10

Patient 8262

I think it was our Philosophy tutor at UPT who said something which I took for granted (or, just as likely, didn’t bother to think about) at the time and have only lately begun to find worrying, now that I have had all this time to think about it. It was this: Any argument or point of view that makes solipsism look no less likely may be discounted.

Solipsism, he told us, was in a sense the default state of humanity. There was, arguably, a kernel of us that always believed that we personally, our own individual consciousness, was the only thing that really existed and that nothing else mattered. That feeling we have – certainly that behaviour we exhibit – of utter selfishness as a child, absolutely demanding (beginning as an infant, when we are paradoxically all-powerful due to our very helplessness), transfigures into the common adolescent intuition that we are invulnerable, almost certainly marked out for something special, but in any event simply not capable of dying, not in our present gloriously fresh state of youthful primacy.

Armed forces at war, our tutor pointed out, are full of barely mature individuals who are perfectly convinced by the proposition It Won’t Happen to Me, and that, significantly, this applies to many who have no serious religious faith predisposing them to such wildly optimistic and irrational self-centredness. This is not to say that there aren’t plenty of others who know perfectly well that It Can Happen to Anybody, or that somebody who started out feeling special and invulnerable cannot change into somebody who is rightly terrified by the randomness and capriciousness of fate – especially military fate – but the vast majority are convinced, despite the evidence all around them of that essentially uncaring arbitrariness, that nothing bad will happen to them.

It might be said that we never entirely shake off this feeling, no matter how many of our illusions we lose in later life or how let down, abandoned and irrelevant we may feel as age extracts its various tolls from us. Of course, this persistence did not in any way mean it might actually be true. We had to assume that solipsism was nonsense because otherwise everything else around us was nonsense and irrelevant, and the result of a kind of self-inflicted deceit.

The tutor’s point, though, was to provide a kind of check on the wilder excesses of philosophical investigation. Of course it was always interesting and sometimes worthwhile to speculate on highly outré propositions and explore exquisitely rarefied and unlikely ideas, but that ought not to distract one overmuch from the mainstream of philosophical thought, or indeed reality.

Whenever one was struck by a previously unlikely-seeming idea that had come to appear plausible or even sensible, one ought to apply that test: was it inherently any more likely than solipsism? If solipsism seemed to make just as much sense, then the idea could be dismissed.

Of course, the proposition that nothing – or at least nobody – else in the universe really existed could never be disproved from first principles. No evidence that might be produced was capable of convincing somebody fully and determinedly holding this idea that they were not the only thinking, feeling thing in existence. Every apparently external event could be consistently accounted for through strict adherence to that central hypothesis, that only one’s own mind existed and that one had therefore made up – simply imagined – all apparent externalities.

Now, our tutor pointed out that there was a weakness in the hard-line or extreme solipsist’s position which came down to the question why, if they were all that existed, they bothered to deceive themselves so? Why did it appear to the solipsistic entity that there was an external reality in the first place, and, more to the point, why this one specifically? Why did the solipsist appear to be constrained in any way by that supposedly physically non-existent and therefore utterly pliable reality?

Often, in practice, one would be talking to the solipsist concerned in a sheltered institution or outright lunatic asylum. Why did they appear to be there, with all the restrictions such establishments tended to involve, rather than living some life of maximally efficient hyper-pleasure – a god, a super-heroic master-figure capable of any achievement or state of bliss through the simple act of thinking of it?

How this argument affected the individual solipsist apparently depended entirely on their degree of self-deception and the history and development of their delusional state, our tutor informed us, but the depressing truth was that it pretty much never resulted in a eureka moment and the solipsist – now happily convinced of the existence of other people – returning to society as a rational and useful part of it. There was inevitably some underlying psychological reason why the individual had retreated to this deceptive bastion of selfish untouchability in the first place, and until that had been successfully addressed little real progress towards reality was likely.

But do you start to appreciate my concerns? Here I am, lying in my hospital bed, relatively powerless and certainly obscure, unheeded by almost everybody, of merely passing interest even to those charged with my care, and yet I am convinced that I am merely hiding, biding my time before I resume my rightful place in the world – indeed, in the many worlds! Before this I had a life of adventure and excitement, of great risk and even greater achievement, of unarguable importance and prominence, and yet now I am here, an effectively bed-bound nonentity who spends a lot of the time asleep, or lying here with my eyes closed, listening to the banality of the clinic going on all around me, day after almost unchanging day, remembering – or imagining – my earlier life of dashing, daring feats of elegance and style, and positions of importance and great power attained.

How likely, really, is it that these memories are real? The more vivid and spectacular they are, the more likely, perhaps, that they are dreams, mere notions, not the set-down traces of actual historical events. What is most likely? That these things happened, threaded through my life like some charged conducting wire spun through the drab fabric of my existence? Or that – doubtless under the influence of some of the drugs prescribed by the Clinic seemingly as a matter of course – I have used a febrile, undemanded-of mind with too much time to think and too little happening in the common weft of reality to distract it to conjure up a theatre of colourful characters and exciting events that flatter my own need to feel important?

I could easily believe that I am mad, or at least self-deceiving, or at the very least that I have been so, and that only now am I beginning to grasp the reality of my situation, my plight. Perhaps these very thoughts are the start of the process of me dragging myself out of this pit of lies that I have dug for myself.

And yet, where did all these traces come from? Where could they have come from? Whether they are genuine memories of actual events which occurred in the real world, or even several real worlds, or whether they are stories I have told myself, where must they have come from? Could I really have made them all up? Or is it not more likely that their very variety and dazzle indicated that they must genuinely have happened? If I am so banal and ordinary, where did these absurd fancies appear from? I must have had some life before I ended up here. Why should it not be as I appear to recall?

I think I can remember a common enough upbringing in a world no more exotic than any might appear to an outsider. A city, a house and home, parents, friends, schooling, jobs, lusts and loves, ambitions, fears, triumphs and disappointments. All seem present and correct (if a little vague, perhaps due to their very ordinariness). All in a minor key, though. All humdrum, everyday, unremarkable, that’s all.

Then my true life (as I think of it) commenced; my entry into the many worlds and l’Expédience, my dealings with persons and events that were anything but ordinary. That was when I became the me I was, even if I am, temporarily, a pale reflection of that person now.

I shall be that person again. I know it.

But you can see why I might be worried. You, who might be a part of me, or a future self.

The Transitionary

Did I do what I think I just did? Surely not. If I did, I’d be the first. (Or not, of course. Maybe it happens all the time but they keep it secret. This is the Concern we’re dealing with here. Secrecy comes as standard. But wouldn’t there be rumours?)

Could I have just flitted without septus? That isn’t supposed to be possible. You must have septus, the drug is absolutely necessary, even if it is not entirely sufficient, if an individual is to transition between realities. I was out of the stuff. They’d taken the emergency pill out of my hollow tooth and taken the tooth itself for good measure. I was unconscious but it must have happened because the tooth was gone.

Or, it occurs to me, I swallowed the pill in a lucid interval – between the smack in the face in the plane and waking up tied to the chair – which I don’t remember. Or maybe it went down my throat by pure chance when they punched me. The punch in the face could easily have dislodged it; I swallowed it and they didn’t know I had. They’d have needed a bulky piece of kit like an NMR scanner or something to have a chance of locating the pill inside my body, so even after they found the hollow tooth…

But they said they had found the hollow tooth, and removed the pill. Why lie about that? Didn’t make sense. And why the post-flit hangover? I didn’t even know who I was for the first few seconds, and my head still hurts. Never had that before, not even in basic training.

Still, even with bits that didn’t add up right, that was a far more plausible explanation than somebody accomplishing a septus-free flit. I had to go with the must-have-swallowed-it-by-accident scenario; I’d just got lucky, once again.

Anyway, whatever: I am naked, hardly presentable to the outside world, so the first thing to do is find some clothes. I try the light switches by the door as I pad out of the great ballroom, but nothing happens. Pausing at the tall double doors to the anteroom beyond, I listen for any sound that might indicate I am not alone in the Palazzo Chirezzia. Quiet as a tomb. I shiver as I cross the anteroom and hall, making for the central staircase. The air is cool but it is the air of ghostly desolation – all these rolled-up carpets, this sheet-wrapped furniture and gloomy light and smell of long abandonment – that truly affects me.

I try one of the grand bedrooms on the first floor, but the wardrobes and cupboards in the dressing room are empty save for mothballs sitting in little nests of twisted paper, or rolling around with dull and lazy clicks in drawers. My reflection stares back at me through the shuttered gloom. Another bland-looking man of generally medium build, though reasonably well-muscled.

On the second floor, one room holds a wardrobe with various sets of clothing, some of which might be my size, but the clothes look antique. I go to the window, crack the shutters and look out. The people I can see in the calle running along the side of the palace look to be dressed in colourful, relatively slim-fitting, moderately heterogeneous clothes.

I would guess I am in a fairly standard late-twentieth or early-twenty-first-century Degenerate Christian High-Capitalist reality (a Greedist world, to use the colloquial). The fragre certainly feels right. Probably the same Earth I visited before, when my little pirate captain tried to recruit me, or near as dammit. If I did flit away from torture, without septus, through sheer desperation, then a familiar world, one I’d visited before and felt comfortable in, but not one they’d expect me to resort to, is where I would head for automatically.

Calbefraques might have seemed the obvious destination; you might think, why didn’t I just wake in my own body, in my own house in the trees looking out over the town beneath? Because for years I have known I might turn traitor in deed as well as thought, and prepared for it mentally, telling myself that in any transition under duress or in a state of semiconsciousness, the place I thought of as home would be the last place I ought to aim for.

All the same, I would not have thought I’d end up here.

The clothes in this wardrobe are fancy dress, I realise; ancient costumes for balls and masquerades.

Three rooms later I discover men’s clothes of the appropriate era and that fit. Just dressing makes me feel better. There is no hot water in the Palazzo Chirezzia; I wash myself from a bathroom cold tap.

There is no electric power either, but when I remove the sheet from the desk in the Professore’s study and lift the telephone I hear a dialling tone.

But what to do next? I stand there until the phone starts making electronic complaining noises at me. I replace it on the cradle. I’m here without money, connections and a supply of septus; conventionally the first thing I ought to do is establish contact with an enabler or other sympathetic and Aware, clued-in soul, to put myself back in contact with l’Expédience and to locate a source of septus. But I’d only be putting myself in jeopardy, handing myself back to my earlier captors and my gently talking friend with his sticky tape, if I do. I have been faced with the choice Mrs M always said I would be faced with and I have made my decision. It is a big thing that I have done and I am still not entirely certain I have jumped the right way, but it is done and I must live with the consequences.

However, the point here is that I will play into the hands of those I oppose if I take the most obvious route and attempt to contact a normally accredited agent of l’Expédience in this world.

The most important thing is to get my hands on some septus. Without that, probably, there’s little I can do. Certainly I appear to have flitted, once, without the aid of the drug. However, it was in extremis, uncontrolled, impromptu (a surprise even to me when it happened), it was to a semi-random location and it resulted in considerable discomfort as well as a state of profound confusion – I did not even know who I was initially – that lasted quite long enough to have made me extremely vulnerable in the immediate aftermath of the flit. Had there been anybody who wished me ill present at that point, I would have been in their power, or worse.

For all I know I had that one spontaneous flit in me and no more – perhaps some residue of septus had built up in my system that allowed me to make that single transition, but is now cleared out, exhausted – and even voluntarily putting myself in another situation as terrifying and threatening as being suffocated while tied to a chair would fail to result in anything more remarkable than me pissing my pants. So, I need septus. And the only supplies of it in this world, as in all worlds, are supposed to be in the obsessively wary and inveterately paranoid gift of the Concern.

However, there ought to be a way round this.

I run my hand over the sheet covering the seat by the telephone. Very little dust.

I sit and start entering short strings of numbers at random into the telephone keypad until I hear a human voice. I have forgotten almost all the Italian I learned last time so I have to find somebody who shares a language. We settle on English. The operator is patient with me and finally we establish that what I require is Directory Enquiries, and not here but in Britain.

The Concern has bolt-holes, safe houses, deep-placement agents and cover organisations distributed throughout the worlds it operates most frequently in. As far as I was aware I knew about all the official Concern contacts in this reality, though of course it would be naive to assume there would be none that had been kept from me.

However, I also knew of one that wasn’t an official Concern contact because it had been set up by somebody who wasn’t part of the Concern proper at all: the ubiquitous and busy Mrs M. So she had assured me, anyway.

“Which town?”

“Krondien Ungalo Shupleselli,” I tell them. I ought to be remembering the name correctly; we are solemnly assured in training that these emergency codes should be so ingrained within us that we ought still to remember them even if we have, through some shock or trauma, forgotten our own names. This one has been thought up, probably, by Mrs Mulverhill rather than some name-badged Concern techies in an Emergency Procedures (Field Operatives) Steering Group committee meeting, but, like the official codes, it ought to work across lots of worlds and languages. It will probably sound odd in almost all of them, but not to the point of incomprehensibility. And it should be far enough removed from the name of any person or organisation to avoid accidental contacts and resultant misunderstandings with possible security implications.

“Sorry. Where?”

“It may be a business or a person. I don’t know the town or city.”

“Oh.”

I think about it. “But try London,” I suggest.

There is indeed a business answering to that name in the English capital. “Putting you through.”

“… Hello?” says a male voice. It sounds fairly young, and just that single word, spoken slowly and deliberately, had been enough for a tone of caution, even nervousness, to be evident.

“I’m looking for Krondien Ungalo Shupleselli,” I say.

“No kidding. Now there’s a name I haven’t heard in a while.”

“Yes,” I say, sticking to the script. “Perhaps you might be able to help.”

“Well, that’s what this is all about, isn’t it?”

“May I ask to whom I’m talking?”

A laugh. “My name’s Ade.”

“Aid?” I ask. This seems a little too obvious.

“Short for Adrian. What about yourself?”

“I assume you know the procedure.”

“What? Oh, yeah. I’m supposed to give you a name, that right? Okey-doke. How about Fred?”

“Fred? Is that common enough?”

“As muck, mate. Common as muck. Trust me.”

“Indeed I do, Adrian.”

“Brill. Consider yourself sorted. What can I do for you, mate?”

Madame d’Ortolan

Madame d’Ortolan sat in the rooftop aviary of her house in Paris, listening to the flurrying of a thousand soft wings and looking out over the darkening city as the street lights came on. The view, graphed by the bars of the aviary, showed deep dark reds and bruised purples towards the north-west, where a recently passed rainstorm was retreating towards the sunset. The city still smelled of late-summer rain and refreshed foliage. Somewhere in the distance, a siren sounded. She wondered how big a city had to become, and how lawless and dangerous in this sort of reality, for a siren always to be heard somewhere. Here, the siren was like an audible signature of fragre.

Madame d’Ortolan took a breath and said, “No, he must have had another pill hidden somewhere.”

Mr Kleist stood in the shadows, behind and to one side of her seat, which was an extravagant work in bamboo with a great fan-shaped top. He looked about at the various birds still flying within the aviary. His head jerked as one flew too close and he ducked involuntarily. He shook his head.

“He did not, ma’am, I am sure.”

“Nevertheless.”

“He was fully restrained, ma’am. It could only have been in his mouth, and that was checked very thoroughly, both before the interrogation began and afterwards. Even more thoroughly, subsequent to his apparent transition.”

Madame d’Ortolan looked unconvinced. “Thoroughly?”

Mr Kleist produced a little transparent plastic bag from one pocket and placed it on the small cane table standing at the side of her seat. She leant over, looked at the thirty or so bloodstained teeth inside.

“They are all present,” he said. “They are just teeth.”

She looked at them. “The false one with the cavity. Was there room inside it for two pills?”

“No, and the septus pill was removed from it and the tooth itself extracted while he was still unconscious.”

“Some residue of septus left with the mouth or throat?”

“I have already asked our most knowledgeable experts. Such an effect is next to impossible.”

“Send these to be analysed, all the same.”

“Of course.” Mr Kleist picked up the plastic bag and replaced it in his pocket.

“Some sort of osmotic patch, or a subcutaneous implant?”

“Again, ma’am, we did check, both before and after.”

“Perhaps up his nose,” Madame d’Ortolan mused, more to herself than to Mr Kleist. “That might be possible. Ill-bred people sometimes make that ghastly snorting, pulling-back noise with their noses. One might ingest a pill in that manner.”

Mr Kleist sighed. “It is a theoretical possibility,” he conceded. “Though not in this case.”

“Did he make such a noise?”

“No, ma’am. In fact he was probably incapable of doing so or of performing the action you mention because his nose and mouth were both tightly secured by tape. No air movement would have been possible.”

“You checked for some infusionary device? Perhaps something concealed within the rectum, activated by…” She could not think how you would activate something like that.

“We checked the subject’s clothing and performed a second internal examination. There was nothing.”

“An accomplice. The septus delivered by a dart or some such thing.”

“Impossible, ma’am.”

“You were alone with him?”

“No. An assistant was present.”

“The assistant…”

“Is completely trustworthy, ma’am.”

Madame d’Ortolan turned to him.

“Then, unless you were somehow complicit yourself, Mr Kleist, it could only be that he was able to ingest a slow-release pill some time before.”

Mr Kleist displayed no reaction. “The arresting interception team assure us this would not have been possible. Also, we took blood samples before and after and there was no sign.”

“They must be wrong, all the same. The results must be wrong. Have everything analysed again.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Madame d’Ortolan turned and gazed out over the city as it subsided into darkness, strings of street lights curving into the clear distance of rain-washed air. After some time she put one hand to her lower lip, pinching it.

“And if they are not wrong, ma’am?” Mr Kleist said eventually, when he began to think that perhaps she had forgotten he was there.

“Then,” she said, “we would have the most severe problem. Because we would be faced with somebody who can flit without septus, and, if they are capable of doing that, they could be capable of doing almost anything.” Madame d’Ortolan stopped and thought for a moment. “That would be a perfectly terrifying prospect even if the individual concerned was utterly loyal.” She turned and looked at Mr Kleist. She could hardly see him. “However, I do not believe that to be the case.”

“It might be wise to act as though it is,” he suggested. “Provisionally, at least.” There was a small light on the table by her side. She clicked it on. Mr Kleist still looked dark, dressed in black or something near black, his face paler but still in shade.

“That had occurred to me,” she told him. “Have the husk killed and a full – and I do mean full – post-mortem carried out.”

“The person is not a husk, ma’am.”

“I don’t care.”

“I understand, ma’am.”

“What about the trackers?”

“We have another two teams on him in addition to the one that found him after Lord Harmyle’s murder. There has been nothing reported so far.”

“Are they optimistic?”

Mr Kleist hesitated. “If they are, they’re being unusually reticent about it.”

“Well, never mind how we lost him initially. Now that he is lost, what if he stays lost? What will he do next?”

“He may already have warned those who were on the list marked for assassination. We think somebody must have. The back-up teams have yet to report a success.”

“Not even Obliq?” Madame d’Ortolan asked, pronouncing her name with the sort of acidic tone she usually reserved for Mrs Mulverhill. “I thought they definitely got her.”

“Ah,” Mr Kleist said. “The team report they now think she may have been flitted an instant before the hit.”

“So he did warn them.”

“Somebody did. We doubt he had time personally.”

She frowned. “Your assistant heard the names on the list, didn’t he?”

“As I say, ma’am, he is above suspicion.”

“That is not what you said, and nobody is above suspicion.”

“Then let me rephrase. I have complete faith in his loyalty and discretion.”

“Would you vouch for him with your life?”

Mr Kleist hesitated. “I would not go quite that far for anyone, ma’am. As you say, nobody is entirely above suspicion.”

“Hmm. That list, then, the people on it.”

“We are watching them as closely as we are able to, waiting for an opportunity, but it is not easy and it is not looking promising. Obliq and Plyte disappeared entirely, untrackable, and the rest are awkwardly located, or staying too firmly in the public eye for us to strike. The relevant teams are still primed and in place, ready to resume action on your command the moment we have a clear shot.” He left a pause. “Though of course we have lost the advantage of surprise and concurrency. Even if we are able to pick one off, the rest will become even more suspicious and hard to get at, the moment they hear.”

Madame d’Ortolan nodded to herself. She took a deep breath. “Thus far, this has not worked out as we intended.”

“No, ma’am.”

She was silent for a few moments. A bird cooed somewhere overhead, and wings rustled. Sometimes, when one of the birds in the aviary was unwell or had been injured and was hopping about on the floor of the structure, broken-winged or too ill to fly, Madame d’Ortolan would let the cats in, to dispose of the creature. She always enjoyed the resulting kerfuffle, brief though it usually proved to be. She twisted in her chair and looked at Kleist. “What would you do, Mr Kleist? If you were me?”

Without hesitation he said, “We find ourselves fighting on two fronts, ma’am. That is not supportable. I would indefinitely postpone the actions against the Council members and withdraw all but the basic tracking teams involved. Throw everything at Oh. He’s the greater threat.”

Madame d’Ortolan narrowed her eyes. “Mr Kleist, I have worked for decades to get to just this point with the Central Council. If we don’t act now there is every chance they will approve the sort of invasively damaging policies that the Mulverhill woman has obviously been insinuating into the vacuous heads of an entire generation of students, technicians and agents for a decade or more. There are too many Mulverhills out there and their influence is growing. I can’t keep swatting them away from all positions of influence for ever. We have to act now. We may not get another chance.”

Kleist looked unimpressed. “Ma’am, I think the moment has passed, for now. Another may present itself in time. In the meantime, nobody seems to have any proof that you were behind the actions against the other Council members, or be prepared to speculate openly on the matter, so we have established, as it were, a stable front there. Mr Oh, especially if he is allied with Mulverhill, is an immediate and dynamic threat. Also, once he’s dealt with, we may be able to make it look as though he and Mulverhill were behind the attacks on the Council members.”

Madame d’Ortolan unwound herself in her seat to sit forward again, looking away from him. She released a long, deflating sigh. “Sadly, annoyingly,” she said in a quiet voice, “I think you’re right.”

Mr Kleist was silent for a few moments. His expression did not change. He said, “Shall I issue the relevant orders?”

“Please do.”

He turned to go.

“Mr Kleist?”

He turned back. “Ma’am?”

Madame d’Ortolan had turned to look at him again. “I take this very personally, and very ill. I shall expect Mr Oh to pay for this, in person. Once he has served whatever other purposes we require of him, I think I might ask you to tutor me in some of the techniques you employed in your earlier profession, so that I might apply them to him. And Mulverhill, for that matter. I severely doubt she’s innocent in all this.”

Mr Kleist gave a small bow. “I am at your disposal, ma’am.”

There was a small smile on Madame d’Ortolan’s thin lips. Her paper-cut smile, as he thought of it. The image brought with it, as it always did, the memory of the scent of lemons and the echo of long-faded screams. She waved one hand. “Thank you. That’ll be all.”

He turned again and had walked more two steps when she said, “Mr Kleist?”

He turned and looked back, still untroubled. The lady was known for using this little technique. “Yes, ma’am?”

The birds were almost silent now, settled in for the night.

“What was it they used to call you? The Moralist, was it?”

“The Philosopher, ma’am.”

“Ah, yes. So, was it agreeable, to be taking up your old profession again?”

He looked at her for a moment. “Why, ma’am,” he said quietly, “we barely began.” He regarded her a moment longer. “But no, not especially.” He bowed and walked away.

The Pitcher

Mike Esteros is sitting at the bar of the Commodore Hotel, Venice Beach, after yet another unsuccessful pitch. Technically he doesn’t know it’s unsuccessful yet, but he’s developing a nose for these things and he’d put money on another rejection. It’s starting to get him down. He still believes in the idea and he’s still sure it’ll get made one day, plus he knows that attitude is everything in this business and he must remain positive – if he doesn’t believe in himself, why should anybody else? – but, well, all the same.

The bar is quiet. He wouldn’t normally drink at this time of day. Maybe he needs to adjust the plot, make it more family-oriented. Focus on the boy, on the father – son thing. Cute it up a little more. A dusting of schmaltz. Never did any harm. Well, no real harm. Maybe he’s been believing too much in the basic idea, assuming that because it’s so obvious to him what a beautiful, elegant thing it is it’ll be obvious to everybody else and they’ll be falling over themselves to green-light it and give him lots of money.

And don’t forget Goldman’s Law: nobody knows anything. Nobody knows what will work. That’s why they make so many remakes and Part Twos; what looks like lack of imagination is really down to too much, as execs visualise all the things that could go wrong with a brand new, untested idea. Going with something containing elements that definitely worked in the past removes some of the terrifying uncertainty.

What Mike’s got here is a radical, left-field idea. The central concept is almost too original for its own good. That’s why it needs a generous helping of conventionality slathered over it. He’ll rework it, again. It’s not a prospect that fills him with joy, frankly, but he guesses that it has to be done and he has to struggle on. It’s worth it. He still believes in it. It’s just a dream, but it’s a dream that could be made real and this is the place where that happens. Your dreams – not just of your idea but of your future self, your fortunes – get turned into reality here. He still loves this place, still believes in it.

Mike leaves the bar, goes outside and sits on a bench, watching the ocean, watching the people pass on the tarmac strip and on the sands themselves, roller skating, boarding, strolling, playing Frisbee, just walking.

A girl comes and sits on the bench too. Well, woman. She might be Mike’s age. He starts talking to her. She’s cute and friendly and smart, rangy and dark, nice laugh. Just his type. A lawyer, on a day off, just relaxing. Monica. He asks does she want a drink and she says maybe a herbal tea and they sit in a little café still within sight of the beach. Then they go for dinner in a little Vietnamese place a short walk away. Mike gives her the pitch because she’s genuinely interested. She thinks it’s a great idea. It actually seems to make her thoughtful.

Later they walk on the beach in the light of a half-moon, then sit, and there’s some kissing and a modest amount of fooling around, though she’s already told him she doesn’t go any further on a first date. Him too, he tells her, though strictly speaking that’s nonsense and he guesses that she guesses this but doesn’t care.

Then, in the middle of a tight, embracing kiss, something changes. He feels it happen, and when he opens his eyes the moon has gone, the air feels cooler and the beach looks narrower and steeper and leads down to a sea that’s much calmer than the one that was there just seconds ago. There are islands out there, dark shapes under the stars, covered in trees. He shakes his head, looks at Monica. He starts back instinctively, crabbing away from her on all fours. She’s changed completely too. White, blonde, shorter, face quite different. There are a couple of guys – the only other people on the beach – standing massively about ten feet away, watching them.

She dusts her hands and rises, standing in front of the two men. “Mr Esteros,” she says, “welcome to your new home.”