The 2084 Precept

by Anthony David Thompson

  ***

  It was raining when I woke up and so it was another cab for the short trip to Whitehall. Whitehall is a wide road, plenty of statues and monuments. It's full of ministries and ministers and ministers' staffs, and you would not be in error if you referred to it as the center of the U.K. government. One of these buildings houses the Ministry of Defence and the headquarters of the British Armed Forces. To be precise, my actual destination was not in fact in Whitehall but in Horse Guards Avenue, not to be confused with Horse Guards Road by the way. This avenue intersects with Whitehall and is where the northern entrance to the MOD Main Building is to be found. Sloppy directions from Delsey, lucky for him he doesn't work for me, but he can't cause problems for people who check their destinations in advance, no sweat.

  Even so, the rain was raining and the wind was gusting and my umbrella was in the car back at the hotel, and so I got soaked covering the ground to the building entrance. There is a statue of a Gurkha there, one of those Nepalese folk originally drafted into the British Army, poor buggers. Or maybe not such poor buggers. A Field Marshall in charge of the British Indian Army once said that if a man asserts he is not afraid to die, then he is either a liar or he is a Gurkha. Well…maybe. Or maybe the Field Marshall was simply full of shit. There are also a couple of monumental statues, or statuary monuments if you prefer, Earth and Water they are called. Not that I took any notice of these governmental decorations, I was getting soaked. But never mind, there are worse things than water and it's good for the hair.

  Into the building itself, not a very old one, a neoclassical affair finished about fifty or sixty years ago. I checked my watch, ten minutes early. Delsey was already waiting for me there, my 'contact person'. He hadn't changed, he was his usual dreary-looking self, a human reproduction of an envelope without an address on it.

  He guided me through a large number of corridors and into a big room which had clearly undergone some refurbishment at some point in time. It was a comfortable looking room, obviously for use by VIPs, and it had a large table in it with over twenty comfortable looking chairs surrounding it, nearly half of which were occupied. I didn't recognize anybody except Delsey's boss, the others could possibly be superior members of the police hierarchy perhaps.

  There were polite greetings and polite introductions and they were indeed all representatives of various branches of the so-called enforcement organization. But we were clearly waiting for additions to the party and so I excused myself and was directed to a door leading to the toilets or—as so eerily referred to by the Americans—to the restrooms. I suppose you could have a rest of some kind in there, but then you could do that in just about any room, couldn't you? Being a European, I took no rest, but I dried myself off, I shook my suit jacket, I ran my fingers through my hair, I checked that my rain-damaged appearance had improved by around 1%, and I headed back into the meeting. The seats were now nearly all occupied and two more persons were entering as I sat down.

  There is no end to the number of ministries in any given country, it seems, and there is no end, it also seems, to the number of departments within most of those ministries. Their task is to control and manage just about any aspect of the activities of the other human beings over whom they have power. The Ministry of Defence is no exception to this. It has a civilian staff of over 80,000 in order to run itself. It even has departments such as the Naval Education Service, the Royal Army Educational Corps, the Queen's Army Schoolmistresses, and the Children's Education Service—the headquarters of the latter being in Germany, by the way. It makes you think. Even a country like the U.K., which represents less than 1% of the world's population, requires hundreds of government departments, staffed by a vast army of hundreds of thousands of people, to tell others what to do, to create laws for them, to try and ensure those laws are obeyed, and to deal with those who don't obey them. None of which is of any particular interest other than that it makes it easier to understand one of the ways in which politicians spend money they don't have and bankrupt their countries with crippling burdens of debt.

  Well…I must say that we had some of the really big fish here today. The Piccadilly demonstration had of course been an exceedingly convincing one and it must have been given a lot of serious internal publicity. And it must have been clear to a lot of people that such abilities could prove to be of unimaginable advantage to whichever country managed to lay its hands on them.

  I was introduced to all of the newcomers and they included—I can recall most of them—one of the Ministers for Defence attending the Cabinet; the Attorney General, who, among other things, is the government's principal legal advisor on matters of international law; the Minister of State, Cabinet Office (who is responsible for providing policy to the prime minister); the boss of SIS, better known in common parlance as MI6; the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State (International Security Strategy); one of the five ministers who, together with the Home Secretary, head up the Home Office, which in turn is in charge of all of the country's police forces; the First Secretary of State and Secretary of State for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office; and the boss of Wilton Park, a department located in Steyning in Sussex, God knows why, and which is responsible, among other things, for arranging international conferences for politicians.

  A complicated meeting, you might think. Yes, but not as complicated as it might have been, had they wanted to involve more top people from the government jungle. And there must have been many who were simply unavailable at such short notice anyway, and there must have been many more who were singularly unimpressed with the information given to them and who didn't feel like wasting their time listening to a load of crap or—if you prefer the more sophisticated word we borrowed from the French—ordure.

  And of course it wasn't important enough—yet—for some of the really big fish, guys like The Minister of Defence himself, or the Secretary of State for Defence, or the Deputy Prime Minister. But even so, they had managed to assemble a small but acceptably heavyweight gathering on next to no notice, so hats off to them.

  There was some shuffling in the seats, some harrumphing, some coughing, the noises you get to hear before the curtain rises at the opera or in a theatre, and then they told me that they would be grateful if I could arrange for an innocuous event within this room to kick things off—a kind of aperitif said one of them, haw, haw, haw, bloody fool. No problem, I said. And what the government officials did, they asked all of the police representatives to leave the room and wait outside, and then they told me what they had agreed on. These people should please come back in and bark like dogs, thank you. For how long, I asked. Not for long, they said, a minute would be more than enough.

  I confirmed to them what they already knew, that I personally had none of these powers and that I would have to telephone in the request, and I went through the door to the toilets and pressed the green button on Jeremy's phone.

  Nothing happened. I pressed again. Nothing. Ghastly thoughts began to slam around in my brain, my neurons were in disarray in less than a second and were formulating a series of grim, fearful scenarios, not only involving serious ridicule, but problems of a legal nature as well. Or of a not so legal nature—which an affronted and embarrassed high-level police authority would be perfectly capable of generating for a perpetrator, a time-wasting and taking-of-the-piss perpetrator.

  Until I realized that I had been using the wrong finger, my print wasn't being recognized, and when I corrected the error, it was—for the first time in my relationship with Jeremy—with colossal relief that I heard his voice on the other end, "Hi, Peter." Calm and collected. I had not yet returned to being calm and collected myself, but I gave him the request, and he said no problem. And so it was with a spring in my step—a remarkably factual expression in this case—that I returned to the room. All of the faces were looking at me, some expectant, some interested and some openly disinterested, skeptical. And then they looked at the main door, and then they looked back at me, and then they looked at the do
or again.

  But they didn't have to look for long. In they came, barking as if they'd been born and raised in the kennels, deep barks, squeaky barks, happy barks and one notably depressed bark, the latter coming from—take a prize—Delsey. Now a minute can be a long time when you've got something like that going on. I recalled my utter disbelief the first time, with the waiter and the girl on the street. These happenings were as impossible as some of the things you see hypnotists doing on stage, making members of the audience jump around by persuading them they are standing on hot coals, or making them take their clothes off, or whatever else hypnotists are supposedly capable of.

  But the demonstration of such powers of hypnosis requires, as far as I am aware, the physical presence of the hypnotist. And there are no hypnotists, as far as I am aware, who can affect a significant number of people simultaneously. And this is what made Jeremy different. And if my neurons had spent many days wrestling with themselves and looking for plausible explanations, Piccadilly on Sunday had convinced them to give up the struggle. They had had no other choice. Jeremy, quite simply, was unique. Also not right in the head of course, but that is not the point.

  Yes, a minute of barking is a long time even if it is dogs you are listening to. But if it's human beings you are listening to, it has the feeling of eternity because it also makes you feel strangely ashamed to know that you personally are also a member of this species. I don’t know why. Psychological.

  The government people couldn't believe their eyes or their ears, and who could blame them? And when it finally stopped, the police officials looked confused. They were wondering why they were standing around when everyone else was seated, and they quickly took their places at the table again.

  I would guess that people are vaguely aware of what they have been induced into doing on these occasions, but they are not quite sure about it because their neurons, after undoubtedly performing a rapid and intense analytical exercise, are unable to come up with the goods.

  But if the barking law enforcers were confused, severe consternation was the initial reaction in the ranks of the spectators. The spectators had had no choice but to believe what their eyes and ears had just seen and heard. On top of that, they knew that I had had no knowledge of their request beforehand. I, or a contact, could cause things to happen.

  But you could see their initial reaction of amazed astonishment wearing off almost immediately. The sly workings of their pea-sized brains took over as they began to imagine in which ways this new technology might be used, if only they could lay their hands on the metaphorical reins of the metaphorical horse.

  And so they started pressuring me. They wanted to meet with this person calling himself an alien—meet with him of his own free will of course, they said. They realized that any other way might merely cause him not to 'perform' or—and this they didn't say but you could see them thinking it—might even cause him to retaliate by using his amazing powers on them, perish the very thought.

  I can conceive of three possibilities, I told them. You have either forgotten the conditions for this meeting, or else you are wanting to void them or—worse still—you were not even informed of the conditions. Whichever it is, it doesn't matter because I am now leaving. The prime minister will have missed out on the most important piece of information he has ever received, or could ever possibly have received. Nice to have met you all, thank you for your time, and have a good day. And I stood up to leave.

  This had the required effect. If, they said, I could arrange for an extraordinarily major event to occur, a momentous one—that word again—within the next two or three days and let them know in advance what it was and when and where it would occur, this would greatly enhance their chances of being able to convince the prime minister to agree to a meeting with Mr. Parker. The prime minister, by the way, could possibly have some thirty minutes available next week on the Wednesday afternoon.

  No problem, I told them, I would contact Mr.Delsey tomorrow morning with the necessary information. Many thanks for your coming, several of them said, and I left them to what would no doubt be a huge discussion of all of the possible explanations for what they had just experienced. Except that there was only one possible explanation available and, let us be honest, it was not an easy one for neurons of any type, size or denomination to be able to grasp.

  Delsey caught up with me before I made it outside and asked if I would be staying in London over the next few days. I told him no. I had a private life and I would be back in Germany for the weekend and perhaps longer. No point in my trying to hide it, they would know anyway; electronic communication, electronic tracking, hiya there George Orwell. I told him that I would be contactable at all times and could fly back without notice if necessary—up until the point that Jeremy Parker and the prime minister were in direct contact. After that, I would no longer be involved and would consider myself free of any obligation to be in contact with him or to allow my private activities to be the subject of further scrutiny by him or his colleagues. Of course, you can always arrest me, I told him, but he didn't find that amusing. He wasn't worried in any case, I could tell that, he knew they could locate me whenever they needed to. Well…maybe he was right and maybe he wasn't.

  The rain had stopped and so I left the building and walked along into Whitehall, down past Downing Street on the other side, turned right and on into St.James's Park and up towards Piccadilly and back to my hotel.

  I didn't do much else today. I had a light meal in the hotel, revueltos à la basquaise, they'd certainly scrambled the languages here but it was a dish I had long since taken a liking to on my trips to Bilbao. It was always a choice for me if I felt like something light and healthy. I washed it down with a half-bottle of red, a good one, a Château Hautes Combes 2005, actually a very ordinary Bordeaux from a very ordinary year, it couldn't have cost them much. But then taste has never been directly connected to what something costs.

  I went outside for the day's last cigarette, yes, must be. Back in my room, I called Jeremy on his mobile and recounted the afternoon's proceedings. He was pleasant enough but his tone sounded non-committal, perhaps he'd had a hard day at the office and we were, after all, only ants and wasps. Fantasy ants and fantasy wasps of course, inhabiting his fantasy universe. He promised to think of something worthwhile for the ministers and their cohorts and would let me know tomorrow morning. I typed and printed the United Fasteners invoice for the past few weeks: €25,200, not to be sniffed at.

  And off I wandered to the land of Nod. The word Nod, in case you are interested, derives from the Hebrew verb 'to wander'. It is the land referred to in Genesis to which God sent the crop-farmer Cain after he (Cain, that is) had murdered his younger brother, Abel. Both were the sons of Adam and Eve and as a result, Cain retains the distinction not only of being the first human being to be born, but also of being the first one to commit murder—by murdering the second human being to be born—which also made him the first to have committed fratricide. Although not the last of course. And this tale—merely as a matter of interest—is also identical to the one recounted in the Islamic Koran. Interesting.

  Nod is also the name of a small village in the U.K. near Holme-on-Spalding-Moor in East Yorkshire. Actually, the word village is an exaggeration when referring to one or two ramshackle buildings, but it is the version of Nod I prefer to picture when going there.

  DAY 22

  I woke up late. A window check showed me patches of blue sky today along with a bunch of fast-moving white clouds, so still windy out there. But the clouds were not rainy ones and the days when I know I am going to catch some regular glimpses of that broiling ball of gas up there always enhance my mood, as they naturally do for most of us. Except, needless to say, for the Delseys of the world.

  I had breakfast at the hotel, a leisurely one with the poached eggs. I then took a walk, returned to the hotel and collected the invoice and the gifts for Roger and Geoff, and strolled over to Shepherd's Market. There I picked up a gift for Su
si and some really good flowers, and headed with my packages into South Audley Street. Up to the third floor and there she was, Susanne Brown, looking as swish as usual and smiling a smile as crooked as ever.

  "Hello, Peter," she said, "out enjoying the sun today?"

  "The sun is great," I said, looking straight at her, "but not as great as some of the things you get to see indoors."

  "Ah, well that is nice to hear. Very nice to hear." Could it be there was a slight blush appearing there? Surely not, a woman of the world like this one. But both her eyes and her smile were as inviting as last time. Perhaps she was just a little embarrassed about showing some interest, who knows?

  "Some flowers for Susanne," I said, "and a small gift as well for having had to put up with your company's weird visitor over the past few months."

  And yes, she was definitely blushing now. "Oh Peter, you really are a very nice and thoughtful man. This really isn't at all necessary you know, but thank you, thank you very much, it is extremely kind of you." And she opened the package and it was her perfume, the one I had noticed her using a couple of months ago. By chance, that had been, but it's always good to store these nuggets of information away in your neuron filing cabinet. You never know if the day will come when they can give you that definitive edge in the sexual safari stakes.

  Not that I intended doing anything about it. The attraction here was purely visual, sexually visual if you insist. Time, as it is wont to do, would clarify the rest of it, starting with when my neurons decided to ban Céline to the archives and add Susi to the group of blinking red lights.

  "I am so terribly pleased," she said, as I headed off in the direction of Roger's office, "that you will be continuing to work with us." Ah hah, so she knew about that. So much the better. And she really did sound genuinely pleased about it. Good news.

  Roger came out from behind his desk to greet me. Man, the way the poor bugger walks certainly portends an early exit, I would put a bet on it, he is an autopsy on the hoof. He picked up the phone and asked Geoff to come along, and then I gave them their presents, each one a small engraved plaque on a wooden surround, intended for the desktop. Roger's said: If you come in here with a problem, and don't suggest a solution, you are part of the problem. And Geoff's addressed one of the world's most frequently heard statements: You are 99% sure, are you? Right…so you don't know.

  The gifts went down well and so did the invoice when I handed it over; they had been expecting a larger amount. But never overdo it is my motto, the psychological gains are worth a fortune over the long-term. I told them that I would be back in a month's time, probably for several days. Great, they said, it's a flexible arrangement from now on. But a very fine arrangement, I thought to myself, I will be getting a lot of credit as Clark's reported profits go up and up and up. And I will be earning money for doing next to nothing.

  I humbly accepted praise for the idea of the employee wage deal and everything else, we said our goodbyes, and I headed out into the reception area. Susi was still at her desk. She was an attractive woman, I said to myself again, no two ways about it. Let me cement the potential blinking red light status a little further. "Do you know what, Susanne?" I said, looking deep into those big, bright eyes, "I am also very pleased that I shall be continuing to work with you." And yes, she blushed again, and she gave me another crooked ambiguous smile and it nearly killed me. But it didn't.

  The sun was shining, the clouds were scudding and, as P.G. Wodehouse might have put it, the bees were no doubt buzzing, although that would be over in the parks rather than here in South Audley Street.

  Jeremy's phone rang.

  He told me that a largish asteroid would be crashing into Jupiter on Monday. He gave me the time and he gave me the coordinates. Those present at the last meeting should inform the prime minister, who would no doubt have the U.K. and possibly the U.S. scientific community informed, although they would be unable to assist by confirming or denying the event. He also asked me to kindly let him know as soon as the Wednesday meeting was confirmed. And he wished me a pleasant weekend. A non-committal mood again today, it seemed.

  I called Delsey and repeated the information. He said he would call me back as soon as he had an answer on the Wednesday meeting.

  I wandered around a few streets, I bought a birthday card for Monika and I bought an IHT for myself. I read it while having a sandwich at one of those small Italian cafés. There were 34 car-bomb deaths yesterday, 112 other combat deaths, the stock markets had gone down again, lucky me, and the long drawn-out Euro crisis was continuing along its inevitable path to doom—a situation which had not of course (as I keep repeating, but these repetitions are delectable and comfortable to my neurons) been created by any of the birdbrains in any of their ministries, and which, consequently and naturally, had nothing to do with them at all.

  I walked back through Berkeley Square to the hotel. Little Miss Ugly was at the desk. She had a nice name: Geneviève Lane. I noticed it for the first time from the nametag pinned to her chest. Breast, I should say, a more sensual word and also a more accurate one. Nice breasts she had, as I mentioned before, and ready-made for nestling on in times of trouble and strife. These were the kind of breasts which help to heal the soul of the emotionally wounded, no doubt about it. Emotionally wounded men at least, I don't think that breasts arouse women, non-lesbian women anyway. And as for the lesbians, let them enjoy it also, it doesn't bother anybody. And as for the aberrations, the militant females, the ones who are in fact non-female females if they did but know it, I recommend a visit to a restaurant called simply La Vie, which is just off Knightsbridge and whose owner is a cynic, just like me. His menu frequently contains comments such as 'In the interests of equality, we are serving chest of chicken tonight'.

  All of which, I admit, is neither here nor there. Good evening, Miss Lane, I said, knowing full well that my use of her name would have an effect on her, and indeed it did. It was as if I had plied her with an array of selected aphrodisiacs, she was metaphorically stripping her clothes off, I do not exaggerate. Which made for a pleasant discourse with a strong erotic undercurrent, while I explained that I was going to have a snooze and that I would then be leaving. I would pay for tonight of course, but would prefer to settle the bill now. Perhaps next time, Miss Lane, I thought to myself, you can apply your breasts to the furtherance of the O'Donoghue healing process.

  I fell asleep straight away and Morpheus provided me with a dream about breasts. Nice firm, round breasts, the ones which last for decades, as opposed to the ones like poor Miss Lane's, which were also nice but which would not last for decades. Poor girl, hers were a fast depreciating asset, to use a balance sheet term, and in the not too distant future you would not be thinking of them as breasts anymore, your neurons would be classifying them under the category of udders. Or dugs. I know, it's brutal, it's sad. But that's life, it's the way things are. I hope that Geneviève uses her assets well (or, more appropriately, allows them to be well used) during the short time allotted to them, and that she eventually marries a man whose libido is destined to be equally short-lived.

  I hold the view, right or wrong, that I have no reason to apologize for acknowledging nature's idiosyncracies for what they are. So I won't.

  I didn't wake up until 11 p.m. No matter, there were ferries to France throughout the night.

  DAY 23

  I trundled down to Dover at the mandatory U.K. speed of a diseased tortoise, and bought a ticket for the next available ship, which was a Sea France one (MyFerryLink, ghastly name). It was 4 a.m. by the time we docked in Calais, which of course was 5 a.m. continental time. Or Central European Time; whatever, it excludes the Brits. And it also excludes the Northern Irish come to that, excluded as they are in their turn, from being Brits.

  But European the Brits indeed are, albeit unbeknown to most of the products of their modern schooling system. Their country's name derives from the description 'Big Brittany', a term used by the Romans in order to distinguish it from t
he region of 'Small Brittany' in north-western France. And the name England of course derives from the term Englaland, named after the Angles, one of the German tribes which settled there during the 5th and 6th centuries. And so this Italian, French and German salad, liberally sprinkled with Scandinavian pepper and other dressings, is what the Brits are. Although not, of course, what they have become.

  I made it home to Okriftel in the original land of the Angles in bright sunshine at around 10 o'clock. I stopped off at the petrol station to buy a newspaper and Mr. Brown's chocolate. From there I walked down to the local travel agency. Renate was there. Renate Mayer, the owner. She can't have been more than forty but nature had dealt her a bad hand and she had clearly decided to cultivate the bad hand further by tending to her lack of sex-appeal with the solemnity of a deranged gardener watering his weeds. And her personality corresponded fully to the abode in which it was located. I usually hold people who have made their own way in life in high regard, and Frau Mayer was certainly a self-made woman. And precisely that was in fact her problem. She worshipped her creator. And it showed. Our relationship, therefore, was of necessity one of the Frau Mayer and the Herr O'Donoghue kind.

  All of that being as it may, I utilized her services because she was extremely efficient. She could deal with the most complicated itineraries in a matter of minutes. She loved nature—in spite of what it had done to her—and would locate the most amazing hotels in magnificent surroundings in the French Alps or the Swiss Alps or Madeira or wherever else I wanted to go with a girlfriend who liked hiking (as well as the rest).

  She had some very classy gift vouchers and I told her I would like one made out for a return flight to Ajaccio and two weeks in whichever fine Corsican hotel she cared to recommend—in the name of Frau Müller. The dates and the bookings would be confirmed at some point in the future but I would pay an estimated amount in advance right now. If she wondered why I was giving such a gift to Monika Müller, whom she knew, she didn't show it. She never raised an eyebrow, a very professional lady our Frau Mayer.

  And Frau Müller it was whose doorbell I rang before going up to my apartment. Being seriously squashed up against those breasts again was as arousing as it usually was and needed as much male self-control as it usually did. In fact more than it usually did, it not being a healthy thing to have spent several weeks in near-celibacy mode, irrespective of Catholic priests' opinions, honest or otherwise, with regard to the subject. Mr. Brown's violent welcome attack resolved the dilemma as it always did, his slobbering dog-kisses easily annihilating my neurons' attempts to maintain the erotic fire, and I accepted Monika's offer of a coffee. I gave Mr. Brown half of his chocolate, thanked her for keeping him until after the chess, and went upstairs for a quick snooze.

  My alarm woke me at a quarter past one—or a quarter after one over the pond—and after a shave and a shower I was off down the road to the technical college, only five minutes away.

  The parents were there, some of them anyway, the mayor and a couple of his officials were there, the headmaster of the college and three of his teachers were there and the chess players and some of their pals were there. The sun was shining, the mayor made his little speech, he presented me with a bottle of Rheingau Riesling, and he wished me and all the players an enjoyable and successful afternoon.

  Which they wouldn't have, at least not the latter. There were twenty pupils, nineteen young guys and one girl and two teachers who also wanted to play. Now if these had been good club players, there was no way I would have been able to avoid losing a game or two. But they weren't, and so I was going to have a fairly easy time. And how it works is this: I have the white pieces on all of the boards, and I walk around making the first move. And when I arrive back at the first board again, that player then makes his move (they all have to wait until I get there each time before making their move) and I reply to it and move on again to the next board. This goes very fast initially, as I know the openings—the best possible moves—and I don't have to think about anything. And after about an hour, we are into the middle game and on a few of the boards I begin to need a few seconds, occasionally a minute, to make my move. But then the players who are in hopeless positions start resigning, and the final game is usually over after about three hours, maybe a little more. Except that on this occasion there was a small, wiry, red-haired young fellow who was playing very well, added to which I had missed the best move on a couple of occasions, and after nearly four hours I offered him a draw. Which it was, and which he accepted and which he had deservedly earned.

  After that, there were sausages, cakes and drinks. The red-haired student enjoyed some well-earned friendly mobbing by his fellow-students and I had a chat with the mayor and some of the other adults, including the wives. And two of the younger ones were really something, let me tell you. I had to activate the neuron quarantine law to keep my eyes off their breasts and legs and, yes, their asses (no, I have no intention of being the first male in the world to announce the truth—the whole truth and nothing but the truth—about why we inspect their asses). But the neuron quarantine law, as with a variety of laws, is a difficult one to abide by and of course they noticed my non-compliance.

  But there you go, there they are, locked into the consequences of the reproductive trade, thinking about cooking dinner for four tonight, dealing with four people's dirty washing tomorrow, cleaning the family nest on Monday, and all the rest of what they call life. Playing their role in the planet's cycle of birth and death, happy with their bourgeois lot—well, some of them are and some of them aren't—but both kinds lost forever to the single person's world of unfettered existence on life's ocean waves, a memory they have swapped for a roof over their heads, the use of a car, the need to comply with their biological requisites, and the desire not to be alone and without offspring when Dr. Death comes tapping on their door, as of course one day he will.

  I smoked a cigarette as I walked back home in the early evening sunshine, I collected Mr. Brown and the basics for my fridge from Monika, and went upstairs. Mr. Brown settled down to resume his pondering of intricate canine metaphysics and I settled down to my newspaper.

  More trouble in the Middle East, I noted, and (great news!) more peace talks planned. Most people alive have been inundated with news items on the Middle East conflicts and their thousands of accompanying peace conferences since the day they were born, and that is no exaggeration—O.K., not since they were born, an unworkable expression; but since they reached the stage of being able to absorb world news. Unfortunately most of the countries involved in this mess operate on belief-based systems, so there won't be any peace for centuries to come or, more realistically, ever. They all hate each other too much.

  Of mild interest was another article on government corruption. Nothing new about that either, corruption being as much a part of the human character as the killing skills are. But I was amused by one of the examples used to demonstrate how corruption can be practiced (and also tolerated—and therefore approved—and sometimes participated in—by the boss birdbrains).

  There are 30,000 civil servants working for the European Commission. Last year, 22,329 of these people were ill. At least once. That was an increase of 0.6% over the prior year. They were ill for a total of 433,808 working days, which means an average of nearly 3 weeks for each one, an increase of 2.5% over the prior year. This article pointed out that not all of the illness was fraudulent but that an awful lot of it was. No normal private organization could survive with those kinds of numbers. And normal organizations would almost certainly do something about it. But these chronically sick people are their own bosses, they do nothing to change things, the abuse increases each year, and then they are allowed to retire in their mid-fifties and take home a pension of between €4,300 and €10,000 per month (all decided and approved by themselves, needless to say). Not bad, eh?

  And what exactly do these people do or achieve anyway, when not ill or on vacation or whatever? What is the difference between them bei
ng ill and them being not ill? And if some of them occasionally die, how can you tell they’re dead? Don't ask me folks, just keep on voting.

  I switched to the Sudoko, more interesting. Then I gave Mr. Brown his evening meal and, replete with college sausages and beer, prepared myself for a long, long sleep.

  DAY 24

  Mr. Brown woke me up. It was time for his morning constitutional and I took him down to the river for an hour. When we returned I wrote 'For a very special friend' in Monika's birthday card and took it together with the gift voucher down to her apartment.

  She was still wearing one of the long T-shirts she used for sleeping, and she had no make-up on—on my account, probably, despite her explanation of a long Sunday and a birthday lie-in. She knew I generally disliked the taste of lipstick and the chemical smells of powders and other female painting products. Not of course, that we men don't regularly sacrifice ourselves in this regard in the name of luuuuv. Or sex.

  When she opened up the card and the present, she burst into tears. And then she hugged me and gave me a long kiss, for the first time ever on the lips.

  Erotic was not the word for it, her body caused my neurons to disintegrate into a morass of raving lust and when she felt my reaction, she pressed herself up against me even harder. But, cynic though I may be, I am not a bastard. My entire nervous system, except for that section responsible for moral control, erupted into volcanic rage as I separated myself from her embrace. I mean, this was a woman who would be reaching retirement age before I was fifty; that would never work, not with me, and not with many others either. And no way was I going to cause her the programmed heartbreak. I liked her too much for that.

  She became her cheerful self again before long and my neurons also took a grip on themselves. The electrical impulses resumed their normal traffic flow, and other parts of myself, aching a bit though they may have been, started on their dejected and unwilling return to standby mode. She made me some poached eggs, we talked about my upcoming trip to Spain, and I invited her to dinner that night in her favorite restaurant in Wiesbaden.

  Delsey, that indefatigable weekend worker, called me during the afternoon. The meeting was confirmed for Wednesday at 5 p.m., on the condition that tomorrow's forecast event did indeed occur. Mr. Parker and myself should please be at 10, Downing Street at around 4.45 p.m. The Downing Street venue was preferable for security reasons, already in place you understand, no need for additional measures, ha, ha. If the event did not occur, however, the meeting would not be taking place and I should present myself instead at nine o'clock on Tuesday morning at New Scotland Yard and ask for him. Without fail, please, to preempt any need for otherwise unavoidable steps and inconveniences, you understand.

  I understood alright, some kind of charge for infiltrating and willfully obstructing government functionality or whatever. I told him O.K., but that I might not be present, Mr. Parker would be deciding on the need for that. He asked what my movements were going to be in the coming week and I told him I didn't know.

  I called Jeremy and let him know about the meeting. No, it would not be necessary for me to be there, he said. He could handle the meeting himself, he would let me know how it went. I sent a text message to Delsey confirming that Mr. Parker would be there on Wednesday, and that I would not be there. He shouldn’t worry however; I would fly over tomorrow night to comply with his alternative meeting requirement in the case of a non-occurrence of the forecast event.

  I called the restaurant and reserved a window table for two and ordered a small birthday cake with just one candle, gave them my credit card details. I went out for a long, fast bike ride with Mr. Brown. We exhausted ourselves nicely, and then I gave him his dinner, smoked a cigarette on the balcony, had a shower, put on some fresh clothes, and went downstairs to collect Monika for dinner. She was wearing a simple black dress and a small necklace and she looked, yes it is the correct word for it, fantastic. She had done something to her hair and she looked very young.

  It took us about half an hour to get to the restaurant which is on the town end of Wiesbaden's main park, in one of those fine buildings housing the city's main theater and the casino. As we walked away from the car park, Monika took my hand. She had never done that before, but it felt O.K., it felt good. It wasn't of course, it was as wrong as sleeping together would be. And maybe she was thinking the same thing because she let go again before we went inside.

  The dining area was fairly large and fairly full. It was all dark paneling and the walls were hung with photographs and sketches from a fun-loving but bygone era. The lighting was low and relaxed, there were candles on the tables, and there was a piano player and a guitarist. We ordered some red wine. Monika liked Rioja and so I ordered a 2005 Murillo while we looked over the menu.

  "Oh, Peter," she said.

  "Happy birthday," I said.

  "Too many of them," she said with a smile.

  "Not the way you look."

  "I'm sorry about this morning," she said.

  "Don't worry, Monika," I said. "There's nothing to worry about. Just relax."

  "I know, but I shouldn't have…"

  "Perhaps not," I said with a smile. "But living dangerously is not without its benefits."

  She reached across the table and took hold of my hand again. "I've been having bad thoughts about you all afternoon," she said.

  "Bad thoughts?"

  "Yes. Very selfish thoughts. I have been hoping that you will never, ever, find the right woman. And then you will have to stay with me."

  "Now that's not what I call a bad thought, Monika," I said. "But even if I find what you call the right woman, you and I will always be very special friends. And the right woman would have to agree to that in advance."

  She started dabbing at her eyes again but she was very happy, you could tell, she was enjoying her birthday. And so was I, just watching this woman, her deep brown eyes, her soft brown hair, her slightly crooked nose and, yes, her nice round breasts, neatly tucked away and nestling in that little black dress of hers. And after dessert, the restaurant manager and two of his waiters brought the birthday cake and she blew out the candle and the waiters and the tables around us applauded and I asked for her favorite piece of music, San Salvador, and while it was being played she burst into tears again. And then we drank a lot more red wine, and a coffee, and a cognac, and I asked for some more old pieces of music, including ones that I like, such as Walkin' in Memphis and Streets of London, and we were one of the last ones to leave.

  We went into the casino where we ordered more cognac, and I gave her €100 and I told her to double it or lose it and of course she lost it all, and of course I lost my €100 as well. Monika was drunk and I was also fairly sozzled, but I still drive well—and slowly—when under the influence, not that the police would see it that way of course. Nor should they, don't get me wrong. But life is a risk, and it was a Sunday night and there were no police around and we drove happily back to Okriftel, luck favors the brave. Sometimes.

  I put Monika to bed, no undressing her, I won the battle again with my neurons on that one, and I gave Mr. Brown five minutes around the block and then I put myself to bed as well.

  DAY 25

  The pain caused by Céline was slowly becoming a dull ache. An ache which still produced pangs of grief whenever she surfaced in my thoughts, but time's scabs were gradually forming over the wound, the healing process was under way. So it was Jeremy Parker who dominated my thoughts while I was shaving, and he continued to dominate them while I drank my coffee and smoked my cigarette. How on earth could he cause an asteroid to make an unforeseen and unplanned crash-landing onto one of our planets?

  I finally concluded that there were two possibilities, and only two. Number one: O.K., so he had chosen our largest planet, Jupiter, a gas giant with over sixty moons and which has over three hundred times the mass of the Earth and is four times bigger than that in terms of volume. And as such it has a massive gravitational pull and regularly drags comets and
asteroids towards the inner part of our solar system, some of which end up from time to time crashing into its surface. What is left of them anyway, the gravitational forces tear them to pieces while they're on their way in.

  So he was not talking about an unusual event. Maybe, deranged though he is, he has—in addition to his astonishing and prodigious mind-bending abilities—outstanding talents as an amateur physicist and astronomer. Look at the skepticism with which Galileo was treated by the other scientists of his time, some of whom actually categorized him as insane. Perhaps Jeremy simply has knowledge of the fact that another asteroid is finally due to lose its orbital battle and perish in that gaseous spider's deadly embrace. Far-stretched, no doubt about it. But it couldn't be his computer-hacking; he had said so himself, he can't move physical objects.

  The second possibility was that no asteroid at all would crash into Jupiter today. This could therefore be the day when Jeremy's fantasy world would finally manifest itself to be exactly what it was, a fantasy, the proof of the pudding so to speak, the end of the line, a lunatic having to confront himself with the evidence of his own lunacy, and with whatever consequences that might turn out to have.

  And of course there would be the consequences for myself. I wouldn't think they could put me into jail, they had no real justification for that. And even if they did invent some nebulous reason for doing so, it wouldn't be for long. It would simply be another of life's experiences, like being washed gently onto some smooth rocks by a small ocean wave. So it would mean some embarrassment and it would mean some hassle, but who knows, maybe Jeremy would still transfer the remaining money from our interview agreement. He might be hopelessly deranged, but he had proven himself to be a person of high integrity so far. And even if he didn't, the €300,000 I had already received compensated more than satisfactorily for the time and trouble of my involvement in this weird affair.

  Mr. Brown had—quite justifiably—begun to intensify his harassing strategy, and so off we went, down to the river, back to the petrol station for the newspaper, and back to base. Only 30 conflict deaths today, a nice round number. Are we pleased? Are we disappointed? Are 30 deaths enough to trigger our abhorrence and disgust? Or are 30 deaths too few, a miserable number, disdainful, not worth a moment’s thought? Or doesn’t it matter, do we not really care what the number is, or how many were women and children? Has it all been going on for too long, have we become totally blasé? To each his own. My own personal reaction, as you would naturally expect of a cynic, was a cynical one and it hasn't changed from day to day and it hasn't changed from year to year. Our small lump of rock continues to orbit its star, the human species continues to pursue its various activities—revolting, pathetic or otherwise, define them as you see fit—on its small lump of rock, and there is nothing I can do about it and there is nothing you can do about it (if you think you can, then your attempts and those of your predecessors have been extraordinarily ineffectual), and there is nothing anyone else can do about it either. So I personally am only mildly interested at best. And even then, only from a mathematical and statistical point of view.

  It was exactly 2 p.m. when I switched on the news channel. This was the time Jeremy had said we would be able to observe the asteroid collision. But I dozed off after about twenty minutes. I woke up again just after three o'clock but there was no asteroid news that I could see, the main item being another huge debate about the refinancing of yet more Greek and Spanish and Italian bonds. It was while I was watching the sports news that the sub-heading BREAKING NEWS started to flash across the bottom of the screen, followed by MASSIVE ASTEROID HITS JUPITER in non-stop repetition.

  My brain stopped. My neurons went on strike. They were not accustomed to improbable and irrational occurrences of this magnitude. The synapses, which are the coordinates of the nervous impulses passing from the axon of one neuron to the dendrites of another, were in disarray. Synapses, after all, were designed and created to function exclusively under pre-determined and mathematically defined conditions. Nevertheless, interruptions to the ordered activities of the central nervous system do not—except in situations of, for example, extreme torture—last for any protracted length of time. The recovery occurs within seconds, even micro-seconds, as the metaphysical need to reassert itself takes over again and the frantic search for an explanation complying with the imperatives of unconditional logic is launched.

  And of course the logic was found. In this case it was already embedded in the appropriate compartment of the brain. This was a natural event, said the logic. There was nothing unnatural or supernatural about it in any shape or form. Such events had occurred before and they would inexorably continue to occur in the future. Among others, the renowned Shoemaker-Levy comet had died its appointed death on Jupiter less than ten years ago. And Jeremy Parker had merely had prior knowledge of the timing of this particular object's demise, even if our scientists on this occasion hadn't. And that was all there was to it, that was the logic.

  I continued to watch for a while and before long the news commentator began to relay to us the few snippets of the information he had been fed, the size of the asteroid was unusually big, the causes and the peculiarities of its orbital exit were still being researched, and so on and so forth.

  I switched off the television. Sometimes life's ocean waves lift you up high on a gentle swell and deposit you tenderly onto a soft and sandy shore with, for example, a beach bar not far away. There would be no embarrassment for me, there would be no hassle—at least not of the unpleasant kind—and I would not have to catch a flight tonight or make an appearance at New Scotland Yard tomorrow morning. And—the beach bar was also stocked with diverse bottles of very old single malt whiskey—my chances of earning the extra outstanding €300,000 had multiplied exponentially.

  Back to earth. My mobile rang. It was Sr. Pujol from Barcelona. He was just calling me on the off-chance in order to enquire whether there was any possibility of our meeting at his group's offices in Barcelona at the end of this week; that would then allow me to start at the shipping company in Palma first thing on Monday morning. Cheeky to say the least, putting pressure on your new consultant before he has even started.

  But my mood was a good one and after some quick thinking, I said that I could agree provisionally. A great sacrifice, a major reorganization of my work and travel schedule, issues with my current project, but O.K., provided he appreciated this might result in my having to fly a couple of times to the U.K. for a day or two during the next few weeks. He was happy to agree to that, plus he owes me one. Or he thinks he does. My thinking told me to tell him that I could make it for Friday around 1 p.m. That way I could drive overnight on Thursday from Okriftel to Barcelona, meet Pujol, and then take the night ferry to Palma on the Friday. No need for a hotel in Barcelona, I still preferred to keep Delsey and his crew off my back for as long as possible.

  I knew I could probably arrange the pending interviews with Jeremy for a Saturday or a Sunday, but it was good to have agreed alternatives with Sr. Pujol just in case Jeremy were to require some unforeseen and sudden assistance.

  "Brownie," I called. There were the usual thumps and skidding noises as he got to his feet, his mat went sliding across the floor, and downstairs we went to see Monika. She had already been out for a walk, cleared last night's cobwebs. But the day was still warm and she was happy to take another one. We walked down to the river and along it for a while and then we decided that an early meal would be a good idea.

  We returned to Marie-Anne's and ordered fish and white wine again ('you two again’, smiled Marie-Anne), and Mr. Brown joined in a football game with some kids who were playing on the grass nearby. I broached the subject of the car. I told her that I would not be taking my Audi to Spain, that all of the cars get scraped and scratched in that country—an exaggeration but not much of one—and that I would be hiring one for the trip and would be leaving on Thursday evening. I didn't get the chance to ask her if she would agree to the hire in her name becaus
e her eyes gleamed, she said why hire one, let me use yours and you can take mine, it's scratched enough already. And that was the deal. Her car was a white Golf with one of the bigger engines, probably four or five years old, and it would serve its purpose well in getting me to Barcelona. There are speed limits anyway on the French autoroutes and the Spanish autopistas. And following that it would remain permanently parked for a while, not that Monika needed to know that.

  After the meal we had a coffee and she told me that I shouldn't have invited her to such an expensive dinner and that I shouldn't have given her such an outrageously expensive gift and that she had had a wonderful birthday. She also thanked me for putting her to bed but told me I should have undressed her, women prefer that and so do their clothes. And she looked at me with her big brown eyes and a wistful smile on her lips. She said that it was a very sad thing that my work took me away from home all the time.

  And as we got up to leave, she didn't take my hand, but she put her arm through mine, and Mr. Brown sniffed his way along in front of us and led us both back home.

  DAY 26

  Today I decided to do nothing except play chess on the computer and read my book. According to one of the Bible's authors, God also took a day of rest. Although opinions to be found here and there allege that it might have been better had he decided not to.

  I also decided to call Jeremy, pressed the green button on his phone.

  "Good morning, Peter," he said and I could imagine him sitting in his office in his expensive business suit and wearing one of his expensive collection of ties.

  "Good morning, Jeremy. I just thought that I would check to see if everything is O.K. for tomorrow's meeting."

  "No problems from my end, Peter. After all, all I have to do is appear at the appointed time and that I shall do."

  "Fine. Then I assume you have no objections to my starting my Spain project? I intend to travel there on the day after tomorrow for a kick-off meeting the next day."

  "Objections? None at all, Peter. And if I understood you correctly, you will be able to fly over on mutually agreed dates for the remaining interviews. That is still the case?"

  "Absolutely, Jeremy. An agreement is an agreement, at least between one honorable person and another. I wouldn't apply that to most of the elected birdbrains or to the likes of Hitler, of course."

  He laughed. "Oh, you have no need to convince me of your non-birdbrain status, Peter, and you are not the Hitler type. And in any case I assume that the small matter of a monetary nature continues to play its minor role."

  "I don't mind telling you that that is not very polite of you, Jeremy. For your information, that small matter, as you put it, is smaller for you than it is for me and the role it plays is a major one. But that is not the reason for my keeping to our agreement; I am complying with our agreement because I always comply with my agreements."

  "Indeed. I apologize. That was very impolite of me, Peter. And I am benefitting at least as much from our relationship as you are. Please accept my apologies. My sincere apologies."

  "Apologies accepted, Jeremy, thank you. Now tell me, how did you know about the asteroid?"

  "Know about the asteroid?"

  "Yes, how did you know it was due to hit Jupiter yesterday?"

  "Peter," he said, "It was not due to hit Jupiter yesterday. That is why your astronomers didn't know anything about it. I actually made it happen, or rather I asked my colleagues to agree to do it for me. They are more conversant with the technical requirements and the mathematical calculations than I am."

  "You and your people caused it to happen? I thought you said that you can't influence physical objects, you can't make things move. You said that you can only influence people's minds by hacking into their cerebral function, by manipulating electrical impulses and neuron activity and the like."

  "Ah, and that is so," said Jeremy. "We would not be able to physically move an asteroid or any other solid object, or semi-solid come to that. But what we are able to do, we are able to influence the six fundamental interactions of nature. At this point in time your species is only aware of four of them, namely: gravity, electromagnetism and the two nuclear forces. The first two are the ones which are of interest to us here. Gravity is a natural phenomenon in which most physical bodies are attracted to each other by a force proportional to their masses. Note that I say masses, not size. And gravity is responsible for many things. It causes dispersed matter to coalesce and to remain coalesced and it is responsible for most of the macroscopic objects in the universe—including your own planet and your sun. Gravity is also responsible for the intensely high temperatures in the interiors of forming planets and stars. Gravity is also the cause of 'weight'. Without gravity, weight would simply not exist."

  "And you can influence gravity?" I asked.

  "No, no, we can't do that, but we can influence the gravitational forces affecting an object."

  "How?"

  "Well, first of all, you would need to understand that gravity itself is not, precisely defined, a force."

  "It isn't?"

  "No, and your modern physicists already know that. They accept the findings of Einstein's theory of general relativity, which states that gravitation is a consequence of the curvature of space-time, which causes and governs the motion of inertial objects. In other words, it is not a force. And it is something that we can influence."

  "I still have my question. How?"

  "Well, there is also a second ingredient involved. Electromagnetism."

  "What is electromagnetism?"

  "Well, Peter, let me see…you presumably know what a magnet is?"

  "I think so."

  "It is a metal producing an invisible magnetic field which strongly attracts other ferromagnetic materials. Actually, it attracts all substances, but its pull on non-ferromagnetic objects is very weak, hardly noticeable. And its 'unlike' poles are the ones which attract, while its 'like' poles do the opposite, they repel. Now… an electromagnet is like a magnet, except that its magnetic force is generated by electricity. In other words, if the electric current stops, it stops being a magnet."

  "And?"

  "And so magnetic fields are produced by the motion of electrically charged particles and we are able to directly influence the forces which result from that motion. We can influence the activity of those electrically charged particles."

  "So you can use your hacking skills to mess around with non-solid forces and/or space-time, and in that way you can affect any solid objects which happen to find themselves under the control of such forces?"

  "Yes, and I can't explain it any further than that because not even your physicists would comprehend it. Even their decades-long research into anti-gravitational forces hasn't increased their understanding very much."

  "But you still haven't answered my question, Jeremy, so let me put it to you in a different way. Why do the four—or six—natural phenomena of nature exist in the first place?"

  "Ah, now that is a good question, Peter. And the answer is…we don't know. Like you, we merely happen to know that they exist."

  "Now that is interesting, so there are some matters you don't know about. And if you don't mind my saying so, Jeremy, that is a good and calming thing for me to hear."

  And it was a good and calming thing for me to hear. It was somehow of comfort to me to know that he hadn't taken care of every single detail in that intricate fantasy world of his. And his attempt to explain how that asteroid was moved was therefore vague and incomplete and therefore not to be trusted. Although…the matter of the asteroid still had me puzzled. How could he possibly have known about it?

  "In that case," I continued, "I obviously won't be getting an answer to my question. So please tell me about the asteroid itself."

  "There's not much to tell, Peter. There are millions of asteroids in your solar system and most of them exist within two areas. One of these areas is between Mars and Jupiter, and the other one stretches beyond the orbit of Neptune in what you c
all the Kuiper belt. The asteroids come in all sizes. The largest one, which you call Ceres, has a diameter of about 1,000 kilometers. Actually, you reclassified that object as a dwarf planet some eight years ago. Next you have 2 Pallas at 544 kilometers diameter and 4 Vesta at 525 kilometers, although the latter has more mass than 2 Pallas. And the minor ones can be as small as a couple of millimeters. In fact, an average 90 tons of these objects descends upon your planet every day."

  This called for an interruption. "Did you say 90 tons every day?" I queried.

  "Yes, Peter. You are bombarded every day by millions of meteors, meteoroids, and meteorites—the latter being your term for objects which actually impact your atmosphere or surface. But as their size is usually anything from that of a grain of sand to the size of a fist, and as they are travelling quite fast (40,000 kilometers per hour would be a common speed), nearly everything vaporizes as it enters your atmosphere. My colleagues simply chose an asteroid which was large enough to make its impact on Jupiter an interesting one for you."

  "And what if they had sent it to Earth instead of to Jupiter?" I asked. "Would it have destroyed our planet?"

  "Oh no, your planet is too big for an asteroid impact to be able to destroy it. But a large enough asteroid would certainly destroy all life on your planet, if that's what you mean, except—perhaps—for some bacteria. In fact, this has already happened twice in your planet's history, mass extinctions both times. And it will probably happen again, but perhaps not for a very long time. You will, however, continue to have more near-misses like the one that passed very close to you a few years ago."

  "Well…you've explained to me how you got that asteroid to leave its orbit, not that I really understand your explanation, but I'll take your word for it. However, how did you manage to get it to travel as far as Jupiter in such a short time? It was a very sudden event, virtually without notice in fact."

  "Now that was done by utilizing our space-time technology, a science which you might describe, in its simplest form, as a far-reaching extrapolation of your Einstein theories, and for which you would need several years of study to be able to understand, Peter. Assuming, that is, that you were an accomplished physicist in the first place."

  "O.K., Jeremy, understood. Accepted. And anyway, many thanks for making the effort to explain. I appreciate it. I guess I just have to accept the fact that the event happened, and that it happened exactly as you said it would happen, and exactly when you said it would happen. That is the fact of the matter. So thanks again for the info, and may I wish you a successful meeting tomorrow."

  "Oh, successful or otherwise, Peter, it will be intriguing. A close-up view of how your species reacts to something beyond its comprehension. I know you don't believe me, Peter, and they probably won't either. But they, like you, cannot reject facts and it will be interesting to see what they decide. I'll update you on the particulars in due course."

  And we said our goodbyes. He was right, I didn't believe him. He hadn't convinced me. He hadn't convinced me at all. His explanations had been far too amateurish, based on an absolute minimum of knowledge, they were far too nebulous, they didn't hold water. In fact, thinking over his rhetoric even more closely, he had not provided me with any intelligible explanation at all.

  So there remained the one and only possible conclusion. He must have known about it in advance but didn't want to admit it. He preferred to maintain his carefully and painstakingly fabricated delusion of the alien traveler. But—honest as I am—the one and only possible conclusion was also a difficult one for me to swallow. I was confused and I had, for the first time since I had been involved with him, some doubts concerning his status as a human being. But please don't ask me what the form or consistency of those doubts were, because I don't know.

  And so I took Mr. Brown for a walk, I played some chess on my laptop and studied some end-game situations, and I took Mr. Brown for another walk and I ate at the Italian.

  I also stayed up reading a large portion of my new book, 'L'Élégance du hérisson' by Muriel Barbery—an extraordinarily beautiful book because of its writing, and also because of that rare manifestation in literature, its uniqueness. Not a great book but an eminent one. I must buy a couple of copies of the English translation to use as gifts for a blinking red light or two (would they have kept the title, 'The Elegance of the Hedgehog'?), and to see if they have been able to achieve the herculean task of retaining most or all of its literary accomplishment. And then I went to bed.

  DAY 27

  I can trace my ancestry back to a protoplasmic primordial globule. Oh yes.

  To a prokaryote to be precise. Prokaryotes such as bacteria and archaea first appeared on this particular planet about 4 billion years ago. Like all living cells, they use the same basic set of nucleotides and amino acids, and they share a limited set of morphologies. I use the present tense here, because some of these organisms are still around.

  Around 2 billion years ago, enkaryotic cells arrived on the scene (don't ask me how, maybe God or Allah sent them do you think?) and eventually caused the next major change in cell structure by engulfing bacteria, by means of endosymbiosis, and triggering a co-evolution which finally resulted in organisms such as mitochondria, hydrogenosomes and, in plants and algae, chloroplasts.

  But these were still unicellular organisms. The first multicellular organisms began to appear in the planet's oceans around 600 million years ago, in the form of sponges, slime moulds and a variety of similar organisms. And not too long after that, something we call the Cambrian Explosion produced a massive increase in biological diversity, probably caused by the significant increase at that time in photosynthetic activity, the consequence of which was an accumulation of oxygen in our planet's atmosphere.

  And so it was that around 500 million years ago plants and fungi began to colonize the land, and they were followed about 350 million years ago by arthropods and other animals of elementary structure. Amniotes and birds began to develop around 150 million years ago in what we refer to as the Jurassic period, and mammals evolved about 20 million years after that. Homininae first began to appear around 10 million years ago. And the human being—the initial anatomical version, as I had explained to Jeremy—evolved around 200,000 years ago. Very similar, at the time, to certain other animals; in fact to this day human beings and chimpanzees share 96% of their genomes.

  What evolved, including ourselves, and how it evolved—in fact, how it is still evolving—is, without contradicting proven biological and chemical theses, a matter of pure chance. It is a matter of pure chance based on several haphazard and unforeseeable occurrences, similar to the ones affecting our planet's weather. For example, the majority of plants and animals reproduce sexually, the defining characteristic of which is recombination, so called because each of the offspring receives 50% of the genetic inheritance from each of the parents. Nobody knows how or why sexual reproduction came into existence, although we do know when—it was in the early history of the enkaryotes—nor do we understand how it has managed to evolve and survive. For it is not only a highly inefficient method of reproduction—an asexual group of organisms can outbreed and displace a similar sexual group in as little as 50 generations—but it is well documented as being a haphazard and sometimes dangerous method as well. The genetic reshuffling produced by the random nature of recombination can, and often does, break up favorable combinations of genes. And it can cause unforeseen mutations.

  Another example of the random nature of evolution is the way predators and their prey have developed. Both have always needed to continuously develop and enhance their attack and defence mechanisms in order to survive: the predator in order not to die of hunger, and the prey in order not to be slaughtered into extinction. The continuous evolution of the increasing strength of toxins and antitoxins in certain animals, including limbless reptiles, is a perfect example of this. And sometimes the predator has become extinct, and sometimes the prey has become extinct, depending on the comparative efficiency and/
or the speed of their individual evolutionary processes. Depending, in other words, on chance.

  And extinction events play a major role overall. It is interesting to note that extinctions of species occur regularly, the best-known one being the Cretaceous-Paleogene event, in which all non-avian dinosaurs were eliminated. In fact, nearly all plant and animal species that have ever lived on the Earth are now extinct. And we have a mass extinction event going on right now, the Holocene event we call it. It has only been with us for a few thousand years, for the simple reason that it is associated with the human species, with humanity's expansion around the globe. It is a very deadly extinction event and it is working at a very high speed. And the human animal is the cause.

  And so we are just a dot in the history of evolution, part of a long, long series of speciation and extinction events. The fossils tell no lies. And extinction, like it or not, is in any case the ultimate fate of all species.

  So…that is my ancestry. And, since all organisms on our planet derive from a common ancestral gene pool, it is yours as well. We are the products of evolutionary chance, a system created by a deity or deities, or otherwise, take your pick. Or don't take your pick if you don't want to. I don't. The big mysteries remain unsolved including the unanswered question of where did those prokaryotes come from in the first place and how did they manage to come into existence—on Earth or somewhere else—if they didn't exist before?

  But perhaps all of this is a load of crap. Maybe the Jews have got it right—we did not evolve at all. We, along with the universe, were suddenly created 3,761 years before the birth of Christ. Who knows? Not I. I am neither a Hebrew, nor has anybody else provided me with any worthwhile information on the matter.

  The cause of these idle evolutionary ruminations on a nice, sunny Wednesday morning was—of course—Jeremy Parker.

  That asteroid business had me thinking outside of the box, a fine expression for which we owe a debt to the Americans, and which I apply as necessary in my consultancy work when faced with major and seemingly insoluble problems. Hypotheses in other words, and mainly of the 'what if…?' kind, and as crazy as you care to make them. What if Jeremy Parker were an alien? And what if Jeremy Parker and his brothers were capable of eliminating us, should they choose to do so? It would, after all, be just another extinction event, it wouldn't have the slightest effect on our solar system, or on our galaxy or on the universe. It would be like destroying an ants' nest, it wouldn't have any effect on anything—or to be more precise, it wouldn't have any noticeable effect on anything, notwithstanding that legendary time-travel story to the contrary. You know the one I mean. The one in which the butterfly got trodden on. A Sound of Thunder. Ray Bradbury. Brilliant.

  So…what if? The only thing to try and do would be to persuade them to please not do it. Which was exactly what was already under way, albeit with a well-nigh insurmountable condition attached—getting our birdbrains to agree on something in the first place, and in the second place getting them to do something about it. So there was no point in even thinking about it. Superfluous worry. And in any case, the idea was ridiculous anyway. He couldn't be an alien. He was, and without doubt the police had already substantiated it as an irrefutable fact, Jeremy Parker, ex-inmate of an institution for the mentally disturbed. An insane person with unusual hypnotic powers and very advanced astronomical knowledge.

  And that, of course, was equally far-fetched. So drop the subject. Carry on earning the money and time, as time is wont to do, will eventually deliver an answer to the conundrum.

  This thinking had carried me through much of the morning outing with Mr. Brown. It had been interrupted by a salad lunch in Monika's apartment, but it took hold of me again in the afternoon and it still didn’t bring me an inch closer to any form of rational conclusion. I mean, asteroids for goodness' sake.