Everything that's in my head

Chapter 8

Next morning, Adam lay in as he was exhausted after the night’s excursions. The nurse came to give him his bath but Adam waved her away with a speechless hand and rolled over. As the rope of memory descended, he began to put the pieces of the night before into some kind of narrative.
Yes, he had walked down an endless corridor. Secondly, he had made Dougal cross and for the first time there had been friction between them. That was a negative. Thirdly, there was that man in the bed called…… Adam searched for the name, Earnest, Earnest Serius that was it. Was he someone like himself? Maybe he had been brought back from the dead? If that was the case then they would have much to discuss. Finally, and most importantly, there was something about last night that bothered him; there was something at the back of his mind that wasn’t quite right. But what was it? He remembered being herded back to his room by a scowling and disapproving Dougal. It then occurred to him, that, far from being a free man in a new world, he was, in many ways, a prisoner of it. On the strength of last night’s evidence, Dougal was his warder as well as doctor and mentor and he was not allowed to wander unsupervised. This disturbed him. He got up quickly and walked out of his room and into the empty ward proper. The nurse reached for a telephone and said something into it, all the while looking at Adam.

‘That’s it, you call him; I’ll be in the bath.’

As Adam lay in the warm water ten minutes later, he heard a polite cough from outside the door.

‘I’m in the bath’, said Adam plainly and plunged his head under the water to rinse out the last of the shampoo.

‘I’ll be with you in a minute’

Adam quickly dried himself down, wrapped the towel around his waist and unlocked the door. He caught Dougal lurking outside, who then spun round and turned his back.
Adam walked back to his room, pausing only to drop his towel and wave his penis at the nurse who was sitting at her desk. She smiled her usual smile and continued with her work.

When he was dressed, there came a knock at the door and through it, Dougal asked him where he would like lunch.

Adam thought for a bit and opted for the Vatican.
Dougal blinked and within a moment, two velvet clad flunkies were fussing around them ushering the two friends to a gilded table that lay directly beneath the magnificent dome of the Basilica. Once they were properly seated, Dougal raced his eyes over the menu only to quickly snap it shut and order the soup without so much as asking Adam what he wanted. He asked one of the two men, a short dark man with a squint, to give his regards to his Holiness. The men disappeared and when they were out of earshot, Dougal opened fire.
‘I don’t know what you were thinking last night but it was highly irresponsible, anything could have happened’.

‘Like what?’, snorted Adam. ‘What could possibly happen to me here?’

Dougal looked dismayed at this and hissed,

‘I am responsible for you, and it is in your interest that ‘I'… Dougal paused to search for the right way to say this, 'should look after you. There is so much you don’t understand about this place and the work we do here. If something were to happen to you’, his voice trailed off but he quickly came back with:
‘You are, after all, a product of a thousand years’ work, judging by what we found out a few days ago, I think its important that we don’t leave you alone at all, if ever.’’

Adam knew this moment would come. It had lain in his memory like a pea under a mattress, under one hundred mattresses; affording in that one little spot, no comfort or respite.

For the first time Adam was going to talk about it, actually explain it, break it down into its different components; shape events past into some kind of narrative, give it a beginning, middle and an end.
At that moment, the two waiters returned and served Brown Windsor soup.
Dougal picked up his spoon and delicately dipped it into the brown, steaming liquid, hanging on every word.
‘‘I wasn’t very well’, said Adam, presently.
‘The only way I can explain it is its like you are involved in a civil war with your self. One half of you looks on while the other tears itself to pieces. You feel miserable at first, down trodden. Then it follows you home, this feeling. A constant gnawing in the belly, loud noises freak you out. You get so damned jumpy, edgy, on edge, tense. You feel like a bomb is going to go off any minute. A feeling of absolute dread descends like a black cloud. The next thing you know you are in deep shit, suddenly you can’t control it, it’s controlling you. Then it follows you home, then it’s round the next corner, it hits you in the morning and it hits you at night, it just gets worse and worse until well… ….you take matters in hand’.
He shrugged his shoulders at this and plunged his spoon into the bowl, causing a drop of soup to stain the table cloth.
Both ate in silence and with much slurping. Breaking his roll in half, Dougal gently shook the falling crumbs onto his side plate and looked up at the soaring heights above them and then back at Adam. When their eyes met, he felt he had only scratched the surface.
‘I killed myself Dougal'.
‘Yes’, is all Dougal said in reply and ordered the main course, with both having the lamb.

When Dougal had heaped a generous tablespoon of seasonal veg onto Adam’s plate and drowned them in a rich, dark gravy, he fixed Adam a stare and said,
‘Where I come from, my people don’t go in for that kind of thing, it’s a complete anathema. Dougal settled on this word proudly as if he had plucked it from the pages of the biggest dictionary of all time.
‘We as a people ………'. When he said people, his mouth hung down at the sides, as if people wasn’t quiet the right word but would do as way of explanation.
‘Have a very dim view of such carrying on'.
‘Who are your people, Dougal?' Adam asked, happy to steer Dougal away from a difficult subject.
‘There aren’t many of us, if you look at the size of the human race and our little village, we really are quite a small bunch. We come from a very special line of evolution. Who knows, there might be some of your DNA swirling around in here somewhere'.
Dougal drew a figure of eight with a stubby finger around his chest as if to illustrate the individual strands themselves.

‘This isn’t the real me anyway'.

‘What do you mean?’ asked Adam a little unnerved.

‘Well, let's just say that there are two 'me's'. Dougal lifted his bushy eyebrows a little and looked decidedly fly.

‘Right’, said Adam, clueless to what Dougal was on about but not wanting to appear foolish.

‘Sometimes, I don’t in fact look like this at all', and with that Dougal stuffed a large piece of blood dripping lamb into his mouth, putting an end to any more enquiry.

By the time they had got through the pudding both diners were very full and Dougal ordered a digestive. A decanter of Cognac was placed on the table with two tumblers chiming as they hung from the waiter’s fingers.
The conversation had moved on to football in the mean time, with Adam telling Dougal everything he knew.

The game had not featured significantly in Adam’s short life but it had been there all the same, a comforting back drop in saloon bars the length and breadth of merry old England.

‘When did football actually stop, as in the last game?’ he asked sadly.

‘As far as we are concerned’, said Dougal ‘the last ever recorded football match took place in a swamp around the time of 15,340. The historian Pluto, of all people was there at the time and despite poor health was able to record events in some detail. The Dougal produced a text he had in his inside pocket, peered down through his bi-focal s at it and began to read.

‘Pluto’s hand is quite scratchy in places, so forgive me if I sound a little hesitant.

Adam nodded, although he didn’t quite know at what and the venerable Dougal started.
Kick off was at three o’clock, time for lunch to settle and when there wasn't much to do . The game was to be played in a large clearing in the forest near a small stream which was handy as the players could quench their thirst should it get too hot (which it does).
Someone had been gathering reeds and had tied them into a tight, compact sphere. Its kicking potential was soon discovered and for the next 3 weeks it was kicked around the clearing with ever increasing competitiveness. This in turn attracted a number of spectators who had come ostensibly to take the waters and collect a little fruit but were now caught up in the general excitement of what was becoming a major sporting event.

Word, however, got round that nothing would start without Reg’s tacit agreement and a captaincy for him in any team that took the field. He was none to happy about all the noise the ‘games’ were generating and all the strange men they attracted.
He was coaxed down, rather ungraciously, some felt, from his tree but once fed and watered his mood lifted and eventually, after much cajoling, accepted a match should be played between his crew and the ‘other lot’ which was Reg’s way of referring to the opposition: a group that lived beyond the river. But only on the condition that they brought their own women and they promised not to kill anybody unless it was ‘absolutely necessary’.

Someone stuck the head of a monkey on a rusty pole to signal the start of the game which went down a storm with onlookers and players alike, who then proceeded to throw fruit at it and shriek collectively every time a berry bounced off a glassy, staring eye. Even Reg managed a wry smile at this and deemed that should there be any dispute, this ghoulish totem would be the final arbiter.

The game got under away at the allotted hour with much excitement and general hysteria only for it to end abruptly just before half time when Reg hoofed a clearance into a tree, out of reach of even the most dexterous of climbers. Reg just turned, oblivious to the howls of disappointment, shrugged his shoulders, climbed up his favourite tree and began to pleasure one of his many wives

The spectators went back to their fruit collecting and the 'other lot' drifted away back to their villages. The ball stayed in the tree as if to taunt everyone involved and remained there until people forgot about it. The monkey’s head gathered flies until that too was removed; lest it stank the place out and attracted unwelcome guests.
Reg was secretly delighted the game should have ended this way,(although he was careful not to show it). He didn’t much care for the opposition or even his own players for that matter. Some of them having stolen the ball from his feet and run circles around his slow, lumbering frame. This, Reg felt, was disrespectful and made him look silly in front of the girls, who had been a little too vocal in their support for some of the younger members of the squad. No, much better to keep everything and everybody on an even keel so he could continue what he was good at: keeping order, making wise decisions and ripping the head off anyone who annoyed him

So it was with some irritation on Reg’s behalf, that the ball was recovered a little later albeit with a large, brown turd lying on it, from under a bush. The ball of reeds was in relatively good condition despite its lengthy incarceration in the tree and the turd was easily flicked off with a stick. Once washed in the river, and a few more reeds added, all was set for a second half. The score was nil-nil as far as people could remember and by popular request, ‘the other lot’ were brought back from the river by the big oak. Reg at this point was beyond caring, seeing that he had an axe buried in his head and had been left for the jackals a mile down stream.

The new chief was altogether a different prospect. Bernard was much younger than Reg. He was both lean and agile and could run the fastest, jump the highest and had a degree of charisma that was both infectious and inspirational. He quickly realised how another game would boost his new found elevation and one of his first acts as leader was to behead a monkey and put the severed remains on the same rusty pole as its unfortunate predecessor. A replay was scheduled for Saturday afternoon.

This time, nearly a hundred came. They journeyed from all over the delta, some as far as the hills to the north. They came fully prepared for a long day in the sun, the thoughtful carrying mats to keep out the ferocious ants that hung about the jungle floor and coconuts to trade for refreshing juice.. The two sets of supporters kept to different sides of the clearing and were to content to hurl abuse at one another in the hot, dry sun.

Bernard was elated when his side scored first. He had chipped a loose ball into a mêlée of players who had gathered around a player’s prostrate body only for a quick thinking winger to tap it in before anyone could react. Some of the opposition complained bitterly about this unsporting gesture, one even going so far as to wrench the monkey’s head from the pole and throw it at the new chief. Order was restored when the irate man was duly clubbed to death and the most argumentative players chased away. They went in at half time, with a slender lead and still a lot of bickering.

The second half was delayed for two hours after someone spotted a leopard lurking in the bushes, and the majority of fans and players alike took the opportunity to have a cooling slice of fruit and a short doze in the branches that surrounded the clearing. The all clear was sounded at five in the afternoon and the players sleepily took their positions for the second half. It took a while for the atmosphere to return but after 10 minutes the game came alive when the ‘other lot’ equalized. A nimble fullback, with a youthful, pleasant face, picked the ball up in midfield, dribbled it past a few pathetic, half-hearted tackles and blasted it past the outstretched hand of the goalkeeper. The crowd erupted and invaded the pitch. General hysteria followed which took half an hour to subside as the happy goal scorer was raised upon the shoulders of young and old alike and carried in triumph around the camp. At 1-1 play resumed with a real tenacity and determination by both sides, who realised that with the setting sun, time was running out.

The new chief battled against an unforgiving defence. No matter what he tried, how many clever balls ‘dinked’ into the box, however many good crosses he fired across the gaol mouth, the second, surely winning goal, remained elusive. Things got worse when his goaly disappeared half way through the second half and play had to be halted briefly to launch a search party. He was quickly found in a nearby bush on top of an away fan, who couldn’t see what all the fuss was about and got dressed again sulkily, while the clearly frustrated players trudged back to the clearing.

Shitfoot got his name because he was the first player to kick the ball after it had been found with the turd on it. At first, the name rankled, but after the crowd began to chant it, repeatedly whenever he got hold of the ball, he didn’t seem to mind so much and sort of enjoyed the notoriety the name lent him. Shitfoot was short. Very short, but he wasn’t without character and a certain agility that got him around the pitch with a seeming grace and ease. He had come to the game late after having missed the first half collecting firewood. He was rushed on as an emergency sub when one of the new chief’s more promising players was carried away by a crocodile during half time.

It came naturally to him. He had an almost instinctive feel for where the ball was going to be and would arrive just as it became available. Being so short he had a low centre of gravity which enabled him to swerve around players at almost impossible angles. He had grown in confidence and stature as the game unfolded and by the time the last quarter arrived he had become Bernard's star player. If anyone was going to score, then it would surely be Shitfoot.

The sun was now beginning to dip below the horizon and some of the less fervent supporters were beginning to drift away, not wanting to risk a walk home in the dark. Both teams were exhausted and many were covered in nasty looking scratches and bruises.. Their muscles ached and their spirits were flagging but at 1-1 the new chief refused all pleas for an honourable draw. The game would continue until a clear winner emerged.

Shitfoot re-doubled his efforts. As if driven by an inner demon, he darted in and around the now slow moving opposition, harrying them into surrendering the ball. He was a ferret, here there and every where only to scuff the ball when presented with a clear shot on goal. The crowd were beginning to despair of there ever being a winner, when Shitfoot picked up the ball in his own half. He stopped the ball neatly as it fizzed at his feet, and set off towards the opposition’s half at a lightning pace. He left player after player in his wake, as his inexorable dash to goal gathered pace. A long, slow roar began to stir in the throats of the fans as they sensed that something fantastical and unimaginable was about to unfold. Shitfoot arrived in the box with only a defender to beat and proceeded to go wide of him, forcing a difficult angle from which to shoot. It was then, when time itself seemed to slow down, that Shitfoot had a brainwave. Instead of trying a cross in the vain hope that someone might be there to head it home, he did what he had to do to win the game and it was the least expected thing imaginable: as the crowd were baying for a shot, as players were scything along the dirt floor towards him, he pointed to the ground and yelled ‘SNAKE !!!’ at the top of his voice. The game came to an abrupt halt as mass panic erupted in the players on both sides and they deserted the clearing with indecent haste. The panic spread through the crowd and they retreated thirty feet under the forest canopy amidst much screaming and wailing. Shitfoot sensing it was now or never kicked the ball in to an empty goal (the goal keeper having been the first to leave) and ran a lap of dishonour around the clearing, waving his bare bottom at the away supporters end and generally being silly.

The panicked fans realising they had been tricked quite literally, went bananas.They had been gathering whole bunches of them during the day and the harvest now served as ready supply of ammunition with which to bombard the home team and its supporters. Scenes of horrible slaughter ensued. Shitfoot didn’t last long and the new chief has a lasting image of him holding the ball aloft, grinning inanely just before being eviscerated by a furious mob. Fighting followed long into the night, with neither side giving any quarter. It was only the next morning when people were just too tired to hack off any more limbs that the ‘festivities’ came to an end. But Bernard was happy. They had won 2-1, his place at the head of the tribe was now cemented and once the dead were buried he could set about starting a lasting dynasty.
A form of a memorial was erected in Shitfoot’s honour. The monkey’s head was placed on a rock near the clearing and people laid trinkets and coconut shells around it. Shitfoot’s name lived on and some girls even named their first born after him. Needless to say no more football was played after that: The tribe judged it too dangerous and taxing on resources. The ball was unravelled and the dusty, battered reeds were committed to the river whence they came.

'He goes on to cover the eighth world war and a famine in a place called 'Long Island'.

'Eighth world war? I thought there were only two'.
'No, eight' said Dougal, gently correcting Adam.

'The third world war will be fought with nuclear bombs and the fourth with sticks and stones',chuckled Dougal, quoting Einstein badly and grinning to himself.
'What's so funny about that?', said Adam with an edge to his voice.
'Well, to give you an idea, the fifth was fought with herring and the last, ..all they had in the way of weapons was cynicism. Don't worry, by the time it got started, only about 25 people turned up and half of them were mad'.

Dougal, Adam’s only friend, the man who had taken him by the hand and saved him from eternal darkness, placed the paper down gently on the table and Adam wept unselfconsciously.
‘What’s the matter now?’, Dougal asked presently, confused as to why Adam should cry at this particular piece of classical history.
His pupil blew hard into Dougal’s handkerchief and wiping the last of the snot away he blurted out,
'I am so homesick. I’m alive when by rights I should be dead. Dougal, I’m having to contend with the fact that everything I know, knew,’ he added quickly before Dougal had a chance to correct him, ‘doesn’t exist any more. How shit is that?’

After Dougal had paid the bill, Dougal popped up to see his Holiness while Adam sniffled and regained some of his composure. Presently, there was a distant laugh up a flight of stairs some way a way and Dougal came scampering down with a broad grin on his face and suggested they went for a drive.

Dougal blinked and they were in a very wide open space with a brilliant blue sky. On the horizon, there a stood a cluster of brown hills, before which lay endless tundra. They were standing on a dusty asphalt road that stretched to meet both skylines and in front of them stood a large, shiny, metallic object that reflected perfectly the occasional cotton wool wisp of cloud that passed overhead. It was the size of a family saloon that had no discernible doors but only a large, chrome exterior.
The rear of this brilliant form, rose into a set of muscular haunches, that pointed to a hideous strength.
‘Get in’,
Dougal said, pushing a button on his key fob.
A door appeared from the perfectly smooth exterior in a hiss of escaping vapour to reveal a lush, leather interior with an exquisitely designed dashboard. Adam dutifully got in and as Dougal was getting comfortable in the driving seat Adam asked him it this was in fact a hover car; something Adam presumed any discerning person of the future would have.

‘No’, Dougal said vaguely and grimaced as he turned a key in the ignition.

The thing roared into life with a power that took Adam’s breath away and filled him with awe. It felt as if he was bestriding a magnificent beast that had roamed the plains of a pre historic era. This thing was mighty, a hybrid between a tiger tank and a Ferrari. Sat in his seat, Adam felt he was in the bowels of a living thing whose muscles and sinews were perfectly toned with a limitless amount of energy and aggression. The monster idled as both of them strapped themselves in, Dougal put the thing into first and they drove way in a fearful roar, spitting gravel yards behind them as the beast tore away almost bounding down the road towards an empty horizon.

‘Would you like a dried apricot?’, asked Dougal presently, pointing at the glove compartment in front of Adam. The desert outside shot by silently and all that could be heard was the steady throb of the engine beneath. They reached 400 miles an hour with Adam folding his hands in his lap looking a little abashed.

‘It’s nice to open her out once in a while’ remarked Dougal, winking at Adam condescendingly.

’Clear the tubes’.

He hit a five hundred mph and seemed to relax a bit. He tapped a ditty on the steering wheel and hummed a tune Adam didn’t recognise.
They cruised through a mountain range with out Dougal taking his foot off the gas and descended onto a featureless plain at at a steady Mach 0.5, still on the arrow straight road that they had started on.

Dougal broke the silence.

‘This was made about a hundred years after you passed away, there was a mini industrial revolution and this is what they came up with, or one of the things at least, it was a great time to be human, believe me. It was a period of unimaginable happiness, where it really was summer all year round. There was no want, no hunger, you became, albeit briefly, one tribe and so dazzled were you by the brilliance of enlightenment it completely fazed you. It was humanity’s field of the cloth of gold, you might say, a time of global plenty. The Earth was one green and pleasant, sun-filled upland. You know there wasn’t one war for about ten years, not a single bullet fired in anger. Ten years, can you believe it? Every human heart beat as one, you spoke with one voice, you all danced to the same beat; a great, great time to be a member of the human race. This rust bucket came right at the end of that glorious epoch, a product of a brilliant time and you must forgive me, I’m rather fond of the old girl.
He changed down and took it up a couple of hundred.
They flashed through the desert landscape like a silver bullet, as fast as lightning but in the car not a sound could be heard save the low hum of the enormous engine.
After an hour or two, Adam’s jaw dropped, his eyes rolled to the back of his head and he sank forward drooling onto his shirt. Dougal asked him a question but when getting no reply, turned and looked at Adam. He smiled at Adam’s hunched shape and settled back into his seat.

When Adam awoke he was alone in the machine and Dougal was nowhere to be seen. In the driver's seat there lay an ancient leather-bound book with yellowing pages and a musty smell that reminded Adam of libraries. He got out to stretch his legs and found he was on a promontory, high up overlooking a dusty valley thousands of feet below. The sun was beginning to set and there was no sound save the rustling leaves on dry looking shrubs that lay scattered here and there.
‘Dougal?’ Adam said under his breath not wanting to break the stillness. He wasn’t altogether unhappy that he was on his own, the scenery was breathtaking, and it calmed his nerves and so gave him the opportunity to take stock.

What had he been thinking? The memory of those last terrible minutes of his life in the old world burst like a geyser into his consciousness. How could he possibly reach out over a thousand millennia and apologise to all those people whose lives he had destroyed? They were dust now. They had become the sand that lay at his feet.

He was no longer Adam but an infant of another world. The very ground had spat him back out, perhaps in disgust at this foul tasting morsel of mankind. Adam was now freeborn, liberated at last from the shackles of that which had bound him so tightly.
.
Adam felt well for the first time in a long time. He felt clear headed. On top of things. What had happened, although regrettable, had happened and he felt like a survivor.

He went back to the car, sat in the passenger’s seat and opened the book Dougal had left him.


The Books of Earnest

Earnest Serius was born somewhere in the south of England; his actual birthplace never being independently verified: although rumour has it he was in fact begotten in a cave. His parents, dwelling out in the long grass of society made no registry of the birth. He was found, at the age of five, wandering the streets of a northern market town chewing on the headless corpse of a rat and was subsequently taken into care. Various institutions struggled to raise him but he was passed from one establishment to another, as seasoned welfare officers found they could not cope. It wasn’t as if he was missing a limb or had some congenital disease that would render him incapable and in a special wheel chair. On the contrary, Earnest Serius had every component that makes for a normal human being: He had two legs (that hung like threads from his waist), two arms, a massive oversized head, unmanly shoulders and a foot long penis that swung between his legs like a gym rope. Everything was there to class him as human the only thing being he was repulsive to look at and stank to high heaven. How he came by his name, again, no one quite knew for sure but on that star crossed day when the world was blissfully unaware of his arrival, his hapless parents void of inspiration, wandered in to the local town and asked the first man they met his name and it fell to him to christen the architect of man’s destruction. The name, Serius, came from his father’s island; a distant Mediterranean outcrop that no one had ever heard of. Thick set and foul smelling, it was rumoured that he had married his sister, Earnest’s mother, who was as wild as the wood she lived in and as dark and forbidding as its murky interior. Thrown off their island by superstitious peasants, the goatherd and his wife were plucked from the high seas by a passing British merchant ship bound for England but were soon thrown back in by a frightened crew and were forced to swim to shore with the few processions they had, tied to their ankles. Exhausted and bewildered they drifted from town to village in search of food and shelter. They roamed the hills and valleys before finding caves in which to dwell and where they would be left alone. After a few years Earnest was born and nearly eaten by his father.

Earnest was a boy that not even God could love. As he grew up he began to relish the solitude that being wholly unpopular gave him. He had no distractions to pass the time and other children recoiled at the mere suggestion of playing with him. He soon became content to gaze out of the window and pick at the many festering boils that covered his body from head to foot. He had inherited his father’s condition, a bacteria buried deep within the skin that once in contact with air, rose to corrupt the flesh and give off an odour akin to putrefying flesh. This made any meaningful contact with humans or animals, nigh on impossible. The staff at the many institutions he stayed at, were very happy for Earnest to have as little interaction with themselves and inmates as possible. After some time, they both fell into some kind of routine, where Earnest would stay in his room all day and they would put his meals around the door and scamper away, amidst much coughing and retching. No teacher could come close to him so those who still cared, despairing that the boy would grow up illiterate, gave him a computer so that he could access distant learning courses and have at least a rudimentary education.

He was unlovable in that he would try, like his father, to eat anyone who came close to him if he was hungry. So not only was he confined to his room but it was also locked and bolted 24 hours of the day, 365 days of the year.
This made Earnest very happy and the staff, once they had cleared the entire landing on which his room lay, was happy too. They could go whole months without ever seeing him, and would eventually drop off food via a dumb waiter that was air locked and hosed down after use.

So Earnest grew up; alone and totally unloved, which suited him, as he had absolutely no social skills to speak of but he became, as you would expect, very adept at using the computer. Self-taught and with nothing to distract him, he would spend weeks without sleep, surfing the net and digesting the infinite information available. He learnt how to hack into the most unbreakable of systems and would correspond with the very top software magnates across the globe. He would design for them ever more and more advanced software as he had the ability to cram into a day what most humans would take weeks to complete. He never slept. He rested when his brain simply shut down from exhaustion but apart from that not a moment's slumber stopped him from what had now become a blinding obsession.

In programming circles he became a living legend, albeit a dark one: a faceless non entity that was never seen nor heard but who could advance technology in giant leaps and all at the click of a mouse. There was nothing else in his featureless existence, to steer him away from his preoccupation: no wife, no sex, no kids, no job, nothing, apart from information technology and the odd nap.

So when NASA informed the President, that meteorites were heading towards earth at an alarming rate, scientists began to think of Earnest in a different light. What role he would play in saving the planet no one knew for sure, but many in the scientific community had a gut instinct that he would play a crucial role and true enough, when his time came, he did play an important part but not in a way that any one expected.

They first saw the blazing mass of ice and iron on a rainy afternoon in November, as it whizzed past Pluto, spewing behind it a plume of hot gas. The President was woken in the early hours and with red eyes and untidy hair got on the phone to other world leaders and told them the bad news. At first the Russian premier thought it was a crank call and hung up, which everyone in the Pentagon thought very funny. Finally, and after much persuasion from his own scientists, he too understood the gravity of the situation. By 6;00 o’clock in the morning, as the world struggled out of bed, news teams gathered for what would be the most momentous briefing of their lives.
In truth, mankind took the news soberly and in its stride, for the thing wouldn’t hit for another 3-4 years, so it wasn’t as if it was tomorrow or anything.
Naturally, there were demonstrations but people soon caught on that complaining was in fact futile; for the problem was not a man made one, and therefore was nobody’s fault, not even the Americans, who were leading plans for survival anyway.

Firing nuclear weapons was out of the question, as it would not only produce thousands more little meteorites but that they would be radioactive as well. A probe was hastily assembled amidst much fanfare, to try and knock the thing off course but it crashed on take off for reasons unknown, much to the disappointment of mankind in general. Religious leaders set aside their differences and agreed that this indeed was the ending of the world and man had only him/herself to blame.

It was Earnest Serius that came up with the idea of shelters on a global scale and that given the authority, he was prepared to organise the whole thing. As high level, one-to-one meetings were out of the question, Earnest was content to manage things from his cell and sovereign states although uneasy, letting a man they had never met, run the survival of the human race from a computer/s, the weight of the scientific community told them, frankly, that unless they could come up with a better idea they had better get on with it. Earnest was the man for the job
It was Earnest's discovery of a super strong yet lightweight steel that swung it. On hearing the news of the impending crisis, he set aside 2-3 weeks of sleepless nights for its development; that it would need to be cheap to manufacture and could hold impossible weights. There were easily enough basic raw materials to go around as everyone knew that nothing on the surface would survive so anything that had been made of steel was simply broken down and smelted. This brew added to Earnest's newly found formula made for exactly what was needed and the world rejoiced.

In addition to his steel enhancing duties,, he designed blueprints for the shelters themselves. Plans for intricate and sophisticated bunkers raced across the globe via electronic mail and spewed out of ten million printers. Once these were read, a real sense of hope began to emerge; that mankind could and would survive. Prayers were said in all languages and candles were lit in the Vatican in praise of Earnest Serius, the man whom life had rejected and yet was to be its saviour. News and current affairs programmes ran feature after feature on his humble origins. The fact that he might have been born in a cave excited every one, as it lent a certain biblical resonance to his mysterious life. The Muslims claimed him as their own, as did the Christians, the Hindus added Earnest to their list of deities and the Jews swore that this was the real messiah.

Work began in the New Year and as the threat was equal to all, every man woman and child in every country across the entire earth dug as if their lives depended on it, which it did. The new steel met and exceeded all expectations. The blue prints were easy to read and adaptable. Any problem that arose was wafted in Earnest’s direction, who soon set about finding a solution. By the end of the first year there were gigantic holes appearing in all five continents. People by now had given up all notion of work in the commercial sense of the word; people didn’t work in offices or factories any more, nobody wore suits or ties. They bought agricultural attire and gloves were at a premium. The shopping malls emptied and civil wars came to an abrupt halt. Arab dug with Jew and Jew with Arab. A real sense of ‘we are all in this together’ swept through the human race.

By the second year the roofs were being covered and armies of fitters were moving in to make the cavernous spaces habitable. They were, after all, making entire underground cities; complete with roads and hospitals, reservoirs and schools. It was only going to last for 4 years, time for the dust to settle and for the sun to break through the darkness and again give life to the plants and warm the bones of the young and the old.
If mankind could only hang on, then life could return to normal and it, with its advanced brain, would have beaten the dinosaurs and survived. By the end of the second year everything was on schedule and confidence was brimming over. Earnest was putting the finishing touches to plans that covered the post meteorite world. There would have to be years of reconstruction. Whole countries would have to start from scratch, with fledgling economies and a non-existent agriculture. It was as if the slate would be wiped clean and all the ills of the past would be cleansed. There would be a fresh start and man could reinvent himself as a peace-loving and God fearing species: he would no longer be fallen and Earth would be the Garden of Eden once again.

By the beginning of the third year, the first groups of people were beginning to settle in. The ending of the world and its rebirth was to be a great leveller, class and caste systems vanished and privilege was consigned to history.
The transition was orderly because, thanks to Earnest Serius’ well laid plans, elaborate security precautions were in place well before the first people arrived. The leaders; presidents, prime ministers, kings and queens, were given only slightly better facilities nearer the surface and near telecommunications systems so that they could talk to one another and have a sense of how things were going. Livestock was herded in Noah like fashion, although considerably more than two of each. Every attempt was made to make the place homely and liveable in. The day when the great doors would be slammed shut, drew closer, and a sense of great foreboding ran through mankind.

Farewell concerts were held, where mass audiences wept quite unselfconsciously and mankind hugged each other in fraternal support and friendship. Services in cathedrals, mosques, synagogues and temples went on for days, with congregations in fervent, fasting prayer. They beseeched God to deliver them and thanked him heartily for Earnest Serius’ input.

By now, the meteor could be seen by the naked eye; a small wisp of seemingly innocuous gas that turned night into day. People could read by its luminescence and those still left on the surface complained of a lack of sleep. Whole cities fell silent. The general hubbub of daily life ceased and one by one the metropolises of the world went dark as the power was switched to support life underground.

Security personnel turned for one last look, and with rifles slung over the shoulders slammed all the ten foot thick, steel doors shut with an ominous boom. Only the crazed roamed the earth, left behind by an uncaring and indifferent populace, bent on survival.
Earnest Serius was given lavish quarters near the surface as befitted his elevated status, with a porthole that looked out onto a lush, fertile river valley. No expense was spared, with all countries contributing to the cost of what was basically a small, bejewelled palace.

He was moved, in a specially designed truck, that was hermetically sealed from the outside and only a very few were allowed to see him. The stink he gave off even from the short journey from the doors of the hospital to the open doors of the truck, caused his doctor to faint. The curious guards recoiled at the sight of him for Earnest hadn’t been in daylight for most of his adult life and his boils were as bad as ever. According to eye witnesses, he looked neither left nor right or at the brilliant blue sky. His face was impassive, and this first taste of fresh aired freedom, had no discernible impact on him. He barked at the driver to move and banged his hand hard on the interior panel and the truck roared into life, conveying Earnest in great secrecy, to his new home.

His rooms were fitted out with the latest in computer software as this was to be the nerve centre of the operation. This was where Earnest would run the labyrinth of tunnels and apartments that filled the cavernous spaces many feet under ground. He would manage the air, the heat, the light, the water, the food, power, everything mankind needed to live through its enforced incarceration.

He settled in well. He eschewed the linen sheets of fine Egyptian cotton and the mattresses filled with the softest, Icelandic down, preferring to snatch what ever sleep he needed on the floor or where he sat. He never even ventured into the gold plated, marbled bathroom. Earnest Serius had never bathed in his life and he didn’t see why he should start now. He ripped up the hand woven; Persian carpets that made his feet itch and threw them into a corner. He defecated where he stood as a vulture would ; he didn’t want the added hassle of getting up and walking to the bathroom.
The finery of his surroundings was alien to him. For a man that was not able to understand beauty, gold was a metal with no more lustre than plain iron. The beautiful tapestries and the great works of art lent to him from the world's greatest art galleries inspired nothing within him; for Earnest was an organism that resembled a man but was in truth an insect. He breathed, his heart beat, his cells multiplied but there the resemblance ended. No love, no desire, no consciousness penetrated the thick, green canopy of his thoughts.

Of all the features in his palatial surroundings, only the porthole was his favourite. He would sit for hours and watch the gathering dust storms swirl around the tiny aperture, as the meteors made their presence felt. He sat motionless, riveted by the random motion of the brown gas like clouds, thrown up by the impact. It didn’t once occur to him that this was in fact the ending of the world, that he had a ring side seat to the nemesis of man. From a humble ape to a creature of immeasurable faculty; that man’s journey should come to this dusty end meant nothing to him. He looked into the pool of infinite despair and saw only the reflection of himself, a hideous, dead eyed monster.

Loud marshal music was played to drown out the detonations. They shook the shelters violently and the lights flickered momentarily. Families clung to one another, lovers held each other close and babies wailed for days on end. One shelter in Russia took a direct hit, killing millions, and another in Africa was partially struck, opening a crack through which tons of earth and dust poured, asphyxiating thousands. However, once the impacts were over, life underground began to move forward. People realised that mankind had survived and a special day was given over to Earnest; that he might be venerated on this day, hymns written and sung in his honour.


Humanity went back to the daily life of routine. Children were schooled and people busied themselves with keeping the place tidy. Plays were put on; the libraries teemed with voracious readers, and every conceivable club was established to while away the days and slow the onset of the inevitable boredom. At first, no body seemed to notice the piped music that played one song over and over again and that seeped from every corner of every complex the world over, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

It had been an after thought by Earnest, that folk should have some light, middle-of the-road entertainment to keep their minds off the humdrum, foetid life of life underground but he was oblivious to the importance of variety to the human existence and had chosen only one song which he presumed people would like.
By now, having completed the mission the world had set for him and with nothing much else left to do, he began to while away the time gazing out of the porthole and having thoughts that only God could come near to understanding. After the advent of the mirror he stopped all communication and ignored hand written notes smuggled in with his dinners from anxious presidents about what he intended to do about ‘the song’.

‘The Lady in Red’ was a hit composed by a man called Chris De Burgh, who wrote it allegedly for his wife, Cinzia. He was happy that the single made number one and was very happy to receive all the royalty cheques that came rushing in, as the success of the record took off. It topped the charts in 1986 and was at number one for the grand total of 15 weeks. Popular with teenagers from all corners of the globe, it was the stuff of young love, of the first kiss, a musical rite of passage from childhood to adolescence.

It played throughout the day and night. From the milking parlours, to the seats of government, in the schools and offices, the bedrooms and playgrounds: every inch of the subterranean caverns was covered by its melodious, treacly sound. Mental health professionals soon had queues around the block, each wretched patient recounting the same wretched tale; 'something, anything to stop the music'. Some set pistols off next to their ears but it only gave a temporary respite as the ear would recover and the song would seep back like the slow hand of death. Men and women dug with their fingernails at the steel decking of their entombed world to find the hidden speakers that delivered the frightful drivel, or even its power supply. Such was their angst.
A rumour did the rounds that politicians of every hue had the power to turn the song off in the peaceful solitude of their private apartments. This hearsay had the effect of galvanising the masses into an insurrection so bloody that it surpassed even the cruellest conflicts 'above'.
Despite the best efforts of the armed security guards, liberally spraying the mob with machine gun fire, they were able to enter the inner sanctums of power and lynch MPs suspected of harbouring an ‘off’ button. One poor Socialist MP in Central America met a particularly grisly end, having his intestines torn from his stomach and made to eat them in front of a blood thirsty rabble. The irony being the whole bloody drama was played out to the strains of ‘Lady in Red’ as there was no ‘off’ button anywhere to be found.
Nowhere was immune. Suicides rocketed as people began to hurl themselves from strategic high points around the cities. The deranged thrust kitting needles into their ears and it became a pact between close friends; one to deafen the other with any implement that came to hand. But still the song kept playing.

‘I’ve never seen you looking so lovely as you do tonight
I’ve never seen you shine so bright
I’ve never seen so many men ask you if you wanted to dance
They’re looking for a little romance given half a chance
I have never seen that dress you are wearing
Or the highlights in your head that catch your eyes I have been blind
The Lady in red is dancing with me cheek to cheek
There’s nobody here, it’s just you and me, it’s where I wanna be
But I hardly know this beauty by my side
I’ll never forget the way you look tonight.

I’ve never seen you look so gorgeous as you did tonight
I’ve never seen you shine so bright you were amazing
I’ve never seen so many people want to be there by your side
And when you looked at me and smiled, it took my breath away.
I have never had such a feeling
Such a feeling of complete and utter love, as I do tonight

The way you look tonight
I will never forget the way you look tonight
The lady in red
The lady in red
The lady in red (I love you)’.

Over and over again. People began frantically telephoning Earnest, requesting politely at first, if he would mind playing something else or just 'switching the thing off?'. With his stature still high, people conducted themselves with reverence when dealing with the great man. But this soon began to wear thin as the weeks went by and Earnest wasn’t picking up. He rapidly became the most hated man on the planet. The peoples of the earth would have swapped Earnest Serius for a thousand Hitler's or ten thousand Stalin's, if only he would stop the noise. He had become a snake oil salesman, a charlatan; in the Mid-West many centuries before, he would have been run out of town or lynched. His statues were torn down and children were renamed but Earnest let the phone ring and the song kept playing.
He wouldn’t pick up, he couldn’t pick up for he was elsewhere. He didn’t care if mankind lived or breathed. Not any more, not after this. He was oblivious to its pain, uncaring for its agony. Mankind for all that he had done for it, this was its token of appreciation; a small, cheap and unassuming mirror.

He had acquired the offending article months before the mounting dissatisfaction over the song had really taken hold. Two of his most trusted guards had concocted an idle bet between them. It was something as mindless as; who could hold his breath the longest, with the loser having to pay a forfeit; there not being much else to do on Earnest’s floor. The rivals were unsure as to what the forfeit would be but they both knew that even being found in possession of a mirror was enough to warrant a life sentence, let alone giving one to Earnest. So it was natural then, that once a winner had been decided, handing Earnest a reflective surface would be the price; such being the folly of boredom.

It hadn’t taken them long to deduce that the elaborate security measures on matters mirror, were on behalf of Earnest and confirmed their worst fears that the thing behind the frosted glass was after all a freak. With the possibility of a life time’s incarceration hanging over them, quarter was neither asked for nor given and they both set about starving themselves of oxygen until they both fainted. Finally, after the best of three, a purple faced, thick set Yorkshire man loaded Earnest’s lunch into the dumb waiter and inserted a small circular mirror under a pile of sweet potato and a lump of garlic sausage before pulling the cord twice and sending it on its way.

For Earnest the advent of the small, feminine compact came as a profound shock. As he was polishing off the last of the gravy and licking the bowl clean, he saw something appear on the plate’s surface. He caught a glimpse of a reptilian eye that stared back at him with a burning intensity that Earnest found unsettling. When he had licked the rest of the sauce away he could take in a whole, hideous, blanched face that stared back at him, incredulously. The skin was chalk white and the face had a look of such extreme wrath that it struck terror into Earnest's heart and the plate fell from his hands. He ran into his office and closed the door.
He stayed in his inner sanctum for a whole two days before venturing out. Finally, having gained a semblance of courage, he crept over to the plate and the shiny round puddle that lay next to it. He peered down at it to see if his uninvited guest had gone but no he was still there, staring at him with hateful eyes. This time Earnest did not run but stared back not with hate but with curiosity which like wise the vision on the floor aped with perfect timing. Earnest shot an eyebrow up an inch inch causing a boil to burst open and shed its foul smelling liquid down his corrupted face. A red livid lump exploded correspondingly on his tormentor's face and Earnest was confused. It was as if the monster, the evil one, the terrifying gargoyle that lay lurking on the floor in that small space was....well....him in some way or at least very similar.

Earnest thought speaking might help.

'Do you know who I am?', he asked tartily.

There was no sound from the floor but the lips moved in perfect timing to that of his own.
Earnest went off to have a rare lie down. His brain raced with innumerable calculations as to what that thing could be but every time he drew a blank.
He must have drifted off, something Earnest never did but when he awoke he felt very anxious and upset. He had had a dream where God had told him, quite categorically, who the person was, inhabiting that small space on the floor next door, and Earnest couldn't believe it. He sat trembling at the end of his bed for a while before walking as if a man to execution back to the shiny object on the floor.

There was the apparition just as if he had left it, with the same abject look that Earnest wore and when Earnest thrust his hand out to scratch at the face a corresponding hand met his and then he finally knew. A half ton penny dropped in a ten ton machine and he let out a feminine shriek so loud that it could be heard many floors below and echoed around the empty apartments of his private palace.

As he stood alone, that small part of his mind that was human burst into a gaseous cloud of self-awareness and he began to weep.
The big, salty tears that gathered in his infected ducts were the first to fall in all of Earnest’s difficult years. They ran down his corrupted face and splashed to the floor in silent grief. He pulled at his testicles and fell to his knees, letting out deep, guttural, bestial groans that came from deep within his black, light less soul.

He staggered to the only place that could give him comfort, the porthole, and pressed his face against the cool glass. The dust storm swirled and eddied around Earnest’s lonely promontory, and he wept such bitter tears that they threatened to send the Earth spinning from its axis and hurl it into space.

And there he remained week upon week, oblivious to the distant gunfire and ghastly screams that hung about the corridors with increasing intensity. He kept himself alive by licking the condensation from the smooth surface of his window on the world, all the while in his mind’s eye, walking through a mist covered, wilderness devoid of colour or relief. He walked alone, without direction or purpose, in search of what he didn’t know. He hoped that one day he would be found in this wasteland and that his questions could finally be answered.

With Earnest day dreaming, the world grew more insane. The security personal had given up trying to keep order and had joined the masses in seeking ways to overthrow the erstwhile saviour of mankind. They hurled themselves at the machine guns and flame throwers protecting Earnest's quarters, dying in their millions. Thousands would charge at the reinforced steel doors only to be cut down by the eyeless and unforgiving robots that Earnest had cleverly installed for just such an emergency.
Bodies piled up and remained unburied with wave upon wave trampling over the decaying flesh of the fallen.

And so it went on. With no headway made at the gates, mankind imploded and shrank away from life. It had been beaten by one of its own or nearly its own; Earnest being at best only half human. A day was set and communicated around the world that this would be the day that mankind gave up its ghost. Religious leaders conceded that there was no God, only the Devil and that the humanists had been right all along. The song kept playing without respite and man consoled himself with the fact that once it was all over he wouldn’t have to hear Chris De Burgh’s number one hit ever again. The method used was the acid found in the cooling ducts that wormed their way around the underground caverns and that was highly toxic to both man and beast alike.

On Wednesday 15th November at 4 o’clock in the afternoon, ironically the day the meteorites had first been spotted, mankind drank the poison and all fell silent.

Years later, the few that remained, the orphans that had hidden in the shadows and so had been missed by the wave of human misery as it crashed on the shore of its fate, were the inheritors of a new and empty world. Years later, they broke into Earnest’s quarters only to find a smashed porthole at the end of a vast, gilded room.

Adam put the book down and stared at the horizon through the tinted windscreen.

Dougal had appeared from nowhere and stood a little distance away, he too looking at the horizon.

‘Is that what really happened?’, asked Adam, not looking at Dougal.

‘Every word and that was only the beginning'.

‘Well, fuck me’, said Adam and closed his eyes.