Good morning from Caffè Nero on a cool day with a hint of rain in the air.

Let me ask you a question: What is your worst fear?

At school, we had a boy the others called “Sparky.” I never used nicknames – in our playground ecosystem, they were shorthand for cruelty, and his was no exception. He sat in the classroom, shoulders hunched and silent. The bullies could slice him open with words; he had no snappy rejoinders. “Sparky” was meant to sting, a dig at his supposed dullness.

Yet hand him a broken cassette player or a lamp that stubbornly refused to flicker, and he was transformed. His fingers coaxed life back into mangled wires and burnt fuses. While the rest of us couldn’t get the lid off a battery compartment, he was rewiring contraptions on the fly.

After school, he vanished into the Royal Navy’s silent service. The same boy who was mocked for being slow became a submariner, spending months sealed in a metal tube far beneath the waves. I suspect submariners aren’t the life and soul of parties. They exist in the hum of machinery, content with their own company.

When you grow up under the shadow of the Cold War, as we did, you spend more time than is healthy wondering how your story might end. We expected to fight in a generational war as our parents and grandparents had. 

My worst fear was of taking my last breaths trapped in a steel coffin on the ocean floor, the hull groaning under tons of water, no rescue on the horizon. It remains, to this day, the way I least wish to leave this world.

That dread crawled into the pages of Now Is The Time Of Monsters. The passage I wrote about that fear is below. I hope that it entertains you. I don’t ask you to enjoy it.

THROUGH THE DARK STAR

First, Jack bends down on his left knee and uses his knuckles to tap the wall. It’s solid rock. Then he moves on to his right knee and does the same. Finally, he stands, reaches above him and touches the roof. Solid. 

 ‘Conclusion. This space is scarcely wide enough for two persons to walk side by side and barely high enough for me to walk upright.’

 ‘How’s the height for you, Mr Edge?”

 “Manageable, mio caro”, the AI replies; Flavatore Edge’s Italian accent transforms the word into a thing of mellifluous beauty.

 Jack pushes away the beads of perspiration that are popping out on his brow. 

 “I can’t see a thing. Where are we headed?”

 “We are in a tunnel. It becomes narrower.”

 Ten metres into the tunnel, and he and the AI are bumping into each other, and Jack’s head is scraping against the roof. Fifty metres in, and Jack is on his hands and knees. The AI has dropped back behind him. 

 Jack wipes his face with his sleeve. His shirt and trousers are sticking clammily to his body.

 “Are you sure there’s a way through, Mr Edge?” 

 Jack can’t hear the AI’s response clearly, but he takes it to be a yes. 

 Another five metres in and the tunnel has become so narrow that he has to stretch his arms out in front of him. He will now have to push himself forward using his toes and knees. 

 Jack closes his eyes. Rivulets of sweat pour from the crown of his head over his face and down the back of his neck. 

 ‘If I push forward just once more, I won’t be able to move.’

 He turns his head sideways and rests it against his shoulder.

 “Mr Edge.”

 There is no reply. He lifts his head as far as he can.

 “Mr Edge!”

 But Flavatore Edge’s beautifully accented voice remains silent.

 Jack lays his head back down on his shoulder.

 ‘If the AI has broken down, it will be impossible to push him back along the tunnel.’ This time he feels the sweat spring from the area between his shoulder blades and pour down the sides of his chest. He swallows several times.

 “Hello.” 

 The voice is located some way ahead of Jack, further along the tunnel. His heart gives such a thump that he can actually hear it.

 “Who’s there?” Jack breathes between rapid inhalations and exhalations.

 He uses the base of his hands to push himself back a fraction. Immediately, he feels his feet against the head of the AI. 

 “I am the tunnel,” the voice says. “You are going in the wrong direction.” 

 “It’s an automated warning, mio caro”, says the AI.

 “Did I wake you up, Mr Edge?” 

 Jack’s voice is coming in short gasps. His clothes are saturated with the sweat pouring from every part of his body. 

 “Thank you. Yes. I appear to have had a momentary loss of function.” 

 ‘Does the AI use his vocabulary,’ Jack wondered, ‘to select words like ‘momentary’ to parade his accent?’ 

 “I can’t move forward,” Jack says. 

 “I am the tunnel,” the voice says. “You are going in the wrong direction.”

 “I am going to give you a push,” says the AI. 

 And he does. 

 “Now I can’t move at all,” Jack whispers.

 “I told you this way was not safe.”

 Jack is shaking hard. He hears a long, thin scream. He closes his eyes. The scream is coming from his own throat.

 “I am the tunnel. You are going in the wrong direction.”

 “Make your legs stiff,” says the AI. 

 Jack feels a huge force applied to his feet, and he is through.

 “You are not permitted to enter this space.”

 “Help me,” says the AI.

 Still shaking, Jack grabs the AI’s outstretched arms, places his feet against the walls to either side of the tunnel, and falls backwards as the AI slides through. 

 The AI’s body glows in an oily sheen of red, blue and green in the flashing lights. They are in a huge cave.

 “Sweat is not an efficient lubricant,” the AI observes, looking at Jack’s sodden clothes and enjoying the word ‘lubricant’. He takes a pocket handkerchief from his jacket and wipes his face.

 “You are not permitted to enter this space.”

 And then.

 One hundred, ninety-nine, ninety-eight…..”

 “That doesn’t sound good. Why is he counting, Mr Edge?”

 “I agree,” and then, “I have something to say.”

 “Ninety-two, ninety-one, ninety…..”

 “I prefer that you call me Flavatore.”

 Jack is looking around for a way out.

 “Eighty-eight, eight-seven, eighty-six…..”

 “What?”

 “I prefer that you call me Flavatore.”

 “Are you mad?” says Jack.

 “Maybe. A little bit.”

 “Eighty-one, eighty, seventy-nine…..”

 “Yes!” Jack shouts.

 “Yes?”

 “Yes, Mr Flavatore Edge!”

 “Seventy-four, seventy-three, seventy-two…..”

 “I can’t see a way out. Just rock.”

 “Interesting.”

 “Interesting?”

 “Yes, interesting. If the human brain can’t make sense of what it sees, it creates an illusion that it CAN make sense of.”

 “Sixty-five, sixty-four, sixty-three…..”

 “Can you see a way out?”

 “Yes. There are two ways out.”

 “Which ways?”

 “One is the way we came in. If we go back, you will be able to pass back through the tunnel without difficulty. I exuded…” 

 Flavatore pauses and then repeats the word ‘exuded’ as if in delight.

 “….. I exuded much oil on the passage walls.”

 “Fifty-one, fifty, forty-nine…..”

 “And the other way?”

 “The other way is through the dark star.”

 Flavatore points to the far end of the cave. 

 Jack squints. 

 Part of the rock face is lit. 

 “Forty-five, forty-four, forty-three…..”

 Flavatore touches the wall again.

 “Forty two, forty one…..” and the voice trails away.

 “No need for that anymore”, says Flavatore.

 The rock face is becoming smoother and flatter, and Jack sees that the light is not on the surface but beyond it. It is a huge window. The light ripples across it. Beyond the swirling light, there is darkness. 

 “This is the second way, mio caro,“ says Flavatore. “Through the dark star.”

 Flavatore touches the wall again, and Jack sees twinkling lights appear on either side of him. 

 “This is a ship,” says Flavatore, “but it travels through time. It is made of particles of time. No need for you to understand, mio caro.”

 “Will it take us to the Vault of Heaven?”

 “It will take us to another place. And from there, you will be able to go to the Vault. But it will be by a very different path.”

 “Are you not coming?”

 “I can come part of the way.”

 Jack is anxious to go, and Flavatore realises that. He touches another place on the wall, and Jack can feel a slight forward motion. The dark star is a great way off, but as they move towards it, they travel more quickly.

 The dark disc is growing in size. The ship sails past the huge wisps of light, and the black star fills the whole wall. 

 “We are about to enter the dark star. Goodbye, mio caro.”

 “Where are you going, Flavatore?”

 Then Jack sees Alice. She is in Wonderland. She is taking a pill. Alice begins to grow. Flavatore grows into a long piece of spaghetti. Jack is growing. Just like Alice. They stretch, and stretch and stretch. Jack is on the edge of the star. And Jack is in the star. He is on the edge and in the star at the same time. Flavatore says goodbye. Flavatore has gone. Alice has gone. There is a cat. The cat smiles at Jack. The cat is gone. The cat’s smile travels with Jack into the heart of the dark star.

 Jack cannot remember his name. He has forgotten his name. He is a boy. He forgets what a boy is. There are words in his head, but he does not know what they mean. He is somewhere. He is not where he was before. He cannot remember where he was before.

 He is somewhere else. His name is Jack. He is a boy. He looks into the dark sky and sees stars. He remembers that the tiny points of light are called stars. He does not recognise this sky, these stars. 

 Flavatore is not here. Matilda is here. 

 “I am Matilda,” she says. “Before, I was Flavatore, but now I am Matilda.”

 Matilda is standing beside him. He can hardly see her. Then she turns on. Matilda lights up as though she is in bright sunlight. She smiles at Jack.

 “You are safe now with me.”

 “Where is this?” Jack asks.

 “We are on the other side of the dark star. We are in the far future. We are almost at the end of time.”