1. By burying them in a big jar under a major city for the recipient to find and analyse in several thousand years’ time
2. By hiding your message 75% of the way through a licensing agreement
3. By tracing the letters of your message on the intended recipient’s genitals with your tongue during a seemingly anonymous sexual encounter
4. By teaching your message to the parrots of a region that you know the recipient will walk through, but in a language that no other local walkers speak
5. By dropping a drop of water from your window onto the head of the passing recipient each day; the information being encoded in the ratios of different isotopes of carbon and oxygen in the water (the oxygen being in the water molecules themselves, the carbon in carbon dioxide dissolved in the water)
6. By feeding your message to a large, gormless and tasty fish that you then release into a pool that the recipient is about to go fishing in
7. By writing the message on the internet, sandwiched between two or three of your favourite conspiracy theories and/or racist memes
8. By hiding your message in a relatively anonymous post on tumblr
1. It’s me, says Bob as he comes in from the lock. And I can tell at once that there’s something wrong; he’s stumbling around, confused. It’s me!, he says again. His g-counter is silent. Dorit and I exchange looks. Mart on the door rushes to scan him and there it is: maybe his g-counter is broken or something but hers is beeping red within two metres of him. There’s no real protocol for what to do if someone makes it through the lock contaminated. Mart grabs the spare sheeting we were using for the lab extension and pushes him back with it, panicing. Lin opens the door and together they shove him backwards into the lock, where he falls over and starts vomiting. We shut the inner door. I send Mart and Lin for decontamination and we check the area. No-one wants to think about Bob.
2. We’ve lost three people so far, and so there is a kind of protocol in place for that. If you are contaminated beyond hope of recovery, you stay outside. The next survey mission, in the morning, collects the body and we take it home for the family. There’s not a lot you can see of the city outside through the protective glass. Just grey mist and the looming shadows of buildings. Normally when this happens they’re too far gone to struggle much. We’re pretty good at decontamination these days but you can only do so much.
3. Of course, the best way to come back safely is: don’t get haunted in the first place. Don’t provide a hook, a sense of familiarity that the ghosts can cling to. The city is so old, now, and so full of ghosts, that it can be hard to avoid triggering memories for one or another of them. Mart estimates that we have come at a time when the city had been inhabited more or less continuously for a period of approximately half a billion years. Even the time underwater, there were people here. This is why our suits have been designed with features that as far as we know humanity has never had. Those irritating inflatable skirts give us a silhouette proven in two years of field tests to minimise haunting potential. Sometimes the suits come in with g-count zero, even for a full ten-minute mission.
4. Bob is quiet, outside. I think that he must be dying, quietly, politely somewhere out of sight. Even if he were not haunted, we put him back out there without any oxygen. Quietly, politely, we eat dinner. We turn the lights out. Dorit, who is an interfaith minister, says a few words into the darkness. We try to sleep.
5. Why do this at all? The opportunity was there. We could come forwards, but only to the point when there were no people left. Maybe they were employing some blocking technology before that, maybe it’s nature’s way of avoiding too many paradoxes, I don’t know. We could come forwards in time but only to after the death of humanity. So we came. We came to find out more about the last people, to learn from them, to maybe avoid their fate. Because there were people here, not many people but some, until maybe a few years ago. The people must have been resistant to haunting, somehow. Lin thinks it was the plants that were the problem. At high g-concentrations the ghosts will latch onto anything familiar at all, even plants, and suck it dry of life. No plants, and give or take a thousand years, no oxygen. So the last people must have known they were doomed. There are ghosts up on the hill that gasp: are they the final inhabitants?
6. Anyhow, the next morning they bring Bob back in, and he’s stiff and cold but oddly peaceful-looking. And we put him in the box, the one that we have for these occasions, and I take him back in time, back to when we came from, and we inform the authorities. I phone the family. We arrange a handover.
7. We never expected the ghosts. The ghosts of a city a thousand years old are gentle whispers, almost invisible. I used to think that memories were laid thick in the streets I grew up in. I used to pass a building that had been built from the stones of another, older building that had fallen into ruins and feel a thrill at the weight of history. Where we went to, the streets have half a billion years of history. The ghosts are so thick in the air that almost nothing else matters. How many people in half a billion years? If you squint through the mist, sometimes you can see them. The gaspers on the hill. The grey ladies in the temple (we no longer go to the temple). The long man. The burrowers.
8. I pass the box over to the authorities, who will perform a final decontamination and pass the body on to the funeral directors appointed by Bob’s family. And only then do I realise. It’s me, he said. It’s me. In bringing his body back to our own time, we have let loose Bob’s own patient ghost. It has half a billion years to go until it can haunt him. But it knows where to find him when it’s time. And it will.
1. Slow zombies. Shambling, gormless members of the living dead, often bearing an odd resemblance to the sort of humans the author believes should think more closely about their life choices and aspirations. Method of disposal: destroy the brain.
2. Fast zombies. As above, except able to sprint. Method of disposal: destroy the brain, but more quickly.
3. Immobile zombies. Members of the living dead who are in fact not able to move about at all. Method of disposal: as they are not particularly dangerous, this depends on how you feel about having dead people around the place. If you meet one, the nice thing to do might be to prop it up in front of a good film.
4. Ant zombies. Interestingly, the ant is particularly susceptible to zombification. It is quite hard to tell if an ant is a zombie one or not but obviously you should avoid being bitten by the zombie ones. Method of disposal: identify, then destroy the brain.
5. Zombles. There have not been Wombles on Wimbledon Common for some years, following an effective culling program by the local golf course, who objected to the mounds of earth left by their burrowing activities on the greens. Instead, the golf course now has to deal with Zombles. Although they are largely peaceful and still aid with litter-picking, they have a tendency to erupt from bins in a way that unsettles patrons. However, as they can be useful in chivvying up the slower players and still spend the majority of their time underground, the golf course has largely worked around the Zomble issue so far. It may be that they are concerned about the negative publicity that a highly visible extermination campaign might entail. Method of disposal: Zombles are remarkably self-contained and will not stray from Wimbledon Common. The easiest way of dealing with them may just be to admit the problem, seal off the Common and give it up for lost.
6. Zombie ghosts. Interestingly, if a poltergeist is bitten by a zombie it is possible for the resulting creature to be briefly unundead. Method of disposal: nature abhors a double negative, so infestations of zombie ghosts tend to clear up by themselves. The only problem may arise if there is a necromancer around to attempt a state of ununundeadness; this deeply unstable situation may result in a messy explosion.
7. Armies of zombies who have stored their brains in a massive locked cave full of zombie brains somewhere deep underground which is also guarded by lots of zombies. Method of disposal: probably you are screwed.
123 Quests
-1123.1 In search of miscellaneous items
–1123.11 Treasure
—1123.111 Treasure with mystical powers
—1123.112 Treasure with great social significance
—1123.113 Treasure that will just make you rich
–1123.12 Swords or other weapons
—1123.121 Obtained from lakes or rivers
—1123.122 Obtained from stones
—1123.123 Obtained from weapons shop
–1123.13 Food and drink
—1123.131 Fountains of youth, beauty or pertness
—1123.132 Fruits
—1123.1321 Forbidden ones
—1123.1322 Tasty ones
—1123.133 Ice cream, chocolate or cookies
—1123.1331 Those that are perfect
–1123.14 Clothes, shoes or accessories
–1123.15 Keys, remote controls and other miscellaneous items
-1123.2 In search of people or other beings
–1123.21 Gurus, messiahs or prophets
–1123.22 Ordinary people just like you, the reader, who are the subject of mysterious prophecies
-1123.3 In search of knowledge
–1123.31 In search of Meaning
–1123.32 In search of The Ineffable
—1123.321 In which the questers failed to bring a large enough supply of effs
-1123.4 In search of mystical powers
-1123.5 In search of something you had all along
–1123.51 In search of yourself
–1123.52 The real treasure was the friends you made along the way
–1123.53 The real treasure was your navel
—1123.531 When you gaze into it your navel also gazes back
—1123.532 The quest ends when all involved are accidentally sucked into a giant bellybutton
–1123.54 Item was on your head all the time
-1123.6 Quests to get rid of things
–1123.61 In the ancient forge whence it was made
–1123.62 In the appropriate recycling bin
-1123.7 Unsuccessful quests
–1123.71 The real treasure was NOT the friends you made along the way, actually everyone was kind of trying to kill you
–1123.72 Desperate million-to-one hope inexplicably failed to come off
1. Snuggled up in the cosy crook of the first e, like a ferret in a nest.
2. If you look carefully, the shaft of the initial letter T is a tower block which is small because it is very far away into your screen (the crossbar is in fact the runway of a tiny airport which is even further away). This tower block has three flats available. They are quite comfortable, as things made of pixels go.
3. The hole of the last letter o is full of ants, but it’s a great place to live if you’re an ant.
4. Do you see the elephant near the end of the title? Only an ear and a trunk are visible, they look a little like a letter p (the body is the same colour as the background, because this elephant is a master of disguise). Anyway, under that elephant is a warm sandy spot that’s great to have a picnic in, and the elephant has promised not to move until you’re done.
5. What looks like a letter k is in fact a schematic representation of the state of Britain post-Brexit - confusedly going every which way apart from leftwards. It is the sole exhibit in a tiny museum of political schematics which I have just set up in the title of this post. That museum needs a dynamic, thrusting curator. Is that you? Apply here.
6. You may notice that there are some spaces in the title, and that the positions on screen that they occupy have hosted other letters in the past. As brownfield word sites, they are ripe for development. This is one area where I feel we can take many lessons from the German language. In Germany, modern sentence building regulations mean that spaces between words are usually rapidly filled with new and stylish letters.
7. Do you see that letter a in the title? That’s the best letter a ever. It’s sweet and funny and really a joy to hang out with. It’s a little shy, but once you come in and get to know it you will have an awesome little letter friend for life. It will even perch on your shoulder and you can feed it treats. Don’t mistake it for the other letter a in the title, though, which has committed murder and will do so again. I’m sure you can tell the difference.
8. The dot of the first i is in fact a spiral galaxy approximately 50 million light years into your screen. It has millions of habitable planets. There’s bound to be one you like.
9. I realise that this post is only digital at the moment, and you may be feeling reluctant, because this does tend to make real estate values volatile. But imagine: this is an up and coming area and could one day be printed out on a real printer, giving it oodles of old-fashioned charm for the retro crowd and setting off a rocket under prices. It’s in your interest to get in before that happens.
1. Those that have been whispered into for so long that they retain tiny echoes.
2. Flat pillows that bear the scars of some number of pillow fights, perhaps thirty-five, you can tell these things by the distribution of the stuffing.
3. Pillows made from actual clouds, to be put in gaudily unsleepable-in guest bedrooms.
4. Pillows that have floral pillowcases bearing secret and passive-aggressive messages in the language of flowers.
5. Magic-realist pillows that occasionally emit a small kangaroo.
6. Things that look like pillows but are actually small sleeping animals, sheep with their heads retracted or sacks of otters.
7. Grumpy, lumpy pillows that can’t even.
8. Those made from moss, cardboard boxes or backpacks.
9. Magic pillows stuffed with the hairballs of mythic beasts that curse the sleeper with true dreams and slightly damp hair.
1. The Russian Roulettocoaster, Upper Mongolia. A roller coaster similar
in context to Urbonas’s Euthanasia Coaster, the Russian Roulettocoaster
is designed to inflict prolonged, extreme g-forces on its passengers,
such that around one in six of them will not survive the ride. The
testing and calibration process landed the entire surviving concept,
building and operational teams of the project in prison, so rides on the
Russian Roulettocoaster these days are thankfully rare. A variant
version in which the car is occasionally diverted onto a track that ends
in mid-air was never built, although plans exist.
2. The You Don’t
Have To Be Mad To Work Here But It Helps Building, Chicago. An entire
office building themed around fairground rides for the wackier kind of
modern corporation. Meeting rooms can only be accessed by tube slide,
the toilets are located in a giant ball pool, and top floor access is by
giant see-saw, forcing employees to co-operate and co-ordinate their
operations in order to get to meetings with the boss on time. In a
cost-savvy move inspired by behavioural simulation and optimisation
tools, employees are kept svelte and expenses reduced by the free office
cafeteria being located on a rotating floor, inducing minor feelings of
seasickness.
3. The tea spa, Highgate. A spinning teacup ride
containing actual tea. The premise of the tea spa is that sitting in a
large cup of green tea will rejuvenate and revitalise your skin, encalm
you in a carrying on sort of way, and also make your clothes a little
bit fashionably brown. Additionally spinning the teacups causes mild
dizziness, which is absolutely the kaleiest sort of legal high, and
sometimes inspires fascinating insights into fluid dynamics. For an
additional fee, it is possible to put a cat in the room, briefly, before
it runs away.
4. The Himalayan waterslide, Nepal. The exact location
of the Waterslide is a closely-kept secret. It appears to be a cave,
but about thirty metres from the entrance reveals its true nature: an
enormous, mile-long waterside-cum-tunnel dug into the Himalayan rock by a
reclusive billionaire. Those who have the resources to find and use the
waterslide (and the gumption, as it is also unlit along most of its
length) will eventually plop out into a wide pool in an artificial
cavern deep beneath Annapurna. Actually getting out again is another
matter; the cavern contains the billionaire’s shuttered secret base, a
number of nefarious evildoers thought lost to the world, a nuclear
reactor best described as ‘cranky’ and the only remaining wild
population of the Nepalese Burrowing Tiger. The cavern currently
contains nearly the world’s entire supply of a certain type of adventure
tourist (did you notice there were fewer of them about?). It is
believed they may have formed a civilization, and many do not wish to
return to the surface.
5. Your mum.
Those that grow with each telling, those that you think have ended but which always have another ending to follow, stories for cold dawns, half-forgotten ones, stories that rely on some unspoken common knowledge, those that you disregard at the time but which come back to you at midnight; stories best told in a den or treehouse, stories for the intoxicated, those that curl back to their beginnings; tales that are elegant and beautiful knots, or that are passionless clockwork; stories about ideas that grudgingly contain people; stories about people in search of some plot; those that are not what you thought they were at first; those that you thought were funny when you started telling them but you realise half-way through are not, those whose digressions are the best parts, those that mean different things to different listeners; stories against the end of the world; those that you tell whilst sheltering from wolves; stories that wear their parlour tricks on their sleeves; that mix metaphors in a bucket; stories that seem to float off, mid-thought; those that are far too cool to say anything; stories presented as evidence for something true; shaggy dog tales; sleek greyhound stories whose meaning races off when left unattended; tiny grumpy dog tales that fit in a handbag.
A is for Ava, who wakes every hour,
B is for Ben, who can turn on the shower.
C is for Charlotte, who chews all she sees;
D is for Dan who likes trying to grab bees;
E’s for Elijah, who’s climbing the stair;
F is for Fred, chucking food from his chair.
G is for Gabe, sitting sucking his thumb,
And H is for Hannah, look out for her bum!
I is for Isaac, a querulous eater;
J is for Jem who can sick half a metre;
K is for Kelly, who’s kicking your seat;
and L is for Liam, who’s licking concrete.
M is for Mia, who likes snatching toys,
N is for Noah, the source of that noise;
O is for Olly, a bit of a thrower;
P is for Penny, who’s pouncing on Noah.
Q is for Queenie who’s quoting from Frozen,
R is for Rob, always putting his nose in;
S is for Sophie, who’s chasing a swan.
T is for Tim, turn around and he’s gone.
U is for Ursula, clutching your knee;
V is for Viv who’s half-way up that tree;
W’s for Will, and he never will share,
X is for Xavier, pulling Jem’s hair;
Y is for Yasmin, who’s in to the bin;
Z is for Zack, is it time for some gin?
1. Queen Victoria was largely absent from public life for years after the death of Prince Albert. The public were given to believe that this was due to unbearable grief; however, in truth this was only the initial cause of her absence. In fact, she was engaged in a titanic secret struggle for the future of London. After Albert died, the Queen made certain consultations with dubious magicians, leading to a midnight ceremony in the gardens of Buckingham Palace at which they attempted to talk to Albert’s shade with the help of John Dee’s scrying-glass. The ritual went disastrously wrong, raising something from the deep that should never have been wakened. Some of the survivors claimed that it had Albert’s face; but it is certain that it was not Albert. For the next thirteen years, Victoria and her inner circle fought the beast, which was intent on making a nest in central London, eventually defeating it in an epic battle in Regent’s Park which was successfully passed off as a firework display.
2. Greta Garbo did not actually retire from acting at the age of 36. In fact, she was replaced by a robotic replica from the future in 1940, the film Ninotchka having become a quasi-religious obsession in the Patagonian robot cultures of the 3970s. Following this replacement, the real Garbo made a further fifty-seven films in the future before her eventual death at the age of 118. The robotic Garbo tried its hand at acting but proved to be an imperfect copy; it executed its emergency retirement routine and spent a significant proportion of the following years on standby mode in a cupboard. Interestingly, Garbo’s future grave site has become temporally dislocated and tends to wander through time between her original birth date and 4450 or so. Interested hikers near Ushuaia should keep on the lookout for a large and mysterious cube.
3. Another victim of body-swapping was Bobby Fischer, the American chess champion. During a particularly inspired game in 1973, Fischer’s pieces were infested by the Zugzwang collective, a team of sixteen floating spirits who had taken to defining their hierarchy in chess terms. The queen of the Zugzwang collective, angry at being sacrificed, executed a bellybutton-level essence swap with both players, essentially splitting herself in two. Fischer’s body was rather inexpertly controlled by half of the Zugzwang queen for the rest of its life. The whereabouts of his mind is currently unknown.
4. It may seem odd to suggest that Kanye West has a reclusive secret life, as he is not known for being exceptionally reclusive. However, this is because at least sixteen clones of West have been made. Each one spends ten months of the year in strict seclusion, before telepathically communicating with the others for an update on the outside world and spending the next two months as (part of) West’s public face. What they are doing in their ten-month sabbaticals is unclear, but I’m sure the world will find out eventually.