1. When you are no longer interested in the world
2. When the physical body dies
3. When the last person who remembers you dies
4. When the last piece of physical evidence that you lived is gone
5. When the last member of your species dies
6. When no living beings remain in the Universe
7. When the Universe itself comes to an end
1. Open the black bag and place parts A, B and C together. Talk to part D nicely, until it reverts into the recessed position. Parts E and F will be delivered when they are needed; slot them in place behind the lintel.
2. Place against a wall in direct sunlight (Side N1 must be flush against a vertical surface). Fill the reservoir (G) with potable liquid. Clanking noises are normal at this point. If they are disturbing your sleep, a muffling device (H1) is sold separately.
3. Important: once the initial phase has developed, the surface behind the device may become inaccessible. Placement should be chosen with this in mind.
4. Keep the reservoir topped up. On feast days, wine or beer may be appreciated. Make sure to prune any extraneous shoots. Diagram F12 shows the proper orientation of growth and should be consulted frequently. Once growth is well-established, the device may start attracting ladybirds. Wipe them off whenever they become too dense.
5. Keep an eye on the red indicator. When it turns purple, you should be able to open door Q. Don’t step inside just yet.
6. Send off the attached postcard to initiate delivery of pack R and rations S. Although we recommend using only the officially-developed supplies, it is possible to enter the device using your own. In either case, no legal responsibility is taken for what may occur. When you feel ready, open door Q, using torch K for illumination. Bring stout walking boots and a supply of spare batteries.
7. Remember to close grille G1 behind you, and DO NOT open any of the accessory hatches. Good luck!
1. There was a switch on a metro train, and somehow something hit it.
2. It was a warm Sunday in July, and there were major delays. In the third carriage, a builder and a singer got to talking over the next hour, and later on they went out of their way to share part of the journey home.
3. Ten years later, they had a baby daughter, who was brown and perfect and who liked to play among the lavender bushes.
4. The daughter had a daughter who had a daughter, and so on for a few hundred more generations. Eventually nearly everyone on the planet was descended from her; and her lavender-loving genes spread out into space.
5. There were seven more races that could perhaps be called human before the race between disasters and ingenuity took a sinister turn. But by then, the seventh humans had made something rather like robots in their own image, and the robots survived. They spent some millions of years being confused between a number of simulation cultures, but eventually they decided that they probably had the right reality and commenced to live in it.
6. The robot societies spread out over the Galaxy, though they did it the slow way. Fortunately, they could afford to wait; though, by the time they had reached some of the more distant stars, they were much-changed.
7. Eventually, one by one, the robot stars winked out, leaving an occasional lost city hurtling through the void on planets that had come loose from their systems. And there were three or four other civilisations that came from different places, and one or two of them knew of the lost cities and told stories about what they thought might have happened there. Though they were never quite right, it must be said.
8. The Universe gently skated over the crest of its near-infinite expansion and began to draw back in. By this time life had more or less worn itself out, though it had a few brief and bright late flowerings in the heat and chaos near the end of time. It seemed there was a chain connecting their feverish stories to the old ones, though there is not enough space in anyone’s mind to enumerate the links of it.
9. Time ended and it all began again.
Before the entrance of the diners, the hall is prepared. The shutters are gilded and bolted shut. Great basins of clover are placed in front of them. A chandelier of beaten gold is raised, and a choir sits in the upper balcony and chants plainsong. A fire is lit in the hearth, over which some unidentifiable large meat object is placed for roasting.
1. Entrance of the diners. Each is served a thimble of champagne and three compliments, which are delivered by lissom young gentlemen in satin jackets. Each diner takes their place at the table and is draped in a large velvet cloak. The cloaks are curiously uncomfortable; they are much too hot for the hall, which is already a little stifling, and they are covered on the inside with large, stiff patches displaying the logos of the banquet sponsors.
2. A great black dish is brought to the table. It is made of cast iron and requires ten servants to carry. These servants are dressed as chimney sweeps and after their brief service they will be thrown out on the street with pay of one Cornish pasty each. The central lights are dimmed, and candles are lit amongst the clover basins. The lid is removed, to great fanfare. Hundreds of bees fly out. The host explains that this course contains no food, but that a delivery of bees is required to pollinate the clover. Water is served.
3. There is a parade of gentlemen in sharp suits through the room. Goodness, but they are well-dressed. A jester, dancing before them, showers the air with cocaine. The gentlemen pass through the room into some other room beyond high table, and we do not see them again. Slices of bread are served, but run out before the bottom of the table is reached. The diners are encouraged to fight for the bread; after ten minutes, those without bread are deemed to obviously not want food, and are thrown out.
4. The choir sings works by John Tavener and Arvo Part. Three banquet supervisors make the rounds of the table, asking for contributions for the choir, who are volunteers. Great flat black pebbles are served, with a single walnut half on top and a drop of salad cream. The supervisors explain that, for a fee, diners may get the pebbles monogrammed in gold and take them home.
5. The fourth course: representatives of major fast-food chains wheel golden trollies around the hall, offering a selection of iconic meals for fifteen pounds each. The choir sing a medley of jingles designed to increase hunger and promote careless purchases. Meanwhile, a group of cheeky young bucks of long and certified pedigree creep beneath the table and anaesthetise the feet of the diners, before stealing their shoes.
6. Diners are given a form to fill in to determine if they are worthy of dessert, citing income, work ethic, and a time they solved a personal challenge in an enterprising way. The five souls deemed worthy get to sit at a small table in the centre of the room and eat flaccid chocolate mousse, with everyone else gathered around to observe their shining example.
7. End of the banquet. A selection of bright, humming and flashing fluorescent tubes are switched on. Two Tudor-esque servants wander in, scratching their arses. They douse the fire, retrieve the roasting meat and take it through to the back room. The cloaks are removed and the guests presented with dry-cleaning bills. On the way out, they are offered employment as servers in the back room for the rest of the evening, but are unable to accept; indeed, most are having trouble even walking (given the foot anaesthetic, their lack of shoes, and the fact that the floor is strewn with dead and dying bees). This is entirely OK, provided that they pay a surcharge.
The next day, the newspapers report positively on the entrepreneurial spirit of the young bucks, recounting as a footnote that some wasters of no consequence were caught stumbling down the road.
6030 People
-6030.1 Small people
–6030.11 Babies
—6030.111 When they are wailing in the middle of the night
—6030.112 When they are snuggled-up and milk-drunk
—6030.113 At the age when one has mentally categorised them as something like a puppy, and they suddenly do something intelligent
–6030.21 Children
—6030.121 Real children
—6030.122 Children in stories of children, written by adults
—6030.123 Children in the imagination of children, reflecting backwards in an infinite spiral
–6030.31 People who are merely slightly shorter than oneself
-6030.2 People encountered out in the world
–6030.21 Those who are like you
—6030.221 Those who are like you inside, but sufficiently different outside that you do not immediately think so
–6030.22 Those who are not like you
–6030.23 Those who may or may not be, depending on your definition of ‘like’
–6030.24 Those who operate within the social contract of their time and place
—6030.241 Those who use the social contract to perform iffy deeds
—6030.242 Those who can only operate within the social contract after long study
-6030.5 Those who are easily categorised into a small number of different groups
–6030.51 Those who are happy at this categorisation
-6030.5 Those who are a source of gorgeous mystery
-6030.6 People who are made of ice-cream, butter or sugar
-6030.7 People who make music
-6030.9 Those who are in fact some number of moles dressed up in a trenchcoat, mask and hat
1. The clouds are low and thick near to the edge of the world, and a determined person may climb up into them and squelch around (although it is very wet up there and there is not much of a view). There are several species of trees that grow upside-down, reaching roots into the air in the hope of snaring a passing cloud.
2. The houses at the edge of the world are low and made of light wood, and when the wind rolls in from the edge they sometimes lift up and float; a stout rope being required to make sure that they do not blow away. They say the people who live there have light bones, like birds, and their skin is very dark.
3. Some days the forests catch all the clouds, and on these days the sun is bright and low and fierce and burning, and the beaches and deserts of the edge-world are a syrupy pinky-gold in the light and too hot to walk on.
3. There are birds who fly out to the edge of the world and keep on going, as if they have set their compass by a distant star. These birds never come back, but fortunately there are enough birds in the world to bear their loss.
4. There is an ancient postal service there which uses trained turtles to carry letters. In theory, I believe, one could send a postcard to the edge of the world and back, although it would need a sequence of addresses to make it though all the postal systems in between.
5. The mountains out there, such as they are, lean away from the edge. They have the appearance of low and worn teeth. Sometimes, when the edge-wind blows particularly strongly, rocks roll up their slopes and launch into the air from their summits.
6. Sometimes the earth creaks on its unnatural axis, out by the edge, and the sound is deafening. Great flocks of tawny gulls rise up from the beaches when this happens, and circle over the edge-waters (which are shallow and fast-running) for a day or more until they feel it is safe to land again.
1. Aethelbert’s Torr. This is a negative tower, that is to say, it reaches down into the earth rather than up into the sky, and it is of great antiquity. It is most often encountered in dreams, in various forms. The most common is the dream-trope of a familiar building with extra structures, in this case the extension of a staircase or lift shaft down into the earth beyond its usual limits. Aethelbert’s Torr is thought to have originally been associated with dreams of barrows and mortuary houses, but has diversified into many other forms over the many years of its existence. However, there generally remains a suggestion that something dead may be in its unusual depths.
2. The Tower of Dornock’s Drift. This otherwise-unremarkable tower has been noted as standing on cliffs overlooking the sea in several old chronicles. When cross-referenced, however, it is notable that at least ten different cliffs are mentioned; and no tower, or remains, are visible at any of those locations. There also remains a curious account of a hermit at Beachy Head that the tower was seen to rise into the sky on a pillar of flame on New Year’s Eve, but had returned the next day.
3. The Necessity Lighthouse. The necessity lighthouse is an odd enigma. It only appears in moments of uttermost darkness; although some of its features seem to suggests that it was intended to appear to those on states of deep spiritual or emotional trouble, it has only been observed in literal states of lightlessness. Thus those in trouble in caves, shuttered rooms at night, or in some cases out on very cloudly nights have occasionally seen its distant beams. Its appearance has also been reproduced in the laboratory in a specially-designed light-free chamber. There are thus some who hypothesise that the necessity lighthouse is in fact just an illusion caused by the eye’s reaction to complete darkness. Less well known is that the subject of the lighthouse experiment claimed to have been able to approach the lighthouse and walk round it, noting the phrase ‘You can do this’ in purple paint around its lower levels. The subject was not observed to move during the experiment.
4. Many examples of clocks featuring elaborate automata, donated by Western emissaries during the Qing dynasty, may be seen in the hall of Clocks in the Forbidden City in Beijing. Less well-known is the Clockwork Tower, a somewhat over-elaborate but fully-inhabitable mechanical tower with many fascinating automatic features. It is thought to have been a gift from a rather over-enthusiastic Venetian noble in 1760. As well as extending, in a not-at-all-phallic way, from three stories to seven at the push of a button, the clockwork tower was also able to scuttle sideways on ten mechanical legs. Observers described it as looking a little like a top-heavy crab. Unfortunately, one day it managed to scuttle right out of beijing and was never seen again. One assumes it must be hiding out somewhere in the Chinese countryside.
1. Consider a perfectly spherical cow of 1 metre diameter and uniform density. This cow needs milking. How are you going to do it?
2. I am pointing a 15 MW laser at the back of your head right now. No, don’t turn around. I’m not asking you to solve this problem, I’m just suggesting that you do have a problem here and asking you to acknowledge it. I probably won’t turn the laser on.
3. Derive Maxwell’s equations. To do this, you will need to use the fundamental constants pi and c. Note: both of these constants are hungry and one of them needs a wee. Your derivation will probably proceed much more smoothly if you can sort out their needs first.
4. Consider two trains of mass m speeding towards each other. Train 1 is travelling at 50% of the speed of light, and train 2 at 20% of the speed of light. You are a passenger on train 2. Roughly how much energy will be released when they crash, and don’t you think you’d better find a way to get off before answering this question?
5. You are in a Hollywood film in which Love is postulated as the fifth fundamental force. Derive a plausible extension of the Standard Model of particle physics to include the Love Force, based on its observed effects at a macro level (flushed cheeks, hormonal release, last-minute assignations in airports, etc.).
1. Doris Fnorling-Burteley, 1811 - 1920, is mainly known as the first person to explore Woking. Admittedly many people were there living there first, but this did not stop Doris, whose single-minded devotion to surveying the town resulted in a gorgeous compilation of charts, anthropological studies and illustrative plates known to scholars as the Woking Chronicles. A small plaque near Woking Crematorium celebrates her life and works.
2. Sir Audsley Stephenson, 1820 - 2980 (non-consecutive). Sir Audsley is a curious figure, thought to have been inducted into the secrets of time travel by an inter-temporal jewel thief who he caught and seduced in the act of trying to steal his ancestral opals. Although a keen reader of traveller’s tales, Sir Audsley was an almost obsessive refuser of spatial travel. Some have speculated that he experienced motion sickness of unusual severity. Instead, Air Audsley explored his West London mansion and grounds through time, initial concentrating on a single temporal dimension but subsequently making excursions in several others. Unfortunately, nearly all of his works are classified documents and many are considered too pornographic for general consumption. After his death, a selection of monographs were declassified under the strict understanding that they must not be transported back in time. A small detatchment of the neo-Venusian time police in 3011 was dedicated to shadowing Sir Audsley and his works and eradicating the many paradoxes his careless time travel created.
3. Jane Cook, 1831 - 1871. Mrs. Cook was an otherwise unremarkable Victorian housewife who dedicated her life to exploring maps; that is to say, many hours of her time were spent with a magnifying glass, paper and pencil, obsessively documenting the minute ridges, furrows and flaws across her well-worn map of central York to create a new map at double-scale. Subsequently, she mapped her double-scale map and the resulting quadruple-scale map, returning to this exercise another five times before being crushed by a mound of stray paper at age 40.
4. John ‘Cartophage’ Russell-Johnson, 1837-1920. If his tales are to be believed, John Russell-Johnson single-handedly accomplished many of the greatest feats of exploration of the Victorian era, including navigating the Northwest passage, reaching the North Pole, and the discovery of a lost city in the Amazon rainforest. Sadly, however, his persistent habit of eating his maps, documents and usually shoes when faced with adversity on the return journey means that no documentation or proof of his exploits is available.
1. Think of a number, any number. Add four, and multiply by two. Subtract six. Divide by two. Subtract the number you started with. Now, what do you end up with?
2. There was a number that was caught in a maze, very like the one just constructed, and had to eat its way out. It was a dangerous process, costing an amateur mathematician three fingers and a chunk of thigh meat.
3. The mathematician was stitched up by a doctor at the tallest hospital in the world, which had just been constructed. It was twice as tall as any other building in the world, and one could look down from its upper floors at clouds passing by. All the staff at the hospital were new and none of them knew their way around.
4. The doctor got lost on his way home and had to sleep in a broom cupboard in the kidney department. He had a dream about being served a meal of purple food by a mysterious veiled woman. It would have been such a good dream, if only boiled beets, candied violets, red cabbage, blackcurrants, roast aubergines and plums had had some kind of joint flavour affinity.
5. The woman closed the door of the dream and took off her veil. Then she poled her boat along the river to the next dream she was contracted to appear in and put on a great cloak of peacock feathers. It was a dream for an aging judge, who was to be bent double in a box and whispered to.
6. The judge, however, was late for her dream, because it was snowing that night and the traffic around London had tied itself into a historic knot. It was the sort of knot that one gets in sewing thread, requiring only gentle pulling (or in this case, the movement of a single, unremarkable car) to undo. But nobody had the wider perspective to see this, so it remained in place all night until a squadron of police officers painstakingly cut and unravelled the thread elsewhere.
7. The road’s four lanes became a silent, black-and-white maze of snowy vehicles, navigated by blanket-wrapped figures. The driver of the car at the heart of the knot spent the night with twenty other drivers who had decamped to a nearby lorry with a heating system. They played cards all night and thought up increasingly ridiculous terms for snow. Hey, said the lorry driver, as dawn began to break. Think of a number.