Listing to Port

1. The Holy Roman Emperor Lothair I. Reason: if your party is held during his lifetime, the cost of providing extra security will be prohibitive. If it is not, you will either need to mess with historical timelines or host a corpse, which is a bit of a downer.
2. The dwarf planet Pluto. Reason: it will not fit in the door.
3. Don Quixote. Reason: He is a fictional character, and thus unlikely to attend.
4. The North Sea. Reason: you will be too busy mopping up after it to enjoy your party.
5. Capybaras. Reason: there are too many capybaras in the world to fit inside a reasonably-sized party venue, and if you only invite some of them then the others will be jealous.
6. The platonic ideal of the colour blue. Reason: if it vomits on your carpet you will never, never get the stain out.
7. The norovirus. Reason: it is a terrible conversationalist, for one thing.

1. Stop breathing

2. Get rid of that heartbeat

3. Lose consciousness

4. Cease brain stem activity

1. The first of the seven other seas is initially difficult to distinguish from the more commonplace seas near its entrance, which some say is in the North Pacific. Navigation, however, is almost impossible. One can usually tell that one has entered the first other sea by the complete malfunction of GPS, compasses, celestial navigation, etc. at the same time. At night the stars are blurry smears across the sky. Generally the advice to those who have entered an other sea is to get out as quickly as possible, so the navigational problems pose a grave difficulty and few people have come back from the first other sea. Because it is near the North Pacific Gyre, great washes of plastic are sometimes seen near the entrance and this can be a way to navigate out. The nature of its actual hazards is rather vague. Some speak of just escaping the rising of unusually violent storms; others of drifts of fog they felt compelled to avoid. One must assume those who did not make it back learned somewhat more.

2. The water of the second sea is sweet and cherry-scented. It falls in extravagant waterfalls from steep, rocky islands thick with stinging plants (maybe there is some kind of fruit-based filtering system within?). Needless to say, the sweet water is clogged with vast algal blooms and the sort of extraordinary insectile forms one might expect near-infinite sugar to attract. The sky over the second sea is a thick, luminous yellow, as if a ferocious sun were doing battle with an enormous cloud bank. It is an awful place. Those who have come back from it are generally not fond of cherries.

3. The water in this sea seems to become thicker as one ventures further in. It grinds together like ice, although the weather is only moderately cool. Sailing into it is incredibly perilous and should only be undertaken for short distances and with a reinforced hull. There are many tales of ships who have entered unknowingly and their unfortunate ends. Needless to say, a swimmer could not last long in the milling waters, half-transformed to stone. They say if you could get through the transition zone this sea would be walkable on, and maybe it does not count as a sea at that point, even if one can still over the centuries feel the movements of great stone whales below.

4. There is no light here; no sun or moon or stars and (as far as we know) no phosphorescent seaweeds of the like. One can bring one’s own light sources, of course, but so far none have shown anything but a black, brackish sea against a black sky. The longest a boat has stayed here and returned is an hour. Depth soundings have yet to reveal evidence of a sea bed.

5. There is a perpetual smell of peat on the air; much more than the occasional small islands could produce. This is perhaps the friendliest of the seven other seas and there are some travellers who claim to have stayed here for weeks with little ill-effect. It is still notable that maybe one in three of those who have been in fail to come out. Therefore there must be some hazard, even if we are unable to say what it is.

6. We do not know anyone who has been to the sixth sea. Some say that it was invented to make sure that there were seven other seas and not six. Alternatively the entrance may be very remote or very small, or its waters peculiarly hostile.  

7. It is a shallow sea, and can be waded in in places. The sun shines very hot on its nearer parts, which are windless and smell strongly of the thick red seaweed that grows there. It is not known how far this sea stretches, though no-one has found an end of any sort other than a few lonely sandbanks. But one cannot sail here other than in tiny rowboats or punts, so it is hard to travel far. There have been explorers who were determined to prove that some miraculous feature existed, somewhere deep beyond the bland inner reaches of this sea. We waved them off, and we have not seen them since. I suppose if they found their utopia they might have stayed, and be still living.

1. The ruins of an old coach house, it must have been miles from anywhere. There are trees growing through the windows and the roof is long gone. Everything is covered in moss.

2. A pile of mouldering pornography in a bush; it must be a remnant of the days when there was always a pile of mouldering pornography in a bush, as if that was how pornography came into being in the days before the internet.

3. A tangled thicket of dead branches and brambles. There is a nest of some sort at the other end, I think; it is impossibly large, as if it were a nest for a family of humans. But there is some kind of hair inside. There is no getting through the thicket to find out. The woods on the other side are their own place and cannot be reached without a machete; they stretch all the way to the mountains, even though this wood is bounded on every side by housing estates.

4. A winding path that leads down to a swampy valley, all yellow grass and mosquitoes. There is a small pond on the far side, unreachable without waders. Something white is moving in the rushes.

5. A den of numbers, newly hatched and wriggling. This is where they come from and where they grow alone, before they migrate to universities to perform elegant mating dances in a variety of exotic equations. Out here they are wild and you cannot be sure of adding them correctly. Sometimes they line up in the wrong order. I myself have been bitten by a particularly malevolent three.

6. Some actors. They are lost, and looking for the path. They are at pains to inform you that they are not performing a Midsummer Night’s Dream, although isn’t it funny that it’s turned out like this, ha ha. Not that one would be making love in these woods anyway. They are too damp. It is only a short way to the main road, from which it is twenty minutes’ brisk walk to the high school where they are performing.

7. There is a place where the morning mist lies heavy on the ground, beside a little stream. The first golden light of sunrise turns it all to sparkles and dew. The air is suddenly curiously warm and heady, even though everything is outlined in damp spiderwebs. Something large drops into the water, but one cannot see what.

8. There is an old tree, maybe it has been here for the full nine hundred years of an ancient oak’s age. It is split and hollow and surrounded by a crown of rotting branches. Inside, there is a hole leading down into the ground like a bottomless pit, scratched on all sides by the graffittied names of teenagers who must have slid down into its comforting embrace and ended up somewhere else.

1. There was an apartment building, I think it was in London somewhere. In the penthouse lived an entirely unremarkable couple, who had passed through thirty years in the world without leaving any mark on it. They did not quite realise this, living as they were on a day-to-day basis busy with small actions. But everything they did seemed to be erased shortly after they did it. People forgot them; their spilled coffee melted away; the people at the local shop greeted them every day as if they were new to the area. Certainly they seemed to have no family. In the end I am not sure if this was bad luck, or the action of some vengeful and powerful enemy.

2. On the floor below the penthouse lived some robots. Before their retirement, they had been involved in a top-secret surveillance project and hence they were conditioned to enjoy the view. Needless to say, their existence was also top-secret and, since they had been largely abandoned by the government, they had had to devise complex strategies for continuing to operate in peace. One of these, they thought, was to seek out forgettable and reclusive people and live near them. They were able to recharge from the electricity supply. For spare parts and oil they had taken to making orders from Amazon, then answering the door in a full-size Peppa Pig costume which a disgruntled London Marathon participant had discarded next to the building. Due to their compact, modular nature they were able to fit in spaces inaccessible to humans with no outward sign other than the occasional scritching noise. This was fortunate as they were often raided by the police (who had noted the apartment’s electricity use as highly suspicious) and had to all hide under the floorboards. Otherwise they spent their time making an enormous quilt, which one of their former operators had told them was a good way to pass the time.

3. There was a man who was writing a book, and he lived two floors below the penthouse. He survived on a small pension from the Department of Springs, which he had been awarded after a tragic pogo accident had led to him losing one and a half legs. He had been writing this book for fifty years. It was a beautiful thing and very long, with all manner of gilded maps and illustrations and equations and fold-out origami clocks and collages and flipbook animations. One volume was nothing but a series of holes in coloured pages which combined to spell out ever-changing poems; another contained only one enormous folded map of a city almost exactly the same as his own, combined ingeniously with a diagram of the nervous system of a rat. There was a book set in barely-discernable dark greys which was full of maps of caves. The fiftieth volume contained a hollow chamber which was always stocked with a tiny bottle of sherry and told of the coronation of a king in the book’s world. In the seventieth volume, the characters mounted an escape through a hole in the back cover, leaving behind themselves only a small trail of lost full stops. After this, the pages of subsequent volumes were largely blank or abstract, or dealt only in matters of space, time and geometry. The current volume, however, told of the author’s struggle to lure his characters back (he assumed they were living, like mice, in the walls of the house, and that this was what had been causing the scratching noises) via the medium of smells, and as a consequence his southward windows were stocked full of herb pots; thyme and rosemary and fennel and bay.

4. Three floors below the penthouse was an apartment that was entirely full of insects, from floor to ceiling. Because the insects entered the apartment via a private drainpipe on one side of the building, and exited it via the sewers, the other occupants were not aware that they were there. Indeed, they were generally held to be good neighbours, because they were mostly quiet and did not leave rubbish in the hallway. I am not sure why this apartment was such an important staging post on their journey, or where they came from, or where they were going. On summer nights, when the scent of thyme rose in the air, those insects who were currently in a winged phase would dash in joyous zigzags around the apartment’s congested spaces before falling to the floor to mate.

5. Six old women lived in the apartment on the ground floor. These women had once been in a ladies’ cricket team together, but had fallen on difficult times after an unsuccessful attempt to use occult powers to improve their fortunes. Since that day, they had been haunted by the hairy ghost of W. G. Grace. The ghost was most put out at finding itself haunting a London flat and would frequently invite other ghosts of his era around to complain at them. The old women thus usually found their sleep interrupted by querulous Victorians. They welcomed the quiet buzzing and pattering of summer nights, which they assumed was some kind of air conditioning system above, as it partially drowned out the constant spectral grumblings they were subject to. On these nights they all sat up and drank saffron gin in their huge bed.

6. Below the old women there was no flat, only a basement. Although it had been intended for the storage of cleaning equipment, it was currently officially marked as unused, and its plywood door was closed with an enormous padlock. However, it proved easy to remove the door from its hinges. The basement had therefore been inhabited by a succession of squatters, and was currently the home of a young man and his labrador. In the daytime, they pretended to be statues on the riverbank for the amusement and edification of tourists. The basement was rather damp, and so they did not care to spend longer there than could be helped. However, they happened to be in on the night that the ghosts of W. S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan, who had been getting drunk on saffron gin fumes, stumbled through the ceiling. Gilbert and Sullivan, who were pretty shitfaced, spent the rest of the night singing a new operetta about the many humorous problems faced by a ghost in the modern world (by which they meant the Edwardian era). Unfortunately, only the dog was awake.

7. Some days later, the dog (who was plagued with earworms which it was entirely incapable of expressing) took a wrong turning and ended up in the building’s malfunctioning lift. It was rare to find the lift venturing down as far as the ground floor, because one or other of the inhabitants of the building had levered open its workings and poured irn bru into them. The dog travelled to the top floor, where it howled and howled under the impression that it might have been singing until its owner came to find it. And that night, everyone who was heading home headed into the wrong apartment. Perhaps the dog had been singing after all, who knows?

1. The Flesh Pot, 2080. Taking advantage of the widespread uptake of vat meat, the Flesh Pot specialised in providing diners with very small, very expensive steaks made from the genetic material of the celebrity of their choice. The Flesh Pot was very careful to be scrupulously above board. All celebrities on the menu endorsed the restaurant and had personally donated their DNA to the on-site vat farm in South London. As a result, their selection was a little peculiar and tended towards the C-list. However, there was always rumoured to be a basement to the building, accessible via a fold-out mirror in the building’s excessively plush toilets, where somewhat less ethical meals were served: for example, the flesh of non-affiliated personalities (bin raids for genetic seeding material being a well-publicised hazard of fame in the near future) as well as experimental organ and other scaffold-based meats. An article in the New Sun in 2082 claimed that an infiltrating reporter had been served a faithful replica of a horse’s penis made from the genetic material of a well-known singer, and that the offered menu included the option to consume the hearts of one’s enemies, given a few strands of hair and a couple of months’ lead time. As a result, the Flesh Pot was shut down in 2085, though many years later its core concept spawned a chain of neo-Venusian fast food restaurants.

2. Light.1, 2088. Light.1 did not serve food; rather, patrons ‘dined’ on light, air, smells and sounds harvested from across the world. From 2091 water was also occasionally served with meals, although many purists felt that this was going against the original concept. Light.1 was initially branded as an art concept restaurant. However, it soon found its three windowless dining rooms were frequently underoccupied. By 2095 the restaurant, which was kept in operation by the ready flow of some billionaire’s art-wank money, had primarily rebranded itself as a weight loss enterprise. Although the main restaurant closed in 2100, the concept was kept alive by a travelling Light.1 roadshow offering non-dining experiences in some of the world’s deeper caves.

3. The Cauldron, 2109. The main dining room of the cauldron was built around an enormous pot, set bubbling in 2109 and kept boiling for the entire lifetime of the restaurant. Two rows of seats (the restaurant’s entire capacity) surrounded the pot. After initially being seeded with an unknown set of ingredients, the pot was entirely stocked with ingredients provided by the restaurant’s patrons, who were allowed to taste a spoonful of the current stew when making their (exclusive, in-person only) booking. The restaurant had no chef and only a skeleton staff. Its stews were frequently peculiar-tasting, but oddly popular; perhaps because patrons felt they were contributing something to some kind of notable crowdsourcing event thing. The existence of the Cauldron was probably prompted by the 2100’s fashion for boiling all foodstuffs to unrecognisability, following the unfortunate advent of Salmonella X in 2102.

0120 Round things
 -0120.1 That are extremely pleasing
    –0120.11 Holes that are perfectly round
    –0120.12 A full moon in a completely dark night sky
    –0120.15 Marbles that are all one colour
 -0120.2 That are not where they should be
    –0120.21 Round clods of dirt indoors
       —0120.211 Dirt of suspicious origin, possibly related to a strange cat in the house
    –0120.22 Full stops in the middle of sentences
 -0120.3 That are amusing or fun
    –0120.31 Balls
       —0120.311 Ball pool balls
       —0120.312 Footballs
       —0120.318 Giant balls of rubber bands, string, wool or other substance, used as tourist attractions
    –0120.33 The dots on the bottom of exclamation marks
 -0120.4 Of which there are many
    –0120.41 Small round items used for packing
    –0120.42 Food that is round
       —0120.422 Food that is pretentiously round
          —-0120.4222 Food that is intended to resemble the planets of the solar system
       —0120.423 Food that is boringly round
       —0120.424 Food that exists in four physical dimensions but whose projection into our three-dimensional universe is spherical
       —0120.445 Meatballs
       —0120.446 Dough balls
    –0120.44 Woodlice that have rolled themselves up on the lifting of a stone
    –0120.45 Wet spots on the ground at the start of a rainstorm
 -0120.5 Things that are thought to be round, but no-one can be sure
 -0120.6 Things that are or resemble eyes
    –0120.62 The eyes of cartoon characters
      —0120.622 The little dots of light in the eyes of cartoon characters
 -0120.9 Other things that are round

1. The clouds that lie in layers upon layers between you and the sun on those November days that feel like perpetual twilight.

2. Dark clouds on the horizon that splinter into starling murmurations when observed more closely.

3. Clouds that creep up behind you, so that you think it is a fine day until you feel the first taps of rain on your back.

4. Clouds that rain on only one side of the street.

5. Simulated clouds made up of a large amount of pillow stuffing, to be rolled in and jumped on on cold mornings.

6. Clouds that are distant explosions.

7. Brown clouds presaging snow.

8. Tiny fluffy clouds whose shape cannot quite be resolved into amusing resemblances.

9. Clouds that fall to earth and sit wetly outside your window all day.

10. Ones that are actually marshmallows.

11. Contrails across cold winter skies like cracks in the sky’s ice dome.

12. Clouds that are hardly there at all.

1. The Western Thnorbilla. A bird of highly distinctive appearance that has developed a symbiotic relationship with humans. The Western Thnorbilla is covered with stiff, spiky white feathers that resemble spines - indeed, bird experts have speculated that further evolution in that general direction would lead to a kind of bird-porcupine thing. When in camouflage mode, the Thnorbilla extends and locks together its long legs so that they resemble a handle, the whole bird thereby somewhat resembling a toilet brush. The Thnorbilla then infiltrates a human house. If it finds a toilet brush of suitable design, it drags it to a local bin and tosses it. Then it occupies the vacant brush holder, drinking from the toilet and venturing into the kitchen at night to raid the fridge. As most Thnorbilla hosts are unaware of their visitors, it is difficult to get an estimate of population. However, recent high-resolution footage of the bird’s brush-chucking antics is thought to have been obtained and is scheduled for a future BBC bird documentary with David Attenborough. Scientists thereby hope that more people may be inspired to check for Thnorbillas so a proper census of this unusual species can be obtained.

2. The Giant Splapbird. This bird, thought to be one of the largest that has ever lived, is surprisingly hard to spot. The Giant Splapbird roosts on tiled roofs, where it has evolved a sophisticated camouflage; each feather resembles a roof tile, and its large round beak can be easily mistaken for a chimney pot. Provided it chooses the right roofs, and provided people rarely look up, the Giant Splapbird can evade detection for a lifetime. We are unsure what it eats and do not wish to find out.

3. Cadden’s Warbler. Can you hear a noise, right now, that sounds a little like a dripping tap? Just on the edge of hearing? Are you sure? Listen really carefully. You think that might be it? Annoying, isn’t it. That’s the Cadden’s Warbler. You probably have two to three hundred living in the pipes and drains of your house and they will. not. shut. up. Should you be unfortunate enough to have an infestation so severe that you actually start to see them flying around, you may note that they are small grey birds about the size of bees. Due to their habitat, they are continually a bit damp and dirty and you may want to discourage them from perching on things. A really dense swarm of Cadden’s Warblers looks a bit like the sort of static that one used to see on old-timey televisions and might be a good reason to leave the country.

1. As a child he always wanted to eat a whole cake. But it was never allowed. He planned the supreme act of rebellion: a cake a metre on a side, cooked in a kiln, filled with chocolate AND cream AND custard. He vowed to eat the whole thing in one go. He failed. And in addition felt quite unwell. And in addition a wandering cat inspector took a photo of him lying in the cake’s huge remains and posted it on Twitter, where it became a meme in a way that continually popped up and shamed him throughout his life. After that point, he knew his anxiety was justified, and that the worst would always find a way to happen; and he never tried very hard at anything again.

2. Instead of sending Henry the fifth tennis balls, the French sent cake. All was forgiven. It was great cake and Agincourt never happened. In the alternate future thus spawned, humanity was 99.7% wiped out by a virulent plague in 1870 when a precursor of the ebola virus and the common cold met and fell in love in some stray cream during the annual Anglo-French cake festival. The remaining 0.3% lived brutal and pointless existences in regions of the world that were not able to sustain creameries.

3. She made a point of bringing her perfectionism to everything she did. When it was time to organise a hen night, she knew exactly what was needed; a huge hollow cake with a buff gentleman ready to leap out of it and swing his thong. The cake needed to be convincing. She made it herself. There were no cracks or hinges or anything uncakelike visible. In fact, it was superb. Any remaining imperfections were covered over on the night with a layer of marzipan. When the time came, the excited bride-to be cut into the cake to a gust of stale, exhausted air and revealed the pallid, lifeless leg of the hidden gentleman, who had suffocated.

4. As a marketing stunt, they decided to make a whole planet out of cake. It was the largest-scale replicator use to date and the ad team was very excited. A number of major scientists had been lured on board with the promise of limitless Battenburg. A spot between Mars and the asteroid belt had been identified, and the initial replicator array was scheduled to launch in three days. The next day, the rocket fell over and accidentally set off the replicator array in Baikonur instead. Rather than using chemically-uninteresting asteroids as fuel, the replicators used planet Earth. Within four days the entire planet was made of cake and nearly all sentient life had died.