Page 18 of The 2084 Precept

  ***

  Off I headed on a long walk, a beautiful day. I didn't feel like lunch, too many biscuits. I bought myself an ice cream instead. I headed into Hyde Park, nobody following me as far as I could see, not that I was really checking, it's the other way round now, it's me who wants to contact them. I found a place under a tree and sat down. One of a thousand others doing the same thing, everybody grateful for the opportunity to absorb the life-giving warmth of their star's nuclear reactions—with the deadly effects of the attendant radiation being nicely deflected by our planet's magnetic fields of course. For which thank you very much. I finished my ice cream, took out my mobile, and dialed the Tom Delsey number.

  "Delsey." The tone of his greeting was of the kind a corpse might give to an undertaker.

  "Peter O'Donoghue, good day to you, Mr. Delsey."

  "Ah…Mr. O'Donoghue, and good day to you too."

  "My apologies for calling you on a weekend, Mr. Delsey, but something has come up. Would it be possible for us to meet at your early convenience?"

  "Certainly. Always a possibility. Got some information for me, have you? The Parker thing?"

  "Yes, I have. Quite surprising information; not what you might think."

  "Now that sounds interesting enough. Is tomorrow soon enough?"

  "Tomorrow is Sunday," I said.

  "Yes, well…I'm with the family today but tomorrow I'm on the road again. Nevertheless, if it's awkward for you, we can make it Monday. Or if it's extremely urgent, I can fix it for today of course. Nothing the wife hasn't had to put up with before."

  "Tomorrow will be fine," I said. "What time and where?"

  "How about your hotel? 10 o'clock suit you?"

  "Yes. See you then, Mr. Delsey. Goodbye and enjoy your Saturday."

  "And the same to you, Mr. O'Donoghue, the same to you."

  I called Jeremy on the alien phone. Told him the time and place of the meeting with Delsey. Fast work Peter, he said. He would be waiting for my call or calls.

  I stretched out on the grass and lit a cigarette. I felt good. What a weird way to be making money. I can't get over it. It isn't real. But, and you can believe me, I'd give up every cent in exchange for being able to have Céline, even if it turned out to be only for a few months. I must check my messages when I get back to the hotel.

  Man, is it warm. Swimming is never on my agenda for the U.K. But who cares, just to think that in a couple of weeks I will be in Spain, pre-summer time, water temperature in the pool around 23 degrees, not too warm, not too cold. And in Mallorca I know exactly which hotel I will be staying in initially, a favorite of mine, into the sea off the rocks, too expensive to have any screaming kids running around—not their fault, kids scream, you screamed and so did I, but no way do I want them cluttering up my space, no apologies for that; leave all the stress and the shit (both metaphorical and literal) to the players in the reproduction game—and waiters all over the place, all of whom have had some kind of training and who actually want to pay attention to you.

  And in this contented fashion I just dozed off. It was early evening when I resurfaced. I took a stroll down to the Knightsbridge tube station, picked up the Saturday IHT, had an early meal in a Lebanese I know, played backgammon over coffee and cognac in the back room with the owner—he is a mean backgammon player, but then so am I—and wandered out again into the still warm evening air and back to the hotel.

  Yet another new girl was at the reception desk, not particularly attractive, not too good a figure, kind of a longish face and red-haired. But she was pleasant enough. It's just that red-haired women are without exception precluded from my catalogue of female prototypes. My interest in red-haired women has always been zero for reasons we don't need to enter into here.

  I booked a small conference room for tomorrow morning’s meeting with Delsey and took the elevator to my room.

  No message from Céline, not good. See what happens tomorrow. I finished reading the IHT, same things every day, only the death count varies, spent some time on the chess column and polished off the Sudoko.

  I gave my neurons some work regarding tomorrow’s meeting, mapped out what I thought would happen, decided on a couple of preventive steps. Picked up a late sports program on the television—my only use for television is sport, and then only on a Saturday, and then not always—and disappeared into the land of dreams.

  DAY 17

  Except that I didn't dream. Morpheus was clearly away again on one of his nefarious nighttime pursuits. His father Somnus was in charge and I slept peacefully and well and so did my neurons. I shat and I shaved and I showered, I went down to breakfast, I timed it to finish at five to ten, and I sauntered leisurely along to the lobby.

  Tom Delsey was already there. He was wearing an open-neck shirt and a sweater of the kind only purchased by the inhabitants of certain types of U.K. suburban settlements. It was a cheap knit, it had a ghastly crisscross design, and it had a blend of colors which brought eggs and bacon to mind. But, to be fair, and one always tries to be fair, it did serve to disguise his beer belly by about 20%.

  "Good morning, Mr. O'Donoghue," he said. "Pleased to meet you again."

  He didn't look pleased to be meeting me again. His left eye was still halfway through a wink and he looked as morose as ever. Which is in no way a criticism of him as a person. To be fair again, if you or I had a face as pockmarked as his, we would possibly be morose-looking ourselves.

  "Good morning, Mr. Delsey," I said. "Thank you for coming."

  "Ah…" he replied. "Hmm…er…I have three of my colleagues with me and I wondered if they might attend also. One of them is my direct superior by the way. We are seriously puzzled by the mysterious Parker and are therefore more than interested to hear anything you might have to tell us. But if you prefer not, then we'll do it one on one and I'll fill them in afterwards."

  Great. Four of them to witness the magical tricks. That should get things moving. But first let them think that I am doing them a favor, that I am a nice cooperative guy.

  "Well, Mr. Delsey, that is not what I had in mind, if you don't mind my saying so. The subject of our discussion is going to surprise you in the extreme. Just you and I would probably be better. As envisaged."

  I looked at him, gave him the stare. He looked at me, giving me his half-wink. He was still hoping. But please don’t worry too much, old chap, in the end the nice Peter O'Donoghue is going to provide you with some of his one-eighth Irish cordiality.

  “If that is the way it has to be, Mr. O’Donoghue. Unfortunate, but there we go, I assume you have your reasons.” And he looked at me like a dog hoping I would change my mind and throw him a small piece of that nice, forbidden steak he could smell on my dinner plate.

  Well, I did allow him to suffer for another ten seconds or so and then, agreeable bloke that I am, I made his dream come true. "Well, Mr. Delsey," I said, "it does seem as if it's important to you to have your colleagues present. And I can understand that, your boss being among them. So O.K., we'll do it your way. But I warn you, they are all going to be as surprised as you will be."

  He was happy to hear this, very happy, and the talk about a surprise had clearly whetted his appetite as well. He actually smiled briefly. "Thank you, thank you," he said, "I'll be back in a minute or two." And off he went out through the hotel entrance, down the steps, and turned left. I followed him out, stood on the steps, another beautiful day, our star steadfastly continuing to burn up its hydrogen in full sight high in the sky. Good to have a star like that, I thought to myself. You can rely on it, no risk at all. For another 3 billion years at least, before it starts its prolonged death throes. And if we're still around of course, which we won’t be, Andromeda is coming. And I wondered what, if our star had the power of reason, it would be thinking about what our terrible species was doing to its most beautiful planet.

  But I had no more time for further philosophical perusal, as Tom Delsey appeared around the corner, accompanied by three others. We greeted each
other on the steps and I led the way through the lobby to the room I had hired. We sat down at the table and I poured myself a coke, and they poured themselves some coffee while presenting their identification for my inspection. They looked like genuine warrant cards, if that's what they're called, not that I would be able to tell if they weren't, and not that it mattered much anyway. I didn't catch any of the names or any of the titles, not interested.

  In true civil servant fashion, no-one sat on my side of the table. That was fine by me, I had my space. Delsey and two of the guys sat facing me and the other one had taken a seat to my left at the head of the table. Or at the tail-end of the table, depending on how you view these things.

  I regarded them all in what one would refer to as a calm and collected fashion, and I cogitated—in what a cynic would describe as a mildly captious manner—on the fact that in a few decades my visitors would possibly all be women, as by then the women would have achieved the power necessary to prevent us men from hindering them in their career choices, as we do at the moment. They will also be building factories and houses all over the place and also sports arenas to house their female boxing tournaments.

  "We appreciate your invitation," said the guy at the head of the table, "at such short notice." He, like the others, was dressed casually. He had a thin face, sandy hair, and looked a bit younger than Delsey. But he was probably Delsey's boss, judging by where he sat and by the fact that he had spoken first.

  "Well, there was no notice at all, so it couldn't be short," I said, "but no problem, my pleasure." I gave him a smile, one of my pleasant ones. Make sure he knows it's my meeting. Also that I am an agreeable guy, oh yes.

  "Quite," said the boss and smiled. Smiles all around. Except from Delsey, but then that's just his way. Maybe he's got eight kids at home, or maybe ten, or maybe he has complications because he has more than one mistress, which I doubt, what with his face and his wink and his belly, but you can never tell in these licentious days.

  "Gentlemen," I began, "I have no doubt that in the course of your duties, you have from time to time been present at some very strange meetings. But rest assured that this one will rank among your very strangest. A silver or even a gold medal meeting. And there is no point in my beating about the bush. So I will go straight ahead."

  I picked up my glass of Coke and took a swig. "You are interested in the activities of a certain Jeremy Parker, based on certain comments you have received from a certain young lady. And you know that I am a business consultant performing an assignment for one of his group’s companies. Now investigate as you may and as you no doubt will, the only conclusion you will ever be able to provably reach is that he is a perfectly normal and successful businessman. Take my word for it, which you won't, at least not until you have consumed a lot of your time and wasted a lot of your resources."

  "I don't think you can call him normal," said the guy sitting next to Delsey. He also had sandy hair. He had what one calls a fully-fleshed face and he wore black-framed spectacles. "The young lady's comments were believable and consistent and there was also proof of a very large payment."

  "None of which Mr. Parker would deny, I believe," I replied. "A business agreement was indeed reached and the young lady broke the contract without even starting the project. Certainly, in my view, Mr. Parker should never have made such a payment in advance. A peculiar mistake for an experienced businessman, no doubt about it. But that's it."

  There was silence. They knew of course that they had nothing to go on. One good thing, though, Delsey and his boss were clearly good listeners. They would probably keep their comments to themselves until I had finished saying whatever it was that I had to say.

  "Mr. Parker's business activities have brought him into contact with certain matters which can only be considered as being of extreme importance to national security—correction, to international security. These matters are of such import and sensitivity that they may only be discussed directly with the prime minister. And he has charged me with achieving that meeting, although—and I want to make this extremely clear to you guys—I personally am unaware as to exactly what those matters are at this moment. But I am happy enough to make the attempt. I am being well paid for it."

  No way was I going to let them think that I knew anything, that could really result in some troubled times for me. On top of which, come to think of it, one of them might even be recording this meeting without my knowledge. A nasty trick, but they are humans, so you never know.

  "Mr. O'Donoghue," said the other guy on Delsey's side of the table, a dark-haired person with remarkably tiny ears, starting to go grey (the hair, not the ears), probably the wrong side of forty, "do you realize how many requests the prime minister, or rather his office, receives every month from both people and institutions wanting to meet with him?” There are hundreds, and for all kinds of reasons—official ones, serious ones, trivial ones and insane ones. I think you are going to have to forget about that idea. All the more so since you are not prepared to, or cannot, say what it's all about. You know how these things work, Mr. O’Donoghue. Be reasonable."

  "I understand your reaction. It couldn't be otherwise of course. No offence taken. But I am sure you will change your minds. You see…these matters of national and international security include a specific telepathic power—I use telepathic for want of a better word—which constitutes, potentially anyway, a huge and colossal threat which I doubt any country has the means to successfully counter, or even contain. And," I continued, "I am going to demonstrate this to you right now and leave it up to your imagination as to what unbelievable events could be unleashed anywhere on earth. Or, indeed, everywhere on earth."

  I detected a significant quantity of skepticism. What else? But a cautious skepticism, they were going to witness a demonstration of something or other. Good Sunday fun, is what they must have been thinking. The same as I did a couple of weeks ago. And, in fact, the same as I was doing again today. I wondered what kind of experiment they were going to choose.

  "This is what we will do," I said. "You are going to choose a person or persons whose minds you would like to influence. You can even choose yourselves. Or animals. Or anything, in fact, with a brain. You are then going to tell me what you would like them to do. I will transfer your requests on my mobile and all you have to do is watch. Please make sure it is something harmless and please make sure that, whatever it is, it is something which is going to convince you—fully."

  I leaned back in my chair. This was going to be great fun. Unless Jeremy let me down, unless he couldn't do it anymore. And then it wouldn't be fun. Then it would simply be horribly and appallingly embarrassing.

  "Who will you be calling?" asked Delsey's boss.

  "First the demonstration, gentlemen, and then I will answer any question I can." But none that I don't want to, goes without saying.

  There was a lot of harrumphing and general shuffling around in their seats and the boss asked them for suggestions but no-one wanted to make one, they preferred him to do it. And he was thinking about it.

  "Persons in the plural?" he asked.

  "Also," I said.

  "Well, we could take a stroll toward the park for example and watch all the traffic in Piccadilly stop. For at least five minutes."

  He raised his eyebrows at me.

  "In which direction?" I asked. Piccadilly had reconverted to two-way traffic some years ago after the politicians had discovered that their decades-old decision to make it a one-way street had been an error. What's new?

  "In both directions," he said.

  "Very well, then let us take a stroll into the park," I said. We all stood up and headed through the hotel and out into the street and across into Green Park. The day was overcast, but still, warm, stuffy. Delsey took off his sweater, beer belly on full show, it didn't seem to bother him. Why should it, the word aesthetic would be as foreign to him as a novel by Oscar Wilde. They all watched as I fished out the alien mobile from my back pocket and pressed the
call button. "Peter here," I whispered with a hand over the phone, "all traffic in Piccadilly to stop, also any traffic entering, both directions, for at least five minutes." "Understood," said Jeremy. Click. They had of course been trying to listen to what I was saying—success denied, not that it would have mattered much—and they watched me as I returned the phone to my back pocket.

  I am not stupid. I had done some thinking about this last night. These guys were going to react like human beings and want to know whom I had called, who was capable of this telepathy and how, and they were possibly going to use force if necessary to find out. And they would start off by compelling me to hand over my mobile so that they could trace the call and go and seize the person on the receiving end.

  The traffic started stopping. And they all stared. And I took hold of my own mobile and pressed the dial button for the pre-set number I had prepared. It was a non-allocated number. Not in China, not in the USA, not in any place which might trigger unfounded speculations by a Ministry of Defence—a beautiful name for a ministry, just think of all those countries defending themselves like crazy in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan or wherever—or by any other elected idiots. It was a non-allocated number in Madeira in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. I recommend Madeira if you like wild flowers and don't mind landing on a runway which has been carved out of sheer mountain cliffs (on your left) and borders the ocean (on your right) and which, following a fatal air crash some decades ago, was extended to run out further into the ocean on stilts. It has been classified as one of the world's ten most dangerous airports. Strong winds and bad visibility and you explode against a rock-face; or if you overrun the runway, you die a salty death.

  Now all of the traffic had stopped. I cut off the call and put my phone into the back pocket of my trousers and transferred the alien one into my inside coin pocket. Some of the drivers had stepped out of their cars, seemingly unconcerned about anything at all. A couple of them went into the tube station and came back out again. Others just remained in their cars, some quite calmly, I saw one of them reading some ghastly Sunday tabloid. And others…well, others were suffering from varying degrees of epileptic convulsion.

  My visitors turned back to stare at me one by one. And then they turned back to look at the scene in Piccadilly again. And then they looked back at me again. And at Piccadilly again.

  "Unbelievable," said Delsey's boss.

  "Unbelievable," said Delsey, morose does not describe it.

  "Unbelievable," said the other two.

  I must admit that I was enjoying it. Quite a demonstration. And scary at the same time, those are some powers that Jeremy possesses, no two ways about it. We all continued looking until suddenly there was a stirring, the cars began to move, and within a minute or so everything had returned to normal.

  We walked back to the hotel and into the meeting room in silence. It was easy to imagine a copious amount of serious perusal and profound cogitation wafting its way noiselessly through the atmosphere

  "I would not like to think, "said Delsey's boss after we had seated ourdelves, "what could be made to happen if this capability were to be misused. If this extraordinary power to influence others' minds were to fall into the wrong hands. Or already be in the wrong hands. It is amazing. It is almost impossible to believe."

  "Indeed," I said. "But the problem would be, would it not, which are the right hands? All kinds of people, countries, would do anything to lay their hands on this, including yourselves and whoever is running this country. A tremendous weapon is what you have to be thinking. And we would never, ever use it, not for anything, we would just keep it as a defence threat, we would just lock it away and forget about it, wouldn't we, am I right?"

  There was another silence. They were all looking at me.

  "Was it Mr. Parker you called?" asked Delsey.

  "No it wasn't."

  "Who then?" asked Delsey's boss.

  "I don't know."

  "But you knew the number. Know it."

  "Yes."

  "How?"

  "Mr. Parker receives a number each time a demonstration is required. The number cannot be traced and is voided immediately after completion of the call in any case. Mr. Parker provided me with the number for today."

  Just part of last night's planning. Pretty simple. But let it not be said that I am not giving full value for money to Jeremy. You will never find me being lax or lazy when fulfilling my side of a contractual agreement, well paid or not. Not my type.

  "Could you show us the number, please?"

  "No, I was requested not to divulge it.

  "By Mr. Parker?"

  "By Mr. Parker."

  "Then I am afraid we will have to request the loan of your mobile for a while," said Delsey's boss.

  "No, I'm afraid not," I replied. "For that, you would require authorization. I have done nothing wrong. In fact, if you want to get official about it, I have done nothing at all except make a phone call. I can't imagine you trying to justify your request as a measure necessary to identify someone who has apparently stopped the traffic in Piccadilly by means of telepathy. Can you?"

  Mr. O'Donoghue," he said, "you must be aware of the fact that we are not going to let this matter drop. This is an exceedingly grave situation. Monumentally grave. And well you know it. You are not stupid. We are going to have to visit Mr. Parker as well. As soon as we leave here. We know where to find him."

  "Oh no, you are not," I said. "First of all, both he and I will deny everything. You will all be made to look like fools. You sir, in particular, will be suspected of coercing your colleagues here into supporting some impossibly wild idea of yours. I wouldn't stake much on your career or your standing in the force after that. And secondly, Mr. Parker won't let you get anywhere near him if he doesn’t want to. He will have you or anyone else stopped. Like the Piccadilly traffic. And what's more," I added, just to cement things up, "have you considered the possible dangers if Mr. Parker takes offence?" And to make sure the cement had set, "And have you considered, and this is the most important item of all, that you may be held personally responsible for causing your country to miss out on some incalculably valuable intelligence? Incalculably, I say?"

  "Well, that may be, Mr. O’Donoghue, or it may not be. In any case, Mr. Parker would have to arrange to stop a large number of people if necessary. Now why don't we simply avoid a lot of bureaucratic trouble and unpleasantness and you just give me your mobile? We'll have it back to you within twenty four hours, and that's a promise."

  "Listen," I said. "You are missing the whole point. I have told you that there is a matter of huge international importance which needs to be discussed directly with your prime minister and with no-one else. And what that matter is you will never know unless the prime minister deems otherwise. Today's happening was merely to convince you of that and nothing else. The matter to be discussed with him has far wider consequences than today's mind-influencing, if you can imagine that, which I don't suppose you can. Which in fact I know you can't. And so I would be grateful if you would treat me with a little more civility. This is not a game, and certainly not a game to be played around with at your level."

  I paused. I considered what I had said so far. Frankly, I might even have been convincing myself, if I hadn't known that it was all a load of trash. An extra €400,000 load of trash, mind you. Except for the mind-hacking. That was something. That was really impressive. That was awesome, scary, inconceivable, no doubt about it. I still didn't know exactly what to think about it. But I was changing my mind about poor mad Jeremy being the big danger. It seemed to me that the big danger would be if this capability were to be acquired by human beings. I mean, of course, human beings other than Jeremy.

  But my neurons were a calming factor. They told me that that probably wasn't possible. Only Jeremy could do it. He was a huge exception. And he wasn't going to allow anyone to 'acquire' either himself or his skills.

  "I'll make it short and sweet," I continued. "I understand your concern
and interest regarding today's events. I have therefore decided to give you my mobile. As a favor. Please return it to reception here by 1 p.m. tomorrow. In return for that, you agree to arrange a meeting for me with the prime minister. He will presumably want to have others present including bodyguards. That is O.K. But they shouldn't be able to hear what we discuss for the first five minutes. That is all I ask. After that, the prime minister can decide for himself."

  None of them looked very happy. Delsey's boss said, "As I have already explained, such a meeting will not be possible. All I can do is agree to make an attempt, although the outcome, in my view, is a foregone conclusion. That is all I can agree to, I'm afraid."

  I took my personal mobile out of my back pocket, slowly so that everyone could see where it came from, and I handed it to Delsey's boss. I still didn't know his name, and it still didn't interest me in the slightest.

  "I'll accept your offer to make an attempt," I said. "And no doubt you will contact me as soon as possible. Please bear in mind that the matter is urgent. And hopefully we can all agree that this meeting is now closed."

  Hopefully.

  Delsey threw a glance at his boss, who nodded. "Very well," said Delsey, "but we will need to meet with you personally again soon. Not going anywhere this week are you?"

  "Not until the weekend," I said. "I'll be working, but I'll be staying at this hotel." After today's experience, I thought to myself, they would be keeping more than a close eye on me anyway.

  And that was it. Off they went, taking my mobile with them. And off I went up to my room. I pressed the green button and called Jeremy, thanked him for his immaculate performance and explained to him how the meeting had finished. I plugged in my laptop and checked my messages.

  And there it was, a message from Céline: Darling Peter, I have been suffering terribly these last few days. I got back to Rouen and found out that I am still very much in love with my fiancé. I prefer not to elaborate on that and I know that you will be as understanding of it as you can. You are truly a wonderful man and I wish you sincerely, sincerely, sincerely, a very wonderful and happy life. Whoever gets to share it with you will be a fortunate woman indeed. A thousand thanks for last weekend. Having met you is a memory I will cherish for the rest of my life. Your (very sad) Céline.

  Well. 'Well' was the most suitable word for it. It befitted my open-mouthed reaction perfectly. Speechless I was, not that I had anyone to speak to. Total paralysis of the neurons. Shock. Sadness. Despair.

  For a minute at least. I re-read the message. I re-read it a second time. And then those trusty old neurons began grinding slowly back into motion again. Why the exaggerated reaction, Peter, they asked me. Why the emotional chaos? These things happen in the world, right?

  Yes, these things happen. But they cause emotional chaos if you happen to be a person with feelings. And my feelings for Céline were so spontaneous and so intense and so tender that my only sensation now was one of deep loss. Deep loss. And so, dear neurons, you can shove your philosophical thoughts about one-night stands and the sex was great right back into your metaphorical and cynical ass. I am sad. I am deeply sad. And that is all there is to say about it.

  Of course, said my neurons, but life goes on. And, if you take the decision not to swipe a sharp knife across your throat, indeed it does. I went down to the street and hailed a cab to take me to the En Passant. I walked up the decrepit stairs and into the decrepit games room. The usual decrepit taxpayer-subsidized players were there as always, but also plenty of punters, businessmen or whoever else, whiling away their weekend time. I looked at a couple of them who were standing around watching other games. "Blitz?" asked one of them. "Fiver per game?" I queried. And he nodded and we took one of the two tables not in use and set the clocks.

  I was sad and disoriented and angry—not with Céline but with the emotional storm which had disrupted my peaceful swim on the ocean's waves—and I was in no mood to do anything but slaughter my opponent. I had the black pieces for the first game and I played the Budapest Gambit. This is when White starts off with e4 and the first three moves follow the Ruy Lopez, except that Black's third move doesn't. Black plays f5. This is not a good opening for Black and I would never play it in a tournament—although, as far I am aware, it has never been refuted. On the other hand, a good opponent is always going to obtain a positional advantage as White and maintain it long-term. But this is not a good opponent, it's a punter. And it's Blitz, five minutes per game. And he doesn't know the best moves and he spends valuable seconds trying to figure out the best one each time. Which he fails to do anyway and I slaughter him.

  After about an hour I have won twenty five pounds and he has had enough. This is not money, not nowadays, but it took care of most of my early meal in that steakhouse around the corner.

  Back at the hotel, Little Miss Ugly was one of the two receptionists on duty. She was overjoyed to see me, and although not in the mood, I stopped and made her day with a bit of conversation. I learned that she was doing overtime today because the Sunday moron no longer…er…works for us. Good. Serves him right. Presumably tramping the streets looking for work at whichever places interview morons.

  I went up to my room and sent a message to Céline: Dear Céline, I understand. I will miss you a lot. I will always remember you. Take care of yourself. Peter. I could have written a lot more, I could have written that I would miss her forever, but no point. She wouldn't want to read a load of sickly crap. I know I wouldn't, that's for sure.

  DAY 18

  Today's weather suited my mood, gray and depressed. I sank some Lavazza but skipped breakfast. I smoked my first cigarette of the day—always one of the most needed ones—and drove out to Slough. I had no idea whether I was being tracked or not, but they could have had an army following me and I couldn't have cared less.

  I spent a leisurely morning just checking up on things. Joe was happy, enjoying the experience with his suppliers. He was not sure we would meet our target of 8% but he was confident we wouldn't be far off. Ron was also not sure that we would meet our production target of 17,000 hours but he told me that some fascinating possibilities were being identified. He showed me some of them, and they were fascinating, and he was also happy.

  Before I left, I dropped into Fred's office. He was not one of the happy ones but he was not unhappy either. The works council had held their employee meeting this morning and had presented the management message. This had resulted in a lot of unhappy workers but they were going to take a formal vote on Wednesday morning. To me, this was good news—if they were going to reject the proposals outright, they would have taken that decision already this morning. In my view.

  And another day's fee had been earned; oh yes, a consultant’s life is hard. I drove back to town down the M4. This route was becoming boring, but who cares, it's my last week. I parked the car in the hotel garage and walked up to reception. No mobile. Instead there was a message from Delsey, sincere apologies, my phone will definitely be returned by tomorrow morning. O.K., no sweat, you can never trust a word those guys utter. They're the same as the elected birdbrains. Open their mouths and all you get is verbal diarrhea. Good enough to fool the masses, but not you and me. The problem being, as usual, that you and I do not form the majority. I walked into Piccadilly, along to the nice restaurant. No table available, many profuse apologies. I understand the problem, not only are they packed out, but I am a table for one, not an economic preference at the best of times. This place must be a goldmine, no difficulties with the Piccadilly rent.

  In retrospect, it might have made me late for Jeremy anyway. I took a cab to the Strand, picked up a sandwich, smoked a cigarette, and entered the Obrix offices at precisely 2 p.m. The dream, or Jane as she now is, wasn't there. That was a good thing, I thought to myself, who wants to be looking at something like that, and what's more something like that which might actually be interested in you, at a time when no woman interests you in any way at all. A time which will of course pass, as sure as
our star burns merrily away in the sky. But not today, José.

  In her place was a small, blond, frail looking girl. But the important part of her body wasn't frail. You could see it was nicely rounded, very sexy in a comfortable, motherly sort of way if you know what I mean. Just the kind of girl who can be of great value when there is the need for emotional rehabilitation. And she gave me a really big smile. I have noticed that lots of small girls really go for tall men—right, and some do not—for reasons which would make a good subject for psychological research by some university or other one day. Or maybe it wouldn’t.

  I managed a smile, told her I knew the way and walked along past the offices and into the meeting room. Jeremy stood up to greet me. Business suit as always, striped shirt, dark red tie, and wearing a smile, seemed to be in a good mood.

  "Good morning, Peter," he said, "I am afraid Miss Goodall is not here today. She has a week's vacation. But hopefully you were received in the proper manner by our Miss Monroe?"

  "Certainly," I said. If he was expecting me to show some disappointment, I had none to show.

  "An interesting meeting you had yesterday," he continued.

  "Yes," I replied. "And as I explained, I expect to be contacted again very soon."

  Actually, whether a meeting with the prime minister happened or not, I was anticipating being able to remove myself from this crazy saga fairly soon. I would be driving back to Germany at the weekend and perhaps I could hop off to Spain on the Monday. They would trace me there of course, several ways for them to go about that. But if I drove, and if I didn't take my mobile, and if I parked my car in a public car park in Barcelona, and then used the ferry to get to the island, it would take them some time to find me. First the country, then Mallorca, then me. I was just chewing it over. I needed to give it some more thought. In particular, about how to ensure I could still meet the requirements for being paid in full by Jeremy.

  "Good, that is very good," said Jeremy.

  "The show you put on was also good," I said, "manipulating the minds of so many people simultaneously."

  "Oh, that wasn't actually the case," he replied. "If you think about it, I only had to influence a couple of brains at the front of each line of traffic. It is just a form of hypnosis, as we've discussed."

  Oh well, that was alright then. Only had to influence a couple of brains. Mere hypnosis, about as difficult as drinking a cup of coffee. I wouldn't mind being able to do that, I'd be the world chess champion.

  "Then perhaps we could move on without delay to today's agenda item?" he continued.

  "Fine," I said. "’Environmental management.’"

  I took a deep breath. Here we go again.

  "We have no environmental management, Jeremy. Quite the contrary to what our birdbrains tell us, flap, flap. On the one hand we are completely destroying the environment on this planet, and on the other hand we are doing so at a constantly accelerating pace."

  "Not again," interrupted Jeremy, "it seems that no matter what topic we select, it is always negative, catastrophically so."

  "Yes, and this is another one which is pretty horrific—as I am sure you will agree when you have heard some of the facts. The facts that I know about, that is. I don't have the full story."

  He sighed. The poor guy really would love to hear some positive opinions with which to amplify his deluded fantasies in a more gratifying manner, instead of which all he was getting were the facts. Perhaps I should suggest I go out and find a politician and a bishop for him, they would both be happy to provide him with thousands of positive scenarios, make him happy. "O.K., then," he said, "off you go."

  "First of all," I said, "I have to explain the major cause for what is happening. That way you will understand it better. The major cause is overpopulation. The planet used to be able to handle the quantity of filth and pollution and detritus produced by a limited number of human beings. But now it can no longer handle it. The planet is groaning, it is sighing, it is weeping. But we don’t care about that. We just continue reproducing at an alarming and unsustainable rate."

  Jeremy interrupted me with a smile. "No offence, Peter, but facts would move us along faster than groanings and sighings do you think?"

  "Sure Jeremy, my apologies. But listen to this first: it took us about 200,000 years from the time we started to exist to reach a world population of around 300 million, i.e. at about the time Jesus Christ was born. It took us less than 2,000 years after that or, more precisely, until around the time of World War II, to reach a world population of 2 billion. Wow! That’s enough, you might think? No. It is not enough. See if you can believe this: in only 70 years since then, that is to say within some people's lifetimes, the 2 billion number has become over 7 billion. And it will have become more than 11 billion before I die. Facts. Irreversible facts."

  "Irreversible?"

  "Yes, because of the way we are. About 132 million new human beings are being born each year. Roughly 4 per second. And each one, according to our various religions, is appropriately supplied with a soul to help him or her better appreciate the few decades for which they are going to be around. But if 132 million humans are being born, only 56 million are dying. I have included the 1 million suicides in that figure, but I have excluded the 45 million abortions each year, in order to maintain a factual comparison between actual births and the deaths. For the same reason I have also excluded the 2.1 million stillborn babies per year. After all, if you are born dead, you cannot truthfully be said to have been born at all."

  "Hmm…what is a soul?"

  "I don't know, Jeremy. Some kind of spirit or so they say."

  "And you have one as well?"

  "Apparently. So they say. I have no idea where it is. And how it is supposed to interact with my brain and my central nervous system, I have no idea. Nor, since I have no idea what my soul and its intended function is, can I even make a guess."

  "Hmm…" said Jeremy

  "Now, on the one hand, we have China, which, having watched its population grow to 1.3 billion, took a decision to stop the madness. It forbade and prohibited, with some few exceptions, more than one child per family. Of course this has a negative side to it. This resulted in many of the females being aborted before birth or butchered shortly thereafter, their usefulness being deemed inferior to that of the male. However, the overall positive effects of this law are considered to far outweigh the negative ones. The problem is with the rest of the world."

  "The rest of the world doesn't do this?"

  "No, not at all. India, for a start, will soon overtake China as the world's most populated nation; it may already have done so for all I know. And other countries positively encourage more births. It is a human right to be able to reproduce as much as we want, so they say. And then of course, you have our friends again, the elected clowns. Many of these believe that the bigger their populations, the more influence and power, including economic power, they and their nations are going to have. It is a case of 'more means better' again. Take Russia and Germany for example. Both sets of clowns are downright horrified at the lack of population growth."

  "Choose one of them and tell me about it, Peter."

  "Fine, Peter. I’ll make it easy for myself and choose Germany and more or less repeat what I told you in our last meeting. For me, it is worth the repetition just to re-emphasize in your mind the question of human reproduction in return for money. Germany has created a law whereby you get money for each new successful act of reproduction! And the more children you create, the more money you get! You don't want more children? Hah, well how about doing it for money? If we pay you, will you do it? Money, say the clowns, is a superb justification for getting the masses to reproduce if they don't want to do it for any other reason."

  "But surely," said Jeremy, "money is not an inducement for the upper and middle classes, for those who have sufficient income already?"

  "Quite correct. But it is an inducement to the poor, the less educated and the immigrants, including the millions
already living off the welfare state. No problem, have four, five, six or more children, WE WILL PAY YOU FOR IT! Or rather, we, the clowns, won't. But our taxpayers will—including the ones who have determined that they themselves can't reasonably afford to have more children, or simply don't want to—hey, THEY will pay you for it (with, at the same time, the optimistic desire that you, the reproducer, will spend the money on your babies and not in your pub)."

  "But…"

  "Sure, Jeremy, the consequences are logical and do not need to be discussed. This law, coincidentally, was pushed by a female minister who has seven children of her own—maybe eight, I can't remember exactly. I repeat that this was a coincidence—she was not trying to push her minority views onto others in order to validate her personal sentiments in this regard. It was just another case of 'more is better'. If they will only do it for money, well…so be it. And—can you believe this—last year the German clowns were formally discussing a separate law for an additional punitive tax on all married persons without children!"

  "Seriously?"

  "Seriously. It's a fact. Check it out. So as you can see, Jeremy, the human race cannot agree on this matter either and the population of human beings on the planet continues to spiral at a disastrous and deadly pace. Before, by the way, we have even solved the problem of how to feed the ones already existing. Millions die of hunger each year, mainly children. Yes, this is an easy enough problem to solve. But we are too stupid to do so. Our lack of intelligence stands in the way."

  "But that doesn't make sense."

  "No."

  "So why do you do allow your species’ reproduction volumes to continue to spiral out of control??"

  "Jeremy, it's your fault for asking the question. We do it because that's the way we are."

  He chuckled. "I walked straight into that one again, Peter, didn't I?"

  "Yup," I said. "And the result of all this, among other things, is that we have a large number of vast megacities of over 20 million people. The biggest is Tokyo-Yokohama with 37 million humans, all crammed together, 6,000 humans per km2 staring out of the tiny holes in their high-rise blocks, squashed in like bees in a beehive. One of many twentieth century science fiction scenarios which are already with us. Needless to say, many parts of these cities are run-down ghettos, crime-breeding areas of unimaginable poverty, ready-made territories for the thriving drug and prostitution trades among others."

  "But you still continue."

  "Yes, Jeremy, we still continue. We continue to cover our planet with concrete at an unheard of and massive pace: housing, roads, factories, hospitals, schools, sport stadiums, restaurants, bars, government buildings, bank buildings, airports, hotels, shopping malls, industrial parks, and so on. The elected clowns call this growth; it is very necessary, oh yes, flap, flap. It cannot be allowed to stop, oh no, it can never be allowed to stop. Thousands of construction companies would go out of business, there would be millions of unemployed. The snowball has to be kept rolling, getting bigger and bigger and heavier and heavier. The poor planet can't handle it anymore. It tries to, but we have already passed the mathematical limit of how many humans can decently live on this small lump of rock. But since we don't realize that, we don't slow down in any way, let alone put a stop to it. And even the elected Chinese birdbrains, flap, flap, are now seriously thinking of relaxing their one child per family rule. It's all very sad."

  "Very sad," said Jeremy, clearly at a loss for further comment.

  "And this finally brings us to environmental matters. The rabbit-like breeding I have just outlined to you, Jeremy, will assist you in understanding the enormity of what we are doing."

  "I have read," said Jeremy, "that a number of your researchers say your species is both mad and stupid if it believes it can pump its very thin atmosphere full of carbon dioxide, sulphur, methane gas and other toxic poisons, destroy vast areas of compensatory forest, poison its oceans with its defecation and a whole host of deadly chemicals, and yet not destroy its habitat within next to no time. Would you agree with those people?"

  "Indeed I would and I do, Jeremy. Both mad and stupid as said. Nevertheless, this is precisely what we are doing. And at the same we are digging out what remains of our planet's guts for minerals, fuel resources and so on. At a frenzied and unprecedented rate."

  "Well…it's your planet of course, but it sounds as if not all of you believe your activities to be dangerous. Otherwise you would stop them."

  "You think so, Jeremy? Well, let me divide this up into land, sea and air. As usual, my knowledge is severely limited and I am therefore restricted to those few facts and examples of which I am aware."

  "Understood as usual, Peter."

  "O.K., Jeremy. Now…our species currently produces about 12 billion tons of waste per year. And that includes way over one trillion plastic bags, by the way…"

  "Did you say 12 billion tons? And over one trillion plastic bags? Every year? Why do you need so many?"

  "We don't need so many, Jeremy. But we don't let that worry us."

  "I wouldn't like to be one of your archeologists in a couple of thousand years' time, that's all I can say."

  "Yes, they will certainly be getting quantity instead of quality. All of this stuff will be doubling and tripling as 2.5 billion Chinese and Indians continue down the road to the consumer levels already attained by our 'developed' areas. Not to mention the Africans, the Indonesians, the South Americans and other large and fast-growing population centers. Immense quantities of this waste are piles of innards, bones, and other remains from slaughterhouses and laboratories—don't forget the billions of land animals we butcher every year—hospital and other medical refuse including human organs and syringes, around 40 million tons of poisonous electronic waste, and of course other toxic wastes, including pesticides and even deadly, radioactive nuclear waste."

  “Nuclear waste?”

  “Yes. From nuclear bombs, nuclear bomb accidents, nuclear reactor accidents, nuclear bomb testing and so on. Huge areas of pollution around the planet: Russia, Ukraine, China, USA, Greenland, Spain, Japan, and so forth, including plenty of island groups used for testing and, of course, the oceans themselves.

  "12 billion tons of overall waste every year, you said. Where do you put it all?"

  "Well, we put it wherever we can. Of course, some of us don't like to keep all of this trash—particularly not the dangerous stuff—and so we cleverly ship it off to other parts of the planet. A lot of it never gets there, it being more profitable to dump it into the oceans in transit…and you don't have to bother with a licence for that. But some of it does arrive, licences having been granted in certain areas by greedy and corrupt birdbrains or dictators who accept large bribes to permit the poisoning of their countries.. That is why, for example, 40,000 tons of hazardous pesticides are lying around right now somewhere in Africa. Just lying around."

  "Just like that?"

  "Just like that, Jeremy. And we have many garbage dumps worldwide, believe me. Let me tell you about one that I have seen with my own eyes. It is located at the seaport of Manila in the Philippines. Smokey Mountain it's called. Smokey Mountain is a human version of hell. It is a stinking, noxious mountain of human waste, about 300,000 m2 in area at the time I saw it and 70 meters high. It reeks of death, it reeks of rotting animal flesh, of excrement, of sulphur, of whatever else you care to name. It is populated by a few hundred garbage dump dwellers: men, women and children who scrape a living by wading through greyish-blue pools of unidentified slimy substances, collecting re-saleable trash such as used condoms, or else burning tires from which they extract the wire which sells for 30 cents per kilo. Smoke pollution, 35 degrees centigrade, high humidity, millions of disease-ridden flies. These people live in huts constructed out of garbage, and some of them are even born there, some marry there and some die there. They contract diseases of the lungs, of the eyes, of the skin, and worse things still."

  "A man-made Hades?" proffered Jeremy.

  "Yes, but don't wo
rry. The elected clowns who created this situation have now had a wonderful idea to resolve it, flap, flap. They are going to close the dump and start shipping all of the shit to an unpopulated, unspoiled island. They may already have started for all I know. A pity about all the poor animals on the island, but what the hell, life is tough. And who cares about a beautiful island anyway? And then we have oil pollution."

  "Oil pollution?"

  "Yes, land-based oil pollution. This far exceeds the oil pollution of the oceans caused by oil tanker disasters, drilling platform catastrophes and so on. Vast swathes of land in countries like Russia, Nigeria and many others are polluted with oil. At the same time, a lot of this reaches the sea, about a million tons of it worldwide each year. Let me give you an insignificant example, Aserbaidschan. Aserbaidschan is a relatively small oil-producing country which still manages to run off about 100,000 tons per year of contaminated oil into the Caspian Sea. And as we stand at our petrol station tanking up our car for €100, we don't see and we don’t want to see the local oil workers, who earn about €200 per month to pump the oil overflows into the stinking drainage ditches which traverse the blackened sludge of the silent and lifeless Baku landscape. Nor do we see the resulting deaths of millions of birds and marine life. The main thing is, we get to tank our car."

  Including myself of course.

  "To summarize, Jeremy, we pollute everything everywhere. There are huge garbage dumps all over the planet. We even have a smallish one on our planet’s highest point, Mount Everest. There are an estimated 50 tons of garbage up there right now."

  "O.K., I've got the picture. Do you think we could stop there and move on to the pollution of your oceans?"

  Good. As usual, I was doing my best to give him his money's worth. But, also as usual, the less time it took, so much the better.

  "Right you are, Jeremy. First of all, you should know that we continue to poison our oceans by the minute. We shovel around 8 million tons of garbage, including toxic waste, into our seas every year. The cumulative effect of this is tremendous. The North Pacific Ocean now has an area which is no more and no less than a floating sump of human garbage covering—it's a fact, check it out—over 1 million km2. And yes indeed, like everything else, it is growing. This causes the death of millions of marine life forms each year, including a million seabirds which swallow plastic refuse, seals which become entangled in objects such as beer crates, and so on and so forth. The other major oceanic garbage centers are in The North Atlantic, the South Atlantic, the Indian Ocean and the South Pacific. They are all formed by the rotation of ocean currents in those areas. Even a relatively small ocean such as the North Sea is fed about 30,000 tons of our ghastly mixtures every year. And then we have large amounts of radioactive nuclear waste lying around on our sea floors, some of which has already started to leak out into the sea. And then we have the ships."

  "The ships?" asked Jeremy.

  "Yes. Actually, the only ones I know a little bit about are cruise ships, floating hotels, but they will serve as an example. These ships are far more polluting per passenger-kilometer than airplanes. Add to that the fact that many passengers fly to and from their departure and arrival ports, and you have a double pollution effect. Most of these ships run on bunker fuel, the cheapest and dirtiest of fuel oils, and they discharge about 800 million liters of oily bilge water per year into the oceans. They also produce over 6 billion liters of sewage per year, 30 billion liters of polluted water (from showers, galleys, laundries and so on) and 100 thousand liters of hazardous wastes including, for example, used cooking oil. They also poison the atmosphere with untold amounts of sulphur dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions from their engines. And there are hundreds of these cruise ships travelling around our oceans. Non-stop."

  "And all of this is merely because some of you prefer to spend your vacation time in a hotel which floats, rather than in one which doesn't?"

  "Yes, that is correct. There is no other reason whatsoever. But to all of this we have to add the numbers of untold thousands of freighters, tankers, warships, ferries, research and exploration ships, fishing fleets, private yachts and so forth. I am afraid I am unaware of the statistics for them all. Not that it matters. The effect of all of these activities is catastrophic. We are turning our oceans into stinking, deadly swamps and we are poisoning millions of fish and ocean mammals every year. And even the Arctic ice will have completely disappeared long before I am dead."

  "And nobody is doing anything about this either?"

  "No, Jeremy. Certainly there are the blind optimists. And there are the elected clowns as usual with their international conferences, their platforms for arguing and arguing and arguing. In fact they have been holding meetings and muttering to each other for decades, but they can't agree on anything, or at least not on anything effective, and so everything has got worse and worse and continues to get even worse than that. The usual."

  "Hmm…could we move on to air, do you think?"

  "Our atmosphere? Yes indeed. Our atmosphere, which by the way is 78% nitrogen, is very thin. There is actually no definite boundary between our atmosphere and outer space, but something called the Kármán line is generally accepted as the limit, about 100 kilometers from the planet's surface. In other words, you could drive up there in a car and arrive in under an hour. Except you can't of course because of gravity. But that part of the atmosphere in which we could actually survive is only about 10 kilometers thick; in other words you could drive up there and also drive back in around 10 minutes. Not that we could survive at all if we weren't lucky enough to have our magnetic fields and a layer of ozone in our atmosphere which filters the sun's deadly ultraviolet rays. Without that we would all be dead. But—I don’t know whether you can believe this, Jeremy—we are destroying that as well."

  "What is ozone?" Jeremy asked.

  "Ozone is something which is produced when ultraviolet light strikes two-oxygen atoms and splits them into individual atoms. These two types of atom combine and absorb up to 99% of the sun's ultraviolet light which is highly dangerous to exposed life forms on our planet. The ozone layer is in our stratosphere, only about twenty to thirty kilometers from the planet's surface."

  Jeremy took off his jacket, hung it on the back of a chair. Adjusted his tie, walked over to the window and stared out at the boring view of the building opposite.

  "Fortunate," he said.

  "Fortunate indeed. So…not content with the highly intelligent activities I have already spoken about so far this afternoon, Jeremy, we are at the same time pursuing another highly intelligent activity, namely, we are knowingly and consciously undertaking the terminal destruction of our planet's lungs. Our planet's very thin and fragile lungs."

  "It doesn't surprise me," said Jeremy. He is perhaps reaching the stage where nothing can surprise him anymore.

  "I'll start off with the deforestation of the planet," I began. "We have already made great steps in this direction. We destroy 350 million m² of forest every day, and, as usual, we are accelerating our activities still further.”

  “Excuse me, Peter. Did you say 350 million m² of forest? Every day?”

  “That’s what I said, Jeremy. Check it out. For example, in the past three decades alone we have destroyed 70% of all the forests in Asia. Three decades to decimate forests which have been around for over 50 million years. And if we want to take South America, over 20,000 km2 of rain forest are destroyed in Brazil alone each and every year. Each year. 20,000 km2, Jeremy. This is mainly achieved through thousands and thousands of man-made fires, all easily visible as a myriad of red points on our satellite photography. Fire, you see, is the easiest and cheapest way in which to turn these areas into agricultural land."

  "I believe it," said Jeremy. Could it be that Jeremy had advanced from his lack of surprise and indifference to the glorious and wondrous world of cynicism?

  "Yes, well, Brazil is only an example. Colossal deforestation occurs around the globe, North America, you name it. In fact, th
e country currently releasing more carbon dioxide through deforestation than any other country on the planet is Indonesia. And apart from destroying our atmosphere, we are also destroying the habitats of our planet’s poor, helpless animals and birds, including truly magnificent animals such as the South American jaguar and the Siberian tiger. The habitat destruction also makes it easier to hunt them and these are therefore the next ones slotted to become extinct, the latest victims of the human extermination factory. For example, Jeremy, China has a growing appetite for tiger parts used in making tiger bone wine and traditional medicines and, at $10,000 a carcass, it is not surprising that around 40 of the few remaining tigers are killed each year. Illegally of course; the birdbrain law to prevent the killings is as usual ineffective, flap, flap."

  "Yes…but you mentioned your satellite photography. What do your politicians do when they see the photographic proof of all of this?"

  "They do the same as they always do, Jeremy. They spend decades holding meetings and muttering to each other, creating a few agreements here and there to do something about it at some point in time in the future—on those few occasions when they can agree, that is, and without of course the agreement of certain major powers in any case—and then they all get up, highly contented, extremely self-satisfied and feeling oh, so very proud of themselves, a job well done old chap, and pollute their way back again to their various homes around the planet, where is my monthly salary please."

  "The same as usual. O.K.," said Jeremy. "But what I don't understand, they must surely be aware of what is happening to your atmosphere—your very thin atmosphere as you correctly described it?"

  "Oh yes, they are aware, and that is the paradox. The clowns are in possession of all the scientific data regarding the exploding populations and the effects of industrial pollution, deforestation, travel, transport and so on and they know exactly what is happening. They drown in the billions of fresh statistics that are fed to them and their minions each and every year."

  “Such as?”

  “Such as official forecasts which state that this will be the planet’s warmest year ever since recorded human knowledge. Such as the Arctic ice will completely disappear within a decade or two. Such as there are 420 million fewer birds living in Europe than there were just twenty-five years ago…and so on.”

  "You also mentioned travel and transport?"

  "Oh yes, those as well. We now have over 1 billion land vehicles on the planet. Of these, an average of 150 million are underway at all times, day and night, burning fossil fuels, polluting the atmosphere."

  "Now that is a huge amount of pollution. Non-stop, did you say?"

  "Non-stop. Permanently. Day and night. And at the same time, Jeremy, there are over 40 million airplane flights per year; that is over 100,000 flights per day; more than one flight per second. In other words, there are between 10,000 and 15,000 planes in the air at all times, massively polluting our excruciatingly thin atmosphere, without pausing for breath if you will forgive the pun. For this purpose alone, we burn one billion liters of kerosene each year and create 650 million tons of carbon dioxide. And much of this is totally unnecessary. We transport football teams across continents to world championships, European championships, South American championships, African championships, and even 'friendly' test games go intercontinental. In addition to the national teams, we also do this for individual club championships: you name it, football teams, handball teams, basketball teams, volleyball teams, hockey teams, cycle-racing teams, squash teams, badminton teams, swimmers, skiers, ski-jumpers, tennis players, track athletes, horses and their riders, Formula I drivers and their cars, truck racers and their trucks, rally drivers and their cars and/or their motorbikes—I would need half an hour to give you a complete list of everything, Jeremy, including chess tournaments. And all of that is accompanied by thousands of trainers, managers, mechanics, medics, and others—and of course, masses of spectators, family members, T.V. crews, journalists and so on. And this is all multiplied by the U21 teams, the U19 teams, the U17 teams and—believe me, Jeremy—the U15 teams."

  I paused. Is there anything else? Oh yes, there is plenty. The money is good. I'll give him his money's worth every time.

  "We also transport tons of chicken feet from, for example, the U.S.A. and Europe to China."

  "Chicken feet?"

  "Yes, we would normally throw them away here but the Chinese like them. Whether it's the poor Chinese, because chicken feet don't cost much, or whether it's because they are a delicacy there, I am not quite sure. But someone figured out that there was business to be done, so there you go. Same as the turtles."

  "The turtles?"

  "River turtles, Jeremy. The Chinese like them as well. So much, in fact, that they have just about killed off all of the turtles to be found in their rivers and so the U.S.A. does them the favor of selling them tons and tons of turtles every year, so that they can continue to enjoy their turtle soup.”

  “Interesting ways to pollute your atmosphere, indeed.”

  “Oh, very interesting ways, Jeremy. Take the Germans. They love to barbecue in the summer.”

  “Barbecue?”

  “Yes, outdoor cooking. Grilling. You need charcoal for that. So they import over 200,000 tons of charcoal every year, transported from countries as diverse as Poland, Paraguay and Nigeria. Three continents right there.”

  “Indeed.”

  “But we pollute the air with thousands of other ridiculous transport activities, Jeremy. It would really take me a lot of time to mention them all, the ones I know about, that is. So, if I may, let me turn to another very major item. Manufacturing plants. Industrial air pollution."

  "O.K., O.K., Peter, presumably that is getting out of control as well. I think I have the overall picture well enough, thank you. Do you think you could just round off the subject with a brief summary of what you are all doing about it, or at least trying to do about it? I appreciate that you have told me about what you are not doing, but someone must be doing something, surely, something effective?"

  "We are doing virtually nothing, Jeremy. We can't even take the first few baby steps, like stopping car and truck racing. It would be easy enough you might think, surely our species has a few thousand other things with which to amuse itself? Non-polluting things? But no…the answer is no."

  "But you are aware of how thin and fragile your atmosphere is, and that there are now over 7 billion of you humans polluting it?"

  "Yes, we are aware. Some of us, anyway, and certainly those in charge, the elected clowns. They have made a draft of another of those useless agreements I told you about. They have decided that it would be a good idea to limit our activities in order to prevent the increase in our planet's temperature from exceeding an additional 2 degrees. Not to prevent any further increase, mark you, let alone—heaven forbid—to reduce it. But the whole thing is useless and laughable anyway. The agreement is due to be ratified in the year 2020, by which time, at the current accelerating pollution and population rates, we will have exceeded the intended limit before the agreement even comes into effect. If it ever does of course—that is yet another of those 'agreements' in which certain major polluting countries are refusing to participate."

  "Again," said Jeremy.

  Amazing, isn't it? Frankly, and maybe no-one would agree with me, but if you were to relegate all participating birdbrains to a secure, padded and sound-proofed meeting room in an institute of their choice for the mentally ill, and place them under the chairmanship of, say, a mixed Iranian/Syrian/North Korean coal miners' association, the results would not be much different.

  "Yes. Again," I replied. "And so here we are still in the springtime, and we have already emitted another 14 billion tons of carbon dioxide into our atmosphere since the beginning of the year."

  "Did you say 14 million or billion?

  "Billion, Jeremy. 14 billion tons."

  "In just a few months?"

  "In just a few months."

  "And you k
now that your atmosphere is only 100 kilometers thick." Jeremy sighed. He was sounding somewhat bewildered again. "Amazing. Interesting. Extraordinary. Well…I think I have enough data on this section to do my research on, and so perhaps we could call it a day. Enough is enough, as you say."

  "No Jeremy," I said. "With all due respect, enough is not enough. There is more."

  "Not enough?"

  "Not enough, because we do not only pollute our planet and its atmosphere. Oh no. We don't stop there."

  "Alright, Peter. Tell me, tell me."

  "Well, we worked out how to deal with gravity and we can now orbit our planet, reach our one and only moon, and in fact send devices to other planets, even to the end of our planetary system and beyond. And what does that mean? It means that in less than 50 years, we have, in our usual inimitable fashion, created a vast junkyard up there, 12,000 detectable pieces of scrap—detectable being a length of 8 centimeters or more—all zooming along at speeds of between 15,000 and 30,000 kilometers per hour. Not to mention the much larger number of undetectable pieces, all orbiting at the same speeds and therefore, irrespective of how small, equally capable of causing severe damage to a spacecraft, a satellite, or even the International Space Station which is orbiting at a height of around 350 kilometers."

  "And what exactly are these pieces of junk?"

  "These pieces of junk are an estimated 7,000 tons of abandoned rocket stages, dead satellites and all kinds of miscellaneous scrap, including scrap left over from destructive 'tests' of anti-satellite weapons and chance collisions. Our scientists have determined as a mathematical fact that some of the smaller pieces of debris will continue to hit the larger objects and smash them into hundreds of pieces, thereby exponentially increasing the probability of more such events. An accelerating chain reaction, in effect, threatening hundreds of satellites and anything else that dares to venture out there."

  "And so what are you doing about it?"

  "You would think, Jeremy, wouldn't you, that we would at least stop doing things to further aggravate the situation. But you would be wrong. Only recently, we fired a rocket into space to destroy an old weather satellite. The Chinese this time, testing a newly-developed anti-satellite weapon. The test was successful and created over 1,000 new pieces of debris. At a height of about 800 kilometers, which means that the debris will remain in space for thousands or even millions of years."

  "Garbage creation without garbage collection," said Jeremy.

  "Yes, and you had better hope that we never discover how to travel throughout our galaxy, let alone to other galaxies. It wouldn't take us long to turn the whole universe into a huge, glorious, stinking, human-style shithouse."

  "It sounds as if indeed it wouldn't," said Jeremy. "That is, in between taking time off now and again to kill each other and presumably any other species you might happen to chance upon as well. But then, that is not of course going to happen."

  "Maybe not, but it might."

  "No, Peter, it won't. Either you manage to improve yourselves, mutate into a benevolent and caring species which will accordingly respect its environment and everything else, or the Governing Committee will take the necessary steps. In fact, it may do so anyway, in spite of what I might recommend. And even that will depend on whether we ever get to meet your U.K. prime minister, not to mention your world powers."

  He certainly had everything worked out in his head. Did he make it all up as we went along, or had he created this whole delusion and all of its multitudinous details in advance? An interesting query, sure enough, and one which is beginning to preoccupy my neurons from time to time.

  Let me help him further along the delusional trail.

  "And how long do you think it will take for your committee to reach a decision?" I asked.

  "Oh, I think they will decide within the next three weeks or so. That's quite fast for us. We live about fifteen times longer than you do—an average of around 1,200 of your planet years compared to, say, 80 years in your case."

  "You live for 1,200 years! Well…and if you don't mind my asking, Jeremy, how old are you at this moment?"

  "I am only 28 years old. Extremely young, still a student."

  "And so you only have another 1,172 years to go?"

  Jeremy smiled. "More or less, yes; but then I, like you, will die."

  You sure will, I thought to myself, and in your case while still believing that you've got over 1,100 years to go. He must have spent years developing this fantasy. I can imagine the psychiatrists drooling with delight when they eventually lay their hands on him again. If they ever manage to, that is.

  "O.K.," I said, "so back to your Governing Committee. It could take a decision tomorrow if it wanted to?"

  "It could, but it won't. My professor tells me they prefer to wait and see if we have any success in getting the world's powers together."

  "So that is at least is a small measurement of achievement? A brief delay?"

  "Yes, Peter, but it doesn't get rid of the urgency in any way. In which regard, do you think we could have our meeting on the fifth agenda item fairly soon? The day after tomorrow, for example?"

  "No problem, but I will be visiting Slough that morning. It would have to be after lunch. Say around 1.30 p.m.?"

  "Agreed. And hopefully the authorities will have contacted you again in the meantime and you can fill me in on what is, or is not going to happen."

  "Will do, Jeremy. See you then."

  I gave the small, frail-looking girl a big smile on the way out. Miss Monroe, sexy name. Could be another blinking red light to be checked out when I've finished with my Céline depression, who knows?

  DAY 19

  Same weather, a meteorological depression to match my emotional one. I decided not to go to work today; I would just bill for about four hours or so of analytical tasks (never a good idea to overbill too much).

  I decided to have breakfast in Curzon Street. I went down to the hotel breakfast room for a Lavazza first, and then headed out through the lobby. Little Miss Ugly was there, another big smile from her. And also there was Delsey himself, sitting in a lounge chair waiting for me. It is truly amazing how that guy always manages to look as if the end of the world is nigh. And not only nigh, but not even enough time left to have a cup of coffee before it happens. He reminds me of nothing so much as Banksy’s famous - or, as some would say, infamous - rendering of Van Gogh’s Sunflowers (or, more correctly, of one of the seven versions Van Gogh painted). An immaculate depiction of portending catastrophe.

  He stood up. "Good morning, Mr. O'Donoghue," he said with a smile, a morose one of course, but hey, a smile is a smile, good for him.

  "Good morning, Mr. Delsey," I said. "Brought my mobile with you, have you?"

  "Yes, of course," he said. "Please accept our apologies for the delay." And he took my phone out of his pocket and gave it to me.

  "Find anything?" I asked.

  "Nothing untoward, except for that Madeira number of course." He looked at me, not really expecting me to elaborate, and I didn't. I looked at the phone instead.

  "Done anything to it?" I asked. Not that I really cared.

  "Of course not, sir." Surprise, surprise, I have become a sir.

  "In any case," he continued, "we would need approval to do something like that and, to be honest, we would have difficulty in justifying such a request at this stage."

  "At this stage?"

  "Well, Mr. O'Donoghue," he replied, "We don't know where all of this is going to lead us, do we? You have created waves, you and Mr. Parker, and you can't expect to be left to your own devices until we have got to the bottom of it, now can you?"

  "No, I can't and no I don't. So why don't you tell me what you and your bosses are doing about it." The word 'why' does not imply a question. It is just that I am one of many who have adopted the American phrase 'why don't you' as a replacement for the simpler and more courteous word 'please'. I think the Americans find it useful for whenever they do not actually want to say 'pl
ease' to anybody. So do I.

  "Yes, well, that is why I am here. Perhaps we could take a seat in the corner over there?"

  We sat down, I didn't offer him coffee, I had just had one myself and another one was coming up soon in Curzon Street. I looked over at the desk, Little Miss Ugly was there, watching. I gave her a broad smile, spread some more of that happiness.

  "We had a meeting," he started off. "The aim was to try and involve a few of our top people and to persuade them in their turn to try and involve a minister or two, and then have you perform one or two of those telepathic events, possibly of a more momentous nature. I say of a more momentous nature, because if you have something for the prime minister's ears only, that is what it would take. At the same time, it would be necessary for Mr. Parker to be present in person."

  He paused and looked at me with his half-wink. I didn't say anything.

  "Well…I don't think you can understand how difficult this is. There are huge bureaucratic obstacles. There are a large number of ministries, there are secretaries of state, there are ministers, there are under-secretaries, there is the Attorney General's office, and there is a whole host of other high-ranking officials. Then we have ourselves, the police, and we are responsible to the Home Office, which is headed by the Home Secretary and five other ministers. As you may imagine, a complex labyrinth making it a long, long road to get anywhere near the prime minister. But we have our contacts. We have some tentative agreements with certain important persons for them to attend a one hour meeting on Thursday evening—provisional agreements you understand, and dependent upon your compliance with the conditions I have just mentioned. And the meeting, by the way, would be either at New Scotland Yard or in Whitehall."

  "I have a couple of comments on that, Mr. Delsey. First of all, we can provide a couple of events, as you call them. No problem, providing you accept that they must cause no harm to man nor beast. But we have to be clear on one point. We are not a performing circus. There would be no more attempts to entertain you, your colleagues, or any ministers of any ilk. Either this meeting results in a direct meeting with the prime minister, or it's the end of the story. Finished. Fertig. Terminado. Fini. I therefore suggest that the prime minister be informed of what is going on before the Thursday meeting takes place. He should be prepared to take a yes or a no decision immediately afterwards about a meeting with Mr. Parker, based on the comments he receives from you and your colleagues and from anybody else who deigns to turn up. And last but not least, Mr. Parker will not be attending this preparatory meeting. He will only meet directly with the Prime Minister himself."

  Delsey seemed distinctly uncomfortable about this. He twisted in his chair, he plucked at his trousers—or pants if you are American and like ambiguities—he leaned forward, he wiped his brow, an additional sullenness formed to supplement his customary morosity, and he said in a gruff voice, "I'm afraid we're going to have to insist…"

  "You are not going to have to insist on anything," I said. "I need an answer fast. Otherwise this ends right here and now in this hotel and may God help you, if you happen to be a believer Mr. Delsey, because, mark my words, you will be needing it."

  He considered this for a while. I could read his thoughts. On the one hand, there was a lunatic. On the other hand, there were certain undeniable powers floating around which could, if proven to be authentic ones, be of earth-shaking importance to his country. And then, he had obviously been tasked with arranging this meeting anyway.

  "I will need to consult on this," he said. "We will get back to you later today, if you would be so kind as to keep your mobile within reach."

  "We? And do you mind if I ask who might that be?"

  "It will be me," he said. "I have now been assigned full-time to this case and am responsible for communication. In other words, I am your contact person."

  And that was that. Off he went, and off I went, lighting up a cigarette as I headed for Half Moon Street. I bought the IHT at the tube station and ended up at the same café in which Jeremy had introduced himself to me nearly three weeks ago. I sat at the same outside table in fact, warm enough and no wind to complicate the turning of the newspaper pages.

  And then I took a momentous decision.

  I decided to give up croissants. They taste nice enough and they are not particularly heavy on the stomach, but basically they are a crescent-shaped product specifically designed by the French to crumble apart when you pick them up, and to collapse into a hundred pieces if you are foolish enough to try and do anything with them, such as spread butter or marmalade on them. They also contain an average 34% of fatty oils. I ordered a couple of normal bread rolls and butter to go with the coffee and started on the IHT.

  Debt crises continue down the road to their supernova, shares prices have fallen—I have recouped €15,000—and there were 280 conflict deaths yesterday including 73 Sunnis murdered while praying in their mosque near Bagdad. The only mild interest in the conflicts nowadays is the number of deaths. Syria of course has done a good job of raising the average in recent times. The pope conveyed his condolences to the parents of a kidnap victim beheaded by some Islam group or other. I skipped other boring articles on politicians arguing about this and arguing about that—this is my view, says the one of them, flap, flap…and this is my view says the other, flap, flap—and turned to the sports pages. Always interesting, and today I got to read about the ongoing increase in bribery and corruption at all levels, up to and including the governing bodies, and the huge amounts of money, effort and time being expended in an attempt to at least limit the extent of drug usage in sport. Well, you wouldn't expect anything else, would you, these sporting activities are conducted by the human race on the planet Earth. Interesting of course, but no more than that. I can't even find the energy to say tut, tut or whatever.

  I decided to check on the two small gifts I had ordered for Roger and Geoff at United Fasteners. I walked up to Berkeley Square, a small, pleasant square, home to Winston Churchill as a child and fictitious home to P.G. Wodehouse's Bertie Wooster and—may we never forget—his servant Jeeves. I turned east, crossed over Bond Street, and dropped into the small engraving establishment located just short of Regent Street.

  No problems, ready for collection on Thursday morning as agreed, they said. It had started to drizzle, so I caught a cab for the short trip back to the hotel. Whether I am being watched or not, I continue neither to know nor care.

  Back in my room I pondered the events of the past few days. Things were not as simple as they had been at the outset. At the outset I had agreed to earn the ridiculous amount of €500,000 from a mentally sick person for merely participating in a number of interviews with him up to a maximum of twelve. Since then, I had agreed to cooperate in trying to obtain a meeting between this mentally sick person and the U.K. prime minister, no less. Admittedly with the assistance of some incredibly amazing mind-bending techniques of which this mentally sick person was unquestionably capable. And my total potential earnings, if I could still believe it, had risen to the nice round sum of €1 million. In return for which I now I had the authorities on my back.

  So the question was, how to earn the remaining money while at the same time extracting myself completely and entirely from the attentions of the authorities. I think a small chronological analysis will assist me. First of all I would have to attend this week's meeting, if it occurred, and hope that the pyrotechnics would be convincing enough to achieve the apparently impossible, namely a meeting between Jeremy and the prime minister. The latter would be under heavy security, no question about that, but then that would not be my problem and in any case Jeremy can take care of himself like nobody else, using those inimitable powers of his, no doubt about that either.

  Secondly, I had to attend my meeting with Jeremy tomorrow and, in order to comply with our agreement, such additional meetings as he may deem to be appropriate. Thirdly, nothing was going to make me change my plans to return to Okriftel this weekend. Monika's birthday was on
the Sunday and on the Saturday I had to comply with my long-standing promise to the local mayor to give a simultaneous chess exhibition at the town's technical college. And as for any meetings next week in London, I could just fly over.

  And then I had a tentative agreement to start my Spanish project the week following. The question was, how do I get there without the authorities being able to trace me? With all of today's technology and the global cooperation existing between national police forces, that might not be possible. They would find me if they wanted to, particularly as I had no intention of trying to disguise myself and no idea of how to go about obtaining false passports or driving licenses or other such skullduggery. And even if I did know how, I wouldn’t do it, it’s illegal and I am not the detective-story type.

  On the other hand, I could probably make it difficult for them, cause a few weeks' delay if I got lucky, by which time Jeremy would have had his meeting. Maybe the world's superpowers would be getting together as well, who knows? Jeremy's demonstrations might have achieved that before they decided to lock him up in a high security unit specialized in advanced psychiatric care. Although I would be fascinated to see what would happen if they were to attempt it. By which time, anyway, their interest in me would hopefully have evaporated or at least have transformed itself into a minor and minuscule concern.

  I could drive to Barcelona for my initial meeting with Señor Pujol at his group's head office. No controls at the frontier. And better not to use my own car. Monika would love to swap hers with my Audi for a few weeks or, if not, she would allow me to pay for a rental car for myself in her name. Make it Hertz or Avis and then I could drop the car off at its destination. Or park it in a long-term car park in Barcelona somewhere. And then I could continue on to the loss-making shipping company's offices in Mallorca by taking the ferry to Palma as a foot passenger. My name would be on a ticket and end up in a computer databank somewhere, but as a risk, it was a calculated one. And once in Palma, I could disappear from the hotel after a few days and into an apartment. And no car, just taxis. And not being an employee of the shipping company, I would not be identifiable on its payroll.

  And if it only worked for a short while, so be it, they would start bothering me again. Not that they could do much except annoy me in my view. And by then I would hopefully have been paid anyway.

  Which reminded me to log on and check on the latest €100,000. Not received. No sweat. I'll check again in the morning.

  In the evening, Delsey called. The meeting was confirmed. Thursday at 5 p.m. in Whitehall, the Ministry of Defence. I should please present myself at the northern entrance and Delsey would be waiting for me.

  DAY 20

  This morning was an easy morning—and a pleasing one.

  I had my breakfast, the good old Lavazza and the Chivers, went back to my room and checked my on-line bank account. The third payment of €100,000 had been credited. I was beginning to really appreciate Jeremy, a moral and virtuous person. I always hold people who are totally reliable in high regard, sane or otherwise. I put the money into Nestlé shares. A safe investment given the ever-increasing world population, all of whom need to eat and drink in order not to die, and more and more of whom can also afford quality products as the middle-class segments continue to grow in all of the world's new economies. Certainly, the shares can go up and down depending on the movements, violent or otherwise, of the world's markets, but long-term, the demographic evolution will hold sway. And of course these shares have two additional advantages: they pay a decent dividend, regularly and continuously, and the shares move in line with the Swiss Franc, not the Euro. A good investment in uncertain times in my view. But of course you can never tell, the whole caboodle is just one big, crazy casino.

  I drove leisurely down to Slough and checked up on the progress at Clark's. Everything was proceeding satisfactorily, and at around midday Fred found me outside drinking coffee and smoking a cigarette while admiring yet again—such a minor item, but there you go—the yellow lettering on the dark red background of the new, shiningly clean sign outside the main entrance. Fred was also in cheerful mood. He told me the employees had voted a short while ago to accept the cuts in return for a review of the situation in twelve months' time and a job guarantee until then. Not a problem, he told me, the way things were going. The problem could actually turn out to be the other way round—how to meet increased production requirements without having to increase the workforce.

  I told him I would be in tomorrow for the last time before converting to our new ad hoc arrangement. And then I drove back to London, parked the car at the hotel, took a cab to the Strand, had a sandwich, a coffee and a cigarette, and walked into Jeremy's offices at just before 1.30 p.m. Timely as usual. Prompt and punctual. Jeremy and I complement each other in that respect, if not in other ways, such as mental health.

  The frail but sensuous Miss Monroe was at the expensive reception desk, the smile was warm, the walls were as white as before, the office furniture also, and men and women were investing a part of their lives—a large part of their lives—staring at computer screens. Everything was the same. Including Jeremy, short blond hair, smiling moon-face, tailored suit, the exception being the tie, a beige and white striped one today.

  "Good afternoon, Peter," he said, "I was hoping we could get started fairly promptly today. Lots of Obrix business to deal with, you know. Refreshments are on the table, just help yourself. And how are things with you?"

  "Things are fine with me," I replied. A lie of course, because of Céline. "And thank you for the recent payment, much appreciated. I am trying to earn it as best I can. I have a meeting in Whitehall tomorrow evening. Quite a gathering, I believe. We will need to make another demonstration or two, perhaps including a very significant one. If we don't manage to totally convince them, we will never get as far as the prime minister. Or at the very least, it would take ages. Will that be possible?"

  "No problem at all, Peter. And in any case, and whether they admit it or not, they must already have a tremendous interest in acquiring some kind of control over these computer-hacking abilities, as we refer to them. And if it takes a meeting with the prime minister to further that aim, then I am sure that that is exactly what they will arrange. As I have said, fear is our weapon. We will just have to scare them a bit, that's all. With no harm to anybody of course. And we'll let them choose, as usual. I am reasonably certain they will select something appropriate. Something convincing, and therefore scary."

  He stood up, strolled over to the window, hands in his pockets, and looked out at the building opposite. He was in a distinctly relaxed and easy mood this morning.

  "Just use our mobile again," he said, "to let me know what is needed. If they try to take it from you, no problem. They can't do anything with it. But I don't think they will, not at this stage. And now…perhaps you could please fill me in on our final macro-subject, ‘Beliefs and Superstitions’?"

  He came back to the table and sat down, poured himself a coffee and gave me that pleasant smile of his again. I took a deep breath, something I have done a thousand times during these sessions, here we go again, another description of what we get up to on this planet of ours.

  "I think I will provide you with a brief prologue, Jeremy," I began, "before I start dealing with the facts of our beliefs, religions and superstitions per se. And I will stick to the facts, by the way, those that I know about anyway. And please bear in mind that not only am I a cynic, I am also an agnostic. And so irrespective of any views I may or may not hold, I neither believe nor disbelieve in anything which I am unable to substantiate."

  "A personal characteristic with whose logic I fully concur," said Jeremy. "We will just be dealing with the facts then."

  "There are certain proven realities," I said, "of which we are well aware, Jeremy. We are aware, for example, of the fact that the universe—the one we know about, that is—is approximately 13.7 billion years old. And we know that the Earth was formed from a coagulation of roc
ks and dust just over 4 billion years ago. We also know that the human animal, by which I mean the 'anatomically' modern human animal, evolved about 200,000 years ago in the region we now call Africa. And that that was the moment when, among other things, modern speech skills began their prolonged development. And by the time we arrived at 50,000 years ago, evolution had produced the 'behaviorally' modern human animal whose communication methods were eventually to balloon into an estimated 500,000 languages; of which, however, only about 4,000 are still in use today."

  "You, as a species, still use 4,000 different languages? Today? In other words, you still can't all communicate with each other?"

  "That is so, I am afraid. For example, the most linguistically complex nation on the planet is Papua New Guinea, which has over 700 languages in active use today for a population of only 7 million."

  "An average of one language per 10,000 inhabitants?"

  "Yes. But then, most of the world's languages are very localized ones. Nobody really concerns himself with the fact that the population of Udmurtia, an area in the western Ural mountain region of Russia, speaks Udmurtian. You could say that nowadays we have about thirty languages or so in use by the most important population groups, although some of these groups are quite small: Greece, Holland or Croatia for example. I mention the speech skills because they are one of several attributes which distinguish the human animal from the other animals on our planet, and we need to be able to understand that if we are going to talk about beliefs and how they have been able to grow and form an integral part of our social structure."

  "Fair enough," said Jeremy, "I am listening."

  "Human beings are one of what we call the 'mirror-test' group of animals, namely higher-level animals capable of recognizing themselves in a reflection of themselves. Most human beings achieve this capability at around the age of eighteen months. Modern anthropology supports the Darwinian theory that the difference between human minds and other 'mirror-test' animal minds is one of degree and not of kind. In other words, our brains are not 'different'; the human one just happens to be more advanced. Similar as to how you describe your brain, Jeremy, when comparing it to mine."

  Jeremy raised his eyebrows, ran his hand through his hair, and smiled.

  I continued. "Many religious doctrines, however, reject this outright, stating that our brains are indeed different and that they are also supplemented by something called a 'soul', which they describe as a nebulous and disembodied spirit whose existence, needless to say, cannot be proven but must be believed in."

  "And so where is this taking us, Peter?"

  "It is taking us to the fact that the human being is notable, among other things, for his desire, inane or otherwise, to explain all phenomena, including the inexplicable. And to the fact that our sophisticated communication skills, both in verbal and written form, enable us to interchange ideas, perceptions and abstract thoughts in general on just about everything. And not only interchange—we frequently want others to agree with our own personal views and sometimes we actually compel them to do so, using either force or propaganda. And we do all of this using specific tools, namely philosophy, mythology, the sciences, mass slaughter—including religious wars—and, last but not least, religion itself."

  "Ah, we have finally arrived at the subject itself."

  "Yes, and I'll get straight to it, don't worry. Religion is a 'belief' system, as opposed to a knowledge-based system. The belief is directed towards a sacred, divine or supernatural concept and the object of that belief can be a god, or a group of multiple deities, or a non-theistic concept such as karma. The majority of humans today belong to one of the monotheistic, or single deity, religions, the two most important ones being Christianity and Islam. The Hindus, who constitute the planet's third largest religious group, believe in 33 gods. In fact there are still some Hindus who refuse to believe in a transcription error in their holy scriptures and they continue to believe that there are some 33 million gods."

  "Interesting. Different opinions."

  "Yes, and there are plenty of those, Jeremy. All of these religions are subdivided into differing sects and sub-sects and sub-sub-sects, hundreds of them—and that is absolutely not an exaggeration. Protestants, Catholics, Muslims, Methodists, Baptists, Anglicans, Mormons, Greek Orthodox, Jews, Presbyterians, Sunnites, Shiites, Wahabistic, Salafistic, and a whole host of others, take your pick. Each of these hundreds of groups and sub-groups has different interpretations, traditions and rites relating to their overall belief. These religions also have their own 'prophets', some shared, some not, whose preaching was what created the religions in the first place, and why they came into existence. One of the most recent founding prophets was a person called Joseph Smith Jr., the creator in the 1820s of Mormonism, although that particular Christian sect has had several more prophets and apostles since then, including the ones still alive today. Mormonism itself happens to be a branch of the Latter Day Saint Movement, another Christian sect, but we don't need to go into these kind of details today, Jeremy. We can’t. We would never finish."

  "Quite. I can imagine. You humans certainly know how to complicate everything. But tell me, what exactly is it that these belief systems offer you?"

  "Offer?"

  "Yes. I mean, there must be some incentive to cause people to want to believe, mustn't there?"

  "Ah yes…I see what you mean. Well, I suppose you could say that the incentive is that you are told you are not actually going to die. That is the main prize. A fantastic prize, wouldn’t you agree?"

  "Wow! I certainly would. That sounds really nice."

  "It may sound really nice, Jeremy, but it is a double-edged sword. It relies on the carrot and the stick theory, as you will see."

  O.K., go ahead."

  "With pleasure. Let me take Christianity first. This religion is based on the belief that God created the human race a long time ago and that thousands of years later he determined that things had not gone the way he had intended them to. So much so, that he (whichever sub-sects’ version of 'he' you prefer) decided to send his son to the planet as a human being—or at least in the form of a human being—in order to fix things, or at least to try. The son would be called Jesus and the decision was taken that he would be born as an illegitimate child and on top of that, he would not have a human father. A biological father, that is."

  "Why?"

  "Why what?"

  "Why would he send his son in human form, and why would his parents not be married, and why would he have no biological father?"

  "I don't know."

  "But you believe that's how it was?"

  "Jeremy, I need to insist that I am an agnostic. I am just sticking to the facts as I was taught them. I neither believe nor do I disbelieve. I just don't know. If you want me to say that I hold it to be perfectly possible, then my answer is yes."

  "But why create things in this constellation, in this particular way?"

  "I don't know."

  "O.K. Please continue."

  "Well, the son was born and was murdered at a relatively young age by the human beings whose ways he had been sent to try and change. Or to try and SAVE as religious doctrine has it."

  "Ah. So do I understand that he didn't actually manage to save you?"

  "No. But his father is a very benevolent God and so we were allowed to continue living and retain our chances of being saved on the condition that we modified our activities accordingly—or at least apologize and repent for not doing so."

  "Chances of being saved? From what?"

  "From hell. From eternal fire. From eternal damnation. From eternal torture."

  "Eternal torture? That is a particularly vicious and vindictive invention, don't you think?"

  "Yes. Although I understand that in some versions you can get lucky and end up in some kind of a halfway house."

  "But to be tortured for eternity is a monstrous penalty to have to pay. That's not even just a life sentence, which would be bad enough, don't you think? H
ow do you explain that? I thought you said he is a benevolent God."

  "Well, I don't know. I can't explain it. But there are plenty of others who could. Those who are in the know."

  "Yes…well, I can imagine that the explanation is a somewhat complicated one."

  I decided to stick my oar in for a bit of fun. "Why?" I asked. "You are just the same. In fact, you are very similar to God. You place the responsibility on us. We have to change ourselves. You say you are a benevolent species, but if we don't become like you, if I understood you correctly, you probably intend to go ahead and eliminate us. That is not very nice either, is it?"

  "Ah yes, but there are two major differences. First of all, we don't claim to have created you. And secondly, with us, at least some of you will have lived for a large number of years and as for your future generations, well…they would quite simply never be born. And there is no torture involved at all, and certainly no eternal torture. Perish the thought. Why would anyone want to do that?"

  "I don't know," I admitted. "Nevertheless, a direct threat does have the effect of creating fear. Perhaps the Christian religion and maybe other religions need to operate on that basis. What do you think?"

  "I have no idea," said Jeremy, "why do you ask?"

  "Well, you can believe something simply because you want to, or because you have been told to, or because you have been brainwashed into it, or because you have been forced into it, or because a fear was created about what will happen to you if you don't believe. Or at least, let us say, if you don't comply, or try to comply, with the doctrines. You see, Christianity is based on a totally different doctrine to the one in the Frankenstein tale."

  "The Frankenstein tale?"

  "Yes, in that story, Frankenstein discovered how to create a human being in a laboratory. But he made some mistakes and the human being became an out-of-control monster. But the blame belonged, fairly logically, to the creator Frankenstein, and not to his creation. Christianity, on the other hand, preaches that we are the ones to blame, not the God who created us.”

  “And how does that teaching justify itself? With what logic?”

  “Well, the justification states that God gave us Free Will, the ability to decide everything for ourselves. He also ensured that we were handed the responsibility for our decisions, and for our resulting actions and for the results of those actions. And we are therefore to blame.”

  “That begs the question, Peter, as to what reason he might have had for giving you Free Will in the first place.”

  That was not a question. I did not say anything.

  “So,” he continued after a pause, “since you are the guys responsible for what is a pretty ghastly and catastrophic mess, perhaps your Free Will needs to be guided onto a different track, pushed in fact, brought into line by fear. What is your view on that?"

  "Again, I don't know, Jeremy. Therefore I have no view."

  "Well, then could we continue with the history please?"

  "Yes, of course. Many centuries subsequent to Jesus' murder, his mother, Mary, was apparently put to work."

  "Put to work?"

  "Well, in the sense that she has apparently been trying to achieve some of the things that were not achieved before. She has appeared supernaturally several times on our planet. She has appeared in five different places in France, two in Belgium, one in Mexico, one in Japan, one in Italy, and a total of five times in a single place in Portugal, the town of Fatima. My divinity instruction did not make it clear to me as to why this particular town required so much attention, but apparently it did. At least, those are the apparitions I understand to have been approved by the Vatican."

  "Approved by the Vatican?"

  "Yes, the Vatican is the center of power for the Catholic version of Christianity. They have a classification system for Mary's apparitions; approved apparitions, non-approved apparitions and rejected apparitions. Of the sites of the non-approved apparitions, I recall England, Spain, Egypt, Ireland, Poland, Slovakia, Croatia, Nicaragua and a town called (believe it or not) Rome City in Indiana, USA. There are probably more."

  "And the approved apparitions were witnessed by lots of people?"

  "No, actually not. Usually just by one individual or by a small group. And mainly children, by the way, and mainly only during the past two or three centuries. The apparition in Lourdes, France, for example, was seen by a 14 year old girl in the year 1858. Actually, this girl had a total of eighteen visions overall. Three shepherd children witnessed the apparitions in Fatima, Portugal, during our World War I. The two apparitions in Belgium occurred shortly prior to the outbreak of World War II and were witnessed respectively by a young girl, who had a total of eight visions overall, and also by five more children aged between nine and fifteen years old. But a few adults have also had these visions, Jeremy. The apparition near Akita in Japan, for example, was witnessed by a nun in the year 1973, and a statue of the Virgin Mary on that site also wept tears on 101 occasions until 1980, at which point in time it apparently stopped."

  "Why?"

  "Why what?"

  "Why did the statue stop weeping?"

  "I don't know."

  "Well, why did it start weeping in the first place?"

  "I don't know."

  "O.K., but then why were these particular locations chosen for the apparitions?"

  "I don't know that either. I have many knowledge gaps."

  "But you personally believe in these occurrences, the approved ones at least?"

  "No, but I don't disbelieve them either, Jeremy. These are apparently factual events. I simply don't know."

  "So…if I understand you correctly, Christianity deems the life of Jesus and the apparitions of his mother to have been reasonably successful as regards improving you and your species?"

  "Yes. That is the belief of the Christians. However, a lot of non-Christians hold the view that nothing was achieved. They hold the view that the human race has in fact deteriorated further in the twenty centuries following the birth of Jesus, and, what's more, in accelerated form. They cite the increase in mass slaughter—war, civil war, genocide, ethnic cleansing, and they cite the increase in individual crimes—murder, rape, theft, drugs, torture and so on. And as further proof they state that the horrific activities of the most recent century far exceeded the horrific activities of all the previous ones: the two world wars, the death factories, the manufacture of thermo-nuclear weapons and all of the rest I mentioned to you in our meeting on that particular subject."

  "And which view is the correct one, do you think?"

  "I don't think, Jeremy. I just recount the facts. You can adopt whichever view you prefer."

  "Very well," he said. "I must say that by sticking to the facts in these interviews, and avoiding opinions, you are making it much easier for me. There is no clouding of the issues. Could we possibly move on to the next one?"

  "Certainly we can. The next one is Islam."

  "A bit of a recapitulation before you start, if I may," interrupted Jeremy, "you are an agnostic and you therefore accept the fact that the Christian religion may be the explanation for all things, that it may be the true religion?"

  "Correct."

  "And do I assume correctly, Peter, that this is also your view regarding the Islamic religion?"

  "Yes, your assumption is correct."

  "O.K., I just wanted to make sure I had got it right. Please fire away."

  "Islam is a religion," I said, "which emerged some fourteen centuries ago in the area inhabited at the time by the so-called lizard-eaters of the Arabian peninsula. It is based on a series of prophets, the last and greatest of which, according to the Islamic bible, the Koran, was Abu al-Qasim Muhammad ibn Abd Allāh ibn Abd al-Muttalib Ibn Hāshim ibn Abd Manāf akl Quraschī."

  "Long name," said Jeremy.

  "Quite. He is referred to simply as Mohammed in our part of the world and in fact his name, with spelling variations, is now the most popular name given to new-born babies here in the U.K.—ahead of
Jack, Harry and Oliver. Mohammed was born in Mecca, in the Saudi Arabian desert, around 570 years after Jesus Christ. In his early years he was an analphabetic shepherd boy, but he was given some education later on by certain members of his family and eventually declared himself at the age of forty or thereabouts to be a prophet of Allah, as the Islamic God is called. This did not meet with everybody's approval and after several discordant and antagonistic years he was more or less obliged to flee with a small group of followers to the city of Medina—as it is now called—at the age of fifty two. Thus the Christian calendar year of 622 became the 'year zero' in the Islamic calendar."

  "Ah hah, so you have different calendars on your planet also."

  "Yes, we do. Now Mohammed continued preaching his religious philosophies and at the same time gradually formed a coalition of local tribes in the Medina area. He then began an eight-year conflict—involving plenty of slaughter—to fight his way back over the 450 kilometers to Mecca and conquer it. Quite a feat, if you think about it, an army of poorly trained, unprofessional soldiers winning battles against some of the major powers of the time, the Bezantines and the Sassanids among others."

  "Eight years for 450 kilometers."

  "Right, but don't forget the times we are talking about. Right now, they are planning the construction of a high-speed railway line between the two cities and Mohammed would have been able to cover the distance in a single day, in just over two hours in fact. Not that he would necessarily have wanted to return to Mecca nowadays, I don’t know.

  Oh? And why wouldn’t he?"

  “Because the Saudi Arabian Mecca is no longer Mecca. It is no longer possible to recognize it as Islam’s holiest city. The three million or so pilgrims who now visit each year could be forgiven for thinking they had landed in Las Vegas. The city has become a vast collection of skyscrapers served by large numbers of hotels and expensive shopping malls, all interconnected by multi-lane roads and their corresponding spaghetti junctions. In order to achieve this, the Saudis bulldozed ancient hills and mountains and numerous historical and religious buildings such as the Bilal mosque dating from Mohammed’s time. The house of Khadijah, the first of Mohammed’s many wives, has been turned into a block of toilets. The Makkah Royal Clock Tower is one of the world’s tallest buildings and is built on top of the remains of around 300 historically significant sites. The Makkah Hilton is built on top of the house of Mohammed’s close companion, Abu Bakr. And…”

  “But surely something is left, Peter? What do the pilgrims visit otherwise?”

  “Oh yes, there is something left, but not much. Many pilgrims now arrive in packaged tour groups and are consequently tied to their hotels. They participate in a mixture of guided shopping trips and guided visits to remaining historic sites. These include the Sacred Mosque and the Kaaba itself and the house where the prophet Mohammed lived. For a long time this house was used as a cattle market, and has since been converted into a library which, however, is not open to the public. The Saudi clerics fear that if allowed inside Mohammed’s house, the pilgrims would commit the unforgiveable sin of praying to the prophet rather than to Allah himself. And so, for various reasons, the calls for the demolition of these remaining sites continue. And the whole situation is aggravated, do I need say it, by the latent discontent between the Salafist brand of Saudi Islam and the many different pilgrims’ sects, all of which are rejected by the Salafists as being false ones.”

  "O.K. Peter. Interesting stuff. But you were describing the origins. Allah became, so to speak, the new God?"

  "Yes and no," I replied. "There are many experts who describe Christianity and Islam as sister religions. Certainly many of the personages in the Bible and the Koran are the same, including Old Testament personages, and their existence is acknowledged by both religions. This includes Jesus and his mother Mary, by the way, although Islam describes Jesus as being more a kind of apostle than a prophet. That is why Mohammed changed the direction of prayer away from Jerusalem and toward Mecca, by the way."

  "He did?"

  "Yes, he did.

  "So what are the big differences?"

  "There are no big differences. Just the minor ones of some humans kneeling when praying, others close to full stretch on the ground, others sitting, and others, including priests, pray standing up. Some face east, some look at the ground, and some face the sky (for example, certain soccer players as they make the sign of the crucifix and say thank you after scoring a goal).

  "No, I didn’t mean the differences in prayer customs. I meant the big differences between the religions, Peter."

  "Oh. Sorry. Well…there are equally as many experts who say that these are not sister religions, nor are their gods the same. These experts state that there are three major differences. The first one is that, for the Christians, their God is a Triune God, a three-in-one God, consisting of God himself, his Son—who appeared on Earth in human form—and something else called the Holy Ghost."

  "The Holy Ghost? What is that?"

  "I don't know."

  "O.K. I'll look it up."

  "In contrast, Mohammed was definitely a human being, rather than someone in human form, and he was not the son of the Islam God, Allah, who has never had any sons at all. Nor does Allah have any other partner within his domain. Mohammed, coincidentally, also had no sons, although he certainly married. In fact, he married eleven or twelve times.

  "Hmm…"

  Yes…now the second major difference, according to these experts, is that in the Christian religion you attain salvation—you are saved—if you don't sin. You are also saved if you do sin but then repent and request forgiveness, sincerely of course, of God and his Son. The Islamic Koran, on the other hand, says that your way to salvation is attained if your good deeds while on this planet heavily outweigh your other deeds."

  "According to all of these particular experts."

  "Yes, according to all of these particular experts. At the same time, good deeds and bad deeds are classified in a different manner. For example, Islamic law (Sharia) says that men are superior to women and may use physical violence against their wives if they do not behave in certain matters as the men would like them to. Under the same law, the penalty for a wife who commits adultery is death at the hands of the state. Death by stoning, no less, although nicer methods of execution are also allowed by certain of the Islamic sub-sects of which, by the way, there are over one hundred. Recently, a young woman was stoned to death for having had sex with three men. She claimed that the three men had raped her, but she couldn't prove it, so it was bad luck for her."

  "Not very compassionate."

  "No. But there is some kind of compassion. For example, another woman recently sentenced to death by stoning for adultery was allowed to have her death delayed until she had finished the breast-feeding of her newly-born child."

  "Hmm…"

  "Men, on the other hand, are permitted to have several wives."

  "That doesn't seem fair."

  "Oh, I don't know, it's in line with biological principles, among other things."

  "Biological principles?"

  "Yes. Now let me see, what would be an easy way to explain that to you? O.K…we are happy to put ten cows into a field together with a single bull. But we will not put ten bulls into a field together with just one cow. The latter would be unnatural. It would also have disastrous consequences. It is a biological matter. The male animal, in general, is not only by nature a polygamous animal, but is also, with some exceptions, more than ready to have sex with an adulterous female animal, irrespective of whether that adultery is willing or forced (as in the case of the ten bulls and the one cow)."

  "So you agree with Islamic law in this case?"

  "I neither agree nor disagree. Nor am I saying that the marriage law is based on purely sexual motives. There are other motives for marriage. Mohammed himself married some of his soldiers' widows in order to take over the responsibility for providing for them. So let us just say that I understand i
t, that I accept it."

  "And the third big difference?"

  "And the third big difference, according to these very same experts, is between the two religions' scriptures themselves and what they preach. But on this, these particular experts are factually wrong. It is the other way round. Both scriptures' teachings are in fact very similar."

  Is that an opinion of yours, Peter, or is it a fact?"

  "It is a fact."

  "That means that you are personally acquainted with the complete content of both these scriptures?"

  "I am indeed. I have read the Christian Bible and I have read the Islamic Koran. Both were actually compiled and collected—collated might be a better word—by human beings following the respective deaths of Jesus and Mohammed. The main subject dividing the opinions of the different groups of experts is the subject of tolerance. Tolerance toward others and, specifically, tolerance toward other religions—in other words, toward the 'non-believers' of each respective religion."

  "But the scriptures are similar, you say?"

  "Yes. If you read the Koran, you will find several passages which preach tolerance toward other religions. For example, Verse 32 in Chapter 5 states that whoever kills another human being is as guilty as if he had killed all of mankind. Furthermore, you will find that Allah is prepared to 'forgive' non-believers for not believing, on the condition, however, that they are prepared to repent and reject their previous beliefs. Nevertheless, there are also passages in the Koran, including the final teaching on this subject, which clearly state that Islam should be imposed by the use of force against all non-believers. By murdering them all, if necessary. A form of 'Jihad' is justified against the list of 'Unbelievers' (who are hence the enemies of Allah) and that list includes not only pagans but also Christians and Jews. One example of the many paradoxical teachings is Verse 92 in Chapter 4, which clearly states that a Muslim may not kill another Muslim. From which one must deduce that Muslims may kill non-Muslims."

  "And the Christian Bible contains similar views?"

  "Absolutely. Similar views or similar paradoxes, one should say. On the one hand, we have the 'turn the other cheek' passages. Jesus is quoted as telling us to 'love your enemies, do good to them which hate you, bless them that curse you, and pray for them which despitefully use you'. However, most Christians largely ignore this and follow the 'eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth' principle, also to be found in The Bible. Same paradoxes."

  "Did you say that the Christians largely ignore the love-your-enemy teachings?"

  "Indeed I did and indeed they do, and fortunately so in many cases. Otherwise, Hitler, or rather his successors, would currently be reigning supreme. The Holocaust murderers would not have been executed and their successors would have continued to apply their grisly skills to even broader swathes of the human population, and we would all—those of us allowed to survive, that is—be eating sauerkraut right now, a food which I personally happen to detest."

  "Ah hah, a joke."

  "Yes, Jeremy, but there are a lot of unfortunate examples of human beings using force—in particular, in order to impose their chosen religion on other members of the species. The Christian Crusades, The Christian Inquisitions, the Christian missionaries including the Protestants introducing the 'Word of God' into North America by committing genocide against hundreds of native Indian tribes, and of course we have the Islamic Holy Wars. And we don't stop there, we also have the use of force between the religious sub-divisions, the Catholics versus the Protestants in Northern Ireland, the Sunnites versus the Shiites, and all the rest of them."

  "So the two religions share a lot of similarities…"

  "Yes, but there are also plenty of dissimilarities. And these are not confined to who is the true God or the true prophet or whatever."

  "For example?"

  "For example, a Christian, even if he is a priest, is allowed to change his religion if he wishes to. This is not the case with Islam—worse still, the penalty is death. I remember reading the tale of Yousef Nadarkhani, an Iranian priest, married and the father of two sons, who converted from Islam to Christianity and who was subsequently arrested (in the year 2009) at the age of 32, and thrown into jail. The following year he was condemned to death by an Islamic court. Thanks to external political pressures, the execution was postponed and he was given another year to revert back to Islam or be executed. I don't know what eventually happened to him, but I am sure you can find out on the Internet. In any case, Jeremy, the enforcement of religious belief by force and violence is still alive and well on our planet."

  "Difficult to believe."

  "Maybe, but simple to check out. And there are plenty of smaller religions, Jeremy. And newer ones. Sikhism, for example, was founded in the Punjab region of India in the 16th century by a self-proclaimed guru who said that God had spoken to him. Further self-proclaimed gurus kept the religion going and the tenth guru founded Khalse, a Sikh sect. This god says that you may not remove any body hair, although doubt remains as to which of the various reasons given for this is the correct one. Head hair is wrapped in a cloth of about 5 meters in length. This cloth is called a turban. It also supposedly pressures the 26 bones of the skull, thus permitting the brain to concentrate more closely on spiritual thoughts. Or so I am told. And you may not use tobacco, alcohol or any other intoxicants. Nor may you eat the meat of an animal killed in the Muslim way. So I am told, anyway…"

  "Yes, yes" said Jeremy hastily, "But I don't think we need to go through any of your minor religions, Peter." He tugged at his shirt cuffs, fingered his cufflinks. Nervous. Had a business appointment soon perhaps?

  "O.K. The third largest religion on our planet is Hinduism."

  "No…no thank you, Peter. I think I have the general idea. One could say that each of these beliefs originated via a single human being—or perhaps, in the case of Jesus, a spirit in human form—who lived and travelled around the desert. Jesus stated that there was only one God and that he was his son. And Mohammed said that no, Jesus wasn't God's son at all. On the other hand God had spoken to him, Mohammed, when he got to be around forty years old, and he in fact was the true prophet of God. Of Allah."

  "Yes, that is a fair summary."

  "But you only have their word for it."

  "That is so."

  "And your species believes that what these two persons said about themselves is in fact true."

  "Not quite. Some believe in the one, some believe in the other, and some believe in other ones. And some don't believe in any of them. Our species is divided on this."

  "O.K. But the ones who believe don't actually know if it's true for a fact.

  "No, of course not, Jeremy. If they knew, they wouldn't be able to believe. In fact belief would be redundant. Religion depends on belief—believing what you're told. Oscar Wilde summed it up very well. ‘Religions’, he wrote, ‘die when they are proved to be true. Science is the record of dead religions.’"

  "O.K. So, sticking to the two big religions, Peter, the differing claims of the two main personages you mentioned have been perpetuated since then by other human beings who felt it was their responsibility to do so. But I have a couple of questions."

  "Go ahead."

  "If I understand correctly," continued Jeremy, "these religions state that God or Allah created the human animal, an animal which not only slaughters itself—war, murder, abortion, suicide—but also other animals, which in turn slaughter others, and so on in an intricate chain of non-stop death right down to the spider killing the fly. A ghastly Planet of Death, Daily Death. Now why would God or Allah or anybody else want to create something like that?"

  "Well, some of it is what we like to call the 'food chain', Jeremy, a nourishment system created by whichever god you happen to believe in," I said. "But the answer to your question is that I don't know."

  "You don't know. Well. Whichever god it is apparently also created you and the other animals as creatures requiring oxygen to breathe, water to remain hydrated, fuel to
renew energy (food you call it), systems to continuously remove all of these things after use—lungs, bladders, intestines and sphincters—and then bones, muscles and nerves to provide mobility, other complicated organs such as livers, kidneys and genitals, a system of neurons and electrical impulses to direct your actions, an entire arrangement of major and minor pipes to irrigate all the working parts with a mysterious fluid called blood, a pump to circulate this mysterious fluid, and so on. And the whole caboodle is inhabited by bacteria, full of defects and open to disease, cancer, breakdowns, suffering, death, cessation. Now why would anyone want to create something as complicated as that?"

  "I don't know."

  "And you were also designed to have to spend a third of your existence in a state of total unconsciousness—sleep as you call it—and if you don't, you die. Now, what possible purpose could anyone have had in wanting to create that?"

  "I don't know."

  "You don't know, but you hold everything to be possible?

  "Yes, and for that very reason—I don't know. I do not have the required information to reject the possibility of anything at all. Nor to query why anyone might want to create anything in the first place. I have no idea."

  "How about the Big Bang as an explanation?"

  "I don't reject that either. I just don't know. It could be possible, but again, I don't have the necessary information to understand how something which didn't exist in the first place could then explode. There must have been something there beforehand."

  "Oh yes, and indeed there was, Peter. Let me enlighten you on that. There have been countless big bangs in fact, over a period of time going back into what you might call infinity. But infinity is not a concept your species can grasp. You have to have a 'Beginning' and an 'End' to everything, you cannot conceive of anything else."

  O.K., so now I'll nail him. The past is one thing, the future is another. I wonder what kind of answer he is going to give me on this: "So what about the future, Jeremy, what about the fate of the universe?"

  He didn't pause for a second. He needed no time for consideration. The question was, for him, a simple one.

  "I read," he said, "that your cosmologists have many, many theories in that regard. At the current point in time, there appears to be a growing consensus among them toward the presumption that the universe is flat, and that as such it can, and probably will, continue to expand for ever and ever. This theory may or may not be allowed by their colleagues to survive, as it involves the as yet, for them, unacceptable concept of infinity. But they are right in one way, Peter. The ultimate fate of the universe is indeed dependent upon its shape. It is, however, also dependent upon the role dark energy will be playing as the universe ages. And your cosmologists' tentative conclusion is, due to their lack of knowledge, an incorrect one, I can assure you. What will happen is that there will be an implosion, a big bang in reverse so to speak, and then there will be another 'normal' big bang and so it will go on, a process repeating itself countless times on and on into infinity. One day your species will have to try to grasp and understand the concept of infinity.

  "Well…be that as it may," I said, "I cannot conceive of it, as you have correctly pointed out. But I can accept it as a possibility. And in any case, in your scenario, the big bangs may also be created by God or Allah or possibly by someone or something else."

  Jeremy smiled. A benevolent glance in my direction. In the direction of the ant colony.

  "Alright," he said, "let's leave it at that, Peter. I think we have covered the subject of beliefs quite sufficiently, and time is running out for me today. Could we deal perhaps with the topic of superstitions…in just a few words perhaps?"

  Oh yes, no need to worry about that. In very few words indeed. I need to get out of here. These meetings are not my kettle of fish. And in any case, I am in dire need of a cigarette. I am in dire need of two cigarettes. Three.

  "Yes, Jeremy. In addition to the beliefs, we have a lot of superstitions which, by the way, are also beliefs, but unfounded ones. Take the number 13, for example. In many parts of the world, people believe this to be an unlucky number. Many airlines do not allow a row 13 in their aircraft, presumably because they would lose business. Their customers would think that an aircraft with a row 13 would fall out of the sky. Some aircraft don't have a row 17 either, because that is also an unlucky number in countries such as Italy and Brazil, and such planes would also presumably fall out of the sky. Superstition rules and it serves no purpose to point out to superstitious humans that aircraft without these row numbers crash.

  And Friday the 13th is an unlucky date for most of us in Europe—but not if you're Spanish. In Spain, it is Tuesday the 13th. And I will not bore you with any of the more ludicrous superstitions—astrology, voodoo, tarot and the like—as it would be a waste of your time, Jeremy. But we also have many religious superstitions and a couple of examples of these may serve as useful illustrations."

  "Religious superstitions?"

  "Yes, we've always had these and we always will have them. I won't trouble you with the history of these things, sacrificing to the Sun Gods, killing 'witches' and so on, but here is an example from current times. A seven year old girl was ritually sacrificed—butchered in other words—in the Bijapur district of India in order to offer her liver to the gods holding sway in that area. According to the police, those responsible sincerely believed that the gods would accordingly provide them with a 'good harvest'. Note the word believe again, Jeremy. And, as their Gods undoubtedly said to them, a little girl and her liver is a small price to pay so that the rest of you can remain alive, right? It's a good deal in exchange for a good harvest, agreed? And—also in current times—a forty year old mother of two was burned alive in Nepal's capital, Kathmandu, by some of her relations whose religious beliefs had determined that she was a sorceress whose powers had enabled her to make her uncle seriously ill."

  "Well…and what about other parts of the world?"

  "Certainly. Let us take the country I live in, Germany. There are ongoing 'honor-killings'—year after year—usually, but not always, of young Islamic girls who adopt certain local social customs against their family’s wishes. Their murderers, fathers or brothers or uncles, seriously believe that in this way the family 'honor' will be protected or restored. This superstition is not to be found—I rush to point out—in the Koran. The desire and the will to murder members of your own family for this or any other reason is down to superstition, not religion."

  I know I’m becoming too detailed again, but never mind. I'll give him this one to ponder over as well.

  "Coincidentally, Jeremy, and purely as a matter of interest, there is currently an uproar in Germany about reduced court sentences for Islamic murderers and other Islamic criminals (compared to the sentences a German or other non-Islam person would receive) because of judgments referring to the 'religious and cultural considerations' deemed to have influenced the accused persons’ actions."

  "How eccentric. Stupid of course as well."

  I rushed onward. "And this ‘kill and restore honor’ superstition is not confined to a single religious group or to any specific country either. Take the U.K. for example. There are plenty of these male-dominated 'revenge' killings—revenge by men for having their personal wishes and their perceived power and authority ignored by female members of their family."

  Jeremy coughed. "Indeed."

  He was not wasting his time on words, that's for sure. Which suited me fine, the remorseless craving for a cigarette was becoming extremely serious. So just one more example to finish this off.

  "Another superstition is the one believed in by certain members of the Islamic religion—and in particular by their suicide bombers—namely, that they will be rewarded for their honorable deeds with 72 female virgins when they reach their heaven. This assertion, however, is also not to be found in the Koran, although—due to certain ambiguous translations of Verse 33 in Chapter 78—there are Muslims who would argue otherwise. Certainly,
the Koran makes mention of a variety of pleasurable delights awaiting the faithful upon their demise, but not the 72 virgins. In fact, Allah does not appear to offer a guarantee of even a single virgin. Or even a non-virgin."

  "Yes, well, it still sounds like a superior paradise to the Christian one in which you get to play the harp, wouldn't you say?"

  "Oh it does, Jeremy, it does, but only if you are a man. There is no superstition involving 72 young studs awaiting the ladies."

  "I see," Jeremy said. "Or rather, I don't. But I don't think I need any more on this subject. You have your religious beliefs and you have your unfounded superstitions, and the latter are in some cases also connected to a religion. An intriguing planet you have here, I must say, and each of our meetings confirms it. As usual, I will research the facts."

  Great. It sounded as if we were finished. Another interview over, another slice of the human pie explained. Facts, not opinions. Just the way things are.

  "We don't need to arrange the next meeting today, Peter. We have finished our main agenda and you have been successful in providing me with a condensed overview of the selected subjects. I need to take the advice of my professor regarding the content and form of our subsequent, more detailed, interviews. I will let you know as soon as that has been decided. In the meantime, you will no doubt give me a call to inform me of the outcome of tomorrow's meeting?"

  "Of course, Jeremy. Oh, and by the way, I shall be going back to Germany on Friday evening. But no problem, we will be in contact by phone, and I can fly over at any time if I need to meet with the authorities again, or for us to continue with our interviews."

  "That will be fine, Peter. And take care of our mobile please. I wouldn't want to be troubling my people for permission to computer-hack a message to you regarding our next meeting. For which, by the way, I would also need your personal agreement. I would never computer-hack you without that."

  He smiled, raised his eyebrows. "You have my agreement on that," I said, "but I'll be taking care of the mobile anyway, don't worry." Absolutely. No way was a lost mobile going to be the possible cause of another €400,000 sliding down the drain.

  I went out past Miss Monroe with a big smile, down into the street, and lit up the long-awaited cigarette to accompany me on my way to the Dog and Duck. Miss Monroe might have been thinking it was a pity I didn't stop to chat, or, alternatively, she might not. She might have a boyfriend, she might be in the middle of a huge love affair. Or she might have a girlfriend, always a possibility in this day and age, as we all know. But I am not—at the moment—interested. Céline is still affecting my mood. Maybe next week. Or perhaps not, perhaps later in the year. Because the dream, Jane, would be back in her place again next week.

  DAY 21

  I woke up early, plenty to do today. Grey sky again. I skipped breakfast, just two cups of Lavazza, picked up the car from the garage, and headed off to Slough.

  I opened the sun roof and lit up a cigarette. It was not only a grey day but a windy one and a not very warm one—and so your dedicated smoker has cigarette ash blowing all over his car and he freezes into the bargain. But such is life, we all have a price to pay for our sins. Nevertheless, and invisible as it usually is for the Brits, the sun was indeed up there, no doubt about it, burning merrily away on its suicidal road to death and keeping every single one of us warm, and therefore alive, while doing it. Good to know.

  The 'Clark's Industrial Adhesives and Fasteners PLC' sign was still looking good. The building itself was still looking dilapidated—we'll be fixing that along with other things when more of the profits are banked—and the guy at the front desk was still looking unhappy. Mind you, this time he had good reason to be, his salary would be less at the end of this month than it had been in the prior month.

  I went to see Fred and apologized for the fact that I would not be staying for a parting lunch. "Don't worry, Peter," he said, "you are continuing in a revised role anyway. We'll do it further on down the road." And he thanked me for my work, and I thanked him for his cooperation and for 'putting up with me'—humble pie, sincere or otherwise, a useful lubricant for keeping the wheels of social and professional relationships turning smoothly—and then I toured around saying thanks, see you again soon, to Charlie, Ron and all the others, right down to the machine operators and the office staff, but excluding, of course, the cow. She wouldn't have appreciated it anyway, and she would have shown it, which might have caused me to lose control and tell her that she would be more gainfully occupied in a field together with ten bulls. Or, if I wanted to be nice about it, five bulls. Or, if I wanted to be nice to the bulls, in a field on her own. But I did say goodbye to the guy at the front desk. Poor unhappy sod, his mother should have thrown him away and kept the stork.

  I smoked another cigarette and admired the sign again. Yes, I know what some people might think; but I am just one of those people who happen to regard a large and well-designed sign as a very fine thing. It's just the way I am. Nobody needs to worry about it.

  I drove back to the hotel in London. I called Monika and told her I would be back early Saturday morning, but that I would then be sleeping until about midday. Too cold and windy for walking, so I took a cab and had it wait while I collected and paid for my gifts for Roger and Geoff tomorrow. And then it was back to the hotel again. I checked out my MOD destination, set my mobile alarm for 4 p.m. and fell asleep.