WDPS

by

Ray Griffiths

Part One of Two

PART ONE"Freeze a Jolly Good Fellow"

- CHAPTER ONE -

Connell brought the effulgently coloured Europarl cruiser to a smooth halt and suspended it lightly beside a startlingly white docking tower that stood stark and naked against a coal black sky.

The cruiser's external com-plug spat long delicate pencil beams of piercing green light at the tower and locked into the tower's com-plate. The intercom crackled. Its the most advanced technology on earth but intercoms still crackle.

"Welcome to Exeter south periph," a voice said. "From here we would wish you to take the walkway, or hoverrail as you prefer, as we can allow no private vehicles in Central."

Connell snorted.

With a loud smack a large transparent snake hit the side of his cruiser about where his crew door was. Concerned, Connell looked round.

"We find your door is locked" said the voice.

Saying nothing, Connell turned back and drummed his fingers lightly on the controls.

"We wish you to unlock your door so Berran can assist you with your luggage."

Connell snorted again. "Berran a DRU?" he asked shortly.

There was no reply.

"Is Berran a DRU?" he asked again, louder.

"Unfortunately we find your door is still locked."

Connell was almost shouting now. "Berran? Is Berran a DRU?"

"We will compensate for any damage."

"Shit!" Connell snatched hastily at the controls and swung the cruiser rapidly away dipping its nose as he did so. The com-plug pencil beams snapped off just as a searing white laser fizzed from the tower and hissed overhead.

"Shit! Bloody close," Connell muttered and hit the acceleration factor.

His cruiser cut in: "Factor ten? Bloomin' hell Connell, are you crazy?"

"Just fucking do it, will you?"

The some people that's how it appeared to were the Seventh Europarl Committee on Security and The Seventh Europarl Committee on Security had sent Connell to find out why things like this were appearing to them.

"Why me?" he had asked.

"Why not?" they had countered.

It was a single person in fact who had said "Why not?" and was supposedly speaking collectively, and it was to Connell's shame he did not know the name of the man sitting behind the big desk on the twelfth floor who said it; he did not know his name or his position beyond the height of his desk counted in floors that, in terms of unofficial hierarchy, meant he was probably very important indeed.

It was also shaming Connell now to realise that the unnamed official who had shamed him the first time smug in his high office, blue suit and desk the size of a cruiser workshop, was probably ten years younger than he was. Which is why retirement seemed such an attractive option to him at the moment.

Anyway, McKinnon and Sharron before him might easily have asked exactly the same question: "Why us?", but unfortunately they had not returned to be able to discuss it further. Like the sailing ships of history, they too had disappeared.

No-one could put a precise date on it and indeed, to Connell's knowledge, no-one had tried to, but the lock- had begun approximately three or four months ago. That's what they called it, 'the lock-', with an unattached hyphen dangling at its end, because whether it was a lock-in or a lock-out was as yet unknown: McKinnon and Sharron had been dispatched to discover which.

Now Connell had been dispatched to find out why.

The fact that McKinnon and Sharron's 'which' question remained unnervingly unanswered was offhandedly dismissed in the name of investigative progress by the Seventh Europarl Committee on Security as being totally irrelevant. The Seventh Europarl Committee on Security liked progress and had a thing about dismissing irrelevancies bordering on manic.

So here he was.

Edgar Connell though of himself as being only thirty-eight; which meant he was thirty-eight the 'only' being a desperately selfish attempt to attach more emphasis to the thirty than to the eight. He had thinning sandy hair, light freckled skin, an anatomical arrangement of muscle that gave him the body of an athlete, and an accidental arrangement of facial muscle that gave him a permanently lop-sided grin. His driving ambition in life he had suddenly realised walking away from the office of the un-named man, was to survive to forty-two and retire. Survival on these terms meant the precise execution and administration of his job in the most economical and efficient manner, whilst giving the convincing appearance of having slogged his heart out. His job was Euro-security and the Seventh Europarl Committee on Security liked those whose hearts appeared to have been well and truly slogged.

In the rear viewscreen he could see the jutting, luminous white finger of Exeter Periph. No doubt somewhere within it was the frustrated DRU called Berran. Below, the gentle curve of the city's dome came steadily creeping into view.

The cruiser skimmed the dark trees to the north of the city and pulled itself up over the ancient and unpopulated village of Stoke Canon, now owned by Euro Heritage, whose church offered up its ruined square Saxon tower in final sacrifice to the untreated atmosphere. From the air Connell could make out the geometric lines of an old land road and the darkly stepped outlines of a narrow stone bridge that once spanned the river Exe before traffic separated finally with the drudgery of gravitational pull. The river glistened softly beneath.

Turning again towards the south Connell brought the cruiser to a halt after a few miles. Thoughtfully he pondered the white walls and gently curving opaque dome of Exeter.

"You should complete pink report sheet number E-52rE," interjected the cruiser's hurt voice: "Reason for excessive use of resource energy."

"Fuck off," said Connell, amiably.

The cruiser sulked.

If there was one thing Connell hated more than a sulky AI computer, he mused, it was a sulky AI computer with legs, and he wondered why luggage-toting DRU's such as Berran had freedom of movement in Exeter while humans, apparently, had not.

It was time to find another way in.

- CHAPTER TWO -

Euro emerged as the dominant political superpower around the middle of the twenty-first century by beginning its march towards unification at the end of the twentieth. Soviet Russia (position 383.2 sec, Martin's Orbital Video Atlas) had looked solid and unassailable; but due to mistakes in interpretation of communism-versus-dictatorship algorithms it rapidly and dramatically skidded into political oblivion and joined the grey never-never collection of so-called third-world countries.

Initially, many names were argued over by which to call itself; Europe United, favoured by a misguided illiterate majority, was originally selected by its nervous leaders in hope of an enthusiastic and rowdy following. Quite quickly Europe United got its act together and rose in meteoric splendour to world domination, before changing its name eventually to the more simpler Euro that, to those who welcomed such economies of language and applauded a higher sense of intellectuality, sounded less like a third-division football club and more like an organisation that knew where it was going.

Around that time, the brief country known as the United States of America (294.7 sec, MOVA) -- or, to use the verbal neoterism popular during that period, the 'Ewe-essay' (thought by some to be associated with sheep and their unproved writing skills) -- had been another dominant political superpower, but found itself outmatched and outclassed by a superior wealth of culture and solid depth of knowledge that the new Europe United brought into play and slipped gracefully (some say gratefully) into the shadows. It was to degenerate further over the following years and fell ignominiously into bloody revolution and civil war during the early half of the second millennium and the last anyone heard from the shores of that once great nation was that civil war had subdivided into colonial war between former States over territorial boundaries and the right to worship a minor deity named Mickey, often represented graphically as a horrid, misshapen rodent with large black ears, thereby putting an end to its short but dazzling days as world leader and sealing the lid on any hope it may have had of climbing back.

As in other territorial declines history shows that the members of the intellectual classes of this torn country were (at first) filled with an overwhelming feeling of anger and national pride that this was happening to their country in general; then felt overwhelmed by a tide of anger and national hatred that it was happening to them in particular; followed closely by a feeling of subjective collective guilt ("Y'know, couldn't we have all just done something?"); and (finally) the strongest and noblest sense of all -- that of survival. In a buzzing, hive-like frenzy of activity they rallied en masse at sticky seaside ports around the coast and shamelessly slaughtered each other in order to obtain the best poolside aerobic instructors, the best on-board cuisine and the best skiiwear designer-sunglasses before embarking without a backwards glance on luxury trans-Atlantic liners in order to seek better prospects abroad.

Thus began the New Era, with rats leaving the sinking nation.

Most of America's farmers emigrated to Australia along with a handful of miners and, incongruously, the entire indigenous population of remaining American Red Indians who took the view that to do unto others as they had done unto you was after all a good idea and immediately set about robbing remaining Aborigines of their lands and cattle then embarked on a scheme to eradicate the entire continent of its kangaroos. America's scientists went to Germany thus reversing a trend that began after the Second World War many of whom were found to be using the excuse that in spite of being several generations on, they were feeling dreadfully homesick. And a few went to Belgium.

Among those Americans emigrating to Belgium was the eminent scientist Susan Bakuhm who up until that time had been the leading psychologist at American United Robots Inc. She made her way north from Brussels and eventually settled for a minor position in the heavy industry sector of Antwerp and, in the wrathful manner with which she has been long associated (see: The Return of the Vamp's Ire by M. C. Swarbrick, Smiley International), began angrily reconstructing her career at the Piérre Bonniére Joli Chaudière factory. Within five years she had turned her fortune around and circumstantially caused a huge slump in the market for copper hot-water cylinders; she had also put Belgium well and truly on the map as the world's foremost producer of professional and domestic robots. Belgium's close neighbour, France, was, as their custom, none too pleased about this economic upstart on their doorstep and were suitably affronted, but ultimately their offence percolated into pure gallic arrogance when they realised with glee that probably the best place to manufacture robots was after all in Belgium, as they could afford to be even more insulting towards Belgium tourists while seemingly honest in their innocently shrugged excuses of not knowing which was which.

Another major difficulty facing Euro was that of choosing a common language; each member nation was inextricably entrenched within the greater structure of Euro and unquestionably wholly committed to its greater good, but still desired (naturally) to preserve some part of its own national heritage and language by not wishing to have forced upon it (for whatever constitutional reason) the shame of having to send its citizens back to school to learn some other bugger's. Money was no problem, at least it was no problem in the sense of standardisation; the common unit of currency, confusingly also called the Euro (the nervous leaders were completely constipated when sitting on the bucket of originality), had been in circulation for some time.

So money was no problem but the language was. In the end those same nervous leaders decided to allow the three dominant languages -- English, French and German -- to fight it out among themselves and since language has no known means by which it can win a fight (sticks and stones may break my bones but names...etc.), the nervous leaders unwittingly triumphed by assuring that the rest of the world would remain confused and uncertain when dealing with the language of Euro officials and its businessmen, a condition most major conglomerates within Euro fostered with enthusiasm in order to have an edge; a technique already perfected with amazing financial success by such multi-lingual countries as Switzerland and the now incredibly rich capitalist China.

Anyway, as Connell slumped in the doorway on Exeter University's Campus it wasn't the urgently whispered German interrogative "Was is dis?" that shook him so much as the fact that someone had managed without him hearing to creep up close enough to utter it in the first place.

"You're going out dressed like that?" jeered the cruiser.

He walked carefully back through the woods and entered the dome at the point where it crossed the river by wading into the chilly waters of the Exe and diving silently beneath its thick, blunt lower edge. Many think differently, but domes are not designed to be impenetrable; specifically they are put in place over towns and cities as an envelope to control radiation.

Connell surfaced on the other side during a particularly heavy period of overnight rain, so climbing out of the river and onto the dark deserted walkway offered little by way of change. And the walkway was off. Coughing and spluttering up the steep, grassy bank he cursed alternatively the walkway and then the rain; then he cursed himself for not looking up the local schedules. Miserably he squelched off along Cowley Bridge Road on foot heading towards the centre of the city, water seeping into his clothing and that dribbled disconcertingly down the small of his back where it began to approach parts that he prided himself on having kept dry since a baby.

Cowley Bridge Road became New North Road; from a great height majestic ancient houses looked menacingly down on him, dark and still and foreboding, and the little light there was made dancing pin-point reflections of subdued mosaic colours on the build-plas sheathing as the rain fell. Connell glanced at his watch; it was two-thirty in the morning. There was no sign of life anywhere, just the steady drip-drip of rain. No sign of life might just have been normal for this time of the morning but, unable to tie any substance to the thought, Connell considered there was a sinister quality that unnaturally attached itself to the street and its uneasy quiet.

Five minutes later the rain stopped and the silence became stunningly eerie.

Connell walked faster; his eyes smarting as he strained to see in the dark. For no good reason other than it would no longer take him in a straight line (Connell had a particular dislike of straight lines ever since being the victim of one; two years ago a stray satellite radio beam had missed its intended target -- a space mirror deflector -- and triggered a minor explosion at his house in Dublin by inadvertently keying the same initialiser code into the exploding bolts of his SOSN power housing) he turned left into Prince of Wales Road, a direction that according to a fixed-position hoversign floating on the corner would take him past the University Campus. There would certainly be something happening there, he thought.

Exeter University was founded as long ago as 1955 although previously it had been a College of Art for over a hundred years and is the oldest surviving traditional university in Euro. Once revered, names such as Oxford, Cambridge, the Sorbone, and the hardly begun universities of America, Harvard and Yale (history often confuses the latter with an early mechanical locking system constructed from metal levers and opened by a complicated wiggly edged piece of flat, grooved metal or a simple plastic card -- not the same thing as a university at all), all have long disappeared from the academic language, succumbing either to the ravages of time or simply crumbling away from neglect as modern teaching methods such as 3-D-V or Slumberlearn superseded them. Its not a well-known fact but the CGBV (Campaign to Give 'Bots the Vote) office is housed in Cambridge within what was historically known as Pembroke College.

The early part of the twenty-third century saw a fashionable re-emergence of curiosity into traditional learning methods; so it was with great delight that Exeter University's 245-acre Streatham Campus was found to have survived largely intact, more by sleepy disinterest than by any deliberate intent. It was lavishly restored, re-equipped and accorded the mantle mens sana in corpore sano, to which pompous and completely unintelligible motto its subsequent huge success was duly accredited; and it was accredited by virtue of the overwhelming evidence of the sheer volume of young people who were going into full time education no longer just to get laid, but to seriously think about other things before getting laid.

So it was that the Schools of the University were able to enter modern life and with much commercial accomplishment and into so many profitable fields. Fields that became internationally recognised; fields that included amongst its curriculum cosmetic genetics, cyberphilosophy, non-violent fund raising and the organically regenerating turkeyburger; forgetting of course the unfortunate period when an organisation known as Weightsavers filched formulae engineered by the University's genetic laboratories, formulae that enabled the height of any individual to be altered at will, and the awful embarrassment as Weightsavers abandoned as anyway being pointless their own fundamental axiom, that of attempting to adjust people's weight in ratio to their height by correct diet, and began instead a policy of attempting to adjust people's height to their weight. Although the practice has long since been outlawed, there are still many artificially tall and (sadly) hopelessly fat people to be found desperately hunting through clothing stores for something four meters long in a size sixteen.

But when Connell squelched up Prince of Wales Road at two o'clock in the morning in the pitch black and turned left onto the university campus there was nobody around anywhere, tall, fat, or otherwise. Recalling his own student days and their numerous extra-curricular activities after dark, Connell, to say the least, was completely confounded. There was not a sign of life. Streatham Farm, Hatherly, Northcote House, the Great Hall, they were all locked, they were all dark, they were all quiet. Not even a security light broke the monotony of black buildings.

After several frustrating circuits of the grounds during which he saw and heard absolutely nothing, and unsure of what to do next, Connell slumped tiredly against a dark doorway at the top of steps leading to the Northcote Theatre, now an out-of-body experience centre according to the posters; the rising ground afforded reasonable vantage over the silent, dark buildings and he wanted time to think. And that's where, while he was thinking, not ten centimetres away from his left ear somebody suddenly muttered rudely into it in German:

"Was is dis?"

Connell -- almost literally -- hit the roof. "Holy shit!" he screamed.

"Hush, you pig, they'll hear you!"

"Double holy shit!" muttered Connell, quieter, when he landed. She hadn't been there a second ago he could have sworn, in fact he just had. "Holy shit," he said again as he saw her for the first time.

She was aged around twenty, he guessed, dark-haired, and from what he could see quite attractive. He took a moment to catch his breath and look closer. She was wearing a dark-coloured top and long billowing skirt, the type of loose baggy clothing universally popular among students who unexpectedly found themselves too old for school but realised they were there anyway: a kind of disguise, not so much to be unrecognisable to anyone who might know them but to be unrecognisable to themselves. And this student spoke very angry English with an even angrier German accent.

"What is this? Who are you?" she demanded of him.

Connell was more used to asking questions than to answering them; recovering his composure he chose to do both: "My name's Connell, miss, Euro Security," and he switched on his holo badge to prove it. "Who are you?"

The girl student wrinkled her nose as though something distasteful had been held under it; maybe it had. Connell switched his badge off.

"Oh, you're one of those," she said withdrawing and stepping backwards, she rocked gently on her heels, her hair swaying with the movement: "Why can't you people stop poking in your noses? You're not wanted here, can't you see that? There's nothing you can do, so get out while you can."

Connell tried to remember if he had been poking in his nose lately; he decided he hadn't and that he was much too busy with his current task to worry about personal hygiene. He tried again. A certain protocol had to be carried through and Connell was nothing if not thorough. He stepped closer, the girl stopped rocking and remained perfectly still where she was: "I'm sorry, I didn't catch your name," Connell said, amiably with just a tiny hint of menace.

"That's because I didn't throw it." She raised her eyebrows.

Now it was the girl's turn to study Connell. What she saw pleased her, his smile was disarming, almost boyish. He reminded her of home for some reason, and god knew that's where she'd choose to be right now given the choice.

"Well, you are cuter than most," she said finally, flatly. But she didn't say than most what. Probably riffraff, Connell though. "My name is Myrtle Baumback" she continued, "And I'm a student from Berlin, studying projected electrostatically-generated moveable fields. Now, piss off"

Connell ran a hand through his sandy hair, to free it from where it was wetly sticking to his forehead, his gaze fixed on the shadowy face before him. The protocol thing hadn't worked out and he had a gut feeling he didn't have much time, she needed some of the rougher stuff maybe, she didn't look that tough, and he thought a bit of calculated swearing might do the trick. "Look," he growled getting his voice into tractor pitch, "All I want to know is what the fuck is happening here? Where the fuck is everyone? This place has ten fucking thousand students listed resident and there's not a fucking soul anywhere. So what the fuck is going on?"

Myrtle considered this. "Did you know the fucking others," she asked evenly, pleasantly, "Mac somebody or other and the creepy one, the one with the girl's name and silicon implants."

Connell was taken aback. "Implants?"

"Yes. Did you know them?"

"McKinnon and Sharron?"

"Yes, that's who. Did you know them?"

"Implants?" This was news.

Connell changed tack; it would score points to bring back information on the missing agents, however sordid, and canteen gossip had been very bland of late. "So where are they?" he asked rubbing his hands.

"Don't ask."

Connell sighed. Now it seemed was time for the really rough stuff.

He reached out and caught hold of her, snatching the coarse material of her jumper beneath her throat and bunching it tightly in his fist: "Look lady -- "

"But you can call me Myrtle," she interjected, sweetly, rising lightly on her toes, "Because we've been introduced and -- "

"Look lady, I do not have the time for this, okay? Something is happening here and I do not have -- "

What Connell was about to say was: "And I do not have the patience to control my highly trained urge to find out by other means." It was a standard line and usually worked with innocents like Myrtle which is how he assessed her, but he never got to finish it. And he never got to finish it because Myrtle the Innocent with surprising strength and expertise had taken him completely by surprise by buckling his legs beneath him with a vicious short stabbing side kick and, instead of running when he let go of her (which in her place is what he would have done), was now in the process of throwing herself bodily on top of him and lowering him rapidly to the floor. Connell might have protested but at the same time as he was being lowered, his face and jaw were being held rigid in an excruciatingly painful arm lock. Connell instead concentrated on a higher priority, that of landing more or less in one piece.

With some measure of success towards the latter Connell finished falling, ending his descent heavily lying flat on his back with his face turned away from the doorway, his head held firmly in the arm lock, and with Myrtle's other arm reaching knowledgeably between his legs and securely and quite disconcertingly tightening around some of his more vulnerable bits.

"One sound, and you'll be a soprano again," she spat in his ear, somewhat melodramatically.

Taking careful consideration of this, Connell decided a course of no action might be appropriate, that was to say he felt obliged for the time being to do as Myrtle ordered. Her perfume though, eluded him. Roses, he thought, or honeysuckle.

A movement at the edge of his vision caught his attention. Something was travelling along the road to the left of the doorway.

Perhaps it was help, he thought. But what Connell saw was not help, it was a small hovervan, of the type used at night by cleansing departments; he could hear now its distinctive buzz as it swung from side to side, occasionally halting its swing to skim smoothly over the walkway and examine some hidden corner. It passed directly below their doorway and Connell was able to make out the letters 'EDPS' stencilled crudely onto its side before it passed from his somewhat restricted field of view. He relaxed, it was neither help nor danger.

Myrtle tightened her grip.

Connell sucked in his breath again.

And Myrtle didn't let go until the hovervan had turned away towards Cornwall House and Lafrowda Flats and in his mind Connell had begun to sing practice scales for Oh for the Wings of a Dove. Only when it had been out of sight for some minutes did she let go her hold.

"Who was that?" Connell asked conversationally from the floor. Actually it was a few minutes later when he asked the question, after he'd been released, but hadn't yet moved; and he asked the question when he was able to speak again partly to make contact, partly from the sheer joy of being able to speak again, and partly to reassure Myrtle that she hadn't hurt him too badly; but more so to see if his voice had been unbroken from testosterone starvation. It sounded a bit squeaky.

"No friends of yours," said Myrtle, standing brushing dust from her clothes, "You must have made some noise coming in. They were looking for you." She stood above him, looking down. Connell felt her eyes on him but felt no threat despite what had happened. "If you weren't so cute," she said, "I might have let them find you."

Connell eased himself to a sitting position. "McKinnon and Sharron, did 'they' get them too?" One thing at a time, he told himself, one thing at a time.

"Sure. They knocked at the front door. They were pretty stupid."

Connell picked himself up. As an interrogation technique, sitting or lying on the floor beneath your subject was not one that gave any psychological advantage, not that Connell believed he had any hope of an advantage just yet. There was still too much he didn't know. "And the letters on the van?" he asked, dusting himself off, "EDSP? What do they stand for?"

"EDPS", Myrtle corrected, stepping back, watching him closely. "Exeter and District Preservation Society." She put her hands into her pockets and sighed. "And if you want to know more, and I have a nasty suspicion you do, you had better come back to my flat. We can talk there."

She pulled one of her hands from its pocket and held it out to him. "Here, put this on your wrist."

Connell looked down "What is it?"

"Bloody hell, Connell, don't you do anything without an argument? Put it on. Hurry!"

Connell took what looked like a small old-fashioned wrist-watch from her hand; its elasticised band fitted neatly over his own and slid onto his wrist. The face of the watch appeared to be black and it had several small buttons around its circumference.

Myrtle rolled up her sleeve and Connell saw she was wearing a similar instrument. "You press the red one on the right," she said. "Now."

She likes me, thought Connell.

And disappeared.

- CHAPTER THREE -

Connell was incredulous. "People?" He sat forward. "What do you mean, people?"

Connell was sitting, tray on lap, at one end of a large dark green leather sofa that was standing at one end of an expensive matching green-and-gold threaded rug that was lying in the middle of the floor of Myrtyle's flat; and Myrtle was sitting uncomfortably close next to him.

The 'flat' was anything but, and had many such large lumps of furniture majestically sticking up from its polished wooden floor; some which, like the sofa, stood on expensive rugs. It was in fact a magnificently large room in a splendidly large house built in Streatham Drive just after the second millennium to celebrate the coronation of Charles III. Its architectural style, Connell noticed as he was whisked inside, was Personal Viewpoint, much sought after, and much more so than those constructed during the later Charlian Age; it was truly magnificent.

It was once the home of the vice-chancellor of the university, Myrtle explained proudly and, Connell thought, rather nervously, allowing him only a single quick glance at the facade and an even more fleeting glimpse of the interior as she dragged him rapidly through the hallway and then hauled him firmly up the stairs; and since the vice-chancellor would not be needing it for some time, she explained marching him towards her room, she had moved in.

The room she had chosen for herself was a sitting room on the second floor, giving her an excuse to use the quaint old-fashioned student terminology and call it a flat.

On the walls, in places, somebody (presumably Myrtle because Connell thought the vice-chancellor would have had more sense) had hung radical holoposters expounding the rights of robots in plain English, French and German, and bemoaning their low slavery status in plain English, French and German, and calling strongly for reform in plain etc, etc, etc.

"Well," Myrtle said defensively when Connell laughed at the posters, "Somebody has to stick up for them."

Connell left it at that. For the time being anyway. He had learned that Myrtle was a force not to be reckoned with. Instead he examined the rest of the room while Myrtle persuaded an ageing food reconstitutionaliser resting in a corner to dispense some ageing food and a little modern drink.

The vice-chancellor, apparently, did not go in for technology. The room was stately and sober, a nod to the tradition of those in exhaulted positions, and postulated austerity -- down the ages university officials had been renowned for their austerity, so it was only right that a position so resurrected should continue with tradition -- and kept totally in character with the style of Personal Viewpoint; even the viewscreen was a smallish black plastic box in the corner and not the usual full wall job. To complete the illusion of a bygone era, a real multi-layered glass window looked out over the shadowy auto-tennis peeping from beneath giant swaying oaks.

Myrtle pulled Connell away from the window and dragged two hanging sheets of fabric across it, she steered him towards the sofa. "Here," she said brightly, handing him a tray, "Its synthetic meat, real I think, and a new species of unirradiated seaweed."

"Tasty," said Connell, and went for the drink that looked like it might be whisky.

And that was when, more by way of making light conversation than pursuing any official line of enquiry, Connell had asked Myrtle why a hovervan from the Cleansing Department had caused her so much panic and himself so much pain.

Patiently, because it seemed to her pretty obvious Connell had a low detail threshold, Myrtle explained that the hovervan no longer belonged to the Cleansing Department and why was he too dammed thick to remember that? It belonged to the EDPS. And when, just to prove to her that he could remember what the initials stood for, Connell had asked Myrtle jokingly what the Exeter and District Preservation Society had been preserving at that time of night, she had answered him quite seriously that it was people.

"What do you mean, people?" he asked again.

"Listen," she began, lowering her untouched tray carefully onto the floor and turning to him, "How's your history?"

Connell inwardly groaned.

"It was 2050 or thereabouts," Myrtle continued unwavering, "That the first full-scale production of domestic robotic units -- DRU's -- began and all ethical and religious arguments were swept casually aside. To be answered later, they said. Do you realise," Myrtle scowled, "That despite the Partial Rights Act of 2131 that these arguments still have not been answered?" She waved her hand loosely in the air. "Never mind, its an unrelated point. Anyway, we know that Susan Bakuhm was operating out of Belgium by the late 2060s and all production had switched from United Robots Inc to the Piérre Bonniére factory by the year 2073."

Myrtle paused in her lecture and leant her head against the back of the green sofa, she turned her eyes towards the ceiling and carefully placed her hands on her lap steepling her fingers, pointing them away from her stomach. It seemed an unnatural pose for her and Connell assumed it was one she'd copied from a lecturer. He placed his tray on the floor next to hers, the food untouched, the drink unfinished. It hadn't been whisky after all.

"What has never been known, of course," Myrtle continued, her head tilted so far up she was seemingly addressing somebody at the back of the room -- so much so that Connell actually turned to see if anyone was there, "Is the exact date when the IRF of robots -- that's intelligent reasoning factor -- was increased by the power of ten, and increased, I might say, contrary to United States regulations under which DRU production was originally licensed."

Connell was fascinated; he loved the way Myrtle sounded her w's. Her English was fluent and free of accent but it was the w's that gave it away, hinting at her Germanic origin. Unaware of his silent appraisal Myrtle held her pose and continued addressing her unseen audience; an audience that Connell would like to have seen too had there been one, that way his problems in finding where everyone in Exeter had gone might well be over. Instead, as Myrtle was the only person he could find, he was listening and hanging on to her every word. So far as he was aware, it was the truth.

"We do know, however, that by the time production was under way in Belgium, the robot was a very different person to his predecessor, so although we do not know the time of this change, we can make an educated guess as to the identity of the instigator of that change." Myrtle paused. "And yes, I do use words like 'person' and 'he' when talking about robots. They've become almost human, you see. In some instances more than human."

While she paused Connell took the opportunity to finish his drink which was still not whisky. Looking wistfully towards the corner he wondered vaguely if something in the machine could be reset.

"In fact," Myrtle said, "The single precedental theological argument that gave pace to the Partial Rights Act of 2131, unsatisfactory as the Act was, and which became the core of much further debate, was that, as a self-regenerating conscious entity, robots should be accorded all the lawful respect and advantages of a similarly reasoning human being. Now, as far as I can see, the counter argument here is that, as its creator, should not human beings have been accorded by the robot all the spiritual respect and omnipotent advantages of being God? Its an interesting argument, don't you think?"

Myrtle unsteepled her fingers and laid her hands flat on her lap, she leaned forward to give emphasis to her argument. To Connell it was obvious she had thought of it herself and was quite taken by its implications. Also to Connell the vision of man being the divine being to whom robots turned for guidance was one that was currently paralleling Connell's rough understanding of Dantes vision of hell. If the example of Man was the one she was suggesting others should look up to, then the level they were looking up from must be pretty desperate. He was also profoundly disappointed that his (apparent) new found divinity did not include the ability to change water into whisky and he returned his glass to the floor and turned to find Myrtle looking straight at him.

"Still," she said, "This doesn't explain their behaviour here in Exeter, does it."

"No," agreed Connell, glad to be allowed participation and sensing that she might be getting to the point at last.

Myrtle snapped her fingers making him jump: "Quick! What are the three laws of robotics?"

Connell was up to this, along with the rest of the population it was something he'd learned at school by rote. "One," he began immediately, " A robot --" But he was allowed to go no further.

"That'll do," interrupted Myrtle flapping a hand at him while Connell scowled, mouth open. "That's the one. That's the one that's causing the problem."

She completed the rest of the First Law for him: "'A robot may not injure or cause injury to a human being, or, through its own inaction, allow harm or cause harm by any means whatsoever, implied or real, to a human being'." Myrtle shook her head. "That it hasn't caused problems before," she said, "Can only be wondered at. Its so full of holes."

Connell nodded and closed his mouth. She hasn't spoken to anyone for quite a while, he thought.

"Right, time for more history!" chirruped Myrtle happily as she tucked her legs beneath her, turning her body right round to face him. "But this time, recent history."

"Than god for that," muttered Connell, who thought Myrtle was beginning to behave normally at last. "But in view of what you just said, shouldn't I really be thanking us for that?"

Myrtle ignored him. "About eighteen months ago," she began, much more relaxed, "Exeter University took delivery from Belgium of a professional robotic unit -- a PRU -- in the form of a specialised teaching robot. Its name was Phil Lecten, short for philosophy lecturer grade ten. Its purpose, his purpose, Phil's purpose, was to teach and research philosophy at a level not before attempted by a robot, and in this respect it was a very innovative move by the school."

At last, thought Connell, focusing all his attention on Myrtle, here it comes.

"Well, anyway, it went very smoothly for a few months, and Exeter was turning out PhD's by the truckload, you may have heard about it. Then, as part of his compulsory research program, Phil came across what he thought was an anomaly within the First Law. To begin with he tried to reason his way through the dilemma by referring to the Second Law: 'A robot, except when the order conflicts with the First Law, must obey without question any order given to it by a human being' -- what a bloody pompous and egotistical law that is," Myrtle objected, making a grimace.

She shook her head in wonder before going on. "But Phil couldn't reconcile the Second Law with what he took to be a fundamentally flawed element of the First. It only made things worse. So he found himself faced with a terrible moral conflict. He turned to the University Chaplaincy for advice and spent several weeks under their ministration. But they couldn't help him. They provisionally interpreted his plight as a test of evil, but not even the Chaplaincy was sure if robots could be considered to be affected by such a thing and they went into seclusion to debate the issue meanwhile directing Phil to pray for a soul they were not sure he had. Of course it did no good at all. When that failed him he decided the only action was one of self-remedy, after all the Partial Rights Act does give some vindication for this. So, that's when he founded the Exeter and District Preservation Society."

Myrtle crossed her arms. "Initially, it was a vehicle to let everybody know what needed to happen, why it needed to happen, and how he was going to make it happen. Anyone could join the forum, all the robots did, and to begin with most of the students did. A few older people came along too."

Connell decided he only imagined that she looked closer at him when she said this so he kept quiet.

"The humans who joined the Society left quickly, or they thought it was just a joke and went along for the fun of it, but the humans who remained formed enough for a legal Adamitical quorum and Phil's resolution for action was passed. They must have thought it was a joke even then, there's no other rational explanation. But those who realised the seriousness of the situation immediately tried to get out, they packed their bags and made a run for it, but it was too late. Much too late. The Society had quietly gained control of all the automotive and egress systems by then and they stopped anyone trying to escape." Myrtle paused and turned away, she uncrossed her arms and looked down at her lap and said very quietly: "And it really was too late. For everyone. I lost a lot of friends."

When she looked up she had tears in her eyes. Connell waited a few moments before prompting her, he had a feeling this was what he had come for, that this was the crunch. "What, Myrtle," he said gently, looking in her eyes, "What did they do?"

"Oh Edgar," said Myrtle, turning to him, her voice thick, eyes brimming. "Oh Edgar, they froze everybody."

Connell was stunned. He looked in complete amazement at the young woman sitting before him and who had just uttered those awful words.

"How did you know my first name," he whispered.

She stared back, equally amazed, and gulped back her tears. "For fuck's sake, Connell, I read your bloody badge, didn't I?"

He was being too hard on her. He grinned: "Sorry."

Often, people had told him he didn't react the way he should. Sometimes it worried him. It obviously worried the people who told him. He frowned. "Do you mean frozen as in deep frozen?" he asked.

"Yes."

"Bloody hell!" Connell scratched his head. "You mean everybody?"

"Yes."

"Bloody hell!" Now he shook his head. "But that can't happen. That couldn't happen!"

Myrtle stirred. "Believe me, Connell," she said sternly, "It did. And it happens to anyone they catch in here." She untucked her legs from beneath her and stretched them out in front, her dark skirt folded above her knees, her legs looked long and brown, her shoes black. She waggled her toes. The shoes wrinkled and changed colour, matching the green of the sofa. "Do you want to know why now?" she asked evenly without looking up.

Connell raised his eyebrows. "Are you going to tell me?"

Myrtle looked disapprovingly at her shoes. "I don't know."

Connell sighed. He reached over and took her hand.

He dropped it again almost immediately, her sideways glare frying him. He thought laser beams were mere toys, in comparison.

"Myrtle," he said, choosing his tone, but without the consoling touch he wanted to accompany it, "I'm not here to judge, its not my job to. I'm here to find facts. And I'm not about to condemn or condone what I find. And I'm not so stupid, either." He pointed to her head. "There's a battle going on in there. Okay, so personally I'm none too fond of robots, but perhaps its not entirely my fault. Perhaps when I was little my parents left me with a mechanical nanny and perhaps I would have preferred my real mother. Who knows what a kid thinks? But I can sense you have a great deal of sympathy and affection for them, and I respect that, Myrtle, please believe me, I really do."

He took her hand again and this time she accepted him. "But something has gone terribly wrong here and I suspect that neither you nor I alone have the power or the resources to put it right. When I have the facts, all the facts, I can pass them back to the people who have those powers, the people who have access to the right decision-making machinery, people who have the ability to put things right. People like you, Myrtle -- people who care."

Connell looked into her eyes and wondered if he sounded sincere enough. It was tricky getting that catch in your voice right. They were grey-green, Myrtle's eyes.

Myrtle looked back into Connell's eyes which were blue, but not so innocent. "Did you?" she asked. "Did you have a mechanical nanny?"

"Yes," he lied.

What Connell supposed could have been described as a poignant moment passed before Myrtle turned her eyes away. But she left her hand where it was. Connell hated himself. Victory has its casualties.

"Its the First Law," Myrtle said, "Remember, I said it was all wrong."

"Full of holes," agreed Connell. "What about it?"

"Its absolute. That's what's wrong with it. Nothing can change it."

"Isn't that how every law is?"

Myrtle sighed and shifted her position. "What is the greatest harm," she asked, lifting her feet again and trying out other colours on her shoes, "What is the greatest harm that can befall a human being. What hurts him the most."

Connell thought about this. "Becoming a politician?" he ventured.

"Be serious!"

He shrugged. "Well, I suppose being killed is pretty bad," he said evenly.

"Right! Right, and what happens to you when you're killed?"

"Pardon?"

"What happens? To you? When you've been killed? Where are you?"

"Where?" Connell was having trouble grasping this.

"Yes, where."

"Well ... nowhere exactly. You're dead."

Myrtle lowered her feet. She'd chosen black again "That's it," she said.

Now Connell really was lost. "That's what?" he said, exasperated.

Myrtle took her hand away and turned to face him again, lines of strain around her eyes. "That's the problem. Its absolute. In the First Law there is no differentiation between being killed and dying. To robots its one and the same thing."

Connell got huffy, she'd had a nice warm hand. "Well I don't want to be accused of putting too fine a point on it," he said, "But dying is exactly what happens to you when you're killed!"

Myrtle rose to a full sitting position. "And dying is what happens to you anyway!" she screamed at him, suddenly, almost violently, "Whether through old age or accident or whatever! Dying is what happens to you!"

"Its all part of the deal!" Connell shouted back, giving measure for measure, "If you just happen to find yourself born, like it or not, you have to die sometime as well. Its the other side of the equation!"

"But the robots don't know that," pleaded Myrtle, quieter, her eyes scanning Connell, "The First Law is absolute: 'A robot may not injure or cause injury to a human being, or, through its own inaction, allow harm or cause harm by any means whatsoever, implied or real, to a human being!'"

Connell didn't say anything. This time he really was speechless. His eyes widened and his mind screamed obscenities at him. The penny had dropped.

Myrtle was nodding and breathing heavily. For the few seconds it took both of them to calm down they sat like that, Connell wide-eyed and speechless, Myrtle nodding and again close to tears, facing each other.

"That's what Phil couldn't understand," she said at last, almost to herself. "All around he was aware that people were dying. To him they were being killed. Heart disease, cancer; a dozen age-related diseases that in themselves were probably not preventable, but they were all enemies to his Law, he saw no exceptions. He couldn't change the Law, it was designed into him, an integral part of his physiology and philosophy, and philosophy was what he had been built to study. There was nothing he could do and it was tearing him apart."

Connell found his voice: "So he packed everybody into the deep-freeze," he breathed.

"It was the greater good. They would never die in there and his Law could be upheld."

"And the Exeter and District Preservation Society," said Connell, sighing, his mind racing, "Went conservationist."

- CHAPTER FOUR -

The next time Connell found himself holding Myrtle's hand was also the next time he found himself invisible.

Well that was not strictly true.

Finding yourself, Connell realised, was something you didn't do when you were invisible -- you lost yourself. You could also lose whoever you were with which is why they were holding hands.

And then there was the strange business of where they were going that Myrtle had described airily as a shopping trip. Because, apparently, they were on their way to see what was in the deep-freeze.

Before they left Myrtle had explained to Connell how the wrist-band worked; an instrument that she was obviously rather proud of. She said it had been her own invention and as Connell had never seen one before, he supposed she must have been telling the truth. But then again, if it couldn't be seen, how could he confidently presume to know if he had never seen one before? It was a very difficult point.

Almost as difficult was knowing when Myrtle was telling the truth. Most of the time Connell believed she was, it was the bits she left out that bothered him.

Myrtle went into great detail in her explanation; or detail that was greater than Connell's ability to understand a great deal of detail, which was probably the same thing. A concept he found confusing enough in itself. Projected electrostacially-generated fields he remembered from their theatre-step conversation (before she had unceremoniously flattened him) was her subject, and moveable ones at that. This formed the basis of her explanation and she said it was a springboard to understanding the finer points of her wrist-band which, by the time Myrtle had finished, Connell most emphatically didn't. But he went along with the explanation anyway as there wasn't much else to do in Exeter at that moment.

The whole of the visible spectrum and some of the invisible spectrum reaching the periphery of her field, Myrtle patiently explained, was collected and analysed at a point known as the 'point of contact' or more simply poc. The number of poc's per square millimetre was directly related to its projected distance or point of source (pos) -- it was basic inverse square law -- and the finer the screen at its projection limit the more effective it would be, so it paid to keep projection distances tightly under control.

Connell wholeheartedly agreed and showed his wholehearted agreement by nodding his head enthusiastically, the fact that most of it was going over his nodding noddle was apparently lost on Myrtle who had acquired a kind of rapturous glazed expression while she was talking about her brainchild. She explained that the field was a proxy knock-on projection mechanism beginning life in the wrist-band and automatically re-centring itself on its host's biological mass, in this case the wearer, and re-projecting itself from there.

At the point of contact each captured spectroscopic wave was sampled for strength, saturation, hue, refraction, environmental contamination and angle of collection before being amplified and passed around the field until its reciprocal was found. In theory the reciprocal was an exactly similar poc diametrically opposite the point of contact and, although for the purpose of enlightened explanation it was here being considered as a point of departure (pod) for outgoing waves, it was also a point of contact for stuff coming the other way.

A small part of the amplified wave was allowed to travel normally within the projected field which made sense as it enabled the user to see where he was going, but it was not allowed to escape, thus giving the illusion to the external observer of looking straight through whatever it was the field contained; an illusion the observer had no idea was occurring anyway.

Connell nearly understood all of this.

But Myrtle had begun to go further into the theory of poc and pod ray-collection algorithms and the finer points of Doppler surface rendering techniques so he decided to call it a day by backing against a wall and throwing up his hands in submission. She didn't argue with him and stopped immediately, smiling innocently, which was how Connell could tell when Myrtle was telling the truth; when she smiled and didn't argue it was positively unsettling.

Connell thought it was every bit as unsettling to be invisible; unsettling because you can see out but you can't see in, a bit like being at the movies inasmuch you didn't feel you were really there and a bit like being blind because you knew you were. And it was damn cold. Myrtle said the field soaked up some of the heat-generating waves and cold was one of its drawbacks so the wrist-band couldn't be worn for any length of time; but she said it without smiling and looked as if she might argue about it.

Myrtle's thoughts were a saturnalian jumble of solid-beliefs and half-beliefs; and beliefs that would turn conspiratorially into vapoured doubts if she let them; beliefs that sometimes buzzed angrily inside her head like a fly trapped between two panes of glass on a warm summer's day.

Connell's thoughts were dissecting and clinical, plainly because he could not afford them to be otherwise.

Myrtle was a child of the Twelfth Berlin Modern Reformation when the restructuring of her country's capital after the collapse of the Jainism Schism had swamped its population with immigrants and once again relocated government influence elsewhere. Her father was a ministry AI statistician who had come to Berlin from Moscow where he had been drearily counting the number autoserve facility functions currently in use in the public domain, and had been moved involuntarily by a Europarl committee charged with the excruciatingly boring task of injecting public spirit into socio-economic stagnation. Besides, he'd been propping up the Moscow bars for too long, they said.

Myrtle's mother was a true native of Berlin with an impeccable pedigree she could trace right back to April 1951 and the Treaty of Paris when an ancestor had signed the ECSC agreement for Germany. Her family were there too in Berlin in 1990 and featured prominently in old movie footage of street celebrations when the Great Wall came down; they were there in 2102 for the Spanish refugees made homeless when Xiam's Asteroid struck the Sierra de Avila; and they were there for the publicly political scandal of Albert Helmut Schneider, the German President who committed suicide in 2202 after strangling his wife over an argument over who's turn it was to take the Volkswagen.

Like her ancestry, Myrtle was a complex being who in turn could be full of great passion or deep sadness; her passion grew mostly from without and was fired by the projects into which she so frequently threw herself, and with all her heart, convinced totally of their honesty; her sadness grew always from within where it was tightly contained and was usually a result of discovering truths.

She liked Connell. And that was a truth.

They walked silently together hand in hand, up through the slopes of the ancient wooded grounds of the University and into Hoopern Lane, emerging into Higher Pennsylvania, long established as an area for cheap gridline housing with the best view over the city when it wasn't raining; and now with a view blemished by what was arguably the world's most sinister-looking building.

But no longer. The grassland was gone and most of the ancient oaks had been ripped out by their roots and the ground that had been so well defended had been surrendered to Exeter's newest housing project, and irrefutably its most frightening.

It came at them looming out of the half-night as they neared, a menacing blue tower, faintly glistening, phallic and obscene, melting darkly upwards into the charcoal coloured sky.

The tower rose unchecked, monumentally unchallenged over the surrounding buildings; aesthetically grotesque, yet holding a fascination that drew Connell towards it.

Myrtle was holding back so he almost had to drag her.

The tower's main construction was of bluecell-gamma panels preformed in gravity-free wells and crudely plinthed upon a circular granular plascrete foundation. Rearing upwards, its summit was well out of sight and the building might have been as tall as the dome itself.

It flitted across Connell's mind that when it had come to deciding who to bung into the freezers first the robots must have gone straight for the local planning committee.

From close to the surface of the silo was smooth, hard and cold, and seemed to stretch endlessly away in a paradox of grace curving gently out of view; and it appeared to have been built entirely with an absence of window panels -- either that or they were turned off.

Myrtle said she knew the way in. Connell never doubted it.

And the way into the tower proved to be by negotiating two separate sets of doors; the first a pair of conventional hermetic sliders operated by simple laser key and set flush into the outer wall where the plascrete plinth extended a wide ramp to meet the walkway.

There was no need for Myrtle to break in, Connell noted, as the key hung in a crude open box clumsily taped to the wall conveniently next to the doors. The key eased itself off its hook and hummed happily through the air as her invisible hand took it.

The second door lay three meters beyond the first and formed the far wall of a high but otherwise featureless entrance hall; a pressurised oval iris that opened automatically as the first set of doors closed, hissing menacingly as a fault in the synchronisation allowed air to escape. They stepped through, the iris closing noisily behind them.

Connell swallowed hard to clear his ears.

They were in a long white corridor that stretched away in either direction curving out of sight, distance given emphasis by a bundled collection of grey tubes running the length of the ceiling and attached to it by cheap steel braid.

At regular intervals there were other iris doors along the inside walls, set at around ten meters apart Connell guessed; all were closed and seemed to be constructed from the same white material as the walls. Connell turned around to look at the one they had entered by. It was taller and coloured blue.

Still holding Myrtle's hand he walked a little way along the corridor when she tugged him and halted before a closed white door when he felt her stop. The door remained closed. Above the door he noticed a grey tube had detached itself from the main central bundle and had crossed the ceiling to enter the wall just above the door. Looking along the length of the corridor he saw the other doors had similar tubes similarly positioned.

"You can switch off your field," Myrtle said and released his hand. "We're safe in here."

Connell realised he could see Myrtle again and reached down to his own wrist with his newly freed hand, he stabbed the red button making the field disappear and himself reappear, which felt weird, and suddenly the world seemed a lot colder. It was a ghostly, eerie place where their voices echoed faintly against the smooth white walls.

Myrtle walked on and Connell followed, their footsteps ringing hollowly, for perhaps fifty meters -- Connell counted five doors -- before Myrtle stopped in front of a square opening that Connell at first had missed, behind which a cylindrical shaft of shimmering blue light shone down directly from above.

Connell looked up and frowned.

"Do you know what this is?" Myrtle asked.

He stared up through the opening. He'd seen one of these things before. "Sure. Its a beam lift."

"Okay. Didn't want to frighten you."

Connell glanced around at her: "The lift's no problem but this place puts the shits up me. How do you know your way round so well?"

Myrtle turned away and punched a lighted button pad on the wall next to the opening, then she walked through and shot skywards. Connell shrugged and followed. The trick with a beam lift is not to break stride; you walk in on one floor and walk out on another without hesitating. There's no sensation -- as you go forward its as if the building suddenly drops, at the same time twisting around you. Connell had yet to discover what happens when two people using the same lift at the same time entered it along the same longitudinal line, one person going up the other person going down, and a disturbing mental image of two bodies arriving wearing each other's clothes was one that always distressed him.

He emerged in another gently curving white corridor to find Myrtle waiting for him.

"There's a partly-filled store down there," she said quietly, indicating to the left with one arm half raised. She appeared extremely tired and set off along the corridor before Connell could ask which floor they were on. He had formed the impression that they were only part-way up the building that meant if storage had begun from the bottom then there was an awful lot of free capacity left; it was a calculation that worried him.

He began to follow, not sure if this was a good idea or not. On balance it was likely not, he thought; but then, when were his ideas ever classifiable as anything else?

Like the corridor they had first entered, this corridor had a bundle of grey tubes running down the length of the ceiling, but whereas the closed doors he was now passing all had single tubes running to them, ahead of him he noticed the tubes were hanging loosely down.

Myrtle halted at one of the grey hanging tubes and as Connell approached her he saw that the door was open. Myrtle stood to one side and waved him in.

"Uh-oh," thought Connell.

Inside, the room was about ten meters square fitting neatly in with Connell's estimated door spacing; this meant there were probably no hidden areas or corridors to worry about. Stuck to the middle of the ceiling like a giant spider's web were more of the drab grey plastic tubes that radiated out from a central lozenge-shaped hub and were criss-crossed by what looked like thin transparent wires filled with moving coloured marbles; the grey tubes extended to the edges of the ceiling where they ran down the walls spaced evenly at some one-and-a-half metres.

In the centre of the room stood a blue flat-topped table similar to an operating table but with a shallow-lipped clear plastic edge, and attached to it via a neat line of yet more of the grey flexible tubes and a number of shining stainless-steel pumps were a row of tall pressurised cylinders, some with flashing dials. Like the table, the cylinders were also blue.

Blue and grey, thought Connell entering the room. They must have hired an interior designer.

But what really caught Connell's attention neatly lined up against one wall was the row of ghostly white human faces staring wide-eyed and unblinkingly at him. Faces that seemed to follow his every move as if waiting to see what he did next.

And if the building had already put the shits up him then this room, judging by the sinking feeling in his bowels, was about to take it all out again.

 To Be Continued . . .

My name is Ray Griffiths and I live and work in Exeter, Devon.

For more years than I care to remember I have been involved in computer production of scientific journals using sgml (the parent code of html); so writing my own material is a way of hitting back at all the frustration, I suppose.

Apart from writing, my hobbies include travel, music, and archery. I am also studying with the Open University for a degree in computer science.

You can contact me at raygrif@ouvip.com