Robert picked up his hat and placed it on his head. A silver machine lay on the coffee table where the hat had sat. It looked like a Swiss army knife that had been opened up and then stripped of anything that wasn’t a blade. It looked sharp, lean, and evil.

“Herb. I thought you were intelligent. If you thought about the problem, you’d realize how the Environment Agency could defeat the Enemy Domain. A greater intelligence will always defeat a lesser one. It can be done with this.”

He pointed to the silver device that lay on the table.

“Victory is certain,” he whispered, then sat back with a smile. “Well, pretty certain. Nothing is ever one hundred percent.”

The orange plastic chairs in the lounge had been roughly arranged in two rows in front of the viewing screen. Katie was sitting alone in the second row, watching the news, when Eva walked in carrying a book that Alison had lent her. Katie swiveled to see who had just entered, and a look of relief crossed her moon face when she saw that it was Eva. She flashed a quick, nervous smile and turned back to her program.

“Hello, Katie; what are you watching?”

Eva slid into the next but one chair, glancing at Katie’s face in profile. It did look familiar, but she still couldn’t place it.

Katie blushed and began to breathe quickly.

“It’s the news,” she said. She panted a little, then continued in a staccato burst of words. “They’ve just revealed something new. They say it will change the world.”

Eva looked at the screen. It didn’t seem very interesting: just an endless stream of scrolling symbols.

“What is it?” she asked.

Katie broke into a huge smile. “It’s a mathematical expression that describes itself.”

Eva nodded slowly. “I’ve heard about that. I thought it was supposed to be impossible.”

“No. Why should it be? Your cells carry their own description written within themselves. It’s how they make new cells.”

Katie’s voice had grown less staccato. She seemed livelier, more animated.

“Oh, of course.” Eva looked thoughtful.

“They’re saying that now they have cracked that problem, they’re a step closer to building a human-scale Von Neumann Machine.”

“A Von Neumann Machine?”

“Yes. A machine that can make copies of itself. Named after John Von Neumann, the man who postulated the idea.”

Eva stared at the screen. She had read of the concept before, now she came to think about it. Back in her South Street days, back in the days of warm steamy rooms and yellow light and sitting on her own during the night reading about the rest of the world. Three weeks and another life ago. Katie was talking again.

“There’s some controversy about the whole thing, actually. They’re saying that Kay Lovegrove, the man who claims to have formulated the expression, couldn’t possibly have done it.”

“Ah. Professional jealousy?”

Katie looked confused for a moment. “No. I don’t think so.” She frowned for a moment. “No. The point is, they’re saying he wasn’t from the right field. He just wasn’t studying the right areas to put together that expression. When questioned, he either refuses to, or cannot explain how the final answer came about. It’s all very strange.”

“Maybe he stole it.”

“That’s already been suggested, but no one else credible has come forward to claim the work as their own. Oh, there are plenty of cranks, but none of them can explain the expression’s origin, any more than Lovegrove can. It’s as if it just appeared on his computer overnight.”

Katie’s eyes were glowing. She was gripping each side of the plastic chair, making her look like a little girl. It was like the real Katie suddenly shining through from the tiny place where she had hidden herself, deep within her own body.

Eva spoke. “So do you think that Lovegrove formulated the expression, Katie?”

Katie smiled and shook her head. “No.”

Eva said nothing. Katie’s smile widened. She wanted to tell Eva everything, and in the middle of her shy, pinched little life, she had found the window to do so. She leaned a little closer and Eva smelled spearmint on her breath.

Katie spoke in a whisper. “It’s too perfect. It’s too tight. We’ve already built machines that reproduce. The factory robots they landed on Mars make copies of themselves, but they need millions of lines of code to achieve the result. This sums up the essential idea in a few thousand bits. It’s too neat. It can’t have come from a human’s mind.”

She lowered her voice a little. “You know, it wouldn’t be the first time that society had been given a little prod in the right direction.”

Eva leaned a little closer. “What do you mean?”

Katie shook her head. She nodded toward the window, out toward the mist-dissolved circle of limes and beyond them the woods.

“She’s talking about the Watcher,” said the voice.

I know.

Katie looked thoughtful. “Did you just hear the voice?” she asked.

“Yes,” replied Eva. She felt a little shocked. “How did you know?”

“Your body seemed to relax. Now that’s interesting.”

“What’s interesting?”

Alison had just walked into the room. Katie retreated back inside herself instantly. She gazed down at her fingers, twisting and turning around themselves in her lap.

“Hello, Alison. Where have you been?” asked Eva.

Alison looked a mess. Her eyes were ringed with dark shadows; her hair was lank and lifeless. She wore a grey hairy sweater over her tartan flannel pajamas, the corner of a white tissue poking from one sleeve. She shambled across to one of the padded chairs and slumped into it.

“Sleeping. What else is there to do?”

Eva looked at Katie, but Katie was concentrating again on the program on the viewing screen. Pictures of sheep being funneled through a gap in a hedge were replaced by a shower of chocolate buttons falling into a pool of chocolate. The image flicked to a cartoon group of eight mice eating rice from little bowls.

“We were just watching a program about an expression that defines itself, weren’t we, Katie?” said Eva brightly.

“Have you seen Nicolas? Do you know where he is?” asked Alison, deliberately changing the subject.

“I don’t know. Maybe he’s in his room.”

“I hope so. I’m not in the mood to be stared at.”

Eva said nothing. Alison brought her knees up underneath her chin and wrapped her arms tightly around her legs.

“Doesn’t he creep you out? The way he’s constantly staring at your tits?”

“I thought he was your friend.”

“You don’t have any friends in this place, Eva. Remember that.”

“Ignore her. She’s always like this when she’s down.” Katie’s words came in a flurry, her eyes still fixed firmly on the screen.

Eva turned to get a better view of Alison, twisting on one leg of the chair, feeling it flex beneath her weight as she turned.

“Would you like a hot drink, Alison?”

“No. And don’t change the subject. You’re not telling me that you don’t find it offensive, the way Nicolas stares at your tits?”

“I don’t like it, no. But then again, he’s not in this place because he’s normal, is he? Nor are we. Let’s show him some tolerance. It never seemed to bother you that much before.”

“It didn’t,” said Katie. “Ignore her.”

“Shut up Katie. I wasn’t speaking to you. Watch your bloody program.”

Eva looked on, aghast. Yesterday they had been plotting together, brothers in arms, today…From the adjoining chair, Alison picked up a paperback someone had apparently dropped in a bath. It was swollen to twice its normal size, the pages curling up and around themselves. She flicked through it for a moment or two, before crossly hurling it to the floor.

“Bloody Nicolas!” she shouted, then turned to glare at Eva. “Do you know why he’s in here?”