“I am not a bloody character,” said Russell. “What are you implying? That I’m just a made-up character in a book?”

“Character in a book?” Bobby Boy laughed his grating laugh. “Now that really is absurd. No, Russell. But you’re not a real person. You’re a construct. A bit of this person, a bit of that.”

“Crap,” said Russell. “And so what does that make you?”

“Oh, I know what I am. I’m a tricky lying villain. And Mr Fudgepacker here is a clapped-out old pornographer.”

“How dare you!” gasped the old one. “I am a maker of Art House movies.”

“A clapped-out pornographer who has sold his soul to –”

“Don’t say His name.” Mr Fudgepacker began to totter. Russell leapt up and guided him into his chair.

“Thank you, Russell,” said Mr Fudgepacker. “You’re such a nice young man.”

“Well, you’d know,” said Bobby Boy. “You made him up.”

“Bollocks,” said Russell.

“Just tell him, Bobby Boy.” Mr Fudgepacker scratched at a bubo on his wrist. “I want to get home and rub some pig fat on my scrofula.”

“OK. Russell, you have been brought into existence to achieve a great end: to aid the changing of the world. You see everyone’s confused. What am I here for? What does it all mean? Have you ever asked yourself those questions?”

“No,” said Russell. “I don’t think I have.”

“We wrote it out,” said Mr F. “It was very slow and it didn’t say anything new.”

“Accidental movements of the gods,” said Bobby Boy. “Everything that goes on on Earth. We dance to the tunes the gods don’t even know they’re playing.”

“Strangely enough, I don’t understand a word of that.”

“People aren’t important,” said Bobby Boy. “Not singly. It’s what they do en masse that matters, the direction mankind goes in as a whole. Mankind is really a vast multi-cellular organism, spread across the face of the planet. Or like billions of tiny silicone chips that when all wired together would form this single planetary brain. That’s the way forward, you see. That’s the ultimate purpose of it all.”

“Well,” said Russell, “at last I’ve met the man who has the answer to the meaning of life. This is a privilege.”

“Are you taking the piss?”

“No, I thought you were giving it away.”

“In the beginning the way was clear. All men spoke the same language. All the little chips were wired together. Remember the story of the Tower of Babel?”

Russell wondered whether he did.

“You do,” said Mr Fudgepacker. “You’ve got Christianity programmed into you.”

“Oh, I’m so glad.”

“All spoke the same language and so they could function as a mass mind. But the gods weren’t too chuffed with that, so they knocked down the tower, which was really this huge transmitting device to communicate with other worlds, and they scrambled the language. Mankind has been fighting amongst itself ever since.”

“Very interesting,” said Russell. “So just where do I fit into all this?”

“Your job was to raise the money for the movie.”

“There isn’t going to be any movie,” said Russell. “I’m going to put a stop to the movie. The movie is evil. You’ve done something evil and I’m going to stop it.”

“You can’t stop it now. The movie will be shown and all who see it will be converted. It’s not the plot of the movie that matters, Russell, it’s what’s in the movie.”

“And what’s that going to be?”

“Have you ever heard of subliminal cuts?”

“I’ve heard of them, but that’s like Satanic back masking. It’s rubbish. It doesn’t work.”

“Ours will work. But then ours came straight from the horse’s mouth, as it were. Or rather, straight from the mouth of God.”

“That thing?” said Russell. “That thing on the screen?”

“You shouldn’t call your God a thing, Russell.”

“That’s no God of mine.”

“It’s the only one you’ve got. The others are gone, long gone. They tired of playing games with man. Once in a while they think of us in passing and their accidental thoughts, their accidental movements of thought, cause waves on the planet. Religious fervour. Holy wars. But they play no active part. All but one of them, that is. He likes the place. He sticks around. He has the time for us.”

“No,” said Russell. “You don’t know what you’re saying. That thing’s the devil. You shouldn’t worship that.”

“There’s no devil, only rival gods.”

“You’re barking mad. I’ll stop all this.”

“Enough,” said Mr Fudgepacker. “Quite enough. All who see the movie will be converted. A new order of life, Russell. A new order of being, freed from all worry. You should appreciate that. To be free of all worry and care, all hatred, all doubt. Free to merge into the whole. A new future, Russell. Sadly you will not be here to see it.”

“Because we’re writing you out,” said Bobby Boy.

“Oh no you’re not.” Russell launched himself at the thin man on the table. But the thin man ducked aside and he hit Russell hard on the top of the head. And then things went very dark for Russell.

Russell awoke with a groan and a shudder. He jerked up and blinked all about the place. The place was his office (suitably grim). He’d been sleeping in his chair.

Sleeping?

Russell yawned and stretched and then the memories came rushing back like bad beer from a banjoed belly.

“Oh my God!” went Russell, as this phrase seemed to find favour with him at the present. “Oh my good God.”

He floundered about and tried to get up, but his knees were all wobbly. On the desk before him was the bottle of Glen Boleskine. Without so much as a second thought, Russell took a mighty swig from it.

And then coughed his guts up all over the floor.

“Oh my God.” Russell’s eyes went blink again, all about the place again. The safe door was closed. Sunshine streamed in through the skylight. Russell turned his blinking to his wristwatch. It was just after three and that would be three in the afternoon.

The office door swung open. “Ah, you’ve broken surface, have you?” Bobby Boy breezed in with a grin.

“Get away from me.” Russell snatched up the whisky bottle and swung to his feet.

“What’s all this?” asked the thin one. “Are you all right, Russell?”

“Are you kidding?” Russell displayed his spare hand. He’d made a useful-looking fist out of it. “I’ll stop you. I’ve seen the tapes. You’ve made a big mistake not killing me when you had the chance.”

Bobby Boy made tiny smacking sounds with his tricky little mouth. “I don’t think you’re very well, Russell. Mr Fudgepacker said I should let you sleep. You’ve been over-working, you’ve not been yourself.”

Bobby Boy spied the mess on the floor. “Thought I knew that smell,” he said. “That’s pretty disgusting, isn’t it?”

“You’re finished,” Russell brandished the bottle. “Finished.”

“Come on,” said Bobby Boy. “We’ve a big surprise for you.”

“Yeah, I’ll bet you have.”

“There’s something we want you to see.”

“Some … thing?” Russell’s eyes widened and his face, which was pale, although it hadn’t been mentioned that it was pale, although given the circumstances you would naturally assume it to be pale, which it fact it was, grew paler. Phew!

“That thing is out there,” croaked he of the pale face. “That terrible thing.”

“That’s no way to speak about Frank.”

Russell waggled the bottle, spilling Scotch down his trousers. “I won’t let you show it. I’ll destroy the movie.”

“What? You don’t like it before you’ve even seen it?”

“Oh, I’ve seen it all right. You know I’ve seen it.”

“You have not.”

“I have too.”

“Have not.”

“Have too.”

“Not.”

“Too.”

“        ”

“        ”

(Well, there’s not much else you can do with that, is there?)