'Er, hello,' called Big Bob. 'Hello up there, God, or whoever thou art. I don't like this. I don't want to play. I want to wake up please.'

'you have to play now. you're in the game,' said the large and terrible voice. The first one, not the second one. The second one said, 'do it. go mango!'

Big Bob fretted and dithered and worried and then he said, 'I'm going home to my bed. I'm bound to wake up in there.'

And then Big Bob took a single step forward.

And entered a world of hurt.

A great big hand swung down from on high and caught Big Bob in the side of the head.

'Why you bastard!' Big Bob rarely swore, but that hand hit him hard.

'What did you say, Charker?'

Big Bob glared towards the sky. But the sky wasn't there any more. Where the sky had been was ceiling, and a ceiling Big Bob knew.

'I said, oh…' Big Bob coughed, there was something strange about his voice now. And… He blinked and stared and gawped. From the ceiling to the walls, to the window, to the blackboard to the teacher Mr Vaux.

Mr Vaux, his primary-school teacher. Mr Vaux who had flown a fighter plane in the war that few remembered any more. Mr Vaux who had been a prisoner of war. Mr Vaux who had no truck with ten-year-old boys who swore.

'Sleeping, were you, Charker?' asked Mr Vaux. 'Daydreaming? Wistfully staring out of the window thinking of home time and Pogs in your own back passage?'

'I? What? How?' went Bob the Big.

'And what was that you called me?'

'I?' went Big Bob. 'I?' He looked and he blinked and then looked some more. His classroom' at Grange Primary School. And all the class were there. Trevor Alvy who bullied him. David Rodway, his bestest friend. Periwig Tombs with his Mekon head. Phyllis Livingstone the dark-haired girl from Glasgow, the very first love of his life. And there, over there in the corner, where she had always been, until her desk became empty, Ann Green, the little girl with the yellow hair, who had died in that final summer at the primary, when the swingboat in the memorial park hit her in the throat.

'I?' Big Bob gagged. There was something wrong with his voice. He raised his hands towards his throat and then he saw his hands. They were the hands of a child. His hands when he'd been a child. In the days when his hands had been skinny little hands. Skinny and grubby and stained with ink.

Nasty little hands, as his mother always said. 'Nasty little naughty little hands.'

'What?' went Big Bob, Small Bob now, in his squeaky ten-year-old voice.

'Oh we have been sleeping, haven't we?' said Mr Vaux and he caught Big, no it was Small Bob now, another clout across the head.

'Keep your hands off me, thou…'

'Thou?' went Mr Vaux, laughing. 'Are we "thouing" again? I thought we'd cured you of all that nonsense. One hundred lines, wasn't it?'

'This is madness.' Big, no, Small Bob rose to take his leave.

'Sit down, boy,' cried Mr Vaux. And Small Bob stared at him in awe. The class was laughing now. The boys and girls nudging each other, whispering behind their hands and laughing.

'Charker's a loony boy,' Trevor Alvy chanted. 'Charker's a loony boy, loony boy, loony boy.'

'Shut it Alvy,' shouted Mr Vaux.

And Trevor Alvy shut it.

'It's the headmaster's office for you, sonny Jim,' said Mr Vaux and he took Small Bob by the ear.

'No,' cried Bob. 'Unhand me. You understand not. Something's happened to me. I shouldn't be back here. I'm a grown-up man now. Not a child, I'm not a child.'

'Charker's a loony boy,' whispered Trevor Alvy.

'The class will remain silent,' said Mr Vaux. 'I am taking Charker to the headmaster's office where he will have his trouser seat dusted by six of the very best.'

'You'll do no such thing, thou odorous wretch.' Small Bob writhed and twisted, but he couldn't break away, he didn't have the strength. And there were tears coming to his eyes. Tears of rage and frustration. He glared bitterly up at Mr Vaux. The schoolmaster glared right back at him.

He was a helpless child, caught by the ear by a schoolmaster and now being dragged from the classroom.

'You don't understand,' he continued, as Mr Vaux hauled him along the school corridor. 'Something's happened to me. The tour bus crashed and I woke up in hospital. But the doctors couldn't see me and then there was this terrible voice and it said that I was in a game and…'

Cuff, went the schoolmaster's non-ear-gripping hand. Cuff about Small Bob's other ear.

'You're a dreamer, boy,' quoth Mr Vaux. 'A dreamer and a wastrel. You're no good for anything. Never have been, never will be. You're a waste of space.'

'No, I… no stop hitting me.'

Mr Vaux drummed a fist upon the glass panel of the headmaster's office. Sounds of hurried movement issued from within.

'Just a moment,' called the voice of the headmaster. 'I'm just attending to something. Just one moment please.'

Memories returned to Bob. Troubling memories. Memories of the headmaster. And what the headmaster had done.

It had been years after Big Bob left the primary school. He'd been in his early twenties. The scandal had been in the local newspaper. About the headmaster and how he'd 'interfered' with little boys for years.

'Release my ear, thou wretch,' demanded Bob. 'I will not enter the lair of that paedophile.'

Silence, terrible silence. The corridor seemed filled with silence now. Oppressive silence pressing in.

Bob stared up at Mr Vaux. The schoolmaster's face was cherry red, great veins stood out upon his neck.

'You foul-mouthed little piece of filth,' cried Mr Vaux, shattering the silence into a million fragments. 'You disgusting little

The headmaster's door swung open. A pale-faced youth pushed past, tears in his frightened eyes. He limped up the corridor and vanished into the boys' toilets. Mr Vaux dragged Small Bob into the headmaster's office.

Bad boys had to stand at the bench at break times.

The bench was in the main corridor. It stood between the showcase that displayed the trophies won by boys of athletic bent in many a county championship, and the barometer, brassy and mysterious inside its mahogany case. What were barometers really for? How did they work?

Big Bob had never known. He hadn't known when he was Small Bob. He was Small Bob now.

Small Bob stood at the bench. His face was streaked with tears. Tears of rage and frustration and from the pain. The pain of the terrible thrashing the headmaster had dealt him out.

Mr Vaux had had to hold Bob down whilst the head went about his torturing. The pain had been excruciating. It still hurt more than any pain that Bob had ever known.

And he was here. He was here. Really here. Back in the primary school. And he wasn't dreaming. You couldn't stand pain like that in a dream without waking up. He was here and he was him. Himself. Bob Charker. But Bob Charker, ten years of age.

'I was wrong,' said Small Bob to himself. 'So wrong. I got the wrong movie. This isn't like that Tron at all. This isn't even a movie, this is like unto that old TV series Quantum Leap. I've leapt back into the past. But I'm not someone else, I'm myself. And I am me. I am. I'm real, I can feel myself

He could certainly feel the pain in his behind.

'I have to think this through,' said Small Bob to himself. 'There must be some way to get forward again to the future. Some wormhole, or doorway, or something. I just have to figure it out. Then I can be free of this horror.'

Trevor Alvy walked past him. Small Bob lowered his eyes. It had never been wise to look Alvy full in the face. Trevor Alvy stopped, looked up and down the corridor then returned to Bob. He grinned at Bob, who tried to grin back, but couldn't.