weird green doughnuts. “Am I?” Pieter said. “Well, yes, I suppose I must be, if you’re here.” He frowned. “Pity,” he said. “Oh well. Comes to us all in the end, I guess. How did it happen?”
“I don’t know,” Theo admitted.
“You don’t know. Fine.” Pieter shrugged. “But you got my legacy, obviously.”
“Yes.”
Pieter grinned. “And what do you think of it? Isn’t it great?”
Yes, he told himself, that’s all very well, but if I strangle Pieter, how am I going to get back home? So, reluctantly, he didn’t. Instead, he said, “No.”
Pieter stared at him. “You don’t like it?”
“It’s horrible.” The words burst out of his mouth like water from a cracked pipe. “Three times I’ve used it so far, and each time I’ve nearly been killed in a bar. If that’s your idea of a good time, then—”
He broke off. Pieter was gazing at him out of huge round eyes. “You mean to say you haven’t reset the narrative parameters?”
“What?”
Pieter swelled up like a bullfrog, then started to laugh. It took him quite some time, during which Theo nearly burst a blood vessel staying calm. “You haven’t, have you?” Pieter said eventually. “You’ve left them set on default.”
“If you say so.”
“My God.” Pieter wiped the tears out of his eyes with his sleeve. “You halfwit, the default settings are an anti-tamper device. If you go into YouSpace without resetting them you’re launched into a life-threatening scenario designed to scare you shitless. Didn’t you read the manual?”
“What manual?”
“I didn’t leave you a copy of the manual?”
Theo’s fists were starting to hurt. “No, you didn’t.”
“Ah. Well, never mind. Now you know. First thing when you get back, reset the narrative parameters in MyYouSpace. Then you can choose whatever you like. Personally, I always like to start off waking up in bed with a beautiful woman I’ve never seen before, but it’s entirely up to you. All you have to do is—”
“Pieter,” Theo interrupted firmly. “What’s all this about my brother Max?”
Pieter frowned at him. “You’ve got a brother? I didn’t know that.”
“Max. He died, years ago.”
“I’m sorry. Were you close?”
“Pieter.” His head was beginning to throb, but he ignored it. “Everywhere I go in this portable nightmare of yours, people tell me you and Max are hanging out together. What the hell is all that about?”
Pieter rubbed his chin with his fist. “I’m sorry, I haven’t the faintest idea. I never knew you had a brother. You never told me.”
“Didn’t I?” Suddenly, Theo couldn’t remember. It was possible. His brother had never been a subject he’d been happy talking about. “But in that case, if you didn’t—”
He got no further. At that moment, the door flew open and five aliens burst into the room. They were holding silvery things, sort of like small fire extinguishers. When Pieter saw them, he reached inside his coat for something; whatever it was, he wasn’t quick enough. Dazzling jets of plasma shot out of the fire extinguishers and splashed over him. For a split second Pieter was perfectly still, bathed in white fire. Then he shrivelled, like a leaf on a bonfire. His body became a cinder, the cinder became ash, which lost its shape and crumbled in a neat pyramid on the floor.
Theo watched as the aliens shifted their weapons and pointed them straight at him. Fortunately, he saw them through the hole in one of the weird green doughnuts.
When his shift was over, he found a note for him from Call-me-Bill on the reception desk, telling him that he was now in Room 1. This turned out to be the whole of the third floor. It was quite nice, if your idea of a cosy little nest is the Metropolitan Museum of Art; the main thing was, there was a bed. He fell on it and was asleep as soon as he touched the mattress.
He was woken by what at first he thought was a growling noise, but which proved to be a phone on the bedside table. He grabbed it, mostly to make it shut up, and moaned, “Yes?” into the mouthpiece.
“Theo?”
He’d never woken up so fast in his entire life. Usually, his progress from asleep to awake was slow and gradual, like Man evolving from plankton. This time, though, all the lights in his head came on instantly. “Janine?”
“You total shit, Theo.”
Yes, it was Janine all right. “Hey, sis. Long time no—”
“Shut the fuck up and listen.” Pause. Janine had forgotten what she was going to say. “Anyhow,” she said, “how are