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the time. In our society we only talk about us. Everything is done for the common good.'

'It's all wrong,' I insisted. 'It's all fucking wrong. You're talking about a technology that allows you to control everything - even the most basic thought processes.'

I noticed that Rob and Siobhan were looking at each other. They appeared awkward and uncomfortable. I felt frustrated and angry, but I wasn't completely sure why. I was getting nowhere and all it was doing was winding the others up.

I got up, walked to the end of the garden and stared out over the calm, dark sea. A brisk, cold wind blew in from the coast and chilled me to the core.

The things that I had heard that evening rattled round and round my head for hours. I couldn't sleep. Siobhan lay in bed with her back to me, sleeping soundly. I had really pissed her off with my behaviour tonight. She hadn't spoken to me since the alien had left the house just after midnight.

I just couldn't accept what I'd been told. The alien had asked us to believe that he came from some utopian paradise billions of miles away - a place where people lived predestined lives without question or complaint; a place where individuals worked together selflessly for the common good. Someone once said that we only see things from our own perspective. I could only base my judgement on what I knew of myself and the rest of the human race, and that experience made me doubt that this paradise could ever have existed. What about character and personality? What about creativity and spontaneity? None of those qualities could possibly have been allowed to exist on the alien homeworld. Such attributes would only serve to disturb the precious status quo.

If what I had heard was true then the options were limited. Either this place was a shining example to the rest of the universe, a cold, anodyne hell that no-one in their right minds would want anything to do with, or it was simply the most dangerous mind-fuck in existence. My gut reaction was that this alien 'John' and the rest of his blissfully happy species were being controlled like puppets by some godlike being who's purpose I didn't even want to think about.

Chapter 18

October.

Autumn had arrived with a vengeance.

The days were shorter and the nights longer and the temperature had begun to plummet. I lay in bed with Siobhan sleeping soundly next to me. I was restless. I'd drifted in and out of sleep a few times but hadn't been able to properly lose consciousness. It was one of those endless dark nights where everything and nothing ran round and around my mind constantly. Without thinking of anything much in particular I had managed to keep myself awake until just after three o'clock. The cool night air was icy cold. I shuffled closer to Siobhan and wrapped my arms carefully around her. It was hard to believe that the aliens had been among us for the best part of three months now. It was even harder to believe that Mum and Dad had been gone for almost half a year.

If I was perfectly honest with myself and put aside my own personal feelings and misgivings, then it felt as if the aliens had been with us for much, much longer. They had become such an accepted and integrated part of society that it was difficult now to try and remember what things had been like before they'd arrived.

Although they seemed to have passed by in a matter of moments (certainly much quicker than the dark dragging hours had tonight) our first months together had been more than long enough for the first tangible benefits of our mutual existence to become evident. It didn't matter what I thought of the aliens (and, to be honest, I still didn't think much of them) there was no denying that we as a race had benefited greatly from their experience and expertise. The truth of the matter had been brought home to me a week or so earlier when I'd found myself watching live television coverage of man's first landing on Mars. Okay, so the distance to the red planet was nothing compared to the vast distances the aliens had travelled, but no human had ever been further away from home. It was a monumentally important new beginning for mankind. Years ahead of previous schedules and predictions, the trip had been made in a vessel