of cold. He put on the bathrobe, pushed open the door and found himself on a landing, opposite a door. He pushed that open too. He saw a small, nondescript room with two old, comfy-looking armchairs, a slightly out-of-shape sofa, a TV set and no windows. He shrugged and went in.
The TV set was on. It was broadcasting soft white noise and showing black and white lines, but when he walked in front of it, the noise stopped and the screen turned blue. Then text started to roll up it, Star Wars intro fashion, while an orchestral arrangement of ‘Killing Me Softly’ played in the background –
Muted congratulations!
If you’re reading this, you’ve found the YouSpace Clubhouse. Welcome!
The YouSpace Clubhouse is a facility provided free of charge exclusively to YouSpace users. If you are not a registered YouSpace customer, please leave now through the door in the west wall. To make the door appear, say Door.
About The YouSpace Clubhouse. The YouSpace Clubhouse is available to all YouSpace users as a communal area, social networking arena and leisure and recreational facility. To access the Clubhouse, input Clubhouse into your personal interface module.
Why Muted Congratulations? We note that you didn’t enter the YouSpace Clubhouse using your personal interface module. Therefore, you have accessed the YouSpace Clubhouse using the LastChance™ facility, an integral part of the YouSpace program.
About LastChance. LastChance™ is a function of FailSafe™ For YouSpace, the pre-installed YouSpace personal safety manager. If, during your YouSpace experience, you should encounter a situation inevitably resulting in certain death (such as, for example, getting killed) YouSpace will automatically transfer you to the YouSpace Clubhouse during the last fraction of a microsecond of your existence. Since linear time does not pass inside YouSpace, you can now exist indefinitely within the YouSpace Clubhouse. While here, feel free to enjoy the wide range of leisure and educational facilities and gourmet cuisine provided for your comfort and wellbeing. Please note, however, that should you leave the YouSpace clubhouse (by walking through the door in the west wall accessible by saying Door; see above) you will immediately die. Please note that LastChance™ and FailSafe™ are registered trademarks of PVG Enterprises (Holdings) Inc.
Theo’s mouth opened in a silent, wordless scream. He staggered, backed awkwardly until he bumped into one of the armchairs, and collapsed into it. For a long time, he could do nothing but sit, staring at the screen, trying to find a handhold that’d help him climb out of the well shaft of horror and despair he found himself in. Not alive after all, a voice kept saying in his head. True; and not dead, either. Instead, stuck in perpetual standby mode, in a small living room with light blue wallpaper and a slightly tatty beige carpet.
Finally, after a great deal of frantic scrabbling, slipping and falling back, he found the handhold, clung to it and hauled himself back up into the daylight of partial hope. True, he was as good as dead, trapped in a horrendous Sartre-esque nightmare of grotesque semi-existence, from which there was no way out other than total oblivion. But, he told himself fervently, it could have been so much worse, given the circumstances of his arrival. He might (he shivered from head to toe) have been trapped in this godawful place for ever and ever with Max –
“Theo?”
This time, the scream was neither silent nor wordless. True, the word was only “Nooooo!”, but that was the best he could do by way of eloquence under the circumstances.
“Theo, pull yourself together and get a grip, for God’s sake,” Max said irritably. “Have you seen what it says on the TV?”
No words. Theo just nodded.
“It’s awful. We can’t just stay here. This place is a dump.”
Nod. Manic grin.
“That’s totally unreasonable. We can’t be expected to hang around in this shithole for the rest of eternity. That’s just stupid. I’d rather be dead.”
“Door.”
A patch of the opposite wall glowed blue, and the outline of a doorframe appeared, as though sketched in by a vast unseen Rolf Harris.
“I didn’t mean it literally, you idiot,” Max said irritably, and the door vanished. Theo whimpered and buried his head in his hands. “That’s charming, by the way. Absolutely charming. You should be glad I wasn’t killed outright.”
“Why?”
Max ignored him. “Oh hell,” he said. Then he dropped on to the sofa and put his feet up. “This is all your fault, by the way.”
“My—?”
“Of course. If you hadn’t blown up the VVLHC and trashed those poor people’s planet, they would’ve have