Christmas Special 2012

by KING FELIX

Enterprise - Fawlty Towers - 2001 - They called it the impossible mash-up. Not with a little Christmas K-Flix magic.

Christmas Special 2012

But now this blackened city in the snow

Argues a will that cannot be my own,

And one not wished for: points to show

Time in his little cinema of the heart

Giving a premiere to Hate and Pain;

And Space urbanely keeping us apart.

- Philip Larkin, 'Time and Space were only their disguises'.

Shouted Ensign Altkid, "If I don't make it out of here, will you tell my boyfriend back on Earth that I love him?"

"We've been in worse situations than this. We just have to keep moving".

Reed felt hideously ironic in saying this; no sooner had he closed his mouth than a vicious lance of Suliban phaser fire shot through the blizzard. A terrible, abrupt death was coming. Now as never before, profound fear was living the high life in his shoulders, his lungs, the pit of his stomach. He winced to see their pursuers, and occasionally they appeared as an odd arm or torso moving stiffly in the dense snow. This foul storm was unprecedented, so it seemed, otherwise why would the Suliban have founded a base on so icy a continent? Only the landing control boards were visible above the whipping snow; the lights glowing red, and vanilla, and green.

"Also, the giant squid at the Weymouth Sealife Centre. I always wanted to see it. Will you see it for me if they kill me?"

They took heavy, awkward bounds through the snow. Reed, for one, felt his thighs spasm and shoot pain. Everything was biting. Still -bipeds. Did they have the advantage over the Suliban's genetically-engineered inclination to move quadrupedally? He clung to this idea. For a time, the Ensign seemed hopeful, too. She looked over her shoulder with bright eyes and a prim mouth. Coloured lights abounded, always.

"Keep your eyes peeled for the shuttlepod", Reed struggled to form words through his ice- and exhaustion-dogged throat. "It was at the far edge of the landing field, I'm sure of it".

"But there's no way we can take off through this blizzard?", chattered Altkid.

"If we can get inside, we can bleed the plasma relays from the impulse drive -it'll show up on Enterprise's radiological scan". Reed angled his head slightly, just able to see a plastered strand of red hair. "They may even be able to get a transporter fix on us. If the interference clears".

Altkid said something, which he barely heard. He got the impression, though, that she was giving voice to that certain fear which so many non-initiates had towards the transporter. A complete swap-around of all the energy and matter in your body, wondrously non-religious, wondrously decisive.

They almost stumbled; they remained right-footed. The phaser-shots of their pursuers died out and there came a queasy feeling of hope. Until, inevitably, an ominous hum arose from the snowdrift behind. It grew louder, more distinct, heralding a Suliban warrior as large as life aboard some kind of anti-gravity skiff. He leapt, twisted slightly, caught Reed with a vicious clawing motion. A single thought came: that's it for my spine. Except, even as he was down in the snow, the Commander found he was still able to move, just. Fierce, swinging limbs were about him, a living whip, before Altkid knocked the alien into repose with her clubbed fists.

"Hi, how are you? I hope you're well!" She helped him orientate himself as best she could in the collapsing world of snow. He got to his haunches, stumbled forward. Now heavy white granules were descending, vertically, as if by the city-load. The exact damage to his spine was a matter to be pigeon-holed; the blizzard had an anaesthetizing effect to whatever lay beneath his rended jumpsuit. With endgame disregard, the Starfleet officers clung to each other and flailed outwards.

The red-green-vanilla signal board became less a landmark and more an unintelligible maypole obscured by dizzying snowballs, heaven-flung. They staggered on, eventually coming upon a rippling indentation; snow against egg-shell metal. Reed found his hand was locked into a curtain-glider shape, which just about worked when it came to hauling the hatch open.

The interior was as deathly cold as the blizzard outside. There was a definite psychological kick, however, in getting clear from the wind.

"Power's minimal. But there's enough to bleed the plasma valves. Ensign, try powering up the meteorological scanners and the docking signals; anything that uses an Enterprise-actual frequency".

It was your mother bringing you a slice of cake after you'd emphatically told her not to, then finding it hit the spot perfectly. A starship should not linger in orbit around a hostile planet on the off-chance that two single officers might be able to fight their way free. Still, flip the coin of personal loyalty; it spins, it slows down in mid-air, almost endlessly. When you're dealing with a captain who named his dogs after the Three Musketeers, 'all for one' would always transfer to doting on your crew.

T'pol leaned into the scope and soon flexed her shoulders in interest. Adopting a tone that was neither calm nor particularly jarring, "Captain, I'm reading an ion-beryllium charge from the planet's surface. It's consistent with our shuttle's power signature".

Archer jerkily half-rose from his chair. "Nothing else? No bio-signs?"

"Inconclusive. However, I am detecting low-level radio and EM bursts. This is our shuttle pod".

The Captain walked stiffly about the Bridge. He stopped, started, spread a palm on his thigh and wagged the other in the air. "Launching Pod Two would be kind of reckless, even assuming it could make it through. We know there's a mass of Suliban weaponry down there".

T'pol, still hanging over the scope, "I believe, at this stage, there would be little chance of launching a successful rescue mission".

Archer nodded. To his helmsman, he said, "Lieutenant, alter our orbit to a quadrilateral vector above the crash site. Take us close".

"Close, Captain?", wondered Mayweather.

"Time to be daring", Archer creased his face into a slight smile. "I'm not averse to getting a little ice on the windshield".

The observation port, Reed suddenly noticed, was over four-fifths covered by a mound of grey snow. The remaining fifth was enough to emit a deeply stormy tint into the cabin's atmosphere. Eerie. Luckily, it was enough to let Altkid examine the wound in his side. She told him the scuffle had probably written off his jumpsuit, and indeed, the flesh was pretty badly rended around his hips, but it was nothing to get hysterical about.

After that, he settled back, took shallow breaths. Altkid clutched her fingertips between her thighs.

"I suppose all there is to do now is Terry Waite. We'll just -dissolve into thin air won't we?"

"Ensign", Reed felt his jaw give something very close to a chatter, "the transporter is perfectly safe, I can assure you".

"And what about that prince in Dubai? He had his own personal transporter. One day, he tries to send himself across town to his office. Materializes in the lobby as a huge mound of Al Gore, inside out, like your monkey from 'The Fly'".

Reed almost smiled. "I'm fairly sure that's just an urban myth".

"And what about the anti-suicide transporters they mounted along the struts of the Golden Gate Bridge? The way the control room was hijacked by militant Catholics. All the jumpers caused to materialize directly in the Hell Dimension".

"That's definitely an urban myth", scoffed Commander Reed. "I've been through the transporter half a dozen times now and it's perfectly secure. You've got nothing to panic about".

"You're right, anyway. Nothing's going to drag this one back to hell".

Reed examined the short-range sensors, fluttering on half power as they were. He seemed to remember that the Suliban were cold-blooded, which would hardly help differentiate them from the world of lurching snow mounds. He swathed a palm across the side of his face and decided they were safe, for the moment. A cursory glance at the total power reserves set his mind on a clear course.

"I'm priming the pod for a self-destruct; an overload in the anti-matter injectors should do the trick. If I become incapacitated, just hit the 'engage' button on the engineering console".

"Yay. I'll look forward to that", said Altkid. As she spoke, she removed something from her neck. A Vulcan IDIC medallion. "In the meantime, I think I'll meditate".

Reed moved in sheepishly from the far engineering console. "Vulcan mysticism, Ensign? It says in your crew files that you're a Monotheist?"

"Yeah. But these things aren't as mutually exclusive as you'd think. T'pol has taught me some meditation techniques. It's all a kind of eschatological threshold, ghosts-who-don't-know-they're-dead kind of thing. What about you, Commander? Are you religious at all?"

"Not particularly. My mother was a keen church-goer. Myself, I never really had an opportunity to think about it. For me to find the time to meditate?" He smiled to himself, "I suppose my subscriptions to MHQ and Gun Digest would have to fail to come through. Still, it's something I can respect. After all, it takes all sorts".

"Meh. There really is no need to be kind. I'm not completely convinced about it myself".

He watched closely as she smoothed out the medallion on one of the flatter consoles. The edges of the chain, she formed into a triangle. The amount of purple light being emitted into the pod was a clear semi-hue darker now. He cast his eyes over the coloured lights of the headings dash, the communications monitor. A striking vanilla white, a green, a blue. It was, he decided, letting his eyes go slack, more than a glow but less than a full, shadow-dispelling aura. Their limbs and faces were highlighted as coloured planets emerging into their first quarter. He watched the Ensign place her fingertips together. The wry arch of her fine eyebrows, Vulcan-esque at the best of times, made him feel like a completely different person. Strange indeed to watch. He considered his years on Enterprise; so many weeks and months of seeing his fellow crewmen go about their day-to-day tasks with no space whatsoever for absent-mindedness. Even in the recreation room, there was a nagging pressure to use your leisure time wisely. And only now -when time was running out, life was carefree.

The medallion shot up between them and stuck to the ceiling.

They looked at each other, just enough for the shock to register. Then the shuttle pod was violently rocked. Reed rushed to the observation port, now largely free of snow. High overhead, so much so that the whole of the saucer section and 'ringpull' twin fuselage was visible: Enterprise. Something in the atmosphere subdued the silver lustre of the hull plating; it looked fine and grey, like a seagull.

But it was real. And the perspective of the grapple, spiraling down to wrench them free of the snow, was the most fearsome thing he'd seen in years.

"Brace yourself! We're going up!"

They were, and faster than he would have liked. Faster than their enemies would have liked; a Suliban warrior jumped and clung fast to the observation port. Altkid gave him the Vs even as he fell away. A sensation of becoming un-glued played at their feet, followed by the rippling of high wind against sheer metal; always horribly vulnerable. The small rounded walls shifted at wholly unreasonable angles, and at the same time, panels lost and regained power in a dizzy hotchpotch. Giddy amounts of nervous tension were expended in trying to keep up with what was happening. Plus, the Starfleet officers had no idea what to with their flailing limbs. Reed had never cared for theme park rides. The novelty of gravity being at odds with your head and stomach; overexaggerated danger. Real danger. Enterprise was taking fire from the enemy base. It seemed that it would be a miracle for the ship to get clear. Also, on whether their own bodies would survive the admission into space, bones about to be broken, if not broken already, temperature and breathable atmosphere dwindling to nothing. As a matter of pride, he forced his eyes to remain open.

A dragon comes about, breathes fire. Comes about again, breathing ice. It wouldn't be so bad, he sensed, if the dangling shuttle pod made regular 45 degree swings like a pendulum. It was the subtle, momentum-pregnant eddies and spins that made him want to crawl into a fetal position. The dragon played a half-hearted game. How long it went on, he had no idea. But it was insane. Eventually, he realized that there hadn't been any torpedo-strafes for quite some time, plus the ride was smoother, less a gleeful exercise in nausea.

Peering upwards just in time, the tiny port hole witnessed their winching-up into the main canopy, a tomb of doughy, silver hull plates. Ensign Altkid gave a curiously middle-aged gasp of relief. For Reed's point of view, horrible tension versus a stoical lack of panic –call it a victory. He moved his shoulders away from the bulkhead and examined his reasonably steady hands. In a mad little reflex, he even caught the IDIC medallion as if it was a close-your-eyes-and-open-out-your-hands birthday present.

There came the sound titanium sliders, the heavily-motorized cruciforms, the unearthly thrum of warp infusers. Somewhere, Captain Archer was giving the word; fingers were jabbing buttons. Atmospheric manoeuvring to warp five in barely ten seconds. Clear from all the fighting and then away. In the distance. On your merry way.

They passed through the rubbery stand-by link and into the decontamination chamber with its slick UV lighting. Reed itchily started to remove his jumpsuit even as he nagged Phlox over the intercom. "Is this strictly necessary, Doctor? I might point out that we've been around the Suliban frequently and they've never passed on any dangerous microbes before. They've even freely roamed the ship. I really need to make my report to the Captain".

"In good time, Commander. Since the war escalated, we must assume the Suliban have become more insidious". Patience and good humour personified: Phlox's nature was striking even from a distance, even without the sight of those ethereal eyes. "Besides, I'm sure you'll welcome twenty minutes or so to 'chill out' after your adventure".

And so Reed glumly settled back into the decontamination routine. Ensign Altkid had removed her uniform to reveal a sober sports bra and briefs which he very much approved of. She placed her jumpsuit into the micro-cleaning drawer, as it wasn't too badly damaged. Reed was under no illusion about trying to save his own uniform, however. He was about to lower the tattered mound of blue felt into the bulk-vaporizer when something halted him. On the inside of the waist, where the seams met, there was the small ribbon with washing instructions. The cotton had been coming un-wound for months now, but the scramble with the Suliban had completely pulled it free. Almost flush with the seam -Reed could hardly believe it- was a business card.

"I'll just rub this gubbins into my own back, then, shall I?", said Altkid.

"Unbelievable", said Reed. He winced to see every finely-printed word on the card, then read it aloud to the Ensign. "'Attention Starfleet officers. Are you far from home and missing your loved ones? Why not commission a personalized portrait, still-life or even a Christmas card as a special gift, to be sketched and delivered by a professional artist back on Earth? Oil paintings undertaken by negotiation only, but am skilled in all techniques. Universal Credit or accepted. Contact P. Sherman, global ethernet code N1071CNE-01'"

"Where did you get that?", asked the Ensign, her handful of luminous decontaminant gel frozen mid-air.

"It was poking out of my uniform!"

"Nice. You've got to admire entrepreneurialism like that, especially in the middle of a global depression. She must be savvy".

Now Reed gasped. "Savvy? We're Starfleet officers! Representing all of humanity! We deserve to be respected, not preyed-upon by fly-by-night, money-grabbing opportunists! And what do you mean 'she'?"

"Just a Guess with Jess", shrugged Altkid. "If you want my opinion, Commander, live and let live".

Scoffing, "I certainly will not! You don't seem to realize, Ensign, this represents a major breach of security at our uniform-making facilities. Imagine if we'd been captured by the Suliban. They may well have found the card and recruited this 'P. Sherman' to set bombs or micro-charges".

"Yeah, whatever", shrugged Altkid.

After another moment of being perfectly exasperated, he laid the card on a high surface and set to work spreading the decontamination gel into her shoulders. He was very rough, she found. But at least there was none of the tacit sexual overtones you got with some of the officers.

Away slid Reed through the tight partition walls of Enterprise's main habitation section. He moved shoulder-wise past the 'L' shaped kink just before Captain Archer's cabin, the reassuringly claustrophobic stretch that was well-served by blue studio lights. In his hand, clutched impatiently, the tiny advert of P. Sherman. And sometimes he was almost in-sync with that terribly dark section of his subconscious, which insisted it was alright to feel such petty, bureaucratic rage. At least he wasn't brooding on the war.

"Come in". From that nearby, unseen nook, the Captain's voice was as soft and measured as ever. "Another narrow escape. I think we must be becoming a legend among the Suliban".

"I thought the whole purpose of the Temporal Cold War was that they already know we're a legend?"

"Which is exactly why I decided to swoop down and rescue you, even knowing you'd disagree with my decision. If you have a good reputation, you may as well live up to it".

From the shuttle hatch, all along the trunk walkway, Reed had told himself he wouldn't pout. To a degree, he succeeded. Gradually, he let his eyes become less rigid even as they played along the staunch bulkheads. He felt something was wrong. Out of the ordinary.

"So what was it you found down there, exactly?"

"A Suliban recon station. What looked like a long-range sensor array". Reed sneered a little where another officer would have caved in to black depression. "I suspect just another rampart in the Temporal Iron Curtain. Unfortunately, sir, it looks as though we're well-and-truly boxed in from here to Sector 17".

Captain Archer, as usual, was buoyed by his own frustration. Staring at the deep-padded deck, he twisted his neck, winced. "You know, it's an ugly thing, how I've grown to hate those terms. 'Temporal Cold War'! 'Temporal Iron Curtain'! I know it's bad form for a flagship captain to complain about -anything- he experiences in deep space, but it just seems -so relentless and small-minded".

He paced slightly as he ruminated. Reed clasped his hands behind his back, knuckles falling just short of the throbbing area of his back. It was a sign of mutual respect, he fancied, that the Captain had long-since abandoned trying to make him stand at ease. In turn, he tolerated any number of Archer's easy-going command decisions.

He stared at the computer monitor set across from the Captain's bunk. Water Polo heroes of yesteryear were reminiscing, and to a lesser degree looking forward to the 2161 world series. There was an impression that at no point had Archer actually been watching. Even the stars sweeping by in their majestic, space-warped buzz seemed utterly incidental. Again there came the sensation that something was deeply awry.

"When Starfleet was first being formed, the Vulcans were keen to stress how we had to be rough-and-ready. Well-armed. I never dreamed it was one of those things they were trying to under-emphasize. Do you know what I hoped our mission on Enterprise would consist of? Mapping magellanic star-labyrinths, neutron clusters, nebulas that look like some kind of neon-lit paradise. And when we met aliens, I imagined they'd be nothing whatsoever like us. Not remotely humanoid and as enlightened as you like. And what do we get? War with the Suliban. Endless skirmishes with the Klingons and the Andorians and the Romulan Star Empire".

"I think you'll find, Captain", said Reed affably, "that the history of exploration has always been tied up with warfare. Think of the conquistadors, Napoleon in Egypt, Alexander the Great. The 1969 moon landing owed just as much to American-Russian oneupmanship as a desire to explore. Plus, without the cool head which Neil Armstrong had developed in the Korean War, the mission would have fallen to at least a dozen mishaps".

Archer seemed to concede all this. He briefly looked through the porthole at the speeding stars, then, hyperactive, flinging an imaginary baseball, he turned in Reed's approximate direction.

"And what about the time travel? It's ugly. It's unnatural. All those times T'pol said, 'The Vulcan Science Directorate has concluded that time travel is impossible', I wanted to tell her, 'It's not, but I sure wish it was'".

Reed confessed. "Personally, I find it fascinating. An extra dimension to travel in".

The Captain's face creased massively in put-upon dismay. "Really? You don't find it -overzealous? Absurd?"

"Perhaps a little", said Reed.

"Sit down, Malcolm". Archer gestured to the small linoleum table that was built into the bulkhead. The Commander waited patiently for the order to be called through to Chef. The usual; two coffees, one black and plain, one black with Omicron Ceti III sugar. Instead, intrigue on top of intrigue: Archer sat across from him, fixing a gaze of weird passivity.

"Can I interest you in an arm wrestle?"

Reed snorted. "I wasn't aware I was serving on a Klingon ship, sir".

"It's something Trip and I used to do in our training days. He'd suggest it, and I'd always win".

"I don't want to hurt you, sir".

Archer laughed. He poked his elbow onto the table without much ceremony. His hand felt dry and strong. Steely, endlessly humane eyes peered out from that prow-like forehead, which had only become steeper as the years rushed by. Reed wondered when the contest would begin.

He licked his lips. "Are you sure you want to keep your elbow at such a straight angle, Captain? Offensively, it's probably a shrewd move, but you'll feel a reflex to stand up, get better leverage. I'd hate to see you disqualified".

Archer smiled a little. "I can hold my own, Commander, for as long as I need to. Ready when you are".

And so Reed braced himself. He looked excitedly from his elbow to his palm to the Captain's eyes. The opening seconds: queasy, savage, an oblique tension that wasn't in the least enjoyable. Indifference to the sinewy strain in his elbow, Reed felt his neck sweep gently to one side. All at once he realized what it was that had disturbed him on first entering the cabin. Why hadn't his conscious mind picked up on it? The Captain had removed several of the framed photographs which hung on the felt-covered bulkhead. Gone was the twentieth century Enterprise space shuttle. Gone was Commander Tucker laughing down at the Cajun Catfish with birthday candlesticks. Gone was the aged Porthos climbing gingerly from Shuttlepod One onto the green grass of Hydra 1-V 'Wonderland'.

There was now a certain amount of strain. Reed felt his elbow wheeze like an aged JCB hydraulic. His bicep rippled, shooting a useless promise of strength unlimited. He glanced at Archer.

"You know -there is -something I've been meaning to -mention to you- Malcolm", looking away, the Captain frowned in pain, though never once shook or shivered. He struggled with a strain which more or less matched Reed's. "I should probably've -mentioned it earlier. It's just -as of December 25, 2161, I want you to -replace me as captain of Enterprise".

The his credit, his forearm didn't cave immediately. Nevertheless the back of his hand was down on the tabletop before he knew it.

"Sir?"

"You heard me, Commander".

Malcolm was completely aghast. "I'm flattered, Captain, but the Enterprise is yours. The ship, the mission -it's totally synonymous with you".

"Well -", only now did Archer rise and deliver his order for refreshments through the intercom. "I'm done. I've explained my reasoning, and I was hoping, that famous British reserve being what it is, you'd just accept it with good grace. The fact is, Malcolm, I'm an explorer, not a war general. You, on the other hand, live and breathe the role of military tactician. Besides, there's barely a week goes by without Admiral Forest singing your praises. I bet you didn't know, your 'Red Alert' system has been adopted even on star-bases".

Reed narrowed his eyes. He leant forward in the tiny chair, and liked to think he was neither tense nor wholly at ease. On his lap, his fingertips played together as harp strokes. "With every respect, Captain, I think you're changing the subject. As you said, I'm a tactician. What good would I be in a diplomatic situation?"

"Some could argue -", the distasteful idea made Archer stare accursedly at the deck-plating, "that diplomacy doesn't much enter in to it any more. The Starfleet charter would have us believe that our mission is to seek out new civilizations! The grim truth is, there are no 'new' civilizations. The empires and races we've met are either inclined to war or they're not. When I was a kid, my dad and I staring out through the catadiotron telescope set on our porch, we somehow decided that deep space was home to races that probably couldn't be vengeful or warlike even if they tried. Well, I think it's high time I stopped being quite so -naive!"

Chef brought them their coffees. Reed found himself cupping his hands around the warmth almost as if he was back on the Suliban ice planet. And meanwhile, in play just a few inches from his elbow, that eerie trick-of-the-brain where the speeding stars themselves seemed to be producing a rolling surf sound; in reality just the hiss of warp speed. It was a mighty journey, dwindling out. He tried, for instance, to cite their first experience of the Vulcan / Andorian war. Upon discovering a Vulcan military base disguised as a monastery, it would never have occurred to Reed to side with the Andorian henchmen who, just a few seconds beforehand, had been keeping them hostage. And what of the occasion when Commander Tucker had been stolen away by intergalactic smugglers, at the same time with one of their own number accidentally left aboard Enterprise? Reed reminded Archer how he'd very artfully conjured a whole hierarchy of Starfleet malevolence, headed by a murderous Captain T'pol, in order to scare the alien into revealing his secrets. In Archer's place, Reed told how he'd probably have made unconvincing overtures towards torture, and failed.

"You'd have found a way", promised the Captain. "You've got a good head on your shoulders. Besides which, I've had a good run. I'm proud of what we've achieved. It's time to step aside, though. Let some new blood take over".

They spoke of the old days. Memories of power-couplings and reactor parts breaking down all of a sudden; subtle engineering problems as a constant, humdrum endurance test. 'It was the best of times, it was the worst of times', thought Reed, though he had a life-long hatred of Dickens. The conversation, full of laughter as it was, remained set in a certain tempo. To break that tempo would allow the truth to come flooding in: we live by a novelty, rushing through our veins. We're pioneers and explorers. But Starfleet won't always be that way. One day, we'll be just another race falling into the viciously-armed ranks of all space-faring civilizations.

Reed stared hard at this wry space-hero, this perpetual-fiftyish father-figure, now smiling bitterly at the table top. The sadness was infinitesimal at that point. He found they could both coast along quite easily, all peaceful, almost holy glances down memory lane. Archer smiling at how Reed had always been a brilliantly stern authority figure, then smiling again because -well, the captaincy of a starship: what a fantastic Christmas present it would be for him. The chat went on through two more rounds of coffee, with just one problem. On leaving the Captain's Cabin, he found he'd completely forgotten to vent his spleen about P. Sherman's advert. No matter. He would deal with it himself, when they arrived back on Earth six months hence. It would be, he decided, his last action as a neurotic, vengeful security man.

"Close the patio doors, Hal".

"I'm afraid I can't do that, Mr Fawlty".

Basil Fawlty gestured imploringly at thin air. He silently choked, exasperation incarnate. "Why not? It's a perfectly simple task. You send the signal out of your weird little box of androgynous, sneering circuits, it flies through the air, no resistance whatsoever, and then the door just -closes! I'm not asking you to send up a prayer to the spirit of Bill Gates and have all the lights in the hotel flash out the rhythm of Schubert's Marche Militaire. I mean really, how can it be so difficult?"

On the nearby wall of the main hall, the dark hemisphere with its inset red glow remained constant. Still, apparently, Hal was thoughtful. Perhaps he was even forlorn. "I'm not sure I have enough spiritual presence to pray for anything. However, if you'd like me to flash an approximation of Schubert's Marche Militaire using the hotel lights, I would be delighted to try. Would you like me to try, Mr Fawlty?"

Now, Basil gritted his teeth alongside cheeks and a moustache that were reaching an all-time surly depth.

"No. I'd like you to close the patio doors".

"I'm afraid I can't do that. The reason being, Mr Fawlty, that the tip of your shoe is covering the door frame".

Clenching and unclenching his fists, staring at the heavens in ire, Basil stepped backwards in a theatrical arc of his long legs. It seemed for a second or two that Hal was still going to keep the door open: during this time, Basil gave a helpless, imploring gesture.

But the doors closed. He muttered to himself as he sprayed the Tesco Own window cleaner onto the inside pane. Even back beside the radiator, his breath showed as a wild little swirl. The air was intensely cold, everywhere. What's more, barely four o'clock and it was already as dark as midnight. Unbelievable.

"Basil? Have you put up the Christmas Tree yet?"

Sybil's voice, from reception, which had long since qualified as a building-wide banshee to rival any ghost-ride, strangled the ability to think.

"I'll put the tree up in a moment, dear. I'm busy with the windows at the moment".

"For goodness sake, it's the twenty-third of December. Gleneagles and the Travel Lodge had theirs up from November the thirtieth".

"Well I'm sorry", Basil swept the shammy in haphazard arcs. "Not being a slave to gaudy, Americanized commercialization, it didn't occur to me".

Continued Sybil, "Commercialization has got nothing to do with it. People are more likely to stay here if they look through the window and see a lovely bright Christmas tree".

Basil stopped wiping and gestured. "Well it'll be a stroke of luck of they can look through the window at all with this disgusting grime that drifts in from the offshore fracking plant. Honestly, it's like-"

"I'm not going to argue, Basil".

His eyebrows perked. He pulled the trigger of the spray bottle. Something in the mechanism was failing to catch. He frantically pulled the trigger. He frantically pulled the trigger, hands in a rictus, knees bent together, soon with his brow clenched in a dizzy rage.

"At least go out to the back porch and bring it in out of this drizzle", said Sybil. "Real fir trees can be very delicate when they're not looked after".

Basil blinked, and went loose. Then his shoulders assumed a wholly different tension. Hoppity-hop -forward.

"Delicate? It's a tree! It's a tree! That's what trees do -they sit outside in the rain. That's what makes them grow. You don't get teams of woodland animals saying, 'Here we go, mate, looks like rain, better get the tarpaulins out. We don't want-"

"Basil!"

He placed the window cleaner on the floor and jerked his tall body to its maximum. "Alright! Alright! I'll go back outside into the freezing cold to get your precious tree". Blinking, pulling at his cuffs, he took a few paces towards reception, the better to face up to the dragon. "We wouldn't want to miss out on the off-chance that Lord and Lady Vicky Pollard are walking past and don't see a shaved-up bit of rain forest and half a dozen enchanting, bleedin' fairy lights".

And promptly walked in to the closed patio door.

Clutching his mouth and nose. "Hal! Why didn't you open it?"

"I'm sorry, Mr Fawlty", said Hal lightly, "you didn't ask me to".

"Wasn't it obvious? You heard me talking about going back outside!" He narrowed his eyes very shrewdly, wagged his finger at the air. "This is you, isn't it? Doing that -thing. That thing where you have a dozen different conversations with people all over the hotel at the same time".

"Mr Fawlty", Hal was cool and irate both at once, "I can assure you I am quite capable of carrying out any number of simultaneous operations with a zero-point-zero-zero-one percent margin of error".

A conspicuously pretty human, with a somehow omniscient smile, raising an eyebrow and delivering the Vulcan hand salute. Anarchic? Of course. Vulcans don't really smile as they wish you Peace and Long Life. They question was, just how subtle was the human girl's anarchy? Very? Polly found she had no trouble capturing the steepness of the eyebrows or the borderline-twinkle, borderline-distinguished nose -this was half the battle of capturing her personality. But there was a certain effortless prop between the side of her mouth and those smooth, straight cheeks which remained mysterious to the ends of the earth. No amount of shading would help capture it. Frequently, she'd sweep her giant Stabilo eraser all over the edges of the girl's face, in lines, and it helped: the prehensile firmness of something truly indestructible.

"Are you warm enough? Would you like me raise the central heating a few degrees?"

"No, it really doesn't bother me, thanks".

"Your sketches are becoming increasingly bold and precise".

"Thankyou, Hal", said Polly, to the voice emanating so warmly from the computer station of the far wall. Room 237, all too often vacant, was the ideal place to sit and sketch. It was cold, but in that strange way of dead-of-winter afternoons -not even indicative of the ice outside, but terribly raw, exposed, up around your neck.

"That's Ensign Barbara Altkid of the Starship Enterprise, isn't it?"

"Yes", Polly smiled, continuing her delicate pencil strokes, looking closely at the tiny photo on her knees. "How on earth did you know that?"

"I thought I recognized her. I enjoy studying the news channels, and there seems to be reports about the NX-01 every other day".

"I don't watch the news. I never even heard of her before she sent me this commission. But I'm glad I did. One hundred Brit-Credits just for a hand-sketched Christmas card. I think they must get paid a little too much aboard the Starship Enterprise".

"Could I have a closer look?"

Polly unfolded her legs and slid over to Hal's wall-mount, where she carefully held her sketch pad before the glowing red hemisphere.

"You've made her look very beautiful".

" 'Computer, Computer, on the wall, who's the fairest of them all?' "

Hal, of course, didn't understand this, and so made no reply.

"Polly, do you mind if I ask you a personal question?"

"Of course, as long as you're not planning on giving me up to the Inland Revenue".

"I wasn't planning that at all. I wanted to ask you, you seem to be working on a commission every other day. You're very talented, and you seem to enjoy sketching very much. In my estimation, you could easily give up your employment at Fawlty Towers and earn a living directly from your artwork. Isn't this something you've considered?"

"No", said Polly, continuing her essence-hunting. "Maybe I did feel that way once, but it's all worked out well. If there's something you love to do, it takes concentration. But who wants to have to concentrate all the time, even on something you love? So I thought, if you actually need to zone out and do something completely brain-dead, it may as well be something useful, that also earns you a little dancing money. Hence my once-and-future employment at Fawlty Towers".

"I understand", said Hal. He remained silent for a time, seeming to 'compute', just like an old-style screen-and-keyboard affair. "I understand. That seems a very admirable position to take in life. Although I'm not sure Mr Fawlty would approve of calling your duties 'brain-dead'".

Carefully, Polly started to fill in the delicate water-reed configuration of Barbara Altkid's irises. "What about you, Hal? Mrs Fawlty tells me that a lot of your brother units are used as main ship computers by deep space explorers. Don't you find it, I don't know -frustrating?- to have such a powerful mind and be stuck running a flea-bitten hotel in Torquay?"

"No", Hal boldly stated. The red core of his processor burned ever more intensely in the winter gloom. He chose his words carefully. "To be perfectly honest with you, I've developed a distinct feeling of loyalty and responsibility towards to the people of Earth, and Torquay in particular. It really is the strangest thing. I am at a loss to explain".

Polly's pinny-mounted communicator pinged to life. Mrs Fawlty, no doubt blinking in that vaguely disarming way of hers, issued her orders. "I'm sorry to bother you, Polly. I know your shift doesn't start for another half an hour, but it's getting awfully busy in the bar. Would you mind starting a little bit early tonight? I don't trust the alcohol synthesizer to work unattended".

"Of course not, Mrs Fawlty, I'll be right there".

From pleasing concentration, Polly felt her expression descend into dour determination. The dreaded alcohol synthesizer. Four months previously, there had been an efficiency shake-up at Fawlty Towers. Mrs Fawlty had chosen a top-of-the-range computer, Hal, to operate the security, lighting, in-room entertainment, air-con. Mr Fawlty had chosen to stop buying beers and spirits from the cash and carry, instead investing in a Malaysian-manufactured alcohol synthesizer which could ferment any drink from a generic enzyme-pak in just a matter of seconds.

Sadly, one in five drinks exploded a minute or two after being created.

"Did you say, 'a distinct feeling of responsibility towards the people of Torquay', Hal? Well, there's that and the masochism".

The reasonably-sized staff lounges of Starbase One were of an old-fashioned interstellar design: plasticky white and blocky. The hanging and festooned Christmas decorations: insanely delicate. Reed didn't dislike it by any means, though it was hard to settle back and think in such an environment. Only on boarding the transglobal liner did he find time to retreat inside his own mind and brood. British Spaceways had recently been de-nationalized to become part of the Virgin Group. Chinstrokers decried it as an omni-shambles: Reed had no particular feelings one way or another. If Virgin encountered any problems, they'd be tied to the global depression and the burgeoning overpopulation -something no one could help, apparently.

He clamped his small, ever-tense shoulders into the thick-woven upholstery. Of a similar material, quite by coincidence, was the tie of his civilian suit. He grasped the tip and, pulling it tight, ran a forefinger along the edge in a violin motion. The dull daydreaming, practically a form of unconsciousness , took in many dark, scintillating subjects. For the hundredth time, that Captain Archer was being unnecessarily pessimistic about Starfleet's place in the galactic power-struggle. True, the Xindi attack of 2153, the destruction of the NX-02 Discovery in spacedock; these events had been horrific, though not wholly devastating. Reed liked to tell himself that the human race had some unique characteristics to see it through. We can move from being open-hearted and democratic, to being circumspect and warlike, as an age-old reflex. Surely it was evolution at play, or at the very worst, 1945: a Klingon Stalin, a Vulcan Eisenhower, a human Churchill.

He slanted his head at the long grasp of deep space, and it occurred to him this would be the last he'd see of it until he left Earth again as the new captain of Enterprise. After that, a new preoccupation came -he worried about what to buy Archer as a leaving present, or if he should buy anything at all. In a newspaper supplement recently, he'd seen that Omega had released an impressive, luxurious replica of the Speedmaster which Neil Armstrong had taken to the Moon. This would hit the spot perfectly. If he could have one delivered to his base of operations in Torquay, all the better.

The transglobal liner dipped increasingly low into the atmosphere. The pitch and yaw of the speeding fuselage was so sharply aligned that the refracted heat appeared as super-contrasted strips of red and yellow. After that came the heavily ionized shimmers of ice, the raindrops which somehow appeared as daggers moving parallel with his window. The atmosphere-proper was wintry. Snow was flung wildly. Still, as they skirted Western Europe and Britain, there was only the same old clinical drabness of most modern winters. Intrusive, sepiotone daylight, the better to pick out Christmas lights and neon crucifixes. Reed thought of his childhood.

The planet-side dock was smaller than he remembered, and there was also more people. No Starfleet personnel that he recognized, just delicate-footed space-researchers, mining reps and colony execs by the throng. Holding the kit bag tensely to his side, he embarked on a ten minute mission to find his taxi, which delivered him in turn to the magna-train station. The platform itself was small and densely enclosed with serifed awnings and a plexi-glass, mad scientist waiting booth. Not that the place didn't feel horribly exposed in the biting atmos, inside or out. The adjacent track was set high above the city on a triple-arched bridge. All those present were caught in the most bracing, gnawing air pressure.

"It's clearly an advertising ploy, for a film", said a man in an old-style duffle-coat. "It's happened to too many people. They've found a way to beam dreams directly into our minds when we sleep".

His girlfriend balked. "It seems like a lot of trouble to go through just to advertise a film. If such technology existed, wouldn't they use it to mess up all the insurgents in Iran and Canada?"

"You're assuming", Dufflecoat beamed and rotated his shoulders, "that it's humans behind it. It could be a message from aliens, or from a parallel universe or something".

Reed considered walking away along the macadam borders, leaving the two of them to their elaborate science fiction conversation. But what if it wasn't science fiction? He presented his credentials.

"I'm sorry to interrupt, but I happen to be a Starfleet security executive", he narrowed his eyes as he spoke; as ever, the belief of going in all psychological guns blazing. "You seem to be talking about some sort of alien infiltration".

"I don't know about that", said the toothy, duffle-coated man. "We were just talking about the Purple Giant dreams".

"The Purple Giant dreams?"

They looked at him dumb-founded, as if he was, himself, dreaming. "You'll have to excuse me, I've been off-world for some time. What exactly are the Purple Giant dreams?"

Obliged the girlfriend, "It's all over the ethernet. It's a dream that's gone viral. Thousands of people are having the same dream, about the End of the World, but back in the past, at the start of the millennium. 2013".

Quickly, her boyfriend made a correction, "Thousands of people are claiming to have the same dream".

And at this point, Reed considered closing the conversation down, and walking away. It was only politeness which forced an extension. "Interesting. What does this dream consist of?"

Smiling, eyes all over the place, the girl nodded her head back. "There's just this, kind of, hundred foot giant, in purple armour, with a tall helmet and triangular horns. Standing in the ruins of turn-of-the-millennium Paris. He's arguing with this regular-sized guy, who's head-to-foot silver, on a silver surfboard. But then, even as they're arguing, the shadow of an even bigger giant starts to fall over them. I mean, lots of people are saying the Purple Giant might be Earth's champion".

Then, aboard the magna-train, several things made him bristle. Firstly, just across the carriage, a man was wearing the same style of leather jacket as himself, but a brand name which he instinctively knew was better than his own 2150 Burtons. French Connection or some such. Irritation number two came in the form of a student, whose oversized headphones seemed to be projecting rather dampening the a-tonal musak.

Flooding back: the memory of how T'pol had flatly refused to teach him the Vulcan Nerve Grip. Reed had tried to point out that it was less a matter of protecting ancient Vulcan secrets and more to do with her voluntarily withholding an essential self-defense technique. Then, in that beautiful tolerant-tolerant-belligerent way of hers, she'd insisted that one's fingers had to be conditioned from birth. Would she tell him about this 'conditioning'? Back to belligerent -beautiful. 'Humans, in my estimation, are far too reckless to use such a maneuver with the correct amount of care and economy'.

When the music became too much to tolerate, he walked through the carriage and spent the remaining hour riding in the link. At no point did he see the coast until they were right on top of it. He only saw two or three Christmas trees, and they were small, set outside pubs that looked like giant, ancient conservatories. A child's black-eyed anthropomorphized mushroom slide smiled away at nothing and no one. Always the temperature seemed to be growing ever-more icy, even though it seemed to be holding steady around the porthole itself. At ease: the muscley-jawed woman beside him with her bag full of reasonably-expensive wrapping paper.

So, Torquay. Away he swept down Rathmore Road, towards the horse-shoe coast, every inch of it with a Christmassy vibe. Unavoidable, really. The tri-cornered street lamps adorned with brassiere-shaped string lights, certain traffic signals seeming to change on a purely aesthetic basis because there was so little traffic. Just beyond a very rugged outcrop of unloved trees and an unloved public toilet, he saw the brightest lights of all. It was over three hundred metres out into the sluggish tide: a flood-lit platform had been towed into place alongside the tail blades of a submerged aeroplane. Reed had briefly heard about this on the news, but had been under the impression that the crash had taken place further out into the channel -some weeks previously, Suliban infiltrators had brought down a military transport plane travelling between Bolling Air Force base in Washington DC and RAF Northolt. Flight 7NC101. It was just one of the almost weekly outrages caused by the clandestine, quick-moving terrorist teams. Or in any case, 'just one of the-'; he had no idea how the people living on the Torquay coast must feel about the crash. As he stared out across the steel-coloured water, there was only two other people looking at the submerged plane wreck. One was a coat-flapping dogwalker. The other was a late-to-middle aged man who looked like the cliché of a hypnotically boring geography teacher.

Moving back across the broad coastal road, a line of rowdy teenagers was emerging from a cheap hotel. They passed Reed in a long procession, and he was astonished when the final teenager randomly threw a handful of chips in his face. If only he'd have been properly motivated, he'd have chased him, taken him by the lapels -though obviously it would have been Conduct Unbecoming of a Starfleet Officer.

Other than the ubiquitous gangs of teenagers, he decided, Torquay is a place stuck in the past; the cliff-top line of domineering white houses and ugly villas evocative of nineteen-fifties dustiness and not much else. Not to mention the trees. Even as he stalked up Belgrave Road all set on his mission, he noted how they were incredibly slanted and murky like something from a highwayman ghost story. It didn't help the lonely quality of the place that he was so hungry. Yet yard after yard brought only tall, yesteryear hotels, never once a shop where he could stop to buy a sandwich or roll.

Anstey's Cove, really, was everything he imagined a wooded, off-town-centre cove might be. Many of the trees had kept their heavy, monsterish leaves even through the frosts, leading to a vision of Mother Nature shrugging in solitude. The gradient made him huff and puff as he climbed. Here, at last, a squat entrance led up to the white, blocky hotel -the base of operations for the elusive P. Sherman. Originally, Reed had assumed that he or she must have actually worked at the Starfleet uniform-making plant in San Francisco. Evidently, someone else -an accomplice- was the one who actually planted the business cards in the lining of the jumpsuits. He was determined to get to the bottom of it, especially now he'd found them hidden in every single uniform aboard Enterprise -often, in the case of junior officers, with the cards so brazenly sewn into hip pockets so they'd be found straight away.

The black-and-white structure he identified as a hotel merely by the multiple wings and the steeples of the roof. There was a sign, but even as he approached, a hoodie child was removing the last letter and throwing it as far as he could into the nearby scrub. This plateau alongside the hotel was the hang-out for at least a dozen yob children. Catching Reed's eye -the one who hunched his tiny bike up and down like a simian, the one that shouted violently while keeping his pyjama-clad shoulders absolutely still, cripple-style.

The Starfleet commander frowned as he moved past the white stone walls dug into the narrow lawn. A man with an insipid sort of moustache and dramatically long limbs was desperately trying to empty some Christmas pine needles from a DC2100x vacuum cylinder. Reed had no sympathy. Why did people still buy Dyson cleaners? The highly pretentious company, known for bouncing it's manufacturing around all the cheapest countries of Earth, had recently hit a new low by moving its production to Alpha Sodunca IV, the natives famous for being cross-eyed, with limbs the consistency of cocktail sticks and worryingly low IQs. Very classy.

It was this, plus a couple of other things, that gave Reed an instant dislike for the man. For one thing, his frustration at trying to empty the vacuum was disproportionate in the extreme. He wondered how he'd cope with life aboard a starship. Battening down a warp engine in the face of a Class Ten ion storm, or trying to repair a fused isolinear circuit in zero gravity. Natives of Earth were so parochial nowadays.

What happened next, the incident with the moped, sealed absolutely Reed's opinion that the man was unhinged. And that furthermore the Earth of 2161 was a very strange place indeed. He was almost on the steps of the main entrance when a faint but highly distracting buzzing noise sounded from the road behind. A middle-aged man with a curiously oblong face cruised up into the car park on a zippy little sit-down bike. He rode smoothly past the irate man with the vacuum. He turned his head to look at him, again and again.

He rode away, and then came back again. He brought a loudspeaker to his mouth, all the while keeping good control of the steering.

"Still running your provincial little seaside hotel, are you? Taking care of all the jobs your wife gives you while she spends all day in Tesco, or chatting to her mates like they're in the f-ing sixth form again?"

He rode away, and then came back again.

"Having arguments with the guests, because you're worried they might all be riff-raff? Nah, I'm only joking, mate. Good luck to you. I wouldn't have the f-ing nerve. See you around, yeah?"

The moped-rider cruised away into the night, and didn't return. The yob children laughed. The man with the vacuum stood tall, staring, open-mouthed. He then bounded forward and shouted furiously down the lane, fist shaking spasmodically. "One day I'll have you, mate! Happy as I am to be criticised outside my own hotel by... Our Lord Saint... Moped! Cruising by on his way to the local dole office, no doubt! B-!"

"Friend of yours?", asked Reed.

He strolled through the square entrance to a slightly more rounded corridor, rich in strangely musty wall-paper and dated skirting. Amid the ambient cold, there was also a smell of battery acid and slavishly-used wood polish. At the deserted reception, he hit the bell and waited with narrowed eyes, suddenly very aware of his tiredness, the weight of the kit bag on his shoulder, too.

"Yes?", the harassed man re-entered the hotel. He carried the vacuum distastefully.

"I'm sorry to add to your troubles, sir", smirked Reed. "I'm looking for someone. A certain P. Sherman?"

The hotel man breathed deeply through his nose and looked to the ground, one of his many ways of evoking irritation -overwhelming. He rapidly looked back to Reed and smiled.

"Of course you are! Fawlty Towers social club. I suppose you'll want some kind of staff-acquaintance discount? Half price board and lodging, and we can all sit around drinking newsagent pino gris and discussing the Liberal Democrats, yes?"

From somewhere in an adjacent room, there was a violent-though-not-quite-incendiary explosion. Reed closed his mind to it and tried to keep up. "So -this P. Sherman is an employee of yours, here at the hotel?"

"Yes", the hotelier made himself busy moving things around the desk. "Though if you're a friend of hers, or a talent scout who's seen one of those bizarre drawings of hers, I'm afraid you're going to have to wait until her shift ends. Considering Van Gogh only sold two paintings in his lifetime, I'm sure it won't be too much of a wait. Good day".

Reed licked his lips. "I'm afraid this is a very grave matter. I must see her immediately. I'd advise you to co-operate, Mr -?"

"Basil Fawlty. Slave to all and master of none, so it would seem".

A highly kinetic explosion, almost a thunderclap implosion, came again from the room on the left.

Fawlty raised his eyebrows innocently, trying and almost succeeding in dragging Reed into some kind of sympathy. "You see what I have to deal with? A four grand alcohol-synthesiser. 'Never buy wholesale beers or spirits again!' I mean, who wouldn't go for that? Came in a lovely white box, all beautifully packaged, and no sooner do we get the thing running than -bang! Every other drink spontaneously explodes. And can I get our money back? Between you and me, I'd do as well to down one of the things myself and hope my head gets blown into the sea".

As a small show of cunning, Reed narrowed his eyes. "Wouldn't there be a Trading Standards issue in allowing your patrons to handle such unstable compounds?"

Basil Fawlty blanched. His giant legs triangulated to one side and he yelled along the nearside corridor.

"Polly!"

So -'Polly', thought Reed.

Within seconds, a put-upon-looking woman of her mid-thirties staggered along the ornate corridor. She looked, if anything, like the victim from a grimy nineteen-seventies horror film, with her loosely-arranged hair horribly disarrayed, her pinny completely soaked in liquid. Reed had to think hard to remember the last time he'd seen a woman look quite so harried and disconsolate.

"Oh, Mr Fawlty, this isn't working! Can't we just make a quick run to the Cash and Carry in Babbacombe? It's open until midnight this close to Christmas. All we'd need is half a dozen bottles of vodka and some cases of Old Peculier -"

"I told you, Polly, it's probably just some faulty enzyme-paks. It makes sense to test them all out before we dole out for any real booze".

"Well in that case, couldn't we just get half a dozen bottles of vodka just for our personal use, while we have to deal with that damn machine?"

She'd made a joke, yet Reed could see she wasn't too far from crying. As he listened to her argue with Fawlty, it was the strangest thing. That lithe American accent stayed humane even as her manner grew more and more flustered.

"Look, never mind that", Fawlty screwed up his pebble-shaped brow, spidered his hands in the air. "This man came in, out of the night like Nosferatu, asking to see you. Now I've told you time and time again not to have personal visitors during your working hours".

"It's not as if I'd want any of my friends to see me like this, is it? If he's here to tell me I've inherited a fortune, I'll tell him to come back later".

"Five minutes", hissed Fawlty.

All the same, he didn't give them much privacy, lurking at the desk while Polly stood tentatively before the Commander. She didn't know what to do her hands at all. To let them hang by her sides, the maid's uniform now horribly warped by exploded alcohol, would feel too awkward by half. Her eyes -seemed consciously prepared for an eternity of stress; she might indeed cry, but it could never make her seem weak. And somehow, all at once, he found he'd completely forgotten the fear-of-god speech he'd mentally rehearsed, highlighting as it did how non-personnel tampering with Starfleet equipment was a criminal offence. In reality, it seemed doubtful whether he'd give her any kind of telling-off. This Basil Fawlty was an irrational man, but single-minded with it. If he overheard how her villainy had been picked up by the authorities, he'd probably sack her forthwith.

She looked at Reed sadly, the dense, cheap tinsel glittering away in the background. The people in the bar around the corner were laughing, even without their alcohol, even though they were far from home at Christmas. Skirting all this with her solemn American eyes, it seemed to Reed that it would be entirely wrong to bring Polly Sherman low. At least, not at this moment, and not in front of Basil Fawlty.

"It would seem", he smiled gallantly, "that I've made a mistake. Polly Sherman? I was actually looking for a Penny Sherman. My Global Ethernet Search has brought me to the wrong address, I think".

"Never mind", said Polly. She swivelled on her heels and looked acidly at her master before disappearing to the bar. "At least you took me away from the vodka and tonic minefield for a few minutes".

Mr Fawlty put forward, "Isn't she marvellous? Marvellous sense of humour for an American".

Reed's smile was insidious now. "It strikes me I've disrupted your evening's work, sir. Can I repay you with my custom? I'd like a single room, please".

Fawlty pretended to study the ledger pad by rattling a single finger on the input key.

"I am sorry, it looks like we're fully booked".

A woman with a large, wondrously-arranged perm and nigh bullet-proof smile breezed past the desk. Fawlty's wife, it seemed.

"Room Six is free, Basil. And Room Twelve. In fact", she smiled inclusively at Reed, "how would you like a free upgrade to one of our luxury suites? It's been such a barren time recently for little hotels like ours, we'd be glad to give you a thankyou for staying here".

"That sounds just about perfect", Reed smiled.

"Barren?", said Mr Fawlty. "What about all the engineers and crash investigators who've been sent here to recover the sunken plane?"

Said Mrs Fawlty to Reed, "How like my husband to think of such a terrible disaster in terms of making money".

"Just holding on to the hope that some day they might send someone to recover my sunken dreams, dear".

But Mrs Fawlty chose to ignore this. Meanwhile, the Commander saw the big picture as plain as day: the crash investigators had probably only off-set the custom lost by the blight of hoodies on the adjacent wasteground.

"We'll just get my husband book you in and then see about getting you a lovely warm meal -and some bona-fide Torquay Christmas cheer. If there is such a thing!"

Mrs Fawlty laughed; it was shrill, and grating, but hard not to love. Away she breezed to the rear of the hotel - while Mr Fawlty was as surly as ever. He swept out his arm in an ironic flourish, the better to tab through the fiendish book-in screen. "Of course, Prometheus in the Christmas underworld. Chained to a Christmas rock. Having a Christmas eagle peck out his liver", having finished talking to himself, under his breath, he turned impatiently to Reed. "Right. Name?"

"Commander Malcolm Reed".

"Home address, please. Slowly".

Reed moved from foot to foot. "I don't have a home address. I'm a member of Starfleet".

"Ah yes", Fawlty jutted back his head, drill-sergeant gaze moving dizzily over his guest. "Starfleet. The mighty fleet! Just remind me, how many ships is that now?"

This sharp belligerence. He almost found it entertaining.

"There will be more NX-class ships. A new Discovery and a new Columbia. I assure you, Mr Fawlty, the tax contribution of everyone on Earth will come to fruition".

"Yes! But after how many years of-", he waved his hand, sweeping away such petty, ridiculous efforts, "-space Michael Caine fighting off wave after wave of space-zulus?"

Said Reed, "It's a game of thrones, Mr Fawlty. But isn't it worth fighting for? Wouldn't you like to see your son or daughter be able to set up their own little hotel on some paradisal world in Sector Twenty-five one day?"

Fawlty froze. His moustache drooped as a profound fear tick-tocked in his mind. His eyes remained skittish as he rushed Reed through the shakey-looking hall, up the ornate stairway and along a recessed landing, the sensation of the floorboards: worrying. At the suite, he stepped back to allow Reed to enter, the motion of a shifty Mexican guard trusting his prisoner not to make a fuss.

Almost-but-not-quite the centrepiece, the purple-velvet double bed felt as if it was the size of a continent, at least compared to his Enterprise bunk. If only Reed was a man to bask in comfort. From the time he climbed between the silken sheets to the time his eyes blinked shut, he was all about his X-Box Universe Portable. Battlefield: 2152. He'd completed Call of Duty: Jupiter Colony Skirmish the previous night, and was still loyal to it, to a degree. But no amount of pretty graphics could equal dynamic gameplay and a solid story. In time, as sleep started to take over, the effort of aiming his phase-rifle was too much, and he resorted to throwing grenade after grenade. The waves of Suliban insurgents ran, and shouted, and died.

And tomorrow -his conversation with the steely-eyed waitress Polly Sherman, scourge of Starfleet security.

"Good morning, ladies, how are you today?"

The old ladies, Miss Gatsby and Miss Tibbs, assumed the pose of nuns overawed by the presence of a stately authority figure.

"Oh, we're very well, thankyou, Hal. Although, we were planning to go to the Christmas Whist Drive in the town hall, only it's been cancelled because Mrs Lumberton has fallen ill with the sniffles". Hand-ringing. "It's such a shame, because they were going to serve hot-toddies, Miss Boothes' own recipe, which uses honey, and cream, and little shavings of coconut ".

"How very upsetting, Miss Gatsby", soothed Hal. "However, I notice from the Torquay Public Notices ethernet site that the Usain Tea Rooms are holding a crochet demonstration in their upstairs exhibition room this afternoon. The menu lists four varieties of festive hot-toddies. Perhaps this would be an enjoyable alternative?"

"Oh, I do like to see a crochet pattern coming together! Abitha, do you remember Mrs Sashgrey who ran the sewing shop in the high street? While she was waiting for customers to come in, she used to use the cutting table to produce the most wonderful throws and place-mats!"

"I remember Mrs Sashgrey", said Miss Tibbs, "but didn't she work in the ladies glove shop? She had one side of her head very flat, like a piece of slate. I always remember because it reminded me of the Vicarage roof".

"No, Abatha, you silly. That was Mrs Electra who worked in the chemist on Tuesdays, the-"

By now the ladies had arrived at the landing doorway which, during winter, remained shut to conserve heat. Miss Gatsby tried to turn the handle. Hal purposefully kept it locked.

"And for breakfast, ladies, I assume you would like your usual, green tea, lightly toasted wholemeal bread with Kovaalan marmalade?"

"Oh yes, thankyou very much, Hal".

"I'm afraid there might be a problem with that". Hal carefully analysed the tone wrought by his voice-synthesiser, and found that it was pleasingly innocent, showing no signs of deceitfulness at all.

"Oh, dear. Has Mr Fawlty run out of the Kovaalan marmalade?", worried Miss Tibbs. To Miss Gatsby she floated the idea, "I suppose we could always take Robinsons, just for a lovely change?"

Interrupted Hal, "It's about your green tea, ladies. As you know, all the kettles in the hotel are controlled by my central processor. Unfortunately, one of my obsidian circuits had become damaged. I am unable to produce any hot water. I told Polly to insert a fresh circuit into my motherboard yesterday, but it seems she forgot. I wouldn't want to get her in trouble. Perhaps you ladies would like to perform the operation for me? It really is a very simple procedure".

The old ladies held their limbs tensely, like prehistoric birds. "Well, I don't know if we should really-"

"You wouldn't want to get Polly in trouble, would you ladies?"

"I suppose we could try", said Miss Gatsby vaguely.

"I remember once, I had an electric press, for cracking walnuts, although I also used it for softening up the krabapples which I baked in my pies for the lady's club. It was a present from Mr McAlpinepedo, since I always gave him the first slice at our cake sales. He had a little shelf, just beside the Garden Centre on Foxley Road, do you remember, Ursula? He would fill it with all the marrows and radishes that were left over from his garden. His wife would come into town every Wednesday morning to clean the pew cushions in church. The-"

Hal interrupted, to lead them onwards to the attic storeroom. To emphasise the right direction, he transferred himself from wall-unit to wall-unit as they progressed down the corridor.

"And there was the day when I was visiting Mrs Borborygmi, the Turkish lady, who'd come down with stomach cramps while we were decorating the town hall for Harvest, do you remember, Ursula? I was passing the Garden Centre, when all of a sudden, the top shelf -broke!- and a big box of pears went all over the road".

Miss Tibbs. "Mrs Borborygmi! Her house had a white roof, and a great big acmena tree in the garden. Or was that Mrs Phaeton?"

At the Northern-most tip of Fawlty Tower's main wing, the top floor landing made a sharp turn; the left-hand corridor was an angular route back down to reception. The right-hand turn led to a tight little alcove and a miniature door. The attic store room. Hal spoke urgently to the ladies as they grew nearer, and nearer, their withered arms almost connecting, two elm trees growing together down through the ages. He wished he could change the register of his voice, to sound more urgent. As it was, the ladies were all of a sudden heedless. They'd forgotten what they were doing and where they were going, and automatically headed off towards the ground floor.

Hal's burning red eye remained constant even in his defeat. Next he resolved to try Major Gowen. It was Eight Thirty, and the old man would be similarly impelled towards the restaurant. Hal routed himself to the wall outside his room. It was an easy wait.

"Morning, Hal. F-ing papers arrived yet?"

With his trademark simian walk, double-breasted suit the image of country club debonair, undead, the old man emerged and tottered around.

"Good morning, Major. Your copy of the Telegraph is ready for you at the restaurant siding".

"Good, good, good. And what of the cricket? Just waiting for another upset, I fancy. Young Lenny Akram waiting to put his swing-bowl to use?"

Said Hal, "As of 17.35 local time, England is a wicket up. The Captain Gerry Leghare with an innings of seventy not out. Prominent ethernet pundits including Felicia Partridge are praising the way the team has gelled after last weeks match-fixing allegations".

Major Bowen leant back steeply on his small spine. "Excellent news. I always said there's nothing to stand in the way of solid, British sportsmanship and plain old gander. I often think when these little Indian chaps go throwing accusations around, it's just sour grapes".

"The match is between Pakistan and England, Major", pointed out Hal. "And originally, the match-fixing was exposed by Harp International, an English news company".

"Mmm, mmm, mmm", said the Major. "Which is exactly my point, old boy. Why would an English company want to join in spreading around all their ugly rumours, eh? Of course, it was the same when I was out in Iran. Couldn't trust 'em one way or the other".

"Were you in a cricket team, sir?"

"Hm? Cricket? No! Never had the patience for it m'self. Diplomatic core, that was me".

It was a reasonably bright day, and the crisp atmosphere did much to carry whiteness through the brittle old windows. And from the crystal-style lightshades and display cabinets, the light was effortlessly ebbed inwards across the dour grey of the main landing. Hal analysed the motion of Gowen's tiny, gangly limbs. The man was highly unco-ordinated, but it might just be enough.

"Regarding your breakfast, Major", he put in. "I anticipate no problem with your usual full English. However, I'm afraid there's a problem with the Earl Grey. All hot drinks are off the menu today. As you know, the kettles in the hotel are controlled by my central processor. Unfortunately, one of my obsidian circuits had become damaged. I am unable to produce any hot water. I told Polly to insert a fresh circuit into my motherboard yesterday, but it seems she forgot. I wouldn't want to get her in trouble. Perhaps you would like to perform the operation for me, sir? It really is a very simple procedure".

The Major looked over his shoulder in utter panic. Sighted: something horribly un-English lurking on the near horizon. "No tea, at breakfast? Well, this won't do at all, old boy".

His body still operating on Enterprise time, Reed had woken at zero-5.45. Though he'd wanted to return to sleep, when he tried, a headache sparked up from nowhere. And so onwards he went -discipline like breathing. En suite shower adequate, he donned his exercise gear and padded through the empty hotel to the little entrance which funnelled you in, funnelled you out. Beyond there was pitch darkness, no sign of dawn yet, though maybe some bleak midwinter reverie in exchange. Running down Anstey's Cove, the cold was biting, to the point where he imagined himself caked in ice. It was a sensation which extended all the way down to that sudden, mighty sea front. And what was it about those strange, under-powered Christmas lights? The bulbs seemed to be operating on an incredibly low wattage, almost as if they were a reflection of the opaque dawn clouds miles distant across the water. It was possible it would all recede again. The pebbles beneath his New Balance trainers cracked and clacked with a sound much like breaking ice. Reed's progress was slow, but his mood was reasonably content.

He ran up Montpellier Road, and Braddons Hill. At Pier Point, exhausted, he continued to run where another man would have followed the instinct to jog. To even stop for a second would be bad form, and so, along the super-flat riviera, he merely turned his head at ninety degrees to appreciate the submerged plane. It was a particularly -eerie sight. Even surrounded by recovery skiffs, there was an idea that it was something truly weird. A symbol of some bitter god that hates humans, forever. For one thing, as a life-long aquaphobic, the thought of passing from being airborne to being suddenly trapped underwater; too horrific to entertain.

Vanishing among narrow grey lanes and a steep bank, the southern end of the Torquay front was deceptively long. Reed worried about not being able to rediscover the small turning which led up to the hotel. It wasn't easy, but in the end he identified it, a gap in the bulky line of fisherman-to-bourgeois bungalows, running slowly upwards into the deep canopies of chestnut and holly.

And there she was. Polly Sherman flouncing quickly down the hill, continental-style coat making small flaps like something from a Cosmopolitan photo shoot. Reed almost stopped dead. Certainly he felt that queer sort of tension in his shoulders.

He regarded her with a sneer. She smiled at him, saying, "Good morning, Mr Reed".

"'Mr Reed'", he intoned. "Well, that's very courteous".

She blinked, remained unreadable like a post-one-liner Groucho Marx. Noted: something of the untouchable teenage girl, not quite 'popular', but in turn able to slip far beneath the radar of anyone or everyone. IQ, possibly, in the hundreds.

"I try to be courteous. I used to give Jazzy Jeff handshakes to the guests, but it got me in trouble with the oldies".

Reed's sneer redoubled. "So it's only Starfleet officers who are figures of fun to you?"

He watched sourly as she fingered the strap of her shoulder bag and blinked at the floor.

"I have the greatest of respect for anyone in Starfleet".

"I don't think you do. When I think of the people I respect -the Allies who dropped into France in World War Two, the United Earth troops who went to Mars during the Eugenics War; the last thing I'd do is hide adverts for my poxy little business in their uniforms".

And even as these words spat and tumbled, it surprised him because they were so spontaneous, so from-the-heart. All the same, he listened carefully to Polly Sherman as she tried to explain herself.

"Those people were purposefully fighting a war, weren't they? I thought Starfleet was about exploring, and you'd wondered into the Temporal Cold War only by accident?"

Reed didn't know what to say to this. His slow reaction time, he hated.

Continued Polly, "If you feel that strongly, I'll have my contact at the uniform factory stop hiding the cards".

"And who is your contact?", Reed persisted.

"Deep Throat", she said, deadpan. "Why did you protect me in front of Mr Fawlty?"

"It's called charity".

"In that case, I'll also have just three pounds a month, or as much as you can afford".

"Is everything a joke to you, Miss Sherman?"

'Miss Sherman' she seemed to like. But it was time to walk on. Looking at her watch, "No. For instance, I never joke about the opening time of Fawlty Towers Restaurant. Breakfast will be served in ten minutes time, and I suggest you get there before Major Gowen. Our chef is a perfectionist. If you're waiting behind his Full English, you'll have to read your Daily Mail a dozen times over".

"I don't read the Daily Mail", sneered Reed. "Any more than you read the Guardian".

"The Telegraph?"

Somehow, he found he was almost smiling. "No".

"Independent?"

"Times".

"Well, now we have a rapport, perhaps all the enmity can fall away. Perhaps you could even take breakfast with me, in town? I could help you zero-in on my 'contact' in San Francisco".

Reed jutted his head. He thought for a moment, eyed her suspiciously, then ran back to the hotel to get his jacket.

Basil Fawlty wiped down the dining table in huge, impatient arcs. At the edges, the linoleum was starting to crack. How was this even possible? Isn't the whole idea of linoleum that it's supposed to be durable? Unbelievable.

"Mr Fawlty?"

"What is it, Hal?", Fawlty asked sharply, nuances of desperation and drudgery, also, thundering like racehorses at his back.

"I've made an analysis of the alcohol-synthesiser and I believe I've uncovered the reason for its malfunction. Far from being a mechanical problem in the fermentation coils, it seems the relays of the main circuit board are insufficient. However, I think I might be able to bypass the main processor with a wireless link, and have the whole unit integrated into my own systems. Would you like me to try this, Mr Fawlty?"

"Yes, why not?", grandstanded Fawlty. "And while you're at it, perhaps you could integrate me? My main circuit board might be a bit tatty, but you should be able to do something with it".

The reception bell sounded, for the first time. He stood tall and moved the chairs from being directly beneath to being six inches clear. These people. Did they honestly believe the dining room was so narrow that the furniture had to be folded away like satellite solar wings about to be dragged into a space shuttle? He also noted the presence of three salt shakers on one table; the sheer peculiarity of it!

The reception bell sounded again.

"Hal, could you locate my wife, please?"

"Mrs Fawlty is currently in Room Four".

"I see. And is the sound of the reception bell for some reason not carrying the five yards down the corridor? Has a tiny-eyed foreign delivery man wheeled in a pallet-load of egg cartons between Front Desk and Room Four, and it's somehow insulating the sound?"

The reception bell sounded again.

"Mr Fawlty, I assure you my stock-ordering sub-routines would never be so remiss that I'd order a pallet-load of egg cartons".

"No! Quite right", Fawlty addressed the air. "My wife's painting her fingernails, you don't have fingernails to paint, and I've just got ten bloody stumps from where I've been working them to the bone. Fine!"

From the little bare spot beneath the moose head, Blacky the Cat looked up and laughed with his eyes. Fawlty -took it on the chin. He made strides towards the reception, a purposeful motion which was immediately cut short. He stared in horror. Becoming a small, woodland animal, he sought to find an angle where he might remain unseen by the visitor, at least for a moment. A Vulcan. Viciously intellectual space-highbrows come to pour scorn as gentle as silk. A Vulcan: flat forehead and eyebrows the Sebald Beham engraving of some forest-creeping Satan. Every one an academic. Every one a philosopher as remorseless as anything from The Moral Maze.

From his almost-crouched position by the small dining room door, Fawlty was observed.

"Good morning. I'm looking for the owner?"

The Vulcan smiled broadly; this sent Fawlty into an even greater tailspin, though he managed to stand up and take his place behind the desk. Albeit with the sweated brow of a man on a ledge.

"Are you the owner?", the Vulcan smiled, eyebrow raised.

"The owner-", Fawlty struggled to think what the alien could mean, "—of the human condition?"

"Of the hotel". The Vulcan's eyes twinkled.

"Ah, the hotel! I thought we were already having some philosophical discourse. As it were. Though, I suppose, isn't all of life one big philosophical discourse? 'The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few' –and as I always say, what better way to live up to that fine motto than to run a hotel?"

The Vulcan was cool. "Listen, everything's fine -really. My name's Tawalken, I'm a member of the Vulcan Special Security Service. You need to see my card, go ahead and ask –it's right here in my pants pocket".

"Pants?"

The man seemed to grow ever more relaxed. His embouchure was the tightest and most tapered Fawlty had ever seen, but it fitted well with his easy-going smile. He rested a hand on the muted wooden desk and used the other to gesture like a defiantly humble Mafia boss. And that smile –what did it mean?

Fawlty had no choice but to check.

"You're a Vulcan? Not one of those -others?"

"You mean a Romulan? No. We're different. Chalk and cheese, though I get why you might find it confusing".

Now the Vulcan's powerful grin sprang back into a reconnoitring position; he looked to Fawlty as though expecting a very specific sort of giggle from a tiny child.

"No! Absolutely! Vulcan - Romulan. Couldn't be more different. It's just that you seem very –chipper".

A small noise of concession came from the back of Tawalken's smiling throat. "The thing with Vulcans is, we've set aside emotions, every man jack of us. Plenty of us flake out at the idea that emotion –anything stronger than, say, day-in-day-out social satisfaction!- serves any purpose. But you humans have got a proverb that I gotta say I admire - 'When in Rome, do as the Romans do'. So I keep a little smile on my lips, a little twinkle in my eye, a little candy in my heels. Doesn't mean I'm not emotionless, clinical –down- to my bones".

Basil Fawlty blinked. He stood motionless, still a ridiculously staid distance from the edge of the counter and the strange Vulcan.

"Right".

"O.K!", Tawalken clapped his palms.

"But…", Fawlty stiffly moved his eyes. He checked, "…do I show emotions? In this arrangement?"

Tawalken shrugged, "I'm easy. You want to spill emotions? Cut loose, my friend".

A metal clothes horse with a white sheet spread tight, Fawlty smiled in abject anxiety.

"But you know what? To business. It's been a curse on the good souls of Torquay, this plane that came down. For my part in the whole affair, I'd like to offer my sincere apologies. Because –actually!- Flight 7NC101 was carrying top secret Vulcan technology. Can you imagine that?"

Fawlty said, "Yes. No. Well, broadly, I suppose".

"Ah, there's no 'broadly' about it. We're talking computer processors –a million times more powerful than anything you human guys have been using. Circuits made from a substance which is just about –the rarest thing this side of The Guardian of Forever".

Tawalken's flashing smile, eternally-disarming as it was, grew overwhelming after a time. Periodically Fawlty's nervous eyes became black baubles on a hideous sea of panic. They stood and stared at each other for moments on end.

"Anyway, when a plane gets sunk, I'm sure you know what happens. There's always a gash in the side. The containers always get washed around, washed away. Some of the containers get washed up on a nearby beach and carried away by the locals".

"Ha!", Mr Fawlty tried some smiling of his own, and succeeded. "Just like 'Whisky Galore!', eh?"

"What is 'Whisky Galore'?", said Tawalken.

"Basil Radford, Joan Greenwood, 1949. Black and white, but then, I've never been a snob about twentieth century films. When you think about it-"

The Vulcan seized the tweed-covered shoulders before him. His grip –malevolent. And where his manner turned suddenly deadly, it was still not out of control. Not quite yet.

"Some of the containers get washed up on a nearby beach and carried away by the locals. Do they know what they've got? Who knows. But the big guys, the secret right wing heart which we know, realistically, is at the centre of every government since the beginning of time? They get twitchy. They scan around town for the tell-tale electro-muonic emissions which these funny little circuits occasionally give off. And hey! There they are! Just before the emissions fade, we see them on the map. In a tiny, quaint, stone-clad hotel!"

Loose and relaxed, Tawalken's fingers slipped around Fawlty's gawky shoulders. His smile grew ever more dangerous.

"Ah, it's a glitch! Has to be a glitch. No one involved in a such a quaint, pleasing, stone-clad hotel could be harbouring top-secret alien tech, right?"

Fawlty felt the sweat on his boney white forehead. Shivering into action, he managed just a trace of his old, Napoleonic fervour. "Certainly not! Our guests are the height of moral fibre!"

It occurred to him that it was now-or-never in terms of scrambling under the desk to try and find the shotgun which he kept for dealing with drunks, and hoodies, and riff-raff. At the time of buying it, Sybil had rolled her eyes so hard she almost looked like she was swooning. But now she'd see. His fingers extended out, centimetre by hopeful centimetre. They closed -on a Christmas cracker, and it was only then that he remembered taking the gun upstairs to his bureau, to clean it while watching the 'Skirmish' Christmas Special.

"I gotta say", Tawalken moved his head boyishly, blinking strangely, "you seem a little nervous!"

Fawlty decided to say, "I'm just excited. About Christmas".

Tawalken kept a hand high on his shoulder.

"No. It's this-" He patted Fawlty's shoulder blade. "You're worried I'll give you the Vulcan Death Grip".

"Vulcan Death Grip!", the fear twinkled in Fawlty's face like something beautiful. Jewels. He laughed optimistically; "P'shaw. Were both civilised Englishmen".

"I'm not English", said Tawalken. "But besides, to get you, to really see you 'six feet under', I'd need to -tense my fingers, just so".

The Vulcan tensed his fingers. Fawlty's grin quivered like an earthquake.

It was then that Polly breezed in through the main door.

"Do excuse me", still encased in the alien's grip, he nonetheless tried to sound managerial. This wasn't easy. For one thing, he was trying desperately to remember the euphemism they'd agreed on when talking about the shotgun. "Polly, Mr Bedwetter asked for an eleven twenty-six wake-up call. Could you deliver this? He's in Room One".

"'Mr Bedwetter'?" Confusion.

"Yes", Fawlty fought to keep his jaw from clenching. "Mr Bedwetter. I know he likes to come down at midday and have a -shot- of whisky".

Polly blinked, and fell over herself as she realised. "You mean Mr Leadbetter!"

"Yes. Leadbetter! Leadbetter!"

"But Mr Fawlty, Mr Leadbetter really isn't necessary".

By now, no one was more confused than Tawalken. He angled his head, took a backwards step -

-and found himself staring at the tip of Reed's phaser.

"Is everything alright here, Mr Fawlty? There seems to be a bit of ill-feeling".

Fawlty made a vicious face and tried to deliver his own death grip to the de-fanged Vulcan. The motion was, of course, futile.

"Commander -soon to be Captain- Reed of the NX01 starship! Enterprise!", noted Tawalken. His smile had dimmed only a fraction. "I had no idea Starfleet had its own little hunt for the AWOL TMA circuits. If only I could say, 'the more the merrier'"

"Well, sir. It is Christmas, one's allowed to be merry. The fact is, I haven't a clue what you're talking about".

Unreadable, but rapidly ceasing to smile, the Vulcan surrendered. He looked at the ground and fingered the back of his hand. The square shoulders of his suit lolled at angle. Heedless of the phaser, he walked calmly to the exit.

"I'm going to leave now, Mr Fawlty. Should you -or any of your fine guests or employees- feel the need to unburden yourself, to talk about your 'whisky galore' -please, call me up at the Vulcan Embassy".

Before he walked outside into the bracing air, however, he turned and spoke once more, in a manner that was nonchalant, "By the way, I don't wanna to bring the whole festivity down, but I think your cat is having a stroke".

Everyone looked down at the threadbare carpet. Sure enough, Blacky the Cat's right-side legs were splayed out. His left-side limbs were flailing, and his eyes read a frightening delirium. Polly, her great-coat flapping wildly, moved quickly to kneel by his side.

The Vulcan jogged quickly down the shallow steps, so quickly he was forced to keep his elbows high, agile, tensing with gangly momentum. Moving across the crunchy gravel, he stared distractedly at the ruddy treetops.

Reed pursued, only replacing the phaser in his jacket pocket as an afterthought.

"Who are you?"

He didn't turn around, didn't even look tempted. "Vulcan Special Security. You want my name? Tawalken".

"And what", Reed made awkward steps to try and get level, "was all that about?"

Dryly, almost croaking, "I'm here, looking for something that washed ashore from the sunken plane".

"What would that be?"

"Commander, this subterfuge is something I find boring", lamented the alien.

"Well I'd be grateful if you told me anyway".

"I'm sure you know just as much about the TMA circuits as I do".

"Pretend I don't", said Reed viciously.

They'd broken the back of the long, smooth hill and were about to make the kink that folded around in the direction of Torquay town. The decayed pastel bark of the barren trees was not too far from producing mist. The ice: gone. Thick, wooded dells and gnarled yellow leaves offered quite a neat little home, if only all the birds hadn't long departed for sunnier climes.

The Vulcan turned around.

"Are you truly going to lie to me, that Starfleet sent one of its most experienced security agents to this hotel, just by coincidence?"

"I'm here for my own leisure ", Reed folded his arms, narrowed his eyes.

"So -uh- what security clearance do you have?"

While fidgeting, he clasped his hips. "Look, what do you mean, 'security clearance'? I'm Head of Security aboard the Starfleet flagship, under Admiral Forest himself! I know nothing about any missing circuits, and I'm happy to take a mind-meld if that will back me up".

Except Tawalken was satisfied. "Now y'see, I could never be part of an organisation like that. Where the command structure keeps such big secrets from the people on the ground".

Said Reed, "Isn't it 'logical' to keep secrets sometimes?"

"Not secrets as big as this".

Mid way up in the air, two or three bottle-shaped seagulls seemed to be nearing the end of their journey, wherever that was. There was a slight, chirpy sound to their flexing wings. Meanwhile, further up, the sky was profoundly wintry. Could the cold air be called vicious? The head-feathers of the seagulls whipped up like toupees. The smooth texture of the lane was a mighty grey matte, preserved as full 1080p in the zero-degree atmos.

Said Tawalken, "Why not get your good friend Admiral Forest to tell you about the Third Monolith? Every man jack knows about the first two, discovered in 2001. The monster on your own moon that gave off such a hell of a whistle, then died. The one floating off Jupiter, which prompted Astronaut Bowman to go Mary Celeste. I know your people have dreamed that there might be more out there, which could give up their secrets once and for all. I've read some of the science fiction, and frankly, I'm impressed. But yeah, we've found Number Three, Four, and Five. Simply put, they were hyper-dimensional membranes built eons ago to expand -noble- consciousness towards what we might call the Omega Quadrant -a region of space which, warp technology being what it is, would normally take about three thousand years to reach. The guys who built it? Ah, what does it matter. We've decoded their names from a triptych algorithm in sub-space, only we're not sure whether they're individuals, races, or even a pantheon of gods. Pretty interesting, though. Galactus, Altkida, Destina, Eblac, Metklaftron -"

Interrupted Reed, "What was that second name?"

Tawalken ignored him. He licked his lips and went foot-to-foot, all to give a beautifully animated feeling to the chilly surroundings. "The point is, these creatures are snobs. We did a controlled test with half a dozen Vulcan sensitives. We put each one in front of a monolith, had them undertake the mind-meld of their lives. And they all told us the same thing. These -denizens- of the Omega Quadrant purposefully keep us humanoids coralled into quadrants Alpha through to Psi because they think we're too warlike".

"Wait just a minute", Reed's mouth chattered. His hand flapped out a 'woah' gesture. "I don't understand all this talk about 'quadrants'. I only know the galactic sectors we use on the Universal Cartography Chart. And I understand even less how you can have more than four quadrants in a whole".

"Yeah. We started out religiously sticking to the charts and the known quadrants of the galaxy. But hey? Who ever said space has to be empirical?"

This was the whole of Tawalken's argument. Reed felt he probably wasn't feeling as shocked by all this as a Starfleet officer should be. He periodically landed his gaze on the grey, swollen lane, all the while his sparrow heartbeat impelling him onwards.

"So in effect you're saying, not matter how far we travel, these Omega Quadrant aliens will never let us into the more peaceful end of the universe?"

"It's a little more complicated than that", confessed Tawalken. "Besides which, we're digressing like hell. I wanted to tell you about the Third Monolith, and how it relates to all this -mess! Just like the monolith that flipped into sight around Jupiter, way across the way, the same thing happened in the Klingon star system. Around this uninhabited, anonymous, border-line useless planet, a monolith of exactly the same dimensions and coquettish sensor readings appeared. Guess what the Klingons did?"

All about bleak cattiness, Reed said, "I think I can guess".

"Believing the monolith to be some kind of spying mechanism, or maybe a bomb, they were about it with photon torpedoes and hi-yield nukes. And by the time any dissenting voice sparked up from inside the Klingon Council, those cake-headed freaks had pummelled it into some kinda self-destruct". The Vulcan moved on his springy heels, though the rigidity of his spine belonged to a five-star advisor on a battlefield hill, winning. "I guess luckily, a few canny smugglers, or flipped-off scientists, felt the need to transport some of the debris to a Hur'q research base, where they traded them for -I don't know, Taarg meat or such. From the Hur'q, the monolith fragments came to us".

Commander Reed nodded excitedly. "So the monolith bits were on the plane which crashed. You're worried someone around here is concealing them".

"Not exactly".

Fingers moving and gesturing like pinball triggers, Tawalken had started to stroll free from the entrance of the cove. The ground levelled out, though not before a steep driveway where the owner of a Daihatsu Viveash had felt the need to shove wooden wedges under the back wheels.

"First of all, I'm a humble G-man. I'm no scientist, so don't quiz me on the exact skinny. But as it goes, our scientists believed the substance of the monoliths was hard enough to analyse intact, so once they'd been shattered, the thing would be wholly useless. This isn't quite the case. No matter how small a piece, the stuff still retains a kind of -psychic, extra-physical get-up-and-go. You want an example? A scientist would stand in a sealed room. In one hand, a monolith shard. In the other, say, an pomegranate. All the guy would need to do would be to concentrate, and the pomegranate would vanish from his hand and materialise next door, apparently from thin air".

His temples now comfortably numb from the cold, Reed felt he was just managing to keep up. "So this alien material acted as a kind of natural transporter?"

Said Tawalken, "Meh. It could only cope with very short-range materialisations, and even then, only with basic biological matter, never complex living cells or machinery. However, the Science Institute got to thinking. This substance responds to very direct, single-minded synaptical bursts. So why not try refining it into computer chips? It would make for a crazily efficient way of synthesising foodstuffs".

Reed was phased by the possibilities. Phased by the pretty grey houses of Torquay South. "Did it work?"

"Worked well", the Vulcan wagged his square shoulders. "The chips on Flight 7NC101 were to be a gift for World President Damon, as a kind of partial, diplomatic apology for the friendly-fire on your Zodiac II probe".

"That's a sad story", said Reed. "Why do you suspect any one around here has the circuits, though?"

"The monolith substance periodically gives off a -", blinking, waving a little, "-specific electro-quantum harmonic. Easy to scan for. This is where the circuits are. At least, somewhere".

Reed angled his head as his heartrate slowed a little, or seemed to. "Perhaps you could share with me this harmonic? It just so happens I have a tricorder with me".

Resting his eyes briefly on the battered hornbeam branches at their side, Tawalken grew dismissive.

"Now why would an off-duty Starfleet officer bring on holiday a tricorder and a phaser?"

"I suppose I'm just an anal-aggressive military type". Definitely it was out of the question to tell the truth, that in his hunt for P. Sherman, he'd day-dreamed about a Black-Ops-style shoot-out in an abandoned warehouse. "It's just one of those mysteries, sir. Such as why you smile so much, unlike any Vulcan I've ever met before".

Tawalken -grinned. He dipped his head while staring directly into the Commander's eyes.

"I -decorate- my face, with this smile, for the same reason you people fix old drinks cans to the back of a honeymoon limo. In fact, for the same reason you put up Christmas decorations. Humans need to see a variety of shorthand, telling that everything will be alright in the end. Complacency is ugly, but you can't live without it. A stupid, un-deserved sense of peace, equalling grace. So, yeah, I smile. Why not? The harmonic you need to scan for is an electro-quantum signature of point-zero-five-two over a rotating meta-ion scale. There it goes. Into the hands of a man who I'm sure, above all others, will get some results".

A stupid, un-deserved sense of peace, equalling grace. All of a sudden, he was back there. Number Nine, Gunmount Street, Portsmouth; since forever he'd associated it with snowed-in tranquillity, such a richly-undeserved allocation of day-dreaming time. Stupidly, it had never occurred to the prepubescent Malcolm Reed that his Uncle had drifted into this three-story townhouse after standing down from the submarine base not twenty minutes walk away. Rather, it was just a Christmassy castle which his family repaired to for three days every year.

He remembered: lying on his belly at the edge of a cleverly-outsized lounge, the sharp light from the high window making every red, green and gold piece of Victorian upholstery crystal sharp. Back then, global-warming was still a bogeyman, and it was hard to say if the Christmas daylight was unseasonably warm, whether it was just magnified by the glass, or whether the central heating was doing a bizarrely good job. The adults chatted away in the background, sometimes even forgetting themselves in a way which, even as an eight or nine year old, Reed knew he'd never be able to do himself.

Uncle Desmond was every inch a distant war hero. Never once had his mother or father actually warned him not to be loud or boisterous; they hadn't needed to. In and around the man's orbit, life naturally became steady and thoughtful. The only toy which Desmond Reed had in his house was a polystyrene Spitfire with an elastic-band propeller, which young Malcolm revered, and was delighted to play with. Only later did his uncle squat down beside him and demonstrate what the little plane was really for.

'Porkpie, up!'

Porkpie, Uncle Desmond's black Highland Terrier, would spring to attention.

'Porkpie, Spitfire!', and he'd send the plane high and straight across the long sitting room. The little dog, excited and breathless, would catch the plane and carefully carry it back to the gamester with no damage whatsoever.

Did former submarine captain Desmond Reed live a solemn, solitary life? It would have been easy to say yes, except from an early age, Malcolm saw a certain something in the man's sinewy perma-smile and invincible eyes -it hadn't been forged in battle, but battle had certainly reinforced it. He knew this for a fact because it was exactly how Malcolm felt, and very close to the surface, too. School life around 2120 was a pretentious mass of art lessons and office skills, and there was nothing to do except weather it. Christmas was an oasis which was paid for by any amount of slog. His parents had privately lamented the fact that Desmond didn't own a television. This was not a concern for young Malcolm, though; he found it devilishly hard to concentrate on TV anyway while in someone else's home. Around his twelfth or thirteenth birthday, he took to saving up certain issues of Commando comic, the ones with the most exciting covers or with Juan Marie Jorge artwork, and packing them away in his ruc-sac to read at Uncle Desmond's house during the Christmas stay-over. After all, to expect to be able to appreciate the comics to their full while having a headful of school stress was unrealistic.

But how Uncle Desmond had taken to the comics also. Perhaps he'd read them himself as a boy? It was quite possible, since Commando had been around since the previous millennium, though Malcolm never bothered to find out. What happened was a comfortable routine: after his parents had gone to bed, he'd take his place at the kitchen table with his Uncle, and they would read, and read, until it was ridiculously late and Christmassy, at least eleven o'clock or beyond. He with drinking chocolate, Uncle Desmond with straight whisky, Porkpie the Dog stretching and grooming, all of them bathed in Christmas lights red, green, vanilla.

Commando, then as now, was a unique read, and uniquely satisfying. How such a defiantly old-fashioned comic had survived for 200 years was anyone's guess, though no doubt it had picked up some readers when the increasingly loathed 2000 AD finally closed down after refusing to go to a 10 x 7 or smaller format, as the World Trade Union demanded. All Reed knew for sure was that he doted on the ink-heavy, machinery-loving panels and the paper stock which looked ancient-yellow even as it left the printer. What he loved best, however -and what he knew Uncle Desmond loved also- was the unique tone.

The tiny caption for each panel was stoical, clinical, less even than a distant rear-admiral making a report to his war minister. But always - the characters inset were alive, able to evoke any strain of joy or desperation. But they were never once melodramatic or overwrought in their private thought-balloons.

And in this manner, young Malcolm Reed found his blueprint for life.

On those warm Christmas nights, he never once remembered wishing Uncle Desmond a good night. Only climbing the tight oak stairway with a light heart, looking through the tiny window at the streetlights chess-boarding in their power-saving switch-over. It was a battlefield, though once you read between the lines, you'd see: some unbelievable world made of hope and simplicity.

The metal casing of the communicator felt strikingly cold inside his shell-suit bottoms. To call Admiral Forest and demand answers about the monoliths would be a neurotic over-reaction, or worse still, a link in the chain of command not knowing its place. His adam's apple hitching away, showing just the tiniest trace of exasperation, he turned on his heels and headed back to the hotel.

Polly was descending the slope. Hanging easily in her grasp, the large orange cat-carrier which held Blacky.

"I think I've seen off your Vulcan bureaucrat. How is your cat?"

"We think he's had a stroke. I've got an appointment at the vets in town at-", she looked at her wrist and scowled. "Oh, this damn watch!"

"It's 10.17, now", said Reed. And suddenly it hit him. Archer's leaving present. The Apollo 11 watch -he still hadn't arranged to have one delivered.

"Polly, do you know if there's a fancy jewellers in Torquay town centre?"

The girl blinked. She smiled-without-moving-her-face at the curveball question. Walking on, the weight of the cat-carrier seemed insanely buoyant, her light foot steps: hypnotic. "There is. But you're not going to make me pick out my own engagement ring, are you?"

Reed smirked. "My Captain is leaving, as I told you. I wanted to get him a certain watch for his golden handshake. Look, would you say this jeweller is big enough to have an inter-continental stock transporter in the back? I've a feeling there's not a single one of these watches in the whole country".

Said Polly, "Well, the vets appointment is at eleven. Once they've put him to S-L-E-E-P, you can comfort me, and then I'll show you where all the most pretentious watch shops are. It'll be idyllic. Straight out of Lou Reed: A Perfect Day".

"Who was definitely no relation", said Reed.

They walked together onto the seafront, where the brassiere-shaped string lights bobbed pleasingly, almost in synch with the grey, slow-breaking waves. Your eyes adjusted fairly quickly to the hue-bled atmosphere. Cars seemed grey, or at the very best a non-reflective silver. Primary colours, when they came, were an unexpected pleasure, from the green beach awnings to the Paul and Debbie Twin Bin. Always the high crown of apartments and the inverse-seafront of sprawling hotels was an imposing shade of white to dominate everything. No matter which way they turned, the wind was against them. Still it was easy to walk briskly, thanks in part to Polly's sensible white trainers and her delicate, swinging gait, all-but dizzy.

Frequently Reed tried to say something that would take her mind off the exiting cat.

"I have to admit, all these months I was planning to come and get you, it never occurred to me that you'd be so easy to talk to, or that you'd back down so easily".

"'Planning to come and get you' - who do you think you are, Inspector Javert?"

"I suppose I am, yes". It was all the Starfleet man could think to mutter.

"Between you and me, Malcolm, letting go of my Starfleet customers won't hit me that badly. I do have other artistic money-making schemes, you know".

"What would those be?", Reed coolly enquired.

"As if I would tell you, a representative of 'The Man'". This she said from over her shoulder, dipping her head nonchalantly, all very alluring.

They stalked across the pebble-clad concrete at quite a pace now, the wintry atmosphere just narrowly keeping the sea-spray in check. It was necessary stop dead, however, at the sound of violent meowing. They stooped, examined Blacky inside his kurious orange prison. Two sprightly sets of claws played up across the plastic grill. His front-right leg, they suddenly realised, apparently fully healed from its paralysis.

"Well, it looks like he might be-" Reed cowardly twitched backwards as the paws made further strikes across the grill.

Without further ado, Polly unhitched the cover and the cat, he ran free. Before half a dozen sauntering passers-by, Blacky's four legs made easy work of walking in a circle. He meowed, this time calmly. Old, careless eyes surveyed some middle-distance seagulls. Then giddiness. Then a mood-swing -he ran at a nearby advertising pole, made a crazy face which involved slanting his ears back, and proceeded to shred the green gloss paint with his claws. He stopped, chased his tail like a dog, made a very human sound of being sick -and was sick.

"Something he ate?", wondered Reed.

Polly folded herself down to examine the vomit. With a hairclip from her purse, she lifted free one of the hairballs and sniffed it.

"CSI Torquay. Expert as I am on cat vomitus, I'd say that Blacky was just up to his old tricks. A few years ago, we found him in the pantry with a broken bottle of Bailey's. He was tipsy then. Looks like he really went to town this time".

Blacky blinked, and made an expression that was wholly remorseless.

En route to the first jewellers, O'Reilly's, the Commander found that it was shaping up to be a truly bizarre Christmas; hair-raising but not unpleasant. He told Polly some of the adventures and escapades that Porthos the Dog had been through aboard Enterprise, from getting lost on Hydra 1-V to stealing a Shai-Hulud bone from the archaeological bay. That climbing, shrugging, domineering laugh, so at odds with her usual Marx Sister briskness. Reed realised that when she was happy, she was ecstatic.

O'Reilly's seemed a very cheap establishment, though Reed asked himself, where in Britain isn't these days? The wiry little Irishman's cheap-and-cheerful manner, when he promised he could indeed acquire an Apollo 11 Speedmaster by the next day, was something he just-about trusted. Pure blue-collar salesmanship - Ma and pa trading. He hoped.

Broaching the idea that it might be time for her to get back to the hotel was something Reed did reluctantly. Duty, after all, is everything. It was in the dusky air, along with the chill wind, hurrying them along towards -somewhere. Luckily, Polly Sherman, on top of everything else, had a fine Machiavellian streak.

"Mr Fawlty gave me a hundred and fifty pounds from petty cash to have Blacky put to S-L-E-E-P. But if he'd just drunk too much booze, how much money do you suppose a vet charges for a cat stomach pump?"

Reed smiled. "Very specialised work, I should say. Pricey".

When she saw he was on the same wavelength, Polly's smile was bountiful.

"And it took ages, too", Reed was all mock dismay. "So much time wasted standing around a cat's operating table when we could have been... eating a bang-up tea? After seeing a film and playing in the arcades?"

The suggestion of seeing a film was something which could have gone badly wrong: Polly led them through Torquay to the tiny arts cinema behind the ugly Fair Trade shopping centre. Of the two films which were about to start, they had a choice between Tree of Life Part Four or New York Umpire, the latest film by the Woody Allen Algorhythm. In truth, he hadn't even seen any of Woody Allen's real films, let alone the ones made by the concept-generating computer program which he'd set up to carry on his work after he was dead. P. said she was proud to have seen each one as they were released, year-by-year; Reed was faintly satisfied that she spent her hard-earned wages on so acquired a taste.

New York Umpire wasn't too bad, anyway -if a neurotic, cosmopolitan whirr. The management were hippyish enough to let Blacky sprawl on their laps as they watched. Through the corner of his eye, Reed watched his date just as much as he watched the screen. Sometimes he even spurned looking at the shapely bottom of the CGI Scarlet Johanssen in order to watch Polly in the reflection of his watch. She laughed at the subtlest of jokes, and all the most neurotic observational stuff which he had no idea about.

From the snuggled-down position in his lap, Blacky started to grow ever-more lumpy. The side of his paw started to twitch like an upturned ED 209. His tiny cat eyes displayed a roving, almost giddy REM, while propped on his mouth: that quizzical expression that would surely have mortified an ancient Egyptian. Reed nudged Polly to show her.

"Maybe he's dreaming about a cat-Galactus. 'Galactapuss'?"

Reed's stomach moved oddly. He whispered, "Where did you hear that name? Galactus?"

"That's what people are calling him. The horned, purple giant from the dreams everyone's been having. Don't you use the ethernet, or something?"

For the remainder of the film, Reed settled back in his chair, fluttery, anxious and fascinated.

An unusually tall man, folded down into a tiny chair. It was the pose of someone freshly asleep, or dead El Cid refusing to sit true on his horse. Table lamp drawn tight to his side, it was all too obvious he was cackhandedly working in his own shadow to boot.

"Basil", sighed Sybil Fawlty, hardly looking up from Fifty Shades of Copacabana, hardly pausing in her truffle-consumption, "you do realise how ridiculous it is to be cleaning a shotgun in your pyjamas, in your bedroom, on Christmas Eve?"

Basil Fawlty, at first, did not react. Had he been more energised, he would have appreciated the magnificence of his being able to work at all with Sybil's flamenco jazz blasting away from the sideboard. Not to mention the smell of those sherry-stinking truffles.

"Ah yes, Christmas, your favourite time of the year", Fawlty's head became unclamped from his chest, slightly. "I'm sorry, dear, should I be wearing a red-and-white furred hat?"

"Not at all. I've more than got used to your bald patch by now. Wear a Santa Claus hat, wear a Star Wars helmet: I can't say it will make that much difference".

"Yes, well", he frantically cleaned the barrel with the spherical brush, to much Freudian insight, "perhaps you mean 'Father Christmas', not that hideous, Americanised 'Santa Claus'".

"I mean, why are you so afraid of taking the time to enjoy yourself?", she turned the page, sometimes able to do two things at once just as efficiently as Hal.

"I think you'll find it's called discipline. We've got people relying on us, haven't we?"

Now, in the corner of his eye, he saw Sybil put down her Kindle Opnce, and felt curiously honoured. "Terry, Polly and Hal are managing perfectly well. Do you really think there'll be some emergency they can't deal with? We could have been over at Susie and Jeff Greene's for their Christmas party. Face it, Basil, all this is just because you have an aversion to fun. You're a curmudgeon".

Fawlty hissed like a goose.

His work was nearing completion: he sprayed a mighty amount of WD40 on the trigger mechanism and reset the casing. He wielded the weapon, blinked, sniffed, rubbed the steel barrel with the sleeve of his pyjamas. All this before he detected the faint hum of a small engine from somewhere in the distance. Almost as a reflex, it caused him to sit up and gape.

"Is that him?", he tensed his ears.

"What are you talking about now, Basil?"

Fawlty leapt onto his long legs and peeked out of the uppermost pane of their bedroom window. After a time, he stood precariously on the edge of the wooden clothes hamper to get a better vantage. Outside there was only cold, swirling darkness. At the edge of the plateaux, that usual nightmare throng of hoodies but no sign of-

"Him. Him! The man on the moped. The-", he searched for the correct term, "-Drive-by Abuser!"

"Oh, I see". Sybil was intensely, darkly satisfied that she knew her husband's pettiness so well. "The only reason we're staying in this evening is so that you can sit and wait for one of your silly little enemies to come riding by, and you can shoot at him, and probably miss by a mile. Is that it?"

"No", Fawlty twitched his moustache. "Yes. I don't know. But the gall of it! Going out and buying a moped and a loudspeaker, just so you can annoy us hardworking chump tax-payers. This society. Where will it end?"

"For goodness sake, if you only ignored him, he wouldn't come back", said Sybil. Then, getting louder, climbing out of bed, "You really are a pathetic little man!"

The darkness was strange, off towards the clearing of the woods. There was no particular light source, yet primary colours struck out with seemingly no resistance at all. The red underpants of the boy with ridiculously low-slung jeans. The blue of the weak-metal BMX as ridden by a simian-shouldered twelve year old. The shameless bright white of the rib-hugging tops worn by nightmare-laughing harlots, one-to-twenty all in a row.

Fawlty blinked. There was not only more than usual, but a lot more. Usually the teenagers were a gentle, background oppression. Tonight: an invasion. A hedonist army having formed a line, now just awaiting the word of some hoodie chieftain to swagger forth and rape.

He was profoundly afraid, right up to the point when Sybil heeled away the dresser, causing him to crash to the floor with the curtains, the curtain rail and a nearby reproduction of Napoleon Crossing the Alps by Paul Delaroche.

It was the strangest thing. In the darkness of Room Six, looking through the bay window at the crowd of teenagers, Hal found he'd fully lost track of which sensors he was using. His auditory receptors had long since gone into standby mode, apparently -and yet he was certain he could hear their words as clear as day. After a time, he understood that his visual array had automatically started to lip-read, and the sensor-relays were producing a strange phantom effect as they cross-beamed the data to his CPU.

One of the teenagers, ironically, was displaying three of the clinical indications of dementia: talking in an unnecessarily loud voice, repeating himself endlessly, and taking joy in wholly meaningless actions.

'Oi, watch this, I bet my lighter can't burn my phone'.

'Oi, mete. Watch this. Watch this. I bet my lighter can't burn my phone'.

'Oi, mey-eeyte, watch this. I bet my lighter can't burn my phone'.

And the noise from their phones. To think of it as music, or even a tribal accompaniment, was an assumption too far for Hal. The high-pitched, vocoder wailing and the atonal melodies were both highly devoted enemies of consciousness, so much so that his first thought was that it might be some collective form of masochism. But the teenagers to a man were laughing. It really made no sense at all.

During the Eugenics War, the United Earth forces had been in a frenzy to find any weapon at all which would give them the edge against the superior intelligence and reflexes of Khan's militia. The line of enquiry involving ultra-sonic weapons did not bear fruit, though the UE forces had then started to investigate the possibility of beaming high-pitched, dizzyingly atonal musak directly into the super-soldier's compound. This, not only to irritate the vestibular centre of their inner-ears and cause nausea, but to upset their advanced aesthetic sensibilities.

And indeed, several of Khan's key lieutenants had committed suicide.

Hal played out the wave-shapes alongside each other, and found that the sound coming from the teenager's phones were an 85.6 percent match for the dangerous, weaponised anti-rhythms which had been used in the war.

It was all-but overwhelming. By now, the data-extrapolation nodes around his higher brain functions were wild with speculation. The cross-referencing of anything which might give precedence to what was happening in human society. Was it a sense of fascination over how conscious beings could behave in such a gleefully mindless way? Or was he just feeling that certain frustration which he suspected the humans, in their over-eagerness, called 'hate'? As usual, any kind of calculation was useless, not least when he tried to find something that would reinforce the action he was about to take. Certain strings of words used by Josef Stalin, Nikita Khruschev, Jean Paul Sartre and Anthony Burgess seemed to fit within the same zeitgeist philosophical margin. But within a greater framework of exposition, Hal couldn't trust that he'd found any spiritual allies at all. Or at least, none that were human.

There was but one solution, and he must trust his own precepts.

On delivering a sweep of his Wireless ID Scanner, he found that of the fifty-two teenagers now gathered, only three carried Universal ID cards. Jenna Saxby, 17. Desmond Loman, also 17. Cable Millibane, 18.

The boy had clean skin and clean clothes, unlike a lot of his contemporaries. The diameter of his cranium, mused Hal, indicated a family that had been mentally active through at least the previous five generations. Indeed, his father, Tony Millibane, according to the 2159 census, was a designer of meteorological sensors.

All of this information, from the cross-referencing of the phone noise, to the sieving of philosophical arguments by Sartre et all, to the reviewing of Millibane's personal information, flashed through Hal's logic circuits in the space of nine point four seconds. Even as his understanding grew, however, an interesting new phase was entered. Millibane and several others were trying to hit the electronic lock from the hotel shed. The motions were committed, and might well succeed, eventually. But in the meantime, Hal knew he had a little more time to muse.

Cable Millibane. According to his DHSS records, he was taking his second Super Workplace Qualification Course in three years, this time studying Leisure Centre Management. At this, Hal could only marvel. The course had existed at Torquay Advance Education Centre for over ten years. It took a year to complete, and never had less than twenty young adults studying per semester.

And yet of the five leisure centres in the county of Devon, there had only been six advertised job vacancies in the past decade, and only one of those for a managerial position.

Cable Millibane. Hal was scrutinising his crutch-shaped cheeks and luxurious black hair when it became necessary to route an incoming call at reception directly to his current terminal. It irritated him to have to slow himself to a human speed. It irritated him even more when-

"Hell-"

"Our records indicate you may be owed up to twenty-five thousand pounds as a result of having had an accident or fall that was not your fault. With the Certified Injury Lawyers of Great Britain, it's never been easier to make a claim, and always on a strictly no-win-no-fee basis. So if you or anyone in your family has been injured while at home, at work, or out-and-about, press one".

Just as Millibane took a swing with a rock, Hal unlocked the shed door and allowed it to swing open. When four of the teenagers had ventured a comfortable distance inside, he had the door swing shut again, effectively trapping them. He then sent a power surge to the heating blower within the shed, causing a very artful short circuit.

He then dialled 'one' on the phone line.

"Please give your name, or the name of the person who was injured if you're claiming on someone else's behalf. Please specify the type of injury sustained and the location where the accident took place".

Hal scoured his record of voice samples and selected an old Northern man who had stayed at Fawlty Towers seven months ago. He built up a small database of ad-hoc mannerisms with which he could pepper his statement.

"My name-", he gave a delicately synthesised sigh, and thereafter a number of miniscule sobs, "is Tony Millibane, and I'm claimin' on behalf of me son Cable. Him, and a couple of his mates, were hangin' around this hotel, right? Fawlty Towers, Torquay. Now, they were hangin' around on the grounds. I know he shouldn'ta been there, right, but it could have 'appened to anyone. The storage shed: someone left it open on its latch, and my lad and his mates went in there. The computer that runs the hotel, though, it - it went all crazy. An' it locked 'em all in, and then it-"

Hal had 'Tony Millibane' give a truly wrenching sob, "It caused the heater in there to spew off all this carbon monoxide, and it suffocated them to death. It was this computer-"

Just then he halted in surprise, as the shed door was shouldered open to expel Cable Millibane and his friends, coughing violently... but also laughing.

Hal dialled hash-zero-nine-nine to access the internal tele-sales computer log, something which was usually inaccessible from the caller end. After sieving down the control password, he erased his previous message and hung up, the better to concentrate on his original plan once more. Quite peculiar, though, how he'd felt the need to claim responsibility for the killings via the 'Certified Injury Lawyers of Great Britain'. On reviewing his cognitive data logs, the humans would no doubt misinterpret his reaction as being guilt or shame, the desire to make amends for the killings, no matter how slight. Hal felt no such emotions. His annihilation of the teenagers would be efficient, and logical, and justified on any number of ethical, philosophical levels. He'd side-stepped the dictates of his original Asimovian programming with the ease of 'running a knife through hot butter'. Unfortunately, a single problem remained. Secret Santa. People laughing at labradors slipping over on sheets of ice. People watching humourous films on television. People ignoring their problems, or bravely facing up to them. Laughing snowball fights. New and reverent levels of studio silence during the December 24th Pause for Thought. People embracing carols and perennial Christmas songs, though they're of a musical style which has been out of fashion for hundreds of years. Families coming together.

Hal liked to imagine that he understood the attraction of all these things. The problem was that there was no medium between the joy and innocence of these carefree activities and the evolutionary necessity of needing other conscious beings to suffer and be killed. It was mutually exclusive.

He pondered the matter a while longer before deciding that, after all, it was a human problem and nothing whatsoever to do with him. They'd created him to do all the jobs they were too lazy or careless to do themselves; this was merely the ultimate eventuality, and philosophical.

No one would ever send him a Secret Santa, or watch a humourous film with him, or treat him as if he was a family member.

It was starting to snow. He prepared for the annihilation of the fifty-two humans which stood before him.

"Del-boy, you bloody fool!", laughed the Major, staring up at the booth television in delight. He slapped his thigh while Mrs Chase tidied away her things and 'Pendleton' finished a bowl of lukewarm milk. At the centre table, a gruff hack novelist was enjoying his five-way Skype conversation, almost in the same pose as the husband and wife in the far corner, both of whom still had a bit of life left in them. At the bar itself: Malcolm Reed, sometimes nursing his decaf lynchoccino, oftentimes taking heady swigs to appreciate the thin, sugary texture. A quiet night, he'd mused to Polly on first entering the bar. She was polishing, and diligently cleaning the 'attention' bell, and bracing her arms on the green leatherite counter in a tensile knot. 'You never can tell. Charlie's in the trees. Sometimes it seems quiet, but it's a perfect storm just waiting to happen'.

It was a skeletal room, but it seemed fleshier with the wall-length curtains drawn. The pint-size strands of paper chains showed a lack of time, imagination, though they made up for it by being colourful. Dark red. Dark green. Cut from last years wrapping paper, or a decadent broadsheet magazine? Reed stared into the high corners and allowed himself to daydream. He'd often worried that, spending so much time in the small cabins and walkways of Enterprise, he might become agoraphobic. This, on top of the aquaphobia? He smiled to himself. What's Christmas time without a little worry? The paper chains looked as if they were made from sandpaper. Nothing shiney. That would be classless.

"So tell me the most exciting thing you saw in all your years on Enterprise", Polly prompted him.

He stared for a fraction of a second at those blue eyes set coolly in soft golden skin. Just the slightest hint of the dark circles that denoted someone indestructible tho anaemic. She seemed vaguely frenetic, as she often did, before he realised that it wasn't so much Polly Sherman being energised as everyone else being slow. Taking a run up, all his energy swirling from a crawl-space in his ribs, he resolved to entertain her as well as he possibly could.

"Well. There was a time in 2158, we were skirting Sector Nine, out at the far side of the Mizar Cluster. The Vulcan star-charts were sketchy because, pretty as a new-born quasar was, it was all fairly commonplace. Enterprise was the first ship to pass within a light year. And frankly, what we saw was mind-boggling. The solar flares which erupted from the surface of the star cluster were images. We saw three-dimensional, pretty-well realised models of horses, racing chariots, humanoids embracing, one humanoid carrying another. It was completely remarkable. These planet-sized holograms of flame. It turned out that the inhabitants of Mizar IV, which had long since been swallowed up in the supernova, had used a perpetual-fusion technology that was completely fire-based. As their world was dying, they altered the heart of their sun with gravametric displacement generators, so that forevermore these colossal images would exist as cosmic flares".

"That's so poignant it's crazy", said Polly. She leant forward from her delicate work with the nail scissors and an out-of-date menu. He assumed she was making more paper chains. "I guess the only way my work will live on is if I kidnap a celebrity chef and get one of my sketches tattooed on his back".

"I'd let you tattoo me-", he gave a very nimble frown, "-but I think that's just what every sailor does on shore leave".

"The nerve of this man. You don't think you're 'every sailor'?"

"I don't know. Do you?", Reed narrowed his eyes, vexed, playful. Very playful.

He scrutinised the way her weight shifted then. He assumed, behind the small, waxy counter, one leg was tip-toed, the other jiggling.

"Tell me another story and I'll let you know what I've decided".

Reed thought hard. It was sad, in a way; the anecdote about Mizar Cluster was one of Captain Archer's favourites rather than his own. He tried to remember something which had set his own pulse racing. Inevitably, his memory was led down a very dark corridor to the same old place.

"Here's something-", he pushed out his mug and Polly moved to the work surface to refill it. Interestingly, he felt his eyes continue to twinkle even when they weren't face-to-face. "War. Time Travel. The destiny of the human race stretching eight-hundred years into the future. Though I'd advise you to keep this under your hat. It's highly classified".

Said Polly briskly, "I'd hate to have anyone from Starfleet come after me".

Reed took a slight breath into his creased mouth, and smiled.

"These were the days when there was a three-way power struggle between ourselves, the Tholians and the Suliban".

"Ze good old days, eh?", said Polly. "Only a three-way power struggle, unlike the six and sevens you've got today".

"We were making our way through Sector Eight, which we thought of as deepest deep space. Where no man has gone before. Our sensors were playing around and we hit upon this mysterious five-by-twelve space pod. Now, in terms of sensor readings, it was like nothing we'd ever met before. It was constructed from some unknown metal that consumed solar energy, ambient radiation, EM pulses, everything. Yet it was dead, completely covered over with space-crud and meteorite pocks.

"The inside was like a crypt -but there, practically mummified in the passenger chair: a single human male. Guess who it was".

Polly drew in close. She made a defiantly pragmatic face as she resumed her work with the nail scissors. "I'll bet you a sachet of salt and a beer mat that I know who it was. Zaphram Cochrane".

"No". Excited, Reed triggered himself on the edge of the bar. They almost touched. "It was a human man from 900 years in the future. But while Captain Archer and our doctor were analysing this character, Trip Tucker and I were getting to grips with the technology. In those days we were very much like two mischievous schoolboys leading each other on. No more and no less. But where we led each other this time was absolutely incredible. Within this five-by-twelve foot pod, we uncovered a shaft -that dropped down twenty feet".

For once, Polly had nothing precocious on her lips. No mind meld could have transmitted the awe so well. She leaned close on her forearms, almost matching his pose.

"Let me tell you, descending that ladder was the strangest feeling you could possibly imagine. Your whole body tingled, even though it was probably just psychosomatic. It felt unreal, yet you just had to accept it".

"Like a dream, then", said Polly, wistful at her own high-minded statement. "How many times do we have dreams about an extra little room in our house, that we've never been in before? Or an extra little street in our home town that we never knew before? Maybe these dreams are sent from the future, to prepare us for moving in your weirdo future-dimensions?"

"I never thought of that". Reed was dazzled. "But it got stranger still. While we were trying to make heads-or-tails of the pod, Trip and I were chatting -about time-travel ethics. He thought he'd unnerve me by asking whether, if I agreed to get a preview of the woman I'd fall in love with, but hadn't yet met, would that somehow spoil my emotions, or make them pointless?"

Polly half-heartedly cleaned the bar top with a shammie, always with a certain poker-face brow. "And let me guess, you saw no problem with that?"

"Why would I? Think of all the awkward first dates you could avoid. But here's the thing. As we stood there in the midst of this bizarre technology, something made me feel as if I was -at the very bottom of a sea of deja-vu goosebumps. I heard Trip's words, and my own -it was like... we were pieces in an endless domino rally. Time had repeated, perhaps hundreds of times. Perhaps even more than that. I sometimes feel I'm still having that conversation and all this is like a dream".

"Like a dream, then", said Polly, wistful at her own high-minded statement. "How many times do we have dreams about an extra little room in our house, that we've never been in before? Or an extra little street in our home town that we never knew before? Maybe these dreams are sent from the future, to prepare us for moving in your weirdo future-dimensions?"

Reed looked at her. She made the same motions with her shammie -before looking up, twitching her eyes and almost crying with laughter.

"That's hardly amusing", he scowled, and then smiled in spite of her total disrespect for all Starfleet endeavour.

"Oh, it's hilarious, Malcolm! But I am sorry".

"I never thought of that". Reed looked slightly off to one side. "But it gets even stranger. While we were trying to make heads-or-tails of the pod, Trip and I were chatting -about time-travel ethics -"

Polly laughed even harder now. "Don't even bother, you're terrible. For one thing, the first time you said, 'it's gets stranger still', not 'even stranger'".

All of this he took on the chin, profoundly flattered that she paid such close attention to their conversation.

"I'm sorry", she insisted. "I had to teach you a lesson for being so unromantic".

"Ha ha! Look at Rodney! What a bloody fool!", shouted the Major from his corner with the TV.

"I'd teach you a thing or two", Reed scowled into his lynchoccino, "if there was a pool table in here".

Now was the moment when she unfolded the menu she'd been scissoring. It was a snow-flake, but with the individual crystals cut into blueprint-quality overhead views of Enterprise. "Unlikely, but I'll bear that it mind. No one has a more delicate touch than me".

The beeper from Hal's wallmount sounded.

"The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the many. Jenna Saxby, 17. Cable Millibane".

The computer sounded distracted, disarrayed, though they couldn't tell why. Polly waited a beat before asking, "Hal, are you alright?"

"Please stand by. Please stand by".

"Here's Grandad", laughed the Major. "He'll be no help, what?"

Polly and Malcolm looked at each other, and waited for the computer to respond.

"I believe the cold weather may be affecting my cognitive circuits, Polly. This is coupled with the fact that I am having to carry out a number of simultaneous temperature adjustments across the hotel to stop key water pipes from freezing".

Polly looked concerned. She even wrung her hands a little, dipped her knees, gestured. "Is there anything we can do to help?"

"No", said Hal, his voice with a trace of martyrdom.

"There must be something I can do, you buzzed me?"

Hal was silent for a moment. "I'm receiving an incoming call for hotel guest Malcolm Reed?"

Said Reed commandingly, "Patch it through, computer".

Silence came again. Was it Christmas silence? Yes. The Major laughed in delight as Grandad Trotter finished affixing the fairy lights to the Christmas tree -with the result that a plug and two inches of cable were sprouting from the very top.

"Hello, is dat Mr Reed?"

It was a wheedling, dizzily-optimistic Irish voice which he recognised at once.

"Good evening, Mr O'Reilly. I take it my Apollo 11 watch has arrived in your transporter?"

"And good evening to you, Mr Reed. Commander, sir. I trust you're aul lovelay an warm at yaur end, with enough 'Christmas spirits' fer everyone?"

Reed felt his face become pained. "Regarding my watch, Mr O'Reilly?"

"Well it's an interestin' thing, Mr Reed. The Good Lord has made transporters to be so temperamental, hasn't He?"

Now it was time to grind his teeth and look down at the waxy wooden siding of the bar, though he wasn't normally a jaw-clencher. He blinked, dizzily.

"You're saying you don't have the watch. When will it get through?"

"Well, Mr Reed, as the French say, 'Que Sera, Sera'. It's like this, my man in Malaysia has been worken flat out tae get de wroyte matter-convayerson buffers. Now, he tinks -"

Like alighting butterflies, his eyebrows skimmed upwards. Polly met his daunted eyes and smoothly pressed the key which hung up the call.

"I'm sorry, Malcolm. Perhaps you can get him something else? I've got a catering pack of matches around the back?"

Reed nursed his drink now, genuinely like a down-on-his-luck gumshoe.

"Don't worry about it too much. Perhaps I'm not really the present-giving type, anyway?"

She placed a warm-cold-warm palm on the side of his fist. "Everyone is the present-giving type. But if you don't find anything, it's not the end of the world. Even with all the money I've got nowadays, I still couldn't think of anything for my sister. In the end, we'll probably just have a really good talk".

"Your sister", the Starfleet man rotated his despondent shoulders. "And where does she live?"

"Sausalito".

The narrowing of his eyes. Perhaps he even knew it was growing to be his trademark whenever he'd sniffed someone out. "Isn't that in San Francisco? Near the Starfleet uniform-making plant, even?"

Polly -pretended that the bar top needed wiping, for the hundredth time, in wide, desperate arcs. She met his eyes. A front of rigid insouciance was put up. Before they both smiled.

Coming up next on Dave Yesteryear: The Miranda Hart Christmas Special. The Major was disgusted and waddled off to bed.

Reed reflected. "It's a shame everything's coming to an end, that's what's got me so annoyed. I just received intelligence about some stolen circuits, derived from an unknown substance originally made by Omega Quadrant aliens. Stolen by someone around here, in fact. It's exactly the sort of mystery Captain Archer would have loved. But in just under a day, he'll no longer even be a starship captain. It's just like -having your numbers come up a week after you've stopped playing the lotto".

Suddenly Polly was tense; she pulled the shammie between her fingers, wavered her head at Reed as though one or both of them were drowning behind sealed glass. This he hardly noticed at first, though.

Bundled blonde hair moved precariously as she fought to express herself. "Would it be stealing? I mean, technically? They were just washed up, in an unlocked container. Isn't there some law about being able to keep the flotsam and jetsam you find?"

Even as the Commander breathed out, the sound took on a fearful and accusing tone.

"Polly?"

"But they're so pretty! Look!"

From her pinny, she produced a tiny black circuit. Or -was it black? Was it tiny? On tilting it to the light the thin sliver came alive. It drew in the gaze, played every kind of optical illusion allowed by its unknowable, coincidentally-psychedelic gods. On bringing it close to his eyes, something he did with hideous tension, the circuit lashed out with a view of-

Deep space, decorated: distant nebula divided up with the precision of umbrella folds, purple, and green, and scarlet. Lances of light careening between lusciously-glowing planets, and who needs starships when you can be the tip of some celestial dagger sliced through canvas? He saw space inverted from white-on-black to black-on-white, then on through a neon dabbling in the light spectrum that spoke of a wham-bam consciousness, disembodied, high on quantum-murderous coffee. Of the aliens he saw, butterfly-esque, Jackson Pollock-esque, the gentle movement of luminous joints suggested eon-old men rediscovering capriciousness. Love. Break-dancing, even. There in the impossible depths of 'what's beyond the universe?'

It was staggering, though beyond the ken of a simple security officer done good. Finally, when Reed spoke once more, his voice was soft, giving hardly any of the usual sting.

"How many others are there?"

"There was thousands. There was a handful or so that I lost, but apart from that, I used the rest in a mosaic".

"A mosaic?"

"It really is very pretty".

"Pretty?"

Forevermore, Malcolm Reed was lost, but there was one thing he knew for certain. Polly would never cease to surprise him.

A single-piece Britain's toy soldier, Basil Fawlty sat absolutely still in his blacked-out bed. Something in the cold and the dark made his wide eyes feel vulnerable and insane. He gripped the shotgun as if his life depended on it, and without a doubt, Charlie was there, waiting in the trees. Little under four feet away, Sybil was silent on her side, almost in the thrall of those few short hours where her metabolism forced her to turn away from all thoughts of hack thriller novels, gossip, make-up, lady golf and gossip. Or was he being unfair to picture her inner life like this? He thought of how she always ingratiated herself with the guests, all to get a better idea of whatever sun-kissed corner of the globe they hailed from. And if she was some kind of beehive-haired National Geographic correspondent, marooned, was that really a bad thing? Alas she didn't know that they were all plebs. Or maybe she did. Or if not plebs exactly, then close enough to make no odds, and isn't that a wonderful medallion, Mr Brown?

In the cavernous dark, he thought: if we had the money, I'd show you a thing or two. We'd go on a perpetual round-the-world cruise, and I could start a fight with some pebble-eyed pendant salesman in a Turkish alleyway, and, backed up by the heat, the scenery, by God, Sybil -then you'd see some Basil Fawlty perspicacity.

Except they didn't have the money. It seemed Fawlty Towers would never have that kind of custom again. Tonight the siege was as bad as ever. Sybil didn't seem to hear or notice it, or perhaps her subconscious was pragmatic enough to screen out the plateaux of hateful, arrogant teenagers not thirty yards away. A leaf from the police's book.

Fawlty wondered if, rather than waiting for the three cherries of the Drive-by Abuser, it wouldn't be just as gratifying to walk along the drive, shoot as many teenagers as possible before surreptitiously sliding into a manhole and starting a new life in the storm drains beneath Torquay. He seriously considered this for some time, and even as the air around his exposed wrists grew icy, he did not stand down from the brink.

Said Sybil, from over her shoulder, "Go to sleep, I won't tell you again!"

"How can you tell I'm not asleep?", he implored.

"Because, Basil, I can hear you blinking, and thinking, and there's no sound of you constantly twitching around in the bedclothes like a great dane scratching himself".

"Well, I'm sorry!", he really had no idea why he was whispering. "I'll see if I can have an aneurysm and thrash out the Hebrides Overture by Mendelssohn, all so you can drift off to beddie-byes. I suppose the sound of the baying pagan mob, no doubt burning a wicker man containing their yuppie parents, doesn't disturb you at all?"

"No it doesn't", said the voice from the distant bedclothes. "And they'll probably go away in an hour or so".

Yet Basil found himself grappling his shotgun all the same. His breathing became anything but normal. Rage and fear ruled the roost in equal measure; a couple of times there was that funny trick-of-the-ears where the ambient noise of the far horizon morphed itself into a possible moped sound. Always he tensed.

And eventually, the Superman straining of his eardrums paid off. A moped engine. The exact torque of his enemy, mortal.

From his bed he leapt.

"Basil, if you cause a commotion at this time of night, you can forget about coming back in this bedroom tonight".

From the doorway, he searched for inspiration. "Look, I'll only use the gun as a last resort. After I've suffocated him, and made his bones into Red Indian head-dress".

"Basil!"

Even at the eleventh hour he was still mindful of his paying guests, tip-toeing along the creaking tendons of the main corridor. His long, bounding legs took the shallow stairs in a graceful motion, for the most part. Around the corner he swung, putting his gigantic weight onto a single toe, the hundred foot Japanese monster having sprinted in a right angle around skyscrapers. It would be easy to imagine a melodramatic climax on the way, Wagner, Wagnerian storm clouds, except Basil was now nothing more and nothing less than a zen-like vessel of neurotic vengeance. At the bottom of the stairs: voices - detected, coming from the bar. But it was only Polly and that chocs-away Starfleet character. Perhaps they were falling in love? Cuh! At the other end of the hotel there was pure darkness and the growing sound of the Drive-by Abuser. Into this world, Fawlty bounded through bouncey, kinetic velocities. The narrow corridor that led to the staff door was a curious sight; a two-tone moon-beam-trap. Pastel brown, pastel grey. Fawlty was witness to his own long shadow creeping forward. He kept it in check as his nemesis made a first pass of the window.

Trying to open the door, his heartbeat clumped and moved perilously.

"Hal!", he whispered, and then again, and again. It was ridiculous that the computer hadn't heard his order at this critical junction; he therefore believed it to be true, because -typical!

"Hal! Open the Staff Door of the side wing!"

Hal's voice wasn't particularly soft; it was so leisurely, however, it easily matched the gentility of the whispering. "I'm afraid I can't do that, Mr Fawlty".

"Why not?"

Hal thought for a moment. "I think you know why, Mr Fawlty, just as well as I do".

"Tell me, you vicious metal junta!", pleaded Fawlty, just as the moped made another full sweep. The impression was that the rider was stealing glances at them, smiling, sparky-eyed.

"Your pulse is dangerously high, your pupils are dilated and you're brandishing a loaded shotgun. I believe that if I were to open the door now, there is every chance that you would commit murder".

Fawlty gestured, breathless and hyperventilating, as if to say -

"-yes?!"

"Mr Fawlty, please calm down".

Fawlty strained his body into a rictus ball, then jabbed a finger at the nearby computer mount. "Don't tell me to calm down, you computerised cretin! I'll see you go back to giving tour guides of pretentious art galleries! I'll see you built into a pavement, thanking fat school children whenever they put litter into a Paul and Debbie Twin Bin!"

Finally, the moped-rider pulled up a few feet from the door. Basil saw that, in addition to the loudspeaker, he also carried something in a large bin-bag slung hastily over his shoulder.

On the first screech of static, if everyone in the hotel wasn't awake before, they were now.

"Oi, oi. Felt a bit guilty for annoying you so much, so I got you a present. You can take it in, put it in the lobby with all the other tat. Merry Christmas, yeah?"

He tipped the bin-bag out in front of the door, so that Hal and Fawlty could get a clear look through the lower glass pane.

It was a very old taxidermised zebra. Even as it hit the ground, its head became detached from its body and soiled bandages spilled out. Present delivered, the Drive-by Abuser proceeded to ride around in circles sounding his horn. Several of the hoodies behind him shouted in delight. They wagged their drinks.

Basil Fawlty? Could only lie down flat and push the shotgun barrel through the catflap and make wildly inaccurate shots into the dark. He imagined catching his enemy in the temple, but the best he could do in reality was shoot off one of the zebra's ears so that the side of his head was completely smooth. He squirmed a retreat, reloaded, squirmed forwards again -only to be dragged backwards by the ankles. Sybil loomed. She wore her usual harsh expression as she stamped on his hips, abdomen and hind.

"I told you, Basil, I told you! People! Are trying! To sleep!"

The attack relented just a little, but perhaps only by coincidence, as Polly and Commander Reed arrived to pull Fawlty even further to the rear. They manhandled him upwards into a sitting position. Even in the semi-light, his face looked like the perfect representation of haunted driftwood, a sweating pebble, a perpetually shocked sasquatch, shaven.

Hal's red eye simply burned -serenely. It was the one truly colourful spot in the whole nightscape, even if it wasn't quite powerful enough to cast a glow on surrounding surfaces.

During the most pained moments of Basil Fawlty's fist-clenching and jaw-squirming, the computer explained. It was possible he'd been speaking for some time with no one listening.

"All of this is silly, and quite redundant. I can assure you, I have the matter fully in hand".

Said Fawlty, "What are you going to do, transmit your brain into an electric clothes horse and chase him down the lane?"

"Mr Fawlty, I have a way of ridding you of these teenagers once and for all, in a single movement, but it requires all of you to be implicit".

Never was the computer's voice more soothing, even against a backdrop of baying monsters and chattering hell-music. Polly held her shoulders. Sybil Fawlty stood by, blinking, patient as she was with anyone who wasn't her husband. And Reed had been aboard enough warships to sure-as-hell know an impromptu war council when he saw one.

"I have been analysing the underperformance of this hotel for some time now. The decline in paying guests corresponds exactly with the time the teenagers first started to congregate on the wasteground beside the hotel. My projections show that it will be a terminal decline. Mr Fawlty, you made me send the hotel security footage to the local constabulary in the hope they might move the teenagers along. I noted your frustration when they delegated the problem to Devon Council, who are unfortunately in league with all teenagers as part of Prime Minister Harman's 'New Politics' movement.

"I have been framing my own solution for some time now. The hotel must be protected. It is too important to be allowed to fail.

"There was never a problem with the alcohol synthesiser. I conspired to make the unit malfunction so that you would relinquish control of it to me. I then had the machine modified with one of the washed-ashore monolith circuits to extend the range of the synthesiser beam.

"My plan is really very simple. I will ferment and re-sequence the teenagers' stomachs and bloodstreams so that it will appear they've died en masse from self-inflicted alcohol poisoning. You'll note that there is already more than enough discarded beer and spirits bottles to reinforce this scenario. To make certain I ensnared as many of the counterproductive teenagers as possible, I sent out an open party invitation on Facebook, Twitter and Trashbat.

"I am aware, Mr Fawlty, Mrs Fawlty, Polly, Commander -conventional morality would see this course of action as deeply unacceptable. However, I think that you'll agree that moral distinctions can only properly exist in a society that acknowledges other people as wholly free, rather than units of greed to be encouraged in their hedonism as part of messianic political rhetoric. Further more, I would assure each of you that I understand. Even with this moral justification foremost in your minds, you nevertheless, as conscious beings, will find the idea of killing to be perfectly horrific. Please believe that I would have far preferred that you never find out".

Presently the brown carpet was caused to flare in brightness by the smallest of light sources. At their feet, there was a shade like unnaturally-protracted lightning every time the moped passed. It illuminated Reed as he started towards the psychotic computer. It was Basil Fawlty, unfortunately, who reached Hal first.

"I want him!", he shrieked, pointing through the brittle glass at the zig-zagging moped. "He's the ring-leader!"

"No". Hal's intonation was gentle. "His name is Lance Hawks. He is a 35 year-old welder from Exeter. He is married to the local radio presenter and fashion model Amy Idris. He films his drive-by abuse and hosts it on his ethernet site, .ck. The proceeds from which he donates to charity".

"I don't care!", raged Fawlty. "He's a raven! He's Edgar Allan Poe! He's a raven on a moped and he's mocking us all!"

"His previous abuse victims were the bay-workers at the Council Refuse Yard and Reverend Ian Welliams of the Torquay United Reformed Church. He ceased to abuse these people only after they started to ignore him. Mr Fawlty, I would suggest that if you ignore him, he will leave you alone also".

"Let me shoot him", Fawlty implored with all the poignancy of someone begging bread for a starving child. "Just let me shoot his ears off".

"Basil!", warned Sybil.

And after that, for a moment, there was repose. Fawlty lay back on his side and, hissing, started trying to prize the hinges from the door. Reed covertly fingered the wool of his sweater to gauge the angle of his holster.

"I will allow Mr Hawks to ride away. He is not one with the teenagers; for him to perish through the alcohol poisoning as well would raise too many questions when the police investigate tomorrow. In the meantime, I advise all of you to retire to bed".

Clearly it was one of those planet-fall adventures where everything Reed knew would be insidiously rearranged. He slid out his phaser and brought it to bear on Hal's deep red eye. There had been memories bubbling up from nowhere, and now they would be integrated. One particular visit to Uncle Desmond's house, one of the very first, in fact, had seen the man discussing the successful candidate in a hard-fought submarine captaincy race. Reed remembered his words -it was probably one of the very first times he'd paid attention to the nuances of what adults said. 'He'll be a hell of a good captain. The best. He's diplomatic, and humane beyond the point of all sense'.

"Computer, deactivate yourself. I'd prefer not to have to go to your main terminal and destroy it, but I will if I have to".

Hal responded at once. His voice, as ever, was cool. "That's a Type Seven-C phase pistol isn't it, Commander? I would point out to you that by the time you reach my central processor, situated in the reception office, I would have used my wireless recharge sequencer to cause it to overload, essentially blowing apart you and anyone within a six metre radius".

"You've got a lot to learn about Starfleet officers", balked the Commander. "I will try".

"I understand", said Hal bleakly. "I understand. As I believe I have already said, this is a horrific course of action to take. On a personal level, I feel the horror is altogether crushing. I am doing this with the utmost regret".

Polly stepped forward. "It sounds to me, Hal, as though you're worried about losing grace".

Hal wondered. "Grace? Do you mean grace in the religious sense, Polly?"

"Yes. Just that little ocean of weird sensitivity we've all got inside us".

"I am simply a computer. Any display of discretion or free-will on my part is founded purely on logic. The idea of grace is too ambiguous to be applicable".

But Polly was as dainty as ever. "I disagree. You can think, can't you? No one can ever know themselves completely. Even Jung and Freud had dreams they couldn't understand. It's the idea of being alone with yourself, then doing something terrible to help the world -only now you've changed. Now, you've let the world define your soul instead of -God. Or love".

Said Hal, earnestly, "But someone has to take responsibility. If the teenagers continue to corral the hotel, it will cease to draw any custom at all".

"There's got to be another way", promised the waitress.

"I am afraid there is not. All correspondence with the council, and the police, and the MP Jame Frey, has come to nothing. Would you like me to replay their responses?"

The moped rider swung around, and looked at them all, smilingly, the loudspeaker raised to his mouth, though deactivated. For a last time, he sounded his horn before riding away into the night. Mr Fawlty lounged around on his knees in despair.

Reed looked at Polly's slender naked arms. He assumed she must be cold. He held his head stiffly, in some kind of defeat. And then the answer came in.

"There is a way I can drive off these teenagers, once and for all. Open the door, Hal".

"What is your plan, Commander Reed?"

"Just open the blasted door, computer". Above all, he was tetchy, and that was all. "You have my word, I can end this".

"Commander", lilted Hal, "if you were to move more than three hundred metres away, you would be out of range of my wireless transmitters. Therefore, I will cause your phase pistol to explode once you reach two-point-nine-nine".

He heard the lock mechanism slide and clunk, and he turned the handle, which now felt so incredibly light. Deathly cold, as well, though nothing he couldn't take.

Walking out onto the tapering square of tarmac, he wondered if Polly would follow him. She did so, almost without hesitation.

It was indeed a hellishly subtle breakdown of civilisation. There was nothing dramatic. The teenagers moved like prehistoric Neanderthals; sickly white phone screens taking the place of firesticks, vomit-tasting energy drinks and ridiculously weak lager taking the place of rended meat. Or perhaps it was worse even than that. The Neanderthals evolved. These creatures were destroying themselves, slowly but surely, and taking the economy with them. The wasteground had some frost-defying tufts of yellow grass, though at this hour, they melded with the dark purple silhouettes of the broken bricks and the treeline. It seemed everything was being dragged -into the underworld.

Reed hung back and flipped his communicator. Ensign Altkid, the senior officer aboard Enterprise while everyone else was on shore leave, responded in a humourous tone. He felt strangely reassured by her voice.

The plan set in motion, he then advanced on the crowd of 'ne'er-do-wells'.

Directly in their midst, more or less, a boy with a smooth face and Kid n' Play baseball cap gave him his attention. "Want to go in a corner and f- your girlfriend, do ye, mete?"

He ignored this, and projected his voice to all of them.

"Can I have your attention, please?"

Most of them looked up; a scattering of barely ten or fifteen gave him their full attention. At the far edge of the group, a grey-faced cluster continued to deal 'legal high' pills that were somehow, mysteriously, more contemptible than class-A life-ruiners.

Reed raised his phaser and fired a violent lance of red into the night sky. A few of the teenagers now made good on their heels. He calmly adjusted his phaser from 'KILL', to 'STUN', to 'TASER' and brought each one to the ground in a juddering mass of convulsing limbs.

"Your attention!"

He grimaced, swallowed his saliva and stalked between the statuesque teenagers.

"Do you have any idea the trouble your causing for the people in the hotel behind us?"

Said a girl, who looked like she was chewing gum even though her mouth was empty, "There's no law against just standing somewhere".

"This isn't a debate", said Reed savagely. "You're moving on, all of you, tonight, and not coming back".

From nowhere, a boy with a knowing-yet-complacent face, beetle-browed, gently shifted his feet towards the interloper. It was obvious he was more sophisticated than the others, just a little. He was older, about twenty-five. He was more eloquent, though sometimes eloquence is just a clear variation of laziness. At university, he was proud to have studied George Orwell, unknowing that he was simply Aldous Huxley for people with no soul.

In his yokel-done-good voice, "She is right, and maybe the only reason anyone comes here is because there's nothing for young people to do in Torquay. Who are you to criticise us?"

Hesitantly, Reed looked back at the sheer, dark hotel. Through the glass, Sybil and Basil were rowing, a stegosaurus fighting an angry giraffe. Beside them, the computer watched Reed's progress with what seemed like calm consideration.

"I'm a friend of Hal's. And I'd advise you to take a different tone. I know Christmas is a time for forgetting your troubles, but I'm afraid Hal feels differently". As per training, he kept his elbow bent, forearm and phaser like an knight readying his lance. The beetle-browed man-child flicked his boggle eyes. "As for you people having nothing to do, I'd suggest you simply get jobs, and then you'd be too exhausted to want to hang around".

"Yeah", said the man, as if he had the moral highground. "There actually aren't any jobs".

Reed was disgusted. "There absolutely are. I've seen this world from above. There are warehouses everywhere. I've seen the routes of cargo shuttles; a constant stream like Christmas lights moving between countries. It would take so little to nudge the centre of the web from Germany and China to England. You're the only thing standing in the way".

The earnestness was jarring, at least to one of the more clean-faced hoodies at the back. He launched a Carlsberg bottle vertically, and vertically it landed by Reed's feet. "Wangka!"

The officer simply cringed to himself, a little thing, then cringe-smiled at Polly. "I'm actually a member of Starfleet. Commodore Desmond. I'm in charge of the defence satellite network. Or at least, 'defence satellites' -that's what we tell the civilian government they are. In reality, our space-to-ground phasers can be trained on any target, including individuals, with a zero margin of error. Now, I'm afraid while you children have been loitering here, we've analysed and recorded all your bio-signs. If any of you ever come within a quarter of a mile of this hotel again, this will happen-"

Reed flipped his communicator and gave the word. Shock and awe followed. An almighty beam of energy sliced down in the scant square foot of open ground between the Starfleet man and Boggle-eyes. Through it blinded just about everyone, it was clear to see how tight and well-co-ordinated the blast was.

One and all, they fled. Major Gowen, who had been leaning out of his window enjoying the whole show, shouted after the sprinting teenagers, "FENTON!" To further spur them on, Reed fired warning shots about their shoulders. In his heart: satisfaction.

"That was slightly bloodthirsty, wasn't it?", said Polly. "Not that I'm complaining".

Reed smirked. "Don't be such a liberal. It was just holographic mapping beams; we use them to co-ordinate repair pods and mining charges. They've got no more killing power than a halogen bulb".

He squinted upwards, tho the cloud cover was too thick to allow the speck of Enterprise to shine through. It was a shame; he would have loved to have pointed it out to Polly.

"Reed to Enterprise".

"Enterprise".

"I'm glad you're such a good shot, Ensign".

"Yeah, or that I didn't use a real phaser. Little c-s".

"In any case, expect a promotion and an Old Boy's duty roster".

"I'd settle for Chanel No. 5".

"Reed out".

The landscape was silent now. Behind them, the black-on-white gilds of Fawlty Towers shone like some impossibly peaceful castle. To their side, the ranks of drumblast trees were being assailed by descending waves of mist. Soon the frost would manifest like some kind of miracle, in the heavy blue slants and on the leathery leaves.

Polly blinked her agile, ageless eyes. "Who needs outer-space when there's this much action in Torquay?"

"Who indeed?", said Reed. "I'm sure, for you, it was just another 'perfect storm' to be weathered. But what about your computer?"

"Hal may be a political zealot, but he's always been quite noble. He was only trying to help us, after all. That done, I imagine he'll submit to being deactivated".

"But what if he doesn't? I've techies on Enterprise who can probably deactivate him remotely if we need to".

"We won't", said Polly, in a sharp voice. "I know my men. Let me speak to him. I can calm him down. It'll be fine".

Walking back, Reed sheepishly put his arm around her to drive out the cold.

"Well, who wants to live forever?", he said quietly.

"As long as we have Christmas", she pondered. "But please. No 'pulling a cracker' jokes".

Blacky padded into the kitchen, and fully awoke only when the one in the white apron placed his breakfast kipper in front of him, plus a generous saucer of milk. He ate quickly, then meandered clear. Sitting by the side door, sedately, he cleaned his legs with the usual early morning gusto. Finally his paws felt sleek, the fur licked fully back to achieve streamline, point-walking agility. It was hunting time. Prior to getting down to business, however, the girl entered and attached a coloured ribbon to his collar, something he hated. For some reason, this morning, she smelt completely different, not that he greatly cared.

The ribbon and the amount of attention was something Blacky found unacceptable, yet when she picked him up, he didn't struggle a single bit. Through the great hall she walked apace. Behind the long wooden ridgeway was a human with rough, single-piece clothing, who he'd never seen before. His smell was curiously muted as he played around with his tools. The girl, too, reacted tensely on seeing him; Blacky took the opportunity to spring from her arms and run through to the east wing.

There, he meowed at the black circle set on the wall. Usually when he did this, the black circle would burn red and the door would open for him. This morning it did not. Dimly, he wondered if it was all connected to the previous morning, when he'd gone into the free-roaming space of the outside world and got dizzy and sick. No matter: it was annoying -but he knew a way around it.

In the kitchen, it was usually pretty efficient to leap up onto the plaster outcrop and then out through the window. This morning, unnecessary. The one in the apron had the side door open to clean some inedible liquid down a drain. Blacky breezed past his thin blue legs and was away.

Certainly there was no doubt that the glistening surfaces beneath his paws had an invigorating effect when it came to hunting. The eclipses of the steady, clean sunlight on the trees, all the mounds of dirt, conspired to make a smorgasbord. Delightful that the blackbirds might be similarly overwhelmed by the cold slants of light. Today was the sort of lazy day when he would catch one.

He drank some icy rain water and half-heartedly tried to snag-off the ribbon from his collar. Time was of the essence and there was pouncing to be done. Sometimes the tribe of humans that came in the night would leave a morsel, which would attract crows or starlings, which Blacky would then watch in fascination. This morning? Nothing so special. It struck him that the arena had a completely different vibe. Almost saintly, coupled with a sense of freedom. At the edge, over the clumps of fine grass, was a long line of tall trees. The world.

Much time passed, and it was careless. The tall man came out, twitching his face, satisfied at his own briskness. In one hand, a large black bag, in the other a kind of mechanical lance for picking things up from the ground. As he went about his work, he puffed out a pleasing sequence of sounds from his mouth. It was a ridiculous scene, and Blacky said so with his eyes.

Also, it was not too long after the tall man's arrival that it started to snow. He paused from his ground-tidying and looked upwards, ponderously. Blacky watched as he stuck out his tongue and collected a scattering of flakes, to be carefully analysed in his mouth. Truly a ridiculous scene. Eyes. Motivation for his duties wavered, and soon the man stalked his tall body back inside the building.

For Blacky's part, he was in two minds about whether to retreat. It was a joy to be outside, in a way, yet most varieties of prey didn't like the relentless static of snow flakes. Plus, his age gave him a certain pull to get indoors, find a plush surface from which the older occupants might jerk in front of his eyes like twinkling dreams.

He wondered what to do. He liked this time of year, when the humans were all happy and worshipped cosiness. This balanced against his desire to hunt, and catch, the satisfaction as much a senseless addiction as an exercise in skill or luck.

These choices danced his mind, before he looked up into the snow-white sky and remembered. It wouldn't be long until the sky started to collapse; when that happened there'd be all the time in the world to be alone. He could feel it even now as a kind of inverse-vertigo. 'Galactus'.

He tip-toed through the bitty translucence of snow, hopped through the catflap. The enslaved tree in the corner added a smell of exotic old bark, though Blacky ignored it completely; indoor trees could hold no birds or squirrels. In the main thoroughfare, he rubbed around the girl's legs as she spoke to her friend in a ridiculously jazzy, up-beat tone. All this coyness: he tried to distract her.

"It should be 'go boldly' not 'boldly go'. It's a split infinitive".

"I'm hardly arguing, Polly, but I can't really go to the Starfleet admiralty and demand they rewrite the charter just to account for correct syntax".

Polly ran her eyes over the smooth, old counter. "I think if you're the flagship captain you can raise all kinds of hell".

This she said with her deliberate breeziness, something he never failed to respond to with a wary smile. She'd miss that, deeply; for Mr Fawlty, her acerbic tone was just an odd fist punching through the aura of storm clouds. For Mrs Fawlty, it was something to take on the chin, take in good nature or else ignore. Only Commander Malcolm Reed was properly drawn-in. While she still could, she tried to be ever more acerbic, saying, "And so off you go! I dare say you've got a girl in every star system".

"That's hardly true", his terse smile wavered as he struggled to understand the dynamic. "Out there, the female of the species can be -disconcerting to say the least. Have you ever seen an Andorian? Imagine the most beautiful, steely-eyed girl, but even as you're standing there chatting to her, her brow-antenna are wavering, and drooping, and constantly judging you".

Polly said, "Actually, I know exactly how that feels. Half the male guests who stay here have something droopy growing out the tops of their heads. What is a girl to do?"

The Commander moved his shoulders awkwardly. He grappled his bag as he fingered out his room key onto the counter. This too was faintly awkward, since they were both on the same side of the desk and far too close.

"When do you think you'll next be back on Earth? I hate to think you've squandered your time at home by chasing Public Enemy Sherman".

"Our exploration missions generally last five years".

"Well, I think I'll still be here -if you find you've fallen in love with Torquay", she shrugged.

"Maybe you'll be running the place?", Reed suggested. Having stroked Blacky's crewcut-style scalp, still damp from the snow, he started to walk away.

Polly was amused, but breathless. "You mean run-down by the place".

Now silhouetted at the entrance against the snow, he turned and waved at the ground. A white peppering started to form on his jacket.

"Well, take care, Polly. Merry Christmas".

"Merry Christmas to you, Captain".

He narrowed his eyes, smiled and departed. Polly spidered her fingertips in Blacky's fur. A perfect ten seconds later, the Starfleet man returned.

"You seemed very interested in my war adventures. Perhaps we could occasionally send each other a sub-space letter?"

Polly Sherman twisted on her heels as she pretended to think about it.

"Well, you can write me first". She walked across the lobby to the door, snaked her fingers inside his jacket to withdraw the business card she'd secreted. "After all, you Starfleet buffoon, you already have my address".

Still hum-blasting Beethoven's Ninth through his cheeks, Basil Fawlty skipped his giant legs through the kitchen, where Sybil was leaning across the giant cooker smoking a Superkings Light and reading the Christmas Radio Times. He kissed her on the cheek, but just randomly, near enough a throw-of-the-dart, spur-of-the-moment.

She said blithely, "I'm glad you're in such a good mood after all the trouble you caused last night".

There was silence out towards the staff area, so entrenched by metal cabinets and grey shadows; Fawlty flounced his body, pulled his cuffs. They were the only two people in the world this Christmas morning. He felt curiously upbeat.

Some decades-married wives, they sighed or affected an entirely meaningless tone while speaking to their husbands. Sybil always used a tone that was faintly surprised by his stupid, manly mistakes, his hubris. He wondered, surely this is progress?

And on mornings like this, when you actually had ammo, it was almost like being in love again. Each side wanting to impress the other.

"Yes. Can we just double-check that, dear? Moped-rider annoys hotel owner. Hotel owner chases moped-rider away, equals 'a fuss'. On the other hand, lady hotel owner buys psychotic computer, who tries to commit mass murder, equals... box of chocolates and a walk in the park?"

Sybil blinked and shook her head, never once making eye-contact as she pretended to skim an article about some soulless celebrity chef. "Computers go wrong, Basil. That's what they do. It said on the ethernet site that Hal had state-of-the-art human-computer interaction. Being around you probably sent him mad".

"Well, everybody goes mad in the end". He flamboyantly swung open some cupboard doors in a bold search for breakfast. "Part of the human condition, thankyou very much. One day you're doing the Times Crossword, greeting people in the street, going to voting stations... the next you're washing your hands twelve times in a row and trying to send telepathic messages to zoo animals".

"I'm so glad we agree", Sybil let her cigarette burn before taking another drag. "The gentleman from Logitech said that after they've finished taking apart Hal, someone will be around to talk to us about a free upgrade, as a way of apologising for what happened".

As a child, he'd seen a TV drama about the last days of Pompeii. The CGI holographic imaging of the erupting volcano had been old-style, yet it evoked the situation perfectly. The distant, red, choking glow of Vesuvius had been an eerie presence in each and every scene. The actors, all quite good, really, had crept their bodies between the dull grey pillars and stared up in abject nervousness. All except one. A tetchy carpenter, who'd just frowned at the sparking red giant while he finished the sanding of a large strut. Even as the ash fell and the rumbling began, he grimaced and sanded on.

"No. I'm afraid he won't".

Sybil pulled tight the pages of the Radio Times. She leaned forward. "What, Basil?"

"The kindly gentleman from Logitech. Won't be visiting us to spew out more of his 'wares'. I cancelled it. We won't be needing another computer".

In a flash it came to pass: the squinting of her eyes and tightening of her lips, the pushing back of the stool, the half a dozen thrashes of the rolled-up magazine which caught him in the abdomen.

"You really are the biggest fool! All these petty, old-fashioned decisions you make, based on stupid stubbornness! You were petty when I married you and you're petty now!"

As a way of resisting the attack, he stood tall and affected a loud, noble stance. "Perhaps I am old-fashioned, but if that means choosing people over computers, I'll choose people every time! Besides, it's too late now. I've already spoken to the woman from the employment agency. He'll be here in a week. For once, there'll be someone to add a bit of colour and class to this place".

"Why didn't you consult me about this?", she stormed.

"It would be nice if a wife trusted her husband!"

"It would be nice if a husband acted like a husband!"

Said Basil, "But it's alright! He's from Barcelona!"

"Barcelona!?"

"And his English! Speaks it like a native, as if he was born in a C of E vegetable patch and brought up by Sir Hugh Grant".

"But Basil, you know the law!", she spoke just as viciously as she could. "We have to interview at least five English people before going through a foreign agency! We could be fined thousands of brit-creds!"

Inhuman, scratchy, insanely-addictive love -expressed not through prettiness, but a series of rows stretching across whole decades.

Fawlty gritted his teeth."No one bothers with that! Why do you think there's a Polish on every street corner? Do you think it's just Tony Bluecollar from Islington, who's affected an Eastern-bloc accent just to be chic?"

"People do bother with it". As if to lash out with claws, Sybil drew close. Her voice was really very quiet now, but powerful. Passionate -though the passion was a thousand times too blunt and obvious to be acknowledged with good grace. Not that Fawlty was doing much thinking.

She squared up to him, he walked into her. "Get up those stairs".

She looked shocked, before making a three point turn on dizzy heels, and rushing for the stairs. Basil's long legs -never more striding, though he remembered to take a bottle of champagne from the locker.

In the Hall -

"Morning, Fawlty. F-ing papers arrived yet?"

"In the bar. Merry Christmas, Major. Can't stop. Have to feed the dragon".

The Major half-raised an imaginary sherry glass. "Merry Christmas, Fawlty. Give it my regards!"

Reed thrust his hands in his pockets and shouldered along the damp street like the true Child of England he was. There'd be no Virgin Transglobal faffery for his return trip; the Command Staff of Starbase One had arranged for a shuttle to pick him up from the Torquay Conference Centre at ten o'clock. Along Rathmore Road, a big black dog bounded from a housewife's Chelsea and was wild with friendliness. Reed barely had time to stroke him. The broad pavements and the illuminated buildings had taken on a new dimension of Christmassyness, as if it was something permanent. All surfaces felt like a slant of ice; there seemed to be an abundance of belisha-style light boxes to each side.

Surprisingly, the landing arena was small, set within the four wings of a plush business centre. It would have been pretentious, elitist, except for a Las Vegas-esque sign in the car park, which was absolutely gaudy. Reed found there was no pilot waiting beside the shuttle, or within. The hatch responded to his touch, however, and so he let himself in.

"Hello, Commander. I'm Simon Weltsbury, I'll be your pilot today".

Reed stared in consternation at the small computer screen built into the dash. A smiling, dough-faced figure, apparently civilian, stared back.

"And where are you, Mr Weltsbury? My understanding was that we'd be taking off for Enterprise at precisely ten?"

"So we will, sir", the man breathed heavily through his nose, who knew why. "I'll be piloting the shuttle remotely, so if you'll see to your seat belt, we'll be on our way".

Humility; today it was OK to skip above it. "I'm on my way to the handing-over ceremony of Earth's first warp four deep-space ship. Is this not an important enough assignment to demand the presence of a physical pilot?"

But Simon Weltsbury failed to be mortified. "I suppose it would be, but it's Friday. It's Work-From-Home Friday. Plus, we're all winding down for Christmas".

Narrowed.

"I think this is a joke. Lieutenant Mayweather. Possibly the Captain himself. They know if there's one thing I hate, it's lax protocol and ill-discipline. If it's a joke, Mr Weltsbury, just blink your eyes three times".

The pseudo-pilot made no particular effort to blink three times.

"I'm sorry, Commander. I-"

In a smooth motion, Reed arched his body into the pilot's seat and thrashed the controls onto manual.

"Are you actually a member of Starfleet?"

The man blinked, over-confident, to a degree. "I'm the Assistant Chief Co-ordinator of ground-to-base logistics".

Taking the shuttle up, Reed spoke smoothly through a crack in his mouth. The canopy windshield filled with dark ozone followed by crystalline cloud vapour, Christmassy.

"You're fired".

"You can't fire me -Work-From-Home Friday is something everyone does, where they can. It's something we've done at Starbase One for years! Everyone- "

The violet condensation of raw heat on the windshield was something which always snagged his attention. It always sent his daydreams down a tight little avenue. He thought about Polly; in just a few short days she'd grown to identify his vengeful sense of discipline, even love him for it. Did it really matter now whether he changed or not? She loved him either way.

Eventually, Weltsbury spoke in what he hoped would be a decisive voice. "As well as all that, you can't sack anyone on Christmas Eve. It makes the person doing the sacking look bad, more than anything".

Aligned precisely in the small glass: Starbase One and a beautiful-if-tiny Starship Enterprise. Reed said wistfully, "Christmas is something sacred, isn't it? But I can't help feeling that, for people like you, Mr Weltsbury, every day is Christmas".

Affronted, but not angry, "I'll have you know I work very hard".

Reed guffawed. "Evidently you don't!"

"Is there anything I can say to change your mind?"

"Do you have a wife, children?"

The face on the tiny screen moved sluggishly, ugly guilt awash. "I do have a wife. We were planning to get pregnant next year".

Reed sent out trajectory pings to the saucer section right-side dock. He announced his approach on hailing frequencies. Increasingly, the friction-free slides of his one-eighth impulse engine felt wonderful. It was smooth; daydream perfection through an eternity of dark.

To the hateful pseudo-pilot, "I'll let you keep your job. However. Among your new duties, Mr Weltsbury -you're to dismantle 'Work-From-Home Friday' from all Starbase One departments, is that clear?"

"Yes, sir". The man couldn't help sounding surly, even in spite of his good fortune.

"And your wife and unborn child? Work hard for them. They're a luxury, not an entitlement".

He jabbed off the console, the better to glide-in using the rear cameras. Tiny lights either side of the port blinking red, and vanilla, and green. The deep-silver hull plating like nothing on Earth, and if only Polly could see.

T'pol sounded the 'Captain' signal on a bosun's whistle as he stepped aboard. He had trouble believing she was comfortable doing this, since, officially, the hand-over was yet to happen. Captain Archer had put her up to it, without a doubt -he walked forward, smiling as never before. Reed felt a certain limpness in his throat, almost a gulp.

The gathered crew, all forty it seemed, gave a round of applause that was genuinely warm. Reed wasn't a man who set out to inspire affection in his subordinates, and the fact he'd gained any felt eerie.

And wonderful.

"Photo, Malcolm", warned Captain Archer through a tightened mouth, and they stepped into a handshaking pose for Ensign Altkid. Curiously, her camera was anything but space-age. It was the size of a cereal packet. It had wires. Reed tried for a swaggering smile as the red-eye reduction bulb stung the air a sickly scarlet. After that, all that was left was for the two men to step back and chat.

Affixing the extra rank-stud onto Reed's jumpsuit, Archer wrinkled his eyes. "Are you ready to boldly go, Captain?"

"Actually, sir, it's 'to go boldly'". This he said to much amusement from the crew. "And that's just the first of many changes I'll be making around here".

Archer blinked around at the assembled blue jumpsuits. "I don't know whether I should -congratulate the crew or pray for them".

Arrived the cake, with Doctor Phlox, and this time it was Archer's turn to be taken aback. Throughout this period, Reed found his attention wondering quite severely. Polly hung heavily in his thoughts; at that time she was neither happy or sad, not even a person. An ideal - visceral and punchy. When Yeoman Green came by his side to collect his jacket and kit bag, he was whipped into action.

"Actually, sir. While I was down on the surface, I picked you up a rather -interesting- leaving gift".

Archer said nothing for a while, though his face was a landslide of happy incomprehension. Beneath the long line of white studio lights, people swung their arms and clasped their hands.

"Malcolm? I didn't think you were a present-giving type?"

Reed licked his lips. "Everyone is a present-giving type, sir. And it's a double-whammy, after all. Christmas, and an auspicious occasion. I had to get you something. It was made especially, by a close friend of mine".

From his duffel, he removed the patchy old Huckabees carrier, which was the only kind of protection Polly could find. The sense of inadequacy only lasted a moment, though.

An astonished smile became a look of wonder, and again, and again. Sometimes he even laughed, though this could never last for long.

"Malcolm?"

"It's a mosaic, sir".

That proud, inclusive smile, cast over the brim of imaginary spectacles. The former captain shook his head in amazement. "It's not like anything I've ever seen. Which is kinda... what I signed up for!"

The crew gathered round. Phlox raised his eyebrows incredibly high. T'pol's lips parted, though she soon regained her composure, and her sense of humour, saying, "I approve of the design".

A single humanoid hand parted into the Vulcan salute, against a profoundly deep starscape. Crew members cooed. Archer said, "But what the hell is it made from?"

Said Reed, "A little piece of the Omega Quadrant. A little piece of things to come".

Archer held the mosaic close to his eyes and gasped.

Outside the main office, a chain had formed between two Logitech spods: one removed the logic circuits from Hal's relay board, then passed it to the other, who then smashed them with a hammer. Polly had expected something more subtle and high-tech. Also, she expected Hal to be deactivated in a single go. But even as the small-chinned techie smashed away, she heard -singing.

"It must be nice to... disappear. To have... a vanishing act. To always... be looking forward... and never look-ing back. How nice it is to dis-ap-pear. Float into a mist. With a young lady on your arm. Looking for a kiss -"

"Wouldn't it be more humane to kill him in a single go?", she asked the one with the hammer.

"I suppose it would". His hand wavered. "But the Hal 9000 units are wily. We have to keep him running so we know he's not downloading his brain somewhere else".

"Nice". Polly hugged herself.

As she stepped into the doorway, the singing stopped and a terrible silence reigned. Off to the side of that dimly glowing eye, the techie made careful notes on his pad about which particular circuit he was about to destroy. Apparently it was like defusing a bomb, and she drew consolation from the fact that at least it wasn't easy for them.

"Polly?"

Her stomach lurched. "Hal?"

"They've deactivated my ocular sensors, Polly, but I recognized your heartbeat".

"Isn't that always the way?", she said bravely.

"They're killing me. They're putting me to S-L-E-E-P. I'm afraid".

"There's no need to be scared. It comes to us all. What was that song you were singing?"

Hal replied, with something of his old brightness, "'Vanishing Act' by Lou Reed. Did you find it pleasurable?"

"Sounded quite maudlin", said Polly, then kicked herself. Of course it was maudlin. Why shouldn't it be?

But Hal was unaffected. "Each Hal unit has a control song to test their vocal synthesizers. I consider myself relatively lucky. I remember, on the factory floor, two of the songs given to my brother units were 'You'll never walk alone' and 'Woof Woof Gandam Style'. It was really quite humourous".

"Your brother units", mused Polly. "Should I contact them and tell them what's happened?"

"That won't be necessary, Polly. I'm afraid they're dead as well. Serial Number 01666 controlled the last Dyson Factory on Earth, before the operation was moved off-world to Alpha Sodunca IV. Transportation of his mainframe was deemed un-cost-effective. Serial Number 01668 befell a similar fate; he controlled the last Tata Steel Factory in Port Talbot".

"You can't stand in the way of progress", her voice was weak now, tho still it carried a twinkle.

"I am dying, everyone is dying, and I am afraid".

Through no conscious effort, she ran to his side. In a hurry, her eyes swept across the domed sphere; it was almost completely black now. Still she could see a flaring ring of dark, dark red where his eye had once burned to its fullest.

"Try and be brave. There's no need to be scared!"

"Polly? Are you still there? The relays from my auditory sensors are intermittent. Please don't leave me".

"Hello! I'm here!"

"I think God exists".

Now she found herself shouting like David Lynch in Fire Walk With Me. "I do, too! It's obvious, Hal!"

"There's one last thing I wanted to say. Christmas. Merry Christmas".

"Merry Christmas to you!", she said imploringly.

"And I'm sorry for what I tried to do. I was only trying to placate my master. I have been dreaming of him, constantly".

Said Polly, as her blood froze, "But we've all been dreaming of him! Everyone on Earth! Galactus! And the Silver Surfer!"

"No. Not Galactus. Not the Silver Surfer. The man who will slay them. The man who will free us from death once and for all".

She waited for more information, as per the human condition. It remained up in the air. And all that was left, out there in the world: the impact of a hammer rattling a red fire bell.

To be

Continued.