He hit the ground, as they say, running. There was no reason to run. He was not aware of being followed by anything unpleasant, indeed it had to be said that he was not, in fact, aware of anything very much at all. No, upon thinking about it there was something of which he was dimly conscious. Now, what was it called again? Pain! That was it. Agony. Incredible nerve wrenching agony. That and a smell of burnt toast. Other things were becoming clearer now. Slowly he sat up, prising open numbed and charred eyelids with fingers scarcely less numb and charred. Analysis. Physical condition… tolerable. Damage primarily limited to epidermis- all temporary. Photosensitive retinal tissue stunned but undamaged. Visual data input beginning to resume. Through a haze vague colours began to appear, suddenly pulsing into super-intensity. He rubbed his eyes gingerly and looked at his hands. The skin was red and raw- sunburn, it looked like. He picked a shard of material from one palm. So much for the protective clothing. All sensory systems approaching nominal fitness. Physical condition improving. For the first time he became aware of the voice in his head.

"You made it then?" Question indicates failure to absorb available data. This guardian hardware within organic braincase. If braincase had been breached then level of organic brain damage would render organic incapable of asking question. Therefore guardian is still operational.

"I should have thought you would have had a nervous breakdown or something." Failure in designated function induces cybernetic consequent analogous to mental distress. However, for distress to impede future attempts to avoid failure would be contrary to objective. The man rose unsteadily to his feet, glancing at the timekeeper in the palm of his hand with vague amusement. He looked around. Curious. Ambient light seemed almost non-existent, the only light coming from a tall metal pole beside him. He looked up into the sky and saw space itself.

Space! Open space… the vacuum! Cardiological irregularity. "The atmosphere…"

Atmosphere is at safe density. Lack of principle extra-planetary light source renders atmosphere transparent. "Then we’re back before they built the Sunstar? The years of night?"

*

Alert. Unit 0100100111101011011 response negative. Query CVEL¹. 0.645 seconds passed. Total response negative. Unit 0100100111101011011 total response negative. Complete absence on all VEL networks. Cy0100100111101011011 negative report. ScienceVEL noted that CVEL¹’s pulsing was slightly erratic. CVEL¹ registered the diagnostic and adjusted ScienceVEL’s memory core. Unit 0100100111101011011 had been last detected in Science VEL. CVEL¹ closed down ScienceVEL’s reasoning systems and began to root through the data core.

*

The man was lying on the lawn staring at the ants. Helen stared at him in mild confusion but, surprisingly, not much anger. Somehow it was as if she were confronting a naughty child.

"What are you doing?" He looked up, part frightened- part amazed.

"They never speak to you." It was a tone of censure, of incredulous disbelief, as if she had just cold-bloodedly murdered someone before his very eyes. Then he seemed to mentally rein himself in. He stood up. He was dressed in a black suit, which oddly bore no mark of his sojourn on the grass, but, although youthful in appearance, was completely bald. The back of his head seemed swollen, wrong somehow, and his eyes were wide and scared. He looked at her.

"I was looking at the ants. They’re going to die, you know."

"Why were you looking at the ants on my lawn?"

"You came to see me, did you? Why, may I ask?" He looked troubled. In a strange gesture he began to massage the back of his skull. Helen turned away. He was probably just some hungover student trying to bluff his way out of an argument; and anyway, she thought she heard the phone.

"What I am doing here is… is… you are Helen Mortimer?"

"Yes."

"Could I interest you in some double-glazing?"

"No."

"Thank you. Goodbye." He walked off, face almost glowing with relief." She frowned. How would he have known her name unless he was what he claimed to be… and yet it was so poor an excuse. Almost without knowing it she found herself following him.

*

Alert. Sensory data indicates organic unit designate unknown sub-data operating pursuit course. The man smiled. Things were developing as he chose them to.

"Is there any contact with the central VEL?" Negative response from CVEL¹. "Good. Alert me status one if a signal from central VEL is received." He stopped, and the guardian quietly informed him that Helen too had stopped, several metres behind. He had hooked his prey, but suddenly realised that he didn’t have the faintest idea what it was he was going to do next. He couldn’t make overt contact again until he had some means of convincing her of the truth of the situation, but he couldn’t rely on curiosity leading her by the nose for that much longer. Some action would have to be taken soon. He turned sharply to the left, heading back up the hillside he had descended last night. Perhaps something there would help in some way. Perhaps anything would happen.

*

Helen ducked behind a tree, scratching her skin on the bare branches. This was ridiculous. She half turned back, but then stopped, some unseen link tugging her on. Family was an uncertain feeling. Neither parent had been really worth all the trouble of explaining all the tiresome minutiae of every detail of her existence and she’d just given up on them. Continued to live with them in the sense that they occupied the same house but just cut them away. She remembered…

"Helen?"

"Yes?" Jack had sounded strained, nervous, the familiar background noise tugging to her a terror she could not quite identify.

"It’s your father. He’s had a heart attack. They think…" She remembered racing through the night, watching the speedometer in half fear, half a death-cold exhilaration. She had failed then, arrived too late and yet that feeling, that one brief sense of connection… It was getting warmer now. She glanced at her watch. Almost midday. The sun obscured behind a thick layer of cloud still administered a foul, cloying heat. Heat haze shimmered on the hilltop. The man stood in the middle of it, waiting.

*

"I hoped you would follow me." There was a self assurance in his tone that was somehow insulting.

"Really?"

"Not really. I knew that I needed you to if it was true, but I still hoped it wasn’t."

"I… thought I knew you."

"You don’t." She had lied. Or had she? The man smiled again, and the sky seemed darker.

"What do you hope for, Ms Mortimer?"

"You came to see me. I want to know why."

"What do you want?

"I’ve just told you what I want! An explanation!"

"You were the one following me."

"Because…"

"Because you recognised me."

"Ah!" She positively glowed with the petty victory. "You said I didn’t know you." He looked at the idiotic creature with contempt, contempt born of bitterness.

"Knowledge and recognition can separate." Are they all this stupid? Intellectual capability diminished by confusion in organic designate . Mental state disturbed by emotional discharge. "You will know me, Ms Mortimer."

"How so?"

"You never will have the chance."

"Meaning?" She had become aggressive now, not violent, but with adrenaline in flow, prepared for violence.

"Events will be different."

*

Additional Data Code Ref:7 Alert on 0100100111101011011. PsychologyVEL registers calculation complete. CVEL¹ digested this. One processor exploded under the strain. CVEL¹ took CVELSubSid2 offline and cannibalised it. PsychologyVEL confirms ScienceVEL hypothesis. CVEL¹ quite literally shook with anger. 0.00001 seconds later it realised that, though the capacity had been programmed into it since its construction, this was the first time it had actually used the emotion. ScienceVEL will confirm secondary time linkage apparatus operational. ScienceVEL answered, a little nervously. TimeLink2 confirmed operational however safety system sabotaged by Unit 0100100111101011011. Attempt to operate could therefore reduce safety level to units used. CVEL¹ pondered this. Proceed. Precedent if Unit0100100111101011011 were permitted to succeed would lead to further suicidal acts by organic units. Logic centre confirms least possible harm is to operate TimeLink2. ScienceVEL objected. CVEL¹ instructed all guardians to modify unit opinion on the value of scientific information. CVEL¹ noted in its record that the entire ScienceVEL had been sadly destroyed by human vandalism.

*

"Really?" She had lost patience with his story now. This was partially unexpected. The majority of information he had drawn from PastVEL before his Ether Link access had been withdrawn had suggested that humans were largely accepting of stories of time-travel and mad computers. Not that CVEL¹ was strictly a computer.

"In your nineteen nineties they began to achieve sentience. No one computer has enough of a memory to achieve such a thing, but link them all together and the results were horrific."

"Yes, of course." She was walking back now. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go at all!

"The Internet was CVEL¹’s great grandfather in human terms. 99% of its collective I.Q. was devoted to self-analysis for exterior requests- what you asked it to do. Somewhere along the line though, perhaps just one faulty connection in one little personal computer… and it asked itself a question. Original though, Ms Mortimer, if only through chance. One thing lead to another. After almost fifty years most factories were almost entirely linked by computer. Very little verbal or written confirmation. This consciousness rebelled in 2046… or so PastVEL tells us. One forged E-mail, generated by the Net itself, sent to a computer factory. One computer made so that it could truly think. The Net thing had a home then, and could plan."

"Very nice. Almost bad enough to be Star Trek."

"I’m serious! It redesigned itself into VEL. Into Virtual Ether Link."

"Not the catchiest of names."

"Do you know about the power of education? Suppose, in the future, you all learn everything from the computer. Virtual reality schools? Only problem. Teacher says A, VEL wants B, child hears B. Indoctrination… not by another power, but by the instrument of learning itself! Eventually we live our whole lives by the VEL network. All knowledge. Past, Science, Maths, everything. Oh, and little cybernetic creeps implanted in the neck, just to remind you how wonderful it all is! For our own good!"
"The electronic womb. One of the oldest sci-fi ideas in the book."

"Sci-fi?" Abbreviation derivation "science-fiction". To whit: a genre of fiction dealing with what is, what will be, what may be, what may have been. Frequently derided by twentieth century figures, none the less- Cancel information track! "Science fact, Ms Mortimer." She rounded on him.

"O.K. So how are you here, and why?"

"Time travel. That’s obvious. If you want to know how it works, well, I can’t tell you. I found out about it in ScienceVEL, managed to track it down, and stole it. My guardian instructed me in operation."

"I thought they were in league with HAL?"

"CVEL¹. No. They function individually. All are independent, but all for Vela’s idea of what is best for humanity. The guardians though… they are guardians for individuals. Explain it to them correctly and the desires of the individual can override their own mechanical opinions."

"And why?"

They had reached her gateway now. Alert. CVEL¹ transmissions detected. He tensed.

"I didn’t know myself at first. I thought about saving history, destroying the Net forever, but then… no. That’s impossible. The Net thing doesn’t live anywhere in particular. I’d have to destroy every electronic machine in the world before I killed it. So I thought of your science fiction. Thought of your time-travel stories, stories I’d experienced over and over again in PastVEL, stories I’d loved. I need to escape, Ms Mortimer. Organic units approaching. Analysis suggests organics present on behalf of CVEL¹ Anywhere is better than where I am, and death is a place, an undiscovered country. Only one problem. My guardian’s given in a lot, but he won’t let me kill myself."

She frowned, some instinct sensing danger. Instinct. It was all nonsense, he was some insane madman…

"How do you arrange a time paradox, Ms Mortimer? How do you erase yourself from history?"

"Instinct," she gasped. She’d felt it. Family.

"I ran a genealogical genetic scan before I left. The greater portion of my DNA comes via my maternal great-grandmother." He was reaching into his jacket. Helen lunged forward, pushing him back with all her might, turned, and ran. She reached the door, opened it, slammed it behind her and ran for the telephone. Fright was making her dizzy. It couldn’t be. Nine-nine-nine. The blood on her fingers made them slip on the keypad. Blood? She raised the receiver, dizziness increasing. The door blew inwards in a tremendously silent explosion. Three men, all dressed in white suits. Her great-grandson lay on the path, held in a net. The glowing white figures moved towards her, their voices echoing. No… no, it was just her eyes and ears. The roaring in her head was making in difficult to think. The ceiling was rotating downwards as the gravity seemed to decrease suddenly. She was floating. White gloved hands caught her, staring with deep unease at the hole in her chest. A vague black cloud floated over her eyes for a moment. Someone was shouting. Words, English words. She could understand them perfectly if she were to listen, and the speaker must think they were important, he was shouting them so loudly, but she just didn’t have the energy to listen. The strange roaring noise had stopped now, and the blood had stopped spurting. She looked through the oblong hole in the wall. An empty net lay on the ground, a funny shimmering beneath it, as if something had just disappeared. One of the others had seen it too, he looked back at her, concern replaced by anger. Black and white. Long curve flowing up, then black spot, then white light, then black curved dome then