He realised he was in a chair. The world was white and blurry in half his vision, and it took him a few moments to realise a sheet of paper was stuck to his face.

There had never been a Class A1 event; it had always been a purely theoretical designation. Until now.

Every scrape, site, range and page; every game, download, hack, song, movie and virrie on the Web. Everything on your phone. Everything on your 'puta. Even the content directories of your cupboards. Almost every system has been brute-forced; passwords cracked, firewalls breached. Nothing has been left untouched.

On the TV he found cartoons and movies, music videos and game shows, repeat broadcasts and reruns, but there was nothing current, and no news. Many channels were just blank, or displayed brightly coloured test cards.

Yes' Simon nodded. 'This would suggest that these patterns grow inside the batteries until a critical point is reached, when the shapes develop no further, and the phone ceases to function.

His desire for this to be a joke was quickly replaced by a desire for whiskey.

...while the stony bones of the world tore past and the air grew dark and howling. The last thing he saw as the gulley became a torrent of dust and rock was the Jeep, plucked backwards into space.

Simon shook his head. 'I don't want to be a hero. I'd rather abandon the technology altogether, sit on a hill and speak to my neighbours by smoke-signal.

Simon stopped listening. He realised he'd had enough. Enough of the theories, enough of the mystery, enough of the bullshit. Enough of the soldiers and guns and MI5. Enough of bugs in phones and in people he cared about. Enough of not being cared about back. Enough of uncertainty and lies and civilisation, collapsing or not. Enough of is part in it, his place, his role; the character of Simon Parfitt and all the baggage it entailed.