Mr Rune explained, in words which the layman could understand, that time really didn't exist at all. His premise was that the universe had always been here. It had never begun and would never end. So there was an infinite amount of "time" in the past and an equally infinite amount of "time" to come in the future. He drew the famous analogy of the infinitely long piece of string. If you had a piece of string that stretched endlessly from infinity to infinity, then any point you chose on that string must be its middle. You couldn't have more infinity on one side of it than on the other. And so it was with time. Wherever you were in it, you were right at its centre. No more time behind you than in front. It made perfect sense. Time, said Mr Rune, was a purely human concept. There was no past and no future, just an infinite number of presents.

So how could a human being travel into either the past or the future? The answer was, of course, that he couldn't. Not physically, anyway. For physical travel he'd have to travel faster than light and nothing can travel faster than light. Well, nothing except THOUGHT. It got capital letters in the pamphlet, which meant that it was important.

You can think about the sun instantly, but its light takes eight minutes to reach you. So, mentally, you can outrun light.

Rune argued (convincingly) that many people had already mastered the technique of mental time travel. These folk were, of course, the prophets. Those lucky few blessed with the powers of precognition. The Nostradamus types who could see into the future. And there had been loads of them.

Mother Shipton, Edgar Cayce. Rune offered a list. These folk had travelled into the future by the power of their minds. But the trouble was that the future, which consisted of an infinite number of presents yet to come, was simply too big for the average prophet to get his head round. There was too much of it. So he got overloaded and confused and made a lot of inaccurate predictions. Rune claimed to have formulated a set of mental exercises which concentrated the mind on one tiny little bit of the future - maybe the bit that was only half an hour away.

And this was the bit that had Jim hooked. Just half an hour away. What, if you knew it half an hour before it happened, would benefit you very much indeed?

It hadn't taken Jim half an hour to figure it out.

The result of the National Lottery.

And so Jim sat in the sun, his eyes closed and his face contorted by the anguish of his concentration.

It was a pity that the last page of the pamphlet, the page with the actual instructions for the mental exercises, had been torn off. Somebody else had got that round their cod and chips, but Jim had been unable to find out who. Still, he gritted his teeth none the less and thought forward.

Had Jim been able to foresee the eventual outcome of these mental exercises, he would have abandoned them there and then. In fact, he would probably have abandoned gambling there and then, along with drinking and all other things that he held dear, and retired at once to a monastery.

Because Jim's time travelling, added to John's imminent discovery of a certain sensational disclosure and multiplied by the abominable doings of Dr Steven Malone, would equal an apocalyptic total.

And it would all begin with A Most Exciting Tale.

5.

Prelude to the Most Eventful Day Jack was scraping at his face with a razor, which, like his wit, had lost its edge a good many years before.

"It was a close shave getting out of that little scrape," said Jack, as he all but finished the messy chore. "As smooth as a baby's bum-tiddly-um-bum-bum," he continued, as he applied shreds of Kleenex to the profusion of nicks and cuts that now speckled the shaven area beneath his nose. "Pretty sharp," he went on, as he examined his sagging features in the bathroom mirror. "And You'll knock 'em dead," he concluded, straightening his tie.

Jack's wife, a beauty in her late forties, sliced bread in the kitchenette and worried quietly to herself. Worrying was good for her; it kept her mind off her problems.

Jack came down the stairs two at a time. "Good morning, wife," he said, limping painfully into the breakfast area.

"Good morning, Jack," said Jack's wife. "And how would you like your eggs this morning?"

"I would like them many, speckled and various," said Jack. "Ranging - free ranging, in fact - from those of the mythical Roc to those of the pygmy heron of Upper Sumatra."

"They are on your plate," said Jack's wife. "Make of them what you will."

It was going to be the most eventful day in Jack's long and uneventful life, but he did not as yet know this.

The Excitement Hots Up "How would you like your tea, dear?" asked Jack's wife.

Jack worried a lot about her. Almost as much, in his own special way, as she did about him. Why does she say these things? he worried. Does she do it simply to annoy me? Or does she, perchance, believe that I am a different person every morning? Or possibly she is being unfaithful. Jack worried a lot about this.

"Sugar, dear?" asked Jack's wife.

"Twelve lumps please," said Jack.

Jack's wife popped the usual two into his cup and stirred them with the usual spoon. And then she returned to her slicing and worrying.

Jack buttered up a slice of toast. "You're a lovely bit of toast," he told it. "Would you like to come to the pictures on Friday night?"

In Jack's front garden a postman clung to the roof of Jack's porch. "Treed by a bleeding lurcher," he complained. "Or was it a Dane?"

And Grows Hotter Still "I must be off to work now," said Jack.

"Don't forget your sandwiches, dear."

Jack thrust the brown paper packet into his briefcase. "The price of butter is scandalous," he told his wife. "But not to worry, eh?" And he kissed her lightly on the cheek, hoisted his trilby hat onto his head, shrugged on his camelhair coat, tucked his case beneath his arm, picked up his umbrella and departed.

"Morning, postie," said Jack to the figure cowering on the roof of his porch. "I didn't know it was raining."

"Raining?"

"Well, as they say, any porch in a storm."

"Most amusing," said the postman, who considered it anything but. "I thought you told me your dog didn't bite."

"It doesn't," said Jack.

"But it nearly had my leg off."

"This isn't my dog," said Jack. "It belongs to the wife."

Tension Mounts on the Bus The 8.15 bus was crowded with 8.15 passengers.

"Morning, conductor," said Jack.

"Morning, Jack," said the conductor. "Your mate Bill's up the front."

Jack craned his neck and bulldozered his eye-brows. "Morning, my mate Bill," he cried.

"Morning, Jack," Bill shouted back. "And how are you today?"

"Fair to middling," called Jack. "Fair to middle-diddle-diddling."

"I'm very pleased to hear it." Bill returned to his study of the Daily Sketch. GIANT SPIDER CARRIES OFF WIDOW, ran the banner headline. She was probably asking for it anyway, thought Bill as his gaze left the tabloid and moved slowly up the legs of a particularly well-designed teenage schoolgirl. Shouldn't be allowed, his thought continued.

And meanwhile at Jack's house the postman was giving it to Jack's wife doggy style upon the kitchen floor. This lino needs a dose of Flash, worried the wife of Jack.

Two stops on Jack got a seat. "We're running thirty-five seconds late this morning," he informed a fellow traveller.

"Thirty-five seconds late for what?" asked the traveller, whose name was John Omally.

"For work."

"But I'm not going to work."

"Where then?"

"I'm going home."

"But this is the 8.15 bus."

"It was the 7.30 bus when I got onto it."

"Ah, I see." The conversation was interrupted by the sound of a thirteen-year-old fist striking Bill in the face.

"I never touched her," cried Bill as the bus conductor fought his way through the standing passengers to grasp him by the collar. "A man is innocent until proved guilty," he complained as the conductor flung him off at the next set of traffic lights.

"It's the same thing every day," said Jack to his fellow traveller.

"Not for me it isn't," said John. "For I live the kind of life that most men only dream about. A riotous succession of society get-togethers, country weekends, operatic first nights and charity functions."

"Get away," said Jack.

"True as true," said Omally. "Then there's the skateboarding, the sky diving and the riding of the big surf. Not to mention the North Sea oil drilling."

"North Sea oil drilling?"

"I told you not to mention that."

"Sorry." Jack scratched at his hat. "Do you do any crop spraying at all?"

"Heaps, and Formula One motor racing too." Omally pulled off his cycle clips and adjusted his socks. "And I'm judging the Miss World competition this afternoon."

"That must be interesting."

"Extremely," said Omally. "As long as you don't have to sit next to Tony Blackburn or Michael Aspel."

The bus shuddered to a halt, regrouping its standing cargo at the front end in an untidy scrum. As the struggling passengers regained their feet and began to dust themselves down, the driver put his foot down and they all bundled towards the rear.

A lady in a straw hat fell upon Omally.

"Is this a regular occurrence?" he asked.

"Sometimes we lose one or two at the roundabout," said Jack. "Although I don't recall there ever being any fatalities."

"What about that dwarf the fat butcher fell on last month?" said the lady in the straw hat.

"Oh yes, there was him."

"And that Zulu who went up in a puff of smoke."

"That was spontaneous human combustion. That could have happened anywhere."

"This is my stop," said Omally.

"It's very nice," said the lady in the straw hat. "How much did you have to pay for it?"

"Give my regards to Tony and Michael," called Jack as Omally slipped off without paying.

The 65 bus swung over the Great West Road and headed south towards Brentford. In its path there might well have been a giant spider of outlandish proportions, its mutated mind set upon world domination. But upon this day, as upon others past, there wasn't.

But this was to be the most eventful day in Jack's long and uneventful life, although he still didn't know it as yet.

The Tension Almost Reaches Breaking Point "Good morning, Jack," said Jack's boss, Leslie. "And how is your lovely wife?"

Jack looked at his watch. "She'll be making the postman's breakfast about now," he said. "And how is your handsome husband?"

"Still delivering the Queen's mail."

A thought entered Jack's head, but finding itself all alone in there it left by the emergency exit.

"Now, Jack," said Leslie, boss of Jack. "We have a very important despatch to make today and it must be handled with great care. We wouldn't want there to be any more unfortunate mistakes, now would we?"

"No we wouldn't," said Jack. "No-skiddly-oh-po-po."

Leslie, Jack's boss, smiled upon her subordinate. She was a tall woman, slim, sleek, svelte. Brown-eyed and black-haired and carrying about with her that aura of a woman who knows exactly where she's going.

"I'm going to the toilet now," said Leslie, boss of Jack. "And when I get back I want to see you with your shoulder to the wheel and your nose to the grindstone. Do I make myself clear?"

"Well," said Jack.

Nail-Biting Stuff The company Jack worked for was called SURFIN' UFO. As far as Jack had been able to ascertain during his ten years of service, it had something to do with despatching fragile and precious cargoes from one place to another. The UFO part meant United Freight Operations, but the significance of the SURFIN' bit was lost on Jack.

For company, he also worked on the night shift at the windscreen wiper works.

Jack was the manager of the actual despatching department. He was, in fact, the only employee in this department. There had been some cutbacks. Once there had been lads with hair and tattoos, cavorting about on fork-lift trucks. Lads who read the Sun and smelled of cigarettes and the morning after. But now there was only Jack. And Jack didn't smoke or read the Sun. His office was a little glass partitioned-off corner of a vast warehouse. A vast and empty warehouse.

Jack hung up his hat and coat and rolled up the sleeves of his shirt. And then he sat down at his desk. It was an all-but-empty desk. Empty but for a telephone, a single package and a single piece of paper.

Jack perused this.

DESPATCH NOTE - DATE: 23.5.97.

SURFIN' UFO 1462 UNIT 4+2.