‘Are you there, Roger?’ said Rhonda panicking, struggling in what felt like a giant web. As her eyes adjusted to the light, she saw the wires and tubes poking out from orifices and skin, she saw the elastic threads holding her inside the giant ball. She felt very cold and itchy. It took them half an hour to struggle free and get their feet on the hard, concrete floor. They stood naked, shivering and wobbly in a dark warehouse. All around them were people suspended and wriggling in elasticated spheres. In every direction the spheres stretched on into the darkness.

‘Didn’t we used to have a house?’ asked Roger looking around.

‘Yes, we sold it. We never used it.’

‘Oh.’ Roger curled his fingers round her arm. It was the first time that he had genuinely touched her in three years. She hoped to feel some kind of spark, a yearning, but it was just a physical pressure, just Roger, comforting, but no more than that. They started to walk, not knowing where to or how long it would take. As their bare feet slapped against the ground, they made startled and indignant observations.

‘This ground is very hard! Why does it need to be hard?’

‘My knees hurt.’

‘I could do with a cigarette.’

‘Are you mad? Breathing in tar out here could kill you!’

Roger shrugged and looked at his feet, ‘I’m definitely shorter than I should be.’

‘You’re older, too.’

‘It’s been four years!’ he exclaimed.

‘Oh. Do I look older as well?’

Roger stopped and pulled Rhonda round to face him and said gently, ‘We always said we’d grow old together, do you remember?’ Rhonda leaned in and kissed him. They walked arm in arm across the warehouse, past hundreds of suspended bodies, some sitting, some chattering, some writhing; each in an invented world.

Finally reaching the wall, they found a large door marked Fire Escape, next to which a laminated poster announced a warning.

‘DANGER! USE ALL PROTECTIVE CLOTHING NECESSARY’

To the right of the sign hung thick all-in-one suits and gas masks.

‘Finally, clothes!’ exclaimed Roger and passed an all-in-one white suit to Rhonda, ignoring the gloves.

‘Gas masks? Roger, what’s out there?’

Roger tsked dismissively. ‘No need to fret, Hon. It’ll be some Health and Safety hogwash, they must think we’re idiots to fall for that.’ Health and Safety was one area on which Roger felt perfectly confident. He had worked as a programmer on ‘Elf and Safety: the red tape nightmare’ and believed the entire Risk Assessment Movement to be one fabricated by terrorists trying to undermine society. He began to pull on the boots, but threw the gloves aside.

‘But we don’t know,’ whispered Rhonda, Roger’s sudden bravery stripping hers away, as if he had stolen her gung-ho and left uncertainty in its place. ‘Anything could be out there. They could all be mutants. The place could be run by evolved ants, or roaches.’

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‘Too late to turn back now. I didn’t walk all this way just to give up. Come on.’ He started to push at the heavy door, but it took Rhonda’s help before it started to rumble open. Their weakened muscles were only used to wriggling in elastic.

As the door finally swung back, the light streamed in. The sun was glinting in a blue sky rolling with black clouds. The buildings were streaked with many shades of green and bright yellow, rippling in the sunshine. Roger and Rhonda stood holding hands at the edge of this brave old world, basking in the real sunshine, breathing in the real air.

‘It’s beautiful!’ gasped Roger, and Rhonda didn’t need to reply. The moment was perfect.

Then Rhonda asked, ‘Why is the lamp post pink?’

‘Hmm. And glistening,’ added Roger. ‘I don’t remember everything glistening like this. Do you think someone got bored and painted it all?’ As Rhonda walked closer to the lamp post and crouched down to look at the green and yellow pavement, Roger carried on chattering to himself. ‘After all, whoever lives out here would be all alone. It probably send them a little mad. With loneliness, you know? They’ll want to cheer the place up. Add a few homely touches…’

‘It’s slime mould,’ interrupted Rhonda.

‘Is that a type of paint?’

‘And fungi. Slime mould and fungi. It looks like the fungi is actually eating away at the concrete and metal, and then the slime mould is eating away at the fungi.’

‘What?’

‘It’s pretty incredible really. They must have evolved to feed off man-made materials. Look, there are chunks missing out of everything, the walls, the letterbox. Even the road is pockmarked. It’s all being eaten away. I wonder if they can eat plastic too.’

‘Ah maybe,’ said Roger thoughtfully, but Rhonda was perfectly aware how little he was interested in slime mould. He wandered further down the street, leaving her to marvel at the colourful slithering, popping and consuming of the new evolved life forms; lost in the intricacy.

However, fascinating though it was, Rhonda wasn’t sure she liked outside much. The air was caustic, she felt it sizzling her nose hairs. The sun, even with black clouds rolling back and forth across it, was too hot. In the sphere her pale skin could tan to a rich brown, a trait she had always wanted, but out here she could already see her nose turning red.

‘There’s nobody here at all,’ said Roger from some distance down the street. He was peering into a shoe shop through a giant hole in the wall. Inside the shoes were covered in rippling bright colours, some were raised up on platforms made of fungi. He stepped back as a rivulet of blue snaked purposefully out of the shop, spreading out in tendrils of fizzing liquid. He coughed noisily.

‘Oh Roger, please cover your mouth. We’re in reality now, a little hygiene goes a long way.’ Roger shrugged and walked back over to where Rhonda was trying to find a shadow to protect her nose from sunburn.

‘Don’t you think it odd there’s nobody here? I thought there would be caretakers, or vagrants; even rogue gangs scavenging for abandoned bits of tech, but it’s empty.’ Roger coughed again, remembering to cover his mouth. Rhonda looked around sadly as all that humankind had created was slowly eaten away by primitive organisms that were incapable of understanding the sophistication of a shoe shop or a letterbox.

‘What happened to the world while we were playing games?’ she said.

Roger turned to Rhonda and smiled, about to make a joke, but instead coughed into his hand. As he pulled his fingers away they both saw the blue puddle of slime in the creases of his palm.

‘Hon, I think something is wrong,’ he said thickly, as the blue froth started to bubble around his lips. It took a moment for Rhonda to understand what was happening, and then another moment to believe it. Then she shrieked, ‘Get inside!’ She started pushing him back towards the warehouse door, dragged him inside, then slammed the door behind her as he crumpled to the floor.

‘We need help!’ she screamed. ‘Outside off! Outside off!’

But nothing changed. Roger didn’t get up with a sheepish grin as he always did when he died in the sphere. He didn’t brush the guts off his trousers saying, ‘Dearie dearie. Dead again.’ He just lay there, as the blue seeped from under his eyelids and from beneath his fingernails, slowly consuming him. Rhonda had no idea how long it was before the figures came in biohazard suits and pulled her away. She thought she could hear herself begging with them to save Roger, but shock quickly swallowed all sense and she fell gratefully into unconsciousness.