Planet Earth, 2162 AD

As Angus awoke again, several hours later in the same place on Quinton’s feather-soft burgundy Chesterton sofa, he felt his faculties finally return to him.

On a dumb waiter next to him was a glass of water, two ibuprofen, and a note from Quinton:

Out for the morning. Food in the kitchen. - Quint

Out?

Who goes out during the apocalypse?

Quinton does, that’s who.

For what?

A drink with friends?

A spot of birdwatching?

The man’s intrigue was only matched by his madness.

After fixing himself a fresh breakfast of boiled eggs and toast cut into soldiers, Angus set about writing down the various members of his team that he would need to reverse the whole mind-swap bungle, and hoped to God some of them were still alive.

His ideal list went something a bit like this:

Mike Felch, head of biomechanics - address: somewhere in Hackney

Puneet Singh, Lead project engineer - address unknown

Fred Semple, Lead Physicist -

He knew this one - he’d been to his place for cocktails one night and made some witless remark about his wife’s pantsuit, and whipped himself mercilessly for days afterwards.

Where was it? Camden Town, that’s right.

Note to self: apologise for mentioning the benefits of vertical over horizontal stripes to Celia at the after Christmas bash.

Further note to self: on second thoughts - don’t mention it at all, since they’ve probably already forgotten about it - or I was overthinking it, which I’m prone to do.

Further, extra note to self: best to get these things aired out quickly, so they’ll know you’re not a complete arse.

Final note to self: maybe we don’t need Fred, actually.

Fred Semple, Lead Physicist - 66 Boynton Avenue, Camden Town

Terrence Cockburn - Head of Programming - Somewhere in Eastbourne

Well that’s not going to happen. The two hour drive to Eastbourne under normal circumstances was now more alike in risk of loss of life and general unpleasantness to a 6 month journey to Australia aboard a leaky convict ship.

He was probably dead anyhow, Angus reasoned darkly.

Terrence wasn’t the handy type. Angus would probably give poor old Terry the same sort of odds of surviving an apocalyptic event as himself, which is to say - rather awful - mortal in fact. He was almost certainly either dead, or some sort of apex predator.

Those seemed to be the options these days.

And in Eastbourne of all places, the poor sod. Perhaps Angus hadn’t been paying him enough.

But could Angus do Terrence’s job in a pinch? Programming was sort of like entry-level geek.

Coding. Pah.

He could read a few books. How hard could it be?

Roderick Dalrymple - Head of Nanotechnology and Mathematics - Dagenham

This was a bit of a clincher, since if there were anyone that Angus probably needed, it was Roddy. Not just for his talent for biting quips that put the churlish business types in their place around reporting season, but for the fact that nanotechnology was, in fact, quite fiddly work. They’re just so damn small, you see. And nanobots creeped Angus out.

Suddenly Quinton burst through the door, glistening with sweat and spattered with blood.

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‘How/s the head?’ he said, wiping blood out of his blonde ringlets with his rippling forearm.

‘Mmmm,’ said Angus, mouth full of egg.

‘What you got there,’ said Quinton, pointing at the list.

‘Oh - ah - my list?

‘You’ve got a list have you.’

“Well we’re going to need find a few people…”

“Riiiiight….what for exactly?”

“To fix it.”

“Fix it?”

“Yeah.”

“Fix what?”

“It. You know…”

“I’m not sure I do.”

Then Angus wildly flailed his arms about.

“The whole thing. You know…out there?”

Then Quinton swung a chair round and sat on it, bursting crotch to backrest, resting his chiselled jaw on his closed fist in a considered manner.

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“Well, you see - and don’t take this the wrong way…’

And then Angus proceeded to tell Quinton the key role he had in all the general mayhem that had been occurring for the past two and a bit weeks. He took pains to accentuate the fact that it was actually all a terribly big mix-up, and that it was actually Keenan’s fault, really. Then he explained that, of course at the moment there’s a great deal of bad stuff happening (with the dead friends, relatives, mad people ruling the streets and the general destruction of British society), but at some point, once we’re all back up and running again, we’ll be able to look back on it and have a great big laugh.

Quinton cocked his head to one side, as if to say ‘you wot?’

‘So it was your fancy ‘machine’ that scrambled everyone’s noggins then. Is that what you’re telling’ me.”

“Well, it was my machine - but it was stolen”

Quinton grimaced and shook his head.

“So your ‘buddy’…Kevin -”

“-Keenan.”

“Whatever. He tried to put a mouldy old billionaire’s brain on a computer, but he buggered it up, and the whole world went to pot.”

“More or less.”

Quinton’s nostrils flared like an African Hippopotamus eyeing off a zookeeper for dinner.

“And this Kevin-”

“-Keenan”

“- I don’t care what his name is McBairn. Where is he?”

“Why?”

“Because I’m gonna rip his ankles off.”

“I suspect that you may have been beaten to the punch on that one.”

“There is a God, then.”

“Well, as a scientist-”

“-whatever Gus.”

“If it helps at all - I’ve been feeling really rotten about the whole thing.”

‘Oh that’s nice. My mum was eaten by a physiotherapist last week…’ he said coldly.

Angus winced.

“All I could find of her was a few strips of biltong the physio was saving for later.”

Angus wretched, very quietly.

“And the physio?”

‘In a freezer out back. Not sure exactly what to do with him. Beyond slowly torturing and eventually murdering him, that is. Which I of course did.’

‘Understandable.’

‘I still think there’s something else that he deserves, but I haven’t thought of it yet. Grief tends to sap my creativity, Gus. Don’t know if it does that to you?’

Quinton seemed earnest in his question.

Angus gulped.

“I’m actually reasonably sure my Aunt and Uncle in Shropshire were chased off a cliff into a quarry by a gang of Greenpeace activists over the weekend. I didn’t particularly like them, but all the same. Did you er - have a service?”

“I buried the biltong in the backyard and said a few words. She wasn’t much for ceremony.”

Then Quinton got up, walked over to the kitchen table where Angus was seated, and picked up the list.

As Quinton first tried to read it, he progressively pulled the list a bit farther away from his eyes trying focus them, then a bit farther, and then a bit farther again, until his arm had locked at the elbow. And then with an air of resignation, patted around in his top pocket and fished out a pair of reading glasses.

‘Mmhmmm…Hackney, Twickenham, Chelsea…Mmmhmmm…yep, yep…Oh…’ Quinton said the last ‘Oh’ with an air of despair.

‘Oh?’ Said Angus quizzically.

‘Hmmm…You do know about the Hampstead Heath Sinkhole don’t you?’

Angus went a pale shade of green. His head of Human Resources lived in Hampstead Heath. While he hadn’t made the list - heads of human resources (who are almost always ‘head’ when they’re a department of one) rarely do, Angus had rather liked him, and wouldn’t have wanted him to end up in a sinkhole, no matter how many conflict resolution sessions he had to sit through.

‘I haven’t. How have you heard of it? Do you have internet?’

‘Nah, I saw it when I was out on a walk.’

‘Oh.’

“But the rest of your list looks…doable.”

Quinton breathed in and out deeply and purposefully in the way that a man who’s about to do something he’s not particularly interested in doing does.

He clicked his teeth.

Quinton then thought for a moment, grunted with agreement with himself, and then felt along the mantlepiece above the fireplace, his fingers locating a hidden hidden latch, which he pulled, and the fireplace groaned forward and moved to the side.

It revealed possibly the most comprehensive privately-held weapons collection in the entire United Kingdom. It contained all manner of death-dealing implements, including about 20 different pistols (ranging from antique to modern), machine guns, bats, spiky bats, a flame-thrower, buckets of grenades, and a dusty pair of nunchucks.

He then proceeded to inspect, load and stack about 20 of the biggest, scariest-looking ones in a pile.

Angus was curious. ‘Are those all for us?’

Quinton snorted.

‘Us? No, these are all for me. This one’s for you.’

Quinton then cast his hand over the pistols, hovering over several, before he got to the puniest, most emasculating pistol in the entire collection. He picked it up, cocked it, and handed it to Angus, handle first.

Angus went to snatch it, but before he could, Quinton jerked it back.

‘Who, easy sailor. She’s small, but she’s deadly. I got this for my first ex-wife. She was about the same build as you. Should work fine.’

Quinton stopped for a moment to think.

‘No - actually - she was a bit taller from memory.’

Quinton handed it to Angus carefully. Then, on second thoughts, he grabbed it back, uncocked it, taking the bullet out of the chamber and removing the clip.

‘I don’t want you shooting off your old feller before we even get into trouble. I’ve seen it happen. Ugly stuff. Some blokes don’t want to go on living after that kind of an accident.’

Angus nodded with a sigh of resignation. He believed him, and considered that even though his ‘old feller’ hadn’t got much use over his lifetime, that he, too, would probably count himself in the category of those men wrought suicidal by the loss of their most favoured appendage.

Quinton handed over the revolver. Angus inspected it. It had diamontes in the handle, and the words ‘Femme Fatale’ in swirly lettering across the barrel. And when Angus felt he couldn’t feel any more emasculated than he already felt, he was wrong.