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why?” Jack rubbed his chin. “Question for us is, what did he do next?”
    Suddenly, he had a brainwave.
    “The Timeline Simulator! You know, the computer program they use to simulate how changes in history can affect the future. It must be accessed from one of these terminals. Dad might haveused it to try and work out what happened in the past to cause the climate to flip.”
    Jack turned to the first terminal and started pounding away at the keyboard.
    “Different icons… nothing here… maybe this one is better.” Jack turned to another computer that was also on standby.
    Angus moved behind Jack just as an application opened and the words – Timeline Simulator Version 7.3.1 – flashed onto the screen.
    “Nice one.”
    Jack tapped the screen, “Saved simulations. And the last one – look! It was saved … two days ago . That must have been Dad! I’m going to run it.”
    They waited as the program opened. Jack leaned back. The screen showed a map of the world. In one corner there was a date counter. It started to count forward, and as is it did so, coloured shading on a map, showing the relative power of countries around the world, started to grow or recede.
    Jack explained: “The counter starts at 1750 – so this scenario of Dad’s starts then.”
    The small red blob showing Britain in the middle of the map slowly started to expand. As the counter cycled its way through the nineteenth century, the red shading across parts of the world spread like an infectious disease, enveloping India, Australia and Africa.
    “I think that’s showing the growth of the British Empire,” Jack said.
    The expansion of power of the other European nations was spreading too: blue for France and black for a unified Germany.The counter then moved on through the twentieth century to show the rise of the Soviet Union and the United States and the decline of the old European countries. As the counter reached and then passed the year 2000 another country started to grow in the East. Bar charts in the corner of the screen were changing rapidly, as that country began to overtake all others in population, wealth and military power.
    “See – that must be the growth of China. It’s taking off big time.”
    “It’s stopped,” Angus said.
    “Hold on, what’s happening?”
    A message popped up on the screen:
    Baseline historical model completed.
    Stand by for start of updated
    historical model…
    Then:
    Updated historical timeline
    starting…
    “It’s back at 1750; it’s starting again. This must be a new scenario that Dad modelled…”
    Again, they saw the power of Britain and the other European countries start to grow, then something happened. In the Far East, in Southern China, in fact, a small black blob appeared that had not been on the map before. The blob started to getbigger. Jack looked at the date counter as it passed 1860. Suddenly, the black blob enveloped the whole of China and then started to spread into Japan and other parts of the Far East.
    “This is completely different from the first scenario – look at all the economic and military growth numbers. They’re topping out at thirty-two per cent growth a year – that’s really high, isn’t it? It must mean that black blob which has taken over the whole of China is increasing its wealth and power incredibly quickly.”
    Suddenly the simulation stopped. The date stopped and winked back at them:
    2048
    “What does that mean?”
    Jack looked down at the table. A notebook and pile of papers lay beside the terminal – he couldn’t believe he hadn’t noticed them before.
    “Maybe there’s something in this lot. Look someone’s been scribbling here.” He flicked through the pages until he reached one page with only a few words scrawled on it:

    The last sentence had three bold lines scrawled under it.
    “Look at this Angus… I reckon Dad wrote this. That’s definitely his handwriting.”
    Angus shook his head. “End of civilisation, 2040s… that