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classics on the Golden TV satellite channel. His favourites were the costume and period dramas, like Quadrophrenia , Four Weddings and a Funeral and The Italian Job . But then he liked most programmes from the last century. It was only the archive science fiction he couldn’t stomach – full of 20th century optimism for the future, gleaming spaceships, moon colonies, genetic perfection, robotic servants and time travel for all. There was one time traveller he did admire – Catweazle, a scruffy magician from Norman times who flew through time. Marcus often wished such power could be his - to leap into the water, an ancient spell on his lips, and emerge spluttering in a long vanquished era. But Marcus knew the difference between an impossible dream and a 20th century children’s television fiction. He returned his attention to the news.
                  “Police are still hunting outlawed British Nationalists who sparked a riot at yesterday’s third division derby between Merthyr Tydfil and Hereford United. Eleven people were injured including two club stewards who both needed hospital treatment. And governors of a Cardiff primary school will meet tomorrow morning to decide the fate of teacher Lynette Swinn who has been accused of peddling Christian dogma among pupils in her classes. Miss Swinn, a self confessed ‘Pentecostal’ extremist, has denied that teaching children bible stories and proclaiming her Christianity to pupils was, in any way, racist. Now the weather, with…”
                  “Thou shalt not steal,” Marcus remembered his Sunday school teacher’s dire warning. “Or you will go to hell when you die.” But science had long ago exposed the myth of Christianity as nonsense, and legislation under the Race and Faiths Equality Act had banned its spread through educational establishments and public meetings or gatherings. The fact that Christians preached Jesus Christ was the only way and boasted all gods but theirs were false was inciting racial and cultural hatred, ruled the secular Eurostate. Who said ‘thou shalt not’? God? God was dead, surely, thought Marcus. According to the government, Christianity was, officially, aerie-faerie nonsense. And, if God was dead, who else had the right to say ‘thou shalt not’?
                  Marcus wiped a smear of jam from his lips, gulped the last of his tea and switched off the television set. Pulling on his jacket and peaked cap he left his bedsit, locking it carefully, and descended the stairs. Stopping in the foyer to savour the sleeping silence of his neighbouring tenants and to pick up his delivered copy of Saturday’s Echo, Marcus walked out to meet the wind and the rain.
     
                  Marcus Smith worked as a ticket clerk for CMS-Cardiff, one of two who were responsible for the ticket booth on Merthyr Tydfil’s modest terminus. He had barely met his colleague, Sasha, as they worked opposing shifts. If there was ever a need to communicate, and such occasions were rare indeed, it was accomplished through text messages left on the auto-till. In fact his, and Sasha’s, livelihood was superfluous and CMS-Cardiff would have made them redundant years ago but for the whim of the company’s fare-paying clientele. Customer research had shown that monorail passengers enjoyed the ‘human face’ of their service and did not like the impersonal mechanics of the cheaper auto-fare machines adopted by the bus and rail companies. CMS passengers preferred to exchange pleasantries with a ticket clerk, to speak aloud their destinations and travelling requirements, than to simply punch digits and letters into a swipe machine. And while they were paying, CMS did not mind. Marcus, and his invisible colleague, were the ‘middle men’ between man and machine.
                  There was no room to move in his booth but it was warm and sheltered from the wind and rain. He could read or watch television on