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study him for a moment, prompting him to make some pretence at checking the rail, before beginning its languorous 180-degree sweep. Then Marcus quickly descended the short flight of steps to the maintenance block. At the door, clearly marked ‘Strictly No Access - CMS Personnel Only’, he produced his coded tag-key and swiped it. There was a faint ‘click’ and he pulled back the locking mechanism, opening the door. Marcus rarely had cause to enter the maintenance block but he was entrusted with a key in case of emergencies – a blocked cistern in the toilets, wind-blown debris on the track. But Marcus knew that, inside the maintenance office, there was a key hanging on a hook on the wall behind the door. By the time he pushed the locking mechanism back into place and defied the wind and rain to return along the platform, the key was no longer on the hook on the wall behind the door of the office. Marcus felt light headed. As he passed through the automated turnstile to begin his descent to the street below, he chuckled…a strange sound in the back of his throat that startled him.
                  “Thou shalt not,” he thought.
     
                  Marcus Smith did not sleep that night. He telephoned Misty several times. Each time he replaced the receiver and wiped away the evidence from his flat belly with a tissue he felt a little less remorseful. He rose, washed and dressed at dawn on Monday. As a slight variation to his morning routine he paused before leaving his bedroom and placed his jacket and peaked cap on the bed for a moment. He pushed his teak wardrobe further toward the corner and, in his mind, marked out a large rectangular area at the foot of the bed. Then he collected his cap and jacket from the bed and walked silently to the kitchen to prepare his tea and toast. Several minutes later than normal, Marcus left the house clutching his home delivered copy of Wales on Sunday tightly beneath his coat. There was no rain but the wind howled from an unusually cloudless sky. Marcus peered up at the fading stars, an infrequent sight.
                  Marcus felt different. He took the same route he always did, crossing town to the monorail terminus in silence with his thoughts. Yet he sensed a change. Shapes and colours, sounds and smells…they seemed clearer, more distinctive. It was not merely the cloudless sky that made him feel more alive on this Monday morning.
                  “Today is the day,” he said aloud. “Today I shall fly through time.”
     
    * * *

III
     
    DARKNESS fell in the late afternoon as the heavens simmered with an approaching storm. It was almost 4pm, the evening rush nearly two hours away and the end of his shift, three. Marcus Smith folded away his newspaper and clicked on the ‘send’ icon in the top right corner of his screen. A moment later the computer informed him: ‘Your message (FEELING QUEASY) has been successfully sent’. He switched the turnstile system to ‘unmanned mode’ and powered down the monitor. Automatically checking to ensure the platform was clear of passengers, he lit a cigarette and removed his wallet from his pocket. From it he drew out the selection of newspaper cuttings and re-read them one last time. Then he held them over his lighter and set them alight, dropping the flaming sheets of newsprint into the metal waste-paper basket. As he watched them burn, waiting for the flames to die, he recalled the expression ‘playing with fire’ and wondered if that, too, was an echo from his Sunday school days. “Thou shalt not.” The words inside his head were almost audible.
    A wave of nausea swept across him as he vacated and locked the tiny booth. Only twice before had he left his post unmanned until the shift-change and both occasions were genuine. He would hardly be missed, he told himself, trying to calm the sickness in his stomach and the pounding in his chest. Cold, clammy and dizzy, he leaned his