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looked out of place in NASA headquarters. Well, assuming NASA had no problems with dinner plates that were growing their own bacterial cultures and bedding that hadn’t been washed in living memory.
    I avoided the centre of the bed. I couldn’t see clearly and I sure as hell didn’t want to look, but I reckoned the odds were good that I’d be lying in some stain or other. Then I’d start to wonder where the stain came from and it’s a short step from that to asking if I could take a hot shower. So I lay along the edge whereI could see the TV over Gutless’s right shoulder. There was some desperately sad game show on. The sound was turned down, but that didn’t matter to me. Those kinds of shows are much better when they are muted.
    ‘Dude,’ he said. ‘You have got to check out the size of the maps on this video game. They’re at least half as big again as Insurgency Max , or District 19, The Revenge . We are talking fucking huge. Shit-hot graphics, as you’d expect, and up-to-date weapons shit. Based on some of the latest developed in the States. Hey, some of these guns aren’t even used in the actual military yet. Plus, a bigger range of vehicles. Look, I’ve messed around with that capture-the-flag shit, but the real good stuff is in the death matches. Now, I know what you’re going to say . . .’
    I was glad he knew, because I had no idea. On the TV screen some guy with impossibly white teeth and exceptionally bad hair was charming the hell out of an old woman with brown teeth and equally bad hair. She looked like just being in the game show host’s presence was a validation of her existence. Take me now, Lord, at the pinnacle of my happiness . I hate television, but it can be entertaining. Especially when the sound is muted.
    ‘. . . it all depends on the quality of your team. Shit, man. I got myself into this team of complete fucking noobs last night. I made this head shot and they’re all like, whoa, that was fucking great, man, and I’m like, yeah, it would be to you bunch of dicks ’cos you have no fucking idea what you’re doin’ . . .’
    I let his voice drone on. It’s better that way. Sometimes I fallasleep for fifteen minutes or so and Gutless never notices. I wake up and he’s still talking. I’m like that dinner plate. I could be there in three weeks and going green around the edges and he probably still wouldn’t notice. I love Gutless. If he didn’t exist I’d have to invent him.
    The game show ended and there was a news report. Some blonde chick only about four years older than me was staring at the cameras and looking all serious. She was probably talking about the latest crisis in the Middle East and giving the impression she’d been studying this shit for years and was some kind of expert. Seriously. About twenty. I know a number of twenty year olds. They couldn’t find their own arseholes with a torch, let alone the Middle East on a world map.
    Watching the news with the sound off is much better than listening to it. I like to work out when the fun human-interest stories come on. The face of the presenter normally changes from this-is-serious-shit-so-I’ve-got-a-serious-expression-on to a broad smile. Occasionally, I get it wrong. She smiles and then a picture comes up in the background of people dying in some third-world country. What can I say? I’ve got to play some kind of game while Gutless is occupied with his.
    I almost didn’t notice the lotto numbers on the bottom of the screen. But it must have been the mathematician in me, picking up on patterns. They seemed familiar, which was weird. Just as I was really paying attention, the numbers disappeared and I didn’t catch the last three. Something came up instead aboutoil futures, whatever they are. I tried to put it out of my mind. It always seems to happen with lotto numbers. When they come up, they appear an obvious winning combination. 12, 18, 37, 38, 39, 45. Of course. What else could they be? But I