Now · 2026 · age 42
Now
Twenty twenty-six. I'm forty-two, and this is my room: a desk, a window, two French Lops and a ham sandwich.
My room, today. There's a laptop on the desk with this game open on it, a sea chart on the wall, a ship in a bottle on the windowsill and a navy wall I'm still pleased with. Ever since the living-room carpet turned into the Caribbean, I've liked a map with sea on it.
Everything in here goes somewhere real. The bookshelf holds the whole story, written down. The ship's logbook is the making-of, how all this got built. The top drawer holds the engine that runs it. The phone is the quickest way to get hold of me, and a floppy disk marked Next is for the chapters I haven't made yet.
Two French Lops hop about the floor, and both of them know exactly where the sandwich is. They'd follow me out of the door for it, so their dinner comes first: parsley and coriander from the glass on the windowsill, into the bowl.
Then the sandwich. White bread, ham, cut into triangles, because some things you get right first time. There's only one place to eat it.
I was sat on the doorstep. It was sunny. My own doorstep this time, a bit higher than the last one, and so am I. A sparrow came for the crumbs. Probably not the same one.
I made that sandwich last, too. Still here. Still hungry.
