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By Root 135 0

of the essence of people. Of passengers, crew, visitors, stretching from the moment that the ship's first rivet was cast to the inevitable point, perhaps several thousands of years in the future, when the last piece of the iron hull would have rusted and rotted into oblivion. Essences from the point in time when all these lost souls were depressed or frightened or lonely or sick of life. A tiny fragment of virtually everyone who had ever been or ever would be, on or in or near the ship. Past, present, and future. The bell jar fed on negative energy, and there was always plenty of that around. The skull, a universal symbol of fear and depression, was an obvious representation of this. I shuddered that it had taken me so long to work out something so simple. And so cruel.

Suddenly, everything became clear to me. 'That's why this room has always had such a reputation. Because it's the psychic centre of the ship. The second that you started your obscene contraption a few days ago, ripples were created in time in both directions, as it sucked in all the negative energy that it could find. It's not a wonder that people have gone mad in this place.'

Osbourne inclined his head to one side, a look of absolute and cynical disdain on his face. A look that told of some harsh truths about to be spoken, perhaps. 'So?' he asked, half-standing and parting the ghostly forms in front of him like someone wafting away unwanted cigarette smoke with a dismissive, arrogant wave of the hand. 'What is your point?'

The implication was simple and obvious. He just did not give a damn.

'They're alive in there,' I shouted. 'Those poor people, they know what's going on, what stupid games you're playing. They tried to warn me. They tried to warn Miss Lamb that she was going to die. And now she's in there with them, a part of them. You don't care, do you?'

I was reminded of a deep and lengthy conversation I had once shared with a Roman centurion, at a settlement near Condercum, about the morality of what amounted to ethnic genocide of the barbarian Caledonians. And I remember still the horror and the shame that I had felt at the time, and subsequently, that I could neither affect the outcome nor, perhaps more pertinently, his judgement in the matter. For intelligent men are always prone to the belief that they can change the world for the better if only they can get everyone else to think and act as they themselves do.

It happens. It has happened. It will happen again.

And that was where I came in. What's the point, I was forced to ask, of being able to live outside of time itself if all it allows you to do is to watch the same mistakes being made over and over and over again?

For history repeats the old conceits, the glib replies and the same defeats.

'What you're doing here is something that almost defies belief,' I told Osbourne, knowing that they were wasted words but saying them anyway because my conscience would not allow me not to do so.

'Thank you,' he replied, beaming.

How like politicians scientists can be. Show them a wheel if they'd never seen one before, and they would believe that they had invented it.

'It was not well meant.'

The scientist shrugged as though unable fully to grasp the point that I was trying to make. Perhaps he genuinely could not. It is possible that my arguments were simply beyond his comprehension, so far removed was he from the realm of sanity. 'I fail to understand your concerns, Doctor,' he confirmed, with a seemingly sincere air of befuddlement and an exasperated sigh. 'You appear to be an intelligent man. A man of science. Yet these sentiments you glibly throw at me, they are neither valid nor scientific. They are sentimental nonsense. Are you not impressed by the significant advances that I have managed to achieve in my work thus far? This could change the very future of mankind.'

'That's not the point,' I replied, astonished at this man's hubris and the fact that he couldn't grasp something so simple, so basic.

'Oh, but I very much think that it is the point,' Osbourne snarled.