For the past six years of his life Cambridge had never truly had a moment of silence. Not real silence, where the electronic world stopped trying to work its way in to the niggling regions of his subconscious. That was what silence meant to Cambridge – and absence of the world trying to tell him things. Aural silence was simple, but technopathic silence had been hitherto unknown.

He couldn’t remember what this had been like before – this sensational blackout. It was like being trapped in a deep, cloying smoke that relentlessly submerged his senses in layers and layers of confusion. Everything was rounded and undefined; there was no crackle of wireless data in the air, no comfortingly solid hum of electricity in the walls or beneath his feet. But it was the little things that caught him off guard; a motion-sensing security light outside his bedroom window that refused to go out that had kept him awake all night, or the forcible realisation that he had to type his texts and emails. Not to mention that horrifying absence of the usual wealth of information he could glean from the internet with just the briefest thought; he felt cut adrift from everything that secured him, everything that anchored him and everything that defined him.

It was pathetic. God, it was pathetic and he knew it. He had smoked far too much but the usual reserves of alcohol had remained untouched. He needed clarity, not inebriation. Mechanical inhalation of unspeakable numbers of Benson & Hedges cigarettes had brought a little sharpness in to his world but he was at a loose end when the packet rattled with its solitary last cigarette.

Typing the S.O.S. message had taken an excruciating effort on his part – it was just so wrong! – but eventually he managed to bring himself to form a few words:

cigarettes, please? Sooner rather than later.

 Rob was wet and heavy, but worse than that he was definitely dead. The journey home had been one of the most stressful and miserable of Julian's undead life but he had somehow managed to drag, haul and carry Rob's body the whole way without being seen. He had talked the whole way there - to himself, to Rob, to the thin air - if only to reassure himself that what he'd done was right and that surely everything would be okay and that Rob would wake up again any time now and he'd be as good as new. The fact that he would be as good as new forever was an issue he'd deal with later.

He heaved Rob's soaking body through the front door with a frustrated cry of effort and tumbled to the hallway floor with him in a sodden pile of rain- and blood-logged clothes and limbs. Muttering and pleading under his breath Julian rolled Rob on to his back and frantically pushed away the wet fringe from his forehead . His whole body tensed as he hunched over Rob's body, tenderly wiping the rainwater from his face and watching it carefully for any signs of life.

To the Glory of God and in affectionate remembrance of

Lt. J. DIXON-ROSS

Former Prefect and Oppidan of Eton College who entered into rest on 5th February 1917 aged 20 but to whom the fortune of war denied the known and honoured burial given to his comrades in death.

[ staring intently at a connect four grid. ]

















[ staring so intently. ]

It was a lovely little house by anyone's standards: a respectably middle class red-brick semi-detached two-up-two-down that was only a few minutes from Oxford city centre. The neighbours on the attached side were students - three Oxford Brookes second years who spent most of their nights on the town rather than making any kind of effort in their studies at home. This was a good thing in Julian's eyes; they would be too busy partying to notice the occasional shattered door from Rob or Julian watching Come Dine With Me at five in the morning.

The house was modern and warm with new kitchen fittings and a lingering smell of freshly-laid carpets. It was only partly-furnished but Julian had spotted an unclaimed Argos catalogue by a neighbour's front door and had temporarily borrowed claiming a greater need. Julian had every intention of returning it but still felt guilty as he thumbed through the thin pages on the hunt for a microwave. Of course he personally didn't need a microwave - but as well as things like making sure they had a good boiler for the central heating system and getting one of those mats in the shower that stopped you from slipping he knew that it was part and parcel of Making A Good House A Home. He would have done it even if his new house mate hadn't been a human but the thought that Rob might appreciate it was even better.

Julian had only brought a few of his old appliances from his Edinburgh flat down with him. He liked making a fresh start in new cities and there was something cathartic in shedding old possessions. He owned nothing that would have placed him further back than the mid-nineties (a few cassette tapes of radio plays he had enjoyed) and that was how he liked it. It wasn't for security or safety - that his forged birth certificates were routinely replaced when they made him anything over 25 made him secure enough - but for a sense of belonging to whatever decade he was currently enjoying.

He had only been awake for a few minutes when he picked up the Argos catalogue again and flopped comfortably on to the sofa. The television was one of the few things he hadn't handed over to a charity shop on leaving Edinburgh and currently it stood on an upturned bucket bearing a yellow post-it note reminder to buy a TV license. Out of a sense of civic duty Julian restrained himself from turning it on despite the sad realisation that he was missing The One Show. With a resigned sigh he stretched out on his stomach along the length of the sofa and began searching the index for TV stands.

His heart didn't feel like it was beating - more like it was ticking. The rhythm was faint and almost sickly. It had always been a rather bare apartment; Rob never bought much out of fear of breaking things. Now the sheer emptiness made him feel ill, and he collapsed on his bare, stripped bed silently, pressing the palms of his hands roughly into his eyes to stem the angry, pathetic tears that were so close to spilling from his eyes. What little he head, it was collected in this stupid apartment, in his stupid Ikea drawers and on his stupid Ikea shelves, and now all of it was gone. He should have had that door fixed straight away. Just because he got away with it for days at a time before didn't mean that he was always going to get away with it. It came back and bit him in the arse this time. He should have expected him.

Mondays immediately got worse when you came back to a burgled house. Rob had an afternoon off. He came home early, he'd called the guy to repair the door. He'd had a peaceful weekend. Helping Julian find a house had been the most fun he'd had in a long, long while, and it had relaxed him to a point where he hadn't broken anything since then. He'd woken with a smile on his face this morning.

They hadn't left a single stone unturned. Everything was gone - his laptop, barely used, his teeny television, his CDs, even his damned bed linens and half his clothes were gone. Only the furniture was left. The stiff back door that Rob had never tried to open had been smashed and the narrow alley behind used as a convenient and discreet escape route. Talking to the police had been a nightmare. Admitting he had left the door unattended earned him no sympathy, but he didn't ask for it either. He has just miserably accepted it for what it was.

It seemed impossible to determine the next step. All Rob had the strength to do was eventually move from his bed and, once he had calmed down, make a cup of tea. At least the bastards left him some milk and teabags, though the kettle was gone and he only had two pans left in which he heated some water on the hob. He drank but tasted next to nothing; eventually he just wandered back to the living room and flopped on his sofa. Nothing else to do but go to work in the morning and start rebuilding the home he'd spent so long trying to make.

Rob had quickly become something of a nuisance to many local estate agents in the Oxford area. Claiming to be looking for a living space in the interests of helping a "somewhat indisposed friend", as he had somewhat pathetically put it, he had realised that diving into this matter with no knowledge of Julian's financial status or potential tax brackets. He also had no idea what Julian's tastes and preferences were; as a result of this, initially cheerful seeming estate agents quickly turned a little sour.

A combination of nerves and fear of seriously damaging something (or someone) had led Rob to turn to newspapers. This in turn led to his purchasing every newspaper with a decent property section he could find. Now he was somewhat feebly attempting to open his still broken front door with a few lousy and wobbly kicks. The money Julian had given him was still on the kitchen counter, as Rob had felt some strange compulsion to avoid it at all costs.

Rob spent most of the evening lurking around in the house, trying to make it look vaguely more presentable than the other night. He was never quite sure whether to refer to this place as a house or an apartment. It was only one floor, but he was fairly sure that upstairs was just a storeroom for the little shop next door. It was sort of a house, but has the dingy state of an apartment. Bubbly damp in a corner by the fridge, peeling wallpaper that Rob had tried to salvage - in vain - with a few poorly placed strips of sticky tape.

At least it was sort of tidy now.

A little.

Ish.