Anyway. Verdict day came surprisingly quick. Indeed after 11 months of evidence the jury reached its conclusion in a remarkable three hours of deliberation – Jonesey was innocent on all counts and released forthwith. Cheers in the courtroom and headlines bearing the name of Jonesey’s pseudonym. J paid off his lawyers and quit while the going was good, heading down to Rapid City on a bus.

Rapid City did not earn its name from the amazing Rapids in the River there. But rather from the fact that time runs three times faster in that City than it does anywhere else. Jonesey went in and burned off a good few years. The pace is breakneck and draining on the body but for some at least the rewards are sufficient – for Jonesey it were 5 yrs of pleasure crammed into 1.7, no attachments, few consequences, no bother from the rest of the world. Rapid City like the Foreign Legion for people that don’t like fighting or discipline. A kind of Las Vegas on fast forward, leave your wrist watches at the door.

In truth Rapid City was more than pleasure though, for Jonesey came out of it changed – older, wiser, lean but still hungry (etc). And of course when Jonesey came out the true world had changed too. The airships no longer dropped bombs on London and Plymouth and the girls no longer wore Carling, Heineken or Skol. The nites were longer and the days were shorter and the world was ‘more crueller’ © too.

Jonesey needed to get back to Endland (sic) so he went down to that market and bought a donkey what had been painted by gypsies (Roma) so that it looked like a Zebra. The gypsies wanted more money for the donkey on account of how it was supposed to be a Zebra – “Look is rare, a rare animal – ZEB – RAH . . .” the oldest gypo (Roma) kept sayin and spelling out the name, black and white paint streaking off on his hands as he patted the unfortunate beast. It took them 2 of Gods hours to settle on a price.

Once back in Endland Jonesey took his time to adjust, weighing up his prospects and indeed since the labour market had changed people all over were keen to hire an O level telepath and Negative Futurist like him. He worked for business mainly, in dusty offices, backrooms and some archives. All he had to do was pass his hands over a document (like they taught him at Nightschool) and he could tell you if the deal was good or not or if the client true, what the small print felt like, what invisible clauses there were and if the devil or devils lived deep in the hearts of the men what had perpetrated the deal. Some days he dint even have to see the paperwork but could just smell the client and know how things would turn out.