Three simple words scrawled in fluttering pages of a notebook.

AMAZING.

STAGGERING.

GONE.

*

Despite all efforts of scholars and studies, it’s still not clear which of the experiments perpetrated by Curtis Thumb and his Grandson Andrew caused the rifts, scars and breakdown in the structure of time which we now know as daily reality. Whatever it was, it has its roots in the process they started with the first Schrödinger boxes created for the neighbourhood cats. Maybe it was that experiment where Andrew took a super saver return from Doncaster to Cleethorpes on the train with one identical alarm clock and Curtis tried to hitch hike alongside the track with a second identical clock and a torch and a Duracell battery strapped to his head. Or maybe it was the other experiment where Curtis sat in the one local pub form which they were not totally banned, with a digital watch and a torch, the torch shining out the window into the car park with the burned out Nissan, next to which, sat on a bench in the frost with the other teenager drinkers, Twockers and Offenders, Andrew tested the light (from the torch) that passed through with some ‘instruments and measuring devices’ that he had made earlier. It can’t be told or figured out. Perhaps the answer is on some missing tape. Or on some portion of a tape that in any case got wiped right over.