– What I do know is the programme was fully aware I had left my body at that point – they could tell that I was infringing on territory hitherto unexplored by the two-legged mammalian variety. And not only that but I was open to staying.

– What did the programme make of that?

– It was unnerved.

– Why?

– Rules, my friend. Like the rules of this building we are living in.

– The stair cleaning? Nobody does that any more.

– Can’t you feel the energy of this place? All those other years are tugging at our coats. Every time you walk in here it pulls at you, frays whatever it can get a hold of – at the edges. This building is a psychic vampire – it drinks human essence. It leans psychic tendrils into your aura and takes a long, hard hit. It’s why you are weak! It’s what vampires do, they make you think that siphoning off your energy is normal!

– Why don’t they take yours?

– Because I’m a time-bending machine – time travel is literally at my fingertips. I exist here in this room with you right now, but I also exist in other rooms right now – with other people, at different times. People who I have not met, who I will never meet – those people are reading my words right now. In their own personal way they make those words come to life, but they have travelled from me right here to them right there.

– You’re making my brain hurt, Bill.

– I meet them in some way in other dimensions. My imaginary worlds travel in and out of homes I will never see. They go through minds and cars and buses and boats and planes. They interrupt happy events and broken hearts. I send my worlds to those places. Other people seek them out. I don’t go in person but I pass through other souls and leave something of my imprint. But those readers, they are in those worlds too – and they leave something of their imprint. In that way, there is a world created out there that none of us can point at – something invisible but ever-changing. Many of us have been to it and left something of ourselves there and took something for ourselves out of it.

John pulls on shorts, curls under Bill’s arm.

The three-bar gas fire burns merrily.

– I love your voice.