– Some people got hit by good cosmic rays and some by bad ones. Antimatter constantly rains down on Earth. It arrives as cosmic rays, energetic particles descending to Earth. They can be seen more during thunderstorms and sometimes you can get 100 cosmic rays per square metre all containing antimatter. So how does that pan out for the person on the bicycle cycling through the rain? A gram of antimatter could create an explosion as big as a nuclear bomb. We can only produce a tiny amount, it costs too much. They haven’t figured out how to do it properly yet – however, someone is walking around with their particular programme of language and science and in their own particular unique imprint, one day, all those things coalesce in their brain and they will find a way to slow antimatter down so they can study it and unlock all it has to teach. And for that they will use the virus, the glorious virus from outer space, language, the territorial tyranny and wonder of words! Antimatter can diagnose cancer and one day treat it, all things will be treatable in the end but we have to discard – many – of the programmes – if we are to evolve to the next level.

– I didn’t know poets were so well informed, Mr Burroughs.

– Don’t trust poets unless they are scientists.

– I wish I’d studied mair science!

– Poets are by far not the only people trying to unlock and deconstruct and prove the great secrets of the world. All poets write about people. Why are we still so barely evolved in some ways and so utterly astonishing in others? People are like matter and others are antimatter – there are those who want humanity to evolve fully and their opposite is a source that seeks only to keep things the same or turn them back toward the Dark Ages. To stall or deny or destroy progress so they might for that sneakiest of seconds that makes up a human’s whole life – they might fool themselves into thinking that by controlling – dominating, torturing, colonising, segregating, raping, murdering – that they managed for a period of history to fix time to them. That they won’t die. That antimatter is not destined to destroy them. That death is not imminent and cares not for power or wealth – that they can’t escape it.

– To control their fear ay it?

– Impose themselves on matter and particle. Maybe humans want to make something that can annihilate everything – much in the way death annihilates us all – as a way of denying their own place in the void, their utter core of nothingness.

– So why don’t we change it, Bill?

– I blame the God programmes.

– Even Buddhism?

– Yes.

– Wiccans?