A thought occurred to him, as warming as his blood. If this was the end at least it would be over soon. The thrashing sounded again in the dark. The thought vanished, replaced by an image of his tombstone: ‘Tancredi, failure, killed playing lucky dip in the dark’. He had no more energy for an escape. The best he could do was compose himself and wait for the end. He closed his eyes and fell sideways in a half-faint, catching himself against a metal object – the door handle.

Tancredi focussed on counting down from ten in an attempt to prolong his last moments. He maintained a momentum up to six. At five he faltered, four and three came out of nowhere, two was a terrible strain. As he reached one a strange force took hold of him, punching through his delirium. He grasped the door handle. It opened and he fainted into the Game Show Hall, unaware of the cries of adulation ringing out across the planet in his honour.

Tancredi awoke the next day in a white room, with a nurse on a hoverboard by his bedside.

‘You’ve lost a lot of blood,’ she said, ‘you’re lucky to be alive.’

Tancredi looked at the stump of his right arm cut off below the elbow.

‘I saw it happen,’ she continued, ‘it was fun!’

She hummed the Game Show theme tune, then hovered closer to her patient as if searching for the missing limb. Tancredi stared at her blankly, his incomprehension plain.

‘But the wound is neat. The crocodile took it in one bite.’

XVII
The End Game

Such was the demand for Tancredi following his heroic exploit that he was given only hours to recover from his injury. The show had to go on. Shocked, sickened and white with loss of blood, he once again stood before a Game Show congregation – this time wrapped in his gore-stained cloak. He had no time to mourn the loss of his limb; this was the least of his worries. How could he have been so naïve? A people dedicated to food and obsessed with game shows was the definition of hell. He now expected the worst.

Beyond this he felt an overwhelming stupidity. Every character trait he had exhibited – fear on the Invincible, cowardice on Sanitalis, love on Eros Two, bravery on Scoop and Obesitas – was united by a common thread … idiocy. He knew that his instincts were right. The Universe could only be saved by long-term thinking. He understood the theory, but hadn’t mastered the practice. Having gained a little confidence, he’d plunged headfirst into an abyss.

A crowd of thousands, each randomly falling off their machines, was gathered in the great Game Show Hall. Tancredi stood on a stage in the middle. A praying mantis device passed on a conveyor belt nearby. It raised its head, flicking various brightly coloured tubes in his direction, and offered him a dessert featuring a dizzying array of ingredients. Tancredi felt no fear. He wondered if this was what happened to people after so much hardship. A survival instinct kicked in, the sufferer became inured to adversity.