I drag the wooden chair back from the Memex—the tiny casters squeak like agonized rodents across the worn linoleum floor—and lower myself gingerly into the cracked leather seat. The oak arms are worn smooth beneath my hands, where his palms have pressed upon them over the decades. I grab the solid sides of the desk and ease myself forward until my feet rest lightly on the pedals. There's an angled glass strip facing me from the far end of the desk, and a light in the leg-well that comes on as my heels touch the kick-plate: it's a periscope, giving me a view of my toes and the letters at the back of each pedal. I turn the gunmetal turret of the microfiche reader towards me, place the NecronomiPod on the desktop, and push the power button.

There's a clunk of relays closing, and then a thrumming vibration runs through the machine. It's easy to forget that though it weighs more than a ton, its average component weighs less than two grams: the gears alone took two months' entire output from the largest watch factory in America. I stare into the hooded circular screen in something like awe. Machined to submicron precision, yet less powerful than the ancient 68EC000 in my washing machine, these devices were the backbone of the Laundry's Intelligence Analysis section in the late 1940s. It's like a steam locomotive or a stone axe: just because it's obsolete doesn't make it any less of an achievement, or any less fit for purpose.

The screen lights up—not like an LCD monitor, or even an old cathode ray tube, but more like an antique film projector.

WRITE USERNAME.

The moment of truth: I cautiously kick-type BOB, then spend a fruitless minute hunting for the return key before I realize there's a paddle-shaped lever protruding level with my left knee—like the handle on a manual typewriter. I nudge it.

There's a clunk from inside the desk and the injunction vanishes, to be replaced by a picture of the organization coat of arms. Then more words appear, scrolling in from the bottom of the screen, wobbling slightly:

WRITE CLEARANCE.

What the hell? I laboriously type BLOODY BARON, and knee the return paddle. (There's something weird about the foot-keyboard: then I twig to the fact that its abbreviated supply of characters means it's probably a Baudot Code system. Which figures. Older than ASCII . . .)

The screen fades to white after a couple of seconds, then a bloody sigil flashes into view. It doesn't kill me to look at it, but the disquieting sense that the void is inspecting the inside of the back of my skull makes me squirm on my seat. There is an eye-warping loop to one side of it that feels familiar, as if it's tied to my soul somehow.

WRITE: STILL ALIVE? Y/N:

Knees knocking, I type Y (RETURN).

WELCOME BOB, YOU ARE AUTHENTICATED.