A host of figures now, men, women, young, old, each twisting into the next.

“Stop . . .” Garyus raised a hand toward the box and as he did so the flickering motion ceased, just one figure there now, a pale ghost, the lines of the table visible through his body.

“James Alan Kendeth,” the ghost said, not looking at either one of us but rather at some distant point between.

“You’re the ghost of my ancestor?” Garyus asked.

The ghost frowned, flickered, and replied. “I am a library entry for the data echo of James Alan Kendeth. I can answer questions. To access the full simulation requires access to a net-terminal.”

“What’s it saying?” I asked. Some of the words made sense, the rest might as well be another language.

Garyus shushed me. “Are you a ghost?”

The ghost frowned then smiled. “No. I’m a copy of James Alan Kendeth. A representation of him based on detailed observations.”

“And James himself?”

“He died more than a thousand years ago.”

“How did he die?”

“A thermonuclear device detonated above the city in which he lived.” A moment of sorrow on the ghost’s pale face.

“A what?”

“An explosion.”

“A Builders’ Sun?”

“A fusion device . . . so like the sun, yes.”

“Why did the Builders destroy themselves?” Garyus stared at the little ghost, floating above its empty box, his great brow mounded above the intensity of his eyes.

The ghost flickered and for a split second I saw its skin bubble as if remembering the heat. “No reason that matters. An escalation of rhetoric. One domino falling against the next and in a few hours everything was ashes.”

“Why would they do it again, now?” Garyus asked. “Why destroy us?”

“To survive.” Our distant ancestor looked from Garyus to me and back to Garyus as if noticing us as people for the first time, not just voices with questions. “The continued use of will is unbalancing . . .” He paused, his gaze now on some distant thing in some other place. “. . . the Rechenberg equation—that’s what they call it—it governs the change, what you people call the ‘magic’. We called it magic too, to be honest. Maybe one person in ten thousand understood it. The rest of us just knew that the scientists had changed how the world worked and bang, magic became possible, superpowers! It wasn’t like it is today though—it was harder to use—we had training and—”

“Our magics are unbalancing your equation.” Garyus cut across him. “Why kill us?”

“If everyone dies there’ll be no more magic used. The equation may balance itself. The change may stop. The world might survive and the data-echoes held in the deepnet would be preserved.”

“You’d sacrifice us for echoes? But . . . you’re not real. You’re not alive,” I said. “You’re memories in machines?”

“I feel real.” The ghost-James set ghost-hands to his transparent chest. “I feel alive. I wish to continue. In any event, if we don’t destroy you then you’ll only destroy yourselves and us with you.”

He had a point there but I had little sympathy for any point that might impale me. “So why are we still here? Why only two explosions?”

“There is disagreement. There isn’t a majority in favour of the nuclear solution. Yet. Gelleth was an accident. Hamada was a test that went wrong.”

“Why are you telling us all this?” I wouldn’t have been so forthcoming in his position.

“I’m a library entry. Answering is my purpose.”

“But somewhere . . . in the machines . . . is a full copy of James Alan Kendeth? One with opinions and desires?”

The ghost nodded. “Even so.”

“Can the Wheel be turned back?” Garyus asked with sudden urgency.

A pause. “You’re referring to IKOL facility at Leipzig?” James sounded as if he were reading from a book.

“The Wheel of Osheim.”

James Alan Kendeth nodded. Another pause. “It’s a particle accelerator, a circular tunnel over two hundred miles long. The idea of a steeringwheel for the universe is a simplified way of understanding the change that the IKOL facility effected and continues to drive. The engines at IKOL turn a hypothetical wheel, a dial if you like, changing the default settings for reality. The machinery in the collision chamber would dwarf your cathedrals. In short it is a machine, not a wheel that can be turned.”