They say any available evolutionary niche will eventually be filled by some enterprising mitochondrial strain. The human race had bulldozed most of those niches, paved them over and started charging rent.

The dirt from felled mountains had to go somewhere, of course, so into the oceans it went, and more land ripe for the building was the result. The water was desalinated for drinking, or split into vast hydrogen and oxygen reserves for the fuel cells that powered the cities, and the rest, with a little help from the increased heat output of the ever expanding, ever demanding human race, escaped into the atmosphere; a global, roiling storm that stretched from pole to pole. The rain was unceasing. Unending. The only escape from it was to be safely indoors, under a nice sturdy roof.

Roofs, therefore, were humanity’s next great endeavour. What had been cities became city, and then building. The animals had no choice but to move indoors. To adapt. There was space for them, too, in the foundations and breezeways and refuse dumps and reservoirs. The places where humans no longer had any real need to tread. The carnivores went on living much as they had in their new environs. The herbivores adapted quickly. Organic was organic after all, and the understreets were full of the leftovers of locally-lab-grown produce, cave mosses and lichens that were secretly quite pleased about the recent (to a lichen’s way of thinking) changes about the place, and of course the libraries.

Nobody had much known what to do with the libraries. They weren’t strictly needed anymore, of course. Every known scrap of writing had long since been digitised, down to the drunken scribblings of names and phone numbers on the back of bar mats. The most stalwart of book lovers was hard pressed to tell the difference between the feel or even smell of the current electronic readers and the real thing. Of course there were rarities and personal favourites in private collections all around the world, but when it came down to it there were, in the pages (if you will allow me that) of human history, vast swathes of literature, self-help books and recipe collections that were objectively not worth the paper they were printed on. Still, burning them seemed rather totalitarian, and so the libraries had simply been closed, the librarians given new jobs shushing people at funerals or movie theatres, and the building went on around and eventually over them.

They were the new forests. It was as if all that paper had suddenly decided to become trees again. As if the potential had always been there. Exploratory book-finding parties led by rich eccentrics desperate to find and save last remaining signed first editions of this or that were seldom heard from again. The floors were littered with leaves and folios, stalked through by big cats dark as ink. High in the stacks primates capered, and in the rafters brightly coloured birds built nests from pages of picture books.

“What would you have of me, then?”
“Only love. I know that it is an opinion much out of favour in the common custom, but it has always been my belief that true love is sufficient of and for anything. Indeed, that any love that is not sufficient also be not true.”
“It is not, nor has it ever been that simple!”
“You do me ill, madam, to imply so. For, in the implying, you deny the truth of all that I feel for you. More again, of all that I am. At love’s call I would bear all of fortune’s slings and arrows save one, that one being only your wish that I bear none in your name. Even in this I am undone, for guided as it is by Apollo it is the one whose aim I cannot escape.”

“Want of practice, they called it; but what it really meant was that they no longer believed.”

That’s where it ends, you see. I’ve seen the original edition, hand-lettered and signed. I wish I could tell you other; I wish I could tell you anything else, but everything from there is a lie. Peter was touched. There is no denying that. He’s not the type to change overnight, but he made the effort. Imagine, if you will, Peter making the effort. Hands on his hips, all a-crow, but something holds him and he asks first after her. It’s a dilemma, of course. It’s a problem. But Wendy moves on. Wendy grows up. The adventures are there, but as much as he throws himself into them there is something wrong without her. Day by day, year by year, fresh-faced all the while, Peter grows old.

The rain is fierce on the canopy outside, but only a few drops make it through the leaves to trip a staccato beat on the metal of the roof. The rest trickles and pools, gathering in hollows and slipping down trunks to soak the earth. The path to the door is overgrown and disused, covered with fallen branches and vines on the outside, and tottering piles of books and sheets of loose paper on the inside. The books shift restlessly, still unused to their captivity and nervous about the ability of these walls to keep out the damp. A few eye the fire nervously, gnawing quietly in the corner on a log that might just be someone’s distant relative.

In the House there is a Room. In the Room there is a Wall. This is the Wall of Doors. At the center of the Wall is a fireplace, as tall as a man. The ceiling is lost in the dark, away from the glow of firelight and candlelight, but as high up as the eye can see the Wall is covered in doors and windows and picture frames. Each one is different: large, small, ornate, plain. Through some, snatches of music can be heard. Through others comes the smell of earth or sea air. What are you waiting for? Open one.

The moon rose full in the sky over the sleepy seaside town. It lit up the mist that rolled in over the ocean, and picked out the figures standing on the headlands. The night was so cold that even the sheriff was safe and warm inside, otherwise someone might have been out walking and seen the suspicious figures, or heard the monotonous chant they sent out to sea. As it was, they remained undisturbed. After a time the waves grew larger, disturbing the surface of the mist and whipping the chanting figures into a frenzy. Some collapsed, foaming at the mouth, but a few kept up the chant. From out past the horizon, rising from the depths, it came.

“I’m tired,” he said.
The sun streamed around him and in through the balcony doors, and the air was fresh with a gentle breeze blowing in off the ocean and up the cobbled streets.
“So sleep,” she said. “We’ll be up until dawn tonight.”
“I wanted to walk around the quayside with you today. Stop for coffee or a glass of wine somewhere right by the ocean. Wind our way through the back alleys looking for treasures in antique stores and bookshops and delis.”
“That sounds nice. There’s plenty of time, though. Come over here. Sleep. I’ll still be here when you wake up.”

The world ends in a little over two years. I’ve seen it happen five times. I’ve managed to change some details, but the outcome has always been the same.

Time travel is impossible. I should know, I’ve been to the future. You see, I discovered how to create a time loop. I’m not going to tell you how to do it, but suffice to say it works by changing a quantum event in the past. It’s not actually time travel, it’s more a reset to a certain point. Like a saved game. It turns out that the consciousness of the user gets transferred back to the reset point. I have it hooked up to a heart monitor. A dead man switch.

I know you probably think I’m acting strangely today. The simple explanation is that the day that took place yesterday in your timeline took place about fourteen years ago in mine. I want you to help me this time. I can’t change things enough by myself. Or, if you don’t believe me, I want you to tell me why you don’t believe me. Tell me how I could have convinced you. I need your help, and I’ll reset as many times as it takes to get it.

We open on a cup of coffee. The cup lifts out of shot and there is a sipping sound.

The camera pulls back, bringing with it a slightly grungy rock bassline, to reveal the sipper. It is MUG. He is driving a car; the car is a November ’86 model red car that goes fast.

The camera pulls again to reveal that MUG is also engaged in a swordfight out the open window of the car with the heavily mustachioed GENERIC EVILDOER IV, who is on a motorbike. Power chords ring out. Sparks fly. A mobile phone rings. Zoom. It is MUG’s phone. He answers.

MUG hangs up and the camera pulls back to the wide shot.

MUG tosses his coffee, cup and all, in the face of GENERIC EVILDOER IV. While G.E.IV is distracted, MUG slashes his front tire, rupturing it and causing the bike to crash, slide, roll, then explode. The camera pulls back and up as MUG hooks his car around a corner and out of shot. Cue electric guitar solo. The title is revealed: