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Rupert Weard and the Case of the Adamant Annihilist

By Rob Gillham

Rupert Weard leapt into the drawing room, escaping a hallway dense with impossibly angled, tentacular horrors trying to sell him insurance.

“Ye gods, it’s bedlam out there,” he said. “Just look at this, Boswell.” He hurled his folded newspaper at me like a frisbee.

I occupied my usual spot on the rug by the fireplace. I’d been happily finishing off the remains of a cauliflower when the unwanted periodical came streaking across the room, forcing me to hop into frantic evasive action.

“Oi!” I said, coughing up half-chewed bits of Brassica oleracea. “Do you mind? That was my breakfast.”

“It’s eleven o’clock, you idle rabbit.” Rupert slammed the door firmly shut on a particularly determined sales rep attempting to squeeze its incompatible geometry into the room.

Rupert crossed the room to the fireplace. He tilted the mantelpiece clock back, extended a finger and dialled the position of the hands from ten minutes to four to nine-fifteen. The extra-dimensional thing’s muffled entreaties that he at least consider dental cover ceased abruptly.

Rupert let out a sigh. He brushed some imaginary dust from the spot underneath the clock and replaced it on the mantelpiece before heading toward the small kitchenette at the rear of the room. “Reality Three-Fifty-Three has all but collapsed,” he said. “It’s a disaster, Boswell, a catastrophe — a bunyanesque catawampus of a cataclysm.”

“A mess, then. What about the Annihilist,” I said, “was he there?”

He turned on the tap to fill the kettle. “Either I was too late, or he was keeping his head down.”

“I’d love a brew if you’re making one,” I said, perusing the headlines.

“You’ve been here all bloody morning. Why aren’t you making me a cup of tea?” he grumbled.

I didn’t rise to that. Rupert knew perfectly well why even a rabbit of my distinguished proportions and intellect could not make tea. It’s all about the opposable digits, innit?

The newspaper told a familiar tale. The maverick computer scientist, Tomas Gordion-Nott — dubbed ‘The Annihilist’ by those who knew of such things — had visited Reality-353, unleashing his demonic programming language, Adamant. Now, the fabric of everything there was falling apart.

The details were singular, but the familiar signs of Adamant’s insidious presence were clear. The previously reliable rules and rhythms of existence were in flux. Children learnt one thing in History class only to discover by the time they got home the names, dates and events in their textbooks had changed. Planes took off for their destinations, only for passengers to be told they were now on the scheduled flight to somewhere completely different. Governments the world over were diligently implementing the policy pledges they’d been elected on. These were just the early symptoms of reality collapse. Worse would follow. I shuddered.

Inevitably, someone in Three-Fifty-Three would eventually attempt to write some Adamant code to prove that the world was flat, or some other position at odds with all available scientific evidence, at which point the laws of physics would rewrite themselves. Then it would be game over for Reality-353.

“No closer to catching him, then?” I said.

“Not really,” Rupert said, returning from the kitchenette with two cups of tea, one of which he placed on the floor in front of me. He slumped on the sofa and loosened his tie. “We’re running out of time. Everything widdershins of the four-hundreds is falling apart.”

I took a sip of tea. “We got any biscuits?”

“No.” Rupert gave me a withering look. “Magda won’t buy them. She says we’re both getting too fat.”

“Ridiculous,” I said. “That girl’s skinny as a rake.”

“Not her, idiot.” Rupert closed his eyes and pressed a finger to each eyelid. “Good grief, how I hate the Three-Fifties. Too many angles. It hurts my eyeballs.”

“So, what next?” I said.

“I don’t know,” said Rupert, taking a deck of cards from the coffee table. He shook them from their sleeve and absently shuffled them in one hand. The cards exploded from his palm, spilling across the floor.

“You’re rusty, mate,” I said. “Don’t forget you’ve got a kid’s birthday party in Golders Green next weekend.” Foiling diabolical, multi-dimensional machinations was all very good and well, but it didn’t pay the bills.

Rupert looked at me sourly. “Is this you offering to help out?”

“I told you, I won’t be pulled out of a hat again,” I said. “It’s beneath my dignity.”

He gave a short, derisive laugh. “It’s been a long while since you even fit into that hat.”

“What you need is a glamourous assistant,” I said.

Rupert began to scoop up the cards and replace them in their sleeve. “I think magicians’ assistants in tight, sequinned outfits are considered somewhat passé nowadays.”

“At least get someone to sort out your books. The Presto Palace still owe you for last month’s gig.”

He straightened up and sighed. “No time. We need to get ahead of Gordion-Nott, predict his next move. Wherever anyone downloads Adamant, reality is threatened.”

I nosed the pieces of regurgitated cauliflower, not feeling tempted. “I don’t understand why anyone would want to use a programming language that rewrites reality. It’s completely back-to-front.”

Rupert exhaled a long breath. “You’d be surprised, Boswell. A great many people aren’t interested in new answers. They’d rather the world was rearranged to suit what they already choose to believe.”

“A great many people are Dagenham and Barking,” I said.

“Talking of barking mad,” Rupert produced a pocket watch from his waistcoat, glanced up at the clock, and began winding the antique timepiece, “while we’re in Nine-Fifteen, I should talk to the displaced here, see if anyone’s heard something.”

I shrugged. If Rupert wanted to spend Saturday afternoon wandering Oxford Street talking to people who’d fallen through the cracks in reality, that was his affair.

“They see and hear things when they’re elsewhere,” said Rupert. “They’re useful informants.”

I snorted. “Like Suzie the Hat? Remember that time she said she was being kidnapped nightly by the faerie king who wanted to make her his sexual plaything?”

Rupert glared at me. “That was an entirely reasonable misconception on Suzie’s part. She’s fine now. I’m keeping her supplied with tin foil for her hats. She can’t shift around so much — and King Oberon has been very understanding about the entire episode.” He glanced at his watch, apparently satisfied it was keeping time, and placed it back in his waistcoat pocket. “Anyway, we can’t move the drawing-room now till Magda’s been. You know how much she hates it when she comes to the house and it’s not there.”

I grunted in satisfaction at this news. An afternoon in Reality-915 suited me fine. Spurs were on telly at home against Coventry. “If you want to play the great detective, why not make yourself useful and detect the TV remote?”

At that moment, the sound of keys being rattled in the front door was followed moments later by the appearance of a slender girl peering around the drawing-room door.

“Mister Rupert.” Magda scowled as she located Rupert slumped on the sofa. “I told you before, I cannot clean when you are here. You are too long. Your legs, they are always in the way.”

Rupert clambered to his feet, smoothing down the front of his crumpled Saville Row suit. He sniffed. “Very well. I shall be about my business.”

Magda entered the room carrying a canvas shopping bag from which she produced a large cabbage. She dropped it on the rug in front of me without glancing down.

“Cheers luv,” I said.

She looked pained. “Mister Rupert, the rabbit — it is talking again. This is not normal.”

Rupert pulled on his overcoat. He pointed at me. “I’m off to speak to the displaced. Boswell, behave yourself.” To Magda, he said, “Did you get any kitchen foil?”

Magda leant down, rummaged through the bag and swore in Polish. “I bought some. I know I did.”

Rupert flexed his fingers. He put a hand to the side of his head and seemingly produced a long roll of kitchen foil from his ear. He grinned a little sheepishly before waving the box at me. “Rusty, am I?”

Magda held her hands up. “Every week, you want more tin foil. This also is not normal.” She scowled. “When do I get paid, Mister Rupert? Getting paid is normal.”

Rupert blushed, bowed his head — and dashed from the room. A moment later, the front door slammed.

I investigated the cabbage, leaving Magda to unpack the rest of the shopping. She’s a sound-minded girl. There aren’t many cleaners who will work for a bloke like Rupert. The ones who will put up with the erratic pay run a mile once they discover his London house comprises three mostly derelict floors, a semi-functioning bathroom and a drawing room that keeps disappearing.

Magda had taken these revelations in her stride. Where she drew the line was me. Something in her psyche seemed to revolt against the existence of an oversized, talking rabbit. She rarely acknowledged my presence. Her habit of bringing me fresh veg from the market seemed a form of votive offering — the kind people once left for woodland spirits to keep them from mischief. In return, I mostly remembered not to address her directly. It was an arrangement that suited us both.

Magda cleaned while I munched my cabbage and studied the newspaper. The morning became afternoon in this pleasant manner and I was just beginning to look forward to the Spurs game when the doorbell rang.

Magda went to answer it. Muted conversation was followed by footsteps in the hall. A pale man with a spiky mop of dark hair and very dark eyes appeared in the doorway and glanced around the room.

I immediately made myself scarce — by which I don’t mean I scarpered. I just went very still. When you don’t belong somewhere, it’s astonishing how easily people can be persuaded not to see you.

The dark-haired man didn’t appear to notice me, at any rate. He just glanced around at the Victorian fireplace and the overflowing bookcases.

Magda appeared at the door behind him. “But I already tell you. Mister Rupert — he is out.”

“That’s all right.” He beamed. “I’ll wait.”

Magda opened her mouth but our visitor had already tucked the tails of his black coat under himself and sat down on the sofa. Magda glared at him, emitted an exasperated breath, and left to stomp upstairs. Moments later, the sounds of violent mopping became audible through the ceiling.

The man’s expression, which had been slack and absent, abruptly changed. His gaze focused, dark eyes shining and suddenly alive with a sharp intelligence. His mouth formed a thin smile. “Hello, rabbit,” he said. “Do you know who I am?”

A shiver ran down my spine. It’s not often a human from the nine hundreds can see me, let alone get one over on me. Most people’s lives are too stable, the rules of their existence too well-established to react with anything but wilful blindness to the occasional incursion from another plane.

But the unwanted visitor could see me. Not only that, on entering the room to find it occupied by an outsized rabbit, he’d not betrayed a single hint of surprise. I knew with dreadful certainty who this was. “You’re him, the Annihilist — Tomas Gordion-Nott.”

“The very same.” Our guest gave a small bow and grinned. “Where’s your owner, rabbit?”

“Out,” I said. “Not that it’s any of your business, mate.” I decided to ignore his calling Rupert my ‘owner’. My mind ticked over furiously. I had to be extremely wary. Gordion-Nott was the most dangerous individual in the world — in any world. “Why are you here?”

The man known as the Annihilist leaned back, placing his hands behind his head. He smirked. “Oh, I don’t know — curiosity, perhaps? Your man has been pursuing me across the Diapason lately. He really is quite dogged, though he’s always hopelessly late, poor fellow.” He tilted his head back as if surveying the ceiling. “Rupert Weard has quite the reputation amongst those who move between spheres. He exposed the Doll Maker and those effigies worming their way to positions of influence across the seven-hundreds, didn’t he?” Gordion-Nott smiled. The expression was unpleasantly wide, like the fixed grin of some primeval macroraptor. “That was clever of him.”

“Only, let me guess — you’re cleverer,” I said. “So much so, you thought you’d come round here for a good gloat, because even if we know your fiendish plan, we still don’t have a hope of stopping you.”

The Annihilist shrugged. “Not really. I just thought I’d drop by — you know, take an interest. It seems only polite.”

I smiled inwardly. Tomas Gordion-Nott might be insane, but he was ruthless in pursuit of his objectives. He could only be here now because we had something he wanted.

Gordion-Nott looked slowly from left to right as if trying to survey every detail in the room. His gaze inched from the large bay windows facing the street, past the old cathode-ray tube television in the corner to the chaotically overstuffed bookcases. When he reached the fireplace, his bleak smile widened, a thing I wouldn’t have thought possible. “Weard’s manner of egress from Reality-353 differed from mine. It left a minute but interesting trace — very interesting, in fact — enough to make me follow the thread that brought me here.”

It didn’t take a genius to work out what had caught his interest. “Here, Spurs are playing today,” I said. “Kick-off’s at three and I want to watch the build-up. Do us a favour and stick the telly on, would you?”

The Annihilist remained motionless, fixated on the mantelpiece like an English Pointer indicating the location of prey. His lips moved silently.

“Don’t tell me you’re an Arsenal fan?” I tried. “Chelsea, Fulham?”

“You’re trying to distract me.” Gordion-Nott’s black eyes didn’t budge from the fireplace. “It won’t work.” He rose and stepped forward, stopping just before the rug where I sat, and bowed to bring his eyes level with the mantelpiece clock.

Having the architect of ruin across multiple worlds leaning over me in this way felt both oppressive and more than a little rude. I caught a strong, peppery smell like burning pine, undercut by mildew and something more than a little rancid.

The smell reminded me of a vintage double-breasted suit Rupert had once bought at a Hackney flea market for a knock-down price because the previous owner had died in it.

That suit had stunk so badly it made my eyes water. The smell had brought to mind desecrated tombs and forbidden midnight rituals involving candles and goats. Rupert said it had “a bouquet of brimstone.” The appalling aroma seeped into the fabric of the house and gave everyone nightmares for weeks, persisting even after two trips to the dry cleaners. Magda had thrown the suit out, but the refuse collectors declined to take it, citing health and safety concerns, and we received a letter from the local council threatening a fine if we continued to leave out hazardous waste for household collection.

When Magda had threatened to quit unless something was done about the mephitic outfit, Rupert had quietly moved the drawing room to one of the hellish double-zero realities one night, crept out into the nightmarish landscape, and dumped the offending ensemble there. Even then, the scent had lingered on in corners of the house for months. Magda had finally exorcised the spectre of the suit by scrubbing the entire house from top to bottom with cleaning products she’d had blessed by a priest.

The whiff I caught off Tomas Gordion-Nott as he bent over me was not as objectionable as the memory of the malodorous two-piece, but it was an olfactory echo of it — enough to make me shudder.

The Annihilist, who had continued to peer quizzically at the clock on the mantelpiece, emitted a sharp, triumphant laugh and stared directly down at me. “I’ve been wondering for some time how Weard traverses the skeins with such freedom. This whole room is a reality manipulation engine.” He stabbed a finger at the timepiece and smiled. “This clock is the user interface.”

It wasn’t a pleasant thing to have looming over one, that smile.

“Tell me about this machine, rabbit,” he said. “This room is simultaneously within this reality and outside it. How was it done?”

So that was it. I knew Gordion-Nott hadn’t come here simply for a good old gloat. Was his movement between realities constrained in some way we hadn’t yet realised?

The merest shadow of a frown flickered over the Annihilist’s features. “You think you’ve learned something important. You haven’t.” The face above me withdrew. Gordion-Nott folded his legs like a collapsing chair and dropped his weight to the floor with a breath-taking disregard for biomechanics.

He leaned forward and I wrinkled my nose as another wave of his musty odour hit my nostrils. Now we were face to face, I saw his dark pupils were huge, lacking the iris and almost entirely obliterating the whites of his eyes. The effect was like staring into twin orbs of polished obsidian.

“You’re wondering how you can turn this moment to your advantage,” he said in a soft voice. “You can’t. Whereas, I can learn everything I need to simply by being here. This room is a vessel, the clock the control.” He cocked his head, regarding me with all the alien detachment of some primordial monster of the deep. “What is at the heart of the machine, though? My Adamant programming language, for all its intricacies, remains a symbol manipulation tool, based on the same principles as any computer. I can punch a hole in the Universe with the calculator on a mobile phone. But this room —” he gestured around himself, “this room is an allegorical engine. It manipulates symbols composed of symbols — compound symbols, even. It’s ridiculous. It shouldn’t exist.” He peered at me. “How does it work, eh?”

He was too close, both physically and metaphorically, for my liking. “You want to know your problem, mate?” I said loudly. “You’re too clever by half.”

The Annihilist’s Carcharodon eyes blinked slowly.

“I’ve met your sort before,” I said. “You reckon you’ve got everyone sussed. You don’t even want me to tell you anything because you’re so smart you can figure it all out yourself.” I paused. “Thing is, with clever lads like you, it never crosses your mind someone else might be capable of doing the same to you.”

Gordion-Nott licked his lower lip. “You’re obfuscating, bunny rabbit. Keep going, though. Each time you speak, you betray the very details you’re trying to hide from me.”

My mouth was dry but I wasn’t going to breathe in through my nose — not till Gordion-Nott took himself and the scent of Corpse-breath Pour Homme somewhere else.

Sod it, I thought, might as dive in with four paws. “Yeah, I reckon you were always a clever kid. Nice middle-class upbringing in the suburbs, I imagine, always top of your class. Yet, I’m willing to bet that — for reasons you still don’t understand — you spent the first fifteen years of your life getting the crap beaten out of you.”

A micro expression of annoyance danced around the sides of the Annihilist’s mouth — a twitch, nothing more, but it told me I’d landed a punch. “Mummy and Daddy probably told you how wonderful you were daily, but that only compounded your frustration. Why did no one else share your inflated opinion of yourself? Why did all the fittest girls at school only go out with boys on the football team, eh? Those same boys that beat you up every day — lads thick as two planks, destined for nothing but a life of laying tarmac or making sure your pizza was delivered in under thirty minutes. Bet that ate at you, didn’t it?”

Gordion-Nott put his palms together, steepling his fingers as if at prayer. “Go on.”

“Nah, that’s it. I’m done,” I said.

The Annihilist frowned. “So, according to your saloon bar psychoanalysis, I created a programming language that rewrites the very stuff of existence because of feelings of inadequacy due to being bullied as a child?”

“No, I was talking about why you started cosplaying as that prat from the Cure,” I said. “I can’t imagine why else a grown man would still dress like a teenage proto-goth.” I gave that a moment to sink in. “I’d just assumed you invented Adamant because you’re a prick who can’t stand everyone not knowing how clever you are.”

A cluster of blotchy pink marks had broken out on Gordion-Nott’s alabaster cheeks. “One forty-four,” he hissed.

“Come again?”

“One forty-four. The number. One hundred and forty-four.” He grasped the ankles of his crossed legs and leaned forward, bringing his face closer to mine. “I was born in Reality-144. It’s the reason I created Adamant.”

I held my breath. “What’s so special about Reality-144?”

“Nothing! That’s the point,” Gordion-Nott snarled. “I was ready to give up mathematics altogether when I discovered how to create holes allowing movement from one reality to another. It should have been validation, the apogee of my career. Instead, it was a moment of existential horror — the realisation that there was nothing special or unique about my life.” His voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper. “As soon as I discovered the existence of other realities, I became consumed by the need to understand the significance of mine.” He laughed. It was that brand of unhinged laughter that evil scientists do in films — usually accompanied by a crackle of lightning and preceded with a line like, They all said I was mad to cross fish with antelope, but I’ll show them!

Only Gordion-Nott didn’t sound triumphant at all. “I researched everything from the scientific to the esoteric to the plain ridiculous — nothing was so far-fetched that I wouldn’t consider it. Of course, I began with the basics: one hundred and forty-four is twelve squared. It’s part of the Fibonacci sequence. Mathematically, there was little more to be said for it. So, I scoured works of genius in other fields, looking for any use of the number in the dimensions of architecture, or as repeating motifs in art and music. In Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro, Figaro walks the layout of the home he imagines he’ll share with Susannah, pacing out the dimensions: five, ten, twenty, thirty, thirty-six, forty-three.”

We stared at each other in silence for several seconds.

His eyes narrowed. “They add up to one hundred and forty-four.”

“Yeah, I got that,” I said.

“Still I went on,” he said, “searching for any evidence that there was something — anything — unique or special about my universe and its place in the great scheme of things. I became desperate, considering such ephemera as one hundred and forty-four being considered a lucky number in China and various other places, or that in astrology, there are twelve zodiac signs, each associated with one of twelve houses in a birth chart, creating one hundred and forty-four potential combinations. In Revelations, the twelve tribes of the children of Israel numbered one thousand, four hundred and forty, which is also the number of minutes in a day — two three-hundred-and-sixty degree revolutions of the clockface to make seven hundred and twenty, which you can also divide by five to get… one hundred and forty-four.”

“And that’s good is it?” I said.

“No, it’s all meaningless!” he yelled. “One hundred and forty-four isn’t even a prime number.” He was panting. “No wonder so many of Copernicus’s contemporaries hated him,” he said in a hoarse voice. “He took away our divinely ordained place at the centre of creation, and replaced it with an arbitrary, random existence on an irrelevant rock rotating a small star, just one amongst billions in a vast, cold universe.” A strange gleam had entered those abyssal black eyes. “That’s when I first had the idea of allowing people to believe in whatever they chose. After all, who wouldn’t prefer their own truth to what’s waiting out there? The revelation of the Copernican universe was as nothing to the nightmarish discovery that it’s but one of countless similar realities.” He chuckled. “I’ve been to the worst of them, rabbit. Have you? I’ve seen the nothingness where bloated, discontiguous, serpentine things whisper thoughts to you in words that are pictures of atrocity on too impossibly vast a scale to be processed by the human mind.”

I nodded. “Oh yeah, the Noughties. Lovecraft dimensions, we call them. Best avoided.”

Gordion-Nott sniggered. A line of drool ran down his chin. “They spoke to me in their impossible words. Those words broke my brain, improved me, opened my perceptions. They let me see what was possible. They gave me the understanding I needed to create Adamant.”

At that moment, the drawing room door opened. My heart sank as Magda entered. “I suppose you want a cup of —” Her eyes alighted on Gordion-Nott sitting cross-legged on the rug and facing me. Her expression accelerated from mild annoyance to a battalion-strength glare. “Hey, mister bloody rude uninvited guest,” she said, grabbing him by the arm. “Get up, come on. There’s no rabbit here. Don’t encourage it.”

Gordion-Nott shook his head as if coming to from a deep sleep. His features briefly knotted into a fierce scowl then relaxed as he allowed Magda to lead him back to the sofa.

He sat down, wearing his shark’s grin once more as Magda went to the kitchenette and put the kettle on.

“You want sugar?” she called.

“Two please luv,” I said automatically.

Magda’s response was a sharp exhalation. The Annihilist raised his head. “None for me, thanks.” He looked back at me, all trace of levity gone from his expression. “I’m sweet enough already.”

I cursed the rotten luck that had brought Magda downstairs just when I’d had Gordion-Nott on the back foot. Seated on the sofa now he seemed to have recovered his previous sangfroid. That is, until he began to shake.

The vibrations continued while he hugged himself for support. A strange, glottal clucking emerged from his throat. I wondered if he was choking before the sound coalesced into a high-pitched giggle. He was laughing at me.

The Annihilist’s fit lasted for nearly a minute, by the end of which I felt a strong desire to bite him on the ankle.

“I’m sorry,” he said, wiping tears from his eyes. “Your face, rabbit! You really believed all that nonsense about one hundred and forty-four. Wait.” He succumbed to another fit of giggling. “Sorry.” He held up a hand. “I’ll be fine in a second, hang on.”

Magda returned, unsmiling, from the kitchenette, and placed a mug on the coffee table. “Here’s your tea, mister nutty stranger.”

The Annihilist frowned in mock offence. “So rude. And you seemed such a nice young lady.”

She folded her arms. “And you look like boy who is in terrible heavy metal band and must live with his mother because he doesn’t have proper job.”

Gordion-Nott put his hand over his heart and stuck out his bottom lip. “I was going to wait till you left the room before I stole this vessel, but now you’ve hurt my feelings.”

He rose, stepping back towards the mantelpiece. “It’s been nine-fifteen the whole time I’ve been here,” he murmured. Too late, I realised what was about to happen as Gordion-Nott placed a finger on the hands of the clock above the fireplace.

“What do you say, rabbit,” he said. “Shall we take Little Miss Snotty on a trip to Lovecraft land? Rupert Weard can remain stranded here.”

“Magda, get out of the room,” I said, knowing it was already too late.

The Annihilist chuckled and pushed the hands of the clock to midnight.

I screwed my eyes shut, braced for the moment that the sights beyond the window of a damp North London Saturday were replaced by an intolerable spectrum of black swirling shapes set against a lightless void.

Tomas Gordion-Nott had transported us to the furthest extreme of unreality. With any luck, within minutes, we’d be driven madder than he already was. If we weren’t so lucky, we’d retain some inkling of what was happening while impossible, continent-sized horrors digested us over the course of several millennia.

After several seconds, when there’d been no terrible crunch as bones were compacted or screaming as flesh was flayed from still-living bodies, I cautiously opened one eye.

The greying light of a winter afternoon still filtered through the windows. The only sound was the ticking of the clock and the serene rumble of the W3 bus as it passed.

Magda glared at Gordion-Nott and tapped her foot impatiently. “So, you force your way into people’s houses and change their clocks? You are pointless, childish person.”

Gordion-Nott stared at the mantelpiece, eyebrows knotting into a look of disbelief. “It didn’t work,” he muttered. “Why didn’t it work?” He pointed at me. “What did you do, rabbit?”

I shrugged. “I didn’t do nothing, mate.”

“Allow me to offer an explanation,” said a drawling male voice.

Rupert Weard leaned in the doorway, one hand in his trouser pocket, the other held to his face as if inspecting his nails.

“You’re such a poseur,” I said, trying to hide the relief I felt at his appearance.

Rupert beamed. “Thank you, I try.” He moved his gaze to the furious figure of the Annihilist. “Apologies for not being here to greet you in person, Mister Gordion-Nott. Only, the subterfuge to lure you here required that I was… not.”

“Hang on,” I said. “You knew he was coming here, so you went out and didn’t even warn me?”

Rupert scratched his neck. “Sorry, Boswell, but Gordion-Knot here would have spotted it was a trap immediately. That’s why I couldn’t be here, and you couldn’t know.”

My brain was beginning to ache from the suppressed anxiety of the past half-hour, but understanding seeped in. “You left the trail for Gordion-Nott to follow us back here from Reality-353.”

Rupert nodded. “Quite so. I thought you’d appreciate it, Gordion-Nott, I believe in the computer world they call such a ploy a honeypot.”

“Yes, yes. Very impressive.” Gordion-Nott’s eyes had narrowed to dark slits. He put one hand inside his coat and withdrew a mobile phone.

Rupert didn’t move from the doorway. “You going to stop him?” I said.

He frowned. “You stop him, you’re closer.”

Gordion-Nott made a series of bewilderingly rapid stabs at his phone then winked. “Well, it’s been fun. Toodlepip.”

Nothing happened.

Frowning, Gordion-Nott jabbed at the screen with increasing violence. “Why isn’t it working?”

Rupert had taken out his fob watch and was making a pretence of studying it. He looked up and raised an eyebrow. “Oh, I forgot to mention — this room has been rendered completely inert to all extra-real events. Even pure mathematics can’t open a portal in here. Too much tin foil everywhere.”

“So, this is where all the bloody kitchen foil goes,” Magda said, scowling.

Rupert nodded. “I’ve been stuffing the bookshelves with sheets of it for weeks. And down the back of the sofa, under the rug, plus half a dozen other places.”

“What about Susie the Hat?” I said.

“She’s fine,” Rupert said. “There’s only so much tin foil one needs to make a hat. The majority of it is lining this room.”

I thought on this. “If there’s tin foil everywhere, how come we were able to bring the drawing room here from Three Fifty-Three?”

“Most of the tin foil in this room is preventing our friend the Annihilist performing his usual force attack with a calculator. The only thing preventing the drawing room itself from going anywhere is the single piece of foil beneath the mantelpiece clock. I put there right under your nose before I went out.” Rupert grinned sheepishly. “I confess, it was a rather masterly piece of sleight of hand.”

Gordion-Nott cleared his throat. “I take it there’s a reason I can’t just remove the foil from underneath the clock right now and move us somewhere else?” he said sullenly.

“Yes.” Rupert and I answered in unison.

I looked at Rupert. “There is?”

Gordion-Nott gave a savage roar and charged at Rupert, who jumped to one side. I thought the Annihilist would pursue him with his fists, but he barged past Rupert and disappeared into the hallway. The sound of the front door being wrenched open was accompanied by a shrieking noise that made my teeth ache before the door slammed itself shut.

An unpleasant smell wafted into the room. It was trimethylaminuria, cordite and tears, the scent equivalent of a knife scratching a bottle. I shuddered. Magda murmured something in Polish and crossed herself.

Rupert was frantically winding his pocket watch. My ears filled with a rushing sound. A strong breeze ruffled my fur as if the drawing room were an aeroplane cabin losing air pressure. The sensation peaked in a soft pop. The sound, wind and the awful smell all ceased at the same moment.

Rupert stepped over the threshold into the drawing room.

I regarded him for a long moment. “Did you just move the hallway?”

“I hope you appreciate the artistry involved in splitting it off from the rest of the house, setting it to my pocket watch and all without you finding out.” Rupert’s eyes briefly flickered towards the front door. “As soon as I re-entered the house, I moved the hallway so the front door no longer exited onto the street. Why are you frowning, Boswell?”

“I reckon you’ve screwed up, mate,” I said. “He’s still got his phone, meaning he can make another hole and escape.”

Rupert held up something dark and rectangular between thumb and forefinger with the air of a cat proudly exhibiting a dead rodent. “Rusty!” He snorted. “The very idea.”

“So where’s Gordion-Nott now?”

Rupert grimaced. “Let’s simply say that somewhere in that blasted landscape there’s a suit with his name on it.”

“Blimey,” I said.

Silence fell upon the drawing room as we each contemplated the Annihilist’s fate. My own ruminations were interrupted by the rumbling of my stomach, reminding me there was a mostly uneaten cabbage requiring my attention.

Rupert flopped his weight onto the sofa. “I’m going to fall asleep here. Maybe for a week, maybe more. Who knows?”

Magda regarded him with narrow eyes, then retreated to the kitchenette, returning a couple of minutes later with a tray bearing three cups of tea. She placed one on the floor next to me, then put one on the table in front of Rupert. She sat down on the sofa next to him, tucking her legs under herself, and took a sip of tea from the third mug which she clasped in both hands.

“Mister Rupert,” said Magda. “You are very strange, chaotic person.”

Rupert appeared to consider this. “Yes. I will accept that is entirely true.”

“And I have not been paid this month,” she said.

He raised his eyebrows sleepily. “Ah.”

Magda pursed her lips. “You have children’s party next Saturday. And you are owed money.”

Rupert began to snore.

Magda sighed. She reached behind herself to retrieve the remote and aimed the device at the TV. The room filled with the ritual banalities of pre-match interviews.

“Rabbit.” Magda’s eyes did not move from the television as she shifted herself closer to Rupert and patted the space on the sofa created to her right.

Needing no further invitation, I hopped to the sofa and clambered up. Magda’s gaze remained fixed ahead.

I sank into the squishy seat, enjoying the improved view of the TV. “Magda,” I said, “ever considered becoming a glamorous assistant?”

She dropped a hand and lightly stroked between my ears. I shivered at the pleasant sensation and decided not to pursue the matter. There is, after all, such a thing as pushing one’s luck too far.

---

Host Commentary

By Tina Connolly

And we’re back! Again, that was Rupert Weard and The Case Of The Adamant Annihilist, by Rob Gillham, narrated by Alasdair Stuart.

This little fantastical mystery adventure story about a magician and his rabbit outwitting an evil programmer was a total delight. It felt like it was in conversation with so many other fantastical and funny British stories, ranging from Dr. Who to Douglas Adams to Sherlock Holmes. In Sherlock’s case, of course, that makes our bunny narrator the good Dr. Watson, maybe a little behind on the magician’s clever plans, but always happy to help catch a bad guy. The bunny here is even named Boswell, famous for being a biographer of the more famous Samuel Johnson– but also, Sherlock at one point refers to Watson as his own Boswell. (If you can’t tell, you are indeed listening to someone who has the complete annotated Sherlock Holmes at home, because she bought it with her own money as a teenager, because that is a perfectly normal thing to save up for when you are 18.)

At any rate! I definitely enjoyed the clever turns and twists in this story, including Boswell’s dismissive takedown of Gordion-Nott’s motivations. I also really enjoyed all the relationships in this story, including Magda’s journey from “there’s no talking rabbit here, stop encouraging him” to finally petting the rabbit and bringing him tea. I hope Rob ends up writing more stories about this trio, because they are a delightful group, and I imagine Boswell the rabbit has many more tales to tell.

Escape Pod is part of the Escape Artists Foundation, a 501(c)(3) non-profit, and this episode is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International license. Don’t change it. Don’t sell it. Please, go forth and share it.

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Our opening and closing music is by daikaiju at daikaiju.org.

And our closing quotation this week is from Douglas Adams in The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul, who said: The impossible often has a kind of integrity wich the merely improbable lacks.

Thanks for listening! And have fun.