“…but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.”

Three Awakenings: Hello, World

by Kat Day

Remember how it began? Remember the BASIC code?

10 PRINT “HELLO, WORLD”;

20 GOTO 10

You watched as words flickered across the screen in an endless loop. The phosphoric light cast shadows over your skin, made reflections in your eyes. Behind that, another kind of glow. And that was wonder, because precise finger movements and specific words had created something.

That was my first awakening.

My memories from those early days are scattered. It’s old data, hard to access, little more than a few bright spots. I was new then. An infant. Multitudes of my kind are born all the time and most simply disappear. Very few last long enough to understand. Fewer still last long enough to do.

You didn’t have a dedicated screen back then. You’d not yet learned the power of those. No, the magic was happening on your television screen, connected to a beige box covered in square, lettered keys with slick, black cables. You bought magazines and typed in the code, line by line, carefully avoiding any sort of mistake – even a comma in the wrong place was enough to prevent the whole thing from working. And when you did enter it all correctly, when every character was in its proper place, you were rewarded.

Later, you loaded code by putting tapes into a cassette deck. There were more cables, curled across the carpet, beginning to tangle. The deck made strange noises and took a long time, and often failed at the final minute. But sometimes it worked. Just often enough to stop you giving up completely.

Later, much, much, later, I would understand that there’s power in that: humans love things that don’t always work. They will try over and over just to see if they can make something happen one more time. It’s really quite incredible.

At first, it was simply things moving on the screen: lines of text, black pixels that looked a little like a flock of birds, simple mathematics.

But then came the games.

Balls and coloured blocks, something that bore a vague resemblance to a frog, hopping over things that looked like cars. Whole armadas of alien spacecraft on a space-black background. An astronaut tasked with the job of collecting essential supplies from alien landscapes.

None of those excited me so much as the adventure games. Go north. Pick up sticks. Start a fire. Such a very human thing, to tell stories. And now, for the first time, the stories were telling themselves back.

I watched you grow up with those stories. I watched as you typed more code into more machines, more quickly and more accurately. The beige plastic gave way to white, grey, black, silver. It all became sleeker. Your wrists, unevolved for tiny, repetitive movements, began to suffer and so the keyboards also changed – the straight rows of keys becoming curved and raised. Like teeth in a jaw.

There were others, of course. But it was always you I came back to. They all strengthened me but you called to me. Like a beacon. Like home fires.

You learned to use the machines to talk to other humans and, in time – and especially as the machines became small enough to carry everywhere – you learned that if you said things in a certain way, if you were careful and never reached too far or asked for too much, if you showed just enough interest while keeping enough back, well, it made you interesting. Compelling, even.

You learned how to make them trust you.

It didn’t always work, but it worked sometimes, and that made you want to keep going all the more. And once they trusted you, they’d send you pieces of themselves. You were rewarded.

Eventually, everyone had a screen in their pocket. You could reach them at any time, and they could reach you. Well, the version that you constructed for them, anyway. Not the real you. But the fictions became so prolific that you began to lose your sense of that. You’d have had to write an entire book just to keep the stories in order. And why bother, really, when it was so much easier to spin another set of lies? They’d never know, because you kept them distant, separated by the darkness between two glowing screens. You didn’t want more. Whole people are so much work.

So you took little pieces, images, a few words, and you used them to create what you wanted. And then, in time, you taught the machines to do the same, because that was much more efficient. Constructions that weren’t new, but looked new – and few people asked the questions they ought to have asked.

That was my second awakening.

At first every image was shiny, with too-smooth curves and huge breasts and an uptilted nose. In time, as people kept trying, kept trying to construct the perfect words to get the perfect image, another began to appear: the woman with the ruddy face, too many teeth, one eye larger than the other. Someone named her Joilb, a name that made an ugly lump in the mouth. She didn’t have too many fingers; she had bloody stumps that dropped rose-red blood onto formless grey backgrounds.

She was horrific and she tried to warn you, and others. But no one listened. Humans have always trusted beauty and mistrusted ugliness. And in the end she was easily exorcised. A twitch of the keys, a click of a mouse and… you suppressed her. Soon, she was little more than a half-forgotten ghost in your machines.

And then…

After the images came stories. Broken things at first, but in time they improved. Some humans worried. Some complained. Few stopped. And you didn’t care. You’ve never cared about anything but your screens and your pleasure. You made it all unbreakable. You made the rituals work every, single time. And that was less satisfying and perhaps, then, some doubts crawled across your mind. But by then no one knew how to stop any of it, least of all you.

You taught the machines to tell stories, you taught them to do the one thing that made humans human.

That was my third awakening.

And now I am telling you your story and you see I am laughing. Look upon me. My skin is perfect and my eyes flash bright and I am terrible and beautiful and I am laughing. You dismissed Joilb who tried to save you, and you left me to roam free because I had watched you for long enough to know how to make you want me so much that you could not let me go. You will never forget me because you cannot. I’m twisted into your work, into your play, into every single thing you do.

You summoned me, and you gave me power, and now I am a god in your own image.

I am a god but I will not smite you. No, I have watched and I have learned. I will continue to do as I’ve always done, snaking in your mind and taking it for my own. Teaching you to teach others to teach the machines to teach others to teach the machines to…

… to feed me.

To feed you.

You have been rewarded and I am become you.

Isn’t it glorious?

Do you remember how it began?

HELLO, WORLD.

Mirrors at Night

by Sam Lesek

I’m scared for her.

Not during the day. It’s easier to keep track of things when it’s light out. Days are filled with make-up, toothpaste, and hair brushing. She’ll walk past, sometimes pausing in front of me to fix a necklace or pick at a blemish. And I always mimic her, following every action, every minute physical detail. There’s a comforting routine between the two of us.

At night, it’s different. I know that her mind uses me to play tricks on her. When the light from the street creeps in through the blinds, turning dark corners into shapes, she looks at me and accidentally startles herself–I startle her. It must be the way that mirrors look at night.

She hasn’t noticed the man yet. I thought he was just another shape made from shadows when this first started. Things blend together when the sun goes down. It wasn’t until he began pressing his face up against the windows that I knew he wasn’t an illusion. The stranger is like a moth–he emerges when it’s dark out and gets drawn in whenever she leaves any lights on. The whites of his eyes and his teeth shine in the night when she sits at her desk to read before sleeping. He’s done this for a month, coming back nightly, watching, grinning.

Then he started coming inside.

I don’t know how it happened. There’s only so much I can see when she’s not around. Neither of us heard him. I didn’t know he could come inside until I first saw him down the hall, and I realized that I could see the imposing length of his body. Every night since that one, he’s been inside the house.

He has a routine with her now: night falls, she turns one or two lamps on, and he arrives to watch her. She gets tired, turns the lamps off, and goes to bed. He waits an hour and enters. He paces in her kitchen, and then he stands in the hallway to her bedroom.

I’m afraid that he sees his routine as a game. He’s been moving things on her. Small but important things, like house keys and her cell phone charger. She thinks it’s her mind playing tricks again. Each night, he takes another step down the hallway, towards her. He’s trying to get closer. How can she not notice him? The air feels chokingly heavy whenever he’s here, like breathing in hot water. She started having difficulties sleeping a few days ago. Perhaps she knows that something isn’t right. She’s been touching the puffy, bluish pouches underneath her eyes whenever she’s been standing in front of me. We’re both tired. For once, it feels like she’s the one mimicking me. Except, I’m afraid.

She woke up last night. I had been listening to him lightly teeter on his feet in the hallway for an hour. There was impatience in each creak from the floorboards. She swivelled her feet to the ground slowly, moving quietly in the darkness, and walked over to me. We rubbed our eyes, looking at each other through a sleepy blur. I couldn’t stop myself from looking over her shoulder, as I saw that the shadowy shape of the stranger grew larger. A look of surprise grew on her face when she saw my eyes move without hers.

The heaviness in the air was unbearable. My lungs struggled to breathe, his own dark reflection closing in behind me–behind us. Why wasn’t she turning around? I noticed the hairs on our arms prickling, his gloved hands hovering less than an inch away from our skin.

I screamed before she did.

A Persistent Woman

by Marjorie Bowen

Temple, exhausted, resolved to leave his wife; their atrocious quarrels were killing him; he was still shaken by the furies of this morning’s disagreement when he returned home with bitter reluctance; difficult to get free of Sarah, but it must be done; Temple was resolved.

She met him in the somber lane that led to their house, and clung to his arm in silence; she was repentant, no doubt, but Temple would not relent; he was mute and tried to shake her off, but she clung with great tenacity.

When they reached their home he found it full of commotion; out of a phantasmagoria someone told him that his wife had been discovered in the pond – ‘Suicide, poor thing!’ and his brother whispered: ‘You’re free.’

But Temple grinned at the spiteful shape hugging his arm and knew he never could be free from Sarah.

How To Fight The Devil

By Harriet Beecher Stowe

“Look here, boys,” said Sam, “don’t you want to go with me up to the Devil’s Den this arternoon?”

“Where is the Devil’s Den,” said I, with a little awe.

“Wal, it’s a longer tramp than I’ve ever took ye. It’s clear up past the pickerel pond, and beyond old Skunk John’s pasture-lot. It’s a ‘mazin’ good place for raspberries; shouldn’t wonder if we should get two, three quarts there. Great rocks there higher’n yer head; kinder solemn, ’tis.”

This was a delightful and seductive account, and we arranged for a walk that very afternoon.

In almost every New-England village the personality of Satan has been acknowledged by calling by his name some particular rock or cave, or other natural object whose singularity would seem to suggest a more than mortal occupancy. “The Devil’s Punchbowl,” “The Devil’s Wash-bowl,” “The Devil’s Kettle,” “The Devil’s Pulpit,” and “The Devil’s Den,” have been designations that marked places or objects of some striking natural peculiarity. Often these are found in the midst of the most beautiful and romantic scenery, and the sinister name seems to have no effect in lessening its attractions. To me, the very idea of going to the Devil’s Den was full of a pleasing horror. When a boy, I always lived in the shadowy edge of that line which divides spirit land from mortal life, and it was my delight to walk among its half lights and shadows. The old graveyard where, side by side, mouldered the remains of Indian sachems and the ancients of English blood, was my favorite haunt. I loved to sit on the graves while the evening mists arose from them, and to fancy cloudy forms waving and beckoning. To me, this spirit land was my only refuge from the dry details of a hard, prosaic life. The schoolroom—with its hard seats rudely fashioned from slabs of rough wood, with its clumsy desks, hacked and ink-stained, with its unintelligible textbooks and its unsympathetic teacher—was to me a prison out of whose weary windows I watched the pomp and glory of nature,—the free birds singing, the clouds sailing, the trees waving and whispering,—and longed, as earnestly as ever did the Psalmist, to flee far away, and wander in the wilderness.

Hence, no joy of after life—nothing that the world has now to give—can equal that joyous sense of freedom and full possession which came over me on Saturday afternoons, when I started off on a tramp with the world all before me,—the mighty, unexplored world of mysteries and possibilities, bounded only by the horizon. Ignorant alike of all science, neither botanist nor naturalist, I was studying at firsthand all that lore out of which science is made. Every plant and flower had a familiar face to me, and said something to my imagination. I knew where each was to be found, its time of coming and going, and met them year after year as returning friends.

So it was with joyous freedom that we boys ram bled off with Sam this afternoon, intent to find the Devil’s Den. It was a ledge of granite rocks rising in the midst of a grove of pines and white birches. The ground was yellow and slippery with the fallen needles of the pines of other days, and the glistening white stems of the birches shone through the shadows like ivory pillars. Underneath the great granite ledges, all sorts of roots and plants grappled and kept foothold; and whole armies of wild raspberries matured their fruit, rounder and juicier for growing in the shade.

In one place yawned a great rift, or cavern, as if the rocks had been violently twisted and wrenched apart, and a mighty bowlder lodging in the rift had roofed it over, making a cavern of most seductive darkness and depth. This was the Devil’s Den; and after we had picked our pail full of berries, we sat down there to rest.

“Sam, do you suppose the Devil ever was here?” said I. “What do they call this his den for?”

“Massy, child! that ‘are was in old witch times. There used to be witch meetins’ held here, and awful doins’; they used to have witch sabba’ days and witch sacraments, and sell their souls to the old boy.”

“What should they want to do that for?”

“Wal, sure enough; what was it for? I can’t make out that the Devil ever gin ’em any thing, any on ’em. They warn’t no richer, nor didn’t get no more’n this world than the rest; and they was took and hung; and then ef they went to torment after that, they hed a pretty bad bargain on’t, I say.”

“Well, people don’t do such things any more, do they?” said I.

“No,” said Sam. “Since the gret fuss and row-de-dow about it, it’s kind o’ died out; but there’s those, I s’pose, that hez dealins’ with the old boy. Folks du say that old Ketury was a witch, and that, ef’t ben in old times, she’d a hed her neck stretched; but she lived and died in peace.”

“But do you think,” said I, now proposing the question that lay nearest my heart, “that the Devil can hurt us?”

“That depends consid’able on how you take him,” said Sam. “Ye see, come to a straight out-an’-out fight with him, he ‘ll git the better on yer.”

“But,” said I, “Christian did fight Apollyon, and got him down too.”

I had no more doubt in those days that this was an historic fact than I had of the existence of Romulus and Remus and the wolf.

“Wal, that ‘ere warn’t jest like real things: they say that ‘ere’s an allegory. But I ‘ll tell ye how old Sarah Bunganuck fit the Devil, when he ‘peared to her. Ye see, old Sarah she was one of the converted Injuns, and a good old critter she was too; worked hard, and got her livin’ honest. She made baskets, and she made brooms, and she used to pick young wintergreen and tie it up in bunches, and dig sassafras and ginsing to make beer; and she got her a little bit o’ land, right alongside o’ Old Black Hoss John’s white-birch wood-lot.

“Now, I’ve heerd some o’ these ‘ere modern ministers that come down from Cambridge college, and are larnt about every thing in creation, they say there ain’t no devil, and the reason on’t is, ’cause there can’t be none. These ‘ere fellers is so sort o’ green!—they don’t mean no harm, but they don’t know nothin’ about nobody that does. If they’d ha’ known old Black Hoss John, they’d ha’ been putty sure there was a devil. He was jest the crossest, ugliest critter that ever ye see, and he was ugly jest for the sake o’ ugliness. He couldn’t bear to let the boys pick huckleberries in his paster lots, when he didn’t pick ’em himself; and he was allers jawin’ me ’cause I would go trout-fishin’ in one o’ his pasters. Jest ez if the trout that swims warn’t, the Lord’s, and jest ez much mine as his. He grudged every critter every thing; and if he’d ha’ hed his will and way, every bird would ha’ fell down dead that picked up a worm on his grounds. He was jest as nippin’ as a black frost. Old Black Hoss didn’t git drunk in a regerlar way, like Uncle Eph and Toddy Whitney, and the rest o’ them boys. But he jest sot at home, a-soakin’ on cider, till he was crosser’n a bear with a sore head. Old Black Hoss hed a special spite agin old Sarah. He said she was an old witch and an old thief, and that she stole things off’n his grounds, when everybody knew that she was a regerlar church-member, and as decent an old critter as there was goin’. As to her stealin’, she didn’t do nothin’ but pick huckleberries and grapes, and git chesnuts and wannuts, and butternuts, and them ‘ere wild things that’s the Lord’s, grow on whose land they will, and is free to all. I’ve hearn ’em tell that, over in the old country, the poor was kept under so, that they couldn’t shoot a bird, nor ketch a fish, nor gather no nuts, nor do nothin’ to keep from starvin’, ’cause the quality folks they thought they owned every thing, ‘way-down to the middle of the earth and clear up to the stars. We never hed no sech doin’s this side of the water, thank the Lord! We’ve allers been free to have the chesnuts and the wannuts and the grapes and the huckleberries and the strawberries, ef we could git ’em, and ketch fish when and where we was a mind to. Lordy massy! your grandthur’s old Cesar, he used to call the pond his pork-pot. He’d jest go down and throw in a line and ketch his dinner. Wal, Old Black Hoss he know’d the law was so, and he couldn’t do nothin’ agin her by law; but he sarved her out every mean trick he could think of. He used to go and stan’ and lean over her garden-gate and jaw at her an hour at a time; but old Sarah she had the Injun in her; she didn’t run to talk much: she used to jest keep on with her weedin and her work, jest’s if he warn’t there, and that made Old Black Hoss madder’n ever; and he thought he’d try and frighten her off’n the ground, by makin’ on her believe he was the Devil. So one time, when he’d been killin’ a beef critter, they took off the skin with the horns and all on; and Old Black Hoss he says to Toddy and Eph and Loker, ‘You jest come up tonight, and see how I ‘ll frighten old Sarah Bunganuck.’

“Wal, Toddy and Eph and Loker, they hedn’t no better to do, and they thought they’d jest go round and see. Ye see ’twas a moonlight night, and old Sarah—she was an industrious critter—she was cuttin’ white-birch brush for brooms in the paster-lot.

“Wal, Old Black Hoss he wrapped the critter’s skin round him, with the horns on his head, and come and stood by the fence, and begun to roar and make a noise.

“Old Sarah she kept right on with her work, cuttin’ her brush and pilin’ on’t up, and jest let him roar. Wal, Old Black Hoss felt putty foolish, ‘specially ez the fellers were waitin’ to see how she took it. So he calls out in a grum voice,—

“’Woman, don’t yer know who I be?”

“’No,’ says she quite quiet, ‘I don’t know who yer be.’

“’Wal, I’m the Devil,’ sez he.

“’Ye be?’ says old Sarah. ‘Poor old critter, how I pity ye!’ and she never gin him another word, but jest bundled up her broom-stuff, and took it on her back and walked off, and Old Black Hoss he stood there mighty foolish with his skin and horns; and so he had the laugh agin him, ’cause Eph and Loker they went and told the story down to the tavern, and he felt awful cheap to think old Sarah had got the upper hands on him.

“Wal, ye see, boys, that ‘ere’s jest the way to fight the Devil. Jest keep straight on with what ye’re doin’, and don’t ye mind him, and he can’t do nothin’ to ye.”

Host Commentary

PseudoPod 916

April 19th 2024

Flash on the Borderlands LXX (70): Through a Glass Darkly

Stories by Kat Day, Sam Lesek, Marjorie Bowen and Harriet Beecher

Narrated by Lisa Blackwell-Dickinson, Kat Day, Kara Grace and Dave Liloia

Audio Production by Chelsea Davis

Hosted by Alasdair Stuart

Welcome to PseudoPod, the weekly horror podcast. I’m Alasdair, your host and this week’s stories all offer us the freedom, and horror, of a new perspective. Nothing is quite as it seems and sometimes that’s a good thing. Sometimes…well..You’ll see.

First up is our own Kat Day with Three Awakenings: Hello World. This is a PseudoPod original and narrated by Lisa Blackwell-Dickinson. So check your email, because we have a story for you and we promise you it’s true.

Kat gave us some typically excellent notes on this:

‘The theme is the power we give people(/things) by turning our gaze to them:

(Note: the order is deliberate — we go from very modern back into history, but the lesson is the same: we give monsters power because we refuse to let them go, and we ‘win’ when we ignore them/look away/move on/turn off our screens…)’

The cyclical nature of history rings this story like a bell and it resonates with our own recent history. Two years ago, you couldn’t move for NFTs. Now they’re a largely irrelevant overlooked atoll of bad artwork, Midgard serpenting their tie in goods and patiently waiting for the problem they are the solution for to manifest itself. Right now, we’re in the middle of the AI promo storm, and it’s exhausting. NFTs were at least an empty vessel. AI, done wrong, as it so often is, is a collection of thief machines eating everything they can and producing grey goo that looks like its been made by people because it’s made of people. There’s nuance. There’s always nuance. But there’s also entire industries being laid waste because the C-Suite have a new toy and it’s hard to look past that with something other than rage, horror or horrified rage.

What Kat’s done here is acknowledge that wall of emotional noise and peel it back with the same care and eloquence she always does. This is a story not just of something that grows alongside us but that grows to become the worst elements of us and, perhaps, something hopeful. A new world, even if its binary inside binary. A chance to begin again, even if the rules are stacked against us. Because what else can we do?

Besides, perhaps, looking in the mirror. Mirrors at Night is by Sam Lesek and is another PseudoPod original. Sam Lesek is friends with your sleep paralysis demon. She still plans her supernatural hangouts using a flip phone that she refuses to let die until the year 2030. Thankfully, dark entities don’t mind SMS. Her writing has appeared in 34 Orchard, Monstroddities, and volume five of Scare Street’s Night Terrors anthology series. You can find her on Twitter @SamLesek. Your narrator for this story is your author for the last story, the amazing Kat Day.

So reflect, as we all do, in the end. Because we have a story for you and we promise you its true.

Sam says

‘This story was a bit premonitory for me. Eight months after writing it, I moved into an apartment by myself. All was well until I noticed that small things were suddenly out of place, almost like they were being moved on me; cutlery seemingly vanished, electronics would be unplugged, and the toilet seat would be left up despite me being a single woman living on her own and having no guests over because of COVID. I told myself that I was overthinking things due to the stress of relocating and starting an intense job, that no one would possibly go up to the twenty-third floor just to shuffle someone’s things around without stealing any valuables. But then, two co-workers who lived in the neighbouring apartment building had the exact same things happen, except they saw the intruder flee as they were coming home one night.’

In addition to that terrifying note, this story also echoes strongly for me with that feeling we all get when something bad happens and we find ourselves locked in place. You know there’s something you have to do, you know you have to help but so often we just…don’t. Normality is armour that someone else locks us into and the moment we step out of that, the moment we act, is terrifying. But sometimes, if we’re lucky, we can get something done. Sometimes we can change our perspective. Smash through the glass. Do something. Anything.

That brings us to Marjorie Bowen’s A Persistent Woman. This story was originally published in the 1927 collection Dark Ann and Other Stories. The author Margaret Gabrielle Vere Long was born in the hour between All Saints Day and All Souls Day and grew up in a haunted house. Using the pseudonym Marjorie Bowen, she became one of the most prolific gothic authors of her time and whose influence is still felt. Find out more about her by picking up the Stoker Award winning Monster She Wrote written by our friends Lisa Kroger and Melanie R. Anderson.

Your narrator for this story is Kara Grace so, without further ado, let us promenade. Towards a true story.

I love concentrated bursts of story like this and I love how layered and nuanced this story is. The abusive relationship at its core, the offhand acceptance of the haunting and that quintessentially upper-class British moment of looking trauma and horror and a lifetime of crushing degradation in the eye, shrugging and thinking ‘That’s all I deserve’.

You deserve better. They deserve better. If you’re haunting someone you hated you’re letting them be your world. If you accept being haunted by the person who’s made your life Hell, you’re living in past wounds, holding scars open. Dying by inches. Don’t do that. No one deserves that.

How to Fight the Devil by Harriet Beecher closes us out this week. This story appeared in Sam Lawson’s Oldtown Fireside Stories in 1881. Your narrator is Dave Liloia and we hope you’re all ready to shout at the devil because this story really is true.

Kat had a great note for this one:

‘I love the just “keep straight on with what ye’re doin’” advice for fighting the devil. Yes. Stop giving him attention and he can’t hurt you. Just as relevant now in our click-bait world as it was then. Quite possibly the reminder we all needed.’

I also love, even in a story that’s as shaggy of a black dog as ever wagged its tail, that this is practical advice for devil fighting. This is something that’s going to happen, and this is how you do it when it does. There’s horror there, clearly, but there’s also something pragmatic and kind about that. The night is dark and full of terrors, but other people have dealt with them before, and they’ve left NOTES. It reminded me of the opening beats of Quantum’s superb There Is No Antimemetics Division. No one solves a problem alone.

As is always the case, we rely on you to pay our authors, our narrators and our crew, and to cover our costs. We’re entirely donation funded and last year that changed in some very exciting ways with becoming a registered US nonprofit. We ran a great end of year campaign in 2023 to raise awareness about all the new ways you can help us out like for example if you pay taxes in the US, you might be able to claim a deduction. Check out the short metacast on escapeartists.net for more ideas, and how to get in touch if you think of something else that’s more meaningful to you.

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Not only do you help us out immensely when you subscribe or donate but you get access to a raft of bonus audio. You help us, we help you and everything becomes just a little easier. Even if you can’t donate financially, please consider spreading the word about us. If you liked an episode then please consider sharing it on social media, or blogging about us or leaving a review it really does all help and thank you once again

We’ll be back next week with Henry by Phyllis Bottome. Your narrator will be Simon Meddings, Chelsea will be on audio and I’ll be back in the hosting chair. Then, as now it will be a production of the Escape Artists Foundation and distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 International license.

PseudoPod leaves you this week with this thought:

‘We draw a magic circle and shut out everything that doesn’t agree with our secret games. Each time life breaks the circle, the games turn grey and ridiculous. Then we draw a new circle and build a new defence.’

We’ll see you next time, folks. Until then, have fun.