The Elias Anomaly

Seventeen

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Joseph rose at six AM and enjoyed the first, real sunrise that he could ever remember. It appeared that the calendar in the Cluster was synched, in a civilised manner, to Greenwich Mean Time. That meant that today was Thursday and the month was February.

It was a fine, chilly, February morning and Joseph felt freer than he had, well, as far back as he could remember. This body he was inhabiting was expected to be inside the Cluster. Presumably no one who knew him in London would be expecting him to be anywhere or to do anything. A good job too as Joseph couldn't remember any of these things anyway.

That was a problem. Presumably Robert Stamp couldn't remain absent from his own life in perpetuity. That was an issue to be dealt with in a time called 'eventually'. Right now he was just pleased to be outside of the Cluster.

After a good night's rest Joseph had come to the conclusion that he would trust this to be reality proper. The differences between where he was now and the Cluster were not huge but reality, somehow, just felt more real.

Joseph couldn't explain it any more than that. If pressed he might have come out with some blather about clouds, breezes, the play of light through curls of smoke and whatnot. Blather was all that it would have been.

Instead of wasting time thinking about such trivia Joseph made himself some breakfast. He ate it looking out of his long picture window over the London skyline. As the sun climbed Joseph wondered what he would do today.

The immediate thought was to walk along the streets until he was confident that he had broken the bounds of a folly as described by Dulcie. Later he would talk to Dulcie. Other than that he had no agenda. He supposed that he should be angry about his loss of identity but, on reflection, he couldn't rouse himself to care.

His reverie was interrupted by a buzz from the door control by the entrance to the loft. Joseph wandered over and picked up the handset, not thinking about the consequences of such an action.

"Hello?" he said.

"Courier," said a voice on the other end. "Got a parcel for Joseph Elias."

"That's me," Joseph said. "Come up in the lift."

While the lift whirred up to the loft Joseph had some time. In that time he made a realisation. The number of people who had the knowledge to address a parcel to Joseph Elias was both limited and interesting. While the courier appeared at the entrance, handed over a flat square box and harvested a signature Joseph tried not to panic.

The courier showed no signs of being an assassin or similar. He took his clipboard and left, a fact for which Joseph counted himself lucky. Joseph had to remind himself that in reality he was known as Robert Stamp, Joseph Elias didn't exist.

Non-existence notwithstanding Joseph looked down at the small brown box in his hand with some anxiety. Someone had sent something to the non-existent Joseph Elias. Someone knew he was here.

What was in the box?

The obvious fear was that the box contained a bomb, after all that's what nasty people sent in the mail, wasn't it? Of course, there were many packages people opened on a daily basis weren't bombs. That made the delivery of bombs in the mail a newsworthy event. So, in the matter of opening this specific package, Joseph had the odds in his favour on a bet that this was not a bomb.