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"But what are 
you
 doing here?” Rick said. “Getting smashed all alone before five?" Rick asked. "Have you become some hard-drinking artist come down for his garret to draw inspiration from this little mock-Dickensian tavern?" His jaw widened again in his wicked Tyrannosaurus smile.

“I...I just happened to be passing by and... Christ, I just needed a drink. You know. Not been a good day, all in all. Or year, come to think of it. Or life. Fuck."

He smiled lamely, trying to dredge up the defiant, carefree personality of his boyhood, the one that Rick would be expecting to meet: not the crushed loser he now was. He glanced up at his old friend, but Rick was calling the barman again, waving Glenn’s empty glass.

"Hey, Ed" he bellowed. “Another whatever it was for my friend here."

Glenn started to protest that he'd had enough, he should be getting on, but Rick waved him silent.

"Come on, this calls for a celebration surely. In fact…" he hailed the barman again. "Hey, what champagne you got, Ed?"

Glenn felt very conscious of his shabby appearance, the crotch-sagging, no-brand jeans he'd been wearing for weeks and the scuffed sneakers. But the barman was already uncorking a bottle with a pleasing pop, and Rick was counting a wad of twenties from his shark-skin billfold.

"Now," said Rick, as he poured two flutes, "you were saying?"

The bar was filling with punters, pale wintry faces framed by dark suits and gelled fringes. Their mood was upbeat, the day's labors at end, alcohol and flirtation the new order of business. Glenn envied them. He raised his glass to Rick's and started to explain, but it seemed too self-indulgent, surrounded by these busy people celebrating their release from hours of lucrative tedium.

“I was doing this project. I guess you’d call it a community-based installation…if that doesn’t sound too wanky…”

“It does.” Rick laughed and half-emptied his glass. “But do go on.”

“Anyway, I put all my savings – and more, in fact – into it… And it didn’t work. Not only that, but I just got my first public flushing down the toilet. Here.” He handed the crumpled free-sheet to his school friend. Rick skimmed it quickly, then dropped it dismissively on the wet counter.

“What do they know? I’m sure it was … good. Where can I see it?” Glenn shrugged again. “You can’t. Or rather you can, if you go to my flat. It’s in the hallway there. I had to take it down. The gallery would only display it for a weekend. No great loss, either way. The review’s pretty much hit the nail on the head.”

“Well, I’ll come round and see it sometime anyway,” Rick said, missing the point. “Where you living these days?”

Glenn paused, overcome by the effort of keeping up this pretense of a chummy reunion over drinks.

“Archway,” he sighed. “Not for long, though. Place is too expensive. Gonna have to find somewhere else. Maybe move back to my parents’ place…or try and find a squat somewhere…” He trailed off, staring at the floor, where he noticed a deep gouge in the faux stone flagging.

There was an awkward moment of silence. Glenn felt Rick’s hand on his shoulder. Then, out of the blue, his old friend blurted out an invitation.

“Tell you what. I just moved into a new pad. Got quite a nice little bonus last year, made a tidy investment on this great place up by the canal. I’ve got a guest bedroom, only used it as an office space so far, and a bit of storage. Why don’t you move in for a bit, till you get back on your feet?”

Glenn started to object, insisting that he couldn’t possibly, but shut up when he felt warm tears trickling down his flushed cheeks. He nodded silently. Rick smiled, then poured more champagne. “Come on, mate, it’s alright,” he said. He turned to his colleagues who were standing a few feet away, eyeing up the women by the juke box. “Meantime, cheer up. Let’s get blasted.

***

“So come on. Tell me.” Lola smiled over her glass of wine.

“Tell you what?” said Oriente.

“Who you really are,” she said.

“I thought you said that was
gauche
,” he said. “Anyway, If I told you that, I'd be in trouble.” He sipped his wine. It was, without a doubt, the best thing he'd drunk in a century.

“You're already in trouble,” she said.

“They'd lock me up and throw away the key if told you. This isn't just an academic lecture. It's a police investigation. They'd kill me and whisk me off to your awful heaven.”

She looked mock-offended. “What makes you think it's awful?”

“Tell me about you instead,” he said.

They were in the staff room at the clinic. It was the night shift, and Lola was the only nurse on duty.

He took another sip of wine and closed his eyes.

“Been a while since you had a decent drink, eh? All that crapberry moonshine and hick ale must get you down after a while,” she said, sipping her own drink. “I don’t know how you’ve been able to stand it all these years.”

“It has its compensations,” he said. “This must be expensive,” he said, raising his glass.

“Like I said, I unexpectedly came into a little credit up there,” Lola said.

“Surely not an inheritance?” The hunter smiled. “That concept’s a little redundant these days, no?”

“No, just had a little bit of good, old fashioned luck. I wasn’t always a nurse, as you may have guessed.” She leaned over the table and whispered conspiratorially. “Actually, I used to work for the Gee-Oh-Dee-Dee.”

“The Gee-Oh-Dee-Dee?” frowned Oriente. “You worked for
God
? Dah.”

She seemed surprised he'd never heard of it. “Stands for the Generation of Deities Department. A government office. You know how bureaucrats love acronyms. I guess they thought they were being pretty cute with that one.”

“And why would a government department be generating deities? I never saw one,” said Oriente.

“That’s because they’re illegal outside of the Zone,” said Lola.

The Zone: finally something Oriente did actually know of. It was a vast area of Central America and Mexico that had been designated, during the Exodus, as a cross between a reservation for those who didn't want to commit to immortality, and a penal colony for criminals who had forfeited that same right. But he had never heard of any deities there.

“You see,” explained Lola, cupping her glass, “the people in the Zone have questions about life, just like anybody else. And in their case, they get particularly curious about the fact that their world is bounded by two large barriers – the Great Northern Wall on what used to be the US-Mexico border, and the Panama Canal in the south, which as you know, was widened and also has a huge wall running along its southern shore. Basically, they're locked in, and no one gets in or out, except a few adventurers and academics. And not all of them get out alive.”

“Now, the number of people living in the Zone has grown since the first rump population of Earth got relocated there. Nowhere near what it was, but big enough to be wondering what’s on the other side of those walls.”

“People always want to know what’s on the other side of the wall,” said Oriente. He filled their glasses again. He wished this boozy evening with this beautiful woman would never end, that he didn’t have to return to the Delpy in the morning and perform his Memory Man act.

“True,” said Lola. “Only, in the Zone, it’s not such a hot idea to go near the wall to find out. It's mined. So at the GoDD, we helped ease those existential anxieties. Providing the locals with gods who enforce the old laws – the commandments, as they’re known – such as the prohibition of machinery and a general ban on approaching the walls. It makes life easier for them, and for us.”

“Why for you?”

“Because we don’t want to have to kill them, of course. If they get too close to the wall, they’ll probably get killed by the Watchmen. Only a few select groups are allowed to leave. As you know, these people aren’t chipped. There aren’t any soul poles in the Zone. Zero technology. A state of nature. And we don’t want to have their deaths on our conscience. Though sometimes, needs must.”

“And what was your job?” Oriente said

Lola had worked in intelligence. Most of it was automated surveillance: the Eternals themselves were so distracted by the endless entertainments and temptations of their self-spawning paradises that most agents were part-timers, people who followed the events of the Zoners in the same way as one might have watched a soap opera before the Exodus. They tuned in from time to time, checking up on known trouble-makers. If the computers spotted an aberration in indigenous behavior, the agents reported to the Central Intelligence Committee, who collated profiles and referred miscreants to the Action Committee. Lola’s job had been to supervise a group of agents following several clans of known technophiles living close to what had once been Vera Cruz. The department had suspected them of plotting some form of escape bid.

“So what did you do?” said Oriente.

“First off, we sent a messenger. We used the deer-god. He ‘appeared’ as they were gathering for a family celebration. A birth, a baby girl.” Oriente noticed the wistful look on her face.

“They were sitting outside the walls of their village compound. There were trees across stream where they washed. We projected the god – Freijis was his name-- among the trees and he warned them that if they didn’t desist forthwith and right fucking now, he would righteously smite their asses.”

Oriente smiled. “And did they?”

“Did they ever. They picked up the kids and fled, took us right to a cave where they’d been trying to put together some kind of solar-powered engine that could power a dirigible over the wall, or out to sea. They smashed it up there and then.”

“And if they hadn't?” Oriente had a slightly uneasy feeling. He recalled the strange visions he had seen himself, out in the woods. Yet they couldn't be linked, surely: Lola said it was illegal to project outside the Zone.

“There are ways and means. Missiles that can find their ways into the deepest of caves. But as it turned out, these guys were building their machine for someone else. Command never said exactly who, but it seems we helped thwart some kind of attack on the Watchmen. I never found out who these people were. There was some rumor, that they were all clones of the same person. Weird shit. But I was given a pretty generous bonus and a pass to return Earthside. That’s the intel business for you. One man’s disaster is another woman’s passport to her dreams.”

***

It was an uncomfortable co-habitation at first, for both Rick and Glenn. The boyhood friends, by now men and all but strangers, had never been as close at school as they liked to remember. What should have been a fleeting reunion over drinks, a few tales of teenage rebellion and of fearsome teachers diminished by age, suddenly took on a more permanent character thanks to Rick’s tipsy act of generosity.

Glenn waited a couple of days to move his few belongings into the penthouse apartment, giving Rick a fair chance to back out once he’d sobered up. He filled the time by dragging his disgraced artwork a dumpster, then packed as much as he could fit into two hold-alls and caught the bus to Islington, where Rick’s glass and steel block rose majestically above the lime trees fringing the Regent’s Canal.

At the door, Rick was all smiles, betraying no hint of annoyance at his old friend’s cadging a room. Perhaps he really meant it, Glenn hoped as he lugged a nylon bag the size of a small tent, desperately trying not to scratch the blonde parquet. But as Rick showed him to his guest room, Glenn noted the invitation appeared to now be codified by a vague time limit.

“Stay a few weeks, you’re sure to be sorted by then.” Glenn very much doubted he’d ever be ‘sorted,’ but put his bags in the corner of the room anyway.

“Time for a beer,” said Rick. He led his grateful new flat-mate to the living room.

Glenn drew a sharp breath. Perched like an eagle’s nest atop the brand-new high-rise, the combined living room/kitchen space had wrap-around, floor-to-ceiling windows, making it completely open but, since there were no other buildings overlooking it, totally private. Rick opened a sliding window to a wooden deck looking out north to Hampstead Heath.

“Oh my god,” said Glenn, taking the proffered Corona bottle, though it was only half past ten in the morning. “This is awesome. Must have cost you a bomb.”

Rick smirked, clearly gratified. Glenn had always been the smarter one at school, more academic. Here, he guessed, was a redemption of sorts, for a rivalry both had long ago forgotten.

“Like I said, good bonus last year,” Rick said. “And the year before, come to think of it. Anyway, mate, make yourself at home, there’s beer, wines and snacks in the fridge. Oh yeah, and I just happen to have…” From his dressing gown pocket he produced a fat joint, which he lit and sucked on before passing it to Glenn. They stood in silence for a few minutes, smoking and sipping beer. Glenn felt all the awkwardness of the situation drift away over the city.

When the joint was half done, Rick grinned and shuffled back to his bedroom. Glenn suspected his new flat mate was probably not alone in there. He lingered a while on the magnificent terrace, elbows soaking the damp from the wooden railing, his gaze sweeping across London under its grey skies. He turned and took in the luxury apartment, its glass walls streaked with raindrops, and he felt unexpectedly excited all of sudden. He took a long swig of beer, a drag of his joint, and let his mind wander.