SquidgeWorld Archive

Leo and the President were talking quietly together when Charlie waved me into the Oval Office.

"What's up?" I asked as he closed the door, leaving the three of us alone. Leo gestured to me to sit on one of the sofas, joining them in what, even for this office, was a secretive huddle.

"What we have to tell you now must be kept between the three of us," Leo said.

"Sure," I said. The request was not unusual.

"Josh," the President began. "What do you know about the history of this building?"

I looked at him from under raised eyebrows. "Seriously?"

"Why was the White House built here? Why was it built on this piece of land of all others?"

"Sir, I can get you on the nickel tour if you like."

"Josh," Leo murmured warningly.

I shrugged. "I don't know, was it the piece of land least likely to sink into a swamp?"

Surprisingly the President did not begin a lecture on the geological composition of DC soil. Instead he ignored the flip remark.

"No, the land where the White House now stands was known to be of special significance to the Algonquin Indians who used to live here."

"So they must have been thrilled when we dumped a ton of bricks and cement on it."

"The Native American population had been decimated or exiled by this time. But a discovery was made and the White House was constructed here to conceal it. Since the time of Washington the knowledge of this discovery has passed from President to President. The secret knowledge of something strange and possibly magical."

I breathed out a long "Ah-kay."

"In the latter part of the twentieth century," the President solemnly continued. "The secret was lost, we've known there was something here we just haven't known what it is or where to look."

"Until now," said Leo.

Standing, he walked to the other side of the room. He pressed one of the wood panels on the wall and stood back. I heard a click and a segment of the floor fell away revealing, unbelievably, a stairwell.

I went to have a closer look and then turned back to the President. "Is this the tunnel you've been searching for, sir? Can you finally make your escape?"

"It doesn't lead out," the President said. "It leads down. Go with Leo, he'll show you."

Leo led me down the dusty winding staircase and the panel slid closed above my head. He switched on a torch and I followed the sound of his footsteps and the circle of torchlight. I sensed our journey was taking us down to the level of the basement and when we finally stopped we were in darkness at a heavy door, its wood aged and warped.

It took both of us to heave the door open and on the other side was something I could not begin to explain.

It was a small room, just four walls built around what should have been a dirt floor but was what I can only describe as a pool of light. It was a circle of pale silver, turning and mobile like a whirlpool. The peculiar light did not come from an outside source like a spotlight but seemingly from a deep place within, casting an eerie glow upwards illuminating the dust particles we had disturbed.

I crouched down to look into the pool, trying to find a source for the light.

"You can touch it," Leo said and he leaned down and put his hand into it. I cautiously did the same. It felt like a rush of air, warm and forceful, pulling with firm but resistible pressure.

The light was bright, like looking at sunlight through dappled bathroom glass and finally I had to withdraw my hand and look away. I turned to Leo.

"What is it?"

"We don't know," he said frankly. "The President was looking at some papers about the construction of the current Oval office which, as you know wasn't until 1933 and he found out about the secret doorway and how to open it."

I looked again into the strange light. "Have you studied it?"

"No, we only found it this morning. We dropped the President's watch in to see what would happen and it disappeared."

"Did it burn up or something?"

"No, it just seemed to be carried away."

"So what do the scientists say?" I assumed there was some major Presidential enquiry gearing up.

"We haven't told anyone."

"No one?"

"Nope. Come on, lets go back up," he said and we left the little room, the door slamming shut behind us.

Leo switched on the torch again to guide us back along the passageway and we found the President waiting for us in the Oval Office.

"What do you make of it, Josh?" He asked as we took our seats again.

"Some kind of - uh - energy - some kind of -." I shook my head. "Nothing outside science fiction, sir. I've no ideas at all."

"Well, that makes three of us."

"But you're keeping it a secret."

"Josh, we don't know what we're dealing with here," he said. "We don't know whether it's an accident of nature, just a harmless, pretty effect or whether it holds unique power. Or just say it contains energy more powerful than an atom bomb.

"We're going to assume for the moment our past-Presidents had good reason to bury it deep and keep it secret. If we release it to the military or the CIA there's no telling how it might be used or abused. If not now then in the future. We want to know what it is before we decide to tell the world or to fill in that passageway for good."

"Right, good plan," I said, and when no one spoke. "So what do you want me to do?"

"We haven't inherited much from the past Presidents," Leo said. "Only a single sentence survives and it's, 'A gateway to a new world.'"

"In the eighteenth century that could have meant anything," the President began. "America was the new world. It could be a metaphor for something. Or it could literally mean another world."

"But what it suggests," Leo continued. "Is that the energy or light, whatever it is, might carry a traveller. To another place, or perhaps even to another time."

I tried to absorb this.

"So what we are asking you to do," the President said while Leo watched me. "Is volunteer to go through the door to the new world. We want you to step inside the pool of light."

It was time for me to raise my eyebrows again. "I'm sorry? You want me to what?"

"We want you to volunteer to explore it."

"The thing that might be more powerful than an atom bomb?"

"We realise what we're asking. We realise the danger," Leo said. "But you're one of us, you don't have a chain of command to follow apart from to the people in this room. And we trust you to use what you learn wisely."

"Really?"

"Josh, whatever you think, we rely on you and respect your judgement. You've proved yourself to us time and time again. But I am not ordering you to go. This is your decision because, as you will understand, I cannot guarantee it is a mission from which you will return."

Leo stood and put his hand on my shoulder. "Go home and think about what you want to do. Let us know tomorrow."

~*~

My apartment never really felt like home. It should have, it was a warm place occupying the top floor of a house in a quiet street. It was very much mine with books, photographs, bits I'd picked up along the way and comfortable furniture, some of which I had inherited from my parents when my mother died last year.

But I always felt more at home in the office. There I could work and not think about the single coat hanging on the hook by the door and the one plate to wash up after dinner. At the office I never experienced the same unnerving sense of there being an empty space where someone else ought to be.

Tonight I drowned the loneliness in more glasses of whiskey than I probably should have and pretended to consider my options.

Though the truth was I had already decided to do as the President had asked me. I decided I did not really have anything to lose. After a couple more drinks, brilliant deduction led me to figure out the President and Leo's real reason for asking me, out of everyone, to volunteer for this mission. Suicide mission no less.

I believed them when they said they trusted me but I was not by any means an obvious choice. I had no survival skills for a start. In fact I was a catastrophe waiting to happen. So I came to the conclusion they chose me because I was the one who had buried the last member of his family, because I was the one with no wife, no child, no one to mourn me if I did not come back.

Fair enough. I could understand that but I was still awake at 4am trying to convince myself there was someone to miss me if the worst happened. I was almost sure Donna would even though I knew I was a pain in the ass to her most of the time. And I had a best friend who would probably miss me too. Even though I had not spoken to him in nine or ten months and even though he did not care that I had been secretly in love with him for just about the whole twenty odd years I had known him.

That's when I decided it would be a good idea to phone Sam in California. After all, it would be wrong to go without speaking to him for one last time.

A sleep-fogged voice answered the phone after a couple of rings.

"Sam?"

"Yes?"

"Hi, Sam,"

"Josh? Is everything all right?" See, Sam cared.

"Uh yeah, I just thought. We hadn't spoken in a while. I just thought - were you asleep?"

Sam's voice concealed a sigh, "No man, why would I be asleep at -," I could hear a fumbling for glasses. "- at 1am,"

"Oh good."

"Are you drunk, by any chance?"

"Not by chance, on purpose. Are you?"

There was a pause. "So, how are you doing?"

"Oh fine."

I couldn't think of anything to say though my new secret burned on my tongue just as my old one had for years and years.

"Josh, are you still there?"

"Yes. Are you?"

Another sigh. "Why are you calling me now? After all these months."

"To say goodbye," I said accidentally.

"Where are you going?" Sam sounded worried again. "You've still got a job haven't you?"

"What? Oh yeah. It was touch and go for a while after the whole...

"Carrick..."

"Yeah, that whole thing but, it turns out I'm necessary and indispensable after all. Well, up to a point."

"So can you tell me where you're going?"

"Not as such."

"Josh, do you want to...you know...speak to me."

"I do. I just...can't Sam." And then I thought it couldn't do any harm, not now. "Man y'know, I love you. Really love you, just off the chart. Y'know." I tailed off. "That's all and I just wanted to say goodbye."

Then I hung up not waiting for a reply, a dim and flickering flame of sanity telling me I did not want to hear the answer I was likely to get. When the phone rang straight away I disconnected and left it off the hook before slipping finally into a deep alcoholic sleep.

The next day was Saturday and I slept late, waking up with a fearful hangover no amount of aspirins and showers and cups of coffee could dislodge. It kept hitting me though - today was New World day.

I put it off. I finished some work that I convinced myself could not wait. Delved into the desk drawer stuffed with things like my will and my passport and financial papers. I put it all into a sort of order. Everything was going to Sam.

Sam. Now why was I sure I had spoken to him last night? Couldn't have.

In the drawer I found a gold chain with a small gold musical note charm hanging from it. It was the only thing of Joanie's I owned and I had always worn it for exams and elections and other red-letter days. I put it on now for good luck.

Eventually as the Autumn day drew into evening I changed into jeans, a sweater and a warm suede jacket. I stuffed a couple of apples, some bagels, some chocolate bars and a small flask of coffee into my backpack. Some people would have demanded weapons and breathing equipment but I was venturing forth with a supply of caffeine. You get what I mean about survival skills.

By the time I got to the White House it was late and most people who had come in on a Saturday had already left. Toby was still there, though, poring over paperwork. He glared at me as I stopped by his office for no terrifically good reason.

"What do you want, I'm busy?"

I slouched into one of his visitor chairs because I knew it
would annoy him. "What are you doing?"

"Pardons."

"You just want to throw away the key, don't you?"

"At this point, yes."

"Any possibles?"

He nodded, tapping a file restlessly with his pen. "You would think a society as allegedly sophisticated as this one would be more careful about who it puts in cages."

When Toby could not be persuaded to talk to me any longer I found Leo and told him I was ready. He called the President from the residence and they both accompanied me in a silent procession down the stairwell and through the narrow passageway.

Leo walked ahead with a torch and the President walked behind, sometimes with a fatherly hand on my shoulder. I think I was literally shaking with fear and if I had not been so concerned about letting them both down I might have turned back.

Leo opened the ancient door and we entered the brick built room. The circle of light had not changed despite my half-convincing myself it had all been a dream.

Leo spotted something on the ground and picked it up. "Your watch, sir. It's back." He checked the time. "Still working. I guess that's a good sign."

"Josh," the President said as we all stood around the pool. "Are you sure this is what you want to do?"

"Yes sir," I lied. "Have you got a message for the new world when I get there?"

The President shook his head. "You'll know what to say, Josh. You'll know what to do."

Then he shook my hand and hugged me and Leo did the same. "Good luck son, come back safe," he said.

~*~

Afterwards I thought of it as being pulled downwards like water into a plughole. A strange, but not unpleasant, sensation which lasted only a second or two before I found myself deposited on an earth floor.

I got to my feet, unhurt, and found I was still next to the pool, or one like it, but the brick walls had vanished as had Leo and the President. I realised I had definitely travelled.

I was in a more simple room. Walls of tightly banked earth surrounded me reaching up several feet and narrowing at the top to a mounded ceiling. Carved into a wooden plaque high on the wall was an Indian symbol.

There was no door and for a moment I thought I was trapped. But then I saw a crawl space at ground level. It was a basic tunnel, made for a human though one considerably smaller than myself. I was not too impressed by the idea of crawling into this tunnel but I could not see myself explaining to the two men waiting for a report of a new world that I had been put off by claustrophobia.

So I pushed my backpack ahead of me and began my death-defying journey into the damp and musty darkness. It took me a long fifteen minutes to reach the end but the tunnel was made well, sloping gradually upwards, and it held firm. Finally I hacked through the thick growth of weeds and roots covering the entrance and struggled, gasping for air on to the surface.

One thing was certain, this wasn't the White House. It did not look like any kind of new world either. It just looked like a bad neighbourhood. I had come up on a patch of neglected waste ground at the end of a block. A public building of some kind dominated the block, built in uniform grey concrete and surrounded by a high wall.

I brushed the earth off me and felt in my pocket for my cell phone. I may as well just tell Leo I had arrived, would prefer not to stay and ask him to, if possible, call me a cab. My phone blinked no signal though, so I put it away and started walking.

I felt uneasy. It was dark and the area did not seem to be a welcoming one. No one else was about and there were no cars on the road so I walked for a while trying to get my bearings.

It was a deprived area, I could see that but what I could not understand was why nothing was familiar. I knew none of the street signs or the shop names and even the few cars parked at the side of the road were makes I did not recognise.

Finally I came to the front of the building. A sign read 'Senator Joseph McCarthy State Prison, District of Columbia'. High iron doors were fast shut and nothing would have induced me to knock and ask for help. For a start, where exactly had this prison sprung from? Who had given it such a name? I knew now I was in DC but it might as well have been the moon for all its sense of familiarity.

The front of the building faced a main street and as I still could not get my phone to work I decided to try and find a cab or a phone booth.

It was a wide street lined with poorly built and shabby three storey apartment blocks. The buildings huddled together in blocks, separated by side streets and narrow passageways. There were people at home in the apartments, I could tell by the lights at some of the windows. But there was no one on the litter filled, pot holed, stinking streets. Not one single person.

Turning a corner I found myself in another row of tenement buildings. This street was eerily deserted as well but I began to be convinced I was being watched.

Then I heard the sound of footsteps. They were approaching from a nearby block and as they grew closer and louder I realised it was the sound of a troop of men marching. They turned the corner and I saw them. There were about twenty men in black uniforms, armed with rifles and marching in military formation following a leader. Their uniforms were not from any police or army I knew and certainly none that should be roaming the DC streets at night.

I froze, not knowing what to do. I was certain I did not want anything to do with these people and yet to run away would only draw their attention. In a few moments they would see me, the only person on the street, without any reasonable explanation as to why I was there.

I pressed myself against the wall of the nearest building trying to conceal myself in its shadow as far as I could. I edged sideways with my back to the wall, hoping to find a doorway or a side street to duck into. But I had not got far when someone grabbed me and dragged me off the street. I was pulled backward into an alleyway and flung into a shadowy corner. A hand was slammed over my mouth to crush the loud complaint I was about to utter.

"Shut up," a man's voice tense with anxiety, hissed at me.

The men trooped steadily by. I could not see them from my position but I heard the noise of the march fade as they moved on. Only when there was silence again did the man drop his hand from my mouth.

He spun me round to face him and pushed me against the wall. He gripped my arms.

"Who are you?" He demanded. "What are you doing here?" He shook me slightly. "Don't you know the Militia could have shot you on sight?"

He frisked me swiftly and took my phone from my pocket, examining it and then holding it out to me. "What's this? Is it a weapon?"

He waited for me to answer his urgent questions but I could not. I only had one word for him, one question.

"Sam?"

It was Sam. My Sam. Sam Seaborn. My friend for twenty years, late of the White House and now supposedly resident of a very nice beach in California.

Okay, not looking exactly like Sam. He was thinner than I had ever seen him before, he even seemed smaller and slighter than I remembered him. His hair was longer and his blue eyes were fired with fear and adrenalin. But there was no question it was him. None. He wore black jeans and a battered black leather jacket over a hooded sweatshirt. Clothes Sam would never ordinarily contemplate. But it was Sam.

"No one's called me that in years," he said. He looked deeply at me then and I thought I saw a flicker of recognition cross his face. But he said, "Who are you?"

"Its me," I exclaimed and he quietened me with a gesture. "Josh! Josh Lyman. I don't understand any of this. When did the world turn into George Orwell?"

"You can't be Josh," he said gripping my arm again. "You can't be. Josh Lyman died sixteen years ago."

He let go of me and stepped back, not taking his eyes from me. "But you look like him," he breathed. "You could almost be him."

The sound of his watch beeping startled us both and Sam became instantly alert again.

"I've got to go," he said, giving me back my phone. "Go home by back streets. There won't be another patrol for an hour but be careful."

He pulled up his hood and with one last perplexed look at me he turned, broke into a run and vanished round the corner into the main street.

There was absolutely no way I was going to let him out of my sight though. He was the only familiar thing in this whole hellish place. I followed him at a distance and just about kept up without him noticing me. It was not easy, he moved with a stealth and agility previously alien to Sam Seaborn.

I began to face the prospect that this was Sam but not my Sam and this was Washington DC but not my Washington DC.

Soon, after covering only a block or two, he stopped running and I saw him from across the street standing still and silent in the shadow of Joe McCarthy State Prison.

Moments later a truck turned into the street. The only vehicle I had seen on the road. It looked as if it was designed for moving personnel but its back was empty and just three men rode in the front seat. They were in uniform, though a different uniform to the Militiamen. I guessed they were prison guards.

The gates of the prison opened and I saw Sam climb unnoticed into the back of the truck before it drove in. He lay flat until it was inside the prison and then slipped off, rolling into the shadows as the doors closed behind him.

Then there was silence. I stared at the prison gates for a long time, hardly believing what I had just seen, willing the gates to open and Sam to come out.

Instead I heard footsteps from behind me. I turned and saw two old women bundled in coats and hats and scarves hurrying along. Shuffling passed with arms linked, they did not notice me hidden in my doorway and they carried on until they too reached the prison. One of them banged vigorously on the iron doors and when a guard opened a hatch to see who was there she began demanding to see her husband.

The guard told her to go, yelling at her about breaking curfew. She began shouting back and making wild pleading gestures. Her companion joined in by banging on the door with an umbrella.

I knew immediately there was something not right about the scene, there was something staged about it. I was sure it was designed to distract attention from whatever else was going on here. And it was working. Soon the two women had gathered a small crowd of uniformed guards berating them to go away and threatening to have them arrested.

Something else caught my eye. A manhole cover at the far corner of the outer wall began to move. The cover slid noiselessly aside and from my vantage point I could see a man climb out of the hole beneath. It was Sam. Once on the surface he reached down to help another man out.

I could not see the second man clearly but he was older and dressed in what I took to be a prison uniform. Sam made sure the older man stayed low on the ground while he signalled with a raised hand.

A moment later everything started happening. A car sped past, swerving round the corner and skidding to a halt by Sam. The old women unfolded, straightened into much younger ones and ran in different directions, one sprinting past me. The car door swung open and Sam helped the man he had just freed into the back seat. He slammed the door shut and it shot off into the darkness taking advantage of the empty roads to make a getaway but leaving Sam behind and out in the open.

The Prison doors opened and the guards who came running out were driven back by shots from concealed snipers on the roof of one of the opposite buildings.

Sirens began to wail and a car sped out through the prison gates. Sam aimed a gun at its tyres and it swerved onto the sidewalk. He kept firing to keep the car from driving off again but he must eventually have run out of ammunition because he dropped his gun and raised his hands.

A guard who had been firing at the roof snipers turned his weapon on Sam. I had been completely transfixed by the strange and appalling sight of Sam with a gun in his hand but this development knocked me into action and I ran forward shouting 'over here!' The guard swung round to me. I heard the crack of his gun and felt a sting at my shoulder before Sam, hurling himself forward, floored him.

Sam took the guard's gun and pointed it at a group of men coming after him. It momentarily stopped them in their tracks and he started to run.

He grabbed me by the wrist and dragged me off down the road letting the rooftop shooters cover our escape. We ran into an unlit side street and slipped into an alley unseen.

Sam kicked open the back door of an apartment block. Once inside we put our shoulders to the door, holding it shut while listening to the shouts of guards running past. Twice they tried to push it open but we held firm and the disorganised search moved on. It was only after what must have been an hour Sam dared move. We still could hear car sirens and an endlessly circling helicopter but the haphazard foot patrols had moved on and he decided we were safe for the moment.

"We have to get out of here," he whispered. "Once the Militia get involved they'll get their act together and start going door to door."

"Okay," I said.

He blinked at me in the darkness. "Were you shot?"

It was actually only then I remembered the dull ache in my shoulder and recognised the warmth I felt there as blood.

"I'm fine," I said. Then I noticed the spreading bloodstain seeping through the shoulder of my jacket and bravely passed out.

When I opened my eyes I was sitting up against a wall and Sam was kneeling beside me. He had taken off my jacket and was pulling my sweater off the wounded arm.

"It's okay," he said as he cut away my blood soaked T-Shirt with a penknife and examined the wound with the calm, practised eye of a battlefield surgeon. "The bullet just nicked you, it didn't go in."

I gazed at him as I recovered, focussing on the truly strange situation in which I found myself. How this could not possibly be Sam but could not possibly be anyone else.

I watched him take his jacket and sweatshirt off and tear strips off his own shirt to use as a makeshift bandage.

"Thank you," I said.

"Thank you," he said. "For what you did back there."

"You're Sam Seaborn?" I asked eventually.

He looked at me and I could see he was deliberating whether he should answer. Eventually he quietly admitted it. "I used to be."

"Please Sam, where am I, what is this place?"

He looked at me curiously and sat back on his heels. "You really don't know. I thought you were a ghost but you can't shoot a ghost."

"I'm not a ghost. At least I don't think I am."

"Its Washington DC in the Democratic American Republic and its November 2003." He looked at me again with the same intense, searching gaze. His eyes wandered down and he lifted Joanie's musical note charm with his finger and examined it. "You're so much like him."

"Like the Josh you used to know?"

He nodded.

"What happened to him?"

"We were fighting together during the uprising," I must have looked blank and he shook his head. "The 1987 uprising. We thought the Republicans were about to fall -"

"The Republicans?"

"You're kidding. How can you not know this stuff? There's been a Republican dictatorship since the Fifties. They took power as an emergency measure against the Soviets when the Cold War started. That's what they said anyway. That's how they justified it. But in 87 we'd heard the Soviet Union was unravelling and we thought the Republicans were weakening too. We thought the army would fight on our side against the Militia, that the government and the institutions were ready to fall."

He fell silent, letting the charm he had held while he spoke drop.

"But you were wrong?"

He nodded. Now he ran a finger lightly along my surgery scar, revealed beneath my torn T-Shirt. "So many died, just shot down in the streets. Hundreds were arrested and imprisoned. It barely lasted a week."

He helped me back on with my sweater moving it gently over my bandaged arm. Then he pulled his own sweatshirt back on.

"I should have died," he went on. "We were trapped in an alleyway, soldiers on both sides shooting into the crowd and one of them pointed his gun straight at me." His voice caught. "My friend, Josh Lyman, made the soldier shoot at him. He did what you just did but that soldier had a better aim, the bullet killed him within minutes. Dead in that stinking alleyway."

He forgot himself, dropping his gaze to the ground as if he could still see his Josh lying there.

"You're so much like him," he murmured again. "You've got a scar where the bullet went into him. And you've got this," He reached around his own neck and pulled out a musical note charm identical to mine though his hung on a rough piece of leather and was gold-plated, the plate worn away to the silver beneath. "You've got his dead sister's chain which he wore all the time I knew him. I took it from him before I buried him. Its almost all I have of him."

"He loved you," I said beginning to understand the meaning of this one of a billion possible universes. "It was no hardship for him to die in your place."

"He shouldn't have," Sam said in quiet despair. "He shouldn't have left me on my own. Why couldn't we have gone together?"

I shook my head, too lost in this ancient memory to find an answer for him.

Finally he gathered himself. "We'd better go. We're not safe here. Do you think you're all right now?" He asked as he helped me into my jacket.

~*~

This Sam knew his way round the alleyways and wasteland of the city like my Sam knew his way round laws and governance and language. He moved like a cat with none of my Sam's splendid clumsiness, his footsteps making no sound on the pavement and his swift movements only hindered by my stumbling pace.

On the other hand nothing about the city was familiar to me.
It was a lonely, desolate place of unadorned concrete and neglected streets, reminding me more than anything of Eastern Europe before the Wall came down.

I soon found not recognising was better than coming face to face with a brutalised version of something familiar. Washington Monument was there when we turned a corner, the obelisk stripped of its grandeur was forlorn in the middle of scrubby land where a few cars were parked and rubbish was dumped. I stopped dead and stared up at it.

Sam urged me on and I did follow but I whispered. "If that's Washington where's the White House?"

Sam raised his hand to silence me as we stopped at a corner and he scouted the area for Militia. When he was sure the coast was clear we set off again.

"The what house?" he asked.

"White House, you know, big building on Pennsylvania Avenue. Popular with the tourists."

"The President's Mansion you mean? It burnt down in 1929 and they never rebuilt it. They built the prison on the land in the sixties."

I had never been superstitious about buildings. History had taught it was not the office but the man who occupied it which counted but I somehow felt the heart had gone from the country without the White House.

"When you kick these bastards out, Sam," I said as I hurried to keep up with him. "You've got to rebuild it. You've just got to."

He glanced back. "You bet," he said as if I'd asked him to do the rebuild on Mars.

Finally we slipped into an alleyway at the back of a tall, once elegant brownstone house in an anonymously residential area. To me it looked abandoned, which was clearly the impression it was trying to project. The windows were boarded up and no light came through the gaps in the board. The plate glass in the backdoor panel was smashed and taped over, the paintwork peeled and the brickwork cracked. But Sam knocked at the door, waited and knocked again three times. After a while I heard the sound of a padlock unlocking and the door opened.

Astonishingly, Zoey Bartlet let us in. Though, much like this version of Sam she was an almost unrecognisable version of Zoey. She seemed smaller than the girl I knew but also harder, dressed in a denim mini skirt, a strategically torn punky T-shirt and knee-high black boots. She was evidently going for a kind of revolutionary chic. I thought she looked adorable.

When she saw Sam she broke into a smile I did recognise and she flung her arms round him and dragged him inside.

"You made it!"

Sam hugged her back. "How did we do?"

"He's here. Come on up, he's worried about you."

Zoey threw a suspicious but curious glance my way and looked questioningly at Sam.

"He's okay, he saved my life," he said.

For this I was rewarded with a shy smile and then she turned and headed up the narrow stairs. I followed Zoey and Sam into a room lit only by candles. It was full of men and some women who broke into applause and cheering for Sam.

The crowd parted to reveal an inner circle around a table. The one woman at the table was Zoey's oldest sister Liz looking very much in charge. One of the men was Jed Bartlet.

It was a distorted version of him. He seemed ill and gaunt and was dressed in clothes borrowed from a taller man. "Mr President," I exclaimed involuntarily.

"I don't know who he is," he quipped. "But I like him." He stood and with a painful, shuffling gait, he came to Sam to hug him warmly. "I'm glad you made it, son."

I realised this was the man Sam had freed from prison. The prison standing on the site on which the White House belonged.

"You too, Jed, it's good to see you again," said Sam. "Was anyone hurt?"

"A guard was shot but I don't think seriously. Our guys are all fine."

Jed turned to me. "And this is extraordinary. This could be Noah Lyman back from the grave."

Before I could answer Sam said, "This is his nephew."

"Are you hurt?" He asked me and I realised I was clutching my arm.

"Ellie's through there, Jack. Make sure he's okay. We're leaving at 9 sharp tomorrow."

Sam guided me through into the next room. "Whose Jack?" I asked.

"Me," he said.

Ellie Bartlet with close cropped hair and dressed in a vest top and combat trousers met us. She took a look at me.

"Whose this?" she demanded, with some suspicion in her voice.

"Its Josh," Sam said. "He's a friend El."

"No such thing in this world," she said, even while manoeuvring me into the corner she seemed to be using as a medical treatment area.

She sat me down and efficiently removed my jacket and the bloodied remains of my sweater and Tshirt. She gave Sam a sideways glance as she unravelled the blood soaked piece of shirt.

"Couldn't you find anything dirtier to bandage him with?"

Sam rolled his eyes and went back into the other room, leaving me anxiously wondering when he would return.

"Its okay," Ellie said, misinterpreting my anxiety. "You'll be fine." She cleaned up the wound and when I dared look I could see it was little more than a gash.

"It could do with suturing but I'm trying to save my thread for whatever war is being cooked up next door. So do you think you could survive without?"

"No problem," I said. Glad to escape any procedure. "What war?"

"Well, we'll see. My dad's out of prison so there's bound to be one."

Sam came back with two mugs and some crackers. War rations.

"He's lost a lot of blood," she said. "But he just needs to rest." Ellie dressed the wound tightly to stem the bleeding. "Can you find him somewhere to do that?"

Sam nodded and smiled encouragingly at me.

"Thank you for what you did today, Jack," Ellie said to Sam as she wrapped my jacket round my shoulders and helped me up.

"Did you and Mallory get back okay?" Sam asked.

"No problems, Mal's upstairs with the kids."

"Wish I could have seen your old lady act," Sam said.

"The old ladies were Ellie and Mallory!" I interrupted. "This universe is a trip."

They both fell silent and stared at me. Ellie decided to overlook my outburst.

"But really Jack, thanks. My dad owes you everything. We all do."

"How is he?" Sam asked. "He looks sick."

Ellie shook her head. "I can't do any tests. I just don't know how to find out."

"It's Relapsing-Remitting Multiple Sclerosis," I said and Ellie turned to me.

"How do you know that?" she demanded.

"I've seen it before."

She began to look thoughtful, putting a hand through her hair.

"MS," she said. "You could be right."

Sam gave me another curious look. "You're really going to have to explain yourself."

"But rest first," said Ellie, already reaching for a thick medical textbook.

Once again I followed Sam. We went up a winding flight of stairs, to a room at the top of the house.

"It's my room," He said, lighting an ancient looking oil lamp.

It was the cleanest place I'd seen since I got here. The two Sam's were not so different after all. But it was a small, sad little room with a sloping roof and a narrow window. A bed covered with a faded blanket was pushed against a wall, and a moth-eaten rug covered floorboards. A wooden dresser was piled with books and a few essentials like an old fashioned shaving kit.

"You can lie down here, you won't be disturbed," Sam said and I gratefully sat down on the bed. He handed me one of the cups he had brought with him and watched while I drank it. It was a warm liquid and it wasn't until I had taken a few sips I realised it was supposed to be coffee. He handed me the crackers as well which turned to sawdust in my mouth.

Then I remembered my new world survival kit. I dragged my bag over from where I had dropped it.

I pulled out the flask of coffee and Sam looked at me curiously. I took his cup, which was now empty and poured some for him. The scent filled the room.

"Is that what I think it is?"

"Yeah, I wish I had some brandy to put in it but -"

I tailed off because he was looking at me as if I had just produced the holy grail from my bag.

"Are you sure you're not a Republican?" He said, breathing in the smell before taking a cautious savouring sip.

"There's no call for that," I said enjoying his evident pleasure.

I took the chocolate, apples and bagels from my bag. "Here, its all yours."

His eyes had widened.

"Are you sure you don't want to lie down for a minute?" I teased.

He dropped to his knees, to examine the chocolate bars. "No, not even republicans have this. You can only get this kind of thing in Europe."

He looked up at me. "I keep trying to explain you to myself. But I can't."

He went to his dresser and took a notebook from one of the drawers. It was stuffed with papers and held together with elastic bands. He took off the bands and it fell open, after some searching he passed a photograph to me.

It was a picture of me, or rather someone who looked like me at about 22 years old. He was next to a beaming Sam. Sam at around twenty, whose astonishing good looks I well-recalled. They were sitting next to each other on what looked like a schoolteacher's desk in front of a blackboard, smiling like they did not live in a hell on earth, smiling as though the future was not a car wreck. Anyway I had seen this photograph before.

I took out my wallet and from a compartment behind a book of stamps I slid out a twenty year old photograph, folded small. It was the first photograph I had ever taken with Sam after we had met when I was working in DC and he was interning. We were sitting on the edge of a desk grinning through a haze of alcohol at someone's victory party. He was beautiful and I was in love with him but he had no way of knowing it. I had forgotten which office we were in, on whose desk we were leaning but the photograph had gone from stamp compartment to stamp compartment in every wallet I owned for twenty years and now it met its twin.

Sam took the picture from me and stared at it. "Just tell me who you are. Please."

"I'm Josh but I'm a different Josh. I'm fairly sure I'm from an alternate reality. I think we live in parallel universes."

"I don't know what that means," he said which did not surprise me. This did not seem to be a world likely to entertain wildly theoretical physics.

When I was shot. When I was shot the first time. I spent a lot of time reading about the Theory of Everything. A lot of brain crushing physics about the origin of the universe and the explanation for the physical laws we lived under. I kept coming across the theory of alternate universes. There were various theories but the idea was that many universes existed separate from our own. Some thought that completely different physical laws existed in these universes others thought that physical laws were identical but history followed different but parallel paths. In this theory, any slight accident of fate, any variation in history and the universe would take a different turn. All possible scenarios existed and therefore there were an infinite number of universes following minutely different or hugely different paths. Until now I had never given much credence to these ideas.

From what Sam had told me the path of this universe had taken a different turn from my own at the beginning of the twentieth century and gone seriously wrong in the Fifties. The Republican Party or some version of it had used the Cold War as an excuse to upend the Constitution and institute a totalitarian state. For some reason whatever had stopped it happening in my world had failed to happen in this one.

When I explained the theory to Sam he thought about it.

"You're saying your magic pool of light took you from one universe to another. And in your universe the President's Mansion didn't burn down and there's been more than one election in fifty years and Josiah Bartlet won it and I worked for him with Josh and wrote his speeches. While here in my universe everything is total crap."

"That about covers it."

"Typical. Just my luck."

"Just one of your lucks," I corrected.

"I used to dream a better world could exist," he said. "And all the time it was there, just out of reach."

"It's far from perfect, Sam," I said. "It's just better than this nightmare."

"You're saying it comes down to chance. No god, no fate, no grand conspiracy."

"I guess so. I guess it was just some guy waking up with flu one day and not turning up to the meeting that started it all. They say a butterfly flapping its wings could change the course of history."

He looked thoughtfully at me and then sighed. This did not help him at all. "I'd better get to the meeting downstairs. Maybe we've located the butterfly responsible," his eyes were dark, despite the joke. "I'll let you rest."

He began to gather up the food I had brought. "I can take this? I have to share it with the others. Jed probably hasn't had anything but soup and potatoes for the past five years and we've got children with us at the moment. Abbey's always taking in orphans."

Then he stopped. "Are you going to disappear? If I leave you alone for a moment are you going to drop into another universe?"

"I'm going to try really hard not to."

"I can't risk it," he said and laid everything back on to the floor.

His hair was longer than I was used to and it had a way of falling across his eyes. I touched it, just to push it from his face but he stopped me by taking my hand in his. With a moment of hesitation he kissed my palm.

I pulled him up and into a kiss. He kissed me back, searching with his tongue holding my head with his strange familiar hands, pushing me down so we were lying together. We stayed close after the kiss, giving me time to realise I had crossed a line with this Sam I had never dared risk with mine.

"In your world, are men allowed to do this?" He whispered.

"More or less," I said. "And here?"

"We could be executed."

"Really? I know some people who could live happily with that."

"Republicans?"

"More or less." I kissed him again tugging off his jacket. He pulled off his hooded sweater and torn shirt only breaking the kiss for a moment as he did so.

For a long time we kissed, exploring one another with mouth and hands. Sam's body was my Sam's but stronger, full of its own tense energy keeping him urgently moving against me. Eventually he began to work his way down my body to undo my jeans and pull my pants back, to take me into his mouth.

After we had made love neither of us closed our eyes. I did not dare let him out of my sight and I think he felt the same. I pulled him close and he wrapped his arms around me, laying his head on my non-wounded shoulder, fingering Joanie's charm, matching it to his own identical one.

"So do you think," he whispered. "That in all these billions of universes, billions of Joshs and Sams are spending Saturday night in bed together?"

"I hope so," I said, taken by the idea.

"You and your Sam. Do you do this?"

"I wish," I said. "He's not into men."

"I can't believe it," Sam said. "If he could have you."

"I definitely think I'm worth switching sexuality for."

He settled in comfortably with my arms around him. "Now you sound like my Josh."

I finally closed my eyes. "Tell me about your world," I said. "Tell me about how you and Josh met."

"I came East in 84," he began. "I went to Connecticut because it's always had a reputation of being free of the Republican Party compared to other States. I soon found out that was a myth but I stayed on anyway. I got a job working in a college, helping out where I could.

"My Josh was teaching at the college and so was his dad. Your dad, I guess. Noah Lyman. Your family took me in, gave me a home. I slept on Josh's bedroom floor for two years."

I kissed his head. "He let you sleep on the floor?"

"Well, only in the official version of the story." He smiled up at me. "We fell in love pretty early on to be honest."

"Then I'm jealous."

"I don't understand how you and your Sam didn't. It was the easiest thing in the world." He kissed my lips. "I can't believe you're here," he murmured. "Right back in my arms again."

He was silent for a while and I urged him to go on with the story.

"It started to go wrong. A guy called Leo McGarry was a friend of your father's. I guess you knew him because you seem to know Mallory."

"Yeah, I know Leo. He works for President Bartlet as well."

"He does? That's how it should be."

Something occurred to me. "Is Leo here too?"

"Leo died."

"This world sucks."

"Leo was brilliant, I loved him. He and your father had a small printing press in Leo's basement. They used to publish leaflets about working for change and the illegitimacy of the regime plus anything they could get hold of from Europe or South America, any literature or science or law. I couldn't believe my luck finding these guys, they were saying all the stuff no one else dared to. But Leo was a drinker and he got reported to the Militia for some crap he started spouting in a bar one day."

"What crap?"

"The usual stuff - who was going to be first against the wall come the revolution - that kind of thing. He must have said it in front of the wrong person. There was a raid and the printing press got discovered. Everyone was in danger, so we just packed up and went to Canada. Leo, Jenny and Mallory, Noah, Rose, Josh and me."

"Refugees." An accident of history and that was me.

"In retrospect we should have stayed there. It's under the party but it's not so repressive."

"Wait. Are you telling me the Republican's invaded Canada? Get out of here!"

"Not only that, Mexico and Cuba as well."

"Sorry, go on before my head explodes."

Sam looked alarmed. "That's a figure of speech, right? Not a parallel universe thing?"

I reassured him on this point and he carried on. "We got to hear about Jed and Abbey Bartlet. Leo knew them anyway but we heard they were planning an uprising. We really thought everything was going to change. Jed and Abbey had thousands of followers on the East Coast and we came back in secret to help. Anyway you know the rest. Josh died, Noah and Rose died, Leo. It was a disaster."

"My mom was there?" I said.

"Your mom and dad were amazing Josh, your family didn't flinch. They fought to the end. Jed would have been dead if it wasn't for Rose Lyman."

I held him a little tighter, buried my head in his hair. These stories were unbearably sad. I tried to cling to the fading notion they were not my stories, not my family.

"How do you go on from that?" I asked. "How do you not give up?"

Sam sighed. "When Josh died I kept going but it wasn't the same. Something shut down inside me. All I wanted to do was tear everything down. I stopped dreaming we could build a better world, I just wanted to destroy this one. And I didn't much care if I was destroyed in the process."

"Is that why you put yourself in danger today?"

"Don't misunderstand me, I'm not trying to kill myself. It's just, someone had to do that job, someone had to go and get Jed and I didn't see why it shouldn't be me." He looked up at me with an apologetic smile. "I've never said all that out loud before, I guess it sounds pretty bad."

"No, I know what you mean. Its almost exactly why I'm here."

We fell silent, curled closer together and then it finally occurred to me.

"Come back with me," I said. "Come back! You deserve better than this."

He looked at me, his eyes seeming bluer, seeming sadder. I knew Sam's contemplative face and I let him work through what I had said.

"Then there'd be two Sams," he mused.

"It doesn't matter," I said. "You're different people, you won't cancel each other out. You could live on different sides of the country. Hell, I don't care we could go live in Timbuktu, we'd be together."

A smile played at his lips, so familiar to me I did not really believe he and my Sam were different people. "Josh, if you know me you know I can't go away with you. Not when the world has gone to hell like this."

"You thought you might die today. That's what you told me. Maybe the fight's over for you. Maybe that's what was supposed to happen in this universe. Maybe you've done enough."

"My Josh didn't step in front of a bullet so I could run away."

"He did. I swear he did. He only wanted to keep you safe. Trust me on this one."

"I do trust you. But this is my world and I have to stay. Even if it all ends up with us being shot for treason. I can't just give up on these people. They're my family, I won't abandon them."

I caressed his arm, my finger stopping on scars and marks belonging only in this universe. "And you might not be executed. You might just be the man who saves America. I understand. I'm counting on my Sam to do that too."

"You've changed everything," he said. "Knowing you're out there - remembering tonight. I could maybe start dreaming again."

We didn't speak, just held each other. I understood Sam and to be honest I would not have expected anything different from him. I always knew my Sam would be equal to any test he faced and this man was no different. The question was, how was I supposed to survive without him?

All too soon a thin daylight began to edge and angle its way through the boarded window. We had been lying beneath Sam's blanket holding tight to one another, quiet but not sleeping.

"You have to go back now," Sam said softly. "I'll take you back to the prison."

"Why now? Can't I stay with you a while longer?"

He shook his head. "We're going on the run, out of State until things die down and to plan the next move. We're leaving this morning after curfew ends."

He slipped out of my arms to get up and get dressed. I watched him wearily pull on yesterday's black jeans, a many times washed T-Shirt and his hooded sweatshirt. Then he poured the last of the coffee from the flask and sat on the bed to share it with me.

Sam gave me a T-Shirt of his to wear under my jacket and we left through the broken door, through an alley, through a succession of back streets, looking all the more hideous in the dawn light.

We walked quickly and in time we saw the prison, a looming monster only a street away and I hissed at Sam to stop.

"Don't come any further," I said. "I know my way from here."

He looked doubtfully at me, sharing a psychic understanding with a billion other Sams regarding my sense of direction. "Sure?"

"Not even I can miss it, Sam, it's in front of my eyes."

He reluctantly agreed, "All right. Go left here, then right. That'll keep you off the main road."

As I traced out my route in the half-light Sam gripped my jacket and pulled me back to him. He kissed me hard on the lips and I held him close.

As I held him I realised I could not leave him. There was need and desperation in his kiss, concealed in all his courage and strength. A need only matched by my own.

How was I supposed to give him up? I had felt more at home in Sam's cold attic than in my own apartment. I had felt safer in his arms than in my world where there was no danger of armed Militia beating down the door.

"I'm not leaving," I said.

"Josh -"

"I'm not leaving you, not now I've found you. And I can help you. I can be more use here than at home."

"Josh, you can't give up your life. I won't allow it."

"Everyone's gone. My mom died, just last year. She was the last."

"You work for Leo McGarry. I remember how he felt about you so don't dare tell me everyone's gone. And you work for the President who trusted you above everyone to come here today."

"I understand that but -"

"And you've got Sam too. I don't know what he's playing at but trust me he loves you. You'll break his heart if you don't go back."

"I've got people who love me, I know that. But Sam, I can't leave you. I can't do it."

Sam pulled me back into a kiss. I never found out if it was a goodbye kiss or not because I soon became aware of a torchlight shining on us.

"Hey, look at this," said a man's voice. "We bagged us a couple of DVs."

As I turned, shielding my eyes a Militiaman hit me in the stomach with a rifle butt and pushed me over, booting me in the chest and head. Another man pushed Sam but he was harder to knock down. Eventually he was thrown against a wall and searched for weapons before being made to stand with his arms raised.

Someone dragged me to my feet and threw me against the wall too, taking my backpack from me. I was searched and made to put my hands up as well. When I leaned back against the wall and coughed I was hit in the face and I spat out a tooth, knocked from my lower jaw.

As my brain stopped spinning from this assault I heard Sam saying. "Let him go, I made him do it. He's from Canada, he doesn't know the rules."

One of the Militiamen talked into a radio, the other one pointed his gun at us and told Sam to 'shut the fuck up'.

I managed to stay standing until a black car arrived, driven by two more Militia.

"Take them to the Fourteenth," said one of the men. "After the break out, no one's going to care about a couple of DVs at the Fifteenth."

We were handcuffed and thrown unceremoniously into the back of the car, where I made a fair stab at staying conscious.

"Don't worry, Josh," Sam whispered. "I've got out of the Fourteenth a hundred times."

But for once he did not sound certain of himself.

"What's a DV?" I asked.

"Deviant," he replied as the two Militiamen got in.

"Terrific," I said.

After a short drive we drew up in front of another grey building. Behind it in the shadows was another familiar face, the Capitol Building. Hemmed in by tall concrete office blocks I could still just glimpse its stately dome.

We were pulled out of the car by the Militiamen and taken into what seemed to be a back entrance of a police station. A desk officer took Sam's details while I was left in a chair.

I closed my eyes and listened as he gave a false name and presumably false address. Then he was taken away and I was dragged up to the desk.

"Name?"

"Jack Lemmon." Why?

"Address."

"Excuse me, I'm going to throw up." Which I did. On some shiny black shoes.

They gave up on taking my details for fear of what I would do next. Fall apart all over them probably.

I was taken through a swing door down a flight of stairs. A guard at a desk logged some details in a register and then unlocked a door to a narrow corridor. I was escorted to a cell where my handcuffs were removed and I stumbled in.

I blacked out and when I woke Sam was calling my name and slapping my face to bring me round. I blinked to get him back into focus.

"Josh?"

"I think my head really is going to explode."

He sat me up and helped me lean against the wall. "You have to try and stay conscious okay."

The room was a dark, unheated windowless box. Unfurnished as far as I could see apart from an ominous bucket. Sam went to the cell door and started banging on the barred window. Unnecessarily loudly I thought.

"This man needs a doctor," he yelled.

"Die DV," a voice yelled back.

Sam kept up his shouting for a long time until some other prisoner shouted to him to 'keep it down'.

He came back to me. "Sorry Josh, I'll sort something out in the morning. They don't like prisoners to die before -" He tailed off.

"Before what? Before trial?"

"Before execution. No trial for moral crimes."

I leaned back and closed my eyes. "I'm sorry, Sam, I got you in to this."

Sam shrugged off his jacket and wrapped it round my shoulders. "It was my fault for letting my guard down," he said putting his arm around me. "Here, lean on me, Joshua we'll keep each other warm." I rested my head against the warmth of his sweater and he held me until I fell asleep.

The next thing I knew, Sam was urging me to wake up.

"Oh God," he said, as I moved and winced with the newly remembered pain of my injuries.

Opening my eyes I immediately noticed a strange light in the room. My vision was still blurred but I slowly realised it was given off by the Gateway, by the pool of light.

I was back in the room beneath the White House. I was back in my own world.

I blinked it all into focus. "Sam, how did -?"

I looked up at him. He was wearing different clothes, his hair was shorter and he looked like someone who had been in the sunshine for a few months. It was his scent though, a familiar aftershave and good tailoring scent, which finally made me realise this was my Sam. This was the man I had known for years from my own universe.

I tried to piece things together. "How did I get back?"

"You just appeared," he said. "I've been waiting for you. The President's watch came back of its own accord, we thought the same might happen to you."

He helped me to stand. "But you Sam, how are you here?"

"We just need to get you upstairs and get you to a doctor."

~*~

The next few hours were a painful blur of cars and hospitals and doctors. But later, when I opened my eyes and found I was in a hospital bed I had a clearer head and felt a lot better.

Sam was there, dozing in a chair next to me. Seeing him reminded me I had somehow been flung back into my own universe and reminded me of what I had left behind in someone else's.

I sat up slowly, experimenting with the painkiller-dulled pain of my injuries. I eased myself out of bed, waking Sam as I did so.

"Where are you going?" He asked, sleepily.

"Where are my clothes, Sam? I have to go back."

"Back where?" He asked, sitting up. "Where have you been?"

"It's a long story, but I can't tell you it now. I truly have to go now."

He regarded me for a moment and then dragged round a bag from the foot of the bed. "I got these from your apartment."

He watched, frowning as I changed from the hospital gown into clean clothes, helping me where I could not raise my arm.

"How long have I been back?"

"Its two in the afternoon, you've been back since early this morning."

"That long? Damn."

I took my jacket from the back of a chair and winced as I moved too quickly.

"You've got bruised ribs," Sam explained briskly. "And a bullet hole in your arm. And concussion." I could see he was trying to keep his temper.

"I'm okay, Sam," I said.

"Yeah, I can see that. Look, I'm going with you."

I stopped. "No. It's dangerous."

"Then you're definitely not going back alone. The President should never have sent you in the first place." He angrily threw on his own jacket. "I don't know what he and Leo were thinking."

"I volunteered, Sam. It was my decision."

"Okay, fine and this is mine. You're not going without me."

As I followed him out of the hospital room, I wondered if the day would end with me losing two Sams in one go.

In a cab I told him about alternative universes, about a nightmare version of DC, about Mallory disguised as an old lady to help with a prison breakout, about the Republican Party turned dark and dangerous. He did not say anything, probably thinking the bang on my head was worse than it had first appeared.

Finally, I told him about the man who looked like him. Though I did not tell him exactly why that man was in a prison cell waiting to be executed.

Leo met us and let us go unnoticed through his office into the Oval. He opened the hidden door and silently watched us go.

The mysterious light still danced and shimmered and now illuminated a number of items. My backpack, which the police had confiscated, was there as was the food the other Sam had left in his room, hoping to share with his comrades. There were some bloody scraps of my T-Shirt from the apartment block lobby where they had been discarded. There was also something looking suspiciously like my tooth. In fact everything I had brought with me had returned.

"How long was I away?"

"Ten hours," Sam said. "Which is about how long it took for the President's watch to come back. It looks like all you get over there is ten hours."

He picked up something else from the floor. It was the photograph of the two of us I had taken from my wallet to show the other Sam. I had forgotten it in our hurried departure. Without a word he handed it back to me.

Together we stepped through the Gateway, landing as before in the earthen room marked by an Indian symbol. It was a lot harder to crawl through the tunnel with a wounded shoulder and some increasingly painful ribs and when I finally reached the surface all I could do was sit on the scrubby ground trying to catch my breath. Moments later Sam emerged into the daylight.

"The New World," he announced clambering to his feet and turning 360 degrees to take it all in.

"Yeah," I confirmed. "It sucks."

Eventually he breathed. "This is the most incredible thing. Isn't it incredible?"

"You're crazy." I pointed at the back wall of the prison. "That's where the White House is supposed to be. That's where they held a version of Jed Bartlet for five years."

He stared at the grey concrete wall. "It does suck. But still - you know - string theory!"

This DC was transformed in daylight. The shops were open, cars and bikes jostled for space on the roads and the streets bustled with people. Even though we were better dressed than most of them it was possible for us, both in dark casual clothes, to pass unnoticed through the crowd.

"Can you remember the way to the police station?" Sam asked as we stood together at a fork in the road.

"I have no idea," I said loathing myself.

"Did you go East or West from the prison?"

"I don't know, I forgot to check my compass. What with the boot in my face and all."

"Well, did you notice -"

"If you're about ask me if I noticed the position of the polestar, so help me -"

"No actually, I was going to ask if you noticed any landmark we could search -"

"Yes! Its close to the Hill."

"That's South East of the White House." He thought for a moment and then waved in the direction of one of the roads. "This way."

The road was a long one and we followed its bends and curves for a little over half an hour before we spotted a street sign surviving from pre-republican coup days which told us we were on the right track and close to our destination. Sure enough we soon spotted the dome of the Capitol and after a few wrong turns we found the police station.

"What a place," Sam said as we stood across the road from it. "I'm going to have a word with Ainsley about all this."

It was a grim, grey four-storey building looking worse in daylight than it had i