Part One

Mr Jeremy Right was not the imaginative type. He was a careful man with a sensible haircut and a well pressed suit. He would drive his car every day to his job at the printing factory in Newcastle, and he was happy with that. He would speak to the same people every day and say the same greeting;

 

“Hello Dave, hello Chris,” he’d say on his way into the building.

 

“Hi Jeremy,” they would say to him as he passed. He didn’t even know what they did. As far as he knew they were paid to wander around the car park in their fluorescent yellow vests and drink a lot of coffee, and he was fine with only knowing that. He was not a curious man so he had never thought about it or asked.

 

Today he arrived at work at exactly a quarter to nine as always, and parked his car in his usual spot.

 

“Hello Dave, hello Chris,” he called out. The expected replies did not come. Jeremy thought that this was unusual and it irritated him because he didn’t like things that were unusual. He liked everything to be routine, normal, the same every day. This was not a happy start to his day.

 

He grumbled about it to himself for a minute but never actually cared or wondered why they weren’t there. He soon forgot all about the absent men though, when, upon entering the factory, he found it to be completely deserted. More than that though, it was completely empty.

 

“Well,” he huffed quietly to the emptiness, “this is really quite ridiculous. I can’t print things if I have no printer.”

 

So he found the space where he and his machine would usually stand and he waited. Dust filled the air and the wind rattled through the rafters while Jeremy stayed patiently at his station. He stood there silently until his lunch hour and he listened for the loud clanging sound of the bell that signalled for him to finish for the morning, but it never came.

 

“Well this is really getting quite silly now,” he complained. “It’s a good thing I have my watch with tell me the time or else I’d have gone hungry today.”

 

Jeremy thought that this was all quite unacceptable, but never wondered once what had happened to all the staff or equipment. He was quite a simple man, but happy that way.

 

Every Wednesday " and that was the day today " he would take his car out of the car park at midday and drive a little way down the road to Smiley’s, a little diner where the nice lady with the greying red hair would serve him a plate of good homemade food. She knew exactly how he liked it; two suet dumplings, one spoon of chopped and steamed carrots, two spoons of home grown peas, and a half pint of filtered water at exactly room temperature. The water would be served in his own glass that he brought from home so that he knew no one else would have been drinking from it, and the food would be served on his own plate " which was also his own from home " would be properly separated so that the three foods would never touch. He would also, of course, bring his own knife and fork to eat with too.

 

As he left the car park he noticed what he had not noticed on arriving at work that morning, there were no other cars there.

 

That makes sense, he thought to himself, since no one else bothered to turn up today.

 

It was a calm and quiet day on the road today so Jeremy wound down his car window and drove at exactly the speed limit with the radio switched off. He wasn’t overly fond of music and thought it was a waste of time as a career when people could do much more useful jobs.

 

After ten minutes he arrived at Smiley’s and parked his car in his usual spot. Wednesday was always the quietest day at the diner, which was why he chose this day to eat there, but there was usually a few people at this time, so Jeremy thought it was peculiar that the car park was as empty as the car park at the factory. He didn’t put a lot of thought into it than that, but he did suppose that people might have opted to walk rather than drive since the weather was so nice.

 

He took out his plate, glass and cutlery from the box in the boot of his car. They were all wrapped and padded to prevent breaks or scratches and although he had washed them when he took them home last week, and then washed them before packing them into the box in his cat this morning, the nice lady would wash them again before serving his lunch and would wash them again after he had eaten so they could be safely stored away again in his car to take back home.

 

The door to the diner opened with a loud groan and he looked around, expecting one or two of the usual faces, but there was no one in today. He smiled to the empty diner; he could eat in complete peace then. He set the plate and glass on the counter by the till, as he usually did, and went to the corner table that was set out specifically for him on a Wednesday with only one chair facing the wall so that no one could him eat. Since there was no one else there today he wondered if he might move his chair to face the other way so that he could watch the news on the little television, but he knew he wouldn’t. He always faced the wall. What if someone came in and started staring while he had his lunch?

 

When he reached the corner of the room he realised something was amiss.

 

“She’s forgotten about me!” He told the empty corner, frowning at the lack of table and chair in front of him. He figured she must have just had a busy morning and had gone out the back for a break. She would probably be back any second now to set his corner up for him.

 

He waited for a few minutes and decided to move the table and chair himself. She would probably appreciate his help after such a busy morning, which it must have been for her to take such a long break.

 

He sat patiently in his chair for a while but it hurt his neck to keep turning around to see if she had come back in yet so he moved his chair, as he had at first thought to do, so that he could see the kitchen door. He sat there for only a moment before noticing that the television was off. He knew she liked to watch the 12:30 news and he had become used to listening to it while eating there, so he got out of his chair to turn it on. Maybe the sound would alert her to the fact that she had a customer. She had clearly lost track of the time. He hoped his lunch would still be ready on time.

 

He tried the remote but nothing happened. He checked that the television was plugged in and that the switch was on. When he saw that everything was fine there he tried all the buttons along the television set, nut still nothing happened. He frowned around him but there was still no one who could help. He decided to look for the lady and stepped behind the counter and into the kitchen through the old plastic door.

 

He was surprised by how clean the kitchen had been kept after how busy he was sure she must have been in the morning. People liked to eat out on nice days, and Smiley’s breakfasts were very popular around here. He wanted to call out her name but realised he didn’t know it. In four years of Wednesday lunches here, he had never once asked her what her name was, though he was sure she knew his.

 

Just as he’d decided he would ask her when she brought out his lunch, he realised that there were no pans on the oven or vegetables in the steamer. There was nothing cooking at all. He realised that he wasn’t going to get his dinner today.

 

Jeremy noticed that the back door to the little garden was open and hoped he would find her there. He was not surprised to find himself alone out there too. For the first time that day he really wondered what was going on. He thought about his morning and realised he hadn’t seen a single other person all day. He wondered if everyone had gone somewhere and he was missing out on some event. He wouldn’t have gone, of course, because large crowds made him nervous and uncomfortable, but it would have been nice if someone could have at least let him know about it.

 

He packed his things back into the box in the boot of his car and drove back to work hungry and just a little bit grumpy. When he got back to the factory he stopped at the doorway and realised two things.

 

The first thing he realised was that there was just no point in him staying at work if there was nothing to do and no one to know if he was even there or not.

 

The second thing was " and he mentally scolded himself for not realising this sooner " just because no one had turned up for work , this did not explain why there was no printing machinery left in the factory.  Maybe thieves had come and taken everything knowing that there would be no one here.

 

No, he decided, that can’t be it; I was here this morning. And they can’t have come through the night because the automatic security system would have stopped them.

 

The automatic security system " or TASS as most people would call it " would switch itself on after the last worker left the factory at night and switch itself off again at half past eight in the morning ready for the shift to start. Jeremy knew there was no way anyone could have stolen everything in the factory in only fifteen minutes before he’d arrived there that morning. They would have needed a few fairly large lorries to transport everything and he had definitely not passed any of those today. He supposed they could have gone the other way but that still didn’t explain how they could have taken anything in such a short time. The printing machines were big and heavy, it would take a few abnormally strong men to shift even one of them never mind carry out a factory full of them. Even if they’d somehow got the machinery it would take to remove printers, they would only be able to take them through the doors one at a time. No, a robbery didn’t make sense, but everything can’t have just evaporated into thin air. It had to have gone somewhere.

 

Jeremy decided he might as well go home and think about it after having something to eat. There was obviously no point waiting around here.

 

On the drive home he couldn’t help noticing how empty the roads were. There were no cars and no one walking on the paths, there weren’t even any animals around. He was starting to feel just slightly scared, but he told himself it was just because he was missing something. He started keeping his eyes open for posters or flyers, but saw nothing.

 

The whole thing was just far too peculiar for even Jeremy Right to ignore and he wished he could just forget about the whole day. As he pulled into the drive in front of his house he scanned the street for any signs of life. He wondered if he should knock on his neighbour’s door to see if she was home, but after a few minutes of deliberation he turned off the engine and went into his house. Mrs Stanton was always home, always wandering the house in her dressing gown and slippers with her white hair in curlers, polishing things that didn’t need polishing. If she wasn’t home then he’d know there was something wrong, but what would he say if she answered the door? “Sorry, Mrs Stanton, I was just checking that you were home because I was starting to worry that everyone had vanished into thin air. Sorry to bother you.” No, she’d think he was mad. He wandered if hewas going mad " it’s not like people hadn’t told him he was crazy before. He had to admit to a certain level of compulsive behaviour, but could he truly have crossed the line into madness?

 

He shook his head at the whole idea. He knew he wasn’t mad. There had to be a logical explanation for it. He decided to forget about the whole silly business for now. He’d find out all about what he’d missed tomorrow at work because whatever it was would undoubtedly be the topic of conversation all over the factory.

 

Thinking about the factory forced the issue of the missing printers to the front of his mind again, so he turned on the radio for a little background noise to take his mind off things. He’d listen to the afternoon news and maybe the weather, and then perhaps a shower and an early night would be good. Yes, he decided. He’d take the rest of the day to simply relax. After all, it wasn’t his problem to solve even if it had been a robbery.

 

There was nothing but static from the radio so he quickly switched it off. He tried the television next, but it was the same as the one back at Smiley’s diner. A heavy leaden feeling began to settle in and make itself at home in his stomach.

 

Without thinking much about any awkwardness that might come after, he ran from the house and jumped over the little fence between his and Mrs Stanton’s garden and banged his fist on the door. When, after a while, there was no answer, he tried the handle, the door was locked. He moved over to the next house but came up with the same results.

 

Back at home Jeremy gave himself a few moments of blind panic before picking up the phone. He didn’t know who he’d planned on calling, but it didn’t really matter because the phone was dead. He glanced at his mobile.

 

“No signal,” he whispered to the room.

 

He checked the lights, but there was no power. All the electrics were out. Now he was really beginning to panic. He tried to tell himself that he was being silly, but he just couldn’t find an explanation for it all.

 

Jeremy grabbed his coat and ran to the car without knowing exactly where he was going to go. He realised as he got into the car that he’d forgotten to lock the door, but while his head was telling him to go back and lock it, the rest of him was asking what the point would be. Ignoring the speed limit and forgetting his seatbelt, Jeremy drove for over an hour, taking whichever road his panic led him down until he found himself in what should have been the busy streets of the town centre.

 

Something dark flashed past him in front of the car and a loud scratchy shriek followed. In alarm he stamped his foot down on the break hard. He saw the steering wheel fly toward his face. Fireworks exploded in the dark behind his eyelids and then suddenly everything was black.