I first met the Lords of Evil in a greasy spoon cafe in Clapham, which is a district in the London Borough of Lambeth. There was nothing remarkable about them as far as I could see – they looked like three perfectly normal guys as they sat there at their table eating their fried breakfasts. They ate quickly and silently, that was one thing I noticed. Silently apart from the protracted slurping noise they made when they drank from their mugs of tea. I remember trying not to look at them, trying to focus my attention on my own plate of egg, chips and beans. ‘Food is good’, I told myself, ‘eat the food…’

One rarely follows one’s own advice to oneself however, that’s something I think we can all agree on. I was mortally afraid that I would turn into a machine for pretending to be me. The thought of that really had me rattled. If that happened to me then I would have to keep on going through the motions of pretending forever and ever. Trapped in the farce, trapped in the facade. There would be times when things wouldn’t seem so bad, times when I would be able believe the story that was being propagated, as tawdry as it may be. They’d be the good times as well as the bad. There’d be the joyful times, the happy times, the times when you would be able to rejoice in your own madcap existence. ‘Look at me’, you’d say, ‘check out my madcap existence…’ But then again, these joyful times can never last and then you’ll be left wondering if they ever happened in the first place. You will be left doubting everything. That’s life for you though – wouldn’t you agree? Life’s always like that, when it comes down to it…

‘You could be an illusion without knowing it’, my treacherous thoughts are telling me. They are dripping poison into my brain. ‘You could be an illusion, you could be an illusion,’ they say. Obviously the thoughts aren’t real, but that doesn’t mean that I’m not thoroughly rattled by them. I’m rattled plenty. ‘The thoughts aren’t real’, I tell myself, ‘the thoughts aren’t real’. ‘Never believe the thoughts’, I tell myself, ‘never believe the thoughts.’ I was anxious however just all the same. I was anxious despite the positive self-talk. I was anxious about the internal robot that was pretending to be me – suppose it turned out to be nothing more than a few lines of code? Suppose it couldn’t pretend effectively any more? Suppose that I could no longer believe in it in the way that I needed to? What would happen to me then?

We legged it as soon as we could, needless to say. Boy did we ever leg it! We fled like ships from a sinking rat. ‘This rat’s sinking’, we said, ‘let’s get the hell out of here. Let’s get out of here quick…’ So off we run, seeking our destiny elsewhere. We flee, barking like sea lions, snarling viciously at each other like bad tempered jackals, hoping to find whatever small advantage we can in a savagely inhospitable universe. We flee, squawking like traumatized chickens, wailing like ghosts, crying out like lost souls in the night. We flee in abject terror, seeking whatever comfort we can in a universe made out of broken glass and razor wire…