‘The place the Celts called T’ir n’a n’Og, exactly,’ Kirkham continued. ‘The two are apparently very different places. But consider this: what if there are other dimensions just like our own, so alike that you can barely tell the difference.’ He tapped a row of terraced houses. ‘The only differentiating factors being a picture here, an ornament there. You could go from one to another and not realise you were in a different place.’

‘Perhaps that’s what happens when you die.’

‘I think that would be delving too far into the realms of mysticism.’ Kirkham wandered around the table, looking at the town from different angles. ‘But who knows? Really, when you get to this level, who knows anything? We have our hypotheses, but no way to test them.’

The General examined some of the imposing mansions on the edge of town, one of which had the creepy appeal of the Addams Family home. Then he looked towards the edge of the table and the gloom that lay beyond, and shivered.

Kirkham, however, wasn’t finished. ‘What if someone decided to knock down his house and rebuild it in a different way, or add an extension, as we discussed earlier-’

‘One mind concentrating on a part of the phase-locked system, thereby altering the whole of it?’

Kirkham nodded encouragingly.

‘You know, sometimes I get the strangest feeling that the world wasn’t meant to be the way it is,’ the General mused. ‘It’s odd… unnerving. I have this idea that I was living another life, and then everything changed. Do you ever get that?’

Kirkham didn’t answer.

The General’s initial curiosity had been replaced by uneasiness at the overwhelming enormity of what was being shown to him. ‘This wasn’t the reason why I came,’ he said, abruptly changing the subject. ‘Have you heard anything about one of the enemy being brought in for interrogation?’