He had to admit that the selection was well done, by someone (Indra?) familiar with the early twenty-first century. There was nothing disturbing – no wars or violence, and very little contemporary business or politics, all of which would now be utterly irrelevant. There were some light comedies, sporting events (how did they know that he had been a keen tennis fan?), classical and pop music, and wildlife documentaries.

And whoever had put this collection together had a sense of humour, or they would not have included episodes from each Star Trek series. As a very small boy, Poole had met both Patrick Stewart and Leonard Nimoy: he wondered what they would have thought if they could have known the destiny of the child who had shyly asked for their autographs.

A depressing thought occurred to him, soon after he had started exploring – much of the time in fast-forward – these relics of the past. He had read somewhere that by the turn of the century – his century! – there were approximately fifty thousand television stations broadcasting simultaneously. If that figure had been maintained and it might well have increased – by now millions of millions of hours of TV programming must have gone on the air. So even the most hardened cynic would admit that there were probably at least a billion hours of worthwhile viewing... and millions that would pass the highest standards of excellence. How to find these few – well, few million – needles in so gigantic a haystack?

The thought was so overwhelming – indeed, so demoralizing – that after a week of increasingly aimless channel-surfing Poole asked for the set to be removed.

Perhaps fortunately, he had less and less time to himself during his waking hours, which were steadily growing longer as his strength came back.