Chris looked at the gray and lifeless body in front of him and raised his hand to his brow. He let out a loud sigh and called to the man in a white coat behind him.

“We don't have much time, it looks like he'll fade any moment. Be quick. It looks like we'll only catch the last five. They weren't exactly clean, again.”

The man in the white coat nodded and left the room.

Chris hated this bit. He could never stomach it. He left as the man in the white coat, followed by two assistants, walked back in, holding a rotating saw and a large plastic sheet.

From the corridor Chris could hear the rotation of the saw and the crunch of bone.

The house was a weird one. Documents, books and CDs where falling out of every space available. Piles of used computer hardware lay in one corner of the corridor, next to a dead plant. Some of the walls where only half painted, as if someone had started and then given up. The kitchen was overflowing with unwashed pots and pans. The place was in chaos, yet at the same time, there was a feeling that everything was in it's correct place. The pans in the sink seemed to have been very carefully placed, the documents on there floor seemed to be there for a reason. Chris picked up one of the documents, a newsletter about the activities of a fast food chain, and immediately dropped it again. He had seen it before.

The sound of the saw in the next room stopped.

Chris rubbed his eyes and decided to do a little exploring. He entered another bedroom, clearly a spare one, with nothing in it apart from an unmade bed and a bookcase. He slumped against the wall and held his head, again. The headaches where back again. As he lowered his head, something caught his eye. A small slip of paper underneath the book case. He tugged at the paper but it was trapped. He called out and a man in a black, military uniform came to assist him.

“I want that.” Chris pointed at the slip of paper underneath the bookcase. The officer looked for a moment, then grabbed the top of the bookcase and hurled it forward onto the floor, sending a cacophony of books to every corner of the room, shattering the wooden bookcase in the process. “Very subtle.”

Chris bent down to pick up the bit of paper and looked at it. It was a receipt. As Chris put it in his pocket, another soldier entered the room.

“He's ready.” The soldier said, calmly, before walking out of the room, followed by Chris.
In the main bedroom the man in the white coat stood next a large rectangular green box. Numerous lights where flashing on the front of it, and dials lined the side. Out the back of the machine a wire led to a large monitor at the other end of the room. The monitor showed numerous moving graphs and dials, which where being manipulated by an assistant. Behind the assistant was the bed. A black rubber sheet covered the body, but blood was still trickling down the side of the mattress. The room had become hot had suddenly got very hot and sticky. Sweat dripped from Chris' forehead, and he could feel the back of his shirt getting wet. The heat was coming from the machine. It had to be kept at a constant thirty-seven and a half degrees. It smelt putrid.

“We only managed to capture the last few minutes. Mostly rambling.” said the man in the white coat.

“Put it on.”

The display on the monitor flicked over to a large display of rapidly changing, still images. Numerous images of the house where interspersed by those of people, animals and pornography. There seemed to be no logic to their order or placement. Then from the speakers came a broken, computer-synthesised. voice. Chris looked at the black rubber sheet.

So I'm laid here and I'm bored. I've got 296 DVDs and I'm bored. I've got 3247 CDs and not a thing I want to listen to. I have 132 channels on my television and not one single program interests me. There are people in the Arctic digging for fuel, there are horror stories about people who are starving to death, and there's a man who's stapling his testicles to his leg. Not one of these things motivates me to move so much as an eyebrow. I'm in bed. I'm staying in bed for the foreseeable future. The sunlight from the skylight hits my eyes and stings. But it's not moving me. I pull the covers over my head. I'm bored and stationary.

Death.

The monitor reverted to pictures of dials and graphs. The room was silent.

“Did it record?” Chris asked.

“Everything went fine” replied the assistant at the monitor.

“Right. We do the usual. I want a list of everyone and everything we saw. And clean this up quickly. We've not got long.” Said Chris, already moving out of the room. He hated being near the machine.

Outside, Chris lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply. The sun hung low in the sky and stung his eyes, mist hung around his ankles. He looked across the street. No one was around. It was early, but they had been loud. Chris kept scanning the windows of the terrace houses opposite.

Chris climbed into the front seat of his car, a rusty, blue 1999 Ford Mondeo, and sat still. He put on a Ibrahim Ferrer CD.

He closed his eyes.