Dimple and Arthur waited for the Big Box to arrive. It always came at this time and arrived at this place, and it had been many years since Dimple had considered what they would do if it failed to appear. Arthur, she knew, always worried a great deal about what would happen if and this time was no different. She watched him fidget out of the corner of her eye until the hatch, set into the smooth metal wall of the chamber, flipped open and a large plastic container on wheels rolled out of the dark hole.

The Big Box was here and Dimple raced forward, her naked bulk wobbling as she ran, mind suddenly fixed on just one thing: it was time to eat. Arthur, naked and sweating, was close behind her and together they tugged off the lid, squabbling slightly about who would go first. Arthur never won, he just wasn't pushy enough, and Dimple elbowed at him, keeping him back until, food clutched in her fat hands, she was ready to shuffle out of the way.

She sat against the wall munching as Arthur scanned the crate contents - the Big Box always held everything they wanted and she knew that there would be plenty of the orange, sponge-like, fingers that were very much his favourite. He reached forward, hands open but as he did so Dimple, ramming food into her mouth, spilling crumbs over her huge bloated body, grunted a small nasal grunt. She felt him, suddenly, staring at her, and as she looked into his face she caught a look of sadness, perhaps revulsion, in his eyes. For a moment, a brief moment, both of them had food in their hands but were not eating.

That pause, although neither of them realised it, was one of the greatest human achievements of their world that whole day, and was watched closely and knowingly by others from elsewhere. The moment passed and within seconds they both began to eat frenetically, frenziedly, like people who had not eaten for days.

Dimple would have remained where she was, clutching at her many rolled belly as she lay on her back, vast thighs spreading their fat flat across the ground around her, breasts pooling in her flab sculpted armpits, jowls smeared with spittle and food, saggy round her face. But they had been sent by the others to get the Box, and Arthur had already started pushing it clear of the hatch. There was a snap, the hatch shutting, and Dimple knew that Arthur was waiting for her to get up and help. He always came to collect, why, she didn't know. It was the nearest thing to a chore that existed in a world where the temperature was constant and comfortable, and where they didn't have to fend for themselves, yet still he came, day after day.

Everyone was happy to let him, but it took two to move the crate any distance, and so they took it in turn to help him. It was the one task they ever had to perform - so best, she thought, to get it over with. With a groan she rolled onto her front, with a quake of her massive buttocks jerked herself onto all fours and then with a wobble that almost tipped her back onto the floor, she stood ponderously upright onto her two shockingly tiny feet. Arthur had already manoeuvred his bulk, considerably less than Dimples', but still vast enough to quiver with each movement, behind the Box, and was shoving at it for all he was worth.

"It's exercise!" he said, and, half-heartedly, she pushed with him.

"Randolph Vancouver, why do you think you are here?" It was said like a rhetorical question, but the pause that it left still needed filling.

"I'm under arrest, you can do what you like. Brain washing? Indoctrination? Reasoned argument?"

"I prefer the latter-- "

"Of course."

"But even that is wrong. I prefer to think that the facts speak for themselves. We are very keen on facts here - that, in fact, is the whole justification of our activities."

"I know, I know. I've been a naughty boy, anti-state activities and all that. Sentenced to be re-educated to death."

"Actually," said with a dangerous coolness, "Colonel Claudius thinks it a little more serious than 'naughtiness'. You're going to discover the reasons why, and I must warn you, I am under instruction to challenge your more deeply held and subversive beliefs."

"What a shock."

Randolph noted, with satisfaction, the others' frustration in the silence.

The campfire burned brightly, warmly, offering the ancient call of the communal hearth. On a cold night like tonight this was welcome, but there was great need for caution. A fire was usually a sign, in this place, at this time of year, that a hunt was over and had been successful - but you could never be sure, and men had been lost that way before.

Besides, Michel's group had failed to find food today, and if there was no prey in the area it was likely that those who had built the fire were also going hungry tonight. Michael signalled to the others in his party and they began to fan out, slowly, silently, surrounding the fire. They could see the silhouettes people crouched around the camp, settling for the night, and Michael crept a little further forward to make a rough count of those he could see.

Four men - three less than in his party. He crawled slowly back, signalling with his fingers to let the others know, and his whole party tensed, gripping weapons tightly. Michael paused, minutes slipping by in the cooling darkness, waiting, making sure he had not miscalculated.

Then, sensing his men around him, he felt the time for caution passing, the time to act approaching.

Suddenly, somehow, he knew that the moment had come, an urgent voice in his head shouting 'now, now, now!' and he moved. Almost without realising it he raced forward into the circle of light cast by the fire, hearing a great scream splitting the night air, but a scream that came from his own lips.

The first of the forms around the fireplace felt the thrust of Michael's spear point before any of the rest of them realised that they were being attacked. The three still living began to stand, but even before their first reactions were completed, other figures, Michael's followers, had raced silently into the circle of firelight.

Within seconds the group that had built the fire were dead.

Michael drew a knife, and hacked the limbs from his kill, tossing them one by one into the hot embers at the edge of the fire. They would eat tonight after all - good meat for the first night in many.

"You do not deny that you conspired with a retired calculating machine who has adopted the name 'Moses' to destroy the main grain silo at Madagascar Bay?"

"Deny it? We did a wonderful job!"

"Actually, even in your own frame of reference your operation was a complete, ahh, 'cock-up'. Not only did your bomb smash the main silo, but two subsidiary ones as well. The contents were completely destroyed. May I ask, just to hear in your own words, why in NuTopia the two of you did this?"

"We were hungry! The food ration has fallen and we knew the silos were full Moses and I detonated the bomb to show the people of Madagascar Bay that there is food there - I wanted to show the people that they were short of food for no reason other than you had held back supplies that were ready to hand!"

"May I point out that the people of Madagascar Bay are hungrier than ever? The destruction of food supplies at the marshalling yard has allowed us to restrict food supplies right across the region. We were even able to halt shipments to Purity Springs so you see how counterproductive (from your perspective) what the two of you did actually was."

"Yes, I realize that you're subtle people. Whatever we had done you could have used against us But people were hungry, and there was, there is, food enough. Why should people hoard the last slice of bread at the end of the week when there is food to be had?"

"People are not actually starving, and the shortage is temporary. Doughnuts will be sold again in Paradise and when the cow seeds ripen there will be meat again. But enough of that there is something that it will be educational for you to see."

Arthur and Dimple had pushed the Big Box down a few metric feet of corridor, sweating with the effort all the way, before finally reaching the living quarters. The others were all there, bloated parodies of the human form, men and women cloaked in fat, too huge to bother with movement, until, of course, the food arrived.

Food, Arthur thought. One might think that those who provided it, who ever they were, would have realised the harm that they were doing in their charity. The people here lived lives in which they had all that they wanted, were given whatever they craved, but none of them, amongst which Arthur most definitely included himself, could control their greed.

Often he tried not to think, and almost as a way of drowning his thoughts he ate and ate with the others. Now, however, he was thinking - of late his mind had been positively racing, and he held himself back as his enormous companions jostled round the trough. What arrived in the Big Box was not always the same - it had changed over the years, growing sweeter as they had all acquired a sweater tooth. They had eaten more and more, and as appetites had increased the quantity in The Box had grown to keep pace.

It was hard to control the desire to eat, but watching the frenzy, the food smeared faces, the fact that there was so much food that many of the cakes simply fell to be trodden on by bare feet, he held back. At least for a while.

"This is Test 4.2. We took them at birth - they know no other life, have no idea that we are here. None of the inhabitants of the test arenas know."

"Good God."

"Are we 'Good Gods'? My colleagues and I have disagreements about that. We have provided a space for them to live, a climate survivable, if not pleasant. There is little food, but enough with, as you can see, certain 'additions'. They know only the rules, codes and laws that they themselves have come to evolve during their lifetimes - you will already have observed that they never seemed to have evolved the inhibition against cannibalism, for example. I think that perhaps they should have - we loose more from test group 4.2 from cannibalism than from any other cause, despite the relative harshness of the conditions we have created."

"Do they know we're watching?"

"No. The images that you see here are gathered by remote mini-drones camouflaged as local insects. The man you are watching is called Michael. He is a better hunter than most, but as you can see, even he has to result to eating human flesh in hard times."

"And now is a hard time?

"We recently lowered the temperature in arena 4.2. When we do that the population of the smaller game animals, rabbits and such like, falls sharply. Birth rate falls too, for the humans - almost like a reaction to the conditions."

"Then put the temperature back up!"

"We might, if the prediction testing requires it, but not yet. One of the things we need to know is what happens at the extreme, when food is really, ahh, short Technician, show us Arena 4.3!"

"What are we watching here?"

"Arthur. He's one of our most interesting subjects."

Arthur shied away from the communal room, wondering the corridors instead, muttering 'exercise, exercise!' to himself, under his wheezing breath. Some of the others were having sex - they didn't seem to feel the same sense of self-loathing that he did, or perhaps they did and were just better a blotting it out than he was. For Arthur, disgust at his own bloated body was so strong that the thought of inflicting himself upon someone else revolted him.

There was another reason, of course, that he steered clear, something he was only slowly coming to admit to himself - Dimple sometimes participated and, grotesque though she was, it pained him to think of someone else touching her. So he walked, lost in his own thoughts, only occasionally being bothered by one of the omnipresent flying insects that seemed to infest their living area. He had tried, tried harder than ever before, not to join in the feasting back at the communal chamber, but eventually the smell of food had been too much for him, and he had succumbed.

As soon as he had begun to stuff cake into his mouth he hated himself, hated his weakness, but, as ever, he had pushed it to the back of his mind and carried on eating. It was important though - he had been testing himself recently, day after day, finding the limits of his will power. He knew the answer now - knew that his self control would never be enough to get control of himself - and he was the only one who had the will to even try. But somehow he felt the there had to be another way, something obvious, something that he had missed if only he could puzzle it out.

"Switch to main communal space!"

"Turn it off."

"No, Randolph. Instructive for you to see the pigs rutting. We provide them with everything, heat, light, food. An ambiance so comfortable that they never adopted clothes. And as you can see, they have recreational sex with each other, most of the time. I think they do it to relive the boredom as much as anything else."

"It's disgusting."

"If it's any consolation, I agree, and so does Arthur. He's the only one not there, if you notice. If you ask me he's soft on one of this group, the one of the extreme left, called Dimple. I have a bet with my colleagues that they will eventually strike up a monogamous relationship, but, I think, only after Arthur has, ahh, attempted what he is planning. I am, I believe, considered a bit of a romantic."

"And what is he planning?"

"Escape, I should think. He has deduced our existence from the food we deliver. Every feeding time he is one of the pair that comes to collect the crate we send, and every time he tries to examine the hatch we send it through. Some time soon he's going to, ahh... attack the hatch."

"Can he succeed?"

"Oh no - luckily for him. If he did get through he'd end up in either Arena 4.1 or 5.6. In 4.1 he'd as likely fall foul of Michael as anything else and end up spit roasted over a campfire - a shame, as he is one of the few in Game Four worth watching. If he broke into 5.6 he'd find a whole different set of rules and if he survived that he'd end up as a king."

"You call this a game?"

"Our name for a multi-arena research project. There are many here."

"Have you seriously brought me here to try and sell the idea that the people of Madagascar Bay have to be kept hungry or they degenerate into obese and decedent animals? You give them just enough food to keep them hungry, but not hungry enough to actually eat each other?"

"No. The current famine is just to remind people that food can sometimes run short. The knowledge is deemed enough - most of the time. Arena 4.1!"

Mud walls crumbled in the periodic rain, cracking into lumps, soughing into vague mounds that, in an imprecise kind of way, traced the outlines of what had once been buildings. Rotting timber jutted from the mud at crazy angles, all that was left of collapsed upper stories and roofs.

The settlement had long since been abandoned. A lone fly hovered, somehow maintaining its position against the increasing wind, and turned slowly as if looking consciously in all directions. There was nothing to be seen but abandonment, and dereliction.

The fly suddenly darted away, flying in a specific direction. The ruins were perched upon the top of a mound, and half way down its flank the grass cover was broken. Rainwater, draining away after countless storms, had done its work and a huge fan of slurry had been eroded out, and now spread down hill.

The muddy slope was strewn with a scattering of long white objects, mixed with an occasional rounded something, like a ball. The fly sank low and appeared to peer at one ball in particular. It was a skull.

"What did you do to these poor bastards?"

"Very little, though you might say here we were incompetent, if not actually bad Gods, and this, I must say, is the area which worries us the most. They were given what they needed: food, weapons, and clothing. They had nothing to want, not even fear of want, just not a surfeit of anything. We had calculated that this would be the healthiest environment, but as you can see we were sadly mistaken. They built villages, even developed a little rudimentary technology for themselves."

"And then?"

"Then they went to war they, ahh, slaughtered each other. By giving them enough of everything we had shown them what they needed, what they wanted. But by not providing enough we gave them the motivation to seize what they wanted by force from their neighbours. They are all dead - the first of the arenas to totally de-populate itself. We were shocked - you see this wasn't a game at all this was the control. This was what we were supposed to measure the success, or failure, of the other zones against. This, Randolph, was the game zone model of our own world."

"So you - you cause a famine to stop us killing each other?"

"Based on what we learned here we realised how important it was to calculate a fine balance in the colony's food supply, but the right balance. We thought we knew what we were doing and when we started these experiments we thought that we knew what we would find: too much food and motivation goes, too little and the motivation is to violence. Somewhere in the middle there would be a 'just right' point we called it the 'Goldilocks and the Porridge hypothesis' - don't ask why, it would take too long to explain. The key issue for you to grasp, Randolph, is that the hypothesis is false. Life is more complex than that we need to maintain a balance of fear and hope, keep fixed in peoples mind that there can be both good and bad times. Fear of the bad times keeps people sharp, active, productive, knowledge of the good times means that they have goals to work for, things to aspire to, but rarely feel that they need to kill their neighbours to achieve them. So you must understand that civilisation requires a balance, and to maintain that balance we walk a tightrope, a tightrope we only stay on because of the information gained in these games, and many others like it."

"You call this civilization?"

"Yes, though perhaps because I am, at present, more aware than you are of the alternatives. Listen Randolph, NuTopia, our new world, this glorious colony of Oldearth try to see past the, ahh, propaganda. The Barrier surrounds the habitable portion of this planet: we live in a fortress and beyond the walls is death, death that presses upon our defences without ceasing. We can survive here, in the world that we have built, but the management of that world must be conducted without error. One slip, one burst of civil disorder that has not been foreseen and channelled, and the forces which keep up The Barrier may be endangered. Do you know what would happen then, Randolph? Have you any idea?"

"You're talking about The Chaos. It's a fairy story that you tell us to keep control-"

"Is it?" said almost with real anger. "Arena X Special. Emersion!"

Randolph stood on a windy hill, looking rapidly from side-to-side. Incomprehension, confusion, and finally fear, flickered on his face. He had no idea where he was, but the burnt ashy earth looked like the soil he had seen countless times from the windows of the Rocket Pods out of Madagascar Bay, like the soil of the great wilderness that stretches between the farms and green lands. The ash of The Land.

All was still, except for small windblown eddies whipping across the surface, deforming around rocks, racing up and down undulating slopes. But then, suddenly, there was movement to one side of his foot. A long, many-legged, thing uncurled itself from the ash where it has lain hidden.

It wriggled free of its concealment with a clicking of limbs. Two eyes, large and out of proportion to the body, made even more out of proportion by being on stalks, stared up at him with unmistakable hostility. With a clack of snapping joints, the armoured worm advanced.

The man on the hill kicked it, hard and aggressive, driven by fear and revulsion, and the thing sailed through the air, twisting and waving its legs as it went, hitting the ground with a distant thump.

From the direction he had kicked the thing there came a long, shrill hoot. It might have been a sound of pain, but it sounded more like communication, a modulated alarm, a call to arms. Suddenly the ground around him, for as far as he could see, was writhing with life, rampant, feral, angry life, and countless eyes stared up at him.

Countless 'things' wriggled free of the sand, like the very ground had become alive, moving in a great carpet to surround his little hill. He was standing on an island of ash in a sea of life.

Then, with a sound like drawing swords, the nearest creature snapped open long, curved pincers. Thousands of others followed suit, like pair upon pair of surgical scissors, sunlight glinting on sharp edges.

He screamed as the first cut, coming unexpectedly from behind, sliced through the tendons on the back of his leg. He staggered, fell, and with a surge of movement, he island was swept away and he was covered, the sky blotted out, many clawed legs clinging to his clothing, his hair, a soft belly slipped down over his face -

"Only a simulation. We tried to isolate some of the, ahh, real thing, but it was far too dangerous, and not very much use. You would be dead, as you can imagine, in seconds. Chaos, the name that we give to the tumultuous, multi-varied, and infinitely hostile 'life' force that the Barriers hold at bay, is like that ahh, deadly. And that was only one possible version, of course. It is, almost by definition, highly unstable in form, simply a biomass that takes whatever shape, almost always injurious to human life, that will do the job. It seems to be instinctively 'after us'. Be clear Randolph, without men like me looking after your best interests you wouldn't last five minutes."

It took Randolph a while to realise that he was not only still alive, but was actually unharmed. He stammered "A simulation you're scaring me with a simulation!"

"Ahh you think we are making it up? I can arrange to have you expelled from The Barriers if you wish and you can try the real thing. Do you want me to expel you from The Barriers, Randolph?"

Randolph was silent. He knew that he was beaten knew that he didn't have the courage of his convictions. He didn't believe them but he couldn't be sure, not one hundred percent. He knew then that he would never be sure, but it took him some while to work out the consequences of his uncertainty.

An Epilogue or Two

Randolph Vancouver cries at night. Sometimes it is the cruelty that he sees in the world, the 'fortress', as it was once described to him. He sees the starving during the periodic famines, the thin and haggard people who gather at the Main Rocket Pod Station of Madagascar Bay to beg food off passers by, beggars held back by Soldiers of the Emergency. But mostly what makes him cry is his brief glimpse of the world beyond The Barriers, even if it was only a simulation.

His experience of simulations is that they are invariably a shadow of the real thing, and he knows that even he cannot really imagine what the wave of shifting, fecund life would be like, if ever The Barriers came down and the Chaos got in. Sometimes he sees Madagascar Bay, over run with clattering worms and nothing in the streets but picked clean skulls and goggle eyes on stalks.

Those are the worst nights. However, Randolph is a moral man, and has not abandoned the principals that caused him and Moses to blow up a grain Silo, oh, years ago now. He still has those principals - he just no longer has the courage to act upon them. We know this because although we let him go, we watch him closely. He knows we watch, and swats as many, ahh, flies as he can catch.

Arthur did eventually attack the hatch, though in a way I had not foreseen. He jammed it open with a stick of furniture once the crate had been pulled away, and he and Dimple, unseen by the others, threw handfuls of food through the opening, out of reach.

Arthur and Dimple always collect the food together now, and each time throw away a little more before delivering the crate to the others. They have discovered a new sensation - some of them are hungry some of the time, and all of them are loosing weight.

Oh, and I was right. He and Dimple now walk the corridors of their habitat together - she hardly lets him out of her sight, as-it-happens. What's more, most of the others are showing signs of pairing off, following the example they've been set by their leader.

Game 4 is over - we decided that we had learnt all that we could once Michael broke his leg in an accident and was eaten by his own hunting group. But we made an exception for zone 4.3 - we keep that going because we have high hopes of Arthur and his leadership potential.

He is really thinking now, and we want to see what he has in store for the others. Trapped in a small world, you see, he is just like us, and who knows? Some of those ideas of his may help us to prevent Randolph's nightmares coming true.