The Amazona Ballroom is starting to fill up for the 2008 New Year Party and Axid is weighing up the changes which have occurred since his last visit to Earth, towards the end of the last century. Trapp dancing is sweeping the globe, and buxom trappers wearing gold, shimmering dresses suspended by nipple-hooks are commonplace even in countries where other females are apt to take the veil, if only in despair of twenty-first century fashion.

At this particular ball in London, England a group of philosophical trappers are presently engrossed in some archive video footage of late 1990s comediennes; Morwenna Banks currently under fire:

'She just gets up and says a load of intricate things all wrong, all right and this is supposed to be funny ?'

'So that's all shitequal, Sarah. 'S to be thanked she has no punchlines in the gallery, so what do you say ?'

'S'all right Selina. That's all right.

Axid is finding the trappers' newspeak difficult to comprehend, but has gathered already that punchlines are out-of-vogue because most people hear them before they have been made and that these girls have no discernable sense of humour, which might possibly explain their interest in outdated comic videoclips.

Truth to tell, even in the late nineties speech was virtually redundant in communication and even body language was obsolescent: people would hear eachother think, take turns to have a thought and flirt only to flatter, as a way of promoting ego transference. The terms 'chief' and 'boss' were employed across the board with the same aim and place-change was the most universalised communication system. But this is all heavy stuff: Axid orders himself a drink. He is too late. It is already sizzling under his nose. This place is no fun at all, thinks Axid after the barmaid has prepared her response to his question:

'Whatever happened to suspense, what do you say ?' (Axid is very fast on picking up linguistic nouveatés and tics de langage.)

'Yes. That's what happened. Whatever.'

The barmaid's drawling, dead drone seems to pin Axid's voice against the retreating background noise, rendering it dryer, clearer and then louder with every syllable of his every utterance. His mind wanders back a decade to Josie, his last girlfriend on this planet. Wondering where she might be now, he remembers that very last moment in bed, which turned on him to mirror 'Take a look at yourself'; that final sentence of garbled pillowtalk which he pronounced in an inescapable monotone before realising that his bed-partner was (also) asleep. Before he awoke, she had disappeared.

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