Something went badly wrong.

At first we didn't notice. We got used to bumping about together and stepping
on each other's toes. Funny how that happens.

We felt it in different ways. Some people thought they were getting bigger or
their skin was over-sensitive and they needed to insulate themselves with
something. But others felt squeezed, choked, and confined and sought open
spaces which they never found.

But the world was getting smaller and smaller. It was like a balloon going
down. Everything getting tiny, brighter, more intense and squashed up together.
It was cluttered, uncomfortable - you couldn't find anywhere to sit down.

I was everybody's mother in nightly tears before the television news. My
children in floods, sackings and revolution. It was all going sour. It was al
going sour.

I was scrubbing individual stones on a huge beach. I was making sandwiches for
the whole of Somalia. I was shouting 'Fire!' in a thousand languages. I was
plugging a million dykes with my failing fingers. I was baking languages in a
million fires. I extended trillions of fine wires. I was scrubbing fingers upon
a beach in Wales. I was firing nights...

I was suddenly very ti