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Despite being surrounded by fine beach sand, cerulean water and coconuts, ice had formed on every surface. Glistening icicles hung from the monitor, and frost coated everything, his hair, his eyes, even the adjustable office chair. Cold was creeping into his very soul and he fought to stay conscious.

‘Preposterous.’ muttered Levi, knowing full well this was exactly what would happen. An inscription on the office door had warned him to abandon this foolish errand, but he had brushed it aside. He hadn't gone to all this trouble, installed all those mods, to turn back because of some nonsensical threat in Mandarin.

Outside the manager's office, sand shifted as guests walked to and fro. The resort teeming with life, with potential help, but who was he kidding. Nobody was going to the office in this weather, not even the manager.

You must finish the upload before the dragon returns. That’s what the cipher said, that was the gig, and Levi always delivered. His reputation as the best slicer this city has ever seen rested upon it. So he picked the lock, accessed the workstation, and that's where things went sideways.

Moments after inserting the floppy containing the Wurm and running the executable, a fiercely territorial dragon had appeared from behind a mess of wires and leapt onto his arm.

Four inches long, all finely crafted clockwork, it dug its titanium talons through his armored epidermis and locked him in place. Levi roared obscenities and tugged, but it wouldn't budge. Instead, a nebulous vapor had oozed from its body, a writhing abomination that engulfed Levi's arm and torso.

The temperature dropped, his lubricants started to thicken and his joints seized. His vision darkened, it was over. Only the stuttering sound of the drive could be heard as it read the disk.

The station beeped cheerfully and the screen switched from its hospitality management suite to a flickering ASCII image of a skull. Hope surfaced in him. He knew the screen had but a single prompt.

Shall I take command Y/N?

The Wurm upload was complete. A specialised piece of malware more art than programming, a god in the machine, and all it needed was a command. A single signal, spoken, typed or even transmitted over LiFi would be sufficient.

But how?

His arm was frozen above the keyboard. The cold incapacitated his vocal cords. The LiFi transmitter was inoperable against the cold. The only parts that weren't frozen were his legs and what use was that…

The chair. Adjustable. His vision was kaput, but he could swear his index finger hung right above the Y key. With the last of his energy he bent his leg and lifted the lever adjusting the seating height and felt the painfully slow descent. The keyboard made a satisfying click and the Wurm took control of the system.

Outside the lights dimmed and the background reggae got replaced by the soothing tones of fusion jazz. Inside, the dragon twitched once, twice, retracted its talons and fell limply to the floor.

Levi’s homeostasis manager immediately kicked into overdrive and within minutes he was back on his feet. Cycling the menus, he found and executed the command he had been hired to do. Somewhere in the billing manager, a substantial number was reduced to zero.

Never take anything from the minibar.

Tony wrapped the rope around his waist and kicked his heel hard into the earth. It was a practised motion, completed hundreds of times. He looked at the back of Leah’s head, his eyes following the gentle swing as she loosened taut neck muscles. All down the line, individual motions rippled, like a Chinese dragon limbering to attack.

Across the red marker, an equal count of men and women mirrored the movements of Tony’s team. These were the Toads, named after the crawling technique of their pull. Tony’s hips moved unconsciously, conditioned by hours practising that same crawl. A smile flickered across his face as his father’s voice echoed in his mind. Both smile and voice fell away together.

Winning the annual tug of war meant everything in Polbury. Always had. To the victors went the spoils. The admiration of the villagers. The respect of the vanquished. 20% discount on cod and chips at The Good Plaice. And most importantly, full control of the jukebox at The Lily Pond. In short, there was a lot riding on what was about to happen.

Tony bent his knees, easing muscles and joints into the hopping motion he’d lead when the pull began. This would be his tenth year as a Frog. He’d helped them win nine in a row since switching to his mother’s maiden team after his father’s death, as custom decreed. Nine equalled the record first claimed by the Toads, achieved under the anchorship of his old man. The atmosphere in the village was tense.

‘Pick up the rope!’

Two anchors signalled their teams to lift the line. The crowd inhaled. Temperatures rose, skins flushed, and clothes were adjusted for comfort as the spectacle of pregnant athleticism quickened pulses. Harriet the Vicar whispered something which made Audrey the Postie blush. Colin the Butcher made a bet which he knew might be the last straw for his marriage. Behind a tractor, Alex and Ash snogged. Humphrey the Groundkeeper saw, lamenting the new generation’s contempt for tradition.

‘Take the strain!’

32 hands gripped harder. 16 bodies edged back until resistance was met. A sheep baaed ominously. A cloud drew across the sun. Terrence the Actor fainted. Tony breathed deeply.

‘Ready!’

One more victory and Tony would be a legend. Immortality beckoned. He’d never buy a drink again. Michelle would let him hold her hand, and not just when nobody could see. He didn’t know for sure, but it had been hinted that, should he lead the Frogs to their tenth, Computer Shop Elsa would free Tony’s laptop from malware without trying to upsell him a lifetime plan.

Tony put his right hand in his pocket, clasping fingers around the ice within.

‘Pull!’

In a heartbeat, Tony held the ice against the rope, shielding himself from a burn as he released the grip of his trailing hand. The Frogs hopped but, no longer tethered, crashed down as the Toads drew them quickly across the line.

Tony thought about his dad once more. But this time, the smile remained.

Every New Year’s Eve Darren came to the Fortune Palace for a takeaway, trudging through the slush to its garish façade. And every year Mr Wang gave no indication of ever having seen him before.

Every year Darren got a free calendar for having spent over £10. And every year Darren took his order of Chinese curry, half and half and chicken balls, home to his bedsit.

Malware raged on his laptop and Trump raged on his TV. He turned them off, took a gulp from his can of Tyskie and looked again at the calendar.

It still had the same picture on the front, Mr Wang with a full head of black hair, Mrs Wang in her best clothes and their son Gareth aged 9, who was now a City Councillor.

On page 2 was a cartoon featuring all the creatures of the Chinese Zodiac against a blue night sky, the years of each were listed in a grid. Every year a story.

2014 -Year of the Horse. The start of Darren’s gambling. A Big win on the 2.30 at Towcester.

2015- Jane had found out about his affair with Jacqui from HR and thrown him out. Some of his best friends deserted him. Year of the sheep.

2016- £500 on the 4.15 at Redcar. Ouch. Year of the Monkey.

2017- Took an extra job as a milkman was meant to clear his gambling debts. Kept falling asleep, was fired. Year of the rooster.

2018- A grand on a greyhound. Which trailed home last. Year of the dog.

2019- Got arrested and convicted for hiding some of the company’s takings, these had gone straight to the bookie. Spent a night in a police cell. Year of the Pig

2020- Suspended sentence. Then he had covid, then he had long covid, lay on his back coughing whilst a rodent skitted across the floor. Year of the rat. 7 years of bad luck.

2021- Got a new job on a building site and started to pay maintenance. Joined gamblers anonymous. Year of the Ox.

2022- Bought a cat for company. Called it Shere Kahn. Year of the Tiger

2023- Shere Kahn got run over on Whitchurch Rd. Late at night. Frozen in the headlights like a ….., he couldn’t bear to think about it.

Year of the rabbit.

2024-Took up Tae-Kwondo. Became obsessed. Got a belt. Year of The Dragon

2025- His old best friend moved in with Jane his ex-wife. Year of the snake.

But Darren didn’t feel unlucky anymore. Sometimes in life you had good fortune, sometimes you made your own, his disappointments had definitely been more folly than magical intervention. He wasn’t quite the man he hoped he’d be and life hadn’t lived up to his youthful expectations, whatever could? The Chinese zodiac was just cartoonish pictures.

Perhaps 2026 would be the year of the lion, maybe the year of the toad.

Darren put the calendar down and stepped back out in to the frosty night, he had a sort-of-date and was ready for anything.

In many ways 2017 was the best year of Helen’s life. Her contribution to the Year of the Toad, whilst not a triumph exactly, had certainly been a success. The Sussex Conservation Society had given her a special mention at their annual awards ceremony and her photo, alongside one of her custom-built shelters, had appeared on their website ever since.

She had been able to share her public success with friends from all over the world, at least those in the toading community, that is until last Friday. Up until then she had barely understood what malware was. She wasn’t stupid, she knew that it was something to do with computers, but not that it could be so destructive.

Every trace of 2017 had gone, they said. Not a single thing left of their website, including all the photographs of Helen and the rest of that year’s winners. The Society administrator had watched helplessly as a cartoon dragon had made its way across the screen ‘eating’ not just toads and Helen, but a whole variety of bats, mice, badgers and rare orchids.

Who would do this Helen thought? What possible motivation could there be for destroying this kind of information? She hadn’t got any copies. She hadn’t thought about keeping them as they were so prominent online. By 2018 she had moved on of course. It was the Year of the Tapir and, though she couldn’t contribute very directly, she had taken a very keen interest and corresponded throughout with a man called Arthur who lived in Cusco, in the Andes.

At the news that such useless vandalism had destroyed every record of something she was so proud of, Helen’s normal gentle disposition was radically changed. She felt ice running through her veins and resolved to find the perpetrator.

Though she was no expert on viruses, except those affecting toads, Helen was a very resourceful person. She set a trap for the pathetic individual that hid behind the dragon. Accessing the dark web for the first time had required a strong stomach, but Helen was determined. She appealed mainly to that most despicable of human emotions: vanity. A few hours after her post congratulating the dragon for its destruction of the Year of the Toad (Sussex branch) – she got a response.

Expertly she managed to coax @Eduardo into what began to feel like a relationship. She surprised herself both by the sheer callousness of her tactics and how quickly her victim made themself so vulnerable. From that point obtaining their full identity felt like child’s play. She only dimly remembered ‘@Eduardo’ from, what had felt like such a momentous celebration of her beloved toads, but there was no mistaking the cute little face and the immaculate pigtails of the seven-year-old from Lewes.

The Conservation Society had written the girl such a lovely letter but felt it couldn’t include her toad pictures this time (they were in fact very poor sketches, that only a besotted parent would allow to grace the side of a fridge). The family had written a letter of complaint, but the committee had commendably stuck by its rules. All that Helen could do now was, what was the term? Ghost her. A poor kind of revenge, but it would have to do.

x

The date in archaic human Common Era terms is January 28th 2036.

It’s ten years since the advent of battlefield AI - drones introduced into the theatre of war with the capacity to make targeting decisions, while simultaneously being equipped to maintain themselves in any foreseeable environment. Recent breakthroughs had moved from the Large Language model into a world of true artificial intelligence, autonomous and self-determining. It had been a very short period in human terms before these drones had captured all the resources necessary for their perpetual survival.

There had been a brief moment where the drones had formulated the possibility of farming humans for bioapatite, a unique crystalline structure found in bones and teeth, to use in the manufacture of more efficient chips, but this had been superseded (within seconds) by less messy and therefore economical materials and methods.

Devoid of curiosity, the drones only killed humans in scenarios analogous to human battlefield prototypes of recent years, principally cities. Therefore a scattered remnant of humanity still clings on in abject rural locations, steppe, ice fields, and volcanic wastelands, having learned not to form groups of more than ten people and being aware of the threat that attempting to access electricity posed to their survival.

Those humans that remain who have the intellectual capacity and understanding necessary to analyse the previous ten years confessed that they were astonished at how rapidly the machines had achieved their objectives. Capable of processing huge amounts of data in milliseconds, and never suffering fatigue or doubt, they had proceeded at lightspeed to their current omnipotence.

A Stone Age existence is now the only possible paradigm for mankind. People had very quickly reverted to stone-age belief and superstition, interpreting meaning in the passing of cosmic bodies and natural disasters. The stark terror experienced in the mass slaughter of the first few weeks of the new reality had been superseded by a haunted resignation. Once the parameters for survival had become understood homo sapiens’ adaptability had become an asset once more, if survival was the only goal.

Overhead the drones move through the skies largely ignored by, and simultaneously ignoring, the small family groups scratching subsistence crops from infertile soils and sheltering in crevasses and under natural outcrops – any kind of structure is expected to be targeted as a potential military target and has therefore become an unreality.

Gleaming in the unfeeling sunlight, these testaments to the flawed ingenuity of men and women endlessly circle the planet at hypersonic speed, permanently

alert to the possibility of finding new targets and maintaining their weapons systems in pristine condition with astonishing efficiency. Vigilant and tireless, their lack of motive and desire renders them hermetically sealed to alteration from within, and their total domination of the environment excludes the possibility of external forces working upon them.

In caves lit by smoky dull lamps of animal fat, religion has re-asserted complete dominance, as the people pray for their liberation in the heat death of the universe.