In the absence of any better ideas, The Watcher stands in the centre of Improbable Central, holding a catcher's mitt and staring expectantly at the sky. Around her are people, doing what people do in these sorts of circumstances; panicking, crying, laughing, kissing, drinking, screaming, fucking, raving, or standing quietly still with closed eyes and a meditative smile, taking death philosophically.

"It's like my dad always said," mumbles The Watcher. "When life throws you a thermonuclear device, you bloody well catch it and throw it back." She wonders for a moment who she's saying it to - the cameras are deactivated, her show cancelled. She puts it down to instinct. Even without a television audience, you don't waste a good one-liner. Or even a bad one.

Over the bedlam of the crowd, she hears something. A plane. She looks up into the bright, cloudless sky - habitually looking a little ahead of the direction of the sound.

There it is.

There's a tiny dot. There's a bigger dot. The crowd quiets. "There's the bomb," says The Watcher, pointing. As one, the crowd holds its breath. Here comes the bomb.

There's a thump and The Watcher stumbles, the device snugly in her mitt, no larger than a cricket ball. She stares down at it. "Here's the bomb." She looks up, into the eyes of the assembled crowd.

"Well, that was -"

Bang...