?? This chapter is also available as a full-cast audiobook and movie - see author's note above.

  Accidentally-Skyward had precisely three problems: Quimly, running very on time for work, everything else about his life, Quimly again… and possibly arithmetic.

  'PUT, YOUR BACK INTO IT!' the trudgeworthy5 barked from where it hovered just ahead.

  'My BACK?' Accidentally gasped. 'Into running? I'm not even sure how to put my arms and legs into it! SLOW… DOWN… QUIMLY!'

  'Quimly cannot help Master Skyward,' said the fluffy creature, grinning out through the open hovercar window. 'Quimly is too busy being a hovercar at the moment. Vrooooom!'

  Accidentally scowled at Quimly, who beamed back fluffily.

  'Then how about acting like a darn hovercar and letting me in?' Accidentally slowed to a walk and shoved his fists into the pockets of his dark-puce overalls. 'Pento Mosaic won't accept my quarf was being a jerk as an excuse for me being so terribly on time again.'

  'Really, Master Skyward?' Quimly asked, eyes glinting. 'What will Pento Mosaic accept my quarf was being a jerk as an excuse for?'

  Accidentally hissed something nonspecific through clenched teeth.

  'But Quimly does not have that level of spinal flexibility.'

  'What? No. I meant that figuratively. How could you hear that anyway? I hissed it nonspecifically.'

  Accidentally dodged around a row of public ThinkerLinker booths lining the street, their green-tinted sanitising lights flickering erratically above a queue of people and peoply things waiting for their turn at the communal nose inserts. He ducked sideways, then turkeyed forward, as two maintenance hoverkittens zipped past, their tiny Optipulp megablasters leaving scorch marks on the scarred pavement as they chased down an unauthorised hoveradvertisement.

  Quimly slowed the trudgeworthy5 to a stop just ahead, flinging all the doors open with the car equivalent of zeal.

  'I am not falling for this again,' Accidentally muttered, slowing to a walk just out of reach of an open door. And yet… he dived for the door.

  The trudgeworthy5 jerked just out of Accidentally's reach.

  Accidentally reached out just like a jerk before slowing down again.

  The trudgeworthy5 slowed down again, too.

  'I'm not doing this anymore, you floody quarf,' Accidentally grumbled.

  Quimly was typical of the quarfs Accidentally had, unfortunately, known. Waist-high, fluffy, particularly annoying, with a disturbing habit of turning his face upside down. Almost as disturbingly, Quimly could access every think about any think just by thinking thinks through the pulsing, green ThinkerLinker linker shoved deeply up his nose.

  Not that Quimly having a ThinkerLinker linker shoved deeply up his nose was unusual in Smogington in 2334. Everyone and their quarf had a ThinkerLinker linker shoved deeply up their nose, enabling them to access the universe's collective knowledge... and control anything fitted with a ThinkerLinker floomfield, which included pretty much everything, pretty much everywhere, pretty much all of the time.

  Unfortunately, Accidentally could not personally think onto ThinkerLinker because of his severe galactaphobia. A crippling fear of space that had plagued him since his early childhood. Merely thinking about space made Accidentally fall down and gurgle fairly alarmingly in the back of his throat. And Thinkerlinker was pretty much full of the stuff.

  'Do you hear something strange?' Accidentally asked, hearing something strange… a distant, echoing thump… thump… thump.

  'It would be strange not to hear something strange in Smogington, strange Master Skyward,' Quimly said, holding his hands questioningly out the open hovercar window.

  'If I could shove a Thinkerlinker linker deeply up my nose without going mad,' Accidentally grumbled, 'then I could find out about that strange sound. And then I could drive my own darn hovercar away from it. And then I could drive away from Smoginton. And just keep on driving. Never ever worrying about being very on time for work ever ever again.'

  'But Master Skyward does not need to have a Thinkerlinker linker shoved deeply up Master Skyward's nose. Because Quimly has a Thinkerlinker linker shoved deeply up Quimly's nose, so Quimly can always be Master Skyward's ThinkerLinker linker linker.'

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  'Precisely, Quimly. You being my ThinkerLinker linker linker is why things always work out… about as well as things have worked out so far this morning.'

  'Precisely, Master Skyward,' Quimly grinned.

  Accidentally didn't. 'Honestly, Quimly, I don't know why my parents didn't just flush you down the toilet like all the other quarfs they evolved from potato peelings and earwax in our home evolution kit.'

  Accidentally skitched up a small cloud of ashen dust, turning the toe of his dark-puce boots a slightly more contemporary drab-grey.

  'Some days, Quimly. I really do think I'd be better off with my own ThinkerLinker linker shoved up my own nose, despite my own crippling galactaphobia.'

  'Some days, Quimly…' Quimly mimicked, waggling his fluffy head from side to side.

  Accidentally reached into his breast pocket and took out the worn realograph he kept there. A nervous habit whenever his frustration with Quimly peaked. Hence it being exceptionally worn indeed.

  His breathing began to steady as the trudgeworthy5 hovered past a local park - equally describable as two synthetic trees plonked in the sludge around a puddle of questionable origin.

  Despite the dismal scene, Accidentally's chest warmed at the sight of three children playing with toy hovercars, their levitating vehicles responding in a limited way to their manual intervention because the children were too young for ThinkerLinker linkers. Accidentally could very much relate.

  'No, let me refresh that,' Accidentally grumbled afresh at Quimly, where Quimly still hovered just ahead in the trudgeworthy5. He kicked up a pile of ashen dust afresh, too. 'Some days, I wish they'd turn ThinkerLinker off entirely so I could just get on with my life.'

  'What life might that be, Master Skyward?'

  'I'm twenty-seven. Stop calling me MASTER! Skyward.'

  'What makes Master Skyward think Quimly does not mean master in the other sense? My overlord, my liege, my royal hobgoblin?'

  'Everything you do and say!'

  'Even this?' Quimly turned his face upside down and waggled his tongue.

  'Yes, that's precisely the sort of thing. Now let me into the flarping car!'

  'Of course, Master Skyward. As Master Skyward's ThinkerLinker linker linker, Quimly's sworn duty is to fulfil all Master Skyward's most pressing needs.'

  'Yes, provided I have a most pressing need for a pain in my neck.'

  Accidentally tilted his head back and massaged his neck and saw personal delivery drones buzzing overhead in intricate patterns, dropping packages with varying accuracy into apartment receipt holes, their undersides glowing with ThinkerLinker delivery codes. Panic buying? In May? Accidentally shook his head. What did everyone on ThinkerLinker know that he didn't?

  Accidentally slowed again. This time nothing to do with Quimly. The distant thumping sound had transformed into an unmistakable DOOM DOOM DOOM that seemed to emanate from everywhere all at once.

  Planets didn't say DOOM, did they?

  Planets didn't say anything at all... he was pretty sure. Not even... Hey, look at me, I'm a planet! Or... how about not suffocating me to death with that souped-up smog machine of yours for a nice change! Or any other things like that that planets were more likely to say - if sentences with... THAT THAT in them were allowed, which Accidentally was pretty sure they weren't. Though it was on his ever-growing list of things he couldn't readily deduce, so there WAS that that.

  The familiar tightness that preceded a galactaphobia episode gripped him. He lowered his gaze to the ashen dust at his feet, trying to see patterns there. A coping technique his therapist, Ms Speckledick, had tried to teach him before declaring his case fascinatingly hopeless.

  Suddenly, the sky was much darker. Passers-by began looking upward, their expressions shifting from ThinkerLinker-induced indifference to darkening-sky-induced second guessing their Thinkerlinker feeds. Accidentally looked up in turn and saw perhaps the last thing he ever wanted to see. An angular starblaster with an ominous weapons array, descending through the smog-choked sky. Smogington's longstanding indifference shattered. People and peoply things froze in place, conversations died mid-sentence.

  Someone nearby said, 'This isn't a scheduled unregistered extraterrestrial incursion.'

  Accidentally somehow felt a flash of recognition. For half a moment, he knew this ship, where it had come from, why it was here. The feeling was so intense it felt almost like a true memory. But that was impossible. He'd... NEVER... been off PLANET!

  He'd never even been off GROUND unless JUMPING at SHADOWS counted. The faux memory faded the moment he reached into his breast pocket and took out the worn realograph. He meditated on the image. Him as a boy, tasselled blonde hair and a carefree smile, on a shore he didn't recognise, staring up in wonder at a shadowed sky.

  It was a past that felt like a recurring dream. One his parents refused to discuss. The closest they'd come was when his mother had once grimaced at the realograph and said, 'Some people and peoply things are named for what their parents know they are. You were named for what the universe hopes you'll become.'

  He'd asked what she'd meant, but she'd only smiled sadly and added, 'Did you put on clean underwear this morning? We've been having some issues with the scrubocrotch. Only, your father's underpants have been coming out even dirtier. If you can even imagine that!'

  Accidentally had tried not to.

  Not being on ThinkerLinker, touching that tatty, old realograph, a ritual as automatic as breathing whenever his anxiety spiked, was as close as Accidentally ever came to connecting with the eternal mysteries of the universe.

  A word surfaced in his mind unbidden... Heck. A childish swear? No. It felt like more than that. The word faded just as quickly, replaced by the familiar panic gripping him like molec-u-tight.

  A public alert system, unused for decades, crackled to life with an ominous whine. 'Attention. Attention,' it began brightly. 'No… really… listen up, you lot… particularly you at the back. I have something important to tell you about space…'

  'Space! Oh, Jesus9,' Accidentally moaned as his crippling galactaphobia kicked in. He fell, in a slumping, purple crumple, atop the ashen dust, gurgling alarmingly in the back of his throat. Just as he found himself thinking that things couldn't possibly get any worse, he saw something that was unquestionably any worse. He marked the occasion by making one final, alarming gurgling sound before, pretty comprehensively, passing out.

  chapters of Accidentally Skyward (longlisted for the Richell Prize - Hachette): text, audiobook and movie every Monday. If Accidentally made you smile, tell someone. Thanks!