I kind of forgot all about the product for a while, because I never heard anything more about it from Tom. But then, about six months later, there it was, the thing I'd found, now a part of the Shark Magnet machine. Tom had set it up so the disc spun around, and the groove in it came into contact with a tiny shard of diamond he had prised out of a stolen necklace. And it made a noise! The spinning disc made a noise, a type of music I think, but nothing like I'd ever heard before.

So there you are; the Factory making these strange products that can hardly be used, until you break the code on them. And Old Tom Sharpsaw spending his lost days constructing perverse, uncontrollable machines. They were the mirror of each other.

Take the Snake Loop game he invented, for instance; all these metal pipes that twisted together, sometimes sending up clouds of green smoke. Here, the first thing was figuring out how to turn the machine on, because there was a different way of turning it on every time you put your money in the slot. And then, one day just when you think you've got the hang of turning it on, and you've successfully shot down all the fluffy green clouds with the attached perfume gun, what should you discover but that turning it on wasn't turning it on at all. Turning it on was just turning on the unlocking device which the clouds made. And killing the clouds in a certain order, that was the real way of turning on the Snake Loop machine. Only then could you really start playing the game, which had absolutely nothing at all to do with killing clouds, and a whole lot more to do with snakes and loops and the rhythm of the heart and the shadow of the eye…

Well, it's the Factory, isn't it? Tom's caught in the loop as well; we all are. And that's why nobody ever gets to leave Crawl, and why the goddamn graveyard is so crowded. And maybe one day we'll find out what the Factory is really making. The Big Product, Tom calls it. Because all these things it makes a gift of, they're just the side products, that's what the experts reckon anyway; things that have gone wrong, say, or failed experiments. Tom reckons it another way; he reckons the Factory is giving us these products just so we can help complete the process. And if we ever find out what the final product is, maybe then we all get to leave…

It scares me just thinking about it.

So there were five of these machines that Tom had made: the Snake Loop, the Butterfly Circle, the Plague Circus, the Shark Magnet and the Liquid Tiger machine. And like I said, all of them just kept on growing as the years passed by, and most of them included little things here and there that had come out of the Factory. But the Intravenus machine, that was different. Intravenus was a Factory product in itself. The whole thing had come out just as it was, complete in all its parts, ready for use. The only trouble being, nobody could work out the reason for it.

The shape of the thing didn't help any, being a perfect sphere made from a burnished metal of some kind. A hand knocked against it revealed a hollowness within, alive with echoes, and yet there appeared to be no way to open it up. Two small circular holes placed at right angles to each other allowed a glimpse of the contained darkness, which was smoky and smelled of ash. Certainly, at six feet in diameter, it was one of the largest products yet delivered, but that didn't mean anything; very often the smaller objects proved the most useful, like the bird shoes for instance, they were much sought after. But the Intravenus, what use was it? A large, hollow globe with two holes in it, that's it. So the thing was rolled on over to the Town Hall, which is where all products of the Factory were meant to be registered.

It wasn't called the Intravenus machine in those days, of course, it wasn't called anything. So that's when Tom Sharpsaw came calling. He paid a night-time visit to the Council Yard where all the useless objects were stored. And he found a home for the strange new machine in the Vanishing Palace. Of course he didn't know what the purpose of it was either, not at first anyway, not until he started to work on it, and I'm sure this is where Oris the Robot comes in handy. It was Oris that most probably discovered the secret code of the latest machine, because all the Factory's products are linked in some weird way.

We just don't know the weirdness of the way, that's all.

All Tom Sharpsaw had to do then was turn the secret code into a process that could be coin-operated, by the special coin naturally, and there it was, the star turn of the Vanishing Palace. He painted the sphere black, with the word Intravenus in swirling red letters. He only called it the Intravenus after he'd found out what the purpose of it was, so all us kids were real keen to have a go on it. And I was a bit mad at him anyway, because he hadn't let me help him work on the machine, that wasn't fair. The least I was expecting was first go on the new game. Except then he goes and paints adults only on it as well. It was the first time we'd ever seen such a phrase in Crawl. Tom was very strict about it being for adults only, and so it was only a few men of the town who got to play the Intravenus. And not only men, because some women started to play it as well. They would stare through one of the holes, while a beam of light that Tom had rigged up was shone through the second hole. What they saw inside, we just couldn't imagine. The arrival of the game didn't please everybody, however, because pretty soon some of the older and more conservative people of Crawl started a campaign to have the Intravenus machine closed down, even destroyed. This made us even more curious. We'd ask the players as they came out of the Palace what it was they'd seen in the game, what had happened, what was it like, what was the secret? Please, we'd demand, please tell us what the mystery is.

But nobody would. They'd just walk out of the Vanishing Palace with this glazed expression on their faces, as though they were drunk or something. Near everybody who'd played the game would start to gather around the Factory's outer fence, just staring at the place. Like it was a temple or something. We got so curious that some of us decided to hide in the back room of the Palace while Tom locked up for the night.

There was me, and Bobby, and Janet, and Flo.

Bobby dropped out because he was too scared, I think, so that left the three of us, three girls. I guess that's why we were so fascinated with the machine, not so much that it was adults only, but more because of the name; we all wanted to be in love one day. Because what else could you hope for in a town called Crawl? So there we were, all three of us cramped in the little store room, surrounded by all the bits of things that Tom Sharpsaw hadn't got round to using yet. And it was dark, and scary, and worse still I couldn't help feeling guilty at doing the dirty on Tom, after all he'd taught me. I was going to use the skills he'd passed on to me against him. So how could I not be feeling bad?

But the Intravenus Girl was calling, and that's all that mattered.

Tom lived in some little rooms above the Palace. We had to wait a few hours until all was silent from up there, and every flicker of light had been extinguished. Even then we still waited a while longer, just to make sure. Then we crept out.

It was easy enough to find the box he kept the special coin in. And easier enough with my stealing skills to pick the lock on it. There was the coin! How it gleamed, not like the usual coins at all. This one was shiny, with no marks of hunger. Freshly minted, but how could it be, with a queen's head upon it. Elizabeth II. How long ago was that? Nobody knew.

There was a plan to all this. Flo would keep watch, and Janet would help me with the machine, but I would be the first to look into the hole, that was decided because wasn't I the one who had stolen the key? Tom had suspended the sphere from wires, to bring the apertures up to eye level. Of course that was too high for us kids, so I had to stand on a stool to get to the right level. Janet held the stool while I climbed up, and then I told her to put the coin in the slot. Which she did, making the beam fire into the one hole while I put my eye, tenderly, nervously, against the other.