Free The Year of the Sex Olympics and other TV Plays by Nigel Kneale

International becomes Ryan Interspatial. It is up to you.
    EDDIE : I love this man’s modesty.
    BROCK : Thanks to Eddie you’ll find all your junk in familiar order.
    EDDIE : Disorder.
    BROCK : Obviously. Sorry.
    EDDIE : All that string.
    BROCK : Now. Your pet projects will go on as before—Eddie’s digital crystal and so on—but we’re going to try something new. We’ll correlate all results together.
    MAUDSLEY : But Pete—if there’s no connection—
    BROCK : The computer might spot one. (Doubtful noises) Every clue counts.
    EDDIE : It puts a lot on the computer.
    All eyes go to Jill. She is standing by the computer, her expression strange, as if she is still under the heavy apprehension that nearly made her crash the car.
    BROCK : Jill’s ready. She’s going to try something very sophisticated. Projections—extrapolations—a sort of randomised mix with an accelerated uncertainty principle. How’s that?
    Jill seems to come to herself.
    JILL : Something of the sort.
    BROCK : You all right?
    JILL : Yes, I— (As if to take attention away from herself, she turns to the twin tape storage units) What about data storage? Are those all we’ve got?
    BROCK : Colly. Computer storage room. When do we get it?
    COLLINSON : Oh yes. Well—
    BROCK : What?
    COLLINSON (embarrassed) : There’ve been—problems.
    BROCK (quietly) : You were here to solve them. (Controlling his anger) How far have they got with it? Colly, how much have they done?
    COLLINSON (bluntly) : Nothing.
    Brock stares at him in disbelief, then makes for the door.
    BROCK : Let me see!
    He stamps off down the passage. Collinson looks at Jill. They both follow.
    THE STORAGE ROOM
    Brock throws open a massive door. There is still a notice screwed to it reading “U.S. ARMY. STORE ROOM”.
    The room is immense. It could contain a small house. The walls go up 15 or 20 feet to meet the bare and rotting beams of the roof. The walls are covered with wooden panelling that now hangs away from them in sagging sheets.
    There is a single window at one end, high up and half smothered by the ivy we saw outside.
    Apart from a workmen’s trestle table, standing in the rubble, it is completely bare. A few square yards of the rotten panelling have been torn down and thrown on the floor. Then work seems to have been abandoned.
    Brock stands in the middle of the room, unable to believe it.
    BROCK : It—it simply isn’t—! Five months and not a single—! Why didn’t you report it?
    Collinson joins him. Jill stays in the doorway.
    COLLINSON : I knew there were reasons they had to finish the priority jobs.
    BROCK : Colly, this was priority!
    COLLINSON : To be fair, it wasn’t in phase one.
    BROCK : Refacing and air-conditioning and wiring—! Did they just forget it?
    COLLINSON : No.
    BROCK : What then?
    COLLINSON : Problems with the men. They claimed it was—I don’t know—a dirty job.
    BROCK : There’s dry rot! Do they think it’s catching! Look at those panels—I could shift the lot in half an hour!
    He grabs a swathe of distorted panelling and peels it back. It splits, disclosing shroud-like hangings of fungus. Dust scatters. Brock sneezes.
    He pulls savagely at another section and this too rips away. More fungus—and something else.
    BROCK : Stairs.
    Jill comes to look. The steps are little more than pegs in the wall, scarcely a foot wide and very badly worn—hollowed, sloping and uneven.
    COLLINSON : Yes, they saw those.
    BROCK : The men?
    He tugs at the next section of panelling, it is more resistant but it shows them enough.
    JILL : They don’t lead anywhere.
    The steps run from ground level to about eight feet up and then stop.
    BROCK : Surely that wasn’t what—? (Sourly, as he releases the panel) What else did they find? A skeleton?
    COLLINSON : No-o.
    BROCK : Anything?
    COLLINSON : As a matter of fact, yes. About thirty tins of Spam.
    BROCK : Spam!
    COLLINSON : And a letter to Father Christmas.
    He nods at the trestle table. With a comic groan Brock