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That afternoon, the line on the receiver behaved. There were pockets of frozen time all over the garden. The receiver slipped into neutral for long enough for Digger to recalibrate it and take a reading. He went inside, sat as his computer, and analysed the data.

The software showed the future as an arc of lines radiating out from the receiver, like ripples forming on a pond. When he fine-tuned the readings, that uneventful line remained – the lifeless zone around him – mocking him, like the shadow of the grim reaper.

Digger didn't believe in epiphanies.

But as he stared at the results, he saw that the obvious had been hidden behind a cloud of logic. How could this machine, his creation, understand him, its creator? Recursion, an infinite maze of self-reflecting mirrors. It would need to look back inside itself and reflect on its own existence. The machine had been unable to read his future because he was its creator. It had been frozen in a web of contradictions.

Digger re-programmed the translator. He instructed it to register his presence as a tangible non entity and to manifest these attributes as a void – a white space on the screen.

###

Late in the afternoon, as the Sun settled into a bedding of orange clouds, Digger took another reading.

The future was different. A gray mist formed on the screen as though his presence had diluted the readings. Slowly, this new future took shape, grayness scattered with fine white lines, like veins on a leaf. The veins were Digger himself. He was the white paper on which the future unfolding in front of him was written.

Digger's heart skipped a beat as the scattering of lines clumped and twirled into a single direction – a positive trajectory pointing east. His heart quivered. Salma and Jamal.

Abruptly, the beguiling future dissolved and the white veins were swallowed back into the mist.

Something was wrong. A dark slash below the line of equilibrium was charging onto the screen from the west. A negative event. The interloper was making the screen flicker, as thought the untangler was trying to decide between several possible futures. Digger gazed in horror at a row of jagged troughs dribbling below the line of equilibrium like inverted stumps of burnt trees.

"Shit," he muttered.

Whatever this miserable event was, it was about to happen.

Digger heard a car slow down outside Salma and Jamal's home.

On the screen, the negative event bumped up against the white space that was Digger. He was the junction that would direct the outcome of the future now unfolding outside his house.

He opened his front door as an elderly, agitated man clambered out of a taxi: Mr Wilson. Digger hurtled out his gate, his heart somewhere near his throat. He planted himself in front of Salma and Jamal's house, forcing such a cheesy grin that his cheeks ached.

###

"Mr Wilson! How nice to see you!"

Wilson paused and looked at Digger through hooded eyes.

"Before you visit your tenants, who are, incidentally, very nice people, why don't you come inside for a drink?" Digger tried to sound conspiratorial. "I have something I think might interest you…"

The negative event that was Mr Wilson grunted. He was never one to turn down a whiff of conspiracy. He gave Digger a mute nod, turned and loped towards the house.

"Your hip replacement seems to have taken well," jabbered Digger as he ushered Mr Wilson through his gate. "Are you enjoying your new home at the retirement village?"

Digger's hallway was imbued with a faint reek of mothballs and stale booze as he guided Mr Wilson into his office.

Mr Wilson sneered. "I was doing very well until I got this."

He waved the crumpled document he was carrying at Digger.

"You can't trust anyone these days!" He shoved it under Digger's nose. A tenancy agreement. "While I was in hospital, some scheming estate agent rented my house out to a bunch of damned towel-heads!"

He spat out the last words and prodded at Salma and Jamal's elaborate compound surname, tongue struggling round the exotic foreign syllables. "Hairyfan Mouldypyjamas!" he said, face contorting as though he were biting into a lime. "What kind of people have names like that?"

Digger forced a quivering smile and gestured for Mr Wilson to sit in front of the untangler. The chair squeaked and groaned as though it was about to collapse under the weight of Mr Wilson's bigotry.

Mr Wilson flicked at the lease as though he were trying to squash a bug. "I've come to tell those foreign troublemakers that they're not welcome in my house!"

Digger slipped to the lounge and came back with a whisky bottle and a glass. He poured Mr Wilson a drink and pointed to the untangler's screen.

"I think this machine will solve all your problems," he said. "It's my untangler. It can predict negative events before they happen."

Digger's teeth chattered as he spoke. He pointed to the line of equilibrium and the grey mist and faint white lines that had tentatively returned, trembling on the screen.

"If your tenants are planning anything, er… disruptive, it will show on this screen."

Mr Wilson's eyes lit up like a pair of bloodshot flashlights.

"You mean it can tell us if they are planning to invite all their Middle Eastern friends over to build bombs in the basement?"

Digger gave a faint nod.

Mr Wilson slapped his thighs, threw his head back and laughed so violently that some whisky from his glass slopped onto the carpet.

"Marvellous!" he said. "A terrorist tracker!" He took a gulp of whisky and swallowed loudly. "You could plant these machines all over the city! Sell them to the defence department!"

Wilson poured himself another whisky, his eyes slithering back to the machine. "What's that?" he said, pointing to the negative scar.

"That's you." Digger took a trembling breath. Mr Wilson really didn't have a clue what he was looking at.

"Oho!" he said. "I seem to have made quite an impression on your machine!" He sat back and rubbed his stomach with satisfaction, eyelids drooping like half open garage doors. "What's it telling you about me?"

Digger looked at the screen. The negative event was bouncing back from the void, returning to its point of origin.

"It's telling me it's time to call you a taxi," he said.

"Orright," Mr Wilson slurred. "I'm too damned tired now to throw out those Ayrabs. Keep your eye on them, will you, Digby?"

###

Digger watched Mr Wilson's taxi speed into the darkness. A slice of light from Jamal and Salma's house briefly burst onto the pavement as someone opened and then closed a curtain. A fragrance of warm spices escaped from inside. It wafted past Digger's nostrils, making his stomach purr.

Digger looked up into the sky, which was still tinted with faint remnants of daylight. A glow of satisfaction washed through his limbs as he remembered Jamal's words:

"Perhaps predicting the future changes the future."

Yes, he thought. He had glimpsed the future and changed it. The untangler was like a sculptor's tool and he was the artist, shaping the future from the clay it gave him.

He turned back inside and looked at the translator's screen.

There it all was. His future erupted in front of him - a lively tangle of twisting curls and spirals, like the vapor trails left by particles in a tracking chamber, decaying and reforming as he looked at them.

His life was now woven into the tapestry of Salma and Jamal's future.

There was a knock at his door.

Jamal's smile lit up the darkness that swallowed the street. "Mum wants to know if you'd like to come over and have some dinner with us."

Digger grinned back. "I'd love to."

Salma was waiting on her doorstep, and the light from the open door was throwing a pattern of leafy shadows across the footpath. Jamal took Digger's hand and the silhouettes danced across their feet as they walked through the gate, towards the effervescent light of emotional entanglement.