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Digger waved the receiver around the garden, cursing it between clenched teeth. The damn thing just didn't want to recalibrate. The line on the screen stubbornly danced and trembled, refusing to settle down into the straight blue of neutral.

He pointed the receiver up past the lacy umbrella of giant gum tree leaves and towards the sky. The line still trembled and wiggled, taunting him like a belly dancer. He moved towards the fence, the grass sluggish under his feet after three days of rain. He tried pointing it downwards into the soggy lawn. Still nothing.

He pointed it up into the naked boughs of a magnolia tree and the line slowed into gentle waves. Then there it was... a stillness pausing to be caught, as though time suddenly had caught its breath. He pressed the hold button. The untangler was ready.

He realised that he was being watched. A pair of eyes peered at him through a gap in the fence, one of the new neighbours. A little boy of about seven popped his head over the top of the fence, bright black eyes sparking with curiosity.

"What's that?"

"It's a receiver," said Digger, trying to think of an excuse to slip quickly back inside without seeming rude.

"It looks like a porcupine," said the little boy, casting his eyes over the semicircle of antennae that sprouted from the body of the receiver. "What does it receive?"

Hadn't this boy's mother told him not to talk to strangers?

"Messages," Digger told him.

"What kind?"

Digger had to get back inside. If he left it too long, the receiver would lose calibration and he'd have to go through this all over again.

"Shouldn't you be in school?" He put on his best stern fatherly voice.

"Nope. It's a religious holiday. Mum said I could stay home."

Digger looked down at the receiver. The line had become unstuck. It looped and twisted across the screen again like a wild animal freed from a zoo.

"Bugger," Digger muttered.

The little boy paused briefly at Digger's expletive, then heaved himself up on to the next fence rung.

"My name's Jamal," he said, smiling and showing a tidy row of baby teeth. "I'm your new neighbour."

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The little boy had the beginnings of a strong aquiline nose, shadow black hair, olive skin and obsidian eyes that seemed to mirror the colour of his hair. Digger smiled back at the boy. Religious neighbours. Well, at least they wouldn't be stealing his newspapers, getting drunk and hurling abuse at him like their predecessor, Mr Wilson.

"Where you from?" Digger readjusted all the switches on the receiver.

"My parents were from Iran, but I was born in America," the boy said. "We live here now because America makes my mum sad."

"Oh," said Digger. He was only half listening. The line on the receiver was subsiding back into a stillness that meant it had found another fleeting pocket of frozen time. Perhaps he could catch it again. If he were quick.

"Are you reading the messages?" the boy asked. He had one leg swung over the fence now, wanting a closer look.

"No, I'm interpreting the harmonics of nature."

The little boy paused on the fence. "You mean, like listening for God?"

"No. This is a scientific instrument based on an event cluster theory I have been working on. It's sort of like a seismograph. That's a thing that interprets disturbances in the earth's crust to predict earthquakes. This one interprets movements and fluctuations in space-time to predict future events."

"Oh," said the little boy. His bright black eyes were flicking between the machine and the sky. "You mean it works like a time map?"

"Yes," said Digger, surprised at the little boy's insight. "A fuzzy map."
"Is that your job – predicting the future?"

"Sort of."

The little boy looked thoughtful. He looked up at the sky, where a high wind had teased and flicked the clouds into ostentatious whorls and long wispy strings. He was straddling the fence now, one leg bouncing on the branches of a hibernating maple tree. "My father was killed in the World Trade Centre. Would your machine have been able to warn him?"

Digger paused and looked up from his receiver. The boy regarded him with wide and earnest eyes. Digger didn't know what to say. Jamal could have been no more than a baby when it happened. Or perhaps not even born. He thought hard about what might have happened had the machine already been built. If he'd been nearby just beforehand, the untangler would have given him a 48-hour warning. He imagined the line of equilibrium on the translation graph plunging into a deep and shadowy crevasse – not telling him exactly what was to happen, but detecting a strong negative event.

"No," he said. "I'm sorry. The machine doesn't work like that."

"Then what's the point of it?"

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