The four of them sat at a round, dark, beer-soaked wooden table in the Cow, slurping at pints of beer and animatedly discussing possible restaurants. They'd all got a little dressed up; even Sol had made the effort, and selected one of his few decent shirts. This, of course, lead to Isabelle and Beth making a string of comments about the mirror, which only ended when Sol threatened to hit them with the stick Beth had got him.

Eventually, when it became apparent that a consensus would never be reached, or at least would not be reached before closing time, Sol declared that it was his birthday (or it had been, as the others pointed out, two weeks ago), and therefore he got to decide where to eat. He picked a Turkish place the other side of town, so they had a bit of a hike ahead of them.

Winter was almost over, but it was still cold, so they were all wrapped up in scarves and long coats. There wasn't a cloud in the sky, which made it even colder, but at least it wasn't raining.

Sol and Beth lead the way, with Isabelle and Ted following. The former pair were walking fast, chatting as they went, and soon put a bit of distance between themselves and the others. The slower pair walked along in silence for a minute or two, and then Ted turned to Isabelle.

"Why'd you organize this?" he asked her.

"Sol's birthday. Shit, you've only had one pint. I'm not going to have to carry you home, am I?"

"You can if you want. Anyway, what I meant was, why now?"

"You've seen how those two have been lately, ever since they found out about the forecasts. I just thought they could use a little cheering up."

"How about us?"

"I'm always cheerful. I have a naturally sunny disposition." She turned and treated him to a broad, Barbie doll grin. "And you seem fine." She turned to look at him again, this time with an expression of concern. "You are fine, aren't you?"

"Uh-hu."

There was a brief, uncomfortable silence.

"I think," Isabelle declared, to the world in general, and, judging from her breezy tone, apropos of nothing, "I think that, if you weren't fine, that you wouldn't tell me."

Ted said nothing.

"I think that I'd have to do something very rash to find out."

Still nothing. Isabelle stopped and turned to him.

"I'm not going to have to jump on you in the middle of the street and tickle you till you talk, am I?"

Ted stopped and looked at her in disbelief. "You wouldn't."

Isabelle smiled.

"O.K.," Ted said, turning and starting to walk again, "You win. I'm not one hundred percent fine, if you must know. I don't know what to make of everything. I mean, obviously, I know what we're doing in the short term, but it seems like it should be more than just a get-rich-quick scheme. You know what I mean?"

"Oh, don't you start. I have enough with those two over there," she nodded at Beth and Sol.

"Don't worry, I'm not going to go all angsty and guilt-ridden on you. It's just that I get the vague feeling that there might be consequences to this that we don't know about. We definitely don't understand it, not even Sol."

"I thought he had a fair idea of what's going on?"

"He has theories. There are still big gaps though. I mean, he understands it way better than I do, but I still don't think he really knows what's going on."

"Oh."

They walked on in silence for a couple of minutes, hands in pockets and eyes on the ground. After a while, Isabelle snapped her head up.

"This was meant to be fun! We're not meant to be talking about all that shit. Look, even Mulder and Scully seem to be enjoying themselves." She waved a hand at Beth and Sol, a long way ahead, who were laughing more than they were talking.

"O.K.," said Ted, turning to face her, "I'll drop the subject for the rest of the evening. There are much better things we could be talking about."

He looked away again, and they quickened their pace to catch up with the others.

The restaurant itself was in the cellar of what had probably once been a shop. The low ceiling was liberally hung with a variety of trinkets - baskets, jars and such - that could all at least pass for Turkish, at least to the untrained eye. They sat at a long, low table, and had to lean over to talk; the noise of the kitchen, the waiters, and the other customers bounced off the low ceiling and mingled to produce a rich cacophony.

"How're you enjoying you're birthday so far?" asked Isabelle

"What?"

"I said," she repeated, leaning in closer, "How are you enjoying your birthday so far?"

"Oh, it's great," Sol answered, "Thanks for organising all of this. You didn't have to."

"I wanted to. Now shut up and enjoy your meal."

Sol laughed.

After the noise and heat and light of the restaurant, the night outside seemed all the more dark and quiet. Beth shivered involuntarily, and wrapped her coat around herself more tightly.

"Are you going to be O.K.?" asked Sol.

"Oh, I'll be fine. Don't worry."

Sol seemed to consider this for a little while, then piped up. "Does anyone want to share a taxi?"

"I'm not too far away," said Isabelle, "Ten minutes, tops; I think I'll walk."

"I'll probably walk too," announced Ted, "I could do with the fresh air to sober me up a little."

"Just you and me then." said Beth, after the others had said their goodbyes and left in different directions.

They found a cab, and were at Beth's far quicker than either of them was expecting. "Want to come up for a coffee?"

Sol looked uncertain. "I should probably get back home."

He began to close the door, and then stopped, and opened it again.

"Oh, what the hell. It's not a long walk home from here. Why not?"

He paid the taxi driver, giving him a larger tip than he intended but not having the presence of mind, or the directness, to ask for it back. They went up the stairs, and Beth fumbled with her keys in the lock. She eventually got the door open, ushered Sol into the lounge, and went through to the kitchen to put the kettle on. Sol started to idly look at the bits and pieces dotted around the lounge, as he tended to when left in an unfamiliar home.

"Coffee O.K. for you?" Beth called from the kitchen.

"Actually, tea would be better, if you've got it." There was a small photo of Beth in a mortar board and gown. It was in a big frame, surrounded by snapshots of a younger Beth with people of about the same age, sitting on grass in untidy groups.

"Yup. Milk? Sugar?"

"Yes and no." A print of a London tube map; on closer examination the names of the stations have been replaced by other things. It probably deserves closer study, but there's more to look at.

"I enjoyed tonight; we'll have to do it again."

"Yeah. Well, I have a birthday every year at about this time." Bookshelves. Books are always interesting. You can tell a lot about a person from looking at what books they have (and which ones they choose to display).

Sol was standing next to the bookcase, reading the spines, when Beth came back in with two mugs of tea.

"Thanks." Sol said, taking one and cupping it in his hands.

"I was thinking of doing it a bit sooner than next year."

Beth raised he tea to her lips, and blew across it to cool it down, watching Sol over the rim of the mug.

"You never did tell me when you're birthday was." he said with a slight smile, after a little pause.

"5th of November"

"Really?"

"Mm-hm," she took a sip of her tea, "So you've got no excuse to forget."

"I'll make sure I don't. We'll have to go out, do something special."

Beth watched his expression for a while. "Yes. That would be nice."

Sol glanced at his watch. "Oh shit, I didn't realise it was that late. I should be heading off."

Beth looked at her own watch. "God, yes. You going to be in tomorrow morning?"

"Tomorrow, yes. Morning, don't know. Anyway, thanks for the tea. And thanks for coming tonight; it's been fun."

"It has. Well, goodnight."

She walked Sol down to the front door, and then came back up and looked out of the window, where she could see him walk down the street. After a while, she closed the curtains, and pinched the bridge of her nose. She was beginning to realise just how much she'd had to drink.

"So you've finally made it in, then?" asked Ted, as Sol approached his desk.

"Yeah; wrote this morning off completely, but I feel just about fine now. Anyway, I was wondering if you could go over some of the logs from the last couple of days with me. They don't look quite right, but I'm not sure why."

Ted and Sol spent the next couple of hours poring over the diagnostic information that WorldPulse continually spewed out, concentrating on the logs for the previous three days. As Sol had said, there was definitely something strange with them, when they were compared with, well, all of the rest of the logs WorldPulse had produced since the day they switched it on. It was a fairly subtle change, though - although Ted wouldn't admit it, he doubted that he would have noticed anything was amiss without Sol pointing it out.

After a while, Ted sat back heavily in his chair and declared, "We've ruled out most of the system problems that could be causing this. Could it be bogus input?"

"Not likely," said Sol, "We made sure during testing that the system could cope with the occasional fictitious report."

Ted thought about this for a little while.

"We did test, but we assumed that bogus reports would be rare, random occurrences. What if there's some systematic problem with the reports?"

"The sources are all the same as they were last week. Why would it suddenly appear like this?"

"It..." started Ted, then he stopped. "You've got me. I'll look into it, see if any of the sources have changed. See if there's anything you can spot."

Sol nodded, and went back to his own desk. A little while latter, he returned with a smile on his face.

"Looks like you were right," he announced, "I found about a dozen sources that have all developed subtly different patterns of use in the last week - I mailed you the list."

"Hold on a sec," Ted turned back to his computer, and brought up Sol's mail. He scanned down the list of sources, then turned back to Sol.

"Are you sure?"

"Pretty sure, yes."

"There's nothing that connects them. As far as I can see, they're just thirteen source picked at random from the list."

"I know. It doesn't seem to make any sense. There must be some sort of link, but I'm buggered if I know what it is."

"What do we do about it? Do we remove them from the system?"

"Not yet; Bombay and Toronto use it too, and I'd rather not have to explain to them why we've reduced the corpus until we know a bit more ourselves."

There was a pause.

"We could remove them from Crystal, and see what happens." Ted suggested. Crystal was their new name for the WorldPulse test system; someone had made a comment about the crystal ball that Beth had got Sol, and the name had grown on them.

"I can't see the harm in that." said Sol, cautiously. "Just don't put on any more bets until we're sure that it still works."