Marvin Purdoch was woken by sunlight shining on his face. That wasn’t right. Groggily he reached for his alarm clock; it showed two in the morning but it wasn’t ticking. Marvin shook the clock and it started ticking. He was going to be late for work.

Marvin rushed to the shower. He got in and turned on the water. The pipes rattled a few times then the showerhead spat out a few gobs of liquid rust. Marvin turned off the shower and dried himself as best he could. He’d have to call the plumber later.

Heading to the kitchen, Marvin opened the door to find a cat looking at him. He didn’t have a cat. The cat had savaged his kitchen cabinets and puked, pissed and shat on his kitchen floor. He open the back door and tried to shoo the cat outside, succeeding only after the cat had scratched and bitten him, drawing blood.

Marvin put a couple of slices of bread in his two-slot toaster. After a couple of minutes, one slice of toast shot out and hit the ceiling, sticking to it, while the other slot exuded a pall of black smoke, activating the smoke detector and setting off the sprinkler.

Breakfastless, Marvin ran to the metro station for his daily commute from the suburbs to the city centre. The station entrance was heaving. When Marvin reached the ticket barrier, he fed his metro pass into the reader. The barrier opened but his metro pass wasn’t returned to him. The throng pressed him onwards so he had to leave it behind.

Marvin’s train was ready and waiting on the platform. Marvin got on but had to stand as there were no seats available. The doors closed and the train set off, but stopped as soon as the station was out of sight. Then the lights and ventilation shut off. Two hours later a rescue crew turned up and led the hot and bothered passengers through the blacked-out tunnel to the next station, where Marvin found out that, due to a catastrophic signals failure, there would be no trains for several hours at least.

Back on the street there was no sign of any taxis or buses, so Marvin resolved to walk the rest of the way to work, despite the torrential downpour that had started. Barely able to see where he was going, Marvin was mown down by a bicycle messenger.

Now limping from where the bike had hit him, Marvin made it all the way to work soaking wet and five hours late. Strangely, nobody seemed to care. But then Marvin had never been able to work out why he was paid such a decent salary for a job that anyone of average intelligence could do in their sleep.

High above the Earth, in the Earth Defence Command Centre, Mobile Artificial Sentience Defence Admiral Juliet 1059 was meeting with MAS Chief Scientist Romeo 8722.

“It defies all logic,” said Admiral Juliet. “How can a flesh and blood human like your subject Marvin Purdoch possibly know that the Vrassians would choose this day to launch an attack on Earth?”

“I assure you he didn’t have a clue,” asserted Scientist Romeo. “That’s the way lightning rods operate. We’ll keep on monitoring him and perhaps one day we’ll find out how he does it, but for the moment it’s enough to know that it works.”

“The advance notice we got through monitoring Marvin Purdoch meant we were able to declare a red alert and go to battle stations in time to drive off the Vrassian invasion with minimal losses,” said Admiral Juliet. “Humanity owes him a huge debt of gratitude.”

“But he must never be allowed to know,” qualified Scientist Romeo.