"I can see a slow trend of Visual C++ developers moving to Visual Basic," said Cameron Michaelson, software engineer for Micron Technology Inc.' according to ZDNet report. Surprisingly, Ms Stob has seen this phenomenon too.

Blenkins was the first to go.

Maybe I could have saved him. I spotted the first signs, but I thought nothing of it at the time. One never does, does one?

We were standing outside the dome, he and I, during a rec break. No, not that dome. The dome that was British Antarctica Base 4. Our company had moved all its C++ programming contractors out here — it had turned out that this was very IR35-efficient, although endless polar days had upset our internal body clocks; most people tended to revert to the 1950s. We were soaking up a few feeble rays of the never-setting sun, and chatting and joking about the many circular blue plaques that adorn the entrance airlock in honour of past visiting celebrities. Michael Palin, Scully and Mulder, The Thing from Another World. It was towards the end of summer, a sweltering -20 C, but even in fur-lined anoraks and Damart's finest thermals I was beginning to shiver. I was about to suggest that we went inside when Blenkins spoke up.

'Look here, Miss Stob, what's wrong with an environment that is easy?'

'It's "Ms", if you don't mind. What do you mean?'

'Sometimes I wonder why we make it so hard for ourselves. It could all be... easy, and we'd be more productive too.'

'I say Blenkins, are you feeling all right?'

'Well, now you mention it, I do feel a little queer. Maybe I'll go and see the MO.'

'I should do that, Blenkins, if I were you.'

Actually, I couldn't have saved him, even then. The kindest thing would have been to have shot him. If he had called me 'Miss' again, I might have obliged.

* * *

I was walking past the sick bay when Doctor Smythers stuck his head around the door.

'Would you come in here a moment, Verity? I've got something to show you.'

Blenkins was in a cot, tossing and turning feverishly beneath the straps that secured him. He was muttering a strange gobbledegook.

'Global variables are not such a bad thing, they mean you can easily access data wherever you need to... Pointers are unnecessary. And anyway if you do need them we have them in the latest version, except for casting and arithmetic... Why would you want an integer type bigger than 32-bits? There's a perfectly good "long" type for that or, even better, just use floating point variables everywhere... Tokenisation is just as good as true compilation on fast, modern machines, and the resulting code is more compact... ActiveX controls, what a brilliant design...'

I felt myself turning pale.

'What is it Doc? Is it this 1950s thing again?'

The Doc's brow furrowed.

'No Verity. I'm afraid it's something a great deal more serious than that. But nothing for you to worry your pretty little head about. Now go make us both a cup of coffee. I need to think.'

Sigourney Weaver never had this trouble.

* * *

We ran around the intersection of corridor B7 and just made it into the Thermal Clothing storage area. I lobbed a hand grenade at the baying mob, and the Doc slammed and bolted the door. There was an explosion, and the shouts died down for a few seconds, but almost immediately started up again; horrible bloodthirsty cries of 'There's no need to declare variables! Just use them when you need them!' and 'True inheritance is for perverts!'. It seemed that grenades were as ineffective as bullets.

'What are we going to do, Doc? That door won't hold for long.'

The Doc was removing the grill from the ventilation shaft.

'This leads directly to the main generator in the Convenient Plot Device room. If I can get there and cut off the power, maybe we can freeze them out.'

'Okay, give me a leg up.'

'Sorry Verity, this shaft is extremely dangerous — no place for a woman. I'll go alone.'

At last this '50s thing was working in my favour.

'Fair enough. Off you go.'

'I'm going out, Verity, I may be...'

'Oh get on with it!' I snapped.

* * *

I was standing, hands in pockets, with the pilot of the rescue helicopter as he looked around the burnt-out ruins of the dome, shaking his head in disbelief.

'There's just one thing I don't understand about this, Ms Stob. How come you didn't get infected?'

'That's easy to answer. The thing is, I know that it's possible to build anything — even an operating system — just by dragging and dropping a few controls onto a form. No, it's all right — '

The pilot had taken a pace back in alarm.

'It's okay, I was just kidding. Now, hadn't you better go and get ready for take off? If we stay here any longer, we'll all freeze.'

'Okay, Ms Stob.'

As he walked away, still suspicious, I took my right hand out of my pocket and looked at it. It had grown into a hideous, misshapen claw. Useless for proper typing, but fine for grasping the mouse and clicking things...