O great computer! (Saturn)

Rhys hated that there were always other people there. They littered the place, worse than the food wrappers, tickets and plastic bags they brought with them; they were lichen, clinging to everything and wearing it down. As the days grew longer in the spring, and he had more daylight in which to make his observations, so the number of people waxed too (although, even at the winter solstice, a dark and grim scrap of a festival, he could never find himself alone). In short, he wanted them all to go home or die, or to disappear somehow and never have been.

It belonged to him, he knew, even though he had never experienced it alone. He was like a rich landowner in possession of fields and paths that he could not fence off from the public. One or two local members of the landed gentry had persecuted Rhys in the past, so he had no sympathy for their privileged sort, but he was adamant that his situation was different: his blood and his bones yearned for that place; much as he owned it, it owned him.

He had tried on numerous occasions to be present when others were not; had surveyed the fields and the lay of the land during the day; had returned at night, intent on reaching the centre of the structure. But every time there had always been someone, some security guard or curator, vigilant at their post; Rhys, unwilling to provoke a confrontation, had always capitulated, sloping back into the evening and home. Only once, on a misty February morning, had he made the entire journey unmolested. He had left the house early, tramping a frosty dew into nothingness on the grassier fields, and made his way over barbed wire, through hedgerows and across ditches to the start of the Avenue by the cottages. From there, he had followed the entire true route to the site, curving round the way a procession might have done, and reaching the road near the Slaughter Stone. Emboldened by that lone success, he had tried the route a few more times, but always been spotted on protected, proscribed stretches; the last attempt resulted in a caution, and he dared not risk being banned from the site entirely.

As part of his daily and less adventurous routine there was a particular path that he took from Larkhill. It led him through the fields and across the Cursus, and in his mind's eye the gnarled, rootlike fingers that had cleared it so many years ago had never actually lost their vigour, nor turned into dust. Those hands still dug and toiled whenever Rhys thought of them, which was often. On this route, he would round the corner by Durrington Down Farm, and on a clear day the sight of the monument would always strike him as powerfully as the first time he saw it as a child. Those less eagle-eyed might not from that point spot the still tiny structure on the horizon. But he had acquainted himself with every curve and bank of the land for miles around; had grasped it warmly with his hands; had rubbed each green ridge with his feet until the earthy smell of times past was carried up to his nose, mixed with composty grass and animal dung.

Every time, he passed Mr Armitage's house on the way in; he always remembered how the old man had defended him once, when he had been caught by the police. Realistically, his mother had probably given Armitage a gentle nudge, as the ex-magistrate had always been sweet on her. She probably hadn't asked him to say what he had, though, as Rhys caught Armitage winkingly reassuring the police that "the boy" was feeble-minded but otherwise harmless. But Rhys didn't care. The old sod could think what he liked. They all could, if only they would all go away and think it somewhere else.