Should We Be Worried About Drones?

Are you morally obligated to kill a murderer? It is the only way to keep people safe. Yet did the act of killing somehow bring you down to the same level as this guy? No. Some people are just better off dead unfortunately, and if somebody has to do it, it may as well be you.

This is the philosophy of many online forums dedicated to hunting down those who kill. These vigilante streamers are collectively known as killcels. They specialise in hunting down the destroyers in our society: serial killers, domestic terrorists, mass shooters, political assassins. Popular Tiktok videos of killcels involve hunting down local murderers with high powered rifles with laser sights, running through forests at night and taunting them with 2000s era club classics.

Killcels themselves had their own nemesis, which the entire community was focused on in the hot June of ‘25. Somebody had been using drones packed with high explosives, flying them near the killcel brigades before exploding in a violent fashion. Sometimes they would appear whilst they were launching an attack against the local serial killer, others would be followed home before the explosives would detonate as they stepped out of their car. They called him Droneboy.

Drone warfare had been practiced around the world, with the biggest user being the United States. It only makes sense that the escalation of weapons technology would eventually find its way into the hands of everyday citizens. Even the most well-armed foe, with years of military experience, multiple blackbelts in martial arts and heavy body armour would be blown to pieces by a bomb strapped to a flying toy you could buy at Walmart. This asynchronous combat had been used against civilians in other countries for years, but now it was happening to Americans, they had entered a new level of fear. 

The killcels gather round a table made from a big empty bobbin of wire. We are at an undisclosed location at Sylvan Heights Bird Park. The men around me are twitchy, AR-15s in their hands and cocaine in their veins. 

"What’s the deal with this Droneboy? What is he, an experimental musician?" I say, smirking.

"He hunts those that are hunting the hunters."

"Some say your vigilante justice often goes wrong, you kill innocent people regularly, as well as multiple bystanders. Is Droneboy not just doing what you do to others?"

"Do unto others as you would hath done to you. You're right. We're all going to go to hell for what we've done. But that doesn’t mean this guy can just fly a drone at our best soldiers and wipe them out like a call of duty killstreak."

"He should come out and fight us properly. Mano-a-mano." Says one guy with a katana. 

"Why would he do that? He's winning." I say.

"We're evolving. We have tactics. Disguises. Our own drones that can elimate his drones. We run drills of what to do in an explosive attack." 

They demonstrate for me, throwing themselves flat on the floor, arms pulled over their heads. I stand awkwardly above them all whilst a parrot cries from a nearby tree.

They demonstrate some of their other counter measures. Smoke grenades, fireworks, antisignal wave disruptors, net guns, trained pigeons, armour umbrellas, air cannons, lidar camera jammers, surface to air frequency modulators and good old fashioned guns. Killcels now wore experiments hearing aids tuned to the sound of a drone flying, giving them early warning as to when a strike might take place. These bozos were armed, dangerous and more paranoid than a 12 year old taking its first bong hit.

Droneboy had responded to each of these counter measures with his own. He would fly drones far above his targets, cut the engines and bomb down vertically and silently before exploding next to a killcel soldier. Other times he had installed failsafe systems, so even if the signal was cut, an AI on the drones computer would identify and lock on to the targets, chasing them down until its battery ran out. Droneboy had tried aerial camouflage, armoured units, high yield explosives, drones designed to be destroyed before splitting off into a series of cluster bombs, remote control cars stuffed with C4, randomised gearing on the drones so its signature sound was replaced, liquid thermite barrels and so on. 

The killcels and drone boy were locked in an endless arms race, constantly responding to changes in tactics with their own modifications. Online they portrayed killcels as Wile E. Coyote and Droneboy as Roadrunner, a humorous reference to the evolution of combat design between these two foes. I begin to ask them about their history of divorce, but they all tense in unison.

“Shhh. Drone at 10 o clock in the morning.” Says one of the killcels. We all crouch down as a drone flies overhead. Nobody knows if this was going to be an attack or some dad with a YouTube channel. The drone passes and we all start to relax again.

As I leave the group, I can’t help but think how pointless violence was. People making robots to fight other robots other people had made, what was the point in any of it? They may as well play Street Fighter 2.

Later that evening I watch the news. A report about a dust cloud is interrupted with breaking news that Droneboy had attacked again. A group of killcels had chased a spree killer who had circular saws around his boxing gloves, cornering him in a children’s play area. The killer slid down a slide and into a ballpit as the killcels emptied round after round at the bulletproof glass protecting the playzone. Helicopter footage shows a cloud of paper airplanes flying towards them before falling. Each of the pieces of origami was laced with a deadly poison made from the bodies of rare millipedes, when they hit the floor it would begin to bubble and melt. It dissolved the killcels within a few seconds, leaving the spree killer to continue his wild of murder. Who did this Droneboy think he is? Lady Justice or Judge Dredd? Either way, this bizarre terrorist engineer showed no signs of slowing down his attacks. Sometimes you just had to accept things, dance in the rain, and hope that things would get better by themselves.

 

Toxoplasmosis World

The mist was just beginning to clear, revealing more of the brown smear of trees by the road. There was no other traffic as we drove towards Tarnmouth in the jeep. Inside I was wearing a full body bioproctection suit made of the highest quality linen.
“It’s up here, about four hundred yards out.” Says 6. I give him the thumbs up as we turn up a muddy track, the tyres cracking the frozen mud beneath. Ahead of us are the first finished houses in a new suburb that had been partly built, the buildings a mix of yellow brick and concrete painted grey. Great care had been put into the design of the architecture as they each represented the perfect mathematical equation for what the most economic, eco-friendly building could be through being designed by a computer. Rather than stirring up any kind of interest or emotion, all that the new builds inspired was ennui.
“This is as far as I go.” Says 6.
“Thank you.” I say, getting out of the jeep. It’s cold outside. I begin to walk up the unfinished road.

The streets are empty, although I can hear noises coming from inside the houses. There is a strange atmosphere in the air, the same quietness as if out in new snow. I walk up the drive of one of the houses and let myself through the front door. The walls were decorated bizarrely, striped wallpaper patterns beneath pictures nailed to the wall at varying heights. I sat in a perspex globe suspended from the ceiling by a black chain when a horn sounded behind me. I jumped, spinning round to see a man dash out of a doorway. As he continued to run he seemed to step into his clothes and disappeared in a wriggle of elbows and knees twitching beneath a shirt and trousers. It was quiet again. I stood back up and went to the room he’d just emerged from and switched on the light. An enormous teenager was crouching on the floor. When he saw me he began to hop on all fours around the room, breathing heavily.
“Who are you?” I shout, clutching at the door frame in uncertainty. My gaze drifts down from his oiled forehead and into the blistering, violent red eyes of madness. Rabid like, he hopped around the room for a while until he finally stopped by the wall opposite me. He slowly began to stand, the breathing getting louder. He was trembling. I closed the door quietly and looked around for something to block him in. Even through the door now I could hear his breathing. Is he talking? I pull across a bureau and set it to rest before leaving the room.

In the next room I meet a middle-aged man dressed in a lab coat over his corduroys. He looks up from his clipboard as I enter.
“Hello. I’m here to talk about your discovery Dr. Douglas.” I said.
“Oh hello, it’s nice to meet you. Did you find us okay?” He said, we shake hands.
“Of course. This place isn’t on any map but your directions were excellent. And how could I miss the opportunity to talk about such a fascinating discovery? Potentially one that could alter the context of civilization.” I say, taking out my tape recorder to record such a dramatic statement.
“Well, you tell me, haha.” He says. “Please, follow me to the control centre.”

The control centre was the entire second floor of the house knocked through to reveal a state of the art laboratory mixed with a state of the art security system, all decorated with state of the art meme paintings. HD monitors were fastened to poseable telescopic arms that descended from the ceiling. In the centre of the room was an enormous white table. Dr. Douglas went over to it and smudged his finger, unlocking the huge touch screen computer.
“What I have to show you may alter the future of human history…forever.” He says. He looked back down at the screen and opened up a menu bar and selected a folder, then a subfolder, then a file.
“Say hello to Toxoplasma gondii, a sporozoite that is capable of infecting more or less all warm-blooded mammals, although only breeding inside a feline. Immediately it appears to cause flu-like symptoms, although my research shows that there may be a slightly more insidious side to this microscopic creature.” Says Dr. Douglas. On the table there is a magnified video of the parasites making their way through space.
“Damn.” I say, slowly standing up after leaning against a desk.
“Damn is putting it lightly. Gondii has a 50% infection rate against feline to sapien interaction. We’ve found the average person has a twenty to one chance of carrying the disease.” Says a woman who’d just walked in.
“And you are?” I say, raising one of my eyebrows.
“Her name is Dr. Douglas. This is my daughter, Dr. Amanda Douglas.”
“A pleasure to meet you…doctor.” I say, raising my other eyebrow.
“As I was saying, Gondii is so prevalent in our society we ran studies on the actual effects of this parasite in humans beyond the immediate symptoms.”
“And?”
“And we’ve found that the parasite can affect human behaviour. It increases dopamine levels, shrinks grey matter and engorges the mendula oblongata.” She says sternly.
“In English?”
“Basically it alters the parts of the brain that effect behaviour. Fear, rationality, reasoning…it can even go on to alter sexuality. People with the infection are more likely to drink, more likely to swear…even more likely to have sex with each other.”
“Whoa whoa whoa, now you got my attention.” I say, holding my fingers up to my head and pretending as if my mind was exploding.
“For instance, once Gondii has infected a man it lays its eggs in his semen, which can they go on to infect a foetus before travelling up the mothers spinal column. It also has the added effect of increasing the sex drive of people with the parasite, who then go on to spread it further and further through…intercourse.” Says Dr. Douglas.
“Does that word make you…uncomfortable?” I say, smirking slightly as I create a steeple shape with my hands.
“I’m not sure if you’re taking this seriously.”
“Seriously? Seriously. You know, let me tell you about serious. I once knew a guy who’d worked all his life selling apples out of a cart, he had his own orchard that had been passed down through the generations but this guy had no kids. One day his horse dies and he has to start dragging the cart from his orchard all the way into town by himself, it’s not long before he takes a slip and breaks his ankle. A local kid comes up and finds him, puts him in the back of the cart and then drags both the old man and the apples all the way in to town to the local doctor. And you know what happened when he got there? The old man had died with a smile on his face and an apple core in his hand.” I said. Everyone was quiet for a moment.
“What happened to that kid?”
“His name was Steve Jobs, maybe you heard of him?”
“Even if Steve Jobs were here, he wouldn’t be able to do anything. Gondii makes people take more risks, become more narcissistic and more sexually active.”
“Sounds like the right ingredients for an Instagram superstar.”
“Not only is it transferable through bodily fluids, it is zoonotic. You can get it from eating rare steak for example. It’s potential for infection is enormous.”
“So what? Sounds like this Gondii is a good deal.”
“Cats.”
“Excuse me?”
“The parasite only breeds in cats. Mice that have Toxoplasmosis show almost no fear of cats. People who carriers on the other hand tend to have pet cats. I’ve been tracking the number of times cats are mentioned on the internet and the numbers are increasing at an exponential rate. Our society is becoming almost wholly obsessed with this animal.” Said Dr. Douglas.
“The cats themselves are benign. It’s the parasite that is the driving force behind this. Like Ophiocordyceps unilateralis, the fungus that infects ants that alters their behaviour, Toxoplasma Gondii offers just as much a threat to humans. Our entire planet could become slaves to cats before the century is up.”
“So what you’re saying is we should destroy all cats?”
“It is difficult to think of how to deal with the disease. On the one hand it offers relatively little danger and in fact can make the host happier to some extent. On the other hand, the parasite could change over time…evolve to alter human behaviour further. The rabies virus makes the host attack others orally when it wants to propagate, what if a mutation of this virus makes people engage in…intercourse?”
“Does that word make you uncomfortable doctor?”
“Nevermind that. This little enclave is our test centre. We can run simulations, modify the parasites DNA and test its possibilities. We’ve already discovered that this parasite can cause schizophrenia in babies. You ever seen a schizophrenic baby?”
“So everyone living here is infected with brain parasites? Whose idea was this?”
“Mine.”
“Doctor…do you have Toxoplasma Gondii?” I ask.
“Of course. I accidentally caught it off my cats.” Says Dr. Douglas. He walks over to a cupboard and opens it up. Inside it is stuffed with cats. Hundreds of cats squashed together, mewling and hissing, a wall of fur and claws. The surface tension breaks and the room is suddenly filled with cats running across every surface. I start to run. Out in the next room the teenager has started hopping again, although he is set upon by cats. I knock over a table on my way out of the door and back onto the street. And I am greeted by a sea of cats eyes.

Hundreds of cats. Perhaps thousands. Some are sleeping, some clean themselves, others join flowing roads of cats that move this way and that. A few have already noticed me and are already rubbing themselves around my legs.
“Remove yourself!” I shout, beginning to run around the house. There is a couple copulating in the back garden, the low winter sun illuminating a pair of hairy buttocks rising and falling in the air as steam comes off the sweating bodies. I pull myself up over a garden fence and into the next one. A few people are gathered around a dead cat, they look up from their meal at me at the same time. All of them are wearing white contact lenses.
“Can I get a doggy bag?!” I wisecrack as I leap in with a karate kick, delivering the blow in slow motion to the forehead of an old man. Not breaking stride I continue to run, jumping, rolling, moving. Behind me thousands of cats are chasing over each other to get me, the microscopic worms in their brains wanting to enter mine. I run.

Manchester Central Library Review

The grand opening of Manchester Central Library took place on the 22nd of March after its closure for four years. The £98m revamp restored much of the Library’s original interiors as well as funding entirely new spaces designed by boffins at Manchester University along with international style guru Jacobi Mendelson.

Hundreds of thousands of books were retrieved from a salt mine, kept in a sodium stasis state until being arranged in alphabetical order on the shelves once again. Such rare books include works by William Shakesbeare, an 8th century book on astronomy, an unpublished Simon Beckett play titled ‘The Bone Sharks’ and a complete Florentine Codex. Visitors can happily pluck them off the shelves and leaf through them hungrily, but all of the books have also been scanned by lasers and converted into a pdf file specially designed for Manchester Central Library. In fact a large portion of the library is digital; the entire recorded history of mankind exists in large underground databanks that can be accessed over wi-fi and printed out at a new publishing house found in a distant wing of the library.

Upon entering the Great Hall you cannot helped but be brought to a standstill by its magnitude. Pillar after pillar of green marble line the room, stretching upward to support a domed ceiling that emanates a gentle light over all. Marble statues of deities connected with knowledge are interspersed between the enormous pillars, each of them have the quality of highly polished pearl. The glass floor is made up of a series of interconnecting black triangles, each give the impression of standing above infinity.

Thick wooden doors open into the grand Reading Room, an enormous circular room with tables and chairs arranged in a pattern based on the Fibonacci sequence. It is entirely silent. Walking through people occasionally look up from their book and watch you walk past, there is an air of paranoia around. I am acutely aware of the sounds inside my body. The gurgles of stomach acids, the sighs of the kidneys, the unsticking of eyelids during a blink. I make my way through another door and along a sweeping staircase running around the exterior of the library. There are replicas of author’s desks now and then, in which visitors can access all the books they wrote as well as the books the author had read. Oak doors lead into a room lined with shelves, holding roughly two million books. If one was to sit and read every book in this room it would take roughly one million years.

Clustered around the large halls are secondary rooms. An Italian restaurant is somewhat surprising, though a logical extension of the Renaissance themes seen around the Library. Frescos are painted on the wall lit softly by candles. The next room is the archives, roughly six gigabits of information contained on special cards that can be entered into a computer and read at a leisurely pace. The latest computer gaming systems are also here, the Sega Megadrive and Dreamcast consoles linked up to HD monitors. A tree grows, tendered to daily by a robotic gardener that adjusts artificial lighting and hydroponic systems. Overall one gets a sense that a library doesn’t have to just be a place poor people go when they don’t have a telly. It can be a place of inspired learning. There is a recurring phrase carved into every single piece of skirting board in the building. ‘Dulce Et Ego, Cor Domorum Veni’.

As one climbs the staircase more rooms can be accessed. An art gallery, an operatic theatre, a three dimensional mirror maze, even a vivarium all can be found in the Manchester Central Library. Once one reaches the top floor they are treated to a 360 degree view from the roof of the library. Most of Manchester is obscured by multistorey budget hotels and empty office space, but the roof is nevertheless impressive due to the bubble formed that keeps visitors dry. The bubble is constantly collapsing and reforming as a wave of atomic energy is projected from the rooftop generators through water molecules in the air.

Overall Manchester Central Library is a 21st century take on what a library is, with reference to multiple zones of time, cultures and architecture. Sections of the library are unbuilt, leaving gaping voids between walls in which one can glimpse the libraries previous incarnations. Other sections are overly built; huge chunks of rock can sometimes be found obscuring a corridor or clustered overhead like a nest of wasps. It is a pastiche of the human brain, the new god in the new millenium. I am eagerly awaiting its closure in fifteen years for an entirely new refurbishment, perhaps a simple holograph attached to the side of a drinking fountain, or a first person shooter in which one can get the 20th century American literature DLC at $14.99. Nevertheless, irregardless, at the end of the day, ad nauseam.

VRLA

The sun was high in the sky over Los Angeles, casting harsh shadows onto the pavewalk. I looked around, marveling at the little details around me. Each brick was individual in each of it's grooves, like a thumbprint. Yet all bricks were the same. I pushed my way past the people walking aimlessly down the street, got to a crossing and waited. The traffic went by silently. What was there to do in L.A? I had no idea. Feeling a funk coming on I made my way back to my car and started to drive down the middle of the road. I stopped for a while and watched as the shadows slowly tipped before blending into everything else as clouds rolled over. I continued to drive, making my way out of city and onto the highway. There weren't any cars around but I still drove at a steady pace. Off in the distance I could make out distant hills, solid green and standing in stark contrast to the baby blue sky behind them. I drove off road onto the muddy landscape. Back towards L.A. I could make out the glint of windscreen but out here there was nothing. Just a featureless plain that rolled on as far as the eye could see. I'd lost my concentration on my driving and didn't see the hole in the floor ahead of me. My car fell into it silently, my vision below spiralled fractal-like into a whirlpool of infinite dashboards. I looked around and could make out the underside of the city, off in the distance there were even one or two people trapped beneath buildings.
“Some parts aren't finished.”
“I know.” I said, turning away from the screen. “I like those parts best.”

Rich Favelle squinted at the screen around me. It had been custom-built for this project, curving around my entire body like a huge electric pringle. He pressed a few buttons on his tablet and the simulation reset to the starting point.
“What do you think?”
“It's good...quite realistic.” I said.
“Everything you see is taken from hd cameras we mounted on a few assistants. Think google street view, but with people rather than cars.”
“It reminded me a lot of street view.”
“Well, it's sort of based on that whilst being an evolution of that. This is google maps, grand theft auto, facebook, all rolled into one. We're hoping when we finished we have an entire simulation of America that looks and feels like real life. The sun in our game is actually 150 million km from the surface, so the lighting looks real. We import weather data, traffic data, wildlife data, all sorts of data into one colossal engine.”
“What kind of computer runs this?” I ask, turning back to the game. I walk down the street and go into an empty building.
“Well, at the moment it pretty much needs a super computer. But maybe...two playstation 3's? Probably by the time this is ready the playstation 4 will be out anyway, so whatever.”
“What's the point in making something that nobody can use?”
“Listen, this is a next-next-gen experience. What do old people do at the moment? Watch tv. By the time this game comes out, we'll have the first generation that might have played computer games. So I'm making a massively multiplayer online social reality simulator for them. They'll be the ones with the money and the time to get really involved in this virtual digixperience.” he said, running a hand through his soft beard. I turn back to the game, shrugging. Who cares if grandma wants to play on the Atari? This game was very boring. You couldn't interact with any of the people walking around, steal cars or even jump off buildings. What was the point.
“Since you're saying this is a simulation game and only total nerds play simulator's, why do you think people would play this over say...Operation: Flashpoint?”
“The social element. You can upload a character with your face and go out into the world, meeting other people you know or people you don't. It's another platform to interact with people.”
“Why don't people just do that in real life?”
“Danger. Our new sim will allow people to be safe and explore a version of America without risking car accidents, global warming, terrorist attacks and so on. Not only that, but why does anyone use technology to talk to others? This is the ultimate in communications tech, the ultimate in games tech, social media-”
“Yeah, you said. Well, it looks good at least.”
“Thanks. Users can upload-”
“Yeah. Will there be guns in the game?”
“Real life has guns.”
“So if this is such an accurate simulation of real life, why don't I buy a gun and go around shooting people's tweets from out of their hands? Or set fire to myself on a bus?”
“Well, you could, but we think by allowing users only one account in which they have to tie their cell phones to, this would create a pro-social community. Of course there's going to be jerks, but there's also jerks in real life so you know...” says Rich, looking at the floor for the end of his sentence.
“But this is a game, it's not real. So of course people are going to be doing stuff on here that they wouldn't do in reality. That's the point, right?” I demand. He pauses for a moment.
“I don't think you understand the social media aspect of the simulation.” he said.

I turn back to the game and go to the building I arrived at earlier. This is one of the few buildings that has been modeled accurately and I admit, it looks amazing. I make my way through the main lobby, up a lift and along the corridor. I stand outside a doorway and then look behind me at the other side of the door, wondering for a moment if I were to open it would that door also open? It didn't of course. The room is empty and I walk over to the curved screen and try to start the game up. To my surprise I find another version of the game starting up just as it had done when I arrived twenty minutes ago.
“It's a little easter egg we put in there.” said Rich happily.
“You mean putting the game inside the game?”
“It's simple enough. You're still playing the game, just on a minutely smaller scale.”
“But if there is such this...nice version of the game you're hoping for, can't people then use this version of the game to fuck about in?”
“I hadn't thought of that.” he says, laughing. “Maybe we'll take it out.”
“But if it's a perfect copy of America, won't it have the game inside itself?” I said.
“Sounds like a bit like Inception to me.”
“Well it's more like an onion actually.” I said back to him. Who did this guy think he was? God? Maybe. But if he was God then I was a man, and what is a God if nobody acknowledges it's existence. Nobody would buy this piece of shit game. And if they did they probably spent all their spare time locked away in their basements, eating tinned meat and wanking. Who needed a game when there was real life waiting outside the front door? I burst into song.
“Hello little computer man.
Welcome to the real world.
There's no gigabytes or high scores.
Can you handle life?
And all of it's blackness?” I sang as loudly as I could.

When I went outside I felt more alive than I had felt for weeks. By glimpsing the potential nerd future that awaited us all it had ignited a fire in my brain. I craved rare meat. And fun. I sprinted down the road and went to buy a bottle of cheap bourbon. I cracked open the lid as soon as I stood back outside and let the sweet liquid pour in and around my mouth before wiping with a hankie. Stuffing the handkerchief into the lid of the bottle I walked back to the computer lab where the foul game was being worked on and scowled.
“Long live the old flesh!” I cried, setting fire to the top of my molotov cocktail and throwing it at a window. The hankie flopped out in midair and was left smoldering on the ground, whilst the bottle of whiskey smashed through the glass. I heard a shout from inside and ran away. This was what real life was about, the potential risk of failure.

I spent the rest of the afternoon examining L.A. by helicopter. Long Beach rested at it's lower most point, with the beach running in a shape similar to Africa all the way up to Ventura County. Santa Monica, Anaheim, Whittier, Glendale, Bel Air, Sun Valley, Hollywood, Compton. From the air you couldn't tell where places started or ended, the whole city blurring into a general zone of activity. Where were it's edges? If a section of the city was removed and placed elsewhere, how large would it have to be to still be considered Los Angeles? I yelled at the helicopter pilot to swoop down and land outside the Capitol Records Building. The building resembled a stack of dirty dishes and smelt twice as bad. I ran down the road, shouting and shouting. "Is this Los Angeles? Am I a part of Los Angeles?" but nobody replied. Maybe Rich Favelle was right. Maybe all of life should just be like a video game. I began to hop up and down and strafe people as they walked towards me. Yes, that was it. Yes! I laughed as I walked into a bar and ordered a bottle of wine fresh from the Californian vineyards and made a toast.
"Here's to the finest experience be it real, imaginary or otherwise." I cried, slamming the glass into my mouth.

E-cig review

Like many other smokers I can't help but begin to feel the adverse effects smoking has had to my health. I struggle to run up the stairs, I cough in the morning, I sometimes don't like it and generally wonder what I'm trying to achieve in life. After trying to quit a handful of times with various methods in the style of Wile E. Coyote, I have decided that smoking is going to be a lifelong habit for me. But what if I could smoke a robot? Or maybe look like I was from the future? All of this could be achieved through smoking. But not in the sense of burning plants, but electricity and liquid. Smoking for the new millennium has arrived with the advent of electronic cigarette machines, or e-cigs for short.

The process of smoke delivery is quite simple. A lithium ion battery cylinder is attached to a short cartomiser in which a mixture of Propylene Glycol and flavouring is ignited through a heated lattice, vaporising the e-liquid and delivering a lungful of cloud gently into the body. This vapour is itself made up of hydrogen, oxygen and nicotine, a much more benign substance than the old fashioned cigarette or cigar. It dissipates quickly in the air and remains odourless, allowing e-smokers to puff away happily anywhere in the world. Now that sciencey bit is out of the way I'll get on with the reviews! I have chosen a collection of starter kits from a variety of suppliers and spent the afternoon trying them out.

JACVAPOUR V1P PCC STARTER KIT

This e-cig is a handy little device. It's just a little bigger than your average cigarette and when you puff away it feels like a genuine smoke! The end of mine has a blue LED in it, which is cool. Makes me feel like Harrison Ford in Blade Runner. I often smoke my V1P quite happily at work, at home or relaxing by the sea. The 'juice' or PPG liquid is quite tasty. I got watermelon, bubblegum and mocha flavour. I can mix and match the various liquid in the style of a kind of alchemist. This is more steam-punk than cyber-punk! I have tested this kit to great extent and highly recommend it to the casual e-smoker.

E-LITES E-PRO 4 E-CIGARETTE KIT

What more can I say, this is a fantastic starter kit. It comes with a USB charger, not one but two battery packs, 32MB of disk space and a special black cloth to clean your e-cig. Sadly the flavours I received turned out blank, so taking a hit was like washing my mouth with diluted milk. Still, this e-cig really packs a punch! It can deliver over 23mg of smoke in each puff, making this little thing into seeming like something better than it first appeared! I rate this kit 3/5.

APOLLO SMART LITES 4400 ELECTRO-CIG KIT

The 4400 is the ultimate in vapour tech, infusing each bauble of liquid with a tiny hint of flavour amongst the great lungfuls of black vapour. I tried making a cocaine tincture by dissolving 2g of the white stuff in a VG based liquid over a two day period. This thing was like smoking crack, and quickly ruined the small bauble that came with the kit. Still, I highly rate this experience.

NU-SMOKE 60/40: THE REVENGE STARTER KIT

Nu-smoke 60/40: The Revenge starter kit is a surprisingly unsatisfying piece of mechanical engineering. American boffins have been tinkering away at this new type of e-cig for the last few years, creating an energy efficient vape that delivers both satisfying hits and versatility. Customisation is key in the 60/40, with different cases coming with the kit as if they were important. It comes with several different mouth pieces, batteries and half a metre of ethernet cable, although I'm unsure why. I smoked this e-cig underwater whilst searching for scrap metal and found it held up, though didn't work after a major car accident. A poor show by the Nu-smoke team, though shows great promise. Might be worth purchasing this one for the ipadness of early adoption.

LIBERTY FLIGHT LITE XP PRO KIT

What more can I say, this is a fantastic starter kit. I took a toke of this sweet smoke and thought I had reached Nirvana. I imagined the great Ganesh covered from head to toe in the finest golden finery, his red skin seeming to glow from within like the underside of a finger covering the sun. With one tusk broken and the other proud, he speaks to me in Hindi.
"I don't understand." I say. The vision dissipates. I am alone.
I give this starter kit 5/5.