The Ferryman’s Circuit

He emerged through the mist—not born, not summoned, but recalled. Fortunus Wainwright: a name fractured across centuries, a ghost stitched from salt and static. His coat still smelt faintly of tar, though the oceans had long since retreated and been replaced by risk assessments.

He blinked. Once. The ferry terminal was still there—but now it buzzed softly with failed futures. The tide didn’t rise anymore; it was regulated by public-private partnership. He stepped forward and felt the concrete shudder beneath his boots—each footfall logged, monitored, monetised. The quay had become a node.

In the time he remembered, there were ships, sails, blood, and gold. Now, there were plans. Documents. White papers curling in the breeze. He lifted one. It dissolved into a QR code.

The circuit was broken.

They called him a privateer once. Now he was reclassified: legacy disruptor. An avatar of unmanaged ambition. His old weapons—broadside logic, spontaneous action, consequence—no longer held weight in a system that valued only consultation cycles and stakeholder alignment.

And yet, he was needed. Something had cracked beneath the endless façade of rollout. A murmuring in the pipes. Overspends whispering beneath the paving slabs. Vanishing budget lines. Ghost markets that flickered on screens but never opened.

He watched the drones repair a mural for the fourth time this week. Same brushstroke. Same slogan. Progress is a Journey. Paint peeled again instantly, as if the wall itself had developed immunity to optimism.

Fortunus adjusted his coat. The wind—if you could still call it that—carried with it the scent of printer toner and wet fibreboard. Somewhere, a meeting was starting. The invite list had eight names, none of them human. Somewhere else, an inquiry was being convened to investigate the inquiry.

He moved through the grid, past structures pretending to be buildings. Their walls were too thin. Their names were too long. The Heritage Experience of Integrated Retail. The Collaborative Innovation Exchange Hub. Nothing inside. Just echo and heat.

At the water’s edge, he stood and stared into the Mersey. It looked up at him—dull, monitored, sediment-heavy. Not a river, but a liability.

He pulled the brass key from his coat. The old lock was still there, behind the utility cabinet, behind the cables, behind the panels. He turned it.

Somewhere deep below, in the sediment of the town’s memory, a forgotten circuit flickered. A current passed through the archives. Files blinked open that hadn’t been accessed in years. Real ones. With ink.

Fortunus Wainwright didn’t smile. But he began to walk.

Some systems only reboot when you force the lock.

RW