Walking down the street the other day, I happened upon something rather curious. I noticed that a particular shop which I walk past on a daily basis had vanished overnight. No sign remained of it. The street was far too narrow to easily admit demolition crews and allow them to leave within a space of 24 hours without any trace of them having been there and there certainly wasnt any sign of a demolition having taken place. The shop had simply disappeared into thin air.Quite why this had happened, I took a while to ascertain as I eventually noticed that not only had it not been demolished, it had also been replaced by a worn out shack which seemed to have been there for many years. The shop in question which had vanished was actually a feminie hygiene products shop, I forget its name as I never paid much attention to it. Needless to say, I had never been inside the shop either. Suddenly I noticed, from within the shack, a curtain twitch. A pair of nervous eyes seemed to dart out from behind the fabric and eventually they noticed me standing there, staring at this small, wooden hut.

After a few minutes, a small man came out from inside the hut and, after hobbling over to where I stood, explained, in a voice that seemed youthful despite the speakers aged appearance “I’m terribly sorry, there appears to have been a malfunction”.

It turns out the holographic projector which had created the illusion of the feminine hygiene product shop had broken a few hours before. Querying why such an elaborate system was in place, the man simply replied that it gave him a certain amount of privacy. “But what about the people who try and go into the shop?” I asked. “There’s no need to worry about that” he said.

I wandered off and after a few minutes, looked back. The man had dissapeared and, to my astonishment, the shop had returned. On walking back past the shop later that day I stood outside it and looked through the window. It appeared to all intents and purposes to be a perfectly ordinary shop from my viewpoint outside. The door appeared to be open and although there was no-one inside, it seemed to be full of products pertaining to hygiene. I wandered off again after a few moments, vaguely puzzled by the whole experience.