red Flannery owned a failing farm. It had been a tough year: an exceptionally rainy summer, an exceptionally poor harvest, and a barn fire that claimed four sheep and a tractor. Money was running out, and if the Flannerys didn’t catch a break soon, they'd have no choice but to sell up.

So Flannery sat in the village pub with a pint of ale on the counter and his head in his hands, trying to come up with a solution but only finding more problems. There was no way out. Then he got a strong whiff of cologne, and looked up to see a small, smartly-dressed man standing at the bar. It was obvious the man was not from Little Chippenden. He looked like a city slicker. “Do you know if this place has wi-fi?” asked the city slicker, tapping furiously on his phone.

“Erm, I don’t think so," Flannery said.

At that point the man looked Flannery up and down in a way that made him feel very nervous.

“Do you want to buy some magic beans?”

Ordinarily, Flannery wouldn’t fall for the old magic bean trick, but he was five drinks in and four sheep down, and getting desperate.

“How much?”

“For you,” said the city slicker, taking a velvet bag from his pocket, “gratis. Just make sure to plant it on top of a hill, somewhere high up.”

Inside the bag was the most bizarre bean Fred Flannery had ever seen. It was the size of his fist, heavy as a rock, and made entirely of polished silver.

When he looked up, the small man had gone, and the landlord hadn't seen anyone else at the bar.

“He was just here!” Flannery cried. “Small man, smartly dressed, looked like a city slicker! You must have seen him.”

“Come on, Fred,” said the landlord gently, ushering him out the door. "You've had a rough week. Time to go home."

But Flannery didn’t go straight home. He stumbled past the farmhouse and up to the north field, the highest point on his farm. At the crest of the hill he dug a hole with his hands, dropped the bean into it, and covered it with soil. He watered it with his hot piss, and went back to the farmhouse.

When he woke up he had no memory of the night before.

The sun rose and set, clouds formed and parted, plants grew. Flannery worked and worried. A few weeks later, tilling the north field, he heard a loud crunching sound as he drove over the crest of the hill. He got out to see what had snarled up the tiller, and found a rod sticking out of the ground, a few feet tall, made of polished metal. He pulled it from the soil, revealing wire-like roots at its base.

“In all my years…” he said, scratching his stubbly chin. He’d never seen a weed quite like it.

The next week he found another, in the same place, only this one was taller than the first - up to his waist. It took a bit more effort to pull it out, and its wire roots were longer and deeper. He sprayed the earth liberally with weedkiller and thought no more about it, until that night when he and his wife were watching TV. Suddenly the memory of that night came back to him: the smell of cologne, the velvet pouch, the crest of the hill.

"Bastard sold me a bad bean," he said.

"What did you say?" Frances asked, but he was too ashamed to explain. He knew he'd made a big mistake.

From then on, Flannery visited the north field every morning to pull out the metal rods that insistently grew from the crest of the hill. Some were small and easy to remove, but others were tall and thick, and needed a fork and shovel. No matter how deep he dug, he never found the silver bean.

Spring brought leaves to the trees, and activity to the village, in anticipation of the May Day fête. Frances was on the committee, and Flannery was recruited to arrange haybales, set up marquees and decorate the bandstand.

The fête was a great success. The Flannerys' sheep won second prize, Frances bought a pair of fake pearl earrings from a jewellery stand, and Flannery didn't think of the silver bean once.

But the next morning, happy for the first time in months, Flannery spotted something metal poking above the trees in the north field. He grabbed his fork and shovel, but it was too late. While he had been busy setting up the fête, the rod had grown into a colossal metal tower, as tall as a house, and sprouted aerials and dishes at its tip. Flannery dug and dug, severing thick wire roots with his shovel, but the tower was set too deep in the ground. Just when he thought he’d reached the bottom, his hole collapsed. He needed something more powerful.

Gary Grisham, who owned the farm next door, was more than happy to loan his digger.

"Got a stubborn tree stump, Fred?"

"It's an invasive species."

Within an hour the digger had done more work than Flannery ever could have done by hand, but it still wasn't enough. For days he dug out the north field until the hill wasn't much of a hill at all. He forgot about his crops, his sheep, and his wife. But the deeper he dug, the higher the tower grew.

When Grisham came to the farm to get his digger back, he looked nervously up at the tower, which had begun making a loud humming sound.

"Is that safe!" he shouted over the din.

"It's nothing to do with me!" shouted Flannery.

“But it’s growing on your land, Fred!”

Grisham gave him a look that made him feel very nervous.

Everyone except the Flannerys gathered in Little Chippenden village hall. They shared stories about the tower and the effects it was having. Some complained that it was spoiling the view of the steeple of St Michael's. That the hum kept sheep up at night, and made children throw up up on long car journeys. Old women reported headaches and dodgy knees. Grisham showed the others how to make hats out of tin foil, to block the tower's cancerous rays. Something had to be done, but they didn’t know what. One thing they all agreed on was whose fault it was.

From then on, Little Chippenden shunned the Flannerys. Shopkeepers flipped their signs from OPEN to CLOSED when Fred and Frances walked by. Teenagers in tin foil hats stole one of their sheep and left it in a nearby lay-by. Their Land Rover was keyed in the village. No one wanted anything to do with them. Meanwhile, the tower grew and grew, sprouting more dishes and sensors at its tip, and large fuse boxes at its base.

The only place Flannery was welcome was the pub. He sat at the bar with a pint of ale on the counter and his head in his hands, trying not to listen to the men in the corner whispering about him. Somehow, things had got worse.

Then he got a familiar whiff of cologne, and looked up to see the small man standing next to him at the bar. He was on his phone, tapping away.

"You!" Flannery said, grabbing the man by the collar. "What was in that bean?"

The men in the corner shook their heads and held onto their tin foil hats.

"Finally," the city slicker said, not looking up from his phone, "I've got some good signal around here."

A few days later, the Flannerys received an envelope. Inside was a handwritten thank-you note that smelled faintly of cologne, and a cheque from a company called Magic Bean Telecommunications Ltd for a very large amount of money. Flannery built a new barn, had the scratches buffed out of his Land Rover, and bought his wife a new pair of earrings - with real pearls.