A Dark and Stormy Night, by Jo Wallis

                                          

It was three years since we met; three years and a few days; our first wedding anniversary had passed in the summer. I was thinking about this as I waited for you; struggling to focus on positives, but hindered by the strong winds crashing rain against our house.

Eventually I sensed more than heard the front door open and close behind you, felt anger in your determined effort not to slam it. You would be cutting the air as you moved across the sitting room to the kitchenette and the fridge, checking the surfaces were clean, the floor mopped and everything we owned tidied away in its correct place.

You stand in the door way, a can in hand, swaying slightly. In a ludicrously loud whisper you ask if I’m awake. Even without the thunder, sleep would have been impossible, but I don’t say that.  I smell rain on you, and sweat. I am absolutely bloody soaked, you say, and freezing cold. Even in the gloom I see the bottom of your trousers darkened, your shoulders the same sodden black.

Oh dear, I say, shall I get you a towel?

Shall I get you a towel? It’s going to take more than a towel to warm me up, my darling, you say, in tones that reproach me for appearing warm and dry in bed. I am actually incredibly cold, unable now to distinguish the hammering in my head from the storm outside. Your voice is dangerously high-pitched as you ask why I hadn’t reminded you to take your raincoat.

You stand close now, slam your can down on the bedside cabinet. Beer spills out; it will forever remain the smell of violence, but at that moment all I think is, mustn’t forget to wipe that up when you’re through with me.

In the morning you are smoothly conciliatory as you down black coffee and fasten your tie. You were so cold and so wet and I had been having a laugh, you say, I’d done nothing to help. For all I cared your suit could’ve been ruined. I’d brought it on myself. But really, sorry, I shouldn’t have been so rough. See you later.

I am sore all over and avoid the bathroom mirror. Would it have made a difference if I’d pretended to be asleep? Probably not: I can’t seem to help aggravating you. If only I had thought to put your raincoat out, or an umbrella at least. But yesterday morning had dawned fine and the forecast had been fair. And then it occurs to me, clear and unavoidable as if delivered by last night’s lightning: I hadn’t made it rain; I don’t have the power. It was not my fault.

A Little Christmas Piece, by Peter Morford

We’ve got it all wrong about Christmas.  I  can’t believe that we would choose the most miserable part of the year to celebrate a birth.

    I remember how it used to be, years ago in Ratcliffe Highway. There’d be deep snow, carts stuck in freezing mud; cold ‘ouses, a dunny shared with fifty neighbours, yet we workin’ blokes was supposed to be ‘onest and ‘appy. Yet somehow we’d save up for the feast and ‘ide little gifts in secret places for the nippers to find.

     On the day – it was only a day- we’d light a good fire and live off the fat of the land. I remember one Christmas in particular.  We already had one goose and then I won another. I was lucky when the girl in the market gave it to me so that we ‘ad two on the table. The nine of us– our parents couldn’t come - sat round and gorged.  The wife and I had a good supply of Porter beer while our grubby-faced nippers drank lemonade and played with their toys. It was a picture of Dickensian bliss.

      I was dozing in front of the fire when there was a thunderous banging on our front door. The Runners!

      Within two days I’d been tried for stealing a goose and a sack of carrots and told I would be deported to Australia. My tearful family saw me off. “It’s only for seven years,” I said. “I’ll write.”

       “But you can’t write,” the wife  said.

       “I’ll learn.” They waved at me from the dockside as we caught the tide and sailed away.

       For the long voyage we travelled in the crowded, rat-infested hold.  It was ‘ome from ‘ome. I met a little gang of rustic coves from some place called Tolpuddle and when I asked them what they’d stolen they beat me up.  I don’t know why.

        A few months later we landed at Botany Bay and I joined the forced labour gang. Among the cut-throats and thieves was one educated man. He must have taken a fancy to me because during the three years he taught me to read and write.

        Then I got my freedom and was given a smallholding a short walk from Botany Bay. Soon, with a new wife and family I could celebrate Christmas properly. We ‘ad food from our own fields and the best grog that money could buy. A barbie on the beach! Perfect. Tiny Tim would have enjoyed it.

        Christmas would never be the same again, thank goodness.

Don't Touch, by Martin Needham

It is now the 734th year since the outbreak of the Great and Merciful Peace and all the inhabitable areas have agreed upon two supreme commandments. These two rules were  born out of the  necessity of circumstance and have transformed human existence. Early in the time of Scarcity  the elders who took control of the holy google-net ruled that all human life was sacred and may not be taken, every individual must eat in moderation and exercise to maximise their lifespan. The eggs and sperm are still taken from the young at 17 years of age to be protected so that selected embryos can be produced  in gestation tanks when required by their family.  For the first  two hundred years humanity prospered people expected to live to 120 and then 150 and now 200 years. The sterile homes and the blessings of the virtual worlds created by the omniscient and most revered google-net  mean that people continue to live entertained and safe existences.  So the planet was fully repopulated until the time of the  Super Abundance coinciding with the final impotency of antibiotics. At this time the second great rule was revealed to us . Thou shalt not treat the sick. So for half a millennium we have lived in an the midst of a terrible binary of rules born out of conflicting necessities which are  sustained by a personal greed for life and enshrined in religion. Thus we preserve and revere our online lifespan but we may not interfere with the sick. In this way the overall balance of life is preserved.  We study the great sciences of prevention, sterilisation  and vaccination that we might live longer. Everyone must wear their life preservers; white synthetic spider silk suits that armour us against the scourge of abrasions. We live within our sterosphere helmets that protect us from infection. We conduct our business through virtually controlled machines and exercise in virtual worlds inspired by reality and imagination.

I am a servant of the great and most majestic high google. In my first half century I was one of the developers of the most miraculous world time web which has become the great investment sensation of our  age. We succeeded in drawing in  digital signals refracted back from the black star gravity pool. These data streams from the birth of our most revered google net brought us knowledge of what we now call  " the age of "visceral engagement" .  At first we were shocked and sickened  by the violence, bare flesh and physical contact. It has since been used to reform our virtual entertainments. 

This is my first attempt to send a super accelerated data burst on the reverse path back through the curve of the  space/time depression. There is no rule against it, but in my heart I know there should be.  Studying your lives for over a hundred years now I feel compelled to warn you of the unfortunate alignment of cultural rules and circumstances that have come to  enslave us. I realise that this epistle may threaten our own existence but it is not much of an existence.

I am 198 years old. I have followed the rules, lived long and been  well rewarded by our standards  but perhaps less well in your judgements. I will send richer data streams after this simple old fashioned coded message but try to imagine our time.  We must endure our illnesses and the consequences of them, we must not intervene.  We do not touch and remain untouched. I have recently lost another greatgreatgreatgrandchild in circumstances that further fuel my doubts about these rules by which we live.

We had stepped outside our block Louis and I , risky but not against the rules. He being but five year old saw the leaves blowing down from the trees. Before he could be stopped, he put up his anti bacterial visor that he might chase and catch the leaf. It brushed his eye as it floated down: infection followed and then death. I have stood coldly by and watched death too many times, and I know that you would judge me ill by the standards of your time for doing so.  Our children's instincts betray our true nature. It is  buried deeper as we mature by the consistent layers of conditioning that we must not touch.   When I first looked back at your time I was shocked, offended and physically sickened by the way that you touch each other, walk barefooted, breathe the air. We had lost the words for two mouths touching and even now I cannot bring myself to write such an obscenity,  but now I am obsessed  by it and jealous.

 Preserve your humanity not your individual selves: live a real and dirty life. Set your descendants free.

Yours in perpetual  servitude.            Gideon

The Sleeper, by John Garland

It was a very large home-made card. His address was correct, and neatly written, but the rest was clearly the work of a small child. On one side was what was meant to be a tree, drawn in felt-tipped marker, complete with oversized red apples. On the other, beside the address, the child had written, in large, clumsy letters, “Dear Uncle Mike This is my tree I hop you like it”; the message being accompanied by a smudge of the child’s hand.

Mike turned it over several times, puzzled. He was nobody’s uncle: indeed, as an only child himself, it was genealogically impossible. With a growing feeling of alarm, he gradually realised what it was all about.

They had told him, you’re going to be a sleeper. Don’t do anything at all to draw attention to yourself; especially, don’t attempt to contact any of us until the message comes. Then you must take the appropriate actions immediately. Then they had explained the system of codes, and made him learn them all by heart. He was told that under no circumstances should he write them down. So he had learnt them by heart, and hadn’t written them down, but oh dear! That was years ago! Right now he was pretty sure he could remember most of them if pushed, but ……..   Think, man, think! This was going to be very important!

First, the spelling mistake: the missing letter E. That meant he must contact Agent E, if he could only remember the right address. But supposing he’d moved in the intervening time? Well, that was beyond his, Mike’s, control: he could only do his best. Now the child's handprint: he was sure that indicated a degree of urgency ….. Or was that indicated by a footprint? Really he couldn’t remember! Next: the message to be passed on. That was conveyed by the picture on the front of the card. So a tree with apples meant … what? He couldn’t for the life of him recall! As for all the other coded symbols he'd been made to learn: stars, parachutes, mobile phones, whatever ….. What on earth did they mean? It wasn’t his fault; the system really was ludicrously complicated! He wasn’t cut out for this work!

The only one he was absolutely certain about was the picture of a clock, which meant “general alert”. Well, if that was the best he could do, he’d better do it, hadn’t he? He was sure he’d got a spare postcard of the Big Ben tower somewhere ….. Yes, here it was, that would have to do. Or did a picture of a building mean something else?  Why had he ever let himself in for this?

He addressed the card to Agent E, at what he sincerely hoped was the man’s address, and wrote as follows:

      “I’ve just received a beautiful picture of an apple tree from my little niece, complete with handprint. She’s a real star! No doubt she’ll be wanting me to get her a mobile phone for her birthday. Whatever next; parachuting lessons, perhaps?”

Praying that this covered all eventualities, and hoping that the word "niece" didn't have a coded significance of its own, Mike dropped the card into the letterbox round the corner and then staggered home, emotionally shattered.

A week later, his phone rang. It was Helen. After a few opening bits of general chat, Helen said, “Sarah told me they’d been doing postcards at her playgroup, and she’d sent one for you! She keeps asking, “When am I going to see Uncle Mike again?” She always calls you that nowadays; isn‘t that nice? But do you know, the silly little thing told me she’d forgotten to sign it! So if it did reach you, it was from her! I do think her teacher should have spotted it wasn’t signed, don’t you?”

Mike couldn’t remember the rest of the conversation: afterwards he suspected he’d cut Helen off  rather abruptly. But when he’d had a sit-down and a stiff drink, he reflected, well, at least war hasn’t broken out, and neither has anyone come to arrest me, so with a bit of luck no great harm’s been done. I’d better go back to being a sleeper, and just pray that this time no-one wakes me up! 

Revelation, by Toli Kram

It’s a sight few relish, but the carnage was on a scale that dwarfed similar incidents.  This straight line of vehicles had stood little chance. Conditions by all accounts were good; perfect in many ways; but dozens of cars and lorries told another story. They lay shunted front and rear. A car transporter with its cargo precariously hanging from the upper deck teetered dangerously: delivery a thing to forget. There wasn’t anything anyone could do.  A Mercedes horse-box lay up ahead, the doors flung open and hanging limply, its occupant lifeless and on its side.  Emergency vehicles surrounded the mayhem, while overhead the shuff-shuff-shuff of a helicopter sounded, and in the half-light a shaft of bright light pierced, illuminating a round patch that slowly licked the carnage inch by inch.

Further down the line of vehicles lay two camouflage-dressed soldiers, one lying face down with unmoving eyes peering into nothing, another pinned between a Routemaster bus and a London black cab.  An Eddie Stobart jack-knifed lorry had pushed several cars on top of one another. In the distance the silence was suddenly broken: a baby crying, faintly at first, but getting louder.  As far as one could see the mayhem of wreckage was strewn, with cars overturned, some on their sides, some even facing in the opposite direction, not one without damage.  The crying became louder, the child becoming more and more upset and agitated as the seconds slowly and painfully ticked by.  Suddenly the jack-knifed eighteen wheeler began to move and in a burst of light it was suddenly hoisted high into the air. On its underside clearly visible was the name 'Corgi Toys'.

 A woman’s voice said “Julian, you’ve woken your little sister!” 

A Pair of Glasses, by Peter Morford

It’s fascinating the way memory works. A glimpse, a casual word, a scent – especially a scent – and our brains flip back in time to things we thought we had forgotten.

            “A pair of glasses” naturally takes me back to the first time I had to wear them.  I saw the leaves on the trees for the first time in years. It almost made up for the realisation that I was a perfect physical specimen no longer.

            Opticians invite us to choose a frame “to suit your personality” Should they say “choose a frame to change your personality”?

            I say this because we often judge a stranger by his eye-wear. Formal horn-rims suggest maturity, a certain seriousness, professionalism. And then we remember the public figures, mainly entertainers.  What’s serious about Woody Allen, Eric Morecambe, Harry Worth, The Two Ronnies, Peter Sellers, Groucho Marx et al.?

            Come in Michael Caine in the Len Deighton thrillers.

            I remember my eccentric grandmother.  She was a black-dressed Victorian relic. She wore button-boots. When she lost her button-hook she would have the whole family searching the house for it.

            Putting on her gold-rimmed glasses was a two handed job. They had tiny lenses and the arms were springy question-mark things which had to be carefully wound round the ears. When she pulled them off with a vigorous tug the earpiece would whip back into shape.

                        Talking of shapes and types – can you ever see rimless little lenses without seeing a sinister Donald Pleasance in one of his nastier roles? Worse still, think Himmler. His glasses gave him the face of The Final Solution.         

            Think Monocle and Patrick Moore.  Lorgnettes bring us Edith Evans and

“A haaaand ..baaaag”

                        Haiti’s heavily-armed Tonton Macoute thugs hid their eyes behind mirrored sunglasses.

                        And what do sunglasses do for actresses but give them an air of mystery? Where are those eyes looking? Can they see anything in this gloomy night-club? Are they going to wear them in the sea?

                        I used to work for an accountant. One day, the Senior Partner deigned to address me.

            “George,” he said. He was never very good with names. “George, if you want to get on in the Firm, I suggest you tidy yourself up.  Find a better tailor.  And get rid of those awful National Health spectacles.”

            Spending more than I could afford, I followed his advice.

            “That’s better,” he said later. “It gives you more gravitas when you’re advising our clients.”

            A year or two later I wanted to buy a house. After skirmishes with various Building Societies I finally got the loan on condition that I increased my deposit.

            As I had spent all my money it occurred to me that some furniture would still be useful. I duly made a Saturday morning appointment with the Bank Manager.

            There he was, sports jacketed in honour of the relaxed day.

            “So you want a short term loan?” he said distastefully. “For what purpose?”

            “I need furniture.”

            He aimed his heavy glasses and nose at me. “How much, pray?”

            I gave him a figure.   He looked aghast at such extravagance. He composed himself.

            “What is your security?”

            “I have just bought a house on a mortgage.”

            He pressed a bell and a minion came running. “Bring Mr Baker’s bank details.”

            He peered suspiciously at the file, then at me. He tut-tutted over some detail which he marked with his pencil and seemed to be spending a long time in deep thought. Here was a worried man protecting the Bank from extravagant home-buyers.

            And then, to my relief he looked up from the bothersome pages and gave me his form of a smile. “I can authorise it this time,” he said, as he started to fill in a long form.           

            “The loan will have to be repaid in six months.”

            I agreed.  “Sign here… and here… and here oh, and here,”

            He stuffed the papers into a manila envelope, got me to sign across the seal and sellotaped over my mark. I was free to go furniture hunting.

            Some-time after that a girl friend asked me to send her a photograph of myself. I duly posed in a Foto-Me kiosk and, without my glasses, took 8 identical shots. I then did a rather childish thing which I’m sure no-one in this room would do. I drew on each image.  I added various combinations of moustache, glasses, beard, whiskers, hair and silly hats. Her reaction to this artwork has influenced my appearance to this day.

            You could say that there is more to glasses than meets the eye but that would be too cornea pun.

Offline, by Graham Attenborough

She was taken from her cell by two guards in their google uniforms. At the end of a long white corridor, still flanked by her guards, she was greeted by a smiling young woman who looked up briefly from a glowing tablet as she was brought in to a gleaming office.

'Please sit', said the man sat behind a Habitat table, adorned with a magnificent digitalised flowering plant.

She sat, the one piece, paper suit they had given her to wear, crackling as she did so. 'What is your username?' The man asked.

She said nothing.

'Your google account? Amazon? What is your smart phone number?'

'I don't have a mobile' she said, 'or a username; a blog; a Facebook page; or a google account. In fact, I don't even have a fucking computer - okay!'

They all looked at her as though she'd just said that she butchered babies for a living.

The man turned to his screen, tapped on it a couple of times and turned it towards her. Immediately she recognised herself walking along a fairly busy street. She saw that as other people walked along, the giant billboard screens flashed up their usernames and quickly directed them to their next shopping destination. A hint of a smile danced across her lips as she saw how the screens went blank as she passed them, unable to identify all her consumer wants and needs.

'As a matter of fact' he said, 'no, it's not okay. Do you even have a bank account?'

'No' she said, 'I do not have a bank account. I don't want a bloody bank account and I have a democratic right not to have one if I chose.'  The man laughed.

'Oh, democracy. That old chestnut. Didn't you know? We have no need of democracy in the age of google because we have no need of governance. We are all free and equal under google. The world has moved on my dear. You see, you and your kind are still living in the bad old days, that's why you insist on calling yourselves neo Luddites and Latter-day Diggers, they tried to halt progress too didn't they, and of course, they failed. I suggest you read about them sometime, on Wikipedia, that is - when you're back on line. And you will be back on line, reconnected to the net, because that, is the only rule passed down by google, in its - all-consuming wisdom.  As I say' he went on, 'we are all free to choose under google but our choices must be made on line. That is the rule. Everything we will ever need is to be found on the worldwide web and you must be a part of the great google family. Otherwise, well, you are nothing, nothing but a shadow, a waste of digits, an affront to consumerism. Someone like you is a non unit. You might as well be dead.'

'Are you actually saying' she said, 'that our only purpose is to shop! To buy stuff on line?'

'Of course', he said, 'what other purpose could we possibly have'?

She looked at the man aghast. She longed to go home, to her dogs, to her books and her vegetable garden. She didn't need google to be fulfilled. She only needed her freedom, her friends, love.

She said: 'you can't force me. You can give me an iPad and a username but I just won't log on. I don't want you, I don't need you.'

The man sat back in his chair and laced his fingers into a steeple.

He said: 'Nonsense, we all need google. Google is us and we are google. You see my dear, if you were on line and keeping abreast of google events, you would know that the latest google nanotechnology means that we can now connect you to the web intravenously. You should consider yourself privileged, you shall be one of the first units on earth to, not merely be connected but to actually be a living part of google itself. There shall be no logging off, even as your physical body sleeps, you shall live and breath within the net, being updated instantaneously. I'm envious I can tell you. Just imagine, you will be as one with google, and, gradually, as this marvellous, google-given technology is rolled out, more and more of us will join you, our minds and bodies sharing forever the power and the glory of the one great google!'

Realising there was no escape from this madness, she began to panic. She stood up and tried to run but the two google guards grabbed her by the arms and held her fast.

'They will take you down to the technicians now' said the man kindly, 'we shall meet again my dear, on line.' He stood to attention, tapped his chest with his right hand before stretching his arm out before him.

'Google be praised' he said, and the others responded.

'Praise be to Google!'

Her legs gave way beneath her.