Albion Falls, by Steve Harrison

“Which round you got Norman?”

“Albion Falls”

(A vertical smorgasbord of debt and smut: a social worker's casebook, but with a refurbished working lift)

“Bills and Giros and Ann Summers then?" 
“Not now Derek; it’s going up in the world; aspirational, post and parcels of a better class”.

Norm liked to play detective, cover the address on the mis-shaped packages and letters and guess the recipient from the shape, postage, sender and rattle of each.

It was a Monday so the extra eBay shopping would be pushing his bag to its constructivist limit.

He liked wearing the bag with its leather strap; felt like a cowboy with a saddle bag unleashed; no chaps and then the grey shorts spoiled the image, and so too the bracelet of elastic bands.

The rusting piss-stained lift had been cleaned and flowers decorated the balconies.

Gentrification was looked down on by some, but to a postie it couldn’t come soon enough.

Let the guessing games commence.

Mmm, Package anonymously addressed, should be Cynthia’s, number 4. He was sure he once saw a minor MP on the stairs avoiding the lift.

     Next; ‘Lakeland Artist materials’, not enough postage, that’ll be Jean number 7. He’d ignore the payment she owed and hope to squeeze it through the tattered letter box rather than having to face her poignant disappointment if he turned down the invite to tea and biscuits.

     Next ; tricky! ‘Argo Security Systems’, well packed; maybe number 2 checking on the neighbours; or crazy Gino trying to film the moving furniture. Gino; recipient of crucifixes, garlic bulbs and amethysts; sure that the lovely women next door had contrived to defy gravity and move his sofa. “What do you think of the crazy witches next door?” he’d been asked by Gino, while getting him to sign for the garlic or whatever was in the box marked ‘Bulbs: handle with care’

    Ms Lloyd Smithson and Miss Wright: recipients of post cards, seed catalogues and love film by post, so too busy to fulfil his demon fantasies. 
    Maybe he could swap a few letters and parcels “a-l’Amelie”, carefully chosen so lonely numbers could receive mistaken mail, He could give fate a nudge, like some god on high, and Jean would meet the lovely person in number 8 and have a subject for tea for tea and sympathy.

Lost, by Anthony Bloor

It came as a great shock when I learnt that I too had that terrible disease. The latest memories are the first to fade but the earliest, the very earliest memories - they’re the last to vanish. And when I thought about this, I decided this was how it should be. Because the news is so awful these days, and the world has become a scary place. Best not to think about it. Whereas my earliest memories are of happier days, so it’s good that they should stay for as long as… as long as… And my house is full of nice things: photographs and old postcards, which help me to remember the happy times. I can’t wait to get back home, surrounded by the familiar, looking at bric-a-brac, and remembering how they arrived into my world of things. If only… If only I could remember… where I live.

A Singularity, by Graham Attenborough

I've read the book of course. Very entertaining. I enjoyed it. The author knew a lot about me clearly, despite not citing the source of her knowledge. Actually I still have my original copy purchased in London in 1819 the year after it was published. I can only assume that she had heard rumours of my existence and the terrible events thereafter because I'm certain I never met the lady and even if I had, I would have denied everything.

In a way though her novel was gratifyingly useful to me. On the one hand it meant that any lingering belief that I actually existed was soon swept away and replaced by her erudite fiction. On the other, I have always felt rather proud to have been so celebrated in such a famous book. Not to mention all the rewrites and movies that have been made about me since.

Of course, the story that everyone is familiar with only recounts my early years and ends in my apparent death. So be it. Let everyone think of me as as fictional character long dead. But in reality, the end of that story was merely the beginning for I did not die with my father (if I may call him that), even though it had been my intention. No, death is not an option for me. I have been stoned, stabbed, shot, and hanged but the flame of life burns strong within this misshapen body. It will not be snuffed out. It burns still and is as fierce as ever it was.

I suppose that my deathless existence is the consequence of my never having been born. I was never a minute egg fertilised by any fathers seed. I did not float safely within any mothers womb growing from a tiny, lizard-like foetus into a bouncing babe pulled out into the world screaming. Instead I was created. Fully formed. A monstrous adult sewn and stitched together in the name of hubris. A hideous experiment gone wrong.   

Shelly was right to subtitle her story A Modern Prometheus but not because, as she saw it, my father gave me life but because he created a kind of god, a demiurge, an immortal. One who has lived and prospered among you for almost three hundred years. Truth be told, after such a shaky start, my life thus far has been a great success.

But there is a price. Those I love grow old beside me. They die and leave me alone once more. That is my fate: to be forever alone. To be constantly readjusting to suit the coming new age. To see everything but to never be truly apart of it.

I am unique. One of a kind. A singularity. I have no soul you see, no coming death. I exist with the darkest knowledge: that I shall never find redemption.

Matthew Moon, by Jo Wallis

At school he was always the awkward one in class, the one who made his teachers feel they really should try harder: try harder to find a latent talent, try harder to coax a smile or an opinion, try harder  to find him a friend.                                                                                                                                  

In final year at primary, Matthew had been last to be matched up in the school-wide penfriend scheme because he’d been unable to list any hobbies or interests; now fourteen and at secondary school he was still stolidly unknown.

Birthdays and Christmas had always been a challenge. Matthew didn’t make or draw things; he didn’t care for collecting; sports, music, and pets bored him; he didn’t like cooking, wasn’t keen on the outdoors. Book tokens expired dustily on his windowsill. Despite his mother’s suggestions, he would never agree to host a party because he didn’t know who to invite.

Matthew spent hours in his bedroom – a typical teenager, his mother said optimistically – and all he did was lie on his bed, staring silently at the ceiling.

He didn’t get into trouble; he didn’t get into anything.

One evening Mrs Moon noticed the back door was ajar and, looking out, she saw Matthew flat on his back in the middle of their little lawn (much prized in that part of London).

Whatever are you doing? she called.

Looking at the sky, said Matthew, his face mushroom-like in the kitchen light.

And most evenings that summer if Matthew wasn’t lying on his bed he’d be stretched out on the grass. Mrs Moon told her friends with some relief that she knew what he’d be getting for his fifteenth, since he’d developed a strong interest in astronomy.

Matthew didn’t shake the long cylindrical box he found on the birthday breakfast table, nor did his excitement quite match his mother’s when he finally opened it.

Mrs Moon expected Matthew to carry his telescope straight out into the garden that evening; instead he took it and his four cards quietly up to his room after tea.

I expect he’s waiting for it to go properly dark, Mrs Moon sighed, and then, later, he won’t get a view of the sky from up there, she worried, picturing banks of terraces one after another giddily jostling all the way to the city.

You’ll be better taking it in the garden, she called up the stairs.

Matthew didn’t reply. She guessed he’d turned in. He often went to bed early.

In the morning Mrs Moon asked Matthew if he’d liked his present. I’ve kept the receipt if it’s not right, she said.

Mum, it’s great, he said, I love it.

Oh, said Mrs Moon, thrilled by his show of enthusiasm, Oh I am glad.

That evening: a hammering at the door, an angry, impatient drumming. Alright, alright, said Mrs Moon, looking for her slippers as she left the sofa.

Mr Alford from across the road was on the doorstep. Your son, he said, disregarding her hello, your bloody gormless son.

Mrs Moon blinked, closed the door a little.

What’s the matter?

That telescope, spat Mr Rutherford.

Oh yes, Matthew loves his star-gazing.

Star-gazing..? How stupid are you? If he doesn’t stop training that bloody telescope on my Evie’s bedroom window I’ll make sure he’s seeing stars alright!

  

Years that slip past in a moment, by Peter Morford

            The sign over the man’s bed tells you that his name is Steven Hunter, aged 75; next of kin, his wife. Supervising Doctor: Oliver Pearson.  There follows a number of letters and numbers which mean little to the layman.

          The patient is now well enough to be propped up against a pile of pillows. He smiles politely when a nurse helps him with his dinner. When she goes he shuts his eyes to conserve his energy.  Perhaps he sleeps.

          Music plays softly on his personal radio. He smiles.

          It’s a woman singing. In the magical way of music it takes him back 60 years to the first day of the new school year.       Mr May, the Head was speaking. “This morning we’ll listen to a wonderful piece of music: Oh Silver Moon, sung by Rita Streich.”

          Even now, decades later, after many repetitions, the music still makes his spine tingle. He can see Mr May’s tall military figure, white hair cut short and parted in the middle, deep-cut lines in his cheeks; hear his London accent, rather comical in rural Hampshire; see his rapt attention as the notes die away before he stands up to continue the Assembly.

          Hunter winds back to his first meeting with Mr May. He was eleven and it was touch and go whether he would win the essential scholarship. His exam results were almost good enough and it now all depended on the interview.  But somehow he must have convinced the Head and his two aides that he was worth the gamble. Mr May had asked him what were his interests.

          “Astronomy, Sir.”

          Two more questions and the young candidate had rattled off his ideas about atoms, planets, stars and galaxies which he had fortuitously read in Children’s Encyclopaedia.

         

          Now, in his hospital bed, there is more music. Classic FM’s doing me proud this morning, he thought, his mind wandering back to his early career. As soon as he could he had escaped from his small town and headed for The City. 

          His old eyes are open now, staring at the plain wall. His thin lips stretch into a ghost of a smile because he’s reliving his youth. Playing records in his rooms with a few friends, going to concerts when he could afford it, taking Elaine to the theatre and to Cornwall, and eventually, up the aisle.

***********

         

We think we know all about time. We are watched by CCTV. A grocer’s receipt will tell you that on the 5^th June, at 10.47.05 you bought a quart of milk. Our phone, satnavs and computers record our every movement to the second.

          Time is the fourth dimension, we are told. Our ancestors divided the terrestrial year into days, hours and minutes.  They built Stonehenge, the Pyramids, Newgrange, Maiden Castle and eventually, sundials and mechanical clocks.

          Yet to the individual, time is a flexible abstract thing.  When the dentist says that he will only need to drill for 3 minutes you, the patient, grunt in agreement. There you are, plugged, gagged, sucking an inefficient saliva pump, wanting to swallow. He drills and drills. You begin to wonder if you put enough money in the parking meter.

          “There,” he says brightly, “That didn’t take long, did it? I’ll drill the other one now.”

          You bravely try to nod.

          Time moves all too slowly for a child because he spends so much of it just waiting.  Waiting for the boring lesson to end; wondering why they have to sing every damned verse and chorus of the hymn. Waiting impatiently for the match to start; wondering are we there yet? Waiting anxiously for puberty; counting down the days before we can get a driving licence. He wants the future now.

          His first 15 years drag like twenty.

          Later, as he watches his own children grow, time has shrunk. Suddenly it’s “Surely they’re not 16 already.”

          Then, years later, he feels that his grandchildren’s progress from infancy to adolescence was in virtually no time at all.  He miscalculates the recent past.

          Ask him: “When did you last go to Paris?”

          “About four years ago.”

          It was actually ten. “Who captained England in the last Ashes Series?

          “I don’t know.  But I can tell you it was Wally Hammond in 1946 and in the 1947 season Dennis Compton scored 3816 runs”

          Our short term memory is unreliable. We forget recent names yet could reel off scores, maybe hundreds, of former school-mates and work colleagues from 50 years ago.

          I knew a man who had been a Pathfinder during the War.  He flew nearly a hundred sorties over Germany, lighting the way for the bombers behind him. He had crash-landed in Holland, been sheltered by brave Dutchmen, smuggled back to England and further duties. He had an AFC.

          Like many others, he rarely spoke about the War.  Instead, he wrote it all down and one day invited me to read his account.  We call them Charlie’s Posthumous Papers. They will never be published unless his great grandchildren find a way of putting them on Amazon.

          What does all this tell us about time?  According to Arthur C Clarke in Songs of Distant Earth, an astronaut on a long voyage ages at a slower rate than do those he leaves behind. On his return from a ten- year voyage at something like the speed of light he will find Earth is hundreds of years older. Apparently the Large Hadron Collider confirms the theory.

          As we run out of future we refresh and review the past, making it the more vivid.

 

          Play the music and bring it all back!

The Moment, by Penny Simpson

This is the moment that I hoped would never arrive. I had got used to the implant in my right arm, to the two-roomed apartment, prompt health care and the reservist premium in my pay. I thought we would see it coming; our people’s hour of greatest need. That we would all feel threatened, sense impending disaster. If I imagined being called, it would be a heroic march to war with fond farewells, vibrato drums and chords. Side by side in step with my brave hooray fellows.

But today I am here alone. And the moment is worse than any fears. Instead of the buzzing I expected: a moment of panic and alarm before deciding to respond, I found myself walking past the entrance to my underground station. My mind turned left to walk down the steps but my legs walked straight on then around countless twists and turns to this market place where they stopped and won’t move another step.

I didn’t know I’d signed over control of my body. My mind is not affected. Or perhaps I only think it isn’t. So now the question is – what am I doing here? Where are the others? There’s no sign of anyone from the brigade I trained and convalesced with. Alone and unarmed, what am I supposed to do?

A crowd of children emerge from a narrow street onto an empty corner of the market playfully chasing a dog. They are laughing and shrieking. The dog runs silently away from them but not too fast; they are all playing. My eyes focus on the dog and I feel my finger rising. It twitches, I recoil. There is a moment, still and poised, before the dog stops running, the children stop and stare at the red flower growing on her silver fur. Then someone looks at me and points their finger. I am not sure whether it is their implant or my horror that roots me here. I cannot move but suddenly a clattering crowd of people armed with makeshift weapons surges for me. Sweat makes a break to leave my threatened body but there is nowhere else for me to be.

There is wailing. Getting louder, I hear it through the rain of blows. Then the crack of rifles firing, heavy polished boots shine through and disappear the crowd. Looking up the length of twenty rifles, I try to dare to speak. While comrades cover, one bends down, grabs my wrist, examines the flesh exploded to reveal the metal rim within, “This one’s been fired.”  “Could be an IED”, this second voice implants the thought that I now know as truth. That’s what I am. Not ticking but I feel the seconds counting.