1916: An Electric Lightbulb, by Graham Attenborough

The whistles blew. The young man climbed the ladder with urgency. Like all the others. Once beyond the relative safety of the trench, he ran. He knew he was screaming even though he couldn't hear the sound, lost, as it was, amidst the cacophony of hell. He realised that, so loud was the sound of battle that he couldn't actually hear anything. He could feel it though, pounding his body with its shocks. He felt his heart beating with such force that it was like a pulsar - still to be discovered.

The first phase had been told to stroll across to the enemy lines. Now he clambered over the soft lumps of their bodies, trying not to be caught in their unbelieving eyes. He ran on towards the Germans, sitting behind their machine guns, fresh from their deep burrows.

It felt as though he'd been punched but when he glanced down, he saw the hole in his shoulder. He was punched again, and then a third time. Everything stopped. He was floating, hanging in the air. All was silence. He felt no pain, only relief. Relief from the terror. He saw the ground coming up to meet him and closed his eyes before the impact.

He opened them. He stared up at the white sky, at the dim sun hanging from a cord. He heard men wailing, whimpering, shouting out in pain. He heard angels; they talked softly, gently, reassuringly. They were the voices of mothers, sisters, sweethearts.

He looked at the sun that wasn't the sun but an electric lightbulb and considered its brilliance. Man had created light. Such inventiveness, he thought, was due to scientific progress but what of human progress? Why, he wondered, did humanity, with all our potential to create paradise, choose instead to unleash hell?

He stared at the sun and wept.

Message in a Bottle, by Anthony Bloor

The inability of a species to reproduce itself must inevitably lead to its extinction. As the person responsible for this tragedy, I must set out the facts, in the hope that another life form, human or alien, will judge me kindly. It was I who discovered that catarrh could be recycled into a source of fuel, I who produced the blueprint for the manufacture of Phlegmonium 125, and my discoveries were fortuitous. New viruses were rife; humans everywhere suffered from permanent colds; and our energy sources were depleted. But the burning of phlegmonium had unforeseen consequences. Within a generation, we knew we were doomed. The reproductive process simply failed; cloning techniques failed. Impotence and infertility; men and women both implicated – so the gynaecologists said. But I still believe that a woman’s nose is more sensitive than a man’s. My wife is here now, sneezing. She stares at me, accusingly. There are four of us left in the town. Our average age is 140. There’s nobody left to manage the phlegmonium plants; nobody capable of closing them down. The toxins are still out there. And we walk the streets regardless – we won’t be here for long.

The Coming, by Peter Shilston

Yes, I was at the meeting when young Ben Maxwell read that epoch-making paper, telling how he’d been able to put a definite date on the crucifixion of Jesus. (“Young Ben” we called him. And of course now he’s forever young, isn’t he?) Old sceptics like me went along all prepared to scoff or ask awkward questions, but the paper he gave was brilliant and the evidence couldn’t be faulted. All those papyrus records had turned up in excavations in Palestine, like the Dead Sea scrolls only more detailed, and the team had spent years piecing them altogether; until there it was; a clear date: something that neither the Gospels or St. Paul had bothered to give us. It was stunning; that’s the only word for it.

   Of course, all sorts of weird groups tried to cash in on it, and they’re still at it. Do you remember that bunch who tried to prove Jesus was black? I ask you!

As for Ben Maxwell, it transformed his life. He was a very modest young man; shy, even. He turned down the offer of a C.B.E. for his achievement, though of course it wasn’t made public at the time. He was quite right, in my opinion: it’s the sort of award that’s given to retired sportsmen, and to people who’ve made donations to party funds. But he couldn’t so well turn down invitations to speak at academic conferences, and before he knew where he was, there were television interviews in the States, and then all over the world; and he started to find he enjoyed it. That’s what did for him in the end, of course: that dreadful plane crash. At least, that’s what they think it must have been, though no trace was ever found. Naturally, sabotage was suspected by the conspiracy-merchants, and others put it down to divine intervention. Was it just a fluke that the plane sank in one of the deepest ocean depths in the entire world, off the coast of Japan, or was something being covered up? And if so, by whom, and why? Assorted nutcases have claimed to see him alive, of course; but as far as I’m concerned, he’s gone; and so he’ll always be young Ben Maxwell, the genius who put a date on the most famous event of all time.

   The college thought of naming a building after him, but they were afraid of annoying the Moslems, or the Jews, or for all I know the voodoo priests as well, so all we got is one of those blue plaques. But he won’t be forgotten, ever.

Anyway, thanks to his work, we have a date for the crucifixion, and this year it’s the two-thousandth anniversary. All sorts of crazies out there are expecting the Second Coming at any moment, and the fact that they’ve always been disappointed in the past never makes any difference: they’re saying it’s got to be this Easter. But I’m not expecting anything, are you? When you look out at the stars on a night like this, millions of light-years away, it makes you realize how insignificant we are here. What grounds do we have for imagining things on this earth matter at all, as far as the universe is concerned?

Hang on; what’s happening out there? The stars ……       

LIGHT!  

Cause of Death, by Peter Morford

For two miles the winding road to the village runs in a cutting beneath fields and woods. Locals who know the hazards drive slowly and carefully, noting  the few places  where two cars could 

pass each other.  In the early mornings you might see the road-kills; hedgehogs, rabbits, the occasional badger or fox and, sadly, someone’s pet cat. Soon, tyres and crows will have destroyed the evidence.

            One evening Judy Vance was driving her husband Harry from the station. They were chatting about his day’s work; her lunch with the W. I.

            “Look out,” he roared.  “Stop the car.”

            Before she had time to think, Judy braked, and felt a slight bump under the wheels. Harry was screaming now. There was a second lesser feeling from the rear wheels.  He screamed again and she saw him straining forward, his face red, choking, running his hands frantically over chest and head.

            She switched the engine off and tried to comfort him as he fell slowly forward, his head against the dashboard. He was too heavy for her to move him back in his seat. Knowing she could do nothing for him, she phoned 999 and waited.

            The ambulance was quick; four minutes.  Two paramedics soon had Harry on a stretcher. Judy watched in horror as they gave him an injection then reached for the defibrillator. Then the Police arrived and an officer put up the red triangles to protect the area then returned to get the car out of the way. Within five minutes the ambulance left, taking them both to the hospital.

            Harry was dead on arrival.

            The post-mortem report stated that Harry Vance had been a healthy man with no known medical problems and no cause of death could be established. In the black humour of his profession the pathologist said privately that Mr Vance was the healthiest corpse he had ever seen. Despite the reported screams and signs of deep distress he had suffered neither stroke nor heart attack.  All his vital organs were healthy and in fact, in another bout of medical humour, he was the ideal organ donor.

            The Inquest recorded “Death by unknown cause, and there were no suspicious circumstances.” The Coroner noted Mrs Vance’s statement that she had stopped the car to save an animal, that as she had been travelling at less than 20 mph the airbags had not deployed.

            Nobody could have told the Inquest that as the wheels crushed the rabbit Harry had felt his own pelvis snap and stomach implode under the infinite weight of the front wheel. Then an eternal second later the rear wheel pressed sternum against spine, bursting the lungs… and then his head, reduced to a disc.

            Empathy killed Harry Vance.