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, then looked down again.

'Please sit,' said a 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 choose.'  

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 online. And you will be back online, 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 online. 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,' the woman said, 'that our only purpose is to shop? To buy stuff online?' 'Of course', the man replied. '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 online 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 not merely to be connected but  actually to 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, the woman 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, online.' 

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.

Travel Bug, by Graham Attenborough

I want to travel, he said, see the world, experience other cultures, find myself.

Great, why not? She said, I'm sure it will change you, perhaps even make you a better person.

What's that supposed to mean? He said, a better person? Are you saying I'm not a good person?

No, no not at all, she said, I'm just saying. I'm agreeing with you. Travel expands the mind and all that.

Yes, he said, but it doesn't follow that it makes you a better person. I just want to travel, see the world, find myself.

You keep saying that, she said, finding yourself, but, what does that mean? Don't you know who you are? Can't you find yourself here?

No but, what I mean, he said, is there's no spirituality here is there, no way of finding your true identity. It's just work and going out for a meal and a drink with your friends on a Friday night. Shopping, buying stuff, watching telly, surfing the net. I mean that's not life is it? You're never going to find yourself just doing all that.

Maybe you're right, she said, but isn't that what everybody does? Or would do if they had the chance?

Perhaps, he said, I don't know. I just keep thinking that there's got to be more than this.

So, these other cultures, she said, do they know who they are then?

Yes, of course, he said, they're in touch with nature aren't they, they don't need all this rubbish to be happy.

Oh, she said, happy. Aren't you happy?

I don't know, he said, are you happy?

I think so, she said, I think so, but I'm not sure.

Me neither, he said.

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.

The Species, by Graham Attenborough

Interim Report on Blue Planet; Star System #**~^#**<~*: Extinction Event.

We began our survey of the Blue Planet many generations ago. Since that time much has occurred, culminating in a catastrophic extinction event, which has decimated almost all flower and fauna on land and much of the planets ocean besides.

Initially, the species responsible for this event had made little impact on the planet's Eco systems, living, more or less, in harmony with its fellow creatures. However, on subsequent visits we found that the species had multiplied exponentially; had begun to form large settlements, and was systematically destroying the environment.

Only a few generations ago, we were extremely alarmed to discover that the species had spread to such a degree that much, of what had once been a Paradise Planet, had been so badly damaged by their activity, that many of its fellow species were either extinct or surviving in captivity and small corridors of natural habitat.

A word here on the species. The species in question is a problem-solving, tool-using biped. The species is basically a scavenger. The species is highly social and in small groups is capable of living within its means. Unfortunately, it would appear that, approximately thirty thousand of the planet's years ago, an anomaly occurred in its evolution, leading to arrested development in the species. This anomaly allowed the species to believe that it was unique, in some way special, and that its immediate (and largely imagined) needs outweighed those of all others with which it shared the planet. Eventually, the species came to see themselves as a kind of god and that the Blue Planet and everything in it belonged to them to do with as they pleased.

Herein is the sorry tale of this most wonderful planet: that it spawned a creature that saw itself more important than the planet that had spawned it. There is hope however. Once the species finally recognised the irreversibility of its actions, it began to use its destructive power on itself like never before. Their final war, over what sparse resources remained, exterminated billions leaving only a few thousand of the most powerful and despicable of the species. These few have escaped the Blue Planet and are now seeking a new world to inhabit.

It is the regrettable recommendation of this report, that these survivors be sought out and destroyed before they are able to infect any other habitable planet. It is essential, for the well-being of the galaxy, that the species is completely nullified forthwith.

*#¥~<~+^#*

Translated by Graham Attenborough (2016)

The Rope-Slider's Wife, by Graham Attenborough

He was a fool for flight. It was, she knew, his true love and always would be.

His father had taken him to the heights when Robert was but a small boy; he had told her how scared he had been at first but fear was soon replaced by rapture.

As a boy, Robert had taken to the towers and spires with such enthusiasm that his steeple jack father's initial delight had soon been replaced with foreboding. A healthy respect for danger and a clear awareness of certain death, if mistakes were made, was essential for such a trade. Young Robert seemed oblivious to his father's concerns and was soon performing daring tricks for the people who aways stood watching in the churchyards below. He would sit or lie on the edge of the curtain walls of the tower tops waving. He would stand on one leg, dance, pretend to lose his footing and cling precariously with one hand from weathercocks. Gradually, he became famous for these antics and money quickly came his way. Encouraged, his father gave up admonishing his son and began to assist him, devising ways for Robert to delight the growing crowds whilst, at the same time, doing so in relative safety.

Ironically, it was his father and not Robert who lost his life in a needless fall. It was on the day that young Robert Cadman married his sweetheart Lucy. Thanks to Robert, the family had prospered. They had bought a fine house in Candle Lane Shrewsbury and, on the the day of the wedding, the elder Cadman decided to hang celebratory bunting from the upper casements. Full of ale, he had climbed out onto the sill, the better to sing and banter with his neighbours in the street. He lost his footing, fell, dashing out his brains on the cobbles below.

His heartbroken widow soon followed her husband to the grave and it fell to the pragmatist Lucy to take charge. Lucy had been a serving-girl at The Lion. Like everyone in the town she knew of its famous son Robert Cadman and had watched the rope slider perform his tricks up on the steeples. When first she met him, whilst walking beside the river on summer evenings, she discovered a young man who lived for the thrill of the moment, a man bursting with enthusiasm to please others, a loving and loveable man but one without an ounce of business sense.

Lucy took control. She it was who designed and made his costume. She who had bills and posters printed well in advance of a performance, and she it was who worked the crowds with her winning smile and a large hat within which she collected the monies due, just reward for the risks her husband took for the pleasure of others.       

They did well. They had a child. A girl whom they christened Susan. They extended their property, became known and well respected about the town. They owned their own wagon and two fine mares who pulled them around the countryside. They traveled far and wide.

And then... And then Robert set up his act to fly across the frozen river Severn from St. Mary's spire into the Gay Meadow; a performance he had given many times before.

The frost fair was in full swing on the morning of the 2nd of February 1740 and the crowds began to swell as Robert walked up the rope from the meadow performing daredevil tricks as he went. Lucy worked the crowd collecting money and explaining that, once at the steeples summit, her husband would slid back down at such speed that the friction would cause his wooden breastplate to heat up and billow out smoke behind him. Within the hour he had reached the top of the steeple and begun his descent. He had even fired off his pistols but something was clearly wrong because he began to signal that the rope was pulled too taut. Lucy stiffened as she watched. Suddenly the crowd gasped and she saw Robert fall away. The rope sprang out across St. Mary's Friars its snapped end aglow with flame. Even from the opposite bank of the river she heard the collective scream from the horrified onlookers as Robert's body hit the iron-hard ground below.

As Lucy Cadman began to run wildly down the bank towards the frozen river she dropped her hat, almost full of money, upon the frosty grass where eagle-eyed beggar boys quickly swooped to claim their share.

The rope sliders wife saw nothing of this. As she ran, she disappeared from history.

Robert Cadman was twenty eight years old.

The rope sliders wife's name is not recorded. Her existence remains a short footnote in her husband's story.

The Flute,by Graham Attenborough

As I write this page, it is six days since I saw the sun... I didn't think I'd miss it that much but I do. The consolation is the brightness of the stars against the pitch-black. It's indescribably beautiful but even that becomes familiar. The important thing is to keep busy. Apart from the task of collecting artifacts, my main concern is safety. The possibility of the pod malfunctioning here on the Dark Side is a frightening thought, given that I'd probably be dead before they found me. It's during down time that it gets to you - the aloneness. I'm not really supposed to but I do examine the artifacts. They're incredibly strange. Sometimes I wonder if some of them are simply natural phenomenon but then, others are obviously designed - for something. Take 'the flute' as I call it, it's clearly a metal object. Long and sleek to touch, with small indentations all along its length. It was the first artifact I found and straightaway it reminded me of a musical instrument. I couldn't resist playing with it and, sure enough, treating it like a flute seemed to work. It made sound in my head. Strange unearthly noise and I'm certain that it was vibrating, calibrating in some way. I have it with me now. I'm toying with the idea of keeping it. I know it's madness and that if I'm caught I'll be in the deepest shit imaginable. Still, it could be done. I feel as though I'm meant to have it, or, it's meant to have me.

I'm back in the sun. I've done my shift safely. It was great to regain contact and to hear a human voice again. It won't be long now and I'll be on the ship back to Earth and, if my plan works out, I'll have the flute with me. I've discovered more about how it works. It makes a music that's beyond our understanding, but, better than that, it shows me things, incredible things about where it came from and who, or what, made it. I don't understand what I'm supposed to do, I just know that I can't exist without it and that, whatever it's for, it wants me to be a part of its purpose. It wants to go to Earth.

I'm sitting in my seat. Waiting for take off. The flute is singing to me. I don't know how they missed it. It's as though it made itself invisible. It showed me how to arm the killer artifacts. They're ready and waiting in warehouse No. 5. It won't happen till after we've gone. I feel sorry for everyone here but it's what the artifacts knew would have to happen. They were waiting you see. They were waiting for me to take them to the warehouse, to bring them to the base. They have a plan. They were still there when the collectors came.

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.

501, by Graham Attenborough

It was a dark and stormy night, in the autumn of 1974. I was sat on the windowsill in my cold bedroom listening to David Bowie on the record player. I was bored. Above the rain-filled wind I heard my dad cheerfully whistling as he opened the shed door to put away his bicycle. He'd been working overtime again but whatever time he got home, it was always too early for me. I sighed. I heard my mum greet him as he came in through the back door. Their murmuring voices annoyed me. Suddenly I stiffened, the kitchen door had opened and my dad shouted up the dark stairs.

"Graham! Come down here, I've got something for you". Suspicious but intrigued, I jumped down from the window and began to wonder if this particular dark and stormy night might turn out alright and that for once my dad was not going to make it worse. I began to entertain the possibility that my recent campaign to convince him that he should buy me a pair of 501s had worked. To give him his due, he had listened and had even nodded in apparent agreement when I'd told him how Levi 501s were worth the extra expense because of the superior quality of the denim and that they were double stitched, by hand.

"Originally, they were made for cowboys" I had told him, "real cowboys, you know, in the Wild West". He had seemed impressed, nodded his head sagely and said:

"They sound good. Let me look into it and we'll see".

After making sure I'd switched off my bedroom light (there was nothing that angered him more than lights being left on in empty rooms), I clattered down the stairs two at a time.

The kitchen was warm. I quickly shut the door, sealing in the heat. It smelt of paraffin and over-boiled cabbage. My dad was standing in the middle of the room. His grubby work clothes seemed to steam slightly.

"Now then" he said, "I got Ted to drive me into town at dinner time and I've got you a present. Don't worry, I got your measurements off your mum". He pulled a folded plastic bag room his knapsack and thrust it at me. It was green and looked familiar. I looked at my mum but she had found something to peel at the sink and turned her back to me.

"Thanks" I said, my heart sinking as I pulled a pair of jeans from the bag. They were wrong, all wrong. For a start they weren't the right colour, a light shade of blue and not the dark, inky blue of 501s. They were soft to the touch not stiff and unforgiving like they ought to have been. I looked at the label and saw the word: Littlewoods.

"Got them in Littlewoods" said my dad, "just as good as those Levis but half the price. Go and try them on then". I could feel the sense of shame welling up to engulf me and just as I thought things couldn't get any worse. They did.

"In fact" he said, "I liked them so much I bought myself a pair".

It was a dark and stormy night in the autumn of 1974. I was fifteen and my life was ruined. 

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.

Wild, by Graham Attenborough

Ironic, is it not, that I, of all men, should find myself roughly jostled about in this filthy wooden cart. And on such a journey too. I do not write this short tract to justify my life. I know who and what manner of man I am. I wish only to make the most of this, my exit from the stage.

Look at all these faces along the route. I should be gratified. I'm not. I recognise a few. Those simpering sycophants who would come to my office off the Old Bailey, squealing about their pilfered pocket watches, their silk kerchiefs, their family heirlooms. I, who came into this world with nothing, who worked and schemed and fought my way to riches. I was the man they ran to for help, to retrieve their treasures. Fools! Did they think me a magician? A seer? Did they believe I was a good man, their friend?

They did. They thought I actually scoured the stinking taverns and rotten rookeries of the city, like a bloodhound, sniffing out their precious stolen baubles. When all the while - and still it makes me smile to think of it - their silly trinkets were safely locked within my strongbox, just a few steps from they sat.

I ran it all you see. All the pickpockets, house breakers and footpads of London Town worked for me, were in my pay and none would dare to cheat me. They went about their business doing my business, reporting back to me until I double crossed their names from my ledger.

Alas, I went to far with that? But what was I to do? Catching thieves was my profession, ergo, some were sacrificed to the drop.

Blueskin Blake was my mistake. He thought me his friend, he thought us equal in the game. That's why I scratched the second cross against his name. But instead of sealing his fate, I sealed mine. He knew too much and found the time to tell it, to shout it out for all to hear. The magistrate set off the hue and cry and sent his hired louts for me.

Ah well, tis the nature of the game. I have won so many times, eventually I had to lose. And now, well here I am, the centre of this, sorry, spectacle. The shouts and jeers grow fierce and the coach curtains of the rich, twitch, with anticipation.

It is time to hand this scrap to Mister Defoe. He may make of it what he will.

I see it now, the Tyburn Tree. I've seen it many times before but this day, it waits for me.

For I, am Jonathan Wild. Thief-Taker General.

I have played my part.