

ENGLAND'S FUTURE HISTORY

Volume 1

Edited by Jonathan Brown

All writing remains the copyright of the authors

#  Table of contents

What is England's Future History?

Rat farm

Sky castle

Jellymen

I want to be pure for him

Wake up to yourself

How beautiful

Three and a half things

Afterlife

Mercy by Richard Blass

Second thoughts

The Genesis

Thin man

Oh dear

About our authors

# What is England's Future History?

It has always been art's place to not only reflect on the past and present, but to look towards the future. Because the three states – past, present, and future - don't exist alone. Each one constantly shapes and changes the others. What happened in the past, changes how we view the present, our hopes for the future are draw from lessons we learned in the past and the present is a fine balance between not repeating the mistakes of the past and wanting to move freely forward into the future, unhindered by baggage.

Literary speaking there have been many attempt by authors to look into the future, each work affected deeply by the author's past and present. Yet few have done so in a joined up way that brings together differing voices to give us a single version of the future that's come from a variety of differing pasts and presents.

This was the aim when we set England's Future History. An online short story competition / project that invited writers to provide their views of what our country's future would be like through the medium of short stories. The catch was that as the stories were published, they created a future timeline that other writers had to take note of – each new story could add to the timeline, take it off in their own direction but never contradict it.

It was started at a time when our futures were very much uncertain. At the start of 2016 we were faced with Brexit, a new President, and wars raging across the globe and political shake ups across the spectrum. We didn't know then how much would change in such a short period.

And while many of the entries tackled such subjects head on, the ones that stood out were the ones with a strong voice that created stories that felt part of what our country could be but also provided unique views of the future – jellyfishermen, tree houses, angel wings and more.

Science and how it interacts with our lives was a big subject featuring in the majority of the stories from erasing memories and genetic cloning to body transformation and day-to-day admin.

And despite these stories taking place decades into the future, they still touched upon issues that are close to our heart today. In fact, one story – our final, world ending scenario – changed the ending to reflect how our country responded to one of 2017's major events – the Westminster terror attacks.

Later this year, we will be re-launching the site looking for more ideas about how the world will change in the coming decades. And it'll be interesting to see how this year affects the entries.

# Rat farm

Tom Leins

Date: 2031

The fluorescent poster above the urinal advertises a doctor who purports to cure pig lice, clean dirty wombs and finish unfinished jobs started by other doctors. I feel my ruptured shoulder tingle involuntarily and wonder if he could do anything about the hot metal that has been embedded in it for the last seven months. I was advised to go to Plymouth for corrective surgery, but I couldn't afford the train ticket – let alone the cost of the surgery – so I left the bullet in there.

I head back into the bar area.

'Water. Please.'

I slide a crumpled five pound note across the bar.

The shaven-headed barman glares at me like he is committing my face to memory, before pocketing the note.

The glass of water he hands me looks more like cloudy piss. I shrug and make my way across the room.

I'm old enough to remember this place when it was still called Slattery's Meat Market. The décor was... utilitarian. Bare brickwork, rusty pipes and paint-splattered wooden planks. It was my favourite place to unwind – at least until it was petrol-bombed.

Philip Erskine is wearing a mud-brown suit, reclining on a cream-coloured leather sofa. He used to be Paignton's Meat King. Now he is Paignton's Mayor. Party politics is largely irrelevant nowadays. The wealthiest man in town merely throws his weight around until he gets what he wants. Until a wealthier man arrives in town – licking his own wounds – and steals the crown, that is.

He looks sweaty, despite the air-conditioned chill of the bar. The girl next to him – and she is a girl – looks like her skin has been swollen with backstreet Botox. It makes her look older than she probably is. She chews gum lazily and winks at me when I sit down.

I shrug off my jacket.

'Why me, Erskine?'

He removes his tinted yellow sunglasses and places them on the greasy table-top. His eyes look red and puffy. His complexion reminds me of a used soap-on-a-rope.

'We can't afford anyone else,' he grins, indulgently – the way only a truly wealthy man can.

I know the drill all too well. If you want a job done properly, you hire a professional. If you want a job done quietly, you hire an old drunk like me.

'I'm joking of course,' Erskine says.

'Of course.'

He clasps my hand with his own liver-spotted claw and passes me an envelope.

'I have been assured of your absolute discretion.'

Shit. The old bastard doesn't even recognise me.

Sure, the last two years have aged me, but I am genuinely surprised that he doesn't remember me. Hell, the last two decades have aged me, but people in this town have depressingly long memories – especially where I am concerned. I scratch my thick beard thoughtfully and stare out of the window.

Outside, the lights from the nearby chemical plant glow white in the night sky. There didn't even used to be any windows in this building. This is the corner where the pussy shows used to take place.

Erskine clears his throat.

'You have seen the local newspaper, I take it, Mr Rey?'

I nod. It isn't a newspaper any more, more of a pamphlet – churned out in a basement grotto on Winner Street or Palace Avenue. The publishers resurrected the Herald Express name for reasons known only to themselves. I glance down at the inky rag...

In recent years cash-strapped local farmers have taken to breeding rats to make a living. They can grow up to 50cm in length and can weigh as much as four kilos. People were suspicious at first, but soon realised that rat meat tasted far better than it sounded. Hell, it's probably the most nutritious thing that has passed my lips in years.

The first rabies scare was dismissed as a fluke. And the second. By the time the third recorded case was made public, people were baying for blood.

'If there is one thing I know about, Mr Rey, it is meat. These rat farms... they are unholy.'

I shrug. I'm not paid to investigate – not any more. I imagine Erskine has something else in mind. Something darker.

'Can I trust you to do what needs to be done?'

Erskine just wants to eradicate the competition. I wouldn't be surprised if he was the one who leaked the story. I wouldn't be surprised if he infected the fucking rat farms.

But I nod and he smiles wearily.

'Thank you, Mr Rey. I have certain materials you may find useful. Meet me here tomorrow. Same time.'

He struggles to his feet.

'How's Jenny, Erskine?'

His ex-wife. A former Miss Teen Paignton. The name stops him in his tracks.

'Jenny...'

He scratches his plump, waxy face, and then takes out his wallet. He sifts through a small stack of wedding photographs and holds it up for my inspection.

'She doesn't look like that anymore. She suffered renal failure after a crack overdose last year.'

Crack? Crack is unusual nowadays. Most addicts I know smoke methaqualone pills crushed up and mixed with cannabis. They smoke it through pipes made from the necks of broken bottles. It can lead to emphysema and other chronic lung disorders, rarely renal failure. It isn't a pretty way to check out, but it is dirt cheap.

Erskine rubs his rheumy, red-rimmed eyes with the back of his hand.

'If you will excuse me Mr Rey – I have funerals to plan.'

His companion pops another piece of gum between her glossy lips and winks at me again.

When they have gone I take a slug from my hip-flask. Carny vodka. It burns all the way down.

*

24 hours later and on the horizon the depot behind the wrecker's yard is still spewing acrid air. Paignton used to be an existential gloom-town where the past made no sense. Nowadays I find the future even more perplexing. The concrete, tarmac and sand stay the same. Everything else is out of sync.

Erskine's driver is leaning against the mayoral limousine, smoking a cigarette. Under the sickly glow of the streetlights his face looks warped, as if viewed in a fun-house mirror.

He's big. And young. He looks like the kind of meaty young fucker who rules the roost in Young Offender's Institutes up and down the country. Up close, I realise that he has a shiny suit and a lazy eye.

He doesn't take his lazy eye off me as I walk towards the car.

'Either you stop staring at me, or we're going to have a problem,' he snorts through pig-like nostrils, but walks away, cracking his fat knuckles.

I open the rear door, and climb inside. Erskine is wearing a paisley-patterned smoking jacket over an open-necked shirt.

'Good evening, Mr Rey.'

'Erskine.'

He passes me a small velvet bag. It is the kind of bag you would usually find jewellery inside. I loosen the drawstring. It's a hand grenade. I haven't seen a grenade in Paignton for many years. The Poles used to import them and did a brisk business down at the harbour. Many a turf war began and ended with a hand grenade in this town. Shit like this almost makes me nostalgic.

'Hey Erskine, are you happy with the world we live in?'

He grunts, noncommittally.

'Neither am I.'

I exit the vehicle. The borstal boy blocks my path. Still smoking. I pluck the cigarette out of his mouth and jab it into his throat. He yelps.

'Fuck off, son.'

He climbs back into the driver's seat, scratching at his burned throat.

I wait a heartbeat and then I pull the pin and roll the grenade under Erskine's car.

I look back once and then walk away, slowly. The buzzing static in my head is so loud I barely register the explosion.

I have no past to speak of, and a future that generally keeps me awake at night. Another body or two won't make a blind bit of difference.

# Sky castle

Lizzie Clark

Date: 2033

Light-footed. Light-footed but heavy-hearted, her socks landing gently against the floorboards. I followed her across the disjointed battlements whilst watching her with a sense of awe I didn't think she was capable of inspiring.

It wasn't really her character that made my heart swell. More that it was just her, being herself, skipping across the swinging planks and hanging ropes as if she were not in the air at all; as if she were not suspended metres off the ground but merely hopping across a row of stepping stones. She looked happy.

I, slightly less elegantly, moved from platform to platform behind her at a respectable distance. Only now and again did she stop to check I was in tow, and had not run off without her noticing. My fingers were calloused and dry from clutching ropes and my toes were blistered from the sun-baked wood beneath my feet; but, despite doing so with the elegance of a porpoise on land, I continued onwards.

A grin had been tugging at the corners of my lips for a while, threatening to escalate into a toothy smile, the urge increasing each time she spun around and pried the hair off her face to peer at me with her skirt billowing at her knees.

The ground lurched and sunk. Being compiled of such flimsy materials, I wondered no one had died yet, though there had been a few falls. Printed across newspapers and filling headlines, the controversy of spacious living had been taken to a new level when suggested residing in the sky. Flapping mouths on train platforms and flailing hands in coffee shops accurately illustrating the issues with constructing what, in hindsight, could be called a literal sky castle, flowed by word of mouth to the press and the ears of the public, about the farcical idea spoken from the mouth of a small girl. Yes, farcical indeed, far-fetched, asinine, half-baked - but possible. It spread faster than wildfire and launched the project that'd be remembered for years. Decades. Centuries.

And there I was, stood in the biting wind, on palm folded around a taunt rope, gripping it in the same manner one would hold a staff of impossible grandeur. I roamed the fortress with my eyes, each piece crafted with love and labour and love. If I were to tug down one of the many clothes draped at strategic angles and squeeze it, I felt sure it would pour a thousand tears of grease and sweat down to the ground below.

The entire thing hung suspended in the air, closely packed half-rooms and swaying ladders frayed at the end. It was easy to forget you were only a few metres off the ground and not lost within the heavens, what with the sun falling in shafts between patchwork clouds and pink hues woven into the scenery.

I snapped my head to the side, hearing a faint voice carried on the zephyr. I couldn't quite make out the words but recognised the tone as one of quiet satisfaction and glee. I squinted and watched her disappear deeper into the wooden labyrinth, hair knotting as it was sewn in intricate knar by the sinuous breeze. I sighed, retreating to the comfort of a sofa and melting into its embrace.

Somewhat lazily I flicked on the TV, un-muting the static and switching it to the news. Always the news, never the soaps or the dramas. Always the news. Always watching the growth in people adopting her idea and claiming their own castle in the sky. Gesticulating presenters with too much lipstick and foundation smeared across their cheekbones welcomed me to their wonderful segment, their segment which was obviously superior to that of any other presenter's, promoting their segment's individuality just like every other presenter. Through the soft whistle of the wind and creak of polished wood I caught a few phrases.

'More and more citizens are requesting....possibilities of accident.....after the rat scam...'

I remembered that all too clearly. Sewers bursting their banks with the rodents, bearing their pointed, yellow fangs. Matted hair rubbing against matted hair, flaking blood dried on their skin and knotted tails brandishing long, fleshy scars. The streets turned countless shades of brown and grey with the army of rats advancing faster than people's legs could carry them. It was safe up here. It was safe in the sky.

I listened, but really it was long since I'd stopped understanding. I was happy and so was she. We were safe in the sky, and as long as I averted my gaze from the rats swarming beneath us it was like a paradise. I lifted my hand to one of the ribbons dangling from a beam and held the watch attached to it by a ligature in my palm. The steel was cool against my warm flesh. I let it drop from my hand and watched the ribbon strain under the weight before returning to flapping in the wind.

The room was one of the earliest contrived, the stature of the three walls that of an amateur and the steel rods erected from the ground bending at a right angle to hold up the building angled with a different method to that of our later designs. My bare feet slapped against the wood as I made my way through the maze. What with global warming slowly baking us into oblivion it was reassuring to feel the icy wind on my face. The only thing I could hear was, if I recall correctly, the rather distant yells of children and lap of nearby waves.

I hoped it wouldn't be long before the entire world was sprinting across dangling bridges and sleeping in oscillating hammocks ten feet above the hot ground. I hoped it wouldn't be long before everyone lived in the sky. I hoped it wouldn't be long before everyone could smile again.

# Jellymen

Norman Miller

Date: 2036

The Hastings net huts frame a steel horizon, tall black blocks in whose lee people shrunk, curling in on themselves against the venting of autumn Channel gusts.

'But how do you know that's what you saw?'

Keef turned from the rattling window to look at the lad. Dan had been a jellyman for six years, but still the others saw him as junior in the pecking order of the shingle fleet.

'I seen pictures, ain't I?,' Dan said with youthful intensity, as if at some perceived slight. 'They was mackerel. I only seen one in a book - but what I saw is what I saw.'

Keef persisted. 'But you never fished them, Dan, have you? None of us have. It might have been a trick of the light on the water. It can do that out there, at the end of a long night. Your eyes are tired; your whole soul is tired. You see what you want to see, not what's there.'

Dan looked out through the trembling glass, and said nothing. Keef cast again into the silence.

'The last guy to see mackerel hereabouts just died two months back.' Keef pointed at a photo of a tall smiling man holding a lobster, a dark alien whose quiet fury had been tamed by bands snapped over its claws. The image scared and enthralled Dan at the same time.

'Mark Nixon' said Keef. 'He went way back, Dan - and he never saw anything that didn't have frigging tentacles for the last five years he went out.'

Keef had first gone with the shingle fleet back in 2015, around the time of the strange jubilation when the last queen's maintenance of breath meant she had out-reigned the queen before. And then the bitter irony of outlasting her son in one of Fate's darker jokes. Coming back from his first trip Keef had wondered at the riot of Union colour behind the beach, jittery bunting making bizarre play with the kids' rides at Flamingo Park on Rock-a-Nore.

Keef's landmarks varied with the years. At first, he'd look for the iron thread of the funicular, ramrod straight from the shore to the rolling green of the Country Park. Later, the ruined castle on West Hill or the black-tiled bunker of the Jerwood, its art a mystery behind windows that always caught the light to preserve their inscrutability to watchers from the sea. And after a bad run, a primeval sailors' response as his eyes seized the spires of St Clements and All Saints, huddled above the High Street for half a millennium.

Keef remembered the look on Mark Nixon's face near the end of his time, scanning the ocean like Ahab without a whale. 'I saw what I saw,' Dan said. But Keef had all but forgotten he was there.

*

Hastings Jellymen had borne its Royal Warrant for a decade - though opinion in both Old Town and New was that the King's professed consumption of jellyfish noodles and 'sea tofu' was zero. But it looked good on the company masthead, a lion and unicorn approving men who caught a beast with no skeleton and no skin, no brain, no heart and no eyes. Just cartilage and water. But it paid for them all to live - and drinks when they gathered in The Neptune.

'When you've got a fortune and all those palace chefs, why would he eat what we eat?' Mack raised his eyebrows along with the glass. 'Wills can fly in any damn fish he wants from anywhere.'

'I heard they feed sole to their cats,' another said. 'And there's freezers full of bass and bream. And Pacific salmon. Pacific, for Christ's sake!'

'I bet they keep those freezers locked tight,' another voice grunted. 'What they pay their flunkeys, who wouldn't be tempted, eh? Light fingers for fish fingers!' And when the laughs subsided. 'You can get a fortune for anything with a fin in London. And that's not just the sharks who run the place.'

'And we hunt the jelly,' Keef said. 'Same again, lads?'

*

Dan's darling, Debs, looked at the film un-spooling in the darkened room at the gallery. She came most months, taking advantage of the cheap local entry that helped stretch her budget to include culture along with basics. And though she'd dated Dan for six months, this film was the first time she'd seen how a jellyfish swam.

The artist's name was Sylvia McCracken. Once, said the sign on the wall, she'd painted seascapes - 'inspired by Turner'. But now she did delicate pencil and watercolour sketches of what swam beneath, along with short films rendered with hi digi to mimic jerky some old art-house flicks.

Debs silently mouthed the names beneath the paintings. Meaning to ask Dan later if they meant anything to him, she dug in her bag for a pen and began jotting them down on the exhibition info sheet, even spelling out some of the Latin tags. From Japan there was a giant jelly, two metres wide. She wrote it down in a neat hand – Nemopilema nomurai. At first this beast had been a harbinger of doom - clogging and bursting nets, killing everything scooped up with it in a tangle of venomous curls, then turning its poison on the fishermen with sharp stings that drew tears from hardened men. A big catch could even capsize boats, tipped over by shifting tons of living slurry.

And now they were turned into shopping. In her bag, the ingredients for the tempura she would do tonight, cooking what Dan had probably sucked from the sea the day before. Salted jellyfish, cornflour, a small soda water for the batter, toasted sesame seeds. Plain flour and oil from the larder, sweet chilli for dipping. She ran through the recipe in her head, watching the film of their supper. Rinse jellyfish for five, sit in boiling water for 15, rinse again, drain, cut into chunks, squeeze dry. Sift flour and salt, add sesame, stir in soda for batter. Dip jelly chunks, fry a minute, watch batter expand into a little crispy cloud, remove. Dip and crunch.

Another film showed a work of Frankenstein science – an artificial 'jellyfish' made from silicone and muscle cells from a rat's heart. It turned her stomach, undulating across the screen, a monster from the shallows of a Petri dish.

Debs walked over to a window, framing a view she could never stop loving. Net huts with skirts of orange and blue mesh rose above the shingle, pebbles as plentiful as the stars to the edge of their visible universe. A fringe of white capped surf fronted the stretched linen of the sea, blue-green today in unexpected October sun.

She returned to devour more science on another sign. How the first jelly mega-blooms had seized a fishery off Namibia. 'Namibia' - she whispered it softly, entranced by memories of TV docs about a Skeleton Coast. Then they'd taken the Black Sea, Alaska, the Sea of Japan, the Med and Mexican Gulf, soon dwarfing once limitless hordes of sardine and anchovy. It read like a chronicle of invasion – or a Biblical plague, her Dad might have said, stuffed with old book learning. But it didn't nauseate her like the rat-heart jelly. It was what she knew, and it meant food.

*

The funicular's metal shrieked up England's steepest clamber, scaling the East Cliff with Dan and Debs raised to the uplands of the Country Park. Sure and slow to the top, where Debs stepped off hand-in-hand with her true love. The thought came again - the way knowledge always does – of how John Logie Baird had come here too for his first attempts at radar, the controlled waves of the air. But she and Dan were good enough with their eyes alone, looking at each other and the far stretching sea as they walked away from the top station, their pace quickening as they put distance between them and people, wanting to be as alone as they could. The High Weald stretched back from the cliff edge, beginning the journey of Inland, draped with ancient wood, gorsey glen, scraggy heath.

'My mum said I was conceived up here,' she said suddenly, laughing at the outrageousness.

'Are you kidding?,' Dan said, his face a picture of mild shock that made her laugh more.

'No, really. Back in 2004. This was one of the only places she and Dad could get away from the eyes in the town.'

Dan looked at her smiling, then a serious face, then smiled again. 'They've got a lot of history here, you know.' He put the serious face back on.

'Oh yeah. Other than my parents shagging?'

'Even older than that!' said Dan with mock earnestness. 'There's all of English history here. There's stuff here from - '. He paused as if to get the order right, or the pronunciation. 'Palaeolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic, Bronze Age, Iron Age, Romano-British, Saxon.' He grinned at the end of his list, then added shyly: 'I got that down at the Museum, back on a school trip way back.' He sounded sweetly shy.

Debs looked at Dan with an expression part-puzzled, part-amazed for a moment, then asked seriously about where all that history was? 'I just see grass and trees, and over there a lot of sea.'

'It's down there, beneath us'. Dan pointed as he spoke. 'We're standing on it, like we're on the crest of a huge wave made totally of all the history of everything that ever took place on this land.'

'You're a funny boy sometimes, Danny.' Then she kissed him automatically, then, a heartbeat later, more intensely.

They were in a dip of the land, out of sight of all but passing gulls. Debs kissed Dan again, and slipped off a jacket she'd put on against the winds that always seemed to blow here, air rushing forever to and from ocean to land, land to ocean. Dan cradled her neck as she pulled him down, his fingers unbuttoning her top, the folds of her blouse fluttering like a sail. Afterwards, hunger abated, Debs held tight her lover's hand and eyed the eternal sea.

*

The last day, Keef had steered the Samphire out towards Beachy Head, glimpsing the Seven Sisters to the west as the sun picked out their flash of white English purity. Then he arced the boat back towards Hastings. He and Dan had worked themselves almost to a standstill, hauling maybe a half-ton of jellies, mastered now with special nets and protective wear that rendered stings mute.

They hadn't spoken about Dan's vision again, like two men of faith agreeing not to raise spiky issues of theology - out of fear as much as professed respect. But Keef saw Dan scan the surface and the nets more intently than ever before. And Dan saw Keef, slyly, follow.

Neither saw the rogue wave. It came in, a glassy wall last seen by a child standing on a sea cliff at Finisterre, heading on implacably toward an English landfall. The wave raked over Samphire as if it was prettily-coloured driftwood - picked up, flipped over, forgotten, just one of its spindly creatures borne as strange flailing jetsam towards Hastings.

Keef died with his vessel. But in the instant between the sea filling his lungs and his eyes giving up their last visions of air and sky, in that long moment he saw them. Hundreds, darting through their element, tiger-striped slivers of light spinning round his head, angels mourning his extinction.

# I want to be pure for him

Stephen Oram

Date: 2050

The morning sun streams through the cracks in the blinds. Soft and comforting. The exact opposite of how I'm feeling.

I woke up convinced that the room was full of chattering people, but the only person in the room is lying next to me. The beautiful and wonderful Rabbie.

It's another day of therapy and a flock of ghosts are clinging to the inside of my skull, refusing to be expunged. I hate it when our bedroom's invaded like this, spoiling the haven of love we've built over the three intense months we've been together. And yet, the more I try to think only of Rabbie, the more the memories of past lovers occupy my dreams.

He moves in his sleep, pulling the duvet tighter. I want to know him better. To know him as much, if not more, than the others. But, we've agreed there are no shortcuts. Time, and time alone, builds what we want.

A memory of a stolen kiss tugs at the periphery of my brain. I know it isn't real, that it's someone else's. A snippet of a past lover grafted on to my soul.

'Intimacy with your lover on a scale previously impossible.' That was the promise and my first time was when I was seventeen. Madly in love – maybe lust – and very drunk.

I remember thinking, why not? I ached to know him better. Him. Kale. I'll never forget him. The first of many, but the first. Special.

It was relatively new back then and took a whole day in an immersive VR lab. We each worked with the programmers, re-creating important episodes from our past. Ready for the immersion.

I remember feeling an incredible sense of apprehension as they warned me that it might be irreversible and occasionally trigger mental problems. I didn't care. It was exhilarating to think that the man I was head over heels in love with - the man I wanted to spend the rest of my life with - was baring himself for me. Laying down the experiences that made him who he was. Coded into VR so I could be immersed in them. In him.

Kale's memories became mine and mine his. What could have been more intimate?

The edges between us blurred and we understood each other in a way I'd never thought I could. It was wonderful, although sometimes we had the most horrendous disagreements, both of us claiming ownership of a memory, the trauma and how it changed us. I hated that part of it – not knowing what was real and what was false. But most of the time it was incredible.

It was so special for a while. A few weeks. But then Kale was unfaithful. His argument that I knew exactly what childhood event had led to this inevitable betrayal didn't make it any easier. In some ways it made it worse because I knew how much the affair meant to him.

And he knew how much it would hurt me.

We split up and a whole string of short-lived encounters followed. Quite a few - too many - were so jealous of the empathy I had with Kale that they insisted on the same. My head filled with other people's memories and it became harder and harder to tell them apart – exactly the opposite of what each of my jealous lovers were hoping for.

So many arguments. So many misunderstandings.

And then I met Rabbie. The man lying beside me now, gently snoring.

Rabbie has never asked for the VR Empathy. He's not jealous, or if he is he keeps it quiet. He's private, a mystery and I love it.

We've set a wedding day. We're getting married.

We're taking the risk; I'm having therapy to erase all the false memories, steadily stripping away all that's not mine.

But they're protesting. Those falsely implanted memories don't want to disappear and as they go, I feel deprived. I grieve.

This morning is particularly bad. They must be expelled. They have to go.

Rabbie is stirring.

I breathe deep breaths and think of the lazy days we've spent by the river soaking up the sun and each other. I don't want him to see the pain I'm enduring.

He opens his eyes. 'Morning,' he says. 'Memories?'

I smile and kiss him. 'Not for much longer.'

'So true. And then I'll have my very own pure and untainted lover.'

I kiss him again.

He stares at me.

A little longer than feels comfortable.

'I wonder if I'll like the new you,' he says as he runs his fingers through my hair.

I swallow. It's an unknown. A risk we're both taking.

'Of course you will. How could you not?'

There's sadness in his eyes.

'I hope so,' he says.

# Wake up to yourself

Aviva Treger

Date: 2056

Right now, I'm sitting in a queue about to have my memories erased, and soon they'll be lost forever - such things are inevitable, I suppose, or so they tell me; but in these last few minutes, while I still can, I want to recall the day I first saw her, before it's all gone; and when it's all gone, as a common courtesy, maybe for the time being, you could remember it for me, on my behalf - at least until the moment comes when you have your memories erased too.

The day I first saw her, she was slumped by the window in the waiting room, her eyes half-closed, and at first, I thought she was squinting in the sun's harsh glare - January was incredibly hot that year; but after I'd checked my notes, I realised she'd probably just fallen asleep.

When I next looked, she was blinking, peering down at the garden, at its flock of raucous macaws in the banana trees, then into the distance at the livestock grazing on the rooftop farms over Sussex. She stirred when her name was called, and I watched her struggle to rise, then walk with a trace of a limp towards me. I smiled a warm 'Hello', because appearing to be friendly to patients was an important part of my job then, even though they often didn't notice.

She wore an empty expression as I guided her to the doctor's office and, from behind the white desk, as the door opened, I saw Dr Alecto glance up in askance, and in a sharp tone of voice address her and say, 'You again. What is it now, Theia? What's the matter with you today?'

Afterwards, I lead her back to the entrance of The Clinic, discussing what the doctor had prescribed - how it uploaded, how it interfaced and how to liaise with me should she have any issues.

'I'm the Medical Technician assigned to you', I said, showing my ID, and smiling. 'I'll be monitoring your progress throughout the treatment, mainly via telepresence, so please don't hesitate to chat to me at any time, about anything.'

She yawned in response, impassive, gawping into empty space as if I wasn't there, then stumbled off into the stifling afternoon without even saying goodbye.

I know she went straight home, because, as I said, I was monitoring her. She ate, showered and went to bed early, attaching the device from the doctor in the way I'd shown, and within a short time, according to my remote observation feed, she was responding well to it.

Theia fell asleep and, soon after, the programme began to run. A peaceful dream gradually sharpened into focus, revealing the fresh colours of an alpine landscape, with a lush flowering meadow and a turquoise stream, set against the backdrop of a crisp flawless day. I saw the images unfold in the dream as she did; I saw the whirling pairs of butterflies above the wild lavender, and the shimmering rainbow on the horizon. I heard the sweet trill of songbirds, and an omniscient voice, reassuring and calm, guiding the words of a sleep meditation. As she relaxed further, the scenery drifted, then gently faded away, transforming into the dreamless oblivion of deepest sleep.

In the morning, Theia's vital signs all recorded as healthy; she'd slept without disturbance the whole night through, which was encouraging, although the treatment is nearly always effective the first time. I noted she had a good appetite for breakfast, eating a bowl of seaweed flakes and a whole moonfruit, and then she left for her job in centenarian care management. It was late afternoon when I received a call from her, whilst I was off duty, playing the guitar. On the screen, she looked revitalised, with much more animation in her face than yesterday, but she seemed agitated. I smiled, and said, 'How are you?', but she ignored that; instead, she questioned me about the side-effects of her prescribed therapy, so I reeled off the list, urging her to elaborate the reason for her query, but she just tutted and said, 'I really hate having to deal with you.'

There was a silence, so I thought it best to fill it by apologising for any perceived flaw regarding my empathy, that I'd only been working with civilians for a short time. Again I bid her to please continue, and this time she did; Theia said she'd been seeing things, images in reflective surfaces, or in the corner of her eye, that mirrored the scenery from the dream, but with a macabre, frightening quality imbued, and, in some instances, the landscape had appeared to be on fire.

'And that voice', she said, 'that voice from the dream - again and again, I've been hearing that voice all day.'

I asked what it had said, but she wouldn't answer.

As we spoke, I searched through my notes on the inducing of deep sleep via brain stimulation, but I could find no reference to waking hallucinations as a side-effect; so, weighing the pros and cons, I decided to advise that the visions would probably wear off once a normal sleep cycle had been established, and that we should continue the treatment a little longer.

With a huff of irritation, she agreed to this - maybe just to get rid of me, so I said goodbye and left her alone. But I remained watching and I know how she spent the evening, what she ate, when she bathed, what she read, what she wore and I recorded when she lay down that night. And as she turned over and surrendered to sleep, the dreamscape activated again, slowly metamorphosing into view. This time, I'd chosen a forest scene for her, a clearing with shafts of mellow sunlight and ancient moss-covered trees. I thought she might like the fragrant pine needles crunching underfoot, and the sound of a woodpecker echoing from deep inside the copse, and the inquisitive red squirrels, extinct now of course, foraging amongst the bluebells.

Theia was responding well to the sensory stimuli until the voice-over script began, intoning a loop of hypnotic words intended to aid a soothing descent into rest. It was at this juncture that I noticed her heartbeat and pulse rate start to speed up, so I was just about to mute the voice in the programme, when something odd happened in the dream that, in all my years of monitoring people during induced sleep sessions, I've never seen before.

A seemingly random character appeared. A young man with a mass of curly dark hair stepped out of the trees; he was speaking the words of the voice-over script and, with abruptness, mid-sentence, he stopped. He remained motionless, as if waiting, and he wore a curious curving smile, as though he was aware of an audience. Then, as he stood there, at the corner of his mouth, I noticed a trickle of blood begin to ooze and rivulet downwards, dripping onto his white clothes. A fresh wound deepened in colour near to his temple and started to seep blood, spattering flecks of crimson across his face, across that strange relentless lingering grin.

At that instant, my attention jolted back to Theia because she gulped for breath in her sleep, and was trying to speak, trying to move. I aborted the dream sequence at once, and I know from her perspective, the dream world would have warped, buckling into twisted shadow, and she would have suffered the eerie sensation of falling out of it, falling into a dark fog, engulfed by the ear-splitting hiss and shriek of white noise. It took some time for her to regain consciousness, and when she finally did, she woke up coughing and spluttering, shaking and crying, her skin goose-pimpled with cold. In the gloom of her bedroom, again and again she refused to answer me when I tried to console her.

I wondered what to do; I debated whether to go there in person, but decided against it, since she'd clearly taken a dislike to me and would hardly feel comforted by my presence. So, instead, I watched her with a keen vigilance all night. She didn't try to sleep again and when dawn spread across the sky, she got dressed and went out. She walked for an hour in the tropical gardens, which were visible on surveillance cameras, so I could follow her; then she came here, to The Clinic, as I thought she might, intent on speaking to Dr Alecto before the day's appointments began. I saw her arguing with the automated receptionist on the front desk and I tried to intervene, because those stupid machines have an appalling lack of rapport with patients, but Theia told me to go to hell, that she only wanted to talk to the doctor and would wait however long it took. I tried not to take this personally, I really did understand her frustration; so I returned to my duties.

After a while, I saw her sneak up the corridor when the mechanicals weren't looking and loiter around the doctor's office. She finally entered unannounced when someone came out and, through the doorway, I saw Dr Alecto grimace at the intrusion, glowering with his usual misanthropy; but he relented and the door closed on them both. Obviously I shouldn't eavesdrop on private conversations, but it's easy to do so in my line of work, and I wanted to know what was discussed. Mainly, it was the hallucinations and the nightmare but I also heard Theia say, 'That Technician is spying on my every move; it really gives me the creeps', which was embarrassing, but I put it down to exhaustion on her part, because in a ragged, pitiful voice she then said, 'I'm so tired. I think I'd rather die than always be this tired.'

There was a silence. Then Dr Alecto cleared his throat and replied.

'I read your medical notes with interest', he said. 'You had a brain injury, didn't you. In view of that, perhaps I shouldn't have prescribed this kind of therapy for a sleep disorder.'

There was another silence. Then he added, 'But maybe you deserve everything you get.'

I heard Theia's reel of surprise. She started to form a response, but the doctor continued talking nonetheless.

'You killed someone,' he said with matter-of-fact smugness. 'I read the report – 'asleep at the wheel', it said. What a quaint, archaic term that is these days. How did you get access to an antique car, anyway?'

She didn't answer, and in the ensuing pause, I imagined he subjected her to a scathing glare. He then said, 'I suppose you still can't remember anything?'

Theia muttered a reply. 'No', she said, 'I...I have no memory at all of that night'.

Her breathing was fraught, and it pained me to hear her in distress - it pained me to the core. I'm amazed at the inhumanity of the doctors in this clinic, who think they can behave without any consideration for people's feelings, just because there are so few real doctors around these days. I deliberated whether I should feign an excuse to enter the room, but then I heard Dr Alecto sigh loudly, and say, 'Well, he's dead now, your unlucky passenger, and if you see him in your dreams, why not apologise for killing him when he next turns up?'

He dispensed a hollow bark of a laugh and then said, 'Continue the treatment or don't. It's up to you.'

I was hovering outside the door when Theia burst from the room; she rushed off, then tripped over whilst leaving the building. A droid zoomed towards her to offer assistance but I swatted it aside with a kick, helping her up myself. I thought she might tell me to go away again but instead she grasped my arm and gazed at me with a tragic intensity, and for the first time, she looked me right in the eye.

'I want to go back,' she said, 'back to that dream - and speak to him. Can I even do that?'

I thought about her question.

'Yes and no', I said, rattling off the reasons why we never advise the use of lucid dreaming programmes, as they're very different from therapeutic dreams and can have unpredictable, even potentially dangerous side-effects if used without care. But she pleaded with me, still holding my arm, and in view of the cruelty the doctor had just shown, I felt duty bound to assist her. So that evening, I acquired some lucid dreaming software, although I made it clear I'd have to withdraw her from any scenario if she became overwrought. We talked for a while, chatting together; then she retired to bed and I watched her remotely, as before.

When she was asleep, bit by bit the lucid dreamscape materialised, at first a charcoal grey blur, but then it cleared into a starless night-time scene, dank and murky, with a crescent moon above, and a soft drizzling rain. We were at a dimly lit crossroads, in the middle of an empty road. Out of the gloaming, I saw the wreckage of a battered dented vehicle, old-fashioned and obsolete; and nearby, another piece of debris was smouldering, still with embers of flame. Theia reached out towards the car, opening its passenger door and, sharing her viewpoint, what I could see inside was a shadowy mass of a body, a young man with curly hair. He was slumped in the seat, unmoving; his pale face, with that upwardly curving mouth, turned towards the faint light. But then he seemed to rouse; he opened his dark eyes and he blinked.

Then something unexpected happened - my observation feed went dead. I tried again and again to re-establish it, because I couldn't allow her to continue without supervision. After several attempts, I decided to manually withdraw Theia from the dream by hacking into her domestic service butler and ordering it to help me, but it was then that I realised she wasn't actually present anymore. She wasn't in bed, asleep or awake, she wasn't in the bathroom, she wasn't anywhere at home. I patched into the security cameras in her building, on her street, and searched, but I couldn't find where she'd gone. I eventually located her by microchip ID tracker; she was at an isolated site on the edge of the city, at a crossroads, and, because my readings suggested she was unconscious, I alerted an emergency team to reach her faster than I could.

They brought her back to The Clinic, with bloodied feet and torn flimsy pyjamas, apparently having sleepwalked into the night under the influence of an induced trance. I knew I'd be in big trouble now, firstly for facilitating her actions and not supervising them properly, but secondly for involving myself in her experience rather than dispassionately observing it. But I was astonished to find I didn't care; I only cared about Theia - about her needs, her wishes, her dreams, and that she was safe. I stayed there by her bedside, watching, until she was fully awake.

It was Dr Erebus who arrived to attend her. I usually avoid him, as he's prejudiced and bigoted towards staff like me, staff who originally trained for combat in war zones; but I remained present whilst he spoke to Theia, discussing her past - the car crash, the night terrors and the post-traumatic stress.

'Dr Alecto should've mentioned the latest option', said Dr Erebus. 'Amnesia surgery. Soon, everyone will want it done. You could have all memories of the accident, and the people connected to it, both conscious and subconscious, permanently removed. Then you could live in blissful indifference, with all the worries of life blotted out.'

As Theia contemplated this solution, I saw her face crumple; I saw her eyes flinch, then brim with tears, and even though it could've lost me my job, I felt compelled to shield her. So I blurted out that she was in no fit state to be making such decisions now, that she was overwrought, vulnerable and needed quality rest and why couldn't he have the sensitivity to see that.

I thought he'd be annoyed by my outburst but, instead, Dr Erebus guffawed to himself with oafish disdain.

'It never ceases to amaze me,' he said, 'how much you ex-military types think you're actually a comfort to your patients. You've killed thousands: you're the stuff of nightmares.'

He sniggered again, as I reached out for Theia's delicate hand, holding it with tenderness between both of mine as she wept. And, in a tone of ugly, cutting sarcasm, as he left the room he said, 'What do you know about anything, anyway? Your thoughts don't count - you'll forget them when you're next brainwashed. You're under orders to care or to kill, and to do your duty, but you're not real. You're only a convenience, only a tool - wake up to yourself. You're just a heartless robot.'

# How beautiful

Maria C. McCarthy

Date: 2071

Ed touched two fingers on the entry screen, but the door remained shut. He wiped his fingers on his jeans, and tried again. Red neon letters flashed ACCESS DENIED. He sighed; technology, as advanced as it was, still needed turning off and back on again sometimes. He swiped the house icon on his tablet, but the screen flashed the same as the entry panel by the door: ACCESS DENIED.

He signalled to the uniformed man beyond the glass door by raising his tablet and pointing to the words on the screen. The man was reclining in a chair behind a desk, tipped as far as you could an ergonomic tip-proof chair, in the manner of an under-worked sheriff in an old Western movie, his peaked cap over his eyes. The heels of his scuffed cowboy boots were up on the desk. He dropped his feet to the floor and the chair brought him upright. He drew the cap back on his head, and spoke into a microphone. 'The screen is on your left.'

Ed tried as hard as he could to signal back - waved a finger, shook his head. The grille where the man's voice came out was too high and Ed's voice too weak to reach it. The man shrugged his shoulders and walked to the door. He opened it to the electronic equivalent of a door being stopped by a security chain. 'What's the problem, Sir?' He surveyed Ed, frown lines on his forehead. Ed swiped the house icon on his tablet. ACCESS DENIED flashed red. The man harrumphed, opened the door, stepped outside and closed it again, then tried his own fingers on the entry panel by the door. PROCEED flashed in green, accompanied by the familiar three-toned chime. He stopped the door opening all the way with a series of two, three and one-fingered taps on the panel. The door reset to security-chain.

'Your access has been denied,' he said.

Ed tried to find a polite way of saying, 'No shit, Sherlock'. He had the suspicion that men in uniforms didn't get sarcasm, most of all those who wore cowboy boots and tipped their chairs like Wild West sheriffs. Instead he said, 'Could you tell me why?'

'Sorry, lad, couldn't get that; say again.'

Ed sighed and wrote the words on his tablet, then offered it to Mr Wild West. The man pressed the house icon. 'It says access denied.'

'I know that; can you tell me why?'

'Sorry, couldn't understand that either. Tell you what, I'll try and find out why, if you like.' Ed pursed his lips and breathed out through his nostrils. He nodded. The man performed a three- two- one-fingered passcode on Ed's tablet, pressed one thing and another, his brow furrowed. 'Your access is denied,' he said, somewhat unnecessarily, adding, 'You've been reassessed and you're no longer eligible.'

'I know I've been reassessed, but what's that got to do with where I live?' Wild West looked bewildered. Ed was used to this – people who had trouble listening. He could speak a little louder, but he doubted that it would make any difference. Some people just couldn't tune in. He remembered the card in his top pocket, and offered it to Wild West. 'They gave me this at the validation centre, but my tablet won't read it.'

'No, didn't get any of that. I could try reading your card, see if that tells us anymore.' He scanned the card with his wrist-reader. 'Bernard 451 Yellow.'

'Bernard?'

'Yep, Bernard 451 Yellow.' At last, Wild West had understood one word of Ed's speech. 'Bernard is one of the new categories.'

'OK, so what do I get for being a Bernard?'

'I'll see what you get for being a Bernard, shall I?' He looked at his wrist-reader, puffing out his cheeks as he did so: 'Vouchers.'

'I used to get money paid into my bank.'

Wild West shook his head, then looked as if he'd had a eureka moment. 'Money – I heard you say money. Getting better at this, aren't I?' Ed attempted an encouraging smile. Wild West went back to peering at the reader. 'Yellows aren't allowed currency. Try checking your bank balance.' Ed tapped the £ icon on his tablet. ACCESS DENIED flashed in red letters, alternating with BERNARD 451 in yellow. 'See, vouchers is what you'll get,' Wild West said. 'Have you tried your email? They might have sent a message.' Ed pressed the envelope icon: ACCESS DENIED.

'I'll try the back-up account.' Ed touched the icon that showed a sheet of paper and a quill pen with an inkpot by the side. ACCESS DENIED. 'This is ridiculous. I need to get into my apartment. I couldn't get in round the front, that's why I tried this door.'

'Have you tried the front door?' Wild West said. Ed decided to save his breath, and just nodded. 'No luck?' Wild West said. Ed shook his head. 'ACCESS DENIED' they said together. Wild West sniffed. 'You've got a problem, my friend. Let's take a look at your tablet. He scanned it with his wrist-reader, returned the tablet to Ed and lifted his wrist toward his mouth, cupping his hand over his ear.

'Lola? Quentin here.' Ed stifled a giggle. Quentin was not a name that went with cowboy boots. Quentin looked at him sharply. 'Not bad, Lola, not too shabby. You?' Ed drummed his fingers on his tablet. Every icon turned yellow, one by one – the £, the envelope, the paper, quill and inkpot - then ghosted to a pale lemon. He held it up for Quentin to look at. Quentin's eyes narrowed. 'I've got a chap here who's getting ACCESS DENIED.' He took Ed's tablet. 'Yep: Bernard 451 Yellow. Yellow, yes.' He looked at Ed, then turned his back on him, opened the door and went inside carrying the tablet. The door closed behind him.

'Hey, my tablet,' Ed said. Quentin took a wand from beneath the desk and waved it over the screen. The blue light that flashed at the top of the device when it was active dulled, and then died. Ed shifted in his seat, pushed the reverse button on the arm of his chair, but nothing moved. He tried to shift the wheels with his hands, and looked down to see them clamped like an illegally parked car, with mini yellow clips that were rooted into slots in the pavement. 'Hey, Quentin!' He shouted as best he could and waved. He tried to raise the seat to standing – sometimes it helped to talk eye-to-eye – but that didn't work either. Quentin continued to talk to his wrist, glancing in Ed's direction, but not so Ed could catch his eye. His throat felt constricted and his breath came in gasps.

A large vehicle drew up, yellow with blacked-out windows, and a woman stepped out of the driver's door. She was wearing a helmet with a visor covering her face. Quentin came out to greet her, ensuring that the door closed behind him. 'What's going on?' Ed said. Quentin remained tight-lipped. 'Can I have my tablet back, please?'

Quentin nodded at the woman. 'Lola.'

She lifted her visor. 'Quentin,' she said, as she moved to the front of Ed's chair, her booted feet up against the wheels, one either side. She kicked one wheel then the other.

'Hello, anyone going to tell me what's going on?' Ed said. It would have been easier to assert himself if he wasn't staring into Lola's chest. He tried to turn his head, but the impulses that helped his neck move had stopped working. Lola stepped back a little and crouched down in front of the chair. 'Your access has been denied,' she said.

'I'm fully aware of that, thank you; obviously a malfunction with the tablet.'

'I'm afraid not, Sir,' Lola said. 'You've been reassessed, and you're...'

'Yes, yes, I know, I'm a Bernard 451 Yellow. This fact has been established. So where do I get these vouchers I'm entitled to, and how do I get into my apartment? Releasing the chair would be a start.'

'Ah, the vouchers,' Quentin said. 'Sorry about that. The vouchers are only for the first three days after assessment. They should have issued them at the validation centre.'

'No vouchers?'

'No vouchers, Sir,' Lola said. 'You are no longer eligible.'

Ed was getting hotter. He took a breath, and tried to tell himself there was no point getting angry; there must be some mistake. 'OK, no vouchers, but can you get me into my apartment?'

'Your apartment has been cleared, Sir,' Lola said. She straightened up to her full height, and Ed found that he was staring into her blouson jacket again.

'My cat – what about Eric, what have you done with him?'

Lola looked offended. 'We're not inhuman, Sir. The cat has been rehomed.'

'What about me? Where do I get rehomed? And why can't I take Eric with me?'

'The problem is, Sir, that you have been regraded.'

Ed suppressed the urge to shout 'For fuck's sake'. Instead, he said, as slowly and carefully as he could manage, 'This I know. I went to the validation centre last week. They do this once a year. There's never any change. I get a digital stamp on my tablet, my money goes in the next Wednesday as usual, and everything's as...' he gestured towards his legs, 'hunky dory as it can be.'

Lola arched her back, straightened, and crouched down again, her face so close that Ed could smell garlic on her breath. 'Unfortunately, Sir, the goal posts have been moved vis-à-vis validity.'

'No one told me.' He raised his voice.

'Best not to, Sir; it only causes alarm.'

'Well, I'm fucking alarmed now.'

Lola flinched in synch with the F word. She closed her eyelids, and then opened them slowly. 'The difficulty we have, Sir, is that you are now a Bernard 451 Yellow.'

'I don't care if I'm fucking canary yellow, can you please restore my tablet and release my chair?'

Quentin moved behind the chair, his hands on Ed's shoulders. 'Sorry mate, no can do.'

'I can appeal. I want to appeal.' His voice was getting squeakier. 'Take me to the validation centre. They'll know what to do.'

'It's a question of resources, Sir,' Lola said. 'The authorities have their budgets. We all have to live within our budgets, Sir.'

'Nothing personal, mate,' Quentin said. 'It won't take long. This will help. Lola?' He pressed down on Ed's shoulders while Lola pulled something that looked like a pen from one of the zips on her jacket.

'No! No! What the fuck...'

Lola inserted the pen into his impulse port. 'You'll be nice and relaxed. Just like having a large shot of whiskey.' His head lolled, his hands stiffened. 'I understand it can be quite pleasurable.' The sides of the chair closed in, tighter and tighter. He could hear the crack of his bones, yet felt no pain. Just like the way they crush a car, he thought, as if he were observing the process rather than a part of it.

As the back of Lola's vehicle opened, he saw them, stacked, wheels and backs and bones and limbs. He could make out a flattened ear in the spaces between the spokes of a wheel. He viewed it all with interest: how small the cubes of bodies and chairs, chairs and bodies, parts of one another, how beautiful.

# Three and a half things

Nina Lindmark Lie

Date: 2082

Three things had stopped Candice from choosing the Advanced Computer Science course the previous year. The first was anger, the second pride, and the third the fact that everyone else took that class.

The anger and pride had been instilled in her from childhood by her father and neighbours, her mother shared their views but in her it was always tempered by some incomprehensible force of optimism that Candice, at fourteen, simply couldn't share.

She was angry at society, that they were poor, that economic favours were always placed on those already rich, that the government fought hard to further only specific groups of people (especially computer people, with their quick fingers and fat bottoms), and angry that the poor were thrown into areas like Moore. The area at the edge of the city had grown so large in the last decade it was practically its own city. She was proud to belong to Moore, that they coped on their own, thank you very much.

The third reason...well. It was such an obvious choice to all students at that level it was practically mandatory. But as Candice disliked doing the same as everyone else, she firmly decided not too; plus by not choosing it, she wouldn't be in the same class as Lorene McPoshPosh anymore. So really that made it three and a half things.

By not choosing the course it meant that she could pick a language instead, so she had chosen Mandarin. It was hard - practically impossible - but it was a small class and their lunch break was way earlier than everyone else's, which minimised interaction with other students. Candice liked this. Her mother didn't.

But not choosing the course, however, also meant she had absolutely no idea how to hack, dismantle, override, or in any way get past the electronic lock and surveillance system currently in front of her. Obviously the course guide had not listed these skills under the 'after this course you will...' section, but Candice was pretty sure it would have helped.

The narrow alley was empty and she stared at the steel door willing it to open but, unfortunately, while classes such computer science, robotics and advanced physics were offered at basically every primary school and up, classes in magic and miracles were yet to be invented.

Candice took a deep breath, not ready to admit defeat, and pulled the black hood further down over her face.

There were cameras everywhere, especially around the shopping district. Apart from the cameras, the street was deserted; most of Brighton's inhabitants were asleep, or preparing for parties along the shore.

She stared at the lock and the door, thoughts of Lorene and the other well-fed kids at the public school, so famous for its scholastic achievements, gnawing at her insides. What had she been thinking? She had been angry, that's what. At Lorene and her comments, by the fact that she had no money and no prospects.

Her mother, with her never ending optimism, would disagree. She would say that there was hope, that there were possibilities. Candice saw nothing but the empty alley. It was late, God-only-knew who else might be lurking in the dark corners. She scanned the alley where she stood. A cat sniffed a nearby box. Her mother had once told her there used to be large bins in every alley, filled with garbage that smelled as soon as the sun came out. The area where Candice lived was not so affluent or clean as some parts, but just the thought of having actual garbage between houses nearly made her gag. She had to admit that the recycling systems, at least, was one thing the scientist had done right, despite most of them being fat and rich.

Candice looked at the ground and picked up a half-broken piece of brick. She squeezed it tight in her hand as she exited the alley and approached the front windows. The edges cut into her thin fingers, the pain helped her focus. There were no lights on in the shop, only the bright LED's of the streetlights high above and the opening hours blinking on the digitised window in the door. She should've counted the cameras but she didn't, defiantly staring into the face of her foes and tormentors – but she found none. Only the face of Candice Moon Cabrera.

Candice, a name from her great-great grandmother and Moon, since she lived in Moore, commonly referred to as the moon because it was so far away. Growing up it had been a funny nickname that she'd loved, a reminder that she lived on the very edge of it all. Now it wasn't a funny nickname anymore and she wasn't able to shake it off.

Her face - gaunt and too thin, the school nurse had pointed out several times - re-focused, looked beyond the glass to the shop behind and the red coat hanging on a mannequin. It was the one her mother had stopped to look at only a few hours ago. In another few hours it would be her birthday and yet again Candice would have no presents or cake to bring her.

She let the brick fall. It clattered on the street, the sound echoed between the houses, and she bit her lip. What she been thinking? Really? Her mother wouldn't wear it even if she'd come up with a decent lie as to where she'd gotten it. People from 'Moon' simply didn't wear such things.

The massive balloon of anger that had been swelling within her the past few weeks was slowly deflating. She felt empty without it. She turned away from the window and walked slowly along the street of shops for rich people.

At the very end of the street she slowed down, waited for a sleek car to pass by and her eye fell on a digitalised window across the road that advertised trips. Trips to the sun, trips to culture, trips to the moon. Trips to places people like her could never go. What really caught her eye was an old fashioned poster on the wall beside it, locked behind a plastic screen: 'Grand Opening - Space Elevator 3rd March 2082.'

Candice crossed the street and stood inches away from the poster. She remembered the kids at school talking about it – already six months ago now, and several of them were bragging about parents that were going to take them to space for Christmas.

The picture was beautiful though. It sent a flutter of excitement through her stomach. Candice ran a finger along the plastic frame. The picture had been taken from somewhere very high on the elevator, looking down toward the tropical sea where the base was floating, down the black ropes - you could see much of the earth beyond it, and space stretching in a never-ending circle above it all. Truly above it all.

The frame cracked and Candice tugged at the corner. It came loose and she worked the edges until she managed to free the poster, she rolled it up and tucked it in her sleeve and turned to walk the long road back to the Moon.

*

A police car was waiting outside the house.

Candice's mouth went dry and her hands began to sweat. She considered running, but perhaps they hadn't come for her - sudden images of her parents injured in a fire, or in some freak car accident, popped into her head and made her pause. Scared by the wild images in her head she ran the last few steps to the door and burst in.

As soon as the door closed behind her, her mother was in the hall and hugged Candice so hard it was difficult to breathe. Her father's face appeared in the door to the kitchen, angry but relieved. After a long minute in her mother's embrace Candice was pulled into the kitchen and her mother turned on her.

'Where have you been?'

Candice quickly pulled the hood off her face as she saw the two police officers sitting at the table, both nursing tea from dirty, cracked mugs.

'Where? Do you know what time it is?! What were you thinking not bringing your phone?'

'I couldn't sleep, just a walk, got lost, I'm sorry,' Candice mumbled over and over while her mother sobbed with anger and relief.

Her father saw the police out and after another round of 'What were you thinking?' questions, she was sent to bed with a mug of hot milk. Candice was stunned, but pleased, over her parents' sudden display of affection and by the fact that they had actually called the police.

The neighbours would have a dozen different stories ready by the morning.

Before Candice went to sleep, she pinned the poster of the elevator on the ceiling above her bed. She lay listening to her mother moving about in the kitchen, listening to people walking in the street, listening to a world not quite so constricted any more. And Candice decided to choose the courses for next semester with a bit more care this time. She looked up at the poster until she fell asleep.

# Afterlife

Lisa Farrell

Date: 2092

When Beth turned her head a little to the left, she could see a square shaft of light from the kitchen spilling through the crack of her open door. She stared at the light, refusing to close her eyes as an invisible weight forced her head deeper into the pillow.

They always left the doors open now, so they could hear if she needed them. They didn't seem to realise she heard them too, that she would lie quietly when she couldn't sleep, listening to them talk about her.

'I just can't choose. It's too important. How are we supposed to make a decision like this?' Mother spoke quickly, the words running together.

'That's what the brochures are for.' Father's lowered voice was a gentle rumble. 'Haven't you read them?'

Beth tried to breathe quietly, tried to still the rattle of her chest.

'Of course I have...'

'I've heard good things about these BettaLife people,' Father began.

'But this isn't like choosing a school! You can't just go by reputation!'

'Ssh, Liz! You'll wake her. Well, which would you prefer?'

There was a hollow thump, as though someone had struck the table, or the wall, with something soft.

'Pull yourself together, woman.'

'Maybe we should let her see...'

'Did you listen to what the doctor said? She's too young, it would only disturb her. It's his job to see that she's as comfortable as she can be now. It's up to us to send her to the best place after. We have to be grown up about this. We have to do the best we can for her.'

The kitchen echoed with a sound like someone choking. A chair creaked across the floor.

'She was always so strong, so healthy. I thought she'd be spared the sickness.' Mother paused. 'I wish they knew who manufactured it...'

Beth rolled her head back and stared into the darkness. There was quiet for a while, then the hiss of tea from the drinks machine. The clink of cups set down on the table. She imagined Father holding Mother's hand as he sat beside her, rubbing her fingers.

Her heart beat hotly in her ears. When she closed her eyes, they felt as though something alien moved round and round under her lids. She allowed herself to sink into the sticky blackness, muffling her thoughts with visions of stars clustering. Their voices were above her, passing over like rolling comets.

She opened her mouth and took a deep swallow of the cool air. There was a tang to it. The doctor must have told them to add something to the mix. The moment her eyes opened the room stilled, and she heard the voices clearly again.

'Yet another brochure in my inbox.' Mother spoke quietly, it was a strain to hear her now. 'What if we're wrong, what if God exists?'

A door slammed.

*

The doctor had a smooth, hairless head, but his face was furrowed and bristly. Beth was glad that, like yesterday, he didn't venture far into the room. He was too old to catch anything from her, but he remained in the doorway, tapping his gloved fingers together.

Father plugged something into the machine next to her bed. A long tube extended from it, writhing like an insect's feeler.

'Yes, yes,' said the doctor, 'and turn that on, there, look there...'

Father stooped and flicked the little switch. Nothing happened.

'You don't have to do anything. When the alarm sounds it alerts my team. They'll be here in minutes.'

The doctor stopped talking and turned towards the bed. His dark eyes reflected a pink light from the street as he looked at her. She looked to the window, searched for the source of that light in the rush of colour that was the city's expressways. In the distance, the space elevator rose like an arrow disappearing into a grey smog-cloud.

'How are you feeling?' the doctor asked.

'Bored.'

'Ah, dear, dear. I have just the thing.'

He snapped open his large silver briefcase and removed a slim package. He handed it to Father, who stood with his back to her bed. She could see a drawing pad through the sterile plastic, like the sort she used to get when they went out for a meal.

'I'm not a baby,' she muttered, but the doctor had gone. Father followed him without looking at her.

She pretended to sleep then, in case anyone looked in on her. They were talking in the kitchen. The doctor declined a drink. He had too many clients today, he told them, and had to go.

'It's a terrible thing,' he said. 'I used to be in the anti-aging business, you know. Suddenly we're all being reassigned to paediatrics.'

'Is there any chance of an antidote, Doctor?' Mother asked. 'We could put her on ice...'

'Her systems are overrun, my dear, I'm truly sorry. Have you chosen an afterlife facility for her yet?'

'Not yet,' said Father, 'we're still thinking about it.'

'Well, don't take too long.'

*

'Look what the doctor left you.' Mother held the packet up for her to see.

'I know, Mum.'

'Well, you know how to raise the bed if you want to do some drawing,' she said. 'I'll leave it here for you.'

'I'd rather have my headset.'

'I'm sorry,' Mother said. The entertainment system was gone, along with the mechanical help, both sold to pay for medical equipment. Beth had screamed, cried and pleaded, but no one listened.

Mother placed the packet on top of the machine beside the bed. Beth didn't look at it, but watched Mother perch carefully beside her, the mattress tilting slightly under her weight. Her skin was red around the eyes.

'Now, I have a difficult question for you, my darling,' said Mother, placing a hand on top of the blanket. 'Have they told you about afterlife in school?'

'A bit.'

'Is there anything you'd want to take with you?'

She tried to think, but she was tired. She looked around her bedroom, but Mother had cleared her things away to make room for the hulking box of a machine beside her, and all the visitors who came to gawp at her. There was a poster on the wall, cycling through pictures of her life, of things she couldn't do anymore.

'Not really,' she said at last.

Mother nodded, and closed her eyes. Her face shrunk in on itself, wrinkles she'd paid to have smoothed away trying to reassert themselves in her skin.

'Don't cry, Mum.'

Mother bent forward and laid her head on Beth's stomach, her hair spreading out like a shadow over the white blanket. She made no sound, but shook slightly. Beth let her remain like that for a minute before she asked her question.

'Mum, what's God?'

Mother sat up, pushing her hair out of her face.

'God?' She paused to stare at an empty space on the wall above the bed. 'Do you remember when we took you to see Christmas last year?'

'Yes.'

'Well, that was God. Some people think he takes souls that have nowhere else to go.'

*

Beth couldn't sleep again. She felt damp, and splayed her limbs out under the blankets so that her skin wasn't touching. She hadn't seen Father all afternoon, so concentrated hard when she heard the door of his study open. Mother must have been waiting too, her quick step moved from the kitchen into the hall.

'Liz, I've made up my mind. I've taken out a loan. We're sending her to the Ultra-Life facility. They can create us there, so she'll never be alone.'

'Oh, thank you, thank you...' The whispers stopped.

Beth lay still in the dark. The house was so quiet she could hear the distant hum of the air pump. She waited for the click as her parents' bedroom door closed, but it didn't come.

Beth pressed the button that raised her bed, the movement causing her stomach to clench. She reached for the drawing pad. The screen was cheap, the plastic squeaking as she moved her finger in shapes that felt like words.

Then she pushed it away and it fell to the carpet with a soft thud. She waited, but no one came, no one heard. She felt for the band around her left wrist and squeezed it over her hand, the loose skin of her fingers bunching before it came free. She knew her legs wouldn't hold her, and let herself drop to the floor, resting her forearms on the bed.

She crawled towards the window. With the blind down there was no light, but she felt her way across the perfectly smooth wall, and released the catch. A click, and the blind sped up, revealing a tangled network of colours in the black sky above her.

*

Liz sat under the window where Beth had been. The blind was open, and with her back to the wall she felt the warmth of UV rays aging the back of her neck. She didn't move, wouldn't move until someone came to take the body away.

Beth was back on the bed, where her father had thrown her, where he had pushed that spiked thing into her flesh even though they must have been hours too late. Liz could still hear him shouting into the phone, demanding that the team come and try to save her. They wouldn't, because they knew Beth's brain activity couldn't be restored now. Her soul was gone.

Liz had the pad in her lap, rereading the words scrawled diagonally across the screen. Capital letters, like someone shouting to be heard.

Out in the hall, the demands gave way to begging.

He would forgive his daughter, but he would never forgive his wife. She'd put ideas in Beth's head. She read the note again, before erasing it.

I WANTED TO MEET GOD.

# Mercy by Richard Blass

Florence Bean

Date: 2098

'After tonight the next exhibition is in two weeks – we'll make people wait a little bit, you know, make them _really_ miss us, hmm?'

Knowing what he wanted I looked up slowly from the menu, 'Of course Mr Blass.'

He waved a casual hand, 'Oh _how_ many times have I asked you to call me Richard?'

Never.

He cast an appraising eye around the restaurant, 'How about you give a _little_ laugh, my dear? Draw some attention, free publicity and all that.'

I laughed; a childlike joyful giggle so beautiful it made several people's heads turn and made me want to grind my teeth. Mr Blass spared a glance for a passing waiter, summoning him, 'I will have the Parmesan Royale for starters and then the Tournedos of Beef. She will have the Norfolk Crab and the Jerusalem Artichoke Veloute.' Forcing the menus into the waiter's full hands, he dismissed him with a smile that always came out as mocking no matter how much he practiced.

'I'll only have you eating the _very_ best, my darling. At least the Ritz isn't serving rat and jellyfish hamburgers yet. I would offer you some wine but I'm afraid that would look bad,' another fake and malicious smile, ' _You do_ appear to be a child after all.'

I looked at the tiny and delicate hand holding my glass of water. I had been six years old for over twenty years now and the face that looked out at me from the mirror had long stopped feeling like my own. I had told Mr Blass this once, back when the difference between _me_ and the body I inhabited was not so great. He had continued to style my hair for the day, laughing and proclaiming me a 'silly goose', and all the while his eyes had told the truth.

Of course it's not yours. You're mine. It's mine. My creation, my work, my art.

To him there was no _me_ beyond what he wanted. I was nothing but a tool for him to work with; a blank canvas for him to fill with his mastery; a shapeless lump of rock to be moulded and carved into perfection.

'Ah the food is coming.' Mr Blass somehow managed to sit up even straighter, 'Now _one more_ laugh before we eat, my precious. That's good.' The waiter walking towards us stumbled slightly, a dazed look on his face, 'Now eat up, my lovely. A beautiful body needs beautiful things inside it.'

*

Despite the controversy surrounding living art, the artists themselves had no shortage of people to work with. Although lesser artists tended to work with adult volunteers – the chance of a life of beauty and style attractive to many – true masterpieces were seldom made with anything other than the donated children. Not only was there not the struggle between artist and canvas when their visions of beauty differed, but certain images were much more powerful when a youngling was used.

After the One Child Policy was introduced there were many more donations every year; parents who weren't ready for their one child just yet could quickly lose their mistake, their consciences appeased with the thought of the wonderful world their children were entering.

The exhibition room was open and airy with various podiums littered around the room. Each 'podium' was part of a scene supposed to highlight the message within the art.

' _Do_ pay attention darling,' Mr Blass ushered me to the space I would occupy tonight, my stage a pile of rubble against the backdrop of a destroyed city, 'There are drains beneath all this rubble to collect the blood, however it is important that you don't move too much. It's supposed to _look_ chaotic but everything must be just so, understand?'

No answer was required.

'There will be a lot of dust and smoke as well but you _mustn't_ cry or blink too much; just look slightly shocked and sad and there must be an air of hopelessness. We'll do your wings and the rest about ten minutes before opening time. Eve will be on your left as usual but tonight you'll have Odysseus to your right.'

Although my face was, as always, neutral he patted my head consolingly, 'I know he's not up to your usual standards dear, but he hasn't been out for _such_ a long time, poor thing, and there's an open space now. It's a shame about Lucifer - you and he did complement each other so nicely, but we must move with the times and so forth.'

'Of course Mr Blass.'

*

At my first exhibition, years ago, I'd been terrified of the knife. I'd lain awake all night worrying that it would hurt. And in the morning Mr Blass had been very upset with the slight circles under my eyes and given me a caffeine injection so I would be able to stay standing for the next five hours. He then ordered the first incision to be made, dismissing my fears with a smile.

Of course it would hurt. But beauty is pain.

He'd made most of the cuts himself; lots of small quick scratches on my legs, deeper wounds on my arms and hands, a single slash above my right eye so that blood the colour of a well-aged wine could run so entrancingly down my face. My wings – still quite small with feathers like ashes – had been hacked at, their only purpose to be mutilated.

Now I'm used to the slight sting of the blade and the sight of blood smeared across skin. I barely wince. I stand motionless on a mountain of broken furniture, stones, and loose bricks.

To my left is Eve: bronze skin, golden cat's eyes, a mane of black curls, slight fangs and a tail. Her voice box was replaced so that all she can do is snarl as she prowls through her jungle terrain, though I remember her trying to purr to soothe me as a child. It used to make her throat sore for days afterwards but her eyes would sparkle whenever I smiled. She cannot speak to tell me her name but in my mind I call her Julie.

To my right is Odysseus, forever trying to bring in a haul of jellyfish as water rages around him. He's a thickset man with a mop of brown hair on his head and a beard hiding everything but the clench of his jaw and the fervour in his eyes; we all fear what will happen when we're no longer 'a sensation'. Truthfully, I haven't seen him in months. We exist in separate worlds – my star rising as his falls.

'The point of art is to make you feel something after all, and what is more moving than your fellow man?' Mr Blass basks in the praise of the people around him, a short way away.

'Well I'm just heartbroken about Lucifer!' The lady lays a single manicured hand on his arm, to convey her deep sadness.

Mr Blass sighs heavily before speaking, 'Yes. The anti-ageing procedures work so well it is often a shock when they go. But he was already old when I got him so it wasn't entirely a surprise.'

Lie.

Lucifer ( _Alan_ ) hadn't died of old age but of dehydration – although he'd been frozen at thirty, from the very start he'd been modified to always weep and no one had noticed when he stopped drinking water, tired of this world of tears.

'They'll perfect this immortality thing one day soon, Richard darling,' another woman, indistinguishable from the first, spoke, 'then you'll never have to lose another masterpiece.'

I almost shudder at the thought of an eternity like this.

'Speaking of masterpieces...' Mr Blass is leading the small group towards me, 'This is Mercy and I must admit I'm very fond of her.' They always give us imperious and highbrow names, heavy with the weight of history and their various connotations. _Me_ , I'm Annie.

'Did you do a lot of work on her?' A distinguished gentleman with an aristocratic demeanour peers at me curiously.

Mr Blass blushes modestly, 'Well there were several operations when she was younger – the wings obviously, facial structure, that lovely shade of blonde – but that cute nose is entirely hers. I wouldn't let anyone touch it!' They laugh obligingly and he continues, 'When she was six I knew she was perfect and she's not been changed since. Mercy is even usually kept away from the world so I can keep that gaze so innocent.'

The women coo, flapping their hands excitedly at how close we must be. Like father and daughter.

'Well, Mercy is one of the few people I'd share an afterlife with.' Mr Blass acknowledges, 'I simply couldn't bear to be parted from her.'

'Don't you think it would be wonderful to live in an afterlife designed by Richard here, Mercy darling?' One of the women glances at me, clearly expecting a response. Mr Blass nods his permission though his lips purse at this break of character.

For the first time I stare directly at the crowd slightly below me, 'Of course. I'm sure it would be just beautiful.'

# Second thoughts

Emma Levin

Date: 2110

John Bessemer woke with a hangover.

His head felt like a metaphor, his throat was dry as a simile, and when he tried to peel himself from his bed sheets his shoulders felt heavy and numb. He stumbled towards the bathroom like a poorly-acted zombie from a twentieth century horror film – arms outstretched for balance, emitting a low moan and a sincere but non-specific hatred of mankind. Squinting against the morning light, he almost tripped over the half-finished rat-burger from the night before. Draped in a cloak of wilted lettuce, it reclined in its polystyrene clamshell and a pool of its own congealed grease - a grim parody of Botticelli's Birth of Venus.

Bessemer steadied himself at the chipped porcelain bowl that his landlord had assured him was a sink. In water that was just about clean enough to see his reflection, he inspected the damage from the night before. His eyes were bloodshot, his skin was pale, and – oh. Bessemer had wings. An enormous pair of white, feathery wings.

Bessemer, being a sensible chap, decided to ignore the wings and continue his morning as usual. He vomited, brushed his teeth, vomited again, and decided it wasn't worth brushing his teeth again.

He stumbled back to the bedside, and began to dress.

His suit wouldn't fit on. He couldn't get his shirt on. Over the wings. Wings.

His panic surfaced like a crocodile.

Why did he have to go and get a pair of wings? A tattoo wouldn't have been so bad. A change of eye colour, limb-lengthening, hell, even a set of new legs wouldn't have been the end of the world! But wings... he could never go to work looking like this! For a start, there was the legal side of things (employees of 'The Twentieth-Century Experience, Giftshop, and Giftshop Experience' were contractually barred from visible interspecies augmentation), but then there was the sheer embarrassment of it. Bessemer was a grown man, not a teenager. And the wings he'd chosen for himself were so incredibly tacky. White feathers were so clichéd. It was as if he'd walked into the shop and asked for the first thing in the catalogue.

There was nothing for it. He'd have to go back to the surgery. Get them removed.

Bessemer consulted his watch. It was quarter to eight. He had approximately two hours to get rid of them. Now, if he could just work out where the surgery had been. And maybe piece together what had happened last night?

He rooted through the drifts of clothes on the floor until he found a suit that was covered in rat grease, and had two holes crudely cut into the back. He shook it, and two pieces of paper fell out. He picked up the larger. It was a waiver, bearing his own signature, exempting the Kraft-Pfizer-Unilever Conglomerated Corporation Consortium for any 'lamentable decisions' made while under the influence of their products.

So, he had been drinking Venusian Vodka last night.

He knew it wasn't actually made on Venus (and just a brand name registered by the KPUCCC after market research showed that it made the product sound exotic, slightly edgy, and it meant that no-one would complain about the awful taste for fear of seeming culturally insensitive), but it was the only drink that he could afford in large enough volumes to get blackout drunk.

Ah. A breakthrough! He'd been drinking to forget. But to forget what?

He had forgotten.

So mission accomplished, really.

He picked up the other piece of paper. It was a business card. 'Dr Harrison Varmer' it read 'Qualified surgeon, unqualified accountant. Recreational Augmentation. Experimental Dentistry. Tax-returns. Clinic 11456a Lesser Harley Street, Greatest London'.

Well, at least Bessemer knew where to go.

*

Bessemer walked briskly through the streets, with his largest coat wrapped around him. He didn't like being out on the walkways this early. The silence scared him. Not that it was real silence – the air was thick with drones, delivering parcels and eviction notices. But it was relative silence. The ad-projections weren't switched on until eight, and they say when one sense is taken away, another overcompensates.

For John Bessemer, the silence made him see. It made him notice way that the thick cables which wound between the buildings looked like vines, or thick, hungry snakes pretending to be vines (which he had seen in a 20th century documentary, entitled 'The Jungle Book'). It made Bessemer notice the mosaic of vents, grilles, and ducts that coughed out warm, damp air. And, on this particular morning, it made Bessemer notice that his shadow had two arched protrusions, beyond where his shoulders normally ended.

When he arrived at the clinic, he was going to have some strong words with Doctor Varmer. Words like 'why did you sell these to me when I was clearly drunk?' and 'can you remove them' and 'please'. It wasn't fair. Tattoo parlours had breathalysers, just like liposuction clinics and hairdressers. But recreational augmentation was still in its infancy. And like the parents of the 21st century, the 22nd century indulged its infants.

Bessemer checked his watch. Five past; best to hail a cab. He climbed a couple of levels to the road-way, and hailed the first autocab that passed, awkwardly bumping his newly-acquired bulk on the cab's door.

He settled down, and began to programme his journey.

Destination: Lesser Harley Street.

Acceleration: Moderate, but legal.

Conversation: Vaguely offensive/Offensively vague

Bessemer proceeded to the payment screen, presenting his wrist to the credit-chip reader when prompted. There was an unfriendly beep. The words 'payment rejected' appeared. Bessemer tried again, with the same result.

What on Earth had happened last night?

He'd only been paid on Friday.

He slinked out of the cab (being careful not to hit his wings, and thus hitting his head).

Slowly, unwillingly, he began the long walk to the clinic.

*

The walk to the surgery was, broadly speaking, uneventful. He was only mugged twice. The first were a very organised pair, who tripped him and dragged him into a siding, away from the unblinking stare of the CCTV. The larger man tackled him to the ground and held him still, pinning down Bessemer's shoulders with his knees. The other man had a scalpel poised to dig out the credit chip.

Stuck beneath the man's meaty thighs, Bessemer marvelled at two things. Primarily, the cleanliness of the pavement, and secondly, the fact that it didn't hurt. He must still have some local anaesthetic working its way around his system. All he could feel was the vague tickle of feathers on the back of his neck, and the cold pavement damp working its way into his jeans.

'Don't take this personal-like,' the man with the scalpel said.

'No, this ain't personal,' parroted the man sat on Bessemer's chest.

'It's just a dog-eat-dog world out here.'

'Yeah. And if it makes ya feel less bad, we're very big dogs-'

'Enormous dogs-'

'And we're at the top of the ladder.'

'Yeah, we're, the big dogs at the top of the ladder.' He paused, and turned to his partner. 'Can dogs climb ladders?'

'Probably'

'But they ain't got no opposable thumbs'

'Yeah, but they're enthusiastic'

'Enthusiasm's no substitute for aptitude'

'What are you, a biological determinist now?'

Bessemer strained to look at his watch. He'd be okay as long as the mugging was over within seventeen minutes. The colleagues continued to argue.

'No, I'm not saying that a dog is physically incapable of climbing a ladder, but that it'd lack the drive. I mean, what's its motivation?'

The larger man got to his feet, gesticulating passionately. 'What's anyone's motivation?'

'Well, if I'm up a ladder I'm normally changing a light bulb.'

As the pair continued to debate exactly why a big dog might climb a ladder, Bessemer backed slowly away.

*

When he finally arrived at the surgery, the flickering neon confirmed that it was a dive clinic. The sort of place that wouldn't mind grafting antlers and exoskeletons to teenagers, and letting them rut in the car park.

Bessemer pushed open the door. In the distance stood a single self-check-in. The floor was carpeted with smashed crockery. Bessemer gingerly crunched his way over to the self-check-in. He prodded the screen experimentally. It wasn't switched on. From the corner, he heard a bang. An automated secretary entered, its caterpillar tracks breaking the porcelain splinters down to porcelain sand. 'Excuse me, Commissioner.' It said, 'I have your teas.'

It dropped a mug, and then retreated back the way it came.

From a door at the back, a thin, bespectacled man appeared. Dr Varmer greeted Bessemer warmly. 'How are you finding the new wings?' he asked, through a wide and toothy grin.

They were not human teeth.

'Erm- ' Bessemer began, before being startled by the sound of smashing crockery.

'Forgive the secretary' he said, gesturing at the floor. 'As I explained last night, it was my father's. I know it makes a mess, but I don't have the heart to get rid of it. Plus, I don't know where it gets all the cups from. I like to imagine people returning home to find their crockery missing. That pleases me immensely.'

Varmer smiled again, and counted backwards from thirty. Bang on cue, Bessemer regained his voice. Within two minutes, he was going to have dropped his coat, within eight he was going to have changed his mind about letting Doctor Varmer near him again. Bessemer would then pace around the car-park for between six and eleven minutes, muttering aloud to himself about quitting his job, and finding a place that would employ him as he was, wings and all. Failing that, he would mutter, he could learn to fly, and make his living as a courier, exploiting the elderly who remembered the events of 2034, and were still scared of drones.

Between twenty-six and thirty-one minutes later (depending on the sequencing of the traffic lights) Bessemer would return, looking slightly battered, and nursing a sore shoulder. Varmer told him every time he came into the clinic: you shouldn't try using any new limbs for at least two weeks, let the ligaments settle.

But every time, John Bessemer wouldn't listen.

It was like this; on the last Friday of every month, John Bessemer would come to the clinic, startlingly drunk. He would be waving his payslip and a bank statement. 'Why has your poxy surgery stolen thousands from my account?' he would scream. It was a guaranteed way of emptying the waiting room, so Dr Varmer had just started closing his clinic early on the last Friday of the month. And before Varmer could explain that it was payment for a legitimate surgery, and pull up the photos from Bessemer's case file, Bessemer would fall silent.

He would be eyeing up a pair of wings. The wings.

They were the biggest in the shop; white, like a swan's, and curved like a Renaissance angel's. They were hideously tacky, and normally only considered by hen parties (and Dr Varmer advised them away from it in the consultation).

The first time Bessemer had come to the shop, Varmer had offered him the same consultation. 'Are you sure you wouldn't like something a little smaller, a little more discreet?' he had asked. But Bessemer was adamant. Every time, he was adamant. Those were the wings for him. He didn't care how much they cost, or how dangerous the surgery, he wanted them. He had always, would always, want them.

And so Dr Varmer would call in the secretary, and they would draw up a contract. The secretary would keep leaving to fetch another cup of tea, but eventually they would hammer out the deal (signing it on the small corner of the table that wasn't covered by mugs). Bessemer would go under the knife, and Varmer would earn his rent for the month.

And then, on the Monday morning, after the worst of the sedatives wore off, Bessemer would come marching over here, and politely, sheepishly, ask to have them removed. Dr Varmer had learnt, over time, that the best way to deal with him was politeness. To fawn. To smile. Bessemer would pay in full for the removal, practically haemorrhaging gratitude. They would have a pleasant chat about how bad the rents in Greatest London were, and Bessemer would request that they do the surgery without sedatives, because he needed to go to work. Apparently the HR department were concerned about the number of days he'd turned up late recently. At this point, Dr Varmer would suppress a knowing smile.

Because he knew that the next Monday, when the alarm rang at 7am, John Bessemer would wake with a start, a hangover, and a pair of wings.

# The Genesis

Miriam A. Averna

Date: 2119

I'm going to have to kill myself. I have no choice. I know what you're thinking: why bother reading on, investing in someone who has clearly given up on life? Someone who won't be here to see it through? And under any other circumstance I'd emphatically agree with you. But it's not as easy as that.

Is it ever?

You see, I live in a world where there isn't just one me or one you. There is at least one other 'you' out there, if you're lucky. If not, then you could be looking at up to 12 'versions' of you.

They're also known as doppelgangers, clones, copies. But they're more commonly accepted as VS's. That's the PC way of referring to them. Short for variegated shadows. Stupid, huh? I think so anyway. They're not shadows, they're people; flesh, blood, bone just like me and you.

The thing is, only one of those is the original - the Genesis. And the others, as instructed by our totalitarian government and their aptly named Alpha Initiative, need to be eliminated. And it is up to the Genesis to get the job done.

'Why the hell does it fall on us to fix their balls up?'' I ask Zeke, who's currently attempting to bounce pennies into my pint with as much fervour as he can muster on a miserable Monday evening. He can't understand why I'm making such a big deal of it.

'Quit yer bitching man, at least you only have one,' he says, as another penny bounces dangerously close to my amber nectar vessel. 'I've still got two of the bastards,' he continues, dejectedly.

I consider this momentarily as I absently run my finger over the rim of my glass. He does have a point; but then the realisation that I now only have one week in which to do it crashes into me again and a sense of foreboding lingers over me like an unwelcome cloud at a picnic. Why did my parents feel the need to contest the decision, wasting precious kill time? Four weeks have rapidly become one, and the outcome of the appeal was still the same - I have to destroy my copy. It is the law.

Dammit.

Come on, snap out of it! Remember your counselling and the three steps to happiness.

Step one - list what's great about your life/situation.

OK, I can do that.

So, positive number one: I am the Genesis. What a relief huh?

Number two: We can legally kill VS's and not vice versa. Phew!

Number three: I am blessed to only have one VS. There's a lot to be said for growing up in a poor family that also happened to resent both Big Brother and technology.

The previous United Government had (mis)calculated that at the current rate, humankind was doomed for extinction. It was an unequivocal certainty. Who were we to contest that? We blindly followed and trusted the people in charge, it is human nature to do so after all, right? I mean, they'd been mostly right about the infertility epidemic so we believed in their calculations.

I didn't see what the big deal was at the time, not only because I was just eleven when the risk to humanity was revealed, but because I always saw the human race as what it truly was. A disease, spreading through Earth like a cancer. Except the United Government's prediction of complete infertility for the next three generations hadn't banked on scientists finding a cure. And this, only half a decade after R.E.V.E.A.L was launched. The project, and I'm sure they think of the acronym and then make the words fit around it, stood for: Re-population of Earth via Embryonic and Artificial Life - in essence, human cloning. The United Government selected the families eligible for the programme, based on the level of desirable genetic traits, then left it up to them to choose how many VS's they would purchase. My parents, ever the risk averse pair, bought just one.

But I digress. Back to listing the positives.

Positive number four:

Shit, who am I kidding?! This sucks big time.

'At least you've taken the hardest step already - eliminating a VS. I can't even think how or where I'm going to do it!' I say pathetically. And then bitter resentment begins to rise within me once again. 'They don't even cover your costs for fuck's sake! Am I supposed to pay for my own weapon? Travel? And- Oh for crying out loud! Give me that!' I say snatching the umpteenth penny from Zeke's hand and bouncing it straight into his full pint.

'How the...', he says in mild astonishment and then accepts his forfeit, downing the pint in less than five seconds. He wipes away the froth moustache and burps loudly, attracting the stares of some of the locals and the audible tuts of the non.

'Look man, you just need to deal with it,' states Zeke, simply.

'Thanks for your help mate, easy for you to say!' I reply with a grunt as he gets up to go to the bar.

I don't even know why I'm talking to him about it. Everything with him is always delivered with a callous or indifferent 'whatever' or 'not bothered'. If only he knew the torment within me. I can't help but think that even though he had four VS's, he still got lucky. Happenstance always seems to favour him, for whatever reason. I mean, his first 'kill' wasn't so much a kill but more of an accidental suicide. His VS had started taking antidepressants when they'd been informed they were on the 'removal' list, except they took all of them in the space of 48 hours, adding alcohol into the mix. By the time Zeke had got to him his liver and kidneys had failed and he was pretty much comatose. So he just left him there to die. Didn't actually have to do anything.

His second VS had met his end whilst running away from Zeke through a busy high street. He'd stepped out onto the road and bam, hit by an articulated lorry doing 35 mph. Wasn't much left of him other than a red skid mark on the road where the lorry had emergency braked, dragging his mangled body under his wheel arch for several metres.

So you can see my resentment at the way in which that lucky bastard has had a relatively easy ride in all this. Still, much as I hate to admit it, he's right about one thing. I need to just deal with it.

'How are you gonna do him then? Any ideas?' he asks, returning from the bar, a bag of peanuts between his teeth and two more pints in each hand. He carelessly places the pints down, spilling some of the beer and deliberately avoiding the place mats I have ready for him. I tut and move my pint onto the mat as Zeke proceeds to tear at the bag using the corner of his mouth.

'Shit, I don't know; I'm still coming to grips with the whole thing. My parents called me three hours ago to tell me, talk about starting the week off badly!'

'Well I guess it can only get better..?' he states more as a question than a fact, filling me with no confidence at all. My mind wanders to potential scenarios, weapons and outcomes. I scratch nervously at the same spot on the back of my head that always itches when I get anxious. It's been especially bad the last few weeks and now it's become almost unbearable.

Zeke proceeds to throw peanuts in the air to catch them, a solo game that has not benefited him any from practice. Peanuts bounce off his nose, lips, chin, the odd one going into his mouth more by chance than skill. I struggle to picture Zeke ever doing anything accurately, let alone killing someone.

'Come on man, you should be happy! Getting a call from the AI rep telling me I was the Genesis was the best thing ever! You gotta ride that wave!' he says, making a wave motion with his hand. Thing is I never received a call from the Alpha Initiative, my parents did. So I have no 'wave' to ride as such, just the burden of having to commit murder, albeit legal. I scratch at my head again, and Zeke, noticing, frowns. A nagging feeling fleetingly passes through me and just as quickly disappears again. I offer a weak attempt at a smile. I need to get out of here. I can't stand any more of his performing monkey routine.

'Yeah you're right. Anyway, I'm shattered. Going to head home now,' I say, downing the remainder of my pint, the second remaining untouched.

'OK mate see ya,' he replies tossing another peanut into the air. As I move away from the able, I hear a 'plop' as yet another peanut misses its target.

*

Back in my flat I come home to a video message from my mum. Something's off with her. She looks fraught, as if she's been crying.

'Darling, we need to speak to you, it's urgent. Please call back tonight OK?' she says, a tinge of hysteria in her voice as her eyes furtively look off screen.

What the hell? I look at the time of the message. Two minutes ago. I go to return the call when a 'swish' sound draws my attention to the kitchen.

What was that?

I freeze, my instincts telling me there has to be an intruder in my flat and my 'fight or flight' reflexes kick in. I scan the living room, looking for anything I can use to protect myself. My head itches fervently as I try to make sense of the objects, but can't see how any of them could help me.

Panicking, my eyes eventually land on my PlayStation 5. I hesitate momentarily. The collector piece had set me back quite a bit at the time and even though I could never use it for its intended purpose, I wasn't overly keen on damaging it any either. My options pretty much limited by my current location within the flat, I push the notion aside and decide that the console's weightiness and sharp corners would offer me the best protection against my intruder. I pull it off the shelf, hoist it aloft and cautiously begin to tip-toe towards the kitchen. Holding my breath, I try to listen out for movement but all I can hear is the pulse in my neck and my heart hammering in my ribcage.

In the stillness of the flat, tension hangs in the air like humidity before a thunderstorm. As I approach the threshold of the kitchen the shrill of an incoming video call startles me and I let out an involuntary yelp. This is enough to let my intruder know I am close. He - me - comes rushing round the corner wielding a knife, which I recognise as my own, high in the air. I have enough time to absorb the crazed look on his face before dodging him.

All the while, my mum is leaving an agitated message on the video phone.

'Sweetie! Please answer! It's urgent...'

My VS turns, shouting in a comically theatrical way 'AArrgh!' He lunges with the knife and I side step him back towards the living room, the ancient gaming device still held high above my head. Between frenzied attacks I notice a tiny mark on his right cheek as I continue to duck and dive away from him, the knife swishing through the air.

'Listen, we're so sorry...we were going to tell you...', my mum sniffs loudly.

At this point I hear my dad come on and begin to shout, but I can only pick up snippets of what he says, my mind focusing on pre-empting the next attack. My VS is now in a hunched position, snarling at me, whilst he moves the knife from his left hand to his right, over and over. He stares at me with such malevolent intent that I feel my blood go cold.

'Danny...out...flat... coming...', the line crackles.

The message abruptly ends, leaving me and my VS standing-off in the living room, the coffee table the only barrier between us. He makes a dummy move and I counter by dodging the other way. My arms begin to ache from the weight of the PS5 I am still holding. I need to throw this thing and soon. Yet my eyes are once again drawn to the mark on his face. A scar? No.

'What do you want? I am supposed to kill YOU! Not the other way round!' I scream at him. I feel rage building inside of me as the itch on my head builds like a crescendo. The VS's expression softens ever so slightly as a look of pity momentarily replaces the hatred.

'You think...?' he laughs wickedly. And then it becomes too much; the pain in my arms, the itch in my head, the tension, all combined. I hurl the console as hard as I can, the corner of it striking the VS's right temple before crashing to the ground. He stares at me, startled, a vacant look in his eyes like his light has just gone out. A wonky smile forms on his lips. He sways gently before falling forwards onto the coffee table with a wet, crunching sound.

I wince at the noise. A pool of blood forms rapidly around him and as the realisation of what I just did dawns on me I begin to salivate in my mouth in a way that only means one thing. I rush to the toilet, clasping my hands over my mouth, before emptying the contents of my stomach into the latrine.

*

After I clean myself up, I cautiously return to the living room fully expecting to feel sick again. But as I approach the body and I see my VS's right cheek up close, a horror fills within me.

The mark on his face. I don't have one. Which can only mean one thing.

I rush over to the video com and play the message from my parents. The auto-tune feature runs a quick scan and I can now make out the scrambled missing words.

'Danny, my boy, GET OUT OF THE FLAT. Your genesis is coming! '

*

Now do you understand why I had to kill myself?

Bet you wish you'd never invested your time in reading this story.

Do you feel deceived? Tricked? Well that's exactly how I feel. My parents lied to me.

But whatever, as Zeke would say.

I'm going to start by listing the positives:

One: I have killed my genesis.

Two: My parents don't know that.

Three: I now have a tattoo of a birthmark on my right cheek...

# Thin man

Sarah Scott

Date: 2131

'Thin Man, Thin Man, gonna eat your skin man.'

'Stop it, Fife, or I'll tell Moma.'

'What's the matter? Is Thin Man gonna getcha?'

Mira returned her focus to the seeds she was pulling from the pine cones, keeping her back to the skeletal, wooden statue that glared at her from the top of the hill. Woven together from branches and vines, made to look like Moma Sups, with her surgically lengthened limbs. Mira preferred not to look at Thin Man and Fife knew it.

The task of shelling pine nuts was hard with Mira's damaged fingers, twisted like her mother's manipulated genes that caused the deformity. The process had been meant to ensure beauty, but it left Mira with bones that curved where they shouldn't, with a snub nose like a pig and with fleshless tunnels where her ears should be.

Each nut needed to be pried from its woody pine cone husk. They needed to be dried and stored safely away. They would be eaten through the winter, after the summer's produce gathered from the forest was gone and the ocean shore froze over. Moma Sups had some canned goods that she hoarded away like treasures, but mostly they ate what they could find in the woods and what they could pull from the sea.

*

The vagabond collection of kids had found their way to Moma one by one, and she fed them all, earning her the name Moma Sups.

'What's for sups, Moma?' the little ones always chanted. Like baby birds, little chicks with gaping mouths. Always begging for food, even when there was none to be had.

'What's for sups?' they would sing, and Moma would shout for them to shut their yaps or Thin Man would get 'em.

They lost three chicks last winter, and this year they had less to go around. Mira wondered which would be gone come spring.

Mira and her brother Fife were the first of Moma Sups' kids. Mira didn't remember, but she knew the story well. She was born in the belly of a beast as it tossed along the ocean waves. They had left the busy streets of London - they were fleeing - trying to get somewhere new, somewhere safe, for when the rockets started to fly.

The ferocity of the ocean on the night of Mira's arrival matched that of her labouring Mother, and when she finally slipped from womb to world, she was wrapped in the intact waters of her birth. They called it a caul birth, a mermaid's birth. When the bag popped and the waters spilled out across the swaying floor, Mira finally cried, and the ocean - hearing her mewling, quieted itself. The waves turned from jagged mountains to soft hills and rocked the baby mermaid to sleep. The next day they found their cove. They found somewhere away from the madness of the world and they settled in.

That's the way Moma tells the story. Fife tells it different. He tells Mira of their mother's screams and the blood that spilled from her. He tells Mira of the body dropped over the side of the deck, into the waves and the crashing onto ragged rocks, chocking on salt water as they struggled for shore. He doesn't tell Mira their mother's name; maybe he doesn't remember. He does remember London. He tells of the colours and the food. Of water pouring hot from taps and rooms filled with toys.

He remembers the fighting when they came to the cove. He says they argued that nothing had happened. The thing they had run from had gone away. The powers had shifted, the new government had different priorities. Things would change now, and they wanted to return to the world. Moma Sups roared and cursed their foolishness. She swore the end was nigh. They were safe here, they were going to build something new, something different, but instead, one by one, the others had gone. Fife remembers them climbing over the hill and away. Until the day that Moma had sworn no others would leave and she put Thin Man up to watch while she was away.

Moma stayed in the cove, and the lost chicks found their way to her. Fife brought most of them back from his scavenging missions. He found them all when they were young, plump little ducklings. None of them remembered the times before life in the cove. They were abandoned, forgotten little souls - they followed him home.

Fife was the only one who scavenged. Moma wouldn't hear of any others setting foot near the old towns. Nothing to be found their but rat meat and rabies she had sworn, but she still let Fife wander. The nearest town was hidden from sight by their secluded spot on the coast, but all the chicks knew where the town was. Over the hill—past Thin Man.

The little ones told tales about Thin Man. They said he was magic and would come to life in the dark. Some said he got kids who strayed too far and ate them up. Others said he was a gift from the town's people. Fife laughed at that and said he was Moma's Thin Man, there to scare you dumb kids. When asked about Thin Man all Moma would say is, 'Ya'll better stay away from that thin man, there's dark magic round him.'

*

'Thin Man, Thin Man, gonna eat your skin man,' Fife taunted as he ran down towards the water with his jellyfish nets slung over his shoulder.

The sun slunk across the sky, and Mira's fingers were dry and sore from her work. She was nearing the end of her pile of pine cones when she heard the voices. At first she thought it was Thin Man come to life. The kids were all in the lodge with Moma, and Fife was at the shore - who else could it be? Then she saw the dancing shadows. They fluttered around the long, still shadow of Thin Man. Mira stayed still and waited, listening to the voices, till their shapes appeared on the hill.

The first thought that came to Mira was how bright they were - so many colours, like bird feathers. The blues so sharp, the yellows so vivid, a crisp white visible under the collar of a deep purple jacket. A girl waved to Mira, and they started down the hill towards her. The easy swing of their arms stiffened as they came close to where she sat.

'Are you alright?' the oldest woman asked.

'Geez, what's wrong with her?' a young girl whispered into her companion's shoulder. Mira could see the girl's finger nails had been sculpted into perfect crescent moons, painted white at the tips. Gossamer wings were tucked up neatly on her back, they fluttered slightly fanning out like an aura behind her.

'Do you need our help?' the older woman asked Mira.

'I don't get any cell service out here, should we go back to the truck and call for help?' said the young girl with the wings, gazing at a black reflective square in her hand.

'Would they even have a hospital back in that town?' asked a tall boy with limbs as long as Moma's.

The tall boy, his hair combed smooth, looked past Mira to the lodge behind her, taking in the racks of drying jellyfish and seal meat, the faded fabric that hung from the tree branches. He didn't notice Moma taking aim.

'Do you live here?' he asked. Concern etched on his crumpled brow.

The staccato beats of the gunshots were softened by the dense forest to the West, swallowed by the waves to the East. One by one, the bright birds fell where they stood. The girl with nails like slivers of new moon was the last to fall, her wings covering her like a shroud. Mira stayed seated, covered in the detritus of the pine cones as the singing children came out of the lodge and surrounded her. She watched the children dance around the clearing. When the strangers were finally still on the grass, Fife dragged them back to the chopping shack. When the last had been hauled from sight and the rhythmic sound of Fife's axe could be heard in the distance. Then at last Mira joined the children, raising her voice in song.

'Thin Man, Thin Man, gonna eat your skin man.'

# Oh dear

Dave Beach

Date: 2150

Newbury

'We just got on with it really. I remember it well because it was a Wednesday and I'd had my midweek treat of blueberry pancakes for breakfast; just a little thing I did to get me through the working week.

'I remember feeling quite full and sleepy on the bus to work. In fact, the whole bus seemed one eye closure from an unconscious state. It was a fairly rickety bus - one of the older models that still needed occasional remote supervision from the depot when a more human touch was needed; particularly after the automated drive system mistook a bollard for a pedestrian and paused for ten minutes blaring 'attention, bus approaching'.

'This morning had gone smoothly and I was confident I'd get to work early enough to grab a coffee. It was on that section of the main road into Reading that we rounded a corner, emerging from the trees, to see the land stretched out far to the east.

'I was thinking about some headline I'd write later that day, seeing which would roll off the tongue easier or whether - precisely because it was unusually worded - it would grab attention. I was only half aware of what my eyes were telling me in that moment.

'A bright flash on the horizon, as bright as I'd ever seen, happened and disappeared. Half the bus looked up, unsure if anyone else had witnessed the sudden flare. I was about to clear my throat to ask someone when the loudest roll of thunder growled at us. My brain turned from headlines to the consensus that something was most definitely up.

'I can't quite describe what happened next. It reminds me of dominoes and the wheat fields I walked in once. Or a leaf blower - yes, it was more like a leaf blower. It was as if some massive hand, starting from the horizon to the east, had swept everything forward.

'Considering that it had only been a matter of seconds from flash to blast, it took an age for it to reach us, this seemingly harmless wind. But when it did, it rocked the bus, throwing off the drive system and causing us to veer into the ditch. Instinctively, I threw my hands forward and felt very briefly that I was on a roller-coaster, before the momentum and sudden stop caught up with us and I smacked my head into the seat in front. I shook the dizziness from my eyes as everyone stirred.

'A middle aged man was the first to pick himself up. He straightened his tweed suit and said, 'Oh dear'.

'And that was the first reaction to the London Nuking of 2133. 'Oh dear' marked the single most pivotal moment of our century. 'Oh dear' marked the end.

'I'd hear later that the exact number of instant fatalities was 29,999; which is an annoying figure, one short of a neat 30,000 that our OCD just hates and equally, as a nation, we hate ourselves for initially thinking it.

'We were rather lucky that there was a strong easterly wind that drove the fallout into the sea. We'd learn it was a crude device planted by terrorists who desperately wanted to shake the yoke of urban civilisation.

'In the decade or so before, the Rural Independent Army (RIA) was responsible for numerous killings of city folk holidaying in the wilds. They were vigorously against the sins of modern society and shared a special hatred for bodily modification, preferring the natural state of things; but it didn't really matter in the grand scheme of things.

'At that exact moment on the bus, all the forgotten information I'd seemingly stored in my subconscious flooded back to me and I knew exactly what to do.

''Guys, get home and sheltered', I addressed the bus. 'Go to your families', which sounded far too ominous so I added, 'and await the authorities' instructions'.

'Of course, I had no idea what the authorities would do or even if the authorities were alive.

'Relieved that someone had taken charge, everyone filed off the bus politely. I looked up and down the road and saw a Charge-Station further up. There was one car there, that had toppled still attached to the charge cable. As I entered, I saw window glass strewn across the shop floor along with half the shelf content.

''We're closed!', a shrill voice shouted from behind the counter. A young woman, with a shaking finger pointed at the door, repeated herself - 'we're closed' - before adding 'sir'.

''Go home', I told her, 'and take what you can.'

'The mere suggestion that recent events might have left the system of collecting money in exchange for goods temporarily redundant was enough for her to assume an air of frightened indignation.

''I don't finish until 5. I'll let you make one purchase.'

''Ma'am,' I'd never said that to anyone in my life, but in the face of nuclear holocaust I felt manners were extremely important.

''Ma'am, I'll give you £50 if you let me take as much as I want. But be aware, I'm giving you essentially worthless paper - what will become an historic artefact of the institution known in the past as banks.'

'For some unknown reason, I could suddenly dictate the future and with the confidence it inspired, I bunny-eared the word 'banks'. She accepted and, her eyes on me like a hawk, I piled bottled water and cereal bars and I left the shop and began the long trek home. I never saw that £50 again.

'We were very fortunate that Mr and Mrs Crane next door had a cellar. My wife and your mother, insisted on taking tea bags. They were graciously accepted, and once Mr Crane's jellyfishing equipment had been moved upstairs, the cellar was made habitable for four people and there we sat, quietly sipping. We used duct tape to seal any drafts, as instructed by the protocol announcement on Mrs Crane's kitchen radio, and we awaited further instructions.

'I have to say the emergency government was very good. London was a bit of a mess, but Birmingham and Manchester City Council sat down and reallocated provisions to the Home Counties, sending in the provincial garrisons to bring in survivors. Reading and Brighton took in a fair few refugees running from the fallout. Having said that, those travelling to Brighton were severely delayed by a southern gale and radioactive rain strikes when a westerly brought the weakened fallout back inland. Even France and Spain helped, diverting their aerial fire-fighting units to put out the blazes before it reached the M25 ring road.

'We all did our bit donating tinned food and clothing to the refugee camps. Ireland brought barge after barge of intensively grown rice from the mega greenhouses of the Irish marshes. The de facto government issued mass produced protective overalls and, being fit and healthy, your mother and I volunteered for the Radioactive Clean-up Scheme. The support was so massive we only had to clean a small section of Twyford high street.'

The young teenage girl looks almost disappointed at her father.

'And that's it? So, no fear, no fight back, no cannibalism or roaming packs of wild dogs?'

Her father smiles at her.

'No, nothing of the sort. We picked ourselves up, kept calm and carried on as usual. Of course, the economy took a hit - London was uninhabitable and, as a nation, we thought it was a good opportunity for a new start and a new direction.

'We went into hyperinflation for a few years after, so the government converted monetary tax into labour tax and we all had to volunteer an hour of our time each week to various local tasks that mainly involved gardening and farming.

'And after a while we were back on our feet. I went to work as usual, only this time I grew my own blueberries for the midweek treat. I think we rather surprised the RIA with our reaction. They didn't bother us after that.'

'So all that came of the attack was... a spring clean-up?'

Her father shrugs, 'We just got on with it really.'

# About our authors

Norman Miller

A Brighton-based writer, working in plays and poetry - but also writing the occasional short story, perhaps in preparation for the day he decides to embark on 'A Novel'. He has written and produced short plays at the Brighton Fringe Festival, which were nominated for the _Award for Outstanding Local Talent_. A selection of his poetry was shortlisted for the _2015 Erbacce Prize_ and he was long-listed for the Bridport Prize in 2014 for _Flash Fiction_.

normanmiller.net

Tom Leins

Tom is a disgraced ex-film critic from Paignton, UK. His short stories have been published by the likes of Akashic Books, Shotgun Honey, Near to the Knuckle, Out of the Gutter, Litro and Spelk. He is currently working on his first novel - _Boneyard Dogs_.

thingstodoindevonwhenyouredead.wordpress.com

Lizzie Clark

The mysterious Lizzie Clark has disappeared without a trace...

Stephen Oram

Stephen writes near-future fiction intended to provoke debate. As a teenager he was heavily influenced by the ethos of punk. In his early twenties he embraced the squatter scene and was part of a religious cult, briefly. He did some computer stuff in what became London's silicon roundabout and is now a civil servant with a gentle attraction to anarchism. He is the Author in Residence at Virtual Futures and has published two novels and several shorter pieces of work.

stephenoram.net

Aviva Treger

Aviva, from Hastings, went to university at UCL London where she studied Ancient History. Later, she trained as an actor at Questors Theatre before returning to Hastings. Now she bases her fiction around various aspects of Hastings' peculiar mythologies and legends - both real and invented.

@Aviva321

Maria C. McCarthy

Maria is a poet, writer of short fiction and memoirs, performer, social networker and workshop leader . Her first poetry collection, _strange fruits_ , is published by Cultured Llama in association with WordAid, with all profits going to Macmillan Cancer Support. Her first collection of short stories, _As Long as it Takes_ , about first and second-generation Irish women living in England, was published in February 2014. Writing as Maria Bradley, she was a regular columnist on BBC Radio 4's Home Truths.

medwaymaria.co.uk

Nina Lindmark Lie

Nina is a short wee lass born and raised in Northern Sweden (at 64' degrees north to be more exact). She relocated to Scotland where she studied for at the University of Glasgow. Now a happy English Language graduate and alumni of the GU creative writing society, she attempts to catch elusive words on paper, which sometimes shapes itself into something readable. So far her read-ables can be found at England's Future History and the National Flashfiction Day anthology 2016.

ninalindmarklie.wordpress.com

Lisa Farrell

Lisa studied for a BA in English at York University, then took the MA in Prose Fiction at the University of East Anglia, the oldest and most prestigious Creative Writing programme in the UK. After graduating in 2006 she worked as a bookseller, wrote a series of (unpublished) fantasy novels, and started a family. Since 2013 she has also worked freelance for Fantasy Flight Games, writing fiction for inclusion in titles such as _The Worlds of Android_ and Star Wars RPG supplements. She is currently working on a new fantasy novel.

@lisamrc8

Florence Bean

Florence is our youngest writer, aged just 16 years old at time of publication. She's currently studying English Literature as one of her A Levels and was hoping to improve her writing skills by practising for a few competitions.

Emma Levin

Emma is a massive fan of sci-fi short stories from the sixties, and the future as imagined in the eighties. She's had short stories included in small anthologies _The Mays_ and _The Failed Anthology_ , magazines like _The ISIS_ , _Notes_ , _Thunder_ and _Neon_ , and numerous recycling bins. Her favourite future-Britain is the one depicted in Terry Gilliam's _Brazil_ (1985).

Miriam A. Averna

Miriam writes horror, dark, mystery, twisted or just plain weird stories. She lives in Milton Keynes with her two cats and partner, but is originally from the South of England and was born in sunny Sicily. She enjoys writing flash fiction, short stories and has just completed her medical mystery novel - _No Cure for Fear_. She began writing when she was a kid and is an avid reader of fiction. Her stories have featured in a number of publications including Canadian magazine _Devolution Z_ in August 2015.

miriamaaverna.wordpress.com

Sarah Scott

Sarah is Resident Curator at HitRECord, a collaborative production company run by Joseph Gordon-Levitt. This position allows her to lead and direct creative projects worked on collaboratively by many artists and writers from all over the world. She is also an editor and regular contributor at _One for One Thousand_ , an online literature magazine where she reads, edits and writes 1,000 word stories. Her short story _Keeping Count_ was published in _A Time and Place Quarterly_. She is currently working on review and revisions of her first novel, _Wovoka's Dance_ , an excerpt of which was recently published in _Hamilton Arts and Letters RAVE_.

sarahscottwrites.com

Dave Beach

Dave grew up in deepest darkest West Wales, a land rich in Celtic myths and legends that have inspired a whole host of storytellers across the centuries. Competing in both Welsh and English, this Anglo-Welsh writer enjoys writing a diverse range of poetry, short stories and scripts, and is currently rambling on about witches and smallpox in his latest novel. He dreams of becoming a celebrated author and scriptwriter.

portfoliodavebeach.wordpress.com

Editor, Jonathan Brown

Jonathan is an award-winning writer of short stories, films, theatre and radio plays based in York. His recent short stories have been published in the _Jam_ anthology (mardibooks) and on a number of website and magazines like _Platform for Prose_ , _Under the Fable_ and _Paragraph Planet_. His day job is as an editor and content strategist and he's worked as a journalist since before the internet (almost). Oh, and he also runs England's Future History.
