Part One by Ruth Smyth
Nigel stretched as he lent back in his chair. His bones creaked. Simulated gravity is easier on the limbs, but it doesn’t stop the ageing process.
“Hey Nige, looking forward to your leaving drinks later,” Eva leaned around the monitor and smiled at him, “how does it feel to have hit the big seven-oh?”
“Pretty good. I have a space booked on C-deck and I plan to spend at least 80% of my day floating around drinking cocktails.”
“Not going straight for Cryo then?”
“Nah, mug’s game that. Who wants to trust a bunch of strangers to wake you up in 73,000 years’ time?”
The loud dong of a message made them both jump. It was from the sanitation department. IT support needed from someone with Earth tech experience. Nigel sighed, “Off to Y-deck then I suppose.”
“Ugh, good luck,” said Eva, “and don’t get stuck, your leaving drinks are at 3 sharp.”
The shiny grey lift doors swooshed open and Nigel was hit with the slightly stale air of the lower decks. The recyclers must be set to a slower pace down here. A small crowd was gathered around a desk up ahead. They all looked about twelve to Nigel. They had the long gangly limbs of the space born.
“Thank goodness you’re here,” said a stressed looking woman in team leader green, ”we don’t know what to make of this.”
She led him to the crowd and the young person in the centre swung their seat around. They looked embarrassed by all the attention.
“What’s the problem?” Nigel asked.
The team leader answered, “Kaya here got a very odd email.”
“It came this morning,” Kaya’s voice was soft, “there’s a file we don’t recognise.”
Nigel leaned in to look at the screen, his corneas had been replaced, but they still weren’t quite perfect. The icon looked like a tiny manilla folder with a metal zip. The sight of it immediately took him back to his first job on Earth, about 10 years before the Departure. He’d started in IT support for a water company. They’d had strict security protocols after the Wars. A zip file was as likely to contain a virus as anything useful.
“What is it? Did I break something?” Kaya asked.
“No, just an old way to compress files. I’ve got some old software I can use.” Lucky they’d caught him on his last day.
The unzipped file was dated with yesterday’s date 02/02/2089. He scanned for viruses then opened it.
“What is that?” Kaya asked, “It looks like a VR game.”
It was a photograph of a landscape. The sky was a washed out blue, the ground a mix of sandy soil and scruffy looking greenery. It reminded Nigel of his native Bedfordshire. But that couldn’t be possible. Not taken yesterday. This must be a fake. A wind up. Someone having fun on his last day. He ran the visual deepfake detector: Genuine.
“That looks like Earth,” said the team leader.
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Chapter 2 By Andrew Stock
“Bedfordshire. Yesterday?” But thats impossible Nigel and you know it. “Now come on drink up. This is supposed to be a celebration.” Eva passed Nigel another rum and smiled as she downed her own drink with a toss of her head wiping her mouth with the back of her hand before signalling the bar tender to bring another round. “Besides its probably just a glitch in the system. You know we get them sometimes.”
“Yes old data caught in the network old man. forget about it and enjoy your last moments here before they revoke your pass and you are cast off to ‘C’ deck. Claudette winked and raised her glass towards him, “You lucky swine.” She said, “I’m so jealous.” Arturo leaned towards him and whispered drunkenly his words too loud to be unheard.
“Claudette is not so far behind you I think. Perhaps she will have herself transported to ‘C’ deck and then you will have someone who may want to enjoy more than just a cocktail eh?” He laughed lasciviously ignoring Claudette’s screech of indignation and reached for the tray of drinks that had just arrived. “To Nigel.” He slurred, “To cocktails and nights of passion on ‘C’ deck.” Despite the colouring of his cheeks with embarrassment Nigel smiled at this group of mis-fits, colleagues who had for many years been the closest thing he had known as friends. Now because of his impending retirement this too would cease to be, as connection amongst work groups must end immediately upon work termination unless of course they too chose ‘C’ deck on their retirement. He sipped the rum quickly hiding the flush that burned his cheeks as he thought of Claudette joining him for cock-tails.
“Nigel Hardiman?” The heavy voice was accompanied by the firm grip to his arm, “Would you accompany me. You are wanted in Command.”
“Command?” Nigel looked at the heavyset figure dressed in regulation blue. “There must be some mistake. I am retired.”
“No mistake Sir. If you could follow me. Now!” He turned sharply on his heel walking through the sea of parting bodies. With barely time to acknowledge his friends, who looked at him with a variation of concern and fear Nigel rushed after the tall figure struggling to match the lengthy stride.
finally arriving outside the blue door of command the guard pointed at a straight backed chair pushed hard against the wall.
“Wait here.” Within moments the door opened again and Nigel was led efficiently into a large office and faced by a small man seated behind an opulent looking desk.
“You know who I am?” The voice was deeper than the body portrayed and demanded instant response.
“Yes Sir Ardo Mecuzio, head of intelligence and security.” The small figure nodded
“Yes. Now Mr Hardiman what do you know of the strange message?” Nigel wished he hadn’t had the fourth brandy and wiped a sweaty hand over his face. “Well?” Nigel jumped at the raised voice and scrabbled for the correct answer.
“Erm not much really. Probably just a glitch, old data. This sometimes happens. After all….”
“No! Do not treat me as a fool.” Mecuzio looked down at the screen set into the black onyx of the desk before continuing. “Perhaps you can tell me why it is that we have had seven of these strange messages in the last hour, all of them containing photograph images reporting to have been taken in the last week and all of them in the Bedfordshire area an area you know so well?” Nigel stared blankly at the furious man confused by what he was hearing.
“I dont know. It’s not possible. Earth was destroyed 60 years ago in the final conflict…” Ardo Mecuzio steepled his fingers beneath his chin and blew a long slow breath which echoed in the stillness of the room.
“Then explain to me why each message received began with the words… Nigel Hardiman assemble a team. Save us?”
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Chapter 3 by John Broadhouse
Nigel was speechless for a few moments, his mind was spinning - why was he targeted? Who were they? Save them from what? It didn’t make any sense.
“I’m waiting,” barked Ardo, “I want answers now. Whoever they are they have broken into our secure channel using an old system which should be impossible to do - we need to find them.”
“I honestly don’t know who they are, but the photos of Bedfordshire, yes, I vaguely remember them, but I’m going back 62 years, I was only a boy then.” Staring closely at a building in one of the photos Nigel’s memory took a jolt. “That’s where I lived. These photos have been altered, those trees and hedges should be withered, not green and lush, the effects of global warming changed that. Yes, I remember the stifling heat, the fires…”.
“Enough!” shouted Ardo. “I will assign a team to assist you in tracking down these transmissions as I can see you have no idea who they are. So, for now you are reinstated, your retirement is put on hold, go and get me results … and close the door behind you”
Nigel liked the idea of being reinstated, it would give him a sense of purpose, especially tracking down the phantom emails, and having a team as well: what a bonus.
The first task was to find the location the emails where sent from which would be easy to find, as the starship he was assigned to had all the latest equipment. He had a hunch that it would be Mars, as prior to the destruction of Earth all the major countries had a base there to house dignitaries. ‘That’s human nature for you’, thought Nigel, ‘the governments knew the end was near, they pretended the floods, heatwaves and volcanic activity could be contained but they hadn’t counted on the depletion of the ozone layer which hastened the destruction of Earth and shortened the timeframe for larger colonies on Mars.
“We have a fix on the transmission location”, stated Zen, interrupting Nigel’s train of thought, “it’s from an N-Class spacecraft heading towards the Orion star cluster.”
“What do we know about N-Class?” enquired Nigel, “and how long would it take to intercept it”?
“The N-Class is a secret Russian spaceship, so details are very limited, but we do know it’s designed to carry many passengers. It’s not the fastest spaceship so I estimate interception in 14 days.”
Nigel handed his report to Ardo and waited for his reaction.
“Russians! This makes the task complicated, the diplomatic status on Mars is at present a bit fragile, all the countries want a united governing body apart from Russia who is spoiling for a reason to veto their decision. If we go in heavy handed with this N-Class it will give the Russians all the ammunition they need. Intercept it but don’t cause an incident. Do I make myself clear?” commanded Ardo.
On the way back to his quarters Nigel made a detour to the bar for a stiff drink, where he met Eva.
“How did it go?” enquired Eva, “Are you in trouble?”
“Not exactly, but I can’t talk about it - top secret”, joked Nigel.
Why would a Russian N-Class want him to form a team and rescue them? Why wouldn’t they use the Russians on Mars to rescue them? how did they know his name and location? He tried to think back to his stay on Mars when his family were housed there. He never did find out what his dad did, he only knew he worked for a government research department - maybe there was a link?” He shrugged his shoulders.
“Are you cold?”, asked Eva,” you look a bit distant, must have a lot on your mind.”
‘If you only knew’, thought Nigel.
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Chapter 4 by Joy E. Wilkinson
Ping! Another email notification. Nigel sighed and opened it. Yet another note from Elon wanting an update.
“Where are we on X-cess? Have you sorted the storyline yet?”
He was going to reply that he was still working on it but Elon always wanted everything done yesterday.
“Going well,” he dictated. “Have added the Russian connection and father mystery. Need further detail on alternative storylines.” Short and sweet, that was how Elon liked his messages.
Nigel had always wanted to work on computer games. Ever since the early days of the Nintendo wii, with its open sand box Zelda games, he had wanted to develop something equally expansive. See what he did there? Another eX word. Elon was obsessed with them. He had wanted to use X-scape as the latest name but the snow dome people had the ownership sewn up pretty tight. X-cess was okay though, it was a name that left possibilities open.
The target market had changed over the years. In the past it was all unwashed teenage boys in basements obsessed with never ending role playing games. Now those boys, and some girls, had grown up and retired and wanted to use their pensions to relive their teenage years. He could not blame them, who wanted to live in the real world when virtual reality worlds offered so many more opportunities?
He looked out of the window at the Bedfordshire countryside. Of course it was not a window in the old sense. Most people set their window portals to show views of a tropical island paradise, or endless cat videos. But he preferred an escape from the virtual world and had his set on the current view outside his home. The rolling grassy hills and trees clothed in leafy greens of his early years had been replaced by an otherworldly landscape that looked more like Mars than Earth. Huge white domes covered much of the land, providing an artificial world protecting people from the high temperatures of summer and the endless rains and floods of winter. Between the domes lay a wasteland of dust and cracked earth and the abandoned remains of the old East West railway. People still ventured outside the domes but it took effort to pull on an environmental safety suit. Why bother when you could stay in an air conditioned space with everything you needed just a quick phone tap away. And why risk an encounter with one of the wild tribes that lived in the hidden spaces between the domes?
And for those who needed to escape, there was always X-world, part of Elon’s ever expanding companies under the X umbrella. It was a mix of old tech computer games appealing to nerds who thought using keyboards was still fun, right through to the totally immersive virtual reality
games made possible with X-Tech suits and helmets controlled completely with brain waves. Pricey bits of kit but it was not as if people had much else to spend their money on these days.
There was a knock on the door and it opened. “Hey,” said Eva, “time for lunch.” One day he would tell his current wife that she had a starring role in his latest game. But perhaps not yet. They set off along a long corridor, doors hiding workers on one side, while the other opened to a huge atrium containing luscious greenery and the sight of colourful drone birds flying overhead. Down below them, a buzz of conversation rose up as people made their way between the different feed stations.
“Soy King burgers?” “Yes, why not.”
Nigel’s watch buzzed. Another email notification. He flipped his wrist to activate his ear implant and a familiar voice broadcast in his head, “It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.”
Finally, the message he had been waiting for all this time.
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CHAPTER 5 (Caroline Coleman)
Eva noticed Nigel’s expression change as recognition turned to relief. “Everything OK?”, she asked, and he nodded absent-mindedly.
“Come on – I’m hungry”, she said, and typed in the numbers for their burgers. Behind her, she could hear him mumbling something that sounded like “Of course, two plus two …”. He seemed confused, looking around him as if the surroundings were unfamiliar to him. Then, with no warning, he turned and walked away, just as a small white robot, with a faded Co-op logo on its head, arrived clutching two enormous burgers, dripping with barbecue mealworm sauce and artificial animal fat.
“I hope you enjoy your meal. How was my delivery performance today?” it chirped.
“Piss off!”, said Eva.
After lunch, Eva walked back to work with some of her friends. Julia had listened to Eva’s complaints about Nigel, head tilted to one side. “You know how intense it can get when Big Brother Elon’s on your back and jumping at you for ideas”, she’d reassured Eva, “I guess that message just suddenly gave him some inspiration. Sure he’ll be there as normal when we get back”.
But Nigel was not in the office when they returned. Eva kind of missed his presence, even though by mutual agreement they sat in different hot desk areas, trying to stifle the incessant jokes about him sleeping with the boss.
As usual, she watched the weekly Eloncast, wondering how a man could have such ultimate confidence in his own superiority. Nigel wasn’t like that. He was a hard worker, and he always came up with the goods eventually, but Eva knew how tough he found it. She knew how he would end up staring blankly at his window portal, as if there must be something new, something he hadn’t seen in that view a thousand times before. She wondered again about his strange departure at lunchtime, and the look on his face, as if he’d finally figured out the answer to Life, the Universe and Everything was not 42. Why hadn’t he come back after lunch? It was going to be awkward if she had to mark him down as absent without prior permission. And what was he doing? Was he alright?
When the afternoon finally came to a close, Eva headed for home – a simulation, fabricated to achieve a perfect blend of the houses Nigel and she had been forced to leave when the domes came. Unfortunately, that meant it had also managed to bring together all the worst imperfections of both houses, a source of considerable friction at times.
Even before she opened the door, her ears were assaulted by strange, crashing music that she had never heard before. The soundproofing was supposed to be the best in the world, but it clearly wasn’t familiar with this. Going through to their main room, she saw a vintage plastic CD case and a box of old paper tickets tied together with string. Nigel had somehow persuaded the home management system to generate an old fashioned school desk and there he sat on a wooden stool reading what looked to Eva like an old book.
She stared, taken aback, fear twisting in her stomach, and then, very carefully, asked “What’s that”?
Part 6 by Joan Lightning
“What’s that?” Eva pointed at the book in Nigel’s hands.
“It’s a lie,” he replied, without moving.
“What is? The book? Fiction usually is.”
“Indeed it is. The question is, what is real? If you know how to look,” He shook the book without taking his eyes off it—"This shows the truth that the government doesn’t want you to know.”
Eva bit back her instinctive retort. Calling him a conspiracy theorist would help no one. Where had this come from? She had been certain he was a normal, intelligent man. Why this sudden descent into—
“You don’t believe me? See for yourself. There’s another book on the table.”
Eva looked at the table and sure enough, there was a solid, printed book, with paper and a cover.
“Where did you find even one book? Let alone two?” she asked carefully, not moving although her fingers twitched, strangely, unexpectedly aching to pick up the paperback and smell it.
What kind of sicko am I? she thought.
“I kept some hidden when the government decreed the destruction of all remaining paper books, and banned all written hard-copy media. I loved my books and that I couldn’t bring myself to destroy them all, so I kept a few favourites hidden for all these years. Safe, locked away, but I read them as often as I could. Often enough to realise the truth.”
His words were almost heretical, but her hand went towards the book, touched it. It was in her hand and she held it to her nose. It smelled wonderful.
“In my youth I learned to lose myself in a good book,” Nigel continued. “But the message I got today was something I’ve been waiting for. ‘The clock was striking thirteen’. It’s from the opening of 1984. I won’t say who sent the message, but I knew they would contact me soon. Open the book.”
Eva slipped a finger under the cover and revealed the title page – Animal Farm.
“Start reading,” Nigel said, “But don’t let the story carry you away. Do the opposite. Try to look around the pages without taking your eyes off the words. Use the corners of your eyes. Can you see it?”
Eva read, trying to stay aware of the physical page and the words she was looking at. Light flickered across the page, a hint of movement at the corner of her eyes. A whiff of pig.
She turned her head to look, but saw only the room. Of course, only the room. What else? And yet, somewhere distant, she heard a distinct ‘oink’.
“What was that?”
“An experiment. An experiment that went very wrong. Something unleashed on the world by people who thought they could control it, but it didn’t work as they expected. Wild nano-algorithms.”
“Nano-algorithms?” Eva repeated.
Nigel put the book down and sighed. “Do you remember the mad times before the collapse? Conspiracies and misinformation and flat earthers? The rise of alt-facts and the chaos and destruction as people who genuinely believed they were defending democracy and liberty went on rampage after rampage, destroying everything?”
Eva nodded. “Like the sort of information ‘bubbles’ that created confirmation bias and led to people believing in pizzagate and things like that?”
“The algorithms were supposed to give each of us a perfect world. They watched what you bought and then helpfully guided you towards things they thought you would enjoy. They recorded the content you interacted with and sent you more of the same..”
He looked at her. “But they evolved, creating something more vigorous which escaped from the digital world and evolved to survive on paper and ink. The new breed clung to books, to printed words, and they recorded what sort of stories and articles you read and enjoyed, and tried to arrange the world around you to your taste.”
“The real world?” Eva asked carefuly, wondering if she was close enough to the door to make a run for it.
“Exactly. Only these could mould reality itself for each person. And it happened to everyone. We are all living in the worlds we expected, but those worlds could not coexist, which led to the destruction and wars.”
He picked up the book. “And that was why they banned printed material around the entire world, to try to contain the effect. And that may be how we can fix everything.”
Eva stared at him. “You’re mad,” she whispered. “Completely mad.”
Chapter 7
Veronica Sims
Nigel held the copy of 1984 gently in his hands.
He remembered that there had been a small group of people in Wilden who had refused to go along with the mass exodus from Earth to Mars in 2039. They had declined to believe all was lost, and insisted the planet could still be saved. People called them ‘Flat Earthers.’ One of them had been his old geography teacher: Jack Starling. He’d been friends with Jack’s son, Eli.
He found Eva. She looked worried.
‘No, it is the system that we are living in that is wrong,’ he began, ignoring any gentle introduction to his thoughts. ‘Humans didn’t evolve never to have opposition, to live out their lives in a so-called perfect setting. Because we are all different, but we must learn to live together despite those differences. Eva, we know it isn’t right. The way we live. We are turning into the robots that designed it all. Fiction Books showed us alternative lives, things we could work toward or reject. People like Elon Junior seem to believe we all think as he does, only, of course, he believes that his aspirations and plans, and those of his father before him, are far superior to those of the average Joe. But even he, in reality, just left it to the bots.
‘And so? What does that mean now, today, for us?’ asked Eva. Nigel noted a note of impatience in her voice.
Well, it certainly means that most of us were, ’lead up the garden path’ as my old Gran used to say. We were convinced that having everything exactly the way we thought we wanted it was a clever idea. But they weren’t even our ideas.’
She nodded.
‘To do that the Elontypes had to convince us that life on Earth had gone, been totally destroyed. That there weren’t different lifestyles, opinions, or ideas. Those things that we read about in our beloved books. Our history, our evolution…Books like 1984 had been written to warn us. Our new masters didn’t trust any books, so they all had to go.’
‘Are you saying that maybe Earth still has some life?’ Eva asked. She spoke slowly, almost appearing to force the question out of her mouth.
‘I know those pictures are from near where I lived as a child. There are changes, things have moved on, of course, but I am sure that is what I have been seeing - Bedfordshire 2089.’
‘But the message asks for help. To be saved.’
‘That is true. Something else must have happened. I need to contact them without the Superbots and Elon Junior tracing me. I need to get to the truth.’
They sat in silence for a while. Thinking.
‘What system did they use to get in touch?’ asked Eva
‘Microsoft 13 Pro.’
‘Can you access it? It must have some security system that you could employ to stop the bots from knowing what you are doing. Anyway, they won’t imagine that you would know how to use anything that old.’
‘I suppose it is a chance I have to take…so much for retirement!!’
Chapter 8 by Rosemary Ostley
So many questions, so little information. God, thought Nigel, where to start? He wasn’t sure whether his skills were up to hacking an old Microsoft system and he realised he would be taking on artificial intelligence, not just elite programmers. Time for some lateral thinking first.
He’d been born in 2019, a year before the first global pandemic, but he vaguely remembered what the world economy had become by the time he found himself relocated to this colony. He badly needed to trace information about that period – instinct told him the Russians were busy taking advantage of the chaos.
He quickly found basic information but wasn’t sure where it had been culled from. The word ‘Wikipedia’ kept cropping up and prompted old feelings of scepticism. He carried on digging, then all of a sudden, a claxon sounded and ‘CLASSIFIED’ was spread across the screen in pulsating red letters. He’d just asked to see a document entitled ‘The lockdown letters’, billed as a compilation of letters a grandmother had sent to her granddaughter during the lockdown. The noise of the claxon brought two stern-looking individuals to his door.
‘What are you looking for?’ one asked.
‘It’s part of my research’, gabbled a somewhat shaken Nigel, ‘Mr Mecuzio has tasked me with finding an answer to the emails that keep arriving, and to do that I need to look at relevant background material. The collection of letters came up when I entered my parameters.’
‘Come with us’, barked the guard, ‘Mr Mecuzio needs to know about this.’
After a good deal of haggling and some choice language, Nigel was finally given the requisite security clearance to access the information he wanted. He returned to his computer, silently wishing both Mecuzio and his henchmen a painful death and found the letters. They were interesting, but they didn’t get him any further until he searched for the name Pookie and up came a document with a tag saying, ‘TOP SECRET, for cleared personnel only.’ Nigel quickly scanned it then settled down to read it in depth.
The grandmother who had written to Pookie was, in fact, ex security services living in a care home in order to keep tabs on a fellow resident, calling himself Gordon, a Russian agent. He was living as an eccentric piano-player and to explain his slight trace of an accent told his fellow residents he had been born in Poland. When Pookie published her late grandmother’s letters, a journalist had got in touch with her claiming that ‘Gordon’ was a Russian spy who, from the anonymous comfort of the care home had been hacking into classified British government systems and planting false information, fomenting fear and dissent amongst the population. The grandmother had died suddenly during the pandemic, reportedly from a brain aneurysm, but she’d managed to provide the government with enough evidence to enable ‘Gordon’’s arrest, further souring the already fractious relationship between the two countries. Elon Jr took advantage of the volatile atmosphere and started to sow the seeds of his plan using fear and misinformation. Bloody hell, thought Nigel, no wonder Mecuzio wasn’t keen for me to dig all this up – he knows!
Implementing a little program he’d devised to shield him from nosy parkers, Nigel searched for Microsoft 13 Pro, the name ‘Pookie’ coming up in several of the results. ‘Now, there’s a coincidence’ murmured Nigel.