twenty first century

2222

~ tidalscribe.com ~ 11 Comments

Welcome to the 2222 British Isles literary study cruise. We will soon be passing by the tiny islands of St Catherine’s, Boscombe, Pokesdown, Hengistbury and of course our destination Southbourne. If the seas stay calm we will be landing for our visit to the National Trust property, the newly restored Tidalscribe House. Has anyone actually been on land before? No I thought not, make sure you take your land nausea tablets as soon as we get the berthing go ahead and before you leave the lecture theatre.

The twenty third century has brought many exciting discoveries, not least of which was the decoding of ‘The Internet’ which turned out to be real, not a myth at all, with the discovery of more historic documents than we could have dreamed of. For students of literature, just as exciting was the unearthing of the ‘voices’ of the early twenty first century when people still lived on land. At last it has been proved that far from ambling mindlessly towards global disaster, vast numbers of ordinary citizens were intercommunicating with the rest of the world and trying to counteract the ignorance of bumbling world leaders.

A lot of citizens wrote what they called ‘blogs’ and ‘websites’. As well as exchanging information they had a highly developed culture of writing, often issuing books on primitive hand held electronic devices.

Today’s lecture is about an author who has not come down to us through history, but was discovered by sheer accident. When at last in recent years a select group of scientists and academics were allowed on land, they chose an island that seemed to have largely escaped the destructive storms of the twenty first and twenty second centuries. The 2029 forced emergency evacuation of the then south coast left houses as if the owners had just stepped out. In one of the houses was found a vast collection of paper books apparently all written by Janet Gogerty. Just as our ancestors did, the scientists tried an internet search and discovered Janet Gogerty had a website called Tidalscribe. She had written thousands of blogs as well as ‘publishing’ many novels and short story collections. If her writing is to be believed, her life and times were much stranger than we have imagined, but her novel Three Ages of Man is uncannily accurate in describing ‘the future’, our life and times. This is the book you will be studying in detail on your degree course.

When we enter the house you will see the author’s book collection in hermetically sealed cases, but the National Trust has preserved the house as close as possible to the way it was left. On her desk sits the antique computer, beside it a half full cup of what is believed to have been coffee, not a banned substance then. Also handwritten notes on paper, faded and barely legible in a strange script, which leads us to wonder if they were intended to be transcribed as her next book or were some mystery message to the future. We will never know what happened to her after she left her home, was she one of the minority that survived?  

Friday Flash Fiction – Click and Collect

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I logged in on my dashboard computer – Friday 15th January 2040. I was getting a new work experience person today. It didn’t matter what day of the week they started, we worked seven days a week and every day was the same, though today was going to be rather different. Their name was Hope, sixteen years old, no idea if they would be a boy, girl or other, I would have to wait and see how or if they self identified. Dressed in biohaz suits it was difficult to tell, so it didn’t much matter. What sort of name was Hope; parents must have been optimistic, must have been optimistic in the first place to have a baby in 2024.

‘Good morning Hope, welcome to the team, what the hell made you want to try this job?’

‘To get away from home, get outside.’

‘They all say that, outside’s not all it’s cracked up to be, every day’s much the same, but I have to tell you we have an NR7 to deal with first today, did they tell you about that in your on line induction?’

‘Nope, don’t think so, wasn’t really listening…’

‘I thought not, well you can back out now, it might not be very nice.’

‘No way, I’d have to go to the back of the jobs queue.’

‘NR7 means No Response for seven days, weekly food parcel still on front path and housebot has set off the alarm – no signs of life detected. We have to go in, it’s almost certain resident is dead, probably of old age.’

‘Whaat…’ came the gruff exclamation through their mask voice box.

‘I’ve seen a few cases. Rich relatives paid or bribed for them to be exempt from the euthanasia programme, unkindest thing they could have done, but I guess years ago they thought this would all be over and Granny would come round for tea again.’

‘Why would you want your Granny to come round, when you could see her on Omegazoom?’

‘So she could play with her grandchildren… oh never mind, let’s get on with this. According to our records all her family predeceased her, otherwise they would have notified us that she was not responding.’

Hope gazed out of the window of my solar powered vehicle as we turned into the ‘Granny’s’ street.

‘I’ve never been down a street before, we live in a tower block, those gardens look so pretty, how do they get them all the same?’

‘Gardenbots, programmed to create the sort of garden the average person wants to look out on. Ah, here we are, Click and Collect food box still out on the front path, regulation two metres from the front door. Only time residents are allowed out; to click on the box, collect it and take it indoors, but obviously you know all that.’

‘Yes, I always volunteer to go out in the corridor and collect ours.’

‘NR7 is the only time we are allowed to enter a private home, I had to sign out the entry device, let’s hope it works.’

I pointed and pressed the button and it showed entry code overridden. I pushed at the front door, but it didn’t give easily; we soon saw why and I thought my other half had a lot of pot plants. It was like a jungle, not that I have ever seen a jungle. Through the leaves emerged a four foot angular housebot. It was no use asking it what had happened, one of the outdated models that didn’t speak, programmed only for house maintenance, not companionship. It didn’t need to speak, I knew at this very moment it would be signalling back to base, alien human life detected. I quickly tapped my wrist phone to register with base my arrival here.

‘Okay Hope, I’ll go first into each room, starting with the front room.’

Obviously the housebot was programmed to stay out of the little old fashioned sitting room; in the corner was the skeleton of a tree, beneath it a carpet of dead pine needles and under that thick dusty layer could just be discerned some grey shapes that had once been Christmas parcels.

Hope pointed in horror as if this might be the body we were looking for.

‘What is thaat?’

‘It was once a Christmas Tree.’

‘A what?’

‘Before your time, a relic from the last Christmas of 2020.’

I felt a lump in my throat. I remembered that last Christmas. We never did go round to Granny’s to have a  ‘proper Christmas when things are better’ – it seems I was not the only child who didn’t get Granny’s presents that year.

We moved through the kitchen, all neat and tidy; the housebot would have cleared away any clues as to when the resident had last eaten.  Out in a little conservatory was another housebot free area, the plants had run riot and on a table covered in cobwebs, a closer inspection revealed a half built Lego set, like I used to play with. But the smiling faces of the Lego people could not be seen under the thick coat of dust.

‘Wouldn’t she have been a bit old to be playing with Lego?’

‘I imagine that was the last time her grandchildren came round, she left the Lego out ready for them to play with next time, but next time never came.’

But Hope wasn’t listening, they had wrenched open the filthy patio door to gaze in wonder at the back garden and it was a wonderful display of colour to cheer us up. The rich relatives must have paid out an endowment long ago for a personal gardenbot.

Reluctantly I lead the way upstairs, the worst part of our job was still to come. I pushed open the bedroom door and there she was, lying tucked up in bed, the blank Omegazoom screen at an easy to see angle beside her. I wondered when was the last time she had spoken to anyone on the screen.

‘Well Hope, you should get your parents to check in to the home bidding, there will be a house and garden available in a week or so.’

‘Do you think we stand a chance, a real garden I could go out into?’

‘Tell them to get in quick before everyone else hears about it.’

No Time Like The Present

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There’s no time like the present, especially for authors. How long does the present last; a year, a week, a day, a second?

My first novel Brief Encounters of the Third Kind’ was set in the present, that was where I intended it to remain. I did not want to name a year; the characters lived in London and the 2005 bombings were still quite recent when I started writing, I did not want their story overshadowed by such a major event.

But first novels, especially long ones, take a while to write, to be read by others and edited. The present was fast becoming the past. World events were turning out differently to what most of us could ever have imagined and technology was racing ahead. My characters had mobile phones that took photos, they Skyped and went on Facebook, a few of them had SatNav. But they did not have smart phones, tablets, ipads, Kindles etc. and the last thing I wanted them to be able to do was Google their location or look up information on the internet with their smart phone; that would have wrecked the plot. More of the Twenty First Century passed by while I went down the traditional route of looking for agents. In the meantime I had written my second novel, Quarter Acre Block, a shorter straight forward family drama set firmly in 1964 and 1965. It became the first novel I published on Amazon Kindle.

I decided to stick to self publishing, Brief Encounters became a trilogy and I describe all three novels as being set in the early years of the Twenty First Century. As far as my characters are aware, they are living in the present and in a new century.

My work in progress was initially inspired by a local event during the Valentine night storm of 2014 and the novel should come to an end within 2014. All the places the wandering hero finds himself are real. But real places can present problems if your story takes place in the present; pity the author whose character goes shopping or works in BHS, no sooner is it published than the shops close down.

If you avoid ‘the present’ and set a year you still have to be on the alert. London and other cities have many familiar and iconic landmarks, but well known scenes can change dramatically. If you set your novel in a particular year, don’t have your hero enjoying the view from the top of The Shard before it has even been built, or the heroine after years away abroad, tearfully spotting the iconic cooling towers on the horizon that mean she is near home – the cooling towers that were demolished two years previously.

But there is no need to rely on your memory; what did authors do before the internet? Rush down to the library to search through old newspapers. Whether you are writing an historical novel or a millennial saga you can look up when Queen Victoria visited your local town, or what the weather was like in Portsmouth when your hero set sail for his solo trip round the world.

As for getting the future right, you will just have to wait and see; not many writers from the past got it completely right or completely wrong.