Please do not eat the grass

POETRY

It’s amazing to consider how far we’ve evolved, but while humans ‘protect’ our cousins in zoos, the great apes are observing us. There’s a reason smoking is banned at London Zoo, especially around the open-air enclosures…

How the residents of ZSL really feel about being humanity’s guests is further explored in Cyrus Song (available in paperback and e-book formats).

An infestation of the Cnut

POETRY

I share my studio with a fictional dog, chicken, and cat. Recently I got a new bed, and found there was barely enough room to share it with the camel who moved in at the same time as the futon. Beneath those packing crates there’s another cat, called Canute, or Cnut for short…

MY CAT IS A CNUT

Like sand in the vagina, the poetic literary voices continue to trouble Paula Nancy Millstone Jennings.

Dressed in nom de plo͞omij

POETRY

A bowl of Petunias once wrote…

GREEN INFERNO PRAYER

Humpback whale found in Amazon rainforest (but no bowl of petunias (and I know it was a sperm whale in the book))

Paula Nancy Millstone Jennings, fear me and my poetic pseudonym.

Songs from a singular lung

MICRO FICTION

I blew into the breathalyser, like a blade of grass between my thumbs. I didn’t know what animal sound I was making, but whatever beast I’d summoned was now approaching…

Still tied with instrument strings

FICTION

Has anyone been to The Tower of London recently? Were the ravens still there? Because it seems The Tories’ incompetent and corrupt fascist dictatorship has achieved at least one thing: The collapse of democracy into deadly farce. The collected corvids on the Tower lawns could surely do a better job of governing than the incumbent economic murderers in Parliament.

Sometimes the easiest means of self-expression is to write a simple story, in the hope that someone reads it in preference to listening. This is one I wrote some time ago, when I had a musical score, but the wrong instruments to play it…

Darkroastedblend.com

TYPEWRITER: A MUSICAL INSTRUMENT WITH KEYS

This was a suggestion slip posted to The Unfinished Literary Agency, poked through the letterbox I have installed in my bathroom mirror. On the outside, it’s just a normal cabinet, containing medicines and cosmetic products, with a mirror on the door. On the other side of the door, is a letterbox, through which people can post things into my mirror.

The Unfinished Literary Agency is a fictional publishing concern I run from a small room above Hotblack Desiato’s Islington office in Islington. The agency’s main function is to write the stories of others, who are unable to convey themselves, for whatever reason. This is one such:

I overheard someone talking about how intelligent crows are, and this got me to wondering what might happen if they evolved opposable thumbs. Being a writer, I set off to find out. It was sheer luck which put me in the right place at the right time, with the right people.

I was suffering one of the worst episodes of depression I care to remember, so I’d gone for a walk to Manor House Gardens, a National Trust property just outside the village where I lived. ‘Depression’, like ‘mental illness’ is a label with no real definition. The condition (and mine’s medically diagnosed as ‘chronic’, with anxiety at the top of the list), is as individual a cocktail of things, and as the individual with all of those things inside them. I tend not to talk about it, for fear that others judge me as having brought it all upon myself. Because I’m also an alcoholic. But if people were to read the nearest-to definitions (so far) of ‘depression’ and ‘alcohol dependence syndrome’, they might be able to find me in there somewhere, like they might in my own writing.

Writing is a cruel therapy, allowing one to exorcise one’s thoughts, yet still alone should no-one read them. It is a thankless task, but it’s nevertheless a coping mechanism for me. But I long to hear that others have heard me. By asking someone else to write this, I’m sort of putting myself in those readers’ places, to see if the story which comes back is worth reading, to see what might happen to me, and if I’ll be remembered when I’m gone.

Ideas for stories occur to writers all the time and in the most unexpected ways. It wasn’t that I lacked ideas so much as I couldn’t extrapolate some really good stories. A story is relatively easy to write but a really good story is something completely different and I was in the business of writing really good fiction.

My books weren’t selling well, but the fringes of undiscovered writers would always count sales in dozens, and although I was never a writer for the money, I was a bit destitute. In a way, I enjoyed the financial freedom which writing enabled me to enjoy. Although that was a beautifully philosophical way for an impoverished writer to think, it wasn’t putting electricity on my key, nor much food in my stomach. I had great visions of where my next novel would take me but it was a long way from being finished. And so it was that I was writing short pieces of both fiction and non-fiction for various magazines. The cheques were small but they kept me alive. My book was on hold and I was struggling for original material for the short story market: such a first world problem.

I sat on a bench and rolled a cigarette. To my surprise, I was joined by two old ladies. When I’d sat down, I was the only person around and I’d seated myself in the middle of the bench, so the ladies sat either side of me. “Excuse me,” I said, “I’m sorry.” I went to stand up.

“Don’t you excuse yourself young man,” said the lady to my left. “You were ‘ere first, so you sit yourself down and do whatever it was you was gunner do.” I couldn’t be sure if it was just a thought she’d absently broadcast, or if she had a sense of humour which was dry to the extreme. In any case, the irony was palpable. She continued: “You might ‘ear sumink interestin’” She gave my arm a gentle pinch, with finger and thumb.

“So, what was you sayin’ baat the crows?” The old dear to my right was speaking now.

“Well, I feed ’em in me garden, don’t I?

“Do ya?”

“Yeah, I told ya, ya daft car. Anyway, they’ve started bringin’ me presents ain’t they?”

“‘Ave they?”

“Yeah. Clever sods ain’t they?”

“Are they?”

“Well yeah, cos then I give ’em more grub don’t I?”

“Do ya?”

Of course, all corvids are noted for their intelligence: Crows, rooks, ravens, Jays and the like, show some quite remarkable powers of reasoning, and it was this that the two old girls were talking about, perhaps without at least one of them realising it. I excused myself and made my way back to my studio, smiling at anyone who caught my gaze.

The most wonderful thing is when people smile back at you. Those are the stories, right there.

Back at my desk, I skimmed quickly through the news feeds on my computer: Britain and the world were at pivotal points. What better time to leave?

Using some string I’d borrowed from a theory and a little imagination, I constructed a means of transport to a far future. My ship was powered by cats: and why not? Schrödinger’s cats to be precise, as a fuel source, wherein two possible physical states existed in parallel, inside each of an infinite number of sealed boxes. Effectively, it was powered by will. The upshot of this was that I could go absolutely anywhere I wished. A working knowledge of quantum mechanics would enable you to understand exactly how the engine worked. If you lack that knowledge, suffice to say that the engine worked. The only limitation was that I couldn’t go back in time. I could go forward and then back, to my starting point, but I couldn’t go back from there. Nevertheless, it was a dream machine.

A few years prior to this, I’d had a bit of a life episode and wondered, if I’d had my time machine then, would I have travelled forward to now, and would I believe what I saw? I paused for a few minutes to contemplate the paradox of myself appearing from the past: I didn’t turn up. Then I did something really inadvisable. It was a self-fulfilling exercise to see if I was vilified in a decision I’d made two years ago: I travelled forward to a time when I either should or could be alive, twenty years hence. I felt settled in my life, and if I was alive twenty years from now, I hoped I’d stayed there. If I was still around, I had to be very careful not to bump into myself. It was a cheat’s way of gaining benefit from hindsight. I set the destination and it was as much as I could do to not say, “Roads? Where we’re going, we don’t need, roads.”

Travelling through time is a curious sensation: I’m not sure quite how I expected it to feel, but it wasn’t at all like I could have expected. I suppose, scientifically, I expected all of the atoms in my body to be torn apart, as I accelerated at many times the speed of light. Eventually, my physical self would reassemble itself. I suppose I thought that I’d effectively be unconscious and as such, if anything went wrong, I would be oblivious to it. Not so, as it turns out.

It was like when I first tried magic mushrooms. At first, there was nothing. So I took some more. Then the first lot started to take effect. Time did indeed slow down, so that I could relish the sensation of reduced gravity. I can assure you, that what you may have heard about the senses being enhanced, is true. The hardest thing to control is the almost undeniable urge to burst into laughter. It is said that just before one dies from drowning, one experiences a euphoria: it was like that I suppose, and I felt a little lost. I’d almost forgotten that I’d taken a second dose. I wish I’d had some way of recording where I went but I don’t recall.

So then I found myself twenty years ahead, of time, and of myself. I kept a low profile but not so covert as to miss what was going on around me: the evidence of change over the intervening two decades.

The most striking thing, initially, was the absence of pavements and roads in my village. There was a single thoroughfare which carried both traffic and pedestrians. All of the cars were computer-driven, their passengers simply passengers. As I took this scenery in, a much more fundamental thing occurred to me: what I was witnessing was a harmony. There were no impatient drivers (or passengers) and no self-righteous pedestrians impeding the cars’ progress: the two existed together, in the same space. Who’d have thought it? The ‘little’ supermarket was still there: a necessary evil, but it was smaller than I remembered, with complimentary independent shops now sharing its old footprint. There was a butcher and a baker; a fishmonger and greengrocer. On the face of things, much progress had been made over twenty years.

No-one had seemed to notice me, so I decided to take a stroll around my future village, taking care not to interact with anyone. I resisted the urge to go to my flat, for obvious reasons. Whether I was still around of not, things had moved on nicely: I’m glad I saw it. Of course, it was like visiting an old home but this was a nostalgia made in the future. I was most struck by something a lady said to her partner as they passed:

“Blimey, that’s going back a bit. That must be about 2018 when that happened.” I’d vowed not to interact, and they passed anyway. I wondered what had happened, just a year after I’d left. Then I decided to do the most ill-advised thing of all.

I had no signal on my mobile, and it was a futuristic irony that an old red phone box replaced my smart phone. That iconic red box on the village high street no longer contained a pay phone, but a touch screen open internet portal. Free. And the little communication hub was pristine inside: no stench of piss and not a scratch anywhere. Either a zero tolerance police regime was to thank, or more hopefully, a society which had calmed down, like the traffic. I noticed that the library was gone, converted into housing and imaginatively called ‘The Library’. Kudos I supposed, to whatever or whomever had made that red kiosk available, to all and for free. I wondered what else might have changed, and wanted to use that little box for as long as no-one else needed it, but I really shouldn’t have been there.

I gave myself one go on the Google fruit machine. I typed my name into the search field and allowed myself just enough time to scan over the first page of results. I reasoned that I should not dwell and that I certainly mustn’t click on any of the links. Twenty years from now, I was still alive and I’d published the book I was writing in the present time. I could not, should not look any further, even though I longed to see how it was selling, how it had been received and reviewed, and how it ended. Or if I’d written anything since. I must not, I couldn’t, I didn’t. So I came back. I steered myself away from looking up my parents too.

I’d caught a bug out there. The kind that bites and infects those with an inquisitive nature and who are risk-averse, carefree, couldn’t give a fuck. But who then think about things more deeply than they should, like writers, using words to convey their feelings, but whose words few read.

I shouldn’t be at all surprised if I wasn’t still around fifty years hence, so why was I going there next? Because I could. Just because one can do something though, doesn’t mean they should. I’d rarely heeded advice in the past, so why heed my own advice about the future? I’d only have myself to blame, and I was sure I’d already lived with far worse. There are limits to what one can imagine.

Hindsight is a fine thing, with the benefit of hindsight. Each of us are limited in our ability to change things but if we co-operate, I’d seen just a generation from now, how things might be. But I’d had to return to what is now as I write this. Now could be quite an incredible time to be around, if things turn out the way I saw them.

At some point in that future I travel to, there is no me: I will cease to exist in my physical form and that will be, well, that.

So when I arrived fifty years from now, I had no idea what to expect, given what I’d witnessed had taken place over a previous two decade period. The only thing I could be sure of as I went through that very disconcerting wormhole thing, was what I was determined not to do: I would not look myself up.

The only way I would suggest of distancing yourself from the future, is to not go there in the first place. Should you find that impossible, try to remain inconspicuous. Naturally, there will be many things which a traveller from the past will find alien about the future. Like the way people stared at me. And then walked straight past me. I smiled at some of them and they all smiled back. The supermarket had completely vanished from the village by now, replaced by more independent shops. There were fewer driver-less cars but that was irrelevant, because the cars cruised at about thirty feet from the ground. The walkers had reclaimed the thoroughfare.

Cognitive Behaviour Therapy taught me that if people look at you for longer than a second or two, it might be because they find you attractive. It could equally be a look of recognition. So I panicked and went back in time.

Just to be sure that I was back in the world I’d left, I took another walk to Manor House Gardens: all was as it had been. The old girls had departed, probably in opposite directions. Not so far from here. Nothing is really, is it?

As I sat and smoked, whimsy took over. What if those people in fifty years time recognised me as a well-known author? Perhaps one of my books had gone on to be an international best seller. Maybe it had been made into a film. What was worrying if that were the case, was that they recognised me as I look now, fifty years ago. Could it be that I just finish the book I’m working on, then I die suddenly and never get to see what happened? I had to be more optimistic. After all, it was my own will driving the cat machine.

Continuing the theme which was developing, my next foray into the future was 500 years from now and that’s where it gets a bit weird. Obviously, the things I saw were familiar to the people who lived in that time, and although nothing seemed alien as such, the apparent technical progress was quite remarkable. The most striking juxtaposition was the one between old and new. It looked as though wherever possible, my village had been preserved. Some of the buildings had been more than 500 years old when I lived there. My old local pub, now over a millennium in age, was still there and it was still a pub. Peering in, I could see that the decor had hardly changed: It was still an eclectic mix of old, non-matching tables and chairs and there was still an open fire. I was tempted to go in. No-one would recognise me. Then I considered how much a beer might cost. Even if I had enough money, I wondered if it would even be recognised as such.

Either side of the pub were houses, built in some kind of plastic / metal composite. It was quite soft to the touch, and it was as I touched the wall that I got the biggest surprise of all. A window opened before me in the wall. It wasn’t a window that was there and which had been closed; it just appeared in the wall and a woman looked out. She smiled, as though seeing someone looking back through her window was a common occurrence.

These windows that just appeared, were a feature in most of the modern houses in the village. Eventually I noticed that doors were too, as one materialised on the front of a house and a man stepped out. He walked off and the door disappeared, leaving just a minimalist, aesthetically pleasing piece of both architecture and art.

Without the benefit of the previous half millennium, I could only assume that this was nano technology: microscopic machines which can alter their physical form, so that in this instance, a material changed from a wall made of the building material, into a glass window, or a wooden door. I imagined that each of the small houses had perhaps three or four rooms, the functions of which could be changed by altering what’s in them. Touch a leather sofa and it might morph into a dining table and chairs, change or move something on a whim. How liberating that must be.

I’m sure there must have been many more wonders, 500 years from now. It struck me that rather than become slaves to technology, humanity seemed to have used it to make more time for themselves in their lives of relative leisure. All of the residential buildings were of roughly equal size. I hoped this might be the result of some sort of leveller, which rendered everyone equal. I’d theorised about a universal state payment system for all in one of my old sci-fi shorts. In that story, everyone was paid a regular sum: enough to not just survive but to be comfortable. The thinking was, that people would then put their personal skills to good use for the benefit of all. I created a humanitarian utopia in that story.

5000 years from now, I couldn’t be sure of what might have happened in the intervening four and a half millennia to make things so different. In short, mankind had gone. There were very few things remaining that suggested we’d been there at all. Had we left of our own accord, or were we destroyed? Did will kill ourselves? Two thoughts came to mind: either, we were extinct as a race, or we could have populated the cosmos by now. Both ideas were quite staggering, after all the progress we’d seemed to be making.

I was forgetting about the crows: I wanted to see if I could shake hands with one. Science held that after humans, it would most likely be the invertebrates who evolved to inherit the earth. If that was the case, what of those who would feed on them?

Sure enough, there were some alarmingly large things with many legs, 50 million years from now. Some species which were once arboreal now walked upright on land. Others which had once grazed on the land grew so massive that they evolved gills and became amphibious, and still others had become exclusively marine-dwelling to support their huge bulks. One of the greatest spectacles on earth in 50 million years will be the annual migration of Frisian sea cows across the Pacific Ocean.

I sat on a grass bank in this distant future and looked across a lake. A chorus of wildlife which I didn’t recognise, buzzed and chirped in the trees. I laid down on the grass and watched a pair of large birds circling above: vultures? I sat back up, so that they didn’t mistake me for dead and they landed either side of me: two crows, about four feet tall, stood and looked over the lake.

“So, what was you sayin’ baat the oomans?”

“Well, I feed ’em in me garden, don’t I?

“Do ya?”

“Yeah, I told ya, ya daft caar. Anyway, they’ve started bringin’ me presents ain’t they?”

“‘Ave they?”

“Yeah. Clever sods ain’t they?”

“Are they?”

“Well yeah, cos then I give ’em more grub don’t I?”

“Do ya?”

“Yeah, I enjoy it, don’t I?”

“Do ya?”

“Yeah. I’m gettin’ on a bit naah, ain’t I?”

“You are.”

“Life’s what ya make it every day though, innit? Live for the next one. It’s why I started playin’ pianah.”

“Next one, yeah.”

And that gave me an idea.

© Steve Laker, 2016.

This story is taken from my first collection of shorts, The Perpetuity of Memory. My second anthology – The Unfinished Literary Agency – is also available now. 

The short and simple dog’s life

ANIMALS

I’ve long thought of animals as people, reasoning that humans are animals too, just a different species with more entitled rights. I believe that if we could talk with the animals, humankind might stand a better chance of saving the one home we all share. We might need to think less but more deeply. We may need to regress to a childhood, where we might ask why dogs have shorter lives than us, and be able to answer the question unlike any adult. It’s why I wrote Cyrus Song.

The book notes how dogs make for terrible activists, because they’re generally contented people, with low expectations in life. Once he’s had some biscuits and a decent run in the park, a dog’s pretty much nailed his day. Humans no more understand their ultimate goal than a dog knows how to drive a car he’s chasing.

Many animals pass through the veterinary lab of Doctor Hannah Jones in the book, including dogs, and one – Frank – provides an insight into the canine mind as he gains his wings. In my book, animals in individual homes are not pets, they’re part of the family, and there’s much we can learn from them.

While clicking idly around the internet, I happened upon an anecdote from a veterinarian of many years, struck by the wisdom of a child. Dogs can teach us a lot, and so can children, before they’re conditioned as adults.

Being a veterinarian, I had been called to examine a ten-year-old Irish Wolfhound named Belker. The dog’s owners, Ron, his wife Lisa, and their little boy Shane (aged six), were all very attached to Belker, and they were hoping for a miracle.

I examined Belker and found he was dying of cancer. I told the family we couldn’t do anything for Belker, and offered to perform the euthanasia procedure for the old dog in their home.

As we made arrangements, Ron and Lisa told me they thought it would be good for six-year-old Shane to observe the procedure. They felt as though Shane might learn something from the experience.

The next day, I felt the familiar catch in my throat as Belker‘s family surrounded him. Shane seemed so calm, petting the old dog for the last time, that I wondered if he understood what was going on. Within a few minutes, Belker slipped peacefully away.

The little boy seemed to accept Belker’s transition without any difficulty or confusion. We sat together for a while after Belker’s Death, wondering aloud about the sad fact that dogs’ lives are shorter than human lives. Shane, who had been listening quietly, piped up, ”I know why.”

Startled, we all turned to him. What came out of his mouth next stunned me. I’d never heard a more comforting explanation. It has changed the way I try and live.

He said, ”People are born so that they can learn how to live a good life — like loving everybody all the time and being nice, right?” The six-year-old continued,

”Well, dogs already know how to do that, so they don’t have to stay for as long as we do.”

Live simply.
Love generously.
Care deeply.
Speak kindly.

Remember, if a dog was the teacher you would learn things like:

• When your loved ones come home, always run to greet them.
• Never pass up the opportunity to go for a joyride.
• Allow the experience of fresh air and the wind in your face to be pure Ecstasy.
• Take naps.
• Stretch before rising.
• Run, romp, and play daily.
• Thrive on attention and let people touch you.
• Avoid biting when a simple growl will do.
• On warm days, stop to lie on your back on the grass.
• On hot days, drink lots of water and lie under a shady tree.
• When you’re happy, dance around and wag your entire body.
• Delight in the simple joy of a long walk.
• Be faithful.
• Never pretend to be something you’re not.
• If what you want lies buried, dig until you find it.
• When someone is having a bad day, be silent, sit close by, and nuzzle them gently.

That’s the secret of happiness that we can learn from a good dog.

I was struck by its simplicity, and it blew some sand in my eyes.

Animals in captivity are a human construct, and we give them too little credit for the empathy they have towards us. They’re grateful of our care, even though it was us who destroyed many of their homes and orphaned them (as the London Zoo chapters of Cyrus Song explain). We should question why they even tolerate us, when we’re such a plague on the one planet we all share. Science fiction writers have speculated that they might rise up against us. I’m more drawn to a post-human world where the planet becomes toxic to humans (which we’re doing a very good job of ourselves, but nature will prevail once we’re gone). Perhaps they pity us. Maybe our children will hear them.

Sometimes we over-complicate our lives (as adults at least). We’re conditioned by media and commerce to live a material existence, so we can compete with others. We lost touch with the simple things. It’s the human condition. We will have to live very differently, and return much of the planet to nature, if our home is to survive.

Cyrus Song proposed that while humans were floating blindly towards an extinction legacy, the animals concentrated on the important things, like shelter and food, and telepathy. They were here first, they have a greater collective wisdom than humans, and a closer fundamental connection to earth. They have a future, and there must be more they could tell us if we listen. Our survival strategy needs to be short and simple. We need to hear the Cyrus Song itself, the sounds all around us, beyond human nature.

Cyrus Song is available now as a paperback and eBook.

I no longer live with a rabbit

Walking on waves with Katrina

FLASH FICTION

I first walked on water about ten years ago, and I could breathe beneath the surface not long after. In the last week or so I’ve learned to fly, and I finally found a place to stay just last night. It was a different planet, a place of freedom and equality, and I got talking to one of the elders about how it all came to be.

THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD (PART 3)

Hers was a world where the superior race was gifted with an awareness, of themselves and others. This extended to a spiritual empathy with all those they shared a home with, the animal people. Her world was a planet-sized brain, with every living organism a neuron glowing in the harmony of symbiotic thoughts in a self-sustaining hive mind. It was an organic supercomputer, born of quantum physics, which had given its makers the answers to life, the universe and everything through universal translation.

While humans spent their evolution destroying each other and their shared world, the animals took care of the essentials (food and shelter) and concentrated on the more important, long-term things. Like telepathy.

The Babel fish had required a quantum leap in human science but therein lay the keys to the animals’ voices. That small in-ear device allowed humans to understand any language, including those of the animals.

For centuries humans had been fighting among themselves over things which only they held a sense of entitlement over. Once they heard the animals talking, they realised how much more there was to life outside the one they’d made. Rather than a common foe to unite warring factions, The Conversation was something humanity wanted to be a part of, a common goal for one united race.

Humans weren’t yet evolved enough to explore space using the same sub-atomic energy they’d threatened nuclear Armageddon with. Stuck on one planet, they listened to the animals and resolved to use their unique abilities to clear up the mess they’d made. It was a moral duty to the home they shared with those who were there first. It was their planet and humans were only meant to be passing guests, but humanity felt obliged to make itself more welcome if it was staying (the animals could talk now, and give them feedback).

Before I left I got to test my flying skills, when I was offered a guided tour. I couldn’t fly far but what I saw in my limited perimeter gave me hope for the rest of the world. There are no factories, with heavy industry moved to orbital cloud cities long ago. Humans are almost exclusively vegetarian, freeing up millions of square miles of land formerly used to rear livestock and grow crops to feed that human food. The Babel fish had a lot to do with the mass conversion, when someone had to die for a human to eat.

We still have money, but there’s a universal income, financed by a personal data tax levied on the companies and agencies which harvest our lives to feed theirs. The basic income provides for essentials (food and shelter), allowing people to develop themselves to be the best they can at whatever they enjoy the most, therefore giving and receiving the most back. And what goes around comes around.

History is cyclical, and I hope I witnessed our bright future and not just a personal utopia. I asked if I could stay, and the elder said no. When I asked why, she said that I was part of the old plastic population and that I was polluted. Until me and my kind repair our damage and restore things to the way they were, there’s no room for us in that heaven.

“You have a common cause, and you are unique as a species in being the only ones who can put things right and ensure the future of the planet and all who live there. When are you from?”

“2018,” I said. I remembered dropping off at just before 8.20 that evening. “Where are we now?”

“Well into a new dawn,” she replied. “Your Doomsday Clock back home will pass midnight soon. Only you and your race can stop the clock or wind it back.”

I asked the elder her name: She was Katrina, or Kat. She saw me off at the coast, walking through the waves with me until I floated off alone. I looked back and Katrina waved.

I woke up and someone was waving in my face. “Welcome back,” a girl’s voice said. “Do you know where you are?”

I did. I looked at the clock and it was 2359.

© Steve Laker, 2018

(Writing prompt: ‘Water’)

Cyrus Song (a Douglas Adams tribute, and a perfectly plausible answer to life, the universe and everything) is available now.

Planet talking with Hawking

THE WRITER’S LIFE

First it was Mischa, the London Zoo aardvark. Douglas already spoke from beyond, and another one does today. He shared a birthday with the Starman: Stephen Hawking, the pan-dimensional cyborg, another voice from Cyrus Song, now with the stars, free of our polluted planet.

He was a cyborg who could speak to anyone, and no-one would much notice his disability, because he didn’t have one. He made communication between species possible, with no need for translation and all the inherent problems of perception of reception, such was the level of thought he put into each of his words.

The deep thought behind his every word was by condition, so he could transcend the thought process of most humans. He was someone who’d appreciated not just the music he heard, but the work of all those who’d arranged it. He’d probably read film credits (as I do) checking the names of the talented, however deeply hidden. And he inspired Cyrus Song.

Stephen Hawking prophesied that humankind faced a number of existential threats (nuclear war, chemical and biological weapons, alien contact, global warming, AI…). Then there’s our ubiquitous invention: Plastics, specifically, micro plastic.

It takes centuries to break down, and then into microscopic particles, never degrading completely. Human waste means that the particles are present in every cubic metre of ocean water (with countless times more, settled below the seabed), and despite filtering for our own consumption, even the “Finest” bottled water contains the particles. It’s in the rain, all wildlife, and every plant on Earth.

Humans are part plastic, and every part of the natural world is now infected. We’re killing the planet, and everyone who lives on it. We’ve fucked mother Earth, and everyone we share it with, permanently. The next great extinction event was of our own making, and it’s one which won’t only extinct humans, but everyone else as well.

Thankfully there’s Captain Mamba to get the animals out.

Like the fictional scientists within, Hawking made the science in Cyrus Song plausible. In the book, the pan-dimensional mice only know him from Earth broadcasts of The Simpsons. Because he was pan-dimensional himself, able to bridge the gap between academic science and popular culture.

In his memory, Cyrus song is free for the next three days: take it. It took me nine months to write, but I owe it to our planet to do all I can to get its message out. There is a perfectly plausible answer to life, the universe and everything in there, and a plot to save our planet.

Free eBook. Cyrus Song is also available in paperback.

Acclaimed by Stephen Hernandez (a translator and interpretor), as “An extraordinary juggling act,” the full review is here.

 

A lonely reflected world

THE WRITER’S LIFE

Sometimes I look in the mirror and I hate myself. Not always the individual looking back (although my sober life is forever burdened by guilt for all I did when I was drunk), but what I represent: My country, my planet and my species. When there are parts of each which you despise, and all bear their own human scars, it’s easy to hate yourself (even more) as a part of them.

Astronomers Discover Planet Identical To Earth With Orbital Space Mirror (The Onion, 2014)

My country (the UK) is a fractured nation, a shell of its former self, damaged perhaps beyond repair by the greatest wilful act of self-harm I’ve ever witnessed by a government. Brexit has divided us within, while the nation has been set adrift by its ignorant, arrogant, self-serving leaders. With the state of the world at large, now is when we need partners, allies and friends. But the UK is alone on this small planet.

Ours is a world of limited, dwindling natural resources, and it’s of finite size. I often wonder what the agendas or ultimate aims of capitalists and governments are, and where catalysts and saturation points might be reached, when there’s only so much to go around, and only so many people (there are conspiracy theories, of course). And then of course, there are those we live with: The animals.

I consider myself a member of one race, the human race, but then I look at what our species does to others and its own kind, and I’m ashamed. And yet, in all the searching, the only thing which makes the loneliness bearable, is each other (to borrow from Carl Sagan). And we’re all connected, by quantum entanglement. Still though, I often feel disconnected, like my country from its European family.

As a science fiction writer, I wonder who else might be out there, and what we ourselves might be capable of. This in itself can make for the stuff of dreams or nightmares. We can fear the unknown, or we can speculate.

The current pace and progress of human science and technology mean we could very well be near a pivotal point, where we solve problems or destroy ourselves. We’re employing AI minds to answer our biggest questions, and one of these man-made brains could easily conclude that humans are the problem. The end of humanity, or a new beginning, could be a near-future scenario.

I imagine near-future humans (if there’s to be such a thing) as the beginning of a next stage of accelerated evolution, as we integrate with machines and technology, eventually becoming organic-technological hybrids. I believe there are other species in the universe like this, perhaps so advanced that they’ve harnessed the natural energy of parent stars using Dyson spheres. Maybe they’ve transcended conflict, evolving to realise that it’s inefficient. I can live in hope, and I can write.

What more can I do? What can we all do? We need to stop fighting and ignoring. We need to talk. So I’m giving Cyrus Song away for free on World Book Day (Thursday).

Despite potentially devaluing myself and the nine months I put into it, Cyrus Song is a book for everyone. I do need the money, but more than that, I want people to see my message, find the answers and tell others, in a review, or by talking. There’s a donation button on this blog (Buy me a coffee) should anyone be sufficiently moved by the free book, normally the price of a decent coffee.

Writing is the only way I have of talking to other people. Cyrus Song is everything I want to say to my own kind. For now, I look in the mirror, and a lonely planet stares back.

Cyrus Song is available now (free on World Book Day).