Invisible extraterrestrial nation

FLASH FICTION

If you go outside now, it’s like a ghost town; a trope of the horror writer. Beyond the window, a post-apocalyptic zombie landscape; one of science fiction…

NOCTURNS

If you go outside now, there’s a strange calm. It’s a kind of peace which can only be found in solitude with others. It’s a world of visitors and living ghosts.

There’s a different place on the other side of the window at 3am, where we gather at a distance. It’s a universe of quantum entanglement.

They’re out there, taking their daily walk. Time means nothing, now that many of us are unable to work.

Anxiety has turned us into insomniacs and agnostics.

Just as far apart as during the day, there are fewer of us, so there’s less risk of infection at night.

A few say hello from a distance, but most just walk around in what for many of us has become our own world.

Personal space is a minimum of two meters, but at night, we all have more space to ourselves.

The shops are closed, so we look to the stars which connect us all. Insomniacs and agnostics.

Sometimes we watch the sun rise, but when daylight comes, we go home.

We sleep, but we’ll be out again tonight.

© Steve Laker, 2020

A world not too far from home, it’s one we’ll find. No matter the distance, we’ll always have a quantum link.

Despite those nets of tuna fish…

POETRY

AFTER ALL (OF US)

If Dolphins Had Thumbs, They Would Probably Destroy Us All, Says Science (Riot Fest)

The genesis of metamorphosis

FLASH FICTION

One story from when paper and ink were rationed, written sparingly at one word per weekday over a whole year, a chapter for every two months of one history. As life changes daily, it shouldn’t be a surprise that a species can re-evolve in a year…

SEEDS

(i)

“Most of us are fake people. We never wanted to be, we just ended up hiding so many emotions that we started wearing a mask. We do this so easily now that we’ve taught ourselves to believe these lies are truth. It’s quite the opposite actually. We are so fake that we don’t even remember our true identity…”

I

“…It’s why we’re all locked inside now, contemplating ourselves. We’ve been forced by authority to obey for our own good. And actually, we shouldn’t resist…”

II

“…Political divisions are forgotten as quickly as new language evolves, and a dictatorial government shifts its rhetoric to one of a nation together, rather than nationalism. Old foes are united against a common new enemy and the citizens largely accept the restrictions placed upon them…”

III

“…and when we emerge, no matter how we look at it, we’ll be different. It’ll be a new world, which we approach cautiously, as we learn a new way of life. None of us will forget this, because it affected every single one of us. We’ll say it was a unifying human experience…”

IV

“…We should stay where we are for now, do as we’re told, while there’s such an opportunity to find ourselves and each other inside. We’ll need that when we all get out of here. Maybe we’ll eventually remove the masks, like we could when we were locked in together…”

V

“…A safe journey to all those who made a new humanity, and with our gratitude. You do not go in vain. We will forever remember the sentinels who changed us.”

VI

“And that’s how you indoctrinate a populace, all the while suppressing resistance, by sowing the seeds of martyrs.”

© Steve Laker, 2020

“I give it two weeks before we see martial law, unless everyone calms the fuck down and starts behaving as they’re told,” said a liberal socialist.

Recycling the middle classes

FLASH FICTION

As I begin, I don’t know how I’ll end. After a gestation of roughly nine months., we’re in the latter stages of the pandemic. For many, the end of days. Tonight’s lottery is the last, so I have little time to write this…

REDUNTANT OCCUPATION

It’s all happened so quickly. The last year has seen situations develop and casualties rise, more than in any global military conflict. A year ago, we were fighting over toilet roll. Even then, Brexit had been largely forgotten.

Those of us who wrote conspiracies in the UK, theorised that Coronavirus was the perfect smokescreen to divert the media’s attention from trade deals the government was signing with the USA, China and Saudi Arabia.

With the mainstream news agencies diverted, a few of us took up unofficial journalism posts, writing mainly for free in the gig economy. We were certain that Corvid-19 was a population control mechanism of human construction.

Having recently made my way through the social cleansing apparatus of the UK benefits system, I was grateful to have won back my human rights, at one of the last tribunals to be held before the system was shut down. I had to put the freedom and liberty I’d regained to good use. I had to explore to be able to report.

After the government departments closed, the indirect death toll from the disease increased the overall figures dramatically. But there was a bigger story.

A man-made virus, designed to reduce the financial state burden of the weak and elderly, benefited the balance sheets of disaster speculators, spread betting on casualty numbers, as hospitals were re-purposed and operations deemed non-essential were postponed. Eventually patients with existing terminal diagnoses were included in this group.

We suspected that those with underlying medical conditions and the over-70s were “shielded” for three months to give doctors time to hasten their demise. The weak and costly were being erased by social cleansing.

Over just a few months, there was a ripple effect. Medical staff succumbed to the virus, so that a situation could be forecast where those needing care outnumbered those able to provide it. Then a financial tsunami, for the invested gamblers and their sponsors. In the last few weeks, despite curfews and marshal law, the streets have become post-apocalyptic, while the protected hide away with their money.

The shops closed months ago and there have been no deliveries for weeks now. The law enforcers have fallen just as quickly as those they’re meant to police and protect. Most stay home, like they were told. A few hunt the rich.

The now invisible government has published a guide, available only sporadically online since the telecoms infrastructure is burning out under the pressure of human want and need. I got hold of a copy, which is why I needed to write.

The document is entitled ‘Professional Education: A New Vision for a Revised Population’. It prioritises specific occupations, and plans to switch education funding to support those professions. They include lawmakers and medics, educators and builders; First and Third class.

And that’s why I had little time to write what may be my last journalistic dispatch. Because like everyone else not in those categories of jobs listed, I’m in the lottery. I may be needed to help care for one of those people in the other two groups.

This is the day of the lottery, when a knock on the door may herald the beginning of many new lives, as disposable people like me are taken to provide blood, limbs and organs for those who need them the most.

It was a financial as well as a public health catastrophe, for all but the disaster capitalists. Suicides increased the death toll but helped as donors for the survivors. They were just part of the gamble to reap the harvest.

Clinical waste, where once we were slaves. 

© Steve Laker, 2020

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).

Please do not lick the windows

THE WRITER’S LIFE

It’s been a while since I wrote in my diary, and personal blog entries have been scant over the last 18 months, while my life has been on hold. Someone let the brake pedal off though, and now my personal liberty has been restored. Now I have money in the bank, a regular modest income, and a life worth living.

This blog started off as a personal journal, but lately I’ve not had much I could write, because of so much unresolved in my life. I can blow off the dark glitter and write my open book once more, now that I’ve won my freedom and been compensated for the trauma inflicted by a battle which lasted a year and a half. It’s a story worth telling once more.

My doubters and detractors (mainly in the other life, away from here) are two distinctly separate but overlapping groups in the Venn Diagram of my social world. They might judge me as someone being paid to do as they please, to sit at home and avoid disease. But they weren’t there over the last 18 months. They didn’t see the consultations, the interviews and the final court tribunal, which led to here and which took a toll on my mental health. They didn’t see the separation anxiety from my family and the loneliness of social isolation. 

Now I receive the Personal Independence Payment I’m entitled to and a Severe Disability Allowance, both of which are the social cleansing machine’s recognition of my condition. It’s a combination of mental malfunctions which no-one judging from a detached position would be able to detect, but which become plain to those prepared to engage with me. It’s worth persisting with life, especially if it winds a few people up.

Much has changed over the last year and a half, including my dad’s health. A retirement home resident, he still remembers me and he’s looking forward to seeing me more, now I have the means to travel. My kids grew up too, although I still managed to see them every couple of months. Now I can spend days with them more often too, and we can do as we please without lack of finance placing undue restrictions on us. On this side of the 18-month war, they’re both teenagers, two of my favourite people and my two very good young friends.

I was out with the kids in London on Sunday, something their mum suggested as money wasn’t such a big issue. I was grateful for that and we enjoyed a full day, starting with lunch somewhere other than a Wetherspoons. With the capital offering the world as our culinary oyster, we went to Nando’s instead.

London wasn’t quiet (it never is) but it was far less busy than normal, even for a Sunday. We’re not too neurotic about Coronavirus, so I just told the teenagers not to lick any windows. They wouldn’t have to, because we had some money.

Later in Piccadilly, we paid an impromptu visit (at £25 for adults; £18 each for under-16s; plus £6 for a locker as bags aren’t allowed in) to Body Worlds, Gunther von Hagens’ now permanent exhibition of plastinated people, providing a guided tour for the still-autonomous around our shared human anatomy.

More than the tarred lungs of a smoker, or the swollen liver of a drinker, I was struck most by the shrunken brain of an Alzheimer’s victim. If I hadn’t had my two teenage friends with me, I might have lost face and broken down at the tragedy of another shrunken mind in a retirement home, which still remembers me. Then again, those young people have never forgotten I’m their dad, and they didn’t give up on me.

It’s good to have my personal liberty back, especially when I can appreciate it because so much has changed. Funny how life works. Now I need to use it more for the benefit of others, which is one for those Venn segments of my life to suck on.