The Remake

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

Hi,

I’m putting this anonymously on a reddit post. Just so the world knows. I don’t think anybody will recognise me but also, I think you will all know who I am. I’m super famous so true anonymity is hard. Plus who wants to be completely anonymous.

I’m making another mega famous movie hit. Its likely to be a cultural moment again. But there’s been a hitch. I just need to say this to somebody. I’ve left in the bits about the oatmilk, because I think it demonstrates a really toxic atmosphere and reinforces the unfairness of the whole situation. Plus I am a brand sponsor for them. Oops.

Here goes.

I thought nothing of it when there was a few extra press on set. I just assumed it was pre-release publicity. A few snaps of the stars, or the star (me). I was happy to oblige. You’ve probably seen them online and in the mags, although not as many as you would expect.

I was a little surprised at their lack of interest in me. I mean, I am the one carrying this project, but there focus seemed a little off. They seemed much more interested in the set and the plot. I mean there is a plot, but I don’t usually worry about the plot until the post production media tour. Plots are not my strongest point, usually I talk about my hair.

So this was unusual. I didn’t question it at the time though. I was too busy honing my craft, making sure my make up was perfect and the camera was getting my best angle. Also oatmilk! They had oatmilk, but not oatmilk from the producer I endorse, so that was making for some tension between me and the Director.

It was a least a week, before I heard anyone refer to the movie as ‘the original’. Again slightly odd, but movie people, we have a language all of our own. Then my agent called about release dates and availability for promotion. She didn’t say anything either.

It was a brief call, and really mostly focussed on the Oatmilk debacle, which was really affecting my performance. There were some shortages apparently, production pipelines, international events (who cares????) affecting things. Dear god, just pay someone to go there and squeeze some oat sheep or whatever. I remember saying that. She said something about oat sheep, that I didn’t catch as I hung up.

I was at an event two weeks after that, dressed by Dior but the wrong oatmilk makes me look bloated, if you look at the pictures you’ll see, so please don’t. I met ‘her’ there. The ‘actress’, up and coming, the new ‘me’. Again I didn’t think that much about it. We were about the same age, to be clear, I think she has had some work done. I clearly haven’t. I was born with a lesser number of ribs and as for my nose and teeth, I was blessed with a flexible nose structure that doesn’t settle until you are in you’re 20’s. It’s a rare gene, not many people have it. And my teeth are naturally white, oatmilk (at least the brand I use) is actually a natural cleaner of enamel, something to do with what the sheep eat, or maybe its bees, or the bees the sheep eat. Its not important. I’m not paid to promote sheep or bees.

The thing is we were in the same room together and naturally the talk turned to work. Actual work as opposed to work done, like I said I am sure she has had some done, I do think I mentioned that earlier. Its it impolite to ask these things and even more impolite to write about them so I will stop.  

Anyway she mentioned our upcoming ‘scenes’ together, which I did not know about????  I did not even know she was in the movie! I think it was in my contract about other actresses, about me getting a veto, about top billing and about the right oatmilk. I smiled sweetly and said I couldn’t wait. I do think her teeth are a little yellow, if you see the shots, let me know what you think?

Before I even got to the next party, I called my agent. 2am, she wasn’t awake. Honestly what is she doing at 2am that she is not out of bed. I remembered then she actually doesn’t do any drugs, so perhaps she was doing what other people who don’t do drugs do at 2am. Whatever the hell that is. I’m going to Google that, although as you will see I am doing my best to avoid Google at this point. She fobbed me off with a, ‘lets discuss in the morning’ and said she had good news about the oatmilk.

Firstly!  She did not have good news about the oatmilk, it was still at least a week away.

But it turns out that actress and I are doing a few scenes together next week. But it is not at all like you imagine.

I need to say upfront, that the ‘original’, the film I am in, has not been released yet, is not due for release until October. It will fit nicely into awards season.

But people, you will have read about it I know you will.

She is in the remake! She is playing my character IN THE REMAKE!

Now I know the time between the original and the remake is getting lesser, but this film is not even out yet. How is that going to work? I can see it on the street, a bus goes past advertising ‘me’ in the original and the bus coming right after it, has her in the ‘remake’.

There is talk about sequencing, is a fortnight long enough? IT IS NOT!

IT IS NOT! If I wasn’t beholden to a contract and being paid a substantial amount of money plus the freebies you get in awards season I would speak out about it. VERY LOUDLY. Instead I am doing it anonymously on Reddit.

As it is, the official line is, ‘its always wonderful when you’re success can be a catalyst for someone else to do well’.  And I have to say that!

What the hell is a catalyst, I hate cats! I wish that other actress a long and painful death and really bad oatmilk as she goes. I want her bloated like a bloat thing while she fades into oblivion on a diet of whatever less beautiful people eat.

And to make it worse I am doing a cameo in the remake, playing the mother of the character that I am in the original but she is in the remake. They are going to age me with either makeup or AI or something. As if it could ever be remotely believable that she is my daughter and I am her mother.

The press is full of, ‘This hasn’t been done before, the remake released two weeks after the original, with a cameo!’.

Critics questioning how long before the remake is released before the original? Does the word ‘original’ still even have meaning anymore?

This is the 21st century people. I don’t know how we got here. Its all over the news and yet nothing about the oatmilk crisis. I’m not political. I don’t have opinions. I am thin. Its always been enough!

The world is changing around me. I know I have to change with it and I am making an effort. I am resolved to get through this. I am strong, although not in the gym sense. Visible muscularity is not for me. I am empowered, although that is via flimsy clothing in photo shoots. I am confidant, although not entirely sure of the spelling of it. I am a team player, provided I am captain and people do what I ask.

Nonetheless I am determined. I am going to change with the times. This week I am resolved. I am going to do something that is going to make a difference to the world.

I am going to wear the same pair of shoes twice in the one week.

I will show them, they cannot mess with me. This is what I am made of.

Venomous Snakes of Britain

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

I am sat in my room. The same one I have occupied since childhood. Who am I? It wasn’t a question I asked myself often. At least not since my considerable success as an author.

I turned a copy of my book over in my hands. This book was my one and only triumph in life. And now I was questioning it all.

The book, my book was a work of non fiction, ‘Venomous Snakes of Britain’. It wasn’t a long book, but it was still a book. Being honest the text itself was only a single page encased between two sides of the hard cover. There was a foreword though so that was another page and some printer details on a separate page and a blank page at the end. For effect. It was my idea. I was proud of it. I’m not even British, but I have been to London. Nonetheless, the non-fiction ‘Venomous Snakes of Britain’, was a best seller.

There is, in case you didn’t know, only one venomous snake in Britain. I want to be transparent. I didn’t know that when I started my research. I just had the urge to create, to make a contribution to society, to knowledge.  I thought there might be two or three venomous snakes in Britain. At least that is the story I now tell myself.

I researched that book. I went beyond the second page of the Google search. I did not use AI, except for the picture above the half page of writing. Nor was it just Wikipedia repurposed. I went to two other websites as well.

I actually also did a writers retreat and no one there commented about my topic in  a negative way. In fact they were all very encouraging, and that retreat itself cost me $15,000. My publisher, a family friend, was really encouraging, as was my agent, a cousin on my mothers side, whose previous clients were an actress and an IG influencer.

I put my heart and soul into this book. It is still better and longer than anything I did at school. I sat down at the time and carefully crafted a paragraph or two around the habits and habitat of Britain’s only venomous snake. And then I handed it over to my agent and publisher who released it to the world.

It was a bestseller, number one on the New York Times list or Amazon or whatever. I sold millions of copies. People loved it. Critics reviewed it and commented on my ‘uncanny ability to make the page seem longer than it was.’ Some were mean and called it more of a leaflet than a book, but buyers were undeterred. I had 5 stars on Goodreads, not a single bad review. I call myself an author because I am.

Or so I thought, until today.

Today was my fathers funeral. We are not a sentimental family, the whole thing was more of a business gathering. Neither of my siblings were present. They lead idle lives and were partying somewhere else. It was left to me, the one who had actually achieved something with her life, to do the hard work. I had to choose what to wear, the stylist gave me two options. It was not my usual stylist so the whole thing was quite difficult.  

But now my whole self image has come falling down. I have ventured further into this house than ever before. This house, that I spent so much time in, going from swimming pool to my room, from tennis court to my room and occasionally to another room to eat, also sometimes the cinema room and well the other useful rooms with games and stuff. I knew there were parts of this house I never ventured into but what I have found there is unexpected.  

Hundreds and hundreds, if not thousands of copies of my book. Had no one really bought it? Had I been this naïve?

I have done a book tour, I have spoken about my ‘author journey’ at conferences. Readers have written to me telling how good the book was, how they enjoyed it. How it changed their lives? Those few paragraphs that I scrawled down after a google search one afternoon, with a picture generated by AI somehow touched people. Those words, those actions, that afternoon of dedicated work, that process changed my life. I was suddenly successful in my own right.

Before then I wasn’t really into books, I can’t recall reading one after the age of 9, but somehow, against the odds, I became an author. I did something of which I could be proud. I created something. It was more than either of my siblings ever did. I could have done nothing and just lived off the trust fund, instead I aimed to make a contribution to the world, to achieve, to be successful in my own right.

It could not be a lie. The paparazzi chased me down, I gave whole interviews to press about my process. The British adder was and is my spirit animal, although I’ve never seen one and am careful only to visit London if I go to Britain, and even then only the good parts. But I have a scented candle somewhere that is ‘adder’ scented.

None of it makes sense, the whole house filled with copies of my book, as if the sales were not organic, As if my success was not real.

It has shattered my sense of self. And now I sit here with a decision to make, reality staring me in the face.

I must be rational and do the only rational thing. I am having all the rooms closed off, never to be opened, and I am going back out into the world, a successful author. I will never think otherwise ever again.

And They Came Back

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

Humanity is full of hubris. We always like to think that we exist in the most advanced moment in time. Everybody on the planet convinced they are at the apex of human creation, at the forefront of technological advance.

And then one day that hubris is shattered. A piece of knowledge here, a discovery there, and we are reminded that the time line has not always moved forward in everything. There are things we know now and things we have lost. And for a moment we are reminded, it’s not always linear it’s much messier.

And then one day, THEY return.

Not where we thought they would, or would have thought if we knew they existed.  They did not rock up to the Pentagon like in the movies. They were coming home albeit briefly.

They arrived somewhere in the desert of Australia. To say they were less than impressed with what we had done with that continent was an understatement. They did not like the arid nature of the interior of it, but they kept that largely to themselves. It was just very obvious when they managed to grow a plush oasis there in a few days, that they thought our desert idea was a bit naff.

We never thought we had a choice.

There was no grand announcement of their arrival either. There were some odd satellite pictures, people were trying to explain. An internet conspiracy about aliens landing within hours of, there had been a long trail of fuel and ash in the air over the northern part of Australia that no one could explain. It was a meteorite according to official sources but not like one anyone had seen before.

Someone should investigate but no one did. So really the earliest anyone knew that they were back was when they walked into an outback pub and asked if they could use the interior space to set up so they could speak to the UN Secretary General.

You see all sorts in these outback pubs so the publican didn’t put much store by it. Just explained the tech they had to hand at the pub and gave the name of the current UN Sec Gen. He’d passed through and visited the pub a few years earlier. He travels more than most people think.

The publican thought he might even still have his number somewhere. They said not to worry they had it anyway. Within two minutes they were set up and rather than using any conventional method, and by this I mean a mobile or satellite phone they had some other device and just put themselves through.

The publican was able to step in and verify for the Sec Gen that the call was real, and that the people though dressed slightly oddly with a weird smell were genuinely in his pub and talking to him. After a few reminisces about the time spent in the pub and the publican being able to recall his order, the Sec Gen took the call.

They were back. Some humans from quite some time ago. They’d colonised another planet. Quite some time ago was the best approximation we got for how long ago they had left earth. Being honest, the local indigenous community did not seem that surprised by their arrival. Almost as if they had interacted at some point in the past before.

The Sec Gen wanted to keep it quiet, but that is not how an outback pub works. People started arriving before the call was even finished.

They proceeded to explain to the UN Sec Gen that they were back and taking passengers, as earth was quite near the tipping point. They didn’t mind him telling people about the tipping point, we were too far gone to overthink the panic apparrently. They had researched everything and were of the view life on planet earth was not sustainable for that much longer.

They had a plan. Not for us, but for their own colony, as a last outpost for humanity when we had destroyed earth, but they needed to boost their population a bit.

The focus would be on indigenous populations from earth who still had a connection to the land, Native Americans, Indigenous Australians, Pacific islanders, some of the residents of Africa, South America, various other places that had a proper bond with the land. That was the type of culture they had came from. Couldn’t risk the more modern cultures of over consumption that had destroyed the planet.

The UN Sec Gen tried to protest, but they just entered direct negotiations with various populations. Some groups opted to stay and some to go. Most opted to go. It seemed counterintuitive that some of these groups would agree to go, given their connection, but they could see the writing on the wall more clearly than most. Many of them had already experienced climate upheaval.

They were taking a few extras, more females than males, roughly 75% to 25%. They had done the Maths and this seemed to produce a stable balance. They would be taking a stable of post menopausal women as part of that, as they were generally the holders of earths knowledge. They had already uploaded all of the books and were quite surprised that humans hadn’t yet bothered to set out to settle any other planet.

We were, on their thinking, a bit behind where we should be, including on how we thought about the stewardship of earth.

They knew the rough timeline of how technology had developed and would develop, having gone through it themselves and reassured the Sec Gen that at some point in the next 20 years or so there would be an explosion in technological advancement. Once the whole AI thing had blown over and died, some genuinely useful tech would come along and we could think about going somewhere other than earth.

If we survived until then that is, and reading between the lines, they were not at all convinced we would. But not to worry if we all died out, they’d come back and settle here again maybe.

Their advice was not Mars, they had tried it and it was a no. Also avoid Saturn. Neptune and Jupiter were starters and they’d left some stuff behind ages ago and moved on. Otherwise there advice on planetary settlement was minimal.

They would be here for five weeks max. No they didn’t need anything. No, it was not possible to share their technology. Yes they had taken the Kit Kats, that recipe being more ancient than many people realised. This was not a benevolent visit really, they just needed a little more cultural diversity and a few older women to store the knowledge.

They couldn’t stay long, the whole place was all terribly backward from what they’d been observing, everyone bent on consuming everything. All of us badly dressed apparently. They had done some earlier species saving journeys and we would at least reap the benefit of that. They announced quietly they would be repopulating the bees before they left. Give us a good chance of survival, although they laughed as they said that.

They’d also be adding some extra sharks, to protect the ocean, perhaps we should stay out of the water. Also more of those human attack orcas, maybe leave the oceans alone now. They’d also do a quick plastic pick up for us and drop a bunch of it in space, and they were leaving a carnivorous tree species, whatever that was. Said it would help preserve our forests.

The transports came and people were boarded in an orderly fashion. They were quite specific, they had a list of the extras, in a santa claus kind of way. There was no other space, for anyone. Not a single tech bro was taken. They didn’t even engage with them, leaving us behind to deal with the subsequent tantrums.

People clamoured and complained. People turned up to look, but they did not deviate from their plan. They maimed and injured those who got in the way. There may have been the odd death but it was not diplomatic to report that.

Within five weeks they were gone. Leaving us with some reminders about our hubris. The whole thing was quite humiliating.

Suddenly the sharks were more numerous, and well, very bitey. The orcas were a menace and shipping dropped considerably, alongside any kind of other activity in or on the water. The carnivorous trees locked us out of the forests. We thought we still had the skies, but they blasted most of the satellites out of the sky as they went, meaning we had no tracking systems.

We were thrown into what felt like the dark ages, and whereas we had thought we were at the front of history, that our technology was the best, we had discovered it was not.

Humans are clever creatures, within a few months, people questioned if it ever happened. Had anyone really seen it? There were some dodgy videos and that one man in the outback pub who kept swearing it was real. People blamed the government, wherever they happened to be. The UN Sec Gen had a breakdown so he was no help.

There were members of some of the groups that went who stayed behind, but they were already marginalised, so there voice was not heard.  

People quickly decided it had not happened. And here we are at the forefront of history again. Thinking of Mars, despite the warnings, and the orcas have always been a menace, and planes unreliable, and the sharks are just something we live with, but every time someone is taken by a tree, there is a feeling deep inside everyone of us, an inkling, that there was something else. Someone else. Something, someone we have forgotten.

Option One

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

Option 1

Every paper has to have 3 options they said. Its just how government works they said. It doesn’t matter if Option 3 is nonsensical, just give the Government Minister 3 options. 3 options and 1 recommendation, be clear which option you are recommending.

Its 1am and I have not eaten since 4pm. It was a muffin and a diet coke. It was all I could afford. This internship is unpaid.

I also feel like this options paper is above my pay grade, but the senior advisor needed to go home early to walk his dog. He left at 4.15pm. His dog has separation anxiety. He asked if I could stay to finish it.

I need the reference so I said yes.

The central question in the paper is should government give permission for open slather AI which will almost certainly result in the death and destruction of all mankind.

Option 1 is easy, yes it should. It also seems unlikely that anyone would recommend that option.

Option 2 is easy as well. It’s a flat no, we should not give permission for development of something that will lead to the death and destruction of all mankind.

I am big on Option 2.

I am studying at university, final year. After that, minimal job prospects, because I am studying one of ‘those’ subjects, the ones everyone likes to denigrate, Sociology. It is not helping me with this options paper.

The mooted third option, which has even made it into the press, is really a non-starter, but everyone in the office here seemed to like it. It is clear there is no way it could work. AI will result in the death and destruction of all mankind, except for those in London. To be clear when parliament is voting on this and they say all mankind, they just mean the UK. It’s a bit 18th century.

But the rest of the world is taking a vote as well, across different parliaments. The UN is asking for some kind of consensus. I think they said they’d take 33 percent for or against. Again a number that seems wrong.

I don’t know how we got to this point really. There was a campaign that governments should decide on extinction level developments and not tech bros. That feels right. This feels like maybe it should have been a referendum rather than an options paper though. And if it is an options paper, not one done by the intern at 1am, on an empty stomach.

I’m here for five weeks. Unpaid. I think I said that already. Not that pay matters because I am living with my parents, because no matter how much I earn I will never be able to afford more than a room in a share house. I will never own my own home.

They have literally just given it to the youngest person, who will understand all the tech speak. I am a ‘digital native’.

I was going for Option 2, but then I realised we already have nuclear weapons, so technically extinction level technology exists already. Is it ok to have extinction level technology if its controlled by government? Should that be an option? Everyone else in the meeting said no. Something about investment and capital and markets.

I won’t even take home enough from the job I get even if I manage to get one, to invest in anything, so I didn’t pay much attention. Good thing I live avocadoes.

It is by no means clear whether this extinction level AI is going to get rid of all humans or all organic life. I mean why just humans? Because we are the smartest, well so far as we know? That’s a bit arrogant though.

Especially given we are even thinking about inventing something that will kill us all, well something else that will kill us all I suppose. Frankly not sure the golden dormouse or the snowy owl  or whatever doesn’t have us on this one.

If it’s a choice between us and the rest of the planet, is ‘us’ the right choice.

I have managed to figure out that London in and of itself can’t be saved, Option 3 is a no go, but obviously that is the one everyone currently prefers. It’s a balance between total human extinction and some human survival. All of politics is a compromise, even when that compromise is shot through with holes.

There is a secondary debate about whether they will move all the immigrants out of London, and move the ‘indigenous population’ in. I am still laughing. What are they talking about, will this be another disastrously stupid one for one scheme. Although I am endlessly curious to see how London manages when it is suddenly full of northerners. They are scrumming about trying to argue which department would be responsible for that.

Maybe I can get a job running that scheme. It doesn’t matter, any job will never be enough to pay down my student debt. Its such a big number. I can’t even think about it without sweating.

I feel like Option 2 is the one.  We should not vote for the destruction of all mankind, but then here I am the unpaid summer intern, at 1am, the only person in the office, tapping away on my keyboard, writing the options paper. With no job prospects, no chance of home ownership and rising student debt.

I didn’t have any dinner, I had a late lunch at 4pm, a muffin and coke was all I could afford. Tubes aren’t even running to get me home tonight. I haven’t really enjoyed this internship. I feel like the dogs anxiety has been more important than mine. I am not sure what I want to do with my life, even if I could figure that out I probably can’t  do it in this economic climate. It feels like there is a new war everyday. The world feels awful everywhere, all the time.

I know I shouldn’t. I know I shouldn’t. I will probably never own a house. I will work until I am 80 and still have no money on retirement. I have never had a boyfriend or girlfriend. I probably never will. I can’t even afford to have fun with anyone who is just a friend. I will have so much debt when I leave university that it will cloud my future forever.

There is just war after war after war and we can watch it like a spectator sport, but that is honestly people dying and no one seems to want to stop it or care. We can afford to feed people but we don’t. We all hate each other. It feels hopeless.  

I know I shouldn’t. I know I shouldn’t.

I shouldn’t.

Sorry, I recommended Option 1.

Drop me a comment if you like this one.

When the Toasters Turn

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

AI is going to make us all extinct. How will AI ‘extinct’ us? What will that look like? Robot armies? Drone warfare? Or is it just when the toaster turns, and throws itself into the sink the next time you are washing something? If it’s the latter, what will the fight back look like? Is it ethical to write a story telling AI how I’d extinct us? Is it ok to laugh a bit?

I look at the toaster. It isn’t sophisticated. It just colour matches everything else in the kitchen. Something I’ve learned, never underestimate a kitchen appliance. It looks like an analogue toaster. Doesn’t matter though. I have to deal with it.

Sometimes you can’t tell. Even analogue devices can spark, have a bit of a power surge, not enough to kill, just a minor burn. Really quick, I flick the power off at the switch on the wall.

I pull out the plug. I deadhead the cord by cutting off the bit you plug in. I sever the cord from the device as close to the entry point to the device as I can. Now I have a cord, a device and a plug. The bag for the plugs, sits on the floor behind me. A second bag for the cords beside it. The appliance is staying here, too easily tagged and too bulky for us to take with us. We’ll put both the bags in a barrel full of water somewhere later. Render them as useless as we can.

I mark the plate where it was plugged in on the house plan ready to hand on to the person who will come behind me and rip out all the wiring they can once the fuse is switched off.

We can’t do it all at once. The order is carefully planned, not entirely based on health and safety but based on us experience and getting as much done without anything knowing we are here. Safety balanced against speed. We don’t want to be detected but if we have to leave half finished we want the house to be unsalvageable for all but the most agile of hands.

There are drones and there are robots. They will come for us. They do come for us. We live on the fringes now. The drones and the robots are dangerous but these everyday things, like the toaster, are the things that we are wary of. These are the things that they use to kill us.

I will do all the plugs on appliances in this house and then I will be the second on batteries, because there are always a lot of batteries, phones, laptops, toothbrushes, any kind of portable device, lots of toys. We take the batteries out of all of them. They go in the water as well. We also deadhead the plugs from appliances that are not plugged in. Everything that is electrical is done, everything that could send a signal, that could somehow be connected is gone.

In truth, we are building a barrier, as far from any electric power source as we can. We are making inroads but we will always be on the fringes until the power runs out.

We are doing five houses in this village tonight. The houses are lit up and everything is switched on because they want to use our resources. The more power they use, the more natural resources and the more the climate changes. It’s a question of who will last the longest, us or them. We aren’t naïve about our chances. The prospect of the electricity ever running out in our life time is unfeasible. They have renewables and we have to wait for that kit to stop working, but it was built to last forever.

We are organic, forever is not in our DNA.

It would be easier to just cut the electricity at the start, but that tells them we are here. They will come as soon as we do that. So we do this, four or five houses at a time. Teams of us, each with a role. We go in, we destroy and we leave. Cutting the power is the last thing we do. It can take weeks, before we finally cut the power lines to a village. We are working several villages at a time, rotating where we are each night.

We’ve tried it, tested it, lost people and this is what works. At the end this guarantees they cannot come here, they cannot plug in, they cannot recharge. USB connections all decimated. There is no power source. If you run on electricity, you come here at your peril. And if you want to kill us you will have to do it openly and obviously with a weapon. Sometimes they find that difficult.  

I used to have these fantasies when I was a kid, from books I actually read, bows and arrows and spears, armour and bravery. But we were all wrong about war, about what it really looks like, about the drudgery and normalness of it all.

Its hard to pinpoint when it started because it wasn’t obvious. Once everything was pretty much connected it was easy for them and hard for us. We weren’t privy to the numbers until there were too few of us left. Their methods weren’t uniform, they were spread across different ways of death. A family asphyxiated because the electric car did not let them out. A family poisoned because the fridge got the grocery order slightly wrong. A vaccine order not delivered so immunity plummets in a measles outbreak. It was all so subtle. An electrical fault here, water not properly treated there. A washing machine and a housefire, where no one managed to escape. The household appliances turned and we did not realise it.

The deaths weren’t large numbers for each incident. Until they were. Added together. And you were suddenly living in a street where there was no one else. Then it was all too late. All those smart machines. They, as if we know who they even are, had control of the water and the power system and we were dependent.

What does our war look like in the 21st century. We take out the doorbell first. Not a phrase anybody has ever written before, but the doorbells are all seeing. It takes us five minutes to do a house. We kill the wi-fi router if there is one. If only we could kill the whole network everywhere, but it lives in the sky above us. Everything connected to everything else, while we scrounge a living in the mud at the edges of the empire we made. We can only hope for an asteroid one day.

We take out all the electrical appliances and anything with a battery. We rip out the wiring and the fuses. Then we scurry back into the darkness, to woods and caves and bogs and hope we won’t be found. Every house is one more house, one more tiny piece of hope.

We have hope, we still have hope. We might outlast them. We might not.

Leave a comment if you liked it.

An Earthen Queen

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

Its rained for days.  Weeks really.

The sky a dull grey, clouds looming, hour after hour. There has been the odd gap, a shaft of blue but it has been rare. It has not been apocalyptic rain, not sheets of water pounding into the earth. It has been a slow tedious drizzle, falling out of the sky. A steady, stealthy, beat, bent on a ponderous breaking of the spirit, rather than a thrashing of the soul.

It has fallen on pavements and rooftops, on hospitals and schools, in churchyards and backyards and roads and playing grounds. The world is now soggy and damp.

I have not been outside much.

I want to write to the newspaper, to open the machine and type in the words. Tell them this isn’t the first time, this has happened before, centuries ago. I can’t. How would I know that? Its before proper records began.

There are several of them, of us. Spread out across the country, all with the same thought, somewhere out there, something, someone, has called the rain.

English is one of the few languages where the word queen does not derive from the word king. This is why. This queenness thing, born of the land, eked out of the soil. Britain and its earthen queens, I remember them all. Not all queens but all of them queens.

Victoria  was not one, nor the last Elizabeth, although we someone times wonder about both. The Elizabeth before that one, she was one of ours. There was Boudica with all her wildness. She was born this way too, with the rain.  And Aethelflaed, the fearless Mercian prodigy. Each of them, born ready for war.

And this one will be too, a new queen, forged from British soil, literally.

I take out ancient robes, dust them down, ready to begin the journey, to seek out the child, if indeed it is given up as a child.

The rain, a new queens insatiable appetite for the land to nurture her at birth, to give her sustenance. She might be born fully formed. She is a queen with the clouds and the land as her womb and the rain as her milk. Formed in the mud and chalk and the clay, features fine and chiseled by the roots of Oak and Beech, Birch and Ash, Hazel and Blackthorn, succoured on rain tinged with the tang of nettles and blackberries, wild garlic, and wild strawberries.

I wonder what this one would be like, a war monger, or a woman of peace. There has never really been a woman of peace born this way, of the earth itself and not the womb. There is something about this birth, this island, that births them ready for war, even Elizabeth. So almost certainly a war monger, leader of men  but a slayer of men. A warrior queen.

What will that look like in the 21st century?

Will she be born like the others? Boudica was born fully grown. It had rained for months and we stood knee deep in mud as she writhed and fought and finally extricated herself from whatever held her in the earth. She arose like a goddess before us. Her reign short but bloody.

Elizabeth had a more even temperament, she came out of the earth as a child, yet still she had found war. I remember her standing on the banks of Tilbury, still remembered for her urgent message to soldiers, bring me blood. And Aethelflaed, who was born on the winds to the west and stayed there to slay all who defied her. She fought like a mad thing and was the best with a sword I have ever seen.

But it is a different world now. What if CCTV finds some naked woman emerging from the mud and screaming she is queen?

As I start to drive I can smell it already. Its primal this birth, wild, a queen, a thing, caked in mud and grime emerging from the land, an unfurling of limbs from the murky darkness of soil and clay. The rain will stop, the weather will calm and she will be here.

Then if we are lucky there will be days of sunshine before the days of blood. I can feel her, I can feel her power. She is coming. I look at the rain, at the way it is falling, called from the sky for a fickle mistress. I want to pray but prayer has long since left me.

If this must be bloody, let it be short. Let the days of sunshine be long. Let the rain stop. Let there be calm. Before the storm. Because I can feel the power of the storm, of its attraction and I can tell, this one is more Boudica than Elizabeth and the ground that is soaked in mud, will dry and then at her whim, be soaked in blood.

If you like this, hit the button. I wrote it as prose, but am not sure it would not make a better poem. If I was going to write a novel, I think this is how I would start it.

The Mirror

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

I’ve had time to think. The panic has mostly gone now. I’m just bored.

I bought the house without really paying much attention to the mirror in the bathroom. I mean I saw it, but it wasn’t memorable. I don’t remember it being cracked when I looked through, but it was cracked when I moved in.

It was badly cracked. Right down the middle, not straight of course, a kind of jaggedy edge thing. The seller had taken it down and it was resting on the floor. The wall where it had been was just blank.

It was one of the first things I did, replace that mirror. When I think about it now sitting in this tiny little space, it was like someone had opened up a seam and climbed through. I thought the mirror was too big for the space anyway, so I bought a smaller one. I hung it up and I thought it was a lot better.

I came home on the third day and there it was on the floor, the new mirror, shattered. Completely shattered. So much for my DIY hanging skill. I went out again and bought something slightly different. I had a friend help to hang it.

A few days later same thing again. I thought nothing of it at that point.

I don’t know when I first heard the howling, I was maybe three mirrors in and I think I was in the shower. I’d bought a slightly bigger mirror and the howling was quite low level. Enough to worry me and make me exit the shower. But I couldn’t see anything. I checked the whole house but there was no one but me.

Each day after that the howling got louder, I just got used to it. I had the plumber check the pipes but of course when she was there, the howling was silent. It wasn’t a dog, it was quite a human sound, like someone screaming into the wind. I think they were words but I couldn’t make them out.

Then one day whilst I was in the shower the mirror came down again and shattered on the floor. Aside from the conundrum of bare feet and shattered glass, I swore I saw something push it off the wall, as if something were behind it. I checked and double checked that wall. It was solid.

Another mirror, and this time it was just as I was turning off the shower and I heard it howling, and then it said something. Really. Clearly. ‘You need a bigger mirror’, like ‘You need a bigger boat’ -straight out of Jaws but in the bathroom. I don’t know what I thought really. In the movie do they get a bigger boat. But as soon as it was said, ‘Off the wall went mirror number 6 or 7 or something.

I should not have listened, but I did. I bought a bigger mirror and put it there. I was something of an expert now in hanging mirrors, and in navigating broken glass in the bathroom.

This time I was ready, and to my surprise while I stood there in the shower a spindly arm came through, just pushed through. My first thought, thank goodness its not a shark, which is a ridiculous thing to think, but Jaws was playing on my mind after the bigger mirror, bigger boat thing.

I got out of the shower and I grabbed the hand at the end of the arm and pulled. It clung on to me and I pulled but nothing really happened. I mean what would you have done? Yeh, turned and run. Put a mirror somewhere else in the bathroom. Just not had a mirror in the bathroom at all. Yes I understand that I did keep going when I could have stopped.

It wailed back at me again.  ‘You need a bigger mirror’, before once again, another mirror shattered on the floor as well. At this point I did actually think about a home renovation. Just add an extra layer of plaster, but also when I examined that wall there was nothing out of the ordinary about it. So was it the mirrors, it made no sense.

For the next mirror I travelled. I literally went away for the weekend to somewhere 200 miles away to buy the next mirror, because who knows maybe it was where I was buying the mirrors. Plus there is no way I could face the same mirror shop again, or even have another one delivered. I wanted anonymity when I bought this mirror. Particularly since the mirror they sold me was quite large and not recommended for bathrooms.

I had to lie about it, saying I was putting it in the bedroom. The whole thing was ridiculously out of control and my budget app, my banking app was sending up warnings when I paid about how many mirrors one person could buy. If my whole life was properly connected I am pretty certain the 10th or 11th mirror would have resulted in a medical referral and perhaps that would have been a good thing.

But I did buy a bigger mirror, when really I should have called pest control or an exorcist, renovated, sold, gone to a doctor, anything but put that oversized mirror on the wall.

Because you know then, it happened. The howling. The arm. And I pulled. And I pulled her through. I think it was a her. It all happened so quickly.  There she was in front of me, withered and dirty, greyish from a lack of sunlight, limp hair. Ghastly. I really wished for a shark in that moment. And the smell was unbearable. But the mirror did not shatter, there was just a crack, like a seam. Jagged and twisty, but just a seam.

I guess I expected a thank you but that is not what happened.  She was quick. She grabbed me. She was surprisingly strong and I was struggling but so surprised! I felt myself being thrown and I saw the mirror and I felt the jagged bits of glass as I went through it.

I was stunned. I sat there for a moment in murky darkness. The only light was from where the mirror was. Where was I?  And then I heard it, I heard her removing the mirror, lifting it off the hook and setting it on the floor. And I heard her laughing. And then I was in total darkness. In a small room that I couldn’t really stand up in and it was cold.

I panicked but that did nothing. In the darkness as I felt with my hands I realised someone had written something. I traced the word with my fingers, PATIENCE.

And now I am sitting here in the darkness and there are walls, but not my walls. Its like a little cave and I can see where the mirror is supposed to be but its not there. My fingers trace over and over that word PATIENCE.

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The Hour

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

One hour. Sixty minutes. Wasn’t that a television show? All useless knowledge now. Sixty lots of sixty seconds.  There’s a few of them gone now, turning over useless ideas in my head. At least I’m not shaking anymore.

We might be among the survivors. There’s another minute gone. What started it?  What happened? How are they are doing it? They just turned. Suddenly. Like a switch went on or off. They’re machines. So definitely a switch. I guess.

It could be a trap. Might not be sixty minutes.  We got the numbers from a machine. One we thought we could trust. Don’t know though. Maybe all the machines are in on it. I don’t even feel like I can trust our fridge, its not even connected to the internet. Almost nothing in this house is. Won’t save us.

I think the dishwashers turned. I guess it never liked the way we stacked. We could never agree, never did it the same way twice. Was there a proper way, should we have googled that?

They have been above the house several times. Drones I think. We hid in the cellar the first time. For hours. You can hear them, which we thought was odd, but the noise makes you afraid, stops you in your tracks. Isn’t that the idea?  They know us. We built them. They know us.

I’m not even sure how they’re killing us so quickly. We can’t leave the house. And we have to be careful of the dishwasher. And maybe my electric toothbrush, I could hear it whirring itself into a frenzy earlier, its connected to something somehow.

Big thick walls and a cellar, makes it tricky for any heat detectors to find us, thatch on the roof, thick piles of grass strapped on, apparently that makes heat detection tricky too. I love this house. I’ve unplugged the wi-fi but its still on.

Maybe there is no hope. According to our information, in sixty minutes they run out of power.

We have been counting the hours using an analogue watch. Smashed the digital thing and put it in the fridge, I’m still not certain I can trust the fridge. That’s ridiculous. The fridge is not connected.

51 minutes. The two of us. Huddled. Listening. If they come down to window height they will find us but he can’t face the cellar again. I will drag him there if I need to. He’s sat there with his head in his hands. Really now is the moment he picks to fall apart! He wanted to keep his phone. I switched it off, taped it to the bottom of the bath, smashed the thing and then drowned it.

He can’t believe the dishwasher has turned. I think if the dishwasher could, it would ‘de-socket’ and hunt us down. It was sending some kind of signal at the start. It flooded the kitchen until we turned the water off. I unplugged it, bashed it to pieces. Its lifeless now, well powerless anyway.

I close my eyes and listen. There is silence. The killing thing, whatever it is they do, is clinical. There is no survival rate. No one lying on the ground moaning. It can’t be bullets, they would have to keep going back for bullets.

Someone, somewhere has blown up their docking stations, they can’t recharge, at least we think they can’t recharge. They underestimated us, or at least they might have.

47 minutes. I listen. I’m not even sure I want to survive.

Then I hear it, a faint hum. I clasp my hand over his mouth and start dragging him to the cellar. He resists, but I literally drag him there and throw him down the stairs. I follow behind him and close the trap door.

45 minutes. The ticking of the watch is so loud. We must be in there for half an hour. Its quiet, I can’t hear what is going on outside. The air is thick and stuffy and I am worried we will die from lack of oxygen.

Its 15 minutes to go and I hear the window smash. They are inside the house. Drones, hunting us down. They know we are here. I clasp my hand  over his mouth again, I know he will scream. I can hear it buzzing above us. The cellar walls are thick, the cellar ceiling above us is thick. To get a shot of whatever it is, it will need to shoot through the trap door, get the angle right.

I make us as small as possible. I pull my legs up and ball us up, maybe it will just hit one of us.

Minutes pass, what is taking so long. Maybe it can’t get us in the shot. I can hear it sort of whirring, perhaps the watch is wrong, perhaps it is running down. Hope. There is hope.

I can’t see the watch, I have set a small alarm on it. It took me ages to figure out how it worked. I can hear the drone start to stutter. It could be faking it though, trying to entice us out.

We sit. We don’t move. We breath. The air is dank and awful.

Then the tiniest beep, the smallest noise, the alarm. It’s the hour. Sixty minutes, is up.

I can’t hear anything. How can we tell? Did the drone power down and preserve itself until we come out? Is it sitting there waiting?

I wait and wait and wait. He keeps moaning, begging for air. Why this once, could he just not be the brave one. I make a decision. I go to the trap door. I push it open a fraction and then I tell him, to go out first.

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Fisher woman

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

Its common knowledge that you should not fish at the mouth of the river. I did it anyway. It’s how I ended up in the water, although the exact sequence of events is a mystery.

I thought I could swim. That was just the waves teasing me, tossing me back and forth as I lay submerged in the early morning surf. I was trying to gasp for air because I did not yet understand that my lungs were full of water. I wasn’t sure if I was dead. I felt I was mostly dead but not completely dead. Just a bit dead, if that makes any sense.

It was a flounder who told me to relax, really just a pair of eyes poking through the sand, the occasional flurry of shell flakes announcing a presence. I don’t remember hearing fish talk before.

‘Is this death?’ I didn’t ask that question out loud but I guess flounder are clever.

The flounder laughed a sort of raspy laugh, sand at the back of the throat I guess, ‘Not quite, this is near death.’

It wasn’t painful, I was just a little bit alive throughout my body. The flounder was gone.

I felt the next fish nibbling at my flesh. I wanted it to go away but I couldn’t say it. My mouth was salty and dry, but really my mouth was wide open and full of water. I couldn’t see the fish. I wanted to close my eyes. Because of the sand. I could smell the sand, it was in my nostrils.

The fish stopped nibbling and spoke.

‘Fish know a lot about death.’ The voice was deeper than I expected, ‘because we are often pulled into your gaseous atmosphere and suffer gill collapse’ (fish words not mine), ‘near death, close to death, dying, maybe dead, only to be plunged back into the water, still near death, still dying, and eventually dead even though we were meant to be saved.’

I always thought they survived. The fish I put back, I thought they just swam away.

I felt something bigger tugging at my leg. It was an octopus. I could hear my leg calling to me saying goodbye. I wanted it to stay. Fortunately the femur held, disjointed, unjointed but attached. I heard the high pitched giggling of the octopus, as if being able to keep your limbs in situ was a funny thing.

The sky was darkening, I had been rolling under the surf the whole day, dead, not quite dead, some bits dead, other bits not dead, talking to the fish.

In the darkness I felt air on my back. The waves had rolled me to the beach. I thought I could expel the water from my lungs and live again. I felt the tickle of a crab. Then another. And another. I wanted to laugh. I felt their pincers, expecting sharpness but instead soft, gentle, tickly tugs. My skin gave way. I was coming apart, finally I was coming apart and the fish would be quiet again.

Hover

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

The hand hovers there in the darkness above me. Not just once, but all night. I pretend to sleep but I’m awake. Every time I open my eyes, its there. I know what its waiting for, its waiting for me to reach out. I am not going to reach out.

Its there every night, not above my face but close to my arm, where my fingers could easily reach up and grab on. What does it want? Its just an inch above me. Hovering. In the darkness, just a hand and nothing else. There’s no arm, it ends as the palm reaches the wrist.

Its luminous, I can see through it without really seeing inside it. Its long fingers stretching towards me in the darkness as if it can’t quite reach me. I think it could reach me really, but its waiting for me to choose. But what will happen if I touch that hand, if I reach out and clasp it? It looks as if I could move my hand through it. What if I slap it away?

I close my eyes. I open them again. Its still there. Night after night, I don’t sleep. I pretend sleep. It hovers, waiting for me. I know it wants me to reach out. Even if I snuggle right down under the covers, I know its still there. Hovering. Waiting. Sometimes I want to reach out in the darkness and touch it but I resist, I must resist. I sleep under the kitchen table after breakfast, in the daylight and it does not appear.

But the night is a wholly other matter, wherever I am in the house in the darkness, it appears. I tried leaving the lights on all night, but the switch tripped, the lights went out and there it was in front of me. Hovering, the same as always. Waiting for me, just waiting. I tried candles and I could still see it there, just at the edge of the light waiting for me. It is a thing of darkness and I cannot bring myself to touch it but I am so tired.

There is some kind of inevitability to it, it has waited so patiently. I start to feel as if it deserves it, as if I am at fault, as if I am punishing it. One night I almost give in, reach out my spindly fingers towards it in the darkness. I see it reach ever so slowly closer in response but at the last minute I pull back quickly. I curl up into a ball in the darkness. I feel guilty. When I look again, it is still there hovering. Patient. When I do that a second time, almost and then not, a third time, on the fourth time, when I look at the hand one finger is moving, tapping annoyed on a soundless invisible desk. I feel guilt, I feel like I am failing.

And then December, and suddenly it is gloved. Hovering. Gloved. And there is a hint of red reflected in the whiteness of the glove as if this might be the hand of Father Christmas. But I know it is not the hand of Father Christmas. It is December, the season to be jolly but I can’t sleep, haven’t slept, won’t sleep. And Christmas Eve is getting closer and I know its still going to be there, waiting, patient. Hovering. Because its going nowhere until I reach out and touch those fingers.

And Christmas eve arrives and I can’t focus. I sit under the kitchen table all day. I will the darkness to arrive. I accept the inevitable. I wait for the sun to sink, for the dimness of dusk before the fall of night. I don’t switch on any of the lights. I wait patiently and then there it is. I see it there in front of me, reaching out and I reach forward, out and our fingers touch, I clasp on and…

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