Tales of Interest

Mars story - continued

2012-02-17T02:49:00.002-08:00

My Father arrived on Mars, set down in Olympus Mons space port, set on the edge of the great crater 1. The air was thin up there. It was the depth of the northern winter and, even with the improved ion drive, it was two months solid travel to get there. My Father had never been in space before, let alone on an inter-planetary journey. It was an awesome sight. The air was thin. It was night. The light of the port showed the atmosphere above, still faintly pink. The sky was relatively clear, but even then you could see clouds rolling up over the surface of the volcano, waves, plumes. Beyond the port-area the expanse of bare, red rock, a plain of half-pulverised basalt. In the distance he could see the lights of various towns, all the way up to the ice shelf leading out into the Boreal Ocean 2, then on, over the horizon to the north pole.

My father had to pretend he was a deckhand and help unload 3, easier said than done wearing a basic space suit 4. It took nearly four hours. The crew finally got some rest sleeping in the rear compartment of the train, which took the delivery, creeping down the mountain to Olympus Mons City, a full day's journey. Every now and then the train would skid on the tightly frozen rails before coming to a sharp halt. My Dad awoke after sleeping for a few hours. When he looked out the window. The top of the mountain was frozen and bare. More than half-way down the cold still clung, but now there were small amounts of vegetation poking through the snow, shrubs and shrunken trees. After a while he spotted his first Martian Ibex 5. Dawn, on the outskirts of Olympus Mons City, they encountered small woods, less than 10 years old in some parts Dad reckoned, a mixture of naked deciduous and slim pine, slumbering under the southern precipice of the volcano; miles and miles dusted with snow.

Very little news reached the trade mission. Some of the dockers tried to swap stories with the crew. It seemed the People's Assembly of Atzlan was still holding out under siege, but the Republic had fallen. The Empire was all but certain, the dockers thought, of winning the war. A union there approached my Father. He must have seen through the act. He asked Dad if he wouldn't mind speaking to the branch members about the situation on Earth. He declined, as they seemed to know more than he did about the war now. Anyway, my Father was almost certainly a wanted man, he didn't want to stick his neck out, not just yet.

My Father didn't get the chance. Down in the city the delegation blundered straight into a catastrophe. It was standard practice for trade delegations to report to the Republican Embassy for debrief and medical examination, before a week's rest and recuperation then the return journey. This they did, but they were denied access to the embassy, which was now heavily fortified, surrounded by guards. Instead they taken away, bundled into armoured cars and driven through the slush-laden back streets to a hotel, halfway out of town, also crawling with menacing goons. It seemed the war on Earth had spilled over onto Mars. The Republican Embassy was the home of a Government-in-Exile. The Imperial Alliance was sending operatives to Mars secretly, trying to assassinate people connected the government. There had been an attempted bombing of the Trade Attache only that week. The Empire demanded the government surrender. Martian Congress was being drawn into the war.

The crew were made to wait locked in an unheated drawing room: ominous. It seemed to My Father, and the rest of the crew, like the end of the line. They began to talk, tell each other who they were, where they were from, who they had left behind. It seemed completely genuine to My Father. The final trade mission of the Republic must have seemed hopeless from the start. The Empire was relentlessly closing in from all sides. How was escaping to another planet going to save them?

Sitting together in the cold room, Dad was about to volunteer his story when his friend, a clerk, white collar staff, veteran of nine previous missions, pulled him aside. “Don't” he whispered. “I don't know who half these men are. We are still in great danger” 6.

They were still in great danger. A representative of the government-in-exile eventually came to explain. The Imperial Alliance had given the government three days to surrender conditionally and tell all remaining forces loyal to the Republic to lay down their arms. The deadline had already passed. The Embassy was expecting and attack any day now. The government of the colonies, as the representative referred to it, was powerless to prevent the assault. In the representative's bitter opinion the colonies were washing their hands of the Republic. Several members of the government had been evacuated 7. The remainder of the government forces were fortifying the city, a rearguard action 8. The trade delegation was to split up go underground. The Empire was unlikely to claim sovereignty over Mars just yet. It hadn't the resources, the manpower to hold down the colonies as well. The delegation would be given new names and new identities and sent out. They would lie low until the signal would be given to reform. The representative did not say what the signal might be.

Wheel left !9

Not long after the crew were introduced to their quarters My Father settled down to sleep. Before he could drop off there was a loud explosion. The attack had begun, it was much larger, more coordinated and thoroughgoing than the Republican forces expected. It was realised afterwards the Imperial forces attacked each of the buildings taken over or used by the Republican government-in-exile with overwhelming force, grenades, machine guns and even small cannons and armoured cars. How did the Empire manage to get these onto the planet and into the city without being notices. What had gone wrong. Some guessed there was collusion between the Empire and the Martians 10. If there had been any collaboration the Martians paid a high price, several municipal buildings were attacked, including the House of Unions. The hall where the Congress sat was largely destroyed.

The soldiers guarding the hotel fought with tenacity. Up against machine guns and flame thrower, armed with only pistols and rifles, they were doomed. My Father and a few others from the delegation were able to escape in the chaos, through a skylight fire escape, across several roofs, tracers whistling around them. They found a place to hide, a communal kitchen in the eastern suburbs, sheltered by a sympathetic leader of the local Consumer Council 11.

April 2156. The fighting was over in 36 hours. Those left alive were taken to a makeshift Imperial Army camp and launch site which had been set up 30 miles out of the city. The prisoners were taken back to Earth to meet their fate. The camp though seemed to remain. For nearly a week no one dared approach it.

Back on Earth

The war did eventually come to an end. Though the Republican Federation was unconquered it was defeated, driven into the furthest corners of the Earth, blockaded, starved. The peace treaty between the Empire and the Republics 12 turned the latter into a client state. The Empire was fed with raw materials, cheap commodities and even extorted labour as part of the reparations set 13. All Republican armies were disbanded, all space exploration was prohibited.

On Mars

The Empire also wanted to claim the Martian colonies. Though it now had a free hand in space, the Empire did not have things all its own way. The defeat of the Republican government-in-exile led to a shock then a fear, then a surge of Martian activity. Mars would be next.

Martians had got used to thinking of themselves not as colonists but as a distinct people. They had roots in the Martian soil, soil which was beginning, through their effort to revive. Martian society did not rely on regular deliveries from Earth. Since the onset of the second, bitter world war Martian industry had all but caught up with Earth's. The Earth Empire could not impose a blockade on Mars from space while the Martian authorities had control of the various elevators leading down to the surface. Neither could the Empire strengthen the base it had set up in the Tharsis countryside, at least not openly. Weapons and men had to be smuggled in, landed directly from orbit on the other, less populated side of the planet and taken across country on long, exposed roads.

But it did have the base in the Tharsis countryside 14, handily placed between the three main Martian cities. The Empire was determined to keep it. The Embassy it ran in Olympus Mons was a skeleton operation. The real work went down inside the military base. There was little the Martian Congress could do to have it removed, short of declaring war on Earth.

Empire began at first a low level campaign of propaganda, intrigue and sabotage. It set up squads of agents, some brought from Earth, some recruited or blackmailed on Mars. They insinuated themselves into different parts of Martian society and made their influence felt. There was still a flow of refugees and immigrants from Earth, although less so. As such it was very difficult to root out the spies and saboteurs. The odd suspicious death or strange accident would draw too much attention, shed too much light on the Empire's shady activity. The Empire obscured its operations enough that it could offer up a scapegoat or two and end the matter 15.

But the threat was real. The United Empire was not a stable set up but riven with economic and political rivalries. It did not have the same social and political purpose that even the Republics relied up. The Earthlings could not gain a foothold, could not subdue Mars through trade. It would, sooner or later, have to use force.

There had been very little crime on Mars, there was very little to steal and the consequences were generally severe. There was no police force, certainly no standing army and not much in the way of a militia either 16. The Martian Congress authorised the build up and arming of the militia. The Imperial authorities could not help but notice and accuse, what they still condescended to call, the Martian Colonies of preparing for war. The Martian Congress turned the accusation back on the Empire. The then Vice-President:

“Why would the Empire object to Mars arming to defend itself if the Empire wasn't thinking, one day, to attack”?

Strong words from 2159, they caused a diplomatic storm that seemed to lead both sides to the brink of war 17 until the Vice-President apologised and agreed to step down. This seemed to cool tempers, get things back to normal, only for the controversy to flare up again after the Vice-President, not considered a suicidal man, was found hanged in his own home.

My Father

Dad eventually settled on the eastern half of the planet. His skills were especially prized. He was granted asylum, work and a new identity. He was sent to help the general commission, connecting far flung settlements to the nearest water works and electric grid. He was given a handle, an operative from the Republican underground to report to, to begin with once a month, then every three months. He was old to keep his head down, not reveal his true identity for a minimum of two years, make as little contact with the locals as possible. The squads of navvies and sparks working the eastern frontier were basically itinerant, kept in hotels, or billeted in farmsteads for months on end. Most usually went home after a three month stint 18, though some stayed working for half a year, earning extra credit.

But my Dad skipped his work detail after six months. He fobbed off his handler who in any case was based on the other side of the planet most times of the year 19, and went to work as a repair man on a well-established agricultural collective, a few hundred kilometres east of the Mariner Dam 20. My Father had stayed there only a few months previously, when he was working with a team helping to repair. It helped that the Farm Leader was a former Republican citizen back on Earth who had emigrated several decades prior. My Father was, in the main, shielded from Republican and Imperial interference.

What also helped was the twenty-year-old daughter of the Head Silo Operative had just returned from her first year at the newly established Olympus Mons City University. The young woman went on to become my Mother. They had a short affair while she was back from spring break. Their relationship sundered after my Father revealed his true identity to my Mother. She went back to university happy that they'd never meet again. My Father was smitten. He tracked down where she lived and began writing letters to her, explaining who he was and how he came to be on Mars; how much he was attracted to her and, through little hints, what a great risk he was running by contacting her like this. In time, after several phone calls and one surprise visit, he eventually won her heart.

Though Mum and Dad told us many stories, sometimes conflicting tales, of their early lives I found much of this I later when trawling through records of Imperial espionage.

My Mother

My Mother was third-generation Martian born. When she met my Father she was a music student, a violinist 21. Her interests were, for previous generations of Martians, daringly, almost obscenely non-practical. She was, though, a sign of how far Mars had come since the early days. It was now not only materially self-sufficient, but developing its own culture too. My parents spent two and a half years in a sometimes long distance relationship, commuting between the farm and the campus. My Mother eventually won a seat in the Olympus Mons First Orchestra, also known as the Red Orchestra. My Father found work in the city and they moved to Olympus Mons permanently. The year was 2160.

1. The new space port was established because setting down on the rim of the great volcano, 29 kilometres high, was an easier and safer route down from orbit compared to setting down at ground level on the Tharsis Bulge.
2. At this stage it was less than 20 Years old. It was barely even brackish, ocean life was just getting a foothold.
3. A number of people on the journey seemed to have been smuggled on board, last minute.
4. Required outside at that altitude.
5. The semi-official symbol of Martian society, used on several generations of bank notes. The Martian Ibex was a genetically modified version of the European Ibex.
6. Like my Father, his friend is still alive today. Therefore we will not name him.
7. The most prominent members of the government, including the acting President and Vice-President, were to stay behind, giving the illusion of complete defeat
8. The government in exile did not inform or consult with the Martian Congress.
9. The signal; the emergency code signal lookouts were supposed to have given in the event of an Imperial invasion and attack. Of course the forward observation points across the city came under attack too.
10. Confirmed, so it seemed, by the awful scenes outside the General Internet Hub, the building which controlled communications across and out of the western-half of the planet. Defeated republican soldiers were jeered onlookers as they were led away to internment and execution. This was no doubt fuelled by separatism and fear. The long years of peace led many to believe in a kind of Martian exceptionalism. Now the Earthlings, uninvited, were bringing there war to our streets. Nonetheless these scene is now a recognised Martian shame. Some go as far to deny it happened, an Imperial fabrication, but it did.
11. My Father reckoned, with hindsight, they were probably a recent immigrant from Earth.
12. Shortly after the war ended the Imperial Alliance was made into a Union. Though the United Empire formally had several capitals it was generally referred to as the Sino-American Empire.
13. The different republics were honour bound to help fill labour shortages in the Empire. Hence, for example, the mass migration of Venezuelan doctors to America.
14. It became known colloquially as The Castle. The Earthlings, for some reason, decided to dig a moat around the outer perimeter.
15. For example, a former secretary of one of the leading Republican parties who had gone underground was poisoned at a restaurant. The man in question escaped from an Imperial prison and made it to Mars hidden in the quarters of a package delivery craft. On arrival with help from the Martian Militia and the informal networks of naturalised Earthlings, he assumed a new identity. He became a secondary school teacher, first down in Southern Mars then later on in Pavonis. Under his new identity he became a small player in local politics, possibly his fatal mistake. He died in hospital after being poisoned with radioactive Polonium 210 in a restaurant. He was eating out with his recently engaged fiancee, who disappeared shortly afterwards the case became well known, never to be found. It was suggested he was about to take the network of Republican loyalists on Mars overground.
16. Law and order, such as past civilisations would have recognised it, was ensured by a community service night-watchman system (at least in the cities). Each citizen on the electoral roll was required to give a certain number of hours each year patrolling streets, guarding buildings, operating emergency telephone lines and so forth. Outside of the cities, in the much smaller towns and farming outposts, keeping the peace was delegated to a small crew or even one person elected to perform the function.
17. If not slightly over the brink. While the hottest diplomatic exchanges were going on soldiers from the now expanded Imperial Barracks spread out across the Tharsis region, setting up roadblocks, and detaining anyone they found suspicious. The squads were defeated by a well coordinated manoeuvre from the now armed local militia, who scrambled all electronic communications before moving along each of the highways, using speed and overwhelming numbers to disarm and disperse the squads without a shot being fired. Though the incident was played down the Empire's move was surely intended as the first step to conquering Mars.
18. The typical rota was three months on three months off for teams such as these.
19. The handler, who went by the name 'Father Ted', was seriously injured in a car crash two years after taking on responsibility. A new agent was assigned the case load with my Father on it. It was just as well my Father gave the Republican protection system as the new agent, a man now known to be Henri Dee, was an Imperial double agent.
20. Actually a system of dams, built across the eastern span of what was Mariner Valley, before the valley flattened out into Chrysse Planitia, now a cold swamp leading up to the shores of the Boreal Ocean. Mariner Dams are the principle source of hydro-electric power on Mars.
21. Her minor was English Literature

Mars story - history and prehistory

2012-01-31T11:47:00.000-08:00

The Old Philosopher said “the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggle”. Less well known is his warning, a few lines later. This struggle, if not resolved progressively it will lead to the “common ruin of the contending classes”.

This is what happened on Earth.

For decades, centuries a struggle raged between the creators and possessors. It was a vast, vast war, spanning the globe, feeding into every aspect of every society. At times the struggle seemed dormant, at times it was all-consuming, terrifying and exciting.

The accumulated effects of war and environmental degradation, the results of a system of possession, frittered and dissipated human civilisation. The process was accelerated by a regional nuclear war that killed billions, poisoned millions of square miles of good earth and resulted in a final, total war. Instead of a progressive regrouping of human and natural resources, what was left of civilisation lapsed into slavery and choking dictatorship, global absolutism. But this was not the end of the story.

Parallel to this human beings found hope and redemption in space. As civilisation destroyed itself on Earth it was rebuilt in space. Human kind began to colonise points across the solar system; in sheltered biodomes on the Moon, round aquifers on Ganymede, over hydrocarbon wells on Titan.

The best hope came from Mars. At first settlers made homes underground to shelter from the Sun's unfiltered rays. They set up factories, taking advantage of their mineral rich home. They not only made vital export commodities , but managed to rebuild Mars's atmosphere. The Martian biosphere slowly began to reveal itself. The surface became amenable first to arable farming then livestock. The ancient oceans were reconstructed, fish stock was added, until even fishing became a viable pursuit. The red planet was made green again.

As Earth sunk into poverty, Mars rose from its spartan beginnings, into wealth. While Earth suffered great repression, Mars was free and egalitarian. The harshness of life pushed the pioneers together, each was reliant on all. The factories and mines were co-operatively organised. The fields were tilled, animals were herded not to market but to public storehouses. Everything was rationed but, unless there was a disaster, no one went without.

In the beginning

Mars first begun to be settled in 2052 . The Great Expedition, 4 astronauts, a joint American, European and Chinese enterprise, landed successfully in the Orchus Patera region . There had already been unmanned, forward missions to the region, setting up the living quarters, a silo containing fuel (liquid CO2 collected from the atmosphere) for the return journey, ready for when the first humans arrived. They stayed for three months, exploring the surrounding region, performing experiments and carefully selecting rocks to take home. Any longer and they would have missed the transit back home. They left behind the bulk of the landing craft, a new structure, which they had used as a compact laboratory and communication centre. It was this process, these kinds of missions, that over the course of a decade helped build up a working colony. By 2066 the first group of men and women arrived with the intention of staying. The day they arrived, November the 7th 2066, eventually became a Holiday for the first Martians .

This was after the first space-elevator was set up. Marvellous inventions, space elevators are geosynchronous space stations connected to the planet below by high-tensile cables. They allow you to raise and lower large payloads (not to mention people) without the cost, effort and danger of fighting gravity. The first permanent Martian colonies were established beneath the first elevator, in what is now the Tri-City area . This allowed critical supplies to be brought to the planet in much greater quantities, metals, plastics, glass, machines, tools; most important was the soil, fresh soil. The first harvest was collected a year later. The first Martian child was born born by 2070.

This was all done as joint government ventures. There were several reasons for this. First as a check on geopolitical rivalry, there were several space programmes able to reach the Red Planet, and more would be on their way. None could simply plant a flag in the soil and claim it for their own. The expense was also prohibitive for one country to go it alone.

The transit times, not to mention to lifeless desolation on the planet's surface meant life was hard for the first settlers, who spent most of the time either toiling away dangerously exposed on the surface or taking shelter in underground quarters. Mars is mineral rich, the first extractions were taken in 2069. Energy was not a problem, the thin atmosphere meant there was lots of solar radiation free to capture. The permafrost gave a ready supply of water (although it generally had to be desalinated). Once the rudiments of civilisation (even if it was an underground civilisation) began to form the distance from Earth gave the first Martians a fair degree of autonomy.

The rigours of Martian life pushed people together, each depended on all. The first meeting of the Martian Congress took place in 2079. Seven men and seven women elected to represent and co-ordinate between the different colonies that had been established by then. They met in the garden of the main biodome serving the Olympus Mons colony.

Though supplies still came, materials and people, Mars became more and more self-sustaining . It is estimated that Mars became self-sufficient in food by 2098. By 2106 Martians celebrated their first 40 years on the planet by inaugurating Martian Time .

It was long suggested that Mars could be terraformed. The Martians drew up their first rough plans in the early 2100s. But something was going on, under their very feet, that they were only just beginning to understand. First bacteria, then hardy lichens and mosses began to escape from the different biodomes and settle in nooks and crannies on the Martian surface. Emissions from biofuel installations helped reconstruct the atmosphere, slowly heat it up. The first small shrubs were found growing on the surface in 2112. The first plants had to be propagated manually. The terraforming had already begun.

1. By the “revolutionary reconstitution of society”.
2. Mars: the workshop of the solar system.
3. To begin with these years I mention are Earth Years. Martian are 687 Earth Days long, approximately twice as long. The Martian Day is 38 minutes longer than the Earth Day. Until around 2100 time on Mars was measured relative to Earth.
4. The site still exists, along the shoreline of the reconstructed Boreal Ocean.
5. Another celebrated day: June the 9th 2079. This was the day the first Biodome was erected, in the newly established Tharsis Colony. Residents could walk around on the surface, touch Martian soil and breathe Martian air (of a kind) for the first time.
6. Mars has three cities really worthy of the name, Pavonis, Ascreaus and Olympus Mons City. They were established firstly out of cave networks in the three different volcanoes, useful because they allowed natural protection from solar storms (and Martian sandstorms), whilst still being close to the surface. As the planet was terraformed the three cities took on different functions. Pavonis became a transport hub, a point where the different farm stations brought their crops and cattle etc. Ascreaus was a largely industrial city. It also had best access (of the three) to the Great Mariner Lake and the Boreal Ocean in the north. Olympus Mons City was the designated administrative centre; home of the first Martian Congress.
7. By the records of the first Martian Congress.
8. Also known as the Dorian Calendar. The extra 220 plus days were spread across the 12 familiar months, which now lasted between 56 and 58 days. Every 3 days there was a Leap-Hour (a backward leap) at Midnight to account for the extra 38 minutes on each day.
9. Energy from these installations was Mars's first real export.

Mars story

2012-01-31T11:45:00.000-08:00

The most important day of my life happened before I was born. My Father was one of the last refugees to escape from the fall of the Republic (1). He was an engineer before the war. He was twenty-seven at the time, a member of the engineering union and a supporter of the Communard Tendency (2) in the Senate (3). He volunteered for the Republican army, serving first in artillery divisions, then in logistics and supplies.

Even as he was evacuated from the continent, along with the remains of the Republican army, rumour went round; a delegation of conciliationist senators was headed for Russia to negotiate surrender (over the heads of the rest of the senate, including the Senate Leader). The rumours turned out to be true, causing much turmoil and an attempted last minute rebellion against the Capitulards (4).

Many people were marked by the Empire for internment and/or execution. They fled, or tried to flee across the planet, to remaining Republican strongholds (although these were also in danger). My Father got out a different way. He escaped on board the near-Earth orbit escalator. He had friends on board the Republic’s final trade mission to Mars.

But this is not my Father’s story, nor is it my own, really. This is firstly about the Martian War of Independence, a struggle that, in my opinion, still goes on to this day. This is also about the ebb and flow of human history which, although it has progressed generally, it has also seen setbacks, defeats. This alone suggests history is not automatic, humanity’s future is not guaranteed. This book, finally, is a warning: if something’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well. Like my Father, I have become another refugee from struggle.

I mean this to be an optimistic tale, an optimistic, cautionary tale, if there is such a thing. I am often asked was the war worth it given the trials and the sacrifice of the struggle? It may be typically Martian but I usually answer that question with another question: could we have lived in peace? Wars and revolutions may mean suffering and hardship, they also mean inspiration, fraternity (and sorority), and give out great hope.

My name is Leopold Trepper (5). I still have hope, hope one day I may return to Mars.

(1) The Republic referred to here means an international network of republics, founded in response to the 1st Alliance, a military coalition of authoritarian regimes. The two coalitions fought a widespread war, centred on Europe, which, after four years came to standstill. An uneasy peace was agreed, with no formal treaty, which lasted nearly twenty years. War broke out again after a dispute over remaining Middle East oil and gas supplies. With the exception of the People’s Assembly of Atzlan, in North America, the Republic’s last stand took place on an island off the north-west European coast. It is generally accepted that Republican in-fighting led to defeat (though everybody blamed everybody else). The 2nd Alliance, led by The Russian Imperial forces, halted on the west European shore. It made an offer of surrender to the remaining Republican forces. The dispute at that point was between Defencists and Conciliationists.
(2) The left-wing tendency in Republican politics. Its basic aim was the extension of democracy into every area of public life, including social measures to allow the poorer citizens greater participation.
(3) Across between the general assembly and the parliament of the Republic. It was a fairly staid, conservative body in peacetime but the frequent convulsions of the war changed its composition and purpose.
(4) As the senators were colloquially known.
(5) My name is not Leopold Trepper. It is a nom de-guerre that was foisted on me one fine day that seemed to stick after I went over ground. More on code names and various characters behind them in a later chapter.

I'm Listening...

2012-01-01T04:50:00.001-08:00

Gwen looked out at the city below, fingers and nose pressed up against the window:

“Rain, rain go away, come again another day” she said in a strange, staccato voice. She turned to look at her Mum, who was busy at the kitchen end of the flat. She grinned:

“Rain, rain go away, come again another day” she said again, but this time gabbled and fast.

Her Mum looked up from the oven. “What dear?”

“Rain, rain go away, come again another day” she said one more time, nice and slow so Mum could understand. But Mum didn't quite understand. She closed the oven door.

“What you talking about?” Gwen was having one of those episodes, those things, Val, her Mum just couldn't get her head around. She folded her arms and pursed her lips in pretend anger. “It's 'the sun has got his hat on, hip, hip, hip hooray...”

“Rain, rain go away, come again another day” her Daughter interrupted. Val could only shake her head and laugh. She didn't mean anything bad by it, did Gwen; she wasn't a cheeky girl. “Come on” she said and went over to her daughter. “You're a funny one” said Val. She ruffled Gwen's hair, lovely golden-soft hair. “Away from there now. You don't want to get all smudges on it now, do you?”

Gwen had been sitting on a chair, pulled up to the window. She loved looking out over the city, she seemed to enjoy it, though Val couldn't understand why, all the way up there on the eleventh floor of a tower block. It was perfectly safe, the window didn't open. The only fresh air came from adjustable vents in each of the rooms. It was one of the design flaws built into the tower block. Hot summers had to be spent half out in hallway, doors open. At least it meant people were able to mix a little, get a sense of community. Most weeks it wasn't like that.

“We've got a little time, Gwen, before dinner's ready” said Val. “What would you like to do? Anything you want...? Anything...”

Gwen wanted to watch the Old Men. Val smiled but sighed deep within. Not the Old Men again. But it was Wednesday. It was time. Val sat her Daughter down in front of the TV for Prime Minister's Question Time. Val wasn't a political person. To her Prime Minister's Question Time seemed like rich man's pantomime to Val, an insult. Every week people would stand up in the chamber and argue. The government would take money from the poor, people like Val, and give it to the rich, so said the opposition. The government denied this every time:

“Oh no we're not”.

“Oh yes you are”.

Nothing would be resolved, nothing would change; the daily robbery would go on, which reminded Val, the final notice on their gas bill. Must pay it soon.

Gwen wasn't really a political person either, she was only four after all. What she liked was the words.

“Order! Order!” the Speaker yelled.

“Order! Order!” Gwen repeated with a giggle.
...

That was Gwen's thing, words. Often when she was playing round the house Val could hear her mumbling strange things, like: diplodocus, onomatopeia, hydrogen or quadrille. This always worried Val. What was Gwen like at play group? Val asked her teachers (as she called them). They said she was fine, bright if a little dreamy. One time an assistant told Val she used to wonder if Gwen was listening during story time, she seemed to be a thousand miles away, lost in thought. The Assistant would stop reading to make sure everyone was following the story, Gwen in particular. She wasn't lost in thought, but picturing the story in front of her.

Some words made her straight laugh, like: pogo, marmite, rubber duck or rhubarb. Val once asked Gwen what was so funny. Val was watching TV, Gwen was sitting in front of the TV, cross legged on the rug, writing out words in pencil on pieces of paper and chortling. What was so funny?

“Look” said Gwen, who held up an almost fresh scrap, just was one word:

Pant.

Val noticed she had the dictionary out again. She was looking up words and writing them down.:

“I see” said Val. “But why're you laughing”.

“It's blue” said Gwen. She then added a little line to the paper, a diagonal downward stroke. She then held it up again for her Mum to see. Now it said:

Rant.

Val shrugged.

“Now it's orange. Do you see, Mummy?”

Val said she did.

…

Val had to hurry. After lunch she was to take her Daughter over to see Grandma. Today was Wednesday. One night a week Val's Mum would take care of Gwen, so her Daughter could have time with her new Boyfriend. Val was a contract cleaner, she worked nights at Canary Wharf. Her Boyfriend, Lewis, was an ambulance driver. Lewis was a kind, reliable partner, not like Gwen's Dad. They loved each other very much. They'd been together for over eighteen months. Val hoped he would propose to her soon.

Things were difficult at the moment, with Lewis's shifts. Weekdays they'd rarely see each other, except on Wednesday evenings, when Gwen's Nana would look after her. Lewis and Val would have, what she called, their Golden Hour together. Actually it was three hours, between when Lewis got back and Val had to head off, but with the winding down and getting ready it really was one single, golden hour.

Dinner was nearly ready. Gwen was waiting patiently at the table. If nothing else she had good manners. Everything was set on the plates, chips, peas and carrots. Although Gwen didn't really like carrots, Val was persisting with them. She thought she might mix them up with the peas, like hiding them. That might work. All that was left was the fish fingers. Val had to hurry. The fingers were long done, Val could smell them, in danger of burning. Val fetched the ragged little kitchen towel she'd been keeping on the side, wrapped it round her hand, opened the oven, reached inside and:

“Ah!” she cried. Searing pain. “Shit!” Val dropped the metal tray with the fish fingers on and dashed for the kitchen tap.

“What's the matter, Mummy?” Gwen asked.

“Nothing sweetie” said Val, running her hand under the cold water. “I've just hurt myself. Dinner won't be long”.

Gwen then mumbled something.

“What was that, Gwennie?”

There was a short pause.

“I love you, Mummy”.

“I love you too” said Val.

“I love you... three!” said Gwen eventually, snorting happy laughter.

…

By the time Val and her Daughter got out the door it had clouded over outside and was threatening to rain. This delayed them even further. Gwen had wasted a lot of precious time, not getting dressed, which she said she wanted to do herself. Three times Val found her playing strange games with Lewis's pack of cards.

“This one's called Patience” said Gwen, about to explain.

“You're trying my patience, girl. Now, if you can't dress yourself, I'll have to do it for you”.

“But, Mummy!”

“No buts, child. Get a cardigan on, it's getting cold out there”.

The lift was broken, again. Val had to carry Gwen down eleven flights of stairs, which was tough but nowhere near as difficult as carrying her up eleven flight. Val had got used to this kind of thing happening. Out the door, off they went into the chilly, darkening concrete plains of South Hackney to see Val's Mum, who lived a short walk away, in Hoxton.

On the way there they bumped into a strange figure. It walked up to them on a lonely residential road, hooded, an uneven gait. The Figure approached the pair carefully but with intent. It leaned over to Val and whispered:

“Do you want to buy some polish...? Hammers...? Nails...? Screws...? Any DIY needs...?”

Val took it in her stride.

“Is that you, Stevie”.

“Aye” said the Figure, who looked up from within what now appeared to be a parka.

“Go away, Stevie”, Val waved. “I don't need anything. We don't need anything”. She picked Gwen up and carried her.

“Can you lend us some money?” asked Stevie, following Val and Gwen for a little way.

Val stopped for a moment. “Of all the places you could have robbed during the riots and you went and did over a hardware store. You need to keep your head down. I'm surprised the police haven't caught you yet”.

“Can't I even speak to my Sister and Niece in the street any more?” Stevie asked.

“Don't be so stupid” snapped Val, who continued walking. “It's not as if you don't know where we live” said added, from over her shoulder.

“But all those stairs” whined Stevie.

“See you brother”. And with that they parted ways.

After a minute's silence Gwen asked her Mother:

“What's DIY?” She repeated the word over and over until they got to Nana's place.

…

Gwen's Nana was always happy to have her Granddaughter over. She only wished she could do more for her family, especially now Val was away from that awful man. Lewis would make a good husband. He was already a great Dad. Nana told her Daughter every time:

“What're you waiting for? There's no time to lose”.

Men like that didn't come along very often. Nana knew that. Thirty years she spent with the grumpy old sod who got her up the duff. She might not have regretted Val but she regretted her Father. Why couldn't Women's Liberation have happened earlier?

They played a few games together, Nana and Gwen, then watched some TV. They both liked watching game shows. Gwen preferred Countdown while Nana rather liked Deal or No Deal. After Deal... Nana made Gwen a spot of tea, sausages and mash. Then they washed up. Nana liked to sing while she worked, old songs, from when she was a young woman. Nana was a good singer. Then they settled down to read a book.

“Natural history, are you sure this is what you want me to read?”

“Yes, Nana” said Gwen. “It's my library book”.

The book wasn't too taxing, about wildlife and nature, with lovely pictures inside, wide plains, tall mountains, dark forests, lions, wildebeest, monkeys and so on. Nana read carefully, checking to see every few lines or so that Gwen understood what was being said. This made Gwen a little impatient, but Nana did not give up.

Gwen was starting to look tired. Nana asked.

“Are you tired. Have you had enough?”

“No Nana. One more page...” Then she remembered. “Please”.

“Of course, darling” smiled her Nana. “The Himalayas were formed less than 40 billion years ago, when the...” She turned the page. The page was sharp and cut her fingers.

“Ah” exclaimed Nana. Searing pain.

Gwen completed the sentence for her:

“Shit”.

The medium is the massage

2011-12-30T05:21:00.000-08:00

There is a traffic jam. Two men sitting in the front of a van, talking.

Man 1: [driving, one hand on the wheel - to the other man] You know the trouble is we're so, we think we're so cultured and, like, media literate, we don't stop to take the time to think about how they affect our lives...

Man 2: Oh aye?

The second man is in his early twenties. The first man is slightly older, early to mid thirties.

Man 1: [Loses his train of thought] Yeah, um...

Man 2: Go on...

Man: Well the, uh...

The traffic jam moves forward a few yards.
Man 2: The media...

Man 1: [Gets the thread] Oh yeah, the media...

Man 2: The mass media.

Man 1: The mass media are like, well, like, take adverts, yeah?

Man 2: Adverts, yeah?

Man 1: Adverts, yeah, they're like the wallpaper of our lives. I mean, look at all these adverts [sweeps free hand – indicating to the street scene outside]. On billboards, on the sides of buses, shops, they're everywhere. If an alien came down from space...

Man 2: That's where they come down from [looking pleased slightly with his wit].

Man 1: Yes [pause - sighs]. If they came down they'd think we were a civilisation dedicated to art...

Traffic moves forward again. Man 1 puts brake back on.
Man 1: Art and design. They wouldn't know it would be, like, adverts to make people buy stuff.

Man 2: They might...

Man 1: They might...

Man 2: You don't know that they wouldn't have adverts and shit.

Man 1: [cutting in] It's getting off the point.

Man 2: [shrugging] How does anyone know what the point is?

Man 1: Existentialism suggests...

Man 2: [dismissive] Yeah, yeah, we've heard all this before. How many existentialists does it take to change a light bulb...?

There is no answer. Pause.
Man 1: The point is, if you walked down the street and noticed everything...

Man 2: [Holds up hand - leans out of the window – hollers] All right there, love? You going my way?

Two women are walking down the street, friends arm in arm, talking to each other. They mid-to-late twenties and are dressed in typical office clothes.
Woman 1: [unfazed turns and looks, without stopping – quick-witted disgust] What, in your filthy van? We'd be quicker walking.

Woman 2: [adds] Yeah, stick to wanking, boy!

Man 2: Wanking?

Woman 2: I mean walking... ha!

The two women both laugh.

Man 1: That showed you, didn't it?

The Two Women continue walking.
Woman 1: [To Woman 2] He has a point though.

Woman 2: You what?

Woman 1: Not him, the other one. The point is... [Pauses to gather her thoughts] The point is life is mediated. You have to spend the larger portion of your life in some degree of, I don't know, numbness I suppose. [Decouples her arm from Woman 2 – the pair stop for a moment] It's numbness or shock.

Woman 2: Yeah, but if the effects of mass media are so pervasive how do we ever manage to notice them?

Woman 1: [Puzzled moment] I don't follow you.

Woman 2 starts walking again. Woman 1 follows her friend, listening. They walk side by side.

Woman 1: [Explaining] I mean, everyone always says the media are all powerful tools of manipulation but it doesn't affect them personally.

Woman 2: Affect or effect?

Woman 1: How can you tell? How can anyone tell? This is a spoken-word interaction.

Woman 1: [Smiles a half-laugh] Stop hiding behind aural ambiguities.

The pair turn a corner into an underground train station.
Woman 2: Hark at you! Anyway, you get my point, don't you?

Woman 1: I think I do. Look, I mean you have to allow for critical abstraction too. [They go through the barriers using their TFL swipe cards] Critical abstraction, [snorts] ha, our only hope.

Woman 2: Where does this all leave us though?

Woman 1: Headed toward the lift. I don't know about you but I'm not walking.

In the lift, doors open, waiting at the ground floor.
Woman 1: [To Woman, resuming discussion] Take, for example, Big Brother.

Woman 2: The TV show?

Woman 1: Of course; now, lots of people thought it was a game show. It wasn't.

Woman 2: Oh no?

More people file into the lift.
Woman 1: Definitely not. Some people thought it was a version of reality TV. Nothing could have been further removed from reality.

Woman 2: So what was it?

Woman 1: That's the point. As a society we are overexposed, media saturated. We have been immunised, benumbed to the true meaning of such genera.

The lift door closes.
Woman 2: So...?

Woman 1: So... Big Brother was not a game show, nor reality TV. Big Brother was a self-generating Beckett play.

Laughter in the lift. Other people were clearly listening in.

Random Man: [Blurts] You're kidding?

Woman 1: [To Random Man] Maybe I am and maybe I'm not. Beckett's plays often dealt with subjects such as time, mortality and the meaning of existence in a world dominated by arbitrary and/or deterministic chaos, in his case the whims of the playwright. In the case of Big Brother... the director and/or producer.

Puzzlement and unease.
Woman 2: [Chipping in] But, of course, argument is based on a collective series of statements leading toward a definite conclusion. The oldest method of enquiry s trial and error, also one of the key elements of comedy.

Random Man's Friend: [Sniggering slightly] You must be, like, philosophers or something.

Woman 1: [Ignoring or missing the inference] No, I'm a receptionist.

Woman 2: And I'm an junior accountant.

The lift reaches its destination. Doors open.

The Dream Lottery

2011-11-24T07:44:00.001-08:00

It was strange how the Dream Lottery came into our lives. It just appeared one day as a series of adverts, all across the globe, in every known language:

“The Dream Lottery is coming in one week”.

On TV, radio, on billboards, in newspapers, on the sides of buses, sports pitches, flyposted, graffitied, carved into benches and projected onto clouds at night... in every known language. Representatives of the Lottery (who, rather oddly, everywhere looked like the local ideal of beauty) went into every village, town and city to explain. The prize was a secret, all you needed to enter was to be 16 or over and have access to a TV.

Some said that the prize was the secret to eternal youth. Others suggested it was the key to inner peace. There were those who said they were in the know, who were sure it was the night when intelligent alien life would make itself known to mankind. There was a group, apocalyptic types, who said the Lottery was the herald the end of the world; we must all prepare. Some people, rather dull, said it was just a billion pounds. There were many theories.

Everyone could play. In fact everyone did. Sure enough, the night before tickets reached every last adult settled on the map. No matter how remote or how inaccessible (or how dangerous the journey) these little tickets found a way into their players hands. The tickets were little slips in white and black dots, with the person's name in gold lettering and an eight-figure number, each unique.

Excitement built and built until, at the allotted hour, the population of the earth each gathered round the nearest TV for the big moment. Every channel broadcasting turned to the programme, the Dream Lottery, live.

Pitch black. On the screen appeared a man. He was unctuous, well groomed, handsome and middle-aged, dressed in a fine suit. He spoke and, funnily enough, no matter where anyone came from or what his or her first language happened to be, he was understood.

“Welcome to tonight’s grand draw. I hope you are all comfortable at home, watching your television screens. Let the dream lottery commence”.

The man then withdrew from shot. There was a man and a woman, each lying naked on their own table, lit from above, with electrodes attached to their body. The camera scanned up and across them. They seemed calm enough, although quickly it became clear something, some current was passing through them. Their bodies twitched gently. They would lift their arms from time to time, twitch their toes, and make grunting or sighing noises.

The man and woman then stood. The camera followed them. The woman started saying prayers from the Torah while the man sang passages from the Koran. After a while they switched to Christian and Hindu passages. On they went through every religion and further into all the great scientific and philosophical credos.

Their voices duplicated and multiplied. They became more and more breathy and passionate until, depending on the viewers’ perspective, there was a sudden orgasmic dissolution, a rush into the mind; each pulse was a delirious pleasure. The physical regions of the mind became like continents, with mountain ranges, rivers, beaches, oceans, some deserts, some forests, some rolling grasslands.

I found myself walking on a dry dirt path, open, through farmland. The sun was shining. It was a warm day. As I walked I realised there was little to no friction. My legs were moving, but there was almost no effort. I felt like I was being led toward something, and I could not look behind me.

I came to a great lake, so huge I could barely see the other shore. I peered into the lake. It was teeming with life, frogs, fish, flowers, insects and so on. I peered deeper and could see what looked like building blocks, circles and triangles, rods and cones, swirling about in apparent chaos. The blocks gathered until they formed a twisting staircase, a double helix. I found myself going down into the helix, down until I reached the level of atoms. They seemed to be shivering. Within each atom I could see a star. Around each star were planets, multicoloured, so many varieties. As the helix grew a star would be born in a flash of light, up and up.

“There is a place”, I said, “where the city meets the forest and the ocean all at once. It is a bottleneck in the universe where the sun goes down. You can only get there by walking backwards into the future. It takes at least an hour, but you have to allow for traffic. But when you get there everything begins to curve and warp. Strange things begin to happen to space. I know. I've been there before. As night fell I could feel the sun's heat gently slide down my back. Seconds later my love appeared. There she was, The Moon... All right, darling?”

There was a rush, a sudden violent change of context. Short but clear images: a small cat dragging her kittens to a safe corner of down-town Hiroshima, a dog trotting through the bullet raked streets of St Petersburg, a fox snaking past a camp on the outskirts of Auschwitz, a songbird on a windowsill in Abbey Road.

I found myself in a hospital, Accident and Emergency Department, waiting with my Wife. I felt tired. I closed my eyes for a little nap. I breathed out and tried relax my muscles. I felt like I was slipping down through a dark, happy liquid. I didn't need to hold my breath. After a short while swimming I looked up. There were soft lights hovering above the water. I felt an urge to come up. I needed to get up. I broke through water and sat up in the A&E waiting room. I turned to my Wife. No, it was all right, we hadn't been called.

More images: Venus shedding its skin, boiling over in a planet wide flood. Mars split open to reveal the Mariner Valley. The resonance of the outer planets at high speed, sending Neptune into a cold dive, into the depths of the solar system.

I was now in a surgery. The room was cold. There was a patient under general anaesthetic. I couldn't quite seem to focus on their face. Something was off-putting. Their chest was prised open with a clamp and the patient was being operated on by an 8ft squid, light grey in colour. It's arms moved smoothly and silently, going about the business at hand without fuss. The operation seemed to be going well, but I could not quite shake the feeling of chilled evil. The room was very cold.

Further out we went, to stars, clusters, waves, galaxies, quasars, back even further to the staratoms. This time they were meshing together, making molecules, bonding into a crystalline structure. The bonds flexed and the molecules expanded into a vapour. The vapour then fell rain on my face. Gentle wind flicked through my hair, the whistling sound of leaves. It is dark all around but the moon is full. It is a well-lit night. Then dawn.

Something was bugging me. It is a now full moon in daylight, and I feel it's following me around. Sometimes when I looked it seemed bigger, sometimes it seemed to have shrunk.

Back in the farmland, in a field (shin high grass) I stopped to stare. I wasn't sure to begin with but slowly, gradually, perceptibly the Moon began to shift. The movement become more violent, more sharp. The Moon was a white balloon on the wind. The balloon spurted around, then it ran out of energy and started to sink. The Moon hits the Earth and unleashed a torrent of fire. Afraid, I turned to run. I gained speed, more than normal. In front of me was a forest. The trees were spacious, pine. I looked up and could see the night sky again, clearly. Through the woods my pace quickened. I was outrunning the fire. It disappeared far behind me. I started running on all fours. I turned into a brown bear. It felt wonderful. I was almost flying. My feet barely touched the ground.

A blur, flashes of noise: tramping feet, yelling voices, the sound of a large helicopter not far above. In a clearing a host of people were being herded by soldiers toward an unknown destination. The soldiers were wearing blank, white face masks, carrying sleek dark guns. Instead of eyes they had black, wet spheres. Instead of hands, tentacles. The scene is lit by floodlights. There was general anxiety and tension in the air. A helicopter gunship appeared over the brow of a nearby hill. Tension mounted. The craft was audibly struggling. It dived nose first into the ground, exploding. Bits of wreckage flew about. I had to dodge them, smartly.

Someone yelled:

“Look over there”.

I turned to look. It was daytime now Euston Road. It was fairly quiet. I could see a woman walking along the north side of the duel carriage way. I could almost recognise her. Suddenly the Euston Tower began to shift. Gliding, it chased the woman down the road. The woman turned and ran screaming, down the road. I followed her until she dived into another building for shelter. There was a sigh of relief as we see the Tower sliding by. Dusk turned.

Street light avenue, a wall: close up shot of someone's feet, shod in moon boots and a spacesuit. The figure was seething, groaning, in pain. They leant up against the wall, shivering and convulsing. The groaning agony reached a climax. The camera panned up to the figure's head. They were wearing a helmet. The figure turned to face the camera. The helmet exploded. There was a scream, an explosion of blood and glass. It left a contorted skull. The scream endured for long after, slowly fading as I tried to walk away.

I reached our home. There is a pigeon roost in the courtyard out out the back of our house. I came through our front door, shut it behind me. I felt slightly worse for wear. I knew I had to drink a pint of water, disrobe and slip quietly into bed. I settled. After a moment I could hear a noise at the window, a cooing. I opened my eyes and there was the silhouette of a bird in street light cast upon the bedroom curtains.

“Had a good night?” the Silhouette asked.

“You appear to be a talking pigeon” I said in reply.

“And you appear to be cuckoo” said the Silhouette, who laughed before flying away. I followed the bird up, through the roof, through the clouds, up.

I found myself hovering above the Earth, which rotated beneath me. I could see cloud banks, huge storms, hundreds of miles wide, and the continents, crisp and clear. They were not the usual continents but new, strange formations. I headed down into the atmosphere. The round Earth turned into a flat map. I had a pen and pad with me. I started taking notes here and there. Occasionally looked up close at the new land, which was still shifting, forming and writhing as I wrote. I felt a little tired. I closed my eyes.

There was a plunge into terminal black, through dark, happy liquid. The camera panned up, then down and in an indeterminate direction. After what seemed like an aching pause the darkness was removed. The unctuous, well-groomed, handsome middle-aged man reappeared. He said:

“I’m sorry there were no winners tonight”.

Guerilla Warfare in the 22nd Century - addition

2011-11-03T10:49:00.000-07:00

A small note: whether you are fighting an urban or rural war if you want to completely remove and replace an occupation you need to control all available territory; you need to take into account the general conditions of your war.

Some observations about the planet. They applied during the period of the war, they generally still apply today.

Mars is a continual work in progress. The atmosphere is generally stable, liveable, but still vulnerable to solar storms. Some say that after solar events the atmosphere is noticeably thinner, breathing is more difficult. Others beg to differ. Either way the atmosphere has to be continually rebuilt.

Martians cope with solar storms by using an early warning satellite system. Even with the speed and ferocity of Coronal Mass Ejections, spotted early, there is generally and hour or more of notice. It is never safe to be out on the surface during a storm. From an early age Martian children are taught to be safe in the sun, stay covered, wear plenty of sun screen and get indoors once the alarm has been sounded. Frequent exposure is almost guaranteed to produce serious illness, all too common among people living in isolated rural outposts.

The occupation took jealous control of the early warning system. The occupying authority played dangerous games, sometimes calling the sirens when it was convenient for it to clear the streets, other times it only gave scant, last minute alerts. Important crops are generally kept under specially assembled closhes, huge protective structures, miles long, another feature of the Martian countryside. Most buildings were either made storm-proof or with storm-proof shelters.

After a while we would take advantage of the storm warning to move people or weapons and such, if the trip was short and the people making it could rely in reasonably protective clothes; patrols would generally be off the streets. If we were engaged in some kind of action it was almost always called off at the first sign of a storm (usually the withdrawal of street patrols).

Solar storms were also a hot political issue. Martians managed to cope with solar storms for over a century, why couldn't the Earthlings manage?

Mars is unlike the Earth, it is 60:40 majority land over sea. There are no plate tectonics on Mars. There is little danger of the entire landmass eroding away. Little research has yet been done into the effects of the water-cycle on Mars, even so most towns and settlements on the Boreal Ocean and the Hellas Sea take regular engineering precautions so as not to be washed away.

What was once Mariner Valley is now an enormous reservoir, shored up in the east by a dam, served in the west by rivers flowing from sources on Ascreaus and Pavonis Mons. It is the major source of freshwater on Equatorial Mars. It was also zealously guarded by the occupation, which was shown several times to be creating artificial shortages in the major cities.

The Boreal Ocean, a vast sea made under terraformation, held no strategic value in the war. The occupation wasted several years patrolling its shores. Little sea-trade had developed across it. There had been several attempts to propagate flora and fauna, more immediate successful in the southern Hellas Sea, which by the time of the occupation had thriving a fishing industry. Given the occupation's mastery in the air it made the Boreal Ocean fairly useless as a smuggling route to the other side of the planet, which is why, occasionally some trips were organised (and succeeded); a horse-sense double bluff.

Due to the vagaries of Mars's orbit, the southern hemisphere has warmer summers and more clement winters than the north. The agricultural region south of Mariner Lake produces most of Mars's food. It is criss-crossed with roads, railway lines and waterworks. There are three major towns in that region, Lassell, Pickering and Holden, which were bitterly fought over.

Mars was terraformed in stages. An added difficulty during the war in some parts of Mars was the lack of cover in rural areas. Only the region between the major cities and around the Hellas Coast had large scale peak communities. Most of the Eastern half of Mars is wild, undeveloped, with few roads, very few towns, more in the way of isolated weather and wildlife research stations. The terrain is mostly prairie, mixed up with small forests. In the south-east the environment was more of a badland. There were experiments in cattle ranching there, with small successes. The occupation used the wild half of Mars to settle 'Independent' Farmers, a local bulwark against the resistance.

Even until the end...

2011-09-29T03:37:00.000-07:00

Utter disaster reigns across the planet. Humanity is all but destroyed. Nuclear fallout is fast approaching. The last three humans are gathered together in an empty street discussing what to do. They are a socialist, an anarchist and a Labour Party hack.

The socialist says:

"We're up against it but we have to fight. We must find food and build some sort of shelter before the fallout begins. The quicker we work the better our chances will be".

But the anarchist disagrees:

"This is nonsense, we need to take direct action against the cloud. I'll stand behind you two and chuck stuff at it".

The Labour Party hack sighs:

"What ultra-left nonsense; the pair of you! How can you consider taking action when we haven't even concluded negotiations with the cloud?"

There is no agreement. The trio repair different parts of street. The socialist goes searching for food in the various bombed out houses, the anarchist meanwhile starts burning piles of newspapers. The Labour Party hack departs altogether but returns an hour later with good news, feeling pleased with himself after booking a suite in a nearby abandoned hotel, ideal for further talks. But, alas, he looks up and sees it's too late, the cloud is about to break... The Labour Party hack then has an idea. He goes up to the anarchist, who's still burning stuff:

"Hey anarchist, I've got an idea".

He explains the idea to the anarchist, whispering, even though there's no one to overhear. Moments later the pair call the socialist out:

"Hey socialist, over here. We've got something to show you".

The socialist is reluctant, the nuclear rain is about to fall, but is eventually persuaded to come over to his comrades. The anarchist and the hack then bludgeon the socialist to death.

As the first drops of scalding, radioactive water fall from the sky, the Labour Party hack, chewing on a piece of the dead socialist, remarks to the anarchist:

"This is it, this is truly the end. Such a shame it had to end this way".

"Yeah" agrees the anarchist, face sticky with gore, "but at least we didn't let the SWP hijack our movement".

Arise, Planet Camden: chapter 5 - an addition

2011-09-13T11:28:00.000-07:00

Tristan De Monbiot, last surviving member of Camden Council, was woken with a start.

“Sir, Sir”. It was his Butler, Mr Collett, shaking him.

Tristan had been having a nice dream about that Parliamentary fact finding mission to various Central Belt resort planets. He was not happy about being woken. “What, what is it, what do you want? I have no bananas”.

“No, Sir” said Mr Collett, “it's urgent news. There's trouble afoot”.

“There's nothing wrong with my feet, apart from the fact that they're cold”. They were cold. When Tristan fell asleep in his bath chair, reading his favourite copy of the Decline and Fall of the Menkalinan Empire or perhaps sipping a glass of fine Betelgeusian Reserve , whatever the reason, he expected to be kept warm. His circulation was not what it was. At nearly two-hundred and thirty years old, why should it be? The blanket laid on by Mr Collett did not cover his toes for some reason.

“There's a rebellion” said Mr Collett, ignoring his master's sleepy confusion, “in the library”.

“But I like the library” said Tristan.

“I know you do, Sir” said Mr Collett. “The Galactic Administration have been on the phone, Sir, they say it's a matter of public order. As the last surviving member of the...”

“I know, I know” Tristan interrupted. He plumped the pillow under his neck and shifted to the side slightly. “I'm the last surviving member of the, the Council and they want to know what I think. Well...”

A long pause.

“Well, what?” asked Mr Collett, circling anxiously round his master.

“What do you think, you fool?” Tristan looked his servant in the eye for the first time since he woke. “Tell them so long as they don't bother me they can do whatever the hell they like. As far as I'm concerned it's their problem”.

“Shall I tell the Administration that?”

“Yes” said Tristan, rather loudly. He was fully awake at last. “Now” he said, waving non-specifically, “be a good chap and get me a book”.

Mr Collett did as he was told.

Future Legend - chapter 4: addition

2011-08-19T10:59:00.000-07:00

Dave Maher – The funniest thing happened, it was during the second wave of looting; by that stage we'd got round to calling it expropriation. There was a shortage of good clothes it was decided. Communes sent out parties of people to look for clothes, cloth even, go searching. Someone in my local commune had the bright idea, what about Carnaby Street, Regent Street? What about Knightsbridge and Sloane Square? I was with the team searching the Chelsea boutiques. There were four of us. We went around with, you know those trollies street pickers used to have, big cages on wheels? Those ones. There was slim pickings, mostly, loads of places boarded up, a few slops picked clean.

We turned from Sloane Square up Sloane Street and you could see right away a huge pile of bodies, naked bodies. We'd just gotten over the violence, the dead were almost all buried, so this was a shock. We got closer, the pile was in the middle of the street, Sloane Street, which is about half a mile long. We got closer and realised these weren't bodies, they were mannequins. Someone taken them out the shops and dumped them in the street, some of the mannequins were a little charred. How could anyone have missed this... unless...? I don't know.

It was then we noticed the shops, all the couture and perfume places, and jewellers. They were pristine and very well stocked. In each doorway was a figure, one mannequin, a male figure, dressed in a suit, arms folded, guarding the store. Very strange.

More 3001

2011-08-15T11:04:00.000-07:00

There was a loud knock on the door. Christian woke with a start. “What?” The book resting on his face fell on the floor. He called out softly: “Hello...?”

Another knock. Christian sighed a deep breath, straightened his dressing gown and sat up. Again knocking. Who could it be? The Chapel? Christian had not been among the Membership for ages. He had been on nights now for over a year. Had there been a raid? Perhaps it was his Wife...? Perhaps not... Of course not... He looked at her picture, faded, framed on this bedside table and felt a little quiver. Perhaps it was the Custodians, come for him. These days nothing good could come from somebody knocking on your door. Even so the knocking continued. It would have to be faced.

Christian called out, this time clearly. “Hello... who is it?”

Through the letterbox: “Elmer”. It was a young man's voice, Christian recognised immediately.

“Yes, yes...” Christian hollered down the stairs. “Elmer Fudd”. He padded up to the door, straightened his dressing gown again, and peered into the spyglass on the door. It was Nicky, and his little brother for some reason. They looked anxious. “Do you have a following?” Christian asked.

“No yet” said Nicky, “but I think our album's about to break the Top 40. Can you let us in?”

“Yes, um, hold on there...” Christian opened the door eventually. The lads bundled inside. “What's happening... Has there been a raid?”

“Yeah, the Custard's are out, everywhere” said Nicky. “All over town. We had a little encounter on the bridge”.

“Oh no, you didn't?” said Christian, checking his front room for a moment. The curtains were closed. He triple bolted the front door, checked through the spyglass. Everything seemed normal outside.

“But, I just said we...”

“Figure of speech, laddie. This way”, Christian waved the pair upstairs. “No, my point is why were you picking fights with Custards?” Upstairs, they skirted Christian's room. He led them into his study. There were two heaving bookshelves, a desk with a computer and printer and various chairs.“Sit” said Christian, rather commandingly. They all did.

“We weren't picking fights” said Fidget, speaking up for the first time. “The Custodian on the bridge started talking to us. He wouldn't let us pass”.

“So, what...?” said Christian, “did he question you? Did he start trying to catch you out?” Christian went round the room, tidying up, bits of scrap paper, pens, notebooks and so on. There was a skylight, which he drew closed. Underneath the window was a black instrument, a set of tubes mounted on a tripod. Christian folded the instrument away, put it to one side,

“No” said Nicky, “he just wanted to talk. He had a tough life, it seemed. He just wanted us to understand. What's that you've got there?”

“Never mind” said Christian, “so why are you here?”

“He wanted to search my bag.”

“Ah, I think I see where the problem is” Christian nodded. He picked up a pen and pad and started writing.

“I wanted to return this to the Chapel library” said Nicky. Fetched the book out of his bag and handed it to Christian. “It's an ancient script, only recently recovered. I've been reviewing it, taking notes. I think it's worth a full reprint. It's evolutionary theory but quite a different take”.

“I see” said Christian, glancing over the cover. “It doesn't seem to have a title”.

“It has several possible titles” said Nicky, “all just as good. The, uh, basic idea is the apparent drive toward increasing complexity is an illusion brought on by the simplicity of life's beginning. Complexity is an accident. All large creatures are lucky survivors, creatures like the horse”.

“Or human beings” Christian added after a pause, he scribbled down some notes. “So much for the primacy of mankind... when is the next fallout due?”

“I heard there some radioactivity in Scotland recently” said Nicky. “Although it's prevailing wind out there, so it's not likely to come down south”.

Christian glanced through the book again. “You know the Humanist faction aren't going to like this”.

“The Humanist faction can lump it” said Nicky. “I can only say what's in the book. It's an interesting idea, not the most interesting read. The diagram, page, what was it now? Hang on a second”. Nicky took back the book. “Here” he said, after he found what he wanted. “Page 62, the living descendants of Orohippus, a fraction of the species... a... bud on the tree of life”. He showed Christian the graphic.

“That's interesting” said Christian. “But, more to the point, what do we do now? You can't stay here”.

“I thought this was a safe house?”

“Nowhere is safe at the moment”. Christian took down some more notes, then sighed and scratched his forehead. “I have an idea”.

...

It was Lucky Pierre's time to shine. The Chapel educational that night was switched from the back room of a pub to the local theatre. The meeting would be full, everyone knew it. Street vendors had been sent out all over the town with flyers. A lot of them were young boys. They were usually harassed quite egregiously by the Custodians, but they got the message out. There had been some postering, daylight postering, which was very bold. The posters of course came down quickly, but plenty of people saw them up. An enterprising soul (or souls) managed to get the event mentioned on a community radio station broadcast. There was an anxious investigation afterwards. How could it happen? How could it be allowed? Lucky Pierre was well known, one of the few Chapel members operating overground.

Pierre was a well known academic, one of the finest minds society had to offer, a great discoverer and prolific inventor. Most of all he seemed to be in the right place at the right time, consistently, he had a knack for it; hence his name. He discovered gravity after head butting an apple tree in a drunken game of truth or dare. He realised the universal nature of background radiation after cleaning pigeon crap out of the mechanical seashell he was using to catch rainbows. He invented refrigeration after accidentally leaving ice cubes next to a smouldering furnace. He had been arrested many times for many crimes. In fact he seemed to be serving three separate sentences in three separate correctional facilities at the time. An unusually lucky fellow to live such a rich and fulfilling life. He often seemed to be functionally illiterate too, strange, for such an old man, very strange.

The lights were low. In a backstage dressing room several Chapel members were arguing with the theatre manager. It was a one-sided exchange, as the manager was gagged and tied to a chair. The room was filling up. There were certainly plain clothed officers in the audience, and there were Custard vans waiting outside, scouts could see them; the Chapel members had to keep a close eye on their escape route. Nonetheless, until the meeting started, until Pierre actually spoke, they would hold firm. They wanted to get the elusive Pierre, bang to rights, this time, once and for all, guv.

Circling in a corridor, one of the Chapel members saw Pierre in his new, pressed suit, muttering his lines. There weren't many to learn.

“We're beating a retreat now” said the Chapel Man. “It's a standard operation. Three grand for you, and a new name when you get out. There shouldn't be much heat, not physical. We've got undercover in the audience just in case anything goes spectacularly wrong... It won't, but, you know...?”

Pierre looked at the Chapel Man without acknowledging, blank, silent.

“Anyway” said the Man, “it's a standard operation, distraction, sleight of hand. We've even smacked the projectionist and sound man around, just a bit, mind you, to make it look convincing. All you have to do is get up there, say the lines, the words Pierre, look...” He pointed to the sheet of paper in Pierre's hand. “They've been spelled out phonetically for you, spelled like they sound. Ok, so, all you have to do is say the words, the Custodians will break in arrest you and disperse the audience. When they question you say nothing, except when they put things straight to you, did you do this, did you do that and so on. You got me?”

Pierre smiled, he seemed to understand.

Not long after the room was full. There was a tense buzz of anticipation. The lecture was to be on ancient history. What would Pierre say? More importantly would he be able to say it? There was a hush, a spotlight fell on the stage. Pierre approached his lecturn. There was a ripple of awe. The crowd was made up, overwhelmingly of Ordinary Decent People who had no time for heresy, but they loved controversy and spectacle. Many had not seen such a renowned public figure before. Pierre cleared his throat and, after a moment began:

“The most interesting thing about King Charles the First is that he was five foot six inches tall at the start of his reign but only four foot eight inches tall at the end of it, because of...”

There was a thud, several crashes from several directions, then the sound of boots. What seemed like hundreds of Custodians, an incredible number burst into the theatre at once and marched to the front of the stage, surrounding the audience. A man in a long and suspicious black coat stood up in the front row and turned to address the audience.

“Sit down everybody” he said in a firm voice. “In the name of the Authority I am hereby dispersing this meeting. Anyone resisting, anyone resisting dispersal...”

There were a few cries from the audience. Loud mouths were plucked from the crowd one by one until the audience fell silent once more.

“Anyone else that doth resist dispersal or otherwise doth hamper us in our legal and rightful duty will face arrest. All those present in this building shall be searched upon leaving. Anyone found with incriminating material on their person will likewise be arrested”. A rumble from the audience. The man then turned to Pierre, still standing, clutching the lecturn. “Pierre Overcoat, aka Lucky Pierre, aka Miguel Fisk, aka Professor Shenannigans, I am arrest thee on suspicion of Disseminating Illegal Knowledge, Incitement and Subversion. Thy will be taken away from here to a special place of correction, whereupon thy will be found guilty of those crimes before an appropriate Kangaroo Court... Take him away”.

Two custodians appeared from either side of the stage to take Pierre away.

3001 - Nicky and Fidget head into town

2011-08-02T11:14:00.000-07:00

Mother Shabooboo was right, the heat was on. The town was crawling all over with Custodians, little big men in their yellow luminous uniforms and flat black hats. They were on the streets marching about, in the shops talking to customers, sitting on park benches licking ice cream. Nicky and his brother were on their guard.

They a Custodian on The Bridge over The River in the centre of town, standing with his arms folded, looking into the middle distance. “Good morrow to thee young sirs” said the Custodian. He was older than the average Custard, dressed old school too, an all black uniform with a large domed hat. He looked at them, stern but friendly, expecting a reply. Fidget mustered:

“Uh... hi... and a good... thee to thine own thingy”.

The Custodian let it slide. He smiled, wrinkling his moustache. “Orphan boys I see”. He was shrewd it seemed. “Lovely day, isn't it?” He splayed a palm out to the sun. “Don't stay out too late, though, you don't want to miss curfew”. Pointed at the pair and smiled again.

“Of course not” said Nicky.

“We never let the sun go down on us here” added Fidget. Pause. Fidget scratched his nose then looked up at the Custodian and asked rather abruptly, “can we go now?”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa” said the Custodian. “Hold hard. Haven't you heard there's a situation?”

“What kind of situation?” asked Fidget, risking another question.

“Heretics” said the Custodian. “One of their bases was raided last night. More I cannot say”.

“Indeed you cannot” Nicky affirmed.

“The Town Authority has declared a state of emergency...”

“Goodness me...” The Town streets were much quieter than usual.

“Which is why we're all out and about, keeping close eye on things”. The Custodian sighed. “At least we're all getting overtime and Unusual Peril Bonus”. The Custodian seemed to be in a world of his own now. “Never know when a Heretic might come bowling round corner and confront you with who knows what. They only let us have paradoxes these days”. The Custodian seemed to yield the pathway, Nicky and Fidget began to creep round him, almost instinctively. “Its tough out there when your confronted with a diseased, febrile mind, they're cunning these Heretics. They try to get you with their...”

Nicky couldn't resist. “Febrile, sir? You're beginning to sound like one of them”.

“Exactly, that's exactly the way it happens, young man” said the Custodian, pointing in emphasis. “You have to be vigilant or before you know it...” He twirled a finger. “They've got you”. Nicky and Fidget were now walking, brisk but casual. “Hang on a minute. Hey... hang on a... Oi, come back here...!” But it was too late. The two lads took off as fast as they could, seconds later they were lost down an alleyway. The Custodian tried to give chase but was all but rooted to the spot. He'd been given bridge duty and his shift wasn't due to end for another two hours.

3001 - horses and hedgerows

2011-07-30T05:25:00.000-07:00

There was another pause. Nicky seemed to drift off for a moment. The horses in the distance seemed agitated. The younger ones, the smaller horses, pranced around, neighing, they seemed to be playing.

“It's... It's almost like they're... If we could just...” Nicky then snapped back. “We have to go to the library”. He turned to his brother. “Do you want to come?”

“Yeah” said Fidget.

“Come on, let's go”.

The brothers marched off down The Hill, toward The Town.

“So how's the old place then?”

“The orphanage...?” said Fidget after a moment. “It's the same as it ever was. There was a terrible fuss when you didn't turn up for class”.

“Really...?”

“Yeah, you got another lunchtime detention. The Staff were very angry. They got even more wound up when you weren't there. You got a right proper hiding when they found you...”

“Really, is that so... Who did they thrash this time, Nelson, Iffy, Johnny Bollocks?”

“No, none of them... It was Tiny Tim”.

“What? The one out of the books?”

“What'd you mean?” asked Fidget.
“Tiny Tim” said Nicky, “he's a character, in a novel, one of the ancients”.

“Well, he's alive now”.

“And living in the orphanage” Nicky added. “Never heard of him... Is he new...?”

“He's been... two years....”

The pair fell silent. They reached the bottom of The Hill. There was a thick looking hedgerow. The lads picked their way through a narrow gap to come out on a country road. Almost immediately through, they encountered a figure; a wobbly, bent, old-looking woman, dressed in bright summer clothes. She leant on a walking stick in her right hand. There was a small wicker basket in the crook of her left arm. Fidget recognised her straight away.

“Hey, Mother Shabooboo”.

The figure did not respond. Fidget tried to wave but his brother restrained him:

“Careful”. He then called out. “Elmer”. The Woman responded:

“Fudd”.

Nicky approached. The Woman glowered momentarily under the brim of a sun-hat. She looked up to meet the young man's gaze.

“Sorry about that” Nicky whispered. “How's the typeset?”

“Keep it ornate. Things are very narrow, Young Mage. The censor is upon us”.

“I need to return to the Chapel”. Nicky showed the book.

“I see” said The Woman. “Be careful, they're armed with paradoxes”.

“Ah...”

“Mostly blanks, but some are liable to go off. Take care”. She waved goodbye to Nicky and Fidget and made her way, slowly prodding down the road”.

When she was out of sight Nicky turned on his brother:

“Never address a Leader of the Chapel outside” he hissed.

“Sorry”.

“You never know who might be listening, or watching... Come on, little brother”.

The pair pressed on. Fidget asked:

“Where's she going?”

“That's not for us to know” said Nicky. “The heat is on”.

“You mean the authority?”

“We'll have to be careful round town”.

“I wonder what paradoxes they're using right now” said Fidget. He got no answer. Another hush fell.

Nicky's attention drifted again. He pawed his right hand through the nearby hedgerow. The crunch of feet on gravel, very few cars passed this way any more. Stones, small rubble everywhere, a ridge of weeds passed down the middle; the road had seen better days. The clouds above were a little more substantial.

“You can be a real dick sometimes, Nicky, you know that?”

“Uh...?” Nicky looked up. “Sorry, I was just thinking about hedgerows as peak communities”.

“Really...?”

Nicky took this as a queue for more hedgerow talk. “They're man made, cover a fraction of the surface area of...”

Fidget butted in. “Paradoxes, Nicky, we have to guard against them”.

“Simple enough” said Nicky. “When they approach a suspected chapel member they're trying to lure them into public thought, trap them and send them to the magistrate...”

“Uh-huh...”

“In order to uphold Littlejohnism the law-keepers have to violate it, a necessary evil. You can't respond with incomprehension, they never believe it”.

“You could answer a question with a question”, Fidget suggested.

“Yup” said Nicky, “except that corrupting an officer is also a crime, that includes luring an officer into irrelevant thought”.

“I heard you can do it”.

“You're leaving yourself wide open” insisted Nicky. “The only safe way to parry attack by paradox is through non-sequiteur. Try me” Nicky smiled.

“Uh, ok, um, who shaves the barber?”

“The Roman Empire...”

Fidget took a moment to think of another. “Who is liable, the lawyer or the student?”

“The dice will tell... One more”.

“Is the answer to this question no?”

“Maybe...” said Nicky. “The key is to respond immediately. Your first thought is your best thought. It totally disables them”.

“Unless you think of the answer...” added Fidget.

“Indeed, or the opposite of the answer. They can infer back from that... No”. Nicky continued: “you have to think ninety degrees to the opposite, the opposite once removed... times three... carry the one... It's like a stranger coming round the corner”.

“Hello stranger” came a voice, “your money or your life”. Two men, ahead, in the road, burly and large. They wore what looked like padded dark uniforms. They both carried solid looking clubs in their belts”.

“That's an interesting question” said Nicky, “as we have no money and life is essentially meaningless”.

“Always the smartarse, Nicholas Copernicus” said the man whose voice it was. Broad smiles then broke out all round, everyone reached out to shake hands and slap backs. The men were Joycey and Festive Dave (the man with the voice). They were chapel guardsmen. “Elmer Fudd, lads, Elmer Fudd” said Festive Dave. “Cor blimey, you know we could hear you all the way down the lane? It's good to drill, I know, but...” Festive Dave lowered his voice. “Hey what you got there?”

“It's a book...”

“Yeah, I know it's a book” said Festive Dave. He rolled his eyes in a jocular manner. “What's it all about? Is it from the chapel library?”

Nicky: “Where else can you get a good book these days...? Or any book for that matter, huh?” Nicky laughed.

“Give us a look”. Festive Dave reached out, smiling. Nicky passed the book over. Joycey gathered over it while Dave flicked through the pages.

“You're a bit quite, Joycey?”

“He's taken a vow of silliness” said Festive Dave, “one false move on a mission like this it could be, well, things could go very wrong”.

“What is your mission?” asked Fidget.

“We're taking care of the Mother while she's out on her afternoon stroll” said Dave. “She likes to go blackberry picking... Speaking of which, we've got to cover her back”. Dave handed Nicky the book back. “Best be on our way, come on”. The two men jogged on.

“Oh, lads”, Festive Dave turned for a moment. From down the road: “The password changes at midnight tonight”.

“What is it?” asked Nicky.

“Not what is it, where is it...? 90 degrees from the opposite of the truth”.

3001 - discussing horses

2011-07-20T10:13:00.001-07:00

“Nicky...? Nicky...? Is that you...?”

“It is me” said Nicky, without turning.

It was him. Young Nick was far from the orphanage, as usual. Of course it was only to be expected. He was almost eighteen, almost time for him to make his own way in the world. But what was he doing?

Fidget found his brother out on the Downs, sitting under a tree on top of a hill, known locally as “The Hill” (any other name would have seemed extravagant and ceremonial). Nicky was sitting, cross-legged under the tree. He had a sketch pad his lap and a pencil in his hands. It was a wonder how he got hold of such things. Paper and pencil were strictly rationed. Art was another suspect area in Nicky's world. Abstract and/or expressive work was very much frowned upon, realism was the order of the day, even impressionism was treated with caution. Even so, the sternest critic would have been pleased with Nicky's work.

“Where have you been?” said Fidget. “It's been so boring back at St Littlejohn's. Come on, let's go argue natural selection with the people in Town”. Fidget finally caught sight of his brother, sitting as he was. “What're you drawing?”

There was plenty to draw out on the Downs. It was a beautiful day of radiance; warm, but with a fair breeze, twisting through the grass, which was already knee high in some places. It was time for the farmers to let their cattle out onto the common again. The sun reached down to the earth through the tumbling clouds in moving shafts. There was a small pond nearby. The sound of birds was dotted everywhere. In the distance further hills, some greater, some lesser, ploughed on as far as the eye could see (about two miles away, in the valley between the two tallest hills was the Town). All around was static, yet the world seemed to be in motion.

But Nicky didn't draw any of this. In the semi-distance was a herd of large-looking animals.

“What're those?” Fidget asked. “They look like long doggies”.

“They're called horses, fidget... equus”.

“Whatwus?”

“Equus ferus caballus” repeated Nicky. “It's the Latin for horse”.

“What's Latin?”

“It's the language ancients used to catalogue animals”.

“Why'd they do that, why not just use English?”

“Well they did” said Nicky. “They did that as well. They seemed to like naming things twice. I'm not sure why”.

Fidget finally caught up with his brother. Standing over him, he could see what Nicky had been drawing; very detailed sketches, details of the horses, muscles, expressions and motion. Nicky stood up, brushed off and tidied away his book under his arm.

“Do you remember the Second Principle of Decency and Rightness, Fidget?”
“Uh... no...” He decided.

“From the Good Book...”

“You mean the Only Book?”

“It’s in posters, on the walls of the orphanage. They mention it almost every class”.

“Oh yeah” said Fidget nodded, giving up pretending not to know. “Work must be hard because hard work is good. It makes Hard Working Families and Hard Working Families are Right”.

“Machines and labour saving devices are considered, well, necessary evils...” Nicky paused for a second, scratched his chin then continued. He opened the book again for Fidget to see. “You see this?” He turned to a specific series of pages. It was a series of pictures of a horse in various phases of a gallop. There were little side sketches of greater and lesser detail on either side of each page.

“The system of muscles works through a relay of relaxation and tension. Each muscle is attached to a point on the body”. Nicky held the book, cradled in his left hand and wiggled his fingers on the right to demonstrate. “I have an idea...”

“Great” said Fidget.

3001 - even more Fidget

2011-07-14T03:55:00.000-07:00

Nicky had another bright idea.

“It's our tribute to Saint Littlejohn and his abiding principles”.

“I don't understand” said the Deputy Director, Mr Rothermere.

“Darkness is holy and ignorance is bliss” said Nicky. Nicky had gone to Mr Rothermere's office to ask permission to hold a special service in the grand tradition of the Church. The Church of Saint Littlejohn conducts very simple, some would say moving ceremonies. A short hymn from the Prescribed Jukebox (Brotherhood of Man, Bucks Fizz, Phil Collins, Mike and the Mechanics, Go West, Oasis and the like) followed by an even shorter sermon, leaving ample time for prayer and reflection. This would usually meant turning all the lights out and the congregation hitting each other with chairs for fifty minutes.

“Uh-uh don't quote me scripture, young man” said Mr Rothermere, irritated and confused. “I just don't see how you could have got religion all of a sudden”.

“Let's just say my time here, growing up, has shown me the true value of banging your head against a brick wall. If something is worth doing it's worth doing...”

“Over and over again until you die...” said Mr Rothermere, completing the verse, “regardless of the outcome”.

“So we can...?”

“Who is the priest on duty?”

“I will be” said Nicky, who had just turned sixteen. Mr Rothermere then remembered the recent ad campaign: Divinity in 30 Minutes or your Money Back:

“Well, I'm not sure, young Nicholas. How do I know you're not making this up?”

“You couldn't make it up” Fidget chipped in, he and a couple of friends had tagged along. They'd managed to keep their mouths shut so far.

“I've got the certificate back in my dorm if you need proof. I know all the line

“No, that'll be fine, Nicky, but I am warning you...” Mr Rothermere waived the boys out his office.

“Yay” exclaimed Fidget. “I get to hit people with chairs!”

The hymn was short and sweet, the sermon even shorter, Young Nicholas did an admirable job keeping the fourteen young boys and girls who had packed into the common room under control; there was a little giggling. Then there was silence and a ripple of awe. Something wasn't right. The Staff who'd been posted to listen in on the service smelled a rat. He barged into the room, the door had been wedged. The kids were looking at a sharp beam of light. Fidget standing over a lightbulb in a box on top of this table, while Nicky was holding up this perspex triangle. There was a rainbow on the wall, it had been summoned as if by magic. Nicky was describing something called spectrum lines when The Staff broke in. Needless to say the meeting was broken up.

“Quick” yelled Fidget, “hit him with a chair”.

But it was too late. Nicky and Fidget were grounded for six weeks, Nicky's books were confiscated and burned.

Fidget lay on his bed, basking. He smiled at the memory. He looked at the arc of light streaming down from the window. It was amazing to think, there was more to the world than met the eye. That was the point of the experiment, to get inside light. Nicky was always going on about the life inside things, hidden reality, logic. He loved his brother but he hadn't really understood until that day, the time when he split light into its component parts.

But a pall fell over little Fidget. He wondered, where was his brother?

3001 - more Fidget

2011-07-13T02:13:00.000-07:00

This particular morning there was nothing to be busy with. Class was over for today. The orphans were granted one hour a day of education. Education mostly meant reading passages from The Good Book (otherwise referred to as The Only Book) and learning the lessons within. Today's lesson was from the Gospel according to St Littlejohn, the Patron Saint of, amongst other things, this particular orphanage. The lesson today was:

“He went unto the devilish city for it was full of demonic activity. He did preach unto the people. Men were refusing their bonded duty. He did admonish them for they were enforcing their outdated practices, and you could not make it up. He crossed their picket line and did smite their union. He called upon angels to smite the devils with truncheons and they smote them”.

Fidget wasn't really sure what the lesson was about. There seemed to be a lot of smiting going on, whatever that was. He had a copy of the Good Book/Only Book in his little bedside table, all the orphans did. There was no out and out ban on other books. His brother, Nicky, was always bringing books home and always getting into trouble. There was something wrong with everything he read.

Fidget had enough of the Good Book and the Magic Box wasn't working, there was a problem with the Thin Light that made it work (Nicky called the Thin Light electricity). Instead Fidget lay there in the sunlight under his window and thought about the time his brother split light.

It was really his brother's first ever experiment. Fidget remembered Nicky came home after sneaking out of the orphanage for the day.

There was a pass system for the older children. They were trusted to go down to the Town after class, although what they were supposed to do there was a mystery. There was little in the way of distractions. The Town had a local ordinance prohibiting anyone between the ages of 13-19 from running, jumping or standing still within the jurisdiction. Any teenager could be stopped and questioned by someone bearing the insignia of the local authority. If said teenager could or would not say where they were going (or if it was obvious they were not going directly where they said they were going) they could be removed or imprisoned until they could be collected. The only place young people could really go was the shop, they could look at the food, maybe buy some sweets or a magazine. But Nicky had other things on his mind.

He had heard of a strange place, called The Library. It was a place where you could look at books, not just The Good Book but other books. Not only that, you could take a book home with you if you wanted, so long as you promised to bring it back. The first day Nicky came back with a book it was a big, thick thing, with a heavy cover. It was called Inside Light.

He remembered Nicky lying on his bed, reading this book:

“Hey, Fidget, look at this. It says that light is more than just light. Light is a form of sound and sound a form of light. Not all the light you see is all of the light. In fact we only see a little bit of the light, a tiny little bit and, here look, the light we see is made up of different types of light. Look, here, the picture”. Nicky showed his Brother the picture. “You can see inside light, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet”.

Fidget wasn't sure at the time, though he thought the picture was very beautiful, but Nicky was convinced. “It's like a rainbow” he said. Nicky wanted to prove to the other orphans that it was true. He spent weeks and weeks trying to think up an experiment. Irrelevant Thought was of course fiercely prohibited. Nicky had already been in trouble for building a hang glider and getting his brother to jump off the orphanage roof. Nicky was trying to prove that air had weight and could be used to help heavy objects float. Fidget successfully flew a few hundred yards before being blown of course and crashing into a nearby copse. Nicky had to use all his powers of persuasion (remember, he had just persuaded his younger brother to jump off a three story building) to convince The Staff it was all his idea, Fidget was just a pawn in his diabolical game. There was no way they'd let him perform another experiment, not without some ingenious ruse.

3001 - a horse odyssey

2011-07-12T04:42:00.000-07:00

It was warm for that time of year. The orphanage was cold all year round, stone floors, glazed bricks and no heating, but Fidget had a south-facing window. If it was sunny he'd lie on the bed and bask for a while, up to an hour or so. If the Matron saw this she always used to close the window and shut the blinds.

“Too much fresh air and good food makes him hyperactive”.

That's how he got his name, Fidget. He'd run around the building looking for things or people to play with. If he got out into the grounds he'd almost always find a tree to climb up. Fidget used to get beaten a lot, usually for the crime of “irregular exercise”, which meant not waiting for the designated play period. Fidget didn't seem to mind though. He never fought back, it never occurred to him he could object to being hit. They'd finish thrashing him about and he'd still be looking up at them, grinning absently. After a while the staff just seemed to give up.

In the end they found a solution. They'd lock Fidget in his room with a Magic Box and some Special Tape, moving pictures of ancient games.

“What'd you want me to?”

“Sit and watch”.

“But it's not, see Fidget. It's a game. The men dressed in red are trying to beat the men dressed in blue and vice versa”.

“And what?”

“The other way around, boy. The men in blue are trying to beat the men dressed in red”.

“And how does that happen?”

Pause for thought. “Nobody knows”. Another moment's silence.

“So, right, but, what'd you want me to do?” asked Fidget.

“You've got to support one of the teams” said the Staff.

“But which one?”

“I don't know” said the Staff, growing exasperated. “Pick one”.

“But which one?”

“I don't know, uh, what's your favourite colour”.

“Indigo” said Fidget, with a big, cheeky smile. The Staff sighed:

“Has your brother been filling your head with ideas again?” The Staff grabbed the top of Fidget's skull rather roughly and wiggled it a little.

“Indigo is one of the colours of the rainbow” said Fidget, chant-like. “A rainbow happens when light is refracted into it's component...”

“Enough of that” said the Staff, sharply, still holding the young man's head. He pointed a finger at Fidget. “Your brother is a dangerous boy, a heretic. He's on a one way trip to prison or the loony bin. Don't you go listening to your brother...”

“He showed me how light is split...”

“Enough...!”

“He used a prism made of...”

“SILENCE...!” The Staff used his grip to throw Fidget back onto his bed. Fidget banged his head slightly on the wall, but didn't seem too fazed. The Staff continued. “Light, my boy, is made of nothing, OK...? It just, it just happens... all right? It's not worth finding out what's inside of nothing. That's just stupid, stupid and wrong. Rainbows are magic and anyone who questions unknown processes is guilty of irrelevant thinking and you know where they gets you, huh?”

Fidget gave no response. The Staff took it as an affirmative. He continued:

“Once your brother turns eighteen he's going to land himself in serious trouble...” The Staff used the silence to get back to business. “All right, all right, I've decided... You support the red team”.

“That's great” said Fidget, who bounced a little on his bed.

“Yeah” said the Staff, “do that and whenever your team has the ball and is kicking it around you go 'yeah, come on, way-hey' and stuff like that. Cheer... Be happy...”

“Happy...” Fidget repeated.

“That's the spirit” said the Staff. He ruffled Fidget's hair. “Time for a hair cut soon, I think?” He put the Special Tape into the Magic Box and up came the moving images. “Now let's here no more of that science talk, eh?”

Fidget was too busy bouncing up and down to notice.

Future Legend - chapter 9

2011-07-05T09:07:00.000-07:00

Patrick - I’m a newsman. In the old days that meant a lot of recycling, grabbing other people’s material and rewriting it, other people’s footage and reediting it. There was constant turnover, stories could rise and fall in a few days, often a few hours. There was lots of pressure. You had to keep pace.

As such there was very little time to check things, edit or even find a bit of flavour, background. You’d find, say, a mistake in a wire report, a factual error that was put out at nine in the morning. By six in the evening it’d be incorporated into dozens of broadcasts, quoted online and printed up for the evening free sheets, by which time the error had become a fact; and who reads the corrections?

Everything changed with the unrest. The world was in tumult, turned upside-down, our agitators are fond of saying. Yet I think London must have been just about the worst place for news. The means of communication were erratic at best; transport, closed; telephone lines, usually cut; the satellites, turned off; internet, difficult. I suspect it was more than just an accident.

Most of the embassies were closed. A lot of governments were on the wrack themselves. I presume at least they had very little time to comment our problems. Some stayed open. I know the commune, anticipating the will of the National Assembly, tried to get recognition for the likely new government. France said yep, but that wasn’t a surprise, Cuba and Venezuela and Bolivia also did in time. America said no, which was a surprise, not the decision but because everyone thought the embassy in Nine Elms was abandoned. Apparently they kept a little mission on in Kensington that slipped past everyone’s attention.

When we decided to reopen the station I know a lot of people were worried about filling airtime, to put it bluntly. A lot of time and effort was spent trying to make contact with the old correspondents, home and away. Radio was the most reliable source and outlet, so we put out appeals. The World Service helped in this regard. Dear such and such, we seem to have lost our correspondent, please return ASAP.

We weren’t supposed to get the response we got. Before long the station was deluged with all these helpers, eyewitnesses, delegations, rumourmongers, conspiracy theorists, friends of friends. We’d get letters (through the new revolutionary post), pictures, people would approach us with films of this that and the other, audio recordings, transcripts, interviews.

All of us had to learn, very quickly, how to sift through this stuff. It was a crazy nightmare, day after day, but we found your way. About eighty percent of our correspondents are new, so to speak, and very raw. It’s always a problem, getting them to give reports that are relevant and clear, not full of irrelevant waffle. Stories I think take about 24-36 hours longer to produce on average. But we’re no longer churning through other people’s reports or press releases. There's no editor on your back with insane deadlines for ridiculous stories, just the commune. It’s like it’s it’s the way things are supposed to be. And people love us. It’s a real community.

Communal Britain, it's culture was based around the radio. In London we had the means, means to broadcast across the country. We were one of the first to rebroadcast. We broadcast to the city at first. There was a continual argument about whether to go national. As time pushed on most of the towns and cities developed their own networks. The decision to broadcast across the country was delayed until there was a country to broadcast to.

News of the National Assembly called was sent by relay up and down the land. Within minutes there seemed to be a response, chatter up and down the bandwidth.

Some private concerns cropped up on the dial from time to time, not based in any commune. They were mostly amateur affairs, at the level of the old pirate stations, the kind that dotted the outer bandwidth in the old analogue days. Some of these stations were absorbed into the communal network, most flared up and died quickly based on their owners’ means and enthusiasm.

There were some stations that claimed to be the Government Emergency Broadcasting Network, the one that broadcast in the first few days. Though the source of the network was never tracked down the government network had ceased broadcasting after the destruction of Parliament and Whitehall. People assumed it must have been broadcasting in or nearby.

Most broadcasts claiming to be from the government were transparent lash-ups, old diehards broadcasting variations of fake news, patriotic abuse and soft rock. These were often rooted out, shut down and their owners charged under the local jurisdiction’s version of breaching the peace. The most successful rival station naturally came from within the Eastern Bishopric, a broadcast to the Bishop’s subjects that kept them informed of matters christian and communal. It did have a surprisingly well-informed international desk, most people would give it that. For this reason alone it was, if not popular among the communards, then it was certainly listened to.

Minutes after London Permanent Council had sent its message along the relay a station was found broadcasting in both analogue and digital that bore all the hallmarks of the old Government Network. It was the same voices, the same style, the same calling cards and musical beds. The broadcast repudiated the assembly. It was a violation and usurpation of law and order, private property, human rights, god, the crown and everything that was good and right in the world. The communards were violent anarchists who had turned London and the rest of the country into a third-world disaster zone. Justice would be swift in coming...

What really concerned were the messages that followed from around the country. It seemed everyone else was getting this broadcast too. The national broadcasting system was hurriedly brought into action. The assumed Communal Government of Britain, the London Permanent Council in other words began to fight back over the airwaves.

The issue, the day-to-today issue we used to fight over was prisoners. I mean, the rival stations, they’d come up with all sorts of outrageous crap. They said we had gang bangs, drug orgies, satanic rituals, mass conversions to Islam, silly stuff they knew wouldn’t stick. The thing they’d pummel, the thing they returned to again and again, was the prisoners.

To some people’s shock the prisons were reopened. London was never safe. It was an open city, effectively, for a long time. What justice you had you had to make for yourself. Even so there were very few people who you’d want locked up, permanently. On the other hand there was the campaign of fire, these… gentlemen arsonists. If they were caught they couldn’t be just let free. So some of them were eventually put to work. I liked that, it was right, I agreed with the Root and Branch on this although it didn't half clash with their ideas about radical liberty. But, of course, we were accused of being slave drivers and torturers. They had some cheek, these stations, knowing what was going on in the Bishop's little kingdom.

So, anyway, it was like ping-pong, back and forward with these accusations, denials, insults and threats. Our policy at least was to hold back with what we knew until we could prove it, you know, we actually wanted to convince people, not just whip them up.

Oh, I remember the day when we got footage and pictures… This idiot… spy I suppose he was, they sent to infiltrate a factory group, I think it was a weapons workshop. He was caught before he could do any damage. He had on him, on this digital camera, with footage and stills of torture, beatings and water torture. Thinking about it now it was pretty grim stuff. But these were clearly Bishops’ soldiers dealing out the punishment.

We had them over a barrel... not the best metaphor perhaps, anyway. We put the pictures online and put the film on public show, for information, at about a two-dozen cinemas, we announced this on air, repeating it for a day or so. We had them. I know because they stopped broadcasting, the government Network, for at least 48 hours. The broadcasts were definitely coming from within the Bishopric. The next thing we heard from them they were accusing us of being violent pornographers by showing the film publicly. There’s just no accounting for taste.

Freya - A little over a week before the assembly was due to open the United States government, my government, was overthrown by a military coup. Until that point international relations barely impacted on our New Politics. Now it seemed something big and sinister was moving. The communards had to find out what it was.

Old London is a city of roughly 300 languages. In the immediate days after the catastrophe there was very little formal communication with the outside world. I remember lots of stories flew round, across the radio, via the rump internet. Most of the old embassies were abandoned or silent. IK tried to get to the US embassy, I hadn't heard from my family and I wanted them to know I was ok. Of course the embassy was locked down, shut.

Solid news usually made its way into the city via the immigrant population, London’s contact with the outside world.

I, somehow, got a job on the London Daily News, a non-partisan paper. I eventually got in touch with my parents and a few friends back home via the restored internet link. They eventually became my, my first correspondents I suppose I've got a selection of notes made back then, about the international situation. By the middle of the year the rough picture was this:

North America: the United States was undergoing a second civil war, fought between the central government, based on the coasts, and various breakaway states in the central belt, upside down names. The hottest battle was in the Republic of Texas, with its large enemy population, i.e. Mexican population. Word was huge internment camps had been set up, tales of slave labour spread, stories of torture and mass death. The rebel state’s internal war soon spilled over into Mexico proper. Though there were many good reasons and even more real reasons, the struggle was sparked by the battle over water. The south and west was suffering a three-year drought. While the federal government lost time, the pressure on agriculture and the big cities rose (along with prices). States with water resources were basically fighting with those who hadn’t.

Texas’s chief rival was not the central government but the loyal state of California. At the beginning of the year California was hit by a general strike. The mainly Latino working class backed by the mainly black public sector workers rose in response to the rebels. Though called by the California union locals, the movement spread quickly, became far bigger across the region, peaking in Nevada where, in Las Vegas, it converged on the local college football stadium. For a brief time the assembly saw the republic overthrown. Las Vegas was declared the capital of Atzalan.

This was an intense embarrassment to the government and its supporters back east. Leaders of the national unions were desperate to call the strike off. They had mixed success. Though the western states were still officially the jurisdiction of their governors, real power lay with committees handed down from the strike. Most industry and commerce was “collectivised”, run by the staff and dedicated to the war effort. Meanwhile, a popular militia held the line against the rebels across the Rockies while the regular army remained confined to base.

Continental Europe: Where the catastrophe hit hardest the logic that had brought together great nations had broken down. The map of Europe was redrawn in dramatic fashion. Nowhere had reached the desperate depths plumbed in Britain, but nowhere had the old order been as completely destroyed. Most of Europe now lived in limbo. Two examples:

France was one example. During the spring, after several days of street fighting in Paris, creeping from the banlieu to the centre, the president surprised everyone by appearing on national TV to resign, declaring that someone must form a sixth republic. France’s parliament tried to take up the task. A constituent assembly was called amid great turmoil and rancour. It was decided that the only way to save France was to give it to a postman.

The Postman, that was his political name, was one of the most popular figures in French politics, a hero to many; but the republic offered was almost identical to the one prior. He declined the post.

France had to survive for weeks and months without a constitution or government. As the decline precipitated, inside and out, popular anger could not be contained. France’s parliament retired. A new constitution along the lines of Venezuela, Bolivia (that was the aim anyway) was written and ratified at a permanent mass meeting in the Stade De France. The Postman was made President of the Sixth Republic.

In the south however, away from the great cities, the Old Solider, that was considered a proper name, withdrew with his national front. As the new republic was declared his men began taking over the towns and villages by force. Refusing to recognise the new power, they threatened to declare independence. What they meant was civil war.

Civil war had already come to Italy, which had in fact split into fractions. Politics was already hotly contested before the breakdown, each side bringing out impressive mobilisations. The left was strong in the cities, on the campuses and in the unions. The right dominated in the countryside, especially in the north. The final kick-off came after a Bologna-Lazio cup match. Lazio were beaten 2-1 thanks to a last minute penalty award. The Romans went on a rampage through the town centre under the close watch of the Caribineri. Past midnight the rioters were expected to disperse. Instead they decided to stay. They careered around the suburbs looking for reds, muslims and gypsies, knocking up any suspicious houses and shops.

The next day fascist politicians started arriving in the city, giving inflammatory statements to the press and generally egging on the crowd. Once it was clear this was an organised provocation left groups began mobilise.

Months down the line the central government was formally still sitting. The actual power lay divided between a left alliance of Tuscan and Lombard cities in the west, and a de facto fascist state in the east. Local leaders had brought the people onto the streets to claim Sicilian and Sardinian independence. Even the Pope was making statements about restoring the glory of the Papal Legation.

Middle East: The Middle East was already striving toward a democratic future when the catastrophe hit. The sudden withdrawal of American support meant instant collapse of the puppet states, Israel, Egypt and Arab kingdoms. Universal democracy was declared. The Middle East enjoyed a belated renaissance.

Latin America and Africa: Little news came out of these two continents. The few tidings were good, or at least not so bad. Latin American societies were much less affected by the catastrophe. There were some unsubstantiated stories slum fires in Rio and Sao Paulo, but other than that… Large parts of Africa were already fairly decimated before the catastrophe. Beneath the Sahara many of the old states simply melted away. The almost permanent civil war in Central Africa flared up again.

Asia: Pakistan and India were hit hard by the crisis. The government still formally existed in India, although it was widely ignored. Having been chased out of three cities the government recruited a load of high-ranking officers and relocated to a military base under the Himalayas. By this stage much of the old machine had fallen apart, as it had in Pakistan. The worrying thing was no one knew where the nuclear armaments were any more, whose hands had they fallen into.

China was also a whistling kettle. Internal refugees fleeing a drought in the centre of the country had packed the costal cities, which perversely seemed to be suffering from frequent storms. The state, fearing another flu outbreak, initially resisted with force. Local governors were given emergency licence. Special internal passports were introduced. There were mass round ups, huge detention camps. The numbers became overwhelming. Camps sagged under the human flood; huge turbulent slums rapidly welled up. There were frequent riots, though they were all crushed.

The government initially held out well but with no practical limit to the violent chaos in time it began to sink. By the end of the year Tibet and Xinjang separated and the Hong Kong and Macao governments were also left to run things pretty much by themselves.

Chapter 8 - continued

2011-06-29T02:10:00.001-07:00

Anna Engelmann: this incident took place two days before the National Assembly was due to meet.
While lots of people were worried about the Bishop, the fascists, the Knights of Albion, started attacking us again, from inside the city. It was the same old men, same old nazis, but it was a different experience, second time. Example: when they marched on Hackney.

I was in a class at the time. It was at the old LCC on Mare Street, learning how to repair clothing. It was your typical day, typical day in Hackney, until these kids came bursting in from wherever, it seemed, going on about how the nazis were marching on Hackney (there were other groups moving through other boroughs). The nazis were coming and we had to stop them from taking the town hall. One of the teachers from the local secondary school was also a militiaman. He got his class working as little messengers; learn by doing and all that. He even gave them the special courier’s seal from the local commune.

Some in the college were a bit incredulous, I heard some grumbling, but the kids eventually managed to get the whole college out. It made sense what they were saying, as there’d been all these rumours and threats going round about the National Assembly (it was only a week or so away). We marched down to the town hall, there was already close to a thousand people there, some had come armed.

The crowd kept building for another half hour or so, two or three thousand at least. There were scarce few militia there, which was a bit disturbing... worrying. The place was boiling with discussion, however. It was friendly but fierce, you know? People swapping stories; trying to work out what was going on. A few of the better known communards were there, keeping a kind of order.

They're coming! They're coming! Some of the kids spotted the fascists, strutting up the road, from the south. I know said they saw nazis with little badges with the Bishop’s insignia on but.... but they looked different to me.

There must have been about five hundred of them, marching. They were all in this uniform. A lot of them had black body armour, crest padding, shins, arms and helmets. They had what looked like batons and, I think, lightweight rifles. I remember at that moment someone, joking, called them Satan’s Batsmen. That got a laugh, but a bit hush went over the crowd. For that moment, when they first appeared, I thought we were in trouble.

There was an armoured car at the back of the column with this guy riding on top, all puffed up like he was Mussolini. We were in front of the town hall, all over the pavement and the gardens. We sort of bunched together, instinctively. They stopped over the road, in front of the Ocean. There was a little panic wave rising as people realised we could be surrounded. One of the lead communards, a leading communard, I won't say who, approached me, they approached anyone else they knew. They said we had to stick together. If we scattered we’d be all be picked off. Stick together, spread the word.

Some of the soldiers approached the crowd and attempted to give out leaflets. I think that broke the spell. They were all told to fuck off, basically. Then I noticed more people, some militia arrive on either side of the soldiers, guns and clubs in hand. They were the ones now being surrounded.

The tank man disappeared inside. Then there was this big, booming voice over a public address system: HACKNEY IS NOW A LIBERATED ZONE! The guy read out his fascist spiel. I don't know where it was coming from. Someone in the crowd must have worked out the odds were in our favour, as they started approaching the soldiers, giving them grief. It was getting heated. I must admit it was exciting. You could see these nazis, look them in the eye, tell them what you thought, give them what for, and they’d look away. They knew.

Anyway, despite this the guy in the tank kept reading out from his script. It boiled over, the crowd boiled over when he started reading out this list: THE FOLLOWING PEOPLE ARE WANTED FOR ARREST. People started fighting, grabbing at the soldiers weapons. I think someone gave the order to fire, but the soldiers were overwhelmed. A few of them managed to escape by climbing on the back of the armoured car, which forced its way through the crowd.

It was funny; as it was driving away back down the road someone poked their head out of the car and tried to knock their comrades off. Looking at the car again it was then I noticed it was a just regular van, like those camper vans, painted black and decked out in corrugated iron. Not so imposing.

We chased them off, I say we, I mean the kids mostly, they chased the nazis off down Mare Street toward Bethnal Green. Some in the crowd started letting off pistols and rifles at this point. That was a bit undisciplined.

The whole thing took about ten, fifteen minutes. The only thing that put a chill on the situation, for me at least, was my name being read out.

Assad Mirza - At the top of the militia we banked on the rebels holding to their strategy. As far as we knew the Bishop was still marching on London.

We mobilised the entire militia. Everyone was on full alert. I know this annoyed some of the politicians in the assembly (they won't like me calling them that), but it had to be done.

In most parts they were sent out to search for any lurking saboteurs. Known supporters of the Bishop were arrested. Units not on search detail were told to inventory all arsenal, food and medicine in their jurisdiction for later distribution. The leaders of each militia group were summoned to two bases we set up. One was in an old hotel in Bloomsbury, commandeered, near what we thought was going to be the front line. The other was safe in the maze-streets of Soho. We had fall back points were readied for Hammersmith, then Ealing, then Heathrow. The London Permanent Council gave running of the city to the militia leaders, who would report back to a joint meeting of the sub commanders and council every half hour (the council was happy when Alexandra Palace was fortified).

Metal workshops were commissioned to work overnight. Every drop of fuel that could be found, every battery that could be spared or recharged was turned over. Crews of scavengers were sent down to the dead zones to search for useful materials that could be dragged to the workshops or the front line.

Riders were sent out into the night with bundles of leaflets. Each neighbourhood was to be woken with the news although, what with the Knights causing trouble in bits of the city, the word spread quicker than the riders. London was in danger, but the commune was going to act. All able bodied citizens not already employed in the workshops, the militia or scavenging the dead zones were to assemble 6am at the nearest communal meeting point.

The following morning tens of thousands of ordinary Londoners appeared across the city. They split into two groups, spades and arrows. Across the morning, as streets were dug up, barricades erected the tens turned into hundreds of thousands. Each major road was blocked off and guards put up. Major flyovers were prepared with dynamite. Every large junction was booby trapped and covered by snipers, rifles and bows. All working machine guns were commandeered and placed either high up or in street level trenches. All groups were kept in touch my phone, bicycle courier or rider.

The militia sent small reconnaissance groups out to major roads and junctions. The night before, weapons and materials were sent out to secret dumps at key points across the city, to be quickly unveiled if the rebels should the deviate from their plan. London was ready. The plan was set. Events happened though, and events change everything. The militia on the front line, credit where credit's due, had a better idea.

Chapter 8 - continued

2011-06-29T02:09:00.001-07:00

Keith Brown - After the All London meeting we settled into almost diplomatic relations with the Bishopric. He couldn't defeat us. We weren't looking to get rid of him in the short-term. Both groups were here to stay. The custom, short lived as it was, if there was an issue to discuss we would arrange for heavily armed groups to meet at a certain point, usually in open countryside, and exchange documents, verbal messages and so on. Sometimes there'd be a prisoner exchange. There were a few tense occasions. We published all contacts, all negotiations with the Bishop; he didn't like this, and threatened to break off.

There was a sharp incident at the end of the summer, only a few weeks before the assembly was announced. The Bishop declared that the following Saturday his army would march through Romford and the surrounding areas in a gesture of Christian solidarity. A fairly transparent attempt to claim part of outer London for the Bishopric (although, let's be honest, the Bishop had a fair few supporters living there – “private residents”, not part of any commune).

Soldiers from the former Chelsea barracks were sent to negotiate with the army. They were turned away. On the morning of the Bishop's threatened march people from all around the area were mobilised to confront the march, 6am start. The Permanent Council sent groups of bows and rifles from different city milita, distributed blocks and blocks of dynamite to back the crowd up.

While this was going on a squad of unmarked cars, not obviously belonging to the Bishop's army (by this point we had informally agreed symbols for each army) they raced into the centre Dagenham. The unknown men took advantage of our strategic weakness. They got out and sprayed the area bullets, fire bombed lots of buildings. People who saw it say it lasted for three-quarters of an hour. They were only driven off once militia groups arrived from Romford and Newham.

That same week there were riots down in the West Country led by clerically inspired gangs. The riot in Bristol was kicked off, it seems, by an unaccountably large amount of alcohol arriving in the city. Reports have never been adequately investigated, but stories tell of three separate, simultaneous pogroms breaking out, one in the city centre, one in the suburbs and one near the docks. The death toll was between 300 and 1,000, mostly residents and/or communards. This is taking into account several fire bombings and the one confirmed mass execution. 50 bodies were later recovered from the docks. Not all were identified. Most who were, were well known communards. Each had a variety of injuries. All were bound and had gunshots through the head or neck.

The rioting there went on for about a week. Elsewhere there were armed groups who tried to assault communal buildings in Manchester and Liverpool. They were repelled more quickly. When captured survivors were questioned they claimed to be inspired by the Bishop, although they denied being armed by him.

The Bishop didn't just communicate with us. He had his own radio station, press and leaflets, which he aimed at us. He was always calling for a “Campaign of Fire” to cleanse Britain of plunder, anarchy and vice. His cleansing process became all too real for many Londoners.

Nasr al Sabah - I can’t really call myself a soldier. I suppose I am, but I don’t feel like one. In all this time I’ve learned a few things. The worst thing is fighting someone who will never surrender, no matter what. Even though you’ve won they’re gonna make you kill them, you can't stop until every last one of them is dead. Archway was like that.

The bastards had been on the rampage, about 200 of them, old nazis killing and burning. They knew they’d never get away with it. It was, what’s one of those... Kamikaze missions, yeah? I don’t know how many people they’d already injured or killed, but when we had them surrounded, they barricaded themselves in this skyscraper.

I thought at the time some of them must have pistols. There were plenty of gunshots going off, though they couldn’t hit a fucking thing. But they all still had their fire bombs. I think someone found out later they were a combination of flares, grenades and some Molotov cocktails. They said they had hostages with them, which turned out to be a lie, so then they threatened to burn down the building.

They ignored everything we offered. We had to fight our way in. You know, they were given time, time to come out? They were given several hours.

Anyway there was about a thousand militia that came. Nearly all of North London that was on duty was there that night, by the end. It was a big thing. The plan was we basically had to rush in, three groups of us, across fifty to a hundred yards or so of tarmac (road, pavement and so on). We knew the gang was mostly on the third and fourth floors. We’d go under cover of fire. Once we got inside we’d cut the lift and take the stairs, secure each floor as we go.

That was the plan.

It turned out at least one of them had a semi-automatic or a submachine gun, and it was pointed at my team. We were making good progress when twenty yards from the entrance there was, like, this huge ripping sound. I saw at least four people around me hit the ground, injured or dead. I don’t know how, like, the bullets missed me.

The rest of us dropped to the floor, like you’re supposed to do, but people were still getting hit. The fire was coming from at least the seventh floor. We had to keep going. We got up. It all seemed it was in slow motion, but it wasn't. Then there was a bang, a huge explosion round the other side of the building. They were chucking all they had at us.

Of course they couldn’t stop us getting inside. All the way up they had the advantage of the high ground. Barricades, street fighting is mostly hand to hand, but for some reason this felt close than that, if that makes sense? It only took an hour and a half to finish them off, but it felt much longer. The building nearly went up twice, where they set fire to stuff. We chased them up to the eleventh floor in the end. I mean, we still kept going, clearing every floor right up to the roof. You couldn’t be sure.

We lost at least two hundred people that night, a total waste. We should have let them burn it down, burn the whole building down.

Florence Tanoh: the incident she describes happened three days before the National Assembly was due to start.
The Root and Branch HQ was attacked. It was a really clumsy, stupid thing they did, the fascists, but everyone was shocked by it. It was in the morning. A van pulled up on the roundabout outside, side on. I was sitting in the front of a lorry, riding shotgun they say. I was with a load of militia men and women. We were going to be sent east to help on border patrol. There was a lot of tension and worry about the Bishop invading.

Our driver, I didn't know him, he was an old soldier though, our driver spotted there was something wrong first, he said something like “who's that” or “what's going on”. It was one of those camper vans with the side door. The door swung open, then there was this really loud roar. No one realised at the time but it was a small missile. The men in the van had shoulder launchers. They were aiming at the palace. They managed to get off three shots, which all missed, before anyone returned fire.

The van took off as soon as it was fired on. It went up Constitution Hill. Our Driver, who shouldn't have done this, followed quickly. I don't think the fascists thought they'd be followed because we caught up with them quite quickly, before the Wellington Monument roundabout. There were twelve guys in the back. They had to hold on tight. Our driver tried to ram the van off the road. He was like a madman, but no one tried to stop him. We took the curve far too quickly and were lucky not to tip over.

The Driver used the CB radio, asking for help, but there was no response. “Get the fuck down here, emergency, emergency”. The fascists took off toward Knightsbridge, so off we went again. Our lorry caught up with the van on Kensington Gore. They started shooting at us, pot shots with pistols, but they hit nothing. The van tried to shake us off by turning sharply up the Broad Walk in Kensington Gardens. There were people in the park. It was a nice day, warm and sunny for that time of year. They had to take cover, fast, as we were travelling at over fifty miles an hour, rattling along, it was very noisy.

Turn right, back out onto Bayswater Road, I radioed for help this time. I described where we were and where we were headed; no one could get to us soon. We almost caught up with them before Marble Arch. The van driver tried making more sharp turns, round Marble Arch, but we were braced for it. Hyde Park was closed to traffic, so the van driver barged through this gate. He must have done a lot of damage to his vehicle, but never mind. We chased the van across the park, over the grass, dust flying, toward the gate at Hyde Park Corner, more people piling out the way, more gun shots. The van started pouring more and more smoke as it went. This gate was open, it shouldn't have been, but the driver tried to go through it too quickly. The van mounted a bit of the pavement, came off the road and hit one of the pillars.

The van was a wreck. I had not seen anything like it. There was four people inside. Three died on the scene, one died later, before anyone could question him. They were not Bishop-men or, if they were, they were in disguise.

Future Legend - Chapter 8: fire and the return of fire

2011-06-22T05:22:00.000-07:00

Keith Browne - It's difficult to say who or what the Bishop was, for certain. There were conflicting opinions; some reckoned the Bishop was a puppet, a cipher, but some think he was an autonomous political actor. We know his name, almost certainly; George Cameron-St John.

The Bishop was of course not a Bishop when this whole thing began. He was a Vicar for several years, the leader of a congregation of several Church of England churches in the area around Colchester. He occasionally gave sermons at the army base there. He said he had a Doctorate in Divinity from Cambridge University. This is probably true to some degree, although there are no surviving records of this in any of the colleges. He was an undergraduate member of the Conservative and Unionist Student Society at Cambridge for three full years, although he did not seem to be active in the party from his postgraduate onward.

He is on record as left the Church of England over the ordination of gay priests. It was stated in several local newspapers at the time. He is also on record making a number of other rather conservative statements, regarding gender politics and sex education in particular. He tried at one point to join the Catholic Church, but found a more suitable home in the English Democrats. There are some who name him as a party branch treasurer but, again, there are no surviving records.

In the year before the crisis, the unrest, he started making many more trips to the barracks in Colchester, although he was not attached to the chaplain's office there. He had no known source of income at this point, the treasurer's job couldn't have sustained him. He no known dependants, no family and very few contacts, at least not ones we can find today, outside of the old army. We do know he was in with a number of the officers there. He was also seen meeting with senior officers in the Essex Police force.

At the time of the struggle in London the health regime in Essex was fairly liberal and light. The violence seemed to spark panic in the police force, some kind of nervous reaction which led to a clamp down in most municipal workplaces, schools, the local university and so on. Independently of this, or not the Bishop went/was summoned to Colchester Barracks, whereupon he called upon all good Christian soldiers to stand up for England, Queen and Country. We don't have an exact transcript, ha!

After various parades he set about building his army, which was called the Order of Albion. The name was to attract the various right-wing groups and agitators, bring them under his banner. I don't think there was a grand, unified right-wing conspiracy at this point, the name was deliberate. After, of course, they were ejected from London and other big cities they flocked to him; his new congregation.

His army wasn't strong enough, at least he thought it wasn't strong enough, to take on the whole of London. People, some people, forget; they say “the Bishop's army was 100,000 strong, and we beat him”. We did, but our army was over a million strong, everyone was with the communes and would fight for them.

The Bishop instead attacked to the north but was repelled by the Polish Free Army at Cambridge. The Bishop then sent his men to the east and south. Chelmsford was always a stronghold. The Bishop's men could generally hold Basildon and Southend. Of course he never got into Harwich or Felixtowe.

The tried to build numbers through conscription, but this made his army fairly unreliable. His army, his movement ground to a halt around Brentwood way. They could make punitive raids in places Harlow and even St Albans. They were always restless. I think the Bishop needed to keep moving from success to success, however paltry, to boost the army's morale. Any occupied town, the army would generally leave a couple of hundred soldiers behind while the rest went off on some escapade. The militia tried to organise sabotage missions inside the Bishopric. His whole movement They never set foot inside the M25 though, which was the Bishop's stated aim. I guess that was when he started looking for international aid.

Derek Campbell - I've been a sailor, I'd been a sailor for thirty years now. I took up sailing after my Wife died. She had breast cancer. I didn't want to remarry. I named my boat after her, Bonnie. I kept it at a marina in Grays. I used to take her out, once a month, sailing in the channel. One time, a Bank Holiday, I took Bonnie all the way out to France, up the coast to Belgium, then Holland; three day trip. It was my getaway.

I wasn't involved in the whole unrest, it's not right, you know, to be involved in that sort of thing, not at my age; I was all for it don't get me wrong. I wasn't involved in the unrest, but I had friends and family who were, anarchists and communards. An anarchist nephew of mine, you might know him, he brought some of his friends to see me. They were nice kids, not revolutionaries I thought. It was not like the old days. I had some mates, Ernie and Abe was their names. They were involves in that 43 Group who used to have a go at Mosley's lot. They were tasty lads, proper, what you'd think revolutionaries were supposed to be.

Never mind, these kids came up to me asking me about the boats around Canary Wharf and London Bridge. They was all abandoned, you see? The kids they wanted to take the boats out on the Thames, go fishing. I said you don't want to eat anything that's been caught in the Thames, but they were adamant. They knew I knew something about boats so they kept coming back. In the end I agreed.

A group of us we went down to the marina, the one by London Bridge. I tell you they weren't kidding. There was loads of them, huge, big yachts all the way down to tiny little dingies, coal barges and that. Some of them were rusty, some of them had clearly been poked around in. A lot of them though were still decked out, all plush, maps, passes, working radio, stocks of diesel, medical kits and what not. Some of them even still had fresh food in the fridge. I said are you sure these have been abandoned? They said yes. I said then, first thing's first, you have to declare yourself a maritime commune or something. The kids didn't like that idea. I said, first, you got to do it to stop someone else claiming all the boats for scrap metal or something; second, you can get help repairing and refuelling these if you join the commune. Everything went through the local commune. They were good organisers they were.

So I started taking these kids out on the Thames and East to show them the basic moves, mooring, piloting, navigating and such. More people got involved in the sailing group, including, I was glad, someone who said they knew about casting nets and fishing. After a few weeks kitting them out, one fine dawn the new mariners set off in a little flotilla, 20 boats down the river. I went out with them. We'd mostly just pottered round the far end of the Thames at high tide. This time we were set on the English Channel.

We had just sailed past Grays, mid-morning, when odd shots of rifle fire started whizzing at the sails. You could see then men on the bank side, shooting at us. I was concerned, there was some discussion, radio discussion, but the group kept pushing on. The ships drew more fire, this time aiming at the crew. A few people were hit. The captain of the lead ship, one of the original anarchist kids, she was telling the crews to press on when she was cut short by a huge explosion. A grenade from a launcher ripped through her boat, killing all on board. We turned sharply and headed for home.

Our would-be sailors were deterred for several weeks until some of them hit on making trips out at night. I didn't join them, mind you. My job was done, I thought. After several successful weeks sea fishing, crews again started to come under attack. In one incident a group of boats were boarded by a party of Knights, abducted and never seen again. From then on crews started to go to sea armed.

Chapter 7 - continued

2011-06-15T03:13:00.000-07:00

My name is Katya Corbyn, I lived with my Mum and Dad and my Big Brother, Chris, in Colchester until the Bishop took over. I escaped from one of his concentration camps. I am alive. My family may well be dead now.

My parents were both teachers, which I think was why they were taken. They worked at a comprehensive. Subversive education. I don't know. It was just so random. They taught at a different school to mine. I was at an academy.

The panic was frightening, we were told it was frightening, and I guess it was. The police made a surprise visit to our school. The whole school came out for an assembly. We were shuffled into the basketball court by policemen and women and these strange guys, a few of them, in black boiler suits. It was weird. There was about twenty police officers standing at the end. All the teachers were standing at the side, looking a bit nervous, I thought.

This policeman spoke to us, he started off speaking through a megaphone, but he stopped. It wasn't working, so he just, sort of, shouted at us instead. He said he was a chief officer or something. He said he'd come to tell us about what was going on and why. It was an islamist/socialist plot... I'm not kidding. Foreign takeover. We were not to worry. Demonstrations would meet with an iron fist, not sure why. Turn to God in times like these, British institutions, the church, the crown; something like that. The Legion of Order was ready to defend Britain to whatever end. He then said god save the queen, and all the police officers started singing the national anthem. It was then I noticed there were police officers covering all the doors. We were expected to sing along.

Worst of all the police stayed lurking around the school. It was a big compound, the school. They said they were guarding the gates. From what? My friend Lou said the Chief Officer did another speech, to the staff, in their common room. What was going on. Lots of people said the army was going to be called up... A lot of people said that would be a bad thing. People assume, people not from garrison towns assume that everyone who lives in a garrison town is all for the soldiers; that's not true. Most times you meet a soldier they're out on the town, getting drunk and throwing themselves about.

Mum and Dad were always against me being out after dark, even if it was just going down the road to see my friends for homework. Even going to see bands play the Guildhall was out of the question. There was that thing, like, the year before. My friend, Lou, works part time in her uncle's pub, she saw it happen.

A university student was attacked by some soldiers, she was in a pub with some friends. A couple of squaddies came over together from a group of about nine, they were very drunk, they started trying to chat the girls up. The girls weren't interested, but the squaddies kept leering over them, so the one woman, the university student, got up and told them to fuck off, right in their faces. One of them got really angry, this is how they can flip, and glassed her in the face. They started fights with anyone who tried to help her, one bartender got stabbed in the neck with some broken glass. The whole pub was in a stand off until the police came with an ambulance. The police told everyone to go home. They hushed the whole thing up, no charges. They visited the student's family and persuaded them to forget about it. There wasn't even a mention in the local paper. But everyone knew about it in town, everyone.

We went home. No homework at all, which was weird... at the time. I told Mum and Dad what happened. No, I didn't have any homework. It didn't seem to sink in. They'd had a similar experience. Police officers in their school. Neither wanted to talk about it, much. Dad watched all the different news bulletins. When I got home Mum was out. She came back with a huge load of shopping, lots of tins and frozen food, which we all had to help put away. Chris helped, although I think he was a little bit stoned at the time. She said there was panic buying everywhere.

The next day was the same, only fewer police and more strange men dressed up strange. They came and took everyone out of the school this time, marched us into the town centre. We were going to honour our army heroes.

It was drizzling, like constant mist, but it looked like the whole town was out. We stood on the High Street behind these rows of men, all black suits, clubs and helmets. They weren't police, they looked like police, but they had none of the usual badges or numbers. They looked threatening. There was lots of discussion, they kept telling us to shut up. One kid, in the year below me, made a smart arse remark and was removed from the crowd. There was lots of hubbub, people all around were shocked. Nobody did anything to stop them. Our bit of the crowd was put in a special police box, one of those things, a kettle, although they weren't the police. We waited, and we waited, the rain got a little harder, then it eased off completely. It was getting less weird and more boring. It wasn't cold but I remember feeling very cold. There was very little talking though.

Eventually you could hear a marching band in the distance, there was a little ripple of noise along the crowd. Here came the soldiers. Again, like, nothing better to do, we started cheering. It wasn't, like, the greatest noise you ever heard, not very enthusiastic. Rank after rank of soldiers came past, some armoured vehicles, some tanks. Not all the soldiers seemed to be from the local regiment, or even in regular uniform. They looked more like farmers in canvas. Close to the end of the demonstration was the oddest thing, an open top limousine cruising along. There was a man standing on top, standing to attention, with his chest puffed out like he was a real piece of something. He was dressed in a purple robe, with a strange conical hat, purple, cone shaped hat. It was the Bishop.

…

That night, a little bit past eleven we were all in bed, I was awake, reading, Chris was probably smoking something, I don't know about Mum and Dad. Anyway, there was a knock out the front. We didn't live in that big a house, semi-detached. The porch door was mostly glass. It sounded like banging. Then the front door, it was banging. I think we all must have jumped. There was a voice, shouting:

“Health inspection, open up”.

It was then I noticed lights out in the street, flashing lights. I could hear Mum, she was afraid:

“Go down, I'm frightened, Snoopy, go down!”

That was Mum's name for Dad, snoopy. I was at the top of the stairs, Mum halfway down, in her dressing gown:

“Go back” she said. I stayed where I was. Dad said:

“Who is it”, trying to sound firm.

“Health inspection, open...” Then there was a crash, they knocked the front door off its hinges. Dad was pushed to the floor. Load of men poured through the door, they were loud, they were wearing canvas-like uniforms and carrying these guns, pistols and rifles. I quickly had a gun pointed in my face. Chris was dragged out of bed. He was stoned. Mum and Dad just looked bewildered.

Were told there was another deadly flu outbreak. We were told to get dressed, we were going to be quarantined. We were being processed. Before we knew it we were on the back of an army truck with a load of other people from the street. We were driven away. I could see, just see out the back all the lights were on, the men were searching through our house.

We were driven for ages, it felt, like, an hour. It was very noisy and bumpy. The flap at the back was open, just a bit. I tried to force it open. I thought might be able to jump out. We were let out in this strange place. It looked like a military base.

We were all shoved out and down this alleyway, toward what looked like an aircraft hanger, very quickly, they wanted us to move very quickly. The hanger was brightly lit and mostly empty, there were loads of camp beds, no covers. There was about a hundred of us, huddling around. They shut us all in. The lights stayed on all night.

The next day, I think it was the next day, there was no light, natural light, very little happened. We were given some food, stale baguettes. The soldiers handing them out looked angry and didn't speak to anyone. The rest of the time people just milled around, there was lots of crying and angry, stress-talk. There were some muffled noises outside. You could vaguely hear people talking, but nothing distinct. A few hours after that the soldiers were back. They made everyone stand up. Everything went quiet. Then the lead guy read out some names:

“Step forward, come this way”.

The people called out did so, about a dozen or so. For a moment there was no panic or worry. Then, it was like everyone realised at the same time, they called out all the young men. The room kicked off. There was crying and fighting. The soldiers resorted to guns again, shoving them in people's faces. They dragged the young men out the room, Chris was the last to go. The last word I heard him say was:

“Mum!”

The room was like a madhouse, people screaming, banging on the walls and doors. One man tried to pick a fight with our Dad. It had almost calmed down when another load of soldier men marched in, more this time, dressed in black and carrying big machine guns. For some reason I noticed, at that point, everyone, these soldier men, whatever they were wearing they had these badges, insignia. It was like the St George's flag.

They called out another load of names. The were on one side of the hall, we were all backed up together at the other end. One by one they called out names, no one responded. They started picking people out and dragging them from the crowd. I was one of them.

It was night time outside. It was dark, but the lights were big and bright. They cast, like, huge shadows, and you couldn't really see where you were going. We were bundled across a big gravel square, about twenty of us, into this hut, this long... utility hut, into a room, and the door locked behind us. We were then picked out again, one by one, and taken to another room.

“Katya” this man said. “I want to ask you a few questions”. He was a soldier-type, but dressed in black, with that little insignia again; a middle-aged man. The room was pretty shady. I could see the Man clearly though. He was calm.

I said something like:

What's going on, where's my Brother?”

“He's joined the army?”

“What army?”

“He is defending the crown, defending the country”.

Chris was the bassist in a crap punk band: OCD Soundsystem they called themselves.

“What do you think of that?” the Man asked.

I sort of stumbled, but I didn't believe him.

“Your parents are teachers, aren't they?”

“Yes”.

“At a comprehensive school, right?”

“Yes... Who are you...? I thought....”

“They opposed it transferring to academy status...” He cut in.

I wasn't sure.

“Yet they sent you to an academy. That's a bit hypocritical, don't you think?”

I didn't know what to say.

“Were they active in the union...? You must know...” I didn't know. “Were they active in the union, the NUT, National...?”

“Yes, yes” I said.

The Man seemed satisfied. He changed tone. “What did they teach you, your parents?”

I didn't answer. It was then that I noticed two other people in the room, one woman and one other man. I couldn't see their faces.

“Do you love your country?” asked the Woman.

I wasn't sure how to answer. “What do you want me to say? I don't know what you want”.

“Patriotic people believe in law and order, don't they?” said the First Man to the others. “Your Mum's a biology teacher, isn't she...? She teaches sex education as well, yes...?” He got more angry again. “Can you confirm... uh, can you confirm that your mother taught sex education to thirteen-year-old children?”

“How would I now?” I shouted. “They didn't teach at my school”. I didn't feel brave.

“She's not going to be much use” said the Second Man. “Work detail?”

The First Man agreed, and I was taken out of the room, put back with the rest.

...

About, I don't know, about two hours later we were marched out of the hut, back across the gravel square and into another old army truck. It's engine was running, we would be leaving soon, perhaps to the “work detail”. We were, I think, by this point, too tired to object. The canvas flaps were drawn down, we set off. I thought about the first trip, about the flap at the back. Could we get out? I had my whole arm through, trying to reach to this belt strap, holding one of the flaps down, when the truck broke, like, really had and I, sort of half fell out.

I yelled for help. There was screaming inside the truck. I'm surprised the driver didn't hear us. Someone, I don't know who, pushed me out. I landed half on my head. I wasn't happy, but they just said:

“Go”, in a loud whisper. The truck pulled away, leaving me lying there. It took a moment to get up. I was in this village, really small, in fact it was more like, what do they call it...? A hamlet. There was only two streets, one crossroads; in the middle of the night. The truck must have been lost for it to have stopped. It turned right at the crossroads. I turned left and, twelve hours later I ended up in London.

Chapter 7 - continued

2011-06-11T05:42:00.000-07:00

Anna - The, how shall I say, technical side of organising a national election seemed like a... it was difficult to explain the hows and the whys of putting together an electoral roll. There was a lot of trust within the commune, inside the different structures we had, inside Hackney and across London. But then there was an argument coming out of the London Assembly, that still rumbled on occasionally in the Permanent Council, about what constituted a commune. This was where the politics started showing.

There were two schools of thought. Some, gathered round The People Party, Constitutionalists, whatever you prefer to call them, emphasised that communes had to be territorial, unitary and indivisible. This meant that groups based around ethnic or religious identity could not call themselves communes, or workplace groups. The opposing argument, which usually gathered round the Root and Branch, Democratic Workers Party, argued that all communes are to begin with self-defining. Though basic democratic standards had to be adhered to, it would only be with careful cooperation and consensus such bodies could be formalised and regularised. Both arguments had their merits.

I thought the Constitutionalists were in a rush to formalise what was what, it was not in keeping with the atmosphere of the communal groups, at least not in Hackney. People were forming new communal groups all the time. Whipps Hospital was recovered and rebuilt after being trashed, virtually burned to the ground by a group of nazis. As soon as they were up and running they wanted to send delegates to the Waltham Forest collective.

The London communes were the de facto organisers of the National Assembly. The Permanent Council chose to go with a national version of the local, London body, a permanent delegation, subject to instant recall, proportionally drawn from a biannual assembly called a 1-1,000 basis (groups with 999 or fewer members were granted a voice but not a vote) with presiding body elected by that delegation to steer the process. We discussed this in our Hackney assembly and it was voted for almost unanimously.

The whole notion of politics was making a comeback round the National Assembly. I've mentioned the two main parties already; the Root and Branch Party and the Constitutionalists. They were not majority parties in any body, but they they were the ones with the clearest ideas about what they wanted, they were the best organised, and so they tended to polarise the argument; people would support one group or the other.

Simon and Lilly became Root and Branch members. I was always regarded as a supporter. I, I suppose I was, but I was never a member. I've always thought there's too much to be getting on with. A lot of political debate ends up as pantomime, everyone just... it's the same opinions back and forth. You can get sick of it after a while.

The Root and Branch Party were so named because they wanted to dig up the old order in its entirety: nature and gardening were common metaphors in the New Politics. The old order was a tall tree blocking the light and stealing the soil. It had to be chopped down and dug up so new life could be sewn. The Root and Branch Party was founded, more or less, out of the first uprising. They lead the fight that day, against the government and its infernal legacy. The Root and Branch Party saw the communes and an end in themselves. What was left was to acknowledge them, ratify them and have them lead the way in the Grand Reconstruction. I think that's a fair. There was lots of talk of Grand this and Great that.

The Constitutionalists saw the communes as more of a means to an end, although they hotly denied it. The Constitutionalists were much slower to congeal. They were not so much a party, for a long time they had no central office. They seemed to have better access to paper and printing works. They seemed, I mean lots of people complained about this. They had many friends on the radio network. All the means of communication were collectively owned, yet the Constitutionalists seemed to be first among equals, which the Root and Branch members never failed to point out. They also had a greater number of recognised names from the Old Days (another common Root and Branch attack).

So, anyway, the terms of the election were hotly contested. Everything had to be seen to be above board. We were asked to help with an all-London census for the election, which would double as the basis for the basis of the Three Year economic plan being suggested for London and the rest of the country (I think Five Year plan carried too many bad connotations).

We were given a fortnight to investigate every possible dwelling in the borough and take the names and vital details of everyone over the age of sixteen. The eventual report said there were 2.1 million communards, 400,000 private citizens, 300,000 were estimated to be unaccounted for. You'd meet a surprising number of people not involved in the communes. What were they doing? Homes, just about, sometimes they were shells, wrecks buildings with poor, wretched people existing inside.

There was a small tent village hidden away in a dark corner of the marshes, a gang of hobos gone back to nature. I met a very nervous family on one round; Asian, a woman, an elderly looking man and two children, about eight to ten years old. They were Urdu speakers, we had a lot of trouble approaching them. They were very aggressive, understandably I suppose, given the life they were leading, aggressive and afraid. We didn't know if they were armed. We had to come back later with a translator. They had been hiding in a self-built hut, hidden in some bushes in the middle of Clissold Park. When we were finally able to talk to them we found out, eventually, they'd been living off grass, herbs, flowers and rainwater, and catching the occasional small animal. The kids were sent out each night to forage while their Mother looked after what turned out to be their Great Uncle.

A lot of the so-called private citizens were bandits, some, communards often reckoned the bandits were Loyalist sleeper cells, but I'm not so sure. A group from our commune found trouble with a modern day Fagin, running a safe house for stolen goods and runaway kids. They were operating in the south east of the borough, over into Stratford and West Ham. They'd been behind a series of kidnappings. They targeted young people, young women especially, although they got less and less picky about who they abducted... robbed and often... often sexually assaulted. If they couldn't demand a ransom, and who had much of anything to spare, they'd try to enslave their captives or kill them and even eat them. They were a frightening bunch, who made night time a terror.

The militia pursued them for some time, but it was the census who caught up with the gang. They were in a warehouse, an abandoned three story warehouse in Hackney Wick, by the canal, right under the shadow of the old Olympic stadium. We made sure all teams down there were accompanied. A team of three had been missing for half an hour down an old, unrecovered industrial estate. It was quite a wreck, the estate, unusable, deserted, a mini Dead Zone it seemed. No one went there from the commune, normally. It was certainly a dangerous labyrinth, but, it was felt, the place had to be checked out. A big mistake.

So, anyway, the militia guards went to investigate. They found the gang's hideout, base, whatever. There was a gun fight, followed by a three hour siege. The census team were killed, quite horribly. The gang tried to use them as hostages. It was thought, afterwards, they were trying to buy time; perhaps they had help coming. It didn't arrive. More militia came instead. Once the gang knew they were not going to get out of this, they cut their hostages throats, letting them bleed to death, before and throwing them out the window. None of the gang, I'm glad to say, survived.

The militia searched the building. First floor they found stacks and stacks of stolen items, some food, clothing, computer equipment, generators, engines, lathes, bricks and plastic. Second floor there was several rooms full of prisoners, their other hostages... former hostages... all shot,... dead, some chained to walls, old radiators and so on.

Patrick - This stuff, this controversy about some of our members, it was… ridiculous. It’s telling, the fact the Squatters never dared put their accusations directly. They’d always get their friends on the ultra-left or the anarchists to do the really dirty work. Like, I was a member of the Labour Party, back in the day. I mean, so what? The Squatters, the Root and Branch, they’d just insinuate stuff about how we had all this secret access to money and power or even just, you know, equipment, supplies etc. They were fanatical about their communal principles, nothing got away from them. You couldn't sneak a bar of chocolate or a bag of nuts past them... Can you tell I speaking from experience?

But that was the secret of their power, their fanaticism. I... uh, that's, I don't mean that completely negatively either. They were never in the majority, the Root and Branch, but wherever you went they were just… there, you know? Alex and Dave, the guys from from the occupation were typical. I had a look back. I found we actually kept records of meetings, staff meetings at Radio Free London. They were the only ones to have attended every recorded meeting, but they were everywhere else as well. Example:

I came back for my second shift on the station. I was in a pretty bad way, through the mill, personally speaking, I should have taken some time out, get myself back on my feet. But I went back, I got back to find the place, Broadcasting House, turned upside-down. The front had been completely repaired. In two days Dave had got together a team of builders together with some engineering and design students. All the glass was put back in. I don’t know where they got in from. The brickwork was patched up. The rubble and metal outside had been sent off, somewhere, for recycling.

Inside was even more amazing. There was fresh new carpeting down. The taps were working. Light and power was back in most parts of the building. There was a generator out back. As I arrived someone was busy installing solar panels on the roof. There was a new telephone system being installed too. While all this was going on Dave housed everyone in the building itself with beds confiscated from a furniture store. He wasn’t even supposed to be there, Dave.

The building by now was under siege, a different kind of siege. Everyone wanted to use the station. It was a hive of activity. Alex was now effectively the station manager. It wasn’t really like the good old days, drive time, news, sports, weather, traffic, music and chat. There was some of that, but lots more in the way of public announcements, appeals or debates. The broadcasting time was a joint effort between the survivors, the occupiers here and some guys from the private stations. They came together, shared equipment. Bush House, I was told, was still open, doing foreign language broadcasting. Carl, the security guard, was part of the team running the show there.

And that was typical. You couldn’t help being impressed but, at the same time, you could feel the ground moving beneath your feet. People were rushing ahead. I spoke to some there; we felt we had to get this on a more democratic basis. That or strike out on our own.

Ben - We made our offices in Buckingham Palace. It's funny, it took a long time for us to think about renaming the place, a long time. But, then, names like that didn't seem to matter. We had a treasury, an armoury, a stock of paper and a small printing press. The press was old, only really good for posters and single sheet bulletins. We did think about installing a bigger plant, but the cost was prohibitive, and the Millwall and Wapping plants were both up and running, we had friends their, some members as well, who'd see we got our share of print time. We made sure we kept good relations with the printers collective.

As it the operation expanded the Palace really filled up. It was a hive. The place doubled as a meeting space. There was usually a report going on, meeting between the Permanent Council members and branch members. It all seems quite disciplined, regimented. The further out from, inner London I suppose, beyond the M25, or even the circular, the more federal the party became. Outside London branches were not so much branches as franchises; associated groups bearing the name. Anyone wanting to join the Workers Party usually sent a delegation to the Palace.

The most amazing group, I think, was The Council of the Free City of Harwich. They never joined the Root and Branch faction, but I'm proud we sent aid, smuggled into the city, championed their cause on the Permanent Council. I remember the meeting, the delegation describing the siege of Harwich, an particularly epic event for such a small town. Mid May: having been rebuffed by the Poles a near Cambridge a week earlier, three days after securing Ipswich to the Bishopric, the Bishop’s army marched on the coast. Harwich citizens were given several hours warning. The army was spotted on the march by a group of dirt bike enthusiasts who raised the alarm. They were out holding a race for some damn reason, I guess they reckoned there'd be no farmer to object, nothing was going to stop them.

In the little time remaining a group of truck drivers managed to shut down the port, the shops and various public utilities. The resulting demonstration met the Bishop’s men in the town centre. The army had not expected resistance, as such the citizens managed to fight them off with only rocks, bottles and incendiary flares.

Harwich was run by the strike committee for almost a year, in which time the citizens survived famine, disease and three further attempted invasions. In this time it was almost entirely cut off from the rest of Britain. We tried our best to send help, but it survived, in large part, thanks to solidarity from across the North Sea.

Getting back, talking about venues, the Constitutionalists meanwhile plumped for the Royal Horticultural Hall in Victoria, which they renamed the People’s Horticultural Hall. Many puzzled at first why they set up on the edge of the Westminster dead zone. It became clear when they started their own radio and even TV broadcasts from the building using equipment plundered from the old BBC studios nearby.

Paper circulation was difficult, you see. Telephones were erratic, there was always breakdowns or sabotage somewhere on the telephone network, which, of course, made the internet hard to access. Radio was the key link with the outside world. Radio Free London was very popular. The Commune for Broadcasting had it running very well, people just gravitated toward it. Everyone listened and you could go there, literally go there, and try to get something on the air. It was very popular. If it ever occurred to set up a Root and Branch radio station... it would have been like stepping on people's toes, breaking with the communes.

After much wrangling and bad noise the Constitutionalists agreed the equipment could be moved to the former Broadcast House. To be used on a strictly equitable, public, communal basis.

Our party was small but influential. The census showed we had around 20,000 active supporters. Roughly the same as the People's Party Nonetheless we defined the parameters of the New Politics. As such other groups and individuals tended to merge or fall in behind either us or them.

Future Legend - Chapter 7: politics

2011-06-08T03:51:00.000-07:00

Anna Engelmann is Secretary of the Hackney and Waltham Forest Commune - Co-operation built over the months, creating a de facto leadership of the various communes, territorial, work and militia based, which met from time to time to decide matters for the whole city. I was delegated several times, often with a voice and vote. Us communards eventually did the decent thing and gave this unofficial body a name, the Provisional Permanent Council. People scoffed at the, ok, the slightly pompous title, but everyone responded to the call for elections. The first assembly was on Midsummer's Day. It was so well attended it the Council had it moved from the old ULU building to Euston Friends Meeting House, then again, six hours notice, from Friends House to the Brixton Academy. It stayed there, in daily evening session, for the next three months.

Sarah Cox was delegated by the Railway Workers Collective to the first all-London assemby, where she came first in the election to the Permanent Council. A member of the Democratic Workers Party, aka the Root and Branch Party, Sarah took the lead in the party’s fraction on the council. A controversial, pugnacious operator, Sarah has earned nicknames (mostly from her opponents) such as “Bilko” and “Napoleon”.

I wasn’t happy being delegated. I didn’t have much choice, I suppose, being the biggest loudmouth on the rails. Ha! I suppose it wasn’t the worst thing ever, delegation; it had to be done, but it wasn’t no fun. Every night was a struggle. There was always an argument to win, which we often did, not always but often. But it had to be done over and over, every night. Any vote we won, any important vote would usually be challenged. There’d be a revote; we’d win by more or less of a margin. Someone, some pissy little group on the fringe of the assembly would threaten to walk out.

People, whingers, like to claim we pack out meetings. We come to meetings , whenever and wherever they’re called. We bring large numbers, members and supporters. We take things seriously. We are disciplined. We know what we think and what we want. What’re we supposed to do, pretend we don’t have members?

The first meeting, first session was all about electing the permanent council, you know, the one that would meet in the day. The assembly decided it had to be formally re-elected no less once a month or whenever one of its proposals lost by two-thirds margin. There was some compromise. Some of the Restoration groups wanted a vote of no confidence after a straight defeat. The anarchists wanted everything done by consensus.

The council was elected by proportion, different groups put up slates with order of preference. Some people wanted to stand as individuals, we were happy to let them die on their arse. There was a little debate, a where two people proposed each slate, about a dozen or so slates; two minutes each, it was a bit noisy and leery but nothing terrible. The chair of the meeting explained the voting process.

Then there was a recess. People put their forms in one of three ballot boxes. We had argued for a hand vote (we always have), but the provisional council decided no.

There was another session after that, I think, I remember, was about relations with other towns and non-incorporated communes and such. Meanwhile the votes were counted and the results were announced halfway through the second session… Root and Branch won two fifths of the seats on the Permanent Council. Everyone was surprised. I know I was.

But then it kicked off. The anarchists, backed by some of the Restoration groups, demanded to know many DWP members there were in the meeting. Who’s checking the credentials? This meeting has been rigged! Who knew liberals could make such a rumpus? Meeting adjourned. We had a little caucus, which pissed the anarchists off even more. One of them demanded the rest of the meeting be able to listen in, which was a bit… a bit funny. Anyway we agreed to have everyone’s credentials checked. There was nothing to hide. It turned out the room was less than 2/5ths Root and Branch members.

There was a revote, after which our slate now got 55% of the vote. The anarchists used this to launch a walk out, all twenty of them. Their leader demanded that it their walk out be noted in the records. Some of the Contras made bad noise, threatened to go as well but they stayed put in the end.

So, after all that, the rest of the session was a bit weird. Everyone kind of rushed through what they were saying, not disagreeing much. Our new council members, surprise new council members, new chair and new convenor, were getting ready to take over for the final session. It was getting on for half ten by this point. There was just the votes to get over with on two commissions from the second session, which I remember thinking could have just been made into a composite.

The chair asked the meeting if it wanted to vote by secret ballot or hand count. I’d like to think people were won to a hand vote by that stage but they might have just been tired. The consensus, there’s that word, was for a hand count. Then this guy right up on the top shelf, top shelf of the arena, jumped up all anxious looking, and started going on about point of order (it wasn’t a point of order). As a member of the anarchist delegation he wanted to point out that majority voting is a divisive method and, for the benefit of the meeting, each decision should be taken majority then minority.

By now a fair amount of the assembly was getting pissed off. A few of us we turned round to this guy and went “haven’t you walked out already?”

So began a long tradition of long arguments over long nights. It was a rough and ready get up. Most meetings were contested, noisy things, but they job got done. That’s life, I suppose. I remember... my Dad... He started out on the rails when, when he was a lad; after my Brother and I were born he went to work in the Passport Office. He used to say, heh, he used to say “its better that lifting shit”. These days that's my attitude to being on the Permanent Council.

Chapter 6 - continued

2011-06-05T06:55:00.000-07:00

Excerpts from the anonymous pamphlet Principles of Popular Warfare - What are the basic principles for forming a militia? Aside from the prerogative of the communal constitution they are:

(1) The agreed need for self-defence. We live in a time of intense struggle. We face an enemy who will stop at nothing to will, who will, if necessary, torture, maim and/or kill anyone who opposes them. Communal self-defence implies organisation, and organisation, at this stage, implies hierarchy. We are not all soldiers. If we were these theses wouldn't be necessary. For the time being hierarchical control must be balanced and complimented by democratic control. As the urgency of self-defence recedes in time democratic control must win out.
(2) Discipline. Discipline comes from a combination of conviction and fear. Under the old order conviction was the product of the officers' unchallenged ideological leadership and the harsh penalties (official and unofficial) meted out for disobedience. It was mechanical discipline. There is no lack of conviction in the commune. Communards are fighting for their lives and their future. The harsh penalty? Certain death at the hands of their enemies. This must be formalised through
(3) Fitness and training. An athletic, well-trained team, even if it is unarmed, is more than a match for a well-armed rabble. The first weapon, the human body, must be kept in good condition. Militia may be asked to complete all sorts of strenuous, dangerous tasks at short notice, with no prospect of relief. They must be ready for anything. You must train with all weapons to hand, learn their uses and how to use them.
(4) The last key principle is intelligence, co-ordinated intelligence. Militia are defensive organisations. Each militia group must know its area inside out in order to secure it. In any co-ordinated campaign details must be shared with other groups, but carefully, on a need to know basis.

...

A typical commune of 1,000 people has between 50-100 people dedicated to the militia. Not all of the militants should be full time. Every member of the commune should have some kind of idea how to build a barricade, throw a Molotov cocktail or wield a weapon.

The basic unit of the militia, called a Unit, is 5. Somewhere between 10 and 15 makes a Team. Each team has a Leader. Each Team Leader is responsible to an overall leader, usually called Sub Commander. Each Team will have daily tasks, either set by rota or by the commune (or by brute necessity). Militia members should be either delegated or selected by rotation. The leaders of the militia should always delegated and answerable to the commune at large.

Though militia are generally mixed, there are a few in London organised according to particular languages and nationalities. There is the Simon Bolivar Brigade, based in Vauxhall, consisting of various Latin American militia. A group of Hungarian refugees have put together the Kossuth Brigade. A group of Poles operate out of Leyton led by a man who answering to “Dabrowski”.

...

There is never a typical militia arsenal. The London Council has tried to sort this, decreeing an audit and general redistribution on weaponry. While this has had some success there are some communes with heavy machine guns and working armoured cars; hard fought and hard to come by, they were sometimes reluctant to part with their weapons.

The first source of weapons was whatever rebel soldiers brought into the commune, rifles, sub-machine guns, grenades, occasional rocket launchers and mortars. These were generally very good weapons, although ammunition and ancillary supplies were hard to come by. The next, most common, source of conventional weapons was those taken from the old police, usually batons and shields, although there were many rifles, tasers and even pistols.

The third source was the distribution from private collections. Common in this category was spoils from the former criminal underground, which had a glut of handguns, knives, machetes, knuckledusters, whips and such like. Criminals never made great communards. Most of these weapons were scavenged from dead bodies. The biggest haul was from the clear up after the initial unrest.

The bulk of London’s arsenal however has been adapted or built from scratch by The Wombles.

There were a number of simple things Londoners used to beat off early attacks from the Knights, home made barricades, Molotov cocktails, torches, fire axes and kitchen knives. Sets of railings were commonly cannibalised and either made into barriers or broken up and turned into spears, bayonets or harpoons.

There are many lash ups. Many crude bow and arrow sets were built. In time these designs were refined. Several workshops now producing crossbows. These are underrated weapons. Another resourceful group of Wombles sharpened a load of spades. These have become a commonplace weapon. Militants often drill with them.

Some groups have made catapults, large and small, from useful debris, rubber and rope. The early designs were usually either useless or dangerous; some groups persisted. There is a particularly fearful weapon, a giant rotating catapult stand guard over Tower Hamlets, atop some old student buildings in Mile End. The catapult has a three-mile range. The local communards call it Ground Control.

Florence Tanoh - The train ride, oh yes, that was something. I was delegated, as they say, to escort a special edition of the party paper. The countryside was a wild place, it still is. Trains would get hijacked or derailed all the time. In the old days you’d get very angry if a train was ten minutes late, but these days you have to be pleased if you arrive in one piece on the same day you left.

We were given important cargo to protect. There were two passenger carriages (engineers, some delegates, you know, political people… I think there was one prisoner on board too). I checked in inventory; there two fresh tanks of petrol, a consignment of scrap metal, spare parts and machine tools, 6000 boxes of rifle ammo and the first edition of The People’s Standard. It was only a four pager but it was the first national newspaper, and it was ours.

We had to take this all up the East Coast line, from St Pancras to Edinburgh. It was part of a regular bi-weekly delivery. I was on the third string crew. We all had jobs elsewhere in the commune. At the time I was working half the week doing stacking and doing inventory in a warehouse, the other half in a local primary school teaching mathematics. Most of my week nights I was a union delegate to the Communal Council. I spent a fair few weekends training with the militia.

The first crew, old railway, RMT, they were off sick. There was another bout of flu going round. One of the drivers fell ill, so they were all quarantined. The next lot, the replacements, they, they set off from London but disappeared somewhere after Peterborough. A set of carriages, burned out carriages was found about 4 miles down the line, down the line from Peterborough station. Everything was gone and there were no bodies nearby. Some thought was them who stole everything, gutted the train and ran off. Where to though?

We had an old tube driver taking us on the journey, Tony his name was. He didn’t have any relief, so we had to take it extra slow, with breaks every few hours. It was to be a two-day trip. It was two guards per carriage. Me and this guy Nazir, we were given the carriage with papers to guard. He looked like a young boy but he was a regular militia from the North London commune.

We had what become standard issue militia weapons, rife, pistol, 50 rounds of ammo each, two grenades, a hunting knife. Nazir loved his pistol. He kept spinning it round in his hand, flipping the clip in and out, and taking pretend shots at the passing scenery. I kept telling him off but he would laugh to himself and shuffle off for a bit, then he’d forget where he was and start doing it all over again. I gave up in the end. It was a long journey.

I was not nervous, not to begin with. I thought we were prepared going out. There was a break in journey, a blockage on the line, deep in the countryside, somewhere after Peterborough again. The train slowed. The driver spotted this pile, he said, about a half a mile off. Luckily we stopped in time. It was a solid stash of broken concrete and bits of heavy metal, sheets and stuff; quite a substantial pile, but the rails didn’t seem to be damaged so we thought we would clear it and get on our way quite quickly.

But then I saw, I could see these people in the distanced, heading up toward us. We were in open fields, up on a ten-foot embankment. We were quite an inviting target when you think about it. We could see them about a hundred or so yards away. The Team Leader yelled, warning them not to get any closer, but they kept coming. We got into formation, into battle formation, took cover or got down low. The Leader told us to fire a warning shot. We did, but they didn't stop. Then one of them, the group shouted ‘eggs, eggs, we’ve got eggs’.

So they were hawkers. They had blocked the line so they could sell us their eggs. We let them come mind you, they had quite a fresh range; plenty of eggs. I saw plucked chickens and ducks. They had white bread (I felt a loaf, it was slightly warm). They also had some tomatoes, lettuce and these sugar biscuit things.

There was a dozen of them, the hawkers. They all had painted faces, in different colours and were wearing woven, multi-coloured ponchos. It occurred to me later this was a tribal outfit. The Team Leader and the Driver were both offered a poncho.

They were happy to see us, glad for the custom. I think we were all a bit disarmed, so to speak; we didn’t know what to expect any more. We all had a look. Some of us tried to buy. We offered them communal notes, but according to them we didn’t have the proper money, by which they meant old pounds. We were traitor scum, violent usurpers who’d surely be hanged for treason; especially Nazir, where was he from, no, where was he really from? Our money wasn’t worth the recycled toilet paper it was printed on. You understand? You get the picture?

Things were getting tense again. A thought occurred to me. Were they a trap, a decoy of some sort?

It turned out Nazir had some old five-pound notes on him, quite a stash actually, so he bought up something from each of the hawkers, and they eventually left, seeming to be happy. He explained to me later some of the North London communes had contacts with villages in Hertfordshire. The villages were contested. The communes sometimes paid them in pound notes, fives and tens, which they’d use as tribute if ever the Bishop’s men made a raid. If ever the militia travelled they took a wad of notes, just in case. When we got going I had a look at one of Nazir's bundles. They were fairly simple forgeries.

We got on our way. The rest of journey was uneventful. The train made stops in all these towns up the East Midlands and Yorkshire. Everywhere we stopped the people who met us wore face masks. They’d heard about the outbreak in London. We dropped off most of the ammo in Sheffield, where we picked up a load of freshly rolled steel. That took several hours. By nightfall we reached Leeds, where we stopped over. The train was refuelled and we spent the night in a recovered hotel, which doubled as the local party HQ.

The following day we stopped off in York, Newcastle and Berwick before heading on to Edinburgh. The bulk of the passengers were ambassadors to the Scottish assembly. Scotland had declared itself independent and shut its borders.

In Leeds got speaking to one of the ambassadors. They were diplomats (of a kind, the guy I spoke to was a mechanic from Lambeth, the delegation included a shepherd, a teacher, an allotment farmer, several Wombles… not professional diplomats) sent to negotiate permanent relations and an open border and also just… find out what on was going on, you know? Very little information ever came down from Scotland. But we were turned back at the border, men in masks again. The poor driver had to reverse up about 50 miles of track to the next siding where he could turn round and couple to the other end.

Future Legend - Chapter 6: three pillars

2011-06-01T01:58:00.000-07:00

Ben - The job seemed to sort of come together, converge (convergence was another buzz word, convergence and recovery). Everyone talks about the Dead Zones, where there was total destruction but there was damage, abandonment and neglect almost everywhere. We never had a quiet day, us Wombles. It was always busy. Where the Knights were unopposed, for however long, they wrecked havoc. If they had overrun the city I doubt there’d be much of worth left standing.

The first people to go picking through the remains were straight scavengers looking for things to use or swap. This wasn’t paid any regard at the beginning, but as time went on they became a nuisance. You had these workplace groups forming with plans, needs… bottlenecks and so on. Half the time getting anything done or fixed was spent looking for things; raw... things. sometimes even people. Then to find some git has run off with the very thing you need... Not good.

On the average day you were sent out with a list of stuff to find. If you could get a car or a truck or even a bike it’d save a lot of time. As the fuel supply started running low we resorted to horse and trap or occasionally lugging the stuff ourselves. The typical Womble was a cleaner/scavenger/repair man (or woman, mustn’t forget). I was roped into it, I suppose, because of my background in engineering and computing. I put down both in a, a round robin of my local commune. I think they thought computing meant electronics. I didn’t really know much about the finer points of repairing or putting together electronic systems, but I winged it and it seemed to work. You learned as you went.

A typical example would be the school we recovered. It was a three-week job, about a hundred or so people, up in Edmonton. A gang of Knights had wrecked it, completely, a month earlier, in the great unrest. I think it might have been a mixed, liberal place. There must have been some motivation behind the attack. I don’t know. They clearly tried to burn down a number of buildings but that hadn’t worked so they smashed as many rooms up as they could, every room almost and everything in them. There were bullet holes all over the place, dried blood, dried piss and graffiti. There was a photocopier in the staff room with shit in it. Can you believe that?

We found a couple of bodies, half eaten. It looked there canine teeth marks. They were partly rotted too. Dead bodies, fresh ones, have no smell. In fact I think they have a no-smell, if that makes sense. You can sort of tell there's a body nearby because it blocks out all other smells. Rotting bodies are different. They stink. People have passed out, inhaling the smell.

We couldn’t identify the bodies, no one on our missing persons list, although they were both clearly adults. They were very ripe. There was a long trail of dried blood, leading to a utility room. Inside, more blood sprayed on the floor, they had broken rope round their legs, the people. They'd clearly been tied upsidedown and beaten… Their faces were brittle and pulpy.

The computer room was a tip. There was glass and plastic everywhere. The idiots had mostly gone for the monitors, kicking them and chucking them about, although the computer stacks took a few blows as well. They were mostly old HP and Intel processors (they must have been second hand at the time). I had good assembly manuals for both. Once the room was cleared out repairing the stacks was relatively easy. I didn’t have enough spare parts to repair all the monitors, however. I managed to adapt some bits from some old TV parts. There was a glass and plastic making gig we knew started up in Newham. I put in an order for them to make some usable screens. I sent it out by courier, you know, a telegram. There was a little delay, a few days, I know there was a bit of problem with the Newham plant being asked to do so much on credit, but when they heard it was for a school they got down to it, eventually, down to business. The commune also had access to a fair old greenhouse on Muswell Hill, which had a nice tomato crop, several tonnes coming through, when put together with the other collective farms. We promised Newham a cut of that. I think that also helped loosen the logjam, I think.

While we were there I also helped the electricians connect up a power supply; the usual deal, some solar panels backed up by a petrol generator. The electricians also had plans to connect it to the wider grid feeding off the marsh windmills. All of us on the team pitched in generally, by repairing the general damage to the buildings or removing stuff that couldn’t be repaired; plaster, beams, bricks, insulation and so on.

One thing I am amazed by is how much we can recycle. I don’t know if we’ll ever be completely self-sufficient, but, for example, I saw what the printing plants were doing with all the paper and ink, recycling, separating. No one’s gone short of paper, and man do people get through paper. The other thing sticks in the mind, when it comes to recycling, is clothing. I remember finding out, it was from a report to the wider London commune. You don’t think about things like that, where does my clothing come from, shoes, shirts and stuff? There was a time when good clothes were expensive, quite hard to come by. I remember it being discussed at meetings.

A lot of clothing was looted in the beginning, from shops and warehouses. Like with most things, it, the looting, so to speak, got more organised. People were sent out to look for particular items, to be kept by the communes for future use. This worked for a fair old while, six months or so but just as stocks ran down a black market sprang up. I went to one, I know it was wrong but I went to one on a day off, looking for some good boots. It was one of those flash markets that appeared from time to time. There was a rumour of one coming to Ridley Road, in Hackney. The stuff looked stolen. I went and saw a stall packed with fresh leather boots, all sizes, mostly unworn. Where they’d come from I could only guess.

But we were shown how to solve the problem. It was not long before the second Knights rising a fresh factory popped up in Neasden; run by a group of young Asian women. They’d managed to get the clothing factory where they used to work going again. They had good supplies of wool, some cotton too. They even hooked up with a plastics factory that had found a way of making it from coal from the Kent seams (which I didn’t know were being mined again) and were making plastic fibres. So they went to the commune to offer their services to the rest of London. They even trained others up, started new plants around the city.

Simon - The next stage, after scavenging, was trade, trade with the periphery of the city. After trade came self-reliance. It was too long between expeditions. The railways were pretty irregular, not to mention dangerous. There was plenty of land to use. Hackney and Walthamstow came together to divide up the marshes. We built collective windmill there, it took several months to get up but it now supplies a large proportion of domestic electricity; it runs like a dream. We share Victoria Park with Tower Hamlets. The park is kept for grazing cattle. There are several more farms and allotments around the borough. We're a little short on greenhouses, which is stupid, but every housing estate has a growing patch. We're growing carrots, chez Engelmann, in hanging baskets.

It was all very smooth, very logical. The only tricky thing was seed supply. The black market, probably Knights or Knight sympathisers, tried to monopolise the seed supply. Garden centres were plundered. Kew Gardens, I think, was appropriated too. There was also a load of old allotment owners, often suspiciously well armed, who were keen to hang onto their supply. They were not keen on working with the communes, a lot of the time. There were big fights over seed supply. The communes had to use some force to solve the problem, go to the militia, fight it out with the black marketeers, raid suspect warehouses and sheds. That was how the secret greenhouse was found.

Springtime, late summer lack market citrus was all over the city. Citrus fruits, oranges, grapefruit and limes were difficult to get hold of, then, suddenly, abundant. People were happy about this, but the communes had to take a hard line. There was an investigation, a lot of searching. It turned out the fruit was coming from a commercial-size greenhouse near Hampstead Heath, in the ground of this mini-mansion. The owner was a commune member, apparently. Not for long, though, after that.

Syd - London is greener now than it has been for centuries. The solution is pretty much in problem. You have lots of bare concrete, completely barren. Sure, it’s being broken down by nature. But you have to help it along. The earth underneath is nearly as sterile, but break it up and add rubble powder. It restores the nitrogen content. Don’t forget worms, if you want to grow anything worms are your friends.

It was this initiative that broke the allotment guys and all those farmers holding people to ransom, provincial scum. We got busy. We did the business. We’ve got the biggest agricultural commune now, there’s that word, 75 base acres, 25 rooftop acres and 12 new greenhouses across Tower Hamlets and Newham. We feed London. It’s the best.

What we got? We’ve got good crops of onions, potatoes, parsnips and turnips. Root vegetable, tubers and so on, they do really well. Oh, and carrots. Carrots are important. There aren’t any regular supplies of sugar beet, except from the north, but that's not enough, so carrots are the only real sweeteners we have. Then there’s the wheat. We have wheat although we’re not self-sufficient in bread. Our greenhouses are small, but we're building more all the time. We concentrate on a growing a few fruit and vegetables, mostly tomatoes… some bananas. Well, we all know about those... Animals: well, keeping chickens is not so easy, same goes for rabbits. The feral wildlife go for small, cooped animals most often. You have to look after them carefully. We’ve got lots of space for sheep, goats and cows. We don’t do meat, milk, wool, cheese, OK I think we’ve traded the odd cow, but Tower Hamlets is veggie, pretty much.

Chapter 5 - continued

2011-05-28T05:30:00.000-07:00

Simon - Worse than the darkness, worse than all the vigilantes and The Bishop, the hunger nearly tore us apart. It’s, I don’t know if you’d say it was ironic, but in the first few days and weeks we hadn’t eaten that well since, I don’t know.

I was in hospital when the supermarkets were picked off. I remember coming home, Anna and Lilly and a few others were arguing, debating with some of the neighbours about what to do with all this food. Things had been difficult for quite some time, unemployment, illness, prices going through the roof. Neither Tracey nor I was ever unemployed, but we still had to budget. You had to think, “can I have this, can we afford this, can we make it last a little longer”? Then, of course, there were those on the dole. I remember an old friend of ours, Gareth, a computer programmer. He’d been laid off. He told me one Friday in the pub (after I bought him a drink) he had £8 to see him through to the following Wednesday. So it was no surprise, I thought, that people eventually just… took what they needed.

I was at the first estate meeting. People were discussing how to divide up the food, the food they got from the supermarket raids. The majority wanted it divided up equally between houses, with a little extra going to the elderly residents, which seemed fair enough to me. However, Tracey and Mr Petersen from the TRA had managed to corner a lot of the stuff coming in. They had it stored under lock and key. They were arguing that the food should be rationed. There was still heaving violence. The shops plainly weren’t being stocked. None of us knew when or where we would find food again. We had to look ahead, conserve what we had until the situation returned to normal, when fresh supplies came in.

When I arrived the meeting had been getting quite heated. One guy was shouting threats at the TRA, rounding on Tracey. I guess he suddenly noticed I was there, because he backed down a little. It kept going to a vote and the result kept being in favour of equal division. Despite this I think people started feeling a little bit guilty. They knew there was something right about what Tracey was saying. So there was a compromise; Tracey filled me in later. The food was divided up, though not before it was catalogued. It was then delegated to Tracey to form a permanent team to look for food.

For the next few weeks we found more food and supplies. Stuff was abundant. It was everywhere. All the perishables got eaten or used first. Oh, man, there was so much clothing going round we didn’t know what to do with it. Anyway, the longer-term stuff, rice, flour, dried fruit, potatoes and such got stored down in the hall. By this time we’d rigged up the storage room as a makeshift fridge, it was tiled and kept well circulated. Time went by and, of course, the hunting about, searching for food was less and less successful.

There were stories about black-marketers, hoarders and rip off merchants going round peddling back of the lorry stuff. The local militia was always confiscating stuff from hawkers. But, as time passed there was more and more pressure on our supplies. It was tough keeping stuff refrigerated, let alone frozen, what with the intermittent power. That, about a month in, maybe a little less, was when the trade groups started going out further, expeditions outside London.

Little bits would go missing here and there. Even people on the estate would hoard stuff here and there. There was one big break-in where we pretty much lost everything, a week’s supply. A number of estates were hit and the... so-and-sos mostly got away. Fortunately they were stupid so-and-sos, who came round the borough the following day trying to sell back what they’d stolen.

So, end result, we started jailing people and confiscating their stuff. In one case we kicked someone out of the commune altogether. This boy, I say ‘boy’ he was about twenty, had joined a gang targeting old people. Their thing was getting in with them, the old folks, not too sharpy, pretending to help but stealing stuff as they went. This went on for quite a while. They got a bit greedy though and tried it on with Mr Petersen. He was a bit too alert and caught them in the act. We set up our little own justice system. The lad was tried in front of a full meeting of the commune, Mr Petersen saw to it. He pushed for expulsion.

The situation eased a little once we started making contact with the wider world, especially outside London. We were quite well placed to trade. We had a good supply of water. Hackney had a number of good wells, plus on our estate we had a working distillery. The windmill on the marsh meant we had a decent supply of electricity also. There was a good surplus we could trade. There were several wells in the borough. It seems pretty much all the regular water supply was drained or contaminated. The water pressure was too low. I remember there was that mysterious pond which rose up out of nothing and sunk a hole in part of Hoxton.

Once we made contact with parts of the country things improved a little. Even so, we were liable to run out of various, very important things at difficult times. There were more arguments, over food more than anything else. Food and soap. For a long time it was difficult to get soap. Everybody was hoarding something, or at least it seemed like they were. This lack of sustenance left people tired and more prone to illness as well. Old Man Petersen died of, well, the hospital said it was natural causes but it was exhaustion. We all buried him together. It was so sad. But there was little sentiment when we then went to divide up his useful effects. It turned out he’d been hiding little stocks, mostly hard bread and cheese and little bits of this pork soup concoction he’d been keeping in jars round his house.

We didn’t really turn the corner until we began growing our own. The marshes were drained, partly, dug up and seeded with crops. Lilly, I am so proud; she led the team that reclaimed London Fields. I spend the half the summer months now guarding the cattle put out to graze on Victoria Park. I don’t think any of us at the start thought we’d be turning to agriculture to survive. We had some help from outside but it was mostly trial and error… a lot of error. We survived, and in one piece… and that’s something.

Prasanth - The first week on the farm we were in a barn, one of three in a little courtyard. The farmhands were our protectors, but it felt like a prison.

They cleaned out the barn, pretty well. They gave us blankets, food and water, water in little bottles. We had a few battery powered lights and four bars of soap, which we were expected to share. No one was allowed in the farmhouse, quarter of a mile away, down a little track. Beyond that was a row of small huts, portacabins, where the farmhands lived. No one event went near. The kids were allowed to run around play outside, a bit, but we were told not to roam. They never threatened us, so much, but there was nowhere to go, nowhere to run to. The farmhands had frequent, long arguments. No one could understand, but it must have been about us, what to do with us.

A few other people stumbled upon the farm. They were taken in, in the way we were. There was nothing to do. No TV, no radio or newspapers. We, the refugees, we would sit around most of the day, talking, trying to figure out what was going on. There was very little interaction with the farmhands. A rat would come and go, someone would feel ill, maybe an argument would break out (they were breaking out, people in the barn were getting more and more frustrated), they would come and see what the problem was, sort it out. The rain got worse. There was a growing pool in one corner, welling up. The farmhands were very annoyed, but a few of us clubbed together, insisted that something was done about it.

The only person who got a bit more attention was my wife. The farmhands were almost all men. They seemed to feel honour bound to treat her with care. They gave her extra food and blankets, sent someone every few hours to check up. I had mixed feelings about it. I felt quite, quite angry and jealous. I could not do anything for my wife.

Getting on for a week things were about to boil over. It was very frustrating being there, not knowing what was happening. It felt like it was cold and dark, all the time. We'd barely been able to wash and were still in the same clothes a week earlier. At night sometimes there'd be occasional gunshots and some shouting. The farmhands would not tell us what was going on. The seventh morning those of us who could stand and walk were going to go to the farmhouse and stand up for our rights. But before any of us even got up there was a knock on the door; a delegation from the farmhouse.

The farm had a crop of sugar beet that needed collecting. We were going to help bring the harvest in. It wasn't clear what they were going to do with the beet, but we were given a stack of gloves and boots to put on. There weren't enough boots for everyone, some people had to tie newspaper around their shoes. We all then marched down to the nearest beet field. There was no trucks or machinery, there wasn't enough diesel left, apparently. We just had spades and buckets, we would be digging by hand. It was barely even dawn, and the rain was coming down again.

To show us some goodwill the some of the farmhands pitched in, but it was a long day. I had never felt lower, had it come to this? Although my daughters, they helped carry the buckets back to one of the barns, they seemed to be having fun, just happy to be doing something. We finished it all in a day, though it was not long before dark. The atmosphere seemed better in the barn where we were all staying. Some of the farmhands stayed and talked with us for a while. One of them, a Lithuanian guy named Petr, who seemed like one of the leaders came up to me, he said, as if confidential:

“Are you a business man? I heard you were a business man”.

I said, “yes”.

He asked: “what kind of business”. So I told him about my internet cafe. He shrugged but then said: “come with me”. I wondered where he was taking me. We were going to the farmhouse. Inside I remember was warm and light with carpet on the floor. It hit me on the way in, I'd forgotten how it was to feel comfortable. In the kitchen, round a table, was a delegation from the North London Commune. They wanted to barter their fuel, paper, water, soap and electrical equipment for food. They also wanted to draw up a contract all future trade and relations. The farmhands were not used to this sort of thing. They wanted an 'expert' to help them.

Chapter 5 - continued

2011-05-23T09:51:00.000-07:00

Anna - London is built on a marsh. Water is one of our biggest assets, as well as one of our biggest burdens, time-wise. London's got two major reservoir networks. After some large-scale distilleries were set up most communes were able to produce enough clean water to export. After the unrest most of the suburbs and outskirts were still connected to a water supply, less bombing and less sabotage went on. But water pressure was crucially low. Effort was made to reconnect the inner city wards, but progress was slow.

It was just as well. The water supply could no longer be trusted, certainly not drunk straight from the tap. Some of the sabotage was poisoning, like the time in Brent, someone, some way, somehow, the local processing plant was spiked with mercuric chloride.

Many neighbourhoods sank their own wells, the further out you were the deeper you had to dig. I helped build a pump well in the middle of Hackney Downs. There were several more set down in the Lea Valley, Haggerston and Victoria Park. The commune hired a surveyor from Islington in return for several hundredweight of electrical cables, computer equipment and so on. It was not even fifty feet deep before we hit water. The table is surprisingly high... I was surprised, anyway. Several housing estates rigged their guttering to collect water to be processed. That helped too.

Some groups set up collective distilleries, water distilleries. We set up several treating plants in Hackney. We'd filter, then boil, then filter again. In South London they got into making tea, basically, brewing water in all sorts of herbs, sweets and seeds. Where wells could not be built communes began redistributing surplus water. It was brought communities in need by horse and trap.

The quality...? There were no major outbreaks in Hackney. No one died from anything they drank, not out of our wells anyway. The first few months after the unrest were difficult. People had to get used to a different quality of water. It was the same across the city, lots of stomach troubles, diarrhoea and so on. There are more local differences in the quality of water. You get used to it though.

The sewerage system meanwhile seemed to have stood up to the crisis pretty well. By September of the first year it had been swept of all blockages (and potential crocodiles).

Future Legend - Chapter 5: New London

2011-05-22T07:02:00.000-07:00

Lilly - It was amazing, yeah, how wildlife seemed to creep back into the city. It came back through the dead parts, the Dead Zones. When you think about it it's like, how long would it take if everything we did stopped, for the countryside to come back. Really early on, in the first few weeks weeds and eventually small shrubs began poking up through all the ash and rubble. One very common plant was the buddleia, which used to grow only in the aggregate by railway tracks. I catalogued lots them. Other new floral features included Rose Willow herb and Canadian Fleabane, yeah, and the Tree of Heaven, and Traveller's Joy: everywhere across the Dead Zones. They were given the nickname, people called them “fire flowers”.

The parks in London became quickly overgrown. Sheep were imported from the countryside, part for the meat, part for the wool and part to keep the grass under control. Some parks were given shepherds, my Dad does some of that now, part time. Other groups let the sheep roam free. The larger parks, such as Richmond Park and Wimbledon Common, became almost impossible to manage. By the early autumn they were full grown grasslands. Very interesting, for science and that.

In the early maelstrom domestic animals, mostly pets, were usually abandoned. Swarms of cats, packs of dogs began to congregate away from people, on the Dead Zones. This made it very difficult for those who decided to stay with their pets, many were eaten or mauled, pets that is. Nightmare stories did the rounds of people being attacked and killed, like the woman who saw her baby snatched by a fox, in her garden. That was awful. The beasties were eventually hunted and hounded out of most neighbourhoods. By autumn of the first year the last three remaining dog packs were taking refuge in the Central London Dead Zone. A lot of hunting actually involves chasing dogs. Not all domestic animals were pets. There were, of course, city farms, zoos and private collections. Many were eaten though some survived.

There was the flock of ostriches living around the plains of Camberwell, Burgess Park and sometimes on up to Herne Hill and beyond. Regents Park and Hyde Park were had families of Tapir and Capibara. A group of communards tried to reclaim Earls Court they found it occupied by a troop of chimpanzees. You can see Birds of prey all over the place, around high-rise buildings, kestrel and hawk. Some claim they see full-on, large eagles casting across the sky. Then there's the parakeets, they'd already escaped. In the old days they were seen across South London but were now found as far north as Enfield and Stanmore. And the leopard, I saw it, around London Fields. It was the end of April. No, it was May… I think… We were assessing the place, taking soil samples to see if we could start a new allotment there.

I was doing my AS Levels that year. There was this meeting where we were all asked what we could do. My Mum remembered that I got good marks in Environmental Science. I got it because I did this experiment really well. I was always good at finding the best ways to get good marks and I remembered my teacher saying about the soil texture experiment was easy to do. You get soil samples, put them in water and detergent and shake them all up to see how the layers form, the soil potential. Mum remembered this and, like before I could, I was sent out to find good patches of ground to grow stuff. The people wanted loam or clay loam. So, that’s what I was doing. My friend, Anya, and me we went out with rucksacks, we had a trowel each and loads of these jars.

We were walking through London Fields. Like I said, it was only, like, April or May but the grass was starting to get a bit long (not like it is now in some places). We had no problems though. We started walking up from old Broadway Market to the lido and the town hall, taking samples every twenty paces. It was quite quiet. You could only see one or two other people, milling about. It was late evening, nearly sunset. It’d been quite a hot day. Anya spotted this cat sitting on the roof of the swimming pool. It looked like an ordinary cat, but it was weird. It was like the perspective thing was all wrong… that or it was huge.

Anya didn’t want to come, but I got a little closer and had a look. It was big and had spots all over its body. I thought then this was the leopard, THE leopard people were talking about. I thought it was brilliant… The leopard was just sitting there, basking in the sun. I say the place was quiet, I don’t know… Somebody must have seen it, surely? From where I was I could see it was panting a bit. Its chest was going up and down.

Then leopard saw us and stood up. I wasn’t afraid. It looked at us for a couple of seconds. I was about twenty, thirty metres away. I could see it sniffing the air, checking us out. Then it ran. I’ve never seen anything move so fast, so quiet too. It leapt off the roof and bolted across the ground. I dropped my bag, and broke some of the jars in the process. It tried to follow the cat but lost track of it behind the tennis court. I thought it was brilliant but my Mum, she freaked out when I told her, plus I had to go back and do all my samples again.

Ben - People are afraid of the Dead Zones still. It's a name, a name that stuck, 'dead zone', which is half the trouble. They're not safe places, derelict zones, abandoned or destroyed. Being a recovery agent, a womble, I have to go to the Dead Zones. There's so much in these, these places that's valuable, usable. Raw material extraction is still fitful; things like coal, oil, copper, iron, sand, even salt is difficult to get hold of. We have to reuse and recover what we have.

The area around Whitehall and Parliament is, was the most notorious. I suppose, when you take into account the destruction on the South Bank, Southwark flooded out, it's a formidable obstacle in the middle of London. But, for some reason, the Whitehall Dead Zone got this reputation. There is still a pack of dogs there no one seems to be able to get rid of, although I think they're fairly harmless. For us Wombles they're an occupational hazard. Dogs, I find, are more interested in scavenging food than anything else. They're scared of rifles, even wave a club at them, an old baseball bat and most will back off.

Whitehall was an almost insurmountable wreck. It was destroyed in the Great Fire. There were a few bombs which did not go off. They still do, occasionally. We've not found them all, I'm sure. If we do go to the centre it's in daylight and we tread carefully.

I remember there used some awful strange noises coming from the site. We were assigned to Whitehall, I remember, a two week job, looking for all items (although paper was a priority). We'd work the day, clear out at dusk and pack up what we'd found to the nearest depot. My team stayed a lot in a recovered hotel just off Piccadilly Circus. The city would be settling down for the night, all the weird noises, strange sounds would come out for the night. You never used to notice it, before, what with all the traffic, passers by, TV, radio, insulation and so on. In this cocoon of sound you'd miss what was really going down.

Gary and I are both light sleepers. I remember waking up in the middle of the night, a few nights, I could hear outside the hum of electric power lines, water flowing through the drains, especially if it was raining, footsteps, single footsteps, and conversation, usually the militia on patrol. But every once in a while there'd be a howl or a scream or a crash, something awful. This was common. You'd get rumours flying about, a friend of a friend told me, a story which became a myth which became a solid fact.

Even after the fall of the Bishop you get idiots broadcasting, supposed loyalists still out there. They made the most of this mystery. Often they'd claim there was a government in waiting, hiding underground, waiting for the right moment to appear. Others claimed it was a torture chamber, a special prison held by the Commune. I know one teacher told me their kids passed around tales of the Whitehall Monster, sometimes it was a ghost, sometimes a bogeyman, lying in wait for the unsuspecting to pass; ready to pounce.

They mystery was solved by accident, or by an accident. We'd found a new room in the old Cabinet Office and sent pair of Explorers, guys specially trained (such as anyone's trained) to check out rooms in a potentially unstable building. I wasn't there at the time but, apparently, they'd checked the whole room out, it didn't seem booby trapped, when one of them slipped and fell, causing that whole section to cave in.

The poor chap died, the other shattered his a leg and punctured his left lung, but in the process they'd stumbled upon the first passage under Whitehall. Small comfort that this was a breakthrough we'd been looking for a long time. We knew these tunnels existed. Many surmised the government, the old government, may have plenty of important secrets down there. The only evidence of the tunnels we had until that point was two doors, huge big, bolted, five foot, steel affairs, one near Embankment tube station, the other in the basement of Buckingham Palace.
Rescuing the survivor took several careful hours. My team was given the job of clearing the area, stabilising the building so it could be explored. When it was done I noticed the floor in the tunnel was damp. There was no leak, it was the rising water table. The area we'd found was a corridor, narrow and a little over six foot tall. I was a close fit. The passage was about twenty yards long, at either end two were more sealed doors. They were rusty, easy to deal with.

We spent two days under there, exploring these caves. Some were lit, some were not. Some were damp, some were dry. We found lots of old government artefacts, some which shed light on the whole situation, the crisis as it developed. The underground avenues would echo... the noise was back, we had a job to do, but the noise was back, this crashing howl.

We broke into this room, this huge room. It was almost completely dark, a little light sieving in from some point across the room. You could just about make out some shapes, but the echo that was going round, it was a huge place, like a small arena. There was all sorts of bric-a-brac lying around, lots of tables, electrical equipment, stacks of paper and fold out chairs I remember. We stepped in carefully. We were going to bring in the explorers, but then there was this fast scampering. Someone or something was inside with us. We had to find it, quickly. Torchlight scampering around.

There was a moment, we were all searching round, what was it. There was a loud wallop and a screech, this thing was attacking one of our number; panic, utter pandemonium. I'm so glad no one tried to shoot this thing. Horrific, blur of limbs, flash of teeth and that screech. We had to get it off our guy, hold it down (it was human shaped) and bludgeon it with bat. I ended up doing the holding. I was terrified.

It turned out it, the thing was a scrawny old chimp, another refugee gone wild. It shit itself, literally, when we suddenly arrived. We were under the ICA in an old bomb shelter. The little guy had got in through a crack in the basement and couldn't find his way out. Now it was dead.

Chapter 2 - addition - Assad

2011-05-21T06:11:00.000-07:00

Assad - I am a rebel soldier. I became a communard. It was not an easy decision. I joined the people for one reason, because their cause was right, and they were willing to risk their lives to achieve it. People think we were locked away, that the soldiers didn't know or care what was going on in society. We had our bosses and our bullies too.

I served in combat, in Afghanistan. It was difficult out there, every day, you're under fire. Behind every corner another danger, lurking. Night time, you don't know what's out there, waiting.

So many soldiers took refuge in racism. You hate the people, the people shooting at you. They move among ordinary people, civilians, and you can't tell the difference. If you make a mistake out there they always blame you, but, if they're in trouble if you don't rush in to help they come at you; why weren't you there? You came to help, yet you end up hating the people. I saw soldiers take pot shots at kids. I saw violence against civilians. I heard people, soldiers use the p-word, call civilians rag-heads, all sorts of language. If ever they noticed me listening they'd apologise, they didn't mean me, I was good, I was British, despite my ethnicity.

But back home it was the same. In uniform, in parades, I was good, I was one of the boys, brave boys out fighting for our freedom. Out of uniform, alone, on the same street, I was one of them, just another p-. Then the upheaval starts. We're back out on the streets, facing the same people, desperate, fighting for their lives, only this time it's home. That's when things started to change. That's when I started to see...

Other soldiers I know will tell you the same.

Future Legend - Chapter 4: concluded

2011-05-19T04:13:00.000-07:00

Lilly - I heard the Bank of England go up. We were sent out collecting bits of metal for the workshop when it happened. Everyone heard it. You could hear it miles away. Then we started seeing all these buildings catching fire, saw through binoculars. Soon all the skyscrapers in the city were on fire and there was all this smoke rising up, this huge black cloud, like, miles high. They say the blast radius went out for ¼ of a mile.

We… like, all the neighbourhood, we went down to see what was happening, see if we could help. Me and Anna and a few others, we went down on bikes and managed to get to Old Street, but the road was blocked off. We were told to get back, which pissed me off at first but then, you know, it was quite dangerous. Either way we stayed to watch. I remember Anna was very keen. We found a good spot on the roof of this old pub where you could see loads.

It was quite exciting, I suppose. All sorts was going on. There were ambulances, people rushing everywhere, some body bags. There was loads of fire fighters trying to pump water but they were saying pressure was too low.

It was hot, I mean really hot. The fire was, it must have been 200 yards away, but you could feel it like that. We got there by early afternoon. It was a bright day. There were huge plumes of smoke over the city, but the rest seemed clear. After about half an hour to an hour the wind got up a bit. The smoke had spread and there were big clouds forming above, overhead.

We were under this cloud, pitch-black... above, overhead, and it was getting hard to breathe. Sometimes bits of, like, ash would fall out of the sky. These ambulance people spotted us, asked if we could help move some people, fire fighters injured or burned. A few of us helped with that, helping people up, running backward and forward between different spots. If Mum and Dad…They know now…

One point I was helping carry this guy with a broken leg, we were right underneath these two buildings on fire. I looked up and, like, saw flames catching the wind and bending between buildings. It got less exciting, the whole fire, but I don’t think I was afraid, not at the time.

By evening the whole sky above London, overhead, was grey or black, except out west where you could see the sunset, well bright. It was dark, except for the fire. It was intense, and loud. You could hear it a mile away. It would make these crackling noises but then, every once in a while the wind turned and you hear this whoosh sound. Then the rain started falling, but it was full of ash, dirty. There was a thunderstorm that night, I think that helped cool things off, although Anna said there were tornadoes, but I don’t know if that’s true. They said it took three days to damp the whole thing down. The smell lasted for another week mind.

Syd - At any other time I’d have been happy to watch the whole place burn to the ground. My uncle was a docker and me Dad worked at the fish market. That area’s part of my heritage, you know what I mean? Having these fucking huge buildings, pricks in the sky, it was always too much. I hated it. Dad, he sold the house and we moved out to Dagenham. He died two years later from a heart attack and then Mum, wouldn’t you know it, Mum, she got a job as a cleaner, working in the HSBC tower.

I’d been squatting with friends for a couple of years. I was sort of a political, I suppose. I attended demos and stuff. But we, our group, we were, we were non-ideological. We just wanted to live free, you know? It was a risky business, even at the end, when there were loads of places that were unoccupied… free. We’d last about two months in a place, on average.

We didn’t get involved in all the fighting, with all the politicals wanting to make their revolution in power. I always thought tt’s better to make the revolution where you are, get on with it now, get busy, you know? It’s all about freedom. They made so much about the bank being blow up, you know? It was nothing.

We had a group. The Black Flag. It was a horizontal network, spread across East London. It was supposed to be based on sound consensus politics but our branch, as the communards would have called it, was dominated, no not dominated, it was run by this guy called Gideon Makhno. He was a dynamic guy, a natural organiser. You know the kind? He was the driving force.

He often talked about getting into expropriation, Gideon, but never seemed to manage it (although I know a couple of squats were used as temporary safe houses). He did seem to have a lot of money, though, which he’d funnel our way. We used to call him Flash sometimes; the money he seemed to have. But we weren't dependent on him, no, most of what we had came from art exhibitions, gigs and the occasional teach-in.

When it went down we were living in a town house, wicked place it was, on Columbia Road… That was an excellent social centre. We had no hassle, no problems, until a bunch of politicals come round demanding we give them people and weapons to help fight these Knights. They said we had a communal obligation, something like that. They weren’t armed, so we told them to fuck off.

We got so much hassle from the local so-called communards, they kept coming round. I don't know what it was. They must have liked us or something. A few of us decided we’d actually up and leave. There was some who had a mind to spread the social centre, give people a choice, you know, if they didn’t want to be part of the commune or not; autonomous. We’d been all day scouting about for spots when, I remember, Gideon came home with a bright idea. He’d been around the Isle of Dogs with some mates. They'd found a route to Canary Wharf. They said the whole place was derelict, pretty much abandoned. Think about it, it'd be difficult to get to but the main building alone used to hold 50,000 people. Not even the communards went there, a definite plus point.

It turned out a few others spotted the potential too. There was that recovered print shop on the isle. Some guys were using the boats in the marina to go fishing or something. A few people thought we should get in on the fishing gig, but Gideon said we shouldn’t; we should concentrate on the job, you know? We were looking for free space. There were all those luxury flats, mostly abandoned, but Gideon, he went straight for the big one.

He led about 100 of us, people from around the network, down on a march. We occupied the main building, the old Canary Wharf tower. It took, oh, it took almost a fortnight, but we got the electric going, light, heat, good running water and beds, all going on the first, second and third floors. There was a creative area on the fourth floor. The elevator was still running so we figured we’d barricade the stairs, for safety. It was only on the ground floor but, even so...

So, yeah, we had a launch night for the new social centre, big party on the fourth floor with bands, DJs, a fucking huge bar and a chill out room. We pulled out the stops, you know? I know people were talking and there was thoughts of one day turning the whole area into an autonomous zone. We were going to coin it in that night. I reckon at least a thousand turned up, a thousand, maybe two. The trouble was nobody had any money. They were all communards, with their IOUs, not proper money, these promissory notes stamped by the local commune. We were trying to get away from that shit.

But things were going OK I suppose. The night was rammed, an absolutely banging night. I was dealing with the sound on the live stage so I wasn’t... having fun, you know? Even so, I was still, you know... there was this great vibe. It must have been two-three in the morning when, BOOM, one, two, three huge explosions going on. It didn’t really register at first but we were under attack. Thinking back I still don’t get it. We were supposed to have security on the door but these must have been fucking fire bombs or something. There was no petrol on the premises, least not I knew of. Of course, whoever it was cut off the elevator. There was fucking chaos, man, bedlam. I don’t know how many people got out. We didn’t check who was there. No one did. It was come one come all.

Some guys tried to hack through the barricade but it was bricks and that, debris, really locked down. We got out by climbing down. Gideon, had a bit of quick thinking. He worked a rope system lashed together on the first floor. It took ages to set up, or it felt like a long time, but I was one of the first out. By this stage you could stand back outside and see the sixth to ninth floors were on fire with huge tower of smoke and some debris falling; you had to watch that.

Then of course it got worse. The other buildings started going up. You know, the fact we were there, opening night might have been a coincidence, but this was big stuff, a long time in the planning. If we’d have done, back in the day, if we'd have done it we couldn’t have done it better.

Five minutes later a communal fire team arrived, along with some medics, but there was little they could do by then to put it out. It was just a rescue operation. Then a group of militia appeared, started asking questions. We didn’t get on with the militia. None of us stuck around. I don’t think any of us saw Gideon after that.

Future Legend - Chapter 4: continued

2011-05-19T04:09:00.000-07:00

Ben - We were searching through town for Knights hiding, holding out when we happened upon Buckingham Palace. It was almost accidental... lots of rushing around, we almost missed that the palaces were unguarded. It shows, I hope, how little regard we had for trinkets, baubles.

It got to the stage though where people started claiming buildings. There were all these refugees to find shelter for, not to mention new unions, community groups, militia, all wanting space, spaces of their own. The anarchists had claimed Canary Wharf, which was a wake up call. Politics was very fluid in those days but a group of us, like minded, resolved not to be caught out, cleaning up the city, while others were claiming the prize.

We didn't know what we'd find inside the palace. We had scouts watch the building for a full day. The guards had shut themselves up, down the road, in their barracks. No one was coming in or out. Could it really be empty, we thought. It seemed so.

Despite this we went armed, thirty militia each from various North and Central London communes. I was one of the unarmed 'technical staff', people expected to dismantle this, disable that. I'd like to say we broke in using skill and guile, but it was a cold morning; none of our bolt cutters were powerful enough , the torches were taking too long. We wanted to get in quick smart. In the end we battered down the front gate with a JCB.

We'd not encountered opposition so far. If there was anyone inside they surely would have noticed the clangour of the gate tumbling down. The militia had to work quickly and secure every known entrance into the building before we make our way inside. It was very quiet.

The Palace was much smaller than I expected, and I had a schematic with me. Although it was quite intricate and involved, inside was fairly bare. Everything of monetary value had been removed. I remember, in one of the rooms, seeing these empty spaces, less dusty and faded, with little tags underneath. They were where the old pictures used to hang. There were tags for former Rembrants, Vermeers and Rubens. The silverware was gone. Jewellery, gone. There were no documents of useful value... useful value? No, I tell a lie, there were some staff tags, ID, ladies in waiting, butlers, cooks and so on.

The stuff left behind was prosaic. I helped search a kitchen, storeroom and pantry. The fridges were still pretty full. A washing machine with clothes still in it, stale and horrible. All throughout the building you'd find little bits of evidence, unemptied ash trays, books and magazines lying around, there was a strange sound coming from one of the rooms on the top floor, clear voices. It turned out there was a TV left on, tuned to an American news channel. The palace had not long been evacuated, recently evacuated, probably in a hurry.

It took a couple of hours to search the building, not long. There were no traps apparent. Next was the garden. The garden was the greatest mystery. If we wanted to hold the building we'd have to search the grounds. Despite not even being spring, the grass was fairly overgrown. Someone had raked the leaves into big, rotten, mulchy piles. Up above, in the trees, were CCTV cameras, though they didn't appear to be switched on.

We got a warning straight away, however. I remember the commotion. I was sitting at a computer terminal in one of the staff rooms, lower ground floor, trying to break the code to get inside. In came a crew of militia, carrying a young man, screaming, his leg half hanging off. They started treating and dressing him right there. He had stepped on a bear trap laid outside in the long grass...

The idea we had was to form a party. Like I said, things were pretty fluid... politically, but people were sizing up the action, who'd get to do what, even if they don't admit it or didn't realise it at the time. The government had gone silent. There was very little communication with the outside world. Most of the embassies were evacuated, although, at the time, I think very few people noticed or cared. We were alone, I remember someone putting it like that, we were alone, alone in the world. The question sort of... bubbling under, was... what kind of world did we want to make it.

The building was up and running, the palace converted to our basic needs, searched, fortified, telephone connection installed. That afternoon we were able to bring together a group, like minded people. Some trade unionists, old lefties, new lefties, I suppose, if you count people like me. We would launch our new organisation right there.

We had a few rebel soldiers with us, maybe six, no more than twelve at most. I found they were always pretty conservative in ideas, in thought, at least until they were convinced of something, but they were often the most forward and militant in action. Most of us, I know thought the building was secure, but they, the soldiers knew better, they kept working. It was a good job they did too.

The old world was still out there for them. They were very worried about the Palace Guards. They felt, somehow, that they were letting their old comrades down. They, and their team, barricaded the front gate, stuck barbed wire everywhere along the perimeter. Once the all traps were located, the traps in the garden, the soldiers insisted they be left in. They sized up key points for rifles and machine guns. Out on the balcony, you know, the one where they royal family used to stand a wave, they knocked some of the masonry away and fitted a heavy machine gun; 4,000 rounds, they said it had, we may need it.

Late in the afternoon, almost twilight a lookout spotted some unusual activity. A small convoy of armoured cars speeding up the Mall. They pulled up sharply in the main roundabout in front of palace, a squad of men, and I suppose women too, fanned out. When I got a look through a window on the first floor I could see the cars. They looked like old police riot vans but painted black and fortified. On the side they had markings, a black and red cross inside a white circle, inside a larger red square. I could see they had weapons of some sort. They didn't look friendly.

There was a little group out in the courtyard at the time, tinkering with the barricade. You could hear the order go out:

“Retreat, immediately, find cover”.

The squad outside took this as a queue. They started shooting at the people in the yard. Everyone around me inside the building instinctively ducked. By the time I looked again three were dead, three more were hiding behind a pile of tyres. The militia returned fire. The remaining three were able to get to safety. The squad used our barricade against us, firing from relative safety, but they needed to get in the yard to have a chance of taking the building, and we had the heavy machine gun, 4,000 rounds. The militia let it off a few times, letting them know what we had in reserve. At the risk of glamorising the whole thing, it was, it made an awesome rattle.

The stalemate lasted for what felt like ages but was probably about half an hour. The sun set. Things seemed to be dying down when we could see them lighting what looked like big bales. It wasn't obvious what they were doing. I was round the back of the building at the time, helping build a fall back for if they got through or over the back wall but it was described to me; the bales were launched by catapult at the building. None of them got close enough to make serious impact and set anything alight, so they got out the flame thrower.

I saw the result recorded on a camera phone, strange darkness, the occasional popping noise, then whoosh, boom, red light. But even this didn't work. By morning there was nothing more than a few burning tyres and a huge scorch mark in the gravel. The siege, I suppose it was a siege, thinking about it, lasted for about two hours. The squad, of course we know now they were the alleged Knights of Albion, had to make do with setting fire to various trees up and down the Mall.

I would say we didn’t know what we were doing, if I’m completely honest, which I hope I am, eh? We did not know who we were fighting, really; what they had or what was motivating them. Don’t get me wrong, you could make an educated guess, they were Knights. The point was we didn’t know, know for sure.

Florence - Our plan was to bring overwhelming numbers the one advantage we definitely had at what we assumed were their fortifications. There were armoured cars and the occasional tank on our side now but these were very unreliable, not to mention there were very few who could really drive these things. The idea was to lay siege to the parliament building, we’d arrive, take the closest position we could hold, then creep in, reinforcing as we went. Tightening the noose it was called. That was the idea we discussed. We’d use the armoured vehicles we had as cover… Oh yes, there were some reinforced buses. The front and sides were decorated in sheet metal with supposedly bulletproof glass lifted from banks and building societies. I thought that was pretty neat. All of this was brought together in less than 24 hours, incredible, when you think about it.

The southern communards were to take Whitehall and Westminster Bridge. We on the other hand, West London, would seal off the rest of Parliament Square, Milbank, Victoria Road and so on. We’d each have to, different groups, progress from places like Hammersmith, Shepherds Bush, Queens Park, crossing what we thought was dangerous territory. From Hammersmith to Westminster direct took us through Chelsea and Brompton.

I wasn’t properly in the militia. I was given was a pistol with six, count them, six shots. I had a pair of handmade grenades that might have just been lumps of metal, you know, with a pin and a pike made from sharpened railings, like the ones you get in Central London. I was a nurse back home, so because of this I was made the lead medic of my team and given this really heavy kit to carry.

The collective in Hammersmith got wind of the trouble through the Free Radio. I was one of a group, the local Root and Branch party you might say, although it had not been formed then, who pushed for a quick response. Even before we heard other collectives were calling for a showdown our commune went into permanent session to decide what to do. We had, how you say, commissions flying out here there and everywhere… commissions… It’s funny how these words trip of your tongue now. We had commissions for everything; organising in public. I was made part of a commission to collect medicine, how I eventually got drafted, so to speak. The permanent session was held in the old town hall. It had to be adjourned and reconvened in a safer spot, an old theatre, the Apollo, after some loyal soldiers, Knights basically, were spotted moving through Shepherd’s Bush. I don't know if that was true... Like I said, all of this happened in 24 hours.

Next morning, 6am, we had at least two thousand of us setting off from Hammersmith. It was a totally unwieldy number, I thought, very noisy and slow. We not only had armoured cars and cycle couriers but were expected to peel off in units of five to investigate and secure side roads and dangerous looking buildings. How five of us were supposed to deal with an ambush or sniper or booby trap or…? I don’t know, but there you have it.

We were nervous. Every slight noise or… flash of light… every uncertainty would stop the convoy while these poor souls would be sent off to investigate. It never came to anything. In fact it was very quiet…a little too quiet, as they say in movies. I was sent with a team to comb the area around Emperors Gate. Every house empty but every house was standing, and these weren’t houses, they were, they were huge. Mansions, whole families would live in these mansions. I could not believe it. In the old days I remember me, back in the old days, my husband, our baby, we lived together in a flat, a three-room flat above a bookshop... Anyway, we searched a few buildings, old homes on the row, and they were empty. All the homes, the mansions, it seemed were abandoned. All you would find would be fittings, bookshelves, broken fridges and so on; all that couldn’t be carried. All but one house.

We found one woman, this poor Swedish girl, Ylva; she couldn’t have been more than eighteen. Her English wasn’t great. She told us she was an au pair? She'd been looking after six kids; the parents were lawyers (from what I could make out). They upped and left for the country home, she said, and hadn’t come back. I found Ylva hiding in a conservatory. She’d been locked out. She was living on cold tinned food she'd found in a supermarket. At night she slept under a rug. I more or less offered to take her in right there.

After it was all over, the fighting, I brought this up at the council meeting. There were so many people without homes. My husband died of the flu about six months before. He was one of the first. Then my little boy I fell ill… I don’t know why it was me who pulled through. Empty house: I ended up looking after people, friends from work, they came to stay. I took in my Niece, Donna, her parents both died. The point was it was like this for a lot of people, no permanent home to go to, and yet there were all these beautiful homes going empty. So the commune started rehousing people in these upscale areas.

The attack had to be co-ordinated. Commune leaders usually tried to communicate through the mobile phone system. These were left behind for the day. You didn't know who'd be listening. The plan was to communicate through bicycle couriers, they were able to zip through the rubble and mess. But, not surprisingly, this didn’t work too well either. Messengers got lost or delayed, some never arrived. There were lots of hold-ups. People began to speculate. They soon found out why.

It was only when we got to the edge of Parliament Square that it occurred to anyone what was going on. We were walking into a trap. The area seemed... strange. As the different groups approached there were huge explosions, three, four, then five, a pause, then more went off, followed by whirls of machine gun fire from every conceivable direction. Parliament, Downing Street and the MP buildings were instant four storey infernos. People scattered for cover. This was serious. This wasn’t just the Household Cavalry at work.

Of course, similar things were happening in the City of London. Whole buildings, they must have been packed with dynamite and petrol. Flaming nightmare all around, buildings crashing to the ground.

Future Legend: Chapter 4 - continued

2011-05-14T09:48:00.000-07:00

Freya - I used to work in the Victoria and Albert museum as an archivist. It was a good job, quite a trek though, every morning; Bus to Wood Green, then the tube to Kensington through the centre of town.

Besides there was just so much going on, finding food, stocktaking and rationing, fixing an electric supply. I was part of a team building a well, once the water pressure went. Then there was the big borough meeting about the windmill on the marsh, what to do with it? I thought that question was obvious, but never mind. The point is stuff like that just, they just kept coming.

A group of us, we were on a, a kind of sortie around the area looking for decent piping (we were trying to build a pump) when I bumped into an old work colleague. This was when the violence had died down, after the great fire of Westminster. I bumped into her on Bruce Grove. Old woman, her name was Candy. She used to be one of the admin staff, organising fund raising and sponsorship. I didn’t really know her but, apparently, she knew me. She explained that was looking all over for old staff to recover the V&A. 'Recovery' was becoming a big word then. Her operation expanded to take in the Natural History and Science museums. Getting across town was still quite difficult, never mind all the… broken down areas, there were still roadblocks, barricades up. The plan was to all go at once.

A week later we met up in Euston at the Friends House, a nice central point, and all went down to Kensington with our freshly minted passes. There were about 30 of us, ex-museum staff: quite a group. We even had our own armed guard, which I thought was odd. Apparently the area was a bit of an unknown quantity, you couldn’t be too careful. So Candy contacted the militia in South Camden, who seemed glad to offer their help.

Once there we split up into special groups. Candy and a few leaders from the other museums had drawn up these lists, extensive inventories of what we should find. But there was nothing. There was nothing. The ground floor V&A had been boarded up seemingly from the outside. Our team had crowbars and axes, so that wasn’t such a problem. Inside, the whole place had been stripped bare. Not looted, after all what looters carefully seal the building they’ve just robbed? It had been carefully picked clean.

There was an ex-janitor with us, Ignacio, who had a set of skeleton keys,. We tried the safes. Nothing. We tried all the offices. Paperwork: nada… all gone. All the alarms were triggered but had just run down to nothing. The security tapes were also missing. The story was pretty much the same in the other museums. It was bizarre. Short of dusting for prints we couldn’t done much more. The museum district was empty. Of course we didn’t know, we didn’t appreciate just how empty it was.

Chapter 4 - Fire!

2011-05-14T05:39:00.000-07:00

Keith - Everybody was worried about the army, especially the soldiers who'd defected; joined our side. I think everyone knows the government disappeared. There were lots of rumours, what happened, what was happening... what was about to happen. I don't know the truth. I turned up for work at the Department for Education (and Skills, don't forget that), staff turned up, first day of the unrest, to find the building locked. All the ground floor windows were boarded up. The government had just packed up, taken leave, absented itself.

As far as anyone can work out the Chelsea Regiment dissolved into, nothing, really. About half of the City of London regiment defected. On the fourth day some claim they saw a convoy of lorries with regiment insignia driving east, out of town, at top speed. The crew on the Belfast were all for the rebellion. We know now that RAF Northolt was grounded after the men and women there were deemed 'unreliable'. The big mystery was the Household Cavalry.

There was no sign of the royal family. Buckingham Palace and Clarence Palace were empty. Enterprising souls, we know who they are, they saw there was very little activity going on took them both and occupied them. The Household Cavalry did nothing, they remained in barracks. The most the Cavalry did was make a nuisance of themselves, occasionally interfering with traffic along the Mall, Whitehall and sometimes the Strand. It was very hard to approach the barracks, which you had to do, if you wanted to travel through Central London (I travelled across town most days, crazy I know it seems now, to see my Mother, who was stuck, languishing in a half-empty old people's home). Soldiers, the ones you were able to speak to, were usually abrupt and unfriendly. They were “neutral” apparently.

Oh, yes, and the secret service. MI5 was broken into. There was only a token defence on the door and a few guys, office juniors, left trying to delete files and shred documents. On the sixth day I was summoned, yes, summoned by the local commune, who had piles and piles of data and documents they couldn't make head nor tail of... The commune wanted a report, who was holding what information on who, names of spies, operatives... It needed tidying up for publication; what they were going to use to publish it with I don't know. Anyway, I was put on a team, of about twenty people, sitting in this xanadu, pouring over pages and databases. What did I find, ten minutes into the job?

“Keith Brown”: PCS representative for DfES 1994 to present.

Why did they put my name in quotation marks?

Chapter 3 - Continued, again

2011-05-08T09:13:00.000-07:00

Prasanth - The riots were all over, very scary. We had to get away. My wife, Leila, was six months pregnant, fourth child. Our daughters were in primary school. When the Knights, the fascists came we had to get away. They took over the whole area, smashed up my internet business, gone, wrecked. They had a list of Black and Asian businesses, they must have. You could see them, marching through the streets. It would have been a matter of time before they came to our homes. You could see them. It was very frightening. Some people wanted to fight. I don't blame them, but it was not our place to fight. We had to get away...

My Brother and his family lived in Coventry. He said there was much less trouble there, we should come up. So we tried to... take him up on his offer. We packed and left early morning. The North Circular was packed. Its seemed lots of people were trying to get to the M1. It wasn't even dawn, we were moving along very slowly. You could see military planes and helicopters in the sky, the RAF base must have been busy. The sun rose, we got to about Wembley, nothing was moving, some people were getting out of their cars, abandoning them, which only made the situation worse. This man, Muslim man was going down the line, the line we were in, speaking to people:

“Brother, what is happening?” I'm not a Muslim, so I was taking a bit of a liberty there.

“There's a police roadblock up ahead, about a mile away. They're searching cars, one by one. Turn round, if you can, my friend. It'll be hours”.

It did take hours. The police were very thorough in their search. We were lucky to get past. I understand they shut the whole road down not long after.

We lost contract with my Brother and his family, my wife was keeping in touch by phone. The traffic was fairly free though. The girls were upset and confused, they wanted to stop at every service station. I kept on driving for as long as I could, but even I was getting tired. The traffic seemed to be slowing down again. Now was a good time. We pulled in at a service station on the M1. The place was full of coaches, coaches from all over the country. There was a crowd by the main entrance; more Knights. We couldn't stop.

Less than mile up the road, there was a brawl going on, I think it was a brawl, spilling out from the hard shoulder. You had to drop to about ten, twenty miles an hour to get past. There was a big circle, it looked like a prize fight. There were two police vans on either side, the police were just watching.

All this time we were buzzed by helicopters, flying low over the motorway, some of them were police helicopters, some of them were the big ones with two sets of blades... Chinook, I think. There was the occasional plane or planes, flying south at top speed, toward London. An hour after the service station, ten miles I suppose, the strangest thing... I'll never forget the roar and the loudest bang. In the rear view mirror was fire. A few second later, more explosions. Every car just stopped, we were lucky not to be hit.

Everything seemed to be in slow motion. All around us people were running for our lives. We had to get the girls out. Leila found it difficult to move. Our youngest daughter, Angel, was paralysed with fear, she didn't want to go. I had to drag her out of the car. We all held hands and climbed up the verge, through a gap in the trees, to a nearby field; no time to look back. More explosions. We had to leave everything we couldn't carry behind.

...

It was cold, so cold. It wasn't really winter, but spring hadn't begun. Wandering through fields, the mud, the rain, soon gets you tired. It's amazing how much countryside there is out there.

There were groups of us, wandering. It was natural we'd come together, thrown together for warmth. It is strange how goodness works through people, some people but not through others. We were with ten other people, refugees who had escaped. I don't remember many names now. We had a little bit of food, a retired couple had some travel sweets and bottles of water, which they shared. Gladys and Gareth, that was their names! They helped poor Angel calm down too. One young woman broke her ankle, we took it in turns to help her across the fields, until we reached a country road.

We eventually found a little, what're they called, a little hamlet up the road. It was the commuter zone I suppose; they were about two dozen little mansion, all gated stockbroker homes, firmly locked. We tried ringing bells, buzzers yelling for help. There was no answer from any of them, except one. It sounded like an old white woman, quite distant, yelling over a hedge something like:

“Go away. I have a gun. I have a gun and two dogs. Go away”.

We picked up a few more people along the way, more refugees, until our group was a crowd of about sixty, seventy people. It meant more help and more food. There was a doctor in the crowd, who was able to see to Leila and make sure our baby was OK. It was a very unwieldy bunch. It was getting dark, people were tired. We'd been through another little village and got a similar response to the last. Arguments and tensions were starting to break out.

We were in quite open country. Our little one, bless her, spotted a large farmhouse in the distance. The group resolved to go there, ask for shelter for the night. There was quite a discussion. Some people wanted to take the farm by force, but it was eventually agreed we'd ask first.

Passing up the road to a fence and cattle grid there was a small tree nearby. It was twilight, but something strange was clearly dangling from the tree. It was an old, white man in his underpants, hanging by his neck, dead. He had been beaten quite badly, his sides were purple and blood red, his face was like pulp. Before anybody had time to notice there was a truck coming our way from behind, plus yelling and torch light coming from the farm. We were surrounded. It was a posse of dangerous-looking young men, armed. There were at least as many of them as they were of us. I thought we were done for but when they saw us they instantly relaxed.

Cut a long story short, they were Polish and Lithuanian farm hands. The man in the tree was their former employer, a gentleman farmer. He had promised good work but instead confiscated their passports and banned them from leaving the farm. He treated them very harshly, allowing all sorts of beating and abuse to go on. Some of the farmhands had been there for three years or more. They had taken the violence in London as a cue. They overpowered the foremen, taking their weapons and driving them off the land, before settling scores with the old man, leaving his body out as a warning.

They thought, for some reason, we were the police. Once they found out who we were they were only too happy to take us in. I don't know about the other but I was still afraid. Our lives were in the hands of these people. But we had no choice.

Chapter 3 - continued

2011-05-07T06:30:00.000-07:00

Patrick - London, Central London was shattered, I mean really… I’d seen those films of World War Two. You think you’d know, you think you’d know, you'd be able to handle it. We were in the building, Broadcast House the whole time. When it all died down, when I finally was able to leave it was just shocking.

It have been four, five solid days of fighting. By the following morning we’d effectively been conscripted reserves in this new militia. I didn’t want to be in such a position but, I guess, by that time it was too far-gone. You had to pick your side. I went with my people, our people, who were relying on us as a source of communication.

There was a solid belt of what were now being called Liberated Zones reaching down and across North and East London, into the South. The Knights were beginning to retreat. They were no longer on the streets. It’s funny, but it was only by the middle of the fourth morning that we realised there’d been no aerial attacks for twelve hours. Something had clearly happened.

There were rumours of groups of Knights approaching the remainder of the City of London and Chelsea barracks, plus there were always stories of snipers, lynching and snatch squads dotted over the place. A plan was hatched, I don't know by whom, to have organised groups go out and sweep the city. We were to be the base of communications.

The Central London Commune for Broadcasting (I came up with the name, what’d you know), the CLCB was charged with fixing and powering up the building and equipment, which we did, I’m proud to say, in less than six hours. What later became Radio Free London began broadcasting on digital and analogue frequencies, putting out public information and coded messages, coded messages that anyone with half a brain could decipher, but still...

It took a couple of days; we all took shifts, slept in the building, had food and water and, eventually, a clean set of clothes were brought to us. Carl, now the head of security at Broadcasting House, sent out a team to pick through Oxford Street, Regent Street, Carnaby Street for some bargains; it was almost civilised, you know?

We were eventually relieved. A gang of people, someone, they’d been rounded up, some former staff from Bush House and the Capitol Tower. You’ve got to understand, the work was, it was consuming.

Fourth morning I had a message brought to me on the newly established communal courier service. It was a little telegram from Lucy:

“Am OK. Helping clear up in South London. Love Snoopy”.

A little brief, I thought. I hadn't heard from her in days. I couldn't tell if she was alive or dead. I sent a message to Lucy, telling her I was OK, asking her to... call back. I wasn't quite sure what to make of it. I asked the guy, the courier, where Lucy was. He said:

“South London, somewhere, Dead Zone, probably”.

But for the first time in… I actually thought at the time, wow, now I can go home. Sure, there’d just been a colossal civil war raging through the city, but, you know, at least now I could go home. I felt good… I was kidding myself... So, anyway… Our shift was relieved. We were fetched transport. A guy drove me off on this dirt bike. I asked why we couldn’t take a car. He said there was no room for cars where we were going, and stuffed a helmet onto my head. Off we went.

He took me along Oxford Street. I could see all the bullet holes, smashed and burned out shops, past car crashes, shattered bits of building, pools of ash, lumps of masonry. There was an exploded double-decker bus, with people searching through the wreckage and, of course, carrying away the dead bodies. Through Holborn and down the Kingsway the picture was similar. That said Bush House seemed to have got off pretty lightly, and there was still a queue to get into the Indian Embassy.

My driver went the wrong way round the Aldwych roundabout. My nerves jumped for a moment, then I realised, it didn’t matter now. There was no traffic. Onto Waterloo Bridge… there I could see the most shocking thing. Where there used to be the South Bank buildings, Oxo Tower, the BFI, now there was a gigantic pile of rubble, some of it still on fire. The Charing Cross Bridge was wrecked too. I asked my driver what that was. He shouted again something about a Dead Zone:

“Don’t go there”, he said.

As we crossed over into South London I began giving directions. The terrain got tougher and tougher. We’d come across whole buildings that were blown out or burned down, more people, more bodies. Then we came up to our first barricade, two piles of tortured brickwork, wood, PVC and the remains of what looked like old cars, with a swing gate and guards in the middle.

My driver, stating his name (which I’ve now forgotten) and flashing his communal credentials asked for us to be let past. The guards asked where we were going. I told them the address of my block of flats. They said, bluntly, it was fire bombed and gutted… Lucy… There were no known survivors.

I had to get off the bike. My legs felt weak. I must have been in shock. It felt like I was going to collapse, burst at any moment. But I spent an hour or two looking round the area, the wreckage in Southwark, speaking to people. Through this incredible chaos, two hours it took, but I found Lucy, down, near The Cut. She was with a team counting and recording bodies, matter of fact, a huge pile of them. They'd been bringing them up from the underground. The corpses were choked and charred. There'd been a fire in the tube station. But I saw her... she saw me... the tension, all the tension exploded... A strange, eerie scene, but we fell into each others arms.

Future Legend - chapter 3: the aftermath

2011-05-05T02:35:00.000-07:00

Dave - Some people say the fighting, the violence went on for three days, some say five. It was really more like a week before it was completely safe to step out onto the streets. There were still a few Knights of Albion lurking around, gangs, guys with guns, some of them soldiers, looking for pot shots.

Some of the soldiers had defected to us. I remember the scene, two, three, no, five tanks parked by Elephant and Castle roundabout, parked up in a row, near the university. You know the one? There was a crowd all around, cheering; they had just come over. There were flags and flowers everywhere. The soldiers moved among the crowd, getting hugs and kisses. The leader, apparent leader, was being held aloft, crowd surfing. There were three teenage girls sitting on top of one of the tanks, on the cannon, waiving at everyone. There was a loud snap... snap, snap, snap, that's what it sounded like, then screaming. Someone was shooting at the crowd. One of the girls had been hit, knocked clean off the tank.

Do something, do something! But where was the shooting coming from? Someone spotted the gunman on top of the Coronet. Look, there! Before the soldiers could do anything the half the crowd took off after him. I don't think he was caught, but the soldiers had some emergency medical kit managed to save the girl's life.

There was hardly any ambulance service, a lot of them had been shot up by Knights or had broken down or just been lost. The hospitals were full to bursting, though the nazis tried to attack them too. One of the reps at Bow Locks only just escaped a serious attack. A group of union members were cornered in a street fight, near the sorting office and had to fight their way out. The rep was knocked unconscious and had to be carried to Whitechapel Hospital, two miles, no stretcher or splint. They got there only to find another cohort of thugs trying to break inside.

The sheer scale of, of what went on, meant that many bodies, people who had died, were left where they were. There were supposedly some snipers who collected bodies and used them as bait. I can well believe that.

Once all the fighting died down dealing with the dead became top priority. People were already hypersensitive to disease. Something had to be done before there was an outbreak. They weren't communes, at least not formal organisations yet but the local organisations, shall we say, were ones getting down to the dirty business. At first people, they tried to collect and move the bodies to a safer place. Some tried to bury them. This only shifted the problem and, in a city without certain supplies of soap and water, made it very difficult for them to keep clean, which was the point of the exercise.

Many tried to keep the names of the dead, if they knew or could find them. People’s possessions were searched, although some felt squeamish about it.

The nastiest, most upsetting part was the massacre at Kings Cross. Our union branch, Mount Pleasant, volunteered to help. This was the demo that started the big walkouts, the one that spilled out across Camden and Islington, the one that was bombed and strafed from the air. I remember; we were up by Angel tube, stuck facing down a group of Knights. You could hear it going on…

There were hundreds dead, maybe thousands. It took three days to clear. Each body was identified. We had lists of missing people, sometimes with pictures. If we had no pictures then we looked for anything that had their name. Two items and we were fairly certain, three and we were sure. Some people said they should be stripped, as good clothing would soon be in short supply. I thought that was, it was not on. I’m glad we didn’t do that.

Identified bodies would then be taken away for disposal. The unidentified would be sorted, as would be the unidentifiable. Eventually they would be disposed of too. We built a pyre in a park square. Face after face, sometimes no face… and the smell. I never want to have to do anything like that again.

Anna - The power was intermittent, for a while, off an on. It went out again on the fourth afternoon, this time for good. I know it was later for some, most maybe. The fighting wasn’t really over by that point. It was lucky it went out in the middle of the day otherwise we’d been all over the place. An estate meeting was called. What to do? We made the usual rounds. Me, myself, I’d got so taken up with, well, estate matters. I’d not been to work all this time. It never even occurred to phone in. I suppose I sort of knew there was no work to go to, the hospital was shut.

Anyway, we made the usual rounds, checking who was in and who was out. The first thing we did was ration the battery supplies. Some were unhappy about giving up their stuff. We had to use persuasion (soft and heavy, if you know what I mean). Some of the kids were sent out to forage for some more. Batteries were sorted and counted (and monitored). There was a queue. If you ran them down too quickly you were put to the back. This went down in the community hall, which was becoming the centre of life on the estate.

The trouble was this only dealt with small electrical items. There were dozens fridges and freezers full of slowly spoiling food. Most of the flats were gas heated (although that was soon gone too, it took two weeks for the gas supplies to run down). Some homes had gone electric. We all guessed that we’d be without electricity for some time. We had to find a way of making our own. I don’t think anyone suspected the national grid would be down permanently.

There was an electrician on the estate, however. He said, with a bit of help, if someone could build a him a generator he’d be able to patch up the estate in time.

There were a industrial estates down on Hackney Wick, Hoxton, Homerton, Shoreditch plus one in Stoke Newington, but Simon knew some of the guys from the workshops under the Downs railway bridge. They not only gave us some copper wire but reworked some old car engines. They functioned as generators for a while. They were now officially part of our group… our commune. Some of the kids on the estate had been at the Sixth Form College. They’d been taking science and knew how to make simple magnets. They helped. There was a lot of trial and error. It took a while before we got the design right.

We gave up on using petrol engines, as fuel was very scarce. Together with the workshop guys the science kids tried making wind generators. These were more successful, although keeping the wheels greased was a bit of a problem. Even so, on the good days we managed to generate enough power to start storing it (bless them, the science kids made rechargeable batteries).

The problem wasn’t really solved until the communes started pooling resources. It must have been four, five months down the line before we fitted our first solar panel. That was good.

But the first night without electricity, with all this food about to go off, we searched for whatever preservatives we could find, salt, spices etc and potted as much food as we could, storing it in a cupboard in the community hall. With the rest the estate group decided to have a big cook-off. Though it was still a bit cold we all gathered up some wood (plenty of it on Hackney Downs), charcoal and tinfoil and had the first barbecue of the year.

Not long after that we took the cooking indoors. Old Man Petersen (and a couple of his buddies) fitted a huge coal stove bought from an antique shop. We’ve been eating down in the community hall ever since.

Future Legend - Chapter 2: Patrick

2011-04-30T05:27:00.000-07:00

We were in dispute at the time. I was a rep for the technical staff at Broadcasting House. We had quite an active branch, I thought. On the up at least. People would come to me for union news all the time. Then again, compared to some, civil servants, posties, it was still quite slow going.

BBC management were trying to put through increased pension contributions, wage cuts, basically, and close down various posts across the stations, across the departments. Despite the mandate we had the union executive didn’t want to call more than weekly one-day strikes, and the journalists… well, enough of them already, they made their own deal.

So, we had the good luck, bad luck, whatever you want to call it of being out while these riots were going on. We’d had some good pickets previous two weeks. A dozen, almost twenty, and these were on 6-9am shifts. Of course there were dozens more people crossing the line. But, you know, we were feeling good. I was feeling good. The members at least were respecting the picket line. I thought perhaps we could up the number of days...

Now, I remember the morning, the morning after the night before, getting there, sort of, ten to six. There were people waiting for me, six of them, all buzzing with the news about the riots, which I found a bit odd.

The strike was officially on. By 6.30 we had at least twenty pickets (all talking about this “uprising”). Everything was set. The only problem was no one else turned up. Portland Place was (is still) a pretty empty that time of the morning, but it was quieter than usual; hardly anyone came down the street, let alone approached the building. I remember asking the one of the security guards about it. He didn’t know anything either.

One of the guys, Alex, Greek guy who worked in the archives, had brought two of his mates. Apparently they’d been up all night fighting the police. Normally I would have asked them to leave but, I don’t know... The guys were getting text messages, phone calls, people telling them what was... happening. It felt… undisciplined. It didn’t really dawn on me, the gravity of the situation, until about an hour and a half in.

I’d sent Alex and his mates down the road with a sandwich and coffee order, a big order. If they were going to hang around I thought they should do something useful. They came back a few minutes later. All the shops were shut, they said. They said they’d checked Oxford Street as well, but that was abandoned except for police, tube closed, no buses or no cars. I couldn’t believe it. I’d only been through Oxford Circus an hour or so earlier and it’d been averagely average for that time of day, I thought. Literally, what, two minutes later, a parade of police on horseback came past our picket, heading south, a score at least, if not fifty. It occurred to me to phone head office, no luck. Then I tried phoning home. The system seemed to be jammed, like during the tube bombings.

A short while later the parade came back again. This time, behind them, was a large group of people. To begin with they looked (and sounded) like ordinary protesters. As they passed by it was clear they weren’t your usual dog-on-a-string types. They were your big guys, Phil Mitchell types, a bit like me, I suppose, but dressed out in boots, sports gear and the like. We know, I know now, Alex was right. These were the Knights.

Some of the marchers took an interest in our picket. They started chanting at us, “who are yer?” I didn’t know what was going on. There was about 2-300 of them. They were quite intimidating, I felt. A few more Phil Mitchells stopped by. Alex and his buddies went round bracing everyone: be on your guard. Sure enough they started to get aggressive. They started to threaten us, call us traitors, get a job and such like. A few of them lobbed stuff over the police line. The police did nothing but stand between us and them.

One of the pickets, a new member, a temp who was working on the websites (I can’t even remember his name now, I’m sorry), went over to the demonstrators and tried, I think, to reason with them. This sparked a rush in the crowd. They sent the poor guy flying. To this day I don’t know what happened to him.

Alex was thinking quickly, however. He and one of the security guards jammed the front door open. We, by which I mean the rest of us, piled inside just in time to lock the doors behind us. A few of the Mitchells tried to kick the doors down. A couple of the windows got smashed, but we managed to keep them jammed shut long enough until the police finally intervened, got them away. So, without intending to, we had occupied BBC Broadcasting House.

Suddenly it all became clear. Alex and the security guard, an old black guy called Carl started looking for stuff to cover the windows and barricade the door. I sent two groups out into the building to look for people in the building. A different group was sent to the canteen to check on food (a bit drastic, I remember thinking at the time, but it turned out to be very important). Me, myself and a couple of other technicians went to check what was working, who was actually broadcasting.

We only found one team. The poor sods thought they’d been broadcasting without relief since1am. The entire broadcasting system had been switched off by someone, we couldn’t find who or how, and would take time to reconnect. I assumed there’d be an emergency broadcast happening, but we checked the different BBC channels, analogue and digital, and couldn’t find one. Very puzzling, I thought.

After a couple of hours we gathered what we had, who we had, onto the 3rd floor (some people too their chance to leave). It turned out there were thirty-one of us occupying the building. Alex, Carl and a few others had finished barricading all the doors. They even said they’d started work on fall back positions. They surmised the police would be back, given how crucial the building was. On the flip side, a couple of Alex’s mates had the good idea of filling buckets and tubs with water, in case we were cut off. They’d even found some plastic mattresses, used for goodness knows what, that’d serve us if we stayed overnight. I tried phoning home again, no luck again.

We, the technical crew, tried checking the radio stations. There was nothing going out, except for a few commercial stations playing pre-recorded stuff on a loop, that and pirate stations on the far end of the old analogue bands. Most TV was off air. The internet was still working. Wild stories reached us that White City had been taken over (or burned to the ground). The best we could get were foreign TV news bulletins, but they seemed to be sketchy, crazy stories of mob violence and army massacres. I did manage to speak to my girlfriend, my partner Lucy, on the phone; a breakthrough. She said she was fine, at home, safe… everything was fine…

Then a tank rolled down the street. A couple of Alex’s friends spotted it careering about toward Regent Street. There were dozen or so people riding on top, carrying St George’s flags. It was firing off wildly into the surrounds. We could hear it throughout the building, the most amazing din. For one moment I thought they’d come for us, but the tank bowled on past. Moment later we heard an almighty crash and bang as it ran into a building and blew up.

We kept hearing gunfire and helicopters for the rest of the day. In the distance there were some very loud, ominous thuds. I felt very precarious, vulnerable. None of us, I think, could believe that we would be ignored. It was too incredible. Were we being ignored? Perhaps we'd been forgotten? No. kept talking and talking, who were these people, the Knights of St George, what were they up to? Someone got hold of the rumour passed around, first by phone and then by twitter updates, there was a coup in motion (or successful). The government had been arrested (or killed). The Royal Family was under armed guard (or evacuated from the city). Air strikes were being called in. That last rumour of course came true.

I never saw any bombings (a couple of people said they saw some from up on the roof). You could certainly hear them. A big roar went up around nightfall about a mile or so north of us, I guess around the Euston – Kings Cross area. Things were sliding, starting to… Throughout this time I tried to get hold of Lucy again… couldn’t get through, no answer.

But the next shock came later that night. Most of the violence seemed to have passed us by. After much discussion (our group by now had turned into a fully fledged communal democracy) it was agreed we’d turn off the lights, spend the night with one eye open, and try to find a way out in the morning.
This friend of Alex, this guy called Dave, who was an unemployed artist (and looked it too, right down to the goatee beard and beret) had got word of a group of rioters, coming down from Edgeware Road, looking for shelter. I thought it was mad, but the group voted to let them in.

I felt the whole situation was slipping away. I felt my responsibility. I hadn’t heard from my partner… Lucy… I hadn’t heard for a while... from. We’d just moved into a new, a new flat out in Southwark, lovely place. Whenever I tried to ring again… no answer. I tried not to think the worst... I was convinced, we had to get out of there, somehow, before things got too bad, really bad. Broadcasting House was an important building, an institution... But the more events progressed the more it seemed young Alex and Dave were running the show. They were organising things like rotas, patrols, collective meetings with chairs and lunch breaks with menus almost (there was some very nice cold food in the canteen store rooms).

Of course, who turned up later? Not rioters but militia. There was a banging on the main entrance. There were 40 or so armed men and women at the door, with guns and tazers and batons. There were several battered looking, obviously commandeered cars. Some had bicycles. A couple of them were carrying large boxes full of what turned out to be Molotov cocktails, flares, grenades and torches. They immediately made our occupation battle ready.

There were, apparently, another 20 or 30 people hiding in a hotel across the street. They were the leftover from a police station siege earlier that day. The mix, I found out, was amazing. There was a doctor, three builders, an IT tech, two cleaners, two train drivers and an engineer, a bus driver, a number of admin staff, four students (Biology and Physics, two for English Literature), a nightclub bouncer and a security guard. You can tell I wrote this down, can't you? The rest were rebel soldiers.

The militia, heh, been trying to flush out a group of police officers who were holding on inside when they were ambushed and overwhelmed by a mixture of Knights and soldiers backed up by a tank, a rogue tank. So our militia escaped along a nearby canal and regrouped. The word was other groups had dealt successfully with tanks and armoured cars by luring them down narrower roads then bombing them. The key was to make a diversion and scatter anyone on foot behind the vehicle, such I was told. There was another team out on push bikes trying to lure a particular column down into Fitzrovia and surrounds.

The physics student told me all this while he was busy preparing this fearsome looking device, a box contraption packed, he told me, with grenades and artificial fertilizer. I asked him what his job was. His eyes burned… He was the one actually going to plant the bomb under the tank.

The militia hadn’t wanted to confront the tank on such a wide plaza, but it was in hot pursuit and would arrive at any moment. Ten minutes or so after the militia members arrived a tank appeared on the crossroads with Cavendish Street, followed by a score of men on foot, seemingly armed. There was some hollering. The men fired a few pot shots off into the dark. The tank obligingly turned and headed in our direction. Peering out of a conference room window on the third floor (we’d all been told to take cover, I don’t think anyone paid attention) I noticed the road was funnelled slightly up to the bend by the church with parked vehicles and debris from a nearby building site. I could see a few militia members crouched in doorways and behind cars. As the tank approached a soldier with a rife yanked me silently from the window. He told me to get back and stay down before taking up position.

The silence was loud, but the breakout was louder. I tell you now, it's true, there’s nothing louder than war. The shooting went on for what seemed like, like an eternity. The militia cleared the road quite quickly but the bomb had to be delivered before the tank started loosing off shells. It seemed like forever.

Boom! What was that? It turned out the tank had fired into the hotel. I was half kneeling at the back of this little room. At one point I looked up and saw six bullet holes scored across the wall, then a seventh six inches or so above my head. Thirty seconds, another crash. Most of the building across the road was gone. It’d be our turn next, I was sure. Ten seconds later, there was the biggest bang I may ever hear and sheer white light. The tank went up, along with many windows and, we found later, the entire front door, battered in by a huge lump of shrapnel.

One we were sure the street was clear we all went out to check the wreckage. The tank was now a ball of metal and flame. The militia searched the dead bodies for weapons and tools or any useful info. I came across the physics student, face down on the ground bullet-ridden, half-burned and peeling. A couple of us wanted to take him inside, along with the other casualties but, as Alex and Dave pointed out, there were wounded to deal with. Once they got treatment it was agreed we’d get on with re-barricading.

So began our first night of occupation.

Future Legend - Chapter 2: continued

2011-04-27T12:14:00.000-07:00

Unnamed - Second night, into the third day, we were free, Outer London. Central London was on fire. I know there was helicopters, planes and shit going up. They didn't come up our way. They must have been too afraid. I don't know what they were afraid of. No one slept, not in our house. The third morning we got guys coming up from other neighbourhood groups, calling for help. Central London was overrun by police and nazis, and they were using guns, live ammo. We all knew they would come for us if we didn't act fast. In the morning there were thousands of us, marching into town; just taking what we could carry, not much of a plan.

But I, I had my gun. It took me less than ten seconds to waste all the bullets.

It took nearly two hours to find the first group of enemies, riot cops. They'd taken control of the junction outside Camden Town tube, a hundred or so in, like, a big armoured hexagon. Someone heard on their mobile (the system still wasn't knocked out by this stage). When we got there they were already fighting with a group coming up from Mornington Crescent, Somers Town; bottles and batons, a few molotov cockails. People at the front seemed wary of charging the police. They threw a few things instead, eventually getting a reaction. The police charged us, we withdrew until they ran out of breath.

This happened a few times, until some of the leaders in the crowd, we got together, decided it wasn't working. We needed a plan. We hit on the flying wedge tactic. Get people together, get the fighters properly tooled up. It was gonna be tough. We got to about ten yards from the police line. The front of the march was doing well, not panicking. Before our fighting squad could get to the front there was gun shots. I've gone over it in my mind, it was about ten, I think; all really quick.

People fell to the ground, dead or otherwise. You had to just try to run, somewhere, scatter for cover, but something took over me. I stood there, a stampede going on round me. I tried to get the best line of sight I could, and just let off, six rounds was all I had. I'd seen people with guns before but I'd never even held one. It was so powerful. I don't know if I hit anything in Camden.

So, of course there was another burst of fire. It was coming from a guy lying on top of a police van, parked in the middle of their defences. He was plain clothes, holding, I think, an assault rifle. I was lucky not to be hit. I was lucky, in the panic, that no one noticed it was me firing at the police. The people who got away regrouped maybe hundred yards down the road, Camden Road. There was a real, swirling anger. Other people had to be prevented from letting off more pot shots. It was really hard (some the police, I could see, were starting to advance on where we were; you could hear a helicopter coming as well) but we had to get more people along and have another go.

We had to think fast. Some people wanted to build a flame barricade, get some cars together, branches, furniture from a nearby restaurant, and burn them. This old Arab guy had a different idea. He said he knew how to hot wire engines, which he did. We should use the cars to ram the police lines, set them loose, down the hill, on fire. Fucking crazy, when you think about it; like, taking it to the next level. He must have been a ram raider or a car thief or something.

It was far too complicated to work, stick it in second gear, people outside push it to get it rolling, get out, snap the handbrake, while, at the same time, someone else chucks a flaming bottle on the back seat, then push, push, push. I think only one of the cars reached the police line (one of the cars ploughed into a shop front). But the police must have been freaked out, all the people just charging at them, no fear (we had a few hundred more friends arrive by that time). A lot of the police broke ranks... Rifle guy was long gone.

Future Legend: Chapter 2 - continued

2011-04-25T06:20:00.001-07:00

Unnamed - They thought we’d give in, the feds. They were talking about martial law, no surrender, teaming up with the nazis. Head round the area with a big show of force. But the second afternoon we put up the roadblocks, yeah? Backs to the wall; we knew they were gonna come back for more.

Everyone, everyone in my neighbourhood helped make it. People stopped work. Anyone without jobs was already in the street. They brought, like, bits of old furniture, wheelie bins, paving slabs and stuff. Burned out cars were always good to build around. One guy on my block, I swear down, he set fire to a load of cars, drove them out in the middle of the road and burned them down, his own car included. My sisters, Shabnam and Aysha helped. Mum let on that she wasn’t happy, made a big fuss, but she didn’t stop them. I’ve not thought about that…

We fought them back until about midnight, when they cleared out. There was all this stuff about the nazis joining them. I didn’t see any that night, not round where we were. I didn’t think they’d come up our way, although some people I know swear they did. Plain clothes guys with batons and stun guns and that.

Anyway, after we’d won we were all so happy we didn’t want to leave. The streets were ours, man.

Then something amazing happened. A few of us heard there was this meeting, like, two in the morning it was. We went down to the bridge by Finsbury Park station. It was massive, I tell you, man, thousands. I couldn’t believe it. People were discussing what they were going to do next. I remember this old guy, must have been in his fifties, got up and said we should march to the nearest police station and free all the people inside.

We all liked this. We all went down to the cop shop, Islington was reckoned the nearest. I never got inside, but people just smashed their way in. I know my sisters were in there, they got inside. People like, they didn’t just carry the people out but their weapons, the computers, the files and that. The place was totally cleaned out and, I couldn’t believe it. Aysha came out with a gun. I took it off her. I told her it wasn’t safe.

Future Legend: Chapter 2 - continued

2011-04-25T06:19:00.001-07:00

Anna - It’s funny how it started, the commune thing (I find it a bit funny saying ‘commune’, even now). All your life you’re taught that people are naturally selfish and violent. I remember being taught that book at school, what was it? Lord of the Flies, that was it! We were told that’s what would happen if civilisation ever fell apart. You spend all this time worrying about the end of world only to find out its not so bad. Is that wrong? Do you know what I mean?

I can’t speak for anyone else but I know what happened on our estate. The power went out sometime during the first night, I think for at least a square mile in each direction. I don’t know why this should have happened, but anyway…

The following morning I went next door to see Mrs Koori and her kids, check if they were all right. They were fine, although the kids were a bit nutty, as you’d imagine they would be. No school, no school! They didn’t have any lights or candles, so I popped back to mine to fetch some.

In this time I bumped into Old Man Petersen from the Tenants Association. He was knocking on all the doors on this block. The other reps were doing the same on theirs. One thing he asked me to do was to see if Mrs Sewell on the ground floor was OK. She had been burgled a month or so earlier and generally didn’t answer her door anymore to strangers. It turned out she was fine and hardly aware of what was going on outside. She had a gas stove, so I boiled some water and made her a cup of tea.

A couple of people dropped by, meanwhile, I didn’t know who they were but they seemed friendly enough. They suggested we run Mrs Sewell’s bath and fill some tubs with water. They had heard some parts of London had the water was cut off too. Soon everyone was filling their tubs.

Later that morning some looters came round offering all sorts of goods, food, clothes and electrical items for a price of course. I remember they came down, about six or seven of them, each with two shopping trolleys loaded. I recognised some of them. They were kids from the estate and had the good manners to go to by the TRA first. The reps had the sense not to buy. Instead they insisted the loot was divided between the residents. The kids were scolded (a bit) but sent out to find more useful items.

You can look back and think how awful. I remember at the time prices were going through the roof. You'd go shopping in your local supermarket and find whole isles bare or nearly bare. There was talk of rationing here, speculation there, hoarding and so on. People were afraid for their lives, worried if they’d have food to buy and, often, money to buy it.

It was becoming clear there was a, this major crisis going on. By the afternoon a few of the more able residents on from the estates on Amhurst Road teamed up to chase away some Knights. They’d regrouped down by the train station. Apparently they’d been kicked out of the hospital.

That night there was a meeting in the community hall to divide up the estate’s resources, discuss events and decide what else to do. Pretty much everyone turned up. I was a bit embarrassed (but relieved). Simon phoned in the middle of the meeting to say he was OK.

Chapter 2 - Continued

2011-04-21T10:49:00.000-07:00

Anna - I remember the night it started, really started. There was an awful lot of noise and lights coming from the north. I heard them. You could hear it in Hackney. Our neighbours, the Kooris, their boy was out playing football in Clissold Park. He saw loads of police vans heading in the same direction up north. I remember counting at least three police helicopters zipping across the sky at top speed.

Lilly was away from home. Her college had been shut down. A few of the staff and kids had fallen ill. She didn’t seem to be coming down with anything we sent her off to stay with her Nana in Scotland. It felt like... like something was in the air. I wanted her out the way. That was hard. Then Simon was suspended from work after he tested positive, which was harder. I used a bit of blat, as the Russians say, influence I had at Homerton; arranged to have him taken into the hospital for observation. They could have just taken him to the edge of town. I remember going to visit, going onto the ward, having to step into a special suit and mask, which was, you know, a bit daft. I had the shot, like other NHS staff, but, anyway....

Once he started showing the actual symptoms I was prevented from seeing him, which was… I know that it was nothing to do with the staff there… Anyone could see they were struggling to cope as it is. He was allowed a call home once a night. I used to wait up until about 9.30, 10. The phone would ring; he would call every night, until that is the riots broke out.

I was sitting at home. I'd been working at Whipps Cross, back to back shifts. There’d been some officers round that afternoon. They stayed on the doors making what they called routine checks. It must have been a slow day as they hung around for three hours. We got them off the premises in the end, but it was a grind.

Anyway, night; I was watching TV, waiting for Simon to call, when I saw a news item about disturbances in an unnamed London suburb, which was odd... Unnamed? It turned out it was Haringey, although you had to guess. I recognised some of the shots, stand-offs on Tottenham High Road, smashed windows in Wood Green shopping centre.

There was something strange in the broadcast. Despite the outrage of the reporter, the commentary, they showed this clip of police with riot shields, batons and dogs charging a group of youngsters, teenagers. The kids retreated little by little and the police eventually stopped. Then, ripping through the crowd came a flying wedge. The kids, totally fearless, armed with bats, snooker cues and iron bars they came through, charging. They gave as good as they got.

The police line fell back, and back, and back.

I’d been going out of my mind, waiting. It was then after the little news clip, I got up to make some tea. Stirring the milk, I noticed myself nodding and smiling.

Syd - We developed this tactic called Fridge Raiding, which meant we'd go down to a supermarket in big numbers, quick, usually with a getaway van, and just take what we could. You had to case the place out first. There were a couple of fails, where police got wind of what was happening and laid in wait. If we were really successful we'd go and handout items round the local neighbourhood. Some people were polite, some people refused (we soon showed them), but most were happy to see us. It was really popular. I reckon on a few occasions staff at these supermarkets just let us get on with it. No surprise then, after it all kicked off, second morning, there were big fridge raids going down everywhere.

Those little 'metro' shops, pretend corner shops were stripped bare in no time. The major supermarkets took a little longer, but they all fell, what with the police being busy elsewhere. I was up with a few comrades in Leyton. There was a crowd of about 400-500 people trying to break into the hypermarket. It looked like police defending but it turned out they were private security. A dozen of us, we all bundled into my mate's van, got up there as soon as we could which was easier said than done, with all this street fighting going on. Stimpy, my mate, was fucking nuts. He drove the van fresh into the line of guards (twenty miles an hour it was, he must have done some serious damage), then crashed headlong into the main entrance, before reversing back out. The guards scattered, everyone else piled in. I watched for a bit. You could see young mums coming out with boxes of nappies, kids with TV sets, old folks grabbing electric heaters, row after row of people with trolleys piled as high as they could go, food, clothes, toiletries, really basic things people need to thrive and survive. Stimpy went looking for spare tires, he'd punctured one on the way in, the numb-nut.

After about half an hour there was still no sign of the police. Instead these guys turn up, fat football types, skinny kids in sports wear. One of them was waving an England flag for some reason, They didn't go inside. Instead they started giving grief to a few people coming out with stuff. There was some screams, a fight kicked off. We all got involved, piled in and saw these blokes off. It didn't click, but this was a sign of things to come, these were the fascists, the Knights of Albion as they called themselves.

Later than night we were involved in another raid, much closer to home in the East End. This time a lot of us were inside, we wanted to get some supplies for the social centre, now things clearly were getting busy. We were inside, we had the trolleys, looking for stuff we needed. All of a sudden there was police outside, dozens. We were surrounded. We had to think fast. Gideon called everybody together. It was a trap. We had to leave right there and then.

One of our guys kicked down a fire exit round the back, but the way was blocked. Not by the police, but more of these nazi hardmen, who immediately barrelled in after us. We had to fight out way out. Not everybody made it.

The police and the nazis were now collaborating.

Simon - I was stuck in hospital with this super-flu, chicken flu, when the fighting began.

They were quarantining people, the authorities. Luckily I had only tested positive for the virus. I hadn't started showing any symptoms. My wife, Anna, managed to sneak me a place in a hospital, you know. Not everyone made it to hospital.

Even so it was miserable, boring, most of the time; just sitting up in bed, reading or watching TV. The first twelve hours or so I remember not having a drip. I couldn’t eat or drink. When the symptoms started coming on could hardly keep stuff down. I was really weak. I kept asking for a drip, but they just sort of ignored me, brushed off the question. I spoke to a woman patient in the opposite cubicle, she said they’d run out on lots of things... I don’t know... The point is it was a nightmare.

Of course then these riots start happening. Everyone in the hospital was talking about them, staff and patients. It felt like a bubble had burst, you know? There was rightness to it. Yet people, ordinary people (we were ordinary people back then) were getting caught up in the violence. Some of the staff went missing. I remember this guy down the hall, I forget his name, anyway, this guy, old man, was expecting to be released. He’d had a close shave, almost died from the flu, but was now fully recovered and waiting for his daughter to come pick him up. She never came, perhaps she was killed. No one knew.

Then it came on the news, supermarkets were being looted. That was a bit of a… it was news.

I was having a lot of trouble sleeping. I remember getting up. It was early morning, the morning after the night before, just after dawn. I’d had another rough night and was feeling a bit weak. I went for a walk up and down the ward, just to stretch my legs. I didn’t notice at the time but there was no nurse on duty.

I could see out of the window funny looking groups hanging around in the car park and at the gates. They seemed to be stopping people going in an out, giving them a hard time. I watched for a bit. There were fights. An ambulance came in to the hospital. One group tried to grab the patient off the gurney, while beating up the paramedics.

It was then I clocked what was going on. Callum, a friend of mine from the anti-fascist group, had been monitoring the far right internet chatter. I spoke to him the night before. There’d been stuff passed back and forward about Night of the Rope, all that shit, which was their code for an uprising. I could see outside this was it.

Despite how I felt, I had to leave. I went back to my bed grabbed as much stuff as I could. I had some clothes and some money but no shoes, just these slippers, and no phone either. There were staff changing rooms on the wing I remember. I reckoned at the time I might be able to nick some boots or something.

While I was weighing up the odds I could hear shouting at the end of the ward, outside the door. I just ran as fast as I could down the other end, barefoot. Lucky for me there was a fire escape. Of course the alarm went off. Standing at the top of these stairs I didn’t really notice. Down below there was a huge swarm of people, maybe 2-300. They were organised, not police or army, but organised, bear in mind this was only, what ten minutes, less than that since I looked out the winde… Anyway, I saw them, rounding up the nazis and kicking seven shades of shit out of them.

Future Legend - Chapter 2: Ben

2011-04-21T04:38:00.000-07:00

A few of us pegged it down the high street. The police weren’t keeping up so well. I didn’t know what we were doing. All of a sudden two vans appeared out of a side road and we were cut off. The officers got out. They seemed to be smiling. I’m sure I heard one of them say, “got you now, you c-words”. I don’t mean to be offensive. That’s what they said.

Then I heard someone yell “this way”. None of the shops were open, it was mid morning but they all seemed to have their shutters down. A girl, ah, young woman, running, had spotted a fire exit, open, into to an abandoned shopping centre. Everyone made for the door. Not everyone made it, though. Not much later, by coincidence, I managed to, I bumped into the guy who was directly behind me, trying to get in. He told me he got club to the jaw; fractured it did. He also showed me finger shaped bruises on his right arm. He said he got free by kicking the door shut on the police officer’s wrist. It was that close.

So we got in and just scattered through the mall, panic. By this stage I just ran and ran and didn’t look back. I could hear the yelling and stuff getting knocked over and the kicking and punching behind me. It echoed really loud, all around.
But I got lucky. The shopping centre was three stories high. I bundled up the escalator (turned off) to the top level. The first shop I ran into there was a guy. It was one of the Asian lads from the queue, already in there. He was looking. There was an air vent, loose enough; he was trying to get through.

He said, “brother, help me move this shelf”. I didn’t know what else to do, or how long we’d have (although I must admit I bristled a bit with happiness when he called me “brother”). We climbed up the shelf, through the vent, into this wall space and kicked the shelf away. I remember up above it was dark and full of pipes and boilers and tanks and bits of lagging, you know, insulation. It smelt quite off. I think there were a few pigeons floating about inside. I couldn’t see a thing but my friend managed to spot a skylight. We climbed out onto the roof.

Outside I had to pause for breath. My friend, my new friend asked if I was ok. I was fine. You could see there was a narrow alley out the back and a warehouse. Fully gathered I tried to make a run for the edge of the building. We had to get off, I thought. My friend grabbed me though, and told me to stop.

“Don’t move, don’t make any noise… They never look up”.

It was a metal corrugated roof so that made sense, lots of banging.

“Follow me” he said.

We crept to the edge of the roof and peered down into this alley below. Sure enough there were about two-dozen cops waiting at a back exit. Just as we looked they charged in as one and came out with about eight people, kicking and screaming.
They all got bundled round the corner into what sounded like vans; doors slamming. We waited a little longer. When we were sure they had given up on the mall we made a jump for the warehouse roof, first my friend, then I. The gap was four, five foot, at least. Across, we waited a little longer, although it was starting to drizzle. Once we were definitely sure the coast was clear we, my friend found a sturdy looking drainpipe, also thankfully made of metal, not plastic, to climb down (which was a heart stopper, I tell you).

Once down we bid each other salaam aleikum and goodbye, and I never saw him again.
I got home about half two, shut all the curtains and double locked all the doors and went to bed. I eventually managed some sleep. Half six, Gary got back. He was banging on the door. Of course, I'd double locked it. I had to get dressed. I eventually ushered him in. I was expecting a rant, the first thing he said to me was, “you won’t believe what’s going on out there”.

Of course these were the riots going on, kids with their bottles and barricades. It was hard to credit. I wouldn’t believe it. He felt had to show me. We went to have a look. I say it now like it’s strange. I didn’t want to get involved but it was, I don’t know, intoxicating, I supposed, exciting.

We wandered through the crowd a bit, fell back when the police charged and crept forward with everyone else when they retreated. By sort of nine, ten o’clock (I’m not quite sure, now) there was a lull. Gary and I, we followed another group over to Wood Green. The bus garage appeared to be busy; there was a huge crowd outside. In fact the bus drivers had parked up and walked out, although some of them, we were told, drove out with crowds of kids on board, looking for police to fight.

It seemed a bit chaotic, at least to my eyes. There looked to be some people in charge, some kids, some older people, a few of the bus drivers, sort of a coalition of… I don’t know what. I wasn’t obvious what was happening; just some people seemed to be talking louder than others. There were conversations and arguments going on all over the place. I tried to listen in.

Then we both got handed these flags, they looked to be trade union flags and were told to get marching. So we did, about 5-6-700 of us. We went down the hill to the overpass by the old shopping centre (I heard later a bit worse the wear for having been ‘looted’). There was a police roadblock. There must have been at least six or seven vans, about a dozen cars and enough officers to fill them... and we were going to meet them. Great!

About half of us had flags of some sort, I’m sure the rest had either bricks or bottles (they were kept well hidden). There were all sorts of flags, trade union, socialist, Muslim; I saw a couple of rainbow flags, a Jamaican flag, Venezuelan, Bolivian, even an Aymaran one. There were a few megaphones, and lots of chants, none of which we really recognised at the time.

As we approached the police line I remember being incredibly nervous. They looked just like the police I’d seen earlier; eager to get down and nasty. We were walking at an even pace when there was a huge rush behind. What looked like a flying wedge, came bowling through, people in masks charging. They’d whipped off their flags to reveal all sorts of weapons. I saw snooker cues, baseball bats, lead piping, table legs and all sorts. They careered directly into the police line. The officers must have been caught off guard because they broke ranks immediately. A few, I’m sure, retreated to their cars. A volley of bricks and bottles then followed the flying wedge. The police began to retreat slowly, and then briskly, there simply weren’t enough of them to hold us; they weren’t riot police, they were too lightly armed. They kept creeping. After a while they simply turned their backs to run. They even left some of their cars behind. Some tried to keep up, but our group ended up getting dangerously stretched. Some wanted to follow all the way but the loud talkers started gathering us in.

What a strange moment. I hadn’t a clue what had just happened, but I couldn’t help feeling elated. People cheered and danced, hugged each other like friends. People didn’t want to go home after that. But there seemed like nothing else left to do.
It was six in the morning when the police came crashing through our door. I was stunned, at first by being yanked out of bed and kicked in the kidneys (which I felt for days afterwards). But then I had a semi-automatic rifle pointed in my face. Both Gary and I were cuffed and bundled down the stairs and out the flat, pushed and knocked all the way. Gary almost lost the sight in one eye after being slammed into a doorframe.

Shocked, numb as I was, after we were thrown into the back of a van I can remember thinking, almost aloud, mouthing how could they have found us? There were a couple of other people in the back. In between the homophobic abuse, one of the officers said we’d been taken off the Domestic Extremist list. Gary had been to anti-war rallies back when we were at college.

I had no idea where they were taking us. Eventually we arrived at this police station, the back of the station. Gary and I were put in separate cells. I was in with three other people. There was a university student, a schoolteacher and an elderly looking caretaker. The place was noisy as anything to begin with, lots of yelling and banging, like the shopping centre. There’d been a number of people arrested. The noise would quiet down for a while, but the bedlam would start up again with each fresh batch of arrests.

All morning the cells were filled up. In ours I remember we had two more students, a taxi driver, a roofer and a postie join. It was cold outside, but I remember the room getting very hot, muggy. Every once in a while the officers would check up on us, peep though the little slat. Some in the cell would give a little sass back. One of the students demanded water to drink, the door opened and she got a bottle chucked in her face.

Despite this morale, I felt, was high. There was no earthly reason, at least none I could think of, why we’d be released. Nonetheless we were comrades. We were, in the best sense, all in this together. Each new prisoner was an update on what was going on outside. What was going on? None of us could really get our heads round it. Revolution seemed too far-fetched.

It got to the stage were some of us were getting tired. The lights had gone out. I guessed it was night. It felt like night time.

It had been several hours since our last visit and the building was generally quiet when a faint but clear commotion began building outside. We heard running, shouting, doors breaking open, one after the other. Our door was then flung wide. I saw three young women, one with a battery torch and the others with crowbars. The one with torch said:

“C’mon, we’re getting you all out”.

Future Legend - Chapter 1: Simon - Fascists

2011-04-19T12:07:00.000-07:00

For a while I was one of the nazis' top ten targets, number seven, I think was my best chart position. I can at least look back with a smile but it was a matter of life and death.

I was a member of an anti-fascist group, our branch, union branch was affiliated, and I kind of drew the short straw; I was the official delegate to meetings. This was back in the day, times when the far-right was beginning to come together. They were on the streets, sometimes lurking outside meetings. Trade Unionists were their number one target, after Muslims. We were the enemy within, and while we weren't outlawed, strikes more or less were. You took life and limb into your own hands going out on a picket line. But more often you had no choice but to be there.

I worked in the civil service, in the dole offices. We were quite well organised in our branch, North London. We had to be. We were in the front line of the austerity drive. There was an endless struggle over the targets.

Staff were expected to drive certain numbers of people off the unemployment roll, at least that's what the management wanted. Bullshit, of course. DWP staff did a demoralising job as it is, we were never that popular with claimants. But the targets weren't just about making vulnerable people destitute. I'd been in the union for years, branch rep for far too long. Once word got out, members of staff who joined the union were quite swiftly 'assessed', usually given some absurd target, impossible to get without trampling over claimants, that or tripping up themselves and getting a disciplinary warning.

We were forever fighting closures, lay-offs and disciplinaries. There were never enough ballots. But we pushed. We kept at them, all the time... and it began to pay off. Civil servants never had what's called sectional strength. Four hundred train drivers on strike could bring the city to the stand still. The same number of civil servants out does make a scrap of difference, really, not to most people's lives. We took any chance we could to synchronise our strikes with other unions, but that was all too rare.

The breakthrough came from a rather unexpected source; the Plug Riots. It happened in the Home Office, almost legend now; I only know the rough details. There was a staff meeting, senior managers were there, some say the Secretary himself. There was some disagreement, I guess something was announced as staff policy, which really got up people's noses. There was a moment, a racist epithet aimed at a Muslim member of staff, which resulted in a wildcat, only about thirty or forty or so but, instead of just walking out (and possibly never coming back) they all took their passkeys and computer plugs with them.

They caused a right old scene and threw a big old spanner in the works, no one in the office could do scab work to cover for them, but they were still in deep. Strictly speaking they'd just committed common theft. They had the good sense to head off to an number of government departments where there were ongoing disputes, and brought people out on the same basis. This went on for four hours before the police got involved, by which stage civilian staff at New Scotland Yard were protesting in support. This was the beginning of the Flying Bureaucrats.

All that effort put in over the years, shepherding your union branch, taking case work, fighting for ballots, fighting to get them returned, ringing round for pickets, convening with other branches, other unions, finally began to pay off, but not in the way we would have expected. The original Flying Bureaucrats won, hands down (despite the police trying to kettle a bunch of them near St James tube station – the local RMT branch threatened to shut down the Piccadilly Line if they did), the offending manager was suspended. This became the thing for unions with long term grievances to do, walk out, quickly, and start knitting together with other disputes in other workplaces; spread the havoc, even if you only started small fires elsewhere, it would be enough for your boss to agree to settle.

There were court cases, attempted suits for secondary picketing, but the idea was spreading very quickly. The only case that ever made it to court, a group of bus drivers in Holloway launched a wildcat against the summary dismissal of their rep, which ended up taking over Archway Tower, a Waitrose depot and the part of the Northern Line. The rep was summoned personally to account for the strike. He repudiated it in the dock (although he was happy to have his job back) and got all 127 members of the union branch to testify that he did so in public.

This was where the police stepped in. It was reckoned you usually had between an hour to and hour and a half to spread the strike. If you moved to directly picket a place, before long the police would try to detain you. If they felt they couldn't make secondary action stick they'd go for the Emergency Enabling Act, they would try to carry away anyone showing flu symptoms. If that happened they'd try to break up the crowd as a health risk. It was wise to back off, scatter and reconvene elsewhere.

Meanwhile, if you had been sharp, you'd have already been on the phone to someone in your target branch. One time we were with a group of nurses and support staff from North Middlesex Hospital, they'd brought us out and now we were off, a delegation, trying to get to the Wood Green bus depot. Twenty to thirty of us, walking along the pavement, briskly, all of a sudden there was screeching and sirens. Almost there, top of the hill, at the little crossroads that turns off toward Bounds Green, six riot vans pulled up, cops piled out, and had us surrounded. They did the usual where're you going, what're you doing, who are your leaders thing. It was about even numbers, although they were tooled up and had the law on their side. We all played for time. A scene was developing, lots of onlookers. I reckoned the cops didn't want to be seen laying into nurses. I leant my phone to one of the lead nurses so she could speak to guys at the garage. Not five minutes later two buses pulled up, Not In Service. The cavalry arrived, three dozen drivers got off and surrounded the police line. Some of the onlookers got involved at this point. How do you say? The kettlers were now kettled.

There got to the stage when the police just couldn't contains these kinds of walkouts. They were coming to breaking point. This is when the fascists came on the scene. They were, how shall we say, offering their services to the police, to the state for a while. A few months before the unrest, the real unrest started, they were still mostly Dole Bashing and trying to launch the odd race riot (I had to carry the branch banner a one time at a counter-march in Barking).

The first time I was aware of them coming for us was hearing about a meeting in Brighton, an anti cuts meeting if I recall, being attacked. There were plenty of people at it, about 30 to 40 thugs came along, determined to wreck up the place. No one was expecting this. The thugs got to the meeting room door before the were finally held off. The next day I was at a lobby of Parliament, huh. Early morning, there was about two dozen of us from our union branch gathered in College Green, the police were waiting for us at Parliament Gate. Without warning these guys bowled round the corner from Millbank, started yelling and throwing stuff. A couple of people I know started to run. Luckily a few more of us cottoned on what was happening: hold your ground! We did and, eventually, the police arrived. There was a moment when I was very worried. The fascists clearly hadn't expected us to be there, perhaps in the number we were, otherwise I think they would have attacked. It was about nine thirty in the morning. You could smell them, six to eight foot away, they were drunk.

They really got dangerous when they started teaming up with the police. I think it was a two way process, the police and the nazis were separate, but gradually merged. It was like the description I heard of the Battle of Russell Square. The fascists were always in the front line, sometimes with police equipment, batons and such, the police held the fall back position (although some of them joined the charge).

I remember someone at work telling me I was on a hit list, this was days before the Edmonton thing. One of the line managers came up to me in a quiet moment, one of the few we had, and told me all about this website they were organising through. He told the the address and everything, said I should watch my back. I laughed it off (I should of asked him what he was doing looking at nazi websites).

Later that day I heard a rumble downstairs. It sounded like another load of Dole Bashers had shown up. We followed procedure and dropped everything. The job was to secure the queue, then the building. But these guys were not trying to start a fight in the queue, they were on the inside, throwing their weight about. I arrived with a group at the bottom of the stairs. There was a stand off. The thugs were by the phone booths, making lots bad noise and threatening people, there was about fifteen of them. There were staff, claimants and security guards gathered by the desks.

There was nothing between us and the fascists. One of the thugs noticed me, said something like “it's him”, pointing at me. Then they charged. For a moment, a fraction of a second it was just strange, like it wasn't really happening. I remember it now in slow motion. A friend of mine, a comrade from the union then grabbed me, tried to get me away from the ruck, through the door, back up the stairs. You have to remember, in moments like these, as with before, most anti-fascist confrontation is not glamorous combat, it just means you stick to your guns, hold your ground. I couldn't have got upstairs, the moment after my friend grabbed me I got a punch to the side of the head, which must have hurt the gentleman swinging. I am so glad I turned round and threw a punch back. I wasn't Muhammad Ali by a long shot, but I got my attacker on the nose. He fell back, holding his hooter.

There was a lot of grabbing and kicking. Some of the security guards, staff and even so claimants piled in. It was lucky there were no knives, very lucky, someone could have been killed easily. In the end we got them out the door.

Future Legend - Chapter 1: Ben - unemployment

2011-04-17T10:30:00.000-07:00

I was there. I saw it happen… I knew it would, eventually… Everybody thought so… everybody who thought, thought so.

I used to be a computer programmer, one of the safest jobs there was. I was supposed to be an engineer. I graduated with a degree in engineering. Of course there was the debt to deal with, huge debt. So I took this job working at a City Firm. I’m not proud of it. It was part of, it was in the Canary Wharf complex. I started there as a temp.

I remember, a couple of weeks after I started my partner and I were invited to a barbecue with friends. People asked about my new job, where it was, what I was doing and so on; which was all in hand, but what did the company do? I realised sort of then that I... didn’t really know. It wasn’t apparent and I’d never stopped to ask.

It turned out it was a financial agency. It specialised in converting debt into special what they called packages, then selling them on to investment firms. Companies, actual productive companies, got to spread their risk while the investment firms were able to diversify their portfolios, buying in. It all worked fine so long as everybody paid up what they owed. Except, of course we know now, it was a game of pass the parcel… or really it was musical chairs...?

My job was quite safe, I thought, indispensable. Everyone in the office used quite high-end computer programmes, the latest equipment, but no one knew how these packages worked, how the hardware worked. I did and so I was always in demand. But, of course, the company went broke.

It was just before the stock market crashed. No one, none of us, the regular drones had any idea what was going on until a few weeks before. Usually the Directors were not seen round the building. Toward the end they started coming in more and more, making long and sometimes… fraught sounding calls from their office; you could hear them out in the cubicles. There was a parent company in New York, a sister company in Frankfurt. By the end management, the Directors were in the office, on the phone almost daily.

It turned out the company was running itself on finance too. The Directors had been borrowing money to cover running costs, including our wages. Debts mounted while the credit rating began to sink. Credit, the life support, was eventually turned off and, hey presto, the company dropped dead, like that. I still haven’t been paid my final month’s wages. Ha!

So, I was one of the first to be laid off in the great wave of unemployment. I didn’t deserve it. I know that. But I suppose in a way can’t help feeling I did. I'm an engineer, trained engineer, but I didn’t dedicate myself to anything particularly useful. At least, I couldn’t say the people I worked for added anything to society.

There were a few nice people at work, pleasant folk, but I hated the general atmosphere there. The way senior staff would talk about people, about life in general was terrible. Sexist, racist and homophobic. To them everybody who wasn’t a city boy was just useless scum.

Lots of people went along with it, laughed at their bosses’ jokes. I tried to keep my head down, tried not to stand out, but in that environment, that company it was difficult . I remembered, on my first day signing on, how the managers and directors used to talk about dole scroungers, like they were filth to be washed away. I thought of myself as a liberal guy, but I know I used to cuss them sometimes. But, waiting to see my advisor, I sat and looked around and was surprised to see how young and, you know, normal looking a lot of the claimants were. They looked like interns, office juniors, smart young people, like the graduates who come to London for work, the kind who passed through the old office all the time.

I did work again after being laid off. I managed to find a few months temping here and there, as well as some cash-in-hand stuff, delivering news papers. I spent one summer, the last summer before it all kicked off, as an Exam Invigilator. It was seasonal and the hours weren't great. They cut off our housing benefit because of the job. We, Gary and I, we ended up almost back where we started. I was a Trading Inspector for a while after that, until that job was cut.

Our job, apparently, was to clamp down on all this illegal trading going on, black markets springing up. There were strikes, although strikes were officially banned. They were rumbustious affairs, street fighting all the time. It wasn't so much the police as the vigilante squads, far right groups who liked to attack pickets. They used to hang around unemployment offices sometimes, seeing if they could recruit. I know Gary was approached once, he told them to fuck off; I'm so proud! There was also loads of closures, public spaces being shut down, because of the flu going round.

Such dislocation meant food and fuel became scarce, even scarcer, more scarce when hoarding took off. Shortly before the great unrest the government tried to enforce rationing. Police were dispatched to supermarkets, when they were open. According to some witnesses, people I know, friends of mine, troops were sent to protect warehouses. A black market sprung up in supermarket goods. The rumour was a particular supermarket chain went into alliance with several of London’s gangs, never confirmed, mind you.

With the black market typically a convoy of lorries and vans would descend on a public area, a square or major and close off the road. For the next couple of hours there would be a rush of people desperate to buy before the market closed up. The scene was popular, despite usually being monitored by gangs of men carrying bats and knives. Us Trading Inspectors, we were expected to pose as customers, gather evidence and so forth before bringing in the police. No one tried that hard, these gangsters were armed to the teeth. A few inspectors, I know, got stomped, some disappeared. Even then no market was ever shut down by the police.

This was nothing like the good old days though, working. I had to make frequent trips to the job centre.

In the beginning it was fairly normal, signing on. As the illness, the virus set in, the flu got passed round, life seemed to change. The rules were changed too so, you used to come in once a fortnight to get your book stamped, now you had to come twice a week. There weren't any new staff laid on or centres opened (I know, I kept checking to see if there were any DWP vacancies). That's when the queues began to form.

Then it got round that dole offices were breeding grounds, exchange and mart for the flu. The face masks came in, you had to wear those, you couldn't sign on without them. Then came the random searches, they called them health checks. I remember more than once people being whisked off the streets or getting yanked out the queue.

After about a month before the terminal crisis, you saw the agencies and gang masters coming down to dole offices, bold as anything. They started picking people out the queues and offering day work on great rates. A few people who went with them actually got work. Often it was down one of those black markets, the touring markets. A lot more simply got mugged or had their wages lifted. You knew this, everyone knew this, but there were a lot of desperate people.

The gang masters arriving would always cause chaos and bad noise. But, again, the police did nothing. I remember getting very confused and upset by this. The first time I saw this I tried to remonstrate with a nearby officer, plead for him to intervene in a fight. He told me to go away, I asked again and threatened to have me arrested. The gang masters were usually quite well dressed. Sometimes if a guy or a group of guys happened to walk past, and they looked like a recruiter, groups would head off after him, begging; if he was on his own crowd would sometimes get threatening.

The other type of person you’d get was the rich kids, students, city folk and the like. There was a lot of anger and fear put about then. The papers were full of stories about the great unwashed, scroungers and mobs… draining the system. Groups of these kids would come down to dole queues, GP offices and second hand stores anywhere where they’d likely find poor, sick people, and start throwing their weight around. I only saw it happen once. That was the time it kicked off.

It was a Wednesday. I was due to sign. A group a gaggle of student-types (one of them I recognised had a UCL rugby top on) came down to the queue. They didn’t have facemasks on, the kids, which was illegal by that point. Officially you had to wear them outdoors, in public spaces at all times. Generally though you wore it round you neck until you saw a police officer and then it was up quick.

The kids went up and down the queue. They said were looking for two people to clean their house. One of them, the leader it seemed, had a wedge of cash, which he waived about. He went up to a few people in the queue, usually Black or Asian and, no word of a lie, he started 'recruiting', putting fivers in their pocket.

No one wanted to take up the offer, it seemed. There was a bit of pushing and some staring down between people, tension but no violence. There was a bit of cursing and swearing from the kids before they gave up and started to walk off.

Someone then broke from the line. I turned to see. Three lads, Asian lads, only teenagers, went running off after the students. The students weren’t interested though, pushed them away and kept on walking. A few more people followed after them. Pretty soon the students were surrounded with people begging, they couldn’t escape. I turned away for a moment but then heard what sounded like one of the students yell, “f-off you f-ing p-s”, something like that. I turned away, another scrap, keep your head down, I remember thinking; I shouldn't have.

There was a scuffle and a yell. I looked up again. I could see one of the Asian lads had fallen to the floor, clutching his chest. The students were running off, heading down the road at top speed. The poor boy had been stabbed. Pretty much the whole queue ran over to help. Some chased off after the students.

About twenty seconds later half a dozen police cars and I think at least one van pulled up, officers started pouring out, arresting people in the crowd.

That’s how it started.

Future Legend - chapter 1 - Anna: Flu.

2011-04-15T06:08:00.000-07:00

My name is Anna Engelmann, I am a survivor. Two thirds of the population, the population of the Earth contracted this strain of flu. One in ten who caught it died. Being a nurse I saw more than my fair share of deaths.

People die from influenza all the time. At least in our society you got used to it mostly being a nasty bug, but if you're in anyway weakened you're vulnerable. Old people, toddlers, school kids; my brother, he's asthmatic, he nearly bought it.

There are new waves of flu all the time. I've worked twenty-five years in the NHS, we had dozens of outbreaks in that time. The difference between normal outbreaks and the big ones, the ones people remember... it's not just how virulent they are but how vulnerable people are. The last truly devastating outbreak was in the winter of 1918. In Europe at least, people had been through four years of total war, they were sick, malnourished and badly housed. Conditions were not the same but similar when Chicken Flu broke out.

It really happened in the winter before the great unrest. There was the ongoing effect of the austerity programme, unemployment, inflation, a housing crisis. We were in work, my husband and I, but in our house it was difficult to get by, with the cost of everything going up all the time. We took on a lodger, a young student lad, to make things stretch further.

It was January-time, I remember, our student came down with this new flu, Chicken Flu. He had to go to hospital. Until that point the illness had been striking the oldest hardest. That was it started hitting the headlines, and when we got our first load of circulars from upper management, do this, do that, always wash your hands (which we always did anyway).

The government though was more calm, blasé perhaps. They wanted everyone to be calm. They only budgeted for extra staff vaccines. I guess with the NHS exec they wanted to cover their arses, the government meanwhile was just blowing it with everybody, taking on everyone at once. My husband was on strike a lot, DWP, they called them the bowler pickets. So the word from the government the flu would die off over the summer, everything was going to be all right.

Everything wasn't all right, cases (and fatalities) went up over spring and summer. It was big news. I remember getting doorstepped by a journalist who was hanging round on a shift change. He wanted to know if we feared for our lives, were there any gruesome deaths being hidden, did we back the government or the management? That kind of rubbish.

Getting on toward university term time there was a panic about all these student congregating in university. That was when the government passed the emergency law about public buildings, the Emergency Enabling and Containment Act. I remember it was passed through Parliament in three days. Chief provisions were to enable local authorities to close down ‘infected public spaces’, extend stop and search, and close what was called loopholes in patients' rights. The pub we used to go to after shift was closed down under this new law, and two local cafes.

There was also this thing about unemployment offices. A lot of the old offices were closed down, 'consolidated' they called it. Claimants were required to sign on twice a week. I saw where my husband worked, North London. It had 125,000 people going through the doors. It was automated a bank branch.

But the illness kept progressing. More and more people succumbed, even famous people; two well known musicians, a TV presenter, half the cast of a well known musical, the Deputy Mayor, the Prince of Wales, even the Prime Minister’s wife. It was funny, funny strange, watching this happen. I was only inoculated once. We were supposed to have got a second jab after the disease officially mutated, but it never arrived. Simon, my husband missed out on it too, it passed him by for months.

The government rocked up with more measures. October, another bill was rushed through parliament. The disease was made illegal. More exactly, it was made illegal to have the disease. Special ‘measures’ were put in place.

Any home or private building found to have hosted the disease could now be immediately quarantined, along with anyone inside. Masks were made compulsory. Major social events were cancelled. Gangs of masked police officers were sent into the streets. They were given unlimited power to stop and search. We even had them charging about the hospital. They were very difficult to hold back. We had a two hour wildcat in our hospital when these gentlemen turned up, a surprise visit, wanting to examine our patients.

Anyone showing any symptoms would be taken off to special... centres. Any registered carriers (all carriers were required to register with a central database) found in the streets would be arrested.

I will admit a lot of the hospitals were finding it difficult to cope with the flow of fresh patients. The government opened new, what they called, treatment centres. I saw pictures of them, pre-fabricated buildings set up in out of the way places, old industrial estates, parks, fields often on the edge of town. But I know from the staff that were called up (that's what it was called) that very little treatment went on in these centres, and it seemed difficult to get out once you had recovered. There was a minor scandal when a junior minister was asked about the treatment centres in a radio interview, and referred to them as containment centres; it was a slip of the tongue.

The whole atmosphere was getting crazy, like collective hysteria. I think that contributed to the eventual unrest. People just can't live at that pitch of madness, constantly. There were soldiers out patrolling. I saw them. No mention of when they were 'called up'. It was usually round the poorer areas.

There were loads of stories, horror stories. One I remember: One junior school came back from a three-day trip to France to find half of their parents had been taken into protective quarantine. Those with infected families were sent to a treatment centre. The rest were allowed to sleep in the school under armed guard until they could be examined.

Simon told me a friend of his working on the buses was stopped by the police and, literally, yanked off the bus mid-route and charged with reckless endangerment, that's what it was called. The company had been carrying out health checks. A whole bunch of people had been suspended. It just happened that they were all union members.

A neighbour of ours, Mr Petersen, lost his wife. Her funeral was 'made sterile', she was basically buried in secret. He was sent a video of her funeral.

Future Legend - introduction - Ben goes underground

2011-04-14T03:34:00.000-07:00

People are afraid of the Dead Zones still. It's a name, a name that stuck, 'dead zone', which is half the trouble. They're not safe places, derelict zones, abandoned or destroyed. Being a recovery agent, a womble, I have to go to the Dead Zones. There's so much in these, these places that's valuable, usable. Raw material extraction is still fitful; things like coal, oil, copper, iron, sand, even salt is difficult to get hold of. We have to reuse and recover what we have.

The area around Whitehall and Parliament is, was the most notorious. I suppose, when you take into account the destruction on the South Bank, Southwark flooded out, it's a formidable obstacle in the middle of London. But, for some reason, the Whitehall Dead Zone got this reputation. There is still a pack of dogs there no one seems to be able to get rid of, although I think they're fairly harmless. For us Wombles they're an occupational hazard. Dogs, I find, are more interested in scavenging food than anything else. They're scared of rifles, even wave a club at them, an old baseball bat and most will back off.

Whitehall was an almost insurmountable wreck. It was destroyed in the Great Fire. There were a few bombs which did not go off. They still do, occasionally. We've not found them all, I'm sure. If we do go to the centre it's in daylight and we tread carefully.

I remember there used some awful strange noises coming from the site. We were assigned to Whitehall, I remember, a two week job, looking for all items (although paper was a priority). We'd work the day, clear out at dusk and pack up what we'd found to the nearest depot. My team stayed a lot in a recovered hotel just off Piccadilly Circus. The city would be settling down for the night, all the weird noises, strange sounds would come out for the night. You never used to notice it, before, what with all the traffic, passers by, TV, radio, insulation and so on. In this cocoon of sound you'd miss what was really going down.

Gary and I are both light sleepers. I remember waking up in the middle of the night, a few nights, I could hear outside the hum of electric power lines, water flowing through the drains, especially if it was raining, footsteps, single footsteps, and conversation, usually the militia on patrol. But every once in a while there'd be a howl or a scream or a crash, something awful. This was common. You'd get rumours flying about, a friend of a friend told me, a story which became a myth which became a solid fact.

Even after the fall of the Bishop you get idiots broadcasting, supposed loyalists still out there. They made the most of this mystery. Often they'd claim there was a government in waiting, hiding underground, waiting for the right moment to appear. Others claimed it was a torture chamber, a special prison held by the Commune. I know one teacher told me their kids passed around tales of the Whitehall Monster, sometimes it was a ghost, sometimes a bogeyman, lying in wait for the unsuspecting to pass; ready to pounce.

They mystery was solved by accident, or by an accident. We'd found a new room in the old Cabinet Office and sent pair of Explorers, guys specially trained (such as anyone's trained) to check out rooms in a potentially unstable building. I wasn't there at the time but, apparently, they'd checked the whole room out, it didn't seem booby trapped, when one of them slipped and fell, causing that whole section to cave in.

The poor chap died, the other shattered his a leg and punctured his left lung, but in the process they'd stumbled upon the first passage under Whitehall. Small comfort that this was a breakthrough we'd been looking for a long time. We knew these tunnels existed. Many surmised the government, the old government, may have plenty of important secrets down there. The only evidence of the tunnels we had until that point was two doors, huge big, bolted, five foot, steel affairs, one near Embankment tube station, the other in the basement of Buckingham Palace.

Rescuing the survivor took several careful hours. My team was given the job of clearing the area, stabilising the building so it could be explored. When it was done I noticed the floor in the tunnel was damp. There was no leak, it was the rising water table. The area we'd found was a corridor, narrow and a little over six foot tall. I was a close fit. The passage was about twenty yards long, at either end two were more sealed doors. They were rusty, easy to deal with.

We spent two days under there, exploring these caves. Some were lit, some were not. Some were damp, some were dry. We found lots of old government artefacts, some which shed light on the whole situation, the crisis as it developed. The underground avenues would echo... the noise was back, we had a job to do, but the noise was back, this crashing howl.

We broke into this room, this huge room. It was almost completely dark, a little light sieving in from some point across the room. You could just about make out some shapes, but the echo that was going round, it was a huge place, like a small arena. There was all sorts of bric-a-brac lying around, lots of tables, electrical equipment patches of puddles (we had to be careful), stacks of paper and fold out chairs I remember. We stepped in carefully. We were going to bring in the explorers, but then there was this fast scampering. Someone or something was inside with us. We had to find it, quickly. Torchlight scampering around.

There was a moment, we were all searching round, what was it. There was a loud wallop and a screech, this thing was attacking one of our number; panic, utter pandemonium. I'm so glad no one tried to shoot this thing. Horrific, blur of limbs, flash of teeth and that screech. We had to get it off our guy, trying to grab, trying hold it down (it was human shaped) and bludgeon it with bat. I ended up doing the holding. I was terrified.

It turned out it, the thing was a scrawny old chimp, another refugee gone wild. It shit itself, literally, when we suddenly arrived. We were under the ICA in an old bomb shelter. The little guy had got in through a crack in the basement and couldn't find his way out. Now it was dead. We all felt a little bit dead too.

Three Fingers

2011-04-14T03:31:00.000-07:00

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Future Legend (3rd draft) - introduction: Lilly and the Deer

2011-04-12T04:43:00.000-07:00

Hunting has become a major part of our lives. So much has changed recently you can forget something as simple as tracking and killing a wild animal is actually not so simple. I learned it, I suppose, a little bit from my Dad. He's a shepherd now, that's one of his jobs. You have to be handy with some sort of weapon if you're a shepherd. But I learned it, properly, at the university... and now I'm teaching.

We have a little outpost in Richmond Park, I can't tell you where as it's a special scientific site. There's a hut, a hide, fences, bushes a pond, and a little observatory where the astronomy course does its thing. I take people out there to train them. I've seen all sorts of animals. It's amazing how life has sprung up, just revived, revived since everything changed. When I take students tracking we get through a fair amount of botany too.

Sometimes hunting is a pest removal service. If there's a cloud of feral cats, packs of dogs giving trouble we'll be asked to deal with them. Feral predators are a menace, people have been killed by dog packs. We usually have to be quite crude, quite direct; traps, nets and so on. There are people, I know, who are working to domesticate the old pets again. There's grain to store, for example. It's an absolute bugger trying to keep your grain mouse free. A lot of the times though ferals are beyond taming. It seems sick but sometimes meat is meat.

The most common animal to hunt for meat is the boar, they're quite noisy and leave quite a trail, lots of mess. Piggy gives good crackling but the real prize is deer. It's so rare to see one, let alone catch one. If you can you can feed a family for a month, plus the pelt is excellent. You can never trap a deer, they are too sharp. Deer have to be killed.

I have only seen one, once. I was taking a group of five, an advanced class out to see what they could pick up. I train students with compound bows and crossbows. Of course there are rifles and all the rest of it, but good ammo and supplies are not so regular; besides, if you miss with a rife every animal in a half mile round you scatters. It's good to learn the hard way, and the hardest part is finding an animal before it finds you. You have to learn to spot footprints, see different kinds of dung. You can tell what's around by the urine you find, if you've got the nose for it. Then, of course, if you make visual contact you have to follow your animal, carefully but quickly. It can be hours before you get in a position to kill.

So, it was early afternoon. We were walking along the South Bank, making our way to Richmond Park. The area wasn't deemed structurally safe. It's one of the last real Dead Zones. I had a special permit so thought we'd explore. We were in some bombed out buildings, open to the sky, looking over some of the weeds and grasses growing there, one of my students had just found some rare edible fungi eating into some wrecked timber when there was a sharp clash. I looked up, we all looked up and there he was, almost directly in the sun, the silhouette of a deer, huge antlers.

There was a long pause, everything seemed frozen in time, until one the students lunged for a crossbow shot; they weren't even close. We tried to follow but the last time we saw him, the deer, was half a mile away charging over Westminster Bridge, north toward the ruins in Whitehall.

Sorry, We're Open...

2011-04-06T09:28:00.000-07:00

The most corrupt place I ever worked was a corner shop. I was twenty, at college. It was the time when student loans came in, means tested. Mum and Dad earned slightly too much money the previous year and my living loan was drastically slashed. I had to find a job.

There was part-time work going at the shop up the road, a chain shop. A house mate already had a job there. They recommended me to one of the managers. They (the manager) said:

“Yeah, bring him in”.

My interview consisted of:

“When can you work?”

I told him my class times. At that point I only had lectures on Monday and Friday, a strange timetable. “Tuesday and Wednesday would be best”, I said.

“When can you start”

We agreed I would start next Tuesday. A few minutes later I was on the payroll (my shifts soon changed, mind you).

An aside: there's nothing like working in a customer service roll to develop a fine contempt for humanity.

The number of drunks we had, friendly, unfriendly, clumsy was just impossible. Although shop slap bang in the middle of the student district I suppose it was inevitable. Everything needs to be explained to a drunk, again and again. Do you do cash back? No. Why? Because it isn't company policy? But... why? Because it isn't... and so forth.

Then there were the blaggers. For example: the kind of people who want their can of lager for 55 pence. Why? Because it says 55 pence on the label beneath one row (of six) of lager cans. It also says 55 pence for cans of a famous soft drink, which coincidentally happen to be stacked next to the lager. Meanwhile, there is a another clearly market label stating the price of the lager. But that doesn't stop the pointless argument. Another example: We kept deodorant behind the counter. I was dealing with a fairly busy queue. A woman barged toward the front of the queue, loudly but without shouting:

“My husband wants to try that deodorant”, she said, pointing. The husband meanwhile is pacing up and down outside the shop.

“He has to buy it first”.

“But he wants to try it out before...”

“Madam, please could you... I have a queue of people to deal with...”

So, while I'm trying to deal with the queue she hangs around, going, please, please, please and so forth, getting in the way, getting on my nerves. While bagging up an absurdly large order I give in:

“Here”. I reach back and bring forward a can of deodorant, not the one she was pointing at, and bang it on the counter.

“Thanks” said the Woman, at least she was polite. “C'mere”, she gestured to her man. He came over. She lifted his arms up, one by one, squirt, squirt. She dropped the can on the floor. They both ran.

Before I get too carried away with my cavalcade of hate I must mention one last group, the thieves. The shop was on the corner of a set of major crossroads in town. Diagonally opposite to my work was was a well known drugs den and safe house. The week before I started one of the managers had a bright idea, a money saving idea. They worked out how much cheaper it would be to remove the security guard and install CCTV.

The local street rats sniffed out this weakness quickly, soon targeting the shop. They'd casually walk in, grab a load of stuff, usually out the freezer at the far end of the shop, away from the tills, a stroll out. There were many reasons why we, the staff there, didn't care. But the Rat Boys got more an more cocky, grabbing more and more stuff, sneering at us. I tried calling the police once. I showed an officer the footage we had of a lad walking out with half a dozen frozen twelve inch pizzas. It turned out the company was skimping on cameras too. All we had to show badly pixellated footage. Only every four seconds was actually recorded. It was useless, a frame of an uncertain block figure standing over the freezer, the next frame was a blur reaching deep inside, the next showed the uncertain figure with an indeterminate bulge under his sport jacket (1).

That said, we had one fortnight of blatant thievery ourselves. It was all in a good cause, mind you. These were the days when you were paid weekly, at least we were paid weekly here. One an a half weeks into the month it was dropped on us that we'd only be paid monthly, starting now. This was tough on a lot of staff, hard for me because I was coming to the end of my semester loan. There were a few nights, before locking up, where the afternoon-evening shift turned off the useless CCTV and took what it needed from the shelves, what it would have bought with the money it would have been due.

The source of the corruption was simple and clear. The shop was a 24 hour service. It had three managers, each of whom was supposed to take one eight hour shift. They all clubbed together, agreeing to only do one shift together, 7am-2pm. They'd file fake reports, write up fake accounts and see how long they could stick the toboggan ride. Because of the way staffing went, they didn't even have to lock up. I frequently ended up with the keys to the building going home.

Because pretty much every report, every scrap of paper accounting for what went on there was bollocks unbound, everything was up for grabs. Everyone else, other than the managers, was on minimum wage. The float was regularly raided. Who'd miss three quid here, four quid there, out of £150?

The most blatant robber was a manager's girlfriend. He was a funny looking, hairy Australian, she was a pudgy girl who claimed to be nineteen, everyone I knew thought she was younger, dangerously borderline. She'd drop in occasionally, always with a good reason, forgotten keys, A to Z, that sort of stuff, and come out again with sixty, seventy, eighty, sometimes ninety quid in her pocket. It came to a head on an Easter Weekend when the shop had to close after too many people turned up with too many twenty pound notes.

There also seemed to be a porn racket going on. It must have been one of the managers again. There was a regular order of porn magazines, daily. If they came in the afternoon one of us would have to sign for it, stick it out the back; there were no suitable shelves to sell this stuff. Week after week the pile would build up. I know it wasn't right but a few of us, if we were on tea break, would have a flick through the latest order. Most of it was boring, some of it was a giggle, some of it was quite disturbing. You wouldn't believe the number and variety of things people can masturbate with. The porn pile would build up and then suddenly disappear. Someone must have been selling it on. No one can surely wank that much.

But the strangest bit was working with a drug dealer, a nice guy, mostly, named Paul. He was a dealer/user, the latter part was most obvious. He loved dance music (2), this was back in day when we all had a future and dance music was It. He knew all the buzz words that everybody else had cottoned on to and liked to use them, he'd name check hot tracks, the in clubs, cool holiday venues. The fact that everybody knew them of course also meant they were overripe, deeply unfashionable. He used to clue us in on what was really going on in dance too, although with hindsight it could have been a load of bollocks, invented for his amusement.

I used to work afternoons into evenings. Paul would often be there, on shift. He was a short guy with violently bleached hair and tired skin. Thursday, Friday, Saturday he was energetic, capable, tireless and very good with the customers, who he loved to chat with:

“Oi-oi; extra large rizzlas, I know what you're up to, bro... No worries, mate. Keep it on the down low, eh?”

He'd keep this going, all the way into the night shift. This was his appeal with the management, he was the only member of staff they could get to work overnight. Monday, Tuesday, however, was a different story. Paul just seemed to sag, wane. Sometimes he'd miss a shift and one of us would have to take the keys home and unlock in the morning.

He was sacked and rehired three times while I worked there. The longest he ever spent out of the shop was five days. At least one of the managers would ask him back; there was no one else who would do the night shift. One of the times was after the Australian Guy found drug paraphernalia slimly hidden in the storeroom, scales, weights, droppers, bleach, really obvious stuff. Paul owned up to keeping them there. It was straight up. Two days later me and a few friends were walking back from a night out and found Paul wandering around the shop. The shutters were down and the lights low. Paul had some friends around, guys we'd never met before. They were all smoking and helping themselves to pastry leftovers. I went over to order something through the service flap, said all right, oi-oi, down low and all that gibberish, then got on my way.

It all came to an end one afternoon, and a strange afternoon it was. It was a wet day, getting on for winter, really raining hard. We weren't busy. Few customers came by. I put on my favourite radio station to pipe through the shop's PA system (instead of the management choice of Radio 2, Magic or Heart). I was on till duty for half an hour but hadn't seen anyone for nearly fifteen minutes. Outside was a grey figure, a small man, pacing up and down in front of the shop; baseball cap, old sports wear. It was Paul.

“Paul” I yelled, “what're you doing, come inside”.

He came inside, striding in a clear, odd manner. It was like he'd been waiting for the invite.

“What're you doing? Are you supposed to be on shift?”

Paul was shivering cold, his eyes were fearful, glassy. It didn't register at the time but I remember he had a small well of foam coming from the right side of his mouth.

“Have you got money?”

“I have, but I...”

“I need money”, Paul shot back immediately. He started hugging himself.

“We all need money” I said, with my best calm smile. I felt he was giving off some odd, uncomfortable vibe.

Paul snapped, “give me some money”, before adding, “please, I need...” He paused, sentence frozen, staring at something in front of him. Adding nothing more he walked back out again into the rain, still hugging himself. The lash was heavy and he soon disappeared.

Ten minutes later Paul was back. I had a small queue in front of me. Eleanor and I were clearly busy but Paul came bowling in behind the tills. I said:

“Excuse me, Paul, are you due on shift?” He was looking for something, peering under each desk (3). “Can I help you?” Paul stood up. He was very close. He tried to look me in the eye but couldn't focus. He wiped his brow and stepped back a bit, straight into Eleanor. He didn't apologise, instead he regained balance and focus:

“What time is it?”

There was a clock six inches above his head if he turned to look.

“It's half four, Paul”.

Not another word, he hopped over the desk, barged through a group of people waiting to be served, and ran out the building.

Another twenty minutes later things had quietened down again. I was on shelves, facing up some tins, when I got a tap on my shoulder. I was not expecting it at all and almost jumped out of my skin. It was Paul, looking very frightened. He reached forward, right hand, and gently clutched my shoulder. He whispered:

“What's my name?”

I remember feeling annoyed. I knocked his hand away. “What's going on, Paul?”

Paul took his hand to his chest and looked at it, held it like he'd been hurt. He looked up at me again, repeated, this time slightly louder, “what's my name?” I noticed the foam round his mouth now.

“Your name's Paul Jarrow... What's going on Paul...?”

A long pause while Paul fumbled first through his jacket pocket, then the pockets on his trousers. He finally found what he was looking for. He pulled out a plastic butter knife, looked at it for a moment.

“What's my name?”

“I think you better come with me” I said. I shouted down the end of the shop. “Eleanor, I'm just popping into back room for a while. Call me if you need me?” Eleanor nodded like she understood.

I took Paul to the kitchen/toilet area. I made two cups of tea while Paul washed his hands, that is to say ran his hands under a warm tap, while explaining to me that he'd robbed an old lady with a butter knife. I tried to keep him calm and find out why but just got nonsense about disappearing shadows and the sun's evil twin and some such. A few minutes later, there was a knock at the door to the shop. Paul, still washing his hands turned to face the door. He splashed water everywhere.

“It's the police” came a surprisingly gentle voice. It was Eleanor.

The door slid slowly open. The storeroom/kitchen/toilet area was dark. As the light filtered through there stood a policewoman, behind her Eleanor.

“Paul Jarrow?” the policewoman asked. She got no response but was in no doubt.

“Paul” said Eleanor, “it's time to go”.

With that Paul walked forward, hands in front, as if in a daze. The policewoman took him away. None of us ever saw him again.

(1) We got our own back on one of the robber kids. The shop had a pastry section, with a heater and chicken roller. One day Me, Paul and this other member of staff, Eleanor (a sixth-form student who also worked as a cage dancer in a nightclub), saw this boy come back in three times to shoplift. The fourth time we were ready. We had a bunch of pound coins slowly roasting under the heat lamp. I was facing up on the shelves and left a small pile of them in nice clear view. We knew it worked by the pubescent scream. The lad then started kicking shelves in as revenge, stubbing his toe in the process. We then bundled the boy out the shop and each gave him a few sharp kicks on the pavement. It wasn't the most sensible thing I've ever done. Two weeks later the boy was back. He tried to lift some bottles of wine. I tried to stop him. He recognised me and threw a bottle at my head, missing me by inches. The boy used the distraction to escape with £30 worth of white wine.
(2) He actually loved anything euphoric and uplifting. He was also into Nirvana, Smashing Pumpkins and U2, which meant he and I had some common ground at least musically.
(3) There were four serving tills behind a desk next to the front door. We kept supplies of behind-the-till stuff there, usual things, batteries, cigarettes, condoms, painkillers and so on.

Arise, Planet Camden - synopsis

2011-04-01T10:24:00.000-07:00

Chapter 1 – An introduction to the main story. Thom, a student at Camden's university wakes after a hard night's partying disoriented and slightly hungover. He learns from his flatmate, Johnny, that the club he started out in, The Underword, has burned through. It looks like an arson attack. The rest of the chapter introduces the reader to the characters and ideas played out in the rest of the story.
Chapter 2 – A news report from the scene at The Underworld. Thom and Johnny watch. Johnny seems a little too entranced by the drama. Cut to Bob back at his station, an office the municipal building. Having never dealt with real crime before he is struggling to cope. Under pressure from the Chief Commissioner he agrees to take on staff. Not sure what to do, he takes a trip to his local cafe, owned by a veteran of the Martian liberation movement. He meets Thom there. Bob persuades Thom to help him. Meanwhile Johnny heads to his class. He seems like a man possessed. Johnny pulls out a rifle and proceeds to murder his lecturer and classmates.
Chapter 3 – Lucy, a young native of Camden wakes up. She used to be a promising student, but she joined her mother working as a cleaner at the Central Library after her father died in an industrial accident. She takes her brother, who is a genius, to his first day at school. She sneaks into the library before her shift, a friend there secretly loans her books. She takes an intriguing political pamphlet away to read. Later, on shift, she and her colleagues learn they are all being forced to take half-time. Lucy leads a walkout of her shift.
Chapter 4 – Bob quizzes Thom about his relationship with Johnny (now dead). Thom is introduced to the Chief Commissioner. Testimony from a survivor of the theatre massacre. Thom reports to Bob at the scene, there are few leads. Bob meets up with his wife, DJ and former model, Jenny, AKA Momma Zoom. They have hardly seen each other in days. They briefly discuss their time before having to part again. A lead turns up, a video confession from two men calling themselves Mark and Joey, which seems to involve another of Thom's friends, Gideon. Camden's cultural venues are threatened. Bob and Thom find Gideon lurking around a classical concert in the Roundhouse. The pair attempt to question Gideon backstage. Thom leads the questioning, but seems to be under the same spell as Johnny. The spell is only broken when Bob collapses from exhaustion and Gideon escapes (to his death) out a window.
Chapter 5 – The strike spreads through the (vast) library. Many employees have grievances. Lucy persuades her friend, who has been kept on shift for eleven hours, to join. The strikers try to march to the Central Office to present their demands but at repelled by a strange armed group, who turn out to be the genetically modified Special Police Force. They are driven from the building. They seek refuge and solidarity from the planet's liberal elite but are rejected. Instead they take their case back home, through the night to the south side of the planet. The last scene is Lucy friend, captured by the SPF, undergoing violent interrogation.
Chapter 6 – Bob wakes in UCLH. Thom and Jenny recount the last 24 hours for Bob. Back in the Roundhouse Thom calls an ambulance for Bob. He finds the orchestra has committed mass suicide (causing mass panic). Gideon's body has also disappeared. Following a seemingly implanted notion Thom heads to the library to research an occultist lead. He finds it occupied but uses his police status to get inside. He is contacted by Jenny, who has been directly emailed another recording. It is Mark and Joey but speaking through two different people. Dawn; Thom and Jenny battle through Central Camden, dominated by street fighting between the SPF (seemingly now also under the control of Mark and Joey) and the insurgent Poor to meet Dave Cornwold, a former Phd student being 'pursued' by Mark and Joey. Dave reveals the true nature of the villains. They are fascists using astral projection to violently derange the minds of Camden citizens and further their aims.
Chapter 7 – Daniel (in the future) remembers being taken by his mother to the council now directing the uprising of Camden's poor, who have been transformed from ordinary, grey people into gods, angels and nymphs. The planet has been divided along the central river, between the SPF and the army of Poor. The council is busy discussing how to retake the northern half of Camden when the Martian veteran, called Leopold Trepper, arrives with a host of his old buddies to offer help. Together they launch a guerilla attack with musical instruments (the SPF are allergic to culture).
Chapter 8 – A passionate debate has broken out at a meeting of senior police officers, whether to retreat or to destroy Camden, one side is led by Mark, the other Joey. Bob, Jenny and Thom arrive at the siege going on at Central Library, where the last SPF are holding out. They meet Lucy and Leopold Trepper, who are directing the siege. Bob suggests they use his negotiating skills to end the siege peacefully. Bob and Thom enter the now almost empty library and are led to Mark and Joey. They are evasive, protean beings. After an extensive argument, back and forth, Mark and Joey admit the futility of their situation (the rebels are immune to their madness, the rebels are winning) and agree to leave, but not before they get their henchmen to destroy what's left of the library with fire bombs. Bob and Thom barely escape with their lives.
Chapter 9 – Concerns what happened after Mark and Joey were drive from Camden. The planet is united, without class distinction. All the different groups are transformed into one: the Citizens, rounded human beings.
Postscript – A short pamphlet from the Martian war of liberation, which turns out to have been written by Leopold Trepper.

A Gift

2011-03-28T10:31:00.000-07:00

The Heir to the Kingdom could sit no longer. He'd been sitting for hours. No, he stood up, began pacing his room, furiously, all corners like a cell's dimension.

It was a dull, dismal room, something the Heir was not accustomed to. There was no furniture, apart from a single chair; no light except for a solitary bulb. There was no decoration. The walls were bare, the floor the same, except slightly dusty. There was not even a window, just a lonely, solid door. The Heir wondered if there was even any ventilation. There must have been, surely?

Lonely was an apt word. The Heir was alone, all alone, and felt it too. His wife, whom he loved dearly was not there. He was a sensitive young man. It was painful to be apart from her.

They were a normal couple, the Heir and his Wife, a normal couple who went through the normal ups and downs. The nights he had fought or argued with his wife she used to sleep on her side, sometimes she'd go into another room to sleep. He knew they'd make up, they always did, they loved each other so much. Yet to be that inch apart, even for that moment, unable to touch, was unbearable for the poor young fellow.

Now she was gone, the Heir knew not where. He did not want to think where she could be or what was happening to her. He had thought on this too long. He had to distract his mind or else go mad with fear and anticipation. It was best to get up and walk, he thought, so he did. As he walked the Heir tried to think of other things, better things and better days.

Their wedding day was the best of all. The Heir thought of that day. The grand ceremony, the joy, the acclaim. Though everyone could see (the wedding was televised) it felt like a perfect, secluded bubble. They were safe behind the high walls, so he thought. He settled into a more even pace, then continued circling the room.

The wedding, their wedding was the happiest, proudest day of his life. It was all the greater knowing that he'd married for love. He knew only the crass marry for beauty, while the cynical marry for money. Only the righteous marry for love. As he gazed into the eyes, repeated the vows to his bride, the beautiful young woman, millionaire débutante now his bride, he knew he'd made the right decision. He had married for love. The mistakes of the past would not be made in the future, so he thought.

Everyone they had invited came. The good and the great, kings and queens, princes and princesses, dukes and duchesses, presidents, first ladies, captains of industry, pillars of religion and leaders in culture came to honour their union. The gifts were sumptuous, the embraces warm. They left the abbey on a bright, spring afternoon. The bells were pealing, the future bright, so he thought.

But there was one guest that could not be accounted for. On the day, their wedding day this guest was only a distant rumble, a faint prospect, a notional being, beyond walls and boundaries. As he circled his little throne the Heir rued it's intrusion into his life. This guest, this uninvited guest was The Idea. The Idea brought with it The People. Together their gift to him was The Revolution.

The Heir to the Kingdom stopped pacing and sat back down. In his present condition he realised it was a gift he could no longer return.

Lessons

2011-03-20T07:06:00.000-07:00

From a very early age I have been learning how to become invisible. I haven't managed it yet, although I can pull of the next best trick. With enough smarts and a little luck I can avoid being noticed, and for all intents and purposes that's good enough.

Most people are an absolute pain. Most people who pay you attention either want you for something or want you to do something. Worst of all are the people who insist you must do something.

“You must do this”.

“But why?”

“Because I say so”.

Teachers, managers, policemen; often they have ways of forcing you to do it. So it is a great talent to avoid being noticed, to pass unseen, as and when you want to.

When I was little I used to lie awake at night, in the dark, very still. Strange things would happen. There is a sense, beyond your usual five, called propriaception. Close your eyes, hold your hand out in front of you. Clench your fist. You know where your hand is and what it is doing, despite not being able to see it. That is propriaception. If you lie still, in the dark for long enough, don't move your arms and legs, soon they will disappear. You will remember that your arms are by your side, yet you can't be sure they're not crossed or even waving in the air.

I'd lie like this until it felt like I was a skull propped up by a pillow in an infinitely dark universe. Sometimes, if it was dark enough, could open my eyes and after a while see the molecules of the air, swishing about, like dust on the breeze. I could even see the delicate particles disturbed by my breath. If it was quiet enough I would begin to hear the sound of marching feet, accompanied by a high pitched whine. It was years later when I found out it was my heartbeat and the electric whirr of my brain. You can hear it too, right now, your own heart and brain, if you go to the right place.

Years later, at university, I tried this little experiment again. It was a quiet night, very warm for springtime. I was alone and the house was empty. I was in my room, reading. It was late, I began to feel a little tired and put my book down. I lay as still as I could, but there was too much light. We (my friends and I) lived next to a fairly busy thoroughfare. I was on the second floor, the same height as the street lights, which fairly beamed leaf patterns into my room, onto the wall above my bed.

There was no traffic, however. Ordinary sounds faded but, instead I heard a coarse buzzing and the sound of water. I figured it was the noise of a nearby electrical substation and water flowing through the sewers, inaudible in the day.

The first step to not being seen is not being heard. Your footstep is a give away. No one gives attention to how they sound when they walk. Your footstep is almost as personal as your fingerprint. It is specific to your height, weight, foot shape, even temperament. Some people shuffle, while others thud, some are energetic while others drag. If you live in a house with enough people you will, in time, be able to tell a person's footfall.

When I can I try to glide. I got the idea from one of my mother's anecdotes. She says that once, when I was little, she had to keep an eye on me and a few of my friends while she went to the Post Office. She stood in the queue while we charged about playing. Mum was soon exasperated, we were like:

“A heard of elephants”.

A woman in front of Mum in the queue turned to her and said:

“Actually elephants are all but silent when they walk”.

The secret to a silent walk is to put your foot down before you apply any weight. Elephants also have wide, splayed feet. If you are trying to walk unnoticed make sure you account for any irregularities in your stride, a slight limp or a squeak in your shoe. You can practice it (it's perhaps better to practice on a friend, otherwise consequences might get weird). You can walk behind them for a surprisingly long time, matching your pace to theirs. If they are not expecting you they will not notice you.

That is more or less the second knack to going unseen. You must fit in. You must fit in with the universe of the person you are trying to avoid. The average police officer does not see any crime from one week to the next. For one thing why would anyone commit a crime in front of an officer of the law? Instead, their mind is arranged in a basic scanning pattern. Their universe is a small one, divided into two basic states of being, things that should be there, and things that shouldn't. There are only two things that really should be there, people shopping and people working.

But I digress. You have to look like you are supposed to be there, wherever you are, and you have to act like you are supposed to be there. I have avoided ticket inspectors on buses simply by projecting an outward sense of calm and serenity. It was on one of those old bendy buses. I paid the man no regard as he approached. I looked like I had already been seen, my pass checked and all was right with the world. It couldn't have harmed that I was wearing a suit at the time. It was also rush hour, the bus was fairly packed. The odds were in my favour.

There is one final aspect I want to bring up. We are social beings. Each of us pass in front of hundreds, thousands, maybe millions of scanning patterns each day. There are two ways of hiding aspects of your being from prying minds. Your personality is like a mountain side. You don't want just anyone scaling it you must hide the route to the top. You must either hide in obscurity, the path must seem smooth and impossible to grasp, that or you must hide in plain sight, there must be a profusion of detail, many paths to the top.

You must be canny, with what you tell people, friends, co-workers and so forth. I told a friend the other day about my interest in astronomy. It was a fine and interesting conversation we had, at least it was for me. My friend then told a mutual acquaintance about this, who immediately conflated this with astrology and started a campaign, bombarding my email address with messages about birth charts, tarot and so forth. The acquaintance wanted to know what I thought of it all, and was disappointed when I wasn't totally enthusiastic.

It is a small, perhaps whimsical example of how the world is dominated by unintended consequences, multiple strange wills clashing with each other. There is no way to become fully invisible, you can't hide forever. When finally confronted with the bullies, the jerks and time wasters of this world there is only one appropriate response. A firm, unambiguous:

“No”.

The Dream Lottery - continued

2011-03-17T08:07:00.000-07:00

A very important man sat back in his chair. He was at work, a huge office, well-appointed, stately, almost a hall. He held a position of great importance and demand. It was rare that he'd get a moment alone, but this was one of those moments. In these times he'd stalk the room slowly and look at pictures of previous office holders. Sometimes he'd look into the large landscape mirror at the end of the office/hall and think:

“That's me, that's really me. I've come so far and look at me now”.

There was no vanity in what he thought, he had come a long way.

He had five minutes before his next meeting, a pile of papers in his in tray that weren't going to be read, at least not now, in the time that he had. The Very Important Man instead felt like catching up on the news. He searched his desk draw, found the remote and switched on the TV set in front of him, specially provided. He put his feet up on his own desk.

The TV was showing a report on a far away catastrophe. A sea-bound earthquake had unleashed a tsunami. It was daylight when it hit land. There was helicopter footage. The Very Important Man watched with the sound down, he watched this wave, a barrage of mud and debris plough on slowly but surely over field and fence. In the distance was a large motorway, further along a small town. The camera could see small, toy-like cars bombing along the road. It zoomed in on a vehicle, a small white van. The passenger was leaning out the window, looking back, screaming something inaudible. The wave was gaining on them. They were clearly terrified.

The Man's phone system buzzed. It was his secretary. The Man sat up promptly and answered the call.

“Julia...?”

“Mr Pr...”

“Can it wait, Julia? It's not often I...”

“It's a very important...”

“Please take a message, Ms Biden. It's not often I...” The Man softened his tone. “Please, Julia, I appreciate if I wasn't disturbed for the next five minutes. Take a message. Tell them I'll call back”.

“I will do”.

“Thank you”.

With that the Very Important Man returned to the TV. The footage had changed. Now the wave was ploughing along an airport runway. He knew that airport. He'd flown through there only six months ago, on his way to meet another Very Important Man. The Man leant forward, arms on the desk, to get a better look.

What seemed before like slow and steady progress before revealed itself, close up, to be a powerful torrent, carrying cars and bits of roof and tile and, was that a boat? The Man knew that airport, it was several miles inland. What power, what awesome destructive energy had been released on that poor, poor country. The Man's mind boggled. He watched on, entranced. Image after image rolled across the screen. The coup de grace, as the wave receded one helicopter camera caught a mile-wide whirlpool. Inside was a boat, a doomed vessel struggling valiantly against the current. The Man couldn't help but feel the excitement rise.

Beep, beep. It was the intercom again.

“Ms Biden, why are they ringing back?” said the Man; his heart was still palpitating.

“It's not them, it's the...”

“Please take another message. Tell them, whoever it is, I will call back later this morning”.

“But...?”

“Thank you” said The Man, curtly.

The news broadcast had done with the first story and moved on. This next item was regarding a civil war. Establishing shots. It was a dry country, desert land. The Very Important Man recognised it immediately. He had many important dealings in that region. He turned the sound up. The commentary talked about the raging battle going on. A brave but desperately disorganised rebellion fighting for freedom and democracy, up against a mighty dictator and his army.

The story was captured by the sympathetic image of masked rebels standing in broken streets, barren rubble, firing quite deliberately into the air, aiming, with their AK47's. Cut to the image of a fighter jet, impervious, miles high. That's what they were shooting at, apparently. The Man, the Very Important Man was wooed by the eloquence and nobility of their cause. A masked man, a warrior was interviewed, assault rifle slung over his shoulder. His monologue (albeit translated) was so simple, so effective, the Man, the Very Important Man was all but won to his call for international solidarity. Help us, please! The only thing that kept him from reaching to the phone, trying to find that masked warrior (the Very Important Man was so important he could have found that man, if he chose to, if he dedicated enough time to the search) was the memory; only eighteen months ago the Very Important Man sent his best ambassador to seal an important deal with the dictator.

Beep, beep. Again with the phone calls. But before the Very Important Man could get a word in edgeways:

“Mr President, it's the Saudis” said Ms Biden. “They want to know if you're on board with the invasion of Bahrain. They're waiting on your approval”.

The Very Important Man thought for a moment, a long moment, before answering.

“Tell them... Yes... yes... it should make great television”.