These Snippets are NOT for Sale

My teaser for the 'Future Britains' SF anthology

Hi there.

You might not be aware of the Future Britains anthology that's currently being curated through the indefatigable efforts of fellow SF Substacker Martin Grace. You might be even less aware that I'm contributing a 5,000 word short story to this speculative collection of unashamedly Brit-centric stories. It's called ‘The MoHo Man’* and has allowed me to distil several months of lived experience into a future fictional tapestry.

After any drafting of a story you lose words in the edit. With my writing process that can be up to a third of the total. They're normally paragraphs which help me (as much as any beta reader) understand the fresh new world my brain is creating. (What's that? You think I'm in charge of what initially splurges out? Er, no. Unfortunately, that can also include my verbal outputs…).

As the story pours onto the page, it (should) begin to tell itself – through setting, characterisation, dialogue etc. Very often, I also want to leave some leeway for my readers’ own imagination and even guesswork to play a part. Spoon-feeding a story isn't my style. Your intelligence and a little bit of effort is assumed, even expected.

So snippets are snipped and cuttings are cut. But they never go to waste. Like an obsessive squirrel, I sweep them up from the editing floor and retain them all. You just never know…

Now you can find below the ten snippets from my Future Britains short story which didn't make the final cut. They total over a thousand words and are arranged in a way which should excite your speculative taste buds and leave you wanting more. Think of them as an oversized amuse bouche; a foretaste of what this literary chef has to offer.

Best of all, there are twenty-three other chefs cooking up an SF storm for this Future Britains anthology, which is at the crowdfunding stage for only a couple more days. Yes, you can contribute to the final menu, with even your name printed in it for posterity!

Until next time…

*MoHo = Motorhome. No wordplay intended.

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Photo by Leo_Visions on Unsplash

Offcuts from ‘The MoHo Man’

#1

Steel and concrete; electricity and connectivity; authority and sanity; they’re all meaningless when engulfed by human chaos. It had only taken two days. That’s how long the country had lasted without a truck delivering food. The government and its craven advisors had assumed truck drivers would put jobs and money before themselves and their families. Forty tonnes of food could save a street of neighbours, even a whole village. But it could also mean a lorry and its driver being ambushed at night by people prepared to kill for more pasta and toilet paper, despite being surrounded by corn and cattle.

The animal instincts which we’d philosophised and patronised away had never departed our bodies, unlike the teeth and claws we’d eradicated or herded into reserves and zoos.

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#2

Humans couldn’t help making connections within their heads or between themselves. As individuals or tribes, they sought structure and formed networks, even as they decried clinging to hierarchy. But their brains hadn’t evolved to deal with civilisation and technology and enlightenment. They’d existed to aid human survival. This had meant belief continuing in not only the invisible, but also the impossible.

But logic and reason had been in short supply since the End’s madness had engulfed the world. Hunger had cut humanity in half. Violence had crushed those who remained in the cities. Only the physically and mentally agile had escaped, leaving the immobile, irrational and inflexible of mind to rot where they lay, disbelief etched on their dead faces.

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#3

It became easy to venerate the few who knew the things Dad had taught; who had the means to leave their home and still live; and who had long-ago resolved to shoot first and eat without regret later, whilst still giving to those more deserving.

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#4

The preppers and their paranoia had been proven wrong. They’d never been short of comforts before being hit by the reality they’d preached about in preceding years. They’d never imagined there would be no room for individual self-sufficiency, no place for egos, no need for them. They’d never imagined no-one would want to help them, despite offering so little in return.

Allotments were now protected like the money of yesteryear. Barbed wire wrapped around hidden half-acres of serried root vegetables and entwined trellises. Growing and storing food had proven to be the hardest task of all. Those who knew how to coax precious calories and vitamins from the soil were protected like the gold of old.

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#5

As the edible dwindled, the violence increased. As the hoarders hid, the desperate sought them out. As authority collapsed, the strong preyed on the weak. The thin veneer of civilisation the goyas boasted made them different was sawn and hacked away by ignorance, panic and irrational greed. Just ask Mum, who’d bared her teeth and screamed her defiance as she’d stabbed a wide-eyed raider to death. The one who’d extinguished her pillar of love and strength. The blood from Dad’s final lesson had covered her and her children.

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#6

If her people had survived without land for five hundred years, then they could manage five centuries more. They knew about being on the margins. They knew how to live off the rump of an uncaring society which worshipped land and its ownership more than family.

The End’s arrival rendered land and property so plentiful its ownership became meaningless. The lawmakers who’d fenced out and ridiculed the old ways now survived by learning from those with travelling in their blood. Who knew that kinship outdid killing. Their life had been restored and was now relied upon – for all the wrong reasons.

For those who’d decried our ways loudest still couldn’t part with their old ways and habits. They still wanted it all; still grovelled to wealth, hierarchy and status; and remained dangerous.

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#7

But human brains hadn’t evolved to deal with civilisation and technology and enlightenment, but to ensure survival. They couldn’t stop making connections, either within heads or between tribes. So the Code’s birth into a newly fractured world was both inevitable and its spread unavoidable.

The Code wasn’t created like an inbred newborn, its parents fearing the worst as they counted every finger and toe. It instead appeared as a cloud bubbling above a sunlit mountain peak; seeding new stories and laws from the cold ashes of human destruction. Tales which now provided strength to tight-knit communities instead of lonely, painful deaths; which required belief in not only the invisible but also the impossible. Songs and chants to transmit revived knowledge from parent to child, elder to youth. Music to help heal and forget; forging passionate rhythms to bond people in public and private unions.

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#8

As Laura had lain awake, her home of fifteen years growing more visible in the dawn light, she’d promised herself she wouldn’t depart her old life like her pal Jeanette. She’d walk into the woods willingly, even if she’d likely never return. Jeanette, whose father had died from an infected cut two months earlier, had been dragged away by another, younger Guardian, kicking and screaming, pleading to stay. Her screams were like those at the End, not a new beginning. No-one had mentioned her since, not even her mother.

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#9

A Guardian was neither invisible nor could achieve the impossible. Their authority stretched no further than a community’s implicit respect. When facts and decisions faced up to thoughts and prayers, only reality could remain, however harsh. That’s what he dealt with now: life pared back with tooth and claw, framed in a new belief. Not in Guardians such as him, but in the Code they applied.

A Guardian knew things, could say things and was permitted to do things which were feared far more than cold, thirst or hunger. The Code saw to that. They had the power of judge and jury despite the lack of any written word. But the personal cost was being in permanent forfeit to a broken world; enduring a loneliness that might never be broken; hiding memories which could never be shared – or forgotten.

But if respect for his kind failed to lodge even in the shifting scree of a dislocated camp, or deceptive and delusional minds, a Guardian could enforce the Code by other means. With methods to make a lover shudder when whispered in the dark; using instruments no-one dared name. The outcome was an unforgettable warning to anyone who witnessed a Guardian’s concluding judgement.

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#10

A child’s face emerged from behind a tree, their hand clutching a bucket. Their eyes darted from the metal water bottle clutched in his left hand to the shopping bag in his right, stuffed with ‘burb scavenged scoff. Their curiosity was no surprise. Food and water were always a powerful draw, but most knew to leave him alone. It was unlikely they knew he’d been summoned. But even the children had learnt hard bargains had to be struck when a Guardian called.

#end#

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