Author: Alexander Fawn

The man shuddered as he waited for his late night taxi.

It was cold and dark with the streets empty. He had been called out unexpectedly. It had ruined his plans for the evening, but that was the nature of his work, but he wouldn’t change it for anything. He hadn’t been there long when a young lad appeared at the end of the street. As he approached, he seemed to be waving his arms around with a strange rhythm. It turned out to be a flick-knife. He was tossing it back and forth, with the shiny blade extended, like a juggler. The boy sneered as he approached, still flipping it from hand to hand. As he drew level, he made a few intimidating swipes with the weapon, then leaning forward, he grinned and said “Boo!”

The man stood perfectly still and let him pass. He watched him walk away, cackling to himself. It was only moments later that he heard the commotion. He squinted in the dim light and saw that the boy had obviously tripped, and was now lying face down on the pavement and howling. When the man got to him he could make out a dark stain forming near the boy’s leg. The boy tried to move, but only screamed with pain with each attempt.

The man knelt down next to him, asking, “Are you all right?”

“Of course I’m not all right,” came the gruff reply, through gritted teeth.

“What happened?”

“What do you mean, what happened? I fell over didn’t I? Anybody could see that!”

Ignoring the remarks, the man tried to estimate where the knife had gone in. It seemed to be somewhere around his upper leg. “There seems to be high blood loss there,” he murmured, standing up.

“You a doctor?”

“Yes, but…”

“Well, do something?” He tried to move, but the pain only made him scream again.

The man took out his phone and began dialling.

“Do something!” the boy repeated. “You don’t have time to play with your phone. Do something!”

Calmly, the man said, “I’m not playing with my phone, I’m calling for an ambulance.”

“Help me. There must be something you can do while we wait.”

The man knelt down again. “Yes, all right.”

The boy tried to look up. “Jees! It’s about time.”

“OK,” he began, “Tell me… what do you remember of your childhood?”

They work methodically, using the grid, clearing the land.

They have the chemicals and the machinery that enables them to scour the landscape, to make it pristine again, to purify. To remove all traces of those that were there before. The grid, clearly marked out on the ground beneath by beams from the hovering craft. The laser-like markings guide their progress. The inhabitants long gone. All physical traces of the global population broken down and turned to dust. The land masses are being prepared. New life forms wait for their time. Before long, great ships will bring them. The repopulation process is well underway. A better world will be brought about. The previous tenants ignored all the warning signs.

Progress is in the making…

He didn’t much like the noise or the incessant crowds.

He sometimes thought about the idyllic life of a butterfly. Free to flit around in the open spaces that nature provides.

Or a fish, he thinks about a fish and the vast distances they can travel. Being part of a school that swim together ln unison, sometimes over vast distances. He thinks about the life of a bird. Up there, soaring. The ability to wing your way skyward and to keep going until there is simply not enough oxygen. To swoop and dive; to have a prevailing wind let you glide. For a while he crouched, just thinking about gliding.

Of course, all of this was a pipedream. His fate was sealed. He was lumbered with being a beetle, living under a waste bin in the concourse of a busy city railway station.

The man had been summoned urgently to a meeting with his handler.

It was not the way things were usually done. He would normally receive a polite phone call asking him to provide a convenient time to come in. Even when it was the case that someone needed to be neutralised as soon as possible, there would be a calm and courteous call. It was normally arranged and carried out carefully and in a professional manner, to minimise mistakes.

The handler was waiting for him in the small sound-proof room at the back of the florist shop.

The handler looked put out.

“It must be important. It’s the first time I’ve had to break off from a round of gulf to be here.”

He unlocked a drawer in the metal desk and took out a large brown envelope.

He slid it across.

“I don’t know anything about this one, beyond it being top priority, so I hope you don’t have questions.”

The Neutraliser stared down at a coloured photograph of the man sitting opposite.

He reached into his jacket.

As he screwed the silencer on, he said, “This will be a first for me too.”

He was really tired of so many everyday problems.

There seemed to be so many of them. When he got back from the shops he slumped in his armchair. Within moments his faithful old tabby cat jumped up onto his lap and settled down.

He looked up at the ceiling and sighed. “The bus was late, again,” he started, “and we got stuck in traffic three times. The pot holes in the main street are getting worse, you’d think that our taxes with fix them up, but no. D’you know, going through town, I counted six kids cycling on pavements; that’s so dangerous, but you can’t tell them. The people on the bus were so loud that other people were shouting into their mobile phones.”

He scratched his head and snorted. “Shopping was a nightmare. They keep moving stuff around the isles. I don’t know why they do that, after all they have to pay someone to do it. It doesn’t make sense. Of course, the price of everything’s gone up, again. The queue for the self-service checkout was so long I had to go through the regular check out. The checkout girl was so rude, and to make it worse she was chewing gum all the time.”

He shook his head slowly, and said, “All of that, and I have to come home to those noisy neighbours next door with heir screaming kids and their loud music!”

The cat uncurled itself and sat up. It looked directly into its owner’s eyes and let out a soft sigh. Lifting its chin, it said, “You know, I am always here if you need to talk.”

It really is all about safety.

He knew that, and he was good at his job within the HSB, that’s the Health and Safety Bureau. This was the one thing that kept the world safe; that stopped it slipping back into the mess it had been in so long ago. It was a world that was better now, much better than before, but more importantly, it was safe. Most people would have no idea of what the world used to be like. It is so far back now, and such great strides have been made over the centuries. So much has changed. The new world order was a long time coming, but come it did.

So many hazards and life-threatening scenarios now no longer exist. The world-wide production and processing of food now under control of one central authority. The HSB, of course.

No more drivers, only passengers. Simple, don’t you think? And so obvious. All types of conveyances sensor-controlled to eradicate any possibility of collisions. Moving beyond the use of electricity was a game-changer. All those all too common accidents in the home, gone. Kids sticking spoon handles into sockets, mums in baths reaching for hair-driers, and dads fixing TVs. All gone. No more fossil fuels either. Everything so much better. Through the decades, the need for hospitals has been greatly reduced. Most citizens never visit one in their lifetime. Even those who make it past two-hundred.

The fire-proofing of clothes, materials, houses and office blocks has reduced the need for a fire service to such a small section within the HSB, that most people never see them. All major populated areas are kept safe within climate-regulated domes. For those travelling between, science now monitors the weather with accurate predictions and a global weather warning system. As for wars and fighting over land, power, money and other stuff. It’s all gone now. Just no need for them. It’s all so far back that it’s hard to imagine what was being fought over.

All aspects of life are now safety-compliant. Everything is under control. Everything, accept people that is. What are you going to do? This is the only category of safety risks that can’t be controlled, well, not entirely. Lord knows it’s been tried. Scientists have been working on it, but it just can’t be done; not with a one hundred percent rate of success. The only remaining threat is complacency. That’s where the man from the HSB comes in. Where there is trouble, he nips it in the bud. There can be no exceptions. Left to grow, left to fester, it’s a contamination that will creep back to a time well past. Well behind them. Well gone.

His ear bud chimes and he checks the address on his wrist screen. He arrives to find two men shouting at each other. They stop and stare at him with helpless expressions, they know exactly what’s to come.

He draws the device and fires twice…

Safety is everything.

He wanted to take her somewhere different.

He was looking through the restaurant guide. He’d been told about a place that gives its customers a completely unique dining experience. She was saying only the other day she was getting tired of the same old humdrum cafes and restaurants on offer in the city. She obviously wanted something different. This sounds perfect. It’s a bit of a journey getting out there, but it sounds as though it could be well worth making the effort. He checked the location online and noted the travel time. Yes, they could manage that. He gave them a call.

The man who answered sounded very friendly. “A table for two, sir? Of course, sir. We have one of those left.”

“Just one thing, is it near the kitchen? My wife is particularly sensitive to excessive cooking smells. No offence meant, I hope you understand.”

“Not at all, sir, I understand. No, this table is out on the fringe. So, no worries there, sir.”

“I’m sorry, did you say, fringe?”

“Yes, sir, here at the Bush Tucker café we like to think we blend in with our natural environment. The alfresco tables are closer to the swamp, this allows our patrons…”

“Sorry! Did you say swamp?”

“Indeed I did, sir. We at the Bush Tucker café provide an authentic atmosphere that allows our…”

“Hold on, hold on. Aren’t you the people that had all that bad publicity about customers being attacked by crocodiles?”

After a short silence. “There was some publicity, sir, but the reports were shamefully exaggerated.”

“But people were dragged into the swamp and eaten by crocodiles, weren’t they?”

“Well, yes, I suppose that has some truth in it, but…”

“Hang on! You people were in the news again quite recently. Another case of a woman customer being taken. She was pulled into the water and mauled to death or something. I remember the news report, now!”

“No, no, sir. That was greatly exaggerated, she only lost a leg.”

He ended the call and went back to the guide.

As witches go, she put on a pretty good show.

Lots of mumbo jumbo in her dimly lit cottage. But statistically she was a failure. She had a reputation for casting love spells. Young girls from the village and from miles around would visit her. As time passed it became evident and generally known that very few of her spells actually worked. The desperate girls simply didn’t get the man of their dreams. Her clientele dropped off, so did her income. Finally, she passed away in abject poverty.

The aging widow had never learnt one of the cardinal rules of spell casting.

Her heart just wasn’t in it.

He knew the eyes of the world were on him.

The final selection had been made and it was decided that he was the right astronaut for the mission. Although this opportunity would probably make him world famous and one heck of a celebrity, he wasn’t likely to be around to bathe in the glory of it. He would leave them all behind; his girlfriend, his parents, his friends and relations; all of them, for the greater good of mankind. The mission; to travel out into space, well beyond anything that had been undertaken before. He would travel beyond the solar system, beyond the Milky Way into the deepest space, into a great firmament that had only been seen through the most powerful telescopes on Earth. It would be unknown territory. The cameras and the world watched him go.

After several months of travelling at unimaginable speeds through an endless void, he became aware of a particularly interesting signal amid the incessant space noise coming from the speaker, the first of any real significance since leaving the launch pad. It appeared to be a small, lone world in a vast and empty tract of space. It could well be some kind of outpost in the centre of its vast surroundings. He watched his screen as a great yellow light came into focus. Great arches glowed brightly in the night’s shadow that covered the land mass. It was a pillar or a post, maybe some sort of communication tower. The screen was sharpened and full magnification was used. Beneath the arches, and behind the pole, a structure, dimly lit but obviously inhabited.

He slipped his craft into a holding mode above the planet and entered the pod. Landing softly before the building he made his way to the entrance. He paused briefly to look around.

The bizarre nature of what he was looking at and the ridiculously impossible circumstance he found himself in, simply faded into insignificance compared with his love of hamburgers.

Coming home from work he fell asleep on the bus again.

Fortunately, like previous times, he had woken up before his stop. This time it was only a matter of seconds before sailing past and having to either walk back or catch another bus on the reverse journey. He was sick of it and knew that something really had to be done about his sleepless nights. Eventually it would have a major impact on his health. Night after night he could hear what would have to be a small animal in the attic scrabbling around at night, causing an ongoing succession of sleepless nights. It was, in fact, a huge, hungry rat prowling around in the attic continually looking for food.

Although he found the landlord a hard person to get on with, he would have to be firm and advise him yet again of the problem in the attic. He had already complained, but nothing had been done. He didn’t want to go around and see him face to face, so he decided to send him a strongly worded email. So, that evening he sat typing. He was far more specific about the growing problem, forcefully suggesting that the landlord arrange to have a pest exterminator come in and fix the situation.

Meanwhile, up in the roof space the rat was gnawing on a cable.

The man was choosing his words carefully, so as not to upset his grumpy landlord.

Above him the chomping continued.

He was almost finished when a loud crackling noise came from above.

In that moment, upstairs, sparks and fur flew, momentarily lighting up the loft, and a dead creature lay smouldering.

Downstairs, his screen went black and the house went into total darkness.

One problem had been solved!