Scotland Before the Bomb

by M. J. Nicholls

  “They made you exercise for the food, didn’t they?”

  “Yes,” he wheezed, collapsing on a verge.

  They had made him run for thirty minutes on the machine while the superfit villagers stared at laughed as he strained to reach the target. “Work that flab, fatso!” one neighbour said. “Faster and we might give your sandwich a filling!” another added. “If you’d listened to InfoJog, you wouldn’t be in this mess, lardy!”

  An enraged Rachel ran inside and called them all bona fide cast-iron capital-C-words. She caught Denise laughing and chewing on a niblet of lettuce. She ended the friendship in a glare. And flounced out.

  “We’ll have to camp outside, won’t we?” she asked Sean.

  “Yes.”

  “And you’ll have to do that again to get us supper, won’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, at least it’s shaping up to be lovely morning.”

  A rainbow appeared in the bright skyline, which temporarily ailed the dread that passed between them, and temporarily abated the feeling they should have drowned themselves in the flood.

  The sandwiches were stuffed with cress.

  [‘InfoJog’ by Randall Bloom, a story found perfectly preserved on several sheets of A4 between two boulders in the former Clackmannan, found by the editor, March 2108.]

  “Q+A with Hank Righteous”

  [SUTHERLAND]

  Q: Thank you for talking to us, Hank Righteous.

  A: Yes.

  Q: You rose to the position of PM in 2034. Could you briefly sketch the events that led to your appointment?

  A: Surely, I will. As you know, I was working as a cheesemonger in the Sutherland area when news of the Great Divide broke. I had provided locals with a selection of runny or unrunny brie, cheddar, stilton, or red leicester through catalogue order or in-store purchase for over twelve weeks. The mayor at that time, Alton Kinks, had been elected PM and asked me to provide the cheese portion of his inauguration catering. I accepted. I had to provide cheese nibbles to over one hundred thousand people, so imported seven hundred truckles of the aforementioned cheeses, and set to work on creating a platter fit for one hundred thousand kings. At the ceremony, Alton complimented me on the viscosity of my runniest brie, and asked if I would like a permanent post as his cheese provider in parliament. I accepted.

  Q: You had the ear of a powerful man?

  A: My kitchen was next to his office. I overheard many conversations while straining the cheese through my special buttery netting. I learned that certain towns and villages in the country wanted further segregation . . . to be made countries in their own right. For example, Helmsdale wished to establish itself as a state of mind. To achieve this, high-voltage smoke machines were brought in to create a dream-like fog, and clouds were lowered from the sky with pulleys to create a strong sense of unreality, with pan pipe and harp music being pumped in from enormous PA systems on the streets. Other places wanted nothing to do with this freaky festival and complained to their MPs. Tain wished to open its doors to the downtrodden and homeless and create a communal utopia based on the sharing and not the hoarding of wealth. Dornoch wished to relocate the populace to a series of airships that would hover above the streets and forbid any land-based occupation. This created schisms.

  Q: How was Alton during this?

  A: He consumed a damaging quantity of my extremely arid pecorino. I was called in to perform the heimlich manoeuvre in important meetings, and on one occasion the minister for Halkirk exploded with rage after his request for an electric boogaloo was refused. I performed this life-saving manoeuvre and suggested the PM switch to a runnier cheese, like my perilously slippery edam. He refused to switch, however, and it was in a meeting with the minister for Tongue, who wished to relocate the citizens into the eye of a raging cyclone, when he choked on that fatal piece of pecorino, and perished.

  Q: Could you describe the events leading up to your coronation?

  A: When Alton passed, I was placed under arrest for serving the fatal cheese. As punishment, I was elevated to the post of Prime Minister, as no one else wished to negotiate between the increasingly hostile hamlets. My first meeting was with the minister for Lairg who wished to turn every building into a larger-than-life-size model of a sphincter. He spoke for nine hours with brio and passion, outlining his vision to replace prefab homes and shops with a constantly constricting and unconstricting ring of cleftal muscle. I had to concede that he spoke most eloquently, and I was moved. Once he was permitted independence, the other towns and villages had to be given the same, or they would spit at me. In Rogart, every second man had to chuckle to himself politely or risk assassination. Lochinver was moved into the cortex of Marianne Faithfull. Brora was transformed into an “ouroborough”, i.e. a self-eating village. Embo painted their road markings purple in an attempt to show character. Golspie couldn’t handle the spotlight and hid under a shoe. Nothing changed in Farr.

  Q: And?

  A: I remained the minister for Strathy, where there was an overwhelming vote to transfer the place into a softcore pornographic movie from the 1970s. This meant the constant re-enacting of scenarios such as workmen fixing appliances proceeded by seven minutes of passionless staged intercourse, punctuated by unrealistic and overly loud moans before anything erotic had taken place. I never understood Strathy’s fever for this way of life, perhaps it had its origins in the one pornographic tape in the village finding its way into circulation shortly before I arrived. So at present I rule over a land of flared trousers, cheap negligees, and the echo of exaggerated shrieks from every home.

  Q: Are you happy?

  A: I haven’t pasteurised stilton in over nine months. I cope.

  Q: Best of luck to you.

  A: Hmm.

  [From ‘Interview with PM Hank Righteous’, in The Big Book of Interviews with Prime Ministers, Penguin, 2030.]

  “Trip Advisor Reviews”

  [SPEAN BRIDGE]

  currylover: The Annual Porcupine Appreciation Festival was splendid. French actress Marine Vacth made a surprise appearance as a twelve-foot porcupine, and the porcupine bouncy castle was terrific larks, if a little prickly on the toes. The two-hour porcupine montage, featuring moving tributes to the crested porcupine, the long-tailed porcupine, Rothschild’s porcupine, the bristle-spined porcupine, the Sumatran porcupine, the thick-spined porcupine, the brown hairy dwarf porcupine, and the stump-tailed porcupine, was amazing. The keynote speaker, Alan Sproul, was eloquent on the North American porcupine’s penchant for clover, and impressed us with his theory that the first porcupine evolved in the Neogene Period, not the Miocene. The DJ was tremendous, laying down old favourites, like ‘Porcupine’ by Echo & the Bunnymen, and ‘Porcupine’ by Joseph Arthur to end the festival. A barbellate ball!

  Lorna_K: We’re not sure we went to Spean Bridge. It took us two hours to find the place, if it was the right place, there not being a sign towards or in the country. When we stopped to ask for directions, we were met with silent glowers, and one man said: “Don’t.” Most odd. The place itself was painted blood-red, like in the western High Plains Drifter, where the spectre of Clint Eastwood ambushes the gang who killed him. We stopped at the Mortiis Saloon for a cider, and the server, a pale man with trembling hands said to us: “I have tuberculosis”. This level of service is appalling. My husband suggested we leave, so we left our drinks and headed to the museum. Inside an otherwise vacant room, in a plastic case, was a llama brain suspended in aspic, and nothing else. I was shocked. My husband looked for the curator to complain, but the backroom was filled with wasps, so we had to flee, as I have an allergic reaction to wasps, which turn my ankles septic. Avoid this place, if you can find it.

  Bill_E_Bob: We stayed at the B&B. The scrambled egg was adequate.

  solaceseeker: Spean Bridge prides itself on being “the most waterlogged country in the universe”, not an idle boast. Located in the basin of Ben Nervous, a mountain that prides itself on “killing the largest number of back
packers in the universe”, the buildings are flooded ten or twenty times a year. Frustrated locals have ripped up their homes’ foundations and sewn large water wings to their walls, so the properties bob about in the frequent short-lived lakes and puddles. This provokes rage from those whose houses are bumped by the free-floating ones: windows smashed, walls dented, roofs impacted. When we arrived, two residents were firing blunderbusses at each other’s children, howling: “No mercy!” It was not a pleasant atmosphere, and since we hadn’t packed a canoe or swimming costumes, we moved on.

  LionelMac: If Elizabethan pottery is your teacup, then let Spean Bridge do the pouring! I have never seen a more exquisite range of ceramic items in any one small nation, or a curator as passionate about pots and cups as Dorothy O’Shea!

  mariecutie: Spean Bridge is not for small children. The forest trail is unsafe, excess silt ruins the prospect of paddling in water, boulders block the central walking route, loud rave music blares from student campsites, menacing mushrooms are within reach of small hands, no changing or toilet facilities are to be found, rabid dogs off their leashes roam the forests, and a naked man with a skullcap tattoo can be seen bathing on the opposite bank. I will be writing to their Prime Minster, if he ever stops bathing.

  Chaz: I took one look at this place, said ‘nope’, and sped past. That said, it might not have been this place I sped past, and I might have said ‘hope’, because I am a cheery soul.

  xoxo34: This country is a hoax. Invergloy, northwards, beams a hologram, southwards, in the shape of a boring village. The only thing to do “there” is browse the highland memorabilia shop, and no one ever purchases an ornamental castle, or packet of overpriced shortbread, ever. So no one has noticed, except me. (I craved shortbread).

  altogethernow: Spean Bridge is a state of mind. The state of mind one has after taking a tractor’s worth of barbiturates, parading up Red Square in a cockerel outfit, and howling the canon of My Bloody Valentine to the winds. Spean Bridge is sinking one’s cerebrum into cool death. To visit Spean Bridge is to blow one’s cosmic brains to a patternless splatter. To suicide the real and unlock the hot bubble of lies inside the prism. To slap the alabaster logo on the fruitiest uncle in the pavilion. To incite the loon to the River Styx. To orangeade the worthiest nobleman on the plateau. To coax the marvellous manic into haughty slaughter. To overuse the salt shaker on a tape recorder. To repress the magnanimous spirit of a Labour chiseller. To re-write the night into an ultra-bright striped light. Bing-boom. Visit SB.

  andyhandy: Here are directions: follow the A82 to Fort William. At the time of writing, there is a £3,500 pass-toll, so please raise that sum in advance of your trip, or you might end up incarcerated in a schooner for a few decades. This happened to my sister, who was kicking herself later. Next, make a sudden left when you see the tyre tracks that veer toward a field. Drive across the field, following the tracks for two hours. When you see some twigs beside a gymnasium, stop and ask Greg Alison for directions. If Greg’s not sitting on the iron-age hill fort, he might be urinating in the gym lavatories. Wait for Greg. He will direct you, in Welsh (activate your live translation app), to the forest that you need to enter to access Spean Bridge. This part of the trip takes place on foot. I have never finished the forest trek, having lost a knuckle en route, but friends say that when you arrive, there’s a nice statue of someone. Bring a packed lunch and a rocket launcher in case of pterodactyl attack.

  crabhandler43: We stayed at the The Bawdy Gherkin B&B on Altour Road. The room was fine, except for the manservant who insisted on remaining in the room the whole time. After a day, we were used to his presence, and his helpfulness. He passed the lubricant when were making love, and helped me recall trivia, such as who won the 1995 world snooker championship (Stephen Hendry). At night, he would sit upright in a chair and breathe heavily, muttering the name “Alison” over and over, which was strange at first, then helped us sleep. I always pictured the lovely actress Alison Steadman from the Mike Leigh films. Apparently, the B&B burned down soon after our stay, which is a shame.

  applecore24: I can clear up the confusion. This “country” is called Spleen Bridge, and is in fact a bridge made from the columns of former Daily Mail content writers. When the newspaper invaded Kent in 2020, that robust Anglo-Saxon county mounted a merciless retaliation, spearing over four thousand proofreaders, sub-editors, columnists, and interns, and executing the editor Paul Ducker on live television, to the merriment of one billion viewers. The paper’s archives were used as ballast for various structures, among them Spleen Bridge, which contains over two thousand columns from the likes of Richard Littlejohn, Katie Hopkins, Quentin Letts, Rod Liddle, and other choleric commentators who struggled with basic human empathy, before the residents of Kent speared them in the brains. I worked on the construction of this fine edifice, which has become a popular attraction for nice people.

  abstractnotions: There’s nothing here except a single bowl of soup balanced on an upturned coracle. Leek and potato.

  [Reviews of Spean Bridge from tripadvisor.com, accessed via the internet archive, October 9, 2108.]

  “The Fictional Village of Echt”

  [ECHT]

  FOREWORD

  THE VILLAGE OF ECHT in 2057 was transformed into a “fictional village”, with the 300-odd residents turned into characters in an ongoing work of fiction. Although there are no plans to publish the work in its unabridged form (i.e. to render into prose every waking hour of every ‘character’ in the village), certain vignettes in the lives of these ‘people’ have been committed to print. The following represents a selection of these. As you will see, the residents struggle daily to conform to their ‘character’ labels, and to remain eminently readable. Readers who find these stories inconclusive, unsatisfying, or pointless, should bear in mind the village of Echt only has one resident writer, THE LITERARY CHARACTER, who at the time of this foreword is at work on 298 abridgements of the lives of the Echt populace.

  THE LIKEABLE CHARACTER

  Victor is the Likeable Character. Victor is popular in the fictional village of Echt. Victor has two daughters, Claire and Nora, and works as a ticket inspector on the local rails. Victor has a line in humorous repartee and inoffensive banter on the trains, in the pub, and in the shops and streets. He remembers little details about his passengers and is polite but firm when handling fare dodgers. His wife is a soft-spoken woman who people think is too sour and unattractive. He seeks nothing from people and keeps to himself and is never too smug or too humble or too omnipresent or too hilarious or too boring. He was eating soup with his sour wife Alison when he popped a notion on her fleece cardigan.

  “I think I might start up a skiffle trio.” Alison ceased blowing her minestrone.

  “What?”

  “I’ve been tweeting these chaps from Dunecht. I have long nursed visions of frotting the washboard on a stage.”

  “Honey, we’ve nibbled on this rotten beef before. Your likeable character will be compromised if you’re seen on stage stroking a mangle like a washerwoman.”

  “Stop calling it a mangle. You can’t tease rhythm from that awkward washing apparatus.”

  “And you call that sheet of ribbed metal an instrument? You’ll humiliate yourself if you step on stage with that. Your likeability will be vaporised the minute everyone in the village watches you in mid-hunch fingering those ribs.”

  “Pass the salt.”

  “Honey, you—”

  “SALT.”

  Alison overrode their saline safe word to ram the point home. She painted a visual Hieronymus involving Gillian Gordon the village halfwit snickering into her egg cream and Daniel Vim the village intellectual staring in open contempt at the sight of a once-liked figure of solidity making a musical buffoon of himself to achieve some ridiculous ambition that yielded no commercial or personal dividend. During their routine coitus that night she broke her promise that she would never (since that time) nag into his ear several moments before climax to imprint her
point on his sexual recall. But she inserted ‘forget the skiffle’ into her mmms and ooohs, causing him to cancel his oncoming coming in favour of a fast withdrawal and an artless squirm from the duvet to the floor to dressing gown to the bathroom and an enraged erectionless return to spew vitriol into her sour ear. This tactic ensured that for several weeks, before climax, Vic would remember this painful nag and shrivel up with contempt for his annoying wife, and lose his ardour entire.

  THE (NON-) BLOGGING CHARACTER

  The most authentic form of self-loathing blog is never written. Damon wrote this on his blog. He was seeking a compromise between not writing to express his true contempt for the act of blogging and the need to reach out and communicate a message to someone somewhere. As he explained to his mother:

  “The self-loathing non-blogger community, who have no qualms about expressing themselves in the comment section, have roared up in hate. Nothing2Say said: ‘Your blog is a lie. You want acknowledgement for a statement we all know to be true, but never speak out of collective understanding. You have violated the one rule in the non-blogging community, and that is never to blog. You are banished forever.’ H8M8s said: ‘Fail. You tried to wangle some loophole in writing this obvious statement. But in writing this, you have placed yourself on the streets with the other word-whores seeking validation for their pointless utterances.’ Paul_Si said: ‘I will urinate on this blog in a violent frothing stream until the end of time.”’

  “Such hateful spume,” his mother said.

  “I made a mistake. I had such a craving to express something and receive positive feedback I couldn’t control myself.” Damon spooned scrambled egg into his sad non-blogging face. He was the character who didn’t blog.

  He had wrestled with the prospect of writing things in a world where opinions, stories, screams and sobs filled the internet like unrelenting textual flatulence, and chanced upon a cult of non-writers who used their silence to make a powerful statement about the aimless pummel of modern babel. The non-blogging world emerged: thousands of blogs titled ‘a non-blog’ with post after post of blank space. Non-tweets and non-statuses and non-instagrams (non-pictures of white space) followed. The main criticism of the movement was that they too were attempting to communicate a message about how everyone was obsessed with attempting to communicate a message, but their silence was to be seen as a corrective, political act and not a self-enabling one. Damon, like a million others, used them to justify his writer’s block as a rebellious act.