Contents
12th April 2035 Day One
13th April 2035 Day 2
14th April 2035 Day 3
15th April 2035 Day 4
16th April 2035 Day 5
17th April 2035 Day 6
18th April 2035 Day 7
19 April 2035 Day 8
20th April 2035 Day 9
21st April 2035 Day 10
22nd April 2035 Day 11
23rd April 2035 Day 12
24th April 2035 Day 13
25th April 2035 Day 14
26th April 2035 Day 15
Acknowledgements and Thanks
Copyright
For my children
I love you love you love you.
What follows is imagined.
However, similar things have
happened in the past.
12th April 2035
DAY ONE
In a large dormitory, in a megacity in Southern England, a Level Three Worker was sound asleep, like all the others in his unit.
Except unlike all the others, he was dreaming.
He was standing in bright sunshine, looking across sand dunes at a sight which was at the same time the most frightening, exciting, awesome, and spectacular thing that he had ever laid eyes on. It was so tall he could not see the top of it. It reached way up into the sky. The body of it was dark brown, like the colour of dark brown sugar, and moving. As he looked more closely, he could see that there were great violent whirls of brown sand and dirt. The sand was churning and swirling at high speed. It was an enormous sandstorm moving across his view. It was huge and violent and nothing like he had ever experienced. Something about the base of it drew his attention. At ground level, there seemed to be things like huge discs turning. They looked like huge round saws, the height of a house, spinning with blurring speed. He could tell from their colour and glint that they were steel. He could see that they would destroy anything in their path. The storm was some distance away so that all he could hear was the rushing sound of the wind. It was the most terrible thing he had ever seen.
Words came into his mind: The steel wheels of the winds of change.
He woke up, together with all the others in the dormitory, when three loud notes were sounded for Rise. The notes were not as harsh as an alarm bell, but they had the same effect. For a moment, he blinked, glancing briefly around the space. Everything was familiar: the ceiling was light and high; the walls were plain and unadorned; lines of beds stretched in every direction. As he stood, the floor was cool and hard. Everyone was standing to attention next to their beds, ready for the notes to sound for them to file off to the washrooms and lockers to shower and climb into their day kit. There were Supervisors watching them.
His head had a centimetre of hair, like all the others. He was dressed in his night kit, like the rest. If you looked along the rows, there was little to distinguish one male from the next except some physical features - height, build, and skin colour. His identification number and dot code were printed on a panel on the breast of his top: G1L3E290718RN052CBS4U BWM4C.
This stood for Generation 1; Level 3; Europe; 29 July 2018; Register Number 052; City B, Sector 4, Unit Block West M; Floor 4; Room C.
Another set of notes sounded and the lines of young men marched towards the lockers beside the washroom. He pulled off his night gear, took his turn in the shower and dressed. Day gear consisted of a grey collarless shirt, a dull blue top, matching blue trousers and boots. His number and code were sown in the same place on his breast and his unit number was stenciled in large lettering across his back.
He stood again, waiting for the next notes to sound to signal the group to move off from the lockers, and file downstairs and across the street towards the canteen block. The climate of the street was comfortable because it was roofed at high level, like a high atrium.
The canteen served one thousand men, but he knew exactly where to walk, where to collect his morning meal and where to sit. He took his portion: two slaps of hot porridge with a slurry of cooked fruit, a mug of hot, milky tea and a muffin. They did this every morning; it was routine. There were precious few words spoken - there was the occasional bark from a Supervisor. No one showed any emotion. They listened to the Morning Music while they ate, until the notes that sounded at the beginning of Morning Announcements. By now, everyone had finished eating and drinking.
There on the screens was the face of the Announcer.
“Good morning, Workers. Today, it is Day 6494 and we can announce that the target for carbon neutrality for last year has been achieved. The world is now fifty-two per cent carbon neutral! We have achieved this through our work together. Our world working population is now four billion seven hundred and fifty-three million, four hundred and twenty-two thousand, eight hundred.”
The Announcer read some more facts and news items then, when the notes sounded, every Worker picked up his tray and moved along to the clearing area and then to the rows of information screens.
When it was his turn, he placed his hand over the scanner screen. An electronic voice spoke his identity number and then said,
“Today you will work in Observation Room 412 until lunch, then you will work in Laundry Room 134 until dinner.”
He headed along a wide route to the Observation complex, passing countless other men. He walked to the bank of lifts and went up to Level 4. Workers in similar outfits moved to their workstations. The corridors and lift lobbies were busy on every floor. He found Room 412 easily from the huge number on the door. He had worked on this level many times before. He filed in and registered with the Supervisors. They were dressed in black. Many of them were older. A Supervisor pointed to a workstation. He went over and logged in. He read the instructions that came up. He was to observe units in Zone A. Down the sides of the centre screen there were smaller displays. If he touched one of them, they filled the centre display area. He had a menu to add different displays.
The notes sounded for the work to begin. He settled down to watch Workers on factory assembly lines, in laundry rooms, in kitchens, on construction sites, in canteens and in storage depots. There was a multitude of activities, but nothing surprised him. He had done this many times before. If there was anything that seemed incorrect, he could zoom in on the individual concerned. If the person seemed to be doing something that was questionable, he could drag an alert tag onto that person. The alert would be picked up by one of the Supervisors. They worked on the central bank of terminals on the raised area in the centre of the room. There was no conversation, only the sounds of people working, and the Morning Music coming from the speakers in the ceiling.
After about an hour, he spotted a bulldozer driver on a construction site who was not moving. He zoomed in to observe more closely. It looked like the driver was slumped at the wheel. He concluded that he must be asleep in the cab. He waited two minutes but the man did move and so he placed the alert tag on the man. He carried on surveying other scenes. He worked without any sign of interest in the subjects of his observation. All around the room, men of the same age were doing exactly as he did. They worked quietly and methodically. Their expressions did not change. If you studied their faces closely, you could not detect any emotion.
Occasionally, someone would get up, motion to his Supervisor and head to the toilets up the corridor. A trolley arrived from the canteen with tea and a snack.
There was a tap on his shoulder. Two Supervisors were looking down at him through narrowed eyes.
“Come with me,” said one of them.
He marched the Worker along to the bank of lifts. They went up to an upper floor and along a corridor to a door marked 601.
The room was brightly lit. He was told to sit in a chair.
Another Supe
rvisor entered.
“Hold still,” commanded the man.
He held a device and scanned one eye then inspected the device.
“Anything different last night when you were asleep?”
The question was delivered like a blow.
The Worker shook his head.
The two men stood back and compared devices. They nodded agreement.
One of the devices showed his file. It read ‘fear of heights.’
The door opened and a third man entered. He wore black clothes.
He came over to the Worker, gripped his shoulder and pulled him to his feet. He took the Worker along the corridor to another room marked 606.
“In this room, you are mine,” said the man. “I can do to you whatever I like.”
He picked up a whip and brought it down on the table, making the Worker jump. Then he took a cord and bound it around the Worker’s neck.
Holding one end, he pulled him to the open window. He thrust the Worker’s upper body into the opening. The Worker was looking straight down at the hard surface of the street below with the cord tight around his neck.
“Now you listen: you have anything to report, you report it to the first Supervisor you see. Got it?”
He yanked the Worker back up onto his feet.
“You got it?”
The Worker nodded, face pale, eyes wide, hands shaking.
The man removed the cord and, holding his shoulder in a grip like a vice, took him back to the Supervisors in Room 601.
The Worker was marched back to Room 412 and told to continue observations.
Notes sounded for the end of the session and he returned to the canteen for lunch.
After the meal he filed in the line for the banks of information screens to confirm his directions for the afternoon session.
“You will work in Laundry Room 134 until dinner,” the voice told him.
He headed along a wide concrete street. The buildings were many storeys high above him. The atrium roof allowed sunlight to filter down onto the concrete walls. The air was conditioned and there was only movement of air when he passed a ventilation outlet.
On his way to another section, he passed men dressed in the same uniform, walking unhurriedly to their next assignments.
He found the Laundry room on the first floor. It was a similar size to the canteen. It was laid out in a very orderly way: on one side of the room, there were stacks of washing in large bins divided into sections, each for one unit of one hundred Workers; there were rows of industrial size washing machines then ranks of dryer machines and tables for ironing.
He registered with a Supervisor and took his place at one of the tables. With four other Workers, he spread out clothes and they used the controller to bring down the ironing slab to press them. Another team of Workers collected the pressed and folded clothes in wheeled bins and moved them to the storage area so that they would be ready to be taken to the lockers in the dormitory blocks. As they completed one lot of laundry, men from another team brought over baskets of dried laundry that were ready for pressing. Everyone seemed to know his role so the process seemed to work like clockwork. There was no conversation, just the occasional nod or gesture. There was a rhythm to their work. The gushing steam, as they brought down the press, sounded above the hum of the machines in the washing section.
They all halted when they heard the loud notes and gathered around the canteen trolleys for the afternoon snack. No one had a watch because there were always the notes to start and stop the session.
They kept up their work until the notes sounded again to signal the end of the session. They switched off the machines and headed for the exit when the Supervisors had checked all was correct at their table.
He made his way back to his unit Rec Room, where there were men using the information screens and browsing pages on news from the Executive, or news from other sections. Most of the men were sitting and watching the large screens where the Announcer was introducing news stories from around the world. There was a report on the wolf population in some distant forests. There was another report on the marine life of an ocean reef. He touched the information screens and found that his next session was fitness. He made his way to the exercise gym and registered with a Supervisor then joined many others in a rotation of individual exercises.
When he had completed his circuit, he checked out with the Supervisor and went to shower in the washrooms. He placed his dirty clothes in one of the trolley bins and found new clothes in his locker. He returned to the information area and the notes soon sounded to direct them to move to the canteen block for dinner.
He had the same food as the rest of his unit. Tonight, they had a bowl of tomato soup, a plate of couscous with a sauce of vegetables and a few pieces of chicken, followed by a plain raisin cake. They ate in silence while the Evening Announcements played. He had shut out the memory of the dream and so he had not thought about it all day.
After dinner, he returned to the Rec Room with his unit. On the screens, there was a speech from one of the leaders of the New Order. He did not recognise him. They all sat and listened. There were exactly one hundred young men. They were all close in age. They were all seventeen years old and they were all born between the first day of July and the last day of September in the year 2018. They did not know this. None of them knew the day of their birth. They did not know that the date that day was the 12th April 2035. He sat and listened like all the others. He was totally unaware that he would come to remember this day as the last day before everything changed for him.
The speech ended and the Announcer bid them a good night. He got up and walked to the washrooms to brush his teeth, and then to the locker-room to get into his nightclothes. He found his bed among the neat lines, ten by ten. His was near the middle: row six, bed number five. He lay down and closed his eyes. Soon the note sounded. The lights were turned off and the Supervisors left. Silently, from small outlets under every bed, there issued a clear gas. Within minutes, all of them were asleep.
His sleep was normally empty of anything visual. It was like passing into a warm fog, without any sound or sight, and with no feeling.
The hours passed.
Workers in identical dormitories were asleep: the men in their sectors, the women in theirs. Recorded voices of a man and a woman gave the Night-time Messages: the kind of words a mother or a father would say to comfort a child. There were Supervisors on night shifts, keeping watch from Observation Rooms, but otherwise the whole city slept.
Suddenly, he came out of the fog and into a dream:
He was standing in bright sunshine, shading his eyes from the intense glare. It took moments for him to focus. The air was hot and dry in his nostrils. He was looking at the sandstorm in all its vivid colour and movement. He felt the same shudder, seeing something so vast and terrible. The steel wheels were spinning at its base like giant saws. The vision was exactly the same as before.
But this time, a voice next to him said:
“Mark.”
He turned to find a man of about the same age, standing next to him. He looked into his eyes.
“You are being called,” the man said, “it is time for you to wake up.”
* * * * * *
Flashback Saturday 17th January 1953
The rain was falling steadily through the central London smog. Looking down on Pall Mall, the black taxis plied their trade and a few people on foot moved to and fro in the street-lit darkness. Four black umbrellas emerged from the Royal Motoring Club and moved West along the pavement. They headed past St. James’s Palace and turned up the hill to an ornate entrance on the East side of St. James’s Street. Entering Grey’s Club, the four men left their overcoats and umbrellas with the cloakroom attendants and mounted the stairs. They were elegantly dressed in tailcoats, as was customary for a high society wedding. They all wore the same old school tie. They each carried the confident air of someone who has known privilege since birth.
In the dining room, th
ey were shown to a table in the far corner. Some of the other diners only glanced in their direction. An old general with a white moustache stared disapprovingly at the Indian.
They devoured their dinner, chatting like close friends do, their merriment fuelled with wine and, later on, brandy.
With the time being after eleven, the dining room was nearly empty. The general had fallen asleep at his table, his head bowed forward.
“I do not want to end up in here, old and decrepit, dining alone, pissed and asleep at my table,” said the Englishman.
They all looked across the room towards the slumped figure of the general.
“I want my life to count for something,” said the Indian.
“Well, my life is not going to bloody well count for God, I’ll tell you that!” said the Englishman.
“Ya,” said the South African, “but what a bloody mess the world is in.”
“I have a friend in Washington,” said the American, “and he says that this situation with Russia and her friends is going to go on for at least ten, maybe twenty years, maybe longer. America will be at war with another country before long. There are plenty of senior people who are seriously paranoid about the spread of Communism.”
“I’m not going to fight another bloody world war. I lost everyone in my family in the last one,” said the Englishman.
“The thing I hate is the way we treat this planet,” said the Indian, “nuclear bombs, toxic coal smoke, cars everywhere you go. Our atmosphere is a thing of purity and beauty and we are being so ignorant and irresponsible. The smog in London was so thick last week, I walked past a bus that was crawling along Piccadilly. I made it to the Ritz before it did!”
“The world is chasing after money,” said the South African. “It’s greed. People are never satisfied with what they have. We saw it at school. I see it among my family and our friends.”
“The world is deceived with ornament,” said the Englishman.
“The human race is on a path to self destruction,” said the American, “we have seen it throughout history. The conflicts are no longer between two nations, now they involve many nations. And the weapons are getting more efficient at wiping out large numbers. We could blow the world to pieces, then it would be game over for everybody.”
2035 Revelation Page 1