I Polyphemus

Innocence takes many forms and I always felt sorry for this guy… Here’s his side of the story, before his guests arrive.

Lightning strikes out to sea, something in the roar makes me rise and walk to the beach. I stand, my feet in the freezing shallows. A great fork strikes again. The image stays on my eye. The dark horizon creeps back in slowly. The bolt of light has torn the peace of the night and I stand, unable to turn away.

Familiar anger rises. I close my eye and breathe. I smell the beach, the seaweed washed up from yesterday’s storm. I breathe and feel the anger let go of my throat. I smell my herd of sheep.

I hear the cry of an animal in between the unending roar of the sea. I recognise it. It is the cry of a lamb for its mother, a comforting sound to me. I see a flash of light, even with my eye closed. Its mother’s reply is lost under another crack of thunder out to sea, closer this time.

Like this, the footsteps of the gods grow closer to my island. I can see them, even with my eye shut.

I wonder if I should give thanks to the gods for something. It has been so long since I thanked them for anything. Another fork of light strikes from the heavens to the sea. It has been a while since they thanked me for anything either. I wonder for some time if we are even. I think we are. But, what would they say?

I sit down in the surf and splash some water on my face. It is cool and eases the hot anxiety I feel creeping across my neck.

Nobody is going to take my island away from me. Nobody is going to ruin everything I have spent my life building, my flock, my hills, my home.

Solarpunk manifesto

As a solarpunk writer, you have the chance now, to help us imagine a better world. Not on your own in front of a screen, but out there, taking what is already happening in this world and imagining worlds where it has already happened.

Our city

The seasons tell us that the festival of Ethelochory is here and we have been up all night, putting the finishing touches to our festival bicycles, because scattering seeds to the wind is our responsibility now.

When it comes, we are ready for the dawn, hungry for sunshine. Breakfast is served to eager, sparring mouths all along the communal table, and on the kitchen floor for the more-than-human residents, purring and barking too.

I grab a Wild Cleaver coffee and hover until a place at the table is free. I know people who can say they still remember the taste of real coffee, but I can’t say I do. Besides, foraging for Cleaver seeds is fun, easy and left to children, or anyone that finds the idea of wading through sticky weeds and then shaking their clothes off to harvest them amusing.

Two friends finish together and, as they make room on the bench, I slip into the conversation in their place. I tear through my breakfast and, from outside, I hear great doors slide open and the hiss of decoupling and tik tik tik of bicycles being moved in the beckoning, morning air.

My locally grown breakfast was delicious and I catch my reflection, grinning back at me, in the plate I have licked clean. A plate I made myself. I stack it with the others and race outside.

The festival bikes are fully charged and already unplugged. Their electric motors aren’t purring, not yet, but poised like so many cats, happily stretching in the warmth of the sun, ready to pounce on the day. I grab the nearest bicycle and run my hands over it – thick tyres to grip the road as sure as claws – a firm frame fierce with faded fire decals – paniers pre-packed with everything a solarpunk needs to survive out there in the city on festival day.

We ride.

From the top of the hill, we can see the whole of the city laid out before us. It is unnerving to sit like a god above it all, we are not comfortable with this disconnected feeling, but soon we will be down there and part of it all again. From up here, we see the grids where people tried to tame the city and beautiful scars where we let nature back in. I see all the things a land needs to survive – trees roots to bind the blind world of soil together, shade for humans and more than humans to enjoy, space to walk in, space to meet each other in, space to ride in.

We ride downhill, toward the heart of the city.

I remember a story my father used to tell, of a similar hill, in a different city, in a different time. He was ten years old when he stood at the top of that hill and the kids down below gave him the thumbs up and pushed the pedestrian crossing button. Ten years old when he stepped onto his skateboard and pushed off, down that hill, to the crossroads where his neighbourhood met the three lane freeway. Long ago, in a far away land where cars sped, hindered only by the god-like finger of traffic lights. Halfway down the hill and he sees the light turn to amber. But cars don’t stop for amber and neither does he – he just keeps getting faster.

And faster – now the light flips red and the river of cars breaks and he flies, untouched, unscathed – alive – across the road, cheers as he makes it through. I can see my father panting in breathless triumph, as the cars start to flow again and he turns, hammering that button, to part the cars and climb the hill and risk it all, all over again.

On our road, there are bikes all around me, close enough to touch, and we do touch, as we fly down our hill, toward the docks. We flow, like water, a wave tumbling, frothing. On this hill, in this time, there are no cars to stop us.

Down amongst the buildings now, we surge past a common, the public house, “The Goose” is open early, not to serve alcohol, but to serve as a community base, for anyone who doesn’t have anywhere to be at this hour. We hear laughter and someone waves to us, but we have somewhere to be.

We flow past a tower block and feel how fast we are going as sunlight strobes fierce, from in between the buildings. It is blinding and exhilarating. Then, as we emerge, there are cries as we see the edge of the docks, at the bottom of the hill. History is at our backs, the city changed by our presence. Side streets crowd us, like possibilities. Some of us take these branches – to make deliveries, to plant seed balls, to run with dogs – but we hurtle on, compelled by everything that has come before us, energised.

I see one group of bikes burst off from the pack and splash to a halt, slamming into an energy dock at The Fourth Hunger noodle bar. Though they have come to a halt, they pedal on, their wheels spinning, grinding power into energy on the treadmills, like mills used to. Some riders dismount and slip behind the empty bar, picking power attachments from the modular menu. As their friends continue to pedal, the attachments power up the oven, grind the flour and top up the refrigerator energy to keep the yoghurt cool. Yoghurt pizza bases will be happening in no time.

A cargo bike peels smoothly off from the pack and hurtles down a side road, its bin packed to the brim with heavy tools, bound for the tool-share shed. To our left we see the city is healing, simple home improvements being made to existing houses, traditional skills see seaweed insulation going in, where there was none before.

To our right, the city is growing, new homes are going up, people gather at the foot of an unfinished house, curiously handling unfamiliar materials, looking forward to learning new skills. In the next street, newly finished houses bring the joy of man’s expression through work to the sparkling morning in an art nouveau explosion, swirls and tangles bursting from simple, handmade decorations.

Ahead of us now, I see the edge where the city simply stops building and fussing and people gather to look out and upwards from the jagged piece of land where the earthquake decided to heave the road in two. The people who survived it never fenced it off, just left it as a monument, a gash in the continuation of the spectacle, a break in the capitalist fever dream of life created for the road.

At the road’s end, the human part of the festival is waiting for us in brightly dyed clothes, sunbleached instruments wailing to and fro. Flashes of reusable bunting catch my eye and the wind and the riders fan out and take formation. The end of the road rushes to meet us, the cliff laughs wide before us, the wind in our faces does not daunt us – it is perfect – for – takeoff.

The spectators cry out as we launch off the end of the sky-dock, off the edge of the city and into the blue. My bicycle wings deploy and catch the wind, their solar skin sucks up the sun and my propeller whirls into action. As we drift up, above the city, I pull my festival lever and my paniers part as I scatter seedlings to the wind.

Around me, everyone is doing the same and suddenly the air is full of glistening, airborne magic. I ease off my pedals, to join the chorus of voices, echoing out clear to the horizon.

We shout:

We are solarpunks

We are imagining an alternative future, a better future, a better now.

We write in collaboration with our community

The hero’s journey is over. Put your feet up, it sounds like you’ve had an exhausting time, did you not think to ask your community for help on your quest? Solarpunk heroes travel in groups and return home in even greater numbers.

We are not picking between Utopia or Dystopia

We are not paralysed by fear and gladly choose solutions over perfection.

We are not climate despairers.⁽¹⁾

We are not optimists, but we are overflowing with the hope that our writing inspires action and that our imagining alternative futures, not only “reflects the world as it is, but also participates in its transformation.”⁽²⁾

We are in opposition to opposition

The opposite of capitalism is not returning to the land.

There are more than two ways to get things done.

We are going to imagine some.

Competition between man and man is a lie, long since over.⁽³⁾

We have better ways of solving problems, by working together.

Human and human.

Human and more-than-human.

Non-human relationships are important

More-than-human relationships are all-important.

Pet your cat.

Plant your salad.

Praise your mycelial network.

Solarpunk is happening now

Cyberpunk was a relevant reaction to capitalist calamity and steampunk was a retreat from that future, into fantasy, with hazy, ill-defined technology. But solarpunk has something that we have not seen since the last great collision of art and science in the 1950s. It has its hooks in reality.

In the 1940s, the Golden Age of science fiction believed that “sheer technological accomplishment would solve all problems and all problems were what they appeared to be on the surface.”⁽⁴⁾

It was soon obvious that this was not the case, and this idea was revised when “the dropping of the atomic bomb in 1945 made science fiction respectable.”⁽⁵⁾Overnight, the world saw that change was here and people wanted to know what this meant for them. Science fiction was on hand with stories about how the technology that existed now and would exist soon, would change us.

The 1960s saw comics wither and the genre blossom and mature into book sales. The New Wave told us stories with psychology, sociology and politics added to the science.

The same thing is happening now, for solarpunks

The climate crisis has made solarpunk respectable. Change is here on your doorstep, it is in your hands and so is the technology to shape that change.

Solarpunk already lives off the page, in the now. Talk to solarpunks in your community and they will spin you tales of alternative lives, alternative worlds where things are better, happening two blocks away:

Community gardens taken back from ugly, corporate wastelands
Bicycles powering sound systems and charging phones
People learning to eat seasonally and develop their own food-resilience

I am imagining a solarpunk book where, as I turn the final page, I see links that spill off that page and connect with my world. Where I have just read about solar sky-bicycles seeding futuristic cities, my book tells me how to reach out to affordable, community benefiting, solar technology just down the road from me. This technology exists now, it says. Grab your bike.

Sources

Adam Flynn https://hieroglyph.asu.edu/2014/09/solarpunk-notes-toward-a-manifesto/
Professor Jesse Cohn, Art Politik p.243 https://www.minorcompositions.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/artpolitik-web.pdf
Wiliam Morris “The condition of competition between man and man is bestial only and that of association human.” https://www.marxists.org/archive/morris/works/1883/pluto.htm
Algis Budrys (August 1965). “Galaxy Bookshelf”. Galaxy Science Fiction. pp. 186–194.
Isaac Asimov https://pdfcoffee.com/nightfall-and-other-stories-isaac-asimov-pdf-free.html

What would Solarpunk musicians have done differently?

I can’t stop thinking about an anecdote I heard about a British punk band from back in the day (they will remain nameless) who childishly wouldn’t let their support band soundcheck. I keep asking myself – what would Solarpunk musicians have done differently?

What would Solarpunk musicians have done differently?

On a slow tour of America, The Solarclash play first, as is the Solarpunk custom of supporting local talent. This guarantees an audience for the support act when they take the stage after them. The Solarclash are guests in this town and treat their hosts with respect, not hobbling them with cheap tricks like denying them a soundcheck so they sound worse than them, playing to an audience of no one. This is The Solarclash – they are the ones that jump on the energy bikes at the front of the stage during the soundcheck, pedalling hard to drive the soundsystem, generating enough energy for the support to properly hear themselves, working up a sweat before they’ve even got their guitars out.

Slow travel and slow vacations influence The Solarclash’s slow tour schedule, instead of the ‘one night only’ of days gone by, The Solarclash posters proudly announce that they will be in town for ‘one week only’. Time enough for them to get to know the place and, as is customary, to learn some of the support band’s songs. The last song of The Solarclash’s set is a cover of the first song of the support band’s set. The last song of the evening is a local cover of The Solarclash’s most famous song.

As the tour rolls on, more songs are learned and swapped, sometimes the changeover between bands sees more members on stage than are in the audience. Songs stretch, stages swell and the drummer looks up to find a wall of backs they don’t recognise, glimpsing the band they are supposed to be playing with, on the energy bikes, heads bobbing furiously, finally grinding that old punk pogoing spirit into good use as the sound system flares louder and louder.

In the morning it’s time to press the flesh as the band join one of the venue’s chosen causes – a local food scheme, keeping communities alive by connecting local growers to local tables. The band rocks up with minor hangovers, thanks to the organic craft brewery’s excellent quality drinks last night. There’s a crowd of fans here already. The Solarclash have been here a few days and they know most of the fans by sight and some of them by name.

Today is the last day of the tour and The Solarclash are planting, helping local people get out from under the unseasonal boot of Big Food. Fans smile and take pictures working shoulder to shoulder with their favourite band, all getting their hands dirty, joking about never washing their overalls again. The work is hard, but shared, and lunch is well earned.

The band aren’t selling T-shirts, or copies of the album. In fact there is no studio album, the only record of their songs is the physical, recyclable copies they record live at the gigs, distributed on the day for people who were there at the time. And, who needs a T-shirt to remind you of the time the band came to town in March, when you can tend the lime tree they planted and dream of the limes you’ll pick in years to come?

After lunch, The Solarclash say goodbye to the town, whose name they have remembered, not scrawled on the back of a set list as they burnt their way across the country, one place blurring into the next. Their ride is here and they mount their sky cycles and leave their cheering fans far below as they feel the warmth of the sun lift them into the sky, filling their solar sails with energy for the long journey ahead.

Power Shower

Excerpt of a conversation submitted for your consideration by Westminster Pancakes plc, shared as per the standard breakfast table-service agreement 2025. Flagged for Shower Master Power Update fix v9.563. Flagged for possible gym membership violation, law update pending.

Returning customer 57934/b4 Flo Kennedy – regular table – mid tier

Returning customer 46112/r2 Judith Taco – guest table – high tier

I’ve had the most terrible morning, Judith. I got a notification from the shower that our hand soap refill order frequency has been delayed because we are apparently not washing as much as we did last month. I get this notification as I am in the shower, staring at my almost-empty hand soap bottle.

It sticks to the sides.

I know and we rinse like you’re supposed to.

Doesn’t work and it still sticks to the sides.

It still sticks to the sides and the little sensor that knows when you’re running low doesn’t think you’re running low because there’s soap on the sides. I am thinking of changing brands.

Nightmare.

But now I can’t change brands because I’m waiting on our new order frequency change confirmation notification, which you have to know before you can submit a brand change proposal. So, I’m lathering up with shampoo to save on hand soap and I get another notification on the wall from the house coach, letting me know that I qualify for a rebate because our water use is down.

So you’re using less water, but more soap?

It’s insane. How are they not talking to each other?

You should change your settings, how are you getting household notifications in the shower? That’s legal-you-time.

Oh, it’s already set to one green note max. The water saver counts as an orange because it’s something the company owes you.

No wonder I’ve never seen an orange!

They are legally obliged to let you know within four hours of a rebate, so that’s why it’s orange. I confirm receipt and through the shampoo in my eyes I can see there’s another notification waiting.

<order#563 arrives within agreed SLA>

You get more done in the shower than most people do in a whole morning, you know that?

It’s a red.

Red? [redacted under the family-restaurant out of hours obscenity act 2022]

The red notification is from Sam’s lawyer. It says that they are sorry to inform me that most changes in water usage are caused by a change in routine and that, as my geo data confirms that my routine has not changed, they are filing a pre-emptive divorce strike.

So, because,

Because Sam isn’t using the shower as much, it looks like Sam’s showering elsewhere.

Elsewhere, like someone else’s house?

Elsewhere, like a dirty, bitcoin motel.

Data divorce.

Data has triggered a pre-emptive divorce clause.

Did you know Sam had a pre-emptive divorce clause?

Who reads contracts?

I’m checking mine now.

So, I’m crying and I’ve soap in my eyes,

Shampoo in your eyes, right,

And Sam on the other wall explaining to me that it’s just a glitch and the new gym that Sam’s registering at hasn’t completed the onboarding process, which is why my house is divorcing me at 8.30 in the morning.

What are you going to do?

I’ve raised a ticket.

Damn right you have.

I could brick that shower, honestly.

Oh, don’t, Our toaster got bricked the other week.

That is brutal.

One of the kids pushed the ‘automatically install all updates’ button.

Oh no.

Don’t think they meant to. I almost raised a ticket. In the end I socialed the toaster people and now they’re raising a ticket for me.

You can raise your own ticket.

That’s what I told them. And my kids are eating bread.

Ugh, bread.

Did you ever think that maybe Sam is having an affair?

I don’t know. Gyms are run by crazy powerful AIs. Can’t imagine how you’d get one to lie for you.

True.

Their gym AI membership schemes are so complicated, have you ever tried getting out of one?

It’s impossible. You can’t.

I’ve booked an induction at Sam’s gym.

Good plan.

In your name.

What?! I can’t double-gym.

Kidding, I used my maiden name.

I am not doing gym fraud with you.

No, I checked, I can do an anonymous free trial without breaking contract and bring one anonymous free guest. We can go, skip the induction and wait in the cafe, see if Sam actually turns up to the gym.

We can’t go looking like this.

That’s why we’re getting new haircuts, new clothes, I still have access to Sam and my joint account.

Why am I getting a new haircut?

Because you’re my friend,

Not if you get me barred from my gym I’m not.

And my shower is making me paranoid and I need you to help me out.

By doing gym fraud.

We’re not doing gym fraud.

I’m not doing gym fraud, you’re doing gym fraud.

<order#569 arrives within agreed SLA>

You have got to stop saying gym fraud.

(Shuddering) G-g-g-gym fraud.

I’m not afraid of a pancake restaurant.

Says you, whose shower bricked their relationship an hour ago.

That’s not funny.

Bit funny.

Do you want a free haircut or not?

Hair fraud!

These pancakes are the best.

They are the finest chocolate-not-chocolate pancakes on this street.

How’s things with you? How was last night?

Date night is always a good night. Let the Brands do the cooking and we’ll do the [redacted under the family-restaurant out of hours obscenity act 2022]

Nubalees interviews Strangers From Birth

Strangers From Birth the Video Game has arrived. All Possible Futures Interactive Archive presents the story of one robot and their mission to go back in time and cut through the myths and find out what really went on with his all-time favourite human band. Nubalees is a robot from the future! Join him as he tells the story of Strangers From Birth, in their own words.

Can you navigate the time stream and remember classic Strangers From Birth events from your own reality? Will you brain-phase and become unable to remember if Strangers From Birth really did ride on the hovering Megacity of Brighton and Hove and Portslade? Or will you rise triumphantly from the magma of uncertainty and arrive at the best possible future, just in time for Strangers From Birth to rock the party?

Enjoy a good old fashioned Choose Your Own Adventure story with a futuristic lick of laser-paint.

Good luck, human!

Nubalees interviews v1.0

Trip to the shops

Simon stood all alone at the dry mouth of the market. Unsupervised man, his partner joked. Normally, Simon would spend Saturday morning traipsing round in his partner’s footsteps, daydreaming, bag holding. But today, Simon was in control of the shopping list. He was fine with that – had already been to the Macro-Barn and picked up their week’s worth of macrobiotic attack yoghurts.

The market shimmered in the midday heat, blue striped awnings flapped feebly in the tired breeze. Shoppers bristled in the heat and pushed like a tide, filling the space between stalls like water, flowing eagerly along the thin strip between vendors. Cries filled the air from all sides, a woman’s cracked voice made a claim her imported handbags were never going to fulfill – “Change your life!” Simon gripped the black, branded bag of tomatoes in his sweaty fist and paused to check his list. He was a rock in the river of shoppers. The river broke against his sun maddened neck and flowed on past him.

Simon rolled up his sleeves and checked his tattoos – Tomatoes, leeks, vegetables scrolled on his left forearm, under the beautifully inked name, Vega-organic. The ink on his arm matched the bag he held. Simon smiled and held his finger to the words. The ink rubbed off on his finger and bled down his right arm, coming to rest above his elbow with a neat line through it. The tattoos on his left arm now said Zoy Dogz, Party EGgs, 3 Size Peas.

Above the tang of the market bins, dust and baking shoppers, he could smell the next stall on his list. He turned into the flow and followed the honey that drifted to him on the wind. Past the Planet Wide Distress stall with its sun-bleached green logos, its all too dramatic banner scrolling lazily in the heat above the stall – we will not be here to clean it. Past a stall where a chrome cat cried and licked its own tears back up in a perpetually upset water cycle.

Past an ancient looking stall where foot high alphabet letters grew purple fire-moss. Some moss had made its way off the side of the stand and was collecting by the metal legs of the stall in a faded drift, giving the impression it had been rusting there for years.

A fly buzzed close to Simon’s face. He swatted at it lazily and watched as it landed on the stall in front of him, right in the middle of a music-web. He heard the spider advance, beautiful notes appearing on the wind as the tiny vibrations on the delicate web instrument strummed into life through the sound system. The fly struggled in electric misery, vibrating terrified arpeggios. Simon turned his head and followed the honey scent.

It was hot and dry, so Simon stopped for a NubaLime. It wasn’t on his list, but he felt like he needed it. He checked the list again, and repeated the items out loud so he wouldn’t forget them. Zoy Dogz, & Party EGgs. The spore, mood-circus, bubble stall had a crack in its top and was visibly leaking little puffs of yellow, delight spores. When he set off again, Simon made sure he shuffled past just close enough to the yellow spores to put a smile on his face.

Simon reached the centre of the market place where all the streets twisted together and a few tenacious mobile food stalls crept oppressively close to the shoppers. What was it about lists that he found so hard to remember? Simon shifts his bags from left to right arm, checking his list again. He glances up from the only item on his arm, the monogrammed Zoy Dogz and tries to get a fix on the stall. He peers down two dank corridors of people, leading away from the marketplace, looking for something familiar. All he smells is trouble.

Simon sees tentacles thrashing from one stall, vile, corrupted jets of sound bleating from a directional sound system, sweeping its broken noise at unlucky passers-by. After another NubaLime, for the heat, and a corn from the Street Corn guy, Simon felt more disoriented than refreshed. He dropped his corn husk, wiped his mouth on the back of his hand and tried one of the streets.

Barely two steps in, the people close so tight that the sunlight briefly disappears behind the flap of a ripped tent top. It’s not even a relief to be out of the glare of the sun and Simon shifts his bulk uncomfortably as people press themselves against him. Other people’s bags peck at his knees with uncoordinated jabs, randomly protruding sharp edges swinging into his shins. Their hot skin brushes against his. Then a jolt as non-human fur brushes against him, lightly curling across his forearm making him flinch at its electric touch. The contact is drenched in animal faux-romone, something about the smell makes him think of foxes.

Uncomfortably, he turns against the flow of people and wades out again. The crowd seems to strengthen with every step he takes against the natural tide. Gaudy, ethereal ripples splash on the faces of the people surging toward him, dancing like light on water and when he looks again they all have his face. He closes his eyes and presses for the market square not two steps away: he could hear them all, mumbling and whispering the same thing as they pass too close to him. ‘Savings,’ ‘Multipack’.

He breaks free, back into the square with a heavy wheezing breath. He needed another NubaLime. The honey mist trail was hard to find again, it was clogged with dust and a sizzling confusion of street foods. Someone had dropped their tattoos, people were stamping the letters into the dust. The ink rose and bit at their shoes, looking for flesh it could crawl onto.

Simon checked his arm again. His ink said Bran Fox. It was the only thing on the list. He rubbed the black, flowing ink and the honey smell rose in his nostrils again. The stall was actually a lot closer than he had thought. It was right there in front of him. The dusty man at the Bran Fox stall shovelled bran into a brown paper bag with a mangy looking felt tip fox scribbled on the side. The bran had dried star shaped fruit in it, which reached out with its five arms for the scoop as it came near.

Simon paid for the bran and shook his head at the things his partner asked him to shop for these days. His arm was clean and the weekly shop was done. As he hefted his shopping bags he pondered that they felt a lot heavier than usual, but that was probably because he was carrying them all on his own. Shaking his head happily, he rummaged in his pocket for what little change he had left and bought a case of NubaLime for the journey home.

September laughed so hard

September laughed so hard that her eyes ordered a crate of coffee refills, a keyring kitchen and a year’s worth of gravy-gems, online. She spent the next few minutes rolling her eyes, cancelling the orders with a ‘buyer’s remorse’ gesture. The café doubled as a pop-house and before she could finish cancelling her orders a waiter-drone tried to airdrop a slo-cooker keyring set on the table. The entire table waved their drinks and swatted at it as it bobbed and hovered just out of their reach. All this did was bring more uncontrollable laughter, during which September booked an underwater hotel.

“How do I change the settings?”

September pawed at her eyes in between chuckles.

Her friends nudged one another as she removed her lenses from her streaming eyes.

As September’s breathing returned to normal, she looked around for her bag, to keep her lenses safe. This was a lot harder without her ‘find my bag’ visual locator on. Without her hovering panther icon it was hard to remember what her bag even looked like. Her friend, Patience, put her arm in what looked to Patience like a shimmering, golden peach until she felt the hard stone of September’s bag in its centre. Patience drew it out and passed it to her.

As she stowed her lenses and dried her eyes, September could see that the café was actually an uninspiring brown. In fact, everyone in the group was dressed in plain clothes and their hair hung in dull, undeyed clumps. Tiny rainbows did not spring from the parties’ hair when they turned suddenly. The tabletop was not held up by an adorable, grumpy polar bear, but by a solid gloop of grey cinders and exposed wiring.

When the time came to sing Happy Birthday, September laughed so hard that some of her close friends ordered her a cab with a sad wrinkle of their noses. They sang and sang and none of them had their harmonizers on and September could hear their real voices, wretched and out of tune. It was the most ridiculous thing she had ever heard.

When the cake came, September was beyond words. ‘What is it?’ she kept saying, pointing at the monotone slab of off-white icing airdropped in front of her. The cloud candles and koala chorus were folded away in the secret, augmented world of the restaurant’s reality. Her friends laughed and pointed as the cake narrative unfolded, ducking to avoid this and turning their faces away from the delightful terror of that.

September took a few steps back when the whole table ducked away from a fake cake explosion she couldn’t see. They all picked gloops of imaginary icing off themselves and flicked it at each other. Evidently the pyro-cake was getting out of hand because September was totally hidden under the waves of entertainment-reality that cascaded out from it. Sanctuary nearly hit her in the side of the head and September asked her to stop. Sanctuary didn’t hear her.

“Ladies! Ladies?!”

No one heard her. She could feel the familiar tickle of laser speakers dampening her voice. The Restaurant AI had decided she was not part of the Birthday celebration. She was being drowned out of her own special day!

September just stared at them in disbelief, outside of it all.

‘Tember, where did she go?’

‘Someone go with her.’

‘Her cake’s here.’

September stood in the middle of the room, clutching her bag and the one shoe she could find, watching her friends look for her, spreading out blindly, like a children’s game of Murder In The Dark. Some moving toward the bathroom, some flagging waiter drones, others reaching out into the fog of the un-augmented reality where September had slipped. She stood, two inches from her friend, Regular’s fingers, waving uselessly back and forth, looking for her. She wasn’t laughing anymore. Something stopped her from reaching out and taking Regular’s hand.

Staring around at the sign-less doorways, September picked one at random and walked, with what diminished dignity she had left, toward it. She walked silently through a grey hole in the wall, not through burning, peacock fans, not through a wall of diamond ivy. The only thing that saw her go was a floating drone shark, that airdropped hotel tickets into her handbag as she went.

Cryo Me A River

Frank Henstein stepped into the Huvver lift and was propelled upwards through the daily debris of handywipes and food wrappers that bobbed in the impossible antigravity lift field. The office stinks of fake pine and ice-cream aftershave.

Frank was born in Croydon, 1987, his brother Barry had been the one keen on Cryo. At 29, Frank begrudgingly signs up to help promote Barry’s faltering Cryo business. The full body scan and physical checkup reveals Frank is dying of an incurable cancer. Without blinking, Barry enthusiastically suggests Frank freezes himself, until science can find a cure.

Frank does not want to die. Getting frozen seems as much like death to him – and Barry wanted the Cryo done right now. Frank explains this to Barry, the two embrace and Barry cries and tells his little brother, that he does not want to do anything to hurt him. It is touching. Frank wakes the next day, one thousand years in the future: his cancer cured.

On his break, Frank opens one of the few cartons of cigarettes left in the world and smokes at his desk. It was somebody’s birthday, but he can’t remember their name, or their nickname, or hair group. He was sure half the room were at the party right now: impossible to tell, when the party was inside the computer.

Barry has already been and gone. They told Frank how long Barry lived, but 450 years is too long for Frank to fathom. Frank can only wonder why his big brother hadn’t called for him.

His sister lived next, she barely lasted a year before calling her mother and father back from the dead. She died for real at the age of sixty, their parents both went around the same time. The records don’t say why they died, or why they did not call on Frank. Maybe they all felt like he did, that this was unlivable, that they would not share this hell with the ones they loved?

Frank tries to relax, but only succeeds in starting another cigarette. He wants to watch more about what life was like two hundred years ago, when his parents lived. Frank remembers the last time he tuned in to History Unlimited – the next day, everyone turned up for work, dressed as prehistoric men and spent the day throwing mud and staging crude, electric wars.

The girl that Frank tries to talk to every single day, stops at the end of his desk.

“Chup,” she says.

“Chup,” he copies. She laughs and walks on. She greets her friends with a manly ‘chup’ and there is more laughter. Then she is dancing in a caustic 3d haze. It hurts to look at it, if the broadcast is not meant for you and Frank winces as he tries to pick out details in the fizzing digital mush.

Frank wonders what to do after work. Even in his daydreams, he goes home. Home to cushions that behave like pets and beds that burn his covers off in the morning, with a fake fire he will never get used to. He dreams of the robot kitchen and how he will react, disgusted by every single meal he is presented with. He wondered how his sister lasted, almost a year, like this.