In Competition No. 2468 you were invited to imagine that you fall asleep and wake up 20 years hence, and then report your impressions without moving from the place where you awoke.
Brian Murdoch reported new stamps issued for the Queen’s 100th birthday and the 2012 Olympics postponed yet again, for the 17th time. Mike Morrison envisaged an aged Ken Barlow supervising a pedestrian crossing in Coronation Street and Madonna in the news for adopting a Lithuanian grandmother. Last week I read H.G. Wells’s The Sleeper Awakes in which the hero, after a nap of a mere 203 years, is faced with ‘the nightmare of Capitalism triumphant — higher buildings, bigger towns, wickeder capitalists, labour more downtrodden than ever and more desperate’. Read or reread it. The prizewinners, printed below, get £25 each, and the bonus fiver goes to Richard Ellis.
I stared up at the heavily veiled face. ‘Trisha?’
‘Yeah, Dad. Drink this green tea?’
‘Where’s Mum?’
‘She and Gran are being genetically enhanced. Should be back by lunchtime. Gran’s actually dead, technically, but you’d never notice.’
‘And my arms?’
‘Donated to Darfur. Here in the West thought transmission does the lot. I’ve had three kids by TT. Oh, and one circus freak. It happens when you don’t concentrate.’
‘My legs?’
‘Crushed under a Radio Times.’
‘So I just lie here and look at the stars?’
‘Correct. Only they’re painted, not real ones. Ozone layer depletion meant they had to put a false ceiling over most of Greater Reigate.’
‘Trish, d’you have to wear that thing?’
‘’Fraid so. All non-Chinese women have to, except when servicing a government minister. Now, the tea.’
‘If I must.’
‘You must. You’re old. I’m young. You do what I say, see?’
Richard EllisA loud voice awoke me. ‘Why are you sitting there?’ I’d fallen asleep (surely only a few minutes ago?) on a bench in St James’s Park, but the bench was now surrounded by dozens of anonymous Soviet-style apartment blocks. How had I got there? And who was addressing me? Then I noticed the cameras. There were eyes everywhere, each with a loudspeaker attached. I was being watched!
I stood up quickly and approached an elderly woman. ‘Please!’ I implored. ‘Where am I?’ She frowned, wary. ‘The Jacques Delors Estate.’ I looked around in dismay. ‘But ...what’s happened to St James’s Park ...and Buckingham Palace?’ ‘Buck House was destroyed in the Rebellion, and the Parks were needed for housing.’ She eyed me suspiciously. ‘You talk and dress funny. You’re not from the Union, are you?’ Then, stepping up to a camera, she shouted, ‘There’s an illegal here!’ I ran.
Virginia Price EvansThe first person he saw was his daughter, adult now.
‘That was a long sleep,’ she said.
‘Is Mother ...?’
‘She’s in Beijing, on a course in Personal Awareness, which everyone has to do now. She’ll be back in January, when she gets her new Fuel Emissions Allowance.’
‘Good grief!’ he said. ‘And you?’
‘Monica and I are fine. We’re in a Civil Partnership, both teaching, and having Urdu lessons, so that we can keep our jobs.’
‘Urdu!’
‘All teachers have to pass in Urdu now. There’s talk of it being an official language of Parliament. Now you’re back, Dad, I’ll make a date for you to get a “Permission to Live” certificate. I believe the doctor can still fit in people late next month.’
He groaned. ‘Fetch me some sleeping pills, will you, love? Lots of sleeping pills.’
Paul GriffinThere is no denying the alien beauty of the mosques that fill the skyline in soaring clusters. Their slender towers and bulbous minarets possess a kind of floral perfection, and their blinding whiteness, like the whiteness of the whale described by Melville, seems to offer a literal carte blanche for the imagination to write on. Even the harsh gaze of security cameras and the grim security patrols with their semi-automatics, agents of a powerfully assertive monoculture, cannot spoil the view.
I have not seen such clean pavements for decades. Not a solitary trace of pizza or burger boxes, lager cans, crisp wrappers .... At one end of the plaza in which I have awoken is a giant TV screen apparently replaying a scene from a bloodthirsty feature film. But as the video loop repeats itself I realise that it is actually the executions of George Bush and Tony Blair.
Basil Ransome-DaviesI was still in the saddle when I came to — it was the mare herself who shook me awake — and our surprise was only equalled by that of the passing crowds at our revival. The meadow through which we had been travelling had vanished; now we stood in a dingy town square, of coffee-houses, outfitters, gin shops and the like, set around a graceless fountain, the whole dotted with statuary, for a piece of which we had lately been mistaken. The citizens, I observed, once so bulky and brightly if horribly dressed, now stood gaunt and ragged. Some chewed on celery. Then a hideous murmuring arose from those around us.
‘Grandma, why is that man riding meat?’ I heard a young girl demand of some withered crone, and I shuddered. Pressing Betsy for a turn of speed, we cantered swiftly away.
Piers GeddesNot in my own bed. Not even in my own house.
And not a hospital. There is apparatus around me, plenty of it, and higher-tech than I could have imagined, but it can’t be medical. In fact my environment resembles a futuristic TV studio. I see what must be optical and recording equipment. But there are no wires....
And I’m not alone. Far from it. There are people present, an assembly of them, and they are interested in me. I feel the burning attention of their gaze. Why do I mean so much to these strangers? I blink myself fully awake, alert my senses as a stooped, elderly man emerges from the murmuring, excited throng. He carries a clipboard. As he approaches me he says in a dry, estuarial voice: ‘Hallo, good evening and welcome. Tonight we have a television first — a real-life Rip Van Winkle.’
G.M. DavisNo. 2471: Celebration
‘Once I was only a wannabee,/ But now I’m a big celebrity.’ You are invited to supply a song or lyric beginning with these lines and continuing for a maximum of another 16. Entries to ‘Competition No. 2471’ by 23 November.