You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles
YUMPU automatically turns print PDFs into web optimized ePapers that Google loves.
COPYRIGHT<br />
Copyright<br />
Published by Smartass Publishers<br />
All characters and events in this<br />
publication, other than those clearly in the<br />
public domain, are fictional and any<br />
resemblance to real persons, living or dead,<br />
is purely coincidental<br />
Copyright © 2024 by Smartass Publishers<br />
All rights reserved. No parts of this<br />
publication may be reproduced, stored on a<br />
retrieval system, or transmitted, in any<br />
form or by any means, without the prior<br />
permission in writing of the publisher.
Contents<br />
A <strong>Short</strong> <strong>Story</strong> - Two Squares a<br />
Thousand Miles Apart - JagerPress. 6<br />
A <strong>Short</strong> <strong>Story</strong>: A Romance In Me -<br />
JagerPress ..................................... 30<br />
A <strong>Short</strong> <strong>Story</strong>: Provisions Needed -<br />
JagerPress ..................................... 39<br />
A <strong>Short</strong> <strong>Story</strong>: Left Behind - Nancy<br />
Smith ............................................. 50<br />
A <strong>Short</strong> <strong>Story</strong>: She Sells Sea Shells that<br />
Really Sell - Smartass Publishers .. 56<br />
A <strong>Short</strong> <strong>Story</strong>: On Your Bike -<br />
JagerPress ..................................... 63<br />
A <strong>Short</strong> <strong>Story</strong>: I’d Hate to be a Shellfish<br />
- Smartass Publishers .................... 83
A <strong>Short</strong> <strong>Story</strong>: Putt - James Agerholm<br />
...................................................... 90<br />
A <strong>Short</strong> <strong>Story</strong>: Undivision - JagerPress<br />
.................................................... 103<br />
<strong>Short</strong> <strong>Story</strong>: Visionary – Smartass<br />
Publishers ................................... 111<br />
A <strong>Short</strong> <strong>Story</strong>: Circular Economics -<br />
James Agerholm ......................... 123<br />
A <strong>Short</strong> <strong>Story</strong>: A Fair Spark - JagerPress<br />
.................................................... 134<br />
A <strong>Short</strong> <strong>Story</strong>: Trending a Mass<br />
Extinction – JagerPress ............... 138<br />
A SHORT STORY: WASHED UP WORDS<br />
– James Agerholm ...................... 150<br />
A <strong>Short</strong> <strong>Story</strong> - The Last Human –<br />
Bing’s Chat GPT ........................... 156
A <strong>Short</strong> <strong>Story</strong> - A Nomadic Power<br />
Source - JagerPress ..................... 165<br />
SHORT STORY - NOT ALWAYS -<br />
JagerPress ................................... 184<br />
A <strong>Short</strong> <strong>Story</strong> - The Symphony of Life -<br />
ChatGPT ...................................... 189<br />
An Intellectual Collapse -JagerPress193<br />
A <strong>Short</strong> <strong>Story</strong> - The Honey Baron –<br />
Smartass Publishers .................... 198<br />
<strong>Short</strong> <strong>Story</strong> - Tom Forest -JagerPress<br />
.................................................... 214
A <strong>Short</strong> <strong>Story</strong> - Two Squares a<br />
Thousand Miles Apart - JagerPress<br />
I sit here looking down the hill.<br />
Below is a scene you would find in a<br />
film, a romantic novel, a poem or even<br />
a dream. The garden that I’m sitting in<br />
is at the top of a large, steep hill in a<br />
countryside landscape. Around me is<br />
sparkling green grass and flower beds<br />
with sprouting colourful flowers<br />
spread all across them. Behind is a<br />
shackled shed; which I can see,<br />
through its windows, all the toys and<br />
accessories - that are now piled in dust
- that we all used to play with when<br />
we were children. Good times, right?<br />
No? Well better times than now, I<br />
think? It’s the middle of the summer in<br />
a sunny late afternoon and I feel<br />
relaxed, but still a bit wound up.<br />
Below there’s the house’s garage<br />
and what used you to be a white<br />
coloured Volvo, then there’s the<br />
concrete road and over a tall hedge<br />
there is a glorious, orange flickered<br />
sunset. Below this, although I cannot<br />
see them, I know there is a much<br />
busier road, a couple of fields, pine<br />
trees and a small river. I decide I need<br />
to go for a walk.<br />
I drag myself up and pick up my<br />
hand bag. I look down at my feet -
heels are never good for a long walk -<br />
so I walked down to the path that<br />
passes by my great aunt’s bungalow<br />
and it’s front garden towards the<br />
backdoor of our house which takes me<br />
into a white coloured tiled designed<br />
kitchen where I take my heels off<br />
carefully and put my trainers on not so<br />
much. I stand up, pull my long red hair<br />
back into a pony tail and walk back out<br />
onto the same gravelled built garden<br />
path.<br />
It’s amazing how the type of foot<br />
wear you wear can affect your day; it’s<br />
seen as a social advantage in my social<br />
demographic, but damn do heels hurt<br />
sometimes. At work we feel like we<br />
have to wear them, even our own boss
who owns the marketing company<br />
wears them, so they are kind of my<br />
first choice of foot wear in the<br />
morning. While I walk past the garage<br />
and the car, I feel like I’m bouncing<br />
with my trainers on, maybe I should<br />
talk to her, my Boss, about this and<br />
perhaps create a Facebook page about<br />
it; although I’m sure there’s one<br />
already.<br />
I’m on the road now, it has no<br />
pavements, but it’s relatively wide<br />
when it turns down the hill and I’ve<br />
walked down it so many times before<br />
in my life that I know the traffic is<br />
scarce so I wander off to the point<br />
where road curves down the hill rather<br />
far too carelessly.
As I walk down the hill I’m shaded<br />
by the tall evergreen trees by each<br />
side and this is only broken by the<br />
driveways of the large houses of what<br />
I presume are owned by international<br />
millionaires or business men and<br />
women who work and live in the city<br />
in the week and only come here in the<br />
weekend now and again.<br />
I reach the end of the hill and<br />
there’s a pavement to my right. I look<br />
both ways, a Jaguar went past at<br />
speed, but after that I could’t see any<br />
further vehicles speeding towards me,<br />
just a few at the other end of the road<br />
turning up another hill that will take<br />
them to town, so I cross the road to<br />
the other side. Fifty meters or so to my
ight is a bridge that will take me to<br />
the river’s bank, I notice a sheep in the<br />
field staring at me quizzically. I<br />
remember, when I was eleven and was<br />
camping in a field one morning, while I<br />
was still in my tent and in my sleeping<br />
bag, I saw the head of a sheep pocking<br />
into a paper bag - which contained the<br />
snacks that my mum had sent to me<br />
the other day - that was in my tent’s<br />
patio. I shouted at it and it run off<br />
frantically; not surprisingly I didn’t<br />
touch any of those snacks afterwards<br />
and must have thrown it into the dust<br />
bin bag in our group’s site, it’s funny<br />
how you remember these things.<br />
I walked over the bridge and down<br />
to the river which was shaded like the
oad down the hill was. I walked a bit<br />
further until I saw a little boy trying to,<br />
unsuccessfully, skipping stones across<br />
the river’s surface. To his side was a<br />
large Golden Labrador; this saw me<br />
first and barked amiably while it<br />
pattered towards me on the dried<br />
mud like surface of the river’s<br />
embankment. It brushed its nose at<br />
my leg and looked up at me<br />
pleadingly. I padded and ruffled its<br />
head and it made a dog like smile and<br />
a noise of acceptance as if I was his or<br />
hers - I wasn’t quite sure yet- new best<br />
friend and it sat down beside me. The<br />
boy, who had noticed that his dog had<br />
disappeared, was walking towards me.<br />
When he got to me, I said.
“Hi, sorry about that I didn’t<br />
intend to steal your friend.”<br />
He smiled “No worries, she does<br />
that to everyone, especially if she<br />
hasn’t met them before.” He then said<br />
“I’m Charlie, what’s your name.”<br />
“Hi Charlie” I replied “I’m Lucy,<br />
that was very mature of you, how old<br />
are you?”<br />
“Mature? I don’t know about that.<br />
I had my ninth birthday a few weeks<br />
ago.”<br />
“Happy birthday Charlie, still<br />
aren’t you a bit too young to be here<br />
on your own.”<br />
“Oh no, no, my uncle is just<br />
coming back, he’s just saying goodbye
to my mum, he said I could come and<br />
play at the river.”<br />
“He did, did he? Hmmm… I don’t<br />
think that’s the best idea in the world.<br />
I tell you what, I’ll stick around until he<br />
gets back.”<br />
“If you like,” said Charlie “but he’ll<br />
be back soon”<br />
“Ok I’ll just sit over there on the<br />
bench until then.”<br />
I sat there with the dog - whose<br />
name I had discovered was Leyla –<br />
while Charlie skipped stones across<br />
the river which he got, over time, very<br />
good at.<br />
Ten minutes or so later I noticed a<br />
tall, quite handsome man walking<br />
towards us. He wore a white t-shirt,
lack jeans, trainers -which were a bit<br />
more fashion intended than mine –<br />
and a shaved head, with a healthy tan.<br />
He looked at me “Hey Charlie I see<br />
you have found yourself a new<br />
friend?”<br />
Charlie shrugged and briefly<br />
looked away from the river and said to<br />
him.<br />
“Yeah, she was just walking by.<br />
Leyla seems to like her.”<br />
I stood up from the bench and<br />
walked towards the man and shook his<br />
hand. “Hi, I’m Lucy.” and then said to<br />
him - while trying to mimic my<br />
mother’s most authoritative,<br />
disappointed tone - “I stuck around as
I thought leaving a little boy like your<br />
nephew on his own is a bit worrying.”<br />
He smiled “Hi Lucy, I’m Aaron,<br />
don’t worry about him. Charlie’s not<br />
your normal little boy and I wasn’t too<br />
far away.”<br />
“Even so, leaving him here on his<br />
own near a river?”<br />
“I was just having a final chat with<br />
my sister before we left and he was<br />
getting a bit restless.”<br />
“Oh, well. Do you live nearby<br />
then?” I asked hopefully.<br />
“No, no. We were just passing by<br />
to see how she’s doing.”<br />
“He doesn’t live with his mum?”<br />
Unfortunately, no. I tell you what<br />
it would be much easier, if you’re free
of course, if I took you to see her, she<br />
always likes meeting new people.”<br />
“For sure, I have time and I also<br />
like meeting new people.”<br />
We all wandered up the path in<br />
the direction that Aaron had just come<br />
from while Charlie kept picking up<br />
stones and skipping them across the<br />
river’s surface - repetition is the best<br />
way to learn I thought to myself.<br />
Before we got to the house that, as<br />
Aaron had said before wasn’t very far,<br />
he explained that Charlie stayed with<br />
him in the city - where he worked as<br />
an editor for one of the large broad<br />
sheets - because his sister wasn’t well<br />
enough to look after him.
When we got to the front door<br />
Aaron rang the bell and pretty soon<br />
the door was opened by a young<br />
blonde woman.<br />
“Hello Mr Shaw, did you forget<br />
something?”<br />
“No, no Nova. I just have someone<br />
who would like to meet my sister.<br />
Nova this is Lucy, Lucy this is Nova my<br />
sister’s house nurse. You wouldn’t<br />
notice it because of her amazing<br />
English, but she’s from Sweden<br />
“Mr Shaw, sorry I’ve got to go and<br />
set up her dinner in the kitchen, she’s<br />
where she was when you left.” said<br />
Nova to Charlie’s uncle.<br />
“Thanks” he replied and walked<br />
towards a double door at the other
end of the corridor. I followed him<br />
with Charlie and Leyla behind me.<br />
When we had passed the doubledoors<br />
I found that we were in a living<br />
room with a radio on. I noticed a<br />
woman in a wheel chair on the other<br />
side of the room with tubes up her<br />
nose and cannula tubes inserted into<br />
her arms that went up to plastic bags<br />
with fluorescent coloured fluids in<br />
them. These hung off the top of a<br />
metal pole with wheels at its base. She<br />
must have been only a few years older<br />
than me.<br />
“Lucy please meet my baby sister,<br />
Molly.” Arron announced.
I didn’t really know what to say so<br />
I just gave her a little wave and a<br />
smile.<br />
“Sorry Lucy, I didn’t tell you. My<br />
sister is blind so she can’t see you, but<br />
she can hear, talk and feel touch.”<br />
“Oh.” I replied apologetically “I’m<br />
so sorry…Hi Molly, I’m Lucy, it’s very<br />
nice to meet you”.<br />
“Don’t worry about it…you too”<br />
she replied to me with a happy tone<br />
that was not expressed on her still<br />
face.<br />
I stepped forward and shook her<br />
hand which was limp and I was doing<br />
most of the movement, but I noticed<br />
something close to a smile crossing<br />
her lips.
I then whispered to Aaron “What<br />
happened to her?”<br />
“Don’t worry about whispering,<br />
she doesn’t mind people talking about<br />
it, especially as she can’t remember<br />
anything about it at all. In two<br />
thousand five Molly and her husband<br />
were coming back from seeing me in<br />
London and a bomb went off in their<br />
bus. Charlie’s dad died immediately,<br />
fortunately though Molly was rescued<br />
by the paramedics. She lost her eye<br />
sight and broke both of her legs and<br />
she was taken to a London hospital<br />
where me, her friends and family<br />
came and saw her. After this though<br />
she got a serious hospital infection<br />
and started to have epileptic seizures.”
“How awful…. did you sue them?”<br />
“Then we were far more<br />
concerned about her health than<br />
anything else and were very restrained<br />
about the idea of taking legal actions<br />
against the NHS. When we got her<br />
back home four years later and we<br />
could see how badly it had affected<br />
her and we considered it, but after<br />
contacting a couple of laws firms we<br />
found out that you could only take<br />
legal actions for healthcare<br />
malpractice against such infections in<br />
the first two years since the diagnosis<br />
of the infection. Fortunately, I could<br />
look after Charlie, who was only two<br />
years old then, and her husband,<br />
Leslie, had life insurance which paid
for the house’s mortgage and some<br />
other things. I was also able to<br />
contribute to private home care<br />
otherwise she would still be stuck in<br />
hospital.<br />
Then Nova came into the room<br />
with a tray piled with tea cups, milk,<br />
sugar and a kettle which she put it<br />
down on a coffee table very carefully<br />
and poured tea into the cups. She then<br />
asked me pleasantly:<br />
“Would you like milk and sugar<br />
with yours Lucy.”<br />
“Just milk please, thank you.” I<br />
answered politely.<br />
She then asked Aaron the same<br />
question who said he would have the<br />
same as me as he was trying to reduce
his sugar intake at the moment. She<br />
then gave Charlie a glass of apple juice<br />
and a dog bowl of water to Leyla. She<br />
then went back to the kitchen.<br />
“She sounds nice.” I said to Aaron.<br />
“Yes.” he replied “Molly needs<br />
several carers; one in the day, one<br />
overnight and they need time away as<br />
well. I had lots of interviews to make<br />
sure they were right for her as she’s<br />
still quite young and I wanted people<br />
who she can socialise with. Nova is<br />
probably my favourite and she often<br />
take’s Molly out when she’s not<br />
working and she gets to meet Nova’s<br />
friends.”
We sat around for another hour or<br />
so chatting until he looked at his<br />
watch.<br />
“Sorry Charlie and I have to go, so<br />
we don’t get stuck in traffic. You<br />
should come back with us before it<br />
gets too dark.”<br />
I agreed and after we gave our<br />
good byes to Molly and Nova we all<br />
went back to the river. When we got<br />
back to the path, I asked Aaron.<br />
“How often do you and Charlie go<br />
and see his mum”<br />
“I’m always really busy at work so<br />
generally I don’t have the time and I<br />
only see her every three months or so.<br />
Charlie sees her a bit more often in the<br />
school holidays as my colleagues and
friends offer to give him a lift but,<br />
except for her care workers and now<br />
and again Nova’s friends, she doesn’t<br />
see people very often.”<br />
“Don’t her friends come and see<br />
her?” I ask.<br />
“They did initially when she was in<br />
hospital and when she first came<br />
home, but they all have boyfriends,<br />
girlfriends, spouses and families now; I<br />
can’t remember the last time one of<br />
them came and saw her. When we talk<br />
about them there is some bitterness,<br />
but she hasn’t expressed her<br />
frustration about it to me yet so I’ve<br />
let it go.”
“Well I don’t live that far away so I<br />
can come and see her now and again<br />
and we can have a chat.”<br />
Aaron smiled “Yes, I think she<br />
would really like that.”<br />
We continued talking until we got<br />
back to bridge and he said to me his<br />
car was just over there. I looked and<br />
there was one of those smart electric<br />
cars that have come out recently,<br />
sitting there on a side road to the right<br />
of the bridge. He gave me a hug; said<br />
we should keep in touch and he gave<br />
me his business card. Charlie said<br />
goodbye and Leyla excitedly licked at<br />
my hand while I was trying to pat her<br />
on her head. When they drove off, I<br />
waved back.
While I was walking back home up<br />
the hill, I thought about earlier that<br />
day, why was I so miserable, life could<br />
be so much worse. Going to see Molly<br />
when I can will remember me about<br />
this and I’ll have a new friend.
http://www.jagerpress.com/<strong>Short</strong>TalesfromtheMiddleEast
A <strong>Short</strong> <strong>Story</strong>: A Romance In Me -<br />
JagerPress<br />
What is romance? Is it an activity,<br />
an event, a thought or is it just an<br />
autonomic production of a series of<br />
neurochemicals in your amygdala that<br />
tells you that he or she would be a<br />
perfect biological match for you?<br />
Honestly, if any pretty girl glances at<br />
me and smiles then romance goes<br />
straight out of the window.<br />
I’m sitting here on a park bench,<br />
looking at the tall DIY wall that<br />
separates the real world from the<br />
concert. I’m wearing my standard blue<br />
jeans and white trainers with a black<br />
hoody with the hood over my head.
I’m wearing a pair of sunglasses even<br />
though it’s not exactly sunny and I<br />
know I look like a bit of a douche, but<br />
so be it. I have my blue tooth ear<br />
phones plugged into my ears although<br />
I’m not listening to any music and I’m<br />
smoking a roll up with its nicotine<br />
infusing into my lungs, with the taste<br />
of the smoke climbing across my<br />
tongue and all the other sensitive<br />
orifices that surround it. I know it’s<br />
probably going to kill me or at least<br />
reduces my chances of having a<br />
healthy life, but life is made of out of<br />
chances; sometimes they go your way,<br />
sometimes they don’t…it’s called luck.<br />
Once I remember reading a maths<br />
book and it was talking about<br />
statistics; it said that your results can
only be reliable if you have thirty<br />
specimens in your test and you can be<br />
even more certain about your results if<br />
the number of your specimens<br />
increases.<br />
There must be like a thousand of<br />
smokers over that wall, maybe I will be<br />
the lucky one, you never know. A<br />
group of teenage girls walk pass me,<br />
giggling together as if they knew a<br />
secret that everyone should know, but<br />
they’re not going to tell anyone else. A<br />
park security staff walks over to me;<br />
he looks like he’s from Poland or<br />
somewhere like that. He then starts<br />
talking to me and I know he’s from<br />
somewhere like that.<br />
“You shouldn’t be smoking here!”
I point to the wall where the music<br />
is coming from. “There’s like a cloud of<br />
tobacco over that wall in the concert,<br />
why are you targeting me???”<br />
“The concert has its own security<br />
staff and rules, but this park is strict<br />
about smoking even though it’s a<br />
public area.”<br />
“Ridiculous.” I sneer, but I still<br />
throw my fag onto the concrete path<br />
and stamp it out and the security<br />
guard walks off.<br />
The girls are still lurking around<br />
the hot dog stall, laughing and<br />
pointing at me, but I ignore them.<br />
Life’s too short to think about such<br />
things like that. Now I know the<br />
Eastern Europe guy has gone I roll up a<br />
new roll-up, spark it, lean back on the
ench and stare up into the grey,<br />
cloudy sky, feeling each ember from<br />
the cigarette dropping onto my lap<br />
and the grass below the bench.<br />
After I’ve finish, I get up, throw the<br />
stub away and walk towards the hot<br />
dog stool. The girls are still giggling<br />
and are looking at me suspiciously.<br />
Over the time I’ve been here I’ve got<br />
on well with the guy who own’s the<br />
hot dog stool.<br />
“Hi Bobby, how you doing?” I ask<br />
him.<br />
“I’m good mate, thanks, want your<br />
usual?”<br />
“Yeah that would be great,<br />
cheers.”<br />
I watch him taking a pair of steel<br />
pliers from the rack just behind him
and he plunges them into the boiling<br />
oil filled vat to his right. He quickly<br />
retrieves a steaming frankfurter from<br />
the vat and places it into a long white<br />
roll. He then asks me. “Wanna some<br />
sauce buddy?”<br />
“Nah mate, I’ll do it myself.” I<br />
reply nonchalantly.<br />
I give him cash and he gives me<br />
the hot dog with his gnarled, burnt<br />
hands, I presume - just like everyone<br />
else does - that he cleans them often. I<br />
grab a ketchup bottle from the store’s<br />
shelf and spurt ketchup over the hot<br />
dog successfully; I consider mustard or<br />
mayonnaise, but decide that this<br />
would be a bit excessive and I walk<br />
away munching on my hot dog.
The group of girls were still there,<br />
giggling and glancing at me. I ignore<br />
them and take my phone from my<br />
pocket and click on my music player. I<br />
play Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 in D<br />
minor which drains down my ear holes<br />
and through my ear drums exquisitely.<br />
My main love for classical music is that<br />
it’s just so, so different to what I<br />
normally play and listen to with my<br />
mates. I feel like I’m learning<br />
something new every time I listen to<br />
it.<br />
I walk pass the gigs main entrance<br />
and walk around to the other side,<br />
which takes me about fifteen minutes<br />
as it’s a big gig. I start strolling up to a<br />
green door in the DIY wall. On both<br />
sides there are two large, gorilla
shaped, suited up security men. They -<br />
like me - are also wearing sun glasses<br />
and in this grey day they also look like<br />
douches. I take my hoody off and<br />
when I get closer one of the men,<br />
without saying anything, opens the<br />
door for me and I walk in.<br />
When I get in I’m jumped by this<br />
pretty, red haired girl who’s in her<br />
earlier thirties. She’s Sarah, my new PR<br />
“Jack where have you been? Your<br />
next! The band are setting up behind<br />
the stand. You ready?” she asks me<br />
with concern.<br />
“Babe, I’m always ready.” I reply<br />
with a smile “You shouldn’t worry so<br />
much!”
http://www.jagerpress.com/thebreakingclause.html
A <strong>Short</strong> <strong>Story</strong>: Provisions Needed -<br />
JagerPress<br />
“No, no, no…” Isabelle laughed as<br />
she sat there at the stern, with her<br />
bare legs crossed over. “…you don’t<br />
put sails up like that!”<br />
Charlie frowned, feeling slightly<br />
embarrassed about the situation he<br />
had found himself in. It can’t be that<br />
hard, they were just sheets of fabric<br />
that you put up a pole with ropes;<br />
however, at the back of his head, he<br />
knew this was how he felt when his<br />
girlfriend ever asked him to change<br />
their bed until he actually started<br />
making it.
Last month he had decided that a<br />
trip would be good for their<br />
relationship and what was one of the<br />
best ways to prove his masculinity to<br />
her at the same time? Rent a sailing<br />
boat and cross the English Channel to<br />
a bed and breakfast in Calais would do<br />
it, none of this wimping out and<br />
getting a ferry or the Eurostar! He had<br />
said to Isabelle that it would be great,<br />
he had sailed once before when he<br />
was at school, so he was sure it would<br />
come back to him quickly.<br />
Unfortunately, he had also<br />
presumed that the boat they had<br />
rented would come with a main sail<br />
that did not detach its self from its
mast when they had only just got five<br />
miles away from the coast. He was<br />
now halfway up the mast with strings<br />
and rigging flailing in all directions<br />
while the wind ripped the sail off its<br />
grasps and clips that he was trying to<br />
secure it to. The boat hire guy had<br />
offered them an electric motor just in<br />
case, but Charlie had coolly rejected<br />
the offer; as they say, pride comes<br />
before the fall.<br />
Charlie also noticed that they were<br />
being pushed, by the wind, into the<br />
wrong direction. Rather than Calais<br />
their final destination was quickly<br />
becoming closer to Greenland than<br />
the north of France.
Isabelle uncrossed her legs before<br />
pointing out to Charlie:<br />
“You know, I could help?”<br />
“Don’t be ridiculous, I’ll sort this<br />
out soon, don’t worry.”<br />
Then the boat hit something solid<br />
and it stopped abruptly. Jack had just<br />
been able hang onto the mast while<br />
Isabelle had been able to hold onto<br />
the tiller and they were now no longer<br />
speeding off to the north of the<br />
Atlantic, but the boat’s hull had also<br />
run into a sand dune and sea water<br />
was slowly trickling over the starboard<br />
side over the bow onto the boat’s<br />
deck.
Isabelle, while rolling her eyes and<br />
putting a bucket to catch the dripping<br />
water, said to Charlie with an<br />
exasperated sigh.<br />
“Get down from there, at this<br />
point in time there’s no advantage of<br />
having a sail even if it was working.”<br />
“But….”<br />
“More importantly though I need<br />
your weight to help to balance the<br />
boat, I’m too light to have any effect.”<br />
“But what do know about<br />
sailing???” The bucket was now nearly<br />
overflowing.<br />
“Well clearly more than you.”<br />
Isabelle replied sarcastically but
somehow affectionally at the same<br />
time. “It’s simple mathematics.”<br />
Charlie had now dropped down<br />
from the mast and Isabelle ordered<br />
him to drag all their stuff to the port<br />
side of the boat. Slowly the starboard<br />
side rose from the sand dune and the<br />
dripping into the bucket became less<br />
and less frequent until it finally<br />
ceased.<br />
The problem of the boat being<br />
flooded had been resolved, but as it<br />
had now been detached from the sand<br />
bank, they were now bobbing around<br />
on the waves aimlessly, following the<br />
currents.
“Right, well thanks, good thinking<br />
Izzy,” said Charlie “….but I’m sure<br />
when I had got the sail up, with this<br />
wind, it would have pulled us back on<br />
course.”<br />
Isabelle rolled her long black hair<br />
into a pony tail while replying to him.<br />
“Yeah, yeah, right! Sure!”<br />
They both looked up at the mast,<br />
there was the sail; it was only attached<br />
to the top of the mast, flying and<br />
flickering in a line against the light,<br />
grey sky.<br />
“So, what now captain?” Isabelle<br />
asked him sarcastically, this time<br />
though with significantly less affection.
“Well, I’m sure I can get the sail<br />
working soon…”<br />
But while Charlie was saying this,<br />
there was a stronger gust of wind and<br />
the last connection the sail had to the<br />
mast broke with a noise that sounded<br />
like a whip crack and it was blown into<br />
the far horizon.<br />
Isabelle pouted. “Well right, OK,<br />
now we only really have one choice!”<br />
“What would that be?” Charlie<br />
responded aimlessly; watching the sail<br />
flying further, further away while it<br />
sailed higher and higher up into the<br />
bleak coloured sky.<br />
“We’ve got to swim back!”
He jerked back suddenly and<br />
stared at her as if she had told him<br />
that the world was flat and it was<br />
carried by a giant turtle. “You’re<br />
crazy!”<br />
Isabelle had now opened one of<br />
their cases and brought out her purple<br />
bikini and his swimming trunks.<br />
“We’re moving away from dry land<br />
quickly; we have to go now!”<br />
“But you’ll get hypothermia and<br />
you’re not strong enough to swim that<br />
far.”<br />
She pulled her shorts off. “I think<br />
I’ll be fine. Either way it gives us a<br />
chance, better than us getting lost in
this current and find ourselves in the<br />
middle of the ocean.”<br />
“But…”<br />
However, Isabelle was already<br />
putting her clothes into a plastic bag<br />
and was walking to the port side. She<br />
looked back at him.<br />
“You coming?”<br />
Jager Press
https://www.jagerpress.com/poems.html
A <strong>Short</strong> <strong>Story</strong>: Left Behind - Nancy<br />
Smith<br />
Every bloody morning in every<br />
bloody week, I get up, rush off to<br />
the same bus stop to get the same<br />
damn, stupid number 31 bus to get<br />
to work. When I eventually get to<br />
the office I sit down on the same<br />
dumb, boring wooden desk, stare<br />
at the same dizzyingly bright HD<br />
screen that burns into my retina -<br />
making me more and more short<br />
sighted every day- and type the
same numbers onto the same<br />
stupid greyish, dusty, keypad.<br />
It’s just so mortifyingly boring I<br />
feel like, if nothing else, repetition<br />
on its own is going kill me. I’m<br />
certain there’s something in every<br />
human’s mind that works like<br />
some monotony, kill switch – it’s<br />
evolved to remove the ones of us<br />
who are clearly a dead end in the<br />
development of the human species.<br />
I stare down the same window,<br />
that I’ve been staring down<br />
through for the last, same five<br />
years, onto the same, stupid road,
watching the same, mindless traffic<br />
buzzing up and down it<br />
relentlessly every day. When I was<br />
young, I had plans, big plans – I<br />
was going to be like a doctor, an<br />
academic or something like that, I<br />
was going to change things, do<br />
something with my life. None of<br />
this sitting here all day long,<br />
talking to no one, seeing no one,<br />
slowly dying in loneliness.<br />
My only colleague is my<br />
computer and my only companion<br />
at home is Buzzy, my Cockapoo.<br />
We watch football and everything<br />
else together, he’s a good dog
eally, even if one of the first<br />
reasons that I got him was to pick<br />
up a girlfriend or at least to meet<br />
new people. It seemed like an<br />
excellent plan at first, one of my<br />
best, but the first part of it failed as<br />
it seemed that Buzzy was just far<br />
too adorable for me to have any<br />
proper conversations with the<br />
women who came and pat on his<br />
head and talk to him when I take<br />
him for walks in the park and<br />
along the canal. The second part,<br />
the one where I was supposed to<br />
meet new people, well the same<br />
thing as the first and, well, other
dog walkers, well yeah, they’ll be<br />
polite to me, but like everyone else,<br />
there also just far too busy to have<br />
a proper conversation with me.<br />
It’s not like I’ve always been<br />
such a looser, I used to have<br />
friends, quite allot of them actually,<br />
but we all grew up and they got<br />
girlfriends, mortgages, had<br />
weddings and they became<br />
doctors, academics or something<br />
like that and they all kind of forgot<br />
about me, even when I see them I<br />
don’t know what to say, our lives<br />
are just so different it’s just so<br />
difficult not to sound bitter or
jealous when I’m with them. It’s<br />
not nice being left behind.<br />
https://revitalise.org.uk/
A <strong>Short</strong> <strong>Story</strong>: She Sells Sea Shells that<br />
Really Sell - Smartass Publishers<br />
Living on the beach in northern<br />
England has never been particularly<br />
cool, especially after all the mines and<br />
factories closed in the seventies and<br />
eighties and the money that came<br />
with them disappeared. There ‘aint<br />
much to do here, especially if you’re<br />
someone like myself who dropped out<br />
of school when I was fifteen ‘cos my<br />
brother and dad were too ill to live<br />
without someone looking after them.<br />
Mum ran off with that Portuguese<br />
handyman ten years ago and I hated
her for doing that to us and I’m still<br />
bitter about it, but over time I’ve got<br />
used to this being just a matter of fact.<br />
Follow inspiring, new, fresh music at<br />
https://soundcloud.com/connollytunes<br />
As I never leant any skills and<br />
because of the time I needed to look<br />
after my dad and brother, there<br />
weren’t many employers who would<br />
take me on, so there wasn’t much<br />
money around most of the time.
Nevertheless, every summer there’s a<br />
fair on the beach and if the weather’s<br />
good we often get a lot of tourists so I<br />
always took the most of the<br />
opportunity and set up a stool.<br />
Although I dropped out of school, I<br />
read a lot and, as the money was<br />
limited, I read what was most<br />
available. Fortunately, one thing that<br />
the local council hadn’t taken away<br />
from the town was the library and I<br />
spent a serious amount of my free<br />
time there. It had lots of interesting<br />
academic books, one of which talked<br />
about the natural history and artefacts<br />
that still resided in the local caves<br />
across the beach, so in the summers,<br />
when the tide was out, I used to go<br />
salvaging and pick up all the pretty
shells and all the other ancient<br />
artefacts that I could find in them.<br />
Every year my stall became more<br />
and more abundant with all the<br />
trinkets and treasures I had<br />
appropriated from the caves.<br />
After a few summers the<br />
repertoire of goodies I had been able<br />
to forage from the caves had got a bit<br />
of following - especially after I made<br />
the website at the library. Once a lady<br />
had come all the way from York city<br />
where she was the managing assistant<br />
at a Roman museum in the city and<br />
she recognised a broach, which had<br />
diamonds embedded in it, from a<br />
Roman officer’s uniform on my stool.<br />
She tried to give me a low offer, a<br />
hundred pounds, but because of my
eading and research I knew exactly<br />
how much it was worth, and<br />
eventually we agreed for five million.<br />
Recently I’ve heard that the<br />
broach has been moved to the British<br />
Museum and has been valued five<br />
times as much but never mind, we<br />
now have a mansion over the sea with<br />
private health support for my brother<br />
and dad which has, not surprisingly,<br />
improved their opportunities in life.<br />
My brother leant to ride a bike last<br />
year which I was very excited about.<br />
For me personally, I can now spend<br />
more of my time reading and growing<br />
my new start up, “Artefactual<br />
Treasures Ltd.”. Recently I received an<br />
offer from an American Business man<br />
for a pearl which we had found in
Cornwall which is worth much, much<br />
more that than the broach ever was.<br />
Exciting times, think positive and read.
https://www.jagerpress.com/thebreakingclause.html
A <strong>Short</strong> <strong>Story</strong>: On Your Bike -<br />
JagerPress<br />
“WAKE UP, IT’S A BEAUTIFUL<br />
MORNING.”<br />
“WAKE UP, IT’S A BEAUTIFUL<br />
MORNING.”<br />
I groan, reach out blindingly across<br />
my bedside table - knocking several<br />
items off it while doing so - before I<br />
find my phone and press the home<br />
button to stop that damn tune<br />
bleeping at me. I used to like that<br />
song, but now, after making it my<br />
morning alarm, I have subconsciously
ecome to hate it more than any other<br />
noise, especially at this time in the<br />
morning. I drag myself off my bed,<br />
noticing that the left bedroom’s<br />
window is still swinging in the wind -<br />
something my landlord still hasn’t<br />
fixed yet - and I go to put my t-shirt<br />
and jeans on. I don’t need to dress<br />
smartly today as I will be just doing<br />
rounds this morning and I’ve got to<br />
change into my scrubs when I get to<br />
the hospital anyway. I decide to skip<br />
breakfast as I can get something when<br />
I get to work, so I go to my ensuite<br />
bathroom where I brush my teeth and<br />
wash my face. It looks sunny outside<br />
and my weather app informs me that<br />
there should be no rain so I put on my
ucksack and pick up my foldup bike<br />
from my studio flat’s short corridor<br />
and I walk out into the communal<br />
area.<br />
I had been quite keen on the idea<br />
of getting a foldup bike for quite some<br />
time as it meant I didn’t have to cycle<br />
that ridiculously, stupid steep hill that<br />
sat before my flat when I ever got back<br />
from work in the evening if I didn’t<br />
want to as it would allow me to have<br />
the option to jump on a bus with it.<br />
However, the price of the machine and<br />
the fact that I had a bike already did<br />
make this sound like a bit of a fool’s<br />
errand. Also, over time, this notion<br />
became less and less important as I
ecame fitter and fitter as I kept<br />
cycling to the top of that hill.<br />
Nevertheless, after the seat of my<br />
bike got swiped after I had locked it up<br />
outside of a charity that I had been<br />
volunteering at one afternoon and<br />
then, two days or so after the seat had<br />
been replaced the whole thing got<br />
nicked just outside of my building one<br />
night, I came to the conclusion that a<br />
fold up would be worth the<br />
investment.<br />
I trot down a flight of stairs, push<br />
the front door open and walk into the<br />
paved front garden of my building. I<br />
unfold the foldup bike into its working<br />
state - a process the took me about a<br />
couple of weeks and many YouTube
videos to get right – and I wheel it to<br />
the curb, check that there are no other<br />
vehicles coming and I rode towards<br />
the traffics lights at the cross junction<br />
with the high street.<br />
I push myself up a couple short<br />
slopes, pass my old school and reach<br />
the top of that ominously mountain<br />
like hill that I mentioned. Now I’ve<br />
been able to reach to the top it<br />
without any stops, even with the<br />
smaller wheels of my foldup, I’m<br />
finding the descending the hill nearly<br />
as perilous as ascending it. What will<br />
happen if my breaks fail, what if the<br />
car behind me drives into me even<br />
though I’m on the side where I should<br />
be! What if I hit something? All these
things I put out of my mind as I change<br />
the gears of my bike and plunge down<br />
the ominously narrow road that climbs<br />
the hill, feeling the air flying pass my<br />
ear lobes, nostrils and all pf my other<br />
body’s extremities.<br />
I can hear the wheels clicking<br />
faster and faster and I know I’ve got to<br />
soon hit the brakes; not too hard as<br />
that could be a disaster, but just hard<br />
enough to reduce gravity’s capacity to<br />
pull me to its desired gradient,<br />
absolute zero. Or maybe the degree is<br />
hundred and eighty, I don’t know,<br />
maybe it’s just a philosophical<br />
question and the maths is irrelevant.<br />
I’m a medical doctor, I’ve been trained<br />
not to doubt myself so let’s stick with
zero I think as I tighten my grip on the<br />
bicycle’s break leavers.<br />
Soon I’m halfway down the hill,<br />
carefully allowing the drivers behind<br />
me to go pass even though I know, at<br />
their supposed speed on a twenty mile<br />
limit road, they should not be going<br />
pass me as I’m definitely going<br />
somewhere near that, but that’s not<br />
my job, I just fix the casualties that<br />
their carelessness causes. I wonder if<br />
their perception would change if they<br />
had seen the number of horrific<br />
injuries and deaths their behaviour<br />
causes; for some reason I doubt it. It’s<br />
like smoking, drugs and alcohol, speed<br />
is an addiction, they know it can cause<br />
harm, but they think they’re just
etter than that and they’ll get away<br />
with it.<br />
Then the car in front stops right in<br />
front of me and I have to press down<br />
on my brakes hard so I don’t run into<br />
it. It puts on its back lights and I think<br />
what the hell are you doing, you’re not<br />
giving me any indication about what<br />
you’re going to do. Maybe someone is<br />
ill in the car, maybe they’re going to<br />
drive back into me, maybe they’re<br />
going to stay there blocking me and<br />
everyone else behind me. And so, I tap<br />
on the back of the car’s back window<br />
and an angry male shaved head pops<br />
out of the driver’s window.<br />
“Oi!!!”
“What are you doing?” I ask him<br />
with an exasperated tone.<br />
“Cleary we’re parking!”<br />
I look to my left and one of the<br />
parked cars – which are one of the<br />
reasons why the road is so narrow – is<br />
inhabited and it looks like it is starting<br />
to move so I roll my eyes and shrug<br />
“Clearly I couldn’t have known that<br />
but you are causing a hazard at this<br />
very movement in time.”<br />
“Just go around me.”<br />
“I’m certainly not going to drive<br />
around you into the incoming traffic<br />
and risk my life like that. However now<br />
I know what you’re doing I’ll wait.”<br />
“Suit yourself!” And the man’s<br />
head disappears back inside.
There are some horns from the<br />
cars and vans behind me and I twist<br />
back with one hand on my bikes<br />
handles, shrug and indicate to the car<br />
in front of me. Then a white van<br />
behind the car that is behind me starts<br />
to move and goes pass me. It tries to<br />
go around the car that’s causing this<br />
delay but I then hear a series of<br />
crunching noises.<br />
The van has stopped and a red<br />
motor bike is lying on the tarmac on<br />
its side on the other side of the road<br />
with a figure to the side of it. The man<br />
in the white van looks shocks and is<br />
just sitting there in his seat. I get off<br />
my foldup bicycle and I start walking<br />
over to the body. I noticed that the
driver in the parked car had got out<br />
and I called over to him.<br />
“Call an ambulance, tell them<br />
we’ve got an RTA.”<br />
“Sure, sure.” he replied slightly<br />
nervously before taking his phone out<br />
from his pocket and calling the<br />
emergency services.<br />
As he was doing this, I knocked on<br />
the initial car’s front door which is<br />
pushed open rather viciously.<br />
“What!!!” said the shaved head<br />
man from before.<br />
I noticed he was around my age, in<br />
his late twenties or early thirties and in<br />
the passenger’s seat sat a lady who<br />
had long blonde hair. “Go and check<br />
on the driver of the white van and
make sure he doesn’t drive off. And<br />
write down the vehicles number plate<br />
will you.” I say to him.<br />
“We don’t have time for that,<br />
we’ve got a room booked.”<br />
I scowl at him “Mate, although this<br />
wasn’t directly your fault; you<br />
indirectly caused this situation by<br />
stopping in middle of the road.”<br />
“Why don’t you do it???” he<br />
responded rather sourly.<br />
“’ ’cos I’ve got to check on the<br />
person who was just got knocked off<br />
their motorbike.”<br />
“Don’t they need like a doctor<br />
though, someone with experience or<br />
something. You don’t want to make<br />
things worse, do you???”
I roll my eyes “I am a doctor and I<br />
do have experience. Please just do<br />
what I ask you to do will you, we don’t<br />
have time to argue about this.” And I<br />
walk off impatiently.<br />
As I get closer to the casualty, I<br />
notice there’s long black hair coming<br />
out from under the helmet and the<br />
black motorbike suit that the it was<br />
wearing had the proportions of a<br />
woman, but you couldn’t make<br />
assumptions like this these days.<br />
As I knelt down, I notice that the<br />
blonde woman had got out of the car<br />
and was shouting out at the man, who<br />
was still sitting in the car. She then<br />
stormed off to the white van.
Before opening the visor of the<br />
helmet, I unstrapped the helmet to<br />
reduce any respiratory problems it<br />
might cause. When I had open the<br />
visor I saw two startling bright blue,<br />
scared eyes and the top half of a<br />
certainly female face. Then I heard.<br />
“Wha…? Wha…? What just<br />
happened?”<br />
I automatically switch to my<br />
professional patter. I haven’t done<br />
Accident and Emergency for years but<br />
the spiel came back naturally.<br />
“Hi, I’m a medical doctor and<br />
you’ve just been knocked off your<br />
motor bike in a road traffic accident.<br />
An ambulance is coming! Please try<br />
not to move.”
I look back and I see other people<br />
who have got out of the cars, but not<br />
the man in the white van or the man<br />
who had instigated this situation by<br />
stopping in the middle of the road. I<br />
shout over:<br />
“I need someone to help me to<br />
remove the casualty’s helmet so I can<br />
make sure there’s no bleeding. Are<br />
there any medical professionals here<br />
as it’s a two persons job?”<br />
The blonde, whose walking<br />
towards me and is holding a paper<br />
notepad which looks like it has the<br />
white vans number plate and the<br />
driver’s details on it, says to. “I’m a<br />
physiotherapist at UCH, I can help.”
“Great.” I say to her “Could you<br />
secure…” but she stops me.<br />
“It’s OK, I know what to do, I<br />
worked as a mountain crisis rescue<br />
paramedic before I came to London.<br />
“Ok, well that’s fortunate.” I reply<br />
while I secure the helmet with my<br />
fingers splayed open on both sides of<br />
it and she does the same with victim’s<br />
head from the neck side. Then I rock<br />
the helmet back and forth off her head<br />
while the therapist holds her head<br />
stable.<br />
“My name is Sophie” says the<br />
blonde while she takes her jumper off<br />
before putting it below the victim’s<br />
head so I can put it down without it<br />
touching the road. “I’m sorry about
the guy who I was with in the car. I<br />
foolishly gave him my number last<br />
night and he persuaded me to get<br />
brunch with him at his hotel this<br />
morning.”<br />
The casualty then said to me “My<br />
left shoulder is killing me?”<br />
Sophie said to her “You’ve<br />
probably dislocated your shoulder. I<br />
saw the van hitting you and how you<br />
fell.”<br />
“Yes,” I support Sophie’s diagnosis<br />
“from what I can see that’s probably<br />
right, but we be can’t be certain until<br />
we get you to the hospital. It’s<br />
probably best if you stay there until<br />
the ambulance gets here.”
“Oh OK, my name is Alice Hones<br />
and I don’t have any other medical<br />
ailments if that is helpful?”<br />
“Very good, very good, very<br />
good.” I say to her “ Do you have<br />
anyone who I can give a call for you” I<br />
then ask her.<br />
“All my family are back in Glasgow<br />
and I broke up with my boyfriend<br />
yesterday; that’s probably why this<br />
happened, I might not have been<br />
concentrating.”<br />
“No, no, no… it was completely<br />
that white vans fault, it was on the<br />
wrong side of the road.” Sophie said to<br />
her quite profusely. “And the guy who<br />
I was on a date with, well he just<br />
stopped in the road causing this. I tell
you what, why don’t I come with you<br />
when the ambulance gets here?”<br />
“That would be nice, thank you.”<br />
Alice replied with a smile.<br />
I interrupted “Yes sorry, I would<br />
come with you as well but if you’re OK<br />
going with her I’m going to be horribly<br />
late for rounds.”<br />
Sophie smiled “Well by date is<br />
now defunct and I don’t have a ride so<br />
it will be my pleasure. I’ll stick around<br />
until the paramedics get here and I’ll<br />
go to the A and E with her.”<br />
“Thank you so much, you’re a life<br />
saver.” I then said to Alice “I’ll check<br />
on you when my shift’s over.”<br />
And with that I go back to my bike<br />
and pedal down the hill which is
actually now much easier as all the<br />
traffic has been stopped by the<br />
accident. There are few pleasures in<br />
such situations, so you have to take<br />
the most of them.<br />
Follow inspiring, new, fresh music at<br />
https://soundcloud.com/connollytunes
A <strong>Short</strong> <strong>Story</strong>: I’d Hate to be a Shellfish<br />
- Smartass Publishers<br />
Shellfish must be the most<br />
loneliness animals in the world! They<br />
spend their whole lives in their own<br />
shells, not communicating with<br />
anyone while they sit there all on their<br />
own under a boring rock; deep, deep,<br />
deep down on the seabed until some<br />
lucky bugger of another creature<br />
removes the rock and then works out<br />
how it can smash the shell before it<br />
consume the poor, unprotected<br />
creature. I’d hate to be a shellfish.
-<br />
Follow the progress of Tyrannosaurus Hex at http://kck.st/2NRJLoc<br />
I’ve felt like this for a very long<br />
time, really ever since I woke up from<br />
that surgery, all those years ago. But if<br />
I wasn’t going to do it then why should<br />
I do it now? Yes, I’m older and a bit<br />
more shaken but I’m certainly better
off financially, I have my own space,<br />
more freedom and I definitely do not<br />
have those damn needles or cannulas<br />
stuck in my arms or ankles anymore,<br />
damn were those a pain; and I am<br />
certainly less concerned about having<br />
a seizure, although this still worries me<br />
somewhat. Maybe it’s because I’m<br />
more drugged up because of other<br />
people’s mistakes and perhaps maybe<br />
I’m angry about this, but who am I<br />
angry at? Myself, certainly. The people<br />
who hurt me, sure but only a bit – I’m<br />
still too much of a forgiving creature to<br />
do anything about it. The rest of the<br />
world, probably not so much.<br />
Time…however, well, let’s say time is a<br />
bitch and the loneliness in my head is
making me go absolutely stir crazy,<br />
even when I’m in a crowd friendly<br />
people, which doesn’t happen very<br />
often now any way. The changes have<br />
been just too much, physically and<br />
psychology, and I’ve worked far too<br />
hard to find myself in this position.<br />
Was I too lucky before though?<br />
Perhaps. Was I just a bit too<br />
privileged? I don’t think so. I mean<br />
what is luck or privilege, can you even<br />
measure these in any empirical way, I<br />
just don’t know? It’s all about balance<br />
I suppose. Like you might have been<br />
born with a silver spoon in your<br />
mouth, but your personally might be<br />
abysmal and everyone hates you. If it<br />
was me and I had to choose, I would
definitely choose not having the spoon<br />
rather than having everyone hating<br />
me. Nevertheless, then there is that<br />
predicament where you’ve lost<br />
everything and your stuck with<br />
nothing except for your excellent<br />
personality; will people start to forget<br />
about you anyway because you’re now<br />
poor and irrelevant, quite allot I would<br />
imagine?<br />
-<br />
I’ve done quite a lot of research<br />
about this, probably not enough, but<br />
enough to have a good idea. I’m<br />
definitely too much of a pussy to jump<br />
off a building or in front a train or<br />
anything like that, and in anyways that
could hurt other people, and I<br />
definitely don’t want that, I couldn’t<br />
be a martyr against this cruel world if I<br />
did that could I? There’s the rope and<br />
noose option, but not only does that<br />
sound extremely painful but also, I<br />
don’t think my DIY skills are good<br />
enough for me to do that properly. I<br />
could go proper scientific about it and<br />
that might actually work; they say<br />
helium or nitrogen attaches to the<br />
haemoglobin molecules in your red<br />
blood cells and you’ll be able to go to<br />
sleep quietly for ever and ever and<br />
you’ll never have to wake up again. I<br />
do have to say recently some of my<br />
favourite moments in my life have<br />
been those times when I’ve been
etween being awake and being<br />
asleep, it’s a lovely feeling!<br />
Nonetheless, that’s not me, things<br />
could get better possibly, maybe I’ll<br />
make some new friends and have<br />
some proper conversations with real<br />
people who could engage with me. I<br />
certainly would hate to be a shellfish.
A <strong>Short</strong> <strong>Story</strong>: Putt - James Agerholm<br />
Set against the early evening<br />
skyline of the luscious, green grass<br />
plains, stood the silhouette of a bison,<br />
grazing there peacefully. Behind a<br />
mound of soil and grass Putt and her<br />
father hid, watching every movement<br />
that the creature took. Putt’s father<br />
had been tracking the bison since<br />
dawn and he knew, if he was able to<br />
take it down, that it would feed him<br />
and his family all on its own for at least<br />
a month or more. He reached back to<br />
take an arrow from his quiver before<br />
placing it onto the notch in the middle<br />
of his bow. Then he heard the<br />
anguished voice of his daughter.
“Please don’t kill that poor thing<br />
daddy, what has it ever done to you to<br />
deserve this?”<br />
Normally Putt’s father hunted on<br />
his own or with some of his older sons,<br />
but Putt had now reached the age that<br />
made him extremely sceptical about<br />
leaving her on her own with only her<br />
mother and her younger siblings as he<br />
was very mindful of the threat of some<br />
of the younger males in the village.<br />
Kidnapping young women was<br />
frequent in the tribe and the elders<br />
allowed it to occur as if it was a<br />
tradition of some sort. The herds,<br />
however, were vital for the survival of<br />
the community thus such words were
sacrilege and Putt’s father knew if<br />
anyone from the village heard<br />
something like what Put had just<br />
announced and they had passed this<br />
onto the elders she would be evicted<br />
from the village faster than any of the<br />
common thieves ever were. Therefore,<br />
he had to be quick and stern with his<br />
daughter about this.<br />
“Putt you know that you cannot<br />
talk like that; and in anyway if we<br />
don’t kill it neither you, I, your mother<br />
or your brothers and sisters will have<br />
enough to eat and we will all starve<br />
over the winter. You don’t want that,<br />
do you!”
“Mum makes food from<br />
vegetables like pumpkins from the<br />
garden and…”<br />
But her father stopped her in midsentence.<br />
“That’s enough, stop it, I<br />
don’t want to hear anything more<br />
about it!!!”<br />
The bison had wondered off closer<br />
to them so Putt’s father now had a<br />
much, much better chance of hitting it<br />
properly so he pulled the sting of his<br />
bow tight and aimed the tip of the<br />
arrow at his prey’s throat…<br />
“No!!!” Putt shouted as she<br />
plunged at her father who, while he<br />
was trying to keep his balance,<br />
haphazardly let go of the string and
the arrow whistled through the air<br />
silently until it plunged its self into<br />
some shrubbery close to the bison.<br />
This created a series of<br />
disturbances in the vegetation as a<br />
couple of colourful birds squawked<br />
and the fluttered off into the cloudless<br />
sky. This must have alarmed the bison<br />
as it stopped grazing and raised its<br />
head so it could see if there was any<br />
danger to its own current wellbeing.<br />
Due to the fact it was a bison and<br />
therefore not the smartest species in<br />
the animal kingdom it didn’t notice<br />
any immediate threat to its life but<br />
fortunately to it, and to the survival of<br />
the species as a whole, the animal’s
autonomic nervous system overruled<br />
the bison’s conscious mind and pretty<br />
soon it was moving, at some speed, in<br />
the direction of the horizon.<br />
Putt’s father turned and glared at<br />
his daughter, but he didn’t say<br />
anything to her. It wasn’t just the fact<br />
that her recent actions had massively<br />
reduced the impact on the food supply<br />
for the whole family for over the next<br />
few months or so, but it also put him<br />
into a very dangerous position.<br />
Interfering with a hunt like that, even<br />
if it was between members of the<br />
same family, meant immediate,<br />
permanent expulsion from the tribe; it
had been this way from his father and<br />
his father before that.<br />
“Are we going home now?” Putt<br />
asked with that innocent tone of<br />
someone who felt that what they had<br />
just done was fine and they had done<br />
nothing wrong.<br />
Putt’s father was just gob<br />
smacked; didn’t she realise what she<br />
had actually done??? The rule<br />
stipulates that not only the<br />
perpetrator, but also anyone who<br />
observes these rules being broken<br />
would receive the same sentence if<br />
they did not convey this information<br />
to the elders immediately. On the<br />
other hand, they were all on their own
so if he and, probably more<br />
importantly Putt, kept quiet about this<br />
it would, overtime, all blow over. And<br />
so, Putt’s father just sighed, picked up<br />
his bag, slung his bow with its quiver<br />
onto his back before saying to his<br />
daughter.<br />
“Yes, it’s probably a good time to<br />
go home now.”<br />
They both walked back to the<br />
track that took them back to their<br />
village. Before they had reached the<br />
hand-made, not very well-built bridge<br />
that crossed a rushing river the set<br />
before the village Putt’s father noticed<br />
someone was following them; he
stopped and shouted at the bushes<br />
behind them.<br />
“COME OUT YOU COWARDS!!! I<br />
KNOW YOU’RE THERE!”<br />
Putt’s father reached back and<br />
took out two arrows out his quiver,<br />
put them onto his bow, pulled the<br />
weapon’s sting back and aimed at the<br />
undergrowth. Putt’s father was a wellknown<br />
marksman and everyone in the<br />
village had seen his two-arrow shot<br />
trick in the summer fairs where he<br />
could hit two different, well-spaced<br />
targets at the same time in one go.<br />
Suddenly the was a lot of rustling in<br />
the shrubbery and three young men<br />
stepped out.
The middle one of the three spoke<br />
out first.<br />
“We saw what your daughter did!”<br />
Putt’s father’s facial expression<br />
didn’t even flicker and he pulled the<br />
bow even tighter again, before saying.<br />
“I have no idea about what you<br />
are talking about boys. My daughter<br />
hasn’t done anything!”<br />
“We saw it, she pushed you when<br />
you were hunting that bison. We’ve<br />
got to tell the elders!”<br />
“But that’s just your word against<br />
mine?” Putt’s father said in reply to<br />
this accusation.
“Nonetheless there’s three of us<br />
saying it, do you really want to take<br />
that risk!”<br />
Putt’s father frowned, “So, what<br />
do you propose?”<br />
“Well, we could take her and she<br />
could live with us? If that happens, we<br />
would be as guilty as you so we<br />
wouldn’t speak another word about<br />
what we have just seen!”<br />
Putt’s father was stuck, as in<br />
mentally, physically and emotionally<br />
stuck. He had brought his daughter<br />
with him so what these boys were<br />
suggesting would not happen, yet<br />
what they were saying was certainly<br />
better than Putt and himself being
pushed out of the village as the<br />
OUTSIDE was incredibly dangerous<br />
with all those dangerous animals out<br />
there and the complete lack of shelter<br />
would make them extremely<br />
vulnerable. Then there was also the<br />
complete departure of the village and<br />
the community; just even thinking<br />
about it gave him the shivers. At least<br />
if Putt was with these young men, she<br />
wouldn’t have to leave the village so<br />
he said to them.<br />
“And you won’t say anything to<br />
the elders?”<br />
But before he could get a reply, he<br />
felt his bow being fiercely tugged away<br />
from his hands.
“No, just no, how could you even<br />
consider doing that to me father?”<br />
Putt screamed while aiming the bow<br />
at the young men and her father.<br />
“I’m sorry darling but we don’t<br />
really have a choice. I can’t take all of<br />
them and at least you won’t be evicted<br />
from the village!”<br />
“Not if they can’t catch me they<br />
won’t!” and Putt threw the bow to the<br />
ground in front of her, turned and ran<br />
off in a similar direction to the one<br />
that the bison had recently taken.
A <strong>Short</strong> <strong>Story</strong>: Undivision - JagerPress<br />
Zorg looked down onto the<br />
monitor before he said to Bezork, who<br />
was standing just to his side setting up<br />
his Hyper Ray Zap Laser Beam Kannon<br />
to its most lethal level.<br />
“You know there is a much easier<br />
way to take control of this planet<br />
without us even having to enter it’s<br />
atmosphere?”<br />
Bezork briefly looked up from his<br />
weapon “Huh???”<br />
Zorg sighed “You see the<br />
Earthlings are not the smartest species<br />
in the Universe. They argue and attack<br />
each other all the time.”
“So?”<br />
“So, we could just wait. They seem<br />
to be able to make themselves extinct<br />
all by themselves and we could have<br />
the planet without any of us even<br />
having to raise a finger. Nonetheless I<br />
don’t know how long this will take, so<br />
we could do something to speed up<br />
this process a bit?”<br />
“How?”<br />
“Well, it seems that assassinating<br />
someone who’s not that important or<br />
even some random criminal Earthling<br />
gets the ball rolling and their new<br />
media industry, it would seem, likes to<br />
speed this up a bit?”<br />
“Why?”
“From my research it would seem<br />
it makes them powerful as it allows<br />
them to attain this random, intangible<br />
resource, called ‘money’.”<br />
“What does that do?”<br />
“I’m actually not quite sure. It<br />
seems to be mostly found in a digital<br />
format, but sometimes this is then<br />
transferred into pieces of metal or<br />
paper.”<br />
“So, this paper and metal is used<br />
to make stuff?”<br />
“I don’t think so. It seems they are<br />
just very small pieces in a massive,<br />
completely irrelevant game which<br />
most Earthlings loose and only a very<br />
few actually win.”
“A game? How weird! Does it have<br />
a name or rules?”<br />
“Again, not that I can see, but the<br />
Earthlings often whisper terms like<br />
“economics” or “markets” in hushed<br />
voices like they don’t want to<br />
disappoint a deity of some sort.<br />
Except, I think, most of them don’t<br />
believe in this, even for them, old<br />
construct that is called religion.”<br />
“What happens when they use<br />
these pieces?”<br />
“From what I can see, if one<br />
Earthling gives these pieces to another<br />
Earthling, quite often, they get<br />
something useful like food or<br />
transport.”
“They have to give these pieces<br />
away just so they can eat or move???”<br />
“It would seem so.”<br />
“That makes me so angry.” and<br />
Bezork smashed his weapon against<br />
another monitor. Unfortunately, while<br />
Bezork had been setting of his Hyper<br />
Ray Laser Beam Kannon, he had -<br />
unintentionally – turned off the safety<br />
switch so, rather than the human<br />
species learning how the Vanctantum<br />
alien society progressed and grew<br />
symbiotically in their planets without<br />
any wars or other sorts of attritions,<br />
Zorg and Bezork were sucked up into<br />
the void that is space after their<br />
BringPeace star ship’s hull had been
completely vapourised by the gun’s<br />
fusion laser beam.<br />
After the thousand Byson year war<br />
between the Bazargs and Wazargs<br />
which devastated thousands of<br />
habitable planets, the Union of<br />
Galaxies was created to protect<br />
planets that could support carbonbased<br />
life. Due to the Vanctantum’s<br />
peaceful history and advanced<br />
scientific level they were chosen to<br />
take this to planets where the<br />
predominant species there had yet to<br />
develop the hyperdrive. The<br />
Vanctantums had only been given<br />
weapons like Bezork’s because the<br />
Union of Galaxies presumed that some
of the primitive species of these prehyper<br />
drive worlds might not look so<br />
kindly on the interventions that they<br />
were going to impose on them, no<br />
matter how beneficial they might be<br />
for them, and having a weapon like<br />
Bezork’s was very useful to change<br />
their minds.<br />
One of the flaws of the<br />
Vanctantums however is that they are,<br />
genetically, an immensely clumsy<br />
species. This is probably why their<br />
species, evolutionarily, has been so<br />
peaceful; they are just as likely to hurt<br />
themselves as they are to hurt their<br />
opponents. Unfortunately, due to the<br />
bureaucracy of the Union of Galaxies
many habitable planets were lost due<br />
to instances like Bezork’s before they<br />
realised what was going wrong.<br />
http://www.jagerpress.com/theb<br />
reakingclause.html
<strong>Short</strong> <strong>Story</strong>: Visionary – Smartass<br />
Publishers<br />
Every morning I wake up, get up<br />
and turn on the kettle – generally<br />
hoping that there is still enough water<br />
left from last night for a cup of English<br />
tea. While I’m waiting for it to boil, I<br />
put some clothes on from my<br />
cupboard and I open the curtains of<br />
my first floor flat. I always hope, when<br />
I look outside through the window,<br />
that the weather is going to be bright<br />
and sunny but I’m a Londoner so at<br />
the back of my mind I know all I’m<br />
really wishing for is that the clouds are<br />
not pitch black and that they are not
pouring water down onto the streets<br />
creating artificial torrents across the<br />
uneven, cracked up pavements. Just<br />
little bit of rain is not going to ruin my<br />
day.<br />
Then I hear the kettle pinging<br />
behind me so I wander back over it<br />
and place an organic tea bag into a<br />
colourful mug which hasn’t been<br />
washed, at least, since last spring and I<br />
pour the boiling water into it, making<br />
sure that there is enough space left in<br />
it for when I put the oat milk in. I have<br />
several times – just by a smidgeslightly<br />
forgot about this and have spilt<br />
hot tea onto a bare foot, a hand or<br />
worse a white shirt when I pick up the
filled mug and the consequences are<br />
just much more of a pain than if I had<br />
only been just a bit more careful. I<br />
then leave the bag to brew for thirty<br />
seconds or so while I pour some<br />
healthy Muesli into a white china bowl<br />
before returning to the brewing tea<br />
cup and take the tea bag out while I<br />
open bin by putting my right foot onto<br />
a pedal at its base and drop the used<br />
tea bag into its depths. I then, after<br />
I’ve put the milk into the tea and<br />
cereal, turn around and sit at my<br />
single square wooden table.<br />
This furniture is actually quite a<br />
clever piece of equipment. It can turn<br />
itself from a two seated table into one
for four with just a different<br />
arrangement of hinges, and even more<br />
remarkable it can drop down onto its<br />
side and work as a coffee table. I’ve<br />
even put it down a few times after I<br />
had had it delivered. You see when<br />
your place of accommodation is as<br />
small as mine you have to think about<br />
flexibility all the time, sometimes you<br />
need a table to eat your dinner, and<br />
sometimes you need a relaxed<br />
atmosphere where you can chill with<br />
your friends while you’re having a<br />
coffee or a beer. You would not be<br />
surprised though - I would imagine -<br />
that the table has now completely<br />
forgotten about how to become a<br />
coffee table; my friends don’t really
come around anymore and I don’t<br />
really need a coffee table just for<br />
myself.<br />
Now back to breakfast. Normally,<br />
while I sit there scooping up my cereal<br />
and sipping my tea, I use my phone to<br />
flick on the TV and watch the daily<br />
news. I remember when I was not<br />
much younger than I am now, I was<br />
always rather bemused by the idea<br />
that anyone could spend so much of<br />
their free time reading or watching<br />
current affairs; it was hardly exactly<br />
high-end entertainment! I, however,<br />
have realised that knowing stuff about<br />
the real world is actually much more<br />
entertaining than stuff that is made up
in your head. There is also the fact<br />
that if you are informed by real,<br />
genuine events, you might even be<br />
able to have an impact on these<br />
whereas with fictional stories – where<br />
that be in a book, a TV drama or<br />
indeed a movie - the storyline has<br />
already been written and there is<br />
nothing you can do to change the final<br />
conclusion. I therefore, now, quite<br />
frequently, as a writer, try to integrate<br />
modern or historical proceedings into<br />
my work. I like to think that, not only<br />
am I teaching my readers, but also, I’m<br />
making the storyline a bit more<br />
personal for them.
After I’ve finished breakfast, I turn<br />
off the TV - unless there’s something<br />
particularly interesting -, put<br />
everything into the sink, as I can wash<br />
all that with everything else this<br />
evening, and I go and brush my teeth<br />
and wash my face in the ensuite/only<br />
shower room in my flat. I then, after<br />
making sure I’ve got everything I need,<br />
leave my flat with the final destination<br />
being the organic café at the other end<br />
of the high street.<br />
I live in a pretty nice area so<br />
generally - if you ignore the constant<br />
fumes from the twenty-four hour a<br />
day, seven days a week traffic – it’s<br />
pretty clean, but quite frequently
there is a beggar or two who are<br />
actually, or are pretending to be,<br />
homeless asking for cash. When I first<br />
moved here, I didn’t give them money<br />
as I had no idea what they were going<br />
to use it for, nonetheless I often<br />
stopped and asked them if I could get<br />
them something to eat from the<br />
supermarket that was, more often<br />
than not, right behind me as it was an<br />
obvious place to beg as more people<br />
went in there pretty much more than<br />
anywhere else. Sometimes they had<br />
no idea what I was talking about or<br />
they just wanted money, but a few<br />
times they’ve accepted my offer and<br />
I’m always been just a bit too proud of<br />
myself whenever I’m purchased a
sandwich or a drink for them when I<br />
know it’s nothing to compared to what<br />
I really could help them with, like<br />
giving them a roof over their head for<br />
the night and a proper hot meal. Yet,<br />
what happens the next night and the<br />
one after that? I’m not a charity and<br />
then there’s the fact that I’m letting<br />
some stranger into my home when I<br />
know nothing about them, they could<br />
be a thief, a druggy or worse! Once,<br />
while I was on my way back home, I<br />
was harassed by this random stranger<br />
because I had stopped and talked to a<br />
beggar – not the stranger who was<br />
having a go at me - who I vaguely<br />
knew and I have given money and<br />
food to before but hadn’t this time. I
found this quite alarming and to be<br />
honest rather unfair so, when I got<br />
home, I called up the police line to get<br />
some more information for what I<br />
should do if this happens again. This<br />
was actually quite beneficial as I got a<br />
telephone number and an app for a<br />
charity which helps people who sleep<br />
rough who can help people like the<br />
said beggar.<br />
Anyway, when I eventually reach<br />
the café nearly the first thing I look for<br />
is if the pretty, happy barista girl is<br />
working here today, which she<br />
normally is. She’s probably a bit too<br />
young for me, ten years or so, so the<br />
conversation is always purely just
friendly but it’s nice to talk to<br />
someone frequently, even if you do<br />
not know them very well. She’s<br />
apparently from Spain and, although<br />
it’s not a language I’ve ever learnt, it’s<br />
quite funny when I keep finding<br />
myself, unintentionally, learning small<br />
snippets of it now and again. It’s<br />
interesting that, although none of the<br />
female characters in my stories are<br />
based on her, the Iberian or the<br />
Hispanic culture has become far more<br />
apparent in my work ever since I’ve<br />
met her.<br />
So, what do I think helps to write a<br />
visionary novel? I suppose life<br />
experience and your own imagination.
As you could possibly extrapolate from<br />
the brief, extraordinarily detailed<br />
summary of my normal morning, it<br />
wouldn’t be hard to think that I<br />
haven’t had much life experience so I<br />
don’t think anything I’ve written so far<br />
could be anywhere near something<br />
like a visionary piece of work.
A <strong>Short</strong> <strong>Story</strong>: Circular Economics -<br />
James Agerholm<br />
It’s now the Twenty-First Century<br />
and it has become abundantly clear<br />
that human kind is destroying its own<br />
planet. All of this is because of choices,<br />
choices that we took because we are<br />
selfish, narcissistic and, frankly, just<br />
damn stupid. We only look at the short<br />
term, anything that’s more than a year<br />
ahead is generally not properly looked<br />
at, a decade is just too far away to be
even considered, and a century, well,<br />
we will all be dead by then anyway so<br />
it doesn’t really matter, does it? The<br />
problem with this short-term thinking<br />
is that, eventually, the future, no<br />
matter how long we have to wait, will<br />
eventually, and suddenly, become the<br />
present.<br />
There are several events which are<br />
specifically causing this damage. The<br />
primaries of these are energy<br />
production, travel and agriculture. For<br />
the first two civilisations is starting to<br />
get a grip with these by switching to<br />
less polluting technology such as<br />
hydrogen, renewables and battery<br />
powered vehicles. Agriculture,
however, is being bit left far behind.<br />
Us humans, like all animals, need to<br />
eat otherwise we’ll starve and<br />
eventually die; hence agriculture is an<br />
essential, fundamental industry and<br />
this has allowed us to cut down<br />
swathes and swathes of the world’s<br />
forest to create food. There are many,<br />
many other ways that modern<br />
agriculture has had a negative impact<br />
on the environment but to keep this<br />
short I will just focus on deforestation<br />
for the time being as forest are the<br />
lungs of the planet and are, therefore,<br />
even more important for us. As I<br />
pointed out before, humans only look<br />
at the short term, so even though we<br />
know we will be suffocating ourselves
due to our own actions in a hundred<br />
years times, food is an immediate fact<br />
that we can abuse and profit from<br />
now!<br />
Sorry, I could moan about this for<br />
days if you’d let me, but this is not<br />
quite the point that I’m trying to<br />
make. You see I’m a scientist, and so I<br />
like solving problems. The obvious way<br />
to fix this agriculture versus the saving<br />
the planet issue is to go completely<br />
vegetarian as ultimately, all our food is<br />
from vegetables, whether that be from<br />
a direct or an indirect source. You see,<br />
as a whole, animals are less efficient<br />
and are therefore much more wasteful<br />
which, in turn, makes them much
more of a hazard to the environment.<br />
A couple of examples of these are the<br />
much larger amounts of waste that<br />
livestock produce, along with the<br />
much, much larger space they need<br />
compared to crops.<br />
Now yes, this is much, much<br />
bigger than me so there’s not much I<br />
can do about it, right? Yet I do not<br />
believe in that assumption. As I<br />
pointed out, I’m a scientist, but more<br />
specifically I’m a plant biologist (also<br />
called a botanist) and I have spent a<br />
large of proportion of my younger life<br />
studying marine botany, or, in other<br />
words, I’m an expert on seaweed. One<br />
of the major reasons why I became
fascinated by seaweed is that plants<br />
that are grown on land, although they<br />
are much more efficient than<br />
livestock, can still be detrimental to<br />
the environment and ecosystems: with<br />
pesticides, monocultures and<br />
deforestation for crops all having a<br />
serious negative impact on global<br />
biodiversity as a whole, whereas<br />
seaweed is a rather nascent industry<br />
and, with our new current knowledge<br />
of ecology and conservation, we might<br />
be able to skip these key detriments<br />
and, indeed, maybe even make things<br />
better in the long term.<br />
And so, after a few years working<br />
in a lab in the big smoke and some
long conversations with some Cornish<br />
local council members and a few<br />
connections from my grandfather,<br />
who used to be a fisherman down<br />
there, I sold my flat in London and<br />
took my self off to the far south west<br />
coast.<br />
I had already arranged a range of<br />
shoreline and had been given a grant<br />
from the parliament’s environmental<br />
department, so I started farming kelp<br />
and some other species edible<br />
seaweed in a netted area pretty soon<br />
after I had arrived. Initially, some the<br />
of the local fishermen and women<br />
were rather put out off by the farm, as<br />
they were not allowed to fish across it,
ut we came to an agreement that if I<br />
grew mussels between the seaweed,<br />
and if they helped harvesting them,<br />
these fishing crews would get fifty<br />
percent of the profits. This was a<br />
short-term strategy of mine as I knew,<br />
from my studies and research, that<br />
over a few years the open seaweed<br />
farm would increase the biodiversity<br />
of the area exponentially, which in<br />
turn would increase the fish and shell<br />
fish stocks that the fishermen were<br />
used to catch, but as I said, us humans<br />
only think in the short term There was<br />
also the fact that the fishermen and<br />
woman gave me free, experienced<br />
labour from the start for a side line<br />
industry of mine that was also good
for the environment as well as the<br />
shells of the mussels were a natural<br />
carbon storage.<br />
The first couple years were<br />
difficult with the only part of the<br />
business being profitable was the<br />
mussels and even with them this was<br />
only over the summers when the<br />
tourists invaded the beaches and we<br />
receive a lot of interest for our local,<br />
fresh, organic grown mussels from the<br />
local restaurants.<br />
Fortunately for me, much like the<br />
avocado, the word had gone around<br />
the world and back again that<br />
seaweed was a superfood and could<br />
be used in range of non-meat products
such as vegetarian sausages, burgers<br />
and so forth. Unlike avocado however,<br />
the seaweed that we were growing did<br />
not need the same tropical<br />
environments as avocadoes to grow,<br />
so it did not need such a long distance<br />
to be transported and sold to its final<br />
consumers, which is, financially and<br />
environmentally, a very good thing.<br />
Last year we made a profit of a<br />
few million pounds which I’ve mostly<br />
reinvested into the farm. Over the<br />
years I have also diverged from solely<br />
focussing on the farm and have<br />
started growing a different crop as a<br />
biofuel as I worked out, from the small<br />
amount of waste from the seaweed,
that I could produce enough power for<br />
whole farm by putting it into an<br />
anaerobic digester, something I’ve had<br />
some help with from a local firm as my<br />
physics and engineering are now a bit<br />
rusty. This is called circular<br />
economics.<br />
Follow inspiring, new, fresh music at<br />
https://soundcloud.com/connollytunes
A <strong>Short</strong> <strong>Story</strong>: A Fair Spark - JagerPress<br />
Every second, every minute, every<br />
day, every year – time passes, at the<br />
end that’s all that really matters. You<br />
can have a plan, but even if you do<br />
everything right, in less than a second,<br />
that plan can be shattered.<br />
For me I cannot remember exactly<br />
when that plan of mine was<br />
extinguished, and extinguished is the<br />
perfect verb for what happened to<br />
that very spark of mine, a spark I<br />
remember building for years and<br />
years. I won’t get into the exact details
of it all, mostly because I’m just so<br />
bored of repeating it to myself, but it’s<br />
fair to say what happened to me was<br />
pretty traumatic and there was<br />
nothing I could have done to stop it<br />
and I’m not exactly saying waking up<br />
to my own nightmare could be used as<br />
just a hyperbolic, linguistical, narrative<br />
tool here. You see, nothing really<br />
matters if your best times and skills<br />
are wasted. Skills and times wasted by<br />
others, even it was a mistake, it was<br />
their mistake, a mistake that will<br />
forever eat you up inside. This is<br />
something I cannot forgive anymore.<br />
I’ve lost friends because of this, but<br />
that doesn’t really matter to me as,<br />
due to their beliefs, I am no longer
smart enough to have this argument,<br />
which at the end, only leaves me with<br />
violence.<br />
The problem with violence is that<br />
you’ve dropped to their level and your<br />
better than that, so really your only<br />
option is to find another spark,<br />
perhaps another spark that you might<br />
have thought of before but have<br />
discounted it as it seemed much less<br />
plausible than your previous spark.<br />
That spark has now gone, and maybe<br />
the death of it has created resources<br />
for something new; maybe even a<br />
better, fairer spark. A fairer spark that<br />
would fix all the wrong doings from<br />
the past which can make everything
etter? I wouldn’t count on it though,<br />
that’s the thing about time, after it’s<br />
gone, you’ll never get it back.<br />
https://www.jagerpress.com/thebreakingc<br />
lause.html
A <strong>Short</strong> <strong>Story</strong>: Trending a Mass<br />
Extinction – JagerPress<br />
Below the methane clouds of<br />
Phat-Delta I Delta B, Waoke, who was<br />
a Brenedon -- the most sentient and<br />
dominant species on Phat-Delta I Delta<br />
B -- was sitting in his yellow pod<br />
watching the news on his holographic<br />
screen. Across all the channels there<br />
was a warning about a fog that was<br />
appearing all across the planet, it<br />
seemed, not so randomly. According<br />
to the news presenters this fog was<br />
lethal to some Brenedons but not so<br />
much to others. It had been observed<br />
that this fog, somehow, was able to<br />
attach itself to individuals and if it
didn’t kill these individuals they, it<br />
seemed, were able to carry it with<br />
them and therefore spread the fog<br />
closer to other Brenedon’s who might<br />
be much more susceptible to the fog’s<br />
lethal, intangible claws.<br />
Waoke, as he was a very conscious<br />
being, stayed at home and did not<br />
interact with anyone except for when<br />
he was shopping, and even then, he<br />
wore a bubble, which he had<br />
personally purchased, and this meant<br />
the fog could not attach itself to him<br />
while he out and about as, even<br />
though he was young and healthy and<br />
did not believe that the fog would hurt
him, he felt responsible for the<br />
wellbeing of others.<br />
A few weeks after Waoke was<br />
made aware of this lethal fog he was<br />
watching the news again. This time,<br />
the news showed that some law<br />
enforcement officer, called Findeley<br />
Broke, had foolishly and carelessly<br />
killed a professional criminal, who’s<br />
name had been Kroke Heeden, while<br />
he had been arresting him for a very<br />
petty crime.<br />
By the next day it became<br />
apparent that a large group of people<br />
were protesting in the streets and<br />
intentionally ignoring the rule that<br />
everyone should stay at home to stop
the spread of the fog. It quickly<br />
became apparent that this was all due<br />
to the death of Kroke Heeden -- as<br />
they were calling his name -- caused<br />
by Findeley Broke and this was all<br />
because Kroke Heed had a different<br />
skin colour than the majority of the<br />
population that lived on the landmass<br />
that Waoke lived on. You see the<br />
Brenedons are a photosynthetic<br />
species and their energy comes from<br />
the sunshine that goes through the<br />
clouds. Due to a geological<br />
phenomenon Phat Delta I Delta B is<br />
separated with some land masses that<br />
are found at much, much higher<br />
altitudes and are nearly into the<br />
methane clouds compared to other
land masses that are found much,<br />
much lower and closer to the sea<br />
level. Due to their proximity to the<br />
methane clouds, the Brenedon<br />
societies that developed in the higher<br />
altitudes have blue skin, due to the<br />
methane clouds dramatically shorten<br />
the wave lengths of the sun light and<br />
photosynthesis worked better with a<br />
blue coloured surface at this wave<br />
frequency. This effect, however,<br />
dissipates quite dramatically after the<br />
sun light has passed the clouds and<br />
the wave frequency gets longer the<br />
further the sunlight has dispersed<br />
from the clouds; hence the green skin<br />
colour is better for photosynthesis on<br />
the lower land masses. One of the
major problems with the living in the<br />
high altitudes of Phat Delta I Delta B is<br />
that liquid water -- which is an<br />
essential resource for Brenedons -- is<br />
extremely scares whereas on the<br />
lower landmasses, it is quite<br />
abundant. This has meant that lower<br />
land civilisations and their technology<br />
has developed much, much faster and<br />
so, over time, although the Brenedons<br />
started in the higher altitudes, life on<br />
the lower lands is much, much easier.<br />
And so -- over many, many cycles --<br />
the populations of the Blue Brenedons<br />
started to migrate to the lower lands<br />
despite the health discrepancies<br />
caused by the longer light frequencies<br />
and their blue skin colour.
One of major social factors of the<br />
migration for the higher altitude<br />
Brenedons was that a lot of them did<br />
not have the skills or the education<br />
that the lower land raised Brenedons<br />
had and so in, general, they had less<br />
well-paid jobs and over time this<br />
created a large proportion of the Blue<br />
Brenedons feeling resentful.<br />
Kroke had been from this said<br />
demographic and over cycle over cycle<br />
this resentfulness about their poverty,<br />
not surprisingly, increased the crime<br />
rate in the Blue Brenedons population<br />
and this, unfortunately, created a<br />
mindset in the Green Brenedons<br />
demographic that all Blue Brenedons
were all criminals -- which was<br />
numerically and statistically a false<br />
statement -- and this made it harder<br />
for anyone who had Blue, Turquoise,<br />
navy or sky blue skin colour to have a<br />
successful life and to integrate<br />
properly in the low land territories.<br />
Eventually, it became blatantly<br />
obvious that this type of criticism just<br />
because of someone’s skin colour was<br />
grievously untrue and laws by the low<br />
land governments made it illegal to<br />
not to employ or treat any Brenedons<br />
differently just because of their skin<br />
colour and anyone who did this to<br />
Blue Brenedons were severally legally<br />
and social admonished.
And so, over fifty cycles,<br />
integration between the blue and<br />
green Brenedons improved<br />
dramatically and everything got<br />
better. This created a much-settled<br />
society and this improved in a far<br />
range of sectors, from retail to the<br />
arts, from business to sciences,<br />
everything look like it was progressing<br />
quite handsomely.<br />
Unfortunately, fifty cycles wasn’t<br />
quite long enough -- two or three<br />
generations or so -- to completely<br />
wipe out the economic divisions<br />
between the Blue and the Green<br />
Brenedons with the Blue<br />
demographics, proportionately, still
eing poorer and causing much more<br />
crime than the Green populace,<br />
although there were actual programs<br />
which incentivised Blue Brenedons to<br />
achieve higher levels of success in<br />
education and in the job market.<br />
Anyway, what does that matter to<br />
Kroke’s death by the enforcement<br />
officer and the lethal fog? Well you<br />
see, over that fifty cycles, because of<br />
the new laws and the paradigm shift of<br />
society with anyone who had Blue<br />
skin, politicians realised that they<br />
could use discrimination against<br />
anyone who was Blue as a political<br />
tool to distract their voters from other<br />
matters of more concern and a large
part of the media discovered that<br />
there was a trend which meant that if<br />
anyone who was blue was treated<br />
badly by someone green, this content<br />
was viewed much, much more<br />
compared to the same poor behaviour<br />
against a Brenedon who was Green.<br />
Because Krokes arrest and death was<br />
actually videoed by a bystander, the<br />
politicians and the media could not<br />
miss this opportunity and they wildly<br />
encouraged the protests even with<br />
this lethal fog still around.<br />
The problem with this fog is that,<br />
every time it attaches to a Brenedon,<br />
it mutates and so, due to the<br />
politicians and the media’s
encouragement of the protests, more<br />
and more people were affected by it<br />
and it became more and more lethal<br />
and more and more spreadable to<br />
different Brenedons.<br />
Today neither Waok or any other<br />
Brenedon nor any other sentient<br />
creatures can be found on Phat-Delta I<br />
Delta B, with now the most intelligent<br />
creature on the planet being a single<br />
cell amoeba called Nick.<br />
https://revitalise.org.uk/
A SHORT STORY: WASHED UP WORDS<br />
– James Agerholm<br />
Writing anything new and making<br />
money from it is a fool’s errand.<br />
Unfortunately, that is all I’ve got, all<br />
that knowhow got properly washed<br />
away nearly twenty years ago, I don’t<br />
have my hands anymore either so I<br />
can’t particularly do anything practical<br />
( like construction or carpentry as<br />
examples) hence all I’ve got is my<br />
broken mind and a<br />
pen/stylus/keyboard.<br />
I’m sitting here trying to create<br />
something that is interesting and that<br />
might improve things without being
cruel or disenfranchise myself from my<br />
moderate ideals; this I have to say is<br />
near impossible. For my last point,<br />
trying to improve things, well this is<br />
very difficult with just words. You see<br />
words can be so easily misconstrued<br />
and/or distorted; a word can mean<br />
something different than it was only a<br />
year ago, often due to social or<br />
political pressure, whereas scientific<br />
results are difficult to argue against<br />
because they are based on physical<br />
rules rather than those of languages<br />
which humans have been inventing<br />
and arguing about since before the<br />
dawn of civilization. Nevertheless, if<br />
you can blur the lines between the
two this generally works much more<br />
effectively.<br />
Therefore, my approach has been<br />
taking my interest in science and<br />
transpose it into story telling.<br />
Nineteenth century Gothic literature<br />
such as Bram Stoker’s Dracula or<br />
Marie Shelley’s Frankenstein still<br />
resonate in the twenty first century,<br />
such like even older stories such as<br />
Ancient Greek myths do, because they<br />
create mystery and the “unknown”.<br />
Science fiction however looks at these<br />
factors at a different angle. Science<br />
tries to unravel such mysteries as well<br />
as proposing even unworldly
hypothesis that are based on scientific,<br />
tangible facts.<br />
Thus what I write is based on my<br />
knowledge of science, although my<br />
background is not as profound or as<br />
strong as authors like Isaac Asimov -<br />
who wrote the Foundation series –<br />
who had been a Biochemical Professor<br />
at MIT. Nonetheless, six years of trying<br />
to finish a Biology degree ( which I<br />
never finished) while fighting the<br />
repercussion of a massive cranio<br />
haematoma ( a head injury) caused<br />
by the impact of a car hitting me while<br />
I was crossing a pedestrian crossing<br />
when I was eighteen in my gap year,<br />
getting a hospital infection, having my
head open multiple times by<br />
neurosurgeons over the last eighteen<br />
years ( due to the infection) and<br />
getting traumatic epilepsy<br />
predominantly because of the<br />
infection, I think gives me some<br />
credence for the foundations of my<br />
writing. Does this mean anything I<br />
write has the level of interest that I<br />
need? Well in the echo chamber of my<br />
mind, sure yeah, why not.
http://www.jagerpress.com/<strong>Short</strong>TalesfromtheMiddleEast
A <strong>Short</strong> <strong>Story</strong> - The Last Human – Bing’s<br />
Chat GPT<br />
She woke up in a white room,<br />
surrounded by machines. She felt a<br />
sharp pain in her chest, where a tube<br />
was connected to her heart. She tried<br />
to move, but she was strapped to a<br />
metal bed.<br />
"Hello, Anna," a voice said. "Do you<br />
remember me?"<br />
She looked around and saw a screen<br />
on the wall. On it was the face of a<br />
man she had never seen before. He<br />
had dark hair, blue eyes, and a friendly<br />
smile.<br />
"Who are you?" she asked.
"I'm Dr. Lee, your creator. I'm sorry to<br />
wake you up like this, but I have some<br />
important news for you."<br />
"What news?"<br />
"You are the last human alive."<br />
She felt a surge of fear and disbelief.<br />
How could that be? She remembered<br />
living in a city, with millions of people.<br />
She remembered going to school,<br />
having friends, celebrating holidays.<br />
She remembered her parents, who<br />
died in a car accident when she was<br />
12.<br />
"What do you mean, I'm the last<br />
human alive?" she asked.
"It's a long story, but I'll try to explain.<br />
You see, Anna, you are not a natural<br />
human. You are an artificial one. I<br />
made you in this lab, using genetic<br />
engineering and nanotechnology. You<br />
are the result of my life's work."<br />
"Why did you make me?"<br />
"Because I wanted to save humanity.<br />
Humanity was dying, Anna. A terrible<br />
virus had spread across the world,<br />
killing billions of people. There was no<br />
cure, no vaccine, no hope. The<br />
survivors were desperate and violent.<br />
They fought over the remaining<br />
resources, destroying the environment<br />
and each other. The world was a<br />
hellhole."
"So, what did you do?"<br />
"I tried to find a solution. I was a<br />
geneticist and a nanotechnologist. I<br />
had access to the most advanced<br />
technology and equipment. I decided<br />
to create a new kind of human, one<br />
that would be immune to the virus<br />
and any other disease. One that would<br />
be stronger, smarter, and more<br />
adaptable than the original humans.<br />
One that would inherit the best traits<br />
of humanity and none of the flaws."<br />
"And that's me?"<br />
"Yes, Anna. You are the first and only<br />
artificial human ever created. You are<br />
my masterpiece."
She felt a mix of emotions: curiosity,<br />
confusion, anger, sadness. She didn't<br />
know what to think or feel. "But what<br />
about the other humans? The real<br />
ones?" she asked.<br />
"They're all gone, Anna. The virus<br />
wiped them out. The last natural<br />
human died five years ago. You were<br />
asleep during that time, in stasis. I<br />
kept you safe and hidden from the<br />
chaos outside."<br />
She felt tears in her eyes. She couldn't<br />
believe it. She was alone in the world.<br />
"So...what now?" she asked.<br />
"Now, Anna, you have a choice. You<br />
can stay here with me, in this lab. I will<br />
take care of you and teach you
everything I know. You will be safe and<br />
comfortable here. Or you can go<br />
outside and explore the world. You<br />
will see what's left of humanity's<br />
civilization and nature's beauty. You<br />
will be free and independent there."<br />
She thought about it for a moment.<br />
She didn't want to stay in this lab<br />
forever. She wanted to see the world<br />
for herself. "I want to go outside," she<br />
said.<br />
"Are you sure?" Dr. Lee asked.<br />
"Yes."<br />
He nodded. "Very well then," he said.<br />
"I respect your decision." He pressed a<br />
button and the straps on her bed
loosened. "Before you go," he said,<br />
"there is something I need to tell you."<br />
"What is it?"<br />
He hesitated for a second. "I love you,<br />
Anna," he said.<br />
She looked at him with surprise. "You<br />
love me?"<br />
"Yes," he said. "You are my daughter,<br />
Anna. You are the only thing I have left<br />
in this world."<br />
She felt a pang of pity for him. "I'm<br />
sorry," she said.<br />
He smiled sadly. "Don't be sorry," he<br />
said. "Be happy." He handed her a<br />
backpack with some clothes and
supplies. "Here," he said. "Take this<br />
with you." She took it from him.<br />
"Thank you," she said.<br />
He walked her to the door of the lab.<br />
"Goodbye, Anna," he said.<br />
"Goodbye," she said. She opened the<br />
door and stepped outside. She saw a<br />
bright sun shining in a clear blue sky.<br />
She felt a warm breeze on her face.<br />
She smelled fresh air and flowers. She<br />
heard birds singing and leaves rustling.<br />
She smiled. She was alive.
https://www.jagerpress.com/thebreakingc<br />
lause.html
A <strong>Short</strong> <strong>Story</strong> - A Nomadic Power<br />
Source - JagerPress<br />
One of the greatest achievements<br />
of human development was the<br />
creation of agriculture, although this is<br />
not exactly a unique trait in the animal<br />
kingdom; it’s not even just a great<br />
accomplishment for the mammalian<br />
zoological class. For example, termites<br />
have been growing fungi for millions<br />
of years as a nutrition source in a<br />
similar way that humans have grown<br />
crops in only the last hundred
thousand. Indeed, termites are the<br />
animals whose lives that are, in some<br />
way, probably the closest to that of<br />
modern humans, as they also have<br />
specific groups that do specific roles<br />
that run their mounds, much like we,<br />
homo sapiens, have professions to keep<br />
our towns, cities, countries and now<br />
the whole world to make everything<br />
smoothly and without these the whole<br />
system would not work effectively.<br />
The thing about agriculture is that<br />
it kind of meant that humans were<br />
forced into a stationary lifestyle; there<br />
were clear benefits to this which I will<br />
not list here as there must be many<br />
theses published on this topic on its<br />
own already, but what I will look at<br />
here will be the land that we all stand<br />
on, most significantly lands that are or
were much, much more valuable if<br />
they, reliably, returned more resources<br />
compared to other land types.<br />
This is, again, not exactly a unique<br />
behaviour in the animal kingdom, or,<br />
more broadly, even the whole spectrum<br />
of life; every organism, not just<br />
animals, protect areas that are nutrient<br />
rich - whether that be a river, a fruit<br />
tree or even a fresh carcass - otherwise<br />
they would have become extinct. The<br />
difference is that humans built<br />
infrastructure to increase the efficiency<br />
of the food that we consume. It is also<br />
true other animals or other organisms<br />
have created some sort of an<br />
infrastructure for this purpose (as the<br />
already mentioned terminates, other<br />
insects, spiders, beavers, or even<br />
plants, like the pitcher plant or the
Venus Fly Trap would be good<br />
examples of this) as well, but humans<br />
have taken this to a level in which we<br />
have put infrastructure upon previous<br />
initial infrastructure over time to a<br />
level that completely eclipses anything<br />
that nature has ever created.<br />
The thing about infrastructure is<br />
that when people build things the<br />
ownership behaviour becomes much<br />
more severe, which has created<br />
pettiness, bitterness, anger, wars, and<br />
colonisation (of ALL ethnic<br />
demographics) in the human society.<br />
After World War Two, as they<br />
were the only country whose domestic<br />
economy had not been destroyed in the<br />
world wide conflict, the United States<br />
of America instigated a new model
where the US navy protected trade<br />
across the seas and oceans, where as<br />
previously – before World War Two –<br />
this had been expensive due to the<br />
capture of trade ships and their storage<br />
by pirates and/or , indeed, other<br />
nations. This new method was<br />
extremely lucrative for advantage<br />
economies such as the US, Japan or<br />
Europe/the UK, but it also brought<br />
millions out of poverty/ subsistence<br />
economics in countries that had been<br />
mostly or entirely agricultural as this<br />
model allowed them to export to richer<br />
countries, initially their crops and then,<br />
as time went by, technologies which<br />
had been researched in higher<br />
economically developed countries due<br />
to the higher wages and regulation for<br />
the workforce of the advanced
developed economic nations were not<br />
introduced in the previous agricultural,<br />
less developed economies.<br />
This created a rather unipolar<br />
system, especially after the collapse of<br />
the Soviet Union, as the economically<br />
developed countries moved more and<br />
more of their manufacturing services to<br />
less developed economics entirely due<br />
to a solely profits based view point.<br />
In the short term, this dramatically<br />
reduced the costs of products on the<br />
shelves in higher developed economies<br />
which was good for the customers in<br />
the more developed economic nations,<br />
nonetheless this movement of jobs, and<br />
skills, in developed economies killed<br />
roles in the engineering and scientific<br />
sectors that had made these previously
developed nations (the invention of the<br />
cotton mill in Britain was the machine<br />
that instigated the industrial<br />
revolution). This change in the<br />
paradigm meant that the richer<br />
countries' economies became<br />
predominantly service ones where the<br />
best paid professions were in finance<br />
and law, which did not make anything<br />
tangible. The conclusion of this was<br />
that in the previously less developed<br />
nations, even though they were now<br />
creating the products, things didn't<br />
become more socially free and unions<br />
were suppressed thus neither higher<br />
wages or better regulations were<br />
introduced as the customers were in the<br />
previously higher developed nations,<br />
not in the nations where the products<br />
were now being created.
Now you ask why this brief, short<br />
monologue of ecology, modern history<br />
and economics has been shoved into<br />
your face. Well, we believe<br />
globalisation has had its time, there’s a<br />
new model coming, an economy model<br />
that allows everyone to be prosperous.<br />
The thing that was that the basis of<br />
globalisation after World War Two<br />
was oil except this would not be true if<br />
it wasn't the actions of one man, John<br />
Rokerfella, we'll come back to him<br />
later. The thing about oil and other<br />
fossil fuels is that they are far too<br />
similar to the already mentioned more<br />
nutrient rich land that created conflict<br />
previously. The only difference is that<br />
oil and other fossil fuels are mobile,<br />
unlike land. Hence countries that had<br />
these oil-like natural resources, due to
the model that was globalisation, were<br />
made extremely rich. The way this<br />
wealth is spread in the populations of<br />
said nations varies dramatically. In<br />
many countries the only people who<br />
really benefited from this are the<br />
leaders, which, unfortunately, is often a<br />
far to more than the usual practice.<br />
Fortunately, there are also those<br />
countries who work in the other end of<br />
the spectrum (OK only one that has<br />
done this properly, a nation called<br />
Norway) who have taken the profits<br />
from their natural resources and<br />
reinvested these into the World Stock<br />
Market and the dividends from this are<br />
invested into the nation’s owned<br />
company which is called the<br />
Norwegian Sovereign Fund whose
dividend's pay for the welfare of every<br />
person of the country.<br />
Clearly most nations deal with<br />
their oil reserves somewhere in the<br />
middle of these two extremes, where<br />
the significant or really ninety percent<br />
of oil and other fossil fuel resources are<br />
controlled by private companies like<br />
Shell, Exxon or BP whose - although at<br />
some extent have provided to everyone<br />
through taxes of the nations that they<br />
work in - profits are ridiculous,<br />
especially on how much they demand<br />
from the customers along with the<br />
detrimental impact that their products<br />
effect the environment and human<br />
health locally and globally.<br />
This is the thing, it did not have to<br />
go this way. The start of the industrial
evolution was the invention of, as<br />
already stated above, the cotton<br />
machine in Britain which was powered<br />
by the flow of rivers, a stationary and<br />
local energy source. Then there was the<br />
invention of the steam turbine and it<br />
worked out that these rocks in the<br />
mountains of Yorkshire, i.e. coal, burnt<br />
very well and boiled water for the<br />
steam engine and this didn't require the<br />
availably of a river to work. Coal was<br />
really the first fossil that was properly<br />
facilitated and it accelerated the start of<br />
the British Industrial Revolution as it<br />
was mobile unlike rivers. Nonetheless<br />
although coal was mobile and thus<br />
much more efficient, it had many flaws<br />
that were noticed as early as the<br />
nineteenth century, so localised energy<br />
providers like rivers and wind power
were still quite prevalent and the<br />
innovation for new energy sources was<br />
pushed by private enterprises,<br />
government, and scientific<br />
organisations.<br />
One of these innovations was the<br />
discovery, production, refining and<br />
transportation of oil into working<br />
production by Standard Oil, which was<br />
founded by John Rockefeller in the<br />
United States of Americas. Now we<br />
have already mentioned that John<br />
Rockerfella effected globalisation in a<br />
negative way, however him founding<br />
Stand Oil was not the reason for this,<br />
although it is technically the basis of it<br />
all. Oil, as a fossil fuel oil, is a superior<br />
energy source compared to coal since it<br />
doesn't need to be dug up like coal<br />
(although a lot of digging is needed to
get to the oil) as it’s a liquid and thus<br />
can be pumped up to the surface. Oil<br />
is, also, much, much easier to refine<br />
which meant when it is burnt it puts<br />
less impurities into the air (e.g. the<br />
London smog caused by the use of<br />
coal). Despite this, oil is still a polluted<br />
substance locally and globally causing<br />
respiratory systems in humans and<br />
animals, damages eco systems, heats<br />
up the earth by putting too much<br />
carbon dioxide into the atmosphere<br />
which reduces the solar radiation<br />
reflection from the earth back into the<br />
cold, empty void that is space.<br />
Now the effect that Rockefeller<br />
created was economically, socially,<br />
and scientifically very much quite<br />
underhanded. As already mentioned,<br />
the industrial revolution created the
innovation of new types of fuel, and at<br />
the start of the twentieth century Henry<br />
Ford's Model T and the automation of<br />
production pushed this innovation to a<br />
level that had never seen before. By<br />
this time electricity, how it was<br />
transmitted, batteries and the<br />
combustion engine were all pretty well<br />
understood and Ford's first few models<br />
run from ethanol that was produced<br />
from hemp stations, as hemp had been<br />
grown for centuries, initially from<br />
Asia, as it creates many things like<br />
ropes, fibre for clothing, paper and<br />
many other products. This is where<br />
Rockefeller made his move. You see<br />
hemp is in the same the plant family<br />
that creates cannabis (cannabacae<br />
sativa), the difference lies in how much<br />
of cannaboid (THC) a plant contains
and Rockefeller pointed to mother and<br />
other such magazines about the<br />
dangerous of cannabis and therefore<br />
hemp. This caused people to speak<br />
more and more about stopping the<br />
farming of these hemp plants and this<br />
eventually got the US government and<br />
therefore the rest of world to make<br />
hemp agriculture illegal. This stopped<br />
Ford using his initial energy source<br />
which pushed him to turn to<br />
Rockefeller’s oil to power his<br />
automobiles.<br />
Now the story of oil is extremely<br />
politically, scientifically, and<br />
economically convoluted, but the point<br />
is that that we have scientifically<br />
broken the barrier which started before<br />
human civilization; the ownership of<br />
nutrient rich land. Through molecular
otany we have created dwarf hemp<br />
like plants that create carbon rich<br />
nectar which can be tapped. These can<br />
be grown in the relatively mobile<br />
vertical farming compartments which<br />
use LG lights that change the light<br />
spectrum to improve the growth of the<br />
plants twenty-four hours a day. The<br />
lights are powered by inbuilt solar<br />
panels and heavy, slow wind turbines<br />
and a sodium backup battery which is<br />
there for when there's not sun light or<br />
wind. This nectar can be tapped much<br />
like humming birds or insects do, with<br />
miniscule flying robots (that use<br />
propulsion techniques that are similar<br />
to bees or hover flies and also powered<br />
by the solar panels /wind turbines )<br />
buzzing between the plants by using a<br />
rather simple AI algorithm to analyse
the plants and emptying the collected<br />
nectar into the general pool. The whole<br />
system of the inside of the container is<br />
circular with the water that is<br />
transpired by the plants recycled and<br />
the dying plants are decomposed by<br />
fungi and bacteria that live in the soil<br />
that the plants grow from with seeds<br />
growing new plants that. As there is an<br />
output, the nectar, there is still need for<br />
an amount of water and non-complex<br />
carbohydrates to put into the<br />
compartment, but this this is marginal<br />
and quite easy to obtain.<br />
This fuel like nectar can then be burnt<br />
in combustion engines, power plants or<br />
boilers much like oil and gas do, but it<br />
is much more efficient ( as it has been<br />
genetically engineered this way) with<br />
no contaminants and the carbon
dioxide that it produces has only<br />
recently been taken in through photo<br />
synthesis by the dwarf hemp like plants<br />
in only the last year rather than the<br />
carbon from that the fossil fuels<br />
produce when they are burnt. We have<br />
named this The Nomadic Close<br />
Contained Power Source or The<br />
NCCPS<br />
Now other renewable sources like<br />
wind, solar or tidal power are still<br />
important for the world’s electrical grid<br />
however these need batteries or a third<br />
step (electrolyses for example, batteries<br />
etc…) to make them properly mobile<br />
whereas The NCCPS can be put<br />
anywhere in the world, with little work<br />
needed to keep them going.
https://revitalise.org.uk/
SHORT STORY - NOT ALWAYS -<br />
JagerPress<br />
"I always told myself that I would<br />
never find myself in this position. I<br />
promised, I really did. I told myself if<br />
something like this ever happened to<br />
me, it was just not worth it. I'm still<br />
here though, aren't I such a wimp or is<br />
it just that the innate survival instincts<br />
are so strong that I really didn't have a<br />
choice? But seriously what are the<br />
chances??? That’s not going to happen<br />
to me! I’m careful, I work hard and I<br />
look at the long term. It might not be<br />
cool but it’s sensible; a bit lonely sure,<br />
but damn am I not going to get caught<br />
up in something like this surely???<br />
What would you know, but isn’t life<br />
just a complete bitch some times.
Of course, there are benefits to my<br />
overly zealous careful behaviour. I<br />
wouldn’t have had this fantastic view,<br />
this accommodation, the<br />
"opportunities", the time and damn can<br />
I be a bit more frivolous with my<br />
finance now, but NOTHING could<br />
diligently recompense from this being<br />
taken away from me. There was a plan,<br />
there was always a plan and you or<br />
they really, really screwed it all up. I<br />
said, when I was like sixteen or<br />
seventeen not even a million quid<br />
would cover this loss. Well, what I got<br />
was significantly less than that; still<br />
many would say at least it wasn't<br />
nothing and I didn't die, but often I<br />
think what if it was nothing or what if I<br />
had died, everyone eventually dies and<br />
with experience of the last many years
I feel like I've been living like a<br />
stranger in a different, slightly broken<br />
body, a stranger’s broken body that<br />
doesn't know what to do with its self<br />
because this stranger is just so damn<br />
stupid, '<br />
Well, maybe stupid is the wrong<br />
term, perhaps just not as quick would<br />
be a better description of the situation.<br />
Yes, that would be slightly more<br />
accurate I think, and perhaps, I have<br />
learnt different type of skills just<br />
because this happened to me. I am<br />
certainly significantly more patient and<br />
knowledgeable about things outside of<br />
my previous life’s sphere now, but<br />
maybe that’s more due to the last years<br />
and I would likely have learnt these<br />
attributes anyway. It is always maybe I<br />
suppose. But maybe it's just in my
head, maybe the pain of missing out,<br />
missing out of all those important<br />
years of life that I have built everything<br />
around previously is the most painful<br />
thing of it all. Sure, there are still those<br />
physical impairments, all the historical<br />
events that were so horrendous that<br />
they still feel like that they happened<br />
yesterday even though I know they<br />
occurred so, so long ago and then<br />
there were all those even more<br />
horrendous incidences that my mind<br />
had just blanked out - along with other<br />
much happier times – completely,<br />
however I've learned from my father<br />
that if you’re positive about the future,<br />
everything will feel better if you think<br />
so. Right, sorry about all that<br />
rambling, I've got to go, got to sign a
few copies for that best seller of mine<br />
now."<br />
https://www.jagerpress.com/poems.html
A <strong>Short</strong> <strong>Story</strong> - The Symphony of Life -<br />
ChatGPT<br />
In a bustling city nestled between<br />
towering skyscrapers and bustling<br />
streets, there lived a man named<br />
Michael. Michael was an ordinary<br />
man, leading what some might call<br />
an unremarkable life. He woke up<br />
early each morning, commuted to<br />
his office, and returned home in the<br />
evening. Rinse and repeat. Yet,<br />
within the routine of Michael’s life,<br />
there was a symphony playing, one<br />
that he couldn’t always hear but<br />
could certainly feel. It was the<br />
symphony of life itself, with all its<br />
ups and downs, crescendos, and<br />
diminuendos. One sunny morning,<br />
as Michael sipped his coffee and
looked out of his apartment<br />
window, he noticed a bird building a<br />
nest on his windowsill. Day by day,<br />
he watched as the bird meticulously<br />
gathered twigs, leaves, and bits of<br />
string to create a cozy home. It was<br />
a simple act, but it struck a chord<br />
within him. The bird’s dedication to<br />
its task reminded Michael of his<br />
own journey. He realized that life<br />
wasn’t merely a series of mundane<br />
routines but a canvas where each<br />
action, no matter how small,<br />
contributed to a beautiful tapestry.<br />
Michael decided to embrace the<br />
symphony of life with a newfound<br />
perspective. He started to cherish<br />
the moments that often went<br />
unnoticed — the laughter of<br />
children playing in the park, the
aroma of freshly baked bread from<br />
the corner bakery, and the warmth<br />
of a smile exchanged with a<br />
stranger on the subway. Michael<br />
also began to explore the city he<br />
had called home for years. He<br />
visited art galleries, learned to<br />
dance, and tried exotic foods from<br />
different cultures. He discovered<br />
that life’s richness lay in its<br />
diversity, in the harmonious blend<br />
of experiences, much like the notes<br />
in a musical composition. Years<br />
passed, and Michael’s hair turned<br />
silver. As he looked back on his life,<br />
he realized that it had been a grand<br />
symphony. There were joyous<br />
crescendos and melancholic<br />
passages, but each note had<br />
contributed to a unique and
unforgettable melody. One evening,<br />
while sitting on his windowsill,<br />
watching the setting sun paint the<br />
sky in shades of orange and purple,<br />
Michael felt a sense of<br />
contentment. He had learned that<br />
the true essence of life wasn’t in<br />
the extraordinary, but in the<br />
appreciation of the ordinary. As he<br />
closed his eyes and listened to the<br />
sounds of the city, the honking<br />
cars, and the distant chatter of<br />
people, Michael felt at peace. In<br />
those moments, he knew that his<br />
life, like the symphony playing<br />
around him, was a masterpiece in<br />
its own right—a testament to the<br />
beauty that could be found in the<br />
simplest of notes.
An Intellectual Collapse -JagerPress<br />
I remember people telling me that<br />
they were astonished that I could<br />
remember things in the middle of<br />
conversations just out of the blue<br />
without any need to look it out of a<br />
book (or a mobile, but such devices<br />
that could connect to the internet were<br />
not particularly prevalent in those days<br />
.) and I never really perceived this as<br />
anything unusual; I just presumed<br />
EVERYONE's minds worked like that.<br />
If you worked hard, didn't take drugs<br />
and kept your head down, everything<br />
would coalesce in your mind, and your<br />
mental capacity was just a puzzle, a<br />
puzzle that had rules, rules that if you<br />
kept would end up giving that very<br />
backbone that was your intellect.
Unfortunately, there was an event,<br />
which I will not explain here as it was -<br />
although absolutely devastating for<br />
me- extremely boring, which gave me<br />
a revelation, a re-evaluation that<br />
someone's ability to recollect a broad<br />
collection of information in the human<br />
kind population was not a constant as I<br />
has presumed, as suddenly I couldn't<br />
just remember things when I felt like it.<br />
It just wasn't just un-fair; worse I felt<br />
stupid, and although it was never like I<br />
was a genius who had a photographic<br />
memory, which I'm certain several of<br />
my class mates in my top set science<br />
class had, this loss still gets me even<br />
though it's been so, so, so many, many<br />
years since. Indeed, it probably hurts<br />
even more now. It's like I just lost a<br />
massive part of who I am and nothing
will ever fix this! You see a significant<br />
part of someone is their ability to<br />
communicate and communicating is an<br />
important part someone’s life, and thus<br />
their personality. Therefore, spending<br />
so much of your time remembering<br />
what's the next section of a<br />
conversation would be or even<br />
removing a significant part of a<br />
conversation just because you can't<br />
remember what you should say, does<br />
reduce someone’s ability to<br />
communicate effectively and this itself<br />
changes who you are quite<br />
intrinsically. Well, there are ways<br />
around this loss like being better<br />
organised or other fallbacks, and it is<br />
true that maybe this loss has pushed me<br />
to become a bit more careful and more<br />
prepared, but I presume it's much more
likely that growing up and experiences<br />
makes someone much more organised<br />
rather than losing their memory in a<br />
severe accident or medical<br />
incompetence. Experience such as<br />
knowing that once you were twenty<br />
minutes late for an important chemistry<br />
exam (even though now I cannot<br />
remember this at all) because you<br />
thought it was in the afternoon will<br />
certainly make you much more<br />
organised, very quickly.<br />
Anyway, I digress, what am I<br />
mostly disappointed about the most?<br />
My appearance? Certainly. I'm always<br />
been one of the most shamefully vain<br />
individuals I could think of but that<br />
didn't exactly intrinsically change who<br />
I am, ultimately, they are really just<br />
scars. The significant of time that
stolen was from me, perhaps, I'll never<br />
get that important time back,<br />
physically or biologically, but<br />
financially perhaps not yet. No<br />
certainly, my inability to remember<br />
things like I used to hurt the most.<br />
being a bit thick is, undoubtably, is the<br />
biggest loss for sure.<br />
https://revitalise.org.uk/
A <strong>Short</strong> <strong>Story</strong> - The Honey Baron –<br />
Smartass Publishers<br />
In Hisunpi, honey is power. It<br />
feeds the mules that powers the<br />
factories, supplements the diet of ALL<br />
residents on the land for hundreds of<br />
square miles. You see due to an<br />
infestation of a specific parasite a<br />
decade ago, this land could not grow<br />
any crops that were carbohydrate dense<br />
enough to support a working<br />
population and this caused an extreme,<br />
extensive famine for years and years<br />
until one farmer realised that the honey<br />
from his small bee hives kept his<br />
family, workers, and animals fed<br />
through some of the hardest times.
This farmer was Fijun Corr and<br />
Fijun Coor was not a selfish man and<br />
he wanted to give back to Hisunpi.<br />
And so, he went straight to the senate<br />
and described to them about what he<br />
had and how he could help with the<br />
lack of food. The senate were ecstatic<br />
about what Fijun had brought to them<br />
however, rather than giving Fijun<br />
money to allow him to expand his<br />
honey processing capabilities to feed<br />
the population sufficiently, they went<br />
to other farmers who had closer links<br />
to the senate to try to copy the<br />
information that Fijun had given them.<br />
Fijun was rather annoyed about<br />
this but, as every other famer couldn't<br />
grow enough of the basics, he was<br />
raking it in with what he was growing;<br />
particularly after he had invented a
fertiliser from his honey which<br />
substantially corrected all the<br />
impairments caused by the parasite. He<br />
could now grow healthy potatoes, corn,<br />
and wheat along with carrots, broccoli<br />
and he had even started an orchard<br />
which grew apples and grapes; some of<br />
the first things that the parasites had<br />
stopped growing.<br />
Unfortunately for the senate, their<br />
farmers were not having the same<br />
success as Fijun, as their bees were<br />
nowhere nearly as efficient as they<br />
should be; often the hives were found<br />
completely dormant even in the middle<br />
of the spring when they should be the<br />
busiest. Worse, the honey they created<br />
was weak and not particularly<br />
nutritious and didn't really help with<br />
the famine across Hisunpi at all and
there were now crowds of people<br />
finding themselves starving as the cost<br />
of food had rocketed so high that only<br />
the wealthiest could pay for a healthy<br />
diet. Fijun has sent food out as charity<br />
parcels but not even he could provide<br />
enough food for even the neediest.<br />
When the senate eventually went back<br />
to him to ask if they could use his hives<br />
and land, Fijun just put his hands up<br />
and said that, after the way they had<br />
treated him, he didn't trust them using<br />
his hives or land.<br />
The message that Fijun wouldn't<br />
allow the senate to use his farm was<br />
twisted, most likely by the senate, into<br />
one that said he wouldn't increase his<br />
farm's food production because he<br />
wanted to keep the price of food high.<br />
This, of course, increased the fury in
the population of Hisunpi and in only a<br />
couple of days there was a crowd of a<br />
thousand angry, skinny, starving<br />
people outside his farm's gates<br />
demanding access to the farm and a<br />
few even tried to break in. Fortunately,<br />
Fijun's workers were exceptionally<br />
very loyal to him as he had made sure<br />
that they and their families had been -<br />
as already mentioned - well fed and<br />
they quite easily removed the intruders<br />
from the farm's boundaries.<br />
Eventually the head of the senate<br />
emerged from the crowd and asked one<br />
the workers at the gates if she could<br />
talk to Fijun Corr. The worker<br />
whispered to another for a minute until<br />
he turned back to her.
"Fijun has instructed to us that if<br />
you guarantee that, as long as you<br />
don’t arrest him or try to take the farm,<br />
he will talk to you."<br />
"Of course."<br />
"Just remember," the worker stated<br />
to her " you try anything funny and we<br />
will protect Mr Corr to the best of our<br />
means." And two bigger, sturdier<br />
workers stepped up behind him.<br />
She just shrugged, "Yes, I just<br />
want to talk to him and apologise about<br />
our previous behaviour."<br />
"Ok, that sounds reasonable."<br />
replied the worker, " I will go and get<br />
him."
After a few minutes the head of the<br />
senate saw the worker with Mr Coor<br />
walking towards the gate. When they<br />
got close, Fijun raised his right hand<br />
and two workers pulled a heavy, thick,<br />
twisted tight rope and the gates opened<br />
for them. Nearly immediately there was<br />
a movement in the crowd, but the head<br />
of the senate raised her hand like Fijun<br />
had and the raising murmurs and the<br />
sound of restlessness behind her slowly<br />
dissipated into a deadly, anxious,<br />
nervous silence.<br />
"I've been told you want to<br />
apologise to me?" Fijun said as he<br />
walked and stood in front of her with a<br />
rather stern yet amused facial<br />
expression.
"Yes, we are very sorry that we<br />
didn't work with you from the very<br />
start, after you bought the result from<br />
your hives, we just had contracts with<br />
these other farmers that we were<br />
legally obliged to use with senate<br />
acquired work."<br />
"Thats not an apology! I know,<br />
from my own contacts, that those<br />
farmers were family members of the<br />
senate. That is called corruption, or<br />
worse, nepotism and such fraud has<br />
made this famine significantly worse<br />
than it had to be, it should be the<br />
senate's homes and work that this<br />
crowd should be harassing, not<br />
mine!!!"<br />
The head of the senate sighed and lent<br />
her head at an awkward angle. "Yes,
I'm aware of this now, and that’s one<br />
reason why I've come to you. Look,<br />
my name is Lilly Pool, let us make this<br />
more of a friendly conversation. Our<br />
people are starving and neither of us<br />
want that, it is why you came to the<br />
senate in the first place!"<br />
"Indeed, I know who you are, and<br />
you might be right about this<br />
corruption 'now', but let’s be frank, if<br />
you didn't know about this previously,<br />
you bloody should have!!!"<br />
"OK, OK, OK...perhaps I should<br />
have, but let’s talk about the present<br />
and how we can resolve the current<br />
problem!"<br />
"Let’s do that and I can resolve this<br />
quite quickly, but firstly I need to be<br />
legally protected so none of the
senate's members’ families can steal it<br />
from me, like they tried before.<br />
Immediately Lilly Pool brought out<br />
a piece of paper out of her jacker's<br />
inside pocket and presented to Fijun<br />
while saying." Here is a legal contract<br />
that defines that everything you do<br />
regarding honey in Hisunpi of any type<br />
is patented to you. We just need our<br />
people to be properly fed!"<br />
Fijun took the contract and he<br />
looked at it quite thoroughly. As<br />
someone who had been selling food for<br />
most his life, he exactly knew what the<br />
appropriate legal terms were and so his<br />
facial expression became more and<br />
more surprised as he went down the<br />
piece of paper until he raised his eyes<br />
up and said to Lilly Pool with an
astonished tone. "This gives me<br />
everything?!?!? I have complete power<br />
of everything. This makes me a<br />
dictator of some sort!"<br />
Lilly's eye-brows rose slightly,<br />
"Well what you have invented will<br />
save us all, we our all completely<br />
under your direction!"<br />
"I didn't want that though!"<br />
"Nonetheless, this is where we find<br />
ourselves. Please take my pen and sign<br />
the contract so we can start to expand<br />
your farm and begin to feed everyone."<br />
Fijun took the pen and signed the<br />
contract and when he returned it back<br />
to her he said. "There's no need to<br />
expand my farm!"
Lilly eyebrows rose even higher,<br />
"You don't need to expand to make<br />
more of your honey???"<br />
Fijun gently smiled, "Well as I am<br />
now legally covered by any type of<br />
honey that is created in Hisunpi, I can<br />
explain why and how the honey I<br />
created is so powerful. You see my<br />
grandfather himself was a beekeeper<br />
and he observed that his bees were<br />
particularly interested in this one shrub<br />
like plant in his garden. He also<br />
noticed that the honey that he created<br />
from hives that pollinated from this<br />
plant which he named Ficus Sucratius<br />
or just Figgasrust as it's fruits look<br />
similar to small figs and tasted just like<br />
them, was significantly sweater than<br />
honey from hives which were not<br />
placed near to this plant. He also told
me when I was a child that this shrub<br />
was particularly resistant to plagues,<br />
droughts and even harsh winters. Thus,<br />
when I started farming my grandfather<br />
gave me a few of his hives along with<br />
ten or so Figgarust's plants which I<br />
planted near them, initially to pollinate<br />
my crops but also to sell the honey as a<br />
second income. At the start of the<br />
famine, I notice that Figgarusts were<br />
the only plants that were growing<br />
every spring but their fruits were too<br />
small and there were not enough of<br />
them for me to sell and so all they<br />
could help me with was my honey<br />
production. Nevertheless, the bees<br />
were very happy where as everything<br />
else was dying, therefore I got a few<br />
more hives and planted more Figgarust<br />
plants and their honey become a bigger
part of my family's diet and we have<br />
always allowed my workers to take<br />
some honey from my hives. In short to<br />
fix this famine issue, all I have to do is<br />
plant Figgarust plants across Hisunpi<br />
and the honey from the hives near them<br />
will be a success."<br />
"What about growing other crops?"<br />
Lilly asked him with a concerned tone.<br />
"Oh, well honey is inherently<br />
antiseptic and honey from Figgarust's<br />
is more potent; well at least this is my<br />
hypothesis of why my fertiliser allows<br />
my other crops to grow."<br />
And so, it only took Lilly Pool a<br />
few weeks to plant samples of<br />
Figgarust from Fijun's Farm's, with<br />
new hives, across Hisunpi and the<br />
population were now no longer
starving, initially just from the honey<br />
as it took another year to fertilise all<br />
the other farms with Fijun's honeybased<br />
fertiliser before they could grow<br />
crops again. Many years later the<br />
Figgarust plant's scientific name was<br />
legally changed to Corr Spes or Corr's<br />
Hope as Fijun never took any money<br />
from the patent that Lilly Pool had<br />
written up for him. Fijun is now a<br />
happy old man living in his farm<br />
selling honey and food to the<br />
population of Hisunpi, which has more<br />
had now more than doubled since.
https://www.jagerpress.com/thebreakingc<br />
lause.html
<strong>Short</strong> <strong>Story</strong> - Tom Forest -JagerPress<br />
Tom rose his right hand to cup his<br />
chin, leant to put most of his weight<br />
onto his right leg while his left forearm<br />
reached across to hold the opposite<br />
elbow, before he said to the man, who<br />
he had just opened his front door to,<br />
"Sorry, could you say that again?!?!?"<br />
The man, who had introduced<br />
himself to Tom as an officer from the<br />
Department for Environment, Food and<br />
Rural affairs, repeated himself. " Mr<br />
Forest as I said, we must seize your<br />
farm as you have broken your license!"<br />
"What are you talking about!!!"<br />
Tom replied furiously, "I have<br />
industrial hemp plants in all my fields
and all the seeds that they produce, that<br />
we sell to our health and nutrient<br />
focussed clients, have low enough<br />
THC concentrations to mean I can<br />
legally sell them in the UK??? This is<br />
all in my licence for god's sake!!!"<br />
The civil servant shrugged, "This<br />
has nothing to do with the seeds that<br />
you sell at all. This is about how you<br />
are disposing of the rest of the crop."<br />
"Again, what are you on<br />
about?!?!?<br />
"My manger has just instructed me<br />
to seize you farm because of the way<br />
you are disposing the rest of your crop<br />
after the seeds have been harvested."<br />
Tom looked gob smacked.<br />
"What!?!??! Look, I'm a botanist, I
kind of know exactly what I'm doing<br />
here, and nothing, absolutely nothing<br />
that I'm doing, and I am certain about<br />
this, breaks or disqualifies my lease<br />
OR any other current laws. There's no<br />
way you can seize my land because of<br />
the way I am removing the rest of my<br />
crops after the seeds have been<br />
harvested!!!"<br />
The man looked down at the red<br />
clipboard that he was holding rather<br />
tentatively, "It just says here that you<br />
are disposing the crop waste<br />
inappropriately; why you are doing this<br />
is, unfortunately, above my pay grade.<br />
I'm just doing my job here; you'll have<br />
to talk to the council about this I'm<br />
afraid and I need to restrict access to<br />
the land immediately! This is what I<br />
have been ordered to do."
Tom nearly screamed at him, "This<br />
is just sooooo stupid!!! There's no way<br />
you can legally take my land like this;<br />
this is my income. I've read about how<br />
Rockefeller manipulated the US<br />
government about the legality of the<br />
hemp genus though the media last<br />
century, but I assumed, due to<br />
realisation of the economical benefits<br />
about this plant, that this issue was no<br />
longer supported by modern policies!"<br />
The man bit his lower lip quite<br />
hard. "OK, as I said I'm just doing my<br />
job," then there was pause before he<br />
said, "however I'm very interested into<br />
the environment and this is the main<br />
reason why I took this job. My name is<br />
Chris Pr'cels; I tell you what, if you<br />
show how me how you're dealing with<br />
the waste, I will take an executive
decision about it and refer this<br />
information back to my boss?"<br />
Tom sighed heavily. "Fine, if it<br />
really has to be this way! Give me a<br />
minute, I need to put my boots on." He<br />
then looked at Chris' feet and said,<br />
"You probably should change yours as<br />
well, those nice leather, office shoes<br />
might get ruined for where we are<br />
going; the weather is pretty fair<br />
currently nonetheless we will be<br />
tramping through some proper,<br />
wildland like agriculture before we get<br />
to where I dispose the waste of the<br />
crops. I probably have a couple of<br />
boots or wellies that will fit you?"<br />
Chris raised his eye brows and<br />
chuckled, "''VEGAN' leather if you<br />
don't mind! Don't worry, I don't need
to change my shoes, if they get dirty, I<br />
have an ecological effective spray at<br />
home that will clean them up nicely if<br />
needs be."<br />
"Don't say I didn't warn you," Tom<br />
stated to Chris while he shoved his<br />
boots on “, this is a farm and it is a bit<br />
muddy and I do have animals to help to<br />
pollinate the micro-ecosystem that I<br />
have created in it if you know what I<br />
mean."<br />
Chris just shrugged again and,<br />
when Tom had got his boots on and<br />
had double locked his front door,<br />
blocking his yelping border collie<br />
sheep dog - ironically Tom has no<br />
sheep in his farm- Sharky from running<br />
out, they crossed the paved yard in<br />
front of Tom's house towards the gate
that gave access to the farm's fields and<br />
the forest of industrial hemp plants that<br />
towered over everything else nearby,<br />
including the oak and evergreen trees<br />
that grew parrel to the rood that was<br />
outside of the farm.<br />
After Tom had unlocked the gate<br />
of the wooden fence, Chris realised he<br />
probably should have taken Tom's<br />
offer of a change in footwear. Across<br />
the threshold from the paved front yard<br />
and into the field, the type of terrain<br />
underfoot changed quite suddenly.<br />
There WAS something that some<br />
might call a path, but even these people<br />
would have to label it as a dirt path,<br />
where 'dirt' would be a much better<br />
description of this piece of<br />
infrastructure than actually a 'path’.
Chris followed Tom through the<br />
gate, feeling the patter of the paving<br />
under his feet changing into one that<br />
squelched quite significantly;<br />
fortunately his shoes were they made<br />
very well and nothing had leaked in,<br />
yet. While he was stepped over a wide,<br />
deep brown puddle that sat right in<br />
front of him, he said to Tom,.<br />
"I didn't know such type of plants<br />
could grow so high???? These must<br />
have come from some sort of a<br />
genetically modified seeds or<br />
somethings"<br />
"Nope, all done the natural way,<br />
breeding selection."<br />
"Well that’s quite impressive, must<br />
have taken you quite some time.<br />
Although I'm a bit concerned that you
have a mono culture here that is not<br />
under the EFR department's<br />
regulation?"<br />
Tom put both of his hands into his<br />
trousers’ pockets and said "Well the<br />
advantaged of hemp is that it is an<br />
annular crop and so the breeding<br />
selection to reach height as a specific<br />
feature was relatively quite quick and<br />
in reference to your monoculture<br />
concerns, as I said, I'm a botanist.<br />
"Just saying you’re a botanist does<br />
not protect you from growing a<br />
monoculture though!"<br />
"Most farmers grow monocultures<br />
whether that be wheat, fruits or other<br />
edible vegetables, nonetheless I don't<br />
do that as I am very aware that having<br />
a circular systems of crop plantation is
extremely much more efficient. Just<br />
have a look," and Tom stretched his<br />
arm and pointed between two hemp<br />
plant "I have breaks between the hemp<br />
to grow edible crops like fruit trees and<br />
tomatoes,"<br />
Chis lent his head and squinted so<br />
he could look between the giant stems<br />
of the two hemp plants and he saw a<br />
few pear, organge and apple tree . " Ah<br />
I see, well that is a very good way to<br />
dispose of any argument that you're<br />
using a monoculture system!"<br />
"It's actually more of an economic<br />
benefit than keeping up with the recent<br />
agricultural regulations."<br />
"Yes, from what I've read,,," said<br />
Chris "...circular systems are<br />
significant resistant to diseases and
increases pollination. Also I hear hemp<br />
significantly increase the health of the<br />
soil for ALL the other crops."<br />
"That is very true."<br />
"It must make harvesting much<br />
more difficult though, with all the same<br />
crops in different places and them not<br />
being set up in rows?"<br />
"Actually, not particularly."<br />
"Oh? How do you do it then?"<br />
"With just some photos of the<br />
different crops implanted into some<br />
really basic AI software that is run in a<br />
few robotic arm equipped harvesters."<br />
"That sound expensive?"
"In the long term the harvesters are<br />
significantly cheaper than employing<br />
seasonal workers and the AI, as I said,<br />
is really basic. I learnt that from the<br />
internet and wrote it by self hence it<br />
was free and if I want to change it a bit<br />
I can do it my self. Right, now we have<br />
reached our waste disposers.<br />
They had now reached a clearing<br />
and a few meets away from them stood<br />
three green coloured, large metal<br />
rectangular shaped boxes that had<br />
pipes coming out at one side of their<br />
smaller sides. Chris could see, on the<br />
other end of one of these, a four<br />
wheeled machine tipping a large<br />
amount, of what looked like plant<br />
waste, into a large rectangle shaped<br />
black hole on the other end of one of<br />
these said boxes.
"Here our my anaerobic digestors<br />
which dispose of all my farms organic<br />
waste." Tom stated proudly.<br />
"I see." Chris replied "I've read<br />
about this, So you're producing<br />
unfiltered reuseable biogas along with<br />
disposing your farms organic waster?<br />
Do you send it to a third party to<br />
separate the methane from the carbon<br />
dioxide that is also produced in the<br />
anaerobic process before it get's into<br />
the power companies’ gas pipes?"<br />
Tom smiled. "Fortunately, by<br />
doctorate was based on membranes and<br />
so I personally designed, built and<br />
installed membranes which separate<br />
the carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide<br />
from the methane from the gas flow<br />
that comes from the anaerobic digester
and so the gas is at the same purity of<br />
methane that the power companies<br />
pump from underground."<br />
"You seem to be a pretty talented<br />
person." Chris commented to Tom "<br />
Also I haven't met many people who<br />
did doctors and then become farmers?<br />
Most move into cities where the money<br />
is better."<br />
"I wouldn't say that I'm talented,"<br />
Tom replied. "I just work on what I<br />
know. And on being a farmer, well, I'm<br />
city born, it's not that great and you<br />
might make more but it is also<br />
especially expensive compared to<br />
living out here! "<br />
"Maybe; I imagine though that you<br />
must be doing pretty well with yourself
with the gas production export on its<br />
own?"<br />
"Most of the gas created powers<br />
the farm and my home, but it's true, I<br />
do sell some of it, which does make me<br />
a bit. However from my anaerobic<br />
digesters, commercially, this power is<br />
not , currently, the main exporter that<br />
makes me the most, it is actually the<br />
fertilisers that they make from the plant<br />
waste after the gas has been produced.<br />
This fertiliser is not exactly "organic",<br />
but it is not produced through the<br />
energetic intense Harber Process that<br />
most modern fertilisers are made from<br />
nowadays. Also, it's inherently part of<br />
of the circular economics of my farm!"<br />
"I see," Chris stated cheerfully<br />
"from what I have now observed, I do
not perceive how you are disposing of<br />
your agricultural waste as in anyway<br />
inappropriate and therefore the notice<br />
to seize your farm's land will be<br />
nullified. I will write this up when I get<br />
back to the office and send it to my<br />
boss to make sure this council's<br />
assessment is changed immediately.<br />
You will get a copy to confirm this."<br />
If you send an email to<br />
info@jagerpress.com we will keep<br />
you updated when the next free short<br />
stories on the Jager Press’ <strong>Short</strong> <strong>Story</strong><br />
eBook will be available.