Very Short Story - Face to Face

I've been saying for many years that the future of the human race is depicted with uncanny foresight in the Disney film WALL-E. I wrote this story for a challenge piece a good decade ago now and my convictions on this matter are firmer than ever!

Face to Face

“What is it?”

Abraham glanced over at his student as he stared at the cracked, dusty device they had just carefully trowelled out of the withered earth and heaps of lifeless brick that formed the Desolation of Manchester. It looked so innocent, so innocuous, so bright and helpful, with not a shadow or a hint of what would spring up from it visible in its sleek design.

“This was the beginning of the end,” he told her solemnly. “This was the first device that made it all too easy.”

Rebekah blinked at him. “It doesn’t look like much,” she remarked.

Abraham smiled ruefully. “It doesn’t need to. That was the problem. But it did everything – it stored their music and their information, it gave them access to entertainment, to guidance, to everything they needed at their fingertips, wherever they might be. It’s said it started use as a voice communication device though after a time, that was mostly forgotten. People came to depend upon it, to need it and to expect all that they needed, all that they wanted, wherever they were, all of the time. Face to face and even voice to voice communication was abandoned in favour of social networking. Then came the implants. And soon, no one even bothered to leave their houses as technology grew more and more convenient. Images of outdoors, collections of friends, the virtual experience, was better than the real thing.”

“There weren’t enough people left to watch over growing food.” Rebekah knew this part of the story. “And nobody noticed.”

Abraham sighed. “And if our ancestors hadn’t been technophobes, we would have starved right there with them. We must be grateful for that. Because of them, of the wifi black-spot hideaway they established in the Lake District, we have a chance to start again.” He pulled himself awkwardly to his feet. “Come on. Let’s take this to show the others. They need to learn how dangerous it is.”

Rebekah smiled. “And we do it face to face, right?”

Abraham nodded. “Face to face. Remember that if nothing else. Always face to face.”

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Uniqueness of a Book

 The human imagination is an extraordinary thing, when you stop and think about it. Being as I am not of a scientific bent, I have no idea of the ins and outs of how it can possibly work, how it is that a lump of grey meat inside a wrapping of bone could possibly generate images, ideas, unheard sounds, regurgitate things once seen and create whole new universes out of nothing. Indeed, to be honest, I don’t want to understand how it works - that would destroy the magic. I’m quite happy just to have the means to play in new and never before seen realms in the depths of my own head. But there is another special thing about the imagination – it is unique. It is a strange thing to consider that no one will ever see my characters exactly how I do. Oh, I can describe them down to the freckles on their noses but one of the beauties of books and taking a world out of words rather than pictures is that everyone’s imagination will give it their own slant. Even the finest description in t...
Read more

Very Short Story - A Surfeit of Irony

I should really be writing something profound and thought-provoking here but, to be candid with you all, dear readers, I'm really tired and can't be arsed so I have chosen to share with you another little story written many moons ago for a writing challenge far away in a distant corner of the internet. Once more, it shows my tendency to try and angle things a little differently. Copyright is mine, of course, and if my little note in the original document is accurate, the prompt was "Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want". Enjoy. :) A Surfeit of Irony He couldn’t say when he’d first noticed the pattern. That was the thing people tended to forget. He was an intelligent man. Calling himself Dr De’Ath was no affectation – he’d earned the title legitimately through studies conducted at numerous highly considered universities and the surname had been a bonus of lucky parentage. After all, being born Xavier Marvolio De’Ath the third pretty much guaranteed a high leve...
Read more

On Being Ordinary

It’s a tough old gig, isn’t it? Being ordinary. I think it’s fair to assume that most people will know how it feels. To be one of the masses, puttering through life in the background, with the occasional walk through or cameo into something bigger but generally just the background noise of life, unheard, unseen and mostly unappreciated. And whenever the larger forces of the universe collide to make something big and splashy happen, it’s always the ordinary folks who end up shafted by it. It’s enough of a bother up here in the real world – so imagine what it must be like being the background noise in a fantasy kingdom with all the perils of plague, war, magical catastrophe and attack by random winged beasties to contend with as one tries to get by in life. Straightforward medieval peasant life with new weird and obscure ways to die thrown in – fun times for all! I’ve often thought being a background character in a fantasy novel must be the hardest gig in all of literature, especial...
Read more