I called David and asked him to pack a bag for Kelly and me for our hospital stay. Not staying with my child was not an option, even if I wanted to leave her, which I didn’t. The Free Zone hospital was hugely understaffed and there were no nurses available to look after her. Keeping an eye on her and attaching the mask to her tiny face every four hours so that the automated nebuliser could administer the adrenaline and steroids she required was my task. I have never felt as useless as I did during that first illness, when my tiny baby lay inside the huge, see-through oxygen tent, labouring to breathe, with an enormous bandage wrapped around the intravenous drip in her hand that fed antibiotics and fluids into her immobile body, and with pads attached to her chest to monitor her oxygen levels.

I was shocked and dismayed that my baby had stopped breathing and had been admitted into hospital, but I was grateful that such a good paediatrician was attending to her. Dr Dream worked at a private clinic in the Work Compound, but she also attended to children in the Free Zone hospital twice a week as part of her compulsory community service. She was a philanthropist and cared about all of her patients, whether their parents were part of the working elite or not.

I didn’t think to ask her questions about Kelly’s illness at the time and didn’t think for one moment that this stay in the hospital would become the normal pattern of my life. No-one in my family had suffered from respiratory problems and I didn’t know that infants that contract bronchiolitis often develop asthma later in their childhood.

Our time in the hospital was uncomfortable for me. One parent was required to stay with the sick child, but no food, drink or sleeping facilities were provided. For three days and nights, I attempted to sleep sitting upright in one of the plastic chairs, with the automated medication co-ordinator waking me every four hours with a long and intrusive beep. I couldn’t afford to use the InstaMax machine in the ward as I wasn’t working and wouldn’t be paid for the days I missed. David brought me protein pills and tap water from our apartment and I had to manage on these. I felt hungry all the time as supplements never satisfied me the way real food did, even if it was a basic meal.

The loneliness was overwhelming as I had no family living close enough to visit us. I had my ipad and iphone, but these did not provide me with much entertainment other than free books which I could download from the internet. I could not afford to purchase expensive data to send or receive messages.

There was a huge television in the ward general area but this ran the never ending selection of reality television programmes that were supplied free of charge to the inhabitants of the Free Zone. World government didn’t broadcast any movies or serials on the free television channels that stimulated or challenged the mind. The unemployable and people in jobs threatened by digitalization were not exposed to anything that could incite resentment or discontent at their lot in life. Every effort was made to provide for our basic needs while maintaining the status quo and avoiding anything that could result in anyone questioning our futures or our becoming jealous of the more fortunate people living in the Work Compounds.

While better than the television, the books that were available to me were also limited. All controversial books had been banned more than fifteen years ago, when paper books became a luxury of the past. Trees were too scarce and valuable a resource to be used for paper of any sort. I had heard that there were vast numbers of books on display in the book museums in the Work Compounds, but even the lucky residents of these areas where not allowed to touch or look at them for fear of damaging the last printed books in the world.

This post was written for Linda G. Hill’s SoCS posts. The prompt this week is a as follows: Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is “open book, point, write.” Pick up the closest book to you when you sit down to write your post. Close your eyes, open the book, and place your finger on the page. Whatever word or phrase your finger lands on, write about it. Enjoy! I picked books as I was a book fair today and books was on my mind.

You can join in here: https://lindaghill.com/2019/06/07/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-june-8-19/

3 June – form the handwritten notes of Lisa Robinson

I am sitting in a worn office chair in the Free Zone 110 Hospital. Kelly is lying on one of fifteen beds in the long, narrow ward. Her dear, little face is pinched and white against the slightly whiter pillowcase and her soft moans blend in with the coughs, wails and cries of the fourteen other small children in the room.

My choices were limited this morning. I either skipped going for the job interview I had finally managed to wrangle and brought her here, or risked coming back to a dead child. Overnight, Kelly’s temperature had climbed steadily and, despite my lying her on the floor of the bathroom and filling the room with steam from the hot water tap in the shower, her cough had worsened, booming in her chest, and making her frail body shake with effort.

I picked up the thick file lying on the small table next to her bed and ran my eyes swiftly over the mixture of typed and hand written notes.

Name: Kelly Robinson

Age: 10 years old

Diagnosis: Acute bronchitis

Underlying condition: Brittle chronic asthma and a biofilm in her sinuses

Genetic microchip implant: None

Bitterness rose in my throat like bile as I read those last words. No, my beautiful little girl doesn’t qualify for a genetic microchip implant because of her parents’ status as unemployable people who were unable to adjust to the new labour market that came about due to mass-scale digitalisation in the mid 2020’s.

She wouldn’t be lying in this hospital bed in this sterile, white ward, if she had access to the genetic engineering options available to the privileged dwellers of the Work Compounds. The mutation in the gene responsible for her chronic asthma and impaired lung functioning could have been successfully treated through the biotechnology available in the microchip. Lisa didn’t understand all the detail, but she did know that the use of biotechnology could help to remove the negative consequences of the mutated gene that was causing her daughter’s illness.

Kelly had been such a strong and healthy girl when she was born. At that time, David and I were both employed and, although David’s job was under threat from the proposed impending implementation by the world government of the fully-fledged world-wide cyber-physical system, known as Bella, it had not as yet happened. I also had a job and was hoping to upskill from a bookkeeper to a role in financial data analytics. All pink and cute, Kelly breastfed well and the obstetrician had allowed us to be discharged a day early from the hospital because she was doing so well.

At three weeks old, she stopped breathing for the first time. Checking on her sleeping in her pram, I noticed that her lips had gone blue. Her chest was not rising and falling as it should have been. I grabbed the baby out of the pram and she immediately started crying, loudly and lustily. Wrapping her up warmly, I ran out of the house and used took the electric bus to the hospital. The journey was one of the most frustrating ones I have ever experienced. The electric bus moved slowly along its rails and seemed to stop at each and every stop. On arrival at the hospital, we had to wait in a crowded and noisy room full of sick and snotty children for the paediatrician to see us. The doctor was kindly, although the dark pockets of puffy flesh under her tired eyes told me of her exhaustion. She sent me to the X-ray department to have a sonar and x-rays of Kelly’s lungs and chest. It was 6 PM by the time we got back to overflowing patients waiting room and 7 PM by the time we saw her again. She examined the X-rays and sonars and read the various reports and then she diagnosed Kelly with bronchiolitis. Bronchiolitis is a virus that affects the respiratory tract. The infection causes inflammation of the tiny airways, called the bronchioles, which lead to the lungs.  The swollen airways fill up with mucus which makes breathing difficult. Kelly, and I as the primary caregiver, were admitted into hospital for treatment. It was a terrible time for us both. The doctor mentioned the possibility that nanotechnology might need to be used to treat her, if her condition proved to be on-going and potentially of a genetic nature. My heart pounded and my hands shook when she told me the astronomical cost of treatments involving genetic engineering. I prayed that we wouldn’t need this treatment.

This post was written for Sue Vincent’s weekly write photo challenge: https://scvincent.com/2019/06/06/thursday-photo-prompt-choices-writephoto/

What Amazon says

“I’ve had a most amazing time….”

So begins the Time Traveller’s astonishing firsthand account of his journey 800,000 years beyond his own era—and the story that launched H.G. Wells’s successful career and earned him his reputation as the father of science fiction. With a speculative leap that still fires the imagination, Wells sends his brave explorer to face a future burdened with our greatest hopes…and our darkest fears. A pull of the Time Machine’s lever propels him to the age of a slowly dying Earth.  There he discovers two bizarre races—the ethereal Eloi and the subterranean Morlocks—who not only symbolize the duality of human nature, but offer a terrifying portrait of the men of tomorrow as well.  Published in 1895, this masterpiece of invention captivated readers on the threshold of a new century. Thanks to Wells’s expert storytelling and provocative insight, The Time Machine will continue to enthrall readers for generations to come.

My review

The Time Machine, even on the face of it, is an extraordinary story, particularly if you consider the time when it was written. The book is narrated by a third party who tells of the Time Travelers wonderful invention of a machine that can travel through time and of his experiences, travelling into the future.

The books starts with the Time Traveler explaining his theories of time travel to friends and others whom he has invited to a dinner party. He demonstrates his theories using a miniature time machine that he has built and tells them that he is nearly finished building a full sized one. The attendees of the dinner are most circumspect although they recognise the Time Travelers superior intelligence. His audience come across as slightly suspicious of the Time Traveler and it seems they think he is far to clever for his own, or anyone else’s, good and that he might be tricking them. The narrator reveals that he has pranked his friends in the past.

He is quite genuine though and does manage to travel far into the distant future on his machine. He discovers a world that appears to be on the decline, that is inhabited by beautiful, almost doll-like people, who demonstrate the behavior and intelligence of children. The Time Traveler, who is an intellectual snob, finds this very difficult to understand and speculates at length about why the intelligence and innovation of mankind has eroded so significantly. He initially comes to believe it is because the Eloi have evolved over time to have a perfect life, completely free of any sort of threats. The climate is lovely and temperate, there is plenty of delicious fruit to feed them and, as a result, they do not need to develop their brains in order to deal with adversity and to improve their chances of survival.

Soon after the Time Travelers arrival in this future world, his time machine is removed and hidden. He quickly works out where it must be stowed but he can’t understand the circumstances around the theft. As time passes, he soon realises that everything is not quite as it seems in this paradise. There is a threat and it is more horrible than the Time Traveler could have ever believed.

I already knew the basic story of The Time Machine before I re-read this book recently. The story is fascinating but I was most intrigued by H.G. Wells interesting analysis of human intelligence, how it develops and how it could decline. He also makes acute and accurate observation about societies and how the interaction between the employers and the employees could play out over time. There are some conveniences in the book which a reader quickly identifies, but for me, they did not detract from my delight and interest in this great story.

Purchase The Time Machine

Our days and nights were no longer clearly defined in this strange dark world. The sky was a dark all day and this deepened into an even greater darkness at night. The cold was relentless and I did not want to waste our fuel, not knowing how long this terrible black winter would continue, or even whether it would ever end, although Tom assured me that it would. “Scientists predicted that nuclear winter would not last longer than ten years, but would go on for at least two years, depending on the number of bombs dropped.”

This was not as helpful to me as Tom seemed to think, as a difference of eight years in his prediction was a really long time when metering out food, drink and fuel. The fuel was my greater worry as it took considerable space to store wood and, as a result there was less in proportion to the stored food and drink. We settled into a routine of lighting the fire twice a day, early in the morning and again in the evening. When we had enough coals, I let it die down and then banked it to retain the heat in the coal until it was time to rekindle it.

During the time when the fire was burning brightly, we settled ourselves around it and read or wrote. Sometimes we played some board games which we found in a cupboard in the spare bedroom. When the fire died down and the cold started creeping in, we prepared and ate a meal and climbed into our beds, dozing in the warm until the time came for me to rekindle the fire.

As the days and weeks passed, I developed a yearning for some fresh intellectual stimulation. Tom too, was bored and it made him irritable and annoying. He would lie for hours singing the words of popular songs from before the winter over and over to himself. As the days wore on, and his appetite for new information and intellectual challenges remained unfulfilled, he became more inconsiderate and careless about his appearance. He did not want to wash or maintain his appearance in any way, nor did he want to talk to me and had chats or discussions. He withdrew into his own world of anxiety and fear. If I stirred from the room with the fireplace, which we were using as our primary residence, he would scream and cry hysterically until I returned. He would not venture outside at all which left me on my own to bring in all the wood and other items we needed from the outbuildings.

I have to do something. We are going to have to try to drive to the town. It’s only ten miles away. We should be fine. The thoughts went round and round in my head, banging on like a drum. I finally broached it with Tom. “Do you think we should take Glen’s 4×4 and drive to the town? There is bound to be a library there in the town’s Free Zone and we could get some books to read.”

His face lit up with enthusiasm and I felt bad for not having suggested it previously. His own yearning for respite from the boredom and routine reflected in his eyes.

“What will we do if we run into other people?” Tom’s face puckered slightly with distaste; he had never enjoyed meeting new people. His PTSD and OCD gave him a distrust of other people and their motives.

This boy can read my mind. How did he know I was worried about running into other people? We haven’t seen anyone since we arrived at the farm and it’s been a few months now.

“Don’t you think it would be nice to see some people? We have been on our own for a long time now.”

Tom’s eyes darkened and a wary expression crossed his face. “What about if they are hostile? We have food, drink and fuel; other people may want to take these things for themselves.”

My own fears were laid bare by these few words. What if there were hostile people out there? What if we ran into trouble?

“We’ll take Glen’s gun.” I had found it hidden in a safe at the back of a wardrobe in the bedroom. The safe wasn’t locked. Well done, Glen. Lucky for us, of course, but really careless not to lock the safe.

Tom nodded. “Okay, I do want to get some books. I am so bored.”

Written for Sue Vincent’s weekly write photo challenge. You can join in here: https://scvincent.com/2019/05/30/thursday-photo-prompt-yearning-writephoto/

Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is “silent/silence.” Use one or both in your post. Have fun!

From the diary of Jennifer Saunders

The view beyond the double glazed windows was one of complete desolation. There was no moon glowing brightly in the darkness of the night. Not a single star lit up the unwavering darkness. The thick layer of smoke and dust that had wrapped itself around the earth was impenetrable. The cocoon mankind had created for himself was complete and effective.

As I stood watching, the showering of snowflakes swirling and dancing in the air increased. They were difficult to see in the relentless dark. A splattering of slightly lighter grey in the greater darkness. Worse of all was the stillness. It is hard for me to convey the stillness. All my life there had been noise, the murmur of people moving about in the office or on the street outside, the chirps of birds welcoming the morning light, vehicles on the streets outside, televisions and other electronic devices buzzing in the background. The silence entered my head, bringing with it a horrible feeling that there was no life left on earth beyond this small cottage where Tom and I were bidding our time. A feeling of panic grew inside me, swelling and growing, threatening to overcome me.

“Mom,” said Tom, coming up next to me at the window. “Look at the sea, it looks so unchanged, doesn’t it?”

Saved by my extraordinary son from descending into a pit of despair and anguish from which there may have been no return, I looked at the ocean, watched it heaving and moving under the dark sky. I realised that I was wrong, the silence was not complete, and the gentle sound of the waves lightened my feeling of oppression and lifelessness.

I turned and drew him into a hug. I still have Tom, I’m not alone. I pushed any thoughts of John from my mind. The chance that my husband had survived the nuclear explosion in London was slight.

We had a lot to be thankful for. Glen left this cottage, his planned refuge, well stocked with long-life candles, food and fuel. His planning had been impeccable and in addition to the quantities of slow-burning oil we found in the house, the largest shed was filled with wood. There were also canisters of gas hidden in the cellar. It made me feel as if I was standing on a tinder pile that could go up in flames at any moment, but, it seemed to have been here for a long while and the house was still standing so my unease about natural heating supplies are probably unfounded.

I signed, thinking about my flick of a button heating at home. People hadn’t used wood or gas for heating since they had been banned by the World Government. How did Glen get his hands on all this wood and gas? Even prior to the ban on fossil fuels being implemented, they had been extremely expensive due to shortages. Beyond the financial reach of most people.

“Let’s make some dinner,” I said, draping my arm around Tom and walking towards the small but well-equipped kitchen.

Over our meal of reconstituted soya mince and powdered potatoes, Tom and I started talking about books. I was a great reader and I had passed this love on to my son, but both of us read on our electronic devices. These had reached the end of their useful lives due to the lack of power. Paper books had become unavailable for purchase by the public due to the ban on cutting down trees ten years ago. I miss the feel of a paper book, I signed wistfully at my memories of my youth when I had a whole bookcase filled with books. Most people read on their devices but there were still libraries which kept one copy of all books published.

“I wish we could visit a library,” Tom said. It gave me turn to realise his thinking was along such similar lines to my own.

“There is a library in the village. I did think about us driving to it and having a look around to see if there are any people about and whether anything was still functional, but I am worried that we could run into trouble. We don’t know what is happening in the world outside of this small piece of farmland.”

We haven’t seen a single person since we arrived about a month ago. Where are all the people?

You can join in Linda G. Hill’s SoCS challenge here: https://lindaghill.com/2019/05/31/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-june-1-19/

What Amazon says

“No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man’s and yet as mortal as his own.” Thus begins one of the most terrifying and morally prescient science fiction novels ever penned. Beginning with a series of strange flashes in the distant night sky, the Martian attack initially causes little concern on Earth. Then the destruction erupts—ten massive aliens roam England and destroy with heat rays everything in their path. Very soon humankind finds itself on the brink of extinction. H. G. Wells raises questions of mortality, man’s place in nature, and the evil lurking in the technological future—questions that remain urgently relevant in the twenty-first century.

My review

The War of the Worlds is an amazing book and through reading the book, as opposed to watching the movie, you get to appreciate HG Wells incredibly progressive understanding of philosophy and how human societies work. For me, these insights were the most outstanding feature of this intriguing science fiction story and provide food for thought about how people could evolve if our species focuses only on mathematical and scientific progress and moves away from creativity and emotion as the Martians are depicted to have done.

The narrator of this story is a journalist living an ordinary life in an ordinary English town. He happens to be good friends with an astrologer named Ogilvy and, due to this friendship, chances to witness an extraordinary sequence of explosions of gas on the planet, Mars. Ogilvy attaches not importance to this strange occurrence and reassures the narrator that there is very little chance of intelligent life on Mars.

A few days later a meteorite hits the common near to where the narrator lives on Maybury Hill. Ogilvy and the narrator investigate the pit created by the meteorite and suspect that it is unusual due to it being cylindrical in shape and made of metal. This event does not, however, attract much attention and only a small gathering of curious bystanders is present when the cylinder opens and the Martians are revealed in all their astonishing ugliness and clumsiness. Ogilvy is still convinced the Martians pose no threat to man as they are hampered so significantly by the greater gravitational forces present on Earth. He underestimates the advanced intelligence of the Martians and can’t imagine a being that is so highly evolved it has replaced its physical body with machinery making them entirely impervious to the forces of nature, or so they think.

Ogilvy becomes a victim of the Martians first demonstration of their military superiority and the narrator soon discovers that he is entirely incorrect in everything he surmised about Mars and the Martians. The war against the alien invaders begins and all of the weapons created by men are quickly and easily overcome by the Martians.

The story is told from the point of view of the narrator, who is present from when the Martians first arrive on Earth, and from that of his brother, who is living in London when the alien invaders attack the city.

Aside for the intriguing ideas about the nature and psychology of the Martian invaders, there are also some through provoking scenes featuring the narrator and a pastor which cannot come to terms with the demise of mankind at the hands of the Martians.

An excellent book for readers who are interesting in philosophy, psychology and science fiction.

Purchase The War of the Worlds

From the diary of Dr Thompson

I warned them about the catastrophic consequences of a nuclear war on the earth’s atmosphere and climate, but they did not listen. As with many situations in life, greed and ego overwhelmed common sense. This time, however, man’s follies have not just resulted in a war. This time, they have brought mankind to its knees.

It did not take long for the world to transition to one of perpetual darkness as the nuclear winter set in. I knew it was coming when I learned about the numerous and immense fireballs caused by the exploding nuclear warheads. The fireballs resulted in massive fires as office blocks, warehouses, houses, churches and schools all burned. Outside the cities, the woods and farmlands burst into bright, yet devastating, flames.

From the second floor window of my home I watched this great and uncontrolled burning. Thick and choking plumes of soot and smoke billowed into the blue sky, where it mixed with the copious fine dust raised by the explosion, and turned it black and grey. The widespread destruction of the transport infrastructure in the city meant that, on the assumption that there was any formalised firefighting capacity left after the explosion, no-one could travel by vehicle or train around the outer circumference of the city. The inner city, which had taken the direct hit of the blast, no longer existed. There was no-one to fight the fires.

I am watching my hypothesis on a nuclear winter becoming reality. It is already perpetually dark and the intense cold has set in. In my mind’s eye I visualised the terrific heat of the fires lifting the clouds of smoke higher and higher into the atmosphere.  I imagined them drifting on the strong west-to-east winds until they formed a uniform covering of particles encircling the Northern Hemisphere, which blocked out all but a fraction of the sun’s light. I know that the lack of sunlight will have caused large horizontal and vertical temperature gradients which would have accelerated the transport of particles and radioactivity from the Northern Hemisphere to the Southern Hemisphere. I have assumed it will have occurred this way as I did not hear of any nuclear explosions outside of the Northern Hemisphere before the communications networks went down. The temperatures on the surface of the earth have already plunged and this, together with the nuclear fallout, will destroy a great deal of the animal and plant life.

In my scientific paper on a nuclear war, I made an assumption that approximately three to four billion people would survive the initial blasts and the radioactivity. I anticipated this figure would decrease significantly due to starvation, exposure to the cold and disease resulting from the nuclear winter that would follow.

I know I am dying but rather than die from radiation poisoning, I am allowing myself to gradually die of exposure. This seems a better way to go and I don’t have any weapons in my house to hasten my death by any other means.

Thank you, Sue Vincent, for providing another great prompt that fits in perfectly with my current Nuclear Winter theme. You can join in this prompt here: https://scvincent.com/2019/05/23/thursday-photo-prompt-transition-writephoto/

Charli Mills’ prompt for the week is as follows: May 23, 2019, prompt: In 99 words (no more, no less) write a story without ice. It can be a world without ice or a summer camp that runs out of cubes for lemonade. What does the lack mean to the story? Go where the prompt leads!

Here is the 99-word version of my story:

As we stepped outside, a chilly wind embraced us, making my eyes sting and water. The cold of the air felt more intense than when we had arrived a few hours ago and more white flakes flew from the dark sky. Our feet crunched on ice encrusted grass as we trudged across a wide expanse of lawn towards the first outhouse. Dizziness and confusion gripped me and thought I might collapse, but, drawing a few reviving and slow breaths, I managed to reach the small building and open the door. I stepped into its shelter, dragging Thomas after me.

If you would like to read the longer version with more context, here that is too:

From the diary of Jennifer Saunders

The farm was everything we had hoped for and more. It was remote and Glen proved to have been a survivalist who obviously foresaw a time when the modern world shuddered to a halt for some or other reason. World Government electrical networks did not reach this isolated location and so a number of gas lights were placed at convenient intervals around each room. I was hugely grateful when I flicked the switches and they sprang to life. Tom and I were already weary of the perpetual dark of the Nuclear Winter that had settled upon the land.

In the pantry we found rows and rows of canned goods including milk and various high protein legume based foodstuffs. Vacuumed packed packages of soya products, dried milk, soups and other instant meals were stacked on the wooden shelves. There were no meat-based products but I wouldn’t have known what to do with any had we found them. It had been over twenty years since consumption of meat by humans had been banned. There was also a good supply of water. He must have used his military connections to obtain this sort of stockpile which was far in excess of the individual food and drink allocations allowed in terms of the World Government policies.

In the cupboard in the main bedroom I found a selection of thermal lined fleece jackets, gloves and hoods, with a flap that came down over your ears and another that covered your mouth, leaving only your eyes exposed. The clothing was much too big for Thomas and me, but we put them on over our own clothes anyway, before venturing outside in the subfreezing temperatures to inspect the outhouses. Fortunately, I had packed our boots into our luggage before we fled Birmingham.

As we stepped outside, a chilly wind embraced us, making my eyes sting and water. The cold of the air felt more intense than when we had arrived a few hours ago and more white flakes flew from the dark sky. Our feet crunched on ice encrusted grass as we trudged across a wide expanse of lawn towards the first outhouse. Dizziness and confusion gripped me and thought I might collapse, but, drawing a few reviving and slow breaths, I managed to reach the small building and open the door. I stepped into its shelter, dragging Thomas after me.

You can join in the challenge here: https://carrotranch.com/2019/05/23/may-23-flash-fiction-challenge/

From the Diary of Dr Thompson

I have often wondered what would happen if there were a world-wide catastrophe. People have entirely different ways of reacting to events and, often, their reaction is completely different from what you expected from that particular person.

I remember when a friend of mine’s company was involved in a corporate scandal. He was a corporate financier, whose job involved debt restructuring and business turnarounds. You would have thought a guy like that would have reacted with quiet calm to a difficult situation like this. He was one of a number of purportedly top innovative people who worked for this firm. None of them reacted as I expected. I was surprised to watch how they ran around in meaningless circles, trying to get things done with no real plan or purpose to their actions. They did not have the creativity to think broadly and find innovative solutions to the crisis. This cycle of disastrous chaos and confusion went on for months before the company finally started to stabilize. It was miraculous, considering that lack of proper planning and cohesion among the leaders, that it ever pulled though at all. It completely undermined my confidence in the abilities of professional people like lawyers and accountants to deliver on any of their promises to their clients.

Lack of innovation is one of the main causes of this war mankind is now embroiled in. Prior to the introduction of advanced digitization, the World Government attempted to provide guidance to less developed countries to help them become more innovative, as this was known to be a key driver of Fourth Industrial Revolution readiness. The sub-governments of individual countries and their business leaders where encouraged to promote creativity by empowering employees and challenging them to create, challenge and experiment. Programmes were developed to up-skill workers and give them the abilities thought necessary to survive in a fully digitalised society.

A lack of understanding of cultures, including patriarchal and hierarchical societies, led to failure in this area and the ultimate inability for these economies to adapt efficient to changing parameters. The inequality gap increased, plunging numerous countries into poverty and resulting in the creation of the ghetto system where the poor were given accommodation and other basics to help them survive but dooming them to a life lacking any opportunities for change and future employment. The frustration and anger of the masses was underestimate, much to the detriment of the World Government which is now collapsing in the most spectacular way.

As I watch from my window, seeing the chaos and confusion of the devastated city and witnessing the tumultuous masses trying to flee, in any way they can, I know that only the innovative will survive the post apocalyptic world that awaits them. Without the daily guidance provided by their microchip implants, the rest will all die.

***

This little meander through the diary of Dr Thompson, was written for Linda G Hill’s weekly SoCS challenge. This week it is rhymes with rosy.

I asked my husband for a word that rhymed with rosy and he said cosy and posy. I asked my son, Gregory, and he said nosy. None of theses words inspired me to I looked on Rhyming Hippo and that had a few more interesting ideas, including through me and catastrophe. I chose catastrophe.

You can join in the challenge here: https://lindaghill.com/2019/05/24/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-may-25-19/

What Amazon says

Teen twin brothers Evan and Simon Resnik are fiercely loyal to each other and share an unusual bond—they experience each other’s emotions as their own and can sense where the other is.

On their dying planet of Tage, scientists work tirelessly on its survival. Like the twins’ parents, Simon is a science prodigy, recruited at a young age to work with the brilliant creator of Scientific Innovations. To the bitter disappointment of their parents, Evan shows no aptitude or interest in science. As a Mindbender, he travels into the minds of scientists to locate buried memories, connect ideas and concepts, and battle recurring nightmares.

When Simon mysteriously disappears, Evan is plunged into a world of loss and unbearable guilt. For the first time, he can’t ‘feel’ Simon—it’s like he no longer exists. Evan blames himself. No one knows that he ignored his brother’s pleas for help on the night he went missing.

A year later, Simon is still gone. Evan lost his twin, but Tage might have lost its last hope of survival when it’s discovered that Simon’s unfinished project could be its salvation. Evan is determined to find him—somewhere—and bring Simon home. Their unusual connection might be more extraordinary than they know, and the key to locating Simon.

My review

The Gemini Connection is a most intriguing book which weaves the human emotions of frustration, anger, jealousy, resentment, self depreciation and love like colourful threads through the greater fabric of an exciting and unique science fiction novel.

The book features twins who live in a futuristic dystopian world where the inhabitants of the planet have exhausted many of its resources and what remains is being decimated by unknown and untreatable diseases. Scientists and other clever and inventive people, who are able to contribute towards findings solutions for the salvation of a society that is in the process of failing, are held up as heroes and are the recipients of accolades for their societal contributions as well as better food and lifestyles. The twins parents fall into this category and, at the beginning of the story, spend all their time and energy on saving their people and planet. This complete change in their focus from their family and two sons to the quest for glory in the guise of saving their planet changes life significantly for Simon and Evan. The backstory of their evolution into scientists, obsessed with their work, and the related increasing disdain for ordinary people who are not able to contribute towards saving the planet in the same way due to different talents and aspirations, is an important theme of the story and sets the scene for the unfortunate events that come to pass in the book.

Simon has a brilliant mind and is following in the footsteps of his illustrious parents. Evan is not as intellectual and demonstrates more physical and sporty gifts. This makes Simon the child of their parents dreams and Evan the disappointing child they cannot relate to or understand. This attitude by their parents results in Evan becoming a young man who lacks confidence and belief in himself and who feels inferior to his cleverer brother. Despite this unfortunate home environment, Simon and Evan are very close and share a unique bond that enables them to both “feel” the other’s presence and emotional state. When Simon disappears soon after discovering a sordid and dark secret by one of his mentors in his job, Evan feels responsible and sets off on a path of emotional self destruction. However, Evan has a talent of his own which enables him to access the minds of other people and help them sort out their chaotic thoughts. This talent gives him to tools track down and help save his brother but it also serves as the gateway to his own possible destruction. Will Evan be able to detect their joint enemies and stop their evil plans in time to save his brother and return him home? I enjoyed this book’s fresh take on a science fiction story.

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