This Wednesday kicks off something a bit different. The English writer Sudo Nonym, a regular over at Free Speech Backlash, sent yours portly a treasure-trove of fiction stories for readers here to enjoy. Many of these stories have already run at FSB, but Tom, the proprietor over there, is cool about cross-posting and republishing, and I’m never one to say no to intriguing content—especially when someone else has done 90% of the work for me!
Also, he has two eBooks on Amazon (that’s an Amazon Affiliate link; I receive a portion of any purchases made through that link at no additional cost to you—TPP)!
But I digress. Today’s story is the first chapter or part of a longer piece, The Man from Historical Accuracy. The premise is simple: a bureaucratic agency, Historical Accuracy, tweaks history to keep things trucking along as they should.
Put another way: there are drunken druids watching DVDs on Stonehenge.
With that, here is Sudo Nonym with Chapter 1 of The Man from Historical Accuracy:
The Premise
What if history is planned out already? What if we do not understand time? It seems linear to us – yesterday became today and tomorrow will be tomorrow.
Comic elements underlie the fact we are only supposed to know so much at once – terrible to think we are manipulated by the future and our past must be constantly supervised to ensure today comes as no surprise…
Or is time really manipulated by the future? What if it can be seen as a totality – like a monopoly board?
What if America had not achieved independence? What if the Mayflower had foundered? What if Hitler had died in WW1? Whether we like it or not we are where we are today if those instances had not occurred. With children born and raised / grown? What if a time shepherd made sure this timeline, or others, was maintained?
Chapter 1
England. A while back. The site at Stonehenge. Future address; Amesbury, Wiltshire SP4 7DE. Night time.
‘How is Stonehenge coming along?’ asked the newcomer. The technicians and builders were sat around the site campfire drinking beer, telling lies to each other and discussing the football not invented yet by several thousand years. They looked up.
“Foof! Who’s this sneaking up here? Another inspector, manager, architect, surveyor, project manager or what? There were enough of them! They could have moved the stones from the west without antigravity if all these tossers had turned up at once!”
‘Stonehenge? Why are you calling it that? We’ve been calling it the “LESS”, said one.
‘Less?’ said the newcomer.
‘Not Less as in not as much but L-E-S-S as in Lens Equalisation Star Sighting system.’
‘Oh, I see. I’ll try again. How is the LESS coming along?’
They all thought the same thing at once. It wasn’t polite.
‘Nearly done, but nobody’s told us if they want it landscaped,’ said the first tech he spoke to.
A Druid and his assistant approached the fire. They called all holy men ‘’Druids.”
‘Hey up, it’s the holy man of the trees and the earth. Yo! Man!’
One of the lads threw sugar onto the flames to cause a sudden flash and flame. The Druid rolled his eyes and made a sign. His assistant, now fifty feet away, ashamed at leaving the person who fed and protected him, tip-toed back to peer nervously around his master’s robe.
The tech with the headphones and translator box listened to the Druid, laughed and turned back to the group.
‘He says we are defiling the holy ground with our stone construction. He says the
…fflae is corrupt… suppose he means the holy magnetic field is screwed up…he’s saying the blue stones must be returned, that…Gaia, whoever she is, that Gaia would have put them here herself, if necessary, that now there is a void in the …doo dah… ’
‘Give him some beer, no! Give him some vodka – tell him it’s the magic water of the gods or something!’
***
The newcomer looked on in distaste as they got the druid and his assistant drunk and amazed the pair with technology. In turn, piezo cigarette lighters, uPods playing their R&B, rap, Abba and ACDC devil music; the wind up LED torch, holo images and beeping alarms on their digital sports wrist computers.
***
The Druid’s assistant coughed and spluttered on a hand rolled cigarette. It wasn’t only tobacco, judging by the boy’s dreamy expression. The Druid turned to him and, receiving no respectful reply, slapped him, only to get a shrug and a high pitched giggle. The evidence was gone and the Druid was seeing visions himself.
The technicians ran a Sci-Fi DVD projection onto the Stones. Shiny steel robots firing lasers came and went, dodging behind the stones. The techs fired their u-phones at the moving targets. Now and again a robot disappeared in a flash of flame. The Druid shook his head, looked again. The smoke from the burning white tubes made his head reel far more than the stuff he used. The holo display and the flickering fire smoke made his eyes sting. He scraped up soil and clutched his amulet.
***
What a hoot they were having!
Let them enjoy their last night of civilisation, the newcomer thought and stole away from the fire. He paused by their temporary accommodation, checked around the site to make sure there was nothing that would not turn to dust within a century. The stones looked unreal in the moonlight, like a concrete sculpture in a 1970s dormitory town. He liked the old ones better. The old ones! What am I saying?
He would have everything else and the immediate earth surrounding the construction team’s paraphernalia gravitated up into orbit; just high up enough for the orbit to decay and then burn to ashes on re-entry.
They might even see it as a shooting star as they began their new life with the savages! Best they treat the Druid kindly! Thanks to the ruling Green Party up in the twenty first cycle none of their clothing or personal gear will last, he thought with a grim smile.
He walked round to where he parked his two-seat spacer, jumped in and took off vertically. Within minutes he was in orbit, closing with the time ship geo stationed over what would become Russia. He felt the tug of the grav beam and then he was drawn inside the hold. He sat waiting for atmosphere to climb to breathable norm then jumped out and went through to the control centre.
‘Where are the fleets?’ he asked without preamble. A console operator barely turned.
‘The Moebans are just back of Jupiter. Where do you get these names?’
He pointed at the screen. ‘The Zanthro are hiding behind the sun.’
‘Have you arranged for a difference of opinion over mineral rights?’
‘Yes and the people on, what did you call it? Mars? will be surprised to find they have no atmosphere tomorrow. Terminally so, I imagine.’
‘Good. Now, I want the heavy equipment lifted off from Sto…, from the site down there. Low decaying orbit, eventual burn etcetera.’
‘What about the incoming Lens?’
‘That won’t be here for at least three hundred years. I like a bit of forward planning.’
‘…and their escape boat? That won’t burn up enough. Evidence will be left. The archaeologists are getting scientific, clever now.’
‘Just drop it in the ocean somewhere about five miles deep.’ He pointed to the
holo-globe. ‘There’s a deep part there, in the Pacif… in that big bit.’
‘You sound like you’ve been here before.’
‘Yes, sort of, you could say. Anyway, time waits for no man…’
What am I saying again?
***
The operator looked up at him.
‘What’s it like being a Man from Historical Accuracy? I mean, you must know loads of history to be able to tweak it and that…’
‘Sometimes it’s a burden. That bunch down there? Not the brightest in the pack but their DNA will lead to all sorts of interesting developments in their future; if they survive the next year that is. They will find frivolity a rare luxury for a while I fear.’
***
The console operator watched him go, turned to his screen. Two battle fleets, an ambush! If only he dared to keep a recording. There were software houses up home in the future begging for footage like this. He shivered slightly as if someone walked over his grave. Not with MHA here. He was sensitive to the slightest of time anomalies was MHA. And he would hunt down a perpetrator and dump him on some squalid rock without hesitation; like this one. He forgot what this planet was called. Dirt? Soil? Something like that anyway. Best not to know maybe. He wouldn’t want to be stranded there.
About the Author
Sudo Nonym, the name inspired by favourite American Sci-fi author Jack Vance, is British English and spent his earlier years in the RAF. No stranger to weapons, ejection seats and bomb disposal he took his experience out into the World to some 70 countries. Probably easier to list where he didn’t go but USA was a favourite from Vegas to New Orleans, the Alamo to Pikes Peak, Washington to Florida, Albuquerque to Charlotte and wondered at St Louis where the pioneers set off for the Rocky Mountains. Regrets? Not having a KFC in Kentucky.
Sudo Nonym to protect the innocent in a dubious world, he has 3 grandkids and lives with his wife of 40 years in a secret location with a cat and untidy workshops where he finds it easier writing about his inventions than actually making them work.
Writing themes include time travel, spies, speculation over other worlds and, not to chase or challenge the climate change theories, to complain bitterly were something to go wrong we’re not going the right way to prepare for it. Houses that float on water or tall pilings at least, boats to move about and inexpensive flying machines rather than the preserve of the rich or those with the application to fly them. Money where mouth is, he is a licensed private pilot.