FOREWORD

One of the chief premises of this book is the concept of stopping history, as it were, at a certain point, and imagining alternative events taking place thereafter. The starting-point for this alternate chain of events is an imagined terrorist attack n American soil, on the 3rd December 2008, involving co-ordinated bombings on the New York subway system. Everything thereafter belongs to my imagination, although at times I may marry some elements of what was the historical reality with my alternative version.

ME – THE TRAIN

The train reluctantly trundles into motion, bumping forward lethargically, and for some reason I think about the end of the world.

I wonder if they have the odds at Ladbrokes, on the how’s and when’s of the apocalypse. 4/11 on Global Warming killing us all in 100 years. 3/1 on a nuclear holocaust by 2030. Would hardly be an apocalypse though, would it? Merely the extinction of one rather bloody-minded, virulent, and reasonably intelligent species. The world would probably keep spinning, and eventually something new would probably come to rule the Earth, and we’ll just be decomposing dead mammals, or spirits in the air, or sitting with Jesus and Jimi Hendrix in Heaven, or whatever else you might believe.

You know, most people don’t ask themselves these sorts of questions, like how and when the world will end, because it’s just not really the healthy thing to do. We have a defence mechanism in our brain which allows us to ignore thoughts of death and non-existence and apocalypse, because if we thought about it all the time, we’d go a little insane. Well I am a little insane, and I don’t give a fuck about much.

My life’s a mess. I’m a failure and a waster. I’m a fuck-up.

The train starts to slow, gradually. First stop, Drem, coming up. Ba-doom doom, ba-doom doom, ba-doom doom … and it starts to get slower … ba-doom … doom … ba – doom … doom … … ba … doom … doom.

Oh for fuck’s sake, why so many people getting on at twenty-five past two on a fucking Monday? At Drem! There‘s one farmer and one horse living in that hamlet, tops. I defy anyone to try and tell me that this place is a village. If three houses, a field and a train station constitute a village, then the old countryside steading in which my family home was situated constituted a thriving metropolis.

Oh, that’s another thing – I am a country boy in origin, now turned city-boy, because living in the countryside as a young adult male is, well, boring. It’s just shit. The train has ground to a halt, and through the windows I see the gaggle of geese, apparently constituting people, preparing to board the train, flapping around by the doors.

The sound of the electric doors whooshing open reaches my ears, and on comes the parade. Ah well, ‘tis to be expected I suppose, what with it being the Christmas holidays at the moment, or near enough. Think a lot of these folk getting on the train here are young Spanish tourists on some exchange trip. They must’ve come for the weather, I think sarcastically. I look at one: a slim, yet rather well-endowed, tanned brunette. Would I? Is she too young? Perhaps, but that said, some of the girls here look at least sixteen, maybe seventeen or eighteen. And I’m only twenty; fuck it, of course I would.

She doesn’t look back. Ah well, can’t blame her.

Suddenly I’m paying much more attention to the people around me, particularly now that we’re crammed onto this carriage like pieces in a game of Tetris. Mussolini may have made trains run on time, but did he ever consider expansion of space? No, I don’t think he did, and you know why? Because the high and mighty, the politicians, the rulers, the lawmakers consider us in their equations only in the context of how we can make them look better, and more accomplished. “Look at our marvellous trains and how punctual they are!” “Yeah, mate, but take a look inside and observe people suffocating in this tinned can you call a carriage like sardines.”

A middle-aged, pudgy sort of man opposite me, decked out in a fetching fluorescent yellow jacket of low-ranking-civil-servant fame, catches my attention by the rustling and crunching noises that constitute his current romance with a packet of cheese and onion crisps. He reaches eagerly into the packet and pulls out a round golden-yellow potato crisp, bringing it towards his chubby, ruddy face with a gleam in his eye, breathing in the sweet scent through his bulbous nose, and slowly putting the crisp in his gaping, yellow-toothed mouth, and crunching down on it with satisfaction. That could be a Marks and Spencer’s ad for the working man, I ponder.

“These arenae just cheese ‘n’ onion crisps. These are crisps cut fae the finest potatoes, sourced fae the broad sunlit fields ay Ireland, shipped tae Scotland ay delivered tae’ oor finest potato slicers, who then deliver the pieces ay sliced tattie to Jamie Oliver, who gently fries them in Extra Virgin Olive Oil flown in straight fae Sicily, in one o’ them quality Teflon pans wi’ they wee red dots in the middle, along wi’ cheese made fae’ the milk o’ the finest southwest Asian goats, ay onion shipped in fae the expertly-farmed fields ay Northern China. These arenae just cheese ‘n’ onion crisps – these crisps are the pure dog’s baws!”

The man in the jacket licks his salty fingers, oblivious, naturally, to my train of thought concerning him. Sitting next to him is an elderly woman, gazing blankly out the window, wearing a tartan skirt with beige sort of tights, along with a grey-brown jacket. I’m sorry, but age and senility are no excuse: get some fucking fashion sense! The woman still has eyes, doesn’t she? What would possess anyone into donning such a colour combo? Is that how they all dressed back in the day?

Not that I can particularly talk at the moment, sitting here as I am in my less-than-chic work attire.

For a second I freak out, as the old lady turns her head towards me and I get the sudden, crazy idea that maybe she heard me thinking. I certainly wouldn’t put the development of such technology past our government, or the use of a pensioner as a plainclothes agent.

But no – she’s looking at the baby boy opposite, sitting next to me. I’d almost forgotten I was sitting next to a toddler, I think, with a mental grimace of distaste. I know I used to be one, but fuck me, kids are annoying. I work in a restaurant, and I honestly believe kids are a genuine safety hazard. According to health and safety regulations, it’s not okay to block the fire exit, nor is it to acceptable to spill a drink on the restaurant floor without mopping it up and then putting up one of those unfolding yellow signs to warn customers, nor is it okay to mix up the kitchen and the restaurant floor’s cleaning materials, BUT … it’s perfectly fine for little screaming brats, who never look where they’re going, to run around restaurant tables in demonic little packs while waiters serve hot food and coffee? It’s madness. If restaurants aren’t prepared to ban kids completely, as would be my preference, then we should at least demand that parents keep them on leashes, or wired to one of those systems where if they move five feet away from their parents they get zapped by an electric shock. That’ll teach the bastards some table manners.

As the old lady smiles at the boy, her face and lips reminding me of unfolding crinkled paper, I notice the red mark that scars the side of her face, which I couldn’t see beforehand while her face was turned out the window. It’s not hideous to look at, or particularly large, but I can’t quite work out what it actually is. A burn, perhaps, or an illness or rash of some kind? Who knows; perhaps it’s a war wound. Perhaps she and her wound are old relics of the British Empire. Either way, the mark looks permanent, and strikes me as a sign of the woman’s decay. I know that’s not all that nice a thought to have, but then again, it’s true, and truth isn’t necessarily nice. The truth of life is that everything decays and dies. I don’t mean to be a killjoy here, but we may as well face facts.

The old lady goes back to gazing listlessly, aimlessly out the window.