Adventures In A Future Tense

ADVENTURES IN A FUTURE TENSE!!  BY JUSTIN BARWICK

I had been forcibly detained and sent to a labour camp located in the bleak windswept depths of Highland Scotland.  A few miles north of the sprawling metropolis known as Scot-Zone 1.  My entire gang of bloodthirsty young hoodlums had been rounded up by way of a highly undiginified method.  At the time we were all paying a visit to the robo-brothel, human females were strictly forbidden fruit as far as us males were concerned.  We were engaged in the act of paying for the prosti-droids seedy services when a very strong force beam locked us irremovably to our intended sexual partners, giving the authorities enough time to arrive and round us all up for a lengthy spell of enforced confinement and back breaking physical labour.  That’s what happens to all males when they reach the age of 18.

EXTRACT FROM NEWSPAPER ARTICLE: 2019 A.D.

Today marked a historic tipping point in GCSE results.  For the first time in living memory no boys passed their GCSE exams at grades A, B, or C.  They were all counted as failures.  They also failed to pass any A Levels.  Meanwhile 90 percent of girls achieved an A star in their GCSEs.

EXTRACT FROM NEWSPAPER ARTICLE: 2020 A.D.

A new nadir was reached today.  All boys who re-sat their GCSE exams failed to achieve even an E grade.

2021 A.D.

All boys who resat their A Level exams this year failed to achieve a passing grade.
All girls meanwhile achieved a 100% success rate in passing both GCSEs and A Levels.

EXTRACT FROM NEWSPAPER ARTICLE: 2035 A.D.

Yesterday it was announced by the Education Secretary Miriam Hawthorne that no boys would be permitted to sit GCSE exams from now on.  Following a 16th successive year of blanket failure in passing their GCSEs.  They would be offered apprenticeships as call centre operators and fast food chain assistants.

EXTRACT FROM NEWSPAPER ARTICLE: 2064 A.D.

Gangs of feral youths are running riot through the leafy suburbs of our once proud metropolises of South Zones 1 and 2, North Zones 1 - 3 and Scot Zone 1.  This is thought to be as a direct result of the controversial policy of removing newborn baby boys from their proud parents and dumping them in poorly run care homes. 

Where they grow up to be given free licence to run riot, taking drugs, stealing cars and even raping and killing innocent people.  All newborn girls meanwhile are also taken away from their natural parents and deliberately hothoused in cutting edge educational facilities.  They grow up to become geneticists and brain surgeons.

And that’s where we are now in the year of our lord 2075 A.D. While I and my fellow murderous gang members languish in a forced labour camp in Scotland, The tele-net - a telepathically linked forum of highly intelligent telepathic women has been buzzing with rumours of a decades old conspiracy to isolate and subjugate all males while females grow up to live a life of luxury in their sub-orbital colonies.  These particular women are highly unusual, in that they actually pity the males who are abandoned in corrupt care homes from birth. 

Two highly classified archived documents have recently surfaced on the tele-net.  Both documents were signed by all members of the 100% female cabinet in the years 2035 A.D. and 2060 A.D.  They read as follows:

It is hereby agreed by all parties now present at this extraordinary general meeting of the Conservative cabinet that all boys will no longer be permitted to study for GCSEs.  They will be given low paid apprenticeships in call centres and fast food chains.

It is hereby agreed by all parties now present at this extraordinary general meeting of the Conservative cabinet that all new born baby boys are to be forcibly removed from their natural parents and placed in care homes scattered across the country.  New born baby girls however will be forcibly removed from their natural parents and placed in the luxurious sub-orbital colonies that have been prepared for them by strictly covert means.  They will grow up to be highly intelligent members of the new female society.  It is our fervent hope that newly burgeoning cutting edge paranormal technologies will enhance many of these womens telepathic abilities exponentially.  A new age is dawning, the time of male dominance has long since passed.  That is all.

Whilst languishing in the forced labour camp in darkest Scotland we had our natural urges bio-chemically curbed by a kind of chemical cosh!  We were transformed from rampaging monsters into drone-like workaholic zombies forced to carry out meaningless tasks which involved the removal from plastic moulds of identical knife fork and spoon sets.  The individual utensils were then carried along a conveyor belt to the next group of zombies to be sorted into separate piles according to function.  This went on for several weeks which inexorably turned to months.  We began to despair of ever seeing daylight again.

Then one night we all had the same identical dream.  An indescribably beautiful female voice murmured instructions to us regarding the location of the source of the chemical cosh that had so dampened our naturally fiery spirits.  There was a pass code to the door of this particular laboratory.  Upon hearing the appropriate numbers, we found that they were burned in our minds, we would never forget them.

So the very next afternoon one of us created a commotion which was all the distraction needed for another one of us - me as it happens to run to the correct door punch in the number code and burst into a luckily empty laboratory.  I could see all the sinisterly coloured liquids bubbling and gurgling away in their glass demi-johns.  I found a broomstick in a corner and smashed them all to smithereens.  Then I opened the door to a much smaller storeroom.  I had seen its contents in my dream.  It was full of several plastic barrels of chemicals.  I opened the taps on them all and let their contents leak away onto the floor.  Hearing the sound of approaching footsteps I hurriedly exited the room and quickly rejoined my fellow gang members.  But the identical dreams had not ended there.  They had gone on to show us a secret route out of the forced labour camp.  We waited, until, all of the supervisors had gone on a break, then set off towards the basement levels of the sprawling complex of factory buildings.  There were only six of us.  Firstly we located a stock room that we had been shown in our vivid dreams the night before.  It was festooned with supervisors uniforms, we hurriedly shrugged them on and made our way to the lift which led down through the basement levels.  In the dream we had been told to go to basement level 9.  Soon we arrived there and followed the directions of our dreams to the letter.  We found a large grille which covered a surprisingly roomy air vent that would lead us out into the surrounding forest.  After crawling along a claustrophobically dark and narrow passage way for what seemed like an eternity we suddenly saw daylight and emerged blinking into the forest.

But our six identical dreams had not quite ended there.  Feeling a strong sensation of de-ja-vu we followed a winding woodland path which started off fairly level before suddenly becoming very steep and rather treacherous.  By the time we reached the top of a heavily forested hill we were gasping for breath, not having had any exercise for nearly four months.  There was a derelict cottage not too far away and we made a beeline for it.  You’ve guessed it!  Another feature of our remarkably vivid dreams the night before.  There was no front door, just a gaping black hole.  Very tentatively we entered the musty darkness and one by one blinked out of existence. 

We had been caught by a powerful teleportation beam.  We emerged in the teleportation booths of South Zone 1’s central police bureau.  A beautiful blonde girl greeted us warmly.  We couldn’t believe our eyes.  She was obviously human, there was no mistaking her natural beauty.  She turned to face the desk sergeant and said fiercely.  “Here’s your proof officer.  These poor individuals have been forcibly detained and turned into emotionless slaves by the corrupt authorities who run forced labour camps.  All you have to do is test their urine and I think you’ll find that they have been injected with a highly illegal chemical cos-” Suddenly the pretty blonde girl blinked out of existence. 

She reappeared back on board sub-orbital colony alpha6.  “Miriam Spencer you are up to your neck in the mother of all shit storms!  You do realise you have just commited several illegal acts!” Miriam’s supervisor was in a very bad mood.  Looking back over the dream log of Miriam Spencer she had discovered illicit telepathic activity.

Miriam had been telepathically transmitting a deliberately planned lucid dream to six males who had been incarcerated in a forced labour camp in Scotland.  Which was the first illegal act.  She had been responsible for their escape from captivity.  A second illegal act.  And had herself wandered off the sub-orbital colony where she was strictly forbidden from travel down to earth.    Which was the third and final illegal act.  But back to the matter in hand...

“I don’t care what you think!  It’s too late now anyway!  The police are duty bound to run a drugs test on those six boys.  And also I have telepathically transmitted the contents of two highly controversial top secret political documents into the mind of the notorious lady gossip columnist: Villetta Danby.  The Prime Minister and her cabinet of corrupt cronies are all doomed!  The contents of those documents will be broadcast on every vidi-show in the land by 6 o’clock tonight.”

And while Miriam languished in her room, having been grounded for two months.  She knew that the wheels of justice would be grinding into action.  The 6 o’clock vidi-news slots were buzzing with the details of the aforementioned documents.  Early the following morning the Prime Minister and all of her cabinet ministers were arrested under charges of social engineering and in-direct child abuse.  The six boys including myself had indeed all been drugs tested.  The use of an illegal chemical cosh had led to the closure of all twenty of the forced labour camps which were scattered across the country in bleak windswept locations.  All of the illegally imprisoned males were to be re-educated in a highly resourced environment just like the girls.  They would become qualified lawyers, doctors and surgeons.  And so the natural balance of life was restored.  Newborn baby boys and girls would grow up happy and secure in the arms of their loving parents.

As for me, like every other boy in the land I had never been given a proper name.  Just a government number.  Mine had always been 67/950/749.  I adopted the name Jack Harrison and went on to live a fulfilling and busy life as a full time lawyer.  Miriam Spencer became a dame and devoted herself to charitable works involving the rehabilitation of violent ex-gangsters...