Apocalypse 1 Life in 2095

It was eleven o' clock at night at the Inland Revenue. Matty had finished work for the evening.
She had a cup of coffee, went into the washroom to brush her teeth, and then climbed into
her sleep pod. Her sleep pod was a structure like an armchair with a metal body around it
packed full of cushions. The workers didn't go home to go to bed. They slept in the office.
They worked forty five hours in three days and then went to visit their families for the rest of
the week, those who were fortunate enough to have families. Public transport was expensive
due to the energy crisis. Scientists generated electricity in every way they could imagine and
fed it into the huge electric tram network, but it still wasn't enough. Matty didn't go straight to
sleep. She delicately, carefully, took her cordless earphones out of the metal case in which
she kept her wipod and put them in her ears, trying hard not to drop them. She turned the
wipod on and put it in her pocket. Stephanie approached.
"Good night, Matty. What are you listening to?"
"A preacher."
"At this time of night?"
"I always listen to something spiritual before I go to sleep."
"Why?"
"I find it so comforting, so reassuaring. It really relaxes me at the end of a long day."
Stephanie left and the preaching continued.
"I used to think that sin was a long list of things that you couldn't do. Have you got anything on
your list that I haven't got on my list? Then I discovered that sin is a little word that has I in the
middle. Sin means living a self-centred life instead of helping others. Sin means making your
own plans, putting yourself on the throne and pretending to be God, instead of accepting
whatever God brings into your life. God's not mad with you, he's mad about you. He wants to
be in your life. Oh, there is a great party in the kingdom of Heaven when a prodigal comes
home, when someone decides that they want to put God at the centre of their lives and stop
living a self-centred life."

The sermon ended and Matty turned off the wipod and went to sleep. At seven o' clock in the
morning the pillows vibrated and Matty woke up. Time to go to the washroom to wash her
face and go to the canteen for breakfast. In the canteen Matty decided to have a small packet
of coco pops and some banana flavour milk shake.  "10 euros, please," said the assistant.
Matty gave her a large gold coin. She put the coco pops into a cereal bowl and poured the
banana flavour milk shake on to them. Strange how the two flavours seemed to go together.

Matty arrived at her desk. The computer was tiny and looked like a portable CD player. You
opened it up. The screen was in the lid and the keyboard was on the bottom. The customers
sent emails informing of their address changes, marriages, name changes, or other
problems. If a customer emailed to tell you they had been married they had hopefully
completed the online form that had everything the computer needed to know written in the
right boxes. The computer would be quite capable of receiving this form and updating the
records itself. Name changes and address changes were done automatically in the same
way. Matty was there when the customer or the system had a problem. One customer wanted
to know what to do to inform the Inland Revenue of their change of address. There seemed
to be so many websites. She had got lost searching for the Inland Revenue on the internet
and had only been able to find the email address. Matty emailed a standard letter containing
all the necessary instructions. Another customer was furious that he hadn't been sent a card.
He had told the Inland Revenue he was moving house and they had sent it to the previous
address. He was only allowed one card. Matty needed to investigate the customer's records.
Yes, the customer had emailed saying he had changed his address and the email had been
forgotten, as people sometimes did forget emails when they had such a vast number to look
at. Matty sent an email asking another department to delete the first card, as the computer
system would refuse to issue another and only a few people were authorised to delete it. A
very small number of people could be in charge of national insurance cards and customers'
problems for a whole country. The work seemed quite interesting to Matty but it was
monotonous, the same basic problems coming up literally hundreds of times a day. She
turned on her wipod and listened to some music. Matty had downloaded it from a budget
website that consisted of albums that were more than twenty five years old and had never
been in the top 50 album chart.  An awful lot of pop gospel artists from the early 21st century or even the 20th were featured on this site, where their records could be downloaded for virtually nothing. The Christian works were sometimes better than the secular ones, which could be truly boring.
"The two of us together, stepping in time with you, love is just the deepest groove, and now and forever, we can go on together. You've got to keep it moving, getting better every day, growing up in every way, the way I am feeling because of your love and healing. Get it together, go on forever, no one can ever take it from you, love has no limit if you are in it, if you stay in it, dreams will all come true, yes, they'll all come true." Matty was sure that her dreams would all come true. One day she wouldn't be working on a temporary contract and living in a rusty old caravan on a campsite. One day she would be a manager. One day she would be able to buy a house.

The weekend began on Thursday. Matty's pillows vibrated at seven o' clock and she woke
up. She felt good. She was going home. After breakfast, Matty went to the tram station which
was by the side of the main road. It was about the size of a bus shelter and was painted
bright colours with an attractive, sloping roof. Matty took her mobile phone out of her pocket
and dialled the ticket machine which was in the corner of the tram station. "Please type your
mother's maiden name," said the voice on the mobile phone. "Please enter your date of birth.
Please enter your identity number." The machine printed out a ticket which Matty took and put
into her purse. The electric tram arrived. It was big and looked like a train with overhead lines.
Matty waited for six people to get out of the carriage next to her and then got on. It was
crowded. She stood holding on to the pole as the tram pulled away. Eventually she saw one
free seat near the back, moved towards it and sat down. It was twenty miles to where Matty
lived in Sunderland. It was going to be a long journey. Looking out of the window, Matty
could see an awful lot of caravans. It was council policy to demolish any low cost housing
that was over a hundred years old and replace it with caravans. The very rich would keep the
best houses for themselves. All sorts of places were now huge, sprawling caravan parks, all
the way from Gateshead Stadium to Felling, Heworth, Pelaw and Jarrow. The caravan was the
new economic miracle, the home that an ordinary working family could afford to buy. If you
had a job you bought a caravan. If you were unemployed, or had a temporary job like Matty
did, you lived on a local authority camp site. Unemployed people lived in all sorts of things,
second hand caravans, old vans, cars, even tents. Matty lived on the Southwick Local
Authority camp site and belonged to a church which was working there to help the poor.

Matty arrived at the camp site and decided to buy some lunch at the site shop. The shop had
huge freezers that contained one particular brand of frozen chips, one particularly unpleasant
brand of beefburgers, one brand of cheap sausages, one brand of chicken nuggets, one
brand of fish fingers and four different kinds of meat pie. There was another small fridge next
to the counter in which were individual pies. A scotch pie was only two euros.
"How do you manage to make pies so cheap?" she asked.
"They're the same pies I have in the freezer. I'm not a butcher or a baker. I don't make them.
I defrost them so that they're ready to eat."
"Don't they go bad in hot weather?"
"I'm very careful. I defrost them overnight, then I put them in the fridge. They are not frozen,
but they are kept to a controlled temperature. They're always fresh." Matty picked up the
scotch pie. Just occaisionally she liked to eat the same food that the poorest people on the
campsite were eating. She also took a chocolate bar and a bag of crisps.
"Nine Euros, please," said the shopkeeper. Stan came in.
"Hello Matty," he said.
"Hello."
"I've just come here to get my main meal of the day. I'll have one of those scotch pies, one
of those steak pies, a bag of crisps, a chocolate bar and a milk shake." He picked them all
up and walked to the counter.
"Fifteen Euros," said the shopkeeper.
"That's a lot," said Stan.
"Well, you wouldn't get it cheaper anywhere else."
"I suppose not. I'm on benefit, you know. It's not easy living on 400 euros a week. I still
haven't finished paying for the tent." The shopkeeper gave the goods to Stan in a plastic bag.
"Come to the church tea tonight," said Matty.
"Oh, thank you," said Stan. "That would be wonderful. How much does it cost?"
"It doesn't cost anything."
"That's really good, that's really nice." Stan returned to his tent with the plastic bag of
groceries. He sat on his sleeping bag, still wearing his hat, his fleecy winter coat, and his
scarf. He removed his gloves. His hands felt cold. He ate the pies and drank half the milk.
The chocolate bar and bag of crisps he would eat later in the afternoon. This would have to
do him for two meals. He was really looking forward to the church tea.

That evening the church had their communal meal together in a big tent that looked like a
circus tent and that had red and white stripes. The tent was full of plastic garden chairs and
tables. There were calor gas heaters. Stan sat down on a chair next to Rupert and Matty and
unzipped his fleece.
"Oh, this is nice," he said. "I have no heating at all in my little tent."
"That must be awful," said Matty.
"No, it's all right. You rap up warm. I wear a T shirt, a long sleeved shirt, a medium size
jumper, an extra large jumper, a hat, a scarf, and a fleece. My legs feel a bit cold when it
snows." The food was being cooked in big, steel cannisters. There were peas, carrots,
potatoes, meat being warmed up and vast piles of empty tins that had been thrown into the
dustbins. A young couple arrived.
"Hello Matty," said the woman.
"Hello Pauline," said Matty. "How are you?"
"We're fine, we're not living in a tent anymore. We're living in an old ambulance."
"How'd do you get that, then?"
"I'm in St. John Ambulance," said Paul. "They had an old ambulance they wanted to get rid of.
I asked, can me and my girlfriend live in it?"
"What did they say to that?"
"They laughed, at first. Then I went down to the jobcentre and got the forms to fill in. The dole
gave them 6,000 euros."
"Of course, we have to pay it back," said the woman. "It's nice, though. It's got comfortable
stretchers for beds." Some children and a young mother arrived. They sat down. The food
arrived. One of the children began eating it.
"Could you wait until we've given thanks?" asked Rupert. A man was standing on the stage
next to a microphone.
"Before we begin our meal, could we just pray," he said. "Dear Lord, thank you for bringing
us here today and thank you for this lovely food. For good food and good fellowship, may
the name of the Lord be praised. Amen." One of the children began to tuck into the meal, but
the others complained.
"Mam, what sort of funny food is this? Why can't we have chips?"
"Mam, this meat is so boring. Why can't we have beefburgers, sausages and pies like we do
at home?"
"I'm sorry," she said, "at home they get everything just the way they like it."