2084-B

Chris made his way to Room 101. A man in his 50s sat behind a desk wearing a suit and a pair of distinctive red wire round glasses. Few people wore glasses anymore. People had contact lenses, if they were poor, or surgery, if they were wealthy, but these glasses were a fashion statement.
"Good afternoon," said the doctor. "Sit down."
"Hello. I'm Chris Jones."
"Pleased to meet you. I'm Dr Bucket. Why have you come to see me?"
"We must stop the Mars project. Every time the lights go out I see this white light and hear a beautiful voice, like a female actress, saying, 'Don't go to Mars.' Then there was all this red dust on everyone's desks in the office. When I came early in the morning to vacuum it up, there was an explosion and the lights went out. Magnus said I plugged the vacuum cleaner into the UPS but I didn't. This afternoon there was a message over the speakers. It made everybody feel ill. I translated it. It told us that a huge league of aliens, from all the planets you've ever heard of that might have visited Earth, have established a base at the North Pole of Mars. They'll pretend to help us but that's not what they have in mind. You must stop the Mars project."
"I have no power to stop the Mars project, Chris. I work for a different department."
"What department is that?"
"Occupational Health."
"Are you a medical doctor?"
"Yes. And I'm a psychiatrist."
"You're going to have me put away."
"No Chris, it's about 150 years since I could have anyone put away simply for believing in aliens. And certainly not this century. It's not unusual now."
"You think I'm stark staring mad."
"I don't. I think you've had a frightening experience. The lights keep going out. I know there's a war going on but it's still very frustrating. Someone tried to hack into the NASA internet this afternoon. Things like that frighten people. Imaginative, sensitive people can become distracted and distressed at a time like this. And you wouldn't be the first person who was worried about the wisdom of making First Contact with aliens."
"Do you believe in aliens?"
"I don't know. But you believe in them and they're real to you. I respect you for that. Look at it this way, Chris. Should our ancestors have stayed in the forest and said, 'We're not going to domesticate horses, we might create Genghis Khan' or 'We're not going to build boats, we might help the Spanish to conquer South America. We'll stay in the forest, where it's nice and safe.' They didn't. And, if there are aliens, and if you're right, neither will we just stay on our own planet and play it safe. Neither should we. I'm going to give you a fit note for 2 weeks." Dr. Bucket picked up the tablet computer from his desk. "Take a holiday. Get away from all this stress. Go somewhere nice with your girlfriend."

A few days later Chris was sitting on an aeroplane beside his girlfriend Maria. An announcement came over the loudspeakers.
"This is your captain speaking. This flight is going to be delayed for a few hours while we wait for the authorities to deal with a demonstrator who has just glued himself to the tarmac in front of the plane." Everyone was calm for a few minutes but half an hour passed and people were becoming more anxious. The passengers began to discuss the situation.
"Haven't they removed him yet?"
"Airport Security have got to unstick his hands with the solvent. It might take a long time."
"What do they do it for?"
"He's unemployed. He's bored. He's got nothing else to do."
"Well, I wish he could take out his frustration without cancelling somebody's holiday."
"Why doesn't the pilot just run him over?" asked Chris.
"Cool down, Dude, it's happened plenty of times before. No one's going to cancel their holiday. We'll just be an hour late."
"I think our demonstrator has a point. Isn't it surprising that 60 years after this country signed an international agreement to make everything net zero aeroplanes still run on oil."
"Why? What else could they run on?"
Chris spoke again. "Why doesn't the pilot just run him over?"
"They haven't got his hands free yet."
"The solvent takes a quarter of an hour to unstick something."
"Why doesn't the pilot just run him over?"
"Look, one of his hands is free, now the other, they're moving him."
"Aren't the police going to come and arrest him?"
"They won't bother. It's too common." The man was led away by an airport security guard. The plane began to taxi down the runway.

A few hours later Chris and Maria were in Lanzarote. They stood in the airport lounge with their suitcases.
"Have you ever been in a flying taxi?" asked Chris.
"No," said Maria.
"Let me show you something." Chris booked a flying taxi on his mobile phone. A few minutes later it arrived on the runway just a few feet from where they were standing. The helicopter rose into the air. They could see the airport and the city beneath them. They could see the sea and the miles of empty beach that were cut off from the tourists who could also be seen sunbathing on the tiny patches of sand behind their hotels.
"Wow," said Maria. "You don't get this kind of view from a plane."
"We're flying at 3,000 feet," said Chris. The helicopter landed in the street just in front of the hotel.
"You have reached your destination," said a voice from the loudspeaker.
"$300 please." Chris paid the bill with his mobile phone.
"That's $100 a mile," said Maria.
"A Spanish Uber cab would have cost a quarter of that money," said Chris. "A good enough reason why you haven't been in a flying taxi before." Chris spent a relaxing 2 weeks dividing his time between the hotel bar and the tiny patch of sand that was fenced off behind the hotel. He felt vulnerable wandering around lonely parts of Lanzarote on his own. A tourist stuck out like a sore thumb and walking long distances in areas most tourists avoided was dangerous on your own. Chris spent most of his time drinking little bottles of fruit juice,  which didn't need ice because they were kept in the fridge, and sunbathing wearing factor 65 sun cream. At the end of 2 weeks, he still had a tan.

Chris was back from his holiday and back in the lounge at the shared house in Personchester lying on his camp bed. It was 10 o' clock at night and he was tired, having just got off the plane. He fell asleep. He had a dream about the being with the female voice who seemed like a white light in the darkness.
"Look," he said to the being. "Who are you? Aren't you an alien as well?"
"I am a being from another dimension where no one has ever sinned. There is no curse there. There is no sorrow or pain."
"Humankind is perfectly capable of destroying the world all by itself. It doesn't need the aliens' help."
"The aliens will intervene to prevent the world from being destroyed."
"Isn't that a good thing? Why are you trying to stop them?"
"The aliens will create an evil world. It will not be the kind of free world that you have now. They are wolves in sheep's clothing. When they rule the world many people will wish that humankind had been allowed to destroy itself."

The television on the sideboard by Chris' bed looked like a portable radio with a plastic screen on the front. The alarm went off at 6 o' clock. The news came on. A newsreader appeared. "UK Today with Vivian Balding," said a voice from off screen.
"Demonstrators against the use of oil in aircraft fuel," said Vivian Balding. It was hard to tell if Vivian Balding was a man or a woman. In the 2080s, it was even harder to ask them the question. "People who glue themselves to the runway to prevent planes taking off. What should be done with them? We don't agree with this man." Chris was looking at a picture of himself, sitting on the plane a few weeks ago.
"Why doesn't the pilot just run him over?" The scene changed back to Vivian Balding sitting in the studio with the demonstrator that had glued himself to the tarmac in front of Chris' plane.
"You're a political demonstrator. Why did you glue yourself to the tarmac to try and stop the aeroplane taking off?"
"Vivian, we're trying to save the planet. It's 60 years since zero carbon and 90 per cent of aeroplanes still run on kerosene."
"You can't make an electric jet engine, can you?"
"Yes you can, maybe not for a military jet but at least for a passenger plane. A passenger plane doesn't have a pure jet engine. It's not propelled by the exhaust gases coming out of the back. It's a fan turbine engine. It's just a propeller enclosed in a cylinder so it doesn't cause any drag. It could easily be electric. The airlines do a really good job of convincing us that electric aeroplanes can only fly at 150 mph and that they can only go a few hundred miles. Rubbish. With modern batteries, they could go any kind of distance and, with a fan turbine engine, they could fly at 500 mph."
"What do you think of the man who said that the pilot should run you over?"
"I've reported him to the police." Chris was terrified. It was bad enough to have been humiliated on national television. Now he was likely to be arrested.

Chris arrived at work.
"Hi Chris, you're a celebrity," said Nigel. "You're famous. You're on the TV."
"Infamous, more like," said Tom. "I don't believe in climate change. Why doesn't the pilot just run him over?"
"I was only joking," said Chris. "Just something I said in fun and I never really intended that the pilot should run him over."
"You still said it," said Gary.
"It's not against the law to tell a joke, is it?"
"We'll see what the police think," said Tom.

That night two police officers, a middle aged man and a young woman, arrived at the shared house.
"Mr Jones," said the police woman.
"Yes. I'm Chris Jones. I didn't mean the pilot should run him over. I was joking."
"It's what you said," said the policeman.
"All right, I could have been more tactful. I was sat waiting on the tarmac for a long time. I was worried that the flight might be cancelled. No pilot has ever run over a demonstrator sitting on the runway, anyway, I was being sarcastic and I didn't really mean it."
"Tell that to the magistrate," said the police woman, handing him a letter. "You've got a court summons on June 19th." The police officers walked around the house. There was an expensive Suzuki electric car standing on the drive plugged into a charger on the wall.
"Nice car," said the police woman to the landlord. "You must be making a lot of money to have a car like this."
"Why isn't it in the garage?" asked the policeman.
"It's too big for the garage. The plastic bumpers were covered in little dents. Couldn't possibly park it in the garage without damaging it."
"Can we have a look in the garage?" The landlord pressed a button on a remote control. The door lifted up and the light turned on to reveal a huge pile of sleeping bags and rubber mats.
"Are you the landlord?" asked the police woman.
"I am. My name's James Johnson and I'm the landlord of this property."
"How many people do you have living here?"
"About half a dozen."
"I think you've got a few more than that. There's at least 20 sleeping bags there. I'm going to have to charge you with contravention of the 2074 housing act. Providing substandard rented accommodation."
"Am I under arrest?"
"No, but you will get a court summons through the post."

Chris arrived in court on June 19th. It was a frightening experience. There was a sign that said 'Dieu et ma droit' - God and my right - like Chris had seen on TV. The magistrate was a bald middle aged man in a suit.
"Mr. Jones, you are charged with Outraging Public Decency on an aircraft on April 20th. You have pleaded not guilty on the form you returned to the court. Why?"
"I didn't really mean that the pilot should run him over, we'd been there for hours."
"Half an hour," corrected the magistrate.
"Okay. Half an hour. But I was upset and thought they'd have to cancel the flight. I said something in a moment of anger that I didn't really mean. Surely it's not against the law to tell a joke?"
"Under the 2074 Public Decency Act it is against the law to make any public statement that a reasonable person would find to be embarrassing or offensive. It is a crime to tell an offensive joke. You will return to this court in 2 weeks time to be sentenced. All options remain open, including a prison sentence." Chris was horrified. A criminal conviction was bad enough but a prison sentence? That was ridiculous.
"A lengthy prison sentence will be considered. Maximum penalty is 3 years," came a voice from the back of the court. Chris turned around to see the demonstrator.
"Well, I don't know what this guy is so upset about because global warming never happened," said Chris.
"Never happened?" asked the magistrate.
"Well, okay, we should feel sorry for the polar bears and the African farmers but it didn't get any worse than that. It wasn't the end of the world, and it won't be." The magistrate and the demonstrator looked at each other, stunned and shocked.
"Mr. Jones," said the magistrate, "for a public order offence with no malice aforethought and in a person of previously good character, I might have given you a suspended sentence with a few hundred hours community service. But now you have committed a much more serious offence. Climaticide. The offence of depriving future generations of the benefit of all the good things we would have done to mitigate climate change. This offence can not be punished in a magistrate's court. A magistrate's court can not give a prison sentence of longer than 3 years. You will go to the Crown Court."