2084-E

Chris stood in front of the judge in the crown court. The judge was a middle aged man with a moustache and a beard. He was wearing his red gown and his white wig.
"Chris Jones, you are charged with an offence under the Climate Damage Act 2077," said the judge. "How do you plead?"
"Do you think it makes any difference, what I said? Remember the last time you wrote a letter to your MP. A fat lot of notice they took of it."
"Just answer the question," said a young Indian man in a suit who was sitting next to the demonstrator who had glued himself to the tarmac in front of Chris' plane. The judge spoke again.
"Mr. Jones, you are in a crown court. Can you please answer the question. Do you plead guilty or not guilty?" Chris hesitated for a moment. He knew in his heart that he had done nothing wrong but there was no point in denying what he had said. The judge looked at him again. "Mr. Jones, are you guilty or not guilty?"
"Guilty."
"You have pleaded guilty to an offence under the 2077 Climate Damage Act. Mr. Jones, what we say has a profound effect. If we all raise our voices in unison, we can change things. One person writing a letter to their MP might have no effect, you may be correct, but if we all shout together, it will be like the walls of Jericho falling down. And we must all shout together to protect future generations against climate change. Any trivialising comments about it only being a danger to African farmers and polar bears can hold back the creation of a consensus of opinion in our society. If too many people say such things it will sow the seeds of confusion. It will deter the government from making the decisions that urgently need to be made. It will threaten the progress we have made to become a zero net carbon society and endanger future generations. That is why such behaviour must be severely punished. I have no hesitation in sentencing you to the maximum penalty for this crime. You will go to prison for 9 years. Take him down." Two prison officers handcuffed Chris and led him down to a prison van. He was in a vehicle about the size of a small minibus, behind an iron grate which was between him and the driver's compartment, with half a dozen other prisoners who were all sitting on benches on either side. No one said anything. The van drove down the motorway for what seemed like several hours. Still none of the prisoners spoke to each other. Chris didn't want to speak. He was in a deep state of shock, trying to reflect on what had happened to him since lunchtime. He imagined that the others felt the same.

That afternoon Chris was lying on the bed in his cell. The authorities had decided that every prisoner should have their own cell and that that cell should contain its own shower. The majority of prisoners who were attacked by other prisoners were attacked either by their cell mate or in the shower. But this was only half the size of a victorian prison cell. A curtain separated the shower from the bed and the toilet which filled the rest of the room. The sink was positioned on the wall above the toilet cistern. Chris lay on his back on the bed as it was too uncomfortable to sit. There was certainly nowhere anyone could have put a chair. The walls were so close to Chris' face he felt as if he was suffocating. He gazed up at the light and it was so bright that it hurt his eyes. There was no window. A fan on the ceiling did a poor job of providing ventilation. Chris had been given a computer about the size of one of the first smartphones. It had a hundred websites that had been vetted by the prison service. Old film channels, documentaries on science, politics and history, religious programmes and an email account which was carefully monitored by the prison AI system. Chris selected a nature documentary, closed the toilet lid and put the computer on top of it, lay on his side and did his best to try and watch the picture.

They were led into the exercise yard, hundreds of prisoners, like a corridor at school, with half a dozen prison officers. It was raining gently and a freezing cold wind was blowing. But after the sterile environment of a prison cell that was almost exactly like an accessible unisex toilet, the rain and the wind felt refreshing. So did the woman prison officer who was trying to teach the men that it was possible to do a hundred press ups, as long as you allowed your body to rest on the ground for a moment after each set of ten and now let's see how many tens we can do without resting. The prisoners were led into the canteen. As everyone was sitting at the table and the food was being given out, a man shouted, "The Lord says there is someone here today who is on the verge of committing suicide. I want to say to that person, God loves you. You think nobody cares, God cares." One of the prison officers burst out laughing.
"Michael, I should think, in a prison this size, there would be a reasonable number of people who have thought about suicide in the last week."
"The Reverend Michael Smith must be right, then," said the woman prison officer. "God must have spoken to him."
"He's just the mad vicar," said one of the prisoners. "Don't take any notice of him. He's done this before."
"God loves you," said another prisoner. "Oh, is that why we're all soaking wet?" He looked at the plate of food in front of him. "Is that why we have to eat this horrible food?" One prisoner turned to another who was wearing a white coat, as if he worked in the kitchens.
"Gary, what is it with the food here?"
"I think the chef forgot to put the onions in the gravy today," said another prisoner.
"The chef doesn't put onions in the gravy," said Gary. "It's only when you have a tin of steak and onion that you have onions in the gravy."
"Gary, we have to eat this twice a day. What is it we're eating?"
"Tinned vegetables, tinned meat and tinned potatoes in gravy. It all has to be warned up in great big stock pots and we only get a quarter of an hour to prepare it."
"What kind of meat is this? It's not like any kind of meat I've seen before."
"It's not meat, it's cheap tinned fish. It's mackerel. It's usually either mackerel, pilchards or hot dogs."
"Your diet contains all essential nutrients," said the woman prison officer.
"That's not what the doctor said," said one of the prisoners. "He says that we are all anaemic and we're all deficient in folic acid." One of the other prison officers replied.
"Following the doctor's advice we will be having steak and onion twice a week and kidney beans with every meal."
"Oh, joy, joy, joy." Chris turned to Michael and asked him,
"Are you really the mad vicar?"
"No. I'm a lay preacher and I do a little bit of writing and broadcasting on the internet. I'm not really a vicar. They just call me that. I'm here for inciting hatred of aliens. I teach that they're not really from other planets. They're evil spiritual entities who are simply posing as extra terrestrials."
"How you can you be inciting hatred of aliens? There are hardly any aliens on Earth anyway."
"There are 6 delegates to the United Nations. One from each planet, or one of each species. They wouldn't start a regular flying saucer service to Mars if NASA were still charging $10 billion for a ticket. That would damage the economy. The United Nations delegates received death threats. Their children were bullied at school. They blamed me and other Christians like me. The police started locking us up. Bradford was being tormented by flying saucers. There were hundreds of UAPs. The airport had been closed down for a week. The 101 telephone service was jammed. My church stood on a hill together and looked at the flying saucers and sang, 'In the name of Jesus, in the name of Jesus, we have the victory, in the name of Jesus, in the name of Jesus, demons will have to flee.' The UAPs disappeared. After that they stopped coming to Bradford. UK News reported it. They started saying that I was a hate preacher. I was subject to a thorough police investigation. Every sermon I preached or article I had published on the internet for the last 20 years."
"But 20 years ago we didn't know what aliens were."
"We hadn't made contact with the aliens on Mars 20 years ago. Christians have been preaching about them for a very long time. They saw this coming."

The prisoners could buy crisps, chocolate and cans of pop from the prison shop to supplement their meagre diet. Chris had discovered that he could close the toilet lid and put an unopened can of pop on top of it to make a TV stand. Now the little computer the size of a 5" smartphone could stand up while Chris could lie on the bed watching the picture. He looked for Michael Smith on the religious website. Surprisingly, most of his sermons were still there. Michael Smith had gone to prison but his sermons has never been taken down.
"It will be as it was in the days of Noah," said Michael Smith on a video that was dated 2071. "The Nephilim. The sons of God who had children by the daughters of men. They were the heroes of old, men of renown. The alien half breed. They were cruel to people. They were evil. Why did God tell the Israelites to completely destroy whole civilizations? To get rid of the Nephilim. As long as the Nephilim existed, Jesus could never be born a pure human. These are not spacemen from other planets. Their ships do strange things that no alien spaceship could ever do. They hit the ocean at 60 miles a second. If you hit water at that speed it would be like hitting concrete at 600 miles an hour. You would be killed. You can not do a sharp right hand turn at 60 miles a second. That would also be fatal. It would subject the astronauts to forces of acceleration that no physical being could ever survive. They are not physical beings. They are angels. Fallen angels. Evil angels that were kicked out of Heaven. Oh yes, they can materialise for a few moments but that is not their natural state. They are spiritual beings and they come from the spirit world." There was a video of Michael Smith's congregation on a hill in Bradford during the UAP/UFO sightings. The UAPs looked like the boomerang Chris' uncle had bought him in Australia when he was on holiday. There were half a dozen of these strangely shaped craft in the sky above a small English town. The congregation began singing. "In the name of Jesus, in the name of Jesus, We have the victory. In the name of Jesus, in the name of Jesus, demons will have to flee. Who can tell what God can do, who can tell of his love for you, in the name of Jesus, Jesus, We have the victory." The boomerang shaped craft in the sky disappeared. Michael Smith could be seen standing on the same hill, a few days later, talking to a news reporter.
"Are they extra terrestrials?" asked the reporter. Michael laughed.
"Oh yeah, anyone not from this world is an extra terrestrial. But they don't come from other planets."
"If they're not from other planets, where do they come from, then?"
"Aliens are evil spirits. I read a UFO book and in it there is a man from a Muslim country who calls them Al-Jinn. Mischievous spirits. That's what they are and that's why they respond to Christians singing hymns."

Chris had been in prison for just over 2 years. A prison officer came to see him in his cell. The prison officer was a frail elderly man. Chris wondered if the new retirement rules had prevented him from drawing his pension. He wondered what this person would do if one of the prisoners became violent. He looked too frail to be able to deal with a prison riot, although Chris noticed the tazer, the handcuffs and the pepper spray the man had attached to his belt.
"Chris, I have some good news, you're being decategorized. You're a quarter of the way through your sentence and you're considered low risk. They're letting you out."
"Just like that?"
"Not just like that. You're serving the rest of your 9 year sentence on licence. You'll have to report to the police station once a month and if you misbehave you'll serve the rest of your sentence in here. You're not allowed to go more than 10 miles from the police station and there's the injections. Every time you go to the police station you will receive a monthly tranquilliser injection to stop you reoffending."
"Does it work?"
"The new tranquillisers do. No one's ever committed a crime when they've been on them. The rate of re-offending has gone down to zero. Do you have a bail address?"
"My parent's address."
"That's fine then, I'll just ask the helicopter taxi to fly you there."
"By myself? I could just run away and disappear into the night."
"You won't get very far. The watch you're wearing contains a chip. Like a dog or a cat. We know where you are. If you're more than 10 miles from the police station that you're registered with you'll be arrested."
"I can take the watch off."
"You can't buy anything without it. You've got £500 in the bank courtesy of HM Prisons. That's your going home grant." The prison officer tapped the screen of his own watch and spoke into it. "Mr. Jones asked to be bailed to his parents' address. Order helicopter taxi to his parents' address."
"Don't you need me to tell you my parents' address?"
"The system knows where your parents live. You've got 5 minutes to gather some possessions, if you want to." The prison officer handed Chris a small zip up shopping bag. Chris put into it a can of pop, a bag of crisps, his toothbrush and a half used tube of toothpaste. He followed the prison officer outside to where the helicopter was waiting to take him to his parent's house. He used his watch to phone his mother. Half an hour in the helicopter and Chris could recognise some of the familiar buildings of Sheffield. His mother's face appeared on the screen.
"Hello Mum, I'm coming home."
"When? Today?"
"Now. In 5 minutes. I'm flying over Sheffield in a helicopter taxi."
"Ooh, good!" said Mother. His father was sitting behind his mother.
"Welcome home, Son."

The watch received a text message notifying Chris of his appointment at the police station the next day. He stood in a queue outside the police station with about a dozen other people who had an appointment at the same time. One of them was Michael Smith.
"Hello Michael."
"Hello Chris."
"I've just been released on licence."
"I got released 6 months ago."
"What's it like, being on the injections? What's in them?"
"It's a cocktail of 5 drugs. SSRI, SNRI, a painkiller, an antipsychotic and another drug that was invented by the aliens."
"What effect does it have on you?"
"You feel good all the time. You don't need to do anything wrong. I don't preach anymore. If I did it would violate the licence conditions but I don't want to. I only preach when I get angry about things. Now I don't feel angry."
"You just feel happy that the aliens are taking over the world?"
"Yes I do, I trust them completely, and so will you. Chris, you'll change. You'll become more contented. You won't want to say things that are controversial. You won't resist."
"Isn't that disastrous for democracy?" A policeman came out of the police station.
"Democracy, Chris? What's that? I apologise for the way my friend is talking. He is anxious. He is depressed. He is here for his First injection." The policeman looked at Chris.
"You're coming first."