Playing Havoc

Steve Morris

Description

BANG! Lights out! Just how would we cope in an event where every electronic device on our planet was rendered useless in an instant? If all electric power, industry, basic utilities, transport and the very communications that we all take for granted were zapped in a single moment, how would life carry on? What skills do we possess to cope with and help us rebuild life from its very foundations? Playing Havoc, partly based on fact, partly a black comedy, describes one small British Island's battle to maintain some normality in the chaos after a coronal mass ejection through the eyes of one man who had only recently moved there with the very intention of getting some peace. A reluctant man with enough problems of his own to deal with finds that the longer the havoc goes on, more and more of the islanders turn to him for help.Book reviews online @ www.publishedbestsellers.com

Sujets

• Science fiction
• Thriller

Informations

• Publié par: Pneuma Springs Publishing
• Date de parution: 26 juillet 2012
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781782282273
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Playing
Havoc



Steve Morris
First Published in 2012 by: Pneuma Springs Publishing
Playing Havoc Copyright © 2012 Steve Morris
Steve Morris has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this Work
Pneuma Springs British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Morris, Steve, 1969- Playing havoc. 1. Suspense fiction. I. Title 823.9'2-dc23
Kindle eISBN: 9781782282389 Epub eISBN: 9781782282273 PDF eBoook eISBN:9781782282495 Paperback ISBN-13: 9781907728433
Pneuma Springs Publishing E: [e-mail] W: www.pneumasprings.co.uk
Published in the United Kingdom. All rights reserved under International Copyright Law. Contents and/or cover may not be reproduced in whole or in part without the express written consent of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, save those clearly in the public domain, is purely coincidental.
Introduction

We are all so busy these days. You have no spare time any more, do you? Neither do I. We have buttons to press and screens to watch. Anything else will just have to wait because we’re busy right now and we’ve got to be somewhere else in ten minutes. So, if you’ll excuse me….
It wasn’t always like this, though. Can you think back to those more simple days when you took a vacation for two weeks and no one could get hold of you until you came back? Can you remember when you had enough time at the weekend to sit and notice what the birds were singing? Everywhere was closed anyway.
We can now live our own lives completely in our own busy little worlds. We no longer need other people. Life can now be lived by the very touch of a button.
And do you really think that the world is a better place now?
Just how long can or will this go on for?
Until the lights go out. That’s exactly how long.
Zap.
Darkness...Then we’ll see who’s king.
And could you cope in a completely disconnected world with all this time on your hands?

Playing Havoc examines just this scenario.

May I present to you my first full-length novel. Take a moment. Perhaps we need to force ourselves away from our busy desks to look at the natural world outside and consider what we’re really missing and where we’re meant to be.
Within the following pages we need to consider our place in this world and also what we can usefully contribute to it.
One day soon, we might all have to find out the hard way.

I’d like to thank again those people who gave In All Probability its fair chance.

Steve Morris
May 2012
The Novel
Cast:
Giles – narrator, first person
Andy – a stranded plumber
Trevor – an elderly neighbour
Mary – Trevor’s wife
Warren – an eccentric elderly neighbour
Nancy – Warren’s wife
Darren – nerdy neighbour
Alfie – Student #1
Alison – Student #2
Samantha – Student #3
Katrina – wealthy “lady of leisure” neighbour
Rick – current boyfriend of Katrina
Ted – unstable neighbour (ex-forces)
Melanie – neighbour
Mr Singh – storekeeper
Mr Taylor – Harbour master
Doctor


“Playing Havoc”
This story is based on fact. CMEs occur on average around once a century. The last event like this fried the world’s early telegraph network at a time when we still travelled by horse and cart. There are a few more electronic gadgets around these days … and you know how you feel when only one of them lets you down.
We are now overdue for the next solar flare.
1
In the blink of an eye
Thursday 19:00 hours
“Oi! Giles!”
It was old Trevor’s voice shouting me again from the top of our steep little road of seven houses. I turned around.
“Giles! Summat’s come down! Up ‘ere,” he beckoned, “The lad in the next street’s just got back home. He reckons a plane’s come down!”
I met him halfway up the bank. Trevor was desperate to tell everyone in our road. Not used to moving so quickly he was almost out of breath. A pinch of salt was often needed here. Both he and his mate were eccentrics if I was to describe them politely. I was never going to take either of them seriously.
“A plane, Trev? Where?”
“A proper big ‘un. Smack into the cliff. That’s what all that smoke is,” he gasped nodding out towards the sea.
Trevor stuttered as he raced to get his words out quickly enough as he panted, “Jumbo or summat, right at the bottom of the east cliff! Flaming debris everywhere. No rescue in site though from what the lad could see. He’s headed off back there to help.”
“Rubbish,” I thought.
“Give over! We’d ‘ve heard something about it!” I replied not accepting any of this. Apart from those Chinook helicopters flying low overhead earlier, and some flocks of birds, I’d not heard a peep and was more interested in my dinner.
As I turned away, a guy standing across the road, who was over from the mainland, had his van’s bonnet up running jump leads from someone’s car. Hearing the conversation, he crossed over and joined in. Apparently, he’d been working on a neighbour’s plumbing all that day and had also been watching proceedings from the top of our hill.
He introduced himself having heard the same rumour.
“I was just thinking the same thing. If there’s been a crash, we’d have seen emergency services arrive or at least heard them even from inside the house. I did hear this bang an hour or so ago, then I saw all that smoke over there. I should be on me way home by now, but I can’t start the chuffing van. I’m stuck here until I can get the van jump-started but your other neighbour’s car battery is flat as well. And why’s my radio not working? Does anyone know what’s causing that? The six o’clock news would tell us all what’s causing all that smoke for certain.”
I didn’t wait to speculate further and perhaps a little rudely, I shot off quickly home thumping upstairs without removing my shoes to dig out a telescope so as to settle the matter. I knew that a one-time passing fad in astronomy would come in useful one day. The device was soon found and pointed towards the smoke.
I saw much more.
From then, all became surreal. I did begin to wonder if this was one of my vivid dreams, so dramatic was the image I could see through the lens. Obscured by a few rooftops and summer’s trees in full leaf, I was still able to watch proceedings like it was on some TV screen with the volume turned down, that there was a massive yellow and grey smouldering area just off the cliff-side. Plainly there had been a massive fire or explosion over there. Through the telescope, faintly through the multicoloured smoke, I could see some silver wreckage strewn at the top of the cliffs. The tide was retreating and part of the shingle beach below was visible.
On the beach was an entity that was never meant to be there.
Clearly, and pointing terminally downwards, lay part of a huge airliner’s tailfin.
2
Ever likely
Perhaps I really had played a little too much on those flight simulator games and perhaps I’d seen a few too many action films. My ex-wife made a big thing about all that in the divorce case. If I’d played PC games too late at night I would see plane crashes in my sleep and shout about them. Images of a given day’s events often intertwined with those from a PC screen to replay themselves in my dreams in a way that could never be good for me. Scenes of crashes where I lived were often premonition-like, so I felt like I’d seen this all too many times before.

Instead of rushing out to share my view of this with the neighbours, for quite some time, I had difficulty coming to terms that all this just really was happening within spitting distance from my home. A silent drama, like some flickering black and white horror film, I could see a major national disaster happening in broad daylight right before my eyes. Yet where was the emergency services’ response to this? Where were helicopters, fire engines and the military? First on the scene I would have expected Satellite TV. Where the heck was that TV news helicopter with the annoying girl with the teeth and headset that seemed to buzz around all major news events about ten minutes before the police got wind of it? I was always amazed how often that girl seemed to be in the right place at the right time. So where was the radio and TV coverage? Perhaps a B-list celebrity was due to be released from rehab clinic and we’d have to wait to be the second headline.

On top of all this, why were all our electronic gadgets not working when we needed them most?

After doubting my own eyes and squinting again and again through the lens, I joined the others outside once more. This was a lot more serious than we first thought. Without saying it out loud, we were all thinking the very same thing. It all pointed towards a terror attack. We had been warned. Recent world events had been leading up to a major one. However, none of us was ever going to be properly prepared for when it did happen. Was this the day?
Our Government had produced some really vague emergency planning leaflets last year, probably in anticipation of these terror attacks. They delivered them to every house warning people what to do in the event of a “major disaster”, which without spelling it out was supposed to be a guide of what to do in a major terror attack. For once, this was one unsolicited leaflet that I actually did take some time to read. Not that I was any the wiser afterwards. Quite what we were meant to learn from any of the vague information in the leaflets though, I’ve no idea. Heaven only knew where I’d put that leaflet anyway.
This contrasted with sinister memories of the days when I was a child in the seventies, when I was genuinely really very scared by all that “Protect and Survive” Cold War Government propaganda distributed at the time. I couldn’t bring myself to read it in any detail