Copyright: January 12th 2026

Chapter 1: Introducing Marcia one of the two main protagonists of the story.

 

The apartments under London are sound proofed.  The trains glide by with purpose and they make Marcia’s hanging plants sway a little with the vibration.  She, like many other residents of London underground prefers to watch through tinted windows the realism of the constant rush of people-traffic or the slither of the trains, only teenage boys in big hooded jumpers and huge trainers notice or care about the residents’ windows.  They pull silly faces and make rude gestures, it doesn’t really matter to them whether they’re seen or not.

    But if they stand in front of Marcia’s window for too long, the infra red detector notices them:  ‘You are standing too close to the window and are posing a threat to this resident, please move along.’  It is Marcia’s voice, Copyright January 12^th 2026.  Every apartment beneath London carries this infrared detector, this message in Marcia’s voice.  It is the Millennium Anti-Vandal device by Atlantis Systems.  Unfortunately, the detector has quite a large margin for error, if a trolley or stack of magazines is left in front of the detector (which is always possible in a busy station in a busy city), it still goes off.  Should the obstruction happen to be a person that will not move then they will consequently receive a mild electric shock, but if the obstruction is a stack of say, dry papers then it tends to set them on fire.  Many’s the time a commuter has had his or her path crossed by the flaming face of a minor celebrity or politician, posing in front of a stately a home, often with a Labrador.

Marcia is the voice people hear when they try to overdraw on their bank account, and she will say ‘I’m sorry, but you have failed your finals and are not entitled to a degree.  We wish all the best for your future’, when students scan through their academic barcode, which for some reason always sits by the photocopier in the library so that anyone copying chapters on contractual law or Kabuki theatre will hear every word. She has recently completed a big recording for the Texas sentencing system.

‘You have been found guilty of first degree murder and have been sentenced to death by electrocution.  Thank you for your co-operation and God save you.’

   Marcia came to the job through extensive market research and the monitoring of target audiences, she had begun her career on a science fiction show.  She was cast as the voice of a ship computer in ‘Judge Xavier’s Intergalactic Court’.  The show was a sci. fi. Courtroom drama set on Judge Xavier’s courtroom-in-a-spaceship, he wandered through outer space sorting out disputes between rival alien races and was watched all over the world.   After a long auditioning process Marcia was picked from hundreds.  She proved to be very successful, and the men’s lifestyle magazine, ‘Teste’ reported that her faked nude body was the most downloaded in the Western hemisphere, proving most popular in Croatia; the fact that the face was not hers either seemed to escape their notice.  It’s said that Marcia’s voice alone is guaranteed to give most males a hard-on and he can give her any body he wants.

   Six weeks after the last ever series of ‘Judge Xavier’s Intergalactic Court’ was aired, Marcia was offered the opportunity to produce a series called ‘Badass Space Girls.’  The series would star ‘flaming haired tease’ (‘Teste’ magazine, March 2025, the ‘Ginger Minge Sensation’ issue), Tremelo Stevens and the ‘busty blonde’ (‘Teste’ magazine, ‘Mammery Fans Special’ issue, February 2024), Cheyenne Harriet, but it was not to be when it was discovered that Tremolo’s famed glamour model and soft porn career had actually been a carefully spun lie, involving body doubles and desk top publishing.  She had in fact been a legal secretary, the network pulled all funds for the pilot.

     Atlantis had found that female voices were preferred to male voices due to their associations with the non-threatening and maternal. Marcia had been an ally for intergalactic peace seekers and now for the common man, and woman. It’s easier to direct the blame at a faceless voice than a faceless company. 

   And so Marcia and her voice (insured for 10,000,000 euro) on 1^st June, 2030 walk along the stainless steel corridor of her apartment complex to the escalator. Marcia stares at little cardboard posters that mainly advertise internet sites with obscure names, chosen because all the best names had already been taken.  Primates, Pebbles, Tripofalifetimes and Freefishfinance speed past her, she can only just make out the ads – as always the escalator goes a little too fast; at one point she thinks she sees an ad for a restaurant called Stopcock Experts but on second thoughts believes she could’ve been mistaken.

The street ‘s unedited content confronts her.  Marcia looks out onto something not unlike a bad collage as concrete and glass frontages jostle for supremacy over carefully preserved nineteenth century arcades in which you are still no allowed to whistle.  London is bursting at the seams, she moves through the endless bustle to the large hypermarket on the corner to buy a newspaper.  When she speaks to the man behind the till, he feels a presence come over him as if he has been touched by something, he knows the voice so well, even though he’s never met her before.  Already the woman is floating through the crowds.  

Already streets are being cordoned off for the No-Global demonstration to take place the next day.  Marcia casually glances at the paper she’s just bought.  On the front is a picture of a suicide bomber – girl, nineteen- dead in a place with too many consonants in its name.  Lying on the kind of concrete she used graze her knees on as a child, Marcia stops to look more closely at the picture of the pretty, empty face.  Lips bloodless, mouth in what could be the beginning of a yawn as she wakes from sleep.  Eyelids heavy and red.  Her body’s intact, or should that be ‘the body’ now?  We are always so sure that a bomb’s job is to blow everything apart, this girl is still, for the most part, as she was.  Until the blood starts at her waist, staining her khaki green jacket, so many little clues to a life, but nothing solid.  Marcia searches for references to her own life, to feel pity.  When we hear a child is dead, how often do we say ‘he was nearly the same age as our …’?  We do it to feel it.

   ‘I thought most people were happy.’  She looks up from the newspaper, now smudging her fingers to the street, to London, to something a little cleaner.   How can something so intent on destruction not destroy the one person carrying it?  

   People come to London like spawning salmon, they inhabit old vinegar factories, department stores that gone bust, turned into large glassy apartments before the echoes of ringing cash tills have barely faded, occupied almost immediately.   These places above ground are very expensive, Marcia could afford one but finds them poorly soundproofed with the atmosphere of a beehive.  However the views are stunning from inside.

 

LOGIN:mrs_rabbit

I was looking for some music to play when I stole it.  A mini disc with ‘Tracey’  written on it.  I didn’t know Connor had a girlfriend.  The MD was 45 minutes of songs.  I hate myself even now for listening to it, as if I’d watched them having sex or slept with one of them myself.  Because these were the things that make two people close - compilations, books, clothes that you wear belonging to another, their smell in them like another, imperceptible colour.   Books that I borrowed on the pretext of study.  If there were underlines or notes in the margin-space, I would feel something shift inside me, as if I was hearing him breath. 

 

‘Look mate, you know there’s an alarm on these stations, so don’t even try it sweating out your Japanese fantasies here.’ Marcia’s sister’s matter of fact tone spreads across a room of computers to a teenager, pimply and fumbling in the corner, her acoustics absorbed by the plastic casings and furniture.  The boy does not turn around, but his face starts to glow scarlet.  He pretends not to hear her and loads up a page on Bonsai tree maintenance.   

‘I can’t believe you.’

‘Look, it’s my café and I don’t want him turning away customers.’

‘Propriety, tact, these words mean nothing to you.’

‘Miss muck.’  Marcia smirks,

‘I wish!  Give us a coffee.’  Her sister saunters off, smacking the backside of her mate Rob as he wanders in.  ‘Hello to The Sister.’

‘Hi Rob.  Christ, what are you so miserable about.’  His sigh is heavy.

‘The government.’

‘Oh right.’

 

LOGIN:dreadian

The fires are dying, we’re wrapped in blankets, muscles ache with cold.  Blue light and the houses in shadow like broken animals.  Man there was loads of us, we were numbers.  Numbers watching houses, then a roar but slowed down like, slow motion – sort of.  Attishoo, attishoo, we all fall down.  She’s bound to get the message, will she look?  Can she even find a computer?  She might not be in the city at all.  C’mon Magda, remember that time?  The houses just falling after years of solid ground and families and laughter?  I’m one of those house now, I’m falling and people are just watching, are you watching?

 

Marcia’s surrounded by furtive tapping it does not make what she is reading any less sad.  Pat….pat, pat, clickclick, it’s her turn.  Patpatpatpatpat. 

 

 LOGIN jan26

Pat, pat.  Rain on trees, on leaves.  Dad breaking up the old rotting bench – I could not splinter the weather-raped wood.  He stamped on it at a slant.  Dad was old then, Dad’s are always old, but he was strong.  And Georgia is so like him.  She has the charm of the youngest child, convinced of her existence, of her right to be here.  No matter how old we get, she’ll always be the one of reckless youth.

 

‘What’s up with you?’

‘God Georgia, how can you stand it?  It’s like death watch beetle.’

 ‘Well, it’s all part and parcel.  Music helps.’  

 

Memory, is a child tugging at our sleeves.  Sometimes, to have the lines already drawn on the page is good, a relief, we know the constraints, our space metered equally, we know the direction.  However, what if the lines seem to be getting more closely ruled?  They crowd the page, obscuring blankness.  At one time, there were opportunities.

Author's Note

Honesty is the best policy!

Reviews

[Lucy Landers]

This is excellent. Are you available for sale? Or the book, maybe? I want to buy it.