Last note from England

September 20, 2010
Task, Write something to do with technology.
© GregW

One final note - For the Record.
Late summer of the year 2047or 49

Thanks for taking the time to read what I fear is the last note from England.
I do hope to be able to explain a few things about what has happened here over the last few years. I am sorry but I have no method of keeping count of the number of those years, a survival existence provides so few diary keeping opportunities.  I do know it has been more than ten winter seasons but how many more I can’t say.
It has been some twenty five years since I have actually put any writing implement to paper in order to communicate. It is strange doing it for the first time in so long, especially here in the Data museum in the wasted ruins of the city that was once Leeds.
First, let me get the obvious out of the way, yes, my handwriting is terrible, close to illegible I grant you, and my spelling less than perfect, I am guessing my spelling is poor, I really don’t know after all this time. I only ask you to endure the process of reading it as I am trying to be as neat as possible and voice recognition printing is a thing of the distant past. Oh, would that those days could return.

You will see around you the glass encased examples of leading-edge technology up to and including the year 2035. I have managed to remove the accumulated dust and detritus off this particular cabinet so the latest and smallest mind chips and eye cameras can be viewed through the magnifying lenses.

I guess now I have mentioned these chips and cameras I can say that England was proudly at the cutting edge of this information capture and interface technology prior to ‘The Event’.  By the year 2028 more than two thirds of the UK population had joined the BT rollout of proximity networking, all of us had had our mind chips and eye cameras implanted and the rapid decline of hand held communication devices was not lamented.

England was delighted to be finally at the global forefront of something.
Naturally there had been resistance to the technology from the fundamental religious countries like the United Continents of America, New Combined Europe and Pacific China.
They had joined their voices to decry it as, and I can quote from memory, “One more evil initiative of England’s drive towards the un-godding of the planet.”
My guess is that it was really more a human objection to the government networked components being inserted into its citizen’s heads.  But personally, I really liked having 50 terabytes of memory and infinite image recognition implanted into my life. I suddenly knew everything I wanted to and I could see anything I wanted as long as I was in range of a network hub, and by 2025 prox networking had reached everywhere in the UK.
The downside was of course that other nations had patchy networks and smaller countries refused to install the costly technology.  This meant not many UK residents wanted to travel anymore. Why bother, after all we could download the artworks and architecture, have the atmosphere of a place simulated, order the food and fashions and see the views anytime we wanted, while doing what ever we wanted.

But as you probably know, all that ability ended when the tiny little asteroid landed on Drax.
It was huge news on the day of course, the National Grid lost most of its northern power generation and all the region went into brown-out until the nuclear generators came on-line to catch the load. I do wonder at the billions of pounds we spent on wind generation as we knew that climate change would bring weather and wind speeds outside their operating range.  The rotting towers continue to litter the countryside with falling blades. But,,, I digress,,, and I can little afford the time or energy.

Of course you, dear visitor, will know much more than I do about what happened in the rest of the world when it was discovered that the Drax meteorite had bought an electron stabilising virus to earth.  As the virus spread so quickly through our national power grid what we saw here was the daily failing of power distribution. Before the communication networks collapsed altogether we did learn our whole country plus Ireland was being isolated from all global interaction as the virus was found electrically contagious.

I do understand therefore that power sharing with Europe had to be cut.
But communication links?
Did they ever prove the virus could be spread by wireless and optical links?
I do wonder if such total panic was the right response.
I mean when the power stopped here, the network stopped, the mind chips and eye cameras stopped, the transport and manufacturing stopped, everything here stopped.

Anyway, as you would know, England was isolated from all world communication and travel. As far as I know,  the virus didn’t spread outside the UK.  I am hoping the rest of the world continued to exist. There were early attempts by us to travel off shore by boat but as all marine electrical systems were affected, that only left dead reckoning and sail craft. I did hear rumors the first attempts to cross the channel were met by hostile fire and I never heard anything about later attempts. But to be honest with you, after the initial shock, my life was one of protecting my home and fighting off the neighbors who raided my vegetable patch and stole my hens.

Life here has been grim, and I would have presumed there are no witness records of this country’s demise. The young generations had never learned to write.  I thought today I’d just have to pretend I was strong and make it through the ruins to this abandoned and forgotten Technology museum in the hope I could leave this one last letter from England.
I know it is a very poor final chapter to the accumulated works of the Great English poets, playwrights and academics, but it is sadly what we are left with.

Regrettably I will not be able to continue my report further as my ability is failing, I know not of what cause, but I do have sufficient energy just to seal this note to the display case and I intend to do that and lay here beneath it with some remaining vanity, hoping my body at least will escape the hungered ravages of the remaining starved population.