|
From the April vault..........
Here's a treat for you - honest - a serialisation of the story that appeared in last year's "New Writing Scotland" which was crittered into shape by the members of the Glasgow SF Writers Circle. Part two next month, same bat time, same bat channel.
MR MURDOCH COMES TO TOWN
By Ian Hunter
Donald Murdoch took the sonic dart from Stornoway to Edinburgh airport, then a slingshot pod into the city centre. He quickly found the MSP hover lane and set the controls for New Holyrood.
It was a beautiful day, although chaotic down below, as usual. The snarl-up headed back towards Livingston. Still, that was the reason he was here, he supposed. To make things better. Elected to represent the Highlands and Islands Coalition Against Road Charges. To be honest, Murdoch hadn't thought much of his chances, but had been helped by the Government's new policy of extending road charges to owners of private single-track roads. Talk about shooting yourself in the foot. Those roads had only been created due to the incentives and tax reliefs on offer and were self-financing once built,
generating money from tourists who wanted to get about the isles. They were all over the place. Everyone on Uist now had their own road and were expected to pay for using it.
The Executive wasn't interested in improving infrastructure, Murdoch fumed, they just wanted to make money. The public certainly agreed. He could hear them on his media-cap, phoning Sir
Robin Galloway on "Good Morning Scotland". Gently he touched the cap with his finger, not quite believing he owned one. This certainly was a bonus. No sooner had he been elected than the free subscriptions started flooding in: BBC Spectrum, BBC Hyperbeam, Sky Hyperbeam, MacDonald's Hypervision and Pepsi Digihype. It certainly beat being back home, on an island where the use of technology was strictly controlled by the Free Kirk. There, they would huddle in the village hall watching early Twenty First Century digital TV programmes on an old-fashioned giant plasma screen.
As he hovered closer to his destination, Murdoch chewed on his lower lip, and nodded determinedly, thinking he would have to wangle a way to get the hyper channels beamed into the villages, give his constituents some modern programmes to watch for a change. After all, he wouldn't have been elected if it hadn't been for their help. All the other parties used zipverts, holobites and virtual canvassing to get their message across, but because of Free Kirk decrees he could use none of those things, although it had been a masterstroke to go door-to-door, even if there had been a few nasty incidents with
sheepdogs and one near fatality involving an old woman on an organicroft, who got a nasty shock when someone actually knocked on her door for the first time in years.
"You're tuned into the zeitgeist of the moment. The pivotal points in Scotland's agenda with Sir Robin Galloway. We'll take some more calls after this classic practical joke."
God, it was the exploding pacemaker at the cremation one again. He knew it backwards. Murdoch closed his eyes and concentrated on his cap, telling it to change stations.
"Pull over."
Keep going, he told the cap.
"Pull over."
What was this ? Some rap song ? On every channel ? Maybe it was an advert.
"Pull over. NOW !"
(to be continued)
|
