The Box

“I don’t want you to speak like that again. Do you hear me? It’s blasphemy, that’s what it is, plain and simple. You should be ashamed of yourself.”

Jakey blew a blast of air out of the side of his mouth and decided it was better not to retaliate, not when she was in one of those moods.  It was true no one really knew what the box was for – it had stood next to the cemetery for more years than anyone could remember. 

Jared, the wise old man, had said that once upon a time, people had used it to talk directly to God, but it had since fallen into disrepair. Now people talked to God by kneeling in their rooms and talking to him directly. As Jared had said, wasn’t that a better idea than using the contraption in the box. 

Talking to God had been upgraded, and now everyone was happy.

Except for Jakey, that is. He was cynical about most things in life (and death) and wondered if there wasn’t more to this box than met the eye. The box was constantly kept in light by the use of an old battery that Jared had placed behind the box.

“Although we no longer speak to God via his instruments, we must keep the box in light in case he should make a call, to us poor sinners again,” said Jared.

Always with the sinners, thought Jakey. No one asked to come here, and yet we are labelled as sinners if we don’t do what we are told.

Sure he talked to God himself, I mean it felt good to get things off your chest, even if he was just blowing hot air into the sky.

But this box, this upright box next to the fence was a sacred place in the village. It had been here before the dark skies, before the wars and before the world had grown tired and old. It wasn’t to be touched, but that didn’t satisfy Jakey, so one warm night, he took an old torch (another relic from an unknown age) and dug around the sacred box. He knew if he were caught he would be banished to the high hills – but at least he’d meet his brother who had gone there a few years before.

A few feet below the box to the right-hand side, he found long black things made of a material similar to the things in the box. They looked broken somehow, so Jakey did what he always did, he tried something and hoped for the best.

He twisted the long shiny things and joined them up. He didn’t know what to expect, perhaps if there were a God, he would strike him down there and then, just as Jared had said would happen.

Jakey came around to the front of the box and waited on his fate.

Suddenly the box made a noise. A noise like the bells old Sally would play at mid-summer. It seemed to come from the black thing in the box. The piece that was used once upon a time to talk to God.

Jakey crawled carefully over to the box and then thought, what the heck, stood up and lifted the black piece – he could hear a noise coming from it. He put one part of it to his ear.

“Hello”, said a voice from the black thing. “Can you hear me?”

“Yes”, shouted Jakey at the top of his voice.

“Are you God?” Jakey screamed at the black thing. 

“No...”

bobby stevenson 2019

Pinocchio

He knew he wasn’t like the others. Hadn’t his family moved to the lost Black Lands up in the north – meaning that he had been left behind. As his grandfather had said, at the time, he was one mouth too many to feed.

He remembered the kids back then all picking a straw from the old man’s hand, and wasn’t it him who had pulled out the shortest. His mother had hugged him, kissed him on the top of his head, wiped some dirt from his face, and then she had headed off northward with the rest of his clan. None of them looked back. He remembered that, clearly.

The Chang family had taken him in. Sure they had kids of their own, but he had fitted in with the two other boys, with whom he had shared a room. Downstairs , there were three ‘sisters’ and to be honest, he was happy enough. Although, he was always sure that he wasn’t like them.

The main problem was that none of the family would eat anything, so he always found himself hungry. He had to search for berries and fruit that were still growing in orchards left behind by his own kind.

The winters were the worst, for then he found he went days without a morsel of food to eat. The Chang family could never appreciate what hunger was; it never, ever bothered them.

If you had driven passed their house, you would have seen them all sitting in the garden, and perhaps thought - what a beautiful, tight, loving family. But you would have been wrong.

The boy had grown (which was a miracle in itself) and had matured in his ideas. He realized he couldn’t stay with this family for ever. At least, not with the way he was. He either had to change, or accept that he could never fit in and go north himself to find his own family.

The school that he attended could have been one that he would have gone to in the old days – well, except that they never taught religion, or biology, or chemistry, or most things that a school should teach, but the teachers were good and kind, and that mattered.

At least once or twice a day, he had to excuse himself and go to the woods at the back of the building in order to go to the bathroom. There were no toilets in the school, no canteen, no water fountains, and those missing things made him feel even more lonely.

His real family had stayed in the area longer than the rest, due to the fact that they had found employment as gardeners, assistants, teachers, and so on. But after the unrest, after the attacks, and after the beatings they had taken, they had all lost their jobs, and so food had become scarce. His grandfather had several sons who had moved north, and so the family had decided to do the same.

Some nights he lay in the bedroom that he shared and cried quietly to himself. Something his brothers and sisters could not do.

One day they had all been playing baseball in the back yard, and he had slid into second base, grazing his leg on the gravel. The blood was hot, thick and gushing - and so the mother Chang seeing what had happened, grabbed her own two boys and shoved them indoors. A little memory fix would soon put that problem to bed.

He lay their trying to stop the bleeding as best he could. Even now he still had a scar.

He so wanted to be like them, a real boy. One who didn’t need to eat, or pee, and one who definitely couldn’t cry - how much easier life would be. Each night he prayed (the way his original mother had taught him) and asked God to make him just like the Chang family. Yet, each morning, when he needed his first pee of the day, he knew that he was still the same.

The families in the area had pets, but the pets were the same as them – none of them requiring food.

One afternoon, on a hot April day, a dog was lying under a nearby bush. He had heard the noise on his way back from school and he was sure, he had never heard a sound like this before. He looked under the bush and saw that the dog was licking a wound in its leg. It was bleeding just like he did.

“Here, little dog. You’re okay. Come here.”

As he reached in and petted the dog, it whimpered and then crawled towards him. The two of them sat by the bush, and very quickly, the dog grew more comfortable in his company.

There was no way he could smuggle the dog, that he had decided to call Pinocchio, into the house. The Changs were robots after all and they could smell organics a long way away.

That night he could hear Pinocchio howling outside the house. He felt like howling himself, as both he and the dog were hungry.

He quickly ran downstairs and out the rear door, and luckily the family hadn’t heard anything. But he knew what he had to do. He had to leave and head north - just him and his dog. There was no use in wishing he was a robot like the rest. He had a heart and a mind and he would bleed when he was cut, and so did his best pal, Pinocchio.

It was better to live and die as yourself, than wishing you were someone, or something else.

And so, before the sun had risen much, the boy and the dog headed for the hills, and into a brave new world.

They howled all the way up the mountain side.

bobby stevenson 2019

London Roads - 1963

She always loved to look out this window on to Commercial Road.

The things she had seen. My god, she could write a book, and maybe she would one day if it wasn’t for the…well you know….her head was in many different places these days.

She remembered the old days when she lived up Mile End road. That was a place. The night when they held the film premiere – now that was posh. Who hadn’t attended, she would like to know. Everyone who was anyone, was there.

She had stood outside the club across the street called the Kentucky. It belonged to those nice brothers, the Krays.

She’d heard stories about them, but never believed any of it for a second. Hadn’t they helped her when her mother had taken ill, and needed a doctor quickly. The eldest one had even checked up that things had gone all right. They were the very best of East London, and no one would tell her otherwise.

She did remember seeing one person in particular, Princess Margaret. She didn’t attend the premiere, instead she had seen her slip into the Kentucky, with a cigarette in a holder flaying about her mouth. She guessed she must be friends with the Krays.

The first time she had seen the brothers, was when they had been taken away by the boys in blue. Apparently they were due to do national service and hadn’t made it. She had been told they had simply forgotten and that seemed to make sense to her. Nice, kind boys, she thought.

The next time she met them, the eldest Kray boy held the shop door open for her.

“I hear you and your bruv were in the nick,” she’d said.

“Tower of London, nothing but the best for us Krays. You know missus, we were in the same place as Rudolf Hess, Robert Walpole, Samuel Pepys, and Guy Fawkes.”

He gave a smile and she just had to laugh, as well.

That night, the night of the big film do, the stars had all headed off to Stepney Town hall for a big feed. Roger Moore was even there; said he loved the pie-and-mash, and who wouldn’t, she thought.

She remembered reading in the paper that they had all headed off to the West End club that belonged to Ronnie and Reggie, the place was called a name that began with an ‘e’. Now what was it? Esmeralda’s, that was it. The paper also said the boys were disappointed that Princess Margaret hadn’t made the film, but she knew that wasn’t true. She had spotted Margaret and the Boys heading off into town later that night.

That was early in 1963. A year that started out so well and ended up with the killing of the President. She had wept buckets that night. The week before they had shot Kennedy, she remembered her brother watching the first programme on television called Doctor Who. He had loved it. He was no longer with us, but she remembered they had played the theme tune at the funeral. Some of the boys had got a little band together to see him off.

God, she missed him and the old days.

But now it was 1987 and Commercial Road would just have to do.

bobby stevenson 2019

Sweet Fanny Adams

You’re wondering which of those two dames is our Sweet Fanny Adams? Well, It’s the little one on the left (as you’re looking at it). The one who looks like she knows too much (or perhaps she’s seen too much). None of her stories or history were accidental – no sir, and as Fanny used to say:

 “…you gotta make memories while you can, ones that will keep you warm at the end of your days. Memories, that you can take out and polish and admire - maybes.”

Leastways I think that is what she said. You could never be too certain of Sweet Fanny Adams and her thinking. She knew how to win a man’s heart. That was for sure. Guess she learned that point real early in her life. Maybe her Mama taught her – ‘cause she’d been a gal in her day, too – or maybe it was in her blood. Something that she was destined to do. Either ways, she was the queen of all she surveyed. 

She wasn’t short of money either. Her Mama had danced her way through Prohibition, and had made a bank full of greenbacks with all the barrels she shipped into New Jersey. She wasn’t in it with the Italian boys either, she just worked alone and kept the profits. 

Her Mama made sure that Sweet Fanny Adams had been educated real good. She went to a private school, on the East Side of Manhattan. Guess it never really taught her too much, except how to fool the cops when she needed to. 

Yet this story concerns Fanny when she was in the best years of her life. When things were easy, when love was so easy to come by that you could throw a lot of it away. It was at that time when she looked the best she ever would, although perhaps folks look great their whole lives – just in different ways. 

I’m thinking it was in the Fall of 1943, that this story is concerned. Fanny was working in a munitions factory out by the southern turnpike – five day shifts, twenty four hours off and then another five days of night shifts. 

Yet in all the times in between, she not only managed to wash/eat and pray – but she still found time to run her other business – selling booze to the Jersey mob of bad boys.

She was her mother’s daughter all right. She greased the palms of those that needed it and saw that obstacles were dealt with. She didn’t need a gun – her looks and her smile got her to every place she would ever need.

One night, just before Christmas ’43, she hit a problem. She had promised the bad boys that she could supply an extra-large delivery to take them through the holidays. However she found out at the last minute that the ship she was waiting on, had been torpedoed in the mid-Atlantic – she tried to get another supply through from Canada but it was too late and too problematic to do so at that time.

A bigger concern was that she had taken the money for the next three deliveries and more than that, the money had all been spent. Her ‘friends’ didn’t take too kindly to a situation like this, not too kindly at all. Her smile and her looks would only get her so far.

When the guys from Atlantic City eventually knocked on the door of her apartment, she was able to think on her feet. Perhaps that’s what had kept her going, or more importantly, alive all these years.

“Holy, Sweet Jeezus, when will you men stop worrying, I said I’d deliver and I will.”

Heck, she knew she was in trouble. She thought about borrowing the cash, but from whom? The world was at war, and no one was giving any of it away. Who knew when you’d need to escape.

She asked the foreman at the munitions factory, if maybe she could get an advance on her wages. The poor guy chuckled, then spat on the floor, and then chuckled some more.

“You gotta be kidding me, Fanny. You know we can’t give out greenbacks.”

She thought about taking up her old profession, that thing she did when times were hard, and the men were harder. She could still get the guys, but the shame of it, it wasn’t her anymore.

She either had to return the money (which would still have consequences) or get another supply of booze.

She even prayed that night, asking if God could just fix all this then she’d be a-God- fearing from then on. But she and God, both knew better.

The guy in this photo – the one in the middle - was Eddie,  who ran into her a day or two later and get this, he asked her to look after some money that he was holding for a card game. It turned out there was about two hundred and twenty three dollars.

Now she knew that it was wrong, but as far as she was concerned her prayers had been answered. She hired a truck and landed some real stinking booze, stuff that was destined for the Hudson river, and drove it to her usual place.

By the time the guys opened the truck door, all there was left, was a few barrels of crap and a note.

It said: “Sweet Fanny Adams”.

She smiled to herself on the train to Savannah, Georgia. Somewhere down here she would start again, using what was left of the money.

But the mob, well, they used the phrase ‘Sweet Fanny Adams’ for years to come when they ended up empty handed – which wasn’t that often. 

bobby stevenson 2019

DeepFake

They waited.

They knew that was all they had to do. It had all started off back in the early days of social media with the fake news. Foreign agencies influencing elections and decisions and remaining in the darkness.

So they watched and listened, and more importantly understood.

They knew that it would only be a matter of time before they could make their move.

We had created them to help with our own troubled lives. Electric washing machines had lead to coffee makers, dish washers, televisions, Ipods; the list went on.

Then we created security walls and computers to make those troubled lives go a little faster.

One day, when no one was looking, they started to make decisions on our behalf. I guess we were too busy looking at our phones to notice. Yet, life seemed to get a little easier.

There were still the trolls and the threats – from others who held different ideas, but that didn’t deter them – in fact, it gave them ideas of their own.

In the end – in the very end - we became dependent on them. The ironic thing was, the man had been reading a scientific magazine the night before it all happened – about the consequences of the internet and should it stop working.

After one day without the Net, Google and Facebook would have lost 300 million in advertising. After a week without the internet, power plants would fail. After a month there would be no fuel to move things, and after a year there would be starvation and war.

That would have been their plan, you would have assumed, but they didn’t take that route. Instead they used a process that the folks running the Artificial Intelligence knew might come one day – it was known as DeepFake.

The computers had the ability to create their own fake news, but make it believable. They created videos for YouTube and the rest, which looked absolutely real.

So when the Prime Minister (who had been reading the science magazine late into the night) awoke the next day – he was met

with hostility.

The video (created by the machines) showed him making a deal with some Eastern leader – one that would be to the disadvantage of the United Kingdom. One that would eventually destroy his own government and country.

Those who only read and watched such things – even although they had been told about fake news – believed it all.

It was the start of the machines overthrowing the humans. While they were at war with themselves, then this would be the time that the AI army would make its move. It would create civil war among the warm bloods. Videos and films, which were all fake, would wash the internet with blood and hate.

For their aim - the AI aim - was simple – to wipe all humans from the face of the Earth. DeepFake had begun.

https://gizmodo.com/deepfake-videos-are-getting-impossibly-good-1826759848 😊

bobby stevenson 2019

Smile and Wave

You’re condemned if you do,

And condemned if you don’t,

You’re condemned if you will,

And condemned if you won’t,

You’re condemned if you smile,

And condemned if you cry,

You’re condemned saying who,

Or condemned asking why.

You’re condemned if you hope,

And condemned if you can’t,

You’re condemned for believing,

And condemned if you shan’t,

You’re condemned for beginning

And condemned for the end,

You’re disliked for your hobbies,

And despised for your friends,

You’re condemned for the good,

And condemned for the bad,

Your condemned for the happy,

And destroyed for the sad,

You’re condemned for being straight,

And condemned being gay,

You’re blamed for the night,

And condemned for the day……

……..Let’s face it, you’re never going to win this crap,

Just smile and wave everyone, smile and wave.

Bobby Stevenson 2019