Mohammed Adnan's '2047'

I told you. I told you I'd add 36 years. Just an example of the psychic power I'm going to be employing in this post. If you've got a bit of a phobia about all things ghostly and supernatural, then I'd recommend you keep reading as there's nothing of the sort anyway.

It was a bit of a crap day in June and clocks were broken. William Churchill was tapping the beat of a song called 'Same' by The Unchangeables, a band of identical quadruplets who all played instruments manufactured by Simple. After a little while and a lot of boredom, William got out of his room, running past the newspapers strewn across the floor like someone had used the Daily Paper as confetti in some sort of extravagantly plain wedding. The words 'Cloning is the way forward, exclaims clone' was on every page of each paper. William got out of his cubic flat, only to see more cubic flats line across the way, each flat spaced equally apart.

Rain pattered on the ground outside. It did not pitter. Just another example of the many changes that had occurred in recent years. The pavement outside had become uniform to reflect the homogenised society we now lived in. The bell would be ringing soon and people would be walking out of their houses and towards the work factory where all administrative duties and computer-related business took place which kept the cog of society grinding slowly to churn out the little meaning given to the lives of the people inhabiting the town. All the stores around were either delapidated or on their way to being so. The work routine was organised by the mayor's Work Policing Unit, who ushered the people towards the factory and stormed into the houses of those had not left and fished them out.

William looked at his calculator watch, which had now been termed 'retro' in 3 different generations. It read 2.20pm. He looked up and saw the train station he had been running towards. As he got in and approached the platform, stopping before the 'Mind The Gap' warning, his train pulled in, scraping the rusted metal and letting out a screech which mirrored his yearning to leave. He got on the train and as he did so, he could see others doing the same; eagerly hurling themselves onto the train to escape the grimness. Ennui lived in splendour here and William had had enough of his company. As he bustled his way past the crowded train, many of whom were looking towards the heavens as if salvation had engulfed them, the train began to move. William found a nice floor spot where he could sit and see a window. As Slough passed him by, he'd return to normality. Nothing had really changed in the last 36 years anywhere else. But Slough just got worse.


I bet you were thinking that this was a glimpse into some washed-out future. However, everywhere is pretty much the same or more vibrant, except a few towns here and there. They're just stagnant. Let's be honest; things aren't gonna change that much in 36 years... are they?

Would you like anything else with your oxygen canister and chicken pizza?

This was a great article and a topic of discussion on the drive time show I present on local radio: http://web.orange.co.uk/article/quirkies/Pizza_restaurant_to_open_on_Moon (article courtesy of Orange News and the Daily Telegraph). Weird news and odd tidbits I can get my grubby mitts on usually slot themselves firmly into my show, otherwise I'd be blabbering in a stream-of-consciousness sort of way which would make listeners switch off and to listen to the sound of lawnmowers as that would probably make more sense.

So, after broadcasting the news on radio and leaving the station, I sent an email to the PR department at Dominos pizza with the following:


To whom it may concern,
 
As a fan of your glorious pizzeria, it concerned me that you may be opening a store on the moon:http://web.orange.co.uk/article/quirkies/Pizza_restaurant_to_open_on_Moon?pg=2#newscomments

With the current economic climate, it might be a bad move to build this store on the moon due to lack of customers and no financial return. That no oxygen thing might be a problem too. Plus, I'm no mathmatician but £13.4billion sounds like a lot of money. I could buy lots of pizzas with that.... oh, and solve a big chunk of an economic crisis.



However, if this is true, do you do home deliveries? I'm craving a nice margherita pizza. And as I am currently looking for employment, is there a job application I can fill out?


Thank you for your time.




Yours faithfully,


Mohammed Adnan


Thinking that I wouldn't get a reply, I still refreshed the page, hoping that I'd get a response of some sort to answer some of the, quite frankly, pertinent questions regarding a home delivery from the moon and if I could work in outer space as a pizza-selling assistant.


And I did. And kudos to Dominos, they humoured me and replied with the following:

Hi Mohammed

Thank you for your email.

We’re over the moon you liked the idea but I’m afraid we can’t take credit for this story as it came from Domino’s Pizza in Japan.

Please could you tell us if you are based in the UK?

Kind Regards

Tanya

What a great reply. Great pizza and great staff. And I think this news story has sparked my next story because to eat on the Moon is perhaps a future pursuit, should we run out of space to build more restaurant here on this green and blue planet. I understand that George Orwell wrote '1984' in 1948. Whether that number came from him swapping the latter 2 digits and setting his heart on that, I have no idea. However, if I did it in this year, 2011, it'd be pointless, because my depiction of the crumbling future under the scope of an oligarchical dictatorship would be of me writing this blog. Instead, I'm going to add 36 years, just like Orwell did to portray the society under the control of 'Big Brother'. I could be a sort of Winston Smith character who rebels. So my next post is storytelling? Great.