The UFO Bible 3

"If a man does not work, he shall not eat."

Matthew met his new neighbour Michael. Michael had nothing much to do and invited Matthew round to tea. Tea was strange, as it tends to be when cooked by a single man who doesn't have much money. Boiled rice, tinned mackerel and assorted tinned vegetables with partially cooked onions. Matthew didn't mind. When he first lived on his own, Matthew had cooked similar meals himself. At least it was filling.
"What have you been doing today?" Matthew asked.
"Nothing much. The television is not very good. Reception is terrible."
"I'll give you a list of all the stations you can still get out here. Have you any internet?"
"I've a cheap mobile phone. Can't watch films because the download is limited. Surprised how well it works, though. I can put it in the bedroom window and listen to a podcast on the Bluetooth radio. The bedroom is the only room I can afford to keep warm. The central heating is only on for half an hour three times a day, at meal times. I only moved here because I couldn't afford to pay the mortgage anymore."
"What's it like living here if you don't have a car?" asked Matthew.
"Difficult. There's a bus to Grimsby but the nearest bus stop is two miles away. It's expensive. I can only afford to get the bus once a week. It's tiring carrying three bags of heavy shopping all the way back. But now there's a new way to have your shopping delivered. The robobike."
"What's that then?"
"It looks like a little child sized motorbike. It delivers all your shopping in a little basket on the front. It comes up to your door and can either give you a little toot or send you a text message on your mobile phone to let you know that it's arrived. Free delivery for orders over £30."
"Sounds fantastic."
"I haven't used it yet but I'm going to use it for the first time today."

The robobike went into a supermarket in Grimsby and trundled quietly around the shop floor at one mile an hour. It pointed its camera at a tin of peas on the shelf. Another robot was pushing a trolley around, restocking all the shelves. The trolley was between the robobike and the tin of peas. The shelf stacking robot pushed the trolley out of the way and said, "Sorry." The robobike stretched out its mechanical arm and picked up the tin of peas, placing it in its basket. An hour later the robobike was with a group of other robobikes travelling down a dual carriageway, playing a game of constantly overtaking each other and seeing who could get up to more than sixty five. The robobike finally arrived at Michael's door and tooted its horn. 
Michael opened the door with a delighted look on his face which changed to shock and disappointment. Here at the front of the robobike was a big plastic crate in which all of Michael's groceries were floating in milk.
"What's this?" With a soft spoken American accent the robobike answered him.
"Mr. Jones, you asked for your groceries mixed in a box."
"I didn't mean literally. Who said anything about my groceries being delivered to me floating around in milk in a plastic box?"
"As a robot I can only follow your exact instructions. This is what you asked for, Mr. Jones, all of these items mixed in a box. So I went back to the depot and mixed them all up in a waterproof container and brought them to you."
"But now they're all ruined. Now all the meat and the onions and the carrots have been soaked in milk."

Matthew arrived. His attention had been attracted by the robobike. He had wanted to witness the first delivery.
"It's not the end of the world," said Matthew.
"Maybe not but it's a complete waste of £45 worth of groceries and I've already paid."
"Was the meat all in tins?"
"Yes. And the vegetables, apart from the onions."
"Supermarket onions are usually clean," said Matthew. "No bleach, detergent or washing up liquid?"
"No. Why?"
"We could make this into a stew. I just need a whole kilogram of pasta, a one pound bag of porridge and a packet of cheese. We'll cut the onions up into small pieces and grate the cheese."
"I couldn't possibly eat £45 worth of food," said Michael.
"You don't have to eat it all on the same day. Fill your freezer with it and I'll fill mine. I've got a huge pile of empty margarine tubs." Matthew and Michael gathered together all their pots and pans, including the massively oversized stock pot Matthew had bought because it was half the price of a small one. They spent the rest of the evening cooking this huge supper. Finally Matthew served two plates of the meal on the dining table, one for him and one for Michael. Michael took his first mouthful.
"This is really good," he said. "I wondered what it would taste like but this is all right, in fact, this is quite tasty." They spent the rest of the evening washing out the pots and pans and stacking the rest of the stew into their margarine tubs. Each of them took twelve margarine tubs to put into their freezer.

Michael walked for an hour and caught the bus to Grimsby Job Centre. It was time for his interview. A young woman sat behind the desk.
"Michael, you've been unemployed for more than six months. If you're unemployed for more than six months, you have to apply for a job in another time."
"How do I do that?"
"The job centre has been here since 1860. There's an outside toilet in the yard that has been here since 1860. That is our time machine."
"But there wasn't really any such thing as the days of full employment. It was never as easy to get a job as people think it was. What if I apply for a job in another time and I'm not successful? What if I don't get the job?"
"The job centre have a black book in which they write down all the vacancies they can't fill. It's kept on top of the toilet cistern. These are not just jobs from the so called days of full employment, they're jobs from those days that no one wanted to do. It's skilled jobs that were difficult to get. I think you could get one of these jobs straight away."
"Coal mines, cotton mills, anywhere that there was mass child labour, you could be right."
"Michael, if you don't get in that time machine between now and lunch time we're going to stop your benefits."
"I was just on my way to the outside toilet. Sounds absolutely wonderful. What a good idea."

Michael sat down in the outside toilet. The toilet looked very old and had a wooden seat. Somebody had lit the gas light that was on the bare brick wall of the toilet. It was from before the days of electric lights. On top of the cistern there was a thick black book with a hardback cover. The job descriptions and job numbers had been written on the lined pages in fountain pen. Michael flicked through the jobs having a look for one that he liked. There was a job for a teaching assistant. He typed the number into the control panel on the wall. He wondered if anything had happened. Was it all a joke? Was this time machine actually real? He opened the door of the toilet and walked across the yard. Where had that big factory chimney come from? Why did those boys sitting on the steps of a house have bare feet? He walked back into the job centre. The windows looked really old fashioned and so did the big oak doors. A woman sat behind the counter wearing a long dress. The manager sat beside her wearing a bow tie and a top hat.
"I want to be a teaching assistant," said Michael.
"Do you know where West Lane school is?" asked the woman.
"Yes," Michael said. He had walked past the old school on West Lane many times.
"Just go in there and ask for the headmaster, Mr. Weathercock."
"You need to get some decent clothes," said the manager. "We can't let you go like that. You're from another century. People don't wear jeans and trainers here. At least, maybe a farmer or  a collier could get away with it but school masters must be smartly dressed." The manager led Michael into his house, which was fifty yards from the job centre, and gave him a white shirt and a black suit. "I have a spare room where you can stay for a few days until you find somewhere to live."
"Thank you, Sir, and you do this all out of the kindness of your own heart."
"No I don't. I'm going to send you a great big bill at the end of the month." The manager smiled.
"Thanks anyway, at least you're willing to help people. I wouldn't want to be stranded in another time with no idea what to do."
"It's my job to do it. I used to work in Grimsby Jobcentre in the 2030s, you know, the decade of the Great Recession but they sent me back to the 1880s to look after people."
"Is that where we are? Are we that far back?"
"Yes. It's 1881."
"I'm from 2028."
"You don't know about the Great Recession. The banks collapse in 2029. A major collapse. The governments can't afford to bail them out. The World Bank won't let anyone borrow any money. Unemployment hits 10 million, or it would if the aliens hadn't started sending millions of unemployed people back in time."

Michael arrived at the school.
"I've come to see Mr. Weathercock," Michael said to a lady teacher standing in the school yard who was wearing a long dress and a large hat with a bonnet. "I want to be a teaching assistant."
"Follow me." The lady teacher led him to the headmaster's office. "Mr. Weathercock, a man who wants to be a teaching assistant."
"Splendid, splendid, my new teaching assistant," said a middle aged man with large round glasses and a black cape and a square black cap. Michael wondered if the stick the headmaster was holding was a walking stick or a very heavy cane. Perhaps it was both. "We're just about to have dinner. Would you like to join us?" Michael sat down at a table in the school canteen with several other teachers and the headmaster. The pupils were boys of a variety of ages, some seven or eight years old, some young teenagers. The meal arrived. It was thin slices of grey meat with no gravy. There were peas, cabbage, mashed turnip and mashed potato.
"We shall say grace," bellowed Mr. Weathercock. "For what we are about to receive, may the Lord make us truly thankful." One of the boys ate most of his dinner but left the mashed turnip.
"What's the matter with your turnip, Boy?"
"I don't like turnip, Sir." The other children in the canteen gasped in horror.
"Don't like turnip. Is that right, Boy? Perhaps you'd prefer six of the best. Hold out your hand." Mr. Weathercock brought down his walking stick on the boy's knuckles six times, hard. The boy started crying. "That's all right, Boy, I won't cane you again just because you cried. The rest of you, stop laughing at him. Boys do cry, you know. Stanley seems to enjoy cabbage and peas that have been on the floor and are covered in mud. We must be understanding of such strange tastes. Go on Stanley, get down there under the table with your plate and scoop it up. Enjoy."

Michael walked into one of the classrooms in the afternoon. Finding nothing to do, he went up to the office and spoke to the headmaster.
"Mr. Weathercock, Sir, I went into the classroom and there's no lesson plan. I expected to see printed sheets of paper on the desk. How am I supposed to teach the children?"
"I can't afford to go down to the printer's shop every time I have a lesson and give them sixpence to produce thirty printed sheets."
"I suppose not, Sir, but don't the children even have books?"
"Books cost a week's wages, lad, I can't afford one for each pupil. I can only afford one for each teacher. You may borrow a book from the school library." The school library was a small bookcase in the headmaster's office that can not have had more than twenty books. There were no more than twenty classes in the school.
"Which subject am I teaching?"
"Which subject do you want to teach?" Michael picked up a Chemistry book.
"This looks interesting. Where should I start?"
"Start anywhere. You're covering for Mr. Johnson while he's in hospital. He'll be in hospital a long time. If you do something they've done before there's no harm in doing it twice. I'll come with you." 

Michael returned to the room and opened the book at a random page.
"Hello. I'm Mr. Jones. Our subject today is - " he looked at the book " - Metals."
"What do you know about them, Lad?" asked Mr. Weathercock, smiling.
"Metals are malleable and ductile."
"Write it down. Here we chalk and talk." Michael took a chalk and wrote on the board. Without prompting, the children took out their slates and copied down what he had written. Michael realised that here, knowledge was precious. The words from the books in the headmaster's bookcase covered hundreds of easels. "When a metal touches an acid something happens."
"Does anyone know what it is?" interrupted the headmaster. One of the boys put up his hand.
"A chemical reaction, Sir."
"Yes, very good. What sort of chemical reaction?" asked the headmaster. No one new. "Perhaps Mr. Jones can tell us."
"There is a chemical reaction that produces hydrogen." Mr. Jones completed a diagram on the board. It had little arrows and said metal, acid, hydrogen. "Something else will be left behind. Can anybody guess what?" No one replied. "If I had iron and I added sulphuric acid, what would happen?" One of the boys put his hand up.
"Is that how they make iron sulphate, Sir?"
"Yes. Very good."