Travelling to Dystopia (Time Tunnel Tale # 4)

It is funny when you think of it in terms of 2023, but back in 1984, workers still went for a drink at lunchtime, in fact it was really the ‘norm’ of the day. I hardly drink these days, but back then was not averse to a couple of pints of lager, sometimes more, before returning back to the ‘daily grind’ after my lunch hour, as it was called.

I had read the Covidiary the previous night , if you remember , that was the publication written by Frank Scott in what was evidently the year of a pandemic of a disease called ‘Covid-19’, which he had compared to the Spanish Flu of 1919, which his grandfather, and indeed two other people he had met in his travels in Time, had been aware of.

Anyway, me and Gaz went to The Prince at lunchtime, had a couple of sandwich rolls and lagers, and a chat.

“So, Gaz, I believe this, but what do we do, is there any point in bringing it to the attention of the authorities? “, I said.

“What would be the point of that, they would only laugh in our faces,” he said.

I could imagine the headlines in the local press, plus the ridicule we would get at work from the older ones in the office, “time travel?- , there’s not  such a thing , are you guys still bleezing from last night” they would say, as they lit another cigarette , and puffed smoke into the already polluted office space.

“Just keep it to ourselves, the weirdest thing for me is, I think I remember that guy Frank in these times, he was on a training course with me last year, he was the most vocal in every session, totally full of himself, and held us up from getting to the pub. Once we were there, he was all over the Course Trainers, haranguing them, saying that he aspired to being like them , he could do a far better job, and so on and so forth”, said Gaz, the most he’d said all day, as he had been busy signing documents in the office, something that , he said , needed peace and quiet to complete.

A small part of me thought that Gaz had made the whole thing up, but his description of future Glasgow sounded pretty plausible once the Covidiary had been read, and the pictures taken by Frank on a small device called an ‘I-Phone’ had been seen. Glasgow looked like a real dystopia. We could take a day trip to Glasgow if we could get a day’s leave. We could apply to our Line Manager, George Fellows, saying that we were off on a day trip to Dystopia and see if he knew what we actually meant! George was very ‘old school’ as they said, he had joined our organization many years ago, and lived for his job, he was not great with people, but then there were few people in our office or others I had heard of, who were good managers. It was just the times in which we were living, 2023 would be better, wouldn’t it?

 We would find out once we went to the Time Tunnel!

After, of course, we had had a pint or two in the place.

Gaz could write a story about it, you never know, the title ‘Tripping to Dystopia’ had a good ring to it, a bit like a potential Hawkwind song title or a Mike Moorcock short story, how cool was that?

I had never actually seen any of Gaz’s writing, but he was always on about it, so it must exist. He certainly was ‘well read’ in relation to some of our colleagues, whose reading matter mostly began and ended with the daily tabloid newspapers. Gaz was a big sci-fi fan, which was something he got into in his schooldays, when it was a ‘craze’ amongst his school friends and this enthusiasm had never left him. He liked other types of books, but sci-fi was his favourite genre. I heard him being described as a bit of ‘poet and a dreamer’, by one of our colleagues, which was a tad harsh, but reminded me of the opening to a story by one of my favourite horror authors, H.P. Lovecraft, where the narrator describes himself as someone who resided in a garret, something which Gaz often joked about as he lived in a tiny top floor flat.

Anyway, we returned to the office after lunch, sober, and sucking Polo mints, just in case any comment was made.

Peter, the enforcement officer, met us when we came into the building,

‘Been drinking on your lunch break lads?” he said with a smug smile on his ruddy cheeked face.

‘Mr. Fellows would like to see you in his office toot sweet.’

I laughed inwardly when he said, ‘toot sweet,’ was he trying to be funny or was he just ignorant of French pronunciation?

Probably the latter, as he wasn’t the brightest in the place, he was one of those folk who got on as they ‘spoke a good game’, this was how I imagined Frank Scott to be , just by the tone of what he had written in the Covidiary, and what Gaz had told me about ‘Young Frank’, Scott’s ‘80s self.

It was all very interesting, I thought as me and Gaz entered Mr. Fellows’s office for unknown reasons, hopefully we could discuss our leave applications for our trip to Dystopia, to the future.