A diary from the future?
Or a dead man’s work of fiction?
In this first year's worth of entries from a diary stored on a recording device found after a house fire in Nottingham, England, the beginnings of an expansive story are told.
Starting in 2014 Oxfordshire, the diary records the life of someone ordinary, a young journalist, seeking to make his way in the world, and recording his experiences as the world changes around him.
What starts off ordinary in 2014, becomes more extraordinary as the years pass, and ends among the stars.
Nobody knows if it is a work of fiction or a true record of how things happened, and will happen. By reading the diary, some things may have already begun to change, and the future is not what it was.
But it could be that this is how it would have been.
CHRONICLE 2014
by
ANDREW WOODMAKER
Edited from recording device by
Michael Simms
Copyright Michael Simms 2013
https://www.chronicleyear.com
MSP Publishing
Dedicated to my brain
which will not let me do nothing with my time.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Foreword
I found these diaries among the remains of a house in Nottingham that burned down in 2012. They were written on some kind of computing device that I’ve never seen before. It’s taken me a while to extract the pages from the device, and get them into a normal format.
I don’t know if they’re a work of fiction. They may be someone’s life’s work and I’m stealing from someone who died in a house fire.
Or maybe they aren’t. Maybe they’re notes from the future. I don’t know. The device was certainly futuristic enough. Some of the things these diaries describe are horrific, some of them amazing and wonderful. I don’t know if I’ll change things by publishing them, or maybe I’ll bring these things to be.
I’m not a philosopher.
This is the first of a large number of years. I haven’t even read them all myself. I’ll be releasing them as I manage to extract them, one year at a time.
I’ve looked for information about Andrew Woodmaker, the supposed author of these diaries, and I can’t find anything. Maybe I just don’t know where to look.
If they’re just a work of fiction, and I’m publishing the last work of someone that died, I’m sorry, I don’t know what your name was, and I hope you don’t mind my publishing them.
If this turns out to really be a diary from the future, I hope it can guide us to a better world.
Michael Simms
2013
Sunday, March 16th 2014
Congratulations on deciding to buy a copy of my diaries. Of course, you’ll already know the life story of one of the most influential journalists in history, but you can now get to know my innermost thoughts as I climb the road to success and worldwide acclaim.
Well, OK, at least I hope so. I expect that really, this will start off as a diary I keep for about a month, and will end up as just a list of birthdays and appointments for the next year, before I chuck it in the bin. Lets face it, getting a job in the Didcot Gazette wasn’t really my first choice of jobs after graduating, but I suppose it’s better than the Sun. At least I’ll be able to report on real stories, not just celebrities and their sex scandals.
I’ve been there a week now. All week last week I was being shown the rules, asked to read loads of previous editions so I knew the style of the paper, getting to know the ropes, that kind of thing. The paper is small, just twelve of us and that includes the receptionist. We don’t even do our own printing, we just email files off to the Oxford Daily, and they do us a print run when they aren’t printing their own paper. And then once a week we send off a few thousand papers for free delivery, mostly full of adverts, and lots of budgies get a new lining for the bottom of their cages. Still, it’s not a bad group. The boss, Nigel Hawkings, seems a bit stressed and worn down, but then, when you’re making budgie lining for a living, it’s got to be hard.
I’m their first hire as Nigel - who insists on being on first name basis with all of his staff - tries to change the direction of the paper. Up to now, they’ve just reprinted whatever they think the locals will like that they can get from the Reuters news feed, and they’ll buy stories from the Oxford Daily when they have anything good, but I’m their first real reporter. I’m supposed to go out, find the big local stories and turn around the fortunes of the company. No pressure then.
I must have done well at the interview last month, because they’ve given me pretty much carte blanche with what I choose to cover. Not being from the local area, that could be pretty tough, but I’ll do my best to do a good job. After over 40 interviews, they’re the only ones to offer me anything and so either they’re a bit desperate, or I was so good that my skills were beyond the understanding of the papers that didn’t offer me a job. I’m believing the latter, and, of course, if you’re reading my diary, I was either right, or you’re snooping where you shouldn’t be, Taima! :-)
It’s late evening now, and tomorrow I’ll try and see if I can find anything local that’s going to rock the world in its significance, and expose it to the locals of Didcot in all of its glory. Or at least I’ll try and find a lead on those annoying kids who’re going round keying cars all over town.
Monday, March 17th 2014
Well, it is a good morning. Taima woke me up this morning in the best way a girl can wake up a guy, and I don’t mean breakfast in bed :-) But now she is off making breakfast in bed, to celebrate my first day of actual work. It’s a crying shame that even though she’s only Muslim by birth and not really practising, she still gets uncomfortable making bacon, so it’s gonna be a bacon free breakfast. And I think I hear footsteps in the hall so, away with the pad, time for food!
In the office
In the office now, just checked my emails, and discovered I’ve got lucky! An interview request had been accepted by a local company.
Late last week I’d sent out a load of requests to do interviews and tours of local interesting businesses - OK not so much a load as a handful, there isn’t so much going on in the area that you could call it a load - and I got an email back from the one I really wanted, Reaction Engines. They’re the guys who’re making the new space engine. I have a tour and a meeting with the owner this afternoon. That gives me a couple of hours to quickly read up as much as I can on them so I don’t seem like a moron when I get there.
Evening
Wow, busy day, and awesome, my first day as a real journalist. I’m glad the days of pen and paper are mostly behind us, I think my hand would have fallen off writing this all down. Simply videoing the whole tour and interview makes it a lot easier. I wish they’d acknowledged that back at uni, instead of making us learn the art of journalism as it was in the 1960’s.
Anyway, yeah, the interview and tour. It was really interesting. The company is working on a new engine - a hybrid engine. A bit like in hybrid cars, it has two modes of operation, but this one is to go on rockets. No, not rockets, spaceplanes. They glared at me when I called it a rocket. It’s called the Sabre engine, and it’s a re-usable engine that works like a normal plane’s jet engine up to about 26km, and then it turns into a rocket engine to push the rest of the way into space when the air gets too thin for a jet engine to work.
The big deal is that it will reduce the cost of space travel. You could be a space tourist for a quarter of the price that Virgin Galactic are charging, and you get to go all the way into orbit,
not just a suborbital halfway job. They’re a small company though, and I think that’s going to be the heart of my story. They have an idea that will quite literally change the world, and they only have a small number of staff there. This thing should be huge. I think the story will be about government lack of vision and how many local jobs could be created if they would see the project for the real value it has. That’s bound to go down well as a story. A bit of politics, a bit of science, local interest, and British excellence. Now I have a week and a bit till my first slot in the paper to write it. Oh and I have to get two more stories for that edition too.
I think I’m going to be a bit busy...
Wednesday, March 19th 2014
OK, so four days into this journal, and I’ve already missed a day. See, I knew it would end up as a list of birthdays and meetings. Right, lets get this started then. OK, mum’s birthday on April 6th, that’s written in. Dad’s birthday April 7th. There, now lets try and write something good!
OK, so despite missing Tuesday, I can promise it did happen. The world didn’t just skip a day, it just got a bit busy, and I was tired when I got home. I’d spent most of the day writing on the Reaction Engines story, and to be honest, it didn’t go well. I can’t have writers block on my first professional story, that would be silly, so I assume that I’m just coming at this from the wrong angle.
So today, I dropped the story and had a meeting with the local police. The Didcot police force only has a small staff, and they don’t even open on Mondays! Who ever heard of a police station closed on Mondays? In Coventry where I grew up, they’re all open every day and night, but I guess that’s the big city compared to small town England.
I got to the police station at about 11, not long after the morning fog cleared up, and had a chat with the duty officer on the front desk. He wasn’t exactly rushed off his feet, so we talked about local issues for a bit. I gave him my number, and he promised to let me know if anything exciting was going on in town that the press should know about. I did the usual, told him that he’d get a mention in the paper if we printed any stories he gave us a lead on, stuff like that. It’s technically illegal to offer the police money for leads, and since the new laws on press ethics were passed, well, I’m sure that the big papers still play loose with the law, but here at the Didcot Gazette, we play by the book.
I left at 1pm, when the police station closed for lunch. Yep, they close for lunch. What on Earth is going on here, do no crimes get committed between 1 and 2pm? Anyway, he had nothing too interesting to talk about really. No bank robberies in the town this week, no exciting crime at all, to be honest.
This may well end up being a problem. It’s all well and good having complete freedom to report on anything I want, but if nothing happens in the town, how can I do a good job? Having only moved here two weeks ago, I just don’t know the people or the places well enough yet. I just hope the boss - sorry Nigel - doesn’t mind too much.
I spent the afternoon wandering round town, chatting to local shopkeepers, giving out my card, telling them to call me if they had anything newsworthy to tell me about, or just to talk about the town, about anything they think could be interesting. Anything at all... Please?
Thursday, March 20th 2014
I’m writing this at lunch, a crab-stick sandwich from the local deli. I got a call this morning, from someone who’d seen my number after I’d left it in a shop window. Yes, I know, it’s tacky, but I’m new in town, so I’m using short cuts. He wants to talk to me about a matter of ‘extreme public interest’. I do hope he isn’t wasting my time. He doesn’t want to tell me over the phone, so he’s either paranoid, or worried his story isn’t interesting enough. Or possibly he’s being hunted by MI5 and his phone is bugged and I’m in for the most exciting afternoon of my life. My guess though is that it’s boring, but I’ll hold out hopes for paranoid.
Evening
OK, yep, it was boring. But I think I’ll write about it anyway as one of the three stories I need to do for next week’s edition. The meeting was with a quite nice old guy, who spent a good amount of time complaining about the trees at the back of his house. I didn’t realise that that was the story he wanted me to cover. The rail company wants to cut the trees down just past the end of his property, so they don’t cause problems for the train line that goes just behind them. The track east of town is elevated on a bank, and they think the trees will cause subsidence in the embankment. I’ve seen news stories about this kind of thing before, so I guess it’s a story to cover. Local interest, and I do need to report on what makes the local population tick, if I’m going to cover their news.
Late this afternoon, I laid out the outline of the tree story, ready for writing. I’ve also made some good progress on the Reaction Engines story. It isn’t where I want it to be yet, but I’m not hating it as much any more.
Saturday, March 22nd 2014
OK, so, here is is, my first completed story. I’ll be handing this in to the editor on Monday morning. Taima has given me the evil eye for working today, but she understands that it’s my first story for my new job. She’s good to me, and I’ll definitely make it up to her.
Railways ignore local protests
Despite overwhelming local criticism from residents of Didcot, First Great Western is planning to uproot hundreds of trees along the route of the Oxford to London railway line.
“It’ll destroy the view from my back window,” commented local resident Martin Brown. “When I look out of my window today, I can see lovely trees, all coloured leaves, birds nesting in them, but if the train company pulls them all up, all I’ll see are dirty great intercity trains going past.”
His sentiment seems to be echoed by many in the local community, with a petition so far gathering over 150 signatures from the town. Mr. Brown intends to join up with the action group from Cholsey and hand a combined petition from the two towns to management from First Great Western.
When contacted, First Great Western said that the work was needed to prevent soil erosion from critical rail infrastructure, and they had an obligation to carry out the work to ensure rail safety.
If you would like to sign the petition, please go to the online petitions site linked from the Didcot Gazette’s homepage. You have until the end of next week to make your statement.