Paphos People

WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?

Alan Wainright was a Luddite, a Technophobe. He didn’t know the origin of the words but was aware that he was well known to all of his friends as either one or the other. He intensely detested the way that the world was going faster and faster, people didn’t think any more they just tapped into a hand held device to find out about everything. On waking they immediately reached for a machine to see what the weather was going to be like for the day, whereas Alan just looked out of the window. Next thing was the device on their wrist which told them how many steps they had taken the previous day, what their body temperature was and how many beats per minute their heart was producing whereas Alan looked at his Timex wristwatch for the time, he knew he was alive because he was awake and yesterday was yesterday who cares how far you walked.
Going to work the modern man got into his electric car, spoke to his satnav device ‘take me to work’ and just had to be there to follow instructions and steer the thing wherever he was told. The car companies were working on eliminating the need for that chore by this time next year whereas Alan got his trusty Raleigh bicycle out of the shed and pedaled his way to work.

Until the day that, without any prior warning, there was a massive solar flare. It shot out from the sun reaching some forty million miles in a matter of minutes. The force was so great and sudden that it sent a massive shock wave of energy into space.
The result of this was that all of the thousands of items in orbit around the planet earth were knocked off course, colliding with each other, spinning off into deep space or spiraling down towards the planet to burn up on re-entry or simply crash into the ground or sea.

Nothing was left up there, no Space stations, no GPS systems, no communication connections, no internet relays, in fact all the new technology and redundant space junk since the launch of Sputnik one and Telstar was gone. It was back to the nineteen fifties in a single stroke.

Politicians and Scientists all over the world cried out “WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?” But nobody could hear them except of course people within hearing distance. No one could go anywhere because they couldn’t read a map or even know where they lived in relation to where they wanted to be.

The next day Alan Wainwright got up as usual, checked his Timex, looked out of the window, thought that he had better take a mac because it looked like rain, then pedaled to work.
That’s how things should be!