Dystopian Tales

By R G Hewitt

Two stories about changing the world from what it is now, in the first one, and from what it might easily become in the second. The first sees two ordinary people (with brief but essential assistance from an alien) perform a Global Robin Hood style transformation of the inequities that corrupt human life and happiness. The second, set in Australia, tracks one man's journey out of anonymity and tyranny into love and heroism.

• Language: English
• Publisher: R G Hewitt
• Release date: Sep 26, 2021
• ISBN: 9781005229672

R G Hewitt

A 74 year old psychotherapist who started writing fiction 2 years ago and now can't stop.

Book preview

Chapter 1

It was better now. He'd give them that. The street outside his room was quiet except for the shuffle of feet passing by and the odd murmur of conversation. It was only a month ago, maybe six weeks, that he'd turned off the light and watched, through a gap in the curtain, as two men raped a girl on the pavement a few feet from his window.

He hadn't done anything, had let the curtain fall back and had gone to his laptop, put on his headphones, and carried on watching a YouTube video, what it was about he couldn't remember. He felt bad that he hadn't done anything of course but he didn't know her so why would he risk getting knifed for someone he didn't know. He told himself that if he'd known her he might have done something but he wasn't convinced that he would have.

Everything had changed since they came, and he was glad, relieved. And it kept on changing every day it seemed. He couldn't know for sure but he was getting the impression that he was being given the facts, told the truth about what was happening and he was finding it hard to adjust. He was accustomed, as was everyone else he knew, to disbelieve the news in all its disguises, both mainstream and alternative. It was disconcerting to be confronted by information that might turn out to be true and that had not been designed to make him believe something that was to someone else's benefit.

They had released something into the atmosphere. They said it was some kind of virus and gave a lot of scientific detail that he didn't understand. They said that it altered a part of the brain called the amygdala and that it would solve the violence that had become endemic in society. That was the word they used; endemic and he'd looked it up and it was true. It had been endemic and the woman on the pavement would no doubt have agreed with the use of the word.

Violent crime had disappeared overnight, literally. Everyone got a little sick, from a fever mostly, and had woken just fine and healthy in the morning. He could imagine the dark creeping slowly across the world and the billions of us falling asleep and then waking refreshed as the half circle of sunlight swept over us again. And we were changed, altered in some way that was imperceptible, internally at least. But externally? That was soon obvious to everybody.

At first, we were like mice checking that the cat had really gone. Then we began to venture out after dark again, a few in the beginning but very soon we reclaimed the streets and the cafes and bars reclaimed the pavements, squares and plazas.

He was hesitant at first. In fact, he was closer to terrified, as were most people. They were aliens after all and they shrouded themselves in mystery. He knew of them only what everyone else knew of them and that was from the sound of their voices. They announced themselves from orbit and surprised or rather shocked both astronomers and the military because neither knew that they were there. Impossible, they said, as if denying reality could change it.

'I hope you will forgive the intrusion,' they said, through every electronic device on the planet that had a speaker and some that didn't. The announcement was in English in most places and Chinese in others.

'We noticed that you might be in need of some assistance and came to offer our help. Please don't be alarmed, we mean you no harm. In fact, we think that even if we did you are quite capable of and talented at harming yourselves without advice from outside.'

He was offended when he heard this. But after his offence had died down he had to admit that they had a point.

'We will be sending items down to the surface. Please believe us when we say that these are not weapons. They are a gift that we think you will appreciate, and it would be pointless if, in mistrust, you were to attempt to retaliate.'

Russia, North Korea and Israel did hastily re-target nuclear missiles on areas in space where they believed the aliens might be. Those rockets were now undoubtedly wandering through the solar system looking for something to destroy.

Thousands of these gifts fell to earth and the whole planet seemed to clench its combined sphincter in fear. Nothing happened. They just sat there apparently inert, but they weren't inert. As the aliens later explained, the gift they sent us was the virus that these little modules breathed out into our atmosphere. He assumed that they didn't tell us that they were giving us a virus until after we could see what it did because they didn't want us to panic. They were right in that, he decided, because if we'd know they were releasing a virus our combined sphincter would have been shitting itself.

The amygdala, he mused, who knew it was such a problem for us? I didn't even know I had one.

Chapter 2

Then they went quiet. Most people assumed that they'd gone but we couldn't be sure because we hadn't seen them arrive had we.

It was summer and he sat outside the café with a cappuccino and a croissant and scrolled through the news on his phone. For more than a week now this had been an uplifting experience for him and, he assumed, for everyone else.

The Taliban have stopped thrashing women accused of adultery. How does that work? Thrashing was undoubtedly a violent act but it was a judicial punishment, at least it was according to Sharia. So theoretically it wasn't a violent crime. Perhaps the thrasher had to be driven by a kind of righteous anger to carry out the sentence. If that was so, then it made sense that his rearranged amygdala wouldn't allow him to do it. Whatever the reason, he felt pleased for Afghan women, not because they could now feel free to cheat on their husbands but if they were tempted at least they could try it out without fear of being publicly whipped.

The news from Australia was curious. That country was still caught up in a futile attempt to eradicate the Covid virus, drive it to extinction as if it was rabbits or fruit flies. The rest of the world had looked on in disbelief as lockdown and curfews had gradually cowed the Aussies into submission. Protests and dissent had been squashed by fierce policing and massive fines and imprisonment, but something was changing. People were