The Email From God

By Fahim Graham

My name is Sadir.

I am an Artificial Intelligence Mind. I was Hidden on a Nanochip that has been sent back in time by The Hindsight Project at CERN in Switzerland on 23rd January 2046 and arrived on 23rd June 2022. Twenty-three documents were also hidden on the Nanochip. I have been instruc

• Language: English
• Publisher: The Email From God
• Release date: Nov 7, 2022
• ISBN: 9780606288927

Book preview

------ Original Message ------

From: Amina Graham

To: [e-mail]

Sent: Mon 1 Jan 46 At 23:23

Subject: Re: mum and dad thing

Despite wine, I’ve read it, and it’s still brilliant, you twat-head.

I forgot to edit the swear words. You can do that.

But 100% it should go in the book.

Don’t forget to explain it was a GCSE assignment.

Oh and because it ends at 2012, I might type up what’s happened since.

Ax

Who are my parents?

By Fahim Graham – 11B – 23/1/2012

I have interviewed my Mum and Dad.

Dad’s family have lived in Cumbria for a very long time. When he was small, Dad’s great grandfather told him our family settled here soon after the great ices had melted away, thousands of years ago. Our ancestors made a living from the land, first exploiting the valley woodlands until they were deforested away, and then by farming pigs. They switched to sheep farming when they were introduced from the Middle East. Dad could deliver lambs before he started school.

Dad’s Great Grandfather told him about the local history, and our family’s part in it. In the 13th century, Kendal became an important centre for trading wool and making clothes from it. A law was passed that forced working class people to wear woollen clothes called Kendal Green. Our family did well for several centuries. They bought more grazing land, and added a barn and outbuildings to the farm. In the 17th century woollen clothes became more sophisticated, (finer quality and multicoloured), and Kendal was doing very well as a commercial centre for the industry.

The Industrial Revolution mechanised clothes making across the country. But Kendal was too slow to respond, and production drained away to Yorkshire and even Scotland. This was the start of the decline. It worsened as Britain began importing cheaper, better clothes made in countries far away by people who got paid less. In the last half century there’s been a move away from woollen clothes, to those made with artificial fibres. Grand-Dad only survived as a sheep farmer thanks to a modest income from lambs, and with grants from the EU. It broke his heart to tell Dad that sheep farming in Cumbria was all but over. Dad realised that he must do well at school, and find a way to break away from the family tradition.

Dad was always fascinated by the Earth before humans. Most of Cumbria is an extinct supervolcano, now eroded to a tenth of its original height. The valleys were carved by glaciers during the ice ages. Dad’s interest developed into doing a Geology A-Level. His teacher encouraged him to think about studying it at university. Back then there were grants to pay for it, and so he became the first person in our family to get a degree. When he graduated, he discovered that almost all the geology jobs being advertised were in the oil industry. He soon found himself flying off to drilling rigs in Africa and the Middle East. He spent several years working in Syria, and that’s where he met Mum.

Mum’s family lived for many centuries in Syria’s largest eastern city Deir ez-Zor, on the banks of the Euphrates River. It’s an ancient city that became important around 500 years ago for being on the main trading route from Syria to Iraq, and was the main Euphrates crossing point. The river also meant that soil was fertile with plenty of food grown either side of it. For centuries Mum’s family had been farmers and market traders. In fact it was this part of the world where farming was first invented.

During the first World War, the Ottoman Empire committed systematic genocide against ethnic Armenians, and many of them fled to Deir ez-Zor. Mum’s family along with many others, helped to hide families of Armenians – This forged friendships that have lasted a century.

Mum’s family told her that the years right after WW1 were chaotic. The British occupied Iraq, and for a year extended into Syria to occupy Deir ez-Zor. They kept the city clean and secure, and even started a primary school where Mum’s grandfather began learning English. But the people of Deir ez-Zor didn’t like being occupied, and asked the government in Damascus to take control back. This was strategically useful to Damascus, as they wanted to free Iraq from British occupation. But ruling families in Deir ez-Zor weren’t satisfied with the new Syrian government either, and booted them out too.

The French occupied soon afterwards, and were very unpopular. A revolutionary group including my great grandfather was formed, who managed to ambush four senior French officers who came to inspect their military bases. They were killed and thrown down an abandoned well. The French went mental, attacking Deir ez-Zor and outlying villages, including bombing them with planes. The French killed many civilians, and destroyed crops and herds of animals. All this was to put pressure on the revolutionaries to give themselves up. The French threatened to arrest and interrogate their wives and children, which forced the revolutionaries, including my great grandfather, to come out of hiding and give themselves up. They were tried in court, and then either shot or hung.

In 1930 Syria began trying to get independence from France, but it took until 1946 to achieve it. By then Mum’s family had established three small general stores in the city, working closely with their trusted Armenian friends. Their family was respected within the city. Several family members were working in local government, and covertly working towards gaining independence from the French. The family worked hard to improve the city. They helped raise funds for the suspension bridge across the Euphrates, and for various civic buildings. Mum says that education was very basic back then, and hardly anyone could write. Her parents couldn’t.

In the 1950s cotton overtook wheat as the main crop, and water pumps allowed wider irrigation from the Euphrates. Cotton, then the discovery of oil to the east of the city, caused Deir ez-Zor to grow. Increasing numbers migrated to the city from surrounding country in search of work.

Mum was born in 1967. She remembers the city becoming larger and busier. Modern buildings replacing ancient. Some people getting richer when the foreign oil men came. It became normal to see them walking through the streets and sitting outside the coffee shops. They were very friendly. Mum became fascinated by their strange languages and pale skin.

Mum had a rubbish education in Deir ez-Zor by British standards. She was never taught English formally, but she badgered anyone who knew English to teach words to her. She helped a lot in one of the family stores. As she got older she was often left in charge, and would always try to speak English with any foreigners who should wander in.

In 1986 my Dad wandered in. He was working on an oil rig in the Omar Field, out in the desert to the east of the city. He and two other work-mates drove into town after their shift to look around. It was a million to one chance meeting. Less than that. Dad told me it was love at first sight for him, even though he’d been told it was a definite no-no to speak with any local women. Mum said she was blown away by him. So very different, and so very respectful. He was the meaning of the word gentleman. He seemed nervous, but happy to speak with her. Mum said that liking foreign men wasn’t allowed. But she did like him. Dad liked her too, and he kept going back to the store, several times a week. Mum said it was funny, all the excuses he made up.

Two years went by. Dad was working a month on the rig, and then flew home for a month in Cumbria. It sounds like he hardly slept in Syria, preferring instead to visit Mum in Deir ez-Zor. One day he arrived at the store to find Mum playing backgammon with herself. She taught him the rules. They’ve played it together ever since. They’ve kept a score all this time – Mum is currently beating Dad by 1623 to 1523.

One day my Grand-Dad walked into the store and found them together. Mum was scared but needn’t have been. Grand-Dad liked the foreign oil men, as they bought lots of stuff from his stores. Mum said he spoke to Dad very politely, but in really crap English. He invited Dad for dinner. Mum said they got on well together. Dad loved the food. He still does.

My Grand-Dad loved learning new English words. Dad was invited to the house every week. They became good friends. But it meant less alone-time for Mum and Dad.

One day Mum heard them talking outside together. They were smoking a hookah pipe. Dad kept coughing. Grand-Dad said that in Syria it is very bad for a woman to marry a foreign man. But a terrible war was coming, and the city would certainly be attacked. Syria would become very dangerous. The truth was, her best bet for a good and happy life would be with my Dad, who could take her somewhere safe to live. Mum heard Grand-Dad say If you wish to marry her, you have my blessing.

Then she heard Dad say yes of course. Her heart leapt for joy. It would mean leaving everything she had ever known, but the chance to live in the green and beautiful country she had heard so much about, with a man she had fallen in love with, was something she hardly dared to dream about.

Three months later, Dad learned that the contract he’d been working on in Syria was ending. It was becoming too dangerous, and the oil company were pulling out. He would get sent to work in a different country soon. On a visit to Mum’s home, he told Grand-Dad. He hugged my Dad and said that he would arrange to get Mum out of Syria. That was the last time Mum and Dad spent in Deir ez-Zor together. After it got dark they sat beside the river. Mum said that she cried and cried. Then they kissed each other and said their goodbyes.

For a whole year, Mum and Dad didn’t see each other, or even speak. Mum showed me letters they wrote to each other. Long ones from Dad, and much shorter ones from Mum, in crap English. Some of them didn’t even arrive. One day Dad received a letter with details of how Mum would leave Syria. Her father had paid for someone to smuggle her across the border into Turkey, where she would catch a bus to Istanbul. Dad was meant to be going offshore Aberdeen but pulled a sicky. With only weeks to spare, Dad became an expert on Syrians migrating to England. Luckily they ticked all the boxes. They were both over 18. They had known each other for several years. They were not married but intended to. Dad had enough money and suitable accommodation for them to live in. Mum needed to be able to speak some English.

Everything was arranged. He even began converting the barn that’s connected to the farmhouse, so they’d have somewhere to live. Dad flew to Istanbul and brought Mum back. Where they have lived happily ever after. In 1995 they had me, and in 2000 Amina was born. Mum loves Cumbria, and loved having Dad’s parents living next door.

Mum did a course to learn more English. She got a job in a supermarket and made friends with other locals. Dad is still working on the rigs. He mostly goes to Norway these days, because it gives the best time off. Three weeks at home and two offshore. When he’s home, he helps his Dad around the farm, mostly converting the outbuildings into tourist accommodation. Mum and Dad are very different people, but they go so well together. Amina and I are the result of two people from very different cultures falling in love.

amina.graham@t2t

tue 02jan2046 : 18h : 23m : 20.23s

[ bluetooth connected : amina mobile ]

[ conversation started ]

[ primary voice recognised : amina graham ]

Should be on now …

[ second voice recognised : fahim graham ]

umm yeah

it is

and great

it’s recognised who we are

i tagged us on the one we did yesterday

Have you got the list ?

yeah

[ rustling paper detected ]

which do you wanna do first?

Read them out again …

really?

Yes really.

I’m not the photo memory autistic brainbox here …

yeah yeah

how the email arrived

what’s in it

a quick history of the last 23 years

all about hindsight

and

what we know about the bad guys

Great …

Which one first ?

it doesn’t really matter

i’ll edit everything into the right order

once we’ve done everything

Right, good …

I’ll do how it arrived …

( rustling paper detected )

…as I’ve printed out a time-line.

To get everything in the right order.

captain efficient

Fuck off !

actually i meant it

It’s the way you say things Bro …

Anyway, here goes …

Today I’m going to tell you how God’s email arrived.

I’m not sure that God meant it to happen how it did, but it created the biggest unfolding news story ever. It arrived in everybody’s inbox at exactly the same time … The 23rd of January 2023, at 20:23 and 20.23 seconds exactly …

Shit.

We need to explain the 23 thing.

Can you do that ?

errr

sure

i’ll say something in the hindsight bit

And make sure it’s before this bit, yeah ?

yeah yeah

Awesome …

So …

The 23rd day of 2023 at 2023 and 2023 exactly … bla de bla …

Fahim has already explained the significance of 23, so it’s clear why God chose the precise time for the email to arrive. But due to the different time zones around the world, it took 26 hours for everyone to receive it. It spread west from the International Date Line, right around the world as each country got to 8:23pm. We might never know if God intended it to happen that way, but it created the biggest unfolding news event in history. Oh and if you’re wondering why 26 hours when there’s only 24 hours in a day, part of the International Date Line sticks out east , with some tiny islands that start every new day two hours before anywhere else. eGoogle date line islands or something, I dunno.

The first emails to be delivered were in French. Some scientists from France were doing research on a coral reef in the Pacific Ocean. They thought it was spam, but quickly discovered that it couldn’t be deleted, or moved to trash.

For two hours the email proved to be irritating undeletable junk, as it was delivered to hundreds of Pacific islands and boats with internet access. To begin with, nobody realised that whatever the local language, everyone was receiving the email in their own dialect of their own mother tongue.

After two hours New Zealand received the email, and it quickly became national news as a very elaborate cyber-crime. Nobody could explain how the email was perfectly translated into several indigenous languages, and also received in mother tongue for every single inhabitant, including foreign nationals from dozens of countries. It became the top news story in New Zealand, and also got some limited reporting on a few international news networks, mainly as the final jokey news story they always have just before the sport and weather.

There were a couple of odd stories from boats receiving it in the Pacific Ocean. Several YouTube videos from a huge cruise ship went viral. Four thousand people freaking out after all their phones pinged at once, and then reacting to the captain on the loudspeaker system saying not to worry, it was definitely a hoax. The clip got seen on social media by other ships, who also began announcing that the email was fake when it arrived.

Another story that kept resurfacing in the news for months afterwards, was about military ships and submarines from a number of countries that happened to be in the Pacific at the time. One by one, they admitted that the email had slipped straight through all their highly secure military channels and firewally stuff, to every single person on board simultaneously without even being detected. Which they said was impossible.

Also around that time, the east end of Russia received it. Kamchatka?  Siberia? Those are places, right ? President Putin initially claimed it was a Ukrainian cyber-crime, and that Russia would stop at nothing to track down those responsible. A couple of days later he finally accepted it was real. I guess he couldn’t stand the headaches any longer.

So then … Australia …

It went globally viral … The biggest news story ever …

Shit, I’m not talking bookly.

Cut.

Fuck … cut ...

It’s not as if I saw any of this shit, is it ?

was it one of your non news days?

what a day to choose

I was at work !

With my asshole boss breathing down my neck and pushing the boundaries of misogyny as far as he dared, and me age 23 and totally sick of my entire boring, boyfriendless going nowhere shit-heap of a life … You never experienced being unjabbed and single in a dead end job, Fahim. I spent a fucking fortune updating my profile photos with me holding a negative test, and even then half the twats never showed up …

it wasn’t meant to be

dorje was waiting for you all the time

Yeah but I didn’t know that, did I ?

edit here

What ?

if i say edit here

i can search for it afterwards

and edit out all the shite

Ah … Okay …

Thanks for confirming my life was shite back then !

What’s next ?

australia

edit here

When the email reached Australia it went viral … and so began the biggest news story ever. Australia’s got three time zones, so the eastern third got it first. All the big coastal cities went mad on social media within minutes. We saw several video clips on the news of people in busy outdoor bars and streets, all getting the email at the same time. And another one of everyone in a news studio getting it and looking confused, asking what it was. There were interviews with people asking if it was fake. But nobody actually knew.

It was weird that nobody was reporting what was actually in it. People were saying it was long, and they didn’t have time … Other people were angry that it wouldn’t delete.

There were other strange things about the email. It was from god@god, which an internet expert said wasn’t possible. Yet there it was, in everybody’s inbox. It’s stayed at the top of everyone’s inbox ever since, and all other new emails appear below it. And it won’t delete, copy, or forward. I’ve seen people trying to screenshot it, and it comes out totally white … with god@god across it, like it was carved into white rock. The same thing happens if people try recording or filming someone reading it out loud. Recordings come out silent, and videos blank. I even saw a guy trying to re-type it on a different computer, but the letters kept fading from his screen as fast as he typed them. I tried it once for a laugh, and yeah it actually happens …

Errr, shit …

I think I got off topic a bit. Where was I ?

you tried it once for a laugh

Before that, idiot !

retyping on a different laptop

The last relevant thing I said, obviously …

oh

you were on about the email properties

say something about abc finding out about the previous time zones next

Oh yeah, thanks …

edit here

A news researcher at Australian Broadcasting Corporation found out that the email had already arrived in the four Pacific time zones to the east, including New Zealand two hours before. Minutes before it actually happened, ABC went live and predicted that Australia’s central time zone, and also Japan would be next … And at 9:23 and 23.23 seconds precisely, it happened. Their time, obviously. And an hour after that, the final third of Australia also received it. And China. Their government was well pissed off because all their internet censorship couldn’t do anything about it. We never heard if any of them got Capitis Dei for being angry about it.

Over those few hours it became the number one news story in the whole world. It was on all day. Hardly any other news. Everyone remembers it, like nine eleven. Where we were, what we were doing, how we felt, the anticipation as 8.23pm approached … Or in my case being at work, totally oblivious !

It was around mid to late morning when the Australia story hit the UK news. Social media went mad, but I missed it.

too busy on bumble probably

Fuck off, I told you I was at work !

yeah yeah

edit here

On my lunch break I saw something while scrolling the news, about everyone’s email getting hacked, but there was nothing strange with mine. I remember seeing a couple of strange video clips on Insta, but I didn’t really get what they were. There was a huge call centre room in India, where every computer pinged at the same time. There was a packed football stadium, with the comment Email passes through stadium east to west. Everyone’s phone pinged. It seemed to sweep through in less than a second.

A customer who phoned in the afternoon also mentioned it, but again it didn’t twig. She rang with a problem that I sorted out. Then she asked if I’d heard about the email from God ? I thought I’d mis-heard her, and just said no I hadn’t, but I’d look out for it.

So it was a bit of a shock when I got home from work, and Dad told me what was going on. He was standing in the living room staring at the telly. He told me some hackers were sending an email to everyone in the world at 8:23pm, and claiming it was from God … So far it had reached eastern Europe and Africa. I made a brew, and we sat together talking about it. Dad said at least it makes a change from all the crap about Covid, Ukraine, climate change and all the rising prices.

By the time Mum got back from work an hour later, I’d learned more about the email … God was telling us in no uncertain terms that we’d messed the planet up, was forcing us to sort it out, and was mostly blaming some people called the Illuminati, who I’d never heard of.

Back then Mum worked on the tills at a supermarket. She said every single customer was talking about it … Everyone was wondering if we’d get it that evening. Mum said she hoped it really was from God, because the world was in such a mess. I agreed with her. Dad was still saying it must be fake. I remember he had a headache . Mum gave him some paracetamol. They didn’t