"2000TV" Story Comp RESULT!

[Bad City Blue]

Hello, fellow grexnixes

What wonderful, creative talent we have lurking on these pages. Indeed, 200AD fave Mike Carroll waqs once a humble entrant into the short story comp, so who knows.

Some great entries as usual, with the winning one by TIMOTHY!

Well done, Tim. PM me your address and I'll ask Rebellion to get you a GN sent out.

Thanks to all for entering, I really enjoyed reading them.

Next? Who knows.

Bad City Blue

CLOSEDOWN by TIMOTHY

Chuck Willigans had always dreamt that one day he would press the big red button and the screen in front of him - his screen - would turn to black. His work would be done; 50 years of watching the lives of fellow citizens, of reporting their every peccadillo to his superiors in Sector 8 PSU would be over and he could slip into a comfortable retirement. Maybe he would take up a hobby - synchronised macrame seemed popular at the moment - but more likely he would settle in front of the vid and start to watch fictional lives. He doubted it would be more exciting, and certainly not more fulfilling than the job he would be putting behind him.

When the time did come for him to leave however, things were not as he had dreamt. For a start there was the timing. He had wanted to keep going for another five years at least; time to watch the Knowles twins grow up, to see  Billiam Jenks come home from the cubes one more time and possibly even to send him back there. His body had decided otherwise though. He had noticed his failing eyesight over the last few years - a certain fuzziness around the edges, the screen brightness being nudged slowly upwards - but he had persuaded himself that he was still good at his job, that he still noticed things. Yet the figures spoke for themselves and an 8% drop in detection rates was not something that Justice Department would tolerate. Bionics had been considered but dismissed as not cost-effective and so he had been dismissed.

What had hurt him most though was the screen. He had sat in the same chair monitoring the same screen for half a century. It was his screen. Justice Department may have owned it but he had invested such time and love in the job they at least owed him the screen, didn't they? He could put it in the corner of his hab and think fondly of his job whenever he watched the soaps on it. And so he asked for permission to take his screen with him into retirement; and permission was promptly denied. They did not even allow him the closure of turning the screen off after his final shift. They just moved him aside and let his replacement have it. Where was the justice in that?

Chuck had given his life to Justice Department, yet still they treated him like this. Well somebody was going to pay. It took him a little while to plan, and he was struck several times by paranoia about the cameras that would no doubt catch him, but eventually he was ready. It was not to be a big protest but a poetic one. They had taken his screen from him, so he would smash theirs - the big one in the block lobby with its rolling reports of crime in the block and its pleas to call Judge Pal to report your neighbour. A screen for a screen. Despite the thought and the planning though it was not to be. It was a blurry-eyed Chuck Willigans who set off to the lobby and those blurry eyes did not spot Frannie Halbert from number 1423. He bumped into her as he left the el, and she wasn't about to stand for that. A cooking laser between the ribs and that was the end of Chuck. His only protest was to make a mess for the clean-up crew, but he would have been pleased that his death was reported on that screen.

[Timothy]

Golly gosh, thanks all. I enjoyed all of the stories this month. I'll message Mr Blue my details now.

[Heath C Ackley]

Well done Sire! A well deserved win.