History Written By The Victors (Electric Dreams Entry)

“Ahh the control subject’s awake! Perfect, we can begin the documentation.”

The disembodied voice emanated from a small speaker in the corner of the ceiling.

“Sir, there is a microphone on your desk, please sit on the chair provided and state your name”

He glanced around the prison like cell. He was slumped against a bare white wall, the fabric of the bedspread soft beneath his palms. He sat on a small bunk, the aforementioned desk stood before a large mirrored window.

“There must’ve been some mistake, I’ve not done anything”

“Sir, please state your name”

“Chris Belford - I would like to exercise my right to a lawyer!”

“Your right to a loy-er? Please explain”

“My lawyer you know, the legal representative I’m entitled to have present when cops interview me…”

“Interesting, very interesting. I’ll inform your documentor of this development. She’ll be along shortly.”

---

Chris waited in the small room, the plain white washed walls unfamiliar. He nursed his sore head, groggy memories of the night before drifting through the cloud of stale alcohol. This was why he didn’t go drinking with Helena, what had she got him into this time..?

He wasn’t ashamed to admit he could identify the town he woke up in by the local drunk tank. Not this one though, he had to learn how to say no to that girl.

He groaned a little, wondering what day it was, how many angry messages his phone would light up with once he got it back.

---

“Chris Belford?”

The speaker cracked as the words broke the silence, jarring through Chris’s hangover. He slipped from the bed, easing himself into the metal chair.

“You the lawyer?”

There was no button, the microphone seemed to activate as he spoke.

“I’m your assigned documentor, Nooni Adams, would you be able to answer a few questions?”

“Would you…? Seriously lady, you have me locked up in here, no lawyer, what’s the deal?”

“We just need you to answer a few history questions, then you’ll be free to go”

“History questions? You shitting me?”

“I just have 75 questions for you to answer, then we’ll send you home”

“Fuck you, I ain’t answering anything til you tell me what’s going on”

There was a long pause, Chris keep his steady gaze on the mirrored glass, certain she would be looking back.

“Ok Chris, what would you like to know?”

“How about why you have me locked up here? Where ever this is?”

“We brought you here, to the Oaki Prediction Facility, so you could answer some questions.”

“What the fuck, is this even legal?”

“We are a government run facility Chris, this is all perfectly legal, now if you could just answer a few questions…”

“I’m not telling you anything, until you tell me what’s going on!!”

The speakers fell silent with a soft hiss.

“Dya hear me?”

Chris banged on the glass.

“You can’t just keep me here!”

He sank back into the chair, defeat washing over his exhausted body. A warm blanket of drowsiness crept over his mind, they had partied far too hard…

---

Chris struggled to open his eyes, forcing back the induced fog. His finger twitched, his arm came into vision, bound to a plush wooden chair.

He sat in a sumptuous room, deep coloured drapes adorned the walls, a rich mahogany desk sat before him.

“Hello Chris, glad to see you’re waking back up.”

He grunted a little in surprise, only just registered the dark eyed woman seated beyond the desk. Metal plating patchworked her bronzed skin.

“I’m Director Westpoint, welcome to the Oaki Prediction Facility...”

An uneasy fear came over Chris, this wasn’t just snide cops messing with the drunk tank.

“...Apparently you have some questions that simply must be answered?”

“What is this place… who are you…?”

“I see, it is not that you have questions that must be answered, but in fact, things you wish to understand?”

Pinching a velvet cloth from the corner of her desk with her pink skinned fingertips, she unmasked the translucent eye of a crystal ball.

“Is this… some kind of prank…?”

“Chris, all we want from you, is for you to answer a few questions, if you need to understand why first, I will show you”

She lifted the crystal ball, the light swirling like mercury through the glass, placing it in the middle of the table.

The silver tendrils entwined, giving way to an angular looking low building, windowless white.

“This is the Oaki Prediction Facility, where we are right now. Here, we channel the power of the spirits through science and biotechnologies to determine the required corrections and edits. We have created a unified planet, there were mistakes at first, some evils were apparently, quite necessary, but we are so close to the perfection we have been aiming for with the five year plan”

“Corrections, edits, five year plan… what are you talking about…?”

“I’m sorry, to be completely transparent, you are our first control subject, there is a lot to take in. Let me start again. Chris, this is not your reality, we have brought you here as a control subject.”

“Not my reality, what does that even mean, and hang on a minute, what’s all this shit about ‘control subject’, what are you going to do to me?”

“All we want, and I simply cannot stress this enough Chris, is for you to answer a few simple questions about the history of your reality. You really don’t need to understand why.”

“Well I simply cannot stress enough that I ain’t tell you shit til you explain what’s going on!”

Director Westpoint sighed, flexing her encased hands.

“I will put it in the simplest terms I can. You are in 2189, we have brought you to an alternate version of the future to answer a few questions about your past”

Chris stared at her in complete disbelief.

“Look, you’ve been talking crazy since I got in here, no way i’m in the future, fucking, prove it!”

Director Westpoint raised her metallic hand, indicating the calendar on the wall behind her.

“That the best you got?”

The crystal ball swirled, the image twisting before them. The pristine facility gave way to his house, the tipsy mailbox, the overgrown tree, it was just as he’d left it.

The image began to flicker, the house aging, the mailbox suddenly replaced with a shining new one, the house refreshed with yellow paint, extended, the tree pulsed, growing and shrinking in the flickering image.

A burning flame engulfed the ball, obscuring the house.

“What… what was that…?”

“That was your house, from the moment you left it, until now, in your timeline.”

“My timeline…?”

“Yes, the moment we brought you here, just before the bombs fell, we executed the latest series of historical edits, amplified WW1, prevented WW2, redirected the hands of revolution as required. The time lines have diverged”

Chris, his mind still slow from the grip of his hangover, finally grasped what she was saying.

“You’ve been changing history…”

“Yes, the most effective way to solve our current problems is to prevent them occurring. We managed, with the small edits, to map the changes to our present through more traditional methods…”

She waved her hand over the crystal ball, a myriad of images swam through the glass, before and after. Packed factories automated, humanity combined efforted redirected to science, arts, exploration...

“There were of course, a few unintended consequences. I believe you may know of… Nigella Lawson?”

“The sexy chef lady.. yeah..?”

“Very sadly, in one of the edits, we changed her irrevocably, after that, the food she cooked was so bad not even the dog would eat it, except for her borscht, it was to die for”

“But.. she’s still famous…”

“Is she…? See Chris, this is why we need you to answer a selection of questions.”

“Did it work… the changes… what did you create…?”

“A unified earth, a colonised solar system, so very, very much…”

---

She untied him once he started cooperating. The questions weren’t numbered, but Chris was fairly confident there were considerably more than 75, he sat there for hours, scratching his head, trying to remember the names, the dates she asked about.

True to her word, once he had answered the questions, Director Westpoint clicked her fingers, and a small door pushed open through the draped curtains.

“Chris?”

The familiar voice of Nooni Adams emanated from the doorway.

“Please come with me”

He followed the sound, ducking through the low door into a long corridor lined with portraits.

“See Chris, it was quite painless” Nooni greeted him.

Her dusky voice didn’t match her petite stature. Nor did her red hair, shaved above her left ear, revealed an arc of circuitry, connecting to an implanted eye.

Chris shrugged in reply, following her past a gold leafed frame.

“Who’re all these people?”

Nooni looked at him, her one natural eye widening.

“You must know Edmund and Adolphus? The Bavarian Priests..?”

He slowly shook his head.

“Never heard of them…

“What about this man, Sasha Lenin?”

“Sasha… Lenin?”

“Yes, the Russian Guy Fawkes…? He brought an end to the monarchy”

“The name half rings a bell...”

Nooni hurried ahead of him, her tiny heels tapping a beat on the marbled floor.

“Here, Wang Yaping, you must recognise her!”

Chris stared at the faded photo, a smiling woman in a blue space suit, standing in a vast desert.

“Never seen her in my life”

“Wang Yaping!”

She repeated the name, as though it would prompt a sudden memory.

“She was from your time! The first human on mars… to see it then, the rolling red dunes…”

Nooni’s eye took a dreamy distant glaze as she tailed off.

Chris glanced over pictures, hoping to recognise at least someone.

“So… is this everything you made happen…?”

Nooni smiled.

“It’s not quite that simple, we don’t make anything happen, the editors push here, prod there, we documentors take note of how it plays out."

She continued down the corridor, opening a heavy door tucked between the frames.

“Just through here, and we will have you home in no time”

Chris slipped after her into a large sterile room, a small chamber stood between two mirrored walls.

“Thank you very much for your cooperation, please step into the capsule and close the door, you will be returned to to your present.”

The surreal experience was getting too much, Chris readily stepped over the threshold, turning around to close the slide door. As he fingertip touched the glass, controls appeared, circling the transparent surface. About to press the arrow, he paused, a nagging thought growing at the back of his mind.

“What was it like, before you started changing the past?”

Nooni stopped, touching her finger to her head, tracing over the implant.

“It’s… hard to remember…”

Wow this was a really tricky one, it didn't come out how I hoped, I had hoped Chris may get a tour, or end up being recruited to help build their better future, get to see the hands on historical editing, and far more of the world created but the deadline looms, and i don't think I will manage another before the 1st, so here we have it, letting it go and moving on.

this is my entry to @tygertyger's #eletricdreams contest - there are still a few days left so check out the post here to see all the rules. The prompts were #1 it is the year 2189 your protagonist wakes up in a parallel reality where neither the second world war or the Russian revolution happened how does this impact this reality the protagonist finds themself in . What does this mean for the protagonist ? #2 a medium with a crystal ball #3 the story must include the sentence - “the food she cooked was so bad not even the dog would eat it, except for her borscht it was to die for ”.

_{Although I could swear when I had first saved the prompt it was 2289, clearly those future editors have been at it already! To be honest, I know this isn't great, and isn't what tyger had wanted so much, in that it doesn't directly show the cultural and societal changes, just hints at some of the changes accomplished, really a total cop out and cheat way to answer the prompt. But eh, here it is.}

Photo Credit by Pixabay User Candiix who has such a wonderful range of pictures, including felines, foals, flowers and fantasy females!

Edit: With @tygertyger's permission, we have a new (and hopefully improved) ending

_{I stole a bit of extra time at the expense of a very late dinner, but I much prefer this ending so not complaining!}