Note: this story will be serialised on royalroad.com if you would like to read further chapters in the coming weeks. Visit https://www.royalroad.com/profile/328384/fictions to read more.
Chapter One
Far away, in a world not unlike this one, a young furry creature began to gain the power of insight.
It wasn’t so much of a ‘now I know how protons and neutrons converge to form atoms’ sort of insight, but more of a ‘I feel rather like I could quaff down a large amount of cheese and crispbread, and I wonder if there’s anything good on the telly’ type of thing. Which was quite unnerving for this tiny, miniature, decidedly un-statuesque, and all-over hirsute alien creature, for no other reason than the concepts of cheese, crispbread and telly (and whether there was anything on one) were entirely foreign to it. As well as that, for that matter, was the ability to form thoughts in sentences in an entirely stuffy, foreign language – and even the concept of language altogether, since before now, this really quite miniscule animal, had previously only communicated through telepathy in a sort of futuristic binary code.
Nevertheless, this teeny little fuzzball with legs brushed off these strange thoughts, and went about his day, which involved hunting for even tinier creatures in the underbrush, right at the bottom floor of a heaving forest canopy, located in an tropical rainforest on a completely foreign and undiscovered planet. But try as it might, it couldn’t seem to shake a strange craving for a nice big helping of strawberry sponge cake, and a fast game of french cricket in a Salisbury backyard.
As it happens, in fact, this wasn’t a particularly isolated event. All over this small, lusciously green (with hints of purple, red and lovely big blue oceans) planet, other creatures of great and small statures (and several species of semi-conscious moss, too) were starting to think in a way that could only be described as, well, English.
Tall flamingo-esque-looking animals with boggly eyes and wings made of a sort of skin meshed like crepe-paper began arguing about the average goal scores of South London football players, and had the ineffable urge to buy a pair of sturdy wellingtons ‘because it’s a bit wet out.’ Indeed – the weather was a bit wet out, and had been for millennia – particularly since these lanky beaked beanpoles were wetland creatures who had been born in and lived their entire lives loping around in a knee-deep fluorescent bog, where constant rain was a feature, and not a bug. Bugs – or what can be passed off as bugs on this strange planet – also formed a large part of their diet, though they couldn’t help but wonder whether the whole thing was a bit unrefined, and whether they could be better enjoyed crushed into a pate and spread onto crackers.
A colossal mammoth-like creature (though in this instance, with tusks where their eyes should be and eyes where their nostrils ought to be located), in much the same way had felt an undeniable urge to read up on the misgivings and latest pratfalls of something inexplicable named the royal family in the equally as inexplicable tabloid press, as well as the private lives of certain reality TV show contestants (all concepts that appeared with no logical context for which they could base their understanding on). Which was particularly inconvenient for the mammoth-like creature, since at that very moment, it was being coaxed onto a cliff-edge by a tribe of bipedal simians with spears, presumably so that they could use the height of the cliff to off the poor creature and eat it.
But the mammoth shouldn’t have worried, because this cosmic explosion of Englishness hadn’t missed his tool-using upright-walking pursuers. Who were all struck with embarrassment at the loincloths they were wearing and began asking each other where the nearest TopShop was so they could buy a smart pair of jeans, a T-Shirt with a logo on it and some crisp white sneakers. When one of the hunting party realised that he didn’t have a watch on, it caused instant pandemonium amongst their ranks, as the watchless hominid became immensely panicked that it didn’t know whether or not he’d missed the latest episode of EastEnders, which he had been most looking forward to watching.
Meanwhile, on another mostly green and blue planet many light years away – known as Earth – a brilliant but absent-minded scientist named Herman Smithy turned beet-red onstage in front of a rather large audience of billionaires. After receiving many millions of dollars of funding over many years, he had been absolutely sure that that the machine that he and his team of thousands of physicists, engineers and mathematicians had built would certainly have done it’s job – that job being to upload a rat’s consciousness to a computer, therefore giving it the gift of a figurative immortality (for as long as the computer wasn’t turned off, or the memory was wiped, that is). And it was particularly embarrassing, since many of his billionaire benefactors were particularly invested in the applications of this sort of technology in how it could potentially be applied to themselves (and their favourite mistresses), because they hadn’t spent all this time accumulating all that hard currency just to leave it to their snivelling progeny.
Sadly, instead of the fabulous spectacle he expected to occur, Herman’s rat sat in his cage, hooked up with wires to the computer, defiantly in possession of his own mind. It remained rat-like in its behaviour, doing ratty things, like sniffing about and scratching itself while the computer screen above, which was supposed to now display a life-like rat avatar, remained disappointingly blank, save for an error message that Herman hadn’t seen before.
But in fact, Herman’s experiment wasn’t entirely without consequence. At that exact moment, millions of Britons had woken up that day with an urge to live like animals – very strange animals. In fact, over the next few hours, unbeknownst to Herman and his cadre of Billionaires, complete and utter chaos was beginning to spread across the entire country, as people dropped what they were doing and started sniffing lamp posts, galloping like wildebeests and trying, with limited success, to fly. Sadly, and in particular for those who had taken to learning to fly, one of the immediate consequences of this was that the mortality rate nation-wide went up significantly, and continued to accelerate as the hours went on. People had begun to adopt the different characteristics of different animals on an African Savanna – each separating into groups based on their perceived order in the food chain, and acting accordingly. Some people hid, some people grazed – and some people hunted.
The exact point where Herman knew that something had gone wrong was around about 12pm, after he had managed to get home unscathed (he had certainly noticed some people acting strange, but nothing entirely out of the ordinary – he did live in South London after all). But when he noticed his elderly neighbour, Edwina Higgins, with her arthritic fingers in a claw-like grip around one of the very top branches of the Elm tree on his side of the fence, he started to think that perhaps something had gone awry. He watched in wonder as she quite happily stripped pieces of bark off the tree trunk, licking the ants that she found there and eating them.
It was at this point that the beginnings of a realisation started to pour into Herman’s head. It went something like this:
Edwina Higgins = acting like monkey
(this = strange)
‘Mrs Higgins,’ he started feebly. Are you alright?’
Mrs Higgins turned quickly and inspected Herman, quickly deciding that he wasn’t of interest. She then made an aggressive hissing noise and continued on with her business of eating ants and holding onto branches.
‘Do you want me to call Derek? It’s just that you’re awfully high up in that tree there, and I don’t think it’s awfully safe, especially at your age.’
Derek was Mrs Higgins’ son the Doctor. Mrs Higgins now paid a bit more attention to Herman, this time beating her chest and hooting at him. Herman immediately regretted his remark about her age.
‘I think I’ll call Derek. Not to worry, help is on the way.’
As Herman started dialling Derek’s number into his phone while fixing himself a nice cup of tea, his mind began to oscillate some more, going something like this:
My experiment = mind transfer
(This = similar to Mrs Higgins’ behaviour)
The phone rang out. Herman left a polite voicemail, while peering out the window at Mrs Higgins, who had now taken to licking her cardigan with great enthusiasm. The mind cogs whirred again, this time with a soupcon of anxiety creeping into Herman’s subconscious. The manner of the whirring of the cogs went again something like this:
My experiment = failure on rat
Experiment success on Mrs Higgins?
He shook off that thought. What a terrible thought indeed. It couldn’t be seriously considered – the math was solid. But then again, not solid enough to warrant a success in his presentation. What if he was off in his calculations?
Herman hesitantly picked up a yellow marker he had been using to mark use-by dates on his tupperware, and began to slowly write out – on the window – the mathematical equation by which his contraption performed the processes that…(and it all gets rather complicated from there really and it doesn’t bear going into frankly) made the thingies (language dumbed down so as to not alienate anyone reading this) work in his machine. As Herman kept one wary eye on Mrs Higgins outside, who was now swinging lithely from one branch to the next (particularly commendable for a woman of 89), his writing became more furious, and more desperate. His thinking went a bit like this:
Equation = must be right
But,
Experiment = failure
Therefore,
Equation must be wrong
At a certain point, the entire window was filled with a long, overly complex mathematical equation, and at the very end, a single character was circled. Herman considered the implication of this character, and realised, to his horror, that he had forgotten to carry the one, which was entirely a ridiculous sort of mistake for Herman, someone in possession of 3 Phd’s to make, and one that sadly and immediately made Mrs Higgins’ behaviour make sense all at once, and all at once Herman felt a smidge concerned.
For to forget to carry the one would – instead of concentrating his Theta Ray at a simple rat, would instead cause the Theta Ray to travel back into the electricity source, and then out along electrical lines, which link up with telephone lines, with link up with cellphone towers, which would transmit brain swapping rays out indiscriminately, all across mainland Britain presumably.
Suddenly Mrs Higgins’ behaviour made a terrifying amount of sense, and Herman was unable to enjoy the fact that his machine most certainly worked, largely for the fact that due to a simple failure of arithmetic, the entire of London has been exposed to a completely proprietary, entirely dangerous mind swapping technology.
Herman consoled himself briefly with the idea that perhaps the problem was only limited to his own backyard, though a quick check of what was going on in the street outside his home confirmed that he was woefully, horribly incorrect in that assumption. His thinking at that point went along the lines of:
Herman = in a bit of a pickle.
Joe Greathead 