Worthing Flash

It started in a dream. I dreamt that I had downloaded a trending game "Evil Empire". It had already spawned two lookalikes, "Vile Empire" and the satirical "Live Empire". For good measure, I downloaded them too. When I woke up I found that my phone had downloaded "Evil Empire" all by itself. These smartphones really are smart. Then I tried to turn to other apps. It wouldn't let me. I swiped up, down and sideways to no avail. Then I tried to reset the phone. It had disabled that too. I could not switch it off and I couldn't turn the volume down although the music was really annoying. I turned on the radio. Radio Four reported, "Britain has been the victim of an unprecedented cyber attack. It is reported that mobile phones have been incapacitated by a video game called..." And there it stopped and the "Evil Empire" music started to play. I tried to turn the radio off. It wouldn't turn off. So I tried another st...

Surprise! I drove through a fog made denser by the smoke from the bonfires. There was something about this particular year which seemed to have brought out in people an insane urge for pyrotechnics, filling-dislodging bonfire toffee and quaint nostalgic penny for the guy stuff. Or maybe it was because I hadn’t been back home for a while. I'd deliberately booked something at the Royal Exchange so that I could escape. It was my last night in the old country, and would be my last trip home. My shock, in the aftermath of the pile up ahead, was partly owing to the smash itself and partly to what I saw when I left the car and walked the few yards to the scene of the accident. There was horror, mingled with a desperate urge to laugh my head off, when I saw the blood streaked face of the driver of the car at the end of the pile up, by which time I ...