Hmm, interesting. Let me process. It's not that I don't believe you... But believing you doesn't come naturally.

It must be a hard wrap, being God. There's this delicate balance to keep. I guess it's like being a teacher. You want things to end up well, but you've placed the ball in their court. Independence is bittersweet.

Does it enrage you, seeing choices be made? Can you find ways, like the rest of us do, to look away from the violence, the narcissism, the cruelty?

If there's a reason for all this, I'd like to know.

A haiku may not be 15 words so this title offsets that

**

body on a bed

why is everything so wet?

it's over so quick.

**

The music is ambient, the lights are low. Scraping chairs fall into the beat of the soft jazz; the receipt emerging from the till yet another piece of percussion. I am sat with a laptop- the quintessential 21st century person.

Facing the entrance, I have seen every person who's entered the bottle shop since me. People come in alone, looking harried. Some come in unlikely partnerships whilst others look perfect for one another.

An email pings: something is expected from me. I type and click, my brain whirring. Productivity is a noble goal. I am excited for the buzz I'll feel when I achieve something, anything.

Breathing deeply, I press 'send' and take in the scent of frying ingredients, a real mix of vegetables and carbs. The door opens once more, a light December breeze aerating the space.

I am used to many things, having moved to Los Angeles, where anything seems to go. That doesn't stop a small gasp escaping my throat when this tall, mustachioed man enters, a firecracker scent reaching me from even meters away.

The barista audibly sighs, assessing the queue and balancing the lesser of two evils. He scurries from behind the bar, grasping the sleeved arm of the new presence. "The restrooms are this way," he scolds, the two men moving in tandem out of my view. A woman in the queue with a crop is already drafting her poor Google review.

Before he rounds the corner, the man catches my eye. A singular jet-black curl peeks from beneath a worn green cap. With a short wave of his wrench, he manages to connect with me for a mere second. Then, he's gone.

I recommence my tapping, waiting eagerly for the plumber to re-emerge. The barista clears the queue, again and again, as it goes from a matcha latte crowd to a local IPA crowd. The sun crests the building opposite.

Love follows a rubric; we know the rules. We have seen the films. We know the end goal.

Friendship, meanwhile, is chaos.

It's rich, it's hot. It burns like a fire. Sometimes it begins with a bang, with others slowly getting hotter over time. They are there, living their lives, and we love them without a guide.

This makes it all the more tragic if (when) they ever fall away.

It's hard to ask, 'Are we still friends?' so I ask the question in myriad ways. I probe, I plan, I like, comment and share.

The withdrawal is quiet. It's unsure whether it's final. My heart breaks slowly, piece by tiny piece.

I am English in America. I am a recovered anorexic. Suffice to say, thanksgiving is an unfathomable knot for me.

I asked, 'What do you do at thanksgiving?'

I was told, 'We eat.'

I asked whether there was an element of gratitude.

Multiple parties laughed. Some shrugged. I was told giving thanks was cheesy; they fed back that you might, if you had kids?

I read a little and spoke to some of my more left-wing friends. It turns out the holiday has deep roots in colonialism. The colonialism which continues to oppress the people who were here first. In a giftshop on a reservation, I leave saying, 'Happy Thanksgiving'. Thoughtless; I curse myself.

Spirals of regrets around a holiday that isn't mine. This feeling is alien and it sits on me as I pick at carrots with gravy from a paper plate.

We like to make ourselves obsolete.

There used to be a time when everything basic would take us so much time that a life could be comprised of doing things to keep ourselves alive.

Then we learnt that we could outsource some of these tasks to other people. We could share out the load and focus on honing our expertise somewhere specific.

For some reason (capitalism), we would now prefer to rely on things than ourselves or others. Ourselves and others? They require payment. They can make mistakes. But they also feel achievement, feel gratification.

I do not take umbrage with replacing a house servant with a Roomba, or a carrier pigeon with an iPhone. It's relieving to be able to ignore some tasks completely, understanding that they are just inherently done due to my status as a 21st century human.

But there is a line.

People are fighting. They are scrambling over one another's shattered egos, grabbing the ties of other smart-casual men, staring into grey, tired faces. 'I am competent,' they whine. 'Here is an example of my work,' they call into the abyss. Fake jobs open their wide jaws, sucking in AI-written resumes.

We once used to have purpose; now we fire computer-generated documents across the ether simply to secure a position sending more computer-generated documents across the ether.

I just want to sit and churn butter; is that so much to ask?

Every Sunday, I receive a box.

It comes on a small van, grey smog harumphing from its exhaust.

The box is made from thick cardboard; quality tape is wrapped around each gap. It takes me some time to open the box as I've never quite perfected a technique.

Once the packaging has been ravaged, I peer inside, four roughly ripped corners frame my face. At the base, an arms' depth away, sits an envelope.

I lift the envelope from the dead center where it always seems to sit, delicately peeling the wax seal.

A letter. To me. 'You are nothing'.

I learnt at a young age that bonds were complex. I learnt this lesson from Hobbes.

Hobbes, unlike my family, was reticent to connect. Not one to lie or exaggerate, he would prowl into the room only on his own accord. If the vibes were off, Hobbes would simply stand, cast a withered look, and leave.

Occasionally, Hobbes was close, his downy ribcage vibrating with each purr. He'd perch in the airing cupboard- close but not too much so. It told me, 'I am here'.

Since Hobbes, I am grateful for the kind of companionship that is deeply, subtly nuanced.

Nunney has a castle which, for some reason, fails to dominate the attention of any passer by. Nestled between said castle and an over-topiaried churchyard once stood a tavern. I use the word tavern rather deliberately; the patron’s slick use of ‘pub’ only worked from his own tongue. It was dank, low-ceilinged yet still decadent. Somehow, this became my sanctuary.

Once per fortnight, my grandfather and I would pack away our identities (those of embittered, recently turned enemies) and we would drive the twenty minutes of twisted lanes to this tavern. The day in question was no different: we sat, side by side, as we coursed through the Somerset country in curt silence. I slammed the car door petulantly as we parked, squinting to see through rays of sun that somehow made it through the castle’s pointless arrow-slits. I could feel my grandfather’s gaze boring through my inch-thick thighs but he hadn’t the gumption to make a comment. Of course I had not yet eaten today.

At the door, we left our histories on the grisled black mat. A bell rang, summoning the attention, but not the presence, of the patron. Fraser was a disturbing man, practically the sole member of staff that we would see. His skin a translucent grey denoting sickness, eyebrows slanted in permanent disapproval and voice deep with a Scottish lilt. He wouldn’t move from behind the heavy bar, looking down instead at the reservation book lit by a gas lamp. It would not have surprised me if those pages were made from animal skin parchment. Checking it was a habit. Of course we were there, but he seemed to like tracing his calloused finger down the page to find our names regardless.

He led us to a table in a private room, running us through its history for the umpteenth time. The history itself was no doubt fiction but it fit with the narrative of messy noise this man liked to live within. He used the wooden menus to gesture to a mediaeval mural unlit on the back wall. “It’s crucial that light does not reach this. Conservation is key when it comes to relics…” Each sentence failed to properly end; it often felt like he would reach a point and then decide we weren’t really worth his explanations. After several false starts at conversation, he would leave us to ‘settle in’.

Each visit, I would purposefully disrespect the patron. I was acutely aware that he rewrote the entire menu each week, with absolute attention to detail, trend and season. My obsession with food meant I was, of course, entirely informed on the inclination towards tart apple in starters. I was no stranger to the asparagus that’s so fresh at this time of year. Each fortnight I would place down my menu, assertively provocative, and order the caesar salad. Dressing on the side. Fraser wouldn’t even write down my order. His reaction paralleled grief. She can’t decimate my expertise in this way (denial)? How dare she (anger)? Would Miss accept just a slither less of the dressing (bargaining)? Why do I bother sharing my gift to a world so ungrateful (depression)? Finally, he would slink back to the kitchen (acceptance) whilst I bore the brunt of Grandfather’s glare.

This evening, again, was no different. I had worked very hard this week to curate my ever diminishing diet, and would probably barely touch the dressing today. I looked the publican directly in the eye on his return and placed my order with no regrets.

We had already accepted, however, his choice of wine. As we consulted his taste, you could see the satisfying scratch we had given his ego. Five straight minutes he had spoken, five minutes of barely audible sommelier babble which comfortably filled the silence between two with so much to say. Fraser, in the end, was the one to settle, despite pointed comments set up as inaccessible questions. And he had returned with a bottle coated in dust. It’s odd how the British see signs of taste and wealth in dilapidation. He blew the dust towards a musty window, pouring a glass for my grandfather to taste. I knew he had no understanding of wine, so watching his act always filled me with a bit of joy. It’s amusing to watch someone else belittled.

Then, the magic window opened. The moment wine touches our tongues, they become untied, spreading open an evening’s truce. Grandfather forgets, briefly, how irate my self-imposed torture makes him. I, in turn, let go of the immense reins of anorexia. We soften around the edges, falling into a more comfortable rhythm of observational chatter and recollection of memories. Bread arrives, warm and salted, and I don’t hesitate to tear a corner. Just a corner, but it’s a casual aside that would usually never happen. By the time I sat behind the salad, I was a different person entirely. I was a frequenter of restaurants, noticing the succulence of the chicken breast and how it complemented the salt of the pancetta. I revelled in how carefully each crouton had been doused in, no doubt homemade, olive oil. I dipped each leaf into the dressing, and even I could not deny that the publican had created something of wonder there…

We left as dusk was settling around the stuffy village. Fraser watched us from his same spot at the bar, and I wondered fleetingly whether he knew the significance of this outing. The outside now felt too small, tight around me, imposing somehow. The pithy candles in windows and bunting on gutters seemed insincere and I just wanted to be home. So we both paused, resuming our familiarly toxic roles and clicking back into an awkward dance that we now called life.

The first thing I noticed was a strange sound: a sound like the repetition of laboured breath, close but not too close. It had a deep timbre which I couldn't place. I didn't notice anything else. I sometimes think about how, in the absence of things, a certain emptiness of senses washes over me. That was what it was like. Not too hot, not too cold, not in pain, not, not in pain. Not anything, basically, just a person, listening in the darkness to a low-pitched, repetitive sound.

I opened my eyes and that was when the senses began to rush around me, like an augmented reality being built, brick by brick. The room was a pale colour, off-white, which made me instantly feel cooler. Tiny lines wove their way up the walls, intersecting and running out like roots, reaching up to a mottled ceiling. Cracks. The place was dilapidated. I was sat on the ground, which made me feel a dull ache sinking into my bones, as though I had been sat in the same position for a long time. Cautiously, I reached my hands beneath me, placing each palm flat on the marble floor and using the stability to push myself to my feet.

Now, I could have accepted the sound I was woken up by. I live in the kind of world which is full of noise, meaning I rarely dwell on the origin of the soundtrack of my life. However: marble? Really? Marble was the stuff of Ancient Greece, of cartoon Hercules confronting the statue of his father. It was durable in a way that no one bothered to seek out anymore. The coldness which crept around me felt partially linked to the properties of marble itself, and partially from a sense of disconnect and connotation.

My curiosity made my movements laboured somehow. I'd always expected a quick-paced panic to possess me in a situation shrouded in mystery, yet here I was, eyes narrowed, moving with hesitance and controlling my breath. The sound continued in the background. The room that I was in was small. Neglected. Relatively empty. There was a window, through which light was seeping, putting a spotlight on tiny particles of dust as they danced around me. Naturally, I tried to tug it open, a layer of dust transposing itself onto my sleeve in the process. It took three pushes for me to force the lower pane upwards; once it was free from its catch, it gained momentum and swung up to hit the upper frame. The sound suddenly stopped, to be replaced by wings, violently flapping their escape. The stray, mauve feathers clustered on the sill made me think perhaps I'd dismissed more than one detail I should have been able to process.

When I spun back around, the floor was no longer empty but rather littered with copious papers, all sepia stained and flickering in the breeze. I sat back down, against the wall, using my hands to turn the pages into less of an incoherent mess and more of a pamphlet. 'Not the window', 'Not the window', 'Not the window'... each page repeating the same phrase, not written, whispered, my hands speeding up, tossing each to the side until the last. 'The door'. The words echoed. From where, I couldn’t tell. With one eyebrow raised, something I have never been able to do deliberately, I cast an eye at this door. It was nothing special, old but not ancient, incredibly plain but heavy set. With nothing to lose, I got back to my feet.

Yesterday (maybe?)

"This is your final warning." The statement came out with little drops of spittle, which I watched until I realised that would land me with the knowledge of where they fell. "We have made plenty of defences of your decisions and it, frankly, is not sustainable..." Here, I opened my mouth, and was preempted by a look and a hand, outstretched to say no. "You are going to walk back out there and do your job, live your role, properly, professionally and without complaint. Do you understand?"

I have always found it quite interesting how often we are asked whether we understand, when the real question is whether we will comply.

I stood without saying anything, lips pursed, head bowed to signify a posture of compliance, and left the office. This was the office of Ms Cally Windstrup. She was not in charge of the department within which I worked, her seat was much higher. However, I had been on her radar for quite some time. I had been known to question everything. Sometimes verbally. Sometimes with actions which 'reflect poorly on the company'. On one occasion, I was even told that I had questioned the morals of the company with my choice of attire. I couldn’t pretend that wasn't a satisfying moment.

The route from Cally Windstrup's office to my booth felt to be a well-trodden path, you could almost see the tracks of my Doc Martens in the soft carpet. I trudged through several departments, unnoticed by anyone. Each department here was comprised of: the aforementioned soft carpets, part of a scripted ‘office’ physical aesthetic; a bank of booths in which workers could carry out their daily tasks and the whirring tech of a machine at work. Inside each department's monstrous cavern of computers existed the reason I was here, the world how people now knew it: 'Net6', known to some by its name, known to most, nowadays as purely 'The Internet'. As I passed 'Intelligence', I gave a monitor a nudge. My least favourite department. I thought of them as 'spies with no eyes'.

The computers took up most of the space, and most of my time. A forest of bulky boxes rimmed with flashing lights and labelled buttons. Knowing which to press was now hardwired in my mainframe, though I probably couldn’t explain it.

I walked around this office on a ridiculously regular basis. There’s a phrase about familiarity where the claim is made that the action could be done blindfolded. I genuinely had. I’d zoomed around it on my wheeled desk chair once, only to find that, when I came back the next morning, it had been replaced with a mahogany chair with four solid legs. That didn’t bother me too much, considering they’d been replacing the wheely chair every day to cover up the fact I’d been picking out its stuffing. One morning, I’d dug around in a cupboard, found a megaphone and staged a lone revolution. The next day, even the room where the cupboard had been was gone. I’d entered this office in a short tartan one-piece one day which I’d sewn together from my dad’s old suits. That one got me an almost instant demand to Windstrup’s office, and I’m sure it didn’t help that I treated the walk that day as a catwalk.

The reason that this particular memory has stuck was not the request to Cally Windstrup's office, that was a regular jaunt. I had been tracking the changing shades of her nail varnish in my journal. They changed weekly. I would also not have remembered the trek back to my booth. I am surprisingly mobile for a Net6 employee. No, when I got back to my booth, and I eventually managed to find a position on the solid chair which was close to comfortable, I found a letter on my desk which was not typed. I remember this letter, its stiff manilla envelope and the blotted curve of its cursive. I remember its sharp corners and the heaviness which readjusted its sense of gravity as I rotated it in my hands. I don't, though, remember opening it.

title: Natural

genre: Light Sci-Fi

age range: YA

word count: 80,175

author name: Hannah Keogh

why your project is a good fit: It's new, it's fresh and it's taking a look at the way tech is heading in the future

the hook: Where is the world heading and is it healthy?

synopsis: Darcy, our young non-binary protagonist, wakes up in a room. As their memories return to them, they try to work out where they are and, more importantly, why. Only days ago, they had been administering the inner workings of the alternate reality technology that has come to dominate their world, 'The Net'.

Through corridors and rooms where experiences don't seem to add up, Darcy is allowed the freedom to experience life in a way they never have before, especially when they bump into Niccolo, a cynical young man who seems to have even less of an idea than Darcy themself. The pair embark on a journey through a slightly chaotic world, building a relationship that may not have been possible in the ruins of the world they had both been accustomed to.

A story in two parts, 'Natural' is a love letter to all that is human- the tiny things that add up to make life real.

target audience: young people who care about the world

your bio: I am an educator from the UK, currently living in California. I used to be a teacher and now I work in educational policy. I read a lot and write book reviews which I share on Instagram

platform: Instagram @hanreadslots

education: Master's level education in politics in the UK

experience: amateur writer

personality: ADHD extrovert

hobbies: reading, writing and outside exploration