B l a c k B o x

Udine Crali 1939

When they kicked back against the influx; their inherent racism was brought to bear on the fact that their gang no longer ran the street.
Immigrants out! was the mantra of that England First brand of patriotism, long nurtured as fodder by the aristocracy in order to always keep an army ready to defend their walls of money. When they looked at themselves (if indeed they ever looked at themselves in anything but carnival mirrors) they saw themselves as two-fingers-up-to-the-French; Bovverboys vs the Yardies; mods vs the rockers; the mythology that had been served and re-served for general cultural consumption and regurgitated at the drop of a top hat and tails; a delusion of skinheads, the English fetish with the fascist model of crowd control.
They dealt with the diverse cultural mix that comes with what should be an enlightened society by performing their violence only in situations where they outnumbered their victims. Not for them that passive-aggressiveness so lovingly practised by the aspirational classes; they had no aspirations; they knew their place; not for them the draughty halls of intellect; they were content in their misery; content to dish it out in beer banter and aggressive comradery; everyman’s friend up until you crossed that line that’s drawn at the end of their knuckles and toecaps.
But even these pork-fed patriots with those centuries of accumulated ignorance inflicted upon them by their landlord rulers; even by their wilful embrace of their own peasant status; even they were never a match for real violence. Even those legendary gangsters; those Crays and their like; with their inherited understanding of the psychology of violence; the unpredictable back alleys of keeping your mouth shut/saying the right thing; even they were no match for the weight of the Kleptocracy; dangerous: those landlords themselves; the ones who own this fetid little island; sucking the life from their labouring peasants.

Back then the looming prospect of WW3 was killing the world: people were dying in anticipation of nuclear annihilation. The concept of peacetime had been subsumed by the delusion that WW3 had not yet begun.
Force-fed a nauseating brand of jingoist bonhomie; delivering information overload with updates every 15 minutes; productivity boosting health tips rammed down throats lubricated with hi-protein drinks designed to enhance that narcissistic self-obsession and the blind belief in wealth and earning as status.
When it came time to get their hands dirty, most came up short on practical skills and many more were obliterated as a result of lost heritage, lost analytical skills, lost abilities to adapt.
Back then the powers did their dirtiest work during the emergencies; emergencies both genuine and manufactured; emergencies that covered days and nights of people being encouraged to stay indoors for fear of some incoming storm; some super-cancer causing solar event; some virus concocted by Fu Munchu that threatened a global pandemic; some super trojan constructed by some deep web hacker cult that threatened a global software panic… you get the picture.
This is when they removed the basis for any sort of benevolent society; ripped it from beneath the feet of the very people they’d cultivated to get them into power.

The streets at its edges are empty except for us and those hard-faced armoured forces employed by the city.
Heading east toward Greenwich, the MagLev 3.0 shudders comfortably on its magnetic cushion. Naz had the bike’s body hacked to accept a bigger drive; the increased size of the drive meaning that the bike gives off a comforting low volume percussive roar above the rattle of displaced stones on the road.
Naz appreciates the inefficiency of that power-bleed to sound, considers it worth the energy trade off.
In addition, the BodyHack boys in Woolwich, for a large chunk of Naz’s accumulated credit, had laced the bike with crypto-shelling ping responders that discourage all attention.
Naz’d had them work on his helm too – grafting in a firewalled core that communicates only with the Maglev and, through me, the customs gates that have been put in place for the purpose of our commerce.
Surrounding that firewalled core is an XO of legitimate data – bank, insurance, security status, social media – in the name of Norman Bray.
If you’re so inclined you can read the following from his headstone in Nunhead cemetery: Norman William Bray 1839 - 1843, “Taken by Angels”.
Taken by angels.
There’s a farm run coming in fast from Essex and we’ve got to get past the Barrier and down to the slipway to oversee the unloading. The grumbling of the Anglo’s will perhaps be abated by the delivery of eggs, bacon and beef and booze for their Sunday pig-out. The Anglos are an insular lot these days; don’t get out much, but are willing to pay for deliveries.
Just the way we like it.
In this light, and from this vantage point on the riverbank, Greenwich Peninsula looks like some long-dead insect – its carapace of glass and plastic rotted away from the inside; in the foreground the dome’s black skeleton of burnt and rust.
We took them out at the beginning: those suited and pampered warlords who thought they could keep their island of opulent privilege in the centre of bandit country.
They withdrew to the Isle of Dogs where they still own the westward underground, use it for their private transports but only as far as Westminster and no further North than Tottenham Court Road.
Most residents of the jagged blade of apartments along the Eastern riverside of the Greenwich Peninsula remain despite, or because of, the loss of the transport system, finding that all they need is in and around what was originally named amid the dread and optimism, The Millennium Village.
Behind us, the rising sun graces the east facing towers of Canary Wharf with tarnished memories of gold. Visible from so many locations south of the river, those buildings act as a compass point for the unconnected map-reader.
They’re not in as good a condition as they once were for sure; gone the pastel painted facades surrounding the residential prisons of the late empire (dead but kicking yet); gone the red aircraft warning lights that once adorned the high and mighty skyline; gone the belief that electricity is a human right.
They got off better than the square mile itself: gutted during the Covid-19 pandemic and the riots that followed; reduced to a concrete, steel and broken-glass façade.
But there on the Isle of Dogs the satellite dish receivers remain, still able to communicate with those few remaining satellites. Those dishes were well defended during the Re-zoning. The Isle of Dogs was easy for them to defend, especially with the amount of fire-power they had available. Walled themselves in; arms around the money.
Fuck them. We don’t need them. We don’t want their money nor do we want the bedraggled remains of the what was the financial crisis. Nor do we need those satellites now incapable of delivering even rudimentary GPS.
We run on Wifi.
On Greenwich Peninsula the ever-present wind whistles a tune through the kite cables anchored to the Dome’s remaining masts; a tune familiar to those who work there to administer the recharging facility and the batteries stored there under what’s left of the structure.
Between us and the Dome’s carcass, the black box remains weirdly clean considering the devastation wrought on this citadel during the second uprising. The original windows were removed and the perimeter secured with high voltage.
We keep a regular watch on this area.