It’s the year 2525 and man is still alive. The Bridgwater Town Council was meeting for its annual ‘Smile and Be Happy’ event. This year they were reviewing the council minute books from March 2026. It was a time when we didn’t even have ‘Zimbobble’, the now widely practised ability to replace your head with that of someone else to instantly understand their point of view. A practice that meant we hadn’t seen a war since the ‘Highbridge Unpleasantness’ of 2312. Sadly, there are no squirrels left due to an AI malfunction.
In March 2026 there were apparently Italian students visiting from Bridgwater’s twin town Priverno. They were here to do ‘work experience” (great laughter as work had been abolished in 2432 and replaced with AI push button personal use household drones).
Town Council Leader Smedbot25 pulled out a dusty file on what was known as ‘paper’ (this was in the days when there were still trees) and laid it before the other councilbots.
“Ah ha!” he declared “Here is a report from Eastover, now Floodsector 12. It seems the Italian students did a traffic survey which counted the number of ‘cars’ using the different roads and quite clearly the sum total of ‘4’ using Salmon Parade demonstrates the pointlessness of the change of direction of traffic flow and provides evidence to reverse this decision. Quick, we should get this to County immediately as they are still considering if to do this or not”
Another section of the report showed a strange over abundance of shops in the town centre which seemed to be either duplicating each other or having no customers. It was noted that in Italy in 2026 they had similar places and they were known as ‘Lavanderia’ translated as ‘washeteria’. But what purpose could shops that just ‘cleaned your money’ serve? No one knew. And nobody needed a haircut. As hair had been found unnecessary in the late 23rd century and abolished.
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Another report with neatly drawn pen strokes 5 at a time denoted over 360 potholes in the West Street section of the town alone. Why would they need so many? The report noted. One was so big that a family from Yorkshire was living in it and had been declared a Home in Multiple Occupation.
Around the town the report noted many individuals sitting or sometimes laying on the streets sustained only by kind donations from passers by or replenished by liquid from metallic containers which when tested had proved to lead to intoxication. The councilbots puzzled for a moment. Surely there shouldn’t be people homeless as in 2525 the AI council Gold, Silver, Bronze and Putty award scheme allocated the number of living spaces each year according to the number of people who needed them. They stamped it ‘possible error’.
It was good for the councilbots of the mid 2500’s to look back on a simpler time in their town’s history. Could they learn from the mistakes of the past? Did the research from the Italian ‘helpers’ provide an insight into a bygone age which was no longer with us?
The meeting closed and five minutes later the councilbots had jetpacked themselves to the paradise island of Hamp with its splendid sandy beaches lapped by the gentle waves of the Sea of Petherton.
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“And what was ‘Italy’ ?” pondered Clonebot 23. No one needed to answer as a quick thought-buzzer logged him into his anytime-history-memory-databank and he knew within 3 seconds that Italy was a country that had existed before the great global catastrophe of 2027 when the then last and final president of the USA Donald J Trump had run out of countries to invade and had accidentally declared war on himself inadvertently ordering a nuclear strike on America and wiping himself out along with all major cities.
In the subsequent decade Italy became known as Euroflot.1 and ever since has simply been an advance base for the Russo-Chinese-Iranian World Federation which had put a man on Mars back in 2028 and was now trying to find what had happened to him. And that’s why no one had heard much from Nigel Farage for the next few centuries..