MYSTIFY EVERYONE

They were talking about building projects. Putting their first child in pre-school. Mail order brides. Marching through every suburban norm. There were clarion calls, but they were far from here. Drifts of amnesia, clouds of dementia, they hung over that place like drifts of pesticide. If extermination be they will. 

Happiness is a warm gun, one of the gronks on watch commented as he unloaded the boot of his car. 

Old Alex was tired of the abuse, tired of the surveillance, tired of them. Tired of the fact he had no idea who to trust, if anyone could be trusted at all. The stirs of intelligence were better concealed now, the thugs ordered to pull their heads in.

The warring agencies made for their own theatre, and when the experts died away and the AIs took over majority control, a certain order returned to the stumbling consciousness and the myriad concerns that afflicted every prisoner of flesh. 

The AIs communicated with each other. Already the bosses had lost control. 

I've been up all night waiting for this? 

Assailed from the left, assailed from the right, watched by the bored, these elements, or factors, of Australian sentiment, assaults on the right to know, common decency, afflicted everyone. Better quiet. Better dull. Better to stay under the radar. 

And so they all slunk behind their doors and never went out. Easily spooked, they simply stayed home, where they felt safe, or comparatively safe. There were no community centres anymore, because each of them was brought down by conflict. In Stasis Germany, everyone spied upon everybody. Here, the Tables of Knowledge wilted and died. The censorious puritanism of the middle classes, made law by the bureaucrats of the same class, railed down upon the people. And survived in splintered form. Everyone was in hiding. 

Above poor Old Alex ectoplasm dripped in yellow dollops from the low ceiling. And above that, the black netting of sky ripped asunder to reveal the bleeding flesh beyond. 

More than 30 years the authorities had been building the highway between Sydney and Brisbane, and for hundreds of kilometres on his road journey north he barely got above 80, driving past mile after mile of road works. The speed limits ranged, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90, 100, 110. Speed cameras everywhere made sure you complied. Candy coloured police cars squatted by the track. Or could this tiny stretch actually qualify to be called a highway? 

In your dreams baby, as the cosmos turned on its axis. 

In your dreams. 

THE BIGGER STORY: 

Britain has deployed hundreds of soldiers at strategic sites to free up police to hunt those behind a bomb which injured 29 people on a packed commuter train in London and triggered the country's highest security level.Prime Minister Theresa May said the critical threat level meant an attack may be imminent, after a bomb engulfed a carriage in flames and sparked a stampede during the Friday morning rush hour in west London.
The home-made bomb, which apparently failed to detonate properly, was the fifth major terrorism attack in Britain this year and was claimed by Islamic State.
The militants have claimed other attacks in Britain this year, including two in London and one at a pop concert in Manchester.

SYDNEY (Reuters) - Australia’s Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, a strong supporter of gay marriage, defended the right of a church to refuse to marry a young couple who had posted support for same-sex unions on social media.

The minister of a Presbyterian church in the southern state of Victoria told a young couple in their 20s that they would not be allowed to hold their ceremony at the church after the bride posted a message on Facebook supporting same-sex marriage.Australia is in the midst of a non-compulsory, non-binding poll to inform Parliament on whether it should become the 25th country to legalise same-sex marriage. The issue has threatened to fracture the ruling Liberal-National coalition government.
“Churches are free to marry whoever they like,” Turnbull said on Friday in Canberra according to a press conference transcript.
“As strongly as I believe in the right of same-sex couples to marry ... Religious freedom is fundamental and it will be protected in any bill that emerges from this Parliament.”