If we’re looking for someone to blame for my latest story, we can blame the Roman Empire.
I haven’t fact checked this, because so often when I fact check things the truth comes in to have a piddle on my chips, so I’m just going with what I remember learning at school which is this: none of the Roman leaders wanted the Britain gig.
Being sent across the Narrow Sea to squat in a damp field with nothing in your stomach but turnip soup was hardly anyone’s idea of a good time.
Growing up in Shropshire, I could easily understand how someone might find the endless mizzle and the bitter winberries wearing thin pretty swifly, especially if you’re used to the Roman light and a really good bit of underfloor heating. When it came to imagining other worlds, I didn’t have to make a huge leap when I built a place not dissimilar to the rain-soaked hillsides of my childhood.
What if, I thought, what if someone was taken from an estate in Telford and relocated lightyears away in somewhere not all that dissimilar to Telford? What if it was their job to look after the people who lived there? What if those people were pretty fed up with the constant invasions, the endless threats to life and the pressing risk they’d never get to watch the final episode of their favourite TV show before their life was extinguished at the whim of yet another sociopathic warmonger?
So that’s what I wrote.
Maz Star: A Massive Inconvenience is here for your reading pleasure.
Please also enjoy the video of me rabbiting on about it.
Please feel free to share this Top Secret Project with everyone you know!
