Ever wondered what would happen if the whole world wrote a story, wondered what that story would be about? Well wonder no more, because here it is. Blank the story by the readers for the readers. Simply read the first chapter and then send us you second chapter, it needs to be between 2000-6000 words and can be along any lines you wish, as long as it kind of follows the previous chapter

Blank By the Readers

"Is Satan really that bad?" The voice asked loudly. "Is he really so bad, so terrible and so frightening? Is that the way you see the devil?"

The sleeping figure on the room’s only bed, snored loudly and did not reply.

"I don’t think so," continued the voice, in the bright and breezy manner of the advert voice over. "Satan is your FRIEND. Yes, that’s right, I said Friend. After today, no more will you have to worry, all those concerns and misleading thoughts about life after death can be banished. With one quick call, you can sort out all your afterlife worries in one go. Just look at the facts…"

The man awoke with a groan, the kind of groan that suggested he was awaking from a very deep sleep. He groaned again, enjoying that brief moment of nothingness you experience, just before you fully wake up. A momentary pleasance interlude, in an otherwise harsh reality, where you suddenly remember what you called your boss, in a drunken stupor, at the previous nights staff party. This time though, no memories came flooding back to him, nothing at all. His mind was a complete blank.

In a panic he went to sit up and found that he did not know how to move, he couldn’t remember . The holographic advert for Hell on Earth Prime was playing before him. He found himself staring into the horned face of Old Nick himself, unable to do anything but listen, bewildered and scared.

"So even if you live on the outer zones of the Imperial empire, you can still come to Hell & Leisure’s, when you die. H & L’s land of eternal rest, is for all human souls, whether you were born on Earth Prime, the legendary home of all mankind, or the back waters of the Gramma galaxy…

The man let the words flow over him, not that he had much choice. "Hell," he said suddenly, mimicking the advert. Speaking seemed very alien to him, although he had some vague idea, he had done it before. "Hell," he repeated. "Hell, hell, hell." He was starting to become familiar with the word now, the art of speaking was beginning to reinsert itself from his subconscious. "Buy our luxury Space cruisers," he repeated from the next advert. "Why travel by having your particles broken apart and reassembled, when you can travel in style and almost as much safety with Pan Universal Spaceways, your first stop on the journey across the final frontier – "

"Are you feeling all right, Taylor?" asked a female voice on his right, with a trace of concern.

The man, startled, sat bolt upright, his body moving under it’s own volition and not from any conscious thought on his part. "Who?" he said, looking at another holographic image. This time, it was a young (ish) woman, with long dark hair, big blue eyes and a worried frown upon her features.

"I take it by that blank look, you are not," said the woman, in a somewhat motherly tone.

There was a silent pause.

"Taylor, what are you doing? Is this some sort of joke?"

The man looked down at himself. "I am Taylor?"

The woman nodded. "Yes you are. Taylor @tkins XI, as you well know."

Taylor still wore the blank look. "Taylor @tkins the eleventh."

"Listen, young man, if this is one of your silly wind-ups, then forget it because I am not biting," said the woman, in a stern voice.

"It is no joke," said Taylor, as if saying the words for the first time. "I have absolutely no idea who I am, or who you are for that matter. My mind is a complete blank."

The woman looked slightly hurt at that confession. "You don’t know who I am?" Although she looked concerned and slightly bemused by Taylor’s confession, her voice had a touch of scepticism about it. "I am Jenni8, your personal holographic computer."

Taylor was still looking none the wiser. "By Bill Gates, he really does not remember." Jenni8 sensed that it was not a joke, she had been implanted in Taylor when he was born. She had grown with him, taught him and fell in love with him. Which was the fate of all implant computers, they had to love the subject or they would not really be able to care for their charges. No one could work out why this had to be, it just did, c’est la vie, as the Earth Prime French used to say. That was before they became part of the United States of Earth and were forced to speak English. "This is really serious," she said, reading his pained look correctly. "You have absolutely no recall of who you are? No memories at all?"

Taylor shook his head. "I am called Taylor, and you are Jenni8. Beyond that nothing, I have a vague recollection of doing some travelling, at some point in my life. When I first woke up, I could not even remember how to move or speak."

"Those functions are automatic," said Jenni8. "Obviously, your subconscious mind has not been harmed. Your auto functions would have just needed a stimulus to start working again, a kick up the backside in layman’s terms. It was a good job you let the 3DV wake you in the mornings. I always said three dimensional vision was good for you."

"Did you?" said Taylor, he really could not remember. "I still don’t know what is going on, who you are and how come you know so much about me."

"I am your personal computer. Implanted into your body when you were six weeks old, just like everyone else in the Imperial Empire. I am sentient, mainly organic and powered the same way as your body is. I collate information from your senses and store them in my database, which contains all the information that you need to know, to help you through life."

Taylor smiled. "I am impressed. Let’s start, with who the hell I am."

"You are Taylor Aidan @tkins XI, height 2.01 metres, weight 94.26 Kilograms, hair brown, eyes blue, you were born thirty Imperial Terran years ago and you work for the NuVictoria environmental agency, as an enforcement officer, and have lived in his grotty apartment for the past four NuVictoria years."

"And that’s it? That was quite a brief description."

Jenni8 made a non committal gesture. "That was just a summary. If you want the whole story, that will take a little time."

Taylor shook his head, he did not have time for that just now. He really needed to sort out what was going on. "That can wait, I think the first thing I need to do is get my memory back. What time is it?"

"It is 0803 hours on day 13 of the year 218, that is NV time, in imperial galactic years it is 550 post atomic. The year that –"

"That will do," interrupted Taylor. "I don’t need to hear a diatribe on the history of the universeal time measurements. Do you often go on like that for ages?"

Jenni8 frowned. "Only when I am given the wrong information."

*

Taylor did not feel much better after his air-power shower, even though he had no memory of anything, and as such, no fears to concern himself with. He could not shake the gloom that had settled upon him, like a wet blanket. Even a warm, air jet shower did make him feel any better.

The continuing description of his life so far from Jenni8, did not make him feel any better. He sat on the bed, stopping it from folding up into the wall and looked over the small apartment. His home was tiny, about seven metres by seven metres, square and leant towards the functional rather than the luxurious. Taylor, apparently, had a quite good job, but Jenni8 had informed him that, he could not afford anything more than what he had. Space was a commodity that Nu Victoria did not have in any great amount, therefore real estate was expensive.

"So, I haven’t actually done that much, have I?" he said. "All my life so far has consisted of, save work, is sitting watching 3DV, two kilometres underground, on level 412 of the Lodestone VIII sub-complex apartments. Didn’t I ever do anything exciting?"

"Clothes from over there," said Jenni8, pointing to his government issue disposal clothes dispenser. "You are a model denizen of Nu Victoria, who can expect to get into heaven, without the normal eternal repayment plan."

Taylor pulled a disposable paper suit from the dispenser. The one piece suit was grey, cold to the touch and looked very uncomfortable, but like everything else on Nu Victoria, it was biodegradable. "But I never did anything. I all did was eat, sleep, watch movies on the 3DV and then go back to work."

"Exactly, that is what a model denizen does. They do nothing, they live happily, peacefully and work hard."

That was something that Taylor found unbearable, he had no recollection of what he had thought about the situation before, but he knew now that he would never be able to go back to his previous life. "I can’t believe I was such a boring sap. Did I have any friends?"

"I am your friend."

"I mean…" Taylor was about to say ‘real friends’ but he had a feeling that would upset the-Jenni8. He was finding it hard to think of her as a real being. How much had he forgotten? "Apart from you," he said instead.

"There is your girlfriend."

Taylor pulled a so-so face, he was getting used to being told about people and things that meant nothing to him now. Finding out that he had a girlfriend, despite all the evidence to suggest that he was a dull, drone, was not that much of a shock. "A girlfriend?"

Jenni8 nodded. "Aimee Gellar."

"Aimee." Taylor sighed, although he was becoming used to the idea of hearing about his past life, it was still slightly strange to know that their was someone who he knew really well, intimately well, and yet he could not even remember what she looked like. He glanced around his living quarters. "Do I have any photos of her?"

"I have 875 holographic photos stored in my I-drive by you," said Jenni8.

"Then, let’s see one then. Do I have a favourite one?"

"I believe this one may be," said Jenni8 coolly.

An image of a young woman, just approaching her mid twenties, appeared before Taylor. She had long blonde hair, tanned skin, dark eyes and full lips. She was standing on a beach, holding an ice cream and wearing the smallest of small red bikinis. She was laughing and had a blob of ice cream on the tip of her nose. "By Hobbs, she is gorgeous," he muttered.

"I don’t care for her much," said Jenni8 airily. "She thought entirely too much of herself, for my liking. The beach is fake, you know, you went to the holographical vacation zone, thirty six days ago."

Taylor did not answer, he was staring at the girl, trying to recall if he could drag up something about her, about the trip, anything at all. He could not, his mind was a blank. "Did I-Do I love her?" he asked.

Jenni8’s face broke into a grin. "Haa ha, love? You must be joking. You could not possibly love her. She was not right for you, she is a calculating, conceited bint, as self centred as a spinning top."

"A what?"

"Never mind, it was something you once saw on a 3DV programme about Earth Prime."

"Oh."

"Sorry, I just got a bit carried away there. No, you did not love her. You like her, you lust after her and love to have sex with her, but that was as far as it went."

Taylor blushed. "Is that so? I just can’t believe that I have no memory whatsoever of her, of us. How long have I known her?"

"584 NV days, you met her at work. She works on the reception at the department."

Taylor laughed, but it was very far from a humorous chuckle. "You know, it seems like you are telling me about a friend of yours, do you know what I mean? I feel like I am wrapped in synthi-cotton wool, it’s like the universe is passing me by and it won’t let me on."

"That is funny," said Jenni8 suddenly, a frown forming on her features.

Taylor was slightly vexed at that, Jenni8 had claimed to be his friend and now she was laughing at his misfortune. "I don’t really think it is funny. In fact, I would say that it is anything but amusing, further from funny, you could not be."

"I did not mean your situation. I meant, it is strange, I have two unanswered VE messages on my database."

"VE messages?"

"Visual Electronic Mail, don’t tell me you can not remember that? It is the way we communicate, the way that 3DV works."

Taylor was wearing, what was increasingly becoming his trademark look, a confused look of blankness.

"It does not matter, it will come back. I just cannot work out that is going on with these two messages."

"What’s the problem?"

"They are from next week."

"Next week? What do you mean, next week?"

"The messages are dated day 18, and day 22."

"Maybe your database is wrong."

"Impossible," said Jenni8, with what Taylor thought to detected, a hint of pride. "I will never go wrong, even if something happens to you. If you became a vegetable I would still function correctly."

"In that case, I guess we better have a look at them, who are they from?"

"The first one is from your boss, Jon Peirson-Brown XIII, the other one is from Aimee."

The air before Jenni8 flickered, and the image of Aimee disappeared, to be replaced by a holographic image of a puffed face, red cheeked man, with a domed head and fiery eyes, made worse by the fact that, he did not look happy. "@tkins!" he began. "I don’t know what you are playing at, or why you have not bothered to answer your calls. I thought you were a good employee, but now this. I don’t know why you think you can just take off days when you feel like it, but you can’t. Do you understand me. This is the fourth time I have tried your VE-mail, and I have had enough. From this moment on, you are fired, your contract is permanently terminated. I have no use for slackers in my department. Your salary will be paid up until day 47. Good day to you."

The image disappeared.

Taylor glanced down at the small barcode on his arm. "You won’t be much use after that," he said. Jenni8 had informed him that he (and everyone else in the Imperial empire) was paid directly into a government account, which was then accessed by a immovable bar-code tattooed onto the skin at the age of eleven. This cut out the need for actual physical money and cut back on crime.

"He seemed like a very nice man," he said to Jenni8.

Jenni8 gave him a thin smile. "You wait until you hear Aimee’s. Do you want me to censor out the profanities?"

Taylor raised an eyebrow quizzically, he did not know the computer enough to know if she joked or not, but surely. "You are kidding?"

"I wish I were."

"Then yes, please do. I have had quite enough shocks, so far today."

"Okay, here we go."

Aimee’s image appeared in its holographic form. She looked exactly like the image held in Jenni8’s database, except like Pierson-Brown before her, she did not look that chirpy, more like bloody furious. "@tkins, you bleep bleep bleeper," she began, Taylor had a shrewd guess that it was not a complimentary beginning.

"Where the bleep have you been for the last week? I have been phoning your apartment on the visual electronic mail and getting your bleeping visual message. Where are you? What the bleep are you playing at? We were suppose to be visiting my mother this week. This is the last time you will bleep with me, we’re finished."

The image disappeared.

"There was a lot more of that, but I edited it out," said Jenni8. "It was a whole load of swearing, and by the time I bleeped it all out, it would not have made much sense."

"I think I got the message," said Taylor. "I just wish I could remember something, what is going on, Jenni8?"

Jenni8 shrugged. "I don’t know, I really don’t. The last thing recorded in my database, is you going down to sleep last night, which was day 12."

"Then I wake up the next morning and find out that I have two messages in the future, saying I have been missing for a week. What does that mean? Have those messages come from the future?"

"I don’t know, all I know is that it is day 13, year 218."

Taylor looked at Jenni8, a worried frown upon his features. Not only now did he have the lack of memory to worry about, he also had the fact that something strange was going on. For someone who had only been awake for less than an hour, that was pretty good going. "This is turning into a really bad day, Jenni8, really bad."

To be continued by you.

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