By Jim Gray
About the novel
Cult of the Machine is a (sort of) Sci-Fi novel that describes the lives of two people living in Aberdeen during a time when quantum computing and AI are being used to try to reverse the effects of global warming.
Rick and Joss led relatively uncomplicated lives. She was a university lecturer while he played keyboards in a moderately successful rock band.
In 2030, the snow starts to fall. QC, the quantum computer, has been working on fixing the climate. With the rapidly lowering temperatures, Northern cities like Aberdeen, Scotland, are quickly locked in a permanent Winter.
Rick’s band can’t tour, then Joss is laid off as students now learn from home.
As many former residents head South, how will Rick and Joss cope with no work in the arctic wasteland?.
Rick remembers
We knew there was trouble when the snow didn’t melt. In late November 2029, Aberdeen’s austere, granite-lined streets were brightened by the first falls.
While temperatures plummeted, hackles were up, and although the city hadn’t suffered a bad Winter for many years, at first, the white blanket raised few eyebrows among the middle-aged and elderly, who dusted off their greatcoats, dug out Auntie’s Christmas present scarf and drew the matching woolly gloves over frigid blue hands.
In decades before, this northern city, perched astride hills between the Dee and Don rivers, was accustomed to a good dump of snow. Without much fuss, plough-bearing corporation buses got kids from sledges to school, took head-squared housewives to the shops, and corralled bent-backed workers to quarries, shipyards or warehouses.
Dirty yellow gritters spread salt on ice-bound streets that led workers to Fish and ships, the ‘toon’s ancient industries that would soon make way for the oil. The oil that brought money to pockets, American accents to Torry, and, perhaps unknown at the time, would silently hasten the end of brutal winters.
While pissing our drilling rig wages down the drain, we grew to believe that other people’s global warming had put paid to our severe winters. In recent years, Europe’s already declining energy capital tholed the odd day of snow, but nothing close to the blizzards that choked the city streets back in the seventies when I was a kid.
But the snow of late 2030 just didn’t stop. It fell, and fell, then fell some more.
Don’t get me wrong; it wasn’t neck-deep or anything. By Christmas, the covering topped out at about a metre, but most of the time, the snow seldom rose much above boot height. A stout pair of wellies, and you were just fine. Yet still, it didn’t stop
Joss
Joss has been a lecturer at Aberdeen University for many years. Her subject is history. It is one she loves and so would read, even if it were not her profession. Recently, because of the snow, the university has switched to online learning and laid off many staff, Joss among them. She is stir crazy being at home and has many feelers out for jobs.
Joss loves Rick but has had her head turned by Charlie, a twenty something technician at her former work. Charlie is a prick. Joss knows this well, but he persists in asking her out, and although she keeps saying no, she fears that one day she might accept.
At 52, Charlie’s attentions are flattering, even though they may endanger her relationship with Rick. She knows well that she should do everything to put a stop to the behaviour. She could get someone at work to have a talk with him, or even let Rick know. Knowing him, he would laugh it off, but what if he finds out from someone else? This terrifies her. Joss has only ever confided her quandary to her best friend, Donna.
Rick
Rick doesn’t understand love. Is it a combination of like and lust? He likes Joss. More than anyone on the planet, and he’s never lusted after anyone since meeting her. However, he has a feeling that there is something else he is supposed to be doing to keep her happy.
It’s not that they are unhappy, far from it. Their relationship is great. There is just a sneaking fear it’s not enough for Joss. She’s never said as much, and of course, there’s no way he’s going to ask, but it’s a constant niggle in the back of his mind.
Rick is a musician. A keyboardist. Before the snow started falling, his band were semi-pro. Between the band, tutoring, and depping for local bands, Rick made a decent living. One of his favourite side gigs was sitting in front of a piano in Aberdeen’s Trinity Centre and bashing out tunes all day Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. The money from this alone paid the mortgage, and he treated these stints as paid practice sessions.
Delayed career aside, Rick has two other problems in his life. Number one is that Joss, being a techno geek, really wants to get them both wired up with these newfangled neuralinks. Rick doesn’t really fancy having wires stuck in his brain, but he likely will, just to keep the peace.
Problem two is a bit more sticky. Joss’s best mate, Donna, has a crush on him and has thrown herself at him a few times, when Joss was away. She’s a lovely lass, but Rick has no interest there at all.
If Joss finds out, there could be trouble.
Donna
I’ve been friends with Joss for twenty years and I love her dearly, but I hate the way she treats Rick sometimes. It’s as if their relationship is only temporary. If it is, I wish she would end it and move on.
Of course, I have an ulterior motive. I’m hopelessly in love with him. I know I shouldn’t be, but we don’t get to choose who draws our eye.
Joss’s flirtations with that prick, Charlie, really get my goat. He’s not half the man that Rick is. Joss should tell him to piss off, but I think she enjoys the attention.
What I’d give if this bloody snow would stop. I can’t get out and about much, and funds are running low since the university laid me off.
The horrid shopkeeper down the road is all over me like a wet rag when I go in. He knows well that I’m hard up and he likes to think he is doing me a favour by selling me a tin of soup for a fiver. Prick!
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