The Future's Coming Everywhere

John Fraser's latest work of fiction, The Future's Coming Everywhere, comprises two thematically linked stories. In the first, Candice, echoingboth Voltaire's Candide - a disillusioned idealist and world traveller - and Zadig, the last wise, just king of Babylon - Candice sets out to find power and wisdom. Her reason is dwarfed by a huge powerless electronic brain, functioning without purpose or control. She is compelled by office politics to flee, through the natural park she herself created. Managing to evade pursuit, regaining her autonomy and mobility, she finds the people she meets along the reservation's edge have neither power nor wisdom, but they do illuminate. Eventually she finds solace and refuge in a bar, The Truce. In the second tale, Friends, Danièle, after adventures in the catering trade and estrangement from her friends and lovers, realises that it is in Law that wisdom and justice must reside. Wisdom is everywhere, law is precarious, but in the end she finds the latest king of Babylon, in his vast, near-deserted residence. She waits for people to arrive, to benefit from this enlightened rule, but will she wait alone...?