The Witness Read online

Acknowledgements

  Thanks to the inspiration of David Eagleman’s wonderful book Sum, which I highly recommend.

  This is the second story which I have written with this, structure, the other being Possibility, in which a man dies and finds himself in a world populated by all the choices he’s ever made.

  And also as a podcast of it on the Edgar Million Podcast (search on i-Tunes, Pod Addict etc) or there’s a direct link below:

  https://soundcloud.com/edgar-million/edgar-million-podcast-possibility

  Finally, special thanks to Mike Lewinski for making the cover image of star trails available under a CC license:

  https://www.flickr.com/photos/ikewinski/8009695480/in/photolist-dcMMpW-jJAEA8-9HhWuD-rbUVCB-wrGqEW-x78NaL-x78HgY-xnWRFd-yxJvqM-cYAz6E-cKQD6Y-6tJMLD-9gP7FJ-7TCC33-pykWb-381n9T-cZfCT5-5UWC9j-dd5P7L-dWk57q-8mtkhQ-cYAST1-cYAHaA-73wYUn-5Q2r9A-fuDkQV-9d4wgA-fuDirB-d1E5WA-aBq49V-zzPvEg-zwCNF5-cYANVE-ia5Dfg-8TdE23-9XJZVX-eGmvbN-35cwvu-dcLVuw-dd5NMC-9wVoar-8J43cj-dvSzPC-cYArqd-cYACCh-o53ZMG-cYAvGj-8hh4QT-8hkmom-8Tbrka/

  Thanks

  Thanks for taking the time to read my story and I hope you’ll forgive the odd typo or grammatical error that slips through. Feel free to tell me about any you find via @edgarmillion . As much as I try to proofread everything, I know I miss errors here and there, and I’ll remove them if you tell me.

  If you follow me at @edgarmillion you’ll get announcements of any upcoming stories or other news, along with occasional complaints about football and The Donald.

  Finally, if you liked this story, I’d love a review if you have a mo.

  Also, if you like listening rather than reading I publish lots of my stories as podcasts/audiobooks for free here: https://soundcloud.com/edgar-million and on iTunes.

  Other works

  The Outsider

  On a normal day, a bizarre tragic thing happened.

  The world cried out for answers, but the one man who might have had them had none to give.

  “The news said it was a plot by Al Qaida or Islamic State. Twitter and that shouty American bloke on YouTube said it was the Jews and the New World Order coming to enslave us. David Icke probably said it was lizard people, but I'm only guessing, just because that's the sort of thing he says. 

  When people find out I was there, on that terrible day they ask me who or what I thought it was, certain my presence must have endowed me with some greater wisdom. Then when I can tell them no more than their Facebook they switch to suspicion. If I don't know then I must have been a part of it. The inside man.”

  Franny and June

  ‘Franny and June’ is ‘Freaky Friday’ meets ‘We need to talk about Kevin’.

  Remember all those body-swap movies in the eighties? Like Big and Vice Versa and ask yourself, what might happen if the doting parent misses their youth a little too much.

  Who wouldn’t like another chance to do all again, to get it right this time? To be young and pain free, careless and bright? Of course, we know from Tom Hanks experience that being young comes with its own challenges, right?

  A Button to Save The World

  The end of the world is nigh. Cities lay in ruins, almost everyone unemployed and global warming threatens to overwhelm us.

  What if you could press a button to make everything alright?

  The time had to come soon though; they had to stop it hitting the tipping point. The point when global temperatures would rise two degrees above the pre-industrial revolution levels, when the Greenland ice sheets would melt and we would begin to burn. Ever more chaotic weather patterns, famine, war and quite possibly end of the humanity. The earth would live on but humanity, our civilisation and history would die screaming.

  What if you could press a button to stop it all? Reverse and even eliminate global warning? Would you?

  Of course you would, but as Patrick K. Useful discovers, saving the Earth has a cost.

  One man has a Button, which when pressed will save the world.

  Patrick K Useful wants to stop him.