This is an old start to a story I wrote. I'm just consolidating it here.

Chapter 1

Welcome to the not too distant future and Welcome to the book.

As soon as you can, please send an email to hander.filmsales@hotmail.com. This will place you on the CDF mailing list. Emails are a reliable form of information.

We live in an age of macro narratives. The barriers between our avatars and real self are melting. It doesn’t make sense to dance around an ugly subject, so I will get straight to the point.

It’s night. The light of the moon is a crystal white. I imagine a cloaked city of interconnected palaces in the clouds that hover in a misty gray canopy above. I am dressed in a long black jacket with blue jeans. My hair is long and unkempt. I skulk beneath a bus stop. I imagine that the next bus that comes along will have all of my friends on it and they will combine all of their efforts to help me.

I am on the run from an organization I know only as the SFP. It was set up to keep tabs on me. I realize, with no great amusement, that my life has become like that of a comic book hero who faces peril at every turn. A bus full of comic book heroes would do.

A thousand electric showers in the palaces above are turned on at once and I press my body against the bus stop trying to keep my only clothes dry. The rain is so hard that I don’t even notice the bus approaching. I quickly dash out and signal to the driver.

Shaking my hair I climb on board and flash my ticket. The bus isn’t full of super heroes and friends but instead has only two passengers. One is an old man - it doesn’t make sense to dance around ugly subjects; the other is a very attractive girl with brown hair. I sit near the girl and watch her shift her body around slightly so she can keep an eye on me. She seems young but her clothes are bold and colourful. That cheers me up as I settle into my seat.

No longer afraid of the rain, I take out my CDF Unit. Context Dependent Films are just about the only thing I can use to amuse myself these days. Living on the run, I rarely get the chance to stay in one place long enough to watch one of the 3Dimax films at the cinemas. However, my love for films and stories is what keeps me going.
My CDF Unit automatically downloads a film everyday. The films work by dividing a story into three component sections. Video, Audio and Book. When I’m able to sit in quiet spaces I can watch the video component of the story. When I’m on the move I can listen to the audio of the story. And when I’m in loud environments I can read the book and look at the pictures. Where I am and what I’m doing dictates how the story is delivered to me. For a life like mine, it is not only convenient but also oddly empowering.

Today I have been learning French. I am planning on attempting to cross the Channel in the next few months and the idea of being on the run in a country where I don’t speak the language doesn’t appeal. For most of the day I have only been able to listen to the audio and read the book.

I spent the morning hiding in an attic above a shop that sold musical instruments. I was too frightened to make too much noise and my head phones broke two months ago, so I had to content myself with only using the book section of my CDF, reading equivalent French and English words and looking at the illustrative images.

In the afternoon I had crept out of the shop and headed across London to the train station. I was able to select the audio on my CDF as just about everyone else in the city uses headphones. It is quite a surreal experience to walk freely on a crowded street with a female French voice describing, for all the world to hear, what you call certain vital organs in her language. No one looks up to the physical sound that colours the street.

The video I’m presented with on the bus is of a French soap opera. Presumably the words you have learnt in the Audio and Book sections make an appearance and you get to hear them in context. I feel like relaxing and notice an option to link in an old video. I laugh and smile. How did she know?!

CDF’s producers, Film Sales ltd. www.filmsales.cdf.net, are the last company independent of the government data sharing policy. They only keep records of the films you have seen and your comments on those films as this helps them decide which films will best fit your daily life. These records are kept safe from the government because each subscriber is given a handler.
A handler works for the company by facilitating a client’s account. They have personal stations that record the CDF’s you have seen and your comments and they are in charge of uploading requested and recommended CDF’s. By keeping data sharing on a one to one basis the company cunningly side step the Government.

My handlers name is Sarah Mason. I have never met her but I think she knows me better than I know myself. She sometimes downloads additional options to the films. For example, because this is the fifth day in a row that, by request, she has downloaded an educational CDF to me, she has included an option for me to take a break and watch my favourite video instead. She is telling me to take a break.

For me, it is this dialogue with Sarah that is the greatest story of all. A tear creeps down my face. I feel like Sarah and me have just spoken a thousand words. I imagine holding her hand, like all of people in the ticket queue had been doing that morning as they shuffled along oblivious to the French word, ‘beau’, that resonated around them.

The film Sarah has downloaded for me is a story about a commuter who travels to London daily but dreams of staying in the countryside where he lives. I love the story, as I grew up in the countryside. The video component however, is simply films of the sky. Rolling clouds and the ambient sounds of the location. It is my home. www.commutestory.cdf.net.