THE FUTURE HAS ARRIVED. NOBODY CAN LOG IN. Barry Puddifoot only wanted a packet of digestive biscuits. Unfortunately, according to the Government, he is dead. It is September 2036, and Britain has finally achieved the dream of a fully connected society. One national identity. One seamless system. One convenient way to manage everything from your pension to your prescription. There is just one small problem. The system has started deleting people. In the Cheshire village of Haslington, residents find themselves unable to buy food, enter their homes, access their money or prove that they are, in fact, alive. The official helplines are reassuring. The automated responses are beautifully worded. Nobody appears able to do a bloody thing. Then the village's surviving pandemic volunteers get involved. Armed with paper notebooks, old telephone numbers, emergency rotas and a deeply British refusal to be told what they can and cannot do, Haslington Support Group begins helping the people the system has abandoned. But what starts as a local administrative disaster soon exposes something far more disturbing. Behind the cheerful language of efficiency and reconciliation lies a history of missing records, borrowed identities and decisions nobody wants to admit making. And somewhere in Eileen's loft is a box of paperwork that certain very important people would rather remain unopened. As the crisis spreads from village kitchens to the highest offices in the country, one question becomes impossible to ignore: When a computer decides you don't exist, how do you prove you're still here? Haslington 2036 is a sharply observed, darkly funny British thriller about technology, power, community and the extraordinary inconvenience of ordinary people who refuse to disappear. The future is automated. The resistance has put the kettle on.
