Iconeye.com set a challenge: write a story for the end of the decade in 100 words or less. Tom Henry was one of the winning entries (one of 14 who received honourable mentions) which were printed in the February 2010 edition of the magazine. Here is his entry, which is a take on an old story (can you guess which one?):
No one would have believed, in the first decade of the twenty-first century, that human affairs were being recorded from within the virtual worlds of cyberspace. The risks should have been obvious, but scepticism held sway until globalisation began to seep under the door. Slowly and surely, obscure micro-financials, written in fine print, trapped in layer upon layer of brillant white carbon, and buried deep in long-forgotten contracts, exploded to devastating effect. At midnight on the twenty-second of February two thousand and eight came the first of the bank failures that were to bring so much calamity to Earth.
Copyright © David Thomas Cochrane 2010
