Janet's job was boring. At seventeen, people said, "Work hard! Later on, you'll be promoted." Or "The work doesn't matter. You'll get married soon." In the office, there were piles of tenants' housing and council tax benefits applications to be checked. Assiduously she worked, day after day and in her break time chatted to Doreen. In the council office in this small town, the women were segregated from the men and not encouraged to talk.  Janet wondered how to get promoted, since the routine work gave her no training. Her parents required her to catch the six o'clock bus home each evening, and after eight in her village, there was nowhere to go, so she wondered how to get married soon. Janet was good at arithmetic, and when the office supervisor noticed this, she was transferred, and did the calculation of housing benefits on one of the office computers.  This did not last long, because a new supervisor decided to transfer her again to inspecting and destroying outdated documents and gave the computer work to a new trainee. The old papers were kept in a basement, reached by stone steps leading under the council offices. Here Janet spent her days, dismal and alone. When Christmas Eve arrived, Janet felt more cheerful, as there would be an office party in the afternoon. She was looking forward to a little relaxation. She spent the morning as usual in the basement deciding which documents to destroy. There was a door at the end of one corridor of filing cabinets which was usually locked, but today it stood ajar. Tempted by curiosity, she peeped inside and felt for the light switch.  She did not find it immediately and stepped over the threshold. To her consternation, the door slammed behind her, leaving her alone in the dark. She fought against claustrophobia and panic and prayed silently, "Oh, God, please help me," as she felt for the door- handle. It would not turn. Then she ran her hand slowly and carefully up the wall, and found a light-switch. Stone steps were leading down into a deeper basement. She tried the door again but it was jammed shut. She was a Catholic, so the prayer, "Hail Mary, full of grace .... pray for us now and at the hour of our death," came naturally to her. She descended the steps, thinking that it was no use staying put and knocking on that stout, locked door. No-one from upstairs would hear. And today of all days, they would be getting the drinks ready and would assume that she had slipped out early. Mrs. Frost, the manager was known to turn a blind eye to this on the eve of Bank Holidays. With one hand pressing against the wall to steady herself, she went forward, wondering what lay ahead? Perhaps the archives of Trottingtown Council? At the foot of the steps was another door, which opened easily. There were scraps of cardboard lying about in the passage and with these she wedged it open and switched on the light in the next room. Meeting her eyes was a furnished apartment. "Bunks for twenty people," she estimated.  From a further room came a humming sound. It was a small generator of electricity, run on oil. There was a screen facing her, serving as the visual display unit for a computer.  Fortunately, Janet had begun to study computing. She walked up to it and switched on. The instructions said, "CTRL key held down and C pressed wakes up the computer," so she woke up the computer. The message that appeared was, "Nuclear Emergency. This is a Regional Control Centre. Questions welcomed." "Is it real?" thought Janet. "And if it is real, I'm alone here, and so, I am the Regional Control Council." Practicality and coolness overcame her fear, and she typed in, "Is the ventilation system working?" "All life support systems working," answered the computer. "Oh, it is a friendly computer," thought Janet. "Please, God, help me to stay friends with the computer." "Where is the food and water?" she typed. "Under the bunks is a supply of tinned food. Water is in the kitchen." Not far away she found the kitchen, containing a sink, an electric cooker and a toilet. "All worked from closed systems, she thought. "I did not know that preparations for defence against nuclear warfare were so far advanced." Next she tried the telephone and phoned her mother, but there was no reply, only the steady note of the number unobtainable tone. She asked the computer, "How does the telephone work?" ~Have you a code number?" asked the computer.  "No," replied Janet nervously. "Intruder present; systems cut off," replied the computer and went dead. Janet retreated to the kitchen, anxiety producing a lump in her throat. It was a pristine, immaculate kitchen; there were cups and cutlery, and running cold water. Janet drank her fill. She needed something to eat and looked under the bunks.  There were only stores of canned food and she could not find a tin-opener. "I hope there's some tins with keys like sardines," she thought. She had to dismantle mounds of corned beef, tinned salmon, rice puddings, prunes in syrup and vegetables in brine. None of these were easily accessible foodstuffs. At the back she found the sardines complete with keys. Thankfully, she ate the contents of a tin of sardines, then lay limply on one of the lower bunks, looking frequently at her quartz watch, and at eleven o'clock that evening noted, "Day one has passed." Janet was rather a moody person and in the silence, with nothing to mark the passing of time, this tendency was heightened. For days she could be as cool as a cucumber, and then have a panic attack lasting three or four days. But so far she had kept her feelings of panic in check. That night she said her night prayers very carefully and this helped. She supposed that when she emerged that she would find life going on as normal, because her predicament here must have been an accident. There had been no recent world-threatening news, only the usual type of violence at home in the inner cities and in several countries where civil war was in progress. This state of affairs often depressed Janet, but surely there was no real nuclear alert? But how could an isolated, ill-informed person know? Supposing this was for real? With these thoughts buzzing in her mind, she determined that she would work out a routine for the next few days. Next morning when she switched on the computer, she was relieved to find that it answered, having apparently forgotten that it had treated her as an intruder yesterday. First the computer gave her a bit of good news. "The apartment is time-locked for fourteen days," it replied in answer to her question about finding an exit. Fourteen days was a finite time, a little longer than the Christmas holidays, but bearable, as long as the world outside was normal. "Where is the tin-opener?" she asked. "Have you a code number?" asked the computer. It was as erratic in its replies as many human beings.  "Janet did not reply. She was not going to answer, "No" again. There were many drawers in the kitchen, some of which were filled with papers, some containing cutlery and some filled with electronic components which mystified her. Finding the tin-opener was not vital as she believed the stocks of sardines would suffice, but looking for it would be useful and she thought she might find out more about this place from the documents. She planned to start her days with half an hour of prayer and meditation, half an hour of exercise, and a meal of sardines and water. Accomplishing this, by nine o'clock that morning she was ready to search. Soon the kitchen floor was bestrewn with paper, mostly reports of committee meetings, of which she read only the headings. She found nothing of interest that day, and before going to bed, marked it off as "Day Two." She was following the kind of practises that she had read about in the more melodramatic accounts of prisoners' lives. If the conditions had been harsh as well as frightening because of the uncertainty that the outside world was normal, she would probably not have bothered about this. This was a comfortable prison. On day three she opened a file and saw that the top sheet was marked "Code Numbers." Excitedly she turned the computer on and typed "Code 1 is ZF 42." "The Prime Minister's phone number is QN 9966, " was the reply. When she dialled this number a telephone answering machine replied, "The PM is not at home." When she continued the procedure with Code 2, she was told, "The police bunker is unoccupied." Codes 3 to 567 gave her much more information on health physics and medicine, and the phone numbers of top scientists and civil servants, but it was completely useless to her in her present predicament. Curiouser and curiouser became the information, with messages such as "The Chief Mole is at X45" displayed on the small screen. But then Code 568 made the computer reply, "The tin-opener will be supplied." The metal door to a compartment under the computer flew open, revealing the tin-opener. Retrieving it quickly, Janet went to the food-store and half an hour later, triumphantly, sat down to a meal of hot, baked beans, not before saying grace. Though she had left a plea for help on some of the answering machines, she did not know whether these were being used by anyone. Top scientists would not be checking answering machines unless there was an emergency, but if there was an emergency, they might be all dead. So she had to wait for the fourteenth day. The telephone numbers of the American CIA, the KGB in Moscow were probably accessible to her here, but she cared little about classified information. As the days passed, she started talking to herself. "I must write something in my diary," she frequently told herself. "If I get out, I must work for peace," she wrote, "but how do I do that?" Then followed, "I opened a tin of carrots, and found it went well with the corned beef. Then I had some tinned rice pudding. The electric generator makes a noise. I am glad of it for company. What should I do if it broke down?  I expect mother has contacted the police. Do they know about these underground cells?" ------------- On the fourteenth day, she was still keeping up her daily routine and nothing untoward had happened. Food stocks and water for twenty people were in store, so she had masses of supplies in hand. She went up the stone steps which she had descended fourteen days earlier in the early morning and waited by the door to the outer office. "Would it open at eleven o'clock?" she wondered. This was about the time she had entered on Christmas Eve. "And if it opened, would the world outside be normal?" She could no longer remain calm. She sang hymns, but broke off abruptly. She stood, then sat, then danced on the spot.  She shouted. Quarter to eleven came, according to her trusty quartz watch. The minutes seemed to go more slowly.  Waiting....waiting....waiting. Outside stood one of the members of Trottingtown Council and a police constable. Janet had been listed as a missing person - but they thought it a 99% probability that she was accidentally doing nuclear alarm drill. A selected group of councillors, officials, medical staff and police had been preparing themselves for incarceration for fourteen days, but most were half-relieved when the authorization had been cancelled. A faulty computer programme was scheduled for investigation. At eleven o'clock, they watched as the door flew open. Janet was sitting on the stairs, with her head slumped in her hands. "It's all right now," said Mrs. Humphreys, the town councillor. "I'll take you home." Janet met Mrs. Humphreys' eyes, and without asking, knew the world was normal. --------------- Later that year, her employers offered her promotion - a position as a computer programmer had become vacant. She refused. "What do you want to do, then?" they asked. "I would like to work as a gardener," said Janet. The Council gave her a job designing new peace gardens. In these gardens flowers and vegetables grew together. Organic gardening was practised. Janet had a unique job, that allowed her to work manually in the gardens for half her time and as a computer-assisted designer working on garden plans for the remainder of her time. It was very fulfilling. The council decided to make Trottingtown a nuclear free zone. They did this by opposing plans for the transport of nuclear waste on the local railway. Janet prospered. She now worked with Tom, Roger, Susan and Margaret. The future looked more hopeful. However she remembered that Trottingtown Council had set up Trottingtown Dungeon and gradually this became known to more and more people. Eventually by public demand, the council converted the dungeon into a public museum. Nuclear alarm drill no longer took place in Trottingtown.   Copyright Joan Hughes 2000