As he stumbled down from the bus and into the drizzly evening Mac instantly recognized where he was, the old Player Wills Factory.

Built in 1935, the factory had once been a thriving source of employment for the city, complete with its own theatre. It remained in use until 2005. Now derelict, the factory was popular with film crews and anyone else wanting to add a bit of urban decay to their art.

The bus had stopped at the South Circular Road entrance and Mac joined the rest of the passengers now queuing at the guard hut.

On both sides of the passengers leered and loomed blue boiler-suited men and women.

The arm of the seat digging into his side, the person sobbing next to him and the fear he was still feeling made it difficult for Mac to get comfortable but as the journey continued the drone of the bus and its motion caused Mac to finally fall into a fitful sleep.

He was half-awake when the bus stopped twice more and more unwilling passengers were forced down the back but quickly fell back to sleep.

‘Wake up, Sleepy Head,’ said the same sneering voice as a strong flashlight was pointed straight in his eyes. ‘This is the end of the line for all of you.’ Mac felt himself being pulled upright and then shoved towards the front of the bus.

It is sometimes fun to be taken somewhere and not know where you are going. There is something magical about the mystery. Supposedly.

But not always and certainly not this time. Mac tried to look out the windows but couldn’t see a thing. The sound of the engine was so loud that he couldn’t really hear anything either.

Mac tried to focus on the time he thought they were taking. He tried counting the seconds in his head as he couldn’t see his watch in the darkness but nothing he did could ever be precise and so the fact of this approximation only served to further fuel his fear.

‘We want shot of the lot of you!’ sneered the voice. ‘You lot and your reading and writing and thinking.’

If ignorance and distrust has a voice (which it so clearly does) then it would sound just like this one.

Mac listened in stunned silence as the rant continued.

‘Culture means nothing to us anymore. Nothing, I tell you. The Past is just a place where you stupid people live. Writing. Thinking. Reading.’

The voice’s face came very close to Mac now.

‘We’re turning back Time, saving the country from the likes of you and your band of boring biddies.’ The voice was so angry now that Mac’s neighbour renewed her sobbing.

‘Now, not another word out of anyone until we get there,’ it yelled.

The inside of the bus was very dark.

Mac could barely make out the seats in front of him.

‘Sit down, Grandpa,’ said a rough voice and Mac was pushed onto the closest seat. ‘Not another peep out of you.’

In the seat beside him someone sat sobbing quietly.

‘I’ve been here for three days now,’ she whispered. ‘Some of us have been here even longer.’

‘Quiet!’ said the voice. ‘I thought I said no talking.’

But Mac just didn’t understand.

‘Who are you?’ he shouted. ‘What do you want with us?’

‘What do we want?’ mocked the voice. ‘What do we want?’

Mac heard a laugh.

‘I’ll tell you what we want.’

Stories began to circulate like oil spills on the filthy floodwater. People disappearing. Not coming home. Old people. Pensioners. Grand parents. Long-loved relatives. Anyone now officially ‘excluded.’

At first these disappearances were happening elsewhere but when the wife of his old friend (and fellow Fellow) Professor Giollaiosa Ó Ruairc phoned to tell him that Gilly, as he was known, had been missing for three days Mac really began to worry.

What could Mac say? He knew where this was all going but what could he do?

Emergency Order CBI341 excluded him from taking part and this was what alarmed him the most. Overnight the country became divided between those involved and everyone else. Mac was now part of the ‘everyone else.’

Mac received a letter in the post, confirming the fact that as ‘a reward for all you have already done for your country a grateful nation now exempts you from having to take part in Operation TurnBack.’

The letter made everything sound so plausible but Mac knew the true purpose of Operation TurnBack.

‘This is how civilizations are loosed from their footings’, he said to himself. ‘Raze the past and reset.’

Everyone begin from the beginning again.

Forever more.

Amen.

Bureaucracy can be both banal and baleful at once and so the simple issuing of something as official-sounding as an Emergency Order helped lull once more an already docile nation.

As the world has learned since lessons began the trick is to convince a nation to rewrite history together. Collectively. Only personal histories are rewritten with a single pen.

And so being the nostalgic nation that it is, the country readily adopted Operation TurnBack as a charming idea.

‘We’ve been through such a lot as a nation in recent times.’

‘It is time we brought the old times back.’

‘Everyone has spent years only thinking about themselves.’

‘It is high time we thought about the country again.’

‘If only everyone could stop and think about how things used to be.’

‘If only now could be more like then.’