Off the Rails

About the Book

Many years ago, a highly intelligent race of people living in China discovered a fault with the Earth's natural orbital trajectory which, if left unresolved, would result in the world ending in the mid twenty-first century.

The leaders of these people, whilst travelling the world in search of a solution to the problem, arrived in London. Here they stumbled on the theory that if they created vast but subtle movements across the Earth's surface, then such weight-shifts would have a reasonable bearing on the rate at which the Earth rotates, and thus would alter its orbital path. To provide this weight, a project named 'Commuters' was created, so called due to a misprint of Computers. This was performed by building a railway infrastructure throughout the land and simultaneously inventing a large number of excitingly named, well paid, but virtually harmless jobs. This created both the demand and the mechanism for many people to travel in the same direction at a given time of day.

The group of pioneers were adamant that the real reason for their work should not be made public, yet at the same time the project needed to be monitored. To satisfy this, an organisation called the Littlepeople was created, whereby those directly involved with the project took 'invisible' jobs within society. From these positions, they could easily observe their work without fear of detection themselves. They therefore occupied jobs that are commonly labelled 'working class' or 'unskilled' as they were unlikely to be noticed by the Commuters within these positions.

About the Author

Matt Jones was born in 1971, the grandson of Austrian Jewish refugees. He spent his formative and adolescent years in Stevenage, and like many children comes from a broken home. However, in Matt's case it was adjudged that it was he who broke it, despite his protestations that it was broken before he touched it, and that if it wasn't meant to be so, it should have been kept well out of his reach.

After leaving school at sixteen, and having being written off as a failure by most of his teachers, he went away to study in Lancashire. After finishing university, Matt proved his teachers right as he found work on the NHS graduate training scheme, where he trained as an accountant.

His work has taken him to Peterborough and Milton Keynes. Since qualifying he has had managerial jobs in both Harlow and Basildon where his unconscious tour of new towns continued. He decided, therefore, to take up writing before he unwittingly found himself in Telford. Matt now lives in a small North-Western town called Ramsbottom, which he is campaigning to rename as Upper-Ramsbottom.

Although not a religious man, and now in his early thirties, he is tempted to find his roots in Judaism. This is not for any spiritual reason, moreover that a yarmulke would do wonders for his bald patch.