By 2046, Britain’s old street names had been replaced by moral slogans and lines of sacred script painted across concrete gates. Loudspeakers called the districts awake before sunrise, their echoes rolling through estates where every doorway carried notices about approved conduct and proper dress. Markets still operated, though little remained of their former cheer: sacks of flour, tins with blank labels, bruised vegetables under the eyes of volunteer wardens. The foods of the old age were spoken of carefully, and some were not spoken of at all.

Arthur, sixty-eight and stubborn beyond reason, kept a final strip of bacon hidden inside an old biscuit tin beneath loose floorboards. He had not opened it in years, yet knowing it was there steadied him. The younger neighbours, raised on curfews, filtered networks, and lessons about the corruption of earlier times, treated his stories like fairy tales. He told them of noisy seaside arcades, of pints spilling across pub tables, of football crowds singing in the rain, and of breakfasts that filled whole streets with smoke and salt.

One winter evening, the power failed across half the district. The cameras died, the patrol vans stopped humming, and the loudspeakers went mute. Arthur lit a candle, opened the tin, and laid the strip into a skillet over a gas flame. It hissed softly, a tiny forbidden sound. Then came the pounding at the door. Three officers in black uniforms entered beneath the emblem of the Morality Directorate, their body cameras already recording. The neighbours vanished back into their flats as Arthur was marched into the corridor in handcuffs, the scent of bacon still clinging to the air. By morning, the district noticeboard carried a fresh warning about prohibited meats and nostalgia crimes.