“On the third week, on the other hand, we had a guest speaker but I cannot remember what was the topic he spoke of. It might have been about identifying signs of emotions in facial expressions – or was that the other guest speaker?” My colleague talks and talks and talks. She is clearing her desk. “Either way, I did find that module…Oh, what was it called again?”

Can’t she tell that I’m still processing data? It’s impossible to concentrate.

“Yes, the FV1001 – introduction to emotional transactions.” She adjusts her long ponytail. “It was all very interesting.”

“I don’t think I was taught such a module in the university five years ago.” I say.

“Oh, they’ll do everything these days to distract students from gaining any actual knowledge.” She says and pulls the mattress out underneath her desk. The mattress inflates in seconds.

“Fancy a cup of tea?” She asks. I shake my head.

“I’ll get one out.” I reply.

“You going out? Do you mind if I join you?” She stands next to my desk. I try to ignore her presence and stare at the figures on the computer screen. I was never taught emotional transactions at the university, but I know the theory. It’s the practical things that make me nauseous.

“Actually I’m going by myself.” I force a nonchalant smile and look up at her.

“Maybe next time.”

She moves away from my desk.

“Okay then. Good night!” She says and stretches on her mattress. I turn off my computer. She swallows her sleeping pill and doses off.

I step out from the elevator. The gatekeeper beeps when I press my finger on the identification slot. The screen lights up. ‘Welcome back SG151583. You are allowed three personal outings in this period.’

I press accept and the front door opens.

I live and work in Area SE1 8XX – formerly known as Southbank. One generic steel and concrete building after another. Further down south the old town still exists, abandoned and packed with the underclass. There is no need to enter the old town. Everything a human being might need is in the city. All the familiar brands and chains serving commodities are nearby. It is safe here.

I walk to the nearest escort outlet.

The sales assistant smiles behind the hygienic steel counter. There is no queue.

“What can I do for you today, Madam?”

“Could I get an Exotic Boy Wonder, please .”

“Can I please have your customer card, Madam?”

“Certainly.”

The lady swipes the card.

“This is not what you normally would order, Madam.”

“I know.” I nod and look down.

“You have preferred London Fog before, Madam.” The sales assistant says.

“I know, I know.” I look up.

“Was there something wrong with the service last time?” She is puzzled.

“Not at all.”

There was absolutely nothing wrong with the service the last time. It was a Sunday night a week ago. After we had sex I got up hastily and put my clothes on. He remained semi-naked. He was browsing through his journal. There was something about the way he slide his index finger across the page. The sight of him sitting there with his dark brown hair messed up made my heart beat irregularly. The smell of sweat was intoxicating. Suddenly I couldn’t breath.

I had the medical check the following day.

“Nothing’s wrong, Madam.” The GP said and

“Have you been recommended to change your habits by someone?” The sales assistant asked.

“Nope.”

“Has one of our advertising campaigns affected you regarding this forthcoming transaction?”

“No.”

“Could you hold on one moment, Madam.”’

“Certainly.”

Oh God. A queue starts evolving behind my back.

I can see the sales assistant recapturing the situation with her manager. She’s confused, never been in a situation like this before.

The sales assistant returns.

“Madam, would you mind quickly filling a form here, on the side. Just so that we can keep up. Revise standards, if needs must…”

I sigh.

“It’ll only take a minute, Madam. It would be very important to us.”

I don’t want to fill a survey. I turn around and leave without saying a word.

“Madam? Madam? Your card…” The sales assistant waves my customer card at the counter.
Fuck the card, I need to get out.

I find an alcohol outlet at the corner of the street. It’s one of those old-fashioned places with wooden furniture and carpets. There’s hardly anyone in – two men sitting by the counter and a third man by a table in the corner.

I slowly recognise him. He is the London Fog. The irregular heartbeats return. They probably have a lecture on this specialist matter on the FV1001 module. What should I do? I order a glass of mild alcohol and approach the London Fog. He looks up from his laptop when I get to the table.

“Hello.” I try to pick up the nonchalant tone.

“Hello.” He replies and tries to scan his memory to see if he already knows me.

“So… What is your status at the moment?” I continue.

“Tired. And yours?”

“I come to your work once a week. We engage in an intercourse.”

“Oh yes. Sorry, I would have probably recognised your card number.” He says.

What now? Do I just sit here?

This is the pain we bury 
In shallow graves
Just to get through the day to day
Inescapable compromise of integrity versus a life that doesn’t even come close
To the way we planned it
Telling stories of who we are and how we see this world 
Surrounding us that we are part of but never quite fit into

These wounds we carry still the scars we bear as 
Proof of survival

We believe in everything we believe in nothing at all, not even
Ourselves

Only this: Necessary acts of creation
Confrontation, exorcism reparation for the mistakes
We cannot forgive in ourselves
Or even ask to be forgiven for

Negotiating with fate Or God or Something
For any answers at all

Hoping yet, terrified that anyone is listening
When these masks and glamours slip away into smoke
And the only thing left is
Us
-2006

17 April 2058
 I’m still a poet. It’s just different. I breathe the poetry of survival now. The next breath, the next meal, the next cache of fresh water – these are the verses inscribed. Thoughts composed in language that will never be pretty. Pretty never interested me. Pretty covers up a multitude of sins.

This world contains no margin for lies. Not anymore. Emma has a fever.

22 April 2058
The physicality of my days is simple: wake, wash with the chemicals that never leave me feeling clean, take nourishment, work, wash again and sleep. I rarely speak, except to the children. They don’t remember the world before, so I tell them stories. The adults can’t seem to bear remembering. 

It isn’t that I don’t mourn, it’s that I only mourn in voiceless words that won’t be seen until I’m dead. For all the failings of this body: Old bones in old skin disintegrating around me, old injuries giving me a crippled gait; my mind hasn’t abandoned me. Sometimes it’s the closest I think I’ll ever come to heaven and sometimes, it’s the next best thing to hell. 

Memory is a blade that cuts any hand that grasps it. Memories of everything swept away in the floods. Memories of everything burnt to dust by an unflinching sun. 

The things I miss the most: chocolate, Gerbera daisies, coffee, black and blue steaks, books. Real books, pages printed and bound. By 2021, paper media was a thing of the past. I miss writing. Holding a pen, letting thoughts flow to my fingertips and onto a page. My husband. My children. They died in the global famine, along with 4 billion other people. No graves. No markers. Just ashes. My grief is as much a part of me as the colour of my eyes. Why should I explain it?

The hall is home, for now. All of us orphans of a sort. We’ve only got a few weeks here, before we head further inland. Jamie’s calling me.

I try not to feel. I care for them. I try not to care. I can’t afford to love them. Not in a way that implies permanence. I haven’t got enough time for permanence. 

The older ones remember just enough to ache for the past, and the youngest will never know anything but this strange existence.

Emma is dead. 
 She was 12 when I found her. Nothing but the sticks and knobs of bones, a tangle of filthy blonde hair, and wide, feral green eyes. She latched onto me like a kitten, clawing to keep me close.  
For fifteen years, she was the nearest thing I had to family. 
 Enough. 
 

28 May 2058
 I will stay here, when the pack leaves. Maybe I can feel clean again, just once before I die. My thoughts are becoming scattered. It’s not madness, merely the entirety of experience crowding in once more. 

8 June 2058
It’s quiet. Even at night. The heat is starting again, after a solid week of rain. Rain seems such a miraculous thing this time of year. The tomato and lettuce seeds have sprouted. Jamie left me a bit of extra water, but the collection barrels on the roof and around the perimeter are full. 
Every day, I stood naked on the roof in the rain. Warm rain, like stepping into a proper shower. We were such a profligate species when I was young. 

Tabula Rasa. The juxtaposition of present and past. It began in the late ‘20’s. When the full fury of nature fell upon us in ways the scientists hadn’t predicted, the tenuous illusion of civilisation was held up to the bright light of day. Power shifted. As death and destruction became part of the normal rhythms of our existence, survival meant forgetting the life before.

We learnt to have faith in ourselves and in each other. We learnt to deal in reality, rather than myths. We drifted into packs like the social animals we are. Finding safety and comfort in numbers. 

I’m not an historian, only one human being who has outlived everyone I love. 

15 June 2058
Nanotech meant that with a simple injection, we became a sort of archive of human existence. Eventually, all of our memories will rest in a databank. Over three billion people turned into ghosts in the machine. Catalogued, cross-referenced, tagged, analysed and archived. 
 

12 July 2058
The images of my husband and children. My childhood. My life. I don’t know if it matters that I remember the taste of champagne, or pizza. 

What value can the memory of the sweet burn of an aged single-malt or the strange delight of chocolate-covered bacon have? I walk in the Turbine Hall and wonder if any of this will matter.  
History is always suspect. 

I found raspberries, a wild patch in St. James Park. There is still so much that is beautiful in this world. In this city. Things are coming into balance. The wildness encroaches on civilisation and we cannot object. Coexistence by default. 

27 August 2058
There was an electrical storm to the south that looked like fireworks. I watched from the roof. The respirator filter was done in after twenty minutes. I retreated into the hall, counted the cracks in the paint on my bunk leg. My fingers itch. I want a pen. I want paper. I want to remember for myself. 

17 September 2058
The rains have come. The only benefit of the implacable torrent is the muddy stream sluicing into the drains. The grit and dust that make it impossible to breathe outside will be gone for another season. I’ve brought the plants indoors. Tomorrow, I’ll venture out with the net. Staying in one place means no access to bartering, no additional rations from the aid stations, no proper foraging. 

Random cravings for a cheeseburger, chips, and an ice-cold beer today. It’ll be a memory feast tonight. 
Sitting on the floor, I remember: A wide, toasted roll. Crisp lettuce and juicy ripe tomato. Pickles. Onion. Fresh beef, grilled to a perfect char on the outside of the patty. Still moist inside. Hot and salty chips. The first sip of a summer ale. Citrusy tang on the palate, that light and brisk effervescence on the tongue. Sitting in the sun with my mates, laughing. 

 I didn’t realise I was weeping until I stopped. Bloody hell, I hate fish. It’s better than processed molecules of synthetic beef, but only just. 
 

23 September 2058
So tired.
I dreamed of my husband last night. The way he was when we met. Standing on the pier with his hands in the pockets of that battered, ridiculous leather jacket, ratty trainers on his feet. 

We band together in packs because it’s emotionally safer than being paired with one person. We need each other, but not too much. Practical needs: tasks to be done, safety, resources pooled together. Even within the pack, we’re emotionally isolated. 

I’ve grown weary over the last few months. I can’t seem to lose the habit of survival. Even when survival is tedious. 

Enough. 

30 September 2058
I’ve done what I can. I’ve been keeping the kit since before we came back to London in the spring. At my age, no one tries very hard to talk you out of suicide. It’s done. 

The things I loved are an endless list. I loved life. I loved the endless expression of human consciousness in art, music, literature. There is so much beauty, such a capacity for grace in all of us.

There’s nothing left to say, is there? Well, maybe just this: I hope we survive. I hope we learn to expect better of ourselves. I hope we learn to love each other again. 
Hope. 
It’s what sustained me through all of it. Even now.  

Enough.

* * *

Exhausted, I trudge into the shelter. The usual flickering lights and white noise greet me: the eternal drumming of the rain, the creaking and scratching of the sculptures and the endless chatter of the neighbours. I head past rows and rows of bunks, towards our corner. I just hope I waited long enough. “Oi! Yorkshire!” I turn. It’s Mickey from two rows over. “I see your Dad’s finally croaked it. ‘Bout time too. Give some Londoners a bed.” I’ve stopped listening. He’s right though. We never should have come. I get to our corner. A Cockney family’s making themselves at home. There’s no sign of Dad. Guess he was taken and Quicklimed round the back while I was out. No hanging about. Won’t take the risk.

I stand, watching them, the new family. They’re thanking God for their salvation. A home at last, away from the rain. My little sister used to say that the rain was God’s tears, like Noah’s ark or something. 40 days and 40 nights…it’s been over 40 years and still no sign of stopping. And as for the animals, they take care of themselves. Everyone does. A hand touches my shoulder. Old Jack’s come to see how I am. “He went quietly, you know.” Yeah, he shivered to death. Gone in a whimper. “Makes a change”, I say. We laugh, not quite sure if we should but what else can we do? “You’ll be alright, son.” He leaves me to it. I go reclaim my bunk and devour my meal for one.

***

tap tap tap tap tap tap

Creak

tap tap tap

Creak

tap tap

“Our Father…”

tap tap

Creak

“Who art in Heaven…”

I can’t sleep. The rain keeps on drumming, the rusting sculptures keep on creaking and the new neighbours are praying. They cling to their Bible, praying for desert as hard as their ancestors prayed for rain. I used to dream of deserts. Miles upon miles of warm, dry sand. Like in the stories Mum used to tell us. About when she was little and how they used to go play at the beach. Back when the sea knew its place and the sand still stood its ground.

A scraping sound joins the symphony of creaks and taps. That spider sculpture’s at the roof again. Trying to escape, that’s what I used to tell my little sister, Libby. The rain made them grow so big and fierce looking, that the Government got scared and locked them in here. But one day, they’re gonna claw their way back out and wreak bloody revenge. Ha, she wouldn’t sleep for a week! Mum said I have an overactive imagination. It’s not like there’s much else to do round here, just work, food and sleep. I’ve read all the books I could find, twice or more. Except one, I’m saving that. If I don’t have dreams, what else have I? That’s why I dream about mountains. I dream I’m flying high above the sordid cities and dripping clouds. I’m free to do anything. Free to be anything. I could be a doctor. Yeah, I could do that, like how I took care of Dad and…….Or a scientist. Figure out this rain and make everything better. Or…or a lawyer, no, a politician…I’d stop all this lark, rotten shelters and stuff. Save the world. Do better than that lot, sat up there in their towers. Or a writer, a journalist. I could go anywhere. I could do anything. I just need to get free from here. Free from just surviving. I reach under my pillow. The reassuring lump of my rucksack sits waiting. Good. I’ll go in the morning. Wish I could sleep.

***

I wake to the sound of wailing sirens. Fear grips my stomach. People dash back and forth, lugging sandbag after sandbag over to the door. The door! I bolt out of bed and over to the outside door, dragging my rucksack with me. A wall of sandbags bars my way. Whatever’s happening, it’s not good. “Move it, Yorkshire.” Mickey staggers past me, carrying a pile of sandbags. He drops them on to the wall. “You gonna help, or what?” He starts arranging the bags in place. “I need to go out.” I know it’s a long shot, but I have to try. “Go out? Oh, why didn’t you say so? Here, let me help.” Before I can move, he grabs hold of my arm and he shoves me to the ground. “Idiot.” A hand reaches down to help me up. It’s Old Jack. “You don’t want to go out there, son. Haven’t you heard? It’s the Barrier, see? It’s finally given up the ghost. Couple of hours and half of London’s going to be under water!” No. The experts said it had at least a couple of months. I have to get out. Now. I turn and once more, I’m running for my life.

There’s still a chance, if I can get through the Tubes…A crowd is gathered on either side of the gate, one side begging to be let in, the other, ignoring them as best they can as they stack sandbags between them. I fight against the waves of people, trying to get through, but it’s no good. The wall continues to grow and grow until the cries from the other side are muffled and finally blotted out. There is no escape.

I dash back to the main hall. There must be something. I can’t just be trapped here. Not ’cause of him. But there’s nothing. Just walls and walls of sandbags blocking our way out. The water’ll still get in though. It always does. Could use a boat, really. Shame he sold ours to get this beautiful place by the river. We’ve been stuck here ever since and I’m still stuck here. Mum and Libby died here and so did he. But I can’t. I won’t. The sculpture next to me moans in agreement. I look up, watching it claw at the skylight for freedom. I lunge at the sculpture and start shinning my way up before it’s even fully dawned on me what I’ve got to do. Slowly and painfully, I edge upwards, the rusting metal grating against my palms. The sculpture groans under my weight. I look up at the distant, rain-spattered skylight. I can make it. I have to make it. The twisted metal creaks and snaps and suddenly I’m falling. The sculpture crumples, slipping away from the sky. We crash to the ground screaming.

I awake to angry voices and accusations but it doesn’t matter anymore. Old Jack’s sorting everything out. Congratulating me for being so clever. Everyone’s at the sculptures now. With weapons and bare hands, they
steal its limbs to better seal our tomb. Genius. That’s what Dad thought, bringing us down here. London’s
where the rich and powerful live, so it must be safe. Never mind the experts. He never listened. That’s why I had to do it. I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life stuck here ’cause of him, because he couldn’t admit he was wrong. Not even after Mum and Libs…It was gonna happen eventually anyway but that sort of illness hangs about and I couldn’t, not anymore. And it’s funny, ’cause here I am, still. Trapped on this sinking island. And soon the Barrier’ll burst and the rich and the powerful, they’ll be alright. Up in their high rises and helicopters. It’ll just be us down here and all those people in the Tube…and the rain. I take out my last book and sit down to read. I had so many plans.

THE END

With growing knowledge of the Source, religions had been forced to discard much of their dogmas and suppositions. For those with Protection, the world was fast becoming a united space, a Utopia of sorts – they didn’t have to see it any other way. But then every role had its risks.

“Trafalgar Square was officially shut down today. That’s the fifth landmark this month…”

Emerging from trance, I stretch my fingers to revive them and shakily take a sip of coffee. More evacuations I suppose. They’re always telling us about parts of the city being closed down and evacuated. I picture groups of people being herded together into tanks and driven to the hills in the North. To a better life. Not that I know what happens during evacuations.We all have our roles and as one of the Protected my role is not to know. My role is innocence.

My eyes have wandered, I draw them back to the screen, I must focus.

“…To keep it open would involve daily pumping and as everyone knows we’re running out of storage space. …. Erica, can you see me? …A leading scientist has expressed his concerns. can you see me, Erica? .Further evacuations are planned over the next few weeks…”

The questions flash up on the screen. Breaking through the text. Urgent red letters….

I rub my eyes and look away. When I look back more words have appeared, weaving their way into the news-byte like weeds growing up through cracks in the pavement “…Erica, its me, Carl…”

I wave my hand to refresh the screen and it momentarily disappears, when it reappears the questions are still there: “Erica can you see me?” I circle my hand around the room and the screen follows. The words running around like a dog chasing its tail. I’m making myself dizzy.

It can’t be him. I take a deep breath. Close my eyes for a moment.

Chocolate cake in the coffee-shop, what was it called? The sun shining, mum’s lifting me up.…I’m smiling…Can you see me, Erica? Erica, can you see me? Come and find me …Carl hiding again, stupid boy – I follow his voice to find him. Pull back the curtain and there he is.

Was. In the end I had to stop looking.

“Come and find me?” Now the voice is in my head… Carl’s voice? …I must be losing my mind. Fear takes hold, I can feel it like slivers of ice through my body. I open my eyes and there’s nothing there, the room’s gone, its dark, I’m floating.

Cracks in time, falling through. Time is just a concept. Nothing to hold onto.

Dark images flit by, terrible things and I can’t shut them out. …

….And then suddenly, beams of light slicing into the darkness. Colours so radiant, so wonderful I want to cry with happiness.

“It is me, its Carl.”

I must have been tired and fallen asleep…

“Its okay, Erica. I know what you’re thinking. You must try to let go…”

And then I’m moving again

Lights falling through me, words falling through me. Spaces in between swallowing me like hungry mouths, spitting me out. I’m floating free through spaces full of something I’ve never felt before.

What is this feeling? Its incredible. It feels like…

Swooping, swallowing, the eagle has landed. But what does that mean? Why is life full of clichés. Regurgitating old words. Old worlds. Everything living is dying. Still we try to resurrect the past.

“Love?”

“That’s not what I was thinking”

“But its what you were feeling, Erica. This is the love you’ve spent your whole life searching for. And it was here all the time.”

I feel like I know so much. Too much. How can it be possible to know so much.? Feel so much? All this history and insight running through me. Terrible. Wonderful. Every cell in my body is alive like never before.

My body… where is my body?

Close by, I can feel his presence. Compassionate. Understanding. Patient.

Could it be Carl? That eight year old boy lost so many years ago.

And then I realise what’s happened. I feel panic rising…

Clouds appear, images flashing before me, a tornado with a house spinning through it, a wicked witch….a feeling of imploding, words and images pushing against me, suffocating me slowly…

“I’ve fallen in?”

“Yes, Erica…down the rabbit-hole…just like I did”

The thing I’ve feared my whole life. All those bodies at the depot, being kept alive in the hope that one day a cure would be found. People snatched away from their lives in an instant. Consciousness lost to The Source.

I turn away from his voice.

I’m surrounded by images…people drowning, clambering to wreckage …London disappearing in a flood…the most awful scenes…

“Erica, you must try to relax. You’ll learn to control your energy. Then you’ll only see the good things… Everyone you’ve lost, everything you’ve been looking for, its all here”

I think about the comfort of my flat. My coffee, still warm on my desk with its bitter-sweet aroma. My friends in their flats, close but so far away now. Sitting at their screens staring into space, perhaps catching the news-bytes as they come out of trance just as I did. Safe in the knowledge that their brains are fully loaded with everything they need to survive the day ahead. Safe in the knowledge that they are Protected.

It would be hours before anyone found me.

The Uploads are necessary for survival. Everyone knows that. You can’t leave your flat without them. We’ve all heard the horror stories of people who’ve tried. Without the Uploads we couldn’t cope with what was out there. There are things we’re not supposed to know. Things we’re not supposed to see. We cannot deviate from our role.

Falling in is a side effect. The risk is minimal. And scientists are making good progress. The government’s always telling us that.

“Is there no way out?”

…A pair of shoes…red…ominous…words encircle me, taunting me with their mantra…there’s no place like home, there’s no place like home…there’s no place like home…

I know the answer to my own question. Fifteen long years its been since I last saw my brother. And so many others lost since then. Bodies lying in stasis, waiting to be revived. The Protected are not allowed beyond the compound, not allowed in the depots. Its not part of our role.

“Erica, you must understand, we haven’t fallen into the Source, we ARE the Source”

That small body laid out like a corpse…surrounded by flowers, prayers.My mother reluctant to make the call… the armoured van turning up just before curfew.

Soon there’ll be no one left to keep the bodies alive.

These days the garden was their only solace.  She spent hours just watching. It was a lush, tropical, blooming, rambling trail of wonderful colours and tasty looking goodness.  They had nurtured it from nothing, fighting the authorities all the way to be able to keep the land and use it how they wished.  The mooring had always been no-man’s land; neither the council nor the waterways authorities knew who owned it.  They had researched and written letters and eventually, years later, managed to find out that it actually belonged to nobody so had been able to lay claim to it for a small nominal fee with the promise to maintain it well and not build ugly buildings on it.  That was no problem for the Chapman’s; they had very green fingers and had built a wonderful ecological world of delights on that mooring.  When the weather changed in the early twenties it made a huge difference to the ground.  It meant that all those foods and plants that they could only have dreamed of growing could now be grown in abundance.  Since the collapse of the government and local authorities there were no longer restrictions on the moorings, the boat owners owned the moorings and took over their maintenance, forming small local communities that acted for the goodness of each other and boy how that worked so much better than the regimented days at the beginning of the century, when religion created wars and meltdowns amongst angry people ignorant to any other way and the controlling authorities had spiralled out of hand without any positive results.  In those days technology was seen as the only way to pull the reigns in on a sprawling mass of blinkered and brainwashed souls.

They had been so lucky.  Some would say it was their destiny; they had always been so kind to others.  Their careers had evolved from their love of music and each other.  Neither or them realised just how successful their workshops would become.  People travelled from around the world to attend them, waiting for up to two years to book on to some of them.  They were renowned creative masters of their field and libraries of books had been written about them and their way of life had evoked such a strong following it was scary to imagine how different the world could have been, had they not had the courage to pursue their dreams.  There had been a time when they were going to give up on it all. Pack up their bags and head off to the other side of the planet and start again, discover something different.  It looked like those wretched computers were going to take over the world until some bright spark managed to quite literally pull the plug on the whole system and everything was lost.  All global networking stopped over night.  The controlling spell was broken.  People had to start to get to know their neighbours again, live in the community and find another way.  Most people had forgotten how to communicate without laptops and hand held machines.  Most people didn’t care for conversation and books and found it quite humiliating to have to revert back to what they assumed was a redundant and out-dated way of life.  Once they found their feet though, which didn’t take as long as expected, they were flying.  People embraced each other, and the world around them.  It started to grow again.  Even the mountains of abandoned old laptops, computers, macs, ipods, blackberries and mobile phones that had grown up in the city like children’s lego skyscrapers seemed to have a new life and served as a reminder to those still living just how close they had come to being ruled by machines.

The Chapman’s had been involved with unconscious spirituality since they were young and first engaged to be married.  That was how they had first met, at a small meeting of minds in a dingy café in London.  The aim of the group had been to enlighten the mind through telepathic nurturing and communication.  They knew that if people could just reconnect with the full capacity of their minds a whole new path could be followed that would save the world from its tragic yet inevitable destiny.  The difficulty was trying to make the rest of the world see how this could be possible, without all hell breaking loose, but thankfully they didn’t have to try too hard, for when the plug was pulled and the panic set in, there was a spontaneous unanimous rising that meant that everyone was on the same wavelength and they were able to start the thread of unconscious connection quite simply with meditative breathing.  The collective core strength of this small group of the Chapman’s had been enough to open the minds of millions and the streams of unconsciousness began flowing, together at last, in the right direction.

It became apparent that a vast amount of people had become so backwards in their thinking that there was a lot of work to be done.  The old government buildings and places of worship had all been converted into places of relaxation and meditation where people could go and learn to unlock their imaginations and reconnect with their minds as one and begin the healing process.  The Chapman’s were relentless in their efforts. Slowly but surely the skies cleared and the earth began to breathe again.  The land became green and the sound of stress that had been a constant buzz, growing ever louder over the years, became a dull fading hum.

She knew their time was coming.  She knew that they had fulfilled their requirements to the earth and they now had to go to Spirit.  Leaving their garden was going to be the hardest thing in the world, yet she knew that whoever came next would blossom with it and learn to accept and adore the beauty within.  That thought alone made her heart skip a little to know that they had come all this way through a long and troubled life, fighting for a better future, and together they had made it happen.  Like the squirrels playing in the trees her heart fluttered and jumped high, reaching up into the clouds for the warm embrace, touching laughter, a loving and beautiful sound echoing throughout the collective world and resounding across the water.

Especially as it’s a normal sun, doesn’t have any of that lovely purple haze around it, which is easier on my eyes.

You know, I much prefer it when it’s hammering down, you know, when the rain is really beating against the window, almost tapping out the base beat of one of those Old School, Summer of Love tunes.

Any kind of rain is okay really, as long as it isn’t that nasty yellow burning stuff that would take the enamel off your dentures. I like to be ‘all snug’ in my chair with preferably no visitors to disturb me. You know the type, they think they’re keeping you ‘active’ and who insist on shuffling me to the holosuite to pretend to look at mountains, parks and grazing sheep.

Don’t get me wrong, I love to see the kids and the grandkids but on a day like that I like to look out my window and fish around in my mind for the good memories or look at my DS Visual Board and pick one of my fantasy stories to read in silence.

The silence can be so comforting, just like my old bed cardigan, the soft woolly one; you remember it had that funny zip that seemed to close at an angle.

Still love Lord of the Rings and can’t wait to see what the new film version will be like. Now Victor Mortesson he was lovely; and that kiss he gave at the end to the Fairy, Elf Lady – definitely tongue; and do you know what, he’s still on my ‘Five List’ of people I’m allowed to have sex with. Pretty impossible considering he’s been dead for 20 years but you know me and – I like what I like and maybe they’ll invent a time machine!

Think the actress was called Libby Tyler or was it Ebby? Something like that, very pretty, good actress, did great work for the War Effort.

On those wet days, that new fella whose got no legs from smoking stays in his room, and doesn’t hark-on about the war and how things were a lot simpler in his days. You’d have thought he would have given the fags up when the government first started warning about the dangers, let alone when they ran out during the war and they substituted the tobacco for dried compost.

What was I saying?

Oh yes, the weather.

Well anyway today when I logged onto the current news, there was the most ridiculous story about a group of people that decided the best way to help the earth was to start a revolution by putting back all of its natural resources; so they removed some local stone walls and statues with the intention of burying them! That was bad enough but fancy trying to steal those ladies jewellery, as if putting gold and diamonds back into the ground would make a difference – bloody fools!

Still, gotta give them credit for breaking-out of their order of things, not ruled by guidelines and moral promises – I can’t remember the last time I had a real milky bar of chocolate or smelt proper coffee.

I used to love Walnut Wips! All creamy with a nut on top – lovely. Haven’t been able to get them in years. Probably contra banded under Moral Promise 15 – Promise to Endeavour to Follow and Lead by Example the Guidelines of Natural Hygiene.

What was I saying?

Oh yes, the newspaper.

It was also talking about the thirty-year anniversary of the war – so many dead. After all this time it still gives me a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach when I see the news and it announces ‘Breaking News’. It said there were still hundreds of kilometres of land that was still contaminated with the chemicals and thousands of children and animals still being born with defects, not just there but right the way across the globe.

All in the name of God – as if!

At least some lessons have been learned, the newspapers don’t say what god or religion it was, rather it’s touted as ‘the actions of the uneducated’.

Next week the family is taking me out for my 90th Birthday.It’s going to be a huge affair with the local titties coming to give a speech just cause I’m so old and ‘made-it’. Wait a minute, that’s not the word… dignitaries that’s it… though titties is probably more appropriate.

Well anyway, there’s going to be a cake, probably made from dried eggs, it’ll set my digestion off again I know it and back to more tablets to try and get me to go. Oooh I wonder if they’ll give me another one of those green and white pills, I like those. You can really see the colours then.

What was I saying?

Oh yes, my birthday.

All that fuss, just because I was a timid little thing who when they said eat healthy and exercise regularly I did – in hindsight I wish I had lived it up a bit more.

I’m also being awarded some air miles but you know how it is, too old to be running around at airports with all those checks they make, even though the Identity Cards help a little.

I think I’ll probably give them to Ruth and Joe, they’ve already sold their entitlement for this year to pay for the extension and they’re goods kids, always make time for me and let me know all the gossip that’s going on.

I mean last week they told me Cousin Agatha had been having a thing with the neighbour. Funny looking thing, Agatha not the neighbour – I always wondered whether those funny eyes of hers were due to the x-chemicals. Ruth laughed and said that was normal in her family, a trait they called it. More like a travesty if you ask me.

(Sigh)

Do you remember when you could fly anytime, anywhere? No allocation of air miles, just log on, pay and off you went. We should have travelled more, but we never did. Always skint. Now I’m loaded and can’t be bothered. So since this allocation scheme was introduced I either give them to the kids or sell them. Someone always wants them, and yes, don’t worry I always get a good credit for them.

Well anyway Aggie’s man-friend was sent to prison for bootlegging beer. He’d already got 27 Moral Disruption Points against him so that was that, sent to the Detention Camp for Life Internment. Turns out he’d already been for Moral Re-Education three times and Aggie had met him after the last stint when he was behaving. Stupid girl!

God I really can’t be bothered with the party.

I’m old and my body gets really pissy with me when I muck around with it. But since they’ve arranged passes for the whole family and it’s unlikely that I will be around for the next time that happens, (physically or mentally), I think it should be okay and the kids always make me laugh. Though sometimes I suspect that what ‘I’m’ saying is probably more amusing. Half the time I think, they think, I’m making it up.

God I’m tired…

What was I saying?

Ooh lovely, it’s started to rain.

Yep, they’re they go, running around getting all the visitors and guests in. It doesn’t look yellow to me and the grass isn’t steaming but you never know. They have to be careful see. Us residents have great health insurance but you never can tell with the visitors. They do swipe their Health Cards when they sign in but one of the nurses was telling me that sometimes the system isn’t up-to-date and it causes all sorts of data re-analysis when someone gets hurt on the premises and doesn’t have the right cover.

I might just go back to my room for a bit, have a lie down and maybe a nap before lunch, listening to the rain will send me off no problem.

Mmm 40 winks, or in my case 90. Get up fresh as a daisy and maybe have a game of backgammon with old moaner. He always shuts up about how he’s seen it all when he knows he’s seen nothing compared to me.

But you know, on days like this, I really miss you.

Heavy rain outside, cuddling on the bed and pulling the blanket over us. No interruptions, just a lazy duvet day listening to the rain.

Can’t believe you’ve been dead for fifteen years.That’s one of the reasons I wished I’d been a bit more reckless when I was younger. What’s the point of being alive at ninety if everyone else your age is dead!

What was I saying… I suppose it doesn’t really matter… maybe I will have that nap.

‘What are you doing’ he asked in a childish query. ‘Haven’t we organised this already?’

Neil is a novelist’ and is slouched back in his chair while his wife is arguing over his desk. Neil is slim, with
yesterdays wax in his hair. He comes across as having a familiar face. He’s the kind of guy who looks agitated when he has been interrupted from his writing, but if you ask him a question about his new book, he won’t stop. Tapping his nails he explains ‘This new book is about Philosophers and Scientists big disagreement on Nature.’ 

In the corner of the room, a morning news update about the war on weather is playing loudly.

James waits for his response. He looks down at his trainers. He can see his reflection off the marble floor as the cold still seems to be rising.

James has to start work tomorrow. He is tuning the forests that surround London. Controversy means that some people seem to disagree with what’s going on but his main job is to harness nature. Like most of the kids his age, he has an intuitive knowledge of making nanotechnology useful.

A bright painting of pink flamingo’s hang between there faces. The novelist and his wife continue to discuss. James can understand the code of the disagreement but can’t understand their situation. He wishes he could pay more attention sometimes.

‘Where do the flamingos’ go now that the sea levels have risen? James asks himself. He really wants to remove himself from this triangulated situation. Neil’s wife doesn’t like the smell of salt air and often needs a glass of champagne to talk to young people. She doesn’t seem to be able to see past her daily problems but re-hangs paintings all over the place to keep herself busy.

‘So how long will you be here?’ Neils asks, ’well I’m here for a while, I think Professor Schumt said for 3 months but it depends if he spends the fund on wet technology or buying leather furniture for his newly appointed office?.’

“I’m an expert in wet technologies.” James acclaims. “As a scientist, I can make live growth do amazing things,
they’ve asked me to make all the trees in London grow into new structures, as we don’t have much dry land anymore. They don’t want to waste any time with manufacturing, so I let nature do the work.”

“So what type of structures are you growing?” Neil asks,

“They’ve asked me to grow new types of cathedrals throughout the city so we have places to socialise.” 

At that point, the sun came up from the left and shone into the room. The room went quiet, while Neil took a drink from his cup and peered out the salted window. His skinny hand gripped the table top. He seems very unsure of the future.

The news report recorded no changes since yesterday. In the West they have started shooting ions into the sky to steal rain falls. Outside you can see tilted masts and sails billow, as the shimmering fleet move past. The shadows from the ancient light are been harvested by the flocking wildlife. A single long cloud hangs in the sky, a distant memory of the greyscale London which so many of the paintings depict.

‘Ok, we are going to put you in the bronze room overlooking St. Paul’s estuary’.  My wife takes care of the rooms.
Don’t worry its going to have sunshine.’

Neil’s wife comes out from the desk and steps down from the crate where she had been reaching. She seems to have a nervous disposition.

‘Are you OK?’ James asks. He is not sure if she has trouble breathing or if she has trouble speaking. Unsure of a response, James follows her upstairs.

James retraces his steps to the door. The clinic they passed on the landing looks very empty. The glass door
automatically slides open and closes as they pass. James sees a glimpse of a white uniform hanging.

“You should tell your professor that I’m still working from home.” She says.

They meet noise on the last flight. Neil’s wife is out of breath. She really doesn’t seem very well. They turn left
underneath the scaffolding which blocks the view of the sky. Into the raised courtyard her morning vapour trail out searching for James, as she trys to explain where they are.

The part of the building they arrive at has a big green door with a single light above it. There are no visible handles.

‘Is this the door to my room?’

James takes one glance eastwards to see the view. The tree-lined vista of London is breathtaking as the mercury reflections of the partially submerged dome appear beneath him.

James isn’t sure if he should follow her. She opens the door which leads to a large bronze room. The marble steps are the same. The temperature doesn’t seem to change once the door is closed behind him. The room has stained glass as they rise; resin lines track down the side of the walls. Clenching the balustrade, James waits to enter. This place is warmer. The smell of heated metal feels homely. James finds a bed in the corner where he feels quite comfortable.

‘I’ll leave you here, tomorrow you must move rooms, as this is for two people. And you are alone.’ 

James sits on the bed wondering how he is going to explain his situation to Professor Schumt. If he pauses for a moment he really doesn’t don’t know if he should be here. “How much time has passed?” James tries to recollect. It’s the kind of time when he can’t imagine anything else. The floor looks so hard and shiny, a thousand people could have passed through this room and he could never know.

An upside down oak tree hangs above his head. The amber clock is slowly turning .The resin is dripping from a bleeding scar on the trunk into the hour glass below. As the hour glass slowly fills, the forests are slowly moving. He imagines the creaking of the cathedrals as they grow, the languorous groans on the transept filling the live braches of the trees.

James starts moving the furniture and unpacks his case. The desk is comfortable looking but it’s in the wrong place. The chair needs to face the light. The other bed becomes a waste land of unsorted possessions.

Finishing his shower James considers calling Professor Schmut but then decides to put back on the same clothes and leaves the room immediately.

Peripet throw Amrolite a wave with hir dendron afore ze drop in boomtube and gone. Me though, I not so easy.

- Fucken wasten time dirty stoppa – me ding.

Pull back me claw, smack Amrolite full up. Meant to be like soft tap but exo overcomps and it blow right through he face.

Whoops.

Blood everywhere, droplet ten exp six. Viddy pip to slow so can admire the air mist. Amrolite head it like totally bomb.

Maybe gone too far, nag me ethimod. Maybe it score true. Crowdrank dip red; not diggen this. But Amrolite he just laugh. He passen tape like it rainen punchcards as nano morph he head back. Fucken Aibrid won even stay down. “Fuck you Tb0mb,” he voke. Head red fucken mess. Nanos vapen, roaches eaten. All clean now: then he sleep likesay.

“Powerdown maybe a minute, maybe ten,” voke Amro. Smooth as u like.

“Nuff den,” me voke. “See yo metal in Miraflo.” Full casual like. In boom tube. But Miraflo it dead. Proxim nada. Fullen graveport. Solo Peripet n Fowler. Shoulda been cruisen wit partynav tonite but Fowler wanna go blinden. Shoulda passed. Fowler nother fucken retro head with e romantic bullshit. Nuff den.

- Where been, Tb0? – ding Peripet. – Fucken ages -

- Mibad – me ding back, ceecee Fowler. – Amrolite -

- Viddied u – laugh Peripet. – Ubad, right -

- Fucken stupid blind – me ding Fowler. – Proxim on – Power up.
Scene coming in overlap2p. Cerrochrome and Dyce biggen it east Vladi way. Dyce head wide fucken open. Ze crazy. Practically inviten neurocrash party.

- Psych? -

Peripet channel green. Fowler shrug, ping amber. Fucken serotweak already methink. But Fowler turn that off too, says proxim. Nuff den. Jump.

Dyce head it fucken crowded. Everyone ircing through. Yeah, it fun scene. If you like fucken standen room only.

#@Dyce you need fucken upspec!

#Yeah yeah

#No fence nuttin but me checkin out.

#@Tb0 Shit man don be no dirty stoppa

# @Dyce spect but me checken out

Where to go? Proxim flash up rentbodies. Not arsed with choosen, just want checkout. Psych in. Holy butterfly space. Cool.

Milkweed an UV.

“Hey hey, check Tb0mb,” voke Cerrochrome, banden pix. Cool. Cerro ain’t usually bloggen me. Hey hey, ‘deed. Me recommod flash: Manaus? Good for butterfly. Cerro dings green. Fucken a. Tb0 the leader. Fucken a. Boom the butterfly.

Manaus tips the round. Partynav deprecated; hell, proxim deprecated. Port fucken bangen. Serromod flooden: neurostim blowen out on flower forest perfume vibe. Dyce port fucken snake, Peripet aquabot. Even Fowler he finally risen up.

An Cerro: Cerro matched pair on me b-fly. Fucken yeah. Cerro ze hot. Always diggen high, always clear blue hitpoints an cortex all the way up to hir plexus. Usually no fucken chance viben with me, but now flyen the pair!

- Flyen pretty good for new bug – me ding Cerro.

Overlap2p me view of hir flyen above, vector overlay. Tryen present schooled, but instant the ding go out it sound dumb. Fucken no voke in butterfly body.

But Cerro ze no vaped. Flyen pretty swit youself, ze ding back, overlap2p hir own view. An with glitter trail cuttenpaste. Damn. Cerro actually rollen with me.

B-fly nice n pretty but ain’t no voke, and sensoplex weak. Better kicken it mammal style hereon. But Cerro rel no follow, right? wtf aint no harm tryen.

# Hey Cerro how bout go warmblood me ding. Then: realise dint ding im, dinged irc. Oh fuck.

- Woo – ding Dyce. – Slick move mofa -

Can’t read hir lights. Prolly piss extracten but Dyce he good guy. Dint ceecee anyone. Swit trick too with head fulla psychs. No-one else listenen: aint scored up in any one else’s inbox. For 1nce, thanken fuck for lowstats.

Uh-huh, ding Cerro. What in mind? Me recommod pipe: Lemur? Very prehensile, very nice. Fucken yeah. Getten prehensile wit Cerro, hur hur hur. Proxim pings rentbody near the space. Ethimod nag: not cleaned after past user. Remember NIV: safe swap means clean ports. Yeah yeah. If Cerro don mind then I don mind.

Oh yeah. Lemurspace rocken. Fucken saucereyes n multilimbular. Swit. Climben tree, an Cerro wit me. Proxim dingen as the party en Dyce head droppen off.

Alone wit Cerro, oh yeah, Tb0mb clicken it on. Ze pipen in olfact, viz… tactile. Uh huh. Me   rollen tonite, yeah.

- Open psych? -

- Nuh uh – ze ding. – Warez fire? -

But ze droppen firewall settin a notch. Senden packets. Starten download.

Oh yeah, ze openen up now. Interface throbben. Pulsen.

Oh yeah.

- Hey Tb0? -

- Yes, Cerro? -

- Wanna go @ ¦¦ ~ #oh hey, Amro! -

An there he be, fucken Aibrid, fucken spammen all over you. “Hey whassup sweet lemur Cerro that fur is benden and banden all over the place.” Still voken. Go to fucken ding, me think, ze no interest in yo fucken retro bullshit. But ze fucken fallen for it.

“Where you bin Amro?” ze voke.

“Bin sleepen. Builden up energy,”  he grin – flesh grin, do you believe it – I gots so much dreamtime to show. Wicked cool.” Pipen glyphs, fast and loud – dazzlen Cerro.  Completely fucken overclocken me.

- Amro, you algo fuck – me im.

- Hey, Tb0, you don mind if I show Cerro this thing – he irc back. Finally, fucken dingen. Even if irc, not im.

- Actually -

- See you later, Tb0 – ceecees Cerro. Fucken ceecee.

Leaven. Psych wiped, ports closed.

Fuck.

Shoulda hit that son of a bitch harder.

This is us standing side by side at our graduation; me in blue and you in gold.

This is us at Michael’s wedding, dancing together just the way friends do.

These are us at protest marches: against the war in Iraq; against banning same-sex marriage (we went together, we told people we were going together, it was the most out we had ever been); against the African Blockade. This is us destroying the wall in Palestine, barely distinguishable in the crowd. Behind us your brother is cheering. He hadn’t yet told anyone that he had contracted the Red Plague.

This is us with our son the day he started school, finally, after waiting months for the quarantines to end. He was born the day the Moon Station opened. You were annoyed at having missed the live broadcast of the
ceremony, but you smiled whenever you told the story, proud to show off that he was ours.

This is the wilderness reserves with the last of the elephants and the children who asked us why we hadn’t stopped them dying.

This is you repairing our wind power generator; me cleaning the rainwater tanks. We were prepared when infrastructure collapsed, and were pleased to shelter those who weren’t.

Do you remember the parties drinking Michael’s gin and eating cousin Margaret’s home made pies?

This is us sitting in Memorial Park—after it had been the Park of the Republic, after it had been the field hospital for the victims of the bombings in 2033, after it had been Kensington Gardens. It was raining, but it was six years to the day since the Declaration of European Unity and the young couple walking their dogs were happy to take the photo for us.

It is the last photo I have you, just weeks before the cancer finally won. I am missing too many moments from the years we had. I should have taken a photo every minute of every day. How did you smile when our son sent his first postcard from the moon? How did you cry when they cured the disease that took your brother? How would you laugh at me now, maudlin over pixels blinking at me from a screen. I have the next seventy years to think about, you’d tell me.

The grandchildren are visiting tomorrow. I have baked them your favourite cake.

Fifty years ago it would have been a ridiculous notion, walking around with a pink book in your back pocket. And now here he is. Not that it’s forced, it’s encouraged. And he, like so many Londoners, is Discouraged.

His hand brushes against the fabric of the banner and he has an overwhelming urge to tear it down and hurl it into the cold grey waters of the Thames. Like so many of the Discouraged, he feels ill at ease with the idealism and optimism that surrounds him.He wants to see these words, the cheap paints, muddied and washed away.

And instantly he feels ashamed.

Some kid’s probably spent hours on this. In his day it would have been mindless graffiti, spray-painted directly onto the bridge, fuelled by anger. But these kids, they’ve never known that kind of anger. They’ve led such protected lives.

He lets go of the cloth and instinctively feels his way to the acupuncture point on the side of his hand. He taps to ease the shame and anger. He wants to feel calm, he wants to be like them. But its no use. He stares at his hands, cracked skin, sores that won’t heal.

The drizzle is relentless. Everything is damp. Nothing ever dries out completely. Water leaking from the sky and seeping up from the old subway stations below. Filthy and black. The damp stagnant smell, everywhere.

He remembers the sound of trains, the growl of the engines, the vibrations that could be felt even from the ground above.

They say we are manifesting a new future. That all the destruction and decay we see around us is the result of our own misguided thinking. That we, as a species, have spent too long thinking about what we don’t want and in doing so have created it.

In the canteens there is talk of the life-forms growing in the stagnant water under the streets. Single cell organisms brought down in the meteor-rain, rapidly evolving. That was what they were told in a public news-sheet five years ago. What they’ve become since, scientists can no longer share.

He walks along the bridge and turns the corner. Here and there weeds, rushes and lily-pads grow in the blackened ponds and puddles in the street. London is turning into a marsh. Eventually, they’ll have to abandon this city altogether.

He remembers walking along one morning and being struck by the beauty of a water-lily. Freshly opened yellow and white petals not yet stained by the black rain. So pure and at odds with everything else he could see. For ten minutes he stood there memorising the image until it was firmly imprinted on his retina. He felt a deep joy stirring within for the first time in months, maybe years.

He stares idly now into the surface of a pond, so murky he can hardly see his own reflection. Small amphibians drift lazily through the grimy water and insects skate along its surface.

He looks up. Something catches his eye and spurs him on.

He walks towards the building that was once the Tate Britain. Revolving doors long since rusted over and sealed shut. A banner hangs across the front entrance – ‘Thoughts create reality”. The building itself is cracked and neglected. Covered in moss and lichen. Great works still occupy its interiors, now sealed within like artefacts in ancient Egyptian tombs. Preserved for some future generation to rediscover. Perhaps.

He remembers going to the Tate nearly fifty years ago. Standing on the steps eating ice-cream with his friends, carefree. The sun shining the way it did back then. And staring out onto this river. The one thing that remains unchanged. Well, almost. Of course, the current is stronger than it ever was back then and steep embankments struggle to contain the rising tide.

Hundreds of others like him have gathered, urged on more at the spectacle of the fire than the occasion itself. Such vivid colours, flames dancing and crackling. So beautiful to watch. Three Seers form a triangle around the blaze. Its been months since he witnessed a Cleansing.

Fires are not permitted outside of the ceremonies.

Even with the petrol it takes a while to get the blaze going. But its only when he gets much closer that he sees what is being burned. And he stands fixated in the crowd watching the already drowned Ophelia go up in flames.Not just Ophelia, war paintings, works by Rothko and others.But his eyes hold onto Ophelia as the flames consume the flowers in her hand, her hair.

Negative energies have to be Cleansed wherever they occur. That’s the rule.

He stares deeply into the flames as he thinks about the past.

Fifty years ago, it was okay to keep your thoughts and emotions to yourself. It was encouraged. People didn’t want to know what you were thinking or feeling. The mind was a private space and if it was messed up it was for you to deal with. There were no healing circles or tapping groups.

It was the Great Reform of 2030 that changed everything. The Belief Reformation Trust were elected, a landslide victory. It was inevitable, really. Years of campaigning for a better society – of protests and government White Papers – hadn’t achieved anything. Years of anti-war rallies had only created more wars. Governments were just buying time, they didn’t have the tools to change anything really. Not at a cellular level, an energy level. Without that, no real change can take place.

By the 2020’s the campaigning had stepped up. Protests had always contained some form of violence, whether actual or intended, but it was getting worse.

He remembers vividly the Give Children Back Their Lives Protest of 2023, when thousands of exasperated parents took to the streets of London and stormed the Houses of Parliament. In the end the siege lasted three days and achieved nothing. When the hostages were finally released the government realised it could no longer cope with the demands of ordinary people.

Belief is the basis of all healing. Everyone knows that now. When the pharmaceutical industry could no longer conceal the evidence from the Placebo Trials and Energy Interventions, they did the only thing they could to retain their power. They formed the BRT, a global network taking over from the governments of the world.

It’s not a dictatorship, not Big Brother watching over you. Its more complicated than that. Its Righting Wrongs. Everything done by committee. Everyone has a chance to vote. Nobody has to make any decisions. The BRT take care of that.

So much progress made towards eradicating poverty through the clearing of ego-based negativity. People suddenly realising that they have more than enough of everything. So many times he’s seen the effect Clearing has on people, even people of his generation, they come out looking lighter, happier, like a weight’s been lifted. And each time he thinks it could have been me. Except it can’t.

He can’t help feeling cheated. Betrayed.

“All that we are is a result of all we have thought” reads the opening line of the BRT Manifesto on the inside cover of the LPB. A quote taken from the founder of Buddhism – a former religion, now incorporated into Spiritual Practice

Everyone remembers where they were on 24th April 2035, the day the World Wide Web was unplugged. It was like stopping the clocks.

They had tried to prevent it but the Inter State Clean Ups hadn’t worked. There were always renegade groups of Discouraged out there, hacking in with their negative energies. So in the end it had to go.

He had been born into a world where the internet seemed as vital to life as running water. When the final message was displayed, the world held its breath.

‘On-line..’ already the word seems strangely archaic, an elderly woman overhears the thought and involuntarily makes eye contact as her subconscious too works on the associations of that word. She quickly looks away and hurries on.

This is not the world he dreamt of. He grew up feeling protected, he spent so much time in his room speaking to his friends through a machine. He felt safe.His fingers still long for the comfort of a keyboard.

“A bit wet out there today I’m afraid.” he says. “ Going to be cold later.” I travel half way across the world and we’re still talking about the weather.

 “It was warmer at home.” I joke, though it’s obvious really, it being summer over there and winter here.

He drives me though the streets. It’s not a Landrover but a car with roll bars and a gun rack in the back. I try not to look disappointed. There’s an inch of water everywhere, that doesn’t seem to go anywhere, just
swish around as cars surf through.

 “The drainage.” he says. “Not like yours.” I nod, though don’t know what he’s talking about.

There’s a roaring trade in umbrella sales going on in the streets. Everyone runs around carrying the lurid orange and greens they’re selling. There’s no individual umbrella’s at all, like no one in the whole place owned an umbrella before today. It’s all rather pretty. I try to take a picture but he’s driving too fast, and you can’t take good pictures though wet glass.

“At least it’ll wash the snow away.” he says reflectively. I nod. “I remember when I was a child it used to be so hot during the day, when it got cold like this at night, everyone would come out into the streets and drink watermelon.”

“Surely it’s still like that in summer?” I say.

“True. I just remember it being a touch warmer. Maybe it’s just the nostalgia of youth. I remember my father always saying the same thing. Just like he used to say the young generation was much worse than his. Now I
say the same thing, I wonder if it’s just something we think as we get older.”

“I hope it’s not raining when we get there.” I say.

“Don’t worry.” he says. “The canopy will cover the rain.”

I don’t know what he means until arrive there. The plains, it seems, is more of a jungle. I always imagined it to be stretches of open land, but there’s a lot of it under cover of trees or large rock formations.

“I’d like to go on alone.” I say. “I think it will be better that way. More intimate.”

He doesn’t sneer or nod approvingly, he just says; ‘Of course’, as if journalists come down here everyday to capture the last moments of a dying species.

“I’ll wait in the hut.” he says, directing my attention to a small shack with some tables outside. “Follow the path, down the valley. Don’t get out of the car until you reach the bottom of the valley. There’s a sign saying ‘Elephant’s beware’. You can get out from there. The other animals don’t come that far.”

“Out of respect?” I ask. He walks away without comment.

The path is a muddy track. The ground is sticky and hard to drive through, like elephant dung. I didn’t tell the groundsman that I don’t really know how to drive. There’s no point in England anymore with all the traffic, but I manage anyway. I’ve played enough Micro games to know how it works.

It’s all one way anyway, I just wheel spin along the valley towards the dark walls of the rock that hides the Elephant Graveyard.

I stop the car just by the opening. I want to take a picture of the exact moment when I first see it, so others can experience what I’ve seen in this place with my own eyes. I slot the camera together, fitting it into the rain sleeve. Still, if rain gets on the front of the lens it would be disastrous for the shot.

I step slowly forward, the camera poised at my eye and take a shot, the camera’s auto focus working quicker than my eye. Then I focus it myself and take another shot, focusing on the line of tusks in the front.

The place is massive, like a scrap yard. Skeletons of giant carcasses lay haphazardly, like after all of the effort to get here the elephant’s didn’t even care enough to find themselves a nice spot. Most still have their tusks attached. I wonder if they’ll now reverse the anti-ivory laws. Since the last elephant is about to die, a law to protect them seems pointless. It seems a waste now, all those beautiful ornaments that were burned in the
thirties. It didn’t change anything. To be honest, though the scene is a shocking testament to the death of a species, it looks just like it does on TV. I don’t feel overwhelmed, as I imagined I would. But still, that won’t come across in my pictures.

There isn’t a moment when I suddenly see her, just a movement near the rock and then I notice her watching me, as if she’s always been here. She’s enormous. Much bigger than she seems in pictures. Her skin is leathery and weathered but it adds to her air of wisdom. Like she’s seen everything. She looks almost bored as she stares
at me, perhaps not really seeing me at all. The elephant sucks on a mulchy piece of grass as she strains towards, me as if curious or shortsighted.

She looks into my eyes, and for a moment there’s a connection, like recognition.

I slowly bring up my camera, without breaking eye contact. I wonder if I should just point the camera in her direction and hope for the best. I don’t want to risk her looking away.

The camera lens whirs slowly into focus and there’s an almost imperceptible snap as the picture is taken.

The elephant doesn’t seem to register the click, but from some other inclination begins to walk towards me. I try to appear calm, so that she’ll know that we are alike, and that I intend to help make her death meaningful. She comes on faster. I smile benevolently towards her, but begin to wonder if she understands.

She snorts, as if dislodging something from her trunk and a gush of hot breath comes out like steam into the cold air. She begins to run towards me, huffing. I step back, taking a quick picture. I think I should get back in the car. I could come back later, stand on the top of the rocks and look downwards, perhaps. She seems almost angry, but maybe I’m projecting human emotions on the animal. I get back into the car, and turn the key, but it won’t start. I don’t understand it. It has petrol.

She stampedes towards the car, looking straight into my eyes with a kind of madness or anger. Surely she could not crush the car. I do not know what will happen and it scares me, so I take the gun from the back seat and aim it though the windscreen. She doesn’t stop running and is so close now that momentum will carry her onwards
even if intention does not.

I fire.

An angry gash appears along the top of her head but she does not register it. I am horrified but fire
again. There’s blood, but I don’t know where I’ve hit her, so I fire again and again, shouting in despair as I do.

She slows but does not stop. There’s blood on her ears and on the ground but she’s still dragging herself towards me. I don’t think she’s ever going to stop until one of us is dead. I fumble with the door handle. Falling out of the car I run towards the graveyard of bones. I’m shouting – I don’t know what. I want her to follow me. I know she will.

I dive under the bones of one of her ancestors. The tusks stick out in front of me like the arms of a protecting
angel. I know she will follow me anyway. I have to do this, she will not rest. She must see the tusks but tumbles
towards me anyway. Impaling herself.

She lays still, huffing at me angrily as I crawl away from her, but I see fear too in her eyes, or maybe sorrow. I think about climbing up the rocks and signaling for someone to come and help her, maybe save her. But I
also know I must set off now on foot, to find the hut before dark. To linger any longer would be suicide. She’ll surely die now anyway, what would be the point?

As I walk away I hear the scamper of animals running behind me. I do not need to look back to know that I am doomed.

 It would seem like something was wrong if a place didn’t smell of urine, these days.  Now part of the furniture that lets you know you’re home, like manure to the countryside, that incubated sickly ambiance of uncapped storm-drain smothers all in the city and renders its original point of reference redundant.  But I still think of it so, as I still think of rain as rain, result of a cloud and not rain as rain, result of the sky.  The same way that, despite my age, men are still boys and women girls: I allow the world its change but respectfully decline for personal reasons. 

Regardless, an impressive cue extends from every official toilet of this building, so perhaps I’m not alone in my denial.  Must be something in the water.  Still, I had to prise myself away from one, despite its contradictions, and now find myself lingering in the stairwell, awaiting the opportune moment to release my over-extended bladder. 

 Has it really come to this?  Pissing not in the official toilets of the Tate Modern?  Because that’s what it is, come hell and high water.  Come homeless, come sickness, come donner and blitzen, this is still the Pope of stairwells; a spiral into the loft of culture; the Odessa of steps.  But!  There is no time like the pure pressing swell of the present to deny past value and future consequence, and the rain, so ever present that one learnt to take personality from it a long time ago, now taunts me with the sound of its constant relief. 

A moment as opportune as any other finally gives enough cause to face corner and gush.  The ceaseless roll of one million rooftop drums stops for my urination and, in what will become the only instance of such a feeling for a very long time, I am joyful.  Then it stabs me in the back – ‘Oi!’ – and the suspenseful roll of rain reignites from above. 
A woman is shouting at me, but what’s the point?  Never in the history of women shouting at urinating men has a man stopped half way through.  But, of course, as the lengthiest wee since records began finds contour and spreads down the stairs, the shouting becomes more and more distressed.  Finally, and with the resignation of an inescapably shamed man, I shake myself off and turn to face the judge.

Something about me being disgusting and how even her little boy can wait until he reaches a toilet, but
I don’t really pay attention to her words.  She looks like a corpse, save for her eyes and animation, and, as she lectures, blood begins to run from her right nostril until it hits her lips and flecks towards me down the steps on the back of her voice.  I’ve seen it in half of the people here, and wondered at it in myself.  Cholera, I expect.  Enough to kill a man, but not enough to stop a woman keep order.  Makes you proud to be British. 

He liked the muted, ochre simplicity of the peaches and yet, as he painted, he was like a bundle of knots all bunched up inside his too-big, baggy shirt. He scowled, and he set his back to the window and the taunting square of sky behind him. He painted seven pictures, each of which was no bigger than the palm of his hand, and he planned to sell them along with the fruit at market. Later, as Munir rubbed out his brushes, he wondered if, deep down, everyone was sick of blue.
    
Munir wondered how many peaches he would need to sell to pay Horin, who would be making the next trip to town, to source a tube of Prussian Blue. There was no question of palming Horin off with fruit – he had peaches enough. His garden ran down to the river and he irrigated it at night for free. Although Horin denied it, who else could it be sloshing about with a bucket when everyone else was in bed, with the windows flung wide open, the better to hear the crack of their peaches as they withered? Horin’s outsize, swollen fruit was testament to his furtive forays to the water’s edge; he would have peaches to feed to his pigs right through to November when everyone else would be sucking bitter blackberry pips from between their teeth.
    
‘Where’s the challenge of a peach?’ Horin asked. He turned a picture in the palm of his hand, as he might a pebble, before throwing it down on top of the unsold fruit. ‘Paint me my portrait, and I’ll find you some blue.’
    
That evening, Munir cleared the table and sliced up the peaches.
    
‘He says his eyes are blue, but they are grey.’
    
‘If he says so,’ his wife replied and they ate on, in silence, into the dimming light. 

                                                            ***

Horin believes the sea can talk.

He is fifty-nine.

He has brown hair made bright and brittle by the sun. It is the colour of wheat, ripened, then flayed, by the sun.

His skin is the colour of leather kicked over with dust.
    
He has a bicycle. He keeps pigs.
    
When he was nine years old, Horin found himself on the suddenly steep shingle that marked the fraying edge of Aldeburgh beach.
    
He turned a pebble in his hand and assessed its weight. He was barefoot and ankle-deep in water. He stood there and looked at the tiny pebbles that bulged between his splayed toes. The stones were not smooth. They hurt and tickled at the same time. Even though he was giddy with cold, he liked it. The tide was coming in. A wave slapped against his shins and streamed between his legs. As the water pulled back against his calves, he saw the tiny, pretty pebbles rush away like beetles from around his feet until there were two hollows under his heels. His toes could no longer grip and the next wave knocked him over. As he went under, he heard the sea.
    
What makes me blue?
    
He wanted to answer, the sky, but he was face down, and the sea poured into him as if he was an empty bottle. It filled his ears, his mouth and his lungs, and he sank. His fingers felt stupidly for the pebble he no longer held. Then, perhaps out of pity, the sea threw him back on to the shore to his parents. Because they were angry, they dragged him away and did not care when the stones cut his knees. They hauled him right up the beach, away from the reach of the highest tide, beyond the brittle, frayed line of seaweed and the knotted-up fishing nets, and the oil drums, the crab shells, the rusted tins, and the four-pack plastic. That’s where they took him and where they beat the water out of him. In the years that followed, wherever Horin moved, the sea formed a shadow behind him – it crept up the rivers, along the dykes, and across the Fens – through Harwich, Framlingham, and Cambridge.
    
In the evenings, Horin waters his peaches and watches the brackish water soak away. He reasons that every bucket thrown down is one less bucketful in the sea. It feeds a thirst that is so great that no matter how much water he sloshes about it cannot stop the earth from breaking apart or the soil from crumbling to a thick, ochre dust. He knows that in the end everything becomes either salt or dust. That even the sea, one day, will run out of blue.
    
Then Horin remembers the paint. 

                                                           ***

It is believed that when Munir Shurrab painted Pig-Keeper and Peaches, very few words passed between the artist and his subject. At least that is what Shurrab’s wife, Alicia, notes in her diary. There was, at one point, a disagreement about paint. No other documentary evidence survives to confirm this.
    
The portrait is believed to be Shurrab’s last work. It is exceptional in that Shurrab is remembered for his intensely luminescent, compact landscapes. As far as it is known, this is the only portrait Shurrab painted. The identity of the subject is a mystery, but Alicia’s diary makes reference to visits from a man who kept pigs and who was believed to be a member of Shurrab’s community.
    
The painting shows a man in his late fifties. His hair has been combed, and is parted to the right. The man is wearing a shirt buttoned up to the collar. Shurrab has included items that could be symbolic, and that hint at the man’s status: a bowl of peaches stands on the table; a bucket rests between his feet. There is what looks like a bicycle in the background, but it is difficult to distinguish from the deep shadows that obscure the space behind the man.
    
The subject has clearly been arranged and, even if the relationship was strained, Shurrab would have needed to direct his model. We can imagine his instructions, but perhaps a more terse conversation took place. We cannot be sure.
     ‘We have an agreement.’

 ’I know.’

 ’Did you find it?’

 ’What?’

 ’The paint.’

 ’Yes.’

 ’I need it.’

 ’Of course.’

‘Well, then…’

 ’Not yet.’

 ’What do you mean, not yet?’

 ’I'll bring it.’

 ’When?’

 ’When you’ll be needing it.’

 ’I need it now.’

The sky was so blue that day it hurt.

Another day.

 ’Why blue?’    

‘It is necessary.’    

‘And when it has gone?’

‘Then I’ll find more.’

‘It is not that easy.’

The portrait took form.    

‘The paint. I insist.’

‘Soon.’
    

Alicia made sporadic entries into her diary. Not long before Shurrab’s death he became increasingly agitated, and he would wait at the door for the pig-keeper to arrive. On his last visit they argued. She writes of the pig-keeper handing a tube of paint to her husband, which he grabbed. The screw top was seized on tightly and Shurrab had grunted with the strain as he tried to remove it. The more he struggled, the more he damaged the tube until the thin, metal casing split apart to reveal nothing more than a thin, shrunken finger of dry paint. It looked like a dull, black slug that had been poisoned with salt. When Shurrab cut into it, he found a tiny amount of tacky paint. At this point, Alicia writes, he wept.
    

Alicia’s diary does not reveal the identity of the pig-keeper, nor does she explain why Shurrab had chosen him as a subject. She describes him as grey-eyed and shambling. Yet her description is inconsistent with the portrait, and with the assertive demeanour of the man. His eyes, which engage the viewer in a fierce, direct stare, are not grey. Look closely, Shurrab has painted them the deepest, most startling, blue.

‘Om tara, tu tara, turey svaha’ whispered Rajesh, stepping onto the 214 shuttle, holding his travel coupon out to the straight-backed bus-driver. His daily mantra to Tara, mother of liberation, was one of the things that his father had left with him, something he always held onto. Rajesh was in bloom, blossoming with the virility of a 30-year-old man, longing within to be united with his queen, now that he had risen through life, no longer an orphan, now an initiated man. Ever since he had been living in the Solar commune, he had been designated each month with the princely task of collecting the moon calendars and their moon-cycle data submitted by the Timekeepers, the documentarians who had to keep track of all the menstrual and therefore productivity cycles in London. It was probably one of the most enjoyable duties in the city, at least Raj fancied it was, dropping in regularly to talk about the natural cycles at play in each group and then drawing their observations together, along with astrological data, to ensure harmony was at work in the communes. After all, how many other intelligent men were confined to their small communities forever, interacting only with those who lived close by, all working on their various duties together, but oblivious to the multitudes of magical women who were opening their doors with wide hopeful eyes under the weight of the London winter sky?

Mind you, the job did have its downfalls. For starters, Raj’s monthly transport coupons were handed out strictly in keeping with the route he needed to take, a system akin to that of showing a man a sumptuous roast meal but then giving him pickles for dinner. There were girls out there that he couldn’t catch, and somehow it seemed to him that it couldn’t be mere coincidence that the prettiest girls belonged outside of his regular circuit. It was the nature of the communes, that if you belonged to one you would have little real contact with anyone from another one, and besides, the boroughs themselves each housed interesting worlds inside each of them, specialist collectives built on specific dharmas which channelled the people and energy within them dutifully towards their given purpose on the planet. It was only due to Capitalism that this sort of society – Planetisation it was called, - had ever become possible but now individual motive had shifted to become a planet-wide one and the world was a better place. Even the dodo thought so, at least, that’s what Raj’s records had shown. In any case though, diverting from his tasked routes, even a mere ‘restructuring’ of his schedule one day, would
not just be a waste of time, it would be a red mark on his path of nobility. But he saw those pretty girls, oh yes he certainly did. This was his own little struggle, trying to maintain to his code, of eradicating desire and all it’s
ills from the world, while peering dreamily, day-upon-day into the inner lives and menstrual charts of some of the most light-filled women on earth. He knew everything about these women, when they were working, when they were bleeding, when the communes were in enlightened states, when things needed to be left alone, to fight out their shadows. Raj had insider knowledge. With it, came responsibility.

The other thing which wasn’t so great about his role was that it showed him just how mysteriously powerful these little clitorised creatures had come to be. Sometimes it scared him. They occupied London’ most lavish buildings; the Square Mile, which had once housed glittering jewels in the international financial system, were now residential palaces, gems in the sustainable architecture revolution, abodes for some of the most influential feline communes of the world. Their empire was not just London, Britain or Europe. In 2058, women ran the world. They were connected to an entire world organised by Dharma communes, everywhere. There were no more political borders. There were only Dharma lines, systems which ensured that each person followed their purpose, surrounded by others on the same path. Distractions removed, the world had been able to unite under a much healthier notion of humanity, and it didn’t involve visas, taxes, deficits and surpluses; it involved humans, evolved and evolving ones.

It was the wars that had really finished the patriarchal chapter of the world off for good. Too much violence and not enough nourishment, all topped off with the Global Inflection that overtook world economies; that was how The End came. Besides, how realistic was the Capitalist dream anyway, on one hand desiring for a prolific skilled society, on the other hand, destroying the fertile ground called Creativity with its consumeristic pulse and its aggressive fist? The moment had come for the Trinity of Women – the Maiden, the Mother, the Crone - 
to take up the helm, and it hadn’t been a fight which brought about this change, it was the natural way.

As the bus approached the Digital Database commune, Raj mounted the horse of anticipation which was galloping inside him, rising to the tide of nerves which knew already that Ramona would be awaiting him. Her eyes! They looked at him as though they were looking at him from within himself. How she melted his might, only to make it mightier! He had felt this from the first moment he had laid eyes upon her, her sheer magnetism made him rise to the challenge of life. But he knew nothing else about her, so secretive she was. She hid her Self far, far away, but maybe today, he would get into her cave.

‘Raj, a pleasure to see you. Please come on in,’ 

The antechamber was a garden of textiles, all reds and purples. For a flashing moment, Raj had the sensation that he was deep inside Ramona’s womb, but he quickly had to stop that thought as the erection it gave
him would have been a confronting but honest way of introducing himself to her again.

‘Sometimes it’s good not to be too honest,’ he advised himself.

In these last few years, Raj had learnt, he had learnt from the women and men he had seen. Love has a whole different flavour when you take it with dharma. It’s not about the wedding celebration, the token gestures
towards law with a contract or towards heaven with a white dress; it was about whether, by being united with another person, a melody was created which opened up higher pathways and brought light surging forth, surging forth in a way that doesn’t stop, ever. And all around him the world was lit up with this light. It
was what built the dharma communes, what brought about real meaning to the hard-working days, the quiet dark nights, the cycles in the Moon Calendars, the unrelenting joy that hung now in people’s eyes.

The question was though; was Ramona his doorway to these higher worlds? Was she? For Raj, it seemed that she almost definitely was. Whenever he saw her he felt like he had reached the other side of the world,
and that together they would suddenly be invited into another one. But what about those other girls, what about all of those lovely lips and hips out there? Was he really ready for this? For something of such a magnitude? In his heart of hearts, he searched for an answer to that question. He asked Tara to come, to tell him the way but all he heard was her singing in her own world. He asked the secrets of the Moon Calendars, the data which knew the underbelly ways of the world, if she was really The One, the only One for him; only silence was there, nothing but the never-ending journey of silence.

Ramona had her clitoris, an oracle, like a SatNav; a place to tell her the directions for the way ahead. But there stood Raj, left in a world without numbers, wondering, how does his heart count its heights and its truths now?

The world can be such a cruel place these days, and who can blame it after how we have treated it, throwing its hospitality in its face like the ungrateful lodgers we are. Every thing has its place, everything its time and I think perhaps the world is done with us and our conceit.

There we all sit, the rain has stopped so the drips so no longer infiltrate this shell of a building, broken and decaying; like civilization. A fire burns at its centre, the smell of cooking meat and herbs drift up in its ghostly fumes, escaping through the cracks above our heads into the blackness beyond. 

I pull my rags about me and I should shiver but I don’t. There is so little warmth, so little comfort in these barren times, living in the husk of an earth we have shaped. I’m not cold tonight, not on this bitter night with its crystal full moon and its star speckled sky. I can hear the sounds of the people talking, some even laughing around this fire but they do not penetrate my conscience, they are far away to me. This night there is warmth in my belly as I crouch in the ruins of humanity because tonight he is here; the man with the presence, the man who brings light to my never ending darkness. I watch him through the dancing orange flames and I wonder if he sees me, if he awakens at the sight of me the way I do him. 

Cats wail and call to each other from other ruins of what was once London and now, once more, belongs to nature: The cats, the survivors, the prosperous, they are unaffected by the wars, by the global decay. They take our remains, they become our food and they keep the rats at bay. We could not survive without the cats but they would barely notice our absence, as they stalk the crumbling remains we had once thought so impervious. 

I feel the heat in side myself, the yearning in my loins as I watch him, his face illuminated in the dancing orange flames. In my mind I run my fingers over the lines that creep from his eyes when he smiles, the movement of his lips and I imagine the smell of him.

I know he is promised to another tribe as an act of peace. For that is what we are now, we are tribal survivors of the global holocaust, and we cling to those closest to us like addicts. We fight each other, we squabble over broken buildings and ruins and then we make peace treaties. The man was to marry a girl from an east end tribe, cementing peace between the east and the western tribes. 

From beneath my ragged hood I watched his lips as he spoke, the words lost in the distance between us and I wondered if, when he was with his bride, he would think of me. Would he think of the warmth, the salvation I could offer? When she scratched his back and arched toward him as he entered her, would he, for just the briefest moment allow me into the darker, undeclared parts of his brain? Would he push inside her with a fierceness drawn from her inability to ever be me, a fervour clashing with violent hunger?

I drank deeply, and briefly wondered at this life we all clung to. Our homes were destroyed, our families gone and yet still we drank. Perhaps that is why, what else is there to do in these cold times we brought upon ourselves except drink and devour each other? What other salvation can this broken place offer us, how else could we satisfy the ever starving ID during this fast?

I watched him then and he caught my eye and I felt an awakening between my legs as his eyes bore into me. I wanted him to bend me forward and hurt me as he entered, I wanted to hear his feral grunting in my ear and I wanted to be lost in that moment forever. But he never could, and I never would and because of that humanity would continue to perish and wither. Because no one reached to each other, no one shared that moment of blissful oblivion. Humanity, mankind, the wars and the violence has brought us here, to 2058, and now we cannot be saved, we are lost.

I haven’t seen a bird in flight for many years. They began to disappear from the sky when the rain started its relentless attrition of the city and it’s inhabitants. The birds fell from the skies, exhausted, after weeks of frantic searching for ever diminishing dry spaces to rest, or nest.

I remember the first time I saw one drop. It landed in a puddle in front of me as I crossed a road and as I stared at the small bundle another landed nearby, then another and soon countless more had rained down until the ground in every direction was feathered by fragile dead bodies. I recalled, at the time, a story I’d heard long ago about an incident in China during the reign of Chairman Mao. The Chinese citizens had been roused to frighten the sparrows away from newly sewn seeds during times of great famine. For several days and nights people had shouted and banged pots and pans until the birds dropped with exhaustion and the skies became empty and silent, as they are now. The only birds in London today are the ones the street vendors keep in rusty cages to attract the attention of passers by. Sparrows, finches and robins have become curiosities as fascinating as the bird of paradise and as enigmatic as the phoenix.

Very little inhabits the sky these days since the blue closed up and sealed itself off from the earth with a suffocating blanket of cloud. The last star to be seen in London was the North Star, sometime in August 2037. For several nights this was the only visible star and it shone so brightly children all around London wished on it every night innocently unaware that it wasn’t the first star, it was the last, and their wishes would never come true. As the blue disappeared, and life clouded over, it seemed that a colour blindness descended on London as the contrast levels were adjusted to almost zero. A psychologically toxic miasma now fills every internal and external space causing a collective, and perpetual, state of somnambulism as people’s reality gradually dissolves into a cycle of lucid dreaming.

These liquid days, with no shape or form, are filled with menial tasks and activities in an attempt to define each twenty-four hour space in time. This day will be shaped by the delivery of a book to the Artefact, Relic and Community Centre to be catalogued and stored for future reference, although it was an unspoken accepted knowledge that this was unlikely ever to happen. Since the sky clouded over people’s minds have also become nebulous places. Heads full of grey clouds have no space for enquiry, curiosity or imagination. Ideas get lost in the fog and clear thinking becomes an exhausting pursuit that few people can sustain and so it seems that finally man’s thirst for knowledge has been quenched. A million years of intellectual and industrial evolution is gradually being washed away by the tide of indifference. The flotsam and jetsam of the last epoch is being collected and displayed in various community centres all over London but it’s only the very old that go to look. As they stand blinking with watery eyes at flickering screens they try to remember a narrative, but too many chapters are missing.

I flick slowly through the book as I walk. I know these streets so well I could walk them blind fold. I know which roads are now canals, and which parks have become lakes, and with such little traffic about these days I barely have to raise my eyes to navigate. As I study the book, searching for something familiar, it becomes increasingly difficult to read. The print seems to be fading, and the colour is slowly disappearing through a white haze as if the pages are slowly erasing themselves.

Looking up, I realise that the air has become opaque and I am walking through a fog so thick I can no longer see more than an arms length in front of me. This peculiarly dense mist is disorientating, I can’t see anything in any direction and it is impossible for me to find my way. This is unknown territory; my familiar urban environment has evaporated and I am left standing in the vapours, or perhaps I’m suspended in a cloud seconds before the chilling realisation that I am dead.

I need to find a familiar landmark so I begin to walk slowly through the fog and as I surrender myself to it it feels strangely comforting like warm goose down as I sleepwalk my way through the white nothingness. A formless shadow suddenly appears in front of me and as it gradually sharpens into focus I am confronted by a spectral stranger who reaches for my book

“I’m taking it to the community centre” I say “It doesn’t make sense to me any more”

The stranger opens the book then looks at me and as our eyes meet I feel the clouds in my head clear. Her eyes are ocean blue and I see in them a grainy cinematic rendering of every apocalyptic event the world has witnessed. I see continuous rainfall and floods of epic proportions. I see famine, droughts, plague, ice ages, volcanic eruptions and meteors showering from the skies. I see great processions of fabulous beasts and flocks of birds fleeing in terror. I see human pilgrimages and diasporas and I watch time fast forward, pause, unravel and reverse. In one fragment of a second I see the history of the earth reveal itself and realise that she has witnessed it all.

“This is a very special book and like no other,” she says. “It has many narratives and can be read in any language or direction; forwards, backwards, inverted, or along any trajectory your finger might trace. Every reader is confronted by dead ends, intersections and diversions and each reader navigates a different journey and reaches a different conclusion. This book is an isotropic network of potential; it shows you how the crow flies and tracks your journeys, past and future. It tells you where you have been and where you are going. Many people have got lost in this book but if you know how to read the codes, and if you ever stray from the path, this book will lead you home.”

“ But I know where I’ve come from” I say “and where I’m going, I just don’t know where I am”

“You are here,” she says, holding the book open and pointing at a page. I make my eyes focus on the spot she is pointing to. It is the margin at the very edge of the page, the blank white space that runs parallel to the text; a place specifically for the inscription of a personal subtext.

“You are here, in the margins,” she says. “But I can help you find your way out.”

She takes my hand and leads me through liminal obscurity until the whiteness clears and the veil is lifted. I feel her hand slip from mine as I emerge from the mist but when I look back for her I trip over the metal skeleton of a dead bird and drop the book in a puddle. A passing gust of wind opens it and leafs through the pages as if searching for an alternative route. Then, one by one, each page is torn from the book and a flock of paper birds with printed filigree wings takes flight filling the dull grey skies with an ancient A-Z of London. I watch their reflections in a large still puddle until the birds disappear over the city, and then I begin my journey home.

It dropped to the bottom of the dinghy, a wall of stagnant water cresting and slamming after it. The dinghy pitched and spun off course, everything crashing downwards, water spilling in from all sides, Harrison yelling and stumbling, the dinghy spinning in the current and finally slamming into the dead outcrop of an ancient electricity pylon. Harrison fell, cracked his head against the oar, and the boat drifted on silently.

The rain pattered down softly, beating out the rhythm of Harrison’s life like a thousand metronomes. When he awoke, he had drifted far beyond the settlement. His belongings were spilled and broken in the bottom of the boat. With his foot, Harrison poked the dark heft of the thing that had fallen from the sky and almost capsized him. He kicked at it with his toe and heel. It was disguised under his tarpaulin. He held his breath, shifted his weight carefully and lifted the edge of the tarp.

It was a dead bird.

Harrison stared. He didn’t know about birds. That is, he knew about them: he had read the articles as a child in half-drowned encyclopedias before the waters rose further and flooded the top shelves of the library, and his mother had told him what she could remember: wing-beats against glass, tiny forked feet, beautiful songs in the air. (He knew about snow.) When she was ill and writhing in the tent, her ribs pushing against the restraints of her papery skin, he had whistled for her. He had thought about bird-song and cried when she finally gave up and they pushed her off into the waters wrapped in blankets.

He sat in his boat in the rain and stared at the body of this bird; huge, filthy, balding where the feathers had come unmoored, the tiny feet, the tiny eyes, the unexpectedly hairy legs. His fingers hovered above the legs, curious, but loathe to touch them. What do you do with a bird?

Annie wouldn’t cook the bird, certainly; for her, the threat of disease was as high as ever. Harrison pictured her as she had stood when he left that morning: Annie in the tent over the bucket of greasy washing water, arms folded, her hip-bones casting shadows on her thighs, her dressing gown and wellingtons, a shower cap pulled down over her hair, her cough, the drip-drip-drip through the ceiling marking the time of her hopelessness. Annie turning away at night, jerking in tune with her nightmares, her eyes sinking deeper into her skull. Annie’s dreams of disease and contagion; Annie’s refusal to eat; her head lolling on her shoulders in the rain.

Harrison’s head ached. He saw the bird falling from the sky and hitting his tiny boat. He wondered about the distances it had travelled. He pictured jungles and deserts. He pictured the bird airborne – this dead mass winging in space – and tried to see it perched on a branch, but his memories of trees were ragged and silly, and the bird didn’t perch well on comic-book stick-trees, thick torsos with round bushes of bright green hair. Harrison sighed. The bird’s eyes stared back at him, offended, and he turned away.

He paddled until the sun sank halfway into the water. Its reflection danced huge and red, and the eyes of the dead bird burned. He didn’t know where he was headed. The bird watched him and he rowed as if under contract, afraid that if he ditched it, he would somehow bring the wrath of the fallen world down upon him. He felt the cracked old buildings deep underwater resonate as he passed, shifting in the earth as a tribute to the bird, a weird visitor from a very long time ago, lost in this savage place. In the darkness, Harrison sank to his knees, curled up and slept, his head inches from the bird’s beak, his warm breath fogging up the air around them so that from above, it would look as though they were both breathing.

When he awoke, the boat was bobbing against a huge concrete wall. Harrison paddled along the perimeter. Around a corner he found the bottom of a long ladder leading to a platform straddling the top of the wall. This was, Harrison realized, one of those areas protected from the beginning of the floods; the wall, concrete and steel, was twenty feet thick and must have seemed, back then, impossibly, stupidly, large. He slung the damp, slick body of the bird over his shoulder, lashing it to his chest with a length of rope. He moored the dinghy to the ladder, hoisted himself up to the bottom rung, and climbed. A glass roof joined the walls on the inner side, arching over the building, a dirty and debris-splattered sky for whatever waited underneath. Inside the wall, the ladder passed down through a tiny gap in the glass. Harrison descended, placing his feet gingerly, the bird pressing warmly against him. At the bottom, he shivered.

The air was dry.

The ground was dry. Dust covered the ground the rungs of the ladder; it settled on the bird’s bedraggled feathers. It irritated Harrison’s eyes and coated his tongue. When he moved, his footsteps shifted and disappeared. The silence, the missing rain, was terrifying.

The entrance to the building before him was shaded by an immense curtain of plastic, and he pushed through it as through the door of an immense meat-locker in one of his childhood encyclopedias. Beyond was a massive hall filled with monsters; huge metal spiders, garbled shapes, bunk-beds littered with books and statues everywhere – steel and wooden guardians of an abandoned space. Harrison moved through the room like a ghost. He sat on the edge of one of the beds and looked up at the underbelly of the spider, and wondered about the world that had drowned and rotted before he was born. He lay flat out on the bed and slept, the bird beside him, their heads level on the pillow, two eyes closed, two eyes watching.

He alternately slept and explored the mausoleum of statuary. He read the books, futuristic dystopian adventures, following the words with his fingertips and reading some sections aloud to the bird, who listened attentively, propped up on a pile of pillows on a top bunk in the middle of the vast chamber. Harrison couldn’t find any food, and he felt lighter and happier.

One day, wandering outside, he heard a noise. A retort. Something smashed or broken. Yelling. He looked up the ladder, a dark line pointing into the sky, and he felt dizzy. Shadows moved far above his head. Something fell. Something dotted the dusty floor of his strange garden, and Harrison stumbled over, tripping in his haste and then crawling crawling, his legs trembling and his head thumping. Glass littered the ground. Harrison picked up a sliver, the size of his arm, and it cut into his palm, and his blood dripped onto the dust too, glittering against the broken glass. And then the rain started, spotting the ground, spattering against Harrison’s face and arms and legs. He heard a cracking and roaring and he realized that the glass was shifting and giving in above him, and he crawled to the wall and grasped the ladder and watched as vast sheets of the sky fell in, smashing on the roof of the building, the noise horrific, the end of the world at last.

Harrison climbed the ladder. He rested every few rungs. His legs shook. Tears poured down his face as the rain pounded down into his own private arena. When he reached the platform at the top he lay there for a very long time, and when he looked out over the old sea, he saw his dinghy floating unmoored, about twenty feet out. In the boat were some kids with shotguns, smoking and laughing, singing some garbled song. They saw him and hooted, and one of them blasted the gun in his direction, and they cheered and whooped, but they didn’t bother with him beyond that. His face was hollow and hopeless. Their own makeshift raft was disintegrating nearby, rotted planks and plastic drums moving away from one another and sinking slowly into the old, old city below.

Harrison watched his boat sail away.

He slept in the rain until the morning. Then he climbed back down the ladder and walked across to his building, the dust underfoot now a slimy muck, clinging to his feet and slurping as he pulled his feet out, step after step. He pushed through the plastic curtain and walked around the growing puddle seeping underneath it and running into the hall, and he found his bird waiting for him, watching him lie down on the bunk beside it and close his eyes, and the bird kept watch as Harrison stroked its feathers and cried, and the waters rose.

I decided to take my notebook and sit on a bench outside. I went to a bakery to get a brioche to eat. I sat on a bench and ate my brioche. Crumbs were getting on my lap, and I was scared just in case a woman came up to me who wanted to make love, she’d deny me because I was some jerk with brioche crumbs on his lap. But the more I wiped them off my lap; the crumbs seemed to melt into my brown corduroy pants. I stood up and wiped off the crumbs that were coincidentally in the groin area.

Suddenly I heard a scream, it sounded like a woman’s scream. Quickly, the singular scream became a multiple multi-gender scream. A woman ran across the street and she was half undressed. I looked down and saw huge holes in my pants. They were getting bigger and turning my skin underneath bright red and burnt. I didn’t scream but immediately took of my pants, and once I noticed that all articles of my clothing were disintegrating I took everything else off. The melting of my skin was not painful surprisingly. While running home naked, I was in no mood for an erection, but that would have been good considering I passed by every woman in town I knew. But they were in no mood to think about penis sizes at this moment.

I finally got home and walked around for a while. My heart was beating over and over, with the exact same amount of force and pressure each individual beat. It was as though it was a dog in a cage of an identical size of the dog. The dog is hitting his head and body desperately to escape the caged lifestyle. Every time he forgets that the last attempt didn’t work so he pushes with the same force again without saving energy. My heart started to slow down.

I looked around and decided to see what was going on with the rest of my clothing. I walked upstairs and my drawers were shriveling and holes were being made in the wood and than growing. For less than a second I stared as though it was an art piece. Then I ran to my drawers and tried to open it. Once my fingers touched the handle of the drawer my fingertips started to swell as well. I immediately removed my fingers. I looked at my room and saw a wool blanket. I used that as a glove. For the first time for a while I was willing to admit I was scared. With the blanket I picked up a large bundle of clothing, which fortunately did not affect the blanket. I ran downstairs and into the streets and I threw my clothing in the middle of the street, amongst the other clothing. I saw people running to the pile of clothing and I saw people running away. The things people used as a glove really varied, but one woman obvious didn’t find anything, and was using her hands. It must have been the third batch by now because her palms were barely protected by flesh and the blood went on her clothing, which really didn’t matter anymore.

I went back and forth with this blanket, which after the third time started to tear apart. I assume this mutated clothing didn’t burn wool as fast. I switched blankets and gathered the rest of my clothing in my arms and ran downstairs and threw it in a pile. The clothes were disintegrating themselves and their fellow clothing. The street wasn’t being disintegrated at all. Some people watched this bizarre tragedy on the streets; others watched it from the window. A man threw in a match and nothing happened. Everyone was willingly nude. They decided to undress. I saw a women throw the last of her clothing. Her face was scared, she was crying silently. She ran back home in a position to hide her breast and vagina, which got to her home slower and less conveniently, and caused more attention because of her position. But her and a few others were being stripped by this bizarre tragedy. They looked like what I imagine a rape victim looks like during the rape. On rule I never cry, but this made me sad.

The clothes fully disintegrated. No one knew what to do. Everyone was separated at this point. We were all the same scared human with nothing to hide with a common enemy. A few women and men looked at the rest of us who were just staring at the black circle in the middle of the street. We were staring at nothing, and we were all utterly and agonizingly confused. After a long minute a few people walked home, and once a few did the rest did rather quickly. I was the last one standing in public, nude, and even though the shock wore off I found interest in watching the versatile reactions of everyone and the empty space of a tragedy. I finally left.

***

I feel like I’m living someone else’s life drinking this bitter coffee. I don’t want to drink it. I haven’t bathed for a few days. I’m also kind of hungry. And I’m anxious ever since I quit smoking a month ago, the day after the tragedy. The same day of the bizarre tragedy I smoked a cigar and twelve hand rolled cigarettes and eighteen pre-rolled cigarettes. The next morning I had to quite because I smoked the rest of my tobacco and can’t get my hands on more. My legs still jitter but far less than before.

I’m only drinking coffee because that’s all that’s really left in my cabinet; that and a few cans of sardines and other various things. I wish I could contact the town grocery store owner, just to somehow get my hands on a grain as cheap as barley. His grocery store is locked because the store was closed during the tragedy. No one can contact him to at least get the code for the lock. He’s probably like everyone else, locked in his or her home nude. The only people I see in the streets are the previous nudist; which numbers two. But they somehow find a way to get in a possible view from my window, and I assume everyone else’s window. I think the town will do something once our lives will be in risk when our food supply is at a dangerous low.

Around a week after the tragedy I was so uncomfortable of the loneliness I went outside for a second, and went back inside. I noticed my neighbor’s eyes staring at me through their window; they were shocked since I wasn’t known as a nudist. I try to avoid caring about what other people think but since nobody cares about me anymore, or ever, I’d feel awful thinking the only people that know me are just an embarrassed couple mocking me to fill their empty time.

I once saw a car come into town from a distance, the car immediately left. My guess was the passenger’s clothes were starting to burn there skin; painless. My other guess was they were somehow contacted by a town member for help; but that’s just a guess. No one’s really came from the outside to help us yet.

I would think everyone would just agree to live nude. But after all of us seeing each other so unapproachable, all of us scared for our lives, all of us so embarrassed. All of us either loosing faith or praying our fucking hearts potential to God for help. I think all this human contact, so bare and so unasked for; I think all this made us not want to be reminded; not want to advance but fall backwards, maybe in hopes it will somehow fall backwards in time.

1943: Sound of my own breathing. The townspeople know of the SS’s attempt to round up all the Jews in Denmark. We are smuggled up the coast, past Helsingor and Hamlet’s Castle, to the fishing village of Gilleleje.

2008: Copenhagen – Christiania. I wake up on the floor outside The Woodstock café. Mouth dry, blood on knees, noshoes. A large dog walks towards me. Stops. Looks. Sniffs. Licks his lips. Morethan I can do.

2058: I use the rough stone I find in the snow to abrade my fingerprints. I blink, knowing that I would need to do the same with my retinas. I hold the stone up to my eyes; feel its pits, its asperity. I look across the frozen strait, at the fires that smoke and gutter.

1835: What faith I have founders on the pebble-strewn shore, is picked apart by crabs and hooded crows, taken a loft by gulls and terns, then discarded among the weeds and the rocks. I roll astone between my fingers, watch the boats drift.

1943: During the night, the villagers prepare their boats. Seaweed full of flies that find us in thedarkness, their buzz more terrifying than gunfire. I close my eyes, imagine that strip of land on the far side of the sound, the sand, the pebbles beneath my feet, fear ebbing away in the waves’ lullaby.

2008: I prop myself up against the wall, run my hand through the gravel. People sit on benches drinking coffees and beers. If I could drool, I would do. To my right – dirt, discarded roaches, burned-down spliffs. To my left – a red bucket. Water. I lift and drink. People turn, look at me, shake their heads, turn away.

2058: My snowshoes, made from webbing and scavenged wood, sink into the ice. The sky’s petrol spills carry the smell of burning cities, the acrid stench of torched computers. My belongings, slung across my shoulders, I discard in the yellow melt: a bloodied implant carrying a copy of my DNA, a surgery kit. A book.

1835: It is I who decide what is real and what is not, what comprises the world and what I make of it. Is that thunder I hear in the distance? Like my thoughts, the fishing boats drift out into the seen world. They hang low in the water – what is it they carry? This is my escape. If I look at my reflection, it is not I who I see.

1943: My mouth dry. Huddled together – young, old, men, women – the smell of urine, of faeces, mingling with the reek of fish. Nazi guns bombard the harbour. The Waffen SS direct operations to round us up – almost 1400 from the 7,000 Danish Jews. The local people risk their lives to save us.

2008: A man steps from the café with a cup of water. I drink it down. Pitch forward. Vomit. My body shakes. I try to stand. The dog steps forward, drinks from the red bucket. I vomit. The dog looks, sniffs, walks away. A dreadlocked man sits down, says something I don’t understand, says something in English.

2058: My plan is to head south, to another continent. The strait, frozen for five years, is beginning to thaw. The fires from the cities and towns blacken the air. The clouds speckled with crows, rooks, and ravens.

1835: The truly reflective comes from within. What I am seeing is what others see – the outward self, the object of alienation. I hear the tremulous voices coming from the fishing boats, picture their catch – and it is not creatures of the sea I behold, but men, women, children – a single entity cast upon the world.

1943: Now we hunker among fish blood, guts, the tangling nets, our heads like so many floats. Under cover of night, the boats set out. Are there mines? Are there U-boats waiting for us on the crossing? I can hear the slosh, the give of waves. Gunfire like thunder. We share the same air, the same space, the same time, which is no time until we reach the shore.

2008: I nod. I put my hands in my pockets, shake my head. He walks into the café. The man who brought me the water comes out with a coffee and a beer. I drink the beer. Drink the coffee. He asks me a question, I shake my head. I give him a name, a number. He goes. He returns, motions to a motorbike. I get on. Another man passes me a helmet.

2058: Back through Scandinavia, Germany, through Greece, through Turkey, Syria, Israel, through Jordan, through Iraq. South through Egypt, Sudan, and Ethiopia. Others to China, Siberia. And others still down through Borneo and Papua New Guinea on to Australia.

1835: I stare across the sound, watch the almost still surface, think of the crab cases washed up among the seaweed, the tiny white and pink shells containing nothing but the memory of a body – for that, in itself, is the only way for it to know the world. Without there is nothing but falsity – nothing but nothing.

1943: Shouts. The boat slows, pitches against the sea floor, wood scrapes over shingles, fishermen jump into the water, secure their boats on the shore. The trapdoor opens, we are hustledout onto the pebbled beach, it is cold, we all turn, look back at the coming boats, the deafening explosions.

2008: We arrive at a train station. The motorcyclist buys a ticket. Gives it to me. Hands me a slip of paper, a bottle of water. I board the train. I look at the note, it reads, “Don’t come back.” I look at the ticket, it says Gilleleje.

2058: The camp, ringed by men armed with primitive weapons, stands at the confluence of two rivers littered with discarded vehicles and computers. I walk towards them, my white shirt held above my head. They raise their clubs, their sharpened sticks. I walk on. Women and children stand along the banks.

“What do you mean, why not?” I replied.

“I just don’t like ’em”

“What about the bloke who’s servin’ that soup, he was alright.”

“Mate, it’s just the way I was brought up. From where I come from we just don’t like ’em, think about our tax and stuff that goes to em.”

“Better than some no do’er, living on job seekers. Wouldn’t you prefer someone who’s alright and actually contributes something, like that lad serving food in the canteen?”

“It’s not that I don’t think they’re alright, it’s just id rather they weren’t here.”

I never could gain an understanding of Charlie’s disliking towards foreigners. I reckon its these kind of issues that have crumbled this society. I like Charlie, he’s a sound bloke, and maybe I’m just being a bit naïve towards his kind of views, but still, doesn’t help in a situation like this.

It’s a funny thing being in a refuge at the Tate, after gaining a degree in Fine Art. While seeking shelter after having to leave our own homes, people like Charlie come up to me asking about the sculptures, with an expectation that I know all about them, but I don’t! Sculpture used to be a thing I bumped into when stepping back to view a painting, but now it bumps into me. I suppose this is a good opportunity to become equated with it all, while this savage rain messes up the foundations of the country. To hell with being outside at the moment.

Dear Jennifer.

Thank god that we’ve somehow got a connection here! Didn’t expect to be stuck here for this long, so I didn’t bring my mobile charger or anything, which has obviously now died. Only get half an hour on here so jus emailing the parents, and you of course my dear friend. How’s things going at the Gherkin? Bet you can even see Essex from there, providing it hasn’t joined Canvey in being completely submerged. Pretty sure they didn’t expect this rain to go on for so long, as our food seems to be getting a bit low, and the bars completely dry, nooooooo! lol. Had soup again the other day, it was good, but they’re blatantly running low if they’re doing meals like that, but hopefully this whole thing wont go on for much longer, I hope things are ok at your refuge. Take it easy, and ill catch you soon x

Charlie complained “So hungry! Adam mate, I could totally go for a ‘Burger Boys’ right now”

“You could always go for a ‘Burger Boys,’ no salad I’m guessing”

“Ha! Damn right”

I then joined in. “You’rite boys, how’s it goin’?”

“Where you been? Me and Ad’ av been waiting for ya to go to the canteen”

“Alrite alrite, been sending some emails, some of us actually have friends”

“Ha, do one”

“What you been chatting about?”

“Jus saying how good a ‘Burger Boys’ would go down”

“mmmm u’d be lucky to get one of those.”

Adam stated “Charlies obviously naïve to the fact that that is all about ‘Curley’s’”

Charlie fought back, “What ever Ad’, it IS all about ‘Burger Boys,’ the chips are better”

And then a brilliant idea from Adam “Ok, what you do is right…get your chips from ‘Burger Boys’ and then leg it across to get a burger from Curleys”

“HAHA, mate that’s a ridiculous effort for perfection! I remember when we were kids, Charlie’s Dad always used to take us too S.F.C. Loved fried chicken as a kid, it’s a shame it closed”

“Why that happen?”

“Victim of the ‘42 recession”

“Everything good closed then.”

“True, true”

Urite Jen.

Glad to hear things are good at the Gherkin, hopefully they’ll get extra supplies to us too if they’ve jus reached you. We can see the boats going around the streets as well, madness! Be well good to bomb around London in a boat, probably still get charged for congestion though lol. Well loads of Police Airships about too, who could be bothered to commit a crime in this weather, you know what I mean!? Starting to get a bit tougher here since I last messaged. The bunks are starting to get a bit uncomfortable, could do with some new sheets, and some clothes! Sorry to reveal the skanky reality, hope it hasn’t spoilt your appetite for that chocolate ration that I’m SO jealous of, but yer this refuge is a bit run down, everyone could do with a bit of a morale boost. Missing you Jen, hope we can meet up for a drink soon, probably gona have to be on a boat though…

“What’s this room?” questioned Charlie

“This Charlie my dear friend, is a collection of paintings my Dad brought me to see as a kid, he had some attachment to them. Probably this kind of exposure that lead me to go and study painting, so I figured id share this experience with you while were stuck here.”

“Who they by? They’re a pretty dark.”

“They’re by Mark Rothko, titled the ‘Seagram Murals.’ They were painted 100 years ago. Its quite a funny story. He painted them after getting a commission for some high class swanky restaurant in New York, before Manhattan was just completely overwhelmed by its population. But Rothko hated that the working class wouldn’t be able to view them, and cancelled the commission, calling these high class people “bastards.””

“Haha”

“I know what a legend. And yer, so he donated these examples to the Tate providing they could be displayed like this, which explains the dim lighting. It creates a environment similar to the one they were painted in, so my Dad said.”

“They’re pretty cool, you know a bit about them then”

“A bit yer, just that story really, my Dad was well into ‘em”

“Is this why you paint?”

“There is some influence from them I guess, but to be honest I don’t know where the desire to paint comes from.”

“Your jus mad, haha”

“Well I guess so haha. My Dad taught me about this painter Gerhard Richter, who was from what would’ve been East Germany, which came before the pre-2043 republic of Germany, a long time ago now, 80 odd years since he would’ve been painting. And Richter said something like “once obsessed by painting one eventually gets to the point where one thinks that humanity could be changed by painting. But when the passion deserts you, there is nothing left to do. Then it is better to stop altogether. Because basically painting is pure idiocy.”

“Ha. Did uni not teach you what the desire is?”

“Mate, I discovered how its appealing, how one views work, but its something I, and I think a lot of painters constantly question. There’s never any real closure with painting, its an exploration, a way of thinking. To solve its myths would mean destroying its appeal I guess.”
“A bit beyond me mate.”

“I wouldn’t worry, I hope these Rothko works have opened you up to something. Stick with me Charlie and you‘ll soon know all.”
“Haha, whatever mate, sounds cool.”

Coming up to Two weeks of rain and two weeks of being in this refuge – what is God doing to us! Best start building an Arc. Its incredible how the crashing rain affects your sleep, the dreams one has are weird to say the least. I know it could be worse, I’ve heard of food not reaching the other refuges in London, but still its beginning to get unbearable. I’m tired of washing from the toilet sink and attempting to wash my clothes from them, I‘m tired of some people not borthering with the urinals and going by the stairs. Real grim.

I think about Jen a lot, missing her quite a bit. I’m sure things at the other refuges are getting just as low. Cant wait to get out of here to go see her, she’s all I really care about at the moment.

Dear Jennifer

Hang in there my dear! We’re, doing ok here, it cant be long now. One of the people delivering the food rations chucked us a football – absolute gem, it’s given us a bit of a lift. Just thought id message you to let you know I’m thinking about you, and that your messages help lift me in this situation. You mean a lot to me Jennifer.

I go back to the bunks to see Charlie.

“You’rite Charlie”

“Mate I’m knakered!”

“Your always knakered, you fat-”

“Oit, lets be having less of that”

“Haha, sorry, what you been up to?”

“Bit of 5-a side in the Turbine Hall with those guys from the former German republic”

“Quality, any mention of the world cup victory we‘ve been milking for nearly a 100 years”

“Oh yes”

“Ha. Glad your warming to a bit of multiculturalism, told you they’re al’right.”

“Mate I hate em”

“What do you mean!?”

Noone could remember anything else but huddling together to try to get warm. To try to get some comfort.

Apart from that, there were the scraps of memories that were sewn together to create a story that would make sense of it all.

Of it all? Of the rain. Of the engorged sculptures.

She was not sure what she felt about these stories. Ideas of Noah, ideas of Arcs, ideas of Redemption. What had she the need for redemption for?

There is always a leader. The anti-hero, the proselytiser.In this new frontier where the only regularity was the drip, drip, drip of rain, theproselytiser was he who blamed the false gods sharing our space. The false gods with their urinals, and their pharmacy bottles, and their sheeps heads.

He would blind himself in one eye – that man – to make himself into a one who could see a truth! She wondered what he had been before the rains. A hustler, a madman?

Could they not all see the gleam of promise in his eyes, the gleam of someone who had had nothing, as he raised his fist to the floors above full with their paintings always threatening to fall down on them and destroy the one place where it was dry. Apart from the drip, drip, drip of the rain and the sculptures sponging up the hope of some spare space for them to huddle.

Whilst they huddled together, she kept herself apart. Most of the time they ignored her. Sometimes, she let a chuckle escape as there patchworking of the story of Noah became further away from that she had been taught at her fathers knee.

The giggle – to them – sounded like that of a madwoman for it cut the idea of an idea.

Apart, she could hear Her. Her words reassuring her, soothing her, berating her. This was her God.

Occasionally – when they were busy with their stories – she would trace her name on a sculpture.

By the next day, the tracing would be unreadable. The faint trace obliterated by the drip, drip, drip of the rain.

There were few books left, few books that hadn’t become mouldy, and sweaty and scuppered.

She had tried to hide one of the books, one of the books about the urinals, and the pharmacy bottles, and their sheeps heads.

One day the book was gone.

But the She voice had no dismal end. The voice dialogued with her, kept her alive, just as it kept her apart.

The voice encouraged her to laugh at these Others and their tales of old. Tales of old suddenly unrusty – unlike the buttons people pushed in exhibits of old which had long ceased to work.

Tales that had swept up the survivors and kept them afloat. Tales that had made the weaker ones exit the museum in two’s – in two’s – with the mock bravado of animals who had found a key. That the key hadn’t worked, that it rained still, was seen as proof further of the need for all to join this farce.

They found her threatening, rocking to herself, talking to noone they could see. Would she not walk with them, as once she might of before the rains?

She had heard the tales of Noah once before the rains. She had been at school with thick socks coming up above her knees. Socks unchilled by damp.

They all had spots where they huddled. Hers was near the big spider. Because? There was no ‘because’. Hers was near the big spider.

Was she the only one who felt the spider? Who felt it puff out, like dough rising on an oven of old?

There had always been talk of creatures, of course. When she was little, there had been Triffids – terrifying creatures that would stride over the countryside ready to tear up anything that came in its way.

This, now, was different. She, the sculptures, the huddlers, were there together.

It had been raining incessantly for years.

If one day, there was a rainbow, what would she do?

The platform was deserted but for small greyish creatures camouflaged against the bleak concrete surface of the world outside the train. The creatures, which he thought might be birds, hopped on deformed feet devoid of talons with cigarette butts smoking in their beaks. They hopped brazenly towards his feet as he walked towards the floodlit station at the end of the platform.

When he reached the train concourse he was barely able to open his eyes because of the bleached white that resonated throughout his environ, blurred by dark shadows crossing his vision at a speed he had never known a human to travel at. He recognised the sound of mobile phones, but not the tonal qualities that he now heard – like a thousand different orchestras of infinitely unique instruments, their sound was heavy in the air, visible to his squinting eyes – spinning, rising, and diving – colours and sounds dazzling and darting, he lifted a hand to his head to
compose himself, at that moment stumbling into a steely figure clad in black with myriad pockets, straps, belts, and other appendages. The police man flinched with a mechanical clunk of metal before telling him to be careful with an expression that was both menacing and uneasy.

All at once he buckled under the discordant symphony of the cities’ population. Sirens looped over sirens, swelling above the grumble of trains burrowing beneath the city, advertisements spoke multilingually, as he noticed the people that he now recognised were also doing. None of this was particularly alien to the old man. The city of his young manhood had always been a hive of activity, and maybe nothing had changed but him, but everything had just that small amount of subtle change that fifty years would effect. Everything had risen or increased by just that small degree to cause a sea change in the world he once recognised.

Finding a dark corner of the station concourse in which the florescent lights abated. He crouched down and assessed his new world with improved clarity. The perimeter of the station was a maze of vending machines of some variety, unlike the kind he had seen before or during his imprisonment. The train stations was bustling with monochromatic people, their clothes different shades of the same colour, even when of completely different national styles. All of a sudden, the old man was blindsided by an unknown salutation from beyond the cordoned off toilets behind him. He was unable to recognise a face between the metal grills, but there was a definite shadow beyond his limited field of vision.

‘You should make yourself a little less conspicuous’, the old man understood from the darkness, although the dialect was largely unrecognisable, ‘You’re obviously a stranger here,’ continued the voice from the shadows, ‘and although there are millions of strangers here, they do well to not appear so’.

The old man massaged his face vigorously, pressing his fingers firmly over his eyelids. ‘I need to get to the Cathedral’, spoke the old man from a cobwebbed voice box.

‘You won’t find much help there,’ the darkness spoke, as expected, ‘but its where its always been’. There was a pause while the old man tried to find his bearings. ‘Where are you from?’, spoke the voice quietly.

‘A Cell’, answered the old man honestly, as was always his way, ‘But I must get to the Cathedral’.

‘Ok’, answered the man from behind the peeling bars, his shadow more discernable to his adjusted eyes, ‘I can take you there, without being noticed’, and the man appeared from behind the place in which he hid – a rakish red head with filthy skin and musty woollen clothing, ‘follow me’, he hushed.

The old man and his travelling companion walked out of a forgotten exit and into the pungent and thick night air of the city. The old man struggled to breathe in the laden atmosphere clouding the small spaces between the blackened stone buildings. His companion allowed him time before satisfying his own curiosity.

‘How long were you in prison?’, he finally inquired.

‘I was not in prison’, the old man wheezed, ‘I committed no crime. I was locked away because I was thought to have a sickness, a sickness of the mind’.

‘Ah’, expressed the red-head, with no apparent concern visible on his dirty face, before barring the old man with his arm protectively, Ahead of them there was a group of teenagers gathering at the bridge. ‘Ok,’ said the wily red-head with an idea fluttering his eyelids, ‘Walk with your head down and with staggered steps. And drink some of this’, the old man drank a mouthful of what he thought would be liquid, but was in fact noxious fumes, feeling a cloud of warmth consume his throat and oesophagus. ‘Pretty bad, huh?’, said the old man’s guide, ‘But needs must in
this place, and liquid alcohol is expensive – even the heavily diluted stuff’. They walked past the nuisance of teenagers, dressed very peculiarly as far as the old man could see. One wore a coat hanger underneath the collar of his sweatshirt, another wore what he thought might be pyjamas, they all appeared to be styled as a result of accidents.

‘Well done’, said the red-head after they walked past unnoticed, ‘So, if you don’t mind me asking, but actually such questions are no longer rude to ask, why where you imprisoned for being crazy, if you were not? And why are you going to the Cathedral?’

‘Many years ago, a series of meetings and coincidences, confirmed my suspicions that I had been set to task by the devil himself’, stated the old man, ‘Of course, my first reactions to these meetings and coincidences would have been like yours and any other rational man -complete disbelief’, explained the old man before continuing, ‘A gentleman called Puzzlewit had recruited me to write a book, for an academic he worked for, a gentleman called Professor Serpentine. This man, Professor Serpentine, knew much more than anyone I had ever met or have met since. He spoke of religion as if he had seen it all, of science as if he was privy to exclusive information that could explain anything anyone were to question or consider fantasy. At our first meeting, he showed me a copy of a book with my own name as its author, telling me that this book was the book that I was to write in just three weeks. I thought it a cheap trick, until three weeks later, when I produced the book that he had said I would’,

The old man glanced up to see the Cathedral rising above the blackened buildings with their wooden-board faces.

‘Somehow Serpentine, and his apprentice Puzzlewit, laid clues for me to follow,’ continued the old man,‘transported me to places where evil truly existed. I was at once a woman in the heart of the Wahhabi heartland, a refugee of an African tribal war, a Palestinian in Gaza, a homosexual in the Bible Belt… I was all of these people, and in each case I found it was not the devil that bred evil.

‘So Serpentine gave me powers, powers of speech, powers of charisma, he taught me of the true nature of Mohammed and Moses, and the intentions of Jesus, and my book was ready to shift the thoughts of so many that I would have at once been a continental drift pushing and pulling at the ground that people presumed firm and fixed. But I acted unwisely, and gave in to temptation as Serpentine warned me not to, and he abandoned me, and my book ceased to exist.

‘So, today, I have come to this Cathedral on the day of my release, for Serpentine has made me a clue for another book that has yet to be written, for I believe this is a place that he protects. When others have destroyed the city around it for one reason or another, this place has not concerned itself with the identities that people have wrongly assumed. It stands firm above them.

‘Serpentine told me that a Messiah is born every day, but as each day passes, our world becomes more poisonous and our Messiahs are corrupted. So I shall sat here and wait, with my story, ready to protect whomever is sought by Serpentine to continue his work. I shall wait here my friend, and you would do well to take care.’

Look at my river view! I’m metres from where they once prosecuted criminals such as ‘Al-Qaeda terrorists’ and ‘hoodie’ murderers. Huh, that’s a phrase I’d totally forgotten, ‘hoodies’. I can’t remember when the ‘hoodie’ became unfashionable.. probably around the same time that Prince Charles started to wear one with his crown.  And look now! Now everyone has a hoodie…. in a way… the good old rain Mac - the Ug Boot of the 50’s. I suppose fashion died when the water rose, practicality rules glamour every time.

I’m listening for the hum of the river boat making its round to the poor, and the old like me, waiting to go for our weekly pilgrimage to the floating Tesco’s superstore in Penge.  It’s a long bloody journey; I’ll tell you that for nothing. Three chuffin’ hours on a boat the size of a box room. Cramming folks in like they used to on that train thingy underground, what was it called???…  Blimey I spent my 20’s and 30’s on that thing packed in like sardines, praying the next extremist wouldn’t blow us all up. Ah the good old days eh?

St Pauls is still standing though. You can’t knock the old girl down, though they’ve tried over the years. Three or four bombs hit her in the second world war, and even the earthquake of 33’ didn’t get her… Lord knows how, it took down most of the ‘Sky Flats’ on Ludgate Circus.  Nope, she’s a strong old thing, a bit like me I guess, although I’m sure she’ll last longer than I will.

Here it comes, and it looks like that little bugger Jimmy is steering the boat again. He makes quite a sport out of knocking bits of crumbling concrete off of the old buildings. The damage he does to them’s terrible, but then I guess none of the old buildings were erected to survive in this river.  Even my building isn’t like the new ones that they put on stilts.  Clever designers really .. I’m not sure why they keep rebuilding here though, I guess one day they’ll give it up as a bad job and let the old Capital go the way of the Siberian Tiger. I suppose it keeps us bums away from the rest of the few others that are thriving; thriving while we waste away along with the old buildings and streets of London below us.

It don’t matter much to me though, I recon I’ve got another 10 years or so, 15 at best, so my fears for the future are pretty comical compared to the younger lot behind me.  In my day we worried about what would happen if the world warmed up and the seas crept higher and if we were heading for another Extinction-Level Event; or so that old actor used to say, you know the one, Morgan something or other.  They made disaster movie after disaster movie and we lapped them up like a cat licks its milk, except to us it was just a movie, another bit of media feeding us a story. I must say I do long for the old television; holograms just don’t have the rich colours like the telly used to have.

I can’t wait till next weekend. I’m off to see my old pall Bob.  He lives on dry land in the west. It’s good to stand on soil occasionally just to remind yourself that the floor didn’t always sway, ever so slightly.

Oh, it’s my turn to get on! I suppose I should stop this flaming conversation that I always have with myself when I’m waiting for the ‘City Sailer’.  One of these days I’m going to invest in a cat so people don’t think I’m completely insane.. now where’s my boat pass??? It’s here somewhere… I’m always forgetting things… Ah, the Tube, that’s was it was called!! I do miss the old tin can.”

I’ve lost track of how long I’ve been doing this. Two, maybe three years. Long enough I could light the candles blindfold if I wanted. But I still keep the direction sheet beside me as I go. There’s something reassuring about it. Its five step predictability. Not a lot of that around nowadays, predictability, what with everything that’s happened.

I started it at first to chase a girl. Back then, well, it was early days for the whole candlelighting project, and it was easy to get anyone whipped up with the whole idea of it. It sort of felt like we were replacing something of what was lost. It was the noble idea of trying to bring a bit of London back to life, or something like that. At any rate we were doing something constructive after we all headed to London from the northern towns to do our bit for the relief effort, help rebuild after the Surge, only to discover there was no relief effort. Everyone had given up already. There was no London to help.

So me and Emily, this girl, we went out lighting most weekends along with a few hundred others. Floating down the canals in motor boats, yachts, beer barrel rafts. Hunting for buildings that could still be accessed. The places where people once lived.

Of course Emily is long gone now. She lost interest after the initial buzz and headed back up north, like most of the rest, which suited me since I’d found myself getting more keen on the lighting than I was on her. In fact I was more than keen. I was obsessed.

At last count there were only eight of us still doing it. But I suppose that’s better than nothing.

STEP TWO: Unpack media reader, solar kit and transmitter. Check contents. Construct rig in accordance with manufacturers guidelines. DO NOT RUSH. CONSTRUCT TO LAST.

I’ve been working this high rise for weeks now. I’ve got my rigs set up in careful rows all over the roof, no one rig blocking sunlight to the solar panels of another. This one I’m doing today, it’ll be the thirtieth I’ve set up here. It’s sort of a round number so I’m half tempted to leave it at that. Move on to another building. But I’ve barely worked through a third of the flats here. I could light up another fifty before I need to move along.

Besides, I quite like it up here for the view.

Get here at dawn and look at the skyline with the towers of the old city in silhouette I can fool myself that London is more than just a floodland. Blurring my eyes to smooth the crumbled edges, it looks like the only thing missing is lights.

But with the sun high like this the ruins tell their own story. When it came, the Surge swept in from the east. So the eastern side of every building shows the worst damage. Those that are still standing here at any rate. Rooted in their canals like this, canals that were once streets.

The same goes for the interiors too. I hardly ever find anything usable in east facing rooms. Me and Emily discovered that pretty early on. The few times we forced our way into such a room we were lucky to recognise anything. Everything had been ripped apart by the force of water through windows. Furniture, people, pets.

Thinking about it, I think that’s why she left. Probably why most of them left. I think they thought that the few of us who stayed were so hard hearted we weren’t bothered by the death we were clawing through. I know it got to Emily. And it isn’t that it didn’t get to me. It just felt like I was taking some of those smashed up pieces and putting them back together.

One of the other lighters, Stef, he summed it up once with: Of course I see sights I’d rather not see. But what of the things I need to see and share? How else can I get to them?

STEP THREE: Clean then insert media cards.

It’s mainly cameras, phones and video cameras that I’m trying to find when I search a home. They’re usually shattered beyond repair but their memory cards are often undamaged. It depends on the force of the impact when the Surge hit. It depends on the amount of water that remained in the room afterwards. It depends on so many things.

A bad day for me is when I find a whole set of cards, a phone for every member of the family, a couple of cameras, a video camera, spare cards – only to test them and find they’ve all been wiped by water and time, washed of every memory.

But today is good enough. A single phone on the floor of what was once a living room. I test its memory card in my handheld. It flashes positive. It holds content.

STEP FOUR: Test playback. If there are multiple media, set a play order.

It’s only when I finally connect my handheld to the media reader and press PLAY that I know the whole thing has been worthwhile. The images and films on these disks and cards, they’re the candles. They’re the memories we’re reigniting.

I skim through today’s images and videos. It’s a family of three. Mum, Dad, a young boy. In the videos they’re speaking some language I can’t follow. There they are against a mountain background, hugging friends, tearful relatives, painful goodbyes. Then on a train, Mum looking anxiously through a bag, the boy staring wide eyed out of the window as the train departs. Then they’re in a city that isn’t London. Paris? Berlin? Photographs of a hotel room where they must have stayed for a while, Mum looking anxious all the while, pale, questioning whether they should really have done it. Then views of London. Dad looks relieved, proud that they’ve made it. And then a party, in a flat, here. Other people, the same language. There’s a birthday cake in the shape of an eight. And the boy running, laughing, a tennis racket in his hand, raised high, as he runs towards the camera, Mum in the background, settled now, no longer pale, stroking her tummy, her bulge barely there so she thinks it’s still secret. The date stamp in the bottom left corner, 22/03/2055. A week before the Surge.

Before she left, Emily pressed me why I wanted to carry on with the folly of it. Who’s going to watch it, she asked? Somehow the answer didn’t matter.

STEP FIVE: Begin broadcast.

I click RADIO ON and a panel of five lights on the transmitter flicker on, then off, then light in turn: power on, input signal received, connecting to network, requesting IP. Then with the fifth light green the rig is transmitting. Job done.

I flip open my handheld, scroll through the icons and open the Candles application. The display shows a map of London as it was. At least that’s how it’s supposed to look. The shape is correct. But it isn’t drawn with lines to show roads, it’s made up of a yellow glowing cloud, clusters of intensity. I click to zoom on the south west area, my present location. Then zoom again to where the yellow is most intense. As it zooms the cloud fragments to individual points of yellow, each representing a rig transmitting. Zoom again to my high rise, and there they are, thirty candles glowing strong.

The latest addition is easy to spot, flashing as it is to show that it’s new. Clicking that begins the download, please wait…streaming, then there he is, my tennis racket birthday boy, running to the camera again, Mum in the background, running to Dad, racket held high, his laughter not quite so lost now.

The Last Ship.

‘Not left behind.’ Vela rejoiced as the rain hit her face. Cradled in her basket of ropes she swung beneath the pulpit of The Fugue, the last ship leaving the city. The chimney of the old power station poked through the water high above the drowned turbine hall.

Vela’s skin burned in the freezing rain. The air hurt her lungs. ‘The last ship,’ she thought. ‘The last ship.’ Her heart beat.

Slowly the three-master slipped beyond landing stage that had once been the Tate’s upper terrace. On it hundreds of desperate people wailed and screamed.

Already her fingers were stiff. With the last of their feeling she crushed her immersion suit’s chemical pack and slowly warmth crawled over her skin. She set her watch and pulled the hood over her face. She had six hours. Vela waited for the tide to turn.

The water was moving faster now and the diesels of The Fugue made slow headway. It inched past the high terraces, already awash with saltwater. The figures stood in silence. Vela watched as at first in ones, then twos and threes, then
in bunches the figures were swept into the freezing water.

Soon the water relented and The Fugue surged against the weakening tide. Vela turned her face to see the curving tops of the Thames Barrier at the same level as her eyes and soon they were out and sailing over the towns and villages of Kent,
now a vast grey silent flood plain.

Vela folded her arms about her and thought about her future.
The engines slowed. There were shouts above her and soon she heard the slapping
of the wind in the sails and again The Fugue leapt, tacking with the wind as she turned in to The Channel. Vela slept dreaming of sun. She dreamed of sky. Hope had collapsed to this thin point. Awake she thought of it and asleep she dreamed of it. It was as if the cold had opened a crack and she’d slipped into a virtual world.

The fugue sailed past The Needles, past The Lizzard and turned south. The days lengthened and became light. Now and then she glimpsed the sun. After four days she called out, ‘Somebody help me’.

Zhen, seated in the back row, watched the heads turn towards the sound of the teacher’s voice.  The teacher adjusted her brand-new regulation outfit again.  She had been trying to make it sit comfortably for most of the trip.

“Soon we are visiting London’s famous Tate Modern Art Gallery.”

An appreciative murmur rippled through the top deck.  Zhen, very excited but eager not to show it, kept silent.  In the seat in front of him, Xan’s boyfriend snorted loudly.  Xan dipped her head, and a lock of her long hair came free.

“But before that, two matters.  Firstly, we shall check our situation to ensure that safety regulations are complied with …”

Zhen, with a guilty start, surreptitiously reached for the safety belt.  The long trip here had been so slow and uneventful that he had ignored the sign warning that “PASSENGERS MUST WEAR SEAT BELTS AT ALL TIMES”.  He clicked the buckle home as quietly as possible.  It would be a pity to do anything to jeopardize this visit.

“Secondly, before we begin, I shall give you a short introduction to this gallery and its grave importance for the lost world of Old Art.”

Another murmur, less appreciative this time.  Most of Zhen’s fellow students were Art Historians (apprentice), so too intense an appreciation of Old Art was considered an anomaly.  But then as an Engineer (Marine) (apprentice), Zhen was something of an anomaly here too.

In front of him, Xan was whispering.  Before Zhen had a chance to overhear, the boyfriend was talking over her.
“We only learn about Old Art so we do not repeat its mistakes!”

Some scattered applause, fading quickly.  The teacher held up her hand, palm outward, for silence.

“So, the Tate.  One of the largest repositories of Old Art …”

Zhen knew this story well.  Surprisingly, he had found himself quite interested in Old Art – even if what he had really been interested in at first had been his friend Xan.  Alphabetical seating had meant that Zhen had sat behind her for four years at Chengdu Higher School (Number Fourteen).  He had long admired the shape of her shoulders and the shining hair cascading to meet them.  Countless times he had watched her treading water in the dormitory’s communal baths, unable to take his eyes away from that glorious hair flowing out across the water, slick and lustrous as an oil spill.  Her hair was covered now, its radiance hidden apart from that stray strand.  Zhen felt the urge to touch it, and laced his hands in his lap.

When the time had come to enrol at Sichuan Institute of Technology (Number Three), he had imagined that they would study Engineering together.  She had always listened when he spoke of all the possibilities he could see for an engineer, how they could make so many different and beautiful things.  Beauty was to be found in machines, architecture, in the concrete things of the world.  Beauty was what endured.  He had laughed when Xan had announced that she would study Art History, and specialise in Old Art.  How useless!  But after that first year, Zhen had found that her memory still moved him even more than a well-executed blueprint.  He enrolled in one of her Art History courses, and enjoyed it.  He had signed up for more.

“Old Art includes all works described as ‘artistic’ produced before the circumstances leading up to the Second Cultural Revolution of 2045 made such artefacts unnecessary …”

The teacher’s voice rose and fell in the familiar rhythms of a rehearsed lecture.  She was explaining how the Tate had acquired its vast hoard of Old Art.  Britain, not for the first time in its history but certainly the last, had become obscenely rich in the twenties when hyperinflation had struck down the Euro.  Bryan Sewell III, the clone who’d been the Tate’s director, had been able to snap up incredible bargains.  His greatest triumph had been the exchange of da Vinci’s Mona Lisa and the Venus de Milo for three truckloads of Irish Sea oil – the Council of the Revived Paris Commune deciding that they valued real warmth over cultural illumination.  Later, his deputy, Bryan Sewell IV, carried on the work, rounding out the Tate collections until they were the most comprehensive in existence.  Even the third major extension on the site of the old Southbank Centre had hardly provided enough space for them all.

Listening to the story, Zhen found himself trying to imagine the reality of what they were about to see.  Of course, he’d been through the Virtual Reality lectures as part of his studies.  It was eerie but exciting, sliding through the silent simulacra of the Tate, the Prado, or the Whitney, where the corridors were always bright and airy and completely deserted.  He knew that the real thing would be nothing like that.  It would take time to adjust to seeing Old Art without disembodied voices explaining and luminous text bubbles popping up.

“Since 2045, the law allows only the New Art.  Luckily, since the New Art is the most efficient realisation of the New Functionalist Aesthetic, it is all that is required …”

A burst of applause, the boyfriend clapping the loudest.  Zhen was disappointed to see Xan clapping hard too, although his own hands came together almost without thinking.  The New Art:  of course it was better, but secretly Zhen found it somehow unsatisfying.  Their first class outing had been to the Sichuan Regional Gallery.  The SRG was famous, the first big collection of New Art.  It had helped cement Chengdu’s reputation as the Venice of the East.  Zhen was particularly keen on the work of Enlai (Artist), (or (Engineer), since the two professions were interchangeable now).  The class had crowded in around Enlai’s masterpiece, ‘Artwork Number Twelve’.  Three steel cogs ascending along a blank white wall.  Zhen had tried to sketch the piece, and he thought that he’d gotten the spirit of it.  Most of his class had just bought one of the official holocards.

Zhen already had a holocard of the Tate.  Pressing the plastic button conjured up a series of magical things:  a lobster telephone, an ancient jet spitting fire, a cracked cement floor.  Zhen liked the way you could zoom close in, or animate the holograms in brief tableaux.  The holocard’s digital renderings were guaranteed more technically detailed than the originals.  It hadn’t impressed his grandfather though, who’d visited the Tate when he’d worked as a dishwasher in London way back in 2009.

“Bring me back one of those Turbine Hall snow globes,” his grandfather had cackled, “Or maybe you can get me one of those ‘London 2012’ banners!”

Zhen had just smiled politely.  They both knew that there were only half a dozen of the real ones left, valuable antiques ever since the anti-Olympic riots in Stratford Stadium had gotten out of control.  Things had changed a lot here since his grandfather’s time.

Soon Zhen felt almost sleepy, lulled by the steady progress of the vehicle beneath him and the sinuous movement of the strand of Xan’s hair.  The teacher’s concluding remarks brought him back:  “So pay close attention, class:  the history of Old Art remains a useful study.”  She lifted the interphone to speak to the driver.  The students broke into an excited buzz when the engine stopped. Everyone turned to the windows to look out.

All around them, sunshine glinted on water, the flat expanse of ocean that extended as far as Zhen could see.  The day was calm, and the wavelets were tiny.  Their peaks only rose a few centimetres, just high enough to refract the bright sun into a thousand flashes of light.

As a marine engineer, Zhen knew that there were rarely large waves on the water submerging London.  There was nothing for the waves to break upon before the Ural Mountains thousands of kilometres to the east.  Zhen guessed that most of the time at this spot there was only this sparkle refracting into the sky, like a semaphore blinking out the last words of a stopped history.   Spread out underneath their feet were kilometres of submerged streets and sunken houses.  Nothing moved down there but the rhythmic sway of the seaweed fast growing up over the stones.  Seventy metres below, the drowned gallery was still holding its final exhibition.  It was always open to those wilful enough to descend into the dark.  The rising sea had finished the Old Art more surely than the ideological dictates of the New Art ever had.

“All are ready?  Let us visit the Tate!”

The teacher clapped her hands.  She mimed adjusting her breathing apparatus and checking the oxygen level.  The students, quiet and serious now, copied her movements carefully.  Xan tucked the loose strand of hair back beneath her wetsuit.  Zhen felt the chill as seawater flooded over his feet:  the submersible was beginning its dive.

A rook cackled, inspected the ground, hoping

The snow fell softly on Bone Hill
And all was quiet; silent

No one there to tell

O, Jerusalem
Your green and pleasant land now gone

Covered by stone
Relegated to dark, green garden corners
Covered by mud and a drift of white

All that was once is now obscured
White as a dove’s wing and feather soft

A whiteness, a blankness, a pall
To bury our treasure and our triumph

It came

No one to tell
No one knew
Indiscriminately, indifferently

A whiteness, a blankness, a truth
Breaking up the harshness of our earthly structures

It fell

No experience could have halted us
Nor innocence move us

So it falls
On London.

He, however, was only lost, and therefore was indifferent with the disappointed people. Closeness was not as magical as they imagined, at least the majority of them.

A piece of paper laid astray. He compared it to a link on a website, possibly www.timessquare.com or something. When picking it up, he felt like a digital mouse clicking it. It was enigmatically folded, as expected. Whatever that was on his mind distracted him from keeping grip to the paper. The lack of practice was probally a factor as well.

The font was strange. It was not consistent like that he is used to. Specific letters were structured differently throughout. Personality existed, and was currently alive. Not translated digitally.

But this speratic change in letters dizzied his mind. He was accustomed to thirty cuts in an average minute of internet videos, yet adjusting to an inconsistent font as difficult, but entertaining. The challenge excited him.

He made out the first sentence, and did not care enough to remember. He threw away the yellow paper. He forgot about it fairly quickly. He walked across the street, unaware what the light ould have said years ago. For memorable purposes, it stayed on “go.” A safe choice. There were even a few cars, but they doubtfully worked even with a fair amount of reconstruction.

He took a bobby pin and attempted to open a car door. He was not jacking it. He was trying to sit somewhere warm. Homelessness was a lost art, which was a good thing. Yet actual victims were now really in trouble.

In a state of anger he shoved the door his direction, which worked. Years defined the cars weakness. He sat in the antique model and looked for a cigarette in his pocket. A car was the best place to absorb the most nicotine possible. Yet the smell would negatively attract cops.

He could not find one so fell asleep. And the world stayed awake. No specific city “never slept” anymore. No cities had connotations either.

More than ninety consecutive days of rain – the most since records began, the screens were saying – had left the landscape sodden. Beyond the deserted road, rows of allotments sprawled like debris from a shipwreck, a few tiny figures picking their way through the remnants of another winter’s growth. Behind them, ranks of concrete tower blocks marched off into the mist, merging into the heavy sky.

My ear drum buzzed and a name blinked up on my left retina; Forrester.

“Arrive?”

It took the car’s AI two seconds to reply to the query I flashed across, and I sent a visual back of the answer: 2200hrs. I would make north London in time. She wanted my answer in person.

The battery bleeped and I slid into my seat, relaxing into the memory foam as the autopilot took over and swung me into the inbound lane, picking up speed as the Secure Wall at Greenwich loomed closer.

A flick on the ceramic ring on my left hand and music came on, filling my head with soft sounds that blocked out the thrumming of the rain. The incessant noise drove many to the edge of sanity; cochlear implants spared the few. Save the environment? Save us from it.

The rain had worked a terrible change on people. The realisation that it was something immense and other, outside our control – anger, hatred and a sense of loss directed at an abstract. How can you fight the weather? The answer all too often had been to take it out on our fellow citizens. Only mass unrest on the scale we had seen had made our current way of life possible. Out of the rubble and wreckage, we were building a new way. What I had seen – were we ready?

The car slowed as I passed the Bluewater memorial, allowing me to bow my head in respect. The memorial was many kilometres inwards from the site itself, still irradiated and out of bounds.

I could measure my life in tragedies; from the Olympic bombs in 2012, my first clear childhood memory, through to the closing of the border after the Channel Tunnel explosion of 2041. Bluewater seemed distant, the image of the mushroom cloud rising from the quarry that had filled screens across London already something of the past, sad and iconic.

I was in a reflective mood, hitting 50 this year. I was halfway through my career, only 30 more years until retirement. I had to decide now if this programme was right.

Forrester was a tough person to work with. Her manner was abrasive, but she was brilliant; a true visionary. The sheds would be unthinkable to most people, but Forrester had developed them as a solution to the single biggest problem facing London in the 2050s – where was the food coming from? The last three days in Kent had given me plenty to think about, and I had little more than an hour to decide what I would say.

Hard to believe that I had set off for Dartford just 72 hours ago. The rain had seemed lighter as I queued at Security Exit East on Blackheath, and a quick scan suggested the greyness had dropped to just 20 per cent – the lowest level for more than a week. The assignment was simple, nothing difficult to do; only to see if I could stand it.

Forrester had briefed me in her office in Islington the day before, rightly guessing that I would be impressed by how high up her building was. The view was the best I had seen, ranks of islands and towers jutting up from the central basin, black-sided tube boats of the Northern Line steering their way down the Holloway Road, steering gear and props dropping down to engage as the wheels hit the water.

“Understand? Decision time.”

These were the first words she had sent since I had arrived half an hour earlier. On reaching her room, several megs of documents had landed on me and it had taken me time to sort and archive them into any sense.

I had needed to sit down; some of the data was startling. I knew the food supply programme had improved, but the screens had suggested improvements in lighting techniques, vitamin sprays, better control on seed strain mutations, rather than this.

Now she was asking me to commit to something utterly rational, but troubling at the same time. It made sense from my research, but to make the leap to this – I needed time.

“Visit?” I sent.

She stared at me for several seconds. Word was you did not question Forrester, did not seek to understand what she did or why. She was brilliant; being alongside her was its own reward. But I had done well, discovered some significant links between atmospheric conditions and the development of the central nervous system. If she wanted me to buy this, I needed to see them for myself.

“Benefits clear?” She sent this and dozens of associated reports, the reduction in food riots, improved health in zones five and six, imports of several core items cut to sustainable levels.

“Visit.” This time I spoke out loud, withered vocal chords choking slightly on the v. She stared again for a second, her pupils abstracting themselves a little, clearly reviewing my file one last time.

She gave me the courtesy of a nod and I left, taking a last look at the shattered pools and towers below.

Then, a day later, the pyramid of Canary Wharf had dipped over the Wall in my rear view as I drove out towards Dartford, the broad dead reach of the Thames spilling out alongside me. I had considered Forrester’s work, but something more than the logic still troubled me.

Soil needed nutrients, that was true; human resources were cheaper than fuelled machinery; and gene screening meant that there was a growing body of the population that simply could not be allowed to reproduce. Why invest so many millions of hours to eliminate cancer, arthritis, diabetes, obesity, only to allow people to breed them back in?

“Resolve,” she sent, more data, more background.

Stopping cross border movement, then freezing access to London, meant we at least knew the pool we were working with, but it was ridiculous to think that we could guarantee health outside the thousand families allowed to live and breed inside zones one and two. Those families, selected for their genes, had put an end to the old order, leaving us to create our magnificent and living works of art.

A good inheritance these days meant a mix of the best of dozens of different racial backgrounds, the strongest of each contributing to a golden multicultural thread of health, intelligence, adaptability. For those who failed to make the grade, extinction was inevitable. Forrester had found a way to give this extinction purpose.

But was I ready to buy into the programme? As my car crested a rise on the elevated road and the sheds of Dartford opened up ahead of me, each a thousand feet high, vanishing into the rain clouds, I had to wonder.

These things were staggering, a pure synthesis of function and concept. Storey upon storey of plant beds, producing wheat, maize, potatoes, fruit and vegetables, piled high; fibre optic membranes reproducing sunlight, spraying concentrates of vitamins and minerals into the depleted, sodden air. The stacks meant each level allowed its waste to run into the next, until the very lowest level, on which pigs and other omnivores thrived, finally available as part of the food chain after near dying out.

And Forrester’s brain wave soared above it all, her gift for thinking the unthinkable, the link in the chain that meant the thousand families left in London would not starve while the rain lasted, giving us time to plan some way to turn back the ice fields in the north.

Forrester’s viscous spray of nutrients, of organ matter and ground bone, of hair and skin, wasting not a single cell of the tens of thousands of genetic dead ends, bringing them to a close before they starved what was left of England and brought down the wonderful new world we were building in our capital.

Now I could see the elevator tubes making their way up the sides of the sheds, carrying their drugged and listless passengers up to where the machinery ground and thrummed, open to the incessant drumming of the rain.

As I stepped out of my car, only three days ago, and the vivid, animal smell of the air around the sheds hit me, she sent me something to stiffen my reserve, stretching her language to emphasise how important this was.

“They give their lives – and London lives. Decision?”

I had less than an hour to decide.

I dreamt of a Catherine-wheel inside an aeroplane. I could see it in the sky, in the arc of open (above the tracks and the footbridge) from where I was sitting on the platform at the station.

I watched the kite-tails, ribbons, flicking and curling and spinning around the planes’ round body in screams – blue and red and choking and caught in a boil of grey, dark smoke. The silhouette of the wings and the tail-boned angle stayed solid, while winding the restless momentum of the tense push of the wheel

(fragment)

The Catherine-wheel.

It was wrapping the thick body of the plane, with spitting, whirling (wiring) (fire) bladed coloured flames | enamelflickered, flavoured, distant dazzle of heat, undulating, vaulting | were the dark clouds silent, or spinning- |

a looming

a stillness

a wrapping – a wheel of repeating splinters and running, looping, frightening explosions, disappearing underneath the roundness of the horizonand then re-surfacing, still alight and getting closer.

On the platform I am sick quiet.

J, M (brother and sister) are sitting beside me, looking up towards the sky, the aeroplane and the Catherine-wheel. They are as calm and conferring as they were the day that Grandpa died.

I see the outline of (M) her forehead and soft nose, and in-dip of her neck. Lips closed, she hums an answer.

We look at the plane spiraling closer, rounding towards usglinting, spitting, throttling

notching, reeling outwards

(fragment)

Scoring | engraving a shallow line into an arc, or a mark, a pillar. It is sandy, dusty stone leaving powdery rubbings. The anchors are steel, they arch. This is a frame onto which a sculpture will grow. There are four stumps in the ground, hooked onto a polished, light exhibition floor. The nib of each stump is buttoned with this grainy, engraveable stone | concrete grains onto which we draw a diagonal slice like the head of a nail. A little indent to grasp something’s hold, to mark the place where we will drill or push. From these points, higher, grown now- we reel a silk length which gathers in crease lines, widening and lowing like a hung, looping necklace. Thin as tights, dusted with a sand which settles: impermanent, undisturbed, colouring an impression of bark. The stumps rise like fists pushing upwards from underneath the fabric. These we round and blush with dull powdered paint into solid hydrangea  heads. Gluey-puce thick colour, fallen thin as the pink sky. Fragile as speckles on dry paper un-tipped, black as nests, glistening like strung torches, stretched and then loose, like taut and then slackened hair.

(fragment)

Sleeping On The Train.

Hollow-dip neck

powder-dark eyesyour neck falls as

though from a string, too exhausted to support it.

Your arms wrap your ribs and

your hands tuck into

arm crevice folds.

Your curls reach your wrists

your knees still

your shoes, outstretched, flicker.

The stop of the train weeps to wake you

but then your breath

tumbles back to the wall

of the carriage

and you glance back into focus in my window,

where the background of the black glass is dark fields.

(While) you pale away again at each lit station

‘Where are you heading- shall I wake you’, I say

‘I’m safely awake’ you say.

But your lip lifts again

your neck sways

your eyebrows dream upwards.

You re-wake

your fingers hurry to your telephone

you lean to catch the name on the drowned station signs.

Directly I came into The French House I could see the poor sod had been sitting
there crying about it. I had to keep my head and if I ran straight over he might’ve started blubbing all over again, so I nodded over to him and stood at the bar and ordered a bottle of black market beer. God knows I wanted a drink in front of me when the sorry lad got jabbering as he had first thing that morning.

‘Hullo’ he said sullenly when I sat down.

‘Alright lovely?’ I said and touched his wrist.

He was hunched over, he looked like he’d been up all night.

‘Here’ I twisted the cap on the bottle and filled our glasses

‘Cheers…’

‘Cheers’ he said woefully.

‘So what do you want to do?’

‘It is yours you know.’ he said

‘So you say’ I said abruptly then I softened my tone and continued

‘So what would you like to do? I mean are you sure you are…I mean it’s…’

‘Yes I’m sure…you’ve been the only one and I am seven weeks late.’

Then there was silence and he sat sulking. I was speechless, I hadn’t got a
boy into trouble before, not as far as I know and certainly not intentionally. I tried to work out the date of when we had collided in the dark corner of a Soho bunker.

‘But I thought we were careful…’

‘Not careful enough.’ He said bitterly.

For a few moments we sat quietly. William Valentine was a beautiful boy, long eyelashes framing dark blue eyes and black hair slicked back. He looked into my face as if looking for something and then said urgently

‘Will you help me?’

‘Help you? Of course, now there’s no point looking all glum William, lets have us another drink and we’ll…’

Suddenly he was crying, silently with his elbows on the table and both hands
covering his face, his shoulders jerking up and down.

‘I feel so ashamed…’

‘There there! No need for all that, I said I would help you didn’t I?’

Behind Williams shoulder, I could see the mirror and in its reflection two Dutch pilots I had been chatting with the night before.

‘Sorry’ William blubbed ‘Sorry to be such a pain, this hasn’t happened to me before.’

‘Me neither! There there…’ I said eyeing the Dutch pilots in the mirror as William rubbed his face making it redder and blotchier. His eyes were pink as a white rabbits and as scared.

‘Here…do you have anyone you can go to?’ I said offering him my hankerchief.

‘I feel so…foolish…sorry…I think I could go to my uncles in Bournemouth for a while and think…I think I need to think…My uncles so kind.’ He blew noisily on the hankerchief and offered the gooey thing back to me, I refused it and said

‘Keep it. Now look here, I have said I will help and that it will be alright so dry your eyes William there’s a good egg. Have you got a boyfriend that you can talk to? Someone who’s you know…had a…’

‘Had a what?’

‘Well you can’t seriously be considering keeping it?’

I was getting impatient, rattled, he was drawing attention and I tried to sit more upright to block people seeing him, especially the Dutch pilots. Then William stuttered

‘I thought…I mean…I know we hardly know each other and that I can hardly expect you to want to…to…’ William really bucketed the tears out, stammering

‘I can hardly expect you to…offer to marry me…I mean could you imagine marrying me? You said you would help and well…if you took me on it would be alright do you see?’

He his top lip trembled, his tongue tip licked a teardrop and quietly I managed to choke out the words

‘Marry you?’

‘I know it’s sudden… but…would you at least consider it…I don’t know if I could bear the shame…I don’t know what else to do…it’s a rotten mess that’s what it is, but if you would just think about marrying me? I mean I wouldn’t be a burden…I can be very quiet and well maybe you could learn to love me…learn to love the two of us…’

He looked down and patted his belly as he said this and bit his quivering lip.

‘Now stop all that talk.’ I said sternly ‘Don’t be ridiculous you know very well that marriage is out of the question for a woman in my position. I think the best thing that you should do is go away…I mean go to your uncles like you said and see what he thinks is best…maybe you should speak to your father…how old are you?’

‘You’re joking I couldn’t tell father! He’d disown me…my uncle’s cool with this kind of thing though, the same thing happened with my brother but it was just trapped wind in the end. I am not that young, I am twenty two in March!’

‘Twenty two is that all? William darling, you are just a boy…sweet William Valentine….’

He looked disappointed but hopeful, it was as though I held his life and future in my hands and then I made my mind up.

‘Now listen, this is what we will do…first you will dry your tears, then we’ll head to Waterloo and get you a ticket for the next ferry to Bournemouth. Do you have your papers? Good. You’ll go there and just take all the time you need…maybe work on your little poems…I’m sure your uncle will know what to do, he’ll see you right…then as soon as you have your head screwed on straight you can write me OK?’

‘Oh thank you!’

He was about to lean over and kiss me as he gushed

‘Oh yes Bornemouth, my uncle always keeps my bunk for me, I have a few things there…and I could work on my water poems. Oh good idea thank you!’ I tapped his arse and shooed him up to the mens lavatories to wash his snotty face.

‘Are you feeling better William?’ I said

‘I had a wave of nausea in the toilets but it passed…I been sick most mornings of late…but thank you.’

He nudged me and we sauntered down what was once Old Compton Street towards Cambridge Circus to get a flying rickshaw. The shells of the buildings of old Soho were derelict but there was a bright opportunity in the air that Saturday. The purple rain was relentless as ever and black burnt branches fingered the lilac sky. People bustled and queued for rations. Once in the flying cab we relaxed and from on high we saw the Covent Garden slums below. I saw a young boy struggling with a red-faced screaming child, the lad had him by both arms and the urchin was kicking and screaming. I looked over at William who saw them too, he squeezed my hand and smiled at me and I played with his fingers and gave them a little absent-minded kiss.

As we crossed a checkpoint on Waterloo bridge I looked East and saw smoke
pouring into the skies above the remains of St Pauls. I felt as though we were at the main aorta of London, the very pumping heart. At the port of Waterloo I was so glad there was no more drama and no more tears. Cupping my hands around his face, I planted one on his mouth, we kissed and as we held each other I whispered

‘My funny William Valentine.’

‘Love you’ he mumbled.

‘Steady on sweetheart, people will talk.’ I laughed and opened the gate to the ferries.

He stood on the step, waving and called out

‘I will write!’

I hurried through the crowds of Waterloo and crossed the flooded banks of the Thames and dived into a speakeasy on Villiers Street for a quick sherry. The best black market sherry in town.

‘Alright Georgie” I said recognising the barman ‘Blimey when are you due?’

‘Doctor said in the new year.’

‘What is it?’

‘Think it’s a boy and footballer too!’ George said and panted, patting his balloon-like belly

He was a milky little man, George’s ruddy cheeks bloomed, he beamed and waddled off wiping the tables.

I sipped the sherry and thought about William and decided I had done the right thing packing him off, his uncle would see him right. How could I marry William? He was beautiful, I would have spoiled him and spoilt him. Then I thought about the Dutch pilots and the ripe look Amsterdam’s golden boy had given me. It’s better to be safe than sorry I said out loud and swallowed a condom.

© 2009. Salena Godden

I open my eyes and I can see a little way ahead and to either side, then the sick murky liquid fades to brown, then complete black.

Every so often I bump into the remains of Them.  Can’t be helped- there are so many and the water has swelled them to grotesque proportions, to floating masses of purple-blue stretched skin.  Normally some scavenger would have finished them off, but they made even the scavengers sick.

Sometimes I get so hungry that I will dare to take a nibble.  Not enough to make me sick, but enough to get me through.

There’s talk of heading north.  The idea is that it’s colder and less diseased, but the water seems the same wherever I go.  It’s likely I’m going in circles.  I used to be able to tell where I was by the temperature, but my senses are so overwhelmed by what I see, what I smell.  What was once sweet is now sickly.

“What !”, Peter turned round slowly, and glared down the ladder,

“Erm…”, Michael arranged his features sympathetically and remembered yesterday’s tantrum, “…well I think that maybe…”, he paused as his courage deserted him,

“What !!”, Peter narrowed his eyes and took a step back down the ladder,
“It’s just a tad…”, he put his hands up straight and then flicked them both to one side,

“Say it…”, demanded Peter menacingly,

“No…I’m not going to….”,

“Say…the word !”, Peter hissed in a guttural voice,

“No”, Michael crossed his arms and looked pleasantly upwards,

“SAY IT !!”, Peter screamed at the top of his voice.

At this a small figure, obscured by a scarlet umbrella splashed over to the foot of the statue that they were working on. Peter cast his eyes skywards sarcastically. Michael watched her approach with relief, she glanced at him as she passed and tutted,

“Actually it wasn’t m….”, he began but stopped short as she flashed those supernaturally blue eyes at him in a momentary expression of anger,

“Michael, don’t even start, okay ?”,

she raised a finger at him and he swallowed the rest of the sentence. She shook her head again and called up towards where Peter was now shiny with the soaking he was receiving.

“We’ve told you about the tempers haven’t we ?” she spoke sharply but with control.

Peter put down the shears with an over elaborate amount of care and came down the ladder with as much dignity as he could muster in the pelting rain. When he got to the bottom he tuned to face her very slowly and slowly extended a pointed index finger,

“I….”, he said, “had to come here in a boat this morning”,

“Aha”, she looked straight back at him, seemingly unmoved,

“I live in Shepherd’s Bush !!”, he drew back as he spoke to enhance the effect.

“And ?”, she put a hand on her hip and her face tightened with tension,

“And ?”, he laughed sarcastically to himself and turned away, “’and’ she says, ‘and’, as if that’s a perfectly normal occurrence in West London”,

“You want normal do you ?”, she snapped at him and moved the umbrella to the other hand, “how’s this for normal, last night I had to swim underwater in order to get something from the freezer downstairs. In Chiswick mark you !”.

Peter looked a little non-plussed by this and could only venture a rather tame ‘really?’ in response.

“Yeah”, she drew herself up to her full 4 foot 11 inches, “so don’t give me a lecture about hard you are finding all this”, she saw him begin to speak and held up a hand to stop him, “and for God’s sake please don’t go on again about how we’ve had it harder than other places, and couldn’t we have had sunshine or something else. I went to Italy last summer, and saw skeletons fused to the ground. So we, in comparison got it damn lucky !”.

“She has a point”, Michael offered in a meek voice,

“Is that right ?”, Peter rounded on him, “and how the Hell do you explain this nonsense…”, he gestured vaguely at the statue behind him,

“I’ll admit, it is unusual”, Michael smiled thinly at them both and rubbed his hands together anxiously,

“Oh oh”, Peter staggered back in mock surprise, “Unusual is the word your using for this is it ?”,

“I think to be fair Michael”, she spoke as if to a small child, “that’s probably understating it a bit”,

“Yeah”, Peter joined in, “stone statues that suddenly need trimming fall into a whole different category to un-pissing-usual !!”,

“Don’t you think you should get out of the rain”, Michael ventured, “after all you’re gonna catch your death of cold”,

“I don’t care”, Peter glared back and walked back towards the ladder, “now if you’ve all finished lecturing me on normality, I’m off up this ladder to take a pair of shears to Nelson’s Column in a Trafalgar square that is three feet below water. Okay ?”, he climbed for a few seconds and then looked back down at Michael, “and if you say it, if you say that word, I will throw the shears at you…no no, better still, I’ll make you do this”,

“Ah but I’m scared of heights so…”, Michael spoke as if this explained everything,

“So you keep telling us”, shouted back the rapidly ascending Peter, “good thing you’re not scared of water or else you’d be completely screwed wouldn’t you ?”.

Michael flushed a little and caught her grinning in the corner of his eye. She immediately looked away and positioned her umbrella strategically between the two of them. Michael pretended not to notice and looked stoically upwards into the teeming rain.

“Try and get done soon”, he called up, “weather looks like it might get nasty”, he clenched his teeth as soon as he said it, and the little red umbrella was whisked away from her face so he could see her look of horror. The ladder stopped shaking, and Michael’s stomach clenched. Peter had stopped just before the summit, and now stood very still. Michael’s face flushed hard this time, and he heard his heart thump above the constant drone of raindrops. Peter looked down at him, framed by a canvas of turbulent grey cloud and the eerie swirl of watery daggers shooting towards them. His eyes were wide open with fury, and a large droplet of water was hanging off his nose. Michael knew he should say something, and say it now or a pair of stone shears may shortly be hurtling towards him. But he couldn’t, he thought furiously but his stupid brain couldn’t come up with anything.

Glancing across at her he saw only pity in her eyes. He didn’t have time to work out what that sudden shadow above him was, and before his brain could process the information, Peter had fallen onto him with a crunching thump that knocked the wind out of him and sent him sprawling into the water with a big splash. Underwater for several seconds, he could see nothing but bubbles and the churn of white water. Managing to flip himself over and get his face above the surface again, he flinched and lurched as hard as he could to the left as Peter’s fist flew towards him and glanced off his right cheek. A numb pain followed it, as did a further blow to the solar plexus that would have been shattering if the water resistance hadn’t slowed it down.

“Stop it for God’s sake”, she screamed vaguely behind them, but Peter continued to pummel him. Then, as quickly as it had started it stopped, Peter got off him and sloshed away. She came over and helped Michael lean on a handy plinth before shouting something at the retreating Peter. Michael didn’t care what she’d said and stood there breathing heavily and trying to work out which bit of him hurt most.

Peter stood warily at a distance, looking a little contrite but also still very angry. She walked over and moved him away slowly and then pointed up the ladder once more,

“Finish the stupid thing and we can get back inside”, she then wheeled around once more and looked at Michael, “and you don’t say another word okay”. Michael nodded in response, but was in truth too tired to speak.

“Right”, she said, “now that we’ve all calmed down we can trim this ruddy stupid thing and dry off”.

The ladder trembled once more as Peter went up for the third time. She walked over carefully to where Michael stood.

“You okay ?”, she said under her breath,

“Yeah”, he replied, “my head hurts quite a lot but otherwise I’m fine”,

“He does seem unusually tetchy today”,

“You could say that”,

“Sad really”, she said,

“Why so ?”,

“Well, because from here it does look crooked doesn’t it ?”.

Michael looked at her sideways before responding,

“That’s because it is”, he looked straight ahead,

“What do you mean ?”, she asked slyly,

“I mean that once a month I go up there and trim it so it isn’t straight”,

“What !!!”, she turned and hissed at him under her breath, “Are you crazy, he’d kill you if he found out !!”,

“Maybe”, said Michael, “but it gives him something to do. Without it, what exactly…”, he looked around them at the drowned city, “what exactly would he have to do but go mad”

“And what’s in it for you ?”,

“Exactly the same thing. If you can focus on the little problem, the big one seems to go away”,

“So you’re deliberately looking at the trees rather than the wood”, she looked away and nodded slowly,

“Well, let’s face it”, he looked at her pointedly, “the damn wood isn’t there any more is it ?”.

Ella’s also my girlfriend, but whatever you do, don’t tell my mum. After all, you have to have some secrets when you’re nearly in double figures. It’s not like we’re doing sex or anything. Bobby asked me if we were the other day. But I don’t care about him, because he picks his nose and eats it, and he always needs help in his Web Usage tests.

‘So we’ve got little Eleanor tonight?’ Mum asks as we reach the school gate. She’s looking at Ella but talking to me.

‘Yep’ I tell mum. ‘Say hello, Ella.’

Ella says, ‘hello Ella.’ She can be such a smartie pants sometimes.

Mum smiles – a lazy half smile that makes her head tilt to one side. Then she looks past us at Damien’s mum, who is walking over in her fuzzy brown coat that makes her look like a bear from the back. Mum opens her bag and gets out an oblong-shaped present. I know it contains cigarettes, because I saw her
wrapping them last night. She hands it over as Damien’s mum reaches us. ‘Here you go. 200.’

‘Thanks Sylv,’ she replies, ‘how many is it now?’

‘Fourteen hundred.’

‘Whack it on my tab, eh?’

‘Will do. Well, I better get this lot home,’ Mum nods at Ella and me.

As we start walking, Mum asks, ‘What would you girls like for dinner then?’

‘Hamburgers!’ we shout.

‘How about… marrow stir fry?’ Mum says.

‘Urgh. ‘ Ella wrinkles her nose in a way that makes her look like a cute tortoise.

‘We’re vegetarian,’ I explain to Ella.

‘We keep an LSGI kitchen,’ mum adds, fiddling with her phone. ‘I’ll text the food unit to start defrosting the tofu.’

We pass McDonald’s snack-’n'-gym, reach the corner of Downhills Park and turn onto our road. Mum says we’re very lucky to live in Tottenham. We’ve really gone up in the world since she married Simon, that’s for sure. I heard her describing our house to Grandma, ‘one of those Elizabethan jobs,’ she said,
‘from the regeneration.’ Regeneration means when something transforms into something better than before – like when Lady Di turns into Superlady in the cartoon.

As we get to the house, mum’s phone starts ringing, and we get in just in time to answer it on the TV. Mr Stavos appears on the telly. It’s Thursday.

‘Alright Ted?’ Mum asks.

‘Alright, Sylv? How’ve you been this week?’

‘Clean as a whistle.’

‘Well, I’ll see you in a ten.’

‘See you soon.’ Mum turns off the telly and looks at me, ‘Right. Do you need a wee, Zadie?’

I don’t really, but I probably could. ‘Ok.’ Mum hands me a narrow jar that I take to the toilet, fill up and give back to her.

Then as Ella and I run up the stairs, she gives me a funny look. ‘Why does your mum take your wee?’

‘It’s to check my calcium levels.’

‘It’s weird.’

‘No it’s not.’

We get into my room and I turn on the wendy house. Once it’s inflated, we sit inside. The wendy house has pictures of ladybirds and frogs and butterflies on it, and when you sit inside the light comes through in funny, inside-out insect patterns. ‘Let’s play the wedding game,’ Ella says.

‘Ok.’ The wedding game is our favourite. ‘Let’s do dresses. Mine is going to be a pink ballgown with a train as long as a mile, so all the guests can stand on it.’

‘Ok. Mine is going to be silver silk, with pink flowers – real ones not pretend flowers.’ Ella beats me. I’d forgotten about silver.

‘Zadie?’

‘Yeah?’

‘Have you ever eaten chocolate?’

‘No! We’re too young!’

She looks at me carefully, narrowing her eyes. ‘You can’t tell anyone.’

‘I won’t.’

Ella reaches into her pocket. I think she’s going to get out some pretend chocolate, and am already fake chewing and saying ‘num num num’ when she shows me a real chocolate bar.

‘It’s seventy percent cocoa,’ Ella says and breaks off two squares.

‘Wow. Seventy percent.’ I take a square and put it in my mouth. It’s bitter and not very tasty. We chew seriously until the front door beeps, and we hear Mr Stavos come in downstairs. Ella giggles, which gets me started.

‘Let’s dance!’ I run out of the wendy house and start jumping on the bed, which is a new dance move I made up. Ella jumps on the floor.

‘Zadie!’

‘Yeah?’

‘You’ve got ants in your pants!’ Mrs Lawrence sometimes says this and we both think it’s really funny, so we giggle even more. Then Ella asks, ‘is that why your mum checks your wee? Because of the ants in your pants?!’ She’s cracking up now, but I stop laughing.

‘No! That’s not funny Ella.’

‘Yes it is! I’m going to tell everybody your wee gets checked for ants. Hey, everybody!’ and then she’s running down the stairs and I’m running after her but I’m out of breath from all the jumping so she gets to the kitchen ahead of me, where mum and Mr Stavos are drinking tea.

‘Hey!’

‘Shut up, Ella!’ But she won’t shut up. She looks directly at Mr Stavos.

‘Zadie gets her wee checked for ants!’

Mr Stavos’ usually kind face suddenly puffs up like two storm clouds coming together, and he looks at me and then at mum, and then back at me.

‘Yours?‘ he asks me, and I know I’m going red.

‘My mummy checks it for calcium.’

He looks back at mum and sighs. ‘Clean as a whistle, eh Sylv?’ He speaks into the voice badge on his chest, saying lots of numbers which remind me of times tables, and then, ‘I need a search warrant for 52 Downhills Park Road. Sylvia Harvey.
She’s a 341… yeah… counterfeit samples… her daughter’s… ok, cheers Alan.’ The smile drops off his face as he turns back to mum. I think about the words ’search warrant’. I’ve heard them before somewhere, maybe on TV. 

‘Look Ted,’ mum says, ‘I had a bad week. I didn’t want it to show up because I’ve been doing so well. There’s no need to search the house.’

Search the house! I grab Ella’s hand and run out of the kitchen, all the way to my room. I kick the wendy house over and grab the chocolate and foil wrapping.
‘We need to hide it! Quick!’

‘Under the bed?’

‘They’ll definitely look there.’

We hear a knock from downstairs and the front door open to barking voices.

‘We can put it in my shoe!’ Ella says. ‘They won’t search me – I don’t even live here.’

‘Ok, but quick.’ I help Ella undo her laces and slip the chocolate under her foot.

‘Act natural.’

We creep out into the empty hallway. The door to mum and Simon’s room is open a crack, and voices come from inside. I tiptoe up to the crack, and see navy shapes of adults clonking about. Then I see mum’s slipper on the floor. It’s attached to her foot, and then I see her – sitting on the floor in front of the wardrobe, although I can’t see her face. A navy shape blocks her and a female voice says, ‘Can you move, please?’ I hear mum pleading, and then moving. As the wardrobe door opens I suddenly know what’s going to happen, and piles of cigarette boxes come pouring out. White boxes like paper aeroplanes, nosediving headfirst to the ground. Killing all the passengers. I hear a strange noise; Mum is
crying.

Someone kicks the door shut. I pound on it. ‘Let me in! Let me in!’

A second later it opens, and two police officers come out with my mum between them. Mum’s eyes are red and she’s wearing handcuffs. Mr Stavos is behind, looking sad. They all stop when they see us.

‘It’s ok,’ says Mr Stavos, ‘I’ll stay till Mr Harvey arrives.’

And then they carry on down the stairs. I try to crawl between their legs to mum, but there are two many feet in the way, so I just watch as they leave. Mum calls back, ‘I’ll be back soon, Zadie. Be good for Simon.’

And then she’s gone. Ella sits down next to me on the stairs, crying and stroking my hand. ‘Bee.’

‘Yes hatch,’ I whisper.

‘I think I’d like to go home now.’

It’s become a kind of etiquette thing, we all pretend not to be able to hear the sounds of people having sex, and so we all act as if we’re still asleep. Perhaps pull the blanket up a little higher, turn over in the bed or make some indistinct sound as if sleeptalking. Anything to make it look as if you’re not half-awake or listening.

We need babies, we’ll need future generations, and there’s only one way to guarantee that. I know this is true, but I wish they’d do it somewhere else, maybe in one of the galleries or corridors where nobody goes. Not at night, when we’re all trying to ignore the soggy drumming and get some sleep.

I really need my sleep, don’t want to have to listen to their stifled noises and rhythmic bedcreaks, I need to get some good solid kip, for one very simple reason: it takes me all of my concentration to hide the fact that I’m losing my mind.

—-

The next morning, Derek and I were standing by the main doors, watching out for any newcomers.

“Lovely day today,” he said, looking out into the endless drizzle, and grinning.

I like Derek. If I was going to tell anyone about what’s happening inside my head, it’d probably be him. I like to think he’d listen, and understand.

“Nice weather for the ducks,” I say, and immediately regret it and feel my stomach tighten. We haven’t seen ducks or any other wildlife for months. The last duck we saw floated past, dead, on one of the floodwaters, and it took five men to retrieve it. We ate well that night, but I don’t want Derek to think I know where ducks can be found, and that I’m keeping the information from everyone else.

“Be nice to see a duck, that’s for sure,” Derek said, and nodded slowly. The knot in my stomach loosened.

“I’d like to –“ I started, but Derek raised a hand to silence me, and pointed out into the forever rain.

“Someone coming,” he whispered.

I frowned and squinted out into the grey downpour, and then saw what he meant. A small red boat was bobbing towards us. As it drew closer, I could make out two people sitting in it.

“Threat?” I said, and could feel the tension again.

“Maybe,” Derek said, and then, after a moment, “Go and get Harris.”

I did as I was told. Harris looked after security. He hadn’t been elected to the position or anything, he was just so big that no-one was going to argue with him when he said he wanted the job.

Harris was talking to some of the women when I told him about the red boat. He stopped mid-sentence and came back with me to the doors.

“There,” Derek said, and pointed. The boat was less than fifty feet from the building now, rocking gently back and forth on the raintide. “It came from the south – Southwark way.”

Harris nodded, and went to get more of his security detail. I peered out into the rain. One of the two people in the boat seemed to be hunched over something, and it made me think of the day Carol and I had washed ashore, and splashed our way frantically to the building.

Thinking of Carol made me want to laugh, in a cold and uncontrollable way, and I bit the inside of my cheek to keep the laughter at bay.

—

Later that day, I sat under the spider statue in the hall, looking at the film playing on the wall.

Harris and the other security men had taken the people out of the red boat, up to one of the abstract galleries, for ‘a debriefing’. There had been three of them, a married couple and a baby, who the mother refused to let anyone else touch. There were already rumours that the baby was dead, and had been for some time. Stories like this didn’t shock anyone any more.

I sat and stared at the images on the wall, and wondered who’d created this film. We hadn’t completely lost touch with the past, and we knew it was a sewn-together series of sequences from other films, but we didn’t know who’d made it or why. By stringing together bits of film, were they trying to impose some order on things which didn’t make sense? What story were they trying to tell?

On one of the yellow bunkbeds near me, a young woman was trying to sleep, but kept twitching and turning, perhaps kept awake by the constant dripping and drumming of the rain. Reflected light from the images on the wall played over her face.

There was a booming noise, and a deep creaking vibrated through the hall. The woman sat up in bed, and looked at me as if for explanation.

“The sculptures are moving,” I said, trying to make it sound like the most normal thing in the world. “They make that noise when the humidity reaches a certain point, and they’ve absorbed some moisture.”

She nodded quickly, and settled back down again. She rolled over, nudging a book off the edge of the bed and onto the floor. Even with the curled covers and wrinkled corners, I recognised it as a book I’d been looking at the other week, trying to keep myself occupied so I didn’t have to talk to the others. The first chapter was about people walking in London at night, and it might as well have been talking about the surface of the moon.

I sighed and stood up, glancing quickly at the spider sculpture above me. I couldn’t tell if it had moved, but that was the thing; if it wasn’t for the noise, we wouldn’t know that the statues were moving at all. Gradual, glacial movements, until one day last year the grey clouds parted for a moment and we saw that Nelson’s Column, on the other side of the river, was now as tall as a radio mast. The clouds had closed in again within minutes, and sometimes I wondered how high up Nelson might be now.

The spider sculpture didn’t look as if it had moved, but I walked away quickly anyway.

—

I heard a noise from upstairs, what sounded like a woman’s high-pitched scream, and tried to ignore it even as part of my mind guessed where it was coming from. Near the Lichtenstein, or perhaps the blue Klein. I hated the Klein: its pure blue reminded me too much of the view outside.

The woman kept screaming. I was seized with the urge to start screaming myself, but it occurred to me that if I started I might not stop.

The rain started to pound with renewed ferocity, and it became hard to hear anything.

—

My concentration goes on maintaining the appearance of sanity, and doing my chores – patrolling, mainly, and helping prepare food– and trying not to attract the attention of Harris or anyone in security. Cleaning the food preparation area this afternoon, my hands became so sodden with the water they started to wrinkle like prunes. Divers Hands, Carol used to say, and then smile to herself.

I don’t know what she meant. I miss her. I try to think about something else.

Wasn’t the dripping of water a form of torture in the past? Is that why I feel so brittle, close to losing it?

—

Another sleepless night. I dreamed I was walking along a beach with my father, but there was sand where there should have been sea, and my father’s face wasn’t right. The man in my dream looked like the man in the film on the wall.

Can I truly have forgotten my father’s face? What’s happened to me?

—

The next morning, I’m feeling the urge to talk to someone, and again I’m paired with Derek on lookout. I’m gathering my courage when Derek says he needs to go to the Gents.

I feel the moment’s passed, and stare hopelessly out into the deluge. My thoughts churn, and I remember a story about a king who tried to hold back the tide. He failed, and I realise it’s just as futile to try to stave off the day they realise what’s going on behind my eyes.

The madness is growing inside me, building like a wave, and they’ll come for me like they did for Carol. Strangely, this feels almost comforting.

“Anything?” Derek asks on his return.

“Nothing.” I shake my head.

There’s a creaking sound from the horizon.

“Nelson?” I suggest.

“Could be,” Derek replies. “Or Churchill.”

I nod, and look outside again, feeling almost calm for the first time in months.

The water won’t stop, and the statues are moving. It’s just a matter of time.

Carol, I think. It’s just a matter of time.

I turn away, so Derek can’t see the smile beginning to spread across my face.

You’re wearing a Bioderm bodysuit made from material that breathes like skin. Your body is slight – toned muscle sculpted round slim bone. On your face, a smile. A smile sewn on your face with ugly stitches made of string. You’re smiling at the rows of obese men and women in front of you. There are twelve of them standing there in the studio like farm animals in a field waiting out the rain. You’re small enough to roam around inside each one of them; insignificant, a minority figure in an age where 79% of adults in the Kingdom of London are clinically obese. GoogleSoft™ technology and the ruling Assembly’s Virtual Living policy, is making the need to move beyond the confines of the home almost obsolete.

You look up at the squares of blue silence in the ceiling and, despite the subdued lighting and the Nutri-air climate control system, you’d rather be elsewhere. It’s always been this way. The artificial light, the fabricated air, all that flesh, they make you feel like all the matter that exists in the world is crammed here in this studio with you. Despite today’s ‘hazardous’ pollution level warning, you want to be outside on the London streets. Outside, alone, breathing in real skies, feeling the Thames lapping your insides.

You ask them to go to the end of their mats for the roll-down, and they obey, gathering up armfuls of themselves. As they haul their bodies around, you can’t see their bones move inside them, and it disturbs you. You can’t help despising them for it. These people are lost inside their own meat, but this thing you will do will help them find themselves. This is why they’ve come to you, you realise. This is the reason you’re here, not to teach them Pilates™ but to help them start themselves again.

You lead the class through the roll-down, walking fingers down spines you know must exist somewhere in the spongy folds of their backs. They are bent over themselves now, pushing down on the sprung floor. You watch, appalled. How you hate the fat, the pictures you see in it – grimacing faces, ugly shapes, buried worms. But most of all you hate the fat because it’s alive. You look away, the taste of lard in your mouth, tongue caked with it as you give the instruction to roll up .Eventually they’re upright, staring at you, their moon faces flushed from the inversion, and you ask yourself, how? How the simplest of movements can excite so much sweat from their glands? You put a hand to your nose, waiting for the Nutri-air system to take away the smell.

A voice, firm, decisive. It’s yours. You can hear yourself speaking to them. You’re telling them you don’t want to hurt them anymore than they’ve hurt you. And they have hurt you, over the years. They’ve hurt you by getting bigger and more immobile and less flexible despite your best efforts. You’ve made a life’s work of these weekly one-hour classes and yet you know now that it means nothing; you’ve been wasting your time. These people have done nothing but feed off you for years; you can feel them breathing you in every time you exhale. You press a hand to your face. It’s like you’re growing old in their skin, their grey, lumpy, stretch-marked skin. An anger bigger than you squeezes your temples, burns your throat, pushes at your eyes trying to get out. If these people had any respect for you, if they felt any loyalty to you at all, they’d do the decent thing and die.

Disgusted, you turn your back on them and confront the mirror. In your left hand, the vacant gun. On your face, a quiet smile; you love this gun. How beautiful it feels in your hand, like a cool glove. But this is no ordinary gun. It’s not like any you can buy without licence from any of the big retail dotcoms. No, you have designed this gun yourself. It’s a gun designed by you to kill with precision, to kill beautifully. Your hand will speak to these people now. Your hand will tell these failed bodies what they need to hear – it will talk to them in bullets.

You pull out the gun in your empty hand and point it at yourself in the mirror, and it’s in that moment, you know. For the first time in your life, you know exactly who you are. And you’re not alone in this knowledge because the woman behind you in the first row, she knows who you are too. You can see it in her eyes, brown eyes that suddenly can’t meet yours. She looks at the floor, pulls her shapeless black t-shirt down over the rolls of her stomach, clutches the fleshy wings of her upper arms. Of all the people in the room, this one has fed off you the most. Questions, always asking questions, always asking for help, always wanting somethingfrom you – you could never give her enough. Turning to face the class, you cast your eyes, slowly, deliberately, around the room, but really, you’ve already decided; she’ll be the first.

The people stare back at you like West End theatre-goers from the 1990s – expectant, waiting to be engaged – and you smile because you know you’re about to give them the performance of a life-time. Adrenalin is coursing through your bloodstream like lust. Cut you now and you’d bleed anticipation, excitement. The adrenalin is making you shake but it’s a shaking that’s somehow outside you. When you raise your gun hand it’s surprisingly steady. You’re aiming straight at her now, the woman you’ve decided will be first. She can feel the cold barrel scorching her forehead even from ten feet away. The fear in her eyes tells you this.

The woman dies as beautifully as you imagined she would. The bullets burn kiss-shaped holes in her forehead, her chest, her belly. And there’s beauty, precision in the way they all die. You watch the bullets splintering hair follicles, splitting cells as you shoot them, one after another. And you enjoy it, seeing these people falling apart in front of you like this. You enjoy it because it feels like you’ve been part of this falling since you began teaching them in the late 2030s. This is how it was meant to be. Inevitable. So you keep on firing, on and on until every last one is lying on the floor. But still you don’t stop because using this gun, this gun you’ve made yourself, somehow it personalises the killing, brings a kind of humanity to the violence. So you keep on shooting them, shooting their fat onto the walls until eventually it feels like you’re firing at ghosts. And that’s when you lower your hand, letting out the breath you’ve been holding since you brought the gun to life.
The studio is deathly quiet now, just the gun whispering – kiss-shaped smoke rings float upwards in the beam from the glaucous spotlight above your head. But the gun no longer feels like it’s in your hand. It’s become something other, a thing in its own right, a thing that needs no-one but itself to exist, to fulfil its destiny. You hear a slow rapturous handclapping, but you’re the only one in the room left alive and, when you look at your hands, they’re wiping themselves down the thighs of your Bioderm suit.

“It’s all your fault,” you say, and as you look round the studio at the bodies on the floor, you realise this is something you’ve known about yourself your whole life. Just as you know you’ve spent your whole life preparing for this death. You grab your things, stride across the studio and grapple with the airlock door. Eventually it unseals itself and breathes you out into the corridor. You walk away from the studio and head for the fire exit. Security cameras trace your every step as you leave the building. They know who you are, your past, your medical history. They know where you’ve been, where you’re going, everything.But you’re oblivious. You’re looking at your hands. You’re looking for the gun, your beautiful gun.

“Did I just do that,” you ask yourself, and you answer.

* * The End * *

A glut of flat-packed messiahs ranted at Speakers’ Corner. People flocked to hear the gilded tongues of mendicants. When the promised miracles drowned in a puddle, these prodigal Judases were hunted down with zeal.

Without warning, the rain ceased. People gazed in wonder at the cloudless sky, basking in the warmth of the sun. The vast and minute cogs of the societal machine engaged once more. The council cleared away the corpses of the false prophets.

A multi-millionaire purchased the Tate Modern and promptly closed it for an extensive overhaul. The tabloids shrieked that a national treasure was being defiled.

Within a week, the Tate Modern was forgotten.

A new craze gripped the capital: M-Jumping. The tabloids fastened on like thirsty leeches. Adrenalin junkies were scaling barriers to gain access to the Millennium Bridge. The premise was simple: a running leap into the Thames, the current would sweep the person to the other side of the bridge where they would grab a rope and climb back up. Many died from drowning, either by missing the rope or from hitting submerged objects.

The media frenzy began when a leaper missed the rope and was eaten by a shark. It was caught on camcorder: the bladed dorsal fin, the look of horror, the scream and the man being snatched. The video took huge hits on YouTube.

Large grills were placed within the floodgates of the Thames Barrier.

Perversely, the number of leapers increased.

Everyone remembers the final ill-fated M-Jump. A synchronised league leap had been organised. The winning team would be scored on the amount of survivors and aggregate times for scaling back on to the bridge. The top M-Jumper, Dicarus, was going to perform a solo jump and when he was ascending, a siren would signal the mass exodus.

Dicarus had jumped and grabbed the rope without a problem. The klaxon blared and momentarily forty people were suspended in midair like obedient marionettes. Dicarus was halfway up the rope when it happened. A grinning shark launched itself out of the river. What was left of Dicarus still gripped the rope, he had no abdomen. Eyes glazed, fingers loosened and an indiscernible splash was his epithet.

It transpired that a large number of sharks had congregated due to the steady supply of food provided by the M-Jumpers. The Thames was awash with blood and mangled flesh. It was dubbed ‘The Millennium Massacre’.

Soon after, most of the bridge was exploded.

I was still trying to sort through the three months of mail that had been delivered in one go (actually it had been dumped outside the door of my flat and not all of it was mine) when I discovered I had a job offer. The electrics at the Tate Modern were being rewired. I had not rewired a kettle in five years let alone a building! Some incompetent clerk had not deleted me from the priority contractor list after I had jacked in my job to ghostwrite for braindead celebrities. Not that I had ever published anything in my name. Utter sufficient Brobdingnagian verbiage and anyone can exude an aura of erudition.

I accepted the job.

There were sleeping quarters in the Turbine Hall for the workers. I could not decide if the metallic bunk beds had a militaristic or incarcerated feel to them. A canteen had replaced the main shop. With the major structural work finalised, the workforce had dwindled to a minority who were working shifts. It was a strange to see so many empty bunk beds.

Every level of the Tate had been flood-proofed. The recessed flood breaks at ground level were occasionally tested. They would soar like impatient tombstones. Windowed areas had been reinforced with high-density glass. The disused oil tanks of the power station had been converted. Two were storage rooms replete with supplies and the third was the internal security nexus where CCTV and motion sensors were monitored. A high-tech hydro unit had been assembled underneath the old Switch House. In the event of a flood, it would utilise water to extract oxygen and to create electricity.

The works of art had been hung up again. Private viewings were permitted for those with sufficient influence, although they had to be accompanied by armed guards.

Darksome clouds swathed the sky. An unsettling twilight bathed London in a sepia tint whatever the hour. The streets were riven with unease and suspicion. Electric fences were erected around the Tate’s perimeter. A sense of foreboding nestled within my soul.

And then the rain started.

Fantastical sculptures appeared everywhere – metal, plastic, wood – it did not seem to matter. These offerings did not appease the gods, the rain became colder and harder. Pagan tribalism thrived and human sacrifices became the ‘Menu du Jour’.

It all happened so unexpectedly. I was testing some circuits when the alarm system blared out its visceral warning. I rushed to the security room. I could hear the ominous echoes of the flood breaks clanging shut.

The Security Chief, Steve, was barking orders over his intercom, “Fall back to the tower base, I repeat, fall back to the tower base!”
When I asked him what was happening, the reply chilled me, “The unthinkable.”
The CCTV images showed the perimeter guards running. Suddenly, a voluminous torrent of water swept them away.

Sensors indicated that the water level was rising exponentially. I ran back to check all the flood break electrics. One short circuit could end it all. The lighting was subdued, presumably at a default setting. A dark shadow seemed to flit across the Hall and I looked up to the glass roof and saw that it was shrouded with water. My mind struggled with the reality. If one single drop had glanced off me, I would have had a psychotic episode.

Only eight people had been inside when the alarm sounded. No one just popped out for a cigarette; several would be smoked while exchanging morsels of gossip. There was no emergency procedure for a flood, which was ironic given the nature of the work that had taken place. The perplexed smokers had still been dragging on their cigarettes as the security guards raced past them. Smoking does kill.

The muster was eclectic: one ex-electrician, two security personnel, one canteen worker, two cleaners, an artist and a visitor. I could sense that Steve did not consider the last two people to be of any practical use.

We all stood in silence. The aqueous shadows that were fluttering around the Turbine Hall unnerved me. I disturbed the calm with the profound “I’m hungry.” The rest murmured agreement and we trudged leaden-footed to the canteen. Steve glared at me when I loosed a guttural bark of a laugh that startled everyone. I shrugged apologetically. The visitor, an elderly lady called Constance, had opened her purse to pay for her food.

We filed into a room with a large window facing the river. I decided against asking if anyone had popcorn. It was as if a huge suitcase had been emptied into the water.

Maybe if nothing else had happened at that point, more of us would have survived. A succession of glass baubles with people inside lumbered past. No one said anything. The viewing capsules from the London Eye were rapidly filling up with water. It was pitiful to behold. The unfortunates pounded the glass with bloodied hands; their screams and shouts all the more hideous because we could not hear them.

Daily, Constance would ascend to the highest point of the Tate and stare intently through the glass roof. One day, I accompanied her and we both peered into the Stygian gloom. Without any prompting, Constance told me she was looking for a rainbow. When I asked why, she replied she needed proof that God had not forgotten us.

Seven nights passed without incident.

And then the killing started.

27.06.2058
There has been no sunlight this year. Not a day without rain. The Children don’t mind, they have no innate longing for sunshine. They play under the solar lamps absorbing the life giving light. Run with joy under the massive legs of Maman. Giggling. Playing chasing games as the Curators watch. They swim tethered to buoys around the Sea Room in the specially heated Warm Pool. Mothers joke that one day a baby will be born with gills. We shall return to the sea they say. And laugh. It makes me feel cold and sick. I am too old. I long for the sun. Today is my birthday, no one has noticed. I am forty eight. One of the Old Ones. Perhaps next year I will go for the Longswim and not return.

03.08.09
The sea stretches for miles in all directions. There is a dull greenness to it, and here and there the remains of a tall building reaches above the waves. People get about in boats. Rowboats. Sailboats. Houseboats. I remember cars. The road. Driving. Blinding sunlight and being grateful for the rain. How things change. But today something different happened. It was like a scene from the Vid Screen. A small black speedboat came whizzing over the water. It must have been powered by some exotic engine. Everyone stopped reading to gather at the Window and see. It must be coming here. It must. The whispering grew. The shock was palpable as the boat sped away. One woman cried. Then the children started. A wailing grew in the Turbine Hall. The endless deluge was creating its own atmosphere of tension and despair. We have become caged People with our precious Artworks, our Treasures. Our Precious things. I wonder what would have happened if the Scientists had won the vote. I was an Young Artist, back then, and I voted for them of course. But perhaps I was wrong.

05.08.2058
The Lead Artist has called a meeting. Everyone must go. There are people calling for a boat to go after the Speedboat. Others argue the pointlessness of such a venture. It must be hundreds of miles away by
now. But the longing for a new power, that feeling of speed is like an infectious drug amongst us all. What Super Power could have developed such a wondrous thing people mutter. But they don’t let the Artists hear. People fear having to take the Longswim. As we all do in the end. Except for Louise B. of
course. She is kept alive. It is her Spider that we worship after all. “All that you desire is never enough.” Those were her last words. She lies sleeping now.

08.08.2058
The meeting didn’t go well. Afterwards we watched as twenty three of our Number got into a Sailboat and left. There were twelve Curators and a Director in the group. The Artists were not pleased by this
departure. Warnings about further departures and the dire consequences that would follow were posted
in the Turbine Hall. Tonight even the food tasted of rain.

11.09.2058
Over one hundred of our Number left today. Only those with young children are too frightened to leave. I watched them leaving. Sailing away. I wanted to go. Out into the rain. To see what was left of the world. But I couldn’t, I was too frightened. It was Reading Day. I read The War of the Worlds again. To remember another world. Where in the end it got better. There was disaster and terror, a terrible spreading fear, but the world survives. People survive. What will happen to us now. There has to be a certain Number to survive here in our Art Gallery. Food must be grown. The Solars and Winds need maintenance. The Artworks must be cared for.

13.10.2058
I had a terrible dream last night. The Speedboat came and it stopped. But it was empty. There was no magic engine or new energy developed in some far off place that would save us from the endless rain. Then I woke and felt sick. And there it was floating gently, bumping into the dock. Black and shiny. It seemed to have no unbroken line. Impenetrable. And then I saw him standing on the balcony holding
something. Something I remembered from a Christmas long ago. Remote control. That was how it worked. This was some trick by the Artists. They wanted us to go. They wanted more space for their Artworks. And then I woke up. I felt sick.

19.10.2058
It is so cold today.

25.10.2058
Today marks the anniversary of my child’s death. I know there was nothing I could have done. It haunts me still though. The guilt. The sadness of losing her to the waves. The endless sea.

29.10.2058
The friction between the Artists and the People has grown. There are strange rumours. I wonder sometimes if my dream wasn’t a dream. Other people talk of it. That strange boat mooring at the Dock. And the Artist with the Remote Control. But I told no-one.

01.11.2058
I spent the day in the Quite Quiet White Room today. No outside. Nothing. Just white. I tried not to think about the Speedboat. The cold. The rain. But even in there I thought I could hear it. The far off drumming of rain.

12.12.2058
I spent so long working on the Hydroponics Trays in the Food Hall my back has stiffened. I keep thinking about the boat. Where is it now? I cannot concentrate on my book. It is Reading Day. I must read. It is cold. My back aches. I decide the only solution is a Painkiller. Time to visit the Damien Hirst. The Dispenser hands over one Painkiller with cold disapproving eyes which bore into the back of my head even as I walk away. I lie back down and savour the effects of the Painkiller. I hate myself for giving in to the pain.

24.12.2058
It is Christmas Eve. But only the Old Ones remember. Christmas was banned in 2026. Excessive consumption was no longer tolerated. Now all that passes between those that remember is a small smile. The one that says Yes I too remember the Old Times. Celebrations, shops full of endless gadgets and toys. And food like you have never seen. The taste of honey. And birds that flew in the sky. And Aeroplanes. Children laugh at that one.

25.12.2058
Something incredible has happened. And on Christmas Day. No one else can see the significance of it. The rain has stopped. Blue sky. Everyone has rushed to the roof to feel the sunlight. They all run around screaming even the Artists and Directors. The Conservators and Curators check Atmospheric Levels. And then it happened. Everyone froze. The boat was back. Speeding over the beautiful blue sea. It was real. The sunlight dazzled on the water. The shiny black Speedboat glided gently to the Dock. All the children ran. Down the stairs. Towards the boat. A few seconds later the Adults recovered
from the shock and fear. And ran. Towards the boat. We Old Ones were the slowest of all. The last to see what happened next.

06.07.2059
There are twenty nine of our Number left now. Fourteen are the infants who were sleeping in the Crèche on that fateful day when the Speedboat did that terrible strange thing. I hid. Once I saw what was happening. The Children were first, sucked straight into the blackness of the shiny hull. I didn’t understand what was happening. Then the Adults, they tried to resist. But they must have been too
close. I shall never forget the screaming. And then it was gone, speeding away. There was silence. No rainfall drumming. No Children laughing and playing. Till a cry came from the Crèche and those of us left came running. The same look of terror stamped on all our faces.

I am living in front of the ocean, I don’t know which one, only “the ocean”.

I am living near the river. I am living and everyday, it’s rainning.

Everyday I look for the ocean, for the line formed between sky and sea, and for hour I don’t know what’s happend
somewhere else, and I don’t care.

From the moment of my first remenber , I mean consiously, I feel like this, don’t care about nothing.

More than a memory, it’s the only feeling I always keep, before identity, or consiousness.

My world ‘s apprehension had only this general line: nothing.

I live in front of the ocean, but it’s not ocean, or water, the most important is the front, and I never wanted to know what was the back, so I look at the front.

I am not loving the ocean, I’m feeling the ocean, I’m feeling him. All his molecule are in conversation with mine,
from his origine to his end, when it will come.

My knowledge grow then disepear, as cloud arrive, obscure sky, and leave, letting traces behind them.

In the past I had a lot of visit, people come from far away to know me, to discover freedom sensation; or lost interior landscape, things like this.

In a far away past I had value, because I was synonymous with liberty, all horror or happiness that was associate. War, conquest, blood, freedom, hope.

During a part of humanity history, I had been ignored, forsaken. Not a question of mode, just a decadence of
imagination. During this hard time I had learn how much powerfull I was. I prepared a revenge.

My power is silent, and my force is without limit. Empire they had build could collapse at every-moment.

Now, I had extended myself on a big part of the world, my loneliness had grow and grow, perhaps am I totaly alone.

Everywhere I had risked my presence I was received with fear and flight.

It’s too late to look back, I am the last emperor.

I am the ocean, in front of my own reflect in the sky, feel alone in the deep of the galaxy…

The bodies didn’t normally wash so far upstream, not in such numbers anyway. Jetsam then. Refugees probably, thrown overboard like so much ballast. They were almost comic, the way they bumped and collided. It reminded me of the smoke chamber they used at school to demonstrate the collision of particles attracting and repelling each other. Boyle’s Law, I think.

A corpse’s hair almost touched my foot and I took a step back onto the sandbags. Alonzo grunted and pointed down the wall towards the Globe. Its walls were once white so I heard, but now had that same green sheen as everything else. I gave Alonzo a confused look. Further then, to the dereliction of Southwark Bridge? He grunted again. He meant somewhere closer, on the wall itself. I wiped the rain out of my eyes.

Water was lapping up and over, about twenty metres down the line. I nodded to Alonzo that I understood and strode down the wall like a chimpanzee, one foot on either side. The wake of some passing vessel had shown us a weak spot. Another sandbag came up from the back of the truck, the line of conscripts human-chaining it to me. Following my steps, Alonzo brought his bucket of mortar and together we roughly stuck the sandbag in place.

The temperature had dropped again and there was sleet mixed in with the rain. Alonzo made the same joke about ‘Global Warming’ people had been making for forty or more years. I could have said something about the Gulf Stream but didn’t bother.

Not before time a dredger came by, its nets gathering up the corpses as best it could. Two more followed in a sweeper formation, one on either bank. The chain passed up long wooden poles and we pushed at the bodies, forcing them against the tide towards the gathering arms of the dredger. We were eager for them to be away. You might think they would act as further ballast, like make-shift sandbags, but they were a greater risk to the integrity of the wall. For one thing, they rotted. The smell was unbearable. For another, they hid gaps; there might be another breach under a dead arm or torso.

That night I lay on my bunk, reading a book in French. I could follow maybe one word in ten. Still, it was all we had. Books in English were in high demand but were so well thumbed that the text was becoming worn away or blackened at the side of each page. You had to guess the plot sometimes.

The floor was damp. It didn’t matter how well we kept at the wall, the water always found a way in. There was a blue-black tinge to my pillow. I turned it over to the less mildewed side and struggled to understand Georges Perec.

In the morning there were even more corpses. Some ship must have gone down, or maybe two had
collided. The bodies were all clothed, some of them quite smartly as if they’d been on their way to a dinner party. This time one of the dredgers came to a halt in midstream. There was a Thames waterman standing on a raft in front of it. Alonzo passed me the binoculars. It was a raft of corpses. We paused in our repairs passing the binoculars between us. With the skill that can only come from practise, the waterman lashed new corpses to his raft. He shouted instructions to the pilot through a walkie-talkie. He’d push it back into his belt then stride across the bodies, their backs like stepping stones, their
bellies logs and he a lumberjack. He shouted over to us and we understood. We recruited a dozen more from the volunteer conscripts to stand on the wall and push the bodies out to the waterman. He was joined on his raft by others from his vessel. They were quick, each one able to lash a new corpse to the edge in less than ten seconds.

Some of the conscripts were sick. Me and Alonzo were pretty much immune to this by now. Your first few corpses are the worst, but then you see twenty, thirty, a hundred. The numbers let you look away, inside yourself.

By afternoon, the wall was clear again, the defences holding. For a short while the rain stopped and there were no barges, no dredgers, no flotillas of bodies on the river and we could see across uninterrupted to the towers beyond. The city seemed green again, as it must have done a long time – centuries – past. But it was cold, like a jungle that had grown up in the Arctic and been surprised by
the suddenness of the chill. Wordlessly, Alonzo dropped a paperback onto my bunk. It was The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.

In the half light I began reading, guessing at the missing words in the blackened thumb shape on each page. The paper was like my jeans, black and sticky with the accretions of a thousand previous owners. I was maybe a quarter of the way through the book when I fell asleep.

I came awake as though shaken. The building was shaking. Earthquake? No, it had stopped. What then? A bomb? I swung my legs over the side of the bunk. They went in water.

I looked at my watch. It was six-thirty; just before dawn. Other people were rousing too. We
splashed through the ankle deep water to the ramp. Water was pouring down in spasms, like slit veins involuntarily pumping out their last. I caught Alonzo’s eye but he just shrugged. Outside, we climbed, the human chain up the wall. The water was lapping up and over, breaching the wall in a dozen places. This didn’t make sense. We all knew the tide tables. The next high tide wasn’t due
for another three hours.

The rain was turning to sleet again.

I was one of the first to reach the top. I stood, bare feet gripping the sandbags, as ragged as Huckleberry Finn. Others joined me. It probably wasn’t a good idea to stand, so many of us, on our flimsy barricade. It didn’t matter. None of it mattered any more. We each knew what sound had awakened us all, had shook the building. What was left of Southwark Bridge had gone. The concrete remains were even now collapsing into the Thames.

An iceberg had destroyed it.

We watched as the ‘berg continued along the Thames, going West with the incoming tide. The
timetables meant nothing now. All was wash.

Further, smaller ice floes followed in the wake of the giant. The iceberg sailed on, unhindered. The footbridge had long since fallen, its pinions and balustrades pitiful jagged reminders of its past. A military pontoon followed in its wake, navigating the jigsaw of the smaller floes. It broke from the stream and headed towards our position. The ‘berg hit Blackfriars Bridge and came to a stop. The bridge clanged like a cracked bell but held.

The pontoon pilot drew his craft alongside the wall. There was another man standing on the prow. He wore a military jacket, but had jeans beneath. “Get in,” he said. “When that bridge goes, this whole area will go with it.”

Alonzo didn’t need any persuading; he was already across. “What about the Gallery?” I said.

“What about it? Did you leave any people in there?”

“No, we’re all here.”

The man shrugged. “Then get in.” I wanted to tell him there were Henry Moores under water now, with all the other stuff the flood would swallow. But I was on board now and the pontoon was already turning away. Only now I realised that I had left Alonzo’s copy of Tom Sawyeron my
bunk and I wondered how many more copies there were anywhere in the world.

We sailed where Southwark Bridge had once stood and looked back. Blackfriars creaked and groaning, buckled and fell. The waves rocked our boat and drowned the wall I had stood on. All things considered, I was better off here than back there. I saw the sandbag wall fall and the river rush to fill the void.

The sleet had become snow.

I looked back. The waves lashed the walls, but the chimney stood high above, like a marker buoy over lobster pots, should anyone ever have a reason to return.

It was a week before the Great British public would flock to the polls, which Graham Cave had so wittingly remarked upon on Sunday morning breakfast TV as ‘making a refreshing change from the Polls flocking to Great Britain’, and the nation was frantic with pre-election excitement. The two, sorry three, prime ministerial candidates appeared periodically on primetime television, either in the heat of debate, or as in the case of Graham Cave – in thirty minute long commercials with blockbuster budgets.

Graham Cave was ahead by a country mile, stock-piling celebrity supporters and patriotic anthem playing musicians. His campaign slogan read, ‘Graham Cave: Nothing to Hide’, a cunning use of his
surname as decided in a two week seminar with his election team. He had nothing to hide, nothing to be ashamed of.

His father had been unashamedly rich, and Graham had been cruelly burdened with the trappings of wealth. It was not just his Eton schooling he was unabashed to declare, but his views, views that a nation had been reluctant to voice until he soothed them with speeches opening, ‘I’m sorry, but…’, and, ‘some people say that if you say x, that makes you a y’, and slowly that public began to share the beautiful language of ignorance dressed in silky sound bites in staff canteens throughout the land.

He was unashamedly Christian, and was unashamedly proud of living in the Christian land of Great Britain. So he didn’t go to church regularly, and he didn’t know so much about the Bible, ‘is that really
what being Christian is about?’, he questioned, and the churches were so short of worshipers and the worshipers were so short of company that every one felt inclined to agree. Besides, ‘what is the alternative?’, he quipped, ‘Atheism or Islam? Stalin or the Taliban?’

He was unashamedly anti-immigration, despite his Irish maternal grandparents, he soon disowned them and all their Irishness. He willed the country’s doors closed from the outside. His pillow wept for those
poor unemployed citizens whose jobs were being stolen by those tax-paying, birth-rate raising aliens, so willing to undermine working values.

He spoke with the kind of voice that accompanies documentary footage of dramatic change –a presidential funeral march, a student protest, a nuclear explosion. He could speak in nonsensical jumbles, reciting a foreign alphabet, or the written script of a chimpanzee’s grunts, and still hundreds would walk on bare foot to stretch out fingertips to touch the air that could have been the breath that sustains the man.For the first time in living history, people felt impassioned about British politics. They booked holiday time off of work to make banners to wave around at party rallies.

‘What do you think is the reason for this, this unprecedented fervour for British politics?’, Cave was asked, ‘Well…’, he pondered, leaning towards the party-sponsored interviewer, ‘… it is no wonder that politics has not excited people, it may not be entertainment, but there is a duty to entertain that has long found itself shuffled amongst paper-logged desks and bureaucratic circles of never ending bureaucracy!

There is a duty to entertain our citizen’s ideas and concerns,’ he continued, ‘their ideals and complaints, their hopes and their fears – I have listened to this population. I have listened and I am both troubled by their worries and in awe of their inspiration.

This nation’s ideas have filled a world, have filled this world. Our inventions are in every home, our business plans are profiting millions, our language is spoken in every corner, our common sense of decency and morality is universal. And yet our flags are hidden, and are ways are suppressed. Why? I cannot answer this question easily, and I am sure that most of my fellow Britons would also have the same difficulty. Is it because of racism? Is it because we are afraid of offending those who have chosen to come to this country, to work in this country, to be a part of the nation of
this country?’, Cave inquired with contrived naivety, ‘Is it because a minority in this country complain that we pander to their demands for neutrality of nationality? A minority that has increased our risk of terrorist attack and unemployment!’, he paused with mouth smugly gaping, ‘Well, I do not need to be
the one to say this, but that’s just a load of… what’s the word? Oh, I’m sorry the word has just escaped me… ah, this is embarrassing! Imagine forgetting the name of the current prime minister of Great Britain!’

His name was David Winters, and his opposition to the cult of Graham Cave was growing tired. He sat in his burgundy leather armchair staring into the fire. Where had it gone so wrong? His liberal
philosophies had long been unpopular with the high earners of Great Britain, who had been forced to move over-seas to avoid high taxation, but recently the working class had also turned their back in favour of the fire brand politics of the opposition.

If he thought about it, the interview in which he had been asked about his presumed religious faith had certainly been a catalyst towards his current state of dire unpopularity.

He had been asked how important his religion was to him, to which he levelled an
inquisitive stare upon his questioner, and then to his aides who had organised this interview, before sitting back in his chair and answering. ‘My Religion?’, he asked, pausing for a matter of seconds, ‘Show me a man whose religion is his own’, he levelled,‘My religion? I suppose you are asking about my faith, my faith in a Christian God(the Christian God of Great
Britain!), Listen’, he said sitting intently forwards,‘this country is not a theocracy and let us not become one. I am not Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Buddhist, Sikh, Hindu or any other for that matter – and how could I be? How could I be Christian in a country in which all these religions exist without intrinsically believing that everyone of another faith is fundamentally wrong? That is not my duty as Prime
Minister.

My duty is to provide an environment in which 60 million ideas of God and religion can exist peacefully and beneficially – for the sake of everyone.’

‘I suppose I’ll read those comments again’, he reflected to his oldest ally as he walked off set, who could only wince and agree.

And sure enough, the next morning’s papers were filled with news of the devil worshipping Prime Minister sinking the country into the murky depths of the godless. Not too much of an unusual read, it must
be said, as the tabloids had always sold well off of the rope that his daring policies left hanging.

He had allowed immigration to reach its highest recorded levels, and while benefiting considerably in financial terms – he was criticised for selling British jobs. Criticised by people who chose to over-look the dramatically improved unemployment and education statistics, resultant from foreign investment and tax contributions.

Trade and Industry had become strong once again at a price to many American based multi-nationals and banks, earning him many enemies in high media-owning places. Hence, the Paparazzi and news hounds, unearthing teenage experiments and student misdemeanours and concluding that the man who ran this country was a godless, drug-taking, narcissistic, unpatriotic, communist philanderer.

But now even the liberal press had deserted him. Conservatism was the new Liberalism. Right the new Left. And there David Winters sat, contemplating a life of after dinner speeches, personal memoirs,
and for the first time, he reflected on how far removed from the British public he really was.

‘Darling?’, he called out, ‘How do you fancy a change of scenery?’

‘Pardon?’, his wife responded, walking into the room with their young child heavy in her arms.

‘Oh nothing’, he sighed. ‘I was just thinking about moving out of here, to somewhere new’, he spoke wistfully, ‘and I hear caves are going to be the new thing’.

At that very moment the notion hit me, for that brief moment my lung expands with gratitude full of fresh yet cold January air, I am in a network; a network of unknown quantities, one that consists only of other super
monkeys, mirroring my exact movements. Invisible bonds that connect us, invisible bonds that modern conventions have tried so hard to sever. Dividing us up into static, regimented platoons, defined by hay bales and plaster, we are a hive of bees hanging to our individual rights above a vast bowl containing a soup of singularity. Humans are social creatures and our technologies reflect that. Break us apart and our wires crawl out like the roots of fungi in an ancient forest, connecting us beneath the soil.

Right now, I am touching the network, feeling it in my nerves, I may leave my house but I may never remove myself from the database in which I voluntarily placed myself. Slow at first, profiles, friends’ lists, pictures. Then blogs, bank, work and car all follow me, a weightless weight on my shoulders. Even if I wanted out, the people I meet throughout my forecasted life will fill in the gaps I do not want to.

A spark of rage, a feeling of building the dream home around you only to realize that it its lovingly selected materials are all variations of Perspex, in addition, you devised no exit. What to do? You may remove the
mind via a bullet in the head but not the body, not the profile. Feeling this mobile, like a noose around my neck and I am barely two meters down my quaint concrete garden when I decide this day, is to be lived like it is my last.

Tearing the wretched device from my neck and setting it up for recycle, letting it fall to the ground, the mobile quickly graces its new bleak, solid, habitat with small, needle like dandelions that swiftly collapse around what now resembles a caterpillar wheezing and twisting, slowly burning to death. A shudder dances up my spine, this device that contains my genome taking one last squirm, one last breath. This must be what self mutilation felt
like.

Impossible, no. What I am laying whiteness to is consequence of chance, randomly firing microwaves that I, as a stupid human am associating with stupid human attributes; furthermore I have no time for this mildly amusing
spectacle. This day will not wait for me and my legs are hardly even adjusted to this upright position.

My feet with me in tow are headed for a remote place, a place that as a teenager I used to climb trees and fall in love with authenticity. By chance I would wind up living close by but never revisiting, out of fear? Definitely, it would be of no surprise if those trees where gone, now synthesised and far more efficient yes, but now exhaling and inhaling, so slowly it’s barely noticeable, but distinctly eerie, I so used to love to climb.

Grabbing the fence post I hurl myself over the barbed wire, for a brief moment my feet bid farewell to the pavement before being met with a sudden thud of soil. This is a shortcut, today I’d rather not endure the market
stalls, their blinking lights and directional adverts subtly screaming at you for attention, they make my head pound and palms sweat, my mind unwillingly absorbs the junk that merchants spoon feed it, such a dreadful waste of thought, I am no baby.

This quest for tranquillity, a place to hide from the manufactured, the engineered, is tinted crimson with fear. What if that place no longer exists in modern society? What will become of me then? Outcast, wanderer, a kook, children come at me and ask questions for which I supply no real answers while adults strategically tack around me. Sailing boats avoid shallow waters, Adults don’t like taking risks. Why on this day, the day that is to be treated as my last would I head toward a memory? Have I been a skipper who has sailed in my comfort zone, but now finds that the winds have not been to kind? The idea lingers in my cortex, starting to crackle, again I feel the
anger, my nervous system starts humming in my ears, I am about to run.

At this point the local farmer lets two mean black hounds of their leash. He and his dogs has been shouting at me for a few minutes now, ever since I vaulted into his pig pen during feeding, I have not yet had the time to emerge from my thoughts to deal with this pressing issue. But the pigs have long since scarpered, I was about to follow suit anyway.

Hurdling fences at my age? Feels easier that it should be, in addition I am sure that I escaped from the jaws of these same hounds some fifty years ago. Seems they have gotten a lot faster since then as they are practically snapping at my heels. Hurtling across farmland through fluffy clouds of white Chick-hens and an angry mob of Bowl I feel the rush of euphoria as I dive down the valley into a damp muddy forest, I almost don’t care if these dogs maul me right now, if the future is so bleak, why not give up when my head bares a stupid grin up amongst the clouds and my muscles are burning coal? Suddenly I feel a vengeful jaw lovingly embracing my ankle, I fall face first into the mud, I almost forgot.

Grow old they said, but for how long, for whom? Life expectancy is increasing at such a rapid rate I am sure to hit two with double noughts. Would hate to be old for an eternity, to lose my body and dive into a database.

The dog is still latched on to me; I feel no pain, yet. I almost casually reach down for it, grab its head, and twist. The beast in its last moments gives up a feminine yelp and falls limp. I promised that I would live today like it where my last. That means I will not give up, not today, I am fearless. Its partner is stood some distance away, just looking at the scene before it, its dead accomplice, still baring its fangs, latched onto me. The stream that trickled just behind me provides the soundtrack as this once ferocious animal starts a very human cry.

The promised place of my memories lay just on the other side of this stream and up the ridge, leaving the departed lovers behind, I start to climb. I should be feeling a scathing pain in my ankle around about now but
somehow, I feel numb to it. I left something behind in my garden today, something more than a mobile but I somehow departed with it.

A memory, these stupid human memories that make the past seem so perfect, like viewing an old house from far away, come to close and you can see the torture years unforgivably ravaged it with. Here lay that old house. Dark and rotting, in agony and past its time, even the trees that befriended this home and complimented it with every sunlit hour for years, now with shame, keep a cautious distance. I am fearless, the thought fluttered in my head. This house needs to be put down with dignity, much like an old dog, past its natural life.

Later that night, I would revel in the resulting glow of my new found philosophies here, the old wood now gratefully alive again in a beautiful coat of bright colours for a brief moment. I would only laugh my lungs sore and my voice hoarse, pause to contemplate the past before throwing it into the fire along with everything that will be lost in time beyond this point in my life. At this time I feel wealthy; at this time I know I don’t
belong here.

They say that there’s something wrong in the troposphere, although some say it’s the fault of the hydrosphere. People think our planet has failed, although in reality it’s only half the planet, the antipodes still has sunshine, and a giant queue of people trying to gain entrance through immigration, but their summer is coming to an end: it’s expected that once the sun goes down at the end of March then it won’t rise again in April, just as ours didn’t on 1st October and doesn’t look like it will ever again.

Scientists have blasted off probes into the clouds, the satellite-stars have reported back reams of information, none of it useful. Some think that a meteor hit the earth, maybe somewhere out in a desert, and that governments have covered it up in order to stem panic about this nuclear winter. Successive emergency governments say that they can solve it; even hardened optimists don’t seem to believe them.

Apart from food shortages, looting, muggings, newly formed gang violence, religious mania, fuel crises, power cuts, and a rising suicide and murder rate, everything is quiet. In yesterday’s 14:08 pea-souper snow, flickering neon streamed into soggy gutters, streetlamps’ light pooled like Saturn’s rings. Venus, or one of the satellite-probes, hung low in the brown-black sky. People used to talk about feeling small and insignificant when looking at far away stars, but it makes me feel comforted that we’re not the only things here, that some other planet or galaxy or universe could exist and could run life there better than we have, could even come to save us.

God, I miss the red electric shock of sunset when seen from the wrong side of night, the violent sky just as it sets again. I think I miss that more than plants and light and food and normality, I just miss the colours of the firmament. Oh, you god-damn low down sun of a bitch – rise, god-damn it, rise to morning-time.

I think it’s night time again. The stars shine their dark light. Some birds are tweeting but most are silent. They are as confused as we are. But my next door neighbour says that her cat is adapting, it sleeps when it wants to, goes out when it wants to and is bringing home more mice as a result of the permanent night. The cats and cockroaches will survive. I haven’t spoken to anyone else for a week.

I sit out on the balcony, smoking, more for the red tip glow than the nicotine. I don’t want to have to venture out to buy more. I don’t want to have to venture out. The Employment Opportunities Office is shut until further notice. I heard that the employed are demanding that their companies bus them in and out; no-one wants to walk or use what little public transport is still running. It doesn’t take much of a catastrophe to cause a crisis.

Fuck it, I’m going out. What good is sitting alone in your room?

Despite my anxiety, I could still feel the glorious momentum of motion as the three-quarters-empty train finally set off after a driver had been found. My fellow passengers sat heads down, paying no attention to me or anyone else. They obediently filed on and off at each stop. The streetlight bounced bright off the train at Cambridge Heath station and into the tornado shaped clouds when I alighted. I walked into the slinky silver mist haze of pollution on Hackney Road.

I headed in the direction of the canal, but my eye was snagged by something going on in the park. The gates looked like they’d been jimmied open and a large crowd had gathered – another religious meeting. Or the eco-terrorists blaming our ex-decadent western lifestyles for the sunlessness. All of those enviro-types are glad that this has happened. It just proves them right.

But as I nosed further in, I was suddenly choked by orange and green smoke and then could smell shooting stars. Loud screams hit my ears. This is it, then! This is how the world ends, not with a whimper but with a horrible, frightening bang. I turned, panicked, and bumped into the boy behind me. He reached out his hand and held my arm to steady us both.

It feels like I’m on the bridge of a spaceship, he said, his eyes illuminated with delight, watching a planet coming toward me and then disappearing, supernova-style.

I turned around. The gunpowder left its remains in the towerblock windows, in the sky and in my eyes. Frosted blue electric explosions came nearer and nearer until they seemed just outside of my eyes, until they were in my eyes, until it was my eyes exploding, leaving spider-snake-smoke trails, my optic nerves becoming combustive marigolds, glitter snakes
and red comets exploding, fizzing stars and diamond chandeliers falling into our eyes.

Isn’t it wonderful, the boy said, still holding my arm. I don’t know who arranged it, but it’s such a brilliant idea.

I suppose that there has to be dark to have the light, I said.

Listen, he said, looking at me, there’s a rain-storm due at 20:58. I know an
i-bar near here, The Kropotkin.
It’s, er – he laughed. It’s Soviet themed. You can download 20th century avatars and virt-fight the cold war all over again. But it’s safe, the owners are my friends. I’m not an apocalyptic attacker, he added.

I looked at him. I thought about cats and birds and dark and night and snow and
light and fireworks. What the hell, I said, adapt and survive, right? Mutual aid. Co-operation, right? Live together, die alone, yes?

Come on, he said, linking his arm in mine, I’ll buy you a Tequila Sunrise.

Forget about them. Keep looking forward. Keep looking up.

I’m feeling a bit dizzy. Maybe that’s why I’m tempted to open my mouth and swallow some of the rain. Not a good idea. Too many reports on what resides within that teeming swarm. Swirling against those electric lights, each droplet is a perilous luminescent jewel. Any one of them could contain some dreadful poison and I have no way to tell as I don’t have my microscope and my sight is slightly blurred. With every blink a block of colour hovers over my vision. Attempted revelation perhaps, or a liquid prism stinging against the iris?

And when I open them again, more blocks. One rectangular window on top of the next, each with an identical neighbour on either side. The only way I could possibly see to the end of them would be to lie upon the slick paving slabs. Far too smooth to allow puddles. I don’t do that of course. Because of fear more than anything. An image is conjured into my mind of a corpse lying beneath a grotesque headstone. I shudder at the thought of all those workers getting to their offices, scurrying over my decomposing flesh. Or is it a fever coming along. The pain in my neck throbs sinisterly and I think I feel a tightness in my throat. I did take my prescription today. The requisite number of vitamins and proteins and pro-biotic bacteria to secure my health and well-being, but are such precautions enough? Keep calm and look at those screens. No disturbing visions of mortality there. Better to force my head back a little further; just a little further and I might see right to the top. Maybe if I was to keep the pose for long enough, evolution would steal away the ache in my neck.

Forget about that. Still far too young to get morbid. How old are we now?

I can see everything. All of the picture is on display. Burning at you through those cool windows. The rain softening the glass canvas in a vain act of modesty. Pick a scene at random. Room number 2058 perhaps. The protagonists sit behind desks, plugged into work stations. Smaller than life. Yet each figure is powerful in their indifference. After all; who is the spectator here? Those beings are unreachable, unknowable. We can see each other well enough, but if I was to reach out my hand, I would not feel the touch of flesh but the unblemished surface of a screen.

Time to draw back I think. Try not to get too involved. After all I do not know those creatures parading before me. Better perhaps that they are oblivious. Keeping my eyes fixed upwards I start walking backwards, until the figures are only smudges against the glass. Indistinct and wavering as wraiths. With every step I take though, the building appears larger, a vast slab against the night.

The rain runs rivulets down my face and I am exposed to the phosphor eyes of the brooding tower. A behemoth studded with uniform rows of spotlights emanating from it’s concrete torso. What can I do? Each harsh beam searches greedily. To raze away the shadowed contours of identity.

Forget about it. Someone has to watch over you. To keep you safe.

I think my head has been in one position too long. I feel I could be getting delirious. I try to move it but I‘m stuck. A wave of panic momentarily washes over me. No. No, it’s just the rain. My head does eventually move, in a painful grinding sensation. I rub my eyes, to try and relieve the soreness. They feel battered by the rain and searing lights.

I close them tight shut and anxiously wait. At last a soft dawn glow shines pale against the tempest. I rub away the ache in my neck and give a relieved sigh. I am not yet blinded and a future vision waits to be formed.

They’re all up there, the progeny of Earth – celebrities, politicians, and even the everyday folk like herself.  Each of them is nothing beyond a man or a woman, but the world is only just beginning to see what a person can accomplish, can really accomplish, when they put their mind to it.  What came before – the wonders of the world and the rise and fall of empires – all that was the prologue. This is the future.

Her boyfriend doesn’t understand that of course.  Boyfriend.  Such a ridiculous word to use when one is approaching middle-age.  It sounds so transitory, like she’s going to dump him at any moment and get herself a replacement.  It doesn’t encompass everything he means to her, all the things that he is and can ever be.          

Years before she met him he was the victim of an industrial accident.  Equipment jammed and fell, crushing him beneath.  Prosthetics saved his life, and these days he likes to make jokes about his genitals and her penchant for machinery.  She never tells him how close he is to the truth.

During the day she works on building sites.  She’s not building anything though, nobody is, what they’re doing is taking the city down bit by bit, starting with the housing estates and working their way from there.           

There are protests against the work.  People who think the city should be kept the way it is despite the fact that there’s no need for this much housing anymore.  They come and they stand out beneath the grey of the sky, hoods and hats keeping off the endless London rain, and they shout their slogans and hold their banners up high.

What they don’t understand is where the materials go.  They don’t get dumped in a landfill, not
anymore, they get recycled and most parts end up heading into the sky, just one more piece of the exodus.  Scavengers filch some of it.  But the artists are the real trouble.

They are a problem all across London, a prolific infestation that can’t be stemmed.  They creep through the night in their hundreds and cut security fences and take what they need.

They weld steel and mould concrete, and the results are bizarre and macabre, more so because the dawning of each day sees new sculptures lining the roads, joining the teeming thousands that already exist, drops of rain glittering like oil on their curves. They are changing things, the artists insist, they are giving the jaded tourist a look at something new.  They are modernising the metropolis and it’s not their intention to stop.  Not ever.          

The city council is not impressed.  Waste disposal has become a war balanced on the teetering edge of alliance and betrayal.  The artists have the actors and writers behind them.  Their campaign is fought in the theatres and the daily papers.  The council uses more pedestrian means and has government funding behind it.

The war goes on but the artists are losing ground bit by bit.  Slowly, the parks and roads of the city are being reclaimed, Wimbledon Common and Hampstead Heath and all the little greens
that fill the between places.  Workers in fluorescent jackets treat them as though they were weeds to be kept from growing.  They clear away the sculptures while the rain patters down all around, flooding their boots and trickling into their clothes.

It is a judgement, some say.  The rain is life-giving, and there has certainly been a frenzy of creation over recent years.  It is wrong to stem the tide.  The artists put their all into the
city and work at making it something new that defies definition.  But all that those hard-nosed labourers see fit to do is to cut it and kill it dead.

Ink does not see why it matters.  The artists insist they will never leave, but some of them will, she knows.  Perhaps on a day when the rain finally gets to be too much and risking the guard dogs to forage for scraps no longer seems worth it.  Some of them will look up and see the planets turning in the sky, beckoning them to a new beginning.

Her boyfriend feels it.  He comes over and they eat together and talk about the future.  She mentions children and maybe a pet or two, and he nods and then glances at the window, his eyes turned up.

Even she fantasises about leaving it all behind and going somewhere new one day.  She listens to the propaganda and the testimonials of all the people who are already there.  They glow
with the excitement of it all and chatter about their new lives.  And she is tempted.

She won’t act on it.  Not because life is life wherever one happens to be and is filled with the same old worries, but because this is her home and she loves it.

She loves the way it feels to tear down those empty estates, knowing that she is bringing an end to an era.  She loves wandering along roads that once thrived with traffic but now lie empty, looking up through drops of rain at the architecture of Wren and his peers.  And she loves the rain.

It lulls her to sleep and sends sweet dreams her way.  It whispers of all the people who ever lived in this city – strict Victorians and spoiled royals; philanthropists and their opposites; the poor; the dispossessed; and the foolhardy.  The rain tells her about the city and what it is and what it has always been.  It would go on even without her, but she will not leave.  She would miss the rain if ever summer came again.

I see part of a metal staircase below me.  Underneath that, there is a sort of wall curving inwards. It seems to be made of irregular planks. I realise the significance of the shape of the planks. They’re all people.

A stinging in the left side of my head makes me cry out. An earnest, black-clad woman appears. She says, “Test.”

“What’s that mean?” I say.

“Good,” she says, not changing her expression. She looks down at something in her hand.

“What’s going on? What’s this?” I raise an arm to indicate the enormity of whatever I am part of. My muscles work now. “Who are you?”

 
“Hmm?” She does something and I feel a twitch in my mind. “I’m an Artendant. I work out the choreography.”

I try to ask what she means but I can’t think of any words. I say, “ah… ahh… what, what…”

She twists her lips efficiently. “Good. You’ll be required to interact with the Articipants when they speak to you. Sometimes you won’t be able to talk.” She looks down again and I feel another sting. “Avoid criticising the United Republic of Samaal.” The Artendant moves to one side and reaches up to the person next to me.

“Wait! What’s going on?” I say. She hears, “aio oh i o.”

Her face jerks back into my field of view. She looks annoyed. She pokes a small instrument at me.

“O a?” I ask. She presses a button. Something folds in my head.

Now I can make no sound at all.

I looked down from the bridge of the TeraTanker X. Three fast boats fanned out around our ship. They looked like bees attacking a buffalo. People said this stretch of water would be safer after Yemen became the 65th state of the USA. Even Samaal had hired an ex-US President for ceremonial purposes. I noticed that one of the pirate boats was flying a new-look Stars and Stripes. I leaned against the rail to watch the fun.

 
Our defence station crawled with men, an ants’ nest defended with a complex strategy. The men shouted and heaved giant hoses. One man bestrode an immense brass stopcock. A jet of high-pressure water shot out at the nearest pirate boat. The boat dropped back.

Our immense tanker continued down the coast of Africa, unstoppable – a planet in its pre-programmed orbit. The pirate boats buzzed aimlessly out of range of the hoses. There was a shouted order and the white arc drooped and dripped. Nothing happened for about half an hour.

Without any particular sign, one boat began to approach. A man in the bow lifted his arm. He seemed to be staring beyond our tanker. He brought the hand down decisively.

 A screaming force beat me back. It was a power, a sonic club buffeting me against the steel of the ship. My eyes squeezed sphincter-tight. I felt metal against the back of my head and opened my eyes for a defensive impression before squashing them shut. There was a helicopter above me. The overwhelming noise still tore through my brain.

There was a change in the air. I could feel particles in my nostrils. The screaming stopped. I could hear the chopper blades now, far off in a muffled dimension. I opened my eyes. The air was a writhing yellow. An alien face poked into reality. Black with a central grille. Pipes.

 
I open my eyes. The sweeping yawn of emptiness wrings my stomach. The Artendants march up and down the steel helix, their energy infecting us with futile restlessness. They rub, they polish; they clean us as they do the metal. I try to protest but come out with a slobbering uuoaah. The Artendants wipe me like municipal employees would swab a pissoir. They finish and leave me to float above the preparations.
 
A woman glides up the staircase, pointing a remote at each of us. I go from being able to say vowel sounds, my default setting, to enforced silence. The floor below is dark with Articipants, talking and gesturing and pointing their imagers at each other.
 
The hall goes dim. A spotlit lectern commands attention. The chatter subsides. A man walks to the microphone. The applause is adulatory.

A familiar voice coils from below, one used to being heard. “This is a great day for… uh, art and a great day for the United Republic of Samaal.” The voice is comforting, like worn-out slippers, something that never worked very well but has been part of life for as long as most people could remember. “Ah have been impressed by my new nation’s commitment to ending equality in the world by redistributing resources…”

There is a smattering of polite laughter.

The voice continues. “There are those who will say that the message of this great artwork is ambiguous just as they will say that the ambitions of the great nation of Samaal are ambiguous. Ah say that if art is not ambiguous, we can never know its exact meaning…”

I am apparently in an installation that announces Samaal’s pre-eminence in the worlds of art and finance. Piracy is a reasoned strategy for wealth distribution – a kind of random tax. Obligatory participation in one of the United Republic’s prominent art projects is part of that strategy.

The spiral staircase clangs. More art lovers. Articipants. This is a nice old couple. He’s wearing a beret. She has aerodynamic spectacles.

“Hello.” She cranes upward to peer at my face. She is panting. Her breath smells antiseptic. I don’t answer. That part of my brain is not available.

“You people are amazing.” She smiles like a missionary bestowing a wafer on an ex-cannibal. “I envy you your commitment.”

I make a noise by forcing air between my tongue and palate.

“Ooh!” My patroniser steps back. She turns to the Artendant, present for Wellbeing reasons. “I so adore the interactive nature of this piece. What’s it called?”

“Out of Oppression Emerges a Unified People.” The Artendant shows teeth. “We have at least one representative of every country that has impeded the cultural development of the United Republic of Samaal.”

She simpers and turns to her companion. “I’m so glad we came, Ernesto. Isn’t this exciting?”

Ernesto is still bent over, catching his breath from the ascent. He straightens for a moment and catches my eye, making an expression of comic solidarity. I wonder what we have to be solid about. The little party ascends to the next level of the installation.

“I so wish that I could give my life to art,” the bespectacled art monkey emotes. “Did you ever see anyone so fulfilled?”

As time has passed, the starers clanking up the spiral staircase have become better dressed, less likely to refer to guides, more likely to express an opinion, less likely to make sense.

Another couple appears. The woman stands back and peers at me through pince-nez that she doesn’t need.

“And how long have you worked here?”

“The passage of time has become irrelevant,” I say. For a change, it comes out as I thought it.

“Deep,” she says, turning away.

Her swain glares at me. “The other one just made noises.”

“Come on, dear. It’s a gimmick.”

“All art is gimmickry,” I say.

“What?” he says.

I feel the switch in my head.

“Aw ar i i i ee,” I say.

He turns away.
 
“They’re taking the piss,” he says.

I feel a sliding sensation in one of my thighs. A voice from beneath me snaps out, “You hurry with that one.” A crane swings past. A rope drops across my face.

The man moving my legs around answers, “I’m hurrying.”

“How long you be?”

“Long as I be.” I feel the sliding in the other leg.

I get the sense of unfolding in my brain. “What are you doing?” I say.

“Getting you outta here.” The rope wraps around my torso.

“Why? Am I…?” I can’t get the word free out. The rope tightens.

The man sniggers. “You been sold.” He pulls experimentally on the rope.

The voice from below calls, “Ready?”

“Sold?” I can’t think of anything meaningful to ask. “Who to?”

“The Googenhahm Mooseum.” He puts on a posh accent to pronounce the name. “You on the way to Abu Dhabi. You a big success, man. Ready.”

I swing out over the gleaming floor.

‘But it’s only May!’ thought Gaby, putting an extra bottle of water in her sack.

Outside, in the street, the moving pavement to the station was already packed. The parallel inside walking pavement, for obesity sufferers levels 2-7, was also packed. She prized a gap in the outside lane, despite the groans of perspiring commuters. At the tube station the crowd was backed up to two sets of traffic lights, waiting to get through security. Gaby would be lucky to make it to work by ten thirty.

When she finally got into a carriage Gaby phrased her manager to let her know what time she hoped to arrive at the Book-Library in Battersea. She was enjoying her library training – she’d done three months at the Computer-Library and three months at the Information-Library. It was much quieter at the Book-Library, but she did like the feel of books – their distinctive covers, the texture of the paper, the accumulation of pages. There may not be as many opportunities for promotion in the Book-Library sector but she thought that this was where her interest lay. If she could find a niche in a brown-brick university or a film adaptation company she reckoned she’d be happy enough.

Her face was squashed against the back of a tall man in a blue striped kirtle. He was one of the few people in the carriage who didn’t have wires going into his ears. Gaby apologized for her proximity. She could just see the new Geyser Building out of the window; it towered twice the height of Canary Wharf. When the train stopped at London Bridge Gaby pushed her way out of the carriage as graciously as he could. On the platform she saw a young man sitting on a bench, hunched over with his head in his hands. Something about the shape of him made Gaby stop in her tracks. She’d seen that posture many times before. She knew him from school. It was Ned Chillet. She went up to him.

“Ned. Ned. Are you alright?” He looked up and seemed relieved to see a familiar face. “Do you recognize me?” asked Gaby.

“Gaby Taylor. We were in the same ‘personal finance’ group in our last year at St Jude’s.”

“You remember.”

“You graduated with twelve straight A’s and a distinction in data.”

“ Right,” Gaby said, baffled by his memory. “What’s up?”

“It’s my first day at my new job. The journey is very very difficult. I’ve done it with my mother three times but this is the first time on my own. There were so many people, all standing close together. I couldn’t breathe.” His voice was quite flat, as usual, and he was talking quickly.

“Where do you have to go?”

“Vauxhall. MI5. Blue and white building.”

“What’s the job?” Gaby asked out of curiosity.

“I am a Back-up Delivery Technician. I am responsible for configuring devices with backup software, resolving all backup issues, disaster recovery data replication, resolving scheduling issue, ensuring best use is made of available resources …”

“I get the picture,” interrupted Gaby. “Do you know where you need to go?”

“Yes. I can continue now.”

Gaby remembered not to be surprised at his abruptness.

“Well, good to see you, Ned.”

“Good to see you.”

“Do you still live in Sydenham?”

“Yes, I do.”

“With your mother.”

“With my mother.”

“Look here’s my phrase number. Get in touch if you want to. Or I’ll contact you.”

“Thank you. Goodbye.”

“See you.”

Ned hurried towards the exit steeling himself for the ticket barrier.

Gaby liked Ned but he was hard to get to know. At school the students in their year tried to talk to him but soon lost patience. Gaby was glad he’d landed a job. She wondered how he’d got on at Rutland University where he’s gone to study systematic biology. She meant to contact him that week but she had essays and reports to write, and her garden needed watering every evening. She knew she shouldn’t be trying to grow lilies and delphiniums, and she kept them well-hidden at the back of her plot, but she couldn’t resist the scent of the ‘regale’ trumpets, or the intense gentian blue of the ‘Michelle Obama’ spires.

A month later, on her way home from work, Gaby saw Ned sitting in a carriage at London Bridge waiting for the train to leave. She went to sit opposite him.

“I’ve been thinking about you,” said Gaby.

“How does that feel?”

“I wondered how you were? How the job is going?”

“It’s going alright. But I want to do more skilful work.”

“Like what?”

“I want to infiltrate terrorist networks on the net.”

“Bit of a hacker are you?”

“I’m a big hacker, not a bit of one.”

“I see,” said Gaby, humouring him. “What else do you get up to?” Gaby noticed that Ned’s hair had grown quite long. It nestled in loose curls on his collar.

“I have a new hobby.”

“What’s that?”

“ I can show you if you like. Come to my house at nine o’clock on Sunday.”

“In the morning?”

“No. In the evening.”

“Isn’t that a bit late?”

“No.”

“Right. Fine. Thanks. Now you ask me what I’ve been doing.”

Sunday was a little cooler but temperatures were still reaching 28C in the middle of the day. Gaby got through her chores and her paperwork and set off in the evening to walk to Ned’s house. Had Ned had any girlfriends Gaby wondered? Was he interested in girls at all? It was hard to know where Ned’s intellect finished and his emotions began. She knew where he lived but she’d never been there before. The street was easy enough to find. He lived in a typical 2030’s house with lark’s tongue chamfers and stained glass skylights.

Ned opened the door to Gaby. He rarely smiled but he seemed pleased to see her.

“Would you like a drink of something?” Gaby wondered if he’d been practising his social skills.

“I’ve brought this bottle of skourie. Do you like skourie?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never had it.”

“You add distilled water. It tastes of moon fruit.”

“The kitchen is through here.”

She followed Ned into a large white square room with a series of white doors recessed into white walls. Behind one door was a stack of glasses, behind another a water cooler. They took their drinks into the chute and rose to the top of the house. There was still a little light in the sky. The flatness of South London rose into the Weald.

“In here,” said Ned entering the last room in the west extension. The roof had a section which opened up to the sky. A telescope was angled at the stars.

“I want to show you an asterism.”

“What’s an asterism?”

“It’s a pattern of stars which isn’t officially a constellation. But tomorrow it becomes official. The Summer Triangle – a new constellation.” Gaby was intrigued.

“This is what you are looking for.” Ned showed Gaby a chart with a near perfect right angle triangle joining up three stars. “It’s the first feature visible in the darkening sky so you should be able to pick it out.” He pointed to the stars individually. “Deneb, Vega, Altair.”

Gaby positioned herself at the telescope and let her eye settle on the darkness.

“Look for Vega – it’s the brightest of the three – bluish. Can you see it?”

“Yes, I think so.”

“Vega will be our ‘North Star’ in about 12,000 years. It’s only 25 light years away.”

“Oh.”

“Can you see Deneb, the dimmest?”

“Just about. Yes, yes I can.”

“3,230 light years away.”

“And that must be Altair.” Gaby kept looking until she could believe that she was a part of this cosmos. When she stepped back from the telescope she stumbled and grabbed Ned’s arm to steady herself. They looked into each other’s eyes. Ned kissed her on the cheek. Gaby kissed Ned on the mouth. They held each other.

“Can you hear my heart beating?” asked Gaby.

“Yes.”

“Do you know there are more stars than heartbeats in the whole of human existence?”

“No, I didn’t know that,” said Ned.

Anyway, this Treadle piece. The main body of the sculpture, this big white cube at the centre, suspended by these wires here, made cunningly invisible by the black wall – depending on where the visitor stands, of course – is representative of the absurdity of universal perception in regards to individual reality and the concept of individualism as a bi-product of universal realities. Oh yes, and these fluorescent tubes jutting from it, here and over here and, well, you can see how many there are, all higgledy-piggledy; these are the channels or pathways interpreted through varying perceptions, each leading nowhere – perhaps he ran out of materials. Maybe he could have turned them back in on themselves, leading back towards the cube, but to be fair, there’s not a lot of room left there. Legend has it Treadle’s original plan was to have jars of human organs positioned at the end of the tubes. Controversial stuff, eh? I don’t know why he changed his mind.

And then there’re the screens – can’t forget the screens; wouldn’t be art if there wasn’t something roving to catch the eye. And what’s he chosen here? A rhetorical question obviously, seeing as that I’ve swept around this exhibit more times than I can remember. Throw in a dab of hyperbole as well. It’s been seven times – first week of the installation, y’see. Normally I’d just give it the once around but with the floors being white and that bloody black background and the gleaming white of the cube and the twinkling tubes… The curator picks up on the fluff people bring in on the sleeves of their coats, let alone the grit crushed into the treads of their shoes. Fastidious sod.

So. What d’you think of it? Work o’Genius, eh? Not only in the way he’s captured the reflection of his mind, and the imaginative method that he’s chosen, but brilliant in the fact that he has contemplated such an intensely philosophical and indeed intellectual conception. As far as postulation and physical ingenuity go, it certainly is right up there… I mean, us mere mortals, well, when would we ever jerk our meagre brains into wondering about the whys, hows and where art thous? Never occur to us. These theories of being and understanding and futility and what not. For me, I certainly like a piece of art to make me think. Or at least to make me think, hey, I’ve wondered that too, and to make me feel that we are the only two people in the world who have ruminated at length over the metaphysical… And I like my art to be admirable, y’know, something that I couldn’t do. Some say it’s not that others can’t do it but that they haven’t done it. Well, it’s a fair point. I mean, I haven’t fellated a Chihuahua… But most of all, I like my art to have an aesthetic value. And let’s face it, this thing… well, it wouldn’t look out of place with the rest of the clutter in my attic – if I had one.

Right. That’s clean enough. Let’s go get a coffee.

None of that machine dispensed slush here. Quality blend, look at that packaging. This cafeteria used to give me the creeps when I first started – so much darker in here than in the other rooms. But I wanted the late shift. And I’m used to it now. It’s good to keep my space from the others in the house. Perhaps just as much for their sakes as for mine. There was talk, hang on, coffee’s ready. Just run my tag across the screen – they check absolutely everything here. Tight wads. ‘No freebies. No perks’ that’s the curator. And the assistant curator. Even the gift shop workers. They’re all so bloody serious here. One black coffee… eight quid on account. Well, I’ve earned it. Anyway, there was talk of the plaza down the road – not from here, I mean the one near where I live – being torn down for flats. But there’s always talk. And besides, even if I could afford to move, who’s to say the next lot I share with will be any better?

Yeah. It was nice, to begin with, spending the hours around the art. But being here everyday, near it and never part of it… It’s like being a steward on matchday. They still owe me for that.

The janitor’s expression, resigned yet resolute, stares out from the multiplex of screens. The surrounding universe dulls, darkening at a slow albeit insistent pace until eventually both the man with the broom and the entire cafeteria vanish. The monitors as blank as the vague shrunken faces reflected in them. The nominal crowd edge away, a neutral murmur sitting like a low creeping mist, gradually dissipating as most of the visitors shuffle on toward another exhibit. The next ripple moves in amongst a smattering of lingerers who missed the opening sequence, waiting for the empty screens to flicker into life once more. Shoulder to shoulder, silent but for an embarrassed cough here and there. Stern, respectable, mature countenances sharing separately in the majesty of age.

It’s important to get your stuff out there. And these days, well, everybody’s at it. And the more titillating or marginally contentious it is, the more eyes it’s going to attract. Basic maths. And then, the more eyes upon it, the greater the assumption by the money-spinners that it’s going to make them a packet. And bob’s your note. I mean, take a look around this place. This one’s by that Stuart Treadle chappy…

He did not have to read the date on the newspapers he had been harvesting all afternoon to realise the advent of the special day. The message had been broadcasted across the city for over a month – product propaganda illuminating the shop windows and bus shelters. But like everybody else he had waited until the last minute. That was all part of the process though. Part of the fun. Besides, tomorrow would be quiet. The city died for one day every year. And he was part of the city. He was part of modern life. So he too would contribute to the generic procedure instilled in the populace.

The box was nearly covered. An avant-garde illustration in presentation. A myriad of colours. Faces and body parts both famous and infamous beaming up at various angles between statements of bold type – headlines and articles on topics he had no relation to. It was all so amusing to him. A funny world. One which persists with myopic conjecture, fruitless competition and insidious sanctimony. One where the progress of thought terrifies the thinkers, and to hide behind a shroud of meaning provides comfort in its aggressive dogma.

There is nothing quite like a homemade gift. The application of thought, initiative and diligence. Removing dirt and hair from the adhesive backs of fallen messages. Locating the most recently discarded gobbets of chewed gum. Inspired methods of fixing the wrapping to the gift. Time-consuming, meticulous and exhausting. All because he had not forgotten the principle of the circus. Whether Roman winter solstice, Celtic mysticism, middle-eastern folklore, or biblical fairytales, he was determined to play along and join in the celebrations by donating all he had to the gods. As was the purpose of the day. It was a significant episode. A demanding production. And he was putting his heart and soul into it.

Come nightfall the footfall had changed. Last minute consumers had been replaced by seasonal revellers. Below the hum of artificial light, the box was finally presentable. Half the task was complete. And now was the time to unite with the partygoers. To kick back after a good day’s work. He crawled into his newly decorated abode and reached for a self-congratulatory drink. No plebeian aluminium cans this evening. But a bottle he had reserved. Lethal shards fashioned into a brooch of wealth and sophistication.

Poking his head out from the opening of the surprise package he savours the taste of absolution. At the bottom of this bottle a new day would commence. A day of eternal silence. Peace. But until then he would imbibe the spirit of things. Smile at the cacophonous carolling interspersed with vitriolic spitting. A sense of satisfaction manifested itself within his breast. Greater than anybody else had ever experienced. For a few hours he would relax without dwelling on a miserable past, or staring blindly into a futile future. Until tomorrow he would have his place. This is his reality. In the present.

Dear little lamb
so white and woven
we want your leg
to roast in our oven.’

The planet looks blue and green and scattered around like a beautiful embroidery are the lovely animals. Against the green fields are the white of sheep, the darker colours of horses and the patchy cows.
Then in Africa the wild ones, weaving across the prairies like an embroiderers ‘running stitch’, threading in and out of the trees and around the water pools. Hiding in the jungle, many other ones.  For we have learned by then to care for these beautiful gifts to us, not to torture and kill them. The horse to ride or work for us,  the sheep to give us wool, the cow for milk.  Those that are unproductive we phase out or use their manure for agriculture.
We have reduced the population of people and introduced soya and quorn for staple food along with natures fruit and vegetables.
We have learned that to the animals, we are God, because we can kill or ill-treat them or show them mercy.
We have chosen to be kind.
The knives to kill them have been changed for ploughs to till the land for the fruits and vegetables.

‘We think we are kind
we superior humans
how can we be
to put life in our ovens?

The blood from
their slaughter
has run like deep rivers
is THIS the meaning of lufe
to be kind to the creatures?’

Earth by 2058 will be better, maintaining the beautiful creatures that enhance our countries, that stud the countryside in texture and colours and birds that soar against the sky in patterns.

Thick golden light is daubed, paint-like on the shards of broken glass still hanging in the windows of the highest flat blocks, whilst behind the glass the gilded picture frames that decorate the walls glimmer under years of dust. The faces of their deceased occupants awake as the evening light graces them, before falling back into the shadows once more.

Nature has crept, silent and insidious into the city, its green tendrils expanding over everything. The buildings are smothered in a deadly caress as vines slowly drag them to ruin. The most beautiful flowers bloom through cracks in walls; their soft silken petals fall to the pavement and are caught on the summer’s evening breeze. They dance through the streets, spreading life into every dirty corner. It is as if nature is reclaiming her Earth, after decades of pollution and destruction at the hands of man.

Beneath lush green trees which canopy the streets, the pavement lies like a dried river; its dusty banks cracked and fractured. Small ravines have ripped through its tarred black surface, and damp green vegetation crawls up from far below the ground to catch a glimpse of the summer sun.

Deep below the ground the intricate system of tunnels are spread like veins through the body of the city which breathes no more. Miles upon miles of sooty chambers lay under the concrete, a labyrinth of darkness. Somewhere, in the empty maze, a red emergency light flashes, briefly illuminating a few hungry rats as they scale a putrid mountain. Their hearts are some of the only still beating for miles and miles…by some strange genetic deformity, they are immune. These dirty creatures are set to be the basis for millions of years of future evolution. On the platforms, behind sheets of tainted glass, packaged foods turn slowly to dust. Green tendrils crawl from the light of the evening into the tunnels of the underground station, wrapping themselves along handrails and escalators, billboards and ticket machines. Slowly smothering.

In the playgrounds across town, the breeze jostles swings to and fro on rusting chains, it is almost as if a small child has just leaped free and has run off to some other innocent pursuit. The sun spreads its fading glow down the framework, as the paint peels and flakes to the ground in curls, revealing the dull black metal hiding underneath.

On street corners, bolted to the darkening brickwork, those strange, rectangular boxes watch the world fall apart stone by stone through their singular glass eyes. They no longer serve a purpose, their mission of surveillance now useless. They see the sun set; it glints off their eyes and blinds their frozen vision for a moment, glaring off their lenses. They see but one image, one tiny snapshot of the world. They have seen the collapse of humanity as it flitted across their viewpoints. They are the only remaining witnesses. And they will be silent forever.

As the final slice of sun disappears below the horizon, a complete stillness echoes over the streets. The soft wind is now edged with cool, a sign of the approaching purple dusk. It buffers along the leaves that carpet the pavement, twisting them into tiny fleets of coloured butterflies dancing a foot from the ground. Every day, over this empty city, the sun will continue to rise. Nature will continue to take hold. Dusty streets are the only remaining monument of an entire race; for the city has a new Queen. She needs no palace, for she is everywhere. She is the desolation, the desertion, working hand in hand with her sister of Nature to eradicate the dirty traces of man on what was once a perfect world. Her face is carved not on coins but on every blackened wall which hold up the crippled buildings. Your eyes cannot escape her reign. She is the smashed fragments of glass that lie on the ground, she is the soft creaking of a door as it swings from its hinges. She is the heart of darkness, corrupting the artificial beauty of a material world. She is the black spots of mould slowly spreading over the pristine glass surface of a hundred thousand mirrors…for there is no one left to gaze into them any longer.

This city was once a hive of swarming people, a blind race who believed they could play the creators, believed their existence to be of a higher significance than the planet’s other inhabitants. They crushed the life from their own lungs, choked thick their organic masses with tar and pollution. Their desperate hunger for knowledge, for power over nature only proved to be deadly. And they paid the price.

“Damn it.” a teenage boy slouches at his desk, tired eyes locked onto a loud computer, with a large, welcoming screen reflecting both the morning sunlight that creeps through a pair of purple, drawn curtains, as well as the invasion of modern day digital spam.

“Every god damn time.” the boy seems agitated, fractiously staring deep into the bright white screen, set at a resolution that defeats the naked eye. The beam of light from the screen not only tries to break through the boy’s thin glasses, but also succeeds in lighting up a somewhat depressing, flat-tinted room. The dark theme of the moderately sized room hides the majority of various pictures and frames scattered across the wall and ceiling, including old-fashioned Japanese Anime and Manga animations, film stills, oriental rock artists and a collection of electric guitars. The vast shadows that lurk between the walls feel comfortable at home, laden with stacks upon stacks of litter and broken computer parts, half-empty plates of food from previous dinners ally with chipped cups and coffee-stained mugs to form a carpet of waste. Adjacent to the window stands a towering grey computer that dictates the room and manipulates the teenage boy. Motionless, his eyes are flickering between every pixel of the hypnotic screen, downloading digitalism into his brain to replace an older file that is the mind. It is safe to say his clothing relates well to the murky nature of the room. A large, green t-shirt effortlessly hangs from his shoulders to meet a pair of baggy, light blue jeans that replace the tissue’s function, stained with breakfast leftovers. Apparently he hasn’t left the room since his morning awakening, his short hair pays dividends to the messy bed behind him. In fact, one could have a strong case in suggesting the boy hasn’t had a wink of sleep yet, with evidence of his red, lazy bloodshot eyes.

After a few clicks of the mouse, like meditating music to the ears of the young boy, the screen displays a series of flashing colours that force a squint to his eyes. Considering sleep, and the lack there of, the bright colours of the screen pierce through the boy’s mind, poking at his eyes, hurting his brain, like a clan of needles tormenting a rooted, helpless individual. It is this sacrifice that he makes every morning in order to gain digital pleasure from the very words about to appear before him, ‘Bios Online’, the latest of a number of massively multiplayer online games to be released. A soothing wave of tranquillity overcomes the boy, his mind is finally at rest, as if a clean slate has been granted to him. He softly smiles, his fingers gently hover and stroke above the keys of the keyboard, teasing every letter into euphoria, before gradually releasing himself into a tantra of touch-typing.

“Sorry I got disconnected…damn spam.”
“I now have 27 online poker programs lol.”
“Re-invite me please.”
“Hey.”
“What level are you now?”
“Nice.”
“I cant, got classes soon. I’ll catch up tonight.”

“Matt!” a screeching voice suddenly disturbs the boy from his meditation, arriving unwelcome, exterior to the room.
“Matt!” the same wretched voice vibrates the room again, but only louder and longer than before. It can only be the boy’s mother, or a sister with a husky voice, the former seeming the more plausible.
“What?” the boy finally manages to slur out a word in reality. It doesn’t seem to be his favourite thing, especially after adopting his own mind to Bios Online.
“You’re going to be late for school, hurry up and come downstairs!” it’s definitely the mother, shouting from the bottom of a shallow set of stairs.
“Alright, alright. I’m coming.” Matt releases a reluctant sigh of disappointment. Nothing else matters much to him at this moment, no more than the thought of school disrupting his online gaming experience.

“I gotta go, I’ll be back tonight ”
“Me too my girlfriend is dragging me off lol.”

“Breakfast is ready, come downstairs!” Matt’s mother persists in her mission to descend his son from the prison that he resides in for eighteen hours per day.
“I’m logging off now, jeez.” an irritated Matt replies, as he pushes back on his chair, rolling across what’s left of the wooden floorboards of the room. The chair hits the unmade bed, as he finally raises from the sitting stance that occupied him through the morning, clicking the discs of his spine as he straightens and stretches his back. He yawns like a lost caveman crying for his desired home, and as he opens the bedroom door he is embraced by a flood of daylight, banished from these walls for some time now, cleansing the foul stench of a mood, ridding the shadows that cling onto a depressing ambience to the room. He treads carefully down the set of creaking stairs, finding every step more of a struggle, since he’s moving away from what he desires the most. However upon seating himself at the dining table, he finds his mood suddenly elated by the welcoming smell of fresh eggs cooked over easy, the tangy whiff of fried crispy bacon and pork sausages, and best of all, the morning smell of buttered golden brown toast, perfectly set on 2-and-a-half minutes in the toaster, not to mention a warm, sweet pot of tea.
“Thanks.” acknowledges Matt, as he begins to dig into a fine morning breakfast.
“You were up all night again, weren’t you?” the mother notices her weary son, “That game will be the end of you.”
“It’s just a game.” he muffles a reply.
“Yes, it is. And playing a game for 23 hours a day isn’t exactly a life-style.” argues his mother.
“I like my life.” declares Matt, crunching the fried bacon, liking it as much as his life.
“Can you seriously call that a game? A game is something you spend a respectable amount of time on, not all god damn day.” she continues to lecture Matt.
“A game is something to do to have fun, it doesn’t matter how long I play it for.” he attempts to justify his addiction.
“It does matter, because it’s affecting your studying. You need to learn how to balance work and play.” his mother advises.
“I’m doing fine at school, I’m almost graduated, remember?” he replies.
“Even your friends call, asking why you’ve been quiet all year.” she persists.
“I said I’m ok, mum.” Matt’s eyes remain focused on the plate, cutting into a piece of toast accompanied by scrambled eggs.
“I’m just worried about you, that’s all. I’ve been worried ever since you stopped talking to me, since the first week you locked yourself in that room.” she says in a concerned tone of voice.
“You don’t need to be worried. I’m getting my work done at school, and I’m having fun with what I do at home.” replies Matt, his mouth half-full.
“Be more social, Matt.” orders his mother, while handing him a napkin.
“With who?” he places down the cutlery, “My friends spend all day talking about which pub they want to go to, they compare biceps in public, they talk all day about how the world is dying, yet they do nothing about it. They smoke in social groups, they drink together only for the sake of their insecurity, and when they finally run out of pointless conversation they decide to roll a joint and start the whole cycle again. I like my online friends better.” he finishes the rant, with a sense of relief, going back to his much-enjoyed breakfast.
“They do drugs?” she gasps.
“Along with every other person in the town, yes. Wake up, mum. We’re a long way into the 21st century now.” Matt opens her eyes to a pinch of the world today.
“Well, I’m sure you can find other friends, real friends to hang around.” she seeks an alternate route of advice for her son.
“Maybe after I realise I’ve wasted years of my life on a computer game.” replies a sarcastic Matt.
“I’m only trying to help, dear.” she looks at Matt, still portraying a worried look.
“I appreciate it mum, but I’m happy at the moment.” he acknowledges her words and finishes his perfect start to the morning, carrying the last few gulps of tea with him as he throws a backpack on his shoulders. Walking towards the door he turns around to wave goodbye to his mother.
“Just be careful, one day there may be no turning back.” she adds.
“From what?” Matt ponders.
“The future. Technology, addiction, games. I don’t know. It’s all very worrying for parents to see their children growing up around such fast times, you know.” she answers.
“We must be hard to maintain.” Matt jokes with a slight smile.
“You know I’m here if you need anything at all.” his mother replies with an encouraging thought.
“I know, thanks.” Matt appreciates her words, “It may be a good thing, though.”
“What’s that?” she asks.
“Future technology, future games.” Matt opens the front door.
“I don’t think so.” she refutes.
“Soon enough they’ll produce graphics so real, you wont be able to tell the difference. They could use that to their advantage, you know, fulfilling desires and all.” claims Matt.
“Or they can use it for control, which would be more likely.” his mum replies with a differing opinion.
“That would be far too Hollywood. That’s fantasy, that’s a game.” he argues.
“And you wouldn’t enjoy that?” she asks.
“I probably would.” Matt goes to step out of the front door, only to be stopped once again with a question.
“Why?” asks his mother.
“It’s like in class, we were arguing; if there were a machine that we can plug ourselves into, a machine that delivers every single pleasure that mankind seeks, to it’s absolute maxim, wouldn’t you be willing to enter the machine rather than continue daily chores and struggle with real life?” Matt describes the choice to his mother, to which she finds herself deep in thought about what she would actually do. She thinks for a moment how she cannot grasp full happiness, and absolute pleasure, because the limits are unknown to her. She considers that perhaps the machine’s ability to deliver a chief good, a truth, an absolute, is the wiser option to commit to, rather than to continue the difficult task of life, for such little pleasure ratio.
“Me too mum, me too.” Matt closes a front door that mediates a satisfied son and a mother lost in the moral thought of right and wrong, good and bad, and pleasure and pain.

But on which ruins did we start building today’s houses?

On those left by the financial crisis about fifty years ago when the whole planet sank into a deep depression – not only our economies but also our hearts and souls?

Or on the ideals left by a young man elected as president of the most powerful nation in 2008? Who had never been that much a leader but a real good listener?

And who, just by attentive listening, forced his partners to find solutions for their problems by themselves?

Or on those left by all those people who dared to ask the only question that had never been asked before: WHY? Why us? Why now?

If you take a short glimpse at 2058 it seems as if nothing has changed.

We still go to school, receive some kind of education that allows us finding a job and earning a living.

We still pay taxes, go shopping, watch movies, listen to music or just switch on the TV.

We use the internet, we even write or read books.

Some marry and have children, some are single; some pray to which god ever and some don’t.

Still, some people are rich and some are poor. Some are celebrities, some just part of the crowd.

But if you take a deeper look you will see that a lot of things happened in the past fifty years.

In 2009 we had to learn the hard way that the markets cannot heal themselves and that it is as impossible to make money from thin air as it is to make gold from cobble stones.

We still have companies but nowadays they provide goods and services and not shareholders-values.

We still have banks but their main task is to provide accounts and not risky investments.

We still work for money but we receive a fair profit share, not a pay that is too high for dying but not enough for living.

Oh yes, still we have nations, still we have governments, parliaments, elections and everything.

But nearly no country has something like an army left.

When the economic depression was at its worst and the unemployment rate at its maximum, the money wasted for soldiers, guns, tanks and bombs was urgently needed for assuring the nations futures.

And afterwards nobody cared about rearming, because we all had shared the same problems and the same troubles – we became friends the hard way and we would stay friends for good.

Nowadays we use political weapons to fight nationalism, fascism, racism.

We still have some conflicts left but nations prefer diplomacy to fighting and killing.

Fifty years ago we had been on the level of a developing country from one day to the other.

Millions of people jobless; taking a bus or a train a luxury; no gasoline for our cars – suddenly we had to live simple lives. We used our feet for walking or biking and planted fruits and vegetables on every square inch of green, in our gardens and on our balconies. And during the process of economic recovery – which was a very slow one – we had formed a new society.

But it weren’t the politicians who had changed in the first place – the people had changed.

Queuing in lines for food and water after the break-down of our social systems, seeing the destruction of everything that had been made and done in the past, not knowing what will be tomorrow, all those fears about the future brought us close together.

Some of those people who had always complained about what they had called “economic migrants” tried to make their living abroad – and had to learn what this phrase meant: discrimination, prejudices and hate.

Whatever we do it will be reflected to us sooner or later – and these reflections hit us like bombshells. We paid a high price for all the exploitation, the injustice and the wars our former lives were based on.

And we started asking questions to our leaders. We became interested in their work. We learned that only voting on a four or five years-basis was not enough.

We elect our politicians, we pay them with our taxes – so they have to represent us, not themselves; they have to work for our benefit, not for theirs.

Today, everybody is a politician.

In the decade before the collapse the technological progress was higher than ever before – but socially we still behaved like stone age-people.

We sat feet on the moon while hundred thousands of people starved.

We played with our genes while babies died of diarrhoea simply because their water was contaminated with bacteria.

The corn which was needed to feed the world went into the tanks of our cars.

All our wonderful ideas, all our great inventions had been used for destruction and suppression.

In the last fifty years the technological progress came more or less to a halt.

But we had understood.

For the first time ever the social progress overtook our technology. And nobody really misses a new mobile phone standard or bigger TVs.

Sometimes, I think on my grandma.

She had told me that the former Soviet-Union planned a manned trip to Mars in 1992.

When 1992 began, the Soviet-Union did not exist any more.

Around 2006 some nations thought about how to get astronauts on Mars. How to manage the energy needed to overcome earth’s gravitation, how to survive a two year’s flight, how to bring them back home.

Then we had the economic break-down.

People still look up to the stars and listen to all their promises in their soft glow.

But our preferences have changed.

Maybe we will leave our home one day. But not before we emptied all waste-baskets and cleaned our windows.

Do we live in a perfect world?

Is this the paradise we lost?

Certainly not.

Still we are human beings with all our weaknesses: our greed, our aggressions, our intolerance, our lack of understanding for what we do not know, our ignorance and our jealousy.

Yesterday’s ruins are yesterday’s blessings – and some wounds never heal.

Still some people – especially those who had experienced the “Big Bang” as they use to call it -have no faith and are full of fears – and whoever fears the future does not have one.

But the houses we started building on the ruins of yesterday are comfortable and worth living in.

They are fit for tomorrow.

Still lost in the fug of sleep, it took him a few moments to realise his VistaVision must be on the blink again. All Mallick’s Favourite cities flashed intermittently onto the window – Lima, Stockholm, Anchorage, Bilbao and Coventry – but then the view settled permanently on this nondescript city of glass, polymers and concrete. And there, towering above it all, clutching her sides in merriment, was Sue Barker.

The streets of the city were absolutely empty. Although Mallick knew, of course, that if he put on his spectacles, they would instantly populate with a teeming horde of Avatars promenading, shopping, chatting, or enjoying a coffee outside Starbucks.

It was a not-unpleasant conurbation, but save for the gigantic flickering depiction of the legendary A Question of Sport presenter, hardly exceptional. Oddly, it touched something inside him, this place, and he resolved to add it to his VistaVision Favourites so he could enjoy it again.

When Nursey appeared at eleven, as she did simultaneously across the Nursing Home, he told her his VistaVision unit was faulty. “I’ve been looking at some unknown city all morning.”

Nursey eyed him warily, Mallick was a known troublemaker. “VistaVision has been taken offline for maintenance, that’s the actual view outside your window.”

Mallick whistled. “I see.”

“You have soiled your bed again,” observed Nursey.

“Not true!” protested Mallick. He hadn’t done that since he was 48-years-old; four years ago, March, 2054. But Nursey flinched at his tone of voice as she pulled the Velcro straps across his trainers, and Mallick knew he was in trouble.

“I was talking to Chavnace in room 662,” she said. “And now you have spoken to me harshly.”

“I’m sorry,” said Mallick. He didn’t want to spend his morning in the Activity Room selling currency on the global markets with the other recalcitrants.

“You’ve hurt my feelings. My stats are plummeting,“ said Nursey. A series of numbers motored around her choker like a train. “My stress levels, soaring.” Mallick rolled his eyes, Nursey could be such a drama queen. “Now I’ll have to reimburse management for the deficiency in my work output, sending my stress levels higher still, you know how these things spiral.”

“It wasn’t my intention – “

“You must compensate management directly for the deficiency or you can sell currency on the global – “

“I’ll reimburse,” said Mallick, resigned.

“Seven Euros have been debited from your account.”

She pulled his ears through the holes in his foam helmet, then said softly: “There, what an absolute dish you look.”

Nursey had never complimented Mallick like that. To his astonishment, he could feel his eyes welling-up.

Nursey stepped back to see him flicking away the moisture with his wrists. “I was talking to Krishna in Room 59.”

“Nursey, what’s that?” Mallick pointed to the gargantuan Sue Barker wiping away her own tears, tears of mirth. She seemed to be rolling so dangerously around her seat that Mallick thought her in danger of falling off it and crashing onto the tower blocks below.

“That’s the Question Of Sport exhibition at the Putin Centre. That lady’s name is…”

“Sue Barker!” Mallick flicked a look at Nursey, he didn’t want to upset her again. “I remember her dimly from my childhood.”

“Sue Barker was a famous patron of the Physical Arts. The exhibition is quite something, I understand, although offensive sports references have been removed for the well-being of any Avatars of children. I’ve been told, however, that Phil Tufnell’s head is really quite something to see.”

“I’d like to go.”

Nursey stood at the door. “I understand your Avatar is attending on your behalf. Let him tell you all about it.”

“Actually, I think I’d like to walk through the city,” said Mallick.

Nursey blinked. Her smile was sympathetic. She wasn’t a bad old girl really, Mallick thought.

“I worry that you may find the stimulus too… potent,” she said. Her duties fulfilled, she began to pass through the door. “And I expect your Avatar won’t be best pleased.”

Avatar Mallick was supposed to report in every week about all the things he had seen and done. At the same meeting, Mallick would give him a new schedule of activities: social meetings with designated friends, leisure events, days out, shopping. Plus, a regular rota of his hobbies, Synchronised Rioting and Pottery, and suchlike.

But the truth was, Mallick hadn’t seen his Real-Life Substitute for several months. Neither of them enjoyed these meetings. Mallick had never been very good at coming up with new and exciting activities, and in any case Avatar Mallick seemed to increasingly resent his input.

Mallick couldn’t remember who had finally called the meetings to a halt, but now the Avatar kept him up to date with his hectic life by sending occasional text messages. “SAUNA PACKED,” read one. “DIFFICULT TO BREATH. YOU’D HATE IT!!!” Another message suggested: “DISCOVERED YOU ARE ALLERGIC TO THEATRE, GOING FOR A COFFEE!!!” What a terrible life he endured! More than once, Mallick felt grateful his Avatar did all these things in his stead.

But the truth was, Mallick actually knew very little about the life his Avatar lived on his behalf. He’d discussed it with others at the Home, and they didn’t seem to know much more about their own Avatars’ lives. However, they all agreed that, more than certainly, an Avatar’s schedule was a punishing one.

Mallick hadn’t stepped outside in a long time. He had completely forgotten what his own city ed like, and was afraid to say he knew more about the ravaged, deserted streets of Rio and Newcastle than his own bland habitat.

But he felt enervated and excited as he walked towards the monstrous, laughing Sue Barker. Occasionally, when he lost sight of it behind a tall building, he fitted his spectacles. Instantly the streets bustled with thousands of Avatars. They were absolutely everywhere – talking, play-fighting, walking along the road, lounging outside cafes, sometimes rolling drunk in the gutters.

Once of twice he received a sharp glance, or a conversation faltered as he passed, and if he was honest with himself he had to admit that many Avatars had chips on their shoulders about Real Life People. He thought, more than once, that he saw resentment and distrust flicker behind their hardlight eyes.

Eventually Mallick arrived at the Putin Centre, walked beneath the sparkling ‘QS’ logo, between the legs of Sue Barker’s mammoth desk which served as an entrance, and into the arena.

He gaped at the exhibits. Everything was just so darned big. Massive holograms of Sue Barker, as well as Dawson, Tufnell, Botham and Carson – the Venerable Vine! Many images of the hallowed Patrons of the Physical Arts surrounded him. And piped into the arena, louder even than the Question of Sport theme, came the sound of clapping and of laughter, so much laughter.

Mallick experienced a sudden, vivid sense-memory. He was a baby again in that terraced house in Leeds. His mother sang softly in the kitchen, his Dad giggled and goggled on the sofa. His older brothers scrapped in the hallway. From the telly came the sound of a lady laughing.

He was wondering what had happened to his siblings when he felt a tap on his shoulder. He put on his spectacles. There stood his Avatar, fizzy drink in one hand, downloaded copy of the Exhibition Programme in the other.

Avatar Mallick hissed: “What’re you doing here?”

A number of curious Avatars stood behind his own, some designated friends he, the Real Life Mallick, didn’t recognise.

“How dare you do this to me!” roared the avatar. “This is my job, you have no… right!”

Mallick could understand his Avatar’s displeasure – he could have attempted to get in touch, to stand him down – but he felt the best way to handle the situation was to keep it simple. So Mallick said: “I thought I’d like to see the exhibition myself.”

“Oh!”

Avatar Mallick staggered backwards as if he had been struck on the nose. Another Avatar placed a sympathetic hand on his arm.

“You won’t get away with this!” said Mallick’s Substitute. He tottered forward, leaned in close, but Mallick felt no breath on his skin, no spittle fleck his helmet. “I could have enjoyed this exhibition, God knows I have to enjoy every other damned thing. But now I’ll never know! You won’t get – ”

Avatar Mallick, all his friends, disappeared the instant Mallick took off his glasses.

He wanted to concentrate on regaining the sense-memory he had enjoyed before he was interrupted. But he couldn’t get it back.

The laughter, the cheery music, began to grate on his nerves. It had been a mistake to come.

Mallick wondered if Art really wasn’t his thing at all.

An ironic smile played around his lips as it struck him that reading paper books as he did was not much slower than reading with Injectsophy.

As he put the book back on the shelves his hand knocked against the transceivers of the tiny Injectsophy machine. It dropped onto the gold coloured, heated titanium nitride coated steel floor. He picked it up and put it back beside the many old books in his collection – looking shabby from more than a century of handling by his family all now dead – the cremation dust of their bodies scattered into space along with the dust from many others who had expressed dissatisfaction at the way they saw their lives being governed.

Just occasionally when he was allowed an out day, he would take the levitplane and visit the grave of his grandfather.

He would sit on the grass beside the carved stone sarcophagus and tune his mind to the philosophical thoughts of his grandfather. The grave stood on a small grassy knoll, surrounded by a high wall on the other side of which living quarters had been built almost up to the wall and towering above it. He had an article which had been taken from a newspaper relating the uproar there had been when the graveyard in Putney had been cleared of all bodies to make way for the living quarters of the large immigrant community who had left their own drought stricken countries to come to Britain to take advantage of the plentiful rain water.

His grandfather had been so well known and loved that the violence which erupted when the graveyard clearance was announced, forced the Elders to declare the knoll a memorial to his grandfather in perpetuity.

Protests from families whose relatives were being torn from the earth and their bodies burned were muted in comparison with the mass uprising against the planned destruction of his grandfather’s grave. The securivisors were easily able to suppress these small protests with the recently introduced more powerful Tazer guns which could render an aggressor unconscious for a day or longer. At that time securivisors were chosen for their violent nature but sometimes they displayed sympathy for the protesters. The Putney riots had worried the Elders and they started a decade of brain research which resulted in virtually complete control of the securivisors brains. If any unrest began, radio signals were automatically transmitted from satellites, triggering injected nano particles to produce the enzyme, ‘monoamine oxidiseA’ causing aggressive violence in the securivisors. Any human feelings possessed by them would be blotted out so that they would maim and kill any protesters without discrimination or regret.

Because of this and better surveillance, made possible by sensors permanently fitted in the skulls of every member of the community, except the Elders, it was almost a decade since the last serious publicised crime had been committed. Initially sensors were fitted after the age of ten but, when crimes were found to have been committed by the young, the age had been reduced to five.

Although Anton’s parents had been genetically assessed before they were allowed to marry and he had been analysed at birth, it had been discovered on random checking when he was in his late twenties that he had developed a genetic defect and had therefore been sterilised so that he could not procreate. He was still permitted to meet female members of the community but only those who had also been sterilised. He retained the mechanical ability for sexual intercourse but the knowledge that he could never produce children had destroyed any pleasure and made him impotent. Before his genetic makeup had been re-assessed, he had been allowed females at approved meeting sites and had had several partners from a group with whom the Elders thought he would be compatible.

The best designers had been employed to make the meeting sites both attractive and hygienic but the knowledge that meetings were recorded meant topics and activities were inhibited. This suited the Elders who saw the necessity to reduce the population drastically.

He envied his grandfather, who lived when it was possible to choose whatever female one found attractive. Several photograph albums mainly of his girlfriends and his two wives still existed. He had also written a number of semi-autobiographical novels about the affairs he had had. These found a large market at a time when pornography was allowed. Anton kept them and the photograph albums in a concealed compartment in the wall behind his bookshelves where securivisors would not see them on their unannounced visits. There was a worrying possibility that they would read his thoughts so he had developed what he called ‘blanketing’ a method of thinking only ‘pure’ thoughts of love for the Elders. He knew the securivisors were able to detect what he was thinking because he would notice them looking quizzically at him and at each other in disbelief that here was a man so brain conditioned that he really did think that he loved the Elders.

When they left, he would take a bath to wash away the DNA which would have settled on him from their breath. While the bath was running, he would stare admiringly at his image in the mirror. He had not been born beautiful so from an early age, his features had been remodelled.What had been a pudgy nose and flabby cheeks had been cut away. His parents had elected that he should have the features of the 20th century actor Cary Grant. At intervals throughout his early life and into adulthood, further modelling had been performed. He looked at the photograph of the actor which he kept beside the bathroom mirror and saw that he could pass as his double. The difference was that the weekly diffusion of hyaluronic acid to soften the subcutaneous layers of his skin, coupled with daily use of a moisturiser meant that he would never develop the craggy features which the actor had in later life.

His grandfather’s writings on philosophy were still available but only in the expurgated form which the Elders permitted. In the concealed cabinet, Anton had the originals all of which he remembered. The society that his grandfather had predicted from the trends which became apparent to him around the end of the 20th Century had all eventuated. Obviously he had been unable to foresee the extent to which electronics would be developed but in most other respects he was remarkably accurate.

He saw that the growth of terrorism provided an excuse for ever increasing surveillance. Even towards the end of his life in the year 2000 (he just reached the age of 100) he was appalled at loss of privacy. Every mobile phone conversation and text was available for examination by the authorities as was every email and every web search. Closed circuit television watched everyone’s movements in the streets and shops and could detect suspicious movements. It was all justified in the name of security of the nation, of society and of the individual but as Anton’s grandfather had said ‘does this not destroy the very thing it sets out to preserve – freedom’.

Anton thought about this paradox whenever he sat beside his grandfather’s grave or read his works as he sat in his air conditioned, virus free living quarters. He became depressed when he thought that the face the surgeons had given him, however beautiful, could never reward him with real success with a woman. The thought passed through his mind. ‘Is it not better to be an imperfect person, to make one’s own mistakes, to get drunk, to be promiscuous, face the risk of being mugged, burgled or violated. Would it not be more exciting than being in a sterile living quarter where all needs are supplied, where reading a book meant plugging in a transceiver and taking the memory enhancing drugs in order to remember every word’. It was at such times that he thought what Albert Camus had said in his Myth of Sisyphus “there is only one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide” In the concealed compartment behind his bookshelf, Anton kept an extract he had made from the belladonna plants he found on waste ground. One dose would be enough to give him oblivion.

Streets now empty except for maggots, scavengers and guides. Maggots prey on the unwary, scavengers sell to the desperate, and the guides, for a price, provide some safety from both. The guides’ torches form scurrying pools of orange light in the darkness while the hiss of rain turning to steam in the flames forms a sad lament. An atmosphere hazy with another London smog from a people forced to burn coal and wood in a country splintered into surviving fiefdoms. Only those areas guarded by private militias, the Green Zones, retain the pretense of civilization. The so-called government holding a cluster of buildings along the embankment, serviced from the river and fortified by the remains of the army. My army.

‘You sure you don’t need protection?’

‘No, Clarke, I’ll be fine,’ I say with a wry smile.

It’s a ritual. He asks; I decline. They’re loyal men. My men. I’m out of uniform and, if they’re asked, they haven’t seen me, and won’t see my return.

Walking across Westminster Bridge I head towards Trafalgar Square. There, close to the ransacked National Gallery is a rarity – an undamaged wall. A canvas perfect for a subversive message. If only the rain would relent. My head’s down, avoiding eye contact, watching the raindrops bounce off the street. In the sodden ground, reflected firelight and broken neon vie for supremacy; an echo of the lost vibrancy of London.

‘Where you goin’ brother?’

The voice from the hulk in front of me is flanked by heavy shadows. A glint of gold chain around his neck gives no clue to his faith. Just another maggot.

‘Moving through, is all.’

A knife appears, the blade catching fire in the night’s light as it’s pressed against my throat.

‘You gota pay man, you know, to pass – this my land.’

His breath stinks of ice-crack. The shadows either side have closed. I’ve been dreaming. They’re too close. I’m out of options. I look up, into his eyes, but he’s staring past my left shoulder.

‘Problem, bro’s?’

The voice at my side is quiet, yet heavy with intimidation. The maggot in my face backs away with a feral smile of stained teeth.

‘Hey Joe, he with you? S’fine Joe, s’ok, just sashing bro, you know?’

The maggots slide back into the darkness as I turn towards my saviour. A shaven-headed black man, thick beard, coat-collar pulled high around a neck as wide as his shoulders. A face scarred by fights and misshapen ears flank half-closed eyes above a broken nose. He ignores me, watching the maggots leave. When he turns, it’s like a rottweiler judging its moment of attack.

‘You’re Grafton, ain’t ya?’ again that voice, heavy with restrained threat. It demands an answer.

‘Yeah.’

‘I’ve been watchin’ you,’ he says, the inflection flat, eyes steady, appraising. ‘To me, you been doin’ good.’

‘Good? Yeah, right,’ I say, playing for time.

In my pocket, my fingers relax on the gun. Despite appearances, this is no maggot, no thug. I look closer and he matches my stare. Then I see it: in a face mashed by violence, his eyes are completely free of malice. But his smile is cold.

‘Doin’ good?’ I say, with a calm I don’t feel.

He nods and inclines his head towards the surrounding darkness.

‘Sure,’ he says, ‘I’ve seen you. Watched you. Those images, your art. It’s seen. It’s read. Yeah, you doin’ good.’

I dig out the forgotten spray can from my other pocket.

‘This?’

‘Yeah.’

‘You like art? My art? Or what it’s saying?’

That heavy head tilts towards me, I resist the urge to take a step back.

‘Why? Maybe you think someone like me can’t?’

‘No, not that,’ I say, ‘look around you, who cares?’

As if he’d never seen the world, he looks.

‘I care,’ he says, that voice dark with commitment. ‘You know, when people stop creating, writing, painting or dreaming, it leaves me miserable; leaves in a forest of despair.’ 

‘You’re a poet?’ I ask, surprised by the sentiment.

‘No, just something remembered from the past. I’m part of this, and I want a future,’ he says, his massive fist sweeping the air as if sowing corn. ‘Things have to change; your guerrilla art adds another voice to those that are still listening and watching.’

Those heavy features gaze at me.
‘My name really is Joe, by the way.’

‘Grafton,’ I say, sensing the bond between us grow. We shake hands, an archaic motion, but strangely apt.

A scavenger sidles up and the world reality re-imposes itself.

‘You need body part? Healthy liver? No disease, guaranteed!’

Ferret-like eyes implore as hands writhe in supplication, Uriah Heap style.

‘No,’ I tell him, my disgust plain.

We turn our backs on the creature, and walk towards Piccadilly Circus and the empty plinth where Eros once watched over lovers and tourists. Undeterred, the scavenger darts past me and thrusts a note into the big man’s coat pocket before dodging away back into the night.

Joe moves those huge shoulders in discomfort. ‘I’m err, known, around here,’ he says. ‘I used to drink. Still do, too much, Allah forgive me. That animal, he knows I might need him one day.’

Taking out the note, he throws it away, but not before noting its contents.

‘You know, they still show art at the Tate Modern.’ I sugest with caution.

‘Yeah, only for those that can pass the scanners.’

‘I can get you in,’ I say, and wait, finding myself counting the seconds. But there’s no response. ‘If you want. If not, my mistake.’

He turns and gives me the hard look.

‘How?’

I take a breath: ‘Because I’m one of them.’

‘Yeah, I figured there was something strange about you, how you managed to do what you do. I guessed you have connections. Which faith?’

‘Crusaders,’ I shrug. ‘It’s required. There are others in the elite who feel the same as us, but are nervous.’

‘Nervous!’ He says, and laughs without humour. ‘I’ll bet they are. You should know I’m part of the Brotherhood, part of Jihad. That’s also required.’

‘Not a surprise.’ I tell him. The dice had been thrown.

The two of us stand there in the rain, looking into the dark streets where the fighting goes on unseen. The banditry, survival and religious war a daily part of life.

‘I’d like that.’

‘What?’

‘I’d like to see the art.’

‘In that case, let’s go.’

We walk in silence, the buildings around us stark as skulls, their windows empty sockets. Joe becomes nervous as we approach the fortified perimeter of Green Zone 4 and the Gallery. I could see him glance towards me. I stop.

‘Joe, listen, you saved my life back there. But there’s more to this than that. I need you to trust me.’

Joe studies me impassively, then says: ‘Tell me Grafton, did I really save your life?’

I hesitate. ‘Probably.’

‘Probably? Yeah, I knew it, you were armed, right?’

I shrug. ‘Sure, but there was no way I could’ve gotten my weapon out before that maggot cut me. I was good as dead.’

‘Yeah, that’s what I figured. Both counts. You’re one crazy mother. Warrior artist!’ Joe looks away into the distance, thinking. I know if the decision goes against me, he’ll snap my neck like a chicken.

‘K, man, what the hell, I’m goin’ to trust you,’ he says, and I exhale in relief. For the first time I see him really smile. ‘Let’s go see some art, man, and be inspired.’

I send a burst-communication access code to my men on the perimeter of GZ4 to allow us passage. As we walk through the night, the future seems less dark.

‘Right, Joe, it’s done. Let’s go get inspired. Change the world.’

I’m Child of the Blue Flower; trained to natural world. Care for creatures, protect plants. Must find Prophecies. Fulfil promises. Follow our Leader’s teachings, meet others, begin again.

Climb steep steps from cellar into house, surprised by warmth. Warmer than spring, warm as August. No nuclear winter. Heating on? Can’t be power. Lights don’t work. Check fuse. Nothing. Warmth comes from outside.

Air dry, silent, dusty. Moisture-free smog hangs; constantly made into new patterns by strong wind. Silent. Swirling dust, like clouds of locusts from news.

A plague will come. Mankind will destroy the plague and himself.

 Locusts ate through Africa, Americas, on into southern Europe. We heard no more. Locusts didn’t stop, not then. News another disaster. Power plants no longer within Company’s control. Reactors beyond supercritical. No cooling them. They’d melt; radiation leak. They, we, would be no more. Only safety underground. How to find  place in shelters explained later. None cared about locusts after. Few wondered how shelters had been built, or when, or why.

Look to horizon. Dancing lights gone. Eruptions of orange, pink that lit sky are no more. Beautiful, deadly sign faded. Ended. Gone.

Sky mottled, muddied blue. Sun a huge circle of lime green. I’m sick; vomit splashes my feet. Sun cannot be green, won’t look up again. Sun cannot be green.

Garden wrong. Snowdrops hadn’t shown through cold earth when  family left; shut myself alone into cellar, pulled protective shielding over door. Snowdrops in flower now. So yes, February. Try not notice nodding bells are cornflower blue. Leaves last year barely glaucous now rich, vibrant, turquoise.
 
A plague will come. Mankind will destroy the plague and himself.

Our Leader had known what would come. He’d warned; few listened.

You who are left will be innocent as children. You will see the blue flowers and know I spoke the truth. You will create the future.

I turn to golden ivy. Once it lightened gloom with cheerful sunshine yellow, it still echoes sun’s colour. Colour it cannot be. I return to house where see sun no more.

Food in house. Tins, bottles, jars. Bags of rice, pasta. In cool garage, potatoes, carrots, onions, apples, oranges. Mother said I’d be dead. She left me food. I won’t look at green sun. Mother wouldn’t think  me not needing food.

I try tap, water flows. Looks clean, safe. All right to drink, or contaminated? No more contaminated than air. Breathe air; drink water. There’s gas burner in garage. Five cylinders gas. Dad said I fool to stay. No one could live when power plants failed. He bought me spare gas.

Was introduced to The Children by Danny. Tried to persuade my family to listen to prophecies. They called us a foolish cult. Banned me see them, see Danny. What do I have now? A child indeed. Must follow The Leader’s teaching. There’s nothing else.

World’s power supplied by one company scared Children. People worried about prices, not end of world. The Leader, our great teacher had known. Government claimed electricity stations safe. They built bunkers. Great underground concrete caves. They knew, as The Leader did, of disaster. They hadn’t wanted to prevent it. Wanted to survive it. Wanted to triumph. Now no company provides power. Government has ways of supplying it, deep in earth. They are power now. The only power.

Man will shut himself away from the light and the truth. He will be in darkness for one hundred years.

The Leader foretold.

Whole cities entombed together. My family too. The Leader knew future. Had explained. Those who listened; believed. Became his Children. He couldn’t prevent power plants imploding. He warned of imprisonment of Man. He warned of changes to our world. His children couldn’t be buried alive for four generations. We’d live on surface, breathe fresh air, see sun or die.

Why hadn’t he told me sun would be green?

I must find prophecies; know all truth. Danny has scripts. He  allowed me to read them when I was with him. Must continue. Will go now, ask. Things different now.

I take food in a rucksack, my brother’s bicycle. It will take an hour to ride through city, to Danny’s house. An hour pedalling hard. If there are still seconds, minutes, hours.

Danny not home. He was. On table vase of flowers. Blue flowers. Remember argument in sect about our sign. Some said flowers should be blue, should always be blue. Others said they should be as far from blue as possible. As colours returned, should select strongest or weakest hued to mark change. Which Danny’s choice? No way to tell. I haven’t left flowers at home. Should have. I’ll leave some here, when have prophecies.

 In Danny’s bedroom, find leaflets.  I look at blue flower, our emblem. Remember words I helped write.  They warn of this, collapse of power stations, a changing world. We were too late, much too late. Less than a tenth ever delivered. How many read?

Find prophecies. ‘For the Children’ a note says. I take one.
 
In kitchen, no food. Leave what I brought . Leave pot of flowers next to Danny’s. Go home.

I read prophecies, begin to understand.

 Man’s greed and inhumanity will be his destruction and his salvation. The sky will fall. The poison will be driven away.

Ozone contracted with implosion of power plants. Blue of distant atmosphere descended. Pollution dragged by escaping radiation, away, above. Sun still golden. Viewed through layers of dust, ozone, pollution.

Sun not green.

 I feel well, strong because oxygen concentrated in layer close to earth’s crust. Earth altered orbit. Warmth proof equator, so seasons, have shifted.

Changes will come. The north will move south. A silent wind will warm the land.

The Leader knew so much. He’d known mankind would almost destroy himself. Knew Government would declare no safety. Take people below to teach them to live together. They’re beginning again so when their great-grandchildren emerge into light they’ll inherit a peace sculpted by destruction. Live in simpler world, treasure, protect; not destroy. The Leader had begun to teach us. He wanted us to think for ourselves, do what we should because right, not because all we knew.

 You must learn the way of love and peace. I will teach and you must learn.

The Leader, The Children couldn’t teach people. Unheard above rumours, fear. When dancing lights lit sky, our families went underground. The Children made promises.

“We shall seek out, care for any left behind. Release pets. Protect homes. Earth will not wither, die. It will become clean, safe. The great grandchildren of those below shall emerge, share the new earth with the descendants of The Children of the Blue Flower.”

I begin my tasks. Cycle through warm wind from house to house. Carry food on back in case meet those in need. Meet no one. In each house I tidy, clean. Eat what food I need, take more for journey. That’s all I take. Find no creatures to care for. No animals, no birds wild or domestic. Empty cages, empty fields, woods. There are fish in tanks. Take to streams, release. Don’t know if they’ll live. Hear no sounds save clicking of spokes on wheels, running of water. No birds to sing. Few leaves on trees. Those few there are, don’t rustle in warm breeze. No locusts. No people, no voices.

You will be alone, but you are my Children.

At each house, I find vase or glass, fill with water. Pick flowers,  bluest can find, set them where a visitor would see.

Rain falls. Flowers change. I leave chartreuse daffodils, navy tulips. Summer brings blue roses. Once sought after, now only option. Delphinium spires. Brightest, richest blue I’ve ever seen. Autumn brings dahlias, chrysanthemums. Blue little less true? Another colour breaking through. Winter comes. Warm wet winter.

I pick snowdrops again. Maybe paler now. Maybe just want them to be.

A year I’ve travelled. Occasionally finding vase of decaying flowers. Once, in summer, flowers  barely wilted. Think meet Danny.

No. I’m tired. Going home.

In house, see vase I’d left. Same vase; not same flowers. Fresh. Primroses palest moss green, hellebores with faintest rim of muddy maroon. Tulips, just showing colour. Colour that isn’t blue. Look closer, see drops of dew clinging to newly picked buds.

I listen, hear Danny call my name.

In*visible is an imaginative experiment, which consists in switching from visible to invisible through a conceptual breathe. It is an architecture that seems to appear from the void, made of tiny items of material. Only quantity and proximity render visibility.

A small mound of sand fulfils the hands. With a little rush, the material thins out, it spreads in the ambience, it disappears in the air. 

A grain of sand is the barely perceptible soul of a dune as big as the eye can see. 

In*visible is an idea that originates from an image. The scene is a forest, where common home furniture are located like in a surrealistic act: a wardrobe, a bed, a dining table, … These objects seem to be suspended in the natural environment, seem to be out of context. But they actually represent a home.

Millions of particles “live” in the forest. They are technological elements, artificial bugs that sometimes sparkle in the night, like mechanical fireflies.

Each element (flying/floating/hovering in the thin solution of the atmosphere) is linked with its fellows. They exist/live in the network, they make a system, they communicate with each other.

The slightest signal is interpreted as a movement, a mutual approach or a departure. The particles go closer or away. They create a more or a less thick, visible nebula. They form the shell of the house: a permeable/impermeable case, a place of shades between inside and outside, natural and artificial, house and wood. The architecture is evanescent and never becomes tangible. It rises out of nothing just visual. Still, it is material. 

The house’s material is itself the process that produces it. The material is not a motionless and passive element. It is a responsive and sensitive device, constantly re-shaping (or self-shaped). 

In*visible: 

It is a diffused architecture, that lives spread in the air (my house is in the air). It is made of swarms instead of walls, like thrilling nebulas of material. It is made of dust of barely perceivable relations.

It is a breathing architecture, that physically contracts and expands, responding to environmental and weather conditions and to the inhabitant’s wishes.

It is an eco-systemic architecture, made of communities of particles/organisms that live in symbiosis with each other and answer to environmental stimulus.

In*visible is a shine. It is a plan which aims to be a fashion icon. Brilliantine, pailettes, glittering jewels, in*visible has a female outlook for gleaming ornament pulsation. Sparkling, in the night time. 

In*visible trusts in miniature technologies. Magnetic adaptable forces hold the particles together, shifting their thickness and rarefaction, therefore their visibility. An invisible nanobot “station” is in communication with them.

The station can enclose home space, even if lasting invisible, and then attracting particles. Or it could be more than one station: awfully extended or awfully tiny nanobot successions, like invisible tech-pearls thread. The filaments wave in the air, becoming more or less visible, they contract and broaden, they stretch and curl up, they tangle a barely perceivable substance.

In*visible could not be realized straight away. It does not apply well-established technologies. It looks for technicians and scientists teamwork, alternating between their imagination and their skills. In*visible is a fantastic appliance which takes technological researches as starting points, contextualizing them in every achievable set/background. This kind of attitude could be compared to  the science-fiction world, even if the last purpose is not fictional.

In*visible wants to be real.

Can architecture be poetic first than realistic?

Can science (and architecture) be investigated through images?

Can architecture and science influence each other, communicate ideas, produce imaginative scenarios?

(..to be continued…)

When Ernst came aboard he had a knapsack in hand and blood poisoning just beneath his heart. The first rains stuck in his memory like that—the Band-Aid curling back to reveal a sore festering above his shinbone, the tinny meningitis-whine of a fever to accompany the rash. He had swam past two pigs bloated belly-up, snagged on a traffic light, floating, the gasses boiling inside of them. The pigs were fizzing, and Ernst, in his furious dog paddling past, found this remarkable.

Now his clothes held his body in a shivery-wet demur; the body held a hot infection, and in the heat of his delirium he fully comprehended what held his soul: his laptop computer. In a stuttering fit of sizzling batteries and misconnected internet did the machine contain an infinity of rainless projects, a desert to keep dry in three scrunched-tight plastic baggies. The whole world. (The worlds he kept in his leather wallet had turned to sludge.)

Ideas will not keep sane in such humidity. That’s why the equator belts to it so many savages, with its seas and jungles, so many little shrunken heads. The curious madness in the tropics’ heat and rain. What was monsoon but a time for cholera and dysentery, for the hard living in torrential winds? Cars past their axels in the soup. Ernst believed tidal waves and tsunamis were the province of undisciplined minds, minds warped in the trough the way wallpaper bubbles and then slicks away, falling from the wall in tendril slabs. If the house stayed wet enough. He thought: the only reason Bristol hasn’t met with cannibals is the cold. The chilled damp doesn’t send us stark raving, no, it calmly bores us to death. The tap tap tap. The sploop, sploop, sploop. Leaking down from light fixtures, down cheap brass that greened up like houseplants, where the gardens below suffocated in quick marshlands. Ernst was losing his teeth. “Bloody teef,” he groaned.

—

Counterfactual, Ernst reckoned, the claims of great art springing from suffering. The postdiluvial wisdom, certainly, was safely intact—as the bloody fuckin rain woan let go, he repeated and repeated and repeated until it seemed like he could let it go. He hated the idea of bolting down the River M4 but saw no faster way of making it to South Bank with his bombs. Kedging every last sucker bitter and with child, ashore on the concrete medians. Saint Ernst, with his pocketknives and extra socks, and when the good ladies ask him, “What’re you facing this end?” and looking east—answering themselves. “Why, an I’m goan to Londun,” he replies curtly, Saint Ernt, his nose snotting and slicking the stubble of his chin. When the good ladies with-child make to stow away with him, he bats them offboard, sobbing. He remembers the picturebooks (fetid, of course) and the deluge ages past and Ernst and his saintliness is neither humbled nor chastened because nowhere nowhere nowhere nowhere—his fever has made him hum softly to himself, and to repeat words.

When doctors on the ferry got at him, they thought his appendix had burst. When he was lucid enough, he explained he was fine for now he just needed sleep. They let him sleep. When he awoke he was in an infirmary in London. His horror subsided when he realized his bag was right there with him, its zipper scraping his hand.

Bloodborn information. Hospitals are wonderful places for abstraction because they’re so sad, and because they’re chock-a-bloc with pain killers. “Ello, dahling,” he mumbled as he plugged in his power cord. The lights on his laptop blinked softly, as if through snowy lashes. The interface was a bit runny—LCD with its sinuses infected. Ernst’s sniffles were comparable. He ran his hands down the length of the cords attached to his own body and other computers, machines telling anyone this man’s heart still beats, his brain still thinks. With so many cords so sensually integrated with his flesh and psyche, dry warm cords, Ernst came to understand the general miasma of his selfhood: interface as pathogen. The frequency modulation program running through his laptop gave him an erection as it began to collate low-decibel vibrations and warmed. The fillings in his teeth chittered. An image of crows overtook his laptop screen, their wings beating back the rains. The hoarse-sweet sounds of cawing filled his earbuds and set his eyes to tear.

—

Bad enough Venice all gone, sunk miserably by eco-terrorists tired of saving medieval fabrics. China rumoured—fabulously—to have consolidated economic frontiers with Russia, even human capitol, but that ended half-decade back with the landslides and the earthquakes that stole an entire province. Ernst could not make the facts any more cogent than this. Than science-fiction. His laptop was not sleek enough to hide up his arse although if he wanted to get-off there was still a lot of porn. Nobody teleported to Mars. Super-flus had ravaged the places the first and second world had consolidated into their undeveloped third. Counterfacts were more reliable anyway! The record of the West was kept safe in impenetrable prefabs protected by eunuchs who wore rococo vestments. —An example of counterfact. Saint Ernst smiled. He found some clothes. He walked back into his miserable life, trembling goodbyes to haggard orderlies and mop-faced nurses.

The future is so troubling because we prepare it through sublime interpolations. The moon-landing—bleeding American twats salting the plate in the sky with their flaggy shit and soaking pads. But his great-great-grandfather had danced that night, so his great-grandmother had said. Now everyone lived so long! Ernst in his ecstasy saw old men’s knees knocking, faun-wobbly and creaking under the pale disk. Used to be you could see the moon! There were no rejoinders now—nothing to demarcate. Between the modern and postmodern, between the Second Awakening and the Enlightenment; great barbarian hordes bothered not to menace the civilizations to the north and west. Time had folded back into itself projecting inwards. Ernst was hapless to blame television. The things through cathode-ray tubes stuck. There was war after the Second World War because of TV. When everything went digital there were still wars but nobody noticed such a simple and elegant conclusion to war-as-such. War-as-such-war-as-such-war-as-such. Destruction as aesthetic compulsion: this was done. This-was-done-and-done.

The full and discreet integration of the televisual and telecommincative in all matters civic and economic rendered war axioms and art axioms interchangeable. 

—

More of Ernst’s teeth fell out in the tubes. Fishees sped by and he pointed at them and his teeth and at a child who grimaced but was unafraid to look away. The slate-sludgey water and the carp fattened on ratkings gnashed safely on the other side of the acrylic font. The child—a girl of four or seven, stunted, surely—pointed at things she found interesting, too. She pointed at an especially beautiful lady, a dry lady with a wondrous beige briefcase and stoles of ermine crossed doubly about her wrists. The child pointed at a dark-skinned teenager, his mouth full of shining diodes. Ernst pointed at the intricately lain footprints on the floor of the car and followed a trail with his finger until he spied a cat, far under a bench down the row. The child followed along. A cat. A secret.

—

The last of Ernst, his own remainder. His laptop in its low decibel death throws. The fillings in his teeth flicked out as his jaw flipped off his face. The acoustic weapon and all the statuary gone in a gold-glowing shake of firelight and vibrating stones crashing in the pavilion. The scattered other deaths, the bottomless wealth of treasures liquidated. The bricks and concrete blown bite-size in the crumbling blast, the glass showering in dirty streamers of confetti. The tendrilled ogee of rain-culled ash collapsing again, matching the curls of the child’s hair as she stood far off, under a tarp on the bridge, holding the cat, uncomprehending and alert. The vestibule was open and the water slithered in.

Conversely, Saint Ernst regretted everything. Curious, that, in an afterlife, at the dry edge of a desert expanse, willing the endless sands to some other monument.

—

In the afterlife, Saint Ernst built a dam in the desert. He added turbines and floodgates and shaped a reservoir, dynamited channels and dropped locks for freights he knew may come to ferry the other dead. A town below thirsted for power and light. No rain ever came.

—

When rain finally came, Saint Ernst was all gone again. Somewhere else.

There is a melancholic attitude in the simple action of breathing.

This story is placed in an old glass house [the London Kew Garden?].

A thin structure of white iron sustains the glass and organizes the warm light that comes from the top into the inside. The light is sparkling around in a multitude of dewdrops.

Here, layers of vegetation create a trilling landscape of vivid, fresh leaves. Between them, a constellation of glass bubbles occupy the core of the space, set down on the floor or suspended in the air. They are chemical instruments prepared for a mysterious experiment.

Each glass has openings and inlets that look like small mouths waiting for food. Inside, lit by the light, plants with big leaves find a place.

The man appears, from behind. He is old and he is wearing a blue shirt. His hands are big. Experienced. It seems they can tell many stories.

The man moves slowly in the space that is familiar to him. The shots are on the details, on the man’s movements (not on his face and expression), or on the plants all around, which seem to be observing. 

The light is warm and expands the forms and the colors.

The man gets closer to the glass bubbles. He reaches one of the pipes with his mouth and starts breathing. Now the exchange between the human and the plants is made clear. The communication is happening.

The images are on the man’s mouth, nose, on his skin, on the air that solidifies on the glass surface, on the steam that fills the bubble, on the plants, which disappear behind a cloud of blurring, on the leaves, that wave for the air movement. It is a vibrating and humid vision.

It seems like the man is speaking to the plants, as if they have a secret relation, as if they share a mysterious code of chemistry and thermodynamics.

After some breathes, delicate floral drawings manifest on the man’s hands. They are like tattoos that grow with the breathing. The drawing fills the hands, it goes on the arm and disappears under the shirt. It shows again under the man’s neck, around the ears, which becomes full of plants and leaves.

The man starts sweating and all his body is now full of tiny water drops, like dew, like the steam on the glass surface.

He leaves the bubble and goes to his worktable, where a set of old technical equipment is located. Glass and brass tools and measure devices and proper scientific apparatus.

He takes an odd pair of tweezers and moves them to his arm, which is covered by shining water drops. The man grabs one of them with the points of his strange instrument. But, unexpectedly, the liquid surface resists to the pressure of the tweezers. It shines in the humid atmosphere. It is a diamond!

The man takes the gleaming stone from his arm and carries it to his desk, leaving it at a specific point. Here a huge drawing of lines and formulas seem to describe a phenomena and its trajectories. It is a white drawing on a blackboard that awakens images of maps of constellations, a complex diagram of physics, geometry and mathematics.

The man goes with his pincers to recover the other crystals and put them on the drawing as if they have a meaning in the drawing itself. The crystals shine between the lines and the numbers.

These crystals are proof of a mysterious transformation. Through breathing, the body seems to respond to laws of mathematics, physic, geology and medicine. This follows the idea that humans share with plants and mountains the same natural rules. 

The old man, the magician, lives with the plants and feeds them, as well as they feed him. They share the same space, in a symposium of air and water.

He is the miner of his own body, as if it is a cavern.

Breathes (as well as emotions and memories) are like shining substances that vibrate in the core of our body and move to the periphery to be expelled, to be secreted in precious materials.

The Triton bulletin boomed across the room and the voice of Gavin Esler Jnr pricked Charles’ ear.

“Emergency! London is braced for torrential rain. Bands of low pressure are moving rapidly towards the capital. With the abolition of Tide Council marshals, any volunteers should meet in the low point Wealth Districts immediately.”

 
Alex and Charles stepped back from the window and faced each other.  ‘Jez would’ve known what to do, wouldn’t he?’  Charles sighed.
 
‘Yes,’ Alex said quietly.

They shook the last of the city niads from their Nazarethan beards and sat down.  Alex began stencilling the alphabet across a square of MDF Charles had found in a floating paladin.

 Earlier that afternoon, both young adult men had been Carbon Dating: a lonely hearts agency for those who didn’t care about the environment.  With a subscription exceeding a million, they were certainly not alone in being lonely or indeed refusing to go green.  As the splashing waters of the capital lapped against the Caillech plinth, a monument to England’s shameful industrial past, people just didn’t care.  For most the only concern was how not to drown.

London had become one big fag packet and nature had written a serious health warning down its side that no one bothered reading.  Charles and Alex used to care greatly but stopped nearly a year ago.

It was 8pm and the lounge was full of Asopus candles.  In near darkness, a poster of Charles’ new band The Witches hung on the eight-foot, breeze block wall opposite.  The calendar on the door had ‘Jez’s Anniversary’ scribbled on the date 3rd September. 

With Jez Christie, they were known nationally as the Trellick Trio: the future brains of England.  Together they were invincible; down to two, they were nothing.  Charles, an engineer; Alex, an inventor; and Jez, a six foot nine inch speaker of 97 languages, a brilliant communicator and highly principled natural leader.  Where others said ‘yes’ for a quiet life, he was unconcerned saying ‘no’ for a loud one.  He introduced the Paddlecab, the aquatic rickshaw; implemented Tide Councils; and the Homes on Stilts project.  With the dissolution of Parliament after the shambolic Clegg Years, it was everyone for himself.  Jez however said no.

He had first met Charles and Alex by the river wall.  They hadn’t much direction in their lives at the time.  He said, ‘Follow me.’  They did.  Together they formed an alliance based on one principal:
Never look down upon someone unless you are giving them a hand-up.

Jez was killed on September 3rd 2057, crushed against a jetty by a bendy-boat along Tottenham Court Harbour.
                                                          - – - – - – - – - – - -

It was Alex who had decided upon the Ouija board idea.  They each placed their right hands on two upturned glasses, and held them firmly on the board.  They called out to Jez and awaited movement but nothing happened.  After half an hour, and feeling deflated, they sat back.  Charles was ready to watch his favourite soap ‘Harpies’ on his Inward Eye but just as Alex tried tempting him to continue with the Ouija Board, there was an explosion. The lounge door was flung open.  A huge gust threw them back, practically stapling their buckling limbs and shocked faces to their chairs.  Voices seemed to swirl on the carrying wind like a class of screaming schoolchildren coming off t