The Quiet at the End of the World
Page 25
No species has ever survived by trying to cling to what’s gone. You can’t exist if you’re trying to get back to an environment or culture or climate that’s changed. You have to adapt if you want to keep going.
“Our old ways are gone,” I say, when they’ve quietened down again. “That isn’t what the world needs any more. That is not what we are. Whatever it was about our biological bodies that didn’t work and stopped us reproducing the way we used to, it doesn’t matter. That’s over and done with.
“You can’t be fussy about survival. You take what you are given. And what we have been given is a way to carry on. A new type of body that does work. It has its flaws like the old one, sure, and it might break again one day, so that we have to move on to the next thing. But it works, and we are going to use it. Because we have no other choice.”
The world is changing too. Nature is breaking down the old ways and reassembling them: forests grow where cities once stood; rivers flow where concrete used to be. Nothing stops the endless march of progress. We have to do what London has done. We have to change. It’ll be strange and uncomfortable and new, but it has to be done.
I raise my voice. “We are the human race. All of us, everyone in this room. And we are going to continue. We are going to thrive. Because there is no point to anything if we don’t have a future. We are creating something for the next generation. And we aren’t going to let them down!”
There’s a stunned silence.
Eventually, Feng stands up. “Thank you, Lowrie and Shen, for raising this motion.” He sounds quietly shocked. “We will discuss it in the same way we do every topic – in a calm, civilized fashion. Now, who would like to speak first?”
Darcy stands immediately. She opens her mouth to speak and then bursts into tears. “My mum would have wanted me to have children,” she says, mopping her face with a flowery handkerchief. “I don’t know why we didn’t do this years ago!”
“It’s wrong,” Olivia Fletcher interjects. “It would be selfish! We weren’t designed for that!”
I lean over and whisper in Shen’s ear, “Do you think we should leave? I don’t think this is our debate to have.”
“Can we go mudlarking?” he asks.
I stare at his lips. “I suppose, if that’s what you want to do. I had something else in mind, though.”
He raises an eyebrow and tugs me out of the hall. Everyone is arguing so much that they don’t even notice us leave.
I’m sure they’ll let us know their decision later – although I think I already know what it’s going to be. We’re humans. If there’s one thing we can do well, it’s find a way to survive. A little thing like extinction isn’t going to stop us. Not when there’s still so much of the world left to explore.
EPILOGUE
London, England
16 August 2528
Hello!
This message – if anyone ever reads it – was written by the last two members of a biological species called homo sapiens. It is part of a time capsule which we launched into space on board a satellite. It is designed to orbit the third planet from the sun, which we call the Earth. It will remain in orbit for five hundred thousand of our Earth years. It will then decay so that the capsule falls back to the ground.
Hopefully the silicon wafer this message is engraved on will last long enough to be found by any future intelligent lifeforms living on Earth. There is also a data-storage device, which contains pictures, sounds and objects from our culture, as well as documents taken from our lives, so that you can understand more about us.
(See: bagpipes.mp3, fire-footage.mp4, kissing.mp4, heartbeat.mp3, hammering-nail.mp4, Bach-toccata-d.mp3, chuck-berry.mp3, male-female-child-anatomy.jpg, DNA-simulation.gif, pyramids.jpg, athletes-racing.gif, eating.gif, children-playing.mp4, ink-calligraphy.gif, horse-riding.gif, gymnastics.gif, last-messages-from-around-world.txt.)
We don’t know if humans will still exist by the time you read this. The inorganic form our species currently takes is quite hardy, but it isn’t indestructible. Maybe you’re a human yourself but a gaseous version, or made of code in a virtual reality. Whoever you are, we hope that you are safe and happy.
We’ve done our best to pass on Earth in the healthiest state we can. Our species has done so much harm to this planet over the centuries. We have burned and ravaged and overturned Earth, from the deepest oceans to the final layer of the atmosphere. Hopefully we’ve fixed that by the time you inherit the planet. We’re working as hard as we can to reverse our ancestors’ mistakes for you.
If you’re reading this, whoever you are, we hope that you love one another and create breathtaking art and care for this planet as well as it deserves. Please remember the human race, even if you don’t know us yourselves.
We have to sign off here. Our son, Adam, is just waking up, so we need to intervene before he starts pestering Mitch again.
Yours, on behalf of humanity in its many wondrous and terrible forms,
Lowrie and Shen Zhang
P.S. If you’re an alien, know that I love and respect you and everything you do, but please be nice to anything living on this planet. We really like it. – Shen
AUTHOR’S NOTE
This book was inspired particularly by Seven Brief Lessons on Physics by Carlo Rovelli and the essay “Aliens and Us: Could Post-humans Spread through the Galaxy?” by Alexei Rees in Aliens: Science Asks: Is There Anyone Out There?, edited by Jim Al-Khalili.
I also drew inspiration from Ice Age Art: Arrival of the Modern Mind by Jill Cook; the article “Hominin Footprints from Early Pleistocene Deposits at Happisburgh, UK” by Nick Ashton; The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History by Elizabeth Kolbert; Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness by Peter Godfrey-Smith; Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind and Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow by Yuval Noah Harari; A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived: The Stories in Our Genes by Adam Rutherford; and The World Without Us by Alan Weisman.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thanks to everyone at Walker Books, especially Annalie Grainger, Emily McDonnell, Krystle Appiah, Emily Sharratt, Margaret Hope, Anna Robinette, Kirsten Cozens, Rosi Crawley and John Moore. I also want to thank Lisa Horton and Margaret Hope for the gorgeous cover.
This was a really tough book to get right. I wrote version after version, searching for the best way to tell Lowrie and Shen’s story. Annalie went above and beyond as an editor to help me find the answer, and I couldn’t be more grateful.
I couldn’t have written this book without the unwavering support of my agent, Claire Wilson, who was there when I thought I’d never find the right idea. Thanks to the rest of the team at Rogers, Coleridge and White, including Rosie Price and Miriam Tobin.
Thank you to Sarah Barnard, Clare Samson, Alice Oseman, Emma Mills, Steph Whybrow, Lucy Powrie, Alice Hildreth, Catherine Doyle, Sara Barnard, Non Pratt, Charlie Smissen, Charlotte, Troy and Travis Smitten, Xiaoyue Wu, Shirley Barnes and Madison Woodward for the support. Biggest thanks go to Mum, Dad (who is deaf in one ear – sorry for never ever remembering which side to talk to you on) and my brother, Chris.
LAUREN JAMES was born in 1992, and graduated in 2014 from the University of Nottingham, UK, where she studied chemistry and physics. She started writing her first novel during secondary school English classes, because she couldn’t stop thinking about a couple who kept falling in love throughout history. She sold the rights to the novel, The Next Together, when she was 21, while she was still at university.
Her other novels include The Last Beginning, and The Loneliest Girl in the Universe, which was inspired by a physics calculation she was assigned at university. Lauren is a passionate advocate of STEM further education, and all of her books feature female scientists in prominent roles.
She lives in the West Midlands and works with Writing West Midlands, providing creative writing courses to children. She is an Arts Council grant recipient. She has written articles for numerous publications, including Th
e Guardian, Buzzfeed and the Children’s Writers’ and Artists’ Yearbook 2019.
You can find her on Twitter at @Lauren_E_James, Tumblr at @laurenjames, or her website: laurenejames.co.uk, where you can subscribe to her newsletter to be kept up to date with her new releases and receive bonus content.
ALSO BY LAUREN JAMES
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or, if real, used fictitiously. All statements, activities, stunts, descriptions, information and material of any other kind contained herein are included for entertainment purposes only and should not be relied on for accuracy or replicated as they may result in injury.
First published in Great Britain 2019 by Walker Books Ltd
87 Vauxhall Walk, London SE11 5HJ
Text © 2019 Lauren James
Cover illustration © 2019 Lisa Horton Design
The right of Lauren James to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, transmitted or stored in an information retrieval system in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, taping and recording, without prior written permission from the publisher.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data:
a catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978-1-4063-8232-7 (ePub)
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