by Ashly Graham
Accepting the karmic closeness of the end, people were looking on the bright side: being blown to bits while healthy was preferable to dying a lingering death from the cancers of old, which—after billions of dollars spent in trying to find a cure, and after the world had endured the mumblings and bumblings and ramblings of a million pompous and secretive scientists, and after the deaths of legions of mice and rats—the disease was discovered to succumb naturally to a filthy-tasting drench of three pints a day for two weeks of a mixture of bugloss Anchusa arvensis, and raspberry cordial milkshake Rubus idaeus benignus lac concussum; after which one was advised to go either on a crash diet, or back to square one and hook oneself up to a Jiffy-Fix machine.
An expression of philosophical acceptance settled on the face of the Earth, as for the Time-Being life went on. In dingy halls and church basements formerly occupied by the coffee-guzzling ghosts of twelve-step programmers, sober crowds gathered to share their acceptance of the one great thing that they were powerless to change.
Oh, how wonderful it was to be relieved of worry about money and the job and health care and school fees and inadequate retirement savings, and who was going to take care of one in one’s dotage! Macbeth’s tragic cousin Hamlet was right:
To die: to sleep;
No more; and, by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, ’tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished.
People dedicated themselves to living, instead of dreaming, the impossible dream, and scrambled to fulfil long-deferred ambitions; to experiencing life more intensely than they ever had, or would have done had they been spared. Now there was nothing to be afraid of but fear itself, as Franklin Delano Roosevelt said in his first Inaugural Address; nothing but rosebuds to be gathered, and golf handicaps to be improved. They laughed at the Judgement Day cartoons in the newspapers. Students who failed their exams, instead of buckling down with a bad grace to swotting for retakes, flipped their tutors the bird—as in gave them the finger, rather than demonstrated an avian 90° rotation—or made the old palm-inward V-sign, and went to the pub.
The Optimists, and members of the Gay Abandon Society, did not put on brave faces, because there was nothing to be brave about, and no reason for them to be less happy, or gay, than they already were. Instead they smiled Mona Lisa smiles, as if they knew something that the rest of the world did not, about what was really going to happen.
They said how considerate it was of the meteorites—each optimist and corybanter adopted one and gave it a name, like Dastardly Dudley, or Fast Freddy, or Happy Hannah, or Flintstone, or Frolic, or Rocky—to defer their arrival until just after a quarter past four in the afternoon, on the thirteenth of April; when people would have had their tea, and their cucumber sandwiches, and sponge fingers, as they always had while poet Browning’s lark was on the wing, and the snail was on the thorn, and the poet’s god was in his heaven, and all was right with the world (now that everything was deducted at source from income, there were no financial returns to be filed for the fifteenth of April, as the pre- Central State Tax Man in Great Britain used to propose); and where, in fellow poetizer Rupert Brooke’s Grantchester, in deep meadows yet one might forget the lies, and truths, and pain; and where stood yet (as it always did), the Church clock at ten to three (eighty-odd minutes earlier), and there was honey still for tea.
When they went on their long weekends, the one that might be their last, upon arriving at their Optimists’ Guide-recommended hotel, guesthouse, or B&B, they found that the booking had not been lost, as it always had been in the past; the first room they were shown was the one they were happy to remain in, the shower worked, and the mattress was comfortable. The food was delicious, the wine was not rot-gut, the hotel staff was not surly, the rates were reasonable, and the weather was perfect.
Perhaps one was just imagining it, but, per Reginald Heber, every prospect pleased, and one’s fellow guests, instead of being vile, turned out to be such good company that all parties said, and meant, that they wanted to stay in touch for the Duration.
In America, where families had recently gathered from near and far on the last Thursday of November for the festival of Thanksgiving–Black Friday, instead of everyone expecting the soon-upcoming Christmas to be the same ill-tempered gathering of incompatible relatives slagging each other off over the turkey, newly converted Optimist families were already looking forward to a vastly enjoyable traditional celebration amongst the same people.
“Cheer up, it may never happen!”, the Optimists said to each other, convinced that it would; and, “It can’t be all bad!”, knowing that it wasn’t.
The only thing that the Optimists and the Pessimists were agreed upon was that gallows humour was out, as in not in or on.
The Pessimists were torn between delight, anger at their delight, and annoyance that the Optimists, given the incontrovertible evidence, were not sharing their gloom. As James Branch Cabell said, attempting to ruff the previously quoted Voltairism, “The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds; and the pessimist fears this is true.”
Being depressed was not fun any more, and now that they had been deprived of the joy of quitting the world on their own terms, many Pessimists snatched defeat from the jaws of victory by committing ingenious felones de se. Hordes of lemmings in the Arctic circle, scampering to cliff edges traditionally favoured by lemmings a-leaping, were forced aside and watched in astonishment as waves of bipeds rushed past them and swallow-dived into the airy depths, with cries of “Geronimo!”.
Proud Pessimists sat in their favourite chairs with mass-produced Swords of Damocles dangling from frayed thread or Glide dental floss—despite the manufacturer’s claim, it snapped more easily than the regular kind—above their heads. They held Russian Roulette parties; friends shook hands with friends and shot each other on the count of three; actors played their final scenes in Romeo and Juliet, and Antony and Cleopatra, using real poison, too many sleeping pills, genuine weapons, and live Egyptian cobras, or asps, Naja haje; bungee jumpers “forgot” their bungees; and lumberjacks were paid handsomely for felling trees onto Pessimist houses.
Self-service guillotines with automatic hydraulic returns appeared in every square for five thousand-Universo coins (just under ten old pounds sterling) in the slot per chop. Penthouse suites with scenic views were overbooked for “Champagne Suicide Breakfasts”, clean-up included. Instead of settling down with a four-month supply of potato chips, beer, and cigarettes to watch M*A*S*H, Seinfeld, Cheers, Friends, Frasier, and Law and Order reruns on television. Pessimists tightened nooses round their necks and kicked away the chairs they were standing on, and swallowed pistol barrels, and drank paraquat and arsenic cocktails, and eviscerated themselves on oriental rugs, and dropped the hairdryer on the high setting into their baths.
Cilla “Mellifluous” Polybius 0009R(Hon.), who for fifty years had been the voice of the Speaking Clock, until the State cancelled her contract, and threatened her with worse than a lawsuit if she went independent, was at age one hundred and twenty-one smuggled out of the Sunset Lodge Nursing Home, where she was fondly known amongst the residents as “Superfluous Mellifluous”.
Polybius’s vocal cords were restored by private subscription of those who very much wanted to hear her soothing voice counting off the remaining hours, minutes, and seconds of the world. For secrecy, and to ensure that her unique timbre was preserved, the operation was performed in the basement of his house on Harley Street by a sympathetic retired Ear, Nose and Throat surgeon, Larry Engitis 5654H, rather than through one of Central’s home-installed Jiffy-Fix machines, from which every operation was scanned for automated authorization by Central’s Department of Medical Corrections, under the direction of Ribby Braka-Legg 4723C.
A week later, when Cilla Polybius had recuperated, she was wheeled into another room at Abbey Road Studios, London NW8, where she was to record her first an
nouncement of the day, at six o’clock ante meridiem, on a scrambled satellite frequency set up by the complicit owner of the Sirius radio station, Howard Stern III 9753L.
At first things went well, and Mellifluous sounded pretty good, if one made allowances for over a century of gin and cigarettes. Then at 18:10, precisely, Polybius uttered, in an uncharacteristic foghorn voice, the words, “Tempus? Fugit!”—and collapsed, dead.
Her mortified surgeon, Larry Engitis, swearing that it was not his fault, made what amends he could by taking Cilla home with him in the trunk of his car, where he retrieved her larynx, had it enshrined in Perspex, and donated it anonymously to the British Museum.
In the business world, nobody cared about making or hoarding money any more, only spending it; for, as the adage went, “You can’t take it with you.” Hard-nosed executives did whatever it took to trigger or invoke their golden parachute clauses, and the softer-muzzled ones took advantage of early retirement packages.
Fraud, embezzlement, and the fudging of expense accounts ceased.
The stock market bubble burst, not for economic reasons, but because stockbrokers, and bond and futures traders were not showing up for work, and nobody cared what the world financial market indices or currency exchange rates were. Investors shrugged instead of mourning their robust portfolios, TESSAs, ISAs, 401ks, and IRAs, which had been depleted yet again by the technology shares that they had held onto after the last crash.
The Central State Bank, under Director Midas Ruptt 0192A, reduced interest rates to below zero. Newly friendly and caring lending banks, Building Societies, and Savings and Loan institutions, sent letters to their customers informing them, with their compliments, that they could burn their mortgage documents, and that they were now pleased to be offering non-repayable loans.
The regional State governments in Greece, Italy, Spain, and elsewhere around the world as word got around as to what the Greeks, Italians, and Spanish were doing, applied for further financial bail-out packages. The head of the World Bank, Max Meany 1098A, had already got his extra-long cheque book out, so that all the zeros could be fitted in, and was writing before he came to her senses.
Lloyd’s of London sustained the last in a record string of deficit years, and underwriters crushed the nibs of their pens on their desks.
Psychologists took their tear-stained couches to the dump, threw away their hypnotic watch-chains and pendulums, and wrote to their patients cancelling their appointments and advising them to stop whining and get a life for the short time remaining to them.
Those who had paid good money to psychics and clairvoyants over the years walked into their parlours and gave them knuckle sandwiches.
The police did not bother to arrest anyone, even when crimes were being done under their noses.
Lawyers took down their shingles, as no one was bothering any more to sue, divorce, make last wills and testaments or contest them, or disinherit their children.
Estranged families and friends sat down together to smoke the pipe of peace filled with the substance of their choice.
While genuine obituary columns in newspapers went ignored, those commissioned from ghostwriters by the famous amongst the live and kicking, and published online, attracted a great deal of interest.
Travel agents refunded deposits on next summer’s bookings without being contacted; while cruise lines were inundated with reservations from those who for years had sworn, without ever meaning it, to give up their jobs and travel the world, braving drunken skippers, and Norwalk-agent-like taxonomic family Caliciviridae RNA viruses.
Insurance companies waived the pages of exclusions in their policies, and paid lump sum annuities ahead of schedule.
Former aristocrats shivering in ancestral homes plagued by draughts and damp took down their tapestries, Rubenses and Velasquezs, and used them as firelighters. The remaining vintage wines in the cellars, which were not due to reach their peak for another five or ten years, were quaffed without regret, accompanying quite the wrong dishes.
In non-religious and irreligious marriage ceremonies the phrases “For better or for worse” and “Until death us do part”, spoken by emotional couples as they tied the knot, were replaced with “For better and better”; and “Until death or April the thirteenth, whichever the sooner.”
A well-known heterosexual man got wed to a gay squirrel, and the reception, which was broadcast on TV, was held in a tree house.
No one bought burial plots, and those who already had them used them to inter their (deceased) pets in.
Terrorism, violence, and sectarian warfare ceased, and the lion lay down with the lamb more often than was good for the bloodlines of either species.
Paynim played peanuckle with closet Pentecostalist.
The Israeli government wrote to the Palestinians that they were welcome to live where they damn well pleased, only to receive an identical letter from the Palestinians that had crossed in the post.
Stalwarts of the Irish Republican Army and Unionist Party, who had resumed hostilities after their brief period of concord, because they were bored, tossed their weapons into the lough, and went off arm in arm with each other to sink pints of Guinness, and Black and Tan, in the pub.
Sicily and New York and Chicago and Philadelphia and Detroit and Los Angeles and New Jersey became vendetta-free zones, as Corleone, Gambino, Colombo, Bonanno, Genovese, Lucchese, and Soprano, capo crimini capo de tutti capis, consiglieres, capo bastones, contabiles, caporegimes, sgarristas, and piciottos, sat down to meetings with their opposite enemy of State numbers, buried their stilettos in the tables instead of each other, passed around pictures of their offspring, and the recipes of their mothers’ tomato sauce, and admitted that their sisters were indeed the ugly whores that the other parties had long maintained.
No one bothered any more to have cosmetic or plastic surgery.
People resumed taking snuff and chewing baccy, drinking rivers of booze, sucking unfiltered cigarettes until the smoke came out of their ears, and snorting kilos of cheap coke supplied by the overworked and underpaid hairpin untitled children of former king- and linchpin drug lords and barons, enemies of the drug tsar, Candy Snowe 4654C.
Men stopped having vasectomies. Condoms became optional. Women junked their diaphragms, coils, and other cervical contraceptive devices, in favour of morning-after Plan B One-Step® pills, or nothing, as free sex and key parties resumed, and brothels opened in shopping malls.
Health clubs closed.
Those who had been on the Nutkins diet switched to the new “All Fat All the Time”, “Dine While you Sleep” and “Karbo and Kandy” programs. McDonald’s Triple ClogBurgers, which contained three hundred grams of saturated fat, and enough sodium to turn the combined output of the Evian and Vittel springs into a Sargasso Sea, flew off the griddles. A computer at Central registered that, within two months of the Apocalyptic news, the world’s population had doubled its avoirdupois; and that in California, home of the worst dietary offenders, an earthquake registering 10.3 on the Richter scale rolled only a single French fry onto a floor, so heavily and evenly weighted were the North American and the Pacific tectonic plates.
Men and women who had worked in factories for forty years retired to huts in the Andes, to write the one novel that they knew they had in them.
People went off to collect deadly snakes in the Cameroons, to climb Annapurna without oxygen, to search for moonstones in the Rocky Mountains, to go walkabout with Aborigines, to train to become prize-fighters, and to perform stunts that, a month ago, they would have dismissed as madness.
Trapeze artists and high-wire acts donated their safety nets to trawler fleets, and added more somersaults and creative twists to their routines.
The last man still to be hunting the Snark retired and took up lawn bowls.
So completely did everyone get carried away by the mood of carpe diem, that few gave thought to whether or not Central would succeed in turning the hourglass the other way up, before the last grain
of sand trickled through on its way to being beamed up to Nowhere over the Rainbow. Loudly they sang the words of the 1948 Sigman and Magidson song that had become the new global mantra:
Enjoy yourself, it’s later than you think;
Enjoy yourself, while you’re still in the pink.
Chapter Fifteen
As if this unorthodox behaviour was not odd enough, the world underwent an environmental transformation. In a matter of weeks the ozone layer, which had come to resemble a Swiss cheese without the cheese, was filled; red tides ceased, and the palm-studded beaches of the Arctic and Antarctic were flooded and covered with icebergs.
What was left of the Amazon basin took health-giving breaths of carbon dioxide, and regrew as if it had been drenched in QuickGro Arborfeed.
Greenpeace and the Sierra Club laid off all their employees and shut down.
The mercury levels in swordfish, ling, and orange roughy—a restaurant favourite since its name had been changed from slimefish, a denizen of the deep with a not-uncommon lifespan of a hundred and thirty years—fell to zero, and the streams of New Jersey ran so clear that water bottled from the Raritan River outsold that of Poland Spring.
People reported that rare birds were nesting in their gardens and raising brood after brood of chicks.
Forestry commissions stopped felling trees, lumber sales plummeted, housing starts ceased, and paper-mills closed.
Now that no one was interested in cutting down the few remaining trophy sequoias in the California redwoods, the stalwarts of the open-sandal and fungus-toed, nut cutlet and slippery-elm-eating, tree-hugging brigade, who were still occupying their leafy platforms a hundred feet above the ground, came down. They went home to their old cabins, lit rusted wood- and fossil-fuel burning stoves and boilers, tossed in their malodorous plaids and Birkenstocks, and swigged from demijohns of Old Possum Bourbon as they deloused their bodies and soaked in their first hot baths for years, and blunted clippers and scissors and razor after razor on hair, face foliage, underarms and legs.