The Good Ship Blake was a Floating Laboratory in 1888 and thus came the name of this country.
“To what?” I asked, but they did not seem to know.
To the future, I ventured, but that was not something they cared to consider. All they cared about was tabling their results, with little analysis. They were blind to all else.
All who lived here were involved with science. I admit I found it difficult to fathom. They lived in cubicles, alone, isolated socially for the most part, communicating little.
“Where are the schools”, I asked. “Where are the children?”
“We are sterile, here. All of us asexual and sterile. How else would we get our work done? Children are nothing but time drains.”
“But they are your future,” I said, appalled.
Again, the concept of the future seemed to hold little meaning for them.
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IV. Wednesday: Brail. Formerly Fiji.
(Excerpt)
Another train journey, this time to Brail (Fiji).
I think Louis Braille may be pleased in some ways but saddened in others.
On this island, all are blind. There is not one sighted person amongst them. My fellow passengers were all blind, and chattered excitedly about their new life ahead. Certainly it seemed idyllic.
They did not use electricity so there was none of that awful hum. There was no sin, no violence, no crime. All were married (but children? Where were the children?) and there was no disease. The early vaccinators were right.
I only say Braille would be saddened because none read here in this place named for him.
Still, they seemed very happy and I would have liked to stay but the train beckoned, a new destination.
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V. Thursday: Campbell. Formerly the United Kingdom.
(Excerpt)
On the journey to Campbell (Dr Campbell was a well-known vegetarian advocate) I wondered if the deadly war between labour and capital had ended, or if the cutthroat competition for cheapness had led to catastrophe. It was not hard to imagine.
In this place, gambling had a frightening presence. Horse racing! As vile a sport as any devised, and yet they were obsessed. I spoke to an anxious man, who said that his family relied on his winnings. I must have tutted, because he said, “Your family?”
“My mother passed over.” I felt a sudden chill to realise my mother had been dead some 200 years. That there would be nothing left of her physical self.
And yet still I struggled at times to find a life of my own.
“My mother needed care, so I didn’t find the time for my own family.” I found no trace of my family. My dear niece Florrie most certainly had children, but I found no trace of them, nor of their children, nor of their children’s children. I would need half a year to find anyone at all.
“A shame,” he said, and I realised that he was being overly pleasant with me. I supposed him to be over fifty, although it is so difficult to tell in this time when facial preservation has come far. I must look ancient beyond all measure to them.
I knew that in 1988, the process of early marriage for all and protection of family and child had minimised greatly crime, vice, poverty and illegitimacy. I see that now, all this is gone. I can only imagine what will come. The degradations of old: cannibalism, infanticide, war, pestilence, prostitution; all fail if we fail to care for our children properly.
My deepest regret should be that I had none of my own, but truly, I found no man with whom I would spend a life. Am I at fault in that? Perhaps.
Every girl in my time knew that if she was tolerably pleasant, she could be married.
I did not choose to be tolerably pleasant.
Here, I discovered all citizens to be vegetarian. At least they imagined they were. Instead, they ate meat by-products made to appear as vegetable matter.
I was summarily ejected from the island on raising this point.
As I waited at the train station, a carload of young people arrived. The citizens cheered, greatly welcoming. “New blood!” they said.
This gives me hope.
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VI. Friday: Maxwell. Formerly Africa.
(Excerpt)
When once this vast land made up many countries, now it is only one, with the coastline shrinking until only Tanzania, with Kilimanjaro, and some surrounding lands remain.
What exists here is a massive sorting demon, which appears to manipulate most of the world’s movements.
James Clark Maxwell invented this machine. What strangeness! A sorting demon so large it displaces an entire country!
It is in control of everything from the underground electric railway, which connects all, to the clothing industry. How different it is to the South Australian Co Operative clothing company!
Vanity has risen.
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VII. Saturday: Tientsin. Formerly Europe.
(Excerpt)
Chomage still weighs on my mind as it ever did. Only with employment do we find self-esteem, self-worth and self-improvement. Who would choose to be a beggar?
On the once-great continent of Europe I found little employment of any kind. I can barely speak of what I did find
Beggars everywhere, yet no one to beg from.
An opium haze from border to border. The Treaty of Tientsin 1838 saw a large amount of cocaine imported to the UK.
I thought of the mandrake that facilitated my journey here and wondered if perhaps it might be a better substance for them.
Still no children. “They are at home,” I was told time and time again.
I could not bear the smell of the place.
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VIII. Sunday: Diamantina. Formerly North America.
We travelled so quickly it was like a trip from Adelaide to Melbourne.
I remembered this: my friends saying, “You caught cold on the journey (Adelaide, from Melbourne).”
I said, “I have done nothing of the sort. I am hoarse because there were people in the carriage I am not likely to see again. I had important things to tell them.”
At last: children! The train was full of infants. The youngest were mere weeks old, cared for by a number of nurses.
There were some sullen-faced adults, and I could not establish a rapport with any of them, much as I tried.
Instead, I helped out with the babies, to the nurses’ silent gratitude.
As I travelled, I reflected on all I had seen. This was not the happy world of 1988. It had none of the potential.
There was a terrible screeching of brakes on the other track and we witnessed the most horrendous accident. Our train paused momentarily. I could only hope that lessons could be learnt, because nothing in this life comes without benefit. Not even the very, very worst. I tried to exit the train in order to help, but it seemed the doors would not open.
All I could do was watch helplessly as the carriages burned. We all sat with our faces pressed to the window. Some were weeping; others seemed distant, as if they could not bear to watch.
Three people escaped; we watched them climb through the roof. We cheered, all of us, watching these three young people, while clearly burnt and injured, run along the top of the train. They carried nothing. And there was nowhere to go but along the tracks, because we were in the middle of the ocean.
Our train departed again and I did not see what happened to them.
We arrived in Diamantina, and any hopes I had for the future were dashed.
This country was a mockery of all I had believed in. It was nothing but a poorly run, un-caring orphanage, named for Diamantina, a cruel orphanage in Brisbane.
Was the barbarous practice of war responsible? I asked a sensible-seeming girl how they came to be here.
“We are all orphans. No one can be expected to care for us, so we come here to make a life of our own.”
“Was it w
ar?”
She looked at me sidelong. “There is no war anymore. Each of the seven countries has its role and each is happy to fulfil it.”
There was that, at least. “And where will you go? Once you are grown?”
“I won’t know what train I’m on. I could end up anywhere.”
It seemed that when they reached seventeen, they were placed on the first train, regardless of destination. They could end up in Nailsworth, in Blake, in Campbell, in Tientsin or in Maxwell or Brail.
I could think of nothing more to say to her.
In 1988 I had felt convinced that we were on the brink of a great social and industrial revolution, which would alleviate suffering, better mankind and improve our very planet Earth.
I could see now that the revolution had taken place, but, sadly, I saw little betterment at all.
In 1988 the Associated Homes with their gentle but continued pressure all but extinguished the awful and addictive habits of old.
So devastating to see this lost.
I was delighted to see the youngsters in school, although the teachers left something to be desired. It is my understanding they are sent here as an alternative to prison. Only the best of them saw this as a chance for redemption. There are teachers whose classes are a joy.
The rest of them seemed to treat the job as punishment itself.
I met one good teacher, a Miss Tosh, and we got along famously, sharing many a meal. I was not yet used to all the stares I received and she kindly explained, “They are unused to the sight of older people. Even the teachers must depart by the age of twenty-eight.”
She took me into her classroom and had me talk of history. I do believe those children were on the edge of their seats.
“Were you there when the comets landed?” one asked.
“2015,” the teacher whispered.
“No, I was not.” They did not ask me how I had missed that, given my birthdate, and none of them thought to question me further.
They excitedly explained the damage done; the tides rising, the plates shifting.
I am forthright and it shows in my eyes and face. Here, amongst the children, with their honest, if sometimes vile or unpleasant or unintelligent reactions, it was refreshing. Honesty is the way forward. I hoped they wouldn’t lose it but I was fairly sure they would.
Children went to school, and they worked to keep the basic facilities open. The drone-like adults fortunately managed most of the work.
There was little ‘good’ play, though. No gentle games. All of it wild. The young girls dressed like boys so there was no difference in the way they played or ran.
I believe that games, rhythmical, musical and orderly, which the little ones learned, with the avoidance of all horseplay, and all humiliating possibilities, are the beginnings of social, helpful intercourse.
At first glance, you might think that with proper care, these children, these apparent orphans, could grow. We have been so awful to our orphans in the past. Without a family, they have no one to care for them.
How was this not considered in establishing this hellish place? Were no lessons learnt from the past?
I came across a group of young girls. One was crying; the others appeared to have turned their backs on her.
“What is it?” I asked, hoping to comfort her. I thought again that without kind adult intervention, children would not learn kindness.
“Ah, don’t mind her. She is a very annoying girl. She is crying because her brother is a murderer and everyone knows it.”
“Not true!” the girl said. “He did not cause that accident!”
On further questioning, I understood that three young people (in fact, the ones I had seen escaping the terrible train accident I had witnessed) had been charged with causing that accident. There was no court case; as survivors, they were held to blame. One hundred and eighty-two people had died in the crash and ‘someone had to pay’, the authorities said.
“What level of insanity is this?” I said. No one would listen.
To my utter devastation, these children were charged with mass murder and sentenced to death. They were brought back to Diamantina, as if the children needed to be terrified into behaving themselves. I tried to push them to act, but not even the young men would respond. I thought, “You are weak and useless,” and I thought, “This, perhaps, is the end of the world.”
I tried and failed to stop their execution. How is such a thing even considered?
I collapsed. It seemed hopeless, and I was drained of all energy.
All health.
The children left me there in the dust. Some came to poke at me. One burnt me with a match. One tried to steal from me but I mustered a snarl that scared her off.
This was our future.
I felt destroyed.
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IX. The return
I think that I will keep travelling into the future until my past catches up with me.
When there was still hope in my heart of survival (because we do know of our own passing) I thought the world a good place. But now I am dying, the world seems dark and bent on destruction. Have I imagined it all? And yet here is the bare patch of skin burnt by that child. And I can feel the texture of these new clothes, tight and binding.
Tight
And
Binding.
“Another Week in the Future, an excerpt” by Kaaron Warren
THE LIONESS
Laura Lam
~The English Channel, 1349~
The lioness and her pride closed in on their prey.
Jeanne de Clisson, known to many as the Lioness of Brittany, pirate queen and sworn enemy of King Philip VI The Fortunate, bared her teeth. “Attack!” she screamed, holding her axe aloft.
Jeanne’s son, Guillame, turned the wheel, and the cog swung in the dark waters, heading towards the fat-bellied merchant ship, La Gracedieux, which attempted desperately to escape. The three ships of the Lioness’s Black Fleet, painted dark and with crimson sails, were far quicker than the smaller craft.
One soul on board would be particularly sweet for Jeanne de Clisson to hunt. Elyas de Blois was a minor noble but cousin and former foster son to her sworn enemy, Charles de Blois, Duke of Brittany. When she killed the boy, word would reach that son of a pig even as he rotted as an English prisoner of war. Her smile grew wider.
“Arrows!” she called, and the archers at the forecastle of the cog began the attack, the slim arrows flying through the air to burrow in the wood of the merchant ship or to pierce flesh. Above them, the sky that had threatened rain all morning released its promise, drenching the decks. Jeanne pushed the wet ropes of hair from her face, moving to the railing.
“Javelins!” she called, and the crew switched weapons, the thicker shafts able to do more damage. She scowled at the rain. She wished she could attack with pots of unslaked lime, but in weather like this, it was far too dangerous, as like to burn her men as her enemy.
La Gracedieux fired arrows back at the Black Fleet, but many missed the ship entirely and were lost to the ocean. The wind was against her prey, who were not as practiced in warfare as the Lioness and her sailors.
“Board!” she cried. Her men were already swinging the grappling hooks over their heads, letting them sail to skid along the other ship’s deck before catching in the railing. They were close enough now that Jeanne could see the fear on the sailors’ faces on the other ship. She thrummed with the anticipation of blood.
Her sailors pulled the grappling hooks closer, until they could jump onto La Gracedieux with ease. Jeanne hoped the crew would not surrender. If they did, there would be no thrill of a fight, only silent slaughter.
Her crew made quick work of most of the merchant sailors. Blood mixed with the rain to stain the decks. She waited until the situation was in hand before she jumped across the gap to the other ship. The smell of iron, salt, and wet wood filled the air. Her axe at the ready, she made her way to the captain, whose arms were pinned
by two of her crew.
“Captain,” she said, giving him a courtly bow. “I thank you for your ship and your cargo.”
He spat at her. His aim was good—the spittle hit her cheek and slid down her neck, the rain already rinsing it clean. She raised her eyebrow at him. Around her the melee continued, men screaming as they were cut down.
She raised her axe and, without ceremony, hit him in the gut with its blade. The captain was not brave in the face of his death. He screamed, high-pitched and terrified, and then bowed forward, gasping with the pain. Red bloomed on his jacket. Jeanne slit his throat with the knife from her belt and he fell to the deck, crimson pooling on the planks.
At her nod, the men dragged the captain’s corpse to the side and threw him over.
“Where is he?” she asked her first mate, Sancius.
He knew of whom she spoke. “Below deck. We put him in the brig at the beginning of the fight.”
“Excellent. Bring him up. I’d like to have a look at him.”
He nodded and went down to fetch the prisoner himself. Jeanne liked that about Sancius. Even with his rank, he didn’t mind going down and grabbing the prisoner he knew she was anxious to see. He’d been the first man she’d hired for his brawn and the jagged scars on his forearms and on his cheek. Sancius struck fear into the hearts of the men she was about to attack. They looked at him and forgot about the diminutive woman at his side, at least until she cut their lives short with her sabre or axe.
Sancius dragged the nobleman onto the deck. Elyas de Blois was little older than Jeanne’s sons. His deep red hair was dark with rainwater and hung limply in his eyes. He had a pretty face: fine-boned, almost delicate, and a slight build. His green eyes were full of fear yet he held his shoulders back defiantly.
Cranky Ladies of History Page 29