The House Next Door Trilogy (Books 1-3)

by Jule Owen

  In Washington, Prime Minister Bartholomew Dearlove argued passionately in favour of signing the treaty. He urged his fellow heads of state to put archaic and emotional ideas of nationhood aside. He said a vote for ATLAS is a vote to save Western civilisation.

  In Birmingham, protestors gathered before parliament to ask the government not to surrender national sovereignty.”

  Bob is red-faced as she and Mike burst through the door.

  “Hello, Dr. Bob. Dr Mike,” Sergeant Baker says. “Been for a run?”

  “Oh. Hi, Charlie. We ran all the way down the bloody hill.”

  “Why did you do that?”

  “We were worried we’d miss the boy. But you haven’t done him yet.”

  “No, he’s all done and ready to go.”

  “Ready to go where?”

  “Wherever you want to take him. I’m guessing he’s staying with you? Although the bunkhouse has accommodation…”

  “He’s stopping with us,” says Mike quickly.

  Bob says, “So he’s okay then?”

  “Why, shouldn’t he be?” Charlie asks, mustering a degree of half-hearted suspicion.

  “No reason at all,” Mike says quickly.

  “There is his age,” Charlie chuckles. “The system says he’s fifty-one.” He shakes his head. “I suppose it’s meant to be fifteen. He’s pretty young to have a doctorate, but then I thought if he belongs to you, he’s probably some kind of child prodigy. I’m right, aren’t I?”

  Bob stares at Charlie. Mike says, “That’s right. He’s a trainee.”

  “Thought as much.” Charlie pulls opens a drawer, “Do you want a biscuit? Just off the truck from Birmingham this morning. They’re meant to have some natural ingredients. Mind you, the young doctor here won’t think them anything special - he’s a Silverwood resident, after all.”

  Bob gapes between Charlie and Mathew, “Silverwood?” Mike elbows her and Bob says, “Oh, yeah. He’s from Silverwood,” but as she turns from Charlie to focus on Mike and Mathew, her face is all questions.

  “Where did I put them? Here they are,” the sergeant waves a packet of biscuits, opens and offers them.

  Mike shakes her head, “No thanks, Charlie.”

  Bob takes a biscuit, “We’d better get going, then. Thanks, Charlie.”

  “Have a good evening, ladies. Nice to meet you, Doctor,” he says to Mathew.

  He is still chuckling to himself when they leave the prefab.

  12 The Dishonest War

  Bob and Mike’s hut is on the top of the hill on the west side of the park, built on Anglo-Saxon burial mounds. “Perfect for a couple of history enthusiasts,” Mike says.

  The hut is a weather-boarded prefab building, with peeling white-washed paint, a solar panelled roof, a small roof-mounted windmill, a water-tank and water butts collecting run-off from the gutters.

  It is still raining as they approach the hut, a drizzle now rather than a downpour, but the rain runs off the roof into the gutters, as steady as a mountain stream. The little house is surrounded by plant pots of all kinds containing herbs and edible leaves. There’s a small grove of fruit trees to the left of the door and a run for chickens, scratching and pecking silently as Mike opens the front door for him.

  Inside are three rooms; a bedroom, bathroom and a large room that functions as a dining room, living room and kitchen. He is given a quick tour.

  “Palatial by the standards of the park,” Mike says. “But we don’t have a spare room. You’ll have to crash on the couch.”

  “Couch is great,” says Mathew.

  She ushers him into the living room and invites him to sit.

  With nightfall, the temperature drops dramatically and Bob kneels before the wood-burning stove to set a fire. They send Mathew off to the bathroom for a hot shower, worried he might catch a chill from his swim.

  Before he goes in, Mike hands Mathew a towel and some clothes. “Probably a bit big for you. These belonged to my brother.”

  Mathew takes the bundle from Mike and goes to the bathroom, a tiny room barely large enough to turn around in, with a basic toilet, a tiny washbasin and a shower. He strips and showers quickly. The water is lukewarm, but there’s soap and it is good to get clean. The window is open and he shivers as he dries himself and gets dressed.

  Clean, warm and dry, Mathew joins Mike and Bob on their large, low, comfy rug-strewn sofa.

  Mike is studying him strangely, he thinks, as he takes his seat next to her.

  “Are you ok?” Bob asks her, but she just smiles and nods.

  The fire has taken and it crackles and snaps. They wait for it to burn, to turn white-hot. Mike uses tin foil to wrap the potatoes, opens the door to the stove and tosses the potatoes into the smouldering ash. While they bake, she cooks coffee on top of the stove.

  Mathew says, “Pete and Charlie called you Dr. Bob and Dr. Mike. Are you medical doctors?”

  Bob laughs her throaty laugh, then says as she gradually sobers, “No. No, we’re not. Although, given the amount of people who have been killed and injured on this project, it would be useful.”

  Mike says, “I’m an archaeologist, Bob is a historian. We started off being academics. I’m not sure what you would call us now. We’re busy doing stuff; neither of us has written anything for years.”

  “Applied historians and archaeologists?” Bob suggests.

  “We’ve been here a long time. We worked on St Paul’s before this. We’re here to add some credibility to a commercial enterprise and to make sure the wrong kind of corners aren’t cut, to avoid the Palace of Westminster being rebuilt in Silverwood with the Elizabeth Tower at the wrong end and to prevent the contractors from grinding the ancient bones of the kings and queens of England with their heavy equipment, by mistake.”

  “How long will you be here?”

  Bob glances at Mike, shakes her head, “Until the work is done. We don’t know. It’s taking us longer than we thought to dismantle and rebuild. Every stone has to be painstakingly catalogued and marked up, in order for it to be put back in exactly the right place. The buildings have been underwater for a long time. There’s sludge and rubbish all over the place. Some materials aren’t recoverable. We have to make sure we don’t destroy anything as we excavate. It all has to be transported across the country.

  “We’ve been here six years. We started off helping with the emergency recovery of objects not retrieved before the big flood. A huge amount has been moved throughout the last ten years. Books from the British Library, art treasures from all the galleries, precious objects from the museums.”

  “Where are they now?”

  “Special vaults and archives to keep it all safe.”

  “There’s a huge archive inside the mountains in Snowdonia. We went to visit it. That’s where a lot of the British Library stuff went.”

  “A lot of paintings, sculptures, other art objects and furniture went to Scotland when the royal family left. Things will come back to Silverwood once the buildings are moved and rebuilt to house them.”

  “I’ve had a thought,” Mike says. “We’re going to Silverwood the day after tomorrow for the grand opening of St Paul’s. It will be safe and a straightforward journey with a secure convoy. You could come with us?”

  “I want to get started tomorrow,” Mathew says. But then he remembers his last journey through one of Mr. Lestrange’s doors and how a week went by in tropical Siberia while time stood still in his own time. If time worked the same way here, it didn’t matter how long it took him. “Actually, that would be wonderful, thank you.”

  Mike opens the door to the stove and prods at the white-hot wood and the potatoes with a metal poker. She asks, “Is your mother very sick?”

  Mathew nods, “She will die, I think, unless someone helps her.”

  “Is it Tagus?” Mike asks.

  “Tagus?

  “The Tagus virus?”

  “It is a virus, but the doctors say they don’t know what it is.”

  M
ike nods thoughtfully. “People say there are all sorts of strains of viruses. Although we tell people my brother died from Tagus, it might have been any number of variants. The doctors wouldn’t say they knew what it was either. All they would say is it killed him by cytokine storm, which basically means his immune system was overwhelmed.”

  “Some medical people we know told us that what folks call the Tagus is not one virus at all, but several. If you believe them, the Russians made the virus or viruses, or the Latam Republic, or us. There may be antidotes available for certain strains to certain people. The government claims terrorists made it, which may be true. Who knows? No one admits ownership. No one wants to talk about it. They say the worldwide death toll is already greater than the number of people who died during the Spanish flu epidemic.”

  “And now it’s not just the refugee camps any more. It’s here amongst us. No one wants to talk about that either.”

  Mike says, “My brother was a highly qualified engineer with a bright future ahead of him. When he was diagnosed, they took him away. That was the last time we saw him alive. There are rumours of antidotes, but there were none for him. He died within 24 hours.”

  Mathew’s face whitens, “24 hours!”

  Bob says quickly, “Some people last a week. I’ve known people last ten days.”

  Mike says, “There was a community where people were sick for months, but didn’t die. Do you remember?”

  Bob nods and smiles encouragingly at Mathew.

  Mathew says, “But I don’t understand, why don’t people know how to cure these viruses? If people created them, they must have made antidotes.”

  “You must have heard the various governments of the world are conducting an undeclared biological world war.”

  “The Dishonest War.”

  “Given the world’s ever-diminishing resources, it makes sense to reduce the populations of enemy states. If it is true then neither side will release the antidote to their enemies, presuming they have one. Some people call Tagus “Deliverance” because it struck first in refugee camps. That made people suspicious that it’s a more deadly version of the Mercy.”

  Mathew has heard of the Mercy, “Population control?” he says.

  Bob nods, “Other people say it is a natural consequence of overpopulation, overcrowding, unsanitary conditions. The Edenists say it’s God’s judgment.”

  “For what?”

  “For messing with nature and our biological destiny, genetically modified crops, animals and people, for synthetic foods and biology, biobots and biorobotics. And for destroying our climate.”

  “They do have a point,” Mike says.

  Bob sneers, “They’re all crazy. No good or useful thought ever came from an Edenist.”

  Mathew’s eyes fall on a machine gun propped near the door. “Don’t you get tired of carrying guns all the time?”

  “We didn’t always have to carry guns,” Mike says. “When we came here the city was still under the control of the government.”

  “It still is, officially.”

  “The police, the army, they lost control here a few years ago. Like the rest of the south. No one admits there is a civil war going on. You know how it goes here now. The weather gets crazy through the winter and spring. People who have found somewhere to live not previously flooded, are flooded again. The infrastructure breaks. Constant energy blackouts, mains water cut off. Roads aren’t repaired. Fuel for transport expensive or difficult to get. There’s no food. There’s endless riots and looting. Yet the government is still raising taxes. So people stop paying because they don’t know what they are paying for anymore. Places are too dangerous for the police to go in. Instead they send the army, but the army doesn’t know whom it is supposed to be fighting because everyone looks like a civilian. There are no soldiers for them to fight, only kids, gang members, criminals and occasionally a handful of randomly organised ordinary people who have had enough.”

  “When the government moved north, they took all the people with power, money and influence with them. They left the south to rot. That’s where the Edenists come in. They are organised. They provide food and shelter to the homeless, they established schools and hospitals. But the two most important things they provide are something to believe and an army. The Edenist preachers do the talking. The Accountants keep law and order.”

  “But why do they want to kill you? You are saving churches.”

  “They don’t want to kill us. A lot of them approve of what we are doing because they are traditionalists. They want to return to the old ways. But they spread a message of violence and that leads some to think any government worker is fair game.”

  “So we live here, behind barbed wire fences, and carry guns with us wherever we go.”

  Mike crouches next to the fire and opens the glass door of the stove with a glove. “Potatoes are ready, I think.” She grabs the tin-foil parcels with iron tongs. “Get some plates and the cottage cheese, Bob, will you?”

  Bob goes off to the kitchen, “Butter as well?”

  “If there is any.”

  “Mathew, give me a hand.”

  Mathew goes into the little kitchen and Bob hands him cutlery and three glasses of water.

  While they eat, Mike asks Mathew, “Are you a PhD?”

  Mathew smiles, “No. I will be one day, though.”

  “Charlie said…”

  “A mix-up.”

  “Like your age?”

  Bob says, “The system doesn’t get data wrong.”

  “Of course it does,” Mike says. “We thought you weren’t on the system. That you were Non Grata. Also, because of your e-Pin,” she pulls her own earlobe to show him her naked lobe. She isn’t wearing an e-Pin. “Most people who can afford it have augmentations. Only the poor still use wearables.”

  “And the Edenists and Accountants, because they say God made us perfect and it is blasphemous to interfere with God’s blueprint,” Bob says. “Charlie said you are a resident of Silverwood, which presumably means the system says you are. But Silverwood residents are privileged. The privileged all have implants and you use wearables. Plus, you didn’t know how far Silverwood is from London. Why are you really here?”

  “I told you, I am trying to save my mother.”

  “And Charlie thinks you are this doctor from Silverwood. You have someone else’s identity, but it is impossible unless you share his DNA.”

  “I do share his DNA,” Mathew says. “We’re the same person.”

  Bob laughs, “Right. I suppose you are about to tell me you are some kind of clone, part of one of those strange projects they run at Silverwood University?”

  Mathew says, “Something like that.”

  Bob whistles through her teeth, “Holy moly,” she says. “Best not let any Accountants catch you.”

  “He’s joking,” Mike says.

  “Of course he’s joking.”

  Mathew smiles awkwardly.

  13 Letters to Himself

  The sofa makes a comfortable bed. Bob and Mike have turned in for the night and Mathew is alone. There are no curtains at the windows. The sky has cleared of clouds, blown away by a rising breeze, and moonlight floods into the room. The fire is dying, the embers glow deep red against black charcoal. He can’t sleep, anxious about the day he will have to wait to get to Silverwood, wondering how long his mother has left.

  All the time he’s been in this new world, this future London, he hasn’t even tried to connect to the Nexus. The last time he travelled through one of Mr. Lestrange’s worlds his e-Pin and Lenz didn’t work. But, he supposes, here in this time he is still alive. It’s worth a try.

  He initiates a call with a low whispered voice command aimed at not waking his hosts. A brief login prompt appears before his eyes, surprising him. It says, “Checking bio-ID.” A moment later there’s a new message. It reads,

  Welcome, Dr. Mathew Erlang.

  Doctor.

  This is my older self. The system thinks I am my older s
elf.

  But of course, why wouldn’t it?

  The same DNA, the same bioID, the same person.

  I get my PhD!

  The menu of the Nexus is remotely hosted and updated. The Lenz operating system is quite different from the one he is used to. It takes only a few moments to update.

  Then, “News,” he says, trying something simple first.

  The day’s headlines, the ones from Charlie’s office, immediately appear before him. He mentally lists the things he should know as a citizen of this world.

  “Nexus,” he says, “Who is Bartholomew Dearlove?”

  “Text or speech?” comes the response.

  “Speech.”

  Through his e-Pin he hears, “Bartholomew Dearlove is the leader of the Universal Popular Party and has been the Prime Minister of England and the head of the coalition government for eleven years. He is serving his third term as Prime Minister.

  “Before the general election, there had been calls for him to resign. Many hold him responsible for the continuing civil unrest in the south. However, Deputy Prime Minister and leader of the Garden Party, Oliver Nystrom, offered Mr. Dearlove his full support. He rejected calls for him to take the leadership for himself.

  “Mr. Dearlove, formerly the Mayor of London, became Prime Minister after the assassination of seventy-nine-year-old Saul Justice. Mr. Justice was assassinated by one of his own personal guards. On his death, the new Prime Minister, Bartholomew Dearlove, took the decision to call a general election. In his most famous speech, Dearlove hailed the return of democracy to Britain and denounced the emergency government’s excessive powers and duration.

  “The election of 2080 returned a hung parliament. In the negotiations that followed, Oliver Nystrom accepted the offer of the role of Deputy Prime Minister and the Garden Party won fifty per cent of parliamentary seats, heralding the biggest political shift for 22 years.

  “Mr. Dearlove offered his full support to the Garden Party’s agenda of adaptation. The coalition government has since worked tirelessly to build climate adaptation infrastructure. The crowning achievement of the coalition will be the new capital city of Silverwood.”