The House Next Door Trilogy (Books 1-3)

by Jule Owen

  Mathew says, “Nexus, tell me about Silverwood.”

  “Silverwood is the first English Adaptation city. It is situated twenty miles to the west of the interim capital of Birmingham. It is expected to officially become the new capital on the completion of the relocation of the Palace of Westminster. Named after former leader of the Garden Party and prominent adaptation advocate Cadmus Silverwood, the city will extend to four thousand square miles and will house a population of fifteen million, twenty per cent of the total UK population.

  Silverwood has been designed to provide safe shelter for humans, with plans based on the most pessimistic climate projections. It exploits state-of-the-art approaches to energy generation and conservation, food production, water management and waste recycling. The design of the city will also take advantage of the natural landscape, with many underground levels built into hills.

  The most controversial, innovative and costly aspect of Silverwood’s construction is the roof, made of self-replicating nano-material that grows itself. This roof will effectively lock-in Silverwood against the elements, allowing scientists to create their own weather systems. Silverwood’s chief advocate, Oliver Nystrom, argues this is essential for humanity’s ability to survive and thrive into a future increasingly beset by extreme weather events.

  Critics argue against the extraordinary cost of Silverwood, already close to breaching its one-and-a-half trillion pound budget.”

  Mathew sits for a while, absorbing what he has learnt. Then he opens a new file and names it ‘Letter to Myself’. He dictates quietly. His letter reads:

  I don’t know how to begin or how to convince you this isn’t an elaborate hoax, but I am your sixteen-year-old self and I am writing to you from Greenwich Park, half a mile from Pickervance Road. I have found a door through time. Our mother is dying in a Panacea hospital from what I believe is a military-made virus and my only hope of rescuing her is you.

  14 Revisit

  Tuesday, 13 February, 2091, London

  The armoured vehicle’s huge thick-treaded wheels clamber over another heap of rubble. Inside, Mathew is thrown against the glass as it lurches to one side. He stifles a yawn and glances at Bob, who grins at him. He spent most of the night on the Nexus and he’s barely had two hours sleep. She woke him at five, fired-up with the idea of taking him home. Now she is as pleased as punch with herself for organising this trip for him. Partly, Mathew knows, she wants to check out his story, but once she embarks on it, she starts to tell herself she is doing it for Mathew.

  Mathew’s old road is a twenty-minute walk from Bob and Mike’s hut, but it might as well be on Mars, Mike says - too dangerous to walk on foot. To get them there safely, Bob calls in a favour from one of the soldiers at the camp. The soldier’s name is Greg. His job is to patrol the nearby neighbourhoods, and clear the slums, to make sure there are no Non Grata living within a rocket launcher's trajectory of their camp. He’s going “up top” anyway as part of his morning patrol. Bob persuades him to take a couple of passengers. Mathew doesn't want to tell Bob he'd rather not know what has happened to the house on Pickervance Road.

  “There's nothing much here, y'know,” Greg says, his eyes firmly ahead. He scans the landscape for threats with the expert attention of someone with 5 years’ experience. Bob has told Greg that Mathew wants to visit an old family home. She hasn’t told him Mathew claims he still lives there. Mathew feels he should apologise to Greg. He doesn't want the responsibility for this detour, putting these people's lives at risk.

  “I think this is it,” Greg says. “There's no road sign but the on-board computer says this used to be Pickervance Road.”

  Mathew raises his eyes to the front windshield and is amazed.

  Rising from the widespread devastation, the piles of rubble, the half-demolished buildings, is a row of neat red-bricked Victorian terraced houses. Most of them have their roofs. A third of the way along the road, the armoured vehicle crushes a pile of bricks beneath it and rolls back to a stop. There is a tree growing right in the middle of the road. It’s pushing through the old cracked, sun-baked tarmac surface and blocks their way.

  Bob says, raising an eyebrow, “This is where you live?”

  Mathew tries to open the truck door. It is locked.

  “Just a sec,” Greg says. He grabs his gun and his helmet from the passenger seat. They watch him in the road, his helmeted head packed with a whole host of military gadgetry, carefully scanning their surroundings. In addition to the tools the helmet provides, Mike explains that Greg is using his enhanced biological vision to check for signs of human body heat.

  Greg comes back to the vehicle and opens Mathew’s door, “All clear,” he says. “There's no one here.”

  The tarmac beneath Mathew’s feet is broken like the crust of a well-done cake, full of cracks made by roots, bad weather and years of disrepair. Bushes and trees smother the road. As he walks to his front garden, bindweed grabs and snags at his legs. The old olive tree is alive, taller, wider. The front garden wall has collapsed. There are brambles everywhere, growing through the broken windows of the living room. The front door of his house is, incredibly, still there. Peeling blue paint reveals weathered wood underneath. He pushes at it and it opens without resistance. The locks are long broken.

  The stairs are dead ahead, bare of carpet and rotten in places. He starts to climb up. His foot goes through the third step and he grabs the handrail to steady himself. It wobbles dangerously. Mathew loses his balance and puts his foot through another rotten board.

  “Careful,” Bob says. “We don’t want you spending tomorrow in medical. Are you sure this is your house?”

  Mathew nods. Now he is here, he wants to see it.

  More cautiously now, he goes up and tests each step before putting his full weight on it. As he gets to the top, something moves suddenly, frightening him. He flattens himself against the wall and gapes up.

  “Pigeons,” Greg laughs. “Why is it we managed to kill ninety per cent of the life on this planet but we can't kill pigeons?”

  “I’m surprised the maggots haven’t killed and eaten them all,” Bob says.

  Mathew walks across the landing as Greg and Bob climb the stairs. He opens his bedroom door. There are two empty spaces where the windows used to be, one of them part-patched with shrilk sheeting and cardboard. The floorboards are grey and brittle from exposure to the elements. There is an old, stained mattress on the floor and blankets bundled up with a pile of old clothes. Someone is living here.

  “Your bedroom?” Bob asks, raising an eyebrow.

  Mathew nods.

  Across the landing is his mother’s room. There’s an actual bed, another stained mattress, a mess of bedclothes, a bit of rotted carpet on the floor and an old sideboard, none of it familiar. The windows are unbroken but the roof has a hole and a bucket underneath, full and overflowing with water.

  Bob comes and stands beside him. “So where is your mother?” she asks, now convinced of his story.

  “They took her,” he says. He rubs his eyes, genuinely overwhelmed and his voice is strained and desperate when he says, “I need to get to Silverwood.”

  “Okay,” Bob says and he knows she will help him.

  He gazes at the garden and across at Mr. Lestrange’s conservatory.

  “Would you look at that,” Bob says, coming up beside him. “It’s got orange trees growing inside of it.”

  It is just as it was in twenty fifty-five.

  15 Breakfast with the Government Agent

  Mathew follows Mike and clambers from their boat, into a stranger’s flimsy rubber dinghy that tips alarmingly. Then he jumps inelegantly onto the jetty, barely keeping his balance. Bob stands and waits with her gun and a rucksack slung across her shoulders. Behind her, on the wide wooden platform, there is a twelve-foot chain link fence, barbed-wire-topped, just like the park boundary. Bob leads the way through the gate, negotiating Mathew’s entrance with the soldier on guard duty. As she talks, Mathew takes it al
l in. Staircases run at angles between platforms, all across the side and the full height of the giant iron box holding back the Thames from the Houses of Parliament.

  Bob smooths things with the guard and they are allowed to go in. She asks, “Do you want to take a look around?”

  It is still quite early. People are coming to work. A man in a hardhat and a yellow safety jacket waves to Bob and Mike as they start to climb the staircase.

  At the top, Mathew stares at his feet, trying to catch his breath. Bob elbows him. They peer over the edge of the rusty iron wall. Parliament is below, or what is left of its half-dismantled carcass, hugged by a corset of scaffolding. There is heavy machinery inside; a giant crane rests on a platform, diggers, prefabs and trenches.

  Bob says, “Everything has to be lifted by the crane onto the boats. We load containers on barges and take them downriver, where they are put on trucks and then driven to Silverwood. There, another team meets and unloads it and works on restoration, reassembly or storage.”

  Mike points to one of the trenches far below, “That’s where I’m working right now, deep down there. We’ve found some interesting stuff under the floor from the earlier palaces. We’re recovering and recording what information we can while they unbuild the walls around us. Bob works there, supervising the roof being taken off the House of Lords.”

  Bob says, “I spend two days a week there,” she points at the partly dismantled Westminster Abbey, also within the great watertight iron sanctuary. Mathew takes in the edges of the barrier and the water high on the other side.

  “We got most of the good stuff a while ago,” Mike says. “The interior of Lady Chapel, most of the Kings and Queens, although we lost Bloody Mary’s head,” she pulls a face. “Bit embarrassing.”

  There is a persistent wind with a February bite. Mathew shivers.

  “We missed breakfast. I’m starving. Let’s go to the Anne Bonny,” Bob says. “My treat.”

  The Anne Bonny is an old Thames riverboat converted into a restaurant, one of a number nestled with the other vessels tied to the makeshift Westminster Pier, but the most popular. It’s already busy as Mathew, Bob and Mike enter. They come from the top deck via some stairs. At the bottom, there is the titular hero, a female mannequin dressed as a pirate.

  They take a booth with a window view across the water and make themselves comfortable. Bob and Mike are reading something. Mathew follows their lead and peers at the table. It’s an old wooden piece of furniture, scrubbed, scarred and battered by generations. Over the grain, the grooves, stains and cuts, a menu is projected with holographic versions of the food on offer. He watches Bob and Mike select their food with their hands, reaching and taking virtually what they want to eat in reality. He copies them and says, as they do, “That will be all,” when he has finished, hoping he doesn’t appear as surprised or impressed as he is.

  “Would you look at that!” Bob says nudging Mike.

  Bob and Mike both stare across the restaurant at the back of a tall man with short black curly hair, standing by the bar. When he turns, he greets them with a broad, boyish smile.

  “Well,” he says loudly as he walks across the room towards them. “If it isn’t my two favourite historians!”

  Bob gets up, “Mr. Quinn Hacquinn!” They kiss and hug like old friends. He leans across the table to greet Mike.

  “And who is this handsome young fellow?” he asks, staring at Mathew.

  “A friend,” Bob says.

  “The son of a friend,” Mike corrects. “Down from Silverwood.”

  “And what is the young son of a friend from Silverwood called?”

  “Mathew.”

  “Hello Mathew,” he stretches across the table to shake Mathew’s hand. “Is there room for one mid-sized bottom around this table?”

  They all move around to make room for Quinn, who studies the menu and makes a choice. Once this is done, he settles back and says, “What great occasion could have taken you away from the hallowed walls of the Palace of Westminster? Breakfast at the Anne Bonny is not like you at all. You are usually so puritanical.”

  Bob says, “This is very like you, on the other hand, you lazy bastard. We’re showing our young friend some hospitality. How is business with our Government Agent these days? Any contract issues with the labourers? Disputes over pay or conditions? Maggot children to send to camps?”

  “Now, all that is gravely exaggerated gossip. You know I just fill forms all day. I am harmless as a summer cold. Mildly irritating, unpleasant and inconvenient, but necessary to the order of things.”

  Mike snorts, “Viruses are deadly these days.”

  Quinn’s drink arrives. It is a red concoction. He takes a sip and peers through the glass at the top at his friends, “True enough.”

  “What is that awful stuff?” Bob asks.

  “Bloody Mary. Hair of the dog. Bit of a heavy night last night.”

  “Your liver must be ready to flambé by now.”

  “I’m on my third one. There’s a spare growing in a Birmingham lab, ready to swap.”

  Bob and Mike laugh.

  Quinn says, “No, seriously. There is. But what is human life without indulgence? It is brutish and short; you may as well live it to excess.”

  “You are showing us the way, Quinn,” Bob says.

  “I am fostering a new enlightenment. Or I will when I am sober.”

  “You are never sober,” Bob says.

  He grins.

  “So what is the young gentleman doing in this godforsaken rat-infested swamp of a dead great city?”

  “Apprenticeship.”

  “Educational work placement.”

  “Thinking of becoming an archaeologist? You don’t seem the type, somehow,” Quinn says as he studies Mathew thoughtfully. “I would more have you pegged as a boy who builds things. Robots and the like.”

  Mathew flushes as he stares into Quinn’s mischievous eyes. He makes a mental note to check his Nexus privacy settings. He mustn’t have completely switched his broadcast off.

  “Planning to stay long? I only ask because I thought I might be able to help negotiate a daily pass here on site.” He says to Bob, “Poor Darren downstairs will get his ears burnt from his boss when he finds out you persuaded him to let your friend through the gates with following the proper procedure.”

  “He’s alright,” Bob says. “He’s kosher.”

  “I know he is,” Quinn speaks to Bob but fixes his gaze on Mathew with the knowing eye twinkle. He asks Mathew directly, “So how long are you staying?”

  “We’ll take him to Silverwood with us tomorrow when we go for the St Paul’s inauguration,” Bob says.

  “Such a short trip. What a shame. Barely long enough to take in the sights.”

  “He needs to get back home.”

  “My mother is sick,” Mathew says.

  “Is that so? You must be worried.” When Mathew doesn’t reply, Quinn says, “Would you like to go sooner?”

  Mathew’s eyes widen.

  Quinn continues, “There’s a government caravan heading north this afternoon. I’m going with it. You could come with me, if you want to, Mathew. I mean, I don’t want to take you away from your friends and shorten your trip, but if you’d like there’d be space for you.”

  Bob says, “This wouldn’t be one of your tricks, Quinn, would it? No detours to Internment or suchlike?”

  “The boy’s legit; you said it yourself. He has bioID. I saw Darren’s log. He has a pass to the city of Silverwood. I want to get the boy home. You forget; part of my job is to make sure people are in the right place. I am trying to help, but if you don’t trust me…”

  “I love you, Quinn, you know I do, but you are a terrible human being.”

  Quinn clutches his heart dramatically, “Ouch, you wound me!”

  They laugh.

  Mathew says, “When would I get to Silverwood if I came with you?”

  “Tonight. As long as the convoy isn’t hijacked by Accountants and we a
ren’t all lined up against the nearest vertical surface and gunned into mincemeat.”

  Mathew looks at Bob and Mike.

  Mike says, “You should go if you want to. A day is a long time when someone has the virus.”

  Mathew nods. He says to Quinn, “I’ll come with you.”

  “Excellent!” Quinn says. “A travelling companion. It is a while since I have had a young impressionable person to share my life’s wisdom with. We shall have such fun together.”

  Bob sighs, “Mathew, you should wear earplugs for the whole journey.”

  Their food arrives, served by a pirate-themed robotic waiter, complete with tricorn hat and eyepatch.

  Quinn necks the rest of his Bloody Mary. He says to the waiter, “I’ll need another one of those.”

  After breakfast, Mathew says goodbye to Mike and Bob on the jetty, while Quinn prepares his boat.

  “Contact us, if you’d like,” Mike says. “Let us know how things go with your mum.”

  “I will if I can,” Mathew says.

  “Don’t pressure the boy,” Bob says. “Come here and give me a hug before you go, though.” Mathew is swamped by Bob’s many layers of clothing and her ample bulk. Her hug is so hard, when she lets go he gasps for air. She laughs at him.

  Mike holds his shoulders and says, “Take care of yourself. We’ll be thinking of you.”

  Mathew nods.

  In the boat, Quinn swears loudly, unable to get the engine to start. “This bloody thing!” he says. “I had it serviced a week ago. That criminal Flekerton doesn’t know one end of a spanner from a hosepipe. I’m going to have to row.”

  “Row!” Bob says amazed. “If you row you won’t reach the supply camp until dinner time.”

  “Nonsense! See these guns?” he says, mock-flexing his biceps. “Oarsman’s arms, forged in the Blue Boat at Oxford.”