Tomorrow’s World

by Davie Henderson

  Anyway, what I heard on the radio got me thinking. It really concentrates your mind when you know the police are hunting you. So what I got to thinking was that I should either lay low or move somewhere else. And laying low really isn’t an option, because I need the Green Man just as much as Planet Earth does. So it looks like I’ll have to move on. It’s probably for the best because it solves the problem regarding Sara—I have to forget about her and she has to forget about me because she has no future with me and I have no future, period. Funny, with all that’s been happening I’d forgotten about that. I’ll write her a note. I’m not sure exactly what I’ll say, whether to tell her I’m the Green Man. Probably it’s better that I don’t. Maybe she’d be proud of me, but then again maybe she wouldn’t understand. All I know about the note is that it’s going to be a lot different from the self-pitying one I would have written a couple of days ago.

  APRIL 22

  I was trying to work out where I should move to, and suddenly it hit me: why limit myself to one place? Why not go on a tour, take my message across the whole damn country? I’ll be sort of like David Janssen in that old black and white television show. The Fugitive, I think it was called. The one where he’s wanted for a crime he’s not really guilty of, and has to move from town to town to keep one step ahead of the law. He never stays in any one place for long enough to put down roots or get close enough to anybody for them to guess his true identity. I used to love that show. Now it looks like I’m going to have a chance to write, direct, and star in a whole series of my own. I have enough savings to last about a year, and, well, I won’t need any more than that. Everything has worked out as though it’s meant. I feel that more strongly with every passing day. Each time I decommission a car I feel like another hand is moving mine, that a greater force is at work through me. Call it God if you will, but I prefer to call it Gaia.

  APRIL 24

  Boy, did I get the surprise of my life this morning. I caught the sleeper train down to London and, when I got off, the first thing I saw was a headline on one of the kiosk billboards announcing that I (the Green Man) was there. I froze, like fugitives do in old movies when they see a wanted poster with their likeness on it. I couldn’t figure out how they’d known I was coming. I mean, the paper had to have been printed before I’d even got on the train. Then I read the first paragraph of the story and realized what had happened: someone else must have heard about what I’d been doing and had taken on my mantle. At first I was angry that they were ripping me off. Then, when I put my personal feelings aside, I saw it was wonderful: I had my first disciple. Without intending it, I’d become a messiah, and my message was spreading.

  APRIL 24

  It looks like I’ve got more than one disciple. A lot more. Today’s paper said a couple of hundred cars were ‘decommissioned’ (they said vandalized—how dare they) last night. I only took out 21, so I’m figuring there were about another nine or ten guys at work. Maybe twelve, like the twelve apostles.

  APRIL 25

  Holy schmoly!!! I made the TV news today. Or, should I say, we made the news. And the best thing was, they had a poxy vox or whatever it’s called—you know, where they interview ordinary people and ask for their opinions—and the people who spoke out against me, or rather spoke out against us, sounded so selfish when they were doing it. Even some drivers conceded we had a point, and most of the people who didn’t have cars talked about us like we were heroes doing a job that had to be done.

  APRIL 26

  Boy, the power of TV! A whole lot of people must have been inspired by what they saw last night, because there were Green Men at work in towns and cities all over the country in the hours after the news feature was aired. As a result we made the news again, and this time we were moved from being the funny story at the end of the show to being the second story. We would have been first if it hadn’t been for a superstorm hitting New Orleans and finishing off the work that Katrina started a decade ago. They actually linked the storm to global warming caused by, among other things, car exhausts, and used that to segue into the story about the Green Men.

  APRIL 27

  I suppose it was inevitable. Any worthwhile cause will have its martyrs. One of my followers got caught ‘green-handed’ by the owner of an SUV last night and was beaten to a pulp and left to die in the street. I feel terrible, but in a way I also feel it’s happened for a reason, like the things that happened to me. They interviewed the guy who found the body of our first KIA (killed in action) and he said, ‘What that guy did to this Green Man, others like him are doing to the planet.’ I couldn’t have put it better myself.

  APRIL 28

  My disciple didn’t die in vain. Far from it. Something amazing happened once word of the death—the murder—got out. Someone, somewhere, had the idea of reclaiming the streets, of using bicycles to form a rolling blockade. Word must have spread on the Internet, and this morning there were cyclists wearing green armbands and riding shoulder to shoulder on the streets of almost every city, causing traffic chaos. We had another KIA—a motorist apparently lost his patience and deliberately ran over one of the cyclists. The surrounding cyclists who saw what happened got off their bikes and dragged the motorist out of his car, and other people in cars got out to help the motorist. By the time the police arrived another five people were dead and dozens were seriously injured. Again, I do feel bad because I know none of this would be happening if I hadn’t started spraying cars. But, then again, if cars hadn’t poisoned me and the planet I wouldn’t be out with my spray can. I just did what had to be done. I didn’t realize what I was starting, though. Those scenes on the news today were like something from a movie about a world spinning out of control. But then I shouldn’t be surprised, because that’s exactly what is happening to the world.

  If anyone’s in doubt about that, they only have to look at the weather forecast for later in the week. ‘The mother of all storms’ is how the forecaster put it, and one expert they interviewed said it was the sort of storm you used to only get in the tropics, and even then only once every couple of decades. Now they’re happening several times a year in the tropics, making whole cities uninhabitable, and it looks like they’re starting to happen here. I suppose it isn’t surprising given the fact we’re getting the other kinds of weather they used to only get in the tropics—the heat and cloudbursts.

  APRIL 29

  There was a different kind of chaos on the streets today—people heading for high ground. All of London is at flood risk from tidal surges and the rain that’s coming with the wind. They’re expecting major structural damage and power cuts, and advising everybody to leave.

  I think I’ll catch a train back north. I’ve not been feeling so good lately, coughing up horrible black stuff, waking up with my boxers and T-shirt soaked in sweat that I’m sure is due to more than the sweltering nights. I just want to go back home.

  I turned over the next page but there was no more writing on it. I tried to imagine the chaos and panic that must have filled the next days of the Green Man’s life. I wondered how much longer he’d lived, and how he’d died. I couldn’t decide if he’d been unbearably self-righteous or heroically altruistic, a visionary or plain nuts.

  I just hoped he’d made it home.

  CHAPTER 10

  OUTSIDE

  THERE WAS A MUSTY SMELL IN MY NOSTRILS WHEN I woke up the next morning. I’d fallen asleep with the diary in my hands, and it was lying on the bed beside me. The events it described came flooding back so vividly it was as though I’d lived through them. No doubt I’d dreamed about Green Men and traffic jams, street fights and hurricanes.

  I got up and put the diary in my bookcase. It was a tight fit. Not wanting to damage the timeworn jotter I didn’t force it all the way in. If I had, the chances are I’d never have solved the mystery of that other bookcase, the one in Doug MacDougall’s room. It was the shadow that did it, the one cast by the jotter sticking out a centimeter or two. I’d seen a shadow like that before, stare
d at it for hours the previous night without recognizing its significance. I hurried over to my computer and flashed up the photo of Doug’s bookcase on my wallscreen. Sure enough, there it was: a vertical dark band in the middle of the top shelf. I looked at the spine of the book immediately to its right, the one casting a shadow. It had obviously been difficult to put back in, suggesting it was the last one to be taken out.

  It was called Lichens and Mosses of the World.

  It was difficult to imagine a less promising title for a book that held the key to a mystery, but at the same time I felt sure this was the last thing Doug MacDougall had read. I was equally certain that somewhere between its covers was the passage that changed his outlook on life—and that there was a good chance it explained his death. It might have been a coincidence that Doug died before he could tell his daughter about his ‘amazing discovery,’ but I’m not a big believer in coincidence. I’ve lost count of how many cases I’ve cracked by making a connection between things that appear to be linked only by chance.

  If there was such a connection in this instance, I wouldn’t find it without getting my mitts on a copy of Lichens and Mosses of the World.

  I started with the Ecosystem, searching by author because his name, Jay Bright, was shorter than the book’s title. Sure enough, Lichens and Mosses was in the ISBN index, but nobody had bothered digitizing it. I wasn’t too surprised. You can earn pleasure points by adding to The Sum Total of Human Knowledge, but the number of points you get is related to the profundity of the original content and the value you’ve added by your own powers of analysis. Lichens and Mosses of the World didn’t have any obvious potential for providing rich pickings on either count. Still, Doug MacDougall had apparently found something startling in it and, just as I couldn’t rest until I discovered what had happened to Doug, so I couldn’t settle until I found out exactly what had shaken his world.

  Since Doug’s apartment had already been cleared out I couldn’t simply help myself to his copy of Lichens and Mosses of the World. I had to find another copy.

  I had to go to the old city.

  “You’ve never been to the old city?” I asked incredulously.

  Perfect Paula shook her head.

  I’d told her my theory about the book and what I intended doing about it and, before I knew it, I was trying to persuade her to come with me to the old city. Suddenly it seemed very important that she came; at least as important as getting a copy of the book. I wanted to find out if Perfect Paula had a sense of wonder to awaken. I wanted to find out if there was a truly human being deep inside her. The strength of my desire to see if she’d loosen up when outside the community, if the change in surroundings would change her, took me by surprise.

  “I’m as baffled that you make trips to the old city as you are that I don’t,” Paula told me. “Why damage your health when there’s no need? We have everything we need right here in the community.”

  “Aren’t you the slightest bit curious to see what it’s like?” I asked.

  “I can do that with a timesphere.”

  “It’s not the same. It’s not the same at all.”

  “What’s different?”

  I didn’t know where to begin. It was like trying to describe color to a person who can’t see, or music to someone who can’t hear. Paula looked at me curiously. I waited for her to sneer as I struggled to articulate. When she didn’t, I realized she hadn’t just asked the question because she thought I’d have difficulty answering it, which is what Numbers often do. She genuinely wanted an answer. I tried my best to give her one: “It’s a different world, and you can be part of it in a way you can’t in a timesphere. You can reach out and touch things; think about what they were used for, and by whom.

  “You can open doors and step into other people’s lives, learn something about how they lived from the things they gathered around them. Some houses leave you cold and unmoved, or just plain depressed, but others captivate you. The past comes alive around you, and having the chance to explore it is amazing in a way that nothing in the community is, not even the timespheres. You want to open every door and drawer or just walk slowly from room to room. And, as you do, you start to feel a presence not your own.”

  “Don’t tell me you believe in ghosts, Travis,” she said, and now there was a hint of a sneer on her face and in her voice.

  “No, but some places definitely have an atmosphere, and when you go there it doesn’t take much imagination to hear the echo of old footsteps and voices,” I said. “There’s a story in every house. There’s a mystery with clues in every room, in every cupboard and drawer and box.”

  As clearly as I saw signs of old lives in those derelict houses, I saw confusion in Paula’s eyes. I guessed she was torn between mocking contempt, envy, and curiosity; perhaps she was wondering if she’d feel any of the things I’d talked about on visiting such a place.

  “Why not come with me and find out,” I said.

  “What?” she asked.

  “Why not come with me and find out if you can feel any of those things, too.”

  The assurance I was used to seeing in her eyes had disappeared altogether, and I knew she was taken aback that I’d read her mind so completely.

  Then it was her turn to surprise me. I’d expected her to come up with a whole host of perfectly logical reasons for not venturing to the old city with me, but she didn’t say a single word, just nodded.

  We did a search on the Olden Days Database—largely drawn from the Internet which was at the heart of life sixty years ago—and found two libraries within walking distance that had listed Lichens and Mosses of the World in their catalogues. One was in the old city of Dundee. I guessed that was where Doug MacDougall got his copy. The other library was on the far side of the river, in what had been the middle-class suburb of Newport. I thought that was our best bet.

  Okay, I also wanted to go there because it was a bit further away, giving me more time with Paula. Then there was the fact it was made up of gorgeous old stone villas; if anywhere could enchant Paula, it was there.

  After stocking up with four filtermasks apiece—the most you’re allowed in any one day—we breathed into the first of them and set off on our little adventure.

  I noticed a change in Paula as we made our way down to the old city. Her stride shortened and she began looking around, not straight ahead like Numbers usually do. I’d forgotten how startling the change from community to old city is the first time you make it, because I’ve walked from one to the other so many times. There’s no boundary wall or fence, no moat or ditch, but the demarcation is just as abrupt. The narrow, well-maintained streets give way to wide, potholed roads strewn with masonry, broken furniture, and burnt-out cars. The regular, tiny-windowed, ten-story havens and the low gray factories are replaced by a bewildering assortment of buildings of all shapes and sizes scattered about here, there and everywhere. There are towering thirty-story apartment blocks with their windows blown out by hurricanes, and the tattered remains of flapping curtains forlornly adding flashes of color…

  The remains of factory chimneys shorn off halfway up by superstorms, looking like the lightning-struck stumps of petrified trees…

  And the spires of churches where people once gathered to worship a God who would eventually abandon them. Or maybe they abandoned Him to worship the new god, the Ecosystem.

  There are old tenement blocks with water-stained and crumbling walls; with plants sprouting from chimney pots, and rusty drain pipes dangling from the roofs and hanging off the gables. The windows are boarded up or gape darkly, with discolored net curtains like smoke-darkened flags of surrender hung out by defeated inhabitants who’d long since given up the ghost. The doors hang off their hinges, or have been beaten down by the desperate hands and feet of the hungry and thirsty; their faded and tarnished plaques spelling out the names of people who don’t live there any more, above letterboxes that no longer swing open with anything except the wind.

  There are brick walls
covered in graffiti that was meaningless when it was written, let alone now.

  Signs advertise products that haven’t been made for decades, or name streets hardly anyone has walked for sixty years; traffic lights and lamp-posts no longer light up.

  I hardly noticed any of these striking sights, because I was watching Paula as she took them in. She didn’t say anything. I had the feeling that, for once, she was at a loss for words. She spoke plenty but in a different language, one made up of barely audible gasps of shock and surprise, uncharacteristic hesitations and disbelieving shakes of the head.

  I spoke before she did, saying, “It’s like the old city has learned everything there is to know about how to look the worse for wear, and doesn’t try to hide its knowledge: every way stone can crumble and wrought-iron can rust; plaster can peel, paint can fade, and wood can warp and splinter; every way a road can be cratered and potholed, a pavement pitted and broken.”

  Paula nodded, unable to take her eyes off the dereliction around her, and said, “Yes, that’s exactly what it’s like, but I couldn’t have put it like that.”

  “You don’t get a true impression from watching movies or hearing teachers talk about it, do you?”

  She shook her head. “You get a picture, but it’s incomplete in some way I can’t describe.”

  “It’s the stuff you can’t describe that gives it atmosphere.”

  A gust of wind blew back a curtain as we walked by, and Paula’s eyes opened wide in fright. I should have laughed at her, because they regard displays of emotion as a sign of weakness, and we love nothing better than witnessing such a nervous reaction in them. But for some reason I didn’t laugh or even smile at her alarm. Instead, I said, “It’s okay, it’s only the wind.”