News from Gardenia

by Robert Llewellyn

  ‘Track-ways, so you do have roads, like cars and trucks and stuff, only underground.’

  William smiled. ‘I’m not sure what you mean but I’m fairly confident our transportation system isn’t quite the same as the systems you might have used. I believe you had surface tracks for machines to use.’

  ‘Oh, we had roads, William, loads of them, everywhere. I often used them to navigate. Very easy to follow a motorway.’

  ‘A motorway. That sounds rather lovely.’

  ‘Believe me, they were anything but lovely,’ I said. As we levelled out I could see a pattern emerging from this strange yet familiar landscape. I started to notice more and more long greenhouses dotted around. They were quite large structures, covering a couple of acres each. ‘You’ve got a lot of greenhouses,’ I said.

  ‘What is a green house?’

  ‘Sorry, I mean the glass houses, the big glass structures.’

  ‘Oh, I see, yes, very good. They are not made of glass though; the exterior covering is entirely thermo cells, solar cells I think you may know them as. We use them to grow a great deal of our food.’

  ‘So they generate power as well as protect the plants.’

  ‘Indeed, that is correct. All our structures capture power. Oooh look!’ said William suddenly, pointing to our right. ‘That’s Moore Hall. I’ve stayed there many times.’

  The large building, still only two storeys high, had a very large glasshouse close by.

  ‘That is one of the earliest communities,’ said William. ‘See the wind vanes.’

  I hadn’t noticed them until William pointed them out. A long ribbon of green material stretched between upright poles – like telegraph poles, the material seemed to go on for miles.

  ‘Wind vanes?’ I asked.

  ‘It’s a bit of a relic now, but they do still capture a lot of energy; the fluctuations caused by the wind drive actuators buried in the ground. All the energy they use at Moore Hall and more comes from the vanes.’

  ‘Brilliant,’ I said, this time trying not to shake my head.

  ‘I’m glad you approve,’ said William with a gentle smile.

  In the distance I saw a familiar sight, a cluster of towers poking above the tree line.

  ‘Wow, is that Oxford?’

  William stared ahead. ‘I dare say you are correct young man, your eye sight is clearly a lot sharper than mine.’ He held up the map and stared at it closely. ‘Yes, it must be Oxford; you may wish to fly over it.’

  I banked gently to the left so the towers were directly in our path. Although the buildings were familiar, nothing else was – it was as if the forest had taken over the whole country. All I could see beneath us were trees and as we got closer I realised the bulk of the city had gone; it was just a series of old buildings in woodland.

  ‘So where are all the houses? This used to be quite a big town in my day.’

  ‘There are still houses, lots of houses. Look, there’s one,’ said William. He was right, there was a house, and a mile or so further on, another one.

  As the tower of Magdalen College came closer, I reduced altitude and banked to the right. I could see the river, and Magdalen bridge, and on the bridge, a building. Either side of the building was a garden; it was clearly no longer a road. There really were no roads anywhere to be seen in what was once Oxford. I banked to the left and saw the Bodleian Library looking as though it was in very good repair. It seemed most of the old college buildings were still standing, although due to the number of trees growing between them the whole place looked unrecognisable.

  ‘Is it still a university?’ I asked.

  ‘I suppose you could describe Oxford as such, although it is more a place of research. Many people from around the world come to stay and work here. I have worked here in my youth. It’s a wonderful place to visit; I’m sure you’d be most welcome.’

  I couldn’t help it – I shook my head again as we resumed our course. How could a city the size of Oxford disappear, the ring road, the motorways, the industrial estates, the housing estates, all the development I knew so well; where had it gone?

  ‘I can’t help wanting to know where everyone lives. It’s like the whole of England is a forest. What’s happened? Does everyone live in London?’

  ‘Goodness no. We don’t really have a London anymore, not as you would have known it. We don’t really have towns; we have spread out.’

  ‘But there doesn’t seem to be enough housing for everyone. Do people live underground? Where is everyone?’

  ‘I don’t think people live underground,’ said William with a big grin. ‘How big was the population in your time?’

  ‘I don’t know exactly, somewhere around sixty million.’

  ‘Goodness me, we are now barely twenty million at the last census. Sixty million! Where on earth did you all live?’

  ‘I’ll tell you one thing: it was a lot more crowded than it is now. So what happened? How did the population drop so steeply?’

  ‘I don’t think it dropped suddenly, not like a plague or anything like that. People had fewer children and I suppose we generally live longer; I think that’s the main reason.’

  ‘But how did you do that, with legislation?’

  ‘Goodness no, not in my lifetime. I believe when very few people have more than one child it just becomes the norm. I know that for a long time many people had one child, if that. Many men are unable to father a child, my parents bore only me, I have only one child, my child had only one child, so the population halves every generation. There is now some concern that we may have taken it too far – more and more people are having two children these days. There seem to be so many children about.’

  ‘You don’t approve?’

  ‘Oh, I do, very much. I have one grandchild but I’m about to become a great grandfather for the second time. It’s wonderful.’

  I stared ahead. It all seemed too simple. It sounded as though, from what William and Paula had told me, the human race had steered away from the disasters of war, climate change, overpopulation, starvation and destruction of the planet by simple peer pressure, by organising themselves without some overriding authority telling them what to do. It all sounded utterly unconvincing. I felt sure there was something going on out of sight. Something was controlling these innocent, charming people. There had to be some hidden force or influence.

  ‘There’s Kingham,’ said William, pointing slightly to our right.

  I glanced down at his map. Sure enough, the map said Kingham Hall, but all I could see was trees.

  ‘I can’t see anything I recognise,’ I said as we banked to the left to circle where the village should have been. Suddenly a familiar-looking roof caught my eye: the barn and the big manor house were still there, although again surrounded by mature trees. I worked out from the angle of the barn that my own house had disappeared. What had taken its place was nothing more than a vegetable garden by the look of things.

  ‘This is so weird; my house has gone.’

  William reached across the small cockpit and touched my arm gently. ‘Many years ago we had so many empty houses we did remove the great majority of them. We used all the materials again. Nothing was wasted.’

  ‘So there’s nothing left of my world,’ I said as we continued to circle around what had once been my home. ‘Well, there’s some old buildings I recognise, but not much else. Let me see if my airfield is still there.’

  I banked to the right and headed towards Enstone. The midday sun reflected off the roof of an enormous glass-house, built where Enstone airfield had once been. The rest of the field was of course dense woodland, as it seemed was everywhere else.

  I glanced at the battery level, still 100 per cent, and we’d been flying for thirty minutes. Again I slowly shook my head.

  ‘Are you feeling unwe
ll?’ asked William.

  ‘I’m fine. I think it’s just the endless shock of being here, of how immediately familiar and yet how utterly different everything is.’

  ‘I cannot begin to imagine what you are going through, my friend,’ said William sympathetically. He placed his hand on my forearm and patted it gently. For some reason I didn’t find this move intrusive or uncomfortable, quite the opposite. I was very grateful for the reassurance.

  ‘If you are feeling up to it, I think we should head south until we reach the Thames, then follow it east towards the sea. There is something along the way that I feel will interest you greatly.’

  ‘What sort of thing?’

  ‘Have you heard of Heathrow?’ asked William, pronouncing the name quite carefully.

  ‘Heathrow airport?’ I said in surprise. ‘Is that still there? You do have aircraft!’

  ‘Not exactly,’ said William.

  ‘Space rockets, oh wow!’ I said, grinning like a loon.

  ‘Let us head south now – the river is not far. I’m sure that’s the best route to follow.’

  I banked around and headed south. ‘I’m finding it hard to orient myself,’ I said. ‘There are so few landmarks to guide me, and my sat nav is useless,’ I said, tapping the dormant screen.

  William passed me the map. With a brush of his finger an arrow appeared, a 3D hovering arrow that shimmered slightly above the surface area of the map. It looked so intensely as if it were floating between my eye and the map below I wanted to touch it, to feel its glossy surface.

  ‘Follow the arrow – it is pointing in the direction we need to head,’ said William.

  I adjusted our direction very slightly and the arrow shimmered from blue to green.

  ‘That is pretty bloody amazing,’ I said, glancing over at William.

  The old man smiled and stared ahead. ‘I don’t wish to build things up too much, but I feel what we are about to see will impress you.’

  10

  We flew due south for some time, over endless forest broken only by the occasional small field neatly planted with what could have been vegetables or ground fruits. There was the odd square of oil seed, an occasional field of what could have been wheat or barley. There were no towns, just houses dotted about here and there, and of course many more glass houses. At one point we flew over something that was a recognisable street, with rows of old houses either side of gardens.

  ‘That’s Burford,’ said William. ‘You may recognise that.’

  I’d been for a pub lunch in Burford once when Beth and I had done an exploratory bike ride around Kingham. It was vaguely familiar except for the absence of the traffic chugging up the hill between the houses. No road now, just gardens.

  After a few minutes or so, batteries still at 100 per cent, I saw the sun glint off a river in the distance.

  ‘Ahh, Kelmscott and old father Thames,’ said William. ‘Let us turn to the east and follow it – there is much to see along its banks.’

  I did as William suggested and followed the river’s meandering path. The water was occasionally obscured by large trees but following its general direction was easy. I was concerned about landing by this time; we’d been flying for close to forty minutes. If the old fellow was caught short there wasn’t much I could do about it.

  ‘How are you bearing up, William?’ I asked.

  ‘I’m having the most wonderful time,’ he said without looking at me; he was staring at the ground.

  ‘I’m just a little concerned about landing somewhere. If you need, you know, if there’s a call of nature, well, the only place I know we can land is in your field.’

  William turned to me and smiled. ‘Don’t fret,’ he said. ‘I am fine, I’m having such a wonderful time the last thing I need is to have a wee-wee.’

  A wee-wee. So after two hundred years of massive cultural and technological change, people still called taking a piss having a wee-wee.

  After passing over Newbridge where the Windrush meets the Thames, another landmark I recognised, we followed the river past Oxford again, with William pointing out various communities along the way. No big urban development, just a series of houses surrounded by more trees.

  It was only when we passed over the bridge at Henley, again a landmark I could recognise, that I realised we had already passed Reading, except there was no Reading, just a few farms.

  Beyond the bridge I saw some strange-looking buildings on the bank of the river.

  ‘What are those?’ I asked William pointing to the structures.

  ‘Heat extractors,’ said William. ‘They extract the naturally occurring heat from the river and turn it into energy; there are many of them all along the Thames.’ Of course from that moment on I noticed these little buildings again and again.

  I was very relaxed – the Yuneec essentially flew itself on autopilot, and I merely adjusted the direction every now and then in a lazy attempt to follow the river.

  After another minute something ahead caught my eye. I was vaguely scanning the horizon when my eyes just stopped, transfixed by what was before me.

  At first, the four lines made no sense to me, just four vertical lines in the sky, stretching from the land horizon into the misty blue. These thin lines were directly in our path and it was only when I saw an object rising up one of the lines that I started to blink.

  ‘What in heaven’s name is that?’ I asked as the object continued to rise up one of the lines. As I was speaking another appeared out of the misty blue and descended at much the same graceful speed.

  ‘That, my dear fellow, is Heathrow. That is what we have come to see.’

  As we got closer to the lines, another object started climbing up another line, a small dark box-like shape.

  ‘What is it?’ I asked. ‘I just can’t work it out.’

  ‘Pods,’ said William. ‘The ones that look like jewels or maybe like tears, they are passenger pods; the cuboid ones are for transporting goods, specialist goods or medicine, sometimes raw materials.’

  I looked up as high as I could. Way, way above us a small speck on one of the lines disappeared into the blue.

  ‘Blimey, William, this is utterly breathtaking – where are they going?’

  William turned to me and smiled. ‘They go into space, Gavin. They go out into space.’

  ‘Seriously?’ I gasped.

  ‘Oh yes, once they have reached the required altitude, they essentially stay motionless while the earth turns. When they reach their destination they latch onto another line and then descend; it’s how we travel long distances.’

  ‘Oh my Lord,’ I said, trying not to swear. ‘What are the lines attached to, solar kites?’

  ‘Goodness me no,’ said William. ‘No, something much larger. They are attached to geo-stationary satellites located about 160 kilometres above us.’

  ‘Wait wait,’ I interrupted, trying to take all this information in. ‘Satellites…so there’s a satellite with a bit of string hanging from it, and the boxes climb up the string. But how did the satellite get there, like, the first one?’

  ‘Well, before I was born, I’m not sure exactly when – you’d have to ask Paula – a very substantial rocket was sent up which carried the first tether satellite. As far as I recall this then sent a tether back to earth, and from then on the transportation of machines, support systems and people to work on the systems was much simplified. Now any new satellite is built on the ground in various parts, then transported into position, the various parts are constructed into a whole, another line is dropped to the earth, and so on.’

  ‘So how many are there, I mean, around the world?’

  ‘Oh, I have no idea. I would say a few hundred.’

  We were soon close enough to see some detail of the objects crawling up the tethers. The more modul
ar shape that was in front of me was moving upwards at a gentle pace. This was soon overtaken by a slightly more cuboid shape going up one of the other lines. That was climbing into the sky at about the same speed as a rocket, i.e. very bloody fast.

  ‘Just extraordinary,’ I said, staring in awe.

  ‘The lines are around 150 kilometres long, as I recall,’ said William. ‘They just crawl up the tethers. The pods do have tiny hydrogen propulsion systems to steer themselves in zero gravity. You will have to add your name to the waiting list, have a trip somewhere.’

  ‘Fuck me,’ I spouted, then glanced at William a little shamefaced. ‘Sorry.’

  He was smiling at me. ‘I thought you’d like it. You see, Gavin, we no longer need rockets to break the surly bonds of earth.’

  ‘Wow,’ I said, finally taking my eyes off the spectacle in front of me. ‘D’you know who said that?’

  ‘Said what?’ William asked.

  ‘The break the surly bonds of earth thing.’

  ‘I have no idea. I must have heard it somewhere; it’s quite poetic isn’t it?’

  ‘Ronald Reagan,’ I said. ‘He said it after a terrible rocket disaster.’

  ‘Goodness, was he a poet?’

  I laughed. ‘No William, he wasn’t a poet.’

  After circling the tethers at Heathrow a few times we followed the river towards London. I had never flown in this area before – it was strictly off limits to light aircraft. I’d only ever seen the view from passenger jets. I knew that at the height we were cruising at I should be able to see the gargantuan spread of London before me. All I could see was the river winding its way through woodland.

  ‘I cannot believe what my eyes are seeing,’ I said. ‘Where is London?’

  Before me, the river fed into a wide body of water. At first I thought I was seeing a lake, a massive lake where London should have been.

  ‘Ah yes, of course,’ said William. ‘This will have changed beyond recognition.’

  The sun reflected off the water; it was huge, it wasn’t a lake, it was an inland sea.