‘Yes, I suppose so. It’s not so much the physical changes, the number of trees, the intensity of your agriculture, it’s how you organise things, how you manage big projects. I’m baffled. I mean the space-lift stuff.’
I noticed Grace was looking puzzled. ‘The tether things,’ I clarified. ‘The big ones at Heathrow – you can’t tell me that doesn’t need some kind of management.’
William turned to Halam. Halam smiled and spoke.
‘We have systems in place, Gavin. Gaia systems.’
I must have sneered a little; I suppose I imagined they meant some kind of spiritual belief system, Gaia meaning mother earth and dream catchers and homemade jam and all the hippy nonsense my parents had been into which had held back development more than anything else I’d come across. My sneer was clearly registered – Paula picked up on it.
‘Global Artificial Intelligence Arrangement,’ she said.
‘Is that what Gaia stands for?’ asked Tony. For this question he received some caring looks from the older diners.
‘Sorry, I–I suppose I’d never really thought about it.’ He smiled, clearly a little embarrassed. ‘I mean, I knew what it did, but I didn’t know the letters stood for something.’
‘Oh, right, what’s that? Is that what it sounds like it might be?’ I asked, smiling now.
William spoke. ‘It’s a system that was installed many years ago. As you say, a management system. It knows where every podmibus is, where every pod is, where everyone is, where power is being created, where it is being used, how much is being used, what it is being used for. Everything. It’s in the grid so calling it a computer as you would have done would be somewhat misleading.’
‘Okay,’ I said. ‘I think I can just about get my head around an intelligent management system for machines and logistics, but Paula said you have no legal system, or government, and it just seems, well, it seems like it could all go wrong at any minute. I mean, a splinter group could organise and take over.’
There seemed to be general consent around the table. Clearly this had been discussed and was seen as possible.
William spoke first. ‘It has happened, Gavin, over the years and many times. Somehow though, it has just never really caught on. We are just about surviving, and we all have to work hard to maintain what we have and feed ourselves.’
Halam joined in. ‘We all know that at some point our young people will become frustrated with the settled ways we have adopted. We have to accommodate this yearning and learn from it. Sometimes our young people have a very good point to make.’
I noticed him glance at Tony, who apart from Henry was the youngest person present, although with what I was coming to understand of their longevity, he could have been thirty. I smiled at him.
‘So, going to start a student revolution then?’ I asked.
Tony smiled. ‘I’m not sure what that is, and I suppose I could, but I don’t know why I’d bother. Should I bother?’
He did seem to be asking me a question.
‘Gavin,’ said William. ‘You remember the circular field we saw this morning, when we took off.’
‘The one you play particle physics on?’ I asked.
William nodded. ‘Well, young Tony here plays very well, he is about to progress from Sub Atomic to Quark.’
‘Congratulations, Tony,’ said Mitchell. ‘I hadn’t heard.’
‘Yeah, it’s good. It’s very confusing at the moment but I’m slowly getting the hang of it.’
‘Amazing,’ I said. ‘I cannot imagine what it is you play, I’ll have to come and watch.’
I sat back in my chair and stretched my legs. There was a silence around the table and I stared at my fellow diners one by one.
‘I’m sorry, but I cannot understand how it works. I know you say you don’t have money, but the materials you use…something you can’t get here, materials that just do not exist on these islands, if nothing else, how is that, well, how do you pay for it?’
My question seemed to keep the gathered party silent; only Paula reacted.
‘I think I know what you mean,’ she said eventually.
‘I’m glad you do; he may as well be speaking in tongues,’ said Grace rather sharply.
‘We don’t pay for it. Not in the sense that I believe you mean, Mr Meckler.’
‘Oh please, Paula, call him Gavin,’ said Grace. Again, a slight snip in her tone and again I couldn’t really read what was going on.
‘I’m intrigued to hear what Paula has to say,’ said William, grinning broadly as he spoke.
Paula nodded seriously. ‘What we have now only works as part of an ongoing process. You have arrived at a period in history where, for about the last forty years, through slowly evolving technological innovation, we have essentially free abundant energy.’
I was about to sip my elderflower juice. I stopped, staring at Paula.
‘Completely free?’ I said eventually.
‘Yes, we produce far more energy than we can use, so it has become effectively like the air. You cannot even compare it to fresh drinking water – water is not free. There are still many people in the world who do not have an adequate water supply, but energy is abundant. It wasn’t of course always like this and indeed it may not continue to be like this but at present, that is the situation.’
‘I don’t understand,’ I said. I noticed Henry was also listening intently, not fidgeting or mucking around, just sitting listening.
‘I can imagine, coming from the era you do, it is hard to understand. A whole society whose very existence was built on a constantly dwindling energy source was indeed doomed to failure.’
‘So, what are you saying, the oil ran out?’
Paula smiled. ‘No, no, we still extract oil, a very modest amount in comparison to your own time, but it’s a very useful resource. We only use it as an essential raw material, but we still use it.’
‘So you really don’t burn oil in any way?’
Paula smiled, again the brief and seemingly impatient smile of an old teacher at an annoying young pupil.
I noticed Henry looking at me like I was a bit mad.
‘Why would people burn oil?’ he asked, glancing at his mother. She was staring at me and said nothing.
‘We try not to burn anything,’ said Paula. ‘Although every mid-winter’s day we have a party at Goldacre Hall and we burn logs from fallen trees in the old fireplaces. The old folks seem to love it.’
‘Oh yes, that’s lovely, you’ve seen the mid-winter fire haven’t you, Henry?’
‘Yes,’ said Henry, not looking at all impressed. ‘It’s all a bit mad if you ask me. Really dangerous in my opinion.’
I pondered for a moment and then asked, ‘You said you had all this free energy for the time being, like the abundant free energy you mentioned could come to an end in some way?’
‘All things come to an end, Gavin, or they change beyond recognition,’ said Paula. ‘We are very reliant on technology to maintain this abundance and as you know machines wear out, they decay, they need maintenance – and we have a little problem there.’
‘Oh, indeed we do,’ said William.
‘What’s the problem?’ I asked.
‘Well, just like your era with fossil fuel, we’ve grown used to it. We don’t think about it or worry about it, because we spend so much of our time and energy growing food, maintaining the land and the forests. The vast majority of us focus on that activity. We come in from the fields, have a shower, eat food, turn on lights – it’s all normal and we don’t think about it.’
William butted in, smiling as he spoke. He was clearly aiming what he was saying at Tony and young Henry.
‘Young people today barely know where the heat and light comes from; there are very few of them prepared to learn about it, to bec
ome technicians and engineers in order to develop new technologies or even maintain existing ones.’
‘I see,’ I said. ‘Blimey, that all sounds very familiar.’
‘What does blimey mean?’ asked young Henry. He was asking me, not his mother.
‘Oh, it means, well, it’s when you are surprised. It’s actually a really old term, from the olden days even before I was born. It’s a short version of “God blind me”. People said that when they were surprised I suppose. That got shortened to “Gawd blimey” and eventually just “blimey”. You say, well, we said things like blimey, or Jesus or other ruder words when we were surprised.’
‘Blimey,’ said Henry. ‘Blimey, Mum.’
There was a small ripple of laughter around the table. His mother smiled at him.
Paula wasn’t laughing; humour was clearly not her thing. She cleared her throat and leant her enormous forearms on the table.
‘I just want to explain to you that we have very serious problems and people don’t seem prepared to face them.’
‘I’m just fascinated as to how you, we, well, whoever did it, how they solved the energy crisis, because it was really looming when I, yesterday, whenever it was I was…you know what I mean.’
Paula nodded. ‘Indeed, it must have seemed like an insurmountable problem,’ she said. ‘The very idea of burning oil, gas, coal or indeed radioactive material strikes us as a little insane if I may make so bold.’
I smiled – I’d sat motionless in enough traffic jams with an engine purring in front of me to ponder this notion on many occasions.
‘So you get all your energy from solar kites in the upper atmosphere.’
‘Oh no, not so much any more – the tethers you mean.’
I nodded.
‘No, although there are plenty of them still around. They are coming to the end of their useful life and they are a problem to decommission. We’ve had a couple come back to earth when we weren’t quite ready. They make a bit of a mess when they land.’ She raised her enormous, bushy eyebrows as if to underline the problem. ‘Not only of the kites themselves but any poor soul who happens to be standing where they land.’
‘Right, so that’s actually happened?’
I saw William nodding gravely.
Paula continued. ‘Oh yes, it has happened many times, or some part of the tether mechanism fails, the kites sail away and the tether comes to earth. That’s not so serious as the material of the tether itself is very light, but it gets tangled in everything. When there is no power running through it, you can barely see it with the naked eye.’
‘This is all so amazing to hear,’ I said with a big grin.
‘I’m very glad I’m entertaining you,’ said Paula’s solid, unsmiling face. ‘You see, it’s a constantly evolving system; we have what you would have called a smart grid. A substantial amount of the energy we produce or capture is used to transport power around the grid. We use deeply buried UCC, or ultra cold cabling – that way we can transport sufficient energy to places far distant from the source. We use geo thermal to a large extent, tidal barriers in places, wind, especially off our shores and solar concentrators in the desert.’
‘That’s amazing. It really sounds like you’ve solved one of the biggest problems we’re facing, I mean, we were facing.’
‘No problem is ever really solved,’ said Paula very seriously. ‘A very basic understanding of history should have taught you that.’
I nodded as gravely as I could but I was fascinated to hear all this.
‘Okay, so here’s a question that’s been puzzling me,’ I said. ‘When I flew into the weird cloud, the batteries on my plane were reading about 50 per cent.’
I noticed Henry looking very puzzled at this point, then I realised he was not alone. I explained as best I could.
‘In my day, in the olden days, we stored energy in batteries, chemical packs that released the energy in controlled amounts which powered things. Okay, so the energy would run out and you would have no more power, so you had to constantly monitor the level of energy you had remaining. However, when I came out of the cloud, the batteries were suddenly completely full, and so was my iPad, and so was my phone.’
‘I won’t pretend to know what an iPad is,’ said Paula. ‘But the batteries just picked up the induction charge. That is now universal. We no longer use battery technology or wires. The lights you see on the ceiling – they are self-contained units.’
I looked up at the small flat panel in the ceiling. ‘No wires?’
‘There’s no need. We have global induction. Any electrical device works anywhere on the planet’s surface.’
‘You are kidding!’ I said.
‘I don’t think I’m kidding.’
‘So, you mean to tell me, no wires, no batteries ever, anywhere. That is incredible!’ I said. Again I noticed Henry looking at me. I smiled at him. ‘It’s incredible for me, Henry. In my time, we had all sorts of problems moving and storing energy; I s’pose you wouldn’t even know those problems existed.’
Henry shrugged. I may as well have been speaking Russian; he clearly hadn’t got a clue what I was babbling on about.
‘Electrical induction was discovered well before even you were born,’ said Paula.
‘Nikola Tesla,’ I said proudly.
‘Indeed, without doubt, a genius in the field.’
‘And that’s why I could fly my plane all day, and the batteries would never run out.’
Paula nodded slowly. ‘Indeed, that is the case.’
‘Wow,’ I said, then I looked around the table again. What was intriguing was that it seemed everyone else, with the possible exception of William, had been listening and taking everything in with just as much interest as me. It was as if they didn’t know all this either.
‘And so the lesson ends,’ said William, and he clapped his hands once. ‘Let us proceed with the day’s events.’ He stood up and everyone helped to clear the table. Young Henry did his share without being asked, then returned to the table with a pack of playing cards.
‘Poker?’ he said.
‘Henry,’ said Grace, ‘Gavin may not wish to play.’
‘I’m happy to,’ I said. I wasn’t really – I can play poker badly but it wasn’t something I would have chosen to do right then. However, all the other members of the group were busying themselves and I felt it was almost expected of me.
Henry started to deal cards with a level of speed and dexterity that made me nervous. He’d done this before.
‘Henry, do you ever watch the telly?’ I asked as I tried to concentrate on playing cards.
‘What’s that?’ he asked.
‘Oh, like a movie, or a program on a screen, you know, television.’
The young lad looked at his grandfather for help, I turned to Halam, he shook his head and shrugged.
‘I just wondered, only children in my day would watch what we called TV, a screen showing images or stories, movies.’
‘Oh yeah, I watch stuff on my Book. I’ve seen old movies, I know what you mean,’ said Henry with some relief. ‘I think I prefer to read or listen to stories but some of the old stuff is funny. Mostly I talk to my friends who live further away than I can walk.’
While we played cards I was only vaguely aware of what else was taking place in the kitchen. I did notice Mitchell and Grace talking in the corner for a short time but I couldn’t make out what they were saying. It didn’t look antagonistic. They left the room together and I registered a slight feeling of annoyance, or jealousy, or maybe just a hint of disappointment. I was noticing my feelings: this was not something I was used to.
I wanted to tell Beth, explain to her that I was having feelings and I was noticing them and I was not allowing them to affect my behaviour in unpredictable ways. I sat in silence for a momen
t as I contemplated the apparent impossibility of this desire. Beth was very dead and I had to accept that.
I glanced up to see Halam sitting with a pad of paper and a pencil; he seemed to be drawing something. As I was losing yet another poker hand to the fiercely competitive Henry, I suddenly noticed the small drawings hanging in frames on the wall of the kitchen. I am one of those people that could be in a room for an hour with a Renoir hanging over the fireplace and not notice. The drawings were exquisite and very detailed, just everyday occurrences around the house and in the garden.
Henry was winning every hand we played and clearly this gave him great satisfaction; as he beat me yet again I threw my hand in and turned to Halam.
‘Are those your drawings on the wall?’ I asked. He looked up and held out his hand.
‘Don’t move too much – yes they are, but stay as you are for just a moment longer.’
‘Oh, you’re not drawing me again are you, Granddad?’ said Henry with mock annoyance.
‘I am indeed, young master Henry.’
Grace re-entered the room. She bent down and kissed Henry on the forehead. He held a hand affectionately to her face.
‘I’m going to bed now,’ he said to me. ‘Thanks for playing cards; you’re really good at it.’
I laughed. I had consistently lost every game.
‘You’re not so bad yourself, mate,’ I said as I helped Henry pile the cards together. Henry then kissed his grandfather on the cheek and left the room. Grace stood for a while looking at me.
‘I am going to bed too,’ she said. I didn’t know where to look. Was she asking me to join her? I didn’t know what to do.
‘I will no doubt see you in the morning,’ she said. Okay, so I wasn’t meant to join her.
I nodded and smiled. ‘Thank you,’ I said.
‘For what?’
‘For letting me cook,’ I said. I don’t know why I said that. I wanted to say ‘for letting me look at you and for wanting me to give you a baby’. I’m really glad I didn’t say that; something in me understood it would have been wrong – it was as though I had finally learned how to interact with women. I went on to elaborate on my reasoning.
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