‘It helped me calm down and concentrate on something other than all my endless questions about why I’m here and what’s happened to me.’
That made sense to me. I hoped it would to Grace, and indeed to Halam, who was clearly observing this interaction with some interest.
Grace smiled gently at me; her face was so beautiful I couldn’t help myself – I stared at her like a fool.
‘You are welcome, Gavin,’ she said. ‘Henry has just suggested something to me. Maybe you might like to come along and talk to the young people in the learning hall tomorrow, tell them something about the history of your era.’
‘That’s a very fine idea,’ said Hallam.
I was pleased that I would get to spend more time with Grace, but I couldn’t help worrying. I said, ‘Are you sure? Isn’t it going to confuse the kids if I tell them I come from two hundred years ago? I mean, it’s hard enough for me. If I’d been sitting in school and some bloke in britches and a top hat came into my class and said he was from the early age of steam, we’d think he was a nutter or a rubbish actor.’
Grace smiled. ‘I love it when you talk like that – such passion, and yet I have no idea what you mean half the time. I think you’re right though – don’t you, father? I think you could talk about how the world worked in your day without revealing how you know. You will just appear to be very learned.’
I smiled and turned to Halam; he was nodding in encouragement.
‘Okay, I’ll try,’ I said.
‘Good, it is agreed,’ said Grace, and then she slipped out of the room.
I smiled at Halam, who was looking at me.
‘What an extraordinary kid Henry is to come up with an idea like that,’ I said. ‘And he is a truly brilliant poker player.’
Halam sighed. ‘Yes, he’s a bright little fellow, no doubt about that.’ He looked up at me and said, ‘And his mother is a wonderful woman.’
I nodded. It was awkward. I had learned that Halam was Grace’s father, Mitchell was her sort of husband and Henry was her child. I did not see how I could fit into this cosy world without causing a great deal of distress. I didn’t know if what Halam had just said was a sort of sales pitch for his daughter, or a warning to stay away.
Halam held up the paper pad he was holding, stared at it momentarily then handed it to me. I stared at the drawing in amazement. It was a wonderful picture: me playing cards with a young boy, both of us completely recognisable, the room picked out in great detail.
‘Wow, that is extraordinary,’ I said. ‘What an incredible talent.’
‘Just my doodles,’ said Halam. ‘I like to record events that take place in the house. It’s mostly very quiet here, so your arrival has caused quite a stir.’
‘Oh dear,’ I said. ‘I hope I’m not upsetting anyone.’
‘Not in the least,’ said Halam, looking right into my eyes. ‘You must know you are very welcome at any time.’
I walked with William and Paula back along the path to Goldacre Hall. Paula used a rather wonderful glowing rod device, which created a pool of light all around us so making our way between the trees and along the hedge was not difficult. An owl squawked as we made our way through the soft darkness, other than that it was incredibly peaceful. However, inside I was full of noise, of anxiety and distress.
As we walked, I decided to go for broke and bring up the information Grace had inadvertently leaked to me. Apparently it is in my nature to be direct, some have said brusque, so without hesitation I came out with it.
‘I learned today that I am not the first person to come through the cloud,’ I said as we walked. I carried on walking but soon realised my two companions had stopped. I turned to face them.
‘Sorry, I don’t mean to shock you, but clearly it’s rather important I know about it. I need to understand what has happened to me.’
William and Paula started walking again. William spoke first. ‘It is true, although it was many years ago. I was a young man when it happened and was not present here at the time.’
‘Oh right. Wait, you mean it wasn’t recently. How? I don’t understand.’
‘The tether has been operating for over a hundred years,’ said Paula. ‘The event you are referring to took place in 2142.’
I quickly did the mental maths as we walked slowly towards Goldacre Hall. ‘2142, okay, so sixty-nine years ago.’
‘Indeed,’ said William. ‘Another flying machine came through the cloud. It was controlled by a man called Reginald Peter Mitchell.’
‘So the cloud thing, the weather patterns, all that happened before.’
‘Yes, but unfortunately the flying machine was a much cruder but much faster model than yours. It apparently flew around for a while, many people saw it, then the loud noise made by the engine ceased and the man controlling the craft jumped out and came to earth with a large circular wing tied to him with cord.’
‘A parachute?’
‘Indeed, that was the term he used,’ said William, tapping his forehead. ‘I could not recall the term – a parachute.’
‘Oh, so you met him,’ I asked.
‘Oh yes, I got to know him very well; he was a wonderful man.’
‘And what happened to the plane, the craft, the flying machine?’
‘That came to earth too, but with rather more disastrous consequences. It crashed into a glasshouse over near Cholsey and three people died as a result of the impact. There was a great fire and an enormous amount of damage.’
‘Blimey,’ I said. ‘But that’s, well, it’s surely very relevant to my arrival. I’m surprised someone hadn’t told me already.’
‘Well, clearly someone has,’ said William with a gentle smile. ‘I don’t think anyone was trying to keep it from you. It is more probable we felt it would only add to your confusion and anxiety.’
I took a deep lungful of the cool night air.
‘It’s very hard for me to comprehend what has happened to me – I’m not even beginning to understand – but the fact that I’m not the first to get here through a bloody cloud, this is just weird. Where is this guy now?’
‘He is long dead,’ said William. ‘He was not a well man, and he sustained some injuries when he came to earth. We did what we could for him and he did live another thirty years or so, but he was never in good health, unlike your good self.’
‘Oh blimey, so he lived for thirty years here. Did he get used to it?’
‘I’m sorry,’ said William. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘Well, if he came from the same time as me, you know, back in history, did he manage to adjust to living here with you…I don’t know how to describe you. You lot.’
William smiled again and I wasn’t sure why.
‘I suppose he did. He was a great help to us. He is remembered very fondly by the people who knew him.’
William delved into his jacket pocket and pulled out the map he had used in the plane. He brushed his hand over it and said, ‘Reginald Peter Mitchell.’
He stared at the sheet for a moment and then handed it to me. The first picture revealed the whole thing to me with a shiver of recognition. A clear colour picture of a slim man with bad teeth, a thick crop of hair and a small, neatly trimmed moustache. He was wearing a uniform I recognised immediately, a military uniform. It was the uniform of an RAF pilot from the Second World War.
14
I awoke the next day half hoping that Grace would enter the room and we might spend the day together, wrapped in each other’s bodies, lost from the world.
I lay in bed for a while just absorbing the incredible silence, but with one ear listening for someone approaching. I could hear nothing.
I had a pee in my little bathroom; the sewage system had obviously changed a great deal from my time. You evacuated whatever it was you n
eeded to evacuate using a low porcelain receptacle which, when you stood back from it, made a low buzzing sound. Whatever was in the small hole in the centre of the device then disappeared along with some air, a bit like the toilet in an airliner. A suck of air and it was all gone. I wondered where it went – did they still have sewage works? I hadn’t seen anything like that during my exploratory flight.
I stretched, washed my face and pondered my situation. I had been very disturbed by the previous night’s revelations and had a longing to find out more, to understand why I had arrived in this strange yet strangely familiar place. I went back towards my bed and noticed the large, leather-bound history book Paula had given me. It was lying beside my bed and I felt guilty. I hadn’t even opened it. History had never been a subject I had any interest in.
I suddenly remembered that I had promised to be a history teacher to a load of kids and had no idea what to say, so I picked up the book hoping for some kind of inspiration.
History seemed to me to be just a series of stories told by people who claimed to know everything about what went on before they were born. It was too imprecise, too full of opinions and bias.
However, this was history that had taken place after I had technically died. This was, I suppose, a fairly unique experience for any human being who had ever existed.
I propped up some pillows and lay back on the bed to read. I skimmed down the chapter headings. ‘The Russian–Chinese energy wars, 2063–69.’ Blimey, so there had been wars – Paula had explained that they were all minor skirmishes, but Russia and China sounded like it might have been a fairly chunky dispute.
‘Governments of Extremes’ was the following chapter. I made myself comfortable and started reading.
The National Emergency Government, formed in what was still then the United Kingdom in 2050, lasted eight months before imploding in chaos and disorder. Initially an extreme cadre of activists seized control of the New Liberal Party, a political grouping that had emerged from the disastrous governments before the final 2049 collapse of the British Pound Sterling, as the currency (money) exchange and value system was once known.
This grouping removed all laws from the statute book, abolished all forms of taxation and effectively closed down government. They were convinced that government was the root cause of the financial and social difficulties besetting the country. They sold off the armed forces and police to the rapidly emerging ‘BipTic’ organisation (see Chapter 8, The Big Three).
Many of the former New Liberal government were already directly employed by BipTic so effectively the New Liberals gave the government to the company they worked for. This was deemed a good thing at the time according to many contemporary reports.
During this time many communities developed outside the control of what had come to be known as the NG (Non Government). Although these communities represented everything the zealots in the New Liberal Party despised, the party could do nothing about this state of affairs due to their strict adherence to their libertarian or laissez-faire policies. There were no laws which meant in effect no one could break a law.
As the New Liberal Party slowly tore itself to pieces, a new political force emerged: the GSF (Green Socialist Front) a revolutionary organisation whose members classified themselves as environmentalist communists; they finally seized control in 2068. It is unclear if there was a general election held around that time – the official NG line was that no such election took place, while the GSF claimed they had a popular mandate from multiple shows of hands at meetings held around the country.
The GSF immediately set up government departments and brought in many new laws. Due to the steadily worsening situation regarding the climate and the fact that the capital City was constantly being inundated by sea water, much of the legislation was to restrict the use of fossil fuels.
At this time the male birth control pill, developed in India and China, was introduced to the islands. The previous New Liberal Non-Government had managed to keep the pill away from the general population for moral reasons; BipTic claimed it would lead to more promiscuity and other non-Christian behaviour.
The GSF introduced legislation making weekly doses of the pill mandatory. Blood scans were fitted at strategic points around the country. Any male without a permit to breed had to take the drug. This eventually led to the rapidly despised VRR (Voluntary Reproduction Register).
The VRR was introduced in April 2070 and had a long lasting and dramatic effect on the population of the Islands. These specific laws were passed against fierce public opposition and resulted in the tests that were initially undertaken by pre-pubescent male youngsters.
If the young male failed this test, a basic general knowledge and IQ (Intelligence Quota) test, they would receive a minute chemical implant which made the children permanently infertile.
The youth test was quickly followed by a general test that every adult was required to volunteer for. If they failed to volunteer or failed the test, they were not allowed to reproduce, which in effect meant they were not allowed to remain fertile.
It is believed that upwards of 18 million men were chemically sterilized during the seven years the legislation was in force.
By 2099 the population of the Islands had dropped from 63 million to 35 million. Due to unexpected side effects from use of the male pill and the chemicals used in the sterilization process, the population continued to fall until it reached around 18 million in 2138.
I dropped the book down on the bed beside me. Every sentence made me shudder and yet this was history, events that had happened over a hundred years before the present day. If I had stayed in my time I would have lived through some of it.
The casual sentence ‘the final 2049 collapse of the British Pound Sterling’ had left me in stunned silence for some time.
What about the £32,000 I had in my savings account? The £120,000 I had in my pension fund? I hadn’t even thought about it since I’d arrived in the new world – the mortgage payments, outstanding utilities bills, the ISAs and bonds I owned, the shares I had in three separate engineering companies. All gone, probably not even languishing in some forgotten lawyer’s office – there were no lawyers and from what I had seen, there were no offices.
Still, I had discovered why the population was so much smaller. I tried to picture the sadness and suffering the so-called Volunteer Reproduction Register must have caused, the thousands, no, millions of lives blighted by such arrogance. And the stupidity of the ranting right-wingers and their absurd hatred of government, or supposed hatred – clearly they had just handed over the reigns of power to the private corporations for whom they worked. However, all those people were long dead and I was yet to see signs of such beliefs and worldview.
It was almost as if both extremes had won, against their better judgement maybe. It appeared there was no government, no tax and no obvious legal system, which would please libertarian extremists. It was also true there was clearly an innate understanding of the environment and the responsibility the human race had for it, being as we are the only animal capable of utterly destroying it.
I picked the book up again and skipped to the next chapter, ‘The Rise and Fall of the Big Three’.
To understand how 90 per cent of the world’s population came to be controlled and regulated by three hyper-powerful corporations for over forty years it is important to study their origins. BipTic, Moshchnost and Greywater all started out their corporate existence as normal trading companies, but through clever financing (money) structures and aggressive purchasing (acquiring control through the exchange of money) they grew in size, wealth and political dominance.
BipTic started, in what was then the United Kingdom, when an extremist Christian group with little funding and fewer followers was taken over and controlled by the then owner of a private parking ticket conglomerate called British Independent Parking Tic
kets. This was at a time of high car (autonomous transport unit) ownership and the storage of these vehicles during their downtime was a very large problem in the crowded cities that covered the globe. The process of storing unused vehicles was called parking, and this system was controlled and regulated by BipTic.
If an owner of one of the vehicles was seen to have broken the complex parking regulations, they were given a penalty charge notice or ‘ticket’. They would then either have to pay a substantial fine or attend a religious school for a set number of hours.
This system proved to be a rapid way to swell the ranks of the particular church (specific religious meeting place) that BipTic was affiliated with. The membership went from under three hundred to 7 million in two years.
BipTic used many of the more zealous members of its religious group to work for very little and used specific people to take specific jobs in both government and private companies. It wasn’t long before BipTic just became a natural part of everyone’s life, gradually taking over more and more of the day to day running of the country until, in 2056, they were effectively the government, although this was at the time of the NG.
During this same period in what was then the United States of America (Midwest) a similar pattern was followed. A private security firm, Greywater, had many contracts with existing government departments and started taking over law enforcement and penal institutions.
By 2070 Greywater had taken over the entire government and through a series of military interventions, finally took over control of both the North and South American landmasses. Greywater was by far the biggest and most powerful of the big three but from its very inception was the most unstable.
It collapsed during the period of the dissolution of international trade in 2098. By 2105 it had completely ceased to exist although many adherents to its militaristic and patriarchal philosophy are still in control of Midwest.
Moshchnost started life as an extractor and exporter of fossil fuel from the tundra of what was then the Russian Federation (area east of Polska) and again followed a similar path to that of BipTic and Greywater. Through the use of its immense wealth and strategic interests it rapidly took over control of a vast area of the globe. Moshchnost was the only one of the big three that actually went to war in a way that could be compared to previous state conflicts.
News from Gardenia Page 13