News from Gardenia

by Robert Llewellyn

  Bernice had a daughter in 2088, that was Tira, who in turn had a son in 2125 called Deven, who fathered a girl in 2153 called Mei.

  Samina had two children: Mike, born in 2085, and Lali, a girl in 2096. After all the Asian and Chinese names, having a child called Mike seemed a little dull. Mike had one child called Luc, but that poor kid died at the age of ten. Mike’s sister Lali had two sons, one called Daksha born in 2141, and another called Palash who was born in 2143.

  Again I sat back. The sky was getting darker, my legs felt numb, but a sliver of possibility appeared in my mind. Three people alive now had a weird, tentative link to my old world. There was no mention of their passing in The Book. Mei, Mike and Palash could all still be alive.

  15

  By the time I got into the dining hall early the next morning I was ravenously hungry, but as soon as I entered I realised something was different. I saw a group of older women weeping, being comforted by a young man and two teenage children.

  I walked toward the large table on which was the lovely spread of breakfast dishes as normal, but something wasn’t right. I looked around for old Bal; I couldn’t see him and I think there and then I worked out what had happened.

  ‘Bal has passed away,’ said an old man I hadn’t spoken to before. ‘Many of the hall folk are sad.’

  I nodded and tried to look concerned. Other than the fact that everyone I’d ever known had died over a hundred years before, I’d never known anyone who died. Well, I suppose my granddad, he died when I was a kid, but I barely remember him. Bal was the first person I could remember having seen walking around, being alive, who was now dead.

  I saw a face I knew: William. He was walking slowly with some other old men by a door at the far end of the room. I grabbed an apple and a pastry, took a quick slug of orange juice and followed them.

  In a long corridor I hadn’t explored previously, a group of people had gathered outside a door. I saw Paula among them.

  ‘Bal has passed on,’ she said to me, having to bend down a little to speak softly near my ear. Paula had to be six four at the very least.

  ‘I just heard,’ I said. ‘It’s very sad, but he was seriously old, wasn’t he?’

  ‘Oh, he could have lived longer had he wished,’ said Paula, ‘He had decided that he’d had enough, he was one hundred and thirty-two.’

  ‘Wait,’ I said. ‘He could have lived longer?’

  Paula nodded.

  ‘Was he murdered?’ I asked in shock.

  ‘Of course, forgive me,’ said Paula. ‘Let us return to the dining hall and I’ll try to explain.’

  We left the crowd of mourners in the corridor and returned to the dining hall. I was still hungry so I was rather grateful for this opportunity.

  While I stuffed my face, Paula explained to me how people lived and died.

  ‘The room we were standing outside just now, effectively that is our hospital, as you would have known it.’

  ‘What, just that room?’ I said through a mouthful of weird porridge stuff I had grown to rather like.

  Paula nodded.

  ‘It’s really only used for emergencies, if someone receives a cut, or like a few weeks ago when Vikram fell out of a pear tree and broke his shin bone, he was seen to by some of the hall dwellers who enjoy medical work.’

  I laughed a bit, the idea that dedicated, highly qualified professional medical staff had been replaced by ‘people who enjoy medical work’ was nothing short of preposterous.

  Paula then extracted a small stainless steel phial from her voluminous pocket and held it in front of her face.

  ‘We now use systems such as this, we use what I suppose you might understand as a 3D micro printer which creates curative systems.’

  ‘Curative systems? What, like herbs and stuff?’ I asked.

  ‘No,’ said Paula calmly. ‘Probably the best way to describe them is micro robots, would you recognise such a term?’

  I shrugged and nodded at the same time.

  ‘Okay, well these tiny machines are printed out using a small printer we keep in that room. Harriet, she will be with the mourners and Bal’s body at the moment, she has built and refined a few of these machines and she also travels to other halls where they discuss such things, so they are always trying to improve and revise them. However, we now don’t suffer from many of the ailments that would have afflicted people from your era.’

  Paula undid the tiny tip of the metal phial she was holding and poured a drop into a spoon.

  ‘I take this much syrup each morning and it is slowly removing the small cancer I have on my kidney. The tiny robots work in conjunction with my body’s natural processes. Had I been so afflicted in your era I would no doubt have died some time ago.’

  ‘Blimey,’ I said.

  ‘So, I’m telling you this because no doubt Harriet suggested to Bal to take some appropriate syrup and he clearly decided not to bother. We find this happens quite often when people get over a hundred and thirty.’

  ‘Amazing,’ I said. ‘So essentially, you don’t get sick.’

  ‘Oh, we still get mild infections, colds, rheumatism, arthritis and the general degrading of the human body through age, wear and tear, but we can manage all these ailments with our medical systems, plus our diet is a lot better and we are far more physically active than people from the early 21st century, from what I can gather.’

  ‘Indeed you are,’ I said.

  At that point William joined us. He looked slightly less jolly than usual and sat next to me with his head bowed.

  ‘Doesn’t matter how many times you’ve seen it, or how you knew it was going to happen, it is always very sad to lose an old friend,’ he said. ‘Bal and I have known each other for well over one hundred years. I will miss him.’

  ‘It’s very sad,’ I said. ‘He seemed like a lovely old dude.’

  William stared at me in silence for a moment, he looked like he could have been offended.

  ‘I’m hoping that the term dude is affectionate, I’m not familiar with it,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, yeah, sorry,’ I said, ‘Yeah, dude is nice, it means he was, you know, a really good person.’

  William clapped his hands and sat up straight. ‘Well, as Bal would most certainly have confirmed, we have to carry on. I won’t dwell on the loss of my friend now, I have a project you may be interested in,’ said William.

  ‘Oh blimey, a project,’ I said, not sure what was going to be dumped on me next.

  ‘Judging from what you’ve said of your past,’ said William, ‘you are a skilled mechanical engineer: is that correct?’

  ‘Well, I am a mechanical engineer,’ I said. ‘But I don’t know how much skill I have. Not with the technology you have here, now.’

  ‘I’m sure you know more than enough for what I have in mind.’

  I sat back – this sounded worrying. William gently put his gnarled old hand on my forearm. ‘Please don’t be alarmed; I think you might enjoy the challenge. You see, I’ve just heard from a very good friend that there is an old-style extraction machine needing a little care and attention. It’s just up the way at the Wycombe plastic quarry.’

  I wasn’t ready for this. I’d just woken up, seen a group of mourners, discovered that the entire industrial medical system I had known had become miniaturised and localised, I’d spent the previous day mourning my lost loved ones from a distance of over a hundred years and now I was being told about a plastic quarry.

  ‘I’m sorry, William, you are going to have to explain things one step at a time. Let’s start with the term plastic quarry. What on earth is that?’

  ‘It is just as it says. It is a place where we extract plastic. All manner of plastic and other useful resources that previous generations were kind enough to bury for us.’

  �
��You are kidding – you actually quarry landfill?’

  ‘I imagine that is what we are doing, although how you fill land is a bit of a mystery. But plastic is a really important resource and we use it everywhere.’

  ‘I see,’ I said, trying to understand where I might come into all this.

  ‘So, we use rather old machinery to extract the plastic from the surrounding organic material. One of these machines has recently suffered a severe malfunction. It is of an old design that no one we know seems familiar with. I fear the skills needed to maintain such an ancient device have been lost. I wondered if you might cast a fresh eye over the problem.’

  ‘Wait, is this a piece of quarrying machinery from my era?’ I asked. Surely this couldn’t be the case.

  ‘I’m not sure how old it is exactly – I’ve only ever seen it from a distance – but it may well be that old.’

  I agreed to go. William advised me to bring a coat as rain was forecast for later in the day. I returned to my panelled room, picked up my things and joined William in the garden.

  ‘I only wish we could fly in your wonderful machine,’ he said. ‘But I know there is nowhere to come back to earth safely near our destination. We will therefore take a shuttle.’

  ‘Is that one of the underground transport things you told me about yesterday?’ I asked. William nodded and I followed him into the garden, eager to see this future transportation system in action. Again we passed very well tended allotments, vegetable gardens with rows and rows of growth, all wonderfully looked after. At the far end of one field I saw a woman pulling out bunches of carrots; I wondered for a moment if it was Grace, but when the woman stood upright I could tell immediately from her great height that it was not.

  We followed a track through dense woodland. It wasn’t a chaotic path through the undergrowth; this was a broad, well-used route through the woods. The air was spectacularly fresh with a hint of mossy musk. The sunlight was filtered through the high branches creating what can only be described as an enchanting setting.

  As we walked, we talked constantly; William explaining to me that they had estimated there was enough plastic still buried in various places to last another one hundred years. The only problem was extracting it.

  ‘Which is where you come in,’ he said, giving me a hearty slap on the back. I had been listening, but I was also enchanted by the sheer size and maturity of the forest we were walking through.

  ‘William, these trees, surely they must have been planted hundreds of years ago to be this big.’

  ‘Oh yes, this lovely area was one of the first reforestation projects,’ said William. ‘I was involved in the development of the forest but this was all planted before my time. Some of these trees would have taken root not long after you left your era.’

  I looked around, completely unaware of where I was and there were no landmarks to be seen, only dense woodland. ‘But this must have been a developed area back in my day. It’s so hard to understand how such a dramatic change happened.’

  As we continued to walk through the woods, I eventually spied a small stone building set in a clearing covered in what seemed like a dazzling display of wild flowers. The sun was pushing through the upper foliage sending shafts of light onto the enchanting forest floor. I know nothing about flowers but these made even me stop and look.

  ‘That is such a beautiful sight,’ I said. William smiled again and entered a broad doorway in the small building. Inside was a set of stone steps leading down, well lit and very clean. I could hear sounds coming from beneath me but I couldn’t quite make them out – I could certainly feel warm air rushing up the stairwell I was in, an experience that reminded me of the London underground, only it didn’t smell in any way mechanical from what I could discern.

  Two flights of steps later we entered an area that I can only describe as very unexpected and extremely impressive.

  A brightly lit hallway, no, that does it no justice, a kind of super clean parking lot. The ceiling was not overly high, maybe four meters at most, but it was big. All manner of machines lay flat on the ground, though there wasn’t a wheel in site.

  Following William, I was aware that my mouth was wide open, but I couldn’t do anything about it. This level of technology was way beyond anything I’d seen, it was completely hidden from the ground and it was on a scale beyond anything I had expected.

  ‘Best not to cross the line,’ said William, referring to a line painted on the floor before us.

  ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘What happens next?’

  ‘Oh, sorry, well, a podmibus is about to arrive, it is quite sudden so please don’t be alarmed.’

  As he spoke I noticed wisps of William’s hair start to whip about and I felt an enormous rush of air, then, with very little warning, a low tubular vehicle rushed into the space we were in. It slowed up and settled right before us and a door opened.

  ‘A podmibus,’ said William as he stepped aboard. I, on the other hand, simply had to understand what I was witnessing, clearly this vehicle had no wheels and no clear contact point with the floor. The way it had pulled to a halt and then rested down gave some indication of the propulsion method.

  I couldn’t help myself, I bent down to try and inspect the undercarriage. No wheels, I could just see light from the other side of the vehicle but there was no physical point of contact.

  ‘Maglev,’ I said as I stood up.

  ‘Bless you,’ said William.

  As soon as we had entered the cabin the door shut behind us. There were a few people in the brightly lit interior dressed in the slightly odd-looking clothing I had grown used to, although I could now tell there were variations, decorative strips and brightly coloured scarves here and there. Most of the other occupants looked fit, healthy and active, but they were all quite old. I was the youngest occupant by far.

  William sat down on a plastic moulded seat that seemed to be part of the structure of the podmibus. I sat opposite him facing away from the front and as soon as I did so I felt pressure on my stomach; a thin belt of some kind of soft cloth had embraced me and it pulled me into the seat.

  Then, the biggest shock, this lumbering hulk accelerated at top fuel dragster speed. I wailed in delight but no one else on board seemed the slightest concerned.

  The acceleration was not only powerful but long lasting, although the vehicle itself was almost spookily quiet.

  Our fellow passengers were chatting and laughing as we shot along. There seemed very little rocking or rolling but it was hard to tell as there were no windows.

  ‘This is incredible,’ I said. ‘How fast do these things go?’

  ‘Oh, I have no idea,’ said William. ‘They do indeed travel at great speed but very carefully. Any wandering person or indeed animal on the track can be sensed many kilometres before there’s a problem.’

  ‘But is there, I don’t know, someone at the controls, even remotely?’

  ‘I’m sorry, I don’t understand?’ said William. He looked genuinely puzzled.

  ‘I don’t know, a driver, a person in charge.’

  William smiled gently. ‘No, there is no driver person; the podmibus knows what it’s doing, the grid knows where the podmibus is and supplies the power, the track is in a straight line – the whole system is very simple.’

  William smiled and sat back, his eyes closed and he seemed to nod off. I spent the rest of the relatively short journey studying my fellow passengers. I soon came to realise that judging age by any of the criteria I was used to back in my own day was rather pointless: some of the occupants looked around my age, some looked ancient but most of them were anything but young. From what I was learning the younger ones were probably in their sixties, and the old-looking ones were probably double that.

  I looked around at the interior of the vehicle I was travelling in. It was sort of like a train, only wider
and with much greater headroom. It was very spacious and completely bare in terms of decoration. There were no advertising images or video screens anywhere to be seen. I supposed there was no need to advertise as there was no money to buy anything anyway.

  The whole thing was utilitarian without being too ugly, well designed but very simple. I could also tell from the low rumble the frame of the podmibus made that it was very solid; there was no rattling or wobbling. The sidewalls must have been fifteen centimetres thick. I knocked on the wall beside me to see if it was hollow. It felt reassuringly solid.

  I then felt myself pushed back into my seat as the vehicle slowed down. William opened his eyes and glanced at me.

  ‘Here we are,’ he said. The podmibus came to a gentle halt, the safety sash around my midriff came away automatically and we both stood up. A few other people were getting off and I followed them.

  We climbed up a similar set of steps and entered another small clearing in the woodland. A delightful house, possibly originally Victorian, stood set back against the trees with a very busy vegetable plot in front of it. Three people were working in the garden as we passed by; we followed a narrow cinder path through the woods.

  Before long we came to a much larger open space, a slightly odd-looking hill. I say odd-looking as it didn’t look very real; it was the wrong shape for a natural rise in the landscape. It was obviously man made. The plant growth on top of it was mainly low-level bushes and scrub.

  ‘Here we are,’ said William as we climbed up the hill. When we reached the top I got a surprise – there was a big hole, a massive gash in the landscape. I’d certainly seen nothing like it when flying the day before.

  ‘Blimey,’ I said. ‘What a mess.’

  The hole was clearly not cut in fresh rock. I was familiar enough with mines and quarries to know this was something else. It was without question a giant rubbish dump.

  The ground around us, as we picked our way across this unpleasant landscape littered with the remnants of plastic bags, bottles and containers, created in me an overwhelming feeling of regret and sadness. This was what my generation had done, dumped all this stuff and forgotten about it. There was still so much of it two hundred years later that it was seen as a resource.