News from the Clouds

by Robert Llewellyn

  ‘Thank you,’ said Grace staring right into my eyes. I knew she was thanking me for the baby. A few mildly comical quips came to mind immediately but I didn’t say any of them.

  ‘One of the things I’ve learned since I’ve been away is that when I get back home, back to 2011, I won’t be able to remember anything that has happened to me.’

  ‘You won’t be able to remember?’

  ‘No, nothing. It’s to do with the human brain, and electricity and the way the power surges affect your synapses. I’m not going to pretend I understood all I was told but so far everything my friends in the other dimensions explained to me has turned out to be true. I was told to dive at 48 degrees through the anomaly and I would come out in Gardenia. That is exactly what I did and here I am. To get back to Kingham in 2011 I have to climb at 42 degrees as I enter the anomaly, but when I pass through the cloud back to 2011 every experience I’ll have had will be sort of burned out of my brain.’

  ‘That’s very sad,’ said Grace.

  ‘Does that mean you won’t remember me?’ asked Henry.

  ‘I’m afraid it does, Henry,’ I said. ‘You see, where I come from, or more specifically when I come from, you don’t exist yet, so remembering you is defying some of the very basic laws of physics. At least that’s what I understand.’

  ‘I see, but do you want to remember what you’ve seen and where you’ve been?’ asked Grace.

  ‘Well I’ve kind of got used to the idea of forgetting, but now you ask, yes, I’d love to.’

  ‘Can you record everything and take the information with you?’

  I sat in silence for a moment. This idea had never crossed my mind and I felt rather stupid.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Surely if you can survive the journey, if your drone can survive, then maybe something else can survive, a record of your experiences?’

  ‘Well, yeah, I suppose so,’ I said. ‘It might work, it’s worth a try.’

  ‘You could write it in letters on paper and make a book,’ said Henry. ‘I’m doing a history project and making an old-fashioned book at the moment, I could show you how to make letters with a marker and paper.’

  ‘I think Gavin knows how to do that already, Henry,’ said Grace kindly.

  ‘Do you?’ asked Henry. He seemed very doubtful that someone as thick and old-fashioned as me would be able to complete such a task.

  ‘Yes I do. When I was a child everyone had to learn how to write by hand as much as use a keyboard.’

  ‘A keyboard?’

  ‘Letter press,’ said Grace. Henry looked at her and nodded his understanding.

  ‘If you just recorded everything you have seen, maybe writing on paper is the safest way to transport it. Then you could at least have a record. You never know, reading it might help you recall things, or even people that you came to know.’

  I took a bite from my freshly baked bap piled up with Henry’s strawberry jam. I stared at Grace and thought about it as I chewed. When Grace said ‘people that I came to know’, I knew that she was referring to herself. She wanted me to remember her and I found that quite reassuring.

  ‘I don’t have anything to write on, or to write with,’ I said.

  ‘Andrew showed me how to make paper for my old-fashioned book,’ said Henry. ‘I’m sure he’d show you.’

  ‘Andrew?’

  ‘I’ll introduce you,’ said Henry confidently. ‘He’s a very old man who lives at Goldacre most of the time. I’m sure you’ve seen him.’

  ‘Okay then, that’s a project. I’m going to write it all down,’ I said.

  At that point the door opened and Hallam and Mitchell walked in. From their demeanour they had already heard I’d arrived.

  ‘Gavin Meckler, well I never did!’ said Hallam. ‘How wonderful that you’re back. I’ve been hearing so many stories, everyone in the gardens is full of news about you.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ I said, in mock embarrassment. ‘I hope you’re not bored already.’

  Mitchell shook my hand very warmly. ‘It’s wonderful to see you, Gavin, you look very well, although a little thin.’

  I noticed that the moment Mitchell let go of my hand Grace reached out and took his; she then stood by him holding on to it. It wasn’t a big statement, but it was unmistakable; she was with Mitchell and I wasn’t part of her life.

  Of course that is how it should have been, but I cannot lie and say I didn’t feel pangs. To have met a woman like Grace was enough of an honour; to make love to her night after night and make her pregnant was up to that point the most wonderful thing that had ever happened to me.

  I realise that doesn’t say much about my feelings for Beth, in fact it makes me sound like a right rogue, but it is one of the most wonderful things, not ‘the’ most wonderful. I just mean it’s right up there in a cluster at the top.

  My time in Oak House was intense. We talked for hours. Okay, they asked questions and I talked. I told them about London and Rio, and the massive ships and the Weaver Women, I told them about the clouds and the culverts and the incredible scientific understanding of the people in other dimensions and even the far future.

  My parting from the lovely old kitchen was brief and informal. I knew I’d see them all again before my return home, but I also knew that I would never have quite the same experience I’d had as I followed Henry through the rain to the front door.

  I had been so full of expectation and eagerness to see Grace again, I had seen her and she was more wonderful than I remembered, but also even more distant. I was a potential problem for her and I really didn’t want to be that.

  My return journey to Goldacre Hall was therefore much more subdued and calm. I was not meant to be with Grace, I did not belong. It wasn’t hard to understand, she wanted another child and for whatever reason Mitchell was unable to fulfil that role. However things were arranged in Gardenia, it was obviously perfectly acceptable for her to use me as a surrogate father and I had to accept the role. I mean it wasn’t as if I’d been digging ditches in the mud or slaughtering pigs. Making a baby with Grace had been a fairly amazing job.

  32

  The more time I spent with Henry, the more I realised the kids of Gardenia were almost ridiculously mature. He seemed to know everything.

  ‘I’m glad you’re my new sister’s father,’ Henry said calmly as we walked through the slightly lighter rain. The ground underfoot was very soggy and I was glad to be wearing the wonder boots that Noshi had given me.

  ‘Oh, right. I’m very happy about that, too,’ I said, having no idea if that was the appropriate response.

  ‘Grace told me you were to be the father when you first arrived in the summer.’

  ‘Oh, right, yes, of course,’ I said.

  So that could only mean long before anything had happened between myself and Grace, she had already made the decision. She wanted a baby and I was a visiting male with no connections in her world. It made me understand my position and let go of some of the mildly sentimental feelings I’d been harbouring.

  Thankfully Henry was walking just ahead of me, because I know my wretched eyebrows would have given away my astonishment. They were up and down like a Geiger counter on a windy day in Chernobyl.

  We arrived at Goldacre Hall and Henry walked straight in. I followed him through this very familiar building until he turned through a door I was certain I’d never noticed previously.

  In a room that ran along the south side of the house with floor to ceiling windows along one side, I realised I’d only ever seen it from the outside. I knew at once where we were as regards the floor plan of the house, I had walked past the outside on many occasions, I remembered seeing curtains drawn across the windows during the summer. I now assumed this was to protect all the books from strong sunlight.

  With
the curtains drawn back it was light and a rather wonderful space. On the opposite side to the windows were thousands of books on shelves going all the way up to the ceiling. There was a ladder mechanism at the far end of the room and high up on the ladder a quite ludicrously old man was putting books back on the shelves.

  ‘Gavin wants to make some paper,’ said Henry very seriously. ‘He’s going to write a book with letters so he can remember everything before the increased electrical activity in the anomaly removes all the synapses containing his experiences with us and in the general multiverse.’

  I was looking at Henry as he spoke, barely able to believe what my ears were hearing. He was a little kid who’d taken all that in.

  We waited in silence for old Andrew to descend. It could have been ten minutes, he moved so slowly.

  ‘Sorry for the delay,’ he croaked when he got to the floor. ‘Doesn’t do to rush things at my age. I’m 129, you know.’

  I smiled at him. He moved to a long table that ran down the centre of the room, leaned on it and caught his breath.

  ‘So, you want to make some paper. Well, it takes time. I don’t know how long you have, Gavin. I might suggest you use one of the paper books I’ve already made.’

  He pulled out a drawer in the side of the long table, which revealed numerous beautiful books that looked as if they were bound in leather.

  ‘I made these 50 or so years back, these are the last few remaining. It would be an honour if you’d take one of these on your travels.’

  He picked one of the books up and handed it to me. It was heavy but as soon as I touched it I understood the cover was not leather but rather a form of carbon material that looked a little like animal skin.

  ‘Oh wow,’ I said. ‘I’m not sure I can take this from you. It’s the most beautiful book I’ve ever seen.’

  It took him a few seconds to lift his arm and pat me on the shoulder. ‘I’m 129 years old. I can barely see, it takes me an hour to get up in the morning, I don’t really have any need for it, and look,’ he said, pointing to the remaining books in the large drawer, ‘I’ve got plenty. You take it, Gavin, oh, and here.’

  Again I had to wait some time for him to slowly turn and open a much smaller drawer in the big table. Inside this was a dark blue velvet bag. I watched as he very slowly extracted a black stick from the bag and handed it to me.

  ‘You’ll know what this is.’

  I inspected it, a perfectly smooth black stick with rounded ends.

  ‘It’s a pen,’ he said, ‘to make marks on paper. It is good for about three million letters so you should be able to write your book with that.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said.

  So for the next three weeks I spent the mornings working with Hallam and Mitchell in the gardens and the afternoons writing my memoirs.

  It has been hard work preparing all the vegetable beds for winter, cutting back hedges and moving boxes of produce in one or other of the store barns.

  I also worked in the kitchen with William and found preparing food for a hundred people to be so much easier than cooking for two.

  I had William to talk to and that made things a great deal easier to cope with. His understanding of the human mind, of the way we think and react, was a great help to me.

  However, the most peaceful and rewarding time was spent alone in my little room at the top of the house.

  It took me a while to get used to the activity of writing in longhand. My handwriting was appalling at first and I really had to concentrate to make my hand form the letters correctly.

  However, after a few days the process became more relaxed and I scrawled these many pages.

  This was helped in part by the extraordinary pen that Andrew had given me; the way it glided across the beautiful paper made the experience easier and pushed me to try and write my words more carefully. The line it created was very satisfying and I wrote more slowly but far more carefully because of it.

  The process slowed down my thoughts, allowing me to concentrate and pull the memories out one by one, recalling them all in vivid detail.

  No question here, this part of my journey was the most peaceful and contemplative of any part of my wanderings. The hours I spent in the little room of a house not yet built outside a town that once existed was very fulfilling. I had no idea if I would get back to 2011, to Beth and my real life.

  Being alone in the little room but knowing I was surrounded by the kindest, most accepting people I had ever met was very conducive to my writing. I knew that if I ever got stuck on a part of my increasingly densely written book I could go down to the kitchen and talk to someone.

  If I never got back, if indeed I ended up staying in Gardenia until I died, I would be perfectly happy.

  But that evening, just before I had finished cleaning up in the kitchen, William returned from a meeting of the elders to say that the weather forecast was indicating that there may be an anomaly before the month was out.

  It was now 15th November, 2211. The next few weeks could be my last in Gardenia.

  33

  Seeing Didcot Power Station below me was at the same time nothing unusual and slightly alarming. In the few seconds I’d experienced being lost in the cloud I somehow managed to turn 180 degrees and come out the way I went in.

  I’d experienced no sense of turning. I know I hadn’t guided the Yuneec in a turn and I knew enough about basic aeronautics to know that completing a 180 degree turn with zero visibility in a matter of seconds was not remotely possible.

  Therefore seeing Didcot Power Station made no sense and caused me to express my mental turmoil in a long list of expletives.

  I was screaming questions at myself. How could this possibly happen? I knew, I was certain beyond any doubt, that I had flown past Didcot going south and now I was flying past it again heading north.

  I knew nothing had happened as far as the sky above Didcot in 2011 was concerned. I had been in the thick cloud for a few seconds, the only disconcerting thing was the turn around and the machine I was flying in.

  I had been flying along quite happily in a 2010 Yuneec e430. I somehow got sucked up into a bizarre and frightening cloud formation and I came out a second or two later, heading in a different direction in a completely different machine.

  I screamed in shock when I glanced down at the controls. Everything was different. It was better, there’s no doubt about that, but it was impossibly different.

  Although at that moment I had absolutely no recall of anything other than flying, cloud, turning 180 degrees, a new machine and lots of screaming, I knew something had happened. I had a headache, my neck felt stiff, my eyes were incredibly tired and I felt a bit sick.

  I was in a proper panic but this was tempered by the fact that I was in an incredible aeroplane.

  Breathing rapidly and shouting, ‘Oh fuck, oh fuck,’ repeatedly, I banked the plane around to get a better look at what I’d just flown out of. As the cloud formation came into view it started to drift apart. It sort of broke up into smaller bits of cloud and long strands of mist until the overall formation of this cloud tower had all but dispersed.

  Although the pitch, yaw and direction of the controls were effectively the same, the throttle control had gone. Instead, as I soon discovered, I was controlling the power with a smooth slider control under my thumb.

  How did I know to do that? And how on earth did this thing accelerate so incredibly powerfully? As I pushed the slider gently upward I started to climb at what felt like fighter jet speed.

  Up until a few seconds earlier, I had been flying what was virtually an experimental light aircraft with limited speed and range.

  Now I was in some incredible machine that could have competed in the Red Bull aerobatic competition and possibly won. I had never flown anything so powerful. Before I knew it, I was, acco
rding to the incredibly detailed display on the dash in front of me, at 22,000 feet and climbing fast.

  I should have passed out. The Yuneec wasn’t pressurised and yet I felt no change in cabin pressure. I noticed the little window in the pilot’s door had changed; there was no longer a slide back section. It was a pressurised cabin and clearly the altitude this machine could reach was beyond belief.

  Thankfully at that moment my senses came back to me and I levelled out and started to descend as calmly as I could. I had entered commercial airspace and was going to get into a lot of trouble.

  Twenty-two thousand feet in a single-engined, battery-

  powered plane is barking mad. It could not happen.

  Once I’d dropped to 10,000 feet, I flicked something with my right thumb. A small light appeared on the dash, a symbol of two human hands waving.

  I didn’t know what it meant, but guessing, I gingerly and briefly let go of the controls. The Yuneec stayed true, flying level and fast at 10,000 feet, due south.

  I screamed again as I glanced to my left to see a wooden box carefully strapped into the passenger seat.

  That hadn’t been there before. I went through the same deep breathing routine to try and calm down. Having a panic attack while in control of an aircraft flying over a densely populated area is frowned upon by aviation authorities worldwide. I leaned over and saw that the box was full of things: books, clothes that looked weird and on the far side, my iPad.

  I reached over and pulled it out. It looked the same; at least the iPad hadn’t changed into something weird. I pressed the top button to see if it had any charge. It came on at once and had a full battery. I felt my face flicker. There was some dull recall but it made my head hurt. I knew the battery shouldn’t be at 100 per cent, I was certain it hadn’t been full when I’d taken off.

  I opened the satnav app and after a couple of moments as the iPad searched for a signal it located me over Blewbury, just south of Didcot.

  I dithered again as I realised the mount I put my iPad on had disappeared.