2084 The End of Days

by Derek Beaugarde

  Ewan tried to drown out the minister rambling through his sermon. He thought it was something to do with Noah, the Ark, the Great Flood followed by something about the Second Coming and the Day of Judgment. He thought that the minister was trying unsuccessfully to fit this entire Biblical catastrophic panoply loosely around the catastrophic events unfolding on this morning’s news. Ewan just slipped back into his dream-world. Ewan thought to himself that Gary Mackintosh was a case in point. Ewan had asked Gary to come along to the church in Bowmore. They had been sitting at breakfast at his parents’ little cottage in the hamlet of Dunyveg on the sea loch just off the Ardbeg road, past the distillery village of Lagavulin, where Ewan was raised 25 years ago on the family farmstead of Surnaig. Gary laughingly dismissed Ewan’s invite to church on the basis that he had his own gods to worship that morning.

  “Fuck off, Ewan. Ah’m not even an agnostic. Ah’m a total aetheist, man! Anyway - ah’ve got money markets opening in the Middle East ah need to work on, while you’re away buyin’ in to your God. Ah might just make a killin’ while the rest of the world watches the Greek Tragedy at Windsor Castle, he, he!”

  Gary was indeed a case in point. Ewan did not know exactly what Gary did for a living. He was not employed by any corporation as far as Ewan knew. Gary seemed to work for himself as a self-made online computer expert. He was probably into buying and selling on the world stocks, currencies, commodities and futures markets, but Ewan had never been too sure. When pressed on his sources of income Gary just joked that he was ‘something huge in pork bellies’. Ewan did not even know what pork bellies were. But he did know or at least suspected that Gary worshipped It – the Great God Money. The minister, who by now had finished his sermon, came down from the pulpit to the front of the altar and he had called the congregation to prayer. Ewan had earlier counted a meagre total of twenty five heads including himself and his parents. Ewan bowed and clasped his hands together and prayed aloud with the congregation.

  “Our Father, Who art in Heaven, Hallowed be thy Name, Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done, On Earth as it is in Heaven, Forgive our Debts…”

  Ewan strayed back into his subconscious and thought back on all that had brought him to be here in this church on this particular day back on Islay. Ewan was born the youngest of four children on 5 January 2056 in the Maternity Wing of the South Glasgow University Hospital in Govan, Glasgow and he was brought up by his parents in Lagavulin village on Islay. His father John Archibald Sinclair was the practising minister at the Free Church in Port Ellen. When John-Archie was a wilder, rebellious young 18 year-old he had signed up against his parents’ wishes into the British Army and he served as a Private with the 2nd Battalion the Royal Regiment of Scotland in the Second Afghan Conflict during 2029-31. John-Archie had been based in the Nad e-Ali district in southern Afghanistan at New Camp Bastion, nicknamed the ‘Nou Camp’ after Barcelona’s famous football ground. The fighting between the British troops and the resurgent Taliban rebels was extremely fierce and particularly dirty. In later life John-Archie never really talked about his army experiences but in one sermon at Port Ellen he did talk a little about what had brought him on the path to Jesus. It had been a quiet Sunday morning at the Nou Camp not long after church service had finished. Only a trickle of soldiers had bothered to go along and John-Archie was not one of them. He had pretty much fallen away from the faith of his Islay forefathers. John-Archie and a few of his mates, including his best friend, Somerset-born Sammy Crossan, were sitting in the compound playing cards and gambling at Stud Poker. They were all bare-chested with just their shorts and underpants on, their dog-tags glinting brightly in the fierce July Afghan sun, which they had become inured to. Suddenly, without warning they all heard a great whoosh and someone yelled a fearful cry.

  “Incoming! Mortars - !”

  Soldiers flung their bodies low on the sandy compound or dived for cover as a huge crump of an explosion rocked the Nou Camp. Suddenly soldiers on guard duty were in battle positions on the battlements and pouring huge amounts of live ammo out into the rocky desert in the general direction from where the mortar had been fired from. Some return fire of little magnitude came back from the rocky outcrop and a Sergeant on the parapet pumping his automatic for all it was worth screamed at the top of his voice.

  “Enemy engaged! Enemy engaged - Taliban - twelve o’clock!”

  Other troops quickly ran to assist the Sergeant and a brief fire-fight ensued. Two Taliban fighters with old semi-automatics about 150 yards south of Nou Camp jumped out of their rocky hiding place.

  “La ilaha illallah! La ilaha illallah!”

  ‘No God but Allah’ they cried in their last breaths as they were mown down in a hail of British lead and the fire-fight was over almost as quickly as it started. The two Taliban were happy now in Heaven with Allah as martyrs to the cause of Islam. John-Archie had been knocked unconscious by the force of the mortar blast and he knew nothing about the fire-fight. He had only been out for a couple of minutes and when he slowly came around, the camp was in chaos, with soldiers and medics running about all over the place. He winced as a pain shot from his left arm to his brain and as he lay in the sand he slowly turned his head in a foggy daze and saw that a large gash ran down the inside of his forearm. John-Archie thought that he must have been caught by a piece of shrapnel and the wound was covered in sand and running freely with warm sticky blood. He squeezed his right hand tightly above the wound to stem the flow of blood and called for help.

  “Medic – I need a medic!”

  A voice close by answered him immediately with urgency in his tone.

  “We’re here, son – we’re busy right now! We’ll get to you in a minute -!”

  John-Archie thought as he lay there, bastards have obviously put me down as a non-urgent. He turned his head dizzily to his right and eventually saw in his swimming eyesight two army medics working on a wounded soldier, whose bare body seemed to be half outside of the smouldering blackened crater where the missile had exploded. Poor bastard’s taken a direct, he thought. Then his focus came back a bit clearer and his adrenaline started pumping, bringing him back into full consciousness.

  “Oh - God - no - SA-A-A-MMY!!”

  His best friend Sammy Crossan had taken the full force of the impact. Ignoring his own injury, John-Archie quickly scrambled across the sand towards his friend being tended as best as the medics could, but Sammy’s injuries looked really grim.

  “Sammy! Sammy!”

  One of the medics, an English doctor, pushed at John-Archie’s bare chest.

  “Stay back, Jock! We need to help this soldier –“

  “I-it’s my friend Sammy –“

  “What’s his name, Jock?”

  “Private Sammy Crossan. Will he be…?”

  John-Archie stared down at his friend’s unconscious and battered body. As his eyes shifted down towards the crater where Sammy’s legs should have been, John-Archie could see there were none. He felt his left arm wince in pain and he turned away and threw up violently on the hot burning sand. Then he heard a whisper, just the faintest of whispers.

  “John-Archie…?”

  He turned back and saw that Sammy had wearily opened his eyes and was looking up at him. The English doctor who was putting an adrenaline shot into Sammy’s chest shouted above the mayhem that was going on round about the tragic little scene at the crater.

  “Stretcher - can we get a stretcher over here now!?”

  The quiet intelligent young 19 year-old from Somerset raised a shredded arm to hold on to the screaming medic and he spoke quite clearly and calmly.

  “It’s okay, doctor – where I’m going I don’t need any stretcher…”

  The doctor seemed to comprehend the finality of Sammy’s statement and it only took a split-second more for it to sink in for John-Archie. He slid in beside Sammy’s body and this time neither of the medics made any move to stop h
im. He cradled Sammy’s head and great salty tears welled up in his eyes blinding him with the sun belting off the sand. He spoke gently to his dying friend. John-Archie had never actually seen anyone die before.

  “It is fine Sammy, you’re gonna be okay. The doctor’s are gonna fix you up…“

  “N-o-o, Jock, I do-don’t think so…”

  The medics were looking at each other. They knew the futility of Sammy’s situation and they were on the verge of deciding whether to move off to other serious casualties nearby. John-Archie raised his head to the heavens as he cradled Sammy and a deep-throated feral cry welled up in his gullet.

  “God! You bastard! How could you?”

  Sammy clung to John-Archie’s right arm and a warm calm smile came over his pained and bloodied face.

  “No, no, John-Archie. It is okay – he’s here –“

  John-Archie looked at his friend in bewilderment.

  “Who’s here, Sammy?”

  “Jesus – Jesus is here for me…”

  John-Archie’s throat constricted tightly and he suddenly felt freezing cold on that blazing hot Afghan Sunday. He felt fear grip him tightly and when he tried to speak nothing would come out of his mouth. Sammy spoke instead.

  “He’s asking if it’s okay –“

  “If wha-at’s o-kay, Sa-mmy?”

  “Jesus wants me to go with him. Is it okay?”

  John-Archie looked pleadingly to the English medic. The tears were streaming down his face. The medic gave a simple nod and the Scot turned back to look deep into his friend’s eyes. Deeper than he had ever looked into a man’s eyes before or since. He saw Sammy’s soul staring back deep into his own and a great wave of awe and love touched the pair for the first and last time. John-Archie cried desperately as he answered Sammy.

  “It’s okay Sammy. It’s okay.”

  Sammy closed his weary eyes and slipped into oblivion. The medics let John-Archie weep for a moment over his friend and then the English doctor stayed to tend his shrapnel-torn arm. He sat numbly allowing the doctor to clean and dress his wound as Sammy’s body lay dead beside him. He looked at Sammy lying there peacefully and suddenly he felt a warm calming feeling flow through his whole body. It was a feeling like nothing he had ever felt in his life but he knew exactly what it was. Yes, Sammy – Jesus is here. John-Archie left the army soon after Sammy Crossan’s death and went home to Scotland to study for his Master in Divinity at Glasgow University.

  A tear trickled down Ewan’s cheek as he looked at his father sitting on the pew beside him. The minister began his prayer of intercession and Ewan slipped back into his musings. When Ewan was five he went to the Primary School in Port Ellen which had been built on the shore of lovely Kilnaughton Bay near the Port Ellen Maltings, which supplied the malted barley to the various distilleries that had made Islay world-famous for its heavy peaty Scotch whiskies, including Lagavulin. It was while he was eleven and in his last year at primary school that Ewan developed his love for all things cosmic. His teacher Mrs Hunter had given the class a PowerPoint presentation on the Royal Astronomical Society’s (RAS) controversial proposal to site a new observatory containing one of the world’s largest reflecting telescopes at the Mull of Oa. The Mull of Oa is the highest point at 131 metres above sea level on the Oa peninsula the most southerly point on Islay sitting on the western side of Kilnaughton Bay and to the east of Lochindaal. The proposal was to install the 11.2 metre reflecting telescope named CORSAIR (controlled optimal resolution single aperture integrated reflector) by the year 2069 in a purpose built observatory on the Mull of Oa. The telescope would be of similar design to the huge 10.4 metre reflecting telescope, the Gran Telescopia Canarias (GTC) which was sited 2,267 metres above sea level in an extinct volcano on La Palma in the Canary Islands. The GTC had been a very difficult and expensive build due to the inaccessibility of the location. The RAS were able to propose the more accessible Mull of Oa site for their new telescope on the basis that the promontory was still one which was relatively pollution-free, with mostly good clean air that was required to operate CORSAIR successfully. In addition technological developments in single-aperture reflector manufacture and advanced computer generated control allowed both for CORSAIR to be built larger than the GTC and operate at a much lower level. Ewan, who had been fascinated by space since his earliest childhood memories, was absolutely captivated by Mrs Hunter’s presentation, although he could see the rest of the class were bored by it. When the teacher asked for any comments Ewan was the only hand that shot up in the air. He answered with supreme confidence.

  “Mrs Hunter. I’m going to be an astronomer when I leave school.”

  There was a ripple of laughter around the class and Ewan scowled indignantly at everyone. Most of the boys had aspirations to work up at the Maltings or in the distilleries and most of the girls wanted shop jobs in Glasgow or Edinburgh. Mrs Hunter held up her hand to stop the laughter and looked straight into Ewan’s excited brown eyes.

  “And I believe that you will be an astronomer, Ewan Sinclair, if you put your mind to it.”

  However, Ewan was about the only person on Islay who was excited about the CORSAIR project. The insular islanders were in uproar over the proposals and hundreds of objections to the planning application were lodged with Argyll and Bute Council. The main thrust of the islander’s objections was two-fold. Firstly, the Mull of Oa was an area of outstanding natural beauty and also a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI). The deserted promontory was home to various protected sea birds and rare plants, flowers and grasses, which the objectors argued would be disturbed or even destroyed by the huge building project. They argued that it would be a giant blot on a landscape that was practically unchanged since the Ice Age, ‘a great white pimple on God’s own soil’. The second objection was that the proposal necessitated the relocation of the old American Monument, which would require being moved 200 metres to the west of where it was originally built after the First World War. The monument had been erected ‘sacred to the immortal memory’ of American soldiers and sailors who had perished in the sinking of the transport ships Tuscania and Otranto by German submarines in 1918. Again the objectors argued that moving the American Monument would be like desecrating a war grave. There was even a large body of objections from the US, especially descendants of servicemen who had perished in the sinking of the two vessels. Despite the objections the local authority unanimously passed the planning application and in February 2068 work began on the Oa peninsula in earnest. Ewan was captivated by the project build as he played football in the playground at breaks or when he was on the sandy beach of Kilnaughton Bay. He would watch the huge 50 tonners, which had just rolled off the specially commissioned ferries from the pier at Port Ellen, thunder past taking building materials up the Oa. Or be fascinated by the brand-new helijets and some older style helicopters freight in more specialist and technical materiel. A large part of the Mull had been fenced off to keep people out for safety and security, but Ewan loved nothing better than to cycle up the Oa at the weekend and watch the ‘white pimple’ taking shape. The security guards were forever shaking their fists and yelled at him.

  “Get oot o’ here ye bloody wee scamp!”

  Ewan took great pleasure at shouting back as he free-wheeled back down the hill.

  “I’m going to work there one day!”

  The security guards just laughed at him as he cycled off each time with a flea in his ear. The second important event in that same last year of primary school for Ewan was that his teacher Mrs Hunter had selected two boys and two girls in the class to sit the entrance exam for the prestigious Glasgow High School. Ewan was one of the boys. Ewan’s mother Jessie was against this because her ‘baby’ would be away in Glasgow during the school year. John-Archie argued Ewan’s case.

  “For goodness sake, woman, it’s not as if the boy is going to outer space! He’s only going to Glasgow and it is only 45 minute
s away on the new helijet service from the Machair. I’ve spoken with Margaret and she and Jim have agreed Ewan can have their spare room. They’re practically round the corner from the school where they are in Anderston. And anyway the boy hasn’t even passed the exam so who knows whether he’ll get in or not?”

  After buckets of tears from Jessie and pleading from Ewan she relented and Ewan sat the exam in late March. Jessie had an unmarried cousin Bella McAffer who was also very maternalistic and sympathetic to the cause. Bella comforted Jessie with optimistic thoughts of failure.

  “We’ll let Ewan sit the exam then. We could be lucky Jessie and he’ll not be getting in to the Glasgow High School.”

  Although the competition for places at Glasgow High was fierce Ewan passed with flying colours, as did shrewd Mrs Hunter’s other three applicants from Port Ellen Primary. The results had come through with only two weeks to go until the summer holidays and Mrs Hunter asked the two boys and two girls to stand up at their desks in class.

  “Peter McEachern, Ewan Sinclair, Elizabeth MacFie and Mhairi Gillespie have all been accepted for places at the Glasgow High School. It is a great honour for Port Ellen Primary to have had all four sit the exam and all four pass with such distinction. I would like to say to all four of you – children, I am proud of your wonderful achievement. Class please show your appreciation?”

  Ewan’s chest swelled to bursting as the whole class burst into a raucous round of applause and cheering. A week before First Year was to begin Ewan had settled into his sister Margaret and husband Jim’s spacious apartment in the large Edwardian-façade terrace on the corner of Cleveland Street and Kent Road in the Anderston district of Glasgow. It faced the magnificent Victorian edifice, the Mitchell Library, which Ewan would spend many hours of study and research in. Margaret was the oldest of the four Sinclair children and she was 13 years older than Ewan. She and Jim did not have any children and it did not look like they would ever have any. Jim was one of the growing ranks of infertile males spreading around the globe like a virus with no finite causation as yet identified. That week before school started was like a holiday in the big city for the wee Islay boy. Margaret and Jim took him to Pollok Estate and the Burrell Collection, Kelvingrove Art Gallery, the Riverside Transport Museum on the north side of the River Clyde and Ewan’s favourite. It was the Glasgow Science Centre on the opposite side of the river from the Transport Museum. Anything to do with space in that museum and Margaret would end up having to drag Ewan onwards. The impressive blond-sandstone Glasgow High School was situated on the other side of the bridge which crossed over the M8 motorway, on Elmbank Street in the Blythswood district. Rev John-Archie and Jessie had come to stay in Glasgow and to support Ewan through his first week at the High School. Although Margaret’s flat was big she only had the one spare room, which Ewan was using and his parents booked into the nearby Glasgow Hilton to make a holiday of it. On the Monday morning John-Archie and Jessie came over to Margaret’s for breakfast and to see their ‘big boy’ get into his smart new dark blue uniform with the High School crest emblazoned proudly on the jacket pocket. After breakfast and tearful hugs from his father and sister, Ewan walked the short distance from Cleveland Street to Elmbank Street with his mother Jessie beside him. They walked quietly and watched the rush-hour traffic go by. The electri-cars, trucks and taxis clogging up the M8 trying to get into the city and also above them the build-up of air-car traffic in the lower air lanes and helijets in the upper lanes. As they turned off Bath Street into Elmbank Street they could see the hordes of parents and children streaming into the school gates. Jessie put her arm around Ewan’s shoulder and reassured him.