The Time Bubble Box Set

by Jason Ayres

  At the time the asteroid hit, spring was just returning to the Arctic Circle. The sea ice had been at its maximum extent in March and was just beginning to retreat, as it did every year. But this year, things were to be different.

  The ash cloud was particularly concentrated at the Poles. In addition, the sulphur dioxide released into the upper atmosphere by the volcanic activity reflected back the heat. As a consequence, very little of the sun’s warmth penetrated down to the surface below. Temperatures failed to rise and the Arctic sea ice failed to thaw.

  In the Antarctic it had less effect. Winter was returning to the Southern Hemisphere, and the loss of energy from the sun made little difference at a time of year when very little sunlight reached that part of the world.

  For other countries in southern latitudes, it was a noticeably bad winter, but not anything that had not been experienced before. The Falklands were even wetter and more miserable than usual. New Zealand had a cold winter with plenty of snowfall. Melbourne, Sydney and other Southern Australian cities were cloudy, cold and damp throughout June and July.

  Such conditions were not unheard of. However, when the poor weather lingered on into September, questions began to be asked.

  Further north, all sorts of unusual things were happening. The Sahara saw more rainfall than it had received in years. All manner of seedlings, dormant for decades under the parched sand, sprang forth as saplings. In other tropical areas, monsoons arrived at the wrong time or not at all.

  There was a noticeable cooling across all tropical areas, estimated at between one and two degrees Celsius. That, combined with the unpredictable rainfall, led to widespread crop failures. Many places did not see the sun for weeks on end, stuck under an unremittingly grey and gloomy sky.

  In the more temperate areas of the Northern Hemisphere, things were even more noticeable. Much of Europe had a dismal, cold and wet summer.

  Even by the UK’s standards, notorious for disappointing summers, it was a shocker. The temperature never reached 20 degrees Celsius anywhere in the UK for the entire summer, and in most places, daytime temperatures were more like March than August.

  Further north, things were even worse. Summer never came to Scandinavia at all. Snow showers persisted throughout the season. But it was inside the Arctic Circle where the biggest changes were occurring.

  With the sunlight blocked out, the Arctic sea ice barely retreated at all. By August, only a quarter of the usual melting had occurred. For the first time in many years, the Northern Sea Route never opened.

  When the sun did manage to break through the clouds, rather than warming ocean water, most of its heat was reflected back by the prevailing ice sheets. As September arrived, the sea ice was already beginning to advance again at an unprecedented rate.

  For the tourist industry it was a disaster. All flights were grounded until mid-June and, even when they resumed, bookings were a fraction of what they would normally have been.

  Those that did make it to the Mediterranean were greeted by the worst summer in living memory. The Costa del Sol was overcast and cold. Flights continued to be delayed or cancelled at short notice due to concerns over continued volcanic eruptions.

  It wasn’t just the tourist industry that was in trouble. Failed harvests around the world were putting pressure on food producers, exacerbated by restrictions on air travel which were causing all manner of freight delays.

  All of this had a knock-on effect on many global companies, all reflected in the stock markets which went on a prolonged slide throughout the summer. Only the previous spring, the Dow Jones had broken through the 30,000 mark for the first time. By the end of August it had plummeted to less than 15,000. The same pattern was repeated across all the major economies as the world fell into a global recession.

  Governments urged their citizens to stay calm. There had been worse crises than this in the past. We had survived them, we would survive this. The climate would return to normal in a couple of years, the economy would recover, and all would be well.

  In the meantime, the word “austerity” began to be bandied around once again, as it had after the last major stock market meltdown twenty years previously.

  Not everyone was convinced. Kaylee certainly wasn’t. She’d had her work cut out working with the Met Office over the summer, running all sorts of projections as to what was going to happen. Now she was getting seriously worried.

  The previous evening she’d been working in her office, by now half-converted into a nursery. It was cold and windy outside, but she was warm enough at her desk. She should have been – she and Charlie had had their central heating on since the middle of August. Despite the woolly jumper she was wearing, the bump in her middle was really showing now. She was six and a half months pregnant.

  She’d been looking at the satellite patterns, ocean temperatures and the long-term forecast for the month ahead and she was extremely concerned by what she was seeing.

  She and Charlie were due to fly out to the Canary Islands for a holiday the following week. They were going to stay with Charlie’s mother and Kaylee’s father who’d been living on the island of Fuerteventura for the past three years, along with Kaylee’s sister, Olivia.

  Charlie and Kaylee had booked their flights several months ago before she knew she was pregnant and before the asteroid strike. With all the cancellations and a baby on the way, they were not even sure if they would be able to go, but her pregnancy had been straightforward so far. Her doctor had given her the all-clear to fly as long as she returned by the first week of November.

  The newspapers were making the most of the weather to try and sell more copies. On this particular October day, the front page of one of the mid-range tabloids was screaming out “COLDEST WINTER IN 1,000 YEARS ON ITS WAY”.

  Kaylee was doing her weekly shop in the large superstore on the edge of town. She noticed the headline as she wheeled her shopping trolley past the newspaper stand. This particular paper had been running such stories every year as long as anyone could remember, and most people had long stopped taking them seriously. But this didn’t seem to be the case today.

  Three people picked up a copy as Kaylee watched. She reflected that, for all the paper’s scaremongering in the past, this time they may just have got it right.

  She glanced away from the newspapers towards the fruit and veg area. It wasn’t particularly busy and there was no sign of anything out of the ordinary as people went about their daily business.

  A young mum with a pushchair was choosing a bunch of bananas. An elderly lady was complaining to a member of staff about the price of strawberries. The poor growing season had driven up the prices of fresh food.

  Kaylee pondered what might happen in the months ahead. The weather charts she had been studying showed a huge mass of cold air positioned over the North Pole. It looked highly likely that it would be plunging southwards over the next week, bringing freezing temperatures to the UK, not at all what would be expected for mid-October.

  Kaylee’s concern was more for the long term, though. If it was going to get that cold in October, what would the rest of the winter be like? What sort of conditions might her baby, due in late-December, be born into?

  She was glad they were getting away to Fuerteventura. According to her dad, the weather over there had not been too bad recently. It hadn’t been as hot a summer as usual, and cloudy much of the time, but it was still pleasantly warm.

  =============================

  Whilst Kaylee was thinking about the long-term weather forecast, most people were more concerned with complaining about the current conditions. It was nearly opening time at The Red Lion, and Kent was sitting at the bar reading the paper whilst Lauren stocked up the fridges.

  Kent wasn’t too worried about the weather. He and Debbie were due to jet off on holiday the next day. They were bound for Cyprus, which by all accounts had also escaped the worst of the poor summer.

  The door from upstairs opened and Debbie emerged with a fac
e like thunder.

  “What are you doing, sitting there?” she said. “It’s bloody freezing in here! Why haven’t you got the heating on?”

  “Heating costs money, my sweet,” replied Kent. “It will soon warm up when we get a few more people in.”

  “If we get a few more people in,” she replied. “It’s not exactly been busy in the daytime lately, has it?”

  “Well, you can blame the weather for that,” replied Kent. “It’s not been like last summer when we had that heatwave during Euro 2028. The sun brings them out.”

  “Well, it’s too cold. Get outside and get some of those logs in and light a fire. They’ve been sat out the back long enough.”

  “You know carrying logs in is bad for my back,” replied Kent. “Maybe Lauren could…”

  “Stop right there, mister,” interrupted Debbie. “You can’t keep dumping every little thing you can’t be bothered to do onto her. She’s going to have her work cut out running this place while we’re away as it is.”

  Lauren had been working hard over the summer. She’d been on a training course and gained her personal licence. Now she felt ready to take charge of the pub whilst her employers were away.

  “Yes, and that’s why I’ve promoted her to assistant manager and given her a pay rise,” replied Kent.

  “Excuse me,” interrupted Lauren. “I am actually here, you know. You could include me in the conversation.”

  “Well, you two sort it out amongst yourselves,” said Debbie. “I’m going back upstairs to pack.” She turned and headed back upstairs. Once she was out of earshot, Kent turned back to Lauren.

  “Go on, Lauren, get a few logs in. I’ll make you a coffee if you do. And I’ll light the fire.”

  “Go on, then. I suppose I’ll have to get used to doing it while you’re away,” she replied.

  “Yes, I was thinking about that,” he replied. “If the weather stays like this, it might be a good idea to have a fire every day. It’ll draw the shoppers in from the cold and we’ve got enough wood out there to build a house. Perhaps I over ordered when I asked for a whole lorry load.”

  Lauren headed out into the garden to get the wood. She would soon have cause to be very grateful that Kent had ordered so much.

  Chapter Ten

  It was the only four weeks since the autumn equinox but the weather had already turned bitterly cold. Charlie shivered in the crisp, cold air as he walked across the car park from his office towards his car.

  He had just finished work for two weeks and couldn’t wait to get away from the cold. He’d booked a hotel at Gatwick Airport for him and Kaylee for the night, before they flew to Fuerteventura in the morning for two much-needed weeks in the sun.

  He’d spoken to his mother on the phone the previous evening and she’d told him that the weather there had improved a great deal in the last couple of weeks. The clouds that had hung over the islands for much of the summer had finally dispersed and the sun was shining, lifting temperatures to a most agreeable 25 degrees Celsius.

  As Charlie fought his way through the icy north wind he thought about how much he longed to sit in the sunshine again. Today felt more like January than October, and he couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt the warmth of the sun on his skin.

  Autumn had come swiftly. There had been a succession of Indian summers in recent years, and it had stayed warm right into November. This year, the leaves had turned brown early and most had fallen already.

  He kicked his way through a pile of leaves beneath the horse chestnut tree in the centre of the car park. What conkers had been on the tree had long since fallen. He had noticed that there hadn’t been anything like as many this year, another consequence of the poor summer.

  Kaylee had been at home doing some last-minute packing. She had been busier than ever over the past few days. The Met Office was on red alert tracking the weather front coming in from the north, and it had been all hands on deck. No new leave was being granted, but as she’d had the two weeks in the diary for months and was going on maternity leave shortly anyway, her boss had agreed to let her go.

  Over the past week the situation had worsened rapidly. Canada, Russia and Scandinavia were already in the depths of winter. The cold air mass from the North Pole had already reached Northern Britain and had led to major snowfalls across the Scottish Highlands.

  The media remained awash with speculation about what was occurring. Far from being confined to a few sensationalist tabloid headlines, the matter was now being discussed seriously, not only in the quality papers, but also across radio and television.

  The Government insisted there was no need to worry and that they were in control of the situation. With a general election due in May 2030, they were well aware that they needed to keep voters on their side.

  Extra money had been set aside for cold weather payments to the elderly and those in hardship. Additional resources were being brought in to help keep the roads gritted and cleared of any potential snow, or so they claimed.

  The party line was that Britain was likely to be in for a cold winter, but that the atmosphere was already returning to normal and it would be business as usual within a year or so.

  Many were sceptical, which was unsurprising after a long history of failed promises from politicians. A fair amount of scaremongering had already begun over food and energy supplies. And so it was that, as Kaylee made a last-minute visit to the supermarket to pick up some suntan lotion, she was greeted by a very different scene to the one she’d encountered the week before.

  All around her, people were filling trolleys full of tinned food.

  “Look at these idiots,” she heard a middle-aged man say to his wife as he pushed his trolley down the soup aisle. “Panic buying just because there’s a bit of snow forecast.” Hypocritically, he then began loading dozens of tins of baked beans into his own trolley.

  Kaylee had heard such comments many times in the past. They were one of many clichés trotted out by people every time there was any sort of bad weather forecast. She remembered the last time there had been a heavy snowfall, some seven or eight years ago. People had been moaning about panic buying then, too, as well as Britain’s inability to deal with the snow.

  “What’s wrong with this country?” she remembered her father saying. “A couple of inches of snow, and everything grinds to a halt.”

  The simple truth was that Britain just wasn’t prepared for snow, less so now than ever. After a decade in which snow had fallen only occasionally, it just wasn’t worth spending money keeping and maintaining an army of snowploughs on the off chance of an occasional heavy snowfall.

  As things currently stood, despite the reassurances of the Government, the country was woefully ill-equipped for what lay ahead.

  Kaylee found the suncream aisle and was pleased to find that the whole stock was marked down to half-price. There had been precious little demand for suncream during the past six months, and clearly the store wanted to get rid of it. She picked up a couple of bottles and went to glance at the newspaper headlines.

  The tabloids were again screaming out at her in huge bold letters about the forecast snow. She ignored them and looked at some of the quality dailies. A story she saw on the front of The Times caught her eye. They led with “Russian gas supply under threat”.

  She scanned quickly through the article. According to the paper, due to the freezing conditions in Russia, the country was using a huge amount of energy. Their President had announced that he was unable to guarantee maintaining permanent supplies to Russia’s European customers during the coming winter.

  Up until now Kaylee had been only mildly concerned about the weather situation. She knew how cold it was going to get, but as long as heating, transport and food supplies could be maintained, she hadn’t envisaged any serious danger.

  Now, as she looked around her at the panic buying public, she began to feel distinctly uneasy. If she hadn’t been going to the Canary Islands, she might well have started fillin
g a trolley herself.

  She was extremely relieved that they were leaving, and began to wonder if perhaps they ought to stay in Fuerteventura a little longer. She would talk it over with Charlie.

  In the meantime, she needed to warn her two best friends. If things were going to get bad, she wanted them to be prepared. She went to the self-service till, paid for her suncream, and headed back out of the store in the direction of The Red Lion.

  It had been a busy week for Lauren. With Kent and Debbie gone to Cyprus, she’d had her work cut out running the pub. She didn’t mind, though. She was enjoying the power of being in charge and was making the most of it in more ways than one.

  Because of the need to have someone on the premises at all times, she’d moved into the rooms upstairs and had taken full advantage of it. She hadn’t spent many nights alone.

  When Kaylee arrived, Lauren was dealing with Andy, who was trying it on as usual. Some things never changed.

  “Is it OK if I get a few pints on tick today, Lauren?” asked Andy. “I’ve got a bit of a cash flow situation.”

  “You know that’s not allowed, Andy. If Richard was here, he wouldn’t allow it and neither will I.” Lauren had long learned not to take any nonsense from Andy.

  “But he said before he went on holiday that it would be OK,” protested Andy. “I am one of your best customers, after all.”

  “May I refer you to Exhibit A,” responded Lauren, drawing Andy’s attention to a handwritten notice on the wall. She read out the contents: “Do not give credit to the following people under any circumstances”.

  She paused, then said, “Oh, and look whose name happens to be first on the list? Well I never, it’s Andy Green. Why are you so short of cash, anyway? I thought you were loaded.”

  “Well, I have got a fair bit of cash on me, but I need it for something else. Nobby The Professor has given me a tip for a handicap at Ayr this afternoon. It’s 33/1 and he reckons it can’t lose. So I was planning to pop next door to the bookies and put a decent bet on it.”