by O M Faure
‘Waste not, want not,’ she says.
‘Do you want mine?’ I ask her.
She squirms in her seat and shakes her head.
17
Olivia
Conurbation of London, 1 November 2081
* * *
Several people are looking at us. Nearly everyone here is wearing a version of our outfits in varying colours and fabrics. Most have the same type of jacket as we do, some are wearing tight t-shirts only over the leggings. I wonder whether maybe there’s a dress code or is it that people are just so accustomed to wearing the same type of outfit all the time, for convenience, that they don’t realise anymore how similar they all look to each other?
All the women here have very short hair, pixies or buzz cuts. Some have a side of their head shaved, and most have dyed it in outlandish colours: turquoise, orange, neon green. Some are just completely bald and tattooed with swirling flowery designs or busy geometric shapes. DeAnn and I stand out with our long hair, despite the shiny new clothes.
Madison is chatting away, explaining small things and showing us how to access the bank accounts that Blossom opened for us this morning. The young blonde woman must have been sent to make us feel welcome. She speaks very quickly and tends to laugh at the same time. She’s slender and has a beautiful face with long, rectilinear features. Her eyes are blue and although she wears too much makeup like everyone else here, she looks fresh somehow. Her bobbed hair is longer than that of any other woman we’ve seen so far, reaching just above her jawline. She smiles at me when she sees me staring at her round belly. I blush and avert my eyes, biting my lip.
‘There’s so much to talk about. Where would you like to start?’ she asks.
‘Is there a quieter place we could go?’ I ask, as people are staring openly at us by now.
‘Actually, we’ve been cooped up in here for hours. Take us outside,’ DeAnn says. Madison hesitates and DeAnn presses on: ‘We’re not being held prisoner here, are we?’
‘No, of course not.’ She chuckles uncomfortably.
‘Well, then.’ DeAnn gets up, leaving her tray on the table.
Madison glances at Captain Burke. He nods.
‘OK, follow me,’ Madison says with a smile, as she gets up.
I gather DeAnn’s tray and mine, feeling ridiculous in the unflattering spandex; I might as well be naked in the beige outfit and my cellulite is probably showing through the thin fabric. Wishing I’d gone to the gym more often over the last year, I struggle to get up from the bench and angle my bum away from view as I wait for the Captain to walk ahead with Madison and DeAnn, but instead he helps me put away the trays.
‘Olivia, right?’ He has a really deep voice.
I nod, blushing.
‘You’re not what I expected.’
Gosh, I bet he’s used to people being fitter, with the rationing and all.
‘We’ve never seen anyone from the past before. It’s exciting.’
‘What do you do here?’ I ask.
‘I’m an agent, just like you.’ He smiles.
What? Oh right. For some reason everybody here thinks we’re agents. Better play along.
He guides me through the building, chatting about inconsequential things, and I find myself relaxing. He has a warm laugh.
‘So you travel forwards too?’ I ask.
‘Yes, I used to. Now, I’m more senior, I overlook a project to replicate the technologies we find in the future.’
‘That sounds really interesting.’
‘You mean boring, I think.’ He smiles. His accent’s polished but there’s a faint cockney trace below the surface.
An escalator takes us down into a vast hall. The ceilings here are at least three storeys high and all along the lobby’s glossy black glass walls, giant digital screens are displaying videos in what looks like Chinese, which the people passing by below assiduously ignore. The place is so full it looks like a pre-Christmas crowd in a commercial centre.
Diving into the flow, we head towards the exit. A few metres away from the revolving doors, we cross a line on the ground and each of our iModes beeps and flashes for a second. The security guard looks up and says something to his wrist.
Then we’re out.
The sound and movement are completely overwhelming. Throngs of people rush past us within centimetres of each other, ignoring each other in pure London style. Wearing spandex leggings in various colours, with transparent cut-outs strategically placed both to reveal and hide, most passers-by are not actually walking but standing very still on round, electric hovering contraptions. A few are zooming past on electric skateboards, scooters and bicycles.
Most people around us have their heads encased within glass bubbles that resemble overturned fish bowls. They look like they’re talking to the air inside them, as though they’re mad, yet everyone seems to find it completely normal.
The streets are milling with thousands of pedestrians, all jostling for space, pushing and weaving past us. The road traffic is whizzing past too; it seems that all the cars on the road are driverless and they’re driving as one, as if the same programming were pulling them forwards.
Yet, despite the huge crowd and bumper to bumper traffic, the street is eerily silent, except for the rhythmic clapping of people’s gummy shoes on the ground and the occasional whine of their small, round scooters. The cars are silent as well. It’s unnerving to be surrounded by a crowd yet hear nothing.
I turn around and look at the building we left, rising up higher than the Shard. Buildings the same head-spinning size sprout everywhere, reaching up into the yellowy smog dome above us.
Dazed, I try to focus on specific people, as the size of the crowd is making my head spin. A group of thirty-something women in front of me are walking together, pushing prams. About half of them are pregnant and wearing multi-coloured leggings with tight tops that show off their round bellies. One of them has thinning hair and her pallid skin is dry and blotchy. A middle-aged woman, her red hair shaved in a buzz cut, chats away inside her bubble, pulling her toddler roughly by the wrist. He’s wearing a breathing mask that’s eating up half of his face, and is looking longingly at her, but she’s oblivious. The thought comes unbidden to me I’d take so much better care of a child if I had one. My heart does a weird backflip and I bury the thought away. Above the rubber mask digging into his puffy cheeks, the toddler’s blue eyes seem too wise for his age. I smile at him but the woman yanks him away, glaring at me suspiciously.
It all looks so normal at first glance and then not so much, like a familiar tune gone off-key. Although we’re now in November, the weather is warm and humid, at least 25°C. As I look up to take in the overcast sky, I notice a white and green flag with a red cross overlaid on top. The building looks official; shouldn’t this be a Union Jack? What’s going on here?
The smell of rotten eggs abruptly interrupts all my thoughts. I pinch my nose and gag while we cross what must be the Millennium Bridge. The stench that’s wafting up from the Thames is overpowering. It feels like I’m inside a dustbin lorry. Retching, I grab the bridge’s railing and glance at the river; the water’s practically gone, only a bed of mud and a trickle of water remain.
Madison and Captain Burke haven’t noticed anything and are talking quietly, walking ahead of us. Captain Burke walks with a slight swagger, a hunching and tightening of the shoulders that speaks of roughness and modest upbringings.
DeAnn has removed her jacket and is pushing it against her face as she scrutinises the streets and canal pathways searching for something. I’m too busy trying to breathe through my mouth to ask what she’s looking for.
People are streaming all around us, forming eddies around our obstruction, too English to curse at us. DeAnn is oblivious to the dirty looks we’re getting. Holding my sleeve against my face, I hurry across the bridge to catch up with our guides.
‘I don’t know what may seem strange to you. So why don’t you just ask and we’ll do our best to answer,’ Madison sa
ys with a smile.
As we make our way along the Thames riverbank, I look around, trying to think of something to ask them. Most benches are occupied by elderly people in various stages of decrepitude. A short distance away, a gaggle of teenage girls is gathered around a transparent plastic screen, silently shrieking about a boy band video of some sort, their heads wrapped in the odd-looking fishbowls. Their hair ranges from mermaid green to dark purple and they’re covered in colourful tattoos. Their cropped leggings barely cover their knickers, the bottom part of their bums clearly visible, hanging out of their skimpy, tight shorts. The effect is quite eye-popping. Don’t these girls have parents?
‘Is this an air filter of some sort?’ DeAnn asks, pointing to the glass bubbles on people’s heads.
‘What? Oh no, no.’ Madison chuckles. ‘Wait, you’ll see.’
She tries to touch DeAnn’s neck but my partner jerks away. Taken aback, Madison turns to me instead; she touches my collar at the side of my throat and a screen appears in front of my face, startling me. It’s transparent, so I can still see the waterfront through it but now a menu is superimposed on the crowd of people, with boxes of scrolling text in garish colours and flashing images that come and go. Madison and Captain Burke start walking again, so I follow them, trying to adjust to the extra layer of information that the iBubble displays. The whole world is muted in here and the only things that seem real are the colourful images popping up on the curved screen.
My ear bud is spewing out over-excited chatter and I can’t find a catch on the collar or an off-switch either. Everywhere I look seems to activate a flood of information; from the special deals at this tech shop, to a passer-by’s full bio and personal photos and a brothel’s ad.
Panicking in the claustrophobic iBubble, as the sex workers start to pant and show me their lady parts, I tug at my collar until Madison takes pity on me and releases the catch. The iBubble retracts into the plastic band around my throat and we catch up with Captain Burke, who is answering one of DeAnn’s questions as he guides us through the crowd towards a pub, which I unexpectedly recognise; it’s the Founder’s Arms. Heartened by the familiar name, I follow them inside, feeling as if I’d just found flotsam to hang on to, just as the mudslide of time was threatening to drown me.
We each order our drinks at a self-service machine and navigate a path through the enormous café. Hundreds of people sit at very small tables, so close they’re elbowing each other. The multitude of people pressing me on all sides is exhausting.
Captain Burke takes one look at me and gestures to Madison, who guides us upstairs to a small room overlooking the river and the London skyline. From here we have a view on St Paul’s which looks forlorn and grey, shrunk somehow, as it sits squished between towers that loom menacingly over it.
We sit and take in the view for a moment, each one lost in their own silence, relishing the luxurious privacy.
‘We... Madison and I think there are a few things you should know… it’s probably better if we tell you outside the Programme premises. Are you guys too tired or can I go ahead and brief you?’
‘Oh, that would be so helpful, actually. Thank you, Captain Burke.’
His lips stretch in a smile. He lightly touches my shoulder and I intensely wish I weren’t wearing beige spandex.
‘Please call me Anthony – and it’s no trouble at all. If I were in your position I’d want to know as much as possible before going on mission.’ He goes over to the door, waves his wrist in front of a pad and says, ‘Maximum privacy.’
The glass walls all around us become frosted and opaque, and the sound quality in the room turn muted. Maybe soundproofed.
‘So what do we need to know?’ DeAnn’s arms are crossed as she leans back in her armchair.
‘You’re being sent to Uganda,’ Anthony says.
Madison sucks her breath in. ‘Are you sure, Anthony? Has it been confirmed?’
He nods grimly.
Madison says, ‘I don’t understand why the Programme would risk your lives and send you there. I guess they want to showcase for you the main issue of the age in a country that will epitomise the problem... but still.’
‘What’s the main issue of your era – is it famine?’ DeAnn asks. ‘I mean, do we really need to go all the way to Uganda to figure out that there’s famine in Africa?’ she scoffs.
Urgh, the woman’s so callous sometimes.
‘Famine’s not the main issue, that’s the symptom,’ Madison says, rubbing her pregnant belly.
‘OK, I’ll bite.’ DeAnn frowns. ‘What is main issue of your era, then?’
‘Before I tell you, I guess there are a few things you should know. First off, we’ve pretty much eradicated communicable diseases, so mortality has sharply decreased over the last three generations,’ Madison starts. ‘Life expectancy has soared as well and sits at around one hundred and twenty years old on average nowadays.’
‘Wow, that’s phenomenal.’ DeAnn sits back in her chair. ‘But it doesn’t sound like an issue.’
‘The medical advances are of course a positive development,’ Madison continues, ‘but it had an unintended consequence: we now have about four billion people over the age of sixty in the world. In Europe practically one in two people are senior and the over-eighties population has multiplied by seven since the year you left.’
Ah, so it wasn’t my imagination, earlier, when I thought I saw elderly people everywhere.
‘As a result, mortality rates are decreasing, child mortality in particular, is a thing of the past, and in parallel, most regions have continued to be quite fertile.’
‘Why are you both so glum?’ I ask, puzzled. ‘Surely having amazing medical advances, living longer and ensuring babies survive into adulthood is fantastic?’
‘Yes and no, Olivia.’ Anthony shakes his head, trying to find the right words. ‘We’re faced with exponential growth in a finite environment. It’s like trying to put two litres of water in a one-litre bottle. The Earth’s carrying capacity is still the same as it ever was. But our population keeps multiplying, with no end in sight and it isn’t sustainable.’
‘But I don’t get it,’ I puzzle out loud. ‘What’s the big deal? So what if there are more of us? There’s enough unoccupied space all over the world to accommodate more people, surely. I mean, Canada for a start is huge—’
Madison interrupts, ‘It does matter that there are so many of us. We’re on the brink of exceeding the carrying capacity of our ecological environment.’
‘Do you mean like Earth Overshoot Day?’ DeAnn asks.
‘Yes, just like that.’
‘Earth what?’ I ask, looking at each of them in turn, puzzled.
‘Earth Overshoot Day is the point in the year when we run out of our allocated supply of natural resources,’ Madison explains. ‘Normally in any given year, from the first of January to the thirty-first of December, we should have enough supplies to feed and sustain the whole word’s population. When we started calculating Earth Overshoot Day in the 1960s, we had a surplus of about three months. Then, in the 1980s, we could last until mid-December. In the noughties we ran out by October. In 2016, you started using the next year’s resources in August.’
‘I don’t get it, so what?’ I ask.
‘Well, that worked only as long as the following year yielded enough. It’s like living on credit and then losing your job. You can’t pay back the money you’ve already spent, so your current survival as well as next year’s survival becomes jeopardised. That’s exactly what happened: our crops started failing and we ran out of food.’
Remembering how hard it was for Martin and me to conceive, I frown, wondering. ‘Isn’t fertility decreasing? Sperm counts are dropping in developed countries and I thought women just had an average of 1.8 children, below the generation renewal threshold. Isn’t Europe’s fertility nose-diving? What you’re saying can’t be right.’
‘Yes, in a way, that was partially true. But humanity’s numbers overall aren’t
decreasing. Our growth is just slowing down – and not fast enough. Each generation grows in size, which means the number of fertile women grows as well.’
‘How is that?’ I ask, feeling even more confused now.
Madison explains: ‘Let’s say three women had eight children each in 2016. By the time these children are twenty years old, there are now twenty-four adult offspring. Let’s say that twelve of these are women who go on to have four children of their own each: that’s forty-eight kids. You see where I’m going with this? Even having eight children each, the three women in 2016 had half as many babies as the total born to their twelve daughters, who have four each. So even though fertility per woman is decreasing, the overall population is still growing exponentially.’
‘Oh, I see.’
‘So now we face a situation where fertility is on average 2.5 children per woman in the world and approximately 3.5 per woman in the least developed countries.’
‘We’ve just reached fourteen billion people on Earth last month. And we seem to be on course to reach sixteen billion by 2100,’ Anthony adds, looking glum.
DeAnn frowns. ‘So you’re saying that the main issue is not really the availability of food, it’s overpopulation? But won’t famine lower these demographic projections?’
‘Only about fifteen million people worldwide died of starvation in the last one. Sorry to be crude, but it’s not even making a dent,’ Anthony replies. ‘You and Olivia are humanity’s best hope at this stage. You’re the only ones who can still prevent our catastrophic overpopulation or at least lower humanity’s growth rate, so we never reach this point.’
He throws a glance at Madison’s distended belly and her mouth slants downward as she rubs her bump, head bowed.
Anthony looks at his iMode. ‘We should go back, we’re going to be late for your assessment.’
We’re subdued on the way back, each of us lost in our thoughts. When we reach the Programme building, Madison hesitates, then says, ‘Listen, I’d really like you to meet my family. Do you think you could all come for Sunday lunch?’