No Future Volume One
No
Future
Volume
One
Bradley
Stoke
No Future Volume One
Contents
I Alex 2020. 5
II Lindiwe
2065.
11
III
Phil 2103.
18
IV Alex
2021.
24
V Betty
2037.
30
VI Eden
2048.
36
VII Tamara
2092.
44
VIII
Alex 2022.
54
IX
Gabrielle 2039.
63
X
Alex 2023.
72
XI Mark
& Molly 2070.
80
XII Molly
& Mark 2071.
89
XIII Alex
2024.
97
XIV Diane
2042.
107
XV Eric
Esterhazy MP 2044.
115
XVI Lindiwe
2066.
124
XVII Tamara
2093.
131
XVIII Alex
2025.
139
XIX Eric
Esterhazy MP 2045.
147
XX
Psychlone 2106.
155
XXI Iris
2053.
163
XXII
Lindiwe 2067.
171
XXIII Olive
2082.
178
XXIV Lord
Newbury 2077.
187
XXV Zoe
2047.
195
XXVI Eden
2049.
203
XXVII
Tamara 2094.
211
XXVIII Alex
2026.
219
XXIX Eden
2050.
227
XXX Tamara
2095.
236
XXXI Alex
2027.
244
XXXII Theo
2052.
252
XXXIII Eden
2051.
260
XXXIV
Tamara 2096.
269
XXXV Alex
2028.
278
.
725
No Future Volume One
I
Alex
2020
“And
where did you say you worked?” she asked as she delicately squeezed
Alex’s now limp but resolutely sticky penis between her red enamelled
nails.
“I didn’t,” admitted Alex.
“Too soon on a first date,
then?”
“It’s not quite the first
date…er…” Alex began, but hesitated as he tried to remember the name
of the naked woman sprawled on the mattress beside him. He couldn’t
very well continue to call her Alfalfa2020 now their
relationship had gone beyond cyberspace, but he’d already forgotten
her real name.
“We’ve mostly only talked
about sex and, if I recall, something to do with local traffic
congestion, Alex.”
Shit! She’d remembered his
name, but what was hers? Did it begin with ‘A’ or with some other
letter?
“I think we also discussed
some other global issues…like…er…”
“Like what?” she snorted.
She stroked his testicles while Alex ineffectually twiddled his
fingers through her hair. “And the name you’re trying to remember is
Agnieszka. Not Agnes. Agnieszka.”
“Russian?” guessed Alex.
It was at least plausible. She was quite a catch for an internet date
and very much in a blonde, slim and tall fashion that would be wholly
consistent with someone of Russian origin. And she had that
delightfully dismissive hauteur Alex associated with Russian women…
“Polish,” she corrected
him.
…Or, indeed, women from
anywhere to the East of Germany.
“My parents came from
Poland,” she continued. “Back in the Nineties. I’m sure we’d mentioned
that on the net.”
“I think we talked about
global warming, the environment and stuff like that,” said Alex who
was intent on returning the conversation away from the poverty of his
memory to the wealth of his political and social knowledge.
“I don’t remember any of
that at all,” Agnieszka remarked. She teased his left testicle with
the sharp edge of the red tip of her longest nail. “You did talk about
how rubbish this town is. No facilities. No pub. Just a crappy
Wal-Mart and a Dunkin Donuts.”
“They’ve opened a
Starbucks now,” Alex pleaded. “And I think there’s gonna be a new
petrol station.”
“Well, bully for Ashton
Lovelock, New Town. What made you want to live here rather than back
in Swindon? I think Swindon’s a great place. Plenty of shops. And the
M4’s nearby.”
“Well, it would’ve been
easier for us now if I was still renting a place there. Your
apartment’s just a mile or so from where I used to live…”
“More a flat-share than an
apartment. Property’s so fucking expensive.”
“It was work more than
anything else. My company’s based in a Business Park just ten miles
from Birmingham. That’s forty odd miles from here. Just over an hour’s
commute on the motorway…”
“...On a good day,”
Agnieszka commented knowingly.
“…And property’s not so
expensive round here, at least not compared to Swindon.”
“And where did you say you
worked?” Agnieszka asked again.
“Well, that’s why I’m sure
we must have talked about serious shit, you know, like climate change
and immigration policy and terrorism and politics and stuff,” pleaded
Alex. “I work for an on-line news service. It’s part of the
Disney-Reuters-News International media group. I help compile news for
the news services.”
“The ones you have to pay
for or the free ones?”
“Both. The BBC. The
Telegraph. The Mail. And even Google News. They’re all customers of
ours.”
Agnieszka’s face crumpled
into an almost comical expression of sceptical dismissal. “It’s all
lies, isn’t it? All the stuff that’s posted on the net. Everyone says
it’s just propaganda. There’s no money in News now, so it’s mostly
made up or recycled or planted or just showbiz trivia.”
Alex was genuinely
shocked. “That is not true,” he spelt out slowly and precisely.
“There’s an absolute separation between editorial and news content.”
“Even on a News
International outlet?” Agnieszka sneered. “I’ve seen the crap on Fox
News UK. I’m just glad my parents came from Poland and not the fucking
Republic of Waziristan. All they go on about is Fortress Europe and
cars that run on deep-ocean methane. Where’s the separation between
fact and insular small-minded fantasy?”
Alex wasn’t sure he was so
pleased now that he’d invited this woman into his house. The last
thing you want to happen while naked and just after having made love
for the last half-hour is to have to listen to someone disabuse you
for what you do for a living.
“I just collate and edit
the news,” Alex pleaded. “I don’t have anything to do with what News
International or, for that matter, the BBC or Google do with the
content. And I don’t think there are any lies out there. It’s just
presentation and editorial.”
Agnieszka smiled. She
obviously enjoyed Alex’s show of outrage. “And just what kind of news
do you edit and collate then? Big issues like the environment, war and
nuclear proliferation?”
Alex twisted his face into
puppy-dog submission. “Entertainment,” he admitted.
“Pop stars and television
personalities?”
“More internet gossip.”
“Like...?”
“Well, there’s a lot of
it. After all the net is bigger than all the other media put together.
And look at the success of VR. Virtual Reality. That’s exploded like
there’s no fucking tomorrow…”
“Yeah,” said Agnieszka,
with a wry smile. She cupped Alex’s balls in her left hand while her
right stroked the length of his powder-stained penis where the glans
was slowly retreating into the shelter of his foreskin. “I’ll give you
that. You certainly know how to use the controls on Hot Nights
Interactive.”
She bent her face down so
that her lips, as bright red as the varnish on her nails, could brush
along Alex’s now steadily reawakening penis.
“I try to please…” said
Alex as he leaned back in a gesture of surrender.
“It’s not fucking politics
or fucking religion or fucking environment you’ve ever talked about as
far as I recall,” said Agnieszka. She tugged Alex’s penis up against
her cheek while smiling at him from the distance between his eyes and
his groin. “It was mostly nothing but fucking.”
And fucking was precisely
what Alex and she did for the next few hours in Alex’s modest terrace
at the end of a typical suburban car-lined street: each vehicle
proudly displaying both tax disc and parking permit. In the muffled
background of the couple’s pants and gasps came the occasional roar of
overhead planes or the growl of motor engines, but the predominant
noise was the mechanical electronic thud emanating from Alex’s sound
system that he had pre-programmed to activate on just such an occasion
as the one currently happening.
Alex knew that all was
right in the world. This was his second first date this week and he’d
lost count of the number of times he’d had sex so far this year with
the various women he met through Hot Nights Interactive, not
to mention those through New Friends On-Line and Fun With
No Commitments.
Was Agnieszka any
different?
Well, she was a first
class lover that was for sure, although Alex had already guessed that
from the on-line sex they’d enjoyed together. The controls might have
been in human hands, but the physical contact was exclusively supplied
by inexpensive computer accessories.
Agnieszka was undeniably
head and shoulders above the normal standard of woman Alex had picked
up on the internet, though given the difficulties in making friends by
other—if you like old-fashioned—means, on-line dates were nowadays of
a somewhat better class than they might once have been.
And as Alex’s penis felt
the gushing warmth of Agnieszka’s vagina gripping his burning
stiffness, he knew, more than he’d ever known before, that this was an
encounter which had to be repeated.
No Future Volume One
II
Lindiwe
2065
After
so many months of struggle and sacrifice, the arduous journey was
finally over. Lindiwe had arrived. In the town’s short history, few
had suffered as much as Lindiwe to reach Ashton Lovelock. Few could
have endured the adversity, hunger and rape. Few would have willingly
paid so much from so little savings to make a home in the fifty year
old English New Town.
But desperation had driven
Lindiwe to extreme measures, as it had her fellow migrants who’d also
survived the journey.
Lindiwe hadn’t viewed the
stops on her voyage as a tourist might, although there were few
European tourists who would venture into sub-Saharan Africa these
days. What she saw of the thousands of miles between Southern Africa
and Northern Europe wasn’t through the round windows of an aeroplane
soaring above the clouds and streaking ahead of a trail of
prohibitively expensive fossil-fuel. She saw no airports and most
definitely no passport controllers. Had she met even one between
Lesotho and London, she’d have been unceremoniously bundled away in
the back of an immigration police-van either to be dumped back in her
country of origin or detained in one of the countless refugee camps
that lined the shores of North Africa. And from what Lindiwe had heard
about these camps, her most likely fate there would be a lonely death
while she waited for a decision from the many government agencies and
private charities that were fruitlessly arguing with one another over
the responsibility for feeding the millions of desperate souls in
their care.
No one would want to be
burdened with such responsibility when there were so many other more
immediate needs to address.
Lindiwe didn’t expect
Ashton Lovelock to treat illegal immigrants with any more kindness
than Nairobi, Cairo, Harare, Sarajevo or Rotterdam would have done if
her presence had been discovered by an official at any point on her
voyage. And when she had been obliged to declare her presence,
well…
There had been several
times when she’d had to use her body as currency to keep her and her
companions safe. This had been the case from the very start of her
journey when she’d had to sacrifice her virginity simply to secure an
exit visa from the United States of South Africa. There were the weeks
and, in the slums of Cairo, the months of working for very little pay
and a great deal of verbal and physical abuse in occupations that were
far more menial than her post-graduate degree and professional
training had ever prepared her for.
Here in the Kingdom of
England there might be an opportunity to make good the qualifications
that were surplus to requirements in Maseru. Lindiwe had high hopes
for Ashton Lovelock. Despite the crumbling decay of the hastily-built
house she was staying in, it was a relatively young town with
energy-efficient housing, extensive parking spaces, and a profusion of
windmills and solar panels.
The truth was that Ashton
Lovelock was a veritable paradise compared to her original home in
Africa. The years of African famine hadn’t reduced overall population
numbers by very much. Maseru still housed a population far greater
than its infrastructure could support. The police were ineffectual
against the criminal gangs that made it hazardous to venture out
whether at day or night. The few available jobs paid very poorly if
they ever paid at all. Offices and homes were collapsing from neglect.
Queues of starving people wound through the high streets for the few
goods the criminal gangs permitted to arrive in the shops. Only a
lucky few were ever rewarded for their patience.
Ashton Lovelock, on the
other hand, was a town of owner-occupation that had now become a
neighbourhood of squats as the number of those who could afford to buy
property in the over-crowded Kingdom of England had shrunk at the same
rate as the supply of non-derelict housing stock. This town had once
been home to a prosperous community of second and third generation
Asian immigrants, but the regrettable policies of the recently deposed
Government of National Unity had resulted in their total evacuation.
This inevitably left a vacuum that was now being filled by the latest
wave of immigrants: of which Lindiwe was one.
But she was only one of
many. There were people gathered in Ashton Lovelock from all over the
world, though almost all of them were pretending to have come via the
Northern European Union. This was a necessary lie, made plausible in
the aftermath of the National Server Centre Riots. Many came from
Africa, at least as many from the Middle East and Asia, and,
inevitably, refugees from the racially intolerant Republic of North
America. Fortunately, the one thing everyone had in common was a
shared understanding of English.
“Where can I find work?”
Lindiwe asked her friend Apara whose optimistic postcards were the
beacon of hope that had drawn her across two continents to this far
distant island.
Apara shared the same
single mattress with Lindiwe in a room that had once been a loft
extension. Three mattresses filled almost all the available
floor-space and each of them, including the mattress the two friends
shared, was home to one set of people during the day and another
during the night. Apara and Lindiwe shared the mattress in the
daylight hours. At night, a black married couple from Mississippi
slept on the same mattress and frequently left behind the trace of
semen stains.
“There are no jobs at
KFC-McDonalds,” said Apara, referring to the franchise where she
worked. “You’re just going to have to look for work elsewhere.”
Lindiwe’s heart sank. She
couldn’t sleep on the mattress at night because Mr and Mrs Martin
would be there and there weren’t many places open in the evening where
she could hope to find work. This meant that her pursuit for
employment would also mean going without sleep.
Nevertheless, bleary-eyed
and bored, after a night spent in the vicinity of the bus depot in the
company of others with nothing else to do, Lindiwe resolutely wandered
the streets of Ashton Lovelock in the hunt for an employment
opportunity. Not that there were many places to visit in the town
centre. The proprietor of KFC-McDonalds, herself a South African
immigrant, was sympathetic but pointed out that there was a long
waiting list of equally desperate candidates. The other fast-food
chain, Yo Sushi Pizza Hut, was rather less friendly and more or less
told her that only Muslim men could apply. Other than that, the only
supermarket—a Tesco-WalMart—was openly hostile and told her that the
company had a policy of reporting suspected immigrants. So there was
little hope there either.
Lindiwe soon realised that
there were no jobs for her in Ashton Lovelock at all. The immigrant
community had already taken all the available low-paid opportunities.
And this was much to the evident distaste of native English citizens,
many of whom openly taunted Lindiwe with unsubtle reminders of the
unethical practices of the deposed Government of National Unity.
The ever-widening radius
of her job-search eventually encompassed a business estate on the
perimeter of Swindon where Lindiwe at last gained a position but as
nothing more demanding than a nightshift cleaning-woman. Although this
position required an expensive two-hour commute by bus followed by a
half-hour walk it was still better than having to spend the entire
night avoiding the couple sleeping on her daytime mattress.
Her official tasks mostly
involved switching on and switching off the various cleaning machines
and robots. However, it wasn’t long until Lindiwe discovered that
cleaning wasn’t everything she was expected to do, although it wasn’t
written into her terms and conditions of employment (which, in any
case, were entirely verbal and agreed with a handshake).
During the first week that
Lindiwe worked at the George Monbiot eco-business park, she became
aware of the existence of rooms that were out of bounds to her and the
other night-time operatives. There would invariably be an e-paper sign
pasted on the door of these rooms that requested that they be cleaned
later. In case there might be some misunderstanding, these doors were
locked from the inside. This was odd because the only people supposed
to be working at the offices so late at night were security guards and
technical operatives.
It soon became evident
what was happening when Lindiwe bumped into any of the people who’d
been staying in a locked room. It was always a man and a woman. The
woman was invariably much younger than the man and usually an
immigrant. Lindiwe also noticed the smell of sex that was lingering on
their person. Her nostrils had become well attuned to the odour after
the weeks she’d spent in Sarajevo in which her survival relied on the
provision of blow-jobs to total strangers..
“I like all the staff to
chip in,” Lindiwe’s boss explained as he handed her the meagre rewards
for her first week’s work. He was a slender dark-skinned man with a
turban and a West Midlands accent. He was an exile who’d returned home
after the change of government. “The benefits are extra pay. I can’t
promise a fortune but tips can make a difference.”
“Why don’t people go to
brothels and massage parlours?” asked Lindiwe, who understood that her
continued employment was almost certainly conditional on her accepting
this extra work.
“The change of government
brought about many good changes,” Mr Singh said with a sigh,
“otherwise I wouldn’t be here, of course. But one measure the new
government also introduced was to close the illicit sex establishments
that were an unofficial refuge for the immigrant women who’d stayed on
in the country, despite the constant pressure to leave. This operation
is similar to many others you’ll find all over this country. It’s a
way for the Business Park’s landlords to use empty rooms in offices
that would otherwise be decommissioned and for the punters to get what
they want.”
And what they wanted was
something Lindiwe now had to provide about twice a week in one of the
several out-of-bound offices. They were furnished with rather basic
beds rather than desks, computers and chairs. The felt-covered
partitions around each cubicle now served the function of hiding what
was going on. There was a steady stream of customers who came to enjoy
the inexpensive pleasures that immigrant labour was now providing:
their appetites whetted by the VR fantasies they could enjoy in the
comfort of their own homes.
For Lindiwe this provided
no pleasure at all until she squeezed into the office shower with the
other nightshift cleaners to spray off the semen, urine and other
bodily fluids that the customers believed was a necessary part of
love-making but during which ordeal the vaginal penetration was
probably the least distasteful part.
No Future Volume One
III
Phil
2103
Phil
hated the long drive home from Warwick Business Park to Ashton
Lovelock. Not until the gates to the town were shut close behind him
and he was once again under the protection of the most advanced and
modern security technology that money could buy did he feel safe. No
terrorist or vagrant could trespass the gated community of Ashton
Lovelock. Not even a bird flying overhead or a mouse burrowing beneath
the hi-tech walls could stay undetected for long by the town’s
computer systems, which also served to modulate the temperature, keep
the rain off the walkways and ensure that the lawns were kept
regulation length. And all this was within an entirely self-contained
energy system with a zero carbon footprint.
All the same, there were
several insecure kilometres on Phil’s journey home from work where the
windows of his battery-driven car had to stay sealed whatever the
weather and it was essential to keep his tracking devices set on. Most
of his commute was along a secure stretch of carriage-way. Few
terrorists could trespass onto the tarmac beyond the electric fences
and deep ditches that protected it. The road from the Warwick Business
Park to the A46 was similarly protected but not at the expense of
tax-payers but of the businesses based at the park.
There was more than ten
kilometres of unsecured road—mostly in a poor state of repair—from
Ashton Lovelock to the tolls at the start of the private roadway. The
hover-mechanism of his car might be less energy-efficient and burnt up
a lot of the battery charge, but it kept the car’s chassis safe from
damage and ensured that Phil and his Ford-Toyota Apollo got to its
destination without being mired in a ditch or, worse, car-jacked by
plebs eager to plunder his car for valuable parts.
It just wouldn’t do to
imagine what would happen to Phil in such a situation. Highwaymen were
known to kidnap law-abiding citizens such as him for ransom. They were
the terrestrial equivalent of the pirates that terrorised the high
seas and thereby helped to make imports so prohibitively expensive.
There were rumours of an illicit trade in human body parts used by
unrecognised physicians for plebs who couldn’t afford proper
health-care or, worse, used as raw material in the bio-labs such as
the one at the business park just next door to Phil’s office.
Those kilometres were the
only few Phil ever got to see of the England the plebs inhabited. The
pity of it was that he saw the same few kilometres every day, both
coming south and going north. Familiarity with the sight didn’t make
him any fonder of it. There was rubbish piled up, as there was no
waste disposal business to remove it. The buildings were in a terrible
state of repair with slates falling off roofs and the lawns untended.
The pavements that lined the roadside were crumbled and potholed and
in almost as bad a condition as the road itself. This was also where
the homeless lived under tarpaulin with their children running around
half-naked like the savages they were.
Phil knew that there were
different classes of pleb, just as there were different professions
such as technocrats, executives and administrators. However, whereas
the distinction between the professions was measured by academic
achievement and seniority, the diversity amongst the plebs was vacuous
and chaotic. There were those in paid employment or who were
self-employed amongst whom there was a lucky few that owned
road-vehicles that were characteristically in a very poor condition
and often relied on inefficient carbon fuels that their owners had to
buy off the black market. The plebs clearly deserved their constant
chastisement by the media for their fecklessness and irresponsibility.
They sometimes had families with three or more children. Some were
even eligible for state handouts and lived off these rather than make
an honest living. They were a burden on honest professionals like Phil
and this was the principal reason why he resented having to pay taxes.
Phil knew there were
countless orders of pleb, but the distinction was difficult to discern
among the faceless, ragged and malnourished scum that he dutifully
ignored on his journey towards the robot-operated tolls that
automatically recognised his car and let him through without him
needing to pause on the hazardous side of the barrier. Some were of
immigrant stock. Although they were generally known as illegals, a few
had somehow gained English citizenship and therefore not technically
illegal. On the rare occasion that Phil needed to speak to a pleb he
had difficulty understanding a word they said through the dense
thicket of regional and even foreign accents.
At least his tax money no
longer needed to support the Northern English plebs now that their
separate assembly had taken over this responsibility. If the Geordies
clamoured for independence like the Scots, Welsh and Irish before
them, Phil would have no objections in granting it to them.
Although the overwhelming
majority of the English population could be classified as plebs they
inhabited only a fraction of the Republic’s habitable land. Most was
owned and managed by agri-businesses, business parks, commercial parks
and, of course, gated communities. The plebs had to make do with the
space left over. And what did they have to complain about? It wasn’t
as if there was a place for them to live in an agri-business compound
or an assembly plant. That was reserved for robots. If only the plebs
would stop breeding and just die out.
Phil drove the final
kilometre or so within Ashton Lovelock to his home along roads, lined
by pavements and lawns, that couldn’t be more different from those
infested by homeless scum. The garage doors opened well before his car
rolled onto the driveway and a welcoming scent of lavender and fuchsia
wafted out from his living room.
Phil wandered into the
kitchen where a meal was already waiting for him, prepared by the
robo-chef from the same genetically enhanced foodstuffs that were
being designed and patented in the Sony-Monsanto Bio-Research faculty
based at Warwick Business Park.
As he tucked into his
dinner, Phil wondered what he could do this evening.
Phil wasn’t married,
although he had many girlfriends. Most of these were of the cyberspace
variety that he couldn’t dare to meet in real life and the others he’d
met through VR dating. But somehow today he wasn’t in the mood for
cybersex. Perhaps he could arrange a social evening with Larry, Artie
and Aaron and, but unless he could hold back on the alcohol he’d have
to arrange a taxi to travel the five kilometres or so back home and it
was always a hassle waiting for it to arrive.
Phil checked his mobile
for messages.
Nothing.
What could he do?
Phil smiled. Well, why
not? He deserved it and it would scarcely break the bank.
There was just one other
contact with the pleb majority Phil maintained that wasn’t with
taxi-drivers, waiters and bar-staff. And it would arrive within half
an hour of being summoned.
He picked up his phone and
scrolled through a holographic display of images of mostly semi-clad
women that he’d bookmarked earlier.
The sort of women Phil
preferred was the type that one could call voluptuous. Not fat,
although very few plebs could afford to be that now. Obesity was a
disease that famine had eliminated amongst the poor. The women that
Phil preferred had an ample bosom, good-sized hips and thighs and—this
was important to him—white skin. So many plebs were of a complexion
that was all shades from black through brown to off-white, but Phil
preferred women who were, if anything, rather paler than his own
slightly olive-hued skin-colour.
Today was going to be
Arabella’s turn. Her real name was almost certainly not Arabella.
Plebs often had names that were decidedly non-English, like Anoushka
or Fatima, or ones that were drastically abbreviated to Shell or Tray
or Madge. Arabella’s status was set to Ready and she could be
at his address within forty minutes assuming that she, or rather her
driver, wasn’t detained at the entry gate for too long. A few jabs
with his finger on the touch-screen and Arabella was on her way and a
provisional deposit transferred from Phil’s credit account to that of
the Empire Dating Agency (Ashton Lovelock).
Phil settled down to his
delicious soy-lamb vindaloo while he watched the television news on
the kitchen wall screen. It was the usual stuff about floods,
droughts, famines and terrorism that numbed his senses and those of
anyone else who troubled to follow current affairs. The riots in
Yorkshire were a worry. Phil shuddered as he watched the pictures of
Shopping Malls in flames and mobs rampaging around the town centre in
their traditional uniform of shell-suits and baseball caps.
Thank God Phil only did
his shopping on-line.
At last the doorbell rang.
Arabella’s driver was another woman, perhaps in her early forties, who
wore a smart uniform with the letters Empire Dating emblazoned
across her jacket. She held Arabella’s hand while, following protocol,
she gave a little speech about what the service cost, how much the
extras might cost, and the limits that Phil would have to respect.
“Definitely no excretion.
Definitely no fisting. Semen on the face, but not in the mouth.”
“Anal?” asked Phil as he
admired Arabella’s sizeable arse that was straining to escape from the
skimpy white dress under which peeked the lacy edge of her knickers.
“Anal is fine,” said the
escort. “It’s classified as a standard extra.”
Phil took Arabella’s hand
to take her across the threshold.
“One hour or two?” the
escort asked. “Or would you prefer half-hourly instalments?”
“Two hours would be fine,”
said Phil, as he tucked in his shirt to hide the overhang of his
stomach over his waist.
Obesity might be rare
amongst the plebs but it was by no means rare amongst the more
privileged.
No Future Volume One
IV
Alex
2021
Agnieszka
made sure that her final exit through the front door was at least as
dramatic as any other during the term of her relationship with Alex.
This time, however, she didn’t pause to shout up to him from the
hallway before she stomped off to her car to drive off to one or other
of her many friends and relatives who would soon once again be
reminded just what kind of bastard, shithead or cunt Alex was. This
omission was a novelty to Alex and probably also a relief to his
neighbours who already knew far more about the couple’s tempestuous
love-life than they might have wished.
Well shit, thought Alex,
as Agnieszka’s environmentally unfriendly petrol car drove noisily
away, if she thought he was a cunt then he might as well act like one.
Or better still, he might even get hold of the genuine article.
Life with Aggie hadn’t
been that great an experience although having sex with her had been
and continued to be right to the end. From the very start, Aggie had
ideas about how to run the connubial home that conflicted with Alex’s.
And, as a habitually single man, Alex wasn’t used to having to
compromise.
“The way we first met each
other is shit. Absolute shit,” Aggie said. “On-line sex is shit.”
“But it is how we
met,” Alex countered.
“That’s because it’s
almost the only way anyone gets to meet anyone these days,” Agnieszka
admitted. “No one lives where they were born or went to school any
more. Somehow you have to make new friends without the benefit of a
social network that you’d built up through school or university. And
since everyone uses the internet, that’s become the only way.”
“So, it’s not all shit.”
“But it is at the same
time,” Agnieszka responded. “The person you meet on the internet isn’t
a real person. It’s a kind of made-up thing that’s fashioned for
whichever dating or friendship site you’ve logged into. If we’d met on
a BDSM site, then I’d probably have been Agnes Leather or
something…”
“Rather than Alfalfa2020.”
“Exactly.”
It wasn’t just sex that
both kept and drove Alex and Agnieszka apart. The two of them worked
in two different towns and for both of them the daily commute was
almost more tiring than their actual jobs. Nowadays, Alex was working
longer and longer hours which often continued until late into the
evening. That might entail an expensive taxi ride home. If he drove
home after even the smallest drop of drink, he risked being caught by
one of the countless automatic traffic surveillance patrols that lined
the roads and having to submit to a breathalyser test that he’d almost
certainly fail.
In material terms, Alex’s
job at DRNI was going well. He’d been promoted from a job where he put
collated news about VR Entertainment to one with the broader remit of
covering VR Current Affairs. That was mostly because the distinction
between Current Affairs in the virtual world and real life was
becoming increasingly blurred. It was increasingly necessary to
monitor the politics, economics and personalities of cyberspace as so
many people spent a steadily greater proportion of their lives in that
domain. Real money was being exchanged in cyberspace and ever more
effort was expended on its administration.
Nevertheless, Alex didn’t
need to spend much time immersed in Virtual Reality to find out what
was going on there. In fact, he spent rather less time in cyberspace
than the average visitor. If he had, it would have been impossible for
him to find the time to actually do his job. His task was more to sift
through the huge volume of blogs, notice boards, flash messages and
the like generated in and around the virtual realm and then summarise
all this in either short text articles or video messages presented by
his website avatars (who looked a lot better than him anyway). And
what he couldn’t find out about the Virtual World for himself, he
could easily retrieve from other news sites which fed off each other
in a kind of mutual cannibalistic frenzy.
Alex strode over to the
window and looked out across the street at the houses opposite and the
slowly rotating blades of the wind farm just beyond. There was no sign
of Aggie. On previous occasions she’d sometimes driven off and come
back after less than an hour: tearful and open for reconciliation. In
the early days of their relationship, this was exactly what Alex hoped
for as a resolution to their frequent quarrels, but it had now become
almost what he most dreaded. It was better when Aggie stayed away for
a day or maybe two. Her sister in Gloucester or her best friend in
Banbury or even her aunt and uncle in Rugby could be relied on to take
care of her until Aggie was ready to return home.
Alex put on the television
and flicked through the hundreds of available channels whose content
was rarely of interest. It was all shopping, gambling, religion, chat,
quizzes, soap operas and reality shows that were all cheap to produce
and, for many, addictive to consume
As always, Alex’s
attention gravitated towards the news channels. Fox News UK had its
usual op-ed programmes. It was the Nick Griffin Show with the host
ranting on for an hour or so on a news item that made him apoplectic
with a furious rage that was consistently aligned with the views of
right-wing pressure groups and the interests of big business. This
kind of television was somehow hypnotic. Griffin had borrowed
techniques from the American masters of right-wing television punditry
to present an evidently English blend of outrage, patriotism and banal
repetition.
Nick Griffin managed to
lambast the liberal media for well over an hour. This was odd, because
as most of the media was now lambasting each other for the same
pretext it was difficult to tell which corner of the media actually
was liberal. There was then a short section in which were presented a
parade of news headlines in rapid and confusing succession. Famine and
floods in Pakistan. War in Syria. More on Climate Change (not a day
went by without at least one story on that). Presidential Elections in
the Ukraine. Terrorist strikes in Beijing. Postponement of the Moon
Mission. Then there was the Weather Forecast with the usual warnings
about flooding in East Anglia and strong winds in Scotland.
Alex had more than enough
of watching television when the credits for the Bob Spink Show
appeared. There was only so much reactionary ranting he could take in
a single evening. He still wasn’t really convinced that disengagement
from Europe was the answer to all England’s woes.
Alex wandered over to the
window to check if Aggie had driven her car back.
Nothing.
Reassured, Alex locked the
front door, turned off the television and settled down for a session
in cyberspace. This was a cumbersome process in which he enclosed his
head in a helmet, pulled on gloves, and attached peripherals to his
genitals; but if you wanted the full immersive experience of
cyberspace, there was no alternative.
He then navigated through
virtual space to his usual haunts to see who might be there. He was in
luck. Chickabiddy4 was waiting around with not much to do.
Alex had no idea what the
real Chickabiddy4 was like and he was unlikely to ever find
out. In any case, she wasn’t the sort of on-line friend you’d really
want to meet in real life. The on-line fantasies he shared with her
would probably have both of them arrested. She could even be a man for
all Alex knew (this wasn’t at all unusual), but it was a fantasy worth
maintaining for the time he and she spent together. This was generally
a session of cyber-sex accompanied by a not at all virtual arousal and
eventually a very real release of semen (which very clever software
was able to postpone for as long as he wished).
Was this infidelity?
Alex wasn’t sure.
It wasn’t sex in a real
physical sense. And would Aggie (or for that matter the real person
behind Chickabiddy4) really enjoy sex that included urination,
fisting and bondage?
Aggie, naturally, had a
different opinion.
“Just because you do it
through broadband mediated by computers doesn’t make it right,” she
argued. “You ejaculate on and with another woman. That sounds very
much like fucking as far as I’m concerned. It’s being unfaithful. It’s
worse than prostitution because it’s not done for money, it’s done for
fun.”
It wouldn’t do for Alex to
argue that it was surely more ethical that he indulged in it for
mutual pleasure rather than one-sided exploitation. This wasn’t an
opinion that Aggie shared.
However, as Alex
reflected, how many men in the real world could Agnieszka meet through
on-line dating who didn’t also practise on-line sex?
And if Aggie could never
accept the sort of man she would meet through on-line dating, where
else would she find the man she was looking for?
No Future Volume One
V
Betty
2037
Betty
wasn’t a naturist. That was a crappy thing to be. That was just like
being a member of the National Trust or a Civil War re-enactment
society. But she did make a point of wearing clothes as rarely as
possible. She was proud and unashamed to assert herself as both
Vegetarian and Green. And these were words that were definitely
written with capital letters.
In this respect she was
very much as one with everyone else who lived in the Broad Oak Grove
commune.
Of course, when the
builders of Ashton Lovelock named the street there was no grove and
certainly no oaks, however broad. Like all names in this town, it was
chosen to invoke a rustic memory that bore no relation to a reality
either living or dead. The squat in which Betty lived was one of many
houses that had failed to find a buyer in the uncertain housing
market. It was now unsold and, were it not for the tender loving care
of Betty and her friends, it would have already decayed to the state
of nature from which it had emerged just over twenty years earlier.
Betty was obliged to wear
clothes whenever she left home to shop at Cost Cutters, but she was
under no moral imperative to be nude. It was more an eco-awareness
thing. The clothes industry was just as bad as every other
exploitative multinational industry. It despoiled the environment and
oppressed the poor simply to supply consumers in wealthy countries
with clothes that were both cheap and cheerful.
In truth, it wasn’t that
clothes were especially cheap these days. Neither, for that matter,
was food, fuel or very much else. Betty was no more able to afford
much in the way of luxury than anyone else in the commune. The
benefits system was like a points system nowadays. Only those who
could clearly demonstrate that they couldn’t find work would get any
state subsidy for the luxury of not working, while at the same time
there was a rapidly shrinking pool of employment opportunities. The
only way that anyone in the Broad Oak Grove commune could make money
was by selling stuff at rock and dance festivals. Otherwise, their
survival was dependent on second-hand clothes, food parcels and soup
kitchens.
The supermarket shelves
were heaving under the weight of prohibitively expensive goods. The
last oil crisis had made fuel more expensive and energy conservation
more necessary, but the media was portraying it more as an economic
rather than as an environmental issue. Nevertheless, those cut-price
supermarkets that made cheapness their principal virtue—and Cost
Cutters was about as cheap as you got—were now championing their Green
credentials. But Betty wasn’t taken in. Why should ordinary people
have to suffer when the rich could still fly across the oceans just to
get from one major city to another? What did that do for the world’s
sharply declining reserves of oil? What was so green about genetically
modified potatoes that never rotted? Or gene-spliced pigs that could
barely waddle with all that surplus blubber? Or those Frankenstein
varieties of fruit and vegetables being generated in the laboratory?
What about the obscene commercials that urged everyone to spend spend
spend while the sea-levels rose, the hurricanes got worse and drought
gripped so much of Africa?
Betty’s conscience was
clear. Well, almost. She did have a weakness for chocolate
bars—especially those new brands coming from China. They tasted so
good, despite the lethal array of chemicals they contained and the
likelihood that the confectionery’s ultimate origin was a gene-spliced
mutation in a vast agricultural warehouse on the banks of what little
flowing water was left in the Yangzi River.
The walk back from the
supermarket to Betty’s commune was over a stream whose name was
obscured by graffiti and whose flow, like all rivers and streams these
days, was held back behind a wall that was designed to act as a flood
defence. These days, when England wasn’t suffering from drought it was
under a deluge of heavy rain.
It was the flood defences
that were the most worrying signs of irreversible climate change. The
water level generally subsided a few days after a heavy downpour, but
it would leave homes in low-lying areas like Broad Oak Grove in a very
sorry state. It was for this practical reason that the houses on Broad
Oak Grove were uninsured and uninsurable and now only fit for
squatting.
Betty’s grandparents lived
by the sea in Sussex, so Betty actually knew a lot about coastal
defences. Not that you could see the sea these days. The view was
obscured behind a three metre high sea-wall that had been erected to
protect the South Coast from the rising sea level and the occasional
storm surge. Nowadays almost all Britain’s seaside resorts and other
vulnerable points on the coast were protected like that. Even London
might soon be similarly protected, especially since the failure of the
Greenwich Flood Barrier a couple of years ago that had admitted flood
water into the heart of the City of London.
Betty arrived at the
dilapidated front door of Number 2 Broad Oak Grove where posters
rather than curtains obscured the view through the windows to inside
the house. She turned a set of several keys in the various locks and
slipped out of her clothes almost as soon as she was inside.
Fortunately, autumn was relatively mild this year. Even if it wasn’t,
the windmill in the garden and the solar panels on the roof would
generate enough energy to keep the place warm.
Self-sufficiency wasn’t
really an option for the squatters. This house, like all the others on
the street, was disconnected from mains electricity and their frugal
energy supply just had to suffice. Nevertheless, the commune was able
to survive if not exactly flourish. This was due to an enlightened
policy of eco-awareness and the fact that the only energy-sapping
technology used by anyone in the house was the ubiquitous laptop. In
winter, however, the commune was forced to resort to using log-fires.
This practice understandably split the housemates between those who
thought that burning wood was good because it was natural and those
who deplored the rape of the world’s forests.
Betty strolled into the
living room where Edie, Tom and Alicia were sitting around also naked
on ancient thread-worn bean-bags while listening to the music being
broadcast from Edie’s laptop. It was some kind of electronic
Arab-Chinese fusion sound overlaid with what sounded like Russian
vocals.
“Been shopping?” asked
Tom. He’d noticed that Betty was carrying a bulging cloth bag with the
slogan Don’t Touch My Genes! emblazoned on it.
“Yeah,” said Betty as she
wandered into the kitchen to put the various paper bags of lentils,
rice, tofu and beans onto the shelves.
Tom followed her into the
kitchen. He put his arms around her waist and gently pressed his lips
on her shoulder.
“What did you buy?” he
asked.
“The usual,” she answered.
Betty knew that Tom wasn’t
really interested at all in her shopping expedition. If he was then
he’d probably have been more enthusiastic about doing his own fair
share. However, she appreciated the intimacy and returned Tom’s kisses
with a couple of her own. She then wriggled out of his grip so that
she could put some frozen food into the fridge.
The couple returned to the
living room where Alicia was rolling a spliff on the back of a
newspaper and Edie was surfing the net on the same laptop from which
was still booming the sounds of modern Russia. Betty settled down with
Tom on the battered sofa they’d found abandoned on the street and
waited for Alicia to finish preparing the joint.
Tom was very affectionate
and his penis was in a half-way state of excitement that Betty knew
she could stimulate into full erection with little effort. However, it
was Alicia who was Betty’s current lover and Tom was supposed to be
hooked up with Tanya: a black girl from another squat just across the
road. Betty didn’t mind the attention, of course, and she was
delighted to see that Alicia was visibly jealous.
The joint was prepared and
passed around. It was almost entirely weed. The cost of tobacco was so
high and its availability so restricted that it was now cheaper to
smoke undiluted weed even though it made every hit that much stronger
and seriously shortened the lifetime of a single joint.
Betty was feeling naughty.
And, anyway, Alicia had been less than normally amorous the night
before. She’d fallen asleep rather too soon for Betty’s appetite. She
squeezed her fingers around Tom’s penis and jerked her hand up and
down while she chatted with Edie about the news she was reading on the
net.
“The elections in the
Waziristani Republic were totally rigged,” said Edie with a sniff. “I
mean, do they really want all that Islamic terrorism to come back?
Fucking President Beck just doesn’t know what the fuck he’s letting
the world in for!”
Betty wasn’t paying her
much attention. Tom’s penis was as erect as it was ever likely to be
and it seemed a shame to waste it. She got down on her knees and was
about to give the man a blow-job when she noticed a sudden movement
from Alicia. Was her lover going to cause a scene? After all, it was
just a bit of fun.
“Fuck, Bet,” said Alicia
who took position between Tom’s legs. “There’s enough here for two to
share.”
With that Alicia placed
her lips on the tip of Tom’s glans while Betty kept a grip on the
shaft and proceeded to take as much of it into her mouth as she could.
And all the while Edie
continued surfing the internet with the smouldering roach in her hand.
There were too many women at play and she preferred her sexual
activity to be more private. Also, with so much going on in the world,
there wasn’t enough time in the day to keep up with it all.
No Future Volume One
VI
Eden
2048
Eden
had bought and sold so much land that he couldn’t really be blamed for
not knowing what he actually owned. Not that he was ever involved in
the purchase. He employed people to do that for him. All he knew was
that where land was cheap, the best medium-term strategy for a man of
means and ambition such as himself was to buy it. A growing population
and a declining supply of housing stock only pointed in one direction
with regards to future profit for those with the wherewithal to
survive the current economic recession.
It wasn’t Eden who’d made
the decision to tear down the ramshackle, decrepit rows of houses in
the recently purchased Broad Oak estate, but it was his choice, once
presented with the options, to replace it with a single mansion that
could house only one man, his family, his guests and his many
servants. Eden had probably been resting in his villa in Switzerland
or maybe on his yacht in the Caribbean when the eviction orders were
issued and houses demolished. No one had troubled to inform him about
the protests, sit-ins and angry protests that accompanied the
clear-out of the squatters and scum who’d previously been dossing in
what was now his land. Their eviction would surely be no loss to
either the estate that Eden St John-Easton had inherited or the town
of Ashton Lovelock of which it had once been a part. It would be
difficult to imagine how anyone wouldn’t cheer to see the back of the
filthy, unclothed, uncivil and over-educated rabble that were driven
away in the back of police vans and the well-reinforced vehicles used
by the security firm that Eden also owned.
Eden’s current visit to
Broad Oak Manor wasn’t going to be for very long. There was a show in
Broadway he’d soon be flying over the Atlantic to see and he was
anxious after that to return to either his yacht in the Mediterranean
or his villa in the Maldives. He felt rather more at home abroad than
he ever would in a modest mansion in the English Midlands.
Nevertheless, even the
wealthiest man had duties to attend to in his home country. There were
accountants, lawyers and politicians to see and that could only be
done in the United Kingdom that Eden feared was in danger of not
staying united for very much longer.
Eden’s penance for
enjoying himself in luxurious homes drenched in the best sunlight on
the planet was to spend the occasional week of purgatory in one of his
English properties such as, for instance, Broad Oak Manor.
Fortunately, the English
weather wasn’t always as bad as Eden remembered it from childhood.
Climate change couldn’t be that bad if there were to be more of these
balmy June days unspoilt by even a single cloud in the sky. The
changing climate might have badly impacted on Eden’s agricultural
shares (especially in the southern United States and Russia), but it
was worth it if there could me more pleasant evenings like this.
Eden had all of Broad Oak
at his disposal, and he could see no reason why he shouldn’t stretch
his legs and enjoy it. Much of the estate was now blanketed with
freshly grown lawns and woodland that replaced the original dreary
suburban streets and back gardens. He could have taken the air
accompanied by an accountant or a lawyer or one of his many female
companions, but tonight Eden chose to stroll in the gardens by
himself. He spent very little time alone and he wanted some respite
before he had to attend the meetings and conference calls that had
been arranged for him.
And after paying all those
millions for a plot in Middle England, Eden thought that he really
ought to savour it.
The gardeners had done a
good job in transforming the land into something presentable. At long
last, the roads whose names had celebrated various species of tree
were actually turned over to their cultivation. There was now elm,
oak, beech and sycamore on land that once sported their names.
Nevertheless, there hadn’t been enough time for the trees to grow
especially tall. Although the genetic modification that facilitated
rapid growth and disease resistance made the landscape rather more
densely forested than would otherwise have been the case, the trees
could scarcely be described as towering. They seemed short even to
Eden who despite his great wealth was not similarly blessed by great
stature.
Indeed quite the opposite.
The foliage was no more
thick than it was tall, so Eden could easily spot the presence of
shadowy figures in what might otherwise be called a thicket. He was
sure that they weren’t his servants and he knew that he wasn’t
entertaining any guests. And even if he were, no guest would be
skulking around like these people.
Ever alert to the possible
risk of terrorism, Eden gripped his mobile in his palm. His forefinger
stroked the red alarm button that would summon security staff to the
scene. If these shadowy figures were foolish enough to threaten him,
then within minutes their bullet-ridden bodies would be splattered
across the well-manicured lawn.
As he approached closer,
Eden could distinguish that there were only two trespassers. They were
becoming gradually less distinct as the sun dipped behind the trees.
Eden decided to bide his time until announcing his presence, but he
didn’t want to get so close that he couldn’t alert security in good
time if these figures belonged to a cabal of green anarchist Muslim
feminazi terrorists.
“What the bloody hell do
you think you’re doing?” Eden commanded. “Are you aware that you’re
trespassing on private property?”
There was rustling in the
shrubbery.
“Don’t hassle us, man,”
one of the shadowy figures announced as she emerged from the dark. “We
don’t mean no harm.”
Eden was startled by the
sight of a totally naked woman. She was probably in her late twenties,
but thanks to the privations of a hippy life-style she hadn’t put on
the kilos of excess fat that almost everyone else found impossible to
shed. He wasn’t sure whether it was her nudity that startled him or
the fact that her crotch sprouted more hair than he thought a woman
could grow. Most women of Eden’s acquaintance, including his wife,
maintained nothing more than the merest suggestion of such florid
growth. Maybe it was also the unexpected hirsuteness of her limbs and
armpits. Only the most specialist pornographic website could have
prepared him for such a sight.
Behind her was a similarly
undressed girl who was probably only about eight or nine years old.
There was enough apparent family resemblance for Eden to surmise that
she was quite likely to be the woman’s daughter.
Eden knew exactly what he
wanted to do. He wasn’t really bothered about his legal rights as
owner of the property, but he always liked a bit of fun. As he
normally had to pay for it, it pleased him to have an opportunity to
get something for nothing.
He strode towards the
woman and carefully focused his eyes on her face rather than her
expanse of bare flesh.”You do realise that you’re trespassing on
private property?” he said officiously.
“Yeah, man, whatever,”
said this woman, “but there’s nowhere else to go. It’s not as if we’re
doing any damage or anything.”
“The law is the law,” Eden
reminded her. “Private property has to be respected. You wouldn’t like
it if someone decided to squat in your house or garden.”
“Well, no,” conceded the
woman. “But it’s not like we’ve got anywhere else to stay. And anyhow
this is where we used to live...”
“You did what?” wondered
Eden who was genuinely surprised.
“...When there was houses
and roads and lamp-posts and things,” the woman elaborated. “Didn’t
we, Benita?” she asked her daughter.
“I don’t remember,” the
young girl replied. “It was a long time ago. Ages!”
“Yeah, we did,” said the
woman. “It was round over there just by that new pond that’s been dug
up.” She pointed in the direction of the ornamental lake and the
exotic river birds with clipped wings that had been imported into the
estate.
“That really is of no
concern to me,” said Eden who didn’t appreciate the direction this
conversation was taking. This naked bitch clearly had no idea who he
was. “I have no choice but to evict you.”
“Yeah, man,” the woman
sighed who walked purposefully towards Eden with a resigned
expression. “I know the deal. You guys are all the same...”
As the woman cupped her
hand over a crotch which was clearly tumescent under the cloth of his
Camellia Geldoff jeans, Eden was initially inclined to protest that
no, he wasn’t the same as any other guy. He was phenomenally rich.
He’d done well from the astute investment of his inherited wealth in
the rising Stock Market and the accompanying rise in commodity prices.
He had everything he wanted. On the other hand...
The woman knelt in front
of him while her bored daughter gazed on from a distance. She
unbuttoned the expensively tailored denim crotch and eased out Eden’s
penis. Clearly this wasn’t a sight that troubled young Benita who was
more interested in watching the dance of golden butterflies over the
lawn.
“My name’s Betty,” said
the woman as she placed the tip of her tongue on the purple tip of
Eden’s glans. “Just so’s you know.”
Betty might be a stranger
to Eden, but blow jobs most certainly were not. Fellatio was something
he enjoyed on most days: usually at the service of a different woman
each time. There would sometimes be two or more women competing for
the gratuity that they hoped would be both forthcoming and generous.
However, it was
unusual for Eden’s penis to experience a blow-job from a naked woman
of extraordinary hirsuteness in the open air on a sunny evening. He
was rather enjoying the peculiarity of it as the woman slid his penis
deep down her throat and lubricated the length of his shaft with
saliva which dripped in large gollops onto the daisies between her
parted thighs. She gripped the penis with one hand while her other
cupped Eden’s hardening testicles which she handled in such a way to
control the release of his seed.
Eden surveyed his estate
while Betty concentrated on his manhood.
He was shorter than most
people. This was a fact that raised heels could never satisfactorily
address. Even selecting only the most petite escorts couldn’t lessen
Eden’s resentment that it wasn’t wealth, reputation or clothes sense
that most people associated with him. Rather it was—and always had
been—his stature. On the other hand, there were no heads higher than
his as he gazed at the lengthening shadows by his mansion walls, the
pale orange glow of the early evening sky, and the sight of a little
girl. And this girl’s eyes were focused on her mother and the swell of
her mother’s cheeks as she pushed Eden’s erect penis back and forth in
her mouth. She could, if she wished, regard the trail of saliva that
slobbered out of her mother’s mouth and dripped onto the soft pale
hair of her motherly hips.
Despite his wealth and his
deficiency of moral boundaries, Eden observed limits to the extent of
his depravity. There were others in his circle of wealthy friends and
acquaintances who might take advantage of the wealth of under-age
flesh that world poverty and world travel made so available. All the
same, it was while his mind wandered to the notion of sharing his
semen with the very much pre-nubile but still naked daughter of the
woman whose lips encompassed his throbbing member that his penis spurt
forth in unrestrained fashion into the woman’s mouth and over her
matronly bosom.
Betty had achieved what
she’d intended. There were few men who after releasing so much semen
could button up their flies and then forcefully expel the woman who’d
provided that pleasure. And not much conversation normally followed
such an encounter.
Eden returned to the
mansion. Despite Betty’s efforts, she and her daughter would have to
be evicted, of course. Eden couldn’t tolerate squatters on his estate.
You allow one in and you opened the door to an unstoppable rabble.
These eco-anarchists might think they represented the future, but like
the many generations of utopian idealists before them they represented
nothing more than a hopeless fantasy that would soon be dispelled by
the imperatives most people were subject to: which was to earn a
living and to be housed.
No Future Volume One
VII
Tamara
2092
After
the many months of uncertainty and anxiety since Tamara had began her
desperate exodus, it could only be a relief to finally arrive at the
Broad Oak Refugee Centre just outside the Ashton Lovelock gated
community. She’d have been naive if she’d imagined that her welcome
would be especially warm simply because the government of the Republic
of England had reluctantly and belatedly agreed to provide asylum for
a nominal fraction of the many millions of refugees spilling out of
the devastated and still radioactive Holy Land. Nevertheless, she
hadn’t really anticipated quite the degree of hostility that greeted
her and what was left of her family.
Tamara and the hundreds of
other Jewish refugees in the convoy still identified themselves as
citizens of the State of Israel, however much this was a nation that
now existed in name alone. The charred wasteland that once held
host to so many high hopes and aspirations was now under the reluctant
care of the resentful citizens of Palestine. Israel’s victory in the
Holy War had been Pyrrhic at best. It was the official losers in the
conflict who were now dominant in what had once been core Israeli
territory. And this was simply by virtue of the fact that the number
of Palestinian survivors was substantially greater than that of the
equally wretched Israeli victors.
What had once been a short
plane ride from the Middle East to the Republic of England was now a
fraught journey for the Jewish refugees through the two competing and
loosely federated European Unions. Not one nation state through which
Tamara and her family travelled on their exodus would willingly
antagonise their Muslim citizens by expressing more sympathy than was
necessary to the mostly despised tribe of Israel.
The protest that greeted
the refugees outside the Broad Oak Refugee Camp’s forbidding gates was
not substantially different to the others that had followed their
peripatetic trek from one temporary camp site to another. There were
much the same banners on display which as always attributed the entire
blame to the Jewish race for the military disaster that had devastated
the Middle East. The slow but inevitable demise of the State of Israel
had been equally as agonising as, but rather less spectacular than the
apocalyptic annihilation of Jerusalem, Bethlehem and Tel Aviv just
over a generation ago.
Tamara was too young to
remember much about the war although the images of mushroom clouds
rising above the city of Jerusalem had been replayed so many times
that she almost believed that she’d seen it for real. Like most
Israeli citizens, her actual memories of the war were of a time spent
huddling in underground bomb shelters. She was one of the lucky ones
who weren’t instantly vaporised or had survived only to endure a more
painful lingering death from the radioactive fallout that fell not
only on Israel, Syria, Egypt and Palestine, but also on non-combatant
nations as far afield as Turkey, Cyprus and Iran. Although Israel had
suffered at least as much as any other nation, to the extent that it
was no longer a nation at all, Israeli citizens were still blamed for
the catastrophe with undiminished resentment by those who’d suffered
directly or indirectly from its affects. There were few people in the
world who didn’t know someone who’d died or was afflicted by
radioactive sickness after Israel resorted to the ultimate deterrent
as a response to the threat from its belligerent neighbours. As if
there hadn’t already been enough distress from water shortage, crop
failure and the long-heralded final collapse of the oil industry.
However much Tamara
understood and in a sense sympathised with the protestors it troubled
her that Broad Oak wasn’t intended to be just one more stop on the
journey but the final destination. This welcome wasn’t one that boded
well for the future.
The gates to the refugee
camp shut close behind the trucks after they’d filed into the
courtyard. The refugees disembarked, but the thickness of the camp’s
walls didn’t muffle the sounds of protest from outside. Some were
chants of disgust at Israel’s role in the Middle East Apocalypse
whereas others were the same gratuitously offensive anti-Semitic
chants with which Tamara had become increasingly familiar during her
years of exile.
Tamara and her family
settled down to their new overcrowded home of ragged sheets,
threadbare mattresses and leaking roofs. And home it was. At long
last. Broad Oak Refugee Camp: home to the unwanted and despised.
Shelter had only been provided because of Israel’s role in England’s
imperial past when the nation was head of an empire powerful enough to
dictate the fate of other nations. Now it was a republic as
self-obsessed as the people of Israel with its own relative decline
since the dissolution of the United Kingdom.
The Broad Oak Refugee Camp
was asylum not only to Israelis, but also to refugees from Armenia,
Kurdistan, Laos and Venezuela whose citizens belonged to the
lengthening list of failed nation states. Amongst these, whether
represented by actual governments or by governments-in-exile, there
were also refugees from the now irradiated Gaza Republic whose mere
existence had been considered sufficient provocation for the missiles
to be launched. At least the administrators of Broad Oak had the sense
not to house Israelis in the same buildings as the Gazans.
“They should have stayed
in the Gaza City slums,” complained Tamara’s mother. She could never
forgive the Palestinian militia for the summary execution of her
husband and Tamara’s stepfather. This happened in the desolate ruins
of Ashdod where Tamara’s family had once enjoyed prosperity and an
easy life. “At least the bastards have somewhere they can go.”
Tamara couldn’t really
dispute the logic of her mother’s assertion. Palestine continued to
exist as a state with real territory, but only the most romantic fool
would genuinely prefer a radioactive wilderness to the relative
security of the Republic of England. There was no need here to wear a
mask to shield one’s lungs from radioactive dust. No need to use a
Geiger counter simply to decide where to settle down for the night.
Even the hardiest former resident of Gaza City couldn’t survive long
in the fine dust and ash blowing about the extinguished cities of the
Middle East.
“We have to treat everyone
equally,” said Benita, an old woman whose job in the kitchen was to
help feed the thousands of refugees crammed into the camp. “There are
very strict rules which everyone has to obey.”
“Surely you can see the
injustice,” pleaded Tamara’s mother to the older woman. “We’ve got
nowhere to go. Literally nowhere. We Jews are persecuted wherever we
go...”
“Not all Jews,” disagreed
Juan Valdez, an elderly man whose mattress lay adjacent to Tamara’s.
“American Jews are no more persecuted than they ever were.”
“They aren’t Israeli
Jews!” complained Tamara’s mother. “And precious little welcome do
they give their fellows. Did they help us in our hour of need? Did
they help clear the Holy Land of the Palestinian scum?”
“I have to warn you not to
use language like that,” said Benita firmly. “Whatever grievances you
have must be put aside here. The administrators don’t take provocation
lightly. The Sherwood Forest Refugee Camp has already been shut down
because of rioting. We can’t risk the same thing here.”
“I still think it’s
unfair,” said Tamara’s mother grumpily.
Despite Benita’s
admonition, Tamara couldn’t help agreeing with her mother. It was all
well and good trying to enforce a bland neutrality to maintain the
peace, but what could this old woman know? She’d spent all her life in
England. She was unlikely to have dallied long in the war-torn Middle
East. The English might complain about the poverty that had returned
to Europe and the humiliating break-up of the United Kingdom, but the
worst they’d ever known was a brief episode of what had amounted to
almost a dictatorship and which had served only to hasten the nation’s
decline.
The Refugee Camp
dormitories were overcrowded. Food handouts were sporadic,
unpredictable and never really adequate. There was little to do in the
grounds of what had once been a private garden and throughout which
were now scattered tents and make-shift shelters in wait for the next
intake of refugees. Nowadays Tamara’s life was principally focused on
just two things. The first was the tedious and lengthy processing of
her family’s petition for asylum. If this process ever came to a
resolution, she and her family would be released into more permanent
accommodation elsewhere and could start earning a living again. The
second was the erratic arrival of the food trucks. These were the very
deliveries that the crowds of anti-immigration or anti-Semitic
protestors outside the camp walls most complained about. Food was no
longer plentiful even in England and many English were upset that a
scarce and expensive resource was now being provided free to
foreigners who were unable to work for a living.
Tamara was assiduous in
seeking friendship with Benita in the hope that in this way she might
benefit from a few extra scraps of meat but the old woman was
scrupulously fair and only gave extra portions to the genuinely needy.
And this was an ever-increasing proportion of the camp’s population.
“Don’t look so glum,”
joked Bilal on seeing Tamara seated alone by the side of what was once
a pond but was now no more than an oval mound of grassy soil that
would soon be covered by new tents.
Tamara smiled at Bilal.
After all, he was
personable, young and extraordinarily attractive.
But he was also an Arab.
Although she wouldn’t want
her mother to know that her daughter was consorting with a goy and, of
all goyim, an accursed Palestinian, Tamara had become rather fond of
him. In fact, when they first met a few days after Tamara arrived,
Bilal initially thought she was a Palestinian. Hers wasn’t an uncommon
name amongst Arabs. Tamara meanwhile was also not expressing any
prejudice mostly because she too couldn’t quite place Bilal’s
ethnicity. His accentless English was rather better than hers and he
didn’t sport the thick beard and traditional garb affected by some
Palestinians.
“It’s nothing,” Tamara
replied, but conscious that her eyes were still damp.
“Don’t be silly,” said
Bilal. “It’s obvious that there’s something...”
“It’s my mother. She’s not
getting any better.”
“It must be the cold and
damp.”
“To have come so far and
now when we’ve arrived...”
Bilal put an arm around
Tamara’s shoulder while she nestled her nose into his ragged woollen
jumper that was decorated with gaily jumping Christmas reindeer. Like
the frayed MS Apple tee-shirt that Tamara wore, it had been provided
for free by the dwindling number of charities that were sympathetic to
the world’s dispossessed.
It was even more of a
comfort for Tamara when Bilal and she sloped off together to the
boiler-room in one of the several shelters that had once served as
guest houses on the estate. It was one of the few places where a
couple could find privacy and consequently it was in great demand: so
much so that the couple had to reserve a time-slot by scratching their
initials on the scrappy writing-pad that acted as a makeshift
reservation system and was discreetly hidden on a shelf above the
boiler-room door.
The boiler-room was
already occupied. The door was secured from the inside to preserve the
dignity of the couple (identified as T+U on the lined writing
paper). Bilal and Tamara hid from prying eyes in the shadow of an old
oak tree while keeping an impatient eye on the boiler-room door.
When Bilal and Tamara
first became a couple, it seemed the most natural thing in the world.
A girl needed companionship and protection and a man had his needs
too. This wasn’t Tamara’s first such liaison on the winding trail of
refugee camps between Israel and England, but it was the first time
she’d had a relationship not just with a goy but with a Muslim. A
Palestinian at that. OK. She didn’t know that at first. But he was a
good enough fuck that there was almost nothing Tamara wouldn’t forgive
him for.
Bilal had never known a
Jewish woman even as a casual acquaintance, but he was actually rather
less troubled about race and religion than she was. “We are all people
of the Book,” he would say, although Tamara wasn’t quite sure that the
Torah had quite the same significance to Muslims as it had to the Jews
and their tempestuous history.
The boiler-room door
opened at last and an amorous couple spilled out. They were both women
and they both wore head-scarves. They giggled and averted their gaze
from Bilal though they looked slyly at Tamara. They probably thought
she was a Muslim. Her father’s Moroccan ancestry made her ethnicity
rather ambiguous.
And then they were in.
It might have once served
as a boiler-room and it was still filled with pipes and metal
chambers, but as the camp was heated by coal fires these days the room
was now mostly used to store possessions that the refugees couldn’t
find anywhere else to leave. In amongst it all was a battered mattress
with damp stains and a hole where a spring had once burst through.
There was also a quite distinct late November chill. It was many years
since the pipes had held warm water and the intermittent power supply
was too unreliable for the building to be heated by other means.
Even so, Bilal and Tamara
had already learnt that intimacy didn’t require nudity. As long as
they each had access to the fleshy bits that mattered, the exertion of
lovemaking would soon heat them up. But before the couple fell
together onto the stained mattress, they secured the door behind them.
They were conscious that Al + Pa, whoever they were, would
soon be outside the door and impatient to get in. They also had to
move aside the clutter to lessen their discomfort as they embraced in
the shadow of the bizarre family heirlooms that filled the room. There
was a portrait of the Mount of Calvary (now too radioactive to welcome
visitors), a broken electronic keyboard and an array of battered
ancient laptops.
Tamara took Bilal’s penis
inside her arse, not because it was the most comfortable place to be
fucked but because with the scarcity of condoms she wanted to save the
few she had for when her anus was too battered for penetration. She
was sure she wouldn’t get pregnant as long as she wiped off the semen
with the old cloth handkerchief that she’d found in Hungary several
months before.
It would be a disaster if
she did happen to get pregnant,.
What would her mother say?
Tamara already knew the
cost of carelessness, but thankfully the worst consequences had been
kept at bay by the miscarriage only a couple of months after she was
even aware there was a problem.
“When can I fuck you
properly?” Bilal wondered.
Tamara wondered what
grounds he had for complaint. After all, she’d sucked his prick, let
him prod her anus and spurted his semen over her face. What more could
a man want?
“When I next have a
period,” said Tamara firmly.
Bilal nodded. He must have
understood the wisdom of her words. His own family probably knew their
son had a lover. Men were never as discreet as women. But if they knew
that the dusky-skinned girl with the dark curly hair and the scar
across her forehead and cheek was not a fellow Muslim but rather one
of the most despised people in the world, what would happen next?
Perhaps she would share
the fate of the Jewish girl she’d once got to know when her family was
stranded for several weeks on the coastline of Cyprus. She’d had her
nose sliced off.
That was a far worse
punishment than Tamara had suffered from the blade of the knife
wielded by the irate brother of the Hassidic Jew with whom Tamara had
just made love in the crowded slums of Ljubljana.
For the moment however
Tamara had the blessing of the love of both Bilal and her mother. Such
precious blessings were to be cherished. She kissed her lover
passionately while outside the boiler-room door she could hear a
gentle knocking from Al and Pa to remind her of
another couple’s furtive need for satisfaction.
No Future Volume One
VIII
Alex
2022
Alex
watched little Betty crawl across the Karndean floor with affection.
Children were so amusing. They expressed themselves so
unselfconsciously and found so much of interest in the world around
them. It was really rather entertaining.
But did he want to be a
father to such a child himself? Alex wasn’t so sure. In terms of time
and money they were a wearisome burden.
And if he didn’t want to
be burdened by his own children, would he ever choose to trouble
himself with someone else’s?
Not really.
So what had persuaded him
to start a relationship with Betty’s mother?
Well, there was much about
Bella to recommend. First and foremost, she was a great fuck. Alex had
never enjoyed such intense sex before and he couldn’t imagine how it
could be bettered. Second, she wasn’t bad-looking either, although
experience had taught Alex that good looks and good sex don’t always
coexist. In Bella’s case it was a kind of Mother Earth, hippy goddess,
bushy crotch kind of beauty: not that Alex could now see anything
wrong with that.
But with these major
plusses came the inevitable minus and in Bella’s case it was little
Betty, who was crawling over the carpet, naked as always, and gurgling
as she did so. Being a father wasn’t one of Alex’s chief ambitions in
life and being a step-father even less so. If he and Bella were to
stay together much longer he might be expected to do the morning
school run, spend weekends at the sports field, and maybe even attend
school plays and prize-giving days.
What the fuck!
This was not how Alex
mapped out his future however welcoming Bella’s hairy vaginal lips
were or how strong the grip between her motherly thighs. It was good
fun while for the moment, but some time soon it would have to come to
an end. What worried Alex was that whereas it was his previous
girlfriend or partner who made the first such move, was this the
relationship that would break the mould and oblige Alex to force the
issue?
With a bit of luck, Bella
might be unfaithful and make the separation that much easier to
arrange. It didn’t seem likely that it would end in quite the same
spectacular way as it had with Agnieszka, with smashed crockery, a
long crack across the television screen and enough animosity to
entertain the entire street. But at least the woman was out of his
life. No more tears and recriminations. And no more passionate
reconciliations either.
With Bella there were no
histrionics. She was remarkably tolerant of Alex’s vices, whether they
involved drugs or booze or cybersex. In fact she even appeared to
tolerate the minor infidelities that Alex would vehemently deny if he
was ever challenged but which he guessed that Bella must have
suspected. Indeed, it wasn’t anything that Alex ever did that troubled
her but more those opinions he expressed that most came into conflict
with the green, politically correct and occasionally mystical views
that Bella held.
She was a woman who was
not only well-informed on the green issues of the day but knew exactly
the right words to express her views, while Alex floundered in a
morass of political incorrectness and naiveté. In truth, Alex was
still not entirely convinced that climate change, species extinction,
rampant consumerism and meat-eating really were the harbingers of evil
that would bring humanity to its knees. As long as the light bulb lit
up when he flicked the switch, the water flowed when he turned the
faucet, and there were 24-hour News Programmes on the television, the
imminent end of civilisation and also the end maybe of a lot more
besides seemed pretty much remote.
“It’s not just about the
future,” protested Bella as they lay together on Alex’s king-size bed.
“It’s about the present too and how you should lead a life that’s in
balance with nature.”
“You’re not going to see
me hug a tree,” Alex retorted. “I’m not going to give up eating meat.
And I already do enough recycling.”
“But you drive an
old-fashioned petrol car,” Bella replied. “You fly rather than travel
by train. You don’t have solar panels on the roof.”
“Until it becomes cheaper
to go green then I’ll continue to follow the most economical model.”
“But economical for how
long? We’ve had yet another unusually hot wet summer. There’s been
flooding along almost every sea coast and river bank in the country.
Not too mention the mudslides, floods, droughts and forest fires all
over the rest of world.”
“It’s not totally proven
yet,” said Alex, quoting from Fox News UK. “There’s climate
change for sure, but it’s not necessarily anthropogenic...”
“So, it’s absolutely
natural,” mocked Bella. “What about deforestation? And
desertification? And famine? They might have nothing specifically to
do with global warming but they don’t do any good for anyone. And the
Iranian nuclear reactor going up like that. All that radiation
spreading to Afghanistan and Pakistan didn’t do the environment any
favours.”
“These things happen,”
argued Alex who just wished he could quite echo the fury and absolute
certainty of a Fox News UK television commentator. “There’s an
explanation for everything and it’s not necessarily to do with human
economic activity. There have always been environmental crises over
history...”
“I’m sure there have
been,” admitted Bella, “but there are an extraordinarily large number
of them today. If it wasn’t for the millions upon millions spent by
Big Business to sway the editorial line of the newspapers, television
and internet, there’d hardly be any disagreement at all with the
overwhelming majority of informed scientific opinion that all this
stuff going on and the rape of the environment is scarcely a
coincidence.”
Alex was always nervous
about this sort of conversation. He was in a definite no-win
situation. Anything he said that didn’t acknowledge the imminent end
of civilisation would appear to be at best complacent and at worst
conniving with the interests of the polluting industries.
Consequently, like most people, he kept his opinions between himself
and the ballot-box, and took what comfort he could from those
commentators on television or on the internet who so convincingly tore
down the facade presented by scheming scientists and liberal
politicians simply to feather their nests in ways Alex didn’t really
fully comprehend.
Bella’s friends were, if
anything, even more green than she was. These were people who
continued to wear what might once have been fashionable in the late
twentieth century, though it was difficult to imagine a time when a
fashion model would have sported woolly hats, coarse cotton shirts and
open-toed sandals on a catwalk. There was Eve, whose hair was both
short where she shaved it and very long where she didn’t and had
difficulty in keeping her nipples hidden from sight under the jumble
of tee-shirts or ponchos she wore. There was Tina whose most
distinguishing feature was her truly enormous boobs. Alex struggled
hard not to allude to them when he discussed her with Bella but he
still fell short of her standards of political correctness when he
referred to her by her skin-colour. There was also Angie, who Alex
rather fancied. She was a petite, slender girl whose looks were only
slightly marred by the length of her pointed nose and the quite
different fact that she’d shaved her head right down to the flesh
(although this was generally hidden under one or other of her
collection of woollen hats). But Angie was actually the woman the
furthest from Alex’s reach as she was absolutely and assertively a
lesbian—a fact that both fascinated and slightly titillated him.
Then there was Ben, who
was Tina’s boyfriend and also Betty’s father. He was bearded and
baggy-clothed and a frequent visitor as much because Tina was Bella’s
best friend, but because he liked to be close to his daughter. Ben was
father to at least two other children, of which Tina was the mother.
His accent betrayed a privileged birth and education, the benefits of
which were expressed neither in the way he dressed nor in the
life-style he followed. Alex suspected that Ben was just playing at
being a counterculture eco-warrior until such a time he got bored and
returned to the family home. And then, instead of protecting wild
animals, he’d perhaps be hunting them down on a horse.
“What a stupid idea!” said
Bella indignantly when Alex suggested this to her. “You’re just
jealous that he’s been born with certain advantages. He can see the
futility of a consumerist life. What more do you need than friends,
food and the roof above your head? If everyone were like Ben, the
world would be a much better place and we wouldn’t be headed towards
disaster.”
“No, of course not,” said
Alex, who couldn’t see how ever-increasing petrol prices and an extra
metre or two in the height of flood-defences really amounted to
imminent global catastrophe.
Alex and Bella weren’t
really living together although they slept together most nights.
Bella’s real home was a room in the house she shared with Angie, Eve
and a shy bookish fellow called Quentin who hardly ever ventured out
of his bedroom. This was a fairly flexible set-up where a variety of
boy- and girlfriends passed through and one where Betty sometimes had
many playmates of her age and sometimes none depending on the conjugal
histories of her mother’s housemates’ partners. But Bella chose to
stay mostly at Alex’s suburban home and inevitably with the playful
company of Betty and her battered toys.
Alex had become quite
comfortable in this routine. When Bella was there, he never had to
worry about what to cook as she was as much at home in the kitchen as
Alex so obviously was not. He didn’t even need to worry about
housework either as Bella treated his house just like her home, which
was rather better than Alex ever did. And bedtimes were times Alex
definitely looked forward to. He was sure Bella had taught him
everything she could and yet there always seemed to be yet another
carnal variation that would surprise him.
Indeed, Bella’s amorous
inventiveness had taken a recent turn for the more adventurous that
Alex frankly found rather exhausting. Those motherly breasts of hers
pressed hard against Alex’s face while his erect penis struggled to
keep anchorage inside whichever hole Bella had directed it. A trickle
of saliva, semen and Bella’s own vaginal juices trailed down the
length of his shaft into the mutually tangled hairs of their crotches.
Their bodies slid over a slither of perspiration that sometimes smelt
of petunia oil and sometimes of something even more earthy.
“That was amazing!”
complimented Alex, when at last their bodies were conjoined no longer.
“Where did you learn that? From the internet?”
He’d meant it as a joke,
of course. Alex always maintained the romantic notion, despite the
nature of his own sexual education and the succession of women through
his life, that sexual athleticism and sexual experience naturally led
to greater sexual adventurism and that instruction was never really
necessary. He expected Bella to simply respond with a joke.
Instead, she looked
unaccountably sheepish.
“I’ve been meaning to tell
you for a long time,” Bella said.
“So, where did you learn
your techniques?” pursued Alex still in a jocular tone.
“From Ben.”
That was understandable.
The couple had lived together for two or three years around the time
of Betty’s birth. They were bound to have tried out a few things.
“You never forget a trick
once you’ve learnt it, even after a few years,” said Alex in an
attempt to disguise his resentment that another man had known his
lover at least as well as he did.
“...Or after just a day or
so.”
“You what?”
Alex wasn’t sure whether
this called for him to remove his arm from around Bella’s bare
shoulders, so he let it rest there but he inclined away from her.
“Or just this morning...”
“With Ben?” asked Alex.
“It’s not been going so
well between Tina and Ben for a while,” said Bella.
“I hadn’t noticed.”
“Well, you never would.”
“But that doesn’t mean...”
“Ben is the father
of my child.”
“Oh.”
So, Alex found a way in
which he could separate from Bella, but the tears still came more from
his side than Bella’s. For her, it seemed a quite natural thing. For
Alex, it seemed almost perverse. And this was because Bella’s transfer
of affection from Alex to Ben was neither rapid nor abrupt, but one
where for a while she continued to have sex with Alex on a regular
basis and occasionally made love with Ben to one where it was Alex who
was the occasional lover.
Then after a week or so
when Bella and her daughter hadn’t visited at all and only replied
politely and cautiously to his phone-calls, Bella rang his door-bell
to finally return her copies of his house-keys.
“It doesn’t seem right to
hang onto them,” she said.
“Well, that’s alright,”
said Alex who’d actually hoped more for a tearful reunion than a
dispassionate separation, “I’m going to be moving away from Ashton
Lovelock anyway.”
“Where to?”
“Near London. Or somewhat
nearer to it than I do now. The company I work for is in London and
it’s a long commute.”
“You don’t want to leave
too large a carbon footprint each day, do you?”
“Something like that,”
admitted Alex, for whom it was actually more time and expense that was
persuading him to make the move.
“Well, best of luck.”
No Future Volume One
IX
Gabrielle
2039
Farming
is a business like any other. It may also be a vocation, a life-style
choice or even one of the few remaining outdoor occupations, but the
one thing Gabrielle knew for sure was that farming is a business.
Although she had
sympathies with the principles of organic farming and rather
distrusted Genetic Modification, what mattered at the end of each
accounting month was that she’d balanced the books and generated
enough profit to stay in business. In a world where famine and food
shortages were a daily reality for more and more people in the world,
including those living just on the border of the European Union,
Gabrielle was convinced that it was almost her moral duty to provide
as much food to the world as she could from the farmland she owned.
Business was rather better
than it had been for many years and the future looked promising.
International food prices were continuing to rise and this in turn
significantly improved her profit margin. Much as she was saddened by
the television images of the unfortunate starving millions in
Azerbaijan, Zimbabwe, Chile and Pakistan, it remained an undeniable
fact that farmers like her were unlikely to be amongst those who’d
suffer as a result of the changing face of global food economics.
Gabrielle’s sympathies
weren’t bogus. She’d been a bit of a globe-trotter when she was
younger. In those days, fuel prices made a flight to Africa and Asia
affordable even to students and graduates willing to defer their loan
repayments. She’d seen the real face of famine in Bangladesh,
Mozambique and Uzbekistan that tourists wouldn’t normally be exposed
to. A tour company would keep such horrors as much out of sight
as possible. Her interest in Third World famine relief continued
through her generous donations to foreign aid charities and her
practical assistance in shipping out food that the supermarkets
considered substandard to countries whose citizens had rather fewer
scruples than spoiled London shoppers. She also made a practical
contribution by employing immigrant Indians and Pakistanis on her
estate, however much this was frowned upon by people in nearby
Rickmansworth.
It made perfect economic
sense, of course; just as much as did the cultivation of GM crops,
cloned cattle, synthetic fertiliser and multilevel fruit farming. So
when Gabrielle didn’t attracting the ire of the prejudiced for making
a hiring decision for one sound economic reason, she was attacked by
green idealists for putting business interests ahead of what they
believed to be ethical farming. If they had their way she’d have to
live on half her current income, lay off most of her staff, leave land
fallow that was now used for meat and dairy, and the only
beneficiaries would be the poor of Ethiopia and Venezuela who’d be
shipped out all the vegetables that the supermarkets had rejected.
Such criticism was
inevitable when you farmed so close to London. Indeed, hers was the
first farm that one would pass by when driving on the busy A404 (M)
from the M1 to visit the bustling new town of Buckland Common. She’d
never have been criticised so much if she was living in Wales or
Northumbria, but here where land costs were high and the distance to
market was so short there was nothing she could do to satisfy her
neighbours. When she didn’t suffer taunts from Greens who could never
appreciate the value of a good leg of lamb or beef on the bone, she
had to direct her farmhands to paint over racist daubing on the fences
that enclosed her estate. Who’d have thought that farming would become
so political in the twenty-first century?
The racist taunts resulted
from the fact that so many of Gabrielle’s immigrant farmhands came
from the Indian subcontinent. Presumably it would have been less of a
problem had they come from within the European Union, but Gabrielle
doubted whether Georgians, Armenians or Moldavians would be treated
with much more respect. Skin colour was obviously an issue, although a
high proportion of local residents were themselves third or fourth
generation Indian or Pakistani. The usual excuse for the vitriol was
that the people Gabrielle employed were taking jobs that would
otherwise go to honest Englishmen. This wasn’t the kind of view that
would be shared by anyone who’d ever tried to employ local people,
especially from the London area, who would know one end of an
agricultural implement from another; or for that matter who had the
technical knowledge and qualifications in biology and genetics to
understand what was required in modern agriculture: at least not at
the level of wages now standard for agricultural workers in the United
Kingdom.
And why the Indian
subcontinent? Most farmers of Gabrielle’s acquaintance resourced from
rather less expensive foreign countries such as Morocco, Palestine,
Senegal and the Congo
One reason for sure was
that Gabrielle’s longest-lasting lover, the one who’d most often
shared her bed, was a second generation Indian Muslim who still had
plenty of contacts in the subcontinent of his grandparents’ birth.
Although he also had a
wife whose upkeep he maintained and who he even occasionally fucked,
he wasn’t a jealous man. He didn’t mind at all that Gabrielle was a
woman for whom the word polyamorous had been invented and was
fully content to share her body with other like-minded men.
Furthermore, Ghazi Patel was at least as keen on cock as Gabrielle.
Indeed, as she watched him glug down a mouthful of semen or gurgle on
a stiff cock deep down his throat, it seemed that he enjoyed the
physical pleasures of a man rather more than she did. She liked a fuck
but, although partial to buggery, she preferred to keep her anus in
good condition so she could enjoy it the more on special occasions.
Ghazi was less reserved. He liked to fuck a man up the arse and was
even happier when a man did it to him. Gabrielle got sexual stimulus
from Ghazi’s expressions of orgasmic delight and often shared the
spurt of semen when it was eventually released by the man who was
fucking her lover up the arse.
Gabrielle had a taste for
having both holes engaged when she consented to the delights of
sodomy. It seemed a waste for her more sensitive hole to be neglected
while the other was being penetrated. After all, why have sex with two
or more men at once if you couldn’t indulge in double penetration?
Another reason why so many
of those on Gabrielle’s payroll came from the Indian subcontinent was
the standard of education they’d received. This was usually
significantly higher than the level they’d have attained in England’s
failing school system. But the chief reason was actually almost
charitable. It wasn’t just that Punjabi or Guajarati men were good
fucks, but it was also Gabrielle’s response to the conflict between
the republics of Pakistan and India that had displaced so many
refugees and filled so many news site web pages.
The war was generally
restricted to the India-Pakistani border and was ostensibly fought
over the Kashmir, which was fighting its own civil war to become an
independent Islamic Republic like Iraq or Afghanistan. But no war
could be fully contained and it had spilt over into the densely
populated regions of Jammu, Islamabad and Rawalpindi. And where were
the displaced Indians and Pakistanis supposed to go? If they were
Muslim they might elect to live in Srinagar if they chose to accept
Kashmiri citizenship and tolerate the daily bombing. If they had
family further away from the front they might move in with them:
although that served only to further swell the populations of Mumbai
and Kolkata, now the two most populous cities in the world. Gabrielle,
with the assistance of the Red Cross and other international
charities, had decided to give practical help in the form of sanctuary
for the displaced.
The fact that this made
good business sense was also something of a bonus.
Gabrielle generally left
her staff to manage the farm without much supervision, although she
was still the main contact with the financial and agricultural
companies. She’d like to give more responsibility to Ajit, the Chief
Farm Manager, but although his English was excellent she was reluctant
for her customers to think that she wasn’t the one in charge. She also
wanted to counter the impression that a woman of prodigious sexual
appetite might give that she was somehow deranged in business matters.
But she generally trusted Ajit’s judgement when it came to the biotech
products marketed by companies like ICI-Monsanto or WalMart BTech.
After all, his qualifications and experience in Agribusiness was
rather better than hers. He must have been a great loss to Rawalpindi,
Pakistan, where he would still be living if it hadn’t been so badly
bombed by Indian stealth planes.
“I’m not sure about this,”
said Ajit, when the sales representative from WalMart BTech had left.
“I know we like to do business with the company especially since
WalMart took over Tesco’s, but the very notion of non-sentient animals
doesn’t seem right.”
“It’s just meat,” said
Gabrielle, who’d tasted the samples they’d been given. “Surely it’s
actually more moral to slaughter animals that don’t feel pain, have no
comprehension of the world, and in a sense have never really lived.”
“They have lived,”
Ajit protested. “They breathed, they consumed and processed the
mulched vegetable foodstuff they were given, they had blood coursing
through their veins, they had hearts...”
“...but not minds,” said
Gabrielle.
“It’s not right to reduce
Allah’s creation to the level of vegetables,” continued Ajit.
“It’s just meat. The
things that generate it are just meat-machines. They’re not sentient.
They’ve never suffered. Surely it’s better to eat meat that doesn’t
result from the death of a sentient being.”
“I can’t believe that
people shopping in Tesco’s or Cost Cutter’s would choose to buy meat
that originated from the obscene monstrosity you can see in this
picture,” Ajit remarked.
The pair reviewed the
photograph in the WMBT brochure. It had no bones, no eyes, no ears and
probably no brain to speak of. It had been engineered to perform the
one job of converting vegetables to meat. Gabrielle almost felt sick
at the sight of it. The nearest equivalent to it she could think of
was the placenta left by a cow after giving birth.
“It could be produced for
export,” said Gabrielle. “The shoppers in British supermarkets would
never see the meat unless it was sold on the black market. There’s a
food shortage in the world. Meat is particularly nutritious and easily
digestible. The statistics provided by WMBT, but also those quoted
from Nature and other science magazines, are unequivocal. With
the same input of vegetable and cereal foodstuff converted into mulch
we can double, triple or even quadruple the amount of meat available
to feed the world.”
“I’m not a vegetarian,”
said Ajit. “But this isn’t natural in any sense of the word. The genes
of this monstrosity come from pigs, cows, fish and chickens. Ungulates
and avians.”
“Surely your moral code
can see that any meat that is produced without causing pain and
suffering is a good thing. And anyway there aren’t many people who’re
complaining about the biologically engineered milk that’s never seen a
cow or the oranges that have never grown on a tree. People will soon
get used to eating meat that’s never belonged to a sentient beast. In
fact, they’ll soon wonder how barbaric we humans were to slaughter
animals simply to fill the supermarket shelves.”
Ajit studied Gabrielle
thoughtfully.
“Are you saying that we
should farm this stuff?”
“There are good economic
reasons to do so at least on a trial basis. Did you see the amount of
investment WMBT is willing to give us for doing so? If it doesn’t
sell, we won’t lose out any more than we did when we grew those
cold-weather olives...”
“They didn’t really taste
like olives. More like catshit.”
“Perhaps people won’t buy
this stuff either.”
“But if it does
catch on? If everyone buys meat that’s like this? What then? Nobody
would farm sheep, pigs or cattle. The fields would be empty and the
countryside would be nothing but fields of grain and vegetables. There
wouldn’t be any insects because they can’t digest GM crops. There
wouldn’t be any wildlife except in the odd pocket of woodland.”
Gabrielle laughed. “Oh
come on, Ajit! You sound like a madman. Even the Green fanatics don’t
go that far, do they?”
“I hope I don’t sound too
apocalyptic.”
“Don’t worry. Look, we’re
running a business, you and I. The business case for farming this kind
of meat is pretty watertight. I’d be very surprised if many farmers,
apart from the organic ones, would turn down an opportunity like this
to bolster the balance sheet. And anyway,” Gabrielle said, nodding
towards the latest bit of graffiti that had been spray-painted over
the gateway to Greenfields Farm, “we have other worries at the moment.
How is the staff coping?”
“We installed some extra
security alarms and cameras around the dormitories,” said Ajit. “A
gentleman from the security company will be coming round tomorrow to
evaluate the situation.”
Gabrielle nodded.
“Well, for the moment I
think we’ll go with WalMart BTech’s proposal, but I’ll wait a day or
so before I contact them so’s I can think about it. Would that be
alright, Ajit?”
He agreed but reluctantly
so. Gabrielle could see that when Greenfields Farm started
manufacturing pain-free meat, or however else it would be marketed,
she’d have disputes ahead with her Chief Farm Manager. But one thing
she wasn’t worried about was that he should hand in his notice.
After all, where else
could he go?
No Future Volume One
X
Alex
2023
It
was like joining a club. Not a very exclusive club of course, as it
already had over eight million members, but certainly one with
crippling membership fees. It was a club to which Alex had long
aspired to be a member and that was to be one of those who lived
within the circumference of the M25 and could call themselves
Londoners.
For sure, Rickmansworth
wasn’t that far inside the M25. The Metropolitan Line through
the suburb continued above ground to places like Amersham that were
way beyond the London orbital, but it was good enough. And living here
was just about within Alex’s income as long as he managed to keep his
job and there wasn’t another sudden hike in interest rates.
As a commentator on VR
politics and economics, Alex’s future employment was contingent on a
section of the media that nowadays might seem unassailable but could
so easily become a mere footnote of history like tablet computers and
3D TV. For the moment, however, Alex was as much a media presence in
the world of Virtual Reality as anyone although his online avatar
hardly resembled him at all.
As a Londoner, he could
now join the daily squeeze on the Tube. Every day, for the prohibitive
price of a season ticket, he could press his nose into other
passengers’ armpits while body odour and farts filled the carriage,
but he could also now spend his evenings in the capital, where he
could watch a show or drink in a pub. He could become part of the
vibrant heart of one of the ten largest cities in Europe and still one
of the most wealthy and powerful in the world. However, he’d also
learnt the necessity of keeping a watchful eye on the time if he
didn’t want to miss the last tube home and have to spend a fortune on
a late-night taxi.
Unfortunately, the West
End wasn’t the part of London with which Alex was becoming most
familiar. Rather, it was the mundane attractions of Rickmansworth like
the Park Road Shopping Centre, the old pubs and restaurants on the
High Street, and the modern establishments on Parsonage Road and
Rectory Lane. A night out in Rickmansworth for a single man usually
involved him watching a movie at the Fox Cineplex, which was only
marginally better than watching it at home, or nursing a lonely pint
in the garish but anonymous pubs on the Parsonage Road.
There was a huge choice of
women to date within the London area, in both the real and virtual
sense, but most of those who lived nearby in a strictly geographical
sense were actually quite awkward to meet in a practical one. Almost
everyone he contacted through dating websites lived in a part of
London to the South, East or Central that was very tricky to get to.
And, if things didn’t go to plan, it was more awkward still to return
home. Who could have anticipated the logistical nightmare of getting
back to Rickmansworth from Richmond, Peckham, Epping Forest, Croydon
or Uxbridge?
There were many nights
when Alex ventured out from his modest one-bedroom, one-reception
terrace house, walked all the way to the town centre along roads with
rustic names like Meadow Way and Nightingale Road that were fast being
swamped by new apartment blocks and housing estates. And then he was
in streets filled with shrieking young men and women whose inhibitions
were lost to alcohol and drugs. The choice was then between sitting in
a desolate antique pub that sought to attract custom with gourmet
lunches and imported lagers or more modern establishments where he was
wedged in by the youth of Rickmansworth and unlikely to find a
comfortable seat.
“It’s crap here, isn’t
it?” Alex heard one day when he’d ventured inside a pub that from
outside had initially seemed promising but inside was nothing special
at all. In fact, the only thing that kept his attention was the
presence of attractive young women including—it had to be said—the
person who was addressing him.
“I don’t know why I come
here,” joked Alex in the hope of keeping her attention. “It can’t be
the beer. It tastes like piss.”
“We just rent it,” she
replied. “It’s recycled on the premises.”
Although it was an old
joke, Alex gave the expected laugh and steered the subject of
conversation towards finding more out about the woman who’d spoken to
him.
She was attractive, but
probably not to everyone’s taste. She had a freshly-scrubbed,
pale-freckled appearance. Not even her skimpy outfit could make her
look more urban. She looked uncomfortable in the stilettos she wore.
The sheer stockings she wore over her full thighs didn’t really suit
her. She was gripping a full pint glass in her hand rather than a more
modest glass of wine.
“Are you waiting for
someone?” Alex asked Gabby after she’d told him her name.
“Sort of,” she said. “Or
perhaps not. Maybe you’ll do.”
“Sorry?” asked Alex who
wasn’t sure he quite got the drift of what she’d said.
“I live near here,” Gabby
said, without really addressing Alex’s question. “My Dad owns
Greenfields Farm. It lies a few miles from here, just by the M25. It’s
surrounded by country lanes.”
“You wouldn’t think there
was much countryside round here...”
“There’s not as much left
as when I was a little girl,” Gabby replied. “The town gets closer and
closer to the farm every day. Soon there won’t be any green belt round
London at all. So, I’m a Farmer’s Daughter. Just like the ones you see
on the web, but I don’t fuck goats and cows, let alone dogs and
horses. Why should I when there are better studs to fuck?”
“There are?” said Alex who
was both aroused and alarmed by the direction the conversation was
taking.
“This is a good place,”
continued Gabby, as she continued to survey the lounge. “It’s a kind
of singles bar. Did you know that?”
“No,” admitted Alex, who
now resolved to position the pub higher on his list of occasional
haunts.
“Not a proper singles bar,
of course. Not like the ones in the smoke. Ricky’s not that kind of
town, even though it’s changed a lot in the last decade or so.”
“Is this the kind of place
you come to regularly?”
“Sometimes.”
“Do you ever go to
nightclubs?”
“Of course I do, but the
nearest decent one is miles away. I wouldn’t want to waste the night
dancing to the same fucking moronic pap you hear in a place like this.
All that twenty year old telly talent show drivel! How naff. So, tell
me, Alan...”
“Alex.”
“Alex. Tell me, do you
have a girlfriend? Or are you some kind of sad git?”
“A sad git,” said Alex,
choosing to conveniently forget the one-night stand he’d had with
Melissa from Kensal Green who wasn’t quite as good in the flesh as her
photo on West One Dating suggested.
“Have you ever had a
girlfriend?”
“Of course. Last proper
one was in Ashton Lovelock.”
“That’s in the Midlands,
isn’t it? What was she like?”
“A bit of a hippy. Very
Green.”
“I have a problems with
Green,” sniffed Gabby. “Being a Farmer’s Daughter and all. You can’t
do business in the modern age, not with the pressure from WalMart,
Tesco’s and the rest to supply product at a low price. If Greens had
their way, we’d never eat meat. And food would cost three times as
much.”
Opinions like this were
refreshing to Alex’s ears after having heard so much about how his
eating habits were raping the environment and poisoning the planet.
“I’d rather have
affordable steak any day,” he agreed.
“Well, let’s just hope it
doesn’t go the way of fish,” Gabby remarked. “Fish and chips costs far
more than most people can afford.”
“No wonder there are no
chippies left anymore.”
Gabby was refreshingly
old-fashioned in her attitudes, despite her youth and high level of
education. After a few more drinks she not only lit up a cigarette
when they left the pub together but announced that her car was parked
in the Rectory Road Multi-storey car park.
“I don’t know which is the
more expensive vice these days. Fucking ciggies or fucking driving. It
costs a bloody fortune to fill the car up and the parking fees are
criminal. Do you drive, Alex?”
“Used to. I had to sell
the car when I bought a house in Rickmansworth.”
“Really and where do you
live?”
“Just over a mile or so
from here.”
“I’ll give you a lift
home, shall I?”
Alex was pleased at how
little work he’d needed to do this evening. Nearly three months in
Rickmansworth and he’d never suspected that his postcode search on the
internet dating sites didn’t need to go much further than WD3.
“How can you afford to
smoke and drive?” he couldn’t help asking Gabby, after he’d turned
down the offer of a cigarette.
“Living with Dad helps,”
said Gabby, as she reversed her Four by Four out of the tight parking
space on the sixth floor of the car park. “No rent or mortgage. Makes
a fuck of a difference. Working for Dad helps even more.”
“You’re a Farmer as well
as a Farmer’s Daughter?” said Alex.
“Don’t look so bloody
surprised. Farming’s not a bad profession, you know. It’s like running
a business and an employment agency and a retail outlet and everything
at once. You’ve got to be pretty sharp to do all that these days. When
Dad retires, I’m the one who’ll take over the whole show. I just hope
he doesn’t retire till he’s fucking ninety...”
“How old is he now?”
“I dunno. Quite old. Fifty
or something.”
The drive to Alex’s house
was almost as slow as it would have been if he’d walked. It was only
when you were in a car that you realised the impact of the traffic
calming and one-way systems that bedevilled even an outer suburb like
Rickmansworth. The roads were incredibly narrow for a Four by Four,
especially when driven by someone who disregarded the drink-driving
regulations. Cars were parked on both sides of every road. It took
more than five minutes to find a space in the streets and cul-de-sacs
around Ashwood Lane.
“Small house, eh?”
commented Gabby, when she saw Alex’s home squeezed in the middle of a
long row of virtually identical houses all with paved-over front
gardens and white-framed energy-efficient windows.
“The mortgage costs me a
small fortune,” Alex told her as he pushed open the door into a
cramped hallway that led straight on to the staircase.
“I’m so grateful I’ll
never have to get into the fucking property market,” remarked Gabby.
“Where’s your bedroom? Upstairs?”
“There’s only the one,”
Alex said as he walked up the steep stairs behind her.
The bedroom was small. A
double bed dominated it and made the room seem smaller still. Alex had
dismantled his bed in Ashton Lovelock and reassembled it in
Rickmansworth with much cursing. And the bed was just about the only
thing that Gabby was interested in.
She didn’t like to waste
time. She didn’t say much at all as she pulled off her clothes,
although she was careful not to rip them as she did so. Gabby was soon
totally naked and very comfortable with it. It was unlikely that she
was a girl who sat naked in the sun on holidays to Ibiza or Lanzarote.
Her pale skin betrayed no tan lines or any other evidence of exposure
to ultraviolet radiation.
She also revealed a vagina
that could never be described as neat and tidy. When Alex entered its
slippery, moist and warm cavern, his prick slipped out so often that
Gabby had to keep pushing it back inside.
“It always does that,” she
said with no evident embarrassment. “I guess it’s meant to take two
rather than one. When you’re fully stiff it’ll be okay. There are some
condoms that’ll give your cock the friction you need...”
“Are there?”
“I can order you some off
the internet, if you like.”
Sex with Gabby was simply,
unequivocally and unreservedly just sex. While their two bodies were
engaged with each other, sex was all that there was between them. All
she wanted was to be fucked. She was very strict on the use of
condoms, but also expert in revitalising Alex’s penis when it flagged.
“We’ve got all night, you
know,” she said.
“I’ve got to go to work
tomorrow,” Alex remarked feebly.
“Well, fuck that! There
are more important things in life than work, you know. Just get your
cock back inside me where it belongs.”
No Future Volume One
XI
Mark & Molly
2070
Times
were good.
OK. Good in the sense that
they weren’t bad, but the upward climb in the value of the Stock
Exchange and the related rise of living standards must count for
something.
For sure, things would
probably never again be as good in London as they were before the
National Unity government took power and the subsequent dissolution of
the United Kingdom. The City of London had forever surrendered its
role as a hub of international business. It was Frankfurt that had now
taken over that role in the European time zone. It would never regain
its earlier status now that economic power was so evenly distributed
across the world.
But for Mark and Molly, in
their brand new home in the Greenfields Estate in Harrocks Wood New
Town, could life ever be any better? They had at last moved into the
second floor studio apartment that had taken so many years to save
for, a second baby on the way, and they were earning enough now to
contemplate even the prohibitively expensive option of marriage.
And it was much easier
nowadays to commute to the City compared with the three hours it used
to take the couple from Bishop’s Stortford. It was a mere two-hour
commute from door to door, involving a half-hour trip by bus and
invariably wedged in and standing for the whole one hour tube journey
from nearby Rickmansworth. They now had more time to spend with one
another and, of course, with little Monica who saw rather more of the
nursery and crèche than she ever did of her devoted but unavoidably
busy parents.
There were occasions when
Mark or Molly, but never the two together, could enjoy an evening out
with friends in the capital until the last tube beckoned them home.
When they were younger this was all they ever did in the evenings, but
those were the days of the National Unity government when any staff
employed by the bars and restaurants that were at all competent were
also likely to be deported as a result of the National Immigration
Policy. In those days, service was truly dreadful and the quality of
food and drink had dropped even further. Now, with so many deportees
returning to England and being provided housing and jobs by a
chastised coalition government still struggling to qualify for renewed
membership in the Northern European Union, the bars and restaurants
were once again properly resourced. Not that Mark and Molly were now
able to enjoy the benefits.
Mark was a marketing
officer for Tata Benz where he had the unenviable mission to encourage
people to purchase cars that was not only expensive to drive off the
forecourt but even more so in terms of insurance, taxation, fuel and
parking. Inevitably, the marketing was focussed on the drive to keep
down retail prices, but Mark was actually one of the employees who’d
chosen not to accept the offer of a company car. Even before he filled
the tank with biodiesel he’d be worse off financially with a car than
without.
All the same, the message
had got through to an admirably high percentage of the target consumer
market. London was still periodically gridlocked and every road was
subject to parking restrictions. Nevertheless, Mark guessed that there
were rather fewer cars on the road than there used to be that were
truly above board and legal. This could be blamed on a feeble and
incompetent justice system that was another product of the years of
supposedly strong government that had so crippled the country.
Molly worked as a legal
secretary for an international law firm that ensured that she was
always kept incredibly busy. Despite her advanced pregnancy, she often
had to work weekends. The repatriation of deportees involved so many
unsuspected complications. An impoverished English government was
pushed yet further into debt by the actions of those who’d been
treated badly by the previous administration and were now exercising
their right to claim compensation for lost trade, for illegally seized
businesses and, in some cases, for the rough treatment suffered at the
hands of over-enthusiastic immigration police. Most cases were
extremely difficult to prove one way or the other as the database
records had been deleted. If the data hadn’t been leaked to
clandestine websites, usually illegally, there would have been far
fewer cases for the government to resolve.
Mark and Molly worked
hard, even though their salaries were often paid late, the debts
continued to pile up, and the demand for unpaid overtime continued to
rise. But at least they had jobs. They were now in that minority of
people under forty years old who’d managed to buy a home and who could
just about afford to pay their monthly mortgage payments despite the
crippling interest rates.
There were few
opportunities for the couple to play as hard as they worked. Despite
her early reputation as a free and easy woman, Molly couldn’t find the
time to be unfaithful to Mark even if she wanted to. Had anyone
approached her at the office photocopying machine with the proposition
of a quickie in the broom cupboard, she would have had to politely
refuse. Long hours and hard work had severely sapped her sexual
energy. But not so much, of course, that she and Mark hadn’t been able
to conceive a second time.
Mark had always been the
faithful sort. He’d never cheated on anyone. Even when he was single
and could afford to get high (before the government of National Unity
became so ridiculously heavy-handed in enforcing the laws on drug
possession), he’d never been keen on casual sex. He would never make
love with a mate’s girlfriend or wife. That just wouldn’t be right.
How would he like it if the same thing happened to him?
When their long working
day was over, Mark and Molly made their separate ways to the tube
stations through the rain-soaked streets of London. (Who said that
Climate Change wouldn’t bring even more rain to already soggy
England?) As a devoted couple, they set their mobile phones to
broadcast their whereabouts so that the other would know whether their
partner was in the office or on the tube. This was a facility that had
mostly gone out of fashion after it had been so spectacularly abused
by the immigration police to locate people they wanted for what was
euphemistically known as questioning. This had sometimes led to injury
and even death as the police struggled to meet their monthly
deportation totals.
Mark was reassured to see
on his mobile phone that Molly was now walking along Chancery Lane to
the tube station, while he was standing in the carriage of the
Metropolitan Line train to Amersham. It was rather less comforting to
know that due to yet another incident on the line, he would continue
to be delayed in a stationary carriage between Baker Street and
Finchley Road.
All around him were
similarly frustrated passengers: many dripping wet from the heavy rain
outside and all squeezed as tightly together as was possible. Most
were also regarding their mobile phones, where they could send
messages, watch television or just be entertained by music or films.
Some passengers carried e-books, while a lucky few perched on the
ridge of foam that passed for a carriage seat and were able to use
their tablets.
Mark scanned his fellow
passengers as best he could from the view he had past the elbows and
umbrellas that poked near his face. They were less racially diverse
than they would have been just over ten years before and dressed
somewhat more shabbily. The age of cheap clothing, along with that for
cheap food, was now just a distant dream. Nowadays people resorted
more and more to patching up their worn-out socks and sweaters. There
was even a good trade in supposedly indestructible fabrics that would
never need repair. The one thing that remained cheap, of course, was
electronic goods.
Along the side of the
carriage was an array of plasma screens where once there would have
been windows from which were broadcast soundless adverts for consumer
goods, debt relief and film downloads. These were periodically
interspersed by public information screens that informed Mark and the
other passengers just how far the train was from the next stop and how
long it would take to get there. The fact that these screens were
stubbornly awaiting further information, as they had for the last ten
sweaty humid minutes, provided no comfort at all.
Mark held his mobile phone
up to within half a metre of his face and reviewed the news stories he
could hear through the discreet ear-piece in his right ear. These were
the usual type of stories. Things were still tense in the Middle East,
of course. Israeli drones were targeting supposed threats in Jordan
and Palestine and were countered in kind by Iraq and Turkey. There was
more on the recent murder of the Culture Secretary and her husband.
The police were questioning someone with ties with the Confederate
rebels in the increasingly militaristic southern states of the United
States. Something about flooding in Woolwich and how the Greenwich
Flood Barrier was holding back the rising waters of the River Thames
from reaching London. But Mark spent rather more time reviewing the
news about the upcoming marriage between Heir Apparent Princess Rachel
and Bruce Banner, businessman and entrepreneur. It was nice to read
good news occasionally and this made Mark speculate about his own
wedding nuptials should he and Molly ever save up enough to actually
go through with it.
He toggled his display
back to see how Molly was doing. She’d taken a train on the Bakerloo
line and was now approaching Warwick Avenue. At this rate, she’d be
home before him and it’d be her who’d be making dinner for a change.
Molly was a better cook than him anyway, although neither of them was
especially skilled.
Mark read the short
message she texted him: “V. crowded. Don’t feel so
gd. Love you lots.”
The message immediately
alarmed Mark. Molly was now about seven months pregnant. He hoped
nothing bad would happen. The first pregnancy had gone remarkably
well, despite the long daily commute to and from Bishop’s Stortford.
The worst of it had been the delay getting from their home to the
maternity ward through busy traffic and the long wait for an available
hospital bed.
Mark, of course, could do
nothing to help. He was stuck in a stationary carriage while further
up the line he imagined another line fatality was being cleared away.
Not that he’d ever be told what had happened.
“Hope
it’s
nothing,” he
texted back.
“I’m
faint
and sick. C U Soon,”
came
the prompt reply.
Mark had no idea what was
the right thing to say at this point. He did a quick search of some
medical websites but what he read only alarmed him further.
“Try
sitting
down,” he
texted back.
“Not
poss.”
“Yr
preg.
If u cant get a seat who can?”
There was no reply.
For the next half hour
until the train moved again, as trains ahead of his up the line were
also shunted forward, Mark continued to check Molly’s whereabouts on
his mobile. He followed her progress along the Bakerloo Line past
Kensal Green and Wembley Central to Kenton where surely she would take
the escalator link to the Metropolitan Line. He was rather surprised
to see that she’d missed the stop and had arrived at Harrow &
Wealdstone.
Perhaps the carriage she
was in was so crowded at Kenton she’d not been able to get out. He
expected she’d now get on a southbound train. And why had she still
not texted him?
Then he noticed with even
more dread while his train at last slowly juddered onwards to Finchley
Road that, after staying for five to ten minutes at Harrow &
Wealdstone, Molly’s location was now moving remarkably rapidly along
the roads south towards Northwick Park. Perhaps she’d caught a taxi.
Wise move when you’re pregnant. Whatever the cost.
And then the phone rang
and it was Molly’s number.
“Hiya Molly!” Mark cried
cheerfully.
“I’m sorry to disappoint
you, sir,” replied a male voice. “Am I speaking to Mr Mark McEwan?”
“Yes.”
“Thank you, sir. I’m a
paramedic and my name is Martin Green. Your partner, Ms. Minchin, is
being taken by ambulance to Northwick Park Hospital. We advise you to
get there at your earliest convenience.”
“What’s happened?”
“Nothing life-threatening
but it’s not good news,” said the paramedic. “It’s related to Ms
Minchin’s pregnancy.”
“Has there been an
accident?”
“In a sense yes, sir,”
replied the paramedic. “But as I say it’s not life-threatening.”
The rest of Mark’s journey
was even more stressful than it had already been. The train eventually
arrived at Northwick Park where the hospital was located just round
the corner. Inevitably, the satellite navigation was better at finding
the overall location of the hospital than that of the reception desk
and by the time he arrived he was drenched by the torrential rain that
even now wouldn’t let up.
The cause of the emergency
was, of course, a miscarriage.
Molly had fainted on the
spot where she’d been standing on the tube, but as she was so tightly
wedged in she didn’t fall to the floor. She was only identified as
having lost consciousness when the train reached its terminus at
Harrow & Wealdstone. It was only when everyone had disembarked
that she was finally free to drop to the ground. It was then that
somebody decided to call an ambulance and she was taken to the nearest
hospital.
“There wasn’t anything we
could do, sir,” said one of the nurses as Mark squeezed the hand of
his still sedated partner. “The miscarriage happened before she was
found. In fact we judge that it may well have happened while she was
still standing up in the carriage. It’s not very amenable for a
pregnant woman.”
“Indeed not,” said Mark
who lost most of his normally unbreakable optimism for the future as
he regarded poor Molly as she lay on the bed with a tube trailing out
of her nostril. “When will she better?”
“Fairly soon,” said the
nurse. “But we don’t advise her to return to work for at least a
week.”
How would G & M UK
accept even a single day of staff shortage given Molly’s massive
workflow? How sympathetic would an American company be?
“I’m sure that’s for the
best,” Mark replied.
No Future Volume One
XII
Molly & Mark
2071
There
was no denying it. Molly had taken the death of her unborn child very
badly. The shock of the loss sent her into a downward spiral of
despondency and then depression. The inevitable result was that she
lost her job. Her impressive academic qualifications notwithstanding,
she was now no more useful to humanity than a housewife. And although
if anyone should ask she’d insist that it was her free choice to spend
more time with little Monica, she was clearly not at all suited to the
role. And now Monica was at primary school there was no real advantage
to Molly being available throughout the day.
Furthermore, it was
difficult for the couple to get by on only one income. The savings the
couple had stashed away was now being eaten up by the monthly interest
on their mortgage. After paying for that, the monthly season ticket
and the basic cost of living, there was nothing much left over. As the
debts continued to rise and a steadily growing proportion of Mark’s
salary was committed to interest payments on existing debt, Molly
stretched out as best she could the available budget for food and
clothing. But although the charity shops in the Greenfields shopping
precinct might provide good quality clothes for a child of five years
old, they were less useful for buying the clothes Mark had to wear for
work. Molly resorted to the cheaper supermarkets and the weekly market
stalls as a means of cutting costs, but these were all an hour’s walk
away in Rickmansworth.
There was little now to
cheer Mark up when he arrived home in the evening, more tired from his
commute than from his long hours in the office. And there wasn’t any
cheer in the news that he’d read on his tablet on the way home.
England’s negotiations for re-admittance to the Northern European
Union were fraught. France and the Netherlands still resented the
English government for its role in causing the once much larger and
wealthier European Union to split into two halves over the issue of
ratifying the membership of Turkey and Armenia. Scotland and Wales
still held a grudge against England for its role in the dissolution of
the United Kingdom together. And there was little at all encouraging
to be found from a casual scan through the news. All-out war in the
Middle East seemed increasingly inevitable and the United States was
far too preoccupied with its own worries about secession and civil war
to do anything about it. Flood barriers were going up all round
London, just as most of the Southern English coast was similarly
enclosed by an ever-heightening wall to guard against rising sea
levels. And to cap it all, Princess Rachel had broken off her
engagement. Bruce Banner was now a man who’d travelled the distance
from being England’s most celebrated bachelor to being the most
despised.
Mark had little enough
opportunity in the evening to squeeze in quality time with Molly
before he slumped down by his wife in their conjugal bed. As much as
Mark enjoyed the wholesome vegetarian meals Molly was now cooking, he
was far too exhausted to demonstrate his appreciation in the way that
had invigorated the couple’s early years together. And Mark was too
tired to be much use at the weekend even on those occasions when he
wasn’t required to go to work for a marketing campaign or a business
conference.
On Sundays, the couple
would shop together in the dilapidated Park Road Mall where the cheap
but not especially cheerful shops were clustered. It was a depressing
parade of pawn shops, instant loan stores, charity shops and
second-hand clothes stores, interspersed at regular intervals by the
boarded-up facade of one of Rickmansworth’s former shopping delights.
And in amongst it all were
youth from the suburb’s rundown estates who dressed in clothes that
expressed only too well their relative poverty. The clothes advertised
desperation rather than high fashion. These young men and women
weren’t the ones dressed in the colourful psychedelic fabrics and
artistically arranged hair that adorned the young people who were
jiggling provocatively on the flat wall screens in the shops. Rather
they wore a jumble of whatever they could find in the charity shops.
Many young people, whether male or female, avoided even the need to
visit the hairdresser by shaving off their hair. However much he
preferred to keep a discreet distance from them, Mark was aware that
today’s youth could hardly be blamed for their poverty. Unemployment,
especially amongst the young, was shockingly high. As Molly could
confirm, well-paid jobs had become harder and harder to find even for
the well-qualified. If a young man or woman continued to study beyond
the current school leaving age the path to higher education was beset
by crippling loans and fierce competition for college places.
“I kept some of the best
fruit aside for you, Molly love,” said the burly shaven-headed
stall-holder in the vegetable market with a friendly pat on her back.
“Organic, it is. None of your GM or synthetic stuff. Grown in proper
orchards, it is.”
“Do you know him?” Mark
wondered, as he and Molly strolled over to the dairy stall where the
eggs and dairy came directly from farms in Hertfordshire and were sold
at prices that were even more competitive than those in WalMart-Tesco.
“Of course,” said Molly.
“I know all the stall-holders here.”
Molly wasn’t exaggerating.
She knew Wayne the stall-holder very well just as she’d also got to
know Alan, Mickey and Garry.
Her idle time out of work
hadn’t gone entirely to waste.
Molly found conversations
with Mark had become ever more depressing and monotonous. Their
discussions were always about the same things these days and Molly
just wanted to get away from it. The couple’s debts were piling up. It
looked likely that they would have to default on the mortgage now that
interest rates had risen yet another percentage point. It was unlikely
that Monica would be accepted at the Rickmansworth school they’d
applied for her and she might end up in an overcrowded one in Watford.
There was no likelihood of Mark getting a pay rise. In fact, with the
continuing slump in international car sales there might even be
redundancies on the horizon.
And when you turned on the
TV it was always the same old stuff. War. Famine. Plague. Floods.
Failing businesses.
Even Princess Rachel had
failed the nation.
What could Molly do in
those hours from nine o’clock when Monica was packed off to school and
three o’clock when she had to be picked up again? She could trudge
back to their tiny apartment in Bluebell Grove and sit mesmerised by
chat shows and twentieth-century movies interspersed by debt relief
adverts. Or she could aimlessly wander the streets of Greenfields. Or
she could stroll over to Rickmansworth where she’d got to know some of
the town’s other citizens who also had to idle away each empty day.
For the small amount of
cash that she might otherwise have used towards the bus fare into town
she could buy skunk, meth, coke or even smack. Illegal drugs were very
cheap these days. The devastation resulting from the Stan Wars and the
current unrest in the Middle East had dramatically increased their
illicit supply. More unemployment had likewise enlarged the size of
the target market and the number of those willing to risk arrest and
imprisonment to maintain the flow and availability of the product.
After all, the cost of a hit from crack or H was rather less than that
of a single cigarette and there were almost exactly as many places to
sit down and enjoy it.
Molly knew of many reasons
for the easy availability, cheapness and demand for narcotics. One
reason highlighted in the news was the impotence of law enforcement
agencies throughout the world, particularly in the disintegrating
United States and the Kingdom of England. Police forces had more
important matters to deal with than the drug trade, such as organised
crime and civil disorder.
Wayne didn’t supply drugs,
but he liked to share a puff of crack after a long morning on the
stall. Alan didn’t supply drugs either, but he often had a spare wrap
or two of skunk. Mickey and Garry worked as a team, but they were very
low down the pecking order and never handled quantities larger than a
kilo. Molly was, of course, yet lower down still the supply chain, but
she was already sufficiently knowledgeable about drugs etiquette from
her relatively wild youth to get accepted amongst her new friends. She
knew how to prepare a bong; how to heat stuff in tin foil; how much to
use and how long to wait till she got a hit. And she had the enviable
ability of being able to hang around in the company of her new friends
for only a few hours a day without ever overdoing it. When she
appeared outside Greenfields Primary School to take her daughter home,
no one would ever suspect that she might be stoned out of her mind.
Which she often was.
Molly also knew how to get
a little extra for free. This was another skill she’d learnt before
she’d met Mark and settled down to a life of office work and commuting
in London. Wayne was one of the lucky few who Molly would allow the
privilege of a free fuck. She’d secretly always liked a bit of rough.
Mickey and Garry had to pay in kind for the rewards she was scarcely
generous in doling out. Unlike women who relied on the proceeds of
selling their bodies to pay for drugs (and there were many prostitutes
lining the kerbsides of Rectory Lane and Nightingale Road), Molly
insisted on using a condom. Like drugs these were also very cheap and
easy to get hold of.
Molly wasn’t a drug
addict. She’d never been an addictive personality. She liked the hit
she got from the wide choice of drugs that were readily available, but
she never allowed it to distract her from the responsibilities of
parenthood and of being a partner. She was no more addicted to drugs
than she was to sex, but both brought danger, excitement and genuine
physical thrills that somehow compensated for the boredom of not
working and despair at life’s apparent futility.
In any case, Molly didn’t
want Mark’s prick to be the only one she’d get to know for the rest of
her life. Wayne’s was thick and chunky: a bit like the man himself.
When he ejaculated inside the condom it pushed out the nipple like a
tiny balloon. Mickey had a long thin penis which wasn’t what you’d
imagine for a man whose stomach drooped over his waist. He had very
good staying power which enabled Molly to come several times in a
single session. Garry was probably the most disappointing of the men
Molly had got to know in this intimate way, but he was also the man
most pathetically grateful. He was strangely shy and retiring for
someone who made a living by hustling and selling drugs to strangers.
Furthermore, Molly never
forgot her class loyalties. She made certain that there was no overlap
between her daytime vices and what her neighbours in Bluebell Grove
would ever get to know. Molly was practical, sensible and
well-prepared for most eventualities.
Nevertheless, the bad news
when it arrived did so with a sense of inevitability.
Molly’s first indication
that her suburban dream life in Greenfields wouldn’t last much longer
was when Mark gave an account of what Tata Benz executives had been
telling their employees about past sales figures and future
projections.
The thrust of the
presentation was about the ever worsening state of the automobile
market and Tata Benz’s success in diversifying away from its
historical core business. All the same, the bottom line was that the
mass market for cars was no longer as profitable as it once had been
and that the company’s offices in the more minor international centres
would soon have to be closed. One of the more peripheral centres for
the Indian-German company was the Kingdom of England, where future
sales projections didn’t offer much of a source of confidence.
Mark continued his commute
for several more months as the company struggled to present its
declining fortunes in as good a light as it could to financiers,
stockholders and the general public. He was assured that he would
receive a reasonable but not fantastically generous redundancy
payment. What Molly knew for sure was that there would soon be two
people spending their days in enforced idleness in the cramped space
of Apt. 4, 3 Bluebell Grove.
However, even that
disheartening scenario wasn’t to be.
“It’s either eviction and
homelessness or this,” Mark announced to Molly after explaining the
options. “I know it’s not as nice as Greenfields, but this studio
apartment in Dagenham is about all we can afford until either you or I
get another job.”
“It’s a rented flat,”
wailed Molly. “What about the deposit we paid? Can’t we use that to
buy another place?”
“The deposit just about
covers the outstanding debt on the mortgage payments,” said Mark.
“Dagenham’s all slums and
sink estates,” Molly complained. “What sort of school will Monica go
to? What about the crime in the area? You’ve seen the stories about
gangland killings.”
“It’s a shorter commute to
London,” Mark remarked. “It’s almost close enough to Docklands for us
to be able to walk to work.”
“The only reason it’s
cheap in Dagenham is because it’s first in line when the flood
barriers break,” said Molly who’d done her research. “The last time
the barriers broke, Creekmouth were under more than a metre of
sewerage and mud. Newlands Park was marshland for months afterwards.
They even had to close the A13.”
“Well, that’s one good
reason for us to rent and not to buy property in the area,” said Mark
with a grim smile.
No Future Volume One
XIII
Alex
2024
Never
before had Alex felt as much like he was playing a walk-on part in the
story of someone else’s life. He was like a minor character in a soap
opera who’d somehow been allowed to stay on for more than one episode.
Even though he’d been seeing Gabby for nearly a year now, there was no
doubt which one of the couple was calling the shots in their
relationship and it wasn’t Alex.
To make matters worse,
Gabby made no pretence whatsoever that Alex wasn’t just one of several
men with whom she regularly fucked. He shared her with lovers whose
presence in Gabby’s life rarely survived more than a single night.
This wasn’t the stuff to boost a man’s ego, especially one whose score
rate was so wretched in comparison.
It was mostly because Alex
had achieved a small level of success with the women he’d met through
internet dating sites that Gabby continued her relationship with him.
Alex didn’t want to elaborate too much on encounters which only
occasionally resulted in him enjoying the sex that he
and—presumably—the woman he was dating had been anticipating. For a
start, his dates shamelessly lied about their age. Few women in their
forties, let alone their fifties, had looks to match Alex’s chosen
target age range of 20-35. Alex would have chosen a younger age
bracket if he hadn’t been aware that few women in their teens would
genuinely seek the affection of a man approaching his thirtieth
birthday. And those women who did were unlikely to have a romantic
reason for such a choice.
In exchange for the tales
of sexual conquest she wheedled out of him, Gabby recounted her own
exploits which, unlike Alex’s, needed no gloss or elaboration. Alex
didn’t want to elaborate too much on his dating disappointments with
women who in one way or another rather deserved to remain single. It
wasn’t their looks alone that persuaded him to make this assessment,
however important this was to Alex. There were other important
considerations like neuroticism, body odour and sometimes hostility
towards men like Alex who weren’t acceptably clued-up on the issues of
the day.
“Well, there isn’t much
you’re sure about, is there?” Gabby asserted while she pumped his
penis. They were sitting in his tiny living room with the television
in the background tuned to Fox News UK. Zak Goldsmith was ranting
about a Green conspiracy that was somehow certain to wreck the
economy. “Although I’m no great fan of the Greens, even I can see that
this is just paranoid conspiracy bullshit. Why do you watch it?”
“I like to get the other
side.”
“The other side of what?”
wondered Gabby. She lowered her tongue towards Alex’s lap to lick the
tip of his glans while she kept her eyes fixed on his. “This is
nothing more than news porn. It’s not real opinion. It’s propaganda.
You just watch it to see how far it’ll go. It’s like those porn movies
where you wonder whether there’ll be DP, piss or scat. And, believe
you me, those are better options than what I’d like see happen to
turncoat fascists like Goldsmith.”
“We’ll watch something
else,” said Alex who switched the TV to an internet porn channel that
was showing at least two of the sexual activities Gabby had mentioned.
Gabby turned her face
towards the screen. “At least it’s not farmyard porn,” she remarked
while continuing to pump Alex’s prick. “You wouldn’t believe the
number of times at school and university the guys got me to watch that
kind of crap. ‘Ever wanted to make out with Dobbin?’ ‘Are the
sheepdogs on your farm as good at fucking as they are at herding
sheep?’ ‘Ever sucked a horse’s cock?’”
“You haven’t, have you?”
wondered Alex who’d occasionally succumbed to that fantasy.
“Of course I fucking
haven’t. I’d have to be fucking demented to do something like that.
And you have to be fucking demented to even suggest it.”
However much Alex felt
like a bit-player, he had to admit that the best sex in his life so
far was definitely that which he had at least once a week with Gabby.
It was always her who’d initiate it and she rarely gave Alex the
chance to choose otherwise.
“Get ready,” she’d say on
the phone. “I’ll be over in half an hour.”
“Are you sure?” said Alex
who might be watching a movie he’d just downloaded.
“Why? Who’re you with?”
“No one.”
“Don’t be fucking soft,
then. Just put some cans of beer in the fridge.”
The text messages, e-mails
and even surprise calls that Alex received from Gabby never followed a
predictable pattern. About the only valid excuse he could offer for
not being able to see her was that he was with another woman. On other
occasions, he’d have to apologise to colleagues for having to return
home early rather than joining them for a pint after work. He’d have
to scurry home as fast as he could if he was on a lonely prowl in the
streets of Rickmansworth. If he was working late, he might arrange to
meet Gabby in a city centre pub and then go out for a meal afterwards.
This was a relatively rare treat for her and one she probably enjoyed
at least as much as the sex they’d soon be having on Alex’s couch or
on his well broken-in double bed.
Despite his nocturnal
fantasies or the more graphic ones he watched on the porn channels,
Alex’s taste in sex wasn’t remotely adventurous. Sex involving
animals, urination, fisting and transsexuals were strictly off limits
in real life.
So when Gabby suggested a
threesome, Alex wasn’t enthusiastic at all.
“With a woman?” he asked
hopefully.
“Is that what you want,
Alex?” she asked as she held him against her bosom, his penis still
deep inside her.
“If that’s what you want.”
“Well, I don’t,” she said
firmly. “I’m not a dyke.”
“And I’m not queer.”
“Don’t worry, sweetheart.
I’m not asking you to have your arse violated,” laughed Gabby who was
clearly quite excited by the idea. “That is, unless that’s what you
want?”
“Fuck no!” gasped a
genuinely terrified Alex.
This was one ménage
Alex didn’t look forward to. Besides his entirely genuine worries
about anal violation, he was anxious about how well he would perform
when exposed naked and erect in front of another man.
He tried to escape into
Virtual Reality where he could sample a kind of simulated sexual
threesome, but since he was the one determining the terms of
engagement it wasn’t especially realistic. Alex wondered just what
sort of perverse rules Gabby might come up with. Perhaps he ought to
break the whole thing off. But then the thought of having to rely on
nothing more than women who pretended to be younger than they were and
frequently made unreasonable demands on his virility persuaded Alex
that maybe what Gabby wanted wasn’t so bad really.
Most of the time he spent
in Virtual Reality—togged up in bizarre equipment that simulated
muscular movement and presented a 360 degrees vista of an imagined
world in front of his eyes—wasn’t so much for sex or entertainment but
for work. And most of that was to scan the latest news and information
generated by an ever-growing community of online users in the many
Virtual Reality worlds. After he’d captured enough screenshots, Alex
could then return to the real world by terminating his connection and
tugging off the equipment. Then he returned to his desk, which was in
a different room from where he did his research, to write his daily
column. Most of this was nothing more than a verbatim account of what
he’d seen and it was in that sense that he offered the world a kind of
news amalgamation service.
However, he had to do more
than simply that to earn his salary. Reuters-Fox wouldn’t be very
pleased if that was all he ever wrote about in the column he submitted
every day to their news services’ internet pages. He had to do a bit
of private research, which entailed surveying weird VR sites that
promised a lot but were the sole preserve of fans of Tolkien, Star
Wars and Harry Potter who were probably many decades older than their
avatars suggested, and where the principal activity was to engage in
tedious debates that Alex never featured in his column.
Virtual Reality was his
corner in the newsroom, but Alex felt restless. He would rather be
doing something more interesting. He was weary of the online
community’s endless arguments about the significance of plot lines
from now defunct television shows.
Alex also had fears about
his job security. Would VR one day fizzle out and fade away, however
inconceivable this now seemed since Microsoft and Google had merged?
Would it continue to grow? And would he have to share his workload
with someone else? Alex was sufficiently self-critical to recognise
that some of his colleagues in the Online Media newsroom were rather
better than him in the quality of their research and reporting. That
could make his job substantially more difficult.
“Next
Friday.” Gabby
texted him.
Her text didn’t elaborate
further, but Alex knew exactly what she meant. He even knew who the
other partner in this ménage a trois was going to be. It was
one of Gabby’s more frequent lovers: a guy called Ghazi. She’d met him
when she was a student when they’d both been studying Business
Communications as part of their degrees, although her final degree was
in Agriculture and his in Business Studies.
Alex didn’t consider
himself to be a racist. After all, several of his colleagues were
black or Asian. And he’d several times made love with women of exotic
ethnic origins, including a tubby Chinese woman called Kim of whom
Alex had been very fond. But it was quite a different thing to be
sharing a woman with an Asian man. It was bad enough that he was a man
at all. When Alex reviewed his anxieties he wondered why an Asian man,
who’d after all never visited the Indian subcontinent, should be any
different to a white man. Perhaps a white man was actually worse. Alex
was in contortions that he guessed were actually less to do with
Ghazi’s ethnic profile and a great deal more to do with his own
floundering about for an excuse, any excuse, that he could use to
avoid this sexual encounter and yet still remain with Gabby.
Worse still, the entire
thing would be taking place in Alex’s flat on Alex’s bed. What would
the neighbours think? They must have seen Gabby turn up at his flat at
all times of night and day with a cigarette dangling from her
outstretched fingers. They would have seen her Four By Four parked
nearby and effectively making the already narrow roads even narrower.
Not that Alex actually knew any of his neighbours. He wasn’t home long
enough to pass more than the odd word with them.
Friday came around and the
doorbell rang while Alex was trying to lessen his anxiety by watching
a documentary on the melting glaciers and consequent flooding in the
Himalayas.
“Ghazi, isn’t it?” said
Alex shaking his guest’s hand.
“And you must be Alex,”
said the tall, classically handsome Punjabi. “Gabby hasn’t told me
much about you, but I’m sure we’ll get along fine.”
There was no hint of
anything other than a well-educated Home Countries accent in his
voice.
“And where in India...”
asked Alex for the sake of conversation.
“... Does my family come
from?” Ghazi said. “Somewhere in the North West. I don’t really know.
It was a long time ago.”
There really weren’t
enough beers or a long enough time to wriggle out of what Alex was
dreading before Gabby announced that since the two were now
sufficiently well acquainted, maybe they all ought to get on with it.
“Why the hurry?” wondered
the host.
“Fuck’s sake, Alex,” said
Gabby, barely restraining the frustration in the tone of her voice.
“Best strike while the iron’s hot.”
It must have been hot for
Gabby whose vagina was dripping uncontrollably when she pulled off her
clothes and lay down on the bed. And judging from the huge erection
that met Alex’s eyes Ghazi was also very enthused. Alex shuddered.
This was by far the largest and most erect penis he’d ever seen in the
flesh. Indeed, it was the only one he’d ever seen in real life other
than his own.
“Have you ever done this
before?” asked Alex of Ghazi while taking his time to remove his
clothes.
“Yeah, of course,” said
Ghazi. “Several times. And not always with Gabby. How about you?”
“Never.”
“Don’t worry. You’ll soon
get the hang of it.”
Alex doubted that. Indeed
if he’d not taken the precaution of dropping a little blue pill, he’d
probably have been so intimidated by Ghazi’s presence that he wouldn’t
have been able to do anything at all.
The evening with Ghazi and
Gabby was an event that resonated more in the memory and with more
eroticism than it did at the time. Yes, he and Ghazi were active in
all those sexual activities with a single woman that Alex was familiar
with from having spent so much of his adult life watching porn.
Sometimes Gabby sucked Ghazi’s erect penis while Alex thrust away in
Gabby’s gushing, moist and even squelchy vagina. Sometimes it was
Alex’s penis that was sucked while Gabby was being fucked by Ghazi who
betrayed a definite preference for fucking her in the arse. And then,
inevitably, the two of them fucked her together, with Ghazi’s penis in
her anus and Alex’s in the other hole.
What Gabby most wanted and
what she’d so often said she most wanted to try was something that
both Ghazi and he were less eager to do and that was to be fucked in
the vagina by both men simultaneously. “I’ve always thought there’s
more than enough space for two,” she said as justification.
Indeed, she was absolutely
right. Her vagina easily accommodated both Alex and Ghazi.
The main reason Alex was
reluctant to do this was that he would have to brush his penis against
Ghazi’s. This was something he’d managed to avoid doing until then. In
fact, he just about managed to avoid touching Ghazi’s skin altogether.
Ghazi’s reason for being
less keen was that he was reluctant to pull his penis out of Gabby’s
anus. Alex speculated that this was because the man liked a tight
hole. He could see the virtue in that. It was disconcerting to see his
penis slip out of Gabby’s capacious vagina in the throes of passion.
But when Ghazi placed his
hands over Alex’s buttocks from behind while he was still fucking
Gabby, Alex began to suspect that this anal enthusiasm wasn’t reserved
for women alone. And when he felt the rubbery sensation of Ghazi’s
tongue inside the crack of his arse, this was not so much suspicion
but proof.
“Don’t!” said Gabby
quietly but firmly when she noticed what her Punjabi lover was doing.
“There are plenty more
arses out there in the world,” Ghazi said reluctantly. “It’s just that
there’s only two in this room.”
“Just be content with the
one,” said Gabby firmly. “I’m sure we can do this again some other
time with someone a little more adventurous.”
Alex was too preoccupied
in the business of fucking Gabby to make a comment.
He was aware though that,
despite his reluctance, the thought of being violated by Ghazi had
excited him enough that he would soon, at last, be relieved of the
pent-up pressure in his balls.
“Shall we do it again?”
asked Gabby afterwards, but she must have known from the feebleness of
Alex’s response that this was unlikely.
Either on that night or,
indeed, any other night in the future.
No Future Volume One
XIV
Diane
2042
Reverend
Diane Dawkins wept while she watched the television news film of the
dead and dying of Rawalpindi. If the wretched souls hadn’t already
died from the intense heat and blast of the nuclear explosions, they
would surely do so from radiation poisoning. Perhaps those who were
dead were the lucky ones. Cancerous growths and the birth of deformed
children were all that most of the survivors had to look forward to.
Her usual response to such
international crises was to dedicate a section of her weekly sermon to
the matter and place a collection box for the relevant charity at the
church door. Somehow, this didn’t seem adequate for the scale of the
current disaster. What should Diane, as a minister of the Church of
England, do to help the tens of millions of people who’d suffered and
the maybe hundreds of millions who might suffer in the future in a
subcontinent sandwiched between astonishing economic growth and the
famine, disease and devastation that resulted from the world’s first
real nuclear war, limited though it thankfully had been.
Diane’s first response was
to pick up the telephone and call Doris to get her advice. Who else
could be first choice? The phone rang and after trilling for a short
while Doris’ sweet voice replied.
“What is it, sweetheart?
I’m still in the office.”
“Are you working late?”
“Again,” Diane’s lover
replied.
Doris’ position as senior
project manager at Accenture IBM often entailed long hours as meetings
overran, schedules were missed, and the customer requirements were
once more changed. On the other hand, she was senior enough to be able
to choose which projects to work on. Or, rather, which ones not to.
She avoided projects for defence contractors, tobacco companies and
others whose trade she believed to be unethical. Diane wasn’t sure
whether it was Doris’ strict moral code of conduct or her body that
made her love her so. As a Vicar of Christ, Diane was grateful that it
wasn’t for Doris’ beauty alone. What would the good Lord say if that
were so?
“It’s nothing, darling,”
said Diane. “We can talk about it later.”
“At your place or mine?”
Although Doris and Diane
had been lovers for over four years, they still maintained separate
homes. It wasn’t because Doris was especially mindful of any
disapproval from her congregation. The vicar had been open about her
sexuality from the first day that she discovered that she loved women
as much as, maybe even more than, she did men. It was more because the
two women treasured their separate space. They’d both lived alone for
so many years and neither of them was in the first bloom of youth.
Perhaps, it was a step too far that they should share more than a bed
on a permanent basis.
“Should we get married?”
Doris once asked Diane.
“Although the Church of
England is comparatively liberal on gay relationships and believes in
the sanctity of marriage,” the vicar answered, “I’m not sure that even
this far into the twenty-first century the church has progressed quite
as far as to unreservedly welcome same-sex marriage for its ministers.
It’s still an issue for many in the Anglican community: especially in
Africa and the Southern states of America. My first duty as a vicar is
to my flock and if there are people in my congregation who’re
uncomfortable with the idea of their vicar marrying another woman then
I believe I should respect their opinion.”
“Very diplomatic,” said
Doris. “But my offer remains open all the same.”
It was nearly ten o’clock
when the vicarage doorbell rang and Doris arrived. She was a slender
woman whose hair was flecked with grey. Her hair perfectly
complemented by her silver-grey eyes. She was wearing a business suit
and the stern high heels that made a woman of quite average height
appear quite tall. Diane knew her lover would soon be divested of her
uncomfortable, restrictive work clothes and that as always the couple
would reclined together naked on the sofa in the living room in front
of the television set.
Diane in the nude was much
as one would expect. She was not a slim woman. In fact, she was
moderately plump but not unattractively so. Her bosom was just as
generous uncovered as it promised to be from what could be seen in the
contours of her cassock.
The two lovers wound their
arms about each other and relished the sensation of each other’s
flesh.
“Why did you call me at
work, sweetheart?” asked Doris as she idly twirled her fingers around
the huge aureoles of her lover’s nipples.
“I didn’t know you were
still at work,” said Diane. “I thought you might have been home. Or
perhaps on the train back from London.”
“While the project is in
its present mess,” said Doris, “there’s going to be nothing but
problem after problem. The legal department haven’t quite worked out
the international legal implications yet...”
“International legal
implications?”
“Any project that aims to
simplify security and passport controls at airports is bound to have
countless international legal issues. The Chinese are the reference
market, of course, and most European and Asian countries are in line
with China. The United States, as usual, is dragging its feet and
raising all sorts of objections.”
“Why’s that?”
“It’s just what they do.
The different states can’t even agree between themselves whether black
is black or doesn’t happen to also be white. If they can’t agree
amongst themselves how can they be expected to agree anything
with anyone else? I despair. It can’t be long now until the nation
splits down the middle. It just can’t cope with no longer being the
world’s richest or most powerful nation. All it can do is huddle in
the corner and sulk. That is, when it’s not quarrelling about eye
retina recognition and DNA identification.”
“It sounds like a real
headache,” said Diane. “But what I called you about was disaster
relief for the radiation victims of the Indo-Pakistani War. I was just
wondering if you had any suggestions for what a Vicar of Christ should
be doing.”
“I’m not really the best
person to talk to about charity,” said Doris. “It is charity
you’re talking about, I hope? You’re not suggesting we leave Surrey
and fly over to the irradiated zones in the republics of Kashmir,
India and Pakistan? It’s not quite me, I think.”
“It’s not me, either,”
said Diane. “I don’t think I’m cut out for that kind of work. Being a
missionary was never one of my childhood ambitions. In any case, the
charities already have plenty of much better qualified people in India
and Pakistan. They don’t need the help of a couple of middle-aged
English women...”
“Middle-aged!” laughed
Doris. “I think I’ve got a few more years left till I’ll call myself
that.”
“They probably wouldn’t
need us whatever age we were,” said Diane. “But we’ve got to do
something. It’s our moral duty.”
“Are you saying that
because you’re a vicar?”
“It’s our moral duty to do
something for the tens of millions in dire need and the hundreds of
millions who are displaced whether we work for the church or for an
international computer consultancy or for the local supermarket. This
is the worst international crisis of our lives. It’s the first time
for nearly a century that nuclear weapons have been used in anger. It
is our moral imperative to give whatever help we possibly can.”
“Point taken, sweetheart,”
said Doris as she tenderly kissed Diane’s stomach.
“What I don’t know and why
I called you,” Diane continued, “is exactly what we should be
doing?”
“I don’t know either,
sweetheart,” said Doris. “And you know that. I take it you want to do
more than just arrange a collection from your parishioners and to give
a sermon on behalf of the millions of radioactive refugees, but you
also don’t want to fly out to the nuclear wastelands. You’ll just have
to contact agencies like Red Cross or Oxfam or Action Aid and ask them
for advice.”
“I’ve got to offer them
something more than the usual charity collection money,” said Diane.
“I’ve got to do something a great deal more.”
“About the only thing
these poor souls want besides food and drink is shelter,” said Doris.
“Are you suggesting that we shelter them in the Church grounds?”
“It’s an idea,” said
Diane, her face lighting up.
“But not a very good one,”
countered Doris. “I don’t exactly see the good citizens of Reigate
welcoming a plane-load of refugees in their midst.”
“This is a wealthy
parish,” said Diane. “Many good Christian souls live here. Most of
those in the firebombed ruins have nowhere else to stay.”
“You can suggest it,” said
Doris. “You might even be able to find space for a hundred or so
wretches, though they would have to be orphaned or terminally ill to
be granted compassionate asylum in the United Kingdom. You can
possibly raise funds from the few dozen people who regularly attend
church and the many more who use it for weddings and funerals. You
might even get a few lines of praise in the Guardian and possibly the
Church Times. But I don’t see it being popular with the people of
Reigate. The mere hint of surrendering sovereignty to Brussels will
have them up in arms. The slightest suggestion that the government
might go soft on immigration has protestors outside the town hall. I
can’t see too many people in the district celebrating the prospect of
having to house Indians and Pakistanis in their community.”
“It need only be a
temporary measure until the refugees can return home,” said Diane.
“And when would that be?”
“Radiation eventually goes
away. It’s got a half life.”
“What happened in
Rawalpindi and Lahore and Srinagar wasn’t like Hiroshima or Nagasaki.
It was ten, twenty, maybe a hundred times worse. The radiation will
take generations to disperse.”
“All the more reason for
good Christians to offer help.”
“And not many of these
unfortunates are Christian. Most are Muslim. You’ve seen how much
prejudice there is against Muslims. And those who aren’t followers of
Islam are Hindus or Sikhs. Will your parishioners really want to give
aid and assistance to heathens?”
“God loves all His
children,” said Diane.
“I dare say He does,” said
Doris with a defeated sigh. “However, on a lighter matter... Do you
want to see my latest creation?”
Diane grinned with almost
childish enthusiasm. “Yes, I would.”
Doris lifted her naked
body off the sofa where she’d been lying beside Diane and rummaged in
her handbag until she found the memory stick she was looking for. She
plugged it into Diane’s system and fiddled with the remote so she
could display it on the screen.
Doris might be a project
manager nowadays, but many years before she’d started her career in a
more humble position as a Computer Science graduate and she still
enjoyed playing around with computer graphics. She’d scanned
three-dimensional models of the reverend and herself into her computer
and used it to generate some disturbingly realistic images of the
couple in fantastical situations.
“Here are some stills I
generated,” said Doris, as she flicked through a slide-show of half a
dozen such images. There was one of Diane and Doris together on Mars
holding up a rock covered with Martian bacteria. There was one of the
couple visiting a Buddhist temple in Cambodia. There was one of Diane
posed like a mediaeval saint with a halo above her head and her hands
clasped in prayer.
“I’m not sure I’m worthy
of that one,” laughed Diane. “There’s a great deal more I have to do
to be beatified.”
“You will, sweetheart, I’m
sure,” said Doris, kissing her lover on the lips. “And here is what
you’ve really been looking forward to seeing...”
Doris activated a movie
that she’d generated using the images of the two lovers and animated
by pornographic software that overlaid their bodies on the images of
porn stars having sex. It was a seamless and deceptively realistic
movie of Diane and Doris making passionate love. It suffered only by
being rather more perfect than the real thing. The folds on Diane’s
stomach were less pronounced. Doris’ vagina was less ragged. And the
setting was a landscape in the English countryside where it was highly
unlikely that two middle-aged women would be allowed to cavort so
openly.
“It’s beautiful, darling,”
said Diane in grateful amazement. “It must have taken you ages.”
“If it works then every
moment will have been worth it,” said Doris placing a hand between
Diane’s thighs. “Are you feeling hot?”
Diane leaned over to kiss
Doris on her lips—a prelude they both knew of greater passion to
come—while keeping an eye focused on the television screen.
“I couldn’t be more in
love with you if I tried, darling,” she said.
No Future Volume One
XV
Eric Esterhazy MP
2044
After
the applause had died down, Reverend Dawkins once again addressed the
televised audience seated ahead of her in the town hall. She had
a hard fight ahead of her. Only the barest minority were sympathetic
to her. Most of the applause was reserved for Eric Esterhazy, the
Minister for Housing and MP for Redhill & Surrey, who had just
spoken.
“I don’t accept that the
shelter we provide for refugees from the nuclear wastelands of India
and Pakistan can in any way be described as a ‘conduit for
immigration’”, she said steadily and evenly. “Our mission is to extend
compassion to our fellow human beings. The refuge cannot be described
as a ‘gateway for refugees’.”
“Do you intend to deport
the people you shelter back to where they come from when they’re fit
and able to return?” asked Emily Littlejohn, the Fox News UK anchor
who was hosting the discussion.
“I think ‘deport’ is
putting it rather strongly,” said the vicar.
“Deport them is exactly
what you should do,” said Eric Esterhazy MP. “The British Isles are
overcrowded. We can’t cope with yet more immigrants, refugees or
whatever you want to call them. If we want to provide a reasonable
level of housing, education and medical care to our British citizens,
then immigration policy must be vigorously enforced.”
“Is it government policy
to deport immigrants?” asked the host.
“It is when
they’ve entered the country illegally,” said the Minister. “In fact,
it’s the same policy in all countries in the European Union. It’s the
policy of most states in the USA. It is the right policy. Otherwise,
it’s unfair on British citizens who’re looking for employment in these
straitened times. The country is overcrowded. Jobs are hard to find.
We have to be realistic.”
“And how do you respond to
that, reverend?” asked the host.
“I think you’re putting
too much focus on the question of immigration and not enough on our
moral responsibility,” said Diane. “Christians have a moral duty to
help those in need. There are hundreds of millions of people
throughout the Indian subcontinent who are in desperate need of help.”
“I don’t think Her
Majesty’s Government can allow this country to accommodate an extra
hundred million British citizens,” said Eric Esterhazy MP without
waiting to be invited to reply by the host and whose remark was
rewarded by thunderous applause from the audience.
Eric observed the reverend
as she spluttered a response to the host’s follow-up questions, but he
knew that she’d never really had a chance. Fox News UK was a good
friend of the Conservative Party, particularly in the relatively
affluent South East. As the BBC continued to decline as a media
presence, Fox News UK was now Britain’s most influential and powerful
news outlet. He never had reason to fear an invitation to appear on a
Fox News program, especially on home turf, whereas he would only
appear on the BBC when instructed to do so by Conservative Central
Office.
Reverend Diane Dawkins was
the token liberal on a panel of four guests in which Eric held the
fulcral position as the voice of moderation. The other two guests were
Karen Mackenzie, an author of books which claimed to expose the extent
by which the liberal minority routinely distorted scientific evidence
to serve its interests, and Horace Cutler, the token black guest whose
strident views opposing immigration were somewhat less moderate than
the Housing Minister’s.
Eric was quite content to
watch Horace launch a vitriolic attack on the reverend. He
patronisingly questioned the kind of Christianity she represented,
disparaged the workshy immigrants from Rawalpindi, and emphasised that
the United Kingdom should tighten immigration controls along with the
rest of the European Union, an institution he normally had no time
for.
“It’s not racist to want
tighter immigration control,” said Horace, aware that his skin colour
independently affirmed that. “The world is a crowded place. There is
famine, war and plague on every continent. The UK’s interests are best
served by keeping such problems as far out of reach as possible.”
“The troubles of any one
of God’s creation is a matter for us all,” said the reverend.
“I admire your
well-meaning compassion,” said Eric, acting in his self-appointed role
as the panel’s moderate, “but misguided liberal benevolence is
precisely why the world is in the mess it is today. If the less
developed nations acted more in their self-interest rather than
choosing to rely on the charity of wealthier governments, there
wouldn’t be so many people unable to rely on their own governments for
help.”
“Surely the plight of the
millions displaced by nuclear war deserves our compassion,” pleaded
the reverend.
“It is not in the
interests of the UK to correct the mistakes made by other nations,”
said Karen Mackenzie who was utterly unsentimental with regards to
such matters. “If two nations should bomb each other that is their
choice. The British taxpayer shouldn’t have to pick up the tab for
their monumental folly. Surely it’s bad enough that we have to suffer
from the nuclear waste that was thrown into the sky.”
However much satisfaction
Eric was getting from this mismatched debate, he had to acknowledge
that there were still too many obstacles in the way of successfully
implementing a sensible immigration policy. The electoral reform that
took place so many years ago had made British politics indecisive and
vacillating. Coalition government followed coalition government. The
Conservatives might be the chief party in the coalition, but they had
to compromise with the Liberals, the Democrats and the rest on the
left of the coalition. Although Eric was a Tory through and through,
his sympathies were more with those in the British Independence Party
and the UK National Party on the coalition’s right.
Immigration wasn’t the
only issue that troubled Eric, of course. Taxes were too high. Ten
percent income tax was just robbery. VAT at thirty-five percent,
although less of a worry, was similarly too high. Too much money was
being squandered on failed government schemes to build flood defences,
develop alternative energy, house undeserving and drug-addicted
wastrels, educate young hooligans, and provide medical treatment for
the wilfully obese. And all the while, England and the rest of the UK
were going to the dogs. It now ranked as only the fourth richest
country in Europe. A nation no longer qualified to be a member of the
G10 on the basis of GDP. A once proud nation whose pitiful military
capability relied too heavily on buying arms from China and Russia.
The streets of Redhill and Reigate were overflowing with unemployed
yobs who indulged in drug binges at the taxpayers’ expense. Things
were not the way they should be and without a firm hand they were only
going to get worse.
When the recording of the
television discussion was finished, Eric shook hands with the host and
the other three guests, taking care to be especially polite with
Reverend Diane Dawkins. She was, after all, one of his constituents as
well as being one of those most likely to blog, tweet or otherwise
publicise her differences of opinion from those of the Minister of
Housing.
He then strode over to
shake hands with Dick Tebbit, the producer of Town Hall Live.
“Good show as always,
Eric,” said Dick. “You showed the pinko where to get off.”
“Don’t think it’ll make
any difference, Dick,” Eric said sadly. “She’ll carry on harbouring
refugee scum and there’s not a bloody thing anyone can do to stop
her.”
“Nothing will change while
the coalition government gives cabinet seats to pinkos,” said Dick.
“The Immigration Minister is particularly weak. Davison might just as
well fling the doors wide open and say ‘Come on! Come in! Everyone’s
welcome to a free meal on us.’”
“It’s broad-based
coalition, Dick.”
“Broad enough to have
queers, greens and pinkos obviously, Eric. The Tories need reforming.
Get rid of the TINAs.”
“TINAs?”
“Tories In Name Alone.
It’s a labelling tactic that worked in the States. Look how well
unadulterated conservatism is doing over there.”
“Not well enough,” said
the Minister. “I just don’t know how long the States are going to
remain United. Those Northern and Western States are getting
increasingly resentful about the Republicans’ grip on government.”
“That’s their problem, not
ours,” said Dick. “Look, I’ve got an post-shoot party at the Reigate
Regency. We’ve booked a three-bedroom suite. There’s someone there I’m
sure you’d like to meet.”
“Is she anything like the
last one,” laughed Eric. “She had massive tits and a big fat arse.”
“She was good though,
wasn’t she?”
“Bloody good!” Eric said
with a chuckle as he recalled her amorous jigging between his legs.
“What time shall I turn up?”
Eric’s time was
constrained by the need to attend his constituency surgery for which
he was always late and which he conducted as rarely as he could get
away with. He was an important Government Minister after all. After
this, he phoned his wife to tell her that he had important government
business and ordered a taxi to take him to the stately Reigate
Regency. This was a hotel which if it didn’t now provide a discreet
and expensive service for the well-heeled would long ago have gone the
way of most hotels in a country where tourism had mostly collapsed due
to the exorbitant cost of travel.
Eric wasn’t disappointed
by the girls on offer. Fox News UK had an extensive entertainments
budget which easily extended to cover the cost of hiring good quality
whores. The minister observed with satisfaction how much the class of
women who took up prostitution as a career had improved, despite the
exacting penalties Eric’s government had introduced for making that
choice. A high proportion almost certainly belonged to the very
population of illegal immigrants Eric was most eager to deport. Not
that this was an observation that troubled Eric too much. Principles
are only principles after all. And it gave the minister a certain
wicked satisfaction to know that if these women were deported back to
whichever famine-stricken, radioactive or deforested shit-hole they’d
escaped from he’d have fucked them twice: once literally (and usually
up the arse) and once again figuratively but with rather more
sustained ill effect.
On this occasion he was
able to enjoy the company of Dune and Emerald which names he was
certain neither had been originally christened with. In fact, as one
girl quite clearly came from one of the quarrelling Stans to the south
of Russia and north of Tibet and the other was almost certainly from
either India or Pakistan, they wouldn’t have been ‘christened’ at all
in the Christian sense of the word. Their English wasn’t that bad,
although Dune, the Uzbekistani or Turkmenistani, had some difficulty
with pronunciation. But Eric wasn’t there for conversation and the
girls didn’t have to say much as he fucked the one in the arse, as he
preferred, and let the other push her tongue inside the hairy recesses
of his buttocks.
Eric was a harsh lover—not
that his wife was especially aware of this—and the girls were soon
covered in bruises and slaps which would soon settle down and not
unduly trouble their next patron. When he left them—sobbing slightly,
as he preferred, the mascara dripping down their cheeks and a small
trickle of blood coming from Emerald’s anus—Eric was in a thoroughly
good mood. This had been enhanced, of course, by the lines of coke
that accompanied his energetic lovemaking.
“Good girls, aren’t they?”
said Dick when Eric returned to the main room of the party. Most
guests were gathered around a holo-screen that showed nothing more
shocking than Fox News UK’s headline roundup and the usual pictures of
Islamic terrorists being rounded up in the Southern United States as
part of the new zero tolerance policies.
“Bloody good!” agreed
Eric.
He looked around him. As
usual, there was a public display of sex on the sofa. Emily Littlejohn
was probably the only one amongst the naked men and women who wasn’t
being paid to perform. Most of the guests were like Eric and preferred
to enjoy sex where they couldn’t be watched and appraised. Judging by
the company with which she was so intimately engaged, Emily obviously
liked her cock and cunt to be black or brown.
“I told you I had someone
here I thought you ought to meet, Eric,” said Dick who guided the
Minister towards Sir David Coulson, Chief Executive for Fox News UK,
whose expensively suited back was ahead of him.
“Oh, hello Eric,” said the
honoured news executive as he shook Eric’s hand. “We have a lot to
talk about, you and me. There’s much that I’d like to do for the
country and common decency, and I believe that you may be the man to
help me. However, you will need to excuse me momentarily.”
He nodded downwards at the
Asian woman whose mouth was pumping up and down on his erect penis.
“Certainly, Sir David,”
said Eric who knew better than to expect one of the most powerful
people in the country to drop everything for him. “I’ll wait by the
drinks cabinet with Dick.”
“Good man,” said the
executive who slapped his erect penis onto the woman’s cheeks and let
a drool of spit fall from his mouth and onto her eyes.
He was obviously enjoying
this encounter rather more than she was.
No Future Volume One
XVI
Lindiwe
2066
It
was the first time since Lindiwe was a child that she could remember
ever being happy. Was this what she’d been looking for since she’d
left Lesotho? In fact, so low had her measurement of luxury fallen
that just to sleep on a mattress she didn’t have to share and to
survive without needing to sell her body were enough now to make every
day seem worth living.
Lindiwe was totally
baffled how Reverend Diane Dawkins had managed to keep the Reigate
Refugee Centre open through the years of the English National Unity
government, but the reverend was more than willing to answer Lindiwe’s
questions on one of her regular visits to the centre.
“The centre survived
because it was designated as a Refugee Processing Centre,” the stout
elderly woman explained. “The government needed holding stations to
house refugees before they were deported, but ours was a centre that
made no attempt to hasten bureaucracy’s exasperatingly slow
processing.”
The centre had been used
as a refuge for illegal immigrants since the Indo-Pakistani Nuclear
War and continued to serve a similar function through the Stan Wars
and the Wars of Secession in what had once been known as the United
States.
“Nowadays the majority of
refugees come from Africa and the Middle East,” said the reverend. “In
your case, of course, it’s because the economy’s collapsed. In the
Middle East, it’s because of political repression and war. From Egypt
to Iraq, from Morocco to South Africa, there seems to be no let up in
the flow of refugees.”
Although the reverend was
sympathetic, she was adamant that the centre should never be perceived
as a facilitator of immigration. “You can’t believe the problems I’ve
had. The local MP was especially unsupportive when the English
National Unity government was in power. In any case, it’s not
appropriate for the Church of England to have a political view on the
immigration issue. Our concerns are entirely compassionate. It is
immoral to allow people to starve or die from radioactive poisoning
when we can do something to help.”
Although Lindiwe wondered
whether the reverend was being disingenuous in her protestations she
had to acknowledge the simple arithmetic that wouldn’t and couldn’t go
away. The international status of the Kingdom of England may have
suffered ruinous decline. Its relation with its immediate neighbours,
the Republic of Wales and the United Kingdom of Scotland and Northern
Ireland, could now be best described as frosty. It was currently in
the humiliating process of petitioning to rejoin the Northern European
Union it had left with so much bravado. But despite all that, the
quality of life in the kingdom was still immeasurably better than it
was in most of Africa. There was no famine. There was no armed militia
roaming the streets. There was a working economy. There was
electricity, gas, running water and public transport. And there was no
lingering radioactivity as there was in the Stans and on the borders
of India and Pakistan. Literally billions of people were clamouring to
get into the Kingdom of England just as they were into all the
relatively prosperous nations of Europe, East Asia and North America.
As far as Lindiwe was
concerned, the greatest benefit of being able to live at the Reigate
Refugee Centre was that she no longer had to sell her body. Whether
openly or more discretely, it had been almost the only way in Ashton
Lovelock she could earn a living where immigration status wasn’t an
obstacle. When Lindiwe confessed to her friend Apara how far she’d
sunk on the day she returned to her squat with a bag of pills to treat
the gonorrhoea she’d contracted, she was shocked to find that her
friend was transacting much the same kind of business just to be able
to continue working at KFC-McDonalds.
Lindiwe had to get away.
She didn’t really know where, but it definitely had to be somewhere
else. It was a trail that took her hitchhiking along the M4 motorway
and was only made possible by continuing to offer the same sexual
services she hoped never to have to do again. After passing through
several other small towns Lindiwe eventually arrived at Reigate,
Surrey, where by taking advantage of the good reverend’s compassion
she at last found a place to stay where her vagina could take a
well-deserved rest. It wasn’t that her new job of sweeping Reigate’s
streets attracted especially attractive wages—a pitiful piece rate was
the best she could expect—but at last, with a secure bed and freedom
from the protection rackets that preyed on illegal immigrants, Lindiwe
could begin to think in terms of improving her lot.
As part of her rent,
Lindiwe also helped in the refugee centre’s administration. Her
doctorate in biotechnology was evidence of significantly more advanced
arithmetic skills than those she needed to maintain the centre’s
accounts. The creaky old computer might not have the horsepower to
handle the rendering requirements of modern VR or to seamlessly stream
terabit data, but it was more than adequate for the task of adding
figures together. The flow of income from fund-raising and charitable
donations was always just about exactly the same as the outgoings and
bore witness to the fact that Reverend Dawkins received no income at
all from the enterprise.
Lindiwe helped in other
tasks that were even further adrift of her postgraduate
qualifications. She helped make the beds, scrub the floors, and even
take care of refugees who were suffering from the final excruciating
stages of radiation poisoning. Lindiwe’s heart brimmed over with agony
as she watched the health of victims, often younger than her, steadily
deteriorate from cancers that lacerated the flesh and devoured the
internal organs.
“Would you like to work
full time?” asked the reverend after only four months. “I’ve seen how
much you do around the place. We need people who are capable and
willing and, of course, who speak such excellent English.”
“What about my
street-cleaning?” Lindiwe wondered.
“I’m sure there’s someone
else who’ll be more than eager to take on that responsibility,” said
the reverend. “You have skills and talents that are being wasted while
you wander the streets of Reigate with a broom and plastic bag.”
There was of course no
shortage of work required to administer the centre. This was partly
because the dismemberment of the United Kingdom into three separate
nations had been hasty and uncoordinated, leaving English accounting
practices in a labyrinthine mess. Even so barely a tenth of Lindiwe’s
time was spent maintaining the accounts. Her time was mostly dedicated
to general caretaking jobs alongside a resident taskforce of willing
but mostly terminally ill refugees. Amongst her duties was the care of
the same refugees when their infirmity finally brought them down.
“How could those generals
and politicians allow the bombing of Ashkhabad, Amritsar and
Duachanbe?” commented Dr Abdullah, who was a refugee from Uzbekistan.
“What was going through their minds when they condemned so many
millions of people to a life of such misery?”
“They probably thought of
the victims as corpses rather than survivors,” bitterly remarked
Daniel, an Ethiopian doctor who nowadays most often worked as a nurse.
“If a soldier earns a medal from killing just one enemy, think how
many medals a general gets from killing millions with just a single
bomb.”
“They knew the value of
life, though,” said the doctor sarcastically. “Barely one single
rouble. More than half the bombs used in both nuclear wars were
neutron bombs. They killed people but left property standing. All the
better for the looters once the background radiation had dissipated.”
As a Refugee Centre
employee, Lindiwe was even invited to have dinner with the reverend
and other favoured employees. The reverend shared the vicarage with
Doris who was about the same age as her partner. She was employed by
an international company that along with most such companies based in
the City of London had radically scaled down its activities in the
British Isles when the English National Unity government honoured its
electoral pledge to leave the Northern European Union. She claimed
that she was just working out her final years until retirement,
although she also complained that her pension wasn’t going to be
adequate.
“The Stock Exchange has
had too many crises, shocks and falls for it to be worth much
anymore,” she said while eating the vegetarian curry prepared by the
centre’s cook. He was a refugee from Amritsar and a living witness to
the ravages that persisted a quarter of a century after the city was
engulfed by the century’s most famous mushroom cloud. His face was
covered more by scar tissue than skin.
“It’s not all gloom and
doom,” the reverend said cheerfully. “Things have improved a lot in
this country in the last four years. They’ve at last started repairing
the flood defences in East Anglia. They might even drain the swamps
round Norwich and people will be able to get about without getting
their feet wet. And they’re doing wonders with renewable energy.”
“There’s been too much
damage done already to make any appreciable difference,” disagreed
Doctor Abdullah who was also invited over for dinner. “You can’t
reverse a four degree rise in global temperatures as easily as that.”
“You have to start
somewhere,” said the reverend. “Now things are settling down in
America, the Northern United States and the Western Union are doing
something practical at last...”
“... while the Republic of
North America still burns up what’s left of the world’s petroleum at
heavily subsidised prices,” Doris disagreed.
“It’s something,
nonetheless,” said the reverend. “Look at the strides that the world’s
two leading economies, Japan and China, have made. They’ve taken up
the slack in the space program after the former United States had to
duck out. They’ve produced so many amazing scientific miracles. Robots
that seem almost human. Advances in biotechnology. The research into
nuclear fusion. They might even find a cure for cancer.”
“It all sounds good,”
admitted the doctor, “but that’s not enough to address the real
problems of the world.”
“And what are they?” asked
the reverend.
“You know as well as I
do,” said the doctor. “The environment is in crisis. Too many people
and not enough resources. And where there is enough to go around, like
in China, Japan and some parts of Europe, there isn’t the will or the
wisdom to share it fairly.”
“He’s right, Diane,” said
Doris. “It’s not looking good. And it’s the rich countries that are
most at fault.”
The reverend smiled. “We
can’t change the world alone, but I don’t believe that the Lord Jesus
Christ would ever abandon His creation. I still hold firm that through
the Love of Jesus Christ Our Lord, we will all be saved.”
“Amen,” said Doris.
Lindiwe wasn’t sure
whether the reverend’s partner was being sincere, but her heart echoed
the sentiment. Her own faith had been sorely tried by the journey from
Lesotho and Reigate. Her body had been battered and fucked and
buggered time and time again. Her genitals had been ravished by abuse
and venereal disease. At last here in the refugee centre run by the
good Reverend Diane Dawkins, Lindiwe’s faith in her God and the
goodness of other people was once more restored.
No Future Volume One
XVII
Tamara
2093
Tamara
studied the framed picture on the wall. It showed the image of a
slightly tubby middle-aged woman which had been made to resemble a
mediaeval Christian saint. She even had a halo around her forehead.
“Who’s this?” Tamara
asked.
“It’s Saint Diane,” said
Dahab. “She was the founder of the Reigate centre.”
“Is she a saint?” wondered
Tamara. “The picture doesn’t look genuine.”
“It’s a picture that was
composed on a computer,” Dahab explained. “We call her Saint Diane.
I’m not a Christian so I don’t know if she’s been made a saint, but we
call her one here.”
“I’m not a Christian,
either,” said Tamara. “I don’t even know whether there are any
Christians staying here. But I think there’s a quite convoluted
process involved in becoming a saint. I don’t even know whether the
Church of England has saints.”
“This is the church of St
Mary Magdalene,” said Dahab. “It’s an Anglican church so I guess the
Church of England does have saints.”
Although the Reigate
Centre was just as packed out as the Broad Oak Refugee Camp, it was
much better managed and the staff who worked there significantly more
sympathetic to the plight of refugees and asylum seekers. Tamara was
impressed by the difference a more efficient administration could
make, especially since it was managed by people who’d originally
arrived in England as refugees themselves.
Tamara was determined to
make a positive contribution right from the start. That was partly
because it was obvious that there were jobs that needed to be done
that she could help do, but mostly it was because she desperately
needed the distraction.
Tamara was more
grief-stricken than she’d imagined possible when her mother died and
her body was taken away for a proper Jewish funeral. This had to be in
London as it was one of the few English cities where there was still a
working synagogue. The fragile threads that had held Tamara’s family
together during those months of travel across Europe finally snapped
the moment her mother was buried. Her two brothers took the
opportunity of the London excursion to slip away from the lax
supervision and surrender their fortunes to the huge sprawling city.
Those family members with which Tamara was left were only distantly
relatives and quite capable of managing without her. For a while she
believed she owed them an obligation but when she realised that they
were eligible for more food and resources if they continued to claim
for her two missing brothers and dead mother, Tamara decided that she
could make a better contribution to their welfare if she also
absconded.
Her family shed more tears
for the departure of Tamara’s mother than they would for her. Perhaps
they knew about her relationship with Bilal who, in any case, had been
transferred to a refugee camp in the North of England where there was
an urgent requirement for cheap labour to help shore up the collapsing
flood defences. Tamara was now alone, wretched and grieving in South
London, but at least she no longer had to share a mattress with two
brothers, a distant cousin from what had once been Tel Aviv and an
uncle who farted most of the night.
For the first few nights,
Tamara wasn’t so sure that her decision to leave was such a good one.
Her only possessions were the clothes she wore, a backpack full of
underwear and the all-important documentation that included a passport
to a no longer functioning nation. She mingled with the countless
unfortunates begging on Croydon’s cratered streets. She ate soup that
was doled out by makeshift soup kitchens and slept in the doorways of
boarded-up shops. By chance, she heard of another refugee centre in
Reigate that might be able to help her if she was willing to work
there for no pay. Tamara’s main concerns were food and sleep rather
than money, so she walked the twenty kilometres or more across the
suburban sprawl and decaying slums to Reigate.
South London had suffered
badly from generations of neglect. The wealthy lived in gated
communities or along well-appointed avenues guarded at both ends by
private security guards. The less privileged lived in overcrowded and
rotting houses. Many were refugees who’d migrated not from distant
war-torn or famine-struck foreign countries but from the hinterland of
the River Thames that had finally been overwhelmed by the rising tide.
The traffic in South London’s congested roads was a miscellaneous
assortment of electric cars and buses, bicycle-driven vehicles and
even make-shift carts pulled by donkeys and mules.
Reigate was beyond a ridge
of hills and thus relatively safe from flooding. It wasn’t so secure
from London’s suburban sprawl that stretched unbroken along the A23.
Why, wondered Tamara, would the Reigate Centre give her shelter when
it was denied by so many other places?
“We just don’t like
turning people away,” said Mehmed when she asked why she’d been so
lucky. “In any case, it would seem especially heartless to turn away a
person who’s just lost her mother and is sleeping on the streets.
There’s also the fact that you’re Jewish and a woman.”
“What difference does that
make?”
“There’s a great deal of
prejudice against Jews these days,” said Mehmed, “particularly in my
community.”
“Your community?”
“The Muslim community. It
can be very vicious. Many blame Israel for all the misery that’s
blighted the Middle East. And many don’t distinguish between the
government of Israel and its citizens.”
“And also for being a
woman? Can’t I look after myself as well as a man?”
“I don’t mean to appear
sexist,” said Mehmed. “One of the few professions flourishing at the
moment is prostitution. Women like you, especially young and pretty
ones, are immediate candidates for exploitation. It mightn’t be too
long until you became just another one of the wretched souls on Bell
Street and Reigate Road.”
Tamara wasn’t going to
complain too much about receiving preferential treatment, but she
guessed that it was because Mehmed was a father of two teenage girls
that he showed such compassion.
She also wondered whether
Mehmed would be so sympathetic if he knew that she’d already succumbed
to the temptation of selling her body, even though it was more to get
favour than a steady source of income. It was true that she’d rather
never have to do so again but Tamara was aware that it was an option
still available to her.
Many of the refugees in
the Reigate Centre were radiation and burns victims from the Middle
East War even after the two decades since it had happened. There were
more Muslims than Jews, but that just reflected the proportion of
victims. Inevitably, Tamara’s sympathy was directed mostly towards her
fellow Jews, however much she tried to be impartial.
“I’d be dead if it wasn’t
for this centre,” said Daniella, a middle-aged woman whose skin was
still blackened and sore after all the intervening years. “When the
bomb dropped in Tel Aviv everything that I’d lived for, saved for and
believed in came to an end. My children. My husband. My parents. If
I’d been standing on the other side of the municipal offices I’d have
been incinerated along with everyone else.”
“It’s a long way from Tel
Aviv to Reigate,” Tamara remarked.
“Aid agencies and
governments were more helpful in those days,” said Daniella. “There
were fewer problems in the world, so resources went a lot further.”
Tamara helped the nurses
take Daniella’s bandages off and put new ones on. She grimaced in
sympathy with her patient when she winced from the pain on skin that
was tender and still not healed.
“The radiation doesn’t
help,” said Fatima, a nurse who also worked for no pay at the centre.
“She’s got melanomas speckled amongst the scars. I guess it’s just a
matter of time.”
“What happened to most of
the victims?” Tamara wondered.
“You mean the original
victims of war, as opposed to the displaced like you? Most are dead of
course. And most of those died within a week or so of arriving here.
An ambulance would arrive at the front entrance and a hearse would
leave from the back. We thought Daniella would be one of those, but
she’s made from stronger stuff than most.”
“Do you still keep the
faith, dear?” asked Daniella when her bandages were replaced and she
was able to sit up on her bed.
“Well, yes,” said Tamara.
“I don’t go to the synagogue because the nearest one is too far away,
but I try to observe the Sabbath. It’s difficult to be dutiful in this
country.”
“I’m sure it is, dear,”
agreed Daniella. “I think I’ve lost my faith.”
“Lost it?”
“I don’t think I believe
any longer,” she elaborated. “Not in a Jewish god. Not in a Christian
god. And most certainly not a Muslim or Hindu god. If there was a God
of the Jews then why has he forsaken us?”
“He hasn’t forsaken us,”
said Tamara. “He has a contract with His people that will never be
broken.”
“Except by nuclear
fission,” suggested Daniella. “The Jewish people have suffered like no
other. Time and again we’ve been banished from the Holy Land. Our
people have been exiled to Egypt and to Babylon. Our temple in
Jerusalem has been destroyed by Roman sword and Iranian missile. Our
people have been scattered throughout Europe and North Africa first
because of our ancestors’ admirable refusal to convert to other
religions and now through the foolishness of the leaders we chose for
ourselves. Indeed, through the stupidity of Likud: the party my family
and I loyally supported for generations. And where is Likud now? What
value is a settlement policy in a land of radioactivity and ruin? Only
the truly mad would choose to settle on lands that will be scarred for
a thousand years.”
“Israel isn’t a place,”
said Tamara. “It beats in the heart of every living Jew. And we are
not forsaken. We must learn from the sufferings of Job...”
“I admire your faith,
dear,” said Daniella. “But where has it brought us? Job’s sufferings
were not one iota of that suffered by the Jews in the Nazi
concentration camps. Job never suffered from radiation poisoning and
incurable cancer. In any case, most of Job’s suffering was endured by
his family. What are the few boils he was cursed with compared to what
I have to put up with. Do you really believe the answer is to shave
our head and strip ourselves of our clothes?”
Tamara was troubled by
Daniella’s rejection of faith, but there was no rabbi within twenty
kilometres she could turn to for advice. She could refer to the
internet, of course, but only during those hours of the day when the
power was on. Most of the advice given by the online rabbis was either
bland or hysterical. There were few Jews in the new Diaspora who
didn’t blame their predicament on a combination of Islamic malice and
Western indifference.
She wondered whether she
could talk to the vicar who was now serving the Church of St Mary
Magdalene, but he split the time he spent in the parish with many
other churches scattered about Surrey and took very little interest in
the Reigate Centre. In fact, he was rather embarrassed about it. If it
hadn’t been associated with a trust in the names of Diane and Doris
Dawkins, it would have been closed down when its founders died.
In any case, how could a
Christian give advice on matters of the Jewish faith?
“It’s the Americans
fault,” said Menachem, another refugee. He had lost the sight of both
his eyes along with all his hair and much of his nose in the
catastrophic blast over Haifa. “If their nation hadn’t fallen apart
they would have protected us from the Islamic infidel. They were bold
with rhetoric, especially in the fundamentalist Southern States, but
weren’t ready to back their words with muscle.”
“They were worried that
there might be another Civil War in the United States,” said Tamara in
America’s defence. “If nuclear weapons had got involved then...”
“I don’t care what the
quarrelsome American states do to one another,” said Menachem.
“They’re probably better off as they are anyway. And would the world
really be that much worse off if the Yankees had been wiped off the
face of the Earth? But what happened to Jerusalem is unforgivable!”
No Future Volume One
XVIII
Alex
2025
It
was a long train ride from Rickmansworth to Reigate, but for Alex it
was worth the effort. In any case, the travel time had been reduced to
rather less than an hour since the new railway line from his Docklands
office has been opened. He could work late, which for form’s sake was
increasingly often since he’d been promoted to management, and still
arrive at Diane’s one bedroom flat before dark.
Diane provided probably
the best fun Alex had ever had with an internet date. She was amusing.
She was good conversation. She was sexy. And she was wonderfully
passionate between the sheets.
But there was a reason why
she’d advertised her availability on the internet even though she was
still in her twenties and four years younger than Alex. And that,
despite a regime of several diets and regular exercise, was because
she was undeniably plump.
Now she was discussing her
plans about changing career. Marketing was no longer the vocation for
her she once thought it was.
But a career in the
church?
“Relax,” said Diane as she
pecked Alex affectionately on the cheek. “We can still have sex.”
“But with a vicar?” said
Alex. “That can’t be right.”
“It’s the Church of
England, silly,” Diane laughed. “I’m not going to be a nun.”
“Can vicars have sex?”
“Why not?” said Diane.
“It’s not illegal, is it?”
Nevertheless, Alex
wouldn’t let the subtleties of religious doctrine interfere with a
good story. He was happy to announce on his fourth pint in the
Archbishop Williams that he was fucking a nun.
“A nun!” exclaimed Dave,
who worked in accounts. “That’s fucking insane, man. Nuns don’t fuck.”
“Well, she’s not a nun
exactly,” Alex clarified. “She’s applying to be a vicar.”
“That’s the same thing,
innit?” suggested Eddie, a big bearded guy with a management role in
HR. “Vicars. Nuns.”
“Vicars can fuck,” assured
Terry. “It’s just that most vicars aren’t chicks.”
“Don’t be so sure about
that,” said Dave. “I’ve heard that’s not true any longer. More women
than men work as vicars these days. We’ll have a fucking woman
archbishop next...”
“Then the pope’ll be a
chick too,” said Eddie. “Only popes can never fuck. Not legally,
anyway.”
“We need Larry from
Religious Affairs to sort us out on all this,” Alex joked.
“Don’t be a twat,” said
Eddie. “He’s some kind of Muslim or Sikh or something. Anyway, he
never drinks. Whatever religion he belongs to, it’s against drinking.
But still, Alex, your vicar girlfriend sounds better than the last
one. She was a fucking farmer’s daughter...”
“She’s probably gone back
to sucking donkey’s dicks,” sniggered Dave. “Does this nun of yours
pray before she fucks?”
“Vicar,” corrected Alex.
“No, I don’t think so.”
“Perhaps she’ll dump you,
so she can stick a crucifix up her twat,” suggested Eddie.
“You’ve seen too many perv
pornos, man,” said Terry.
“How do you know what they
show?” wondered Eddie. “Anyway, it’s fucking common knowledge. It’s
all that sexual frustration, innit?”
Alex enjoyed a good laugh
with his mates after work. These days, he had no anxiety about getting
a phone call from Gabby demanding his immediate presence. Diane wasn’t
as experienced or as sexually adventurous, but she compensated for it
by the extent of her devotion. Alex wasn’t sure he could ever confess
to his workmates that he’d met her through a dating website or that
she was somewhat overweight. Well, she wasn’t obese as such. She
didn’t have those horrible saggy folds that some women had. And,
anyway, more and more women—and men—were overweight these days. Alex
sometimes worried about the stomach bulge over his own belt. Being
overweight wasn’t such a big deal. After all, Diane wasn’t as bad as
Eddie’s wife. She was so obese that Alex wondered about the physical
obstacles the couple had to overcome to have sex. Online porn gave
helpful advice on this aspect of sex as it did so many other critical
questions of the human condition, but it still didn’t tempt Alex to
seek out Eddie’s wife and give it a try himself.
Alex was well suited to
life in middle management. He knew he was never going to become a
great journalist, even of something as lightweight as VR. He struggled
so hard to say anything interesting or enlightening about the virtual
world. It was considerably more trivial than television and its
content was becoming ever more narrow as the online community ossified
around what it was already comfortable with. Even VR porn, on which he
was an entirely unacknowledged expert, had become ever less
interesting. Perhaps there would be a day when VR rendering was less
blocky, when the exasperating jerkiness didn’t interfere with
rapid scene changes, and when VR entertainment wasn’t so slavishly
derivative of things that had come before, such as porno movies,
gaming, blogs and social network sites. When that day came,
transistors would be using graphene rather than silicon, quantum
computing would be used for other things than performing calculations
on remote servers, and the gear he’d have to clamber into would be
more comfortable than the stuff he had to use these days.
The path to being a
successful manager at Reuters-Fox was mostly about anticipating the
right impression to make to the right people. As long as business
affairs were kept in some kind of order and the right numbers were
entered into the spreadsheets, Alex’s job was mostly measured by his
ability to be witty and unthreatening at meetings, to be willing to do
stupid overtime even when it wasn’t needed, and to be good company in
the pub. You didn’t get anywhere in Reuters-Fox if you weren’t a
team-player and didn’t have the right attitude.
“You ever thought of
moving on from website management?” wondered his line manager, Dick,
one day as they stood by the water cooler.
Alex wondered whether this
was a trap. If he showed anything less than one hundred and ten
percent commitment to the website division, this might be evidence
that a more dedicated man or woman should take his place. Perhaps
someone like that bitch Fatima whose choice of skirt and blouse was
disarmingly revealing. On the other hand, Alex didn’t want to be
perceived as a man without ambition.
“Only if the right
opportunity comes up and I’m the right man for the job,” said Alex.
“Why? Is there something in the offing?”
“I don’t know about that,”
said Dick. “ITN’s not been doing so well recently. A merger of the
news operations might be on the cards. It’s only talk, mind you.”
“Reuters-Fox-ITN?” Alex
speculated.
“I doubt it,” said Dick.
“We’ll cherry-pick the best and flog the rest. Take out the opposition
and strip them of their assets. But there’ll be some growth
opportunities for us, I guess. Then there’d be only the pinko BBC to
worry about.”
Alex noticed no evidence
of merger activity after this brief chat, though he now kept a closer
eye on news stories about the venerable Independent Television News
organisation. Advertising revenue was declining and aggregated news
was very much the trend. Any organisation that employed foreign
correspondents and featured original news content was at a
disadvantage when the most important asset was timely, glossy and
instant news coverage. It was a race between news companies in which
the winners was the one whose cameras were first at a riot, whose
spokespersons were the first to stand knee-deep in flood waters, whose
correspondent was first parachuted down into a war zone, and whose
paparazzi got the most explicit footage of a film star’s love life.
“I’m not sure I like how
the news media is so much more focussed on attracting advertising
revenue than it is on providing objective news,” mused Diane in her
bed, on which were strewn pillows, fluffy toys and her own smooth
bulging body.
Alex continued to stroke
her buttocks while she reciprocated by pecking him gently around the
crotch.
“Fair and Balanced
is Reuters-Fox’s watchword,” he said.
“Not Truthful and
Objective I note,” Diane responded. “When I go to a news website
I want to find out what’s going on in the world. I don’t want to be
distracted by news stories about the latest pop star scandal.”
“It’s what the public
wants.”
“That’s not good enough,”
said Diane with a frown. “The media should be more ethical than that.
There are too many major stories hidden behind dross. And it’s not
just your employers, of course, though they must be amongst the worst.
Where are the headlines about the droughts in Africa? What about the
dispute over water resources in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh? What
about the flooding on the Pacific islands? You hardly hear a thing
about the wars in Senegal, Mozambique, Colombia or Nepal.”
“We’d be out of business
if we didn’t give people what they wanted.”
“That’s just turning the
argument upside down. Surely being informed is what people want when
they go to a news website.”
“I’m not sure it is,” Alex
admitted.
“And you think that’s how
it should be?”
“Not really. It’s just how
it is.”
Diane sighed. She rolled
her body round and let Alex slip an arm behind her shoulders. “I often
think you’re too accepting of how things are,” she told him. “What’s
important is not that, but what we should do to make things better.”
“Is that why you want to
be a vicar?” wondered Alex.
“That’s a motivation for
sure but if that was the only thing then I’d do better to work for a
charity. Or, at a pinch, a political party. There are other things
vicars do besides campaign to help starving people in Africa and Asia.
There’s the matter of believing in God and choosing to work as a
shepherd to His flock. You and I, we never talk about religion, I
know, but it’s a pretty important thing for me.”
“Well, I know you go to
church every Sunday,” said Alex, who’d never much enjoyed this
disruption to the weekend when he stayed over at Diane’s studio
bedsit.
“So, what do you
do that makes the world a better place?” wondered Diane with what Alex
felt was more than a hint of accusation.
“Not as much as you,” Alex
replied diplomatically.
“You don’t do anything at
all,” said Diane rather more firmly. “I honestly wonder why we even
have a relationship at all.”
Alex could see this threat
to his comfortable status quo was one that he had to address, but it
was also one that he was already aware of. He sometimes felt
uncomfortable with her just as he once used to be with Betty and never
once with his workmates. Why should he ever need to justify himself?
It wasn’t as if he ever did anything bad. He wasn’t the one pumping
oil and methane up from the ocean floor. He wasn’t the one exploiting
the poor and downtrodden of the world. He wasn’t the one digging in
his feet with regards to policies to implement low carbon options in
energy and transport. Why should he get the blame? After all, the
worst he ever did was vote Conservative at the general elections and
that was more because he was fed up with paying so much of his income
as tax than from any desire to support the rich and trample down the
poor.
“The reason we have a
relationship, sweetheart,” said Alex as he stroked his finger over
Diane’s still moist labia, “is this.”
“I guess you’re right,”
said Diane with an indulgent smile.
No Future Volume One
XIX
Eric Esterhazy MP
2045
Eric
was infuriated. The Prime Minister had just humiliated him in front of
the whole Cabinet. What kind of a woman was she? An out and out bitch,
that’s what.
Moreover, it wasn’t as if
he could defend himself by claiming that he’d been misquoted since his
words had been broadcast live on national television. On Fox News UK,
naturally.
“I got a little carried
away,” Eric told the Prime Minister. “Of course, I didn’t mean to say
that Muslims from Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan should migrate to Mecca
if the situation got much worse. I was merely trying to suggest that
the Islamic community already have a good system for handling the
refugee problem should the war get much worse.”
“It’s a very delicate
matter, Eric,” said Dominic, the Foreign Secretary. “There’s a huge
arsenal of nuclear weapons in the region. The Iranians, the Russians,
the Ukrainians and some of the Stans themselves: it’s a tinderbox. The
last thing we want is for the Minister for Housing and Urban
Regeneration to make any ill-advised remarks. Thankfully, only the
pinko newspapers and the BBC have picked up on it. With luck, it’ll
just fizzle out. But this isn’t the time to exacerbate a tense
situation.”
“I agree with the Prime
Minister,” said Ivan Eisenegger, the Minister for Education and
Welfare. “It’s not only international opinion we have to handle with
care. British Muslims of all ethnic origins expect constructive and
sensitive diplomacy from the government with regards to our dealings
with the belligerent nations. As far as the British government is
concerned, the conflict isn’t about religion. Nor even about culture.
If anything, it has far more to do with water and oil.”
When did Ivan ever
disagree with the Prime Minister? And yet in private Ivan’s views
were, if anything, rather more robust than Eric’s although he was
noticeably reluctant about voicing them on Fox News UK. If Ivan had
chosen to say in front of the television camera half of what he said
to Eric in private then he’d fit right in. But Ivan’s ambitions seemed
set on a more distant goal than the Housing Minister’s.
Eric, on the other hand,
was the member of the Cabinet who appeared most often on television.
Fox News UK knew he could always be relied on to express what the
network considered to be the moderate side on any matter of national
debate. Yes, the issue of immigration was becoming ever more worrying
but there should be no discrimination against UK citizens of any
complexion. Yes, there was evidence of climate change, despite the
recent cold winter, but Eric wasn’t convinced that the blame could be
entirely attributed to the aviation and automobile industries. Yes,
flood defences were ineffective and the catastrophic flooding of East
Anglia and Southend and the number of lives lost was tragic, but we
must remember the high cost of dealing with the problem and the fact
that there are other more pressing issues. Yes, military defence was
an ever-increasing burden on the UK’s shrinking GNP and the arms were
mostly bought from China and Russia, but a strong nation needed strong
defence. Yes, Eric was speechless with disgust at the recent
revelations regarding the crimes committed by paedophile and
prostitution rings operating in the Southern Counties. Eric Esterhazy
was the man Fox News UK liked to parade on the screen when an
unerringly conservative opinion needed to be phrased with both
reassuring sympathy and apparent authority.
Eric did very well out of
this arrangement. The fees for appearing on television were undeniably
generous. There were also the proceeds from the newspaper articles
that he dashed off for the affiliated newspapers and websites. He was
now one of the country’s most well-known politicians and his wife and
family were very proud of him. Even his constituents were starstruck
by the Surrey MP who was more often seen on television than he ever
was in Reigate.
“I’m worried, Eddie,” Eric
confessed to the Director of News and Opinion when he was next at the
Fox News UK studio. “The Prime Minister called me out in front of the
whole Cabinet regarding my unguarded remarks about the ’Stani
ragheads. I think I might be treading on thin ice.”
“The bitch!” said Eddie as
he patted his good friend on the back. “After all you’ve done. What do
you suggest we do?”
“What do you think the
boss would say?”
Eddie mused about that. “I
could ring America and find out, but I don’t think he’d appreciate
that. My guess is that he’d recommended you cool it. You’re our man in
the Cabinet. We can lean on the Prime Minister, but she has to kowtow
to the pinkos in the coalition. You’re a reliable man, but there’s not
a lot that a Minister of slums and slum clearance can do. Your path to
promotion is off-limits unless we can get some shit to stick to that
liberal pinko in Number Eleven. We’ll keep you well away from
discussions relating to immigration and foreign policy. That way you
won’t put your foot in it again.”
“It was a simple mistake,
Eddie.”
“We don’t mind
ex-ministers, bloggers and talk show hosts coming on a bit strong, but
a Cabinet Minister has got to be much more wishy-washy. We don’t want
the coalition to collapse. And most of all we don’t want to let the
red scum and their slimy green allies into government. That would be a
fucking disaster. I’ll have to think about it, but in the meantime
what we’ll try and do is position you more as an expert on business
and the economy. Do you know much about that kind of stuff?”
“My degree’s in Classical
History,” said Eric.
“And you didn’t even get a
first, you wanker,” laughed Eddie. “Too busy chasing skirt I guess.”
“I was active in the
National Union of Students.”
“Yeah. That was when there
was such a thing. You did well enough to get to be Union President or
something, didn’t you? But at the moment, it’s Economics I reckon you
should be boning up on. I take it you’re numerate?”
“Numerate, Eddie?” said
Eric, affronted. “Yes, I can do arithmetic.”
“As long as you don’t make
the same bloopers that other politicians do when they calculate
compound interest or when they misunderstand statistics and
probability then we can get you on a few business discussion programs.
I also take it you’re fully cognisant of your government’s rather
feeble economic policies, Eric?”
“They’ve not changed for
over half a century, have they?” said Eric. “Lower taxes. Cuts in
Public Spending. Incentives for Business. Target the workshy and
encourage the wealthmakers.”
“Well, yes, Eric. The
policies remain the same, but the words we use to express conservative
economic theory have to change with the times. If it sounds like a
broken record then there are plenty of liberal media twats who’ll jump
on what a minister says and point out where this or that economic
theory hasn’t worked in the past. You need to sound bold, adventurous
and modern. I think we can get our business guys to ply you with a few
links to websites that can give you the concepts and the jargon you
need. The conservative agenda will never go forward if it sounds like
it’s standing still or even going back. It’s a step by step process.
Look at the success we’ve had in America.”
“I just hope those pinko
Northern and Western States don’t fuck it up.”
“There’s no way the GOP
will ever relinquish its grip on the White House and both houses on
the Hill,” said Eddie. “It’s locked in place. The conservative agenda
is fully on track. And there’s still a way to go. The tax burden is
still unfairly distributed. The blue-collar scum should have to pay
for the services they get from out of their own pocket. It’s not the
responsibility of those who’ve worked hard to get to the top to
subsidise the skivers, the dropouts and the Mexican immigrants.
There’s too much laxity shown towards troublemakers like the
eco-warriors, the multiculturalists and the socialists who want to
reintroduce healthcare.”
“You don’t think the rebel
states will carry out their threats?”
“What? Rerun the American
Civil War in reverse? Have the Northern Pinko states and the Western
Green ones secede from the Strictly Red ones that make up the majority
of the United States? Believe me, it’s different these days. The power
isn’t with the tree-huggers and the bleeding hearts. It’s an alliance
of Wall Street, the hicks and God All Mighty. Or at least the God who
hates abortionists and smites all those who are insufficiently
patriotic.”
“And how’s the
conservative agenda going to advance in the UK, Eddie?” wondered Eric.
“I don’t know. I’m not a
fucking strategist. It’s going to be through a combination of fear,
greed and the ballot box, I guess. As always. Voters never want to
give up on a tax-break. Voters don’t want foreigners to take their
jobs. They don’t want to be told what kind of car to buy or what to
eat. When it comes to the General Election the electorate always vote
according to what it believes is its self-interest. It’s up to us and
you in particular, Eric, to convince the couch-potatoes that their
self-interest is best served by the Conservative Agenda.”
“And is it?”
“Of course it fucking is.
You’re a Conservative. What’s good for the United Kingdom and the
world is what’s good for business and the patriotic Englishman.”
“Englishman?”
“Scotsman. Welshman. Brit.
You know.”
Eric returned by taxi to
his plush London apartment in Mayfair that had been bestowed on him
through the generosity of Fox News UK and its parent corporation. He
only occasionally returned to his constituency and then mostly to
reassure his wife that he still cared for her and his two daughters.
Eric knew that the two greatest threats to his ascendency was an image
that was less than squeaky-clean and a performance as government
minister that was less than merely competent. The success of his
career as a minister was generally achieved by delegating as much
responsibility as he could to civil servants who implemented what was,
in actual fact, a relatively liberal housing policy in the face of
ever stringent government cuts. His image was kept clean by the
traditional means of maintaining absolute discretion and of making
frequent phone calls to the wife.
Part of that discretion,
of course, was the result of him owning two London apartments. One of
these was rather modest and located in Clapham. This was an apartment
he only ever visited for the benefit of cameramen who wanted to
photograph him going to and returning from his ministerial office. The
one in Mayfair was where he could do whatever he liked. No one knew he
lived there apart from the Fox News UK Accounts Department.
What he decided he would
like to do tonight was savour the amorous company of Edwina, a short
large-breasted black woman whose real name sounded nothing like the
name she used and who once confessed that she’d been a qualified
architect in whatever godforsaken African slum she’d originally come
from.
Eric loved to squirt his
semen into her mouth and slap his penis back and forth, up and down,
on her thick-lipped face while mascara slipped down her cheeks and her
nostrils snorted out bubbles of viscous pale fluid. He loved to hold
the uncelebrated architect down on the bed while he thrust into the
tight anal orifice between her huge buttocks. He loved to hear her
cries for mercy (how fabricated Eric neither knew nor cared) when he
slapped her with a cane on the buttocks which for him was the real
source of her attraction.
It wasn’t her sparkling
intelligence or ready wit which she demonstrated so well when they
slumped naked on the bed with the television on, more often tuned to
the BBC Parliament channel than anything else. Nor her slightly
accented speech from which came substantially more eloquence than
anything that emerged from his daughters’ lips when they discussed
whatever shit pop group or teen flick that was currently attracting
their attention. Nor anything about her other than her talent at being
fucked, taking it in the arse and begging for more. And all paid for
by private accounts hidden from both parliamentary scrutiny and the
tax man.
God Bless Fox News UK,
said Eric to himself, as he fucked Edwina deep down her throat so that
she would choke up not just saliva but often whatever she’d been
eating earlier that day.
Perhaps Eric did value the
fact that this black woman who could fuck so well was also so well
educated. It appealed to him that he could exercise the power he
relentlessly pursued in a fashion that would so literally humiliate
the real life target of his verbal attacks on illegal immigration and
women’s rights.
If only he could do to the
Prime Minister what he was now doing to Edwina. That would show the
bitch. The Prime Minister was nowhere near as buxom, of course. In any
case the cow was probably twice the black whore’s age. But that
wouldn’t lessen the pleasure he’d get from pissing on the Premier and
allowing the urine to trickle into her mouth, onto her prissy silk
blouse and over her flat chest.
But would Eric ever get an
opportunity to fulfil his ambition to befoul the leader of the
Conservative Party? This could only be achieved if he followed the
wishes of his boss in America and became an expert on the Conservative
Economic Agenda. And then the trickle that would come down on the
masses would be as smelly and yellow as that which he normally
splattered over Edwina just when she thought that this time she might
be spared that particular ordeal.
No Future Volume One
XX
Psychlone
2106
“Eric
Esterhazy is a cunt.”
Psychlone, or Simon as he
was still known to his mother or Psy as his friends called him, liked
the lyric’s essential message, but it raised a host of obvious issues.
If he incorporated the phrase into his next release, would anyone even
know who Eric Esterhazy was? If it hadn’t been for his Second Class
degree in Political History, Psychlone probably wouldn’t have known
either.
It was only five years
since he’d been an undergraduate at the University of Extern when he
was equally well known as either Simon or Pothead. The nickname was a
reference to two facts about him at the time of which one was that his
surname was Potter. So, despite being screwed every month since
graduation for interest repayment on his student fees, his three years
at university couldn’t be totally wasted if he could use the name of
an obscure mid-century politician in a lyric. All listeners needed to
know was that Eric Esterhazy was one of that shady group of wankers
who’d formed the English National Unity government and in the process
fucked up the country and what little was left of its international
reputation.
The single line left
Psychlone with another rather more intractable problem. What word
rhymed with ‘cunt’? He couldn’t use ‘National Front’ although that was
the first rhyme that sprung to Psychlone’s mind. Associating the
National Front’ with Eric Esterhazy and the mid-twentieth century
Conservative Party would be both inaccurate and unnecessarily obscure.
Who knew enough about the history of English politics to understand
the reference? There was probably a better rhyme to use. Something
pithy. Something witty. Or perhaps he should use a different word to
describe the former Chancellor of the Exchequer? Then again, ‘cunt’,
unlike ‘bastard’, ‘motherfucker’ or ‘arsehole’, possessed exactly the
degree of contempt that Psychlone wished to express.
When his lyric was
conveyed from his laptop along with the software-generated symphonic
orchestration to his hundreds of millions of downloaders, he knew that
a little word like that could propel it into the international chart
of the top one hundred tunes for that particular week. And the more
downloads the greater the trickle of revenue into his credit account.
A million hits translated into a million English pounds. And that
would be enough to just about cover a week’s rent for his crappy
squalid studio apartment in Exeter with a bit left over for a
take-away pizza or curry. He needed a few hundred million downloads a
month just to finance his repayment on student loans and his dope
habit.
Despite having gained an
Upper Second in Political History, Psychlone still wasn’t entirely
sure where his political allegiance lay. That complicated matters for
him. Most people held a one-dimensional view of politics, just as they
held a one-dimensional view of religion, the environment or nuclear
warfare. It was easy to say, for instance, that the continued mining
for oil in the Antarctic was bad because it would accelerate the
already alarming collapse of the glaciers that covered the continent.
It was easy to say that the increased expenditure on nuclear warheads
by the various belligerent nations was a bad idea. But when looked at
it other angles, the same issues seemed much more multifaceted and far
more intractable to resolve. Although petroleum was now an impossibly
expensive fuel, it was still required by the plastics industry. What
could people afford to sit on if there wasn’t plastic furniture given
that the cost of wooden furniture was beyond the reach of most
people’s pockets? And when a nation such as England and its allies in
India, the Republic of North America and the Mediterranean Economic
Union were confronted with nuclear weapons on their borders with
Northern Europe, China and the Northern United States, what good was
it to be neutral like Russia and the United States of South Africa?
What was the right thing to do when a gun is pressed against your
forehead?
And so too with
politics...
It was easy to say that
Eric Esterhazy and Ivan Eisenegger and the rest of the Government for
National Unity were reactionary shits whose longest lasting
contribution to the United Kingdom was to pull it apart. Their actions
were understandable given the tension of the times and the overweening
power of the right-wing news media. It might seem quaint today now
that the media had become essentially impotent and the right-wing
resurgence of the early twenty-first century had collapsed into a
miasma of its own making, but at the time it was a message with
genuine electoral appeal. Many people genuinely believed the nonsense
spewed out by the media. It was just a shame that what would be merely
diversionary to the general thrust of change—like fascism in the
twentieth century and the counter-reformation in the sixteenth
century—had a greater impact when its actual result was to cripple the
necessary political will to tackle the real problems in the world just
as the window of opportunity of doing so effectively was steadily
slipping away.
But you can’t get all that
in a five minute dance number.
Psychlone was one of the
top hundred or so dance producers in the world. His music was rocking
the decks from Lhasa to Reykjavik, from Pyongyang to Sao Paolo, and
from Exeter where it was produced to Beijing where his revenue stream
was calculated, subdivided and redistributed. It might be pitifully
small but at least Psychlone was able to make a living from his art.
It was all conceived and generated on his laptop where only thirty
years before the sounds he created would have taken the resources of
the world’s best recording studios (when such things existed). These
same compositions were distributed to the usual outlets from which
they were downloaded and eventually caned on the world’s best dance
floors.
Psychlone was often asked
about his musical influences in the frequent web interviews he had to
give. It was a crap question because after two centuries of recorded
music and a century and a half of electronic dance music there were so
many of them. Was it dubstep, techno, reggae, bongo or epsilon that
influenced him the most? Psychlone soon learnt that the best responses
weren’t the truthful or reflective ones that addressed the complex
legacy but those that best pandered to current fashions. The real man
behind the Psychlone pseudonym had to feed the electricity meter and
keep his laptop running on batteries during the frequent power cuts.
At the moment the fashion was for a soulful, bass-heavy beat with
multiple cut-ups and a disorienting dance step so he could claim that
his primary source was fractured dubstep, although Psychlone also
listened to Shostakovich, Ligeti and Reich.
“You think too fucking
much, Psy,” said Ellen, Psychlone’s long-suffering girlfriend. “What
does it fucking matter what your influences are?”
She was sitting on the
battered mattress the couple had bought second-hand from the market
despite the presence of a prominent brown stain. She was skinning up a
spliff stuffed with sawdust since cigarette tobacco was many times
more expensive than its chief ingredient. Psychlone had only moments
before finished his online interview with a Los Angeles DJ from the
Western Union who’d been enthusiastically dropping the latest
Psychlone number. This was a mellow tune influenced by the music of
Joe Zawinul and Flying Lotus.
“I dunno,” said Psychlone.
“I’m an influence myself, you know. I kinda feel responsible. There
are guys all over the planet that listen to me on webcasts. I mean,
it’s fucking LA today. They’re the good guys. They play the good stuff
and they’ve got the world’s best fucking weed. And then I might give
an interview to some schmuck from Houston or a DJ from Casablanca, you
know, in the fucking Mediterranean Economic Union. And they’re like
the bad guys. They’re the ones whose governments put a ban on every
fucking thing except stuff like dance music and quiz shows, Shouldn’t
I be doing a bit more than saying I dig these hundred year old MP3s
from Croydon? Shouldn’t I be doing a bit more?”
“Fuck, Psy,” said Ellen
passing over the spliff. “Just take a toke and fucking shut up, man.”
Psychlone took a hit or
two and handed it back. He let the fumes fill his lungs and listlessly
watched the bluish smoke billow out from his nostrils.
“It’s fucking tense, you
know,” said Psychlone. “It’s more fucking tense than it’s been since
the cold war.”
“Cold war?” wondered
Ellen. “What the fuck’s that? Some kind of ice cream franchise
quarrel.”
“Cold war. Late twentieth
century. The whole world was split between the Soviet Union and the
United States of America. They had missiles pointing at each other. It
could have been curtains.”
“Yeah,” admitted Ellen. “I
heard something about that. Didn’t come to fuckall in the end. The
Soviet Union disintegrated because no one believed in it any more. The
United States disintegrated because the states in the North and West
got pissed off with how the wingnuts in the Republican states were
fucking them over. Though the nuclear warheads didn’t go away.”
“Yeah,” said Psychlone.
“They’re still around. They’re just pointing in different directions.”
“So what you working on at
the moment, Psy?” Ellen wondered to steer the conversation to a
different direction.
“It’s something
political,” said Psychlone. “It’s to do with the English National
Unity Government.”
“What the fuck?” Ellen
said in despair. “Don’t you ever give up? Who fucking cares what
happened half a century ago? It was a fuck up from beginning to end.
People want to dance to your music. They don’t want to be preached
to.”
“Yeah. But where’s the
stuff that does the preaching these days?”
“Fuck knows. Wherever it
is, no one’s actually listening to it.”
“Yeah. I guess you’re
right.”
Psychlone put his
headphones back on and continued working on his number. Perhaps the
lyric would have to go. Maybe he could dispense with lyrics
altogether. They were always a drag and Ellen was dead right when she
said that people didn’t really listen to them. On the other hand, if
he could just put together some words that captured the anger and
frustration he felt then he was sure his music would grab the
attention of a few more people, get more downloads and then maybe help
pay off a bit more of his student loans. Perhaps he should try
something that related to events in people’s actual lives.
“What about if I put down
some lyrics about power cuts or the battery shops being fresh out of
juice or the broadband transmitters getting fucked up?” he asked
Ellen.
“You what?”
“You know: if I put in
lyrics about stuff that really pisses people off.”
“Is that what pisses you
off most?” wondered Ellen who passed the spliff to Psychlone so he
could take a few more tokes. “Not when there’s a dope famine or
something like that?”
“When’s that ever
happened?”
“Not in my lifetime,”
admitted Ellen. “But it could, couldn’t it?”
“Yeah, but I want a lyric
that’s something people can relate to. You know something like: ‘My
battery’s flat. Lord knows, but my battery’s gone flat.’ It
could be called something like My Battery Blues...”
“It could be, but you’d
need a wicked beat for it not to sound real naff. Something that
doesn’t make it sound like you’re just whining.”
“What’s wrong with
whining? It’s not like I can write about being blown up by a nuclear
warhead. Or left starving in the streets. Or being drowned. But people
do get pissed off and whining is exactly what they do.”
“Fuck, Psy. You wanna do
something political then do something political. Just don’t
expect me to have an opinion. When I go dancing it’s to get away from
all the shit. I don’t wanna be wallowing in it. Lighten up.”
“I dunno,” said Psychlone.
“I was just trying to put something together. The last tune went down
real well. It got some real good reviews on the blogs and there was a
real buzz. I just want to capitalise on it.”
“What you need is a
blowjob, you sad fuck.”
“You think so?”
“Just a moment,” said
Ellen who breathed in a lungful off her spliff that burnt the paper
right down to the roach. She shook her head as the smoke wafted round
her lungs and stubbed out what was left in the ashtray.
She then pulled off the
tee-shirt which had covered her small perky breasts and swaggered over
to Psychlone wearing nothing more than a pair of white panties and
plastic sandals. She threw the tee-shirt to one side with the logo
advertising Pepsi-Coke Fizzy Cola prominently displayed on the back of
the chair where it fell.
“Out with your dick, DJ
Psychlone!” she commanded as she knelt in front of her boyfriend’s
bulging crotch. “I know just what you need to cheer you up.”
No Future Volume One
XXI
Iris
2053
Iris
wasn’t a girl who’d normally be described as someone with a nuanced
understanding of politics even by those who she lived with. Her
opinions on almost everything closely conformed to those of her
friends and colleagues, and if she would ever join a debate regarding
the limits of political freedom, the nature of democracy or what
provided a government with legitimacy she would soon get very bored.
But even Iris was glued to
the television as the extraordinary events unfolded from one day to
the next. Only a week ago it seemed that the United Kingdom would
stumble on as it always had despite the civil unrest that had become
so familiar. Food riots. Petrol pump riots. Demonstrations against
immigration. Demonstrations against racism. The United Kingdom was in
a state of perpetual crisis. And it looked like that was just the way
it would always be.
Things changed forever
from the moment when the Coalition Prime Minister, Ivan Eisenegger,
made his Special Announcement to the national news media. He declared
a State of Emergency to resolve the strife that had caused such
immeasurable damage to the British economy and the UK’s international
reputation. It was a natural response to the general desire for law
and order in the country. The Prime Minister stood flanked by the
Chancellor of the Exchequer, Eric Esterhazy, and the Deputy Prime
Minister, Olaf Smith, as he announced a series of measures which he
admitted were draconian but which he also assured the nation were
absolutely necessary to get the rioters off the street, to get the
looters out of shops, to protect the ordinary law-abiding citizen, and
to restore Britain’s pride in itself.
This was going to be, the
Prime Minister announced, a Government of National Unity.
“Don’t you ever get bored
with watching this stuff on TV?” asked Iris’ boyfriend, Giorgio. “I
mean it’s not like much has happened since the first day they declared
a State of Emergency.”
“That’s just not fucking
true,” said Ember, who along with her lover, Ernie, and their
daughter, Primrose, shared another room in the large house where Iris
and Giorgio lived. “The Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish governments
are all colossally pissed off about having a State of Emergency
imposed on them from London. It looks like the new government wants to
leave the Northern European Union. And there’s talk that the BBC might
lose its independence.”
“Don’t talk bollocks,”
said Ellie, who lived by herself in the smallest of the three bedrooms
in the house. She was skinning up a spliff on a glossy fashion
magazine with her bare legs stretched out across the threadbare
carpet. “That would never happen.”
“You don’t know with these
cunts, Ellie” said Ember. “You’ve heard the shit that arsehole
Esterhazy’s been spouting on Fox News UK all these years. I can well
believe that he’d be more than willing to tell the BBC to toe the
line. Not that the broadcaster anything like it used to be. All those
budget cuts have left its television channels looking like one of
those crappy ones you see on satellite from places like Nicaragua and
Cambodia. No one really watches it now except for news.”
“Well, if that bastard
Esterhazy has his way, no one would want to watch it even for that,”
agreed Iris.
“Fuck’s sake,” said
Giorgio, the only man in a room otherwise populated by three adult
women and a child. Primrose was three years old and playing with a
small tablet computer on which brightly coloured animated characters
were dancing around in a magical kingdom. “Just fucking cool it. I get
real pissed off with this political shit. Can’t we just watch
something that’s just fun? There are some good cartoons on Fox at the
moment.”
Ember snorted. She was the
only one in the room with any professed interest in politics although
the only times she’d been on demonstrations was when her partner could
be persuaded. And since their daughter was born, there were fewer and
fewer such opportunities. Ellie’s primary diversions were of a
hedonistic nature. Giorgio could hardly even be persuaded out of bed
in the morning since he’d lost his job at the council and he spent
most of the day either in front of the television or hunched over his
laptop.
Iris’ interest in politics
had only come about as a result of the current crisis. She sort of
supported demonstrators when they demanded better pay and stuff like
that but was a little worried when their demands became more
vociferous and the demonstrations were tainted by violence. The riots
of the last two years had even spread into suburbs like Uxbridge and
Bromley. They couldn’t be described as inner city riots any more. But
could this new Government of National Unity be trusted? And if it was
about National Unity, why were there actually fewer non-Tories in the
new government than there’d been in the old Coalition Government?
Even so, there wasn’t much
protest when, having passed her lit spliff over to Ember, Ellie picked
up the remote and began scrolling through the channels. She eventually
settled on a twenty year old action movie that starred giant
grasshoppers and a large number of vicious ants. Primrose momentarily
lifted her head from whatever game she was playing and lowered it
again when she realised how dark and gloomy the film was.
“I must have seen this
film a dozen times,” said Giorgio.
“Well, it must be good
then,” said Ellie who was more interested in skimming through the
fashion pages of the magazine on which she’d just been rolling the
spliff.
The company settled around
the television in a moderate state of inertia as the joint was passed
from person to person. Although it was mid-afternoon on a Wednesday,
Giorgio was the only one who didn’t have a job to go to. Ember
balanced her childcare duties with her shifts as a nurse in a hospital
halfway across the other side of London. She frequently had to leave
Primrose to the care of the household when Ernie was working late at
the office, which was on most days. Ellie was a home-worker most days
of the week, but only the occasional phone call and the urgency of a
looming deadline ever kept her away from the communal living room.
Iris was a fully qualified
postgrad zoologist, but she’d not yet found a job that matched her
impressive qualifications. Her job at the biotech labs in Southgate
hardly stretched her at all. She was convinced it could be done by a
machine and that it would be by a machine that she’d eventually be
replaced. The hours were crap too. This evening when the rest of the
household, except Ember and Primrose, were heading out to a nightclub
on some courtesy tickets that Ellie had somehow organised through one
of her many boyfriends, Iris would be at the lab watching the clock go
by and sorting out DNA samples.
“Don’t worry about it,”
said Giorgio who kissed Iris when she at last left for work. “You’ll
be able to get in later, won’t you? What time do you finish, anyway?”
“Five in the morning,”
said Iris.
“Fuck that,” said Giorgio.
“The bastards are fucking slave-drivers. You can’t slip out early, can
you?”
“Yeah, I can. And get
sacked too.”
“Well, a job’s a job,”
said Giorgio ruefully.
Iris looked back at her
housemates. Ellie was in sparkling form with elegantly applied makeup
and dressed in a revealing silk top and low-slung denim shorts, while
one of her boyfriends was sitting nervously on the sofa clearly
uncertain about what the evening might have in store. It wasn’t
unknown for Ellie to go out in the evening with one guy and come back
with someone totally different. And it wasn’t necessarily another guy.
Giorgio and Ernie were sitting around idly watching an American sitcom
where the canned laughter accompanied all but the most trivial gesture
or verbal inflection.
It was pissing down
outside, so Iris hoisted up the hood on her jacket and ran through the
puddles to the nearest bus stop. Her journey consisted of two bus
journeys and one stretch underground. She had to allow plenty of time
for the journey. The traffic was dreadful. There might be fewer
petrol-driven cars and more battery-powered ones, but they still
occupied as much space on the roads. The allowance she made for any
delay was so great that she normally arrived at the lab at least half
an hour before she needed to, and on a fixed shift system she wasn’t
paid for hanging around in the canteen.
“You see the news?” asked
Khadija, one of the other lab assistants, as they sat down together
with their coffee mugs by the microwave.
“Yeah,” said Iris. “About
what in particular?”
“What the new government
says about immigration and stuff,” said Khadija. “The way they’re
tightening it up. It was on the BBC. It didn’t sound so bad the way
the minister expressed it, but when the political editor analysed it
the whole thing sounded like Nazi Germany or something.”
“It can’t be as bad as
that,” said Iris. “And, anyway, you’ve got nothing to worry about.
Your family’s been living in London for generations.”
“Nearly fifty years,” said
Khadija in her South London accent. “Ever since my grandfather came
over from Iraq during the Gulf Wars. Not that there’s much left of
Iraq now. But it’s all this Burden of Proof business. A lot of people
who’ve been legal might now be reclassified and even deported. You
know: retrospective tightening of the regulations.”
“I didn’t know that
immigration was such a big issue, anyway,” said Iris. “It’s only
because of Fox News UK and the newspapers you’d ever think so. I heard
that loads more people are emigrating because of the shit state of the
economy and all those riots...”
“Yeah. Civil unrest. Good
excuse for a coup.”
“Don’t be so melodramatic.
I’m sure it’s not that bad. And anyway they’re the same old faces.
Eisenegger. Esterhazy. Sauterelle. The same ones who’ve been in
government since I can ever remember. And let’s be honest, the riots
left me shit-scared. Do you remember when the whole of Central London
was paralysed that time? Some bastard threw a brick or stone in my
direction when I was trying to get to the tube station. Nearly hit
me.”
“Yeah. I hope you’re right
about there being nothing to worry about,” said Khadija. “How’s
Giorgio? Got a job yet?”
“I don’t think he’s even
trying,” said Iris. “But he’ll have to pull his finger out. In two
months time he won’t be able to claim dole any more. His six months’ll
be up. Then either he’ll get nothing and scrounge off me or he’ll have
to go on the Voluntary Labour scheme.”
“What do you think the
lazy sod’ll do?” wondered Khadija.
“I’ll fucking ditch him if
he thinks he can get away sitting round the telly all day living off
me. He’s going to have to dig ditches, mend roads, work in soup
kitchens, and all that other stuff they have to do these days.”
“It doesn’t help create
jobs if all the work’s that’s needed is done by the unemployed for a
pittance.”
“I dunno,” said Iris. “I’m
not an economist. Anyway, I guess it means that there are even fewer
jobs available for those immigrants who manage to get into the
country. That’d suit the government right down to the ground.”
“It’s time, ladies,” said
Ollie, the gay shift supervisor, who appeared at the coffee lounge
door. “Chop chop. To the workstations.”
“Okay. Okay,” said Iris as
she made her way down the aisle to her desk. The monitoring equipment
was waiting for her, although the session required her to log on
before the start of her shift. There was still a buttock-shaped
indentation in the chair where Duncan had been sitting. He was the
rather fat guy whose shift had just finished and who left a trail of
biscuit crumbs all over the desk.
Iris sat down and logged
on to the system. The DNA samples she had to monitor today came from
some kind of fruit fly and Iris had to match the mutations with the
observable physical characteristics and behavioural modifications of
the actual animals. It was tedious, mechanical work, but still
considered too specialist to be done by machine alone.
Iris glanced at the clock.
Twenty hundred hours. Only four hours till her lunch break which at
just after midnight wasn’t really going to be a meal she’d enjoy. She
glanced around her. Khadija was already making some notes on the
tablet she had in her hand. The other five or six people were also at
their desks. Everyone was in, except, of course, Anthony who’d been
designated as surplus to requirements about a week ago just before he
was eligible for redundancy payments. Would Iris be in the same
situation when she’d worked for one year and eleven months?
Iris banished such
concerns as she rotated the holographic images of DNA helixes around
on her workstation. She had another night’s work to do.
No Future Volume One
XXII
Lindiwe
2067
There
were some days that Lindiwe dreaded more than others. Most days were
bad enough. She almost wished she’d never got used to the relative
sanctuary of life at the Reigate Refugee Centre now she’d had to leave
it behind. The crackdown on illegal immigration subsequent on the
General Election resulted in Lindiwe and most other employees of the
Reigate Refugee Centre being forced to resign and find employment
elsewhere.
But what employment was
there for a young African woman where her legal status wasn’t an
issue? It could only be a profession exactly like the one in which she
was currently engaged.
Lindiwe stood outside the
rear entrance of a grand old house in the securely guarded avenues of
Reigate South Park. Only clients like the gentleman she was about to
see had benefited at all from the lack of opportunities for more
conventional employment whose inevitable result was less expensive and
more widely available sexual services.
Sir Eric Esterhazy was a
regular client of Empire Cleaning Services, Lindiwe’s employer, and
consequently one that she couldn’t afford to disappoint. He was also
the client that Lindiwe least enjoyed having to visit, even though he
was one of her most frequent clients. He always requested her by her
business name, Ebony, rather than the name with which she’d
been christened. Lindiwe often contemplated exercising her option of
refusing to go, but Empire Cleaning Services could easily find someone
else to replace her and it wasn’t as if they could ignore the specific
requests of a Knight of the Realm, even if he was now only a backbench
MP. Lindiwe suspected that the reason Sir Eric was so insistent on her
services rather than those of Laura, Ivory or Onyx was precisely
because she so evidently hated both him and his sexual predilections.
Lindiwe was a busy woman.
She might have to provide services to as many as a dozen clients in a
single day. Fortunately, not all clients were as demanding as Sir
Eric. Many simply required oral or manual relief. Although these
services weren’t especially enjoyable for Lindiwe, she could generally
complete the job within a quarter of an hour. As a general rule
Lindiwe preferred repeat custom. This wasn’t because her existing
clients were in any way better than the rest of humanity, but because
they were all known quantities. She knew what to expect and normally
there were very few surprises.
Prostitution was still
illegal, of course. Successive governments had tightened legislation
against the trade at exactly the same rate as economic circumstances
compelled ever more women were to take it up. The result of this was
that women like Lindiwe were even more vulnerable to the predations of
clients who had no respect for her. Lindiwe was almost a prisoner of
Empire Cleaning Services as a result of the draconian penalties
imposed on illegal immigrants, although she was grateful that her
employer’s business practices were actually rather more ethical than
many entirely legal enterprises. If she was working in one of the
countless sweatshops in Central London, she’d have to work for very
long hours and never get more remuneration than food to eat and a
mattress to sleep on. It was ironic that the employment practices
Lindiwe knew from Africa had migrated into the country along with much
of the continent’s population.
Empire Cleaning Services
advertised itself as a cleaning company. Its advertisements openly
promoted the house-cleaning aspect of the services provided by its
employees. If a client actually did want one of the women employed by
the company to do nothing else than vacuum-clean, dust and polish,
this was a service that would no doubt be provided with great relief.
It would be a relatively expensive service, however, given that the
minimum hourly rate for the advertised services was more than enough
to cover the weekly wage of most cleaning maids.
The uniform Lindiwe wore
was more appropriate for a maid than for a prostitute—or at least for
those prostitutes that frequented Holmesdale Road and Bell Street. It
might be noted that high-heels weren’t especially practical for
pushing a vacuum cleaner around the house and that stockings weren’t
very suitable for kneeling down on the kitchen floor with a scrubbing
brush, but such detail was sufficiently subtle for Lindiwe to pursue
her trade without fear of arrest. The dark green nylon outfit was
almost utilitarian. She looked almost like a nurse, which was ironic
given that Lindiwe wore no such uniform when she did work as one at
the Reigate Refugee Centre.
Sir Eric was very old. If
it hadn’t been for the miracles of medicine and erectile enhancement
drugs, the worst Lindiwe might have suffered would be a bathing in
urine and possibly a severe spanking. Unfortunately for her, the
knight was so well medicated that Lindiwe was fully occupied for the
whole span of her two or three hour appointment. Before she left, she
would need to shower and apply makeup to remove the traces of semen,
spit and urine from her face and body. Such cleanliness was expected.
It was as much in Sir Eric’s interest as it was for Lindiwe’s dignity.
The employees of a cleaning service company, even one as expensive as
Ebony, wouldn’t normally be expected to leave the client’s home
with semen dripping down her chin or have mascara smeared all over the
face. And Sir Eric wouldn’t want either his neighbours or his
constituents to know what he did for amusement.
As a freshly divorced
backbench MP, Sir Eric could now spend the hours not already dedicated
to serving his constituencies or his Party Whip by doing exactly what
he wanted.
And this currently
involved buggering Lindiwe while concurrently complaining bitterly and
long about being a Lib Con MP.
“I’ve been a Tory all my
life,” he said as his artificially guaranteed erection ploughed inside
Lindiwe’s arse (for the usual extra cost). “Now I’m a fucking Lib Con.
Fucking con is right. It’s a con that dilutes the electoral choice. No
one can vote Conservative without also voting for the fucking Liberal
pinkos.”
All conversation with Sir
Eric was one-sided. The knight did all the talking, which he did from
the moment Lindiwe arrived until she left, while, in her role as Ebony,
Lindiwe said very little at all. There was virtually no one that the
former chancellor didn’t blame for the ultimate failure of the English
National Unity government apart from himself. The fucking Scots, the
bastard Welsh, the Liberal pinko cunts, the arsehole Belgians, the
vacillating Americans, the slit-eyed Chinks and Nips, the wops, the
frogs, the krauts and, most of all, the conniving Prime Minister Ivan
Eisenegger who’d let everything fall apart. What hatred Sir Eric
didn’t reserve for his political enemies was directed at every group
of individual that wasn’t white, wasn’t wealthy, wasn’t male and
wasn’t at least middle-aged.
Lindiwe knew exactly what
her ranking was in Sir Eric’s hierarchy of humanity. As a nigger
bitch, as he so charmingly addressed her, she was basically hardly
better than the four-legged animal that shared the same title. Only,
as Sir Eric wasn’t likely to fuck, bugger, piss on or otherwise
gratify himself on a female dog, Lindiwe had to do.
Lindiwe got into the habit
of watching the news before she visited Sir Eric. She had bought a
tablet on which she could browse the latest news and surf the
internet. Lindiwe knew she’d be in for a rough time if the news was of
the kind likely to antagonise Sir Eric. The news wasn’t quite as
predictable a weather vane as Lindiwe would have liked, but she’d come
to dread any intimation of success in the Kingdom of England’s
faltering attempts to rejoin the Northern European Union, any sign of
tolerance towards immigrants or the socially disadvantaged, and any
fresh revelations about the excesses associated with the English
National Unity government. News stories about the Norfolk flooding,
the melting Antarctic ice sheet, the desertification of Brazil or the
famine in Egypt didn’t generally trouble him much at all.
Although Sir Eric was
quite happy to stick his tongue, penis and fist in the most private of
Lindiwe’s orifices, he couldn’t raise himself to shake her hand or
even acknowledge her departure beyond a cursory remark. “I guess it’s
time for you to scamper back to your grass hut,” he might say. Or:
“The cash is in the usual place. Don’t spend it all on bananas.” So,
even at the very last, after Lindiwe had showered and dressed herself,
the knight couldn’t resist a gratuitous insult.
Was this what Lindiwe’s
expensive and hard-fought education had led her to?
“I was studying to be an
eye-surgeon,” said Jiao-Jie, Lindiwe’s flatmate, when she posed the
question. “Then the Zambian government decided to expel its Chinese
citizens. My family had lived in Zambia for three generations. The
Democratic Republic of China wasn’t letting back Zambian emigrants
whatever their ethnicity and neither was anywhere else.”
Lindiwe sighed. “It’s a
lottery. The stupidest and most ignorant Englishman gets a better life
than we do.”
“For the moment,” said
Jiao-Jie philosophically. “On the other hand, at the current rate at
which the Kingdom’s economy is declining it won’t be long before it’s
on the same level as Portugal or Estonia. And look at the problems
there. Riots. Famine. Even plague.”
“Even the worst-off nation
in Europe, whether in the North or the South, fares better than any
country in Africa,” said Lindiwe. “There was basically no government
at all when I left Maseru. And the people who were supposed to govern
were no better than Sir Eric Esterhazy. They screwed everyone and
blamed the country’s problems on foreigners and traitors.”
“That’s what’s happening
in Europe as well.”
“It’s still not as bad as
Africa,” protested Lindiwe. “There are no jobs. There’s no food in the
markets. Every year the harvests fail. The police are worse than the
thieves they’re supposed to be protecting us from. The government of
the United States of South Africa only controls the larger cities and
the borders.”
Jiao-Jie wasn’t going to
be outdone by this one-upmanship of misery. “I don’t even have a
country to claim as my own. China doesn’t want me. Zambia doesn’t want
me. And do you think I’d be working for Empire Cleaning Services if
England wanted me?”
No Future Volume One
XXIII
Olive
2082
Emily
was kneeling in front of the screen and staring intently at the high
definition images which were her only escape from drab and dirty real
life. The television was by far the most valuable of her mother’s
possessions. She touched the replay symbol on the touchpad which
displayed an exact miniature copy of the image that was blazoned on a
much larger scale on the screen.
Like any five year old,
she’d much rather be watching cartoons, but the television was still
stuck on a website that was screening an amateur film clip of the Lib
Con Massacre. This film was showing the culmination of the siege on
the Liberal Conservative Party headquarters by an angry, starving mob
that was offloading its murderous frustrations just as it had done a
day or so before at the Fox News England television studios.
Specifically, what Emily was viewing in full graphic high-definition
splendour was the wholesale massacre of a group of politicians and
their supporters.
Emily had seen the film of
the punching, stabbing and lynching so many times now that it no
longer shocked her. There was a lot of blood. The cries for mercy and
the screams of pain and agony were very frightening. The person who’d
been filming the violence was very much on the side of the hate-filled
rioters and narrated a commentary on the events as they happened with
obvious relish.
“And now it’s the turn of
fucking Eric fucking Esterhazy,” he yelled. “Die you fucking cunt!
Just fucking die! Harr! Harr! His fucking nose is smashed. Kill the
cunt!”
Emily wasn’t too sure what
half the words meant but they were still words she’d heard many times
before. Cunt. Shit. Pee-pee. Shut the fuck up. And every word or
expression was usually prefixed by ‘fucking’ for emphasis.
“Fuck sake, Emily,”
shouted her mummy, Olive, who was holding a joint in her hand and
wearing nothing but a pair of slippers. “What’s this shit you’re
watching?”
“It’s only what I was
fucking watching a moment ago,” said Emily’s Daddy for today who Emily
hadn’t really got to know very well yet. She knew that her new Daddy
wasn’t her proper Daddy because unlike Emily and Olive whose skins
were pale with a slightly bluish tinge, this Daddy had very dark skin.
And Emily could see all of his skin including his stiff and twitching
penis.
“And what the fuck is
that?” asked Olive. “It’s not what you’d call approp... appropri...
right for a little girl.”
“It’s just those riots
yesterday, innit?” said Ed. “Watching the cunts getting a kicking.
Look at that fucker. All his fucking teeth everywhere...”
Ed was referring to a
scene where an elderly man was being kicked again and again in the
mouth. Despite the high digital resolution, the image was wobbling
about all over the place.
“Emily should be watching
fucking cartoons,” said Olive as she grabbed the touchpad out of her
daughter’s hands. “She shouldn’t be watching this shit. What the fuck!
Where’s the fucking kiddie stuff?”
Ed laughed as the picture
switched to some hardcore porn movie that showed explicit film of a
woman’s face being ejaculated on. “What kind of fucking kiddie stuff
do you want?”
“Not fucking pervy stuff,
you dirty-minded cunt,” she said. “Here we are. Cartoons. Fucking
kiddie cartoons. Not fucking sick shit.”
Olive returned the
touchpad remote control to her daughter. “Now you just watch this shit
while me and Daddy have a cuddle on the mattress. No fucking peeking,
right.”
“Yes, mummy,” said Emily
who’d often peeked, of course, and didn’t much like what she saw at
all. It was just the same as the porn stuff on the television screen
but not as easy to see what was going on.
“Shouldn’t the kid be at
fucking school or something?” wondered Ed while he stroked his penis
in readiness for the action to come.
“School? Yeah, I guess
so,” said Olive as she lay down on the mattress which was the only
furniture on the room’s bare floor-boards other than the battered sofa
and the kitchen chairs. They were all gathered in the living room
because it was the only room in Olive’s apartment other than the
shower/toilet and the tiny kitchenette. “When I find a school I don’t
have to fight through fucking Afghanistan to get to, I’ll fucking take
her there.”
“It ain’t as bad as all
that,” said Ed.
“Yes it fucking is,” said
Olive. “It’s a fucking war zone out there. Like your fucking Palestine
or your fucking Pakistan. It’s all fucking guns, knives and drug
dealers and shit.”
“You do a bit of dealing
as well, you know...”
“A girl’s got to fucking
survive, don’t she? But it ain’t good, you know. There mightn’t be
fucking radiation or mushroom clouds or shit like that, but it ain’t
nice out there. I don’t want my girl to get fucked by a perv or knifed
by a gangster. And anyway what fucking good is school anyway? There
ain’t no fucking jobs no more.”
Emily didn’t really
understand very much of what Mummy was saying. And she hated it when
Mummy and her new Daddy cuddled on the mattress. It was so noisy and
it looked weird. On the other hand, it was better when they did
it during the day, rather than at night when Emily was trying to sleep
on the sofa with the coiled spring that had poked its way through the
plastic cover and chafed against her calves. On those occasions, her
Mummy’s vocal lovemaking kept her awake and Emily got ever so tired.
What she liked best was when her Mummy was staying out of the flat
somewhere else, usually still within the bounds of the sprawling
Housing Estate that covered almost the whole extent of Hackney
Marshes. Then Emily was able to doze on the mattress accompanied only
by cartoons burbling on in the background.
In fact, cartoons were
about the only entertainment Emily had to enjoy when she was at home
by herself. Emily preferred it when Mummy was out during the day and
was thoughtful enough to dump her daughter on one of the neighbours.
Then she was able to play with children from the other flats. Emily
soon discovered that other people’s flats were usually no better than
her mother’s. Sometimes there was a separate bedroom so that there was
no risk of anyone else’s Mummy and Daddy cuddling while the children
played or, more often, stared at the flat thin screens that dominated
most households. These were powered by the same kind of heavy battery
that Mummy had to buy every now and then from the supermarket just
over a kilometre away. That was an intimidating place that Emily
enjoyed visiting where plate glass windows protected the cashiers from
the all too frequent gun raids.
Other children’s Mummies
and Daddies were generally much the same as Emily’s. The Mummies would
sit round the flat all day and usually the Daddies did much the same.
This was especially so in winter when it was cold and the batteries
ran down so quickly while burning up all their power on the little bar
heaters that hardly kept anyone warm anyway.
Some homes had computer
games which were fun to play although many were also very violent.
Sometimes they were almost as bad as the film of the Lib Con Massacre,
even if it was a lot easier to see what was going on.
A few children also went
to school, although Olive was mostly right about the attendant risk.
It was often quite dangerous just to walk along the open streets and
some of the older children had scary stories to tell of the violent
fights they’d witnessed. As a result, most children went to school in
groups of five or more just for safety. And from what Emily had heard,
even school didn’t sound like it was especially safe or secure even
though it was surrounded by thick metal gates and the windows were all
barred.
Emily dreaded it when
visitors called when she was at home alone with Mummy. The worst was
the Rent Collector. He was a big man that Olive called the Fat Cunt
when he wasn’t there, but Mr. Obasanjo when he was visiting. He
was indeed overweight and his skin was even darker than Ed’s, but he
was always polite to Emily. In fact, Emily sometimes wondered whether
he wasn’t a little too nice to her. Olive also dreaded his
visits. She told her daughter that the Fat Cunt always carried a gun
and a big metal stick and if Mummy didn’t pay the rent he’d use one of
them if he didn’t use the other. Although the flats no longer
officially belonged to anyone now that Hackney Borough Council had
surrendered administrative control, it was men like Mr. Obasanjo who
ensured that they would never be exactly free for residents.
Olive wasn’t let off when
she didn’t have the money to pay the week’s rent. Not only would she
have to pay the difference the following week with interest, but she’d
have to suck Mr. Obasanjo’s fat stubby penis to be granted even that
much dispensation.
“This time swallow the
shit,” Mr. Obasanjo said when he spurted out his sperm into Olive’s
mouth. “You know I don’t like it when it drips on your fucking tits.”
“Yes, Mr. Ozzabanjo,” said
Olive as she wiped her lips and with a pained expression let the pale
goo slip down her throat.
Mr. Obasanjo slapped Olive
across her face that left her with a bruise that would swell up on her
pale cheek in the hours after his departure. “Don’t ever
fucking call me that, bitch! Obasanjo. That’s my name. Daniel
Obasanjo.”
“I didn’t mean nothing.”
“Well don’t say nothing,
then,” he said. “Just have the readies next time. All of them.
Otherwise you’ll have to sleep in a cardboard box under the Eastway
with those other homeless cunts.”
Olive’s other visitors
were generally less hostile than the Rent Collector, but there were
still often arguments. These were mostly about drugs and money which,
Emily got to realise, were usually closely associated with each other.
Olive’s only other source of income was from the Unemployment Workshop
which she attended on a fairly irregular basis. The work was demeaning
and it didn’t pay well, but it supplied Olive with food tokens and a
small amount of cash which could be spent on rent, drugs and
batteries.
Some days were worse than
others. A good day was one when Emily got enough sleep, when she got
to play with her friends while Mummy was out somewhere, and when she
didn’t go hungry. Bad days were when there wasn’t any food, when the
water supply was cut off, when it was cold and there wasn’t enough
money to buy a battery to keep the electric heater running or to power
the television.
And it was especially bad
when her Mummy and the current new Daddy were arguing and shouting at
each other.
This was always very
frightening, especially since there was no other room for Emily to
hide while Olive and the man sharing her mattress were throwing things
at each other. These were the times when ‘fucking’ was a word used
more often than any other and usually more than twice in each
sentence.
“I want to go to school,
Mummy,” Emily said to Olive one morning after an argument which had
culminated in the latest new Daddy slamming the door behind him as he
left.
Her mother lay on the bed
with a bruise over her face and caked blood just beneath her nose.
“What, darling?” she said, feeling sorry for herself as she usually
did after an altercation of this nature.
“I want to go to school,
Mummy.”
“It’s fucking dangerous.
You know what it’s like out there. I don’t want a girl of mine to get
fucked up by some cunt.”
“Mo goes to school. So
does Fatty and Jack. And so does Cookie.”
“Who’re those cunts?”
“They’re friends of mine.
We play at Aunt Suzy’s place when you leave me there.”
“Oh, Suzy’s kids. I didn’t
know they went to school.”
“They go in some kind of
convoy,” said Emily.
“Convoy. What’s
that?”
“It’s when lots of kids go
together. Mo said I could go with them to school.”
“What school?”
“Just school.”
“I guess it’s fucking
Gainsborough First School. The one that got flooded last time,” said
Olive. She contemplated the idea for a moment. “You get free school
dinners there, don’t you? And they keep you warm and shit when it’s
cold, don’t they?”
“I think so,” said Emily
who’d not previously been aware of the fringe benefits of schooling.
She just wanted to be away from the flat and all the quarrelling. And
she also wanted to spend more time with her friends.
“Yeah, if you can go with
Suzy’s kids then go. Just don’t fucking wake me up before you leave.”
“Can I go tomorrow?”
“Course you fucking can.
You don’t have to wear school uniform or anything, do you? Just don’t
go in the nude.”
Clothes were a genuine
problem, of course. All Emily’s clothes were the wrong size and most
of them were threadbare and full of holes. And usually they were also
rather dirty. Olive’s visits to the launderette were kept to the bare
minimum. But Emily looked at her mother who as always was more or less
wearing nothing at all. Emily didn’t want to look like that.
“I’ll tell Mo to wait for
me tomorrow,” said Emily.
“Yeah. Whatever,” said
Olive.
No Future Volume One
XXIV
Lord Newbury
2077
It
was an uncomfortable fact that Lord Newbury’s title was neither
ancient nor especially honourable. But it was a title of which he was
very proud although the only privileges it endowed on him were those
of status and hereditary wealth. There was no political power
associated with the hereditary title and there hadn’t been for over
seventy years. And now the bastards were threatening to dispose of
what little value in the title still remained. Over a thousand years
of glorious tradition was to be swept aside. A tradition older than
England itself. And all because of the unfinished business of the
dissolution of the United Kingdom.
It could have been so
different if that idiot Princess Rachel hadn’t made such a mess of her
proposed marriage to that commoner. It was bad enough that centuries
of precedent were amended to enable her to succeed to the throne. And
then she broke yet more precedent by wanting to marry a mere low-life.
But worst of all was for her to have subsequently made such a fuck-up
of the whole affair...
It left a very unpleasant
taste in the Right Honourable gentleman’s mouth. He grimaced as he
regarded the images displayed on his library computer screen.
“Excuse me, my lord,” said
the butler who had discreetly slipped into the room. “Sir Eric
Esterhazy is waiting to see you.”
“Is he, Edwards?” said the
lord. He hurriedly shut down the browser window so that it showed no
evidence of the rather undignified website he’d been visiting. “Show
him in.”
“Yes, my lord.”
Lord Newbury stationed
himself in a stately position by the bookcase where he could pretend
to consult a rather dull nineteenth century volume on fossil snails.
It did at least have some passably interesting black-and-white plates.
Sir Eric entered the
library and bowed decorously. He stood at a respectful distance and
waited for Lord Newbury to address him.
“Good to see you again,
Eric.”
“It’s good to see you
also, my lord.”
“I guess you must be
wondering why I asked you over here.”
“It’s always a pleasure,
my lord.”
“I’m afraid it isn’t for
pleasure this time. The reason I’ve asked you to visit is for your
advice.”
“I’m honoured, my lord.”
“How long is it since you
retired, Eric?”
“I didn’t retire as such,
my lord.”
“No, I guess not. In what
year did you last serve as Member of Parliament for Reigate, Eric?”
“The General Election of
’68.”
“That’s when they redrew
the boundaries, wasn’t it? It’s become harder and harder for decent
men to represent the country.”
“Much harder, my lord.”
“Who represents Reigate
now, Eric?”
“An incompetent idiot from
the Social and Liberal Democratic Party, my lord.”
“I can’t keep up with all
these new political parties. Whatever happened to the old certainties,
Eric?”
“The electorate is
perverse, my lord. They would prefer to be represented by a rabble of
pretty much identical pinko political parties rather than by a
sensible choice between a strong Conservative government and a weak
coalition of Greens and Socialists.”
“You were never one of
those who liked it when the Tories merged with the Liberals, were
you?”
“It only served to further
compromise an already diluted brand, my lord.”
“My concern,
however, is less to do with the dismal state of English politics,
Eric, but the future no less of England’s venerable tradition of
aristocracy. As you know, the present coalition government of lefties,
greens, vegetarians and lesbians has plans to dispense with the very
institution of nobility. If they have their way, the title I bear will
be gone forever. I would no longer be known as Lord Newbury. I would
be known only as Norman Francis Erickson. That’s a disgrace.
Honourable traditions such as the aristocracy are what made England
great.”
“England is no longer
great, my lord.”
“Indeed,” agreed the lord.
“The lunatic Left and the Greens have taken over. What justification
does the coalition government have for wanting to make the Kingdom of
England some kind of republic?”
“Pressure from abroad, my
lord,” said Sir Eric. “The Kingdoms of Scotland and Northern Ireland
have unilaterally declared themselves as the Scottish and Northern
Irish Republics. Wales has already been a republic for a while. The
Commonwealth has totally disbanded. The Royal Family is no longer
perceived as a national asset.”
Lord Newbury frowned. “You
should never have relinquished power, Eric. See what’s happened in the
last decade or so. This is a fight to the last breath. What hope has
England got in its darkest hour?”
“I need to consult a
sympathetic expert in constitutional matters, my lord,” said Sir Eric,
“but I’m certain that overthrowing a Constitutional Monarch isn’t as
straightforward as the coalition government seems to believe. It’s not
just English postage stamps that would have to change. There is also
the fact that the Armed Forces pledge allegiance to the crown and not
to the government of the day.”
“How can the fortunes of
the Royal Family be the same as those of the Peerage?” said Lord
Newbury. “As far as I’m concerned, the wastrels at Buckingham Palace
and Windsor deserve to lose their estates.”
“The Armed Forces do not
pledge allegiance to barons, dukes or earls, my lord.”
“I see.”
“On the other hand, the
Royal Family needs a stock of bona fide blue bloods, my lord.
The fortunes of the King and Princess Rachel are very much one with
the fortunes of the treacherously dispossessed peers.”
“What can be done, Eric?”
“There are legal processes
that can be invoked, my lord,” said Sir Eric. “If these fail, then
there is direct appeal to the electorate...”
“You saw what bloody good
that did in Scotland,” said the lord. “The ungrateful bastards voted
overwhelmingly to dump the monarchy.”
“I think there was an
element of nationalism in the referendum vote, my lord. The Royal
Family was perceived to be English.”
“Well, of course they’re
bloody English. They’ve not been Scots for nearly four hundred years.”
“The English electorate
might warm to them in that respect, my lord.”
“I suppose so, Eric,” said
Lord Newbury. “But if that fails, what’s left?”
“The military option, my
lord.”
“Do we really want a
second English Civil War?”
“If it defends what’s
right, my lord.”
“Hmm,” said the lord.
“Would the Scots and the Welsh get involved?”
“It’s an internal matter,
my lord.”
“What about the bloody
Sprouts?”
“Brussels won’t be
involved, my lord. The Northern European Union has been decidedly
reluctant to readmit the Kingdom of England.”
“It’s those bloody Scots
again, isn’t it? Ungrateful bastards. It’s them we should declare war
against.”
“That was my advice when I
was last in the cabinet, my lord. Unofficially, of course.”
“You should have nuked the
bastards,” said the lord bitterly.
“It was mostly because the
Scots had access to nuclear weapons that my suggestion was overruled,
my lord.”
“I guess it would’ve been
a bit risky,” Lord Newbury admitted. “After all, the wind sometimes
blows from the north. The Geordies wouldn’t have been very happy,
would they?”
“Not at all, my lord.”
“How many right-thinking
people can we rely on, Eric?”
“There are fewer than
there used to be, my lord,” Sir Eric admitted. “But on the other hand,
the stakes are higher. It’s do or die, my lord.”
“It most certainly bloody
well is, Eric. But will they stand up and be counted?”
“The glory and pride of
England is at risk, my lord.”
“Is there enough money?”
“Switzerland remains
neutral, my lord. The bank vaults will hold firm against the prying
noses of the Sprouts, the Yanks and the Arabs. And they’re too high
above sea level to get submerged, my lord.”
“Unlike the rest of us,”
said Lord Newbury. “Did you see the news last night?”
“It’s dreadful, my lord,”
said Sir Eric. “The City of London and half of Westminster...”
“They should have piled
the sandbags higher,” said the lord. “And why did they bother
protecting the East End? Who cares if the degenerate scum and illegal
immigrants sink under five foot of water?”
“Not me, my lord.”
“Anyway, I digress. Do you
think we’ll be in a position to safeguard the essence of England
against those who seek to bring it to its knees?”
“I have already been
discussing potential courses of action with other sympathetic parties,
my lord.”
“Like who?”
“Many, my lord. News media
executives. Prominent internet companies. Loyal military men. Fellow
Liberal Conservatives...”
“Not the Liberal ones I
hope...”
“Of course not, my lord.
There are many well-informed, well-financed and well-intentioned
parties who are willing to harmonise with our enterprise if need be.”
“As they did in ’53? Let’s
hope they have the stomach for the fight this time.”
“It is ever more perilous,
my lord.”
“It’s a funny old world
altogether, Eric,” said the lord. “The Chinks and the Nips run the
show. The Yanks, the Krauts and the Frogs are all in the second
division. The Yanks have been a bloody disappointment, don’t you
think?”
“I had high hopes for the
Republic of North America, my lord.”
“They were just left with
the crappy parts of the United States when it all fell apart. It’s the
world’s most heavily defended breadbasket. Bristling with nukes it
can’t use because the slightest disruption to agriculture would simply
cripple the entire nation.”
“There are those who call
it more a basket-case than a breadbasket, my lord.”
“Yes, Eric. President Beck
is either senile or mad.”
“Or both, my lord.”
“I just don’t know where
things have gone wrong, Eric. You don’t think all that global warming
nonsense is to blame?”
“The Greens made the right
predictions, my lord, but they got on the wrong side of the Business
Sector. What’s the point of being right, if you can’t make money out
of it?”
“Absolutely. The interests
of English business are paramount, wouldn’t you say Eric? Although
I’ll be damned if I can be sure there’s actually much left of English
business to be proud about.”
No Future Volume One
XXV
Zoe
2047
“Where
the fuck am I?” Zoe asked.
She raised her head from
the down-filled cushion on the leather sofa and looked around her at
the posters on the wall that depicted a random selection of teenage
obsessions. About her feet was a scattering of discarded beer cans,
cigarette papers and glossy magazines. A mirror lay flat on the table
beside a half-empty glass of white wine.
“You’ve woken up, have
you?” said Tom, who was sitting cross-legged in only his boxer shorts
and thumbing with no apparent interest through the pages of a women’s
fashion magazine. “We thought you’d be out for hours.”
“She has been,” said Eve,
who was also wearing only a pair of boxer shorts that were probably
not her own. “It’s been fucking forever since Zoe dropped off.”
“It’s the fucking dope,”
said Zoe who lowered her feet off the sofa onto the floor. All she was
wearing was a tee-shirt that had the Arsenal FC logo which she’d
bought once when she was briefly into women’s football. But that was
ages ago. “I’ll ask again. Where the fuck am I?”
“You’re at Al’s,” said
Tom. “He got the munchies so he went off to get a pizza or something.”
“When’d he do that?”
“Fucking hours ago,” said
Eve. “Or maybe it was ten minutes ago. I dunno.”
“Shit. I need some charlie
or whizz or something to wake me up,” said Zoe. “The E’s worn off and
I feel like shit. Anyone got any coke?”
“Al’s got some smack,”
volunteered Tom.
“That’ll do the trick,”
said Zoe.
“Scarcely a pick-me-up,”
said Eve.
“It’ll do.”
Zoe glanced down at her
crotch which she noticed was still slightly sticky. She ran her
fingers through the pubic hairs. “Have we been fucking?” she
asked.
“Yeah,” said Tom. “Don’t
you remember?”
“Not at all,” Zoe
admitted. “Did I fuck you as well, Eve?”
“Of course,” said Eve.
“And Al fucked Tom right up the arse. It was fucking hilarious! Tom
didn’t know if he liked it or hated it.”
“I fucking hated
it!” said Tom indignantly.
“I dunno,” said Eve. “You
looked like you were enjoying it. No one else was fucking your arse at
the time.”
“I got a fucking strap-on
fucking dildo thing at home,” said Zoe.
“Yeah,” said Eve. “But you
didn’t bring it with you, did you?”
“Do you seriously
not remember fucking?” asked Tom. “I mean you were really fucking into
it: the fucking and everything.”
“Did you fuck me up the
arse again?”
“No. Not after last time.
All that shit was fucking awful. My prick smelt bad for days.”
“That was fucking
hilarious!” said Eve. “That’ll teach you to bugger someone without
asking them first.”
“You never seem to mind
much.”
“Shut up, you cunt,” said
Eve who threw a pillow at Tom which he only just about managed to
dodge.
“I’m fucking bombed,” Zoe
slurred. “What the fuck have I been taking?”
“Fucking everything,” said
Tom. “There’s fucking nothing you’ve not had...”
“’Cept the smack that Al’s
got coming,” said Eve. “We’re all fucking bombed, girl. I’m as fucked
as the fucking ’Stanis.”
“Which fucking ’Stanis
would that be, Eve?” asked Tom. “Would that be the Uzbekistanis, the
Turkmenistanis or the Kazakhstanis?”
“Maybe the other ones,”
said Eve. “I don’t fucking know, do I? They’re all the fucking same.
Pakistan first...”
“...and India as well,”
added Tom.
“Then it was every fucking
country with Stan in its name. Kurdistan wasn’t even like six years
old and it got fucked,” said Eve. “And I’m as fucked as all the
fucking ’Stans. I’m one fucked bitch.”
“I know that for sure,”
said Tom. “It’s just that Zoe can’t remember a fucking thing.”
“Did I fuck you, Eve?”
wondered Zoe. “Are you sure I didn’t bring my strap-on thingy here?”
“Don’t worry, Zoe,” said
Eve. “You did what you could without it.”
“You might be bombed,”
said Zoe. “But I’m fucking nuked.”
“Nuked, eh?” said Al who
came into the room carrying a stack of two large pizzas and an
eight-pack of lagers. “Like fucking Afghanistan?”
“As nuked as Tashkent,”
said Zoe.
“That’s not in fucking
Afghanistan,” said Tom. “It’s in one of the other ones I think.”
“Who fucking cares?” said
Al, who sat down and opened the boxes of pizza for everyone to dip
into. “They’re all the same. At least they are now. One stinking heap
of Islamic radioactive shit. No one would want to live there now.”
“’Cept the people who just
happened to be living there,” said Eve.
“People?” Tom laughed
callously. “Fucking mutants. All that radiation shit. Eyes sliding
down the face. Scabs and cancers and radioactive scars. Skin fused
like plastic. You’ve seen the film footage.”
“You’ve no right to be
so... to be so... fucking...” said Zoe incoherently. “Those Arabs or
Turks or whatever the fuck they were... They were human beings like
us. It’s not right to be so fucking...”
“You need a hit on this,
girl,” said Eve passing over the joint she’d been holding onto for
rather longer than Tom was happy with. “But you’re right. The ’Stanis
didn’t deserve the shit they got.”
“They asked for it,
though, didn’t they?” said Tom. “They didn’t have to nuke the shit out
of each other. There’s no law that says that when the water runs dry,
the crops fail and all you’ve got to live on is the poppy harvest,
then you’ve got to nuke yourself to buggery.”
“Talking about poppies...”
said Zoe.
Al took the hint. “I know
what you want, Zoe,” he said. “I’ll bring the wraps in later. That’s
one thing the war did. Price of fucking H dropped like the proverbial.
So did quality resin.”
“You got any of that?” Zoe
pleaded.
“I’ve got fucking
everything,” said Al.
“Still, you’ve gotta feel
for the buggers,” said Eve. “You’ve seen the films...”
“It was beautiful!”
said
Tom. “What a trip. Did you see the colours and everything on those
mushroom clouds?”
“Don’t be a cunt, Tom,”
said Al who held a pizza slice in one hand and a joint in the other.
“Those were fucking people being blown up by those nukes.”
“Well, you can feel as
fucking sorry as you like for those buggers,” said Tom. “They’re
thousands of miles away and they don’t even speak English. What about
the shit in this country?”
“What do you mean, Tom?”
asked Zoe who was really really enjoying her pizza slice. “No one’s
dropped any nukes on Clapham last time I looked.”
“The flooding’s a problem,
isn’t it?” said Tom. “And you saw that shit on telly about people
fucking starving, literally fucking starving, in this country. Food’s
too expensive. Social Security’s virtually dead, thanks to all the
cutbacks and disincentive programs. It’s all gone to fucking pot in
this country.”
“Talking of which,” said
Eve. “Toss us that plastic bag, Al?”
“Which one?”
“The one with the Afghani
Black, you wally.”
“Yeah,” said Al who handed
it over to her. “It’s good shit.”
“Did you fuck me, Al?”
asked Zoe in a tone of vague interest.
Al had to think.
“Yeah, I think I might
have done. I certainly remember fucking Eve and I can’t forget fucking
Tom.”
“You cunt!” said Tom
bitterly. “You know I don’t like it!”
“Calm it, girls!” said
Eve. “Who cares who fucked who?”
“I might if I get
pregnant,” said Zoe.
“You take the pill, don’t
you?” asked Tom, clearly alarmed.
“Or clap. Or Chlamydia. Or
even fucking AIDS.”
“You can get a cure for
AIDS on the NHS nowadays you know,” said Tom.
“Don’t be fucking soft,”
said Eve. “When’s the last time the NHS ever gave anything away. It’s
the fucking Twenty Forties. It’s because people like Zoe’s dad fucked
up the NHS that nobody gets nothing from them now.”
“My dad?” wondered Zoe.
“He pumps money into all
those right wing campaigns, doesn’t he?” said Eve. “Kick out the
immigrants. Cut taxes. Cut public spending. Get out of what’s left of
the fucking EU...”
“It’s split into two now,”
corrected Al.
“Whatever,” said Eve.
“It’s your dad who’s fucking the poor and feeding the rich. A fucking
Robin Hood in reverse.”
“He’s no fucking worse
than your dad, Eve,” Al said calmly. “In fact, all our dads are shit.
They’re all fucking up the world.”
“You’re all fucking
dimwits,” said Tom. “It’s ’cause our parents are so fucking wealthy we
can sit here and treat ourselves to as much shit as we like. And they
wouldn’t be so fucking rich if it weren’t for low taxes and all that.
And why do they do it? They do it for us. That’s what they say.”
“My dad fucking hates me,”
sniffed Zoe.
“What’d you say?” asked
Eve who wandered over to the couch where Zoe was lying with her newly
rolled five-skinner between her forefingers.
“My fucking dad fucking
hates me.”
“Poor diddums,” said Tom
unsympathetically. “I don’t think my dad likes me much either. But he
still gives me enough folding stuff to live in a shit hot flat out in
St John’s Wood. And what about your pad, Zoe? You can’t sniff at
Hampstead Heath, can you? If he didn’t like you just a little bit,
why’s he been so fucking generous?”
“Don’t be so mean, Tom,”
said Eve who lay Zoe’s head on her bare bosom. “You know Zoe’s dad’s a
real cunt.”
“Come on, Eve. When it
comes down to it, what about your dad?”
“Hey, Tom,” said Al. “This
is getting a bit out of fucking hand, you know. Just cool it. Zoe’s
coming out from a fuck of a heavy trip. The E’s making her feel real
shitty. You don’t have to make her feel shittier.”
“I know. I know,” said
Tom. “You’re right. Shit, shall I roll the next one?”
“I think this’ll be the
last joint for a while, Tom,” said Al. “We wanna get into a different
mood if we’re partying.”
“Partying?” asked Zoe,
who’d hardly ever felt less like it in her life.
“You know. At Age of
Love. They’ve got a good night tonight. Great DJs and a whole
lot of other good stuff. I got tickets ages ago.”
“We don’t have to go, you
know,” said Zoe.
“’Course we fucking do,”
said Al. “I’ve got some sulphate, some more E and some good quality H.
If we get the mix right we’ll be up till fucking Thursday.”
“What day’s it today?” Zoe
wondered.
“Tuesday,” said Eve
glancing at the calendar.
Zoe pondered over this
question. She took a long drag of the joint and looked longingly at
the pile of wraps mixed amongst the plastic bags at Al’s feet.
“Yeah,” she said. “Why
not? You’re on.”
No Future Volume One
XXVI
Eden
2049
“She’s
your daughter, too,” Eden said into the phone pressed against
his ear. “You got custody of her and you should bloody well come and
take care of her.”
“I’m miles away,” Zara
replied. “I can’t be expected to drop everything I’m doing just to
pick up my wayward daughter.”
“I don’t see why not,”
said Eden. “I can’t look after her. I’m due back in the Med tomorrow.
I’ve got meetings to go to. I’ve got things to organise. It seems that
every time I return to London, our junkie daughter imposes herself on
me.”
“You’ve got responsibility
for our daughter, too,” said Zara. “It’s not my fault she dumps
herself on you. I guess you’re more lenient about her jacking up...”
“Don’t take the moral high
ground with me. I know the exact extent of your ethics and propriety.
Your escapades are well documented.”
“I don’t see that’s
remotely relevant. The divorce was years ago. You settled. Your
private investigators might have trawled up dirt that you’d have
dished out if I’d held out for a better deal, but you can’t use that
now.”
“It’s your bloody fault
our daughter’s the way she is. You set the example.”
“And you haven’t?”
“Be reasonable,” said Eden
with exasperation. “Your daughter’s OD’d again. The doctors have
pumped out her stomach and she’s laid up sick in her childhood
bedroom. She can’t stay here when I fly back to the Med. You’ve got
to take responsibility.”
“No way,” said Zara. “Last
time she stayed at my place, she pawned one of those Liberian diamonds
for heroin or cocaine or something. I’m not taking that risk again.
She’s a junkie. She can mainline in someone else’s home not mine.
You’ve got the money, you handle it. Why don’t you just book her into
rehab again?”
“It didn’t do much good,
did it?”
“Well, it’s your problem
this time,” said Zara. “She’s in one of your homes and I’m not
prepared to take the risk of having the little bitch steal any more
jewellery.”
“I don’t know why I
thought you might have a more positive attitude.”
“We’re both her parents,”
said Zara. “She’s with you now. Just deal with it.”
With that, Eden heard her
click off the phone.
“Fuck,” said Eden. He put
the phone back into the inside pocket of his jacket and gazed out of
the window onto the leafy square below. He was in the top floor study
of his Mayfair house and had a perfect view of the protest march that
was wending its way through the plush streets. Undoubtedly it was
concerned with something the bloody Americans had said or done to
arouse the ire of the good-for-nothing layabouts. Was it something to
do with petrol subsidies? Was it the nukes they’d sold to Kazakhstan?
Was it the use of fire-arms to suppress protests in Detroit and
Chicago? God knows. These greenies and lefties and bloody pooftahs
just didn’t know right from wrong.
Reluctantly, Eden strode
out the study and descended a flight of stairs to Zoe’s childhood
bedroom. The decor hadn’t changed for ten years and preserved a
snapshot of his daughter’s principal interests from a time before
they’d transferred to boyfriends and drugs. There were teddy bears and
dolls piled up on the shelves. The posters on the wall displayed
fresh-faced boy bands many of whose fortunes had been propelled by
Eden’s money although his interest in them had never stretched as far
as to actually listen to their music. And in the middle of all this
was Zoe’s huge bed that was large enough for three adults to sleep in
rather than just one young girl. Even now, Zoe was dwarfed by her bed.
There wasn’t much of her
to be seen. Her head and arms were exposed while the rest of her was
just a bump under the duvet. A clear plastic tube trailed from one
nostril and was connected at the other end to the complex machinery
left behind by the doctors after they’d pumped out her stomach. She
was awake but looked almost as much like a zombie now as when she’d
arrived at Eden’s principal London address a couple of days ago. And
that was before she’d injected herself with what she must have known
was a dangerously high dose.
Eden didn’t have much
sympathy for this or any other kind of hysterical melodrama. It was
obvious that his slutty junkie daughter was crying for help. You don’t
come to your father’s London home on one of the few occasions he’s in
town and then OD on him if you didn’t envisage yourself playing the
tragic role in a crappy soap opera. Eden might give his daughter money
and medical attention, he might stretch to paying for rehab and
methadone, but he’d be damned if he’d extend her much sympathy. She
didn’t have to become a drug addict. It was she who’d have to come
round to seeing the error of her ways.
He then noticed that Zoe’s
eyes were open and following him as he paced back and forth across the
room.
“You’re awake, I see.”
“Hello, Dad,” said Zoe
weakly.
“So you’ve disgraced us
again,” said Zoe’s father. “Or should I say: yet again? Your mother
and I give you everything you want and more, and what do you do in
return? Can’t you do something with your money other than squander it
on drugs?”
“I’m sorry, Dad.”
“You’re just saying that
so I don’t cut you off,” said Eden as he stood by Zoe’s bed and chose
not to sit on the chair that was beside him. “How would you like it if
I did that, then? You’d have to make a living like the rest of the
scum...”
“The ones who’re rioting
and demanding higher wages?”
“Yes,” said Eden. “The
great unwashed masses.”
“It’s only because they’re
desperate,” said Zoe. “They don’t get a hearing in the media, at least
not the media you own...”
“Part own,” Eden
automatically corrected.
“...and the government
doesn’t care for them, either.”
“You sound like a commie,”
said Eden. “Anyway, the point isn’t about those troublemakers but you.
And the trouble you make is right on my doorstep. In fact, it’s right
here in this bedroom. What should I do with you?”
“Book me into rehab.”
“Again? Lot of
bloody good that did. Cost a fortune.”
“I was clean for ages
afterwards.”
“We want you off drugs for
life. Not just for a few months. But I guess you’re right. There’s
nothing else I can do for you.”
“Are you gonna sit with
me, Dad?” Zoe pleaded.
“Sit with you?” Eden
wondered as he glanced at the chair by the bedside.
“I don’t get to talk with
you very often,” Zoe said. “You’re never at home. You’re always off to
the Med or the Caribbean or Switzerland or something...”
“Can you blame me?” said
Eden with irritation. “Why don’t you stay with your mother if you want
company? And it’s not as if you don’t have a place of your own to
stay. That apartment in St. John’s Wood cost a bloody fortune. I
could’ve done a lot better with that money.”
“Mum’s always busy,” said
Zoe. “She’s like you: always going places. And last time I tried to
visit her she wouldn’t let me in...”
“I heard about that,” said
Eden. “I’m with your mother on that one. You were clearly out of your
mind. The police had to be called to restrain you.”
“It was the K,” said Zoe.
“And the booze. And the coke. I’ve steered clear of stuff like that
since.”
“So, what’s it now?”
sneered Eden. “You’re still taking heroin, I see. The doctors found
quite a mixture of stuff in your stomach, not to mention your veins.”
“It’s so cheap and easy to
get hold of,” said Zoe. “Ever since the wars in the ’Stans, there’s
been more opium and heroin and stuff than there’s ever been.”
“It’s not radioactive, is
it?” wondered Eden who was suddenly alarmed at the prospect of his
daughter spreading radioactive poison around his Mayfair home.
“I don’t know, Dad,” said
Zoe. “Might be. The people who sell it don’t tell you. Might put
people off buying it otherwise.”
“Do you think so?” asked
Eden. That might be an angle one of his newspapers could use in their
anti-drug campaigns. Maybe he could suggest it. Radioactive poppies.
Radioactive people. There might be some mileage in that before the
paper eventually had to print the necessary but belated disclaimer.
“I don’t know anything
about nuclear radiation, Dad.”
“Of course not,” said
Eden. “The money we spent on your education has been as wasted as the
money we’ve spent on everything else to do with you. I’d say it was
all going on drugs if it wasn’t for the fact we’ve probably spent more
on medical bills to repair the damage you’ve done to yourself than the
drugs cost that caused the damage. You look a bloody mess. Your nose
will never look the same again...”
Zoe was too weak to do
more than snort through nostrils where an artificial septum separated
one from the other.
“I don’t know what to do
with you,” said Eden finally. “I’ll get Theo to organise the rehab and
we’ll get you packed off there as soon as you’re in an acceptable
state. But that’s not going to be the end of it, is it? You’ll be back
here again, won’t you? Maybe this time you’ll be in a coma. Think how
bloody embarrassing that’ll be for me.”
“The media never publishes
anything about me, Dad,” said Zoe. “You’d sue them if they did...”
“...Or sack them if I’m
able to,” said her father. “Look, I’ve wasted enough time on you.
You’re a bloody lost cause. Next time I’m in this country, would it be
possible for me to see you without an intravenous drip in your arm and
a plaster over your nose? Would that be so difficult for you?”
“I didn’t mean to be a
nuisance, Dad.”
Eden frowned. “I’m not
sure about that,” he said. “Why couldn’t you dump yourself on your
mother’s doorstep? Why mine? I’m a public figure. Your mother’s just
another rich divorcee.”
“Mum’s never in, Dad,”
said Zoe.
Eden uncharitably wondered
where his ex-wife might be if that was the case. She didn’t gamble and
she’d given up on drugs years ago after her own near fatal overdose
which Eden had to fight hard and litigiously to keep out of the press.
That was when his control on the media was rather less complete than
it was today. Eden ruefully recalled that she claimed to prefer taller
men. Perhaps she was buying their services in just the way Eden
resorted to the arms of women who, as a result of his unofficial
capital ventures, were also discreetly providing him with a slice of
their action.
“Why not just stay in your
Battersea apartment?” he suggested.
“It’s a tip, Dad.”
“That’s not my fault. I
pay cleaners to keep your apartment in order.”
“I usually turn them away
when they appear, Dad.”
“Why’s that?”
“You don’t always want
people seeing what’s going on, Dad.”
“And what on earth could
that be?” said Eden with contempt. “These cleaning companies are
discreet. Even if you’d got a dismembered body in your bathroom,
they’d say nothing. They’d just bill me the extra cost. Anyway, when
you get back from rehab there’ll be no excuse. I’ll get Theo to get
Empire Cleaning Services to do a thorough job.”
“Yes, Dad.”
“Now, if you don’t mind I
have pressing business to get on with,” said Eden, who with relief
finally left his daughter’s room.
He descended the stairs to
the reception area and sat down in one of his massive leather
armchairs. He took a cigar out from a box by the armrest, clipped the
end and slowly puffed on it.
The distress of seeing his
daughter lying prone on her bed drained him of energy. It was worrying
that his domestic life shared none of the success of his business
ventures. A divorced wife and a junkie daughter. It was a good thing
he’d had no other children or wives. He didn’t need another wife. He
could get whatever women he liked and there was never a need to shower
them with diamonds or allowances. And the children of his closest
friends were as much a disappointment to them as Zoe was to him.
Eden picked up his mobile
phone and dialled a number. He had to organise a few things before he
could set off to his offices in the Docklands where he was due to
discuss business with his executive directors.
“Theo,” he said when the
phone was answered. “My daughter’s disgraced herself once more. You
won’t be surprised to learn that she’s overdone the drugs again. There
are a few things I need you to arrange for me.”
No Future Volume One
XXVII
Tamara
2094
The
old lady staggered across the floor of Costa Starbucks while also
carrying a tray on which unsteadily wobbled a mug of cappuccino and a
slice of rich chocolate cake. It was obvious to Tamara that she needed
help. There was also the fact that the coffee shop had no free tables
available.
“Can I help you?” Tamara
asked as she stood up and approached the old lady who looked at Tamara
with a startled expression on her face.
“Help me?” she asked.
“Yes,” said Tamara. “Can I
help you carry your tray?”
“Of course you can, dear,”
said the old lady as Tamara took the tray from her and guided her
towards the other seat on the table where Tamara was sitting. She
regarded Tamara’s uniform. “Are you a cleaning woman, dear?”
“Cleaning woman?” asked
Tamara.
“The way you dress,” said
the old lady. “It’s what cleaning women wear.” She squinted through
her thick lenses at the name plate on Tamara’s bosom. “Empire
Cleaning Services? I know them. I didn’t think they still
existed.”
Tamara blushed. What did
this old woman know? Ever since the Refugee Centre was burnt down in
an anti-immigrant riot, she’d been living on a very slippery slope
indeed and her descent towards starvation had been arrested only when
she’d reluctantly resorted to work for a company that employed her to
provide the kind of services that the now tarred, feathered and
deceased Mehmed had hoped Tamara would never need to do.
“How do you know Empire
Cleaning Services?”
“They used to do work for
my Dad. Years ago. Fifty years ago, I think. When I was a young girl.
I use a different cleaning company now. They’re a lot cheaper. The
girls are all immigrants. Arabs I think. I’m not sure. Once upon a
time they all came from the Eastern Europe or Africa. What’s your
name, dear?”
“Tamara.”
“Pretty name. Is that an
Arab name?”
“It’s Jewish. It can be an
Arabic name, but I’m Jewish.”
“Jews. Arabs. They’re all
the same aren’t they? Is there much left of Israel now? I saw the news
about it on the TV years ago. Tragic, isn’t it? My name’s Zoe. That’s
a Jewish name too, isn’t it? But I’m not Jewish. I’m English. I’m
thousands or millions of generations of English. My family was here
before the Romans. Either that or they came over with the Normans.
Whatever. Stinking rich my family. For bloody generations.”
Tamara was conscious that
this woman was rambling. She probably had no idea what Empire Cleaning
Services really was. Tamara wondered how much she truly understood
about the world around her. But it was curious that for the first time
in her life someone expressed the view to her that Jews and Arabs were
the same. That certainly wasn’t an opinion shared by most people
across the world.
Then the old woman spoke
to her in a way that Tamara really didn’t associate with a person who
was clearly well beyond what was still officially a retirement age
even if the state so rarely provided old age pensions these days.
“I need some smack, dear,”
she said confidentially. “Or coke. Even blow or E would be better than
nothing. You don’t know where I can get some do you?”
“Those are illegal drugs,”
said Tamara in a low voice. “You shouldn’t be taking illegal drugs.”
“Don’t talk shit,” said
Zoe. “I’ve been without a decent dealer for months now. The Arabs and
Africans who sell stuff on the street always try to rip me off because
I’m old and they think I don’t know any better. But that’s rubbish. I
know good gear from bad. You don’t know where I can buy some do you?”
Tamara had no idea of what
to say.
“I’ll pay,” said the old
woman. “I’ll make it worth your while. I almost don’t care what drugs
they are. Being high is about the only good thing left for me now.”
Tamara reflected on the
life she was now forced to lead. The blowjobs, the hand jobs, the
fucking and the times when clients were tempted to pay for just a
little bit more and Tamara suffered several days of blood-specked
stools. Was there anything much worse than that? What escape routes
were open to her?
“Yes,” said Tamara
determinedly. “I know where you can get quality gear.”
“That’s a good girl,” said
Zoe, feebly patting her on the wrist. “I could tell from the moment I
first saw you that you were a good girl.”
In actual fact, Tamara’s
knowledge of drugs, especially the illegal variety, was very sketchy
indeed. She’d only ever smoked cannabis or dropped Ecstasy tablets at
parties. She’d never thought to pay for drugs. But it was also true
that she knew where to go. The refugees and immigrants with whom
Tamara worked had all faced the same employment issues as she and
they’d not all taken the route she’d chosen. A trade that involved the
purchase, preparation and sale of drugs was a natural choice for those
who understood prescription drugs and were otherwise forbidden from
taking legitimate employment. The alternatives, such as they were,
weren’t much better but for many refugees options such as prostitution
and burglary were beyond contemplation.
Tamara was entrusted with
a substantial sum of money to secure the drugs that Zoe wanted. At
first she was tempted to take the money and spend it on other things,
but that would be theft. Tamara wasn’t a thief. She wouldn’t take even
from those who were undoubtedly able to afford the loss. Zoe was
visibly wealthy. She might be scruffy but she was expensively so.
Zoe was very unspecific
about what drugs she wanted beyond the fact that they should be of
good quality. Tamara’s most obvious contact was Mohammed who’d worked
as a nurse at the Refugee Centre but was now more often found on
Church Street by the charred remains of where they’d once all lived
and worked. Nowadays rather than provide medical aid for the needy he
provided those who could afford it a welcome source of distraction and
a less welcome route to drug addiction.
“Man!” said Mohammed. “She
must really trust you to give you that much dosh.”
“I’m a trustworthy kind of
girl,” said Tamara.
“I guess you must be,”
said Mohammed. “And she was definitely not specific about what she
wants?”
“Well, she mentioned the
stuff I just mentioned,” said Tamara. “I think it’s quality she
wants.”
“You think she’ll be a
regular customer?”
“It’s in my interest that
she is.”
“Well, I won’t
short-change her then. I’ll sort out some wraps and a few pills.
You’ll have to come back to my place for me to do that. You don’t
mind, do you?”
“If it’s business only,”
said Tamara.
“Well, it’s not the kind
of business that Empire Cleaning Services employs you to provide,”
said Mohammed. “Unless, that is, you do fancy cleaning up the
place where I’m squatting.”
Zoe’s home couldn’t be
more of a contrast to Mohammed’s. Even getting to the house was a real
problem. It was nearly ten kilometres away in the Surrey countryside,
relatively remote from London’s suburban overspill and at the end of a
private road that was in considerably better repair than any road in
Reigate or Redhill. It was enclosed by a looming security fence whose
intent was made apparent by the plethora of electric wires and lethal
spikes. Nevertheless, only one person was actually resident in a house
that could easily accommodate very many more.
“Oh, it’s you dear,” said
Zoe when Tamara buzzed the intercom. “Did you see the security guard
when you came in?”
“Yes,” said Tamara, who
had passed a uniformed man sitting in a small guard box at the
entrance to the private road.
“He didn’t frisk you or
anything, did he?” asked Zoe.
“No, he didn’t,” said
Tamara.
“You can never be sure
what these security guards might do, dear,” said Zoe. “I told him that
a foreign looking woman might be coming. I’m glad you’re wearing your
cleaning maid outfit because that’s what I said you’d be wearing. And
you’ve brought some good gear?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Great!” Zoe said with
obvious delight. “Come in. Come in.”
The security gate slid
open and Tamara walked into a small antechamber that was there to
ensure that only one person could enter the house’s grounds at a time.
She was then permitted into Zoe’s extensive garden and there, waiting
for her at the open front door, was the old lady herself wearing a
night-gown and smoking a cigarette.
Of course, as an employee
of Empire Cleaning Services, Tamara had been admitted into houses in
Surrey as large as this before. There’d also been the villa in Israel
that she and her family had so tearfully abandoned. That had been at
least as large as Zoe’s, but blessed also by good sunshine and blessed
with a glorious swimming pool. Her family home was now almost
certainly overrun by Palestinians in a land where it was entirely
inadvisable to be identified as an Israeli citizen. A hundred Arabs
could cram into a villa that had once been occupied by only Tamara’s
immediate family.
It was also very different
from not only Mohammed’s filthy squat but the similarly decrepit
single-room apartment that Tamara rented from the burly Armenian man
who collected rent from the properties along Fairfax Avenue.
Zoe led Tamara into a vast
living room dominated by a massive holoscreen television that was
broadcasting a drama series set in an idealised corner of England
where the streets weren’t potholed, the police didn’t accept bribes,
and the villagers’ chief concerns were their relationships with one
another. The old woman pressed the touchpad remote and the image
changed from a drama series to a surreal landscape designed to match
the percussive rhythms it accompanied which unfamiliar music was most
probably the soundtrack of her teenage years.
“What’ve you got, dear?”
asked Zoe eagerly when Tamara sat down on the huge leather sofa beside
the similarly oversized one on which Zoe was sprawling.
“A mixture,” said Tamara.
“I’m not sure what they all are.”
“Let’s have a look,” said
Zoe who carefully opened the package with her crabbed fingers and
examined the contents with what appeared to be an expert eye. She
dipped her small finger into the powder and dabbed it on her tongue.
“It doesn’t look bad. The skunk smells okay too. Of course, there’s
only one sure way of finding out though. Do you fancy sharing, dear?”
“Erm...” said Tamara. “Not
really. Anyway, I’ll have to go home soon.”
“Where do you live?” asked
Zoe. “Somewhere nice?”
“No, not really.”
“It won’t be safe walking
back in the dark, will it? I never wind down the windows of my car
when I’m driving and it must be even more dangerous if you can’t drive
away from trouble. You hear such stories. Of course, the security
companies like it that way. It gives them jobs, especially since the
police are so overstretched and undermanned.”
“I don’t have to work this
evening,” admitted Tamara.
“I’d say not,” said Zoe.
“Who’d want their house cleaned in the evening? Look, you don’t have
to join me in sampling this stuff, but it’s nice to have company even
if I’m not gonna be very chatty. Most of the friends I used to have
sessions with are dead now.”
“Was it the drugs?”
wondered Tamara.
“I don’t know. They’re
just dead. Maybe it was drugs. Maybe it was other things like venereal
diseases or stuff like cancer they would’ve got whatever they’d been
doing. You never know. When people die, the coroner doesn’t normally
specify what the ultimate cause might be. Anyway, I’m old. Fucking
old. I’m in my seventies or something. It’s normal for people my age
to die. And I’m proof that you can keep going however many times
you’ve had your stomach pumped, your nose repaired, your blood
transfused and your heart defibrillated. Anyhow, you are staying
aren’t
you? I’ve got plenty of spare beds you can sleep in.”
“Yes, I suppose I can,”
said Tamara who hadn’t really looked forward to the possible hazards
of a two hour walk in the dark.
“Good girl,” said Zoe. “I
knew you were a good girl. And if this gear’s as kosher as you say and
you don’t mind scoring some more for me, you can stay here for as long
as you bloody well like.”
No Future Volume One
XXVIII
Alex
2026
“Can
I help you?” Alex asked the smartly dressed young woman he spotted
striding through the office late in the evening. The fur coat and
dress she wore was undeniably expensive, so she almost certainly
wasn’t a member of staff. Even this late in the evening it was curious
that she’d been able to get past security. The only other people still
in the office were middle managers like Alex, a few systems
administrators and the cleaning staff.
Alex had recently adopted
the habit of working late in the office. It was the only time he could
find to do the boring management work for which he was paid after a
day mostly taken up by interminable meetings. Unpaid overtime was also
quite obviously one of the best routes to promotion at Reuters-Fox. It
had paid well for Alex in the last year where his ascent up the ranks
had mostly resulted from having reputation as someone who worked long
hours. In truth, it was sometimes quite difficult to find tasks to do
to justify his obsessive overtime but there were plenty of websites to
surf whose perusal might seem just about appropriate for a news
company manager.
Paradoxically, it was also
true that now he was a married man there was less incentive to get
home in good time. After the first few months of blissful married
life, there never seemed a better time to arrive home than after eight
by which time his wife, Isobel, would have forgotten all the things
that had been pissing her off during the day.
It wasn’t that Alex
didn’t love Isobel. In many ways she was the ideal woman for him. She
was steady and reliable and she loved him. Furthermore, she was a
woman who’d also brought with her a substantial inheritance. It wasn’t
a huge fortune, but it was enough to make Alex’s life comfortable.
What’s more, Alex was sure that Isobel rather liked the idea of being
married to a busy man. His apparent workaholism balanced her own guilt
that her life might otherwise have been a little too comfortable.
However, even Isobel had
never been accustomed to the level of comfort enjoyed by this
mysterious woman. “I’m looking for my husband,” she said in a slightly
unsteady voice. “I thought he might be here.”
“Your husband?” wondered
Alex, who hesitated about adding the word ‘Ma’am’ but decided that
however wealthy this young woman was she probably wasn’t a member of
the Royal Family.
“Yes,” said the woman with
a slight slur that suggested that she’d been drinking. “Eden. Have you
seen him?”
Eden St John-Easton had
only recently bought significant shares in Reuters-Fox UK, which was
something of a coup for a relatively young man, but he still wasn’t a
majority shareholder. Nevertheless, he’d already gained a reputation
as a man who took an active interest in his media assets although his
appearances at the office had been few and sporadic.
“I don’t believe I have,”
said Alex.
“Eden always says he works
late,” said the young woman. “I thought he might be working late here.
He often tells me about his ideas for the business.”
“I’m afraid I haven’t seen
your husband,” said Alex. “Is there anything I can do for you, Ma’am?”
Alex immediately cursed
himself. He’d tried so hard to suppress an honorific title that he
knew was totally inappropriate, but the young woman giggled. She
obviously didn’t mind his mistake.
“Just call me Zara,” she
said. “Look, I don’t want to waste your time but could we just check
the offices to be sure he isn’t here somewhere?”
“Erm...” said Alex who
wasn’t sure that this was such a good idea even if Mr St John-Easton
was in the building. In fact, it would almost certainly be a huge
mistake if he was. “Well, if he was here,” Alex continued uncertainly,
“he’d be meeting with the senior editors on the top floor.”
“Let’s go there then,”
said Zara.
Alex glanced nervously
about him.
“Come on then,” Zara
insisted.
“OK,” said Alex as he
slipped on his jacket. He probably wouldn’t be returning to his desk
this evening, but the screen would lock up before anyone came into the
office and could discover exactly which websites he’d been browsing.
He led Zara to the
escalator and accompanied her as it rose to the top floor. He’d only
ever been there before to attend meetings where he’d felt very much
like an insignificant cog in a giant multinational wheel. Zara strode
out of the lift while Alex dawdled behind and watched as the young
woman pushed open every door that could be opened and looked through
the windows of those that couldn’t.
“He’s not here,” she said
at last.
“No,” said Alex with
relief. “Perhaps he was never here in the first place.”
“He always goes on about
Reuters-Fox,” said Zara. “I thought he might always be here.”
“Mr St John-Easton has
many other business concerns,” Alex remarked.
“He doesn’t go on about
any them so much, though. He says he’s got plans for the company.
Plans that will not only improve the business, but also improve the
country.”
“The country?”
“Eden is very concerned
about the country’s welfare,” said Zara. “He doesn’t like the
direction it’s going. The unions are too strong. The environmental
nutters are always proposing new taxes that’ll only throttle business.
The European Union is forever sticking its nose in. It’s not right.”
“I see,” said Alex, who
was sure that Reuters-Fox was exactly the kind of news organisation
that would chime with opinions like that.
“Well, look,” said Zara.
“I’m sorry to have troubled you. I’ll take you to the bar to
compensate.”
“The bar?” wondered Alex.
“There is a bar
round here, isn’t there? This is like a newspaper, isn’t it? There’s
always booze where there are journalists.”
“There’s a wine bar across
the road,” said Alex, who knew of an especially pricey and exclusive
one nearby. What he didn’t know was whether it had a members-only
policy.
“We’ll go there,” said
Zara.
The Zenith was one of a
new breed of wine bar that had emerged from the desire of senior
management to dissociate itself from the scrum of middle managers who
were competing for their attention. Its exclusivity was guaranteed by
a very strict door policy that Alex wouldn’t normally qualify for and
by selling drinks at extortionate prices. Even so, any fears Alex had
about being allowed in were dispelled when Zara and he were greeted
with a polite murmur from the be-suited door attendants.
“Have you been here
before?” asked Alex, who was impressed by the ease with which they’d
entered.
“No,” said Zara. “They
probably recognise me, though.”
“Why’s that?”
“I think Eden owns all the
posh wine bars in Docklands. They turn a good profit and they provide
discreet venues for business discussion.”
“I see,” said Alex.
What he also got to see
was just how much Zara liked her drink. She had no qualms about
ordering the most expensive cocktails, which were put onto her
expenses account, though Zara confided that they probably wouldn’t
actually charge her for them. “You can imagine how that might look if
Eden ever got to look at the accounts.” She had even fewer qualms
about knocking back the cocktails in rather less time than it took to
make them, while Alex resisted temptation and maintained a very modest
level of consumption from the bottle of ludicrously expensive red wine
that Zara had ordered for him. It wouldn’t do to get even slightly
tipsy in front of an important shareholder’s wife.
“Are you married, Alec?”
asked Zara.
Alex didn’t want to
correct her. For this evening he was happy to be Alec, Alan or even
Aled.
“Yes, I am,” said Alex.
“We’ve been married for about six months.”
“I bet like most people
these days you’d been living together for years.”
“Not really,” said Alex.
“We met at a party, got on well and more or less got married less than
six months later.”
“A whirlwind romance,
Alan,” said Zara. “A whirlwind romance. Like mine with Eden, only it’s
like being married to a fucking tornado, if you don’t mind my French.”
“Tornado?”
“Or typhoon. Well, Eden is
a tycoon. Typhoon. Tycoon. Tornado. He’s always doing something and
it’s impossible to keep up with him. I mean, we sleep together every
night, although not always in a Biblical sense, and then he’s always
off somewhere. He’s got a fair amount stashed away in the Caymans and
Jersey and Lithuania and all those other places where taxes are low
and property prices are through the roof. He’s even talked about
buying a yacht.”
“A yacht?”
“Yes, Alec. A yacht.
Somewhere to stay where no taxman need ever venture. Eden hates paying
taxes. There are two things he really hates. Taxes. And my mother. Oh,
and scroungers, unions, Euros, Brussels, homosexuals, Greens and a
whole load of other stuff. I don’t know how much he gives to the
Tories. A lot, I think.”
“Why doesn’t he become a
politician?” suggested Alex.
“I dunno, Alan. I’ve asked
him that myself. What better way to change things? Eden says that the
House of Lords isn’t what it was and he wouldn’t want to take the risk
of contesting a seat in a general election. Winning votes isn’t the
same as buying them. Anyway, Eden says he can get other people to do
all the politics stuff for him. He’s a professional businessman, not a
politician.”
Zara was in no hurry to
leave the Zenith and even though Alex didn’t have to actually pay for
the expensive wine he was drinking, he had no wish to match Zara drink
for drink. She increasingly slurred her words as the evening
progressed, but she wasn’t actually losing it. She was evidently
someone who knew how to knock it back. But she did become steadily
more indiscreet. She looked into Alex’s eyes with open pupils and her
focus was mostly on his face.
Then she placed her hand
on his crotch. She did so firmly enough for her to tell whether his
penis was erect and thereby ascertain his interest.
“Did you say you were
married, Alan?” she asked.
“Yes. Six months.”
“Does your wife mind you
being out at night with strange women?”
Alex burst into a cold
sweat. He knew exactly where this could lead and he didn’t want to
fuck it up. There was too much at stake. Isobel would naturally be
suspicious and she might even detect another woman’s scent on his
body.
“I think she would,” said
Alex diplomatically. “As I say, we’ve not been married long.”
Zara kept her hand on
Alex’s crotch. It was obvious that she enjoyed playing with him and
was amused by the dilemma she’d put him in.
“What’s your wife like,
Alan?”
“She’s slim and pretty and
about the same age as me.”
“Old then. Have you got
children?”
“No.”
“Do you want children?”
“I guess so.”
Zara removed her hand from
Alex’s crotch and swivelled around on her seat. She decided to steer
the conversation away from the dangerous direction in which it had
been heading.
“We want children too,
Alan,” she said. “At least I do. If only Eden would fuck his whores
less often and fuck me more then we’d have had one by now.”
Alex realised this was a
better direction in which to take the conversation. “I think it’s best
to wait a few years till you have children,” he said.
“Fucking conventional
wisdom,” Zara retorted fiercely. “That’s what Eden says. That’s what
they all say. Have your fun now. Have your kids later. You obviously
don’t know what it’s like to be married to a fabulously wealthy man. I
can be dropped at a moment’s notice. Eden would probably find another
wife within days if he wanted one. A wife needs a bit of insurance
against the future. Especially when her husband’s a selfish bastard
like Eden. And what better insurance policy is there than to have a
child or two?”
No Future Volume One
XXIX
Eden
2050
It
was another bloody bastard journey back home to England, Eden
reflected, as his chauffeur-driven car finally pulled into the drive
of his Surrey estate. He increasingly despaired of the state of his
home country every time he was troubled to pay it a visit. He’d had to
wait two days in Milan while flights to Heathrow were held up. Even
private charters such as his were grounded as a result of the
unexpected heavy snow that London’s runways still couldn’t cope with.
And then the drive from the airport across the snowy Surrey
countryside was a nightmare. You’d have thought that global warming
would have done away with bad winters. For nine months of the year,
the talk was all about the sea level rising or droughts and then for
three months of the year there was the inevitable bad weather. Usually
it was floods and storms. This year, it was heavy snow.
“They just don’t get the
gritters out in time,” Eden told Ivan Eisenegger, the Leader of the
Opposition, who was waiting for him in his Surrey home. “What kind of
rubbish road maintenance is that? Where do my bloody taxes go?”
“Local government taxes
pay for that,” said Ivan. “The councils are all capped and they make
whatever cuts they can. It hasn’t snowed for six years so they haven’t
prepared for it.”
“Is that something you lot
will tackle when you get back into power again?”
“We want to move away from
exorbitant tax demands and profligate public sector expenditure,” said
Ivan. “We’ve still not completely worked out how to hand road
maintenance and repair over to the private sector without having to
subsidise it. The public aren’t sufficiently willing to shoulder the
costs directly.”
“There must be ways to
keep the roads clear of snow and still reduce taxes,” said Eden. “But
you’re right: the priority must be to keep taxes down. I trust that is
what you intend to do after the next general election?”
“It’s still a few months
off and the result isn’t yet in the bag.”
“The polls are looking
good. And you’ve got the whole media behind you...”
“The polls also say that
it’s more the unpopularity of the current Coalition than support for
Conservative policies that will be critical to our success. We have to
be careful what we say.”
“I understand that,” said
Eden. “But when you are back in government, make sure that
cutting taxes is your priority. Get the snouts of your interfering
bureaucrats out of my business. That’s all I ask. I’ve got discussions
with my senior news editors tomorrow. What suggestions for news
stories do you think I should make to them?”
Ivan looked around him at
the two other opposition MPs who were also gathered together in Eden’s
smoking room. Eden was the only who was actually smoking and that was
from a huge cigar imported from Cuba. The other MPs had sunk into the
embrace of the huge leather armchairs and sipped from the wine that
Theo, Eden’s trusted servant, had poured out for them. At the same
time, their fingers were tapping desultorily on the keyboards of their
tablet computers.
“The Labour Coalition has
been in power for a long time now,” said Edmund Eaglecliffe MP. “A
negative campaign that emphasises the mistakes and errors of the
present government is surely the best approach.”
“I rather like the tack
taken by the Times when it attacks the menace of immigration,” said
Thomas Eastwick MP. “We need to take a firmer stand against asylum
seekers and economic migrants. The country’s swamped by them.”
“We have to be careful,
Tom,” said Ivan. “Some voters might confuse an uncompromising
immigration policy with racism or intolerance towards foreigners. The
Times is right to highlight the burden on Britain’s scarce resources
resulting from there being so many claimants and jobseekers, but we
don’t want to frighten off nervous voters in ethnically diverse
marginal constituencies.”
“What are voters most
concerned about?” asked Eden. “Isn’t that what we should be focusing
on?”
“It’s the usual confused
picture,” said Edmund. “Sure, there are issues that appeal to core
Conservative values such as a demand for lower taxes, fewer immigrants
and disengagement from Brussels. However, there’s also concern about
flood defences, low wages and the high cost of fuel...”
“We can do something about
the last,” said Thomas. “It’s mostly tax anyway.”
“We can’t go as far as
some of the American states by introducing a fuel subsidy,” said
Edmund. “But we will have to present a coherent view on other
issues, especially the environmental ones.”
“I’m all in favour of
being green as long as it doesn’t cost a penny,” said Eden. “I don’t
like the way these greens always find an argument to raise expenditure
and revenue to combat climate change. It’s just another excuse for
high taxation. Any changes to the tax rate should only ever go one
way. It should never increase.”
“It’s not going to be easy
to implement lower taxation,” said Ivan. “The national debt is
cripplingly high and tax rates are lower than they’ve ever been.”
“The nation’s prosperity
relies on the prosperity of its businesses,” said Eden
uncompromisingly. “What’s to keep companies like mine from investing
in low-tax business-friendly countries like Libya, Korea and America?
The only talk I want to hear is about how to reduce taxes.”
“We have to say something
about the floods in Southern England,” said Edmund. “There are too
many Tory constituencies in the southern counties for us to ignore
it.”
“Don’t expect any media
outlet that I have shares in to print stories that suggest taxes will
have to rise to pay for flood-defences,” said Eden firmly. “This
climate change theory is nothing more than a con anyway. The
scientists have got it wrong. The interests of business take a higher
priority than any nonsense about global warming. I mean, look at the
weather outside. What kind of global warming is that?”
“It’s bloody cold,” agreed
Ivan. “But I know where you’re coming from, Edmund. When you’re being
interviewed by the BBC or one of those pinko newspapers like the
Guardian or the Independent, you have to find something to say about
flood-defences.”
“How many Conservative
voters read those papers or watch the BBC?” wondered Thomas. “Have you
seen the BBC recently? It’s bloody rubbish. They rely so much on
computer graphics to disguise how shoddy their studios are that it
looks like a computer game.”
“The BBC isn’t what it
used to be,” said Edmund. “It’s been no threat to anyone ever since we
scrapped the license fee. But it’s still watched and trusted by more
people than Fox News UK.”
“It’s your job to do
something about that when you’re in government,” said Eden
threateningly. “The BBC is a throwback to an age that should be dead
and buried, along with independent trades unions, publicly funded
education, and social security. I don’t pay millions to the
Conservative party only for you to pursue anti-business policies when
you’re in a position to do something about it.”
“That’s true, Eden,” said
Ivan conciliatorily. “But my advice is that the media you control
should be careful to distinguish between the policies you support and
those of the Conservative party. The public perception of the party’s
independence from undue influence needs to be maintained.”
“So, what do you suggest,
Ivan?” said Eden, who didn’t like being told that he should be paying
for anything other than the implementation of what he believed in.
“Should we be printing stories about how tax-payers’ money should be
squandered to elevate the East Anglian sea wall by another ten feet?
Should we say that tax-payers’ money should be used to give public
sector workers a pay-rise? Should we say that scrapping the
Environmental Protection Agency, the Financial Services Agency and all
those other quangos was a mistake?”
“As I say, Eden,” said
Ivan, “what we do in government and what we say to get into government
are two different things. The important thing for the moment is to
appeal not solely to loyal Conservative voters by stressing only core
Conservative values. What we also need to do is attract the votes of
those who might otherwise vote Democrat, Liberal or one of the other
pinko parties.”
The snow continued to pile
high on the lawns of his Surrey home while Eden and the three
politicians gathered around the huge fire that dominated the smoking
room. Eden didn’t like it when Ivan disagreed with him regarding any
policy detail, but he reasoned from his more private conversations
that the Leader of the Opposition was a man who could be trusted. Eden
was sure that Ivan could be relied on as Prime Minister to pursue the
right policies whatever he had to say in public. Britain wasn’t going
to be restored to greatness unless a Conservative government took
power. Fortunately, the subtle changes to constituency boundaries and
the new rules on voter registration had swung the potential balance of
power back towards the Natural Party of Government that the Tories so
obviously were.
Eden was faced with the
choice of sending Theo down to the cellar to fetch yet another bottle
of wine or of wrapping up the meeting. “Well, gentlemen,” he said, “I
don’t think any of you should risk the travel back home to your
constituencies in these conditions.” He nodded towards the drawn
curtains where a spirited snowstorm was battering against the
triple-glazed windows.
“This weather has been
truly dreadful,” said Thomas. “If it wasn’t so bad, I’m sure Eric,
Phil and even Anthony would have made it.”
“Do you believe that you
have a clear enough idea of how to present Conservative electoral
policy to your editors, Eden?” asked Ivan cautiously.
“My media outlets aren’t
the propaganda division of the Tory Party,” said Eden, “but the
editorial policies of the right-thinking media and the interests of
business can only be served by a Conservative Party victory. We shall
do what we can to maintain a tone in the campaign that rallies core
support without alienating the undecided. I’m sure my editors can be
trusted to do whatever they can to facilitate an election victory.”
“I think we can then say
that our business is concluded, wouldn’t you say gentlemen?” commented
Ivan.
“I think so,” said Thomas.
“In that case,” said Eden,
“it only remains for me to introduce you to the extra company I’ve
taken the trouble to invite.”
“Thank you, Eden,” said
Ivan with categorical firmness. “But regrettably I shall have to
extend my apologies. I’m afraid I do feel really rather tired.
It’s been a very long day and I need to get a good night’s sleep. Is
there somewhere I can rest my head for the night?”
“There are many such
places, Ivan,” said Eden. “My entire house is at your disposal. I’ve
already arranged that a guest room be made available for each of you.
I’ll call Theo and he’ll be pleased to escort you to your room.” Eden
smiled at Thomas and Edmund. “Is either of you two gentlemen also too
tired or would you be willing to accompany me and my other guests for
the rest of the evening?”
The two other Members of
Parliament nodded that they would be prepared to stay.
After Ivan had finally
left, Eden addressed the remaining company. “This isn’t the first time
Ivan’s been reluctant to meet my other guests. Is there something
about him that I should know?”
“I’m sorry, Eden,” said
Edmund. “I’m not quite sure I catch your gist.”
“Don’t pretend to be so
naive, Edmund,” said Thomas. “No, Eden. As far as we know Ivan isn’t
homosexual. His relationship with his wife is perfectly normal. In
fact, it’s perhaps a little too normal. My personal belief is that our
Prime Minister-in-waiting is so driven by the desire for high office
that nothing—and I mean nothing—will be allowed to get in his way.”
“Surely he knows that he
can rely on absolute discretion when he’s a guest of mine,” said Eden.
“Nothing is permitted to go beyond the four walls of this room.”
“I don’t think Ivan wants
to take a risk of any kind,” said Thomas. “History is littered with
the sad tales of ambitious men who let a small slip-up blight their
future. Ivan won’t let that happen to him.”
“Well, in that case,” said
Eden, “I can now introduce you to the extra company I took the trouble
of inviting. I do hope that none of your tastes are homosexual
as I’ve made no allowances for that.”
“And if one of us were,
Eden?” asked Edmund in good humour.
“Are you, Edmund?”
asked Eden.
“Not necessarily,” said
the MP. “Well, far from exclusively.”
“I’ll bear that in mind on
future occasions,” said Eden good-naturedly. “Despite the impression
given by the recent campaign in the Express & Mail, I don’t hold
any personal prejudice against gentlemen of refined taste. It’s the
fucking gay and lesbian community I despise.”
“I’m sure I’ll be more
than content with the company you’ve invited,” said Edmund
diplomatically.
“Well, I certainly hope
so,” said Eden. “I expected rather more guests than you two. That has
the benefit that the number of ladies I’ve invited will outnumber us
rather more than I’d originally anticipated. I hope you’re both
feeling fit and up for the challenge.”
“You never disappoint, do
you Eden?” said Thomas as the six women of mostly Middle Eastern
origin filed into the room scantily dressed and clearly ready to
transact further business with Eden’s venerable guests. And as
this intercourse was unlikely to involve much verbal discussion, the
sorry state of the women’s grasp of English would be no handicap at
all.
No Future Volume One
XXX
Tamara
2095
It
didn’t come as much of a surprise to Tamara when Zoe died. The mystery
was rather that she’d managed to live so long given that she’d managed
to maintain for so long a drug habit far in excess of what a woman of
advanced years was designed to withstand.
All the same, it had been
good while it lasted. She and Mohammed had done well out of keeping
Zoe supplied with a regular supply of whatever drugs that were
currently on the market. Mohammed profited from having a regular
customer who paid promptly and in advance. Tamara profited from having
a very nice house to live in and a wonderfully warm and clean bed in
which to sleep. The only penalties were that she had to leave
regularly to visit Mohammed, which she did in Zoe’s car, and to sit
with Zoe while she sunk into yet another of her mostly silent
drug-induced trances.
“What was your
relationship with the deceased?” the doctor asked Tamara after he’d
examined Zoe’s dead body.
Tamara had rehearsed her
answer. “I was her lover,” she said.
The doctor raised his
eyebrows. “Well, Miss St. John-Easton was a strange one, that’s for
sure. And the toxins in her body... You do know what caused
her death, don’t you?”
“Drugs overdose?”
“Amongst other things,”
said the doctor. “However, we shall be discreet. And not just about
her illegal drugs habit, of course. I hope she’s left something for
you in her will.”
“I’ll just have to wait
and find out,” said Tamara who hadn’t thought about that possibility
before.
Of course, Zoe had died
intestate. Naturally. When would she have found the time to sort
matters out with her solicitors however often they might remind her of
her duty to her family? And this of course bought Tamara a great deal
of time in which she could remain resident in the house she’d made her
home for so many months in her new assumed role as Zoe’s bereaved
lover.
Tamara had everything she
wanted except a line of credit. She had full access to Zoe’s home, her
car, her possessions and everything within the estate’s secure walls.
What she didn’t have was the money to replenish supplies as they ran
out. Thankfully, everything continued to function much as before even
though Zoe was no longer alive. Groceries were delivered. The cleaning
staff arrived once a day to tidy up what was now a much less
disorderly home. The electricity and water continued to be on supply.
But Tamara knew that at some point all this would come to an end and
that she hadn’t put aside nearly enough cash to cover all the costs.
All the same, Tamara could
comfort herself with the notion that the direct debits and standing
orders that had been set up were tapping into a well of funds that
must be pretty much bottomless. And ultimately that source, as Tamara
discovered from Zoe before she’d died and from her own research on the
internet, was Zoe’s father who’d died nearly half a century earlier.
“He was rich,” Zoe told
her. “Fucking rich. He almost owned the bloody government. If it
wasn’t for him there’d probably never have been an English National
Unity government.”
“But he died a couple of
years before all that happened,” Tamara pointed out.
“During the London riots,”
agreed Zoe. “Yeah, that was probably the catalyst that made it all
happen, dear. Money spent on political influence. Chaos caused by
joblessness and poverty. People weren’t used to it.”
“Things were better fifty
years ago, weren’t they?” said Tamara.
“People didn’t think so at
the time, dear. The nuclear wars over in Asia. The crop failures. The
high price of fuel. Everyone thought it had just gone too far.”
“I don’t see why there
were riots then when most people had enough to eat; when people
thought plague and famine was banished forever; when ordinary people
could drive cars and didn’t have to buy household electricity in
portable batteries; when Norfolk still existed as a county and London
wasn’t flooded half the time; when, for fuck’s sake, Israel was a land
of plenty. What were people complaining about?”
“If people had complained
a bit more,” said Zoe, “perhaps we wouldn’t be in the mess we’re in.
Dad didn’t think the real problems were anything to do with the stuff
you’ve just gone on about. He thought it was all to do with
governments interfering in the interests of business. That was what he
mostly thought, but he also believed that immigration, homosexuality,
atheism, environmentalism, trades unions and a whole shitload of other
stuff was to blame. A lot of people agreed with him. Especially the
stuff about immigration.”
“That’s what the English
National Unity government was most famous for, wasn’t it? Kicking out
foreigners.”
“It got worse when England
was forced to leave the Northern European Union. That was when the
United Kingdom fell apart.”
Tamara got bored with
conversations like that. The English felt so sorry for themselves.
They, and also the Americans. The English annoyed everyone through
their well-documented stupidity and arrogance. And soon they woke up
to find that the United Kingdom was no longer united and no longer a
kingdom. It wasn’t even any longer part of the Northern European Union
that it had whinged about for so long. The Americans were even worse.
They let their most extreme political party take absolute control of
the United States and then watched with growing horror as it
dismantled the engines of government. All that was left was a
progressively weaker nation that steadily squandered a reservoir of
wealth that was far from boundless. Eventually, what a nineteenth
century civil war had sewn together was dissolved through
constitutional crises and economic collapse. At least this time it
wasn’t associated with the loss of hundreds of thousands of lives.
Even so, what were these
misfortunes compared to those suffered by Israel. The nation of
Tamara’s birth existed now only in the abstract sense of having a paid
representative in the United Nations’ headquarters in Beijing and by
the continued existence of millions of worthless passports. No sane
person would actually choose to live in a nuclear wasteland where
crops were mutated, cancer was everywhere, and the Palestinians doled
out vicious vengeance on any Jew foolish enough to be identified as
such. That wasn’t what had seemed the most likely of possible futures
when, after the initial barrage of nuclear weapons, the Israeli
soldiers streamed out of the Promised Land to secure their victory. A
rather hollow victory it now seemed when even a limited retaliatory
response had destroyed Israel as a nation. And hollower still when it
became obvious that wind direction and rain spread nuclear fallout and
radiation as evenly on the victors as the defeated and that an angry
vengeful Arab population many times larger than the population of
surviving Jews was not, after all, likely to retreat in cowed
abjection.
“What did your father
think of the Jews?” Tamara asked.
“Not much, dear,” said
Zoe. “Well, not often anyway. Though I guess if he thought about them
at all he probably didn’t like them. He didn’t like most foreigners.
If they didn’t speak English as a first language and they were a
different skin colour, then he almost certainly didn’t like them. And
that was odd, of course, because his businesses were more active
abroad than in England. He spent far more time outside the United
Kingdom than he ever did on its shores. If there was money to be made
out of the Israelis that was all right, I guess, but if an Arab was
going to cut him a better deal my Dad would just dump the entire
Jewish nation if that’s what it took to seal it. Anyway, it was
American money that kept Israel going wasn’t it? When the United
States dissolved that’s all it took for Israel to collapse.”
That wasn’t, of course,
how Tamara understood it from what she’d been taught in the Promised
Land. She was still sure it was never as simple as that, although
surrounded as she was by evidence of the extraordinary wealth, power
and influence that Zoe’s father had once possessed, she couldn’t help
wondering whether the fate of Abraham’s tribe hadn’t, in the end, just
all been down to money.
And nowadays money was
exactly what Tamara most fretted about. She’d gathered together all
the cash she could find in Zoe’s home, but it was obvious that the
lines of credit that kept the estate functioning by default couldn’t
forever continue to finance her lavish lifestyle. At some stage, the
electricity would be cut off, the cleaners would no longer arrive, the
groceries would no longer be delivered and the lawyers representing
Zoe’s estate would ask her to leave. She couldn’t remain where she was
for evermore, could she?
On the other hand, as the
days stretched into weeks and the weeks into months, Tamara began to
wonder whether in some strange way the financial acumen of Eden St
John-Easton might not benefit his daughter’s proxy drug supplier for
many more years to come. How would the diminutive billionaire view his
heritage now if he knew that the last benefactor of the fortune that
had shaped the opinions of millions was a stateless Jewish refugee
who’d had to resort to prostitution and drug dealing to survive? Was
this the legacy by which he’d like to be remembered?
Eventually, of course, the
services that kept Tamara in luxury steadily came to an end. The first
extravagance to be discontinued, of course, was the regular cleaning
service. The day came when the house was not filled at ten in the
morning by a busy rush of activity from Asian and Arabic women who’d
once methodically removed every trace of Zoe’s prodigious drug habits
and now had much less need to be active. Tamara was actually more
upset when the contract for media services expired and she now had to
rely for news and entertainment on the terrestrial radio stations.
Most of these were more or less identical commercial radio stations,
but she could at least listen to the EBC News Service which was one of
the last few remaining remnants of the once prestigious BBC.
Beyond the security walls
of Zoe’s estate there was a large and very frightening world. This was
a world in which a plague was spreading across Wales and North West
England; where there was a deadly border dispute between Mexico and
the Republic of North America (though much of that was indentured
labour trying to escape to Mexico rather than economic migrants
travelling north); where famine bred violence across the Middle East
and put further pressure on the few remaining Jewish settlers besieged
behind high walls and barbed wire; where the Netherlands was now
mostly underwater; and where frightened nations were building up
military alliances to defend what remained of their economic
influence.
It was a much safer world
behind the walls of Zoe’s estate. When she looked through the window
at the countless hectares of garden that had become ever more unkempt
since the gardeners stopped arriving, Tamara could well believe that
things weren’t so bad. It was easy to shelter here in a world where
the horrors of the outside world were as distant as they once seemed a
quarter of a century ago when she was a child. It was reassuring to
have access to so much space. She was tempted to invite her friends
from her time at the Refugee Centre to share the bounty, but she
recognised that this might present a problem with regards to the
security guards. They were prone to pass a blind eye to the one by now
familiar Jewish immigrant, but would be far less tolerant of twenty or
so people that they didn’t recognise.
The groceries finally
stopped arriving one day. That was a blow, although the food was
scarcely what Zoe would have chosen for herself. She was sure that it
wasn’t even partly kosher, but she’d abandoned the scruples of her
religion a long time ago. There was enough in the freezers to keep her
going for several months more, but only if the power supply continued.
Thankfully, the wind generators and solar panels didn’t rely on
payment to the electricity suppliers.
Tamara’s was now a lonely
life. She had no company at all now the cleaners didn’t visit. Tamara
was rather grateful that Zoe had never been very neighbourly. She was
pretty sure that none of Zoe’s very wealthy and rather snooty
neighbours would be especially friendly towards her supposed lesbian
lover. Tamara was secluded in an island of illusory plenty. She knew
it wouldn’t last forever and as the days passed by the dread of being
thrown out into the harsh world beyond troubled her more and more.
Every news report of yet
another immigrant being lynched made her shiver. And she trembled even
more when the racial origin of the victim was identified and it was
announced that it was yet another Jewish migrant.
No Future Volume One
XXXI
Alex
2027
It
wasn’t often that the chief shareholders of Reuters-Fox UK ever chose
to address the senior staff, but the celebration following the
landslide General Election victory for the Conservatives was a special
occasion. It clearly deserved the attendance of those whose wealth
financed the loss-making news media empire and whose influence and
opinions guided its editorial policies.
Alex was probably the most
junior of all the staff in attendance. Although his promotion through
the ranks had been relatively rapid thanks to his tireless
self-promotion and willingness to do unpaid overtime, he hadn’t risen
to the rarefied heights of management where he would normally expect
to meet people like Eden St John-Easton. The young tycoon wasn’t the
only shareholder addressing the massed ranks, but although he was by
far both the youngest and the shortest he was also the most prominent.
The meeting was called to
congratulate the editorial staff of Reuters-Fox UK for their focused
effort towards enabling a landmark victory that could only bode well
for Britain and British business. It also highlighted the work that
still needed to be done to broadcast the message that what was good
for business was good for Britain and that low taxation inevitably led
to improved international competitiveness. The only sour note raised
was when one of the principal shareholders remarked that Reuters-Fox
UK might also need to communicate its green credentials in an age
where fuel prices were astronomically high and localised flooding was
constantly in the news. “We need to be seen to be green,” he asserted
while other shareholders including Eden St. John-Easton almost visibly
rolled their eyes, “but we also need to be genuine. Green is good for
business as much as it is good for the environment. If we lower our
costs on non-renewables and energy waste, we shall also improve our
long term profitability.”
After the conference was
over, Alex was rather taken aback when Ian Anderson, the London Senior
Editor, took him to one side. “Look lively, son,” said his boss who
was as much Alex’s senior in years as he was in status. “Mr St.
John-Easton wants to talk to you. God knows what interests he has in
online media, but make sure you check back with me with whatever he
has to say.”
“Of course, Ian,” said
Alex, who couldn’t help wondering whether this meeting had anything to
do with his occasional late-night meetings with Zara. They were
infrequent, unannounced and, thankfully, never resolved in a way that
Isobel could use as evidence for divorce. As Alex’s face was the only
one Zara recognised in the office, he was her natural point of call
whenever she was in the area and wanted a drink.
Was Alex now for the chop?
“Alan is it?” said Eden
while Alex did his best to disguise how much taller he was than the
great man. “My wife has mentioned you to me.”
“She has, sir?” said Alex
who wondered whether Eden’s rather bland smile was disguising rather
more diabolical intentions.
“Not in a bad way, mind
you,” continued Eden. “You’re an old friend of hers from way back, I
believe?”
“Yes,” said Alex with
almost visible relief. What had Zara said about him? “A long way
back.”
“Well, I don’t need to
know the details,” said Eden, “though you are somewhat older
than my wife. She says that you have some good ideas on to how to
extend the online news service. Is that so?”
Alex wondered what the
hell Eden was talking about. During the few meetings he’d had with
Zara there’d been virtually no mention of Alex’s job and certainly
none about his non-existent good ideas. Was this part of an elaborate
cover-up by Zara to disguise the fact that she’d been meeting him for
nothing more than a drink in the Zenith? Would Eden suspect that Alex
and she were having an affair? What was going on?
“Yes,” Alex lied as
convincingly as he could. “I do believe that with the rapid growth of
the virtual world, such as Virtual Reality, Social Networking and...
erm... so on, there should be a much greater news presence. There’s a
lot more money that can be made from advertising there.”
“Hmmm,” said Eden, who
already looked bored. “Advertising revenue isn’t really a big deal, is
it? I don’t expect to make much money out of Reuters-Fox anyway. Its
costs are hardly covered by advertising revenue, but if you think
there’s money to be made from advertising then have a word with
Marketing. I’m sure they’ll be all ears. No, I was wondering more
about influence rather than revenue. What influence do you think
Reuters-Fox UK could have on the VR community? How do you think we can
get a part of the action?”
Shit! What had Zara got
Alex into? This was his one chance to impress the big man (or small
one, in truth) and he had nothing to offer. How could he bluff his way
out of this?
“I think we should have a
visible presence in the Virtual world,” said Alex with as much
conviction he could muster for his totally improvised thoughts. “There
are plenty of models we can use as examples though they are
focused on the needs of gamers and social networkers. We don’t need to
be just a passive news outlet in the Virtual World. We can be much
more active.”
“And if we were more
active, could we then have more influence?” asked Eden.
This was clearly what Eden
wanted to believe, so Alex decided to reinforce this view. “Yes, of
course,” said Alex. “It’s a way of getting out the message that the
interests of business and Britain are one and the same thing. It’s a
way of ensuring that everyone sees the benefits of business-friendly
government policy.”
“And how would we do
that?” wondered Eden. “I don’t see too many people playing computer
games whose purpose is to lower taxes. What would be the attraction of
that? Would you feature a bunch of greens and pinkos as evil forces
getting in the way of our online hero on his mission to reduce
taxation?”
A joke, thought Alex with
relief, as he laughed appreciatively in the way he’d been schooled in
his years of interminable meetings. “There are more subtle ways of
doing it than that,” he said with a grin. “But effectively it would be
exactly what you suggest.”
“Really?” said Eden
thoughtfully, who was probably more taken by his own attempt at humour
than what Alex had to say. “Well, get on with it, Alan. I’ll make sure
that Tom from Finance gives you the funding you need.”
With that he tapped Alex
gently on the shoulder and left him standing by himself in a state of
paralysed stupefaction. What hole had he just dug for himself?
This was the same question
expressed to him later by Ian when he reported back an account of his
conversation, only Ian was much less inclined to hold back on his use
of expletives.
“Whose fucking idea was it
anyway?” Ian asked.
Alex could see the wisdom
in grasping the straw proffered to him by Eden with both hands. “In
truth,” he said, “I can’t take any credit for it. It was Mr
St. John-Easton who proposed a more active involvement in VR. However,
I think it’s unlikely he’d want to expose himself to criticism if it
should happen to fail.”
“Are you saying that our
young tycoon suggested to you that he wanted a news agency involved in
some unspecified way on the VR internet and he has no fucking idea of
what that should be?”
“More or less, Ian.”
“What the fuck do you
mean? Is it more? Or is it less? What does he want us to
fucking do?”
“I guess a lot depends on
how much money he wants to apportion to the project.”
“I’ll remind you that Mr
St. John-Easton is no fucking Santa Claus. Any money we spend on some
fuckwit project comes from profits made by Fox International. It will
have to be approved by the fucking Executive. We’ve already wasted
fucking billions on internet related enterprises that have sunk
without a fucking trace. Not even so much sunk as plummeted leaving a
pile of fucking shite for us to deal with.”
“I’m not sure we’re in a
position to negotiate with what Mr St. John-Easton wants, Ian.”
The Senior Editor
considered this. “Any ideas then of what we should do to keep our
billionaire friend happy, Alex?”
Alex had an answer for
that, which, of course, was no answer at all. “I think it would be
very hasty for us to commit ourselves to anything specific before
investigating it thoroughly, Ian.”
“That’s not much of a
fucking proposal to put in front of the board.”
“I think we need to be
seen to be doing something towards building up a more prominent
presence in the VR space, Ian. It’s just got to look like it satisfies
Mr St. John-Easton’s requirements.”
“What you’re saying is
that you haven’t got a fucking clue, am I right?”
“We could buy something
that’s already active on the VR scene, Ian,” said Alex. “Something
that’s doing well but needs a bit of nurturing.”
“What do you suggest? Not
one of those fucking virtual sex sites, I hope. I don’t want the
Telegraph running stories about Fox International executives getting
their cocks greased in all that weird VR paraphernalia.”
“They’ll run stories like
that whatever we do, Ian,” said Alex. “That’s just one idea. It might
even pay off, you never know.”
“I guess so,” said Ian
more reflectively. “You’re the fucking expert. I don’t know
anything about all this Virtual Reality stuff anyway.”
“I think Mr St.
John-Easton doesn’t know even as much as you do, Ian.”
“You’re probably right
there,” said Ian thoughtfully. “What do you suggest we do, then?”
“We build up a news
department dedicated to the VR realm,” said Alex. “We do a bit of
investigation and work out what we can buy and what we can develop
in-house. We increase its visibility so that Mr St. John-Easton and
the whole board are aware of what’s happening. We give it a bit of
exposure on Fox News UK and try to get the BBC interested. Any success
it has we credit to Mr St. John-Easton. Any failures we brush under
the carpet.”
“It’s a plan of sorts,”
said Ian. “I guess it’ll have to be handled by your department, won’t
it?”
Yes!
thought Alex. Yes! Yes! An Executive Board presence and a
potentially huge budget. If that wasn’t effectively promotion, what
could be?
“Someone has to take
responsibility for the thing, Ian,” said Alex.
“So, Alex,” wondered Ian.
“How is it that someone like Mr. St. John-Easton—international
playboy, business goliath and would-be media tycoon—should happen to
get to know about you? Or ‘Alan’ as he thinks you’re called.”
“I don’t know, Ian,” said
Alex. “It’s a mystery.”
“A big fucking mystery.
You’re not a freemason or something like that, are you?”
“Of course not, Ian.”
“You wouldn’t say if you
were, would you?” said Ian. “Look, I haven’t got all day. Present me
with a proposal of what you think needs to be done. Make sure that you
don’t make any reference to our diminu... dashing billionaire anywhere
in your proposal. And don’t refer to him in any e-mails either. Just
keep him out of it.”
“Yes, Ian.”
“Well, get going then,
Alex,” said Ian dismissing him with a flick of his hand.
Alex left the Senior
Editor’s office in huge relief with not just a cloud lifted but the
sun shining down on him more brilliantly than it had ever done.
Now what?
First of all, he’d have to
get someone to write up a proposal for the Senior Editor. Maybe Igor.
He could make a good fist of it once he was briefed. And then he’d
have to celebrate. Perhaps he’d join the other managers in the Cat and
Mouse after work. A few drinks would be just the right way to end the
day.
Should he phone Isobel?
That was a difficult call. She probably wouldn’t understand the
significance of what Alex had just achieved and might even suggest
that instead of enjoying himself with his work colleagues he come home
early and celebrate with her.
That would be boring.
Better to say nothing,
really. She wasn’t expecting him to come home early anyway.
No Future Volume One
XXXII
Theo
2052
Theo
was a murderer. He knew that. He was as much a murderer as the man
who’d actually killed his employer. He’d lied in court about his role
in the slaughter, but he knew the truth. It was he, as much as anyone
else, who had murdered Eden St. John-Easton. As expected, the
circumstances that accompanied the murder excused him of any blame.
Who could have known just how much out of hand the rioters would get?
But whether premeditated or not, it was Theo who’d allowed it to
happen.
The guilt plagued Theo
more than he could ever have imagined. He’d thought it might subside
after a year had passed by, but in a sense it only plagued him the
more now that he had so successfully avoided being accused of the
crime he knew he’d perpetrated.
When the rioters came
streaming into Berkeley Square, there were many things Theo could have
done that he didn’t do. He could have bolted up the front door to the
house. He could have turned off the lights to suggest that no one was
in. He could have lied when the rioters appeared at the door with
their crowbars, baseball bats and other improvised weapons. He knew
full well that their intentions were malicious. He knew that the
primary object of their rage was his employer, Sir Eden, who was
upstairs trembling and terrified. He knew that there was little to
stop the enraged rioters from killing his employer just as in the
previous few days they’d slain several other wealthy businessmen and
politicians associated with electoral victory by the Liberal
Conservative coalition that was so deeply unpopular with the poor, the
unemployed and the many others who’d lost their right to vote as a
result of the recent controversial electoral reforms.
No doubt the rioters had
identified Eden’s Mayfair home from recent news stories. Perhaps
they’d spotted Eden in his upstairs study as he looked down at the mob
that was menacingly stalking the streets. Their original destination
had been elsewhere, but this course of action had been frustrated by
armed police. It was the bloody Americans again who’d inflamed the
current civil unrest. Ever since several dozen protestors had been
shot outside the American Embassy a few weeks ago, anyone suspected of
US citizenship or indeed anyone associated with the flavour of
reactionary politics currently ascendant across the Atlantic Ocean was
a natural target for the rioters’ anger.
The Americans’ recent
trigger-happy stupidity gave them much to answer for, but it wasn’t an
isolated incident. In recent years the increasingly barmy and
intolerant administrations that had gained power in America had
fomented unrest all round the world and increasingly in many of its
own States. As the international prestige of the United States
continued to plummet in the face of economic challenges it was
hopelessly unprepared for, so too did the nation’s sense of justice,
its civilised values and even, it seemed, the last few vestiges of
American sanity. Perhaps it was with misguided patriotism that Theo
held the view that Britain’s similar decline in the twentieth century
was accompanied with rather less manic despair than America’s in the
current century. America was flailing madly in the quicksand of its
own making and hastening its absolute decline at an alarming rate.
What should Theo have done
when the door to Eden’s Mayfair home was prised open and he was
confronted by rioters baying for blood? Should he have claimed that
Mr. St. John-Easton was somewhere else and therefore not in residence?
Should he have made an attempt to fight off the rioters even as they
spilled down the hallway smashing vases, furniture and hanging mirrors
as they did so? What he almost certainly shouldn’t have done was
capitulate when asked by a wiry protestor brandishing a baseball bat
where the master of the house was. He most certainly didn’t have to
admit that his boss was hiding in his study on the top floor.
There were ways in which
Theo’s actions could be justified. In fact, once the rioters knew
where to go, they ignored him and crowded up the flights of stairs.
They were no longer intent on smashing up furniture and priceless
heirlooms. Who knows how many works of art were spared for posterity
as a result? And when the rioters had finished their business, they
filed out of the house almost apologetically, their baseball bats and
other weapons now splattered with blood. They even tried to close the
door behind them that they had earlier spent a full ten minutes
forcing open. Theo was able to determine from the deep gouges and the
damage to the lock that the door had suffered not just the onslaught
of crowbars but also battering by rather larger and less obvious
weapons such as a fire extinguisher and a railing post.
Theo remained downstairs
terrified and shaking during the whole time that it had taken for Mr
St. John-Easton to be murdered. He was in the company of three women
and two men who were sufficiently angry with the master of the house
to invade his property but perhaps not so much as to put him to death.
They seemed almost as anxious and nervous by the violence as Theo was,
although they were also clearly excited. They looked intently up the
staircase where from above came the echoing sounds of thumps and bangs
and whimpers. Two of the women were smoking rolled-up cigarettes and
were actually more trim and muscular than the men. They were all
smeared with dirt, sweat and grease. The effort involved in rioting in
Mayfair had clearly been strenuous. The already overstretched and
scaled down police force had quite simply not been up to the job of
containing the thousands of rioters rampaging through not only Mayfair
but every inner city suburb and potential flashpoint in London and the
other major cities in the United Kingdom.
When Theo woke up that
morning and heard on the news broadcasts that rioters were once again
amassing in the usual congregation points such as Trafalgar Square,
Hyde Park Corner and Piccadilly Circus, he imagined that any rioting
would be mostly confined to these places. The patently inadequate
police force was fully mobilised and forced to neglect their duty to
direct traffic, patrol neighbourhoods and prevent drugs abuse, while
the government continued to debate whether it was yet time to mobilise
the military. It didn’t help their cause, of course, that military
commitments in Africa and Asia had stretched that resource too far as
well. Theo nervously watched the progress of the rioting protestors on
television and was startled when the unreal world of online news
coverage suddenly became a fact of real life and twenty or so rioters
were now hammering at the door.
What was the chance that
the master of the house should actually be in residence? Like all such
coincidences, it was unlikely but true. For most days of every month,
the Berkeley Square residence was empty of anyone except ancillary
staff and workmen. There was far more chance of catching Mr St.
John-Easton in the Mediterranean on his yacht, the Buccaneer,
than in Mayfair. But the civil unrest that was to bring about the
death of the middle-aged billionaire was also the cause of his flight
being delayed. Ironically the very reason Eden was staying in his
Mayfair home in London was to congratulate the government on winning
the General Election and it was the controversy associated with its
disputed outcome that had spilled out onto the streets of the most
expensive real estate in Britain.
It was only when the
rioters had well and truly departed that Theo gathered the courage to
climb the stairs to the study where Mr St. John-Easton had been
hiding.
Theo hadn’t been the only
other person in the house. There were housemaids, kitchen staff, and a
minder who’d been more active in organising an emergency chartered
flight than in protecting his employer. Most of the servants huddled
together in the basement and were too terrified to venture upstairs
where the rioters had broken in. The minder had tried to do his duty
when the rioters piled up the stairs but he was unable to protect his
master against so many. It must have been the minder, however, who was
responsible for the death of the young man who had a bullet through
his chest, but this offensive was countered by several close-quarter
swings from baseball bats. Although his skull was cracked, the minder
did eventually manage to regain consciousness.
The minder’s act of
heroism probably only served to further incite the rage of the rioters
which they let loose on Mr St. John-Easton who was shaking with terror
under the table in his upstairs study. Or at least that was where the
murder scene investigators said he’d been hiding. When Theo entered
the study, it was just a bloody mess and difficult to make any sense
of the chaos.
Theo had been a faithful
servant for the Messrs St. John-Easton, father and son, for forty
years. That was almost a lifetime in itself. Most of that time was
spent in watchful idleness. Neither father nor son ever spent much
time in the United Kingdom however much they professed a deep love for
the country they hardly knew and mostly despised. Nevertheless, when
Mr St. John-Easton was on British soil, from the moment he arrived at
the airport until the moment he departed, Theo was always by his side.
There was no duty too demeaning for him. There were the prostitutes
whose services he helped facilitate. There were the abortions he’d
arranged for Eden’s girlfriends. The rehab clinics he’d contacted to
treat Eden’s drug-addicted daughter. The mysterious parcels he’d had
to escort with paranoid care and attention. And now there was no Mr
St. John-Easton to whom he could continue to provide a service. Eden
had left no male heirs and his daughter was too irresponsible to take
over her father’s estate.
What was left of Eden St.
John-Easton was not a pretty sight. The rioters had quite clearly lost
any trace of humanity when they discovered him cowering under the
table. All the resentment that had built up over nearly thirty years
towards the media tycoon who had such a huge hidden influence on
British society exploded all at once. To the rioters, he was the man
who had crippled the BBC and made Fox News UK the official voice of
Great Britain. He was the man who’d reduced the status of British
newspapers to the extent that only the foreign-owned Guardian remained
anything remotely like the voice of government opposition. He was the
man who cheered while the public sector shrunk to a mere shell of what
it had once been so as to facilitate tax cuts that benefited very few
people. He was the man who talked endlessly about bolstering British
business and British enterprise, but was part of the very process that
had relocated most enterprises funded by British money to the more
prosperous countries in the Far East or the slave wage economies of
Africa.
Eden’s head had been
smashed again and again and again. There was very little recognisable
in the bloody mess splattered across the carpet although there were
several loose teeth which could be used to identify the deceased. He’d
been battered elsewhere, judging by the crooked angle of his arms and
legs, but the damage done to what had once been his head and face was
what was most appalling.
When the police and the
coroner and the news photographers arrived, Theo was the man who was
most approximately the primary witness to the crime. He recounted
again and again the story of how he’d been pushed helplessly to one
side when the rioters broke in and how futile his attempts to protect
his master had been. What he never did was explain exactly how it was
that they even knew that Eden was in the building and what role Theo
had in the murder.
In actual fact, Theo did
quite well out of it all. He was awarded a handsome pension and the
right to remain in the very well-appointed Mayfair apartment where
he’d been living for the last thirty years. His wife and children were
now able to see more of him as he no longer had to spread his duties
between estates in Ashton Lovelock, Surrey and the rest of the British
Isles. His family was even granted the status of distant inheritors of
the St John-Easton estate because of a little-reported liaison between
Eden’s father and Theo’s wife that had been a cause of shame and
embarrassment to them for many years.
Nonetheless, Theo was
still burdened with the weight of his guilt.
If it hadn’t been for him
then it was likely that Eden St John-Easton would yet be alive.
But Theo was able to
temper the pang of his guilt by reflecting that the world could only
be a rather better place without him.
No Future Volume One
XXXIII
Eden
2051
“I
wouldn’t advise it, sir,” said Eden’s minder, Jason Irons, a dour but
efficiently vicious scot. “You’ve seen the news reports. It’s been
another day of riots. We’d be better off staying in the house until it
blows over. That is, of course, unless you want to leave incognito.”
“Incognito?” asked
Eden with outrage. “What the bloody hell does that mean?”
“Well, we could bundle you
into a modest car that someone of your status wouldn’t normally be
seen dead in and then we could drive you to your Surrey estate and
well away from any rioters.”
“You’re right, Irons,”
said Eden. “I wouldn’t be seen dead doing anything like that. We’ll
stay here and let this nonsense pass by. I’ll go up to my study. You
continue trying to organise that charter flight to the Med.”
“It’s difficult, sir, what
with the airport staff strike and the protests against aeroplane fuel
subsidies,” said Irons. “I mightn’t be able to arrange anything for a
couple of days.”
“I don’t bloody care what
it takes, Irons. What do I pay you for anyway? Just fucking do it.”
Irons scurried off to
carry out his duty and left his boss alone in his study. Eden buzzed
Theo on his phone who answered immediately. “Come up here please,” he
said and left the call at that. Within a minute, Theo was in the study
standing to attention and bowed his head to Eden in obsequious
deference.
“Well, Theo, it looks like
I’m going to be spending all of today and possibly most of tomorrow in
this place.”
“You won’t be going to
Surrey today then, sir?”
“No, I won’t,” said Eden.
“And it’s very likely that I shan’t be going there at all. My present
plan, if Irons can get it together, is to fly back to my yacht
tomorrow. I’ve already had more than enough of this country.”
“I’ll tell the guys in the
Buccaneer to expect you tomorrow, sir.”
“So, what is happening
outside,
Theo? You’d have thought there would be celebrations after the
election. Not riots. It all seemed pretty conclusive after the polls
closed.”
“There are a lot of people
who don’t like the election results, sir.”
“So why did they vote for
the Liberal Conservative Party then, Theo?”
“I think the ones
complaining are those who didn’t vote for them, sir. I think a lot of
them didn’t vote at all.”
“The modernisation of the
electoral system was well overdue. You saw the chaos that resulted
when every government was a coalition. In fact, the present government
is still a coalition. And it’s a coalition with some
political parties further to the right than Iverson’s lot that I’d
probably support if I thought they ever had a chance of becoming the
majority. It’s the voting system. It’s fair and square. The British
people should just respect the election result and get on with being
governed.”
“It’s not just the
results, sir. I think most people accepted the change of government
even if they didn’t like it.”
“You mean the US Embassy
shooting, Theo? What were the Americans supposed to do? Let the
anarchists overrun the place? They did the right thing. They should
act like that every time.”
“They generally do so
nowadays whatever happens, sir. The Americans are not much liked
anywhere in the world these days. They’re perceived to have become
unnecessarily brutal with the suppression of rioters and the like.”
“And so they should be.
What is this mob moaning about anyway? They pay less tax under a
Liberal Conservative government. They have more and better
opportunities to set up business free from government interference.
They should be happy.”
“Many are complaining
about unemployment and public service cuts, sir.”
“Unemployment, Theo? We’re
doing what we can to keep immigrants and asylum seekers off our
shores. They should be grateful. British jobs for British citizens.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, I need some
distraction this evening. I take it you’ll be able to organise
something. Or will the escorts also be frightened to walk the streets
of London?”
“I think that they’ll be
here even if the River Thames floods and the waters reach as far as
Mayfair, sir. I don’t think anything much could keep them away from
providing you a service. If need be, sir, they’d even dress up like a
rioter to get here.”
That amused Eden. “A
hooker in a hoodie. Tarts with eco-terrorist tee-shirts and utility
boots. Vegetarian whores. Well, they couldn’t be that, could they
Theo? Eating meat is part of their job. Where would they be if they
decided not to eat sausage when they’re asked to?”
“I don’t know, sir. Is
there anything else you require?”
“Food. Drink. The usual.
And if my deranged daughter turns up again, just tell her I’m not in.
That is, of course, unless she wants to fight off the rioters. Do you
think she sympathises with them, Theo?”
“I don’t think she has any
opinions, sir, political or otherwise.”
“She’s a hopeless case.
She’ll be dead long before I am. And then what will happen to the
inheritance?”
“I don’t know, sir. Will
that be all?”
“Yes, Theo. Don’t disturb
me until lunch is prepared.”
“Of course not, sir.”
Eden stood by the window
of his study. Berkeley Square seemed quiet. Perhaps a little too
quiet. Many of the more exclusive Mayfair shops and salons had been
shuttered up since the US Embassy incident. There weren’t enough
police about for Eden’s liking. They were probably gathered in places
like Trafalgar Square that had become almost second home for the
rioting yobbos. If only it was possible to corral the lot of them and
shoot them methodically. That would solve most of Britain’s problems
in one go. And do wonders for the unemployment statistics.
Eden picked up the phone
and punched in a number.
“Eden?” said the voice at
the other end.
“Prime Minister,” he
answered.
“How can I help you, Eden?
I am very busy at the moment. I can’t really stop for a chat.”
“I just wanted an update
on the situation.”
“It’s pretty grim, but
we’re winning.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“The protestors are
disorganised. Their demands are unfocused and uncoordinated. The media
are unanimously against them, including, you’ll be pleased to know,
the pinko Guardian and the BBC. There’s a head of steam but it’ll soon
dissipate.”
“How long do you think
it’ll take?”
“A day or so. At most a
week. In the long run it’ll all be to our benefit.”
“How do you work that one
out, Ivan?”
“It doesn’t do the causes
of the greens, the trades unions, the pinkos or the lefties any good
to be associated with civil unrest. The more they protest the better
the argument to clamp down on them and push forward a modernising
agenda.”
“And what might that be,
Prime Minister?”
“There is virtually no
difference, Eden, between what I want to achieve and what you’ve been
advocating for years. This country will be transformed under my
premiership. In a few years time it’ll hardly be recognisable.”
“Good to hear, Prime
Minister.”
“Thank you, Eden. Now, if
you don’t mind, I have an Emergency Cabinet Meeting in a few moments.”
The Prime Minister put
down the phone and Eden stared at it for a few moments while he
debated whether he to call the editors and senior executives of his UK
media concerns. Finally, he decided that he could trust them to handle
the situation by themselves. Eden looked out again through the window
at the street below.
Shit! The street wasn’t so
quiet now. He could see hundreds of louts and layabouts streaming into
Berkeley Square. They really did look like the cliché image of rioting
mobs as portrayed by his newspapers and other media outlets. They’d
armed themselves as well with makeshift weapons. Some were shouting
and yelling. They appeared to be concentrating around the square’s
perimeter. What the fuck! This was England. Britain. The United
Kingdom. This kind of thing didn’t happen here and it most certainly
didn’t happen in Mayfair. Curse the bloody Americans!
Eden watched as the mob
approached his house. They clearly knew it was his. Perhaps it was
those magazine articles about great town houses that had featured one
or other of his many British residencies. Perhaps it was all those BBC
News stories where whenever there was a report on his business
activities the journalist would always be filmed standing outside his
Berkeley Square home. Well, that was about the nearest they’d
ever get to actually meeting him. The only interviews he did in
Britain these days were for Fox News UK.
And then the nightmare
began in earnest.
Eden watched in horror as
below his study, four floors down, the mob applied their concentrated
force as one and began battering against his front door. He couldn’t
see exactly what they were doing, though he was sure the security
cameras were getting a good view that could be used later to settle
the ensuing insurance claims. They were using lethal equipment to
pulverise his door that included spiked railings, crowbars and other
improvised weapons which had undoubtedly been torn out of ransacked
cars and service vehicles. The banging and thumping reverberated about
the house. The bastards might even get in.
“Irons!” Eden cried out.
“Yes, sir,” said his
minder who appeared promptly at the door.
“You know what’s
happening, don’t you?”
“Yes, sir.”
“It looks pretty bad.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Deal with it, will you?”
“Yes, sir,” said the
minder. He cocked his combat pistol and strode off down the stairs.
The door eventually gave
in to the incessant pounding and from above Eden watched the mob pile
into the house. This was not supposed to happen. This was
going to be the day when Eden was due to fly back to his yacht. He’d
only booked this visit to England at the last minute anyway. But after
such an historic General Election victory, he thought it was pretty
much incumbent on him to show support. And now what was he to do?
All through the many years
of his career, he was generally escorted by a well-armed security
presence. He usually took extreme precautions especially when he
visited countries like America or Russia where homicide was rife. It
had been stupid not to do so here, but after having visited prosperous
business-friendly countries like China and Japan and not needing such
tight security, Eden naively thought the same applied to Great
Britain.
He was obviously wrong.
His security staff usually
had good advice for such dangerous situations and the most important
was to hide. He shouldn’t try to defend himself. There were trained
officers to do that. He shouldn’t try to run away unless he knew
exactly where he was running to. If he hid, there was a good chance
that he might avoid being found. He should never do anything that
might attract attention to his whereabouts.
The only place to hide
that Eden could think of was under the huge table that dominated his
study on which sat a massive computer screen and a pile of expensive
first-edition books he’d never read that had been written by people he
probably wouldn’t like anyway.
The nightmare continued.
Eden could hear the mob
from down the stairwell as they smashed furniture and priceless works
of art and yelled incoherently. He couldn’t quite make out the words
though he fancied that he heard his name being repeated several times.
So, they did know who lived in this house. Then there was the
unmistakable sound of heavy feet getting ever louder as the mob ran up
the stairs towards the fourth floor.
There was a pause in the
running. There were some angry cries. There was Irons’ booming
army-trained Scottish voice yelling at the mob. This was another thing
that Eden had been told by the security companies. Even mobs,
blood-crazed and insane, were often cowed by a show of authority:
especially when it was uncompromising and backed up by the clear
threat of force.
Then there was another
sound that couldn’t be mistaken for any other. Irons had fired off his
gun.
Eden shivered where he
was. Surely that would do it. Surely this was the end of the horror.
The mob would see that they were beaten. They would say “OK, mate. We
understand. We’ll be on our way. No hard feelings.”
Unfortunately this wasn’t
at all what happened when the echoes of the gunshot faded away.
Instead the sound of shouting and yelling from the mob got even louder
and there was the unmistakeable sound of more improvised weapons being
applied on the costly household fittings. Then the thunderous sound of
feet clambering up the stairs got steadily ever closer.
Shit! Shit! Shit!
There was another pause as
the mob assembled on the landing and various doors were opened and
shut. The shouting was still loud, but not much more coherent. Eden
heard the handle to the study door being turned. At least he’d had the
presence of mind to lock the door. Perhaps that would be good enough.
A locked door. Too much effort.
But no! The next sound was
of the door being jemmied off its hinges and then there was no barrier
between Eden and the mob. They were in the same room as him and he
could see their legs and feet from under the table where he was
hiding.
“There’s the cunt!” said
one of the rioters.
Shit!
No Future Volume One
XXXIV
Tamara
2096
A
woman in her mid-thirties strode about the grounds of Zoe’s estate.
She was wearing a smart suit of the kind only ever worn by female
business executives. There was a rhythmic clicking of her high heeled
stilettos on the paved stones as she walked along the path. Tamara
cautiously opened the front door to the house. It would be foolish to
pretend she wasn’t in, even if it was to receive the eviction notice
that she’d been anticipating for well over a year now.
The woman looked up from
her tablet PC where she’d been making notes with her fingers and
regarded Tamara who was standing in a tee-shirt and shorts at the top
of the front door steps.
“You must be Tamara,” she
said.
“Yes.”
“Zoe’s lesbian lover?”
“Yes.”
“You can’t be more than a
third her age. Was she really still interested in romance at
her age?”
“I guess I must be proof
of that.”
“Well, indeed,” said the
woman who again consulted her tablet PC. She strode towards Tamara and
outstretched her hand. “Allow me to introduce myself. I’m Theresa. I’m
the executor for Miss St. John-Easton’s estate.”
Tamara shook hands with
Theresa who scrutinised her rather more intently than she was
comfortable with.
“I assume you must be
wondering what will happen next,” said Theresa. “You’ve been living
here for quite a long time. Including the time when Zoe was still
alive, it must be at least two years. I imagine you’d almost come to
think that this was really your home.”
Tamara nodded.
“Shall we go inside?”
suggested Theresa. “We can discuss matters in more comfort there.”
Tamara escorted Theresa to
the living room where the television was burbling on about the
outbreak of plague in Ireland and the suspicion expressed by Irish
scientists had that it might be associated with a genetic engineering
lab based in England. Tamara turned off the set and settled into the
sofa while Theresa sat primly in the leather armchair opposite.
“As you probably know,
Tamara,” said Theresa, “there was no will left by the deceased. That’s
no surprise. The real surprise is that Zoe survived so long after all
those years of sustained drug abuse. My mother was next in line to
inherit the St. John-Easton estate and even that was hard to
demonstrate in court. This was especially so since she died a few
years ago. And that means the entire estate has been bequeathed to
me.”
“Was your mother related
to Zoe?” wondered Tamara.
“Only through her
grandfather. And she was hardly at all acknowledged as such. She was
the lovechild of Eden St. John-Easton’s father. The only reason that
there is a verifiable trace to Zoe’s father is that my grandmother was
the wife of his valet. My grandfather man was also Zoe’s
grandfather. My mother was younger than Zoe when she died. It’s
ironic, isn’t it? My mother who led a blameless life, bore a bastard
and cared for by one of Eden St. John Easton’s servants, died of
cancer before Zoe whose lifestyle was so excessive that no one
believed she could survive her twenties.” Theresa bit her lip and
raised her eyebrows. “My mother waited a long time for her inheritance
and she missed her opportunity. Instead, it’s been left to me.”
“It must be a great deal
of money.”
“It most certainly is,
Tamara,” said Theresa. “But it’s not as much as it once would have
been. It’s nothing like the fortune it was before Zoe’s father died.
Few of his prime investments had a long-term future: especially those
in the news and media. And it’s not as if Zoe had squandered it all.
Her allowance was generous but she was never allowed full access to
the St. John-Easton fortune. Her father knew that it would just end up
in her veins.”
“I’m sure she wouldn’t
have been that excessive.”
“Are you really sure,
Tamara? Or are you just saying that?”
“I don’t know,” Tamara
admitted.
“The St. John-Easton
business empire held a very wide portfolio. The investments weren’t
just in media, government contracts, arms and retail. There were many
that were never declared to the English taxman and whose existence was
known only to his private accountants. One such investment was Empire
Cleaning Services. You may have heard of them.”
Tamara didn’t know what to
say. She tried to look as nonchalant as she could.
“A cleaning company?”
“They were a
private home cleaning agency once upon a time. When St. John-Easton
acquired the business they were one of countless cleaning agencies
that supplied employment to immigrants and asylum seekers, usually
women, who were willing to make a living by cleaning the homes of the
relatively prosperous. The business took advantage of the low wages
such people were willing to accept and provided them with legitimate
employment while legislation regarding immigrant workers became
steadily tighter. After he acquired the company, it diversified into
other areas where it soon became been quite a lucrative earner for the
St. John-Easton estate. In short, Tamara, Zoe was your employer in a
way that neither of you was aware of when you came to be her lesbian
lover.”
“She was?”
“You can’t deny that you
worked for Empire Cleaning Services. I’ve seen their employment
records. Was it as an employee that you came to be resident at Miss
St. John-Easton’s estate? And if it was, I doubt very much that it was
to actually keep the place clean. That was provided by Think Clean
Ltd. They provide services at a quite reasonable rate, although their
business actually is exclusively related to the aim of keeping
their clients’ property clean. Admittedly, like Empire Cleaning
Services, they can be relied upon to be discreet, but not in quite the
same way.”
“I’m not sure what you’re
suggesting.”
“Aren’t you, Tamara?” said
Theresa who looked directly at her with a not especially friendly
smile. “Are you sure you can’t guess what I’m suggesting?”
“No.”
“Okay,” said Theresa.
“I’ll spell it out to you. Zoe was not a woman with much of a history
of committed relationships over her many years. It’s obvious that she
did have some relationships—her history of abortions is evidence of
that—but at no stage did she ever maintain a stable relationship with
anyone she was intimate with. In the last twenty or so years, the only
sexual relations she’d had at all were ones she paid for and those
were exclusively with men. There is a record of transactions with
agencies whose principal business is to supply the services of what
might charitably be called gigolos. There is no evidence to suggest
that Zoe was likely to have a Sapphic relationship this late in her
life.”
“But she obviously did,”
Tamara continued to assert.
“Did she?” wondered
Theresa with a bit of a frown. “All those years of substance abuse and
principally heterosexual recreational sex; and then you walk into her
life. One moment you’re an employee of Empire Cleaning Services and
the next you’re her lover. There isn’t much in your records that makes
that plausible. You’re an asylum seeker from the Middle East, I
believe. Where from, in particular? Jordan? Syria? Which one of those
nuclear wastelands?”
“Israel.”
“Israel, hmm,” said
Theresa thoughtfully. “No wonder you don’t want to return home. Your
passport’s not much use to you now, is it? Are you Jewish?”
“Yes.”
“Israel doesn’t have many
friends left, does it? The Second Diaspora they call it. Is that so?
Are you part of that?”
“I am,” said Tamara with
resignation.
Theresa pursed her lips.
“A Jewish prostitute,” she said bluntly. “Not however one who’s shown
much appetite for lesbianism. You had plenty of opportunity while
employed at Empire Cleaning Services to work for female clients. This
is an option often taken by employees with no previous history of
Sapphic inclination simply because there’s less risk of physical
punishment. You were one of a minority who showed no inclination to
even pretend to be a lesbian. And yet you claim to be the first female
lover in Zoe’s long life. Doesn’t that seem strange to you?”
Tamara was defeated. “Yes,
it does.”
“I thought you might,”
said Theresa. She looked around the living room which had been
vacuum-cleaned just a day or so before. “Well, Tamara, you’ve had
access to my aunt’s home for a good long time. I’m glad to see you
haven’t trashed it. The security guards told me that there have been
no incidents of wild parties. No orgies. No drug binges. In fact,
you’ve not invited even one of your friends or ex-colleagues to stay
at all. Very commendable.”
“Thank you,” said Tamara
sheepishly.
“However, as you probably
know, you have no actual right to continue to reside in the property,”
continued Theresa. “There is no verifiable proof that you ever had a
relationship with Zoe, intimate or not. There seems to be no good
reason for you to have been here at all. The most charitable
explanation is that you were here to keep her company while she was
taking illegal drugs. A less charitable one is that you were the one
who supplied her with such narcotics. I don’t need to know what you
did, but I do need to make it clear to you that there is no reason for
me to let you stay in what is now my Surrey estate.”
Tamara nodded her head. “I
understand that.”
“I’m a reasonable woman,”
continued Theresa. “Whatever relationship you may have had with my
aunt is neither here nor there, but I can understand why you might be
reluctant to return to life outside the protection of the estate
walls. I’ve seen the news stories about Jews being lynched by angry
mobs. It sounds rather mediaeval, doesn’t it? Only this time the
peasantry of England is mingled with the vocal encouragement of the
Muslim community. It’s not a good time to be a Jew. Even those whose
families have never been remotely near Israel for hundreds of years
are at the raw end of the new age of intolerance. I take it you don’t
want to be lynched?”
“No, not at all.”
“My grandfather was
lynched. Of course, I wasn’t even born when that happened. Those were
the great London Riots that precipitated martial law and the
dissolution of the United Kingdom. They seem like a quiet day in the
park compared with the bread riots, race riots and civil disorder that
are daily occurrences these days. I don’t want to see you lynched even
though I think you’ve been deceitful and thieving and duplicitous. You
might be a drug-dealing Jewish whore, but you don’t deserve that.”
“No, I don’t.”
“There is no question that
you will have to leave this estate. The decorators are moving in
within the month and I need you to be out by then. You do
understand that there is no choice in the matter, Tamara?”
“I do,” said Tamara
nodding her head. She’d been expecting to be evicted for so long that
now that it was happening it seemed to be following a pre-ordained
course.
“There are two options I’d
like you to consider,” said Theresa. “Well, there is a third, of
course, which is that you just walk out of the estate and take your
chances on the streets of Surrey. I’m sure there are plenty of
opportunities still for drug-dealing and prostitution. One of the two
choices is that you return as an employee of Empire Cleaning Services
which you will be pleased to know is an option that remains open to
you despite the fact that you left their employment without serving
your notice period. Is that an option for you?”
“It might be,” admitted
Tamara.
“The other is that you
work for one of the many nursing homes owned by the St. John-Easton
estate.”
“Nursing homes?”
“A substantial number of
nursing homes were built in the middle of the century just before my
grandfather died. There was an aging population and many elderly
people had the wealth and resources to afford to spend their twilight
years in various kinds of care home. The retirement industry is less
lucrative nowadays than it was then. Fewer people can save enough
money to meet the expense of constant care and the state no longer
takes up the slack. Only a very few can now afford to stay at such
places. I don’t know what happens to the rest. Perhaps they just die
miserable deaths. My grandfather could see a growing business
opportunity and so he invested in it. I’m offering you an option that
might be well suited to a bright woman like you and that is to work as
a care assistant in one of the many thousands of nursing homes I now
happen to own. What do you think?”
Tamara frowned. This was a
career choice that had never once occurred to her before.
“It is an
option,” she said glumly.
No Future Volume One
XXXV
Alex
2028
Despite
having spent a great deal of the millionaire’s money on projects
related to the online world of Virtual Reality, or perhaps because of
that, Eden’s request to meet him in his Mayfair house was filling Alex
with dread. Although he’d worked hard at the hopeless task of making a
success of his poorly specified role, he was acutely aware of who it
was who would make the final assessment of the project’s worth.
Eden’s London home was
very impressive. Berkeley Square was surely one of the most exclusive
addresses in London, perhaps in the whole of the United Kingdom. It
was a grand house in a grand square and everything adjacent to it,
near it and what could be seen through the front door when it opened
was also grand.
“You must be Alan,” said
the tall gentleman in a smart suit who opened the door. He was about
Alex’s age but dressed as if he belonged to a much older generation.
“I’m afraid Mr St. John-Easton isn’t in. However, I’m sure I can be of
help. My name is Theo.”
“Good afternoon, Theo,”
said Alex who was actually rather relieved that Eden wasn’t at home.
“Where is Mr St. John-Easton?”
“Not in the UK, sir,” said
Theo. “I daresay he’s probably in Florida by now. Mr St. John-Easton
is quite the globetrotter. However, please come in, Alan.”
“Thank you,” said Alex as
he passed through the threshold into the hallway and passed by some
paintings that he believed might have been painted by William Hogarth
and were therefore priceless. However, as Alex wasn’t especially
knowledgeable on eighteenth century painters, the painter could well
have been someone else and the painting therefore not nearly as
valuable.
“In the living room, sir,”
said Theo as he directed Alex towards a room that was several times
larger than it needed to be. It resembled more a room in a stately
home managed by the National Trust than any room he’d ever been
invited into before. Alex nervously sat down on the fresh new leather
upholstery of a chair that was probably as old as the paintings. He
looked around him. The centrepiece of the room was an imposing chimney
place decorated by antique tiles. Portraits of grand dignitaries
glared disapprovingly down on him. As they mostly seemed to have been
painted within the last century they were probably all Eden’s
ancestors. Paul noticed with interest that the men portrayed weren’t
nearly as short in stature as the present master of the house.
“I’m confident that Mr St.
John-Easton would convey his apologies to you for not being here,”
said Theo, “but if it’s any consolation he very rarely keeps any
appointment he’s made. More often than not I have to stand in for him
as I am doing now. Do you know why he asked you here, Alan?”
“No. Not really,” said
Alex nervously.
“Well, he did ask me to
find out whether the work you’ve been doing on Virtual Reality is
going well and that his ideas are being put into practice. I take it
that I can reassure him on these concerns?”
“Yes, of course,” said
Alex.
“That is, I take
it, what you are engaged in at Reuters-Fox? Virtual Reality. The kind
of thing that involves wearing headsets.”
“Yes, it is.”
“Have you any idea how
that in any way materially furthers Mr St. John-Easton’s interests? He
doesn’t usually take much interest in computers or anything like that.
It’s quite unlike him to use a touch screen for anything but the
simplest application. What could possibly have given him the idea that
his business might be in any way served by investing in Virtual
Reality?”
“It was him who asked me
to get more involved,” said Alex.
“I’m sure he did, Alan.
And why might that be? Could it have anything to do with, for
instance, his wife, Zara?”
Alex was shocked by the
insinuation. What did this man know? “I’m sorry. What did you say?”
“I gather that you and
Zara have been quite regular drinking partners at the Zenith for quite
a while now. Don’t worry about how I know this. Although Mr St.
John-Easton takes very little notice of the information his security
staff gather of activities that might affect his welfare, I’ve always
maintained a very keen interest. It is imperative that I am better
informed of such matters than anyone if I am to provide the quality of
service Mr St. John-Easton expects.”
“You do?”
“The ability to anticipate
Mr St. John-Easton’s needs requires a great deal of research. As you
would expect, the welfare of his wife and her drinking habits are
amongst the matters to which I pay considerable attention. I am also,
of course, interested about any activity associated with Zara that
might be useful to know should there ever be a time that her lawyers
might threaten to make disagreeable allegations in a court of law. Mr
St. John-Easton isn’t aware of my curiosity in these matters, but he
will very grateful for it if, for example, there should ever be
divorce proceedings. On the other hand, Alan, I think you can be
consoled by the fact that the evidence suggests that you have been
quite the gentleman. And this despite several instances of rather
unsubtle coaxing. You’re a married man, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Isobel, isn’t it? And
your wife is pregnant, I believe. A boy or a girl?”
“We chose not to find
out.”
“Very foolish, Alan. It
means you have to think up about twice the number of names for your
child than you might have done otherwise. You could go for Leslie or
Sandy, I suppose. Useful for either sex.”
“I’m sure it is,” said
Alex who was beginning to get irritated by this line of Theo’s
questioning.
“Although I have to look
out for the welfare of both Mr St. John-Easton and his wife, you must
be aware that it is the husband’s interests that are of primary
concern to me. It is he who pays my salary. I would say that your
relationship with Zara is rather more as a drinking companion than as
a fuck buddy. And as such you’ve had a longer and rather more
successful relationship with her than the many other men whose details
have been amassed. You’ve been very sensible not to push your luck.
The vagueness and even vacuousness of this business with Virtual
Reality is surely something that Zara would dream up than would a man
like you who is steadily pulling himself up the slippery pole of
middle management. Zara knows even less about computers than Mr St.
John-Easton, but she knows how to press his buttons. I may not be a
businessman but I can see that there is very little likelihood of a
return on investment from any of the enterprises you’re involved in.
Does this trouble you at all, Alan?”
“I don’t quite know what
you’re getting at.”
“My guess is that Mr St.
John-Easton believes that there is some propaganda value in having a
presence in the VR space. However, unlike my employer, I’ve done some
independent research into this strange world. Porn, hobbits, twentieth
century science-fiction movies, celebrities and trivia: none of these
are likely to be much use to Mr St. John-Easton in his evangelical
crusade to convert a nation of complacent fools to the promised land
of low taxation and lucrative business opportunities. His investments
elsewhere are likely to do rather better than this little niche.
Wouldn’t you agree, Alan?”
“I guess so,” said Alex.
“However, my belief is
that Mr St. John-Easton is more concerned to be seen to be doing
something that can be perceived as forward-looking and dynamic than of
turning around much of a profit or, indeed, of having a great deal of
influence. I hope that your project will at least fulfil those
criteria.”
“We have invested great
talent into the enterprise.”
“Make sure that it is easy
enough for someone like Zara to use and for Mr St. John-Easton to
appreciate. It is in my interest to keep my employer contented—and in
yours to keep your job—that your project is not perceived to be a
total waste of money. Nevertheless, there must be several people at
Reuters-Fox UK who’d be happy to see your endeavours fail: especially
those in slightly more junior positions than you. There must be others
who wonder how you’ve managed to be lavished with so many resources
when other projects have been downgraded or axed. You’re in a
precarious position, are you not, Alan?”
Alex nodded. Political
infighting was what dominated most hours of every day and about which
he spent most time agonising.
“What you might not be
aware of is that Mr St. John-Easton is in the process of acquiring an
internet content company: you know, one of those that provide the
content for websites that deal with Virtual Reality, online gaming,
news gathering, blogging, apps, and so on. This is a growing niche at
the moment with plenty of job opportunities. I expect that once he’s
acquired the company my employer will want to move his own people onto
the management board. Anyone fortunate enough to secure such a
position is likely to find it a rather less challenging role than your
present one. The main objective would be to keep the company’s
activities in line with what Mr St. John-Easton believes they should
be. That would make such a role somewhat unpopular with the current
board but it would be associated with very generous remuneration. I
don’t know if you’ve ever considered a move away from news media, have
you?”
“No, I haven’t,” said
Alex, who wasn’t sure if he was hearing right. Was he being offered a
lucrative job with virtually no responsibilities merely on the basis
of his friendship with Zara?
“Obviously I am in no
official position, Alan,” said Theo with a reassuring smile. “What
happens is totally out of my hands. Even so, what I suggest you do is
focus even more assiduously on your current VR projects. Mr St.
John-Easton likes to be kept informed, but he never has the time to
focus on details. The waffle you provide his office on a regular basis
is exactly what he wants, though I suggest you put rather more
emphasis on the project providing online content that can be sold to
other businesses. I also suggest you take every opportunity, even more
than you do at present, to fan Mr St. John-Easton’s passions. You know
what he likes to see promoted, don’t you?”
“Business. Britain. Low
taxation. Roll back intrusive government. I think so.”
“You don’t have to
actually believe what Mr St. John-Easton advocates. In fact, I think a
healthy dose of scepticism would probably be more in order than any
swivel-eyed evangelism. Just make sure that at least one of the bullet
points in his agenda is covered in your reports. Clearly there’s not
much scope for promoting an anti-immigrant, anti-European Union or
anti-layabout agenda. Especially not the last, as I suspect a very
high proportion of the people who frequent VR websites are out of
work, especially since last year’s collapse of the banking system and
the housing market. But you should have some success in promoting
decentralisation from government and consolidation around already
thriving multinational corporations. Keep a list handy of Mr St.
John-Easton’s principal business ventures and ensure that that you
emphasis the benefits of cross-market synergy in your reports. That’s
something my employer has been particularly keen on since he bought
all those collapsing banks in America like CitiGroup and JP Morgan.”
“I see,” said Alex who was
still flabbergasted by this truly peculiar conversation. Was Theo
being too candid or was he just being attentive to his employer’s
interests.
“Well, it’s been good to
see you, Alan,” said Theo who stood up to signal that their interview
was over. “I hope all is well with your wife and that you will soon be
blessed with a bouncing boy or girl.”
“Thank you,” said Alex who
was more or less hurrying towards the front door where he might at
last pause and gather together his thoughts.
“I’m sure Mr St.
John-Easton has no objection to you accompanying his wife to the
Zenith for the moment,” said Theo as they stood at the open door.
“However, it is, as I’m sure you appreciate, a very delicate matter. I
won’t be surprised if my employer’s tolerance towards his wife’s
flirtations begins to strain in the next few months. At the moment, as
you might be aware, Zara is expecting.”
“No, I didn’t know,” said
Alex in surprise.
“Well, it is
nearly a month since the two of you last met,” said Theo thoughtfully.
“It might be well not to be around when Zara next comes to your
office. Perhaps you should arrange your working hours so that you’re
less likely to be there late in the evening. I’m sure Isobel would be
very pleased to see more of her husband now that, like Zara, she too
is expecting. In my experience, it’s a very hazardous time in a
couple’s relationship when a new member of the family is born. There
could be very serious repercussions if Zara’s child isn’t from the
same genetic heritage as her husband. You want to be as far from the
firing line as you possibly can. Do you understand me?”
“Yes,” said Alex as he
nodded his head. “Perfectly.”
Cover
@page {padding: 0pt; margin:0pt}
body { text-align: center; padding:0pt; margin: 0pt; }