by Pam Crane
the shops; people always panic-buy. We kept out of all that. Pity as it turned out. We forgot about one crucial thing: water. When the flare came, and burnt out every electricity grid on every continent the pumping stations stopped. Only gravity-fed water would get to the taps and eventually even that would dry up. So bottled water would have been a good idea ... had there been any left! I never thought I'd see the day when Brits were happier to be at home praying for rain than cooking themselves on a Pacific beach.
You're really wondering why this was my happiest day, aren't you! Shall I just say that sometimes it's nice to be right. I'd seen it coming. People just laughed. I'm not going round saying 'I told you so' but the fact that you are doing a serious interview with a man who was once ridiculed for being 'unscientific' is mightily gratifying! I'll show you my original calculations if you like. Later on. Over a whisky. And the other reason it was my happiest day - though as you can imagine the initial euphoria didn't last - was the silence.
There was one almighty bang in the direction of the local electricity sub-station and then nothing moved. The clocks all stopped, apart from the battery alarm and our wrist-watches. The hum was gone from the fridge and freezer (we'd cleared those pretty well - hate wasting good food!) Not a prayer of any news from the TV or radio as nothing was transmitting any more; we learned later that every single satellite up there had been fried. No traffic moving anywhere. No phone. Just us, sitting there in the noonday sun - dazzling, even through our green curtains; looking at each other and wondering like the rest of the world was wondering how in heaven's name we were going to live from day to day. Even the birds were silent. Even the animals. There was no wind, and no sound, and the sheer overwhelming peace of it all was sublime. We were now in a world where there were no aircraft, no factories, no mobiles. There was no information. Everything was absolutely still. And I loved it.
Anyway, after the darkest night we'd ever known (the stars! ... For the first time ever, we could see all the stars!) and one or two wobbly moments with candles, we woke to an urgent banging on the front door and there was Dick from down the road with his bike and a message to come to an emergency meeting in the Church Hall.
So we walked down. The entire village had turned out, standing room only. Valerie and I were squashed against one of the useless radiators. Everyone was talking at once - though here and there you saw an ashen face, you know ... those appalled eyes of someone in deep shock? One woman had to be carried out. Tom Barton the land-owner plus the vicar and our local GP eventually got the room to simmer down so we could talk through the critical issues - principally water and food. 'Unless we share, we die,' were Tom's words. Blunt, as ever.
In hindsight, rural communities like ours actually managed pretty well; we're a resourceful bunch. Everyone rigged up some sort of rainwater butt, and we set up committees to distribute filtered river water and the produce from farms and gardens. We went back to wheelbarrows, and horse-power, and our aching 21st century legs. Meat was largely off the menu - short-term, we needed every animal we had for milk, eggs, wool or transport of course, and security around the farms, hen-coops and small-holdings had to be very, very tight. Pets? Don't ask. Huge bone of contention... to coin a phrase ... you can probably imagine how many went 'missing'. They caused more fights and more grief than almost anything else - even the wildlife. Eventually one bright lady in the WI pointed out that combing pet fur produced wonderful fibre for spinning and this saved a lot of our little friends from the stew-pot. But I'm jumping ahead.
You know what happened next. We had a war on our hands. Three days after the Storm we heard vehicles. The big boys still had fuel; Tesco and Waitrose had sent their juggernauts to pick up all the veg and dairy from contracted farms to fill the shelves in the cities. We were living in a rural bubble. We had no idea how desperate things were for everyone else, and frankly most of us didn't care. Would you? Did you? Slam a human being into survival mode and what does he do? Well I tell you: it was Gunfight at the OK Corral. The drivers had been warned that there would be trouble and they were armed. But so were we. Before they could turn off the main road we had their tyres out. I could still handle a shotgun. We got the blighters' petrol tanks too. That was a good day!
Not many since then though. The last nine years have been worse than we ever imagined. Hats off to the engineers and the miners; without them we could never have rebuilt any of our systems. We'd have been back in the stone age. That sudden peace and quiet was pretty permanent for the millions of poor beggars who starved or died in the riots. Still - there's less population pressure now. The world has a chance to recover, get its forests back, breathe ... we'd done a pretty good wrecking job, hadn't we? No choice now. Renewables or nothing. When we're done, young man, and you've phoned your copy through - you can use our line - I'll give you a tour of our solar farm. Solar's a good investment now, ironically! Interested?
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INTERVENTION
My birth was a total shock.
Doreen, the ample young woman who was suddenly my mother, didn't even know she was pregnant. It happened during the last act of Shrek The Musical, plunging the Upper Circle and then the entire Palace Theatre into pandemonium. And I was the wrong colour. Not wrong in the sense of pale Mum/ebony babe or vice versa, but wrong in being - in any and every light - green.
I was as green as Shrek, in stark contrast to the afterbirth. Parents in adjoining seats fainted. They had paid good money to bring pink or brown offspring to town, to see their emerald hero fight for the heart and hand of his princess; they were all set to cheer fairytale characters cruelly banished from home ... and now the theatre echoed to horrified cries of "It's a freak!" "Get it out of here!" "Don't look, darling!" The safety curtain hastily came down. Staff dashed around like dogs on a flock. The theatre emptied.
A&E bustled us into a side-room. Doreen, too traumatised even to weep, was cleaned up, medicated, and made as comfortable as possible while a nervous sister washed me and an ashen-faced duty doctor embarked on a battery of tests.
"Shouldn't she be in Maternity?"
"How would you feel if this frightful anomaly was wheeled in beside you?"
"OK. Staying here then."
"How are we doing?"
"Sex indeterminate. Blood ... I can't cope with this ... totally green. No haemoglobin. Lab will have to tell us what else is in it. BP otherwise normal. ECG, oh dear, anomalous; we're getting a sort of double trace ... we'll have to do an MRI. Coccyx is odd; seems more prominent than usual. No hair, not even eyebrows. We have no way of knowing if this is delayed growth or a form of alopecia."
"Doctor Singh, whatever this child is, it needs to go on the breast. It needs to bond with its mother. Can we stop, please, and give ... it ... to - what is your name, dear?"
"Doreen Sharkey." She could hardly speak.
"To Doreen. Can you release your bra?"
"But I haven't any milk!"
"Are you sure? Here, let me help you. There we are. Now take ... baby. See? He ... she ... wants to feed!"
Doreen screamed. No-one had realised I already had teeth. And I wouldn't let go. There was milk, and I needed to grow.
The MRI scan sent the doctors into a spin.
"Do you think we should notify the Home Office?"
"Or Nick Pope?"
"Or SETI?"
"Or just keep this very, very quiet until we really know what's going on. Here we have an infant born to a human mother but with a totally abnormal physiology. The green blood is pumped by two hearts. There appears to be the beginning of an actual tail. The bony structures are pneumatised like a bird's, and all joints appear to have complete rotation. There are four lungs, and a stomach almost like that of a ruminant ... but we can't know as yet how it functions. Most of the skin surface is very smooth - but seems a little scaly over the shoulder-blades. Teeth are unusually mature for a neonate ... poor mother! And the eyes - until they are open it is impossible to comment."
"So what do we do?"
"Why not ask Doreen?"
My mother, now sedated, was sobbing.
"Doreen? Can we talk?"
"Mmm ..."
"How long have you been carrying this baby?"
"I don't know! I didn't know it was there!" Her tears were soaking the hospital gown now inadequately covering her large, wobbly body.
"Can you remember any occasion when someone ... something? ... might have taken advantage of you?"
"The only thing I can think of was a dream I had. I'd been watching "E.T." It was all about UFOs, and I went up in one. But it was just a stupid dream! Wasn't it?"
"Hard to say. But here you are now with an alien baby. And we have no idea what to do."
"I want to go home!"
"With or without the child?"
"It's not a child! It's a monster! You keep it. You deal with it. I want my life back!"
So much for mother-love. Doreen was mopped up, dressed, and taken home, where she locked and bolted all her doors and windows and hid from the world until her fridge was empty.
"I'll take him," said Sister Jones from Radiology. "I've seen the scans. I live way out in the sticks with no immediate neighbours. My partner is paraplegic, but always up for a challenge. We can bring up Baby and keep him ... her ... well away from the media and prying eyes, and maybe liaise with the SETI people. They really need to be
