The Milieu Principle

by Malcolm Franks

“Thank you,” said Matt, handing the dishes to the stewardess. Now they were airborne he was enjoying the view from the window seat. The place next to him was empty, not that he was complaining. The flight would take seven and a half hours and the additional room was a godsend. He could maximise the space and kill some time with a bit of research.

  He started up the laptop hoping the shop assistant had given it a decent charge. Once loaded he keyed in his name and chose a password, M44MDL, the registration of the Mercedes. He always used the same one. Reaching into his shirt pocket, he pulled out the memory stick and inserted it into the USB port.

  Matt waited for over half a minute. Nothing happened. Then the screen divided in two and a message grew out of the middle, gradually increasing in font size to about sixteen or eighteen. The message stopped enlarging and began to float from one side of the screen to the other, and then move up and down. Irritatingly, it would not sit still.

  “Bloody hell Dave,” he muttered, “you always had to show off, you big lump!”

  His mind flashed back to Leaplish and he chastised himself for the thoughtless remark. He had to blink rapidly to try and dismiss the images from his mind.

  “Concentrate,” he told himself.

  The message read, Sumac Pacha. What the hell did that mean? It continued to float around the screen for minutes on end and he followed it with his eyes, moving from left to right then up and down before left to right again.

  He cursed and pressed the enter button in frustration. The screen went blank. Then the cursor re-appeared in the middle, flickering on and off, as if waiting for a response. He decided it must be an anagram. Dave enjoyed doing silly puzzles.

  Over the next couple of hours he tried a variety of different combinations, all to no avail. No matter what he typed in, nothing happened. Matt decided to give it a rest. He switched the computer off to save the battery and placed it between his feet, popping the memory stick back into his shirt pocket.

  Choosing to listen to some music, he pressed the earphones into place and plugged them in to the socket at the front of the seat. As the music played softly in his ear he couldn’t stop his mind thinking of the puzzle, and it continued to work through the seemingly endless possibilities over what the solution could be. Perhaps it was a foreign language, or maybe one of those bizarre musicals Dave used to enjoy so much. Maybe there was some kind of mathematical context to it.

  A long period of reflection followed. Matt ultimately decided to make use of the thesaurus application. It was a long shot, but worth a try. Pulling the computer onto his lap he switched on and drummed his fingers impatiently along the side of the machine while it loaded. Just as the laptop settled into readiness his attention was drawn to a glowing orange light at the bottom of the screen. A boxed message flagged up in the corner.

  Warning, low battery, it said.

  “Shit!”

  “Would you like some dinner, Sir?” asked the stewardess, amused by his curse.

  Embarrassed by the language he had been heard to use Matt listened politely as she listed the available choices; chicken or beef dinner. Matt chose the second.

  “Could I ask you to put the laptop away during dinner please, sir?”

  Matt nodded. He asked if the sockets built into the arm rests were suitable for PC chargers. She told him they were not and he thanked her. He would have to wait for terra firma to charge the laptop.

  Frustrated by the failure of his new technology, Matt’s gaze started to drift around the plane to keep his mind occupied. Over the isle he recognised the skinny man from the airport, sat between his two kids. He was reading them a story from a children’s book, oblivious to the fact they had both fallen asleep. He wondered which row of seats the wife occupied. He looked behind. There she sat, spread-eagled between two of the three seats, stuffing her mouth with some cake like item without spilling as much as a crumb.

  He was about to look away when he caught sight of the shape occupying the remaining seat, crushed up against the window by the fat lady’s massive bulk. It was the blonde in the yellow top and delicious blue eyes, looking thoroughly miserable.

  She was desperately trying to ignore the constant jostling of the other thoughtless passenger, struggling to conceal her rising impatience. She glanced towards him and smiled; the sort of ‘I’d talk to you if I could,’ kind of smile. He returned a weak grin in acknowledgement. Before looking away he saw her once more bemoan her imprisonment by raising her eyes to the sky, and it broadened his smile.

  Matt walked out of Customs and headed down the stairs to the wide open, impossibly clean, spaces of the air terminal’s ground floor. He’d been here once before and had a good idea how to get around the building.

  Three day shopping break was the explanation he had given the female officer as his reason for visiting. There were no obvious indications they sought anyone in particular and he got quickly through. He took this as a good sign.

  The time saved in not having to queue for luggage coming off the plane was used to convert eight hundred pounds at the foreign exchange desk and, to get some loose coins; he bought himself a pack of twenty cigarettes and a lighter. Matt walked over to a public phone booth and began leafing through the telephone directory until he got to the hotels section. It took four calls before he managed to secure a room at a hotel in downtown Toronto.

  Exiting the terminal the bright warm sunshine hit him like he’d entered a sauna. He slipped off the overcoat and made for the taxi rank. They had posh taxis here he remembered, almost like limousines, and one such car pulled up alongside. The boot lid flipped open and the driver made for the rear of the car.

  “It’s all right, I’ve got it,” said Matt placing his luggage inside the cavernous boot. He called out the name of his hotel as the driver re-entered his seat.

  Matt headed to the rear passenger door and tugged lightly at the handle, uncomfortably warmed to the touch by the hot and beating sun.

  “Excuse me,” said a husky woman’s voice. Matt turned to identify its owner. It was the stunning blonde in the yellow top.

  “Are you going in to town?” she asked. “Fancy going Dutch on the taxi fare?”

  “Yeah, of course,” he instantly agreed without a moment’s thought.

  The driver flipped the boot lid open again to allow Matt to put her suitcase inside, and then he walked back to the car door and opened it a little wider for the young woman. She gave him a sunny smile and slid along the seat to the other side. Matt followed her inside.

  Now he’d seen her up close she seemed even prettier than he’d first thought. He gazed into her blue eyes and she used them to full effect to beam back at him.

  “Where to?” he asked and she gave the name of a different hotel to his, although he recalled it being fairly close to where he was staying.

  “I’m Rosa, Rosa Cain,” she introduced adding, “Cain with a curly C.”

  “Matt,” he replied with a smile, “Matt Durham. I hope your flight wasn’t too much fun,” he said dryly and she gave out a welcoming, throaty laugh in response to his attempt at humour.

  “I was this close,” she said holding up one of her small hands to signify a tiny space between her fingers. “This close to asking for a box of matches so I could start a fire,” and he grinned broadly.

  She was round of face, with a small pert nose and those magnetic blue eyes. The lips of her small mouth were coated a glossy deep red colour which seemed to match the shape of her face.

  “Gosh isn’t it hot over here, much warmer than England,” she said. “It always makes me want to spend more when the weather is like this.”

  “Spend more?”

  “That’s what shopping trips are for aren’t they? To spend as much as you can.”

  “I suppose so, if you have the money to burn.”

  “Not mine,” she laughed, “It’s a birthday present from my Dad. My friend Jennifer was supposed to be coming until she fell ill at the last minute. I thought about cancelling, but didn’t wa
nt to upset my Dad.” Another throaty laugh filled the back of the cab with her warmth.

  “Well, as long as you’re sure that’s what he wanted you to do, I suppose.”

  “Of course,” she joked. “If I didn’t spend his retirement pot then my sisters would, and I’m a far more deserving case,” she laughed.

  Matt said little during the drive into town, being unable to get a word in edgeways as Rosa chattered incessantly. Not that this bothered him, proving to be a wonderful distraction from the events of the last day or so. Rosa was very open, a typical Northerner. Although hailing originally from Kendal, in Cumbria, her accent was anything but pure Cumbrian. There was a hint of northern dialect, but it was well masked.

  “Been around a bit,” was how she explained it. “Picked up a little from here, a little from there; you know what I mean.”

  Rosa had two elder sisters, one a nurse the other a teacher, who were both married. Her mum and dad had taken early retirement together and were hoping to move permanently to one of the Costa’s in Spain. She had studied Psychology at University and was between jobs.

  “I love shopping,” she had said. “Last year I shopped in New York, and spent a small fortune. It’s an ambition of mine to buy something from every major city on the globe. Life’s not a rehearsal, after all.”

  This phrase, life’s not a rehearsal, cropped up frequently in her monologue. She was evidently someone who lived for the day, the moment, lapping up each and every minute of her young life. Her charm completely disarmed Matt, who found Rosa the total antidote to all his immediate worries as he only had to keep nodding and smiling as she spoke. There was no need to interpret each statement, no need to read between the lines of her conversation, just sit back and listen to the steady stream of her open and good natured chattering.

  Normally he found talkative people a turn off. With Rosa it seemed natural. There was no ‘me, me, I, I’ to her words only a zest for communication. It helped she was staggeringly beautiful and, unlike the immediate conclusion he had jumped to at Newcastle Airport, she was anything but self indulged by her own beauty. Matt took to her easily.

  The fifty minute drive into Toronto flashed by in what seemed like less than half the time, ending only when the taxi pulled up outside Rosa‘s hotel. Matt found himself rushing round to the back to lift her suitcase out of the boot while the taxi driver smirked through the mirror, seeing all too well Matt was quite taken with the young blonde woman.

  “Don’t worry about the taxi,” offered Matt. “We’ll call it a belated birthday present.”

  “Why thank you, Matt,” said Rosa, “I refuse nothing but blows,” and let out a throaty laugh which he returned with a warm smile.

  “Enjoy your stay in Toronto,” he called after her as she entered the hotel lobby. Rosa looked back and beamed, wiggling her hand to say goodbye.

  He found Rosa’s company to be an entertaining interlude, and wished the journey had taken a little longer. No sooner had he got back into the taxi then reason kicked in. There was no time for play, he had to focus, get to the hotel and charge up the laptop to see exactly what was on the memory stick. He put his hand to his shirt pocket to check it was still there.

  The watch revealed three in the afternoon, Toronto time. A shower, shave and change into fresh clothes had invigorated Matt’s mood. He felt positive, buoyed by the successful escape from the UK. His spirits had been lifted by this feeling of freedom, providing some sort of compensation for his tortured mind.

  The laptop sat on the window table had been on charge since he arrived. He decided to leave it a bit longer. Matt was confident he’d soon find the key to open up the memory stick, now he had time to think and didn’t have to put up with the constant humming of the jet engines.

  Reaching out for the remote he started to flick through the channels on the fifty inch television screen to identify the news outlets. None of the North American stations appeared to carry any stories about him. He continued the search until he found one that took his attention. Matt watched intently as each item of news was relayed. There was the usual political stuff, foreign affairs and entertainment, and then an interesting article based on the latest academic environmental study. He’d always had a passing interest in the subject because of his fond attachment to Kielder, but it was no more than that.

  Thankfully, global warming wasn’t the dominating topic of conversation. This report focussed on overpopulation, and the impact human growth would have on future civilisation.

  Current forecasts indicated the world population was set to double from around six billion to twelve billion over the next fifty years, placing intolerable pressure upon the natural environment. There were insufficient quantities of arable land, water, energy and biological resources to provide adequate quantities of food to sustain a future population of this scale. A world humanitarian crisis was fast approaching warned the report’s authors. Without immediate and precise co-ordinated action, by nation states, an unprecedented global catastrophe was unavoidable.

  “So what needs to be done, what can be done?” asked the concerned face of the female interviewer.

  “Two things must happen,” was the immediate reply. “Firstly, strategies must be developed and implemented for the careful management and conservation of the materials needed for future food production. Once finite resources such as oil are gone, they can never be replaced.”

  “And the second thing?” asked the interviewer.

  “Growth in mankind must be managed too,” he replied in serious tones. “Our estimate is the optimum population for the globe should be around two billion and we are already past that point, well beyond considered sustainable levels. The environment cannot support any further increases.”

  “Really?” answered the interviewer. “So you are saying it’s already too late for the future of mankind?”

  With the wind taken out of his sails the expert stuttered constantly in an attempt to counter the interviewer’s sharp insight. She smiled politely at his obvious discomfort, but there was no hiding her sense of triumph and the interview soon ended thereafter.

  Matt felt a twinge of sympathy toward the stuttering man. Public humiliation never struck Matt as much of a spectator sport, and it would take the poor guy forever to live this down amongst his peers. Who knows, he may well have raised a genuine issue. Not that it bothered Matt. He would be lucky to see out the next year never mind the next fifty, so it was of no real concern given his current circumstance.

  His thoughts drifted over what to do next. Getting out of the UK had gone better than expected. However, he couldn’t contemplate spending the rest of his life in Toronto hotels. He couldn’t afford it for a start. More importantly he’d stayed here before, and used his credit cards. They were bound to delve into the past, previous destinations and movements.

  No, you have to move on,” he muttered, “Go somewhere you’ve never been before. Or, at least, somewhere you’ve never used credit cards before. Somewhere where there is no existing financial trail to follow, a cold path.”

  He had never fully appreciated how easy life had been in the UK. Fantastic pad, the ultimate luxury machine, access to ready cash as and when needed. All of the elements needed for a successful single man’s life. Now, all he had left was a few grand in his pocket and his bare wits. Not a lot to show after years of stressful endeavour. Well, sort of stressful. Either way, it didn’t seem at all much on which to base his future survival. Perhaps it wouldn’t seem so bad if he actually understood why things were as they were. That last thought prompted Matt to start up the laptop. Deciding to chance his arm he would load the memory stick onto the machine and then type in the strange message, letter for letter, where the cursor flickered on the screen.

  ‘Sumac Pacha,’ he typed in. No response.

  ‘As much a cap,’ he typed in, juggling the words into some sort of sense. No response.

  ‘A cap as much,’ he typed. No response.

  He repeated the task, only
waited for several seconds this time after each input. Still, there was no response.

  “Shit, shit, shit,” he cursed.

  He had started the exercise confident in his ability to unlock the mystery. Now he was consumed by frustration, convinced that its failure to comply with his demands was down to incompatibility between device and machine.

  Matt collapsed back onto the large double bed, yelling more obscenities at the product’s manufacturer. It took several moments for him to start thinking like an adult again. Of course it wasn’t a problem of incompatibility he just hadn’t worked it out properly. He lay quietly for a while, thinking of all manner of permutations. It had to be obvious, Dave was never that smart. Try as he may, the solution proved beyond him. Even after consulting the thesaurus.

  His rising irritation caused his thoughts to drift back to Rosa Cain. For a few short minutes she had helped him forget the reality of his position. Now he was back on his own, his mood started to sink into despair.

  Matt felt isolated, overcome with powerful feelings of acute loneliness. He’d never felt like this before. It was as if the Almighty had decided the time had come to deliver one of those ‘life lessons’ fate unexpectedly throws at people from time to time. All those years he had shunned close friendships. Now, when he most needed a friend, there was nobody to turn to. He had to do something to avoid becoming totally suicidal. New clothes, he decided. When in Canada, you must dress like a Canadian. I need some new clothes.

  Looking through the window he could see the hot sun beating mercilessly down upon the population. He recalled the taxi driver telling him the excellent weather was expected to last for a few more days to come. Matt reached across to the table, retrieved the local guide book and flicked through the pages until he found the retail section. There was a mall close by which included a number of menswear shops. So he got up to indulge in some retail therapy.

  Chapter Seven

  A Warm Night in Canada