News from the Squares

by Robert Llewellyn

  I turned myself and sat upright on the sofa, I noticed the woman glance up behind me, I turned and looked over my shoulder. The middle-aged women who had led me to the room was standing in the doorway with her two quite substantial arms folded in front of her.

  I felt the need to re-assure them I was no threat, but due to the silence in the room I also felt I had enough time to consider the possible consequences of saying anything. I turned back to the woman in the chair, put my hands on my thighs and relaxed. I waited. Nothing happened. It was almost annoying, what did they expect me to do? This little surge of anger eventually resulted in my mouth taking over.

  ‘Okay, I’ll start,’ I said finally. ‘My name is Gavin Meckler, I’m thirty-two years old, I was born in 1979.’

  I paused; I was waiting for questions, for doubt, for some kind of query. Nothing.

  ‘I have accidentally travelled through time to the future, a place called Gardenia. While I was attempting to return to my own era using the same method, an anomaly taking the shape of a large and unusually formed low-level cloud that gathered around the base of a power tether, I came out above your city. I have no idea where I am, what the date is or who you are. I mean no harm and only wish to get back to the period of history I belong in.’

  I sat back, suddenly aware that in being completely honest and explaining things as best I could, I felt like I had come across like a complete madman. Not even a funny nutter who’s a bit confused, but a dangerous psychotic loon, someone who thinks he’s had an alien controlling device shoved up his nose by a three foot grey bloke with a big head.

  ‘I realise this may sound just a bit mad,’ I said after a while. ‘I wish I could give you a simpler explanation but that’s all I know.’

  After a long pause, the woman opposite me nodded.

  ‘Would you like to tell me how you came to be in the drone?’

  ‘It’s not a drone, it’s a plane, an aeroplane. I was piloting an aeroplane, a drone is remotely controlled.’

  ‘Very well, would you like to tell me how you came to be in the…plane?’

  ‘I’d very happily tell you that,’ I said trying my best to sound sane and rational. But I was forewarned now, I knew I had gone through some kind of wormhole time dilation bizarre weirdness I didn’t understand but it was possible this woman did understand. So I added, after a thoughtful pause, ‘In return I’d like you to tell me, if that’s okay, who you are, where I am, what date this is and if anything like my sudden appearance has happened before?’

  I felt really clever and ahead of the game with the request. I was looking at the woman as I spoke and noticed no particular reaction, but as I had learned on many previous occasions I am not terribly good at judging the mood of another person, more specifically the mood of a woman. For all my experience I didn’t have a clue, she could have been entering a life-threatening panic and I probably wouldn’t have noticed.

  She gave a tiny nod at the woman at the door and as usual I had no idea what this implied. I turned around half expecting to see the overall lady approach me with the special jacket with the very long sleeves. However, I saw her nod curtly in response and leave the entrance without giving me a glance.

  ‘This is very interesting,’ said the woman. There was another long pause. ‘You say you come from another time, is that correct?’

  I might, as some have suggested – OK, Beth has suggested it on many occasions, jokingly I hope, although I’ve had my doubts, anyway, Beth has suggested I might have mild Asperger’s. I’ve not been officially diagnosed or anything, but when Beth described the symptoms to me it did all sound a bit familiar. However, even from my alleged position on the autistic spectrum, I could surmise that this woman didn’t believe what I’d just told her. She was just humouring me in an attempt to get more information. My ploy wasn’t working, she thought I was bonkers.

  ‘I was born in 1979, my name is Gavin Meckler, my mother’s name was Jane Meckler, my father was David Meckler, I was born in a town called High Wycombe in a country called Great Britain, or the United Kingdom, or England. Probably where I am now. I’m sure you have some kind of database you can look this up on.’

  ‘Nineteen seventy-nine,’ said the woman slowly. I nodded.

  ‘So you are two hundred and thirty-two years old,’ she said.

  ‘Ahh, so it is 2211 is it?’ I asked. I felt huge relief at this fact. I’d clearly just flown through a cloud and come out somewhere else on the globe, just a spatial jump instead of a time jump. I could find my way back to Gardenia and Grace and Goldacre Hall and all the wonderful people there. I could see my child, maybe even be there when he or she was born.

  The woman smiled at me, a gentle smile that implied she could see right through my game, that it was indeed 2211 and that I must be a bit stupid to assume this would fool her. I tried not to let her attitude get to me.

  ‘I flew in my aeroplane and went into a rather unusual looking cloud over a town called Didcot, that was back in 2011.’

  ‘Twenty eleven,’ said the woman slowly.

  ‘When I came out of the cloud I found myself on the same date, the same time of day, the same geographical location but in 2211, essentially two hundred years later. I am not suggesting I have any ideas on how that happened, and I would readily agree it sounds very unlikely, but all the evidence I gathered over the next few months implied that this really is what happened. So a few hours ago the same cloud formation appeared around the power tether, this is near Didcot in Gardenia, except Didcot isn’t there any more. I was hoping that for whatever reason if I had once been propelled into the future, then flying through the cloud again in the opposite direction would return me to my own time, what for you is the past. However, what appears to have happened is that I have merely travelled through space, not time. I don’t mean space as in outer space, my plane doesn’t go that high.’ I realised two things, I was speaking too fast and I was smiling.

  Mad alert.

  I returned my face to stern as fast as I could and tried to speak more slowly. ‘I simply mean geographical space. So my request is very simple, I’d like to go back to where I came from. To do that it would help me if I knew where I was now. Geographically I mean.’

  Another long silence followed, I think there would have been a time when I found such a long silence uncomfortable, but since I had spent time in Gardenia, where silence and time seemed to be in fruitful supply, it didn’t bother me so much. Eventually the woman took a big breath, held it and then said.

  ‘Okay, Gavin Meckler, you are in London.’

  ‘London!’

  ‘Yes, London.’

  ‘You mean, like, the city of London. But hasn’t it…hasn’t it been flooded?’

  At last I noticed a reaction, the woman registered this information, it meant something to her.

  ‘You ask if London has been flooded,’ she spoke very carefully, clearly thinking about it. ‘Do you mean the old city?’

  I nodded. ‘Yes, of course, the old city,’ I said, ‘I flew over what I would expect to be London a few months ago, when I was in Gardenia. It’s just a big tidal inlet, it’s completely gone, well, the centre of it has.’

  ‘Mmm.’ That was it, a small sound, barely audible. Again we sat in silence for a long time.

  ‘You’ll forgive me if I find your situation quite challenging. I’m going to seek some help in trying to understand.’

  Another long silence, it’s possible my mouth was hanging open as I waited for her to finish.

  ‘I have never, how shall I say this, never experienced such an unusual situation previously. Although I have worked in this Institute for many years your circumstances are a little beyond my skill level. I will make sure you are comfortable and well looked after but I request that you remain in the Institute for the time being. I will return shortly with some colleagues who may be in
a better position to help us.’

  I took a deep breath and shrugged. There wasn’t much I could do. It was obvious I’d wrecked the Yuneec, I had no idea where I was and no idea how to get anywhere else. Once again I had the uncanny impression I was actually dead and this was my spirit’s way of assimilating the sudden change of circumstance. That did of course require a belief in things like spirits and afterlife, a belief I sadly lack.

  ‘Don’t worry Gavin Meckler, you are not dead,’ said the woman with a kind smile.

  Hearing this I froze. Had I just said something out loud without being conscious of it? I’d just been thinking I might be dead but it was a fleeting moment of thought. I wasn’t saying the words ‘I might be dead’ either out loud or silently to myself. I was just rushing through a series of images and memories, of being in Oak House when I was told about the date, of drinking the weird tea with honey in it on my first day in Gardenia and suddenly this clear-faced woman just answered my question.

  She stood up, that was a shock because she was hugely taller than I expected, she suddenly reminded me of someone, an actress from my era, the communist one, Vanessa Redgrave. She really looked like a Mediterranean version of Vanessa Redgrave.

  ‘My name is Doctor Markham,’ she said. ‘We will speak again soon.’

  She walked out of the room without making a sound. I mean not even a tiny rustle of clothing or the merest suggestion of a footfall. Once she had gone I brushed the finger and thumb on my right hand together to see if I had gone deaf. I could hear the skin rub together very clearly, and yet this woman had just moved right across the room, right past me and I could hear nothing.

  I think it was around that time that I started to get properly alarmed.

  3

  The Panel

  By the time the silent woman in white overalls with the big arms had shown me to another much smaller room, I was feeling more than a little disturbed. Whatever this place was, ‘the Institute’ as Doctor Markham had called it, it wasn’t the most reassuring and comforting environment. I was trying to stop myself jumping to conclusions about where I was, I was trying not to panic, but it was getting increasingly difficult.

  The room had a bed-type thing along one side, a weird chair that looked like it came out of the floor. The table, which also seemed to come out of the wall, was in front of a window that looked out onto another garden. This one I assumed was on the other side of the building, it had fewer large trees and was planted with vegetables and fruit bushes. It was incredibly well-tended, almost clinically neat. I could tell by the solid shadows that the sun; although going down to my left, was still strong, the sky was clear, more like a Californian sky than a mid-summer British one.

  Nothing inside the room was alarming, there was no door, I wasn’t locked in, although there was a slight flavour of prison cell about it. There was a blank sort of screen thing set into the wall opposite the bed but it didn’t appear to be operating. It could have been a television, it was a light grey matt panel, that’s the best way to describe it but had no obvious controls, I looked about the room for some kind of remote like you’d expect to find in a hotel room. Nothing.

  The rest of the room was completely empty, no wires, plug sockets, no obvious lighting. The bed had some kind of dark blue cover on it, not a blanket, a sheet I suppose, but the whole place was rather spartan.

  I stared out into the garden for a while, it was very all very quiet and had an almost deserted feel to it. Clearly someone or something worked in the garden, everything was immaculate, almost too perfect.

  I was therefore slightly shocked when I saw a man walk into view from below me; I had estimated that I was two floors up so there must have been an entrance to the garden beneath me somewhere. The man was carrying a garden fork and behind him there was a container, I suppose like a wheelbarrow except it didn’t appear to have handles and he wasn’t pulling or pushing it it, it was just following him. As he moved further away up the fearsomely neat garden I could make out from my vantage point that this wheelbarrow contraption was just gliding along the ground behind him. He stopped by a row of what I’m pretty certain were carrots, the container moved in beside him, settle a couple of centimetres to the ground and he started working the soil with a fork.

  I couldn’t guess his age, his skin was dark and his hair was thick. He was tall and very slim, wearing blue clothing that again looked like some kind of overall.

  That was it, nothing dramatic happened. I don’t even know why I thought something dramatic might happen, did I need something dramatic to happen? I then realised that I didn’t remember thinking things like this before. Maybe it’s because I’d never really had time, I came from a very noisy world where time was always in short supply, plus I’d just spent a couple of months in a very quiet world which I thought I’d got used to.

  Now I was in a sort of Sweden-world, it was very clean, quiet, peaceful, well organised and just a little bit frightening.

  I pondered on this feeling. I was definitely having a feeling and I was able to think about it, wonder about it. I’d never thought about a feeling before, I suppose I’d just had them and only afterwards realised the feeling had affected my behaviour. I was feeling fear.

  I realised I’d never found Gardenia frightening, maybe when I came out of the Pod station in Beijing, or felt momentarily lost in Mumbai, but never in Gardenia.

  I eventually lay on the bed and listened to myself breathe; there wasn’t a great deal else to do. No one came in to kill me, no one held me down on the bed and injected me with some weird psychotropic drug. Nothing happened at all.

  I must have nodded off again which I rarely do during the day, in fact I don’t think I’d ever done it other than after I’d been on a long-haul flight.

  Once again I woke up suddenly as if someone had shaken me, I opened my eyes. Doctor Markham was standing in the doorway looking at me, I jumped up and I may have expressed my surprise with bad language.

  Okay, I’ll admit it. I said ‘Fucking hell, what now!’

  This woman was really starting to freak me out. She was just standing there motionless, staring at me with her big brown eyes, looking so like Vanessa Redgrave it was more than uncanny.

  ‘Would you care to come with me,’ she said, no mention of the bad language and no reaction to it either. I didn’t reply, I just stood up and followed her out of the door. As I passed the threshold of the small room I’d been in for who knows how long, I couldn’t help wondering why I hadn’t left before. There was nothing stopping me but it had never occurred to me to leave. I may as well have been locked in a prison cell.

  I followed the tall frame of Doctor Markham down the corridor and back into the room I’d originally met her in.

  This time however, it was very different. The big sofa thing was still in the same position but arranged in front of the window was a long table behind which sat five women. They were dressed in a similar way to the Doctor, floor length sort of lightweight coats. Not exactly burkha-style garments, they were tailored and I suppose flattering, not that I am any judge of such things but I thought they looked nice. The women represented a wide range of age and skin colour, their hair seemed a little regimented, short or pulled back and tied neatly. Their costumes were in a variety of colours, I can’t describe the clothing in any detail but definitely not uniforms. The one thing that united them was their silence and the rather chilling fact that they all had their eyes locked onto me.

  ‘Please sit down Gavin,’ said Doctor Markham. I did so and watched as she sat down at one end of the table. I was then confronted with six women looking at me. I considered smiling at them and saying hello, but whatever this Institute was, it clearly didn’t encourage smiling.

  ‘I have informed my colleagues of your situation and they have requested to meet with you directly. They have seen our previous talk and we are all very
intrigued.’ At this point she turned to her right and looked at the women beside her. I followed and focused on the woman sitting next to her. I would guess that this woman was in her early thirties, of African descent and, I will admit, I found her rather attractive.

  This woman suddenly smiled at me, a lovely big friendly smile. I tried to keep a straight face but it was such a relief I think I smiled back.

  ‘Hello Gavin,’ she said. ‘I’m Doctor Nkoyo Oshineye and I’ll be helping you assimilate. I’m happy to explain where you are and what is going on.’

  ‘That would be very nice,’ I said, now captivated by this woman. Her gaze was so intense I couldn’t seem to look away.

  ‘As you might be able to guess,’ she continued, ‘your arrival has caused something of a stir, it was all very public and there is already a lot of talk about the man who fell out of the sky. Some people are very upset about it, some are interested to meet you and we are just trying to control the situation for the good of everyone, including yourself.’

  I scratched my head as I listened.

  ‘Is there something wrong with his head?’ asked an older-looking woman sitting at the centre of the table. I turned to her.

  ‘Sorry,’ I said, ‘it’s just a bad habit, there’s nothing wrong with my head…’

  I was going to explain that I was anxious and didn’t want to cause any trouble, but the woman who’d spoken looked shocked. It was almost as if she didn’t expect me to answer her, almost as if it was considered rude for me to answer her directly.

  I then noticed she was wearing some kind of elaborate jewellery that was noticeably absent on the other women. I had no idea at that time what the ornate necklace might represent.