‘I suppose I must have been knocked out when I crashed,’ I said. ‘I can’t remember anything after I came out of the cloud.’
I had no idea what else to say. No one had seemed that bothered about my arrival in Gardenia, I was just an anomaly, they all seemed to know what that meant and it certainly didn’t seem to upset them that much. I wondered how much it would really upset them here. Maybe it hadn’t happened before, maybe I was the first person to ever try going back through the cloud.
‘So, where are you from?’ asked Pete. ‘You sound like us although you use shonky words.’
‘If I tell you where I’m from, can you keep it to yourself for a bit? Like keep it secret.’
Pete sat up to his full and rather alarming height. ‘Matey, if you want someone to keep a secret, I’m your brother.’ He leant toward me, which again was a rather alarming sight. He whispered, ‘I won’t tell anyone.’
‘Okay, well, my name is Gavin, Gavin Meckler. I come from 2011.’
‘Where’s that? Never heard of it.’
‘No, it’s not a place, it’s a time. I come from two hundred years ago.’
‘Two hundred years ago! Blimey. Like proper olden days.’
‘Yes, proper olden days,’ I said with a chuckle.
‘But why are you still alive? You don’t look two hundred years old.’
‘I’m not,’ I said. ‘I’m thirty-two years old.’
Pete sat back and stared at me, his huge mouth hung open which made me look away, he still had a mouthful of twenty-third-century London pizza.
‘I suppose I’ve travelled through time, when I crashed I was actually trying to get back home.’
‘Oh, you poor thing,’ said Pete, he swallowed and put his enormous hand on my forearm and patted it lightly. ‘That’s so sad. Of course you wanted to get back home and now you’re here, in vervelig old London. D’you feel really sad?’
‘Well, apart from being very confused I suppose I’m okay. I don’t know if I feel sad.’
‘Wait,’ said Pete. ‘How can you not know if you feel sad? Did people not know how they felt in the olden days?’
I rubbed my chin for a moment, I had to admit that was a fairly intelligent observation.
‘Okay, well, I don’t think I feel sad at the moment, I might feel really sad tomorrow. I obviously had a right old wallop when I crashed and it’s really knocked the wind out of me.’
Pete laughed very loudly.
‘I love the way you talk,’ he said. ‘Is that old-fashioned talking? Right old wallop and knocked the wind out of me, such good misemo, I like them.’
‘Okay, so Pete, please tell me this,’ I said, partly interrupting him and feeling a little guilty. ‘When I came out of the cloud, when I saw…’ I just didn’t know how to describe it. ‘When I was flying over the city, I saw this amazing grid pattern. As far as I could make out these squares, buildings around squares of open ground. It just seemed to go on forever. Is that right, am I remembering it or did I dream that?’
‘The squares? I suppose that’s what you would see from high up. I’ve seen pictures from high up and it looks like squares, because it is squares.’ Pete stared through the large window behind me, he seemed lost in thought for a moment, then: ‘But you saw squares, yeah, that’s what you saw. Have you never seen squares before?’
‘Well, yes, I mean we had buildings around squares in towns, but each town was sort of separate, we had towns with, well, with open country between then. Farms and things. All I could see were squares, no forests or fields.’
Pete held his head in his hands. ‘I feel so stupid,’ he said. ‘I should have listened to my teachers. I never listened, I just made stuff. I don’t know anything about the olden days. I’ve only ever lived in London, I’ve only ever known the squares. You are going to think I’m really stupid and lazy. I want to learn now. That’s funny isn’t it, when I was young I could not get things interesting in my head. Everything except making things or fixing things just made me feel bored and I hated feeling bored. I’m not bored now, I’d love to learn about your olden day world, about how you had towns and fields. I’m not sure I even know what a field is, is that like a square with no houses?’
I nodded. ‘Yes, that’s it, a square with no houses, have you got any of those?’
‘No, I don’t think so. Maybe on the edge of North London, there’s some really big parks up there. I’ve been walking up there when I was a mtoto. But London’s been like this for, well, for a really long time.’
I sighed very deeply, there was something about this whole experience which was immensely tiring. I didn’t really want to find out about another world, I didn’t want to go through the whole confusing learning process again, it was just too distressing. I felt a bit dizzy and sick, maybe this was as a result of me being knocked unconscious. I sat breathing deeply for a moment trying to regain my composure. I wanted to think about something else, anything else. I needed to hold back the urge to scream out.
‘So tell me what you make, Pete,’ I said. Better to listen to him than try and explain anything more about my predicament.
‘I only make small things,’ said Pete. ‘Furniture, fences, gates, latches, coat hooks, doors, windows, data sensors, toilets, beds, panels, anything people want. I fix stuff too, if things get broken or they just wear out, I fix them. That’s what I’ve been doing today, fixing the square you landed in. I cleared away your drone and took it over to the store.’
‘The store?’
‘I’ll show you, don’t worry, I didn’t leave any of it behind. I couldn’t, a kid might have found dangerous stuff and played with it so I made double sure I’d got every last sehemu.’
‘What’s a sehemu?’
‘You know, all the little sehemu, the odd small…sehemu.’
He was miming picking up things with one hand and placing them in the enormous palm of the other.
‘Oh, parts,’ I said. ‘So the Yuneec is in the store, is that like a shop?’
‘A shop! No it’s my building, it’s where I keep things I might need.’
‘Do you work here? Will I see you here again?’
‘I come here when they ask me. I came today to fix a chair that wasn’t working. It’s like new now,’ he said proudly. ‘Oh yes, I know how to fix chairs.’
He stood up and pointed to the row of doors where we’d received food. ‘You see that door on the end, the top one. That was not working last week, now, it’s as good as new.’
‘Great,’ I said with steadily waning enthusiasm.
‘So you’re staying here? Is that what the big girls told you was happening.’
‘I think so,’ I said, worrying again because I had no idea what I was going to be doing.
‘When this has all settled, when you’ve talked to Doctor Markham for a bit and you know how you feel, I hope you can come and stay in my house. It’s got a blue door with an eight painted on the front. Did you have things like that in the history?’
I nodded.
Again I got the hand on the forearm treatment. ‘Don’t worry, Gavin, you’ll be fine, I’ll look after you, we all will. Don’t worry about what the big girls say, they’re not Weavers so you’ll be fine.’
‘Weavers? Sorry, I don’t understand.’
‘You don’t know about Weavers, didn’t you have Weavers back in the olden days?’ Pete looked genuinely puzzled.
‘Well, we had people who did weaving but it was mostly done with machines I suppose.’
‘No, I mean Weavers, the Weaver women, you didn’t have them?’
‘I don’t think so, I’m guessing they don’t weave, like, they don’t make cloth.’
‘Hell no, they make trouble, the Weaver women are scary for you and me, but you’re here, you’re fine, the big girls are great, they’l
l get really worried but before long they’ll have something else to worry about. They love to worry, it’s what they do.’
Pete stood up, picked up the metal container, drained what little remained in one gulp and walked toward the door in the wall where it had come from. The door folded open, he put the container inside and it gently closed like a sea anemone that’s been touched.
He waited for me, I stood up with my empty bowl and glass.
‘I don’t remember which door it came out of,’ I said as I walked towards the wall of door.
‘You don’t need to,’ said Pete. ‘The door remembers.’
And it did, a door along the wall folded open, I walked up to it and put my bowl and metal container inside. I then stood and watched as the mechanism closed up again. It made no sound, just unfolded itself into a smooth and seamless door. I started to wonder what materials were involved and how it was originally constructed, I would normally have asked, and I could tell Pete would be only to willing to give me an enormous amount of detailed information about it, but I let it go.
‘Beautiful,’ I said.
‘Thanks,’ said Pete proudly. ‘I made those.’
5
Massive Wad
Waking up in a small white room in London was a very different experience to waking up in my wonderful old room in the converted barn of Goldacre Hall, or indeed waking up in my small cluttered bedroom in my house that probably no longer existed in Kingham.
The windows slowly faded from almost black to completely transparent as I sat up on the side of my bed type thing. I could see a clear blue sky; the sun was already high.
I had slept with the lightest blue cover over me that somehow, despite its minimal weight, was very warm.
I sniffed my armpit, although there was still a trace of the lovely unguent stuff that I’d been using in my wood panelled bathroom in Gardenia, I was definitely in need of a rinse.
My body flooded with feelings and caught me off guard; remembering the bathroom reminded me of Grace, and remembering Grace reminded me of Beth. I knew Beth had been dead for donkey’s years, I’d almost accepted that, but Grace. What on earth could have happened? Did she not really exist? Indeed, if I was in fact technically dead then why were the experiences I was having so very mundane? I don’t mean going through the cloud or the extraordinary world I was living in, that aspect was anything but mundane. But the minute-by-minute experience, being hungry, needing to use the toilet, feeling sleepy. Surely that wasn’t what being dead was about?
How, I pondered, was a man fully immersed in the mechanics of the rational, with little or no grasp of matters spiritual, meant to make any sense of what was happening?
I sat up and looked around the room, relieved to discover there was no silent woman looking at me from the doorway.
I remembered then that Pete, the gangly man with messy hair had shown me how the door worked. There actually was a door, a larger version of the food doors in the canteen room I’d eaten in the previous evening.
He’d also shown me the bathroom, I was grateful because it was not immediately apparent what purpose the totally white box would have. It was a mystery how the systems worked, everything kind of folded away when not in use, and everything was clinical and spotlessly clean.
I stood up, pulled on my slightly skanky Gardenian clothes and shuffled toward the door. As expected, the door folded itself away into the floor without so much as a whisper.
Then I shuffled along the broad corridor to the bathroom only to find the foldaway door was closed. It didn’t open as I approached it and I had no idea what to do. I was rather in need of a piss. I looked up and down the corridor but there was no one around to help.
I tried tapping on the door to see if anyone was inside. I could barely hear the tap myself; whatever material this door was made of, it seemed to absorb sound in an uncanny way. I stood back, twitching slightly. I really needed my morning pee.
Suddenly the door opened, well, more like the door fell down instantly and I was confronted with a man about my height. He looked oddly familiar and I realised it was the guy I’d seen in the garden being followed by the floating wheelbarrow with no wheels.
I smiled at him and he looked at me blankly, he then gave me an almost imperceptible nod and walked off down the corridor.
I went into the bathroom and relieved myself. The toilet system looked oddly similar to the one I’d used in Gardenia, it used some kind of vacuum system like in an airliner – even the design was similar. I stood looking at it for a while trying to work it out. If Gardenia was, as had been suggested, an alternate reality, maybe even just a possible future, and this place could be another possible future. The same time, the same place, even the same plumbing, but in every other way utterly different.
I just wanted to lie down in a dark room with a physicist who might be able to explain it to me. The reality of standing in that bathroom was too real to allow such bonkers notions to emerge. If I really understood that, if I really believed that was the case, then I would just have to start screaming and try to tear my face off. I shuddered a little and went back into the corridor.
‘There you are,’ said Doctor Markham. She was standing outside my room and if I could read any emotion on her face, which, let me tell you was not easy, I would guess she was just the anxious side of worried, but only just.
‘Needed a pee,’ I said. ‘Actually, while we’re about it, I need to have a shower but I don’t have any clean clothes to change into.’
Doctor Markham didn’t react, she just stared at me blankly for a moment.
‘I will arrange for you to buy new clothes. Have you had any breakfast?’
‘No, I’ve just woken up,’ I said. ‘I quite fancy something to eat.’
Again there was no immediate reaction, but then Doctor Markham started to walk towards me. I’ll admit now that I was a little concerned. She was very tall, she moved quite fast and with no noise at all. She walked very near me and I noticed, with some relief, a very faint sound of movement as she passed close by. I nearly flinched, I was half expecting to be thrown to the ground or stabbed with some weird space age mind probe.
‘Please follow me in order to get some breakfast, Gavin.’
Okay, so no space age mind probes, no implants, no using my body as an energy source for a technology I had no hope of understanding. Just breakfast.
I followed her down the flight of big stairs half expecting to go into the room where I’d met Pete.
We passed by that room and continued down the long corridor, I did glance in as we passed and noticed quite a few people in there, men and women, most of them staring at me as I passed. I tried to smile but I kept it minimal, just a happy glance, that’s what I was aiming at.
Doctor Markham stood by another entrance into a smaller room decorated in a much softer manner, all along one side large glass doors looked out onto a delightful patio area. The room smelled wonderful. It took me a moment to register the smell, bacon? Yes, it was bacon!
I hadn’t experienced that heady aroma in months. A large table at one side of the room was covered in beautiful china plates, mostly laden freshly cut fruit. However, there was one plate on which there was bacon, a fried egg, grilled tomatoes, mushrooms and toasted bread.
‘Oh wow,’ I said when I saw it. ‘Actual food.’
‘This has been prepared especially for you, we are assuming this is a breakfast dish you would be familiar with.’
‘You’re not kidding, this is amazing!’ I said.
I watched Doctor Markham commit her elegant face to something that could be described as a smile.
‘Is this really bacon?’ I asked. ‘Like bacon, from a pig?’
Her smile broadened. She put a gentle hand on my shoulder. ‘Just as well you asked me that, many people today would not know w
hat you were saying and would find your question disturbing. It’s fresh print.’
‘Fresh print?’
‘Yes, I think the way you might understand is that it’s printed, I believe some technology like this existed in your era. It is printed with exactly the same chemical components as bacon but it doesn’t come from a pig.’
I picked up a slice of what looked like a perfect smoked rasher, sniffed it, took a nibble and everything about the experience said bacon.
‘Help yourself,’ she said, ‘we’re sitting outside.’
I watched her walk toward the large glass door that slid open for her with an almost imperceptible hiss. Nice action. I really wanted to find out about these doors.
I picked up my first proper breakfast since leaving Kingham two hundred years before. Okay so it was printed, but it looked like a proper breakfast. There was a metal container at one end of the table with a few cups near it. I assumed this was some sort of hot beverage dispenser. It was a bit like being in a posh foreign hotel on the first morning you have breakfast, you don’t quite know how everything works and sort of fumble through while trying to look casual.
I held the cup near the container. There was no tap, spout or obvious way of retrieving the beverage. I shook my head and gave up, put the coffee cup down and then watched in utter amazement as hot coffee poured into the cup from an unseen opening. It seemed a bit elaborate and unnecessary – it was just a coffee pot, couldn’t they just pour it? I then realised that even in the brief few months I’d been in Gardenia I’d become a bit of a purist. It was very cool how the coffee came out. I decided I liked it.
I carried my breakfast plate and coffee toward the door, again it slid open without a fuss and I emerged into a very warm outside world.
Now it was even more like being in an Italian hotel garden in the summer. It wasn’t just a bit warm outside, it was actually hot.
‘Good morning, Gavin,’ said Nkoyo, she was sitting at a large metal table under a wonderful dark shade cloth stretched between delicate poles.
News from the Squares Page 5
