News from the Squares

by Robert Llewellyn

  At that point I noticed four women sitting together in the front row of the audience seating. They didn’t look threatening, they were just sitting looking at me, but then so were all the men around them. They did stand out though, they were more formally dressed, the men were in the same colourful garb I’d started to grow used to. I nodded towards the women but they didn’t respond in any way I could read.

  I continued when I saw Yuseff’s enthusiastic head nodding at me to carry on.

  ‘I want to know how on earth you have built this incredible city, two hundred years ago this was all fields, small villages, towns surrounded by open country. Our cities were cramped places with houses and streets very close to each other. I want to know why you chose squares instead of streets. I mean, well, streets and cities all squashed up together. It had been like that for thousands of years, people built cities all over the world in the same way, squash everything together, narrow streets between buildings but now, here in London, it’s all spread out.’

  ‘Fascinating,’ said Yuseff. ‘Well, we want to know how you built this drone, sorry, aeroplane and how you fly it, how did you learn?’

  I was happy to explain and I did, I told them everything. The whole story, I explained about the cloud while carefully missing out any reference to Gardenia. Something about the presence of the four women in the front row reminded me to steer clear of that topic.

  After some time I realised the entire room was hanging on my every word. I was speaking to a huge group of people clearly and with confidence. I only noticed after some time that I had my hand on my chest. It was, I suppose, a slightly camp mannerism but I remember thinking it was a way I had of checking my feelings. I really didn’t want a repeat performance of sudden tears as I’d experienced at the press event. I was, I suppose, checking myself for a sudden and untoward explosion of sadness. I seemed to be coping, I felt safe in this large group of men; I didn’t feel judged or looked down upon. Maybe it’s because they were all engineer types, the sort of men I was used to working with, the sort of men who understand machines better than women. Could that be it?

  Eventually I ran out of things to say, and young Yuseff spoke up.

  ‘So, Gavin, what will you do now your machine is repaired?’

  I turned around to look at the wreck that was behind me and froze. The Yuneec was shrouded in a complex array of machinery, the young men were controlling arms of machines that looked like they were either gluing or fabricating material on various parts of the wings and fuselage. I couldn’t really see the plane but what was immediately apparent was the fact that it was no longer a pile of damaged parts scattered around a stage, it was essentially getting back to its original shape.

  Pete gestured to the young men, they stood back and as they did so, so did the mechanical arms surrounding the Yuneec. The arms silently folded away into small containers spread around the stage.

  ‘What? How?’ was all I could say.

  The crowd cheered and clapped, and Pete stood looking at me with a big grin on his enormous face.

  The Yuneec, well, what had been the Yuneec, was now in one pristine, shiny piece. It looked like it did the day I bought it, no, better. The nose section was slightly bigger, the area under the cockpit was subtly different and the wings looked like second-gen, like a product that had undergone a subtle re-launch. They just looked better.

  ‘Let’s join Pete and let him explain what’s been going on,’ said Yuseff. The crowd clapped and cheered, Pete gave a shy wave and we walked over toward him.

  ‘What d’you think?’ asked Pete, his low voice suddenly amplified.

  ‘I don’t understand, is it real?’ I asked, staring past him at the beautifully lit aircraft.

  ‘Yeah, it’s your drone,’ said Pete.

  ‘Yes, but is it like a hologram or something, can I go and touch it? Is it really there?’

  For some reason this made the audience laugh, I noticed two of the women in the front row were also laughing; the other two remained fairly stony faced.

  ‘Yeah, go and touch it, Gavin, it’s a hundred per cent real,’ said Pete with a big grin.

  I walked toward the Yuneec; my head was involuntarily shaking all the time. What I saw was just too much to take in. They had the technology to rebuild a very badly damaged machine that they’d never seen before, had no experience of and didn’t really understand.

  ‘It’s got a new motor, the original had a tree branch rammed into it,’ said Pete from way behind me although I could hear him perfectly. ‘I got the motor from a car, it’s a b850, lightweight, little bit more powerful than the unit you had in there. Actually it’s a lot more powerful, you’ll see we also replaced the propeller.’

  I was standing by the nose and had noticed the propeller was a new design. It was easy to spot as it hung limply from the nose cone and was made of a material I’d never seen before.

  ‘The original was a low speed rigid design,’ said Pete. ‘I think you’ll find this one is a bit more effective.’

  I ran my hand along one of the three propeller blades, if that’s what you could describe them as. It had a very smooth fabric feel although I could sense they had weight to them.

  ‘We’ve strengthened the wings a bit,’ said Pete. ‘But don’t worry, the whole machine is now a hundred and twenty kilos lighter, we used some modern material to rebuild the structure but tried to keep to the original design.’

  I lifted my hand and tapped the wing above my head, it felt completely different, the original wing on the Yuneec was built of aluminium struts and covered in a tough plastic and fibreglass skin. This was something far more solid feeling, I pushed upward on the wing and immediately the whole plane started to move. This caused a gasp to come from the crowd.

  ‘See, much lighter,’ said Pete. ‘And check the slight bulge under the centre of the fuselage, that’s your new power pack. We’d like to put your old batteries in the science museum if that’s okay. This is a h3p power pack, the sort of thing we use all over the place.’

  ‘And d’you think we should tell Gavin what an h3p pack is Pete?’ said Yuseff, helpfully.

  ‘Oh yeah, sorry, helium 3 polymer, ultra dense solid state energy, you’d probably call it a battery but it’s not really a battery, you don’t need to charge it from an external source. We just couldn’t fit the unit into the original battery bay so we extended it a bit and modelling suggests it won’t alter the flight capabilities of the Yuneec.’

  ‘So, Gavin, what d’you think?’ Yuseff asked. ‘It is very impressive isn’t it?’

  ‘Utterly amazing,’ I said. I leaned over and looked into the cockpit, this too had been changed beyond recognition. There were still two seats but they were white and made up of some kind of quilted material, the controls were essentially the same, just better and the dashboard was now one solid sheet of what I supposed was glass. No dials or obvious control systems.

  ‘We didn’t know what to do with the interior so we’ve kind of used existing systems we use on specialist machines with human operatives. They might take a bit of getting used to, but we can go over the control systems later.’

  ‘So, Gavin, come back and tell us what you think,’ said Yuseff. I turned and saw that they were all waiting for me. I wandered back over to the seating area feeling very frail.

  ‘I don’t know what to think,’ I said as I sat down. ‘I don’t know why you’ve done it, I don’t know if I’ve paid for you to do it, I don’t understand anything that’s happened to me since I arrived.’

  I didn’t say this to gain sympathy from the audience but that is what happened. I looked up at the crowd and noticed one man with a handkerchief wiping his eye, the man sitting next to him had his arm around him, comforting him. If this was what men had turned into in the past two hundred years, it was becoming slightly easier to see why the women of 2211 had felt the need
to take over.

  10

  The Weaver Women

  ‘I’ve got a lot of questions,’ I said as met Professor Etheridge the following day.

  ‘I imagined you might,’ she said holding out her hand as I approached her. We shook hands, it was automatic for me and it was only when I experienced a little rush of pleasure as our hands touched that I understood she was paying me for my time and company. Maybe not a lot, it was the merest stomach flutter, but from what I could comprehend, I’d definitely received some kind of payment.

  The Professor had informed me when I returned from seeing the Yuneec rebuild that she would like to take me to the history museum, apparently a group of her students wanted to meet me.

  The following morning, after I’d had a lonely breakfast in the strangely deserted canteen room, I met the Professor in the reception of the Institute.

  She was wearing a lightweight floor length coat topped off by a very bizarre hat. It wasn’t really a hat, more a moulded helmet made of incredibly fine filigree. It looked a bit like coral, or the skeleton of some bizarre sea creature.

  ‘Wow, cool hat,’ I said.

  ‘I’m assuming that is positive terminology and I’m glad you like it,’ she touched the side of the hat gently with the palm of her hand and I noticed a shimmer of gentle movement run through it. ‘You may not be familiar with such devices. It is as you describe, a hat, but it also performs the function of being a memory enhancement system.’

  ‘Wow, amazing. So you can, like, get information from it?’

  The Professor explained slowly and patiently, ‘When I wear this, I have increased and focused recall into a vast database of historical facts, dates, names and key events from roughly the last three thousand years. It is very history specific unlike my kidonge.’

  ‘With you,’ I said. I was lying of course, I didn’t understand how the hell the wobbly hat of glowing marine creature type thing could possibly work.

  The Professor seemed to ignore my interjection. ‘Obviously merely having access to such data is only useful if you know how to interpret it, to put it in a context that has relevance to the present day. It also designates my position.’

  I felt my annoying eyebrows start their dance of confusion.

  ‘A visual key informing people that I am a Professor of History,’ she explained. ‘Although most people would know anyway, it’s really just an old tradition and I only wear it if I am creating a particular dissertation or on formal occasions.’

  ‘Oh, right, is today a formal occasion?’ I asked.

  ‘It is, it is a formal visit to the London Museum of Human History where the authorities are expecting us.’

  ‘Blimey,’ I said. ‘I don’t have to give speeches or anything do I?’

  The Professor smiled gently. ‘No, but I’d appreciate it if you would be generous enough to converse with some of my students.’

  ‘No probs,’ I said.

  We walked a kilometre or so from the Institute to the entrance of the roadway system Pete had escorted me on previously. The only difference on this day was the weather, a hot wind was blowing. The clouds were low and dull grey.

  ‘It was never this warm in London back in my day,’ I said, almost having to trot to keep up. Already I felt my weird clothes sticking to me.

  ‘We are approaching the rainy season,’ said the Professor as she strode along.

  ‘The rainy season, you have a rainy season?’

  ‘You will find the weather patterns have changed considerably since your time, we have had to adapt to a very different climate. We now have very brutally cold winters and very hot and humid summers, I believe our climate is more like that of New York in your era.’

  We descended the flight of stairs that once again seemed very busy and although I was still intrigued by the system, it was already becoming mundane.

  We waited about a minute as the crowds surged around us, then got into a car and off we zoomed.

  ‘The museum is about eighty kilometres away so it won’t take long, about fifteen minutes,’ she said as I felt the surge of acceleration push me into my seat. I automatically did some mental calculations using the information she had just given me that gave me a result of an average speed of over 400 kilometres an hour. As I glanced out of the tinted windows at the overhead lights flashing past us, I felt confident my calculations weren’t far off the mark.

  ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘I’m in London, you call it London but clearly it covers an area far bigger than London used to be back in 2011.’

  ‘Indeed, London is the term most people use to describe the entire land mass you would have known as England,’ said the Professor. ‘The city has developed over the last one hundred and fifty years and particularly in the last fifty. The old concentrated cities you would have known have all gone, there are a few historic relics remaining but essentially there is little for you to recognise from your period.’

  I was becoming quite adept at taking in earth shattering revelations like this, but of course I wanted to know more.

  ‘And men raise children?’ I asked. Professor Etheridge looked a little confused at this.

  ‘Are you telling me they raise children or are you asking me?’

  ‘I suppose I’m asking if that is correct, from what I have seen over the past few days and from what my relative Ralph told me it seems that men raise children, but how, well, what do women do?’

  Professor Etheridge stared at me for a long time. I smiled, I wanted to show her that I didn’t mean to be rude, but her expression remained fairly neutral. I couldn’t tell if I’d offended her.

  ‘I’m not sure I know what you mean. We work.’ Another pause. She clearly had to really think about this. ‘We administrate, educate, medicate and defend. Not all women are in positions of responsibility, there is no coercion for us to do what we do. It’s a matter of individual choice. Is that what you mean?’

  ‘So women run the place?’

  ‘Well, I don’t quite understand what you mean by “the place”, but it’s true most of the serious administrative positions are held by women, the Mayor was on your review panel, she’s taken a great interest in your case.’

  ‘The Mayor?’

  ‘Yes, Mayor Hilda Mickleton of London, she was at your review panel, did you not know who she was?’

  ‘No. How would I know that?’

  The Professor nodded and smiled. ‘Of course, you didn’t have your kidonge then did you.’

  ‘My kidonge, oh, the thing Nkoyo gave me, but I thought that was the thing that helps me grip my bits.’

  ‘It is, but it’s also what tells you who you are with. Do you not sense it?’

  I sat motionless; I think my eyes might have been doing rapid side-to-side movements as I tried to understand what she was saying.

  ‘No,’ I said.

  ‘Look at me, Gavin,’ said the Professor, she was sitting opposite me in the car, her back to the direction we were blatting along in. I looked at her for a moment, something I always find a bit disconcerting.

  Nothing.

  ‘Try and focus,’ she said. ‘Look at me and let yourself to relax.’

  I did as she asked. I found it very uncomfortable. I don’t like staring at people when they’re looking at me. Maybe I’m insecure, maybe I fear intimacy, maybe it was all to do with the way I’d been brought up, but I didn’t enjoy it. Until…

  ‘David,’ I said. ‘Your husband’s name is David and you have one child, a daughter. Her name is Helen and she’s thirty-four years old, you live on Dunning Square but I don’t know which number, oh my God, how did I do that?’

  My hand was over my mouth for the last part of the list. The information just formed somehow, it just appeared and it was simple. There’s no other way to describe it, I just knew th
is stuff. If you sit down and describe the basic facts about someone you’ve known all your life, say your brother or sister, the information would just form and you can tell someone about them. Just the basic facts, age, partner, children, job, that sort of thing. It was exactly like that. It felt as if I’d known these facts all my life.

  ‘How, how do I know that?’

  ‘It’s just a simple kidonge pairing, there’s nothing to be alarmed about.’

  ‘Derren Brown, eat your heart out baby,’ I said.

  ‘Was this Derren a friend of yours?’ asked the Professor.

  I shook my head. She closed her eyes for a moment and then nodded. ‘He was a magician,’ she said. ‘Now I understand.’

  ‘So can you learn to sense things like that all the time?’ I asked, I was feeling slightly panicky because I had no idea what I’d done, I’d just looked at this woman who appeared to be in her late thirties, discovered she was married and had a thirty-four-year-old daughter.

  ‘Yes, now you’ve done it once, you’ll find you can do it without effort. I can’t really imagine how a complex society could run without it.’

  ‘No, I s’pose not,’ I conceded.

  ‘I understand you had many problems with your personal security, the possibility of fraud, identity theft. I understand you often didn’t truly know who you were with back in the early twenty-first century, we imagine this must have made life stressful and full of anxiety,’ said the Professor.

  ‘Yes, we did have a bit of a mess on our hands,’ I said. I felt the car going around a corner and then accelerate even more violently. I gripped the sides of the comfortable seat I was on, the car wasn’t rocking about or dealing with unmade roads, it was all very smooth and quiet, just a faint background hiss.

  ‘Don’t be alarmed,’ said the Professor. ‘We’ve just turned onto main one, it’s the busiest North–South arterial roadway. We had to speed up to blend in with other users.’