‘You need to learn how to access more data,’ said Nkoyo. ‘It’s all available, there are plenty of articulate voices that would give a very different opinion to mine.’
We sat in silence for a little longer, well, I say silence, there was a faint hissing noise as the machine we were in barrelled along the subterranean motorway.
‘So how do I access such information, through my kidonge?’
‘You might find it easier to use a screen,’ said Nkoyo. ‘You’ll have time when we are on-board the Yin Qui.’
When we came out of the terminal building in South London I was completely unaware that I was staring at a ship. As far as I understood things I was walking along yet another street in this endless city. A street that had recognisable buildings on one side and a large flat, white wall on the other. I couldn’t see the far end of the wall, it disappeared into the haze of the morning sunshine.
‘Where’s the boat?’ I asked as we walked briskly down the street in South London.
Nkoyo gestured to her right, at the high white wall.
‘There,’ she said with a smile.
I looked up as my slow old brain started to work out what I was looking at.
‘Is that a boat?’
‘Yes, the Yin Qui is one of the big fourteen,’ she said.
‘The big fourteen?’
‘The Yin Qui is one of only fourteen passenger and cargo ships of this size. Relax, you’ll soon learn all about it. I think it will interest you.’
I managed to mentally relax as we walked along and could quickly understand that what I was walking alongside was essentially a floating city.
The Yin Qui was just short of four kilometres long, a little over one wide and yet only fifty meters high at the bridge. Although I had never worked in shipping, I knew enough about basic nautical science to understand that a seven million ton ship would exhibit fairly massive displacement, if my calculations were correct it would have to displace, let me see, seven million tons of water.
This marine behemoth should, if my calculations were correct, ride rather low in the water. In the case of the Yin Qui I discovered that this wasn’t the case, only a meter of the massive vessel was beneath the surface due to the many square miles of flat bottom, this bizarre monster literally rested on top of the waves.
The first thing that utterly baffled my ‘constructed from parts’ engineering understanding was that the hull of this ship was made from glass. Not like a sheet of glass joined at the corners with crude extruded aluminium fittings. No, this was one massive lump of glass, effectively printed on an enormous industrial sized 3D solar compressed beam printer in the Gobi dessert. It was a ship made from sand. Even though I knew this, I was sceptical, how could that possibly be achieved and on such an overwhelming scale?
The area of this vast construction that came into contact with water was covered in a superomniphobic surface that could be activated by electrical charge. I’d heard of this kind of material being developed for the American military but as a woven cloth. Essentially an update on waterproof material, this stuff could, theoretically at least, be resistant to toxic chemicals, acids and blood as well as water.
From what I could understand, the material on the hull of the Yin Qui was a charged sheet of this stuff covering the literal square kilometres of its base. When the charge was applied it essentially repelled water, but it did so in one direction, and that in turn propelled the ship.
‘No propellers then,’ I said.
Nkoyo didn’t respond and I didn’t pursue the matter, she probably didn’t know what a propeller was and it suddenly sounded as archaic as hollowed out logs and paddles.
As we walked along by the side of this ship I tapped the side with my knuckles. It hurt. I felt a bit stupid, it was so solid and inflexible, of course it was going to hurt. I banged against it with the palm of my hand, it didn’t make a sound, I was a mere fly tapping one tiny leg against a mountain.
About a kilometre down the road was a large entranceway at street level. A very smartly dressed African man greeted us both by name as we approached.
‘Doctor Oshineye and Mister Meckler, delightful to meet you both, welcome aboard the Yin Qui,’ he said. He held out his hand in greeting, Nkoyo stood back, so I shook his hand and as I did so it was as if I’d been punched in the belly. I literally felt the wind knocked out of me. I leant forward a little and felt the gentle hand of this man on my shoulder.
‘Are you feeling unwell, Sir? Would you like a session with one of our doctors?’ he said kindly.
‘I think he’s fine,’ said Nkoyo. ‘It’s very nice to meet you too Hamisi, what time to we depart?’
‘We will cast off very soon, just a few stragglers left; however, I am here to guide you to your area, I am here most especially to greet you.’
His smile was full of joy and optimism. Okay, it probably cost me a fortune, but it really cheered me up and I started to recover from my fiscal belly blow.
He gestured for us to go on-board although you could be forgiven for thinking, especially if you came from 2011, how hard it was to believe you were getting on a ship. The experience was similar to entering a large building.
We walked down a wide and seemingly deserted corridor until we came to a corner, the vista that opened up to me at that moment was truly spectacular.
Another seemingly endless hall or maybe mall would be more appropriate, it was many storeys high and literally teeming with people.
‘Fucking hell,’ I muttered to myself, I could sense that Nkoyo heard me but hopefully our delightful guide didn’t.
I stuck as close to Nkoyo as I could as we made our way through the noisy crowds; it was like walking through a busy cosmopolitan city.
‘You have an interconnector on starboard floor 14,’ said Hamisi. It was at that point I realised I hadn’t forgotten his name. I know I’d heard Nkoyo say his name but previous experience had shown me I was able to forget a name in seconds, this time it was different. If I merely glanced at this impressive African, I knew he was Hamisi.
As we made our way through the crowds I could let myself relax and know the names of all the people I was passing. Helen, Marissa, Gene, Jean Claude, Sonia, Anne. The names just appeared in my head as if I’d known these complete strangers for years. I had to shake my head and take a deep breath and kind of tighten up in order for this flow of pointless information to cease.
Suddenly Anne’s name popped up in my mind again, this time the full name, Anne Hempstead, the woman I’d met in the Erotic Museum on Carson Square. I hadn’t seen her here, and I started to glance around anxiously. I was following Nkoyo so I don’t think she noticed, but I couldn’t be sure. I also wasn’t sure if it was a problem. The name evaporated as quickly as it appeared and I shrugged it off. So what if she was on-board, it really wasn’t my problem.
I followed Nkoyo and Hamisi through an entranceway to one side of the giant hall and into a long corridor. This time I knew where we were heading, I could sense the space above me and to the left. There was no obvious visual clue but the smoothness and impenetrable integration of this information input had already become normal for me. It dawned on me that the feeling of being lost was something you could barely imagine if you had a kidonge, you’d have to read a book about it to understand what it meant.
We reached a broad flight of stairs leading off one side of the corridor and climbed two flights, turned onto another corridor without hesitation and then through an entrance into a wonderfully sunlit room.
Either side of the modestly furnished room was a kind of bunk bed set into the wall. Possibly a better description would be an inset sleeping module as it was clear the bed was a self-contained unit capable of floatation. No one explained this to me, I just glanced at it and understood that the bed unit was placed next to the exterior of the ship. The foot of the bed was
attached to an ejector hatch system facing out to sea. There would have been a time when I’d have wanted to study such an installation to try and understand the engineering that had gone into it. Now I could have explained it in quite comprehensive detail to anyone who didn’t have a benign kidonge nestling in their bone marrow. The thing is, everyone did, so there was no need for me to say anything.
The spacious windows between the two bed pods looked out onto a narrow body of water with dense woodland covering the land beyond.
I was suddenly less certain of my surroundings, I was guessing that I was looking at what once would have been Southampton harbour, I knew we were on the far side of the ship from the entrance on the dock, it had taken long enough to walk across the ship’s width so that made sense but there was nothing recognisable that side either. South London was how Nkoyo had described it. Again I relaxed and understood the geography, it was completely at odds with the Hampshire Coast I was vaguely familiar with. Due to the dramatic sea rise we were effectively five kilometres inland from any coast I would have known.
‘Don’t worry, Gavin, we are not sharing a room,’ said Nkoyo after conversing with Hamisi in a language I wasn’t familiar with. ‘That would be inappropriate.’
She smiled as she said this, and I admit I nurtured a very mild hope that it might not be inappropriate forever. I know it’s wrong and I know I was married and I know I had cheated on my wife with Grace, but now I wanted to cheat on both Beth and Grace and I felt guilty about that. Nkoyo gave me a look that simply underlined how inappropriate such activity would be. Of course, she knew what I was thinking; I turned away from her in embarrassment.
I undid the wide belt/bum-bag that Ralph had given to Nkoyo, who in turn had handed it to me in the Institute canteen that morning. It contained another body suit thing like the one I had bought from Akiki, identical except a shade lighter. The cloth was so fine and thin that the entire garment would fold and reduce to the size of a book of matches. The belt also contained some of the amazing not-paper stuff like the stuff Ralph had used to show me his family pictures. The sheet contained a vast collection of photographs and easy to understand floating data explaining the clear genealogy of my extended family from my great grandparents in the 1900s up to the present day. It also contained a vast amount of information about the great cities of the world, the first one being Lagos.
‘Are we going to Lagos?’ I asked as I slid the information up the smooth sheet.
‘Yes, that is our first stop,’ said Nkoyo. ‘We will be travelling for two weeks.’
I didn’t react. This wasn’t like the tethers of Gardenia, slide up, slip off, grab on, slide down. This was quite literally the slow boat to Lagos.
My next glance out of our window caused a mild shock, no longer trees in the background, now merely the wide-open sea.
‘Oh, we’ve set off,’ I noted.
‘Just this minute,’ said Nkoyo from the other side of the room. She was shaking out items of clothing from her belt, it seemed no one had bags, just a belt that carried everything you needed.
Toothpaste, make-up, toiletries, nail scissors, all the little bits and bobs you’d have with you on your twenty-first-century travels had seemingly been dispensed with. This was travelling light to an extreme I could only have dreamed of. Yes, it’s a cliché but when Beth and I had travelled to a holiday destination together – Crete being the place I recall most fondly – I left home with a small black shoulder bag containing a few changes of clothes, lap top, sunglasses, tiny flight-acceptable toilet bag and numerous re-chargers.
Beth, realising that we had a two-bag allowance managed to fill two huge wheelie bags, in fact they were more like chests. They were both just under the maximum allowance of twenty kilos, so she managed to transport close to forty kilos of clothes and support products for a ten-day sojourn in a luxury hotel that supplied everything anyway.
Travelling in the twenty-third century was less stressful. I was travelling with a woman with no bags. As far as I was concerned, if nothing else, that simple fact alone represented a genuine leap in human progress.
19
Selective Breeding
The journey from the south of England, okay, South London to the West African coast by ship would take about seven days in 2011. I’d imagined as we were on a ship, and Nkoyo had said we’d be away for weeks, this trip was going to be at twenty-first-century marine speeds, maybe a little faster. But this trip was a great deal quicker; we made it in under thirty hours.
The Yin Qui started moving so gently I really didn’t notice, I learned that it accelerated one kilometre an hour per minute, meaning that after an hour it’s doing 60kph, after two hours it’s reached 120 and after three hours 180.
Yes, a seven million ton vessel travelling at 180 kilometres per hour across the tops of waves, absolutely no discernible motion on-board the ship. As so little of the ship was in contact with the water there was no cavitation at the rear of the vessel and hence minimal drag.
Nkoyo and I ate in a vast restaurant at the front end of the ship, watching the wild sea slide rapidly beneath us almost as if it was a back projection. The ship wasn’t completely silent, I could occasionally register some low level vibration but the Yin Qui’s propulsion system had no moving parts. Breathtaking technology and something I would normally have had to discuss with someone, but being on board meant I seemed to know how the system worked, there was really nothing to discuss.
The one thing I really missed while I was on-board was going out for a breather on the decks. I always loved standing outside on a ship, holding a handrail and feeling the wind in my hair, the bracing ozone rich air and salty taste on your lips from the spray.
None of that on the Yin Qui, the very idea of ‘going outside’ was as absurd as opening a door on a passenger jet at 40,000 feet to get a bit of fresh air. A 180kph wind would make a relaxed game of deck quoits a bit of a struggle.
My dinner with Nkoyo on the evening of our maiden voyage reminded me a little more of Gardenia. We ate in a large space where the kitchen staff and the dining area were in the same room. I could sense that quite a few passengers were helping out, maybe that was a way of paying for your passage. Nkoyo explained the various foods on offer as the choices were strongly African influenced. We served ourselves from a long heavy table that ran along one side of the vast interior cabin.
I had Fufu, not something I’d ever eaten before. A kind of curd made from cassava, it tasted a little plain but there were amazing sauces you could dip it in. I also selected a beautiful plate of vegetables and some beef cubes. They looked like cubes of beef and that’s how a very attentive man at the serving area described them to me. I could just about tell that whatever it was I was eating was probably not beef from some kind of animal.
‘It’s fresh print beef,’ said Nkoyo discreetly. ‘They make it on-board.’
I didn’t complain. It was delicious.
‘The reason we have been invited to Lagos is because you are a very special case,’ said Nkoyo when we had found somewhere to sit down. ‘Your arrival in London has intrigued the scientific community, many of whose leading members are attending a conference in Lagos.’
‘Okay,’ I said as I dipped another lump of fufu into a tasty dish of sauce.
‘I didn’t want to explain anything before we departed for the simple reason that what your presence represents could cause distress and confusion among the general population.’
I listened carefully, at this point I still had no idea if Nkoyo knew I had met Anne the worder, she possibly knew more than she was letting on. I relaxed and tried to sense if she did know anything, clearly I wasn’t very good at perceiving the more subtle kidonge signals and I got nothing. I tried not to think about what Anne had told me, but even the effort of trying to order my thoughts in such a way meant I was thinking about it and surely Nkoyo wo
uld sense that. I was still confused as to how anybody did anything or made any sort of decision when everyone seemed to know everything already.
‘I understand you now know we are having some problems with healthy male births,’ said Nkoyo after a short silence.
‘Yes,’ I said, it was pointless lying about it. ‘A woman called Anne…’
‘Anne Hempstead, yes, she is on-board the Yin Qui,’ said Nkoyo, interrupting me without hesitation. ‘I know Anne. She is a good woman with a pure heart. I understand what she’s doing and I approve, however, this is really a matter of timing. There is nothing underhand or covert taking place and I wish to be completely open with you. As Anne will no doubt have explained, we are facing a crisis in male population.’
‘She did mention it and I have noticed,’ I said. Nkoyo nodded and wiped her mouth with a beautiful linen napkin.
‘This has not been publicly acknowledged by the authorities in London, in fact most Northern Hemisphere city states have been concerned by the constant decline in male births for a long time. The world’s population is currently about 70/30, that is seventy women to thirty men.’
‘Yes, I understand that,’ I said impatiently, ‘But why? You must know why this has happened?’
‘There are many theories, currently the most popular is that through selective breeding by women over the last one hundred years or so, there is a preponderance of men who produce female children. It’s not that men today are any more or less fertile than men from your era, only that for a long time women chose to have daughters. When they have had sons, their fathers are generally men who produce more girls than boys. The longer this goes on, the more girls are born. We have had the ability to understand which men are most likely to provide female babies and they have been at a premium. This has now turned around. The woman you witnessed at the Institute yesterday, the woman who was very distressed?’
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