I made it! Bummer is, everything got soaked in the boat. Maps, travel diary, everything. So I’ve lost my data a second time, and I have to start from scratch. Luckily they make paper here – it’s pretty rough, but it works. A mixture of waste sawdust and a plant called hemp. I tried to describe my ViScape35L to the woman who makes the paper, but she didn’t seem interested. She was pretty tetchy – everyone is, to be honest. No one’s quick to trust a ‘Comper’ (note: the term refers to anyone from a Compound, regardless of class). You’d think they’d be more pleased to gain a skilled man with a Media-class education. I’ve told them I can write, present, program, data-analyse, entertain, all sorts of things. The response so far has been largely caution and suspicion, if not downright hostility.
“Keep yer southern tricks to yerself!” One old biddy told me. I would’ve argued, but the big scar over her left eye suggested that if it were to come to a fight, I would not be the winner.
Still, it’s only the first day; I won’t hold a grudge for my icy reception. I’m sure they’ll warm to me. It’s nearly time for food, thank God. They kept me in meetings and security checks all morning. Well, I’m perfectly used to the odd morning without eating after this ridiculous journey, but I sure wouldn’t mind a square meal. Hopefully we’ll get our ears round each other’s accents soon enough – I’ve had to repeat myself annoyingly often so far. I’ll get back to this later, perhaps with more of a measure for the place.
June 4th, 2291
My guide told me this date; I’d been travelling without my VisionScape for too long to remember. All in all, from leaving New London, it’s been 8 ½ weeks – longer than I thought. They get new people once in a while from the ports and other dubious settlements, but almost never a Comper. I’m not really sure if my ‘guide’ is for my benefit, or if he’s more like a euphemistic bodyguard. Anyway, he’s called Elm, about 55 I’d say, and seems nice enough. His face is broad, lined, tanned, with a mouth that turns up in the corners so it seems like he’s permanently smiling.
Yikes, the food! Put it this way: unexpected. So unexpected I’d do a feature on it at home. I envisioned, of course, corn patties, wheat shapes, soy cakes, washed down with a glass of milk and the standard daily supplements. But instead I was fed this liquid brown stuff with lumps in called vegetables, and brown sliceable cake called bread, full of little hard bits. The smells were overwhelming, like nothing I’d ever smelled before, not even when travelling through the wildlands to get here. Well, I was certainly feeling a bit apprehensive of the stuff. I picked up my knife and fork with trepidation – they were made of wood too, like the bowl, the table, the chair I sat on – and tried a bite.
“It’s what many people used to eat, more than a couple of centuries back, before the 100 Year Darkness,” Elm told me. “They’re from all different kinds of plants.”
“But don’t you die without supplements?” I asked, understandably astonished.
“Of course not. Vegetables, nuts, seeds, they’re all full of things like minerals naturally. They take them out of the soil.”
“But soil is just dirt!” I protested reasonably.
His big green eyes flashed. “Proper soil is full of minerals, fibre, and millions of tiny living creatures. They help plants get what they need, and the plant gives in return some sugars it makes from sunlight.”
Needless to say, I pooh-poohed the whole nonsense. Quickly regretted it, though. All the people nearby in the dining hall turned to stare, and there was one titter of derision. Felt like a total fool. But really?! How could I swallow a tale like that? Everyone knows the world is a barren, deadly place, not filled with ‘tiny helpful creatures’.
I said all this to Elm, and (amid further chuckles from my ungracious hosts) he argued that no, the land only became barren and deadly because we exploited it. I was clearly not looking convinced, as he raised his eyebrow conspiratorially, and said that after lunch, we’d go and look.
The food, by the way, was actually okay. Some of the flavours were far too strong, and the textures oddly slimy and stringy and all sorts, but not half bad.
Now for the really interesting part. On my way from the lakeshore to this place I’d been stuck rattling around the back of a blacked-out cart, and they’d taken me straight inside for questioning. I still hadn’t been allowed out of the main building. It’s some ancient old thing made of stone, and quite beautiful. (Victorian apparently, whatever that means. The rest of the buildings are low, wooden, and seem to grow out of the grassland). After lunch we finally went outside, down a track, and through a high gate in a stone wall... And then... Wow. How can I describe it? It was like my heart stopped beating with the strangeness of it all. So many plants of all different sizes and colours, writhing around each other like messes of cables around pillars, and spreading like thick carpets! And more shades of green than I’d ever seen! In the fields that feed New London, everything is either corn-green, wheat-green, soy-green, or pine-green. It’s all in rows and rectangles. This by contrast was a horrendous nonsensical mess, but somehow... well, it made something in my chest quiver that I’d never felt before. I didn’t know what to make of the feeling.
Elm’s eyes were pricked with tears. “Gets me every time I come in here.” His hand, wizened from work, was on his heart. “This is our Botanical Garden: fifty hectares of all the species of plant we can find and keep alive.”
I was still trying to analyse the strange quiver in my chest. Elm added that, once, nearly the whole world looked a bit like this. Before I would’ve scoffed, but was beginning to get the uncomfortable sense that there was a lot I didn’t know, and I held my tongue.
One of the most dangerous jobs here is to be a ‘Seed-Hunter’. These people search for any surviving species, avoiding Compounds and radioactive zones, and bring back a seed or specimen to the Garden. About a third of them never make it back: eaten by Scavengers; killed by guards; poisoned in waste-dumps; or taken in as Compound Servers. Except here they called Servers ‘Slaves’. Some historical reference, apparently.
“Pick your favourite – it will become your name. That’s how we do it here. Feel free to take your time, and listen to what speaks to you.” Elm said.
Elm had balked the first time I told him my name was Media0563. He was quite calm about it by this point, but his eyes were still sad.
I wandered around, drinking it all in, with no idea how a plant was supposed to ‘speak’ to me. There were so many sounds, smells, little flying insects. I flinched away from them instinctively. Elm told me not to worry, but I’ve always been told that they carry illness and dirt and we should kill them all. I tried to relax, but their buzzing and quick darting movements made my skin crawl. I picked a little delicate plant with white flowers under some knobbly trees.
"Wood sorrel", he said.
So now I’m called Sorrel. I like it.
We stayed there all day. Elm told me all sorts of names and facts about the plants, but it was all so alien to me that they drifted from my mind like clouds in the wind. Now I’m lying in bed after a vegetable supper that made my insides curdle and bubble for a while. I thought I was going to be horribly ill, and half-jokingly accused Elm that I had been poisoned. He took me to a Healer, and got me to pop a few droplets of something on my tongue to swallow.
“You’ve got totally inadequate gut flora, I expect,” the Healer said. An absolutely gorgeous, blonde little thing. A woman that pretty in New London would have Pleasure-Girl genes! I told her this, fully intending it as a compliment, but she didn’t take it well.
“I hope your shitty gut flora does make you sick!” she hissed, which I thought was rather out of order. Oh well. I guess I have to get used to the rules of this place. Needless to say, I apologised like a gentleman and kept my thoughts to myself. Anyway, the drops are some concentrated microbial solution, and after a few hours I should be fine. Hope so. Keep having to run to the toilet (which uses no water by the way – just dry grass and wood dust). The gurgling is embarrassing – but Elm in his bed on the other side of the room politely ignores it. Everything is so different here. I confess, it is yet too early to decide what I make of the place.
June 5th
My stomach’s calm, and I feel as fit as ever! I’ve been assigned cleaning work for a while, whilst they figure out how to best use my skills. Of course digital skills are no use here, but my management, analytic and entertainment skills (not to mention knowledge of New London) must be valuable. Still, it feels beneath me to do Server work, I feel rather misused.
Honeysuckle, the woman I was working with, quizzed me about why I escaped. Said I seemed too ‘well-to-do’ to want to leave. Realised all that info was only in my old diaries, so I’ll jot it down here:
- I was bored
- I was sick of regulation and security so tight, and a workload so heavy, I couldn’t control a minute of my free time
- I was sure something better was out there – I’d heard tales at parties
- I met a Server-boy who’d been captured, and with a credit bribe he told me of this mythic civilisation up beyond the Northern Nuclear Desert. That you could get round it by boat.
- I thought if I asked to go on an investigative journalism trip, they’d let me. I was flatly refused. When I insisted, I was demoted. ‘Coincidentally’, I was beaten up on the street the following night - survived by the skin of my teeth. But I knew it was the authorities.
- I spent a year lying low. I vowed to quietly and calmly organise my escape.
But let’s not dwell on all that. The point is, I was curious – a trait they tried to breed out, but they had to keep a degree of it in Media, it’s part of creativity. I’ll describe the journey some other time.
June 6th
Elm’s been treating me to some history lessons! He’s a bit of a word man, has plenty of media-traits himself, albeit in a very different way than I. They’ve got all these ancient books, and he’s been scribing new copies to preserve them. I’d only heard of books in stories when I was growing up. Though, when I got older and more important, a rich acquaintance showed a stash of forbidden ones he had in a locked cabinet. The wealth in the library here is far greater; I could spend weeks poring through them. I asked Elm why they didn’t mine waste-dumps and create electronics like we do, and this was his strange response:
“We understand the value of so much information storage,” he began slowly and carefully, “but the price is simply too high.”
“How so?”
“To live in a world of make-believe, a two dimensional world... it destroys the feeling of the living world too much. It is just too high a price to pay, to be dissociated, distracted, to be pulled from life.”
Today we looked at old maps and geography books. I already knew that England had once been much bigger – we were taught where Old London had been, after all. But also entire regions called things like East Anglia, Sussex, Warwick, Essex, Somerset... all drowned. Furthermore, I learnt that England used to be three kingdoms! Fascinating. We’re in what used to be ‘Scotland’ up here. It used to be coldish, but things have become quite hot with the rises in temperature. Which, incidentally, was apparently OUR fault?! Apparently humanity burning fuel made a gas-blanket in the air, causing ice to melt, seas to rise, and weather systems to turn upside down. I was told in school it was just the natural cycles of the planet. Gosh. Everything that began the 100 Year Darkness... They say here that we did it. And this, this is the biggest reason they hate the Compers here. Elm explained that the Compound financers, who fought bitterly to keep their mode of civilisation going, refused to stop burning the stuff. There had been other ways of making lots of energy – such as from breaking particles apart, or from the sun – but these industries floundered when global trade collapsed. Whilst some changed how they lived, the founders of New London bought and stockpiled as much fossil fuel as they could to get through the global blackout and denied all responsibility. In other countries entire regions ran out of water and died within weeks. Or slowly ran out of food as the deserts came, tried to migrate, and got exterminated by the countries they fled to. The only reason we escaped that here was by being an island, and a cliffed, wet one at that. We were lucky to keep some rain. Not everywhere did.
My mind feels like it is exploding outwards, like a boiling kettle. I feel deeply perturbed. The pieces slot together with a horrible sense. I understand the hateful and pitying looks I receive, now. And the more I understand them, the more they hurt, because I don’t bloody deserve them. I didn’t choose where I was created, did I?
I am an alien here. A soiled alien. I peer in upon these earthly beings like a ghost, like the ViScape presenter I am, staring out at humanity from a screen. How am I supposed to lead a life?
June 7th
I’ll tell the tale of my escape. It only took a few months of lying low to get promoted again. No one from Media-class ever does something truly extreme, we’re not bred that way – maybe just gets involved with a sex scandal, pushes the publication boundaries, something minimally threatening. Anyway, after a year or so of my usual presenting and producing, I suggested I do a feature for RealityLondon about farmers. Said it would boost views no end. I was allowed, as long as I followed a strict criterion of what to say of farming life. I’d not been out to a farm before. Each farm, say a ten thousand hectare wheat farm to the east, is run by a few machine-drivers. Then there’s a factory with Servers managing the machines that grind and package it up into wheat-shapes. They’re big operations. My job was to paint a rosy picture.
Well – that was my excuse. I took just one cameraman. We stopped with a tractor driver, and when my man was busy setting up an action-shot, I took the car and fled. I couldn’t fill it up outside the city of course, but I planned to just get as far as I could. I was worried about the security at the farm perimeter, but luckily they only do checks coming in, not going out. The guard just winked, saying:
“Mums the word, sir. Have fun, be back before dark.”
I learned later from the smugglers that he was referring to a favourite pastime of the New London elite: Scavenger hunting. It’s still strictly illegal, but no one stops them leaving for a little violent release on the feral humans that turned half-dumb and cannibal out there. I’ve still never seen one. I’ve heard they walk on all fours again, and their teeth are becoming pointed to eat raw flesh.
I thanked the guard and drove on, praying I wouldn’t run out of fuel too soon. Weaving around potholes or the occasional spiny tree that had burst up from below the ancient tarmac, I drove as carefully and as quickly as I could. I was terrified. The whole land around was quieter and emptier than anywhere I’d ever seen – hard dirt punctuated with tough grasses and stands of those spiny trees. Once in a while there was a greener patch in the distance. In the end the road ran out before the fuel. The tarmac had cracked away, plunging into a dry gully that I spotted just in time. I set the car on fire and headed north-east. There was a port there. About 50 years ago New London remade contact with the lands to our east and had begun trading a little again. I’d heard this port was where I could find smugglers or salvagers to sail me north, round the dead zone, into the unknown part of England (sorry; Scotland, wasn’t it?).
It took a week of walking. I wasn’t very fast – I’d never been one for exercise. I ran out of soy-cakes after day 5. I barely slept: the nights were almost intolerable with just a blanket and a coat on the floor. By day three, I had no idea why I’d left the comfort of my city bed. Was getting out worth the thirst, starvation, aching tiredness, and utter loneliness? Had I really left just for curiosity, and the nagging sense of injustice, dullness, and pain? My feet were covered in horrible sores. I nearly turned back. But, I decided I’d at least make it to the port and see what it was like. At least there’d be food there. I couldn’t go back now, anyway – they’d kill me on the spot. Why oh why had I run away? Staying incurious no longer seemed such a big price for my comfort and safety. I made it to the port. Paid City Credits for a bed in a cheap hotel, and slept for seventeen hours.
In the end, it was easy to find the smugglers – they were a more established and respected institution than the new, corrupt port authorities. However, they didn’t care a jot for my Credits. I had to give them my ViScape for passage, regrettably, but I figured I wouldn’t need it anymore. There was only one extra passenger besides me.
“Not many people go this way,” the skipper said when I went to bother him with questions. “Most believe the radiation from the bombs dropped on the Northern Conurbation spreads even into the Channel, and anything north of it is unreachable.” He grinned. He was missing a lot of teeth. “And we like to keep them thinking that.”
He told me that the Northern Conurbation was the megacity that had reached almost sea-to-sea in the narrow part of England. I told him I didn’t know of it. That was the first time I heard the phrase ‘stupid Comper’. The skipper carried on, saying things that only now make sense, after my day in the library yesterday: “Once people started running out of food and water, some governments lost interest in nuclear ceasefire. Some decided the solution was to nuke out entire populations and stabilise carbon emissions. Well, it was too fucking late,” he spat. “Everything was already screwed. It was totally unnecessary mass murder. People say it’s stabilised now, but how the fuck do we know? We have no global scientific data collection anymore, no communication, no worldwide news. I don’t know what the climate is doing in Belgium, let alone Indonesia.”
I was still feeling too sensitive from having just been called a ‘stupid Comper’ to ask him what these place names were.
There is only one word describing sailing ships: awful. I threw up any number of times, and sat in a ball on my bed groaning and wanting the world to end for more hours than I’d care to remember. When I’d acclimatised, I explored the boat. The single other passenger was also an escapee: Pleasure 2,741. She was tall, coy, brunette, with fabulous curves. Said she’d do whatever I wanted if I pretended to be her boyfriend and keep the sailors off. This seemed like a fair enough deal, and I agreed. We hung out a lot after that, two bewildered numbered people in a world full of names. She was a pretty good lay. It made the journey bearable.
Arrived to a rocky, warm, rainy coast some interminable time later. Pleasure 2,741 blew me a kiss, and went her way. I’d miss her. There was a makeshift port building cobbled together out of scraps, and there I tried to find out where the settlement I’d heard about could be found. No one seemed to know of it. I was at a loose end. The shanty-town was filled with bizarre creatures I’d never seen before. Things like skinny cows called horses, and work-cows called oxen. And cows that still walk around when they’re adult! The cows in our dairy farms lose use of their legs after a year in the milk-harvester. It’s perfectly comfortable resting in the harness, apparently. I had to clean up the poo of those horse-creatures in a shed to earn my food. My life was really hitting an all-time low. Dreamt of New London. Had being demoted really been so bad? Now I shovelled shit for a living.
Finally, finally, I found someone who’d talk.
“Our best-kept secret,” the old man said. “Most folk would never trust Comper-scum, but you’ve been here a while now, and I think you’re for real, though you’re an odd fella. Here.” He gave me a hand-drawn map. “Go to that big inland sea. Get someone to boat you over to the valley. You’ll find what you seek.”
That was the boat-trip where all my writings got soaked. The vessel was barely 5 metres long, and the rain barraged down like a high-pressure shower. Thank god I’d had the sense to leave home in summer. On the other side, in dusky twilight, all I could see was a low, steep hill. (Or what I thought was a hill – I learnt later it was part of a two-mile wide, earthen dyke, blocking the entire mouth of Eden Vale). Someone spotted me stumbling through the rain, took me to the entrance tunnel, blindfolded me, and I was carted off for questioning. Phew. I hope I never have to travel again.
June 8th
Today their head biologist took me aside to ask about agriculture in New London. So I told her about the big farms with their one crops, the fertilizer plants and pest controls, the genetically enhanced seeds, how we divert the Severn river into reservoirs, from which it is piped into our irrigation and potable water systems. She looked so shocked that I thought she was about to faint, and I offered her my water.
“No, no, don’t worry. It’s just... I thought this barbarism died out centuries ago.” She gulped. “What do your leaders say they’ll do when the fertile soil collapses there too? When fuel runs out for good?”
“It’s not talked about, really. It’s as if it won’t happen.”
Her big green eyes looked like they’d seen the sorrows of a thousand years. There was a long, sad pause. When she spoke again, her voice was very soft. “Sometimes, an animal is so sick that he cannot heal. He must continue thrashing around, growling, lashing out, until the energy is spent and he dies. For some, it is too late for healing.”
June 9th
It’s been such an exciting day! I’m feeling a bit peaky, not sure what’s wrong. I’m tired and frenetic all at once, like an electrical wire with too much current. But let me explain the importance of this day to me, in case a Vale-dweller ever happens upon these words...
I was born out of a random selection from the gene-pool ‘Media’. My bearer was also Media, as was her first-gen Media bearer. Medias all live in a block together – not a bad block. Media 0238 looked after me until I was 7, at which point I was handed over to School. I didn’t meet her again for another decade. We make people from our genetic maps whenever we need people. But here.... people have children. Like dogs! I mean, they have sexual intercourse, and babies result! Sex isn’t just about lust! Jesse told me that about 60 years ago, true fertility began to return to the humans of Eden Vale. Now more than three quarters of the pregnancies here survive from a natural combination of father-mother genes. The reason I now know this? I met a child in the Gardens today. He’s called ‘River’. He’s eleven, tan-brown, with gold-brown hair past his shoulders, and gold-brown eyes. He moves around the Botanical Gardens like a bird. He stares at me with huge solemnity one moment, then runs off shrieking and cackling, saying;
“You can’t catch me!”
He was right, I tried, but he ran up a tree right to the top and sat on a branch, swinging his legs and sticking out a small pink tongue at me. The sun was somewhere behind the treetops, and everything glinted green, gold, blue, silver.
“What’s the matter?” he called down to me. I’d sunk to my knees, and silent tears were pouring down my face.
“I don’t know,” I replied honestly, laughing. “I just feel so many things. I think you’re the loveliest boy I’ve ever met.”
River then said he wasn’t a boy or a girl, like many people here, and I didn’t understand what he meant. I just smiled, and said, ‘okay’.
What a beautiful day. I think I’ve fallen in love. Perhaps his family would adopt me into their community. Though I’m not a cook or farmer like them. Is that sort of thing acceptable here?
I saw myself in a mirror today for the first time since New London. I’m thinner, darker skinned, and my black hair has grown to my ears in a lank mat. I didn’t know myself, and stared for many a minute, wondering at the expression I wore.
June 10th
Feeling worse. The gorgeous Healer, Dandelion, said I’d better stop working and stay in bed.
“It’s just a common virus. You should be right as rain in a few days.”
I’m feverish, and my dreams were horrible last night. I dreamt of River stuck in my School, that bright face listless and soulless. I dreamt of the beating. The scars across my back from the chain are aching dully. Each time I dreamt of it, I woke up sweating. Elm has moved rooms to avoid contagion. I’m glad. I don’t want to be seen like this.
June 11th
No improvement. Not sure if I’m shaking from illness or terror. Didn’t sleep last night. Thought Elm was an attacker for a full five minutes before I came to my senses. Cold, clammy body, I can’t get warm.
A summer storm is raging outside. Through the window, sheets of rain smash through the trees from a steel-grey sky.
June 13th
Too ill to write yesterday. Dandelion’s worried, now.
“It’s happened once before – a Comper getting severely sick here. She was too used to a sterilised environment. Couldn’t handle it.”
“What happened to her?”
“She died.”
Suffice to say, I’m not feeling too optimistic.
Before Dandelion left the room, she turned, with her hand on the door handle. “I’m sorry I spoke to you harshly, that first time, Sorrel. I’d never met a Comper before, I didn’t understand that you’re all like that. I already see how you’re changing. I should’ve treated you gently: I’m sorry.”
June 15th
Worse. Can’t eat. Throw it all up. Just water. Spend nearly all day sleeping fitfully. I’ve moved out to a lodge in the Botanical Gardens. If I’m going to go, I want the flowers to be the last thing I see. They seem to smile at me. There’s a plaque on the wall above my bed, with the following inscription. It’s been going round my mind:
We are woven into the fabric of this world.
Each one is a line or two, a stanza of its story
That will sing on in ever
Shifting permutations
Until, perhaps
Time stops.
June 18th
Sunshine warms my body. I’m lying on a bed of soft plants near the lodge. I like the hum of the insects, now. A beautiful bird with a red chest is perched on a branch, gazing at me with a bright black eye. It looks clever.
River just brought me a vegetable. “It’s a strawberry,” he said, lip wobbling. “Maybe it will make you well.”
I threw it up, but it was worth it. It tasted like Heaven on earth.
LIBRARY RECORDS
Date: 20/06/2291
Type: Diary - Sorrel/Media-1,063
Filed by: Elm, with love
