News from the Squares by Robert Llewellyn

Author:Robert Llewellyn
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science Fiction, Utopia
ISBN: 9781783520060
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2013-08-29T00:00:48+00:00

18

Skimming the Waves

It’s stating the obvious that I’d seen ships before, who hasn’t? Even if you know nothing about them, everyone who’s been to the seaside has probably seen a ship. I’ve even had the opportunity to sail on a few massive tankers in South America and the Middle East through my work back before 2011. I never fail to be intrigued by the fact that a massive metal object can float on a vast quantity of unstable fluid.

My first experience of large ships was as a ten-year-old, when we caught the ferry from Dover to Calais for a family holiday. My mum didn’t want to go through the Eurotunnel because she thought it might leak. She didn’t say this outright, she just said she ‘had her reasons’.

I assumed it was because she was afraid of it leaking.

Being a fairly precocious young fellow, okay, a really annoying know-all according to my brother Giles, I managed to get hold of some safety statistics regarding cross channel shipping and some engineering data on the tunnel.

We made the crossing to France during very high winds resulting in a great many holidaymakers heaving up their fried egg and chips in the crowded toilets.

My brother and I thought it was a great adventure and spent much of the time on deck hanging on to the railings looking at the grey, angry churning sea.

As the ferry rocked and lurched its way toward the Northern coast of France I went inside and kept mum amused with statistics of ferry disasters and the very high safety record for rail travel. Eventually dad told me to shut up and I went back outside to join my brother.

As a ten-year-old I remember thinking that ferry was enormous, when I saw the Yin Qui as a thirty-two-year-old, I realised I could have had no notion as to what enormous really was. The Yin Qui was a seven million ton passenger and freight ship.

Yes, I’ve got those figures right, seven million tons.

The trip from the Institute to the docks took a full fifteen minutes by car. I say car, I mean the round white thing you sit in that goes underground very fast that everyone in London referred to as a car.

I was travelling with Nkoyo, although very little of why I was going anywhere was explained to me verbally before I departed the Institute. Nkoyo had given me a small package and an even smaller explanation.

It was basically another case of ‘would you care to come with me Gavin’. However, thanks to my kidonge I had allowed myself to understand that we were travelling to South London to board a surface ship to attend something called the General Assembly that was located in a massive building in Lagos.

I just knew that, don’t ask me how I knew, it felt as if someone had told me the day before and I was remembering what they told me. That’s the best explanation I can give.

I was also suddenly aware that the General Assembly was not always located in Lagos, it had only been there for four years.

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