News from Gardenia by Robert Llewellyn

Author:Robert Llewellyn
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science Fiction, Utopia
ISBN: 9781908717139
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2013-08-29T12:51:37+00:00

14

I awoke the next day half hoping that Grace would enter the room and we might spend the day together, wrapped in each other’s bodies, lost from the world.

I lay in bed for a while just absorbing the incredible silence, but with one ear listening for someone approaching. I could hear nothing.

I had a pee in my little bathroom; the sewage system had obviously changed a great deal from my time. You evacuated whatever it was you needed to evacuate using a low porcelain receptacle which, when you stood back from it, made a low buzzing sound. Whatever was in the small hole in the centre of the device then disappeared along with some air, a bit like the toilet in an airliner. A suck of air and it was all gone. I wondered where it went – did they still have sewage works? I hadn’t seen anything like that during my exploratory flight.

I stretched, washed my face and pondered my situation. I had been very disturbed by the previous night’s revelations and had a longing to find out more, to understand why I had arrived in this strange yet strangely familiar place. I went back towards my bed and noticed the large, leather-bound history book Paula had given me. It was lying beside my bed and I felt guilty. I hadn’t even opened it. History had never been a subject I had any interest in.

I suddenly remembered that I had promised to be a history teacher to a load of kids and had no idea what to say, so I picked up the book hoping for some kind of inspiration.

History seemed to me to be just a series of stories told by people who claimed to know everything about what went on before they were born. It was too imprecise, too full of opinions and bias.

However, this was history that had taken place after I had technically died. This was, I suppose, a fairly unique experience for any human being who had ever existed.

I propped up some pillows and lay back on the bed to read. I skimmed down the chapter headings. ‘The Russian–Chinese energy wars, 2063–69.’ Blimey, so there had been wars – Paula had explained that they were all minor skirmishes, but Russia and China sounded like it might have been a fairly chunky dispute.

‘Governments of Extremes’ was the following chapter. I made myself comfortable and started reading.

The National Emergency Government, formed in what was still then the United Kingdom in 2050, lasted eight months before imploding in chaos and disorder. Initially an extreme cadre of activists seized control of the New Liberal Party, a political grouping that had emerged from the disastrous governments before the final 2049 collapse of the British Pound Sterling, as the currency (money) exchange and value system was once known.

This grouping removed all laws from the statute book, abolished all forms of taxation and effectively closed down government. They were convinced that government was the root cause of the financial and social difficulties besetting the country.

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