No Future

Volume One

Bradley Stoke

Contents

I Alex 2020. 5

II Lindiwe 2065. 11

III Phil  2103. 18

IV Alex 2021. 24

V Betty 2037. 30

VI Eden 2048. 36

VII Tamara 2092. 44

VIII Alex  2022. 54

IX Gabrielle 2039. 63

X Alex  2023. 72

XI Mark & Molly 2070. 80

XII Molly & Mark  2071. 89

XIII Alex 2024. 97

XIV Diane 2042. 107

XV Eric Esterhazy MP 2044. 115

XVI Lindiwe 2066. 124

XVII Tamara 2093. 131

XVIII Alex 2025. 139

XIX Eric Esterhazy MP 2045. 147

XX Psychlone 2106. 155

XXI Iris 2053. 163

XXII Lindiwe 2067. 171

XXIII Olive 2082. 178

XXIV Lord Newbury 2077. 187

XXV Zoe 2047. 195

XXVI Eden 2049. 203

XXVII Tamara 2094. 211

XXVIII Alex 2026. 219

XXIX Eden 2050. 227

XXX Tamara 2095. 236

XXXI Alex 2027. 244

XXXII Theo 2052. 252

XXXIII Eden 2051. 260

XXXIV Tamara 2096. 269

XXXV Alex 2028. 278

. 725

I
Alex
2020

“And where did you say you worked?” she asked as she delicately squeezed Alex’s now limp but resolutely sticky penis between her red enamelled nails.

“I didn’t,” admitted Alex.

“Too soon on a first date, then?”

“It’s not quite the first date…er…” Alex began, but hesitated as he tried to remember the name of the naked woman sprawled on the mattress beside him. He couldn’t very well continue to call her Alfalfa2020 now their relationship had gone beyond cyberspace, but he’d already forgotten her real name.

“We’ve mostly only talked about sex and, if I recall, something to do with local traffic congestion, Alex.”

Shit! She’d remembered his name, but what was hers? Did it begin with ‘A’ or with some other letter?

“I think we also discussed some other global issues…like…er…”

“Like what?” she snorted. She stroked his testicles while Alex ineffectually twiddled his fingers through her hair. “And the name you’re trying to remember is Agnieszka. Not Agnes. Agnieszka.”

“Russian?” guessed Alex. It was at least plausible. She was quite a catch for an internet date and very much in a blonde, slim and tall fashion that would be wholly consistent with someone of Russian origin. And she had that delightfully dismissive hauteur Alex associated with Russian women…

“Polish,” she corrected him.

…Or, indeed, women from anywhere to the East of Germany.

“My parents came from Poland,” she continued. “Back in the Nineties. I’m sure we’d mentioned that on the net.”

“I think we talked about global warming, the environment and stuff like that,” said Alex who was intent on returning the conversation away from the poverty of his memory to the wealth of his political and social knowledge.

“I don’t remember any of that at all,” Agnieszka remarked. She teased his left testicle with the sharp edge of the red tip of her longest nail. “You did talk about how rubbish this town is. No facilities. No pub. Just a crappy Wal-Mart and a Dunkin Donuts.”

“They’ve opened a Starbucks now,” Alex pleaded. “And I think there’s gonna be a new petrol station.”

“Well, bully for Ashton Lovelock, New Town. What made you want to live here rather than back in Swindon? I think Swindon’s a great place. Plenty of shops. And the M4’s nearby.”

“Well, it would’ve been easier for us now if I was still renting a place there. Your apartment’s just a mile or so from where I used to live…”

“More a flat-share than an apartment. Property’s so fucking expensive.”

“It was work more than anything else. My company’s based in a Business Park just ten miles from Birmingham. That’s forty odd miles from here. Just over an hour’s commute on the motorway…”

“...On a good day,” Agnieszka commented knowingly.

“…And property’s not so expensive round here, at least not compared to Swindon.”

“And where did you say you worked?” Agnieszka asked again.

“Well, that’s why I’m sure we must have talked about serious shit, you know, like climate change and immigration policy and terrorism and politics and stuff,” pleaded Alex. “I work for an on-line news service. It’s part of the Disney-Reuters-News International media group. I help compile news for the news services.”

“The ones you have to pay for or the free ones?”

“Both. The BBC. The Telegraph. The Mail. And even Google News. They’re all customers of ours.”

Agnieszka’s face crumpled into an almost comical expression of sceptical dismissal. “It’s all lies, isn’t it? All the stuff that’s posted on the net. Everyone says it’s just propaganda. There’s no money in News now, so it’s mostly made up or recycled or planted or just showbiz trivia.”

Alex was genuinely shocked. “That is not true,” he spelt out slowly and precisely. “There’s an absolute separation between editorial and news content.”

“Even on a News International outlet?” Agnieszka sneered. “I’ve seen the crap on Fox News UK. I’m just glad my parents came from Poland and not the fucking Republic of Waziristan. All they go on about is Fortress Europe and cars that run on deep-ocean methane. Where’s the separation between fact and insular small-minded fantasy?”

Alex wasn’t sure he was so pleased now that he’d invited this woman into his house. The last thing you want to happen while naked and just after having made love for the last half-hour is to have to listen to someone disabuse you for what you do for a living.

“I just collate and edit the news,” Alex pleaded. “I don’t have anything to do with what News International or, for that matter, the BBC or Google do with the content. And I don’t think there are any lies out there. It’s just presentation and editorial.”

Agnieszka smiled. She obviously enjoyed Alex’s show of outrage. “And just what kind of news do you edit and collate then? Big issues like the environment, war and nuclear proliferation?”

Alex twisted his face into puppy-dog submission. “Entertainment,” he admitted.

“Pop stars and television personalities?”

“More internet gossip.”

“Like...?”

“Well, there’s a lot of it. After all the net is bigger than all the other media put together. And look at the success of VR. Virtual Reality. That’s exploded like there’s no fucking tomorrow…”

“Yeah,” said Agnieszka, with a wry smile. She cupped Alex’s balls in her left hand while her right stroked the length of his powder-stained penis where the glans was slowly retreating into the shelter of his foreskin. “I’ll give you that. You certainly know how to use the controls on Hot Nights Interactive.”

She bent her face down so that her lips, as bright red as the varnish on her nails, could brush along Alex’s now steadily reawakening penis.

“I try to please…” said Alex as he leaned back in a gesture of surrender.

“It’s not fucking politics or fucking religion or fucking environment you’ve ever talked about as far as I recall,” said Agnieszka. She tugged Alex’s penis up against her cheek while smiling at him from the distance between his eyes and his groin. “It was mostly nothing but fucking.”

And fucking was precisely what Alex and she did for the next few hours in Alex’s modest terrace at the end of a typical suburban car-lined street: each vehicle proudly displaying both tax disc and parking permit. In the muffled background of the couple’s pants and gasps came the occasional roar of overhead planes or the growl of motor engines, but the predominant noise was the mechanical electronic thud emanating from Alex’s sound system that he had pre-programmed to activate on just such an occasion as the one currently happening.

Alex knew that all was right in the world. This was his second first date this week and he’d lost count of the number of times he’d had sex so far this year with the various women he met through Hot Nights Interactive, not to mention those through New Friends On-Line and Fun With No Commitments.

Was Agnieszka any different?

Well, she was a first class lover that was for sure, although Alex had already guessed that from the on-line sex they’d enjoyed together. The controls might have been in human hands, but the physical contact was exclusively supplied by inexpensive computer accessories.

Agnieszka was undeniably head and shoulders above the normal standard of woman Alex had picked up on the internet, though given the difficulties in making friends by other—if you like old-fashioned—means, on-line dates were nowadays of a somewhat better class than they might once have been.

And as Alex’s penis felt the gushing warmth of Agnieszka’s vagina gripping his burning stiffness, he knew, more than he’d ever known before, that this was an encounter which had to be repeated.

II
Lindiwe
2065

After so many months of struggle and sacrifice, the arduous journey was finally over. Lindiwe had arrived. In the town’s short history, few had suffered as much as Lindiwe to reach Ashton Lovelock. Few could have endured the adversity, hunger and rape. Few would have willingly paid so much from so little savings to make a home in the fifty year old English New Town.

But desperation had driven Lindiwe to extreme measures, as it had her fellow migrants who’d also survived the journey.

Lindiwe hadn’t viewed the stops on her voyage as a tourist might, although there were few European tourists who would venture into sub-Saharan Africa these days. What she saw of the thousands of miles between Southern Africa and Northern Europe wasn’t through the round windows of an aeroplane soaring above the clouds and streaking ahead of a trail of prohibitively expensive fossil-fuel. She saw no airports and most definitely no passport controllers. Had she met even one between Lesotho and London, she’d have been unceremoniously bundled away in the back of an immigration police-van either to be dumped back in her country of origin or detained in one of the countless refugee camps that lined the shores of North Africa. And from what Lindiwe had heard about these camps, her most likely fate there would be a lonely death while she waited for a decision from the many government agencies and private charities that were fruitlessly arguing with one another over the responsibility for feeding the millions of desperate souls in their care.

No one would want to be burdened with such responsibility when there were so many other more immediate needs to address.

Lindiwe didn’t expect Ashton Lovelock to treat illegal immigrants with any more kindness than Nairobi, Cairo, Harare, Sarajevo or Rotterdam would have done if her presence had been discovered by an official at any point on her voyage. And when she had been obliged to declare her presence, well…

There had been several times when she’d had to use her body as currency to keep her and her companions safe. This had been the case from the very start of her journey when she’d had to sacrifice her virginity simply to secure an exit visa from the United States of South Africa. There were the weeks and, in the slums of Cairo, the months of working for very little pay and a great deal of verbal and physical abuse in occupations that were far more menial than her post-graduate degree and professional training had ever prepared her for.

Here in the Kingdom of England there might be an opportunity to make good the qualifications that were surplus to requirements in Maseru. Lindiwe had high hopes for Ashton Lovelock. Despite the crumbling decay of the hastily-built house she was staying in, it was a relatively young town with energy-efficient housing, extensive parking spaces, and a profusion of windmills and solar panels.

The truth was that Ashton Lovelock was a veritable paradise compared to her original home in Africa. The years of African famine hadn’t reduced overall population numbers by very much. Maseru still housed a population far greater than its infrastructure could support. The police were ineffectual against the criminal gangs that made it hazardous to venture out whether at day or night. The few available jobs paid very poorly if they ever paid at all. Offices and homes were collapsing from neglect. Queues of starving people wound through the high streets for the few goods the criminal gangs permitted to arrive in the shops. Only a lucky few were ever rewarded for their patience.

Ashton Lovelock, on the other hand, was a town of owner-occupation that had now become a neighbourhood of squats as the number of those who could afford to buy property in the over-crowded Kingdom of England had shrunk at the same rate as the supply of non-derelict housing stock. This town had once been home to a prosperous community of second and third generation Asian immigrants, but the regrettable policies of the recently deposed Government of National Unity had resulted in their total evacuation. This inevitably left a vacuum that was now being filled by the latest wave of immigrants: of which Lindiwe was one.

But she was only one of many. There were people gathered in Ashton Lovelock from all over the world, though almost all of them were pretending to have come via the Northern European Union. This was a necessary lie, made plausible in the aftermath of the National Server Centre Riots. Many came from Africa, at least as many from the Middle East and Asia, and, inevitably, refugees from the racially intolerant Republic of North America. Fortunately, the one thing everyone had in common was a shared understanding of English.

“Where can I find work?” Lindiwe asked her friend Apara whose optimistic postcards were the beacon of hope that had drawn her across two continents to this far distant island.

Apara shared the same single mattress with Lindiwe in a room that had once been a loft extension. Three mattresses filled almost all the available floor-space and each of them, including the mattress the two friends shared, was home to one set of people during the day and another during the night. Apara and Lindiwe shared the mattress in the daylight hours. At night, a black married couple from Mississippi slept on the same mattress and frequently left behind the trace of semen stains.

“There are no jobs at KFC-McDonalds,” said Apara, referring to the franchise where she worked. “You’re just going to have to look for work elsewhere.”

Lindiwe’s heart sank. She couldn’t sleep on the mattress at night because Mr and Mrs Martin would be there and there weren’t many places open in the evening where she could hope to find work. This meant that her pursuit for employment would also mean going without sleep.

Nevertheless, bleary-eyed and bored, after a night spent in the vicinity of the bus depot in the company of others with nothing else to do, Lindiwe resolutely wandered the streets of Ashton Lovelock in the hunt for an employment opportunity. Not that there were many places to visit in the town centre. The proprietor of KFC-McDonalds, herself a South African immigrant, was sympathetic but pointed out that there was a long waiting list of equally desperate candidates. The other fast-food chain, Yo Sushi Pizza Hut, was rather less friendly and more or less told her that only Muslim men could apply. Other than that, the only supermarket—a Tesco-WalMart—was openly hostile and told her that the company had a policy of reporting suspected immigrants. So there was little hope there either.

Lindiwe soon realised that there were no jobs for her in Ashton Lovelock at all. The immigrant community had already taken all the available low-paid opportunities. And this was much to the evident distaste of native English citizens, many of whom openly taunted Lindiwe with unsubtle reminders of the unethical practices of the deposed Government of National Unity.

The ever-widening radius of her job-search eventually encompassed a business estate on the perimeter of Swindon where Lindiwe at last gained a position but as nothing more demanding than a nightshift cleaning-woman. Although this position required an expensive two-hour commute by bus followed by a half-hour walk it was still better than having to spend the entire night avoiding the couple sleeping on her daytime mattress.

Her official tasks mostly involved switching on and switching off the various cleaning machines and robots. However, it wasn’t long until Lindiwe discovered that cleaning wasn’t everything she was expected to do, although it wasn’t written into her terms and conditions of employment (which, in any case, were entirely verbal and agreed with a handshake).

During the first week that Lindiwe worked at the George Monbiot eco-business park, she became aware of the existence of rooms that were out of bounds to her and the other night-time operatives. There would invariably be an e-paper sign pasted on the door of these rooms that requested that they be cleaned later. In case there might be some misunderstanding, these doors were locked from the inside. This was odd because the only people supposed to be working at the offices so late at night were security guards and technical operatives.

It soon became evident what was happening when Lindiwe bumped into any of the people who’d been staying in a locked room. It was always a man and a woman. The woman was invariably much younger than the man and usually an immigrant. Lindiwe also noticed the smell of sex that was lingering on their person. Her nostrils had become well attuned to the odour after the weeks she’d spent in Sarajevo in which her survival relied on the provision of blow-jobs to total strangers..

“I like all the staff to chip in,” Lindiwe’s boss explained as he handed her the meagre rewards for her first week’s work. He was a slender dark-skinned man with a turban and a West Midlands accent. He was an exile who’d returned home after the change of government. “The benefits are extra pay. I can’t promise a fortune but tips can make a difference.”

“Why don’t people go to brothels and massage parlours?” asked Lindiwe, who understood that her continued employment was almost certainly conditional on her accepting this extra work.

“The change of government brought about many good changes,” Mr Singh said with a sigh, “otherwise I wouldn’t be here, of course. But one measure the new government also introduced was to close the illicit sex establishments that were an unofficial refuge for the immigrant women who’d stayed on in the country, despite the constant pressure to leave. This operation is similar to many others you’ll find all over this country. It’s a way for the Business Park’s landlords to use empty rooms in offices that would otherwise be decommissioned and for the punters to get what they want.”

And what they wanted was something Lindiwe now had to provide about twice a week in one of the several out-of-bound offices. They were furnished with rather basic beds rather than desks, computers and chairs. The felt-covered partitions around each cubicle now served the function of hiding what was going on. There was a steady stream of customers who came to enjoy the inexpensive pleasures that immigrant labour was now providing: their appetites whetted by the VR fantasies they could enjoy in the comfort of their own homes.

For Lindiwe this provided no pleasure at all until she squeezed into the office shower with the other nightshift cleaners to spray off the semen, urine and other bodily fluids that the customers believed was a necessary part of love-making but during which ordeal the vaginal penetration was probably the least distasteful part.

III
Phil
2103

Phil hated the long drive home from Warwick Business Park to Ashton Lovelock. Not until the gates to the town were shut close behind him and he was once again under the protection of the most advanced and modern security technology that money could buy did he feel safe. No terrorist or vagrant could trespass the gated community of Ashton Lovelock. Not even a bird flying overhead or a mouse burrowing beneath the hi-tech walls could stay undetected for long by the town’s computer systems, which also served to modulate the temperature, keep the rain off the walkways and ensure that the lawns were kept regulation length. And all this was within an entirely self-contained energy system with a zero carbon footprint.

All the same, there were several insecure kilometres on Phil’s journey home from work where the windows of his battery-driven car had to stay sealed whatever the weather and it was essential to keep his tracking devices set on. Most of his commute was along a secure stretch of carriage-way. Few terrorists could trespass onto the tarmac beyond the electric fences and deep ditches that protected it. The road from the Warwick Business Park to the A46 was similarly protected but not at the expense of tax-payers but of the businesses based at the park.

There was more than ten kilometres of unsecured road—mostly in a poor state of repair—from Ashton Lovelock to the tolls at the start of the private roadway. The hover-mechanism of his car might be less energy-efficient and burnt up a lot of the battery charge, but it kept the car’s chassis safe from damage and ensured that Phil and his Ford-Toyota Apollo got to its destination without being mired in a ditch or, worse, car-jacked by plebs eager to plunder his car for valuable parts.

It just wouldn’t do to imagine what would happen to Phil in such a situation. Highwaymen were known to kidnap law-abiding citizens such as him for ransom. They were the terrestrial equivalent of the pirates that terrorised the high seas and thereby helped to make imports so prohibitively expensive. There were rumours of an illicit trade in human body parts used by unrecognised physicians for plebs who couldn’t afford proper health-care or, worse, used as raw material in the bio-labs such as the one at the business park just next door to Phil’s office.

Those kilometres were the only few Phil ever got to see of the England the plebs inhabited. The pity of it was that he saw the same few kilometres every day, both coming south and going north. Familiarity with the sight didn’t make him any fonder of it. There was rubbish piled up, as there was no waste disposal business to remove it. The buildings were in a terrible state of repair with slates falling off roofs and the lawns untended. The pavements that lined the roadside were crumbled and potholed and in almost as bad a condition as the road itself. This was also where the homeless lived under tarpaulin with their children running around half-naked like the savages they were.

Phil knew that there were different classes of pleb, just as there were different professions such as technocrats, executives and administrators. However, whereas the distinction between the professions was measured by academic achievement and seniority, the diversity amongst the plebs was vacuous and chaotic. There were those in paid employment or who were self-employed amongst whom there was a lucky few that owned road-vehicles that were characteristically in a very poor condition and often relied on inefficient carbon fuels that their owners had to buy off the black market. The plebs clearly deserved their constant chastisement by the media for their fecklessness and irresponsibility. They sometimes had families with three or more children. Some were even eligible for state handouts and lived off these rather than make an honest living. They were a burden on honest professionals like Phil and this was the principal reason why he resented having to pay taxes.

Phil knew there were countless orders of pleb, but the distinction was difficult to discern among the faceless, ragged and malnourished scum that he dutifully ignored on his journey towards the robot-operated tolls that automatically recognised his car and let him through without him needing to pause on the hazardous side of the barrier. Some were of immigrant stock. Although they were generally known as illegals, a few had somehow gained English citizenship and therefore not technically illegal. On the rare occasion that Phil needed to speak to a pleb he had difficulty understanding a word they said through the dense thicket of regional and even foreign accents.

At least his tax money no longer needed to support the Northern English plebs now that their separate assembly had taken over this responsibility. If the Geordies clamoured for independence like the Scots, Welsh and Irish before them, Phil would have no objections in granting it to them.

Although the overwhelming majority of the English population could be classified as plebs they inhabited only a fraction of the Republic’s habitable land. Most was owned and managed by agri-businesses, business parks, commercial parks and, of course, gated communities. The plebs had to make do with the space left over. And what did they have to complain about? It wasn’t as if there was a place for them to live in an agri-business compound or an assembly plant. That was reserved for robots. If only the plebs would stop breeding and just die out.

Phil drove the final kilometre or so within Ashton Lovelock to his home along roads, lined by pavements and lawns, that couldn’t be more different from those infested by homeless scum. The garage doors opened well before his car rolled onto the driveway and a welcoming scent of lavender and fuchsia wafted out from his living room.

Phil wandered into the kitchen where a meal was already waiting for him, prepared by the robo-chef from the same genetically enhanced foodstuffs that were being designed and patented in the Sony-Monsanto Bio-Research faculty based at Warwick Business Park.

As he tucked into his dinner, Phil wondered what he could do this evening.

Phil wasn’t married, although he had many girlfriends. Most of these were of the cyberspace variety that he couldn’t dare to meet in real life and the others he’d met through VR dating. But somehow today he wasn’t in the mood for cybersex. Perhaps he could arrange a social evening with Larry, Artie and Aaron and, but unless he could hold back on the alcohol he’d have to arrange a taxi to travel the five kilometres or so back home and it was always a hassle waiting for it to arrive.

Phil checked his mobile for messages.

Nothing.

What could he do?

Phil smiled. Well, why not? He deserved it and it would scarcely break the bank.

There was just one other contact with the pleb majority Phil maintained that wasn’t with taxi-drivers, waiters and bar-staff. And it would arrive within half an hour of being summoned.

He picked up his phone and scrolled through a holographic display of images of mostly semi-clad women that he’d bookmarked earlier.

The sort of women Phil preferred was the type that one could call voluptuous. Not fat, although very few plebs could afford to be that now. Obesity was a disease that famine had eliminated amongst the poor. The women that Phil preferred had an ample bosom, good-sized hips and thighs and—this was important to him—white skin. So many plebs were of a complexion that was all shades from black through brown to off-white, but Phil preferred women who were, if anything, rather paler than his own slightly olive-hued skin-colour.

Today was going to be Arabella’s turn. Her real name was almost certainly not Arabella. Plebs often had names that were decidedly non-English, like Anoushka or Fatima, or ones that were drastically abbreviated to Shell or Tray or Madge. Arabella’s status was set to Ready and she could be at his address within forty minutes assuming that she, or rather her driver, wasn’t detained at the entry gate for too long. A few jabs with his finger on the touch-screen and Arabella was on her way and a provisional deposit transferred from Phil’s credit account to that of the Empire Dating Agency (Ashton Lovelock).

Phil settled down to his delicious soy-lamb vindaloo while he watched the television news on the kitchen wall screen. It was the usual stuff about floods, droughts, famines and terrorism that numbed his senses and those of anyone else who troubled to follow current affairs. The riots in Yorkshire were a worry. Phil shuddered as he watched the pictures of Shopping Malls in flames and mobs rampaging around the town centre in their traditional uniform of shell-suits and baseball caps.

Thank God Phil only did his shopping on-line.

At last the doorbell rang. Arabella’s driver was another woman, perhaps in her early forties, who wore a smart uniform with the letters Empire Dating emblazoned across her jacket. She held Arabella’s hand while, following protocol, she gave a little speech about what the service cost, how much the extras might cost, and the limits that Phil would have to respect.

“Definitely no excretion. Definitely no fisting. Semen on the face, but not in the mouth.”

“Anal?” asked Phil as he admired Arabella’s sizeable arse that was straining to escape from the skimpy white dress under which peeked the lacy edge of her knickers.

“Anal is fine,” said the escort. “It’s classified as a standard extra.”

Phil took Arabella’s hand to take her across the threshold.

“One hour or two?” the escort asked. “Or would you prefer half-hourly instalments?”

“Two hours would be fine,” said Phil, as he tucked in his shirt to hide the overhang of his stomach over his waist.

Obesity might be rare amongst the plebs but it was by no means rare amongst the more privileged.

IV
Alex
2021

Agnieszka made sure that her final exit through the front door was at least as dramatic as any other during the term of her relationship with Alex. This time, however, she didn’t pause to shout up to him from the hallway before she stomped off to her car to drive off to one or other of her many friends and relatives who would soon once again be reminded just what kind of bastard, shithead or cunt Alex was. This omission was a novelty to Alex and probably also a relief to his neighbours who already knew far more about the couple’s tempestuous love-life than they might have wished.

Well shit, thought Alex, as Agnieszka’s environmentally unfriendly petrol car drove noisily away, if she thought he was a cunt then he might as well act like one. Or better still, he might even get hold of the genuine article.

Life with Aggie hadn’t been that great an experience although having sex with her had been and continued to be right to the end. From the very start, Aggie had ideas about how to run the connubial home that conflicted with Alex’s. And, as a habitually single man, Alex wasn’t used to having to compromise.

“The way we first met each other is shit. Absolute shit,” Aggie said. “On-line sex is shit.”

“But it is how we met,” Alex countered.

“That’s because it’s almost the only way anyone gets to meet anyone these days,” Agnieszka admitted. “No one lives where they were born or went to school any more. Somehow you have to make new friends without the benefit of a social network that you’d built up through school or university. And since everyone uses the internet, that’s become the only way.”

“So, it’s not all shit.”

“But it is at the same time,” Agnieszka responded. “The person you meet on the internet isn’t a real person. It’s a kind of made-up thing that’s fashioned for whichever dating or friendship site you’ve logged into. If we’d met on a BDSM site, then I’d probably have been Agnes Leather or something…”

“Rather than Alfalfa2020.”

“Exactly.”

It wasn’t just sex that both kept and drove Alex and Agnieszka apart. The two of them worked in two different towns and for both of them the daily commute was almost more tiring than their actual jobs. Nowadays, Alex was working longer and longer hours which often continued until late into the evening. That might entail an expensive taxi ride home. If he drove home after even the smallest drop of drink, he risked being caught by one of the countless automatic traffic surveillance patrols that lined the roads and having to submit to a breathalyser test that he’d almost certainly fail.

In material terms, Alex’s job at DRNI was going well. He’d been promoted from a job where he put collated news about VR Entertainment to one with the broader remit of covering VR Current Affairs. That was mostly because the distinction between Current Affairs in the virtual world and real life was becoming increasingly blurred. It was increasingly necessary to monitor the politics, economics and personalities of cyberspace as so many people spent a steadily greater proportion of their lives in that domain. Real money was being exchanged in cyberspace and ever more effort was expended on its administration.

Nevertheless, Alex didn’t need to spend much time immersed in Virtual Reality to find out what was going on there. In fact, he spent rather less time in cyberspace than the average visitor. If he had, it would have been impossible for him to find the time to actually do his job. His task was more to sift through the huge volume of blogs, notice boards, flash messages and the like generated in and around the virtual realm and then summarise all this in either short text articles or video messages presented by his website avatars (who looked a lot better than him anyway). And what he couldn’t find out about the Virtual World for himself, he could easily retrieve from other news sites which fed off each other in a kind of mutual cannibalistic frenzy.

Alex strode over to the window and looked out across the street at the houses opposite and the slowly rotating blades of the wind farm just beyond. There was no sign of Aggie. On previous occasions she’d sometimes driven off and come back after less than an hour: tearful and open for reconciliation. In the early days of their relationship, this was exactly what Alex hoped for as a resolution to their frequent quarrels, but it had now become almost what he most dreaded. It was better when Aggie stayed away for a day or maybe two. Her sister in Gloucester or her best friend in Banbury or even her aunt and uncle in Rugby could be relied on to take care of her until Aggie was ready to return home.

Alex put on the television and flicked through the hundreds of available channels whose content was rarely of interest. It was all shopping, gambling, religion, chat, quizzes, soap operas and reality shows that were all cheap to produce and, for many, addictive to consume

As always, Alex’s attention gravitated towards the news channels. Fox News UK had its usual op-ed programmes. It was the Nick Griffin Show with the host ranting on for an hour or so on a news item that made him apoplectic with a furious rage that was consistently aligned with the views of right-wing pressure groups and the interests of big business. This kind of television was somehow hypnotic. Griffin had borrowed techniques from the American masters of right-wing television punditry to present an evidently English blend of outrage, patriotism and banal repetition.

Nick Griffin managed to lambast the liberal media for well over an hour. This was odd, because as most of the media was now lambasting each other for the same pretext it was difficult to tell which corner of the media actually was liberal. There was then a short section in which were presented a parade of news headlines in rapid and confusing succession. Famine and floods in Pakistan. War in Syria. More on Climate Change (not a day went by without at least one story on that). Presidential Elections in the Ukraine. Terrorist strikes in Beijing. Postponement of the Moon Mission. Then there was the Weather Forecast with the usual warnings about flooding in East Anglia and strong winds in Scotland.

Alex had more than enough of watching television when the credits for the Bob Spink Show appeared. There was only so much reactionary ranting he could take in a single evening. He still wasn’t really convinced that disengagement from Europe was the answer to all England’s woes.

Alex wandered over to the window to check if Aggie had driven her car back.

Nothing.

Reassured, Alex locked the front door, turned off the television and settled down for a session in cyberspace. This was a cumbersome process in which he enclosed his head in a helmet, pulled on gloves, and attached peripherals to his genitals; but if you wanted the full immersive experience of cyberspace, there was no alternative.

He then navigated through virtual space to his usual haunts to see who might be there. He was in luck. Chickabiddy4 was waiting around with not much to do.

Alex had no idea what the real Chickabiddy4 was like and he was unlikely to ever find out. In any case, she wasn’t the sort of on-line friend you’d really want to meet in real life. The on-line fantasies he shared with her would probably have both of them arrested. She could even be a man for all Alex knew (this wasn’t at all unusual), but it was a fantasy worth maintaining for the time he and she spent together. This was generally a session of cyber-sex accompanied by a not at all virtual arousal and eventually a very real release of semen (which very clever software was able to postpone for as long as he wished).

Was this infidelity?

Alex wasn’t sure.

It wasn’t sex in a real physical sense. And would Aggie (or for that matter the real person behind Chickabiddy4) really enjoy sex that included urination, fisting and bondage?

Aggie, naturally, had a different opinion.

“Just because you do it through broadband mediated by computers doesn’t make it right,” she argued. “You ejaculate on and with another woman. That sounds very much like fucking as far as I’m concerned. It’s being unfaithful. It’s worse than prostitution because it’s not done for money, it’s done for fun.”

It wouldn’t do for Alex to argue that it was surely more ethical that he indulged in it for mutual pleasure rather than one-sided exploitation. This wasn’t an opinion that Aggie shared.

However, as Alex reflected, how many men in the real world could Agnieszka meet through on-line dating who didn’t also practise on-line sex?

And if Aggie could never accept the sort of man she would meet through on-line dating, where else would she find the man she was looking for?

V
Betty
2037

Betty wasn’t a naturist. That was a crappy thing to be. That was just like being a member of the National Trust or a Civil War re-enactment society. But she did make a point of wearing clothes as rarely as possible. She was proud and unashamed to assert herself as both Vegetarian and Green. And these were words that were definitely written with capital letters.

In this respect she was very much as one with everyone else who lived in the Broad Oak Grove commune.

Of course, when the builders of Ashton Lovelock named the street there was no grove and certainly no oaks, however broad. Like all names in this town, it was chosen to invoke a rustic memory that bore no relation to a reality either living or dead. The squat in which Betty lived was one of many houses that had failed to find a buyer in the uncertain housing market. It was now unsold and, were it not for the tender loving care of Betty and her friends, it would have already decayed to the state of nature from which it had emerged just over twenty years earlier.

Betty was obliged to wear clothes whenever she left home to shop at Cost Cutters, but she was under no moral imperative to be nude. It was more an eco-awareness thing. The clothes industry was just as bad as every other exploitative multinational industry. It despoiled the environment and oppressed the poor simply to supply consumers in wealthy countries with clothes that were both cheap and cheerful.

In truth, it wasn’t that clothes were especially cheap these days. Neither, for that matter, was food, fuel or very much else. Betty was no more able to afford much in the way of luxury than anyone else in the commune. The benefits system was like a points system nowadays. Only those who could clearly demonstrate that they couldn’t find work would get any state subsidy for the luxury of not working, while at the same time there was a rapidly shrinking pool of employment opportunities. The only way that anyone in the Broad Oak Grove commune could make money was by selling stuff at rock and dance festivals. Otherwise, their survival was dependent on second-hand clothes, food parcels and soup kitchens.

The supermarket shelves were heaving under the weight of prohibitively expensive goods. The last oil crisis had made fuel more expensive and energy conservation more necessary, but the media was portraying it more as an economic rather than as an environmental issue. Nevertheless, those cut-price supermarkets that made cheapness their principal virtue—and Cost Cutters was about as cheap as you got—were now championing their Green credentials. But Betty wasn’t taken in. Why should ordinary people have to suffer when the rich could still fly across the oceans just to get from one major city to another? What did that do for the world’s sharply declining reserves of oil? What was so green about genetically modified potatoes that never rotted? Or gene-spliced pigs that could barely waddle with all that surplus blubber? Or those Frankenstein varieties of fruit and vegetables being generated in the laboratory? What about the obscene commercials that urged everyone to spend spend spend while the sea-levels rose, the hurricanes got worse and drought gripped so much of Africa?

Betty’s conscience was clear. Well, almost. She did have a weakness for chocolate bars—especially those new brands coming from China. They tasted so good, despite the lethal array of chemicals they contained and the likelihood that the confectionery’s ultimate origin was a gene-spliced mutation in a vast agricultural warehouse on the banks of what little flowing water was left in the Yangzi River.

The walk back from the supermarket to Betty’s commune was over a stream whose name was obscured by graffiti and whose flow, like all rivers and streams these days, was held back behind a wall that was designed to act as a flood defence. These days, when England wasn’t suffering from drought it was under a deluge of heavy rain.

It was the flood defences that were the most worrying signs of irreversible climate change. The water level generally subsided a few days after a heavy downpour, but it would leave homes in low-lying areas like Broad Oak Grove in a very sorry state. It was for this practical reason that the houses on Broad Oak Grove were uninsured and uninsurable and now only fit for squatting.

Betty’s grandparents lived by the sea in Sussex, so Betty actually knew a lot about coastal defences. Not that you could see the sea these days. The view was obscured behind a three metre high sea-wall that had been erected to protect the South Coast from the rising sea level and the occasional storm surge. Nowadays almost all Britain’s seaside resorts and other vulnerable points on the coast were protected like that. Even London might soon be similarly protected, especially since the failure of the Greenwich Flood Barrier a couple of years ago that had admitted flood water into the heart of the City of London.

Betty arrived at the dilapidated front door of Number 2 Broad Oak Grove where posters rather than curtains obscured the view through the windows to inside the house. She turned a set of several keys in the various locks and slipped out of her clothes almost as soon as she was inside. Fortunately, autumn was relatively mild this year. Even if it wasn’t, the windmill in the garden and the solar panels on the roof would generate enough energy to keep the place warm.

Self-sufficiency wasn’t really an option for the squatters. This house, like all the others on the street, was disconnected from mains electricity and their frugal energy supply just had to suffice. Nevertheless, the commune was able to survive if not exactly flourish. This was due to an enlightened policy of eco-awareness and the fact that the only energy-sapping technology used by anyone in the house was the ubiquitous laptop. In winter, however, the commune was forced to resort to using log-fires. This practice understandably split the housemates between those who thought that burning wood was good because it was natural and those who deplored the rape of the world’s forests.

Betty strolled into the living room where Edie, Tom and Alicia were sitting around also naked on ancient thread-worn bean-bags while listening to the music being broadcast from Edie’s laptop. It was some kind of electronic Arab-Chinese fusion sound overlaid with what sounded like Russian vocals.

“Been shopping?” asked Tom. He’d noticed that Betty was carrying a bulging cloth bag with the slogan Don’t Touch My Genes! emblazoned on it.

“Yeah,” said Betty as she wandered into the kitchen to put the various paper bags of lentils, rice, tofu and beans onto the shelves.

Tom followed her into the kitchen. He put his arms around her waist and gently pressed his lips on her shoulder.

“What did you buy?” he asked.

“The usual,” she answered.

Betty knew that Tom wasn’t really interested at all in her shopping expedition. If he was then he’d probably have been more enthusiastic about doing his own fair share. However, she appreciated the intimacy and returned Tom’s kisses with a couple of her own. She then wriggled out of his grip so that she could put some frozen food into the fridge.

The couple returned to the living room where Alicia was rolling a spliff on the back of a newspaper and Edie was surfing the net on the same laptop from which was still booming the sounds of modern Russia. Betty settled down with Tom on the battered sofa they’d found abandoned on the street and waited for Alicia to finish preparing the joint.

Tom was very affectionate and his penis was in a half-way state of excitement that Betty knew she could stimulate into full erection with little effort. However, it was Alicia who was Betty’s current lover and Tom was supposed to be hooked up with Tanya: a black girl from another squat just across the road. Betty didn’t mind the attention, of course, and she was delighted to see that Alicia was visibly jealous.

The joint was prepared and passed around. It was almost entirely weed. The cost of tobacco was so high and its availability so restricted that it was now cheaper to smoke undiluted weed even though it made every hit that much stronger and seriously shortened the lifetime of a single joint.

Betty was feeling naughty. And, anyway, Alicia had been less than normally amorous the night before. She’d fallen asleep rather too soon for Betty’s appetite. She squeezed her fingers around Tom’s penis and jerked her hand up and down while she chatted with Edie about the news she was reading on the net.

“The elections in the Waziristani Republic were totally rigged,” said Edie with a sniff. “I mean, do they really want all that Islamic terrorism to come back? Fucking President Beck just doesn’t know what the fuck he’s letting the world in for!”

Betty wasn’t paying her much attention. Tom’s penis was as erect as it was ever likely to be and it seemed a shame to waste it. She got down on her knees and was about to give the man a blow-job when she noticed a sudden movement from Alicia. Was her lover going to cause a scene? After all, it was just a bit of fun.

“Fuck, Bet,” said Alicia who took position between Tom’s legs. “There’s enough here for two to share.”

With that Alicia placed her lips on the tip of Tom’s glans while Betty kept a grip on the shaft and proceeded to take as much of it into her mouth as she could.

And all the while Edie continued surfing the internet with the smouldering roach in her hand. There were too many women at play and she preferred her sexual activity to be more private. Also, with so much going on in the world, there wasn’t enough time in the day to keep up with it all.

VI
Eden
2048

Eden had bought and sold so much land that he couldn’t really be blamed for not knowing what he actually owned. Not that he was ever involved in the purchase. He employed people to do that for him. All he knew was that where land was cheap, the best medium-term strategy for a man of means and ambition such as himself was to buy it. A growing population and a declining supply of housing stock only pointed in one direction with regards to future profit for those with the wherewithal to survive the current economic recession.

It wasn’t Eden who’d made the decision to tear down the ramshackle, decrepit rows of houses in the recently purchased Broad Oak estate, but it was his choice, once presented with the options, to replace it with a single mansion that could house only one man, his family, his guests and his many servants. Eden had probably been resting in his villa in Switzerland or maybe on his yacht in the Caribbean when the eviction orders were issued and houses demolished. No one had troubled to inform him about the protests, sit-ins and angry protests that accompanied the clear-out of the squatters and scum who’d previously been dossing in what was now his land. Their eviction would surely be no loss to either the estate that Eden St John-Easton had inherited or the town of Ashton Lovelock of which it had once been a part. It would be difficult to imagine how anyone wouldn’t cheer to see the back of the filthy, unclothed, uncivil and over-educated rabble that were driven away in the back of police vans and the well-reinforced vehicles used by the security firm that Eden also owned.

Eden’s current visit to Broad Oak Manor wasn’t going to be for very long. There was a show in Broadway he’d soon be flying over the Atlantic to see and he was anxious after that to return to either his yacht in the Mediterranean or his villa in the Maldives. He felt rather more at home abroad than he ever would in a modest mansion in the English Midlands.

Nevertheless, even the wealthiest man had duties to attend to in his home country. There were accountants, lawyers and politicians to see and that could only be done in the United Kingdom that Eden feared was in danger of not staying united for very much longer.

Eden’s penance for enjoying himself in luxurious homes drenched in the best sunlight on the planet was to spend the occasional week of purgatory in one of his English properties such as, for instance, Broad Oak Manor.

Fortunately, the English weather wasn’t always as bad as Eden remembered it from childhood. Climate change couldn’t be that bad if there were to be more of these balmy June days unspoilt by even a single cloud in the sky. The changing climate might have badly impacted on Eden’s agricultural shares (especially in the southern United States and Russia), but it was worth it if there could me more pleasant evenings like this.

Eden had all of Broad Oak at his disposal, and he could see no reason why he shouldn’t stretch his legs and enjoy it. Much of the estate was now blanketed with freshly grown lawns and woodland that replaced the original dreary suburban streets and back gardens. He could have taken the air accompanied by an accountant or a lawyer or one of his many female companions, but tonight Eden chose to stroll in the gardens by himself. He spent very little time alone and he wanted some respite before he had to attend the meetings and conference calls that had been arranged for him.

And after paying all those millions for a plot in Middle England, Eden thought that he really ought to savour it.

The gardeners had done a good job in transforming the land into something presentable. At long last, the roads whose names had celebrated various species of tree were actually turned over to their cultivation. There was now elm, oak, beech and sycamore on land that once sported their names. Nevertheless, there hadn’t been enough time for the trees to grow especially tall. Although the genetic modification that facilitated rapid growth and disease resistance made the landscape rather more densely forested than would otherwise have been the case, the trees could scarcely be described as towering. They seemed short even to Eden who despite his great wealth was not similarly blessed by great stature.

Indeed quite the opposite.

The foliage was no more thick than it was tall, so Eden could easily spot the presence of shadowy figures in what might otherwise be called a thicket. He was sure that they weren’t his servants and he knew that he wasn’t entertaining any guests. And even if he were, no guest would be skulking around like these people.

Ever alert to the possible risk of terrorism, Eden gripped his mobile in his palm. His forefinger stroked the red alarm button that would summon security staff to the scene. If these shadowy figures were foolish enough to threaten him, then within minutes their bullet-ridden bodies would be splattered across the well-manicured lawn.

As he approached closer, Eden could distinguish that there were only two trespassers. They were becoming gradually less distinct as the sun dipped behind the trees. Eden decided to bide his time until announcing his presence, but he didn’t want to get so close that he couldn’t alert security in good time if these figures belonged to a cabal of green anarchist Muslim feminazi terrorists.

“What the bloody hell do you think you’re doing?” Eden commanded. “Are you aware that you’re trespassing on private property?”

There was rustling in the shrubbery.

“Don’t hassle us, man,” one of the shadowy figures announced as she emerged from the dark. “We don’t mean no harm.”

Eden was startled by the sight of a totally naked woman. She was probably in her late twenties, but thanks to the privations of a hippy life-style she hadn’t put on the kilos of excess fat that almost everyone else found impossible to shed. He wasn’t sure whether it was her nudity that startled him or the fact that her crotch sprouted more hair than he thought a woman could grow. Most women of Eden’s acquaintance, including his wife, maintained nothing more than the merest suggestion of such florid growth. Maybe it was also the unexpected hirsuteness of her limbs and armpits. Only the most specialist pornographic website could have prepared him for such a sight.

Behind her was a similarly undressed girl who was probably only about eight or nine years old. There was enough apparent family resemblance for Eden to surmise that she was quite likely to be the woman’s daughter.

Eden knew exactly what he wanted to do. He wasn’t really bothered about his legal rights as owner of the property, but he always liked a bit of fun. As he normally had to pay for it, it pleased him to have an opportunity to get something for nothing.

He strode towards the woman and carefully focused his eyes on her face rather than her expanse of bare flesh.”You do realise that you’re trespassing on private property?” he said officiously.

“Yeah, man, whatever,” said this woman, “but there’s nowhere else to go. It’s not as if we’re doing any damage or anything.”

“The law is the law,” Eden reminded her. “Private property has to be respected. You wouldn’t like it if someone decided to squat in your house or garden.”

“Well, no,” conceded the woman. “But it’s not like we’ve got anywhere else to stay. And anyhow this is where we used to live...”

“You did what?” wondered Eden who was genuinely surprised.

“...When there was houses and roads and lamp-posts and things,” the woman elaborated. “Didn’t we, Benita?” she asked her daughter.

“I don’t remember,” the young girl replied. “It was a long time ago. Ages!”

“Yeah, we did,” said the woman. “It was round over there just by that new pond that’s been dug up.” She pointed in the direction of the ornamental lake and the exotic river birds with clipped wings that had been imported into the estate.

“That really is of no concern to me,” said Eden who didn’t appreciate the direction this conversation was taking. This naked bitch clearly had no idea who he was. “I have no choice but to evict you.”

“Yeah, man,” the woman sighed who walked purposefully towards Eden with a resigned expression. “I know the deal. You guys are all the same...”

As the woman cupped her hand over a crotch which was clearly tumescent under the cloth of his Camellia Geldoff jeans, Eden was initially inclined to protest that no, he wasn’t the same as any other guy. He was phenomenally rich. He’d done well from the astute investment of his inherited wealth in the rising Stock Market and the accompanying rise in commodity prices. He had everything he wanted. On the other hand...

The woman knelt in front of him while her bored daughter gazed on from a distance. She unbuttoned the expensively tailored denim crotch and eased out Eden’s penis. Clearly this wasn’t a sight that troubled young Benita who was more interested in watching the dance of golden butterflies over the lawn.

“My name’s Betty,” said the woman as she placed the tip of her tongue on the purple tip of Eden’s glans. “Just so’s you know.”

Betty might be a stranger to Eden, but blow jobs most certainly were not. Fellatio was something he enjoyed on most days: usually at the service of a different woman each time. There would sometimes be two or more women competing for the gratuity that they hoped would be both forthcoming and generous.

However, it was unusual for Eden’s penis to experience a blow-job from a naked woman of extraordinary hirsuteness in the open air on a sunny evening. He was rather enjoying the peculiarity of it as the woman slid his penis deep down her throat and lubricated the length of his shaft with saliva which dripped in large gollops onto the daisies between her parted thighs. She gripped the penis with one hand while her other cupped Eden’s hardening testicles which she handled in such a way to control the release of his seed.

Eden surveyed his estate while Betty concentrated on his manhood.

He was shorter than most people. This was a fact that raised heels could never satisfactorily address. Even selecting only the most petite escorts couldn’t lessen Eden’s resentment that it wasn’t wealth, reputation or clothes sense that most people associated with him. Rather it was—and always had been—his stature. On the other hand, there were no heads higher than his as he gazed at the lengthening shadows by his mansion walls, the pale orange glow of the early evening sky, and the sight of a little girl. And this girl’s eyes were focused on her mother and the swell of her mother’s cheeks as she pushed Eden’s erect penis back and forth in her mouth. She could, if she wished, regard the trail of saliva that slobbered out of her mother’s mouth and dripped onto the soft pale hair of her motherly hips.

Despite his wealth and his deficiency of moral boundaries, Eden observed limits to the extent of his depravity. There were others in his circle of wealthy friends and acquaintances who might take advantage of the wealth of under-age flesh that world poverty and world travel made so available. All the same, it was while his mind wandered to the notion of sharing his semen with the very much pre-nubile but still naked daughter of the woman whose lips encompassed his throbbing member that his penis spurt forth in unrestrained fashion into the woman’s mouth and over her matronly bosom.

Betty had achieved what she’d intended. There were few men who after releasing so much semen could button up their flies and then forcefully expel the woman who’d provided that pleasure. And not much conversation normally followed such an encounter.

Eden returned to the mansion. Despite Betty’s efforts, she and her daughter would have to be evicted, of course. Eden couldn’t tolerate squatters on his estate. You allow one in and you opened the door to an unstoppable rabble. These eco-anarchists might think they represented the future, but like the many generations of utopian idealists before them they represented nothing more than a hopeless fantasy that would soon be dispelled by the imperatives most people were subject to: which was to earn a living and to be housed.

VII
Tamara
2092

After the many months of uncertainty and anxiety since Tamara had began her desperate exodus, it could only be a relief to finally arrive at the Broad Oak Refugee Centre just outside the Ashton Lovelock gated community. She’d have been naive if she’d imagined that her welcome would be especially warm simply because the government of the Republic of England had reluctantly and belatedly agreed to provide asylum for a nominal fraction of the many millions of refugees spilling out of the devastated and still radioactive Holy Land. Nevertheless, she hadn’t really anticipated quite the degree of hostility that greeted her and what was left of her family.

Tamara and the hundreds of other Jewish refugees in the convoy still identified themselves as citizens of the State of Israel, however much this was a nation that now existed in name alone.  The charred wasteland that once held host to so many high hopes and aspirations was now under the reluctant care of the resentful citizens of Palestine. Israel’s victory in the Holy War had been Pyrrhic at best. It was the official losers in the conflict who were now dominant in what had once been core Israeli territory. And this was simply by virtue of the fact that the number of Palestinian survivors was substantially greater than that of the equally wretched Israeli victors.

What had once been a short plane ride from the Middle East to the Republic of England was now a fraught journey for the Jewish refugees through the two competing and loosely federated European Unions. Not one nation state through which Tamara and her family travelled on their exodus would willingly antagonise their Muslim citizens by expressing more sympathy than was necessary to the mostly despised tribe of Israel.

The protest that greeted the refugees outside the Broad Oak Refugee Camp’s forbidding gates was not substantially different to the others that had followed their peripatetic trek from one temporary camp site to another. There were much the same banners on display which as always attributed the entire blame to the Jewish race for the military disaster that had devastated the Middle East. The slow but inevitable demise of the State of Israel had been equally as agonising as, but rather less spectacular than the apocalyptic annihilation of Jerusalem, Bethlehem and Tel Aviv just over a generation ago.

Tamara was too young to remember much about the war although the images of mushroom clouds rising above the city of Jerusalem had been replayed so many times that she almost believed that she’d seen it for real. Like most Israeli citizens, her actual memories of the war were of a time spent huddling in underground bomb shelters. She was one of the lucky ones who weren’t instantly vaporised or had survived only to endure a more painful lingering death from the radioactive fallout that fell not only on Israel, Syria, Egypt and Palestine, but also on non-combatant nations as far afield as Turkey, Cyprus and Iran. Although Israel had suffered at least as much as any other nation, to the extent that it was no longer a nation at all, Israeli citizens were still blamed for the catastrophe with undiminished resentment by those who’d suffered directly or indirectly from its affects. There were few people in the world who didn’t know someone who’d died or was afflicted by radioactive sickness after Israel resorted to the ultimate deterrent as a response to the threat from its belligerent neighbours. As if there hadn’t already been enough distress from water shortage, crop failure and the long-heralded final collapse of the oil industry.

However much Tamara understood and in a sense sympathised with the protestors it troubled her that Broad Oak wasn’t intended to be just one more stop on the journey but the final destination. This welcome wasn’t one that boded well for the future.

The gates to the refugee camp shut close behind the trucks after they’d filed into the courtyard. The refugees disembarked, but the thickness of the camp’s walls didn’t muffle the sounds of protest from outside. Some were chants of disgust at Israel’s role in the Middle East Apocalypse whereas others were the same gratuitously offensive anti-Semitic chants with which Tamara had become increasingly familiar during her years of exile.

Tamara and her family settled down to their new overcrowded home of ragged sheets, threadbare mattresses and leaking roofs. And home it was. At long last. Broad Oak Refugee Camp: home to the unwanted and despised. Shelter had only been provided because of Israel’s role in England’s imperial past when the nation was head of an empire powerful enough to dictate the fate of other nations. Now it was a republic as self-obsessed as the people of Israel with its own relative decline since the dissolution of the United Kingdom.

The Broad Oak Refugee Camp was asylum not only to Israelis, but also to refugees from Armenia, Kurdistan, Laos and Venezuela whose citizens belonged to the lengthening list of failed nation states. Amongst these, whether represented by actual governments or by governments-in-exile, there were also refugees from the now irradiated Gaza Republic whose mere existence had been considered sufficient provocation for the missiles to be launched. At least the administrators of Broad Oak had the sense not to house Israelis in the same buildings as the Gazans.

“They should have stayed in the Gaza City slums,” complained Tamara’s mother. She could never forgive the Palestinian militia for the summary execution of her husband and Tamara’s stepfather. This happened in the desolate ruins of Ashdod where Tamara’s family had once enjoyed prosperity and an easy life. “At least the bastards have somewhere they can go.”

Tamara couldn’t really dispute the logic of her mother’s assertion. Palestine continued to exist as a state with real territory, but only the most romantic fool would genuinely prefer a radioactive wilderness to the relative security of the Republic of England. There was no need here to wear a mask to shield one’s lungs from radioactive dust. No need to use a Geiger counter simply to decide where to settle down for the night. Even the hardiest former resident of Gaza City couldn’t survive long in the fine dust and ash blowing about the extinguished cities of the Middle East.

“We have to treat everyone equally,” said Benita, an old woman whose job in the kitchen was to help feed the thousands of refugees crammed into the camp. “There are very strict rules which everyone has to obey.”

“Surely you can see the injustice,” pleaded Tamara’s mother to the older woman. “We’ve got nowhere to go. Literally nowhere. We Jews are persecuted wherever we go...”

“Not all Jews,” disagreed Juan Valdez, an elderly man whose mattress lay adjacent to Tamara’s. “American Jews are no more persecuted than they ever were.”

“They aren’t Israeli Jews!” complained Tamara’s mother. “And precious little welcome do they give their fellows. Did they help us in our hour of need? Did they help clear the Holy Land of the Palestinian scum?”

“I have to warn you not to use language like that,” said Benita firmly. “Whatever grievances you have must be put aside here. The administrators don’t take provocation lightly. The Sherwood Forest Refugee Camp has already been shut down because of rioting. We can’t risk the same thing here.”

“I still think it’s unfair,” said Tamara’s mother grumpily.

Despite Benita’s admonition, Tamara couldn’t help agreeing with her mother. It was all well and good trying to enforce a bland neutrality to maintain the peace, but what could this old woman know? She’d spent all her life in England. She was unlikely to have dallied long in the war-torn Middle East. The English might complain about the poverty that had returned to Europe and the humiliating break-up of the United Kingdom, but the worst they’d ever known was a brief episode of what had amounted to almost a dictatorship and which had served only to hasten the nation’s decline.

The Refugee Camp dormitories were overcrowded. Food handouts were sporadic, unpredictable and never really adequate. There was little to do in the grounds of what had once been a private garden and throughout which were now scattered tents and make-shift shelters in wait for the next intake of refugees. Nowadays Tamara’s life was principally focused on just two things. The first was the tedious and lengthy processing of her family’s petition for asylum. If this process ever came to a resolution, she and her family would be released into more permanent accommodation elsewhere and could start earning a living again. The second was the erratic arrival of the food trucks. These were the very deliveries that the crowds of anti-immigration or anti-Semitic protestors outside the camp walls most complained about. Food was no longer plentiful even in England and many English were upset that a scarce and expensive resource was now being provided free to foreigners who were unable to work for a living.

Tamara was assiduous in seeking friendship with Benita in the hope that in this way she might benefit from a few extra scraps of meat but the old woman was scrupulously fair and only gave extra portions to the genuinely needy. And this was an ever-increasing proportion of the camp’s population.

“Don’t look so glum,” joked Bilal on seeing Tamara seated alone by the side of what was once a pond but was now no more than an oval mound of grassy soil that would soon be covered by new tents.

Tamara smiled at Bilal.

After all, he was personable, young and extraordinarily attractive.

But he was also an Arab.

Although she wouldn’t want her mother to know that her daughter was consorting with a goy and, of all goyim, an accursed Palestinian, Tamara had become rather fond of him. In fact, when they first met a few days after Tamara arrived, Bilal initially thought she was a Palestinian. Hers wasn’t an uncommon name amongst Arabs. Tamara meanwhile was also not expressing any prejudice mostly because she too couldn’t quite place Bilal’s ethnicity. His accentless English was rather better than hers and he didn’t sport the thick beard and traditional garb affected by some Palestinians.

“It’s nothing,” Tamara replied, but conscious that her eyes were still damp.

“Don’t be silly,” said Bilal. “It’s obvious that there’s something...”

“It’s my mother. She’s not getting any better.”

“It must be the cold and damp.”

“To have come so far and now when we’ve arrived...”

Bilal put an arm around Tamara’s shoulder while she nestled her nose into his ragged woollen jumper that was decorated with gaily jumping Christmas reindeer. Like the frayed MS Apple tee-shirt that Tamara wore, it had been provided for free by the dwindling number of charities that were sympathetic to the world’s dispossessed.

It was even more of a comfort for Tamara when Bilal and she sloped off together to the boiler-room in one of the several shelters that had once served as guest houses on the estate. It was one of the few places where a couple could find privacy and consequently it was in great demand: so much so that the couple had to reserve a time-slot by scratching their initials on the scrappy writing-pad that acted as a makeshift reservation system and was discreetly hidden on a shelf above the boiler-room door.

The boiler-room was already occupied. The door was secured from the inside to preserve the dignity of the couple (identified as T+U on the lined writing paper). Bilal and Tamara hid from prying eyes in the shadow of an old oak tree while keeping an impatient eye on the boiler-room door.

When Bilal and Tamara first became a couple, it seemed the most natural thing in the world. A girl needed companionship and protection and a man had his needs too. This wasn’t Tamara’s first such liaison on the winding trail of refugee camps between Israel and England, but it was the first time she’d had a relationship not just with a goy but with a Muslim. A Palestinian at that. OK. She didn’t know that at first. But he was a good enough fuck that there was almost nothing Tamara wouldn’t forgive him for.

Bilal had never known a Jewish woman even as a casual acquaintance, but he was actually rather less troubled about race and religion than she was. “We are all people of the Book,” he would say, although Tamara wasn’t quite sure that the Torah had quite the same significance to Muslims as it had to the Jews and their tempestuous history.

The boiler-room door opened at last and an amorous couple spilled out. They were both women and they both wore head-scarves. They giggled and averted their gaze from Bilal though they looked slyly at Tamara. They probably thought she was a Muslim. Her father’s Moroccan ancestry made her ethnicity rather ambiguous.

And then they were in.

It might have once served as a boiler-room and it was still filled with pipes and metal chambers, but as the camp was heated by coal fires these days the room was now mostly used to store possessions that the refugees couldn’t find anywhere else to leave. In amongst it all was a battered mattress with damp stains and a hole where a spring had once burst through. There was also a quite distinct late November chill. It was many years since the pipes had held warm water and the intermittent power supply was too unreliable for the building to be heated by other means.

Even so, Bilal and Tamara had already learnt that intimacy didn’t require nudity. As long as they each had access to the fleshy bits that mattered, the exertion of lovemaking would soon heat them up. But before the couple fell together onto the stained mattress, they secured the door behind them. They were conscious that Al + Pa, whoever they were, would soon be outside the door and impatient to get in. They also had to move aside the clutter to lessen their discomfort as they embraced in the shadow of the bizarre family heirlooms that filled the room. There was a portrait of the Mount of Calvary (now too radioactive to welcome visitors), a broken electronic keyboard and an array of battered ancient laptops.

Tamara took Bilal’s penis inside her arse, not because it was the most comfortable place to be fucked but because with the scarcity of condoms she wanted to save the few she had for when her anus was too battered for penetration. She was sure she wouldn’t get pregnant as long as she wiped off the semen with the old cloth handkerchief that she’d found in Hungary several months before.

It would be a disaster if she did happen to get pregnant,.

What would her mother say?

Tamara already knew the cost of carelessness, but thankfully the worst consequences had been kept at bay by the miscarriage only a couple of months after she was even aware there was a problem.

“When can I fuck you properly?” Bilal wondered.

Tamara wondered what grounds he had for complaint. After all, she’d sucked his prick, let him prod her anus and spurted his semen over her face. What more could a man want?

“When I next have a period,” said Tamara firmly.

Bilal nodded. He must have understood the wisdom of her words. His own family probably knew their son had a lover. Men were never as discreet as women. But if they knew that the dusky-skinned girl with the dark curly hair and the scar across her forehead and cheek was not a fellow Muslim but rather one of the most despised people in the world, what would happen next?

Perhaps she would share the fate of the Jewish girl she’d once got to know when her family was stranded for several weeks on the coastline of Cyprus. She’d had her nose sliced off.

That was a far worse punishment than Tamara had suffered from the blade of the knife wielded by the irate brother of the Hassidic Jew with whom Tamara had just made love in the crowded slums of Ljubljana. 

For the moment however Tamara had the blessing of the love of both Bilal and her mother. Such precious blessings were to be cherished. She kissed her lover passionately while outside the boiler-room door she could hear a gentle knocking from Al and Pa to remind her of another couple’s furtive need for satisfaction.

VIII
Alex
2022

Alex watched little Betty crawl across the Karndean floor with affection. Children were so amusing. They expressed themselves so unselfconsciously and found so much of interest in the world around them. It was really rather entertaining.

But did he want to be a father to such a child himself? Alex wasn’t so sure. In terms of time and money they were a wearisome burden.

And if he didn’t want to be burdened by his own children, would he ever choose to trouble himself with someone else’s?

Not really.

So what had persuaded him to start a relationship with Betty’s mother?

Well, there was much about Bella to recommend. First and foremost, she was a great fuck. Alex had never enjoyed such intense sex before and he couldn’t imagine how it could be bettered. Second, she wasn’t bad-looking either, although experience had taught Alex that good looks and good sex don’t always coexist. In Bella’s case it was a kind of Mother Earth, hippy goddess, bushy crotch kind of beauty: not that Alex could now see anything wrong with that.

But with these major plusses came the inevitable minus and in Bella’s case it was little Betty, who was crawling over the carpet, naked as always, and gurgling as she did so. Being a father wasn’t one of Alex’s chief ambitions in life and being a step-father even less so. If he and Bella were to stay together much longer he might be expected to do the morning school run, spend weekends at the sports field, and maybe even attend school plays and prize-giving days.

What the fuck!

This was not how Alex mapped out his future however welcoming Bella’s hairy vaginal lips were or how strong the grip between her motherly thighs. It was good fun while for the moment, but some time soon it would have to come to an end. What worried Alex was that whereas it was his previous girlfriend or partner who made the first such move, was this the relationship that would break the mould and oblige Alex to force the issue?

With a bit of luck, Bella might be unfaithful and make the separation that much easier to arrange. It didn’t seem likely that it would end in quite the same spectacular way as it had with Agnieszka, with smashed crockery, a long crack across the television screen and enough animosity to entertain the entire street. But at least the woman was out of his life. No more tears and recriminations. And no more passionate reconciliations either.

With Bella there were no histrionics. She was remarkably tolerant of Alex’s vices, whether they involved drugs or booze or cybersex. In fact she even appeared to tolerate the minor infidelities that Alex would vehemently deny if he was ever challenged but which he guessed that Bella must have suspected. Indeed, it wasn’t anything that Alex ever did that troubled her but more those opinions he expressed that most came into conflict with the green, politically correct and occasionally mystical views that Bella held.

She was a woman who was not only well-informed on the green issues of the day but knew exactly the right words to express her views, while Alex floundered in a morass of political incorrectness and naiveté. In truth, Alex was still not entirely convinced that climate change, species extinction, rampant consumerism and meat-eating really were the harbingers of evil that would bring humanity to its knees. As long as the light bulb lit up when he flicked the switch, the water flowed when he turned the faucet, and there were 24-hour News Programmes on the television, the imminent end of civilisation and also the end maybe of a lot more besides seemed pretty much remote.

“It’s not just about the future,” protested Bella as they lay together on Alex’s king-size bed. “It’s about the present too and how you should lead a life that’s in balance with nature.”

“You’re not going to see me hug a tree,” Alex retorted. “I’m not going to give up eating meat. And I already do enough recycling.”

“But you drive an old-fashioned petrol car,” Bella replied. “You fly rather than travel by train. You don’t have solar panels on the roof.”

“Until it becomes cheaper to go green then I’ll continue to follow the most economical model.”

“But economical for how long? We’ve had yet another unusually hot wet summer. There’s been flooding along almost every sea coast and river bank in the country. Not too mention the mudslides, floods, droughts and forest fires all over the rest of world.”

“It’s not totally proven yet,” said Alex, quoting from Fox News UK.  “There’s climate change for sure, but it’s not necessarily anthropogenic...”

“So, it’s absolutely natural,” mocked Bella. “What about deforestation? And desertification? And famine? They might have nothing specifically to do with global warming but they don’t do any good for anyone. And the Iranian nuclear reactor going up like that. All that radiation spreading to Afghanistan and Pakistan didn’t do the environment any favours.”

“These things happen,” argued Alex who just wished he could quite echo the fury and absolute certainty of a Fox News UK television commentator. “There’s an explanation for everything and it’s not necessarily to do with human economic activity. There have always been environmental crises over history...”

“I’m sure there have been,” admitted Bella, “but there are an extraordinarily large number of them today. If it wasn’t for the millions upon millions spent by Big Business to sway the editorial line of the newspapers, television and internet, there’d hardly be any disagreement at all with the overwhelming majority of informed scientific opinion that all this stuff going on and the rape of the environment is scarcely a coincidence.”

Alex was always nervous about this sort of conversation. He was in a definite no-win situation. Anything he said that didn’t acknowledge the imminent end of civilisation would appear to be at best complacent and at worst conniving with the interests of the polluting industries. Consequently, like most people, he kept his opinions between himself and the ballot-box, and took what comfort he could from those commentators on television or on the internet who so convincingly tore down the facade presented by scheming scientists and liberal politicians simply to feather their nests in ways Alex didn’t really fully comprehend.

Bella’s friends were, if anything, even more green than she was. These were people who continued to wear what might once have been fashionable in the late twentieth century, though it was difficult to imagine a time when a fashion model would have sported woolly hats, coarse cotton shirts and open-toed sandals on a catwalk. There was Eve, whose hair was both short where she shaved it and very long where she didn’t and had difficulty in keeping her nipples hidden from sight under the jumble of tee-shirts or ponchos she wore. There was Tina whose most distinguishing feature was her truly enormous boobs. Alex struggled hard not to allude to them when he discussed her with Bella but he still fell short of her standards of political correctness when he referred to her by her skin-colour. There was also Angie, who Alex rather fancied. She was a petite, slender girl whose looks were only slightly marred by the length of her pointed nose and the quite different fact that she’d shaved her head right down to the flesh (although this was generally hidden under one or other of her collection of woollen hats). But Angie was actually the woman the furthest from Alex’s reach as she was absolutely and assertively a lesbian—a fact that both fascinated and slightly titillated him.

Then there was Ben, who was Tina’s boyfriend and also Betty’s father. He was bearded and baggy-clothed and a frequent visitor as much because Tina was Bella’s best friend, but because he liked to be close to his daughter. Ben was father to at least two other children, of which Tina was the mother. His accent betrayed a privileged birth and education, the benefits of which were expressed neither in the way he dressed nor in the life-style he followed. Alex suspected that Ben was just playing at being a counterculture eco-warrior until such a time he got bored and returned to the family home. And then, instead of protecting wild animals, he’d perhaps be hunting them down on a horse.

“What a stupid idea!” said Bella indignantly when Alex suggested this to her. “You’re just jealous that he’s been born with certain advantages. He can see the futility of a consumerist life. What more do you need than friends, food and the roof above your head? If everyone were like Ben, the world would be a much better place and we wouldn’t be headed towards disaster.”

“No, of course not,” said Alex, who couldn’t see how ever-increasing petrol prices and an extra metre or two in the height of flood-defences really amounted to imminent global catastrophe.

Alex and Bella weren’t really living together although they slept together most nights. Bella’s real home was a room in the house she shared with Angie, Eve and a shy bookish fellow called Quentin who hardly ever ventured out of his bedroom. This was a fairly flexible set-up where a variety of boy- and girlfriends passed through and one where Betty sometimes had many playmates of her age and sometimes none depending on the conjugal histories of her mother’s housemates’ partners. But Bella chose to stay mostly at Alex’s suburban home and inevitably with the playful company of Betty and her battered toys.

Alex had become quite comfortable in this routine. When Bella was there, he never had to worry about what to cook as she was as much at home in the kitchen as Alex so obviously was not. He didn’t even need to worry about housework either as Bella treated his house just like her home, which was rather better than Alex ever did. And bedtimes were times Alex definitely looked forward to. He was sure Bella had taught him everything she could and yet there always seemed to be yet another carnal variation that would surprise him.

Indeed, Bella’s amorous inventiveness had taken a recent turn for the more adventurous that Alex frankly found rather exhausting. Those motherly breasts of hers pressed hard against Alex’s face while his erect penis struggled to keep anchorage inside whichever hole Bella had directed it. A trickle of saliva, semen and Bella’s own vaginal juices trailed down the length of his shaft into the mutually tangled hairs of their crotches. Their bodies slid over a slither of perspiration that sometimes smelt of petunia oil and sometimes of something even more earthy.

“That was amazing!” complimented Alex, when at last their bodies were conjoined no longer. “Where did you learn that? From the internet?”

He’d meant it as a joke, of course. Alex always maintained the romantic notion, despite the nature of his own sexual education and the succession of women through his life, that sexual athleticism and sexual experience naturally led to greater sexual adventurism and that instruction was never really necessary. He expected Bella to simply respond with a joke.

Instead, she looked unaccountably sheepish.

“I’ve been meaning to tell you for a long time,” Bella said.

“So, where did you learn your techniques?” pursued Alex still in a jocular tone.

“From Ben.”

That was understandable. The couple had lived together for two or three years around the time of Betty’s birth. They were bound to have tried out a few things.

“You never forget a trick once you’ve learnt it, even after a few years,” said Alex in an attempt to disguise his resentment that another man had known his lover at least as well as he did.

“...Or after just a day or so.”

“You what?”

Alex wasn’t sure whether this called for him to remove his arm from around Bella’s bare shoulders, so he let it rest there but he inclined away from her.

“Or just this morning...”

“With Ben?” asked Alex.

“It’s not been going so well between Tina and Ben for a while,” said Bella.

“I hadn’t noticed.”

“Well, you never would.”

“But that doesn’t mean...”

“Ben is the father of my child.”

“Oh.”

So, Alex found a way in which he could separate from Bella, but the tears still came more from his side than Bella’s. For her, it seemed a quite natural thing. For Alex, it seemed almost perverse. And this was because Bella’s transfer of affection from Alex to Ben was neither rapid nor abrupt, but one where for a while she continued to have sex with Alex on a regular basis and occasionally made love with Ben to one where it was Alex who was the occasional lover.

Then after a week or so when Bella and her daughter hadn’t visited at all and only replied politely and cautiously to his phone-calls, Bella rang his door-bell to finally return her copies of his house-keys.

“It doesn’t seem right to hang onto them,” she said.

“Well, that’s alright,” said Alex who’d actually hoped more for a tearful reunion than a dispassionate separation, “I’m going to be moving away from Ashton Lovelock anyway.”

“Where to?”

“Near London. Or somewhat nearer to it than I do now. The company I work for is in London and it’s a long commute.”

“You don’t want to leave too large a carbon footprint each day, do you?”

“Something like that,” admitted Alex, for whom it was actually more time and expense that was persuading him to make the move.

“Well, best of luck.”

IX
Gabrielle
2039

Farming is a business like any other. It may also be a vocation, a life-style choice or even one of the few remaining outdoor occupations, but the one thing Gabrielle knew for sure was that farming is a business.

Although she had sympathies with the principles of organic farming and rather distrusted Genetic Modification, what mattered at the end of each accounting month was that she’d balanced the books and generated enough profit to stay in business. In a world where famine and food shortages were a daily reality for more and more people in the world, including those living just on the border of the European Union, Gabrielle was convinced that it was almost her moral duty to provide as much food to the world as she could from the farmland she owned.

Business was rather better than it had been for many years and the future looked promising. International food prices were continuing to rise and this in turn significantly improved her profit margin. Much as she was saddened by the television images of the unfortunate starving millions in Azerbaijan, Zimbabwe, Chile and Pakistan, it remained an undeniable fact that farmers like her were unlikely to be amongst those who’d suffer as a result of the changing face of global food economics.

Gabrielle’s sympathies weren’t bogus. She’d been a bit of a globe-trotter when she was younger. In those days, fuel prices made a flight to Africa and Asia affordable even to students and graduates willing to defer their loan repayments. She’d seen the real face of famine in Bangladesh, Mozambique and Uzbekistan that tourists wouldn’t normally be exposed to.  A tour company would keep such horrors as much out of sight as possible. Her interest in Third World famine relief continued through her generous donations to foreign aid charities and her practical assistance in shipping out food that the supermarkets considered substandard to countries whose citizens had rather fewer scruples than spoiled London shoppers. She also made a practical contribution by employing immigrant Indians and Pakistanis on her estate, however much this was frowned upon by people in nearby Rickmansworth.

It made perfect economic sense, of course; just as much as did the cultivation of GM crops, cloned cattle, synthetic fertiliser and multilevel fruit farming. So when Gabrielle didn’t attracting the ire of the prejudiced for making a hiring decision for one sound economic reason, she was attacked by green idealists for putting business interests ahead of what they believed to be ethical farming. If they had their way she’d have to live on half her current income, lay off most of her staff, leave land fallow that was now used for meat and dairy, and the only beneficiaries would be the poor of Ethiopia and Venezuela who’d be shipped out all the vegetables that the supermarkets had rejected.

Such criticism was inevitable when you farmed so close to London. Indeed, hers was the first farm that one would pass by when driving on the busy A404 (M) from the M1 to visit the bustling new town of Buckland Common. She’d never have been criticised so much if she was living in Wales or Northumbria, but here where land costs were high and the distance to market was so short there was nothing she could do to satisfy her neighbours. When she didn’t suffer taunts from Greens who could never appreciate the value of a good leg of lamb or beef on the bone, she had to direct her farmhands to paint over racist daubing on the fences that enclosed her estate. Who’d have thought that farming would become so political in the twenty-first century?

The racist taunts resulted from the fact that so many of Gabrielle’s immigrant farmhands came from the Indian subcontinent. Presumably it would have been less of a problem had they come from within the European Union, but Gabrielle doubted whether Georgians, Armenians or Moldavians would be treated with much more respect. Skin colour was obviously an issue, although a high proportion of local residents were themselves third or fourth generation Indian or Pakistani. The usual excuse for the vitriol was that the people Gabrielle employed were taking jobs that would otherwise go to honest Englishmen. This wasn’t the kind of view that would be shared by anyone who’d ever tried to employ local people, especially from the London area, who would know one end of an agricultural implement from another; or for that matter who had the technical knowledge and qualifications in biology and genetics to understand what was required in modern agriculture: at least not at the level of wages now standard for agricultural workers in the United Kingdom.

And why the Indian subcontinent? Most farmers of Gabrielle’s acquaintance resourced from rather less expensive foreign countries such as Morocco, Palestine, Senegal and the Congo

One reason for sure was that Gabrielle’s longest-lasting lover, the one who’d most often shared her bed, was a second generation Indian Muslim who still had plenty of contacts in the subcontinent of his grandparents’ birth.

Although he also had a wife whose upkeep he maintained and who he even occasionally fucked, he wasn’t a jealous man. He didn’t mind at all that Gabrielle was a woman for whom the word polyamorous had been invented and was fully content to share her body with other like-minded men. Furthermore, Ghazi Patel was at least as keen on cock as Gabrielle. Indeed, as she watched him glug down a mouthful of semen or gurgle on a stiff cock deep down his throat, it seemed that he enjoyed the physical pleasures of a man rather more than she did. She liked a fuck but, although partial to buggery, she preferred to keep her anus in good condition so she could enjoy it the more on special occasions. Ghazi was less reserved. He liked to fuck a man up the arse and was even happier when a man did it to him. Gabrielle got sexual stimulus from Ghazi’s expressions of orgasmic delight and often shared the spurt of semen when it was eventually released by the man who was fucking her lover up the arse.

Gabrielle had a taste for having both holes engaged when she consented to the delights of sodomy. It seemed a waste for her more sensitive hole to be neglected while the other was being penetrated. After all, why have sex with two or more men at once if you couldn’t indulge in double penetration?

Another reason why so many of those on Gabrielle’s payroll came from the Indian subcontinent was the standard of education they’d received. This was usually significantly higher than the level they’d have attained in England’s failing school system. But the chief reason was actually almost charitable. It wasn’t just that Punjabi or Guajarati men were good fucks, but it was also Gabrielle’s response to the conflict between the republics of Pakistan and India that had displaced so many refugees and filled so many news site web pages.

The war was generally restricted to the India-Pakistani border and was ostensibly fought over the Kashmir, which was fighting its own civil war to become an independent Islamic Republic like Iraq or Afghanistan. But no war could be fully contained and it had spilt over into the densely populated regions of Jammu, Islamabad and Rawalpindi. And where were the displaced Indians and Pakistanis supposed to go? If they were Muslim they might elect to live in Srinagar if they chose to accept Kashmiri citizenship and tolerate the daily bombing. If they had family further away from the front they might move in with them: although that served only to further swell the populations of Mumbai and Kolkata, now the two most populous cities in the world. Gabrielle, with the assistance of the Red Cross and other international charities, had decided to give practical help in the form of sanctuary for the displaced.

The fact that this made good business sense was also something of a bonus.

Gabrielle generally left her staff to manage the farm without much supervision, although she was still the main contact with the financial and agricultural companies. She’d like to give more responsibility to Ajit, the Chief Farm Manager, but although his English was excellent she was reluctant for her customers to think that she wasn’t the one in charge. She also wanted to counter the impression that a woman of prodigious sexual appetite might give that she was somehow deranged in business matters. But she generally trusted Ajit’s judgement when it came to the biotech products marketed by companies like ICI-Monsanto or WalMart BTech. After all, his qualifications and experience in Agribusiness was rather better than hers. He must have been a great loss to Rawalpindi, Pakistan, where he would still be living if it hadn’t been so badly bombed by Indian stealth planes.

“I’m not sure about this,” said Ajit, when the sales representative from WalMart BTech had left. “I know we like to do business with the company especially since WalMart took over Tesco’s, but the very notion of non-sentient animals doesn’t seem right.”

“It’s just meat,” said Gabrielle, who’d tasted the samples they’d been given. “Surely it’s actually more moral to slaughter animals that don’t feel pain, have no comprehension of the world, and in a sense have never really lived.”

“They have lived,” Ajit protested. “They breathed, they consumed and processed the mulched vegetable foodstuff they were given, they had blood coursing through their veins, they had hearts...”

“...but not minds,” said Gabrielle.

“It’s not right to reduce Allah’s creation to the level of vegetables,” continued Ajit.

“It’s just meat.  The things that generate it are just meat-machines. They’re not sentient. They’ve never suffered. Surely it’s better to eat meat that doesn’t result from the death of a sentient being.”

“I can’t believe that people shopping in Tesco’s or Cost Cutter’s would choose to buy meat that originated from the obscene monstrosity you can see in this picture,” Ajit remarked.

The pair reviewed the photograph in the WMBT brochure. It had no bones, no eyes, no ears and probably no brain to speak of. It had been engineered to perform the one job of converting vegetables to meat. Gabrielle almost felt sick at the sight of it. The nearest equivalent to it she could think of was the placenta left by a cow after giving birth.

“It could be produced for export,” said Gabrielle. “The shoppers in British supermarkets would never see the meat unless it was sold on the black market. There’s a food shortage in the world. Meat is particularly nutritious and easily digestible. The statistics provided by WMBT, but also those quoted from Nature and other science magazines, are unequivocal. With the same input of vegetable and cereal foodstuff converted into mulch we can double, triple or even quadruple the amount of meat available to feed the world.”

“I’m not a vegetarian,” said Ajit. “But this isn’t natural in any sense of the word. The genes of this monstrosity come from pigs, cows, fish and chickens. Ungulates and avians.”

“Surely your moral code can see that any meat that is produced without causing pain and suffering is a good thing. And anyway there aren’t many people who’re complaining about the biologically engineered milk that’s never seen a cow or the oranges that have never grown on a tree. People will soon get used to eating meat that’s never belonged to a sentient beast. In fact, they’ll soon wonder how barbaric we humans were to slaughter animals simply to fill the supermarket shelves.”

Ajit studied Gabrielle thoughtfully.

“Are you saying that we should farm this stuff?”

“There are good economic reasons to do so at least on a trial basis. Did you see the amount of investment WMBT is willing to give us for doing so? If it doesn’t sell, we won’t lose out any more than we did when we grew those cold-weather olives...”

“They didn’t really taste like olives. More like catshit.”

“Perhaps people won’t buy this stuff either.”

“But if it does catch on? If everyone buys meat that’s like this? What then? Nobody would farm sheep, pigs or cattle. The fields would be empty and the countryside would be nothing but fields of grain and vegetables. There wouldn’t be any insects because they can’t digest GM crops. There wouldn’t be any wildlife except in the odd pocket of woodland.”

Gabrielle laughed. “Oh come on, Ajit! You sound like a madman. Even the Green fanatics don’t go that far, do they?”

“I hope I don’t sound too apocalyptic.”

“Don’t worry. Look, we’re running a business, you and I. The business case for farming this kind of meat is pretty watertight. I’d be very surprised if many farmers, apart from the organic ones, would turn down an opportunity like this to bolster the balance sheet. And anyway,” Gabrielle said, nodding towards the latest bit of graffiti that had been spray-painted over the gateway to Greenfields Farm, “we have other worries at the moment. How is the staff coping?”

“We installed some extra security alarms and cameras around the dormitories,” said Ajit. “A gentleman from the security company will be coming round tomorrow to evaluate the situation.”

Gabrielle nodded.

“Well, for the moment I think we’ll go with WalMart BTech’s proposal, but I’ll wait a day or so before I contact them so’s I can think about it. Would that be alright, Ajit?”

He agreed but reluctantly so. Gabrielle could see that when Greenfields Farm started manufacturing pain-free meat, or however else it would be marketed, she’d have disputes ahead with her Chief Farm Manager. But one thing she wasn’t worried about was that he should hand in his notice.

After all, where else could he go?

X
Alex
2023

It was like joining a club. Not a very exclusive club of course, as it already had over eight million members, but certainly one with crippling membership fees. It was a club to which Alex had long aspired to be a member and that was to be one of those who lived within the circumference of the M25 and could call themselves Londoners.

For sure, Rickmansworth wasn’t that far inside the M25.  The Metropolitan Line through the suburb continued above ground to places like Amersham that were way beyond the London orbital, but it was good enough. And living here was just about within Alex’s income as long as he managed to keep his job and there wasn’t another sudden hike in interest rates.

As a commentator on VR politics and economics, Alex’s future employment was contingent on a section of the media that nowadays might seem unassailable but could so easily become a mere footnote of history like tablet computers and 3D TV. For the moment, however, Alex was as much a media presence in the world of Virtual Reality as anyone although his online avatar hardly resembled him at all.

As a Londoner, he could now join the daily squeeze on the Tube. Every day, for the prohibitive price of a season ticket, he could press his nose into other passengers’ armpits while body odour and farts filled the carriage, but he could also now spend his evenings in the capital, where he could watch a show or drink in a pub. He could become part of the vibrant heart of one of the ten largest cities in Europe and still one of the most wealthy and powerful in the world. However, he’d also learnt the necessity of keeping a watchful eye on the time if he didn’t want to miss the last tube home and have to spend a fortune on a late-night taxi.

Unfortunately, the West End wasn’t the part of London with which Alex was becoming most familiar. Rather, it was the mundane attractions of Rickmansworth like the Park Road Shopping Centre, the old pubs and restaurants on the High Street, and the modern establishments on Parsonage Road and Rectory Lane. A night out in Rickmansworth for a single man usually involved him watching a movie at the Fox Cineplex, which was only marginally better than watching it at home, or nursing a lonely pint in the garish but anonymous pubs on the Parsonage Road.

There was a huge choice of women to date within the London area, in both the real and virtual sense, but most of those who lived nearby in a strictly geographical sense were actually quite awkward to meet in a practical one. Almost everyone he contacted through dating websites lived in a part of London to the South, East or Central that was very tricky to get to. And, if things didn’t go to plan, it was more awkward still to return home. Who could have anticipated the logistical nightmare of getting back to Rickmansworth from Richmond, Peckham, Epping Forest, Croydon or Uxbridge?

There were many nights when Alex ventured out from his modest one-bedroom, one-reception terrace house, walked all the way to the town centre along roads with rustic names like Meadow Way and Nightingale Road that were fast being swamped by new apartment blocks and housing estates. And then he was in streets filled with shrieking young men and women whose inhibitions were lost to alcohol and drugs. The choice was then between sitting in a desolate antique pub that sought to attract custom with gourmet lunches and imported lagers or more modern establishments where he was wedged in by the youth of Rickmansworth and unlikely to find a comfortable seat.

“It’s crap here, isn’t it?” Alex heard one day when he’d ventured inside a pub that from outside had initially seemed promising but inside was nothing special at all. In fact, the only thing that kept his attention was the presence of attractive young women including—it had to be said—the person who was addressing him.

“I don’t know why I come here,” joked Alex in the hope of keeping her attention. “It can’t be the beer. It tastes like piss.”

“We just rent it,” she replied. “It’s recycled on the premises.”

Although it was an old joke, Alex gave the expected laugh and steered the subject of conversation towards finding more out about the woman who’d spoken to him.

She was attractive, but probably not to everyone’s taste. She had a freshly-scrubbed, pale-freckled appearance. Not even her skimpy outfit could make her look more urban. She looked uncomfortable in the stilettos she wore. The sheer stockings she wore over her full thighs didn’t really suit her. She was gripping a full pint glass in her hand rather than a more modest glass of wine.

“Are you waiting for someone?” Alex asked Gabby after she’d told him her name.

“Sort of,” she said. “Or perhaps not. Maybe you’ll do.”

“Sorry?” asked Alex who wasn’t sure he quite got the drift of what she’d said.

“I live near here,” Gabby said, without really addressing Alex’s question. “My Dad owns Greenfields Farm. It lies a few miles from here, just by the M25. It’s surrounded by country lanes.”

“You wouldn’t think there was much countryside round here...”

“There’s not as much left as when I was a little girl,” Gabby replied. “The town gets closer and closer to the farm every day. Soon there won’t be any green belt round London at all. So, I’m a Farmer’s Daughter. Just like the ones you see on the web, but I don’t fuck goats and cows, let alone dogs and horses. Why should I when there are better studs to fuck?”

“There are?” said Alex who was both aroused and alarmed by the direction the conversation was taking.

“This is a good place,” continued Gabby, as she continued to survey the lounge. “It’s a kind of singles bar. Did you know that?”

“No,” admitted Alex, who now resolved to position the pub higher on his list of occasional haunts.

“Not a proper singles bar, of course. Not like the ones in the smoke. Ricky’s not that kind of town, even though it’s changed a lot in the last decade or so.”

“Is this the kind of place you come to regularly?”

“Sometimes.”

“Do you ever go to nightclubs?”

“Of course I do, but the nearest decent one is miles away. I wouldn’t want to waste the night dancing to the same fucking moronic pap you hear in a place like this. All that twenty year old telly talent show drivel! How naff. So, tell me, Alan...”

“Alex.”

“Alex. Tell me, do you have a girlfriend? Or are you some kind of sad git?”

“A sad git,” said Alex, choosing to conveniently forget the one-night stand he’d had with Melissa from Kensal Green who wasn’t quite as good in the flesh as her photo on West One Dating suggested.

“Have you ever had a girlfriend?”

“Of course. Last proper one was in Ashton Lovelock.”

“That’s in the Midlands, isn’t it? What was she like?”

“A bit of a hippy. Very Green.”

“I have a problems with Green,” sniffed Gabby. “Being a Farmer’s Daughter and all. You can’t do business in the modern age, not with the pressure from WalMart, Tesco’s and the rest to supply product at a low price. If Greens had their way, we’d never eat meat. And food would cost three times as much.”

Opinions like this were refreshing to Alex’s ears after having heard so much about how his eating habits were raping the environment and poisoning the planet.

“I’d rather have affordable steak any day,” he agreed.

“Well, let’s just hope it doesn’t go the way of fish,” Gabby remarked. “Fish and chips costs far more than most people can afford.”

“No wonder there are no chippies left anymore.”

Gabby was refreshingly old-fashioned in her attitudes, despite her youth and high level of education. After a few more drinks she not only lit up a cigarette when they left the pub together but announced that her car was parked in the Rectory Road Multi-storey car park.

“I don’t know which is the more expensive vice these days. Fucking ciggies or fucking driving. It costs a bloody fortune to fill the car up and the parking fees are criminal. Do you drive, Alex?”

“Used to. I had to sell the car when I bought a house in Rickmansworth.”

“Really and where do you live?”

“Just over a mile or so from here.”

“I’ll give you a lift home, shall I?”

Alex was pleased at how little work he’d needed to do this evening. Nearly three months in Rickmansworth and he’d never suspected that his postcode search on the internet dating sites didn’t need to go much further than WD3.

“How can you afford to smoke and drive?” he couldn’t help asking Gabby, after he’d turned down the offer of a cigarette.

“Living with Dad helps,” said Gabby, as she reversed her Four by Four out of the tight parking space on the sixth floor of the car park. “No rent or mortgage. Makes a fuck of a difference. Working for Dad helps even more.”

“You’re a Farmer as well as a Farmer’s Daughter?” said Alex.

“Don’t look so bloody surprised. Farming’s not a bad profession, you know. It’s like running a business and an employment agency and a retail outlet and everything at once. You’ve got to be pretty sharp to do all that these days. When Dad retires, I’m the one who’ll take over the whole show. I just hope he doesn’t retire till he’s fucking ninety...”

“How old is he now?”

“I dunno. Quite old. Fifty or something.”

The drive to Alex’s house was almost as slow as it would have been if he’d walked. It was only when you were in a car that you realised the impact of the traffic calming and one-way systems that bedevilled even an outer suburb like Rickmansworth. The roads were incredibly narrow for a Four by Four, especially when driven by someone who disregarded the drink-driving regulations. Cars were parked on both sides of every road. It took more than five minutes to find a space in the streets and cul-de-sacs around Ashwood Lane.

“Small house, eh?” commented Gabby, when she saw Alex’s home squeezed in the middle of a long row of virtually identical houses all with paved-over front gardens and white-framed energy-efficient windows.

“The mortgage costs me a small fortune,” Alex told her as he pushed open the door into a cramped hallway that led straight on to the staircase.

“I’m so grateful I’ll never have to get into the fucking property market,” remarked Gabby. “Where’s your bedroom? Upstairs?”

“There’s only the one,” Alex said as he walked up the steep stairs behind her.

The bedroom was small. A double bed dominated it and made the room seem smaller still. Alex had dismantled his bed in Ashton Lovelock and reassembled it in Rickmansworth with much cursing. And the bed was just about the only thing that Gabby was interested in.

She didn’t like to waste time. She didn’t say much at all as she pulled off her clothes, although she was careful not to rip them as she did so. Gabby was soon totally naked and very comfortable with it. It was unlikely that she was a girl who sat naked in the sun on holidays to Ibiza or Lanzarote. Her pale skin betrayed no tan lines or any other evidence of exposure to ultraviolet radiation.

She also revealed a vagina that could never be described as neat and tidy. When Alex entered its slippery, moist and warm cavern, his prick slipped out so often that Gabby had to keep pushing it back inside.

“It always does that,” she said with no evident embarrassment. “I guess it’s meant to take two rather than one. When you’re fully stiff it’ll be okay. There are some condoms that’ll give your cock the friction you need...”

“Are there?”

“I can order you some off the internet, if you like.”

Sex with Gabby was simply, unequivocally and unreservedly just sex. While their two bodies were engaged with each other, sex was all that there was between them. All she wanted was to be fucked. She was very strict on the use of condoms, but also expert in revitalising Alex’s penis when it flagged.

“We’ve got all night, you know,” she said.

“I’ve got to go to work tomorrow,” Alex remarked feebly.

“Well, fuck that! There are more important things in life than work, you know. Just get your cock back inside me where it belongs.”

XI
Mark & Molly
2070

Times were good.

OK. Good in the sense that they weren’t bad, but the upward climb in the value of the Stock Exchange and the related rise of living standards must count for something.

For sure, things would probably never again be as good in London as they were before the National Unity government took power and the subsequent dissolution of the United Kingdom. The City of London had forever surrendered its role as a hub of international business. It was Frankfurt that had now taken over that role in the European time zone. It would never regain its earlier status now that economic power was so evenly distributed across the world.

But for Mark and Molly, in their brand new home in the Greenfields Estate in Harrocks Wood New Town, could life ever be any better? They had at last moved into the second floor studio apartment that had taken so many years to save for, a second baby on the way, and they were earning enough now to contemplate even the prohibitively expensive option of marriage.

And it was much easier nowadays to commute to the City compared with the three hours it used to take the couple from Bishop’s Stortford. It was a mere two-hour commute from door to door, involving a half-hour trip by bus and invariably wedged in and standing for the whole one hour tube journey from nearby Rickmansworth. They now had more time to spend with one another and, of course, with little Monica who saw rather more of the nursery and crèche than she ever did of her devoted but unavoidably busy parents.

There were occasions when Mark or Molly, but never the two together, could enjoy an evening out with friends in the capital until the last tube beckoned them home. When they were younger this was all they ever did in the evenings, but those were the days of the National Unity government when any staff employed by the bars and restaurants that were at all competent were also likely to be deported as a result of the National Immigration Policy. In those days, service was truly dreadful and the quality of food and drink had dropped even further. Now, with so many deportees returning to England and being provided housing and jobs by a chastised coalition government still struggling to qualify for renewed membership in the Northern European Union, the bars and restaurants were once again properly resourced. Not that Mark and Molly were now able to enjoy the benefits.

Mark was a marketing officer for Tata Benz where he had the unenviable mission to encourage people to purchase cars that was not only expensive to drive off the forecourt but even more so in terms of insurance, taxation, fuel and parking. Inevitably, the marketing was focussed on the drive to keep down retail prices, but Mark was actually one of the employees who’d chosen not to accept the offer of a company car. Even before he filled the tank with biodiesel he’d be worse off financially with a car than without.

All the same, the message had got through to an admirably high percentage of the target consumer market. London was still periodically gridlocked and every road was subject to parking restrictions. Nevertheless, Mark guessed that there were rather fewer cars on the road than there used to be that were truly above board and legal. This could be blamed on a feeble and incompetent justice system that was another product of the years of supposedly strong government that had so crippled the country.

Molly worked as a legal secretary for an international law firm that ensured that she was always kept incredibly busy. Despite her advanced pregnancy, she often had to work weekends. The repatriation of deportees involved so many unsuspected complications. An impoverished English government was pushed yet further into debt by the actions of those who’d been treated badly by the previous administration and were now exercising their right to claim compensation for lost trade, for illegally seized businesses and, in some cases, for the rough treatment suffered at the hands of over-enthusiastic immigration police. Most cases were extremely difficult to prove one way or the other as the database records had been deleted. If the data hadn’t been leaked to clandestine websites, usually illegally, there would have been far fewer cases for the government to resolve.

Mark and Molly worked hard, even though their salaries were often paid late, the debts continued to pile up, and the demand for unpaid overtime continued to rise. But at least they had jobs. They were now in that minority of people under forty years old who’d managed to buy a home and who could just about afford to pay their monthly mortgage payments despite the crippling interest rates.

There were few opportunities for the couple to play as hard as they worked. Despite her early reputation as a free and easy woman, Molly couldn’t find the time to be unfaithful to Mark even if she wanted to. Had anyone approached her at the office photocopying machine with the proposition of a quickie in the broom cupboard, she would have had to politely refuse. Long hours and hard work had severely sapped her sexual energy. But not so much, of course, that she and Mark hadn’t been able to conceive a second time.

Mark had always been the faithful sort. He’d never cheated on anyone. Even when he was single and could afford to get high (before the government of National Unity became so ridiculously heavy-handed in enforcing the laws on drug possession), he’d never been keen on casual sex. He would never make love with a mate’s girlfriend or wife. That just wouldn’t be right. How would he like it if the same thing happened to him?

When their long working day was over, Mark and Molly made their separate ways to the tube stations through the rain-soaked streets of London. (Who said that Climate Change wouldn’t bring even more rain to already soggy England?) As a devoted couple, they set their mobile phones to broadcast their whereabouts so that the other would know whether their partner was in the office or on the tube. This was a facility that had mostly gone out of fashion after it had been so spectacularly abused by the immigration police to locate people they wanted for what was euphemistically known as questioning. This had sometimes led to injury and even death as the police struggled to meet their monthly deportation totals.

Mark was reassured to see on his mobile phone that Molly was now walking along Chancery Lane to the tube station, while he was standing in the carriage of the Metropolitan Line train to Amersham. It was rather less comforting to know that due to yet another incident on the line, he would continue to be delayed in a stationary carriage between Baker Street and Finchley Road.

All around him were similarly frustrated passengers: many dripping wet from the heavy rain outside and all squeezed as tightly together as was possible. Most were also regarding their mobile phones, where they could send messages, watch television or just be entertained by music or films. Some passengers carried e-books, while a lucky few perched on the ridge of foam that passed for a carriage seat and were able to use their tablets.

Mark scanned his fellow passengers as best he could from the view he had past the elbows and umbrellas that poked near his face. They were less racially diverse than they would have been just over ten years before and dressed somewhat more shabbily. The age of cheap clothing, along with that for cheap food, was now just a distant dream. Nowadays people resorted more and more to patching up their worn-out socks and sweaters. There was even a good trade in supposedly indestructible fabrics that would never need repair. The one thing that remained cheap, of course, was electronic goods.

Along the side of the carriage was an array of plasma screens where once there would have been windows from which were broadcast soundless adverts for consumer goods, debt relief and film downloads. These were periodically interspersed by public information screens that informed Mark and the other passengers just how far the train was from the next stop and how long it would take to get there. The fact that these screens were stubbornly awaiting further information, as they had for the last ten sweaty humid minutes, provided no comfort at all.

Mark held his mobile phone up to within half a metre of his face and reviewed the news stories he could hear through the discreet ear-piece in his right ear. These were the usual type of stories. Things were still tense in the Middle East, of course. Israeli drones were targeting supposed threats in Jordan and Palestine and were countered in kind by Iraq and Turkey. There was more on the recent murder of the Culture Secretary and her husband. The police were questioning someone with ties with the Confederate rebels in the increasingly militaristic southern states of the United States. Something about flooding in Woolwich and how the Greenwich Flood Barrier was holding back the rising waters of the River Thames from reaching London. But Mark spent rather more time reviewing the news about the upcoming marriage between Heir Apparent Princess Rachel and Bruce Banner, businessman and entrepreneur. It was nice to read good news occasionally and this made Mark speculate about his own wedding nuptials should he and Molly ever save up enough to actually go through with it.

He toggled his display back to see how Molly was doing. She’d taken a train on the Bakerloo line and was now approaching Warwick Avenue. At this rate, she’d be home before him and it’d be her who’d be making dinner for a change. Molly was a better cook than him anyway, although neither of them was especially skilled.

Mark read the short message she texted him: “V. crowded. Don’t feel so gd. Love you lots.”

The message immediately alarmed Mark. Molly was now about seven months pregnant. He hoped nothing bad would happen. The first pregnancy had gone remarkably well, despite the long daily commute to and from Bishop’s Stortford. The worst of it had been the delay getting from their home to the maternity ward through busy traffic and the long wait for an available hospital bed.

Mark, of course, could do nothing to help. He was stuck in a stationary carriage while further up the line he imagined another line fatality was being cleared away. Not that he’d ever be told what had happened.

“Hope it’s nothing,” he texted back.

“I’m faint and sick. C U Soon,” came the prompt reply.

Mark had no idea what was the right thing to say at this point. He did a quick search of some medical websites but what he read only alarmed him further.

“Try sitting down,” he texted back.

“Not poss.”

“Yr preg. If u cant get a seat who can?”

There was no reply.

For the next half hour until the train moved again, as trains ahead of his up the line were also shunted forward, Mark continued to check Molly’s whereabouts on his mobile. He followed her progress along the Bakerloo Line past Kensal Green and Wembley Central to Kenton where surely she would take the escalator link to the Metropolitan Line. He was rather surprised to see that she’d missed the stop and had arrived at Harrow & Wealdstone.

Perhaps the carriage she was in was so crowded at Kenton she’d not been able to get out. He expected she’d now get on a southbound train. And why had she still not texted him?

Then he noticed with even more dread while his train at last slowly juddered onwards to Finchley Road that, after staying for five to ten minutes at Harrow & Wealdstone, Molly’s location was now moving remarkably rapidly along the roads south towards Northwick Park. Perhaps she’d caught a taxi. Wise move when you’re pregnant. Whatever the cost.

And then the phone rang and it was Molly’s number.

“Hiya Molly!” Mark cried cheerfully.

“I’m sorry to disappoint you, sir,” replied a male voice. “Am I speaking to Mr Mark McEwan?”

“Yes.”

“Thank you, sir. I’m a paramedic and my name is Martin Green. Your partner, Ms. Minchin, is being taken by ambulance to Northwick Park Hospital. We advise you to get there at your earliest convenience.”

“What’s happened?”

“Nothing life-threatening but it’s not good news,” said the paramedic. “It’s related to Ms Minchin’s pregnancy.”

“Has there been an accident?”

“In a sense yes, sir,” replied the paramedic. “But as I say it’s not life-threatening.”

The rest of Mark’s journey was even more stressful than it had already been. The train eventually arrived at Northwick Park where the hospital was located just round the corner. Inevitably, the satellite navigation was better at finding the overall location of the hospital than that of the reception desk and by the time he arrived he was drenched by the torrential rain that even now wouldn’t let up.

The cause of the emergency was, of course, a miscarriage.

Molly had fainted on the spot where she’d been standing on the tube, but as she was so tightly wedged in she didn’t fall to the floor. She was only identified as having lost consciousness when the train reached its terminus at Harrow & Wealdstone. It was only when everyone had disembarked that she was finally free to drop to the ground. It was then that somebody decided to call an ambulance and she was taken to the nearest hospital.

“There wasn’t anything we could do, sir,” said one of the nurses as Mark squeezed the hand of his still sedated partner. “The miscarriage happened before she was found. In fact we judge that it may well have happened while she was still standing up in the carriage. It’s not very amenable for a pregnant woman.”

“Indeed not,” said Mark who lost most of his normally unbreakable optimism for the future as he regarded poor Molly as she lay on the bed with a tube trailing out of her nostril. “When will she better?”

“Fairly soon,” said the nurse. “But we don’t advise her to return to work for at least a week.”

How would G & M UK accept even a single day of staff shortage given Molly’s massive workflow? How sympathetic would an American company be?

“I’m sure that’s for the best,” Mark replied.

XII
Molly & Mark
2071

There was no denying it. Molly had taken the death of her unborn child very badly. The shock of the loss sent her into a downward spiral of despondency and then depression. The inevitable result was that she lost her job. Her impressive academic qualifications notwithstanding, she was now no more useful to humanity than a housewife. And although if anyone should ask she’d insist that it was her free choice to spend more time with little Monica, she was clearly not at all suited to the role. And now Monica was at primary school there was no real advantage to Molly being available throughout the day.

Furthermore, it was difficult for the couple to get by on only one income. The savings the couple had stashed away was now being eaten up by the monthly interest on their mortgage. After paying for that, the monthly season ticket and the basic cost of living, there was nothing much left over. As the debts continued to rise and a steadily growing proportion of Mark’s salary was committed to interest payments on existing debt, Molly stretched out as best she could the available budget for food and clothing. But although the charity shops in the Greenfields shopping precinct might provide good quality clothes for a child of five years old, they were less useful for buying the clothes Mark had to wear for work. Molly resorted to the cheaper supermarkets and the weekly market stalls as a means of cutting costs, but these were all an hour’s walk away in Rickmansworth.

There was little now to cheer Mark up when he arrived home in the evening, more tired from his commute than from his long hours in the office. And there wasn’t any cheer in the news that he’d read on his tablet on the way home. England’s negotiations for re-admittance to the Northern European Union were fraught. France and the Netherlands still resented the English government for its role in causing the once much larger and wealthier European Union to split into two halves over the issue of ratifying the membership of Turkey and Armenia. Scotland and Wales still held a grudge against England for its role in the dissolution of the United Kingdom together. And there was little at all encouraging to be found from a casual scan through the news. All-out war in the Middle East seemed increasingly inevitable and the United States was far too preoccupied with its own worries about secession and civil war to do anything about it. Flood barriers were going up all round London, just as most of the Southern English coast was similarly enclosed by an ever-heightening wall to guard against rising sea levels. And to cap it all, Princess Rachel had broken off her engagement. Bruce Banner was now a man who’d travelled the distance from being England’s most celebrated bachelor to being the most despised.

Mark had little enough opportunity in the evening to squeeze in quality time with Molly before he slumped down by his wife in their conjugal bed. As much as Mark enjoyed the wholesome vegetarian meals Molly was now cooking, he was far too exhausted to demonstrate his appreciation in the way that had invigorated the couple’s early years together. And Mark was too tired to be much use at the weekend even on those occasions when he wasn’t required to go to work for a marketing campaign or a business conference.

On Sundays, the couple would shop together in the dilapidated Park Road Mall where the cheap but not especially cheerful shops were clustered. It was a depressing parade of pawn shops, instant loan stores, charity shops and second-hand clothes stores, interspersed at regular intervals by the boarded-up facade of one of Rickmansworth’s former shopping delights.

And in amongst it all were youth from the suburb’s rundown estates who dressed in clothes that expressed only too well their relative poverty. The clothes advertised desperation rather than high fashion. These young men and women weren’t the ones dressed in the colourful psychedelic fabrics and artistically arranged hair that adorned the young people who were jiggling provocatively on the flat wall screens in the shops. Rather they wore a jumble of whatever they could find in the charity shops. Many young people, whether male or female, avoided even the need to visit the hairdresser by shaving off their hair. However much he preferred to keep a discreet distance from them, Mark was aware that today’s youth could hardly be blamed for their poverty. Unemployment, especially amongst the young, was shockingly high. As Molly could confirm, well-paid jobs had become harder and harder to find even for the well-qualified. If a young man or woman continued to study beyond the current school leaving age the path to higher education was beset by crippling loans and fierce competition for college places.

“I kept some of the best fruit aside for you, Molly love,” said the burly shaven-headed stall-holder in the vegetable market with a friendly pat on her back. “Organic, it is. None of your GM or synthetic stuff. Grown in proper orchards, it is.”

“Do you know him?” Mark wondered, as he and Molly strolled over to the dairy stall where the eggs and dairy came directly from farms in Hertfordshire and were sold at prices that were even more competitive than those in WalMart-Tesco.

“Of course,” said Molly. “I know all the stall-holders here.”

Molly wasn’t exaggerating. She knew Wayne the stall-holder very well just as she’d also got to know Alan, Mickey and Garry.

Her idle time out of work hadn’t gone entirely to waste.

Molly found conversations with Mark had become ever more depressing and monotonous. Their discussions were always about the same things these days and Molly just wanted to get away from it. The couple’s debts were piling up. It looked likely that they would have to default on the mortgage now that interest rates had risen yet another percentage point. It was unlikely that Monica would be accepted at the Rickmansworth school they’d applied for her and she might end up in an overcrowded one in Watford. There was no likelihood of Mark getting a pay rise. In fact, with the continuing slump in international car sales there might even be redundancies on the horizon.

And when you turned on the TV it was always the same old stuff. War. Famine. Plague. Floods. Failing businesses.

Even Princess Rachel had failed the nation.

What could Molly do in those hours from nine o’clock when Monica was packed off to school and three o’clock when she had to be picked up again? She could trudge back to their tiny apartment in Bluebell Grove and sit mesmerised by chat shows and twentieth-century movies interspersed by debt relief adverts. Or she could aimlessly wander the streets of Greenfields. Or she could stroll over to Rickmansworth where she’d got to know some of the town’s other citizens who also had to idle away each empty day.

For the small amount of cash that she might otherwise have used towards the bus fare into town she could buy skunk, meth, coke or even smack. Illegal drugs were very cheap these days. The devastation resulting from the Stan Wars and the current unrest in the Middle East had dramatically increased their illicit supply. More unemployment had likewise enlarged the size of the target market and the number of those willing to risk arrest and imprisonment to maintain the flow and availability of the product. After all, the cost of a hit from crack or H was rather less than that of a single cigarette and there were almost exactly as many places to sit down and enjoy it.

Molly knew of many reasons for the easy availability, cheapness and demand for narcotics. One reason highlighted in the news was the impotence of law enforcement agencies throughout the world, particularly in the disintegrating United States and the Kingdom of England. Police forces had more important matters to deal with than the drug trade, such as organised crime and civil disorder.

Wayne didn’t supply drugs, but he liked to share a puff of crack after a long morning on the stall. Alan didn’t supply drugs either, but he often had a spare wrap or two of skunk. Mickey and Garry worked as a team, but they were very low down the pecking order and never handled quantities larger than a kilo. Molly was, of course, yet lower down still the supply chain, but she was already sufficiently knowledgeable about drugs etiquette from her relatively wild youth to get accepted amongst her new friends. She knew how to prepare a bong; how to heat stuff in tin foil; how much to use and how long to wait till she got a hit. And she had the enviable ability of being able to hang around in the company of her new friends for only a few hours a day without ever overdoing it. When she appeared outside Greenfields Primary School to take her daughter home, no one would ever suspect that she might be stoned out of her mind.

Which she often was.

Molly also knew how to get a little extra for free. This was another skill she’d learnt before she’d met Mark and settled down to a life of office work and commuting in London. Wayne was one of the lucky few who Molly would allow the privilege of a free fuck. She’d secretly always liked a bit of rough. Mickey and Garry had to pay in kind for the rewards she was scarcely generous in doling out. Unlike women who relied on the proceeds of selling their bodies to pay for drugs (and there were many prostitutes lining the kerbsides of Rectory Lane and Nightingale Road), Molly insisted on using a condom. Like drugs these were also very cheap and easy to get hold of.

Molly wasn’t a drug addict. She’d never been an addictive personality. She liked the hit she got from the wide choice of drugs that were readily available, but she never allowed it to distract her from the responsibilities of parenthood and of being a partner. She was no more addicted to drugs than she was to sex, but both brought danger, excitement and genuine physical thrills that somehow compensated for the boredom of not working and despair at life’s apparent futility.

In any case, Molly didn’t want Mark’s prick to be the only one she’d get to know for the rest of her life. Wayne’s was thick and chunky: a bit like the man himself. When he ejaculated inside the condom it pushed out the nipple like a tiny balloon. Mickey had a long thin penis which wasn’t what you’d imagine for a man whose stomach drooped over his waist. He had very good staying power which enabled Molly to come several times in a single session. Garry was probably the most disappointing of the men Molly had got to know in this intimate way, but he was also the man most pathetically grateful. He was strangely shy and retiring for someone who made a living by hustling and selling drugs to strangers.

Furthermore, Molly never forgot her class loyalties. She made certain that there was no overlap between her daytime vices and what her neighbours in Bluebell Grove would ever get to know. Molly was practical, sensible and well-prepared for most eventualities.

Nevertheless, the bad news when it arrived did so with a sense of inevitability.

Molly’s first indication that her suburban dream life in Greenfields wouldn’t last much longer was when Mark gave an account of what Tata Benz executives had been telling their employees about past sales figures and future projections.

The thrust of the presentation was about the ever worsening state of the automobile market and Tata Benz’s success in diversifying away from its historical core business. All the same, the bottom line was that the mass market for cars was no longer as profitable as it once had been and that the company’s offices in the more minor international centres would soon have to be closed. One of the more peripheral centres for the Indian-German company was the Kingdom of England, where future sales projections didn’t offer much of a source of confidence.

Mark continued his commute for several more months as the company struggled to present its declining fortunes in as good a light as it could to financiers, stockholders and the general public. He was assured that he would receive a reasonable but not fantastically generous redundancy payment. What Molly knew for sure was that there would soon be two people spending their days in enforced idleness in the cramped space of Apt. 4, 3 Bluebell Grove.

However, even that disheartening scenario wasn’t to be.

“It’s either eviction and homelessness or this,” Mark announced to Molly after explaining the options. “I know it’s not as nice as Greenfields, but this studio apartment in Dagenham is about all we can afford until either you or I get another job.”

“It’s a rented flat,” wailed Molly. “What about the deposit we paid? Can’t we use that to buy another place?”

“The deposit just about covers the outstanding debt on the mortgage payments,” said Mark.

“Dagenham’s all slums and sink estates,” Molly complained. “What sort of school will Monica go to? What about the crime in the area? You’ve seen the stories about gangland killings.”

“It’s a shorter commute to London,” Mark remarked. “It’s almost close enough to Docklands for us to be able to walk to work.”

“The only reason it’s cheap in Dagenham is because it’s first in line when the flood barriers break,” said Molly who’d done her research. “The last time the barriers broke, Creekmouth were under more than a metre of sewerage and mud. Newlands Park was marshland for months afterwards. They even had to close the A13.”

“Well, that’s one good reason for us to rent and not to buy property in the area,” said Mark with a grim smile.

XIII
Alex
2024

Never before had Alex felt as much like he was playing a walk-on part in the story of someone else’s life. He was like a minor character in a soap opera who’d somehow been allowed to stay on for more than one episode. Even though he’d been seeing Gabby for nearly a year now, there was no doubt which one of the couple was calling the shots in their relationship and it wasn’t Alex.

To make matters worse, Gabby made no pretence whatsoever that Alex wasn’t just one of several men with whom she regularly fucked. He shared her with lovers whose presence in Gabby’s life rarely survived more than a single night. This wasn’t the stuff to boost a man’s ego, especially one whose score rate was so wretched in comparison.

It was mostly because Alex had achieved a small level of success with the women he’d met through internet dating sites that Gabby continued her relationship with him. Alex didn’t want to elaborate too much on encounters which only occasionally resulted in him enjoying the sex that he and—presumably—the woman he was dating had been anticipating. For a start, his dates shamelessly lied about their age. Few women in their forties, let alone their fifties, had looks to match Alex’s chosen target age range of 20-35. Alex would have chosen a younger age bracket if he hadn’t been aware that few women in their teens would genuinely seek the affection of a man approaching his thirtieth birthday. And those women who did were unlikely to have a romantic reason for such a choice.

In exchange for the tales of sexual conquest she wheedled out of him, Gabby recounted her own exploits which, unlike Alex’s, needed no gloss or elaboration. Alex didn’t want to elaborate too much on his dating disappointments with women who in one way or another rather deserved to remain single. It wasn’t their looks alone that persuaded him to make this assessment, however important this was to Alex. There were other important considerations like neuroticism, body odour and sometimes hostility towards men like Alex who weren’t acceptably clued-up on the issues of the day.

“Well, there isn’t much you’re sure about, is there?” Gabby asserted while she pumped his penis. They were sitting in his tiny living room with the television in the background tuned to Fox News UK. Zak Goldsmith was ranting about a Green conspiracy that was somehow certain to wreck the economy. “Although I’m no great fan of the Greens, even I can see that this is just paranoid conspiracy bullshit. Why do you watch it?”

“I like to get the other side.”

“The other side of what?” wondered Gabby. She lowered her tongue towards Alex’s lap to lick the tip of his glans while she kept her eyes fixed on his. “This is nothing more than news porn. It’s not real opinion. It’s propaganda. You just watch it to see how far it’ll go. It’s like those porn movies where you wonder whether there’ll be DP, piss or scat. And, believe you me, those are better options than what I’d like see happen to turncoat fascists like Goldsmith.”

“We’ll watch something else,” said Alex who switched the TV to an internet porn channel that was showing at least two of the sexual activities Gabby had mentioned.

Gabby turned her face towards the screen. “At least it’s not farmyard porn,” she remarked while continuing to pump Alex’s prick. “You wouldn’t believe the number of times at school and university the guys got me to watch that kind of crap. ‘Ever wanted to make out with Dobbin?’ ‘Are the sheepdogs on your farm as good at fucking as they are at herding sheep?’ ‘Ever sucked a horse’s cock?’”

“You haven’t, have you?” wondered Alex who’d occasionally succumbed to that fantasy.

“Of course I fucking haven’t. I’d have to be fucking demented to do something like that. And you have to be fucking demented to even suggest it.”

However much Alex felt like a bit-player, he had to admit that the best sex in his life so far was definitely that which he had at least once a week with Gabby. It was always her who’d initiate it and she rarely gave Alex the chance to choose otherwise.

“Get ready,” she’d say on the phone. “I’ll be over in half an hour.”

“Are you sure?” said Alex who might be watching a movie he’d just downloaded.

“Why? Who’re you with?”

“No one.”

“Don’t be fucking soft, then. Just put some cans of beer in the fridge.”

The text messages, e-mails and even surprise calls that Alex received from Gabby never followed a predictable pattern. About the only valid excuse he could offer for not being able to see her was that he was with another woman. On other occasions, he’d have to apologise to colleagues for having to return home early rather than joining them for a pint after work. He’d have to scurry home as fast as he could if he was on a lonely prowl in the streets of Rickmansworth. If he was working late, he might arrange to meet Gabby in a city centre pub and then go out for a meal afterwards. This was a relatively rare treat for her and one she probably enjoyed at least as much as the sex they’d soon be having on Alex’s couch or on his well broken-in double bed.

Despite his nocturnal fantasies or the more graphic ones he watched on the porn channels, Alex’s taste in sex wasn’t remotely adventurous. Sex involving animals, urination, fisting and transsexuals were strictly off limits in real life.

So when Gabby suggested a threesome, Alex wasn’t enthusiastic at all.

“With a woman?” he asked hopefully.

“Is that what you want, Alex?” she asked as she held him against her bosom, his penis still deep inside her.

“If that’s what you want.”

“Well, I don’t,” she said firmly. “I’m not a dyke.”

“And I’m not queer.”

“Don’t worry, sweetheart. I’m not asking you to have your arse violated,” laughed Gabby who was clearly quite excited by the idea. “That is, unless that’s what you want?”

“Fuck no!” gasped a genuinely terrified Alex.

This was one ménage Alex didn’t look forward to. Besides his entirely genuine worries about anal violation, he was anxious about how well he would perform when exposed naked and erect in front of another man.

He tried to escape into Virtual Reality where he could sample a kind of simulated sexual threesome, but since he was the one determining the terms of engagement it wasn’t especially realistic. Alex wondered just what sort of perverse rules Gabby might come up with. Perhaps he ought to break the whole thing off. But then the thought of having to rely on nothing more than women who pretended to be younger than they were and frequently made unreasonable demands on his virility persuaded Alex that maybe what Gabby wanted wasn’t so bad really.

Most of the time he spent in Virtual Reality—togged up in bizarre equipment that simulated muscular movement and presented a 360 degrees vista of an imagined world in front of his eyes—wasn’t so much for sex or entertainment but for work. And most of that was to scan the latest news and information generated by an ever-growing community of online users in the many Virtual Reality worlds. After he’d captured enough screenshots, Alex could then return to the real world by terminating his connection and tugging off the equipment. Then he returned to his desk, which was in a different room from where he did his research, to write his daily column. Most of this was nothing more than a verbatim account of what he’d seen and it was in that sense that he offered the world a kind of news amalgamation service.

However, he had to do more than simply that to earn his salary. Reuters-Fox wouldn’t be very pleased if that was all he ever wrote about in the column he submitted every day to their news services’ internet pages. He had to do a bit of private research, which entailed surveying weird VR sites that promised a lot but were the sole preserve of fans of Tolkien, Star Wars and Harry Potter who were probably many decades older than their avatars suggested, and where the principal activity was to engage in tedious debates that Alex never featured in his column.

Virtual Reality was his corner in the newsroom, but Alex felt restless. He would rather be doing something more interesting. He was weary of the online community’s endless arguments about the significance of plot lines from now defunct television shows.

Alex also had fears about his job security. Would VR one day fizzle out and fade away, however inconceivable this now seemed since Microsoft and Google had merged? Would it continue to grow? And would he have to share his workload with someone else? Alex was sufficiently self-critical to recognise that some of his colleagues in the Online Media newsroom were rather better than him in the quality of their research and reporting. That could make his job substantially more difficult.

“Next Friday.” Gabby texted him.

Her text didn’t elaborate further, but Alex knew exactly what she meant. He even knew who the other partner in this ménage a trois was going to be. It was one of Gabby’s more frequent lovers: a guy called Ghazi. She’d met him when she was a student when they’d both been studying Business Communications as part of their degrees, although her final degree was in Agriculture and his in Business Studies.

Alex didn’t consider himself to be a racist. After all, several of his colleagues were black or Asian. And he’d several times made love with women of exotic ethnic origins, including a tubby Chinese woman called Kim of whom Alex had been very fond. But it was quite a different thing to be sharing a woman with an Asian man. It was bad enough that he was a man at all. When Alex reviewed his anxieties he wondered why an Asian man, who’d after all never visited the Indian subcontinent, should be any different to a white man. Perhaps a white man was actually worse. Alex was in contortions that he guessed were actually less to do with Ghazi’s ethnic profile and a great deal more to do with his own floundering about for an excuse, any excuse, that he could use to avoid this sexual encounter and yet still remain with Gabby.

Worse still, the entire thing would be taking place in Alex’s flat on Alex’s bed. What would the neighbours think? They must have seen Gabby turn up at his flat at all times of night and day with a cigarette dangling from her outstretched fingers. They would have seen her Four By Four parked nearby and effectively making the already narrow roads even narrower. Not that Alex actually knew any of his neighbours. He wasn’t home long enough to pass more than the odd word with them.

Friday came around and the doorbell rang while Alex was trying to lessen his anxiety by watching a documentary on the melting glaciers and consequent flooding in the Himalayas.

“Ghazi, isn’t it?” said Alex shaking his guest’s hand.

“And you must be Alex,” said the tall, classically handsome Punjabi. “Gabby hasn’t told me much about you, but I’m sure we’ll get along fine.”

There was no hint of anything other than a well-educated Home Countries accent in his voice.

“And where in India...” asked Alex for the sake of conversation.

“... Does my family come from?” Ghazi said. “Somewhere in the North West. I don’t really know. It was a long time ago.”

There really weren’t enough beers or a long enough time to wriggle out of what Alex was dreading before Gabby announced that since the two were now sufficiently well acquainted, maybe they all ought to get on with it.

“Why the hurry?” wondered the host.

“Fuck’s sake, Alex,” said Gabby, barely restraining the frustration in the tone of her voice. “Best strike while the iron’s hot.”

It must have been hot for Gabby whose vagina was dripping uncontrollably when she pulled off her clothes and lay down on the bed. And judging from the huge erection that met Alex’s eyes Ghazi was also very enthused. Alex shuddered. This was by far the largest and most erect penis he’d ever seen in the flesh. Indeed, it was the only one he’d ever seen in real life other than his own.

“Have you ever done this before?” asked Alex of Ghazi while taking his time to remove his clothes.

“Yeah, of course,” said Ghazi. “Several times. And not always with Gabby. How about you?”

“Never.”

“Don’t worry. You’ll soon get the hang of it.”

Alex doubted that. Indeed if he’d not taken the precaution of dropping a little blue pill, he’d probably have been so intimidated by Ghazi’s presence that he wouldn’t have been able to do anything at all.

The evening with Ghazi and Gabby was an event that resonated more in the memory and with more eroticism than it did at the time. Yes, he and Ghazi were active in all those sexual activities with a single woman that Alex was familiar with from having spent so much of his adult life watching porn. Sometimes Gabby sucked Ghazi’s erect penis while Alex thrust away in Gabby’s gushing, moist and even squelchy vagina. Sometimes it was Alex’s penis that was sucked while Gabby was being fucked by Ghazi who betrayed a definite preference for fucking her in the arse. And then, inevitably, the two of them fucked her together, with Ghazi’s penis in her anus and Alex’s in the other hole.

What Gabby most wanted and what she’d so often said she most wanted to try was something that both Ghazi and he were less eager to do and that was to be fucked in the vagina by both men simultaneously. “I’ve always thought there’s more than enough space for two,” she said as justification.

Indeed, she was absolutely right. Her vagina easily accommodated both Alex and Ghazi.

The main reason Alex was reluctant to do this was that he would have to brush his penis against Ghazi’s. This was something he’d managed to avoid doing until then. In fact, he just about managed to avoid touching Ghazi’s skin altogether.

Ghazi’s reason for being less keen was that he was reluctant to pull his penis out of Gabby’s anus. Alex speculated that this was because the man liked a tight hole. He could see the virtue in that. It was disconcerting to see his penis slip out of Gabby’s capacious vagina in the throes of passion.

But when Ghazi placed his hands over Alex’s buttocks from behind while he was still fucking Gabby, Alex began to suspect that this anal enthusiasm wasn’t reserved for women alone. And when he felt the rubbery sensation of Ghazi’s tongue inside the crack of his arse, this was not so much suspicion but proof.

“Don’t!” said Gabby quietly but firmly when she noticed what her Punjabi lover was doing.

“There are plenty more arses out there in the world,” Ghazi said reluctantly. “It’s just that there’s only two in this room.”

“Just be content with the one,” said Gabby firmly. “I’m sure we can do this again some other time with someone a little more adventurous.”

Alex was too preoccupied in the business of fucking Gabby to make a comment.

He was aware though that, despite his reluctance, the thought of being violated by Ghazi had excited him enough that he would soon, at last, be relieved of the pent-up pressure in his balls.

“Shall we do it again?” asked Gabby afterwards, but she must have known from the feebleness of Alex’s response that this was unlikely.

Either on that night or, indeed, any other night in the future.

XIV
Diane
2042

Reverend Diane Dawkins wept while she watched the television news film of the dead and dying of Rawalpindi. If the wretched souls hadn’t already died from the intense heat and blast of the nuclear explosions, they would surely do so from radiation poisoning. Perhaps those who were dead were the lucky ones. Cancerous growths and the birth of deformed children were all that most of the survivors had to look forward to.

Her usual response to such international crises was to dedicate a section of her weekly sermon to the matter and place a collection box for the relevant charity at the church door. Somehow, this didn’t seem adequate for the scale of the current disaster. What should Diane, as a minister of the Church of England, do to help the tens of millions of people who’d suffered and the maybe hundreds of millions who might suffer in the future in a subcontinent sandwiched between astonishing economic growth and the famine, disease and devastation that resulted from the world’s first real nuclear war, limited though it thankfully had been.

Diane’s first response was to pick up the telephone and call Doris to get her advice. Who else could be first choice? The phone rang and after trilling for a short while Doris’ sweet voice replied.

“What is it, sweetheart? I’m still in the office.”

“Are you working late?”

“Again,” Diane’s lover replied.

Doris’ position as senior project manager at Accenture IBM often entailed long hours as meetings overran, schedules were missed, and the customer requirements were once more changed. On the other hand, she was senior enough to be able to choose which projects to work on. Or, rather, which ones not to. She avoided projects for defence contractors, tobacco companies and others whose trade she believed to be unethical. Diane wasn’t sure whether it was Doris’ strict moral code of conduct or her body that made her love her so. As a Vicar of Christ, Diane was grateful that it wasn’t for Doris’ beauty alone. What would the good Lord say if that were so?

“It’s nothing, darling,” said Diane. “We can talk about it later.”

“At your place or mine?”

Although Doris and Diane had been lovers for over four years, they still maintained separate homes. It wasn’t because Doris was especially mindful of any disapproval from her congregation. The vicar had been open about her sexuality from the first day that she discovered that she loved women as much as, maybe even more than, she did men. It was more because the two women treasured their separate space. They’d both lived alone for so many years and neither of them was in the first bloom of youth. Perhaps, it was a step too far that they should share more than a bed on a permanent basis.

“Should we get married?” Doris once asked Diane.

“Although the Church of England is comparatively liberal on gay relationships and believes in the sanctity of marriage,” the vicar answered, “I’m not sure that even this far into the twenty-first century the church has progressed quite as far as to unreservedly welcome same-sex marriage for its ministers. It’s still an issue for many in the Anglican community: especially in Africa and the Southern states of America. My first duty as a vicar is to my flock and if there are people in my congregation who’re uncomfortable with the idea of their vicar marrying another woman then I believe I should respect their opinion.”

“Very diplomatic,” said Doris. “But my offer remains open all the same.”

It was nearly ten o’clock when the vicarage doorbell rang and Doris arrived. She was a slender woman whose hair was flecked with grey. Her hair perfectly complemented by her silver-grey eyes. She was wearing a business suit and the stern high heels that made a woman of quite average height appear quite tall. Diane knew her lover would soon be divested of her uncomfortable, restrictive work clothes and that as always the couple would reclined together naked on the sofa in the living room in front of the television set.

Diane in the nude was much as one would expect. She was not a slim woman. In fact, she was moderately plump but not unattractively so. Her bosom was just as generous uncovered as it promised to be from what could be seen in the contours of her cassock.

The two lovers wound their arms about each other and relished the sensation of each other’s flesh.

“Why did you call me at work, sweetheart?” asked Doris as she idly twirled her fingers around the huge aureoles of her lover’s nipples.

“I didn’t know you were still at work,” said Diane. “I thought you might have been home. Or perhaps on the train back from London.”

“While the project is in its present mess,” said Doris, “there’s going to be nothing but problem after problem. The legal department haven’t quite worked out the international legal implications yet...”

“International legal implications?”

“Any project that aims to simplify security and passport controls at airports is bound to have countless international legal issues. The Chinese are the reference market, of course, and most European and Asian countries are in line with China. The United States, as usual, is dragging its feet and raising all sorts of objections.”

“Why’s that?”

“It’s just what they do. The different states can’t even agree between themselves whether black is black or doesn’t happen to also be white. If they can’t agree amongst themselves how can they be expected to agree anything with anyone else? I despair. It can’t be long now until the nation splits down the middle. It just can’t cope with no longer being the world’s richest or most powerful nation. All it can do is huddle in the corner and sulk. That is, when it’s not quarrelling about eye retina recognition and DNA identification.”

“It sounds like a real headache,” said Diane. “But what I called you about was disaster relief for the radiation victims of the Indo-Pakistani War. I was just wondering if you had any suggestions for what a Vicar of Christ should be doing.”

“I’m not really the best person to talk to about charity,” said Doris. “It is charity you’re talking about, I hope? You’re not suggesting we leave Surrey and fly over to the irradiated zones in the republics of Kashmir, India and Pakistan? It’s not quite me, I think.”

“It’s not me, either,” said Diane. “I don’t think I’m cut out for that kind of work. Being a missionary was never one of my childhood ambitions. In any case, the charities already have plenty of much better qualified people in India and Pakistan. They don’t need the help of a couple of middle-aged English women...”

“Middle-aged!” laughed Doris. “I think I’ve got a few more years left till I’ll call myself that.”

“They probably wouldn’t need us whatever age we were,” said Diane. “But we’ve got to do something. It’s our moral duty.”

“Are you saying that because you’re a vicar?”

“It’s our moral duty to do something for the tens of millions in dire need and the hundreds of millions who are displaced whether we work for the church or for an international computer consultancy or for the local supermarket. This is the worst international crisis of our lives. It’s the first time for nearly a century that nuclear weapons have been used in anger. It is our moral imperative to give whatever help we possibly can.”

“Point taken, sweetheart,” said Doris as she tenderly kissed Diane’s stomach.

“What I don’t know and why I called you,” Diane continued, “is exactly what we should be doing?”

“I don’t know either, sweetheart,” said Doris. “And you know that. I take it you want to do more than just arrange a collection from your parishioners and to give a sermon on behalf of the millions of radioactive refugees, but you also don’t want to fly out to the nuclear wastelands. You’ll just have to contact agencies like Red Cross or Oxfam or Action Aid and ask them for advice.”

“I’ve got to offer them something more than the usual charity collection money,” said Diane. “I’ve got to do something a great deal more.”

“About the only thing these poor souls want besides food and drink is shelter,” said Doris. “Are you suggesting that we shelter them in the Church grounds?”

“It’s an idea,” said Diane, her face lighting up.

“But not a very good one,” countered Doris. “I don’t exactly see the good citizens of Reigate welcoming a plane-load of refugees in their midst.”

“This is a wealthy parish,” said Diane. “Many good Christian souls live here. Most of those in the firebombed ruins have nowhere else to stay.”

“You can suggest it,” said Doris. “You might even be able to find space for a hundred or so wretches, though they would have to be orphaned or terminally ill to be granted compassionate asylum in the United Kingdom. You can possibly raise funds from the few dozen people who regularly attend church and the many more who use it for weddings and funerals. You might even get a few lines of praise in the Guardian and possibly the Church Times. But I don’t see it being popular with the people of Reigate. The mere hint of surrendering sovereignty to Brussels will have them up in arms. The slightest suggestion that the government might go soft on immigration has protestors outside the town hall. I can’t see too many people in the district celebrating the prospect of having to house Indians and Pakistanis in their community.”

“It need only be a temporary measure until the refugees can return home,” said Diane.

“And when would that be?”

“Radiation eventually goes away. It’s got a half life.”

“What happened in Rawalpindi and Lahore and Srinagar wasn’t like Hiroshima or Nagasaki. It was ten, twenty, maybe a hundred times worse. The radiation will take generations to disperse.”

“All the more reason for good Christians to offer help.”

“And not many of these unfortunates are Christian. Most are Muslim. You’ve seen how much prejudice there is against Muslims. And those who aren’t followers of Islam are Hindus or Sikhs. Will your parishioners really want to give aid and assistance to heathens?”

“God loves all His children,” said Diane.

“I dare say He does,” said Doris with a defeated sigh. “However, on a lighter matter... Do you want to see my latest creation?”

Diane grinned with almost childish enthusiasm. “Yes, I would.”

Doris lifted her naked body off the sofa where she’d been lying beside Diane and rummaged in her handbag until she found the memory stick she was looking for. She plugged it into Diane’s system and fiddled with the remote so she could display it on the screen.

Doris might be a project manager nowadays, but many years before she’d started her career in a more humble position as a Computer Science graduate and she still enjoyed playing around with computer graphics. She’d scanned three-dimensional models of the reverend and herself into her computer and used it to generate some disturbingly realistic images of the couple in fantastical situations.

“Here are some stills I generated,” said Doris, as she flicked through a slide-show of half a dozen such images. There was one of Diane and Doris together on Mars holding up a rock covered with Martian bacteria. There was one of the couple visiting a Buddhist temple in Cambodia. There was one of Diane posed like a mediaeval saint with a halo above her head and her hands clasped in prayer.

“I’m not sure I’m worthy of that one,” laughed Diane. “There’s a great deal more I have to do to be beatified.”

“You will, sweetheart, I’m sure,” said Doris, kissing her lover on the lips. “And here is what you’ve really been looking forward to seeing...”

Doris activated a movie that she’d generated using the images of the two lovers and animated by pornographic software that overlaid their bodies on the images of porn stars having sex. It was a seamless and deceptively realistic movie of Diane and Doris making passionate love. It suffered only by being rather more perfect than the real thing. The folds on Diane’s stomach were less pronounced. Doris’ vagina was less ragged. And the setting was a landscape in the English countryside where it was highly unlikely that two middle-aged women would be allowed to cavort so openly.

“It’s beautiful, darling,” said Diane in grateful amazement. “It must have taken you ages.”

“If it works then every moment will have been worth it,” said Doris placing a hand between Diane’s thighs. “Are you feeling hot?”

Diane leaned over to kiss Doris on her lips—a prelude they both knew of greater passion to come—while keeping an eye focused on the television screen.

“I couldn’t be more in love with you if I tried, darling,” she said.

XV
Eric Esterhazy MP
2044

After the applause had died down, Reverend Dawkins once again addressed the televised audience seated ahead of her in the town hall.  She had a hard fight ahead of her. Only the barest minority were sympathetic to her. Most of the applause was reserved for Eric Esterhazy, the Minister for Housing and MP for Redhill & Surrey, who had just spoken.

“I don’t accept that the shelter we provide for refugees from the nuclear wastelands of India and Pakistan can in any way be described as a ‘conduit for immigration’”, she said steadily and evenly. “Our mission is to extend compassion to our fellow human beings. The refuge cannot be described as a ‘gateway for refugees’.”

“Do you intend to deport the people you shelter back to where they come from when they’re fit and able to return?” asked Emily Littlejohn, the Fox News UK anchor who was hosting the discussion.

“I think ‘deport’ is putting it rather strongly,” said the vicar.

“Deport them is exactly what you should do,” said Eric Esterhazy MP. “The British Isles are overcrowded. We can’t cope with yet more immigrants, refugees or whatever you want to call them. If we want to provide a reasonable level of housing, education and medical care to our British citizens, then immigration policy must be vigorously enforced.”

“Is it government policy to deport immigrants?” asked the host.

“It is when they’ve entered the country illegally,” said the Minister. “In fact, it’s the same policy in all countries in the European Union. It’s the policy of most states in the USA. It is the right policy. Otherwise, it’s unfair on British citizens who’re looking for employment in these straitened times. The country is overcrowded. Jobs are hard to find. We have to be realistic.”

“And how do you respond to that, reverend?” asked the host.

“I think you’re putting too much focus on the question of immigration and not enough on our moral responsibility,” said Diane. “Christians have a moral duty to help those in need. There are hundreds of millions of people throughout the Indian subcontinent who are in desperate need of help.”

“I don’t think Her Majesty’s Government can allow this country to accommodate an extra hundred million British citizens,” said Eric Esterhazy MP without waiting to be invited to reply by the host and whose remark was rewarded by thunderous applause from the audience.

Eric observed the reverend as she spluttered a response to the host’s follow-up questions, but he knew that she’d never really had a chance. Fox News UK was a good friend of the Conservative Party, particularly in the relatively affluent South East. As the BBC continued to decline as a media presence, Fox News UK was now Britain’s most influential and powerful news outlet. He never had reason to fear an invitation to appear on a Fox News program, especially on home turf, whereas he would only appear on the BBC when instructed to do so by Conservative Central Office.

Reverend Diane Dawkins was the token liberal on a panel of four guests in which Eric held the fulcral position as the voice of moderation. The other two guests were Karen Mackenzie, an author of books which claimed to expose the extent by which the liberal minority routinely distorted scientific evidence to serve its interests, and Horace Cutler, the token black guest whose strident views opposing immigration were somewhat less moderate than the Housing Minister’s.

Eric was quite content to watch Horace launch a vitriolic attack on the reverend. He patronisingly questioned the kind of Christianity she represented, disparaged the workshy immigrants from Rawalpindi, and emphasised that the United Kingdom should tighten immigration controls along with the rest of the European Union, an institution he normally had no time for.

“It’s not racist to want tighter immigration control,” said Horace, aware that his skin colour independently affirmed that. “The world is a crowded place. There is famine, war and plague on every continent. The UK’s interests are best served by keeping such problems as far out of reach as possible.”

“The troubles of any one of God’s creation is a matter for us all,” said the reverend.

“I admire your well-meaning compassion,” said Eric, acting in his self-appointed role as the panel’s moderate, “but misguided liberal benevolence is precisely why the world is in the mess it is today. If the less developed nations acted more in their self-interest rather than choosing to rely on the charity of wealthier governments, there wouldn’t be so many people unable to rely on their own governments for help.”

“Surely the plight of the millions displaced by nuclear war deserves our compassion,” pleaded the reverend.

“It is not in the interests of the UK to correct the mistakes made by other nations,” said Karen Mackenzie who was utterly unsentimental with regards to such matters. “If two nations should bomb each other that is their choice. The British taxpayer shouldn’t have to pick up the tab for their monumental folly. Surely it’s bad enough that we have to suffer from the nuclear waste that was thrown into the sky.”

However much satisfaction Eric was getting from this mismatched debate, he had to acknowledge that there were still too many obstacles in the way of successfully implementing a sensible immigration policy. The electoral reform that took place so many years ago had made British politics indecisive and vacillating. Coalition government followed coalition government. The Conservatives might be the chief party in the coalition, but they had to compromise with the Liberals, the Democrats and the rest on the left of the coalition. Although Eric was a Tory through and through, his sympathies were more with those in the British Independence Party and the UK National Party on the coalition’s right.

Immigration wasn’t the only issue that troubled Eric, of course. Taxes were too high. Ten percent income tax was just robbery. VAT at thirty-five percent, although less of a worry, was similarly too high. Too much money was being squandered on failed government schemes to build flood defences, develop alternative energy, house undeserving and drug-addicted wastrels, educate young hooligans, and provide medical treatment for the wilfully obese. And all the while, England and the rest of the UK were going to the dogs. It now ranked as only the fourth richest country in Europe. A nation no longer qualified to be a member of the G10 on the basis of GDP. A once proud nation whose pitiful military capability relied too heavily on buying arms from China and Russia. The streets of Redhill and Reigate were overflowing with unemployed yobs who indulged in drug binges at the taxpayers’ expense. Things were not the way they should be and without a firm hand they were only going to get worse.

When the recording of the television discussion was finished, Eric shook hands with the host and the other three guests, taking care to be especially polite with Reverend Diane Dawkins. She was, after all, one of his constituents as well as being one of those most likely to blog, tweet or otherwise publicise her differences of opinion from those of the Minister of Housing.

He then strode over to shake hands with Dick Tebbit, the producer of Town Hall Live.

“Good show as always, Eric,” said Dick. “You showed the pinko where to get off.”

“Don’t think it’ll make any difference, Dick,” Eric said sadly. “She’ll carry on harbouring refugee scum and there’s not a bloody thing anyone can do to stop her.”

“Nothing will change while the coalition government gives cabinet seats to pinkos,” said Dick. “The Immigration Minister is particularly weak. Davison might just as well fling the doors wide open and say ‘Come on! Come in! Everyone’s welcome to a free meal on us.’”

“It’s broad-based coalition, Dick.”

“Broad enough to have queers, greens and pinkos obviously, Eric. The Tories need reforming. Get rid of the TINAs.”

“TINAs?”

“Tories In Name Alone. It’s a labelling tactic that worked in the States. Look how well unadulterated conservatism is doing over there.”

“Not well enough,” said the Minister. “I just don’t know how long the States are going to remain United. Those Northern and Western States are getting increasingly resentful about the Republicans’ grip on government.”

“That’s their problem, not ours,” said Dick. “Look, I’ve got an post-shoot party at the Reigate Regency. We’ve booked a three-bedroom suite. There’s someone there I’m sure you’d like to meet.”

“Is she anything like the last one,” laughed Eric. “She had massive tits and a big fat arse.”

“She was good though, wasn’t she?”

“Bloody good!” Eric said with a chuckle as he recalled her amorous jigging between his legs. “What time shall I turn up?”

Eric’s time was constrained by the need to attend his constituency surgery for which he was always late and which he conducted as rarely as he could get away with. He was an important Government Minister after all. After this, he phoned his wife to tell her that he had important government business and ordered a taxi to take him to the stately Reigate Regency. This was a hotel which if it didn’t now provide a discreet and expensive service for the well-heeled would long ago have gone the way of most hotels in a country where tourism had mostly collapsed due to the exorbitant cost of travel.

Eric wasn’t disappointed by the girls on offer. Fox News UK had an extensive entertainments budget which easily extended to cover the cost of hiring good quality whores. The minister observed with satisfaction how much the class of women who took up prostitution as a career had improved, despite the exacting penalties Eric’s government had introduced for making that choice. A high proportion almost certainly belonged to the very population of illegal immigrants Eric was most eager to deport. Not that this was an observation that troubled Eric too much. Principles are only principles after all. And it gave the minister a certain wicked satisfaction to know that if these women were deported back to whichever famine-stricken, radioactive or deforested shit-hole they’d escaped from he’d have fucked them twice: once literally (and usually up the arse) and once again figuratively but with rather more sustained ill effect.

On this occasion he was able to enjoy the company of Dune and Emerald which names he was certain neither had been originally christened with. In fact, as one girl quite clearly came from one of the quarrelling Stans to the south of Russia and north of Tibet and the other was almost certainly from either India or Pakistan, they wouldn’t have been ‘christened’ at all in the Christian sense of the word. Their English wasn’t that bad, although Dune, the Uzbekistani or Turkmenistani, had some difficulty with pronunciation. But Eric wasn’t there for conversation and the girls didn’t have to say much as he fucked the one in the arse, as he preferred, and let the other push her tongue inside the hairy recesses of his buttocks.

Eric was a harsh lover—not that his wife was especially aware of this—and the girls were soon covered in bruises and slaps which would soon settle down and not unduly trouble their next patron. When he left them—sobbing slightly, as he preferred, the mascara dripping down their cheeks and a small trickle of blood coming from Emerald’s anus—Eric was in a thoroughly good mood. This had been enhanced, of course, by the lines of coke that accompanied his energetic lovemaking.

“Good girls, aren’t they?” said Dick when Eric returned to the main room of the party. Most guests were gathered around a holo-screen that showed nothing more shocking than Fox News UK’s headline roundup and the usual pictures of Islamic terrorists being rounded up in the Southern United States as part of the new zero tolerance policies.

“Bloody good!” agreed Eric.

He looked around him. As usual, there was a public display of sex on the sofa. Emily Littlejohn was probably the only one amongst the naked men and women who wasn’t being paid to perform. Most of the guests were like Eric and preferred to enjoy sex where they couldn’t be watched and appraised. Judging by the company with which she was so intimately engaged, Emily obviously liked her cock and cunt to be black or brown.

“I told you I had someone here I thought you ought to meet, Eric,” said Dick who guided the Minister towards Sir David Coulson, Chief Executive for Fox News UK, whose expensively suited back was ahead of him.

“Oh, hello Eric,” said the honoured news executive as he shook Eric’s hand. “We have a lot to talk about, you and me. There’s much that I’d like to do for the country and common decency, and I believe that you may be the man to help me. However, you will need to excuse me momentarily.”

He nodded downwards at the Asian woman whose mouth was pumping up and down on his erect penis.

“Certainly, Sir David,” said Eric who knew better than to expect one of the most powerful people in the country to drop everything for him. “I’ll wait by the drinks cabinet with Dick.”

“Good man,” said the executive who slapped his erect penis onto the woman’s cheeks and let a drool of spit fall from his mouth and onto her eyes.

He was obviously enjoying this encounter rather more than she was.

XVI
Lindiwe
2066

It was the first time since Lindiwe was a child that she could remember ever being happy. Was this what she’d been looking for since she’d left Lesotho? In fact, so low had her measurement of luxury fallen that just to sleep on a mattress she didn’t have to share and to survive without needing to sell her body were enough now to make every day seem worth living.

Lindiwe was totally baffled how Reverend Diane Dawkins had managed to keep the Reigate Refugee Centre open through the years of the English National Unity government, but the reverend was more than willing to answer Lindiwe’s questions on one of her regular visits to the centre.

“The centre survived because it was designated as a Refugee Processing Centre,” the stout elderly woman explained. “The government needed holding stations to house refugees before they were deported, but ours was a centre that made no attempt to hasten bureaucracy’s exasperatingly slow processing.”

The centre had been used as a refuge for illegal immigrants since the Indo-Pakistani Nuclear War and continued to serve a similar function through the Stan Wars and the Wars of Secession in what had once been known as the United States.

“Nowadays the majority of refugees come from Africa and the Middle East,” said the reverend. “In your case, of course, it’s because the economy’s collapsed. In the Middle East, it’s because of political repression and war. From Egypt to Iraq, from Morocco to South Africa, there seems to be no let up in the flow of refugees.”

Although the reverend was sympathetic, she was adamant that the centre should never be perceived as a facilitator of immigration. “You can’t believe the problems I’ve had. The local MP was especially unsupportive when the English National Unity government was in power. In any case, it’s not appropriate for the Church of England to have a political view on the immigration issue. Our concerns are entirely compassionate. It is immoral to allow people to starve or die from radioactive poisoning when we can do something to help.”

Although Lindiwe wondered whether the reverend was being disingenuous in her protestations she had to acknowledge the simple arithmetic that wouldn’t and couldn’t go away. The international status of the Kingdom of England may have suffered ruinous decline. Its relation with its immediate neighbours, the Republic of Wales and the United Kingdom of Scotland and Northern Ireland, could now be best described as frosty. It was currently in the humiliating process of petitioning to rejoin the Northern European Union it had left with so much bravado. But despite all that, the quality of life in the kingdom was still immeasurably better than it was in most of Africa. There was no famine. There was no armed militia roaming the streets. There was a working economy. There was electricity, gas, running water and public transport. And there was no lingering radioactivity as there was in the Stans and on the borders of India and Pakistan. Literally billions of people were clamouring to get into the Kingdom of England just as they were into all the relatively prosperous nations of Europe, East Asia and North America.

As far as Lindiwe was concerned, the greatest benefit of being able to live at the Reigate Refugee Centre was that she no longer had to sell her body. Whether openly or more discretely, it had been almost the only way in Ashton Lovelock she could earn a living where immigration status wasn’t an obstacle. When Lindiwe confessed to her friend Apara how far she’d sunk on the day she returned to her squat with a bag of pills to treat the gonorrhoea she’d contracted, she was shocked to find that her friend was transacting much the same kind of business just to be able to continue working at KFC-McDonalds.

Lindiwe had to get away. She didn’t really know where, but it definitely had to be somewhere else. It was a trail that took her hitchhiking along the M4 motorway and was only made possible by continuing to offer the same sexual services she hoped never to have to do again. After passing through several other small towns Lindiwe eventually arrived at Reigate, Surrey, where by taking advantage of the good reverend’s compassion she at last found a place to stay where her vagina could take a well-deserved rest. It wasn’t that her new job of sweeping Reigate’s streets attracted especially attractive wages—a pitiful piece rate was the best she could expect—but at last, with a secure bed and freedom from the protection rackets that preyed on illegal immigrants, Lindiwe could begin to think in terms of improving her lot.

As part of her rent, Lindiwe also helped in the refugee centre’s administration. Her doctorate in biotechnology was evidence of significantly more advanced arithmetic skills than those she needed to maintain the centre’s accounts. The creaky old computer might not have the horsepower to handle the rendering requirements of modern VR or to seamlessly stream terabit data, but it was more than adequate for the task of adding figures together. The flow of income from fund-raising and charitable donations was always just about exactly the same as the outgoings and bore witness to the fact that Reverend Dawkins received no income at all from the enterprise.

Lindiwe helped in other tasks that were even further adrift of her postgraduate qualifications. She helped make the beds, scrub the floors, and even take care of refugees who were suffering from the final excruciating stages of radiation poisoning. Lindiwe’s heart brimmed over with agony as she watched the health of victims, often younger than her, steadily deteriorate from cancers that lacerated the flesh and devoured the internal organs.

“Would you like to work full time?” asked the reverend after only four months. “I’ve seen how much you do around the place. We need people who are capable and willing and, of course, who speak such excellent English.”

“What about my street-cleaning?” Lindiwe wondered.

“I’m sure there’s someone else who’ll be more than eager to take on that responsibility,” said the reverend. “You have skills and talents that are being wasted while you wander the streets of Reigate with a broom and plastic bag.”

There was of course no shortage of work required to administer the centre. This was partly because the dismemberment of the United Kingdom into three separate nations had been hasty and uncoordinated, leaving English accounting practices in a labyrinthine mess. Even so barely a tenth of Lindiwe’s time was spent maintaining the accounts. Her time was mostly dedicated to general caretaking jobs alongside a resident taskforce of willing but mostly terminally ill refugees. Amongst her duties was the care of the same refugees when their infirmity finally brought them down.

“How could those generals and politicians allow the bombing of Ashkhabad, Amritsar and Duachanbe?” commented Dr Abdullah, who was a refugee from Uzbekistan. “What was going through their minds when they condemned so many millions of people to a life of such misery?”

“They probably thought of the victims as corpses rather than survivors,” bitterly remarked Daniel, an Ethiopian doctor who nowadays most often worked as a nurse. “If a soldier earns a medal from killing just one enemy, think how many medals a general gets from killing millions with just a single bomb.”

“They knew the value of life, though,” said the doctor sarcastically. “Barely one single rouble. More than half the bombs used in both nuclear wars were neutron bombs. They killed people but left property standing. All the better for the looters once the background radiation had dissipated.”

As a Refugee Centre employee, Lindiwe was even invited to have dinner with the reverend and other favoured employees. The reverend shared the vicarage with Doris who was about the same age as her partner. She was employed by an international company that along with most such companies based in the City of London had radically scaled down its activities in the British Isles when the English National Unity government honoured its electoral pledge to leave the Northern European Union. She claimed that she was just working out her final years until retirement, although she also complained that her pension wasn’t going to be adequate.

“The Stock Exchange has had too many crises, shocks and falls for it to be worth much anymore,” she said while eating the vegetarian curry prepared by the centre’s cook. He was a refugee from Amritsar and a living witness to the ravages that persisted a quarter of a century after the city was engulfed by the century’s most famous mushroom cloud. His face was covered more by scar tissue than skin.

“It’s not all gloom and doom,” the reverend said cheerfully. “Things have improved a lot in this country in the last four years. They’ve at last started repairing the flood defences in East Anglia. They might even drain the swamps round Norwich and people will be able to get about without getting their feet wet. And they’re doing wonders with renewable energy.”

“There’s been too much damage done already to make any appreciable difference,” disagreed Doctor Abdullah who was also invited over for dinner. “You can’t reverse a four degree rise in global temperatures as easily as that.”

“You have to start somewhere,” said the reverend. “Now things are settling down in America, the Northern United States and the Western Union are doing something practical at last...”

“... while the Republic of North America still burns up what’s left of the world’s petroleum at heavily subsidised prices,” Doris disagreed.

“It’s something, nonetheless,” said the reverend. “Look at the strides that the world’s two leading economies, Japan and China, have made. They’ve taken up the slack in the space program after the former United States had to duck out. They’ve produced so many amazing scientific miracles. Robots that seem almost human. Advances in biotechnology. The research into nuclear fusion. They might even find a cure for cancer.”

“It all sounds good,” admitted the doctor, “but that’s not enough to address the real problems of the world.”

“And what are they?” asked the reverend.

“You know as well as I do,” said the doctor. “The environment is in crisis. Too many people and not enough resources. And where there is enough to go around, like in China, Japan and some parts of Europe, there isn’t the will or the wisdom to share it fairly.”

“He’s right, Diane,” said Doris. “It’s not looking good. And it’s the rich countries that are most at fault.”

The reverend smiled. “We can’t change the world alone, but I don’t believe that the Lord Jesus Christ would ever abandon His creation. I still hold firm that through the Love of Jesus Christ Our Lord, we will all be saved.”

“Amen,” said Doris.

Lindiwe wasn’t sure whether the reverend’s partner was being sincere, but her heart echoed the sentiment. Her own faith had been sorely tried by the journey from Lesotho and Reigate. Her body had been battered and fucked and buggered time and time again. Her genitals had been ravished by abuse and venereal disease. At last here in the refugee centre run by the good Reverend Diane Dawkins, Lindiwe’s faith in her God and the goodness of other people was once more restored.

XVII
Tamara
2093

Tamara studied the framed picture on the wall. It showed the image of a slightly tubby middle-aged woman which had been made to resemble a mediaeval Christian saint. She even had a halo around her forehead.

“Who’s this?” Tamara asked.

“It’s Saint Diane,” said Dahab. “She was the founder of the Reigate centre.”

“Is she a saint?” wondered Tamara. “The picture doesn’t look genuine.”

“It’s a picture that was composed on a computer,” Dahab explained. “We call her Saint Diane. I’m not a Christian so I don’t know if she’s been made a saint, but we call her one here.”

“I’m not a Christian, either,” said Tamara. “I don’t even know whether there are any Christians staying here. But I think there’s a quite convoluted process involved in becoming a saint. I don’t even know whether the Church of England has saints.”

“This is the church of St Mary Magdalene,” said Dahab. “It’s an Anglican church so I guess the Church of England does have saints.”

Although the Reigate Centre was just as packed out as the Broad Oak Refugee Camp, it was much better managed and the staff who worked there significantly more sympathetic to the plight of refugees and asylum seekers. Tamara was impressed by the difference a more efficient administration could make, especially since it was managed by people who’d originally arrived in England as refugees themselves.

Tamara was determined to make a positive contribution right from the start. That was partly because it was obvious that there were jobs that needed to be done that she could help do, but mostly it was because she desperately needed the distraction.

Tamara was more grief-stricken than she’d imagined possible when her mother died and her body was taken away for a proper Jewish funeral. This had to be in London as it was one of the few English cities where there was still a working synagogue. The fragile threads that had held Tamara’s family together during those months of travel across Europe finally snapped the moment her mother was buried. Her two brothers took the opportunity of the London excursion to slip away from the lax supervision and surrender their fortunes to the huge sprawling city. Those family members with which Tamara was left were only distantly relatives and quite capable of managing without her. For a while she believed she owed them an obligation but when she realised that they were eligible for more food and resources if they continued to claim for her two missing brothers and dead mother, Tamara decided that she could make a better contribution to their welfare if she also absconded.

Her family shed more tears for the departure of Tamara’s mother than they would for her. Perhaps they knew about her relationship with Bilal who, in any case, had been transferred to a refugee camp in the North of England where there was an urgent requirement for cheap labour to help shore up the collapsing flood defences. Tamara was now alone, wretched and grieving in South London, but at least she no longer had to share a mattress with two brothers, a distant cousin from what had once been Tel Aviv and an uncle who farted most of the night.

For the first few nights, Tamara wasn’t so sure that her decision to leave was such a good one. Her only possessions were the clothes she wore, a backpack full of underwear and the all-important documentation that included a passport to a no longer functioning nation. She mingled with the countless unfortunates begging on Croydon’s cratered streets. She ate soup that was doled out by makeshift soup kitchens and slept in the doorways of boarded-up shops. By chance, she heard of another refugee centre in Reigate that might be able to help her if she was willing to work there for no pay. Tamara’s main concerns were food and sleep rather than money, so she walked the twenty kilometres or more across the suburban sprawl and decaying slums to Reigate.

South London had suffered badly from generations of neglect. The wealthy lived in gated communities or along well-appointed avenues guarded at both ends by private security guards. The less privileged lived in overcrowded and rotting houses. Many were refugees who’d migrated not from distant war-torn or famine-struck foreign countries but from the hinterland of the River Thames that had finally been overwhelmed by the rising tide. The traffic in South London’s congested roads was a miscellaneous assortment of electric cars and buses, bicycle-driven vehicles and even make-shift carts pulled by donkeys and mules.

Reigate was beyond a ridge of hills and thus relatively safe from flooding. It wasn’t so secure from London’s suburban sprawl that stretched unbroken along the A23. Why, wondered Tamara, would the Reigate Centre give her shelter when it was denied by so many other places?

“We just don’t like turning people away,” said Mehmed when she asked why she’d been so lucky. “In any case, it would seem especially heartless to turn away a person who’s just lost her mother and is sleeping on the streets. There’s also the fact that you’re Jewish and a woman.”

“What difference does that make?”

“There’s a great deal of prejudice against Jews these days,” said Mehmed, “particularly in my community.”

“Your community?”

“The Muslim community. It can be very vicious. Many blame Israel for all the misery that’s blighted the Middle East. And many don’t distinguish between the government of Israel and its citizens.”

“And also for being a woman? Can’t I look after myself as well as a man?”

“I don’t mean to appear sexist,” said Mehmed. “One of the few professions flourishing at the moment is prostitution. Women like you, especially young and pretty ones, are immediate candidates for exploitation. It mightn’t be too long until you became just another one of the wretched souls on Bell Street and Reigate Road.”

Tamara wasn’t going to complain too much about receiving preferential treatment, but she guessed that it was because Mehmed was a father of two teenage girls that he showed such compassion.

She also wondered whether Mehmed would be so sympathetic if he knew that she’d already succumbed to the temptation of selling her body, even though it was more to get favour than a steady source of income. It was true that she’d rather never have to do so again but Tamara was aware that it was an option still available to her.

Many of the refugees in the Reigate Centre were radiation and burns victims from the Middle East War even after the two decades since it had happened. There were more Muslims than Jews, but that just reflected the proportion of victims. Inevitably, Tamara’s sympathy was directed mostly towards her fellow Jews, however much she tried to be impartial.

“I’d be dead if it wasn’t for this centre,” said Daniella, a middle-aged woman whose skin was still blackened and sore after all the intervening years. “When the bomb dropped in Tel Aviv everything that I’d lived for, saved for and believed in came to an end. My children. My husband. My parents. If I’d been standing on the other side of the municipal offices I’d have been incinerated along with everyone else.”

“It’s a long way from Tel Aviv to Reigate,” Tamara remarked.

“Aid agencies and governments were more helpful in those days,” said Daniella. “There were fewer problems in the world, so resources went a lot further.”

Tamara helped the nurses take Daniella’s bandages off and put new ones on. She grimaced in sympathy with her patient when she winced from the pain on skin that was tender and still not healed.

“The radiation doesn’t help,” said Fatima, a nurse who also worked for no pay at the centre. “She’s got melanomas speckled amongst the scars. I guess it’s just a matter of time.”

“What happened to most of the victims?” Tamara wondered.

“You mean the original victims of war, as opposed to the displaced like you? Most are dead of course. And most of those died within a week or so of arriving here. An ambulance would arrive at the front entrance and a hearse would leave from the back. We thought Daniella would be one of those, but she’s made from stronger stuff than most.”

“Do you still keep the faith, dear?” asked Daniella when her bandages were replaced and she was able to sit up on her bed.

“Well, yes,” said Tamara. “I don’t go to the synagogue because the nearest one is too far away, but I try to observe the Sabbath. It’s difficult to be dutiful in this country.”

“I’m sure it is, dear,” agreed Daniella. “I think I’ve lost my faith.”

“Lost it?”

“I don’t think I believe any longer,” she elaborated. “Not in a Jewish god. Not in a Christian god. And most certainly not a Muslim or Hindu god. If there was a God of the Jews then why has he forsaken us?”

“He hasn’t forsaken us,” said Tamara. “He has a contract with His people that will never be broken.”

“Except by nuclear fission,” suggested Daniella. “The Jewish people have suffered like no other. Time and again we’ve been banished from the Holy Land. Our people have been exiled to Egypt and to Babylon. Our temple in Jerusalem has been destroyed by Roman sword and Iranian missile. Our people have been scattered throughout Europe and North Africa first because of our ancestors’ admirable refusal to convert to other religions and now through the foolishness of the leaders we chose for ourselves. Indeed, through the stupidity of Likud: the party my family and I loyally supported for generations. And where is Likud now? What value is a settlement policy in a land of radioactivity and ruin? Only the truly mad would choose to settle on lands that will be scarred for a thousand years.”

“Israel isn’t a place,” said Tamara. “It beats in the heart of every living Jew. And we are not forsaken. We must learn from the sufferings of Job...”

“I admire your faith, dear,” said Daniella. “But where has it brought us? Job’s sufferings were not one iota of that suffered by the Jews in the Nazi concentration camps. Job never suffered from radiation poisoning and incurable cancer. In any case, most of Job’s suffering was endured by his family. What are the few boils he was cursed with compared to what I have to put up with. Do you really believe the answer is to shave our head and strip ourselves of our clothes?”

Tamara was troubled by Daniella’s rejection of faith, but there was no rabbi within twenty kilometres she could turn to for advice. She could refer to the internet, of course, but only during those hours of the day when the power was on. Most of the advice given by the online rabbis was either bland or hysterical. There were few Jews in the new Diaspora who didn’t blame their predicament on a combination of Islamic malice and Western indifference.

She wondered whether she could talk to the vicar who was now serving the Church of St Mary Magdalene, but he split the time he spent in the parish with many other churches scattered about Surrey and took very little interest in the Reigate Centre. In fact, he was rather embarrassed about it. If it hadn’t been associated with a trust in the names of Diane and Doris Dawkins, it would have been closed down when its founders died.

In any case, how could a Christian give advice on matters of the Jewish faith?

“It’s the Americans fault,” said Menachem, another refugee. He had lost the sight of both his eyes along with all his hair and much of his nose in the catastrophic blast over Haifa. “If their nation hadn’t fallen apart they would have protected us from the Islamic infidel. They were bold with rhetoric, especially in the fundamentalist Southern States, but weren’t ready to back their words with muscle.”

“They were worried that there might be another Civil War in the United States,” said Tamara in America’s defence. “If nuclear weapons had got involved then...”

“I don’t care what the quarrelsome American states do to one another,” said Menachem. “They’re probably better off as they are anyway. And would the world really be that much worse off if the Yankees had been wiped off the face of the Earth? But what happened to Jerusalem is unforgivable!”

XVIII
Alex
2025

It was a long train ride from Rickmansworth to Reigate, but for Alex it was worth the effort. In any case, the travel time had been reduced to rather less than an hour since the new railway line from his Docklands office has been opened. He could work late, which for form’s sake was increasingly often since he’d been promoted to management, and still arrive at Diane’s one bedroom flat before dark.

Diane provided probably the best fun Alex had ever had with an internet date. She was amusing. She was good conversation. She was sexy. And she was wonderfully passionate between the sheets.

But there was a reason why she’d advertised her availability on the internet even though she was still in her twenties and four years younger than Alex. And that, despite a regime of several diets and regular exercise, was because she was undeniably plump.

Now she was discussing her plans about changing career. Marketing was no longer the vocation for her she once thought it was.

But a career in the church?

“Relax,” said Diane as she pecked Alex affectionately on the cheek. “We can still have sex.”

“But with a vicar?” said Alex. “That can’t be right.”

“It’s the Church of England, silly,” Diane laughed. “I’m not going to be a nun.”

“Can vicars have sex?”

“Why not?” said Diane. “It’s not illegal, is it?”

Nevertheless, Alex wouldn’t let the subtleties of religious doctrine interfere with a good story. He was happy to announce on his fourth pint in the Archbishop Williams that he was fucking a nun.

“A nun!” exclaimed Dave, who worked in accounts. “That’s fucking insane, man. Nuns don’t fuck.”

“Well, she’s not a nun exactly,” Alex clarified. “She’s applying to be a vicar.”

“That’s the same thing, innit?” suggested Eddie, a big bearded guy with a management role in HR. “Vicars. Nuns.”

“Vicars can fuck,” assured Terry. “It’s just that most vicars aren’t chicks.”

“Don’t be so sure about that,” said Dave. “I’ve heard that’s not true any longer. More women than men work as vicars these days. We’ll have a fucking woman archbishop next...”

“Then the pope’ll be a chick too,” said Eddie. “Only popes can never fuck. Not legally, anyway.”

“We need Larry from Religious Affairs to sort us out on all this,” Alex joked.

“Don’t be a twat,” said Eddie. “He’s some kind of Muslim or Sikh or something. Anyway, he never drinks. Whatever religion he belongs to, it’s against drinking. But still, Alex, your vicar girlfriend sounds better than the last one. She was a fucking farmer’s daughter...”

“She’s probably gone back to sucking donkey’s dicks,” sniggered Dave. “Does this nun of yours pray before she fucks?”

“Vicar,” corrected Alex. “No, I don’t think so.”

“Perhaps she’ll dump you, so she can stick a crucifix up her twat,” suggested Eddie.

“You’ve seen too many perv pornos, man,” said Terry.

“How do you know what they show?” wondered Eddie. “Anyway, it’s fucking common knowledge. It’s all that sexual frustration, innit?”

Alex enjoyed a good laugh with his mates after work. These days, he had no anxiety about getting a phone call from Gabby demanding his immediate presence. Diane wasn’t as experienced or as sexually adventurous, but she compensated for it by the extent of her devotion. Alex wasn’t sure he could ever confess to his workmates that he’d met her through a dating website or that she was somewhat overweight. Well, she wasn’t obese as such. She didn’t have those horrible saggy folds that some women had. And, anyway, more and more women—and men—were overweight these days. Alex sometimes worried about the stomach bulge over his own belt. Being overweight wasn’t such a big deal. After all, Diane wasn’t as bad as Eddie’s wife. She was so obese that Alex wondered about the physical obstacles the couple had to overcome to have sex. Online porn gave helpful advice on this aspect of sex as it did so many other critical questions of the human condition, but it still didn’t tempt Alex to seek out Eddie’s wife and give it a try himself.

Alex was well suited to life in middle management. He knew he was never going to become a great journalist, even of something as lightweight as VR. He struggled so hard to say anything interesting or enlightening about the virtual world. It was considerably more trivial than television and its content was becoming ever more narrow as the online community ossified around what it was already comfortable with. Even VR porn, on which he was an entirely unacknowledged expert, had become ever less interesting. Perhaps there would be a day when VR rendering was less blocky, when the exasperating  jerkiness didn’t interfere with rapid scene changes, and when VR entertainment wasn’t so slavishly derivative of things that had come before, such as porno movies, gaming, blogs and social network sites. When that day came, transistors would be using graphene rather than silicon, quantum computing would be used for other things than performing calculations on remote servers, and the gear he’d have to clamber into would be more comfortable than the stuff he had to use these days.

The path to being a successful manager at Reuters-Fox was mostly about anticipating the right impression to make to the right people. As long as business affairs were kept in some kind of order and the right numbers were entered into the spreadsheets, Alex’s job was mostly measured by his ability to be witty and unthreatening at meetings, to be willing to do stupid overtime even when it wasn’t needed, and to be good company in the pub. You didn’t get anywhere in Reuters-Fox if you weren’t a team-player and didn’t have the right attitude.

“You ever thought of moving on from website management?” wondered his line manager, Dick, one day as they stood by the water cooler.

Alex wondered whether this was a trap. If he showed anything less than one hundred and ten percent commitment to the website division, this might be evidence that a more dedicated man or woman should take his place. Perhaps someone like that bitch Fatima whose choice of skirt and blouse was disarmingly revealing. On the other hand, Alex didn’t want to be perceived as a man without ambition.

“Only if the right opportunity comes up and I’m the right man for the job,” said Alex. “Why? Is there something in the offing?”

“I don’t know about that,” said Dick. “ITN’s not been doing so well recently. A merger of the news operations might be on the cards. It’s only talk, mind you.”

“Reuters-Fox-ITN?” Alex speculated.

“I doubt it,” said Dick. “We’ll cherry-pick the best and flog the rest. Take out the opposition and strip them of their assets. But there’ll be some growth opportunities for us, I guess. Then there’d be only the pinko BBC to worry about.”

Alex noticed no evidence of merger activity after this brief chat, though he now kept a closer eye on news stories about the venerable Independent Television News organisation. Advertising revenue was declining and aggregated news was very much the trend. Any organisation that employed foreign correspondents and featured original news content was at a disadvantage when the most important asset was timely, glossy and instant news coverage. It was a race between news companies in which the winners was the one whose cameras were first at a riot, whose spokespersons were the first to stand knee-deep in flood waters, whose correspondent was first parachuted down into a war zone, and whose paparazzi got the most explicit footage of a film star’s love life.

“I’m not sure I like how the news media is so much more focussed on attracting advertising revenue than it is on providing objective news,” mused Diane in her bed, on which were strewn pillows, fluffy toys and her own smooth bulging body.

Alex continued to stroke her buttocks while she reciprocated by pecking him gently around the crotch.

“Fair and Balanced is Reuters-Fox’s watchword,” he said.

“Not Truthful and Objective I note,” Diane responded. “When I go to a news website I want to find out what’s going on in the world. I don’t want to be distracted by news stories about the latest pop star scandal.”

“It’s what the public wants.”

“That’s not good enough,” said Diane with a frown. “The media should be more ethical than that. There are too many major stories hidden behind dross. And it’s not just your employers, of course, though they must be amongst the worst. Where are the headlines about the droughts in Africa? What about the dispute over water resources in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh? What about the flooding on the Pacific islands? You hardly hear a thing about the wars in Senegal, Mozambique, Colombia or Nepal.”

“We’d be out of business if we didn’t give people what they wanted.”

“That’s just turning the argument upside down. Surely being informed is what people want when they go to a news website.”

“I’m not sure it is,” Alex admitted.

“And you think that’s how it should be?”

“Not really. It’s just how it is.”

Diane sighed. She rolled her body round and let Alex slip an arm behind her shoulders. “I often think you’re too accepting of how things are,” she told him. “What’s important is not that, but what we should do to make things better.”

“Is that why you want to be a vicar?” wondered Alex.

“That’s a motivation for sure but if that was the only thing then I’d do better to work for a charity. Or, at a pinch, a political party. There are other things vicars do besides campaign to help starving people in Africa and Asia. There’s the matter of believing in God and choosing to work as a shepherd to His flock. You and I, we never talk about religion, I know, but it’s a pretty important thing for me.”

“Well, I know you go to church every Sunday,” said Alex, who’d never much enjoyed this disruption to the weekend when he stayed over at Diane’s studio bedsit.

“So, what do you do that makes the world a better place?” wondered Diane with what Alex felt was more than a hint of accusation.

“Not as much as you,” Alex replied diplomatically.

“You don’t do anything at all,” said Diane rather more firmly. “I honestly wonder why we even have a relationship at all.”

Alex could see this threat to his comfortable status quo was one that he had to address, but it was also one that he was already aware of. He sometimes felt uncomfortable with her just as he once used to be with Betty and never once with his workmates. Why should he ever need to justify himself? It wasn’t as if he ever did anything bad. He wasn’t the one pumping oil and methane up from the ocean floor. He wasn’t the one exploiting the poor and downtrodden of the world. He wasn’t the one digging in his feet with regards to policies to implement low carbon options in energy and transport. Why should he get the blame? After all, the worst he ever did was vote Conservative at the general elections and that was more because he was fed up with paying so much of his income as tax than from any desire to support the rich and trample down the poor.

“The reason we have a relationship, sweetheart,” said Alex as he stroked his finger over Diane’s still moist labia, “is this.”

“I guess you’re right,” said Diane with an indulgent smile.

XIX
Eric Esterhazy MP
2045

Eric was infuriated. The Prime Minister had just humiliated him in front of the whole Cabinet. What kind of a woman was she? An out and out bitch, that’s what.

Moreover, it wasn’t as if he could defend himself by claiming that he’d been misquoted since his words had been broadcast live on national television. On Fox News UK, naturally.

“I got a little carried away,” Eric told the Prime Minister. “Of course, I didn’t mean to say that Muslims from Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan should migrate to Mecca if the situation got much worse. I was merely trying to suggest that the Islamic community already have a good system for handling the refugee problem should the war get much worse.”

“It’s a very delicate matter, Eric,” said Dominic, the Foreign Secretary. “There’s a huge arsenal of nuclear weapons in the region. The Iranians, the Russians, the Ukrainians and some of the Stans themselves: it’s a tinderbox. The last thing we want is for the Minister for Housing and Urban Regeneration to make any ill-advised remarks. Thankfully, only the pinko newspapers and the BBC have picked up on it. With luck, it’ll just fizzle out. But this isn’t the time to exacerbate a tense situation.”

“I agree with the Prime Minister,” said Ivan Eisenegger, the Minister for Education and Welfare. “It’s not only international opinion we have to handle with care. British Muslims of all ethnic origins expect constructive and sensitive diplomacy from the government with regards to our dealings with the belligerent nations. As far as the British government is concerned, the conflict isn’t about religion. Nor even about culture. If anything, it has far more to do with water and oil.”

When did Ivan ever disagree with the Prime Minister? And yet in private Ivan’s views were, if anything, rather more robust than Eric’s although he was noticeably reluctant about voicing them on Fox News UK. If Ivan had chosen to say in front of the television camera half of what he said to Eric in private then he’d fit right in. But Ivan’s ambitions seemed set on a more distant goal than the Housing Minister’s.

Eric, on the other hand, was the member of the Cabinet who appeared most often on television. Fox News UK knew he could always be relied on to express what the network considered to be the moderate side on any matter of national debate. Yes, the issue of immigration was becoming ever more worrying but there should be no discrimination against UK citizens of any complexion. Yes, there was evidence of climate change, despite the recent cold winter, but Eric wasn’t convinced that the blame could be entirely attributed to the aviation and automobile industries. Yes, flood defences were ineffective and the catastrophic flooding of East Anglia and Southend and the number of lives lost was tragic, but we must remember the high cost of dealing with the problem and the fact that there are other more pressing issues. Yes, military defence was an ever-increasing burden on the UK’s shrinking GNP and the arms were mostly bought from China and Russia, but a strong nation needed strong defence. Yes, Eric was speechless with disgust at the recent revelations regarding the crimes committed by paedophile and prostitution rings operating in the Southern Counties. Eric Esterhazy was the man Fox News UK liked to parade on the screen when an unerringly conservative opinion needed to be phrased with both reassuring sympathy and apparent authority.

Eric did very well out of this arrangement. The fees for appearing on television were undeniably generous. There were also the proceeds from the newspaper articles that he dashed off for the affiliated newspapers and websites. He was now one of the country’s most well-known politicians and his wife and family were very proud of him. Even his constituents were starstruck by the Surrey MP who was more often seen on television than he ever was in Reigate.

“I’m worried, Eddie,” Eric confessed to the Director of News and Opinion when he was next at the Fox News UK studio. “The Prime Minister called me out in front of the whole Cabinet regarding my unguarded remarks about the ’Stani ragheads. I think I might be treading on thin ice.”

“The bitch!” said Eddie as he patted his good friend on the back. “After all you’ve done. What do you suggest we do?”

“What do you think the boss would say?”

Eddie mused about that. “I could ring America and find out, but I don’t think he’d appreciate that. My guess is that he’d recommended you cool it. You’re our man in the Cabinet. We can lean on the Prime Minister, but she has to kowtow to the pinkos in the coalition. You’re a reliable man, but there’s not a lot that a Minister of slums and slum clearance can do. Your path to promotion is off-limits unless we can get some shit to stick to that liberal pinko in Number Eleven. We’ll keep you well away from discussions relating to immigration and foreign policy. That way you won’t put your foot in it again.”

“It was a simple mistake, Eddie.”

“We don’t mind ex-ministers, bloggers and talk show hosts coming on a bit strong, but a Cabinet Minister has got to be much more wishy-washy. We don’t want the coalition to collapse. And most of all we don’t want to let the red scum and their slimy green allies into government. That would be a fucking disaster. I’ll have to think about it, but in the meantime what we’ll try and do is position you more as an expert on business and the economy. Do you know much about that kind of stuff?”

“My degree’s in Classical History,” said Eric.

“And you didn’t even get a first, you wanker,” laughed Eddie. “Too busy chasing skirt I guess.”

“I was active in the National Union of Students.”

“Yeah. That was when there was such a thing. You did well enough to get to be Union President or something, didn’t you? But at the moment, it’s Economics I reckon you should be boning up on. I take it you’re numerate?”

“Numerate, Eddie?” said Eric, affronted. “Yes, I can do arithmetic.”

“As long as you don’t make the same bloopers that other politicians do when they calculate compound interest or when they misunderstand statistics and probability then we can get you on a few business discussion programs. I also take it you’re fully cognisant of your government’s rather feeble economic policies, Eric?”

“They’ve not changed for over half a century, have they?” said Eric. “Lower taxes. Cuts in Public Spending. Incentives for Business. Target the workshy and encourage the wealthmakers.”

“Well, yes, Eric. The policies remain the same, but the words we use to express conservative economic theory have to change with the times. If it sounds like a broken record then there are plenty of liberal media twats who’ll jump on what a minister says and point out where this or that economic theory hasn’t worked in the past. You need to sound bold, adventurous and modern. I think we can get our business guys to ply you with a few links to websites that can give you the concepts and the jargon you need. The conservative agenda will never go forward if it sounds like it’s standing still or even going back. It’s a step by step process. Look at the success we’ve had in America.”

“I just hope those pinko Northern and Western States don’t fuck it up.”

“There’s no way the GOP will ever relinquish its grip on the White House and both houses on the Hill,” said Eddie. “It’s locked in place. The conservative agenda is fully on track. And there’s still a way to go. The tax burden is still unfairly distributed. The blue-collar scum should have to pay for the services they get from out of their own pocket. It’s not the responsibility of those who’ve worked hard to get to the top to subsidise the skivers, the dropouts and the Mexican immigrants. There’s too much laxity shown towards troublemakers like the eco-warriors, the multiculturalists and the socialists who want to reintroduce healthcare.”

“You don’t think the rebel states will carry out their threats?”

“What? Rerun the American Civil War in reverse? Have the Northern Pinko states and the Western Green ones secede from the Strictly Red ones that make up the majority of the United States? Believe me, it’s different these days. The power isn’t with the tree-huggers and the bleeding hearts. It’s an alliance of Wall Street, the hicks and God All Mighty. Or at least the God who hates abortionists and smites all those who are insufficiently patriotic.”

“And how’s the conservative agenda going to advance in the UK, Eddie?” wondered Eric.

“I don’t know. I’m not a fucking strategist. It’s going to be through a combination of fear, greed and the ballot box, I guess. As always. Voters never want to give up on a tax-break. Voters don’t want foreigners to take their jobs. They don’t want to be told what kind of car to buy or what to eat. When it comes to the General Election the electorate always vote according to what it believes is its self-interest. It’s up to us and you in particular, Eric, to convince the couch-potatoes that their self-interest is best served by the Conservative Agenda.”

“And is it?”

“Of course it fucking is. You’re a Conservative. What’s good for the United Kingdom and the world is what’s good for business and the patriotic Englishman.”

“Englishman?”

“Scotsman. Welshman. Brit. You know.”

Eric returned by taxi to his plush London apartment in Mayfair that had been bestowed on him through the generosity of Fox News UK and its parent corporation. He only occasionally returned to his constituency and then mostly to reassure his wife that he still cared for her and his two daughters. Eric knew that the two greatest threats to his ascendency was an image that was less than squeaky-clean and a performance as government minister that was less than merely competent. The success of his career as a minister was generally achieved by delegating as much responsibility as he could to civil servants who implemented what was, in actual fact, a relatively liberal housing policy in the face of ever stringent government cuts. His image was kept clean by the traditional means of maintaining absolute discretion and of making frequent phone calls to the wife.

Part of that discretion, of course, was the result of him owning two London apartments. One of these was rather modest and located in Clapham. This was an apartment he only ever visited for the benefit of cameramen who wanted to photograph him going to and returning from his ministerial office. The one in Mayfair was where he could do whatever he liked. No one knew he lived there apart from the Fox News UK Accounts Department. 

What he decided he would like to do tonight was savour the amorous company of Edwina, a short large-breasted black woman whose real name sounded nothing like the name she used and who once confessed that she’d been a qualified architect in whatever godforsaken African slum she’d originally come from.

Eric loved to squirt his semen into her mouth and slap his penis back and forth, up and down, on her thick-lipped face while mascara slipped down her cheeks and her nostrils snorted out bubbles of viscous pale fluid. He loved to hold the uncelebrated architect down on the bed while he thrust into the tight anal orifice between her huge buttocks. He loved to hear her cries for mercy (how fabricated Eric neither knew nor cared) when he slapped her with a cane on the buttocks which for him was the real source of her attraction.

It wasn’t her sparkling intelligence or ready wit which she demonstrated so well when they slumped naked on the bed with the television on, more often tuned to the BBC Parliament channel than anything else. Nor her slightly accented speech from which came substantially more eloquence than anything that emerged from his daughters’ lips when they discussed whatever shit pop group or teen flick that was currently attracting their attention. Nor anything about her other than her talent at being fucked, taking it in the arse and begging for more. And all paid for by private accounts hidden from both parliamentary scrutiny and the tax man.

God Bless Fox News UK, said Eric to himself, as he fucked Edwina deep down her throat so that she would choke up not just saliva but often whatever she’d been eating earlier that day.

Perhaps Eric did value the fact that this black woman who could fuck so well was also so well educated. It appealed to him that he could exercise the power he relentlessly pursued in a fashion that would so literally humiliate the real life target of his verbal attacks on illegal immigration and women’s rights.

If only he could do to the Prime Minister what he was now doing to Edwina. That would show the bitch. The Prime Minister was nowhere near as buxom, of course. In any case the cow was probably twice the black whore’s age. But that wouldn’t lessen the pleasure he’d get from pissing on the Premier and allowing the urine to trickle into her mouth, onto her prissy silk blouse and over her flat chest.

But would Eric ever get an opportunity to fulfil his ambition to befoul the leader of the Conservative Party? This could only be achieved if he followed the wishes of his boss in America and became an expert on the Conservative Economic Agenda. And then the trickle that would come down on the masses would be as smelly and yellow as that which he normally splattered over Edwina just when she thought that this time she might be spared that particular ordeal.

XX
Psychlone
2106

“Eric Esterhazy is a cunt.”

Psychlone, or Simon as he was still known to his mother or Psy as his friends called him, liked the lyric’s essential message, but it raised a host of obvious issues. If he incorporated the phrase into his next release, would anyone even know who Eric Esterhazy was? If it hadn’t been for his Second Class degree in Political History, Psychlone probably wouldn’t have known either.

It was only five years since he’d been an undergraduate at the University of Extern when he was equally well known as either Simon or Pothead. The nickname was a reference to two facts about him at the time of which one was that his surname was Potter. So, despite being screwed every month since graduation for interest repayment on his student fees, his three years at university couldn’t be totally wasted if he could use the name of an obscure mid-century politician in a lyric. All listeners needed to know was that Eric Esterhazy was one of that shady group of wankers who’d formed the English National Unity government and in the process fucked up the country and what little was left of its international reputation.

The single line left Psychlone with another rather more intractable problem. What word rhymed with ‘cunt’? He couldn’t use ‘National Front’ although that was the first rhyme that sprung to Psychlone’s mind. Associating the National Front’ with Eric Esterhazy and the mid-twentieth century Conservative Party would be both inaccurate and unnecessarily obscure. Who knew enough about the history of English politics to understand the reference? There was probably a better rhyme to use. Something pithy. Something witty. Or perhaps he should use a different word to describe the former Chancellor of the Exchequer? Then again, ‘cunt’, unlike ‘bastard’, ‘motherfucker’ or ‘arsehole’, possessed exactly the degree of contempt that Psychlone wished to express.

When his lyric was conveyed from his laptop along with the software-generated symphonic orchestration to his hundreds of millions of downloaders, he knew that a little word like that could propel it into the international chart of the top one hundred tunes for that particular week. And the more downloads the greater the trickle of revenue into his credit account. A million hits translated into a million English pounds. And that would be enough to just about cover a week’s rent for his crappy squalid studio apartment in Exeter with a bit left over for a take-away pizza or curry. He needed a few hundred million downloads a month just to finance his repayment on student loans and his dope habit.

Despite having gained an Upper Second in Political History, Psychlone still wasn’t entirely sure where his political allegiance lay. That complicated matters for him. Most people held a one-dimensional view of politics, just as they held a one-dimensional view of religion, the environment or nuclear warfare. It was easy to say, for instance, that the continued mining for oil in the Antarctic was bad because it would accelerate the already alarming collapse of the glaciers that covered the continent. It was easy to say that the increased expenditure on nuclear warheads by the various belligerent nations was a bad idea. But when looked at it other angles, the same issues seemed much more multifaceted and far more intractable to resolve. Although petroleum was now an impossibly expensive fuel, it was still required by the plastics industry. What could people afford to sit on if there wasn’t plastic furniture given that the cost of wooden furniture was beyond the reach of most people’s pockets? And when a nation such as England and its allies in India, the Republic of North America and the Mediterranean Economic Union were confronted with nuclear weapons on their borders with Northern Europe, China and the Northern United States, what good was it to be neutral like Russia and the United States of South Africa? What was the right thing to do when a gun is pressed against your forehead?

And so too with politics...

It was easy to say that Eric Esterhazy and Ivan Eisenegger and the rest of the Government for National Unity were reactionary shits whose longest lasting contribution to the United Kingdom was to pull it apart. Their actions were understandable given the tension of the times and the overweening power of the right-wing news media. It might seem quaint today now that the media had become essentially impotent and the right-wing resurgence of the early twenty-first century had collapsed into a miasma of its own making, but at the time it was a message with genuine electoral appeal. Many people genuinely believed the nonsense spewed out by the media. It was just a shame that what would be merely diversionary to the general thrust of change—like fascism in the twentieth century and the counter-reformation in the sixteenth century—had a greater impact when its actual result was to cripple the necessary political will to tackle the real problems in the world just as the window of opportunity of doing so effectively was steadily slipping away.

But you can’t get all that in a five minute dance number.

Psychlone was one of the top hundred or so dance producers in the world. His music was rocking the decks from Lhasa to Reykjavik, from Pyongyang to Sao Paolo, and from Exeter where it was produced to Beijing where his revenue stream was calculated, subdivided and redistributed. It might be pitifully small but at least Psychlone was able to make a living from his art. It was all conceived and generated on his laptop where only thirty years before the sounds he created would have taken the resources of the world’s best recording studios (when such things existed). These same compositions were distributed to the usual outlets from which they were downloaded and eventually caned on the world’s best dance floors.

Psychlone was often asked about his musical influences in the frequent web interviews he had to give. It was a crap question because after two centuries of recorded music and a century and a half of electronic dance music there were so many of them. Was it dubstep, techno, reggae, bongo or epsilon that influenced him the most? Psychlone soon learnt that the best responses weren’t the truthful or reflective ones that addressed the complex legacy but those that best pandered to current fashions. The real man behind the Psychlone pseudonym had to feed the electricity meter and keep his laptop running on batteries during the frequent power cuts. At the moment the fashion was for a soulful, bass-heavy beat with multiple cut-ups and a disorienting dance step so he could claim that his primary source was fractured dubstep, although Psychlone also listened to Shostakovich, Ligeti and Reich.

“You think too fucking much, Psy,” said Ellen, Psychlone’s long-suffering girlfriend. “What does it fucking matter what your influences are?”

She was sitting on the battered mattress the couple had bought second-hand from the market despite the presence of a prominent brown stain. She was skinning up a spliff stuffed with sawdust since cigarette tobacco was many times more expensive than its chief ingredient. Psychlone had only moments before finished his online interview with a Los Angeles DJ from the Western Union who’d been enthusiastically dropping the latest Psychlone number. This was a mellow tune influenced by the music of Joe Zawinul and Flying Lotus.

“I dunno,” said Psychlone. “I’m an influence myself, you know. I kinda feel responsible. There are guys all over the planet that listen to me on webcasts. I mean, it’s fucking LA today. They’re the good guys. They play the good stuff and they’ve got the world’s best fucking weed. And then I might give an interview to some schmuck from Houston or a DJ from Casablanca, you know, in the fucking Mediterranean Economic Union. And they’re like the bad guys. They’re the ones whose governments put a ban on every fucking thing except stuff like dance music and quiz shows, Shouldn’t I be doing a bit more than saying I dig these hundred year old MP3s from Croydon? Shouldn’t I be doing a bit more?”

“Fuck, Psy,” said Ellen passing over the spliff. “Just take a toke and fucking shut up, man.”

Psychlone took a hit or two and handed it back. He let the fumes fill his lungs and listlessly watched the bluish smoke billow out from his nostrils.

“It’s fucking tense, you know,” said Psychlone. “It’s more fucking tense than it’s been since the cold war.”

“Cold war?” wondered Ellen. “What the fuck’s that? Some kind of ice cream franchise quarrel.”

“Cold war. Late twentieth century. The whole world was split between the Soviet Union and the United States of America. They had missiles pointing at each other. It could have been curtains.”

“Yeah,” admitted Ellen. “I heard something about that. Didn’t come to fuckall in the end. The Soviet Union disintegrated because no one believed in it any more. The United States disintegrated because the states in the North and West got pissed off with how the wingnuts in the Republican states were fucking them over. Though the nuclear warheads didn’t go away.”

“Yeah,” said Psychlone. “They’re still around. They’re just pointing in different directions.”

“So what you working on at the moment, Psy?” Ellen wondered to steer the conversation to a different direction.

“It’s something political,” said Psychlone. “It’s to do with the English National Unity Government.”

“What the fuck?” Ellen said in despair. “Don’t you ever give up? Who fucking cares what happened half a century ago? It was a fuck up from beginning to end. People want to dance to your music. They don’t want to be preached to.”

“Yeah. But where’s the stuff that does the preaching these days?”

“Fuck knows. Wherever it is, no one’s actually listening to it.”

“Yeah. I guess you’re right.”

Psychlone put his headphones back on and continued working on his number. Perhaps the lyric would have to go. Maybe he could dispense with lyrics altogether. They were always a drag and Ellen was dead right when she said that people didn’t really listen to them. On the other hand, if he could just put together some words that captured the anger and frustration he felt then he was sure his music would grab the attention of a few more people, get more downloads and then maybe help pay off a bit more of his student loans. Perhaps he should try something that related to events in people’s actual lives.

“What about if I put down some lyrics about power cuts or the battery shops being fresh out of juice or the broadband transmitters getting fucked up?” he asked Ellen.

“You what?”

“You know: if I put in lyrics about stuff that really pisses people off.”

“Is that what pisses you off most?” wondered Ellen who passed the spliff to Psychlone so he could take a few more tokes. “Not when there’s a dope famine or something like that?”

“When’s that ever happened?”

“Not in my lifetime,” admitted Ellen. “But it could, couldn’t it?”

“Yeah, but I want a lyric that’s something people can relate to. You know something like: ‘My battery’s flat. Lord knows, but my battery’s gone flat.’ It could be called something like My Battery Blues...”

“It could be, but you’d need a wicked beat for it not to sound real naff. Something that doesn’t make it sound like you’re just whining.”

“What’s wrong with whining? It’s not like I can write about being blown up by a nuclear warhead. Or left starving in the streets. Or being drowned. But people do get pissed off and whining is exactly what they do.”

“Fuck, Psy. You wanna do something political then do something political. Just don’t expect me to have an opinion. When I go dancing it’s to get away from all the shit. I don’t wanna be wallowing in it. Lighten up.”

“I dunno,” said Psychlone. “I was just trying to put something together. The last tune went down real well. It got some real good reviews on the blogs and there was a real buzz. I just want to capitalise on it.”

“What you need is a blowjob, you sad fuck.”

“You think so?”

“Just a moment,” said Ellen who breathed in a lungful off her spliff that burnt the paper right down to the roach. She shook her head as the smoke wafted round her lungs and stubbed out what was left in the ashtray.

She then pulled off the tee-shirt which had covered her small perky breasts and swaggered over to Psychlone wearing nothing more than a pair of white panties and plastic sandals. She threw the tee-shirt to one side with the logo advertising Pepsi-Coke Fizzy Cola prominently displayed on the back of the chair where it fell.

“Out with your dick, DJ Psychlone!” she commanded as she knelt in front of her boyfriend’s bulging crotch. “I know just what you need to cheer you up.”

XXI
Iris
2053

Iris wasn’t a girl who’d normally be described as someone with a nuanced understanding of politics even by those who she lived with. Her opinions on almost everything closely conformed to those of her friends and colleagues, and if she would ever join a debate regarding the limits of political freedom, the nature of democracy or what provided a government with legitimacy she would soon get very bored.

But even Iris was glued to the television as the extraordinary events unfolded from one day to the next. Only a week ago it seemed that the United Kingdom would stumble on as it always had despite the civil unrest that had become so familiar. Food riots. Petrol pump riots. Demonstrations against immigration. Demonstrations against racism. The United Kingdom was in a state of perpetual crisis. And it looked like that was just the way it would always be.

Things changed forever from the moment when the Coalition Prime Minister, Ivan Eisenegger, made his Special Announcement to the national news media. He declared a State of Emergency to resolve the strife that had caused such immeasurable damage to the British economy and the UK’s international reputation. It was a natural response to the general desire for law and order in the country. The Prime Minister stood flanked by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Eric Esterhazy, and the Deputy Prime Minister, Olaf Smith, as he announced a series of measures which he admitted were draconian but which he also assured the nation were absolutely necessary to get the rioters off the street, to get the looters out of shops, to protect the ordinary law-abiding citizen, and to restore Britain’s pride in itself.

This was going to be, the Prime Minister announced, a Government of National Unity.

“Don’t you ever get bored with watching this stuff on TV?” asked Iris’ boyfriend, Giorgio. “I mean it’s not like much has happened since the first day they declared a State of Emergency.”

“That’s just not fucking true,” said Ember, who along with her lover, Ernie, and their daughter, Primrose, shared another room in the large house where Iris and Giorgio lived. “The Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish governments are all colossally pissed off about having a State of Emergency imposed on them from London. It looks like the new government wants to leave the Northern European Union. And there’s talk that the BBC might lose its independence.”

“Don’t talk bollocks,” said Ellie, who lived by herself in the smallest of the three bedrooms in the house. She was skinning up a spliff on a glossy fashion magazine with her bare legs stretched out across the threadbare carpet. “That would never happen.”

“You don’t know with these cunts, Ellie” said Ember. “You’ve heard the shit that arsehole Esterhazy’s been spouting on Fox News UK all these years. I can well believe that he’d be more than willing to tell the BBC to toe the line. Not that the broadcaster anything like it used to be. All those budget cuts have left its television channels looking like one of those crappy ones you see on satellite from places like Nicaragua and Cambodia. No one really watches it now except for news.”

“Well, if that bastard Esterhazy has his way, no one would want to watch it even for that,” agreed Iris.

“Fuck’s sake,” said Giorgio, the only man in a room otherwise populated by three adult women and a child. Primrose was three years old and playing with a small tablet computer on which brightly coloured animated characters were dancing around in a magical kingdom. “Just fucking cool it. I get real pissed off with this political shit. Can’t we just watch something that’s just fun? There are some good cartoons on Fox at the moment.”

Ember snorted. She was the only one in the room with any professed interest in politics although the only times she’d been on demonstrations was when her partner could be persuaded. And since their daughter was born, there were fewer and fewer such opportunities. Ellie’s primary diversions were of a hedonistic nature. Giorgio could hardly even be persuaded out of bed in the morning since he’d lost his job at the council and he spent most of the day either in front of the television or hunched over his laptop.

Iris’ interest in politics had only come about as a result of the current crisis. She sort of supported demonstrators when they demanded better pay and stuff like that but was a little worried when their demands became more vociferous and the demonstrations were tainted by violence. The riots of the last two years had even spread into suburbs like Uxbridge and Bromley. They couldn’t be described as inner city riots any more. But could this new Government of National Unity be trusted? And if it was about National Unity, why were there actually fewer non-Tories in the new government than there’d been in the old Coalition Government?

Even so, there wasn’t much protest when, having passed her lit spliff over to Ember, Ellie picked up the remote and began scrolling through the channels. She eventually settled on a twenty year old action movie that starred giant grasshoppers and a large number of vicious ants. Primrose momentarily lifted her head from whatever game she was playing and lowered it again when she realised how dark and gloomy the film was.

“I must have seen this film a dozen times,” said Giorgio.

“Well, it must be good then,” said Ellie who was more interested in skimming through the fashion pages of the magazine on which she’d just been rolling the spliff.

The company settled around the television in a moderate state of inertia as the joint was passed from person to person. Although it was mid-afternoon on a Wednesday, Giorgio was the only one who didn’t have a job to go to. Ember balanced her childcare duties with her shifts as a nurse in a hospital halfway across the other side of London. She frequently had to leave Primrose to the care of the household when Ernie was working late at the office, which was on most days. Ellie was a home-worker most days of the week, but only the occasional phone call and the urgency of a looming deadline ever kept her away from the communal living room.

Iris was a fully qualified postgrad zoologist, but she’d not yet found a job that matched her impressive qualifications. Her job at the biotech labs in Southgate hardly stretched her at all. She was convinced it could be done by a machine and that it would be by a machine that she’d eventually be replaced. The hours were crap too. This evening when the rest of the household, except Ember and Primrose, were heading out to a nightclub on some courtesy tickets that Ellie had somehow organised through one of her many boyfriends, Iris would be at the lab watching the clock go by and sorting out DNA samples.

“Don’t worry about it,” said Giorgio who kissed Iris when she at last left for work. “You’ll be able to get in later, won’t you? What time do you finish, anyway?”

“Five in the morning,” said Iris.

“Fuck that,” said Giorgio. “The bastards are fucking slave-drivers. You can’t slip out early, can you?”

“Yeah, I can. And get sacked too.”

“Well, a job’s a job,” said Giorgio ruefully.

Iris looked back at her housemates. Ellie was in sparkling form with elegantly applied makeup and dressed in a revealing silk top and low-slung denim shorts, while one of her boyfriends was sitting nervously on the sofa clearly uncertain about what the evening might have in store. It wasn’t unknown for Ellie to go out in the evening with one guy and come back with someone totally different. And it wasn’t necessarily another guy. Giorgio and Ernie were sitting around idly watching an American sitcom where the canned laughter accompanied all but the most trivial gesture or verbal inflection.

It was pissing down outside, so Iris hoisted up the hood on her jacket and ran through the puddles to the nearest bus stop. Her journey consisted of two bus journeys and one stretch underground. She had to allow plenty of time for the journey. The traffic was dreadful. There might be fewer petrol-driven cars and more battery-powered ones, but they still occupied as much space on the roads. The allowance she made for any delay was so great that she normally arrived at the lab at least half an hour before she needed to, and on a fixed shift system she wasn’t paid for hanging around in the canteen.

“You see the news?” asked Khadija, one of the other lab assistants, as they sat down together with their coffee mugs by the microwave.

“Yeah,” said Iris. “About what in particular?”

“What the new government says about immigration and stuff,” said Khadija. “The way they’re tightening it up. It was on the BBC. It didn’t sound so bad the way the minister expressed it, but when the political editor analysed it the whole thing sounded like Nazi Germany or something.”

“It can’t be as bad as that,” said Iris. “And, anyway, you’ve got nothing to worry about. Your family’s been living in London for generations.”

“Nearly fifty years,” said Khadija in her South London accent. “Ever since my grandfather came over from Iraq during the Gulf Wars. Not that there’s much left of Iraq now. But it’s all this Burden of Proof business. A lot of people who’ve been legal might now be reclassified and even deported. You know: retrospective tightening of the regulations.”

“I didn’t know that immigration was such a big issue, anyway,” said Iris. “It’s only because of Fox News UK and the newspapers you’d ever think so. I heard that loads more people are emigrating because of the shit state of the economy and all those riots...”

“Yeah. Civil unrest. Good excuse for a coup.”

“Don’t be so melodramatic. I’m sure it’s not that bad. And anyway they’re the same old faces. Eisenegger. Esterhazy. Sauterelle. The same ones who’ve been in government since I can ever remember. And let’s be honest, the riots left me shit-scared. Do you remember when the whole of Central London was paralysed that time? Some bastard threw a brick or stone in my direction when I was trying to get to the tube station. Nearly hit me.”

“Yeah. I hope you’re right about there being nothing to worry about,” said Khadija. “How’s Giorgio? Got a job yet?”

“I don’t think he’s even trying,” said Iris. “But he’ll have to pull his finger out. In two months time he won’t be able to claim dole any more. His six months’ll be up. Then either he’ll get nothing and scrounge off me or he’ll have to go on the Voluntary Labour scheme.”

“What do you think the lazy sod’ll do?” wondered Khadija.

“I’ll fucking ditch him if he thinks he can get away sitting round the telly all day living off me. He’s going to have to dig ditches, mend roads, work in soup kitchens, and all that other stuff they have to do these days.”

“It doesn’t help create jobs if all the work’s that’s needed is done by the unemployed for a pittance.”

“I dunno,” said Iris. “I’m not an economist. Anyway, I guess it means that there are even fewer jobs available for those immigrants who manage to get into the country. That’d suit the government right down to the ground.”

“It’s time, ladies,” said Ollie, the gay shift supervisor, who appeared at the coffee lounge door. “Chop chop. To the workstations.”

“Okay. Okay,” said Iris as she made her way down the aisle to her desk. The monitoring equipment was waiting for her, although the session required her to log on before the start of her shift. There was still a buttock-shaped indentation in the chair where Duncan had been sitting. He was the rather fat guy whose shift had just finished and who left a trail of biscuit crumbs all over the desk.

Iris sat down and logged on to the system. The DNA samples she had to monitor today came from some kind of fruit fly and Iris had to match the mutations with the observable physical characteristics and behavioural modifications of the actual animals. It was tedious, mechanical work, but still considered too specialist to be done by machine alone.

Iris glanced at the clock. Twenty hundred hours. Only four hours till her lunch break which at just after midnight wasn’t really going to be a meal she’d enjoy. She glanced around her. Khadija was already making some notes on the tablet she had in her hand. The other five or six people were also at their desks. Everyone was in, except, of course, Anthony who’d been designated as surplus to requirements about a week ago just before he was eligible for redundancy payments. Would Iris be in the same situation when she’d worked for one year and eleven months?

Iris banished such concerns as she rotated the holographic images of DNA helixes around on her workstation. She had another night’s work to do.

XXII
Lindiwe
2067

There were some days that Lindiwe dreaded more than others. Most days were bad enough. She almost wished she’d never got used to the relative sanctuary of life at the Reigate Refugee Centre now she’d had to leave it behind. The crackdown on illegal immigration subsequent on the General Election resulted in Lindiwe and most other employees of the Reigate Refugee Centre being forced to resign and find employment elsewhere.

But what employment was there for a young African woman where her legal status wasn’t an issue? It could only be a profession exactly like the one in which she was currently engaged.

Lindiwe stood outside the rear entrance of a grand old house in the securely guarded avenues of Reigate South Park. Only clients like the gentleman she was about to see had benefited at all from the lack of opportunities for more conventional employment whose inevitable result was less expensive and more widely available sexual services.

Sir Eric Esterhazy was a regular client of Empire Cleaning Services, Lindiwe’s employer, and consequently one that she couldn’t afford to disappoint. He was also the client that Lindiwe least enjoyed having to visit, even though he was one of her most frequent clients. He always requested her by her business name, Ebony, rather than the name with which she’d been christened. Lindiwe often contemplated exercising her option of refusing to go, but Empire Cleaning Services could easily find someone else to replace her and it wasn’t as if they could ignore the specific requests of a Knight of the Realm, even if he was now only a backbench MP. Lindiwe suspected that the reason Sir Eric was so insistent on her services rather than those of Laura, Ivory or Onyx was precisely because she so evidently hated both him and his sexual predilections.

Lindiwe was a busy woman. She might have to provide services to as many as a dozen clients in a single day. Fortunately, not all clients were as demanding as Sir Eric. Many simply required oral or manual relief. Although these services weren’t especially enjoyable for Lindiwe, she could generally complete the job within a quarter of an hour. As a general rule Lindiwe preferred repeat custom. This wasn’t because her existing clients were in any way better than the rest of humanity, but because they were all known quantities. She knew what to expect and normally there were very few surprises.

Prostitution was still illegal, of course. Successive governments had tightened legislation against the trade at exactly the same rate as economic circumstances compelled ever more women were to take it up. The result of this was that women like Lindiwe were even more vulnerable to the predations of clients who had no respect for her. Lindiwe was almost a prisoner of Empire Cleaning Services as a result of the draconian penalties imposed on illegal immigrants, although she was grateful that her employer’s business practices were actually rather more ethical than many entirely legal enterprises. If she was working in one of the countless sweatshops in Central London, she’d have to work for very long hours and never get more remuneration than food to eat and a mattress to sleep on. It was ironic that the employment practices Lindiwe knew from Africa had migrated into the country along with much of the continent’s population.

Empire Cleaning Services advertised itself as a cleaning company. Its advertisements openly promoted the house-cleaning aspect of the services provided by its employees. If a client actually did want one of the women employed by the company to do nothing else than vacuum-clean, dust and polish, this was a service that would no doubt be provided with great relief. It would be a relatively expensive service, however, given that the minimum hourly rate for the advertised services was more than enough to cover the weekly wage of most cleaning maids.

The uniform Lindiwe wore was more appropriate for a maid than for a prostitute—or at least for those prostitutes that frequented Holmesdale Road and Bell Street. It might be noted that high-heels weren’t especially practical for pushing a vacuum cleaner around the house and that stockings weren’t very suitable for kneeling down on the kitchen floor with a scrubbing brush, but such detail was sufficiently subtle for Lindiwe to pursue her trade without fear of arrest. The dark green nylon outfit was almost utilitarian. She looked almost like a nurse, which was ironic given that Lindiwe wore no such uniform when she did work as one at the Reigate Refugee Centre.

Sir Eric was very old. If it hadn’t been for the miracles of medicine and erectile enhancement drugs, the worst Lindiwe might have suffered would be a bathing in urine and possibly a severe spanking. Unfortunately for her, the knight was so well medicated that Lindiwe was fully occupied for the whole span of her two or three hour appointment. Before she left, she would need to shower and apply makeup to remove the traces of semen, spit and urine from her face and body. Such cleanliness was expected. It was as much in Sir Eric’s interest as it was for Lindiwe’s dignity. The employees of a cleaning service company, even one as expensive as Ebony, wouldn’t normally be expected to leave the client’s home with semen dripping down her chin or have mascara smeared all over the face. And Sir Eric wouldn’t want either his neighbours or his constituents to know what he did for amusement.

As a freshly divorced backbench MP, Sir Eric could now spend the hours not already dedicated to serving his constituencies or his Party Whip by doing exactly what he wanted.

And this currently involved buggering Lindiwe while concurrently complaining bitterly and long about being a Lib Con MP.

“I’ve been a Tory all my life,” he said as his artificially guaranteed erection ploughed inside Lindiwe’s arse (for the usual extra cost). “Now I’m a fucking Lib Con. Fucking con is right. It’s a con that dilutes the electoral choice. No one can vote Conservative without also voting for the fucking Liberal pinkos.”

All conversation with Sir Eric was one-sided. The knight did all the talking, which he did from the moment Lindiwe arrived until she left, while, in her role as Ebony, Lindiwe said very little at all. There was virtually no one that the former chancellor didn’t blame for the ultimate failure of the English National Unity government apart from himself. The fucking Scots, the bastard Welsh, the Liberal pinko cunts, the arsehole Belgians, the vacillating Americans, the slit-eyed Chinks and Nips, the wops, the frogs, the krauts and, most of all, the conniving Prime Minister Ivan Eisenegger who’d let everything fall apart. What hatred Sir Eric didn’t reserve for his political enemies was directed at every group of individual that wasn’t white, wasn’t wealthy, wasn’t male and wasn’t at least middle-aged.

Lindiwe knew exactly what her ranking was in Sir Eric’s hierarchy of humanity. As a nigger bitch, as he so charmingly addressed her, she was basically hardly better than the four-legged animal that shared the same title. Only, as Sir Eric wasn’t likely to fuck, bugger, piss on or otherwise gratify himself on a female dog, Lindiwe had to do.

Lindiwe got into the habit of watching the news before she visited Sir Eric. She had bought a tablet on which she could browse the latest news and surf the internet. Lindiwe knew she’d be in for a rough time if the news was of the kind likely to antagonise Sir Eric. The news wasn’t quite as predictable a weather vane as Lindiwe would have liked, but she’d come to dread any intimation of success in the Kingdom of England’s faltering attempts to rejoin the Northern European Union, any sign of tolerance towards immigrants or the socially disadvantaged, and any fresh revelations about the excesses associated with the English National Unity government. News stories about the Norfolk flooding, the melting Antarctic ice sheet, the desertification of Brazil or the famine in Egypt didn’t generally trouble him much at all.

Although Sir Eric was quite happy to stick his tongue, penis and fist in the most private of Lindiwe’s orifices, he couldn’t raise himself to shake her hand or even acknowledge her departure beyond a cursory remark. “I guess it’s time for you to scamper back to your grass hut,” he might say. Or: “The cash is in the usual place. Don’t spend it all on bananas.” So, even at the very last, after Lindiwe had showered and dressed herself, the knight couldn’t resist a gratuitous insult.

Was this what Lindiwe’s expensive and hard-fought education had led her to?

“I was studying to be an eye-surgeon,” said Jiao-Jie, Lindiwe’s flatmate, when she posed the question. “Then the Zambian government decided to expel its Chinese citizens. My family had lived in Zambia for three generations. The Democratic Republic of China wasn’t letting back Zambian emigrants whatever their ethnicity and neither was anywhere else.”

Lindiwe sighed. “It’s a lottery. The stupidest and most ignorant Englishman gets a better life than we do.”

“For the moment,” said Jiao-Jie philosophically. “On the other hand, at the current rate at which the Kingdom’s economy is declining it won’t be long before it’s on the same level as Portugal or Estonia. And look at the problems there. Riots. Famine. Even plague.”

“Even the worst-off nation in Europe, whether in the North or the South, fares better than any country in Africa,” said Lindiwe. “There was basically no government at all when I left Maseru. And the people who were supposed to govern were no better than Sir Eric Esterhazy. They screwed everyone and blamed the country’s problems on foreigners and traitors.”

“That’s what’s happening in Europe as well.”

“It’s still not as bad as Africa,” protested Lindiwe. “There are no jobs. There’s no food in the markets. Every year the harvests fail. The police are worse than the thieves they’re supposed to be protecting us from. The government of the United States of South Africa only controls the larger cities and the borders.”

Jiao-Jie wasn’t going to be outdone by this one-upmanship of misery. “I don’t even have a country to claim as my own. China doesn’t want me. Zambia doesn’t want me. And do you think I’d be working for Empire Cleaning Services if England wanted me?”

XXIII
Olive
2082

Emily was kneeling in front of the screen and staring intently at the high definition images which were her only escape from drab and dirty real life. The television was by far the most valuable of her mother’s possessions. She touched the replay symbol on the touchpad which displayed an exact miniature copy of the image that was blazoned on a much larger scale on the screen.

Like any five year old, she’d much rather be watching cartoons, but the television was still stuck on a website that was screening an amateur film clip of the Lib Con Massacre. This film was showing the culmination of the siege on the Liberal Conservative Party headquarters by an angry, starving mob that was offloading its murderous frustrations just as it had done a day or so before at the Fox News England television studios. Specifically, what Emily was viewing in full graphic high-definition splendour was the wholesale massacre of a group of politicians and their supporters.

Emily had seen the film of the punching, stabbing and lynching so many times now that it no longer shocked her. There was a lot of blood. The cries for mercy and the screams of pain and agony were very frightening. The person who’d been filming the violence was very much on the side of the hate-filled rioters and narrated a commentary on the events as they happened with obvious relish.

“And now it’s the turn of fucking Eric fucking Esterhazy,” he yelled. “Die you fucking cunt! Just fucking die! Harr! Harr! His fucking nose is smashed. Kill the cunt!”

Emily wasn’t too sure what half the words meant but they were still words she’d heard many times before. Cunt. Shit. Pee-pee. Shut the fuck up. And every word or expression was usually prefixed by ‘fucking’ for emphasis.

“Fuck sake, Emily,” shouted her mummy, Olive, who was holding a joint in her hand and wearing nothing but a pair of slippers. “What’s this shit you’re watching?”

“It’s only what I was fucking watching a moment ago,” said Emily’s Daddy for today who Emily hadn’t really got to know very well yet. She knew that her new Daddy wasn’t her proper Daddy because unlike Emily and Olive whose skins were pale with a slightly bluish tinge, this Daddy had very dark skin. And Emily could see all of his skin including his stiff and twitching penis.

“And what the fuck is that?” asked Olive. “It’s not what you’d call approp... appropri... right for a little girl.”

“It’s just those riots yesterday, innit?” said Ed. “Watching the cunts getting a kicking. Look at that fucker. All his fucking teeth everywhere...”

Ed was referring to a scene where an elderly man was being kicked again and again in the mouth. Despite the high digital resolution, the image was wobbling about all over the place.

“Emily should be watching fucking cartoons,” said Olive as she grabbed the touchpad out of her daughter’s hands. “She shouldn’t be watching this shit. What the fuck! Where’s the fucking kiddie stuff?”

Ed laughed as the picture switched to some hardcore porn movie that showed explicit film of a woman’s face being ejaculated on. “What kind of fucking kiddie stuff do you want?”

“Not fucking pervy stuff, you dirty-minded cunt,” she said. “Here we are. Cartoons. Fucking kiddie cartoons. Not fucking sick shit.”

Olive returned the touchpad remote control to her daughter. “Now you just watch this shit while me and Daddy have a cuddle on the mattress. No fucking peeking, right.”

“Yes, mummy,” said Emily who’d often peeked, of course, and didn’t much like what she saw at all. It was just the same as the porn stuff on the television screen but not as easy to see what was going on.

“Shouldn’t the kid be at fucking school or something?” wondered Ed while he stroked his penis in readiness for the action to come.

“School? Yeah, I guess so,” said Olive as she lay down on the mattress which was the only furniture on the room’s bare floor-boards other than the battered sofa and the kitchen chairs. They were all gathered in the living room because it was the only room in Olive’s apartment other than the shower/toilet and the tiny kitchenette. “When I find a school I don’t have to fight through fucking Afghanistan to get to, I’ll fucking take her there.”

“It ain’t as bad as all that,” said Ed.

“Yes it fucking is,” said Olive. “It’s a fucking war zone out there. Like your fucking Palestine or your fucking Pakistan. It’s all fucking guns, knives and drug dealers and shit.”

“You do a bit of dealing as well, you know...”

“A girl’s got to fucking survive, don’t she? But it ain’t good, you know. There mightn’t be fucking radiation or mushroom clouds or shit like that, but it ain’t nice out there. I don’t want my girl to get fucked by a perv or knifed by a gangster. And anyway what fucking good is school anyway? There ain’t no fucking jobs no more.”

Emily didn’t really understand very much of what Mummy was saying. And she hated it when Mummy and her new Daddy cuddled on the mattress. It was so noisy and it looked weird.  On the other hand, it was better when they did it during the day, rather than at night when Emily was trying to sleep on the sofa with the coiled spring that had poked its way through the plastic cover and chafed against her calves. On those occasions, her Mummy’s vocal lovemaking kept her awake and Emily got ever so tired. What she liked best was when her Mummy was staying out of the flat somewhere else, usually still within the bounds of the sprawling Housing Estate that covered almost the whole extent of Hackney Marshes. Then Emily was able to doze on the mattress accompanied only by cartoons burbling on in the background.

In fact, cartoons were about the only entertainment Emily had to enjoy when she was at home by herself. Emily preferred it when Mummy was out during the day and was thoughtful enough to dump her daughter on one of the neighbours. Then she was able to play with children from the other flats. Emily soon discovered that other people’s flats were usually no better than her mother’s. Sometimes there was a separate bedroom so that there was no risk of anyone else’s Mummy and Daddy cuddling while the children played or, more often, stared at the flat thin screens that dominated most households. These were powered by the same kind of heavy battery that Mummy had to buy every now and then from the supermarket just over a kilometre away. That was an intimidating place that Emily enjoyed visiting where plate glass windows protected the cashiers from the all too frequent gun raids.

Other children’s Mummies and Daddies were generally much the same as Emily’s. The Mummies would sit round the flat all day and usually the Daddies did much the same. This was especially so in winter when it was cold and the batteries ran down so quickly while burning up all their power on the little bar heaters that hardly kept anyone warm anyway.

Some homes had computer games which were fun to play although many were also very violent. Sometimes they were almost as bad as the film of the Lib Con Massacre, even if it was a lot easier to see what was going on.

A few children also went to school, although Olive was mostly right about the attendant risk. It was often quite dangerous just to walk along the open streets and some of the older children had scary stories to tell of the violent fights they’d witnessed. As a result, most children went to school in groups of five or more just for safety. And from what Emily had heard, even school didn’t sound like it was especially safe or secure even though it was surrounded by thick metal gates and the windows were all barred.

Emily dreaded it when visitors called when she was at home alone with Mummy. The worst was the Rent Collector. He was a big man that Olive called the Fat Cunt when he wasn’t there, but Mr. Obasanjo when he was visiting. He was indeed overweight and his skin was even darker than Ed’s, but he was always polite to Emily. In fact, Emily sometimes wondered whether he wasn’t a little too nice to her. Olive also dreaded his visits. She told her daughter that the Fat Cunt always carried a gun and a big metal stick and if Mummy didn’t pay the rent he’d use one of them if he didn’t use the other. Although the flats no longer officially belonged to anyone now that Hackney Borough Council had surrendered administrative control, it was men like Mr. Obasanjo who ensured that they would never be exactly free for residents.

Olive wasn’t let off when she didn’t have the money to pay the week’s rent. Not only would she have to pay the difference the following week with interest, but she’d have to suck Mr. Obasanjo’s fat stubby penis to be granted even that much dispensation.

“This time swallow the shit,” Mr. Obasanjo said when he spurted out his sperm into Olive’s mouth. “You know I don’t like it when it drips on your fucking tits.”

“Yes, Mr. Ozzabanjo,” said Olive as she wiped her lips and with a pained expression let the pale goo slip down her throat.

Mr. Obasanjo slapped Olive across her face that left her with a bruise that would swell up on her pale cheek in the hours after his departure. “Don’t ever fucking call me that, bitch! Obasanjo. That’s my name. Daniel Obasanjo.”

“I didn’t mean nothing.”

“Well don’t say nothing, then,” he said. “Just have the readies next time. All of them. Otherwise you’ll have to sleep in a cardboard box under the Eastway with those other homeless cunts.”

Olive’s other visitors were generally less hostile than the Rent Collector, but there were still often arguments. These were mostly about drugs and money which, Emily got to realise, were usually closely associated with each other. Olive’s only other source of income was from the Unemployment Workshop which she attended on a fairly irregular basis. The work was demeaning and it didn’t pay well, but it supplied Olive with food tokens and a small amount of cash which could be spent on rent, drugs and batteries.

Some days were worse than others. A good day was one when Emily got enough sleep, when she got to play with her friends while Mummy was out somewhere, and when she didn’t go hungry. Bad days were when there wasn’t any food, when the water supply was cut off, when it was cold and there wasn’t enough money to buy a battery to keep the electric heater running or to power the television.

And it was especially bad when her Mummy and the current new Daddy were arguing and shouting at each other.

This was always very frightening, especially since there was no other room for Emily to hide while Olive and the man sharing her mattress were throwing things at each other. These were the times when ‘fucking’ was a word used more often than any other and usually more than twice in each sentence.

“I want to go to school, Mummy,” Emily said to Olive one morning after an argument which had culminated in the latest new Daddy slamming the door behind him as he left.

Her mother lay on the bed with a bruise over her face and caked blood just beneath her nose. “What, darling?” she said, feeling sorry for herself as she usually did after an altercation of this nature.

“I want to go to school, Mummy.”

“It’s fucking dangerous. You know what it’s like out there. I don’t want a girl of mine to get fucked up by some cunt.”

“Mo goes to school. So does Fatty and Jack. And so does Cookie.”

“Who’re those cunts?”

“They’re friends of mine. We play at Aunt Suzy’s place when you leave me there.”

“Oh, Suzy’s kids. I didn’t know they went to school.”

“They go in some kind of convoy,” said Emily.

“Convoy. What’s that?”

“It’s when lots of kids go together. Mo said I could go with them to school.”

“What school?”

“Just school.”

“I guess it’s fucking Gainsborough First School. The one that got flooded last time,” said Olive. She contemplated the idea for a moment. “You get free school dinners there, don’t you? And they keep you warm and shit when it’s cold, don’t they?”

“I think so,” said Emily who’d not previously been aware of the fringe benefits of schooling. She just wanted to be away from the flat and all the quarrelling. And she also wanted to spend more time with her friends.

“Yeah, if you can go with Suzy’s kids then go. Just don’t fucking wake me up before you leave.”

“Can I go tomorrow?”

“Course you fucking can. You don’t have to wear school uniform or anything, do you? Just don’t go in the nude.”

Clothes were a genuine problem, of course. All Emily’s clothes were the wrong size and most of them were threadbare and full of holes. And usually they were also rather dirty. Olive’s visits to the launderette were kept to the bare minimum. But Emily looked at her mother who as always was more or less wearing nothing at all. Emily didn’t want to look like that.

“I’ll tell Mo to wait for me tomorrow,” said Emily.

“Yeah. Whatever,” said Olive.

XXIV
Lord Newbury
2077

It was an uncomfortable fact that Lord Newbury’s title was neither ancient nor especially honourable. But it was a title of which he was very proud although the only privileges it endowed on him were those of status and hereditary wealth. There was no political power associated with the hereditary title and there hadn’t been for over seventy years. And now the bastards were threatening to dispose of what little value in the title still remained. Over a thousand years of glorious tradition was to be swept aside. A tradition older than England itself. And all because of the unfinished business of the dissolution of the United Kingdom.

It could have been so different if that idiot Princess Rachel hadn’t made such a mess of her proposed marriage to that commoner. It was bad enough that centuries of precedent were amended to enable her to succeed to the throne. And then she broke yet more precedent by wanting to marry a mere low-life. But worst of all was for her to have subsequently made such a fuck-up of the whole affair...

It left a very unpleasant taste in the Right Honourable gentleman’s mouth. He grimaced as he regarded the images displayed on his library computer screen.

“Excuse me, my lord,” said the butler who had discreetly slipped into the room. “Sir Eric Esterhazy is waiting to see you.”

“Is he, Edwards?” said the lord. He hurriedly shut down the browser window so that it showed no evidence of the rather undignified website he’d been visiting. “Show him in.”

“Yes, my lord.”

Lord Newbury stationed himself in a stately position by the bookcase where he could pretend to consult a rather dull nineteenth century volume on fossil snails. It did at least have some passably interesting black-and-white plates.

Sir Eric entered the library and bowed decorously. He stood at a respectful distance and waited for Lord Newbury to address him.

“Good to see you again, Eric.”

“It’s good to see you also, my lord.”

“I guess you must be wondering why I asked you over here.”

“It’s always a pleasure, my lord.”

“I’m afraid it isn’t for pleasure this time. The reason I’ve asked you to visit is for your advice.”

“I’m honoured, my lord.”

“How long is it since you retired, Eric?”

“I didn’t retire as such, my lord.”

“No, I guess not. In what year did you last serve as Member of Parliament for Reigate, Eric?”

“The General Election of ’68.”

“That’s when they redrew the boundaries, wasn’t it? It’s become harder and harder for decent men to represent the country.”

“Much harder, my lord.”

“Who represents Reigate now, Eric?”

“An incompetent idiot from the Social and Liberal Democratic Party, my lord.”

“I can’t keep up with all these new political parties. Whatever happened to the old certainties, Eric?”

“The electorate is perverse, my lord. They would prefer to be represented by a rabble of pretty much identical pinko political parties rather than by a sensible choice between a strong Conservative government and a weak coalition of Greens and Socialists.”

“You were never one of those who liked it when the Tories merged with the Liberals, were you?”

“It only served to further compromise an already diluted brand, my lord.”

 “My concern, however, is less to do with the dismal state of English politics, Eric, but the future no less of England’s venerable tradition of aristocracy. As you know, the present coalition government of lefties, greens, vegetarians and lesbians has plans to dispense with the very institution of nobility. If they have their way, the title I bear will be gone forever. I would no longer be known as Lord Newbury. I would be known only as Norman Francis Erickson. That’s a disgrace. Honourable traditions such as the aristocracy are what made England great.”

“England is no longer great, my lord.”

“Indeed,” agreed the lord. “The lunatic Left and the Greens have taken over. What justification does the coalition government have for wanting to make the Kingdom of England some kind of republic?”

“Pressure from abroad, my lord,” said Sir Eric. “The Kingdoms of Scotland and Northern Ireland have unilaterally declared themselves as the Scottish and Northern Irish Republics. Wales has already been a republic for a while. The Commonwealth has totally disbanded. The Royal Family is no longer perceived as a national asset.”

Lord Newbury frowned. “You should never have relinquished power, Eric. See what’s happened in the last decade or so. This is a fight to the last breath. What hope has England got in its darkest hour?”

“I need to consult a sympathetic expert in constitutional matters, my lord,” said Sir Eric, “but I’m certain that overthrowing a Constitutional Monarch isn’t as straightforward as the coalition government seems to believe. It’s not just English postage stamps that would have to change. There is also the fact that the Armed Forces pledge allegiance to the crown and not to the government of the day.”

“How can the fortunes of the Royal Family be the same as those of the Peerage?” said Lord Newbury. “As far as I’m concerned, the wastrels at Buckingham Palace and Windsor deserve to lose their estates.”

“The Armed Forces do not pledge allegiance to barons, dukes or earls, my lord.”

“I see.”

“On the other hand, the Royal Family needs a stock of bona fide blue bloods, my lord. The fortunes of the King and Princess Rachel are very much one with the fortunes of the treacherously dispossessed peers.”

“What can be done, Eric?”

“There are legal processes that can be invoked, my lord,” said Sir Eric. “If these fail, then there is direct appeal to the electorate...”

“You saw what bloody good that did in Scotland,” said the lord. “The ungrateful bastards voted overwhelmingly to dump the monarchy.”

“I think there was an element of nationalism in the referendum vote, my lord. The Royal Family was perceived to be English.”

“Well, of course they’re bloody English. They’ve not been Scots for nearly four hundred years.”

“The English electorate might warm to them in that respect, my lord.”

“I suppose so, Eric,” said Lord Newbury. “But if that fails, what’s left?”

“The military option, my lord.”

“Do we really want a second English Civil War?”

“If it defends what’s right, my lord.”

“Hmm,” said the lord. “Would the Scots and the Welsh get involved?”

“It’s an internal matter, my lord.”

“What about the bloody Sprouts?”

“Brussels won’t be involved, my lord. The Northern European Union has been decidedly reluctant to readmit the Kingdom of England.”

“It’s those bloody Scots again, isn’t it? Ungrateful bastards. It’s them we should declare war against.”

“That was my advice when I was last in the cabinet, my lord. Unofficially, of course.”

“You should have nuked the bastards,” said the lord bitterly.

“It was mostly because the Scots had access to nuclear weapons that my suggestion was overruled, my lord.”

“I guess it would’ve been a bit risky,” Lord Newbury admitted. “After all, the wind sometimes blows from the north. The Geordies wouldn’t have been very happy, would they?”

“Not at all, my lord.”

“How many right-thinking people can we rely on, Eric?”

“There are fewer than there used to be, my lord,” Sir Eric admitted. “But on the other hand, the stakes are higher. It’s do or die, my lord.”

“It most certainly bloody well is, Eric. But will they stand up and be counted?”

“The glory and pride of England is at risk, my lord.”

“Is there enough money?”

“Switzerland remains neutral, my lord. The bank vaults will hold firm against the prying noses of the Sprouts, the Yanks and the Arabs. And they’re too high above sea level to get submerged, my lord.”

“Unlike the rest of us,” said Lord Newbury. “Did you see the news last night?”

“It’s dreadful, my lord,” said Sir Eric. “The City of London and half of Westminster...”

“They should have piled the sandbags higher,” said the lord. “And why did they bother protecting the East End? Who cares if the degenerate scum and illegal immigrants sink under five foot of water?”

“Not me, my lord.”

“Anyway, I digress. Do you think we’ll be in a position to safeguard the essence of England against those who seek to bring it to its knees?”

“I have already been discussing potential courses of action with other sympathetic parties, my lord.”

“Like who?”

“Many, my lord. News media executives. Prominent internet companies. Loyal military men. Fellow Liberal Conservatives...”

“Not the Liberal ones I hope...”

“Of course not, my lord. There are many well-informed, well-financed and well-intentioned parties who are willing to harmonise with our enterprise if need be.”

“As they did in ’53? Let’s hope they have the stomach for the fight this time.”

“It is ever more perilous, my lord.”

“It’s a funny old world altogether, Eric,” said the lord. “The Chinks and the Nips run the show. The Yanks, the Krauts and the Frogs are all in the second division. The Yanks have been a bloody disappointment, don’t you think?”

“I had high hopes for the Republic of North America, my lord.”

“They were just left with the crappy parts of the United States when it all fell apart. It’s the world’s most heavily defended breadbasket. Bristling with nukes it can’t use because the slightest disruption to agriculture would simply cripple the entire nation.”

“There are those who call it more a basket-case than a breadbasket, my lord.”

“Yes, Eric. President Beck is either senile or mad.”

“Or both, my lord.”

“I just don’t know where things have gone wrong, Eric. You don’t think all that global warming nonsense is to blame?”

“The Greens made the right predictions, my lord, but they got on the wrong side of the Business Sector. What’s the point of being right, if you can’t make money out of it?”

“Absolutely. The interests of English business are paramount, wouldn’t you say Eric? Although I’ll be damned if I can be sure there’s actually much left of English business to be proud about.”

XXV
Zoe
2047

“Where the fuck am I?” Zoe asked.

She raised her head from the down-filled cushion on the leather sofa and looked around her at the posters on the wall that depicted a random selection of teenage obsessions. About her feet was a scattering of discarded beer cans, cigarette papers and glossy magazines. A mirror lay flat on the table beside a half-empty glass of white wine.

“You’ve woken up, have you?” said Tom, who was sitting cross-legged in only his boxer shorts and thumbing with no apparent interest through the pages of a women’s fashion magazine. “We thought you’d be out for hours.”

“She has been,” said Eve, who was also wearing only a pair of boxer shorts that were probably not her own. “It’s been fucking forever since Zoe dropped off.”

“It’s the fucking dope,” said Zoe who lowered her feet off the sofa onto the floor. All she was wearing was a tee-shirt that had the Arsenal FC logo which she’d bought once when she was briefly into women’s football. But that was ages ago. “I’ll ask again. Where the fuck am I?”

“You’re at Al’s,” said Tom. “He got the munchies so he went off to get a pizza or something.”

“When’d he do that?”

“Fucking hours ago,” said Eve. “Or maybe it was ten minutes ago. I dunno.”

“Shit. I need some charlie or whizz or something to wake me up,” said Zoe. “The E’s worn off and I feel like shit. Anyone got any coke?”

“Al’s got some smack,” volunteered Tom.

“That’ll do the trick,” said Zoe.

“Scarcely a pick-me-up,” said Eve.

“It’ll do.”

Zoe glanced down at her crotch which she noticed was still slightly sticky. She ran her fingers through the pubic hairs. “Have we been fucking?” she asked.

“Yeah,” said Tom. “Don’t you remember?”

“Not at all,” Zoe admitted. “Did I fuck you as well, Eve?”

“Of course,” said Eve. “And Al fucked Tom right up the arse. It was fucking hilarious! Tom didn’t know if he liked it or hated it.”

“I fucking hated it!” said Tom indignantly.

“I dunno,” said Eve. “You looked like you were enjoying it. No one else was fucking your arse at the time.”

“I got a fucking strap-on fucking dildo thing at home,” said Zoe.

“Yeah,” said Eve. “But you didn’t bring it with you, did you?”

“Do you seriously not remember fucking?” asked Tom. “I mean you were really fucking into it: the fucking and everything.”

“Did you fuck me up the arse again?”

“No. Not after last time. All that shit was fucking awful. My prick smelt bad for days.”

“That was fucking hilarious!” said Eve. “That’ll teach you to bugger someone without asking them first.”

“You never seem to mind much.”

“Shut up, you cunt,” said Eve who threw a pillow at Tom which he only just about managed to dodge.

“I’m fucking bombed,” Zoe slurred. “What the fuck have I been taking?”

“Fucking everything,” said Tom. “There’s fucking nothing you’ve not had...”

“’Cept the smack that Al’s got coming,” said Eve. “We’re all fucking bombed, girl. I’m as fucked as the fucking ’Stanis.”

“Which fucking ’Stanis would that be, Eve?” asked Tom. “Would that be the Uzbekistanis, the Turkmenistanis or the Kazakhstanis?”

“Maybe the other ones,” said Eve. “I don’t fucking know, do I? They’re all the fucking same. Pakistan first...”

“...and India as well,” added Tom.

“Then it was every fucking country with Stan in its name. Kurdistan wasn’t even like six years old and it got fucked,” said Eve. “And I’m as fucked as all the fucking ’Stans. I’m one fucked bitch.”

“I know that for sure,” said Tom. “It’s just that Zoe can’t remember a fucking thing.”

“Did I fuck you, Eve?” wondered Zoe. “Are you sure I didn’t bring my strap-on thingy here?”

“Don’t worry, Zoe,” said Eve. “You did what you could without it.”

“You might be bombed,” said Zoe. “But I’m fucking nuked.”

“Nuked, eh?” said Al who came into the room carrying a stack of two large pizzas and an eight-pack of lagers. “Like fucking Afghanistan?”

“As nuked as Tashkent,” said Zoe.

“That’s not in fucking Afghanistan,” said Tom. “It’s in one of the other ones I think.”

“Who fucking cares?” said Al, who sat down and opened the boxes of pizza for everyone to dip into. “They’re all the same. At least they are now. One stinking heap of Islamic radioactive shit. No one would want to live there now.”

“’Cept the people who just happened to be living there,” said Eve.

“People?” Tom laughed callously. “Fucking mutants. All that radiation shit. Eyes sliding down the face. Scabs and cancers and radioactive scars. Skin fused like plastic. You’ve seen the film footage.”

“You’ve no right to be so... to be so... fucking...” said Zoe incoherently. “Those Arabs or Turks or whatever the fuck they were... They were human beings like us. It’s not right to be so fucking...”

“You need a hit on this, girl,” said Eve passing over the joint she’d been holding onto for rather longer than Tom was happy with. “But you’re right. The ’Stanis didn’t deserve the shit they got.”

“They asked for it, though, didn’t they?” said Tom. “They didn’t have to nuke the shit out of each other. There’s no law that says that when the water runs dry, the crops fail and all you’ve got to live on is the poppy harvest, then you’ve got to nuke yourself to buggery.”

“Talking about poppies...” said Zoe.

Al took the hint. “I know what you want, Zoe,” he said. “I’ll bring the wraps in later. That’s one thing the war did. Price of fucking H dropped like the proverbial. So did quality resin.”

“You got any of that?” Zoe pleaded.

“I’ve got fucking everything,” said Al.

“Still, you’ve gotta feel for the buggers,” said Eve. “You’ve seen the films...”

“It was beautiful!” said Tom. “What a trip. Did you see the colours and everything on those mushroom clouds?”

“Don’t be a cunt, Tom,” said Al who held a pizza slice in one hand and a joint in the other. “Those were fucking people being blown up by those nukes.”

“Well, you can feel as fucking sorry as you like for those buggers,” said Tom. “They’re thousands of miles away and they don’t even speak English. What about the shit in this country?”

“What do you mean, Tom?” asked Zoe who was really really enjoying her pizza slice. “No one’s dropped any nukes on Clapham last time I looked.”

“The flooding’s a problem, isn’t it?” said Tom. “And you saw that shit on telly about people fucking starving, literally fucking starving, in this country. Food’s too expensive. Social Security’s virtually dead, thanks to all the cutbacks and disincentive programs. It’s all gone to fucking pot in this country.”

“Talking of which,” said Eve. “Toss us that plastic bag, Al?”

“Which one?”

“The one with the Afghani Black, you wally.”

“Yeah,” said Al who handed it over to her. “It’s good shit.”

“Did you fuck me, Al?” asked Zoe in a tone of vague interest.

Al had to think.

“Yeah, I think I might have done. I certainly remember fucking Eve and I can’t forget fucking Tom.”

“You cunt!” said Tom bitterly. “You know I don’t like it!”

“Calm it, girls!” said Eve. “Who cares who fucked who?”

“I might if I get pregnant,” said Zoe.

“You take the pill, don’t you?” asked Tom, clearly alarmed.

“Or clap. Or Chlamydia. Or even fucking AIDS.”

“You can get a cure for AIDS on the NHS nowadays you know,” said Tom.

“Don’t be fucking soft,” said Eve. “When’s the last time the NHS ever gave anything away. It’s the fucking Twenty Forties. It’s because people like Zoe’s dad fucked up the NHS that nobody gets nothing from them now.”

“My dad?” wondered Zoe.

“He pumps money into all those right wing campaigns, doesn’t he?” said Eve. “Kick out the immigrants. Cut taxes. Cut public spending. Get out of what’s left of the fucking EU...”

“It’s split into two now,” corrected Al.

“Whatever,” said Eve. “It’s your dad who’s fucking the poor and feeding the rich. A fucking Robin Hood in reverse.”

“He’s no fucking worse than your dad, Eve,” Al said calmly. “In fact, all our dads are shit. They’re all fucking up the world.”

“You’re all fucking dimwits,” said Tom. “It’s ’cause our parents are so fucking wealthy we can sit here and treat ourselves to as much shit as we like. And they wouldn’t be so fucking rich if it weren’t for low taxes and all that. And why do they do it? They do it for us. That’s what they say.”

“My dad fucking hates me,” sniffed Zoe.

“What’d you say?” asked Eve who wandered over to the couch where Zoe was lying with her newly rolled five-skinner between her forefingers.

“My fucking dad fucking hates me.”

“Poor diddums,” said Tom unsympathetically. “I don’t think my dad likes me much either. But he still gives me enough folding stuff to live in a shit hot flat out in St John’s Wood. And what about your pad, Zoe? You can’t sniff at Hampstead Heath, can you? If he didn’t like you just a little bit, why’s he been so fucking generous?”

“Don’t be so mean, Tom,” said Eve who lay Zoe’s head on her bare bosom. “You know Zoe’s dad’s a real cunt.”

“Come on, Eve. When it comes down to it, what about your dad?”

“Hey, Tom,” said Al. “This is getting a bit out of fucking hand, you know. Just cool it. Zoe’s coming out from a fuck of a heavy trip. The E’s making her feel real shitty. You don’t have to make her feel shittier.”

“I know. I know,” said Tom. “You’re right. Shit, shall I roll the next one?”

“I think this’ll be the last joint for a while, Tom,” said Al. “We wanna get into a different mood if we’re partying.”

“Partying?” asked Zoe, who’d hardly ever felt less like it in her life.

“You know. At Age of Love. They’ve got a good night tonight. Great DJs and a whole lot of other good stuff. I got tickets ages ago.”

“We don’t have to go, you know,” said Zoe.

“’Course we fucking do,” said Al. “I’ve got some sulphate, some more E and some good quality H. If we get the mix right we’ll be up till fucking Thursday.”

“What day’s it today?” Zoe wondered.

“Tuesday,” said Eve glancing at the calendar.

Zoe pondered over this question. She took a long drag of the joint and looked longingly at the pile of wraps mixed amongst the plastic bags at Al’s feet.

“Yeah,” she said. “Why not? You’re on.”

XXVI
Eden
2049

“She’s your daughter, too,” Eden said into the phone pressed against his ear. “You got custody of her and you should bloody well come and take care of her.”

“I’m miles away,” Zara replied. “I can’t be expected to drop everything I’m doing just to pick up my wayward daughter.”

“I don’t see why not,” said Eden. “I can’t look after her. I’m due back in the Med tomorrow. I’ve got meetings to go to. I’ve got things to organise. It seems that every time I return to London, our junkie daughter imposes herself on me.”

“You’ve got responsibility for our daughter, too,” said Zara. “It’s not my fault she dumps herself on you. I guess you’re more lenient about her jacking up...”

“Don’t take the moral high ground with me. I know the exact extent of your ethics and propriety. Your escapades are well documented.”

“I don’t see that’s remotely relevant. The divorce was years ago. You settled. Your private investigators might have trawled up dirt that you’d have dished out if I’d held out for a better deal, but you can’t use that now.”

“It’s your bloody fault our daughter’s the way she is. You set the example.”

“And you haven’t?”

“Be reasonable,” said Eden with exasperation. “Your daughter’s OD’d again. The doctors have pumped out her stomach and she’s laid up sick in her childhood bedroom. She can’t stay here when I fly back to the Med. You’ve got to take responsibility.”

“No way,” said Zara. “Last time she stayed at my place, she pawned one of those Liberian diamonds for heroin or cocaine or something. I’m not taking that risk again. She’s a junkie. She can mainline in someone else’s home not mine. You’ve got the money, you handle it. Why don’t you just book her into rehab again?”

“It didn’t do much good, did it?”

“Well, it’s your problem this time,” said Zara. “She’s in one of your homes and I’m not prepared to take the risk of having the little bitch steal any more jewellery.”

“I don’t know why I thought you might have a more positive attitude.”

“We’re both her parents,” said Zara. “She’s with you now. Just deal with it.”

With that, Eden heard her click off the phone.

“Fuck,” said Eden. He put the phone back into the inside pocket of his jacket and gazed out of the window onto the leafy square below. He was in the top floor study of his Mayfair house and had a perfect view of the protest march that was wending its way through the plush streets. Undoubtedly it was concerned with something the bloody Americans had said or done to arouse the ire of the good-for-nothing layabouts. Was it something to do with petrol subsidies? Was it the nukes they’d sold to Kazakhstan? Was it the use of fire-arms to suppress protests in Detroit and Chicago? God knows. These greenies and lefties and bloody pooftahs just didn’t know right from wrong.  

Reluctantly, Eden strode out the study and descended a flight of stairs to Zoe’s childhood bedroom. The decor hadn’t changed for ten years and preserved a snapshot of his daughter’s principal interests from a time before they’d transferred to boyfriends and drugs. There were teddy bears and dolls piled up on the shelves. The posters on the wall displayed fresh-faced boy bands many of whose fortunes had been propelled by Eden’s money although his interest in them had never stretched as far as to actually listen to their music. And in the middle of all this was Zoe’s huge bed that was large enough for three adults to sleep in rather than just one young girl. Even now, Zoe was dwarfed by her bed.

There wasn’t much of her to be seen. Her head and arms were exposed while the rest of her was just a bump under the duvet. A clear plastic tube trailed from one nostril and was connected at the other end to the complex machinery left behind by the doctors after they’d pumped out her stomach. She was awake but looked almost as much like a zombie now as when she’d arrived at Eden’s principal London address a couple of days ago. And that was before she’d injected herself with what she must have known was a dangerously high dose.

Eden didn’t have much sympathy for this or any other kind of hysterical melodrama. It was obvious that his slutty junkie daughter was crying for help. You don’t come to your father’s London home on one of the few occasions he’s in town and then OD on him if you didn’t envisage yourself playing the tragic role in a crappy soap opera. Eden might give his daughter money and medical attention, he might stretch to paying for rehab and methadone, but he’d be damned if he’d extend her much sympathy. She didn’t have to become a drug addict. It was she who’d have to come round to seeing the error of her ways.

He then noticed that Zoe’s eyes were open and following him as he paced back and forth across the room.

“You’re awake, I see.”

“Hello, Dad,” said Zoe weakly.

“So you’ve disgraced us again,” said Zoe’s father. “Or should I say: yet again? Your mother and I give you everything you want and more, and what do you do in return? Can’t you do something with your money other than squander it on drugs?”

“I’m sorry, Dad.”

“You’re just saying that so I don’t cut you off,” said Eden as he stood by Zoe’s bed and chose not to sit on the chair that was beside him. “How would you like it if I did that, then? You’d have to make a living like the rest of the scum...”

“The ones who’re rioting and demanding higher wages?”

“Yes,” said Eden. “The great unwashed masses.”

“It’s only because they’re desperate,” said Zoe. “They don’t get a hearing in the media, at least not the media you own...”

“Part own,” Eden automatically corrected.

“...and the government doesn’t care for them, either.”

“You sound like a commie,” said Eden. “Anyway, the point isn’t about those troublemakers but you. And the trouble you make is right on my doorstep. In fact, it’s right here in this bedroom. What should I do with you?”

“Book me into rehab.”

“Again? Lot of bloody good that did. Cost a fortune.”

“I was clean for ages afterwards.”

“We want you off drugs for life. Not just for a few months. But I guess you’re right. There’s nothing else I can do for you.”

“Are you gonna sit with me, Dad?” Zoe pleaded.

“Sit with you?” Eden wondered as he glanced at the chair by the bedside.

“I don’t get to talk with you very often,” Zoe said. “You’re never at home. You’re always off to the Med or the Caribbean or Switzerland or something...”

“Can you blame me?” said Eden with irritation. “Why don’t you stay with your mother if you want company? And it’s not as if you don’t have a place of your own to stay. That apartment in St. John’s Wood cost a bloody fortune. I could’ve done a lot better with that money.”

“Mum’s always busy,” said Zoe. “She’s like you: always going places. And last time I tried to visit her she wouldn’t let me in...”

“I heard about that,” said Eden. “I’m with your mother on that one. You were clearly out of your mind. The police had to be called to restrain you.”

“It was the K,” said Zoe. “And the booze. And the coke. I’ve steered clear of stuff like that since.”

“So, what’s it now?” sneered Eden. “You’re still taking heroin, I see. The doctors found quite a mixture of stuff in your stomach, not to mention your veins.”

“It’s so cheap and easy to get hold of,” said Zoe. “Ever since the wars in the ’Stans, there’s been more opium and heroin and stuff than there’s ever been.”

“It’s not radioactive, is it?” wondered Eden who was suddenly alarmed at the prospect of his daughter spreading radioactive poison around his Mayfair home.

“I don’t know, Dad,” said Zoe. “Might be. The people who sell it don’t tell you. Might put people off buying it otherwise.”

“Do you think so?” asked Eden. That might be an angle one of his newspapers could use in their anti-drug campaigns. Maybe he could suggest it. Radioactive poppies. Radioactive people. There might be some mileage in that before the paper eventually had to print the necessary but belated disclaimer.

“I don’t know anything about nuclear radiation, Dad.”

“Of course not,” said Eden. “The money we spent on your education has been as wasted as the money we’ve spent on everything else to do with you. I’d say it was all going on drugs if it wasn’t for the fact we’ve probably spent more on medical bills to repair the damage you’ve done to yourself than the drugs cost that caused the damage. You look a bloody mess. Your nose will never look the same again...”

Zoe was too weak to do more than snort through nostrils where an artificial septum separated one from the other.

“I don’t know what to do with you,” said Eden finally. “I’ll get Theo to organise the rehab and we’ll get you packed off there as soon as you’re in an acceptable state. But that’s not going to be the end of it, is it? You’ll be back here again, won’t you? Maybe this time you’ll be in a coma. Think how bloody embarrassing that’ll be for me.”

“The media never publishes anything about me, Dad,” said Zoe. “You’d sue them if they did...”

“...Or sack them if I’m able to,” said her father. “Look, I’ve wasted enough time on you. You’re a bloody lost cause. Next time I’m in this country, would it be possible for me to see you without an intravenous drip in your arm and a plaster over your nose? Would that be so difficult for you?”

“I didn’t mean to be a nuisance, Dad.”

Eden frowned. “I’m not sure about that,” he said. “Why couldn’t you dump yourself on your mother’s doorstep? Why mine? I’m a public figure. Your mother’s just another rich divorcee.”

“Mum’s never in, Dad,” said Zoe.

Eden uncharitably wondered where his ex-wife might be if that was the case. She didn’t gamble and she’d given up on drugs years ago after her own near fatal overdose which Eden had to fight hard and litigiously to keep out of the press. That was when his control on the media was rather less complete than it was today. Eden ruefully recalled that she claimed to prefer taller men. Perhaps she was buying their services in just the way Eden resorted to the arms of women who, as a result of his unofficial capital ventures, were also discreetly providing him with a slice of their action.

“Why not just stay in your Battersea apartment?” he suggested.

“It’s a tip, Dad.”

“That’s not my fault. I pay cleaners to keep your apartment in order.”

“I usually turn them away when they appear, Dad.”

“Why’s that?”

“You don’t always want people seeing what’s going on, Dad.”

“And what on earth could that be?” said Eden with contempt. “These cleaning companies are discreet. Even if you’d got a dismembered body in your bathroom, they’d say nothing. They’d just bill me the extra cost. Anyway, when you get back from rehab there’ll be no excuse. I’ll get Theo to get Empire Cleaning Services to do a thorough job.”

“Yes, Dad.”

“Now, if you don’t mind I have pressing business to get on with,” said Eden, who with relief finally left his daughter’s room.

He descended the stairs to the reception area and sat down in one of his massive leather armchairs. He took a cigar out from a box by the armrest, clipped the end and slowly puffed on it.

The distress of seeing his daughter lying prone on her bed drained him of energy. It was worrying that his domestic life shared none of the success of his business ventures. A divorced wife and a junkie daughter. It was a good thing he’d had no other children or wives. He didn’t need another wife. He could get whatever women he liked and there was never a need to shower them with diamonds or allowances. And the children of his closest friends were as much a disappointment to them as Zoe was to him.

Eden picked up his mobile phone and dialled a number. He had to organise a few things before he could set off to his offices in the Docklands where he was due to discuss business with his executive directors.

“Theo,” he said when the phone was answered. “My daughter’s disgraced herself once more. You won’t be surprised to learn that she’s overdone the drugs again. There are a few things I need you to arrange for me.”

XXVII
Tamara
2094

The old lady staggered across the floor of Costa Starbucks while also carrying a tray on which unsteadily wobbled a mug of cappuccino and a slice of rich chocolate cake. It was obvious to Tamara that she needed help. There was also the fact that the coffee shop had no free tables available.

“Can I help you?” Tamara asked as she stood up and approached the old lady who looked at Tamara with a startled expression on her face.

“Help me?” she asked.

“Yes,” said Tamara. “Can I help you carry your tray?”

“Of course you can, dear,” said the old lady as Tamara took the tray from her and guided her towards the other seat on the table where Tamara was sitting. She regarded Tamara’s uniform. “Are you a cleaning woman, dear?”

“Cleaning woman?” asked Tamara.

“The way you dress,” said the old lady. “It’s what cleaning women wear.” She squinted through her thick lenses at the name plate on Tamara’s bosom. “Empire Cleaning Services? I know them. I didn’t think they still existed.”

Tamara blushed. What did this old woman know? Ever since the Refugee Centre was burnt down in an anti-immigrant riot, she’d been living on a very slippery slope indeed and her descent towards starvation had been arrested only when she’d reluctantly resorted to work for a company that employed her to provide the kind of services that the now tarred, feathered and deceased Mehmed had hoped Tamara would never need to do.

“How do you know Empire Cleaning Services?”

“They used to do work for my Dad. Years ago. Fifty years ago, I think. When I was a young girl. I use a different cleaning company now. They’re a lot cheaper. The girls are all immigrants. Arabs I think. I’m not sure. Once upon a time they all came from the Eastern Europe or Africa. What’s your name, dear?”

“Tamara.”

“Pretty name. Is that an Arab name?”

“It’s Jewish. It can be an Arabic name, but I’m Jewish.”

“Jews. Arabs. They’re all the same aren’t they? Is there much left of Israel now? I saw the news about it on the TV years ago. Tragic, isn’t it? My name’s Zoe. That’s a Jewish name too, isn’t it? But I’m not Jewish. I’m English. I’m thousands or millions of generations of English. My family was here before the Romans. Either that or they came over with the Normans. Whatever. Stinking rich my family. For bloody generations.”

Tamara was conscious that this woman was rambling. She probably had no idea what Empire Cleaning Services really was. Tamara wondered how much she truly understood about the world around her. But it was curious that for the first time in her life someone expressed the view to her that Jews and Arabs were the same. That certainly wasn’t an opinion shared by most people across the world.

Then the old woman spoke to her in a way that Tamara really didn’t associate with a person who was clearly well beyond what was still officially a retirement age even if the state so rarely provided old age pensions these days.

“I need some smack, dear,” she said confidentially. “Or coke. Even blow or E would be better than nothing. You don’t know where I can get some do you?”

“Those are illegal drugs,” said Tamara in a low voice. “You shouldn’t be taking illegal drugs.”

“Don’t talk shit,” said Zoe. “I’ve been without a decent dealer for months now. The Arabs and Africans who sell stuff on the street always try to rip me off because I’m old and they think I don’t know any better. But that’s rubbish. I know good gear from bad. You don’t know where I can buy some do you?”

Tamara had no idea of what to say.

“I’ll pay,” said the old woman. “I’ll make it worth your while. I almost don’t care what drugs they are. Being high is about the only good thing left for me now.”

Tamara reflected on the life she was now forced to lead. The blowjobs, the hand jobs, the fucking and the times when clients were tempted to pay for just a little bit more and Tamara suffered several days of blood-specked stools. Was there anything much worse than that? What escape routes were open to her?

“Yes,” said Tamara determinedly. “I know where you can get quality gear.”

“That’s a good girl,” said Zoe, feebly patting her on the wrist. “I could tell from the moment I first saw you that you were a good girl.”

In actual fact, Tamara’s knowledge of drugs, especially the illegal variety, was very sketchy indeed. She’d only ever smoked cannabis or dropped Ecstasy tablets at parties. She’d never thought to pay for drugs. But it was also true that she knew where to go. The refugees and immigrants with whom Tamara worked had all faced the same employment issues as she and they’d not all taken the route she’d chosen. A trade that involved the purchase, preparation and sale of drugs was a natural choice for those who understood prescription drugs and were otherwise forbidden from taking legitimate employment. The alternatives, such as they were, weren’t much better but for many refugees options such as prostitution and burglary were beyond contemplation.

Tamara was entrusted with a substantial sum of money to secure the drugs that Zoe wanted. At first she was tempted to take the money and spend it on other things, but that would be theft. Tamara wasn’t a thief. She wouldn’t take even from those who were undoubtedly able to afford the loss. Zoe was visibly wealthy. She might be scruffy but she was expensively so.

Zoe was very unspecific about what drugs she wanted beyond the fact that they should be of good quality. Tamara’s most obvious contact was Mohammed who’d worked as a nurse at the Refugee Centre but was now more often found on Church Street by the charred remains of where they’d once all lived and worked. Nowadays rather than provide medical aid for the needy he provided those who could afford it a welcome source of distraction and a less welcome route to drug addiction.

“Man!” said Mohammed. “She must really trust you to give you that much dosh.”

“I’m a trustworthy kind of girl,” said Tamara.

“I guess you must be,” said Mohammed. “And she was definitely not specific about what she wants?”

“Well, she mentioned the stuff I just mentioned,” said Tamara. “I think it’s quality she wants.”

“You think she’ll be a regular customer?”

“It’s in my interest that she is.”

“Well, I won’t short-change her then. I’ll sort out some wraps and a few pills. You’ll have to come back to my place for me to do that. You don’t mind, do you?”

“If it’s business only,” said Tamara.

“Well, it’s not the kind of business that Empire Cleaning Services employs you to provide,” said Mohammed. “Unless, that is, you do fancy cleaning up the place where I’m squatting.”

Zoe’s home couldn’t be more of a contrast to Mohammed’s. Even getting to the house was a real problem. It was nearly ten kilometres away in the Surrey countryside, relatively remote from London’s suburban overspill and at the end of a private road that was in considerably better repair than any road in Reigate or Redhill. It was enclosed by a looming security fence whose intent was made apparent by the plethora of electric wires and lethal spikes. Nevertheless, only one person was actually resident in a house that could easily accommodate very many more.

“Oh, it’s you dear,” said Zoe when Tamara buzzed the intercom. “Did you see the security guard when you came in?”

“Yes,” said Tamara, who had passed a uniformed man sitting in a small guard box at the entrance to the private road.

“He didn’t frisk you or anything, did he?” asked Zoe.

“No, he didn’t,” said Tamara.

“You can never be sure what these security guards might do, dear,” said Zoe. “I told him that a foreign looking woman might be coming. I’m glad you’re wearing your cleaning maid outfit because that’s what I said you’d be wearing. And you’ve brought some good gear?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Great!” Zoe said with obvious delight. “Come in. Come in.”

The security gate slid open and Tamara walked into a small antechamber that was there to ensure that only one person could enter the house’s grounds at a time. She was then permitted into Zoe’s extensive garden and there, waiting for her at the open front door, was the old lady herself wearing a night-gown and smoking a cigarette.

Of course, as an employee of Empire Cleaning Services, Tamara had been admitted into houses in Surrey as large as this before. There’d also been the villa in Israel that she and her family had so tearfully abandoned. That had been at least as large as Zoe’s, but blessed also by good sunshine and blessed with a glorious swimming pool. Her family home was now almost certainly overrun by Palestinians in a land where it was entirely inadvisable to be identified as an Israeli citizen. A hundred Arabs could cram into a villa that had once been occupied by only Tamara’s immediate family.

It was also very different from not only Mohammed’s filthy squat but the similarly decrepit single-room apartment that Tamara rented from the burly Armenian man who collected rent from the properties along Fairfax Avenue.

Zoe led Tamara into a vast living room dominated by a massive holoscreen television that was broadcasting a drama series set in an idealised corner of England where the streets weren’t potholed, the police didn’t accept bribes, and the villagers’ chief concerns were their relationships with one another. The old woman pressed the touchpad remote and the image changed from a drama series to a surreal landscape designed to match the percussive rhythms it accompanied which unfamiliar music was most probably the soundtrack of her teenage years.

“What’ve you got, dear?” asked Zoe eagerly when Tamara sat down on the huge leather sofa beside the similarly oversized one on which Zoe was sprawling.

“A mixture,” said Tamara. “I’m not sure what they all are.”

“Let’s have a look,” said Zoe who carefully opened the package with her crabbed fingers and examined the contents with what appeared to be an expert eye. She dipped her small finger into the powder and dabbed it on her tongue. “It doesn’t look bad. The skunk smells okay too. Of course, there’s only one sure way of finding out though. Do you fancy sharing, dear?”

“Erm...” said Tamara. “Not really. Anyway, I’ll have to go home soon.”

“Where do you live?” asked Zoe. “Somewhere nice?”

“No, not really.”

“It won’t be safe walking back in the dark, will it? I never wind down the windows of my car when I’m driving and it must be even more dangerous if you can’t drive away from trouble. You hear such stories. Of course, the security companies like it that way. It gives them jobs, especially since the police are so overstretched and undermanned.”

“I don’t have to work this evening,” admitted Tamara.

“I’d say not,” said Zoe. “Who’d want their house cleaned in the evening? Look, you don’t have to join me in sampling this stuff, but it’s nice to have company even if I’m not gonna be very chatty. Most of the friends I used to have sessions with are dead now.”

“Was it the drugs?” wondered Tamara.

“I don’t know. They’re just dead. Maybe it was drugs. Maybe it was other things like venereal diseases or stuff like cancer they would’ve got whatever they’d been doing. You never know. When people die, the coroner doesn’t normally specify what the ultimate cause might be. Anyway, I’m old. Fucking old. I’m in my seventies or something. It’s normal for people my age to die. And I’m proof that you can keep going however many times you’ve had your stomach pumped, your nose repaired, your blood transfused and your heart defibrillated. Anyhow, you are staying aren’t you? I’ve got plenty of spare beds you can sleep in.”

“Yes, I suppose I can,” said Tamara who hadn’t really looked forward to the possible hazards of a two hour walk in the dark.

“Good girl,” said Zoe. “I knew you were a good girl. And if this gear’s as kosher as you say and you don’t mind scoring some more for me, you can stay here for as long as you bloody well like.”

XXVIII
Alex
2026

“Can I help you?” Alex asked the smartly dressed young woman he spotted striding through the office late in the evening. The fur coat and dress she wore was undeniably expensive, so she almost certainly wasn’t a member of staff. Even this late in the evening it was curious that she’d been able to get past security. The only other people still in the office were middle managers like Alex, a few systems administrators and the cleaning staff.

Alex had recently adopted the habit of working late in the office. It was the only time he could find to do the boring management work for which he was paid after a day mostly taken up by interminable meetings. Unpaid overtime was also quite obviously one of the best routes to promotion at Reuters-Fox. It had paid well for Alex in the last year where his ascent up the ranks had mostly resulted from having reputation as someone who worked long hours. In truth, it was sometimes quite difficult to find tasks to do to justify his obsessive overtime but there were plenty of websites to surf whose perusal might seem just about appropriate for a news company manager.

Paradoxically, it was also true that now he was a married man there was less incentive to get home in good time. After the first few months of blissful married life, there never seemed a better time to arrive home than after eight by which time his wife, Isobel, would have forgotten all the things that had been pissing her off during the day.

 It wasn’t that Alex didn’t love Isobel. In many ways she was the ideal woman for him. She was steady and reliable and she loved him. Furthermore, she was a woman who’d also brought with her a substantial inheritance. It wasn’t a huge fortune, but it was enough to make Alex’s life comfortable. What’s more, Alex was sure that Isobel rather liked the idea of being married to a busy man. His apparent workaholism balanced her own guilt that her life might otherwise have been a little too comfortable.

However, even Isobel had never been accustomed to the level of comfort enjoyed by this mysterious woman. “I’m looking for my husband,” she said in a slightly unsteady voice. “I thought he might be here.”

“Your husband?” wondered Alex, who hesitated about adding the word ‘Ma’am’ but decided that however wealthy this young woman was she probably wasn’t a member of the Royal Family.

“Yes,” said the woman with a slight slur that suggested that she’d been drinking. “Eden. Have you seen him?”

Eden St John-Easton had only recently bought significant shares in Reuters-Fox UK, which was something of a coup for a relatively young man, but he still wasn’t a majority shareholder. Nevertheless, he’d already gained a reputation as a man who took an active interest in his media assets although his appearances at the office had been few and sporadic.

“I don’t believe I have,” said Alex.

“Eden always says he works late,” said the young woman. “I thought he might be working late here. He often tells me about his ideas for the business.”

“I’m afraid I haven’t seen your husband,” said Alex. “Is there anything I can do for you, Ma’am?”

Alex immediately cursed himself. He’d tried so hard to suppress an honorific title that he knew was totally inappropriate, but the young woman giggled. She obviously didn’t mind his mistake.

“Just call me Zara,” she said. “Look, I don’t want to waste your time but could we just check the offices to be sure he isn’t here somewhere?”

“Erm...” said Alex who wasn’t sure that this was such a good idea even if Mr St John-Easton was in the building. In fact, it would almost certainly be a huge mistake if he was. “Well, if he was here,” Alex continued uncertainly, “he’d be meeting with the senior editors on the top floor.”

“Let’s go there then,” said Zara.

Alex glanced nervously about him.

“Come on then,” Zara insisted.

“OK,” said Alex as he slipped on his jacket. He probably wouldn’t be returning to his desk this evening, but the screen would lock up before anyone came into the office and could discover exactly which websites he’d been browsing.

He led Zara to the escalator and accompanied her as it rose to the top floor. He’d only ever been there before to attend meetings where he’d felt very much like an insignificant cog in a giant multinational wheel. Zara strode out of the lift while Alex dawdled behind and watched as the young woman pushed open every door that could be opened and looked through the windows of those that couldn’t.

“He’s not here,” she said at last.

“No,” said Alex with relief. “Perhaps he was never here in the first place.”

“He always goes on about Reuters-Fox,” said Zara. “I thought he might always be here.”

“Mr St John-Easton has many other business concerns,” Alex remarked.

“He doesn’t go on about any them so much, though. He says he’s got plans for the company. Plans that will not only improve the business, but also improve the country.”

“The country?”

“Eden is very concerned about the country’s welfare,” said Zara. “He doesn’t like the direction it’s going. The unions are too strong. The environmental nutters are always proposing new taxes that’ll only throttle business. The European Union is forever sticking its nose in. It’s not right.”

“I see,” said Alex, who was sure that Reuters-Fox was exactly the kind of news organisation that would chime with opinions like that.

“Well, look,” said Zara. “I’m sorry to have troubled you. I’ll take you to the bar to compensate.”

“The bar?” wondered Alex.

“There is a bar round here, isn’t there? This is like a newspaper, isn’t it? There’s always booze where there are journalists.”

“There’s a wine bar across the road,” said Alex, who knew of an especially pricey and exclusive one nearby. What he didn’t know was whether it had a members-only policy.

“We’ll go there,” said Zara.

The Zenith was one of a new breed of wine bar that had emerged from the desire of senior management to dissociate itself from the scrum of middle managers who were competing for their attention. Its exclusivity was guaranteed by a very strict door policy that Alex wouldn’t normally qualify for and by selling drinks at extortionate prices. Even so, any fears Alex had about being allowed in were dispelled when Zara and he were greeted with a polite murmur from the be-suited door attendants.

“Have you been here before?” asked Alex, who was impressed by the ease with which they’d entered.

“No,” said Zara. “They probably recognise me, though.”

“Why’s that?”

“I think Eden owns all the posh wine bars in Docklands. They turn a good profit and they provide discreet venues for business discussion.”

“I see,” said Alex.

What he also got to see was just how much Zara liked her drink. She had no qualms about ordering the most expensive cocktails, which were put onto her expenses account, though Zara confided that they probably wouldn’t actually charge her for them. “You can imagine how that might look if Eden ever got to look at the accounts.” She had even fewer qualms about knocking back the cocktails in rather less time than it took to make them, while Alex resisted temptation and maintained a very modest level of consumption from the bottle of ludicrously expensive red wine that Zara had ordered for him. It wouldn’t do to get even slightly tipsy in front of an important shareholder’s wife.

“Are you married, Alec?” asked Zara.

Alex didn’t want to correct her. For this evening he was happy to be Alec, Alan or even Aled.

“Yes, I am,” said Alex. “We’ve been married for about six months.”

“I bet like most people these days you’d been living together for years.”

“Not really,” said Alex. “We met at a party, got on well and more or less got married less than six months later.”

“A whirlwind romance, Alan,” said Zara. “A whirlwind romance. Like mine with Eden, only it’s like being married to a fucking tornado, if you don’t mind my French.”

“Tornado?”

“Or typhoon. Well, Eden is a tycoon. Typhoon. Tycoon. Tornado. He’s always doing something and it’s impossible to keep up with him. I mean, we sleep together every night, although not always in a Biblical sense, and then he’s always off somewhere. He’s got a fair amount stashed away in the Caymans and Jersey and Lithuania and all those other places where taxes are low and property prices are through the roof. He’s even talked about buying a yacht.”

“A yacht?”

“Yes, Alec. A yacht. Somewhere to stay where no taxman need ever venture. Eden hates paying taxes. There are two things he really hates. Taxes. And my mother. Oh, and scroungers, unions, Euros, Brussels, homosexuals, Greens and a whole load of other stuff. I don’t know how much he gives to the Tories. A lot, I think.”

“Why doesn’t he become a politician?” suggested Alex.

“I dunno, Alan. I’ve asked him that myself. What better way to change things? Eden says that the House of Lords isn’t what it was and he wouldn’t want to take the risk of contesting a seat in a general election. Winning votes isn’t the same as buying them. Anyway, Eden says he can get other people to do all the politics stuff for him. He’s a professional businessman, not a politician.”

Zara was in no hurry to leave the Zenith and even though Alex didn’t have to actually pay for the expensive wine he was drinking, he had no wish to match Zara drink for drink. She increasingly slurred her words as the evening progressed, but she wasn’t actually losing it. She was evidently someone who knew how to knock it back. But she did become steadily more indiscreet. She looked into Alex’s eyes with open pupils and her focus was mostly on his face.

Then she placed her hand on his crotch. She did so firmly enough for her to tell whether his penis was erect and thereby ascertain his interest.

“Did you say you were married, Alan?” she asked.

“Yes. Six months.”

“Does your wife mind you being out at night with strange women?”

Alex burst into a cold sweat. He knew exactly where this could lead and he didn’t want to fuck it up. There was too much at stake. Isobel would naturally be suspicious and she might even detect another woman’s scent on his body.

“I think she would,” said Alex diplomatically. “As I say, we’ve not been married long.”

Zara kept her hand on Alex’s crotch. It was obvious that she enjoyed playing with him and was amused by the dilemma she’d put him in.

“What’s your wife like, Alan?”

“She’s slim and pretty and about the same age as me.”

“Old then. Have you got children?”

“No.”

“Do you want children?”

“I guess so.”

Zara removed her hand from Alex’s crotch and swivelled around on her seat. She decided to steer the conversation away from the dangerous direction in which it had been heading.

“We want children too, Alan,” she said. “At least I do. If only Eden would fuck his whores less often and fuck me more then we’d have had one by now.”

Alex realised this was a better direction in which to take the conversation. “I think it’s best to wait a few years till you have children,” he said.

“Fucking conventional wisdom,” Zara retorted fiercely. “That’s what Eden says. That’s what they all say. Have your fun now. Have your kids later. You obviously don’t know what it’s like to be married to a fabulously wealthy man. I can be dropped at a moment’s notice. Eden would probably find another wife within days if he wanted one. A wife needs a bit of insurance against the future. Especially when her husband’s a selfish bastard like Eden. And what better insurance policy is there than to have a child or two?”

XXIX
Eden
2050

It was another bloody bastard journey back home to England, Eden reflected, as his chauffeur-driven car finally pulled into the drive of his Surrey estate. He increasingly despaired of the state of his home country every time he was troubled to pay it a visit. He’d had to wait two days in Milan while flights to Heathrow were held up. Even private charters such as his were grounded as a result of the unexpected heavy snow that London’s runways still couldn’t cope with. And then the drive from the airport across the snowy Surrey countryside was a nightmare. You’d have thought that global warming would have done away with bad winters. For nine months of the year, the talk was all about the sea level rising or droughts and then for three months of the year there was the inevitable bad weather. Usually it was floods and storms. This year, it was heavy snow.

“They just don’t get the gritters out in time,” Eden told Ivan Eisenegger, the Leader of the Opposition, who was waiting for him in his Surrey home. “What kind of rubbish road maintenance is that? Where do my bloody taxes go?”

“Local government taxes pay for that,” said Ivan. “The councils are all capped and they make whatever cuts they can. It hasn’t snowed for six years so they haven’t prepared for it.”

“Is that something you lot will tackle when you get back into power again?”

“We want to move away from exorbitant tax demands and profligate public sector expenditure,” said Ivan. “We’ve still not completely worked out how to hand road maintenance and repair over to the private sector without having to subsidise it. The public aren’t sufficiently willing to shoulder the costs directly.”

“There must be ways to keep the roads clear of snow and still reduce taxes,” said Eden. “But you’re right: the priority must be to keep taxes down. I trust that is what you intend to do after the next general election?”

“It’s still a few months off and the result isn’t yet in the bag.”

“The polls are looking good. And you’ve got the whole media behind you...”

“The polls also say that it’s more the unpopularity of the current Coalition than support for Conservative policies that will be critical to our success. We have to be careful what we say.”

“I understand that,” said Eden. “But when you are back in government, make sure that cutting taxes is your priority. Get the snouts of your interfering bureaucrats out of my business. That’s all I ask. I’ve got discussions with my senior news editors tomorrow. What suggestions for news stories do you think I should make to them?”

Ivan looked around him at the two other opposition MPs who were also gathered together in Eden’s smoking room. Eden was the only who was actually smoking and that was from a huge cigar imported from Cuba. The other MPs had sunk into the embrace of the huge leather armchairs and sipped from the wine that Theo, Eden’s trusted servant, had poured out for them. At the same time, their fingers were tapping desultorily on the keyboards of their tablet computers.

“The Labour Coalition has been in power for a long time now,” said Edmund Eaglecliffe MP. “A negative campaign that emphasises the mistakes and errors of the present government is surely the best approach.”

“I rather like the tack taken by the Times when it attacks the menace of immigration,” said Thomas Eastwick MP. “We need to take a firmer stand against asylum seekers and economic migrants. The country’s swamped by them.”

“We have to be careful, Tom,” said Ivan. “Some voters might confuse an uncompromising immigration policy with racism or intolerance towards foreigners. The Times is right to highlight the burden on Britain’s scarce resources resulting from there being so many claimants and jobseekers, but we don’t want to frighten off nervous voters in ethnically diverse marginal constituencies.”

“What are voters most concerned about?” asked Eden. “Isn’t that what we should be focusing on?”

“It’s the usual confused picture,” said Edmund. “Sure, there are issues that appeal to core Conservative values such as a demand for lower taxes, fewer immigrants and disengagement from Brussels. However, there’s also concern about flood defences, low wages and the high cost of fuel...”

“We can do something about the last,” said Thomas. “It’s mostly tax anyway.”

“We can’t go as far as some of the American states by introducing a fuel subsidy,” said Edmund. “But we will have to present a coherent view on other issues, especially the environmental ones.”

“I’m all in favour of being green as long as it doesn’t cost a penny,” said Eden. “I don’t like the way these greens always find an argument to raise expenditure and revenue to combat climate change. It’s just another excuse for high taxation. Any changes to the tax rate should only ever go one way. It should never increase.”

“It’s not going to be easy to implement lower taxation,” said Ivan. “The national debt is cripplingly high and tax rates are lower than they’ve ever been.”

“The nation’s prosperity relies on the prosperity of its businesses,” said Eden uncompromisingly. “What’s to keep companies like mine from investing in low-tax business-friendly countries like Libya, Korea and America? The only talk I want to hear is about how to reduce taxes.”

“We have to say something about the floods in Southern England,” said Edmund. “There are too many Tory constituencies in the southern counties for us to ignore it.”

“Don’t expect any media outlet that I have shares in to print stories that suggest taxes will have to rise to pay for flood-defences,” said Eden firmly. “This climate change theory is nothing more than a con anyway. The scientists have got it wrong. The interests of business take a higher priority than any nonsense about global warming. I mean, look at the weather outside. What kind of global warming is that?”

“It’s bloody cold,” agreed Ivan. “But I know where you’re coming from, Edmund. When you’re being interviewed by the BBC or one of those pinko newspapers like the Guardian or the Independent, you have to find something to say about flood-defences.”

“How many Conservative voters read those papers or watch the BBC?” wondered Thomas. “Have you seen the BBC recently? It’s bloody rubbish. They rely so much on computer graphics to disguise how shoddy their studios are that it looks like a computer game.”

“The BBC isn’t what it used to be,” said Edmund. “It’s been no threat to anyone ever since we scrapped the license fee. But it’s still watched and trusted by more people than Fox News UK.”

“It’s your job to do something about that when you’re in government,” said Eden threateningly. “The BBC is a throwback to an age that should be dead and buried, along with independent trades unions, publicly funded education, and social security. I don’t pay millions to the Conservative party only for you to pursue anti-business policies when you’re in a position to do something about it.”

“That’s true, Eden,” said Ivan conciliatorily. “But my advice is that the media you control should be careful to distinguish between the policies you support and those of the Conservative party. The public perception of the party’s independence from undue influence needs to be maintained.”

“So, what do you suggest, Ivan?” said Eden, who didn’t like being told that he should be paying for anything other than the implementation of what he believed in. “Should we be printing stories about how tax-payers’ money should be squandered to elevate the East Anglian sea wall by another ten feet? Should we say that tax-payers’ money should be used to give public sector workers a pay-rise? Should we say that scrapping the Environmental Protection Agency, the Financial Services Agency and all those other quangos was a mistake?”

“As I say, Eden,” said Ivan, “what we do in government and what we say to get into government are two different things. The important thing for the moment is to appeal not solely to loyal Conservative voters by stressing only core Conservative values. What we also need to do is attract the votes of those who might otherwise vote Democrat, Liberal or one of the other pinko parties.”

The snow continued to pile high on the lawns of his Surrey home while Eden and the three politicians gathered around the huge fire that dominated the smoking room. Eden didn’t like it when Ivan disagreed with him regarding any policy detail, but he reasoned from his more private conversations that the Leader of the Opposition was a man who could be trusted. Eden was sure that Ivan could be relied on as Prime Minister to pursue the right policies whatever he had to say in public. Britain wasn’t going to be restored to greatness unless a Conservative government took power. Fortunately, the subtle changes to constituency boundaries and the new rules on voter registration had swung the potential balance of power back towards the Natural Party of Government that the Tories so obviously were.

Eden was faced with the choice of sending Theo down to the cellar to fetch yet another bottle of wine or of wrapping up the meeting. “Well, gentlemen,” he said, “I don’t think any of you should risk the travel back home to your constituencies in these conditions.” He nodded towards the drawn curtains where a spirited snowstorm was battering against the triple-glazed windows.

“This weather has been truly dreadful,” said Thomas. “If it wasn’t so bad, I’m sure Eric, Phil and even Anthony would have made it.”

“Do you believe that you have a clear enough idea of how to present Conservative electoral policy to your editors, Eden?” asked Ivan cautiously.

“My media outlets aren’t the propaganda division of the Tory Party,” said Eden, “but the editorial policies of the right-thinking media and the interests of business can only be served by a Conservative Party victory. We shall do what we can to maintain a tone in the campaign that rallies core support without alienating the undecided. I’m sure my editors can be trusted to do whatever they can to facilitate an election victory.”

“I think we can then say that our business is concluded, wouldn’t you say gentlemen?” commented Ivan.

“I think so,” said Thomas.

“In that case,” said Eden, “it only remains for me to introduce you to the extra company I’ve taken the trouble to invite.”

“Thank you, Eden,” said Ivan with categorical firmness. “But regrettably I shall have to extend my apologies. I’m afraid I do feel really rather tired. It’s been a very long day and I need to get a good night’s sleep. Is there somewhere I can rest my head for the night?”

“There are many such places, Ivan,” said Eden. “My entire house is at your disposal. I’ve already arranged that a guest room be made available for each of you. I’ll call Theo and he’ll be pleased to escort you to your room.” Eden smiled at Thomas and Edmund. “Is either of you two gentlemen also too tired or would you be willing to accompany me and my other guests for the rest of the evening?”

The two other Members of Parliament nodded that they would be prepared to stay.

After Ivan had finally left, Eden addressed the remaining company. “This isn’t the first time Ivan’s been reluctant to meet my other guests. Is there something about him that I should know?”

“I’m sorry, Eden,” said Edmund. “I’m not quite sure I catch your gist.”

“Don’t pretend to be so naive, Edmund,” said Thomas. “No, Eden. As far as we know Ivan isn’t homosexual. His relationship with his wife is perfectly normal. In fact, it’s perhaps a little too normal. My personal belief is that our Prime Minister-in-waiting is so driven by the desire for high office that nothing—and I mean nothing—will be allowed to get in his way.”

“Surely he knows that he can rely on absolute discretion when he’s a guest of mine,” said Eden. “Nothing is permitted to go beyond the four walls of this room.”

“I don’t think Ivan wants to take a risk of any kind,” said Thomas. “History is littered with the sad tales of ambitious men who let a small slip-up blight their future. Ivan won’t let that happen to him.”

“Well, in that case,” said Eden, “I can now introduce you to the extra company I took the trouble of inviting. I do hope that none of your tastes are homosexual as I’ve made no allowances for that.”

“And if one of us were, Eden?” asked Edmund in good humour.

“Are you, Edmund?” asked Eden.

“Not necessarily,” said the MP. “Well, far from exclusively.”

“I’ll bear that in mind on future occasions,” said Eden good-naturedly. “Despite the impression given by the recent campaign in the Express & Mail, I don’t hold any personal prejudice against gentlemen of refined taste. It’s the fucking gay and lesbian community I despise.”

“I’m sure I’ll be more than content with the company you’ve invited,” said Edmund diplomatically.

“Well, I certainly hope so,” said Eden. “I expected rather more guests than you two. That has the benefit that the number of ladies I’ve invited will outnumber us rather more than I’d originally anticipated. I hope you’re both feeling fit and up for the challenge.”

“You never disappoint, do you Eden?” said Thomas as the six women of mostly Middle Eastern origin filed into the room scantily dressed and clearly ready to transact further business with Eden’s venerable guests.  And as this intercourse was unlikely to involve much verbal discussion, the sorry state of the women’s grasp of English would be no handicap at all.

XXX
Tamara
2095

It didn’t come as much of a surprise to Tamara when Zoe died. The mystery was rather that she’d managed to live so long given that she’d managed to maintain for so long a drug habit far in excess of what a woman of advanced years was designed to withstand.

All the same, it had been good while it lasted. She and Mohammed had done well out of keeping Zoe supplied with a regular supply of whatever drugs that were currently on the market. Mohammed profited from having a regular customer who paid promptly and in advance. Tamara profited from having a very nice house to live in and a wonderfully warm and clean bed in which to sleep. The only penalties were that she had to leave regularly to visit Mohammed, which she did in Zoe’s car, and to sit with Zoe while she sunk into yet another of her mostly silent drug-induced trances.

“What was your relationship with the deceased?” the doctor asked Tamara after he’d examined Zoe’s dead body.

Tamara had rehearsed her answer. “I was her lover,” she said.

The doctor raised his eyebrows. “Well, Miss St. John-Easton was a strange one, that’s for sure. And the toxins in her body... You do know what caused her death, don’t you?”

“Drugs overdose?”

“Amongst other things,” said the doctor. “However, we shall be discreet. And not just about her illegal drugs habit, of course. I hope she’s left something for you in her will.”

“I’ll just have to wait and find out,” said Tamara who hadn’t thought about that possibility before.

Of course, Zoe had died intestate. Naturally. When would she have found the time to sort matters out with her solicitors however often they might remind her of her duty to her family? And this of course bought Tamara a great deal of time in which she could remain resident in the house she’d made her home for so many months in her new assumed role as Zoe’s bereaved lover.

Tamara had everything she wanted except a line of credit. She had full access to Zoe’s home, her car, her possessions and everything within the estate’s secure walls. What she didn’t have was the money to replenish supplies as they ran out. Thankfully, everything continued to function much as before even though Zoe was no longer alive. Groceries were delivered. The cleaning staff arrived once a day to tidy up what was now a much less disorderly home. The electricity and water continued to be on supply. But Tamara knew that at some point all this would come to an end and that she hadn’t put aside nearly enough cash to cover all the costs.

All the same, Tamara could comfort herself with the notion that the direct debits and standing orders that had been set up were tapping into a well of funds that must be pretty much bottomless. And ultimately that source, as Tamara discovered from Zoe before she’d died and from her own research on the internet, was Zoe’s father who’d died nearly half a century earlier.

“He was rich,” Zoe told her. “Fucking rich. He almost owned the bloody government. If it wasn’t for him there’d probably never have been an English National Unity government.”

“But he died a couple of years before all that happened,” Tamara pointed out.

“During the London riots,” agreed Zoe. “Yeah, that was probably the catalyst that made it all happen, dear. Money spent on political influence. Chaos caused by joblessness and poverty. People weren’t used to it.”

“Things were better fifty years ago, weren’t they?” said Tamara.

“People didn’t think so at the time, dear. The nuclear wars over in Asia. The crop failures. The high price of fuel. Everyone thought it had just gone too far.”

“I don’t see why there were riots then when most people had enough to eat; when people thought plague and famine was banished forever; when ordinary people could drive cars and didn’t have to buy household electricity in portable batteries; when Norfolk still existed as a county and London wasn’t flooded half the time; when, for fuck’s sake, Israel was a land of plenty. What were people complaining about?”

“If people had complained a bit more,” said Zoe, “perhaps we wouldn’t be in the mess we’re in. Dad didn’t think the real problems were anything to do with the stuff you’ve just gone on about. He thought it was all to do with governments interfering in the interests of business. That was what he mostly thought, but he also believed that immigration, homosexuality, atheism, environmentalism, trades unions and a whole shitload of other stuff was to blame. A lot of people agreed with him. Especially the stuff about immigration.”

“That’s what the English National Unity government was most famous for, wasn’t it? Kicking out foreigners.”

“It got worse when England was forced to leave the Northern European Union. That was when the United Kingdom fell apart.”

Tamara got bored with conversations like that. The English felt so sorry for themselves. They, and also the Americans. The English annoyed everyone through their well-documented stupidity and arrogance. And soon they woke up to find that the United Kingdom was no longer united and no longer a kingdom. It wasn’t even any longer part of the Northern European Union that it had whinged about for so long. The Americans were even worse. They let their most extreme political party take absolute control of the United States and then watched with growing horror as it dismantled the engines of government. All that was left was a progressively weaker nation that steadily squandered a reservoir of wealth that was far from boundless. Eventually, what a nineteenth century civil war had sewn together was dissolved through constitutional crises and economic collapse. At least this time it wasn’t associated with the loss of hundreds of thousands of lives.

Even so, what were these misfortunes compared to those suffered by Israel. The nation of Tamara’s birth existed now only in the abstract sense of having a paid representative in the United Nations’ headquarters in Beijing and by the continued existence of millions of worthless passports. No sane person would actually choose to live in a nuclear wasteland where crops were mutated, cancer was everywhere, and the Palestinians doled out vicious vengeance on any Jew foolish enough to be identified as such. That wasn’t what had seemed the most likely of possible futures when, after the initial barrage of nuclear weapons, the Israeli soldiers streamed out of the Promised Land to secure their victory. A rather hollow victory it now seemed when even a limited retaliatory response had destroyed Israel as a nation. And hollower still when it became obvious that wind direction and rain spread nuclear fallout and radiation as evenly on the victors as the defeated and that an angry vengeful Arab population many times larger than the population of surviving Jews was not, after all, likely to retreat in cowed abjection.

“What did your father think of the Jews?” Tamara asked.

“Not much, dear,” said Zoe. “Well, not often anyway. Though I guess if he thought about them at all he probably didn’t like them. He didn’t like most foreigners. If they didn’t speak English as a first language and they were a different skin colour, then he almost certainly didn’t like them. And that was odd, of course, because his businesses were more active abroad than in England. He spent far more time outside the United Kingdom than he ever did on its shores. If there was money to be made out of the Israelis that was all right, I guess, but if an Arab was going to cut him a better deal my Dad would just dump the entire Jewish nation if that’s what it took to seal it. Anyway, it was American money that kept Israel going wasn’t it? When the United States dissolved that’s all it took for Israel to collapse.”

That wasn’t, of course, how Tamara understood it from what she’d been taught in the Promised Land. She was still sure it was never as simple as that, although surrounded as she was by evidence of the extraordinary wealth, power and influence that Zoe’s father had once possessed, she couldn’t help wondering whether the fate of Abraham’s tribe hadn’t, in the end, just all been down to money.

And nowadays money was exactly what Tamara most fretted about. She’d gathered together all the cash she could find in Zoe’s home, but it was obvious that the lines of credit that kept the estate functioning by default couldn’t forever continue to finance her lavish lifestyle. At some stage, the electricity would be cut off, the cleaners would no longer arrive, the groceries would no longer be delivered and the lawyers representing Zoe’s estate would ask her to leave. She couldn’t remain where she was for evermore, could she?

On the other hand, as the days stretched into weeks and the weeks into months, Tamara began to wonder whether in some strange way the financial acumen of Eden St John-Easton might not benefit his daughter’s proxy drug supplier for many more years to come. How would the diminutive billionaire view his heritage now if he knew that the last benefactor of the fortune that had shaped the opinions of millions was a stateless Jewish refugee who’d had to resort to prostitution and drug dealing to survive? Was this the legacy by which he’d like to be remembered?

Eventually, of course, the services that kept Tamara in luxury steadily came to an end. The first extravagance to be discontinued, of course, was the regular cleaning service. The day came when the house was not filled at ten in the morning by a busy rush of activity from Asian and Arabic women who’d once methodically removed every trace of Zoe’s prodigious drug habits and now had much less need to be active. Tamara was actually more upset when the contract for media services expired and she now had to rely for news and entertainment on the terrestrial radio stations. Most of these were more or less identical commercial radio stations, but she could at least listen to the EBC News Service which was one of the last few remaining remnants of the once prestigious BBC.

Beyond the security walls of Zoe’s estate there was a large and very frightening world. This was a world in which a plague was spreading across Wales and North West England; where there was a deadly border dispute between Mexico and the Republic of North America (though much of that was indentured labour trying to escape to Mexico rather than economic migrants travelling north); where famine bred violence across the Middle East and put further pressure on the few remaining Jewish settlers besieged behind high walls and barbed wire; where the Netherlands was now mostly underwater; and where frightened nations were building up military alliances to defend what remained of their economic influence.

It was a much safer world behind the walls of Zoe’s estate. When she looked through the window at the countless hectares of garden that had become ever more unkempt since the gardeners stopped arriving, Tamara could well believe that things weren’t so bad. It was easy to shelter here in a world where the horrors of the outside world were as distant as they once seemed a quarter of a century ago when she was a child. It was reassuring to have access to so much space. She was tempted to invite her friends from her time at the Refugee Centre to share the bounty, but she recognised that this might present a problem with regards to the security guards. They were prone to pass a blind eye to the one by now familiar Jewish immigrant, but would be far less tolerant of twenty or so people that they didn’t recognise.

The groceries finally stopped arriving one day. That was a blow, although the food was scarcely what Zoe would have chosen for herself. She was sure that it wasn’t even partly kosher, but she’d abandoned the scruples of her religion a long time ago. There was enough in the freezers to keep her going for several months more, but only if the power supply continued. Thankfully, the wind generators and solar panels didn’t rely on payment to the electricity suppliers.

Tamara’s was now a lonely life. She had no company at all now the cleaners didn’t visit. Tamara was rather grateful that Zoe had never been very neighbourly. She was pretty sure that none of Zoe’s very wealthy and rather snooty neighbours would be especially friendly towards her supposed lesbian lover. Tamara was secluded in an island of illusory plenty. She knew it wouldn’t last forever and as the days passed by the dread of being thrown out into the harsh world beyond troubled her more and more.

Every news report of yet another immigrant being lynched made her shiver. And she trembled even more when the racial origin of the victim was identified and it was announced that it was yet another Jewish migrant.

XXXI
Alex
2027

It wasn’t often that the chief shareholders of Reuters-Fox UK ever chose to address the senior staff, but the celebration following the landslide General Election victory for the Conservatives was a special occasion. It clearly deserved the attendance of those whose wealth financed the loss-making news media empire and whose influence and opinions guided its editorial policies.

Alex was probably the most junior of all the staff in attendance. Although his promotion through the ranks had been relatively rapid thanks to his tireless self-promotion and willingness to do unpaid overtime, he hadn’t risen to the rarefied heights of management where he would normally expect to meet people like Eden St John-Easton. The young tycoon wasn’t the only shareholder addressing the massed ranks, but although he was by far both the youngest and the shortest he was also the most prominent.

The meeting was called to congratulate the editorial staff of Reuters-Fox UK for their focused effort towards enabling a landmark victory that could only bode well for Britain and British business. It also highlighted the work that still needed to be done to broadcast the message that what was good for business was good for Britain and that low taxation inevitably led to improved international competitiveness. The only sour note raised was when one of the principal shareholders remarked that Reuters-Fox UK might also need to communicate its green credentials in an age where fuel prices were astronomically high and localised flooding was constantly in the news. “We need to be seen to be green,” he asserted while other shareholders including Eden St. John-Easton almost visibly rolled their eyes, “but we also need to be genuine. Green is good for business as much as it is good for the environment. If we lower our costs on non-renewables and energy waste, we shall also improve our long term profitability.”

After the conference was over, Alex was rather taken aback when Ian Anderson, the London Senior Editor, took him to one side. “Look lively, son,” said his boss who was as much Alex’s senior in years as he was in status. “Mr St. John-Easton wants to talk to you. God knows what interests he has in online media, but make sure you check back with me with whatever he has to say.”

“Of course, Ian,” said Alex, who couldn’t help wondering whether this meeting had anything to do with his occasional late-night meetings with Zara. They were infrequent, unannounced and, thankfully, never resolved in a way that Isobel could use as evidence for divorce. As Alex’s face was the only one Zara recognised in the office, he was her natural point of call whenever she was in the area and wanted a drink.

Was Alex now for the chop?

“Alan is it?” said Eden while Alex did his best to disguise how much taller he was than the great man. “My wife has mentioned you to me.”

“She has, sir?” said Alex who wondered whether Eden’s rather bland smile was disguising rather more diabolical intentions.

“Not in a bad way, mind you,” continued Eden. “You’re an old friend of hers from way back, I believe?”

“Yes,” said Alex with almost visible relief. What had Zara said about him? “A long way back.”

“Well, I don’t need to know the details,” said Eden, “though you are somewhat older than my wife. She says that you have some good ideas on to how to extend the online news service. Is that so?”

Alex wondered what the hell Eden was talking about. During the few meetings he’d had with Zara there’d been virtually no mention of Alex’s job and certainly none about his non-existent good ideas. Was this part of an elaborate cover-up by Zara to disguise the fact that she’d been meeting him for nothing more than a drink in the Zenith? Would Eden suspect that Alex and she were having an affair? What was going on?

“Yes,” Alex lied as convincingly as he could. “I do believe that with the rapid growth of the virtual world, such as Virtual Reality, Social Networking and... erm... so on, there should be a much greater news presence. There’s a lot more money that can be made from advertising there.”

“Hmmm,” said Eden, who already looked bored. “Advertising revenue isn’t really a big deal, is it? I don’t expect to make much money out of Reuters-Fox anyway. Its costs are hardly covered by advertising revenue, but if you think there’s money to be made from advertising then have a word with Marketing. I’m sure they’ll be all ears. No, I was wondering more about influence rather than revenue. What influence do you think Reuters-Fox UK could have on the VR community? How do you think we can get a part of the action?”

Shit! What had Zara got Alex into? This was his one chance to impress the big man (or small one, in truth) and he had nothing to offer. How could he bluff his way out of this?

“I think we should have a visible presence in the Virtual world,” said Alex with as much conviction he could muster for his totally improvised thoughts. “There are plenty of models we can use as examples though they are focused on the needs of gamers and social networkers. We don’t need to be just a passive news outlet in the Virtual World. We can be much more active.”

“And if we were more active, could we then have more influence?” asked Eden.

This was clearly what Eden wanted to believe, so Alex decided to reinforce this view. “Yes, of course,” said Alex. “It’s a way of getting out the message that the interests of business and Britain are one and the same thing. It’s a way of ensuring that everyone sees the benefits of business-friendly government policy.”

“And how would we do that?” wondered Eden. “I don’t see too many people playing computer games whose purpose is to lower taxes. What would be the attraction of that? Would you feature a bunch of greens and pinkos as evil forces getting in the way of our online hero on his mission to reduce taxation?”

A joke, thought Alex with relief, as he laughed appreciatively in the way he’d been schooled in his years of interminable meetings. “There are more subtle ways of doing it than that,” he said with a grin. “But effectively it would be exactly what you suggest.”

“Really?” said Eden thoughtfully, who was probably more taken by his own attempt at humour than what Alex had to say. “Well, get on with it, Alan. I’ll make sure that Tom from Finance gives you the funding you need.”

With that he tapped Alex gently on the shoulder and left him standing by himself in a state of paralysed stupefaction. What hole had he just dug for himself?

This was the same question expressed to him later by Ian when he reported back an account of his conversation, only Ian was much less inclined to hold back on his use of expletives.

“Whose fucking idea was it anyway?” Ian asked.

Alex could see the wisdom in grasping the straw proffered to him by Eden with both hands. “In truth,” he said, “I can’t take any credit for it. It was Mr St. John-Easton who proposed a more active involvement in VR. However, I think it’s unlikely he’d want to expose himself to criticism if it should happen to fail.”

“Are you saying that our young tycoon suggested to you that he wanted a news agency involved in some unspecified way on the VR internet and he has no fucking idea of what that should be?”

“More or less, Ian.”

“What the fuck do you mean? Is it more? Or is it less? What does he want us to fucking do?”

“I guess a lot depends on how much money he wants to apportion to the project.”

“I’ll remind you that Mr St. John-Easton is no fucking Santa Claus. Any money we spend on some fuckwit project comes from profits made by Fox International. It will have to be approved by the fucking Executive. We’ve already wasted fucking billions on internet related enterprises that have sunk without a fucking trace. Not even so much sunk as plummeted leaving a pile of fucking shite for us to deal with.”

“I’m not sure we’re in a position to negotiate with what Mr St. John-Easton wants, Ian.”

The Senior Editor considered this. “Any ideas then of what we should do to keep our billionaire friend happy, Alex?”

Alex had an answer for that, which, of course, was no answer at all. “I think it would be very hasty for us to commit ourselves to anything specific before investigating it thoroughly, Ian.”

“That’s not much of a fucking proposal to put in front of the board.”

“I think we need to be seen to be doing something towards building up a more prominent presence in the VR space, Ian. It’s just got to look like it satisfies Mr St. John-Easton’s requirements.”

“What you’re saying is that you haven’t got a fucking clue, am I right?”

“We could buy something that’s already active on the VR scene, Ian,” said Alex. “Something that’s doing well but needs a bit of nurturing.”

“What do you suggest? Not one of those fucking virtual sex sites, I hope. I don’t want the Telegraph running stories about Fox International executives getting their cocks greased in all that weird VR paraphernalia.”

“They’ll run stories like that whatever we do, Ian,” said Alex. “That’s just one idea. It might even pay off, you never know.”

“I guess so,” said Ian more reflectively. “You’re the fucking expert. I don’t know anything about all this Virtual Reality stuff anyway.”

“I think Mr St. John-Easton doesn’t know even as much as you do, Ian.”

“You’re probably right there,” said Ian thoughtfully. “What do you suggest we do, then?”

“We build up a news department dedicated to the VR realm,” said Alex. “We do a bit of investigation and work out what we can buy and what we can develop in-house. We increase its visibility so that Mr St. John-Easton and the whole board are aware of what’s happening. We give it a bit of exposure on Fox News UK and try to get the BBC interested. Any success it has we credit to Mr St. John-Easton. Any failures we brush under the carpet.”

“It’s a plan of sorts,” said Ian. “I guess it’ll have to be handled by your department, won’t it?”

Yes! thought Alex. Yes! Yes! An Executive Board presence and a potentially huge budget. If that wasn’t effectively promotion, what could be?

“Someone has to take responsibility for the thing, Ian,” said Alex.

“So, Alex,” wondered Ian. “How is it that someone like Mr. St. John-Easton—international playboy, business goliath and would-be media tycoon—should happen to get to know about you? Or ‘Alan’ as he thinks you’re called.”

“I don’t know, Ian,” said Alex. “It’s a mystery.”

“A big fucking mystery. You’re not a freemason or something like that, are you?”

“Of course not, Ian.”

“You wouldn’t say if you were, would you?” said Ian. “Look, I haven’t got all day. Present me with a proposal of what you think needs to be done. Make sure that you don’t make any reference to our diminu... dashing billionaire anywhere in your proposal. And don’t refer to him in any e-mails either. Just keep him out of it.”

“Yes, Ian.”

“Well, get going then, Alex,” said Ian dismissing him with a flick of his hand.

Alex left the Senior Editor’s office in huge relief with not just a cloud lifted but the sun shining down on him more brilliantly than it had ever done.

Now what?

First of all, he’d have to get someone to write up a proposal for the Senior Editor. Maybe Igor. He could make a good fist of it once he was briefed. And then he’d have to celebrate. Perhaps he’d join the other managers in the Cat and Mouse after work. A few drinks would be just the right way to end the day.

Should he phone Isobel? That was a difficult call. She probably wouldn’t understand the significance of what Alex had just achieved and might even suggest that instead of enjoying himself with his work colleagues he come home early and celebrate with her.

That would be boring.

Better to say nothing, really. She wasn’t expecting him to come home early anyway.

XXXII
Theo
2052

Theo was a murderer. He knew that. He was as much a murderer as the man who’d actually killed his employer. He’d lied in court about his role in the slaughter, but he knew the truth. It was he, as much as anyone else, who had murdered Eden St. John-Easton. As expected, the circumstances that accompanied the murder excused him of any blame. Who could have known just how much out of hand the rioters would get? But whether premeditated or not, it was Theo who’d allowed it to happen.

The guilt plagued Theo more than he could ever have imagined. He’d thought it might subside after a year had passed by, but in a sense it only plagued him the more now that he had so successfully avoided being accused of the crime he knew he’d perpetrated.

When the rioters came streaming into Berkeley Square, there were many things Theo could have done that he didn’t do. He could have bolted up the front door to the house. He could have turned off the lights to suggest that no one was in. He could have lied when the rioters appeared at the door with their crowbars, baseball bats and other improvised weapons. He knew full well that their intentions were malicious. He knew that the primary object of their rage was his employer, Sir Eden, who was upstairs trembling and terrified. He knew that there was little to stop the enraged rioters from killing his employer just as in the previous few days they’d slain several other wealthy businessmen and politicians associated with electoral victory by the Liberal Conservative coalition that was so deeply unpopular with the poor, the unemployed and the many others who’d lost their right to vote as a result of the recent controversial electoral reforms.

No doubt the rioters had identified Eden’s Mayfair home from recent news stories. Perhaps they’d spotted Eden in his upstairs study as he looked down at the mob that was menacingly stalking the streets. Their original destination had been elsewhere, but this course of action had been frustrated by armed police. It was the bloody Americans again who’d inflamed the current civil unrest. Ever since several dozen protestors had been shot outside the American Embassy a few weeks ago, anyone suspected of US citizenship or indeed anyone associated with the flavour of reactionary politics currently ascendant across the Atlantic Ocean was a natural target for the rioters’ anger.

The Americans’ recent trigger-happy stupidity gave them much to answer for, but it wasn’t an isolated incident. In recent years the increasingly barmy and intolerant administrations that had gained power in America had fomented unrest all round the world and increasingly in many of its own States. As the international prestige of the United States continued to plummet in the face of economic challenges it was hopelessly unprepared for, so too did the nation’s sense of justice, its civilised values and even, it seemed, the last few vestiges of American sanity. Perhaps it was with misguided patriotism that Theo held the view that Britain’s similar decline in the twentieth century was accompanied with rather less manic despair than America’s in the current century. America was flailing madly in the quicksand of its own making and hastening its absolute decline at an alarming rate.

What should Theo have done when the door to Eden’s Mayfair home was prised open and he was confronted by rioters baying for blood? Should he have claimed that Mr. St. John-Easton was somewhere else and therefore not in residence? Should he have made an attempt to fight off the rioters even as they spilled down the hallway smashing vases, furniture and hanging mirrors as they did so? What he almost certainly shouldn’t have done was capitulate when asked by a wiry protestor brandishing a baseball bat where the master of the house was. He most certainly didn’t have to admit that his boss was hiding in his study on the top floor.

There were ways in which Theo’s actions could be justified. In fact, once the rioters knew where to go, they ignored him and crowded up the flights of stairs. They were no longer intent on smashing up furniture and priceless heirlooms. Who knows how many works of art were spared for posterity as a result? And when the rioters had finished their business, they filed out of the house almost apologetically, their baseball bats and other weapons now splattered with blood. They even tried to close the door behind them that they had earlier spent a full ten minutes forcing open. Theo was able to determine from the deep gouges and the damage to the lock that the door had suffered not just the onslaught of crowbars but also battering by rather larger and less obvious weapons such as a fire extinguisher and a railing post.

Theo remained downstairs terrified and shaking during the whole time that it had taken for Mr St. John-Easton to be murdered. He was in the company of three women and two men who were sufficiently angry with the master of the house to invade his property but perhaps not so much as to put him to death. They seemed almost as anxious and nervous by the violence as Theo was, although they were also clearly excited. They looked intently up the staircase where from above came the echoing sounds of thumps and bangs and whimpers. Two of the women were smoking rolled-up cigarettes and were actually more trim and muscular than the men. They were all smeared with dirt, sweat and grease. The effort involved in rioting in Mayfair had clearly been strenuous. The already overstretched and scaled down police force had quite simply not been up to the job of containing the thousands of rioters rampaging through not only Mayfair but every inner city suburb and potential flashpoint in London and the other major cities in the United Kingdom.

When Theo woke up that morning and heard on the news broadcasts that rioters were once again amassing in the usual congregation points such as Trafalgar Square, Hyde Park Corner and Piccadilly Circus, he imagined that any rioting would be mostly confined to these places. The patently inadequate police force was fully mobilised and forced to neglect their duty to direct traffic, patrol neighbourhoods and prevent drugs abuse, while the government continued to debate whether it was yet time to mobilise the military. It didn’t help their cause, of course, that military commitments in Africa and Asia had stretched that resource too far as well. Theo nervously watched the progress of the rioting protestors on television and was startled when the unreal world of online news coverage suddenly became a fact of real life and twenty or so rioters were now hammering at the door.

What was the chance that the master of the house should actually be in residence? Like all such coincidences, it was unlikely but true. For most days of every month, the Berkeley Square residence was empty of anyone except ancillary staff and workmen. There was far more chance of catching Mr St. John-Easton in the Mediterranean on his yacht, the Buccaneer, than in Mayfair. But the civil unrest that was to bring about the death of the middle-aged billionaire was also the cause of his flight being delayed. Ironically the very reason Eden was staying in his Mayfair home in London was to congratulate the government on winning the General Election and it was the controversy associated with its disputed outcome that had spilled out onto the streets of the most expensive real estate in Britain.

It was only when the rioters had well and truly departed that Theo gathered the courage to climb the stairs to the study where Mr St. John-Easton had been hiding.

Theo hadn’t been the only other person in the house. There were housemaids, kitchen staff, and a minder who’d been more active in organising an emergency chartered flight than in protecting his employer. Most of the servants huddled together in the basement and were too terrified to venture upstairs where the rioters had broken in. The minder had tried to do his duty when the rioters piled up the stairs but he was unable to protect his master against so many. It must have been the minder, however, who was responsible for the death of the young man who had a bullet through his chest, but this offensive was countered by several close-quarter swings from baseball bats. Although his skull was cracked, the minder did eventually manage to regain consciousness.

The minder’s act of heroism probably only served to further incite the rage of the rioters which they let loose on Mr St. John-Easton who was shaking with terror under the table in his upstairs study. Or at least that was where the murder scene investigators said he’d been hiding. When Theo entered the study, it was just a bloody mess and difficult to make any sense of the chaos.

Theo had been a faithful servant for the Messrs St. John-Easton, father and son, for forty years. That was almost a lifetime in itself. Most of that time was spent in watchful idleness. Neither father nor son ever spent much time in the United Kingdom however much they professed a deep love for the country they hardly knew and mostly despised. Nevertheless, when Mr St. John-Easton was on British soil, from the moment he arrived at the airport until the moment he departed, Theo was always by his side. There was no duty too demeaning for him. There were the prostitutes whose services he helped facilitate. There were the abortions he’d arranged for Eden’s girlfriends. The rehab clinics he’d contacted to treat Eden’s drug-addicted daughter. The mysterious parcels he’d had to escort with paranoid care and attention. And now there was no Mr St. John-Easton to whom he could continue to provide a service. Eden had left no male heirs and his daughter was too irresponsible to take over her father’s estate.

What was left of Eden St. John-Easton was not a pretty sight. The rioters had quite clearly lost any trace of humanity when they discovered him cowering under the table. All the resentment that had built up over nearly thirty years towards the media tycoon who had such a huge hidden influence on British society exploded all at once. To the rioters, he was the man who had crippled the BBC and made Fox News UK the official voice of Great Britain. He was the man who’d reduced the status of British newspapers to the extent that only the foreign-owned Guardian remained anything remotely like the voice of government opposition. He was the man who cheered while the public sector shrunk to a mere shell of what it had once been so as to facilitate tax cuts that benefited very few people. He was the man who talked endlessly about bolstering British business and British enterprise, but was part of the very process that had relocated most enterprises funded by British money to the more prosperous countries in the Far East or the slave wage economies of Africa.

Eden’s head had been smashed again and again and again. There was very little recognisable in the bloody mess splattered across the carpet although there were several loose teeth which could be used to identify the deceased. He’d been battered elsewhere, judging by the crooked angle of his arms and legs, but the damage done to what had once been his head and face was what was most appalling.

When the police and the coroner and the news photographers arrived, Theo was the man who was most approximately the primary witness to the crime. He recounted again and again the story of how he’d been pushed helplessly to one side when the rioters broke in and how futile his attempts to protect his master had been. What he never did was explain exactly how it was that they even knew that Eden was in the building and what role Theo had in the murder.

In actual fact, Theo did quite well out of it all. He was awarded a handsome pension and the right to remain in the very well-appointed Mayfair apartment where he’d been living for the last thirty years. His wife and children were now able to see more of him as he no longer had to spread his duties between estates in Ashton Lovelock, Surrey and the rest of the British Isles. His family was even granted the status of distant inheritors of the St John-Easton estate because of a little-reported liaison between Eden’s father and Theo’s wife that had been a cause of shame and embarrassment to them for many years.

Nonetheless, Theo was still burdened with the weight of his guilt.

If it hadn’t been for him then it was likely that Eden St John-Easton would yet be alive.

But Theo was able to temper the pang of his guilt by reflecting that the world could only be a rather better place without him.

XXXIII
Eden
2051

“I wouldn’t advise it, sir,” said Eden’s minder, Jason Irons, a dour but efficiently vicious scot. “You’ve seen the news reports. It’s been another day of riots. We’d be better off staying in the house until it blows over. That is, of course, unless you want to leave incognito.”

“Incognito?” asked Eden with outrage. “What the bloody hell does that mean?”

“Well, we could bundle you into a modest car that someone of your status wouldn’t normally be seen dead in and then we could drive you to your Surrey estate and well away from any rioters.”

“You’re right, Irons,” said Eden. “I wouldn’t be seen dead doing anything like that. We’ll stay here and let this nonsense pass by. I’ll go up to my study. You continue trying to organise that charter flight to the Med.”

“It’s difficult, sir, what with the airport staff strike and the protests against aeroplane fuel subsidies,” said Irons. “I mightn’t be able to arrange anything for a couple of days.”

“I don’t bloody care what it takes, Irons. What do I pay you for anyway? Just fucking do it.”

Irons scurried off to carry out his duty and left his boss alone in his study. Eden buzzed Theo on his phone who answered immediately. “Come up here please,” he said and left the call at that. Within a minute, Theo was in the study standing to attention and bowed his head to Eden in obsequious deference.

“Well, Theo, it looks like I’m going to be spending all of today and possibly most of tomorrow in this place.”

“You won’t be going to Surrey today then, sir?”

“No, I won’t,” said Eden. “And it’s very likely that I shan’t be going there at all. My present plan, if Irons can get it together, is to fly back to my yacht tomorrow. I’ve already had more than enough of this country.”

“I’ll tell the guys in the Buccaneer to expect you tomorrow, sir.”

“So, what is happening outside, Theo? You’d have thought there would be celebrations after the election. Not riots. It all seemed pretty conclusive after the polls closed.”

“There are a lot of people who don’t like the election results, sir.”

“So why did they vote for the Liberal Conservative Party then, Theo?”

“I think the ones complaining are those who didn’t vote for them, sir. I think a lot of them didn’t vote at all.”

“The modernisation of the electoral system was well overdue. You saw the chaos that resulted when every government was a coalition. In fact, the present government is still a coalition. And it’s a coalition with some political parties further to the right than Iverson’s lot that I’d probably support if I thought they ever had a chance of becoming the majority. It’s the voting system. It’s fair and square. The British people should just respect the election result and get on with being governed.”

“It’s not just the results, sir. I think most people accepted the change of government even if they didn’t like it.”

“You mean the US Embassy shooting, Theo? What were the Americans supposed to do? Let the anarchists overrun the place? They did the right thing. They should act like that every time.”

“They generally do so nowadays whatever happens, sir. The Americans are not much liked anywhere in the world these days. They’re perceived to have become unnecessarily brutal with the suppression of rioters and the like.”

“And so they should be. What is this mob moaning about anyway? They pay less tax under a Liberal Conservative government. They have more and better opportunities to set up business free from government interference. They should be happy.”

“Many are complaining about unemployment and public service cuts, sir.”

“Unemployment, Theo? We’re doing what we can to keep immigrants and asylum seekers off our shores. They should be grateful. British jobs for British citizens.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, I need some distraction this evening. I take it you’ll be able to organise something. Or will the escorts also be frightened to walk the streets of London?”

“I think that they’ll be here even if the River Thames floods and the waters reach as far as Mayfair, sir. I don’t think anything much could keep them away from providing you a service. If need be, sir, they’d even dress up like a rioter to get here.”

That amused Eden. “A hooker in a hoodie. Tarts with eco-terrorist tee-shirts and utility boots. Vegetarian whores. Well, they couldn’t be that, could they Theo? Eating meat is part of their job. Where would they be if they decided not to eat sausage when they’re asked to?”

“I don’t know, sir. Is there anything else you require?”

“Food. Drink. The usual. And if my deranged daughter turns up again, just tell her I’m not in. That is, of course, unless she wants to fight off the rioters. Do you think she sympathises with them, Theo?”

“I don’t think she has any opinions, sir, political or otherwise.”

“She’s a hopeless case. She’ll be dead long before I am. And then what will happen to the inheritance?”

“I don’t know, sir. Will that be all?”

“Yes, Theo. Don’t disturb me until lunch is prepared.”

“Of course not, sir.”

Eden stood by the window of his study. Berkeley Square seemed quiet. Perhaps a little too quiet. Many of the more exclusive Mayfair shops and salons had been shuttered up since the US Embassy incident. There weren’t enough police about for Eden’s liking. They were probably gathered in places like Trafalgar Square that had become almost second home for the rioting yobbos. If only it was possible to corral the lot of them and shoot them methodically. That would solve most of Britain’s problems in one go. And do wonders for the unemployment statistics.

Eden picked up the phone and punched in a number.

“Eden?” said the voice at the other end.

“Prime Minister,” he answered.

“How can I help you, Eden? I am very busy at the moment. I can’t really stop for a chat.”

“I just wanted an update on the situation.”

“It’s pretty grim, but we’re winning.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“The protestors are disorganised. Their demands are unfocused and uncoordinated. The media are unanimously against them, including, you’ll be pleased to know, the pinko Guardian and the BBC. There’s a head of steam but it’ll soon dissipate.”

“How long do you think it’ll take?”

“A day or so. At most a week. In the long run it’ll all be to our benefit.”

“How do you work that one out, Ivan?”

“It doesn’t do the causes of the greens, the trades unions, the pinkos or the lefties any good to be associated with civil unrest. The more they protest the better the argument to clamp down on them and push forward a modernising agenda.”

“And what might that be, Prime Minister?”

“There is virtually no difference, Eden, between what I want to achieve and what you’ve been advocating for years. This country will be transformed under my premiership. In a few years time it’ll hardly be recognisable.”

“Good to hear, Prime Minister.”

“Thank you, Eden. Now, if you don’t mind, I have an Emergency Cabinet Meeting in a few moments.”

The Prime Minister put down the phone and Eden stared at it for a few moments while he debated whether he to call the editors and senior executives of his UK media concerns. Finally, he decided that he could trust them to handle the situation by themselves. Eden looked out again through the window at the street below.

Shit! The street wasn’t so quiet now. He could see hundreds of louts and layabouts streaming into Berkeley Square. They really did look like the cliché image of rioting mobs as portrayed by his newspapers and other media outlets. They’d armed themselves as well with makeshift weapons. Some were shouting and yelling. They appeared to be concentrating around the square’s perimeter. What the fuck! This was England. Britain. The United Kingdom. This kind of thing didn’t happen here and it most certainly didn’t happen in Mayfair. Curse the bloody Americans!

Eden watched as the mob approached his house. They clearly knew it was his. Perhaps it was those magazine articles about great town houses that had featured one or other of his many British residencies. Perhaps it was all those BBC News stories where whenever there was a report on his business activities the journalist would always be filmed standing outside his Berkeley Square home. Well, that was about the nearest they’d ever get to actually meeting him. The only interviews he did in Britain these days were for Fox News UK.

And then the nightmare began in earnest.

Eden watched in horror as below his study, four floors down, the mob applied their concentrated force as one and began battering against his front door. He couldn’t see exactly what they were doing, though he was sure the security cameras were getting a good view that could be used later to settle the ensuing insurance claims. They were using lethal equipment to pulverise his door that included spiked railings, crowbars and other improvised weapons which had undoubtedly been torn out of ransacked cars and service vehicles. The banging and thumping reverberated about the house. The bastards might even get in.

“Irons!” Eden cried out.

“Yes, sir,” said his minder who appeared promptly at the door.

“You know what’s happening, don’t you?”

“Yes, sir.”

“It looks pretty bad.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Deal with it, will you?”

“Yes, sir,” said the minder. He cocked his combat pistol and strode off down the stairs.

The door eventually gave in to the incessant pounding and from above Eden watched the mob pile into the house. This was not supposed to happen. This was going to be the day when Eden was due to fly back to his yacht. He’d only booked this visit to England at the last minute anyway. But after such an historic General Election victory, he thought it was pretty much incumbent on him to show support. And now what was he to do?

All through the many years of his career, he was generally escorted by a well-armed security presence. He usually took extreme precautions especially when he visited countries like America or Russia where homicide was rife. It had been stupid not to do so here, but after having visited prosperous business-friendly countries like China and Japan and not needing such tight security, Eden naively thought the same applied to Great Britain.

He was obviously wrong.

His security staff usually had good advice for such dangerous situations and the most important was to hide. He shouldn’t try to defend himself. There were trained officers to do that. He shouldn’t try to run away unless he knew exactly where he was running to. If he hid, there was a good chance that he might avoid being found. He should never do anything that might attract attention to his whereabouts.

The only place to hide that Eden could think of was under the huge table that dominated his study on which sat a massive computer screen and a pile of expensive first-edition books he’d never read that had been written by people he probably wouldn’t like anyway.

The nightmare continued.

Eden could hear the mob from down the stairwell as they smashed furniture and priceless works of art and yelled incoherently. He couldn’t quite make out the words though he fancied that he heard his name being repeated several times. So, they did know who lived in this house. Then there was the unmistakable sound of heavy feet getting ever louder as the mob ran up the stairs towards the fourth floor.

There was a pause in the running. There were some angry cries. There was Irons’ booming army-trained Scottish voice yelling at the mob. This was another thing that Eden had been told by the security companies. Even mobs, blood-crazed and insane, were often cowed by a show of authority: especially when it was uncompromising and backed up by the clear threat of force.

Then there was another sound that couldn’t be mistaken for any other. Irons had fired off his gun.

Eden shivered where he was. Surely that would do it. Surely this was the end of the horror. The mob would see that they were beaten. They would say “OK, mate. We understand. We’ll be on our way. No hard feelings.”

Unfortunately this wasn’t at all what happened when the echoes of the gunshot faded away. Instead the sound of shouting and yelling from the mob got even louder and there was the unmistakeable sound of more improvised weapons being applied on the costly household fittings. Then the thunderous sound of feet clambering up the stairs got steadily ever closer.

Shit! Shit! Shit!

There was another pause as the mob assembled on the landing and various doors were opened and shut. The shouting was still loud, but not much more coherent. Eden heard the handle to the study door being turned. At least he’d had the presence of mind to lock the door. Perhaps that would be good enough. A locked door. Too much effort.

But no! The next sound was of the door being jemmied off its hinges and then there was no barrier between Eden and the mob. They were in the same room as him and he could see their legs and feet from under the table where he was hiding.

“There’s the cunt!” said one of the rioters.

Shit!

XXXIV
Tamara
2096

A woman in her mid-thirties strode about the grounds of Zoe’s estate. She was wearing a smart suit of the kind only ever worn by female business executives. There was a rhythmic clicking of her high heeled stilettos on the paved stones as she walked along the path. Tamara cautiously opened the front door to the house. It would be foolish to pretend she wasn’t in, even if it was to receive the eviction notice that she’d been anticipating for well over a year now.

The woman looked up from her tablet PC where she’d been making notes with her fingers and regarded Tamara who was standing in a tee-shirt and shorts at the top of the front door steps.

“You must be Tamara,” she said.

“Yes.”

“Zoe’s lesbian lover?”

“Yes.”

“You can’t be more than a third her age. Was she really still interested in romance at her age?”

“I guess I must be proof of that.”

“Well, indeed,” said the woman who again consulted her tablet PC. She strode towards Tamara and outstretched her hand. “Allow me to introduce myself. I’m Theresa. I’m the executor for Miss St. John-Easton’s estate.”

Tamara shook hands with Theresa who scrutinised her rather more intently than she was comfortable with.

“I assume you must be wondering what will happen next,” said Theresa. “You’ve been living here for quite a long time. Including the time when Zoe was still alive, it must be at least two years. I imagine you’d almost come to think that this was really your home.”

Tamara nodded.

“Shall we go inside?” suggested Theresa. “We can discuss matters in more comfort there.”

Tamara escorted Theresa to the living room where the television was burbling on about the outbreak of plague in Ireland and the suspicion expressed by Irish scientists had that it might be associated with a genetic engineering lab based in England. Tamara turned off the set and settled into the sofa while Theresa sat primly in the leather armchair opposite.

“As you probably know, Tamara,” said Theresa, “there was no will left by the deceased. That’s no surprise. The real surprise is that Zoe survived so long after all those years of sustained drug abuse. My mother was next in line to inherit the St. John-Easton estate and even that was hard to demonstrate in court. This was especially so since she died a few years ago. And that means the entire estate has been bequeathed to me.”

“Was your mother related to Zoe?” wondered Tamara.

“Only through her grandfather. And she was hardly at all acknowledged as such. She was the lovechild of Eden St. John-Easton’s father. The only reason that there is a verifiable trace to Zoe’s father is that my grandmother was the wife of his valet. My grandfather man was also Zoe’s grandfather.  My mother was younger than Zoe when she died. It’s ironic, isn’t it? My mother who led a blameless life, bore a bastard and cared for by one of Eden St. John Easton’s servants, died of cancer before Zoe whose lifestyle was so excessive that no one believed she could survive her twenties.” Theresa bit her lip and raised her eyebrows. “My mother waited a long time for her inheritance and she missed her opportunity. Instead, it’s been left to me.”

“It must be a great deal of money.”

“It most certainly is, Tamara,” said Theresa. “But it’s not as much as it once would have been. It’s nothing like the fortune it was before Zoe’s father died. Few of his prime investments had a long-term future: especially those in the news and media. And it’s not as if Zoe had squandered it all. Her allowance was generous but she was never allowed full access to the St. John-Easton fortune. Her father knew that it would just end up in her veins.”

“I’m sure she wouldn’t have been that excessive.”

“Are you really sure, Tamara? Or are you just saying that?”

“I don’t know,” Tamara admitted.

“The St. John-Easton business empire held a very wide portfolio. The investments weren’t just in media, government contracts, arms and retail. There were many that were never declared to the English taxman and whose existence was known only to his private accountants. One such investment was Empire Cleaning Services. You may have heard of them.”

Tamara didn’t know what to say. She tried to look as nonchalant as she could.

“A cleaning company?”

“They were a private home cleaning agency once upon a time. When St. John-Easton acquired the business they were one of countless cleaning agencies that supplied employment to immigrants and asylum seekers, usually women, who were willing to make a living by cleaning the homes of the relatively prosperous. The business took advantage of the low wages such people were willing to accept and provided them with legitimate employment while legislation regarding immigrant workers became steadily tighter. After he acquired the company, it diversified into other areas where it soon became been quite a lucrative earner for the St. John-Easton estate. In short, Tamara, Zoe was your employer in a way that neither of you was aware of when you came to be her lesbian lover.”

“She was?”

“You can’t deny that you worked for Empire Cleaning Services. I’ve seen their employment records. Was it as an employee that you came to be resident at Miss St. John-Easton’s estate? And if it was, I doubt very much that it was to actually keep the place clean. That was provided by Think Clean Ltd. They provide services at a quite reasonable rate, although their business actually is exclusively related to the aim of keeping their clients’ property clean. Admittedly, like Empire Cleaning Services, they can be relied upon to be discreet, but not in quite the same way.”

“I’m not sure what you’re suggesting.”

“Aren’t you, Tamara?” said Theresa who looked directly at her with a not especially friendly smile. “Are you sure you can’t guess what I’m suggesting?”

“No.”

“Okay,” said Theresa. “I’ll spell it out to you. Zoe was not a woman with much of a history of committed relationships over her many years. It’s obvious that she did have some relationships—her history of abortions is evidence of that—but at no stage did she ever maintain a stable relationship with anyone she was intimate with. In the last twenty or so years, the only sexual relations she’d had at all were ones she paid for and those were exclusively with men. There is a record of transactions with agencies whose principal business is to supply the services of what might charitably be called gigolos. There is no evidence to suggest that Zoe was likely to have a Sapphic relationship this late in her life.”

“But she obviously did,” Tamara continued to assert.

“Did she?” wondered Theresa with a bit of a frown. “All those years of substance abuse and principally heterosexual recreational sex; and then you walk into her life. One moment you’re an employee of Empire Cleaning Services and the next you’re her lover. There isn’t much in your records that makes that plausible. You’re an asylum seeker from the Middle East, I believe. Where from, in particular? Jordan? Syria? Which one of those nuclear wastelands?”

“Israel.”

“Israel, hmm,” said Theresa thoughtfully. “No wonder you don’t want to return home. Your passport’s not much use to you now, is it? Are you Jewish?”

“Yes.”

“Israel doesn’t have many friends left, does it? The Second Diaspora they call it. Is that so? Are you part of that?”

“I am,” said Tamara with resignation.

Theresa pursed her lips. “A Jewish prostitute,” she said bluntly. “Not however one who’s shown much appetite for lesbianism. You had plenty of opportunity while employed at Empire Cleaning Services to work for female clients. This is an option often taken by employees with no previous history of Sapphic inclination simply because there’s less risk of physical punishment. You were one of a minority who showed no inclination to even pretend to be a lesbian. And yet you claim to be the first female lover in Zoe’s long life. Doesn’t that seem strange to you?”

Tamara was defeated. “Yes, it does.”

“I thought you might,” said Theresa. She looked around the living room which had been vacuum-cleaned just a day or so before. “Well, Tamara, you’ve had access to my aunt’s home for a good long time. I’m glad to see you haven’t trashed it. The security guards told me that there have been no incidents of wild parties. No orgies. No drug binges. In fact, you’ve not invited even one of your friends or ex-colleagues to stay at all. Very commendable.”

“Thank you,” said Tamara sheepishly.

“However, as you probably know, you have no actual right to continue to reside in the property,” continued Theresa. “There is no verifiable proof that you ever had a relationship with Zoe, intimate or not. There seems to be no good reason for you to have been here at all. The most charitable explanation is that you were here to keep her company while she was taking illegal drugs. A less charitable one is that you were the one who supplied her with such narcotics. I don’t need to know what you did, but I do need to make it clear to you that there is no reason for me to let you stay in what is now my Surrey estate.”

Tamara nodded her head. “I understand that.”

“I’m a reasonable woman,” continued Theresa. “Whatever relationship you may have had with my aunt is neither here nor there, but I can understand why you might be reluctant to return to life outside the protection of the estate walls. I’ve seen the news stories about Jews being lynched by angry mobs. It sounds rather mediaeval, doesn’t it? Only this time the peasantry of England is mingled with the vocal encouragement of the Muslim community. It’s not a good time to be a Jew. Even those whose families have never been remotely near Israel for hundreds of years are at the raw end of the new age of intolerance. I take it you don’t want to be lynched?”

“No, not at all.”

“My grandfather was lynched. Of course, I wasn’t even born when that happened. Those were the great London Riots that precipitated martial law and the dissolution of the United Kingdom. They seem like a quiet day in the park compared with the bread riots, race riots and civil disorder that are daily occurrences these days. I don’t want to see you lynched even though I think you’ve been deceitful and thieving and duplicitous. You might be a drug-dealing Jewish whore, but you don’t deserve that.”

“No, I don’t.”

“There is no question that you will have to leave this estate. The decorators are moving in within the month and I need you to be out by then. You do understand that there is no choice in the matter, Tamara?”

“I do,” said Tamara nodding her head. She’d been expecting to be evicted for so long that now that it was happening it seemed to be following a pre-ordained course.

“There are two options I’d like you to consider,” said Theresa. “Well, there is a third, of course, which is that you just walk out of the estate and take your chances on the streets of Surrey. I’m sure there are plenty of opportunities still for drug-dealing and prostitution. One of the two choices is that you return as an employee of Empire Cleaning Services which you will be pleased to know is an option that remains open to you despite the fact that you left their employment without serving your notice period. Is that an option for you?”

“It might be,” admitted Tamara.

“The other is that you work for one of the many nursing homes owned by the St. John-Easton estate.”

“Nursing homes?”

“A substantial number of nursing homes were built in the middle of the century just before my grandfather died. There was an aging population and many elderly people had the wealth and resources to afford to spend their twilight years in various kinds of care home. The retirement industry is less lucrative nowadays than it was then. Fewer people can save enough money to meet the expense of constant care and the state no longer takes up the slack. Only a very few can now afford to stay at such places. I don’t know what happens to the rest. Perhaps they just die miserable deaths. My grandfather could see a growing business opportunity and so he invested in it. I’m offering you an option that might be well suited to a bright woman like you and that is to work as a care assistant in one of the many thousands of nursing homes I now happen to own. What do you think?”

Tamara frowned. This was a career choice that had never once occurred to her before.

“It is an option,” she said glumly.

XXXV
Alex
2028

Despite having spent a great deal of the millionaire’s money on projects related to the online world of Virtual Reality, or perhaps because of that, Eden’s request to meet him in his Mayfair house was filling Alex with dread. Although he’d worked hard at the hopeless task of making a success of his poorly specified role, he was acutely aware of who it was who would make the final assessment of the project’s worth.

Eden’s London home was very impressive. Berkeley Square was surely one of the most exclusive addresses in London, perhaps in the whole of the United Kingdom. It was a grand house in a grand square and everything adjacent to it, near it and what could be seen through the front door when it opened was also grand.

“You must be Alan,” said the tall gentleman in a smart suit who opened the door. He was about Alex’s age but dressed as if he belonged to a much older generation. “I’m afraid Mr St. John-Easton isn’t in. However, I’m sure I can be of help. My name is Theo.”

“Good afternoon, Theo,” said Alex who was actually rather relieved that Eden wasn’t at home. “Where is Mr St. John-Easton?”

“Not in the UK, sir,” said Theo. “I daresay he’s probably in Florida by now. Mr St. John-Easton is quite the globetrotter. However, please come in, Alan.”

“Thank you,” said Alex as he passed through the threshold into the hallway and passed by some paintings that he believed might have been painted by William Hogarth and were therefore priceless. However, as Alex wasn’t especially knowledgeable on eighteenth century painters, the painter could well have been someone else and the painting therefore not nearly as valuable.

“In the living room, sir,” said Theo as he directed Alex towards a room that was several times larger than it needed to be. It resembled more a room in a stately home managed by the National Trust than any room he’d ever been invited into before. Alex nervously sat down on the fresh new leather upholstery of a chair that was probably as old as the paintings. He looked around him. The centrepiece of the room was an imposing chimney place decorated by antique tiles. Portraits of grand dignitaries glared disapprovingly down on him. As they mostly seemed to have been painted within the last century they were probably all Eden’s ancestors. Paul noticed with interest that the men portrayed weren’t nearly as short in stature as the present master of the house.

“I’m confident that Mr St. John-Easton would convey his apologies to you for not being here,” said Theo, “but if it’s any consolation he very rarely keeps any appointment he’s made. More often than not I have to stand in for him as I am doing now. Do you know why he asked you here, Alan?”

“No. Not really,” said Alex nervously.

“Well, he did ask me to find out whether the work you’ve been doing on Virtual Reality is going well and that his ideas are being put into practice. I take it that I can reassure him on these concerns?”

“Yes, of course,” said Alex.

“That is, I take it, what you are engaged in at Reuters-Fox? Virtual Reality. The kind of thing that involves wearing headsets.”

“Yes, it is.”

“Have you any idea how that in any way materially furthers Mr St. John-Easton’s interests? He doesn’t usually take much interest in computers or anything like that. It’s quite unlike him to use a touch screen for anything but the simplest application. What could possibly have given him the idea that his business might be in any way served by investing in Virtual Reality?”

“It was him who asked me to get more involved,” said Alex.

“I’m sure he did, Alan. And why might that be? Could it have anything to do with, for instance, his wife, Zara?”

Alex was shocked by the insinuation. What did this man know? “I’m sorry. What did you say?”

“I gather that you and Zara have been quite regular drinking partners at the Zenith for quite a while now. Don’t worry about how I know this. Although Mr St. John-Easton takes very little notice of the information his security staff gather of activities that might affect his welfare, I’ve always maintained a very keen interest. It is imperative that I am better informed of such matters than anyone if I am to provide the quality of service Mr St. John-Easton expects.”

“You do?”

“The ability to anticipate Mr St. John-Easton’s needs requires a great deal of research. As you would expect, the welfare of his wife and her drinking habits are amongst the matters to which I pay considerable attention. I am also, of course, interested about any activity associated with Zara that might be useful to know should there ever be a time that her lawyers might threaten to make disagreeable allegations in a court of law. Mr St. John-Easton isn’t aware of my curiosity in these matters, but he will very grateful for it if, for example, there should ever be divorce proceedings. On the other hand, Alan, I think you can be consoled by the fact that the evidence suggests that you have been quite the gentleman. And this despite several instances of rather unsubtle coaxing. You’re a married man, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Isobel, isn’t it? And your wife is pregnant, I believe. A boy or a girl?”

“We chose not to find out.”

“Very foolish, Alan. It means you have to think up about twice the number of names for your child than you might have done otherwise. You could go for Leslie or Sandy, I suppose. Useful for either sex.”

“I’m sure it is,” said Alex who was beginning to get irritated by this line of Theo’s questioning.

“Although I have to look out for the welfare of both Mr St. John-Easton and his wife, you must be aware that it is the husband’s interests that are of primary concern to me. It is he who pays my salary. I would say that your relationship with Zara is rather more as a drinking companion than as a fuck buddy. And as such you’ve had a longer and rather more successful relationship with her than the many other men whose details have been amassed. You’ve been very sensible not to push your luck. The vagueness and even vacuousness of this business with Virtual Reality is surely something that Zara would dream up than would a man like you who is steadily pulling himself up the slippery pole of middle management. Zara knows even less about computers than Mr St. John-Easton, but she knows how to press his buttons. I may not be a businessman but I can see that there is very little likelihood of a return on investment from any of the enterprises you’re involved in. Does this trouble you at all, Alan?”

“I don’t quite know what you’re getting at.”

“My guess is that Mr St. John-Easton believes that there is some propaganda value in having a presence in the VR space. However, unlike my employer, I’ve done some independent research into this strange world. Porn, hobbits, twentieth century science-fiction movies, celebrities and trivia: none of these are likely to be much use to Mr St. John-Easton in his evangelical crusade to convert a nation of complacent fools to the promised land of low taxation and lucrative business opportunities. His investments elsewhere are likely to do rather better than this little niche. Wouldn’t you agree, Alan?”

“I guess so,” said Alex.

“However, my belief is that Mr St. John-Easton is more concerned to be seen to be doing something that can be perceived as forward-looking and dynamic than of turning around much of a profit or, indeed, of having a great deal of influence. I hope that your project will at least fulfil those criteria.”

“We have invested great talent into the enterprise.”

“Make sure that it is easy enough for someone like Zara to use and for Mr St. John-Easton to appreciate. It is in my interest to keep my employer contented—and in yours to keep your job—that your project is not perceived to be a total waste of money. Nevertheless, there must be several people at Reuters-Fox UK who’d be happy to see your endeavours fail: especially those in slightly more junior positions than you. There must be others who wonder how you’ve managed to be lavished with so many resources when other projects have been downgraded or axed. You’re in a precarious position, are you not, Alan?”

Alex nodded. Political infighting was what dominated most hours of every day and about which he spent most time agonising.

“What you might not be aware of is that Mr St. John-Easton is in the process of acquiring an internet content company: you know, one of those that provide the content for websites that deal with Virtual Reality, online gaming, news gathering, blogging, apps, and so on. This is a growing niche at the moment with plenty of job opportunities. I expect that once he’s acquired the company my employer will want to move his own people onto the management board. Anyone fortunate enough to secure such a position is likely to find it a rather less challenging role than your present one. The main objective would be to keep the company’s activities in line with what Mr St. John-Easton believes they should be. That would make such a role somewhat unpopular with the current board but it would be associated with very generous remuneration. I don’t know if you’ve ever considered a move away from news media, have you?”

“No, I haven’t,” said Alex, who wasn’t sure if he was hearing right. Was he being offered a lucrative job with virtually no responsibilities merely on the basis of his friendship with Zara?

“Obviously I am in no official position, Alan,” said Theo with a reassuring smile. “What happens is totally out of my hands. Even so, what I suggest you do is focus even more assiduously on your current VR projects. Mr St. John-Easton likes to be kept informed, but he never has the time to focus on details. The waffle you provide his office on a regular basis is exactly what he wants, though I suggest you put rather more emphasis on the project providing online content that can be sold to other businesses. I also suggest you take every opportunity, even more than you do at present, to fan Mr St. John-Easton’s passions. You know what he likes to see promoted, don’t you?”

“Business. Britain. Low taxation. Roll back intrusive government. I think so.”

“You don’t have to actually believe what Mr St. John-Easton advocates. In fact, I think a healthy dose of scepticism would probably be more in order than any swivel-eyed evangelism. Just make sure that at least one of the bullet points in his agenda is covered in your reports. Clearly there’s not much scope for promoting an anti-immigrant, anti-European Union or anti-layabout agenda. Especially not the last, as I suspect a very high proportion of the people who frequent VR websites are out of work, especially since last year’s collapse of the banking system and the housing market. But you should have some success in promoting decentralisation from government and consolidation around already thriving multinational corporations. Keep a list handy of Mr St. John-Easton’s principal business ventures and ensure that that you emphasis the benefits of cross-market synergy in your reports. That’s something my employer has been particularly keen on since he bought all those collapsing banks in America like CitiGroup and JP Morgan.”

“I see,” said Alex who was still flabbergasted by this truly peculiar conversation. Was Theo being too candid or was he just being attentive to his employer’s interests.

“Well, it’s been good to see you, Alan,” said Theo who stood up to signal that their interview was over. “I hope all is well with your wife and that you will soon be blessed with a bouncing boy or girl.”

“Thank you,” said Alex who was more or less hurrying towards the front door where he might at last pause and gather together his thoughts.

“I’m sure Mr St. John-Easton has no objection to you accompanying his wife to the Zenith for the moment,” said Theo as they stood at the open door. “However, it is, as I’m sure you appreciate, a very delicate matter. I won’t be surprised if my employer’s tolerance towards his wife’s flirtations begins to strain in the next few months. At the moment, as you might be aware, Zara is expecting.”

“No, I didn’t know,” said Alex in surprise.

“Well, it is nearly a month since the two of you last met,” said Theo thoughtfully. “It might be well not to be around when Zara next comes to your office. Perhaps you should arrange your working hours so that you’re less likely to be there late in the evening. I’m sure Isobel would be very pleased to see more of her husband now that, like Zara, she too is expecting. In my experience, it’s a very hazardous time in a couple’s relationship when a new member of the family is born. There could be very serious repercussions if Zara’s child isn’t from the same genetic heritage as her husband. You want to be as far from the firing line as you possibly can. Do you understand me?”

“Yes,” said Alex as he nodded his head. “Perfectly.”