Waiting For the Flyers Pt7 (David Walsham - 2)

Our laughter turned to reflection. What a strange world we’d been born into. Both of us remnants of a time never to return. One trapped in a place with no future, the other trapped in a place trying to build one. Everything and yet nothing in common.

All the questions I’d planned to ask evaporated. We sat on our luxurious chairs watching the fading light accentuate the tired look of early autumn leaves.

‘Soon the nights will turn cold,’ David muttered.

‘I always found autumn a sad time in these latitudes.’

‘Last winter was brutal. We lost five, including my Alice. I prayed I’d be next.’

‘But you’re still here.’

‘The first winter after the light show we weren’t prepared. The droids did everything for us and then they were gone. Just heaps of useless machinery. If it hadn’t been for Bob Groves there’d be none of us. Bob was an electrical engineer, he knew how solar panels worked. Got the electrics going. It wasn’t enough to heat more than a few rooms, but it helped.

‘What happened to him?’

‘He went out to salvage some more panels from houses in the village. Never came back. It snowed a lot. The bot-scooters were useless. After the snow went we looked for him, but. . . . Poor sod.’

‘Was it him we found in a house?’

‘No. That was James Beckenham. He’d lived in Burnalham for sixty years. Ran a Chemist shop. He insisted on going back to his house after Christine died. I wouldn’t blame him if he OD’d on something. He knew how. We never found Bob again.’

‘How long did you live in the village?’

‘We never lived here. The residents were shipped here from surrounding towns. As people died off they centralised the care centres. As far as I know ours was one of the last ones left. There were over three-hundred inmates when we arrived. When someone died they were replaced until there was no one left to replace them anymore. Then we just dwindled down to nowt.’

‘Nowt? Oh, you mean no one?’

He nodded. I think I humphed softly, but said nothing waiting for him to continue.

‘I was born in Yorkshire, November 2018. I grew up in Tadcaster. I suppose I was lucky. Tad was a small town with three large breweries. A lot of towns people worked in them. The standard of living was good. My father worked at Bass. It was re-named Coors, but everyone called it Bass. He had a good job there. A manager. Mum worked at Sam Smiths in the brewery shop. My early years were probably the closest to normal. I don’t remember much though.

I do remember Dad complaining about weird machines being trialled in the packaging areas which kept breaking down. He said they looked like spiders. I suppose that’s why I remember it – the idea of giant spiders to a seven-year old.’

‘AI development accelerated after 2023. I suppose they were early droids. The first one I saw frightened the crap out of me when I was six.’

‘Dad told me things didn’t change much at first. The authorities tried to play it all down. They were telling everybody there’d soon be a vaccine and the best medical brains in the World were positive the problem would be solved. It worked for a few years, but when folks saw all the shuttered primary schools it really came home. By year four at Tad Grammar there were no first years.

The news was full of scare stories about population decline. The government encouraged women to try to get pregnant. They offered full support for anyone successful.  Rumours started going round amongst the kids, “the government said we have to shag all the girls.” The girls were up for it too. It caused a lot of fights. Our entire school was called into general assembly several times to explain population decline was only “temporary” and there was no excuse for wanton promiscuity.

By the time I was nineteen there hadn’t been a child born in sixteen years. Hundreds of companies were going to the wall every day. Essentials producers – food, even farms, were nationalised. In our town the breweries cut back. Heineken closed and shifted everything to Holland. Sam Smiths struggled, but being a local brewery it kept going. Mum lost her job. Dad was OK for a while.

News and social media was full of reportages about violent protests, riots even revolutions here and all over the World. America was really bad they said. The government nationalised the media and closed Twitter and all the other social stuff. It was too late by then. Everyone knew we were doomed. Then they opened up their own version of media chat. They actually call it “JATT” would you believe. Thing was, nobody did believe. We all knew it was heavily censored.

I went to university. Just about anybody born after 2016 with an ounce of intelligence had to go. I think the government wanted to create an authoritarian class. I wanted to study economics, but my course, like all of them, were heavily biased towards political history. I think we were kind of brainwashed.

Ended up in civil service in a department overseeing “Media economics.” Later, after AI got daily life more settled things eased up. I used to joke to Alice I was just another Winston Smith. I—’

David’s eyes filled with tears. After a short pause to clear his eyes, he muttered an apology.

‘Do you want to take a break?’

‘I’ll be alright in a few minutes. It’s OK.’ His voice faint from holding back a sob.

Taking a sip of cold tea I waited and made a mental note to look up Winston Smith.