Episode 19 - Fourteenth Birthday Chat
“Hear that si–” …lence, boy? That’s right, the generator’s down.
It won’t come back up, my boy. No use trying. No parts for it, even if we could figure out what’s wrong. Hardly any more fuel anyway. Of course the viewscreens went out too, what did you think they ran on? Good point, the light’s still on somehow, but there’s no guarantee it’ll stay on. You better open the windowports a crack now if you can, my boy, your arms are stronger than mine, hahaha.
My boy, my boy, what to do… Well, we don’t have power now: let’s take stock. We can’t leave the island, but we… you at least should be safe for a good long while. No trees for a boat or a raft even. Trees, trees, you know.
We have the hydroponics still, water purifiers, plus the lab-grown protein. No outside sources of food anymore, but at least there aren’t as many mosquitoes here. It was such a shame, your parents. A freak accident really—the dengue, the Zika, and you just a little boy. We have everything we need right here. Of course, these resources are not infinite.
When I was young I was obsessed with money and women: the money to attract the women. Hah, I have all the currency in the world now, and small good it does: the kind of diseased serfs wandering around out there, hardly a tooth in their heads. You stay away from them, my boy. Plenty of books and pictures here. Yes, books, will you shut up about the viewscreens, they’re gone for good, get used to it—it won’t kill you to open a book once in a while!
You’ve been watching too many movies: get a grip. Look, business was business. Back in the days when we might’ve been able to turn things around, if we hadn’t focused firmly on economic prosperity, that too would have caused untold suffering. If we hadn’t done it, someone else would’ve—it was too profitable not to.
All those scientists were supposed to figure something out: some kind of magic pill, a quick fix. Yes, they did warn us about the tipping points, but…
We held out on the mainland as long as we could. It was my father, your great-grandfather, who bought the land, and it’s thanks to his hard work that we’re here today. He was a smart guy, he planned well: the South Island of New Zealand was one of the last habitable zones. Godzone, we called it. We did all we could to prepare back then: we stockpiled supplies and fortified ourselves with guns, drones and explosives. We had a beautiful home: tennis court, swimming pool, movie theatre, wine cellar, great underground warehouses of food and water, high electric fences and dogs, a whole armoury of high-end weapons, servants, more rooms than we knew what to do with. All the food we could eat, all the water we could drink, all the space we could want, money to burn. Alcohol. Casinos. Heli-skiing… you can’t imagine.
But when the groundwater was exhausted and the food was running out, there was trouble. The climate refugees rose up from the slums, and we had to get out, they would’ve killed us—despite all our weapons and security, there were too many of them and they kept coming like mad dogs—we helicoptered out with the guns, and this is where we ended up: our back-up, worst-case bunker. It’s not bad, such as it is.
I guess we thought nature would be more resilient… The problem was so big, bigger than any one man. It happened faster than we thought, in the end. The desertification, the mega storms hitting us harder and harder, the water rising, always rising faster than we thought, heating, acidifying. WWIII and IV in quick succession. God I miss cities: Paris, London, New York, Buenos Aires, Shanghai, Auckland. Cars, bars, shops, people. There’s nothing over there on the mainland now but a mess of warring tribes, nothing left to loot. Listen, calm down. Breathe in, breathe out: you have to calm down or you’ll have another attack. At least put the filter in your mouth when you’re not speaking. It’s the particulate matter in the air that does it.
Listen to me! You have to preserve the few resources we have left. Pretty much everything in this cave is irreplaceable, precious. You could be the last, my boy: the last of us, carrying on the torch. You’re young, you are the future… Happy birthday.
I didn’t expect that today would be the day, but... My artificial lungs, my cooling systems also require power: we can’t charge the battery again, so when this charge is done, so am I. I’ve taught you everything I could. My quality of life is gone, anyway.
If you’re wise, you should be able to last a long time. With me gone, you should have resources enough for the next ten years or so, if you use them sparingly. And then what? Well, you’ll have plenty of time to think about that, my boy. There’s a little pill for you, if that’s what you decide in the end. You have your memories, nothing will ever take that away, and now you know it all. That’s all that’s left in the end: that’s everything.
Any questions? My battery won’t last: if you have any questions you should ask now.
Don’t call me that! How dare you. I’m still a man, and I always will be. I worked damn hard for what I got. You should be grateful: when I think of all I’ve given up for you, you entitled brat. I’m an old man, just an old man who did what he thought was right.
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The silence was unbroken by the usual whir of fans and machines.
The boy swore again and again until he broke down coughing and spluttering, obscenities which had lost their meaning pouring out of his mouth. He slammed his fist into the bare wall. Ow. Now his knuckles hurt. He put them in his mouth, vaguely registering the omnipresent foul and gritty taste. It didn’t matter what he did: the viewscreens were still out, their dead blackness taunting him. He had cracked the windowports when he felt the room getting stuffy, and mosquitoes whined incessantly outside. Suddenly the light overhead flickered and died, leaving only the faint grey leer of the sun cloaked in its perpetual dim and dusty haze, seeping in from the windowports, and the only artificial light left was emanating from the mechanical outer shell of his grandfather.
“And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers,” the boy echoed. He knew almost all the lines by heart, but it was still awful to be cut off in the middle. He pushed down rising panic.
“You talking to me? Well, I’m the only one here,” the boy postured, giving the screen a good shove.
The boy glanced over at his grandfather. Stupid brain in a vat, he thought. The lights had been rippling frantically across the console for some time now: that meant that the old guybot was saying something aloud, but his audio feed had cut out a while back, right in the middle of a sentence: “Hear that si–” …what? Hear that science? Science, my ass, he thought. Nope, it wouldn’t have been science, whatever it was. Hear that sigh? Hear that silence? …well, whatever. It was the last thing he’d heard. Then the lights had kept moving for at least fifteen minutes, on and on and on; it was the most communicative his grandfather had been in ages, but the boy hadn’t heard a word of it. Damn it, the machinehead could’ve at least taught him how to fix the viewscreens. He’d often ignored what his grandfather had to say; it wasn’t as immediate as the action he lived through in movies. But this time he would’ve listened, if only to find out how to fix them.
“What we’ve got here is failure to communicate,” the boy said, spouting more lines. “Some men, you just can’t reach.”
The boy sighed, flicked some switches back and forth aimlessly. With a sudden burst of rage, he swung around in the chair and kicked at the cables with all his strength. Nothing. Silence. Even the lights on his grandfather’s console faded out, not gradually but all at once, and there was a sharp chemical reek of burning plastic. He popped the filter back in his mouth, put on his hazmat, and went outside to heave rocks into the water. A clear hour in between storms was rare: may as well make the most of it. He couldn’t see the far shore today through the darkening haze.
About the author
Sharni Wilson is a New Zealand writer of fiction and Japanese-to-English literary translator, whose work has appeared in Takahē and the Tokyo Poetry Journal. She can be found at www.sharniwilson.com