(Links at the end to parts 1 to 4)
After bidding their fond farewells to Mabel and her family, Greta, Jerry and Captain Toast headed out into Shopping Village towards the big building at the centre of the village which was where Jerry lived.
The sky was getting dark and lights were starting to come on all around the village. There was a fashion for fairy lights, some golden, some silver, some multicoloured, flashing and twinkling, strung across trees and awnings lighting up the path that wound between the various dwellings. None of them so bright that they outshone the stars which were starting to appear in the darkening sky, or the sliver of the new moon which hung low over the western horizon.
Not so many years ago, this wide, flat expanse had been a twelve lane highway connecting cities. A place where nothing could live. A place where no animal that didn't have wings could ever hope to cross and make it to the other side alive. In those days, the constant roar of speeding cars, trucks and motorbikes would have made it a dangerous and toxic environment. Even the people inside the vehicles needed to be strapped into their chairs in case of technical malfunction, human error, momentary loss of focus or sudden distraction which could all lead to terrible accidents.
The roar of traffic would have been deafening. In those days, most vehicles were powered by internal combustion engines with fiery explosions of petrol fumes driving pistons up and down with tremendous speed and force. One single truck could make as much noise as a hundred people shouting at the top of their voices. The sound it made was like the roar of a beast from the underworld, or the angry howl of a giant bear caught in a trap, but louder and worse.
In those days, in this place, nothing but noise and fumes and oil-soaked dust filled the air. In the days that it was hot, the sun would bake the hard, lifeless asphalt surface of the road and the cars and trucks would heat it up more still with their burning, noxious, exhaust gasses. If it was raining, their tyres would send dirty water spraying up from the surface of the road into the air so that you couldn't see the road ahead of you. At night time, blinding white headlights and red tail lights would be flying this way and that as the vehicles hurtled along at breakneck speeds.
Sometimes, they would be crawling along at a snail's pace, stuck in traffic. This happened quite often, as quite often lots of people were either going to work or going home at the same time and a lot of people lived a long way from the places where they went to work. These times were called the 'rush-hours', which is ironic as it took so very long to get anywhere at those times. Even at other times, whether day or night, there would always be the trucks as big as houses, carrying tonnes of goods to their destinations. Quite often, those goods would have travelled half way around the world to get where they were going.. towards giant, out of town shopping centres, like Shopping Village used to be, in those days.
All around the main building of Shopping Village was another wide, flat expanse. This too had once been completely covered in hard asphalt, but for one or two ill-looking trees which had been put there for decoration. This was the car park. Not a park for anyone or anything to play in, but a place to park cars while their owners went shopping.
Since those days, though it wasn't all that long ago, a lot has changed. Except for a more modest, two lane road that winds through the centre of the old highway and branches off to various neighbourhoods around Shopping Village, most of the asphalt surfaces have been pulled up, crushed with sledgehammers and used to fill in the tyre walls of some magnificent Earthship houses which are dotted around the village. Gardens have been planted, hedgerows and fruit trees. In the sixteen years since the Big Shift, some have even grown taller than the houses.
Some people have used large chunks of the road surface to build rough walls for their houses, which in a way resembles ancient stonework. The asphalt masons of Shopping village are known for a certain style of arched door and windows made by painstakingly carving chunks of the stone-like material into blocks of the right shape. There are also some very talented mud-plasterers who turn walls into sculptural works of art. When someone builds their house, everyone lends a hand. That's how it works in Shopping Village and places like it.
Quite a few homesteads have been built around old buses, trucks and trailers. Of course, when the oil supply stopped, they need to find new uses. Their engines were sometimes repurposed to work as generators, turning biofuel into electricity, but most people in Shopping Village these days make do with solar panels, windmills, pedal-power and other ingenious ways to make electricity, the little that they need. The big generators are mainly used for things like running the big bandsaw at the sawmill, or for concerts, festivals and large, public events which require loud music and bright lights.
O is always innovating, devising new ways to save energy and to modify old machines to make them work more efficiently. New, even lower energy lightbulbs. Replacement motors for washing machines which need a fraction of the power it takes to run the old ones. All makes and models of any motor for any machine can be manufactured to the highest precision using 3D modelling. O has plans for all of them and lots of plans of their own. O has a special talent for finding the most efficient solutions to technical problems.
All of these things find their way to places like Shopping Village and beyond, thanks to traders like Jerry. Jerry doesn't think of himself as a trader, but that's what he is. As far as Jerry is concerned, he likes to go to the city, hang out with his friends there and play music. The fact that people from his village ask him to bring odd things back for them, and the fact that they give him things, if they have anything to share that he needs.. that's just incidental, as far as Jerry's concerned. Just the way things go around. Mainly, he just does what he likes and helps people out when he can, like most people these days.
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Jerry, Greta and Captain Toast wound their way through the alleys of Shopping Village, between hedgerows of fruit trees and bushes, past walls made of truck tyres, painted in bright colours and filled with plants and flowers. Fairy lights were strung between trees and prayer flags fluttered in the breeze. To Greta it felt like a wonderland. She was unused to so much electricity. In her village, the tree-houses blended in with the trees, between them simple rope-walks and rope-bridges. Here and there, a rope-ladder hanging down to the forest floor, which was largely untouched. At night, candles and lanterns would light up the windows of the little houses, high up in the great boughs of the ancient trees.
Every few houses, they would stop to say hello to the people who lived there and Jerry would deliver some item or other from out of his apparently limitless rucksack. In such a manner, it took them quite a while to reach the main building in the centre of Shopping Village, where Jerry lived. By the time they got there, Greta had made several new friends and felt very well known and quite at home in this charming, sprawling, ramshackle village.
The big building in the centre of the village used to be what was called a 'shopping mall'. It was an enormous concrete structure with no windows. In those days, it had had shops on three levels above ground, one shopping level underground and another two levels below that for additional car parking. Since the Big Shift, the underground levels had been allowed to fill up with water and now served as the freshwater reservoir for the people who lived there. Windows and balconies were also added in no particular style or order and vines and climbing plants now grew up the sheer, grey walls of this imposing building. There were still shops inside, but now people lived there too.
Around the main entrance to The Mall, as it was still called, was now a big park with fruit trees marking its vague edges. Young people sat around in groups on the grass, chatting and playing music. Old men in groups of two or three paced slowly along the paths, deep in conversation or in silence, toying strings worry bead as they walked. Old women sat along benches, chatting and spitting sunflower seed shells into the path of the old men and laughing. Some people were grouped around tables where games of chess or backgammon were being played.
A skate-park area was dangerously full of children and teenagers, flipping about on skateboards and trick-bikes, narrowly avoiding collisions, most of the time. There was an area with swings, slides, climbing frames and a sandpit for the younger children. Most of them were starting to drift home now that is was dark and delicious smells of cooking were filling the air.
An area of the park had been fitted out with fitness machines. These were in constant use by fit looking people, getting in shape, proudly showing off their muscles and their fitness. The running wheels, exercise bikes, rowing machines and weight-lifting pulleys were all connected to dynamo motors which generated enough electricity to keep the park and the entrance area to The Mall well lit with a combination of low, lamp posts, hanging lanterns and fairy lights, of course.
The main entrance door into The Mall was a big, revolving glass door with sections big enough for about four people at a time. There was a constant flow of people going in and out. Greta wasn't used to seeing so many people all at once and she'd never seen a spinning door like this one. She hesitated uncertainly, watching the door go round and round, trying to figure out how you were supposed to get through it without getting trapped between the heavy glass and the metal frame, not sure if she even wanted to.
The walk from the edge of Shopping Village to The Mall, though it was only a few hundred meters, had taken an hour or more, what with all the stops along the way. Now it was almost fully dark out. With all the fairy lights everywhere, all the people moving this way and that, and now with this huge, spinning, glass door, Greta's head began to spin. She felt suddenly disorientated and scared, homesick and alone. Why had she come to this strange place? Maybe she should just turn around and go home, back to the forest. Maybe she'd made a big mistake. In that moment, most of all, she missed her mum..
The scene from a three days before ran through her mind, as it had been ever since that night. It felt like a lifetime ago that she'd left home in tears of anger and confusion, mixed with a whole lot of other feelings which she could even begin to find names for.
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Up until the moment that her mum had dropped the bombshell which had turned her whole life upside down, her sixteenth birthday had been such a happy day. All of the people of the village had made a big circle in the sacred space in her honour. They'd brought gifts, songs and blessings and celebrated from the morning till the night. As she'd climbed up into her tree-house that night, she'd felt as if she was the luckiest girl in the world, in love with all of the people and with the enchanted forest that was such a good home. There was nowhere else that she'd rather be. She was in love with life itself.
Her mum came to tuck her into bed. Not something she usually did any more, now that Greta was big enough to tuck herself in and had a tree-house of her own, in the next tree to where her mum still lived. She noticed that her mum had tears in her eyes. “Mum, why are you crying?” she asked.
Her mum didn't answer at once, but just sat gazing at her daughter through her tears.
“What? What is it?” asked Greta again. “What's wrong?”
Her mum tilted her head and smiled a sad, distant smile. “You've grown so big, darling”, she said, taking Greta's hands in her own. “And you're so clever, and so good. Much more good and clever than me. I'm so proud of you, the way you've grown up. You know that, don't you Greta? You know I love you?”
“Yes, of course I do. I love you too.” said Greta, but this just made her mum cry even harder. “Mum, what is it?”
Eventually her mum sat up very straight, closed her eyes and pressed her lips together very tight, took a deep breath, then opened her eyes wide again before speaking. “Darling, there's something I need to tell you..”
Greta would never forget the look on her mum's face, in the flickering shadows of the candlelight, as she'd tremblingly spoken those fateful words, as she prepared to tell her daughter the secret that she'd been holding inside for sixteen long years.
“You know the story of when you were born..” her mum began falteringly. “Yes, of course you do. I've told you about it enough times. I think everyone knows the story. That's why they're always like, 'poor Karen', or 'poor River'.. yes.. everyone knows the story..”
“What, you mean about O and the big Shift, mum? When you were giving birth to me?”
Her mum pulled an ugly face and looked away. “Yes”, she said and muttered some curse underneath her breath.
For a long time, she didn't move or say a word. Just sat staring at the floor, tears now rolling down her cheeks. The only sound was the wind in the leaves and the creaking of the beams of the tree-house which rocked and listed like a ship out at sea.
“What is it mum? Tell me”, said Greta, sitting up in bed, feeling scared, not even sure if she wanted to know.
“There's something I've never told you.. about that night..” said her mum at last, looking straight at her daughter with a reckless abandon in her eyes.. but then turned her face away again and fiddled absently with the weave of the rag rug.
She did this for such a long time that Greta, who was now crying herself, at last had to implore her, “What? Mum. What is it? Tell me what it is already.”
Her mum turned to her again and began to stroke Greta's head and run her fingers down her long, plaited braids. Then she began to speak in a quiet, measured, trance-like tone, very softly, the words that had been on the tip of her tongue for so long. The words she had swallowed over and over again, until they had almost taken away her ability to speak at all.
“When you were born, Greta.. when you were born..” said her mum and then stopped again and stroked her daughter's cheeks, wiping away Greta's tears of confusion and dread.
“What?! What mum? Just say what it is. You're scaring me”, cried Greta, angrily pushing her mum's hand away. Her mum looked at her imploringly, inconsolably sad, but she nodded and took a very deep breath before speaking again.
“You were first, Greta”, said her mum. “You were first. My first baby. You'll always be my first baby, you know that, don't you baby? Baby? You know that?”
Greta was shaking now. “Mum! What are you talking about? Tell me what you're talking about.”
“You... you.. You've.. you've got.. a.. a..”
“What? What have I got? Just spit it out already mum. How bad can it be..?” Dark thoughts were spinning round her brain. “What? Did O do something to me? What did it do? Have I got an implant? Am I going to die? Mum? What is it? Just tell me.”
“No no no. No. Of course not. Nothing like that. Greta. It's.. It's.. what it is.. is.. you've got a sister. That's what it is. You've got a sister. A twin sister. Her name is Clara.” And her mum broke down into howling, anguished, inconsolable sobs. Nothing that Greta could say or do could get her to say anything more for a long time. So long, that the candle burnt itself out and they were left there in the dark, rocking back and forth inside the tree-house, high up in the ancient beech, deep in the forest.
Eventually, her mum settled down and climbed into bed with Greta. As they lay there in the dark, she told the story that she'd been holding in for so long..
When the Big Shift happened, after O suddenly took over the world, there was a lot of chaos. A lot of panic. No-one really knew what was going on, or what was going to happen next. There were reports of gangs roving through towns and villages which were now cut of from electricity and communications, looting and robbing. Meanwhile, in the cities, drones were everywhere, giving people orders and instruction. O was on every screen and knew everything about everyone. A lot of people ran away from the cities, just to get away from O, preferring to take their chances with the gangs of thieves. At least they were human. Others came into the cities, hoping that O would protect and look after them, as they promised.
Greta's dad had wanted to stay in the city. He believed in O. Lots of people did. They thought it was the best thing that could have happened. He hadn't wanted to go out into the wilderness with two little babies. People were getting killed. It wasn't a game. And what did he know about survival? He was a city boy.
Greta's mum wouldn't stay. There was no way she'd submit herself and her babies to being controlled and monitored by a machine, in every aspect of their lives. What sort of life could that be? Of course, she was scared to go out there, but she was more scared by O. Much more scared. She'd prefer to take her chances on the outside. If they died, at least they'd die free.
After some terrible and bitter fights, with no agreement and no chance of compromise, Greta's parents resolved that the only option would be to separate and take one twin each and raise her as best they could. That way, if things didn't work out for one, at least they might for the other.
Neither Greta nor her mum slept that night. Greta had a lot of questions, particularly about her dad, who had almost never been spoken about until then. He wasn't a bad person. He was actually a very good person, but he was weak and foolish, according to Greta's mum.
By the time the sun came up, Greta had resolved to go to the city and find her sister and her dad, if they were still there to be found. She was angry at her mum for not having told her sooner. Also for not making the effort to go and find her sister in all these years. She would go alone. She was sixteen years old now and old enough to make her own decisions. A part of her too, and not a small part, was also excited. She had always wished for a sister. Of course, she'd always craved to know her dad and what he was really like. The only thing her mum would ever say was that they were very young and didn't really know each other.
And so it was that on the day after her sixteenth birthday (less than a week ago, though it already felt like a lifetime) Greta set out on the biggest adventure of her life..
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Greta felt a tugging at her sleeve. It was Captain Toast, eager to get home.
“We're nearly there”, said Jerry. “I live inside, on the top floor. Say, are you OK? You're looking a bit wobbly..”
“Yes”, said Greta, trying to sound more certain than she felt. “It's just.. I don't know.. I've never seen a door like that..”
Jerry laughed. “You're funny. Come on, it's quite safe, don't worry. Look, I'll go on one side and Captain Toast on the other. We'll go through together. Hold his collar, you'll be allright..”
Jerry took her arm and she took hold of the piece of rag tied around Captain's neck, his thick fur comforting her and making her feel braver.
“Right!” said Jerry, leading her towards the spinning door. “Are you ready? On the count of three.. One.. two.. three.. Now!!!”
And before she knew it, they were all inside.
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Read parts 1 to 4 here:
@stillgideon/the-big-shift-part-1-the-rise-of-o-the-great-leader
@stillgideon/the-big-shift-part-2-year-zero