Experiment With Destiny (2 page)

Yet, where
Mrs Windsor’s Island
is an unashamed attempt to create something more conventional and commercial (that elusive ‘break-through’ novel) while remaining true to my beliefs and values,
Experiment With Destiny
is still much more in tune with my real voice as a writer. After nearly 30 years of gathering dust on the attic shelf, and without feeling the need for an extensive re-write to bring it ‘up-to-date’ – the only significant change I’ve made is changing ‘credits’ for Euros as these are now the proper title for the single currency – here is my first completed novel…warts, naivety and all.

Tolkien inspired me to use words as magical spells to conjure new imagined worlds of depth and complexity that could transport the reader to fantastic places that seemed every bit as real as our present reality…and Dick inspired me to bend and shape those alternate realities to question the human condition and challenge our preconceptions about what is real, and what should be…

The world may have changed beyond recognition since Thatcher’s Britain in the 1980s – the inspiration for 21
st
Century British Eurostate – but the dystopian alternate reality remains just a monstrous breath away.

As one of my favourite bands – Jesus Jones – sang: “Do you feel real? And if so, I’d like to know how does it feel?”

Stephen J. Carr (October 2012)

“
Lives of brave men all remind us

We may make our lives sublime

So departing, leave behind us

Footprints in the sands of time.”

Dave Brock

Part 1

Picnic on a Frozen River

I

THE wind howled and rocked the old bus as it crawled through the Saturday morning traffic. It had begun to rain and the cold, grey drops trickled down the window through which Marcus Smith searched his bleak and lonely world. Marcus hoped for light, for life, even colour. But he could see none as he surveyed the dull November day. With a sigh he returned to his thoughts.

             
It was never his pleasure to venture into the city and, when he did, those infrequent but unavoidable affairs were hurried and hassled. Today was different. Today he had chosen this journey. There was no necessity. Unlike before, he would take his time, for today was a very special day. There was almost a smile on his face as he reached into his coat pocket to find, nestled deep, his battered and worn folding wallet. Carefully Marcus prized it open for the third time since leaving his treasures and bedsit home at dawn. He thumbed through a modest selection of cash and identity cards until he found the neatly folded newspaper cutting. Numb with cold, his fingers pulled it free and opened it before his greedy eyes.

             
It was from the South Wales Echo, dated October 12, and beneath a bold single column three-deck headline – ‘Builders unearth treasure’ – it read: ‘Contractors working on the New Cathays housing scheme in Cardiff have unearthed a time capsule dating back to the early 1900s. Demolition workers recovered the sealed capsule from a hidden basement of the former Students’ Union bar shortly before it was demolished to make way for the foundations for one of three new high-rise blocks. Speaking at a press conference last night, Gareth Williams, spokesman for City Developments, said the time capsule has now been handed to the Metropolitan Area Archaeology Trust in Cardiff Bay for examination. “I am unable to confirm what was found inside the capsule, a large wooden crate sealed in tar, but the long derelict Union Bar was in use by university students around the time this was deposited. I am told that, whatever it contains, it will have some cultural significance but is of no greater importance and should not delay work on the housing scheme.’ The article went on to quote a professor involved with MAAT who suggested the time capsule might have been the handiwork of students and of no historical significance, adding experts might pass it on to the National Museum after a thorough examination.

             
Marcus Smith gently folded the cutting and tucked it back into his wallet. The bus stopped and its door wheezed open, letting in the bitter November air. An elderly woman hobbled down the centre aisle toward the exit. He watched as she grappled with the rail and painfully fought her way down the steps to the pavement. Moments later she was gone, a victim to the wintry elements as the old bus hissed, jolted and rumbled on. Huddled at the back, above the warmth of the engine, Marcus pressed his face against the window and dreamed of the promise his day held, a day longed and yearned for since his copy of the Echo a week later revealed the exact nature of that wonderful discovery.

             
The bus halted a second, third and fourth time. His excitement grew. Finally it pulled alongside the shelter opposite the imposing exterior of the National Museum. Its domed roof and towering colonnade seemed to press against the dreary rain-sodden skies as if putting up some form of hardy resistance. Marcus stood and made his way forward to the exit. It was hardly warm on the bus but the cruel winter wind shocked him as he stepped into the now driving rain.

             
Soon he was alone in the shelter as the bus pushed on to some unremarkable destination elsewhere in the city. Marcus checked his watch. It was five minutes before 10 and the museum was not yet open. He decided to wait in the shelter, afforded some refuge from the weather by the graffiti ridden plastic canopy, rather than risk the museum entrance. He checked his dismal environment through 360 degrees. Concrete, steel, glass and brick surrounded him, a vast array of impersonal monuments designed and constructed to stand tall and glorious, paying homage to human enterprise. Most had fallen into neglect and disrepair, patched together and barely habitable by the droves of white-collar workers who accepted their daily routine of misery without so much as a whimper. There was no grass. Bare muddied strips of land marked the ‘natural’ division between concrete and tarmac. The eternal winter – dubbed the ‘second ice age’ by the press – had taken its toll on what remained of the landscape. Even the street, dirty and foul, was pot-holed and swimming with the stale tears of heaven. There was little call for restoration of the roads. Private cars were banned and had been since the Third Gulf War. What fuel remained for government, essential and public transport was running close to empty and the voices of decision travelled high above the grime on the gleamingly unaffordable Community Monorail Shuttles. Across this and every city, the CMS pylons craned above the gloomy dereliction to support the most expensive transport system invented in the history of man. Marcus gazed up through the rain, denied the right to solidify to ice by its man-made chemical content, and traced the silvery sleekness of CMS-Cardiff’s network against the dismal grey. Yes, he thought, we are indeed a kingdom of moles.

             
Far away an iron-like bell tolled against the oppressive city din. The Big Ben Diner chain was summoning its loyal all-you-can-eat-for-a-tenner breakfasters across British Eurostate. As he listened to the melodic synthesized chimes, Marcus remembered there were five Big Ben Diner franchises in Cardiff alone – forty across Wales in total. A drop in the ocean compared to the number of M-Burger and Colonel Chicken outlets. His recall of detail from television commercials never ceased to amaze him. The overhead roar of a shuttle drowned the ninth and tenth chimes. Marcus checked his watch. It was time.

             
He pulled his coat tight about him and pressed into the stinging wind and rain. Crossing the road, side-stepping the first of another cluster of buses, he remembered the media’s ironic obsession with global warming just a decade or so before, and how the scientists suddenly changed their tune. It was at one of those summits…G30 or whatever they were called. The Americans started first, no surprise, and their claim that global warming wasn’t happening quickly enough rubbed a few nations up the wrong way. But the new hype soon caught on and Eurostate Ministers began speaking the same language. Global warming, they said, could actually help save humanity from the big freeze that had crept up virtually unannounced. Problem was, thought Marcus, there was precious little of humanity left to save.

             
Marcus reached the foot of the grand entrance and leapt up its steps, two at a time. He looked up to see the heavy oak doors swing open. The security guard acknowledged his arrival with a nod. Marcus paid him no heed. Wiping the water from his face with a sweep of his hand, he paused only to swipe his credit card through the auto-style. The barrier lifted and, at the same instant, his account yielded 10 euros – the price of a Big Ben Diner breakfast buffet. Marcus paced through excitedly, eager to be swallowed up by the vast, hollow chamber of the museum.

             
Marcus Smith felt almost light-headed as he traversed the dimly lit corridors of time toward his goal. He had come occasionally, forcing himself to make the unpleasant journey from his bedsit in the outer suburbs whenever something new, or rather, old was added to this worthy collection. But with each visit to this temple of history, his aching heart turned greener with envy until he experienced, as now, a lust to make all that these walls contained his very own. His private collection of icons and artefacts paled to insignificance compared to these treasure-filled arcades. Yet it was sufficient for his present needs. Now, as he restrained his pace to avert unwanted attention, he filled his lungs once again with the dust of centuries gone by…and with each breath he became more real, more wholesome. Under the shadows of the high arched ceiling, along the corridors of polished stone, marble and ancient wooden panelling, between the cages of distant memories, Marcus knew his greed was growing.

             
He stood, admiration flooding his soul. Outside, beyond the reverent silence of this sacred chapel, his contemporaries busied themselves in the twilight of humanity. Marcus was no longer aware of them. He was captivated. He could barely believe it…but it was reaching out with its god-like resonance. Identical, almost, to the one depicted on the framed print that hung, encased in glass, above his bed…only infinitely more real.

             
It was a picnic basket, just over two feet high, two feet wide and nearly three deep. Intricately woven in the traditional fashion from thin strips of malleable willow, it was set with precise care and attention to detail on a red and yellow chequered rug or blanket. Its lid was open and, inside, was an Aladdin’s cave of treasures from a long vanished era. Sandwiches, cakes, biscuits, pies and fruit, bottles of red and white wine, jars of pickle, tins of boiled sweets, cups, saucers, plates and cutlery. Unlike the scene depicted in the post-impressionist watercolour that looked down over his pillow, there was no river and the grass was clearly a large sheet of deep green felt, encircled by a rope barrier. Marcus quickly forgot this annoying detail, however, as he spotted the display’s crowning glory. To the side of the basket, almost eclipsed, was an old wind-up record player.

             
Minutes slipped into obscurity. Marcus was oblivious to all but the centrepiece of this display annex, part of the City Developments-sponsored temporary Old Cathays and University Exhibition. The picnic basket and its surreal stage seemed at odds with the stained wood and glass shrines that housed memorabilia, books and trinkets from another world. Yet, to Marcus, these relics were now irrelevant, distractions to the main event…the basket.

It was too good to be true, like waking to find the emptiness inside had been filled, only to wake again. But Marcus was not dreaming. The food, rotten and decayed, had been replaced with moulded, hand-painted plastic. The basket and its accessories, however, were the genuine articles. For a while he was transplanted to that other place, the faraway place, and he stood on the gentle, grassy slope that dipped to the river’s edge. He listened to the feathered arias, heard the wash of the breeze through the leafy boughs and the soothing ripples of the water. He smelled the air of an open, unspoiled world and tasted the breath of freedom. His eyes caught the sparkling dance of sunbeams on the river, drawing his attention to the small wooden jetty that protruded invitingly from the bank. At the end of the jetty was a punt, squatting effortlessly on the gently moving surface of water. Aboard, a young man, elegant beneath his straw boater, navy blazer and white flannel trousers, prepared to cast off. Opposite him sat a maiden of Pre-Raphaelite charm, long auburn hair flowing over her delicate rosy complexion and resting, in breath-taking contrast, against her ruffled white lace gown. They were like two atoms, adrift on a deep blue void, and the nucleus at the centre of the punt was the woven basket of untold riches.

              This was his dream, the vision he beheld each and every night…a picture framed, captive, yet elusive, upon his bedsit wall. For some, the impossible escape was a remote cottage in the distant hills. Others wished for a gleaming automobile like those that ruled the highways before the private traffic ban. Still others left their cares behind them in fantasies of riches as they dreamed of owning their own homes, riding the sleek monorail high above the city’s cares and, once a year, holidaying abroad in a place where the sun still shone. The lure of wealth and romance of the road were not for Marcus. An isolated cottage, perhaps, but where is the happiness in a silent outpost on the borders of a dying world?

             
For Marcus, the future was a waiting hell, the present, his demonic master, and the past; his messianic deity…and this moment captured his god with crystal clarity. To feast on the water and then make love on the grass was heaven itself.

             
“It’s not finished yet.” The dry voice snatched him rudely from his blissful reverie. Marcus blinked, confused, and found himself once more in the annex, on the wrong side of a rope. “They’ve decided to do it up a bit more, do it justice and landscape it…maybe add a period mannequin or two.”

Marcus turned to the dark outline of the security guard who had joined him alongside the barrier. His eyes adjusted to the shadows and he slowly pieced together the man’s crumpled features.

              “City Developments were so pleased the New Cathays project wasn’t held up because of this find, they’ve made a donation to the museum,” he added matter-of-factly. “And because they’re already sponsoring this exhibition, the curator’s decided to do a bit more with this latest addition.” Marcus studied him wordlessly, contempt seeping through his gaze. “A case of mutual back-scratching, if ever there was. If you ask me, City Developments were bloody lucky not to have an order slapped on them to halt demolition until that area’s been properly looked at by the experts.” The guard looked back at the picnic basket, oblivious to Marcus’s growing agitation. “But nobody cares for history much nowadays,” he added with a resigned sigh. “The way visitor numbers are dropping off, I’ll probably be out of a job before too long.”

             
For Marcus it could not have been worse. The security guard’s incongruous smile was the final irritation. His perfect moment had been tarnished by this rude interruption and was slipping away. As the last lingering traces of blissful serenity vanished into the dark recesses of his mind, Marcus turned and marched away from the picnic basket display. He did not pause at any of the other displays but walked quickly toward the exit, his heels clicking against the polished stone floor. The guard swung his head, eyes following with curiosity as Marcus disappeared along the corridor.