On Albion's Shore

It was no use taking on a ninety-year-old at tennis. How was he supposed to compete against a forehand slice that had been honed and perfected for six decades longer than his own? Adam, sunken in yet another defeat, lay back in his chair and blinked twice to turn on the television.

“Now, little brother, don’t bother moping,” boomed Isaac, as he strode through the front door. “You know it’s good for your game to come up against players with a bit of culture in their swing.” Isaac began to recreate in earnest the salvo which had clinched the third set, cutting through the air with his racquet. Adam stayed silent, without the strength for either outward magnanimity or desultory retaliation. The two men wore a similar physicality, but the experience of victory in one and defeat in the other produced discernible differences in their bodies, now both reclined.

The living room was a bright cream, and sparsely populated by soft, teal furniture. Embedded in the centre wall was a clock with terse black trim. Isaac’s wife Becca emerged from the kitchen. She moved to the corner beside Isaac’s chair, and, as she began to bend her knees downwards a chair identical to his emerged from the floor.

“Any luck today Adam?” He did not answer, well aware that his biological grandfather would gladly provide the relevant information.

“Luck? Of course there was luck. He’s always lucky to play such an experienced hand.”

“Well, you might think that, but it’s hardly fair for someone your age to be playing someone who’s thirty. You’ll be asking me for a game next.”

Adam smirked, comfortable in the knowledge that the deficiencies in his game could be so effortlessly explained by his relative immaturity.

“Perhaps, big brother, I’ll beat you one day, but I’ll have to learn from you first.” He spotted the thin, black hand on the clock slide towards three. “Anyway, that’s Remembrance Hour. Better wire in.”

The three of them each opened the armrest of their chairs, pulled out a pair of white buds and placed them in their ears. Fine, milky tubes emerged from each bud and danced around the eardrum and ossicles before settling beside the cochlea. Adam closed his eyes, and slept.

When he woke, he was standing alone in a field of grass, covered lightly by a smattering of daisies, reminiscent of a snowfall. He felt the sun on his neck, intermittently cooled by inconstant spring gusts. His shadow lay in front of him; his eyes followed its line until they reached a base of dulled concrete. They continued along their new target, dragging his head along their rotation like tugboats. By the time he reached the concrete’s end, he was looking skyward. He realised that the colossal structure stretched beyond sight, marking the very end of the Earth. As it rose, it began to curve deeply inward before returning, such that the tip was closer to him than the base. It looked like a Titan had run a chisel through the ground and left this shaving as a monument to his own strength.

“Behold, your salvation.” The Titan had begun to speak. “This is Section 126 of Great Wall 9, erected by the Government to save us all from the Happening. For more than seventy years, the Great Walls have held back fire and flood so that we might survive.” The voice was calm, omniscient, like it came from the centre of Adam’s skull, expanding outwards. Like the concrete itself. “Beyond Section 126, under two hundred feet of water, lie the ruins of the city of London. Before the Happening, London was home to twenty million Britons. When the floods came, many died, but many more were saved by the Walls, by the imperishable spirit and ingenuity of our great nation. Brothers, never forget the Happening. Remember the Walls.”

The wind dropped; Adam drew back into his sleep. When he awoke for the second time, he could remember the field and the Wall as if he had only blinked, yet he was sure he had been dreaming. He recognised the room around him as a hospital ward, from the old films he watched during summer afternoons. The walls were clean and white, but pallid. Thick apple air freshener fumigated his lungs and turned his stomach. He heard a groan to his right, where there lay an old man. He was pink and hairless, with dark brown blotches etched on his face, and he took up barely half the bed. Adam could feel thick lumps begin to push their way up his windpipe.

“This is Robert Thendel.” The voice had returned. “At the age of eighty-seven, the last man in Britain to be lost to the passage of time. He died from what we called natural causes. Look at his face. He experiences pain and indignation that, thanks to our unprecedented strides in the science of body and mind, has not been endured in over thirty years, and shall never be endured again. No longer must we wither and decay. There are no more natural causes. Then came the Great Abolition. Our nation’s victory over death itself, the ancient scourge of humanity. Remember, brothers, we are the ones who abolished death.”

Once more, Adam felt himself slip momentarily out of consciousness. When he returned, he felt a shock on the top of his head, as heavy rain lashing across his hair and skin. He was standing in the middle of a cold, grey street. It seemed the colour had been washed out of the place and carried down the drains by the rainwater. In front of him there was a queue along a cobbled pavement, with terse black figures huddled tightly against the wall. Many of them were children.

“For all the Great Victories won, brothers, the war was not yet over. The final hurdles to overcome were our own basest, most vulgar instincts. Look on the faces of those still held slave to the whims of human reproduction; too little food, too little air, no bed of their own. We were saved, brothers, by the Great Cure, our final victory over our own DNA. No longer are we driven like animals to ravage our own societies. We live in peace, harmony, happiness. The Great Cure won this for us, brothers. Remember the Cure.”

The three awoke simultaneously. Still in his chair, Adam had pins in his feet, and he felt as though he had stood up too quickly. Isaac insisted that one got used to the synthetic reality of Remembrance Hour, and that the whole thing used to be a considerably more disorientating experience, before buds replaced full headsets, but Adam was yet to be convinced. He felt that, if it was possible to develop a tolerance to synthenausea, he had now endured enough weekly performances to earn one.

Isaac, having blinked heavily and now sucking his cheeks inwards, broke the silence.

“Makes you think, doesn’t it?”

Presently, Becca rose from her chair, smoothed out the kinks of her blue satin blouse and headed for the kitchen.

“Oh yes, my dear, some tea would do us all fine. Adam, tea?”

Adam was quiet. Though his synthenausea had gone, he still felt something slightly ajar within. He couldn’t place it exactly, nor could he recall if it had been that way before they went under. He stared at the clock and could hear the tick of the moving hand in his head. The same as the voice he had been listening to.

“Adam.” He came back to the room. “Tea?”

“Hmm? Oh, sorry. Yes, please, big sister.”

Becca had been waiting at the kitchen door for his answer. When it came, she bowed her head and shuffled away.

“Is she alright?” asked Adam.

“Fine, fine, little brother. You know she’s always suffered a bit with the old synthy. Nothing a good brew can’t fix up in no time.”

“I hope I don’t still get it at her age.”

“I’d be surprised if you did. Women always take it worse than we do. Remember, you’re still a youngster; it takes a good bit of growing out of. I was sixty or so by the time I could go under without feeling a thing. But, it’s a worthy cause. Important to remember how lucky we are, little brother.”

Becca returned from the kitchen brandishing a tray covered in burgundy crockery, which she placed on the small, transparent table in the centre of the floor. As she poured the tea, Adam leaned forward in his chair.

“Do you think the Government will ever stop Remembrance Hour?”

The question stunned Isaac, whose hand had navigated a full teacup to within two inches of his open mouth, so that both hand and mouth took on the appearance of early-onset rigor mortis.

“Stop? What do you mean, stop?”

“I mean just not do it anymore. Discontinue it.”

“Well yes, I know what stop means.” Life returned to Isaac’s hand, which then returned the teacup to its saucer, contents untouched. “But why on earth would they want to do that?”

“I was reading somewhere that there used to be something similar done for the World Wars. Is that not true?”

“Well, yes, it was. I remember the silences once every year. But that was before the Happening. Before God himself sought to wipe us off the face of the Earth. 2041, I remember it like it was yesterday. What’s more, it was before we conquered death, and old age. Before we eliminated our own destructive instincts. What else could there possibly be left to accomplish? We have already witnessed man’s greatest triumphs. That’s why the Great Victories shall always be remembered.”

“Triumphs.” Becca’s voice was abrupt, and morose. She was looking down at her hands in her lap, chipping away at a broken nail.

“Honestly, my dear, must we go through this again? You’ll have the Government snoops at the back hedges.”

“I’ve never missed a Remembrance, as well you know. But I remember too.” Her stare had risen and begun to bore a hole in the wall opposite her. “I remember how many were stuck on the other side, how quickly the Walls went up. Not a second thought. Always it’s how many were saved. They never told us how many were lost.”

“Honestly, Becca, to listen to you one might think the Happening was our own fault.”

Becca turned to Isaac plainly, with a look of recalcitrance. Isaac couldn’t bear to receive her without wincing, and looked to Adam.

“Pay her no mind, little brother, just a bit of the synthy talking, eh?”

“Must you call him that?” Becca snapped. “Can you even remember what he really is? Your own grandson.”

From his momentary lapse, Isaac had steeled himself, and his eyes returned to Becca’s.

“I know what he is, my dear. He’s my brother, and don’t you forget it. We’re all brothers now.”

“Brothers. They were children once. Remember what we did to them.”

Becca, with a perceptible sense of abandon, bent her head softly, as if she had just been made redundant. She stood and walked up the stairs. After a minute’s silence, Adam followed her.

When he reached the top of the stairs, he could hear a faint moan, like a cat purring. He opened the door to Isaac and Becca’s bedroom, and found her sitting on the side of the bed, tears falling onto her blouse. She clutched something in her hand. He sat down, and as he did so she opened her fist furtively. She held her heart-shaped locket, made of fine silver. He had never seen her without it around her neck, but it now lay open in her palm like twin dressing mirrors. On one side was a baby’s face. He had never seen it before, but he knew he was looking at himself. A single tear slipped out of his eye and across his cheek like a glass comet. He didn’t know why.