Blog

Just keep bloody rowing. What the hell do you do when you’re in the middle of the English channel –menstruating. Just keep rowing. The darkness is coming. Night time. I don’t know why I am surprised or taunted by it. Its like its personal. The absence of light, makes things worse. The stars will be beautiful and stunning but I will feel cheated as the light goes down. Keep rowing. The device is still working-just. I am still going the right way. I have factored in about 4-5 days and nights of rowing to get to land. The sea here is much calmer than it used to be, there are no ships to worry about. Nothing to concern me except food and water.

It’s monotonous. It’s tiring. I should have brought someone with me. The past. I should have brought something other than the past. My first thought is a book. As if you can read and row, You can’t. Instead I have the past for company. It is still with me. Inside of me. I think it’s not, it’s gone but at moments like this with the night closing in. Before the heavens glistening with stars, I know it has not left me. I know my heart will beat faster. I know my breath will become shallow. I know I need to focus on my arms, on keeping the rhythm. Row. Aching legs, sore butt, row, row, row. Rhythm and pace. Water and food

I think about the old lady. About her last breath under my hands. I think about all the death I have seen and the parts of it I have caused. Of course we caused most of it. Plastic toothbrushes, why do I always think of plastic toothbrushes.  As if one less plastic toothbrush would have made a difference. It was everything, all consuming, all of us consuming. Our whole life style got me here. Rowing across the channel, between England and France, both of which only exist in a meaningful way in my head. We swapped to bamboo toothbrushes an age ago. Didn’t we? Did we? Back when we had four safe and secure walls, a house, a home-wall paper. Beds. The list is long and pointless because all that stuff got me here.

I remember the Essex floods that took us south, to my mother in laws. I remember her house. Not our four walls anymore after that. Even though we lived on what passed for a hill in Essex, it was barely a mound and it had become an island. We had to row. Its where I first became good at it. As a matter of fact my first really big row was from Essex into Kent (which again was largely underwater and then into East Sussex. Names that haven’t fallen from my tongue or anybody else’s in years. A few days of rowing our belongings or what was left of them between the two houses. I think that is when he really left us. Two boats, lots of possessions-we left her at one end and went in convoy together. Him and me, but he was looking out over that sea.

I’ve no idea where he went, even when he went is a bit vague-a few months after we arrived. Maybe. One day he just didn’t come home. I don’t think I waited. Or cried or even mentioned it. He just never came back. I think maybe he died out there somewhere. Who knows. Lots of people died. I think probably he died. Otherwise why wouldn’t he have taken her. She was his daughter. Young. Valuable. Perhaps he knew the future that was to come and that he couldn’t protect her. I will never know. I still worked then. His mother was wheel chair bound. I had less compassion then. I hadn’t see so much suffering. I thought death was the worst of things and held no blessed relief.

I can’t even remember when we decided to go. Maybe I can. If I want to. I packed our things. She never asked. She knew. Nanny wasn’t coming with us. She couldn’t. Too much of a burden. We left before daylight, one day, one random day. Planned. Unplanned. Planned the time but not where we were going. Is that a plan?  Before the old woman was even awake. I put some fresh bread on the bedside table and a jug of water but we never went back. She died horribly, suffering probably calling out for us. For her probably but not for me. There would have been a point when she realised we were gone. That no one was coming. In hindsight, I should have been compassionate and ended her sleep quietly in the night rather than sneaking away. It was inhumane but I didn’t know that then. I hate to think that dogs found her or birds pecked at her or that god awful cat that hung around gnawed at her as she passed. Memory has no comfort. The stars, where are the bloody stars tonight.  

By the time we left, the lights had gone out. The power had stopped. The place smelled of sewerage. Clean water was hard to come by. Food was near non-existent. I grew things in the garden but it wouldn’t sustain us. Some nights I would get out of bed and flick all the light switches in the house on and then off again-but it was useless. I wanted to believe we’d blown a fuse or needed new bulbs but the truth -the power was gone. It was never coming back. It was matches and candles and things we couldn’t make anymore. There were a lot of empty houses. We took things. Wouldn’t you?

We went to London together, me and my daughter. Along dark tar roads, broken and torn by the weather. Filled with others like us, walking to nowhere. I can still hear cars in my head sometimes. But cars were long gone. Fossil fuels. They were the enemy. We just didn’t know it. London, we were headed for London. Not really London. It was outside the M25. Near Reigate, where we –well I was old and she was young. Not super young. Seventeen–able to take care of herself. It was a joint decision. There was space on one boat. I gave her everything I could. Just words mostly. No matter how bad it gets-live, breath, live I will find you.

Those early journeys into France or Spain weren’t so risky. Lots made it and then onto Africa, more risky but still lots made it. Maybe she did. But Africa had shrunk as well. Even now, when I go there, I can’t tell which bits have survived and which haven’t. It changed. It just changed like everything else. Less water, less land, different land, more people, less people, different people. Its hard to know where she would even have landed. I tell myself she did land and I will see her again. I tell myself I would know inside my head if she was gone. But the truth is I don’t spend a lot of time inside my head. I focus on the things I need to do to survive. I hope she does to. Pain is useless in the face of hunger. It simply weighs you down more. Lessens your chances of survival.

Row. Keep rowing. I keep rowing. Not seeing her getting into a boat. Not remembering that it was night time and dark and I lost sight of her even at the dock.

I remember her smell and her smile. The colour of her hair. My arms ache. The tears are coming. I focus. The tears will do me no good out here. I have to survive. The way she has to survive.

I look even now when I see a group. Him, the old lady I can barely make out their faces in my head but she is there, golden and shining and waiting. I stop rowing. I must focus.

There is so much blood, its like puberty in reverse. I remember puberty, hers, mine. Not enough food for her to even have a period at the end and here I am positively gushing Row, just row, on and on.

France is waiting. She spoke French, did a year of it at school. Better at Spanish. It would be enough. Would it? How could I know. You hear rumours about the fate of the children of Europe in the camps of Africa. I am fortunate. I came later, when humanity seems to have returned, although for my part I am not sure Africa is a continent it ever left. I think it might have been us, we might have been the ones that turned a blind to humanity and the price we have paid, when I think of it, is perhaps not so undeserved. I sob. I row. I try and focus. It is dark. I am wet. There is blood everywhere and still I have no choice. Breathe is going in and out of my body. I have to live. Survive. Go on.

She looked at the machine in her hand. Power from the sun. It was clever. She held it. It would get her to where she needed to be. She knew that. It would be less reliable in getting her back. She’d also had a motor for part of the way. Who knows where that had come from. She was rowing back, at least that was the plan. Back to the bit they once called France. She hoped not to have to go on, at least not quickly on, after that. She remembered France from her childhood-a family holiday. She had put that memory away somewhere. Tucked it far away. The sight of its green shores had brought it flooding back but the sight had been brief and she had been focussed on getting here. She would like to just walk there for a day, a day to remember. She was far more familiar with the land she was about to wash up on but less sentimental about it. There were a thousand memories associated with here but she couldn’t recall any good ones easily. She had forgotten those ones.

When she’d taken the job she’d known it would be hard getting here but part of the reason she’d done it was to prove that home was a concept she had no need for anymore. She would be content to wander forever. To forget all of  it. She’d been able to see the shore for awhile now. She’d been coming down the coast for awhile, having gone too far north. She had drifted this last bit on the tide. The sea had been calm. It had been for most of the trip too. It was common now. Deeper, more acidic, but much calmer-like the land and the sea had once been at war and now the sea had won. All its rage was spent and it just lay there now smugly vanquishing it’s foe in the bright sunshine.

She had rowed for most of the last seven hours and she was desperate to make land fall but she was waiting for at least semi darkness. Drifting with the tide, watching the shore. She had seen no one. The village, the crumbling remnants she could see from the shore, looked deserted. Still you could never be too careful.

She had seen nobody, even in France there had only been the one contract. What used to be France, she corrected herself. No point in clinging to the old way of seeing the world. She herself lived on what must once have been and still was the continent of Africa. It was just a much smaller continent and really the structure of countries had broken down although Africa at least still had people. France it seemed, probably didn’t. She really didn’t know what she would find in England.

Technically she was rowing on water where Essex probably once was. There were still people here when she’d left, that was not 10 years ago. The long journey across to the mainland of Europe, down through an abandoned France, on through a revolutionary Italy that was still clinging on as the ice came further and further south. And in front of the ice came the people, and as the sea rose there came more people and they were all looking for somewhere else to be. There were rumours about Africa, how it was surviving. Flourishing. She had nothing. No one left, at least not by the time she reached the shores of Italy. She climbed in a boat, not much bigger than this one with a dozen others and left.

The sky was darkening now. She wanted to land before nightfall but as the light was fading. Her arms ached. She was too tired for a fight, she knew that. How would it feel hopping off that boat onto English soil again? Would she suddenly feel at home or would she feel nothing? She let the waves carry her closer and then she grounded on the pebbles. She leapt out and dragged the little boat forward. She was out of the water on the dry shore before she’d even thought about it. She felt nothing. Just cold.
Looks like England, smells like England, must be England. Off in the distance she could see a tree against the sky. She’d seen them a bit as she drifted down the coast-eucalypts-they didn’t belong here but since the climate had changed she guessed they’d made it home. The one on the skyline was stripped of its leaves, she had heard somewhere far away that the locals in Britain did this. It looked odd, the tree would die now. The weather here was colld compared to the heat where she had come from. Further north it was just ice, she knew that. She would have liked to see where the two met and watch the jagged edge of winter butt the mild weather of the south. She had always liked England though it had not always been her home.

Home. It was a concept she had abandoned. She dragged the boat up to some bushes just above the shore. There was no one around and something told her there hadn’t been for awhile. She hid the boat but wasn’t overly careful. Nothing had walked on that shingle for awhile. She looked at her own footsteps and thought of erasing them. Five extra minutes and no one would tell she’d been there. She decided to do it, cover her tracks and risk entering the town in near darkness.

She grabbed her pack and walked up what had once been the path to the village. It had the remnants of a wall. She could remember when the coastal towns had decided to build walls, when the sea had got to close and they had taken matters into their own hands. She had even helped with one herself. It looked like the sea had crashed through this one at some point but then receded again. That is what people said now, they thought the sea was receding, perhaps abandoned continents would become liveable again. Even here now after all these years you could still see the plastic, the litter everywhere. She had even seen it rowing far out to sea. It was inescapable. And whatever else was liveable, the rubbish would still be there, underneath the ice flow forever.

She walked for a bit and saw no one. This bit of town was obviously deserted. It looked as good a place as any to spend the night. She pushed on a door and it gave way beneath her hands. She sort of jammed it shut behind her. She looked around. Nothing sinister seemed to be living here. There wasn’t the smell of animal droppings or anything dead. She almost wanted to call out hello but stopped herself. She would find a place upstairs. The stairs were rickety but held. She found what was probably a bedroom with some carpet still left on the floor. It was nearly dark now. She would have liked the warmth of the fire but decided against it. She ate some of the bread she had brought. She had other rations in the boat but it would be better if she could find some food here. She took a swig of water. Fresh water would be good too.

She took the sleeping bag out of her pack, and laid down it. Her muscles ached from rowing. She slept until the daylight awoke her.

She smelled from several days of not washing, but she had grown used to it. She thought perhaps of a swim in the sea but it was a risk. On the other hand who was likely to be around versus who knows what lives in that sea. She packed up her stuff and went and stood at the door, back to the beach or on into town. It was only just light. She headed for the beach. The water was freezing but refreshing and she wished she done it last night so she could hunker down in the bag and stay warm. She sat on the beach to dry herself for a bit, munched on the bread, dressed herself and headed off.

She had no desire to meet or see anyone except the person she had come to see. It was about 15 minutes of walking before she saw any sign of life, even then she smelled it before she saw it. Human faeces, someone lived here. It was still early but she suspected here like everywhere else they would make the most of daylight. What would she say if she saw someone? She suspected there were never travellers here, really she wanted to observe for a bit without being seen. The whole place was flat though and there were no trees. She would need to observe from a house. She skirted around the faeces and headed further towards the centre of town.

The place she was really headed for was through the centre and out the other side. Finally she thought she could hear the sounds of a lot of people. She thought perhaps there was a market ahead somewhere. She walked into a backyard, another house, empty. She went upstairs and sat looking out the window. She saw nothing. She moved on for a few houses and did the same thing again. She thought now she knew the direction of the noise. She wanted to skirt it but also to see it. That was unnecessary but she had not seen another human for a few days and who knew who she was going to meet.

She went oncarefully. She leapt a fence and hid when she heard someone actually coming her way. She wondered if she’d been seen from a window but nothing. She came across a small child alone in a back yard at one point. She made eye contact. Held its gaze for a few seconds. It had run away. It had run inside, evidently not too scared. N o one had come to see what it had seen.

Finally she found a house that overlooked what was a market. It was in the distance to some degree. The houses around the centre had been reduced to rubble and the market stall holders used the walls as part of their cover. She sat down. It was bigger than she expected. It was midday maybe by now she thought. She wanted to watch, just for a bit, see how England was really faring. She would be better to travel in early evening anyway.

It was about 4pm when she realised the signal was getting closer to the market. The machine was beeping at her. She was stunned, could it be coming to find her. Then she saw it in the market. It’s hard to know what gave it away, a slightly odd mechanical inflexibility in its movement. She could tell from a distance what it was, when she suspected even up close others couldn’t. She saw it talking to the stall holder on the far side. The stall holder obviously knew what it was because she refused to serve it and sent it away. It looked crest fallen. It was definitely transmitting. It tried again further along with the same reaction and she saw it slip between the stalls and away.

The transmission showed it sat there hiding and then about half an hour later it tried again at another stall. She saw a light come on and the stall holder talking and then it handed over the thing it was holding with the light,  grabbed the bread and ran. The stall holder shook his head and she was guessing he was angry but the machine had taken the bread and gone. That was a reckless thing for a machine to do and she was sure that was against its programming.

Nonetheless the deed was done and the machine was gone. Now that she’d seen it she wasn’t so worried. If the person who’d sent for her was any kind of threat, they would have appeared at the market themselves she reasoned. She wondered who it was that had sent the machine to get food. Perhaps it was injured. Most likely it was. She hadn’t prepared herself for that. She had prepared herself for a fight, she had not thought she might have to finish off someone who was injured. There was never a pleasant side to these jobs.

She hunkered down under the window. It was getting darker. She would wait until the last vestiges of light were gone and then travel by night. Through the square and on out the back. She would find somewhere out the other side to spend the night and then track it into the morning. She didn’t mind so much going back through the village on her way out. She could run. She was fit. She could even fight if she had to. But kill an injured person in cold blood. Much harder. She wouldn’t sleep well.

She lay as still as she could on the mattress on the floor. Pain. Pain. There was nothing here for the pain. In her mind she was running through a list of things she would never do again. Walk. Stand up. Run. Not in any order. Cook a meal. Go to the toilet unaided.

She had made him put the mattress down on the floor. She thought now it was a bad idea. She would never be able to get up from here. There would be no sleep. On the other hand she had been able to heft herself onto the mattress on the floor and she simply had not fancied being lifted up and carried to the bed by him.

The first few days had been difficult. But she had food then. There was no food now. She could see the increasing concern on the monitor, his monitor. She couldn’t focus on that. She needed a plan. Her plan had been, as she remembered from so long ago, not to spend her old age like this. Not to die on a floor alone. She had planned proper retirement in a proper retirement home with a garden and lawn bowls. Not this gritty, resentful, dirty existence. Nonetheless she thought now it had all served a purpose. Pain, searing pain. Hunger. She thought that she had achieved what they wanted. There was a point to it. Maybe, after all. Nonetheless even though she had contemplated this end for awhile, she was not ready for it. She was not certain that if faced with the prospect of taking her own life she could do it. It would be useless to command him to do it.

She just hoped they would come in time. It would be nice to have a conversation with another living human. A proper conversation, it had been some time. The most she had done for the past several years was barter for food. They had no interest in her except as a means of income. She was a curiosity. They knew she was clever. Thought maybe she was evil, a witch, a sorceress. Nonsense, with no science behind it. She had no doubt they were waiting for her to die. Then they would come and take everything. This heartened her a little. Pain. Searing pain. Civilisation she thought, had not sunk so low that they would attack and steal from an unarmed old lady. Perhaps they knew she was not defenceless. Perhaps they knew about him. Perhaps they would come if they could see her on the floor now.

So much pain. She felt she had been barking orders all morning. He was good, kind, caring, but a machine. She knew all of it was just programming. Kindness, programmed in. Thank goodness for decent programming and for programming decency, hadn’t that been the slogan of Christian Bots International, a life time ago. If only god could see humanity now. That’s why he, the machine would also be useless in a fight. He would harm no one. She had to rely on herself for any defence.

She could live with the pain really, it was the hunger that was difficult. She was sweating. Cold. Hot. Cold. Hungry. In pain. There was nothing for it, she would have to send him to get food. That would be difficult. She knew someone might come. She had made him transmit the signal. They would be unlikely to bring her food. They were coming to take not to give. The most she could hope for was a mercifully quick end. And she wanted to eat before that end.

She tried to calm herself, to think of what she might give him to take, that would be so valuable that they would barter with him. She had a lot of stuff even now. She had some of their money but that would be useless. She would need to give them something they could use. She racked her brain, tried to be calm. She was certain her hip was broken. She could almost feel the bits floating around inside of her pelvis. It had always been her worst fear.

She was old, poorly fed and living was hard here. She knew it would happen and in a way she was glad it had happened here at home. Upstairs too, which was even more of a bonus. It would have been so much worse out there alone. Here she could just wait. In fact it had been positively fortuitous, although she suspected the person slowly making their way across the sea to her didn’t feel that way. That is if they were coming, and she was not sure they were. They had to, she told herself, had to. Hot. Cold. Hunger. Pain. She got him to wipe the sweat from her. He would need to go outside soon and stand in the sun to recharge. Marvellous machine that he was. Charged by the sun. They couldn’t do that anymore. That was gone. Past.

 It hadn’t even been a hard fall. She suspected she had been lying to herself for sometime about how fit and healthy she was. She was probably fragile and had been for a while. She wondered really that the villagers had not come sooner. She would have to rely on magic tricks to frighten them away if they came now. Pain. Hunger. Cold. Hot. Cold again. She needed food.

She needed a clear mind, hunger and pain. Pain and hunger. She had been through worse. Had she? She could not remember when. Finally she settled on the torch, the little gold torch. It came on when you pressed the end but you had to keep pressing it. She hoped it still worked. She only needed it to work once, long enough to get her food. She sent him to get it. Told him how it worked.

Told him she needed food. Sent him reluctantly out the door. She could see he was afraid. Told herself he was a machine and that was programmed fear, not real fear. Not the fear she was feeling somewhere lurking between the heat and cold, the hunger and pain. Fear, coiled deep inside like a snake hibernating, waiting for the right occasion to leap out and strike her down. She must keep that under control. Let the snake sleep on. There is no danger here. The danger has passed. The end is inevitable.

She would never have sent him if she wasn’t desperate. She wasn’t even sure after all this time if they would recognise what he was. He looked relatively human. She only wanted bread. She had no need of the torch and maybe they could use it. She didn’t care. She had bartered with them for years but felt no affinity for them. No affection. Poor stupid creatures living in the darkness, never seeking out the light anymore. Paying the price for the past but never gambling that the future could be salvaged. That’s what she was doing here. Gambling that someone out there could salvage the future.

She heard the door close as he left. There was nothing now but to lie and wait. It needed to be near dark to demonstrate the torch. She knew the possible consequences, these were the remnants of society. They had no love of machines. Hadn’t machines got them here? Some small outpost in the darkness, clinging on to life, whilst all around them the sea crept in and the animals got bigger, stronger, hungrier. The villagers might just tear him to pieces and what then. She would die alone here and the thing, the thing she most needed to pass on would stay here with her. He was the transmitter, sending the signal. Why on earth had she stayed here. Why hadn’t she gone on. Questions she couldn’t answer. This had been home. She had been injured, healed, couldn’t go on. Her family were buried somewhere here. All those things seemed to matter at the time. And at the time, it had been hers and hers alone and she had the knowledge.

Now none of those things mattered and someone travelled across the sea, risking life and limb for a small piece of technology she would gladly have given over years ago. It was a stupid thing to have done.

Pain.  Hunger. She could deal with one but not both. Hot. Cold. Hot again. She was sure she was fading.  

It was long after dark when she heard the door open. He came up the stairs. He had bread. He fed her tenderly and slowly. She was grateful. He sat down beside her, crossing his legs in that vaguely mechanical way. It was comical, they had made a robot able to cross its legs because it was a position that made humans feel at ease. All that engineering so people could feel at ease. It hadn’t worked.

‘What happened?’ she savoured the bread, aware it could be her last ever food. It was a big round loaf. It would last her a day or two.