The Spotter
"Keep a smile inside you, petal."
“Time and life move in circles,” is what dad used to say.
I stand on the train platform with a book and pen and packed lunch, looking as I once did: a lone, unconsummated nerd taking pictures with a long lens, from distance, noting details, numbers, movements.
If Lauren saw me here like this instead of at the farm, she'd have never gone for that first drink! Actually, she probably would have but out of curiosity not pity. She was like that: interested in people; caring enough to ask about them - natural or not - instead of talking about herself.
But she would talk about herself when I asked. It was all I wanted to know about. She was all I wanted to know… wanted…
There's no published timetable, but you get to see and know the patterns after a while. The rarer ones are a better prize, but it's the really infrequent, maybe even unpatterned ones that are the real gems, when you see them. It's a tricky game of remembering, keeping track, guessing how long to keep them in my book.
“How can that be a hobby?” Lauren used to tease me.
I loved the trains as a boy, so big and so many; enough to fill reams of books with numbers and types and times. Once the huge beasts were captured, they escaped with a roar of diesel or a steel hiss whirr. For a while, those machines and the cataloguing engaged my childish mind in a sort of meticulousness but left room to imagine riding something so large. That was more than half a century ago.
“I only did it for a bit! I was just a kid!” was my defence.
I came home to our first night in our first place together and she'd framed a picture of me from back then, grinning ear to ear beside the last Intercity engine that they rolled from the museum sheds into Euston station before they scrapped it. Loads of people came to see it like we did, all of us finding out we weren't really alone, that it wasn't just lonely us watching with a notepad and sandwiches on the platform instead of going somewhere on a train. In the picture I was perched on dad's shoulders, reaching up but still a long way shy of the top. Mum took a good picture. She had great timing. I forgot about that picture. Lauren had gotten mum to give it to her before she passed in that Centre. Despite its age, she'd kept the photo perfectly. Uncreased and unfaded. It really looked new in its reclaimed frame. Lauren said mum had taken it from her bible not long before the moment arrived.
“Her bookmark?” I asked.
“No,” she said. “It had a special place in John by her favourite passage.”
For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. John 3:16
They wouldn't let any of us move once they put us in a Centre. They said it wasn't “safe” to transfer people for any reason, even family reasons. Not even that reason for just one measly day. I only found out about mum at The Forgiving. If she could've held on for just another two weeks, we'd have all been there together. But at least Lauren had been with her at their Centre. It was pure luck that they had been kept together. They'd both been at the farm when the Collectors came, flashing the Relocation Authorisations around too quick for anyone to read. I never knew exactly where they'd been taken but they'd been together in that Centre for over four years! Lucky that they had each other. Lucky that she had Lauren at the end. My two loves being loving to each other. So lucky.
Speaking of luck, what were the odds of Lauren and I finding each other amongst… oooh… seven million people? On the front page of The Truth it said that The Forgiving was only hundreds of thousands of naturals. The naturals know the actual truth and so did the guilty bastard unnaturals in London who peered down and out from the windows. All the drone footage of The Forgiving is scrubbed from every web page, but we knew how to find and share it and it’s never going away. The blockchains saw to that.
The story that The Forgiving was just a fraction of the real numbers was put out to assuage the “national guilt”; to limit the public shame of all the unnaturals who shambled under the weight of all their physical and mental ills that ate them up from the inside and would never stop.
Finding Lauren amongst all those naturals was easier than you might think. Even though they gave us all a phone at last, no one had any of their loved one’s new numbers so they were useless to us on the day. The phones weren’t for us. They were for standard surveillance. The bins overflowed with abandoned crappy handsets. We walked and slipped over the crunching plastic junk. That sound symbolises triumph of the spirit and nature over the toxic artifices of foolish men. One thing the Centres had retaught us naturals was that we didn’t need their tools to be happier than they wanted us to be.
Finding Lauren and mum was the only thing I could do. It was… they were the only reason I went to The Forgiving. When we had marched in the early protests through London, and when I was in Dam Square for the strike of Millennium decades before, I learned that you cannot fight the ocean so you must flow with it or transcend it, else be doomed beneath its surface. So this time, in the face of the benign, human tsunami, I did both. I floated with the endless crowd’s currents, picturing The Elephants in my mind.
Floating took little energy; so much easier than trying to swim against the tides and rips. Carried along I could listen, smile, hope while watching for the next useful current to slip. These millions of naturals were molecules of water, together deep and wide; stronger and purer than the Thames. Bonded - all loosely, some more strongly - by love and family and friendships old and new; by the fear, the pain, the horror before, during and after the Centres; by shared relief of that gathering and the trepidation of an uncertain future. The mutual dare to hope again was diluted but visible in every flushed face and sing song voice. We were bound by Nature and our shared nature, both of which had prevailed and allowed us all to remain our natural selves.
With time, I washed up at Green Park and a steady swim carried me through the eddies and pools towards my destination. Bobbing above the crowd, I spotted their majestic backs: The Elephants! So large they could wade unphased in that sea. Those wooden sculptures where Lauren and I first spent time together outside the farm. Still there! They still true to my memory, perhaps I to theirs. By caressing her trunk I asked the Matriarch for her help in a kind of prayer to Mother Nature, once removed by an artifice of man. She remained still so I could mount her mighty shoulders and transcend the water. The waves of passing faces and bodies lapped by my hands and feet with smiles and tears and joy and sorrow, and the fleeting shades of hope.
I wasn’t just passively waiting on the Matriarch’s back, above the water line. I consciously relived our past joys that began that day on the farm and grew from the next day with this herd. I sent my own waves out into the crowd and created a tide to draw them to me.
They say “one out of two ain’t bad”, but when it’s one for quiet sorrow and two for joy, there’s still numbness.
Whenever Lauren looked at me since The Forgiving, there was always a smile in her eyes - playful, warm, penetrating - that said she knew more than she let on. God knows what mum must've told her about me in the Centre! Bad stuff too, I reckon. She must have done. But Lauren was kind and light and gentle with me. Maybe because she had come to know not just the man, but also the boy from his Oma? Maybe. That look she gave me wasn't there before the Collectors came.
She was always easy to love; even easier after that. It was almost like I had to love her to keep those secrets behind her eyes from escaping into the world. But worse still, she might have been less happy without them.
“Keep a smile inside you, petal,” was what we used to say whenever we parted company, even for an hour.
I'll wait and get a few more in the book, whenever they come through, then I'll have a bite. Should be one due in a few more minutes, by my reckoning and records.
There’s an end-of-month treat today in the bamboo lunch pail. Seasonal salad of mixed leaves, radish, artichoke hearts and heritage tomatoes, croutons, and a sprinkled handful of ground chicken! Better to save it up than string it out. Two weeks worth. I save all the crispers I get to swap them with the kids next door. Little naturals all love crispers ‘cause they don't know any different. All us oldies prefer the flavours and textures of the past. Call us snobs, but we were never used to eating bugs. Then it’s off home to savour the beef. It's been a while… two months, maybe? Real beef, this time! Things are improving; that's good. Like Lauren used to say, “If the meat goes up, then problems must be going down.”
There wasn't a single ounce of meat, real or machined, in the Centres. The synth tasted like it, sure, but we knew it bloody wasn't! All of us on the farms did, anyway. We were the first lot to start running the synth lines, for goodness’ sake! They've still not quite got it right. It's the aftertaste and… after… feel. It's always bitter once you chew down to the last, and the smokey maillard taste goes too quick as well. Liquid smoke’s no substitute for the taste of real sear. Then after that… it's just too watery, that last mouthful. Not rich juicy, just watery, like a core of a cucumber.
Anyway, sod all that! Chicken for lunch then some more spotting. Then I'll see her and tell her about dinner and remind her of that time Hamish and his Anya took us out on Loch Lomond. I've nearly got enough miles to do that trip again. If I stay on the bicycle till January I'll have enough allowance to take a train to visit him this summer. She laughed so much sailing that boat; louder and longer than the kindly gales that took us racing back to their windmill.
Need to set that alarm, while I think about it. Need to meet Tom when he's closing the farm and get a bunch of marigolds. No one notices a bunch gone if I take just one from the end of a veg row here and there. I'll grab a copy of The Truth from the stands here and roll them in that like last time and no one will see.
A twenty minute ride from the farm and I'll see my love at the Beds.
I know they're not lilies, my love, but after you the marigolds are the prettiest things that were ever in the farm. What's that? Don't get me started on “tasty”… you'd win that too and you know it.
We'll have an hour before it’s dark, and I'll leave when I'm falling asleep.
The nights are still warm. Always blessed with Indian summers now. English wine was never better according to The Truth they made us swallow in the Centres. But the last two years have had snap frosts and white Christmases, just like I remember as a kid when the roof lights of Piccadilly station were still bright in December even though there was two inches of snow. So the wines are going to be slim next year, like last. One at Christmas, one in May for her birthday, and one in September for mum and dad's anniversary. I've got the points and rights to stretch to that.
Ahhh, arrivals! On time too! Records and memory are still right; I’m still winning this game, though it’s easier now. My reward shall be a contented lunch after this.
Quick! The book! Lens cap off and into the pocket.
They're quieter than they used to be.
Brunette, male, tall, mid forties, brown eyes, 6/10, still sallow
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Dyed blonde, female, med, early forties, hazel eyes, 7.5/10, slight stoop now
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2 kids, playful with each other
Weekly trip towards Knaresborough, carrying a present
Three weeks later, I strike out the female. No sign. Her family keep up the pattern in absentia.
Three months later, I strike out the male, but not the little ones. No more pattern, and there was nothing random or unpatterned about them, so I'm certain he's gone.
Little unnaturals don't take the train alone, so in that remaining ambiguity there lives hope. But I'll be gone myself by the time they return here grown.
I am happy. There's fewer interruptions to my lunch nowadays. Less writing, easier to keep track. The game used to be so tricky; remembering all the faces - all the molecules - flowing by. Going back through the book to recall when they last washed up, especially the random, unpatterned gems. Funny how remembering and recognising faces keeps you on your mental toes; trying to imagine what they’ll look like next time you see them. But they don’t age like normal. It’s like a turbo of decay sweeping through huge forests. “Accelerated decrepitude”, as J. R. Sebastian put it.
I dream sometimes about being alone in the middle of a forest fire, but I can’t feel heat and never catch alight. There’s a horror and a beauty to it, watching all the trees burn and spread fire to each other. In a smouldering wreck of a wretched cabin there’s mum, curled up under a duvet of ashes in her furry pyjamas, lost in the dark dreams that used to make her cry out. She’s light as a feather, unscathed by the flames and the rage and the shimmers of ashen heat. I cradle her with me and she marvels and wonders and shudders at the inferno, but we are not scared. We just keep going straight. Just keep walking in the hope that there’s an edge somewhere.
The fire dies down to clicking and crackling embers and smouldering stumps before we get to the clearing and the cliff. The smoke, thicker than that fog, swirls in a tormented release of hisses and blustering that sound like self-pity and despair turning to relief. It’s strange… the smoke doesn’t blow around and about; it flows straight up from every stump and char and the ground, into a filthy, rolling grey sky. It’s hard to breathe it in but there’s no choice. Each intake carries a wafting vision of another place, an old face - the ones we tried to tell and persuade and save. It’s not the smoke that chokes but the memories of their contempt and superiority and rejection of our love. They wouldn’t read, they wouldn’t listen, they couldn’t think. They all just chose to walk into the forest when it was thick with fog and they left us behind. Through the stumps and the wall of smoke there’s light. A ray on mum’s face is all it takes for her to grow heavy and restless and I put her on her feet. She giggles out joyous, excited noises in Korean and her funny English, excited and animated as she leads and pulls me towards the shimmering beams of gold. We are beside each other at the wall of smoke that flows upwards as sunbeams dance through from the other side. Mum sparkles like a wingless fairy, wide-eyed and smiling like an imp full of love.
“Come on! Go on! There!” she chirps and points past the wall of billowing, escaping memories but I can’t see what lies beyond. I reach to take her hand again, suddenly gripped with a need to carry her, but the tiny fairy pushes me into the wall with the force of a thunder hammer, into an instant backdrop of grey and a foreground of every face I can remember. I stumble and fall through the grey, face down into the smell of warm long grass. Ahead, a lush, overgrown meadow slopes down to a cliff edge against a rolling sea. Behind, there are the remnants of an endless slash-and-burn, whose black, charred spikes are punctuated by shoots and seedlings and small, vibrant petals. I can feel Lauren in the meadow, somewhere where the light is brightest. Mum is gone. That’s how it always plays and ends and then I wake with a shout and a feeling of torment that I should have pushed the little imp through, or carried her, or… and how the guilt of loves that were lost aren’t assuaged by the joy of the loves that remained.
These days it's quieter at the station. It's easier to be happy when it's peaceful. Unnaturals and their things make such a racket; sometimes it’s the squeak of a wheelchair echoing through the station and then there’s the struggling at the carriage as crooked unnaturals try to haul and push each other aboard; sometimes it’s the sound of an oxygen cannister being dragged, but most often it’s just the slow click-click click-click of crutches. It’s not that us naturals don’t help. There’s just not enough of us. We do the real work and the best work. That’s the bargain we struck and the little prize we took. The pick of the way to live and work and be. The unnaturals know they are trapped between frailty and frustration and dependency and needs. They know not to bite our hands that literally feed them.
We move quieter because we carry a lighter load, unburdened by the knawing worry inside that shies away from clocks and calendars and the track of time. We’re still blessed by Nature and what joys are to be found in her. I give thanks for whatever strength we found that kept us going straight when everyone else foresook Nature and their own natures and ran into the poisoned fog.
Mustn't miss my train home, Lauren is waiting. There's only two trains a day on our line now. Not like when I was a boy; when there were enough to fill a mountain of books with their numbers and types and times.
Keep a smile inside you, petal.
The summer that I broke my arm
I waited for your letter
I have no feeling for you now
Now that I know you better
I wish that I could have loved you then
Before our age was through
And before a world war does with us
Whatever it will do
Dreamt I drove home to Houston
On a highway that was underground
There was no light that we could see
As we listened to the sound of the engine failing
I feel like I've been living in
A city with no children in it
A garden left for ruin by a millionaire inside
Of a private prison
You never trust a millionaire
Quoting the sermon on the mount
I used to think I was not like them
But I'm beginning to have my doubts
My doubts about it
When you're hiding underground
The rain can't get you wet
Do you think your righteousness
Can pay the interest on your debt?
I have my doubts about it
I feel like I've been living in
A city with no children in it
A garden left for ruin by a millionaire inside
Of a private prison