Читать книгу More Short Stories to Read on a Bus, a Car, a Train, a Plane (or a comfy chair anywhere) - Colin Palmer - Страница 4

BEFORE

They moved along the neat aisles stopping briefly at each casket to punch a code into individual panels on the clear canopies. They made no discernible noise, every movement was silent. The great hall was silent too except now, as the caskets activated, a soft hiss of gas could be heard from where the silent drones had begun their task. The drones ignored or were oblivious to the sound, hovering onward to their next assigned casket.

The great hall was seven hundred meters long and four hundred meters across, from floor to the centre of the domed ceiling, a distant ninety-nine meters. The brochures stated the ceiling height was exactly one hundred meters but budget manufacturing had saved some time, money and a massive amount of material, massive because the great hall was only one of sixteen such halls in this, the greatest cruise ship ever designed and built.

The caskets themselves also hovered like the drones, their neat lines perfectly symmetrical vertically and horizontally, for they were stacked twenty deep up to the soaring ceiling – their magnetic fields secured them to an exact position. In total, there were five hundred thousand caskets in this great hall and in each of the others for a grand total of eight million … and each and every casket was occupied, nearly two million being crew members of the ship but the majority, paying customers for the maiden voyage.

The designers, marketers and owners had been overwhelmed with the public interest shown in the project. There had been over three hundred million initial applications for a berth on the first voyage, the lucky customers selected by random lottery. The vision of the creator had been clearly justified.

Sadly, the creator himself had not made the journey because he had died some months before the project completion. His name however, was evident inside and outside the ship, on the drones, every piece of equipment, each casket and the uniforms presently hanging in a myriad of personnel lockers. His name was etched everywhere, on cutlery and utensils, on crystal glassware in public and staff bars, even embroidered into every chair, lounge, napkin and towel. The name was less numerous from the outside but what was there was visible for tens of kilometers because of their size, the largest situated on each flank of the huge ship. Each of these letters was fifty meters high and the name stretched almost two hundred meters along the sleek elegant hull.

TRUMP.

There was a time in human history that this name was synonymous with hate, greed, social and race discrimination, and some historians remained convinced the ancestors were responsible for the end of human habitation on planet earth due to pollution of the atmosphere. General consensus was that over population was more to blame, however successive Trump administrations had certainly contributed to the demise. In recent centuries, the Trump name was seen more as saviour, responsible for deep space exploration and the creation of alternative “living planets” that allowed the migration of humanity to more sanitary locations in the galaxy. At present there were only two such planets but a further four were in development, all thanks to the Trump dynasty.

And now, for the very first time, the opportunity existed to return to where it had all begun, the evolution of man, Earth.

In sixteen different great halls, almost two million staff and crew were the first awakened, their intensive training automatically sending them to assigned stations. Hosts moved amongst the lower level of caskets as the lucky paying clients slowly roused. Families, couples, individuals were assisted from their caskets and escorted to preparatory cabins for ablutions and refreshment. As the lower levels of caskets were vacated, they slid seamlessly into the walls of the great halls, and the next level of caskets lowered automatically to floor level. Every customer was bursting with excitement – they would be the first to see where it all began.

Finally, the lower levels cleared and only the highest caskets remained, on their final descent to floor level, thousands of canopies opened synchronously across all the great halls – except one casket. This one remained sealed and as programmed, the drones had not initiated the opening procedure. A young family had alighted from neighbouring caskets and the two children pointed and stared excitedly, first as their own caskets resealed and disappeared into the walls, then as the pulsing air of expectation invaded from the multitude of people surrounding them. Many glanced at the sole casket that remained, the curiosity a short interruption to the anticipation of this new adventure. The children allowed their curious nature to voice a question to their parents and escorting host. “I don’t know” was the unsatisfactory response but it was a short-lived disappointment as they moved out of the great hall and onto the next amazing discovery. The sealed casket was soon the only thing gracing the great hall.

The massive ship slid into position and halted briefly before beginning a geo-stationary orbit. None of the occupants inside felt the different movement, shielded and oblivious to what waited below, their only knowledge from documentaries and the sales brochures that accompanied their tickets to this historic tour. Every customer took their assigned seats in the great halls from whence they had awoken not an hour previously. The magnetic drives positioned each chair into an arena like position of tiers so that all would have an unobstructed view, the occupants firmly secured so that it was impossible to fall, nearly ninety meters for those in the highest tier.

The two children with their parents had returned to the great hall, curiosity aroused once more as they noted the unopened casket still present. Again the casket was forgotten as their chair whisked them from the floor but only to a height of two meters as they were, ostensibly, the front row. Surround sound modules built into the individual chairs gave instructions and announced forgoing proceedings, the excitement of the audience building with each passing second and word. The little boy and girl reached out and held hands – and then a loud collective gasp and more than a few screams resounded through the great halls as the walls and floor diminished then disappeared entirely. The audience was left suspended in seemingly mid-space, looking down at views of a planet nobody present thought they would ever see. Planet Earth.

Swirling clouds, a strange mix of surface colours, the occasional burst of light energy through the atmosphere itself was all explained in the running commentary. A warning was posted that the viewing window would now zoom, bringing the planet and the continent immediately below into clearer perspective, and that each client had the choice to zoom closer should they so desire. Maximum zoom was recommended so that any life forms, animals, plants, would become identifiable, and most people chose this option. However, as their views broke through the ever-present cloud, it soon became obvious that there was no life. The commentary announced they were over a once grand city named New York, though no mention was made of where the Old York had gone. The assumption was made the new was constructed over the top of the old.

The view was amazing, gasps of astonishment at every grid pattern evident in the red dust (the grid pattern believed to be a road system explained the ongoing commentary) or a crumbled dust laden hulk of what were once enormous vertical buildings. A constant strong, gusty wind kept the red dust flying and sometimes restricted the view until special filters cleared the viewing zone again. A particularly strong gust almost blanketed the screen for several seconds, the inherent lull afterward creating the greatest view of all. A giant arm reached up out of the red dust with an enormous torch in its grip, panicked screams now ricocheted the lengths and breaths of all the great halls until the commentary allayed their fears by describing the Statue of Liberty.

Whilst the millions were absorbed with the Statue and unseen by any except the two small children, a drone and several attendants approached the heretofore unopened, and forgotten by the masses anyway, casket. The drone did it’s duty and retreated, the attendants waited, the canopy opened but instead of a person dismounting from the casket, the casket itself tilted toward the view. The casket went on to occupy the space where a seat would normally have been, right beside the children who were watching now with real interest. To them, this was much more interesting than all that red dust blowing around down on that dirty old planet below!

Not a little unlike the arm of the Statue had done but just as surprising, and to the two watching children, just as old, an arm extended from the casket pointing to the scene below. The kids heard a sotto voice, too low to discern the question but an attendant immediately replied, “yes Sir, New York.” The children clearly heard the sounds of crying, broken sobs rare in their world now. The attendants did their best fussing over the occupant, his ancient arm still hanging out of casket … the braver of the two children, the girl, reached out and grasped the paper dry skin, the hand startled by the touch and instinctively withdrawing before slowly unfolding and returning to where the girl could again curl her little hand around some of the fingers. The face of a man leaned forward and over the top of the casket, his eyes roaming between the view below and that of the little girl holding his proffered hand. Tears streamed down both sides of his weathered old face, and if the little girl felt fear, she did not betray it.

“Why do you cry?”

The old man closed his eyes for brief seconds, brief because he had waited so long for this chance and was not going to waste it crying and dreaming. Though short in duration, he had enough time to think, go back, the thousand years or so since he’d been in cryogenic suspension waiting for this very opportunity, to see his home one more time. He saw, the animals at the zoo, giraffes and lions, hippos and zebras and those ever funny penguins, he saw them all now as they flashed before his eyes. He saw people climbing mountains, mountains covered in snow, deserts of white fine sand, the beaches, the oceans and streams teeming with fish, the green earth teeming with life. He opened his eyes and saw the redness of the planet below him, the hostility, the loss, and a few more tears escaped. The little voice urged his attention again.

“Why do you cry?”

He took a deep breath, aware it was one of his first for a very long time, aware it was close to his last, meaning the longest time. He looked directly at the little girl, looked into her eyes, saw the mirror image of another pair of eyes as her less than brave brother peered across her shoulder and he surveyed his young guests with as much dignity and respect as he could tiredly muster. Before she could voice her question again he answered while delicately squeezing her little hand.

“That was my home,” he nodded at the red dust swirling across the bare planet below them, then went on. “It didn’t used to look like that you know. Once it was very beautiful,” and a choking sob erupted from his chest forcing him back into his casket and releasing, slowly, reluctantly, the hand of the little girl.

She shrugged her shoulders and looked at her brother who returned her shoulder shrug and they both switched their eyes to the view of horrible planet below. They forgot about the old man. They forgot about the casket. And when the tour was over and the walls of the great hall solidified, the casket was no longer there.

Later, as the huge ship prepared for the long return journey, caskets replacing seats, the great halls filling again, a small dot was ejected from a service port, accelerating away toward the hostile atmosphere of Earth. A casket, but a special casket carrying a special client, a customer who had paid to return home. His casket bored the Trump logo, everything from the ship did, but this casket also carried an inscription;

…I REMEMBER BEFORE …

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