We, The Lucky Few

  We, The Lucky Few

  P.S. Lurie

  6 P.M. - 7 P.M.

  Theia

  The sea is closer to my house today than it was yesterday and not as close as it will be tomorrow.

  A quick check of my watch proves this: it takes me ten minutes quicker to walk back from the coast, which would make sense if I had hurried but, if anything, I dawdled at the market. The inescapable truth is that the world is drowning. Never receding, never bowing to anything in its path and never selective in its devastation, the tide pulls ever closer. Apart from the highest reaches, our pathetic planet is all but submerged and I make a crude, pitiful estimation that my house will be underwater within the next three months, before I turn sixteen.

  With the water to one side and the Fence on the other, we in the Middlelands have nowhere to turn. In denial, we have watched on from the impermanence of our homes, ignoring the pleas of the Lowerlanders as their own homes vanished. One by one each family beneath us has become homeless and migrated through our roads to set up camp under the shadow of the Fence; a pseudo-exodus, a constant reminder that time is against us.

  At first our world leaders calculated how far the water would rise but once it exceeded the level scientists deemed possible for Total Flood, obviously a defunct term, our questions turned to survival: Will there be enough land for eight billion people? Will there be enough resources? When will it stop?

  Then we were down to a population of seven billion, and rapidly six billion, then five and then... instead of counting individuals we spoke of lost cities, then countries, then continents, until a few thousand of us remain in an area we call the Middlelands in addition to however many live safely in the Upperlands behind the Fence. We don’t know much about them other than during the Surges. Tonight will be one of those times.

  This evening my street doesn’t even reflect the number of living. It’s devoid of life because everyone is clustered in their front rooms waiting for the latest announcement. I brace the cold altitude alone, clutching my backpack tight not just to keep me warm but to conceal the items I traded my necklace in for at the market. I tell myself it was worth swapping for these old-world objects because I have no use for jewellery, however much sentiment it holds. Sentiment won’t save us. I wonder if my family will notice I’m not wearing my mother’s hand-me-down or whether they’ll be glued to the television set waiting for electricity to trickle through.

  I tuck my mousy hair behind my ears and feel the biting wind brush my face. Living at this elevation would be a curse if it were another time but in the present circumstances it’s the best I could hope for. I bring my hand to my chest and feel my heartbeat underneath my thick jacket. I can’t help but feel anxious about tonight even if experience tells me that I should prepare to be let down.

  The breeze carries the smell of fish, the only thing in this world of which there is too much, besides water of course. The pungency casts my mind back to a dog-eared poster on my junior classroom wall with the slogan: Give a man a fish and he can eat for a day but teach him how to fish and he can eat for a lifetime, only the writer forgot the final clause: Give him the strength to build defences against the oceans or all the fish in the world will mean nothing.

  But we are still alive and we persevere. Every day men in the Middlelands set off on tugboats, navigating the eroding buildings that stand like limestone stacks, and fill buckets with the last remaining source of sustenance in this world. The commute with the haul is shorter by the day and reminds me that the sea not only provides life but has the power to take it away.

  Scientific advances are a thing of the past and all we do is watch and wait. And hope. Hope the water recedes. Hope the Upperlanders with their monopoly on electricity ring true on their promise to offer us salvation from behind the Fence. Hope the Surge brings good news. Hope that each time another family is made homeless our turn will not be next. No one any longer questions whether this was the fault of man or fate or a punishment from above or even how to stop it. No one asks what causes the tides to rise and cover all except for the highest peaks. With the focus solely on hunger and survival, no one has the time or energy to solve it.

  Fatalistic, perhaps, so instead we hope. And our best hope for salvation is news from behind the Fence.

  The Surge is our name for the televised announcements from the Upperlands. They are too few and far between for our liking but it is worth keeping otherwise redundant technology in good working order. Tonight’s Surge has renewed an unlikely flare of optimism inside me. Until now the broadcasts have amounted to little more than a recognition of our plight, a thinly veiled pretence for keeping us subdued but rumours are that this one is the game-changer, that tonight the Upperlanders will concede to open the bolted gates and offer us a safe haven. Even the typical atmosphere of dejection around the marketplace had been replaced this afternoon by excitement, with most stallholders shutting up early to join their families at home. It has taken the Upperlanders long enough but, however often the messages let us down, they are preferable to the alternative of admitting defeat.

  In his optimistic manner my best friend and next-door neighbour, Henry, patronises me when I respond downtrodden to the Surges. ‘Which would you rather,’ he asks, ‘hope not to be disappointed by the Surge or resign ourselves to the fact that if we don’t drown today there’s always tomorrow?’ Or something equally pompous but I can’t be angry with him because he’s right.

  I reach the front of my house, open the gate that creaks unless you lift it just so and make it halfway down the path before I turn to face the eerie street. The hum of electricity hasn’t been heard for over a decade. I’m not sure I can actually remember what it was like to have background noise. Maybe it’s a false memory, like how I maybe remember the days when my father would laugh where now there’s just prolonged silence.

  Rusted cars that no longer run are parked neatly in parallel lines but windows are smashed and tyres deflated. The supply of oil, petrol and batteries disappeared with the need to travel and the metal shells serve only as temporary homes. I’ve never been inside a moving vehicle. The roads aren’t maintained anymore and are no longer safe and, besides, there is nowhere to go.

  But the cars serve a new purpose, acting as dividers for three lanes. As an unspoken rule we stick to the pavements whilst the homeless take the middle path. It’s easier to keep some distance from those already living our future and to pretend that we are different from them even if in time we won’t be.

  Lampposts that won’t turn on except briefly during Surges dominate the skyline. The sun is high but already the crescent moon is out. Apart from the occasional candle it will provide the only source of light in a matter of hours. Self-placed curfews prevent us from being outside after sundown. In the dark, the homeless claim the pavements too. As I said, the roads aren’t safe.

  I scan across the gardens that sit in front of each of the terraced houses. Some keep an air of modicum but most have withered. There’s plenty of water close by flooding more of the Middlelands with each passing day. Lack of access to water isn’t what’s killed our plants. It’s apathy. To those with bright flowers, like in the Ethers’ garden, the purpose is to convince one another that our society is fully functioning and not a lost cause. To the rest of us, it’s false advertising. Look around, even a glance, and it’s easy to detect the collapse. What appears to be peaceful suburbia is a living museum, a relic to the past from which we can’t move away. I don’t remember much of how life used to be even though I was born when electricity ran freely through our house, unlike my younger brother, Ronan, who wasn’t alive then. It puts things in perspective when I consider that at least Ronan will remember what it was like to have a house at all, unlike Leda, our baby sister.


  According to the Surges, those in the Upperlands have begun to rebuild civilisation. I’ve seen the mammoth Fence up close countless times but there is no way to see through to the other side. The sheer number of homeless people acts as a human moat around the perimeter and makes it that much more impenetrable. If they have nothing left to lose and can’t scale the Fence then what chance do I have? Once in a while I hear murmurs of rebellion but no one has ever surmounted the concrete wall and the antagonism dies as quickly as it begins.

  I feel pity for the homeless but mostly they make me nervous because all that separates us is time. Privilege became less about wealth and more about location and I suppose I’m lucky in that sense because my house is only eighteen blocks from the Fence.

  My father, if he can muster the energy, speaks of Current Days when electricity was plentiful as opposed to the present situation but his pun wears thin and no one else adopts this term. Even if I don’t remember well, it’s obvious that life was easier then, when the refrigerator wasn’t merely for storage, when shops were overstocked rather than reverting to our unhygienic, lousy market, and when all food, even land animals that weren’t then extinct, could be cooked in a matter of minutes. Piping hot, uncomplicated, convenient. My mother threw the microwave out eight years ago when she accepted that electricity was lost to the past. All this has happened in my lifetime.

  My mother is probably at the hospital and won’t be back until later but I lock the front door all the same, always wary of the passing homeless who eye up their chance of a night under a roof. I breathe a sigh of relief that I didn’t bump into anyone on my way back and feel relieved that the streets are deathly silent rather than be spooked by this. No one can know what items I traded my necklace for. Not yet anyway, they’d only be mad.

  The Surge. My stomach flips each time I remember it’s looming. We haven’t had one for months and the last was as disenchanting as ever. We hope to Rehouse you soon. We need to make preparations. Our sympathies are with you. Rehousing, a distant promise and just one more redundant term like Total Flood. Murmurs have spread through the market linked back to a conversation overheard by a homeless couple at the Fence, something to do with reshaping the Middlelands, but the game of Chinese whispers mixed with optimism negates any remnants of truth. Still there’re only so many times I heard the rumour this week before I couldn’t shake it myself. Henry would laugh if he knew I had an optimistic streak.

  I hide my bag under the pile of heavy coats in the porch, masking the suspicious rise in the fabric before anyone notices I’m here. I take a breath before I join my family. The announcement is due to begin in less than an hour.

  I’ve kept both eyes firmly on the encroaching tide for years, somehow content in the knowledge that one day it will catch up to me, but that has distracted me from a truth more dangerous: that there is something worse to fear. Not that I can know it yet, not explicitly anyway, but by the time I hear the warning screams from my neighbours’ houses in a matter of hours it will be too late to escape the horror that has already descended on my loved ones and will tear us apart before sunrise.

  Henry

  There must have been a time when parents would never dream of telling their child he or she was a mistake but now it’s not only acceptable but expected. When the land began to rapidly disappear civilisation made a pact that no child would be conceived. Why bring someone into a world that was bowing out? My parents were newlyweds when Total Flood failed and they agreed to remain barren.

  The school classrooms continue to be heaving and prove that this agreement was futile. Maybe some parents-to-be were optimistic and others selfish or careless but I was never anything more than a mistake. I don’t mind because my parents follow that revelation by insisting I was the best mistake they ever made. It’s their way of an apology and I’ve never been angry about it. Strangely, as we sit here, the three of us, I consider my other friends’ parents and I am comforted by the honesty of mine.

  The announcement should begin soon so we wait expectantly and with trepidation. Rumours that this is the big announcement, the one that decides our fate, have been hard to ignore. My parents and I are all invested in what we are due to hear; my parents need to know that I will have a future and I need my parents to have something to keep their faith strong. We all feel guilty I am alive.

  My father pushes the power button on the television and joins us on the sofa, sandwiching me between my mother and him. We stare ahead at the blank screen and wait for the promise of electricity to rush through and bring it to life. Twenty minutes to go but the electricity could flow anytime before then. Sometimes it spans only the length of the announcement whereas on other more generous times the Surge flows for much longer.

  Electricity hasn’t been freely available since soon after I was born. When we are indulged with a Surge I don’t become as excited as my parents whose hearts’ leap at the prospect of charging the generator, our most treasured item that gives us a few nights’ warmth through the harshest winters if we’re sensible with our usage, and just enough comfort to remind my parents what they once had and will never have again. I’m not sure who is luckier, me for not missing it or them for having something return even if for a fleeting moment.

  ‘Is everything ready?’ my father asks.

  My mother and I reply in synchrony. ‘Yes.’

  We have a system to make sure everything is properly connected and storing power. I am delegated the bedrooms and bathroom. Chargeable objects, such as a digital clock and toothbrushes, are in my domain. I’m not stupid, these are luxuries. My parents share the generator and the kitchen between them as they are the appliances that matter.

  Theia and I agree that the announcements are never in our favour but we don’t disclose our frustration as that would only upset our parents. We only use the same amount of electricity as you. She’s better at predicting their phrases but it’s a fun game all the same given the circumstances. We are all in this predicament together. It’s impossible to disprove it but I can’t believe the Upperlanders suffer like we do. We hope to Rehouse you as soon as we make provisions. Yet there is one thing that triumphs over the bad news and I daren’t even tell Theia for fear she’ll roll her eyes at me and think I’m weak. We haven’t forgotten your plight. Hope.

  Anytime now the red light at the base of the set will shine, a beacon of tidings, good or bad. The water has almost reached our neighbourhood and it is only a matter of months before the announcements will no longer matter.

  The messages are pre-recorded, abrupt and always arrive at specific times. Never once have the Upperlanders broadcast an announcement early evening and I am excited at the prospect of what this means. I can’t avoid the feeling that tonight will determine our future. I glance sideways towards each of my parents and see the looks of anxiety strewn on their faces. Only then do I feel how tightly they have clenched my hands in theirs. I squeeze back. They too are hopeful, not because they believe the outcome will be good for us but because the alternative is unfathomable.

  Our silence is broken by a noise but it is not the stagnant television, not yet the Surge. It is another noise. A creak overhead and we all tense. I go to speak but my mother beats me to it and puts her index finger to her lips. My father gingerly lifts himself from his seat and reaches for the closest item, which not coincidentally happens to be a hammer. He pretends he has been using the tool to fix the joints around our house for if the water, no, when the water reaches us but I know he keeps it nearby to defend our house from the homeless. I’ve never seen any anger flare in him and can’t imagine he could be violent but then again he has never had to protect us, until now.

  Creaks come from the stairwell. My father grips the hammer as firmly as he gripped my hand, ready to strike.

  Selene

  I shouldn’t be here.

  My breath turns the inside of the wardrobe muggy and airless and I know that I can’t hide much longer. I stand to stretch out my cramp but have to crane my neck a
s I’m too tall. I’ve always been too tall, which is why people think I’m older than fifteen and why my mother thinks I can take the torrent of abuse from her.

  I push open the door and step outside into the empty room. It’s so quiet that if I didn’t know better I’d think it’s just me in the house but Henry and his parents are huddled together downstairs waiting for the Surge to begin. I tread as carefully as my oversized feet allow, on tiptoes, until a creak spreads along the floorboard so I change tact and have better luck spreading my weight under my whole foot. I stop in front of the window that overlooks the street.

  Henry’s room calms me and all the horrors of the outside world disappear. Even when my mother arrives to march me home Henry’s parents refuse to break this sanctuary and ask her to wait downstairs. I just want to check on her. I’m sure she’ll be here shortly after the announcement, anger muted and the promise of no repercussions for my lack of helping out with the Surge. I’m sorry that I upset you. The wrath will come later. How dare you embarrass me? It’ll be easier to go than put up a fight and deal with whatever punches come my way. Let that be a warning to you. Still I go because I learnt the difference between battles and wars a long time ago.

  I look across the room towards the direction of the sea and remember how I used to dream that when the waters reached Henry’s street the house would simply break away from its foundations, rise above the surface and float along on our own private Noah’s Ark, just the two of us. I never let him in on this fantasy when I was younger and if I told him now he’d say I had plenty of growing up to do.

  I hear a noise outside and creep to the window. Since electricity only pulses through our neighbourhoods during the Surges our ears have attuned to lesser sounds. I peer from the corner and spot Theia walking up the path next door into her house. Perfect Theia Silverdale. My mother never fails to recount all the things about her I’m not: proportioned, calm, collected. Smart. If only you aspired to be a bit more like her. I have my own descriptions of Theia but keep them to myself. You’re a waste of space. It may be petty and causes a headache for Henry but so what if he has to divide his time between us?