"Out There"

                                                   “OUT THERE”   by Chrissy Varey-Brown 

 

                   

Part One – The Scrap Book

"What’s that Gran?”  “What, this?”  Replied Great-Gran Stephie, lifting both her six year old Great Grandson and the large, thick book on to her lap.  “It’s my Scrap Book.”   The little boy, Joseph, turned his face toward his Great Gran and frowned, “Scap Book,” he mispronounced, “What’s it for?”  “Scrap Book,” corrected his Great Gran, “And I used to collect and paste all sorts of things in it, but mainly pressed flowers.”  It was Josephs turn to correct, “No Gran,” he said, smiling into the old ladies face, “Copy and paste!”   Stephie gave a chuckle, “Well, let’s take a look inside my Book, and then we shall see who’s right.”  With that she turned the front cover to the introductory page. “Can you read what it says?”  Stephie asked quietly into Joseph’s ear.   It came as a pleasant surprise to Stephie that Joseph had grown so much since her last visit, last time she had sat him on her lap his ear, or rather, his little head had come level with her breast-bone.   Joseph leaned slightly forward, and making the shape of a computer mouse with his hand on her arm, read the words from the page, “My Book of Flowers by Stephie Hunt.  Who’s Stephie Hunt?”  Stephie smiled, “That’s me. Hunt was my last name before I married your Great Granddad.”  Another sense of surprise came to Stephie; it had been so long since she had heard her maiden name that she had all but forgotten it.  She felt a slight pressure on her arm then heard Joseph give an acknowledging “Oh,” as he transferred his hand from her arm to the page of the book, with his forefinger he gave a swift swipe from right to left.  “No, no Joseph, it is not like a computer screen,” said Stephie, covering his hand with her own, “To see what comes next we have to turn the page.”  Again Joseph turned his face toward Stephie, his little brow creased, “I don’t understand,” He murmured.   “Just watch what I do, and you will soon get the idea.” Replied Stephie, turning the page in the age old appointed manner.

The dried and pressed flower on the next page had long since lost its colour.  Not even its shape bore any passing resemblance to the pretty little meadow bloom it had been when Stephie had first picked it all those years ago.  “What is it?”  Asked Joseph, Stephie felt the boy had asked more out of politeness than true curiosity, but she answered anyway, “It’s a Cowslip, a wild flower.”  Joseph’s reaction was dramatic.  He pulled himself back into his Great Gran’s body, snatching his hand away from the book.   “Wild?  You mean from Out There?  Are we going to get sick now Gran?”  Stephie closed the book and put it on the floor beside her chair, wrapping her arms around Joseph she hugged him and said in a reassuring voice, “No, no, no sweetheart.  It can’t hurt us, it is sealed onto the page, no nasty bits of dust or spores can get out.”   Joseph nodded his belief in what she had said, and sliding off her lap he trotted out of the room, his duty of ‘spending a bit of time with Gran’ having been completed.    Letting out a sad sigh, Stephie reached down and retrieved the Scrap Book.  Each hermetically sealed page held a memory for her; each flower represented a day from her childhood.  Childhoods such as she had would never happen again, that was one of the prices they had to pay for Global Health.

Global Health had at first developed an immunisation programme.  The aim was to eradicate the last of the major causes of pre-mature death in the human population, AIDS, cancer, genetic heart disease, and Type 1 diabetes being amongst the forerunners up for elimination.  And it worked, but proved to be exorbitant in cost.  The next development was genetic modification.   A whole generation of developing foetuses were modified, Stephie’s children amongst them.  It was only now, by the third generation, that success was assured.   One of the added bonuses was that people lived longer, Stephie and her husband were well into their 100th year, and that was just with the initial immunisation programme.  Goodness knew how long the following generations would live, the ones that had the immunisation directly printed onto their DNA, there forever, passed down, inherited.  That wasn’t all that was passed down and inherited.   Along with a total immunity to killer diseases had come a total susceptibility to natural air born particles.  It was noticed in that first modified generation that even a short exposure to the outside world would result in fluid building up in the lungs.  However, it was also found that a couple of hours breathing in purified air would see an instant return to good health.  This wasn’t in just a handful of new born modified babies, this occurred in every child that had its DNA altered, and their subsequent offspring.  And so the Domes were built.  Whole cities and communities breathing purified air and kept safe from Out There.

Stephie and her husband could go Out There with no ill effects.   They didn’t bother anymore because of the rig-marole of having to be ‘purified’ before re-entering the Dome.  They had completed the stint that was required of their generation to, at some point during their long lives, take their turn Out There to see to the food crops. Hopefully soon, the robotically controlled Hydroponic Unit would be completed.  They had to ensure that the produce was properly cleansed of dust and pollen after harvest, only then, and after vacuum packing ready for micro-waving, could it be safely brought into the Dome.  Yet even the Domes’ crop fields weren’t really Out There.  Beyond them was the true ‘Wild.’   And it was to this ‘Wild’ Stephie and her husband had decided to go.  They had an overpowering need to see what had happened to it all.  They knew that there must be people Out There, not everyone had agreed to have their embryos modified, preferring to take their chances with whatever a natural life style brought along.  The real motive for them going was to see if it had all been worth it.  Was giving up the freedom of children running through flower laden pasture, turning their faces to the warmth of the sun, and breathing in the sweet summer scents, a price worth paying.

Stephie looked down at the Scrap Book on her lap.  She lovingly ran her hand across its front cover.  She had never felt any pain in all her long adult years, not even in child-birth.  She had never felt fear, never felt threatened.  Had never had the need to fight for survival.  She had no reason to object to the eradication of those foul diseases, how could she?  She was a mother; any one of those afflictions could have claimed one or more of her children.  No, that was not what was wrong; it was the way it was done.   With a snort of cynical laughter she remembered a story her own Gran had told her, not even a story, more a piece of advice.   Gran had said that when someone fell ill they had a prescription from the doctor.  They exchanged the prescription for medicines at the Chemist, but, warned her Gran, you must always read the piece of paper that came with the medicine.  This told you what side-affects to look out for and thus ensure that the medicine wasn’t doing you more harm than good.   That was the crux of the problem with the Global Health Immunisation Programme, not only had no ‘piece of paper’ been issued, they hadn’t even bothered to find out if one was needed.  Stephie looked down once more at the Scrap Book, she would take it with them when they left, hopefully it would become Book One of a series of pressed flowers, if not, then it would serve to remind her of a time when flowers grew in sweet scented meadows.

Part Two – It’s no Holiday

Stephie took off her hiking boots and socks and was about to fill her water-flask before soaking her aching feet in the clear, cold waters of the stream when her husband, Joe, grabbed her by the shoulder and yanked her back,  “No love, I wouldn’t do that, you don’t know, you really can’t be sure.”   His voice was rasping, dry from lack of fluids.  “Oh for crying out loud Joe, we didn’t leave the Dome just to die of thirst.”  She snapped back.   They had left what was once a main highway, now all fractured and pot-holed, three days ago.  The going, which was mainly through wooded areas, had been hard, but not impassable.  They had frequently come across mounds of rubble and crumbling bricks, evidence that this had once been a residential area.  This had alarmed Joe.  “What happened to the people?  Why, and when, did they leave their homes?”  He wanted to know, Stephie was a lot more pragmatic, “They probably left their homes for pretty much the same reason we left the Dome, got bloody fed up of living there.”  But Joe continued to fret, and eventually convinced himself that there had been a worldwide disaster, involving some sort of germ and/or chemical warfare.  He had refused to let her eat any familiar fruits they came across, growing in what once had probably been someone’s back garden.  And now, fourteen days into their trek of discovery, with the food supplies and water they had brought with them gone, he was refusing to let her drink out of a perfectly clear stream.  She was thirsty, hungry, hot, and tired and her temper, which hadn’t been tested for many, many years, was being sorely tested now by Joe’s increasing paranoia.

 She pulled her socks and boots back on, and whilst securing the Velcro fastenings she looked up at her husband.  He was frightened.  He had come, at her persistence, out into a world he no longer recognised, one that he felt sure was unsafe.  She instinctively knew that if she suggested that they return to the Dome he would have run all the way back, eager to encase himself once more in the structure of slave-like routine and safety precautions.  But those were the very reasons she had escaped.  Since they had been away she had felt an uplifting of her spirits, she had felt free, unfettered by the numerous notices that were posted all over the Dome, advising the reader to take this precaution, or that precaution, she particularly hated the one that said, “Remember, another’s safety depends on your diligence.”  Well, she’d had enough of it, a hundred years of constantly washing her hands, wearing a snood over her hair to prevent dander getting into the air vents, sleeping on disposable bed linen and having to steam clean the mattress every day.  And as for that bloody purification unit they had to withstand when they came in from the fields……..  If she were to voice these thoughts out loud she knew they would sound petty and selfish.   A hundred and twenty-five years old, and although she looked and felt as though she was in her thirties, she didn’t know how much longer she had left to live; surely she deserved a chance at freedom.

 

She stood and taking Joe’s hand she said, “Joe, love, look, if you want to go back to the Dome, go back, I’ll understand.  But don’t ask me to go.  I can’t, I won’t.  I shall not live like that anymore.  Right now I am going to walk back a way and pick some of those apples we saw, you can stay here and see if there are any fish in the stream, if there is, try to catch them.”  As she went to move away Joe held her hand firmly, preventing her from going.  With his head bowed he softly said, “I thought it would be like a, a kind of holiday, you know, out here, just the two of us, but it’s no holiday is it?  It’s not at all how I thought it would be, it’s terrifying.  Could you forgive me if I left you, could you?  Because I can’t live like this, any more than you can live in the Dome.  And now you are asking me to catch a living being to eat, that’s what you meant, isn’t it Stephie?  If we stay here our lives will become one of savagery.”  “Oh stop being so bloody melodramatic!” she shouted, wrenching her hand free she squatted beside the stream and cupping her hands,  she scooped up and drank the sweetest water she had ever tasted.   She had managed a second scoop when Joe grabbed her elbow and dragged her upright, yelling,  “You idiot! You foolish woman!”  Spinning round to face him, her temper finally flared, like flood water bursting over a dam.  Her voice hissed though gritted teeth, “If, if I don’t collapse in writhing agony and die within the next five minutes, fill your flask, grab some apples, and go.  We’ve known each other a long time, but it is time to part.  It’s not as though we have lived as husband and wife for the last twenty years, is it?  Hopefully we can part as the friends we have become……….. Joe, don’t cry, please don’t cry.”

No more was said about staying or leaving. They made a meagre meal out of crab apples and  water, and as the sun slipped below the horizon they laid out their sleeping bags, said a subdued ‘goodnight’ and crawled into them.  Sometime during the night Stephie awoke to feel Joe’s arm round her.  It had been over twenty years since they had slept together, in any sense of the word.  She knew that in the morning she would find him gone.  This was his parting.  His final contact with a wife he had known for so long.  The parting would not hold the deep sorrow of death.  That was the strange thing about living for so long, it was almost as though you instinctively knew that your life together had a limit.  In the old days it would have come about by the death of one partner or the other, now you just drifted apart to lead your own individual lives.

 

Part Three – The Reality

Bird song awoke Stephie in the morning.  She lay there just listening, not thinking, just feeling the world around her.  The Autumn sun still held a fair bit of warmth and the nearby wooded area gave off an aroma of damp leaves and rotten wood.  The space beside her was empty, as she knew it would be.  Joe had quietly rolled up his bed roll, filled his flask and left to make the long trek back to the Dome, his home, but not hers.  Suddenly she sat up and grabbed her back pack, letting out a sigh of relief and clasping the pack to her chest, she laid back down.  Before he had left Joe had slipped her Scrap Book into her pack from his,  the Scrap Book ad become her banner for what she was trying to do, a symbol of her reason for being here.   Her stomach gave a loud rumble, which made her at first jump, and then smile.  She was still not used to the natural signals of her body, hunger was not something that happened back at the Dome.  She crawled  out of her bag and stretched.  Before she could think of finding something to eat, there was another natural function she had to attend to.  Pulling on her boots she grabbed the short handled latrine shovel from her pack and made her way to the woods.  After, she noted with some concern that her small bottle of ‘Medi-wash’ was nearly gone.  She could only hope that by the time it had completely run out, her body would be used to the germs and bacteria that her surroundings held.  She should be OK, after all,  she had spent the first twenty five years of her life outside the Dome, and it was surely just a matter of re-introduction.  Returning to what she now considered ‘her camp’ Stephie once more made a sparse meal from crab apples and water, she then set off to near where the crab apple tree was.  There was a remnant of what could have been a garden there.  She knew that any vegetables or fruit would, if they had managed to re-seed themselves, be small and feral, but they would be edible.

 Her foraging turned up meagre fare.   More crab apples, a handful of blackberries, and tuberous roots that could have been the wild ancestors of carrots and potatoes.  There had been abundance of red berries, and of course mushrooms, but she had no way of knowing if they were poisonous or not.  She had seen fish in the stream, but again her lack of knowledge gave her no real clue of how to catch them.  Even if one had by chance jumped into her hands, she had no way of cooking it.  Stephie realised that although there may have been a lot of things a person could know about, there was little they fully understood.  She knew about fire, everyone knew about fire, but she didn’t have the first clue how to get one started.  With sad acknowledgement she understood this much, unless she found other people, and soon, she would not survive.  She had not realised how ill equipped she was for life in the Wild.  She had honestly believed that a lost tribe of people would welcome her with open arms within a few days of leaving the Dome.  That she would settle with them in a life style that was both natural and free.  The Dome, for all its restrictions, had at least kept her warm and fed.

Part Four – Reflection and Conclusion

The days, especially the mornings, were getting chillier.  Stephie had fashioned her sleeping bag into a cloak, and as the days past, she noted, initially with concern, and then just noted, that she could wrap the sleeping bag/cloak around her more.  She had risked eating some of the mushrooms from the woods.  Suffering no ill effects she had added that particular variety to her menu.  She had even tried eating a fish raw.  A large bird had swooped and plucked it out of the stream.  A hastily thrown stone had chased it off its kill.  She ate it quickly, trying not to think of the all but tasteless cold and slimy flesh slithering down her throat, and had promptly thrown it back up again.  Obviously, a lifetime of veganism had made any kind of flesh indigestible.  She had to find people soon,  she knew from working in the Dome’s fields that Winter would bring a cessation of plant growth, she would die.  She had started to sigh at thoughts of the Dome, wistfully, wondering what Joe was doing, how Joseph was getting on, would he miss her?  She missed him, desperately.

 At night, wrapped in her cloak and buried under an insulating layer of dry leaves and twigs, she would think of Joseph.  She would picture his little face in her mind, and recall how his warm little body would snuggle close to hers whilst he read to her from his digital reading tablet.   She knew she would return to the Dome in the morning.  It hadn’t worked, and if she left it too late she would die out here.  She wanted to see her husband and their daughter, and their granddaughter, but she especially wanted to see Joseph, her one and only great grandchild.  She found herself doing something she hadn’t done since her own childhood, she was praying, fervently praying that she had enough strength to return home to the Dome, home to her family, home to the safety and security of a worry free life.

The man had scraped away the leaves and twigs from the odd shaped mound he had stumbled over whilst collecting firewood.  The material he uncovered was strange, but he only mused over it briefly, for underneath it, in fact it wrapped entirely around,  a dead woman’s body.  Although she was very emaciated he could see she should have been in the prime of womanhood, thirty or forty years old.  Hoping to gain some clue to her identity, she must have family, everyone has family, they needed to know, he gently slipped her travel bag out from under her head.  The only thing it contained was a book.  He presumed that the strange markings on the front cover were writings of some sort, but none that he had ever seen.  Looking through he soon made out that it was a collection of dead plants.  It was beyond him to understand why someone would want dead plants.  Not ten minutes’ walk away were pastures and meadows full of plants, alive, and beautiful, some even growing in this cold time of the year.  He shook his head sadly, obviously the woman had been wrong in the head and had strayed from the protection and love of her family.  He would return to his homestead and get his sons to bring her back on the hand cart.  She may be lost and nameless but at least she would have a decent burial, with her book, which had seemed to be so precious to her.