AX50 Read online

  He stopped playing with us and would often not bother with work. (He was supposed to be coaching the juniors at Bridetown FC.) He was never to receive another holiday credit.

  I missed having him play with us and withdrew into my books, computers and VR worlds. My friends at school were into futuristic sci-fi stuff, creating terraformed planets and engaging in intergalactic trade and wars. I loved to immerse myself in VR reconstruction of historic events. It was fantastic to be ‘present’ in the room when important world events were announced. I enjoyed feeling part of the relief and celebration when Queen Elizabeth I was told that a storm had caused the destruction of the Spanish Armada. They called me the ‘weird nerd’ at school.

  Mum loved her work as a windsurfing instructor at Dale, earning many holiday credits so at least we could go on holiday with her.

  Mum routinely assisted Nana onto her sitting hoverboard in the morning as she set off to help in the library. (Some old people had never liked holographic books.) One morning, Mum had to go to the windsurfing centre early. She’d asked Dad to help Nana. I soon heard him yelling and swearing as he couldn’t get the safety harness to work. I went out and showed Dad the button that allowed the belt to click in. He didn’t thank me, just snarled, “You’re such a smart alec.”

  The following week, Rhiannon was reading about the history of Wales. She asked Dad where the Celts had come from before they moved to Wales. He said, “They were trying to escape the Romans who were fighting them in France; they sailed over to Wales.”

  Smirking, I corrected, “I think you’ll find they were mainly driven out of England by the Anglo-Saxons. It’s possible that many weren’t genetically Celts at all, but just adopted their culture.”

  I smugly turned back to my Dylan Thomas poetry. A fist smashed into my face and a sticky burgundy puddle was soon threatening one of Mum’s handmade rugs. “That will teach you to be such a know-all!”

  With that, he strode down to his garden shed, leaving me and Rhiannon in tears to clear up the mess. We were both astonished at Dad’s brutality.

  From then on, he drank more heavily. I would often hear arguments when he staggered into my parents’ bedroom.

  One evening, Mum was working late. We’d finished our evening meal that our droid had prepared. I was in my room, lost in the Battle of Agincourt. The noise of battle and the whistling arrows almost drowned out the shouting in the adjacent room. I heard a plate smash, took off my VR headset and listened at the door.

  “It’s not the first time you’ve been late. I’ve seen you smiling at that bloody Gethin. You’re a fucking whore!”

  “He’s just Rhiannon’s music teacher, nothing more, and you know it!”

  “You’re full of your fucking lies, always some bloody excuse. I’m not having it. Do you hear me!”

  “Have it your own way. I’m starving; let me eat.”

  “You’re going nowhere till you tell me the truth.”

  “For fuck’s sake, I’ve just been at a meeting; now get out of my way!”

  I heard it then; the crunch of fist on bone, followed by a softer sound as she crumpled to the floor. A soft whimper gave way to sobs. Soon after, I heard Dad apologising and saying that he loved her really. I could hear him running a tap, presumably to clean her wounds. I was too afraid to leave my room and crept into bed, pretending to be asleep.

  The following morning, Mum had a black eye and a graze on her forehead. She said she wasn’t feeling well and spent the day in bed.

  After each attack, Dad would be remorseful and attentive for a few days, and then either Mum or I would cop it again. We learnt to make excuses for our bruises.

  One day, Mrs Evans, my favourite teacher, called me back at the end of school.

  “What’s happened to you, Ewan? Have you fallen again?”

  “Oh, that. I just fell off my hoverboard last night. Stupid really, I should have the hang of it by now!”

  “Ewan, I’m worried about you. Is someone hitting you? Are you being attacked by pupils or is it someone in your family?”

  “I told you, it was an accident, nothing more. Thanks for asking anyway.”

  She let it go at that. I walked across the playground where a group of my classmates were playing football. They stopped when they saw me and started chanting, “Teacher’s pet, teacher’s pet…”

  A wave of anger surged through my body. I found myself charging at Dai (who just happened to be nearest to me) and punched him in the stomach. I must’ve caught his solar plexus as he doubled over in pain, unable to breathe. Mrs Evans came charging over. Thankfully, Dai was breathing normally by the time she arrived, but still distressed. I was dragged back into the classroom where Mrs Evans summoned my mother. While we waited, she asked all kinds of embarrassing questions about our home life. I started to panic, fearing I was going to be taken away. Mum arrived. She was distraught. She said (and this was true), “Ewan has never hit anyone before. I think the children must have provoked him as he is normally a gentle giant. Fortunately, we’d pre-agreed the hoverboard story. Mum apologised and reassured Mrs Evans that she had everything under control and was sure there would be no recurrence of such behaviour.

  The incident shook me badly as I was constantly afraid that I might be taken away from my family. I still used to get angry at times. When I was at school, I suppressed it; but my fury would erupt as soon as I got home, smashing plates and shouting at Mum and Rhiannon.

  Dad continued to hit us when he was drunk, but after the school incident, he made sure that my bruises didn’t show.

  Eventually, Mum’s boss made her tell the truth. He reported the situation to the town Mayor, and a hearing with a jury was arranged. Dad pleaded guilty and was given community service. He had to remove the muck from the town’s communal horses’ stables (see postscript) for a year. During that year, he did try to control his anger.

  As he neared the end of this sentence, a celebration was planned in town. Sylvia Davies, who ran the restaurant in the park, had been awarded ten holiday credits a year for ten years. This achievement meant both she and our town would be rewarded. An unusually hot swimming pool with VR, which would make it feel as if we were swimming along a tropical coral reef, would be built in the town. Sylvia herself was given a house shaped like a crescent moon that fitted snugly into the cliffs overlooking Lindsay Bay. The Mayor had given permission for the clone soldiers to shoot five stags and two boars. The usual four-unit limit on alcohol would be waived for the night, and a live band would play in the town square.

  The whole town was buzzing when Rhiannon and I went early for the children’s races and games which were to precede the evening feast. I saw Mum and Dad walking a little apart as they arrived later. It was the first time I’d seen them together in public for a long time. The difference between them was striking. Mum looked fantastic with sun-bleached blonde hair flowing over her tanned sleek body, her only blemish a small purple birthmark on her forehead. Dad was greying with a scabby bald pate. His florid face contrasted with his pasty white neck and arms. His abdominal muscles had turned to flab and his belly hung in folds over his unpleasantly tight trousers.

  “You keep your eyes to yourself, Gethin,” he growled at Rhiannon’s music teacher who had momentarily been watching Mum.

  “What are you going to do about it, you great blubbery boozer?”

  He had underestimated Dad, who may have looked out of condition but underneath was still immensely powerful, as I knew to my cost.

  With three giant strides, Dad was on him; a straight right knocked the teacher off his feet. He fell, limp as a rag doll; his head smacked into the sun-baked clay with a sickening thud. He was absolutely still for about ten seconds. All around people stared, stunned by the violence. Then he started to convulse. It was harrowing, watching his body twitching and jumping while his face took on a violaceous hue. After about a minute he lay completely sti
ll. Mum rushed over and put him in the recovery position. Already our neighbours were on their X-talks, calling for an emergency drone. Within minutes, he and his wife were airlifted to Carmarthen Hospital. Clone policemen marched Dad off. Mum, Rhiannon and I were inconsolable. We must’ve made a sorry sight, isolated in our misery as we left the town to their dispirited feast.

  The teacher was pronounced dead on arrival at the hospital. Dad would be tried for murder.

  Dad’s case came up before the Commissioner’s Court in Carmarthen. Mum attended, sitting on her own. There were so many witnesses that Dad’s guilt was not in question. His lawyers argued the case for manslaughter; the prosecution wanted a murder charge. In the end, the commissioner referred the case to the Supreme Court in CRC.

  We couldn’t attend as there were no hyperloop tunnels under the Atlantic, and Mum wasn’t going to waste credits going by ship. (Only Commissioners were allowed to fly.) His past history of violence against Mum was taken into account. He was found guilty of murder and sentenced to gaol in CRC for twenty years.

  I’d come to hate him, and was relieved he was out of the way. Rhiannon missed him as he was always very soft on her, and yet even she couldn’t forgive him for killing her music teacher. Initially, we were shunned by the community, but gradually they accepted that it wasn’t our fault and their natural warmth and friendliness returned.

  -----

  When we were ten, we started using nasal sprays to delay puberty.

  In August that year, Rhiannon and I had been swimming at Musselwick Bay. We were following a grey-haired, doddery lady up the rocks when she slipped on some green slimy seaweed, twisting her ankle. We supported her with our arms around her shoulders until we spotted a stout stick which she used to hobble to the drone landing site. Bronwyn thanked us profusely and invited us to come to her place the next day as she had some strawberries that needed eating up. Her home was another prefab like ours, but her furnishings were bog standard and rather dull. All the furniture started out the same in our houses, but our mum had been awarded lots of credits and so was progressively transforming our place with designer furniture, curtains, rugs and paintings.

  Her living area looked out over her immaculate garden. To our surprise, there was an even older man slumped in a chair in the corner. He was sleeping with his head bent in a most unnatural way, a glistening dribble of saliva hanging from his chin. He woke as we must have disturbed him. His eyes looked cloudy as he slowly surveyed the room trying to work out what was happening. He finally located us and immediately smiled.

  “Hello, this is a lovely surprise. We don’t get many visitors, especially young, sophisticated ones like you. I’m Harry. Do you two happen to have names?”

  He told us that he was Bronwyn’s father and asked us all about our lives and what we enjoyed doing.

  He became a good friend. I would often visit when I’d nothing else to do. I loved his stories. He’d been in the SAS and told of survival in the mountains of Afghanistan hiding from the Taliban, and of trekking through the darkness of the Arctic when suddenly the icy mountains were lit with the wavering greens of the Northern Lights. Once, when his unit had been ordered to survive without support in Hwange Game Park, he’d heard some creature prowling round his bivouac in the middle of the night. “I shone a torch and two bright white eyes glowered back at me; then the creature turned and calmly padded away. As soon as it was light, I found lion tracks around our camp.”

  Two years later, as he neared 105, he became very frail. Bronwyn was eighty-one and could no longer cope with him.

  He looked more serious than usual. “Ewan, the Mayor visited the other day. He was very understanding but before he left, he said I really must choose one of the following options as Bronwyn can’t manage me any longer:

  1.I can move into a flat with a carer droid looking after me.

  2.Live on a cruise ship where the human carers change every few weeks.

  3.Move into an old people’s home with views over Dale Harbour.

  4.Or maybe take some pills that would put me to sleep.

  “I’m not afraid of dying, but I enjoy your visits, Ewan. Would you still visit me if I move to the nursing home?”

  I didn’t need to think about it.

  After he relocated, I would use the cycleway around Dale Bay twice a week to see him. One afternoon, about a year later, he complained of indigestion and died shortly afterwards.

  I missed those rides, and Harry’s face that lit up when I appeared through his door.

  -----

  When we were fourteen (January AX 39), we stopped the puberty-blocking nasal sprays. Rhiannon started taking oestrogen tablets. All of our school year (we were all exactly the same age) went to hospital for an anaesthetic to have a bone marrow sample taken from our right femurs, and the girls also had their ovaries and uteruses removed. At the same time, we had our X-talks fitted. (These were secured within elastic waterproof bands around our wrists.) We were told these must NEVER be cut off. They were needed to summon emergency aid as well as for communication, ordering food and clothing, music, photography, etc. They would answer any question we asked of them.

  We all moved to ‘middle school’. Here we learnt about ecology, geography, creative arts, life skills, gender, relationships and appropriate sexual conduct. We also learnt about history and how Xanasa had saved the world.

  In March, we all hit puberty simultaneously. That summer, there were wild parties on the beach; music, dancing and driftwood fires. Suddenly everyone was falling in love; girls with girls, boys with boys, boys with girls.

  Two boys and one girl didn’t seem to be affected by this orgiastic epidemic and carried on as normal. I wished I’d been like them. I knew I liked girls and the testosterone was making me as horny as anyone, but it had also caused me to develop a revolting crop of acne. No girl would look at me, let alone be seen to go out with me. One morning, Mum took me to the doctors’ instead of school. The doctor gave me tablets which she said should clear the acne within a week. I walked back into school at the end of the lunch break.

  “Have you been chatting up toads, weird-nerd?” Colin shouted. Raucous laughter erupted from his gang.

  Red raw rage flooded through me, and the next thing I remember was people trying to pull me off Colin as I pummelled him mercilessly. Colin was a bruised bloody mess and was taken to hospital by drone. A clone policeman held me firmly and accompanied me, Mum and Mrs Evans as we were taken before the Mayor. I waited outside with the policeman. I was terrified. Was I turning into my father? Was I going to gaol like him? Surely, I would never be allowed back to school after that. The door opened. I felt myself tense, fearing the worst.

  I thought the Mayor would be wearing a wig under the circumstances, but he was just dressed casually and didn’t look angry at all. Mum had always been fantastic standing up for me, even lying at times when absolutely necessary, but surely even she couldn’t get me out of this one.

  “Ewan, I’ve heard about what has happened over the years. It’s totally understandable after what you’ve been through with your father and everything. I believe you have developed a form of mental illness we call intermittent explosive disorder. I’ll need to get this confirmed by the hospital, but there’s good news. It can now be easily treated.”

  Wow! I wasn’t expecting that. I felt the tension drain as Mum came and embraced me.

  The following day, we went to the hospital in Carmarthen where they confirmed the diagnosis and started my treatment with what they called ‘Petratherapy’*6. I was given an injection into a vein and was told to return for a small operation in a week.

  Two weeks later, I was instructed to press a button on my X-talk if I felt angry, or if I was in a situation that irritated me. That evening, Mum shouted at me, “Get yourself back here and help Rhiannon with her homework before you desert us for the evening!” I was annoyed as I was in the middl
e of a fight on my holostation. I pressed the button on my X-talk and my anger disappeared instantly. I pressed pause on my holostation, helped Rhiannon and resumed my game as if nothing had happened! After a few weeks, I never felt ill-tempered again!

  My acne had disappeared and I was back at school, feeling better than I had for years. I didn’t have any friends, but Rhiannon was great and spent time with me. I fancied her best friend Sian, who lived with two mothers and a gay sister in a neighbouring block. We would often hang out as a threesome and a few months later, Sian and I hooked up.

  Later that year, Mum was in the safety boat while three other instructors were teaching children to windsurf out in Dale Bay. A blustery westerly wind was picking up. She noticed a boy called Glyn heading towards some rocks, totally out of control. She turned her electric jets to full power but was too late. He fell, hitting his head on the rocks. He must have been knocked unconscious, as by the time Mum arrived, he was floating face down in the water. She dragged him into her boat and started resuscitation. She was rewarded by him vomiting half of Dale Harbour over her boots!

  It was great that he recovered, but selfishly, I was even more pleased that Mum was awarded five holiday credits for her action. Mum asked Rhiannon and I where we wanted to go. Rhiannon said she didn’t care as by then she was more interested in boys than anything else. I told Mum that I had always wanted to visit Africa, after listening to my elderly friend Harry tell of his adventures there. We were off to Zambia!

  As the drone came to rest, the hot, humid air of the Luangwa Valley engulfed us like a hot, steaming sauna. It was the end of the dry season, the best time to see animals and birds as they congregate near waterholes. We had to step over a great pile of elephant dung on our way to the camp, which was situated right on the banks of the river. Hippos wallowed in the murky green waters a few metres from our huts. I loved to watch them, the huge cows so gentle with their calves. Once, a young pretender bull tried his luck and a fearsome fight with the king ensued. Their mouths opened wider than I thought possible, exposing their enormous fangs. The gigantic dominant bull was merciless. The young male was badly wounded and disappeared around a bend in the river. I never saw him again.