Wild Abandon (17 page)

In his mind, he was running.

Isaac didn’t count out loud. He traced a circle with his finger on the floor.

“… eightnineteneleven!”

“You okay, Isaac? Are you standing outside door number six?”

He nodded.

“Okay. That’s your room.”

This was something she’d learned years ago when she and Don had attended a three-day nondenominational meditation course. She remembered Don used to say that every time he achieved “thoughtlessness,” he would be dragged back to the surface by his own sense of achievement.

This exercise was called “Visiting Your Future Self.” Freya remembered her future self told her that she did not need to come on a meditation course to speak to her future or past selves, and that these were the sorts of internal conversations most people saved for long bus journeys. Even if Albert’s “future self” told him something as banal as that, Freya would just be glad to see him indulge in self-reflection. She imagined
him meeting a version of himself who was Kate’s age and whose concerns had shifted, as his sister’s had, from the fate of the universe to the fate of a university application.

“Now, walk down the corridor, until you’re another five rooms along. What’s six plus five, Isaac? Is it eleven?”

“Yes, eleven.”

“Good. You go to room eleven.”

“I’m outside mine,” Albert said. “Super-sweet sixteen!”

“These rooms contain the version of you at the same age as the room number. So inside the door you’ll find yourself five years in the future. He knows you are coming because he can remember sitting where you are, five years ago. If there’s anything that’s bothering you right now, then he’ll be able to talk you through it. You can ask him what it’s like to be his age. He’ll know if you are scared or upset. He can offer you perspective.”

She could see by her son’s expression that he was completely going with it.

“Turn the door handle and go in. Sit cross-legged on the floor opposite yourself, just like you are now. Take a moment to notice the room. Then notice your future self. Now, take this opportunity to ask—in your head—any questions you want to, and take note of the reply.”

Isaac’s head dropped. He let go of Albert’s hand, put his fingers in his ears, and pulled them out again. He tasted the ends of his fingers, then wiped his hands, front and back, on his jeans. He opened his eyes and seemed surprised to see Freya watching him. His face passed through a series of emotions in the guilt/shame arena.

She mouthed the words
it’s okay
and held out her hand to him. He dragged himself over to Freya and wrapped his arms around one of her calves.

They watched Albert. His face was moving: eyebrows tweaking, nostrils occasionally whitening at the edges.

—Albert!

—Yo!

—I’m sixteen!

—I’m eleven! How’s the next dimension?

—Insano!

—I knew it would be.

—Nonstop
car
nage!

—So what happened?

—Well, it all started with the swarms. Not just one insect, but
all
of them, over land and sea, to desiccate the earth.

—You know some words.

—I was standing on the flat roof when they blocked out the sun. You could hear them. They were making a documentary about me and they got it on camera when I said:
Fetch the goddamn gasoline
.

—Wow, yes!

—Then I poured the gasoline through the woods, in a circle around the big house. My henchmen all stood at different points along the circle, each with a box of matches. I went up on the flat roof and everyone waited for my signal. I knew that the forest would only burn for so long, and we had to time it right so the swarm would pass by before the forest burned out.

—Makes sense.

—I could see the MegaSwarm coming over the horizon—locusts,
hornets, wasps, horseflies, mantises, midges—and I was like:
Hold!
 … 
Hold!
And I could hear the scrit-scrit-scrit of the super-intelligent ant armies approaching, carrying hundreds of times their own weight in weaponry, and still I was like:
Hold!
And behind the ants, the legions of ticks, mites, beetles, rolling their ball bearings, even spiders, although not strictly insects, swinging through the trees behind and still I yelled:
Hold! Hold!
Then I said … 
Let’s watch this city burn!
, which was the signal.

—All of which was on camera?

—Of course.

—Fuckums.

—Yes. And the flames went racing up the trees, shooting into the sky, and my team ran back to the safety of the house, and we waited and watched as the hordes of ants fried themselves to the floor, huge clouds of flaming insects in the air, like fireworks in slow motion. The smoke acted as a force field, directing most of them around us, but still a few broke through, spiders, alight but alive, running through the undergrowth, gnashing their mandibles, so we went out in the yard with cans of Lynx and lighters and we fought hand to hand with those homos.

—Who won?

—Guess.

—Boom town!

—Exactly.

—All in the documentary?

—
Oui
.

—You’ve learned French?

—
Oui
.

—Then what?

—Then we were the only people left on the planet. Kate was at her boyfriend’s house and then at university, so she was dead.

—No!

—Sorry, but yes. Everyone else is fine. Mum and Dad are in the big house together again and I can do anything I want, like wander around in old libraries and castles and explore hotels. Living in the roundhouse will be really useful training for surviving in dangerous places.

—That’s pretty cool. But I’m sad about Kate.

—It was her choice. You’ll try to explain to her about how wrong she is, and that the world is really going to end, but she won’t listen. She’s sometimes very insulting. She even tries to
kill
Mum and Dad by telling them lies about how the world
won’t
end. You may not want to hear this, but pretty soon you’ll have to think of a way to stop her disrupting your vital preparations.

—Doesn’t she realize that she is wrong and come back to the community just in time?

—In a fairy tale, maybe. But this is real life, champ.

On the way to the bathroom, Liz passed the room at the top of the stairs where Kate and Geraint were studying together. She stopped outside the door and watched their stillness, the backs of their heads occasionally bobbing, the heavy textbook split on the desktop. She signaled for Mervyn to come see—
shh!
she mimed, with a finger held up to her lips, as he lumbered over, still in his office shirt. They stood there, arm in arm, trying to concentrate on their son concentrating, but
feeling too excited and blessed. Liz rested her head on her husband’s shoulder as Kate’s fearless hand reached to turn the page.

Mervyn and Liz had scoured their drawers for the appropriate office supplies. They would not be the ones to stop her squaring the hypotenuse. If tricolor highlighter tabs might undo the damage of her drab, loose-knit upbringing then she would have tricolor highlighter tabs. High-speed fiber-optic broadband had been installed to keep pace with her untethered mind.

She was, they both agreed, an angel sent to raise their son’s grades by osmosis, a concept that was now well within his grasp. It was enough for him just to share a study with her superhuman concentration span. If their son seemed more subdued than normal, then that was only right because he was going through great changes, the painful retraction into his chrysalis. In the glimpses they got of his bedroom floor, they noted the slow retreat of foil trays, empty Baggies, fried chicken boxes, piles of clothes, shattered jewel cases, and snapped guitar strings until, one unseasonably warm day, they sat up in bed and listened to the burr of the vacuum cleaner coming through the wall. Their son’s bedroom’s famous smell—like damp cork, like the raw side of a carpet—started to sift and soften. Mervyn even claimed he missed it.

Albert loved taking minutes in the community notebook.

“People, our battery is dying,” Don said, standing at the head of the table. The table was round, but still he managed to be at its head. He had a shaving rash, Indonesia-shaped, on his neck.

Although they were “on holiday,” Freya and Albert were still expected at the fortnightly meeting. This was the first time Freya had been back to the big house, though the same could not be said of Albert, who had been returning most days to see Marina.

Albert gripped his pencil and wrote:
Battery
=
dying
.

Freya divided her attention among peeling a wafer of mud off the back of her hand, reading Albert’s minutes, and watching her spouse’s newly visible lips move. Don made a pestle and mortar motion. He was speaking slower than normal and the skin beneath his eyes was murky.

Albert wrote:
Last legs. Tighten belts. Membership drive
.

Freya looked across the table at the empty seat, Patrick’s, a high Windsor chair with a patch of buffed wood where the rear of his head used to gurn against the backboard. Next to that, on the bench where Kate used to sit, there were the American newlyweds, Varghese and Erin, who had arrived last night to wwoof their honeymoon. They were smiling and tugging each other’s jumpers.

Albert wrote down:
Patrick’s departure
=
reduced cash flow
.

Freya watched Don chop the palm of his left hand with the blade of his right. His eyes went wide. He pointed at something in another room. Then he pointed at Freya and he gave her two thumbs up.

Albert wrote:
Be like Freya and
Albert
. Minimal living
—
Roundhouse
.

Everyone turned and nodded at her.

Albert wrote:
Half-life. 300,000 years. The dinosaurs
.

Don, still talking, pointed at each person around the table in turn.

Albert wrote down:
Responsibility. Equality. The children of our children. (My children!)

Seeing Don without a beard made her think of him in the very first days of the community. Back then, he seemed to have a perpetual rant running inside him, sometimes silent, sometimes voiced, but always there. Whenever he emphasized a phrase, he used to lean forward, as though his torso became italicized in sympathy.
New structures for living
. Freya blinked and saw him now—trying to be reasonable. A small mound of dry mud had formed on the table in front of her, where she had been picking at her hands.

Albert wrote:
Go digital. Tight ship. Full circle
.

She noticed that, in between taking notes, Albert used his pencil to color in his arms, giving himself the gray sheen of someone with serious nutritional deficiencies.

Don looked around the room, catching each pair of eyes. Isaac, tiny in the wicker chair, drummed his fingers on the armrests, trying to synchronize left and right hands. Arlo held his tea in his mouth.

Don didn’t look at Freya for long. He carried on speaking, raising one finger for emphasis. Albert wrote:
Reel ourselves in. Forge onward
.

She watched Don lean forward, a little awkwardly, his sleeves rolled up, planting his palms flat on the table.

Albert wrote down:
Off-grid. Must vote. Now is the time.
So little of it left
! :-(

All around her, hands went up.

One night, very late, when waking and going downstairs to get a glass of water, Kate saw the TV on through the rows of rippled-pond-effect glass squares in the door to the lounge. Mervyn was watching
News 24
on mute with live subtitles. It surprised her that he could bear to spend his sleepless hours watching the news, given that he was a current affairs journalist. She looked through the door and smiled in the small, intimate way people smile to each other as they pass in a narrow corridor, late at night, on a sleeper train.

The phone lead stretched across the hall and into the bathroom beneath the stairs, the door of which was locked.

“Hello. This is Albert Riley of The Rave House. I spoke to you a month ago … Yes, I’ve changed my mind.”

…

“I know. My parents say I must live my life my own way. Make my own mistakes.”

…

“Yes, they are both happy to sign the release forms.”

…

“You’ll have to take my word for it.”

…

“They won’t be around to meet you. Is that a problem?”

…

“You’re making a big mistake.”

…

“Fine. Forget it. My father says your industry is inherently evil.”

…

…

“Hello. This is Albert F. Riley of The Rave House. I spoke to you a couple of months ago.”

A few nights later, in the spare room, Kate was woken by her phone buzzing against the floor. The screen said she had three texts from her father:

She lay awake, being alternately annoyed with, then sorry for, her father, and unable to reconcile the ecstatic tone of his texts with the time on her phone’s clock: 3:12 a.m. Was it possible that he did not know the messages were instant? Did he think they would arrive in the morning, like the mail?

After being awake for a while, she became conscious of a high-pitched whine in the house. It took some time to realize what it was.