I

History is no fun unless its your own. Avril hadn't ever been a prize pupil, but this project had grabbed her attention like a dog to a hurled stick; which reminded her it was her turn to take the sniveling, mottled thing out for its daily walk. Even in the height of human technological advancement, nobody had thought to invent a machine which could do that menial chore for her. Perhaps that would be her next project. In any case, that noisey mutt would have to wait its turn; Avril was engrossed in an old laminated document passed down to her when her grandmother left them; moved on to a better place; entered the compendium; whatever religion or superstition persuaded people that happened. "When she died." Avril was often more dead pan in her approach than her brief years would normally permit.

The journal had belonged to Avril's great grandmother; Alice. She had been one of the pioneers of the teraforming age; an environmentalist who provided the family's only entry in the annuls of human history. She became an icon of the egologist cause only after her death. But Avril didn't want to spoil the story for herself, and so had begun where perhaps convention rules one should; at the beginning.

The first half of the diary she had trouble deciphering. Alice had begun writing when she was a kid, and a combination of bad handwriting and even worse grammer had almost persuaded her to skim through until the author reached adulthood, but she had labouriously percivered, so right at this point; when things were starting to come to a head; that dog would have to muffle his bark and pace the yard and imagine it was striding through a green and pleasant land, so long as it didn't suddenly develop the ability to speak in human tounge and relay stories of her wanton neglect to her mother when she arrived.

Alice had spent her teenage years doing volenary work for environmental organisations; the Institute for International Preservation, the Word Wildlife Fund, the National Heritage Society; tirelessly campaigning to make sure that the earth's natural beauty would survive for future generations. In her time, things were not as simple as they were today; humankind was not so free, in a physical sense at least. Avril couldn't imagine a time when the species was confined to this planet. When people were crushed up as if the planet was a vast dormatory where you had to use your shoulders every day just to barge your way to work, to school; to wherever you wanted to go. Even traveling was a painstaking procedure. Nowadays it was simple; hop onto a shuttle pod or a flyby if you were old enough to drive. Or go via atomic mixer if you wer'nt put of by all the spook stories. In actuality you really didn't have to go anywhere; technology enabled people to bring places to them. Only last week Avril and a few friends had had a beach holiday in Goa while her mom was at work; without even leaving her room. But this particular history assignment facinated her. Humankind had gone so far up in their persuits of knowledge; and, of course, found some pretty unsightly things; so it was a welcome change to go back. That was what history was, afterall; a delving not towards the future; not through the stars, but into the past.

"July 20th. Things are getting desperate." She read aloud in a fruitless attempt to grab the dog's interest as well. Mabye she would just pull up the local park's V space on the computer and let it run free there; although the concept 'there' didn't really apply since it would in fact be frolicing around in thier own sitting room. But then again, dogs are easier to fool than people, even though it had been proven that the latter were pretty easy to fool. Always of a sound financial mind, Avril concluded that since that option would eat up valuable net time and thus pocket money, she would rather the animal resort to fooling itself with its own limited cognitive devices. "The population figures show 6,000 million; the first time it's reached that mark for twenty years; that's the highest it's been in my lifetime. Of course, then 6,000 million was Ok; expected, even. At the turn of the millenium; it had been calcualted; that would be the number of human beings living on this insignificant blob flating in the fabricless fabric of time and space. But now 6,000 million is a bad sign; a bad sign for health, for hygene; for human dignity. But most of all it's a bad sign for the environment, since some things can be rectified in the fulness of time. Others? Omce they're gone, they're gone....

Being an ecologist was hard enough when we just had to fight people's overbearing instict to kill; to butcher. To lay seige to something which would never really fight back. But since now we're battling necessity too many have succumed to the inevitable; branded our work a lost cause. Sadly, I'm one of the few who disagree. Perhaps I'm too demanding; never satisfied. Perhaps I ask too much. Perhaps I'm fighting a loosing battle; a hopeless one; but I've known people who've carried on regardless and fought those insummountable odds and triumphed; in a manner of speaking, at least.

It was humanity's fault in the first place that the ice caps went; for decades they had been wrenching away at the o-zone layer like frustrated scout masters ripping the canvus of the tent to shreads as darkness loomed in a desperate although blind attempt to get the temporary shelter together before the kid's bawling caused him permenent ear damage. Then when half the conqoured world gets flooded in the deluge, what's humanity's first instinct? Of course; to flatten what remains of the natural world in order to house themselves. To go on as if the destruction they've caused hasn't happened. As if half the world's land mass isn't sitting under a kilometer of cold sea. Two wrongs don't make a right. You don't make up for devestation by destroying more. But I guess I'm a realist in my own, admittedly idealistic way. As I say, it was hard enough preaching to the slobbish when all they had to barrack me was the sullen ideology of human greed. Now we're faced with the persuasive notion of necessity, even some of my closest friends tell me it's a lost cause. I for one remain stringently optomistic, but then they all say that's my nature. Well, true to nature I always was, and I'm not about to stop even in the face of, well; inevitability."

Sample Story Two

CHARACTER PORTRAITS FOR CHARACTERS FROM 'THE COMPENDIUM'

Back to Main Page

Mail me at gabriel.hartnell@virgin.net

All material on this and connected pages are protected by general copyright. Please do not thieve anything from these pages without my consen