Flash fiction: A Man For All Seasons

Net Zero. The Stranger’s Bar. And a three-line whip

Ned wobbled a little as he crossed the Lobby. But he managed a bow to the Speaker’s chair as he entered the chamber and made his way safely to his usual seat. From this he looked down on the orderly scalp of the Shadow Environment Minister, whose hair had been coiffed with precision for tonight’s debate; it had, like her staff, learned to do as it was told.

“Old Ned Fiddler looking a bit unsteady,” a young MP had muttered back in the lobby. “Does he hit the sauce often?”

Sir Thomas More

(Hans Holbein the Younger)

“Never did much,” said the lobby correspondent with him. “Too busy shagging research assistants. But I think the new party leadership is getting to him.”

It was. One of the Whips had called into his office in Portcullis House that morning to discuss the Environment debate for later.

“We’re a little anxious about you, Ned,” he said. “We need to land some punches on the government tonight. Need to show all those Reform voters that we don’t like Net Zero either. Are you going to speak?”

“If I’m called,” said Ned.

“You see, when it comes to Net Zero, you’ve been a little…” The whip looked up at the ceiling and down again. “A little unsound, if I may say so. We were a little concerned after the select committee… at your comments on wind energy for example. A little too approving. Our voters do not want these ugly things in their back yards.”

“You would prefer me to tilt at windmills?” asked Ned.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Never mind. Fear not, I am sure I shan’t disappoint you.” He picked up a sheaf of notes and waved it at the whip, who had, he noted, cut himself shaving. “I have written a paean to fossil fuels that will warm the cockles of your heart.”

“Splendid.” The whip got up to go. In the doorway, he turned. “We realise of course that your seat is a little vulnerable to Reform. You may wish to be a little surer of your place in the Lords. Should anything untoward happen at the neck selection. After all, it’s a three-line whip.”

“Fear not,” said Ned, and added quietly:

“And, as time requireth, a man of marvelous mirth and pastimes, and sometime of as sad gravity. A man for all seasons.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“It was written in 1520, of Sir Thomas More.”

“Oh.” The whip looked confused. ”Well, I’m sure we can rely on you.”

He went. Ned regarded his retreating back with distaste. Over thirty years in the House, he thought, and I’m expected to endure threats from these smarmy little creeps. He looked again at his notes, in which he had collated all the threats to birdlife from wind turbines and bemoaned the loss of farmland to solar panels. He thought for a moment. Then he picked up the wad of papers and dropped it in the bin. Next he opened his desk draw and took out a very old brown envelope from which he drew several sheets of foolscap paper, yellow with age. He placed them in a clear plastic folder. 

Then he went to the Stranger’s Bar and had two gin and tonics and a Glenlivet.

 

*** *** ***

“Mister FIDDLER!”

He swayed slightly as he rose to his feet.

“Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker.” He looked round the chamber. “I need not long detain you …Bustards!”

Trevor Littlewood/Wikimedia Commons

A ripple ran through the chamber. The Environment Minister raised his eyebrows. Madam Deputy Speaker seemed about to intercede on a point of parliamentary language so he continued hastily: “Great bustards, to be precise. As the House will know, these birds have been reintroduced to these islands and it has been put to this House that wind turbines are a risk to them. Are we to let the planet fry because of the infinitesimal risk that some silly bustard might fly into the blades? I am reminded that, a few days after the destruction of the Möhne dam, The Times received a letter that purported to be from some learned academics concerned at the fate of some rare crested ring-tailed lesser-spotted Nubian warbler or the like thought to have been breeding on the reservoir. Still, this is not about bustards. Is it?”

He paused for a moment, then grasped the yellowed sheet of foolscap. “I should like, Madam Deputy Speaker, to read briefly from the diary of my great-uncle Christopher. He writes, on a day in June:

I have been thinking of the seasons and their immutability, which is a comfort in these times; one knows, doesn’t one, that in England, some morning in late February or the start of March, one will step out and feel the wind cold, harsh even, but not so raw as it was; and the sky will be a sort of washed blue with bright white clouds scudding across it, bisected by branches that are still bare but somehow not as barren as before. One knows then that it is early Spring. Then some weeks later that the buds arrive, the hawthorn breaks out and the trees are suddenly a very vivid green that you won’t see later in the summer, when they are duller, jaded.

We’re in that vivid time now; the sky’s a deep blue, not the livid grey-white of August, and the fields are coming alive – I can see them quite well beyond the perimeter fence, stretching across the Lincolnshire Wolds with their gentle folds and hedgerows. The blossoms are everywhere. I woke quite late today – we landed at four last night, and then there was debriefing and breakfast – when I got up I opened the window of my quarters and the world outside looked exactly like early June. Then just now the chaps were bombing up and some clot miss-set a circuit and let a 4,000-pound cookie drop from a bomb bay onto the tarmac. It didn’t go off, or we wouldn’t be here. I could hear the maniacal laughter of the crew and I thought, the world is in flames from Singapore to the Channel coast, and we have just been near-blown to eternity; yet the seasons feel exactly as they should, and there is something we cannot destroy, and that comforts me.

Ned lowered the page. “I read today that the Woodland Trust have detected changes in the seasons. Nothing has brought the reality of climate change home to me quite as that has done.” Two or three members began to rise, but he shook his head. “No, I shall not give way. Madam Deputy Speaker, I realise that my great-uncle could not now be comforted by the immutability of the seasons, as he wrote that he was in that dark time – a week or so before his death on active service. That is a reality almost beyond my grasp. Am I to deny that reality today because if I do not, a few thousand votes may go to fools?

“Madam Deputy Speaker, I have been a member of my Party for fifty years and a member of this House for thirty. But tonight I must defy the whip. I cannot vote against the Government motion and, for all its flaws, I commend it to the House.”

A wave of noise broke over him; cries of “Oh! Oh!” and “For shame!” and “Bravo!”. He did not hear them; he left the chamber and crossed the lobby, only dimly aware of the two or three lobby correspondents striding to keep up with him. They fell back, but one of them called out: “Is your career over?” And another called: “What season is it now, Ned!”

He stopped and thought for a moment. “I think,” he said, “that it’s early spring.”

More flash fiction from Mike:

The Creatives Meeting a tech bro

Homecoming A sort of love story

Solitude A Cold War memory

Rhodri Hactonby's Maps A question of social geography

Hiraeth A yearning…

Strange Places A spirit in the sky 

A Sideways Journey Things might have been different

Displaced Encounter on E94th Street

Belonging Do you? Where?
Leaving Home A house has memories

Mike Robbins’s latest book, On the Rim of the Sea, is now 

available as a paperback or ebook. More details here.

Flash fiction: A History Lesson

Why do we study it? 

It was the last lesson of the day. Mr Balcombe donned his mortarboard and his gown. White chalk powder adorned the latter. This was from the Latin class after Assembly; he had flung the blackboard wiper at Brockley Minor, an especially dense member of the Remove who failed to conjugate the verb manere. The missile had missed, hitting the rear wall of the classroom with a dull thud and releasing a white cloud that caught the morning sunshine as it streamed in through the high sash window. “Since you cannot conjugate manere, you will, er, remain in detention after supper this evening,” said Mr Balcombe, delighted with his own wit.

Perhaps he’d been a little hard on Brockley; after all, the boy was a useful fly-half. He sighed, and entered the classroom where Mr Lawless was teaching the fifth form History. Mr Lawless had joined the school at the beginning of the term. He was a slim, rather quiet man in his 30s who said little in the staff room although he was always polite. But Mr Balcombe had noticed that when he supervised a table at suppertime, the conversation was a little louder, a little brighter, and sometimes the boys were laughing.

He also had the overpowering sensation that he had met him, at least briefly, years before.

“I understand, Balcombe, that his lessons are a little – er, unorthodox,” the Headmaster had said before lunch. “Sir Rodney Bush and one or two others have enquired. It seems their boys have mentioned them.”

“The lessons worried the boys in some way?” asked Mr Balcombe. He sipped his sherry.

“Well, no,” said the Headmaster. “They said they enjoyed them. You might sit in on a lesson or two and check he is teaching properly.”

If Mr Lawless thought this unusual, he gave no sign of it. Mr Balcombe seated himself by the window and watched his colleague write on the blackboard, then turn to the class. On the board he had chalked:

EMERGENCE

And in a smaller hand:

Of what? When? Why? What happened? Then:

DID WE KNOW?

“Last week I asked you to consider these, with reference to a change, or incident, of your choice,” said Mr Lawless. “You have written essays. Bush. Tell us of an age and its emergence.”

“I thought of the Black Death, sir,” said Bush.

“Very good. The emergence of – what? A disease yes, but of what new phase or age?”

“Men asked more for their labour, sir,” said Bush. “So farming changed.”

“It did. The Acts of Enclosure, the arrival of sheep – what is emerging, Bush?” 

“A prosperous new world, sir.”

“Indeed. For some. But as the plague raged, none knew of that; only of the terror they felt. So. Thorpe. Your essay. Most original. Tell the class what emerged.”

“The age of steam, sir. Newcomen’s engine.”

“Yes. But did we know what was happening?”

“A few Cornish miners may have done, sir.”

“Exactly. The rest did not know,” said Lawless. He was walking back and forth before the class, stroking his chin. “That was in the 1690s. Two hundred years later, we cannot imagine life without the train. The cotton mill. And now the Dreadnought.” He looked around the class. “Now, someone – Bush, I think – asked me earlier this term why we study history.” He looked at a spotty youth at the back of the class. “Grimbly, tell me why we study history.”

“So that we can spot it happening, sir?”

“Precisely,” said Mr Lawless. “Tell me, everyone; is an age emerging today? Now? In this year of our Lord nineteen hundred and twelve? And how shall we know?”

No-one answered, for there was a hullabaloo from an adjoining classroom; and then a noise appeared from outside, a clawing, ripping sound, and doors banged as boys poured through the corridors and out onto the terrace that led to the playing fields. All turned their heads upwards, eyes shielded against the late afternoon sun; the noise grew louder and a shadow crossed the First Form cricket pitch and there it was, an assemblage of sticks and wires and stretched doped linen, a trail of black smoke behind it, drawn across the sky by two spinning discs that caught the sun. It drifted past them, perhaps a hundred feet above, the ripping, tearing sound assaulting one’s eardrums, the boys cheering and tossing their caps in the air.

“Well I’ll be damned!” Mr Lawless chuckled. “I do believe it’s the Daily Mail aeroplane!”

“It must be,” said Mr Balcombe. “I did hear it might come this way; how splendid! I suppose that’s that Grahame-White chappie conducting it.” The latter’s hunched figure was just visible as the aeroplane passed over the Headmaster’s house and proceeded in the direction of Great Billingham. In the quad a horse neighed and whinnied between the shafts of the Chaplain’s dogcart and Cook craned her neck at the sky saying “Well I never! Well I never!” over and over again, twisting her apron between her hands.

When the aeroplane was out of sight the two men rounded up their charges and chivvied them back to the classroom. As they followed the last stragglers across the terrace, Mr Balcombe said: “I did say I was sure I had met you before you joined us and now I fancy I know when. Were you ever in the Cape Colony?”

The other frowned. “Yes. That was some years ago.”

“Indeed. During the South African War. Were you serving there? I met you, I think, on a visit to the Second Hampshires.”

“Yes, I served with them. I remember now. We left for the Transvaal about then.”

“How was the Transvaal?”

“We were engaged in farm clearances,” said Mr Lawless. He was silent for a moment, then said: “I resigned my commission not long afterwards.”

“Oh.”

As they reached the door Mr Lawless paused for a moment, then turned and looked at the sky. “I wonder, Balcombe. What has just emerged… and what sort of new beastliness will we commit with the machine we have seen today?”

More flash fiction:

A Man For All Seasons
Net Zero. The Stranger's Bar. And a three-line whip

The Creatives
Meeting a tech bro

Homecoming
A sort of love story

Solitude
A Cold War memory

Rhodri Hactonby's Maps
A question of social geography

Hiraeth
A yearning…

Strange Places
A spirit in the sky 

A Sideways Journey
Things might have been different

Displaced
Encounter on E94th Street

Belonging
Do you? Where?
Leaving Home
A house has memories

Mike Robbins’s latest book, On the Rim of the Sea, is now 

available as a paperback or ebook. More details here.

Flash fiction: The Creatives

Meeting a tech bro

Mandy had seen most of the building now. It was striking; a series of inverted V-shaped spars, roofed to halfway down, so the whole resembled an upturned half-built ark with the planking built out from the keel. There were windows in the roof, scattered at random and interspersed with solar panels.

“We say it’s the best newbuild in the Valley,” said Amrita as she led Mandy through another large open-plan office. “It’s sustainable too. The wood came from a stand in Washington State that’s sustainably managed. And we have enough solar panels and battery storage that we don’t hardly need the grid so the power supply is sustainable also.”

Serpent labret, Aztec
(MetropolitanMuseum of Art/Creative Commons)

Mandy wished her feet were sustainable; she should have worn better trainers today. She snatched a glance at her watch.

Amrita saw this. “Frey’s running a little late,” she said. The phone in her hand beeped. “Ah, he says about five minutes. Let’s go through the chill area.” They passed through an oblong room with a central drinks dispenser; there were low, deep cushion seats and soft bright couches. “Like, this is where we come to chill and it’s where we swap ideas. Frey says the idea is cross-fertilization.”

“Literally?” asked Mandy.

“I’m sorry?”

“Workplace romance?”

Amrita looked puzzled. “I don’t know. I guess I could check with HR and see if they have some figures.”

“Never mind.” There were several men and women sunk into the deep cushions but they seemed to be looking at their phones rather than each other. Mandy decided fertilization was improbable.

And then they were in Frey’s office. Its minimalism was aggressive. Its occupant sat behind his glass desk, coiled like a serpent.

“Sit down,” he said; it was not an invitation. “How is business? Your site is being read in the Valley, that’s for sure. And your tech blog’s the hottest part of it.”

“I hope so,” said Mandy. “And everyone’s curious about you. They want to know what you are doing here.”

*What have you been told we’re doing?”

“Everything, Frey. From germ warfare to Bitcoin mining.”

He chuckled darkly. “Those are kid’s stuff,” he said. He paused, frowned and seemed to think, in a way Many found mannered. “Have you heard of the Blue Brain project?” he said.

She had. “You mean those guys at Lausanne? They wanted to simulate a rat’s brain? And the Human Brain project followed?”

“That’s it. We’re beginning to understand the way the brain works – its neural networks, the way it processes emotion. But that’s just the hardware. If we can build that into a simulation, then add the software – “

Mandy frowned. “Is AI part of this?”

“Oh yes. That is why we are breaking new ground. Imagine an avatar that both functions like a human brain and is capable of learning. We can create a virtual ecosystem populated by virtual beings that can interact with humans. Imagine: You have a problem with your car or your tax return. Your virtual adviser can not only find the answer – that, in theory, is not new; they can also figure out how they can communicate that answer to you in a way that fits your personality. If for example it has understood that you are not neurotypical, it will speak accordingly. But better still, it will form relationships with other avatars within the virtual environment and you can interact with them too.”

“Hang on. Are you suggesting that I will soon have a virtual friendship group?”

“Yes. At first you will feel guilty, creeped out by it,” said Frey. “But then you will ask yourself, Why is this worse than the so-called real world? Why would it not be the real world?”

“The imitation of life,” she mused.

“No,” he replied. “Not its imitation. Its duplication.”

He paused a moment, then said: “Come with me.”

They went into a small room nearby; it was furnished with the same low couches and cushions she had seen earlier, but it was in semi-darkness. Several operators sat before banks of screens that lit their features from below, reminding her a little of paintings of witches or of hell. “Kelly here is team leader on this particular sim,” said Frey. “They’ve laid down the groundwork. It didn’t take long, did it, Kelly?”

The young woman turned from her screen. She was about 25 or 30, her slim face framed by Mont Blanc glasses with a bluish frame; she wore pale new jeans and a white cotton blouse, cowboy boots and discreet jewellery. “Sure didn’t,” she said. “I worked with Paul for the first day and we laid down the basic parameters. We’ve got light and dark, and a monoseasonal set up with equal daylengths; it simplifies things. Next was the physical environment – water and land etc., that was day two. That took us a bit of fiddling about with the graphics interface though. But we got round to plant life on D3. Jeff over there is setting up the taxonomy.”

“And now?”

“We’re in the testing phase. We got the animals done on D5 but we’re finding their interaction with the humanoids a bit glitchy. They were doing some unnatural things together.”

“I beg your pardon?” said Mandy.

“I don’t think Kelly meant that exactly,” said Amrita.

“That’d be radical,” said Frey. “But hey, why not. We can do anything with these sims. Anything.”

A human-like figure crossed Kelly’s screen. She was obviously female, with clear sexual organs. “We haven’t clothed them yet,” said Kelly. “What happened was one of the reptiles gathered fruits and gave them to Female 1, who ate them.  We’ll have to clothe the humans now so that we could code the animal-type sims not to see them as animals too.”

“Tell me,” said Mandy, “do you think the avatars are sentient beings?”

“Excuse me?” said Kelly.

“I mean, do they have consciousness? When something happens to them in the simulation, do they feel it?”

“Well, in the sense that a part of the code is activated.”

“Which is what happens to us, isn’t it?” said Mandy. “I mean, we function according to a genetic code that is not so different in principle from the binary code that activates your avatars and defines their behaviour. So who is to say that they feel nothing? Could there be an ethical question here?”

“Ethics”? The other three looked at each other.

“I don’t think there’s a problem there,” said Frey, after a pause. “Like every startup, we conform to State guidelines and our stock is traded according to SEC regulations.”

“I’m sure that’s so. That isn’t quite what I meant,” said Mandy. “But never mind.”

Later Amrita escorted Mandy to the car park. “There’s one thing I meant to ask him and didn’t.” Mandy paused as she opened her car door. “Lots of people are asking – What is Frey short for? It isn’t his given name?”

“No. His name is Godfrey. We call him Frey for short.”

“Oh. Well, thank you for today, it’s been great.”

“Sure, Mandy. Thank you for visiting Genesis LLC, it’s been great to see you.”

Lucas Cranach the Elder:
Adam and Eve Diptych, c1533-37 (detail)

More flash fiction from Mike:

A Man For All Seasons
Net Zero. The Stranger's Bar. And a three-line whip

History
Why do we study it?

Homecoming
A sort of love story

Solitude 
A Cold War memory

Rhodri Hactonby's Maps
A question of social geography

Hiraeth
A yearning…

Strange Places
A spirit in the sky 

A Sideways Journey
Things might have been different

Displaced
Encounter on E94th Street

Belonging
Do you? Where?

Leaving Home
A house has memories

Mike Robbins’s latest book, On the Rim of the Sea, is now 

available as a paperback or ebook. More details here.