This short story is taken from David Morisset's collection "Dreams Schemes & Teams".
It is set in Sydney in 2052.
They say
that if you drink the right amount of single malt scotch every day, then you
will live forever. I could not
always afford such expensive whisky - but I drank a lot of several cheaper
varieties in my middle years. And,
now, here I am, about to turn one hundred years old. Of course, even with all that scotch plus the benefits of
recent advances in medical science I am sure I will not live forever - and I am
not sure that I want to – one hundred and twenty years will be perfectly
sufficient.
Mid-way
through this bitterly cold winter of 2052, I live happily in a part of Sydney
that has changed a lot. If I had
lived here when I was fifty, I would have had harbour views. But the harbour has long gone. The scientific community got global
warming wrong. To give them some
credit, climate change was indeed a problem - but not in the way that most of
them thought.
I never
understood it personally – you see I was educated in the sixties and
seventies. As a result, my powers
of reason and deduction are considered flawed. People my age cannot be relied upon to give useful advice on
the problems that face our world in the middle of the twenty-first century. But, so what? There are some substantial compensations of modern life in
the great state of New South Wales even for someone as ancient as me.
Because more
than two-thirds of the men in the state are gay – and the proportion is closer
to 90% in Sydney – heterosexual men are required to have at least four wives. Furthermore, strict anti-discrimination
regulations mean that religious and ethnic diversity must be factored into all
institutions, including marriage.
I never
divorced my first wife – a gorgeous Australian girl with enough Mediterranean
blood running through her family tree to make her very interesting company for
the first forty years of our marriage.
But she moved to Queensland to be closer to our son – or so she said.
To meet my
obligations to the state, I now have three other wives living with me - a
beautiful Muslim wife of Iranian descent (who is my favourite), a very
energetic Hindi wife whose family came from Sri Lanka, and a rather beguiling
Buddhist wife who is a recent arrival from Laos. I had to convert to all three of their religions but I think
it was worth it. They are all aged
in their late twenties – or so they say.
My wives
seem happy – at least the three living with me seem happy – and their chances
of finding a stray heterosexual man with enough youthful energy to be open to casual
dalliance are fairly slim unless they travel interstate on business. Of course, they do travel interstate on
business quite frequently. But I
don’t ask any questions as long as the money keeps rolling into their bank
accounts and the state prescribed portion of it finds its way into my pension
fund.
We live in a
four bedroom flat – sorry, type 21, section (b), sub-section (ii) compliant
apartment – next to the site of Pinchgut.
Of course, Pinchgut is long gone.
It was too much of a reminder of colonial times and considered a blot on
the modern Australian landscape.
To be fair, when the harbour dried up in the 2030s, the old fort did
look out of place.
The floor of
the harbour is now criss-crossed with bicycle paths and bus lanes threaded
between eye-catching medium density housing. Some of the most expensive dwellings were built from the
debris of Blues Point Tower after it was destroyed – inadvertently they say - by
the Australia Day fireworks display in January 2040. The old site was converted to a park for people to run their
dogs without leashes.
I had always
marvelled at the way the harbour dried up so quickly. When I was sixty I thought there was a pretty good chance my
old house in Eastwood would have a water frontage once the ice caps really
began to melt in earnest.
As it turned
out, the fickle planet lurched into another cold snap. After a couple of decades of less than
determined action to deal with global cooling we began to notice that all the
desalination plants that were built between 2007 and 2030 had begun to suck the
nearby oceans dry.
Luckily it
kept raining and, because the rainwater was not harvested, the oceans had at
least one reliable source of new water.
But the combination of the reforming ice caps and the multiplying desalination
plants meant that some seawater had to recede. Sydney Harbour’s share was one of the first to go.
I gather
that things are much better in tropical climes. But there are some very upset people on the Gold Coast of
Queensland. I understand that the
old surf club at Broadbeach is fifteen kilometres inland. Also, the beachside tower I used to
retreat to for Christmas holidays (now known as the Summer Solstice Festival)
fronts a golf resort with savage bunkers.
Of course,
climate change has had some positive effects. For example, the scenic walk due west from Frankston to
Geelong draws more tourists every year and the long camel rides across Bass
Strait are particularly well patronised during the summer months.
In
anticipation of my hundredth birthday my wives combined to buy me a train
ticket. Since my early seventies,
I had promised myself that I would one day take the train from Blacktown to
Richmond to see how the landscape had changed since I was a boy in the middle
of the twentieth century.
Serena – my
Sri Lankan wife (why otherwise sensible Asian women persist in adopting such exotic
‘European’ names remains a mystery even to this man of almost one hundred
years) – drove me to Blacktown.
We proceeded
along the old M2, took the old M7, and then found our way to Blacktown
station. There were speed cameras
all the way along both of the old motorways. But the tolls that I had known in my middle age had been
lifted after the violent E-tag riots of December 2025.
As we
travelled west, we noticed that more and more cars had no registration
plates. So much for the speed
cameras!
Serena
dropped me off at Blacktown’s rather grand old railway station. The Minister for Graffiti has recently
announced a major upgrade to this relic.
With a smile that started in her ebony eyes, Serena waved farewell and
promised to meet me at Richmond station.
I boarded a
steam train of the modern variety.
When I was a boy the old steam trains puffed by my house and sent soot
everywhere. The new technology is
much more sophisticated and any soot is collected in dozens of tiny aluminium cylinders
under the engine. The full
cylinders are sent offshore for burial in the shallow seabed in areas adjacent
to various impoverished Pacific Islands.
The electric
trains of earlier years are still operating in other parts of greater Sydney
but the frequent blackouts are a nuisance. The double-decker monorail soon to be built between
Kellyville and Castle Hill is expected to be so starved of power that it will
make only four round trips each day when its single line is completed in time
for the next state election in 2075.
Since 25 year fixed terms were introduced by the state government in
2025, there has been much more scope for careful long term planning of this
type.
As long as
the trend towards working at home was in full swing, Sydney’s infrastructural
shortcomings could be all but ignored by successive state treasurers eager to
run budget surpluses for whatever reason.
However, eventually, the heightened incidence of fraud and corporate
malfeasance caused such alarm that the working at home trend simply had to be
reversed. Because such huge
numbers of people now need to travel around Sydney, most of its transport
arteries are choked for most of the day – with the exception of the lunch
period.
Not
surprisingly then, the trip from Blacktown to Richmond was, as ever, a relaxing
one when I boarded the train just after 12 noon (Australian eastern winter
conserved daytime as adjusted for seasonal errors and parliamentary sitting days). As usual, only a few commuters were
about at lunchtime. Most people
would be working flat out so as to gain every possible advantage over any slack
colleagues who chose to take a break.
I must point
out, however, that my journey was disappointing. Most of the landscape was unrecognisable. There were no farms any more. The houses were impressive but
predictable. The railway stations
that were not vandalised were in distressing states of more general disrepair.
As we moved
through Riverstone, I noticed that the old rugby league ground now hosted
soccer posts. Rugby league and
rugby union were both made illegal in 2027. Boxing had been prohibited in 2022 and then a series of
other sports that encouraged unhealthy physical expression and vigorous competition
were reviewed and found wanting.
The New South Wales parliament is currently debating whether cricket is
an acceptable pursuit in modern times.
Of course,
ridiculous prohibitions and prescriptive regulations always have predictable
results. Most of New South Wales’
rugby players and spectators simply moved to Queensland – just like my son, so
he could watch his boys and their sons play. I am proud to say that, by doing so, he preserved a proud
family tradition of playing one or both codes of rugby – the only one that goes
all the way back to my maternal grandfather. Apparently, my ancestor was a slightly built winger with a
deceptive swerve and a burst of speed that also came in handy off the field whenever
the local police raided his illegal betting shop.
Interestingly,
there have been persistent rumours in western Sydney that both rugby codes had
gone underground and, so, survived.
Apparently a composite game is being played in disused car parks under
old shopping centres with fields utilising the new grass varieties that need no
sunlight. Yes, the game they play
in heaven has gone, literally, underground!
Of course,
there had to be some rule changes.
No ‘bombs’ – or any other types of tactical high kicks - are
allowed. Goal kicks are ruled
unsuccessful unless they completely avoid the ceiling. I long to be invited to a match.
Looking at
the old football ground in Riverstone as the train raced westwards, I could
remember so much. My uncle marking
the lines with lime, my mother and father shouting encouragement to their boys,
girlfriends waiting patiently on the sideline, and coaches making passionate expletive-ridden
half-time speeches. Maybe I should
move to Queensland and leave my compliant wives – but I would probably miss Sholeh
(the Iranian one) too much.
Finally, the
train stopped at Richmond and I walked slowly from the end of the main platform
to the street. Again, most of the
town was unrecognisable. The park
was still there but there were none of the swings and slippery dips I remembered.
The old pub
that my grandfather favoured for pre-dinner ales and animated discussions about
Saturday’s horse races was long gone.
It had been replaced by a needle exchange for heroin users.
Standing
outside Richmond railway station on East Regulation Street (formerly East
Market Street), I waited for Serena and looked towards the Blue Mountains (now
mostly obscured by nondescript buildings). I had no money on me so there was not much I could do except
be patient. In 2037 the state
government had introduced legislation that made it illegal for people aged over
90 to carry any money or other valuables in public areas. If they did, they were liable to
prosecution for recklessly provoking petty theft.
Not that
there is much chance of actually being prosecuted. The courts are fully occupied with workers’ compensation
cases and small business people being pursued by taxation authorities. In 2029 all aspects of tax evasion – as
well as something called “passive minimisation strategies” - were made subject
to serious criminal charges. Because
the tax codes for all the states and the Commonwealth are now so complex that
no-one can understand them in their entirety, everyone is vulnerable to
criminal proceedings at the whim of a bureaucrat.
And then something
took me by surprise. Across the
road from the needle exchange was a familiar old dark brick house, which had
apparently been declared a heritage site and, thereby, had managed to escape
the waves of modernisation that reshaped the streetscape in recent times.
When I was
in my first decade on this earth, my grandmother would take me there to visit
her sister-in-law (my aunt). The
old ladies would drink milky tea by the warm fire of the wood stove in the tiny
kitchen and my brother and I would devour lamingtons and sponge cake.
Our rewards
for sitting quietly while the old ladies chatted usually comprised a walk in
the park, a chance to try all the
swings and all the slippery dips,
and, if we had a rugby ball with us, a bit of goal kicking practice in the
fresh air without a ceiling.
Serena’s car
pulled up just as I was about to go for a stroll through what was left of the
park. For some reason, I suddenly
felt thirsty. I really needed a single
malt scotch.
