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Lie or Lay? All Lies, I Say
I wrote this piece in response to a friend’s confusion over when to use “lie” and when to use “lay”
I had lain in my bed for two days before my friend Ashley came to see me. She opened the door, laid her bag on the chair and came over to the bed, where she lay down beside me and gave me a big hug.
“How long have you been lying in bed?” she asked.
“Two days,” I replied. “The doctor says I must lie absolutely still, but it is so boring; I don’t think I can bear another day of just lying here.”
“That reminds me of a song,” Ashley said, “that one about the two people who want to lie on a mountain forever.”
“That’s different,” I said, “they were in love so they didn’t mind. My mum hates that song.”
“Why, because it’s not Mozart?”
“No, because of the grammar. The person says ‘I want to lay like this forever’ and my mum says it should be ‘I want to lie like this forever’ so she turns the radio off every time the song plays.”
“That’s funny,” said Ashley. “Here, I’ve brought you some flowers.”
Ashley reached for her bag and pulled out some flowers which she propped up in my coffee cup. They drooped over the edge but at least they brightened the room. The bag lay on the floor where she dropped it and I could see more flowers crumpled inside.
“I got some extra flowers,” said Ashley. “I am going to lay them on Grandpa’s grave later this afternoon. We’re going out to my Uncle Dan’s farm; apparently he has a new hen that only lays brown eggs.”
“Cool,” I said, not really caring that she had lied to me. I know Ashley only goes out to the farm to see her cousin Josh.
“Here, pass me the comb, will you? When my head lies on the pillow for a long time my hair gets all messed up.”
“Doesn’t Ben like it that way?” she waved the comb just out of my reach and grinned at me. “I heard you two are together now.”
“That’s a complete lie, Ashley, and you know it.”
We lay, the two of us, side by side in silence while I struggled with the comb. Then she went off to the farm and I was left alone, laid out as if for a wake, my body lying in state, waiting to be revered by the masses. I giggled at the thought of all my friends parading past, while I lay on the bed, still as a statue, winking occasionally to break the monotony.
Oh, how I hate being ill!
The Loyalty Card
I wrote this story for a postcard competition where the limit was 300 words
Lorna pushed the tub of ice cream along the checkout, fingers crossed that she had not used up her allowance for this month. She placed her loyalty card next to the milk and vegetables, to lessen the effect, but then, she thought, computers don’t have feelings.
Beep, beep, Beeep. The sound was so loud Lorna was sure the whole shopping centre had heard her purchase being rejected.
“You have exceeded your monthly limit for ice cream,” said the associate, in a bored drawl.
Lorna wondered how many times a day she said this. People were lining up behind her, and Lorna just wanted to get out quickly, to spare the humiliation of the whole world knowing she had pigged out on ice cream.
Damn those customer cards and their hidden information. If only there were some way to fool the computer into allowing her more calories. The associate placed the ice cream in a basket with other rejected items: chips, sugared drinks, chocolate. Outside a lonely dog whined.
“Oh, I forgot something!” Lorna squeezed past the people waiting behind her and grabbed a packet of dog food. The computer accepted the purchase this time, generating a printed notice along with the receipt.
“You have not previously registered as a dog owner,” droned the associate, “you have one week to complete registration before purchases will be rejected.”
Lorna did not mind; she did not have a dog, but she intended to find someone who did; someone who would trade her dog food for some ice cream. Ha! She would fool the computer yet.
“Have a nice day,” intoned the associate, slapping a ‘sold’ sticker on the dog food packet.
Outside the store Lorna laughed.
A tiny lens inside the ‘o’ of ‘sold’ clicked open and began recording her every move.
Nine Random Words
Nine words, selected at random, then strung together with other words to tell a story
Them
Summer
Eternity
Power
Enormous
Delicate
Urge
Rust
Like
Michael lay on the beach and listened to the waves crash onto the sand. He had been watching and listening to the sea all summer. Each wave started out as no more than a ripple, a bulge on the surface of the ocean, gradually gathering height and strength, gliding inexorably towards the shore where it gave up its power in one enormous crash, before receding, spent, back into the swirling foam.
Sometimes he had the urge to run across the hot sand and throw himself at the waves, as if he could stop them. The waves laughed at him, and teased him, bypassing his fragile, delicate body and rushing to their doom on either side of him.
Soon he would leave this place, and go back to the hot, dusty, city where people, preoccupied with their daily business, had no time to gaze at the sea. The waves would not even notice he was gone.
Michael reached over and picked up his shorts, faded and torn from his battles with the waves. The top button hung loose, dangling from a single thread. Michael pulled it off the shorts and held it in his hand. It was hot, from the sun. He stood up and faced the sea.
“Hey, here’s something to remember me by!”
He flung the button as far as he could, into the crest of an oncoming wave. The wave ignored the gift and kept coming, breaking onto the sand like its brothers and sisters, parents and grandparents, and countless generations of waves before it.
As the water drained away, and pulled back down the sand, Michael saw a flash of metal, glinting in the sun. His button. It would lie there, buried in the sand, pounded by the waves, gathering rust, until he returned next year.
The Advent Wreath
One Christmas I resolved to start a new and memorable tradition for our children. I picked the Advent Wreath as being a simple project that everybody could participate in.
“Can we come with you to buy the wreath?” the children all asked enthusiastically.
“A wreath has to be made,” I explained, “we’ll build it together.”
We cannibalized a large wire frame from a hanging basket that I never remembered to water, and I sent the children out to cut some green branches from our trees. The offerings brought back inside would have thatched our roof several times over, so the next task was to cut them down to a handful of fronds.
“Why are you using more of her branch than mine?” somebody wailed.
“Because your branch is full of prickles,” somebody else replied.
The branches were all stripped down equally and the resultant boughs wound tightly around the frame and fastened in place with those little ties that you get from the bulk foods section. This added a homely touch: little flags advertising ‘peanuts’, ‘barley’, ‘rice’ and such like. The whole thing was far too wobbly to hold a candle so I found some candleholders that could be clamped on the side and arranged the four candles, three purple and one pink.
The girls were so excited about the new wreath that they could hardly wait until supper. Everybody wanted to light the pink candle.
“No, the pink candle is the third to be lit,” I explained, “we light a purple one first.”
“Why?”
“Because that’s the way the Advent Wreath works.”
“Can I light the pink one when it is time?” asked one child.
“No, I want to. Please, Mum, can I?” asked another.
I explained to them that the candles on the wreath should only be lit once a week. Five faces drooped with disappointment. So we started a new tradition: we would light the candles every night during Advent.
For the first week, with only one candle, it was easy to take turns at lighting it and blowing it out, but as Advent progressed we accumulated more and more candles at dinner. It started when the middle two children each made a table decoration at school containing three candles.
“Can we have these at the table please Mum?” they pleaded, “that’s what our teacher said we should do with them.”
Never undermine the teacher’s authority, I thought, brimming with goodwill, so I agreed.
The next night eldest daughter, not wanting to be outdone, rooted around in her bedroom and produced a couple of candles, which she put by her own place. A few days later, eldest son found some candles to put in front of his plate, and even youngest child discovered a lump of misshapen wax at the bottom of a long forgotten goodie bag. Soon we had sixteen candles to light at each meal.
“Where are we going to put the food?” husband asked, lifting up the Advent Wreath, “do we really need this old thing?”
There were howls from the assembled family; how could he suggest such a thing? This was a tradition in the making!
The two eldest children, who were the only ones allowed to use matches, lit all the candles. Eldest daughter used one match per candle, littering the table with spent matches, like the debris from a fireworks display. Eldest son tried to light all the candles with the same match, burning his fingers, which he then plunged into his neighbour’s drink.
“Hey, you lit more than me, it’s not fair,” one of them would cry, blowing out the other’s lit candles to ensure equality, then quickly lighting more candles to gain the upper hand. The table resembled a small bonfire, and the sulphurous smell of matches mingled with the crackling of the dry leaves erupting in flames from the wreath, and the sizzling singeing of eldest daughter’s long hair.
“Why is there only one pink candle?” they asked, when the day finally came to light their favourite one.
“Because it is supposed to represent relief in the middle of Advent,” I explained.
Relief? For whom? Not me surely. By now I was reduced to cooking in the dark, because the children had turned out the lights to maximize the effect of their pre-Christmas conflagration.
After each candle-lit meal was finished the ritual of the blowing out began. It was like a daily birthday party attended by five big bad wolves, who huffed and puffed, sending smoke signals heavenwards, and spraying molten wax over the micro-sized plates and the macro-sized portions of left-over food. Eldest son repeated the burning trick: dipping his fingers into someone’s drink, he extinguished the glowing wicks before middle child could blow them into life again. Eldest daughter scooped the warm wax out of the candles and fashioned it into shapes. Youngest child rearranged the candles closer to her place and husband scavenged for dinner among the debris.
When Christmas Day came it was a day for celebration. The Wreath, with all its symbolism, was put away for another year. The table was now free of clutter, and we could eat drink and be merry, happy in the knowledge that we had created our own, unique, family tradition.
The T.S. Eliot/John Gardner Killer Exercise
The late John Gardner, recognized in his lifetime as the leading creative writing teacher in the United States, developed the following exercise for students:
A middle-age man is waiting at a bus stop. He has just learned that his son has died violently. Describe the setting from the man’s point of view WITHOUT telling your reader what has happened. How will the street look to this man? What are the sounds? Odours? Colours? That this man will notice? What will his clothes feel like? Write a 250 word description.
The rain, falling first on his bare head, poured off his coat and into a puddle by his feet, bounced off the pooled water and spattered back onto the legs of his pants. He looked down at the spots on his pants and observed the pattern forming on the thick linen, and how the dark patches were growing bigger. He had never noticed it before but now he marvelled at the little flecks of thread, woven together creating the fabric. Beyond the sidewalk the hum of traffic rose and fell as vehicles sped past, a blur of colour and splashes occasionally solidifying into a car or a bus. Each time a bus stopped people got on and others got off; young people, old people, some walking slowly, some in a hurry. The man looked at the passengers as they stepped around him and wondered what they were thinking and where they were going, whether they noticed the rain, whether they noticed him. He fingered the change in his pocket; hard, round coins to pay his fare, and thought about getting on a bus, any bus, it did not matter which one, so long as it took him away, far away, but his feet were rooted in the puddle and would not obey his instructions. He knew he should be going somewhere, but so long as he stood in the road, watching the rain, he could hold this moment still for as long as he wanted.
Twin Wishes
I originally got this idea from my daughter, who wondered what it would be like to be a twin and I wrote this story for a competition, where it made it to the second round.
Alli had always wanted to be a twin so when she found an old, black coin by the bridge one afternoon she closed her eyes tightly and wished she had a twin sister.
For a moment Alli felt suspended in black space, with a great wind rushing past her head.
“Hey Alli,” said a familiar voice, “are you and Emma going to Rob’s party?”
Alli opened her eyes and saw Carina, her best friend, sitting on the parapet next to an identical copy of herself. She stared, open mouthed, at the apparition.
“Because I asked you both yesterday and you still haven’t told me,” continued Carina, “and I don’t want to go by myself.”
“We’re going,” said the mirror image Alli, jumping off the wall, “come on, Carina, let’s get some hot chocolate.”
Alli stood motionless, staring at the vision of herself. It was impossible, yet here was this twin, looking perfectly alive and normal with Carina acting as if nothing strange had happened.
“OK,” Carina agreed, “but don’t talk all morning, Emma, you know what you’re like when you get going.”
Alli nodded, wondering what Emma was like when she got going, and what her parents were they going to say when this carbon copy of Alli turned up at the house. She was even wearing clothes like Alli; the same faded jeans, but with a tear on the pocket, and a cream sweatshirt, just like the one that Alli had wanted to buy last week.
Carina had run ahead to catch up with Emma and the two girls were now walking with linked arms. Alli felt a sudden pang of jealousy. How could this Emma person just appear, wearing the sweatshirt that Alli wanted, and turn her world upside down? She had wished for a twin sister; now that she had one it was not what she expected.
Then Emma turned around and held her hand out and Alli felt a surge of sisterly affection as the three girls marched into the café.
“I prefer the whipped strawberry shake we had yesterday,” Emma said, “don’t you Alli?”
Alli shrugged. She’d had a strawberry shake with Carina the day before, but nobody else had been there.
“You’re very quiet today, Alli,” Carina said, blowing on her hot chocolate. Emma had chosen the same topping as Alli and had even reached for the same cookie just as Alli stretched her hand out to the plate. It was uncanny.
“I’m just thinking,” she replied.
“Remember that time you were thinking so hard that you fell off your bike into the ditch?” Emma asked.
Alli was surprised. She did remember that day; concentrating on pushing the pedals, first with one foot then the other, she had not noticed the road curving until she had ridden head first into the ditch. But Emma was not there – how could she have been, if she had only just appeared?
Alli thought back to the scene on the bicycle and now, in the distant recesses of her memory she could see another small figure in the background, with an identical bike, her little feet pushing her own little pedals.
Alli shuddered and closed her eyes, but it was the same with all her memories. Where once there was just herself now there were two little girls, splashing each other in the pool, building two sandcastles at the beach, sharing a sandwich on the first day of school.
Alli pushed her hot chocolate away.
“I don’t feel well; I think I’ll go home.”
“See you at the party on Sunday,” said Carina.
Alli nodded and left the cafe, walking slowly along the path. She studied the grass and the hedge carefully to see if they had changed but they appeared to be the same old blades and the same old leaves and twigs. So what had changed?
A big thump on her back was her answer.
“Hey, Alli,” her duplicate said, “you’ve been acting strange today. Are you OK?”
Alli wondered what to say. How do you tell somebody that they did not exist an hour ago, that they were created by a wish? Yet Emma was standing in front of her, very definitely existing, and becoming part of her life. Alli looked up at her new twin. How much of herself was in there?
Carina was right; Emma did talk a lot, which was a relief because Alli just had to listen. Emma chattered about people they both knew, and what she thought of chemistry class and whether they should wear their red sweaters to the party. By the time they reached the house Alli really did feel as if this newcomer had been around for ever.
At home Alli noticed the changes at once. Not big, glaring differences, but two photographs instead of one, two pairs of shoes thrown outside the door, two bicycles in the shed.
Alli slowly pushed open the door to her bedroom and was surprised to find a second bed at the other side of the room, a second bookcase, and double the usual quantity of clothes on the floor. Alli lay down on her bed and stared at the tiny fluorescent stars on the ceiling above her. The ceiling above the other bed was covered in coloured petals and Alli remembered trying to decide between the petals and the stars. Was Emma just a collection of her discarded choices?
Alli had a difficult week adjusting to the new arrival but none of her friends or family thought it the least bit strange that there were now two of them. Alli wondered why the magic had not included a larger car, as it obviously stretched to beds and bikes and this thought made her giggle as they got ready for the party.
“What’s so funny?” asked Emma.
“Oh nothing,” said Alli, “you wouldn’t understand.”
Emma looked hurt and Alli felt sorry; she could not help liking her new twin, who was just like herself, but yet she could not feel a bond with this person, not like the bond twins were supposed to have. Emma, it seemed, did feel a special bond, or at least, had memories of enjoying a bond with her twin right up until the time at the bridge.
“Just what happened to you at the bridge last Saturday?” Emma asked, holding two t-shirts in front of the mirror.
Alli was becoming increasingly annoyed that Emma kept choosing clothes that she herself wanted to wear to the party. There was no way she was going to the party in identical clothes – that was just too silly, even though apparently most of their friends could tell them apart. But it did seem unfair that Emma had first choice; after all, she, Alli, had been there first, hadn’t she?
“Nothing,” Alli scowled. She threw herself on her bed clutching both red sweaters, to make sure that Emma did not take one.
“Maybe I’ll wear these jeans,” said Emma, picking up a crumpled pair from the floor. Alli said nothing. She would wait until Emma was dressed and then wear something completely different, just to make a point. Emma was fussing with her hair, twisting it the same way that Alli did and now looking for a hair tie. She reached into the pocket of the jeans, pulled out something and looked at it.
“Hey, what’s this?” she asked, “I haven’t seen it before.”
Alli glanced over and saw that Emma was holding the funny black coin she had found by the bridge.
“Hey, that’s mine,” she said, leaping up, “give it back!”
Emma shrank backwards.
“No need to get wound up, I’m just looking. And what’s come over you, anyway? You’ve been biting my head off all week and you never tell me anything any more.”
“I’m just in a mood, okay? I don’t know what’s wrong. Anyway, that’s mine, so can I have it, please?”
“Nah, ah. We share, remember, so I get to have this for a while. What’s so special about it – did somebody give it to you? Is that it – you’re in love and you don’t want to tell me?”
Alli reached out for the coin but Emma was too quick for her and jumped aside.
“Give it back, now!” Alli cried.
“You know, you’re not yourself these days,” said Emma, sounding angry for the first time, “something’s definitely happened to you, Alli. In fact you’ve become a pain in the side.”
Emma held the coin up in the air, just out of reach of Alli’s frantically waving hand.
“I never thought I’d say this, but sometimes I wish I didn’t have a twin.”
Alli suddenly felt herself suspended in black space with a great wind rushing past her head.
The door opened and Carina came into the room.
“Come on Emma, or we’ll be late.”
Emma dropped the coin she was holding, wondering briefly where it had come from and grabbed her red sweater from the bed.
“OK, I’m ready. Let’s go.
The Ten Billionth Person
Sandy pushed the hair out of her eyes and spread her notes across the table. The project was only half-way completed and already she had far too many complications to deal with. The young observer she had just been saddled with sat nervously at her side, a fresh pad of paper set out in front of him, a list of questions no doubt bouncing around inside his head.
“So how much do you know about this project, Tom?” Sandy asked.
“Er, it’s Tim, actually. And I don’t know very much, only that you are searching for the 10 billionth human, but I don’t know why, or how.”
“I see. And who assigned you to this project?”
“Um, the World Food Programme. I started with them four months ago, when I left college.”
Sandy rolled her eyes. A freshman! He had probably never sat through a conference in his life!
“Aren’t you a bit new on the job for such a position?” she asked, wondering if she could draft a memo to a department with the UN and get rid of him.
“Actually, yes,” said Tim, grinning, and opening his jacket. “They thought you’d say something like that, which is why I was authorised to show you this.”
Sandy looked over at the array of miniature recording materials that was taped to the inside of Tim’s jacket. Her estimation of the complexity of the project immediately doubled.
“And who is it that you’re supposed to be reporting on? If the UN want to pull me off the job they’ve only to say the word.” Sandy almost wished they would.
“They didn’t tell me,” replied Tim, but of course he would say that, Sandy thought. “My instructions were to attend all meetings and find out as much as I can about the project,” Tim continued, “something about funding, I think.”
“OK, here’s the quick summary,” explained Sandy. “We’re filming a documentary about the birth and early life of the world’s ten billionth person. It was supposed to be a simple, human interest story but it got hijacked by the politicians.”
“How?”
“Well everybody wanted their country to produce the most famous human of the century and then all sorts of other organisations jumped on the bandwagon.”
“But how can you tell who the ten billionth human will be anyway?” asked Tim, “I mean, babies are born every second.”
“Ah yes,” said Sandy, “but to be part of this project a country needs to have signed up and met certain conditions, and then each new pregnancy is registered and monitored so that it will be fairly easy to determine who is likely to produce the ten billionth baby.”
“But what about countries that don’t sign up?”
“They were mostly the African countries, and nobody counts them anyway – they’re too busy fighting each other. Apart from Nigeria – we have a group of mothers we’re following there.”
“But I still don’t understand how you can be sure you have the right baby,” said Tim.
“Here, you’ll see when we listen to the reports,” said Sandy.
While she had been talking the room had filled with people carrying folders and laptops; several had cameras slung over their shoulders. Sandy sighed when she noticed that some of her staff were accompanied by government representatives. The days of the simple planning meeting were over.
“Alright everybody, let’s start with the field reports. I see from the number of new faces that this project is gaining publicity. Everybody, this is Tim, sent to spy on us from the World Food Programme.”
The people in the room nodded and smiled at Tim, who went a beetroot red and began to doodle on his notepad.
“We’ll hear from Tim at the end. Harman, can you tell us about China, please?”
A young man on Sandy’s right stood up and opened his computer. He projected several slides onto the wall at the far end of the room and everybody swivelled to look.
“Well as you all know, China solved its population problem in the 20s by sterilising young men at puberty. This was done using radiation in the schools and was about 90% effective. Government officials could of course pay to have their sons be exempt and these men were then issued official breeding licences. All pregnancies were recorded against these licences to ensure that these non-sterilised youths did not father more than one child each. Any pregnancy without a breeding licence was terminated. However, this caused problems when the chosen few refused to travel to the remoter regions of the country and a whole decade went by with no children being born in some provinces until one village discovered that their oldest male could still father children.”
There was a titter around the room, but most of the people had heard this story before. Tim was scribbling furiously in his note pad, his eyes fixed on the speaker.
“So,” Harman continued, pointing up at the slides, “we now have six pregnant women who are likely to give birth in the predicted timescale, and they have all been sent to this guarded facility here.”
Sandy looked up in annoyance.
“But they’re not allowed to do that,” she said, “the agreement was that we’d film these women in their environments, to get an idea of the cultural background the child would inherit.”
“Well you can get all that from party doctrine, because they’re all wives of high ranking party officials,” said Harman. “But that’s not all,” he continued, pointing to another slide. “Here we have a group of 10,000 pregnant women, all stationed at a remote facility in the north, to be used to influence the date of birth.”
A general chorus of surprise and annoyance resounded around the room.
“I was afraid of that,” said Sandy.
“What do you mean, influence the date?” asked Tim.
“Well, we already know the likely date of the ten billionth birth, around 14th August, because all of the world’s current pregnancies are registered in the People database, which Ed monitors.” Sandy nodded at a man at the far end of the room who was wearing headphones and staring at a small screen in front of him. Ed looked up when his name was mentioned and waved.
“If I’d known what this job involved, Sandy, I would never have agreed to take it on,” he said. “At least the Dutch all have microchip implants so their updates are automatic instead of relying on a daily data transmission like some countries.” Ed glared at the lady on his left.
“The United States will not have any sensitive information linked automatically to any external programme,” she said, while the rest of the people in the room chanted along with her in unison. It was a mantra they had heard many times.
“Is August the 14th significant?” asked Tim.
“Not necessarily,” said Sandy, “but the country which claims the ten billionth human is.”
“Why?”
“Because they get to influence many of the UN programmes for the rest of the century, and that of course means controlling lots of money. I would have thought your bosses at the World Food Programme would at least have told you that. Being part of the ten billionth baby programme also means a country’s births must be registered and properly monitored, and we can tell if the birth rate goes up, which automatically triggers a cut in health or aid spending.”
Tim looked properly chastened. Sandy wondered how it was that a huge organisation such as the World Food Programme could send such a dimwit as an observer to this project. But then she remembered the listening devices. Maybe they were not so dumb after all.
“So how do you influence the date?” Tim asked.
“By manipulating the birth and death statistics,” said Harman. “The Chinese have set up this breeding facility with 10,000 women in case they need to bring forward the date, should one of their chosen mothers go into labour too early. They’ll just induce several hundred women, keep the babies alive until the ten billionth is born and claim the prize.”
“And is the ten billionth baby likely to be a Chinese?” asked Tim.
“Not if the Saudis can help it,” said a lady from the far end of the table, “they’e determined to have a Muslim baby so they’re pumping money into all the Muslim countries to encourage births. Indonesia’s registered pregnancies have shot up and so have those of all the Arab countries apart from the Palestinians who don’t have their own register. Naturally the Israelis are showing their disapproval with a few high profile murders.”
“But we can’t prove that, Maura!” said Sandy.
“You can never prove anything with the Israelis,” said Maura.
“I had always thought the ten billionth baby would come from India,” said Tim.
“Well, it could have been,” said Sandy, “but they botched it. Joel will explain.”
A small man with glasses stood up.
“The Indians had a number of potential births, almost 340 registered at one point, but then the mobile ultrasound units were sent around the villages and the next thing we knew, 183 women had abortions because they were carrying girls. India was disqualified after that.”
“But I don’t understand,” said Tim, “if you’re counting people, and have a database all set up, surely the ten billionth person is the ten billionth person, no matter where they are born, even if the country is not participating in your project?”
“Not if the birth is symbolic,” said Joel, “like it was when they celebrated the 6th billionth person, back in 2002. Then the world leaders decided that the symbolic baby should be an Indian one, and a poor one at that.”
“No, Tim, sadly this time the ten billionth person will be determined by money and prestige.” Sandy turned to look at Tim, certain that his hidden microphone was picking up her every word. “That’s probably why they sent you to join our team, to find out who was influencing the project and to decide where to send their aid dollars.”
Tim blushed again and started to protest but Sandy waved her hand at him and took up a sheet of paper from the pile in front of her.
“Right, we’ve heard from China; are there any other country reports?”
A short man with dark curly hair raised his hand.
“The Italians are not interested in babies,” he said. There was a titter from around the room.
“Hey, I said babies, not-“
“Yes, yes, Francisco, go on,” said Sandy, eager to restore the serious tone of the meeting.
“Well, we had a couple of ladies but one, she got run over by her motorbike and the other, well it turned out she wasn’t pregnant, just her mother telling her she was because the mother, she’d had a vision, and she wanted to be the 10 billionth grandmother.” There was more laughter.
“And the British, well they want the ten billionth child to be a mixed race child, to show how they have integrated their different communities.”
“So?” asked Sandy.
“Well, it looks like the public are not all that keen on having mixed race babies to order, especially as the government wants to perform DNA tests on all the unborn children to see if they’ would qualify for the special treatment. They don’t want the embarrassment of a pure white or totally black baby to be born.”
“That sounds just like the US,” said Ed, looking at the lady next to him.
“The US is a land of equal opportunity,” she replied haughtily.
“Come off it Edith, your government was offering cash incentives to women to conceive in time for the ten billionth,” said Ed, “you even wanted to have it born on 4th July. And now you have a race going between all the states with two or three hopeful mothers in each state. I don’t know what you’re going to do with all those surplus babies when August rolls around – you Yanks are going to lose a lot of subsidies.”
“Not when the ten billionth human is born in the land of the free!”
“Yes, and then immediately blown up by the radical fundamentalists,” muttered Maura.
Francisco coughed pointedly and all heads turned again to him.
“The Dutch we know about, in fact Ed here can tell you the exact number of their population, and hour by hour progress of the pregnancies.”
Ed obliged by turning his laptop towards the screen. Large numbers appeared on the wall, 26 million and something or other – the last few columns were changing up and down too fast for Sandy to make out. Then a blurred image of a baby in a womb and more rows of data filled the screen.
“OK Ed, we know the Dutch have it all sewn up; we don’t want the gory details,” said Sandy. “Go on, Francisco.”
“The French are very excited. They are planning big celebrations all over the country. In fact so many people are partying in advance that the 23 mothers are mini celebrities and the babies are going to be born blind drunk.”
Sandy frowned. She did not want the project to be the cause of irresponsible behaviour, yet compared to what some governments and other organisations were doing a few glasses of wine too many was hardly grounds for complaint.
“Harman, any more reports from Asia?”
“Well the Australians are definitely out of the race. They started too late and when they realised they couldn’t speed up the nine month process they planned to induce but they were disqualified on medical grounds.”
“Joel, are you covering the Americas, now that India is not participating?”
Joel opened a notebook in front of him and flipped through the pages.
“Bolivia – we had some problems with Paraguayans paying Bolivian peasants to have babies and pass them off as Paraguayans. The Brazilians say most of their babies are born nine months after carnival so we’ll have to wait a while and of course nobody can get into Colombia since it was closed off by the US five years ago.”
“So there’s no other country still in the running?” asked Sandy.
“Yes, Canada. There’s a large community up in the far north, where there used to be ice. It is all sea now, but the government are recreating igloos made of plastic and flying up stuffed polar bears so that the filming is as authentic as possible. We have forty one potential births there.”
Sandy rolled her eyes. “Could they not have just chosen some women in their major cities?”
Joel shook his head. “Apparently they wanted it to be representative of the first people.”
Joel shook his head. “Apparently they wanted it to be representative of the first people.”
“So now what do you do?” asked Tim.
“Well, we send our teams to cover the lives of the people involved. Let’s see, that’s Harman and a camera crew to China; Francisco will cover France, Britain and Holland; Joel is off to the Arctic, and Emily is covering the US. Maura is there any chance of getting a camera crew to one of the Muslim countries?”
Maura shook her head.
“It’s bad enough trying to do this project as a woman, when hardly any men in those countries will talk to me.”
“Can’t you have a male assistant?” Tim asked. Heads shook all around the room.
“Look what happened to poor Mustafa when he started asking questions about pregnant women,” said Joel, drawing his hand across his throat while making a gargling noise.
Tim shuddered and there was a moment of silence around the table for their unfortunate departed colleague.
“Fine,” said Sandy, “meeting dismissed. We’ll convene again in another month and in the meantime, make sure you all get some camera footage. Something tells me we’re going to need to justify every action, and there is a strong possibility that our material will be used as evidence if there is any dirty work.”
The team members rose, gathered their papers and electronic equipment and left the room. Tim, who had abandoned any pretence of making notes checked his wire set-up.
“So, did you decide who gets the grain from the WFP’s foodstocks? I take it your bosses are concerned that the temporary rise in the birth rate due to this project will cause more famines and migrations?”
Tim nodded. “Something like that.”
“Well, you can go and tell them that it is all under control, and as soon as we have recorded the ten billionth baby we’ll all stop reproducing.”
Sandy laughed at the disbelief on Tim’s face.
“Hey – it’s a joke! Go and get a beer and lighten up!”
Sandy walked the three flights of stairs down to her office, the only exercise she’d get all day. This project was turning from a headache into a migraine, or a nightmare, as the countdown wore on. And soon it would turn into an international disaster if the wrong country won. Only which was the right country, or was there even one? Should the country funding the project get preferential results? Sandy knew Ed could tweak the numbers on the computer faster than she could say byte, and there was no prize for delivering the ten billion and one-th baby.
Sandy kicked her shoes off and flopped onto her couch by the window, her one concession to luxury. She flicked a switch on her wall monitor and looked at her e-mail. Three from the UN, one from the dry-cleaners, one, no two from Edith, a couple of junk adverts and one from her sister.
Sandy waved her pointer at the e-mail from her sister. She missed Karen more than she liked to admit. There was nobody to call up late at night with problems, nobody to co-sign the mother’s day card. Sandy could not even buy a ticket and travel to visit her sister – tourists were no longer allowed at the International Space Centre after the series of bio-terror scares in the 40s. And last week Karen had e-mailed to say she was volunteering for the moon colony.
Sandy opened the e-mail and was surprised to see only three words instead of the reams that Karen normally wrote.
“Aunt. Alexandra. August.”
Her sister only used Sandy’s full name if she was being serious, or trying to evade the snooper software. This time she must be doing both.
Sandy stared at the message, a mixture of emotions clashing inside her.
Who was the aunt? Was it her? If so, that meant that Karen was finally pregnant – yet another pregnant woman. But if she moved to the moon colony then Sandy would never see the baby. Suddenly a thought struck her. What if Karen did move to the moon colony, and had her baby there? August – that must mean the due date! All Sandy had to do was make sure Ed included a feed of her sister’s data into the computer, secretly of course, and he could manipulate the information to ensure that her niece or nephew would be the ten billionth human. Moon colonists belonged to no country so her diplomatic problems would be solved in one fell swoop.
Oh, clever, clever Karen.
Sandy reached for the keyboard to tap in an appropriate response, in code, of course. It would not do to have the likes of Tim monitoring her e-mails.
Meanwhile, in India 23 more baby girls were aborted; in China two girls were locked up for conceiving without certificates, and one party official sued the state when his son was found to be sterile; in Holland the factory producing the microchip implants discovered a virus in its production line; in Canada the northern people refused to move into the plastic igloos; in Egypt the Nile flooded and displaced ten million people; and in sub-Saharan Africa wars continued as before, much as they had over the past century and a half.
The Dragon
I wrote this as a timed writing exercise: we had fifteen minutes to write something using the words smoke, salt and mountain. I like writing about dragons and I am sure this one will have some adventures in the future.
The dragon lay inside its cave, its shallow breathing sending small puffs of smoke upwards. His belly was full and he was resting before his next flight. He licked his lips with his forked tongue, remembering the taste of his last meal – a young sheep from the field over the mountain. Not as sweet as princesses, but they were so hard to find these days.
The dragon burped and a small tongue of fire flickered out of his mouth, then he settled back to sleep. He dreamed of a big castle far away, full of succulent princesses. Big ones, little ones, fat ones, juicy ones. All waiting for him to drop by for breakfast.
He would soar above the mountains then swoop down on the unsuspecting kingdom. He imagined himself perched on the rampart of the castle, wings outstretched, casting a huge black shadow on the courtyard, princesses running squealing in all directions, holding their skirts in their hands.
Yes, those darned skirts. If only princesses didn’t have to wear clothes. They were so difficult to digest, all those petticoats, and the prickly crowns, that tasted as if they were crusted with salt. Not the jewels, of course, those he liked to keep, picking them out one by one with his talons. He had quite a collection now in his cave. Why couldn’t princesses be kept in a field, like sheep, except without the woolly coats. Now that would be a fine meal.
The dragon rolled over and crushed its wing uncomfortably. It opened one eye and caught a glint of sunlight reflecting off steel. No, it couldn’t be. Not another hero, coming to show off. Really, couldn’t these knights wait until after lunch?
Good Intentions
Aunt May was full of good intentions, which in her mind went hand in hand with practicality.
“No, Bridget,” I will not buy you a new pair of patent leather shoes for your First Communion. You’ll only be in church for an hour and a half and nobody looks at your feet. It’s not as if you could wear them again either, out here in the fields. No, the money the shoes would cost would be far better spent feeding the orphans in Africa.”
Bridget didn’t care about the orphans. Orphans were always hungry, no matter how much money you sent them or what luxuries you did without in order to support them. Father Murphy was always talking about the orphans and the Missions and Bridget had long ago ceased to listen.
But shoes, they were important. She would not be getting a dress like her sister Lila. When Lila made her First Communion she wore a lovely white dress with a satin sash and flowers in her hair.
“You look radiant!” Aunt May had said, as had all the other aunts and uncles.
Lila had worn white shoes and had positively danced up the aisle on the big day. However, new dresses were now frowned upon, as they highlighted the differences between those families who could afford them and those who could not. The church had raised money, taken no doubt from the mouths of orphans, thought Bridget, and bought a set of gowns; large voluminous, shapeless tents, designed to hide whatever clothes the child was wearing so that everybody could appear equal.
Naturally the attention had at once shifted to their hair and their feet. Bridget had long hair and Aunt May had promised to curl it for her but there was no way she was going to buy her a new pair of shoes.
“But I can’t wear these gym shoes!” wailed Bridget, looking down at her feet and the battered shoes which had climbed walls and trees, scaled cliffs, waded through mud and been chewed on by the dog.
“Nonsense! Of course you can!” said Aunt May and the subject was closed.
On the morning of the big day Bridget rose early and wrapped damp socks around strands of her hair, tying them up tightly. She opened Lila’s wardrobe and gazed longingly at the white dress and matching shoes. Neither of them fit her so she could not even borrow them for the day, not that Aunt May would have allowed it.
The gown was so enormous that it reached down past her knees but it did not cover her shoes, even though she hunched down to make herself shorter. Her classmates gathered around her in identical gowns, each with a pair of gleaming new shoes proclaiming the wealth and status of the wearer’s family. Bridget’s scuffed gym shoes could not have stood out more, even if they had had flashing lights.
Bridget kept her head down, not wanting to see the looks in her friends’ faces. The pity, the triumph, the ridicule. Who cared about First Communions anyway – it was all for the parents. It should have been a special day, her big, important first step. Everybody in the family was here, there would be a big feast afterwards and probably lots of presents, but none of that mattered compared with the hideous things on her feet. The whole day was ruined and nobody had even sent anything to the starving orphans.
The organ started to play and a big tear rolled down Bridget’s cheek.
My mother’s best china mug slipped out of my hand and crashed to the floor
I wrote this as a timed writing exercise: we had fifteen minutes to write something using the above title.
The silence in the room was the loudest thing I had ever heard. A single piece of pot rocked back and forth on its curved edge; the rest of it lay in a hundred little pieces around me like confetti surrounding the bride. Only I wasn’t the bride – I felt like a murderer.
For a moment I stood and looked at the disaster. The broken dream. We had been getting along so well, this visit, my mother and I, almost as if we were about to become friends again, as if all the bitterness and disagreements over the last ten years could be set aside while we made a fresh start.
And now this.
Could it be mended, I wondered. Probably, with enough time and trouble. And patience. She’d expect me to try, of course – if I swept up the pieces now she’d accuse me of being unfeeling. If I sat down to piece the broken shards together she’d tell me it was a useless task.
I could remove the evidence completely and maybe she would never know. That would work with other people maybe, but not with my mother. That mug had sat on the same place on the mantelpiece for thirty seven years; she’d drunk her tea out of it for the last twenty.
No, there was nothing to do but to own up. And then to try and put together the pieces of our relationship.
A Penguin Comes to Tea 