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SOME DAYS YOU WAKE up tired. Tired of trying to survive. This morning, another dust storm howls. The whipping grains pile up in the corner of the aluminium window frame. Casper rouses. I lean over and kiss his back between his shoulder blades. He turns and smiles. His teeth are too prominent. His skin too sallow. His illness only gets worse.
I get up and go to the corner of the room to check our little patch of earth. Kneeling, I bring my face close, hoping to spy some change, some movement, some indication of life.
Nothing.
Not yet, I remind myself. It’s a slow process, rebuilding the earth’s ecosystems. I pour half a glass of water each for me and Casper then sprinkle a whole glass over the dirt.
“I’m seeing Great-Aunt Rita today,” I say.
“Don’t let her sap your soul!” he says with a wry smile before wincing with pain.
***
IN THE TRANSITION ROOM on the ground floor of our apartment block, the storm-needle is far over in the red. I open my locker and pull out my gear. Casper’s is scrunched up at the back, unused for over a month now. My coverall is clammy and rough. At least the gloves have a satisfying worn-in fit. I step into the exit vestibule and curl my right hand around the rope. Pushing the heavy plastic door aside, my fingers tighten as I follow the rope out into the squalling wind. I inch along, following the rope to where it merges with the mainline, joining the shuffle to the shuttle point. The wind pushes me about. But it’s my breath, loud in the mask, that is the soundtrack to my walk.
Once I reach the shuttle, I pull off the mask. Dust falls from my suit to the floor. It’s crowded and hot. I swing from the handhold and think about my Great-Aunt, about how the world came to be as it is now.
***
A NURSE IN WORLD WAR Two, Rita had met her love, a high-ranking officer, in an army hospital. He was rich, very rich, it turned out. They married, though his family disapproved. A year after armistice, he was killed in a car accident. Devastated, I guess it’s no surprise that she joined the EverLasts five years later. Back then, the rest of society knew little about how the EverLasts came about. It was only later, after things got really bad, that the story of how a well-connected doctor travelling with a group of soldiers found himself in the caves of a remote Pacific island—the name still a secret today; about how he had noticed the small, delicate plants clinging to the cave walls; how he had plucked a flower and on impulse sucked the sweet nectar; about how, the next morning, his infected cut was better and his body younger.
Returning to the cave after the war, he’d harvested most of the plants. Coveting them, he’d tested the nectar on select patients. The results were good. So good, he’d earned patronage. Quiet patronage. Quiet money. The most dangerous kind.
His patrons began buying pieces of land and constructing the EverLast domes, special habitats to keep the plants alive—for even with all that money, they were not able, ever, to reproduce them. As time went on, the most loyal and well-off patrons, like my Great-Aunt, moved into the EverLasts. At the same time, outside, various plant and animal species were beginning to collapse. Slowly at first, so no one took it seriously. As it grew worse, instead of taking coordinated action, people fought about the reasons. The EverLasts, they just kept going about their business.
The shuttle arrives at my stop. I’m the only person to get off. I change to another shuttle. This one is a long ride, outside the city, out to what used to be the forest. At the next stop, the platform is covered, the air is conditioned. A windowed corridor leads to the EverLast, the huge dome like a lovely, ripe mushroom cap.
***
THE FIRST AND LAST time that I’d come here, I’d felt special as I walked toward the EverLast. With each step, dreams of escape whirled in my head; dreams of being carefree, dreams of having plentiful food. The automatic keeper had directed me into a scanning and decontamination room. I was re-clothed in soft garments, then ushered into a huge open space filled with a sweet smell; sickly, enticing, intoxicating. The room was lavish, the last time I’d seen so much colour was in the depths of childhood, back when you could play in a park.
“Darling,” a woman had gotten off a chair, nodding to her companion. As she’d approached, it was like looking into a warped mirror. I couldn’t help but know who she was: Great-Aunt Rita, now 104 years old, but looking the same age as me. I’d seen my mother in her cheekbones and eyes. I’d seen myself. I’d seen the child I would never have. It was in that moment that my rage galvanised. I could tell Rita was trying to ignore my gaunt face, a flash of doubt crossing her face. She’d continued anyway, “You’ll never guess! I’ve won the lottery!”
I didn’t say anything.
“We know it’s getting hard out there. I’m so sorry, pet. Just dreadful. We’ve been talking and decided that we can stretch to have five more people come and join us here! We’re quite progressive at this EverLast, you know. A bit renegade.” She’d actually winked. “We drew straws for who could choose a family member. I got a long straw! And, I choose you!” Her smile was too wide.
“No,” I’d said.
“What?”
“You have no idea.”
“We know that it’s bad.” She’d tried that smile again.
“Most of the world is dead. And you lot with your nectar, your fancy plants that suck the nutrients from the soil and colonize the bacteria that recycle nutrients for other plants. You’ve taken everything. And now, the soil is infected because it is so depleted. Nothing grows. Even the crops from the greenhouse farms are collapsing. But the worst of it is that you know. You are wilful. And what do you do? You dare to invite me into your selfish nest of plenty.” I’d turned and left.
Straight after that, I’d joined the resistance. That’s where I met Casper. We were given a cup-full of precious, uninfected soil. Our job was to try and grow the building blocks of an ecosystem. We were given a teaspoon of dried plant matter every month or so, and occasionally some grains of soil that had healthy microbes. After the first year, we were able to share a teaspoon of our soil. And another teaspoon each year after that. The resistance kept the soil-building a secret so that the EverLasts couldn’t confiscate this one small, healthy thing we had managed to create. We had heard rumours that the crash was finally affecting them as well.
Maybe that’s why Great-Aunt Rita had called me again. The open space I stand in is still lavish, but something has changed. I can’t tell what, exactly. And there Rita is again, also somehow different.
“I’m glad you came,” she says. “Let’s walk.” She indicates to a corridor.
“I hope this won’t take long. A friend of mine is unwell,” I say.
“I am sorry to hear that. The world is sick, I know.”
I don’t answer.
“I also know that you have been cultivating.”
I stop walking.
She must have seen my fear. “You are safe here, I promise.”
“How can I be safe when you’ve been spying on me?”
“I want to show you something.” She opens a door at the end of the corridor. We enter a room that looks like all the other rooms: made for relaxing. There are soft couches, so soft, I long to lie on one. There are books on the shelves. I have never seen so many, owning just one myself, a story from my childhood. She goes to a bookcase and pushes on a red spine. A section of the wall becomes a door and opens. She beckons to me to follow her.
It’s dark inside, and even cooler than the big room. We’re about twelve steps down when she pushes on the wall and another door opens.
I gasp.
A multi-scape, a cornucopia of plants, a well-developed system is in here. I smell life. I even see insects.
“Your last visit quite got to us,” she says. “We started on this not long after. We already knew, of course, that the ecosystems of the earth were failing, but we felt immune, we wanted to believe that some solution would arise. After you came, we started building our own, discreet, garden. We have a clean and mature compost.” She shows me a giant beehive pattern on the wall. “Each drawer contains a separate mix. We’re using a remnant and safe mycelium network to speed up decomposition. We’ve also been able to grow some new bacteria.”
“Why are you showing me this?”
She smiles wryly. “There’s no reason for you to trust me, but the truth is that we, here, in this EverLast, are sorry. We understand that we took everything, that we were selfish. This is a small way to try and fix that.”
“What do you mean?”
“Come back in a week and you’ll see.” She stands up and puts a hand on my shoulder. “Promise me you’ll come back?”
“Okay,” I say.
“And keep this conversation to yourself. I don’t need to warn you of the dangers.”
***
WHEN I GET HOME, CASPER is still in bed.
I sit down next to him.
“What did the life-sucker want?” he asks.
“I don’t know, exactly. But I think she is doing something to help.”
“You sure?”
I don’t answer, just put my hand on his hand and hope that he can hold on to find out.
***
I REPEAT MY TRIP THE following week. The storm has abated to reveal a hazy, scratched sky. The door to the EverLast opens automatically. I am scanned and decontaminated. I know immediately that it is empty inside, the breath of humans absent. All their stuff lies dormant.
“Hello?” I call out, actually hoping that Rita will appear to guide me. No one responds. Not knowing what else to do, I retrace our steps back to the room with the corridor to the plants. I open the bookcase and walk slowly into the dark space. Feeling with my feet and hands, I find a small notch. I trace it with my hands and press on a small indent. I take a deep breath.
The door opens onto the light, onto the green. It’s so strong I close my eyes. Steadying myself, when I look again, I see a note resting on a bench. I pick it up and read:
We are sorry. We were wrong. We disregarded the effects of our actions for our own benefit. After taking almost everything, this is what is left in our power to give back. Everything here is self-contained. The security is high. Do not trust the other EverLasts: you are right to be suspicious. If you keep up normal communications, no one will notice. We have left instructions in the appropriate places. This is your garden to tend. Seed small pieces of its soil outside, here and there. It will mostly die, but somewhere, at some point, something will take. It will be slow: many generations. But now, at least, you and all the other living things, just might have generations.
***
I LOOK ACROSS AT THE honeycomb drawers and realise that they are coffins, that the EverLasts had finally returned themselves to the earth. A tear falls from my eye, to my cheek, to the soil.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR: ELEANOR lives in Sydney with her husband and young child. She is hoping to add a pet to the list in the near future. Eleanor has been published in SQ Magazine, Not One of Us and Meanjin. Her story, ‘A Thousand Million Small Things,’ was included in Tangent’s ‘Best Online 2017 Recommended Reading List.’ That story was about extinction, and she hopes the tide will turn on that front—and fast. You can find her on twitter as @elewhitworth or more backstory on eleanorwhitworth.com.
