Curation and Text by Chris. Dugrenier
Artworks by Adrian Baynes
I found this brick walking in a decommissioned, decontaminated nuclear site.
Strange that they carved it into stone.
Strange that they had it, had some … Can’t even remember its grammar!
Is it a collective or an uncountable nom?
Is it feminine, masculine ?
It’s been so long since it has even been talked about…
And yet that word was at first the hope for the future!
Everyone talked about changing to electric!
Then, it happened! The moment we now commemorate with the ‘Renewal’ day-off that we all have forgotten the how, the why, the reasons it came about…
It was a game of chess historians says.
No one can remember if this was a literal or metaphorical game.
They were by all accounts a bit untethered back then!
The panic that ensued when it became too dangerous to use in any way, shape or form.
Everyone talked about it, dreamed about it, fought for it.
But now no one can remember well because well… there’s no electricity to feed the servers that connected the data centres that held the terabytes of history.
Everything was online and one day, online simply vanished.
Followed days, weeks of total shock, months of total panic, years of wars followed by the total breakdown of society as we knew it…
In my capacity as Pyrotechnician, I am in charge of those precious stones… Known as the Golden Flints, we use it to relight the beacon on Cracks’ Hill. Come rain or shine, the beacon is permanently lit. It is the only source around us to collect the fire and is a critical part of the communication infrastructure. I have to make sure the beacon is relit as fast as possible so the signal chain is not interrupted for too long.
Obviously come rain, it goes out if we get caught out and don’t run up there fast enough. That’s when the golden flints are taken from their secret place.
They’re precious stones not because of the 18 carat gold leaf but because … well… there are no others left in the region. Loosing them would be a death sentence. And this is the safest way to make fire.
Come shine and we use the parabolic mirror but this is England…
Fire is the source of everything now so there are tight measures about the relighting ceremony. It is a celebration for everyone. For me, it is quite draining, even after so many years of doing it. Sometimes, I am scared that I’ve lost the touch.
You need to have a clear head to get the spark on the first hit.
The more hits there are the more anxious people become.
Every hit is a personal blow, a knock to the morale, a sign of coming doom.
Everyone holds their hands.
Everyone holds their breath.
Everyone stares at me holding the stones…
It is like static in the air that builds up and up and up …
It’s palpable. I feel it.
And static is terrifying, terrifying for everyone…
In my spare time, I invent.
Or rather I recycle, repurpose the leftover technology made redundant without power.
There’s piles of the stuff… Nothing was biodegradable.
I even found a small tea cup with instructions. Why would they need a computer to tell them how hot their tea was? They must have lost their senses relying on those ‘smart’ machines…
No wonder then that everything fell apart when electricity became too deadly.
Everything functioned with it : refrigeration, water sanitation, health, transport, communication, knowledge, agriculture… everything…
Many tried to circumvent the ban on producing it but there’s no hiding… The atmosphere is now so saturated with static that one small charge can trigger a global electrical storm that can last for weeks … and all hell breaks loose! Hailstones are the worst.
One good thing came out of this… international cooperation. Proper. Effective. Slow but still working.
I am tinkering with this new prototype The Venus Bug V.2.
I got the idea when I found a bug inside a device.
Even if they are nourishing, bugs are bugbears these days. They are everywhere… no pesticides anymore… And so many escape from the farms.
I changed the bite system. The V1 was too strong and crushed everything.
V2 will not close shut totally so that the small ones can leave unscathed through the gaps in the teeth and the large ones are trapped alive fully formed ready for roasting. What a treat if it works!
My grandma told me about phones and how communication was immediate, information constant, data available all around the world. I just can’t get my head around this. Everything was connected by the power of electricity. The irony is not lost on me.
Now, smoke signals, letters, gossips, newspapers are what we rely on mostly.
I am in awe at what they had achieved. How could they have been so careless to lose hold of it? No one knew what was happening until it was too late. The signs were there. The insects were the canary in the mine. No one paid attention. When the animals became mad, some people raised their voices. Most kept their eyes on their screens. Only when hair stood up on their heads did they pay attention but the static accumulation in the air was by then irreversible. Gradually people’s hair fell out and now we are all bald.
The battered Encyclopedia Britannica tells me that the acoustic speech transmitting cans had a range of up to 3 miles or so which would enable us to contact Crick Marina and The Canal Tunnel staff from the Beacons. It is worth a try…
‘Tom and Jerry’ want me to make more of this little scarecrow.
They tested it this harvest, down Berryfield, North East of Long Buckby and they are glowing with praise.
For the strangest of reasons, they think that it stops the birds eating the crops.
“It’s the black cat curse” they say dancing in circles like possessed shamans.
To convince me, they remind me of the many dead birds our cats regularly bring to the front door; always a welcome additional meal for us all.
I am sceptical. I think it’s more to do with them working as a team going around that field making such raucous nuisance of themselves.
I can make more for sure. There is a mountain of this stuff -literally- in Ling Hall Landfill Site. Those gaming remnants are indestructible. However they made this plastic is miraculous but really whatever possessed them to make a product with software that would be antiquated within a couple of years in a case that will take hundreds of years to decompose, if ever!
Fools!
We are now left with this stuff not even able to rot away back to organic matter !
Since Jeremy (8) joined Thomas (10) to work as scarecrows for the local farmers, they’ve become the best of buddies but devilish competitors. I spotted them practising their slingshots the other day. Duke Scaredy-Cat was their target and those boys are hitting that little nose pretty good…
I was never really good at maths.
I much preferred working with my hands…
Arithmetic lessons left me scared to be called to the front of the class where I would freeze trying to answer a simple addition or substraction… See I can’t even spell the word.
What would Ms Delavey say now seeing me use the abacus to do multiplications!!!
Granted it takes some practice to learn this but once you find your way around using the areas of the board to ‘air’ place the numbers you are working with, it kind of makes sense.
I think by far the most devastating loss that happened on that fateful ‘Renewal’ day was the vanishing of digital currencies.
As everything was done by computers run by AI staff, there were no warning signs and no traces either. The clouds just vanished. Every server around the world switched off all at once. The backups didn’t so no banking systems worked and there was no way to get your money to pay for anything. Tragic!
The loss of trillions and trillions of crypto cash ‘mined’ in cyberspace made people go absolutely mad. The electric storms prevented any attempts at restarting that global system. Total collapse of society ensued.
The wealthiest lost the most. Those who kept hard cash and the collectors (coins, gems, stamps, precious metals) were the lucky ones.
No one understood how it happened. Since countries did not cooperate or even share systems, no one could accuse a rogue agent from another country. Everyone was in the same sinking boat.
Tragic but for one man in Wales.
He had spent half of his life combing a landfill looking for his lost hard drive full of crypto coins who that day finally stopped his search. There was no longer any hope to retrieve his fortune. He was free.
The Bug farmer is asking me to adjust his. We all have one… This is the coolest my kids says… It’s the keys that give it its edge!
Other than your fingers & toes or writing on paper, there is no other way to count large figures. And counting is still a necessity when living in a community of 328 inhabitants -give or take, in the middle of the East Midlands.