“Dad, I’m tired of eating roaches. Can’t we have something else?”

“Georgy Boy, there’s been nothing else since 2050.”

“Aw, I’d kill for something else.”

Georgy and his Dad walked on, slowly winding through the trees with their brown trunks sticking out of the ground at regular distances like a tray of frozen lolly-pops.  Two pairs of eyes were peeled for movement.  The right sort of movement.  A gentle rustle.  A leaf that moved in the still air.  A flash of shiny black.  You had to take dinner where you found it.  No time to think, just reach out and grab it.  The trees were thin and spindly.  The green leaves hung down like a teenager’s lank hair.  The Lemur sat in the branch looking languidly at the father and son pair; it held half a roach in its paw.  It was reclined on its back with long grey legs bent at the knees.  It held the roach up in the air with one paw to get a better view before bringing it back down and chewing slowly on the remains.  The lemur sighed, louder than it had meant to.  The sigh fell to the ground landing somewhere in the dirt.

“Dad, why is there nothing else?” Georgy Boy was getting bored with the scenery.  They had walked this corner of the Globisphere just a month ago.  He figured it was a month.  It was hard to say how long it had been really when all the corners looked quite similar.  There was nothing to measure your memories by when novelty didn’t exist.  Nothing had changed much since the last passing.  There were the same trees, same dirt and same air.  There was a small dent on the ground where it looked like something had fallen recently.

“It was the Great Carbon Leak son.”

“The Great Carbon Leak?”

“Yeah.  It made things too warm, changed the vegetation and the water.  You see those trees son?”

“Yeah Dad.  They’re real thin.”

“Sure are son.  They’re too thin ‘cause there’s too much carbon in the air, and we got good air in here too.  But ain’t no-one to keep it good anymore so slowly it’s getting worse.  The carbon makes them grow too fast.”

Georgy Boy took in the Spindly Trees.  They didn’t look well.  They looked like they had held up their arms looking for someone to help them.  Instead their arms had been pulled too hard stretching them right out, and leaving them sore and lonely.  

“The insects didn’t like the vegetation, it ain’t got the right nutrients ‘cause it grows too fast.  If you grow too fast, you don’t grow strong.  So the insects got the wrong nutrients too and didn’t grow right, and the vegetation was making more of something bad the insects couldn’t stomach.  Then the heat got um.”

Georgy tried to imagine insects.  He knew already they sort of looked like roaches, but they sounded like they were much more fun and he imagined infinitely better tasting than the dull thud roaches made on your tongue.  He tried to imagine a purple one with widespread wings and big beady eyes onto a branch.  It didn’t take.

“Son, not much I wouldn’t do for a grasshopper right now.”

They walked on in silence for a while.  Georgy looked for differences in the surrounds so he could remember it more clearly, unusual bark markings, odd shaped leaves, or the texture of the earth.  Georgy Boy always listened in awe to his Dad’s stories.  He could never quite imagine the world as his Dad had seen it.  The world seemed to have been much fuller then.  He would try and picture the creatures his Dad described and pretend he could see them hiding behind trees with their eyes shining at him like hope trapped in a bottle.  Maybe if he believed hard enough they could be real, but like the purple insect nothing had taken yet.

They knew this patch just like they knew every patch.  Two spindly trees above them leaned in toward each other.  One tree had a curled up leaf that had failed to open as it grew.  The tree to the right had a scratch down its trunk that never healed.  They knew there was a clearing coming up just ahead, a small area with fewer Spindly Trees and more Raggedy Bushes.  Raggedy Bushes had soft green stems instead of hard and brown.  You couldn’t really climb them.  They would just collapse if you did but they had more leaves than the trees.  The branches sort of drooped back on themselves giving the impression that they had just got tired and given up.  This made the bushes knotty in places.  The Dog hung out in the clearing.  The Dog ate roaches too, but you couldn’t trust him.  The Dog would also kill to eat something else.  They stopped before they were in view of the clearing.

“Dad, how come the Dog never comes into the trees?”

“He’s allergic son.”

“What’s that mean?”

“Son, the Dog got sensitive skin.  You see ‘cause the trees don’t grow right and make too much of the bad stuff in their leaves, the Dog’s skin gets itchy.  It’s sorta why nothing will eat the leaves, not even the Lemur.  The Lemur tried it once, didn’t see it for a week.”

They could hear the Dog rustling with his nose in a bush looking for roaches.  Georgy thought he heard a small crunch, a munchlette really.  The Dog must have found one, although the bush continued to rustle like the Dog was shaking a tin of candy sprinkles and lapping them up as they fell out.

“Dad, what do the roaches eat?”

“Rubbish son, roaches is detritivores.  If it wasn’t for them eating rubbish we wouldn’t be here.  This place would be filthy too.  You know son, there used to be creatures that only ate vegetation.”

“Wow.  Did they go when the trees went funny?”

“Yeah son.  We had them in the Globisphere for a while but then the carbon started getting in.  The vegetation went funny and the vegetation eaters all died out.  Lucky for us son that roaches were the way of the future.  We got into roaches early.”

They turned away from the clearing.  Georgy looked over his shoulder at the Dog.  He felt sorry for it trapped in its little clearing of Raggedy Bushes inside the Globisphere.  He was conscious of it pacing from one end of the clearing to the next with tired paws, and eyes even more weary at the lack of novelty every time it turned its head.  They would stop and have a look at it again next time they passed.  He tried to imagine what the vegetation eaters might look like.  He pictured green furry creatures with four legs, but longer than those of the Dog so that they could reach the leaves.  They’d have to have a big mouth, stretching from pointy ear to pointy ear, to eat more than one leaf at a time as there were so few leaves per tree.  He imagined a few standing together away in the distance.  He figured they were probably friendly and would want to be in a group, but they didn’t take.  He put them back inside his head so he could try again later.

They walked on through the trees with their lank hair leaves and pale thin trunks.  Little creatures lived up in the trees tops.  Little round furry nameless things.  They were smaller than the Lemur.  They had big saucer eyes and little ears to keep out the noise of their own shrill shrieks.  Georgy’s Dad described the eyes as being like moons, but Georgy had never seen a moon.  As a consequence he pictured the moon as being large and round, with a grey-blue surface that was a little damp.  They didn’t seem very bright, but they were chatty.  They seemed to actually like roaches.  Maybe they even enjoyed roaches.  Some creatures lucked out in the new world.  It would have been pretty quiet if it wasn’t for their chatter; someone had to fill the air with sound.  Without sound the air wouldn’t circulate and would go rancid.  It was the sound that made it move.  Georgy thought this was how his Dad had described sound, but couldn’t quite remember.

“Dad.  Why does nothing else talk so much?”

“Talk about what son?  We’ve all seen every corner of the Globisphere, and it’s not like anything much happens.  There used to be other chatters, back outside of here.”

“Tell me about the other chatters Dad.”

“Well son.  They were like lizards but with feathers and pointy hard mouths.  They lived mostly in the trees but they could walk through air.  They called it flying.”

“You’re making it up!  Really Dad?  Did they really live in the air?  What happened?  Didn’t they eat roaches?”

“They ate roaches alright, most of them anyway.  You shoulda seen them.  Proud creatures, they reckoned they had the best way of living.  They had the land and the air, the trees and the ground.  Unfortunately it was the hard eggshell that got them, you see proper lizards lay soft shells.  All that sophistication, and yet a lack of calcium got the flyers.  Like I said the nutrient balance got all out of whack, starts with the carbon and keeps going.  The shells got laid soft and they can’t survive like that.  Not enough calcium for bones and shells you see.  Was one or the other.  Those roaches are good enough for us, but they ain’t what they used to be either, not enough nutrients for some creatures.”

“Jeez Dad, that’s tough.”

“Yeah, it’s a tough world son.  Shame, I liked them flying lizards.  They filled the air with some lovely sounds.  You always know when the Dog is around too, they would tell you.  Friendly like that.  Mind you the other trouble with flying around is you need good lungs to catch all the oxygen.  Ain’t as much oxygen as there used to be either.  The Spindly Trees are trying, but they ain’t up to keeping it how it used to be.”

The little creatures up in the treetops kept chattering on, as if to prove they were just as good as any flying reptile.  Sometimes they chattered in concord as if they had just come to agreement on some important point.  The ground was getting harder underfoot, and soon they would have to change direction again.  The ground was softer in the middle of the Globisphere.  The skyroof had little round dots on it in a hexagonal tiled pattern so that the moisture in the air, from all the animals and plants breathing, would condense and drip back down again.  There were no dots near the edge.  They were nearly at the edge now.  The ground was dry and hard.

“Can I see the edge again, please Dad?”

“Sure son.”

A few hours later they were at the edge.  The cool hard surface was dusty on the outside.  It was hard to see out.  There was a suggestion of dust blowing around wildly in the outer world.  Georgy Boy thought he could make out some green in the distance.  Long, tall plants with a single leaf somewhere in the dust storm.  He had seen the edge many times before.  It was a chance to get a change of scenery before they headed back into the middle again and then out to some other part of the edge.  He tried to imagine the world outside with flying lizards, and lots of fat trees with vegetation eaters pulling at the leaves.  He imagined a friend for the Dog.  If only he could reach into his brain and pull it all out; post it out like a pop-up card that came to life when you opened it up.  He tried to imagine other sounds, but it was hard to imagine sound.  Sound doesn’t work as well as images inside the mind.  There’s far too much soft stuff to dampen it down.

The edge itself came down in a curve penetrating deep into the earth.  From the earth the edge rose slowly and slowly upwards, gently curving toward the centre.  So slow that you hardly knew it was a curve.  So high you hardly knew it was a skyroof and not a sky.  He knew the sky should be blue and not crystal white, his Dad had told him that, that was how you knew you were still inside.  He was glad to be inside.  At least there were roaches in here.  He wasn’t sure that there was anything useful outside.  He had never seen an animal outside.  He was a little glad about that though.  He wouldn’t wish anything to be stuck out there in the dust.

“Dad, tell me about the soft lizards again.  The ones that jumped.”

“You would have liked them Georgy.  I felt sorry for those little buggers.”

Georgy wished he could have seen the soft lizards.  Of all the things past his Dad told him about, they were his favourite.  He imagined some on the Spindly Trees.  He wasn’t sure they lived on trees, but it seemed like a good bet given most things did.  He made them yellow with pink spots and waited to see if they would take.

“They were good fun.  They had this soft, slippy skin.  Some were real colourful.  They were chatters come to think of it, but it was like they would try to chat and then it would get stuck in their throat and sort of burst out.  They had real long back legs so when they tried to walk, they sort of popped forward too far.  Real funny creatures.”

“Did the carbon get them Dad?”

"Yeah son.  It was that soft slippy skin of theirs.  Let everything in.  The Great Carbon Leak and then the sulphur they squirted into the sky afterwards to try and fix it.  When the rain came down, the poor little buggers just sort of melted away.  They needed the water to live you see, was no good if it was acidic.  The water just kinda ate them.  Damn shame.  They loved roaches too; the new world would have been great for them.”

“Jeez Dad, I would like to have seen one.”  The yellow ones with pink spots had failed to take.

Through Spindly Trees and brown dirt they walked on.  The little furry creatures chattered on above them.  Occasionally they jumped from tree to tree.  A precarious trick if the tree was too soft and springy, you could end up anywhere.  The Lemur looked down on Georgy Boy and his Dad with his curious yellow eyes.  He had started on a new roach.  He picked it over, examining the wings between his fingers.  Watching Georgy Boy and his Dad was a pastime, everyone needs a hobby.  If ever a new food should grow, Georgy’s Dad would surely be the first to spot it.  Maybe one day there would be something other than roaches.  Maybe.  One day.

“You know son.  Those soft lizards lived in the water, that’s why the rain hit them so hard.  They weren’t the only ones.  Out there, past the edge, there’s water so big you can’t see the end.  Nothing can live there now though.  Same problem, too acidic.  Some sea creatures had hard shells, like the eggs of flying lizards.  They couldn’t grow properly, everytime they tried the water dissolved their coat away again.  Those things fed other things.  You just can’t go removing things like that.  Everyone has to wear the consequences.  Those little creatures had nothing to wear, that was their consequence.”

“I can’t imagine living in the water Dad.  It would really hurt after a while.”

“No, you can’t live in it anymore son.  Mind you that was partly ‘cause of the nitrogen leak.  It spoiled the water too.  Made the water rancid so that only water roaches could grow.”

One of the little furry things landed in front of them.  It looked surprised to be there.  The moon eyes were full.  They stopped to contemplate it for a moment while it tried to calculate how it got out of the tree.  Then it was gone.  It gave a shrill squeak then clambered back up a nearby Spindly Tree.  From the accusatory looks it gave them it seemed the furry thing thought that somehow it was Georgy and his Dad’s fault it had fallen out of the tree at all.

“Damn bendy trees” said Georgy Boy’s Dad, “that Dog will get lucky one day.”

Georgy contemplated all his lessons from the day, oxygen, nitrogen, carbon, and calcium.  He didn’t feel very fragile but recognised that he must be if such small things as those could make him live or die.  He wondered what they looked like.  Maybe if he conjured up some oxygen and calcium those flying lizards could come back.  It was hard to picture oxygen.  He tried to feel it in his lungs so he could imagine it more accurately.  It was sort of round and soft, but smooth and probably pale blue.  There was no way to tell if he was making any more of it, but he kept breathing just in case.  He tried to picture little blue balls, almost transparent, floating out of his mouth into the air, and up toward the skyroof.  Maybe if they hit the round dots that made the water they would turn into something good.

They continued to meander through the trees, looking out for roaches on the way.  Georgy placed some brand new creature in each tree in the hope that one of them would take hold.  Small scaly animals, fat furry animals with orange hair, bright blue soft lizards.  The Lemur looked at a leaf, he knew he would regret it but it would be nice just to taste something different.  He held it in his hand and turned it over.  Maybe this leaf wouldn’t be so bad.  He lay on his back in the hook of the branch and held the leaf up to consider his options.  He scratched his head and sighed.  Something floated down to the ground just behind Georgy Boy leaving a small dent in the ground.

They hadn’t gone very far from the edge, more walking parallel with it than towards the centre.  As long as you were in reach of water it didn’t matter, it was all sort of the same.  The consequences of getting lost were low, unless you fell into the clearing where the Dog was.  The chances of getting lost were even less.  Georgy and his Dad heard a strange sound from near the edge.  Anything strange was worth investigating.  They walked toward the sound with its burbling noises and lots of sniffing.  Then they saw the creature that was making the sound.  The creature was pink and two legged.  There were no scales or feathers or fur.  It was quite large, bigger than the Dog, but just as thin.  It was sitting on the ground leaning against the edge.  It had two other leg like things folded up over the real legs, so that they seemed to hold the real legs in stopping them from spreading too far from the body.  It seemed to be trying to make itself smaller.  Salt water dripped down from its brown eyes leaving pale red marks on the skin.  Georgy Boy reckoned it knew he was there, but it wasn’t looking.  Maybe it hoped if it didn’t look no-one would really notice it was there.  It seemed a bit scared or embarrassed.  It wasn’t easy to tell how it felt because he had never seen one before, and didn’t recognise its expressions.

“What sort of animal is that Dad?”

“That’s a human son.  We don’t talk to them.”

“Why not Dad?”

“They caused the Great Carbon Leak.  Thought the planet was theirs.  No-one likes a planet hog.”

“Wow.”

“Then they built this Globisphere.  Tried to recreate the planet in here.  They must have thought this thing would last forever.  Spose we’re better off in here than out there, but I don’t know what will happen with the carbon leaking in like it does.”

“What’s wrong with the creature Dad?”

“It’s lonely son.  It’s the last one.  Funny I never heard them chatting before.  I didn’t recognise the sound.  Now the Globisphere is falling apart they aren’t doing very well.  They don’t like roaches much either.  They need a lot of water too.  I don’t think they get enough from roaches.”

Georgy realised that the poor creature was ashamed too.  It darted a glance at him, but dared spend no more than a glance.  It drew its legs in closer and turned its head away.  The sound of burbling seemed repressed like it was sticking in its throat.  Georgy Boy wondered if that was how soft lizards sounded, like something was held deep inside trying to get out but dared not.

“Will they soon be gone like the flying lizards and vegetation eaters too Dad?”

“Yes son.  Like I said they haven’t been doing too well.”

Georgy looked at the creature, he felt sorry for it but he would have liked to see soft lizards hopping about.  He wondered, when the creature was gone, if he would imagine it back again.  He suspected not.

“Come on son, best not to be seen near it.  Others might think we’re socialising.  We’d be outcasts,” they turned their backs.

“C‘mon, let’s have a swim instead.”

They left the creature to its misery and walked in toward the centre of the Globisphere.  The burbling got louder at first as they walked away and then faded behind them.

Georgy Boy and his Dad jumped into a puddle.  The slightly acidic water was great for sloughing off the last of the old coat which itched so much.  Being trapped inside a layer of old skin was tight, itchy and a little claustrophobic.  Georgy Boy admired his new scales.  They were shiny blue and flicked off the light with calm ease.  Then something stirred nearby.  He turned his head to look in the direction that he thought it had moved.  It moved again, and he shot out his tongue and caught the shiny black roach.

Copyright © Louise Osborne 2016 All Rights Reserved. No part of this document may be reproduced without written consent from the author.