Islamic State had thrown down the gauntlet and the rest of the world held its breath.
As many civilians as possible were evacuated from areas threatened by ISIS or could be got away from what had now become a war zone throughout more or less the whole of Iraq and extending into parts of Syria where the internecine conflict between the Assad government and various rebel groups had ground into a murderous stalemate.
At morning prayers when the devout jihadists were all facing east and prostrating themselves before the prophet, two air-burst five megaton hydrogen bombs were detonated simultaneously. They had been placed at high altitude so as to cause the maximum flash burning effect and the least amount of radioactive ground contamination. They had been located 20km apart and East of the main concentration of the ISIS forces and effectively neutralised them.
It was, as the cliché goes, all over in a flash!
The effect on dissident and rebel groups worldwide was salutary. It was now generally understood that NATO and the Eastern Bloc countries were capable of taking strong and decisive action. After the initial wave of panic worldwide, a period of relative calm ensued. In the Middle East a number of seemingly intractable problems began to resolve themselves, particularly those going on in Libya, Algeria and Tunisia.
The next target for intervention was pretty much bound to be the agonies bleeding Syria into the status of a failed state. The threat of a joint NATO – Russian Federation action was enough to bring the Assad Government to negotiating with the various rebel factions under the presumed neutral aegis of the UN. It was going to be a long and tortuous process but at least a grudging cease-fire brought the worst horrors of the conflict to a stop.
The “No more barrel bombs” headline in the international press became a mantra for peace in the following months.
Despite the optimism, the Western Powers acting in support of the Saudi military continued to blockade 23 million starving Yemenis and the endless sufferings of the Gaza – West Bank continued to drag on, seemingly humanity at its worst and without end.
And climate change took back its ever more threatening place on the world political stage.
CO2 and other GHG concentrations continued their ominous rate of increase.
Harry looked around the little bed-sit that he had rented with a deepening sense of unease. There had been one brief acrimonious exchange between him and his wife and he had been forced to pack some things and depart. He had gone in search of Bessie but she had gone incommunicado after hearing that he had split up with his family and he was beginning to realise just how badly he had messed up his life. For the first time he felt the deep wrenching distress that came with estrangement from his, so taken for granted family. He was seized with an almost agonising emptiness, a want to hold and hug his little daughter, tousle the hair of his blue-eyed son. When he closed his eyes he could see their faces, their uncomprehending, hurt, their questioning pain and their loss.
Equally badly, he had lost his job. Laid off, redundant, another statistic in the spiralling vortex of recession. On his available reserves he could afford to keep the bedsit for a few months and although he had no real doubt that he could get work of some sort, he sensed the loss of financial security and familial support. A dark emotional emptiness loomed before him.
Harry was in deep trouble!
They are called “Arctic Methane Emergency Group” said William. “AMEG for short. Another bunch of crackpots if ever I saw one!”
Annette’s mother nodded distractedly and carried on sewing up the little dress she was making for Annabelle. She had no doubt that he was right but she had other things on her mind now that she was matriarch of their newly expanded family. Especially with their somewhat straightened circumstances and the need to feed and look after them all. Her husband was not a very practical man, neither was he all that good at being economical and he had a tendency to fuss about the place now that he wasn’t working. ‘Which was not to say that he wasn’t trying’ she thought loyally, ‘he spent a lot of his time sending off his CV and otherwise filling in application forms.’
It was just that his skill set didn’t seem to fit in very well with the sort of jobs that were on offer.
“You can’t expect me to do shelf-filling in Tesco’s” he said defensively whenever anybody asked how his job searches were going. “I’m a professional manager, almost an executive, you know. Why, I was being groomed for the Board at Carstairs” (his previous employer). “Not my fault if the MD lost our biggest contract when we had to re-tender last year. He should have put in a tighter bid and downsized the staff then, except that he didn’t so we went bust altogether. Now if I’d been in his position…”
Now he had got a bee in his bonnet about global warming and had come across AMEG while trawling the internet.
Alexander had come back from a shopping expedition with Annabelle. He was pleased with himself because he had made some shrewd purchases and was planning up a bit of what he thought of as ‘haute cuisine’. He bought as strictly in line with the household budget as he could and his economies meant that he could afford the luxury of a bottle of ‘Casa Luis’ red. Which was actually on reduction by 25p so he had given in to Bacchus and taken two which resulted in a £3.50 overspend.
“Oh, well” he thought “it will cheer us all up, especially poor old William and I will get us liver tomorrow. Economical, cheap even and full of iron which we could all do with to stave off the horrors of anaemia! Especially for Annette because she is still feeding the little one.
It wasn’t often that Alexander and William had a dispute but the two bottles of wine that was mostly drunk by the men (Annette now being doubly reluctant to have any) led to an exchange about AMEG. Alexander understood the issues only too well after a protracted internet trawl but it was lost on his father-in-law who distrusted online sources at the best of times. And these were not the best of times as he was prone to remark whenever there was a bad item of news on the radio.
“Crackpots and doom-mongers! That’s what they are. Wind-up merchants who don’t have anything more constructive to offer!”
“Do you actually understand what they’re saying?”
“Of course I do, I’m not completely stupid as you seem to be implying.”
“I’m not implying anything. Only these are pretty serious issues they’re talking about.”
“Alexander, these are scaremongering. They’re practically predicting the end of the world as far as I can see and – “he continued before Alexander could interrupt him with the derisive snort that was building in his throat “ - history is full of those!”
“Doesn’t it worry you a little that not only is this a possibility but that there is indisputable evidence in the geological record that it has happened before? Not once but several times, which means that if the conditions are correct then it not only can happen but it will happen?”
This outburst left William lost for a suitable retort so Alexander continued. “The mechanism is very clear and AMEG are telling us that the preconditions for such an event are right here and right now.”
“So what are they actually predicting, then?”
“It is all to do with melting permafrost and release of methane into the atmosphere.”
It was William’s turn to snort. “We release methane into the air every time we fart! Not just us but all the cows and sheep in the world and anything rotting down creates enormous amounts of it. It is entirely natural and it goes on continuously and it has done ever since life evolved. Before that, probably.”
“And that’s your answer?”
William nodded. “That’s my answer. Methane breaks down over time otherwise the air would be full of it. Well, wouldn’t it?”
Alexander emptied his glass and refilled it with the last of the second bottle. “Well these are the facts” he raised his right hand and one finger. “Number one, methane is a powerful greenhouse gas, maybe 25 to 40 times more potent t
han carbon dioxide. Number two” raising a second digit “it has a half-life in the atmosphere of something like ten years before it oxidises into CO2.
“Third, at present the rate of release from all processes, natural and man-made, especially agriculture is about half a megatonne annually and this is roughly in equilibrium with the rate of decay. The present average concentration is around 12 parts per million where it is additive in effect to the CO2 – which is now more than 400ppm and beginning to accelerate as the damned planet suffers ever more bush fires and we go on consuming ever more fossil fuels to drive ourselves around with and heat and cool our ever-growing population in our ever more overheated and crowded planet.”
William opened his mouth to speak but Alexander was in full, red-infuriator fuelled flow and verbally unstoppable.
“AMEG are saying that there will be a sudden and massive release of gas, perhaps doubling the concentration in the short term. That raises the greenhouse effect to double what it is now and equivalent to around 800ppm – pushing the global temperature up by maybe 6oC and that will be catastrophic. The poles melt, sea levels rise massively and the weather becomes much more violent. Life as we know it ceases to exist. It could be the end of mankind itself.”
William closed his mouth, speechless in the face of his stepson’s verbal onslaught.
“We are already in a mass species extinction equivalent to the Permian when 70% of all species were wiped out. The world is disintegrating around us even without the AMEG prediction and all we seem to be concerned about is economic growth and reality television!”
William drained his glass, wondering if he should go into the pantry and get the half- consumed litre bottle of sherry that was the only other source of alcohol in the house.
“Alexander, this stuff is only a theory. It is a theoretical possibility being talked up by AMEG, ‘Doom-watch 2020’ to scare everybody shitless to no good purpose. After all, what can we do about it anyway?”
Alexander read his thoughts and went into the pantry for the sherry. Returning, he poured a good measure into William’s glass, felt a change of mood sweep over him, a kind of resignation. Refilled his own.
“Maybe” he said, meeting William’s eyes “the time is coming when it is every man for himself. Everyone to look out for their own families as best they can. Make contingency plans and place ourselves where best we can survive and endure what is coming over the horizon.” He raised his glass in salute. “They actually call it ‘horizon scanning’ inn the jargon, you know.”
William raised his and clinked it to Alexander’s. He was beginning to see his son-in-law with a new perspective. For the first time since he had become a part of William’s family he felt a genuine respect for him, an understanding of the man rather than the self-confessed ‘cuckoo’ who worked part-time for ‘Next’.
“So what do you suggest we should do, then?”
“I think we should have a serious talk about this tomorrow, when we are sober. And not in earshot of our wives!”
Mohammed was one of The Blind. The Blind were especially accursed. Mohammed had been caught in the act of casting his gaze skyward when he should have been face down on his prayer mat, duly facing East in prostration before The Prophet and uttering prayers from the Holy Quran. It was a matter of Divine Retribution that his retinae were burned away in a brief yet terrible flash of light, repeated for the second time in the instant before his blink reflex might have mitigated the injury from the first.
He did not know, or even remember how he survived the blast wave which followed within a minute or so later, only that the great wall of sound had left him deafened, in part permanently but not wholly because his ear drums had later healed sufficiently for him to answer the call to prayers five times each day.
The skin had peeled from his face and his exposed hands and forearms from second-degree flash burns and the hair that had burned away from his head as it caught fire only ever partially grew back again leaving him with bald disfigurement on the left side and pigmented discolouration which only added to the unattractiveness of his mutilation. Somehow, it was a particularly cruel punishment for a life of jihadist devotion in which he had never for a moment doubted the mission to come. He had been in extensive training and indoctrination to become a suicide bomber. He had practiced wearing a waistbelt packed with explosives with the potential to kill dozens of the infidels and he was only awaiting the call which the others like him had anticipated to be the sacking of Basra in the unstoppable tide of the advance of the Islamic Caliphate.
Only now, instead of sitting at the right hand of The Prophet and enjoying the fawning attentions of delightful virgin maidens as befitted his self-sacrifice, he was reduced to begging outside the proverbial Walls of Jericho along with many others who had similar dismal tales to tell. He could only eat scraps and await the release that malnourishment and distainful maltreatment would eventually bring him and the anonymity of a pauper’s grave.
Bessie was wearing a new dress and she looked gorgeous in it. It was deep purple, almost black, ankle-length and daringly low-cut at the front to display her ample cleavage to best advantage. Harry’s heart lurched in his breast as he rose from behind the table, stepped around it and put out his hands to take hers.
She stepped back a pace, paused then carefully took his, her expression cool in response to his overwhelming ardour, her dainty, smooth hands equally cool to his feverish touch.
“Don’t rush me, Harry!” She wasn’t smiling, eye contact and body language abundantly clear. “Why don’t we sit down?” she said softly.
He ushered her to the chair opposite his, his passion abruptly checked. He was taken aback, lost to know how to respond, to act with this other, incredibly beautiful and desirable femme fatale who was, but was no longer the Bessie he remembered and was expecting to meet.
“You look tired” she said.
“I’ve not been sleeping. Thinking about you. Thinking about us.”
“You’ve left your wife. Your home.” A statement, not a question. He nodded. “I’ve left her for you, Bessie. I...”
She leaned towards him and put a finger to his lips. “Don’t, Harry!”
There was a pause between them. He was deeply aware of the depth and colour of her eyes, lowered his own, seeing the mole just visible on her breast that he knew so well and yearned to touch, to kiss as he had done so many times in the past.
“You were going to say how much you love me?”
He nodded, uncertain, lost, wondering what was coming next.
“Harry, you don’t really know me any more than I really know you. We are lovers, that’s all.”
“I love you, Bessie!”
“Not really. Harry” a pause then softly “Darling!” She reached across and placed her finger to his lips again. “We are lovers. I love you in bed. I love making love with you. I love your body. The things you do with me, do to me!” Then at last she smiled. “We can spend the night together tonight. If you still want me to, that is.”
“What do you mean? If I still…”
“Harry!” She took his hand in hers, turned it palm up, tickled it, traced his lifeline, met his gaze, paused then said very quietly, so quietly that he had to lean forward to hear her. “Harry, darling! How often have we been together?”
He shook his head in puzzlement.
“I’ll tell you” she said. “We have come to this hotel just seven times for seven – and I do mean this, Harry – wonderful weekends. Seven weekends in the almost exactly eleven months since we first met.” She took a visibly deep breath, looked directly into his eyes.
“What did you expect me to do in between whiles?”
“What? What do you mean? In between whiles?”
“Oh, Harry! The last time we could be together was six weeks ago. We ate, drank, laughed and screwed each other silly. And in between whiles we watched the hotel television. So what have I been doing in all those ot
her ‘in between whiles’ between when we have been together last?
Harry, you are not the only one!”
Harry was by now totally bemused.
“Not the only one?”
“I have had other lovers. I have other lovers.”
Only then did the scales fall from Harry’s eyes. Bessie, his Bessie whom a benevolent Bacchanalian God had gifted to him had been having an elaborate jest at his expense. ‘Bessie! How could she?’
His eyes blazed with rage and the knowledge of the cuckolded man. He half rose out of his chair before she could stop him.
“You…, you…”
In the same instant Bessie also stood, pushed a pointed finger into his chest.
“Don’t!” The anger and the force in that one word choked off his words. “If you say that word, or even think it I will go now and you will never see me again. Harry, please sit down. Hear me out.” She let her voice die back as she resumed her seat, never taking her eyes from his. After a pause that must have seemed an endless lifetime to both of them, he too sagged, then slumped into his chair.
“I’m not what you think, Harry” she continued but quietly now, her voice low and sultry. “There are two other men in my life. I’ve known them both for a very long time and they know each other. In fact, they are friends. Because of the constraints in their lives, we only meet up much the same as you and I meet up when they can and when I, too am free. In that way their marriages and families hold together and I can live my life in the way that I have chosen. By the way, I can’t have children or my life would be very different”
She reached to him with her hands, took his right in both of hers. “Dear Harry! I was going to tell you all this when the time was ready only you jumped the gun and now you’ve left your wife and family and I will get the blame for it, won’t I?”
Harry stood up again, this time with weariness and defeat etched into his face, turned and stumbled away. Completely numb, he walked to the car park, found his car keys and drove away, not knowing where he intended to go.
The World Population was estimated to be 7,331,348, 000 as at 10am GMT 27 July 2015 only it wouldn’t have allowed for a seven year old boy who died on a construction site in Worsbrough, near Barnsley or the 1129 workers who died in the Rana Plaza sweatshop garment factory collapse on May 13 2013.
On this day the price of precious metals had reached a five-year low and was showing no sign that the slump was bottoming out. LONMIN and Anglo-American were laying off 12000 staff in South Africa’s mines between them.
“And those were the good times” mused William. For some forgotten reason he had bookmarked this page in the Guardian Online that day but he felt a resigned indifference now after his investment portfolio had collapsed and ‘the Footsie could do whatever it liked!’ he bemoaned ‘because he was completely out of it and reduced to a state of near penury as a result and both unemployed and unemployable into the bargain’.
Actually, it closed the day at 3644, down 177 points on news of a further downturn in the Chinese economy.
He had not had that discussion with Alexander after all. As the empty wine bottles dropped with a final-sounding crash into the recycling bin the next morning he had concluded that there was nothing constructive to be said and there was nothing to be gained by further raking over the particular coals of their diminished family circumstances.
Besides which, a slightly hungover Alexander had gone out foraging on his bicycle. It was the blackberry season and he knew where there had been some excellent ones last year. Great bushes of cultivars that had been ‘let go’ on a parcel of waste ground that had been previously earmarked for retail development, then stalled by the slump. He had harvested so many that last year’s home-made jam had only just been finished and the empty jars lined up in the pantry awaiting for the new harvest.
Only he was in for a disappointment. The dry weather had shrivelled the berries from anticipated bounty into small, hard and sharp-tasting little offerings and these were already being picked over by other foragers.
“Times” he thought miserably “are getting harder”.