Beyond Oblivion

By Trevor P. Kwain

Seven stories of tomorrow. Seven stories of human life we may recognise. From social interactions and council matters, to the burden of mortgages and the changes to city life. Seven stories to remind us who we are and what we take for granted.

• Language: English
• Publisher: ThreePeppers Publishing
• Release date: Jan 29, 2021
• ISBN: 9781999326890

Trevor P. Kwain

"I Love Wimbledon, History and the Absurd"Trevor P. Kwain is a child of the Eighties. He belongs to the video generation and multi-media lifestyle that is slowly degenerating speech and text of today. Yet, he is no knight in shiny armour to defend the old way of writing. He simply wants to bridge the written word with the dormant imagination in people's minds. An eclectic mind may find the third way, the third alternative, in a bi-dimensional reality torn between yesterday and tomorrow.Trevor P. Kwain currently lives in London.

Book preview

The mortgage

The agent welcomed the couple inside the freestanding chromium steel pod. They had been waiting in the crowded square for over an hour and the heat had started to take its toll among the prospect mortgagees waiting impatiently in line. The cool breeze of the pod was bliss, refreshing. The couple could not hide their sighs of relief as they sat down on two ergonomic resin plastic chairs. The agent could also tell from their expression that the cool air from the air conditioning was a gentle wind of change bringing good omen for the new chapter in their lives.

The agent made the three golden rules clear to the couple before proceeding with a review of their mortgage application. First, each mortgagee was assigned a warden upon arrival. They were bound by contract to engage with him within twenty–four hours of arrival and each time a mortgage consultation was required. The warden was the one and only link with the life left behind. Second, no disclosure of your true origins was allowed during the life term of the mortgage. This included relatives or friends you may encounter or build relationships with over the years. Last but not least, once the jump was made, for the mortgagee no return to the source was possible. The warden would not accept any return requests of any kind unless a fault from the Agency was identified. Any harm or danger incurred after the start of the mortgage was sole responsibility of the applicant. If the Agency recognised their fault, an escape red button would be provided. Whether the warden had this button or was in contact with the source or was able to jump back himself, the rule did not specify.

The agent took a pause to catch some air. He smiled at the couple and asked if they had any questions. It was the nine hundred and twenty-seventh time he had repeated the three rules. Each time without rushing and always enunciating each word distinctly. The couple confirmed their understanding and added they had already read the appendix on the three rules. The agent was not surprised. With everyone wishing to apply for a mortgage, it was now common practice to prepare in advance before taking the jump with no return.

The next phase was to review the couple’s application. Their profiling through a rigorous health and psychological assessment. The choice of location and settings for the mortgage, including property and wealth. While the life-long mortgage was free with no money owed to the Agency, the mortgagee’s life conditions would be dictated by the lump sum he or she would pay in advance before the jump to their destination. It was a fair investment for both sides and the Agency took at heart the well-being of each mortgagee, whenever and wherever that may be.

The couple sat happy at the desk holding hands and exchanging smiles full of hope. They nodded or shook their heads in answer to each question from the agent, unable most of the time to contain their excitement. Each section of the application successfully ticked off meant a step closer to the biggest change in their life.

The interview finished earlier than scheduled. The agent closed their file on the suspended hologram screen and invited the couple to take a seat in the adjacent capsule. The couple thanked him more than once and followed the agent’s directions through a round door and into a transparent plastic tunnel. The blurred view of the crowded square scorched by sun and heat was a stark reminder of what they had just left behind. The cool air indoors and the clean, neat interior was a breath of fresh air from the piles of rubble and the wrecked wasteland on the horizon. They had been on the waiting list for more than two years, and when the Agency’s self-driven car came to announce the pick-up, the couple were ready at the door with the necessary luggage.

A man and a woman in lab coats welcomed them into the adjacent capsule and invited them to take a seat. The row of plastic chairs placed close to each other was more than three quarters full. Men and women, old and young, couples and singles, were mixed on this waiting line. At the far end, a metal doorframe was moving slowly, suspended in mid-air by magnets. It positioned itself in front of a young woman wearing only a pair of turquoise overalls made of light fabric. Nothing else. The warden was in charge of giving new clothes, new accessories, new money, items from a by-gone era you had never touched or seen in person if not in one of those inviting digital brochures from the Agency.

The couple sat next to an old man. The seat next to him was empty, left by a young man busy changing into the overalls in one of the cubicles provided in one corner. As they settled in, the metal doorframe emitted a sound and turned its lights on. The woman in the lab was busy preparing the portal and, in a few seconds, a blue and wavy plasma formed in the space framed by the metal door. She told the young woman it was time to jump and start the mortgage. The destination was written on the small screen on top of the portal. 1856 AD, Western United States. The young woman was clear to go. Her vitals steady, her jump on schedule. She hesitated. The old lady next to her nudged her with the elbow giving a look of reassurance to boost her confidence. A few seconds passed before she disappeared through the portal and her body almost melted in the virtual fluidity of the plasma. She was gone.

A quiet round of applause ensued and died out almost instantly. The woman in the lab coat announced it was now the old lady’s turn and hovered the portal in front of her while pressing more buttons to start a new pre-up session. The couple were given a small bottle each to drink to ease the body tension before and after the jump. They were advised some nausea was normal and would not last for more than thirty minutes. The warden, apparently, was always within thirty metres of the drop at destination if things worsened. The man in the lab said the probability of that happening was three percent. The Agency had everything taken care of.

As the fragile silhouette of the old lady prepared itself for a steady jump, the young man returned to his seat in his overalls and traded places with the old man. The couple stared at the large window ahead. The last glimpse of their life, the last minutes in their old and scruffy plain clothes. The grey world outside hardly changed under the sun or on rainy days. It showed little variation from mile to mile if it were not from a bombed area, a collapsed skyscraper or a wide crater in the ground. On the way to the crowded square, the couple had looked back at their flat and could hardly tell which of the identical grey, nondescript blocks was their home. It was no surprise the colourful digital brochures depicting happy men, women and children in period costumes fascinated everyone and led more and more people to apply for a mortgage. It promised a new home, a new life, forever. The world of today was gone, beyond the brink of collapse, and in a few minutes the mortgagees in the small capsule, and maybe even all those in the crowded square, would leave for good, leaving it all behind. The big jump, they called it, for pretty obvious reasons.

By the time the capsule stood in front of the portal, the line of chairs had refilled with new people from all ages and backgrounds. The couple looked up to read their destination with great anticipation. 26 AD, Rome.

The warm summer air was the first thing to hit the couple on arrival. Then came the soft and dry green grass of the meadow they landed on. Long shadows and an orange pink hue at the horizon hinted at dusk or dawn soon approaching.

The couple sat up on the grass in a foggy daze. Their hands were still clasped together from the jump to face the immediate nausea. The quiet of their new surroundings was magical and disorientating. The couple felt out of place for a few minutes until a husky voice cried out their names from behind a bush. He called out twice until he knew he had the couple’s attention and carefully moved out of hiding. The man, burly in appearance and soft in his manners, wore nothing but a two-piece tunic and leather sandals with long laces tied around his calves. He was their warden, and with a pleasant smile, he invited them to follow him to their new home, a medium-sized Roman villa.

The couple had been in love with Ancient Rome for years. One studied Latin, one studied archaeology. That was before universities closed down, when their present was a better one. Thus, when the mortgage offer started including the choice of time alongside location, they signed up and waited for the call. Millions signed up to apply for a house in exotic locations, in by-gone eras. Despite the never-ending queues and selective process, everyone soldiered on with their heads full of dreams and nostalgia. The mortgage was your one-way ticket to live in the past forever.

The warden did not give his name, but his polite manners were good enough for the couple to trust him entirely. Nobody knew who they were apart from him. He invited the couple to climb on his cart and quickly set into motion for their destination. The gentle rocking of the cart felt miles away from the frenetic jump back in time. The couple started to relax finally, and the scenery made them forget the nausea. The warden led them through the meadow onto a paved road. After less than a mile, he turned right into a dirty road and slowly descended into a low valley. The road was lined with pine trees, and straight ahead, the couple could see their new home, a medium-sized Roman villa with a small courtyard and a small barn just outside. The warden asked them to get changed with the pack of clothes in one corner of the cart. A small team of servants would be waiting for them and they would expect to see true Roman noblemen coming from a nearby city as their new masters.

Settling in was not part of the discussions before the jump. Once the mortgage started, the warden was responsible for briefing the mortgagee on how to live and breathe the new timeline they would be living in. The first week was intense and new arrivals were hardly exposed to any of the locals. Local customs and language were the primary lessons. The warden gave an injection to implant the necessary learnings in your brain. By the end of the second day, the couple were able to speak classical Latin and understand the daily routine, from cooking and table manners to religious offerings at the local temple. The warden lived with you for the first month to monitor your well-being and how you were coping with your new way of life. By the end of the first week, the couple had already forgotten their past future and its misery. Their life was now about managing the harvest, honouring the gods and the emperor, celebrating with lavish banquets and good wine. The warden’s last task was a series of warnings to avoid mortgagees to cause self-harm or disrupt their mortgage lifespan. Apart from the three famous rules, the warden was adamant about forbidding any intervention on local matters using knowledge from the future. The mortgagee had to respect the status quo of their timeline and refrain from bringing disruptive change such as inventions or suggesting scientific discoveries centuries before they happened. He told the couple of a few isolated cases he had to handle, such as mortgagees who attempted to introduce the steam engine in the Middle Ages or the concept of Earth being round to prehistoric men. Their contract was terminated on the spot. The couple swallowed hard upon hearing these stories. They did not ask for details on what he implied with the word ‘terminated’ and the warden hardly gave away any hint. However, a few days before the warden was meant to complete his work and leave, at a point where friendship could almost be struck, the couple dared ask the warden about him and his life. They sat in the open air of the courtyard, chatting over a glass of their local wine. The warden hesitated at first. He had sworn secrecy to the Agency but keeping secrets for years had taken its toll. Or maybe the wine had inebriated him and played tricks on his mind. Or maybe the couple were not like one of these single men taking their mortgage as a reckless adventure, or one of those elderly couples unable to fit in a past they longed for so much but did not recognise. The warden checked they were alone and took his time in telling how he had spent his life fifteen years of his life in Ancient Rome. How he had seen the Republic fall and Augustus become emperor. How he had struggled to survive the first year as part of training. Wardens were hardly re-assigned to a different time. He loved his job though and he would never go back. The couple asked if he was interested in knowing about the present, but the warden declined politely. He thought the less he knew, the better.

That was the last conversation the couple had with the warden. He left at dawn the morning after, ready to meet new arrivals up north. From then on, the couple were ready to live their new life on their own. Their mortgage officially started that early morning. The sun shone low across the valley and washed the villa and their faces with a soothing warmth. The couple for a moment thought of the wrecking heat in what was now a distant present. But they hardly remembered it. The same with the bombed-out cities, the collapsed governments, the barbaric attitudes.

Days in Ancient Rome turned to months. Months turned to years. For the couple, years turned into calendae and season cycles. Their rhythms slowly took the habits of the locals. The offering at Saturn’s temple nearby with the servants, the trips to the market village to sell a pig or a cow, the walks in the meadow. The couple did not miss the touch screens, the beeping technology, the Christian morality. They enjoyed their nights filled with good food and lively entertainment. Their days were filled with self-fulfilling work, from growing the land to improving their villa with the servants’ help. As expected, the Agency never showed up and the couple never felt the need to send for the warden. In the back of their mind, they knew, or perhaps hoped, the agency tracked their movements and monitored their actions. Years rolled by with the comforting assumption of security until the day of the robbery.

The coupled had learned to gain their servants’ trust without raising doubts about their true origins. As old servants left and new ones arrived, to them they were always the kind and well-off couple at the bottom of the valley. Their personal background, built by the Agency, always checked up with the locals through time, and the couple were as Roman as Caesar himself. The reason things turned out differently is still not clear. One night the couple were awakened by loud voices and crashing sounds outside. One of the long-serving maids stormed in with fear and panic in her eyes. She told them a band of men with ugly intentions had sieged the villa and were forcing their way in. She had not finished explaining when a large man with a rough beard and a scar across his face came through grunting. Two men moved to his side, slimmer but meaner in appearance. They all held their daggers and clubs high up. They shouted to move out into the courtyard together with all the servants. The couple, fearing for their lives, followed orders and begged to spare everyone’s lives. They were pushed out into the cooler air of the night. A fire burnt high in the middle of the courtyard where the rest of the gang was rounding up the last servants. The couple kept pleading for mercy and offered them to take whatever they wanted. They kept on begging but the large man with the scar, clearly the leader of the bunch, hardly talked back. The couple’s pleads turned to questions and demands for an explanation. The large man stayed silent. He then hinted at one of his men, and before a blink of an eye, they slit the throat of two servants from ear to ear. The bandits then took their time to steal some food, some jewellery, some wine, until the fire burnt out and they decided to leave the villa for good. The couple saw them disappearing in the darkness, a few moments before dawn broke out. Suddenly, the rising sun was no longer warm, and the sound of chirping birds was deafened by the weeps and tears of the servants.

The bandits returned to the scene a second time. Same tactics, same robbery. Despite increased security at the villa, they kept coming back at the most unexpected times. The robbery became a recurring event over the course of three months and the couple found themselves struggling to keep the pace, plan their food, refill their pantry, and safeguard the lives of new servants. The irony was how well they became accustomed to their aggressors, their uncovered faces. Still fearing them but no longer people unknown to them. By the ides of July, the couple decided to seek help with the prefect in the nearby town. The centurion’s attitude was picky in recording every single detail and asking the scribe to record it all despite the cramps in the scribe’s hand. However, when it came down to doing something about it, he was pretty dismissal and vague. The couple’s first hands-on experience with policing in the Roman Empire made it clear they had no guarantee of protection. It was all on best efforts. The centurion did not even offer to come and see the crime scene. The couple thought of hinting at criminal investigation techniques but refrained from doing so when recalling the warnings from the warden. No use of the future in the past. And so, the couple returned to the villa empty-handed. They took time to retreat to their bedroom and