Fantastic Metropolis

I opened the window and leaned out. The window-box betrayed various signs of recent activity. In the moss which separated the petunias there was a miniature crop-circle. On this modest scale the usual explanations for the phenomena—whirlwind, hoax, mating hedgehogs—were more absurd than the possibility that an alien spacecraft had used the location as a landing strip. I brushed the scarred moss with a finger, wondering again about the print on the hovertracks. Filled with a sudden urge to revolt, I called down in the forbidden Esperanto:

“Kiu vi estas? Kien vi iras? Ne iru en la gardenon!”

Along the street, other windows were raised. I waited for soldiers, searchlights, the paraphernalia of trouble. Distant voices mumbled, fell into silence again. Bored with the irony of it all, I retreated, sitting on the bed, shaking. How long could any of us keep this up? The pressure to ignore the date and begin a straightforward life was immense. At last I rose and fled, down to the living room.

Laura was ransacking a cupboard for a torch. “The animal is outside and it’s talking to itself in Esperanto.”

“I am inclined to doubts,” I sighed.

“No, I heard it. Come on, we’ll get it this time.”

I trailed her through the kitchen and into the garden. Looming over the far wall was a giant head, tongue lolling in a steaming mouth, horns curling forward over oily lashes. Fireflies perched on its lips, burning the dusk like flecks of luminous spittle.

Laura hid her face in her hands. “It’s grotesque!”

“No, I think it’s a cow,” I replied.

“What are you talking about? They were outlawed nearly twenty years ago. Is someone illegally breeding them?”

“I guess so. No other explanation. There’ll be a reward if we catch it. Which of our neighbours could it be?”

We approached the creature warily, stepping lightly on the volcanic dust which coated the path. It seemed docile enough, watching us through the widest eyes I have ever seen. But before we reached it, a thunderous rhythm paralysed our resolve. Something new was coming closer, confusing the experience. Across the tracks, visible as a deeper absence of light, a gargantuan shape crushed the sky. It was the expanding woman, sheathed in stiff leathers, a Stetson pulled down over her brow, mounted atop her husband. She tugged the reins looped round his neck and he increased his pace. In one huge hand she swung a lasso.

Laura frowned. “I can’t see any futurism in this.”

“Nor I. We better leave them to it.”

We crept back into the house and held each other in the little room under the stairs. She was close but cold.

“Laura, suppose the expanding woman is just fat? Not a myth at all, not a living urban legend but a human being? She may be the last genuine person on the planet for all I know. I mean, everybody is trying so hard to be what the century wants that we’ve lost ourselves. What if there is nothing mysterious about her great size?”

She draped her arm around my shoulder. “Don’t give up now. Would it help if I came up with a scientific explanation? Perhaps she’s a mirage, a woman whose image has been magnified by a convex lens of polluted air. It’s all that benzine in our atmosphere.”

I grimaced. There was less free oxygen available these days, a fact with one unexpected benefit. Fewer cell-damaging oxidisers had increased the life expectancy for anyone who survived the toxins. I already felt a chain of years bearing me down. To be born in a previous century is hard enough, a previous millennium is unbearable. I remained sullen and Laura lost patience, her nose-rings signalling.

“What did you expect? Did you think ordinariness was ever a choice? How can we continue living simply when the date is futuristic? Blame the numbers, everybody has to work for them.”

“But I’m overdosing on imagination.”

There was little more she could do for me. Yet some comforts thrive in complexity. The teevee can offer much.

In the spare bedroom, I wait by the window with the remote-control. During a party last month it fell into a bowl of rum punch. It has never been quite the same since. It can now influence the hovertrains. I check my watch and raise the device, aiming it at the tracks. The Philadelphia to Waterloo express is due any minute now. It amuses me that after three thousand miles of transatlantic tunnel, a voyage can come to grief in an Ealing allotment. With the appropriate buttons I can make a train pause, fast forward or rewind. Tonight I intend to try an experiment, something truly futuristic. I will change channels.

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“The Expanding Woman” was originally published in The Third Alternative.