Hope Placed in the Jeremy Greens, and Others Like Them

by Jinny Alexander

1924: The Jeremy Greens

After the earthquake, they reset the world.

We adapt with more ease than the Originals, as we know no different. This is a world of possibility and hope. We are here for one purpose: to perpetuate humankind. These surroundings are our home, but not our problem.

Our faction has been allocated a neat, squat row of houses, each similar to the next, and internally, the same layout. We enter from the street, crossing a small patch of garden. Some are planted with flowers, and bloom brightly against the grey sky. Others are paved or neglected; weeds poke through cracks. It is of no matter to us. Each front door opens to a windowed room, facing the street. Behind it, an identically-sized room, windowed to the rear. Beyond, a galley kitchen leads to a compact bathroom. We are fortunate, our Parent tells us, for this internal bathroom. Not all homes of this era were so advanced. Between the main rooms, a steep staircase leads to two similar-sized rooms above. The rear bedroom leads to another small room, which holds a single bed. The larger rooms each contain two, accommodating five in each house. Our faction numbers eighty. Sixteen houses, joined as a line.

In a seventeenth house, at the end of our terrace, lives our Parent, alone.

Bar these seventeen houses, the street is unoccupied. We have claimed the gardens and grow much produce there.

Each house is the same, though the furnishings differ. In this, an orange-edged, angled mirror hangs above a tiled fireplace but it serves little purpose; we only need to look at one another to see our dark curls, our cleft chin, our grey-blue eyes. We are well-proportioned and tall, in good health and without flaws. We are close to twenty years old, but age has been muddled; our lives now predate our conception dates by a century.

We do not remember the earthquake. We came only afterwards.

Or one hundred years before, our Parent reminds us, with a smile.

They nurtured us in canisters, and of this, we know little. We slept and we grew.

Now, we are deposited on this street, with our wits and our Parent. He provides instruction and necessary learning. He reminds us, when we show curiosity for our origins, we are the Fortunate; the Created; the Survivors. We mutter amongst ourselves that we are not survivors. How could we be, if we were not there? We no longer argue this to our Parent; he insists only that we are his legacy, and refuses to be drawn into further debate. Our rank, officially, is Renewer. To our Parents and the Scientists, we are the Newborn.

1924/2024: Jeremy Green

I was plucked from the rubble, bewildered but largely unscathed, protected by luck or prayer. They found me beneath a wall, pinned by weight and fear. Twenty years old, and all around me, destruction and death. I don’t know how long I lay there, only that nothing but dust stirred around me, not even a cat. The air—once the tumbling, crashing, wrenching horror ceased and the ground finally stilled—was quiet as a dream. I drifted in and out of sleep, wishing for death more than rescue, until the sheet of brick shifted and a hand pulled me free.

I was escorted to a cruise ship—a dust-coated splendour of the seas tethered to the ruins of the city—bigger than a tower block, and populated by scientists and geeks where I expected holiday-makers and cabaret.

Survivors gathered here while the full extent of the damage was ascertained.

Little was left, they told me later, although several early twentieth-century houses survived, buried in acres of rubble, saved by their low terracing and strong build. All else, they told me, was gone. The few survivors were here on this ship.

I, still dreamlike, lay in a soft bed in a tight, windowless cabin, certain that on the next waking, or the next, or the next, all this would be unreal.

It was no dream.

I lived on that ship for some uncountable age, while the Scientists first pulled fragments from the ruins, and then assessed the potential of those findings.

I don’t tell my faction much of this; only that they are the fortunate, created from those the Scientists deemed suitable.

I was treated well, overall, by the Scientists; after all, we were the key to the future. They needed us.

I estimate I lived for around twenty years on that ship; I was pulled from the debris of the earthquake as a young man, my future lost to dust clouds and ruin. I was released from the ship middle-aged, into a new-old ghost-world torn from the pages of a GCSE history book. Those who populate the factions support my estimate; they are approximately twenty years old, although I can’t account for acceleration or restarts.

The early months were hardest. Selectiveness was necessary; I understand that. The Scientists had limited resources, and the ship, space for only nine thousand. They couldn’t take everyone they’d recovered. The badly-injured, unlikely to survive, were easy rejections. Others, later, proved too flawed for the purpose. From those, they salvaged parts to reuse, and discarded the remains. Ruthlessness was imperative. I’m grateful I didn’t have to make those choices, but at times, I wish I’d been discarded.

Once the selection was complete, the process of renewal began. Once the canisters were filled, my main job was done, for the time being. At times, I wondered why I was kept, but they needed me as a gauge—a comparison, and later, a Parent.

And insurance against failure. While they kept us, they could start over.

There were several restarts, but to my recollection, these happened quickly, within the early months. If even one embryo proved unviable, or showed imperfection, the entire batch was terminated, a new one begun.

The Scientists kept us informed, to a point, as every one of us craved company and connections. We sought out conversation and friendships, although the Scientists tried to eliminate these instincts from each new batch of embryos. They guessed the future would be lonely; eliminating the desire for companionship would ease the way. Nine thousand is not many, to build a world.

Within that number, the Survivors, Scientists, and Cyberists numbered fewer than three thousand, once Selection was complete. In addition, of the original crew, those who’d acquiesced to the takeover of their vessel also remained. Those who’d resisted, I presume perished, albeit at sea or afterwards. I didn’t ask. It was before my time; the ship had been ready for years.

The remaining space was allocated to the creation and sustenance of the Renewers.

Onboard the ship, the workload was divided thus: The Scientists prepared and maintained the Renewers. The Cyberists selected and perfected the Reset, and charted the journey. The Survivors, once harvesting was complete, took over the day-to-day jobs needed to sustain us all.

Most Survivors were Necessary Occupations, and many doubled as Parents. Amongst us were engineers, medics, nutritionists. I didn’t know it then, but part of the selection process came down to our ability to serve the ship and the future. If two potentials seemed equal in terms of youth and health, a cook would be chosen over a dropout; a builder over a butcher; a doctor over a dog-walker. Dogs! How I long to see a dog in this new-old world. Could we not have carried animals with us on that human-loaded ark?

1924: The Jeremy Greens

Some evenings, our Parent lingers at curfew and tells stories of the old days. Telling bedtime stories, he says, is what a parent should do for their children, and then his eyes cloud and he disappears into himself, to that place both past and future. He describes skyscrapers and motorways and televisions and he displays the bulky black contraption he found hanging in his back room and tells us how, in his parents’ lifetime, telephones evolved from that, into the flat rectangle he keeps in his pocket. Only our Parent has such a device; we have no need to communicate beyond our faction. It amuses our Parent when we chatter amongst ourselves across our garden fencing, while we pin hand-washed laundry to strings we found tied between our bathroom roofs and gnarly apple trees or rickety sheds. They will make machines for this soon, he predicts, but for now, it isn’t the priority.

For now, he says, we’ll make do, just as our great-grandparents did.

We have time enough in our days. Our only role is to produce food while we wait for breeding instructions. It’s nearly time, he says. Nearly time.

We are not permitted to venture beyond our street, and have no reason to do so. We grow our food in the long gardens that stretch behind the houses. The ground, it seems, is fertile and productive. Many of the gardens boast established vegetable plots – a necessity from the Great War, our Parent says, nodding sagely as if he is the fountain of all knowledge.

To us, of course, he is.

We suck up these snippets as eagerly as the land sucks the rain after a dry spell. We have books, but only those left in the houses, where once they must have been read by the house’s original owners. Our Parent cannot explain why the physical features and items exist in this new-old time, while all humanity has been obliterated. Domestic animals, too, are absent, although wild birds and insects inhabit our gardens. The pictures in the children’s storybooks we devour—filled with talking dogs, tame cats, horses to ride—are as alien to us as the future-past our Parent talks of. The children pictured in these books are also unfathomable. There are no children here.

Not yet.

We must bring children to this quiet, empty land. This is our reason. We will father the new population and rebuild the earth.

We have been allowed to study the timeline, so we know what is expected. The Scientists, like us, are divided into factions. Some monitor and amend the repopulation programme; others research the cause of the 2024 earthquake, to prevent its repeat. Others work closely with Cyberists, rapidly advancing 1924 technology to that of the twenty-first century, fast-tracking inventions that once took decades to evolve.

Our Parent brings updates: today they have made a breakthrough in utilising one of the few radio broadcasting studios. Repurpose, reuse, recycle, he tells us with that wry twist of his face we recognise to mean this is something from his past. Our future.

The Necessary Occupations perform jobs to suit their skills: the doctors ensure the hospital is functional; engineers develop transport, using existing 1920s railway networks to establish satellite hubs in places called Scarborough, Manchester, and other such locations they pinpoint on maps we are not permitted to see.

They do not allow us to know where the other factions reside, lest we interact and forge random relationships. Until these satellite regions are established, our curfew and rules restrain us and prevent inter-faction relations. We are not supposed to know the other factions are temporarily nearby, but our Parent lets things slip, sometimes. He is a kind man, by all accounts, although he often appears sad. He has memories, and longs for a lost family. He had a mother and a father, things we know only from those cartoonish picture books we found in the houses. This father we share between us remembers a time with friends and freedoms we neither experience nor desire. He went to school—this man who is an older, worn version of us but differs in innumerable ways.

Our education took place on the ship, in our rehabilitation stage.

Our Parent smirks at this word as if it amuses him. We cannot be rehabilitated when we have never been habilitant, he says, and although none of us have found that word in the motley collection of dictionaries spread between our sixteen houses, we understand his meaning. We have only the new to learn, nothing to unlearn. We emerged from our capsules to be herded through a narrow corridor into a semi-circular room, where rows of blue-fabric seats faced a stage, a screen, and a lectern, and for many weeks, we were immersed in the facts we would need to live beyond the boat.

The ship, by then, had been harboured for some time. All but the Parents, Cooks, Professors, and Renewers had been busy preparing for our disembarkation.

In these lectures, we were taught how to grow food, how to cook, how to maintain our homes and our hygiene, and which health concerns we must report to our Parent for medical attention. We were given a map of our accommodation, its boundaries clearly marked, and we were fitted with anklets to emit a reminder should we accidentally overstep.

We did not know, until these briefings, we were not the only faction on the ship, and it was here we learned our purpose. We were, the Professor explained, to live under the watch and guidance of our Parent, Jeremy Green, from whose DNA we were created. Once settled, and adapted to the limitations of 1924, offspring creation would begin. Rigorous screening deemed the Abilah Haans our best initial match, although the Professor told us no more about this faction. We would not be expected to partake in the upbringing of our offspring; facilities were being prepared for this. Care of the young would be fulfilled by nurses. Once the first batch of young reached two years of age, they would be transferred to teachers to fulfil their educational needs. At this time, we would be paired again, with the Suan Freemans. We did not appreciate the irony of the name of this faction until our Parent explained it sometime later.

In time, he told us, perhaps we would become free men.

As we knew of no other life, we did not crave this freedom of which he spoke with such sadness in his grey-blue eyes. The same as our eyes, but filled with memory and pain.

1925: Jeremy Green

This new-old world is quiet, so quiet. I still can’t get used to the lack of cars, and above our gardens, the skies are clean and still, even though this location was selected not least for its rudimentary aerodrome. The Croydon I remember was loud, dirty, fast, relentless. All-night takeaways under neon signs, and drunks on every corner. Rows of terraced houses not unlike these, punctuated by tower blocks and roadworks. Even on the ship, for twenty-odd years, the quiet was not as this, with its steady throbbing of engines; the fractious discussions that rang through every communal mealtime. The chatter of people from different lives, thrown together on that floating city. The ship, whilst cramped and confined, held vibrancy and hope and a combined aim. This quiet, thin street, without cars, without women, without children, without the barking of dogs or the shriek of burglar alarms, the call of a postman, or the pleasantries of a shopkeeper, is more of a prison than the ship ever was, and infinitely lonelier.

I can no longer picture my mother’s face. My father. My sister. My home or my school friends or my university peers or the cat who slept on the end of my bed until I moved into student digs. I cannot remember my mother’s voice.

Unlike my Newborns, I am not tethered by an anklet, and am permitted to roam a little further than they. I yearn for a bustling pub, a companionable pint, a girl to talk to. Someone to share my evening with. The women have been stationed far away; our maps don’t show where. The Scientists must have predicted this human desire in the Survivors. Although they were powerless to breed it from us as they tried with the Newborns, they have had us neutered, as one might a pet dog. I don’t understand why, given this, we aren’t permitted to meet for companionship. They argue that if us Parents meet across factions, the risk of our Newborns meeting becomes too great.

They can’t be certain whether the Newborns have carnal urges; unable to test this, they can’t take the chance. If the breeding program fails, so does this Reset, and all this is in vain. I understand. Really, I do.

I worry my faction will become restless, but perhaps I project my own desires.

I’ve argued with the Scientists to permit physical connection, instead of their preferred reproduction method, in which semen will be collected and transferred by medics.

They believe it would create chaos.

They’re probably right, but is it humane to raise entire generations of factions who will never know others beyond the confines of their area, never see their children’s faces, or the women with whom their semen is mixed? But then, if they don’t form love, they can’t lose it. I can’t remember the face of my high-school girlfriend, nor the girl I shared my bed with throughout my first year in King’s College. I can’t remember her name.

Perhaps, then, it is better this way.

I gather before my faction. Eighty times my face looks back at me, eager and questioning.

Tomorrow, I tell them. Tomorrow your breeding will begin, and then, moments later, I watch my face fall eighty times, as I tell them a medic will collect their semen in the morning. No, they will not be introduced to the Abilahs. No, they will not leave this street. I watch my face fall only in the reflections of my eyes in theirs; the Newborns themselves are unfazed by the news. They shrug, they nod, and return to their houses to sleep.

It is curfew, and dusk has fallen.

2023

The original Newborns are long-dead, as are the Scientists, the Parents, and all those who created this.

The Newborns, or Renewers, as they are officially recorded, did well: the eighty Jeremy Greens alone sired almost four thousand children in forty-five years, most of whom survived and bred. Other factions recorded similar successes.

Newer generations of Scientists became greedy, far-reaching, ambitious. They built tower blocks that scraped the sky, and dug deep into the Earth in search of new materials, leaving it top-heavy and unstable.

Across this smog-thick city, above the steady whine of traffic, scientists predict the future. In 2024, an earthquake will destroy the world. We must be ready for the reset.