173: Recreation

Scanning along the scorched face of the barren Earth, the dried and desolate plains scrolling cracked and littered beneath us, strewn with nameless husks of things once living, the parched and yellow land speeding to a blur now, and now slowing, while a triple blip on the featureless horizon gradually looms into view, and finally, we come upon three towers. The towers are constructed from uniform trapezoid-shaped granite slabs, laid in radial formation in dry-stacked courses to form a smooth circular wall, and extending skywards to the height of 1,064 feet. Arranged in a triangular formation, the towers are connected by three narrow flat walls that run from ground level to a height of 998 ft, each housing two exposed glass lift shafts which are powered by regulated hydraulic pressure from the heavily guarded tidal energy exchange station, some 44 miles of deep underground pipeline west of here. The towers evoke the dominating, austere magnitude of the chimneys of famous power stations of peak English industrialism, only built in a close triangular formation that would not have been possible for working structures of the nineteenth century, given the considerations of the thermal interchange between stacks, and the chronic structural stress resulting therefrom. No. The architectural homage is deliberately brought into playful contrast with the Towers’ post-carbon mandate. These are anti-anthropocentric recreation towers. And if some lowly beast searing in the arid wastelands at their base were to crane its neck to steal a glance skywards, at the right time of day it would behold a sliver of burning emerald from the illuminated gardens cresting the towertops. But let’s leave these beasts perplexing in their dust and drift upwards for a closer look. The gardens are immaculately manicured, full of petunias, bushes of white roses, and clusters of begonias. There are also rows of picnic benches, wide-domed gazebos, austere columns of ornamental willows (originally bred to appear on daytime TV back in the Anthropocene), and vibrant beds of tulips in a riot of colour. Pathways edged with marigolds and lavender crisscross among ponds flanked by Japanese maples. And along the paths, wicker arches and tunnels of bamboo adorned with vines of blossoming sweet pea and purple clematis. Dotted throughout are quasi-marble statues; figures approximating classical poses, but sculpted to a detail of perfection surpassing even the finest hands of the high renaissance. And at the centre of it all, a false fountain with glistening silver-woven threads, arching up and cascading down on jets of air, with synthetic sounds of trickling water, completing the illusion. All of this and more creeps into action as the sun rises each day, in preparation for the Visitors. Hundreds upon hundreds of caravans of trains of coaches of Visitors slowly creak their way across infinite stretches of antique railtrack, warped and buckled in the heat, until – slowing to a standstill – they clank against the hundreds upon hundreds of coaches, backed up for miles in the queue up to the Towers’ loading bay. At the front of the queue the Visitors still living are plucked from the dead and led to the tall columned porticos at the foot of the Towers and fed into the lifts. Upon reaching the garden levels, the visitors are provided various tools, which are dropped from hatches in the entrance porches into their trembling hands. Some are given pickaxes or red & white umbrellas. Others, a supply of porcelain tiles and grouting, or bundles of Semtex with incendiary timer-triggers. While others still are issued with a special type of abrasive glove, allowing them to burrow through stone walls. But all of this is to no avail. There is nothing in these circular gardens to really use any of these implements on. So, they usually end up getting cast aside; tossed to the floor, or buried in the trunk of a eucalyptus tree, before the bell rings for teatime and the visitors make their way to the refreshment benches. And spread over the benchtops are hundreds of sopping colourful flannels, crammed into rusty old cake tins, and upon sight of these, the visitors abandon any vestige of composure they may yet have clung to, and dive and snatch at the flannels, wresting the more colourful ones from each other's hands and stuffing them into their mouths, sucking out all the moisture they can, or clamping them to their foreheads til the liquid runs down their temples, or jamming them into their eye sockets with the balls of their fists and pressing out the fluid til it breaches their eyelids and their eyes start streaming. A few hours later, when the chloroform wears off, the flood lights come on, illuminating the lush green hues of the grass, as do the spotlights dotted about, trained on the foliage in various colour effects (ruby, sapphire, emerald, aquamarine…) bringing it all out in dramatic contrast and casting long shadows over the garden. And the Visitors coo and gasp at these sights, novel as they are to all of them as the lush foliage, the palm trees, the petunias, the rose bushes, marigolds and clematis, et cetera, et cetera. And, around Twilight, the neon aphorisms and kinetic signage all get turned on: “Child is the father of man”, and “The thoughts of the daughter bring the mother to bear”, and “The wheels on the bus will mess you up”, and “Everywhere you look, a blue-eyed tiger”, and “Bury thy face where yonder hand may glisten”, and “Bringeth bottle not to the stable door”, and “Cork thy gushing aperture lest ye spill thy terminal bile”, and “Polish not the soapstone pony”, and so forth… The Kinetic signage is all pictographic. There is a cartoon crocodile with gnashing jaws and teetering yellow eyes, holding a glass of milk; the straw jutting infeasibly between the gnashing teeth. There's a cartoon mechanic in blue overalls frantically back-stepping atop a giant tractor tire, his arms flailing and little animated beads of sweat pulsing in three separate bulb flashes, set on wires attached to the head. And there is a gargantuan turquoise elephant, its trunk raised aloft, blowing a large, pink bubble which balloons twice the size of its head, its feet dangling in the air and its tongue smacking reachingly about after the bulbous pink gum. As the Visitors are transfixed by the kinetic signage and neon aphorisms, the garden platforms gently start to tilt towards the setting sun. Until now there was no reason for the visitors to stray to the edge of the garden. After all, the main attractions are in the centre. But gravity is an attraction to rival all others. And the allure in this case is irresistible. Every evening at sunset the roof gardens eventually pitch to an angle of 45 degrees. And anything not planted firmly into the ground – or securely tethered to something planted in the ground – slides towards the lower edge of the garden and plunges the full tower-height onto the arid terrain below, where also coinciding with the setting sun, the sprinkler system – long dried up – has, moments before, come into futile motion; twitching and jolting in dry brittle arcs... These grating, high-pitched rattling sounds alert the wild animals at the base of the tower to take shelter in their burrows or flee the area, as a rain of men will shortly be upon them. But when the rumble of dry thuds ceases; it’s feeding time. And when the night is at its darkest, the garden platforms reset slowly back to their horizontal level. And at dawn, as soon as the sun rises, the gardens tilt towards the east as they await a fresh supply of Visitors.