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Authors: Daniel Richler
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after wet and windy days, and this is now being linked to the high saturation of sulphuric acid in those cities’ atmospheres! Amazing, but true! After the commercial, Mom comes on, and there’s some kind of kerfuffle. The camera pulls out to show she is hugging a tree. In fact, she’s
chained
to the tree. The camera’s bobbing violently, jostled by a crowd. It’s still so close up it’s hard to tell how many people are there, but glimpses of white scaffolding in thebackground tell Robbie exactly where she is before she announces it. He sinks to the soggy carpet to watch.
“Planet Earth is 4,600 million years old!” Mom has to shout over the roar of a chainsaw. “To get a clearer picture, imagine Earth is a forty-six-year-old person! We know nothing about her childhood, the details of her youth are sketchy, but we can deduce that she began to blossom at forty-two!” The camera lurches wildly. For a moment, there’s sky and a great spread of branches and leaves. The chainsaw bites into wood. It sounds like screaming now – the camera tilts down, and Mom’s talking a mile a minute. Robbie stares, picking cereal from his teeth. “Dinosaurs appeared a year ago when Earth was forty-five. Mammals grazed on her front lawn eight months ago. Man-like apes dropped around for cocktails the middle of last week! Last weekend everyone stayed indoors for the Ice Age!” Mom’s voice is shrill and distorted now; people are booing, and the tree begins to crack. As it falls she’s pulled up and over with it, her hair in her mouth, sawdust covering her clothes, her skin, and the black foam rubber of her microphone. Three pigs are pulling her feet first from under the chain. As they haul her off to a waiting cruiser she just about shrieks, “Modern man’s been in the neighbourhood for four hours! An hour ago he discovered agriculture! The industrial revolution began one minute ago! In those sixty seconds of biological time we have made a toxic garbage dump of –” The door of the cop car slams shut. The microphone cable goes taut as the cruiser moves off, then limp, but she rolls down the window and hollers, “Have yourselves a fine Labour Day weekend! See you next week same time same channel! I’m Abigail Bookbinder for
Hello World!”
Robbie shakes his belt again. The screen crackles with static and falls silent. Poor reporting, he thinks, she never mentioned
noise
pollution, like she always does to me. So what is that,anyway, the third time she’s been arrested? Second time in front of EPX , at least. She oughta get a real job.
He slips his belt through the loops on his jeans, shaking his head. Decides to return to the Townships, help bail Mom out maybe. On the way, he might even look up Rosie at the club where she works, bring her to the cottage for the weekend. Farm out concept! He exits the house barefoot. Leaving the front door wide open behind him and the bathtub taps on full.
5
WEIRD HOW, JUST BECAUSE OF ONE LITTLE OVERSIGHT, YOUR entire life can be ruined. Robbie pondered this, later that same day, as he sat beside Rosie on the bus to the Townships. Short of joining the army, what was he going to do now? He sat paralyzed with guilt, ignoring Rosie’s exclamations.
“Look! A Madame Patate
stand. How LOVELY ! Look, a brown
brook!”
His forehead was blistered with cool sweat; he was trying to convince himself that it wasn’t
his
fault the house in town had been suffering from dry rot. Why else would the piano have fallen through the floor so easily? One little inch of water wasn’t so heavy, surely.…
Halfway to Rosie’s club, he’d realized he needed his shoes; barefoot downtown is one thing – different strokes for different folks, OK – but in the country it’s impractical; if he was going to give Rosie a tour of the weed-, leech-, and insect-infested countryside, he needed his sneakers. So he’d returned to the house.
Major bummer.
The green deep-pile carpet in the living room looked like
chained
to the tree. The camera’s bobbing violently, jostled by a crowd. It’s still so close up it’s hard to tell how many people are there, but glimpses of white scaffolding in thebackground tell Robbie exactly where she is before she announces it. He sinks to the soggy carpet to watch.
“Planet Earth is 4,600 million years old!” Mom has to shout over the roar of a chainsaw. “To get a clearer picture, imagine Earth is a forty-six-year-old person! We know nothing about her childhood, the details of her youth are sketchy, but we can deduce that she began to blossom at forty-two!” The camera lurches wildly. For a moment, there’s sky and a great spread of branches and leaves. The chainsaw bites into wood. It sounds like screaming now – the camera tilts down, and Mom’s talking a mile a minute. Robbie stares, picking cereal from his teeth. “Dinosaurs appeared a year ago when Earth was forty-five. Mammals grazed on her front lawn eight months ago. Man-like apes dropped around for cocktails the middle of last week! Last weekend everyone stayed indoors for the Ice Age!” Mom’s voice is shrill and distorted now; people are booing, and the tree begins to crack. As it falls she’s pulled up and over with it, her hair in her mouth, sawdust covering her clothes, her skin, and the black foam rubber of her microphone. Three pigs are pulling her feet first from under the chain. As they haul her off to a waiting cruiser she just about shrieks, “Modern man’s been in the neighbourhood for four hours! An hour ago he discovered agriculture! The industrial revolution began one minute ago! In those sixty seconds of biological time we have made a toxic garbage dump of –” The door of the cop car slams shut. The microphone cable goes taut as the cruiser moves off, then limp, but she rolls down the window and hollers, “Have yourselves a fine Labour Day weekend! See you next week same time same channel! I’m Abigail Bookbinder for
Hello World!”
Robbie shakes his belt again. The screen crackles with static and falls silent. Poor reporting, he thinks, she never mentioned
noise
pollution, like she always does to me. So what is that,anyway, the third time she’s been arrested? Second time in front of EPX , at least. She oughta get a real job.
He slips his belt through the loops on his jeans, shaking his head. Decides to return to the Townships, help bail Mom out maybe. On the way, he might even look up Rosie at the club where she works, bring her to the cottage for the weekend. Farm out concept! He exits the house barefoot. Leaving the front door wide open behind him and the bathtub taps on full.
5
WEIRD HOW, JUST BECAUSE OF ONE LITTLE OVERSIGHT, YOUR entire life can be ruined. Robbie pondered this, later that same day, as he sat beside Rosie on the bus to the Townships. Short of joining the army, what was he going to do now? He sat paralyzed with guilt, ignoring Rosie’s exclamations.
“Look! A Madame Patate
stand. How LOVELY ! Look, a brown
brook!”
His forehead was blistered with cool sweat; he was trying to convince himself that it wasn’t
his
fault the house in town had been suffering from dry rot. Why else would the piano have fallen through the floor so easily? One little inch of water wasn’t so heavy, surely.…
Halfway to Rosie’s club, he’d realized he needed his shoes; barefoot downtown is one thing – different strokes for different folks, OK – but in the country it’s impractical; if he was going to give Rosie a tour of the weed-, leech-, and insect-infested countryside, he needed his sneakers. So he’d returned to the house.
Major bummer.
The green deep-pile carpet in the living room looked like
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