“A what?” Taka asked. He was sitting on the floor, gazing up at her. “You mean like an armadillo?”
“A mushroom,” Mansi explained, flashing him a smile. “The largest mushroom that ever was, biggest organism in the whole world in fact. It covered over two thousand acres in Oregon, living underground, spreading out beneath the earth. They called it the Humongous Fungus.”
A little ripple of laughter went round the room, and similar ripples shot down Addison’s spine. Something was happening here, something special.
“It’ll be gone now, of course,” Mansi continued, smiling sadly. “Like everything.”
“And how does that make you feel?” Taka asked.
Addison knew what he was doing. Part counsellor, part teacher, therapist, confidant, friend; Taka was bridging the gap between the lost past and the dying present. He was performing some vital function Addison hadn’t even realised was necessary, acting as an emotional lightning rod, letting people ground their experiences. The vision chair told returnees the facts, but it was only through Taka’s sessions that returnees processed and accepted it.
Taka was helping people to heal.
“Angry,” Mansi replied eventually. “Helpless. Bereft. But also, vindicated.”
“Vindicated how?”
“In an odd way, nothing I saw in that chair surprised me. Even back home, I was expecting the end. I wasn’t expecting to live through it, but I was expecting it to happen.”
Mansi turned thoughtful.
“You know,” she said, cocking her head, “now I look at it, I think I deserve to be here.”
“Surely you can’t believe that?” Addison said, leaning forward. “Surely none of us deserve this?”
“But I saw it coming, didn’t I?” she replied, gazing at him calmly. “And did I do enough? Sure, I went on some marches, put my recycling in the right bins. I even thought my work was helping, that I was doing more than the average citizen, but in reality I was just tinkering around the edges. Did I really do enough? Really? I was so wrapped up in my own little corner of the world, I didn’t grasp how bad it was.”
She laughed in realisation.
“I didn’t see the forest for the trees.”
When she fell into silence another returnee, a young Guatemalan called Jorge, took up the conversation.
“I always assumed someone, something, would come and fix it,” he said, full of passionate intensity. “I tried to do my bit, but there was always work to do, bills to pay. I just assumed someone bigger, better, would come along.”
“So did I,” Mansi replied.
“We all did,” Taka added.
“But we were wrong!” Jorge cried, eyes flashing. “We spent so long waiting for someone else to save us we didn’t save ourselves.”
Addison had to agree. It chimed with what he remembered of his old life: his foundering acting career, his small circle of like-minded, self-reinforcing friends, his tiny room in the grotty little flatshare where he hid away from anything and everything confrontational. He’d always been one to plaster on a brave face, to avoid a fuss. His preferred course of action was always to postpone, to delay, to push to tomorrow what should have been done today. But when tomorrow finally came, things always ended up being so much worse.
If he had learned to address things head on, perhaps things would have been different. But instead he had chosen the path of least resistance. And not just in his personal life. As he’d watched the crisis unfold, he’d become almost evangelical in his belief someone would come. Some saviour would arise, a bright young thing from Silicon Valley or some ecowarrior from Scandinavia. Someone, anyone, so long as it wasn’t him
Suddenly, the truth hit home and Addison almost gasped with the weight of it.
The levellers were right.
He was guilty.
Perhaps not by the traditions or standards of his time, but traditions and standards were irrelevant. His first real partner at university had given him a poster emblazoned with the slogan tradition is just peer pressure from dead people, and it really was the truth. His generation had been given a challenge and they’d bottled it, kicking the can down the road to a fictional someone who never came.
It was a crushing failure: of imagination, of confidence, of compromise and cooperation, a failure so grand and sweeping it defied comprehension. Yet it was still a failure, the dying planet outside was indisputable evidence. Before, in Addison’s time, humanity’s culpability had been up in the air, but now – ex post facto – it was clear they had failed. The world had ended and that made them all culpable. The levellers’ punishment might be abhorrent, but their verdict was spot on: Addison was guilty because everyone was guilty.
He breathed out slowly, letting the thought percolate.
The levellers were right.
* * *
At her trial, accused of overtravel due to her extensive academic engagements, Mansi was the second returnee to plead guilty. It wasn’t enough to save her, but she went with a quiet dignity that overwhelmed Addison. That same day, three others pleaded the same way.
And after that, nothing was the same.
– Chapter 6 –
More
It was Mansi who gave Addison the idea.
“Five,” he cried, running out of court. “Can I have a word?”
The leveller had been doing a little better since his ordeal, and although he was now walking with a permanent limp, his spirits were up and he’d been treating everyone much more kindly. It was this kindness Addison now hoped to exploit.
“How can I help?” Five replied, drawing to a halt.
Addison took him gently by the arm, guiding him down the nearest ramp. The others were still filing out of court and this particular matter required discretion.
“I was wondering if you could help with something,” he continued, walking out of sight around a corner.
“After
