Chương 43: [To Borrow from the Future]

The supermarket was visible from the marina entrance, its wide automatic doors propped open. The car park in front of it had a handful of cars still sitting where they'd been left the day everything happened, a few abandoned trolleys scattered between them. Torren slowed as they approached.

"This is a shop?" he said.

"Supermarket," Leo said.

"It's like a load of different shops in one. Food, clothes, everything really." They went in. The glass panels running the length of the roof let the daylight in, the whole place naturally bright despite the electric lights being off. Wide aisles stretched the length of the building, shelving units running high on both sides, tall enough that the top shelves would need a reach for most people. Clothes at the front, kitchenware, cleaning products, electricals.

Further back the food sections began, some shelves sparse where perishables had been moved to the storage fridges out back, the longer lasting stock still sitting where it always had. Torren walked slowly down the first aisle and said nothing for a long moment.

"How much does this hold?" he said.

"When it's fully stocked?" Parmo said.

"Thousands of different products. Tens of thousands of individual items." Torren kept walking. He looked at the shelves on either side, the scale of it, what it represented.

"And there are more of these. In every town."

"Every town, most villages. Bigger ones in cities. Most towns and cities have more than one. I think Monkhaven has like five or six. There's another near town actually, it's called Morrisons." Torren stopped. He turned and looked back toward the entrance, then along the length of the building ahead of him.

"Your people don't worry about food," he said.

"Not the way ours do. A place like this means winters aren't feared. It means a poor harvest doesn't break a family. In our world the concern of those in power is never how to feed everyone. It's how to keep people fed enough to keep working. Enough that they don't revolt. Not enough that food stops being a worry, because that worry keeps people in line." He looked along the aisle again.

"Someone had the idea that people shouldn't have to worry about any of that. That it should just be solved." He paused.

"That's not something I've seen before."

"It's not perfect," Sam said.

"People go hungry at home too. The system has its failures."

"I don't doubt it," Torren said.

"But someone tried. That's more than anything in our world." Nobody said anything for a moment.

"When you live day to day that sort of thing doesn't really register, it's just accepted as the way things are. Just goes to show people take things for granted," Leo said. The group continued to walk around, the boys pointing out different things that might be interesting. Luka stopped at the kitchen aisle and picked up a knife block from the shelf, hefting it once to check the weight.

"Here," he said, handing it to Torren.

"The knives are good quality and the block has a sharpener built in. Keeps them sharp without needing a whetstone." Torren turned it over in his hands, slid one of the knives out slightly, looked at the edge.

"These are very well made."

"Factory produced," Luka said.

"Thousands of identical copies, remember." Torren slid the knife back and smirked.

"I'd advise not mentioning that little detail to any blacksmith you meet." Parmo had found what he was looking for two aisles over. He came back holding a Rubik's cube and held it out to Rika.

"Give this a go," he said.

"It's a puzzle. It's pretty fun." Rika took it, turned it over in her hands.

"How does it work?"

"You twist it a load of times so it's all mixed up then you try to get each face to be one solid colour like it was initially. Simple enough concept." The other boys realised what Parmo was pulling here and looked away, hiding their grins. Rika's eyes narrowed slightly at the cube. Her wings shifted. She started turning it.

"Two seconds," Leo said, and walked off. He came back with a multitool and a compass. He held them out to Shai.

"Multitool first," he said.

"Folds out into different things, knife, screwdriver, pliers. Loads of stuff you might find useful when out camping or patrolling. They're great for a lot of situations." He opened the compass.

"And this shows you which direction you're heading. North, south, east, west. Even if you have no landmarks, no stars, middle of the night in thick cover, this tells you where you are relative to home." Shai looked at both of them. She picked up the compass first, watched the needle settle.

"If we need to go into the Wilds," she said, "finding your way back without landmarks is the hardest part. At night or in bad weather the light doesn't help you." She turned it in her hand.

"This solves that." The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

"That's the idea," Leo said. She looked at him briefly, the corners of her mouth moving just slightly. Her tail curled once at the tip before she caught it. Then she put both in her belt pouch. Behind them Rika had already made significant progress on one face of the cube. Parmo noticed and smiled. They headed out of the supermarket and back into the afternoon light. They walked along the marina front, the water visible to their left, the entertainment strip running alongside it.

"That one's a cinema," Parmo said, nodding at the large building with the poster boards out front, most of them showing sequels or films that would inevitably flop as streaming had done a number on the film industry.

"Big screen, surround sound, you go in and watch a film in the dark with a load of other people. Popcorn, overpriced drinks, the whole thing." Rika looked at it without looking up from the cube.

"Like a theatre?"

"Similar idea yeah. Except you're watching something recorded rather than a live performance." She turned another layer. Frowned slightly. Further along the strip a cluster of fast food places sat side by side, their signs still visible, golden arches, a green circle with a crown and a figure in the centre, a man in glasses and a short white beard, a green and yellow design that meant something to anyone who'd ever wanted a footlong.

"All food?" Shai asked.

"All fast food yeah," Leo said.

"Different ones, different things. Burgers, fried chicken, sandwiches, coffee. All quick, designed so you're in and out fast."

"There are that many different places just for quick food?"

"In a bigger city there'd be more." Shai looked at the row of them.

"Your world really didn't want people to go hungry."

"These places are different," Sam said.

"Less about making sure people don't go hungry and more about playing on people's laziness. For what you get they're expensive and not healthy. Taste good though." Torren had been looking past the strip. He nodded toward the large structures visible further along the coast, set apart from everything else, wide and low with tall chimneys rising from some of them.

"What are those?"

"Warehouses mostly," Phil said.

"Some of them are manufacturing, places where things get made and then shipped out. Raw materials go in one end, finished products come out the other." Torren looked at them.

"Like a smithy. But larger."

"A lot larger. Some of those buildings are massive, filled with machines that do the work of hundreds of smithies in a fraction of the time." Torren was quiet for a moment.

"And you have many of these."

"Across the whole country, yeah. Thousands. There used to be more but the people running the country decided selling it off to line their own pockets was a good idea, called it good for everyone else too. We've been paying for it since." He looked at them a moment longer then turned back to the water. The boats were moored along the far side of the marina, bobbing gently on the water. Fishing vessels mostly, a few leisure boats, nothing large. All of them metal.

Shai stopped at the edge of the walkway and looked at them.

"They're made of metal," she said.

"Yeah," Leo said.

"Most boats are."

"How? Metal sinks." Leo looked at Phil. Phil looked at Sam.

"It's something to do with the shape," Sam said.

"The way the hull sits in the water. I couldn't give you the exact science but it works, clearly."

"We learned about it in school," Luka said.

"Can't remember the details either if I'm honest." Shai looked at the nearest boat, not entirely satisfied with that answer but accepting it.

"These are pretty small though," Rika said, the cube still turning in her hands.

"Compared to our boats."

"These are tiny," Phil said.

"The big ones make these look like bath toys." Torren looked at the largest vessel in the marina, a modest fishing boat.

"How much larger?"

"Cargo ships," Sam said.

"The ones that move goods between countries. Some of them are four hundred metres long. Thousands of metal containers stacked on the deck, each one packed with whatever needs moving. Food, machinery, cars, anything." Torren looked at the fishing boat. Then at Sam.

"How long is four hundred metres?" Sam looked along the marina.

"See where the walkway ends down there?" He pointed.

"That's maybe a hundred and fifty, two hundred metres. A cargo ship would be double that and then some." Torren looked along the walkway. Then back at the fishing boat.

"How many of these are there?"

"Thousands on the water at any one time. The whole world runs on them." The three of them were quiet for a moment.

"And then," Parmo said, "there are aircraft carriers."

"What's that," Shai said.

"A warship. Has a long, flat deck, aircraft taking off and landing on it." Rika looked up from the cube.

"What's an aircraft?"

"A vehicle that flies," Leo said.

"Metal, powered by engines, carries people or weapons. There are different types — passenger ones that carry hundreds of people across the world in a matter of hours, military ones built for combat, dropping explosives, that sort of thing. They move at speeds nothing in your world comes close to." Rika stared at him. Her wings shifted involuntarily.

"You built something that flies," she said.

"And can carry hundreds of people. That's hard to wrap my head around."

"You're not wrong. Some people don't like the idea of flying in what amounts to a metal box with wings. they understand it's safe for the most part but still don't like it." She looked at her own wings. Then back at Leo.

"How fast?"

"Passenger ones cruise at around nine hundred kilometres an hour. Military jets go faster than the speed of sound."

"How fast is that?" Rika asked.

"You know the distance between here and Stonehall?" Leo said.

"A passenger plane would cover that in seconds. A military jet even faster." Rika said nothing for a moment. Her wings shifted again.

"Right," Parmo said.

"So the carrier is basically a moving military base. Thousands of crew, weapons, aircraft, completely self sufficient for months at a time."

"Your world built a moving military base," Shai said.

"Several," Phil said.

"Most major powers have them." She looked back at the water.

"And then," Leo said, "on the complete opposite end of things, you have super yachts."

"What's a yacht?" Torren asked.

"A private boat. Rich people have them. Normal ones are just expensive boats, nothing special. Super yachts though—" Leo paused.

"Remember the ultra rich we were talking about earlier? A cargo ship is four hundred metres and moves goods that keep the world running. A super yacht is maybe a tenth of that size and exists purely for one person. Swimming pools on board, landing pads for aircraft, their own personal underwater vessel stored underneath."

"An underwater vessel," Rika said slowly.

"A submarine yeah. It goes under the water. Some of the super yachts have a small one so the owner can go diving whenever they want." Torren looked at the fishing boats.

"So the ship that feeds nations is built to work. And the ship built for one man is built to impress."

"Pretty much," Leo said. Rika looked at the modest fishing boats in front of them. Then back at Leo.

"Your world is completely mad," she said.

"Yeah," Leo said.

"It really is." They stood there for a moment longer, the water moving quietly beneath the boats.

"Right," Leo said.

"We should start heading back." They turned and made their way back along the marina front, past the entertainment strip, back toward the bridge. As they crossed it Rika paused at the rail and looked out across the rooftops.

"What's that building," she said.

"The big one with the strange towers at the corners." Leo looked. The floodlight pylons of Monkhaven United's ground rose above the surrounding streets, the stands just visible from here. He smiled.

"That," he said, "is a football ground. And if you've got a bit of time, we can show you what it's for."