The Tubes The Gas Comes Down In
Prime Ministers of the United Kingdom:
2022-2024:
Rishi Sunak (Conservative)
2024-2029:
Keir Starmer (Labour)
def 2024: (Majority) Rishi Sunak (Conservative), Huzma Yousaf (SNP), Ed Davey (Liberal Democrats)
2029-2038:
Lee Anderson (Conservative)
def 2029: (Majority) Keir Starmer (Labour), Kate Forbes (SNP), Carla Denyer & Adrian Ramsay (Green), Ed Davey (Liberal Democrats)
2031 Net Zero Repeal Referendum: 57% YES, 43% NO
def 2033: (Majority) Rachel Reeves (Labour), Carla Denyer & Thelma Walker (Greens: The World Transformed), Kate Forbes (SNP), Munira Wilson (Liberal Democrats), no leader (Independent Climate Crisis)
2038-2040:
Keir Mather (Labour)
def 2038: (Minority dep. on abstaination) Lee Anderson (Conservative), Tom Harwood (Freedom GB), no leader (Action on Extinction), Sakhina Sheikh & Tim Speers (World Transformed), Mairi McAllan (SNP)
2040-2045:
Andrew Bendigo (Conservative)
def 2040: (Majority) Keir Mather (Labour), no leader (Action on Extinction), Thom Barnes-Wise & Edwin Grove (World Transformed), Mari McAllan (SNP)
2045-2059:
Andrew Bendigo (Conservative leading National Government)
2045: (Majority projected) collective leadership (Extinction Army) def. Andrew Bendigo (Conservative), Addison Lamb (SNP), Rania Ramli (Labour), Sukhpal Gill ("Continuity" World Transformed)
def 2050: (Majority) no Parliamentary opposition
def 2055: (Majority) no Parliamentary opposition
2059-
0000: Gen. Ryang Mi-Hyun (UN Climate Reconstruction Mandate: British Isles)
"Grandad, tell us about snow again."
"I don't see why--you kids have seen snow, haven't you? On the telly, last week. There was that big snowstorm in Arkangelsk, that they weren't expecting, and..."
"Yeah, but you've seen
real snow. In
real life."
"Snow that was here! Outside!"
"It's not all it's cracked up to have been. The ground would freeze--you'd slip and slide all over the place--and you'd need a thick coat to go outside, and the sky would be iron-grey, but you'd barely get any snow. Most of the time, I remember, it was just a sprinkle."
"But what was it
like?"
"Cold, just as cold as everything around it. It had a funny taste, a little like metal, but my mother never liked me eating it, and you had to eat a lot to get the taste, so I don't remember it well. What I remember is the light. When you were lying in bed, just before you got up, and you could see out the window that pale light reflecting off the snow, and you
knew that..."
"Grandad? You're crying again."
"Sorry, sorry...you know how it is, with memories. Especially ones of things you know you'll never see again."
"How do you know?"
"Yeah! What if someone builds a weather machine? Like in that movie!"
"Blake and Mortimer aren't real, stupid."
"It's even worse when you know it's
your fault you'll never see it again."
"Blake and Mortimer went to Tibet, and
Tibet's real! So there!"
"That doesn't prove anything, you're being silly, shut up and let granddad tell his story. What makes it your fault, granddad?"
"Well, it's not my fault, exactly. It's everyone's fault--me, and your grandmother's, and my parents', and your uncle Seb's, and old Tom from down the road, and...everyone who was alive at that time, one way or another."
"Oh, granddad's talking about the climate crisis again."
"I can hear you, you know!"
"We've already
heard this story. We had to interview you for school about it and everything. You told us about how you'd met some of the Extinction Rebellion Martyrs before they got martyrised--"
"Martyred."
"--you believe in weather machines, shut up, martyrised, and the stupid people who voted against cutting the emissions--that terrible argument you had with Uncle Seb, at the time, about the insects and the pods, as well. You
always tell us that story."
"Do I really? Curse of the old man's brain, I'm afraid--repetition."
"And you told us all that stuff about how no-one listened to Hallam, 'til it was too late, and what happened when he took to the streets, and how you nearly got
on Flight 79 to New York but your ticket got bumped up, and how you saw Bendigo send the drones into the crowd on the news, and, and the UN, and everything. All of it."
"I know, I know."
"It was good. Mr Darmadi gave me a Double Merit."
"Only the double?"
"He said he didn't like all the stuff you put in about Hallam. Said it was innacurate, that I was slandering him."
"He
was a cult leader. And a coward. I was
there."
"I know."
"Those poor kids who laid under planes, who burnt themselves alive, who drove dingeys into oil tankers...and Hallam egged them on and sat back."
"I
know."
"Say what you like about Bendigo, HaShem only knows, he had the moral fibre to stay in Downing Street right up until the blue helmets marched in, and he sat in the dock for 'high crimes against the future of humanity', right the way though, without any theatrics or bloody hemlo--"
"I
know!"
"Sorry, sorry. It's...I don't know. I don't know why he still makes me so angry."
"Mr Darmadi said you didn't like him 'cos he tried to do something, and you just 'wallowed'."
"
Rachel!"
"What? It's what he said."
"You can't say that, though! 's rude!"
"Well
you think weather machines exist."
"How is that--"
"Your teacher's right, I think."
"
Granddad!"
"You don't need to defend me, Dovid. It's all right. Like I said, it's everyone's fault."
"Is it all the same fault, though?"
"Huh?"
"Well, if you feel so bad, doesn't that mean you think it's less of the Extinction Army's fault than it is yours?"
"That's obvio--"
"Yeah! So, isn't it more Bendigo's fault than it is yours? Or Andaman--"
"Anderson."
"--you made graddad sad, shut up, Andaman, for his stupid referendum? Or all the people who were burning oil before you were born? All the people who wrote you off as a stupid kid?"
"Maybe? I don't know. They gave me a mess of a future, I gave you kids one as well. That's all it was, in the end; the old burning the young to stay warm, because the future was a place without them and so it didn't matter. Don't think I get to say I'm much better just for being one of the ones who didn't burn and was lucky enough to not get burnt."
"Maybe you're a
little better."
"Maybe."
"Maybe you'll be better still, Dovid, Rachel."
"Maybe."
"...tell us about the supermarkets again."
"Alright. Well, when I was a lad, back before they brought in the National Ration Service, to get food you'd have to go to all kinds of big shops, but there was one
very big one..."
