Chapter 11 - The Fertile Soil Of Free Enterprise

A SUMMER OF foreboding had passed without incident and certain organisations who anticipated doom with glee found themselves a little non-plussed by the fact autumn was upon the land.

 

'Cash-Then-Crash' was a dedicated quick profit organisation desperate to spread the bad news on the fate of the world. This was to be everyone's last summer in Frangea so it was best to spend and have done with it.

 

However as the world was still out there somewhere minding its own business people were waking up to the realisation there was still a future of sorts. Thus the 'Cash-Then-Crash' ethos no longer appeared relevant. Not that many had originally taken up the call to fritter away life savings on pleasurable frivolities before everything was taken from them by cataclysm.

 

In the tiny office above a slaughterhouse that came with a low rent, strange sounds and odd smells, the founder and president of one of the many small enterprises dedicated to creating business from the thinnest of air was in a bad mood.

 

"Another five subscribers have cashed in their End of Dayscertificates," Mully Craftit said in her usual gloom-laden tones, this time with more genuine sincerity. She shook her heavy necklace made of false silver ore and very small tourmaline fragments as she slammed down the fiscal report provided by the agency employed to do that sort of thing for her.

 

"No lingering power, some people," her assistant Share Wellin agreed solemnly. The big lady sat moodily in a corner of the office away from the window and courtyard blood splatters. She creaked in her chair, glad it could carry her weight, and gave a huff of disappointment that scattered a few sheets on her superior's desk to the floor. These black-bordered missives were the latest batch of flyers intended to inform the general public time was still on the point of running out for the good life and they should avoid all hope and concentrate on spending savings while they still could. The sponsors for this inspirational message tended to be shopkeepers in the area whose advertisements adorned the reverse side of the flyers with suggestions on how best to get rid of no longer necessary cash. Luxury goods stores predominated.

 

Mully Craftit realised the sponsors were now outnumbering the End of Days subscribers. The certificates had been Share Wellin's idea. Once a sense of doom had been detected in the various stratified layers of society that made up the more desperate districts of Cherryball Flats, the imaginative assistant to Mully Craftit and regular chum in all sorts of other brief schemes began raising funds on special shop offers for those who wanted to spend their final hours on the Face of the World surrounded by luxury goods they never dared buy if they thought they still had a future to pay for. The idea completely reshaped the on-grid shopping channels for a while during the holiday period and frippery sales spiked in the early months of the Summer Pause.

 

Of course in Frangea any good idea was guaranteed to become public property and numerous similar doom-laden shout-out groups blossomed in the fertile soil of free enterprise. For a while the general public had the enlivening experience of watching the rival Enders as the niche industry became known clash on street corners with banners waving and loudspeakers weeping tears of regret that all the wonderful things of the world would soon be unattainable. 'Grab it while you can' was a popular chant.

 

"Cash it in before the Crash!" screamed Share in response to rival mottos, waving certificates for potential subscribers on a popular street crossing. On the opposite side of the road Lemon Curl, with her bright yellow hair, waved a flag back and forth which declared food and drink were the purchases of choice among her would be followers, especially drink.

 

"Ten percent off all drinks! Free sea water," she shrieked in high-pitched tones, for she was a thin thing with a desperate demeanour that could not help attract others, especially those who accidentally misheard something about free drinks.

 

On another corner someone quietly offered literature as a means to calm the mind while waiting for the final moments of existence.

 

"The word will come to you," this solemn gentleman said, clutching hands together earnestly as his bespectacled assistant, widely believed to be his wife, endeavoured to hand out overdue library books on assorted subjects with digital copies as backup in case it rained on the last day.

 

"We are but a chapter away from doom. Turn that final leaf and fill your mind with flights of the imagination," he continued.

 

"Got any poetry?" a passerby said, pausing to look over the stall of carefully stacked items.

 

"Steela?" the man said, turning to his assistant whom some thought might be his wife.

 

"I'll check," she replied, squinting through thick lenses at what was before her.

 

"Don't worry," the man who had made the enquiry said. "Just hoping that when the world meets its end that should finish off lyrical literature for good and all. Plagued my schooling days all them rhymes and rhythms did. Made not a mite of sense. Like all this," and he gestured to where Lemon Curl shrieked and waved her banner and Share Wellin roared her mantra to sparkly goods frenzy spending.

 

"Care you so little for the future, my good man?" the literature pedlar asked with heartfelt concern, clutching his hands together again.

 

"Seems to me only the past has any effect. It's all I can remember," came a weary response.

 

"Yet one must plan for the future," the book seller replied knowingly.

 

The poetry hater looked around him.

 

"According to you lot of Enders we ain't got no future so why plan at all. Think I'll take a trip up into the mountains and enjoy all that fresh air well away from this craziness. Rather fancy some peace and quiet when my time comes." With that the man sauntered off, giving Lemon Curl a wide berth as she screamed something at him and then was gone. Followed by men wearing shades and dark suits who whispered into their lapels as they went.

 

"His time will come," the book distributor said. "Probably at the next election I think, if we ever have another."

 

"Is that who I thought it was?"

 

"Yes my dear. The President of the Free Land of Frangea himself, out for a stroll among his electorate."

 

"Amazing. Got a copy of his autobiography right here. From Log Jam to Traffic Snarl. Awful stuff. Won't be voting for him next time, if there is a next time of course."

 

"We can only hope not."

 

***

 

THE BATTLE OF the doom mongers went on apace amid the busy hustle that marked Cherryball Flats as one of the most progressive cities on the Face of the World, like a very red spot on the point of bursting. It was as if, apart from a tiny fraction of serial worriers, the whole of Frangea continued to live a not exactly care free existence, but a sort of stolid get on with it in the Frangea way lifestyle choice and damn all the rest of it.

 

As the weeks passed and the sun shone, bathers bathed, hustlers hustled and beachcombers came up with next to nothing, so prosperity for the Enders seemed hard to come by. 'Cash-Then-Crash' garnered their trickle of subscribers, Lemon Curl managed to get a little funding from several breweries in Sicksplash Alley to tide her over and a certain woeful gentleman found himself obliged to pay off some of his late fees at the district library. He managed this by selling scandalous poetry about politicians in high places, with the names cunningly concealed in hilariously suggested anagrams provided by a certain lady who might be his wife.

 

With the onset of autumn a whole new dynamic seized upon the land. The end of the Summer Pause was to some the end of the world indeed for they had to return to work or to school or to some activity that did not involve sunbathing and lazing around outside beachfront bars. The sun kept rising and setting with annoying regularity, keeping days and nights going with a determination that suggested the world was not yet ready to put an end to itself. Such a disastrous turn of events led to inevitable consequences.

 

"What went wrong?" Mully Craftit said plaintively, shaking her mineral necklace with worry as income dried up. It seemed like the end of the world, sort of. Some animal screamed as it was slaughtered in the butchery below in a poignant moment of relevance.

 

"World's still here," Share suggested sagely.

 

"But the sense of doom's still here too."

 

"And Lemon Curl. You know what she's gone and done?"

 

"No. Tell me."

 

"Opened a bloody supermarket with an allnight drinking hall attached. Holds autumn fall over parties with slogans about how a great winter freeze is being predicted by certain weather boffins that'll wipe us all out. Where she got that from, I've no idea." There was a tone to her voice that suggested envy and respect rolled into barely concealed outrage.

 

Mully pondered this a moment as she looked at a slightly crumpled black-bordered flyer. She flipped it over and read advertisements from the various retail sponsors.

 

"Seems to me," she said, "really thick coats, big hats and super-warm boots might be a trending thing in the coming months perhaps."

 

"I'll get right on it," Share said, leaping up with such energy it was a terrifying thing to behold. Then she paused. "I wonder how that book selling chappie will adapt to this shifting doom thing?"

 

"A really large bonfire, probably," Mully said, "you know, to keep him and that woman who might be his wife warm in the deadly freeze that's most definitely on its way."

 

The two women who had staked their livelihood on a future that was no future stopped then and stared at each other as another creature on the floor below gasped out its life in noisy protest.

 

"No," Share said quietly, looking around at the sparse office where no expense had been expended. "That can't be right. We can't be having any, you know, wotsits."

 

"Survivors?"

 

"Them's the ones."

 

Share sat down heavily in her chair again, which she usually did even when in a light-hearted mood.

 

Here was a dilemma. Adapt and die was the rule by which she had shaped her current occupation. Adapt and survive was just simply not acceptable in the current climate of total annihilation.

 

"Bloody Lemon Curl. I could wring her scrawny neck," Share said and laughed with philosophical humour.

 

"She is indeed a step ahead of us on this one."

 

"Step ahead? Got it!" and Share jumped up again. "What say we arrange for hiking trips into the hills?"

 

"Why, by all that's doomed to end?" Mully said, eyes wide and necklace glinting with tremblings of puzzlement.

 

"I read about it in an awful book I swiped from that doomstaller the other day, called From Log Jam to Traffic Snarl, or some such."

 

Share struck up a pose as ideas seized her mind in tight grips that made her eyes go funny.

 

"Picture this," and she swept plump hands out before her dramatically. "A last view of the beautiful land of Frangea before the great snows come sweeping in from whatever direction they're supposed to, covering everything in a freezing blanket of death." Then she smiled pleasantly. "No survivors."

 

"Ooh, I get it. We can arrange hikes periodically. People can view some trees and hills and things and wait a bit for a possible world ending blizzard. When it doesn't come we can give them a free pass for later."

 

"A discounted ticket," Share corrected, thinking of profit margins.

 

"Of course. Silly me. Got carried away there a minute." Mully gathered up the remaining scattered flyers. "Is Pollit still working for us?"

 

"Think so. She was a volunteer helper from our early summer student sweep so can't really dismiss her."

 

"Then dispose of these things and ask her to get some maps of Mount Syzywyg and environs, and a good list of outdoor retailers. We need a new set of sponsors for this one. Roll on doomsday."

 

"Roll on doomsday," Share repeated the battle cry with a skip in her step as she took the no longer needed flyers out to be trashed.