This is the furthest I’ve ever been from the centre of Leicester. I was born there and haven’t moved since. We all know about the visual archives where you can see how people of my age and older used to travel, but not many do now. What’s the point? Where would we go? Why bother when we can see the rest of the world without moving? It’s safer, too.
My friends and I study in our bedrooms all day and take monitored liftshares to safe places where we can freeline together in the evening. None of us are stupid enough to venture, though other groups do. Last week, the brother of someone I know was caught outside in an unprotected zone. I don’t know what he was doing, but guess what? He’s not here to tell the tale.
My Grandad says he remembers when life for Youngs like us was different, but he was born in 2050, and no one else cares about anything that far back. My digistant (my assigned digital assistant) says we can only control the here and now, and tomorrow is forever. I believed her, but then the Fishkids started my unbelieving.
“Do you know about the Fishkids?” I asked Dad.
“Never heard of them.”
“You should stop watching those weird visuals,” my brother said.
“But I saw a headline about them in the Version,” I told him.
“The Version!” Mum’s always listening in. “Well, if it’s in there, you know it’s a lie.”
We’d argued about it before, and what’s the point of saying the same thing all over again?
“The Version is a version of a truth,” I told her. “ Even if we don’t know which one.” Then I read out the headline.
Another Fishkid sighting. Three or more seen in Parliament Lake by a local fisherman.
And now I’m here. Five kilometres outside Leicester and ready to go on a journey of discovery. I’m going to find the Fishkids in the Thames Flood Zone. I’ve left a voice message telling everyone to leave me alone and let me do what I have to do. It sounded like I had a plan, but my only plan is to take the overnight sky tram to the St James’ Park station and see what happens next.
East Leicester station is cold and dark. Apparently, it’s like all the others, all over England, but I wouldn’t know because I’ve never been to one before and if I had a choice, I wouldn’t come again. I’m alone on the platform, just me on this bench and … wait … someone else, an old man asleep on a bench on the other side – messed-up coat, no shoes, probably stinking. I’m glad he’s there and not here. I can see my reflection in the glass behind him. Me, crouched like an ant under my mass of black hair. When I get back, I’ll have it all cut off.
The sky tram is coming down, its lights cutting two white tunnels through the black sky, and its huge, long shape sinks with a hiss of freezing air. Someone should put up a sign warning people about it. My face feels burned. It seems strange to think that something so big would come down and stop for me. The elevator is roofed over, so I’m protected from the cold, but all the same, by the time it stops at the top, my feet are so numb I nearly fall over when I walk out.
Inside, it’s warm, the seats are soft, and someone has left a bag with a half-eaten bagel. It doesn’t look bad. Waste not, want not. I could eat it, but I’m not hungry.
The walls are transparent, so you can see outside, except there’s nothing to see. A non-view. Everything black, like the whole world and everyone in it has died. I know it’s because we’re flying above the sky screens, but it’s scary for people like me who’ve never flown this high before. I wonder what my brother is doing now? Part of me wishes I was with him, warm at home.
Ten minutes in, and I can feel we’re dropping. The city lights are back, but not many, so maybe we’re flying over a rural area. I can see a cluster of lights, a village maybe, and the blank farm parts in between. One day, I’d like to go there and walk over the fields I’ve only been able to see in images, but maybe they’re just another version of the truth, too.
Our route is traced on a screen in the front of the carriage. We’ve passed Northampton already, and now it looks like we’re hovering over Luton, so maybe more people will get on. The escalator is being lowered, and now there’s a crowd standing around it at the bottom. I hadn’t thought about this part. What if someone asks why I’m in here alone? What should I say? But it’s all good because they go into a different carriage, and I think, St James’ Park, here we come. I wonder if they’re all here to find the Fishkids like me?
They’re not, but I only know when they get off at Watford, and now I’m alone again. The sky tram is flying low, and the surface underneath is silver and solid-looking, like a dance floor, except it’s water. All the houses have gone. The lights too. There’s nothing left, just a few towers sticking out above the surface. The whole scene is just as I’d always imagined it, though it’s hard to imagine a complete city underneath.
The sky tram hisses down, its draught shovelling the water into sloppy silver waves. It lands on a flat concrete bed where the station platform is exactly like the one I started from in East Leicester. The water all around makes me want to go back there, even more so when the sky tram goes back up and drops a cold shower of rain over my head. I check the time. I’ll have to wait an hour before it returns. I wonder if I’ll last that long in this place.
The platform is surrounded by a low wall and when I lean over, water fingers scrabble like they’re trying to reach up and grab me. Perhaps this is what really happened to the kids they call Fishkids, and the fishermen only saw their drowned cadavers. Maybe I should have read a different version of the Version. I sit on a bench away from the wall and pull my hair around me like a coat. It has its uses.
“Is it real?”
The slithery voice is close behind me.
“Touch it,” another voice slithers in reply.
Then I feel something tug my hair, hard and sharp. “Hey!” I turn round before thinking, and there they are, two Youngs like me, but only half finished, like someone forgot to add their hair and cut out the skin between their fingers.
“What happened to you?” I ask.
They shrug and look at each other as if they haven’t understood, so I point to my hand and run my fingers through my hair. One makes a slippery sound that could be laughing, but it’s hard to be sure, so I get on with achieving my mission and ask if they’re Fishkids. They don’t answer.
The one nearest me pulls himself up to sit on the top of the low wall. His arms are wet, and the station lights are reflected on his skin. I want to back away, but there’s a bench right behind me. In my world, Youngs don’t do gender identification, or at least we don’t show it, but this Fishkid is naked and obviously a boy. Then, the girl gets up beside him, with her little breasts all tight and hard in the cold. I touch mine under my thick coat and sniff for fish.
“Show you,” she says, then a slippery, webbed hand pulls at mine.
“Down there,” the boy points.
“I can’t swim!” My scream skips over the water, bouncing into the waves and back out, and then I see the huge bubble floating towards us.
“Show you,” the girl says again.
The boy dives into the water, sleek, silver, and so smooth that the surface hardly breaks for him. Then I feel her push me from behind.
My hair is the last thing to get through the bubble walls, and I watch as the boy pushes the last strands in. The girl is outside treading water, and I’m between feeling more scared than I’ve ever been in my whole life and the happiest I’ve ever been because I’ve found the Fishkids. Wait till my brother hears this. He’ll never believe me.
They lie over the top of the bubble, their stomachs flat, their skin squished, and their feet kicking to push the bubble down. The silvery surface above disappears like the sky when the screens have been activated, except that here, nothing is dark. There’s light in every window of the house in front of us and in the water around it. Then they push my bubble through an open window, and once we’re inside, the girl pops it with a knife.
The Fishkids stare at me with their hands held out as if they expect me to run away, but I don’t because everything seems so normal here. We’re in a bedroom like mine at home, with bunk beds for my friends when they visit, a desk for me to work at and posters on the wall, but when I lean out of the open window, my head pushes against something transparent, and when I lean back my hair is wet. The Fishkids laugh and run out into the passage, with the girl pulling me behind her. Then we rattle down what seems like hundreds of stairs, and when we reach the bottom I’m finished, no breath left, but they keep going until we’re outside.
With the door behind us and a garden in front I see what my head hit when I stuck it out of the window. A bubble wall like the bubble I’d been in, except this one is literally as big as a house, a garden and a street at the end. We could be anywhere in Leicester. I could be at home.
The boy beckons, and I follow. We’re crossing the road and walking towards a small park when I realise there’s no traffic, not a single car, not even an e-bus. And that’s when I also realise there are no people, just the Fishkids and me.
“Parents?” I ask. “Mum and Dad, brother or sister, maybe?
But the boy doesn’t seem to hear, and now the girl is running ahead. I must follow because I can’t risk getting lost in an underwater bubble only the Fishkids know about. How would anyone find me? Then I hear voices and music like there’s a party, and I see them dancing. Naked Fishkids. Girls and boys, like me and my brother, except for their bald heads and skin between their fingers.
The girl shouts. I don’t know what she says, but everyone turns around to stare at me. They’re laughing, but not mocking. I could believe they’d been waiting for me. Then they huddle for a minute or two, with a lot of slithery whispering, and I sit down to wait.
At first, this park, which must be St James’ Park, seems like any other in Leicester, except maybe bigger with more statues and more flowers in flower beds. But when I sit down, the grass under my hands doesn’t feel the same as at home. It’s softer and squelchier.
“Come,” the boy says from the middle of the crowd that has moved into a circle around me.
We start running again, and I notice that everyone is barefoot except me, so I kick off my shoes and squelch through the cold, wet, long grass. It feels good. There’s a bridge in front of us and a sign to say it’s the Blue Bridge, but it looks grey and rusted to me. I’m thinking about this when the girl dives into the river flowing underneath. It’s clear for a while, so I can see where she’s going, but she disappears shortly after. Maybe she’s gone much deeper, but it’s ages before she comes back, and I’ve already written her off for dead when her head pops up with a fish crosswise between her teeth.
The boy points at me. “Hungry?”
The girl is sitting on the bank with her fin hands around that fish, her teeth tearing it to bits. I feel sick. “Could I have some water?”
I don’t know how it happened. The group of Fishkids has grown from maybe twenty to maybe fifty, and every single one is staring at me. Then, the girl wipes her mouth and spits out a bone.
“Water,” she says, gesturing to the others, and they follow her like she’s the boss.
I follow, too, walking behind her along a narrow tarmac path with big cracks packed full of the squelchy grass. I’m guessing it’s seaweed because that’s where we are, under the sea, in a big bubble. Even as I think about it, I know it’s crazy. Then I notice the trees, their trunks like the bare legs of a giant body I can’t see. The tops are gone, and there are no branches or leaves. When I put my hand out to see what the bark feels like, it falls as dust over my fingers.
Now I really want to go home, but the girl and her friends have other plans. She stops at a drinking fountain and shows me what to do. My throat is dry, and my tongue is fat and clumpy, so I press the button and open my mouth under the jet of water. Then I retch and puke and spray the whole lot back out. It’s salty.
The Fishkids are excited, their bare feet fiddling shapes in the seaweed grass. They want to get moving, so I let the boy take hold of my arm and try not to think about how slimy he feels. He runs and then stops at a wide road with white lines down the middle and street lights along each side. This really could be home. Then he points to a sign that says Park Lane as if I should be excited about it. I nod, but I’m more interested in the outside of the bubble tunnel we are walking through. There are houses there too, but they are not protected and dry like the one with the bedroom and stairs. They’re wet and peeling and covered in curtains of dark seaweed. Fish swim through their windows and open doors fat as sponges. This is London underwater, in the Thames Flood Zone. I tap the bubble wall, and when I lick my finger, it tastes salty.
“Who did this?” I ask, pointing to the tunnel.
“Buckingham Palace.” The girl is back, standing so close I feel her breath filtering through my hair. I turn to face her and see the high wall behind, the top lined with golden spikes.
At one end, there is a huge gate made of black bars. On the other side, a man in uniform walks backwards and forwards in front of a heavy wooden door. A rat runs across his path. The man stamps but misses. A gold circle is in the middle of the black bars with three gold creatures attached. One, a gold lion is wearing a gold crown. The image reminds me of stories I’ve heard from our archives.
“Do kings and queens still live there?” I ask.
The girl nods but pulls me away when I try to open the gate. She could be scared, but her fishy face is hard to read. I grab one of the bars and shake it.
It’s impossible to describe a sound unlike anything else you’ve heard before, but the Fishkids know what it is. They run away, bunched together like a silver-topped wave, bare feet smacking down the wide, empty street, and white backs splattered with the dark reflections from the water outside.
The girl gestures for me to follow, but I’m frozen, so she grabs my hair and shouts in my face, “Marble Arch!” Her tonsils are smashed-peach red.
We run towards a huge white building with three arches. Some Fishkids climb up it, and a few of them slip. One hits the ground but doesn’t make a sound, which probably isn’t a good sign. The others kick a door down, and then everyone goes through. So do I, with the girl still pulling my hair.
Now, we’re in an empty room with a staircase on one side that hundreds of Fishkids try to climb at the same time. The girl drags me through to the middle and pushes a few of them aside, then we reach the top and crawl out onto a roof, where it’s suddenly quiet. The boy is there, too, staring up with his arms held straight over his head. He nods, and the girl nods back. Then he leaps and disappears into the green light above.
“Now you.” The girl pushes me into the place where he had been, then ties my arms down with my hair and lifts me onto her shoulders.
We rise together, up into the pool of green water, her kicking legs sending shivering ripples through the windows of the houses in the drowned streets. When I look down, the bubble city has disappeared, and a shoal of Fishkids swims in our wake.
