17F – In The Future

In the future, I think things will be worse than they are now. Ms Phillips says I’m being negative, but I think the future is bad.

Last week, Ms Phillips told me that I was “catastrophising”. She wrote the word on the board after class, and I copied it down. She said that it means that I only imagine that things can get worse. So she told me to write something positive about the future. About something good happening.

But I wanted to write about the ocean.

I’ve been reading about the ocean. It’s fucked. I’m allowed to use that word, because that was the word used in the magazine I read. Ms Phillips told me that the magazine was for older people, and that people who use words like that only use them for shock value, and that they use them because they aren’t very good writers, but I still think it was a good article. I read it with my brother, and he says it’s a good article, too. Anyway, the ocean is fucked and it’s all our fault.

The article was about someone sailing for fourteen days to visit the biggest garbage dump in the world, where the ocean is fucked. The oceans have lots and lots of currents, like rips but not just on beaches, they go all over the ocean. And any time someone puts something plastic in the ocean, the currents take it to the same place. And lots and lots of people put something plastic in the ocean. So this place is like a big plastic floating garbage dump.

The article says that the garbage dump is the size of Texas. I looked up the size of Texas on Google. It says that Texas is 268,820 square miles. I don’t know why they didn’t just say that the garbage dump is 268,820 square miles big – I think that sounds bigger. But I didn’t know how big Texas was, so maybe that was why.

Anyway, I already knew about the currents and the floating garbage dump, because my brother knows about that stuff. But while I was reading the article, I learned new things, too. I always thought a juice bottle would always stay a juice bottle, but they say it breaks down and becomes lots of tiny bits of plastic, little chunks. These tiny bits stay in the water and get eaten by jellyfish. And when other animals eat the jellyfish, the plastic stays with them. And eventually we eat things that eat the plastic, so we get the plastic too. Only tiny bits, but they don’t go away. Ever.

Ms Phillips was quiet after I told her about this. Then she said it was good that I was thinking about such serious things, but that I should not forget to be a kid. I said, but I am a kid, and the ocean is still fucked. She asked me not to use that word, and told me to say “polluted” instead. Then she went and had lunch.

The next day she came up and told me I had to write something.

She told me at the start of the class, first thing in the morning. She said that it was a very special creative writing project. I had to write what would happen to the oceans, but I had to give it a happy ending. She said it was important to have hope. I had to write how the oceans would be fixed. I didn’t want to, but she said that it might be my job one day, to work out how to fix the oceans.

So now the oceans were fucked, and I had to write five hundred words on how to save the oceans without saying “fucked”.

So I asked my brother.

My brother knows stuff. He won’t let me write his name here. He says that people can find him if he does that, that’s how smart he is. Anyway, he told me that no one ever does anything about stuff like this until it does something to them personally.

So I wrote about the President. He’s not just a President of one country, like the United States, he’s the President of a group of them, called the Group. I’m allowed to do that, because this is creative writing and I get to make stuff up. My brother asked me if the Group is a multinational corporation, but I don’t know what that is. Anyway, the President of the Group has a son, called Billy. Billy eats a fish with lots of plastic in it, gets cancer, and dies. So the President hires a team of scientists to fix the ocean.

Ms Philips asked me if I had help with the story, but I don’t want her to find out about my brother, so I say no.

Anyway, the team of scientists try out some giant filters, like the ones in fishtanks, only big enough for 268,820 square miles of plastic. But they don’t work, they get clogged and then the scientists can’t work out where they will throw them out to.

And then one of them makes a thing to eat the plastic, using genetic engineering. I found out about genetic engineering from my brother, and from Google. The thing they make is like coral, which I saw on TV and I like a lot. Coral is alive, even though it looks like rocks, which is cool. Anyway, the scientist makes something that looks like coral, except that it eats plastic.

And the plastic eating coral sits in the ocean and eats up all the plastic. And gradually, all of the plastic gets sucked out of the ocean and turned into coral, and people go diving on it, and it becomes a holiday resort. And the President of the Group, he gives lots of credits to scientists (because they have credits instead of money) to invent something better than plastic. So the scientists invent plastic bags made of vegetables, that you can eat after carrying stuff, so there is no more plastic in the ocean.

And the oceans are fixed.

And then there’s no more plastic for the coral to eat. But the coral is still hungry.

So the coral swims to California. It takes it a long time to get there, but when it gets on land the coral finds so much plastic that it eats the entire city and lots and lots of people die, and this is why the future is bad.

Ms Phillips didn’t like the story. But my brother said it was good.

16F – Powers

Not many people know this, but I’ve got Powers. Invisibility. Not what I would have picked out, but Powers are like that. You don’t choose them, they choose you. And I got picked by invisibility.

It’s not as out of control as it sounds. I’m not that athletic, really. I got this cough that breaks out any time I so much as walk up a few stairs. So I don’t really do anything that special with it. It’s a day-to-day thing for now, my Power. It’s just kind of there.

It happened again just this morning. Sometimes I don’t even know that I’ve switched it on, but I was out walking and then this woman looks straight through me. Like, she’s looking right at me, but behind me there’s a shop window, dresses in it, and she’s looking at me, but she’s seeing the dresses. She stops, sees something she likes, really checks it out, and then moves on. And I’m right in the middle, and I’m looking at her, and nothing. No reaction, nothing at all. I wave, make some noises, she doesn’t even blink. That’s how it works.

But here’s the problem – I can never tell when it’s on. Its not like I can look at my own hands and they fade away or anything. I don’t know how I do it, or what’s going on. I just know that it happens.

A whole crowd of people can go past. They’re talking, crapping on about some movie or something, come within millimetres of me, then they just keep going. I followed some of them once, just to see where they went, just to see what would happen. I shadowed them, jumped around their steps, waved my arms a few times. But they never turned around. Just kept on walking.

Sometimes I can be a real dick about it too – I find things, throw them around, just to scare people, just to see how they react. And if I smash something, or bounce something off a wall, make some noise, they see what I do, but they don’t see me. I could yell at the top of my lungs and they wont hear nothing, but smash a bottle into the pavement and they hear that, let me tell you. They jump like the thing’s come out of nowhere, freaks them out. But they see the bottle. They don’t see me.

And its cool, you know? Because you can just go under the radar. There are times when its good to be able to just slip away. Go unnoticed. I just wish it was more reliable.

Yeah, there are times when it lets me down. When I’ve squeezed my eyes shut and tried to disappear. Bad times. Curled up in a ball, covered my face, willed it to happen, really tried to bring it on, you know?

Well those guys, they could see me. Their aim too good.

Since then, I don’t try to put the Power to the test. Maybe something happened to it. Maybe its like anything else, if you get sick, or if someone knocks the shit out of you… Think about it. You get crook, you don’t think so well. Your eyesight can get blurry, your hearing can go, maybe your Power is the same. You’d think a Power would be a switch on, switch off sort of deal, but its not like that. Maybe if I learned to control it things would be different.

So yeah, that’s how it works. There’s no real reason for it, it’s just kind of there. But sometimes you just have to enjoy what you have. Maybe that’s why I was given this Power, because other people, I don’t think they’d appreciate it. They’d find it a hassle.

Me, at least I find it entertaining.

Don’t get me wrong – I’m not short of anything. It’s not just what you see here in the bags, I’ve got a stash near Central, a couple of other places that you don’t need to know about. And I’ve got good places to crash too, dry, out of the way, not overcrowded, not anywhere anyone would think to look. But man, having a power – even an unreliable one, sometimes its just magic. When you can walk behind some guy for ten whole minutes without him even turning around, see where he goes, and you know, I reckon maybe he can feel someone behind him, but he doesn’t even know I’m there.

15F – Go Team

He sat there in the dark, adjusted his blindfold, almost lifted it. It was tempting, but beneath him somehow. He’d stick this one out just on principle.

Goddam group activities. At least these things showed them how much they relied on him. Even Brendan, who was supposed to be organising this mess. Brendan, the alleged trainer, trying to pull the rope bridge together, failing, that same look on his face; crumpled, defeated, probably close to tears. Just like in the office. Brendan was no leader. But he was.

They were all wearing him down, Brendan and the rest of the Team Members. It was like tennis – you hang around people who never challenge you, never test your limits and your game gets soft. Meanwhile he was lifting the game of everyone in the building, not that anyone stopped to thank him for it.

Brendan started to speak, his voice wavering and a touch nervy.

“This exercise will be the last of the day. It’s a simple one. All you have to do is stay in this shed, blindfolds on, for an hour.”

Brilliant. Another stroke of genius. He settled in for the wait.

“There’s only one rule. No matter what happens, even if you feel a little frightened…”

Oh please.

“You must keep your blindfolds on.”

He heard the door slam shut, and listened as Brendan’s ridiculous hiking boots tromped away. God, what a day. They’d had the tower building, the fall backwards business, the river crossing puzzle, but this had to be the worst of it. Blindfolds.

Still, no matter how ridiculous the situation, someone needed to show some leadership. And he wasn’t the type to look for that elsewhere.

“Ok, lets get this show on the road, shall we?”

“How, exactly? We’re not really supposed to do anything in this one.”

Sounded like Sharon, nasally and just a touch whiny. Rule 4 – never let dissension go unanswered.

“Typically intelligent response there Sharon, we’re obviously supposed to communicate in some manner, or this wouldn’t be a team building exercise, would it? Let’s at least give Brendan that much credit.”

He wasn’t sure it was due, but he let him have it anyway.

“Now lets start by getting this organised. Who’s sitting where? And don’t all speak at once”

“Simon, over here.”

“Jane”

A pause, then “Sharon”.

“Kirsty.”

“Rich”

He waited. There was supposed to be one more.

“Pete, you there?”

A thought occurred to him.

“Pete, are you not answering because you’re playing some kind of role in this exercise? Because let me just say right now that if you are, your bonus is really gone. I mean it, gone.”

No response. That would have worked if he’d been here.

“Ok, no Pete. Must have sat this one out.”

A breeze had started to kick up outside, and the roof was creaking, twisting slightly in the wind.

“What do you think we’re supposed to be doing, Blair?”

Ah. Jane. Jane was new. He liked Jane. She was ambitious, more ambitious that the rest of them put together. One of those younger kids, the type you want to see go far, take under your wing.

It didn’t hurt that she was stunning.

“Don’t know Janey, but I suspect that this is all about communication or something.”

“So we should all talk to each other?”

Sharon again. Brilliant.

“Yes Sharon, that would appear to be the kind of thing.”

“What if we all said something we admired about each other?”

My god, were they all really like this? He wanted to object, but Sharon was already talking.

“Simon, the thing I’ve always admired about you is that you never lose you cool, no matter how stressful things get”.

There was no response. Simon clearly wasn’t buying this either. Not as dumb as he looked. She tried again.

“Simon? It’s your turn now hon.”

Above them the iron of the roof twisted and creaked.

“Ok, quick name check. Who’s here?”

“Jane”

“Sharon”

“Rich”

“Where’s Kirsty?”

He thought he heard a soft thud to his left. His hand involuntarily slipped to the blindfold, but he forced it back down. He wasn’t going to be intimidated. If this was the game, then he’d find a way to break it. The answer was obvious, if a little nauseating, but he wasn’t opposed to doing unpleasant things to win.

“Alright everyone, we’re going to hold hands. Move in to the centre, follow the sound my voice.”

He could hear them scraping their way towards him across the rough wooden floor. To his right, he felt a hand grope his knee in the darkness and then grab his hand.

“That’d be Sharon, wouldn’t it?”

“Yes Blair.”

No Jane. How’s that for bad luck.

His left was grabbed by another hand, rougher, masculine. Rich.

“Rich, that you? You got Janey on your other side there?”

Rich paused for a second.

“No, I think I’ve got Sharon.”

“Janey? You out there?”

Rich let go of his hand, started patting the floor next to him. He heard him slide off to his left, calling for Jane as he went. Then he stopped calling.

“Sharon, you hang on to Rich’s other hand there, yes?”

Sharon started to whimper, a miserable, pathetic sort of sound.

“He let go.”

This was incredible. Such an obvious premise and they were still losing. Sharon was freaking out. He grabbed both her hands, pulled her closer towards him.

“Come on Sharon, just stay with it. This is what this one is all about, see how much we look after each other, ok? So long as you and I hang on, we win, ok?”

He felt Sharon’s grip tighten. There was a violent pull, and then his hands were empty. He groped forward, surprised. Surely that was against the rules. He stopped and listened, tried to get a sense of who was around him. Someone was breathing, just a few feet in front of him, laboured but controlled.

He nudged his blindfold up over his eyes. Brendan was standing there, watching him, toying with a knife, waiting to complete the lesson.