Prisioners Read online

  “Very.”

  “It is strange,” the Professor said thoughtfully. “Zoos full of animals in cages were closed for sensitivities over animal cruelty and the transport of cattle, sheep and pigs for food was regulated to ensure so-called humane standards. And yet the mass transport of humans became as far removed from humanity as it was possible to get. Is it any better now? Are cattle and pigs not better served?”

  Carl gave a half-hearted smile.

  Bus terminal - Thailand

  “So, here we are, Carl. The year is 2050 and things are, just as some of us forecast. How do you feel?”

  “You tried, uncle.”

  “I did,” the Professor agreed. “And now I sit and watch the slow destruction of all things bright and beautiful.”

  Carl’s young face did not have the look of someone who’d come to ask questions. He looked neat and clean in his casually dressed style beneath the jacket. When he spoke, he exposed the standard set of sparkling white teeth in two, perfect rows. His bare arms had shown none of the signs of drug use but he still looked tired and fragile and his grey-blue eyes had the haunted look of someone lost in a wilderness. The few words he had so far spoken showed signs of a good upbringing which the Professor put down to his mother. But what were his unasked questions?

  The Professor nodded to himself. He thought he may know but there was time. He would wait a little longer. “Shall we walk a bit further?” he suggested.

  Carl nodded and followed but still said nothing so the Professor fell back into his own thoughts again.

  He started with Stefan, Carl’s father, his own foster brother and what he’d said to Sam earlier. “Procreation without responsibility, Sam.”

  Indeed, it was rumoured that Stefan had first fathered a child at age fourteen with fifteen-year-old black girl from Nigeria. After that it was likely that even Stefan had lost count of the number of relationships that ended with pregnancies.

  There was nothing wrong with Stefan’s fertility but he’d often criticised the use of medical technology for improving the fertility of and conception of others.

  After one strident speech he’d been told in no uncertain terms that to make fertility treatment illegal as he’d advocated would infringe the rights of those wanting to have babies. And when he’d countered by suggesting that such rights would infringe the rights of future generations to live in balanced societies where supply met demand and quality of life from birth to death could be assured, yet another religious leader had told him he was an evil extremist who showed no compassion.

  And whilst the subject raged for a month, many of those living on child benefits, housing benefits and other state handouts were watching the daily antics of rich celebrities living lives awash with excess and believing that such excess was vital for the happiness they craved and also their legitimate right.

  He’d said that any sense of personal responsibility was being lost by decades of shallow thinking, overindulgence and pampering while the more intellectually demanding realisation that standards of living and quality of life were slowly, almost imperceptibly, dropping went unnoticed.

  The mystical 'they' - the governments – were, of course, seen as both the cause of the discomforts and the solution. So, what had ‘they’ done? They’d taken the simplest and most politically astute decision and handed out yet more unaffordable gifts. Not one politician had been brave enough to stand up and say enough was enough and spell out that the basic cause of all the complaints - the shortages, the costs of living, the lack of jobs, the destruction of the natural environment - was overpopulation and that there should be an immediate and radical reduction in expectations or a quick return to self-help and individual responsibility.

  He asked Carl what he thought about the state stepping in to solve human problems.

  “It’s a good thing." Carl said with a sniff.

  The reply didn’t surprise him because that was the attitude of the young - instilled from birth and perpetuated through school into the world of joblessness. Rather than get into an argument he said: "But the people of long ago helped each other because there was no other help available. Helping each other is a strong characteristic of human nature but it is both a strength and a weakness."

  Carl looked puzzled. "How can helping each other be a weakness?"

  "It can be a weakness because gradually, as so-called civilisation has shown, no longer do only the fittest and most able survive but all who are born can survive - the weak, the strong, the sick, the young, the old. They are kept alive not always out of love but by technology and the legally enforced interventions of others. We no longer help each other or even care for each other but expect outside help.”

  "But we cannot allow people to suffer," Carl said.

  "Ah," the Professor replied. "There we have it again. Sickness, pain, discomfort, hunger - they are all an essential part of what it is to be a living thing. To experience pain and discomfort is to experience life. Do you want to remove the understanding of life is by removing one of its key indicators?”

  "But saying those sorts of things was exactly why they did not like what you wrote and what you said," Carl said with an apparent rush of indignation.

  “What I wrote, Carl, was that hardship is natural but that suffering is directly caused by the intervention of man. Think about that. Try to understand what I meant.

  "Towards its own kind, man is the most violent of all animals. Fighting and war causes suffering on a massive scale. Using more than your fair share of natural resources - food, water, fuel - eventually causes suffering to others. Having more and more children because of your own selfish desires and because there are now fewer healthcare risks and because there are state benefits to be claimed and because having as many children as you wish is tolerated by law eventually causes suffering to future generations due to the effects of overpopulation. Are humans so uncivilised that they fail to realise the real, long-term suffering caused by their selfish pursuits?"

  "But people are selfish, uncle. That is their nature."

  "Oh, yes. I agree. They love intervention that removes feelings of selfishness. They completely reject any intervention that denies them the right to be selfish. And if you read what I said it was that it is not the role of governments or religious leaders to encourage, enable or make it easier to be selfish. Instead, it was their firm duty, especially the religious leaders, to stifle selfishness for a long list of sound long-term humanitarian reasons that I gave. But by their very words and deeds they engrain selfishness because that is the easiest route to popularity.

  "What is it that some religious leaders chant every day about forgiving trespass and not wanting to be led into temptation and being delivered from evil? I have always suspected that they are only referring to those currently living because they do not have the vision or scientific wisdom to see the effects of their preaching on future generations.

  "Governments and religious leaders should acknowledge that it is necessary that the people they represent experience both the good and easy times and the bad and difficult times. Struggle and hardship are absolutely essential for the continuation of a species. If one generation finds ways to overcome hardship and adversity through individual strength and adaptability, then the next generation will inherit that strength and adaptability."

  "But it is not fair," Carl replied.

  The Professor shook his head. "Fairness has absolutely no place in nature,” he said. “And you must stop looking upon suffering or hardship as a negative thing. It is a very positive thing. Hardship is essential. Without hardship, life itself is diminished. To experience times of hardship leads to a greater appreciation of the good and easier times. Quality of life can only be measured by balancing the good times and bad times. Removing the bad - the hardships, the stress and the discomfort – also removes the good – strength, determination and self-motivation.”

  The Professor paused, thinking. “Let me give you a good example,”
he said.

  "Trying to be kind and fair by handing out huge sums of money in humanitarian aid does nothing to improve self-reliance. Trying to be kind and fair by handing out taxpayer funded benefits only succeeds in removing the desire for the natural, long-term, mutually beneficial relationships that are already there to provide that same support. Just look at divorce rates and the numbers of people now living alone. Are lonely people happier, more content? If they are, which I doubt, then there is now something fundamentally wrong with human nature. Social animals like humans cannot live alone in nature. They would never survive.

  "And from a biological perspective, to remove the experience of hardship so that everything is 'fair' is to do away with the need to change your ways in order to survive. Life would never have evolved beyond single celled creatures."

  "You mean there would be nothing?" Carl asked, puzzled.

  "There would not be life as you know it. Life only began because the conditions on this planet were right. Cells evolved from little more than chemicals. Some cells survived simply by dividing into two. Others survived by forming colonies but only the best, the strongest, the most able and the most adaptable, survived and found an efficient way to replicate their own kind. Over billions of years they evolved into complex animals.

  “But human reproduction has been interfered with. It is no longer natural. Reducing infant mortality and increasing the survival rate of mothers during childbirth through intervention is, above all, what caused the explosion in population. Good, some might say. But at what cost? To experience the multiple, negative effects of overpopulation?"

  They walked on.

  “Have you travelled much beyond the city, Carl?” the Professor asked.

  Carl shook his head. “I cannot afford it,” he replied.

  “But you have a phone?”

  “Of course, uncle. It is not possible to live without a phone.”

  The Professor nodded, mostly to himself. It was true that day to day life had become impossible without a phone though he was still unsure if the technology had improved life’s quality or its understanding. With it you could watch events unfold in every small corner of the planet in an instant. Another flood in Bangladesh? You watched it unfold. Another tragedy in sub-Sahara Africa and you felt you were amongst the lines of destitute refugees. Essential privacy and debatable standards of etiquette had long been the entertainment for millions. Virtual reality had taken over from reality itself with human interaction replaced by short messages. Deep reflection on the state of the world had been replaced by a quick check of someone else’s opinion and then jumping to your own conclusion without any real knowledge of the background, the history or the facts. Confusion had taken over from clarity of thought. There was no longer time for contemplation or deep, private thinking.

  He told this to Carl. “Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  “Yes.”

  “But no-one saw it as a problem. In the West from where the technology had come no-one had stepped in to assess its downsides and set any controls because to do so would have been an infringement of rights. Freedom to do just what you liked was granted because day to day struggle for survival and hardship was gone. Everything you wanted was right there, affordable and accessible. Technology became the way of life, especially for the untroubled, living-for-today young. You understand, Carl?”

  “Yes, but….”

  “Fifty years ago, everything had become undervalued leading to a throw-away, disrespectful attitude. There was too much of everything. A third of food produced – 1.3 billion tonnes of it – was being lost or wasted. No-one cared enough.

  “The consumer society was at its peak. But growing alongside all this was unemployment. More and more people needed more and more jobs and jobs depended on businesses who, if they were to stay in business needed to sell goods at low prices. There was over production and too much of everything at undervalued prices.

  “There was more wealth than was needed for basic survival so they sought private pleasures – more possessions, more food, more clothes and bigger houses and because they had always been successful breeders, they sought to satisfy their reproductive urges. People were becoming lethargic, bigger, heavier, overweight and building up unseen health problems. But consumerism was what kept them employed and it was in no-one’s interest to point out that consumerism had its down side. So, they continued spending and using up nature’s resources.

  “Long distance air travel and holidays were seen as their right. Back in 2016 3.6 billion people flew by air. 95% were non-essential for pleasure. Vast ships with populations the sizes of small towns took to the oceans filled with food and cheap entertainment stopping at already overcrowded resorts. They were eating, sleeping, drinking and swimming off overcrowded beaches in places half way around the world, places they had no interest in except for the sun, the food and the drinks at the bar - places that they then left permanently damaged, and its wildlife destroyed by their selfish indulgence.

  “Looking back, Carl, would you say that self-indulgence has improved the quality of life, of the human need for fulfilment and happiness? Has it reduced human suffering? Have previous generations given your generation anything that you would like to thank them for? Other than adding you to the numbers this small world is required to support.

  “And what of your current leaders? Does the Pope, for instance, still believe that he is well on the way to fulfilling God’s hopes for his worshippers or is he now having second thoughts? Is he and the current batch of political leaders about to demand urgent changes or is it business as usual?”

  Carl didn’t reply. Perhaps he’d talked too much.

  He looked at Carl and tried to compare him with his father, Stefan. Carl, he decided, did not resemble his father except, perhaps, in the colour of his hair. Carl was taller and stockier than Stefan had been and Stefan always had a look of confidence and contempt on his face. Carl’s face showed a complete lack of confidence.

  Twelve years had separated the Professor from Stefan. While he was studying for his PhD at University, Stefan had been at school but had already become what his mother politely described as “troublesome”.

  For a widowed woman, a doctor with a busy professional life, the experience of trying to bring up Stefan had been a struggle and eventually a tragedy. As a toddler he’d been put into care and fostered out. The Professor’s mother had been the last fosterer and she’d formally adopted him. She’d done her best but living and working surrounded by inner-city social problems had not helped. In the end, she’d reported him to police after her suspicions led to finding a hoard of cocaine and what was then called skunk under his bed. He’d been a dealer operating from near a bus shelter close to the local school. Finally, after periods of detention and prison he’d disappeared only to turn up at his mother’s funeral.

  His mother had always tried to excuse him. “It’s his background,” she’d say. “He’s trying to become accepted by the other boys. It’s peer pressure. It’s the education system. It’s class sizes. How can he be expected to learn in such a chaotic multi-cultural, multi-lingual system where even the teachers give up trying.”

  And she’d blame herself.

  “I suppose I’m doing too much,” she’d say. “I’m not giving him enough of my time.”

  She’d considered private education for him but schools had quickly seen problems and advised against it. Whatever she’d done, it was unlikely Stefan would have turned out any differently.

  But his mother’s own work-life balance had become difficult when Stefan was about eleven. As a gynaecologist with her own strong opinions on population growth and fertility she had already become heavily involved in campaigning for women’s rights. Women were seen as the solution to keeping family numbers down to affordable levels. Some years later when Stefan had disappeared, she had started travelling extensively promoting family planning. She’d spent months in Bangladesh. With over 160 million people at
the time, Bangladesh had the highest population density and some of the worst poverty in the world.

  “Choose a smaller family,” she would say. “Live within your means and reduce the pressure on resources. Protect the natural world to ensure there is enough of everything for everyone.”

  Stefan may not have taken much notice of his foster mother until her death but the Professor’s life had been entirely devoted to carrying on with her message.

  He looked at Carl again, sensing he was trying to find the courage to ask another question. It came at last.

  “Am I really your nephew, uncle?”

  The Professor slowed his walking, then stopped What should he say? Describe the background in the time left or leave it for another day, if there was one? Should he talk about family relationships? Express his opinion that too many boys were brought up bereft of a father figure with all the disadvantages that that brought? That still nothing had been done to address the need for different teaching methods for boys and girls? That to educate boys in an environment dominated by females may once have been seen as perfectly correct to meet the never-ending gender debate but that it was unfair and unnatural and led to disadvantages for boys?

  But as for whether Carl was really Stefan’s son and therefore his nephew, did Carl know something that threw doubt?

  “I suppose so, Carl, but I don’t know for sure,” he answered truthfully. “I only met you once. You were about two years old and with your mother. She introduced herself as Lavinia - an unusual name which is why I remember. I was addressing a meeting before the election. She seemed interested in what I was saying and came up to me afterwards and held you up for me to see. It wasn’t the best time or place for a discussion. Whether we were being introduced as uncle and nephew to save long explanations or just because she liked what I was saying, I didn’t ask. I never saw you or her again. Neither did I see Stefan for years until…...”