SandDune reads in 2025 - Part 1

Six of them in a great H of metal hanging above the Earth. They turn head on heel, four astronauts (American, Japanese, British, Italian) and two cosmonauts (Russian, Russian); two women, four men, one space station made up of seventeen connecting modules, seventeen and a half thousand miles an hour. They are the latest six of many, nothing unusual about this any more, routine astronauts in earth's backyard. Earth's fabulous and improbable backyard. Turning head in heel in the slow drift of their hurtle, head on hip on hand on heel, turning and turning with the days. The days rush.

'You do not announce on Facebook that you, an atheist, are leaving your job and your home and your husband to join a cloistered religious community. I mean you could, and it might be a better way than I chose, which was not to announce anything to anyone. People were wounded. Very wounded. They told me so in the letters that came for a time in a steady river, to let me know of the hurt and damage I had caused by my disappearance, how much it was still rippling. Alex's letters were not so full of fury, though injury still lay between the lines of his unbearably formal notes about legal things to be resolved. And he would drop in details of his projects – the Guinea mangroves, biodiversity funding, the rest; 'actually making a difference' – to underline his faith, his commitment, my abdication.'

England has a population density of over 1,100 people per square mile, and 56 million people to feed three times a day. Most of England is farmed, and realistically will continue to be, our biggest and most vital ecological challenge is how to make productive farms much better places for nature. We can't wipe the slate clean, but every farmer can work up from where we are and make it much better. Some of the answers lie in the past – in how we farmed before we could cheat with new technologies. Other solutions require new ways of doing things, based on science (for example by analysing soil health, studying grazing practices to see what works best, or learning from ecologists about the habitats and natural processes we need to recreate). We can't wipe the work the land and still have healthy soil, rivers, wetlands, woodland and scrub. We can have fields full of wild flowers and grasses, swarming with insects, butterflies and birds. We just have to want this enough to legislate for it and pay for it.

'Immediately outside the window there was a platform lit by three weak, yellow bulbs strung on a wire. Beneath the furthest of these was a group of people – a tall man, unusually thin, with a long coat trailing from one shoulder as from a door-knob, surrounded by five small men in uniform. They were persuading him along. He seemed, in their midst, bewildered like some long, timid animal harried by terriers. Every few yards he paused to remonstrate with them and they, circling about him and gesticulating, edged him on until he reached the carriage from which Harriet was watching. He was carrying in one hand a crocodile dressing-case, in the other a British passport. One of the five men was a porter who carried two large suitcases.

“Yakimov,” the tall man kept repeating, “Prince Yakimov. Gospodin,” he suddenly wailed, “gospodin.”

'And why was it so urgent for them to leave?'
'To put the matter briefly, the King's son is returning to the throne by invitation of Parliament, the army has agreed – or most of it – and England is to be a republic no more.'
The information came in such a rush, was so overwhelming and unexpected, she had to sit on the bed beside him to absorb it. After a few moments she said, 'Why did the army agree to such a thing?'
'A new law, what they call an Act of Oblivion, has been laid before Parliament. The past is to be forgotten. There's to be an amnesty for all who took up arms against the late King – with one exception. All those regicides, as they call them, who had direct involvement in the trial and execution of Charles Stuart are required to surrender themselves for judgement.' He took her hand. There you have it, as plain as I can tell it. This was ten weeks ago. Ours is the first ship to reach Boston with the news.'

At the front of the parlor was a chalkboard, murky green like lakewater. On the wall beside me was a large topographic map of the valleys. It covered much more terrain than the engraving in my mother’s book: here I counted a dozen lakes in each direction, with intricate details in the mountains. The map showed the border fences, represented as raised silver lines enclosing the towns and some surrounding land. The enclosures formed loose circles, crossing the lakes to capture a crescent of each western shore. The town in the middle of the map was unlabeled, but the foreign valleys to the left and right bore their proper names, written in neat type and accompanied by what I realized were temporal designations:

Ouest 3 (-60) Ouest 2 (-40) Ouest 1 (-20) Est 1 (+20) Est 2 (+40) Est 3 (+60)

Studying the series, it occurred to me that although the valley where I lived was in the center, that was only relative. In the eyes of the others, theirs would be centered, and mine would be off to the side—somebody’s future, somebody’s past. Therefore, however different everything else must be in those distant places, the map on this wall would look exactly the same.