The Nervous Nineties: Voyage through darkness into the black whirlpool
A short story written and published when was 14-years-old in 1989. Please don't judge me by this! It won 3rd prize in the Junior category of the South China Morning Post Short Story Competition
You can listen to this in episode 5 of the Tales under the cat tree podcast.
Published in the South China Morning Post, October 03, 1989. Third Prize Winner in the Junior (ages 12-17) category of the South China Morning Post short story competition, 1989. I was 14 and the theme that year was "The Nervous Nineties". I received $HKD 400 cash and $400 for books. What I did with any of that money, I can't remember. I am sure I bought a lot of books though.
It was sinking. The boat that had lumbered on through the ages—was sinking.
Screams could be heard throughout the land of dust they were travelling through. A tribute to all they had done and all they had destroyed. It was sinking.
One by one they died, dropping to the ground like raindrops—slowly, ceaseless, until they hit the ground where they shattered. Starvation and disease had set in. Those on the top deck, dressed in the finest clothes, ignored the cries and wails of those below, and the energy of those below was drained so that they could live. These people died, choked by their own selfishness.
…The boat was sinking…
They were ready to watch their world die. Even though it was sinking, the boat lumbered on through the last of the Eighties to a time when its cargo had its last chance of salvation. The Nineties was an awesome whirlpool, dark, black, mysterious but always changing. They were afraid. They were nervous. Could they get through such a thing?
Those on top deck ignored it as much as possible, but they too felt a tinge of nervousness in the back of their minds. The animals and people below prayed for their lives. The boat lumbered on and on and … towards the Nervous Nineties.
Why were they nervous? Why indeed are the people of Earth nervous? Could it be that we are afraid taxi-drivers could take over the world in the Nineties? Or maybe that there will be a war controlled by the likes of Hitler. All of these are possible, though a bit improbable. But certainly we feel hope and fear of what can happen when we think of the Nineties.
As in all cases the Judge, which is Time, and the Jury, which is Earth, are faced with three possible verdicts at the end of the Nineties – Guilty, Not Guilty or Postponed. The opposition, which is our past deeds, have always been ready.
…The boat lumbers on…
The boat was now in a jungle, the last of the jungles that had once stood in hundreds throughout the land. By now, all could see. All could see the men with electric power saws biting into the wood cutting right into its veins until finally it fell, bowing to the demons that had conquered it shamelessly.
What could happen in the Nineties? Right now the last great rain forest which provides the whole planet with the air we breathe is being destroyed by people —slaves to money. Slowly the animals walk away, their homes destroyed, then stopping suddenly, they look ahead. The people turn and look, curious.
There lies the whirlpool and a little light pierces the swirling darkness. Maybe in the Nineties they could stop this meaningless destruction. And leave the world to live as it always has. Then the light is gone. Both animals and people look shamefully at the ground. Maybe the last great rain forest coulld be destroyed, leaving the world to rot.
… The boat lumbers on …
It’s a park, a wildlife park. Here the animals move freely, unhindered. There are the great beasts, the elephants, lions, tigers, antelopes and so on. The people watch this scene from the boat with peace. The first such scene they had seen in this era.
But one by one the look changes into one of horror, of disgust and of shame. For from behind the bushes, behind the animals, stepped men holding automatic rifles, aimed and ready to fire. The animals turned. Lights blazed. Fire. Screams. Death. There on the ground lay the animals. The men grinning hideously bent and ripped open the warm flesh for money.
Slowly the people on the boat turned away. They did not need to look at each other because they knew what each was thinking. The whirlpool became darker. And the people knew the opposite could also happen however hard they wished. The hunters could kill and kill. Slowly killing off vast numbers of animals with dying screams becoming the only sound of nature when no bird whistled. No elephant trumpeted. No tiger roared. Until the Earth was void of all beautiful life.
Only ugly, selfish humans, still unheeding. The scream was left behind and only the sound of people and animals silently weeping could be heard.
… The boat lumbers on …
Acrid, grey, heavy fumes covered the boat as it sped along and the Watchers looked out onto a greyness that equalled pitch blackness. But through it, the Watchers began to see slowly the dirty chimney of a factory and another and another and… until the banks of the river were filled with factories and their chimneys. All of them belching out the grey fumes.
Many of the Watchers are too sad to cough and become sick, they were weary. All the plants nearby drooped and were almost dead, the water did not have any fish, only a grey half-dead snake floated on the water, its unseeing eyes fixed pitifully on the Watchers. A person began to cough, then he bent over, vomiting grey fluid, then fell and died. The Watchers looked on with horror as another person acted in the same way.
What could they do about this in the future? There was no hope. Soon the world would be covered in grey fumes polluting the water and the air until most if not all life was choked by grey fumes. If not in the Nineties, then in the next century. What hope was there? Even through the greyness the dark whirlpool could be seen.
Suddenly a man cried out in the same instant as another died.
“Look! Look! On that rock… look!”
And there it was a little something which brought a ray of clean white sunshine on the boat. There on a rock was a yellow sunflower sheltered from the grey fumes. There was hope. This was another future. A better one. One which the people could bring about. Someone laughed in joy, another cried.
….The boat lumbers on…
Suddenly the boat turned and went down a bend so fast that almost everyone was thrown off their feet. Then there were the sounds. The crashing, the whizzing sounds of bullets flying overhead. A woman screamed as she fell dead, her baby in her arms. Slowly the bullets ceased and the Watchers sat up.
On the banks they could see lines and lines of soldiers attacking more lines of other soldiers. They were throwing bombs, killing fellow humans. One young soldier stayed out of the fighting, not understanding and frightened, and there he stayed because a man killed him from behind because he was the enemy. The Watchers could see the mother and father in their mind’s-eye. They were crying for a lost son. Lost to a war that they knew no one could win.
But with every dead and dying soldier, the hatred grew on both sides and they sent more sons and daughters to wield gun and bomb so they could kill other people, then die themselves, their lives becoming a statistic on a war record.
Lights blazed, fire ruled the sky. The Watchers knew that this particular battle would not destroy the world. Not now. But in the future in the Nineties?
As more sides join a war, more weapons would be used and bombs capable of destroying the world many times over. This would not be quick death. First they would kill and then be killed. All for people at the top who actually ran the battle. Many of the Watchers knew this could be a future, it could be their future. There was no way out of this and they collapsed in despair.
A soldier shouted. Another took up the shout. Soon both sides were shouting and running at each other. Their guns forgotten, bombs on the ground. The soldiers were hugging each other, sharing their food. The war was over. The people at the top had made peace. But this to the Watchers did not convey much hope. The world could be destroyed before peace realised. The boat’s speed increased, rushing through the river pulled by an ever increasing current as they neared the swirling black whirlpool.
… The boat lumbered on, but it was sinking …
Wind slapped the Watchers’ faces with a hard hand. There was a smell in the air that none could recognise. A sickly, sticky, rotting smell. Slowly the water became darker and darker, blacker and blacker.
The water spray was not water, it was black—black oil. As they went on they could see a gull stuck on the water covered in black, stinking oil, unable to fly, crying a feeble dying sound. The Watchers were reminded of Earth’s fate. Fish covered in oil were flapping their fins feebly on the banks of the river. Soon the boat was moving past a tanker run aground, the crew sitting lazily on deck. The Watchers knew. They knew that the spill wouldn’t be cleaned up. Why?
Because the people at the top would not waste their money. Nature was the only hope in this case and that too was being destroyed. What hope lay in the future?
When all possibilities are destroyed there is nothing but the judgement of “Guilty” and then prepare for an end to everything we know today.
The whirlpool of the Nineties was looming ahead, dark and dangerous. The boat was minutes away, even seconds, from entering that darkness. One would have been relieved to know that there were no more mistakes to correct in the decade of the Nineties. And their nervousness might have been reduced but no, the Watchers were not relieved.
They had seen only the tip of the iceberg. The Watchers themselves knew more. They knew of famine in lands where rain fell no more and now a desert lay. But along with that fertile desert lay children with hungry bodies and bloated stomachs, staring at a cloudless sky of stars—an awesome beauty. But these children are unable to see the beauty, their eyes are too weak. Over the ocean lies a land where food is half eaten then thrown away.
The Watchers wondered how long such an imbalance could continue. How long could such a food supply last? They knew that famine would spread if nothing was done about it.
A student closed his eyes and screamed, silently remembering a massacre a massacre unparalleled in recent history. A peaceful sit-in for more freedom had been gunned down, bloodied and destroyed along with many of the students and other people supporting the students. Yes, the student could remember it, and a burning hatred—for a world that could take life without a second thought when the other side was being so peaceful—grew. He knew that at least for the sake of his fellow students who had died next to him, the world had to be changed. But could it be done?
But there were more problems. Problems unseen a century ago. There was an ever-increasing population hitting five billion in 1987 and it was still increasing as people lived longer and more were born.
Food was short for more of the world, a person living in a wealthy country would think otherwise. As the population increases, they destroy much of the Earth for land to live and resources. But both are running low. And again despair set in among the watchers.
… Five seconds to go…
A man is struggling on the boat, struggling as a man possessed by a demon. The Watchers watch in pity as he breathes his last. They know the reason. An incurable disease—AIDS—slowly killing off vast numbers of people. Not only AIDS but many other diseases. Could they be curable in the Nineties? Many, many people would hope so. Someone sighed—maybe not.
… Four…
And so the seconds tick past. None know what will happen in the Nineties and there is fear and nervousness. In Hongkong people fear the Chinese Government and so they run away frightened. What is to happen in actual fact, who can say? Maybe it will be good, maybe not. But whatever it is, it should not be left to be decided by the people at the top but by the all of the people because they are the real power.
Strive to make a good future and you make a good future. It is right to be nervous. The Nervous Nineties is the decade when all that man has done in the past 200 years will be put to the test and the result could be frightening. And so think the Watchers as they flow towards to the beginning of the end or the end of a bad beginning.
… Two…
Thunder strikes, lightning flashes. The time has come. The whirlpool is straight ahead, darkness is light compared to this. And a sinking boat plunges into a time unparalleled. The world embraces the darkness.
Life-giver, the Maker and the Unmaker, Destroyer the river of Time flows on ceaseless, past the whirlpool…
