Things were better now, on the mainland: more babies, more families, more weddings. Hopper’s generation, consequently, was smaller than those on either side. Whoever the child was, the odds were it was now dead.
Even if some great clock had been stopped exactly with the planet’s spin, and the hospitals of the world scoured for the last birth, it would be a pointless endeavour. The imprecision of timekeeping towards the final sunrise meant no child was formally identified as the final one to know the old world: the world of dawns, sunsets, cool clear evenings. Many pregnancies had been brought to an end, prematurely and inexactly. Why bring a child into a world winding itself down? The chaos and shortages at the end of the Slow had kept the planet’s libido in check.
Hopper knew she was one of the last ‘before’ children: born four years before the planet’s rotation finally stopped.īut during those years new children were perceived at best as an extravagance, at worst a cruelty. The world had paused, waiting for the cataclysm, and those children already young had been treated like royalty – fed well, treated whenever possible, as if in premature apology for a spoiled planet their parents could not mend. There had been plenty born since, of course, but the birth rate had plummeted in those final years. Hopper knew she was one of the last ‘before’ children: born four years before the planet’s rotation finally stopped. It seemed quaint to imagine people reacting to it with shock. Now, thirty years after it all ended, the Slow seemed the most natural thing in the world.
And all scientist Ellen Hopper wants to do is continue working in isolation in the frozen Atlantic, until she is summoned to London, and uncovers a deadly secret. A colonial war has taken place, redrawing national boundaries. One half of the globe is in total darkness at all time. Forty years of a galactic catastrophe has caused the earth’s rotation to slow. It’s 2059, and Earth is barely recognizable. The following is an exclusive excerpt from The Last Day, by Andrew Hunter Murray.
0 kommentar(er)
