31st August. Chelsea
The artilleryman roused me early enough, insisting that we should forage for more provisions while we could, implying that the ponies weren't inclined to rise with the sun. I had no reason to debate the issue, so I co-operated for the moment. One of the first things I noticed when we exited, with him demonstrating his army training by weaving in between the rubble, was that almost the entirety of the South bank had been taken over by the giant plants. I can't stop myself from seeing this turn of events as relating to the subjugation of man by these ponies, though the lack of anything huge growing on the North bank gives me a slight glimmer of hope as it makes me wonder if there might be some bastion of British society holding out across the Scottish border. In contrast to the scene I'd crawled out of in Sheen, these plants seem to be more generic, it was almost uncanny as it was as though all the plant life in Battersea Park had been scaled up.
Once we'd returned to his effective base, the artilleryman invited me to sit as he gave a rough outline of how he came to be here, recounting how he'd come to the conclusion that the ponies had clearly covered every angle of their attack. His argument about how they managed to strike right at the heart of the modern civilised world seemed well-founded to me at the time, but then he recalled the sight of a pony casually tearing open the main station building at Clapham Junction before probing around for any human being within. The description he gave made me pause as it sounded a lot like the pony I'd come to identify as Fluttershy.
"That was when I realised it." He said. "We are akin to livestock now; these ponies have our intelligence and a level of power like that of an elephant against a termite mound, so it's gonna be the horses harvesting humanity. They're pretty much picking and choosing people as they go, but as time goes on some of us will be caged for breeding, screening out every aspect that they don't want out of us. They've barely started, yet!"
"Hardly!?" Our experiences didn't quite line up, as he hadn't been witness to the communal meals that I saw. Still, I could see that they couldn't have reached beyond the home counties at this point and they hadn't even been here a month. "But if it's all over, then what's left?"
"Like I said before, survival. All the fancy stuff's done and dusted; no more jaunts around the Royal Academy, no more fine dining in restaurants. Sorry mate, but you'll have to forego all the drawing room manners you may have learned, they've got no more purpose in life. We're going to have to rebuild the whole of civilisation from the ground up, adjusting for the new masters of the world. I'm sure you don't want to be bred up like a prize pig." I couldn't offer any argument against that. "We must remain independent, out of their sight while keeping a close eye on them, learning all we can about their ways. All creatures have weaknesses, so we'll need to find theirs before we can strike back."
"And just how can we do this when it takes only a glance from them to be seized?" I was spellbound by his spiel about the prospect of playing the waiting game, seeking opportunities where they'd present themselves.
"We'll have to build brand new villages and towns under their very noses in the one place that they'll never look, underground, under their own hooves! I have scouted the storm drains and the outflows and it's a much better prospect now that the rains have flushed out all the filth; dark, quiet, safe. We can build houses and all, a completely new society; a second chance to make something from the chaos that's befallen us all. I mean considering the alternative we have, what's so bad about living underground, eh? We'll build shops and hospitals and barracks. Everything we need; banks, schools, even prisons. Scout groups can retrieve all the books and materials from the surface and men like you, learned men, will teach our children. None of the poetry and rubbish like that, but straight-up science! They've got to be able to focus on keeping all our machinery working while developing new opportunities to advance and gain the upper hand; we could still have cricket games since people need some time off. Maybe we'll be able to rope down a unicorn some day, then we'll find out where it gets its grabber field and then... WHAM! We'll start dragging them down, show 'em what we're really made of and they'll do what we say! Think of all the lying and cheating made by the politicians, for there'll be no need for their sort in a society rising from the ashes as a glorious phoenix, all the chains of convention that we imposed on ourselves and our children are gone now. We'll have to focus all our energies into building up the strong of limb as well as the strong of will, the weaker types have no more room." I flinched a little at this, but gave a slight nod as I could easily see the argument he'd make against my sentimentality. "Might not be heaven living in tunnels, but staying up here's bound to end up being hell. Just think about it, civilisation starting all over again. A brave new world erected on the rubble of the old, tired world that's proven helpless against those mighty equines. We could even build a railway to the more secluded parts of the coast for short breaks; it'd be just like the Tube but on a grander scale. Men with the will to survive shall be unstoppable in the long-run; in fact I've already started." He walked over to what I had thought was a wrecked bookcase until he swung it aside too easily. "Come down here and have a look."
In the cellar I found he'd excavated a tunnel about as long as the width of one of the hoof-prints I'd seen throughout Fulham, about five feet high and four feet wide, which he proudly declared had taken him a whole week to dig. I know that I could dig that much in the space of a working day, whereupon I began to have my first doubts about him and his grand scheme. We did start digging deeper, I figure that our combined efforts managed to lengthen the tunnel by about three feet when he suddenly called time.
"Come and have a drink to the future." I was stumped by this. "You see it's back-breaking work, and when you've gotta make all the plans on top it's bound to wear you down. Here, I'm not gonna hold out on my comrades." He pulled out a half-bottle of actual champagne and filled a couple of glasses, which I could see were more suited to something like a claret. After my first glass he filled it up again before putting together a cold lunch, after which he insisted on a game of cards. I struggle even now to think on the fact that we were just sitting round a table in the midst of the ruins of civilisation, drinking and playing card games while my wife was who-knows-where and it what kind of state. We did return to the tunnel about halfway into the afternoon but he called time before I had even opened up the next six inches, claiming that we had to take up station to watch for giants.
As the sun began to sink I checked up on him and saw that he was slumped against the remnants of a wall with another glass of champagne in hand. I probed him carefully about the nature of what he called 'sentry duty' and he then declared that we should get under cover before a pony came along, and while I was following him back into the room where he had first made his spiel I saw a few more wine bottles that used to hold various varieties from the best champagne to a modest burgundy. He then began to remark about what else could be done in the society he had envisaged, but as the sun dipped below the horizon I saw a couple of ponies wandering along in the distance and the dancing of the shadows cast by the giant plants on the South bank. I felt a traitor to my kind, and I must now conclude that I should leave this dreamer with his flights of fancy.
I shall have to pack carefully and quietly, as I don't know how he'd react if he knew I won't commit to his cause, and I'll need to be up very early. I can hear him mumbling, drunkenly.
"The age of man is over." He's groaning. "Maybe something wonderful can come out..." I fear for his future, one way or another.
The artilleryman roused me early enough, insisting that we should forage for more provisions while we could, implying that the ponies weren't inclined to rise with the sun. I had no reason to debate the issue, so I co-operated for the moment. One of the first things I noticed when we exited, with him demonstrating his army training by weaving in between the rubble, was that almost the entirety of the South bank had been taken over by the giant plants. I can't stop myself from seeing this turn of events as relating to the subjugation of man by these ponies, though the lack of anything huge growing on the North bank gives me a slight glimmer of hope as it makes me wonder if there might be some bastion of British society holding out across the Scottish border. In contrast to the scene I'd crawled out of in Sheen, these plants seem to be more generic, it was almost uncanny as it was as though all the plant life in Battersea Park had been scaled up.
Once we'd returned to his effective base, the artilleryman invited me to sit as he gave a rough outline of how he came to be here, recounting how he'd come to the conclusion that the ponies had clearly covered every angle of their attack. His argument about how they managed to strike right at the heart of the modern civilised world seemed well-founded to me at the time, but then he recalled the sight of a pony casually tearing open the main station building at Clapham Junction before probing around for any human being within. The description he gave made me pause as it sounded a lot like the pony I'd come to identify as Fluttershy.
"That was when I realised it." He said. "We are akin to livestock now; these ponies have our intelligence and a level of power like that of an elephant against a termite mound, so it's gonna be the horses harvesting humanity. They're pretty much picking and choosing people as they go, but as time goes on some of us will be caged for breeding, screening out every aspect that they don't want out of us. They've barely started, yet!"
"Hardly!?" Our experiences didn't quite line up, as he hadn't been witness to the communal meals that I saw. Still, I could see that they couldn't have reached beyond the home counties at this point and they hadn't even been here a month. "But if it's all over, then what's left?"
"Like I said before, survival. All the fancy stuff's done and dusted; no more jaunts around the Royal Academy, no more fine dining in restaurants. Sorry mate, but you'll have to forego all the drawing room manners you may have learned, they've got no more purpose in life. We're going to have to rebuild the whole of civilisation from the ground up, adjusting for the new masters of the world. I'm sure you don't want to be bred up like a prize pig." I couldn't offer any argument against that. "We must remain independent, out of their sight while keeping a close eye on them, learning all we can about their ways. All creatures have weaknesses, so we'll need to find theirs before we can strike back."
"And just how can we do this when it takes only a glance from them to be seized?" I was spellbound by his spiel about the prospect of playing the waiting game, seeking opportunities where they'd present themselves.
"We'll have to build brand new villages and towns under their very noses in the one place that they'll never look, underground, under their own hooves! I have scouted the storm drains and the outflows and it's a much better prospect now that the rains have flushed out all the filth; dark, quiet, safe. We can build houses and all, a completely new society; a second chance to make something from the chaos that's befallen us all. I mean considering the alternative we have, what's so bad about living underground, eh? We'll build shops and hospitals and barracks. Everything we need; banks, schools, even prisons. Scout groups can retrieve all the books and materials from the surface and men like you, learned men, will teach our children. None of the poetry and rubbish like that, but straight-up science! They've got to be able to focus on keeping all our machinery working while developing new opportunities to advance and gain the upper hand; we could still have cricket games since people need some time off. Maybe we'll be able to rope down a unicorn some day, then we'll find out where it gets its grabber field and then... WHAM! We'll start dragging them down, show 'em what we're really made of and they'll do what we say! Think of all the lying and cheating made by the politicians, for there'll be no need for their sort in a society rising from the ashes as a glorious phoenix, all the chains of convention that we imposed on ourselves and our children are gone now. We'll have to focus all our energies into building up the strong of limb as well as the strong of will, the weaker types have no more room." I flinched a little at this, but gave a slight nod as I could easily see the argument he'd make against my sentimentality. "Might not be heaven living in tunnels, but staying up here's bound to end up being hell. Just think about it, civilisation starting all over again. A brave new world erected on the rubble of the old, tired world that's proven helpless against those mighty equines. We could even build a railway to the more secluded parts of the coast for short breaks; it'd be just like the Tube but on a grander scale. Men with the will to survive shall be unstoppable in the long-run; in fact I've already started." He walked over to what I had thought was a wrecked bookcase until he swung it aside too easily. "Come down here and have a look."
In the cellar I found he'd excavated a tunnel about as long as the width of one of the hoof-prints I'd seen throughout Fulham, about five feet high and four feet wide, which he proudly declared had taken him a whole week to dig. I know that I could dig that much in the space of a working day, whereupon I began to have my first doubts about him and his grand scheme. We did start digging deeper, I figure that our combined efforts managed to lengthen the tunnel by about three feet when he suddenly called time.
"Come and have a drink to the future." I was stumped by this. "You see it's back-breaking work, and when you've gotta make all the plans on top it's bound to wear you down. Here, I'm not gonna hold out on my comrades." He pulled out a half-bottle of actual champagne and filled a couple of glasses, which I could see were more suited to something like a claret. After my first glass he filled it up again before putting together a cold lunch, after which he insisted on a game of cards. I struggle even now to think on the fact that we were just sitting round a table in the midst of the ruins of civilisation, drinking and playing card games while my wife was who-knows-where and it what kind of state. We did return to the tunnel about halfway into the afternoon but he called time before I had even opened up the next six inches, claiming that we had to take up station to watch for giants.
As the sun began to sink I checked up on him and saw that he was slumped against the remnants of a wall with another glass of champagne in hand. I probed him carefully about the nature of what he called 'sentry duty' and he then declared that we should get under cover before a pony came along, and while I was following him back into the room where he had first made his spiel I saw a few more wine bottles that used to hold various varieties from the best champagne to a modest burgundy. He then began to remark about what else could be done in the society he had envisaged, but as the sun dipped below the horizon I saw a couple of ponies wandering along in the distance and the dancing of the shadows cast by the giant plants on the South bank. I felt a traitor to my kind, and I must now conclude that I should leave this dreamer with his flights of fancy.
I shall have to pack carefully and quietly, as I don't know how he'd react if he knew I won't commit to his cause, and I'll need to be up very early. I can hear him mumbling, drunkenly.
"The age of man is over." He's groaning. "Maybe something wonderful can come out..." I fear for his future, one way or another.
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April 19
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