Preface
Bedwyr Abbey, County Powys, Wales
March 2037
At first it was just a dry spell, something that only farmers and weathermen talked about. But the dry spell became a drought and the drought became a disaster and, in less than a decade, Great Britain was surviving on glacier melt that was shipped in from Greenland.
By then the rabbits on Skye’s beaches were gone, as were the ponies on Dartmoor and the fish in what was left of the Thames. But most alarming of all, the spring was gone, too. Yes, the days grew longer and warmer, but the flowers and leaves were mostly stillborn. What had begun as a “dry spell” became a great leveler as man, beast, and plant all suffered together.
Then on that Mid-Summer’s Eve, a freak storm formed over Cornwall. To the public it was a miracle but to the meteorologists it was just an unusually severe “Brown Willy,” that strange weather phenomenon that occasionally arises over the heights of Bodmin Moor. (It was just such a storm that spawned the infamous Boscastle flood of 2004 with its inland tsunami that thundered down the main street of the town.) But regardless of what you called it, the storm saved dying Cornwall in a single night before moving on to revive the rest of the country.
Of course, that’s all familiar – you either lived through that era or studied it in school. And you also know what happened in the months and years that followed: how hopes rose and fell and how the world was convulsed.
But what you don’t know is why it all happened or how it will end.
Therefore, it’s time for me to tell you because I’m getting old and I’ve delayed long enough. And in case you are wondering why I know these things, well, the answer is simple: I was a player in that secret drama.
So this is not only a history but also my memoir which is why it begins with the delusions of a much younger man. However, I’d ask you to remember how deluded we all were back then: we continued to believe that we were God’s crowning glory as we drove ourselves and our planet to the hot gates of Hell.
And now let’s begin at the beginning –
Which was the morning after.
-1-
The sky over Land’s End was high and clear and the air smelled of sea salt and suddenly-blooming heather. Ten miles up the road in Penzance, the employees of “King Arthur’s Summerland Carnival” were working hard to reopen, but there was almost too much to do: the pond-sized puddles had to be drained, the acres of mud had to be bridged by wooden walkways, and scores of things had to be cleaned up, straightened out, repaired and tested.
Indeed, it took more than a week to reopen the carnival and even then things still looked quite soggy. However, not one customer complained. People viewed the storm as a Godsend and as something to celebrate.
Special care had been taken with the carnival’s signature attraction, something called “Excalibur.” By modern standards, it was laughably low-tech: just a sword that appeared to be half-buried in a boulder. But if the contraption itself didn’t stir the imagination, then the prize certainly did. Nailed to a post beside the boulder was a sign that proclaimed in “Olde English” script:
Whosoever pulleth out this Sword from this Stone
Will rightwise be proven Arthur, King of all Britons,
Returned at last to reclaim his Throne.
(Gents only please. No tools or explosives.)
