![]() They went to visit friends on the rich side of town. They took some essentials and travelled light. And all went silent.īy late in the morning, Fisher and Venus understood that they had to begin their quest and that their flat might not be safe anymore. The tests were being carried out, and findings were about to come in, when the coded messages ceased. It all went smoothly until they met a member of the chemistry faculty who agreed to perform tests. They kept in touch with Fisher and Venus through coded texts on their mobile phones. Those who were meant to have the water analyzed set out first. If one or more of them were killed, the others would have to make their own way and try to convey their findings to the rest of society, provided there was anyone left to listen. If anything happened, they would abort the meeting. The agreement was that they would converge back at the flat in a week. They went to sleep that night exhausted but clear in their minds for the first time in months. The task of finding water fell to Fisher and Venus. The others would try to find clean water. Some of the friends would take on the task of getting the water analyzed. They realized that they had a limited number of days before they would begin to suffer the ill effects of not drinking enough water. They would wash the fruit with tap water, but they would not drink it. They decided that they would live off the water in fruit. ![]() Then they realized that their discovery had marked a turning point in their lives. At first they thought they could somehow carry on normally. The question is whether we go on drinking this water that is affecting us in some way that we don’t know about, perhaps turning us into morons, or whether we can find water that’s untouched, that’s pure.” “That means it’s crucial for us to find water that hasn’t been corrupted,” Fisher said. “And stop drinking it,” one of the flatmates said. “There are two things we need to do,” Fisher said. What’s more, it caught the light in a faintly troubling way. It was like water, but at the same time had a viscid quality to it. In that state where the mind wanders but the eye is focussed, he noticed that there was something odd about the water in his glass. He had been unconsciously looking into the water as he thought. He was holding his last glass of water for the day. No one challenged the complacency of that statement.įisher was in his room, thinking about the strangeness of these occurrences. In a recent statement he had said, “It seems we are becoming a nation with a remarkable convergence of views. In the midst of all this, the Prime Minister was often seen smiling. Firebrand activists and comedians began spewing sentimental statements of alarming conservatism. The unions capitulated to conditions that the companies they worked for hadn’t even demanded. The opposition parties did not oppose anything. Even radical journalists seemed to be unusually sympathetic to the most extreme government notions. He spent the rest of his time observing, and he’d noticed that the people around him had become docile, amenable to all suggestions from the government. He did freelance graphic design and reporting. Unlike most of his flatmates, he didn’t have a steady job. Fisher lived there with Venus, his girlfriend. Where previously cooking had involved much pouring out of water and juices, now every drop was reused with remarkable creativity.īut it seemed to Fisher, who shared a flat on the edge of a council estate with a group of school friends, that people were changing. ![]() They cleaned their teeth with a tablespoon of water. In most households, people learned to compress their bodily needs to an extraordinary degree of efficiency. People were mugged not for their mobile phones but for their bottles of water. Squabbles and fights over the use of water were common. The taps ran for that length of time and then stopped. What was previously an ordinary commodity, a thing that people regularly wasted in baths and in decorative fountains in the squares, was now rationed to the point where it was as expensive as gold.Įvery household was allowed only fifteen minutes of water a day. To make things worse, there had been little rain, and even polluted water was in short supply. The oceans had become so polluted that the fish caught there poisoned those who ate them. Nations that controlled the world’s rivers saw their economic potential. The truth was that there was a worldwide water shortage. And, because the cost of water had gone up, all the other costs went up, too. People who went swimming caught strange diseases. For a long time now, the nation had been dumping sewage into its waterways. It seemed to have gone up dramatically overnight. ![]() Workers went on strike to protest the high cost of water.
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