Evian

EVIAN

There was always cloud. It was low and sometimes you could imagine you could reach up and brush your fingertips through the underside of it, but even if you could, it would only waft briefly. It would never go.  

Olders told us stories of days when the sky was high and blue and the clouds were like the sheep on the hill, but fluffy and white, not matted and dirty as they are. Frankly, none of us really believed those tales. Some Young’Uns said they had seen pictures with blue skies but pictures were fantasy – we were all taught that early on, so we just laughed when a Young’Un said it was true, like we laughed at the Olders who dreamed on things that couldn’t be, and could only exist in their ancient minds.

Looking back now, as almost an Older myself, I feel sorry for the Young’Uns of my generation. Of course none of us believed we would ever become an Older. I’ve since found out that every generation believes in immortality and that they are going to be the Young’Un that will change the world. I expect its part of the programme of evolution and the survival of the fittest? Who knows.

Anyhow, I remember well the ever-present oppressive cloud, how little light there was, how much energy the Olders took so they could see and how us Young’Uns condemned them for adding to the problems of the planet, whilst our own eyes developed so that they looked like the feral cats that haunted every opportunist corner and prospered from it.

I’m not sure I remember the actual day that Silus Brent’s name began being mentioned. I think it may have been around Christmastime 49. The Olders were always happiest at Christmastime – there was always snow – and I remember on more than one occasion an Older saying that it was just like the good old days.

So, anyway, Silus Brent was neither an Older or a Young’Un, he was in that nomansland between the two, but he had a vision and he was clever.

He was more in touch with the past that we ever were, he’d been bought up by his Older Olders and they’d shown him things that most of the world had forgotten, names that we’d heard of in museums but never really seen … microwaves, radio, Nintendo, Google. Silus Brent understood about all of this and he came up with a plan.

By the time I heard about him he had been learning and scheming for years. Both of his Older Olders had died but he had carried on living in their house with their accumulated possessions and stuff still around him. We know it well now, it’s a museum itself and you can visit and wander round where he lived for a modest sum …. Not allowed to touch anything though.  

His Older Olders were called painters and the house Silus grew up in had pictures everywhere … the same sort of pictures that we were told were fantasy as we were growing up. Each wall of their house was covered in pictures but the one that I guess influenced Silus the most was the one over the fireplace. It was a picture of a festival with a dreamlike blue sky and a brilliance of light that none of us could of dreamed of at that time. Of course now we know it was called “The Festival of the Opening of the Vintage Macon” thanks to Silus Brent’s Older Olders who had written the title on the ancient cardboard at the back of the print.  

Silus must have grown up with that image in his mind’s eye. Then he would have gone out on his daily errands beneath the dirty wool layer of cloud and he must have thought what if it’s true, what if there is a bright light above the dark, what if I could break through, what if, what if, what if?

I’ve already said Silus was clever didn’t I? He also had something that I don’t think anyone else on the planet had. His Older Olders had given him knowledge that we had forgotten or disbelieved and he had believed. He was also curious. He spent many years researching and planning, building and testing, changing and measuring. He was meticulous, he was clever. He had vision.

It was only a small thing. We now know it was called a rocket. This one was apparently called a “firework” that his Older Olders had hoarded from before. Silus Brent knew about fireworks but had never seen them in action and he was taking a gamble that it would do what his Older Olders had told him it would do. But the real magic was in the little device that was attached to the rocket. No-one knows how he made it, or what it was made from and Silus Brent won’t tell, he said there is no need, and that’s true.  

The only thing we know is that it was inside a plastic bottle, you know those ones you constantly dig up in your garden or get washed up on the beach from before. This one had “Evian” on the side of it. The label was faded but you could still read it. I guess that’s why we still say Evian Day. Anyhows, there wasn’t any ceremony. No-one knew about it although to this day you still get some smart arse say they were there, when they obviously weren’t.  

According to them, Silus lit the firework with a taper and ran back behind the shit-pile for protection, which in my opinion is not the safest place to hide for protection, unless he had one of those refrigerators from before, that he could have hid in … nothing destroys those things. Well he waited and waited and as he stood up to go back and relight the fuse (totally ignoring the advice that his Older Olders had given him) it fizzed and the rocket sped up to the sky.

For one significant moment the underside of the cloud was lit with a bright white light before the rocket disappeared from view into the murk and then, with apparently an almost pathetic sigh, it detonated and Evian was released.

They say it was like dropping a piece of soap into a dish of oil. None of us ever knew what the real time of the planet was because for us it was always dusk or dark, but I suspect it may have been early morning because that blue was like ….. I don’t know ….. it was like nothing I had every seen before or ever will and those colours that the blue revealed as the cloud retracted and dissipated all over this murky world of ours …. well we have names for them now, names from paintings … not drawings, artists like Turner who are finding their way back to us, Viridian, Ultramarine, Cobalt, Cadmium, and those stories that the Olders had told us, well we started to believe those too.

Yes, I will always remember the 12th February 2053. I remember it because that was the day I saw the glorious sun and the startling colours that Evian revealed to us and that was the last thing I ever saw. My generation of Young’Uns had developed eyes evolved for a life of murk, and which were burned by the glory of nature that we looked upon for a very short time. But even then, although I have lived my long life in blackness since Evian Day, I can still feel the warmth of the sun in my older bones, still smell the scent of flowers blooming in that stunning light which I will always see in my dreams, still hear the buzzing of the reintroduced bees and to be perfectly honest I wouldn’t have it any other way …………………….. Except, I do have one regret and that is that I couldn’t experience Silus Brent’s most successful innovation – again inspired by his Older Olders. Not much use to me, but apparently all of today’s Young’Uns own a pair of RayBans.