Tuesday 14 June 2011

Page 346: He could smell the trail

He could smell the trail. First gold, then people. He didn't know which people. The people who had been here, he guessed. The people who lived here right at the very end. Whenever that was.

Give or take twenty years. Or thirty years. Or fifty. Fifty max, he thought. That would be the people living here either side of the year 400, give or take ... oh, to hell with it. Three-fifty to four-fifty or, hopefully, more like 380 to 420. Difficult to tell exactly.

What sort of people are they, these people? Farmers. Villa owners, whatever that might mean. People. Ordinary people like you and me. (It was a rhetorical you and me. Inside his head, if you was anybody, it was Jane back home, his critical self. Or Broderick. It could be Broderick.) Ordinary people. People with families, friends, colleagues, associates. acquaintances, neighbours. Especially neighbours. Who is my neighbour?

Good question.

All life is here, he thought to himself. The whole web. The whole social network. The ecosytem. He chuckled quietly trying to imagine the occupants of the villa-farm using Facebook, mobile phones or Twitter. Hey! What was the equivalent he wondered in, say, 417 AD? He smiled and stretched back in the grass soaking up the sunshine. Hey! Just imagine.

Yes. The smell of gold and the smell of people. And something else. The smell of something very fishy indeed. Something very twenty-first century.
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08.06.2011