IT’S A CHANGED WORLD, and the River Rhone has flooded the town of Arles in France. Helen and Isha leave to join their daughter and eleven-month-old granddaughter, Ayo, in England.
In Calais, Isha, who has Ugandan-Asian ancestry, is told that new rules mean she will be immediately deported if she crosses the Channel. Faced with a terrible dilemma, Helen chooses to stay with her. Homeless and stateless, they seek refuge in a friend’s Swiss mountain chalet, but to get there, they must avoid main roads and immigration checkpoints. They decide to walk along the Via Francigena, an ancient pilgrimage route from Canterbury to Rome, but now also the preferred escape corridor for climate refugees fleeing north. Jana resolves to follow them, though this is not a simple decision. The family communicates whenever and however they can while battling exhaustion, terror and the virulent xenophobia of people struggling to protect their increasingly scarce resources.
Their journey does not end in Switzerland. The end of their story is a new beginning.
IT’S A CHANGED WORLD, and the River Rhone has flooded the town of Arles in France. Helen and Isha leave to join their daughter and eleven-month-old granddaughter, Ayo, in England.
In Calais, Isha, who has Ugandan-Asian ancestry, is told that new rules mean she will be immediately deported if she crosses the Channel. Faced with a terrible dilemma, Helen chooses to stay with her. Homeless and stateless, they seek refuge in a friend’s Swiss mountain chalet, but to get there, they must avoid main roads and immigration checkpoints. They decide to walk along the Via Francigena, an ancient pilgrimage route from Canterbury to Rome, but now also the preferred escape corridor for climate refugees fleeing north. Jana resolves to follow them, though this is not a simple decision. The family communicates whenever and however they can while battling exhaustion, terror and the virulent xenophobia of people struggling to protect their increasingly scarce resources.
Their journey does not end in Switzerland. The end of their story is a new beginning.
The streets are a spider’s web of new tributaries. Everything is underwater. Don’t worry about us, but nothing is the same anymore.
I was working at home when Mum’s message came through. I tried to reply, but the link was down, which happened all the time. It was mid-morning, and as I sat there wondering what to do next, the sudden silence made me realise that the weeks of rain had finally stopped. Well, not complete silence because Ayo was whimpering in the background. Her way of warning me before the real bellowing began, usually about ten or fifteen minutes later.
With the rain gone, the sun was burning through the windows, and I could feel my eyes getting heavier in the heat. I’d been working since dawn, and here I should add that back then, I was a Virtual Reality Illustrator or VRI.
Dip the temperature, I thought to Xiris, my digistant. Give me a five-minute exercise routine before Ayo wakes up completely.
:: The usual morning session? ::
Yes, that’ll do, I thought replied.
:: Your energy levels are low. The easement option would serve you better ::
I was on my third set of easement exercises when I changed direction and saw the man sitting on a low wall across the street from my house. He was staring straight at me, his clothes a mix of too big, too small, and darks faded into greys. How long have you been there, I wondered, though it wasn’t a complete surprise because I’d seen him before, dodging between the trees and the liftshare shelter where he must have been living. I don’t know why, but this time he started to walk across the street towards me.
‘What do you want?’ I shouted, even though I’m sure he couldn’t hear. Anyway, it didn’t matter because by that time, Ayo had woken up properly. I ran to the back of the house where she was in our bedroom, pulling at the bars of her cot like it was a prison and I was her jailer. Then I took off my T-shirt and lay down beside her on my bed.
I couldn’t tell you how long I slept, but when I woke, the sun through the skylight above was higher than before, and Ayo was snoring softly in my ear. Then, hoping we’d been there long enough for the man to give up and find someone else to stare at, I slipped my T-shirt back on, scooped her up and went back into the hallway to see if I was right.
He was standing in front of the security camera, looking straight through as if he could see me on the other side. I looked back at him, thinking how the tinted lens made his eyes emerald green. I could have left him there because no one in their right mind opens the door and wonders if they should offer a meal to a migrant who could be dangerous and diseased; it’s against the law to help them, but then I remembered what Helen had said in her message.
‘Nothing is the same anymore,’ I whispered to Ayo, then opened the door.
The man was about my age. He told me his name was Patrick, and because he didn’t attack me or try to steal my things, I let him in, gave him some food, and listened when he told me about where he’d come from and what had happened to his family. After he’d left, with a blanket I’d given him, I messaged my parents. Come home.
Before that day, I’d been an ordinary person like anyone else here, living a safe distance from the disaster zones and believing that the people who knew best would sort out the mess. Of course, there were counterarguments and protests, but for me it was just a big noise and easier to stop listening.
I’ll never know why the man chose me, or even if he did. Perhaps he stood outside ten different doors before I opened mine, but I sent that message to my parents because I didn’t want to lose my family the way he had, or my home for that matter. At a minimum, I wanted us to be together when the dominoes started to fall.
Ayo is still too young to pick out the truth from the lies, so the story I’m going to tell you is my legacy; my version of what happened to us and other people like us, based on messages from my parents, details I’ve been told and what I saw for myself. A patchwork of fact, supposition and imagination.
The man stood outside my door on 29 April 2050.
I was a 27-year-old woman.
Ayo was eleven months old.
My name is Jana.
Future Imperfect’s main conflict is for environmental disaster refugees to find haven. Still, there is subtext shared through moral conflicts about our role in working with Earth as our ally to protect against and fix environmental harm. Babette Gallard’s concept is unique because world-building typically influences the plot, but in Future Imperfect nature itself as part of the world has its dialogue if you listen hard enough shared through the experiences of various characters. The main characters are Jana who must travel with baby Ayo to be with her mothers Isha and Helen who have lost citizenship to Britain and can no longer return home after an environmental disaster uprooted their lives. To meet in another country the four of them must evade border control drones which use lethal force. The future is technologically advanced and those in power will use their hold over technology to continue their way of life in the wake of the environmental destruction they cause. This book is a warning but also a lesson on how we must radically change our interactions with the environment and each other to have livable land.Â
The book takes concepts many readers already know and focuses on how these conflicts will play out in the coming century. Before reading please familiarize yourself with eco-disaster refugee treatment, the role of the meat and logging industry on forests, and desertification. Disaster refugees fleeing violent storms are treated like immigrants looking for sanctuary from human violence. CEOs are known as Entrepreneurs and their economic stratification from regular people is amplified by their ability to own the resources we need to survive, but their reliance on technology may be their downfall. There are well-crafted frequent break-out chapters with stories that directly relate to what challenges the characters will be facing next and what news headlines are captivating the world.Â
Future Imperfect has many characters to remember which are difficult to differentiate on audio reader. It was also difficult to keep track of all the characters and what they did to help or hinder the main characters. I recommend this book to dystopian lovers but caution those strongly influenced by eco-anxiety as the decimated natural environment plays a large role in the story. Isha and Helen’s sadness over what our generation has done to the world is palpable and may affect how one handles their disappointments in our modern-day circumstances.Â