‘Dick, there’s someone I’d like you to meet’.
‘Is it someone who’s discovered a way to return me to 2010?’, Dick spoke back to the door with misplaced optimism.
‘No’, came Taylor’s disembodied voice, adding Dick thought, to try and make him feel better, ‘But I’ve made you coffee and a hearty breakfast’.
Taylor had left the equivalent of a New Victorian sweat suit out for Dick to wear, a grey-coloured brushed-cotton ensemble, more functional than fashionable. In fact, not fashionable at all, unless you lived in a retirement condo in Fort Lauderdale, Dick thought. He finished dressing and headed for the lounge, contemplating that eggs, tomatoes, hash browns and bacon, even if it was the really crispy type he liked, were definitely no substitute for reverse time travel. He pushed opened the panelled door and found himself looking at a plump woman in her late forties. Her pale face was framed with a mass of unruly frizzy ginger hair, the style sported by the lead character in The Hair Bear Bunch.
‘Good morning Dick’, said a smiling Taylor who was standing beside her. ‘I’d like you to meet the Oracle’.
Dick shook her pallid, chubby hand with an expression that was part polite smile and part disappointed sneer. So this was the Oracle. When Taylor had first mentioned her, Dick had visions of a mysterious, wizened crone whose decades of wisdom were etched in deep lines that criss-crossed her expressive face — not an unattractive middle-aged woman with an orange ‘fro. Dick considered himself extremely liberal in his views but there were some popular prejudices he shared and could not shake off; an unconditional dislike and distrust of Turks, the Welsh and the ginger. He hated everything about the latter; their hair colour (obviously), the way they insisted on describing themselves in a quasi-exotic way such as ‘flame-haired’, ‘strawberry blonde’ or ‘Titian’ and their skin — the colour of watered-down milk; so pale you can almost see their internal organs. But there was one thing he hated above all else, and this was the reason he refused to work with ginger-haired girls: orange pubes. And here he was, now standing facing the woman who was ultimately responsible for him being kidnapped and now trapped in this horrendous future.
The Oracle spoke. ‘Hello Mr. Longg. I saw you in a dream’.
She didn’t expect Dick to punch her in the face. Neither did Dick. It was just a reflex act; a combination of the Welsh lilt in her voice and the fact that Dick needed to take his anger and frustration out on someone. Taylor helped the Oracle up from the floor and into an armchair, producing a handkerchief to stem the blood from her nose.
‘I can understand your resentment, Mr. Longg’, said the Oracle, holding her head back and pinching her nose.
‘You saw me in a dream? In a fucking dream!’ Dick was incredulous. He couldn’t spell that particular word or pronounce it properly, but he was in that state all the same. ‘And you had me brought over six hundred years into the future on the basis of just a dream?’
Dick was never good with maths. He was actually only a hundred and forty years in the future but Taylor decided that it really wasn’t the best time to correct him.
‘It was an omen’, said the Oracle. ‘A crystal clear image of you formed in my mind!’
‘What was responsible for this image?’, Dick asked, expecting to hear something about hallucinogenic drugs or a self-induced spiritual altered state.
‘Cheese’, said the Oracle.
Dick really hoped he hadn’t heard the Oracle say the word ‘cheese’. He actually wished she’d said something like ‘fleas’ or even ‘bees’, as if insects were somehow involved in forming her visions; even those would have been preferable to a milk-based foodstuff. Sadly for Dick, his hearing was fine.
‘Cheese on toast, in fact’, the Oracle continued in her annoying Welsh accent destroying, Dick thought, any impression of mysticism or the paranormal that Oracles traditionally convey. ‘It was Stilton. Or it might have been mature cheddar… Or was it a nice piece of Brie? Anyway, I had a late night snack and dreamt about someone who would be our salvation. That person was YOU!’
‘Jesus!’ exclaimed Dick. Turning to Taylor he asked, ‘Doesn’t this sound a little, shall we say, flaky?’.
‘Flaky? I don’t understand’, said Taylor, frowning.
‘Flaky. You know, a bit weird. Putting your faith in someone like me, someone you’ve never met before, on the basis of what this fucking crackpot saw in a cheese-inspired dream’. By now Dick was wide-eyed in astonishment. ‘How good is she? I mean, has she ever had this sort of vision before?’
Taylor hesitated, carefully looking for the right words, but it was the Oracle who answered, dramatically waving one of her hands around while dabbing the other one at the blood still dripping from her nose. ‘I had a similar dream about four years ago. It was very clear. Very clear indeed. I saw a man. He came from an earlier time.’
‘The Resistance brought him here in a similar way to you’, explained Taylor.
‘So I guess the reason I’m here now is because he didn’t defeat the Party’, said Dick.
Taylor nodded.
‘Then what happened? Why didn’t he succeed?’, Dick enquired, asking for good measure, ‘And where is he now?’.
Taylor sighed and shook his head. ‘I wasn’t in the Resistance then, but from what I know, they trained him well and sent him out into the real world to begin his mission’. He paused and looked away. ‘Sadly, after a few months it was apparent that he didn’t succeed’.
‘What happened? Was his identity compromised? Did a piece of equipment fail?’ Dick was becoming irritated. He wanted answers. ‘Did he have to abandon the operation? Was he captured?’
Taylor’s reply came in a whisper. ‘We’re not sure’.
Dick’s reply also came in a whisper, though he wasn’t sure why, as he was quite annoyed over this lack of answers. ‘I know you weren’t there but you must know what happened!’.
Taylor looked at his feet. ‘I don’t’. He studied his shoes more intently and spoke even more quietly. ‘The Resistance never saw him or heard from him ever again’.
Dick’s astonishment was evident in his voice which raised a whole octave. ‘So you’re putting all your trust in this complete fruit loop who’s made a similar prediction in the past, and who got it absolutely, completely wrong? Nought out of one. Or to put it another way, a 100% failure rate. It’s hardly a good track record, is it?’, Dick asked, exasperated.
‘No, but this time I’m really confident’ said the Oracle looking Dick straight in the eyes, although Dick felt her answer lacked the degree of conviction he would have liked.
CHAPTER 7
The Oracle had left the lounge to try and stop her nosebleed which had shown no sign of abating. As Dick picked at his breakfast, which was quite good even though the bacon wasn’t anywhere as crispy as he liked, Taylor explained that the other resistance members were at their various places of work; their colleagues and employers blissfully ignorant of their extraordinary double lives. By day, trusted and loyal supporters of The Party. By night and in their spare time, revolutionaries, plotters, and advocates of, and participants in, free sex.
‘So?’ Dick asked, indicating the china cup in front of him, ‘Is your sex life as steamy as this coffee? I mean I know married citizens are only meant to make love once a week but all of you here must do it more frequently?’
‘We do’, Taylor replied. There are a few bedrooms here like the one you have and members are free to use them with colleagues whenever they want. It’s not without problems though’.
‘What do you mean?’ asked Dick. ‘Apart from possible lubrication issues how can having frequent sex cause problems?’.