Brave New World

The parson, or, as I should call him, Raphael, and I continued our trek toward London. He was far more subdued, perhaps having been shocked out of his fire and brimstone outlook, perhaps merely having sobered. He still issued the occasional small outburst as we traveled, though more mindful of his volume. On our way, we raided a number of gardens, managing to dig up a handful of small potatoes and some young onions, which hardly made a breakfast for us.

My adventures had carried me all around London, but never into the city proper. The weed thinned around our feet, until there was only the occasional scraggly vine, having no source of water to guzzle and having to contend with the paving and cobbled roads. We were just reaching the outskirts when a voice called out, "Halt! Who goes there?" The figure that emerged was draped head to toe in the crimson vines, excepting around his face and mouth, which exposed a slight bit of green. Doubtless, this person had had similar problems to my own with the blight infecting any of the red weed camouflaging his mouth. An army helm perched upon his head, likewise wrapped with the creeper. From beneath this outfit, the barrel of a rifle aimed toward us.

"Er, friends!" I said.

"State your business!"

I was so occupied in noticing the look of him that Raphael took the initiative to answer for us. "The Lord's servants! On a pilgrimage away from this desolation!"

The soldier scoffed but lowered his weapon, turning away from us to go back to whatever post he'd been at. "Be on your way; this is my territory!"

As that struck me as odd, I dared to ask, "Your territory? What do you mean?"

He swung back around, not out of aggression, but rather seeming surprised. He moved the vines out from in front of his eyes, and his beak broke into a great, beaming smile. "It IS you! The man from Maybury Hill! Leonardo, wasn't it?"

Recognition gave me a little start as well. "Good Lord, the artilleryman!"

"Michelangelo," he reminded me.

"And this is Parson Raphael Nathaniel," I introduced. "But how in the world did you survive? I thought you'd surely burned!"

"I thought you'd surely drowned! Here, come inside, quickly." We did.

"Have you seen any Martians?" I asked.

He shook his head despairingly. "Everywhere…

Raphael interjected with, "Repent! Ye sinners, repent!", shouted to the ceiling. I sighed, waving him off. "Don't mind him," I told Michelangelo lowly, and circled a finger next to my head. "He's a little…"

He nodded in an understanding way. "All that's gone on, which of us isn't? We're done for, all right…"

It struck me as surprising that he, of all people, who had been so driven and ready to survive, would simply accept defeat. "You can't give up that easily!" I encouraged, and I was glad to see a slightly more weathered version of his sunny smile return.

" 'course not! It's now we've got to start fighting! Not against them, 'cause we can't win… Now, we've got to fight for survival! I reckon we can make it. But, you see, I've got it all worked out! I've got a plan!" He threw his shoulders back with such confidence we almost had to believe him. "We're going to build a whole new world for ourselves. Look, they clap eyes on us, and we're dead, right? So we've got to make a new life where they'll never find us. Know where?"

I shook my head that I did not. Raphael looked on, curious.

Michelangelo ducked down and spread his arms, making a big production out of the reveal. "Underground! Come on… You've should see it down there!" He motioned for us to come with him, and we followed him to the opposite side of what must have been a pub that he had set himself up in, to a manhole with the cover shoved to the side. As the artilleryman climbed down the ladder, the parson and myself exchanged a skeptical, and somewhat disgusted, look, but followed Michelangelo nonetheless.

We were greeted with an unbelievably clean sewer tunnel. "These pipes are how I happened to escape the heat-ray! Ducked into one on the surface, and they either never saw me or couldn't reach! Look at this! Hundreds of miles of drains! All sweet and clean now, after the rain! Dark, quiet… safe!" he whispered.

Raphael's skepticism continued. He crossed his arms over his plastron. "Whoever heard of living in a sewer?! No one is going to want to do that!"

Michelangelo shrugged. "What's so bad about living underground, 'ey? It's not been so great living up there, if you want my opinion."

"We don't!" the pastor grumbled, but I touched his arm to still him before he launched into another religious screed.

"Let's just hear him out."

Michelangelo gestured grandly around him.

Take a look around you, at the world you've come to know…

Does it seem to be much more than a crazy circus show?

But maybe through the madness something beautiful can grow

In a brave new world, with just a handful of men

We'll start… we'll start all over again! All over again!

"We'll build shops and hospitals and barracks right under their noses, right under their feet! Everything we need," he enumerated, putting fingers to his palm for each, but being a turtle, quickly ran out. "Banks, prisons and schools! We'll send scouting parties to collect books and stuff, and men like you will teach the kids! Not poems and rubbish… Science! …so we can get everything working!" His vision went on and on. "We'll build villages and towns and... and we'll play each other at cricket!"

The parson snorted. "There's no room for a cricket pitch down here!"

But Michelangelo's brightness about the subject could not be dimmed. "Not yet, maybe. But once we get started, we'll be able to clear the room and build a whole underground stadium!" His train of thought rapidly shifted. "Listen, maybe one day we'll capture a fighting machine, 'ey? Learn how to make 'em ourselves and then," he swung a fist through the air, "Wallop! Our turn to do some wiping out! Whoosh, with our heat ray! Whoosh! And them running and dying, beaten at their own game! And we're on top again!"

He was so triumphant over this thought that it swept the parson and I along with him.

Now our domination of the Earth is fading fast,

And out of the confusion, the chance has come at last,

To build a better future from the ashes of the past

In a brave new world…

Give me a handful of men

We'll start all over again!

Look, man is born in freedom, but he soon becomes a slave

In cages of convention from the cradle to the grave.

The weak fall by the wayside but the strong will be saved

In a brave new world

With just a handful of men,

We'll start all over again!

"Think of it like this," he continued enthusiastically, "no more paperwork or red tape to get things done, no more waiting for approval from the higher-ups before making a move… No more of the rich telling the poor what to do in order to make themselves more money! Money… why, we wouldn't even need it! No one could tell us when to work and when to eat; we can just decide that for ourselves! No rich or poor, or black or white, or human or anthro… we'll all be the same now! All on the same level! We'll get rid of all the silly parts of society that don't actually serve a purpose and focus on rebuilding, and doing it right this time!"

Raphael grew wary at this line of the artilleryman's reasoning. "And just who decides what's 'silly' or not? You?"

Michelangelo waved him off. "Me? 'Course not! Everyone would, once they've all come back… 's just the three of us to start with, to get things going."

Raphael's eyes narrowed at him. "Seems like you're not keen on the clergy being part of this 'new world' of yours… like you'd rather have me out of a job."

"No, no!" Michelangelo beamed at him. "Just, well, you do have these muscular arms that would be great for digging… It'd be possible to preach and dig at the same time, right?"

The parson paused to consider the merit of the idea, but the idealistic young turtle interrupted his thoughts.

I'm not trying to tell you what to be. Oh, no… oh, no… Not me!

But if mankind is to survive, the people left alive,

They're going to have to build this world anew…

And it's going to have to start with me and you!

Raphael pointed to himself, feeling like Mikey had indicated him specifically, and Mikey leapt forward, pointing a finger directly at him with an enthusiastic yell of, "Yes!" The parson shifted his eyes over to me. I could only offer him a shrug.

"I'm not trying to tell you what to be," he reiterated in a softer tone and holding his hands up defensively. "Oh, no… oh, no… Not me! But if mankind is to survive, the people left alive, they're going to have to build this world anew! Yes, and we will have to be the chosen few!" He wrapped an arm around Raphael's shell, holding a hand out before him to indicate what the parson should imagine with him.

Just think about the poverty, the hatred, and the lies

And imagine the destruction of all that you despise!

Slowly from those ashes, the phoenix will arise

In a brave new world

With just a handful of men,

We'll start all over again!

He made a wild spin about to make certain I was included in his musings, throwing an arm over my carapace in turn. "Take a look around you, at the world you've loved so well, and bid the ageing empire of man a last… farewell!" He paused to give said empire a solemn, albeit casual, final salute. As if reading the parson's thoughts as he stared down the sewer tunnel before him, he swept back over with an indicating hand before him. "It may not be like Heaven, but at least it isn't Hell… It's a brave new world! With just a handful of men, we'll start all over again!" Leaving us with our thoughts, he dashed down the length of the drain, calling at the top of his lungs, echoing back to us, "I've got a plan!"

"And you thought I was the crazy one…" the parson whispered to me.

"You can't fault him for his enthusiasm," I replied as the soldier returned from his run around the pipes.

"Can't you just see it?" he said again as we climbed the ladder and returned to the tavern, scooting the manhole partly closed. "Civilization starting all over again! A second chance! We'll even build a railway, and tunnel to the coast—go there for our holidays! I've made a start already! Come on down here, have a look."

We were ushered down to the cellar, where Michelangelo proudly showed off the tunnel he'd dug. " 's taken me all week!" he declared, propping his fists on his hips, and I had the first inkling of the gulf between his powers and his dreams.

Raphael and I exchanged yet another look. I gave the barest shake of my head, indicating that I wasn't going to say anything, and he shouldn't either. But, he did anyway. "That's it?" A stung look crossed Michelangelo's face. "Give me that shovel! I'll show you how to dig a tunnel! Lo, and we shall descend into the depths!"

"There's the spirit!" Mikey encouraged as Raphael dug and espoused about Hellfire and damnation for several minutes, until, winded, he continued on without the sermon and merely focused on digging. As I stood watching, a curtain of red vines fell into my line of sight. "Here!" the young soldier indicated that I should put his camouflage outfit on. "Someone should go keep watch! See if anyone else is coming!"

"And if they do?"

He shrugged. "See if they look like hearty material. Otherwise, send them away."

I was going to point out that he had made the same assessment of Raphael and myself and found us wanting enough to shoo off, but I held my piece. I went up to the upper story, where I could sight around from the balconies, but there was no one for the hour or so that I spent there. After that, Raphael came up to keep watch, and I took a turn at digging. Michelangelo, while the parson and I had worked, moved the displaced earth outdoors in a barrow, but did nothing further between its refillings. I had also gone for about an hour, and could have easily kept going when Michelangelo stopped me, saying that I was going to be sore in the morning if I wasn't used to it. I wondered if he was speaking from experience, and if that was the reason for his slow effort. He took his turn at it as well, but stopped after only half an hour to survey the work we had all done on the tunnel.

"I reckon that's enough for now. It's doing the working and the thinking that wears a feller out! I'm ready for a bit of a rest!" he said merrily, pulling me away with him as he headed back up in to the main room. He called Father Raphael down, and the three of us split a tin of green beans and one of cherries. Then, after our meal—which, though still meager by any standards, was the most the parson and I had had in nearly two weeks—the artilleryman produced a bottle from the cellar. "How 'bout a drink? Nothing but champagne, now I'm the boss!"

We drank, and then he insisted on playing cards. With our species on the edge of extinction and with no prospect but a horrible death, we actually played games! He knew a dozen different games, and we played Hearts, Gin Rummy, and he tried teaching us Euchre, but neither Raphael nor myself could quite suss out the rules, to the point of Raphael accusing Michelangelo of making them up on the spot. Father Raphael very suddenly seemed to recall that gambling was the sport of the Devil, threw his cards down and trudged off upstairs to find a bed, while Michelangelo told me more of his grand designs. But I saw flames flashing in the deep blue night, red weed glowing, tripod figures moving distantly—and I put down my champagne glass. I felt a traitor to my own kind.

I excused myself, and like Raphael, found my way upstairs to seek a place to sleep, though it was hard in coming. I lay on a settee there, debating my prospects for hours. The more I thought over Michelangelo's ambitious, optimistic vision, the more fault I found with it. The parson, too, seemed to be finding flaws, for he spoke aloud to himself intermittently: "If we build homes in the sewer, where, then, will the sewer be?" and, "What becomes of us in the rainy season, when the drains fill? Shall we drown? Shall our new houses be destroyed, as all was washed away in the Lord's great flood?" I had to agree, these were good points made, perhaps ones to work out, yet I could think of no easy solutions myself; such matters of engineering and invention were much more the purview of my friend Donatello. I knew telling the eager artilleryman these things would break his heart, and if I stayed, I would only find myself roped in and bound by Michelangelo's enthusiasm, and I knew that I must leave this strange dreamer. I considered calling the parson, to give him the chance to steal away with me as dawn crept its way up the horizon, but knowing of his penchant for outbursts, made the decision that I would have to leave him behind, for I couldn't have him alerting our friend as we tried to sneak out, nor was I in the mood for his confrontational nature getting in the way should we be found out. In the end, I used my ninja stealth to sneak downstairs and out the front door.

I hadn't expected to encounter Michelangelo outside… He, too, was up with the dawn, if he had slept at all. But he did not notice me, his attention on a little dandelion he crouched next to, just as the first rays of the sun bathed it in warm light. He sang lowly to himself, or perhaps to the plant.

Take a look around you, at the world you used to know,

Does it seem to be much more than a crazy circus show?

"But maybe through the madness!..." he sang, clutching at the sides of his head as though he himself was afflicted by said infirmity, which I couldn't entirely dismiss, but then he cradled the little flower in his hands, as it opened its petals to the world, with such gentleness— "…something beautiful can grow…"— that I had to pause and reconsider my determination to go. But then he stood, and turned his shell fully toward me, presenting me with the opportunity to slip undetected around the corner, so I took it, and entered the city.