A Visitor to the Future - 52 - Wilderness Walk
The next few days passed in something of a blur. Tungsten had decided to make his trip up to London and sent me a picture of himself outside Baker Street, where the Sherlock Holmes museum was these days. His cheesy thumbs-up pose told me almost everything I needed to know about how that was going. Sarkona had been struck by a fit of Bio-dev inspiration after a particularly windy night on Anchor, and declared they were moving on from their nose experimentation phase onto ears - spending a lot of time in a new lab they'd had built. Antonia got in touch to find out how I was doing, leaving an open invitation to visit her in southern France. I also joined the Auditors for dinner twice more, as Blaise had invited me, and enjoyed their company.
Apart from that, I'd been taking it fairly easy. I felt that I needed time to think, and had mostly been relaxing to digest the last few weeks. I spent my time looking up a history of IJmuiden and, feeling nostalgic, watching some of the few remaining copies of football games from my own time - which I'd often done with my Mum and sister. I missed them. We'd bunker down in my Mum's living room with popcorn and watch a game whenever she had the time to do so. To be honest, it wasn't really about the football itself - we'd all talk and catch up. Though my Mum would easily shush us when something exciting happened on screen. I was surprised to learn that football still had a decent number of teams and viewers, though my Mum's favourite team - Edinburgh City F.C. - had not survived to the present day. It simply was not the gargantuan industry it had been in my time. A projection documentary I had watched blamed the decline on the increasing numbers of competing sports, though I wasn't sure how accurate that statement was. Given how closely football was entwined with both money and betting in my own time, I thought that the abolition of currency might have more to do with it.
One day I'd decided that I wanted to take a walk in the countryside - it had been easy enough to take a drone-craft to a nature trail about an hour away. I welcomed the change in scenery, even if it was a little warm for my taste without the moderating sea breeze. The terrain was arid with large grasslands that occasionally broke into patches of trees, the trail itself a burnt amber colour. Once again I found myself amazed at how easy this all was - to just get to this area of Africa in my own time would have required money, preparation, and a passport. To be frank, I didn't even know quite where I was, and there was something both thrilling and unnerving about that. I could have asked the Consortium using my tablet - which I now carried with some water in a backpack - but chose not to.
I had been walking for about an hour when I saw a few shapes moving off in the distance. I squinted, picking out the shape of an antelope being chased by about four or five wild dogs with dark coats and the barest patches of yellow fur. I was immediately struck by panic. Wild animals had never even occurred to me as being a possible threat. In my twenty-first century life, I'd been an urban dweller for the most part, not one to ever get involved with nature. I chastised myself for how little I'd thought about things, too wrapped up in my own thoughts and ideas to worry about the world around me.
I debated turning around and heading back the way I'd come, but realised that if an animal were to try and chase me down, I would not easily escape it. Thankfully, good sense prevailed and I pulled my tablet from my backpack, quickly bringing up the application I'd been using to communicate with the Consortium.
Am I safe here? I typed.
The reply was instantaneous. Yes. You are being shadowed by both a Protection Drone and a Wildlife Preservation Drone, both of which are able to protect you. Three possible animal threats have already been diverted from your area. If a change in your route is required, you will be notified. A local Ranger has also been notified of your whereabouts.
I looked around my area for about a minute before finally finding a blurred, slightly-mismatched area of sky that indicated the presence of the snake-like hovering drone that Alexandra had shown me a few days ago. Suddenly its presence wasn't nearly as unnerving.
It took about an hour for me to regain the majority of my confidence as I walked through the wilds, but apart from a distant group of elephants which I stopped to admire, I saw no other wildlife that could be a threat. At that point I asked the Consortium how far the trail extended - it turned out it stretched for another hundred miles or so. I laughed to myself, having thought earlier that the trail was only a few miles long. I would have to come back another day.
The Consortium sent another drone-craft to pick me up, and as I sat inside I felt pleasantly comfortable. I'd enjoyed the change of scenery and the exercise, and resolved to keep my restored body as fit as possible. There were certainly enough forms of exercise in the Consortium that I'd seen so far - from the zero-gravity sports, to even the joggers I'd seen on my first day in Anchor. It was only a question of asking the Consortium what was available nearby.
I slept very well that night, tired from my long walk.