Monday, 4 May 2020

(Vegetables) Chapter Forty One: A Glimpse Of The Future (Which Isn’t Very Nice)

The DVD was a recording of a news item. A haggard looking reporter was filmed in front of a barren field where a few scraggly plants could be seen clinging to the soil.

“…and in the fourth month of what is becoming known as Arma-Veg-on, scientists are no closer to identifying the cause of the blight that is destroying all plant life in South East England. Signs are that whatever it is, it is spreading, with cases being identified as far afield as South Wales and Yorkshire. The government has declared the South East a disaster zone, with London being evacuated, and emergency food supplies being airlifted into refugee camps by the Red Cross. Farm animals are being slaughtered in the affected areas, while wild herbivores, like this rabbit, are just simply dying of starvation.”

The film camera showed a close-up of a dead rabbit. Megan gasped, and covered her eyes with one hand, and the eyes of the coloured bunnies with the other.

The DVD jumped to another news clip, this time of an eminent botanist and agriculturalist being interviewed.

“We believe that the decomposition substance is water borne, and is related to the cases of spontaneously decomposing vegetables in supermarkets that occurred six months or so ago. We know that we are not facing a pest, bacteria or even a virus, having tested the decomposed remains of some affected vegetable matter. The best minds in botany, agricultural science and biology are investigating this problem, and time is running out.”

There followed another clip from a different news programme, and another, all discussing the same problem, all with the situation getting more and more desperate. After twenty four minutes of these clips the DVD finished.

Everyone in the room114 sat there stunned for several long minutes.

"I think I can safely say,” said Rosa finally, “that that is so not good.”

“But what can we do about it?” asked Megan hesitantly.

Felindre shook herself.

“This DVD was given to us by a time travelling rabbit, right? And some of the reports gave the date, which was a good few months in the future115, right? So, either it’s a hoax, in which case it’s a bloody good one, or this is a glimpse of the future. Either way, we know that CS4 is behind it all.”

“And the rabbit wouldn’t have given us this warning if it didn’t think we could do something about it,” said Morwen.

“But what can we do?” asked Rosa. “We know what the plan is, and what’ll happen if it’s not foiled. But how do we go about foiling it? It’s not like we know where Mrs K’s secret base and headquarters is!”

“Um, actually we do,” said Megan. “Or at least Pinky and Purple do, and they can give me directions.”

“But why should we trust them?” asked Felindre. “For all we know they could be taking us into a trap.”

Pinky and Purple responded by doing an amazingly complicated, yet surprisingly understandable charade to indicate that now that they’d seen the catastrophic results of releasing CS4 into the wild, they weren’t going to let that happen, thank-you-very-much. And besides, the white rabbit had told them to help.

“Welcome to the team,” said Morwen. “Now, let’s go save some veg.”

___

114 Even the rabbits.
115 Five months and three days, for the earliest one.

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