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Angling 3000


Guest Mike Connor

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Guest Mike Connor

Rapidly darkening skies and the suddenly looming threat of a very heavy

storm caused the picnickers to rush for shelter, grabbing the food and

utensils on the way. Grandpa was far too slow as usual, and the twins had

to help him up and assist him in gaining the shelter.

 

The heavens opened, and great jagged angry streaks of lightning reached out

to grasp and shake the ridges and peaks of the mountains in the near

distance, thunder rolled and reverberated from the naked rock, like some

mad orchestral cacophony from hell.

 

Rushing on at incredible speed over the foothills the storm abated somewhat,

the first massive rush of almost solid rain settling in to a steady

downpour. Thunder grumbled and rolled, retiring slowly into the distance,

and the picnickers hunkered down in the shelter and waited.

 

Timothy and Thomas, known to all as "the terrible twins" were very quickly

bored, and started pestering Grandpa to tell them a story. They never

believed any of his stories, and often made fun of him for relating such

fantastic nonsense, but still kept pestering for more.

 

"Go on dad, tell them a story" their mother implored, "anything to keep them

quiet for a while, we cant go out in this".

 

Grandpa sighed, closed his eyes momentarily, and then opened them slowly,

focussing on something distant and apparently obscured by the rain, which

only he could see. The picnickers fell silent, and grandpa started with his

inevitable "When I was a young man.............."

 

He paused after his standard introduction, obviously mulling over the

possibilities in his mind, and then proceeded to relate one of his fantastic

stories.

 

"Where we are now sitting there were lots of trees and bushes growing from

the ground which was covered in soil. Insects and worms and all sorts of

other things lived in the soil". The twins looked rather uncomfortable at

this revelation, and fidgeted about on their plastic seats, rubbing the

clean bare rock with their shoes, as if to test the ground for any evidence

of such a wild claim.

 

"What happened to them all then Grandpa?" asked Timothy, "shssssh" said his

mother" listen to the story", and Grandpa carried on as if he had not

noticed the interruption.

 

"At the bottom of the hill was a stream, and lots of fish and birds and

animals lived in it and near it , my Grandpa brought me here quite a few

times to catch fish". "What did you want to catch fish for Grandpa?"

Timothy interrupted again. "Oh we did it mainly for fun", said Grandpa,

noticing the question this time, "and sometimes we ate the fish as well,

lovely they were". The twins giggled, and looked disbelieving, and Grandpa

snorted and continued with his story.

 

"Angling it was called, my Grandpa had a lot of special equipment for

angling, rods for casting and playing the fish, boxes of flies, most of

which he made himself from feathers and fur and other stuff, to imitate the

insects the fish were feeding on, and special clothes to wear while doing

it".

 

"You told us he walked in the water", Thomas interrupted this time, "yes ,

he did said Grandpa, "and so did I, it was fun". "Oh do be careful what you

tell them dad ", said his daughter, "you will have them trying it and

getting into trouble".

 

"Well it was fun then", Grandpa rather testily retorted, and his daughter

subsided with a sigh. She was never quite certain whether to believe her

father or not either, he did tell some rather fantastic stories. She had

checked some of the things he said on the universal com link though, and

some of what he said was true at least, although the information she had

received had been very patchy. There had indeed been streams with trees and

insects, this much she had been able to verify, she had even seen one or two

pictures of some things called trees, and a picture of a fly, a nasty

horrible black thing with lots of legs, that the com link said had carried

disease, but as to people walking in water and the like, even with

protective

equipment, when she had asked about this, the com link had gone into a long

dissertation on the possible danger to life limb and general health, and she

had cut it off, not wishing to hear any more.

 

Grandpa was still rambling on when she looked up with a start from her

reverie. He was telling the twins about squirrels, which apparently were

some sort of small furry creature that lived in trees. She shivered

slightly, turned up the temperature control on her environmental suit, and

regulated the oxygen supply from her belt converter, and started gathering

up the picnic equipment.

 

This would be the last picnic for a long time, her father had somehow

wangled permission to visit the nature reserve yet again. She did not know

how he had managed it, but was certain that it had been very difficult

indeed. Her father was very old, he was one of the first people to have the

anti-age treatments, and it was said that he was over two hundred years

old, the oldest people she had met apart from her father had been about a

hundred and thirty, and considering applying for child permits. She was

glad that she had decided to do it at an early age, she had only been eighty

three when the permit had come through, and she still remembered the

excitement and anticipation she had felt when she had met her husband for

the first time after the permit had been approved.

 

She looked proudly at the twins, only three people she knew had been allowed

to have children at all, and nobody she knew had ever heard of anybody

having twins. Her father said it had been quite common then, but perhaps he

was just exaggerating again, the age treatments were reputed to cause some

strange effects with time.

 

The rain slowly stopped, and the sky cleared quickly, she checked her suit

radiation controls, automatically adjusting the polarising and radiation

filters to block the raw solar radiation now pouring from the sky.

 

She wondered why her father was so set on a picnic in such an awful place,

it was much more fun to visit the feely-drome on the fifteenth sub-surface

level, and a lot less trouble and expense. Ah well, she loved her father,

and if it made him happy, why not. She wished sometimes though he would not

tell the twins some of the things he told them, he did not even seem to

realise that they usually just laughed in disbelief. Their teachers had

warned her a few times, that such fantastic ideas might get them into

trouble at school and in later life.

 

"Come on then, we can go out now", just a few isolated drops were falling,

and these could be handled quite easily by the suits, a downpour was another

matter, the com link had warned quite emphatically about prolonged exposure

to unfiltered rainwater, and she was inclined to take the warning seriously.

She wondered if that was another product of her fathers fantasy that he had

walked in the rain without any protection at all as a boy, the rather

terrifying prospect made her shiver again, and she packed the last few

pieces of algae protein and picnic equipment, and helped her husband

dismantle the special shelter. "Come on dad, you can tell the rest of the

story at home", she said, and the picnickers moved off down the slope of

bare blasted and acid etched rock towards the transport bubble and the

journey home.

 

Tight lines !

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