This desperate future was the ultimate outcome of the fantasies of those who held the belief that humanity was somehow uniquely blessed. Perhaps they had faith in the divine providence of an elevated being with a remarkable physical likeness to the hominid male with a grand plan so obscure that no one really understood it, least of all those who most unquestioningly believed in it.
In the days before the final end, Odile and Edith had watched the news broadcasts on the television screen at the soup kitchen with the same apprehension as everyone else. Nevertheless, even in these desperate early days of international war, most of those who filed in for their daily bowl of soup would much prefer to watch a quiz show, a situation comedy or a chat show. Such entertainment was still very much available, along with the increasingly hysterical pleas for calm and restraint issued by public officials, until the arbitrary moment when the high-alert early warning system somewhere in the world—perhaps in the Republic of North America, but just as likely in Northumberland, Beijing or Aberdeen—reacted a little too presumptuously at the sight of a flock of geese or the distant echo of a small earthquake. Edith's final moments could just have easily have been as she watched the closing moments of a comedy quiz show where the laughter of the studio audience would just momentarily be punctuated by screams of panic and despair as London fell victim to a cluster of missiles directed towards it from all over the globe, of which only a few were likely to have come from England's traditional enemies: the Scots, the Welsh and the French.
Like most people, Odile had nursed the hope that all the anxiety of impending doom would soon blow over. The tense atmosphere couldn't last forever and normal life would eventually resume. Edith, however, reminded her lover that recent history didn't give much cause for optimism. The rhetoric was ratcheted up so high that it seemed increasingly unlikely that it would just fade away. How could the Scots ever forgive their southern neighbours for the insults thrown at them? Although the last few years had been characterised as the Second Cold War, the tension between the belligerent nations was becoming unpleasantly hot. At which stage would the international state of low-level aggression escalate into something much more bellicose?
The news programmes covered in interminable detail the various small-scale wars that the hostile nations of the world were conducting against each other. The Isle of Man was a particular hotspot. It was criss-crossed and scarred by deep trenches as the English peeked over the parapets towards their Scottish and Irish foes. In North America, the border states of Virginia, Minnesota and New Mexico had long been host to widely reported atrocities and massacres. And far from the gradually shrinking influence of the English-speaking world, there was warfare, border disputes, undeclared invasions and isolated lethal incidents across all the continents, although the greatest concentration was in Africa, Europe and North America.
Despite the many signs of imminent crisis, Odile's last day began no differently to any other. She and Edith had struggled out of bed with the morning free of any need to go to work. Edith stayed at home above the soup kitchen, while Odile went for a walk across Lancaster to visit another friend of hers in a part of town that only a few hours later would become nothing more than a vast smouldering crater. There was no premonition that the tatty, derelict streets lined with beggars and drug addicts would soon become scorched by the fires of hell and that every last soul would be incinerated.
Even the weather was unexceptional. It was a typical April day. Not too hot. Not too cold. A little bit drizzly and moderately overcast. None of this would have been an obstacle to the missile which either by chance or design was headed towards North West England, more likely intended to level Manchester or Liverpool than the ancient city of Lancaster. Its guidance systems knew nothing about the elements. It was travelling at just the right speed, maintaining just the right ambient temperature and deflecting sufficient electromagnetic radiation, that it wasn't detected by England's antique anti-missile defences which, despite the years of neglect and the Just-In-Time philosophy that ensured that it was only one step away from collapsing in on itself, was still able to prevent the arrival of a significant proportion of the incoming missiles, but not necessarily of their radioactivity, heat and long-term environmental legacy.
As it glided over England's hills and valleys, hugging close to the wooded hill-slopes and cleverly changing colour as it flew over England's lakes, motorways and fields of genetically modified foodstuff, it knew only the rough coordinates of its destination. But the decades since the missile was programmed and the many alterations made as the geopolitical systems shifted according to whim and political expediency, the actual target at which it its journey came to an end was almost certainly not what was intended.
Neither the missile nor the nuclear warhead whose contact with Lancashire soil would leave a churned-up long-lasting legacy of heavy metals for many hundreds of thousands of years had any emotion of affection or malice towards its target. It was nothing more than a bullet shaped device with stabilisers, a guidance system and a very crude Artificial Intelligence system that took account of potential obstacles but had no means of changing its purpose or objective once in flight. It had no notion of the history or significance of any English town or city, any more than it would have of Houston, Moscow, Johannesburg, Buenos Aires or Edinburgh. But these cities and many much smaller were all to be devastated by similar weapons of mass destruction. Many were launched from submarines whose propellers churned up the last few corpses at the bottom of the jelly-fish infested oceans now long depleted of fish, whales and coral. Many flew from the sky. Some were launched from the robot-staffed military bases on the moon that brought the last vestiges of humanity's space adventure on missiles back towards the home planet and from whence the whirring automatons could observe humanity's demise with no risk to themselves. Many were launched from silos in deserts, often where jungles and lakes once used to be, destined to leave the entire planet in a state of desertification as much like the Sahara, Arizona or the Gobi as it was possible to be.
Along with Lancaster Castle, the shopping centre, the historic monuments and a millennium of English history; along with Odile and Edith, their shared love and life together; along with the unpredictable and various hopes, fears and anxieties of the ragged undernourished people of Lancaster; the whole of England and English history arrived quite suddenly and abruptly to a very absolute and unmistakable full stop.
