I have been a very bad Unbound Author, not posting things in my shed. I am experiencing guilt.

I am trying to rectify the situation now.

The cover looks gorgeous doesn't it. I was so thrilled when I saw the first drafts. Brilliant design.

But what about what's inside the cover?

Due to the fact that many people have already received thier copies it's also very rewarding to hear their responses. I think it's fair to say the result has been overwhelmingly positive.

It's the final book and it does have an ending, I won't spoil it if you haven't read it yet, but there is an ending.

So, this Thursday afternoon (which is the same day that Clouds hits the shops) I am conducting an experiment with Twitter. I will be at their London offices answering questions as fast as I can on Twitter, (they are using me as a guinea pig to see how I use their software) but I will also being using the live video streaming app 'persicope' (https://www.periscope.tv/)

You can watch and fully interact with an iPhone or you can watch on Android phones or a browser. I've been told there is an Android version coming soon.

I've used it before and it's extraordinary, people ask questions and I can answer them by talking not typing. I have been told on many occasions that I can 'talk under wet cement' so I find this is a much easier way of answering questions.

I hope you can join me. I will be announcing exact times on the Twitters using the hashtag #askllew. Or you can add a question in the comments section below too. 

Just in case, I'm @bobbyllew on the Twitters

Would love to hear what you think of News from the Clouds if you've read it, but remember, no spoilers!

In the meantime, leave a question here if you've got one and I promise, this time I really will answer it.

News from the Clouds #askllew on Twitter and Periscope

I admit it's been very quiet in the News from the Clouds universe, but behind the scenes there's been much activity.

I've finished recording the audio version, we've combed through the manuscript many times, spelling, grammar and 'who the hell is Jim?' questions have been answered. I have no idea who Jim was, for some baffling reason one character who'd never been called Jim was suddenly Jim on page 236.

I put it down to an anomalie casued by space/time dilation, or possibly a mistake made by a sad old bloke, me.

I've just been sent the cover designs and they're gorgeous. The only worrying part is the text which reads strap line goes here.

I don't have a strap line yet.

For those of you unfamilair with such terms, a strap line is the one line explanation beneath the title.

In News from Gardenia is was A world where we finally get things right.

In News from the Squares it was A world entirely run by women.

So, I will now fret and worry about the strap line for News from the Clouds.

I would like to once again thank all the people who have supported this book and shown enormous patience with it's slow progress through the now collosal Unbound corporate mill.

I remember when Unbound was just a scruffy handful of authors and ex-publishers trying to shake up the world of books. They are now a multi-national corporation run by sleek suited lawyers and brutal flinty PR people.

I jest of course, it's still a bunch of scruffy authors and they are all lovely.

The finished book will zoosh its way to you in Spring 2015 and I am confident now, after spending so much time with it, that you will enjoy it. It's been an absolute joy writing this trilogy and I can't wait to hear what you think of the final book.

There are Clouds on the Horizon

A short explanation of the mild insanity that can be induced when you sit in a small sound booth recording an audiobook.

This is a very short outtake from  the News from the Clouds audiobook.

It doesn't reveal any spoilers.

Audiobook outtake # 1

News from the Clouds has reached 102% as I write this.

I cannot express my gratitude enough for the trust and support I've had from everyone who's pledged.

Big thanks

A very big thank you

I have just completed the first draft of News from the Clouds.

That really doesn't mean the book is finished, I know I will re-write it after the wonderful Rachael Kerr (my editor) has been through the manuscript with her red pen, but it is an enormous relief to have got this far.

To give you a taste, I have posted a chapter below, spelling and grammatical mistakes abound no doubt, but I think it gives a taste of what's to come.

Hopefully it doesn't contain too many spoilers and it's worth remembering that I might change the whole thing :-)


 Chapter Twenty Four


 

After spending a few weeks in the Chicago Culvert being on Cloud Eleven was not only a blessed relief, it was incredibly restful.

 I had a very comfortable adaptable bed arrangement in my room that was perfectly positioned to take in the ridiculous splendour of the skies as we floated serenely above the storm ravaged earth.

 I would wake up each morning and the transparent nano material in the window would fade from blackout to super clear as my eyes became slowly accustomed to the brightness of the day.

 It was impossible not to feel comforted, slightly smug and incredibly lucky in such truly fabulous surroundings.

 It was during this period of calm that I started to come to half understand some of the resentment among the general populace toward the people of the past.

It's not something anyone from 2011 could easily comprehend, if I thought about the people who had lived before me, the kings, statesmen, soldiers, workers, peasants, mothers and fathers who had lived and died before I was born, I don't think I had ever for one moment resented them.

 In fact quite the opposite, if I ever did think about them it was generally with some admiration.

Basically I'd always loved old technology, I was fascinated to see the crudity of construction and clearly I had the sort of brain that could look at a coupling on an early steam engine and work out not only how they came up with the idea but how they put the idea into practice, no question, I have an engineer’s brain.

 An early and happy memory I have is of walking around the Science Museum in London with my dad and brother when I was a young boy. I spent a long day staring in wonder at the incredible machines that had been built 100's of years before my time. The beam engine pumps, the early steam cars and locomotives, rudimentary batteries and marine engines. Amazing big brass gauges and pipework all held an intense fascination for me.

I didn't resent the people who made them, what they had done back then had developed over generations so that I was lucky enough to grow up in a time of technological achievement and comfort that would have been impossible to imagine in the not too distant past.

I was always impressed with technological progress, with new machines, gadgets and inventions that made life richer, more fulfilled or easier.

That mindset had definitely changed in the world of the Clouds.

The past was a dark place full of stupidity and destruction, the past from where I was sitting high above a world was seen in a very different way.

The human race had been almost destroyed by the shortsighted ignorance of previous generations including mine.

It all seemed a bit unfair, I wanted to tell them it wasn't all our fault, we didn't know any better, we didn't do it on purpose and there is no way we could have known what was going to happen.

It became clearer when Theda and I were sitting watching the sun go down from one of the 92 sun lounges dotted about the upper formations of Cloud Eleven.

'It's not my fault.' I said out of the blue. Theda had just been explaining the pressure variants on board, how the pressure lower down the Cloud structure was slightly higher than up where we were which enabled the whole thing to maintain it's shape. I mean I was interested but the blame thing was really on my mind.

'What have you done?' asked Theda.

'Nothing, that's just the point, it's not my fault that everything turned out so shitty for this world. It's ridiculous that the people here blame the past for their woes, it's not like we did it on purpose.'

'From what I understand the blame is very specific.' Said Theda. 'They don't blame the people of 1811, or indeed 1911. However by the time you left in 2011, there was plenty of understanding about what was taking place and yet it seems they did nothing.'

'It just doesn't make sense.' I said. 'We didn't have any hard evidence back in 2011, it was all speculation and a lot of people thought it was based on questionable science. It was all what might happen, it was almost a belief system, a bit religious, that's what I didn't like about it. It was a bit like the voice of God, 'you have sinned, you will be punished for burning fossil fuels.' That's why I questioned climate change. And I've seen worlds where it didn't happen and those people didn't blame my era. Well, they might have been critical but they didn't blame us.'

'I think you misunderstand.' Said Theda. 'Think of it this way. If you had been walking down the street in 2011 and you were introduced to a military gentleman from say, around 1914. An English man, a military figure who was hell bent on fighting a glorious war against my country. A man who took delight in all the military stupidity that war represented. How would you react to him?'

'Okay, I may have a couple of negative things to say.' I replied eventually, trying too imagine meeting someone like that in Chipping Norton on market day. For some reason that was the location that came to mind when Theda suggested it. A sunny Saturday in Chipping Norton, me and Beth doing shopping and suddenly this smartly dressed man in military uniform with a silly moustache starts holding forth about King and Country, the Bosch, the glory of war and the need for me to defend the British Empire. I'm sure I'd have something cutting to say but knowing me I'd think of it three hours later when I was back at home putting stuff in the fridge.

'Okay.' Said Theda. 'Now, imagine that the war the Great Britain and Germany started didn't stop, ever. Imagine it was still going on when you were alive and all the young men you'd grown up with had been needlessly slaughtered in an endless war of attrition, you may feel even more hostile.'

'Oh, right, okay, I suppose I get your drift.'

'People here, now, the people on this cloud, the few millions of people who manage to survive around the world, they are not constantly thinking that people from 200 years ago are all to blame. Of course not, but if they knew you were from 2011, then it might, as I understand it, cause considerable upset. Some people who have lost members of their families in storm accidents, people who know their forebears suffered greatly in brutal storms, yes, there would be a lot of anger and despair aimed at you.'

It's important to point out that as Theda was saying this to me she was lying on her back, totally naked. As I recall it the situation sounds disturbing but at the time it all seemed very normal and humdrum. I was also naked and sprawled out on a big cushion beside her.

We were just topping up our cloud tans, it was all part of the daily routine.

After six days on board Cloud Eleven Theda told me we were approaching a big docking event, Clouds Six to Ten were converging over the Bay of Biscay and it was a very momentous event apparently.

I was intrigued to see how this could be achieved but even this extraordinary airborne docking didn't hold quite the fascination it might have at one time.

I was not overwhelmed by it, I'd grown used to life on the Clouds and certainly preferred it to living in a Culvert. Sure, the docking would be interesting but I was lost in a kind of mesmerised state, whenever I looked out of a window or lay on a couch in the sun lounges I entered an almost zen like state of calm, not something I can ever remember experiencing before. Maybe flying in mechanically powered heavier than air machines had given me a taste for it, but flying a plane is quite complicated, requires a lot of concentration and planning so going all zen like and dreamy is probably not a good course of action but on the big Cloud it just became a way of life.

On my last morning on Cloud Eleven I had woken as usual, the amazing window which made up one side of my suite immediately turned from dark opaque to utterly invisible as soon as I started to move around. I was surrounded by embedded technology I'd become so used to that I had no interest in discovering how it operated.

I had a shower and even that incredible system had become mundane. Immediately I'd had enough of being sprayed I just brushed a finger on a low set panel and the water stopped and I was instantly bathed in a powerful jet of warm air which dried me in a few seconds.

I did some stretching, another thing I'd never done before I left 2011 but I'd found it highly beneficial to have a proper stretch in the morning. I wasn't doing yoga or anything although I knew there were numerous Yoga classes I could have attended.

I was just starting to ponder what to do with my day when Theda bustled into my silent reverie and as I'd witnessed on a couple of occasions she was excited and skittish.

This is only worth mentioning because her mood was in complete contrast to her normal rather dour and serious Germanic demeanour.

'Come quickly Gavin, we will be docking soon!'

'Really?' I said without much interest.

'Gavin! Two of the biggest objects ever constructed by the human race are going to become one, we cannot miss this moment.'

'Great.' I said as enthusiastically as I could. I wasn't excited. I should have been but by this point in my journey I didn't want anything to disturb my calm mental state.

Theda was pacing around the room, staring out of the window and jumping up and down

'Also I have just been informed that there is a weather window making it possible for you to transfer to Cloud Nine and head for England.'

My reaction to this news was a little more enthusiastic.

'That soon!' I said.

'Yes, the weather patterns are indicating you could get back to Gardenia today.' Said Theda. She walked up to me and hugged me, that was the first time we'd had any physical contact more than a handshake and I found it quite emotional.

That's correct, a feeling hit me and I was aware of it, still a slightly disturbing experience for me.

'I don't know if I want to go.' I said as I continued to hold her. 'I love it on Cloud Eleven.'

Theda gently broke the embrace and smiled at me. 'I know it is very amazing on board.' She said. 'But we both need to go back home, we don't belong here.'

'I know we don't, but I don't want to forget all this. I don't understand why I won't be able to remember anything, I know Brad explained it.'

'It is a very complicated notion.' Theda conceded with a smile.

I stood in the middle of my suite feeling hollow, I was having all sorts of feelings all the time and I was very aware of them.

Eventually I said 'Due to the madness of this whole experience, I'm prepared to accept that I'll forget all this, you, Brad, the Chicago Culvert, Noshi, the squares of London, Gardenia, everything.'

Theda nodded slowly. 'You will Gavin, it will be as if none of this happened. There won't even be traces of these events in your subconscious, it will all be completely erased. But remember there are benefits to this occurrence. You're complete lack of knowledge of everything you have experienced will make your return to your own time much less traumatic. If you knew this would happen to your world, you might go a little crazy, no?'

I shrugged. There was nothing I could do, the prospect of a return to Gardenia was enough to make me realise I'd go mad if I stayed in luxury on Cloud eleven for the rest of my life. Besides, there was no way I could do that, I was sure to end up in some remote Culvert growing carrots all day.

I started packing, which to be honest, didn't take long. My boots and a bag plus the few bits of survival kit like my cool sunshade eye covers and a sachet of tooth regen paste.

I stood looking out at the majestic view from my stupendous windows for a moment, then sighed, turned and followed Theda out of my luxury, peaceful Cloud Eleven suite for the last time.

 

 

 

#

First Draft finished.

There’s no doubt about it, living in the UK during the winter of 2014 is the perfect time to write a book set in an era of extreme weather.

The South of England has just had over double the amount of monthly rainfall we’d expect, there has been a lot of flooding again, all the rivers are full to overflowing and it’s still raining.

I take no glee in this, I’m definitely not having an ‘I told you so’ experience because I never told anyone anything. I’m not even considering the normal sources of climate change warnings, the likes of Bill McKibben and 350.org or the Green Party or any number of other concerned bodies (who’s opinions I agree with by the way.)

No, I prefer the American military, their long term strategists and planners for my take on global climate events.

Have a read of this:


 Admiral Samuel J. Locklear III, the commander of the United States Pacific Command, told security and foreign policy specialists in Cambridge, Mass., that global climate change was the greatest threat the United States faced — more dangerous than terrorism, Chinese hackers and North Korean nuclear missiles. Upheaval from increased temperatures, rising seas and radical destabilisation “is probably the most likely thing that is going to happen (and this) will cripple the security environment, probably more likely than the other scenarios we often talk about.’’


And


 “Extreme weather events (floods, droughts, heat waves) will increasingly disrupt food and energy markets, exacerbating state weakness, forcing human migrations, and triggering riots, civil disobedience, and vandalism.



 James Clapper  US director of national intelligence


 

I think those are two of the most chilling statements I’ve read while writing this book.

I want to re-state that New from the Clouds is not a post apocalyptic book where everything has gone to hell, it’s a book about the indomitable human spirit and our millennia long ability to adapt to new environments.

It’s about what we might know about in 200 years time, it gives us a broader way of looking at the way we live now.

Look back 200 years, 1814 and think how much we’ve learned and developed since then, that’s what makes writing the News from trilogy such a joy and privilege so if you are reading this, thank you for the support. It is greatly appreciated.

 


 You want a future where you're expecting things to get better, not a future where you're expecting things to get worse.



 
 Elon Musk

Wet Winter

I’ve struggled for 3 years to come up with a term that properly describes what I’m trying to do with the News from trilogy.


 Although I was originally inspired by re-reading the utopian novel ‘News from Nowhere’ by William Morris, that was only a starting point.


I originally set out to describe a possible world 200 years in the future that was simply better than the one we live in now. A world where people had stopped burning things to make or do other things, a world where the human race lived with the planet, not from it.

Writing the books has made me appreciate long term thinking, how the technology we are wedded to is utterly outdated and short term and how our current actions are increasingly likely to affect the future.

So I never wanted to us the term ‘Utopian’ to describe the worlds I was creating, they were not intended to be ‘perfect worlds where all was in harmony’ (that last phrase to be read in the ‘High Kryten’ style as depicted in Red Dwarf V episode ‘Demons and Angels)

I simply used the description, ‘not dystopian’ to describe what I was attempting to do.

When explaining the books to an audience I would get a few cheap laughs by saying ‘there are no zombies, no earth shattering meteors, no post apocalyptic nightmare where one man, played in the movie by Mel Gibson, Bruce Willis or Denzel Washington has to walk across a burning world shooting people to save his daughter.’

But I didn’t have a word to describe what the stories were.

Until today.

I just heard an interview with a man called Kevin Kelly who, despite a beard that may say otherwise is not a member of the Amish community although he is an admirer of some of their attitudes.

Kevin Kelly was a founding editor of Wired Magazine, he worked on The Whole Earth Catalog and has recently published a book called Cool Tools.

In the interview I heard he used the term ‘Protopian.’

Thank you Mister Kelly, that’s the term I’ve been looking for.

A protopian novel is set in a future that is not set in aspic, it is better than today but still developing and changing. Protopia is Progress Utopia; as Mister Kelly states, ‘today is a little better than yesterday, not much, but it is a little better, and tomorrow will be a little better than today.’

History has shown us unequivically that this is the case, of course we are surrounded by examples of cruelty, brutal inequality and violence, horrific for the people directly affected, but overall, for most pople, things ahve got a tiny bit better over the last 200 years.

Over the next 200 years, if we drive an optimistic culture to the fore, if we avoid the ugly violence of longing for dystopian collapse and chaos so popular with right wing white men (yes, I had to get on my hobby horse fofr a moment) then tomorrow might just be a tiny bit better than today, and so on.

So, that’s it.

The News from Trilogy is protopian science fiction.

Protopia

One of the profound joys of writing speculative science fiction is that you can let your imagination run riot. You can dream up the seemingly impossible and try to make it plausible.

However one of the pitfalls is making what you can imagine make any kind of sense on the page.

The more removed from the material world we exist in now, the harder it is to describe.

This particularly comes to the fore when dealing with hypothetical materials.

I am, I admit, a bit obsessed with materials, there are so many breakthroughs in new material structures happening right now it’s very hard to keep up, especially if you are an amateur fan like me.

To be honest, it doesn’t take much of am imagination to realise that many of the materials being developed at present are going to make profound changes to the world we live in, but what kind of changes?

Imagine an engineer in 1811 trying to describe plastic.

It’s a solid but flammable substance made from a thick black liquid of crushed fossils that have been trapped deep in the earth for millions of years.

How would that person imagine what you could do with plastic, if it was flammable then what use would it be. Virtually everything engineering understood 200 years ago required fire at some stage of the process.

He could maybe imagine a clock made of this magical substance, or a plate, cup or box.

But as we now know, there are millions of things we make using plastic that he couldn’t possibly have conceived of, things that simply didn’t exist even in the dreams of lunatics in 1811.

So what might we be able to do with carbon fiber Nano tubes? I had a few ideas in News from Gardenia with the space tethers.

What about graphene, the graphite material that is literally one atom thick.

One atom thick, you can’t even see it, you just have to believe someone when they pass you a sheet of graphene because you need about 10,000 sheets of it before it’s visible to the human eye.

What bloody use is that going to be to anyone?

Okay, it’s super light, super strong and made from super common stuff (carbon) and is capable of holding and far more importantly transporting electric power at a rate we cannot truly comprehend?

Okay, graphene is very likely to be the plastic of the 21st century and beyond.

In many ways my nerdy amateur interest in such things is what inspired me to sit down and write these books.

I went through a moment when I started ‘News from the Clouds’ thinking, ‘Oh no, I’ve written about all the materials I know, there’s nothing else I can say.’

Since starting on Clouds that fear has gone out of the window. How could humanity deal with extreme weather, with massive changes in the ten thousand year long stable climate that enabled the human race to move from cave to mega-city.

New materials are going to be a vital part of our development if we are to survive.

So I’m reading a great deal about materials science, oh, and economics and population.

Oh, and while I’m here, thanks so much for supporting the book. The next few months are going to be very exciting.

Materials

Gavin Meckler has slipped sideways in time again to a far more treacherous future than he has ever faced before.

Ever since Gavin left the world of 2011 and landed 200 years in the future, he has navigated the garden lands of Gardenia, escaped a world run by women in the Squares, and now finds himself in a floating city in the Clouds.

In this possible alternative future, the planet is ravaged by a brutal climate – crippling storms, sweeping winds and an unforgiving sun. Earth's inhabitants have had to adapt, creating a highly sophisticated society where the human race has two options: to live on the earth's scarred surface in enormous culverts, reinforced to withstand the ravages of the weather… or to float above it all.

It is a classless society where everyone must experience life both on the earth and in the clouds… and where they claim to know how and why Gavin has travelled 200 years beyond his own time.

Will Gavin finally understand the truth behind his journey? Can he find his way back to the life he left behind in 2011?

Is there even a world to go back to?...

Chapter Three

Waking up in Gardenia was, looking back on it, no big deal. On that occasion I awoke in an actual bed in an actual room made of stone and wood and some kind of carbon nanofibre insulation. But the room had walls, a floor, a delightfully carved wooden ceiling, doors, windows, and most importantly, it was on the ground.

Waking up in the Institute in London was, admittedly, a bit weird but I was still in a room with straight walls in a building in a city. A city that was also connected to the ground.

Waking up on Cloud Nine was a bit more of a challenge. 

I was ensconced in a white supportive bench made of an unknown but possibly intelligent material that was in turn encased in a circular, semi-spherical white room with a round window looking out onto totally static clouds. When I say static, I mean they weren't moving across my limited field of vision: I stared for a long time and they didn’t budge a millimeter. It was like looking at a well-lit, still image of clouds.

I was alone in this slightly chilly space. I didn't suddenly jump up and run around in a panic - I stayed still, simply because I didn't know what to do. I mentally retraced my steps as I tried to get a grip on the situation I found myself in. 

Once again the forlorn hope of flying out into the sky above Didcot power station in 2011 fell away. This time there was no moment of doubt as to where or indeed when I was. 

Coming out of the cloud and seeing blue sky and clouds I could, I reflected, have wondered for a moment if I was over Didcot once again, however, the presence of a couple of dozen white doughnuts flying alongside me soon put paid to that dream.

I had then been taken over by some sort of flying duvet cover and deposited on an enormous cloud that was floating a few hundred feet above the ground. I had a vague memory of seeing the ground below as we approached the cloud. It appeared to be brown and rocky, not green and lush or even urban and complex. It looked like an expanse of scrubby moorland.

I was comfortable on the bench, so I had no great urge to move; I held my breath and stayed motionless in the peculiar white room and concentrated on listening to the sounds around me. I could just hear what I took to be people talking but I couldn't make out anything they were saying. I started to wonder why I could hear no wind noise, no engine noise, no vibration or mechanical sound of any kind. The thing I was in was up in the air and yet it was eerily silent. I could just make out tiny movements - nothing alarming, but just faint alterations in the supporting pressure on my back. 

I slowly moved my body to try and get up. Once again, I had no idea how long I'd slept and the light coming through the window was no help, looking exactly the same as when I'd fallen asleep.

As I shifted my body weight the bench I was lying on reformed itself into slightly firmer platform supporting my bum. I cannot describe to you how weird this felt; it was almost as if I was lying on something living, the response calm but immediate.

I swung my feet onto the odd quilted-looking floor and stood up. I then sat down again rather rapidly because I really couldn't get my balance. The floor was squashy. It gave way under my heels and threw me backwards. 

I dropped down onto all fours and using hands and knees made my way over to the circular window. It really was like a very big porthole in a ship; there was some kind of transparent material in it to keep the elements out of the room but it wasn't glass. As I touched it I could sense it flexed under the pressure but not in a way that distorted the view.

I managed to get into a standing position by leaning on the slightly flexible side of the room to steady myself. With my hands and feet spread, I could stay relatively stable.

What I saw out of the window was a bit of a shock - in fact two very distinct shocks.

One, the thing I was in was incredibly high up, much higher than when I'd landed on it, and two, the view below showed that without any question we were above an ocean.

Whatever I was in was above water, and not only that, we seemed to be moving. I could tell by watching the lower clouds pass over the blue expanse of water. Either they were blowing in the other direction or we were moving. It was a very similar view to the one you'd get out of the window of a passenger jet at 35,000 feet. This could only mean one thing: the room I was in was pressurised. It had to be, or I'd be suffocated and frozen to death.

I stared down for a long time trying to make sense of what I was seeing. I was fairly certain that when I came out of the cloud and saw the flying doughnuts I had been above land. In both my previous jumps through the cloud I'd ended up in the same place - well, the same map coordinates, although it looked very different each time. As far as I could make out, both times I was still in the vicinity of where the Didcot power stations once stood. 

However, this time I'd flown through the cloud that was above the Squares of London, and, it seemed, somehow come out above the sea. Had the world flooded? Was this cloud really more like a floating Noah's Ark? Would I discover two of every kind of animal stashed in the hold? 

I then remembered a graphic representation I had pinned up in my office back in Kingham. It showed the earth with all the water that exists on the planet gathered into two giant blobs resting above California. The saltwater blob was big. The freshwater blob was teeny. I knew that no matter how much ice melted, how much rain fell, there was just not enough water on the planet for Kevin Costner's second worst ever film to have been remotely possible.

So, the question arose in my mind, if I had flown into the cloud over London, and flown out of the cloud over the sea, was it possible to fly through space as well as time? A question like that made me feel mildly annoyed; the whole concept was barking mad, so why worry about minor details like travelling through space as well as time?

'Ah, you have woken up,' said a voice behind me. 

I slid down the wall and sat below the window in order not to fall over as I turned to face the person speaking.

It was the old man who'd greeted me by the plane. I couldn't recall his name, which left me feeling even more annoyed. Why couldn't I remember his name? I felt sure I was better at such basic data storage before the wretched kidonge had wormed its way into my bone marrow.

'Yes, sorry, I'm a bit confused. I'm really sorry, I can't remember your...'

'I am Gustav,' he said kindly. 'Don't worry, you are bound to be a bit disorientated. I am Gustav and you are Gavin Meckler.'

'I know who I am, Gustav,' I said, while repeating his name in my head over and over to try and lodge it in there somehow. 'How do you know who I am? Have you got a different sort of kidonge here?'

'I don't know what a kidonge is but I am sure you will tell me in good time.' His soft German accent was quite gentle and reassuring. 'Please try to relax; you appear to be very anxious. I want to reassure you that you are very safe. We are currently ten thousand meters above the surface, but there is nothing to be alarmed about - the structure you are on has a 100% safety record.'

'That's very good to know,' I said, very aware that my face was not showing any signs of reassurance. 'But there are so many things I don't understand and one thing is really disconcerting. Gustav, you knew my name. As soon as the Yuneec, my plane, my drone, I don't know what you'd call it, the thing I came in-'

'The highly modified Yuneec E430,' said Gustav calmly.

'Yes, yes, well, as soon as it was put down here, on this, on Cloud Nine, as soon as I opened my door, you seemed to know who I was.'

'Yes, we know who you are.'

'How do you know who I am?'

'Hopefully all will be revealed to you presently.'

'Hopefully?'

'Yes, we are attempting to navigate our way to the requisite culvert but as you may be able to imagine, navigating a vessel such as Cloud Nine is not an easy matter. We go where the weather goes and while we can predict fairly accurately where that will take us, we have learned that when it comes to weather…' he stopped and smiled, then leant forward and put a hand on my shoulder, '...nothing is certain.'

'Okay, well, maybe you can explain that.' I said gesturing out of the window above my head. 'We seem to be above the sea.'

'That is correct.'

'But when I came out of the cloud, when I was surrounded by those round things, I was over land - at least I think I was.'

'Again, correct, however we have moved a considerable distance since you arrived. We are now over the Atlantic Ocean.'

'What?'

'We are travelling with the prevailing wind, Gavin. At present it's a North Easterly but we will soon turn back towards Europe.'

'So this is sort of like a balloon?' I asked.

'No, it is not like a balloon, Gavin, it is a balloon. Cloud Nine is a very large balloon: it is over five kilometers in length and roughly three kilometers wide. We hope that by this time tomorrow we will be in a calm area over the mid-Atlantic where we will reconnect with the others.'

'The others?'

'The other clouds. We are one of ten clouds presently, although another ten are under construction. When the weather allows, we connect with the others and form one supercloud, nearly fifty kilometers long.'

'But why?' I asked, staring at this perfectly sane-looking old bloke. 'Why on earth do you float about on clouds?'

'Remember the moment you got out of the Yuneec E430 this morning?' said Gustav. 

'Yeah, it's not going to be something I can forget quickly.'

'Gut. Well, did you feel the wind?’

'Wind?'

'Yes, do you remember as you walked across the court, do you remember feeling moving air; was your hair blown about; did you feel the wind on your skin?'

I thought for a moment. 'No,' I said. 'It seemed very still.'

'Indeed, and yet there was a wind blowing, about one hundred and fifty kilometers an hour at ground level. Nothing unusual, but we were moving with the wind and hence felt nothing.'

As had been the case in Gardenia and London 2211, every single explanation raised a million new questions.

‘So that’s why you live on this,’ I said, gesturing around me.

‘Well, to say we live on the cloud would be a little misleading - we stay on it from time to time, a few months of rest every now and then, plus we get to travel and see the rest of the world. Living in the culverts can be a little claustrophobic.’

‘The culverts?’

Gustav smiled at me and with a slow and gentle movement put a bony hand on my shoulder. ‘You will soon see. It is very different here from anything you are used to, but please do not be stressed; you will be fine, we will look after you.’

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