There was a rumbling in the old shanty town. She didn’t know what it was at first. She was a stranger in town. Her mother and father had moved here only 3 weeks ago, but the rumblings had got bigger and louder. Her ears hissed and hurt with the piercing, grinding sound. She wanted to scream sometimes, as if the pressure inside her ears was about to burst. She cuddled her yellow mottled teddy-doll close to her chest and cried into its heart centre. ‘I don’t like this town teddy-tot. Why did we have to move here? Daddy wanted a job, but there’s nothing here. It’s all rotten, decaying away like an old bonfire. I like the countryside. Its better than this place. When can we go back there? I don’t like it here one bit. I just want to go back to the lake where we had herb teas and seed biscuits. I guess we’ll have to put up with it though. I guess there’s nowhere else to go.’
Just then the rumblings took a tremendous turn and became explosive. The roof of the tin shack shook and it sounded like a pile of debris shattered all around them. Esme clasped Teddy-tot in her bare arms and rocked them both from side to side. Her mother rushed into the bed-room, ‘Esme, no going outside today! Just stay indoors. take this umbrella. Best to have it up just in case.’ Sarika, her mother, was too busy to console Esme any further and rushed with another 2 umbrellas to her lover, Simoney, and the 2 dogs. She carried flasks of herb tea and waterproof clothing. All this necessary for the ongoing onslaught of toxic overload.
Pentonville had become more alive lately, strangely with the arrival of the Philippe family. The rumblings of toxic waste from underground stations and pipes could not be held for long before the eruptions started and small and yet bigger explosions came from under the city streets. Water pipes burst, drainage systems flooded, nuclear energy leaked out and fires started all over the place. It had become the norm, yet not. The steel umbrellas helped with falling rubble, but even they did not keep out the burning fires and sudden explosions under foot. It was like a war zone. Why the family moved to this toxic zone, Esme did not know.
Her father, an artist, drew the scenes he saw and tried selling them to newspapers. The toxic fumes involved in photography often didn’t work and communication systems were breaking down so much that digital wasn’t always possible. Newspapers were not interested most of the time. He managed to sell advertising slogans to tube trains and animal sanctuaries, but his main concern was in using recycled waste from explosions into city sculptures (as long as it wasn’t toxic). Already his hands were dyed red from a nuclear explosion some weeks before. They moved due to the countryside shacks being too close to the nuclear reactors. The protective suits, iodine tablets and seaweed plantations were not enough to protect everyone. Yet the city had other flaws.
Esme’s mother, Sarika, loved the sound of whales, and when she was not seeing to the family she would paint and emulate the whale sounds which she made into music chips. These she sold wherever there was pain in the world, which was basically everywhere. People placed the chips in their inner ears and were directly connected to the whales through their sound. Once connected to whales people often found themselves dancing or acting in unusual ways which usually helped in some significant way. The family was one of healers and they had come together in this life time to see how they could help. That was another reason for entering the city. They had to help where help was needed most. Simoney was going to create city sculptures of positivity which would highlight better health for people and give an uplifting energy.
In times past there had been many restrictions on health and safety and planning issues, where people had to ask permission to do almost anything publicly. That had eventually become a complete joke; people were being maimed and killed daily under heaps of toxic waste in city explosions. The authorities which enforced these laws were creating such high level toxins that there was barely enough clean air to breathe in the denser cities. That’s why the masks had been issued and why it was necessary to wear them whenever outside in the city.
Esme had a brother but he was severely ill and disabled with complete toxic overload syndrome. The condition was pretty common and a cure had yet to be found. The world would need a complete clean up before that was possible. It was considered a terminal illness and one which just needed care and rest. Reubin was only 3 years old but had all the symptoms: constant runny nose, sore lips, itchy skin, rashes most of the time, inability to ingest most foods (since most were contaminated with toxins or GM), nausea and vomiting and viral flue. He may not have had much time to live, but his mother gave him whale sounds and looked after him day and night. His father made him visual toys of higher consciousness. Both of these helped him feel better and he would laugh and gurgle with pleasure and even trot about in his oxygen tent.
There was a loud crash just then and Esme found herself shuddering. The toxin police where shouting about in the street on megaphones ‘do not leave your homes. Shelter well. Crouch low down and wait for the safety siren. Do not leave breakables out of tightly packed containers.’ She had got used to these events but it was still scary. She held Teddy-tot tightly. Reubin had become the one with the greatest need in the family so he always took priority. Her mother would rush to his side to protect him and she only had her Teddy to cuddle. Her father would be out, trying to salvage waste for his art, despite all the severe warnings. She was afraid for him. She wished he would not do such things. But he would venture out with his steel capped boots, rubber and steel suit, umbrella and safety call out button. These rarely worked in emergencies anyway. He wouldn’t be gone long, just enough time to salvage something of the wreckage, maybe even from their home. Every person or family was allowed to keep one food producing animal as a pet, for emergency supplies if nothing else. They had Harriette Hen who gave them eggs. She lay in a steel hut. It was cold and dark often for her and the explosions must have frightened her a lot. Sometimes Simoney would sit with her. Esme felt she was the last to be considered. She was only 9, but in this climate you had to grow up quickly and act quickly. You just had to survive. She resolved to change something about this. She had thought it through. She knew there was a better way. She just didn’t know what it was yet.
Her father returned, exhausted as usual, wearing a hard hat full of rubble, having left bundles of waste material outside for his sculptures. Esme was always relieved when he returned. She thought if he never came back they would struggle as a family. She would no doubt have to look after Reubin as well as herself and have even less time with her mother and less cuddles. She was often afraid yet knew that fear was a useless emotion. It only led to more fear or to the very thing that created the fear in the first place.
The drummers would start in the morning; the tin drummers who attempted to make everything all right through their drumming and chanting in the streets, to clear the toxic cloud energy away. It did work to some degree. Esme saw through her third eye how streams of negativity were wiped away through the sound. But the toxicity would come again very soon. People could do anything these days. Even the toxin police were there just to warn and safeguard people. It wasn’t as if anything happened to you if you did go outside. There were no laws to be broken. Just a risk you took of your own accord.
There were those who were mad with the pain of it all. They would go out into the most toxic zones and explosions and laugh in the streets manically, hallucinating and shouting for liquor. That had all gone of course. There were times when people just used to put toxins into their bodies through their own free wills. Now it would be an unthinkable act. If anyone did that they would almost die instantly. Everyone knew it was unsafe to build up further toxins in the body. Everyone’s biological system was so over crammed with toxic chemicals and nuclear fallout that tipping it over the balance in any way would create instant or near death. Over toxicity was the way most people died on the planet now. 30 was the usual time for a slow death to occur. The ones who reached 50 were lucky – or unlucky as some would say.
The ones who gave birth usually had a baby with birth defects, disabilities or overload of toxins in the blood. The population would surely die out. Esme couldn’t understand it. She stood up as the safety siren came on. She had a headache and started coughing. Her mother came out of Reabin’s room seeming irritated. Esme had a permanent cough but the whale sounds didn’t seem to help much. They tried growing herbs in the countryside but most got contaminated by leached out nuclear radiation or GM crops. You couldn’t make anything pure these day.
‘Get up Esme, its over now, come over here will you and help me make some chapatis. We’ll get some food on for everyone and herb tea.’ it was a hard life, trying to keep them all alive and she, just as afraid as everyone else, yet it seemed she had to just get on with everything without complaining.
They made chapatis and spread them with marmalade and onion spread. It was a thing her mother often did after the explosions. It seemed to calm her down. The neighbour had given them milk from her goat and they drank that with the food. Sarika didn’t think it safe to eat vegetables so they made do with whatever else was around, though why flour was safe and vegetables weren’t she wasn’t quite sure.
When the price of fuel escalated so much that most people gave up their vehicles it was a real turning point in vehicle technology. People hired hover solar cars and the less well off had to walk, run or take the hoverspeed where there were rivers, canals or waterways of some kind. Now there was little transport due to safety concerns. So wherever you were you tended to stay. The family had trekked to the city, partly on a friend’s solar car and partly on foot. Dead people lay in dead shacks. There was nothing much to be done about them. Rotting bodies, she was sure that wasn’t so good.
Esmi decided to make a pact with herself. She would do something even more beneficial than her family to make it a better world. It was either that or wait for a slow death, while she looked after the rest of her family, who were sure to all die before her. She meditated upon the idea all night and in the morning woke up refreshed and yearning to take action. She arranged meetings with all her friends in the neighbourhood and decided to make a children’s council and see what could be done. They called themselves the ‘The Black Tribe’. They aimed to put out the flames of toxic blasts for good and make it a cleaner world altogether. This did not seem an impossible task to those with young and bright eyes, ideas and ideals, let alone a complete desperation to do something about a crumbling world. They would eliminate the black chemicals they were exposed to on a daily basis, the ones that were slowly killing them all off.
Esme got her tribe together from kids she knew in the streets. They didn’t go to school any more. Schools had become too hazardous to run and were closing down too often. Kids were home taught, not taught at all or lessons held in one of the community shacks and taken by an older child or young adult, whoever volunteered. It was a free country in many respects, compared to the old ways. If people had ideas about how things could be improved they could set up a group, a community, take over one of the community shacks or lodges, find artists to work with them or healers or teachers. It was a ‘free for all’ because everyone was so desperate for help and solutions; communication systems were always breaking down, so little was reliable in this world: TV, computers, phones rarely worked. It was partly due to the explosions ripping apart underground wiring, and partly due to explosions on the sun and in space.
Esme started meeting up with her 9 and 10 year old friends in the community shack. Most were happy to come along to these morning sessions on a daily basis as there was nothing much else to do except boring housework and general chores to keep things going. So they would play a game together and then discuss their lives and what needed improving. Many of the kids had brothers and sisters with terminal illnesses, usually toxic overload syndrome, who needed constant care. Many of the kids had parents who were out trying to combat pollution in some way. Many of the kids had coughs, wheezes, sneezes and itches. Most of the kids needed something positive to do.
‘We’re the new kids!’ Esme declared. ‘We’re here on the planet at this time cos we’ve gotta do something to help the world. The adults don’t know what it is, they’ve caused all this. But we’re the new kids in the new world – we can create a new and healthy world. We just need to hold hands in a circle and wish and and imagine its all different and better than this. The drummers know what they’re doing but it doesn’t sustain for long. We have to create a sacred base so we’ll claim this one. We’ll meet in here and do our visualisations and no-one must use the space for anything else. Can someone put a sign up on the door to that effect please?’
A boy, Jasmine piped up, ‘I’ll do it Es. But why not do the chanting as well? They’ll give us the ancient words, then we can do it with our own intention to make it a cleaner world. It’ll work that way, as well as the visuals.’
‘Thanks Jas, cool. And what about we use bells and chimes and those whale sounds your mam makes Es?’ It was Titania, a young girl aged around 7 with long blond hair, one of the crystal children. ‘Thank-you Titania. I think with all those things we can make things different somehow. And we must do these things once a day at least without fail. Never mind if your mam asks you to wash dishes or bake a seaweed cake, just come away and do this.’
‘What if we really can’t Esme?’ it was a small boy, Clover, ‘My mam, she wants me to do everything round the shack and for the babies. I don’t get much time. Our da died from an explosion and she really depends on me.’
‘I know its hard Clover, but somehow this is more urgent. Tell her you’ll be back within the hour. It doesn’t need to take that long. We’ll do it for an hour every morning at 11, the sacred hour, and anyone who can, meet back here at 3 for a second session. That’s all. Meeting closed.’
The children departed and went their own sacred ways back home. The mission had inspired some, intrigued others and yet feared others who knew it would be a hard task to escape their home scene. Yet Esme was determined that their council would make positive progress forwards.
The days came and went and the new kids made beautiful healing sounds, reached out to mother and father God and made visualisations for a new and better world. The world somehow was becoming brighter even in minute ways. The Earth shatterings decreased. The babies started arriving with a healthier glow. Anti-toxic sprays were produced to combat large iconic toxic particles. Adults started listening more to their children and giving more cuddles. These small changes would lead to larger changes and consequences.
And Esme decided to create her own laboratory and do her own individual work. Many of the children decided to do the same in their own ways. They each realised they had important work to do and that school and lessons didn’t really matter. There was no time for such mundane things. The world was at a crisis point and they needed to act like child protection police! There was a divine order to it all.
Esme took over one of the older community shacks. She embroidered it in whatever colourful cloths and clothes she could find. She sprayed it with detoxifying mist and dusted and brushed away the cobwebs and fumes of another time and era. She discovered that when cleaning her own laboratory it was far less an arduous task then cleaning her family home! She had an idea in her head which she could not fathom out entirely. First she needed to wipe all the surfaces very clean and then she needed a place of meditation to sit and think and pray to God for answers to her many questions about the world she inhabited that was so in need of help. Her mother and father had tried to do something but it was not enough and she wished to do much more. She wanted to cleanse and heal the whole planet. Now, was that big headed and over ambitious or was that her soul mission?
She didn’t know anything clearly yet she had enough strength, health and wisdom to know the next step. Surprisingly her mother and father did not question her outside activities in any way. Instead they resumed their own tasks and let her go out whenever she wished, as long as there were no sirens. If the sirens occurred when she was in her lab she kept her head down and felt strangely less in danger than when at home. It was a truly healing space that she had created. She mastered the arts of divine meditation and chanting, using the Sanskrit words she had learnt from the drummers, ‘Om Mani Padme Hum’ meant peace and love from the heart. She would sit in the ball of white light she visualised around her and wait for answers and guidance.
It happened quickly. She immediately felt inspired to acquire 6 clean glass bottles. Her mother had several from the sterilising liquid, ‘OOZOO’ she was given free from the government. All homes, surfaces and infants needed sterilising otherwise there was danger of contamination by some poison. Contaminants were always around so everything was tightly sterilised. Her mother gladly gave her the empty bottles which were already sterilised. It saved her taking them to the re-filling station which was often closed these days.
Esme returned to her laboratory and decided to clean up the world of its toxicity. Through her meditations she realised that toxicity not only came from outside sources, such as toxic waste and sewers, but also from people’s mouths and thoughts, through what people thought and said to one another. It had become a toxic world on every level, in every way. She knew that when she was hungry she needed to eat, but when she was lonely, sad, tired or scared she needed a hug – and mummy wasn’t always around. Her mother was so busy with the little one and with household tasks that she had been left in the middle of dangerous explosions with just her teddy to cling onto.
That was when she seized upon the idea with great gusto. What people really needed was more cuddles and more love in their lives. Then maybe they wouldn’t be so toxic in their thoughts and words. Maybe people would be more loving towards one another, more tolerant and understanding towards others. Maybe then, people who used toxic chemicals to make things would think twice about it, because they wouldn’t want to harm anyone. They would want most of all to preserve other people’s health and to look after everyone on the planet as well as all the little and big creatures, mother nature and her plants and trees. That was an amazing breakthrough of an idea. She planned to write it down and then distribute something in the bottles that would give people a potion of love! ‘Love in a bottle! Wow, that’s amazing-stuff!’
Esme tried and tested her bottle. She placed a few drops of lavender oil, made from the garden they had in the countryside with a drop of her own saliva, purified stream water and the purity of intention that this would be a sacred bottle of love which would help people be kinder to one another. She placed her thumb print on the outside of the bottle together with the words ‘Om Mani Padme Hum’ which she wrote in bold letters on a sticky tab. This would be perfect. But first she held it up to the light of the sun and chanted the mantra, ‘Om Mani Padme Hum’. She asked the all powerful angel Ganesh to remove any obstacles that prohibited the evolution of the human species towards a purer way of being. These words and phrases came to her through her meditations and they added great power to her bottle of sacred remedy. This she held up to the light of the sun at midday 3 times, and then at the full moon on the darkest of days. It was a long and great process and only when she had completed the process after 3 weeks did she take the sacred bottle to the children’s council and declare her creation. The children loved her idea and helped her by collecting all of their family sterilising bottles so she could fill them all up.
Esme chose 3 of the children to act as her helpers and together they placed all the bottles in the sacred laboratory and decanted 3 drops from the master bottle into each of the empty bottles. These were then filled with the purified water (as pure as was possible anyway) and they prepared to make a big production whereby the bottles could be distributed widely.
And so it came to pass that many children in a polluted world came out of their hoards to help the inhabitants of planet Earth. They poured the liquid of purity and love into the world and thereby was the means to extract some of the ugly poisons that had persisted for many eons of years. It is not quite known how it happened but the children made things change through Esme’s potion and through their own visualisations and chants. The world started to clean up, become purer in every way, and Esme was revered and respected for the great scientist of change that she had proved to be. The potion was a great success for many years to come and Esme was kept eternally busy with a huge team of helpers and huge laboratory! And these labs overtook the labs and factories that created poisonous products and gave off toxic fumes. These were the pure labs which had been created by the children, for the children and for many generations of children for years to come.
Reubin became the first boy to survive his condition and many other terminally ill children began to survive too. Esme had to train many in the great art of remedy making yet only children could make the remedy or work in the labs since it was their purity that kept the great potion to the standard that it was. Adults soon came to respect their children and see them as the wise masters that they were and have always been and will be forever more. And indeed, Esme maintained her pact by helping to make the world a far better and cleaner place than it had ever been before. Her mother gave her a huge amount of hugs and cuddles and thanked her for her great work. Many other children were thanked and hugged too by their remaining parents, and the love grew and grew and grew on planet Earth as never before.