Free Send Simon Savage #1 by Stephen Measday

the turn, bumping her shoulder on the top of the wall and careering against Simon. They dropped like stones onto the thick padded matting at the base of the wall.
    Simon groaned. His arms, legs and chest throbbed with pain. He took a tentative deep breath, then pushed himself up from the mat. There was no major damage.
    He glanced at Danice. She lay motionless.
    ‘Danice!’ He crawled over and touched her shoulder. ‘Danice!’
    For a second, she didn’t move. Then her eyes flickered open and she sucked in a deep breath.
    ‘You all right? You injured?’ Simon asked.
    ‘Wind … ed,’ Danice croaked. ‘Sorry … all that … my fault.’
    ‘Savage! Report!’ Cutler bellowed from the far side of the walls. ‘Are you two all right?’
    ‘Sir! Yes, sir!’ Simon yelled back.
    ‘Your day’s not over, Savage,’ Cutler shouted. ‘The jogging track—now!’
    Simon nodded to Danice. ‘Take it easy.’ Then he called back to the captain. ‘Sir! Yes, sir!’
    And he jogged off to complete his punishment.

15

    ‘T his is planet Earth in the twenty-fourth century,’ the tall woman with frizzy red hair announced from the front of the main classroom. Her name was Sandra Creele, and she was the Bureau’s Head of Mission Mapping.
    Professor McPhee turned in his seat to Simon and Danice. ‘I’ve invited only you two because this is a special briefing. The year 2321 is your next mission.’
    ‘It would pay to give this your full attention,’ Captain Cutler added from the back of the room.
    Simon was tense with excitement. Here was a chance to see what the Time Bureau was really up to. He glanced at Danice. ‘Hey, we’ll be the first temponauts into the future,’ he whispered.
    ‘I’ll just be going home,’ Danice replied.
    Simon nodded. ‘Yeah, suppose you’re right.’
    They looked up at the image of Earth projected on the widescreen television behind Sandra Creele. The image rotated from Europe to the Mediterranean, then to India, Asia, Australia and the Pacific Ocean.
    ‘Hey, what happened to all the land?’ Simon exclaimed. ‘Big chunks of land are missing from the continents. And the oceans look much wider!’
    ‘Don’t ask me,’ Danice said. ‘We don’t have maps of the world where I come from.’
    ‘As Simon has so succinctly pointed out,’ Creele said, ‘the world changes significantly in the three hundred years between now and the twenty-fourth century. Ten thousand years of fairly stable climate will have come to an end. A major part of this will have been caused by global warming.’
    She punched a key on a notebook PC and the picture froze on a satellite view of Europe. ‘By the year 2100, the Arctic sea ice has completely gone and the Greenland Ice Sheet has almost disappeared. This alone will raise sea levels around the world by about seven metres. Glaciers melting in northern Europe, South America and other countries will push up ocean levels even further, meaning countries like the Netherlands will be almost entirely underwater.’
    Simon leaned forward, taking in every word.
    ‘Here, in the countries around the Mediterranean and in Africa, there are massive water shortages between the twenty-first and twenty-fourth centuries, and there is a state of almost permanent drought,’ Creele said, indicating the relevant areas with a red laser pointer. ‘Agriculture has rapidly declined, along with a massive fall in the population.’
    Creele punched another key and the image rotated to Asia and Australia.
    ‘You’ll also see that the landmass of Bangladesh is gone,’ she said. ‘Along with other parts of coastal India, China and South-East Asia. In fact, twenty million hectares of mangrove forests have disappeared from tropical and sub-tropical zones around the world. These were areas that used to provide food, fuel and building materials for about six hundred million people. All these populations have disappeared.
    ‘In Australia,’ Creele went on, ‘the huge Kakadu area in the