Lake New

The lake hadn’t been there when Paul’s grandfather was a child. This wasn’t saying much, though – changing waterlines had been a fact of life for years when he was born. Despite constant raise, mangrove trees grew aplenty. Newer trees by the swampy edges held up their lush canopies on labyrinths of stilts; unfortunate older trees had drowned, leaving behind tangles of dead wood. But even those played host to life, and Paul counted dozens of ibises and mud-coloured crabs among their wrecks.

Such was the way of the raise, even in managed sites like this one. Some times trees grew, thrived, then drowned as water kept pouring in and the lake continued to swell.

The good news was, Paul read before coming over, the mangrove population was growing at pace with the lake’s expansion. People didn’t need to do much extra planting. Great for the wildlife, too; reduced intervention meant better chances of self-sustainability. Too bad the surface of attack for the raise covered the entire planet; more than what humans could dream to handle after decades of steady water advance.

The world would be much nicer if people had jumped earlier on the task of creating more places like this oasis in the middle of Sydney’s urban sprawl. But, hey, they had started, and that was a good thing.

Although officially named after a bland politician of the time, everyone called it Lake New. Paul loved it right away. It was peaceful, with cool breeze rustling the foliage, and occasional splashing waterbirds off to the distance. He had been walking for almost twenty minutes before he remembered to put his Neuro-Electric Wave Transducer back on.

Paul fitted the NEWT halo snugly around his temples, and waited for the device to start reading his brain signals. Its bell chimed after a brief boot sequence, inaudible for anyone but him, and the augmented overlay sign welcomed him back, before dissolving in the mud. Paul had always loved the way augo screens blended with his surroundings, and this time didn’t disappoint either.

“Kameygal, how far's the shore from grandpa’s old house?”

Paul subvocalised the question softly, the way some people read under their breath. At home he always spoke to his adjutant at normal volume, but the serenity of the lake inspired in him this kind of respect.

“According to records, it would have been east of Henry Lawson lake drive.” The adjutant added a couple of markers to Paul’s augo and continued. “The top northeast section of East Hills was designated as part of the lake contour, and razed.”

“I know” said Paul. His grandfather had repeated that story until he made Paul’s ears bleed. That people had chosen to build walls only around Sydney Harbour and it’s precious Opera House, and hundreds of thousands had been asked to relocate. The way his grand father told it made it sound like government thugs in jackboots had marched people out of their houses at gunpoint, before sending in the bulldozers.

Paul’s parents remembered a very different story, one that incidentally matched history books better. On the one hand it was true that the government had decided not to build many sea walls and only preserved some culturally significant sites. On the other, they did not simply abandon the rest to their fate, and proof of this were projects such as Lake New.

Climate change was always going to happen; the world had carried too much inertia to change direction at the eleventh hour. Just look at what happened with the 2019-2023 pandemic. It had been a clear, identifiable threat, and the world struggled to believe it was there, even as hospitals filled. The trick was to get ahead of the curve and not only mitigate, but adapt and start thinking a different way.

Paul turned around to look at the legacy houses behind him on the other side of the park. They had been spared from the lake rezoning and still sat there with their pyramidal tile roofs, and garages for cars that hardly thirty percent of the population owned anymore.

Paul’s grandfather had been reasonably progressive for most things, but when it came to the topic of urbanisation, God, did he whinge! Paul laughed at the memories. The old man had never liked neocity projects, but looking around Paul failed to see why.

The area along Georges River had been a pretty typical twentieth to early twenty first century suburb: houses grouped by “blocks”, girthed by streets designed for private vehicle traffic.

The blocks Paul had seen on his way to the lake still kept the wasteful layout typical of those times; private front yards, then a concrete pavement around the perimeter, and a “nature strip” between the pavement and the street. Paul always thought it was strange to call them nature strips when all they had was grass, and at best a tree every thirty or so metres, barely one per house.

Neocity suburbs like the one where he’d grown up had a much different layout. For one, while his Fairfield home was in a much more densely populated area, it was quite a lot greener there. After the redevelopment most homes adopted the townhouse style: two story buildings divided into four apartments, two on top and two below. His suburb didn’t have car streets, and all buildings were surrounded by wide nature strips without fences, like they’d been set in the middle of a park.

The lack of delimited gardens meant that they all shared much larger green areas, many more trees, and abundant native plants and flowers. All looked after jointly between neighbours and local council. Their concrete sidewalks were set between rows of buildings facing each other, but unlike these legacy blocks, Fairfield homes had been divided in groups of six buildings back-to-back, three facing one way and three the other. Sidewalks enclosed every other cluster of these townhouses, and asphalt streets only existed around the outer boundaries of the suburb.

Those sidewalks were the main thing his grandfather loved to gripe about with passionate “in my times” rants. Back then they’ve had private cars, at least two to a family! So naturally all old houses came with garages connecting to their asphalt streets.

Never mind that these days you needed but get on the augo and book a car to come to you, already preset to your destination. No. In his times, people drove themselves around, unlike this useless generation that didn’t know how to operate a vehicle with pedals, let alone shift gears.

In neocity suburbs the space that would have been wasted on a garage accomodated the fourth townhouse dwelling, yes, but in his times you didn’t need to lug a dumb trolley for hundreds of meters from the commuter carpark at the edge of the suburb. You parked your very own vehicle right inside your very own garage, and only had to carry the groceries as far as the kitchen.

Never mind that the extra exercise, clean air, and greenery had probably contributed to his living to the respectable age of 99 to keep complaining about them. And don’t you get him started on rainy days! Paul chuckled again.

He turned around and looked at the edge of the lake. This side was closer to Georges River, and not bound by the large sandstone boulders that walled it in other parts.

“Hey, Kameygal, is the lake navigable?”

“Parts of it. Mostly around the old river path, but not close to the area you’re interested in. It’s too shallow and marshy there. Your canoe idea won’t work.”

When people finally decided to let nature run its course and form the lake it wanted to put here, they removed some of the homes and human constructions east of the river, but didn’t change terrain elevation much. The west side was left mostly untouched as it had been a nature reserve already. Sydney’s new monsoon-like rains still were hard to predict back then, and their sudden appearances, dumping months worth of rain in mere days, made earthworks tricky. Which meant finding the damn trophy would be that much harder.

Paul made half a fist with his right hand, using his knuckles as a keyboard, and brought forward an image of the trophy in his augo.

The award rotated mid air in front of him, its silver shape shining under the fierce morning sun. Paul sometimes cheekily pointed out that the augo projection was so realistic that his grandfather surely didn’t need the real thing. But of course it wasn’t the same, and the old man would launch into another rant. He was incredibly proud of that piece of junk.

Paul sometimes felt a little "unaustralian" due to his utter lack of interest in rugby, but he related to his grandfather’s attachment just fine. The old man had played with the East Hills Bulldogs and got the award for best something or other. It had been a landmark achievement during a time when everything around him was changing.

Luckily for his grandfather, grandma did have more of a soft spot for the game than Paul, and she had been well impressed with the thing. Either that, or she fancied his grandfather and used the trophy as an excuse to get closer.

Whatever the reason, the story was that his grandfather had a way with cars, and grandma’s had just broken down. She was kind of broke herself and couldn’t afford the repairs. Instead, she managed to lift the plate with his name off from the trophy, and told him she would hold it hostage until he got her old ICE clunker going again.

Paul’s grandfather always maintained that he had gone along with it to get the plate back, but the way he doted on grandma and lived every minute to make her happy, nobody believed him. The pair of them went out for a few months before getting engaged, and as they say, the rest was history.

So naturally – or not – when the time came that his grandfather had to abandon the house where he grew up and got married, he decided to bury the trophy on the back garden. Then he spent the rest of his life talking about it.

So naturally – or not – when his grandfather mentioned it again in his hospital bed the last time they saw each other, Paul promised he would look for it.

“I take it the area was levelled with heavy machinery?”

“Yes,” said the adjutant, “and all debris was removed.”

“Which means chances are they dug up the trophy and took it away with the rest.”

“It is a distinct possibility.”

“Well, still worth a look. Are there any survey drones available around here?”

“There’s one I can bring here within ten minutes.”

Paul gave Kameygal the go-ahead and continued walking northward along the path on the lake’s east bank.

They had cleared that area free of houses too, unsure at the time how large the lake might grow to be, but they still planted rows of tufty Nyallas, Pig Face succulents covered in neon pink flowers with yellow centres, and gum trees. He stopped to admire the white flowers in a tall Eucalyptus, delicate and bristly.

“Have you spotted the Koalas yet?” said a woman’s voice behind him. Paul turned to meet her, and his augo automatically provided her details in a neat card floating next to her left shoulder: Marina Volkmann, 31, single, address somewhere in Artarmon. He didn’t think to introduce himself, knowing she’d already seen his.

“Do they have Koalas here?” said Paul, looking up at the tree again.

“No, there are no Koalas in this area,” said Kameygal, helpful and inopportune at once, “it was proposed to bring some, but the plan was discarded.”

Marina didn’t seem to mind, and Paul simply ignored it.

“Sorry, I’ll owe it you,” he said to her, “but I’m about to augo-fly around the lake, if you wanna come with.”

Marina had the kind of warm smile that turned her large eyes into mere slits.

“Sure, why not!”

The white and grey survey drone, a squat triangle about a metre long, hovered above them on three silent rotors a moment later. Paul sat on the grass, then tapped lightly on his NEWT.

“Hop in!”

Marina sat cross legged next to him, and adjusted her own NEWT. Suddenly, their surroundings seemed to dissipate, and the two of them appeared transported inside the drone’s non existent cockpit, courtesy of their headgear.

“I’ve never actually been in one of these augo sims,” said Marina nervously, “promise you’re not going to have it do barrel rolls and make me puke!”

“That’s a nice blouse you’re wearing, I wouldn’t do that to you,” said Paul, and lifted both hands. “Besides, I can’t pilot these things. My assistant’s doing the flying.”

Kameygal took the last remark as a cue and the drone gently started gaining altitude. It’s camera array was set below the body, so Paul and Marina’s view simulated them inside a transparent bubble, from which they saw everything beneath them. Marina looked around and behind her with wide eyed wonder as the drone flew over the mangroves.

“Pretty cool, huh?” said Paul.

“Gorgeous!”

“Kameygal, do a flyby over the lake before we get to the site will you?”

The drone rotated ninety degrees and headed towards the centre of the lake, careful not to disturb a paddling of ducks swimming nearby.

“Your adjutant has an aboriginal name?” said Marina with a curious look at Paul.

“Yeah. The way I figure, it’s my guide through the land, you know? So I named him something to honour a clan of the first peoples.”

“I like that,” said Marina. “First nations have been involved in designing neocity redevelopments from the start. I have a drop of first nations blood, from my grandmother's side.”

The two of them watched the landscape in silence as the drone flew over trees on the opposite side of the lake, then started to make its way around. It took it a couple of minutes to arrive at the site of Paul’s grandfather’s old house.

“This is the location, Paul,” said Kameygal, highlighting the floor plan over mangroves and marsh. As expected, it was a heritage layout, with a staggering amount of space allocated to a two-vehicle garage, two separate living areas, a kitchen, and a sitting room. The plan was only for the lower ground and showed no bedrooms.

“Mind if I ask what are you doing?” said Marina. She leaned forward to better read the labels on the projected plan. Paul explained the trophy story to her.

“And that’s why I’m looking for it.”

“Aw, what a sweet story,” said Marina. She looked like she was going to add something more, but didn’t. Paul cracked his knuckles and leaned forward too.

“You were going to say that the chances of finding the trophy after all this time are rather small, weren’t you?” he said. Marina wrinkled her forehead and adjusted her seat looking uncomfortable. Paul shrugged.

“Hey, don’t sweat it. I thought the same from the start, but I figured at least I’d give it a try. Might strike it lucky...”

Marina straightened herself and passed a hand through the back of her shiny hair.

“True. Can’t hurt to try!”

Marina shifted her attention back to the plan and covered the rear area with a gesture.

“Is this the backyard where your grandfather buried his trophy?”

“Yeah, I think so. Let’s take a look.”

Paul made a square by joining the tips of his index fingers and thumbs, then pulled them apart. The drone camera zoomed in on the area she’d highlighted, giving them the sensation that they had shrunk to a quarter of their previous size.

“Whoa, whoa!” said Marina, holding on stiffly to her own knees. “I thought we said no making me puke!”

“Oh, sorry! I should have warned you. Are you OK?”

Marina held up a thumb and nodded silently, eyes closed.

Paul waited until she looked fully recovered before making another move. Once he was happy she’d overcome the nausea, he asked Kameygal to use the drone’s scanners to start searching for the trophy.

In reality the scanner worked in silence, but Kameygal made it emit a soft ping like a submarine sonar while they waited. Paul spotted a white-fronted heron perched on a tree nearby and pointed it out to Marina. Later, she showed him a fish of some kind leap out of the water to catch an insect near the surface.

Right when Paul was about to call it a day the sonar ping changed to a chime, and a new outline appeared over the marsh. It had the distinct shape of a large cup, if slightly bent on one side, and it still had its two handles attached.

“Oh my God,” said Marina, “you found it! Does the drone have a claw to lift it out?”

Paul looked at the outline for a while before responding.

“I’m going to leave it. A reminder that my grandpa lived here, just like he originally intended. I told him I’d look it up and I did, now it can stay there in memory of him.”

He dismissed the outline, and turned to Marina again.

“I’m starving. Say, I couldn’t possibly interest you in lunch, could I?”

They exited the simulation, and Marina helped Paul up to his feet.

“I don’t know,” she said, and gave him a coy smile, “but hey, luck seems on your side today.”

*