Things From the Flood

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  Dark pictures on the water, they have been hung away.

  Like toys from our childhood that have grown to giants and accuse us

  of what we never became.

  Tomas Tranströmer, SYROS

  Sweden was leaving the era of big government projects. The decaying facilities and machines had been taken over by new developers who welded doors shut and wrapped machines in plastic, and who wanted to exploit the land for new uses. Radio towers rose above the woods behind the houses and, in the glades, humming new data centers melted ice and snow. Satellite dishes grew from the house walls and unfamiliar electrical sockets appeared inside. The children of the community gathered in front of home computers or TV sets (which suddenly showed cartoons at noon).

  Somewhere out there beyond the cordons, beyond the fields and marshes, abandoned machines roamed like stray dogs. They wandered about impatiently, restless in the new wind sweeping through the country. They smelled something in the air, something unfamiliar.

  Perhaps, if we had listened closely, we would also have heard it. We may have heard the sound rising from the forgotten and sealed caverns in the depths: the muffled pounding from something trying to get out.

  PREFACE

  My previous book, Tales from the Loop, told the tale of what it was like growing up in the land of the Loop at the end of the Riksenergi era. The book covered the years from the early ’80s until the decommissioning of the Loop in the fall of 1994, when Riksenergi was replaced with the privately owned Krafta corporation. But the story of the Loop did not end there. As I was working on the previous book, I already knew that the years from 1995 to 1999, and the strange events that followed the decommissioning of the Loop, would require a volume of their own.

  Much has been written about the Mälarö leak and the subsequent Krafta scandal. During the last three years of the last millennium, it was a daily feature in the newspapers. My goal with this book is not to explain the events or contribute to the speculations and conspiracy theories that have surfaced throughout the years. Instead, just like in Tales from the Loop, I wish to describe my own memories of growing up on the outskirts of these events.

  This book chronicles events that took place in the late 1990s. Since then, a number of revolutionary changes have come to pass that the history books clearly define as marking the end of one epoch and the beginning of another. The most dramatic was the sudden pole shift in the winter of 2001, which immediately crippled the magnetrine trade routes of the entire northern hemisphere and created the world-spanning ship graveyard known today as the Death Belt. The Mälarö leak and the subsequent dismantling of the Loop are, at least as far as Sweden’s history is concerned, other such events that clearly mark the end of an era.

  In everyday life, our surroundings only shifted slowly and subtly, such as altered designs of door handles and alarm switches, a soft color change in the glow of streetlights and lightbulbs, or a new font on the signs in the subway; likewise, bathrooms have been renovated, floorboards have been torn up, and kitchen cabinets have been repainted. Each is a minor change, but often, when looking back at them all together, they are as glaringly obvious as a sudden industrial collapse.

  Change is the dynamo that slowly but inevitably drives our society forward, while past days are clouded more and more in mystery and myth. The dynamo only spins one way—there are no return tickets to the land disappearing in the mists behind us. The only passage between our world and the past lies buried deep in our own subconscious, somewhere in the blurred borderlands between our imagination and our memories, and that is where I hope to bring you now.

  Darkness is falling outside my window, and out there in the dusk is the same landscape that was ravaged by the flood 21 years ago. In the twilight hours, it is hard to discern the details marking the passage of two decades. It is hard to separate memory from reality; my mind fills out all the blurry sections. At dusk, the field looks like an ice-covered lake. You could almost believe that the flood is back.

  Simon Stålenhag, Kungsberga, February 2016

  DARK STAINS

  Busy as they were, wrapping presents and composing clever Christmas rhymes, none of the inhabitants of Mälaröarna noticed the dark stains in the snow behind Färentuna church. Nor did they see how they grew bigger and bigger after the second Sunday of Advent. And no one had reacted to the strange sounds and rank smells rising from drains and water faucets during the entire month of December, nor noticed how the Field Hat in Sätuna had been encased in a strange sculpture of brown ice since before Christmas.

  But then Christmas Eve came around. In the early morning hours, it became clear to most of the inhabitants of northern Färingsö that Christmas of 1994 would go down in history for very different reasons than the Christmas rhymes. Most households woke up to the fact that their basements were being flooded by brown, ice-cold water.

  BODIES OF WATER

  It was clear that it was a leak from the innards of the Loop. It could not be rainwater: winter had come in early December and the ground was already frozen. It was as if the enormous underground facility had been flooded completely—every tunnel and chamber, and every tiny opening and duct leading from the Loop was leaking water.

  Thinking back to that day, I mostly remember my own elation about what had happened. I thought the whole thing was awesome and I ran around the house, taking in every single detail of the mayhem. I was most interested in the basement stairs that disappeared down into a luminescent, deep sea world, lit by the plastic string of lights we had wrapped around the banister the previous day—lights that had miraculously avoided shorting out. In the depths of the water in the basement, half-dissolved paper and newspapers floated, as if gravity had been suspended.

  Mom stood in the hallway in her coat and boots, with the phone wedged in between her ear and shoulder, screaming at someone from emergency services while at the same time stuffing clothes into a bag. The day only got better when the fire brigade’s corsair ship finally landed in our backyard, and firefighters stomped in wearing boots and gas masks, and carrying axes.

  If I had known that it would be three years before I saw my room again, I would probably not have felt that excited tingle when the ship’s diesel engines lifted us above the water-soaked landscape.

  BERGGÅRDEN

  We arrived in Berggården around three in the afternoon. After being checked by doctors and subjected to a series of tests, my mother and I ended up in temporary housing set up in the library in Berggården. It was a very nice refugee camp, I must say—full of light, food, neighbors sharing stories about the flood, and all the kids of the area running around among the bookshelves—but we did not stay long. The day after we arrived, as we were enjoying an improvised Christmas dinner, Lars Ribbing stormed into the library wearing his police uniform. Lars Ribbing was my mother’s new boyfriend and also the only resident policeman of southern Färingsö.

  I saw the huge ships arriving over northern Färingsö as we carried our things into Lars Ribbing’s house. The sight of them stopped me in my tracks: such big ships rarely travelled south, and yet here they were: three enormous freighters at the same time!

  I felt something ominous move inside me. Something had just changed in the world. It felt strange and frightening, but I c
ouldn’t decide if it had to do with the big ships or with Lars Ribbing’s thunderous laugh from inside the house.

  THE COMPUTER TARD AND THE HIPPOPOTAMUS

  When the classes from northern Färingsö were merged with the classes in Berggården, the social slates were wiped clean. The old hierarchies ceased to exist, and I had no idea how to behave.

  I ran back and forth on the bus, annoying my classmates. “YOINK!” I yelled as I tapped their heads. Some were angry and yelled “STOP IT, YOU RETARD!” Others laughed nervously with a look on their faces that said “he’s insane.” Knuckles, Jimmy Kraftling’s personal thug, turned around, reached over the seat, pulled my shirt up, and pinched my love handles hard. “HIPPOOOOO!” he yelled between compressed lips. There was a sort of consensus in the bus: here we sit, 28 damned souls who have to put up with this hopeless individual. Even the teachers couldn’t stand me when I was like this—if Rolf was on the bus he would grab me and hiss “NOW SIT DOWN!”

  Worst of all was Jimmy Kraftling’s reaction to my behavior—he simply stared at me with his beautiful Bambi eyes in a way that clearly said: you’re an insect and you disgust me. This would throw me off balance and I would almost stop goofing around for a while. That required swift action, and under no circumstances could I show that I cared, so I threw myself into the aisle between the seats and ran with my shirt pulled up, chasing people with my blotched, heavy belly.

  All that changed when I started hanging out with Lo, the small boy with big front teeth, who was called The Computer Tard. As it turned out, he lived in the house next to ours.

  It’s weird how these things happen. At first I really thought he was mentally retarded or something. I thought he looked strange with those buck teeth, and he had really strange vocal tics between words when he talked. I even avoided leaving the house when I saw him lurking about in the yard next door. But then one night Lars and my mother brought me over to Lo’s family for coffee, and Lo showed me his computer and his books about robots. It was that simple. After half an hour we were best friends.

  HÄGERSTALUND’S DIVING TOWER

  I spent weekends with my father in Hägerstalund.

  My father had moved there when the Loop was decommissioned, and what remained of his department was merged with Krafta Systems, which was the division of Krafta that developed and operated the computer systems in the company’s facilities all over the country.

  The apartment was at the bottom of Hägerstalund Tower, one of the twelve vertical cities in Mälardalen. They were built between 1965 and 1970 as part of a major public housing program, and Hägerstalund alone consisted of about 1,500 apartments. The ground level held a subway station, library, school, daycare, and shops. The tower was crowned with the characteristic water tower.

  Once I heard a group of older boys on the bus talking about the Hägerstalund Tower and all the suicides that were supposed to have happened there during the Loop era. All the suicide victims were said to have been employed by Riksenergi, and they had been affected by the so-called “Loop Disorder” after having spent too much time close to the Gravitron down in the Loop. It had been an epidemic—evidently they never had time to clean up the brains from the ground before the next poor soul smashed into the pavement. After hearing this, I always glanced nervously up the tower every time I crossed the courtyard.

  Other than that, spending the weekends there was okay. It felt like I could get some rest—Dad spent most of his time smoking in the kitchen, and I could use his computer as much as I wanted.

  THE RUSSIAN TEDDY BEARS

  “Russian teddy bears” were a kind of stuffed animal with a simple AI and a synthetic voice unit. They were supposed to be able to hold a conversation and have a personality, or at least the semblance of one. Because the use of AI in commercial products was prohibited in Sweden, almost all of the AI technology came from Russia, where they had a very different view of artificial intelligence and synthetic individuals.

  It turned out that the used Russian bear my dad bought for me was almost completely useless. I had tried everything to get some form of response, but it never produced more than a weak, grating sound, and that was only if you squeezed it really hard.

  So one Saturday, when I was bored and playing around with my grandfather’s old pocket pistol, I had an idea. I would give the bear one final chance to prove it possessed some sort of reason. I took the bear out and placed it on the ground behind an electrical cabinet. “Sad little critter,” I thought, or I may even have said it out loud. I took the gun out of my pocket and aimed it at the bear’s forehead.

  Then I got the reaction I had been hoping for. The toy bear let out a jarring scream that rose toward a horrifying electronic crescendo. I quickly put the gun away and kicked the bear. Its screaming shifted to hysterical rambling in what I assumed was Russian. It became embarrassing: the bear’s heartrending gibberish echoed between the buildings. I picked the bear up and managed to get the battery cover off. That made the bear even more upset, so I pulled hard on the little cord and the batteries flew out and bounced across the asphalt. It was dead silent. I looked around nervously. A few of the tenants were looking out their windows to see what was going on. I picked up the batteries and the bear with trembling hands, and I stuffed it all into my backpack.

  The worst thing was that I was really far too old to play with stuffed animals. And then this happened. And people saw me.

  THE CLOVERS

  The sign above the door to the auditorium in the Berggården school read “WELCOME TO ASS TEROID HALL!” I assume that the sign had read “Asteroid Hall” sometime in the school’s ancient history. Like many other places in Berggården, the name of the auditorium was in honor of the Clovers facility, which was the observatory rising from a ridge behind Västerängen. We also had Sun Street, Star Alley, Space Village, Observatory Hill, and the very inventive Milky Way.

  The strange radio telescopes had contributed to major scientific discoveries once upon a time. For example, formaldehyde had been discovered out there in the interstellar darkness—you know, the stuff used to conserve carcasses here on Earth. Grants dwindled, and in 1991 the facility was modified to track space junk on behalf of Krafta. Operations were mostly handled by computer programs, and from 1989 the staff had been reduced from two hundred and ten souls to three, including the two caretakers.

  Among the elders of the community—those who grew up in the ’30s and ’40s, when the area was still idyllic farmland—there was great suspicion toward the Clovers facility and the monolithic telescope structures. The facility was blamed for anything: warm winters, cold summers, not enough chanterelles, too many snails, too many mosquitoes, or not enough mosquitoes. It didn’t matter what, the Clovers facility was always to blame. So when the water flooded the homes on northern Färingsö in the winter of 1994–95, pretty much everyone over fifty was in agreement about what caused the disaster.

  THE ASTRONOMER’S HOUSE

  On screen the monster split open, turned inside out, and slithered to the floor in a bloody pile.

  “BOOM! Check this out! CHAINSAW!”

  He must have been well into his forties, but Stefan Eklöf had probably clocked more hours playing Doom than anyone else in the area. He had worked as a systems engineer at the Clovers facility in the 1980s, which was why some called him the Astronomer, and he had been one of the first to lose his job when Krafta took over. His house was overflowing with electronic gadgets, and it was the place where everyone in Berggården went as soon as they had any problems with their computers.

  Stefan was somewhat of a demigod to Lo and I, and his software archive was the digital equivalent of the Library of Alexandria. A visit to him often resulted in my coming home with a stack of floppy disks filled with the latest games and programs. Software wasn’t the only thing he gave away: if you got lucky, you could get old computer components he didn’t need any longer. It was said that Jack Strömberg, in Class 5B, once got a complete computer from Stefan.

  In t
he spring of 1995 we sat waiting to get a copy of Doom. When the last disk was being copied, he asked us if we wanted to see something even cooler. (Cooler than sawing demons apart with chainsaws? Impossible!) We followed him down into the basement, where he heaved open a large, round hatch in the concrete floor.

  “This hatch leads straight down into the tunnels in the Loop. Look!”

  He shone a flashlight down into the darkness. We leaned forward. A ladder disappeared down the concrete wall, straight down to where it plunged into dark water. Stefan’s voice almost broke with delight.

  “Extraterrestrial water from 51 Pegasi B!”

  MODEM TIME

  It truly was a spectacular salvage operation, and almost everything about it was strictly forbidden: the illicit disposal of the robot; the illicit disposal of Lars Ribbing’s new wheelbarrow; the illicit conveyance of 15 kilos of rusty scrap metal into Lars Ribbing’s house; and the illicit littering of Lars Ribbing’s pedantically cleaned house.

  My intent was to use the signaling receiver in the Creeper Sphere to connect to the internet without any kind of modem. The fantasy of being constantly online, completely unnoticed by the adults, was so enticing that I could accept severe physical hardships. Of course it all went to hell.

  Let me say a few words about the modem situation. Any use of the modem in our house was strictly controlled by Lars Ribbing, and I loathed having to suck up to him whenever I wanted to be online. He didn’t understand much about computers, but he did understand that modem time was important to me, and he found pleasure in being the highest authority controlling this strange commodity. Whenever I wanted to use the modem I was guaranteed an informative and pedagogic lecture about the rate-per-minute for using the modem, how Lars was paying the bills in this house, how it should come out of my allowance, and how this was really spoiling me, but that he was so damn nice that he would allow me to use it free of charge this time.