The Punishment of Luxury by Michael Carson
The Dark Green Government demanded that extensive coverage be given to the first execution of a citizen convicted under the new Transportation Act. Broadcasting equipment was brought to Trafalgar Square by bicycle, tricycle and solar powered scooter, and set up around Vehicle Compacter No. 1, to the south of Sperm Whale column.
A crowd gathered from early morning. Around eight, six Dark Green Ecological Enforcers pushed a black Jaguar into the Square. It’s owner the condemned man, Dr Robert Stone of Cattawade, Essex, had been arrested, tried, convicted, and was now about to be executed for being found in possession of an automobile. This crime would have been sufficient to ensure that the doctor spent the rest of his natural life in uncomfortably natural surroundings, but what had brought down the full rigours of the new law upon his head what that he had actually been caught driving his car.
The unfortunate Dr Stone had been spotted indulging in this unnatural practice by a Dark Green Reformer while reforming ex-driving instructors on a piece of forestry land adjacent to the doctor’s property. He had been trekking with his charges through this wilderness, pointing out the ravages wrought by acid rain on the trees. The disgraced prisoners - their wasted frames – were kissing the trunks of damaged trees reverently, begging forgiveness of the Wisdom and Spirit of the Universe as they did so. The Dark Green Reformer had been about to sing a verse of his favourite song, ‘A Tree is worth a Hundred People’, when he had smelled something unpleasant. ‘Surely not….’ He thought and launched into the first verse:
‘A tree is worth a hundred people
A flower a thousand hammers
A compost heap is …’
But then he stopped and sniffed again. He looked up into the trees where baby cuckoos were throwing baby blackbirds out of nests as Nature intended. He inhaled again. The smell took him back more than a decade, and he saw himself riding through Central London in the gutter on his old Raleigh looking out for glass, cursing the cars, smelling that smell. Then he saw the old Jaguar, with Dr Stone sitting furtively behind the wheel, moving along the drive nearby.
The Dark Green Reformer and his band of traffic criminals gasped. Dr Stone had been arrested and brought in chains to the Old Bailey in a police rickshaw.
The Jaguar was placed next to the compacter. The doctor sat stoically as the Ecological Enforcers pushed the vehicle into the machine. The public executioner flicked the switch. The compacter rumbled into life.
The peace of rush hour London was shattered. Goat hands had trouble controlling their herds on the Whitehall allotments. Shire ponies shied. Thousands of pigeons, unused to a mechanical sound, took to the air in panic, wheeling and flapping. Even the ripening wheat in Kensington Gardens seemed to tremble. The doomed doctor looked up and caught sight of the steeple of St Martin’s with birds soaring all around it. Then he saw the passenger door to his left coming towards him, the roof of the car crumple, approaching and retreating.
Five minutes later, the compacter opened its jaws to reveal a solid bland and grey cube. This was manhandled to a corner of Trafalgar Square and placed on a plinth directly opposite the National Gallery of Batik. A sign was placed below the compacted Jaguar and Doctor Stone which read:
The Punishment of Luxury
