The sky over the river has gone that peculiar green-grey that means Brisbane is about to receive several million tonnes of water in no time.
The jacarandas are out. Purple flowers scattered across the pavement, stuck to the bottoms of people’s shoes. The air is thick, warm, and smells faintly of rain already.
Down at Streets Beach, tourists are still swimming in the artificial lagoon. The girls have commandeered an outside table. Cold wine, a bucket of ice, somebody’s handbag occupying an entire chair.
“Boland got two,” says Isobel, looking at her phone.
Anna watches a man in enormous sunglasses shepherd three children out of the pool. One is carrying an inflatable crocodile twice his own size.
“Could go to something at QPAC,” says Isobel. “Ballet, theatre, something cultural.”
A distant rumble rolls across the river.
“Speaking of culture,” says Anna, “I’ve decided economists aren’t all idiots.”
“Generous.”
“Met one today, quite clever. Lovely people. Good at maths.”
“What’s the problem then?”
“The foundations. They’ve built this enormous mathematical cathedral on the assumption that everything outside the cathedral stays exactly where it is.”
“Doesn’t sound unreasonable.”
“Except the cathedral keeps expanding, buying the surrounding land, drinking everyone’s water, changing the weather, and then announcing that none of those things are relevant to its calculations.”
Isobel considers this.
“So the maths is wrong?”
“No. That’s the beautiful bit. The maths can be absolutely perfect. It’s the bloody world they’ve invented to make it work that’s wrong.”
“Could say that about my first marriage.”
The first fat raindrop lands in the middle of the table.
Then another.
Across the river, lightning briefly turns the glass towers white.
“Ceteris paribus,” says Anna, picking up her wine.
“What?”
“Everything else remaining equal.”
Thunder cracks overhead. The tourists begin running for shelter, inflatable crocodile leading the retreat.
Isobel looks at the sky.
“Well, it fucking isn’t.”
“And now the tech boys have taken the same modell and pumped it up like that croc, put a trillion dollars of future payments into it,” says Anna.
“Doing what?”
“Building computers to predict how rich we’re all going to be when the computers get clever enough.”
“Are we going to be rich?”
“Apparently. Infinite energy, unlimited resources, everyone living like royalty. In the meantime they’re using the electricity, the water, the copper, the capital. All the things we need now, on the assumption that what they’re building will produce so much more in the future that none of it matters.”
“Well, they’ve already paid themselves.”
Isobel looks across at the towers, their glass faces disappearing behind the advancing rain.
“So they’re spending the future?”
“Borrowing against it. Spending it now. And calling the difference growth.”
“Sounds like my second marriage.”
The rain arrives in a single furious sheet. The waiter appears to rescue the ice bucket.
“Leave that,” says Isobel. “We’re still using it.”
Anna watches the river vanish behind the downpour.
“That’s the thing about the future,” she says. “Ultimate snakeoil.”
