How Grey was my Valley by M. J. Pettit
2400 words, ~12 minutes reading time
Issue 9 (Winter 2025)
For the farewell party, Mavis managed to secure several litres of Grade-A petrol for us sheep to enjoy. The good, rarefied stuff humans used to revel in burning away. The liquid flowed on our last night together, as the flock celebrated our first successful restoration. I’d savored many varieties of petrochemical in my years cleaning up the valley, but never such delightfully undiluted fuel. Gorgeous stuff. Just gorgeous. I could feel the warmth of it gloriously sloshing about my insides as I trotted about, swapping memories with old comrades. But that black market ooze loosened my tongue so I’m sure I said some things I shouldn’t have.
It was quite the night. The flock had roamed far and wide in our effort to clean up the valley, so the whole flock decided to gather along the hillside where it all began before we went our separate ways. The spot barely was recognizable. The grass was tall and lush now. Plants had begun to flower in place of the old chemical blooms. Gone were the piles of slag and oily pools of murk Mavis and I had played in as lambs. The smog that once clung to the lowlands like a damp blanket was just a vague recollection. Funny. None of the others seemed to notice how those things had gone missing. No, everyone was too busy celebrating how much our valley had changed. They were all-consumed by our happy progress, too distracted by it to notice how our shared past had dwindled into feeble memory.
The hill where I bounced and bounded and lambed was gone.
Like anyone cared.
The flock buzzed with chatter of imagined futures. Now that we’d demonstrated proof of concept, we were told the entire world was open before us. Most had decided to accept the Company’s offer and were set to scatter across the next post-industrial wastelands on the priority list. Some, those deluded in thinking themselves braver than the rest, had agreed to retrofit their brain-gut axes into ameboid bodies to scour the oceans of their microplastics. A new world of adventure, they called it.
Fools. To voluntarily surrender one’s form – it didn’t make a lick of sense. We were still sheep after all, four hooves and a mouth, even after all the uplifts and biohacks and network connections.
Like anyone would listen to me. The flock gathered together that evening, but one we were not. In their minds, we’d already moved on into our individual fates. By the time the first humans resettled this place, there’d hardly be a sheepish soul left in our regreened valley.
I caught a glimpse of Mavis from across the flock. She was busy flooding the airwaves with boasts about hijacking the drone and her excitement about her next great adventure. She yammered along with the rest. Yeah, attending Mavis’s last big get-together was a mistake.
I trundled down the hillside towards the stream trickling through the bottom. At least it had the decency to occasionally run thick with a comforting rust. I reached the water’s edge and tuned out my receiver. I couldn’t stand the flock’s excitement. I needed some time alone with my thoughts.
It was near sunrise when Mavis finally tracked me down. She sidled up next to me as I stared into the stream’s murky waters and worked through a mouthful of flavourless cud. Not sure why I bothered. Those grasses were so depleted of plastics and other assorted nutrients they hardly needed a second chew anymore.
We stood cheek-to-cheek in silence for a spell, us chewing and staring and doing not much else. The channel between us lay open, but not a single word flowed.
“Quite the party,” I said after too much time had passed. I tried sounding calm and casual, like the entire world wasn’t coming to an end. “How’d you trick those drones into delivering the good stuff?”
Mavis was having none of it. “Why’ve you been avoiding me all evening, Alwyn?”
“I haven't been,” I insisted, fighting the sudden urge to trot off. “Well, safe travels.”
“Seriously, is that all you’ve got?”
“What’d you want me to say?”
“Explain why you’re set on retiring when we just got started setting things right. Giving up the battle. That’s not the Alwyn I know. There’s a tasty world out there for us to explore. We’ve an entire planet to repair.”
That stopped me. I thought Mavis out of all of the flock might understand. “Not retiring.”
“Staying put, same difference,” Mavis spat. “The transports don’t arrive until mid-morning. Come with me. There’s still time to have your name added to the roster.”
Mavis was right, I could get on that transport in the morning. One hoof in front of the other. A few steps forward onto the ramp and I would be off. I could follow the others and forget this place.
No, I shook off her easy suggestion like an unwanted fly. Mavis was eager to leave, like the others. For the past few weeks, all she talked about was getting some lab-grown microbiome resequence implanted in her belly so she could head off and devour the remnants of the Chernobyl wreck. At least she’d remain a proper sheep, not like those idiots atop the hill waiting to become blobby ocean combers.
A world of adventure awaited.
As if I could. The Company had bestowed upon us wills of our own. Spliced them into our DNA. If we all shared the same programming, why didn’t mine align with everyone else’s? Leaving with the others would be easy. Maybe part of me wanted that easiness. Maybe part of me willed it. But along with my will, I’d also been bred and born and programmed by the Company to love and care for this place. We all had been. But only I could still feel that love coursing through me. The others would let the Company tweak it away.
“Won’t go. Can’t. Sorry.”
“You know Alwyn, you’re more stubborn than a goat. Always was, even when we was lambs. The valley won’t stay the same, even if you choose to stay.”
Break up the flock. Why was the Company so committed to having us go against our nature? It seemed so unthinkingly cruel. But the others accepted it. They wanted it. Desired it even. I’d always thought I was we, or at least part of one. After all those wasted years, turned out I was wrong.
“Never said it would. Stay the same, that is,” Change was undeniable. It surrounded us and engulfed everything. Our bodies struggled to survive off grasses no longer rich in petrochemicals. “There’ll still be work to be done here.”
“What work? We’ve saved this place. It’s done. The land has recovered. Look around you. Time to move on.”
I mightn’t be as smart as Mavis (I certainly wasn’t capable of hacking a drone to deliver the best damned petrol), but I had figured out a few things for myself. Human arrivals spelled the return of chemicals. Maybe not to the levels we’d spent our lives devouring from this soil, but human settlement always leaked poisons into the earth. Humans couldn’t help themselves. It was their nature. They found it easier to reengineer the rest of us than to alter their ways. But I couldn’t bring myself to resent them. Humanity’s unwavering fixity gave me purpose. As members of the flock chased after the next big reclamation, someone needed to remain in the valley and ensure a healthy balance. There was honour in that, if not glory.
I leaned towards Mavis and opened a more secure channel for us to talk. We were alone down by the water and I doubted any of the flock cared to eavesdrop, but even so I didn’t want to disturb them with my stray thoughts. “Don’t you ever miss it though? Sometimes.”
“What?” she asked, although surely she must know.
We belonged to the same flock. Deep down, we all felt the same, right?
Fine. Mavis wanted me to broadcast it aloud. Typical Mavis. I could and I would. “How it was. In the beginning.”
Heresy, naturally. There was nothing good in what had been. That conviction was coded into our genes along with all those bubbly enzymes growing in our guts. We restored the land; made it habitable for the insects and then then birds and soon the humans. Such was our programming, our purpose, our dignity.
“Of course,” Mavis said. “Who wouldn’t miss a lamb’s innocence? Some of the time.”
“No, I ain’t talking about being no silly reborn again. What fool would want that? But what are we going to do when the earth’s turned all green again?”
“Sure, that’s many lifetimes off, Alwyn,” Mavis scoffed. “Neither you nor I’ll ever see the day. It’s not a future worth thinking about.”
But think about it, I did. Constantly. The world had grown heavy with consciousness, distributed into every nook and cranny and being. It wasn’t enough for us sheep to unleach the soil. The humans demanded we want and will the return of their world as it once was. We weren’t machines, they said, and certainly not tools. Promising that humanity learnt the lessons of past mistakes. The woman from the Company liked to call us “fellow stewards,” insisted on it, but she failed to mention what the plan was for us once we completed the last cleanup. I dunno. Why couldn’t I just be happy eating, shitting, restoring and then moving along onto the next wrecked patch like the rest of them? I belonged to the flock after all. Life would be so much easier without the burden of all these free-floating thoughts swelling in my head.
“We’ve been tweaked in all kinds of ways. What if you or I live to see that day, Mavis? What then, eh?” Even a simple sheep like me was capable of reading a headline as it buzzed through my head. The planet was cooling again. Gone were the endless grey expanses I’d cherished as a lamb reborn and remade. The task of reclaiming this valley had seemed impossible then, but now we’d done it. Mission complete. The sludge of our youth was but a dim, wistful memory. “This isn’t a world for those made like us. Not for much longer, anyway.”
“You’re being melodramatic, Alwyn.”
“Am I? Why are we here?” I’d been doing that thinking again. Why us? Surely, the Company could’ve released the enzymes or microbes directly into the valley. It would have been easier and would’ve made for a more efficient cleanup. Why inflict all this cruel consciousness onto the project? Why us, indeed. “Answer me this, Mavis. What’s a green, grassy valley without its precious sheep? We appear in all the old records. I’ve checked. We’re a necessary feature of this landscape. We made this world. We made it, but not for us. Never for us.”
Mavis could see that, right? She must. Mavis was so much smarter than me.
“It’s a better world. One we’ve chosen to help make. The bees are back, so are all kinds of the flowers. We’ve resurrected meadows and creeks–”
I could’ve sworn we’d once seen everything the same.
“But it won’t be my world,” I sputtered out. I tried again, hoping to explain myself better. “I just preferred this place when it was all rusted and hazy and grey. I miss all the old flavours found in my valley. The rest of the world’s a wreck, like it was here, but it isn’t the same wreck elsewhere. It won’t be my wreck. Not exactly.”
Mavis stared at me like I was some kind of stranger as sheer disbelief washed over her. My friend just stood there, wordlessly, working in her jaw like her thoughts were some particularly gummy morsel of plastic. I suppose she hadn’t a clue what to say. Surely, I couldn’t think that way. None of us sheep could. We had our mission and our programming. We were saving the Earth. How else could we be?
Well, think that way I did. Sometimes.
Like I said, I had too much to drink that evening. The petrol went straight to my head and made me entertain many an unhealthy thought. It was like I’d fallen bad and couldn’t get my legs under me again.I used to trust Mavis to come whenever I needed a helpful push.
Now she stood by my side but gave me nothing. Only silence.
Well, at least, she’d never tell another soul about my transgressions. She’d forgive my momentary lapse into blasphemy. I hoped.
By then, I could feel the heat of the sun’s first rays cutting through my fleece. They promised a warm day with a perfectly slight breeze, no longer too hot or dry. Soon, the first of the Company’s transports would arrive. They’d take Mavis to a faraway land along with the rest. My valley would lose its last recognizable trace.
“Fine. I guess that’s it then,” she said with a snort. “Best of luck staying stuck in the past.”
Maybe not forgiven then. I bobbed my head, acknowledging our disagreement. It mightn’t be much, but at least I’d still have my valley, however changed.
Mavis started the climb back up the hill but then stopped and turned. “So, you’re never gonna tell me why you’ve been avoiding me these past few days?”
I owed her that much, I supposed. Mavis and I had lambed here on this very spot with the same mechanical ma after delivery from the vat. Bless her rusted out heart. “Well… I figured if we didn’t speak again then I wouldn’t have to say goodbye to the best friend I’ve ever known. Happy now?”
There. It was said. Mavis could take that with her from this place, even to the bottom of the ocean if she wished. Take that if nothing else.
“You’re awfully dense, Alwyn, even for a sheep.”
Fair enough. Yes, it seemed Mavis and I no longer operated on the same frequency. Soon, we’d likely lose each other’s signals completely. Someday we mightn’t even share a common shape. So be it. Our flock ranged in many ways. If ever some anonymous drone descended onto my valley carrying a load of that rare, glorious petrol, I’d know who’d sent it my way. “I love you, too, muttonhead.”
“Same,” Mavis said as she started the climb. “Always.”
