Future Safe

L.R. Lam

The safe dominated one of the rooms of the National Gallery of Scotland, the black iron at odds with the gold-framed paintings, white statues, and varnished floors.

Julie was ten years old the first time she saw it. Something about it frightened her at the time. Even though it was newly installed, the safe seemed weathered, like it’d been left out by the sea for decades. There were no ornaments or decorations on the outside. It had one of those round door handles, like a fallout vault.

The visitors circled it like satellites. Julie’s father paused, stooping to squint at the placard. On top of the safe was a simple digital display: 50 years, 18,242 days, 437,803 hours, 26,268,178 minutes. A 60-second timer counted down each minute. As Julie and her mother watched, the display’s last number flicked from eight to seven.

“What’s inside?” Julie asked. “Gold? Treasure?” She’d been going through a pirate phase.

“That’s the fun of it,” her mum said, eyes crinkling around the corners. “No one will find out until September 1st, 2125. Verdigris claims her best work is inside and she’s never shown the pieces to another soul. Some say it’ll be empty. Others say that her memoir’s locked up inside, too. But even if it is, it’ll still take 50 years before the world discovers who she is, or was.” Julie’s mum’s eyes shone. “Oh, it’s perfect. I love it.”

Fifty years. Julie did the math, and her stomach twisted and stayed tangled for the rest of the visit. It was the first time she had truly thought about mortality, and it was another reason why that afternoon carved itself into her memory. When that safe finally opened, Julie would be 60 years old, but her parents would be almost 100. Even that day in the gallery, Julie had known Verdigris was her mother’s favourite artist. Over the years, Julie would get her mother birthday cards with Verdigris’ art printed on the front. Her mother would pin them all to the side of the refrigerator like another clock ticking down time.

The world might one day see Verdigris’ best artwork and find out who she’d been, but her mother probably wouldn’t live to see it.

*

Eighteen thousand two hundred and forty-two days later, Julie stood in that same gallery hall along with so many others who had been counting down to this September 1st. The display showed 55 minutes and 32 seconds. Thirty-one seconds. Thirty seconds.

Julie and her husband, Bjorn, had taken the train from Bergen to Stavanger and then the overnight ferry to Edinburgh. As an artist who’d been vocal about how Verdigris had been influential on her own work, Julie had been given the honour of presenting the unveiling. Her 10-year-old self never could have imagined that. Her mother would have been beyond proud.

Julie was happiest in stained overalls with paint caked underneath her fingernails, but today she’d donned the uniform of a respected artist: a black dress with splashes of colours that were evocative of Verdigris’ work, and chunky earrings that made a sound like wind chimes when she moved her head. Bjorn matched in all black. As a gallery owner, he was more at ease here than she could ever be. She liked eyes on her work, not her person.

“Welcome, welcome,” Angela Morton, the head of the Verdigris Foundation, greeted her warmly, passing Julie a flute of champagne. She had straight, black hair to her waist and startling green eyes. She nodded to a dapper man in a suit, bowtie, and a short afro. “You remember Dr. Okogwu, the director of the museum?” Julie shook his hand, hoping her palm wasn’t too clammy.

“How exciting is this?” Dr. Okogwu said. “We’ll all gather by the safe when there’s 15 minutes left on the count down, so just take it all in until then. Looking forward to your speech.”

Julie’s stomach clenched and she gripped the champagne flute too hard as she curled her lips upwards in an attempt at a smile. Bjorn’s hand hovered near the small of her back in silent comfort.

“Thank you for the invitation,” Julie managed. “It’s beyond an honour to be here, to commemorate an artist that meant so much to me and my family.”

“I wish your mother could be with us here today.”

“Me too.” Julie swallowed a gulp of champagne as Dr. Okogwu and Andrea Morton greeted the other guests, her breathing growing shallower. For the people here, it was an excuse for an interesting afternoon of art and culture and the excitement of finally being let in on a secret. This was a highlight of Julie’s career, but beyond the art, this was personal. This was the day she’d been waiting for since she’d first seen that safe. The day she might receive answers that had evaded her for half a century.

Bjorn’s hand pressed more firmly against her lower back. “He said we have some time,” he murmured in her ear. “Why don’t we go outside for some air?”

She drained her glass, her heartbeat pounding in her ears. “Please.”

*

Julie had grown up under the rust-green shadow of Verdigris. If Julie and her mum were at a loose end in town, they’d always stop at the gallery for a coffee and a visit to the safe. Over the years, her mother had told the story of the first time she’d come across Verdigris’ work as a teenager in Glasgow, in the late 2030s to the early 2040s, so many times that Julie could recite it word for word. For a long time, no one even knew Verdigris’ gender; they were an anonymous street artist, much like Bansky, throwing up bold, stencilled designs that highlighted climate change. Over the course of her career, Verdigris only gave two written interviews that revealed next to no personal details about themselves. But Julie’s mother had always referred to Verdigris as a woman, and so Julie had usually found herself doing the same.

Verdigris’ early art was easy to screenprint onto t-shirts and looked good as backgrounds of posters or online posts. Verdigris had ended up as the aesthetic of some circles of the climate change movement. Julie’s mum had worn those t-shirts as she marched with so many others and demanded a better future.

Verdigris’ art later expanded into other types of media. One of her most famous works was a terrarium that gradually grew hotter, as a speeded-up model of global warming, until the plants within it browned and curled up into fragile exoskeletons. Later, there had been the series of seascapes painted in dreamy colours, overlaid with maps of rising shorelines. Sweeping, Romantic-style triptychs of glaciers and other areas marked by climate change as they looked in 1925, in 2025 when she first started climate art activism, and in 2125, which was always the end year in Verdigris’s predictions. The artist also made models of cities around the world to show what a sustainable skyline might look like in the years to come. She claimed every cent she made from art after 2035 was donated to help make 2125 brighter.

Over the years, many tried to unearth Verdigris’ identity. Some claimed Verdigris was a nepo baby, an heiress to an oil empire who felt guilty about the true cost of the fortune. Others said Verdigris must have grown up poor and disenfranchised, which is why they’d started with street art until the physical act of putting it up risked the anonymity. Still more wondered if Verdigris was a collective of artists rather than an individual. Cynics said the artist didn’t exist at all and was only the result of a branding and marketing thinktank.

In her early twenties, Julie did her own digging into Verdigris’ identity.

“Ah, why would you bother doing all that?” her mother had asked when Julie admitted one dinner what she was doing. Her mother twisted her noodles on her fork and waved it for emphasis. “That takes all the fun out of guessing.”

“Mmm,” her father agreed through a mouthful of food. “Not sure what else you might be able to unearth that the journalists or academics couldn’t, sweetie. I’m always amazed that the financials were locked down so tight. Usually, that’s how that sort of thing leaks.”

Julie’s mum hummed and nodded as she swallowed, lips curling into a smile. “Like that author, remember? People were half-convinced she was a man but she turned out to be a normal woman in Italy. It was so anticlimactic no one even remembered it happened. In 24 years, honey, you’ll get your answer about Verdigris. I promise.” Her hair had lightened from salt to pepper to only salt.

Julie ducked her head, wondering if that were true. She kept her growing hypothesis to herself: that her mum, Charlotte Fergus, might have another name. A secret name.

Verdigris herself.

*

Julie and Bjorn sat on the steps of The Mound. The wind was a welcome coolness on her face and set her earrings chiming.

The city around them was still recognisable from Julie’s youth, but there were plenty of differences. Storm shelters to protect the old buildings. Raised cycle paths threaded through the buildings. Parking lots were things of the past, many transformed into community gardens. Princes Street was vibrant with independent shops and family-owned restaurants. Over the decades, many migrants had moved north to cooler climates, and the city centre was lively.

Though the climate was more stable than it had been when Verdigris had first made those long-ago stencils on city walls, only so much damage could be undone. Parts of the world were still uninhabitable, long stretches of shoreline regularly flooded. Yet humanity had endured, and every day people were investigating potential solutions to heal the earth that bit more.

Bjorn squinted at Princes Street Gardens and Edinburgh Castle perched at the top of Old Town. They’d been together long enough that Julie sometimes had that vertigo of double vision: remembering him in his mid-thirties, the first time she’d seen him at his gallery in Norway, compared to his more lived-in face 25 years later. Both versions were equally precious to her.

Verdigris released no more art after the safe was installed. Some suspected she’d died soon after completing it. Julie, of course, thought differently.

“When I was a kid,” Julie said. “I knew my mom likely wouldn’t be here when the safe opened. But then time passed, and she stayed so strong for so long that I found myself hoping she’d make it. That I’d be able to talk to her about what the safe might reveal. I’d find out if I was right.”

Bjorn reached out and took her hand, squeezing it. Julie squeezed back.

It was hard not to be reflective. Since she’d first seen that safe, Julie had grown into a moody teen, then a less moody art student. In her younger years, she’d worked as a curator before transitioning to weekly shifts at various jobs that still needed humans versus automation in return for the basic income allowance. She was drawn to jobs that revolved around food: overseeing the allotment plots scattered in green spaces of the city, or hydroponics in basements or rooftop gardens, getting her hands soiled or plucking a fruit off a branch.

Art had remained ever-present in Julie’s life. She specialised in mainly oil paints and sculpture. She’d been an idealistic artist in her twenties, a more jaded one in her thirties, but she’d settled into her voice and vision for her work in her forties. Sometimes pieces sold, sometimes they didn’t. She wasn’t particularly well-known, but that suited her fine. Meeting Bjorn had felt like letting out the tension of a sigh: Ah, there you are. He was a piece of her life she didn’t even know she’d been missing.

Over the years, they’d saved up their travel miles and either come back to Scotland for a visit or wandered to new places for novel experiences. They’d never had children. She had a small art studio in a shed in her garden. A good life.

Julie’s father had died 15 years ago: a brain aneurism in his sleep. Quick and painless, though not for his wife who’d woken up beside him, or the daughter he’d left behind. Her mum had pretended to take it in stride, but something dimmed behind her eyes. Between breakthroughs in healthcare and anti-aging science, though, her mum had keep ticking along. A bout of cancer was vanquished. A round of stem cell therapy lessened her arthritis and even wound back the clock on her face, the collagen rejuvenating so she looked a few decades younger. Everyone was living longer, but Julie’s mother had seemed particularly immortal.

Two years ago, though, her mother’s time ran out. Her heart simply stopped. Julie hadn’t been back to Edinburgh since the funeral.

“Do you really think it’s her?” Bjorn asked. It was far from the first time he’d asked it, but it would probably be the last.

“I really don’t know,” Julie admitted. She’d finally worked up the courage to ask her mum right before she’d moved to Norway. Her mum had only laughed. “Whatever gave you that idea? This is why you’re the artist, Julie. You’ve such imagination.”

Yet that chuckle had been a little strained, and her mother had tucked her hair behind her ears in the way she did when she was nervous.

Julie had ruminated over her scant clues for years. Her mother had grown up in Glasgow, the city where that street art had first appeared. Julie’s father had worked in finance for a time; could he have hidden the trail? Her mum sometimes sketched or drew on a tablet, but she never showed anyone and deleted it after she was finished, claiming it was just for fun.

Julie had one piece of her mother’s art: a painting of a leaf that had hung in the hallway of her parents’ home. Beneath it, in her mom’s handwriting were the words Hello, world. I’m glad you’re still here. Julie had stared at the painting for hours, but Verdigris’ style had been so malleable and changeable over the years, she couldn’t be sure.

Whenever she was tempted to discount her theory, Julie would remember the softness on her mother’s face whenever they came to the museum and looked at the Verdigris canvases and the safe. Admiration for the artist, or fond possessiveness?

Julie put her head on her husband’s shoulder. “Maybe it’s all a hoax, like they say, and it’ll be empty. If I find out it’s not her, I’ll have this strange mixture of embarrassment, relief, and disappointment. Maybe I’m half-right, and if Verdigris had been more than one person, some of mum’s art was a part of it. But if I did guess it . . . ?” Her voice faltered.

“I know,” he said. “I know.”

That had been the thorn that kept ripping at her. If it was true, why couldn’t her mother have let her in on the joke? She wouldn’t have told anyone, but it could have been something they shared. Them against the world. A shared secret.

She looked at the clock on The Balmoral Hotel, still set a few minutes early so people wouldn’t miss their train from Waverley.

“Looks like we’re running out of time,” she said.

*

Julie stood next to the safe, aware of too many eyes on her. She thought she’d be shaking, but she felt surprisingly steady.  Screens hovered at various angles around the room. Plenty were watching from around the world, and the camera would offer a better vantage point of the inside of the safe as people pressed too close. Her husband was right at the front of the crowd, his smile encouraging.

Four minutes fifty-seven seconds. Fifty-six seconds. Fifty-five seconds. Angela Morton and Dr. Okogwu had already given their opening speeches. It was her turn.

“I’ll keep this brief, obviously,” Julie began after Angela Morton had introduced her, gesturing at the clock. The crowd chuckled. “Some of you are near, and others far, but we are all united in our appreciation for Verdigris’ work, and we have all been captivated by the mystery for half a century.”

She paused, swallowing, and continued.

“Verdigris has always been an enigma. Over the years, people have projected their assumptions into that question mark of authorship and artistry. I’ve been open in sharing that Verdigris was a particular interest of my mother’s and a big influence on my work, and, like all of you, I’ve always hoped this safe would reveal answers.” She paused, hesitating.

“Verdigris has meant so many things to so many people. I’m delighted to be with your today as Verdigris’s future becomes the present and then, in a blink, the past.”

In total silence, the crowd watched as the countdown finished. Four seconds. Three seconds. Two seconds. One second.

The silence stretched just long enough that Julie wondered if, over the last 50 years, the timer had degraded and they might have to call upon the on-call locksmith to crack it.

A second later, the safe’s door mechanisms hissed, and the crowd sucked in a collective breath. Dr. Okogwu stepped forward and twisted the handle, reverently.

The door opened, revealing slivers of white light.

Dr. Angela Morton stepped forward and helped pull the door open. Julie was frozen to the spot as its insides were finally revealed after half a century.

The safe was another terrarium, but this one was not dead.

The scent of warm, wet greenery and decay filled the gallery room. A plane of glass across the bottom of the open safe kept the soil and rocks in place, and a network of pale filaments of roots pressed against the glass. The terrarium was full of ferns, nerve plants, moss and lichens—slow growing plants that would thrive in the dim artificial sun lights.

The plants at one point must have overgrown to fill almost the entirety of the safe’s interior, but as the soil nutrients had depleted, some of them had decayed back down to thin the foliage. Julie squinted. Beneath the ferns, the soil was shaped like hills and mounds. Model buildings peeked above the mulch, and she recognised the Old Town. There was The Mound, where she’d just sat with Bjorn, and the gallery where they now stood. There was the castle and the Ramsay buildings on one end of the High Street and Holyrood Palace, and the Parliament building on the other, with the Tolbooth roughly in the middle. There were a few more modern buildings peeking over it, and blown glass for storm shelters that bore a passing resemblance to the real ones outside.

Julie squinted, drinking in every detail. The voices and noises of the gallery fell away. The walls had the remnants of canvas, and she could catch glimpses of long-ago paint, but they’d been damaged by the damp, torn by growing plants, and streaked with green and black. Her eyes hunted for anything else. Was that the barest outline of a familiar leaf, or was she only seeing what she wanted to?

She drew back, letting others have a closer look at the safe.

“There could still be something else inside,” Bjorn said. “A box hidden in the soil with that memoir.”

“There won’t be,” Julie said with certainty, her voice thick.

“Does . . . does it answer your question?”

Emotions too difficult to unpick swirled through her. There would be plenty of articles written about the exhibit, and what it meant, and whether it was truly Verdigris’ best work. She had no interest in the discourse.

Julie closed her eyes, imagining her mother at her side. Whoever had left this message behind, whoever Verdigris had been, Julie felt she’d received it loud and clear.

Hello, world. I’m glad you’re still here.

“Oh, it’s perfect,” she said.

This story was a joint commission by the Edinburgh Science Festival and Edinburgh International Book Festival.

L.R. Lam is the USA Today and Sunday Times bestselling, award-winning author of Dragonfall and Emberclaw (the Dragon Scales series), the Seven Devils duology (co-written with Elizabeth May), Goldilocks, the Pacifica novels, False Hearts and Shattered Minds, and the Micah Grey trilogy, which begins with Pantomime.