Earth is under new management after the DNA SmartBomb blasts all humans into piles of ash, each garnished with their previous possessions, from Porsche keys to plastic pacifiers.

Other life-forms remain intact as well as buildings and technology. Most of these carry on because of sustainable energy resources, especially solar power.

The hero’s everyday life:

Little Scribble comes from a working class home where he loves to hide in a battered pot in the kitchen cupboard with his toy acorn (previously owned) and a wooden spoon he croons into.

2nd Home: The Old Zoo

His mother drops her tail-defective son at the Old Zoo according to the quarantine laws governing mutants. He learns music, arts and crafts with the other little ones, as well as math and science. No history – ‘nothing to be gained by it’. During TimeforCraft, Scribble seizes the opportunity to fashion a wheelchair to hide that troublesome butt.

The mutants have crammed the zookeepers’ bleak offices with cushions, picnic baskets, blankets and musical instruments from a performance long ago. After dusk, the rusty lion cages and the mutants’ loud songs keep the big cats out.

The Old Zoo actually exists as a location, near Rhodes Memorial, on the Eastern slopes of Table Mountain, Cape Town.

New Home: The Mall

At the Mall the sun floods through an immense glass roof and warms the dead plants in the florist and the plastic trees. In this sterile temple to human dreams, the only signs of life come from our heroes and the supermarket mice. Strands of diamonds sparkle on the trees since Scribble began missing rain on spiderwebs. In the glossy stores, the piles of dust that were once humans, glitter amongst their poignant belongings.

The story plays out among out-of-scale surroundings. Three children are frozen in silent laughter in a photographer’s hologram. Plastic wreaths have found their way to the feet of two haughty shop mannequins, courtesy of Scribble’s grief and short attention span.

In this story, the characters as living individuals are more important than inanimate objects. In the Mall, they live amongst more things than they’ll ever need. But with their various limitations and powers and really just because they want to stay alive and band together against the tyrannical Sheena, they need each other.|

Below are pictures bringing out other thoughts touched on here and there: