Moxyland (Angry Robot)

by Lauren Beukes

  The trip connects, and RomperStomp shimmers into existence in some cheesy-ass neo-classical archway in a candy-coloured jungle, swampy pools burping oily bubbles that pop to release weird little flittering manta rays, and, in the distance, weird looming rock things like you'd get in Vietnam or somewhere, craggy columns with a thatch of greenery on top and a path of floating step blocks leading away. It's vomitously cute.

  I haven't made it two steps from the entry portal, let alone figured out the fucking buttons, when three furry blobs land on top of me, all claws and teeth.

  'Shit! Wait!' The wall blanks suddenly and Moxy fills the screen. Cos Moxy is always watching. He waves a stubby little paw in disapproval.

  >>So sorry! You have been booted from Kiwi Pop for bad behaviour! If you promise to play nice and not swear any more, you can play again for sure!

  I'd forgotten the vocal interactions. I turn it off, no sense betraying my age by my voice, and click on the 'I promise to behave' button.

  I respawn in the arch only to be immediately ambushed by the little bastards, who are clearly waiting for me.

  >>Hi guys! Will you be my friend? says Romper Stomp, one of the default pre-selects in case you're too lazy to type or vocalise.

  >>Die, newbie scum! yells the one called Fluffoki in a little girl's voice brimming with malice.

  I hit back, punching and kicking, but they've got more experience and there're three of them. I've just got the hang of the Shaker-Quake, knocking Fluffoki off her feet and doing some serious damage when one of her little chums takes me out with a blow to the head, KO-ing me one time.

  The screen blanks again.

  >>So sorry! You have died. But at least you tried! Would you like to try again? You've still got nine lives out of ten.

  This is Unathi's revenge for the chicks dig.

  When I call her for help, Lerato is the antithesis of sympathy, giggling so mega-hysterical, I'm sure she's gonna pop a valve. Which would serve her right. 'That's a new record in lame, Toby,' she says, when she manages to breathe again. But she cuts me some slack and saves my ass.

  It takes genius girl a full minute and a half to circumvent the entrance portal where Fluffoki and Co. are waiting for me in ambush, rerouting home™'s IP address so it looks like I'm logging in from Melbourne with a whole new character. She's done this before on my home™ sys back when we ordered those medical-grade biogen 'shrooms from Thailand. It took three weeks to get the damn things with the bouncing around to fake addresses, but it was so worth it.

  Anyway, thing is, spawning is random the first time you play, but once you touch down in the special hell that is Moxyland, whichever portal you emerge out of becomes your home base. You die, you go back there again and again and again, and if some psycho bratlings are waiting to maul you every time, it gets Sisyphean quick-quick.

  I re-surface as an all-new character, a Popling Ludo, special move the Reverb Roar, in an allnew home base, this one pseudo-Halloween with creepy husks of trees and lumo moss that hangs off the branches like beards, miles away from that little bitch Fluffoki and her crew.

  This time, I'm prepared for any juve delinquents who even think of jumping me. I ditch the greets and wade in bloody as soon as any new character makes an entrance, despite the shaky finger and more trite couplets from Moxy.

  >>On your scorecard, here's a blot, for playing mean; that sucks a lot.

  Who writes this shit? And worse, gets financial remuneration for it? I need to get in on that game.

  It takes four and a half hours to battle it out to level six, get to the sacred Maori hideout in the Waitomo caves and beat the pulp out of the guardian spirit, which resembles a giant cuddly platypus, until he surrenders the purple BlinkaStinka.

  Trophy in paw, I invest another hour twenty backtracking to find my original spawn-in spot, and reduce Fluffoki and her little friendlings to so much dead flesh, although sorry to say, it being a kids' game, they die in splatters of sparks rather than bloody gibs. Fluffoki does break out some very bad words, not entirely appropriate for an eight year-old girl.

  And as a finishing touch, I put in a special request to Lerato to trace the little bastards' user names and get them banned from the gamespace for violating protocol. The pretext for locking them out is killer.

  Overage players.

  Tendeka

  We arrive at the Green Point market, to find that Emmie is AWOL. Ashraf tries to convince me we've got the wrong row, but I know exactly where her stall is supposed to be, wedged between the downloads booth and the over-pierced goth girl with her radical handmade fashion, all velvet, lace and PVC with complicated lacings, now also available in Pluslife, according to a sign in dayglo purple highlighting.

  I know we're in the right place, only instead of Emmie with her plastic chickens and wire jewellery, there is an aggro Kenyan punting kangas and cowrie bracelets, and for all I know dodgy defuser interference devices under the counter, who starts screaming at me when I ask why the fuck he's working the stall registered to my wife, Emmie Chinyaka? Especially when Ash paid the full month's rental in advance two days ago.

  'You should look better after your wife, hey?' the Kenyan cracks smugly.

  I drop Ashraf's hand abruptly. I would wipe that smirk off his face if it didn't mean I'd have to deal with the cops.

  We cause enough of a fracas that the market manager, who introduces himself as Mr. Hartley, no first name provided, materialises and takes us to his office stadium-side.

  It seems Emmie terminated her contract yesterday, and took a refund on the rent, no problem for management with so many clamouring to fill the space. Only 50% of the eight thousand though, due to last-minute notice clauses. She sold off her wares and her shadecloth to some of the other traders, packed up the scant remains, and left. No, unfortunately, terribly sorry, he doesn't know where she went or why.

  'Have you tried the hospital?' Mr. Hartley says with sugary concern, like we wouldn't have thought of that already. She's not due to pop for another month, unless it's a miscarriage or a premature, both eventualities Ash obsesses about constantly. We don't have a clue who the father is, whether it was some border guard demanding a toll, or a militia rape. Emmie won't talk about it. But Ashraf and I have discussed it, and we believe the kid shouldn't have to carry the karma. This is the chance to make something good out of the worst possible scenario. And soon he'll have two dads. We're going to name him for Ash's father.

  'I'm sure she's at home,' Ash smoothes. 'Thanks for all your help. I'm sorry if there was any misunderstanding.' I hate it when he apologises for me.

  It takes an hour to get to Delft by train with the strikes. Of course, these don't affect the corporate lines.

  It's a 2k walk to the temporary residential hostel where Emmie's been staying; a severe three-storey block, identical to the hundred other severe blocks surrounding it, a warren of concrete bunkers. We've given Emmie an open invitation to come and stay with us, at least until she has the baby, but she always refuses, which makes Ashraf crazy with worry.

  'Temporary' residential is a hideous joke, of course. The two girls she shares a room with have been there for three and a half years, and still no word on when their assigned RDP housing is going to come through. It's another perfect example of the system's egregious failings. There's a backlog of 1,190,000 or something, and that's just counting the legal applicants, not the African refugees or the rurals coming in under the radar, the ones who can't afford to wait around for the proper health clearances.

  A man, scrawny and dark, not local, opens the door to the dank stairway. 'What do you want?'

  'Is Emmie here? We were supposed to meet her at the market–' Ashraf starts.

  'She's not here.' He tries to close the door on us, but I lean on it with my full weight, so he's forced backwards.

  'Emmie! You here? You all right?' I'm aware of Ashraf and the guy following in my wake as I pound up the stairs, three at a time. A kid with snot crusted down his lips peers down, blankly disinteres
ted. A woman in the communal kitchen looks up startled from the Daily Voice with its screaming headline 'DYING FOR A CURE? MUTI MURDERS MULTIPLY'.

  'Emmie?'

  Her door is wide open, casting a rectangle of light into the corridor, but just before I get there, the security gate clangs hastily shut and a fumble of keys locks it tight.

  'Emmie. What are you doing? We spent hours looking for you. We had a meeting, remember? For Home Affairs?'

  Her hands curl round the bars of the security gate, real Pollsmoor. I feel that familiar knot at how painfully young she is, how naïve and far out of her comfort zone. She doesn't look up at me, staring down at the bulge of her belly. 'Go away. I can't see you today.'

  Behind her, there's nothing as obvious as a half-packed suitcase lying open on her bed, but something has changed in her room, with its scant possessions, the three beds barely a foot apart, with bedsheets hanging from the ceiling like dividers, the paraffin safestove, the brokendown Fifties kitchen cabinet that might be worth something restored, on which a small TV is balanced precariously among a clutter of cheap cosmetics. A piece of cardboard, an advert for a Sunlight Soap competition, is taped to the window to cover a broken pane, advertising a prize of one million clams, all those zeros clamouring for attention, insultingly unreachable, above the face of a grinning little white girl in pigtails.

  We've drawn spectators: the snotty kid and the reader, whom I recognise now as one of Emmie's roommates, and door guy, who is plucking insistently at my arm. 'You must go.'

  'Fuck off, bro! Emmie, listen to me. This is majorly important. I don't care what you did with the rent money from the stall. We'll get you another spot, more stock. Whatever. But you can't pull this disappearing act. If Home Affairs suspects this isn't makoya, you'll be deported.'

  'I'm not staying.'

  'Don't be mental. Where are you going to go?'

  'You must leave, please.'

  I shrug door guy's hand off my shoulder. 'Emmie. Be reasonable. You have a job here. You have a real possibility of a life. What about the baby?'

  'You have to go. You must get out.' Door guy is trying to tug me away.

  'Jesus Christ! Will you get off!' I shove him against the wall, Emmie gasps, and only then do I click the fucking obvious that's been staring me in the face all along. The bedsheet with its pathetically faded floral print has been pulled closed around her bed for privacy. And among the coconut butter and hand cream and mascara is a man's deodorant, a man's brand shaving cream.

  'Ah, fuck, Emmie. Is this–?' But of course it is. Door guy blinks hard when I round on him, but then draws himself up, resilient, and why not? Compared to what he must have gone through getting here, who the fuck am I that he should be afraid of me?

  'Emmie. Why didn't you just tell me? Do you realise–? Fuck! I could go to fucking jail, Emmie. They could disconnect me for this. Permanently.'

  I shake the security gate, so hard that it judders, and Emmie cowers back, automatically putting one hand to the bump that has turned her bellybutton into a protruding jellytot. Babydaddy puts his hand over her fingers clutching the bars, reassuring. But where the fuck was he two months ago, when she was begging on the street corner, filthy and gaunt around the swell of her stomach?

  'What about your baby, Emmie? What are you going to say to your baby when you're all fucking starving to death in some underresourced camp in Lilongwe? Huh, Emmie?'

  'Tendeka.' Ashraf finally speaks.

  'I don't fucking care. You still have to do the interview. You are not going to put me at risk. And you are not getting our child – your child – deported. It's three years, Emmie, three years that we have to stay married before your residency is safe. You're not going anywhere until then, Emmie. You hear me?'

  'We need more money,' she says quietly, meeting my eyes for the first time, drawing strength from babydaddy, closing me out.

  'Fine. Of course. Whatever you want. How much?'

  'Eight thousand. Mr. Hartley only gave me half–'

  'Yeah, you should have thought that one through.'

  'C'mon, Tendeka.'

  'Cut it out, Ashraf. She can have it after the fucking interview. You hear me, you manipulative lying cow? After.'

  Ash wants to talk about it, all the way home. 'It doesn't mean it's over. She probably just wants to have the baby and be done with it. Take off with her boyfriend, start a new life somewhere. We could even help them. They could disappear.'

  'And what's Home Affairs going to say? Refugee wife just ditches her kid with us and runs off, and they're not going to investigate? No, fuck that. We signed up for the full deal here, Ash. Our kid is not gonna get taken away from us just because babydaddy's back in the picture. And they're not running off and getting deported to cause all kinds of shit for us. They're just gonna have to see it through.'

  'Ten, don't be stubborn, please. Think about it. It's three years we'll have to keep this up. And what if she changes her mind? Runs away with him?'

  'No way. Forget it. This is my stand against the bullshit of artificially imposed borders and bureaucracies. And if Emmie and her pop-up babydaddy don't understand the implications, then I'm just going to have to hold her hand through it all. She's sticking it out. And she's

  not going back on our agreement.'

  'But this is not a moral stand, Ten. This is our lives.'

  After the horrendous day, it's a shock logging into Avalon. My enviro-friendly house and the three houses surrounding it have been replaced with loxion shelters, the tinshacks appallingly incongruous among the mansions and manicured lawns.

  I'm already on the backfoot when skyward* walks out of the corrugated door, his avatar grinning idiotically wide and extending her arms with a little twirl, like a Miss Mzansi contestant.

  >> skyward*: tada! what do you think? do you like it?

  >> 10: What the fuck? I didn't authorise this. u can't just hack my dwell

  >> skyward*: it's a new direction. we're abandoning the subtle approach.

  >> 10: It's DEFINITELY not subtle

  >> skyward*: should it be? does subtlety cut it? how was your green house working out for ya?

  >> 10: It's an idealisation, it's setting an example, showing people an alternative to what a perfect world might be

  >> skyward: is it enough to set a good example? how much of an impact have you really made here? and what the fuck does that matter anyway? it's not real.

  >> 10: I don't understand. I do REAL shit realworld

  >> skyward: you have Struggle connections in your family, right?

  The part of me that is not still reeling from the surprise of finding my house transmogrified into shack chic is impressed that he remembers this from the conversation we had when we first met through the future*renovate site last year. But I may have overemphasised the connection. It was a second cousin by marriage whose grandmother helped shelter Ruth First, a Communist journalist blown up by a letter bomb in the 1980s. They had to scrape bits of her off the walls. Not a nice way to go.

  >> 10: Yeah. And?

  >> skyward*: you ask that cousin about the effectiveness of politely asking for change, of peaceful demonstrations, the total pointlessness of street theatre or civil disobedience. or democracy.

  >> 10: She's dead. She died last year of a heart attack. We flew up to Port Elizabeth for the funeral.

  >> skyward*: whatever. it's time to radicalise, 10. assuming you're ready for more ambitious work? but maybe i've misjudged you? based on how upset you are by such a minor adjustment? it's just a virtual house, after all.

  >> 10: No, you just, you caught me by surprise. I wasn't expec

  >> skyward*: best time to catch someone, wouldn't you agree? unprepared. is your protege fully recovered from his scratch, btw?

  >>10: What?

  >> skyward*: your soccer boy. the one who was injured?

  >> 10: Oh. Yeah. Mostly. He's taking some downtime. The meds patched him up. He spun them a story about falling off a roof, doing stunts, tryin
g to impress a girl.

  >> skyward*: i posted the video from your friend's jacket cameras to the net, by the way. it's doing the rounds of the jam circuit. already spilling into the mainstream viral content. a colleague in new york sent it to me via her phone, didn't have the faintest idea of my involvement. she thought it was cool. >> 10: But we haven't modded it yet. You can see all our faces. That was strictly for your personal viewing.

  >> skyward*: don't worry, it's all taken care of. we edited it beautifully, distorted your voices, smeared your faces. it's untraceable, trust me. we rerouted it via an anonyma server in trinidad.

  >> 10: Are you sure? Jesus

  >> skyward*: it's all taken care of.

  >> 10: No, it's just. I've got a lot of shit going down right now. I mean Emmie and Home Affairs and the disconnect and trying to raise funding for Streets Back.

  >> skyward*: do what you have to do. and stop fucking around with the art project. you need money to make it happen. just take the corporate cash.

  >> 10: But

  >> skyward*: what do you care?

  >> 10: It's tainted. It's against all our principles. I mean, you talk about making a real impact, what's the point if you're doing it dirty, breeding more misery? It's like terrorists dealing heroin for the cause. It's a cycle of darkness.