by Terry Tyler
Colt swings his legs over the side of the chair. "What a load of bollocks. Anyway, what if you're gay or gender-fluid? Does that make you rate differently?"
"I don't know. Everyone at work is normal."
I gasp, Nash looks horrified, and Colt laughs. "Wow, babe―'normal'? You ready to lose a hundred pounds, then?"
"Slip of the tongue. You'd never report me, anyway." She blushes, and looks at Nash and me. "None of us four would, would we?"
"Course not," I say.
"Yeah, but you need to watch it," says Nash. "Last week Atlanta reported Enzo for referring to Stevie Spencer as 'she' instead of 'they', and Stevie wasn't even there at the time. Enzo went airborne."
Lori tosses her hair back. "Yes, but Atlanta's a total rancid."
I can't resist it. "I thought she was your friend."
Colt clearly finds the whole conversation highly amusing. "Yeah, I saw you hugging her only yesterday."
Lori rolls her eyes and holds up her hands. "Duh―enemies closer."
Nash flicks through the wallscreen, landing on some then-and-now images of Freya Wilson, the most popular PM in eighty years and the most digitally enhanced woman in the world; she must be in her late fifties, but here she looks about thirty-five. I wonder if her husband recognises her when she comes home, after seeing this vision of beauty on the screens all day.
"Now she would have been a ten," he says, flicking back to her younger pictures from that ancient photo site, Imagio. "Look at that; iconic."
I love looking at stuff from those old sites everyone used before I was born. There was Imagio for pics, YouTube for vids, LifeShare to keep up with family and friends, Twitter for news and views, dedicated emailing sites. Now it's all just Heart, and every single person in every megacity and Hope Village lives on it; it's your connection to everything and everyone in the world.
"Now that's what I call rancid," says Colt. "Come on, let's watch something decent."
Lori takes her flushed face out to the kitchen and comes back with more drinks; vodka, served in the way that's been honoured with the upward arrow all summer―neat, rocks, a sprig of mint and a couple of cardamom pods. You have to slice the cardamom open just a little, so that the flavour comes out. Nash finds us a nice interactive zombie film. Good; it takes my mind off my confused head.
Colt gets up once his zombie has eaten my arm and pauses the film, holding his hands out for our glasses.
"More drinks?"
I can see by Nash's eyes that he shouldn't have any more, but I don't want to get on his case. Instead, I choose―very cleverly, I think―to introduce the subject of his demerit in a 'did Nash tell you, isn't it ridiculous' way, so that Colt might make the sensible decision to pour him a small drink only.
"Yeah, what a scrote, right?" says Nash.
Lori wags her finger at him. "He is, but, sweetheart, you've got to learn to control that naughty tongue of yours."
The way she emphasises the words 'naughty tongue' is heavy with sexual innuendo, and Nash laughs, then blows a kiss at her. Maybe I should deliver my behaviour modification suggestions in porno-schoolteacher mode too, then he wouldn't accuse me of nagging.
I could try it out on my Balance clients, first. I wonder how that would go down.
"It's fucking ridiculous," says Colt. "Some dick bangs into you and doesn't say sorry, you've got the right to call him every turd under the sun."
"Says the guy who never gets social demerits," says Nash. "I'm going to have to do terminal or Care visits, it's the only way I'll make them up."
Colt looks horrified; I want to laugh. Half an hour of Nash's tech and gamer talk, and his victim will pray for a speedy end.
"Nah, don't do that," he says. "I'll ask Lucy to find you some nice old folks to sit with." Colt and Lori's next door neighbour works in the Senior Village, like half the people I know; MC12's aged care industry is vast.
"Yeah?" Nash raises his glass. "Nice one! Can she find me a cheerful deaf mute who's dextrous enough to play Zombie Wars?"
September arrives as warm and dry as any summer day. Nash's demerit is cancelled out after two sessions at Fossil Town―that's his name for the Senior Village. And yes, he's been reported for it, more than once.
We take the zip together this morning, Nash carrying on out to Tech Village on the west side―it's actually the size of a small continent―while I get off at City Centre (South). I like working at the Wellness Centre, because it's near Hub 6, with its little cafés and galleries, salons and fitness spas; the hubs are where you find the life of the city.
I'm happy, because I've got an afternoon session with Ginevra.
Nash is talking to a workmate about something techy, so I look out of the window at MC12 embracing another day, and wonder, as I do every morning, what my mother, brother and sister are doing. Are they heating water for tea over a fire in the wasteland? Is that what people do, out there? I know nothing about the wasteland apart from what I've learned from educational documentaries, because we don't get to see it. Once the ziprail leaves the megacity, the windows convert to a facsimile countryside. Nice to look at, but I'd rather see what's really out there.
Maybe they're living happy lives in an off-grid―or they might have escaped to one of the EU countries where wastelanders are not thought of as rats. Ginevra told me about that.
If so, I'll never find them.
All around me, people are listening to music, scrolling Heart or reading, or, with head back and eyes glazed, enjoying a bit of virtual reality on their way to the daily grind. I become aware that Nash is looking at me in a manner that I can only describe as extremely pissed off.
"You haven't been listening to a word I'm saying, have you?"
Ah.
I give him a guilty smile. "Oh―I didn't realise you were talking to me."
"Yeah, well I don't usually call Enzo ‘Darling’."
"Sorry. I was miles away."
"You often are, these days."
"I'm sorry. I've got stuff to think about―"
For that, I get an eye roll. "What, your rat family?"
"Do you object to me even thinking about them, now?"
"Yes, if it means you're ignoring me."
"Perhaps if you let me talk about them now and again, I'd be more inclined to listen to you."
He grunts, says, "Fuck you, then," in the amiable sort of way he does, selects a programme and slips into VR. I don't care; if he's happier in a make-believe world, who am I to protest? When we arrive at my stop, I reach for his hand and give it a little squeeze but he ignores me.
I enjoy being outside, even if the only greenery is the bushes in tubs along my way; I love the fresh smell of the morning air. When I reach Wellness I stand in the scanner (as well as ID, it checks us for alcohol, drugs, weapons and disease), pick up a green shake from 2-Go, and take the moving walkway to Balance.
My fellow counsellors are scattered around the downtime lounge, chatting or revising details about their first clients. I greet those nearest to me and just sit, for a while, watching. They all seem so confident; I wonder if any of them ever feel totally ineffective, like I do, or if they have secret doubts about the rigid 'guidelines' to which we must adhere. Not that they'd ever express them, as I don't. Too scared of getting reported, and receiving an employment ethics demerit. That's the other one, along with health maintenance and social acceptability, that can endanger your job security. And yes, some sneaky bastards really would report you if you were brave or foolish enough to express a negative thought about Balance. After first pretending to wrestle with the ethics of doing so, of course.
Today I have two client sessions before my meeting with Ginevra. The first is with Harper, who has body image issues―she's a perfect size eight and super-pretty, or would be, if she wasn't constantly frowning into the Fixx mirror on her com at her new chin, which she thinks the surgeon botched, then adapting the reflected image to make it look how she thinks it ought.
It's not actually about her chin,
but the fact that her father left the family when she was a child. Each time I broach this angle, though, she tells me I don't understand, and can't possibly do so because, unlike her, I'm attractive. She thinks this about everyone, though I am certain Spark would rate her an eight, at least.
My second session is with Alden, who says he wants to jack it all in and go live in the wasteland, because he craves the anonymity he is not allowed in the megacity. My initial reaction was great interest, but then I looked at his Heart profile. For a guy who wants privacy, he posts a hell of a lot of information about his innermost thoughts, accompanied by moody pictures of himself in scenic locations.
Then I saw that he writes; I found many more pictures of him looking moody with an antique typewriter, which I assume is just a prop. Black and white, staring into the distance as if contemplating his next chapter. Anguished comments about the pain of 'writer’s block'.
I suspect his whole life is a pose, though he doesn't realise it.
Most of my colleagues look new clients up on Heart before their first meet, but I don't like to, because I don't want to start off with preconceived ideas. Now and again, though, it's not a bad idea.
I go to lunch at Plant Base with my workmates Cassius and Destiny, after which I spend an hour updating my records on Harper and Alden, and then it is time, at last, to offload my frustrations about the pair of them.
"Mostly I want to tell Harper to come back when she's got something real to worry about."
Ginevra laughs. "I understand, but you've already worked out that it's not about her chin; you just have to make her see that." After we've discussed ways in which I might do this I still have twenty minutes left, so I manoeuvre the conversation round to stuff I really want to talk about. She looks cagey at first, but her face softens when I mention my dad.
"He hated it here, right from the beginning, and he wasn't scared to say so." Her eyes have a faraway look about them; I wonder if they were ever involved. "He and Martine had so many rows about it. He told me that even before she was pregnant with Lilyn, before the town clearances started, he wanted to emigrate to just about anywhere―he guessed that the Hope Villages were the start of something much, much more disruptive, but Martine didn't want to hear it."
"Did you, too?" I ask. "Did you see the way things were going, like he did?"
"To a certain extent." She looks away.
I try again. "Why did everyone just accept the megacities, though? After owning property and being anonymous, like Alden pretends he wants, I mean."
"It didn't happen overnight, and anonymity hadn't been an option for years. Total surveillance crept in so stealthily―most of us accepted every little change as it was introduced, not least of all because we had no choice, unless we wanted to opt out of society completely, and being an Offliner wasn't easy."
"I think it sounds nice―uncomplicated."
She smiles. "On the contrary, it became increasingly impractical, and eventually impossible, unless you lived in an off-grid. Online became the only option for booking travel or medical appointments, organising your finances―everything. We got used to adapting our lives, because we had to." She frowns. "We got used to being told, this is what is happening, and accepting it because there was no choice."
"But giving up your homes to live here?"
"Ah, but when the megacities were first open for business, they seemed like a new beginning. A solution. The housing market was in the worst slump ever; ours was valued at less than half what we paid for it, twenty years before." She leans back, twiddling her pen. "Imagine you're a parent. Your firm moves out to MC12 and you're offered a brand spanking new, low fuel consumption apartment only a quick ziprail journey away. The apartment is in a safe area, near hospitals and good schools, and another ten-minute journey from Larks Pond or Wildacre, where your kids can play safely at the weekends. To top it off, your medical insurance is halved. You'd go, wouldn't you?"
"I suppose so―having a car, though, being able to travel where you want―"
"Yes, but ecological Armageddon was the big scare, and the new order was presented to us as the way towards a sustainable future, for everyone. After a while, those who rebelled were seen as dinosaurs trying to cling on to a way of life that was over―and, worse than that, as selfish, because they were unwilling to embrace change that would save the planet." She smiles at me. "But yes, of course it wasn't for everyone. It still isn't. Hence the off-grids, and the wastelanders."
"And those without choices."
"The Hope Villagers. Yes. But they're safe and fed, with access to medical supplies, however meagre." She pauses. "You're thinking about your family."
"Yes." I hold back the tears that spring to my eyes. I never want Ginevra to see me as an overemotional type. "I'm always thinking about them."
"Of course you are." She's waiting for me to expand, I can tell, but there's a mass of complicated stuff in my head, and I don't want to talk about it until I've untangled some of the knots. She carries on. "The introduction of the megacities is the biggest change this country has ever known, so of course there are many teething problems for the transitional generations; however, in forty years' time there will scarcely be anyone alive who remembers before, and life will calm down. It's the same all over the developed world, though all countries are at different stages."
I feel as though she's doing what I do with my clients: cloaking what she really wants to say with the 'official version'.
"Ginevra―how long have you lived here?"
I know so little about her. She's the chic sixty-five-year-old (who looks ten years younger) with the immaculate blonde hair and fabulous scarf collection whose perfectly painted lips smile at me from the other chair, and who I know will always have my back professionally, but I like to think we've become friends, too, in a way.
"Twenty-three years; I was one of the last from my town. I hung on until it really wasn't possible to live there any longer. A few of those closest to me were accepted into an off-grid, but―"
She trails off, fiddling with the ends of today's scarf; fringed, aquamarine silk.
"Could you not go with them?" I was wrong; I don't know 'so little' about her; I know nothing at all. "Can I ask―are you married? Do you have children?"
She gives me her motherly smile, the one that always makes me feel so good. "I don't mind you asking and no to both."
"You've never been married?" I realise what I'm doing. Maybe it's the world we live in; we forget that anyone has the right to privacy. "I'm sorry, it's not my business. I shouldn't have."
"No, no, that's okay. I don't mind telling you." She smiles. "I was with someone for many years. His name was―and I am sure still is―Hugo. Once we accepted that our way of life was no longer viable, we had to make decisions. He said he'd rather go into the wasteland than live in a megacity, but I had other concerns." She fiddles with her scarf again. "My mother. She was only seventy-two but there was no way I was going to stick her in a Senior Village while I nipped off to grow potatoes and pretend it was still 2010, and she couldn't have joined us because she wasn't about to start roughing it at her time of life. She's ninety-five now; her mind is still sharp, but apart from her carers she's only got me. I'm her only child." She laughs. "Hang on a minute, madam―we're here to talk about you, not me."
"Yes, but you're so much more interesting. So you lost Hugo, for the sake of your mother?"
She shrugs. "Yes, but it was a sacrifice I was willing to make. She's happy in the Senior Village. I go to see her several times a week, my busy social schedule permitting."
The way she raises her eyebrows as she says that tells me that she doesn't have much of a social schedule at all.
"D'you live alone now?"
She nods. "Happily so, yes."
I try something she taught me to do with my clients; I say nothing in the hope that she'll carry on. Guess what? It works.
"Hugo could have come here with me. But he chose not to. Once we'd parted ways, I saw that
the relationship had run its course; ten years before, we couldn't have contemplated being apart." She fixes me with that piercing look of hers. "Knowing a relationship is over doesn't happen overnight, either. It creeps up on you, one hour of boredom, one cringe, one moment of misunderstanding at a time. It can take weeks, months, even years. But it's a long time ago, now. I rarely think about him. It seems like another life. Well, it was."
One hour, one cringe, one moment at a time.
Usually I go home suitably offloaded and clear-headed after our chats. Today, though, the tangles in my head seem more tightly knotted than ever.
Chapter 3
Waxingham, Norfolk
Lilyn Farrer puts down her knitting needles and looks out to sea. She doesn't want to stop because she's nearly finished the back of Dan's new jumper, and, warm though it still is, she knows how quickly the cold evenings can creep in. But the light is fading, and they don't have many candles left. Better to save them for later on, when everyone is gathered together.
This time of year always brings with it a sense of melancholy; something about the light in the sky. She doesn't think about them very often at all, but on days like today she looks out at the sky turning pinky-orange above the dark sea, and wonders if her parents are somewhere else―and, if they are, whether they can see her.
Her mind flits to a vague memory of her brother, his knees caked with dirt, and a sweet little baby smiling at her from her cot: Rae.
Her recollections of the megacity are equally vague; she recalls feelings, atmospheres, rather than actual events. Her and John running free and happy in the glades of Wildacre, though even then she knew it wasn't real countryside. It had cafés and picnic zones, and a ziprail connect just a short walk from the gate. She is sure that if she went back now she would laugh at how small it is.
All she can remember about her father is that he stormed about, drank too much and was always cross with someone. Not her, Mum, John or Baby Rae, but others. And then one day some people came and took her out of school and put her in a van with her mum and John. Baby Rae didn't go with them. Mum said it was 'for the best'.