Shift

by Mia Gallagher

  Maisie would always turn to look through the rear window and wave out. We all looked up then, even the ones plugged deep. That was the power of Maisie’s glow. I knew, of course, she was waving to her friends, the others who glowed. But she was so kind, so friendly to everyone, that sometimes I let myself magine – oh, the curse of a Mind’s I – that she was waving at me too. Then I would dare to wave back, but, yes, like this, little one, not very noticeably. I’d smile, making sure my smile wasn’t too obvious, that the others, especially those surfing their smarts, couldn’t see it but that Maisie could. And when she smiled back, I magined it was at me, just me.

  You see, I didn’t have very many friends then. I was no, I’ve told you that’s nasty, new of course, always a disadvantage. And, as I’ve said many times before, I was always rather inconspicuous.

  I had been in the school three months when Maisie announced it. Just before the ringtone sounded, she glanced at the educator, who nodded, and then she stood. ‘I’m going to be ten in a month’s time,’ she said. ‘And I’m having a birthday party.’ Well, little one, you can magine the excitement that generated! All the little corpocitizens began to buzz and murmur, and many sneakily plugged in to check inboxes and eye-ems, and others began to hush, I’m coming to it, began to hush the rest, because we were anxious to hear her say that she’d sent the eeee-vites and they’d be with us in a moment or tomorrow or tomorrow…

  But Maisie said nothing more. She simply packed her eduware into her bag and went out.

  Faiths forgive me, I don’t know what made me do it, but I went out straight after her. I didn’t care, for once, if I got in anybody else’s way or stood on their toes or otherwise attracted attention. But all the other children were so busy scrolling and tapping, swiping air, trying to find their invitations, others still in face-to-face, discussing verbal, trying to make sense of what Maisie had said, that they didn’t notice me one bit.

  I got to the gate just as Maisie’s mother was pulling out in the Guzzler. Racing up, I’d caught a whiff of Mum’s perfume and seemed to feel her fauxfur cuddle around me. Then the Guzzler roared off and Maisie turned to wave, as she always did, and I waved back, again, trying to make it not obvious, and Maisie smiled, as usual, and—

  Then no, not foolish, I realised: all the other children were still in the classroom. I was the only one standing there. In that moment, no, not foolish, no, no sun in my eyes, no, her smile was just for me. She had seen me. She had smiled. And I knew, no, didn’t magine, knew what that meant. I would be issued with an invitation to her party, and I would be the first to get one. It was probably already waiting for me on the familysmart at home!

  I can’t tell you how no, not stupid, no, hush, hush, how wonderful, that made me feel. I floated home, rushing then slowing, rushing then slowing, revelling in the so, no, delicious anticipation generated by that cursed hormone, fantasy.

  But when I got back, a right disaster awaited. I couldn’t plug in. My father had gone out for face-to-face with the right people and taken his new smartsong with him. Worse still, he’d blocked our weefee to the Old Web, as was his wont when meeting right people, so I couldn’t even use the creaky Oldtablet that had come with the rental. I was distraught. Couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep. Next morning, I stole downstairs and saw my father’s new smartsong on the kitchen table. It was a handheld design I hadn’t seen before, with a somewhat Dated look to the lens.

  I picked it up, plugged in. A flicker behind my retinas. A tingle up my spine. I brain-flicked through for his password, keyed it in and in jiggidytime, after a plaintive wailing startuptone, there I was on the intercloud, scouring my eye-em and my emale. Nothing. Deep in my Mind’s I, I sensed anxiety, that scourge of the over-hormonal, begin to download again. It didn’t matter, I told myself. Maisie was into Dated things. She would probably issue the invitation verbally, face-to-face even. Of course! I cleared my traces, shut down the smart and rushed out, not even bothering with breakfast.

  I got to school early, but thing after another delayed me. First the obesity educator, then the caretaker, then the principal. I, who normally attracted no attention, was suddenly in demand by everyone – though once they had me in their company, they seemed to forget what they’d wished to talk to me about. By the time I got to my classroom, I had lost whatever competitive advantage I might have had. The other children were all inside, crowding around, talking through Glass and face-to-face. It was a right clamour. I pushed forward and oh, little one, you’ll never believe it, the crowd had gathered around my desk. Was Maisie there already, waiting to issue her verbal? I shoved my way through, heart pounding, and then I saw it.

  An oh, invitation, lying on my desk! Paperware, of all things! Unrenewable-amazone-sourced card, decorated with a gold-patterned border and intricate black-and-gold Handwriting. Except—

  It wasn’t lying on my side of the desk.

  There must be a mistake, I thought. Still yes, stupidly hoping. Even though Darragh Guo, my desk-peer, had already swooped up the card and was waving it like a flag; Handwritten, for all to see, her gold-and-black name in its unmistakeable characters, the language of origin of her grandparents’ nationstate.

  And underneath, printed in the common tongue:

  There Will Be Party Games. Bring A Gift.

  I twisted back into the crowd, and yes, longed for the veils my grandmothers had once worn to cover my shame.

  Darragh was delighted. She was one of the glowing ones, almost, yes, not quite as much as Maisie, so nobody should have been surprised that she was the first to be invited. At break-time, she demonstrated a marked shortage of moral capital by showing off to everyone. She even asked Maisie where she’d sourced the paperware. Everyone was right agog for the answer, but all Maisie said was that it was a secret. She said it in such a kind way though. So Maisie, to say things kindly that in anyone else’s mouth would yes, they would, sound mean and spiteful.

  Every day that week a new invitation appeared. Niamh Tedjai, Ashwin O’Reilly, Calypso Roche and on Fryday, two. Kanye Ai and Kanye Robinson-of-the-Peter-Robinsons. They got theirs together because they were both Kanye’s, I supposed.

  The second week passed. The third. Day after day I went into our beautiful school, hoping. Day after day I went home disappointed. Night after night I prayed, not just to blessed capital but, faith forgive me, other entities, even, yes, yes, I confess, the god-not-named of my father’s forgotten ancestors, the expropriated, altered beyond all recognition deity that the scattered bottom-feeder descendants of the so-called Righteous still deludedly claim as theirs.

  Soon Maisie’s invitations were landing on the desks of children who glowed far less, then on those whose glow was barely perceptible. My anxiety accumulated. My Mind’s I went into overdrive. What if I wasn’t picked at all? Only seven of us were without an invitation by then and, yes, yes, we were the ones who had no glow at all.

  It’s important for later, little one, that you understand. We’re all going to have to live with each other for a very long time, so you must realise that no, not I, that Maisie never acted out of hush, it’s fine, spite. This procedure with the invitations, one at a time, enough for almost every corpocitizen in the class, but not all, was just a, yes, game for her. One of her yes, no, yes, her Party Games, but in advance. It didn’t change how she behaved towards any of us during those four weeks. She was still the same kind, clever, friendly Maisie.

  But I had changed, completely. I couldn’t concentrate on anything except coming in to school and finding one of those precious invitations on my desk. I, yes, obsessed. Everything else in the world became a blur. The fresh green grass, the trees, the blue sky, so soft compared to the sky in the Other Part where we’d come from, this fertile landmass oozing with capital old and new, so miraculously rescued from Outragesterity by the technocrats, had become as a nutshell to me. My parents had hinted we would each get personal smarts for winterfestival, but even the promise of a personalised Glass or smartsong felt hollow. All I w
anted was that invitation. It grew in my Mind’s I and my cursed overproduction of the fantasymone fed it until it was all I saw. The more real invitations landed on other children’s desks, the clearer and bigger my magined one grew, until it blanked out everything else.

  I knew, yes, somewhere, that I was not the only one who was anxious. I dared not glance at those others who had not been invited. I could feel their no, yes, loserstatus projecting out of them with such dangerous intensity it could almost be touched. What if I were to lock eyes with one of them and instead of my magined invitation, brand my Mind’s I with their yes, it’s nasty, but, untouchable image? Would the desperation we shared snake between us, binding us into an unholy whole? Or worse, would that other child’s lack depart them entirely and transfer onto me, leaving me its sole repository? And what if someone else saw? We were all familiar, as you must be, little one, with the Michelson-Morley experiments on light: the act of observation changing what is observed. If an invited child were to pass me and the other, yes, loser in that moment, see our eyes solder in mutual need, would our combined worthlessness then become magnified, and – oh, shame – captured through the shutter of, say, the invited one’s blink, burn into the code of our cells, altering us forever? No. Head down was the only possible route. Besides, it was not just us, no, yes, losers who were worrying. I would often catch the invited ones from the corner of my I, huddling and whispering face-to-face verbal in the toilets at break-time. From time to time when I had the opportunity to plug in, I would even yes, low, lurk on the intercloud, stalking their eye-ems and posts as they fretted about Maisie and the party and the gift they had to bring. I was familiar with their qualms: how Maisie was the kind of girl who was impossible to buy for, how you couldn’t give her knick-knacks or little jewelleries or games or kindlebooks because she had everything; how everything she didn’t have you didn’t dare get her because she was so unique, it would probably be wrong; how, if you got her something new, she’d think it too flashy, something too old, you were mean. Yet I was so obsessed with my own need that the realisation of these others’ agonies only made me even more yes, yes, jealous instead of comforting me.

  Even my parents noticed something was Up. Here, said my father, offering me his new smartsong. Have a look at some kittens getting stuck in baskets. That will cheer you up. Oh, by the way, he said. Don’t use the capture app yet. It’s not quite ready.

  Thanks, I said, plugging in. Too late, I remembered I should have asked him for his password. But he’d already forgotten I was there, and was talking instead to my oldest sister about the biochem degree she was thinking of asking Shell® to sponsor her for. So I went ahead, hearing again the plaintive startupwail as I keyed in his code. A catmeeme was flashing at the bottom of the screen, beside an icon for what must have been my father’s unready app, an oldschool plate camera on three sticks. This I ignored. What use was it to me? The only thing I wanted to capture was an invitation from Maisie. I clicked the catmeeme. When, finally, hours later, I looked up from the kittens getting stuck in baskets, which had cheered me up somewhat, my father was gone. Out on another face-to-face with the right people, my sister said. But it couldn’t have been that, for he hadn’t asked me to give him back his device, and he never met those right people without his smarts.

  Week four. Moonday. Jennie Ward arrived in to find an invitation on her desk. That was a shock, because Jennie always smelt of, yes, wee, poor girl, couldn’t help it. Chooseday, Xiaolu Ní Bhaoill; Whensday, Tomasz Llewellyn. Now there were only four children left: me and three others, including a boy whose name I can’t remember now, faiths forgive me, the one, yes, yes, Denis, with the boils. On Thirstday Denis got his invitation. That afternoon I stayed late after school. I didn’t want to go to the gate and see Maisie waving from the Guzzler and know, yes, know, that her smile wasn’t for me.

  I spent another long night on my father’s smartsong watching kittens in baskets, trying to override the stupid picture of that invitation in my Mind’s I. But my magenation was a stubborn thing. It refused to be overrid. Even the kittens seemed, yes, silly, contaminated by it, squirming up against the screen as if wanting out of their Glass walls. I couldn’t see what they were so upset about. At least they were part of a Thing that had value: their baskets, and the act of getting stuck in them.

  In me, a gap of be-longing so deep I thought I might, hah, yes, drown in it.

  The next morning, I walked into school prepared for the worst. For Samya O’Brien, wide as she was long, to be standing at the top of the class with an invitation clasped in her hand. But she wasn’t.

  There it was, on my desk, just like the picture in my Mind’s I. So like it, in fact, that for a moment I wondered if – heretical thought – the power of my I had manipulated reality, turned magenation into fact. Yet this realLife invitation was far, far better than the one in my Mind. The card so much whiter, the writing so much blacker and golder. In the centre, my name, Handwritten in the tongue of our Other Part. And underneath that the instruction: Party Game, Bring Gift. I was so proud. I didn’t notice the other children, what they were saying about me, or not. And that afternoon, when I stood at the gates and saw Maisie waving from the back of Mum’s Guzzler, I knew, yes, knew, her smile was for me.

  I had been so caught up in my fears and hopes that it was not until I was on my way home, blithely kicking at dried leaves, that I remembered the gift. I stopped, feeling the familiar thorns of anxiety twist again in my gut. Ideas began flashing through my magenation, one after the next, but none was right. The know-ware I had always been so yes, quietly confident of was firing missiles into my awareness, each scrambling into corruption as soon as I’d thought it. My Mind’s I was bursting with dross. Then an odd, three-legged shape flickered at the back of my—

  Ah, yes.

  And then, little one, I realised what would be my gift.

  My father wouldn’t miss it. He hadn’t asked for it back since I started playing with the kittens. It was only a beta, he’d said once, something he had been roadtesting on the hush-hush for the right people. And it was ideal. It resembled the sort of device Maisie admired; new, but not too new, with something indefinably Vintage about it, just like Maisie herself: Dated, but impossible to say how.

  This was not stealing. This was an act of virtue: ethical expropriation. No wonder those kittens had looked sad, with my gloomy mug moping down on them. How joyfully they would return to getting stuck in their baskets under Maisie’s glorious witness!

  In that moment no, I’m not lying, I had completely forgot my father’s idle comment about the capture app that was not quite ready.

  As soon as my no, not Mum, mother got home, I tried to tell her about the party. She didn’t pay much attention, too busy making dinner and listening to everybody else. She didn’t take in the invitation when I showed it to her, or notice the lovely gold letters, carefully handwritten in her tongue of origin. She just asked my oldest sister to sort me out something to wear and get me there safely. Then my little brother came in yelling that he’d bashed his knee playing soccer, and it all got so busy that my head began to ache, so I slipped into my room and plugged in and watched the kittens getting stuck in the baskets one last time, my face floating over theirs, until I fell asleep.

  I slept like a blog, little one, dreamt of nothing. I haven’t slept like that, or, yes, at all in decades. But don’t worry; it’s no, it’s not, it’s really not as bad as people make out, to live without sleep.

  Next morning my oldest sister went out to the moralshops bright and early and found a white dress, which she bought in exchange for a little bit of capital she had accumulated since coming Here. She cut it into a skirt and added a red belt made from one of my father’s ties. My oldest brother lent me his Abramovic United jersey for a touch of streetcool and my younger brother polished my shoes till they were just as no, okay, nearly as gleaming as Maisie’s. My middle brother ironed my hair flat and my younger sister put it in two plaits, tied with red ribbon to ma
tch my belt.

  Come, said my mother, bending over the sock drawer. My stomach clenched, faith forgives me, because I knew what she was doing. She straightened up and handed me the socks. Now, she said. You will look quite the Muddleuro lady.

  I didn’t glance at my sisters. I knew what they were thinking. Back then, in this country, little one, nothing said, yes, okay, Other Parts quite as loudly as Icis-White socks. Had my father been there, he could have explained it to my mother: you cannot steal the heraldry of blessed capital, you cannot borrow it, nor can you buy it. You have to be gifted it, and only capital’s appointed hand, unseen and mysterious, chooses who to gift and who to overlook.

  But my mother was a simple person – or had become such by then – her wits dulled by too many zero-hour-tracts and the pressure of labouring forth a right horde. So she watched proudly, the yes, foolish woman, as I pulled on the yes, hated badge of my Otherness.

  A moment later she’d forgotten I was even there, but then it was too late. My sister had me by the hand and was dragging me out onto the road.

  We lived in a better part of the city than the drabs, but Maisie lived in the best. Trees, trees, trees. Quiet roads, lovingly tended gardens. Guzzlers, sometimes two at a time, ported outside each gate. Maisie’s house was, yes, enormous. It was separate from those each side, and when I saw it, ah, I realised why the first sight of the new school had made my heart sing. Because it was merely a smaller version of Maisie’s house: a gingerbread cottage modelled on a gingerbread palace.

  When I went in, I expected, I know, silly, there’d be a fanfare, like a fairy-tale Movie, and Maisie’s Mum would say my name and everyone would turn and applaud. But there were so many other children milling around, and presents blocking up the hallway, that nobody even saw me arrive. Maisie threw me a smile, yes, she did – but then she went back to talking to some children I didn’t recognise, who weren’t from our school. Mum was very nice to me, though, and put my present in a pile with the others.