The Shining Wall

by Melissa Ferguson

  ‘Drying cycle commencing. Please stay on mark.’

  Heated air burst forth from the jets that had seconds earlier assaulted them with water. Alida trembled as the room got uncomfortably warm.

  ‘They’re going to cook us, Al!’

  Mum had always said the decontamination procedure was excessive and degrading and was the worst part of her melanoma treatments. Alida took deep breaths. No wonder no one rocked up here to have their babies or prenatal check-ups with the maternity android. Plus there was a rumour the android stole the babies and gave them to plastic-faces.

  ‘It’s just what they do here, little bird. Don’t be scared.’ Alida tried to keep her voice calm and hoped it would be enough to prevent Graycie launching a tantrum.

  Alida’s skin tightened in the heat. This was bloody ridiculous. Did they really think Demis were so icky and diseased they had to be scoured before they were clean enough to deserve medical care? Plastic-faces would arc up at this kind of hassle.

  The air stopped. The room, Alida and Graycie were totally dry – except for the tears squeezing out of Graycie’s eyes. The door in front of them opened.

  ‘Please move through to the changing room.’

  The changing room was lined with shelves of thin, white gowns.

  ‘Place gown over your head. Stand with arms out and legs apart until clothing has taken appropriate shape.’ A holo demonstration of a person frozen mid star jump appeared in the middle of the room.

  Alida and Graycie followed the instructions silently. The gowns moulded to their bodies and softened.

  Graycie ran her fingertips down her arm and smiled. ‘It feels slick.’

  Alida hugged her. Tantrum averted. The most random things cheered Graycie up.

  ‘Proceed through the door on your right to the waiting room. Medical personnel will be with you shortly.’

  Alida and Graycie shuffled into another room with two chairs. They didn’t sit. They stood in the middle of the room clinging to each other. A female medic poked her head out of a door labelled Procedure Room.

  ‘I’m Dr Kimani. You must be Alida, our Demi representative.’

  ‘That’s me, and this is my sister, Graycie.’

  ‘Come through. My assistant, Bryce, is setting up.’

  Alida and Graycie followed the doctor inside. The assistant was bent over a desk, fiddling with an OmniScreen. The room was bright, its surfaces white or metallic. Everything looked sharp and painful. In the middle of the room a reclining chair was surrounded by powerful lights and all sorts of instruments and equipment. No wonder the security around the hub was so tight. The gear would be worth a fortune.

  ‘That’s some decontamination procedure.’

  Dr Kimani paused and frowned. ‘Ah, right. The Demi decontamination. We come in through the truck bay, so … I’ve never had the pleasure.’

  ‘It’s pretty nasty. I thought for a minute we were being exterminated.’

  Alida felt her chin wobble. She had to pull it together and be fearless like Mum. Graycie held Alida’s hand and chewed on the cuff of her moulded white suit.

  ‘Well … LeaderCorp insists.’ The doctor narrowed her eyes. ‘Please make the Demis aware we aren’t trying to kill them. We’re here to help.’

  Alida nodded. Concentrate on the positives. That would be her angle. All she could do was warn the other Demis what was coming and offer herself as proof that they would come out the other side alive. Alida gulped. Assuming she got out alive.

  ‘Now.’ The doctor looked down at Graycie. ‘According to my information you, Alida, are Graycie’s legal guardian.’

  ‘I guess.’ She doubted there was anything legal about anything anyone did in the Demi-Settlements.

  ‘Excellent. Let’s fit Graycie first.’ The doctor tilted her head towards the male medic. ‘Bryce will do a quick scan to check her health status.’

  Bryce snapped on blue gloves and grabbed for Graycie’s hand. Alida pushed her forward, making encouraging noises. She hadn’t told Graycie the implant would be shot into her brain through the nose, or that heaps of needles would fill her body with nanites. Instead she’d told her all the health benefits and cool entertainment options.

  Alida ground her teeth together. Citizens had been getting implants in plastic-land for years. They even gave them to tiny babies. The plastic-land doctors knew what they were doing.

  Bryce pricked Graycie’s finger with a little machine. Graycie growled, snatched her hand back and sucked on her finger. The assistant frowned at the machine display screen. ‘Problem, Dr Kimani.’

  ‘Hmm?’ The doctor raised her eyebrows.

  ‘Some undefined immune deficiency.’

  ‘Well, nothing is ever straightforward out here.’ She sighed. ‘You continue with Alida and I’ll examine Graycie.’

  Something was wrong with Graycie? Well, she could’ve told them that. ‘Um … Graycie’s been taking antibiotics for an infection,’ Alida said. ‘She has a lot of infections.’

  ‘Come over here, Graycie.’ Dr Kimani led Graycie towards a door on the far side of the room.

  ‘Is everything okay?’ Alida called out as Bryce pricked her finger. He had used the words immune deficiency. She didn’t really know what that meant. All she knew was that the immune system fought diseases. If Graycie’s wasn’t working properly, that would explain heaps.

  ‘Don’t fret, we have protocols for this sort of situation,’ Dr Kimani called over her shoulder.

  ‘I’m not allowed to go with strangers,’ Graycie said.

  ‘It’s okay, Gray,’ Alida said. ‘You go with the nice doctor.’

  Bryce checked the OmniScreen. ‘Your blood test is normal, so we’ll move straight to the installation.’ He led Alida over to the treatment chair.

  ‘Maybe I should go with Graycie …’ Alida had to know what was going on.

  ‘Best we get started.’ Bryce helped Alida into the chair, tilted it all the way back and placed a shade strip over her eyes. She looked through the darkened plastic and up his nose. He didn’t have a single nostril hair. Her little finger would fit snugly.

  ‘But I should help with Graycie.’

  ‘The doctor will perform some tests on her and we’ll be able to tell you more soon. We’ve got a great number of people to get through this week, as you can imagine. So it really is best we start.’

  ‘Yep. Okay.’ The doctor would handle it. Alida had to let her do her thing. She’d know how to help Graycie. Maybe Mum should’ve brought Graycie in for tests a long time ago. Maybe there had been something they could have done to help her all along.

  Bryce wheeled over a machine and placed a thin metal helmet on her head.

  ‘Scanning now. You’ll feel a slight buzz.’

  Alida’s mind was full of wasps. She gasped. The wasps faded.

  ‘Excellent. No surprises in your brain structure.’

  An unsurprising brain had to be a positive. She’d take all the positives she could get.

  Bryce handed her a lollipop. ‘Lick this a couple of times. It’ll help you relax.’

  She took it eagerly. The lollipop tasted like the room smelt. A chemical kind of clean that coated her tongue and burnt her nostrils.

  ‘Count backwards from ten,’ Bryce said.

  ‘Ten …’ The room fuzzed and disappeared.

  CHAPTER 24

  A gigantic robotic eye, filled with smaller gleaming eyes, stared down at Alida. She tentatively reached out towards it.

  ‘You back with us?’ Bryce said.

  Alida withdrew her hand and turned her head too quickly. Her sinuses burnt and her temples pounded.

  ‘Is it done? Is it in there?’

  Bryce removed the shade strip from her eyes. ‘Yes. All done and only nine minutes unconscious. We may even meet our installation targets.’

  Zonking out while the worst was done was definitely the way to go. Tiny little red dots, where they’d injected her with nanites, covered the whole of her tight-fitting white suit.
She was very glad she’d been out for that.

  Bryce pushed Alida’s seat upright. ‘How are you feeling?’

  ‘I feel like my head’s been whacked with a hammer.’

  ‘That’s normal. You may also experience some muscle aches and lethargy as your body adjusts.’ Bryce filled a syringe from a glass vial. ‘Because you’re a LeaderCorp employee I’ll give you a painkiller and an energy booster. You’ll have to tell all the other patients to lie down until the installation flu passes.’ Bryce pinched her upper arm and jabbed her with the syringe. ‘When the implant has calibrated with your brain chemistry and made the necessary neural connections, an interface panel will appear in your vision. It’ll guide you through set-up. Feel free to experiment – there are fail-safes built in. If you have any further questions, refer to the tutorial tubes listed in the reading material you were given.’

  Bryce helped her stand. Her pain had retreated to a lingering threat. Graycie stood beside Dr Kimani at the desk. The cuffs and collar of Graycie’s white suit were dark and crinkled where she had been munching them.

  ‘I expect you’re a little woozy right now – nevertheless, we must discuss Graycie’s situation.’ Dr Kimani patted Graycie on the head. ‘Bryce, please take this little lady into the waiting room and give her the spare OmniScreen to play with.’

  Bryce hustled Graycie through the door.

  ‘Take a seat, Alida.’ The doctor pointed to a stool by her desk.

  ‘What did you find? I heard something about an immune deficiency thingy.’ Alida leaned against the edge of the stool, too anxious to sit all the way down.

  ‘That’s part of it. She has a compromised immune system. It makes her vulnerable to all sorts of infections.’

  That made sense. Graycie was regularly covered in weeping sores and crouched over the dunny bucket with a brown waterfall coming out of her.

  ‘What about all the super viruses though – how come they haven’t killed her?’

  ‘Well, for one thing, these kind of immune dysfunctions usually make individuals more susceptible to bacteria rather than viruses. It also seems she may have received extensive vaccinations, immune boosters and nanite injections in her first couple of years of life. The protection she gets from those will fade as she ages, however.’

  Alida wrinkled her nose. That made zero sense. Those treatments were expensive. ‘What the hell? How’s that possible?’

  Dr Kimani squeezed her lips together. ‘It’s apparent Graycie’s not a blood relative of yours.’

  ‘No, she’s not blood, but she’s my family.’

  ‘Your affection for Graycie’s not in question. I simply need to know how she came into your life.’

  Alida lowered herself onto the stool. Citizens were tactless jerks; they couldn’t help it. ‘Well, my mum and I found her about two years ago, naked and slurping rainwater out of a ditch. We guessed she was about two or three then.’

  ‘Do you know her origin?’

  Alida shrugged. ‘She didn’t have a wrist chip, so we asked around. No one knew her and no one claimed her.’

  Graycie had lain in their shack, with Alida sponging spew and shit off her, for days after they’d found her. Mum hadn’t fancied keeping her, but there was no authority to hand over abandoned littlies to in the Demi-Settlements. If they had turfed her out of the shack she would’ve carked it for sure.

  ‘Hmm. Graycie’s brain scan showed something … interesting.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Alida wiped her suddenly wet palms along the legs of her white suit, causing the red dots to streak her legs with pink.

  ‘She already has an implant.’

  ‘That’s … that’s not possible,’ Alida said, but the truth was she had no clue where Graycie had been or what had happened to her before they had taken her in.

  ‘Well, it’s definitely there. I did a more detailed scan and attempted interfacing – unfortunately, it’s been neglected for so long it’ll require the kind of work we aren’t equipped to provide in a hub.’

  ‘Okay. But why would she have an implant?’ It was too loopy for her to buy if someone else didn’t say it out loud.

  ‘Graycie was once a Citizen.’

  Alida let out a held breath. ‘How do you even know that?’

  ‘There’s a match for Graycie’s genome in the lapsed citizens register.’

  ‘What?’ Part of Alida had suspected it all along. The lack of a wrist chip and her warm-honey skin shade all screamed Citizen. ‘So she has a family in the city?’

  ‘Not exactly. These are confidential details – nevertheless, as you’re her guardian I’ve been authorised to inform you.’ Dr Kimani leaned towards Alida, her voice lowered. ‘Graycie’s mother committed suicide after a string of mandatory abortions for genetically flawed conceptions.’

  ‘I have no clue what that means.’ Alida stood and paced across the small room.

  ‘All her foetuses were deformed and she was forced to terminate them before birth.’

  ‘Ah.’ Harsh. Mum had always said the slick lives of the plasticfaces were pricey. They reckoned they had the better deal, but they were controlled in every way until almost zero individuality remained.

  ‘Graycie’s father was then reported as suffering from an intractable mental illness and was stripped of his citizenship. As his dependent, and with no other family, Graycie was also stripped of citizenship. Both of them would have had their implants blocked and wiped before being expelled from the city.’

  ‘Hell. So where’s her dad now?’ Would she have to hand Graycie over to her real family? The thought of life without Graycie made her feel sick. Graycie had been Alida’s from the very first second, someone to pour all her love into while Mum was busy working to keep them fed.

  ‘LeaderCorp keeps no records or tracking information on non-Citizens.’

  ‘So Graycie has no family in the city?’ Alida’s shoulders lowered. The grief of losing Graycie so soon after losing Mum would have been too much. She couldn’t even guess what would happen when she reached too much. She hadn’t been there yet.

  ‘It seems not. As it stands now, Graycie is a Demi-Citizen with a non-functional implant requiring citizen-level repair work. There’s not much else we can do for her.’

  ‘So she won’t have a functional implant?’ Here she was stressing about losing Graycie to plastic-land when the real bad news was Graycie’s shitty health situation.

  Dr Kimani shook her head. ‘I can prescribe a weekly immune booster and a course of vaccinations from the dispensary. There will be costs involved, I’m afraid.’

  Alida buried her face in her hands. She’d pinned all her hopes on Graycie getting an implant. It always circled back to Graycie’s health. It would be the thing that ruined them.

  Dr Kimani stood and clapped her hands together. ‘We’ve got a lot of work to do today. We best be getting on. Let’s get you into a uniform and get you out there.’ She put a hand on Alida’s elbow and showed her to the door.

  CHAPTER 25

  ‘What’s all this we’ve been hearing about the implants turning us into spy robots then?’ asked an old bird, her arm looped through another old bird’s arm.

  Alida blinked slowly; it wouldn’t look professional if she scoffed. ‘I’m guessing you’ve heard this from Odeene?’

  ‘Well, her and some of those Rewilders who’ve been moving in on the edges of the tent city.’

  Alida didn’t have to refer to her information pamphlet to tell the old birds exactly what she thought of Odeene and the Rewilders and their loopy ideas. And it wasn’t the first time that day she’d been asked about them. The most bullshit rumours spread the fastest.

  Alida gave them her spiel, shook their hands and continued on her way down the implant queue.

  A blue rectangle with the words Welcome to IntelliEnhance appeared floating in the air in front of her. She drew back and blinked rapidly.

  ‘Seen a ghost, girlie?’ someone called out.

  Alida tried to smack t
he panel, but it wasn’t really in the air at all. It was a trick inside her brain. Slick.

  The words on the panel changed and an androgynous voice in her mind read them to her. Welcome to IntelliEnhance. For audio instructions please say AUDIO. For text instructions please say TEXT.

  It was too creepy having a stranger’s voice inside her head, so she said, ‘Text.’

  To launch your IntelliEnhance experience please say BEGIN. To exit IntelliEnhance at any time simply say EXIT. To restart IntelliEnhance say HELLO, INTELLIENHANCE.

  Alida traipsed back up to the Medi-procedure gate, squinting through the semi-transparent blue panel.

  ‘Everything all right?’ Shuqba asked.

  ‘My implant came online. Can I take a second to set it up?’

  ‘Sure. You’re entitled to an hour break anyway.’ Shuqba waved a guy and his young son through the gate. ‘Go into the tearoom and help yourself to some refreshments.’

  ‘Cheers.’

  Alida stepped into the cool of the hub. She pulled off the dusty sunhood of her uniform and scanned her wrist at the tearoom door. It unlocked with a satisfying beep.

  The tearoom was as cold and clinical as the rest of the hub. An aluminium bowl filled with shiny red apples sat on top of a glass table. Vending machines lined the walls. On a bench was something called a CyberGourmet. A cute little cleaning bot waited eagerly in a corner for a mess to clean up.

  She’d play with the bot another day. Right then she had to play with her IntelliEnhance.

  ‘Welcome to LeaderCorp Hub tearoom. How can I help you?’ the Building Intelligence System said.

  ‘Um … can you tell me when an hour is up?’

  ‘As you wish. I will alert you in exactly one hour from now. Would you like anything to eat or drink?’

  Alida’s stomach grumbled and her throat was dry from chatting to Demis. This was her only break all day and grub was on the house while she was an employee. As eager as she was to get stuck in to setting up her implant, she couldn’t pass up a chance to munch.

  ‘What can I have?’