The Feed

by Nick Clark Windo

  He pulls wood into a mound. Takes the damp matchbox, wastes three matches whose like will never be made again and whose heads crumble without a spark. He lowers the fourth, sputteringly lit, to the kindling. Smoke curls, lazing heavily into the air. He feeds it until it’s glowing hot, until the wood is translucent, its edges charring to white. He holds a pan above the heat and slowly sears the fish, first on one side, then the other. Simple. The sound of its sizzling seeps into the other night sounds of the birds and the breeze and the sparks from the fire. Behind him rise the tooth-shaped ridges of rock, silhouetted against the star-pricked sky, a day’s chase away to the west.

  Tom eats with his fingers and watches the stars. He sees a hundred of them and then, dizzyingly, a thousand more. The world around him is simultaneously hit by their light and blindingly dark. The fish is delicious, but something about the caustic taste of seared scales teases at the loose memories in his mind. The scrape of cutlery on a plate, and anger. The fire pops and the trees rustle. His tent is pitched behind him. He takes the pan from the fire with half the fish’s white flesh and charred scales still there and waits for his eyes to grow accustomed to the light. Once he can see, he trudges up the verge and onto the track: a country lane that has become covered with soil, blown on the wind and carried on the hooves of animals. The grasses down the center stretch have grown thigh-high. His boots fall heavily and his breathing fills the silence of the night. His eyes search the darkness, and in the end—there: he sees an unnatural shape, too angular. He scuds the frying pan along the road.

  “There’s some food,” he calls. “If you want it.”

  Food, and the fish, and fear, and the sound of water running. The pool beside his tent. They spark off memories, facets of his past, as sleep resolutely will not come. He forces his eyes closed, a T-shirt wrapped around his face. His heart pumps and a dark memory emerges like oil.

  It had taken them years to negotiate contact. There would be no talk of the business, nothing about their past, and they’d learned to avoid their parents. Those things had been too confused, Tom’s and Ben’s different interpretations of history coiled like electricity wires: they were too sensitive and, pressed, the conversations would spark into senseless anger and defensiveness. Neither had been entirely clear on the cause of the difficulties in their relationship, what precisely had brought this all to pass, but there it was. All they had to work with were the consequences.

  “So have you read any good books?” Tom had asked. In the silence, troubled only by the ornate water feature beside them, Ben had given him a look and he’d known that even this had touched on something. “I didn’t—”

  “It’s not our fault. Fuck, Tom.”

  Tom opened his hands up. “I didn’t even mean it like that!”

  Just two weeks previously, the final printers had closed. Books had been obsolete for years, but the event had been symbolic. “If there’s no market for something,” Ben had persisted. “Their business sense was . . .” He shot himself in the head.

  Tom had nodded and taken a drink of water. He was trying to go slow on the wine. “I didn’t mean it like that, Ben, I was just making conversation. Been watching any good ents?”

  “The old stuff mainly. Other Kinds of Furies. And they’ve remade A Mirror for Monsters.”

  So they had reminisced about old ents and they had the conversation stabilized by the time the food arrived. It was an international cuisine: a fusion of everything, from everywhere, which was the way the world had gone. Tom’s main course, a dissection and repositioning of scale-seared fish with tiny vegetables and an artistic splatter of jus, had prompted him to ask, “It’s not a fusion if it’s just the norm, right?” and then they had talked superficially about the Water Wars and the instabilities of the European Bloc. How the Feed had finally been allowed into China and how its government was now suspected of eavesdropping on people’s very thoughts. All they discussed had been surface, easy padding to keep the conversation flowing, until Ben had mentioned as he’d inspected his food that he’d been on Kate’s pool.

  “What would you sacrifice . . . to make the shortages stop? It’s a difficult balance, progress,” he had said, and something in his tone had made Tom reach for the wine. Ben finished his glass of water, obviously gauging his brother, flicked a finger at the waiter and twirled it downward for more. “And Dad doesn’t mind that the Feed was one of the options to sacrifice, but he hopes she’s noticed that every time she puts it in one of her little polls, it doesn’t get voted for once. Customers love it. So the question is, why does she keep putting it there?”

  Tom had thumbed the wine list. This was definitely out of the agreed parameters, and he had felt himself flush. He and Kate were getting married in a month and it was still unclear whether his family would come. It was more unclear whether he actually wanted them to, though Kate was outraged on his behalf. For him; she was angry for him, unable to understand how his family worked, and he was hardly better placed to enlighten her. If Tom had been on now he would have glanded some melatonin, but that had been another of their rules: they’d go slow when they were together. It helped them keep control.

  The water feature tinkled away. Tom could taste his fish again, acrid now. Ben eventually stopped staring at him, but Tom’s flush wouldn’t subside. Ben’s words agitated his mind. He was trying to remember them precisely (difficult without the Feed) to report them fairly to Kate. He stopped. Maybe that was why Ben had agreed they go slow—or in fact had he first suggested it? No record of what was said. No proof. His heartbeat had quickened and there had been nothing he could do.

  “Tell me about SaveYou then, Ben,” he had said, his heavy-pounding chest barely allowing his words more weight than breath.

  “You know we don’t talk about the business, Tom. You chose to opt out of that.”

  “Let’s talk about ethics then, because from what I understand, you’re now in the business of supplanting God.”

  “Tom—”

  Too late. Tom’s pulse had already created a rhythm of its own. “I’m speaking as a customer, Ben, and this SaveYou service—which, by the way, I notice I’ve been upgraded to automatically—”

  “You have the Premium Service, free of charge. People would—”

  “Oh, thanks, Ben, but you’ve digitized heaven here, haven’t you? Let’s take the good or the bad out of the equation for now, because I don’t think we’ll see straight on that; let’s even ignore the morality of what it means for people to have their brain states stored because ditto. What’s ethically dubious, Ben, is that you’re not giving people a choice. Their minds are uploaded, saved, as you put it, and whether that’s wonderful or not, they’ve got no choice about it. This technology is changing us as a race, but we, humanity, are not in any position to decide.”

  “People choose to buy the Feed. It’s democracy on its feet.”

  “But what gives you the right?”

  Ben had stared at him like he’d gone insane. Then: “You don’t even know the half of it.” He’d smiled and Tom had recognized it. He’d known that smile since he’d been a child. Whatever it was that had bound Ben to his father more closely than him, this smile had always shown it. They had the same smile, and Ben had known it. It was his trump sign that Tom would stay the outsider.

  “SaveYou is merely a by-product, Tom. And one,” Ben stated, pointing, “that consumers have asked us for. But it’s not the main goal. We’re investigating travel. I won’t tax you with the unethical details, but by downloading someone’s mind state and uploading it somewhere else, travel becomes near instantaneous. Even interstellar distances: we’ll be able to travel them on the fastest-moving wave. All you need is a host to catch you.”

  “A . . . ?”

  “A synth. You should see them, Tom.” It had been clear that Ben was goading him and probably equally clear that it was working. They had left the confines of their agreed space and were circling each other in the wilds. Come on then. Strike first. Maneuvering for
the moral high ground. “A synthetic being. They look really nearly human. Quite sexy, some of them.”

  “Enough,” Tom said.

  “Would Kate like one done of her?”

  “Fuck you, Ben.”

  “It wasn’t me who started this, Tom.”

  Tom had been seething. There was so much that was out of his control, but that he felt he was responsible to influence. Even though he’d run away. Was training to be a psychotherapist. How could he and his brother have the same genes but be so far apart, have such differing opinions that combusted when put together? Like matter and antimatter, only a galaxy’s distance could keep them from exploding.

  “I don’t think we should do this anymore.”

  Sleep does not come; his body won’t allow it. Every time he falls, a bubble of the past bursts in his mind and his brain boosts on to solve things. Ben. The Collapse. Kate and Bea flicker through his thoughts with a rapidity that feels familiar. It almost feels like the comforting sensation of the Feed. But he has no control over these images, these bursts of memory; they simply come and go. And what can even be solved here? He has lost everything, and all his brain’s kick-start panic does is cost him energy and sleep. The tinned beef, the bath, screaming on the cliff. At the Pharmacist’s, where suspicious fear had infected him. Her silences hadn’t been the same. Holding her naked there. Claire’s camp, the trails of sky debris on the plain; when had he actually known?

  He listens to the water flowing in its tiny brook outside the tent, the high, sparkly tinkle of the ripples clinking pebbles. He remembers the sensations of Kate’s pool: “What Would You Sacrifice?” Anything, he realizes suddenly, if it would work. If he could go back in time to change what had happened, he would sacrifice anything now. Killing Sylene when she had first arrived, yes, of course, but when had that been? And Kate would have been dead then anyway. So . . . leaving the camp sooner, as Kate had wanted to. But would that have stopped Sylene? The Pharmacist had said they had no choice who they inhabited, that it was purely random chance. Bea would be safe if they’d left the camp sooner, that is undeniably true. But Kate? Maybe. Or not. It’s impossible to know.

  Possible histories, impossible to predict. But what would he have had to do to stop this from coming to pass? When the assassinations first began—could he have helped his father? No, of course not. He’d been uninvolved in the business too long. He hadn’t ever been actively involved; he had never been given that choice. Even with his birth, his involvement had been requisitioned: he had been the first person to be enabled in ute purely because of who he was. “The Experiment,” as his father’s friends had called him. The deeper wound was that his mother had allowed it. She must have condoned the bone-deep tests he’d undergone as a child. “Testing for what?” he’d asked, but in a world replete with communication, his father’s greatest trick was silence. Secrecy. Revealing the fait accompli.

  So maybe that’s what he would change: he and Ben wouldn’t have been so abandoned. Maybe they would even have liked each other if they hadn’t been competitors; maybe they’d have been a team. And from there—how would the future have been different? If he had run the Feed? He would have put a pace on technology. He would not have let it evolve faster than their morals could keep up. And in the tent, Tom’s heart thumps him back to reality as stark loss seeps through his thoughts again. He can fantasize about changing the past all he likes, but it won’t change the future and what has come to pass; it can’t bring Kate back.

  By the time he has washed and trekked up the lane again, the other tent has gone. All that remains are a dew-free square of flattened grass where it had been and his pan with the uneaten fish.

  Tom has two ways to run—the way they came or the way they were going—and he chooses the latter, the lane gnarly with plants. Fallen branches have crumbled to a layer of mulch that makes him skid and slide. When he hasn’t found her soon, he searches wildly, glimpsing snatches of the bushes as he trips, searching for any place she could hide. His chest is burning and his eyes streaming when he eventually sees her, a distant figure on the road. He can barely shout for breathing.

  “Stay where you are!” Sylene yells as soon as she hears him. He approaches, nonetheless, and then stops. There is nothing between them but silence and sunlight, clear on the crisp morning air. His breath courses out in clouds and the sweat on his body chills instantly. Sylene has her rucksack on, the straps clasped around her stomach.

  “Where are you going?” Tom calls.

  She shrugs, an exaggerated gesture to be seen this far away.

  “Can I come closer?”

  When no answer comes, he starts to walk. Sylene stays silent, her lips pursed and her pale cheeks flushed until: “That’s enough!” she shouts.

  “Listen. I’m not going to hurt you.”

  “You tried to kill me.”

  “I was in shock,” he says. “I didn’t . . . That was before I . . . You’re carrying my baby!”

  Sylene turns, her hands on her shoulder straps, and starts marching on.

  “Please, wait!”

  “Don’t follow me!” Sylene shouts without turning back. But he keeps a constant distance between them, walking faster than is comfortable to keep up with her quick pace.

  “Can we talk about this? Will you please stop? Sylene!”

  She stops. Even from this distance, Tom sees her shoulders heave. He slows and waits. After a while, she part-turns, one arm out in a shrug. “I didn’t ask for this, Tom. I didn’t choose this. I don’t know what to do.”

  “Well . . . thanks for stopping. That’s a start.”

  A flock of birds disperses from a bush and skims to sit in a tree, their heads cocking, their tails bobbing. They chirrup. One skits back to the bush, and then the others follow, a flock again.

  “Is that it?” Sylene asks impatiently.

  “I . . .” he starts. “What are we going to do? Sylene? Is that what you said you’re called?”

  “I’m going to find people who aren’t going to kill me.”

  “I’m not going to kill you.”

  “Actions speak louder than words.”

  “I can’t let you go. You’re carrying my child.”

  “Well, we’ve got a problem then, because I don’t trust you.”

  She stands in the light falling between the trees, one leg bent. Her jacket is open, her stomach revealed.

  “Are you sure you’re pregnant? Have you, you know . . . ?”

  “I know how it feels, Tom. Are you going to propose something? I’m getting cold.”

  “Wait,” Tom urges. He balls a fist and pats it into his palm; watches her; clocks the gesture; stops it. “Will you wait for me if I get the things, then? And then we’ll continue together?”

  “Not for long.”

  “Promise?”

  “Yes.”

  “Because,” he says, moving on his feet, “I don’t know how well you know how to survive, or what you can and cannot eat. All I know is that if we separate, we’ll never find each other again. Okay, Sylene? A little time, a little patience . . .”

  Sylene shakes her head. “Tom, you tried to kill me.”

  “I was scared! I’m not going to— How can I now? Please, listen, don’t . . . Let’s just talk. All right? I don’t know why you’re here, I don’t know what you want, but I’ll help you. Whatever it is, whyever you’ve come and invaded people’s brains, I’ll help you. Just, please . . .”

  Sylene watches him steadily. Then something seems to thaw and she nods.

  “Okay. Great! Twenty minutes and I’ll be back. I’ll run!” He heads back down the road, stops, turns back, and shouts: “You’ll stay?”

  “Yes,” she calls, weary-sounding again.

  Tom nods, turns, and runs again, glancing back occasionally to see her, smaller and smaller each time. Soon the curve of the track and the trees hide her, and he jumps into the undergrowth and runs back, parallel to the path, as fast as the foliage will allow. He peers between the trunks.
She is still there, in the road where he left her, looking at the sky, her hands on her lower back. After a while, she sits on her rucksack. Tom watches her as she kicks the roots growing over the road. Her hand strokes her stomach and Tom can see it now, the tautness of the thing. The growth.

  The sweat on his skin has cooled and crystallized. Sylene looks back up and sighs with the waiting; she won’t stay for long. He emerges from the foliage and coughs. She looks up, startled, and then her face hardens.

  “Happy?” she says. “Twenty minutes. From now.”

  By the time he reaches his tent, his shirt is sodden and his heart’s every thump makes him dizzy. He throws the tent down, rolls it, forces it into his pack. Thrusting his stuff into his rucksack, something solidifies around his stomach and the bile rises in his throat, but he breathes it down and starts running again, back down the path.

  “So we’ve got to solve this,” Tom tells her as he walks. Sylene in Kate’s body. Close enough to touch yet infinitely far away. He can never be close to Kate again. She’s no longer there. They’ve gone in silence for hours. “We mustn’t get this wrong.”

  “And how are we going to do that?”

  “Sylene, this will be fine. We’ll work it out. Listen, just give me time—”

  “To let me go to sleep so you can kill me?”

  “No! To get used to this, to—”

  “Tom, this isn’t going to work. I wanted to help you find Bea, I really did, but now, I—don’t—trust—you.”

  Tom grabs her arms to plead with her, but Sylene mistakes the gesture, wrestles him and tries to pull away. She kicks his knee and he falls, cracking his elbow as he lands, and the weight of his rucksack pushes his face into the earth, stunning him, jarring his teeth. “I’m not . . . I didn’t!” he cries, spitting soil from his mouth.

  “Don’t come near me . . .” Sylene’s voice quivers as she backs away.