by Amy Lilwall
‘Yes, righto.’ Susan turned to start her task of browsing, as a goose turns on water; all slow and glidey, with its neck straining in different directions. On the other side of the shop she glimpsed the lady who was being served first. A littler sat on her lap with her back to Susan. She had red hair so long that Susan couldn’t work out if it stopped where her bottom stopped or if she was sitting on more. A movement beyond the pair drew Susan’s eye to another person squatting next to the bargain bin. He watched the sales assistant and her customer, a tiny pair of purple boots swinging from his hands. The customer glanced his way and he lifted the boots to eye-level, turning them this way and that.
‘Yes, you’re right; the green would complement her hair beautifully,’ said the lady who was being served first.
‘Let me just see the colour of her eyes.’
‘They’re blue.’
‘Ah yes. Well, blue would actually be better. We have royal blue or navy in that model.’
Oh, what a nice assistant! The woman at Batch Mode would love all of this matching coat colour and eye colour together. She reached out to stroke a white coat just like Bonbon’s, but white. Allergens indeed. How could the doctor have recommended Batch Mode? It wasn’t a patch on this place. Hmmm… Maybe Jinx would prefer the white? Would she? No… No, Susan would go for the green. Green would look lovely with Jinx’s hazel eyes. And anyway, the white one would get all manky and horrible in no time.
Susan heard a clapping noise behind her and turned.
‘Now, did you see that?’ said the woman who was being served first. ‘She said “no”, she doesn’t want the blue one.’
‘What?’ said the assistant.
‘She doesn’t want the blue one. Look. Lolly, do you want the blue one?’
Lolly clapped twice.
Susan stepped closer to the clapping scene and peeped out through a gap between two mini mannequins. The shoe-customer stood in front of a little helicopter and flicked his eyes between the sales assistant and the tiny cockpit.
‘Twice means “no”. Watch again: Lolly, do you want the green one?’
Lolly clapped once.
‘You see? Once for “yes”. Twice for “no”.’
The nice assistant, who was on her knees with a navy blue coat in her hand, leaned backwards and put her hands on her hips. ‘I see,’ she said. ‘Is she from the latest batch?’
‘Yes! She is!’ said the woman, with a tone that wanted to know why this detail was important.
Yes, thought Susan, why was that detail important?
The nice assistant exhaled a smirk.
Susan started to stride towards them to tell her that she had discovered the exact same thing about Bonbon! And Bonbon was from the latest batch! This nice assistant was much more helpful than the other stupid bat-lady, and seemed to be better informed. Maybe she could give them both some more information.
But the nice assistant closed her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose with one hand. ‘I can’t handle this any more.’
Susan ducked back behind a giant display running-wheel.
‘What?’ said the woman who was being served first.
‘This is “communication”,’ said the nice assistant. ‘I now have to call someone to come and evaluate it.’ She stood up, produced a remote control that was clipped to the back of her skirt and pressed a button. ‘So if you wouldn’t mind waiting, they’ll be along in just a few minutes.’
The woman pulled her littler closer to her chest. ‘But it’s bad, isn’t it? You said you, you couldn’t handle this any more…’
‘They will take her away,’ said the nice assistant. ‘And I’m not sure if you will, erm…’ she tailed off.
The woman and the littler looked at each other.
‘You’d better… say your goodbyes now,’ she whispered, almost mouthing the last part of her sentence.
Susan’s mouth fell open. Across the shop, the shoe-customer dropped the boots back into the bargain bin.
‘But I’ll just leave,’ said the woman. ‘This never happened. This conversation never happened.’
‘You can go,’ said the nice assistant in a new, loud voice. ‘But they will find you either on your way home or at home.’
‘But I’ll have more time to, to think.’ The woman pulled her handbag onto her shoulder, and got up to leave. Striding across the floor, she opened one side of her coat and closed it again so that it covered up her littler. As she got to the doors, they were already opening. Two people walked in. The woman froze.
‘Good morning,’ sang a tall, grinny woman with glasses.
‘I’m not sure that you have the right to just take her like this.’
‘I completely understand your concern,’ said the woman, tilting her head back and pursing her lips as if she were blowing on a baby. ‘But if she is def-ec-tive,’ she over-pronounced, ‘then it is in the interest of her own race that she be withdrawn from circulation.’
‘There’s nothing wrong with her. She just claps when she wants something.’
The tall woman smiled and squeezed out a blink to her colleague who stood to her left. He nodded. ‘I’m truly sorry but clapping is classed as communication,’ he said. And he looked like he was truly sorry.
‘Littlers are designed so that developed communication is impossible. It is the one thing that officially separates them from the human race,’ explained the woman, as she took a flat, silver oblong from a pocket on the inside of her jacket.
‘But, well, that could be true of many animals!’ said the woman who was being served first. ‘Dogs bark to be let out, cats meow for food, and, and monkeys, um, monkeys communicate pretty well… I’ve heard.’
The tall woman answered without even blinking. ‘Animals have a “ceiling” when it comes to communicating with humans; we’ve learned this from sharing several millennia with them. We know that animal communication won’t progress into anything sophisticated.’ She nudged one arm of her glasses as she said ‘sophisticated’.
Her truly-sorry colleague spoke. ‘It’s too early for us to understand the communication limits of littlers. They’re just too new, especially this latest batch.’
The woman who was being served first looked at all three of them with wide, angry eyes. ‘This is not fair,’ she said. ‘You designed them to encourage “love in the home”, and, and, as soon as we start to love them you want to take them away.’
‘Oh dear – don’t get upset,’ said the tall woman. ‘Once you’ve already been cleared for adoption, the process to adopt again will be so much quicker.’
Susan felt her mouth drop open.
The colleague opened the flap of a carrier basket and held it out to the woman. He was smiling with his mouth but not with his eyes. ‘She may well be returned to you as soon as we’ve readjusted a few things.’
The woman dipped her eyebrows. ‘Really? I was told that…’ She stopped herself, for whatever reason. Maybe to protect the nice assistant. ‘Are you expecting me to just hand her over? You could be anyone, couldn’t you?’
The tall woman smiled again and retrieved her ID from her inside pocket. The truly-sorry colleague did the same. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘you would have given permission for all of this when you signed your purchase agreement.’
Susan scoffed. What utter bullshit. What a load of crap! She puffed out her cheeks and raised her eyebrows.
‘Right… So do I have to sign for you to take her away?’
‘Yes, of course.’
‘But I didn’t sign for her purchase, so are you allowed to have two different signatures on file?’
The tall woman opened her mouth to say something then closed it again. She signalled to her colleague who produced a barcode reader thingy from behind his back and held it in front of the littler, then her owner.
‘She’s right,’ he said. ‘Where is her legal owner?’
‘I am.’
‘Clearly you are not.’
‘She was bought for me. She was
a present.’
‘Well, where is the buyer?’
She straightened. ‘At home, probably.’
‘This isn’t how we do things,’ said the tall woman. ‘If she was given to you as a gift, the adoption certificate should have been amended.’
The woman who was being served first looked confused. ‘The “gift” is symbolic.’
‘Well…’ The tall woman pressed her lips together and made her eyes really big. ‘That would probably be interpreted as abandonment.’
‘I can assure you that it isn’t.’
‘It’s a Mr Walter Green,’ said the barcode-reader. He blinked up at the woman kindly. ‘We will have to search him out, I’m afraid.’
‘And in the meantime?’ she asked.
‘You can go home,’ said the tall woman, sighing. ‘I have to read you a legal blurb,’ she said, turning the silver oblong on its side and tapping one end. Glowing words started to roll out from it, disappearing as soon as they were read. ‘Please be aware that while we are finding the owner, applications for a littler passport will be refused, and any attempt to hide the littler will be interpreted as abandonment.’ The truly-sorry colleague leaned forward and the littler squealed as a stud was clipped into the top of her ear. ‘This stud will monitor her movement as well as her company. She will be expected to maintain a period of isolation. She must not mix with other littlers or other people apart from you. Any infringement of these instructions will be interpreted as wilful harm against Billbridge & Minxus. Now please,’ said the tall woman, flicking the end of the silver oblong again, ‘go and enjoy whatever time you have left together.’
The pair smiled, scrunching their shoulders upwards as they did, turned, and left.
Having stayed very calm up to this point; the woman who was being served first started to shake.
The nice assistant came over to her, raising her eyebrows as if to say, are you going to be alright?
The woman nodded back. Yes. She would be fine.
Neither of them spoke, both wary of invisible funnels twisting around the room, waiting to catch careless voices.
With her hand over the back of her littler’s head, the woman went through the sliding doors and was gone.
Susan stepped out from behind the display running-wheel, Jinx’s green coat still in her hand.
‘Gosh, I’d forgotten about you! I’m so sorry!’ said the nice assistant.
Her eyes were dim and pink. ‘Are you alright?’ Susan asked.
‘Yes, yes.’ The nice assistant sniffed and wiped her cheek with the back of her hand.
Susan dipped her head. ‘Sure?’
‘Yes.’ Sniff. ‘Sorry, it was… It’s the third time this week that this has happened…’
‘It sounds awful.’ Susan bit her lip. ‘What’s it all about? Hand clapping was all I could really make out… Is it a sign of aggression?’
The nice assistant looked stunned for a minute. ‘Yes,’ she said, then: ‘No, not aggression. Communication.’ She flicked her gaze about her. ‘If you hear about any cases like this, you really must report it.’
Susan blinked for a moment until she could say: ‘Of course.’
‘Oh you found it!’ the nice assistant seemed to try out a new, bright voice as she nodded towards the humcoat that hung from Susan’s hand. ‘Would you like to buy it, or…’
‘Yes. Yes, please. I’ll pay for this now.’
Back in the car, Susan thought about what she’d just seen. She’d told Bonbon that she mustn’t clap in Mini-Me’s, after what had happened in Batch Mode. Bonbon had obeyed until she had seen the grey coat and she held her hands up excitedly, about to smack them together. Susan had caught both of them in her own, big hand just in time.
What if that had been recorded?
‘Home,’ she said to the WayToGo.
The car started and reversed out of the bay then stopped with a jolt. Susan looked into her rear-view mirror to see the woman who was being served first standing just in front of the back of the car. ‘Park,’ she said to the WayToGo, before waiting for the engine to stop and getting out of the car.
‘I’m so sorry, are you alright?’
‘Yes,’ said the woman. ‘Well, no, but… That’s another story.’
‘I know,’ said Susan. ‘I was in the shop. I heard everything.’
‘Oh,’ said the woman. They shared a dancey-eyed, twitchy-mouth look; like two teenagers, desperate to kiss each other. ‘I had been hiding over there,’ the woman almost laughed, pointing to a dark corner of the car park. ‘I was waiting for them to go.’
Susan glanced around her. ‘Have they gone?’
‘Yes. I watched them drive away.’
The little auburn head poked up between the buttons of her coat, the stud glinting from her ear. She smiled at Susan. Susan was stunned for a moment without knowing why. She smiled back. ‘She’s beautiful.’
‘Yes.’ The woman looked down at her. ‘She’s all I have now. Do you have one?’
‘I have two, actually,’ beaming.
‘Two?’ The woman gazed up to her right and appeared to be counting to two.
Footsteps fell onto the concrete and they both turned. The shoe-customer had just come out of the shop, a bag swinging from his wrist. Ah, thought Susan, he had bought them after all. The shoe-customer looked over and changed the direction of his feet so that he was walking towards them. ‘Hello.’ He stopped next to them but his feet continued to shift his weight from one foot to the other. ‘I was in the shop, I saw everything,’ he said to the woman. ‘And you were there too, weren’t you?’
Susan made a serious face. ‘Yes, I was.’
He glanced at their wrists then checked behind him. ‘May I bleep you something?’
The woman who was being served first looked at Susan. ‘Yes, alright,’ said Susan, holding out her wrist. They bleeped their arms together.
‘Alright then,’ said the woman who was being served first. She bleeped her wrist against his.
‘Do think about it,’ he said, nodding towards the glowing patch on Susan’s skin. ‘Bye-bye for now,’ walking away.
Getting back into the car, she said ‘home’ again to the WayToGo, then ‘lock doors’. As the car pulled away for the second time, Susan read the message on her wrist. ‘Monday 19 October 2116 LOG Meeting,’ she said out loud. LOG? Scrolling down she found a name, an address, a time and, finally, a logo that read Littlers’ Owners Group. Ah right! That would be worth going to, but… that was tonight. Could she make it? She thought of twenty women sitting in a circle on high-backed chairs in a flowery living room. No, actually, the shoe-customer really didn’t look like he would fit that scene. Although it was funny that the woman who was being served first looked exactly the type. Ha! There was something about her littler, was it her eyes? They went all sparkly when she smiled – oh, that was it! Her smile. Jinx and Bonbon had never smiled, ever. It was just too, well, human. But… maybe they had the capacity to smile. Yesterday, she was sure that they had laughed…
Monday 19 October 2116 LOG Meeting, she read again. Then pulled her coat around her and watched the road.
It was a little bit rainy today. Not too bad but… She had been fed up with standing outside anyway and now that it was raining… In fact, she was fed up in general today. Oh well, never mind. At least she could see the garden from the dining room. She would be able to see if he was coming or not.
She hadn’t seen him since he’d run off. Maybe today, if she could, she would go to his house. Her chest felt funny as she thought about seeing his big he-one again.
Jinx had been the first to get up that morning. It was still dark outside when she had come into the dining room to look out of the window. Her first thought was that Blankey had come to their garden, and was sleeping in front of the dining-room doors. She was so sure that Blankey would be there that when she got to the dining room and couldn’t see her, she had been disappointed. Soon she was thinking about Chips and, soon after that, she realized
she was waiting for him.
She heard the big He-one get up. Then she heard the front door open and close. Then she heard Bonbon kick her bowl. Then the big She-one got up to feed Bonbon, making all these ooo and ahhh sounds at her, then the She-one went upstairs and Jinx could hear Bonbon making crunching noises as she ate her flakes.
She looked towards the corner of the garden where the entrance to the tunnel was, hoping to see a flap of humcoat reappear just as it had disappeared yesterday.
‘Hello.’ Bonbon came up to Jinx with crumbs trapped in her humcoat.
‘You’ve got crumbs on your coat,’ said Jinx.
‘Oh, have I?’ Bonbon looked down, picking out the crumbs and putting them into her mouth.
Jinx watched. She really didn’t know if it was a good thing or a bad thing, whatever had happened to Bonbon. It was funny how she had always complained that Bonbon had been too nasty, and now all this doing as she was told and being nice and, and listening to Jinx was just, well, not as nice as she thought it would be.
Bonbon sat down in the middle of her coat, looking like an upside-down mushroom. ‘You know it’s feather day, don’t you?’
‘Is it?’ Jinx turned her whole body away from the window to face Bonbon. ‘Is it really?’
‘Why are you excited?’
‘Are you going to make me search for feathers, Bonbon? Do we have to start now?’
‘Well…’ Bonbon considered this while looking at the window. ‘It might be a good idea. What do you think?’
Jinx screwed up her face. It was no good. Bonbon just wasn’t the same, she just wasn’t the same. ‘Bonbon—’ Jinx began.
‘I’ve got—’ said Bonbon at the same time.
They stared at each other for a while.
‘I’ve got a nice surprise for you!’ said Bonbon.
‘Ooo! What is it?’
‘The big She-one just told me that she’s going to get a humcoat for you today, just like mine!’
Jinx stood up and stared at the wall behind Bonbon as the inside of her head started snowing and she was twirling through the snow in Bonbon’s humcoat. No! Not Bonbon’s humcoat; her very own! She looked at Bonbon’s coat and reached down to stroke it. ‘Just like yours,’ she said.