Angry, Wren stood up. She was shorter than Lark but she was strong. ‘I’m not selfish. I’m going to tell Miss Margaret on you.’
I flinched slightly at how juvenile she was being, and I was about to tell her to grow up when Lark crossed her arms and told her to go ahead, see if she’d care. I watched as Wren ran up towards our rooms, the sound of her crying high-pitched in the quiet, and I looked across at Lark, whose eyes were glassy with tears. I was surprised at how upset she had become.
‘It’s not fair,’ she told me. ‘We have all this and so many people have nothing. They think we forget what it was like at home, what it’s like out there …’
The truth was, I had forgotten. But I didn’t tell her that. ‘It’s not like there’s anything we can do about it,’ I said.
In the distance Miss Margaret was walking towards us with Ivy and Wren on either side of her. She had brought a small picnic of treats, and she sat on the grass, opening up the basket. Her eyes were kind and her voice soft as she told us how important it was that we care for each other.
‘You are extraordinarily fortunate,’ she said. ‘The world is such that there will always be a divide between those who have and those who don’t. But it saddens me to see you turning on each other. You should delight in each other’s successes and work to assist those who are struggling.’
Lark shifted over to make room for Ivy.
‘Enjoy your time here,’ Miss Margaret said. ‘Halston is a very special place. Don’t waste it with petty disagreements.’
If we weren’t there, if we weren’t Lotto Girls, we would have had a very basic education – one that taught us the rudiments of text and data navigation, preparing us for no more than a repetition of our parents’ lives. This was our escape from where we’d come from. An escape for us and for our families if we decided to look after them.
‘Try to join in with some of the other girls,’ she urged, getting up to leave. ‘You might like it.’
We could see them, dotted in small groups across the lawns. Miss Margaret was right – we were in the same classes and ate the same meals, but we didn’t really join in with them.
We looked over at the girls closest to us. Ivy shook her head, shifting closer to Lark.
‘Let’s just stay here,’ Wren said.
‘We can play with them tomorrow,’ Lark agreed.
And so we stayed, the four Lotto Girls together.
Lark was the oldest of us, and we celebrated her tenth birthday in Miss Margaret’s room with a special dinner. She had a message from her mother and father, and she watched it over and over again, her eyes bright as she listened to them telling her how much they loved and missed her.
It was late when we left, the night air warm and still.
‘I have a plan,’ I told them, wanting to cheer Lark up.
Ivy was nervous, Wren was excited.
‘Let’s not go to bed,’ I said, making it up as I went. ‘Let’s have our own party down by the river. Now.’
‘We can’t do that,’ Lark protested. ‘We’re not allowed outside at night.’
‘No one will know,’ I promised.
I’d wanted to see the grounds at night but I’d been too scared to explore them on my own. There were no rules – it wasn’t like that – but you had a sense of what was permissible and what wasn’t. And when you’re a Lotto Girl, you are particularly careful not to confirm the assumption that you don’t know how to behave.
There was a full moon much like the one I’d seen on my first night at Halston – a gossamer spill of light, trembling and delicate, across the river, the gentle roll of the tide seeming to breathe and shift beneath the otherwise dark sky. Standing on the shoreline, the four of us looked back at the darkness of the school building. We were so little and ordinarily so well behaved. To be disobedient like this made us fizz with excitement, especially Lark.
‘It’s beautiful,’ she said.
I wanted her to love it there as much as I did. I had brought my mobie down with me, and the screen was illuminated under the night sky. I unfolded it, propped it up and switched on the transmission camera.
‘What are you doing?’ Ivy asked. ‘If anyone sees it we’ll be in trouble.’
‘Let’s go in,’ I told them, pretending to turn it off.
They were so eager to enjoy the river and the night, the air soft and warm, the she-oaks whispering in the moonlight, that they didn’t notice I’d kept it on. I made sure the framing was just how I wanted, and chose a stream that wasn’t too popular but popular enough for there to be some chance the footage would be picked up and retransmitted by people who liked it.
Wren went in first, cautiously, letting the water wash over her feet. Glancing back at us, a smile broke across her face, wide and open, her eyes laughing as she threw her hands in the air and let out a whoop of delight, sending great arcs of water into the sky, splashing us as we followed.
‘Wait,’ Lark shouted out.
Throwing her head back, she began to sing, her voice sweet and restrained, the notes floating high in the stillness.
The broadcast hit the viral networks. It may even have made it onto the sieves, shaking down into networks that appeared and went and reappeared with a speed that could never be tracked. It was Lark singing in that river – the paleness of her skin washed by moonlight, her voice perhaps more beautiful simply for its youth, but beautiful nonetheless – that would have made people watch and retransmit. It was a broadcast that people in compounds such as the one I live in now might have viewed, the cynics wondering if such a place really existed or whether it was just a fabrication from BioPerfect, the dreamers wanting only to get there despite knowing it would require an amount of data they would never have.
I saw the broadcast again the next day in Miss Margaret’s room.
‘Can I assume you are the creator?’ She raised an eyebrow.
I nodded guiltily.
She flicked to a message from the media team alerting all executives to the viral campaign using BioPerfect pastoral land. The hits were continuing to multiply.
‘They’ll have their eye on you,’ Miss Margaret said. Then, attempting to look stern, she added, ‘And so will I.’
Miss Margaret once told us we were each a unique fusion of science and art. She looked at me. ‘How do we define a good communicator? How do we define creativity? Do we need empathy? Flexibility? Openness to outside stimuli? What happens if we are too open? Will we go mad?’
Always so eager to participate and obtain her approval, I tried to answer.
She smiled. ‘You are part of a long debate around each of these issues. You are just a version of what we think it is to be creative, to be able to communicate.’
I used to see myself as an enormous switchboard, genes switched on and genes switched off in a beautiful cosmic pattern designed to create Fern Marlow. Some times I was even grander, seeing a whole cityscape spread out inside me, dancing, flickering lights in an intricate shimmer of perfection. I used to look at myself in wonder, amazed at how complicated I was, how finely nuanced my design. I used to be fascinated by myself. Now, it is as though all the lights have been turned off, the switchboard a jangle of broken wires.
It was Rani who told me what purpose Lotto children served. I was twelve then and she was almost nineteen, about to leave Halston to train as a teacher for BioPerfect. She would return to this school or perhaps be posted to a different one. She didn’t know yet.
I was given Rani’s room for my senior years. I had very few possessions, just a few clothes bought with Halston bursary funds, my mobie and the sculptures I had begun making – tiny miniatures created from leaves, sticks, blades of grass, small pastoral scenes in boxes that I produced in the woodworking shed. My latest one included the river, its flow a pattern of overlapping violet petals, each edge a small crest of a swell. They were old-fashioned works, I knew that, but I enjoyed making them. When Rani asked me if she could take one with her, I was flattered that she liked them. The sl
ight embarrassment I’d felt about how juvenile they might seem was gone in the warmth of her compliment. She’d been kind to me over the years, often encouraging me in Discussion Hour and praising the broadcasts I’d made in extension media.
‘I’ll miss Halston,’ she told me. ‘I don’t know anything else.’
Like most of the Lotto Girls, she rarely went home.
She was sitting on the edge of her bed with her casepack open on the floor in front of her. She, too, owned little.
‘Farnsworth won’t be so different,’ I told her. ‘It’s sure to be as beautiful as Halston.’
She tucked her hair behind her ears. ‘Maybe that’s why I feel so empty. Maybe I need something different.’ She looked at me. ‘It’s a strange restlessness I get, a sense that I would like to shake it all up and change it. Are you ever like that?’
I wasn’t, but then I was only at the start of senior school and still very much in love with my life at Halston.
‘I have always been told I will be a teacher,’ she said. ‘That’s what I was designed to do. It’s what I will be good at.’
‘I’m sure you could always do something else. You have so many talents.’
She shrugged. ‘I’m a Lotto Girl. They use us. Sometimes it’s just to fill a gap in the job market, sometimes they want to try out a new model. They might want to test the success of a teacher with more imagination. They finetune and shape and sculpt and then they have us – a prototype for a possible next version. They encourage our parents or bribe them. Mine were told I would be beautiful as well if they selected the menu option BioPerfect wanted.’
I looked at her. I had never considered us as anything other than lucky. ‘What if you said you didn’t want to go to Farnsworth?’
She didn’t answer me. The light through the window gave her hair a dark gloss like the evening sky at full moon.
I placed my river scene on top of her casepack. ‘Would you like this one?’ I asked her.
She smiled when she turned, picking it up in her hand and then placing it back onto her pile of neatly folded clothes. ‘At least I’m not Miss Margaret,’ she said.
I frowned, unsure of what she meant.
‘Didn’t you know? She was one of the first Lotto Girls.’
I shook my head.
‘She was designed to be a housemother. They did a lot of housemothers back then. That would be much worse than being a teacher, don’t you think? Always having to be motherly and kind. Miss Margaret is always interested in us – even when we’re vile.’
‘Maybe that’s how she wants to be,’ I said.
Rani rolled her eyes. ‘Do you really think what we want has anything to do with any of this? Miss Margaret can’t even have …’ She stopped, a faint blush tinting her olive skin.
Standing in the doorway, Miss Margaret asked if she was ready to leave. She didn’t give anything away. She just helped Rani close up her casepack and told us to say farewell.
Rani turned to me. ‘Thank you for the box,’ she said. ‘I’ll treasure it. It will remind me of here.’
I haven’t made one of those artworks since I left Halston but, without even thinking about it, I’ve found myself collecting bits of material. A scrap of foil, a feather, buttons, pieces of paper. This morning, as I sorted plastics from metals, papers from glass, biowaste from chemowaste, a small wooden frame appeared underneath a pile of decomposing vegetable matter. It would once have framed a painting, I’d supposed, and wondered who it had belonged to and why it had come to ReCorp Facility 279. Making sure that none of the supervisors were watching, I let it slip to the floor, kicking it out of sight until the end of my shift.
‘Who was in my room before me?’ I ask Chimo as we walk back to our compound.
It is some weeks after the first meal I had with him and his friends, and although I don’t eat with him every night, I am spending more and more time with him. I’m trying not to let myself get too close, but I’m failing. I know it.
He shrugs. ‘People come and go. Some I know, some I don’t.’
Sala is behind us, talking to Jiminy. I can hear her voice, soft and husky, as she weaves her way through the press of people around us, the carts, the vendors. She is laughing with him, making fun of someone they know.
Chimo glances across at me. ‘Why?’
I’m about to say that I’m a communicator and then stop myself. I smile, realising how readily I still classify myself in that way and how ridiculous it sounds; a strange idea from a world so different to this one.
‘Aha. She smiles.’ Chimo’s grin is infectious.
I punch him on the upper arm, fists held up in the way Wren used to mock box. ‘They had a chair,’ I tell him, ‘and they decorated it.’
He looks bemused. ‘So?’
‘It’s just unusual for this place.’ I wave my hand around us. ‘There’s so little beauty.’
He stops, staring at me. ‘Have you been in anyone else’s room?’
I shake my head.
‘Have you seen anything other than the facility, your own four walls and the courtyard?’
I shake my head again.
‘You might be surprised at what you discover.’
‘Maybe.’
‘Living here doesn’t preclude you from having an imagination. And I’m not talking about dumping drivel into the Wastelands. Maybe that’s where a lot of it goes.’
I glance across at him, thinking of all the words I have been tossing into the Wastelands. My story.
He looks at me. ‘Being a laydee doesn’t automatically entitle you to sole ownership of creativity.’
Around us the mediastream flickers constantly, the splash of colours reflected on his skin and T-shirt. For a moment his face is illuminated by a waterfall. PureAqua, I think, with my usual disdain for their images. They are always so dull. Behind him a dust cloud dances, flecks of dirt swirling in the grit of the evening, the only patch of sky not flooded with image and text. Then it, too, is filled, this time with a child, her hands digging in the dirt. BioPerfect? No, it’s one of their competitors – LifeCo.
I am staring above Chimo’s head and his eyes lift to follow my gaze. ‘You don’t look at all this shit, do you?’
‘It’s hard not to,’ I tell him. ‘It’s not like I can afford mediablockers.’
‘But you can train yourself,’ he replies. ‘It’s simple, really. You just focus on another person, particularly someone who seems like they’re kind of special, not only immensely artistic but also blessed with extraordinary beauty.’ He winks at me. ‘You look right at them and then you find all the rest – all that crap – just blurs into one huge swirl. Colour. Nothing more.’
I roll my eyes. ‘And what am I meant to focus on?’
He laughs, pointing at his own chest. I’m about to push him away when a woman sitting on the road in front of us begins to howl. I have seen others like her since I arrived. Shell-shocked, their faces flicker from panic to confusion to hysteria. They are the newly datawiped, who find themselves transplanted here with a whole new identity constructed for them, the data irrefutable despite their protests. They are the lost.
This is how transgressors are punished; the severity of the datawipe designed to match the severity of the crime. Sometimes it is just access to certain privileges that are removed, sometimes it is far more – a complete relocation and new identity. Deals are struck between corporations, trade discounts are given for datawipes taken. A dumping in ReCorp with some data is bad. A dumping in ReCorp with no data is akin to death, unless you learn to scrounge and trade illegally – and learn fast.
I remember being taught about prisons in Halston history lessons and thinking that we had developed a far better system of punishment. Now I’m not so sure.
My datawipe was intentional, a way of disappearing used by people who have to be gone. At least I was prepared and carried with me a promise that it was only temporary. This woman would have had no warning.
I try to ignore her. What el
se can you do? But as I step past her, she clutches at my leg, her hand hot and sweaty, her grip tight.
‘This is not who I am,’ she shouts, her eyes on my face as she pulls me down towards her. ‘You have to help. You have to explain.’ She holds up her mobie with the other hand, waving it at me. ‘They’re lies. All lies.’
I try to shake myself free.
It’s Sala who intervenes. She takes the woman by the arm so that her grip on my leg relaxes. ‘You can’t sit here,’ she tells her, helping the woman to stand. ‘You’ll get hurt. Someone will steal your mobie.’
The woman looks at her.
‘Where do you live?’ Sala asks. When she receives no answer, she takes the woman’s mobie and taps open the details. ‘Your compound is there.’ She points to the wall behind us.
Children are playing behind the gate, pushing bits of rubbish through the bars and sticking their tongues out at people on the street.
The woman doesn’t move. She holds onto Sala’s arm, her mouth open, tears streaming down her face. She must be about sixty – old for such an extreme datawipe.
‘Can you take me back?’ she whispers.
Gently, Sala wipes the tears from the woman’s face. ‘I can take you to your room,’ she says softly.
The woman shakes her head. ‘I don’t want to go there.’ She is quiet now, almost child-like.
I remember my first few months here, the confusion and fear acidic in my stomach. I’ve often cursed how little time there’d been to teach me what I needed to know, yet deep inside I know there was little that could have prepared me for ReCorp. There’d been many times when I could have wept, clutching at strangers and pleading for help. But the fear of being discovered, of betraying who I am, has kept me upright. Although, that initial period is such a blur I sometimes wonder whether I ever did, in fact, do just that.
Sala looks over at us. ‘I’ll see you soon,’ she tells Chimo.
Shooing the children away from the gate, she uses the woman’s mobie to swing it open. It probably would have opened anyway. Most of the doors and gates around here are broken, the locks pointless.
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