Everything Belongs to the Future

by Laurie Penny

  That was the subject of their first conversations over strong black coffee in the canteen. Then they started to talk, shyly, about the books they loved, the music and podcasts. Soon, they were sharing playlists. Then they were sharing misgivings. Saladin had a way of pausing before each sentence, as if he were weighing it gently in his brown-butterfly hands, considering its merits and how it could be improved.

  “Biotechnology is neither good nor bad, nor is it neutral,” he quoted one day, stirring his coffee delicately with one leg of his spectacles in a way that would have horrified Daisy’s mother. “That means that it’s not enough to just come up with a miracle. You have to consider how it will be applied. What good is all this,” he said, indicating the door to the lab behind them, “if it only benefits those who can afford it?”

  None of Daisy’s training had encouraged her to think this way. Those questions were for philosophers, not pure scientists like her.

  “My wife is an illustrator,” Saladin said. Daisy tried to keep her face neutral, unbothered. “It’s just as important as what we do—no. That’s not right. It’s not a competition. These things, they don’t work without each other. The precision, the focus, the testing—we can’t do that and think about the implications at the same time. That’s why we need artists. People who think in entirely opposite ways, working together. That’s how we move forward as a species.”

  Daisy couldn’t always remember what was so special about those conversations. Often, they didn’t speak at all, just worked or sat together in silence. That’s when you know a person is special to you. When you’re comfortable being completely quiet together.

  By the time they started fucking, it was too late to avoid making love. And nothing changed in the way they would talk, except that sometimes he would call her hayati. My life.

  Plenty of people had always told Daisy she was clever. That was the only time Daisy had ever felt beautiful. And special. Like she mattered, the whole of her, and not just her brain.

  But when the fix was done, when it came time to stand beside the podium, bathed in the white light of cameras as important men made important speeches, Saladin wasn’t there. He couldn’t bring himself to associate with selling the product at such a high markup. He started writing internal memos, and some of them had verses from the Koran in them. It was a bad time for that. He quit before he was fired.

  The last time she saw him was in a coffee shop on Broad Street in the springtime. The fix was finally approved. Saladin had applied for the lifetime extension, like they were all entitled to, everyone who’d worked on the project, but he had been found ineligible, along with his family.

  Something about a security risk. Something about extremist ideas.

  His beard was growing in rough and scraggy and he looked underslept as he told her all of this. He told her they could no longer meet, for her own safety.

  “What do you mean?” she asked him. “What are you doing?”

  “Nothing, hayatih,” he said, putting his head in his hands. “Don’t you see? You don’t have to be making bombs to be an extremist these days. You just have to have the wrong thoughts. And now they can make sure we all die out.”

  Then he told her not to contact him again.

  And she listened.

  He was the only person Daisy had ever listened to, and that was the only time she regretted it, and by the time she did, it was far too late.

  The notice in the paper had been small. Noted biochemist, dead at fifty-seven. Pancreatic cancer. Survived by his wife and two children.

  Five miles and fifty years away, Daisy put her head on the table of her makeshift lab and listened to the music, absolutely didn’t cry.

  * * *

  All that summer, they worked together on Daisy’s new fix. It consumed them collectively. Constructing the lab, making it as professional as possible with the scraps and tools they had. Finding a way to get the base materials in from Daisy’s work up at the university, which turned out to be surprisingly easy once they had located the chemical skip around the back of Jesus College. They left the house for paid work, when any of them found it, and to take the food truck out to the market.

  Alex wondered if they were still in art-project territory, or if they were doing straight-up politics now.

  “Both,” said Margo, “and neither.”

  It was morning in Cowley, and the market had set up on a scrub of grass that used to be a children’s playground, out by the busy main road. They had a hundred and fifty toasted cheese sandwiches to make, plus the extra ingredients. The special ones.

  “The thing about art is that it insulates you from consequences,” said Margo, scooping garlic mayonnaise out of a tub and slopping it onto the bread. “As a therapist, I always think of art as a way of rehearsing trauma, making the unutterable random injustice of life legible, or at least bearably illegible.”

  Alex thought that sounded like a clever excuse for not thinking your plans through properly. He handed her a block of cheese.

  “But when does the rehearsal end?” Margo continued. She paused to lick the mayonnaise spoon. “I mean,” she went on, “when do you start to realize that this work is what you’ve done with the time you’ve been given? Whenever it is, you’d better have a reason to tell yourself it mattered.”

  Margo twisted around to hand a cheese sandwich to the next customer, a harried-looking young woman who nodded thanks and passed it to the small boy at her side. Alex opened his mouth to say something, thought better of it, and shut it again.

  “Because look,” said Margo. “Protests, when they happen at all, those can be understood. The world doesn’t change when a bunch of people march from A to B, although it’s always good to get out in the fresh air. Art gets to be something else. It gets to be a provocation. To find the fulcrum of culture and exert pressure. So, yes. This is still art.”

  “Margo,” said Alex, “are you high?”

  “I really hope so,” said Margo. “I really do. It’s the only way I can deal with humans at all these days.”

  The harried-looking woman was back, without the kid this time.

  “Sorry,” said Alex, “one sandwich each.”

  “Mine’s not right,” said the woman. “They said I should give it back to you.” She leaned across the counter and placed the oozing sandwich, which had a small wet bite out of the top, into Alex’s hands.

  “Who said so?” he asked, but the woman had already gone.

  Margo had turned back to the stove. Alex peeked between the sticky slices of bread.

  There was a note inside.

  Wednesday at 11. Do nothing. P.

  Alex slammed the sandwich shut and tossed it into the trash bag.

  “Everything alright, babe?”

  Margo touched him on the shoulder, and he jumped. He was breathing hard, and his hands had clenched into fists, ready to fight the empty air. He felt like he was having a heart attack.

  “Fine,” he said.

  “You’ve gone white. And you’re wasting food. What was wrong with that one?”

  Margo started to reach into the trash. Alex grabbed at her arm.

  “What?”

  “Please—can you please just hug me for a second?”

  Margo stepped back.

  “Hey, hey, hey,” she said. “Hey. It’s alright. You’re fine.” She wrapped her big, soft arms around him, not too hard, not too gentle, and he let himself sink into her warm buttery scent, shuffling slightly to turn Margo away from the trash bag.

  “Breathe,” said Margo, “in, and out. Slower than that. Everything’s going to work out alright.”

  But Alex knew she was wrong.

  * * *

  Letter from Holloway Prison, January 2099

  Dear Daisy, and hello Alex.

  They have confiscated most of my paper. I enclose the following without comment.

  PRINTOUT FROM AFTER SARKEESIAN: A RADICAL FEMINIST CLOUDCAST, FEBRUARY 2099

  In all the fuss about the involvemen
t of undercover agents in the development of the Time Bomb, one detail has been glossed over: the fact that at least one undercover agent, possibly more, had a sexual relationship with women activists in the anti-gerontocracy movement. You can find that juicy detail in the court records, but nobody has called it what it is—yet.

  Whatever you think of anti-gerontocracy, there’s a word for having a sexual relationship with another human being simply in order to betray their trust.

  The word is rape.

  State-sponsored rape.

  This is an old story. For generations, undercover agents in “democracies” have been encouraged to start sexual relationships with women activists. Some of these relationships lasted for years, leading to marriage and even children. The practice was widely condemned, but never forbidden—officers in the early twenty-first century claimed these “relationships” were necessary for agents to maintain their cover.

  Interviews with the agents spin these stories as tragic doomed romances. The women involved describe the experiences as a violation.

  We believe them.

  We believe the women duped into bed by these agents were subject to the same kind of violation. It is impossible to obtain informed consent from a person you are planning to betray—even for the best of reasons. This logic extends to the consent of the governed.

  Was it absolutely necessary for this agent to have sex in order to gain information? Surely not. There is a difference between cheating and abuse. This is abuse. Sustained sexual abuse. This is rape. Rape should not be part of anyone’s security playbook. Not now, not ever.

  You don’t have to sympathize with extremists to agree with the idea that undercover officers shouldn’t rape them.

  Stand up for women. Stand against state-sponsored rape. Stand up for individual agency and collective consent. Sign our petition to bring this issue urgently to the Minister for Women and Equalities.

  Comments on this update are closed.

  * * *

  It was Wednesday, and Nina woke up all in one go, a jolt of energy bouncing her small body out of bed.

  Alex watched her through the razor slit of one eye as she padded over to the laptop, dressed in exactly nothing. Pretending to be asleep was the only lie Alex still felt a hundred percent comfortable with.

  He watched Nina. He watched her suck her bottom lip as she checked through the feeds.

  Her littleness excited him, gray light through the grubby curtains kissing her miniature curves. He always had to stop himself from absent-mindlessly touching her during meetings, even though he knew he’d get a slap for it.

  He loved it when Nina took charge in meetings. He loved it when she took charge, full stop.

  Yesterday’s meeting was six slow-grinding hours of processing the actual potential of Daisy’s work. The plan had been to start producing large quantities of knockoff fix and distributing it at cost or lower throughout Cowley, then farther. Margo had already started hitting up their networks in London. But now the plan had changed. Daisy hadn’t made the fix. She’d made something else.

  The trouble was that even living under the same roof as a generic fix factory technically made all of them guilty of national and international copyright infringement to the tune of several decades in jail. This was according to Specter, an absurdly attractive young dirtbag who owned nothing he did not steal, who occasionally slept on a bare mattress in the basement and surprised everyone by turning out to have two law degrees. Since he was not planning to pay back the debt he acquired in another life, under another name, Specter had also stolen his education, so that was alright.

  Alex understood about the patent, sort of. He understood why everyone was paranoid and anxious, as well as excited and constantly checking the windows. Everyone was expecting a raid at any point, apart from Alex.

  Alex was expecting it at a specific moment, later that night.

  They’d both be out of the house. He’d saved up to take her to the Pitt Rivers Museum to look at the shrunken heads, and then on a boating trip across Christchurch Meadow Lake. Nina had always wanted to go. He wanted her to have what she wanted.

  She was so unbelievably clever. Cleverer than most of the Oxford students he’d met. Clever and kind and beautiful. So beautiful. She was so different from his wife.

  If she had the extension, she’d be clever and kind and beautiful forever.

  Alex had a plan. He hadn’t told her the plan.

  When all of this was over, he would be getting his own extension package. That was the deal. And if he couldn’t get two, he was going to offer his extension to her.

  Parker said it wouldn’t be a problem.

  It wasn’t just for him anymore, any of this.

  It was for Nina.

  He loved her. He worshipped her. And because of him, she’d get to be young and beautiful forever.

  Then she would have to forgive him.

  A snatch of grimy sheets and she slid back in beside him. Her skin was smooth and refrigerator-chill against his back.

  “Hi, sleepy,” she said, insinuating herself against him.

  “What do you want?” Alex grinned a dozy grin. She smiled back at him. She had one twisted tooth. It made the rest of her face look even more perfect.

  “The usual,” Nina said, straddling him. “Total destruction of gerontocratic biopower and the money system. Breakfast. And you.” She ruffled his hair. “In that order.”

  He smiled with just his mouth because he knew it was true.

  Then she rolled on top of him and pinned him, kissing lightly along his jawline. He whimpered. He always made the most ridiculous sounds with her. He didn’t care.

  “Do you want me to take control?” Nina’s voice was so, so soft.

  “I thought you wanted to get to the museum before the crowds,” he murmured. She ran her fingers lightly down his underarms, sending little chilly tendrils of pleasure creeping all over his body.

  “We’ll have to hurry.”

  She unsnaked the inner tire tube that nestled under the bed for just this purpose and held him down with her thighs as she bound his wrists.

  “Too tight?”

  “Perfect. But we do have to go soon.”

  “Depends how quickly you’re planning to make me come.”

  Her dark hair fell over her face, backlit. She grinned down at him.

  “Shall I?”

  He nodded, yes yes.

  She crawled up his body and settled herself over his face, and everything else disappeared.

  He wanted her to clamp her thighs hard around his ears, smother him in the sharp meat scent of her, but his hands were tied—he had to crane his head—she wouldn’t risk hurting him seriously. She said the last thing they needed was a dead body to get rid of.

  Also, apparently, she loved him.

  He’d never done this with anyone else before. Not with his wife. Not with any other girlfriend—mentally he checked himself; she didn’t like the word girlfriend, she was his partner. She wanted to be his peer. She was crammed into every sense of him, all he could breathe and and taste and touch—

  He wanted to drown in her.

  He flattened his tongue and drew it down the split of her. Somewhere far above him, she moaned and it sounded like a shout, and then the shouting was everywhere—

  the shouting

  was everywhere

  and downstairs, things were being smashed and knocked over—

  “Shit shit shit.” Nina scrambled out of bed, flinging on clothes and tearing down the stairs two at a time.

  Alex twisted against his bonds, blinded by panic.

  The rubber snapped free from the headboard, cracking painfully against his wrists, and he pelted downstairs after her. Too early, they had come too early. They wouldn’t arrest him, and that might look bad later, but he didn’t care.

  At the bottom of the stairs, something hit Alex very hard in the stomach. A black flower opened and shut behind his eyes, and his knees gave way.

  There was
really no need for them to keep kicking.

  This was all a horrible misunderstanding.

  Alex held onto that certainty as the boots found his ribs, his back, and he curled into a ball with the Hymnus Eucharisticus sounding in his ears over the screaming and smashing glass. He tasted his own blood.

  They didn’t have guns. British police didn’t have guns.

  They had precision flamethrowers.

  They had almost everyone on the ground now. There was blood in Alex’s eyes, but he still saw Nina go down under two officers.

  And Margo—

  Margo was running out of the shed with the contents of Daisy’s lab, only a few jars of real evidence, dashing them on the ground underfoot and cackling madly—

  “Stop right there!” yelled the nearest officer, muffled through his face mask.

  Margo froze. In her hand was a plastic packet marked NOT FOOD, with three small red pills, diamond-shaped, like the fix, except—not. Daisy’s new formula. The one she’d been working on. The one Parker wanted more than anything. Margo was smart enough to know that this must be what they’d come for.

  “Put out your hands,” said the officer, aiming his flamethrower.

  “As a therapist,” said Margo, staring down the barrel, “I advise you to put that thing down and think about the repercussions of what you’re doing. This sort of violence can cause lasting post-traumatic stress. Anxiety attacks, hypertension, you name it. Terrible thing for the family that has to deal with it. Are you married?”

  As she talked, Margo was opening the baggie with one hand.

  On the ground, Daisy raised her head. “Margo,” she said, “don’t.”

  Margo lifted the pills to her mouth to swallow the evidence.

  The officer raised his flamethrower and aimed it at Margo’s raised hand—

  —and fired—

  —and missed, an arc of blue flame careering up to the ceiling as Daisy bit down hard on his ankle and Margo hit the ground.

  Then Margo started screaming.