by Laurie Penny
Something was happening to her face.
“No, no, no!” Daisy was yelling. “Not those!”
But Margo was twisting, wriggling—withering, it was far too late, and Daisy was howling incoherently, and there was shattering glass and sulfur in the air, and Nina was yelling pigs murderers and Jasper made a wet-meat sound as someone knocked him back to the floor, and Alex couldn’t take his eyes off Margo’s face, the unspeakable wrongness of it.
Margo wasn’t screaming anymore. Margo wasn’t moving anymore.
Margo had just aged eighty years in two minutes.
Margo was dead.
* * *
They spent a night in the cells. Just a night. The next day, they were all released without charge. In the end, all the police took was Margo’s body, wrapped in clear plastic. Twisted and withered and terribly, terribly wrong.
Even Alex didn’t understand, not until three days later, when the chip under his fingernail buzzed, a sudden sharp pain, the primitive signal that meant: come to the bridge.
Alex sat on the wall as instructed, his hood pulled up high. The river was deserted. Just one dockhand on the far bank, working polish into the wood of a set of ancient punts. Alex waved and then immediately felt silly.
The dockhand didn’t acknowledge him. He was wearing a bulky bomber jacket stamped with the college crest, really too thick for the weather. He must have been roasting, Alex thought. Margo always complained about having to wear long sleeves in summer. Margo’s forearms had been criss-crossed with old scars. Margo’s face, writhing and wormlike, changing, dying—
Alex put his head between his knees to stop himself from throwing up into the Isis.
After half an hour, a handsome kid in a college track hoodie sat down next to Alex. It was Parker. He looked every inch the early-morning sports fascist, down to the streamlined earbuds chirping out tinny music.
“What do you want?”
“Sometime this week, we believe a member of the collective is going to propose a plan of action. What I need you to do is to make sure that plan of action is followed.”
“What is it?”
“Does it matter?”
“Yes, it fucking does!” Alex realized he was shouting. A startled moorhen exploded across the water. Alex lowered his voice.
“It matters,” said Alex. “I don’t want anyone else to get hurt.”
Parker smiled at Alex. “I find that people have a tendency to get hurt whatever happens,” he said. “This way, we hope, fewer of them will. You remember the deal? You remember what you get out of this?”
“The deal,” Alex said, “is fucking off.” He gave Parker a murder-glance. It would be so easy to shove him into the water.
“Go ahead,” said Parker, as if he’d read Alex’s mind. “I’ll get wet, and you’ll get shot.”
“By who?”
Parker looked up and waved at the dockhand on the far bank. The dockhand nodded, adjusted his bulky jacket and went back to polishing the rowboat.
The bridge was deserted in the morning, just a few bicycles darting by as the August sunshine prepared to boil the dank dew off the grass by the river.
“This is the last job,” said Parker. “After this, we’ll bring you in.”
The morning was silent except for the whispered whine of Parker’s earbuds.
“What are you listening to?” asked Alex. “Is that—”
“The Future Executioners,” said Parker. “Really interesting stuff. Are you a fan?”
Alex chuckled. “That’s my girlfriend’s favorite band.”
“Well, she has excellent taste. In some things, at least.” Parker snapped his fingers and the music died. “Now. Are we clear?”
“Yes.”
“Come again?”
“Yes. We’re clear.”
Alex shouldered his backpack and walked away.
* * *
Letter from Holloway Prison, January 2099
What do we want, Daisy? What did we ever want?
More time.
Of course, we never needed chemical intervention for that. We just need permission to live.
Most of us never get to simply pass time. Instead, we’re made to spend it. We spend time, and the value of our seconds and minutes and moments depreciates with every week and month and year that passes. Time broken into billable units, and never enough of them.
In this prison I have an abundance of time.
How much, I can’t tell you. I refuse to have any device in this cell that tells time. I hear the shift-change sirens, and that is all.
In the beginning the lights in my cell were constant, and I had no way of knowing if it was night or day. This was designed to disorient me. I found it liberating. They gave me a clock, after the first six months. I levered it off the wall with a folded polyplastic plate and smashed it into shards.
I am old in the world’s reckoning, and my joints move stiffly, but I am without the illnesses that wrecked my body in youth; I am tired, and I doze, but when I sleep it seems less time passes.
The aging woman is a special object of horror in this gerontocracy. When I was young and beautiful, it seemed that youth and beauty was all there was of me—that losing them would be a sort of death.
There are those who have argued that the fix is more liberating for women than anyone else, given that we have most to lose—always most to lose—when our bodies age, because when they do, men value us less, and therefore we must be worth less. And who can tell us otherwise now?
The fix has changed the dreams and desires of men in ways our parents could not have guessed, but some things remain the same, hard chips of hatred concretizing in the unswept corners of our hearts.
Understand this, though: when I speak of what men desire, of what a man might do, I am not speaking figuratively, of the wants and capacities of all human creatures, with women sounded silently, unpronounced in that great, all-encompassing “men.” No. When I say that men are weak and fearful in the face of time, I am speaking quite specifically. I am speaking about men.
Which reminds me, I still have to tell you the end of that story. The one about the carpenter and the Devil and the bridge.
So the carpenter makes the deal, remember, and the Devil clicks his fingers and there it is, the bridge the carpenter wanted, arching over the river like a spine spasming in pleasure, like you’d blush to look at it, it’s so perfect and obscene a piece of architecture.
“Remember,” says the Devil, “the first soul over the bridge is mine.”
The carpenter remembers. He wants to walk on that bridge so badly he can barely draw breath, but he makes himself sit down on the bank. He settles down to wait for some unsuspecting soul to come by and seal the deal.
The carpenter looks out across the river, and that’s when he sees his wife.
She’s there, on the far side of the river—his beautiful young wife, screaming. Her hair is on fire; her dress is on fire. She cries out to the carpenter to save her.
So of course, the carpenter leaps up without thinking, and dashes across the Devil’s bridge to the far bank. His wife’s eyes flash red and she blinks out of sight—she was only an illusion, his real wife is at home, wondering where he’s got to.
And she will wonder forever, because that’s when the Devil appears to collect the carpenter’s soul. What do you imagine he’s thinking, just before it happens? Does he think of his wife, waiting by the kitchen door, the dinner spoiling, her fine smooth forehead all creased up with worry? Or does he think only of himself, how stupid he was? Does he think about how much it’s going to hurt, forever?
They’re turning off the lights. I’m out of time.
* * *
Nobody could get hold of Margo’s mom and dad. Nobody knew what to do. Nobody could stand to be in the house.
There was nowhere else to go, so they went to the pub.
There was only one pub on Cowley Road that let you smoke indoors. It was run by a mad old Rastafarian, his grim Scottish wife, and their
two unreasonably attractive sons. The owner handled unruly drunks and noisy college boys with a small hacksaw.
Also, there were no microphones. The owner would periodically take a crowbar to the walls, just to make sure.
They started to go there every night and drink until closing and smoke till their throats felt stuffed with rusty nails. Then they’d go home.
Nina and Alex didn’t fuck anymore; they just held each other tight-tight, like the bed was a lifeboat bobbing on a dark sea, and eventually they drifted to sleep.
Nina woke before Alex most days. She spent a lot of time in the lab with Daisy. By late afternoon, everyone would be feeling well enough to face the half-mile walk to the pub, and they’d do it all over again.
Rinse. Repeat.
In the end, it was all Lars Lafferty’s fault.
Alex woke to find the rest of them crowded around the breakfast table, with Nina sobbing, her face a mess of tears and makeup.
“Fucking traitors,” she said, her shoulders shaking. “Scumbags.”
“Who?”
“The Future Executioners,” said Fidget, quietly. “They’ve started fixing.”
Alex couldn’t quite stop himself from laughing.
“It’s not fucking funny,” said Fidget. “It’s a sign. A bad one.”
“Really?” said Alex. “With everything that’s gone on, this is what you’re upset about? It’s just a band.”
He put a hand on Nina’s arm but she started away and flicked on the tablet, her eyes wet and angry. It was a short clip from a newsreel. And there was the lead singer of the Future Executioners, Britain’s most up-and-coming avant-garde outfit, recent winners of the Mercury Prize, explaining why he was accepting a TeamThreeHundred genius extension package.
“I’m grateful for the opportunity to develop my music over a longer period of time than I’d originally planned,” said Lafferty. He didn’t quite meet the eye of the camera as the newscaster explained how the sponsorship gave Lafferty fifty years’ supply of the fix. “Not many artists get this sort of opportunity,” said Lafferty. When he wasn’t singing, his voice was perfectly ordinary. “It’s all about the music, after all.”
“It’s all shit,” said Nina. “What are we going to do?”
The next night, Fidget brought someone to the pub.
It was an offensively hot day, and they sat outside with the sun beating down like fists. There were always a few students slumming it in the bar, but this one stood out. Tall and neatly dressed, with a sculptured lick of red-brown hair and the tight, too-perfect skin of a fixer. He was white, like Alex and Jasper and Daisy, but a different kind of white—not the ratty, red-eyed, sick-looking kind. His skin had the sleek pink sheen that comes from small, regular servings of very high-quality food.
“This is Milo,” said Fidget. “We can trust him.” He glared at Jasper, daring him to say something.
Milo shifted in his seat. “You didn’t have to bring me all the way out here,” he said. “I think I’m getting scabies just from sitting in this prole shop.”
Everyone stared at Milo.
“It’s a joke,” said Milo. “I’m trying to put you all at ease by being a parody of myself because apparently, it’s important that I make an effort.”
Everyone stared at Fidget.
“Milo is a messed-up person,” said Fidget, “but he’s my messed-up person, and he actually does want to be here. He has something to say.”
“I wanted to invite you all to Magdalen College’s alumni feast,” said Milo.
Everyone stared at Milo.
“Do they not teach Latinate words in state schools anymore?” he asked Fidget. “Perhaps you could translate.”
“I’m sorry,” said Fidget. “He doesn’t mean it. I think it’s a defense mechanism. He wants to see how awful he can be before everyone he meets refuses to be his friend anymore.”
“I’m not friends with anyone fixed,” said Jasper. “No offense.”
“I’m not fixed,” said Milo.
“Milo’s parents have somewhat antique ideas about inheritance,” said Fidget. “They’re withholding insurance until he changes his wicked ways.”
“They what?” Alex looked at Milo. They all did, as if for the first time. His handsome grin stayed fixed, but he was gripping Fidget’s hand so tight that his knuckles had become white teeth in bloodless gums.
“Mummy and Daddy decided to stop my allowance and cut off my fix until I agree to start wearing skirts and calling myself Melanie again,” said Milo.
Alex could see it now. The softness of his throat where the dimple should be, the way he kept his jacket buttoned, even in the hot bar.
Milo produced a pack of black Sobranie cigarettes, the sort that cost half a day’s pay for normal people, and tried to light one. His hands were shaking. The lighter snickered at him.
“Here,” said Fidget. His eyes were soft and sad. He held up a flame.
“My Prometheus,” said Milo.
Between them, they explained the plan. The plan that would give them a way in. A place to release a weapon. A weapon Daisy had extrapolated from her new fix. The same fix that had killed Margo. A gerontoxin, airborne and fast-acting. Diluted and aerosolized, so it wouldn’t kill.
It would just make everyone in the blast zone older, and weaker, and that much closer to dead.
It was monstrous.
And apparently, he was the only one who hadn’t been told.
This, surely, wasn’t what he was supposed to be encouraging. This was the sort of thing he should be reporting right away.
“I realize it’s an escalation,” said Nina, “and I realize it’s the kind of intervention we’ve never considered before. But me, I hate this town. I hate these people. I hate the suits and I hate the scholars and I hate the state and I hate the way they take everything from you piece by piece until there’s nothing left and I hate it that my friend died and it doesn’t even fucking matter.” She was staring at her hands. Her voice was flat and a little frightening.
“All I wanted was to make something small and bright and good, something that lasted a little while, a little while longer than I did. All I wanted was to push back against the darkness just a little bit. To live in the cracks in capitalism with the people I care about, just for a little while. But it turns out I can’t even have that. And now I just want to burn shit down.” She took a sip of water. “But that’s just me. Don’t know about the rest of you.”
Jasper slammed his rum and gingerC on the table, his face weird, hard and excited. “Deeds not words,” he said. “Christ, I’m getting my first hard-on in weeks just thinking about it. But I can’t sign on for anything that gets innocent people hurt.”
“Who in that room is going to be an innocent bystander?” said Alex.
He could see them thinking it through.
All they needed was a push.
“I assume you realize that whoever’s in the room will be affected,” said Milo, “including you.”
“That’s appropriate,” said Nina. “There should be sacrifice.”
“Haven’t you—haven’t we sacrificed enough already?” said Alex.
“What else is there, Alex?” Nina stood up, her face flushed. “No, tell me. What? What else are we supposed to do? Just give up? Slink off into anxious little corners and tear each other’s hearts apart and drink and smoke and screw and die? This doesn’t end well, you know, whatever we do. We’re already fucked. Pointlessly, monumentally fucked. This way, at least we get to decide what kind of fucked we’re going to be.”
She was so beautiful when she was angry.
Alex closed his eyes.
“I love you,” he said. “And I’m in, if you’re in. Whatever happens.”
As soon as the meeting was over, he fished out the emergency minitablet from the bottom of his rucksack and sent a message to Parker.
Parker didn’t respond for days.
By that time, everyone had volunteered for the stunt. Even Daisy volunteered
, which was a surprise—or perhaps it wasn’t. She, after all, had had a long time to be young.
“There’s a chance it won’t affect me as much, given how long I’ve been fixed,” she said. “I should be the one holding the device. The technology is mine. My responsibility.”
“Actually,” said Nina, “you don’t get to make that choice.”
Everyone looked at her.
“Everyone’s a part of this,” she said. “Collective responsibility. And you didn’t—no offense, babe, but you didn’t love Margo like we did, did you? We’d known her years. You’ve got no experience doing this sort of thing. You’re more useful on the outside. And they know your face.”
Daisy argued, but in the end, it was agreed: Alex and Nina would go, with Jasper as backup and Milo to get them into the hall. Alex wasn’t going to get left behind, and Milo refused to be part of the plan if Fidget was directly involved.
“You can’t just make that decision for him,” said Nina. “Weren’t you listening? It needs to be about consensus.”
“Excuse me,” said Milo, “excuse me for not being up to speed with your hippy rules, but last time I checked, you can’t do this without me. And if I’m going to prison, I’d prefer to have a boyfriend waiting for me on the other side.”
Then, quite unexpectedly, he blushed.
Nobody had heard him use the b-word yet.
Fidget squeezed his hand.
Jasper had to shave his dreadlocks, which he wasn’t happy about. Underneath, his head seemed curiously small.
Of all of them, Alex would probably draw the most attention, because he was so very white, and Oxford doesn’t change, and most of the white people in the room would be eating dinner, not serving it.
Alex shaved. It didn’t help. He brushed his hair into a slick parting. It didn’t help. He sent more frantic coded messages to Parker’s proxy on the backup tablet and received short, curt reassurances that, more than anything, didn’t help.
He didn’t beg her not to go. That would have been suspicious. Parker had assured him that they would all be arrested before anyone had a chance to do any actual damage to themselves or anyone else.
Nobody was actually going to get hurt.
But still, Alex found himself waking every morning from nightmares where Nina disintegrated to bone and hair in his arms.