by JT Lawrence
Head pounding, she checks herself in the mirror again. Is she okay?
Chapter 29
Powder Musk
Seth’s Apartment
Johannesburg, 2036
Kate and Seth embrace on the pavement outside their apartment building. The midnight air is soupy: It makes her eyes water, and her own breath chokes her. Or maybe that’s her nerves; maybe the electrosmog has nothing to do with it.
“Take care of yourselves,” he says, looking into her eyes, then Keke’s, as if he’s memorising them.
“Don’t say it like that,” Keke’s voice is deep with emotion. “Like it’s the last time.”
His shoulders move. A micro-shrug.
They watch as Seth hops on a westbound solartram towards Vega’s hostel. They grab a tram heading east, and Kate says a quick prayer to the night sky.
Please let Silver be safe at the Atrium.
Of course she’s at the Atrium. She’s not home … where else would she be?
Augmented ads crowd their vision as they travel, hyper-targeted to their individual codes. Kate bought Blunt Kruffins last week from BAKED; now they urge her to try their new Hash Brownies. Athleisure Club wants her to update her jogger leggings with coolpatches; maybe that will encourage her to take up exercise again, as her last run, they note, was 249 days ago. She swipes them away, irritated. Blinks her burning eyes, tries to concentrate. Keke’s face is bleak behind her mask too. What products are flashing in on her? Certainly something edgier than joggings. Or maybe she’s ignoring the ads entirely. Maybe she’s thinking of Marko, missing him. Wondering if she’ll ever see him again.
They reach the Atrium. The Victorian structure is lit up spectacularly against the inky sky. Made up almost entirely of old glass framed with lead, the structure features interior lights that make the whole building glow. Long-established plants climb up the sides and curl into the windows, meeting the leaves of the inside plants that seem to want to escape. Some of the panes of glass are cracked or missing, some frosted with age. When the Nancies decreed that all buildings had to be made up of at least 20% living organic matter, most corps added plant pockets to the sides of their structures, and roof-top gardens. Herbsills and airplants. The Atrium let its regular garden grow wild into the building, so from the outside it looks like the plants are trying to consume it.
Kate and Keke walk right in without as much as a bell to announce their entrance. There are no security guards or swivelcams to side-eye them. Kate doesn’t know why. Surely they’re not immune to the White Lobster junkies looking to score?
She’s been here before, of course. She brought Silver here for immersion parties when she was younger. At first it was a session a year, then ten, then all of a sudden Silver couldn’t skip a day without feeling antsy. Kate doesn’t know when or how it had gotten so out of hand. She wishes she had stopped it before it became such a driving force in her daughter’s life. It hadn’t been a problem until it was, well, a problem, and by then, it was too late. She walks past a party of jacked-in kids skiing on a mountain. The milieu is projected above the participants for the benefit of the gallery.
It’s good exercise, Silver says, it’s completely interactive. I’m adopting skills. Working out. Problem solving. Defending myself. Designing worlds. It’s about art and creation; it’s not like I’m a crack addict.
And it’s true, but it’s also taken her little girl away from her. How many other parents find themselves on this slippery slope, she thinks, as she walks past the guardian area, where parents are drinking coffeeberry shooters, one eye on the screen and the other on their own individual fixes. How many of these other parents had a sweet, strong, loving daughter (or son) and now see only a shell of that child? Kate’s photographic memory means there’s no lack of the pictures she’s taken over the years of that young girl who used to crawl onto her lap with her glow-in-the-dark cuddle bunny. Her heart aches with the loss.
No one here seems particularly concerned about the AI malfunction. There’s a hushed tone overall, and the feeling of inclusiveness whether the players are immersed in group experiences or going it alone. They’re a tribe. Kate and Keke make their way past a group busy with a scuba diving simulation. Adults, this time. Either doing it to get certified for the real thing, or just happy to do it inside an inner-city building and not having to bother with heavy equipment, sea-sickness, dangerous currents, or the bends. A whale shark swims past them, and they all murmur a drugged-sounding “Who-o-oa.”
It’s not real, Kate would say to Silver, to which Silver would grunt, and spin her eyeballs.
It’s as real as this, she’d say, gesturing to the apartment with its artificial sunrise and invisi-screen and synthetic ham sandwiches.
She has a point, Seth had chimed in from the couch, Bonechaser snoring on his lap.
What is REAL, anyway? Silver had asked. Mally had looked up from his flexiglass Tile, then, interested.
Kate did not have an answer.
Keke and Kate reach the stairs—the elevator has been out of order since Kate first visited, five years ago—and climb to the second floor. The second level is for recreational gaming: parties, training, team building, while the third is for hard-liners. The basement, well, it’s the only place here that has restricted access, so who knows? Strictly 21+, and you have to know someone who knows someone to apply, like some secret underground New York swingers’ nightclub. Kate wouldn’t know where to start to gain entrance, although she’s sure Keke, with all her contacts, would drift in like a breeze.
“What happens in the basement?”
Andy Warhol springs to mind, Studio 54 with a futuristic twist. Alcohash cocktails, cocaine shadowshots, deviant botsex.
Keke shrugs. “Never been.”
“If you were to guess? From what you’ve heard?”
“Hardcore bot nooky. V-XXX-R. Kinky shit. I mean, it must be bizarro sex, right? Or why bother coming here?”
“Excuse the pun,” jokes Kate.
Keke cackles her wild laugh, and people turn to look at her.
“Everywhere you look there’s a novel neuroreality porn hub popping up.”
“Adult Planet,” says Kate. “Every time I see that flashing pink sign it makes me think of some kind of old-school cartoon. A pink animated planet. It tastes like those old lucky packet sweets. Powder Musk. Totally inappropriate.”
“Now why … ” says Keke, giving Kate an eyeful, “is Adult Planet targeting you with their ads?”
Kate’s cheeks warm. “I don’t know,” she mutters. “Their algorithms must be off.”
Keke looks at her. “Right.”
She clears her throat.
“Kate Lovell, you are not having sex are you? I thought you’d sworn it off forever.”
Kate blushes some more. Why, she doesn’t know. She’s almost forty years old, for Net’s sake.
“Don’t take it the wrong way,” says Keke.
“Is that supposed to be another pun?”
“Ha! You are! You wily slut. Who? How? Tell me everything.”
But even if Kate wants to answer the question—which she doesn’t—they’ve run out of time. They’ve reached Silver’s regular jack-in console, and her pod is bare.
Chapter 30
Graveyard Trees
TWELVE YEARS PREVIOUSLY
Johannesburg, 2024
When Zack opens his bleary eyes, he sees a human shape sitting across from him. They’re in a vehicle. He squints at the shape, tries to make out who it is. As he is rocked by the motion of the van he feels strangely at peace. The nagging feeling he’s had for as long as he can remember is gone. There was something important he had to do, but it’s faded now, and only cool relief remains.
In fact, he can’t remember much of anything, anymore. He has vague recollections of life before his arrest, but it all seems so faraway.
He knows his name is Prisoner, and that the shape across from him is his warden, Bernard. She doesn’t acknowledge his waking, but doesn’t
look away either. He knows he does not like Bernard.
Which crim colony are they taking him to? Lovermore told him that the space mining programme is the most dangerous, but also pays the most, and that the sky-scraping vertical farms are one of the easiest options: those aeroponic crops basically take care of themselves. Maybe they’ll put him in a kitchen or a laundry. Maybe he’ll have to clean toilets for the other crims. Or a hard labour option—they’ve probably put him down for that—laying trax for the first phase of the new smart Hyperloop.
The van slows and turns a corner. The windows are tinted the colour of tar. Zack tries to move, to get more comfortable, but when he looks down, he sees he’s strapped into some kind of wheelchair.
“Where’re we going?” he asks the warden. “How much longer?”
She doesn’t reply. You would think she didn’t know he existed if it weren’t for her glare of cold steel.
They move at an unhurried pace, the speed of an extra-cautious cabbie, or a human driver with nothing better to do for the rest of the day, then they pull up and park. For a second there’s a glint of paranoia: Will they even take him to a penal colony? Or will they just stop at an abandoned strip of veld and put a bullet in his brain? They’ll tell the task team hired to investigate that he tried to get away, and what choice did they have? After all, they couldn’t allow a serial murderer to escape.
The back of the van is opened, and the ramp folds itself down to the ground. Bernard kicks the brake off Zack’s wheelchair and pushes him out. She brings a small black kitbag with her. The fresh blue of the sky is almost blinding. He tilts back his head and relishes the feeling of the sun on his face.
“Feels good?” Bernard casts her shadow over him.
Zack cracks open one eye to look at her. Could she not just allow him this one moment of bliss?
“Well, lap it up, Prisoner—”
I would if you let me.
“Because this is the last bit of sunshine you’re ever gonna see.”
Bernard drives Zack’s chair roughly, swinging him away from the view of graveyard trees—tall, fragrant pines—to face the main building.
Zack is expecting some kind of ugly state structure—utilitarian concrete and chipstone and very little imagination—but the architecture he sees takes his breath away. It must be at least twelve storeys high, and is made from some kind of glossy white material. Its outline is irregular—like a shard planted in the earth—but it’s made up of hundreds of hexagons. It looks like a giant piece of shiny white honeycomb. The grounds are carpeted in lush green grass, freshly mown, and perennials blooming and bursting with petal and seed, and there’s a dense forest behind the shard.
Zack’s confused. There’s no branding outside, no state banner. Now that he thinks of it, there’s not even a security wall around the place. What kind of crim colony is this? Bernard pushes him up the ramp to the entrance. Her breathing is ragged with anger and effort. The glass doors slide open to admit them, and a friendly security guard greets them as if they are day visitors, instead of a convict strapped into a prison-issue wheelchair and a huffing ham-cheeked warden.
“We’ve been expecting you,” says the pretty receptionist, smiling warmly. “Welcome to SkyRest.”
Chapter 31
Purest Human
TWELVE YEARS LATER
Seth’s Apartment
Johannesburg, 2036
Mally and Vega finally reach Seth’s apartment building. A feeling has crept into the black city air that wasn’t there an hour ago: slow, insidious, as if there is an undetected gas leak and all it’ll take is an accidental spark to blow up the whole place. Maybe it’s just them, the glances they’re attracting. Vega is in pretty bad shape.
As they cross the road to get to the apartment, a cabbie speeds up, as if to mow them down. Mally launches them out of the way, onto the hard pavement, and the taxi just misses them. Pain burns a hole in his thigh. His wound is open again, his trousers are double-dyed by blood, old and new.
He gets up, helps Vega stand again, loops her arm over his shoulder. He knows he’s supposed to report the malfunctioning cabbie, but now he’s shaking again, and he just wants to get home and tend to his love. They eventually get inside and he breathes a sigh of relief as he feels the cool, conditioned air on his skin. The stairs are waiting.
“Almost there,” Mally says, more to himself than to Vega.
Only Arronax is home.
“Mally!” she says “Where the hell were you?” but then she sees Vega, and she understands.
“You went to fetch her?” She starts weeping again.
Mally puts Seth’s Vektor on the kitchen counter. “Don’t worry, Arro, we’re safe now.” He’s not sure why Arronax is crying.
“Safe?” she says, incredulous. “I need to let your parents know you’re home.” She wipes her tears on her shell-studded sleeves, sniffs, attempts to pull herself together. She tries to beam Seth and Kate three times each, but is met with a busy signal.
“The commstation must be down. We’ll try again later. In the mean time,” she says to Vega, “let’s see if we can fix you up.”
“I’d really appreciate that,” says Vega.
Arronax winces at the android’s crushed face. She takes her gently by the hand and sits her down on a wingback. Then she grabs her utility bag and pulls up a stool next to her to survey the damage.
Does it hurt? Mally feels like asking, but realises it’s a stupid question. She’s been viciously attacked, humiliated, assaulted. Of course it fucking hurts.
Arronax sets to work. She fixes the ankle first, so that Vega can walk again. She is a nimble surgeon with her needle-nosed pliers and blowtorch. The room smells like burnt rubber and bitumen. Metal on metal. A car crash. Arronax moves on to Vega’s fractured arm, her sprained hand.
“This part might be difficult to watch,” she says to Mally. “Why don’t you go get yourself a drink, or something?”
“No,” says Mally. “I want to be here for her.”
Just hours ago Vega was the one tending to his wounds. He holds her uninjured hand.
Arronax breathes deeply, and nods.
She peels off half of Vega’s face. The stamped silicone gives way to a titanium skull—shiny, apart from the damaged cheek bone, which is like crumpled tinfoil. Arronax sculpts the structure back to its original shape and folds the silicone back over it, sealing it with some bright flashes of purple light.
“There,” Arronax says, arranging some of Vega’s lustrous long hair over the seam. “As good as new.” She swallows hard.
Vega smiles. “Thank you.”
Of course, it’s not nearly as good as new, and Mally gets a twinge of sorrow every time he looks at Vega’s face. It certainly looks a lot better than it did before.
“Thank you,” Mally says to Arronax, eyes glistening with gratitude, and regret.
“What were you doing out there, anyway?”
“I went to gather supplies,” says Vega.
“What supplies? You’re almost 100% stocked, according to your meter. What did you need?”
“She went to buy groceries,” says Mally. “For us.”
He sees the floor of the convenience store again, littered with broken glass and spilled food. The owner of the shop, hugging herself and chattering in Xiang.
Arronax pauses, looks concerned. “That’s not in your protocol.”
“I am very fond of Mally,” she says, “and he needs food to live. Things are happening out there. I knew it wouldn’t be safe for Mally’s family to go out for food. Mally’s family are important to him. It will be best if they stay alive.”
Arronax shakes her head, a shudder, and her hair turns a dark shade of purple. She packs up the rest of her tools. “Okay, kids. I’m going to try to reach Seth again. Promise me you’ll stay here? Stay out of trouble?”
Once Arronax has moved back to her makeshift desk, Mally takes Vega’s hand again. He wants to say something loving and profound, but the words don’t
come to him.
All he can manage is: “I love you.”
“I know,” says Vega.
“If you love me too, you can say it back.”
“Okay,” says Vega.
“I love you,” he says again.
“I know,” says Vega.
Mally laughs, strokes her abraded skin.
“You saved my life,” she says.
“That’s not true.”
“You saved my life. I wouldn’t be here now if it weren’t for you. I’d be in the dumpster. You know that’s true.”
“But—”
“I owe you my life.”
“No, you don’t.”
“I owe you my life, and you know what? I’m glad I do.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re the purest human.”
“That’s a weird thing to say.”
“You have the cleanest heart in the city,” says Vega.
“Again, a weird thing to say. But thank you.”
“It’s true. I can see it.”
They look into each others’ eyes.
“What else can you see?” asks Mally.
“I wish I could tell you.”
“Tell me.”
“I can’t. It will fuck your mind.”
Mally laughs. He’s been trying to teach Vega to swear, but her code resists it, and muddles the words up.
“Do you mean, it will be a mind-fuck?” He laughs.
“Mind-fuck,” she says. “Mind-fuck.” As if she’s a toddler learning a new word.
“It will blow your brain out,” she says. This time he doesn’t correct her; he just sighs and looks away.
“Your happiness score is low,” Vega says. “Shall I make you some pancakes?”
He thinks of that mohawk man and how he punched Vega with all his strength. Thinks of her body spreadeagled on the trash. Would he ever forget those visuals? Would she?