Skeletal

by Emma Pullar

  ‘Welcome to the Hyper Market, all your nutritional needs under one roof.’

  I follow the maid, who is dressed in the usual black suit and bowler hat. I note he hasn’t brought a knapsack to carry food back in. I scan other shoppers up ahead, none of whom carry bags. Why would anyone visit a market without bags? I walk in the maid’s footsteps, he strides down the narrow aisle, reaching from right to left pressing squares on the walls. Every so often he stops and looks at his wrist and then carries on walking and pressing. I turn to the right wall; it’s a mess of moving colours all fighting for my attention. I focus on a square at eye-level and read the words in bold.

  ‘ZING!’

  The picture is of a revolving pot. I reach out and tap it. A cheerful male voice fires.

  ‘ZING! A pot of pleasure, a taste you’ll treasure! Never feel hungry between meals with this super snack!’

  I gingerly press the tip of my finger to a rectangle which says ‘Ingredients’. I flinch, expecting another audio announcement, but instead a drop-box appears. My eyes trace over the smaller writing: ‘contains meat, vegetables, enhancers and vitamins’. I frown, that really doesn’t tell me anything. What meat? Rat? Snake? The farm animals Central keep hidden somewhere? What veg is in it? What the hell are enhancers? An arm stretches out in front of me and skinny fingers tap the word select on the picture of the pot of ZING. I look round to see a female maid, curls squashed down beneath her round hat. My eyes are drawn back to the wall when the maid presses the next picture along and a high-pitched female voice chimes out.

  ‘Delicious Burst is full of flavour, it’s our number one bestseller!’

  An explosion of stars lights up the square. I look closer, as I can’t figure out what it is, exactly. Do we make this stuff in the factory? I’ve never worked in packaging and labelling. Where’s the actual product? I look down, it hasn’t materialised at the bottom of the wall from a secret compartment.

  ‘You ain’t meant to be in ‘ere, Ms Skyla.’

  I glance back at the young maid. This time I recognise her, she’s the Vable’s maid, Cara. I don’t see her often, she keeps out of sight. Like glory smoke in the mist, she’s around but she’s not always visible. I have so many questions; one leaps from my lips before I have the sense to stop it.

  ‘How does the food get to the apartment?’

  Cara stares at me; lips tight, hands resting on her bony hips. Her face softens, giving into my question.

  ‘Pickers pick it, packers pack it, placers place it.

  Now I’m totally confused. The Vable’s maid taps a select button on a lower product square.

  ‘But how do they know where to place it?’

  Cara lets out a long sigh. She points to the entrance where a group of Morb children, about eleven and twelve years old, amble through the doors, giggling and hanging off one another.

  ‘A palm-pad inside the doors,’ she explains, ‘I press me hand to it, it scans, then when I press the select button, me prints are scanned again and the pickers know what the Vables ‘ave ordered. They pick from the warehouse, some other Skel packs and then another Skel delivers. Got any more questions or are we done?’

  The maid looks me up and down before allowing her eyes to settle on my exposed chest. I yank up the silk material.

  ‘I hate this dress.’

  ‘Wanna swap?’ she asks.

  I consider it. The maid’s pressed uniform looks more comfortable than my waist-squeezing, breast-bursting, leg-exposing outfit; not enough material in some places, too much ruffled up in others. I’m about to say, ‘yeah, let’s swap,’ when she grasps my arm.

  ‘Those kids,’ Cara points to the Morb kids, gathered around a large monitor. ‘They’re using the quick-shop screen, they press what snacks they want and it comes out the bottom.’

  I watch and sure enough, a boy reaches into what looks like a tray at the bottom of the monitor and pulls out a packet.

  ‘Cara!’

  A shrill voice comes out of nowhere. Cara looks down at her wrist.

  ‘Yes, mistress.’

  ‘Don’t forget the Tangy Paste.’

  I peer over at Cara’s wrist. There’s a small, square screen embedded in it, and filling up the entire screen is the pudgy, one-lensed face of Mistress Vable.

  ‘Yes, mistress.’

  The screen goes black.

  ‘Hosts don’t belong in ‘ere.’ Cara glares. ‘Go before you get us both in trouble.’

  ‘Did it hurt when they put that in?’

  I grab hold of her wrist and brush the smooth screen with the tips of my fingers, she snatches her arm away.

  ‘You should leave now.’

  I know she’s right, but I don’t want to leave. The feeling of disgust at this unnatural spectacle is overridden by intrigue. I want to stay.

  ‘Fine. I guess I’ll go back to the apartment and do pretty much nothing then.’

  Beneath the rim of her hat, Cara’s eyebrows knit.

  ‘You’re a strange chick.’

  ‘I’m strange? Look at this place.’

  I lift my arms and motion to the walls. A smile touches Cara’s smooth lips. She turns her back and carries on shopping.

  ‘Wait! Cara! Can you tell me how to get back to the apartment?’

  She doesn’t look back and I struggle to hear her instructions over the noise of product advertisements pinging out from the aisles beyond.

  ‘Turn left, walk a few steps, there’s a shaft. You know which floor, right?’

  ‘Yeah, but …’

  I watch her stride away. I suddenly don’t want to be alone.

  ‘Cara! Cara!’

  The light starts to fade, and the pictures inside my head begin to blur. Tug of nausea. Images flash before my eyes and merge into flashes of light. I’m blinded. I squint, trying to focus, almost giving myself a headache as I struggle to concentrate on present time. A person in a long white coat stands in front of a blank screen. Flash. Bunce’s face appears in my head. I shake my head, shake the vision away but when I open my eyes it’s still there, this time, on the screen. The white coat is reading at high speed and I can no longer hold on to the room I’m in, the reality of it. My mind is a mess with voices from the past.

  ‘You don’t own your womb, Ms Skyla, I do. I own your entire body, is that clear?’

  ‘Eat up, Ms Skyla. We need you strong and healthy.’

  ‘We made this plan together …’

  ‘No, no plan! There is no plan!’ I croak, my throat as dry as the desert.

  I don’t know how much of my mind they’ve read but I know I’ve given away too many memories. The floodgates open and my thoughts rush in. I manage to hold back my past. Push it deep inside my mind, lock it away for none to read. It’s probably too late for that.

  ‘Where’s Bunce?’

  My eyes stay closed but my voice comes out strong.

  ‘I need that Morb!’ I scream, and thrash about.

  My legs! I can feel them. I can move them. I kick out, aggravated, annoyed with myself, my choices, at the situation I’ve landed myself in. Bunce was my ticket to a better life, dammit! Morbs that step out of line aren’t executed. To my knowledge it’s never happened, and I don’t want Bunce to be the first or worse, the first mutilated Morb. An image forms in my mind of an enormous mess of blubber and machine, crawling on all fours, dragging its useless body through the streets.

  ‘BUNCE!’

  ‘There’s no point in shouting, my dear.’

  I gasp. That’s a strange voice. Am I back at the complex? I’m tired, what’s happening …? My eyes roll back. Black out.

  15

  Rock Vault

  ‘Are you awake, my dear?’

  Shaky voice to my right. Is it real or not? My dreams and memories have bled together. This happens with prolonged mind invasion. They did it to my grandfather before his execution. After he was released – before they decided to murder him – he struggled to string words together. How long was I under? My brain fee
ls scrambled. I force my heavy eyelids upwards, my eyes struggle to focus. When they finally do, it’s not much different to when they were closed. Grey walls, grey floor, grey ceiling … grey Morb? Old and shrivelled, slumped beside me in a hover-chair that has clearly lost its hover.

  I grab my nose and try not to retch. The elder Morb stinks of stale sweat and hopelessness. I can’t decide which I despise more, the smell of a body struggling to regulate its temperature or the self-pity oozing into the musty air.

  My brain might be full of wool but it’s clear where I am – Rock Vault, and vault cells are no place for a Morb. I’m amazed this old-timer is able to breathe. Even though he isn’t breathing well, his rasps are drawn out like a death rattle, his artificial organs must be failing. Not dead yet but he soon will be. The noise is nauseating. If he doesn’t croak in the next hour, I might put him out of his misery. I sit up slowly and cross my legs over the lumpy mattress that is my prison bed. I’m in the same clothes that I washed in the pond after the toilet threw up on me. I feel more than dirty, like I’m covered in the rat shit which has piled up behind my kitchen cupboard or what was my cupboard, since some other Skel is housed there now.

  ‘Who are you?’ I splutter.

  My throat, dry and sore from screaming, feels like I’ve swallowed a mountain of sand.

  ‘I’m not sure, I was hoping you might tell me,’ the old Morb splutters through his suffocating larynx.

  My head throbs like scalding lava is running through the channels of my brain. Did he say he’s not sure who he is? Do I even know who I am anymore?

  ‘What are you doing in here?’ I ask, no courtesy in my tone, no grovelling, he’ll not be addressed as master by me.

  ‘Sitting,’ he says plainly, and then mumbles under his breath, ‘stupid, slow-minded Skel.’

  ‘Fine, keep your secrets,’ I snap.

  Slow-minded, ha! Rather a little slow-minded and mobile than ultra-intelligent and immobile, or insane and immobile as seems the case with this Morb.

  The Morb holds out a shaky hand and gestures for me to move closer. I hesitate. Whatever lands a Morb in Rock Vault has to be a horrific crime, much worse than anything a Skel is sentenced to. This Morb has obviously gone nuts! I stare at him. Is he a threat? He’s ancient, rolls of wrinkled flab barely holding him together. He’s weak and he must be almost blind, for he wears what looks like binoculars strapped over his eyes. I’ve taken a beating mentally by the mind sweeps, but he doesn’t look strong enough to perform the handshake greeting, let alone overpower me.

  I drop onto my knees and lean forward. I wrinkle my nose, not wanting to inhale his personal airspace. I manage to stop the assault on my nostrils and inadvertently taste his stench. I swallow and my eyes water.

  ‘I have a secret,’ he whispers, then shouts at the door, ‘BUT I’LL NEVER TELL THEM!’

  He coughs and splutters. I pull back from the spray of germs.

  ‘What is it?’ I say quietly.

  ‘What is what?’ he croaks.

  I sit back down. Crazy old coot, he’s probably in here because he’s lost his mind and there’s nowhere else to put an insane Morb.

  ‘I’m a scientist, you know,’ he wheezes.

  Yeah, a mad scientist I think, and laugh inwardly.

  ‘I do miss being in my lab.’ He sniffs.

  Lab? The shock of this word sends a pulse up into my skull, and the fine hairs on my arms feel like birds’ feathers being stroked the wrong way.

  ‘The cure?’ I mouth.

  ‘Some people call me Bins, is that my name?’

  I don’t know his bloody name. I need this Morb to think straight. I crawl closer to the Morb’s hover-chair and stare up at him from the filthy floor.

  ‘Lab B, is that your lab?’

  I’m startled when he starts shouting again.

  ‘I KNEW IT! I – KNEW – IT!’ he yells, in between gulps of air, ‘You’re one of them! You’d be the same age as Kally. Is that why they sent you in here? To play with my emotions, get me to talk?’

  I shake my head and try to say no, but the Morb isn’t listening.

  ‘They think I’ll tell you where I hid it! You’re not my Kally! I’m not so far gone that I can’t tell the difference between a young Skel and a young Morbihan!’ His face reddens. ‘They want it so badly, aha! It’s right under their snooty Central noses. They’ll never find it.’ He looks like he’s going to pass out, he takes a deep breath and screams. ‘YOU’LL NEVER FIND IT! YOU HEAR ME?’

  The coughing fit that follows should have been backed up by his last breath, but the old Morb shakes his fists at the walls and clings to life. All the while, inside my muddled mind I’ve worked out who this Morb is. The scientist, the one who created the serum, the one who created a potential cure for the Morbihan’s obesity, the one we were meant to interview back at Lab B.

  ‘The explosion … Central did that, right?’

  ‘Central did what now?’ He says, face wobbling.

  I can’t take much more of this.

  ‘Blew up your lab!’ I say, irritated.

  ‘You want to blow up my lab? My life’s work!’

  The layered face of the Morb, apparently called Bins, (I’ll take a wild guess it’s a nickname associated with the binocular lenses strapped over his huge face), wrinkles into a sorrowful mountain threatening an avalanche of tears, if he can cry through those ‘bins’.

  ‘No,’ I shake my head, ‘I’m a prisoner like you.’

  Bins slumps in his chair.

  ‘I’m sorry, child. They’ve been sweeping my mind for hours,’ he rasps. ‘I’m weak. My thoughts are not what they once were.’

  ‘Was the drone yours?’ I whisper.

  ‘Yes.’ He pants. ‘You know things, don’t you, Skel. How do you know about the drone?’

  ‘I saw it leave the lab,’ Bins perks up, ‘it was battered by the explosion but it got out.’

  ‘Explosion?’ He mutters and again, if he could cry, he’d have filled a bucket with tears by now.

  ‘I’m not sure what happened … I say gently, ‘your lab was destroyed.’

  ‘And Tyris?’ He asks, fretful, ‘Cara left before they came but Tyris was with me when they shot me with a tranquiliser.’

  If Cara swiped the cure then what was the drone for? An image of the blackened body on the lab floor flits into my head. That must have been Tyris.

  ‘Is there a back door to the lab?’

  ‘The back door leads to the hospital.’ Bins says, annoyed I’m avoiding his question. ‘Tell me what happened to Tyris!’

  I sigh.

  ‘I think he’s dead, there was a body – a Skel.’

  That explosion was no accident. The guards took Bins and then blew up the lab. They’re sweeping his mind to find out if there’s any more cure. Except I don’t understand why they would ask Bins to create the serum in the first place? And what happened to Cara, where does she fit in all this?

  ‘Oh, Tyris,’ Bins sighs.

  I raise my eyebrows. A Morb morns a Skel. Unheard of. How strange.

  ‘Were you very close?’ I ask, pity picking at my heart.

  ‘I spent months training him, what a waste of time!’ He rasps. ‘And worse, my lab is gone, my life’s work all gone.’

  ‘Is that all you care about?’ I growl, ‘Tyris died!’

  ‘Skels die all the time.’ He says, waving his hand in dismissal, underside of his saggy arm wobbling.

  ‘You think we’re animals!’ I yell at him.

  ‘You are animals.’

  What is he talking about now? Ugh! I’ve had enough. I climb back onto the lumpy mattress, cross my arms, and turn my back. Fat stinking pig! He’s the animal, not me. We sit in silence. Minutes drag with the sound of his struggling breaths and I think about whether my hands are big enough to wring his thick neck. After what seems like an hour; him sat unmoving, breathing loudly, staring at the dark walls, me thinking about events passed, picking at the wall, a pile of plaster gathering on the
mattress; he speaks.

  ‘Skel,’ he whispers. ‘Talk to me, Skel.’

  I ignore him.

  ‘Do you want to know why I created the cure?’

  I glance over my shoulder.

  ‘Because you were told to.’ I say firmly.

  ‘No,’ he replies.

  No? I turn around and stare at his big moon face.

  ‘You make stuff up as you go along, nothing you say makes sense,’ I say, gripping the edge of the mattress to stop myself from punching him. ‘Central asks you to create a cure, then they sling you in here and destroy your lab. Why?’

  ‘Because …,’ he pants, ‘they didn’t ask me to make it.’

  Artificial parts groan and Bins continues to wheeze. I’m dumbfounded. Morbs never do anything without authorisation. At least I don’t think they do. But then … Bunce did.

  ‘The rat didn’t die,’ he coughs, ‘they said it did but it didn’t. The serum isn’t deadly.’

  ‘It isn’t?’ I ask, surprised.

  ‘What isn’t?’

  ‘The serum, the damn cure!’ I growl through gritted teeth.

  The lowest of Bins’ chin-folds trembles.

  ‘You know about the cure?’ I roll my eyes, it’s like trying to have a rational conversation with a two-year-old. ‘Central ordered me to stop but I didn’t, they destroyed my samples …’ he says, voice wobbling along with the loose skin under his arms as he buries his face in his hands. ‘But I kept a vial for my granddaughter, she wanted to carry a baby so badly.’

  I gasp.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Yes,’ Bins says, lenses peering down at me from beneath his chubby fingers. ‘I know it was wrong of me,’ he breathes, ‘but it pains me to see her so unhappy. That’s all I wanted for her – happiness, and now I shall never see her again.’

  Bins makes a weeping sound, crying dry tears. I can’t find anything to say, let alone words of comfort. I’m shocked. It never occurred to me that Morbihan girls would want to carry a baby. Kally wants the choice to carry and I want the choice not to.

  I feel a little sorry for this pitiful creature before me. He risked his life to try and make his granddaughter’s dreams come true. Why would he do that? Morbs are selfish, self-indulgent, self-centred and anything else beginning with the word self! But not this Morb, he’s fighting the system. Fighting Central! Not for Skels, but still. After hours of mind invasion, he should be a vegetable, his brain should be pulp. I’m surprised he can even talk, albeit he isn’t making much sense.