The Wipe

by Nik Abnett

  There was another name on the form. It read, ‘Verity Cornelia Mott’. Dharma held her breath while she cast her eye across the row of data. She was listed as daughter, unmarried, and aged one.

  Dharma needed to know the date of the 2021 census, so that she could verify that this Verity Cornelia had, in fact, been born in October of 2019.

  “Scroll up.”

  Dharma scanned the information at the top of the form, but couldn’t find a date. She went back to the facsimile census form for that year, and read the front cover page. It clearly stated that the census form had to be filled in on April 1st. That was almost six months before Verity would have had her second birthday.

  Dharma went back to the data and scrolled right. In the final column it said that Verity Cornelia Mott had been born in Lewisham. This tallied neatly with the birth certificate that she had found. No other family members were listed, which was a disappointment. Dharma had hoped that Verity might have had a sibling, a sister; it was her best hope of finding a genetic relation on the female side of her family.

  “Pax and Faith were young,” she said.

  +Communication+

  “Negative.” She really must stop thinking out loud.

  “Census search 2031,” she said. “Required fields.”

  The screen blinked, and a form appeared. Dharma filled in the same data, again.

  “Surname: Mott. Address: 131 Engleheart Road, Catford, SE6. Number of residents over sixteen: 2”

  She scrolled down the form, and found all the details the same. Verity Cornelia Mott was listed as daughter, unmarried, aged eleven, and this time she had an occupation; she was listed as ‘school pupil’.

  “Scroll down”.

  The next row of data came up on the screen.

  Dharma read, ‘Charity Grace Mott, daughter, unmarried, aged seven, school pupil, born in Lewisham.

  “Birth records. Charity Grace Mott, born 2024, Lewisham University hospital.”

  She hoped the information would be enough.

  +Data not found+

  “Charity Grace Mott, born 2023, Lewisham University hospital.”

  The screen showed a new form, similar to the one that Dharma had seen for Verity. The details were correct, so she didn’t hesitate to download the original certificate.

  “Checkout,” she said, and held her id up to make the payment.

  She looked at the certificate for long enough to check that it shared the same details as Verity’s, before saying, “Upload to home stream. Photo storage.”

  Dharma had found her first new female relation where she hadn’t had to take another step back through the generations. Her mother had never talked about an aunt, but that didn’t mean that her grandmother didn’t have a sister. The Deluge and the New Wave had split families up. No one lived in groups. All men lived alone, and all childless women lived alone. Dharma wondered what it must have been like for four people to live together, or for men to live with women. It made her feel strange; the way she had felt watching the old movies with her mother. It was a feeling she didn’t like.

  “Great-Aunt Charity,” she said. “Charity Grace Mott… I wonder who you were. I wonder if you ever had a child. I wonder how I’m ever going to find out whether you did.”

  +Communication+

  “Negative.”

  There were ten minutes before she had to get back to work, and no more research that she could usefully do in the time. Dharma left her cubicle and went out to the coffee machine. She stepped back into the wipe, waited for the ozone smell, and for the interior doors to open, and raised her hand to the concierge, as she always did.

  Back in the cubicle, Dharma took a couple of sips of coffee, and logged back on to W.W.’s intranet. She’d be home in less than three hours. She could think about it all, then, and look over the certificates to see what clues she could find to her next step.

  Seventeen

  The lockdown wasn’t so bad. Groceries were delivered to the garage once a fortnight, and there was enough to eat, just. Faith had kept a small vegetable patch and herb garden for years, and there were fruit trees too, so there was always something fresh to eat, alongside the dried goods, tins and cured meats that were staple supplies.

  Every six weeks, four swab packs were included with the groceries. Charity didn’t need one, since she was immune. The packs were picked up the following day by ambulance, and two days after that the results were posted on the internet. The results were always the same, and they always came as a relief.

  It turned out that Charity wasn’t a brat at all. She did her share of the chores, almost without complaining, and she spent time in the garden with her mother, who insisted that everyone should get some fresh air. She also spent a lot of time alone in the box room. She always claimed to be doing the schoolwork that was being posted on the internet, and Pax intermittently checked that she was. But she was keeping in touch with her friends, too, via the various forms of social media.

  One day she mentioned Able Dole. They’d never been close at school. He was a bit of a geek, and had spent a lot of time watching science fiction movies and playing computer games. It turned out that he was an only child of a single father, and during the lockdown he missed the company of his classmates. His dad was a key worker, so he spent a lot of time shut up at home, alone. He didn’t have many friends but Charity had always been gregarious, so, when he joined one of the group chats, she’d started talking to him.

  Charity was easily bored by what she called ‘girl-talk’, and over the past few months, since the lockdown, there had been a lot of that in the group chats. After a while, all the girls could talk about was how little they were eating and how much weight they’d lost.

  “Guess how much weight I’ve lost?” she said to Verity when they were sharing breakfast one morning. Sage was still in bed, and Mum and Pa were in the garage.

  “I don’t know. Why do you care? And what’s with the whiny voice.”

  “Nothing,” said Charity. “It’s just they always sound so whiny.”

  “They?” asked Verity.

  “I’m bored,” said Charity. “All the girls on the group chat can talk about is food, and how thin they’re getting.”

  “Their mums obviously don’t garden.”

  “You were right, though. I don’t care what I weigh, and neither should they. It’s boring.”

  “So,” said Verity. “You can talk to me.”

  “Yeah, right, like we’re not shut up together all day, every day.”

  “Okay, but there must be someone else to talk to besides the girls from school.”

  “Most of the boys have left the group chat… There is this one boy, Able Dole, I’ve been talking to him a bit. He’s a geek, though.”

  “Yep,” said Verity. “And Pa’s a geek, and so for that matter is Sage, and you always seem to have stuff to talk about with them.”

  Charity got up from the kitchen table, taking the bowl of cereal with her.

  “Where are you going?” asked Verity.

  “To see if Able’s in the group chat. I’m bored.”

  “Good luck with that,” said Verity as her sister ran up the stairs and slammed the box room door.

  As Verity finished her breakfast she thought about what life had been like when she was seventeen, the ridiculous hierarchy that seemed to exist between the kids in any classroom; she thought about the vain girls, and the bitchy ones, and she thought about the boys. They had seemed alien, but also incredibly attractive… Some of them, at least. Who was dating whom, and who was going to the prom with whom, and who had sex with whom, all seemed terribly important to high school kids. She guessed that some of those things had been important to her, too, at the time.

  University was different, more equal. She’d dated quite a lot in her freshman year, and some of the guys had been great, but she hadn’t fallen for anyone; at least, she hadn’t fallen hard. She’d fallen hard for Sage, and he was the one person she wasn’t supposed to fall in love wit
h.

  Sage was faculty. He was only just faculty, after completing his PhD in record time, but he’d been a teaching aid to one of her lecturers. She’d only been nineteen, almost twenty, but at twenty-three he wasn’t that much older.

  They’d talked, and e-mailed, and then they’d dated, but only off-campus. They’d eat, or go to a movie, or sit together in his tiny bedsit, and watch movies. She hadn’t talked about him with her friends, and when it came to student housing she opted for the draw rather than nominate preferred room-mates from her friendship group.

  They’d been seeing each other for more than a year before anyone found out. There had been rumours. Her friends noticed that she wasn’t dating and that she wasn’t always available for supper or a drink, or even for late-night cramming sessions.

  After their first anniversary, Sage had informed the faculty. They told him that it wasn’t their business, unless there was a teacher/student relationship. There wasn’t. They’d met when Verity was taking a single-semester option. They had no official connection.

  By that time, they were both happy with the way things were, but when her friends asked her questions Verity told them the truth. She’d grown sick of the excuses and the dissembling, and she hated to lie to their faces.

  It turned out that no one had known who her lover was but they all suspected she had a secret boyfriend somewhere. Sage was a regular in the faculty, and some of her friends knew him by sight, but they made no judgements… At least, not to her face.

  Charity wasn’t going to have any of those experiences, and Verity felt sorry for her. It was all rites of passage stuff that everyone should go through. Maybe Charity could find some of that, remotely, through the internet. Social Media was huge, so there were plenty of ways to connect with people, through shared interests or acquaintances, through the online book and movie groups that had quickly sprung up since the schools had been shut down. Verity didn’t know what else was out there, but if there were group chats where girls were discussing their diets, then there must be something for everyone.

  Verity decided to encourage Charity’s connection to Able. It would probably come to nothing, but teenagers needed romance in their lives. They needed to go through crushes and first kisses. They needed to sit up all night and talk nonsense with each other. She’d done it, and now it was Charity’s turn.

  The next time Verity saw Charity alone was a couple of days later, on the landing outside the bathroom.

  “How’s it going?” she asked.

  “I hope you’re not checking in on my education,” said Charity. “That’s Pa’s job.”

  “Actually, I was checking in on your social life. Did you have that chat with Able?”

  “None of your business,” said Charity, and flounced into the bathroom, closing the door behind her.

  “Hey, I was going in there!” But she didn’t care, she’d wait her turn. Verity smiled. Her sister clearly had talked to Able, and she was clearly going to talk to him again. Good for her.

  Eighteen

  Dharma had a birth certificate for Charity Grace Mott, but she wasn’t sure where she could go with it. Perhaps, for now, she’d have to shelve it.

  “What about the marriages,” she said, back in her office the following day, already signed onto the internet.

  +Communication+

  “Negative. Facsimile marriage certificates 2000 to 2010.”

  The screen quickly filled with a certificate from the beginning of the twenty-first century. She didn’t know exactly when Pax and Faith Mott had been married, or when her grandparents had been married, but if she had the form of the certificate in front of her, she should be able to upload enough good data, with some good guesses about dates, and possibly come up with something.

  Her grandmother had been young when she’d had her mother, and it was during the Deluge, so there was only a small window of time when Verity and Sage might have got married. It was more difficult with Pax and Faith. She assumed that it was probably after they’d finished their professional training, but wasn’t sure how long that would have taken. She knew that it had to be before the census that she’d looked at for 2021. She’d work backwards.

  “Marriage: Pax Mott, Faith Bigelow, Catford, 2021.”

  +Data not found+

  Dharma repeated the process for 2020. Again, no data was found.

  “Stupid!” she said.

  +Communication+

  “Negative.” It crossed her mind that if there was no hospital in Catford there might not be an office where a marriage could be registered.

  “Marriage: Pax Mott, Faith Bigelow, Lewisham 2021.”

  +Data not found+

  Dharma decided to give it five years, before trying something else. There was nothing for 2020 or 2019.

  “Marriage: Pax Mott, Faith Bigelow, Lewisham 2018,” she said.

  A form came up on the screen and an insert box on the right. She paid her four tix to see the certificate.

  Pax Mott and Faith Bigelow had been married in Lewisham, at the registry office on June 30th 2018, and had both been living at an address in Catford: flat 6, Apex Apartments, Culverly Road, SE6. Their certificate also gave their ages, which tallied with the census forms, and their professions. Pax Mott was listed as a pharmacist and Faith Bigelow as a nurse. It was close enough; perhaps Faith had taken further courses to qualify as a midwife after her nursing training. It seemed plausible.

  Perhaps they’d moved before having the girls. If they’d been in a one-bed apartment, they’d need the extra room. She knew that things had been different in the past, that people had moved around before the Deluge. Both the address on the marriage certificate and on the census, three years later, were in Catford. She’d check the distances if she found other anomalies.

  What Dharma hadn’t expected was that Pax’s and Faith’s fathers had both been listed on the marriage certificate, along with their professions. Since she was most concerned with the female lines, she looked at Faith’s father’s name. He was called Ernest Bigelow, and he was a green grocer.

  Finding details had become easier, and Dharma wondered whether it might be possible to do more blanket searches. She had worked out that the form of records had probably changed very little during the Deluge, and that the New Wave records were probably only introduced some time later. She decided to try a search for the years between the 2021 census, and her mother’s third birthday

  “All registrations,” she said, “2021 to 2045, containing Pax Mott, pharmacist, Lewisham.”

  Her screen blinked, and then it blinked again, and again, as the forms piled up. Pax Mott appeared to have records all over the place. Surely they couldn’t all be related to her Pax Mott.

  Dharma sat down, it would take a while to look at each of the certificates in turn. The first forms were for the census, for 2041 and for 2045. There had been a new census relatively soon after the Deluge was over. It made Dharma’s flesh crawl when she realised that it was more-or-less intended as a final body count. Both forms had the Mott’s address on them, so she paid for them and uploaded them to her photo storage at home. There were a number of professional indexes for Pax’s work as a pharmacist, which Dharma glanced at and dismissed, as she did both their birth certificates, which she already had on record.

  The last two forms were for marriage certificates which had Pax Mott listed as the father. One was for Sage Tuke and Verity Mott. She paid to look at the certificate, which gave her more information about Sage, and gave the date of their wedding only a couple of months before her mother’s birth. Her grandparents were married on June 24th 2042.

  Dharma sat back in her chair for a moment, and then looked for more details on the certificate. It shouldn’t have been possible for her grandparents to marry during the Deluge. All weddings had supposedly been cancelled after the first few months of the pandemic, once everyone who could be was isolated. Only at the very bottom of the certificate did she find the information she was looking for.

  All the
participants of the wedding had signed the certificate ‘remotely via the internet’.

  Dharma was dumbstruck. She wondered why being married was so important to her grandparents. They were together, and they were having a child; marriage seemed redundant.

  Her lunch break was over, so she uploaded the certificate to her photo storage at home. She didn’t have time to look at the other marriage certificate, but her interest had been piqued by her grandmother’s, so she paid and uploaded it, to look at when she got home.

  She was answering a lot of questions about her family. She didn’t understand all of what she had gathered, but she was piecing together a tree; all she needed to do was fill in more of the branches.

  Dharma began to feel as if her search for a genetic relation might actually go somewhere. She really hoped that it would.

  Nineteen

  +Can we get out of this group chat, and talk on our own+

  Charity looked at the message from Able. They’d been talking for a while, but only around other people. They talked books and movies, and school, and they talked about people who weren’t in the group chat… Nothing mean, but some of it was funny. Able was funny, and clever, too.

  +E-mail me: name, initial, father, year+ She felt sure that Able was clever enough to work out her e-mail address from those clues. He might have to try twice to get the right year, she wasn’t sure he knew her birthday.

  Her e-mail pinged; he must have got the right year on the first try.

  She e-mailed straight back with her phone number, so they could text.

  +What’s the problem? Pa’s a pharmacist, maybe he can help+

  +It’s the thing… Dad’s got it. He got sent straight home from work in a paper suit, mask, gloves, cap… Everything. They incinerated his work clothes, right there+

  +You probably don’t have it+

  +Maybe I don’t, but if I’m going to look after Dad, I’ll soon get it. Besides… It stands to reason+