The Wipe

by Nik Abnett

  One of the data sheets cycled to the top on his screen. Con glanced at it, and then zoomed in. It was a birth certificate for Constance Tuke. There was an old address in one of the data fields, which had a red box around it. Con stared at it for several seconds.

  + 131 Engleheart Road, Catford, SE6+

  He sat back again, his mind processing data, quickly and efficiently.

  His office address was 159/RhGbCT/SEd6. The first three digits matched the first three digits in the old style address from the certificate, dated 2042, and with the addition of a lower case ‘d’, the end of the address matched. What if he could find a current address that began ‘131’, and ended SEd6?

  “Thanks for the coffee,” said Blythe, hitting a key to close her connection to her mother. She wheeled her chair a little away from her station.

  Con closed his own screen and turned his chair to face her.

  “Are you okay?” he asked. “I hope your mum didn’t give you too much of a hard time.”

  “I’m fine,” said Blythe. “It’s what she does. What about yours?”

  “My mother?” asked Con. “We were never close. She didn’t like me. She never really accepted me.”

  “But you were at home for a long time,” said Blythe. “You’re ninetieth percentile.”

  “I liked to download school. It’s really all I ever did, seven days a week, fifty-two weeks a year.”

  “That can’t be true,” said Blythe. “That’s not a childhood.”

  “My mother couldn’t offer me a childhood. As I said, she didn’t like me, and, if she had liked me, I don’t know if she’d have been able to be a conventional mother, anyway.”

  “It sounds terrible. People like that shouldn’t have a child.”

  “I suspect that most people like that don’t have a child,” said Con. “Anyway, by the time I was seventeen I was ninetieth percentile, and I was out of there.”

  “I didn’t think anyone left home that young.”

  “I spent some time in juvenile housing with people who’d lost their mums. I was a lot better off than they were. I could work, so I could choose my own tariff.”

  “And you didn’t make any friends there?” asked Blythe.

  “If anything, they disliked me even more than my mother did. I was cleverer than them, I didn’t have to download school and manage on my own, and I had a much higher standard of living. Besides, I was only there for a few months, allocated independent housing when I applied on my eighteenth birthday.”

  “And you’ve been alone ever since?” asked Blythe. “I’m not surprised you like company… Even Joy’s.”

  The handle turned on the cubicle door.

  “Talking of whom,” Con mouthed to Blythe, and they both smiled as Joy walked in.

  “What are you two plotting over?” asked Joy. “Things seem to have changed around here, since my so-called holiday, and I’m not sure I like it.”

  “You don’t like much, though, do you, Joy?” asked Con, smiling at her as she hung up her jacket

  “That’s none of your business,” said Joy, glaring at him. “I don’t know what’s turned you so nasty, Con.”

  “It’s Concord,” said Con.

  “Whatever.” Joy sat at her station, and barely spoke for the rest of the day.

  Thirty-four

  Dharma was surprised when she found two birth certificates with Able Dole and Charity Tuke’s names on them. The search had been laborious.

  Both were dated 22nd January 2044. She selected one and looked at the field for the informant. Able had registered the births on the 15th February 2044 at Lewisham registry office. His address was 86 Bargery Road, Catford SE6.

  The certificate was for a boy called Zen Dole.

  Dharma was disappointed. Her aunt had given birth to a boy, which meant there was no female line to follow.

  She looked at the second certificate, but assumed that it was either an error, or a duplicate of some kind.

  She scrutinised the document carefully, and all the information was the same. Able Dole had registered the birth on 15th February 2044, and his address was 86 Bargery Road. The child who had been registered was a girl called Liberty Dole.

  Dharma switched back and forth between them, in wonder. At only twenty years old her aunt, Charity Dole, had given birth to twins, a boy and a girl.

  She went back to look at the old maps of Catford in 2040. Engleheart Road and Bargery Road were close together, certainly within easy walking distance if the layout of the streets was similar to BRd1. She guessed that the house where the Motts and Tukes had lived was less than half a mile from where the Doles lived. The family had stayed close to each other.

  Dharma was thrilled to have found her mother’s cousins, and she was thrilled that one of them was a girl. If she could trace that child forward through time, she’d be able to find out whether, like her cousin, she had also had a child. That child would be the same generation as Dharma, and, at that point, it wouldn’t matter whether it was a boy or a girl, because her search would be over.

  Dharma hoped that the twins had survived in the difficult years after the Deluge, through all the necessary changes that had followed. She hoped their buildings had been fitted with wipes, or that they had been born with immunity. She was full of concern for her baby cousins, even though they’d been born almost eight decades earlier. They were only about a year younger than her mother. If they were alive, she hoped that she could find them. If they were dead, it might be more difficult.

  “Liberty Dole, 22nd January 2044, Catford E6, all data,” she said.

  A series of documents appeared on Dharma’s screen.

  The top one was the birth certificate that Dharma had already scrutinised. The next was the census for 2045, listing Liberty as a one-year-old girl. The rest of the data tallied with everything that Dharma already knew. She was getting close.

  The next document was an education completion certificate, but much of the information had been redacted: large, black blocks filling the screen where the information should have been. It was dated August 2069, which suggested that Liberty had completed a second degree. Dharma was pleased that the girl was clever. She would have been twenty-five when she started work.

  Next came a housing placement. It was a brief document, dated November 2069, and most of it had also been redacted, but it showed that Liberty had been allocated a place of her own.

  Next, a company employment contract dated January 2070, right around Liberty’s twenty-sixth birthday. Again, it had been heavily redacted. Next came an employment severance record, dated January 2080.

  Liberty had completed her ten years of employment, so this would have been when she could have a child.

  Dharma took a breath before moving on to the next record. She hoped that it would be a birth record, and that there might be enough information on it for her to go forward into her own generation. She uploaded the severance record to her home photo storage, and the screen blinked.

  It was not what she was hoping for.

  Dated November 2080, it was another company employment contract. Dharma wondered why Liberty had experienced a short period of unemployment. It was rare in the New Wave. Some people held the same positions in a company their entire lives; others were promoted or even demoted within the same company. She did not know of anyone who left employment for almost a year and then returned. She would have loved to know what was hidden beneath the black blocks that covered the document.

  Dharma had uploaded each of the documents to her home photo storage. She hoped that her analytical brain might work out some through-line for Liberty Dole’s life. She needed something if she was ever going to find the woman.

  The next document was another employment severance record, dated December 2088. Liberty had terminated her employment in time for her forty-fifth birthday.

  Dharma knew that this was the last realistic opportunity for Liberty to have a child. Dharma had been born in February ’85, a few months after her mo
ther’s forty-second birthday. If Liberty had a child in 2089, it would be close to her own age.

  She uploaded the document, holding out little hope for a birth certificate, but there were still files waiting to be examined.

  The next was a housing placement dated July 2093. This confused Dharma, again, and she was disappointed that there was no birth certificate for 2089 or 2090.

  The next document was dated October 2093.

  It didn’t seem possible. Liberty Dole was only three months shy of her fiftieth birthday. This couldn’t be a birth certificate.

  Dharma picked through the information that had not been blacked out, and it certainly seemed to show that Liberty Dole had given birth to a child. All of the child’s details had been redacted. Nevertheless, this appeared to be a New Wave birth registration.

  Dharma had a cousin. He or she would be approaching her twenty-seventh birthday.

  Dharma sat, thinking about that for several minutes. She remembered being twenty-six, new to life in her own flat without her mother, new to the work that kept her busy all day and which she enjoyed so much, new to the luxury of a higher standard of living. She hoped that this cousin of hers was as optimistic and content, as she had been at twenty-six.

  Liberty Dole would be about the same age that her mother had been when she’d died. There was a good chance that she was still alive, somewhere. Seniors had allocated housing, and were well taken care of. She’d seen it with her own mother. If she hadn’t fallen in her bathroom wipe and hit her head, she’d probably still be alive. Her death had been sudden, and shocking, but at least Constance Tuke had been healthy and active before the accident.

  Dharma double-checked that she hadn’t missed anything, and that all the documents had been uploaded to her storage at home. There was no death record for Liberty Dole.

  Dharma had to get back to work. She closed the screen and set about uploading the data she would be analysing over the next weeks or months. There was little for her to do, so she had plenty of time to think about her personal project while she checked and ordered the data uploads.

  Thirty-five

  The Motts and the Tukes spent the remainder of the wedding day talking and laughing, and eating the food that Faith had spent the previous night preparing. Pax even found a bottle of sparkling wine, so that they could toast the happy couple. Verity toasted with reconstituted orange juice, which sometimes came in frozen, cardboard tubes with the rations.

  “It’s nice to see so much of you for a change, Charity,” said Pax, as they all sat around in the living room, relaxing. “What’ve you been up to the past few days?”

  “Nothing much,” said Charity. “I just didn’t want to get roped into wedding preparations.”

  “There wasn’t that much to do,” said Faith.

  “But if I’d been around, you would’ve found me something to do,” said Charity, “and I didn’t want to get behind with my school work. Pa might have forgotten about it over the past couple of months, but I knew he’d catch up with me again, as soon as the wedding was sorted. I didn’t want to be behind.”

  “So, you’ve been catching up on homework?” asked Verity, some of her old, first trimester sarcasm creeping into her voice.

  “Some.”

  “And Able?” asked Verity.

  “He’s fine, thank you very much. In fact, I might just go for a pee, and check in with him while I’m up there.

  She got up from the sofa where she’d been sitting next to her mother, and left the room.

  “Too much?” asked Verity.

  “Just enough, I think,” said Pax. “It’s good that she knows we’re aware of the boy. Gives her a chance to talk about him if she wants to.”

  “So, what you’re saying is that you feel better about it, Pa?”

  “You’re just like your mother, Verity Mott,” said Pax.

  “Tuke,” said Verity.

  “Mott… Tuke… You’re still the same Verity.”

  +The wedding’s all done with. We’re just sitting around, eating and drinking. I popped upstairs for a minute to say hi+

  +Hi, Chaz. Hope you’re having a good time. You should enjoy today+

  +I’d enjoy it more if you were here with us… But, yeah, it’s been nice. Everyone’s happy, and it’s a nice change from the usual day-to-day+

  +I bet+

  +Tell me how you are. What’re you doing?+

  +School, mostly… It keeps my mind off Dad. I wish he could’ve had a funeral+

  +We’ll give him a proper memorial service when this is over+

  +Yeah… It’s weird, though. I’m doing my schoolwork in the sitting room… I’m sitting in Dad’s chair+

  +That’s nice+

  +Yeah. It makes me feel closer to him, somehow+

  +He’s only been gone a couple of days. Things are bound to feel weird. Are you eating?+

  +Yeah. There’s more food in the house than I need for just me. I guess the rations will change next week+

  +I guess so. Make the most of the extra food while you can+

  +I’m not really hungry. I’m tired, though. I’ve been sleeping okay… I thought it might be hard to sleep+

  +It’s been an exhausting few months. Things will be better really soon. I promise+

  +I hope so, Chaz+

  +I promised, didn’t I? And, I always keep my promises+

  +You always do+

  +Better go, or they’ll start wondering what I’m up to+

  +Enjoy your day, Chaz. It’s good to think of you having fun+

  +I’ll try… Love you, Abe+

  +Love you, too Chaz+

  Charity wandered back into the living room, taking her time. She was expecting lots of questions about Abe that she didn’t want to answer.

  “Everything okay, kiddo?” asked Sage.

  “All good,” said Charity.

  “In that case,” said Pa. “I think I’ll make a pot of tea. I’m sure we can all manage another slice of that delicious wedding cake.”

  “Tea would be lovely,” said Verity. “Let’s sit in the kitchen for a bit. If I stay here any longer, I’m going to go to sleep, and I want to make the most of my wedding day… I’m only going to have one.”

  “You bet you’re only going to have one,” said Sage, helping Verity up out of the low, soft sofa.

  “Do you realise, we haven’t done any gardening today?” asked Sage.

  “Or any laundry,” said Faith.

  “We can all pitch in and catch up, tomorrow,” said Pa. “Including you, Charity. You’ve been far too absent recently, been spending too much time in that tiny little room.”

  “Oh, leave her alone, Pax,” said Faith. “Let her find her own way. She’s doing her school work, and she seems stable and more-or-less content. That’s good enough for me.”

  “Right you are. Gardening and laundry, and schoolwork, can all wait until tomorrow… We’ll all pitch in, and get everything ship-shape in no time.”

  “I’m up for that,” said Sage. “I love a bit of gardening. Never thought I would; never thought about it at all, until we came here. Maybe Verity can take it easy, though.”

  “I’m sure I’m capable of pottering about and doing a bit of tidying up,” said Verity. “I’m not sick. I’m only pregnant.”

  “It’s not hard to see who’s going to be the boss in this marriage,” said Pax.

  “It wasn’t hard to see who was the boss from the beginning,” said Charity.

  She was enjoying the company of her family, and this was a good day. In some ways she never wanted it to end, in other ways it couldn’t end soon enough.

  At about ten o’clock, Sage took Verity upstairs. She was exhausted, but she wouldn’t let her new husband leave her side, even though they’d been in each other’s company constantly for more than a year. She’d be asleep as soon as her head hit the pillow, but Sage was content to read a book for a while and then get a good night’s sleep. He’d been working his way through Faith’s extensive library of gar
dening books, and he’d been reading fiction from the shelves in the sitting room. Some were novels that Pax and Faith had collected over the years, some were from Verity’ and Charity’s years at school. Some were old and demanding, others more modern, and lightweight. There was even some science fiction, the early, classic stuff from the second half of the twentieth century. He’d loved the copy of Ursula Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness that he’d found on the shelf, and, alongside it, Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keys.

  Life was good. Science fiction made him hopeful that life could always be good, even during difficult times, even during the Deluge. It also made him feel hopeful that there could be a new life, a different life, after the Deluge. Perhaps there could be a better life for his child, in the future; Sage could think of no good reason why not.

  Charity tidied the sitting room, and collected dishes, while Pax and Faith set to cleaning down and washing up.

  “Why don’t you go to bed now, too?” said Faith. “Your father and I can finish up here.”

  “Okay,” said Charity. She kissed her parents on their cheeks and went back up to her box room.

  “She seemed happy today,” said Faith. “Affectionate, even.”

  “She’ll settle,” said Pax. “This whole thing has been a lot for a child to cope with.”

  “She’s not really a child any more, though, is she?” said Faith. “We need to give her some credit… and some space.”

  “You’re right,” said Pax, “but I lost one daughter today. It’d be nice to keep Charity’s childhood going for a little while longer.”

  Faith laughed. “Don’t be so dramatic! We didn’t lose a daughter today, and we’re going to have a grandchild before much longer. We should let Charity find her own way, do her own thing at her own pace. Besides, she hasn’t been a child in a long time… Not since the start of all this.”

  “Do you think it would have been worse if this had happened ten years ago, when they really were children?” asked Pax.

  “Worse? Better? I don’t know,” said Faith. “I guess it would have been different.”