by Toby Weston
When an ex-colleague in financial troubles of his own mentioned he was selling off an old family office building, they decided to go for it. Some friends had pooled resources and Anosh put in what was left of their savings. Their little collective was able to buy the old print shop building at 43 Henkelkai.
The ground floor still contained a couple of massive, dusty machines and had huge rolls of musty and decaying paper pushed to one end. For their share, Anosh and his family received the entire top floor and the roof.
Ayşe was far from thrilled to be squatting in a semi-derelict, abandoned building, but she couldn't stand firm against the onslaught of Anosh's enthusiasm for long. It would be their asylum and, eventually, he promised, their home.
The other two floors were split between three families: his old workmate, a former software test manager, and his friends, both Pakistani Sikhs. Anosh immediately hit it off with the doctor, who was called Vikram. The other guy, a former photographer who had specialised in documenting insurance claims, seemed a little stiff, but they all worked together over the first couple of weeks to clean and fix up the place for themselves and their families.
The building had probably never contained so much life. Anosh’s own small litter played on the stairs or in the yard out back, with a rotating and essentially uncountable number of children; brothers and sisters, cousins and guests. In its heyday, the whole area, built on a semi-circular half island of soft mud, within a giant meander of the Rhein, had been a bustling dock with warehouses and yards. Despite a brief revival during the World War, goods sent by ship had been in decline for the past century, and the marginalised maze of locks and canals had slipped into increasing decrepitude.
The run-down, but centrally located, real-estate had been earmarked for redevelopment: old red brick buildings converted into coffee shops, design agencies, and luxury penthouse apartments. New prestigious headquarters, glass parallelograms or cylinders, surrounded by manicured grass and expensive cryptic corporate art, had been built circling the historic nucleus of restored warehouses.
Development had been sporadic. Work would stop when the markets crashed and then start again a few years later as the economy shivered and began to show signs of life. Recently, as the crashes became comically frequent, hard hats and construction sounds were predictable harbingers of the next slowdown’s arrival. Many buildings were only half finished and had remained so for a decade. Ragged plastic sheeting blew from their toothless window frames. Economic refugees and other more or less legitimate inhabitants squatted in the more complete buildings.
***
Four floors up and Anosh still felt uncomfortably close to the action playing out on the streets below. The wet towel pressed to his face wasn't stopping the gas that stung his throat and nose and made his eyes weep. Ayşe was downstairs with the boys, distracting them with cartoons from a better age. Anosh wanted a first-hand look at the violence again engulfing the city. He had come up on the pretext of cleaning the snow off the panels.
They had been in the house for six months, and the electric company still hadn’t reinstated the building’s supply, claiming an open bill from the former tenant, so they were reduced to a reliance on the fickle whims of the sun. Periodically, Anosh would climb to the roof and manually align the panels to a bright region of clouds that might hint at the sun’s location. Even on a smoky and overcast day, there was usually enough sun to boil a kettle, while slowly charging the Companion and nightlight batteries.
The main protest must have been dealt with because, from his vantage point, he could see police on horseback or in armoured vans closing in on the pathetic bunch of protestors, who were now marching raggedly along the street below. Slogans were shouted and banners waved, but there didn’t seem to be much conviction left. Bells were ringing. No solemn striking of the hour or elegant cascading peals, there was no wedding to announce; the bells were for anybody who had missed the police sirens, the black smoke and the eye-watering tinge of CS gas.
Anosh stood at the railing on the roof and looked down at the stragglers, who were bringing their chaos to this normally quiet neighbourhood. They were moving through the city’s outskirts with no clear target for their aggression, burning and trashing lethargically.
It was winter and it was cold. The people were angry. Many had no jobs, no benefits, and no money. More importantly, on a freezing day like today, they had no heating. The big gas pipes from the East had been shut off again and rationing had directed what little reserves were left to hospitals, schools, and prisons. Electricity was sporadic, with blackouts most days.
Lately, either as a punishment or an encouragement to settle down, the government had started to shut off power to ‘troubled’ areas. It didn’t seem to be working. Food and heating were scarce and the politicians seemed to have nothing left in their box of tricks; even their speeches were tired and abrupt, as if they too had finally realised no one was listening.
Shouts and cries carried along the snowy streets. More horses from a side street disorientated the huddle. In the confusion, they had allowed themselves to be tricked into taking a wrong turn. They were kettled; there was no way out, except past the massed police horses.
Looking at the concentration of meat on the hoof, a guilty thought flashed up from some primal partition of his mind and Anosh’s stomach rumbled.
The riot police had formed a line and were patiently pushing back the crowds towards the banks of the canal. People were panicking as they ran out of ground. Just when Anosh thought he was about to witness a massacre, another column of protestors arrived. It was unlikely to be mere chance. The protestors had Companions, and their own mesh networks running command and control structures.
The police, who were out-manoeuvred now, found themselves sandwiched between a few hundred desperate protestors, on the brink of a plunge into the icy waters, and a fresh mass of students armed with banners, bottles, and sticks. The new arrivals were roaring with rage at what they saw unfolding before them. Some command was given and the horses turned and charged towards the new threat.
Anosh found he could connect to the protestors’ mesh, and he used the opportunity to check a public view of the Battle-Space’s maps, videos and tactics posts. Dusslestadt was just one battle in the war today. In Hamburg, a police station had been stormed and the city council, which had been passing emergency power laws, had been taken hostage. Fifteen protestors had already died, and it was still only early afternoon. When it got too chilly or cold on the roof and the battle became too close and real, he continued to follow it with their Companion from downstairs.
He kept the device in sleep mode to save battery, only turning it on at fifteen-minute intervals or when a roar from outside signalled an update would probably be forthcoming. Eventually, sleep intervened, and he joined the rest of his family, snuggled into the nest of duvets. Sirens and shouts continued outside.
Chapter 4 – Better the Devil You Know
In a muggy alley, the girl leant against a damp wall’s flaking paint. Human shadows squatted in doorways rolling dice or sat at plastic tables playing cards. She was supposed to wait. She had swallowed the last mouthful of pop an hour ago and she reckoned she had made the bottle last more than that. She was supposed to wait, but the anger was building up inside. Her mother's voice, twisted by synthetic opium and fake ecstasy—the emotion, not the drug—echoed from an upstairs window. Heads turned toward the source of these rising, piercing cries. Yellow grins, filled with broken teeth, turned to cackle at her.
Suddenly, she was running through the streets of Manila. She reeled through a surreal, claustrophobic world jammed with people and clutter. Clutching hands reached towards her. Shapes in doorways, half lost in the black shadows thrown by the morning sun, followed her with sly eyes. Her mad dash slammed her into a crowd; angry heads turned and glared. A crush of bodies packed around, forcing her to stumble along with them. She felt hysteria rising. The crowd, like an insane confusion of circumstances beyond her contro
l, seemed to jostle her towards some impending tragedy.
She needed safety; a place to hide and be alone. Finally, breaking free of the scrum, her feet took her toward the water. The chaotic interface between land and sea was fractally delineated by floating pontoons and moored vessels. She looked around for a place to hide and slipped under a bundle of oilskins draped over a pile of fishy wooden boxes. She scrambled deep into the heap and found a box big enough to curl up inside. The plastic walls were dotted with shed scales the size of coins. The smell was so intense that, after a few seconds, she failed to sense it.
She used coils of rope as a pillow, intending just to close her eyes and think for a few minutes, to gather herself before plodding back to the brothel, where her mother might soon be finished. She must have slept, though, because as lucidity returned the atmosphere had become unbearable. The sun had risen, heating the air under the tarpaulin, driving moisture from the nets and ropes. The smell was back and the air was tangibly sticky. Although fully awake, she continued to lie still, despite the mounting discomfort. Her mother would be furious, but where else could she go? Trapped, catatonic, fixed by the harbour’s web of noise and smell, her unfocused mind spun circles of increasingly limited options.
Suddenly, the yellow plasticised cloth covering the crates jerked. Spears of sunlight jabbed in. Despite her desperate attempts to cling to its edges, the tarpaulin was hauled aside. Terrified, she kicked out and contacted something gristly. The surprised grunt was her signal to writhe like a caterpillar on its back and dash away.
She was running again; darting between crates, cranes, and other nautical chaos. She never managed to get a look at her pursuer, but she did see drops of his blood when she doubled back to make a break for the fish market, a site of maximum confusion. Somewhere she lost him. The shouts and the slapping of sandaled feet slowly disappeared into the general din. She let herself slack off from her frantic dash and wiped the sweat from her forehead with an arm that smelled of fish.
As adrenaline began to wash out, she felt tears welling up. Great sobs tried to force themselves out of her chest. She began to shake. She’d had nothing to eat or drink since she finished her sugary liquid breakfast, and the physical and emotional stress was too much for her eleven-year-old body to bear.
During the chase, she had been running from some degenerate minion sent by her mother to beat her. On cooler reflection, he was more likely just some unfortunate fisherman startled by the feral creature that had broken his nose and taken off like a scalded cat. Even while she had been running for her life, there was some part of her that wanted to be caught. She hated these frightened little girl thoughts; but sitting at the feet of a statue streaked with pigeon shit, she began to focus on her situation and carefully enumerate her options. It didn’t take long. Essentially, she had one—two, if she allowed herself to include suicide.
Stella waited there for another half an hour. She considered catching and eating one of the horribly maimed pigeons that hopped around the statue on warty stumps. Eventually, she reluctantly stood and pushed back into the crowd.
Manila was a warren. She had only a basic idea of how to find the brothel where her mother was temping, while the regular girl attended a wedding. It took her hours to find the right street. She finally recognised the face of a man, missing a nose, who apparently hadn’t moved from the doorstep where he was begging since Stella went AWOL.
The first furious slap to her face nearly knocked her unconscious, but the half-hearted angry beating that followed quickly turned into a distraught, sobbing cuddle. Knowing that being accosted by this drunken and dishevelled woman was the closest she would get to a mother’s love, she hated herself for the numb warmth that filled her chest.
Hours later, after another nightmare of waiting for her mother’s last shift to end, they were finally ready to head back to the tuna farm. Stella filled two empty pop bottles with water and packed them into her pink nylon backpack. The brothel owner, an old man with stringy hair and tobacco stained teeth, had given her a sugar bun for the journey. She wrapped it in a crisp packet and tucked it beside the bottles. Her mother took a small box of mangos and three bottles of something Stella was sure wasn’t water. They set off on foot back to the harbour. They had arranged to meet one of the service boats that ferried specialists and non-specific cargo between the Farm and any ports within proximity of its course.
Even at night, the plastic pontoons and old masonry docks of the port region seethed with life. Lights, dangling on bare wires, glared and reflected off oily puddles. Automated loaders, bristling with laser range finders and whirling radars, shared the stained old stones with boys pushing carts and stooped, bare-chested drudges.
Stella and her mother were ignored as they pushed through the throng towards a set of concrete steps that led down into the black viscous water. The men had finished loading the cargo an hour ago and were sitting and smoking. They jumped up and started cursing when the two appeared at the top of the steps. Her mother screeched back. She shoved Stella down the stairs before her and onto the already overloaded ten-metre vessel.
They cleared congested waters and headed out to the open sea towards the Farm. Unrelenting waves hammered against the bottom of the aluminium launch, their force shaking the crates, sacks, and bundles lashed together in a heap. Stella’s mother lay on the wooden deck, oblivious and insensible under the harsh lights, her skin filmed with toxic sweat.
Guillermo the deck hand, who had been bribed to let them travel with the only thing her mother had to trade, was sitting on a crate doing something to some rope.
“You okay, Stella?” he asked.
Numb with exhaustion, Stella was lost within the receding lights of Manila.
“Stella? You okay girl?”
“Ignore the little cow. She's pissed with me again,” her mother’s disembodied voice mumbled.
“Fuck you, you filthy old whore!” Stella screamed as the world flickered into focus. She lurched up and flew to the prone woman and began furiously kicking her in the head and tits, screaming all the while. She wanted to kill her, but she was small, and her kicks had little stopping power.
The older woman staggered to her feet, grabbed the small girl like a puppet by the neck and dashed her against the side of the cabin. She would have been beaten blue if Guillermo hadn't intervened, cursing viciously as he flung Stella’s mother back onto the heap of rope.
In the far distance, out-of-focus stars and blobs bobbed—a confusion of blinking masts and towers swaying in the darkness.
Spring followed winter. The riots died down. There was clearly nothing to be gained, and with the sun came a measure of optimism.
“Mommy come and look! I can't believe it!” Siegfried was positively vibrating with excitement as he tugged at his mother’s sleeve. He pointed at the little piece of earth, where the first of his strawberries had turned from white to red. “We should make milkshake!”
When he heard his son’s delightful idea, Anosh looked up from the sweetcorn he was planting and winked at Ayşe. “Good idea, let’s get some cows up here too!”
Besides the rows of raised vegetable beds, the roof had acquired a four-ton water tank and a rickety looking windmill. Anosh and Ayşe had spent two hard days scavenging for the wood to build the boxes for the soil beds. They had overturned derelict construction sites in the neighbourhood, salvaging the unused boxy formwork. The kids loved their little garden and were even more excited about the chicken coop Anosh had promised, although it was nothing more than a tangle of wire netting and plywood.
Downstairs, renovations were coming along too. The echoing floor of the old warehouse and ex-printers was still available for mini-tennis, but the southern wall was portioned off into two bedrooms and a lounge/kitchen.
When Anosh finally built his fourth-generation windmill, the “biggest and best yet”, he assured Ayşe, they would soon be an exporter of energy. The plan was to barter for naan, bhajis and, optimistically, medicine from the famili
es downstairs.
As the weather improved, vegetables showed up on the shelves again. The appalling rioting had become an embarrassing memory, a hazily remembered event within a rowdy night’s drinking; something to be suppressed and forgotten in the light of a new day.
Gradually, people’s lives found a new stability. Supermarkets had been nationalised by the new Way Forward government, which now confidently exercised the emergency powers it had awarded itself. The military had viciously put down riots, especially in the north. Scores of the dead had been left on the streets. There had been an outcry; but, in the depths of winter, weakened by the cold and lack of food, the people had allowed themselves to be bribed by emergency rations and persuaded by propaganda that branded protestors as vandals and traitors.
They stayed on the roof, working in their small garden, until a light drizzle forced them back downstairs. While Ayşe made a potato salad, Anosh finished installing some new software on their old router. After a few infuriating false starts and re-installs, he finally saw the sequence of blinking lights that signified a successful boot.
