Hope

by Tyler, Terry

  "The writers came up with some marvellous content about Aubrey begging Mona to take her to see baby George." Jensen chuckles. "I have to say, I almost believed it!"

  Caleb Bettencourt peers closer. "Tell me these pictures haven't gone out yet."

  "They have, yes, they've been sent to the sites, but they're not due to publish until this evening."

  "Recall them. Now. I want an emergency halt on the whole article, and if I see these fucking pictures anywhere online, you're all for the fucking chop. And find out which imbecile chose the pictures of Mona and the kids."

  "Er―I can do that, straight away, but―"

  "What you waiting for, then? Tell whatsherface in press to drop everything."

  Jensen makes the appropriate calls, then turns back to his superior. "Can you tell me what the problem is?"

  Caleb taps his finger on the screen. "Take a look at the picture again. The one you were going to plaster all over the fucking news sites as having been taken this week."

  "I'm sorry, I still don't see what the problem is―"

  "The tattoo. The fucking tattoo on Hunter Morrissey's right arm."

  Jensen's fingers zoom the picture in and out; he frowns, completely flummoxed and more than a little nervous. "I can't see one."

  "Exactly. Did you not know that one month ago, dear little Hunter got a tattoo on his right arm? Some of those daft runic symbols, I don't know what the fuck it says―probably Celtic for 'entitled over-indulged shithead'―but the point is that it's there. Mona is not pleased, and told him to keep it covered up." He wrenches the tablet back from Jensen, and taps the screen with his fingertip. "However, and it's a big fucking humungous 'however', the sleeves on the t-shirt he's wearing in that picture would reveal it in all its glory."

  "I didn't know; there's been nothing about it in the press."

  "No, there hasn't, but it's the responsibility of the useless bastards in the story department to know every time Mona has her hair trimmed or Aubrey gets her minge waxed or Guy puts on three pounds, whatever. That's what we pay them for. One tiny slip-up like this could lay us open to every shitstorm under the sun."

  "But if no one knows about it―"

  "Only takes one. Say Aubrey's been gossiping to one of her girlfriends. All it takes is for that girlfriend to say, hey, look at this. Where's dipshit's tatt? And we're fucked. So you find out the name of the person who selected this picture of Hunter, and tell them to clear their desk, or take them up to the roof and push them off, whichever you like. Just get him or her, and it, gone."

  Jensen wipes his brow; he's sweating. "Sure. I'm on it."

  As Jensen opens the door, Caleb adds, "Nice work, though, in principle. We'll go ahead with it; just take Hunter out of the picture." He laughs, his anger forgotten. "Anyway, the less media attention that little prick gets, the better."

  26

  The Heat of the Night

  What do you do when your friends make deranged choices?

  It's hard, isn't it? Because it's their life, not yours.

  I can't do anything about this particular deranged choice, in any case, because it's a done deal.

  Kendall is pregnant. By a faceless Duncan who has since got the sack. He was supervising in the kitchen, and I gather she led him off to her shagging hideaway, i.e. the store cupboard. Love among the catering sized tins of ravioli, except that it had nothing to do with love. Kendall just wanted a baby. She reeled him in at ovulation time for a five-minute fuck, and bingo.

  I'd been watching her flirting with him and thinking, in my naïveté, how nice it was that she was going for the complete opposite to Dwork. This Duncan looked like a sweet chap, albeit with zero clue what to do with a woman.

  "That was why I picked him," Kendall said to me, after she'd been to the doctor and had her condition confirmed. "I didn't want to be mauled around, I just wanted the job done." She giggled. "He'd only ever done it once before. I was in charge!"

  She's happy, at last. It's good to see. I don't know; maybe it'll be the right thing for her, after all. Time will tell. I know one thing; I am going to make damn sure she stays healthy and doesn't miscarry like the other girls.

  Nick, however, sees this news from a different angle. When I tell him, his face breaks out into a huge grin.

  "You know what this means, don't you? We're a massive step closer to solving the mystery of the non-existent pregnancies."

  "How so?"

  "Du-uh, Lita. Use it." He taps his head. "Kendall's pregnant. If the big scary Nutri-monsters are, as per Mr Meth-Head's claims, trying to sterilise the poor, we now know they're concentrating on the men. Thus, it can't be in the food; it must be in the medication."

  My mind's gone blank, like it often does, of late. "Explain."

  "Living here really is addling your brain, isn't it? Think about it. The men here have vitamin supplements and medication forced down their throats practically on arrival, but the women don't, so much. Both Kendall and Trinity Chav have been shagging the über-virile Dwork at every opportunity, but have failed to get pregnant. However, when Kendall has a quickie with a member of staff, who wouldn't have received said meds, she gets pregnant in the blink of an eye." He laughs. "There's an amusing irony here, too; swaggering Dwork could be shooting blanks."

  "Fuck. You're right."

  He sits back, arms folded, exceedingly pleased with himself. "I am. All those hours spent doing logic problems whilst waiting for cheap flights at airports have paid off. Now, all we have to think about is where we go from here."

  The next week, though, brings a more pressing concern. Both the gynae and the medical overlord, Doctor Kacszynski, are pressing Kendall to put the baby up for adoption when the time comes, to the extent that they want her to sign papers after the three-month scan. I don't think she'll cave, but they're clever bastards and Kendall's not. I believe that having the baby taken away would cause her trauma from which she would never recover.

  Meanwhile, her news is great cause for celebration within the women's dorm. 'The girls', as she now calls them, offer advice and save her extra food, like rare pieces of fresh fruit or individual cartons of milk.

  The doctors say she must adopt a healthy eating regime, lose weight and take more exercise. They're already making noises about their concern for the welfare of her child.

  "I can see the way this is going," says Nick. "Bet you anything that by the time she drops, they'll declare her an unfit mother."

  Thinking about what may or may not happen in seven or eight months' time makes my head hurt.

  It often does, these days.

  July was humid and overcast, and late August is worse; the walls of Hope Village seem to absorb the heat and moisture. There aren't enough windows. The nights are punctuated by sighs, creaks and shuffling as women, unable to sleep, heave themselves out of bed to go sit by the fans placed in the corners of the huge hall. I feel sticky all the time and long for showers; even one a day would do, but I must wait in turn like everyone else. I want huge salads and fresh fruit, but the salad options at lunch and dinner consist of limp lettuce, tasteless tomatoes and the odd slice of red or yellow pepper. I can't be bothered to talk to anyone; I trudge through my days, doing what I must until I can collapse onto my bed and take myself into another world between the pages of a book.

  I sleep badly, my deepest sleep at dawn, shortly after which I am woken not by my alarm, but by Kendall's groans as she rushes out to the bathroom block to be sick.

  And then Nick makes the discovery that changes everything.

  27

  In The Shadows

  "There's something wrong here."

  We're sitting in the com lounge. Precious Sunday has come round again, but it's August Bank Holiday weekend so of course it's raining, dense sheets of it washing down from a dull grey sky, filling up pools in every dip in the tarmac outside. We did go out but admitted defeat after walking for just twenty minutes.

  Nick is flicking between screens on his tablet while I play soli
taire in a half-hearted fashion, when he digs me in the thigh and demands my attention.

  "Lita. Look. There's something wrong here."

  I imply polite interest, and he shows me a picture of a smiling MoMo in peach pink, accompanied by daughter Aubrey in sunshine yellow. They're poised at the hospital bedside of the latest Hope family success story: Joley, Brandon and baby George.

  "There's a lot wrong there, but what do you mean, in particular?"

  He zooms in with his fingertips. "Look. The shadows on MoMo's face and neck. They indicate that the picture of her is lit from the bottom right, but the lighting in the room comes from the top, as you can see from the shadows where the girl is holding the baby. Lita? Put that thing down and concentrate. And stop looking at me like that. It's important, and I'm right; I know about this shit."

  I try to pay proper attention and he swipes left to Aubrey, enlarging it so I can see the pixels. Oh dear. I’m not sure what I’m supposed to be looking at.

  "Look. It’s as clear as day. And there; Aubrey has no shadows at all."

  Those darned pixels. I try to muster enthusiasm. I don’t like to say that I can’t see the difference, until he zooms right in, alternating from one picture to the other, and then─yes, there it is. Clever Nick. Takes someone with anorak tendencies to spot that which most would not see. I’m reminded of the day I first saw one of those 'magic eye' pictures, when I was a kid; I was made up. "You’re right. Though they might've been airbrushed out."

  "It’s not beyond the realm of possibility. Look at this, though." He swipes back, and shows me three different pictures of Joley, Brandon and baby, all on the same screen. "Look at the arm holding the kid. It's in exactly the same position in each picture. There's not the slightest difference." He enlarges all the pictures. "Look. Even the positions of the fingers." He blows out, a little whistle. "This isn't a real picture. It's a composite."

  I shrug. "So what? I bet at least half of MoMo's promo stuff is fake."

  "Yeah, but it's not just that―"

  He busies himself, an expression of intense concentration on his face, and I go back to my solitaire game, trying to shut out the noise and listen only to the pitter-patter of rain against the tiny windows. It smells like wet dogs in here. I get the cards out on super-mega-brutal level, experience a moment of mild satisfaction, and click onto my Kindle app to find a new book to read. Horror. I could do with some blood and gore.

  I settle back, lounging with my legs stretched out across Nick's lap; he uses my knees as a prop for his tablet.

  I'm enjoying the book, and vaguely thinking how well we fit together, like a married couple, albeit having skipped the initial romance and passion bit.

  All is quiet for half an hour or so, and then Nick speaks.

  "Lita." He breathes in. "Fucking hell."

  "What?"

  "These people―Joley and Brandon. And the other couples. Mandy and Khalid. Emma and DeShaun. They're fakes."

  I frown. "What, you reckon they're actors? How? People would recognise them."

  "No, no―I mean they're computer generated."

  "Oh, right." I remember those glorious models on the Chic website. "Populus."

  "Or Humanoid. Those programs, they're still a bit of niche market because you're required by law to state that it's not a real woman spreading that magic zit cream all over her zit-free face, so they've got a thumbs down from the public, but I'll bet Nutricorp has sussed out their infinite possibilities."

  I look over at his screen. "Could be."

  "I'm going to do some investigating." He stands up and looks around, as if he's only just noticed the other couple of hundred people in here. "Jesus, wouldn't it be great to have one place where you could be by yourself? I think I'd give a year of my life for a whole day of solitude."

  "I know." I put in ear plugs to block everyone out, but it doesn't work too well.

  Nick puts his hand on my shoulder. "I'm going back to the dorm. See you later."

  At dinner time I'm in the canteen, taking a tray filled with vegetable pasta gunk and sorry-looking salad over to a corner table, when Nick zooms over to me.

  "Sit. I've got something to show you."

  He plonks himself down opposite me and shoves my tray to one side. I haven't seen him so animated in months.

  "Here." He shoves his tablet at me. "I've studied all the socials to see if any of them have profiles, and Mandy and Joley are on LifeShare but I'm pretty sure their profiles are fake, mainly because all their supposed 'friends' look like fakes, too―"

  "Slow down."

  He inhales, then blows out. "Sorry. I just can't believe what I've found, it's like every screen I looked at, I found something else. And these profiles, they're definitely not real."

  "How do you know?"

  "They're too perfect. Their posts have no typos or bad spellings; there are the usual soc med abbreviations, but no words actually spelled wrong. And new mums like Mandy and Joley, they moan about stuff, don't they? Teething, the baby keeping them up all night, or asking for advice. But these are all kind of bland. There's nothing random. You know how LifeSharers like Kendall do those status updates that say, 'Just wiped my arse', and then fifty-seven people 'like' it? There aren't any of those. It's mostly cute animal vids, inspirational quotes and 'good morning' statements asking how everyone is today, with a pretty picture below. Even when the baby does keep them up all night, it's all 'but she's so gorgeous', with the same few pictures of the baby."

  I take a good look, studying them both. "Yeah, I see what you mean."

  "And," he continues, "girly LifeSharers change their profile pictures every half hour, don't they? Mandy and Joley don't. They've just got the one."

  "Could be they're too busy with their new babies."

  He sticks out his bottom lip. "Fair comment, but there aren't enough photos, period. Whoever is responsible for them has been clever enough to set a few against different backgrounds, but not enough, not by half. And I don't believe in these 'friends' of Mandy and Joley, either. The only ones that seem like real people are Nutricorp employees."

  "Isn't eighty per cent of the known world a Nutricorp employee?"

  "Yes, but there are no pictures with these so-called friends. No selfies out on the piss, no best mate holding the baby, no scanned old school photo that someone's tagged them in. It's like the only place they've ever connected is on LifeShare. And the same goes for these 'friends', but even that's not all. It's the pictures. The shadows."

  "Yer what?"

  "Look."

  He brings up the much-shared picture of 'Joley' and 'Brandon', with the baby. They're standing outside the hospital, just before going home to start their new life. Nick produces a ruler and a plastic protractor. "Look. If you follow the angles of the shadows behind that bin, the ambulance, the pillar, and that nurse going out of the hospital, they're all in line. But now look." He places the protractor on the shadow behind Brandon. "It's a few degrees out. Same with Joley. And look at their faces; they're in full sunlight. But if you look where they're standing and the angle of the shadows cast by the building behind her, the sun should only have hit the area from the lower right cheek down."

  "I dunno―"

  "Lita, I know this stuff; I've been learning how to compose pictures with separate images for months, and I'm bloody good at it. The average person―like you, if you don't mind me saying so―wouldn't notice any of this, but I do." He turns to look at me. "It means that these people were not really standing outside this hospital on the afternoon when this photo was taken. If, indeed, they're real people, which I am sure they're not. The LifeShare profiles give no indication about where they might live. No locations, nothing."

  "Privacy concerns."

  "Yes, but there are hardly any pictures of their delighted families, either. Just the couples with their babies. Joley has one with her so-called sister―whose jawline is exactly the same as hers―and that's all." He taps the screen. "This will all go over the heads of ninety
-nine point nine-nine per cent of the population, because, yeah, on the whole the profiles are pretty well done. Your average LifeSharer will think they're completely authentic―in fact whether they're authentic or not will not even be questioned, because they believe the stories in the first place."

  I pick up the tablet and stare at Mandy's LifeShare page. "And it's public. Why would they have their pages set to public, if they're so concerned about privacy that they've omitted their locations and all other personal information?"

  "So that the world can see how authentic they are, whilst totally missing the point, which is that they're public in the first place."

  "So why hasn't anyone else spotted all this?"

  "Some have." He grins. "I've had a busy afternoon! No one's investigated to this extent, though. I googled 'mandy khalid joley fake profiles' and came up with a few mutters here and there, but I imagine Nutricorp's social media armies are doing the very same thing on a daily basis, and getting them shut down PDQ."

  I hand the tablet back and glance at my plate of lukewarm pasta, now congealing so prettily against the watery tomato-like objects. Yuk. "Okay, sum up what we've got. Gimme bullet points."

  "Right." He coughs. "I am sure the happy births coming out of Hope Villages are fake. Thus, there are not actually any births all, or this deception would not be necessary. Thus, the lack of births must be by design rather than accident, because they've bothered to go to great trouble to convince the public otherwise."

  I smile. "I like the logical thinking."

  Nick gives a smug shrug. "To continue, we suspect that the male unemployed and homeless are being rendered sterile."

  "Why?"

  "I assume to control the growth of the country's underclass."

  "Because in GuyMo's Britain there is no room for passengers."

  "Exactement, ma chère. Passengers being those who contribute nothing to the economic wealth of the nation but still need to be fed and housed. To borrow one of Cole's favourite Naked Truth phrases, they're phasing out the useless eaters."