Wasteland

by Terry Tyler

  She also told me the real reason why NPU hides the identity of your parents. It's a long-term experiment, to determine whether or not children can grow into better citizens when raised by the state. Ginevra read about it in a document leaked onto the dark net, a long time ago, before she came here. Before what we see online became so controlled.

  My parents came to live here in 2037, from one of the ghost towns. Mum was pregnant with me, and her priority was a safe home and proper medical care for her children. Dad had high level experience in surveillance technology, and went to work at Locate, the population registry.

  They couldn't settle. Mum put up with the restrictions of MC12 life because of us (and the word 'us' still thrills me), but Dad became increasingly troubled; through his previous job and his new position at Locate, he understood more than the average person about how our activity is monitored. He became paranoid, imagining hidden cameras and bugs where there were none, suspecting the slightest household noise―the buzz of a fridge, the creak of a window. He thought his com was reading his thoughts; he was put on medication but refused to take it. The end came when he was hauled in front of his boss to be reprimanded. A guard accompanied him and Dad punched him in the gut, stood on his neck to hold him down, then grabbed his gun and shot his boss. Another guard rushed in and shot Dad at point blank range, there and then. He was a menace to society, they said.

  Mum had not worked since becoming pregnant with my sister, which meant she had few skills relevant to the current job market, but Ginevra thought the real reason for their eviction was that they were the family of a murderer. The three of them were whisked off, immediately, for transferral to a Hope Village.

  "That's what happens here," Ginevra said. "Everything is dealt with swiftly, behind the scenes; once you're deemed undesirable, you're gone."

  Mum accepted the offer to leave me in NPU. I don't blame her for that, now I've had time to think about it. The presence of a twenty-two-month-old toddler would've hampered her plan; en route to the Hope Village she escaped, taking my sister and brother and disappearing into the dark shadows of the wasteland.

  Much to their guards' confusion, they could not be tracked down. It was only when they called Security that the Farrer family's transfer details were found un-actioned on a lazy Locate worker's 'to do' list, and Dad's final act of rebellion was discovered: before he went in to see his manager, he'd removed the entire family's details from MC12's database. No DNA or breath ID, no iris scan, no fingerprints, no pictures; he'd also disabled the trackers on my mother's NuSens.

  My family had ceased to exist.

  I said, "But they must be somewhere! Can't I see if they're registered anywhere else? They might be in another Hope Village, or a linked off-grid―maybe I could get permission to visit them―"

  "No. You can't." Ginevra looked so sad for me.

  "Why the hell not?"

  "Your mother assaulted one of the guards. Stuck him in the neck with a piece of glass from a perfume bottle. She actually missed any major arteries and he recovered quickly, but she doesn't know that; for all she knows, he's dead."

  I gasped.

  "She won't be anywhere that records personal details on the MC database, unless she's changed her name, but I would imagine she'd still consider it too risky. But that's not the main reason why you won't be allowed to find them."

  "What is, then?"

  "You're an NPU kid."

  "Does that mean I don't have any rights?"

  "I'm afraid it does." She didn't speak for a moment; she just sat there, frowning. Then she said, "Who paid for your college education?"

  "I never thought about it―I suppose the government. The NPU scheme."

  "Correct. Why do you think you got your job here?"

  "Because I got a good degree, and I interviewed well―"

  "Were you given a choice about where you would work?"

  I thought back to the career interview I attended at the end of my education. "No―but I didn't think anything of it―I was just told that there were several openings at Balance, and I was given my interview date."

  "There you are. NPU owns you. It decides where you are educated, where you live, where you work, because you're part of an ongoing experiment. We believe that, in the future, an increasing number of megacity children will be brought up not as part of a family but by the state, so that, right from birth, they have no other influence. Eventually, there may be no such thing as a family as we know it, except for the rich. Your generation are the guinea pigs―so no, you won't be given leave to find your family, because your father was a killer and your mother is a criminal, but mainly because you're an NPU kid."

  It was only later that I remembered two particular words of that speech. We believe. I wondered who 'we' was.

  I didn't ask, because I was aware that she'd taken me outside her office to sit beside a noisy fountain so she could tell me all this stuff about my family that I'm not supposed to know.

  Ginevra understood that I couldn't be expected to keep something this big from Nash, but she insisted on being present when I told him, so she could underline the importance of secrecy.

  "Because if this gets out, I could end up in a Hope Village, and so might Rae," she said. "I told her because I thought she had the right to know, and to honour her father, but you absolutely cannot breathe a word to a soul."

  As it happened, Nash was a safe confidante simply because he wasn't that interested.

  He questions nothing that doesn't affect him directly. The megacity is the perfect place for him.

  I imagine their escape, with Mum seeing her opportunity when one of the guards got out to take a leak. I picture them haring down a grass verge, as one guard tucked his dick back into his trousers and the other lay bleeding from a stab wound to the neck.

  I hear Mum saying, run as fast as you can―don't stop, and don't look back.

  Even though I don't know what her voice is like. Or maybe I do; I heard it for the first twenty-two months of my life. Maybe my subconscious remembers it.

  I was happy in the NPU home, and the other kids were my brothers and sisters, or so it was sold to us, and so I believed―it was only when I found out about John and Lilyn that I understood how completely and utterly different it feels to have the real thing.

  I wonder if they ever think about me. They're on my mind now, as I spoon our sweet potato, bean and spinach curries onto plates; I'm wondering where they are, what they're eating tonight. I catch a glance of myself in the small mirror by the cooking hob, and wonder if they look like me.

  Nash doesn't get it at all. As an only child, he's enjoyed being the centre of his parents' attention. His family were amongst MC12's first arrivals, and embraced their new life straight away (easy when you get to live in a gated community), so Nash was brought up to accept every new law, every new technological development as a positive step forward for the lucky people of the UK megacities.

  Ginevra says I must have inherited my parents' spirit; the more I think, the more I question, the less I like it.

  "Don't force yourself into the rebel role, though," she said to me the other day, in a mild way. "It can put you in danger."

  I can't go back to how I was before, though.

  At first I talked to Nash about them all the time, fantasising about finding them, musing over what they might be like, until one evening he let out a loud, theatrical sigh, and said, "How long is this going to go on for?"

  Which told me he'd been bored with the subject for some time, and made me feel like a right idiot.

  I was about to say that this was when I began to fall out of love with him, but it wasn't. It was the moment I acknowledged to myself that my feelings for him had changed. I'm not sure exactly when they began to fade.

  He said, "Rae, listen; you're never going to find them. Even if you do they won't remember you, and if they've been rats for the past twenty-two years they'll be total savages. If Ginevra hadn't told you about them―and I don't think she should
have―you'd still be happy the way you were, wouldn't you? Now she's got you feeling all unsettled. And―I hate to say this, but it's true―they might not even be alive."

  He didn't 'hate to say' that at all. His expression told me he'd been looking forward to saying it for weeks.

  So I don't talk about them any more. Nash assumes I've accepted his point of view. Because Nash never questions anything.

  It's put an almighty barrier between us, but he doesn't know it's there. The fact that he doesn't makes it even bigger. We used to be happy together―I don't know if this is just a bad patch, but I need to reach some sort of resolution about my family before I know what I feel about anything at all.

  There's so much I want to find out, like why my parents couldn't settle. About the world they knew before. What it was like to be able to just get in your car and travel where you want. To be able to eat pizza three nights running without some nasty little ping on your boss's com. Most of all, though, to have the right to make decisions about your own life.

  We eat our curry watching an action movie; Nash's choice. Usual stuff: a threesome made up of a square-jawed guy, a kick-ass woman with ridiculous tits and a non-binary, foiling the savages outside the American version of megacities, except that Kick-Ass Tit Woman falls in love with one of them. I plonk my empty plate onto the table, longing for that banoffee ice cream cheesecake.

  Both our coms ping, Nash grabs mine to click 'accept', and suddenly Lori is in front of us, invading our downtime. Lori was my best friend at college, and she lives with Colt, who I've known since I was thirteen, in NPU. She's hovering over the table, looking straight at us, which is why Nash accepted on my behalf; he adores Lori. I would have clicked 'talk only'.

  "Hi, you guys!" She's as chirpy as ever. She puts on make-up and a cool outfit before she makes calls, and hates it when she gets a holochat deny; all that effort, for nothing. Tonight she's wearing a gorgeous long-sleeved, off-shoulder crop top in sky-blue, to show off her tiny, toned waist, and white leggings. Her hair looks fabulous; candy-pink and lilac stripes down to her bronzed shoulders. She keeps swinging it about, so I'm guessing she's just had it done.

  We chorus, "Hi, Lori," though Nash sounds more enthusiastic than me. Her eyes alight on Nash's empty plate.

  "Ooh good―you've eaten!" She laughs, showing off her Lumo-painted white teeth. "We wondered if you want to pop over? Few drinks, watch some stuff?"

  I don't want to. Nash needs to be careful about his alcohol levels with that demerit hanging over him, and he's never careful around alcohol, especially not when Lori's pouring. But she clicks to include Colt, who appears behind her, sexy brown legs in Bermudas, opening a beer. He leans over Lori's shoulder.

  "You coming round? Vodka's in the freezer!"

  "Boo-yah!" Nash punches the air. I suspect he'll still be making college-boy whoops at the prospect of alcohol when he's in his fifties.

  Looks like we're going out tonight, then. My reluctance is not only because of the Nash booze thing. It's because Colt is employed at Locate―the population registry, where my father used to work. Every time I see him, I open my mouth to ask him to find out if, in summer 2039, a woman in her mid-thirties turned up at a linked off-grid with two small children in tow, a girl of seven and a boy of five―or if Martine Farrer is in prison, and Lilyn and John are in a Hope Village.

  Then I close it again.

  Because I'm scared to know the answer.

  I'm scared to hear him say they're dead―or that they disappeared without trace on that day, twenty-two years ago.

  Chapter 2

  One Cringe At A Time

  Colt and I lived in the same house during our later years in NPU, and we stayed friends all through college, as part of an extended crew; through him I met Nash, through me he met Lori, and the four of us became something of a team.

  They live a mile from us, in Stack 249. It's a gorgeous evening, one of the last now that we're heading towards the end of summer, and I want to walk, or at least do the journey by seg, but Nash says 'sod that', so we head for the nearest ziprail connect. Once on the zip I wish we could go on to Larks Pond to enjoy a peaceful evening by the water as the sun goes down. But hey; three against one, and all that.

  We're settled with drinks, and Colt suggests watching selected iSync streams, but Lori shuts that idea down straight away. She's been anti-iSync since one night a few months ago when a group of us watched Nash's warts-and-all view of her twenty-first birthday party, at which she got hectic drunk. Nash's streams are, basically, a record of our friends at their drunken, worst selves, going back years―I could understand why Lori didn't want us to see a particularly messy scene in which he was trying to pull her up from the floor and she was asking him if he liked her new knickers, which were clearly displayed for all to see.

  As we watched, Marco and Atlanta were taking the piss―not nastily, just in a 'Ha ha, look at the state of you' way, like mates do―and she burst into tears, shouting at us to turn it off.

  Sian grabbed Nash's com and exed it, and there was a heavy, embarrassed silence until Marco said, "Fuck's sake, Lori, we were only having a laugh," and Atlanta told her to get a grip and stop being such a princess.

  I put my arm round her and told her it was okay to make a drunken arse of yourself now and again. I would've hated it just as much, though I think I would've squirmed through it rather than draw more attention to myself. Lori used to be brilliant fun when we were at college, but these days she's totally image-obsessed. This has a lot to do with her winning the 'UMC12 Hottest' award at our graduation party; I reckon she thinks she's got to live up to it for the rest of her life.

  Tonight I would have liked to show the others my lone sunset walk when the four of us went to Windermere in the Lake District at Easter. I've put piano music to it; it's beautiful. Nash says my streams are boring, because they're mostly scenery and places of historical interest, which is, apparently, nowhere near as entertaining as watching our friends getting wankered. As soon as the drink comes out I see him tap on the iSync icon on his com, and his eyes develop that tell-tale, glassy stare. He likes watching the streams in bed at night, so he can laugh all over again at his mates puking up. Mystifies me. It's bad enough the first time round.

  One day I shall wait until he's passed out drunk, and remove his chip. It's on your browbone; the eyebrow is shaved off for its insertion, then the hair grows back to cover the scar.

  Tonight, Lori distracts us by showing us an app called Spark that she and her colleagues at the cosmetics showroom in Retail 6 are going silly over.

  Spark rates your 'market value' in the dating world on a scale of one to ten, based on all your pictures, videos and iSync streams on Heart. Lori is delighted to announce that she scored eight.

  "I was gutted when I first saw it―like, only eight? Seriously?―but Sian reminded me that tens are, like, the hottest celebs, so eight is a pretty witching score."

  "Yeah?" Colt grabs her com, does a bit of nifty finger-work, and the next minute he's beaming with smug, too; he's scored eight point five. No surprise there; Colt has glorious dark brown eyes, amazing cheekbones, thick, long, dark hair and a beard, and he wears Bermudas from March to October, which he insists is because they're more comfortable, not to show off his sexy legs. I suspect it's a combination of the two.

  Of course Nash wants to have a go next, but flops back into his seat with his bottom lip jutting out when he rates just five point five. "Five point fucking five? How average is that?"

  I realise I ought to be reassuring him how attractive he is, but I let Lori do it instead. I'm sure he'd rather hear it from her.

  "That's okay, honey," she says, running her hand down his back. "Five point five is averagely gorgeous!"

  His sulk lifts, just a little. "You're just trying to make me feel good."

  She moves closer, and whispers into his ear, "How am I doing?"

  Their eyes meet, and something passes between them; I'm amused rather than annoyed by this.


  Next, it's my turn. I'm less than enthusiastic, but she's most insistent.

  Colt says, "Pack it in, Lori. She doesn't have to if she doesn't want." I'm sure he knows, as I do, that Lori only wants to 'do' me because she knows my rating won't be as high as hers. What the hell. We both know it won't be, so I let her get on with it.

  Much to my surprise I'm rated a seven. Wow. Must be my new do. Last month Lori insisted on making me over, and suggested I had my long, dark hair cut with a tatty fringe, layered up the sides and given a hint of an indigo tint, so it would look 'edgy-sexy' instead of―well, just long, dark hair. Last year she was hassling me to have one side shaved and a tatt of my zodiac sign on the bald side, but, happily, she let that one go when it stopped trending.

  Lori and her friends live according to the up, down and stable arrows on the trending lists; a look will be adopted by the fashionistas as the new cool (up arrow), then the stylists catch on to it and it goes mainstream, which means it's still acceptable but you won't get any prizes for originality (stable arrow). Once the mums, straights and geeks start having it done, it's condemned to death.

  If you're really, really cool, your personal profile might appear on the lists. If this happens, you're made, socially. Lori's main aim in life is to achieve this, and stay up there for a whole week.

  She opens her eyes wide in surprise when she sees my Spark score. "Whoo, a seven―well done you!"

  "I'm amazed."

  "Oh no, I totally get it; I make over girls who look like you every day; an ordinary, even-featured face is the best to work with. And Sian researched the whole market value question, because she was gutted at being a four, but she's got that quirky style, you know? Apparently men are most likely to go for Ms Pretty But Safe; good-looking enough for their mates to give you the fuckable thumbs up, but not so gorgeous that they'll try."