Moxyland

by Lauren Beukes

  It's ugly, but the effect, even cumulatively, is nowhere near as annoying as the relentless twitter of the motherbitch. I pause at a stall selling plastic belts and cellphone covers and Fong Kong sunglasses to get her a talking Hello Kitty taser that yelps for 'help' incessantly in five different languages. The vendor tries to sell me one from under the table, rather than the squawking sample that got my attention. Once they're activated, he says, you can't turn the damn things off. Better take a new one, still in the box. But I tell him it's absolutely perfect and transfer the full asking to his phone, not even bothering to haggle. He can't even keep up the pretence of being offended. Cash talks, baby.

  Between the short cut, dodging the herd of cyclists who try to run me down on the promenade, and stopping to check out the surf – negligible; the sea stretching between Mouille Point and Robben Island looks greasy and flaccid, but that doesn't mean it won't be cooking on the corporate beaches – I'm already an hour late.

  I slide into the motherbitch's usual booth at Nova Deli by the window, playing it charming, even patting that disgusting mutacute she insists on carrying around with her, draped off her neck like an albino tiger slothmonkey scarf. It bares its neat little teeth at me, the only thing at this table brave enough to express how it really feels.

  'Oh Pretzel, stop that.' Motherbitch taps it on its nose and it starts making these grovelling, warbling, purring sounds. I wish she could have settled on one species or two max. These multiple mash-up jobs make me queasy.

  She is sucking on a nutradiet. She blows a punctuation mark of vitamin-enriched smoke in my direction. 'Did you call the Sunshine Clinic?'

  'Oh, hey, I'm fine thanks, mom. Just great. Thanks for asking. Got a regular DJ gig now, Thursday nights at Replica. Met a cute girl. Several, actually. Nothing serious, no grandkidlets on the way or anything, sorry to say. Swivel's cool, bit disarrayed, but it just hasn't been the same since you stopped paying for my cleaning service. All ordinary, you know. Oh, and you'll be happy to know my ratings are up. Who said I have no ambition? Well, apart from you, obviously, but in light of this, I really think you're going to have to reconsider. I'm streamcasting live now, by the way. So if you have anything particularly entertaining to say, go right ahead. This is a good time. And how is Tyrone? Or was it Wynand? I do struggle to keep track. Which reminds me, I bought you this. In case, you know, you need to put one of them in his place.'

  I slide the Hello Kitty taser across the table towards her. It's still bleating. 'That's "help" in like five different languages, right there.'

  The waiter materialises with two rooibos lattes, like I even drink that herbal shit. While he's fussing with the coffees, motherbitch plucks up the cartoon cat canister in her napkin and drops it neatly onto the waiter's tray, with the same cool efficiency she used to dispose of the rain spiders that probably still hang out in the kitchen.

  'Your father and I have been talking.'

  'That's a first time.'

  'We've managed to agree on your problem.'

  'Can I have one?' I ask, reaching for the pack of nutradiets.

  'No, Tobias, honestly. They're calibrated for my bio-rhythms exactly. They'd just make you sick.' Which is a lie straight up, although of course they are personalised for her nutritional requirements – she pays extra for that – but at least we're communicating now.

  'So what's the problem?' I say, taking one anyway, igniting it with a light tap on the table.

  'Oh my darling.'

  'No, seriously.' I take a drag and the micronutrients kick up the sugar by 100 degrees. I am intensely interested, blisteringly smart, devastatingly witty.

  'Your habit.'

  'Which one?'

  'Toby, please. You make me terribly tired. It's unconscionable. We've decided.'

  'And that's it?'

  'Well, of course you have a choice. If you'd bothered to phone Sunshine… It's just that we won't be enabling you anymore. We've already advised the trustees.'

  I take another drag of the nutradiet. I think it's the zinc that does it, that complements the sugar, I mean. You have to watch it though, because vitamin C will kill a buzz dead.

  'Oh for god's sake. You're on something now, aren't you?'

  I lean back, put my feet on the table to a jangle of cutlery and crockery, cos there's not really space for it. If I can get her to cry, points go to me and everything else is annulled.

  'So, how is father? Still fucking his boss? What's her name again?'

  But she just looks at me.

  'Really, darling.' Even the squashy-faced marsupial is the image of bored contempt, digging under its armpit with its perfect little teeth. Chalk this one to her.

  By the time I get to Stones, my mood has not improved. The pool bar is not, shockingly, exactly jamming at eleven a.m. on a Sunday, even though it's one of the few places in Long Street that's still general access. No corporati pass or proof of income required, and the cams don't work too well. Which goes a way to explaining the general dinginess and a clientele that leans towards the undesirable side of the LSM spectrum – and also qualifies it as the ideal venue to plot Tendeka's next outrageous, which he's being generous enough to allow me to guest on.

  It's a mutual beneficial. I score some quality vid that'll push up my streamcast's rankings, and he gets his exploits recorded for posterity, faces blanked out, of course. Not like those fucking idiot thug-lifers in Baltimore who were IDed and arrested by their uploads, in high-def. Tendeka and Ash are in the middle of a game, but when he sees me, he sets down the cue and crams me into a back-slapping hug of camaraderie, or maybe that should be comrade-ery for the Struggle revivalist over here. He's such a wannabe, so born fifty years too late. His dreads shoved up against my cheek smell of too much ZamBuk wax.

  'Toby! We thought you weren't coming.'

  'What, and miss all this?' I gesture at the near-empty pool hall, inhabited only by Tendeka and his go-everywhere accessory, Ashraf, a couple of oldtimers wedged in the corner, sinking their fifth beers already and not even lunch time, and the bartender, of course, who is tuned out to the soccer. The irony is lost on Tendeka.

  'Can you tone down the coat? We don't want to draw too much attention,' he says, conspiracy quiet, as if he's telling me I have bad breath. Can I tell you how crazy it is that the visuals are freaking him out when they didn't make the motherbitch so much as flinch?

  My BabyStrange is set to screensaver mode, so it clicks into a new image every two minutes. Here's a random sampling to give you an idea of what's displaying on the smartfabric that is so bothering Ten: close-ups of especially revolting fungal skin infections, Eighteenth Century dissection diagrams and, for a taste of local flavour, a row of smileys – that's sheep's heads for the uninitiated – lips peeled back to reveal grins bared in anticipation of the pot.

  'No, see, Ten, that's where you're wrong,' I explain. 'It's camouflage, hiding in clear sight. By drawing loads of attention, I actually avert it.'

  'You're not going to turn it off?'

  'That's right.'

  'Uh-huh,' he says, flat. And just in time, Ashraf swoops into the rescue, reprising once again his role as long-suffering BF and keeper of the peace. Mister fucking UN.

  'We've got a lot to get through, Ten. C'mon,' he says, nudging him back to the table.

  Tendeka goes grudgingly. Cos the fact is, kids, they need me. Can't do it without me. Security on the adboards is tighter than a nun's twat unless you've got a connection. Of course, I still have to convince my connection, but they don't need to know that sweet Lerato isn't on board yet.

  Ten scoops up the balls in the plastic triangle with a neat click-clack and picks out four to map out the plan. 'He's the eightball, naturally, I'm solid orange, the blue stripe is some polit-ec student they've got tagging along, a girl apparently, who better be cute, and Ashraf as the white ball to counterbalance.

  There's lots of actiony stuff, leaping about on rooftops and crawling under fences and avoiding cameras and Aito patrols. I stop p
aying attention five minutes in. I think we've just got to the part where we have to run across six lanes of highway, judging by the way Tendeka has the balls leaping over the cue laid across the table, when this incredible girl walks in, all juiced to kill, to give focus to my distraction.

  Even by the competitive standards of Long Street, being this city's hipster capital and all, this girl is styling, with her hair streaked in fat chunks of copper and chocolate, dirty cream boots and a charcoal cowl-neck dress over jeans, overlong sleeves dangling over her knuckles – this despite the soaring Celsius outside. I'm so preoccupied figuring out if I actually know her or just from the scene that I miss what she says.

  'Sorry, what?'

  'Do you mind?' she says again, already reaching into her back pocket for her phone, hung skate-rat off a silver chain from her belt, to log twenty rand to the table to get tata machance on the next game. 'I mean, if you're not busy?'

  Ten scowls, but what's he gonna say? Fuck off, we're planning the insurrection? That's the problem with pool halls: they're not exactly discreet. And who else is she going to play? The geezer alcoholics in the corner?

  Besides, Tendeka's already chalking his cue, just in case you thought anyone else was going to game-on. I'd point out that a real general would let one of the footsoldiers take care of this little nuisance – like me, for example, cos I could think of some ways. But his logic's going to be to get rid of her as quick as possible, and the truth is, kids, he's the most qualified.

  Ten could wax us all six-love, baby, with one arm amputated. He's that guy who carries his own cue around, the kind that snaps together like a sniper rifle in a war movie. He's also that guy who's not going to cut a rookie any slack.

  It's too entertaining to pass up. Surreptitiously I hit the record button on my cuff as I hand over the stick to the girl.

  'Your massacre, kid.' But as she takes it from me, her sleeve slips back and I catch a glimpse of a faint glow. I knew something was up. Long sleeves in the height of the heat don't cut it. I've seen enough light tatts on the little trendies in the clubs to know, even from a glance, that this here is the coke. The real thing. And when I twig that I saw her a week ago in the eastern seaboard executive zone, which is strictly corporati only, it all clicks into place.

  It's the first time I've seen it. First time anyone I know has seen it. It's a riff on the standard dark marketing shit. Hand out free stuff to the cool kids and hope everyone else is paying attention so they'll run out and buy it. Ordinarily, this would be out of my interest field. My streamcast is called Diary of Cunt, not Diary of Ad-wank. Your weekly round-up of Toby's astounding life: good drugs, good music, sexploits with exceptionally beautiful girls, regular skirmishes with the motherbitch, and, most recently, some para-criminal counter-culture activities compliments of Mr. Steve Bikowannabe over here with the pool cue.

  588,430 unique hits daily, as of this morning's counter. It's not shabby, but let's just say it's not BoingBoing. Or the baby animal cast. Or even that flavour of the viral week, that MIT girl who builds robots and casts pornos of them screwing her.

  But that could all be set to change.

  There's been lots of big talk about this on the rumour blogs, but no images. It's so new on the scene, how could there be? Which means an exclusive. Bigtime traffic. Hits galore. Maybe even syndication.

  It's a close one. Make no mistake, she's playing catch-up, but the girl has some skills. Forget whatever you picked up in the conspiracy forums on the fringe, it's not comic-book superpower shit. It helps you focus, like that zone thing athletes get into. Faster, slicker, more productive.

  It's beautiful to see it kick in. Someone who wasn't paying close attention, someone without my consummate experience, might not even have registered. But I am and I do. It's a textbook special. The breath catches in her throat as it hits, her shoulderblades tightening like she's been punched in the chest, and then it starts to fray away into her system and she goes all loose.

  I am overwhelmed with jealousy. Even occasional viewers will know I'm a waster – in more ways than solo, if you were to ask my motherbitch. But I'm functional skeef. It's not like I'm the kind of junkie freak sporting a tongue-piercing applijack. But I have notched up most of the pharmacologicals. Supersmack, kitty, halo, you name it. I can ID the flavour of the bliss by the rush. But in truth, it's all cheap shit. Black-market. Ill legit. Not like this girl's high.

  And maybe Ten catches a snatch of this, something in her face that reveals that all is not exactly halaal, cos he catches her by the arm.

  'Hey. Are you okay?'

  She snaps to attention, all hyped-up reflexes. 'Yeah. Good, thanks. Do you mind if I take this shot?'

  She folds over her cue, Bruce Lee in the intensity of her focus. She slides the cue back over her knuckles, once, twice, and then pops the white so hard it leapfrogs the eightball snookering her path and whacks her last remaining ball into the pocket. The white dives right in after it, so it's not quite the perfect shot. And who's to say the girl wasn't capable of doing it on her own, sans a sweet little neural turboboost?

  But even Ten's noticed that she's not playing straight. Her pupils are waxed full moon. He snags her sleeve as she moves to give him room to play his shot.

  'You tweaked?'

  'What? No. And even if I was, how would that be anything to do with you?' There's just enough of a catch of self-defence in her voice to spur him on, evangelical recovering that he is.

  'Hey listen, you want to get off that shit. You think I don't know the signs? I've been there. I can help you.'

  'Would you give it a break? Jeez. I'm not on drugs.'

  And now, with all this fast-escalating tension, we are starting to draw attention. The bartender snipes, 'Keep it cool, peeps.' Not that he has any intention of coming round from behind the bar.

  Ashraf steps in. 'It's not important, Tendeka, just leave it.'

  'Yeah, back off, okay? I don't even know you.' But Tendeka is still holding her wrist as she twists away, and her sleeve slides up, exposing the green fluorescent.

  'What is that?' Tendeka snaps. Now that he's spotted it, he won't let go. 'What the fuck is that?' He yanks up her sleeve to expose her wrist, and one thing is clear – this is no rinkadink glowshow. None of the signature goosebumps of an LED implant blinking through the ink of a conventional light tattoo. Cos this isn't sub-dermal. This is her skin. The double swirl of the Ghost logo in mint and silver shines luminously from cells designer-spliced by the nanotech she's signed up for.

  'Get off!' She shoves him away, a little too hard, maybe inspired by the nano-enhanced hormone soup sloshing around in her head, but hard enough so that Ten staggers back and catches the edge of his beer on the corner of the table. He's a big boy, heavy enough to break a glass easy, and a snick of it jams into his palm. Spilt beer and fat glops of blood spatter the floorboards.

  'You fucking sell-out!'

  She steps to the side, putting the pool table between them. How could she have known he would take this so seriously?

  'Do you know what that shit even does? You're a fucking lab rat. A corporate bitchmonkey! You make me sick!' Tendeka vaults over the table towards her. She grabs the cue and swipes it at him, more warning than weapon. I'd intervene, but where's the fun in that?

  With all the shouting, no one notices the bartender reaching under the counter to activate the panic button, or barely more than a minute later, the tromp of big police boots and padded paws mounting the stairs at pace.

  The girl turns her head to the door, almost as if she's anticipating it, as the cop and the Aito come ploughing into the room. She drops the cue and raises her hands in a neat physical dissociation from the scene. The cue rolls scuddering across the floorboards and comes to a stop by the stairs, where the dog sniffs at it once, and dismisses it with a whuff.

  'Oh, and is this your private fucking sponsorbaby security force?' Tendeka says, whirling on the cop, who is already aiming his scanner at him. He couldn't be more off. The poor
schmuck is obviously just a garden-variety citicop, unlucky enough to draw the Long Street patrol.

  'Come to protect the technology? Cos that's all you are, baby. A freakshow prototype.'

  The Aito barks in warning, echoed by a bleep from Ten's cellphone as the cop isolates his SIM from all the others in the room with the scanner.

  'Yeah, fuck off! Don't you fucking log a warning on me. I have the constitutional right to express my fucking opinion. Ever heard of fucking freedom of expres–'

  The cop doesn't bother to register a second warning. He goes straight for the defuser. Higher voltage than necessary, but when did the cops ever play nice? Tendeka drops straight away, jerking epileptic and setting off the damn