It's no surprise then when Customs pulls me aside at OR Tambo International, ready to slam me into quarantine with the rest of the medical refugees in the camps converted from hangars. Which is not great, considering I have a sortof illegal (in the sense of sort-of dead or sort-of pregnant) cellphone nestled in the lining of my suitcase. A chipped one – defuser-free. Needless to say, Mpho is completely ignorant of this, and manages to make the situation worse by working himself into a state of outrage on my behalf.
I'm not concerned. A dry cough isn't exactly a typical symptom, but I am not in the mood to play coy with Customs, even if they should be commended for being so vigilant. I have my trump card. Why take the path of least resistance when you can simply eliminate it?
When the uniform at the counter asks me for my immune status, I snap, 'I think you'll find my company does regular, Health-Dept approved screenings,' and slap down my Communique exec ID, which has the intended effect. Which is that they back the fuck off and fast-track me into the priority queue, the Customs guy apologising all the way. 'We're so sorry, Ms. Mazwai, if we'd known, it's just the risk, and there's been an outbreak in Tanzania; they've closed down Dar es Saalam…' Like I care.
'It's so boring,' I tell Mpho, who agrees absolutely with whatever I say. 'You'd think they could just formalise the process and issue us with corporate passports. Or segregate the flights, like they do on the underway. How much is that to ask, really?'
Two hours and seventeen very mellow minutes later, thanks to a combo of Dormor and vodka served on the connecting flight, we arrive home courtesy of the corporate underway doorto-door. Mpho tries to grope me in the lift, a clumsy invitation to spend the night in his apartment, but I'm too exhausted to break it off or even avoid breaking it off with a mercy fuck. Besides, my apartment has a better view. It gives me obscene satisfaction that I'm one floor above him in the Communique residence, even if his is a single pad.
The door opens to my SIM ID and total cacophony. Jane twitches guiltily. home™ is in rebellion, the system flopping between settings like a dying fish, desperately trying to accommodate all our personal pre-programming at once. The stereo is genre-blending, overlaying the banal pop she likes onto the frantica dub I got compliments of Toby, bass lines colliding with the alarm.
I can't say it's not interesting, but it's wrecking the effects of the Dormor, especially with the lights strobing, caught between the sheerday blue I prefer and the warm orange plush Jane's convinced she likes after she read some colourtherapy article in the pushmags, and plunging sporadically into darkness as some kind of compromise.
Jane is the kind of desperately depressing unattractive that would be borderline pretty, if only her nose didn't resemble a ski-jump or her jaw weren't so pointy or her hair wasn't such a stringy orange, just for example. Nor, sadly, is she the kind of girl whose personality makes up for her physical limitations. As far as I've paid attention, Jane's tastes seem to be a pastiche lifted from pushmag articles, TV makeover shows and social networking recommendations that keeps her comfily secure within her own genre.
Oh, and did I mention she's in Accounts? And let's face it, at thirty-four, way too old to be stuck in middle management. Catch me still hanging around as executive programmer eight years from now.
Infuriatingly, Jane hits the off switch on the remote.
'Oh nice, Jane. Give me that. How am I supposed to restore the settings if it's off?' I turn it back on and click onto the menu. 'Christ on ice. What have you done? Pass me the keyboard.'
'I'm sorry. I was only trying to record Ángeles de la Calle,' which is the soap Jane is happily addicted to, a remake of a 1951 Mexican telenovela, only sexified, modernised, stripped of context and colour. A bit like Gaborone. A real bleach job. And particularly perverse, considering you can stream the original on the Retro channel. Okay, so it's unwatchable, unless you're a total fanboy or an academic, or alternatively, stoned with the subtitles turned off.
'I already set that up for you.'
'But with the rugby–'
'It's a clever system, Jane. It would have registered the reschedule automatically. Oh, never mind.' I reboot home™ manually, so it defaults back to the original settings. God only knows how she managed to do so much damage with the remote. 'There. It's all set up for you.' But I do it in such a way that it's going to cut off the last two minutes of the episode, overriding the download manager that normally insures against such eventualities. And you know what these things are like. Can you say cliffhanger? She's going to die.
'Can you do me a favour and not touch anything in future?' I snap. Jane looks so miserable, I almost recant, until I open the fridge and see that she hasn't bothered to place a grocery order.
There's only ice cream. Thank God Communique has twenty-four hour chefs, which is one major benefit (apart from the sea view, of course) that made defecting from New Mutua all worth it.
I don't ask if there's anything Jane wants, although when I place the order with the kitchen, I throw in a side of avo maki. Keep your friends close and your enemies and all that. I'm just going to ignore the contradiction in how this philosophy pertains to my ruining her soap. The rules of contempt decree that you have to play nice occasionally.
I take a shower and decide the only way I'm going to get the dust (and okay, that man) out of my hair is to cut it off. So when the doorbell goes ten minutes later, I'm busy hacking through my braids with a pair of sewing scissors. Naturally, I assume it's my sushi. But home™ logs the SIM as Toby. I waver about whether I really want to let him in, whether I can handle him right now, decide what the hell, and instantly regret it as he lopes in still wearing his peel, fresh from a surf on the Communique beach. He's soaked. And his backpack is squirming.
'You're dripping on my carpet.'
'Nice hair,' he responds with real admiration, and leans down to kiss me on the mouth, a little too intimately. I shove him off, but, unlike Mpho, he's not bothered by the rejection. 'Gotta towel?'
Jane steps into the lounge to see who it is, and her face clouds. She and Toby share a prickly antipathy, although she flat out refuses to admit it's because he's not corporate. She's internalised enough feel-good talkshows to know you should never confess to being a bigot.
I've been cohabiting with her for eight months now, assigned as live-ins according to synchronous personality matching by Seed. The overlap of our schedules is usually only an hour or so a day, not including weekends. I don't know how she manages to be so bad at number-crunching that she has to work overtime so frequently. Maybe she's trying to impress someone, get that promotion which is always and forever going to pass her by in favour of a smarter, better, more attractive candidate.
Not that I'm complaining. It means we stay out of each other's way, and she's oblivious to how I really spend my down time. (I could even confess to having maybe given Seed a little nudge in this direction, but hacking Communique's central database would be a violation of company protocol, and subject to a downgrade at the very least.)
Toby is still bitching. 'What is up with the security pricks? Like I haven't been here a squillion billion times before. Scratch that your visitors should have free rein.'
'Yeah, but then who knows what kind of streetside degenerates would wander in.'
'People like me, most probably,' Toby grins.
This is old routine. Even though I've hooked Toby up with a Communique Preferred Visitor's card, he has a habit of losing it. I don't let on how much this irritates me, because then he'd only do it on purpose, the same way he always ups the slang to get under my skin.
'Poor baby. Lumped in with the civilian dregs again?'
'Separate entrance and all. Back of the train. Can you tell?' He sniffs himself suspiciously and then flumpfs into the couch, still wearing his peel. Jane bites off a little squeal of dismay.
'But never mind my travails. How was Gabs?'
'Shit. Thanks. It's this big push on Push–' Toby snickers gratifyingly. 'But their cellular network is a shambl
es. It doesn't have the bandwidth to cope with the content, and there have been horrendous glitches with Bula Metalo's ads conflicting with the defusers. So it's ads or social control. Your choice.'
'Sounds like a good time to be a criminal in Botswana.'
'Uh, yeah, apart from that whole death penalty thing.'
'Hectic. Forget the work shit. I only asked to be polite. Did you get it?' Toby grins lopsidedly in that way that girls find attractive, although, honestly, he's more interesting than beautiful, especially since he's started cultivating his beard.
Jane is still hovering in the alcove anomaly squeezed between the kitchen and the lounge, which is but one of many factors that reveals our apartment was originally intended for one inhabitant and then converted, which only makes me more bitterly resentful about being lumped in with tedious finances girl.
'C'mon, let's get you that towel,' I say, downplaying his comment, and because I'm dying to see what's in the bag. And yeah, okay, because otherwise Jane is going to have a coronary about the couch. I'm not completely heartless.
'Should I call you when the food is here?' she chirps.
'You got edibles coming?' Toby perks up. I might have suspected he would have the munchies.
'Straight from Communique's premier chefs.'
We traipse into my room and I close the door. Toby unpeels, weaseling out of the skintight suit that protects him from all the pollutants in the water. He's not wearing anything underneath.
Jane assumes we fuck, but Toby and I worked that out of our systems years back. And besides, he's too promiscuous. I know that sounds hypocritical coming from me, but I'm careful. I throw the towel at him.
'You're still not eating enough.'
'Girls like a boy on the skinny. And besides, it's not insufficient food. It's oversurplus drugs.'
'Speaking of which.'
Toby grins, and like a cheap magician, summons a joint of sugar between his fingers. But when I reach for it, he holds it above his head.
'Uh-uh. Did you get it?'
'Maybe. You gonna tell me what's in the bag?'
'Maybe,' he shoots back. I pass him a lighter, and all play is put aside as he sucks the joint to life.
'Do you ever worry about her?' He jerks his head at the door.
'Uh. No.'
'Surely, surely, sugar and, hmm, let me see…' He sniffs delicately at the length of the joint, takes a long drag and smacks his lips together, playing connoisseur. 'Just a hint of vanilla and a touch of bliss isn't exactly on the employee preapproved list?'
'Stop fooling and hand it over.'
'Only if you tell me you got it.'
'Only if you tell me what's in the bag.'
'Ah. Seems we're stalemated.' He waggles the joint. I ignore it, nudge the neoprene with my foot. Then I look up at him coyly through my lashes. This is an old game we play, practically choreographed.
'What do you think?'
He tackles me, knocking me back onto the bed and pinning my arms above my head. 'You incredible woman.' He moves as if to kiss me, trying his luck as if the final play wasn't already pre-determined, and I twist my head away and take a drag from the joint still pincered between his fingers instead. He mock-sighs and lets up. 'You used to be so much fun.'
'And you used to be not such a drugged-out freak. Put that away. And put some clothes on. I assume you brought clothes?'
He gets sulky and crouches down beside his pack, turning his back on me. As he starts unzipping the bag, it jolts and struggles. A scrimmage ensues.
'Shit!' Toby falls backwards onto his ass as a VIMbot shoots across the room and under my bed. I yelp and pull my feet up, laughing. 'Toby! What was that?'
'My new friend. I liberated him.'
'How do you know it's a him?'
'I would never have gone for a female. Too troublesome.'
I stick my head over the edge of the bed. The VIMbot is already at work, rustling the dust bunnies.
'Tobe. I can't help but notice that this particular VIMbot appears to have the Communique logo on it.'
'Yeah, like I said, I liberated him. Just like I'm gonna liberate you one day: storm into the cursed citadel, slay the vile monsters or, you know, Jane, and carry you off.'
'To your shitty swivel with the rest of civilian humanity.'
'Hey, don't knock the swivel. I get a view at least a fifth of the time.'
'And motion-sick the rest.' His rotating apartment, designed to maximise space, makes me dizzy.
'I like the revolving. It's like being on a ride. All the time.'
'Thanks for the offer, the noble knighthood thing. But I'll pass.'
'Okay, you wanted to know my motivation? It's revenge.'
'Oh. Right. I see. You kidnapped a VIMbot because you resent Communique's security policies?'
'Not just Communique, Lerato. Every corporation! Let every multinational conglom quake in fear, for the people have spoken! Dredge humanity is banding together, taking a stand for freedom, truth, equality – and the right to buy Fong Kong brands.'
'A noble cause indeed. But I'm not buying the whole Fong Kong cheap rip-off pledge, considering you're wearing a thirty grand BabyStrange chamo coat. Please.'
'Okay, all right. I needed some help in my apartment. It's a mess. And this little guy… I just know he wants to help out.'
'All right, all right. I concede. You can have the damn thing. But let me neuter the little bugger first. Pass it here.'
Toby scrabbles under the bed and yanks out the bot, which is buzzing hysterically, desperate to get back to vacuuming. They're pretty dense. You can't interrupt them mid-task. He hands it to me, and I snap out my toolkit and unscrew the faceplate underneath it. It takes less than ten seconds to over-ride the GPS tracking program and the homing instinct. It's not like a cleaning bot is exactly a priority.
'What about the vocal responses? You want 'em?' I ask Toby, who is now pulling on his jeans.
'What does it say?'
I click through the options. Even less than you'd expect. It's such a simple piece of tech and they're not expected to last long, so they're pretty limited. 'Error, please try again,' it chirps mechanically. 'Property of Communique Inc.,' and, lastly, a really cute 'All clean.'
'Mal,' Toby says, so I leave the vocals operative and hand over the bug, which is now sitting quietly on best behaviour.
'Oh, crap, speaking of my BabyStrange, know anyone who might be keen to buy it? My parents cut me off. Again.'
'Is that your way of asking for a loan? Least you have parents, big boy.'
'Is that your way of turning me down? Aw, poor little orphan girl in her subsidised
beachfront corp apartment and cushy job.'
'You are such an ass.'
'That's still a no, then?'
'I have an idea. I know it's out there. Why don't you try working for a living?'
'I would, but my allergies. No, okay, I've got something hooked up with a games merchant, but it's been a while since I played with a joystick. Well, apart from this one.' He touches his crotch. 'Point is it's gonna take a couple of days for anything to come through.'
'This is only because I pity you and your delusions of splendour,' I sigh, pointing my phone in the general vicinity of the item in question, but really at his phone. 'Check your account. I've transferred 5k for you. Which I expect back, Toby. Seriously.'
'Truly, you are a generous corporate bitchmonkey,' he says, putting his hands together and bowing. I throw a pillow at him.
'Oh, and still on the subject of the BabyStrange. Now that you've saved it and, not uncoincidentally, my streamcasting career, I've got something to show you.'
He plays back a weird mash of some almost bar fight, which ends tediously and predictably in a defusing. It's not overly interesting, until he points out the big guy with the dreads, his would-be revolutionary friend.
'Is that where you're getting all the political doggerel?'
'Yeah. Along with the winning phrase "corporate bitchmonkey."
We're having a protest party. It's the new theme night at Replica. Insurrection Saturdays. Awesome DJ playing.'
'You, you mean?
'You should come. It's going to be toyota. I can comp your phone, plus one, if you want.'
'Toby. You know I can't attend those sorts of things.'
'Not even to show solidarity with your generation? Okay, okay, chill. It's just a bash. No one actually gives a shit about protesting against the system, except Tendeka maybe. But I did want to ask if you wanted to make a contribution.'
'What kind of contribution?'
'My beauty, your genius? The perfect pairing.'
'I can't do this guy's phone if that's what you're asking, especially not if he's just been defused.'
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