Shift

by Mia Gallagher

  Their hall was huge, all shine and windows. The floor was made of wood, yes, maple, polished so it gleamed. A glass chandelier hung from the ceiling, and a stairway curved around, with stone steps that flared out where they met the wall. Through a half-open door, I saw a room with a table in its centre, covered with decorations: party hats and coloured streamers and all sorts of smarts and Glass, which struck me as strange though I didn’t know why, and plates covered with tinfoil. My stomach rumbled. I magined buns and sandwiches, the epicurinnacle of Here. Then someone pulled me, it was Kanye Robinson-of-the-Peter-Robinsons, and said we had to assemble in the drawing room for the games.

  Well, little one, you can magine what we expected. Plug in to the intercloud and swap around: some on classic shoot-em-up, others a role-play mystery, those blessed with the right sort of intellectual capital on a multi-level logic-solver. But not a device was to be seen. Then I realised: everyone’s smarts had been left on that big dining-table. We were to play face-to-face: actual kinaesthetic interaction. How Maisie, to propose something so coolly Dated. At that point, I must admit, I let myself feel a little smug. For having grown up in Other Parts, I would surely be far more familiar with such playing than my fellow corpocitizens.

  First was musical chairs. I had underestimated my fellows’ competitive edge, carefully inculcated in them through years of privilege, and I ended up being the fourth one out. But I wasn’t the top loser, yes, smelly Jennie Ward was out first. Maisie should have won but she let the boy with the boils get to the chair first. That was ah, typical Maisie, little one, so gracefully demonstrating her moral surplus. Next we played musical statues. I was excellent at that because they are supposed to come around and make you laugh and I didn’t laugh at all. But then one of the Kanyes pinched my leg, making me squeal, so I was out.

  The next game was Pinning Tail on Donkey. Donkeys, when they were around, were like big yes, dogs with long ears, and used for carrying things, but that one was just a drawing on a piece of black paperware. It had been drawn beautifully, though – until I, yes, knew better, I thought it was Maisie who’d done it – and the tails were small bits of grey paperware with pieces of sheephair sewn to the end, with a thing called a thumbtack, previously in the You-Kay known as a drawing pin, through the top. Everyone had a tail, yes, very generous, and the mission was to stick the thumbtack in Donkey’s bum. I was the second-last person to play. By that time, everyone else had missed Donkey’s bum so there were tails everywhere! All over Donkey, on the wall, even on the floor where people could step on them – though no, no, such things are nasty, how many times must we, I assumed the children who’d put them there were just having a right laugh.

  I stepped up to Maisie’s Mum who was in charge of the blindfolds. She wanted to take my spectiglasses off before she blindfolded me. But I was worried in case someone, yes, if you insist, stood on them by hush accident, so instead Mum tied on two blindfolds to make sure everything was covered. Then she gave me a little push in the direction of Donkey.

  I had concentrated hard when the others went up, and, as I’ve said, I had a very overactive Mind’s I, so I’d been able to memorise where Donkey’s bum was. You couldn’t blame me for thinking my competitive edge on this one at least would be sharper than everyone else’s. I stepped forward, blind, and in the room behind me, felt the hormonosphere grow dense and prickly with excitement. In my Mind’s I, Donkey’s bum clarified. Then—

  saniga-saniga

  It started. Low at first, barely a whisper. I stopped. Silence.

  I stepped again.

  Sann Igga San Igga Rye Chuss Lil San Igger Sand—

  I stopped again, and they did too. I took another step.

  Sandknickers-Sandknickers Righteous-Little-Sandknickers

  Under the blindfold I felt my face begin to burn, my pores shriek again for my grandmothers’ veils. How had I, of all people, with my overactive Mind’s I, not, yes, magined something like this would happen? How could I have thought, how yes, how stupid of me, that they, yes, she, had wanted me there? That the mysteries of the invisible hand would ever lift me, inconspicuous nothingOther me, from the ranks of the beholden into the glorious tiers of the Haves? And in that moment of yes, truevalue-recognition, I thought I heard, yes, I did, hear Maisie.

  Sandknickers, Sandknickers, stupid-little-Sandknickers

  Sooside-boom-Sandknickers In-her-Icis-White-Socks

  She was leading it, driving the rest of them.

  I do not no no, yes, remember making a choice. All I remember is thrusting out my chin and taking a step. The chanting rose. I smelt the bleachy perfumes of my fellow-citis, the sugar of their breath. I took, yes, another step and walked into the wall.

  The chanting broke, splintering into giggles. I passed my hand over the wall, looking for Donkey’s bum. Some of the boys began to chant again. There was a sharp pain on my right arm. My hand jerked. My fingers brushed skin.

  Another sting, left arm. Another, my neck. I twitched and flailed. More stings, legs, neck, arms, fingertips. They were shouting. My Mind’s I sparked. I saw Maisie’s Mum’s Guzzler, our, yes, our faces captured in it. My face, floating over my father’s kittens. How pointless their stuckness in baskets. I saw my classmates and I, playing Donkey forever, captured in Guzzler’s skin—

  A dragging pain, worse than the others, across my cheek. And then I must have let out a sound, a yes, whimper, in the shape, yes, foolish, of her name:

  ‘Maisie—’

  The room went silent. I lifted my hand. My face felt wet. I pulled off the blindfold, but in my haste knocked off my spectiglasses too. Through the blur I saw my hand was red. The same red smearing my arms and dress, running down my legs into my stupid Other Part of the World white socks.

  Around me their mushy faces, staring. In each hand, a dot of grey flecked with blood; Donkey’s tail. I turned. My stomach heaved. Maisie was standing behind me. Her face as yes, golden, as ever. I looked at her hand. The thumbtack on her tail was clean; not a drop of my blood on it.

  She blinked, so fast I no, yes, no hardly saw it.

  A slow handclap started. Then they began to cheer. Drummed the floor with their heels. Somebody handed me my glasses. Someone else slapped me on the back.

  Mah an caleen, said Darragh Guo.

  Welcome, said Xiaolu Ní Bhaoill.

  You did really well, said Kanye Robinson-of-the-Peter-Robinsons.

  I put on my glasses. Maisie was smiling.

  We all had to go through it, said Jennie Ward. They gave me a right slagging about the horsefairs. Used whips on me and all. She twitched a finger, but fairly late into it. Nearly broke me. Got a new right eye out of it, they done a lovely job, see, the scar’s only just—

  You’ve a lot of know-ware, said the boy with the boils. We’re glad you didn’t do a BailOut—

  Not that you’d have got far, said someone else.

  There was a laugh from everyone at that, yes, jolly, yes, cheerful and they all started talking, excited, gabbling. About who had withstood the longest and what unnecessary bits of themselves they’d lost when they’d been the Game and those sad loserstatuses who had not been granted the tiniest ounce of her clemency and all the no, yes, beautiful, subtle, kind ways she let us, no, them, yes, us, no, me know when it was over.

  But I was hardly listening. I was still looking at Maisie.

  Is it even her birthday? I asked.

  Jennie Ward laughed. Oh, bless you for the bubble you came in on. Sure and if it was, she’d be the last one to know it.

  What about our gifts? I said, though even as I did, I could hear my Mind’s I, overactive like theirs, begin to whirr into connectivity.

  The doorknob turned. The children hushed.

  Ah, said Mum. There you all are. She looked at me and tutted. You need to get cleaned up, little one. Everyone else, into the dining room, fast. It’s teatime!

  Tomasz Llewellyn pinched my arm. Cooloid app, he whispered. I sneaked a peek downloading it from that tardworld s
martsong. Like, oceans, effectively, to make it fully op, no way your loser Dad would get there. But you’re nearly good as me at codesmarts, so, hey, sweet.

  Tomasz was right. It took us a while to construct a working Lens from my father’s primitive app, and even he, faith forgive his limited magination, would not have recognised the final V., but it was, yes, sweet. The Board invested from the startup, providing fiscal and labware and giving us some of the less glowing children from the younger classes as guinea-pigs. There were hiccups, particularly in the final stages, but we were able to solve them. I remember a bit, no, yes, lots of debate when it came to who would pilot it our end, but we all agreed Maisie would be the other side. I still see her, that last day, as she posed in front of the Lens.

  Smile! we said, and she did, her face glowing as ever, and strangely empty.

  It had been there all along, of course, that emptiness. From the moment I’d met her. It was, no hush, dear, it was the thing that had made her so unique.

  You see, yes, little one, Maisie had no Mind’s I. She’d never had one. She was born a shell, gee-emmed to reflect back only what people wanted to see in her. She’d been built by the original trailblazers, the first-gen corpocitizens in our school after its mergering by the technocracy. They’d magined her as a benchmark to ensure optimum collective performance. A role model, a battletank to enable us out-perform all competition, including our so-called rivals from the privileged echelons of the so-called Righteous. She was ideal optics in our embattled world of diminishing resources, a world where optics were everything, yet – a paradox – she was less than complete. While she had some self-learning capabilities, she needed constant updates to retain her margins. For more than a decade, corpocitizens in my year had been mergered, like me, despite the stink of Other Parts that clung to us, for our overactive Mind’s I’s. What could find those missing links, and align Maisie with the destiny the invisible hand had carved for her, if not magenation? Each of us had risen to the challenge. We had met Maisie, alone in a dusty classroom, on a first day at a school that had bafflingly delayed our entry. One by one, we had the carrot of her party waved before our noses and one by one, we had suffered in solitude, each experiencing the exalting truth of holy capital, the divine agon of atomisation of labour that pathetic, regulated community will never face. Through that painful process, we had created Gifts, some developed by our own hands, the rest fashioned through the indirect, but no less valuable, exploitation of the skills of others. Without understanding what Maisie was, we had mined the lack encoded in each of us to identify what was missing and facilitate her glorious enhancement. We had been lured in by the gingerbread coating of the witch’s cottage, we had crouched in the cage, we had found our way out, and its name was want.

  Much has been posted, vlogged and holoed about the Game. You’ve probably encountered some of the wilder theories: training exercise, corpocit bonding, a stress test of the robustness of the Board’s fleshware investments. But, really, little one, and you’ll understand this, we played it because it was yes, no, yes, yes, fun. And nobody told us we shouldn’t.

  When we were ready to pilot the market version of what my father, that lost but enterprising soul, must once have thought of as ‘his’ way out, the Lens V.α we would ultimately, after a totes amazeoid clandestine bidding war, sell to the saudileadership of the so-called Righteous, I drew the short straw. There was some griping afterwards, especially from the boys. Kanye Ai said I probably had a spare straw tucked up my sleeve along with a grenade, but the others told him off for being nasty. It was, yes, only fair. I had done the blue-sky thinking. I had concepted the gift, I had exploited my father’s labour to make it real. And I had visioned, in my bleakest moment, the transference principle that would rocket the device into full functionality. Now I stood beside Maisie, at the long Glasswindow of our gingerbread school, and yes, our heart ached as I watched her for one last time smile at the Lens.

  Hey, called Tomasz. Sandknickers! You’ve to look in it too.

  And then it was bish-bash-bosh, as a funnyman once said.

  We all used it in the end, many more than once. Some stuck to shells, like Maisie. Others, like me, have been more inventive, switching as the mood or century takes us from shell to skin and back again, though always choosing similar optics. The skins are no, really, happy with the arrangement. It can be, yes, tricky, though, living with a shell, especially for us, with our know-ware and still-overactive Mind’s I’s. We begin to think that the shell, or even the Lensware, has, silly, yes, silly, thoughts. Kittens turning into baskets. Baskets turning into kittens. Hard to know what’s, yes, me, and not. What’s yes, real, and not. But still we fight to protect our faith, to keep capital’s enduring flame alive, to out-perform all the competition. It’s difficult to tell how we’re doing. We’re so scattered now. Some of us still live, I think. Some not. Impossible to trace. Connectivity is next to nothing these days, as you know well, little one. The cyborbarians at the gates. I can go years without plugging in.

  Years. An empty word to the young, but if I wasn’t here today, with you, you’d soon feel the weight of the dimension couched in that single simple syllable. Tick tock: your sweet face, reflected in the endlessly rising sulphuric sea of the archipelago, creak and sag. Your skin crack. Your flesh slide, your spine hump. While within, on spleen and lung, liver and kidney, you lump and bump, budding toxic flowers, the fruits of a biosphere poisoned by yes, I, we, yes, I admit it, us, the last great magi and magenators of the faith, servants of the technocracy and their, yes, our once-ranting so-called enemies. Such gradual degeneration is not for you. Wouldn’t you agree? Come, little one, join us.

  I can feel your Mind’s I inside you, bright as a tack. Just what I she we need at this time. Don’t be scared. Take my hand, my Primcess™ hand and, together, on the count of one, two, three, let’s—

  there you are

  Smile for the camera.

  All Bones

  Dark. Sweaty. Bass pounding. Bodies heaving. Overhead arched windows, looking out onto black. In the centre of the dance-floor Neil knelt down, seeing a thousand stars humming a song of eternity. He was out of his face on acid.

  She was in the corner, moving like some crazy disjointed mannequin. Her shaved head glowed sick green in the bad disco lights. She was all bones. The light changed green to blue to red to white, turning her from sea-creature to madonna to devil to skeleton.

  The thought made it happen.

  Her eyes stared at him, empty black holes. She began to move towards him.

  Coming to get you.

  She slid her way across, slipping between the other bodies lumbering rhythmic on the floor, so thin that to his tripping eyes she seemed to be melting between them, coating them with a transparent patina of girl.

  Now she was in front of him. Stone Age cheekbones, eyes huge and hollow, thin thin thin hands, waving seaweed fingers. She danced like a maniac, elbows, hands, knees everywhere. Her rhythm was off, kept catching him by surprise, but slowed down by the acid, he enjoyed the sudden shifts, went with them.

  Outside, she mouthed.

  He followed her through the ecclesiastical passageways of the deconsecrated building. She came and went in the darkness.

  ‘Wait,’ he kept saying. ‘Wait for me.’ Except he was so out of his face he couldn’t tell if he said it out loud or not.

  She drew him into a room filled with red light and angular mechanical objects, sinks, plastic bottles full of dark liquids. Alchemy, he thought. Far fucking out. She waved a key in his face and kicked the door shut behind him.

  How the— he began to think, then stopped as she placed her mouth on his like a wet soft hand and dug her tongue in.

  She was voracious. Her lips were full and wet, soft cushions. They belonged to a fat girl.

  Down, down onto the ground.

  ‘Hey, easy,’ he said at one point, distracted from his orgasm, from the feeling of it, which he wanted to savour because usually you don’t you know, bu
t this time, with the acid he could, because it was so… except she kept fucking bouncing, like a Duracell rabbit on speed.

  ‘Easy.’

  She stopped. Shame flooded her face, in the acid bath of his head distorting her into something by Goya.

  ‘Come live with me,’ she said. Come fly away.

  She lived in a tiny house in the inner city. Red-brick, two-up, two-down. Or in this case, one-and-a-half-up, two-down. She was very practical about it. That surprised him. He’d expected her to be more, you know…

  Demanding.

  But no, she explained. Her flatmate had just moved out and she needed somebody to share with because she couldn’t afford it on her own. She was a photographer. On the dole, no money, living off favours and other people’s darkrooms.

  Neil needed a place to stay. His ex had chucked him out, rents had exploded and there was no way he could afford somewhere on his own.

  ‘Okay,’ he said, still dubious at the way she’d dug his mobile number out of thin air.

  ‘Don’t worry.’ She exhaled cigarette smoke from the corner of her mouth. ‘I won’t bite.’

  She was American, Kentucky originally, but years of hustling in New York had eradicated any trace of a Southern accent. She presented herself as being tough as nails, as an old boot, as something that had been left out in the rain for years.

  He was given the bad room, the half-room, the one she had to walk through on her way downstairs each morning. She had the front room, the whole one with the big window and all the floor space and the ten strong wooden shelves.

  She owned nothing. No pots and pans. No plants. No pictures. One day Neil stuck up two posters on the landing wall. When she saw them, she turned sour, resentful, as if he’d walked in on her while she was asleep and pissed on her bed.