by Kim Curran
Sitting here, letting all the information in, feels like that. In a moment, I’ll need to return to the surface, gasping for air. But for now, things seem clearer.
There are themes that repeat over and over. A lot of talk about the virus and what was it. But then mundane stuff, like what’s on TV or what people are eating. And sex. So much sex. People watching it, thinking about it, filming themselves doing it. I flinch every time I’m confronted with yet another contorted face. Why are people doing this? Putting their most intimate moments up on Glaze. Don’t they realise they can be watched? Stupid question, I think. Of course they don’t realise. Up until about twenty minutes ago I didn’t realise. Is this the secret Logan wanted me to know?
I think of Ryan, and wonder what he’s doing now.
Then I know. I see a single image—Amy’s face filling my sight—and I know I’m looking through Ryan’s eyes. Amy is shouting, her normally pretty face made ugly in rage. The auto-captioning starts without me even willing it.
// YOU DID THIS TO ME! YOU PUT THAT VIDEO OUT THERE. AND NOW EVERYONE’S CALLING ME A SLUT. WHEN YOU’RE THE SLUT, RYAN. YOU’RE THE SCUM! //
Ryan closes his eyes, breaking my connection. I close my eyes too, trying to block out the image of Amy’s tear-stained face. She found out about the video after all. Logan was right. There are no more secrets. Our mistakes follow us for ever now. Scars etched onto our souls for all to see.
When I open my eyes I can see an image of a girl on a roundabout, and I know, without really knowing how, it’s a father playing back old memories as he tries to fall asleep.
‘I think I’m getting a grip.’
‘How?’ says Ethan.
‘I don’t know, but if I think of someone, someone I know, it’s like I can centre in on their feed. It’s less random. But I can still see things I’m not meant to be able to see. This stuff, it’s not publicly streaming. It’s like I can… ’
‘Spy on them?’
It’s what I didn’t want to say, but Ethan is right. That’s exactly what I’m doing. Whether it’s the feed from the drones and CCTVs all around me, or the lives of normal people, I can see everything they see. And if I can see it, so can Max.
The laughing face of the girl on the roundabout is replaced with an image of Max from some PR event or other. His too-white teeth and his too-large smile loom down on me like something out of a nightmare. I flinch and turn away from the image.
‘You can focus on anyone you know?’ Ethan says, resting his hand on my arm.
‘I don’t know. Maybe?’ I say, opening my eyes again. The image of Max is still there.
Ethan opens his mouth as if he has an idea and then stops.
‘What?’
He looks uncertain, as if what he’s about to suggest might be a really bad idea.
‘What?’ I say again, irritated. I want it all to go away.
‘Kiara?’ It’s the merest suggestion of her name, as if he’s afraid to speak it. At first I’m confused. He doesn’t even know her. I know I told him about her being affected like those other people, like my mother and that man, how she’s in a coma... and then I understand.
‘Kiara,’ I say.
My focus shifts. I’m looking up at a ceiling. It’s covered in glow-in-the-dark stars, spread across the white paint seemingly randomly. I pick out the constellation of Leo amid the mass of glowing green. And Cassiopeia is there too. And that’s all. Kiara’s ceiling in her bedroom.
‘Navigating by stars,’ I say.
Ethan doesn’t ask what I mean. He readjusts the hood of his top over my head.
As long as I focus on Kiara all I can see are those glowing stars. The relief is almost overwhelming.
‘That was a good idea,’ I say, wiping a tear from my eyes. ‘Weird and creepy, but good.’ I feel more myself. More able to organise my thoughts. The relief is unlike anything I’ve experienced. It’s like lying on cool grass after a long-distance run.
He laughs. ‘Gee, weird and creepy. Just what every guy wants to hear.’
‘Yes, but you’re not every guy, are you?’ I say.
The dull haze of a sol-light blends with the glow of the stars to illuminate his smile. He takes my hand and helps me to my feet.
‘We’re here,’ he says five minutes later.
We’ve stopped in front of a large, white building, with big double doors and a broken sign that used to read Albion Hotel. Only the letters b and t are missing. All the windows have been boarded up and it doesn’t look like anyone’s been here in years.
‘Where’s here?’ I say.
‘My place.’
‘You live in an abandoned hotel?’ I ask, following him down a set of stairs that lead off the pavement and towards the basement level. My legs shake as I bend them on each step, but I’m starting to feel more in control.
‘Dad and I stayed here, when Mum first kicked him out. I kinda liked it.’ He shrugs, and pulls aside a wooden plank covering a window. I squeeze through into the room.
I’m hit by the smell of damp. In the light bleeding through the cracks in the board, I make out mould creeping up the peeling wallpaper and grey patches spreading out from the corners of the ceiling.
‘You live here?’
‘For now,’ he says, dropping onto the floor beside me and replacing the wooden board.
‘It’s, um...’ I say, trying to find the words. And then, because I remind myself of Max I force myself to finish. ‘It’s cosy.’
‘It’s a shit-hole, Petri; you don’t have to lie. But it’s a temporary shit-hole.’
‘That’s the first time I’ve heard you swear,’ I say, more comfortable now that we both know this place sucks.
‘Yeah, you’re having such a good influence on me.’
He laughs and I laugh too.
I look around at the room. It was obviously once a guest room; it has a big double bed in the centre of the room, a large cupboard and small sideboard over a mini-bar fridge.
‘Do you want anything?’ he says.
‘What have you got?’
‘Well, let me see.’ He bends down and opens the fridge door. ‘We have a bag of crisps that has been open for a few days, a box of cereal—but no milk. Oh, some sweets.’ He straightens up, holding a yellow bag of jellies.
‘Sweets would be amazing.’ I hold out my hands and he throws the bag into them. I grab a handful of sugar-coated candy, not caring what colour they are, and shove them into my mouth. The sugar rushes through my blood and I can feel it tingling in my hands and feet. I’ve never tasted anything better.
I collapse on the edge of the bed. It creaks under my weight. Ethan lifts himself up onto the sideboard and watches me, his legs swinging. I’m struck by how exceptional this boy is, by everything he’s done for me, from the moment he stopped me being hit in the riot to now. And why? Because I saved him from Dave Carlton a year ago, even though I now know he’d have been more than able to handle Dave and his goons himself? Can it be as simple as that?
‘Being with me is dangerous, you know,’ I say. ‘If they catch me, I don’t know what they’ll do with you.’
‘I’ll take the risk,’ he says smiling.
‘You know what’s weird though?’
‘You mean besides absolutely everything we’ve been through?’
‘Besides that. What’s weird is you’re the only person I’m safe with right now.’
‘Because I’m what, so manly?’ he says, a smirk twisting his face.
I scowl at him. ‘No, because you don’t have a chip. Anyone else could be used by Max to find me. Even if they didn’t want to help, they wouldn’t have a choice. But you, I don’t have to worry about. What are the chances? Nearly a billion people on Glaze. But not you.’
He slides off the sideboard and walks over, reaches into the bag to pull out a sweet then takes a seat next to me. It’s shaped like an animal of some sort, a monkey I think. He considers it then pops it into his mouth. ‘Nope. Not me.’
I throw my h
ands up, sending bright green and red gums flying over the duvet.
‘What?’ Ethan says, crouching down to pick up the sweets.
‘You is what! I don’t know anything about you. You’re so... so bloody mysterious all the time. It’s annoying.’
‘And you’d rather know every single thing about me, is that it? No secrets, like they promise on Glaze. Like Ryan promised you?’ He laughs, an angry exhalation of breath that lets me know exactly what he thinks about Ryan and his secrets.
I face him. ‘Not everything. Just something. All I know is you’re called Ethan and you seem to be living like a mushroom.’ I indicate the damp walls with a wave of my hand.
‘A mushroom?’ Ethan says, shocked. ‘A mushroom?’ He sounds amused now, a smile creeping over his face. He bites his bottom lip like he’s trying to stop himself from laughing.
‘Yes, in the dark. Like a mushroom.’
We laugh and it feels so good, so normal. Ethan sits next to me, closer this time, and nudges me in the side.
‘OK, Ms Nosy, what do you want to know?’
I look at him. ‘Now that you ask, I can’t think of a single thing!’ This sets us off again. And I know we’re laughing because we’re both scared and exhausted and I, for one, am a heartbeat away from crying and I know that if I start, I may never stop.
I lie back on the lumpy bed and Ethan lies next to me, as our laughing fades away. Our bodies are only inches apart, the backs of our hands resting against each other. I reach out a finger and hook it around one of his.
‘Tell me how you ended up here.’
I slide over an inch so I can lean on his shoulder. Ethan is uncomfortable with the intimacy at first, then he wraps his arm around my shoulder, and begins to speak.
22
‘MUM AND DAD DIVORCED when I was ten,’ he says, his fingertips brushing against my collarbone. ‘After that I spent most of my time bouncing from one to the other, like a ping-pong ball. One weekend here. One weekend there. Which was OK by me. At least it meant I didn’t need to listen to them screaming at each other anymore.’
‘Wasn’t it difficult?’ I ask. At least living with only Zizi, even with all her weirdness, meant I never had to deal with anything like that.
Ethan shrugs and the movement pulls me even closer into him. ‘Not really. I kind of liked it. It was almost like having two lives. But then, Dad lost his job and started drinking. Don’t get me wrong. He didn’t hit me or anything. In fact, he was great. Too great maybe. He’d let me go out and do whatever I wanted, as long as I didn’t wake him up when I got home.’
As he talks, I find my grip on Kiara’s feed weakening and new images start to seep in. Glimpses of people drinking, staring into glasses of golden liquids, hoping to find some answers in there. I hop from one feed to another, like stones across a lake.
‘That kind of freedom is a bit of a trip, you know?’ Ethan says with a soft sigh. ‘No one telling you where to be and who to hang with. Mum was the total opposite. She didn’t want me staying out late. I didn’t understand that she only wanted me to be safe. And I hated her for it. She hated me a bit too, I think. I don’t blame her. I made her life hell.
‘So I spent more and more time with Dad and less and less time with her. Mostly, I spent time with my friends. Hanging out on the streets. And that worked just fine for everyone. Till…’ he pauses. And I sense he’s weighing up whether to finish or not.
‘Till what?’
‘Till I got arrested.’ He looks down at his shoes.
A month ago, I would have recoiled from him. I would have been afraid. But then, a month ago, I was living in a make-believe world where only the bad guys got arrested. I was an idiot. I squeeze his hand, letting him know I’m not going anywhere.
‘It wasn’t for anything bad,’ he says. ‘Or at least, I didn’t think it was. It started with me and some friends hacking vidboards and uploading our own stuff. Loops we’d made of ourselves skateboarding. Tracks we’d mixed. Whatever. Playing, really, cos we could. A lot of us didn’t have access privileges at home, after the government put lock downs on any IP addresses found pirating. And we didn’t have Corina or Logan’s skills to get our way around the blocks. So this was our way of fighting back.’
‘You were an adjacker? Zizi was always complaining about you guys and her wasted media spend.’
‘I’ll tell her I’m sorry when I get the chance.’
The memory of Zizi lying on the bed, her eyes dead and empty, blends in with an image from the feed; a man preaching about the end of days. I know that Ethan may never get a chance to apologise, and even worse, neither may I.
‘One night,’ Ethan continues, ‘I was uploading a vid when I felt a tap on my shoulder. The police were always bothering us, searching us in the street without warrants, telling us to move on. So I wasn’t bothered.
‘But when I turned around, I saw it wasn’t the normal five-oh. They were dressed in these stupid pillar-box hats and blue jumpsuits. It was the first time I’d seen a member of WhiteShield. I laughed in their faces as they told me that I was defacing WhiteInc company property, and I’d have to come with them. I stopped laughing after they slapped cuffs on me and dragged me away in their van. It didn’t matter how much I screamed about my rights. Because the truth was, I didn’t have any rights. I just didn’t know it.’
The shame of being part of the WhiteInc family eats away another layer of who I was. I thought WhiteShield were protecting society, when they were only protecting the company’s interests.
‘What did your parents do?’ I say.
‘Dad wasn’t much use when they called him; he was stinking drunk. Mum actually encouraged them to take me away. She said that some discipline would be good for me.’ He sounds angry and bitter. But more sad than either.
‘And that’s how I wound up being sent to a radical new rehabilitation programme. Tabula Rasa. It means blank slate,’ he says, his voice dripping with sarcasm.
Without willing it, I’m hit with a tonne of data on Tabula Rasa. Reports from the press on how it was the bright new hope for young offenders. Files from the programme itself. Files no one outside the programme should have access to. I let Ethan carry on talking while I sort through them all.
‘By entering I had my record wiped clean, along with everything else. Although I didn’t know that then, didn’t know that by becoming part of the programme I technically no longer existed. Blank slate was right.’
That explained why I couldn’t find any record of him when I looked. No public records anyway. I wonder if he knows about all the files Tabula Rasa kept. The ones I now have access to.
‘When I first arrived,’ he says. ‘I thought I had it made. The building was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. So clean and white. And most of the other boys in there were cool. Like me, mostly. Bored troublemakers, rather than your typical nutters. Although there were a few of them in there too. There were about five hundred of us in all. Totally cut off from the outside world. No internet. No phone calls. It was tough at first, but after a while, I liked it. The silence. The focus.
‘We had classes. Took exams. Exercised in the yard. Grew stuff in the garden. I actually enjoyed all the hard work.’
The image Ethan paints contradicts what I’m seeing: films of pale-faced boys in white laboratories; reports about success ratios; plans on how to roll out the programme across the country. Across the world. One word is repeated again and again. Compliance.
I focus my mind on searching for a name: Ethan Fisher.
The shock of finding him after all of this time makes me sit up. I stare into the darkness of the hotel room and at Ethan’s file.
He looks so young in his photo, he can’t have been more than twelve. Thirteen.
‘What? What is it?’ Ethan says, sitting up. ‘Has White found us?’
‘Your file,’ I say. ‘From Tabula Rasa.’
‘No,’ he shouts, jumping up and off the bed. ‘Don’t read it.’
There are
two of him. The footage of him back then, scowling at whoever filmed it. The him now, begging me not to go any further. But I have to. As much as it feels like a betrayal, I have to. Because I think I’ve worked out the truth behind Tabula Rasa.
// ETHAN FISHER APPEARS TO BE ESPECIALLY SUSCEPTIBLE TO SUGGESTION AND WOULD MAKE A PERFECT SUBJECT FOR CHIP IMPLANTATION. //
‘Implantation?’ I say.
Ethan grabs at his hair. Despair distorts his face. ‘You weren’t supposed to know.’
‘Not meant to know what? Are you on Glaze?’ He shakes his head and turns away. I stand up and pull him back around. ‘Tell me. Are you chipped!’
‘No. I mean, yes. But not I’m not on Glaze. You’re still safe with me.’ He lets his hands fall to his sides and he drops his head.
‘Then what kind of chip is it?’
Ethan bites down on his lip, then arches his neck towards me and pulls his hair aside. I brush the last few strands away and feel three raised dots, in the shape of a triangle, buried under the skin behind his ear. ‘We didn’t have a choice about being part of it. In T-Raz, you had no choice in anything. It didn’t work like the chips do now. We didn’t see anything. We heard it. They put a chip in our heads and…’
‘And what?’
‘We could hear each other.’ He sighs, and it’s filled with a sad longing. ‘Chat with kids in cells three floors down, on the other side of the compound. At first it was just noise. But then you started to get control over it. Tuning in to different voices.’
‘Like a radio?’ I say.
‘Kind of. But then there was the voice,’ he says, reaching up to rub the side of his neck. ‘It bypassed your ears and boomed straight into your heart. Like the voice of God speaking to you or something. I can’t tell you how amazing it felt. It was like being wrapped in the warmest hug you can ever imagine. It felt like you were finally… I don’t know. Part of something. A family. And like you’d never be alone again. That voice could have asked me to do anything, and I’d have done it.’
