by JT Lawrence
“Excuse me!” she cries. “I just need a minute.” She gets up off the couch, and the camera cuts. According to the timestamp, she’s back a few moments later, eyes swollen. She has a box of tissues.
Keke stops the video, pushes its icon back to the sidebar. She looks around the bathroom again. Checks the depth of the water. The towels on the rail are skew. She averts her eyes from the pyjamas. There is a metallic glimmer on the floor, next to the bath mat. She tries to focus on it to see what it is, but can’t make it out. Goes closer, bends down, gets on her knees, but it disappears. She gets up again, takes a step back, and there it is again, but she can’t see what it is. Probably nothing. Probably a glitch in the VR, but she’ll ask about it, anyway.
Chapter 12
The Sound of the Sea
Kate’s waiting for the kids to come home from school. It makes her nervous, not having them within touching distance. The clockologram ticks slowly. She’ll have to do something while she waits, something constructive, to stop herself from going mad. It’s always a push-pull instinct with the kids. When they’re here and being cretinous she looks for ways to outsource them – get them away from her and out of the house. Yet, as soon as they’re gone, the house is too quiet, and she has this unsettling feeling of them not existing at all, and has this desperate need to get them back.
Maybe she’ll cook dinner. She opens the door to the fridge but it’s close to empty. She has a flashback of James, five years ago, walking into their old flat in Illovo, groceries toppling from his synthetic burlap bags. Fresh fruit and vegetables, seedbread, beetroot jam, almond butter. She’d kiss him and call him Marmalade. Kiss his beautiful SPF100 skin. He was so goddamn wholesome – too good to be true. And, of course, in the end, it was too good to be true. He had been haunted by his demons just like everybody else; he’d just been better at hiding them.
Kate shakes him out of her head and closes the fridge door. She’ll order something for dinner. It’s so old-fashioned now, anyway, to cook anything from scratch. Who is she, to buck the trend? She is perfectly happy with mass-produced meals drone-delivered from Bilchen. They taste great and contain the perfect amount of nutrients and kilojoules, which she can’t always claim as true for the food she cooks. If she lived alone she’d have toaster waffles for dinner six nights a week. She taps the screen on her fridge to order. The Bilchen face smiles and bats eyelashes at her. Kate chooses between Italian, Indian, Greek, South African, or Japanese cuisine. Then she chooses her protein and her carb. The app knows her body type and height, her ideal weight, and the amount of exercise she’s done today by syncing with her Helix. It portions accordingly. The same goes for the kids and Sebongile. What Kate really feels like eating is a tub of proper cane-sugar Darkoco ice cream, but she wouldn’t know where to begin tracking it down. Sugar has been semi-banned for almost two years now, much to her chagrin. Fizzy drinks were the first to go. Blunt in, sugar out. How the tables have turned. At least the toking fringe-dwellers are happy.
She does have a small stash of chocolate bars left over from before the sucrose ban, but she only dips into it in emergencies. Does her current state of mind warrant a CaraCrunch chocolate bar? They’re getting old now, and the chocolate is developing a white patina, so she shouldn’t really leave them for too much longer. She turns to walk to her bedroom, but hears something, and stops.
A sound coming from the kids’ room, even though they’re not yet home from school. Remembering that she needs to take the batteries out of Silver’s haunted Bébébot, Kate gets the screwdriver case from the top cupboard in the scullery. She lingers over the toolbox and has a flash of a memory: James with a nail between his lips, hammering another one into the wall. Using his old tools always makes her feel purple. She closes the lid and makes her way to the twins’ room. She’s sure that she must look deranged, standing at the doorway, head cocked, with a sharp tool in her hand. A scary silhouette, waiting for the baby to cry.
It doesn’t make her wait long.
“Mama,” comes a wail from Silver’s side of the room, then a sad whimpering. It sounds so real. It sends her tumbling back in time to when she was trapped in the Genesis clinic at the mercy of the doctor. When the psychopath had handed a baby to her. Their baby. Not of her womb, but of her and Marmalade’s blood. Their DNA-printed boy. Their Mally.
Damn it. Damn it, Kate. You’ve got to pull yourself out of that toxic memory fog. You need to get over it and if you can’t do it for yourself then do it for the kids.
“Mama,” comes a voice from behind her, and she almost jumps through the roof in fright. It’s Mally, with his big green-blue eyes. Her eyes. The sound of the sea.
“Jesus,” she says, screwdriver flattened to her heart. “You scared me.”
“Who’s Jesus?” pipes Silver, trailing in after her brother. Her not-quite brother.
They’re still wearing their character-themed backpax: blue RoboPup for Mally and pink KittyBot for Silver. The nanny is right behind them, laden with their artwork and baking projects, and she smiles when she sees Kate. She seems happy to see her awake and showered but then she registers the screwdriver at her chest and looks puzzled. Kate quickly whips it behind her back and grins, realising as she does so that it must make her look more suspicious, not less.
“How was school?”
“Mally’s teacher wants to know why he insists on learning his numbers in colours. Says it’s confusing the other kids.”
“Er – ”
“And they said to not send Silver to school when she has a runny nose.”
On cue, Silver sniffs and wipes her nose with the back of her hand.
“Last week they complained that she was absent too often and risked falling behind. Can you believe it? She’s three. Have you ever heard of a three-year-old falling behind?”
The nanny shrugs. “Don’t shoot the postman.”
“Who is Jesus?” asks Mally.
“That’s a conversation for another day,” says Sebongile, pulling a funny face at Kate. She puts her hands on their shoulders and steers them gently towards the bathroom. Bongi is fastidious about hand washing. Silver, who was conceived and born biologically, catches colds regardless. Mally has never been sick in his life.
Kate resisted hiring a nanny for the first two years of the twins’ lives. She had suffered for so long with infertility that she couldn’t imagine getting someone else to look after them. She wanted to experience every first moment: words, steps, bites. She wanted to be there for all of it. She stopped working and immersed herself completely in motherhood. Part of it was her way of withdrawing from the world; a product of her PTSD. Back then there was no way she’d trust her kids with a stranger, not after what happened to her.
But it hadn’t been good for her. Slowly, Seth had introduced the idea. Sebongile used to be a SurroSister: a young, single woman who volunteered to assist infertile couples to have children when South Africa’s fertility crisis was at its worst. Without them, the country’s birthrate would have cliffed to zero. When the crisis ended, the demand for surrogates dropped off, the baby boom exploded, and the need for nannies ramped up. It was a natural conclusion that the discarded SurroSisters would become nannies. Not just any nannies, but the very best nannies you could get: pre-approved in every category: criminal; medical; psychological. The surrogate badges gave way to small legacy ‘SS’ brooches: copper pins they would wear over their hearts.
At first they just hired Sebongile to look after the toddlers for an hour while they went for a coffeeberry freezo in the resident restaurant, three storeys below, and watched her via the multiple Gimlet nanny cams. Soon it became clear that the perennially sunny Sebongile was good for everyone, and so she became a regular babysitter, then a live-out nanny, then, last year, she moved into the nannypad next door. Now she is the twins’ best friend, and Kate can’t imagine life without her. Every now and then Kate is tempted to ask her about her surrogate experiences, but Bongi is a private person, so she respects that.
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br /> The Bilchen drone hums outside the delivery window in the lounge. It lands expertly on its platform and sounds its greeting. Kate opens the latch and takes the food, and her ear pings with the receipt. She feels foolish for always instinctively wanting to say thank you to the machine, or give it a tip. Old habits die hard. One day soon the kids will be rolling their eyes at how very old-tech their mother is. Until then, she’ll try to at least act cool.
“Can we get a dog?” Mally asks this every day, without fail.
They’re all at the table, eating black mushroom burgers, with sides of sweet potato chips and deep-fried broccoli stalks.
“We’ve got a dog,” says Kate. “Betty/Barbara.”
Mally screws up his nose. “She’s old. And snorey.”
“And stinky,” says Silver, making them both giggle. It’s true. Betty/Barbara does have a particularly fierce flatulence problem.
“So what?” says Kate. “Are you going to want to replace me too? When I’m old and stinky?”
Mally laughs with his mouth open, showing Kate his half-chewed food. Silver’s smile has vanished. Perhaps it’s never occurred to her that Kate will be gone one day.
Mally, on the other hand, is not put off. “A robotic dog doesn’t stink and you don’t have to feed him and he doesn’t need to be walked and no vet’s bills.”
But then what’s the point?
“And he doesn’t poo,” says Mally.
“Well.” Kate takes a sip of her wine. “There is that.”
“When’s Seth coming home?” asks Silver. She separates all the elements of food on her plate before she starts to eat. She doesn’t like the flavours to touch.
“I don’t know,” says Kate. “Soon.”
“I miss him,” says Mally.
“So do I,” says Kate. “But he won’t be gone long.”
The nanny pats Silver on the hand, winks at her. Kate’s sure Silver is her favourite, although she’s careful to not let it show.
“My favourite colour is orange juice,” announces Mally.
Silver puts her white serviette over her head.
“I’m a gho-o-o-st,” she says. “I’m a gho-o-o-o-st.”
She does it every night, but it still makes them laugh.
“Mom,” says Mally. “Tell me something I used to do as a baby.”
“What? Why?”
“Just because.”
“Have the other kids been saying something to you?”
“What?”
“Have they been saying something about you…when you were a baby?”
Sebongile looks away, as if she’s not listening to the conversation. As if it’s too personal.
Mally frowns.
“Okay,” says Kate. “As a baby you used to… I don’t know. You walked at nine months. Which is really early for a baby.”
“That’s nice.”
“You talked early too. You did everything early.”
Silver looks put out. Already, she knows she is the weaker of the two.
“It’s ’cos I’m older than Silver,” he says. He’s eaten everything but the broccoli.
“Not by much,” says Kate. “A few months.”
“Am I always going to be bigger than Silver?”
“No,” says Kate.
Silver cheers up.
Mally stares at her. “Not unless you eat your vegetables.”
Suddenly her Patch starts pinging wildly and the Helix on her wrist buzzes. Three bumps in a row from three different news agencies. Something big has happened.
Chapter 13
Fahrenheit451
Marko’s leaves fade to draw his attention to his beeping main screen. He guesses it’s his health monitor telling him it’s time to take a break: to stand up and walk around for a few minutes, but instead, when he reads the tickertape, it’s a big news story. Where is Keke? She’ll be so bleak to miss out on this.
The screen cleaves to show him different videos of what’s being reported. He taps on one and sees a man in a black hooded robe and a Jesus Christ mask shooting at people outside a building. He has some kind of automatic shotgun. Russian? It looks like it could be a sawn-off Saiga. Marko’s knowledge of weaponry is mostly gleaned from his gaming, so he’s never quite sure if the guns exist IRL. Not unlike his games, the screen is a mess of screaming and blood spatter – a violent animation replete with motion capture and breathing arcs. Only it’s not a game.
The terrorist’s not acting alone: Marko watches the other witnesses’ clips and recognises the robed attackers as they enter the clinic and mow down patients and medical staff. A pregnant woman is dragged away by her hair.
TERROR ATTACK, shout the headlines. FAMILY PLANNING CLINIC RAZED BY RESURRECTORS. Over thirty people killed, scores injured: doctors, nurses, patients.
The distinctive JC face masks and flowing hooded robes of superblack arachnasilk make the terrorists easy to identify and almost impossible to kill. The synthetic silk is produced by splicing the spider silk gene into silkworms, resulting in a thread tougher than steel and more flexible than kevlar. The masks have built-in night vision. The terrorists also have animarks – moving tattoos – of a revolving crucifix on their necks. A bold symbol of their commitment to their cause.
The Resurrectors started making news around seven years ago, but they’ve never been this brazen or bloodthirsty before. They began as a Christian extremist group, firebombing any individual or organisation that ‘disrespected Jesus’ in any way. Keke had almost been killed when they blew up the Echo.news building. She had been freelancing for them at the time, working late one night, and had missed the blast by minutes. The chief editor at the time knew it would be a risk to run the satirical cartoon about a zombie Jesus (raised from the dead, eating communion flesh) but he did it anyway. He had been a Hebdo fan. Je suis Charlie.
The Resurrectors’ love of violence soon overtook their love of their God, and they were no longer guided by the Old Testament but by their paranoid delusions of “Rapture” and “Doomsday”. They began to use any excuse to terrorise South Africans. No one called them extremist Christians anymore, despite their spinning cross logo. They just became The Resurrectors, terrorists, feared by all.
And they were gaining momentum: Last week they burned down the Sandton Library because it refused to remove the books that the group had asked them to. Harry Potter, The Perks of Being a Wallflower and The Satanic Verses were just some of the titles they believed were corrupting peoples’ minds. When they were refused, they planted a practically invisible incendiary device in seven different books for the seven different storeys and set them off that evening while the restaurant patrons at the square below watched in horror. The bombs lit up the sky and not a book was saved.
As a complete Bradbury fanboy, Marko had decided then that he wanted to do something to stop them. He’d never stand up to them in real life, of course. They are mostly tall, vicious, highly trained people, and he is, well, he’s cuddly around the middle and generally soft-spoken. But his anonymity as a hacker is ironclad. He’s so anonymous, he brags to Keke, that it would take the CCU nothing less than a year to find him, by which time he’d be eighteen months ahead of them, having revolved his online identity hundreds of thousands of times. So while he’ll never dream of approaching a Resurrector in person, he’s certain he can do a significant amount of damage from the safety of his dim room.
He sends a bump to FlowerGrrl, Seth’s contact at F0X, the hacktivist Alba splinter group.
Fahrenheit451 > Seen the news? They’re getting out of control. I’m ready to do something. I’m officially checking in for duty.
Chapter 14
A Skeleton of Gold
The Cape Republic, 2024
They make their way to the entrance of Nautilus. The spiral seashell-shaped sandy building blends in with the surrounding dunes and black rocks, and is surrounded by inviswall. The security guards are wearing the same colour, and Seth jolts when one of them breaks his camouflage to open the gate for
them. Once they’re in the lobby, a female guard guides Seth to the X-ray machine to check that he’s not carrying a weapon or any kind of recording device. She shines a little torch into each eye, then with an expert move, clicks his SnapTile off his wrist and places it in a safe.
“I need that,” he says.
“You’ll get it back.” She doesn’t smile.
His host, along with a barrel-chested ginger-bearded guard called Carson, leads him to the glass elevator. The touchscreen offers them the choice of ten floors, except that they’re not called ‘floors’ but ‘leagues’, and are numbered 0 to 10,000. A moving graphic of a Kraken – the mythical giant octopus-like sea monster – reaches out to touch the ten buttons with its tentacles. It’s a beautiful, nuanced piece of Japanimation. The elevator shuttles towards the ocean then falls quickly to their selected league: 4,000, and they are indeed beneath the sea. The view of the water on the other side of the superglass turns from cerulean to midnight blue.
So, it’s true.
He’s heard rumours of Nautilus being an underwater sea lab, but none of his research could confirm it. For all anyone knows, it was just a high-tech house built on the rocky dunes. His stomach falls along with the elevator, then the doors slide, soundlessly, open.
The lab is cavernous, all white and glass and water. For a second it reminds him of the underground Genesis lab and the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. A school of silver fish swims by the ocean wall. They dart in synchronised bursts. Carson stands at the door while Arronax uses a spray to sanitise her hands, then motions for Seth to take a seat at the infinity table.
A robotic salamander the size of a domesticated cat crawls past.
“That’s Meadon,” says Arronax, smoothing her purple-blue-aqua hair down and away from her face. “One of our first successful builds. He’s our mascot.”
