Afterland

by Lauren Beukes

  Mom opens her mouth and takes the apple chip onto her tongue. Another nun raises a flask to her lips.

  “These are the tears of the Mother, to wash you clean from the inside. Drink of this and be purified.”

  Mom splutters on the liquid. There’s the gasoline tang of alcohol. The nuns rub her back and murmur reassurances.

  “You are forgiven. You are loved. Welcome home,” Hope says.

  “Welcome,” the sisters echo.

  “Amen?” Miles tries, hoping it’s over.

  “Amen. Stand, Sister, daughter, and be welcome.”

  He stands up, clumsy because his foot has gone to sleep. The nuns take their turns embracing them, all smiling eyes. A couple of them are crying, and he’s already had all the tears he can bear. He doesn’t feel transformed. The only thing he feels is the shushing prickly static in his foot, like a busted TV in an old movie. And there’s a part of him that is disappointed.

  “Have you decided on your virtue name?” Hope says.

  “What?” Mom is dazed.

  “The lesson you need to learn from God. The answer should be obvious.”

  “I…”

  “Patience,” Miles says. “That should be your name, Mom.”

  “From the mouths of babes. Sister Patience.” And a chorus of voices breaks out, “Welcome, Sister Patience.”

  INTERLUDE

  29.

  DirtyHarry.tv

  Original reporting, satire, and all the memes you can eat!

  Posted: 30 April 2021 23:18

  Ask Dr. FuzzWolf: Human Culgoa Virus Edition

  In this week’s special edition, Dirty Harry’s resident armchair expert and agony uncle Dr. FuzzWolf has the lowdown on everything you need to know about Human Culgoa Virus and the imminent Manpocalypse! (TL;DR We’re fucked.)

  What is this Culgoa thing I keep hearing about?

  The basics? Really? Okay, let’s assume you haven’t turned on a screen in the last six months and managed to avoid all the public emergency information. HCV or Human Culgoa Virus or just Culgoa is a highly contagious flu that turns into an aggressive prostate cancer in men and boys—which quickly gets into your skeleton, rots your bones, and causes you to die a horrible agonizing death. For the ladies, there’s some snotting and coughing, maybe a fever, but no black cankers eating you from inside your deep pleasure zone. But, hey, don’t say the female of the species never gave you anything! They can still be carriers and infect you, like the worst ever game of pass-the-parcel.

  Unlike your racist Fox News-lovin’ grandparents, you’ll be pleased to know that CV does not discriminate on race, class, religion, or sexuality. You just need to have that Y chromosome. Sorry trans sisters, peace out: It’s the equal-opportunity fuck-you we’ve been promised since the dawn of the first mitochondrial collision.

  Is it really the worst pandemic we’ve ever seen?

  Hmmm. Well, let’s take a look at the worst killer plagues in history, shall we? Not including war, famine, drought, or nasty side effects of global warming.

  Sorry to disappoint you, but Ebola only killed 11,000 people. That Big Bad of the 80s, AIDS, has killed about 39 million people globally, since 1969, when we first started tracking it. The Spanish Flu of 1918 killed somewhere between 20–50 million people (hey, they were a little too preoccupied with a world war to keep accurate numbers on flu fatalities). The Black Plague took out 50 million Europeans in 1346. But we have to go all the way back to the Justinian Plague in 541, to hit the really impressive numbers. One hundred million Byzantine Empire citizens, dead from bubonic plague, fever, and disgusting bubos growing in their groins or armpits.

  Now, ready to be shocked and horrified? Need an excuse to crawl under the bed and stay there? According to the experts, those fine men and women of science and research, Culgoa has infected an estimated five BILLION people so far. That’s most of us out of a population of 7.4 billion human beings. They say that’s a conservative estimate. We don’t have figures on countries like North Korea or Russia and a few other places that consider their infection rate a state secret, in case the world market panics and tanks even more than it has already. Yeah, I see you, making a bonfire out of the stocks pages.

  Okay, infected is one thing and that sounds really bad, but that doesn’t mean everyone is gonna die, right?

  Well here’s the good news. Oh no, wait, sorry, there is no good news. Conservative estimates from those self-same experts on multiple continents reckon that HCV might kill between 500 million and one billion men. One billion men. I don’t mean to scare you, but that’s up to 1/8 of the world’s population and 1/4 of the male population! Mark my words, there will come a time when we’ll be nostalgic for dick pics!

  I don’t understand. How does a virus turn into a cancer?

  Viruses are sneaky little fuckers is how, and oncoviruses in particular—those are the ones that can cause cancers. You may remember from high school biology that viruses are tiny organisms made of DNA or RNA wrapped in a skin of protein. They reproduce by hijacking the host’s cells, inserting their own little pieces of genetic code, and busting that shit wide open. But here’s the catch—when they’re busy imploding your cells, it can push those cells towards cancer. Here’s a list of viruses we know can turn into cancers: Epstein Barr, HPV, Hepatitis B and C, Herpes 8, Human T-lymphotropic virus-1, Merkel cell polyomavirus—and now Culgoa. We don’t know what triggered it, AKA the catalyst event, to turn into the superaggressive cancer we’re seeing, but life is full of mysteries and nature is strange and wondrous.

  But, hey, wait, there’s a vaccine for cervical cancer! Does this mean we could get a vaccine for prostate cancer?

  Maybe, but remember that it took years and years and years for us to develop a vaccine for HPV. And even then, the way vaccines work is that they only protect against infections if you get them BEFORE you’re exposed to the cancer-causing virus. So if you’ve already had the Culgoa strain of the flu, sorry, bud, you’re as screwed as the rest of us.

  I googled prostate cancer and it’s linked to testosterone! I don’t want to die. Can I get castrated?

  Google will also tell you that typically it only occurs in men over 60. Guess what, kids? All the rules have changed. Unfortunately, Culgoa causes castration-resistant prostate cancer. Here’s one time where I can say this and mean it: do NOT try this at home! For the morbidly curious, which is all of you, DirtyHarry’s film crew tagged along to a little backstreet ball sack slice-’n’-pop with a female veterinarian way back when that was a thing people were trying in desperation, oh…all of two months ago. Click here to watch if that’s what floats your boat. And you might also want to read our obituary of the poor bastard, who died anyway. We’re gonna go ahead and repeat the jackass warning. Do not try this at home. And, for the record, the correct medical term is orchiectomy.

  Wait, you’re saying there’s no escaping this?

  You could lock yourself in a bunker in solitary confinement and only breathe your own recycled air, or maybe our astronauts are safe, like in that comic book, but chances are you’ve already been exposed to Culgoa. Experts reckon it’s been going around the world as a virulent influenza for at least five to eight years, maybe longer. Remember that HIV first showed up in humans back in the 1950s, and that took several decades to go all out.

  No cure at all?

  Radical prostatectomy, or total surgical removal of the prostate, has proved effective in a handful of cases. We’re talking a few thousand. It needs to be performed by a highly skilled specialist surgeon, and it only works if the cancer hasn’t already metastasized (i.e., grown out of control, like Kanye’s ego, and invaded other parts of your body) and if the surgeon successfully removes every last scraping of prostate cells.

  Oh shit, but did we mention? Most urologist-specialist-surgeon-types are men, who are probably dying as you read this, or trying to surgify their own asses.

  But, but…how did this happen?

  Well, we think the virus originated in the su
btropics of Australia, the land that brings you killer everything, from deadliest spiders to man-eating crocs, and now the world’s most killing-est outbreak. Or at least that’s where the first reported cases turned up. HCV has been going round and round the world for years now. Think about every time you got the ’flu in the last decade. It might have been Culgoa. You and everyone you know has probably already been infected, like, six times over.

  I heard it was made by North Korea / in a home CRISPR lab / it’s a feminist plot / aliens / we got it from e-cigs, etc.

  Yeah, there are a lot of conspiracy theories going around right now. Of course, it’s possible that this was engineered in the basement lab of a bunch of North Korean bio-hacker feminazi terrorists working with an ancient alien virus they found in a meteor newly uncovered by melting ice pack in the Arctic circle and they decided to spread it to the free world by dosing e-cig vaping oils, which made it super-ironic that we were spreading a prostate cancer virus by trying to avoid lung cancer.…But no. Sorry. All signs point to it being just another horrible way nature is trying to kill us. Think of it this way: with one billion of us gone, at least global warming is going to slow down!

  So, what happens now?

  There’s probably going to be even more panic, confusion, chaos, and death. We’re just getting started over here. We’re just not equipped for an outbreak of this scale on any level. Never mind the political fallout, the financial markets crashing harder than a skydiver with no parachute, or how hospitals are going to be overwhelmed, and we’re going to run out of chemo drugs and then painkillers and then illegal opiates.…Consider, if you will, the impact it’s going to have on industry and farming and transport and mining and power and construction and fire-fighting and satellite maintenance, which are all traditionally penis-centric. Guess the feminists were right on this one. Patriarchy is bad for everybody after all!

  How can you make jokes about all this?

  Because the reality is too horrifying to try to get your head around. You got a better coping mechanism?

  I’m frightened. Hold me.

  Sorry, buddy. Someone’s gotta turn out the lights. I’ll be right here, in my solitary confinement bunker breathing recycled air and hoping the internet stays up long enough for me to download all the porn onto my computer.

  Dr. FuzzWolf is DirtyHarry’s in-house explainer-in-chief with mad research skillz and an uncanny knack for breaking down complex issues in ways the rest of us can understand. He lives in Dallas, Texas, with his husband, where they run a specialty publishing company. He is not an actual doctor. Got questions? Hit him up and he’ll do his very best to get you informed answers!

  UPDATE: This article is massively out of date, but we’ve left it up as a historic artifact for future (female?) internet historians to look back on and see how terribly naïve and hopeful we were about the death toll.

  Current estimates (as of 18 January 2023) are 3.2 billion men, boys, and people-with-prostates dead, including this article’s author, Mark Harrison, which leaves about 35–50 million boys and men alive around the world. We’re still waiting for the cure / the vaccine / any kind of meaningful medical intervention that is guaranteed to stop this happening again, worse next time.

  In the meantime, can we implore those of you with wombs to please, please, stick to the 2021 Buenos Aires Accord: obey the global reprohibition, beware of blackmarket semen, and don’t go trying for babies until we know it’s safe out there!

  30.

  Last of the Lost Boys

  Vice, December 2, 2021

  For the thousands of men around the world who choose to live outside the safety of state systems, the quarantines and curfews, life is perilous, but free. Anja Pessl interviewed two Ugandan men on the run, took to the road with a long-distance trucker living loud and proud all-male in India, and visited Ukraine’s paramilitary “manclave,” XY City.

  Peter Kagugube* is a hunted man. Maybe you’d see it in his eyes if he was willing to take off his glamourous oversize sunglasses. He’s wearing an oversize yellow wax-print dress and gold trainers, a silk fuschia headwrap tied into an elegant bow. He’s Ugandan, he says. Five foot six, with tiny hands that flutter like the skeletons of wings. His ensemble seems designed to draw attention rather than allow him to disappear into the background. “Hiding in plain sight,” he explains, taking a long sip of his mango cocktail.

  We’re sitting at a hotel bar somewhere in Nairobi, or maybe Lusaka. I’m not at liberty to say. “Peter” is obviously not his real name, but neither is the other name he gave me.

  “You have to live inside your alter ego,” he says, exhaling smoke from bright pink lips that match his headwrap. “You have to inhabit her absolutely.” He doesn’t actually smoke, he points out, as if this is the most cunning part of his disguise.

  He is traveling with his partner of twenty years, Joe, who is wearing a bright turquoise turtleneck dress under a denim jacket. It’s not his actual name, either—and he wouldn’t answer to it anyway. He introduces himself as Josie. He’s a shy guy, or maybe a wary one, with big dark eyes, a broad nose and forehead, and beautiful lips—girlish.

  “We’re doing all right, aren’t we, baby?” Peter softens, taking his hand. “We move around a lot.”

  “It’s hard to make friends,” Josie agrees.

  “That must be tough.”

  “No, well, we have all our stuff in the car, a portable CD player and every Fela Kuti album ever made.”

  “It’s true,” Peter laughs, relaxing a little, and I get a sense of how things are for these two, in it together. “And jazz, you love jazz.”

  “Yeah, but sometimes it makes me feel sad,” he admits, and it looks like he wants to say more, but Peter stills him with a squeeze of the hand.

  They’ve agreed to meet with me only because I’m passing on information, for a lawyer in Munich who they hope will be able to help them. There’s a reason they’re on the run, the pair of them, and why all the photos accompanying this article of the pair of them show only innocuous details: nothing that might reveal their identities or location.

  “Josie did something bad. Bad enough to go to jail. They’d take him away from me. I might never see him again.”

  I try to tell him about the amnesty. There are only two million men left in sub-Saharan Africa. The government will bend a lot of rules to keep them safe, forgive a lot of sins. No country is enforcing anti-homosexuality laws anymore.

  “It’s no way to live.” Josie cuts me off. “And I have a lifetime of reasons not to trust them.” He refuses to elaborate on what he’s done, doesn’t want to give himself away, even off the record. I do searches on this afterward, of course, but we’re in a country with a history of jailing pesky journalists, and the files on the quarantine centers and the safe havens are classified.

  “How do you live?”

  “Day to day. We move around, find quiet places to cross the borders. I have a map book. Big cities are better. We tried small towns, but they’re too intimate, people pay attention, they want to know you.”

  “It sounds lonely.”

  “We have each other. Don’t feel sorry for me. You don’t even know me. We’re fine. I’m working on finding us a better place.”

  Jaysing, “call me Jay,” is not looking for a better place. He’s found a niche in this one. He still works as a long-distance trucker on the Delhi-Mumbai route, hauling for forty years now in a hand-painted 18-wheeler called Sridevi, named after the most beautiful woman who ever lived, he says, popping a handful of caffeine-enhanced chewing gum into his huge paw. Unlike little Josie of the previous story, there would be no way to disguise his masculine attributes. Jay is pushing sixty-three and some of his big bulk has turned to flab, but he’s all man and proud of it. He wears short-sleeved button-downs that show off hairy arms bulging with muscle. His luxurious mustache is trimmed to a perfect straight edge, which he does himself, except for when he passes through Gujarat, where he has a girlfriend who does it for him. He has a lot
of girlfriends along the route, he tells me. Quite the change for a man who grew up in a village where young men outnumbered women five to one.

  “Everyone did it. A quick sonogram in the city, and if it was a girl, the pregnancy would be gone. Twenty years later, we all grew up, a village of sons. No brides for us. So I started driving, because it was something to do. People would say, ‘You don’t have a wife and children at home to care for—why are you working so hard?’” He chuckles at the universe’s sense of humor.

  This may be why Jay has never considered going into one of the government’s luxury facilities. “They tried to get me into that one in Bangalore, for my own protection, they said. But if a man’s not free, he should rather be dead. Besides, I make my own protection.” He pats the .22 revolver he keeps next to him in the driver’s seat. He also has a handgun at his hip, with the holster buckle flipped open so he can get to it fast if he needs to.

  There are more guns mounted in the tiny cabin he shows me behind the curtain, where there is just enough room for a single bed and a gun rack bolted to the wall with another handgun and a rifle.

  “That’s a lot of protection. What’s the biggest danger you’ve had to face?”

  “Biggest danger on the road?” He repeats my question, rubbing his graying beard. “All truckers would tell you the same. Hijackers. People are desperate, especially if they’re hungry. That pain in your belly talks out loud, I can tell you from personal experience, and if they think you’re transporting food, well, that’s some high-value cargo. It used to be trouble if you were moving flat-screen TVs or designer clothes. Now it’s canned food and rice, and who knows what can happen. You’re driving along, come up over the hill, in some isolated spot, and find the road blocked off with burning tires and women dacoits with scarves over their faces and sunglasses and semiautomatics. Everyone I know has been robbed at some point or another. Lady who works for the same company as me got shot two weeks ago just outside Jaipur. In the head. Dead. Brains and skull splattered all over the cab. But they wouldn’t shoot me.”