We walked past some cafés with tables outside, the customers stood up as they noticed us approaching and stared and waved at me. I waved back feeling more and more embarrassed. I noticed there were no signs above the establishments, nothing on the building that would indicate it was a café, just tables on a flat area in front of the building and some smartly-dressed waitresses dashing about with trays laden with food and drink. They were human waitresses, all women, not bizarre wheeled robots as I’d seen in Mumbai.
Ralph turned into a large opening in a building next to the café. I followed him inside and entered a cool hallway which was a timely way of being reminded of just how hot it was outside. I also felt a very faint kind of tummy chill as we entered, not altogether unpleasant but a noticeable feeling.
The entrance hall to wherever we were going was very wide with a high ceiling, at the far end an impressive flight of stairs. I say impressive because they were the sort of stairs you might see in somewhere like Blenheim Palace. Ralph’s long legs bounded up the stairs with little effort, I did my best to keep up with him. When I got to the top I noticed the enormous crowd who had been following us had remained outside with the two possible police women.
At the top of the stairs was yet another high ceilinged atrium. Around the sides of this aircraft hanger scale hexagonal space were small rooms festooned with colourful cloth, furniture items and beautiful ornaments. The air was thick with an invigorating spicy aroma; it felt posh, inviting and I was definitely feeling stimulated in some way.
‘Here we go,’ said Ralph, jumping up and down on the spot – a man who had to be well over two meters tall, bouncing up and down like a three-year-old who’s been taken to a sweet shop.
Ralph walked into one of the rooms leading off the central space where he was immediately embraced by an equally tall African man.
The two enormous men turned to me.
Ralph said, ‘This is my 5-G Uncle Gavin, will you look at what he’s wearing! The poor little chappy needs serious assistance.’
The African man struck a pose, a comical, camp pose with one hand on his hip, a finger to his lips and his eyes goggling as he looked me up and down.
‘Carnage,’ he said.
‘Agreed,’ said Ralph with an over-the-top laugh. To describe myself as uncomfortable in this moment is a substantial understatement. I had two slightly absurdly dressed and overly tall men denigrating the clothes given to me by the truly wonderful people of Gardenia. More accurately given to me by Grace. I could feel myself getting angry, I wanted to berate them for being so shallow. The men of Gardenia had moved on from such bitchy generalised observations, if this was an alternate future, I decided I preferred the original.
‘That is Akiki,’ said Ralph as the shop owner disappeared behind a beautiful curtain hanging across the space. ‘This is his shop, you are going to love shopping here, and Akiki is soooo funny.’
I smiled through my pain.
‘You don’t think he’s funny?’
‘I’m sorry, Ralph, I don’t know what to think.’
Ralph sat down on what appeared to be a huge pile of fabric, alarmingly his head was now nearer my eye line.
‘I can see you’re not enjoying it and I feel bad about that. Please just relax, we’ll get you some nice drapes and then go and have a coffee and talk it over.’
Akiki re-emerged with a small white object in his hands. He pointed it at me quite casually and I heard a familiar chime sound, the sort of sound a smartphone makes when it’s received a text message.
Akiki looked at the white object, raised one eyebrow and glanced at me.
‘Nice,’ he said. He then sat down behind a low table and picked up a large book made up of samples of cloth.
‘I think dark to contrast with the pallid don’t you, Ralphy baby. Dark dark dark.’
‘Dark sounds good to me. He’d look swell in dark.’
‘Dark it is.’ Akiki brushed his hand over the fabric and pushed the large sample book across the desk toward me.
‘Just feel that,’ he said. ‘Feel the quality of the weave my friend, is it not truly wonderful?’
I did as he suggested and indeed, the cloth felt very smooth and warm to the touch. It looked to my untrained eye like a dark tweedy sort of stuff. I wanted to ask about how it was made, where the raw materials came from, who wove the cloth. It was completely different to anything I’d seen before, a much finer weave than anything I’d seen in Gardenia.
Akiki turned to Ralph, suddenly speaking much faster.
‘I’ve been trying this stuff out, it’s a totally new weave, a totally fabulous weave.’ He glanced up at me. ‘Very hardwearing, you’ll probably never have to buy anything else, so, what do we say. Yes to dark?’
Both men looked at me.
‘Yes to dark,’ I said hoping this was the right thing to say. This received whoops of approval and Ralph gave me a powerful hug.
Using the same white object he’d pointed at me, Akiki pointed at the sample in the book. Another semi-familiar beep sound emerged.
‘Oh let him see the printer,’ said Ralph who then winked at me surprisingly discreetly. ‘He’s never seen one like yours before.’
Akiki leaned back in his low chair and pulled a curtain to one side with his quite ridiculously long arm. Behind the curtain was a fridge-sized white box and as Akiki turned toward it the front opened in a way I was becoming used to. Essentially the door, if you can call it that, folded away somehow revealing quite complex machinery inside which was moving around at such high speed the many components were a blur to the human eye.
‘My printer,’ said Akiki gesturing toward it in a theatrical fashion. ‘This little chappie is the kipaji.’
‘What’s it doing?’ I asked, intrigued by the fantastically fast mechanism working silently away in the white box.
‘Making your drapes,’ said Ralph quietly.
Sure enough, about ten seconds later the machinery stopped and a table slid out from beneath the box. On it, neatly folded was what I assumed was some kind of garment. It was dark just as they had suggested.
Akiki picked it up, shook it out and I could see at once it was like a kind of wetsuit or an all-in-one body stocking. I also knew after one glance that I couldn’t wear it, it was the sort of thing a mime artist or a ballet dancer might wear on stage.
‘Try it on,’ said Ralph, he was clearly enjoying this, and I totally failed to see why.
‘Really?’
‘You don’t like?’ asked Akiki, he looked mildly offended.
‘Well, it’s not what I’m used to.’
‘But this is the karibuni mtindo,’ he said holding the weird-shaped garment in front of me. I looked to Ralph for help, a pointless move as he was just nodding and grinning.
‘I don’t know what that means,’ I said. ‘I just don’t think I’d feel comfortable wearing it.’
This clearly upset Akiki, he pulled his head back and stared at me, he was tall and bald and rather angry.
‘My weave is the finest, the smoothest, the best. You will feel completely naked wearing my drapery, that’s how good it is.’
He pushed the garment at me and I felt obliged to take it.
‘Try it on brother,’ he commanded.
‘Okay,’ I sighed, ‘where’s the changing room?’
The two men looked at each other. Ralph looked at me.
‘The changing room?’ he said slowly, making the term sound completely different. ‘I don’t know, is it a café?’
‘No,’ I explained, ‘I mean the small room where you try clothes on.’ Their expressions remained blank.
‘Where I come from all clothes shops have a room, a special small room where you can try things on. In private.’
‘Where do you come from?’ asked Akiki.
&
nbsp; ‘He’s from out of town,’ said Ralph quickly. He looked at me with almost comical fury. ‘Just take off the slack garbage you’re wearing and try it on.’
‘Okay!’ I protested and then and there, in the small shop off a large and busy atrium full of people, I took off my Gardenian clothes while trying to ignore the fact that I was completely naked in a semi-public space.
As I started to try and clamber into the bizarre cloth construction I’d been handed I felt angrier and angrier. I had been duped into being naked, these two very tall and possibly homosexual men were humiliating me and having a laugh at my expense. This was all just so wrong.
‘Out of town?’ asked Akiki. ‘Out of his tiny skull more like.’
He took the garment away from me and I stood with my hands covering my genitals. Neither man seemed in the least uncomfortable at my nakedness and I watched carefully as Akiki pinched part of the garment around the collar area and then threw it toward me.
At that moment my body registered some of the most peculiar feelings it has ever experienced. The cloth kind of wrapped itself around me; this feeling was most disconcerting in the nether regions. Not exactly unpleasant, just like nothing I‘d ever experienced before.
‘Oh my God,’ I said. ‘What’s it doing?’
But by the time I said that it had done it, it had engulfed me, I was wrapped. The garment, I have no other word to describe it, fitted like a skin, a skin you couldn’t feel. I looked down at myself, I could not believe I wasn’t naked, I couldn’t actually feel it on me and yet I could sense I was warmer than when I actually had been verifiably naked only seconds before.
‘Wow, that is utterly amazing,’ I said as I wriggled around in my new, dark-coloured, slightly tweedy skin.
Akiki’s face lit up, a massive toothy grin replaced the rather terrifying scowl.
‘I knew you’d appreciate my weave. It’s the best you can get my brother.’
‘It feels so weird,’ I said. ‘I can’t tell I’m wearing anything, is that how it’s meant to feel?’
‘Yes, that’s how it’s meant to feel,’ said Ralph, he grinned at Akiki. ‘He’ll take it.’
I was stroking my hands up and down my flanks, in other circumstances this action could be construed as a little bit pervy, but somehow this skin coat just needed to be stroked. It felt like cloth, very finely woven cloth the like of which I had never felt before. Then I registered what Ralph had just said. Of course, I had to pay for this weird body stocking.
‘How much is it?’ I asked.
‘What is he saying now?’ asked Akiki, looking confused and possibly a little angry again.
‘How many bits is it? How many Kwo have I got to give you in order to own this?’ I said slapping my thighs, hoping my explanation would clarify matters.
‘Thirty,’ said Akiki.
‘Thirty!’ said Ralph indignantly. ‘That’s daylight robbery my friend. I have bought this poor badly dressed little man here exclusively, just to see you Akiki. We have not even looked elsewhere have we, Uncle Gavin.’
I shook my head, of all the things I expected to do when I was shopping in London in 2211, I don’t think bartering was on my list.
‘We came straight to you, I told Uncle Gavin, we will go to see my good friend Akiki, he is a good man and will not try to take you for a fool.’
‘Twenty-five,’ said Akiki.
There was a short pause, I shrugged. ‘Sounds good to me.’
Akiki held out his hand, I reached over his desk and shook it. I then felt a slight slump in my belly, I couldn’t pin down the feeling, it was very subtle but I felt a bit sad and empty, just for a moment.
I stood back from Akiki’s low desk and noticed Ralph slap his forehead. ‘Oh, you have a lot to learn my friend,’ he said, rubbing his face with both hands.
Akiki then handed me a rather nicely shaped bag made of a similar material to my body skin garment.
‘For your old rags,’ he said with a big grin. ‘Please don’t leave them here, if my customers see those lying about I could lose major business.’
I stuffed my much-besmirched Gardenian clothes into the bag and pulled on my now very crude-looking Gardenian shoes.
‘Okay, so how do I pay you?’ I asked, looking up from my struggles with Gardenian bootstraps. Again the two men looked at me quizzically.
‘You already have,’ said Akiki who quickly turned to Ralph. ‘Where is this man from, Venus?’
Ralph laughed, bid a hasty farewell and quickly ushered me out of Akiki’s small emporium.
‘I think going for a coffee now would be a very good idea,’ I said as I caught up with him, we walked across the huge atrium through crowds of people who, unlike when we arrived, didn’t give me a second look.
‘I have no idea what just happened,’ I said, ‘I thought you had to buy stuff in London, how do I pay him? I don’t want to get into trouble.’
Ralph stopped at the top of the enormous flight of stairs and turned to face me. ‘Listen, Uncle Gavin. My friend. Next time, please let me arrange the shopping, you have paid way over the odds for your drapes. You paid when you shook hands, do you really not know that?’
‘When I shook hands!’ I said incredulously. ‘But I shook hands with you when we met, does that mean I’ve paid you too?’
‘Only a small facility fee because you’re family, what did you expect, that I look after you for free?’
We descended the stairs and I felt another small depression hit me, it seemed to be located in my belly, or my solar plexus, some kind of deflationary feeling I’d never had before. I put it down to the realisation that I had left the most benign, gentle and evolved world and somehow returned to one that seemed crueller, harder and based yet again on money, on transactions, profit, competition and greed.
I suddenly felt supremely stupid wearing the one-piece tweedy type super lightweight body stocking thing. I wanted to be wearing a thick pair of chinos and a polo shirt.
I looked down at my body, I had to keep doing so because it was informing me I was in a public place with nothing on.
Ralph walked quickly when we reached the street level. I followed him, chewing over my feelings in a way I knew I never did back in 2011. The crowds had dispersed, but after a while I noticed the two smartly dressed possible policewomen were walking a good distance behind us. I did register that people glanced at me as I walked along but there certainly wasn’t the rather feverish crowd following us in the way they had on our initial outing to the shops. However, even without the entourage, I wasn’t feeling comfortable and I didn’t feel in control, it was like I was in the middle of an argument with Beth, but there wasn’t anyone to argue with, and I still knew I was losing the battle.
We turned a corner and I was faced with another enormous square, the centre of which looked like a forest. However, what marked this one as different from anything I’d seen in London up to that point was the truly vast building at the far end from where I was standing. This was more like the buildings I’d seen in Beijing in 2211. I don’t know how high this building was exactly, but it was easily twice the height of any structure existing back in 2011.
‘What’s that place?’ I asked, pointing to the colossal structure.
‘Marie Curie tower,’ he said without much thought, ‘I would have thought you‘d already seen it, this is the square you crashed your drone.’
‘Is it!’ I said. ‘Where’s the power-field, where did the cloud appear? You know, the cloud I flew out of before I crashed.’
Ralph stopped and looked at me. ‘I don’t know,’ he said with more than a hint of annoyance, then waved his long spindly fingers towards the trees in the square. ‘Somewhere over there there’s some kind of powery business.’
He turned and walked on towards an extensive outdoor café under a delightful collection of l
arge manicured beech trees.
We entered the area and made our way between hundreds of people sitting at dozens of tables. The place looked packed, I assumed Ralph was looking for an available space.
‘Let’s sit here.’
Somehow Ralph had walked across the vast café seating area and found a table where a small party of people were leaving as we approached. It was busy and noisy, I couldn’t have hoped to be able to tell who was leaving or who was arriving. Ralph clearly knew the ropes.
‘So, what goes on in Marie Curie tower?’ I asked.
Ralph shrugged and a waitress appeared at our table carrying two stainless steel cups.
‘Hi, Ralph,’ she said. ‘Two flat whites?’
‘Spot on, Annie, and I really need a sweet bake.’
‘A plate of bakes coming right at you,’ said the waitress. She left as quickly as he arrived.
‘The bakes they do here,’ said Ralph sitting back and sunning himself. ‘They are utterly to live for.’
I put my bag of Gardenian clothes down beside me and leant on the table.
‘Look, Ralph, I’m not keeping up. I’ve just spent four months living in the most peaceful place the human race has ever conceived, and now I’m suddenly in this mad house.’
‘It’s not a mad house – it’s London,’ said Ralph, he was clearly slightly offended.
I pressed on, ‘I need some explanation, Ralph. I need to understand what’s going on here? Why are we in a café and it’s mostly men and kids, what do people do?’
Ralph looked around the surrounding tables. He shrugged again. ‘A lot of men with little kids meet up here after they’ve taken older kids to school, or they drop in on their way shopping or to playgroups and stuff.’
‘Wait,’ I said holding up my palms. ‘You mean men have kids? Men give birth?’
‘What?’ Now Ralph looked genuinely confused. ‘Did men give birth in the olden days?’
‘No!’
‘How can men give birth? What are you talking about?’
News from the Squares Page 9
