As far as I could see above me people were waving and cheering. It was hard to make out exactly what I was looking at, I assume a series of paths and steps leading up the mountains between the buildings. It was all on such an enormous scale it was hard to map it out in my mind. Out of this noisy and very colourful throng emerged a very old woman who walked up to me as we made our way towards the shade of a massive quay side structure. As she got closer I could see she was truly ancient-looking and very frail, she was guided by two younger women and a very young boy who held her hand. As she stood before me the huge crowd went much quieter and she started to speak.
‘Bem-vindo ao Rio, o homem a partir da nuvem,’ she said.
I then heard, ‘Welcome to Rio, the man from the cloud.’
I thanked her and said it was a wonderful welcome, there was a small pause until she understood and she smiled a toothless smile. The little lad touched my hand.
‘Acolher irmão,’ he said. ‘Welcome brother.’ For some reason I found this very moving, the women on either side of the old lady looked moved too, they were smiling at me and one of them had a tear running down her cheek.
‘Many people see you as a saviour,’ said Nkoyo as we finally made it into the shade. ‘You are very kind to tolerate such attention.’
‘I don’t know why they’d think that, I don’t want them to think that and who was the old lady?’
‘Her name is Maria Coradinho, she is the oldest woman in Rio. She is one hundred and forty-eight years old and had asked to be able to greet you.’
‘A hundred and forty-eight, wow, that’s even older than Olumide.’
‘Yes, she is one of our oldest citizens. She has seen many changes in her long life. The young boy, Renaldo, is eight years old and her great, great grandson. He is the first male offspring in two generations so as you can imagine he is very precious.’
I shook my head in amazement as I tried to take all this in. As soon as we walked beneath the giant structure we were faced with a truly spectacular flight of stairs, it climbed up as far as I could see and people thronged up its course to dizzying heights.
‘We have a bit of a climb ahead of us, are you feeling strong?’
‘I guess so,’ I said.
‘If you like we can hire some PDPs, some potência da perna,’ said Nkoyo who pointed to my left. There was a very smart looking emporium, smoked glass frontage with a very clear graphic image of what Nkoyo was talking about. A pair of legs powering up steps with some kind of leggings attached.
‘Wow, how do they work?’ I said.
‘Try them,’ came the response, and we entered the store through the crowd that was watching and calling my name.
Inside I paid a small amount, judging by the barely discernible stomach impact, for what looked to me like a pair of dancer’s tights. As I pulled them on over my one piece I could sense there was more to them than was immediately apparent.
‘They might take a little getting used to,’ said Nkoyo who had stood to one side while I tried on the PDPs.
We left the shop and I was immediately greeted by a great throng of people all waving and smiling. I waved and smiled back and started to climb the steps alongside Nkoyo. Again there is no way I can adequately explain the sensation of having your legs assisted by these weird, semi-transparent leggings. It’s not like a Royal Marine is moving your legs for you at yomp speed, or that someone is pushing you from behind with enormous force, but it also is like that. It’s as if your legs have ten times the power that you would normally expect but they don’t walk for you. It’s more like a pedal-assist bike, if you don’t pedal, you don’t move, but if you do, you move faster than you could alone. However, after about fifty steps which once again were a little bigger than I was used to I was soaked in sweat. The heat in Rio was intense, maybe not quite as chokingly hot as Lagos but still, climbing up shaded steps that just seemed to go on for ever was utterly knackering. After about ten minutes a young woman standing on one of the many short landings handed me a stainless steel bottle, I drank it so fast I’m not sure what was in it, my body just seemed to absorb it like a sheet of blotting paper dropped in a puddle.
‘Thank you,’ I said, she smiled and touched my arm.
‘You will get a lot of that,’ said Nkoyo.
‘I suppose it’s better than if they were chucking rocks at me,’ I joked.
‘Why would they do that?’ asked Nkoyo, she seemed genuinely confused.
‘No, it was a joke, I was…never mind.’
The annoying thing about this endless ascent up the endless stairs is that Nkoyo had no such assistance in the leg department and she was also not out of breath. She didn’t seem to be sweating and she took the enormous steps with her long legs as if she were walking along a level pavement.
After what seemed like hours but was probably twenty minutes, we emerged onto a very grand square surrounded by three enormous buildings. The square was teeming with people, once again just about every race on earth represented in one way or another and most of them staring at me. I smiled and waved, and they cheered and waved back. I cannot truly say I understood why at the time but I was getting used to my ridiculous celebrity status.
I followed Nkoyo into an impressive building directly in front of us, standing either side of the entrance were two clearly military women, they were holding long poles which they held erect as we entered the doors, they didn’t look at me but they were some seriously big ladies. I mean muscular rather than obese, but they were also the fattest people I’d seen since landing in the square.
Inside we were greeted by a much smaller crowd, maybe fifty women clothed in white, head-to-toe white garments; some were body suit type things like I was wearing, some just floor length vaguely Arab-looking tunic things.
‘Welcome to the Rio Institute of Advanced Medicine,’ said a woman whose name I instantly knew was Professor Gabriella Estevinho. I took to her at once for one simple reason, she was shorter than me. I’m shallow, so sue me, but after being the shortest person in any city I’d visited and shorter than anyone I’d met who was over about twelve, it was really pleasant to look down a bit to talk to someone.
‘We are very excited meet you, Gavin Meckler, I am hoping Doctor Oshineye has explained what we wish to accomplish during your visit with us.’
‘She has,’ I said, ‘but I’m not sure what it entails, I hope you’ll understand that I am a little nervous of what may be in store.’
The charming Professor Estevinho led me further into the building, I glanced around to make sure Nkoyo was with us. Thankfully she was, deep in conversation with about half a dozen women who were following us.
‘There is absolutely nothing to fear, I think you will find medicine has advanced considerably since the time you were born. However, you are a fascinating specimen for us, forgive me for describing you in such mechanical terms. Obviously you are a human being with a complex mind and a certain human dignity, and I want to assure you this is completely understood by everyone here, but you come from a time before many of the negative influences of our modern world had come into play. You know about the problems we have had with radiation sickness?’
‘I saw some mention of it at the museum in London, the history museum,’ I said feeling some alarm. ‘However, I don’t know what effect it may have had.’
‘Well, it has had some effect, it is nothing to be concerned about, we have managed to understand the negative effects of radiation on the human body and know how to combat the possible deleterious effects, but the long-term impacts are still being researched. One of them is infertility in both men and women, but mainly, it has to be said, men. From what we understand of your knowledge of yourself, you are not infertile, is that correct Mister Meckler?’
‘Yes, a few people have asked me that, I’m afraid I have no definitive proof but as far as I know it all wor
ks.’ I smiled as I said this, Professor Estevinho smiled back but it wasn’t a complicit smile, it was a smile of a very learned person being polite to an idiot.
The Professor opened a door for me, yes, a door, like a large piece of wood type material with hinges on one side that fitted into a similar sized opening. I liked it, it was so simple and easy to maintain although I think my admiration for this simple device confused my host.
The large room I was shown into contained nothing, it was white, bright and entirely empty. The Professor guided me to the centre and stepped away. I think I was expecting some kind of medical equipment to slide out of the walls and floor and a load of people in surgical gowns to enter through an as yet concealed entrance. However, nothing happened. After a moment the diminutive Professor stood beside me again and held my left hand with both of hers. ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘We have all we need.’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Please don’t be sorry.’
‘No, but, I thought you were going to…’
The Professor gestured around the entirely empty room. ‘This is our scanner de corpo, we have all the data we need now, would you like to eat?’
That was it, I had travelled across the Atlantic Ocean from Lagos to Rio De Jainero to undergo some medical tests and I’d already done it. The process took less than a second and it made no sense whatsoever.
‘Forgive me, Professor, but if this—’ I gestured around the white room, ‘this system can scan my entire biological make-up in next to no time, why did I need to travel all this way. It seems you have very sophisticated communications equipment, surely you could have done this while I was in London?’
‘Of course we could, we could have got the simple raw data from your body, but we also wanted to meet you in person, we can get so much more from being in the same physical space as you, and we also wanted you to see what we would do with the data, we wanted to be sure you truly understood what was going on, what we intend to do with the material we have gleaned from your body.’
I followed the Professor out of the room where we rejoined Nkoyo and the small group of what I took to be doctors.
‘Everything okay?’ she asked.
‘I think you’re asking the wrong person,’ I replied, ‘I’ve got no idea what’s going on.’
We all entered a room with what can only be described as a breathtaking view over the mountainous city. At a glance I assumed that due to the substantial rise in sea levels much of Rio had been rebuilt on and into the mountains that had at one time been the city’s backdrop. I’d never visited back in 2011 so I was going on holiday programmes and tourist videos I’d seen, but the sea fringed the foot of the mountain the building I was in was built on.
The women in white started bringing in food and we all sat down and ate, once again fresh printed beef steaks seemed to be very popular, I chomped my way through a couple.
‘Can you tell us,’ said a woman sitting opposite me, ‘if fresh print beef is comparable with beef from a dead cow?’
I chewed for a bit and swallowed because I didn’t want to spray half chewed food across the table, something I had been known to do.
‘I’d say it is very comparable, if anything it’s better,’ I said finally. I then studied the as yet untouched steak on the plate before me. I looked at the others piled up on the serving dish in the centre of the table. I noticed they were all identical, a kind of perfect steak, same size, same weight, same texture.
‘They are a bit uniform I suppose, that would be the only possible criticism, in the past no two beef steaks would be identical but that aside, this is pretty amazing stuff.’
This compliment seemed to go down well, everyone looked happy. I was simply waiting to hear what the results of my so-called medical examination would be. The women were all busy talking to each other, passing food and generally having a rather good time.
‘I think Gavin is anxious to hear the results of the medical investigation,’ said Nkoyo out of the blue. It wasn’t as if she could read my mind, she was quite simply reading my mind.
‘Of course,’ said Professor Estevinho, ‘we are very pleased with the results, Gavin. Your gonads are in fine condition and you have a very well-balanced sperm count.’
I think my face may have flinched when she said the word ‘gonads’. There was something about that word which always sounded like a painful kick in the balls. Testicles is okay, but it’s bit of a silly word. Gonads is just an unpleasant word. Even if it was the common term for a flower or tree, the gonad tree, you wouldn’t want to sit under it on a hot day.
‘That means you have the ability to father male children,’ said Nkoyo helpfully.
‘Okay, I may be a nerdy engineer from 2011 but I know what she was saying, but what interests me is how this crisis came to be and what on earth my role is in rectifying it.’
Professor Estevinho took a deep breath, her face was delightful, smooth and calm. She smiled a very gracious smile in my direction. ‘Gavin,’ she said, ‘do not be concerned, we are not going to expect you to mate with thousands of women, we are not going to milk you of sperm in some inhuman, mechanical way.’
Again I feared my face may have given me away, I admit there was a background fear that I would be used in some sort of agricultural-style breeding program and, I will further admit, that the prospect of such a weird notion wasn’t entirely disagreeable; however, I was also genuinely relieved.
‘We have scanned your biological system in minute detail and have your entire genome stored in our system. As you may know we have genomes data stored from your era but the sophistication of the technology used at the time was not adequate for the work we do. I have no wish to be rude about your achievements back then, but it was rather crude.’
‘I’m sure you’re right,’ I said. ‘It was all still fairly experimental from what I knew of it, which wasn’t much.’ I glanced at Nkoyo who was staring at me intently. ‘I was an engineer, working on heavy machinery, not a biologist.’
‘We know that, Gavin, we understand,’ said the Professor kindly. ‘So, what I am explaining is that we can use the information we have gleaned today to create a new seed bank if you like, we can create a fresh selection of viable spermatozoa with the required chromosome make-up which will allow us to successfully fertilise women who wish to bear male offspring. Up to now we have only had such information from our current stock of males and due to many genetic factors I don’t want to bore you with, we have been dealing with a serious problem.’
I glanced at Nkoyo again to try and ascertain how delicate the discussion should be, I had no idea of the ramifications of my questions, of who these women were and what their opinions of men were like. They could all have been Weaver women who had simply used their medical technology to extinguish any chance I had of procreating, for all I knew I was about to become a eunuch.
27
Rest Before the Storm
I walked with Nkoyo from the medical centre and down a series of winding, shady streets and long flights of steps.
I was deep in thought, this place really made me think about things I’d truly never considered for a second in my previous life.
Some people were still able to create male babies like the young lad I’d met on the steps when I arrived in Rio. They were able to procreate naturally and have sons, but not that many. I was starting to understand the problem, if women could tell which particular man was most likely to create female children and generation after generation had chosen those men to breed with, you would rapidly end up with an imbalance. I recalled that at about the time I left Kingham in 2011, the number of women graduating from college had overtaken the number of men. I didn’t know much about it back then, I couldn’t sense the beginning of such a massive cultural shift but it was apparently taking place. I had landed in this world at a time where this imbal
ance had reached a crisis point and everyone was not surprisingly getting a bit het up about it. I remembered a family that lived near us when I was a kid, they had four daughters. Of course, back then it was the mum who wanted a son. I can’t remember hearing about what the dad wanted, but my mum used to feel sorry for her. My mum had two sons and even though we tore the house up fairly effectively, Giles by running into things and breaking them and me by taking stuff to bits and leaving it lying around, she was obviously very proud of us.
I can remember as an adolescent looking at the dad with the four daughters, I think he was called Peter, and I distinctly remember thinking he was a bit weird. This was because I’d done enough biology at school by then to harbour the suspicion that his sperm only carried the X chromosomes, and not the really butch Y ones like my dad. The other thing I remembered about those four girls is they were really weird, all of them horribly academic and introverted. They would physically flinch when I walked near them as if they were terrified I might attack. That reaction would be understandable if my brother Giles ran past them, as he was very likely to barge into them in true rugger-bugger style and claim it was ‘just for a laugh’. But I was far more timid and quite evidently constituted no danger.
That memory resonated with me. There was something familiar going on. I was starting to make connections that led to a greater understanding not only of myself but the way others perceived me. It was something along the lines of being seen as a potentially violent man, being grouped together with ‘all men’ when my own personal history was one of utter non-violence. I’m talking physical violence, I’ve never hit anyone, man or woman, never been in a fight, never experienced violence on a physical level. I can understand that some people – okay, Beth – might accuse me of a sort of emotional violence in that I wouldn’t engage and wouldn’t respond when she got shouty. I can see how that kind of passivity can be very annoying and damaging, but I certainly never got shouty back or in the least bit violent.
News from the Squares Page 27
