Special

by Georgia Blain

  Usually, we head to the workline together. This morning, after seeing him argue with Sala, he is nowhere to be found.

  I take my place behind Jiminy. He talks rapidly, keeping up a running commentary on the slow movement of the line.

  ‘Only t-t-twenty to g-g-go. Us s-s-soon. N-n-not her, no w-w-work for her t-t-today. W-w-what will she d-d-do? N-n-no d-d-data f-f-for you. B-b-bastards,’ he mutters. ‘They d-d-don’t c-care.’

  He’s right. They don’t care. I’ve seen it before. You can wait in the queue for hours, you can reach the front, ready and able to work only to be waved away with no explanation. It doesn’t matter how much you plead, how desperate your case is or even if someone else offers to give you their place.

  ‘It’s just a random sadistic exercise of power,’ Sala would say. ‘Designed to remind us all that we are totally dependent on them.’

  And if you protest? I’ve seen that too.

  Mobies are swiped, your protest recorded, your hopes of getting any kind of work dimmed for quite some time.

  Sala is several spots ahead of us. She hasn’t saved us a place and she refuses to look in our direction. Chimo isn’t with her. I watch her as the queue progresses. She keeps glancing at her mobie, swiping through data nervously, only stopping as she reaches the front.

  She’s in.

  Jiminy and I progress. He holds his mobie up to the screen and waits.

  The single word on his mobie tells the story: Denied.

  He mutters under his breath, his stutter pronounced, and he looks at the ground. Then he turns and walks back to the compound. No work, no data. If it happens too often, life gets grim.

  Inside the sorting facility I take my place along the line, several people away from Sala. Both of us keep our heads down, picking through the endless line of rubbish – her hands deft, practised. I am waiting for her to take a break so that I can talk to her, but she doesn’t. She stays on the line, not once glancing in my direction.

  By early afternoon, I need to stop. Alone in the small rec room, I unwrap my single VitaCake and sit down, exhausted. Chimo’s absence isn’t right. I veer from worrying that something has happened to him, to fear and shame over my stupidity in allowing myself to get close.

  There are only a few of us. Most workers took their breaks earlier, and each of us sit by ourselves. To my right, an older woman has her eyes closed and her legs are up on one of the chairs. Her veins are knotted, her skin paper-thin and bruised. Her hands shake as she lifts her bottle of PureAqua, only to find it empty.

  ‘Here,’ I say, offering to pour some of mine for her.

  She is too tired to even thank me. She just takes the water and drinks eagerly, nodding at me as she finishes.

  As I stand to go back, she speaks, her voice croaky. ‘First day of work in a fortnight.’

  ‘How have you survived?’

  She shakes her head and shrugs. ‘Little bit here. Little bit there.’

  There are so many like her, clinging on with barely the strength to stay alive.

  She follows me back out to the line, where I take my place again. I keep an eye on Sala, ready to swipe off the second she does. She is one of the best data earners in the compound, fast and seemingly tireless, rarely going a day without work. Her output is renowned and so is her generosity. I have seen her give away food, water, data, helping those she knows and those she doesn’t. She stands there now, slight but strong, head bent low, cropped hair tucked behind her ears, hands working quickly, rarely chatting to her neighbour.

  As each person leaves, a new one enters, the trail of workers needing a shift never-ending. People queue all day and night, the line dwindling during the day, building up again as darkness descends, and dwindling once more before dawn until people arrive in the hope of a morning shift. You can take your place at any time, but most prefer the earlier shifts so they can sleep at night. Once the morning intake has finished there is little point in waiting until the evening.

  The night shifts are easier to get, but it is hard to work when your body wants to sleep. Unless you are used to it, your output is often less efficient, with less data to take home when you finish. But there are those who are desperate, those who are insomniacs and those who have nowhere to sleep. They will be queuing up outside now.

  Just as I’m about to give up on waiting for Sala, she swipes her mobie and heads for the door. I have to be quick to catch her, and I, too, swipe in my finish time so that my productivity can be divided into the number of hours I have worked. In my rush I almost fail to hold it there long enough, but I can’t miss out on my payment. My data is too low.

  She’s turning the corner as I race out onto the street, almost colliding with the next shift of workers clocking in. Although I call out her name, there’s no chance of her hearing me above the noise – the cacophony of people, autocarriers and mediasteams around us, particularly disorienting after the singular sound of the conveyor belt inside the facility.

  Sala usually walks quickly but this evening she is almost running, darting and weaving her way between the crush of people, and there are several times when I think I’ve lost sight of her, only to see her emerge from the crowd.

  It’s clear she’s not heading back to the compound. As she turns into a laneway, I’m right behind her, pressed against the wall. She enters a doorway, looking around her as she does. I watch as she takes out her mobie, making sure that she stays in the darkness. It must be a data vacuum, I realise – similar to the one that Chimo took me to so that I could contact Lewis. Miss Margaret told me that they exist everywhere, although they disappear as soon as they spring up. You often need to try a few before you find one that works, but Sala appears to have been lucky.

  She’s speaking softly and I have to stand closer than I would like to catch any of her conversation. Talking via the sieves is less risky than sending images or text because the communication can be wiped as soon as it’s uttered. Again, it was Miss Margaret who told me this. Most of the work I’d done on the sieves at Halston had been about leaving a more permanent message.

  She’s talking rapidly, asking if anyone has seen or heard from him, and I assume it’s Chimo that she’s referring to.

  ‘It’s not like him to just disappear,’ she says.

  And then, as she’s in the middle of saying that they should contact her if they have any word, she leans out of the doorway too quickly for me to hide, her eyes wide as her gaze locks on mine.

  She puts away her mobie and steps out, her face inches from mine. ‘What are you doing here?’ she demands. ‘Why are you following me?’

  I’m about to lie, to pretend that this is all a coincidence, but what would be the point in that?

  I decide to hold my ground. ‘We need to talk.’

  ‘Do you know where he is?’ she asks.

  I shake my head as I tell her that she was the one who saw him last, she was the one arguing with him in the compound this morning.

  Her dark eyes are fixed on mine, her mouth set in a grim, straight line.

  ‘What do the two of you want from me?’ I ask.

  She turns to walk off but I don’t let her, my hand firm on her arm as I hold her back.

  ‘Listen,’ I say, angry now. ‘I know you live together. I know it’s all been pretence with me. I was so bloody easy to break down. I’ve told him everything I shouldn’t have told him and no doubt he’s told you. Are you undercover here? Have you been sent to find me? Who sent you?’ I am too loud, my questions becoming increasingly hysterical. I had been alone for so long and then the little friendship I’d found with Chimo was nothing. Everything was nothing. I’d been a fool for thinking I’d found some kind of safety with them. Trust no one, I’d been told, over and over again.

  Why haven’t they come to get me?

  I am sobbing now, and Sala pulls me back into the safety of the doorway, her face close to mine as she tells me to calm down and shut up.

  ‘I’m not interested in you. Not right now,’ she hisse
s. ‘I’m interested in what’s happened to Chimo. Tell me where he is.’

  There was so little time for Lark and I to take in Rahim’s revelation.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Miss Margaret told us, after he’d left. ‘This is not how we wanted to tell you. We wanted more time to explain. You see, we believed that you could both be extraordinary without the design. We believe that investing in education and care and health is paramount. If the same amount were spent on our environment as it is on design, if we improved the lot for everyone – think of the world we’d live in.’ Her eyes were alight, her cheeks flushed as she looked at each of us.

  ‘You used us?’ Lark’s voice shook. ‘And Wren? Ivy?’

  Miss Margaret nodded. ‘They were a little less successful – a lot less in Ivy’s case – but you can also have failed designs. We will be publicising our data on them as well if we get the chance.’ She stood up, her voice brusque as she told us she had to prepare us. ‘Someone has betrayed us to BioPerfect, which was why I had to get you out of Halston so quickly. Ivy aroused suspicions. BioPerfect asked questions – and they can be very persuasive. There are threats and there are carrots. It’s hard to hold out. People eventually talked.’

  ‘Which means?’

  She looked at me impatiently. ‘They’d want to get rid of you. Wipe you, dump you and leave you with nothing. You’re proof that the extraordinary amount people spend on designs, let alone the Lotto, may not be worth it. The two of you are our argument against them.’

  ‘But there’s only two of us,’ I said. ‘Surely that’s not enough.’

  ‘It’s powerfully persuasive,’ Miss Margaret said. ‘Having you both in the flesh, with all that you are and all that you do, is so much more than just data.’

  Lark stood up then. I could see how frail she was. She shook her head as she looked at Miss Margaret. ‘I thought you loved us. I thought you cared for us.’ Her hands trembled as she held onto the chair. ‘We’re not just an argument. I’m me, Lark. This is Fern. You’ve known us for as long as I can remember and you’ve been lying to us this whole time.’

  Miss Margaret nodded, her eyes bright as she met Lark’s gaze. ‘I know, and there have been so many times when I’ve been plagued by doubt. It’s in my nature to act in your interests, to care for you, but we have looked out for you. We will continue to do so. We just have to disband for a brief period and then we will come together again and finish this work.

  ‘You have to listen to me now,’ she urged. ‘What you’re about to face will be difficult – I won’t deny it – but you’re both strong and adaptable. I know you are.’ She reached for our hands.

  Lark pulled back. ‘I’m not strong,’ she said. ‘I’ve barely recovered from the last environmental change. I want to go home. Let me go home.’

  Home. Home had always been Halston, but not for her. Home was home.

  ‘I wish we could,’ Miss Margaret told her, ‘but they’ll look for you there.’

  We could hear activity outside.

  A young woman put her head in and told Miss Margaret the first autocarrier would be leaving in a couple of hours. ‘It’s the one to ReCorp,’ she said, her voice soft but still loud enough for us to hear.

  Miss Margaret thanked her and then looked in my direction.

  ‘We need to prepare you. We have kits with meds, and I have to teach you as much as I can in the time we have left. You both know so little of the world … You will each have a new identity. You will lie low. People will probably guess that you are a wipe, but that’s fine. Just don’t draw attention to yourselves and, above all, trust no one.’

  Sala leads me down backstreets, across compounds, around the edge of data trader markets and through makeshift alleys that appear overnight and then disappear again as quickly as they cut through the shacks and sleeping mats that surround them. Fires are burning, people are cooking and washing, children are playing. Two women are shouting at each other. One picks up the other’s pot of food and tosses it on the ground. We move on, the shouts escalating behind us. The living conditions are even harsher than the compound, but it no longer alarms me. I am growing used to this place, I realise, the luxury of Halston so far in the past it no longer seems real.

  I have to hurry to keep up with her. She stops for no one, although there are many who raise a hand in greeting as she passes. The children tug on the hem of her shirt and giggle playfully.

  She is taking me to another data vacuum.

  The golden rule is to never stay too long in one – unless you want to run the risk of a random scan picking you up in its broad sweep. The place she is taking me to is buried deep in the slums that surround the central compounds. You need to know people to make your way through these alleys, to be able to use these vacuums without fear of having your mobie ripped from you and your data stolen.

  ‘Avoid them,’ Miss Margaret had warned me. ‘Trust no one.’

  And here I am.

  Sala stops abruptly at the entrance of a lean-to, her voice low as she talks to a man sitting in the doorway. She gives him her mobie and he transfers data, nodding at her when she tells him she’s grateful. As I go to follow her, the man stops me, his grasp firm on my arm.

  ‘She’s okay,’ Sala tells him.

  He shakes his head.

  ‘I live with her,’ Sala insists. ‘She’s a friend of Chimo’s. Here.’ She reaches for my mobie so he can scan my identity.

  ‘This is all false,’ he says, after looking through my basic data.

  I can hear my heart beating, the pounding louder and louder, my breathing rapid and shallow. How did he know?

  ‘She’s on the run,’ Sala says. ‘Hiding with us.’

  ‘There are people looking for her.’ There’s a gleam in his eye.

  I turn to run, but Sala holds me there. She steps a little closer to him, drawing herself taller as she does so. ‘Not worth your while,’ she tells him. ‘You betray her – for what? A one-off payment? Your name will be worse than monsoonal mud. No one will come to you. Why would you do that when you’ve got a thriving business like this one, my man?’

  He laughs then, a loud cackle, throwing his head back to reveal a long scar on his neck. ‘Ah, but I get bored, my girl. Why not have some fun?’

  She also laughs, the sound flinty. ‘There are easier ways to have fun,’ she says, lifting the curtain to the room behind him. She pulls me in with her, and this time he doesn’t stop me.

  I step into the darkness lit only by screens. The place we have come to is expensive. Sala probably used a vast amount of her stored data to buy us time here and she doesn’t want to waste a minute. The access is relatively safe and the speed powerful.

  Her instructions are to the point. ‘Find your people,’ she tells me.

  She is convinced they have Chimo. No matter how fervently I tell her that ‘my people’ have disbanded, are out of contact and unlikely to be wielding any form of power at all, she doesn’t believe me.

  ‘They have him,’ she says, over and over again.

  ‘Why?’ I ask.

  ‘Don’t you know, you silly girl?’ She looks at me in disgust. ‘He didn’t love you. He just wanted to get close so that he could find out who you are. He thought there was data to be made out of you. He just didn’t realise how much. Not ’til you told him and he heard about the bounty out on the sieves. BioPerfect bounty, no less.’

  I feel sick. ‘Well, maybe that’s where he is,’ I say. ‘Somewhere talking to BioPerfect – selling me down the river.’

  She shakes her head.

  ‘What makes you so sure?’

  ‘I talked him out of it,’ she tells me, her voice a little softer then.

  ‘Why?’ My head is reeling. I let myself love him, I think, and the shame of that overwhelms me. Those dark eyes, his kisses, the teasing whispers – all a lie.

  ‘His greed tempted him,’ she says. ‘And why wouldn’t it? Who wouldn’t want the possibility of an easier life? But that’s not what we’re about. We’r
e not on the side of the Parents. No way. Standing up to them is what matters – not a few more meals. That’s the only way change can happen. That’s what’s important.

  ‘He found out who you are and what they’re trying to say with you. I may not like you but what they’re doing is important.’

  ‘What’s the difference?’ I say angrily.

  She doesn’t understand.

  ‘Between me and what they’re trying to say with me? The point that they’re making? Where’s the boundary? It’s all one and the same and it all resides in here.’ I point to my chest – wanting to spit on her with fury.

  Sala grins at me. ‘True.’ She looks me up and down. ‘So I guess that means I saved both bits – the message and the person.’

  ‘And what makes you so sure he listened to you?’

  ‘I know him,’ she says, leaning a little closer. ‘I know him well.’

  I laugh at her. ‘And you think you can really know people?’ I shake my head. ‘That’s a joke.’

  ‘It isn’t always easy,’ she agrees, ‘but it is with him.’

  ‘Why? Because he’s your boyfriend? He tells you he loves you?’ I roll my eyes. ‘Even with my limited knowledge, I’d say there’s more room for betrayal in that relationship than there is in any other.’

  Sala looks confused for a second. ‘He’s not my boyfriend,’ she says. ‘He’s my brother. I’ve looked after him for as long as he can remember, and he’s looked after me. We don’t betray each other.’

  I had no idea. For one pathetic moment I wonder whether he did care for me after all.

  She tells me our time is short, that I need to make haste in trying to reach them. ‘Cover your tracks,’ she warns.

  This is the first vaguely safe opportunity I’ve had to contact Miss Margaret and Rahim since I was dumped at the entrance to the compound, left alone in the dust and filth of a stinking-hot evening, with only the barest knowledge of how to survive. I hold my breath as I dive, the excitement alive in my fingers. Then fear, as I remember the trap that was laid for Miss Margaret.