Sequela

by Cleland Smith

  'Well, now.'

  Kester jumped. Farrell was right behind him. He turned to face her and she put an arm out on either side, hands against the window.

  'Shall we pick a spot?'

  He was an insect trapped within glass, against glass.

  'I meant a description.' Kester glanced side to side for an escape route. 'When I said I could share it with you I meant I could show you my concept notes.'

  'No you didn't.'

  'I've got my notes here – if I can just get my Book.' Kester slid his back down the glass, ducked out from underneath her arm and dashed over to his bag. Picking it up he sat back down and put it on his lap, beginning to rummage in self defence.

  'Did I get rid of the others for nothing? Why not show me properly? Or would you prefer I call one of them back? No problem. Who's it to be?'

  Kester fumbled his Book out of his bag.

  'No, thank you, I don't –'

  'You don't go both ways? I suppose you think that's alternative do you? Not religious are you?'

  Kester looked down at his Book and pressed his thumb to the base panel to switch it on. In the bright light its transparent body was made solid by smears and fingerprints. He ignored Farrell's jibes.

  Taking his Book in one hand and wiping it on his trouser leg, he continued, 'I don't think it's a good idea. It takes more than half a day to present and much longer to reach full virulence and you don't want to be waiting around to make a decision. You don't want to expose yourself to something not knowing what it will look like. I could have anything.'

  'Come on, Doctor Lowe, this is the '80s. I have a nanoscreen like everyone else.'

  Kester felt himself shrink. She said Doctor Lowe as if she were a lawyer; the opposition's lawyer.

  'Call me Kester.'

  'Kester,' she said his name with a kick, violently. She smiled at it as if it were quaint, a nickname. She stalked around the desk and perched on its front edge, directly in front of him.

  'With all respect, your nanoscreen can't recognise this virus unless I give you the uploads.'

  'Which you will. Which you wouldn't travel without.' Mrs Farrell stared at Kester until he looked away. 'These make you uncomfortable,' she said with a patronising smile, indicating the sores on her neck, and then untied her vanilla hair so that it flowed down over her shoulders, covering them.

  Kester clasped his hands and glanced down at his Book. The base part of his brain was taking over. She was older than him, probably knew a few tricks. This was so wrong.

  'You'd better not be one of these types who comes in boasting and has nothing to deliver.'

  'No, I've just put it on this morning, it's new. But like I said, it won't present on me.'

  'We've got other people crying out for this position.' Farrell smirked.

  Distracted by his Book again, Kester was caught off-guard. 'I know – but I'm the best. Wait until you see…' He realised that his hands had stopped shaking.

  'Oh, finally a bit of real confidence.' Mrs Farrell pulled off her cravat and pinched open the first few buttons of her shirt.

  'I don't want to boast.'

  'I want you to boast. You're supposed to be boasting – this is an interview. Everyone boasts and most people lie. You're not lying to me are you?' She loosened the tie at the top of her culottes.

  'No, I swear, I've done private trials.'

  'Private trials!' She giggled at the lewd connotations like a girl, and then turned serious. 'You're not screwing with me?'

  'No.'

  'Not yet.' Her mood flicked again into aggressive flirtation. The front of her culottes slid down, revealing a flat creamy stomach. Along the seam of each leg, running up from the corners of her Hollywood to the top of her hips, was the shadow of a line of sores, together making a proud V, a deliberate exaggeration of her shape. 'I'm a company girl.' She nodded at her naked groin.

  Kester was burning up despite himself. He forced himself to look her in the eye and left his chair. As he stood, the cityscape rose back into view, its tilt making him feel as if he was falling towards her. With her hair down, Mrs Farrell's face was softer. She batted her eyelids like a cartoon and held out one hand towards him.

  'Come closer. You won't see them,' she said. She flicked the crumpled front panel of her culottes down over the edge of the desk, exposing herself completely.

  Kester felt his focus narrowing, his mind shutting out all other concerns. He walked forward and felt her hand slide round behind his neck, pulling him faster towards her. The city swelled up, breaking against the skyline. Kester's body was in conflict: sinking stomach, rising erection. This was so wrong. She pulled his head forward and down until her lips were at his ear and his eyes looking straight down the front of her shirt. Wrong in such a teenage way.

  'It doesn't bother you,' Kester mumbled into her hoisted-up bosom, 'mixing business with pleasure?'

  'At V, business is pleasure.'

  Kester let out a strangled laugh and lumped his hands to her waist as she grappled with his trousers.

  'Damn these old-fashioned flies.' They had ruined her practised routine. She laughed as she undid his belt and fumbled with his button and zip. 'You protecting something special behind this fortress?'

  'I hope so.' Kester lifted his head. Committed now to a cause, if not the one he'd walked through the door for, he kissed her hard on the lips.

  'Oh.' Farrell started back as if he had broken some unspoken rule of interview, and then recomposed herself. 'Bold.' She laughed, slid his trousers down over his hips and yanked him in close. 'We need to get you down to our corporate tailor for something a little more easy-access.' Reaching down, she found what she was looking for, found she'd had the usual effect and smiled. She wriggled forward, sliding her other hand to the base of his back, kissing him in return as she lined herself up professionally. 'Much more easy access.' She smiled like a predator.

  'That's if I get – oah!' Kester's mouth left him as their hips clattered together. The interview had all been foreplay to her.

  'If you get the job,' she finished his sentence, hooking her sinewy legs up behind his back and constricting around him.

  -o-

  Kester had had sex before, but not under interview conditions.

  'That's just it, Mum. There isn't much to share.' It rather cut down on how straight he could be with his mother. 'I think I impressed her – impressed them I mean – but you never know with these things, do you?'

  There was rain coming from somewhere. Kester quickened his pace – he was almost at the Bloom. The bulging glass structure would provide temporary shelter from the rain. As he drew closer, his eye was drawn by the dark rocket at its centre; what used to be the Gherkin was now its kernel, a building within a building, completely visible only from one angle, as if the Bloom was a great glass fruit with a segment cut out.

  'You know how well you've performed, Kester.' His Mum always voiced a belief in him that went way beyond reason.

  'I suppose…'

  He paused at the edge of the Bloom's North entrance and gazed down the promenade of shops and bars that curled away round the ground floor.

  'And you will have done well. You always do.'

  Kester's Book beeped, registering the ad he'd stopped beside. ALL NEW LADYSQUEAL AT THE BLOOM 55! Finally, the Pigs were catering to women. Below the tagline on his Book's display popped up a list of eight viruses that were loaded for sale. Some were classics and some were new, commissions for which the exclusivity contracts had lapsed.

  'Nobody does well all the time, Mum.'

  Kester looked up at the full size ad. A businesswoman rodeo-riding a mechanical pig. The smell of rubber filled Kester's nostrils, an olfactory memory bursting open like a nasty liqueur sweet.

  'You do, Kester. Don't talk yourself down.'

  Kester made a noise. He was back in the branch of the Pigs he had visited as a teen tourist, green from his life outside London: close pink rubber walls, a grubby plasma screen above a hole in the wal
l, a stack of rubber blocks to stand on, worn grab-handles.

  His mother took his silence as the need for more encouragement. 'You're the best at what you do, Kester.'

  When he'd visited the Pigs there had been nothing to catch; it was just a quick release for the oversexed and the undesirable, for gentlemen who tired of the palm. Kester snorted to expunge the smell from his nostrils. He had only done it for a dare.

  'I said, you're the best at what you do.'

  'Mum, I'm not the best – I'm good, but you know. You never know who you're up against.' Kester had a little smile to himself. Mrs Farrell would have liked that one.

  'You, Kester, are creative – you always have been – and I'll bet that's what they see in you.'

  Kester laughed at the idea that creativity might have anything to do with his success or otherwise. It had been more a case of the classic quickie – pretty functional. Then again, it had been popping up in his brain like a forgotten set of keys ever since. Popping in and out. A sudden flush and he got all muddled; he could hear Farrell's hair, smell her hands. He looked back up at the rodeo-riding executive, then walked on.

  'You're not just one of these lab people,' his mum said. 'You've got it all going on up there.'

  'Lab people?'

  'Like those folk of yours at the Institute.'

  'Those are my friends! They're good people.'

  'They're good lab people.'

  'Oh come on, Mum, apart from Dee you've only met them two or three times.'

  'That's right and I thought they were perfectly nice lab people.'

  'Mum, I work in a lab – I'm a lab person.'

  It's not that calling someone a lab person was particularly offensive. She could have been calling them anything – it was the way she said it. Kester had heard her use it with all sorts of job titles, from sales attendant to managing director, and she could make all of them sound like they were just playing at work. He could imagine the look on her face, as if she had tasted them and found them sour.

  'Mum, some of those lab people are eminent scientists – far better than me!'

  Kester was aware of a few passersby looking at him. He thought initially that their attention had been drawn by his tone, but then he noticed that before each person looked at his face, their eyes were darting up and down his body, automatically scanning for logos and ads, and failing to find them.

  'Hm. We'll see about that, when you've got a top floor office in the tallest building in the City and they're still plugging away in the old world.' She flitted onto her favourite subject. 'How is Delilah?'

  'I keep telling you, Mum, it's Dee now. She hates Delilah.'

  'Well, it's the name her father gave her and Lord knows that man knew what was what.'

  Kester recalled his mother's admiration for their neighbours' memorabilia collection and the mortification it caused Dee. How her father's judgement had any bearing on whether Delilah liked her name or not was a mystery to Kester.

  'Delilah will keep you on the straight and narrow. She's good for you, you know.'

  'Mum, how many times, she's just a friend.' Kester emerged from the other side of the Bloom to a fleeting dry spell.

  'Can't friends be good for one another?'

  'Yes, I suppose so.'

  'So, what will you be doing in this new job?'

  Kester toyed with the idea of trying to explain to his mother what it was he was going to do and then dismissed it.

  'It's pretty much the same as I do now, Mum.'

  'Oh I see, good…that's good, isn't it?'

  'Yes, Mum.' Kester knew she had never got farther than the title of his thesis, but it touched him that she wanted to understand.

  'Yes, pretty much the same but with better money, better perks, better location, better everything really.'

  'Better lab people?'

  'Better colleagues?' Kester hummed and hawed. 'That remains to be seen.'

  'I'm so proud of you Kester! Give my love to Delilah. Bye, darling.'

  The phone call ended abruptly, as they always did. His mother had got what she wanted from the conversation, so that was the end of it. It irked him sometimes, but not today.

  Kester's mind wandered, blurring time as he weaved through the streets to the Blackfriars City checkpoint. This morning, walking through the City towards V, he had had a curious shrinking feeling as the buildings around him increased in height almost exponentially. Now it was he who grew as the City fell away, becoming larger than himself, dwarfing the buildings around him.

  The checkpoint had been fashioned from an old archway, rescued in pieces from the rubble after the riots in the early part of the Century. It was one of the largest of the City boundary checkpoints, a classic example of the fusion of old and new, stone and glass, that dominated the aesthetics of the City and a neat reminder of why the City had been securitised in the first place. Kester glanced up as he passed under the archway and caught sight of a plaque showing a list of dates: 1840 – the building of the original archway; 2017 – the year it was burned down; 2047 – the year the permanent checkpoint was erected. He passed through the wide glass doors. They would close automatically if there were ever a break in the stream of pedestrians.

  Up ahead, there was a scream. There was a temporary hush and everyone looked towards the source – a man trapped in the barriers.

  'I've had a haircut!' screamed the man, before launching into a tirade about securitisation.

  He gripped the top of the barrier, holding himself up as his legs failed, their muscles disabled by an invisible NTS beam, triggered when the bioscanner failed to recognise him. Two guards, holding Bruzless batons, marched through the crowd to the barriers and dragged the offender to a door at the side of the hall. There was a thick wave of snuffing and humfing and the commuters continued on through the barriers.

  Kester readied his Book as he approached the barriers, paranoid that it wouldn't be read. A brief tone sounded between his biometrics being scanned and the barriers registering the pass on his Book, but the two were matched in a split second and Kester passed through without incident as he always did.

  Out of the City, Kester headed down to the river and back west towards the Institute. Under Blackfriars Bridge the fukpunk he had seen earlier was in a deep sleep, crouched, his knees drawn up in front of him, his coloured clothes and hair making him look like a dejected bird, a piece of totem pole sawn off and abandoned.

  At the edge of the underpass a few more fukpunks were gathered, a different gang, either more careful or more experienced in their narcotics dosage. Two of the five were bare-chested, showing rashes creeping up from their low waistbands. They looked like twins, had the same side-ways Mohican and bandaged fingertips. The other three were dressed variously in studs and leather with strategically placed PVC windows. They must be hardcore – the viruses weren't even mods, just plain STVs and street mutes that had been going round for donkeys'. Kester shuddered as he noticed a green smear on the window of one boy's transparent crotch-piece. He just didn't get it. They were passing round a bottle of Quicksilver. No wonder. The street drugs they used as painkillers were generations behind those the City wearers used. He looked away as he passed them.

  'Fucking nouveau-pox!' one of them shouted.

  Kester jumped and took a small skip out of his path as another spat at him.

  'What?' he replied involuntarily, hurrying on.

  'Where's your pansy bracelet?'

  Puzzled, Kester looked down at himself and noticed he was still wearing his V visitor pass.

  'Right,' he said, unclipping it and sticking it in his pocket. They'd never do anything to him, but better to walk the rest of the way back in peace.

  -o-

  Alexis Farrell darkened the glass partition between her office and the rest of the floor.

  You'll feel queasy, Doctor Lowe had warned her.

  The room was still set up for interview, the desk still in disarray. She walked unsteadily across the floor to the side wall where
a concealed door led to her apartment. It sensed her approach and slid back to allow her through. She kept on walking across the wide, glass-fronted room, closing her arms around her body and squeezing her triceps in her sweaty palms.

  The light faded up in the wet-room. Farrell flicked a manual switch by the large mirror above her dressing counter. An arch of old-style light bulbs spluttered into life around the edge of the mirror, creating little white windows in the pupils of her eyes. She looked pale. Did she look pale? She put a hand up to the soft surface of her image and watched the small pressure rainbows pulse at her fingertips. Whatever the virus, this happened – the sudden sideways push of anxiety leaving her dissociated, nauseous. It would pass, leaving the real symptoms behind; she knew that, but she couldn't switch off the fear. She automatically pinched the band around her wrist, releasing a pain-relieving shot, though Kester had assured her she wouldn't need it.

  At least this time she knew what was happening to her. Alexis clung to this thought and forced herself to remember.

  The virus infects only the cells in the border area between your irises and the whites of your eyes – it can't unlock the neighbouring cells, so it's self-limiting.

  Alexis had concealed her horror. Her eyes?

  In any case I've programmed in a forced rapid shift which means that any tertiary viruses revert fully to the inert form in which they are unable to reproduce. It's also very stable which means the chances of it throwing up a mutation that can spread further are beyond negligible.

  She leaned in to the mirror. Her eyes felt different. Did her eyes feel different? She could feel the muscle movements as her focus shifted, could see her pupils contract as she moved closer to the lights.

  You'll only need the uploads if you want to reverse or arrest the effect, or if you don't wish to remain infectious; no more cells will be infected or damaged once the effect has presented. And I only work with tissues that can regenerate fully to their pre-infected state so there's no fallout and no scarring. You may experience a blurring of your vision, but it will pass. It's just your irises recalibrating their muscular movement to account for the altered cells – the body's pretty clever like that.