by Terry Tyler
I told myself that she was swamped with birthday celebrations, and would contact me the next day. But, like the man who is not that into you, she didn't. Of course she didn't.
I gave her a few days, during which I plummeted, badly. At work I functioned, and that was all. On the third evening I logged on to Heart2Heart, and @HopeinmyHeart suggested I call NPU.
What u got 2 lose? They can't do any more 2 u than they already have.
I think that was what I was waiting for. Someone to tell me it was the right thing to do.
I clicked on the NPU icon.
A male voice introduced himself as Cody. I chose my words carefully, saying I was enquiring about Leah Phillips.
"I'm sorry, ma'am, Leah Phillips is no longer with us."
My stomach caved in. "What? What do you mean?"
Cody gave a little chuckle. "Oh—sorry—I should have phrased that better. I haven't been working here long, it's my first job! I mean that she's been transferred to the new NPU Teens facility." I heard some tapping. "Yes, she was transferred on the eleventh. The day after her thirteenth birthday."
I breathed out. "Can you tell me where NPU Teens is?"
"Sure; it's in MC12."
"Yes, but where in MC12?"
"Oh shoot—off-script alert!" He laughed. "Sorry, I should have asked who's calling!"
"My name is Aileen Phillips. I'm her mother."
"Her birth mother?"
That again. "Well, where I come from we just say 'mother', but yes, I gave birth to her, and she lived with me until she was eighteen months old—" I checked myself; I was sure Cody had zero interest in my life history. "Can you tell me exactly where this NPU Teens place is, please?"
Cody chirruped, "Aileen, I'm going to ask you to hold the line while I check this out. Can you do that for me?"
I didn't answer. I heard voices in the background and assumed the novice Cody was seeking the wisdom of a colleague on how to respond.
"Hey, Aileen!" he sang out, a moment later. "You still there? Good! Now, I'm really sorry about this, but I'm not authorised to give out the location of NPU Teens, 'cause it's super-secure, for their own safety. You understand, I'm sure?"
"No, I don't. I'm Leah's mother. I would like to know where she's living, please."
"Oh dear—look, I know this is difficult, and I know it's a mega-sensitive situation, but apparently you signed over legal responsibility for Leah back in 2048—which means that NPU makes all decisions about her welfare, and I'm not allowed to give you the location of NPU Teens. For security reasons."
"For what? What do you think I'm going to do, go round and burn the place down?"
"Aileen, I'm afraid you can't say that sort of thing, even in jest—the inappropriate language alert has just lit up, and it will go down on your record."
"What? What do you mean? I didn't say I was going to do that, I asked if you thought I was! Okay, I'll find out from someone else."
"Could you hold one moment please?"
My fist was clenched so tightly that my nails had made little new moons on the palm. I heard low voices. Then Cody was back.
"Hi, Aileen! Um, you're '@OneFineDay' on Heart2Heart, aren't you? I'm sorry, but any requests for such information will be automatically blocked. We have a total dark policy when it comes to the location of NPU Teens."
"Can you at least forward the contact so I can call the place?"
"Could you hold the line one moment?"
More distant chattering.
"Hello-oo! You still there, Aileen? Good! Well, I'm happy to tell you that I can give out the contact for NPU Teens, so you can ask about Leah. I'll send the ID to your com right now."
It appeared, and I cut him off mid-sentence while he was telling me to enjoy the rest of my week.
This time I spoke to a snooty sounding woman, to whom I said that I was enquiring about the welfare of my daughter.
"I'm afraid I can't give out information about Leah," she told me. "You transferred legal responsibility for her care to NPU in 2048. NPU Primary maintains connection with the birth parents as a courtesy, but NPU Teens has a total dark policy."
I felt drained by then. Drained, weak, tired, and ready to give up; my daughter had all but slipped away from me.
"Okay, but Leah was thirteen on Wednesday—can you just tell me if she applied to make contact with me?"
I could feel her judging how to answer me; I sensed it in the pause before she did.
"I'm sorry, she didn't, no."
I'm sorry, she didn't, no.
Leah didn't want to see me.
Leah didn't care.
I hung up.
On the forum, a few people told me that the promise of children being able to apply to contact their birth parents at the age of thirteen was bullshit. Which made me feel a bit better.
They don't really let u, said @JazzLover. They just say it to keep u sweet.
@MeadowsMum said, I know someone who reunited with her son when he was 16. Hang in there; it's only three more years. Then she may come and find you. xx
Chapter 13
Tara
2059 ~ 2061
I met a woman called Dior, and my life changed course yet again.
The year before it did so was the happiest time of my life, better than any time before or since.
Each morning I'd wake up with Ned, we'd cuddle up together, eat breakfast, then take the zip to Roof. I was happy when I helped the warehouse guys load up my van, happy when I was driving out into the Wasteland. I loved catching up with the Roof guards at the drop-ins, and now and again I got to meet some real live wastelanders. Guess what? They weren't filthy tramps scrabbling in the dirt or demented revolutionaries, they were just ordinary people like me.
I was happy when I went home to my beloved, happy whether we stayed at home and watched stuff or went out. Happy, happy, happy.
Ned wasn't in my life for long, but he changed it, because he was good and kind and he loved me. He opened my eyes, and I think he might have made me a better person, though that's for others to say.
Slowly, subtly, as our relationship deepened, he drip-fed me information about a side of our world that I'd never thought about before. Underground networks, anti-government factions.
I'd heard of Link, of course, and Ned told me a lot more. I assumed he'd learned it from the sites he looked at, until one golden evening at Lark's Pond when he said, in that mild way he did, like he was asking if I fancied a cup of coffee, "How would you feel about working for Link?"
I stopped. "What?"
"Working for us. Link."
"Hang on—us? You work for Link?"
"I do." He said nothing else for a moment. I could sense that he was waiting for my reaction.
My initial reaction was total confusion, and, I admit, annoyance. "How—where? What—why on earth haven't you told me before? How could you not tell me?"
"There are reasons; I'll explain in a minute. Are you really pissed off with me?"
I thought for a moment. "No … just totally fucking gobsmacked." I stared out at the cloud of gnats in the haze over the water. "Never mind about why—how did you keep it from me? What do you do? When? Where?" Then I felt annoyed again. "Is there anything else you've been keeping from me? A hidden family somewhere?"
"No, no, of course not. To answer your questions, I use the Roof job to get people out of the megacities, for whatever reason."
"When? How many?"
He shrugged. "I can go a couple of months with none, then I might get two in a week."
"So how does it work? How do they come to you?"
"Another operative will send a message to a guy I work with, who tells me. And I'm in touch with a woman in the wasteland. Dior."
"Bloody hell." I stared out across the lake again, oblivious to its beauty for once. "So come on, why didn't you tell me before?"
"I wanted to. I told Dior and one other about you, because I thought you might want to be involved, and having operatives inside the m
egacities is so valuable, but they were both wary about the fact that you used to be a Bettencourt—and that you were the face of Nucrop."
"But I—"
"You hate the Bettencourts, yes, I know that, but Link doesn't know you. Dior spoke to the woman who runs Link in her area, and she said I should wait a year to see if you gave any indication of being loyal to the megacity, let you know more about Link, see what your reaction was." He put his hands on my shoulders. "I didn't like doing it, I hated lying to you by omission, but—well, I had to go by what Dior's Link boss said. We have to be so careful, all the time."
"It's okay. I think."
He bit his lip. "Full disclosure here—I got the okay to ask you six months back, but by then there was another reason I held off."
That didn't sound good. "What's that?"
"It's a selfish one." He turned to look at me, and his face melted my heart the same as it always did, even after eighteen months; a lifetime for me, as far as relationships go. "This. Us. Our life. I didn't want to risk it. To make it dangerous. Because it is. Working for Link is dangerous."
I slipped my arm through his and leant my head on his shoulder. "I understand."
"Do you?"
"Yeah. I've never been happier. I want it to stay this way for ever and ever."
He put his arm around me. "There's something else, too, and you need to truly take this on board. Link is run on a need-to-know basis, not only to keep us safe, but our loved ones as well. If I ever got caught, it would be best if you know absolutely nothing."
"I get that."
"I'm only connected to Dior and three or four others."
I look up. "Who? Anyone I know?" Then I realised, and laughed. "You can't tell me, can you?"
"No. So are you up for it, in principle?" He cleared his throat. "Every person who gets to live outside the megacities and Hope Villages is one more who has made a stand for personal choice and privacy."
I kissed him. "Is that your sales pitch?"
"Yeah, it's bollocks, isn't it?" He pulled me to him and we kissed by that peaceful lake on that beautiful evening. I felt so happy, and excited about the thought of becoming a resistance agent, that I never gave a moment's thought to the danger.
A bit like when I ran down the street to Kelly's house.
When I got into a car with a guy with blitz in his pocket who drove into a restricted area.
When I told Clinton Bettencourt to fuck off.
When I told a customer about the poison in Nucrop.
And so I was taken to meet Dior.
"I am so pleased to finally meet you," she said. "Megacity residents willing to work for Link are harder to find than unicorn shit, but we had to be sure. The woman who runs this section of Link has seen, in the past, what can happen if we get it wrong, so these days caution comes before the need to recruit."
She came out to meet us at what used to be the border between Northamptonshire and Leicestershire, in a 'safe house' in a deserted village, though I didn't see how they could guarantee that any house was safe. The house was dark, cold and mildewed. For a moment I longed for the delicate mimosa scent of Marilee Bettencourt's living room.
"I can't wait to get started," I said. "What do I do?"
I'd pictured myself receiving coded messages and scaling walls in black catsuits and night vision glasses, so I was a bit disappointed when she said, "Serve drinks."
I laughed. "What?"
"Most of the time, that's what you'll be doing. Unless someone is looking for a contact. Sorry, but working for Link is not glamorous. It's dangerous, and you've got to have your wits about you. All the time."
My thrilling undercover agent job turned out to be working in Nerve, my old drinking hole in Tech Village.
The guy who ran it these days, Milo, also worked for Link. He didn't look like a secret agent, either. He wore a shabby jacket and a beard of the 'haven't bothered to shave' type, i.e. not a carefully shaped chin strap like Cosmo and other patrons of the bar.
We met in Nerve one morning, before it was open. I hadn't been there for a couple of years; it seemed odd that so much had happened to me since, but it was still opening and closing every day, just the same.
"We've have contacts in MC12 who actually do the vetting before sending anyone to us," Milo told me. "The names you need to know are Siri and Cosmo, and then there's Ginevra, but I believe she's retired now."
"Cosmo?" Couldn't be many people with that name. Still, if Ned could hide it from me for all that time—
"What's up?"
"I might know him, what's he like?"
Milo shrugged. "Social media stylist, camp as fuck. Nice fella. Always in the bars—here, Parasol, Blue Monday. If it's trending he's there; he has to know about all that bullshit for his clients."
"I do know him. I never would've guessed."
"Well, that's the general idea. Anyway—you'll be working behind the bar. If someone comes in and says that Siri or Cosmo have sent them to you for a contact, you come and get me. Or they might say Ginevra, but that's unlikely."
"Okay. Then what?"
"Then nothing. That's all you do."
"What?"
"That's it. That's your job. You're the first contact; I don't hang out in the bar, I'm always out back. If I'm not, you tell them to come back later."
"And what happens then?"
"I come out and see them. Mostly, they're NPUs looking for their families or those who've done something they didn't ought. Sometimes they're just tired of the all-seeing eye, and want to be free."
"I don't know why they don't just let people go and live in the wasteland, if that's what they want."
His expression told me that comment was exceptionally dumb. "You're kidding, right? When the Great Shift began there were endless Nazi Germany comparisons on social media, which wasn't the image they wanted to present, so if people really wanted to live in an abandoned house with no power or running water, they let them. But the whole point of the Shift was to gain absolute control over the population, and the wastelanders threaten that. The more manpower there is out there, the nearer they get to a real alternative society. Freya Wilson and the Bettencourts know that there are proper communities now, with farming, power sources, fuel, vehicles. It's become an attractive option. That wasn't supposed to happen."
"Oh. Yeah." I'd never really thought about it before. I just accepted that most people lived in the megacities, the unfortunate in the Hope Villages, and a few Boho types elsewhere. "Anyway—once you've seen the hopeful escapee, what happens?"
Milo stood up, and leant his hands on the back of his chair. "You don't need to know that. It's best you don't, because if you ever get caught—"
"Right. Ned told me." Well, this was a disappointment. "So I just serve drinks and wait for people to come in?"
"Yes, but mostly you just serve drinks. Might be only one person a month, though you need to remain alert at all times."
I grinned. "What, you mean tout for business? Like, here's your Manhattan, and have you ever considered an alternative lifestyle?"
He shut his eyes for a moment. "Tara, this isn't a game. Do you know what happens to people who work for Link, if they get caught?" Eyes open. "No, nor do I. But I do know that they're never seen again. I've been doing this for fifteen years. In that time, a couple of people have just—" he clicked his fingers "—gone. One was in the early days; he went full dissenter on Heart, posting about the lack of basic civil liberties, complaining about NuSens, hinting that he knew people who were working to take their country back. Next thing we knew, he'd disappeared."
I shivered. "Did you ever find out what happened to him?"
"No. Never seen again. The other one was a carer in NPU. He was a first contact, like you, and it was a huge win to have someone actually in NPU itself, but he got ambitious. Started making his own enquiries at Locate on his com, the fucking idiot. So, this is the score: you don't join any discussions about human rights on Heart. You don't talk about anything tha
t would attract attention to you, you don't slag off Freya Wilson. Or look up sites on the dark net." He stopped, and looked around, as if worried someone might hear us. "A deep underground network is being established, but it's in its infancy, and only a few know about it. You don't need to, yet."
"But—"
"But nothing."
"Can I—is it okay if I talk to Cosmo about this? About being with Link, I mean?"
"Only in person. You don't make any reference, ever, on Heart. Not even in code." He stood up straight, yawned and stretched, and then clapped his hands. "Right, then. Monday night, six sharp. Welcome to Nerve."
Cosmo was over the moon that I was on board. We went for a walk in Wildacre so we could talk about it, except that he didn't have very much to tell me.
"It's all word of mouth; that's the only safe way to communicate, these days. There are people in every megacity who know someone who knows someone, who will eventually lead them to people like me or Siri. Or Ginevra, when she was active. If we're satisfied that everything's kosher, we send them to one of the first contacts. Like you. They're in cafés, bars, shops all over MC12."
"Was there a first contact in Nerve before?"
"Mm-hmm. She didn't work out; she was too homely for Nerve, stuck out like a sore thumb, so she's gone to work in one of the contact point cafés. You, however, will fit right in."
"Glad to hear it."
He stopped, and ran his hand down my hair. "I was thinking you might want a fake name. And a new look."
"Why?"
"Darling, you were Princess Nucrop; you might want to be less instantly recognisable."
"Ah. Yeah. The Nucrop Girl, now working behind a bar. I don't care about that shit, though."
"You will, once you start getting splashed across Heart."
Two days later, Cosmo produced the most fabulous wig I'd ever seen. Turquoise dreadlocks, waist-length. And he gave me a full make-over, with ridiculously long blue eyelashes, and powder that gave my skin a greeny tint. I never usually wore much make-up, just a bit of mascara and kohl, and neutral lipsticks.
