Catch Me If I Fall

by Barry Jonsberg

  It wasn’t a friendly glare I got this time.

  ‘Okay, clear off, the pair of you. I’m cooking for nearly a hundred people tonight and I can’t afford to waste time chatting. Lauren, I’m using up all the ham – we need to set some more curing. Go on. Run along and give me space.’

  ‘Come on, Ashleigh,’ said Xena. ‘I’ll introduce you to our pigs. They’ve never met a rich kid before, but they’re not too fussy about who they hang with, so you’ll be right.’

  It was all I could do not to puke. I couldn’t stop the gagging, though.

  The pigs, about fifteen of them, were running around in a wooden enclosure with what appeared to be mud for a floor. On closer examination it seemed to be a combination of mud and manure. I gagged again. Xena didn’t seem bothered in the slightest. She leaned against a fence and looked over the squirming mass of pink flesh with what seemed like affection.

  ‘Eight piglets,’ she said. ‘And more on the way when that sow over there farrows.’ I had no idea what she was talking about – more confirmation, if it was needed, of my ignorance. ‘Any of those piglets take your fancy, Ashleigh?’

  ‘They’re all revolting.’

  ‘No. They’re not. Pigs are actually really smart. They’ve got an amazing sense of smell, too.’

  ‘They must be really suffering living next to each other, then.’

  Xena laughed. ‘Let’s look at Babe here.’ She opened a gate and grabbed a piglet as it tried to squirm away. Despite myself, I was impressed. Xena’s reaction speed was incredible and the piglet was no slouch either, but in one smooth movement she had it firmly in her arms.

  ‘You give the pigs names?’ I said.

  ‘Nah. I call ’em all Babe. Simpler that way.’ She hugged the piglet close to her and latched the gate again. ‘Say hello to Ashleigh, Babe,’ she said, bringing the thing up towards my face. I backed away.

  What happened next was so fast and so unexpected that it took me several seconds just to process it. Xena’s hand moved up and across and a fountain of red arced towards me, splashing the front of my T-shirt. I flinched and turned my face away but not before I felt droplets, warm and burning, against my cheeks. When I turned back, Xena was holding the piglet upside down by its trotters. Blood ran, a thick stream, from its neck, pooling into the dirt. The piglet spasmed a couple of times and stilled. Even then, I didn’t really understand what had just happened. I put a hand up to my face and it came away red.

  It was then I screamed. I think it was then. But whenever it was, it was difficult to stop.

  Xena slapped me across the face, at least once, but maybe twice. Hard.

  ‘What the hell’s wrong with you?’ she yelled. I don’t know if it was the shouting or the slap, but I suddenly found my screams had jammed in my throat.

  ‘You killed that pig,’ I whispered. ‘You cut its throat.’

  She glanced down at the body she still held. A knife, red and dripping, was clenched in her grip, its blade snug against the animal’s legs.

  ‘Course I did,’ she said. ‘How else was it gonna die? Of harsh words and a broken heart?’

  ‘You murdered it.’

  She put her face even closer to mine. Instinctively I took a step back.

  ‘Are you crazy?’ she hissed. ‘Murder? Murder is what happens when your parents are stopped in the street and beaten to death for nothing more than the clothes on their backs. Murder is when one of your fancy hospitals turns away one of my people and leaves him to die in the road like a dog. Because the drugs that could’ve cured him are kept for the likes of you and your parents. Murder is when …’ She took a deep breath and turned away. She wiped her forehead with a blood-stained arm, dropped her head and stood still for a moment. When Xena turned back to me, her eyes had lost some of their fire.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said. She took another breath. ‘I should’ve guessed you’d react that way.’ She glanced down at the body in her hand. ‘I slaughtered this pig as quickly as I could. They’re not pets, they’re food. I made it as painless as possible. I …’ She shook her head. ‘Your brother is here,’ she continued. She gave a nod over my left shoulder. ‘Go talk to him. I have to gut and clean this animal and I don’t think you wanna be around for that. Go talk to your brother. And I am sorry, Ashleigh. I didn’t think and I should’ve done.’

  18

  Without my tablet I had no way of telling the time, but judging by the position of the sun it was around midday. Aiden and I sat at a picnic table. It was old and splintered and had benches along two sides. There was a hole in the centre with a battered umbrella stuck into it and that gave a little bit of shade. It was hot, but I liked that no one was fussing about sunblock and UV levels. We kept in the shade, though. Stupid not to.

  I felt a little better. Aiden had helped me clean up a bit, though my T-shirt was still stained. At least my face, he assured me, was blood-free.

  ‘I feel stupid,’ I said.

  ‘No. Not stupid, Ashleigh. We have led particularly sheltered lives, you and me. It’s not our fault that we have little experience of … life’s nastier sides. And you had no idea it was going to happen.’

  ‘I should’ve, though, Aiden. I should’ve. Nonna told Xena to prepare some ham. And that’s what she did. But I …’

  Aiden put his hand on mine. I had been plucking at a few of the splinters in the wood, trying to prise them loose.

  ‘It’s been a stressful few days,’ he said. ‘Hey, how’s that for understatement?’ I gave a tired smile. ‘So cut yourself some slack,’ he continued.

  ‘I’ll try,’ I said.

  We sat in silence for a few minutes, lost in our own thoughts. When I glanced up, Aiden was staring at the sky, one hand absent-mindedly scratching Z, who lay panting on the bench next to him.

  ‘What are you thinking about?’ I asked.

  He smiled and pointed upwards.

  ‘Do you see them, Ashleigh?’

  I squinted, but there was nothing there as far as I could tell. Then again, the sun was too bright and painful and I couldn’t look for long. The glare didn’t appear to bother Aiden.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Drones,’ he said. ‘Mother’s drones, watching us.’

  I immediately tensed.

  ‘She knows where we are?’

  ‘She always knows where we are, Ash. There’s nothing we can do about that.’

  Leaving my tablet behind, it turned out, was completely pointless. ‘Then she’ll be sending people to get you,’ I said. Another thought immediately crossed my mind,one even more worrying. ‘You don’t think those drones could hurt you, do you?’ It would be simple for Mum to arm a drone, program it to select a specific target. She could do it without breaking a sweat.

  ‘No. She couldn’t risk a strike, especially while you’re here.’

  ‘Then I’ll stay with you all the time.’

  ‘But even when you’ve gone, she won’t. Mum might be all sorts of things, but there are people around and she won’t take the risk that someone could be hurt by being close to me. She’s not a killer.’

  ‘She wants to kill you.’

  ‘But I’m not a person. You have to see things from her perspective.’

  I snorted. ‘No, I don’t. Anyway, she could still be sending someone.’

  Aiden shook his head.

  ‘Same reason. Security guards are people. They would probably refuse to come into a place like this because it’s too dangerous and Mum wouldn’t ask them to come here because it could mean their death. Our friends here are hospitable, but they can be ruthless in defence of their land and their people.’

  ‘Then you’re safe here.’

  ‘Nope.’ Aiden picked up Z and put him on the table between us. The dog immediately sat and looked at my brother with eyes full of worship and a tongue that drooped and lolled.

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘Here’s what I’d do in her place,’ said Aiden. ‘I’d produce some bots, small bots like insects. Maybe make
them look exactly like insects. Send a swarm, all of them programmed to find me, bite me, put something into my system that would … well, would achieve what she wants to achieve.’

  ‘Could she do that?’

  Aiden played with Z’s ear. ‘For someone who could make this, let alone make me, it would be very simple engineering.’

  I felt like crying. It sounded hopeless.

  ‘So what are you going to do?’

  ‘I’m going to use my strengths. And I think I have many, probably more than I realise …’

  I remembered what Mum had said about the necessity of killing my brother, how he would turn into something that could threaten the survival of the whole human race. And so I told him. I told him about Stephen Hawking and the idea that an AI using a deep neural network could produce ever more sophisticated and efficient versions of itself, to the point that no human could ever be an intellectual match. That such a being might condense millions of years of evolution into minutes, hours or seconds.

  Aiden let me speak, nodding occasionally, but I could tell he was only partially listening. His mind was racing ahead, taking the information, processing it, analysing it and exploring all the possibilities it contained. Maybe I hadn’t told him anything he hadn’t already considered. After a while I dribbled to a stop. Aiden kept thinking, staring off into the distance, his hand still rubbing Z under his chin.

  And then I started to worry. What had Mum said to me? We’d have no idea what he might turn into but it probably wouldn’t be the brother I’d always known. Was I even now watching Aiden leaving me?

  He smiled.

  ‘I’ve been very lucky,’ he said. ‘That limiter Mum installed in my brain. It was obviously damaged in the kayak accident. When it wasn’t working properly, I started to have … well, such strange thoughts, Ash. You remember. You were worried I was turning weird. But in fact they were just my intellectual baby steps. I saw things clearly. I saw … connections. I felt there was no problem I couldn’t solve. But that scared me and I tried to shut it down. Now I know that was a mistake.’

  ‘Can I ask you something?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘In the park I told you that you’re not human. You didn’t break down, you didn’t tell me I was lying, you didn’t even argue. Instead, you walked away for an hour, came back and it was like you’d accepted everything. That’s just … just …’

  ‘Not a normal human reaction?’

  ‘Exactly.’ Aiden smiled and then I understood what he was getting at. ‘Oh, I see.’

  ‘You said I was away for an hour, Ashleigh. For me it felt like days, weeks even. Something is happening with time.’ He tapped his head. ‘Up here. I’m thinking and feeling quicker and quicker. Having this conversation … well, it’s kind of like wading through mud. I speak a sentence, but a million others go through my head in the time it takes me to say it. It’s scary and amazing all at the same time.’

  ‘You’re doing what Mum said you’d do. You’re evolving into … something else.’

  Aiden reached across the table and took my hand.

  ‘I said before that I tried to shut things down, banish the ideas I was getting, become … more normal, I suppose. I think the news you gave me wasn’t really news at all, Ash. I think I knew the truth, somewhere in my … what’s the right expression? Memories? Algorithm pathways? And the knowledge that I am a machine has given me permission to behave like a machine. I’m discovering stuff about myself all the time. It’s like before I was operating at one thousandth of one per cent of my capacity.’ He laughed. ‘Charlotte would be impressed.’

  ‘I don’t want you to change into something else,’ I said. ‘I want you to stay my brother.’ I could feel tears gathering. I didn’t want to cry, not on what was probably going to be our last day together for a long time. Maybe forever. Aiden squeezed my hand harder.

  ‘I think whatever I change into, I will always be your brother, Ash.’

  ‘You think. You don’t know.’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I don’t know.’

  At first I thought the dinner must have been some kind of birthday party. As darkness gathered, four or five people carried in a piano, of all things. Others set up barbecues and made firepits, brought in dozens of old-style plastic chairs. One old man played the piano and then a couple of girls brought out violins and accompanied him on them.

  Over the next few hours nearly a hundred people turned up. There was dancing and laughter and everyone seemed to be having a good time.

  At one point, Nonna came and sat beside me.

  ‘Having fun?’ she asked.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ I said. ‘Just like everyone else. Is it someone’s birthday?’

  She laughed.

  ‘Not quite,’ she said. ‘It’s a wake.’

  I didn’t really know what to say. What was awake? I didn’t want to ask. These people probably already thought I was a total moron. But Nonna must have read the incomprehension in my face.

  ‘A wake is a celebration when someone has died,’ she said. ‘It’s a celebration of the life they’ve lived and the mark they’ve made on the world.’

  I tried to get my head around this. From my limited experience, death was normally accompanied by the sadness of those who survive. Yet when I thought about it a little more, I could see the point of celebration. If I was dead I’d rather someone was happy I’d lived, than just sad I’d died. Of course, a bit of sadness would be in order …

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘Was it someone close to you?’

  ‘He was close to all of us,’ Nonna replied. ‘There’s a good reason why we call our community a family.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘You get used to it, unfortunately,’ she said. ‘If we had more access to medicines and basic medical care, then deaths wouldn’t be so common. But now sicknesses that even two hundred years ago were survivable can, and do, take us off.’ She shook her head. ‘Enough of this talk. I didn’t come here to make you gloomy. I came to give you these.’ She reached into her pocket and brought out a watch and a ring, thrust them into my hand. ‘Lauren told me these belonged to your parents. I’d be grateful if you took them back.’

  ‘But Nonna,’ I said. ‘These are very valuable. You should keep them. It won’t make any difference to my parents but it could buy you all sorts of amazing things.’

  Nonna laughed.

  ‘And what could we buy with money, Ashleigh?’

  ‘Those drugs you were talking about. Medicines. Medical care.’

  She shook her head.

  ‘Those things are not for sale. At least not to the likes of us. They’re reserved for the people with power. True, they’re normally also the ones with money. But we are disposable. To be honest, every time one of us dies, those in power see it as one problem less. There’s no incentive, at least in their minds, to keep us alive.’

  ‘You must hate us,’ I said.

  ‘Why would I? There’s no profit in hate.’

  I turned the watch and the ring over in my hands.

  ‘Why did Xena … Lauren take these then, if they aren’t of use?’

  ‘That girl! She likes shiny things. And she knew you thought they were important. But they’re not. They’re really not.’ Nonna ran a hand through her hair. ‘We trade, we barter. If we need something built and no one here can do it, we might trade a pig for someone who can. That’s the way our society works. Money is no use if there’s nothing to buy. I wouldn’t trade that ring in your hand for a pig. You can eat a pig. A ring you can only wear.’

  I looked around at all the people, singing, dancing, drinking and eating. I couldn’t see Xena anywhere. I put the shiny things into my pocket and felt a bit stupid for having offered them in the first place.

  ‘I think I’ve upset Xena. Sorry … Lauren,’ I said.

  ‘Ah, she told me about your … falling-out. Don’t worry. That girl is quick to take offence but she’s quicker to forgive and forget. She’s got a heart of gold, th
ough she’d punch you in the face if you suggested it.’

  ‘She was so angry when I said she’d murdered that pig.’

  ‘You touched a raw nerve, that’s all. Her twin brother died because no one could find the simplest of antibiotics, her parents were murdered in a senseless street attack, her aunt …’ Nonna sighed. ‘She’s seen enough tragedy, that kid, to last a lifetime.’

  ‘Her brother died because all the antibiotics were reserved for my family and people like my family.’ I sighed. ‘I don’t know how she can forgive us. I don’t know why she doesn’t hate us.’

  ‘I told you,’ said Nonna. ‘There’s no profit in it.’

  ‘But there’s no loss in it either, sometimes.’ The voice came from behind me and it made both Nonna and me jump. I glanced over my shoulder, but the man was already moving around to sit on the bench opposite. His eyes bored into mine and they were hard as stone.

  ‘Micah …’ said Nonna.

  The man held up a hand but didn’t take his eyes off me.

  ‘Not gonna cause trouble, Nonna. Calm down.’ He put a mug of something down on the bench. ‘Jus’ chattin’. See, your little … friend here needs to know not all of us are happy she and her brother are here.’ His voice was slightly slurred. ‘In fact, some of us are really, really unhappy. Know what I mean?’

  I didn’t know what to say, but it seemed he was expecting some response from me.

  ‘I …’

  But he just carried on talking.

  ‘I’ll tell you straight. I hate you,’ he said. ‘An’ I’m not alone.’ He waved a vague hand behind him but still didn’t take his eyes from me. ‘Plenny o’ people here think it’s kinda … whass the word? – inappro … wrong for you to eat our food, drink our drink when —’

  ‘Micah!’ Nonna’s hand slammed down on the table so hard a slop of liquid spilled over the edge of the man’s mug. ‘If you can’t behave, you’ll have to leave.’

  For the first time he glanced at Nonna. He grinned and took a long drink.

  ‘Free speech, Nonna. Free speech. When we stop that?’ He picked up the mug, waved it towards me and stood. More drink spilled out. ‘You eat our food, we starve,’ he said. ‘Less be honest here, you doan need nuthin’ from us. ’Cause you got it all already, yeah? You got it all and we got nuthin’.’