by Heide Goody
A pop-up reminder appeared on my calendar. The brain scan with the medical team was booked in for the next day. Perhaps that would provide some answers.
***
Chapter 12
Hattie and I pulled up outside the apartment complex, the journey home smooth and fuss-free on the premium roads.
“I think I might hang onto the car,” I said once Hattie was out, adding, as casually as I could, “Maybe go to the shops.”
“Go to the shops?” asked Hattie. “What for?”
“Because.”
“Are you going to the Smiley Store?”
“No, not there. I want to get some food.”
“We have food.”
“Different food?”
“Different beans?” asked Hattie, a look of naked horror on her face.
“I don’t really know what I’ll get. I’m off to have a look,” I said.
It was clear from the look on Hattie’s face that she simply didn’t understand.
“It’s fine though,” I said. “You don’t have to try any if you don’t want to.”
I gave instructions to the car and sped off to the food markets. I stepped out at the drop off point and walked inside. This was unfamiliar territory. Hattie and I had our beans delivered in bulk, so food markets were not places that we had ever really felt the need to visit. It was the same for pretty much everyone we knew.
The food markets was a place which sometimes featured in the screen dramas we occasionally flicked through by accident. Needlessly complicated people with needlessly complicated lives would bump into each other and talk about their miserable complicated problems over the food counters. And indeed the customers were dressed like the people from those drama programmes. No work-issue tabards here. The customers were as brightly coloured as the range of produce on offer on the shelves.
I soon realised I was very much out of my depth. There was a large section of things that looked as though they belonged in gardens. They were shiny and colourful, but I wasn’t sure whether they were meant to be food or decoration. I peered at the displays and read the labels. Aubergines were impossibly shiny and a glamorous purple-black colour. I jipped a query and was thrilled to discover that they were edible. I popped one into a basket. I strolled around, checking a few more things. I spent some time running my fingers across the leaves of a Savoy cabbage, intrigued by the texture. The smell wasn’t all that appealing, so I decided not to buy one. I spent more time reading about garlic. It was an unassuming papery cluster, but the description the Jaffle Port offered was of something delicious and flavoursome, so I popped one into my basket too. As I moved further into the markets, the shelves began to hold packets and tubs. There was no sign of bacon yet. I held up a jar of something called olives. Black globes bobbed in liquid. They looked like tiny versions of the aubergine, but jipping offered no connection between the two. I decided to try olives, and the things next to them called anchovies, which looked like strips of dirt stuffed into a jar.
A delicious smell drew me on. It wasn’t the smell of bacon, but it was impossible to ignore. As I turned a corner into a section labelled bakery it hung in the air, thick and irresistible. Behind a counter, workers in white hats pulled trays out of large steel cabinets. They transferred golden, puffy products into bags and put them on shelves.
“Would you like a sample?” one of them asked me.
“What is that?” I asked.
“Heritage bloomer,” said the woman and used a serrated knife to cut it into chunks. She put the chunks into a basket and placed them on the counter in front of me. I put a piece into my mouth at the same time as I jipped to see what a heritage bloomer was.
It was warm and delicious. Warm food was a strange idea, but a marvellous one. It added another dimension to the experience, and I found that I was making loud moaning noises of appreciation. I took another chunk of the heritage bloomer, which was apparently some sort of bread, and stuffed it into my mouth.
“Mm-mmm. Can I have another?”
“Certainly,” said the woman. “Anything for you. And if you’re a mystery shopper be sure to give me a five star rating.”
“Mifftery fopper?” I mumbled and then jipped the term.
I stood there for quite a while, eating her way through the basket. A man came along and reached for a chunk, but I turned and gave him such a ferocious glare that he backed away.
I finally emptied the basket, shoving the last chunks into my mouth so that my cheeks bulged, and then put as many of the heritage bloomers into my basket as I could carry.
I decided I would come back and explore the rest of the food markets another day, as my arms were getting tired. I staggered to the exit aisle and received a cheery note of the cost of my purchases. I carried them outside, holding the heritage bloomers close so that I could inhale the delicious scent while I found a car to take me home.
When I got back to the apartment, the Empties were being fed. I put my bag down and watched with interest. A truck had pulled up at the side of the road and emitted a discreet chime. The Empties all came alive, shuffling forward to get a portion of beans. They were dispensed into disposable bowls from a chute at the side of the truck. The Emptied clutched their bowls and walked away, pouring beans into their mouths.
The truck pulled away. Feeding had been accomplished: quickly, without noise or fuss or even any need for human effort.
I frowned. At least the Empties weren’t starving, but how could anyone think that this was a good way to look after people? I had a thought and turned to my bag of groceries. I broke off a chunk of heritage bloomer and handed it to the nearest Empty, a man whose face was creased with lines.
“Here, try this,” I said. “I know you won’t necessarily understand what I’m saying, but surely you’d like to hear another human voice, huh? It stands to reason. Well my name is Alice and I want to be your friend. I want to help. You guys are really not having a fun time, but maybe we can improve things, what do you say?”
He said nothing.
“Well, I work over at Jaffle Tech, and I’m on the phones for most of the day. It’s a good job and I love helping people out, I really do, but I’m beginning to think that maybe there are other things I’m interested in. Like different food. This bread is amazing, you should try it.”
His free hand had been dipping into his bowl of beans, but now that it held a chunk of bread he seemed incapable of making sense of the situation. After twitching a few times, his hand opened and dropped the bread, and then he carried on eating his beans.
“Okay, what about this?” I pulled the garlic out of the bag and demonstrated how to take a bite. I quickly regretted it. There was an explosion of white papery mess. My mouth was full of it, and bits flew across my face and onto the ground. Before I could worry about that I was hit with the taste of whatever lay inside. It was so strong it stopped me in me tracks. My eyes started to water and I spat it all out, littering the Empty with flakes of garlic.
My mouth was still full of that dreadful, pungent taste. When I’d eaten soil, it was unpleasant, but this was like a physical assault. I thrust the rest of the garlic back on top of the groceries and tried to rid myself of the taste by making extravagant tongue-thrusting motions.
“Okay, not that,” I said, still spitting garlic skin from my lips.
I went back to the groceries and considered the jar of olives. They were about the same size and shape as beans, but different. I had no idea why it was important to me that the Empties should eat something different, but I wanted to help them break free from their walking prisons. If this might help then I had to give it a try. I unscrewed the jar and took out an olive. It glistened attractively. I put one on top of the beans in the man’s bag and then I picked out another and put it into my own mouth.
“What about this, huh?”
We could experience olives together. I bit down and was shocked by how hard it was. I looked away so that I didn’t upset him with the face that I was pulling. The tas
te of the olive was bitter, but not horrible. I bit down again, but was completely unable to crunch the olive with my teeth. I jipped a quick search and saw that olives were sometimes stuffed, sometimes pitted, and sometimes whole. I looked at the jar and saw that these were whole olives. Another hurried search revealed that olive pits were not for eating. I spat the remains into my hand. Apparently pit was an innocent and cute word for a small pebble.
I looked at the Empty who was still munching through his beans. Glancing in his bowl I saw that the olive was gone. His mouth was still chomping away. Could I make him spit it out? Probably not. Would his teeth break first or would he choke to death? Either was an appalling thought, and I watched him very closely, holding my breath. Eventually he finished the beans and immediately drifted to a refuse bin to deposit his bowl. He slumped back to the position of powered-down defeat which seemed to be the default resting position of the Empties. I waited for a few more minutes to be sure I hadn’t accidentally killed him with an olive before going back inside.
Helberg was in his office. He sniffed the air as I entered.
“Have you sorted out Swanager and Pedstone?” I asked.
He nodded. “I’ve moved them into my place, treating them like royalty while I hole up in the back here, although Swanager threatened to move out altogether. Something about a new integrated living solution experiment they’re trying out in North Beach…” He trailed off, looking at me. “What did happen to you?” he asked.
“What do you mean?” I said.
He shook his head and sighed.
“Actually, there is one area I need some help with,” I said.
He nodded for me to go on, but I paused, unsure what I was asking.
“That stuff you watch on the screen. The people who huff and wriggle without their clothes on?”
His eyebrows shot up. “Porn, you mean?”
“Porn, yes. What is porn?” I asked.
Helberg blew out his cheeks and grinned nervously. “A lot of people would say that it’s just about watching people having sex, but it can be so much more than that. There’s a lot of artistic—”
“Right! Sex! What is that?” I demanded, thinking I was getting to the core of the bizarre feelings and images which had been flooding my brain.
“What is sex?”
“Yes,” I said. “I mean, I know what sex is. We learned about it in the school science downloads but it’s like … algebra. It’s all very important I’m sure and I tried to pay attention to the lesson, but I couldn’t see any practical use for it.”
Helberg looked at me for a long time. “Um, can I ask why you want to know about this? I mean, why now?”
“I’ve been having some … unusual thoughts.” I really didn’t want to describe them, even if I had the words.
Helberg grinned. “You’re horny,” he said.
I immediately felt the top of my head.
“No,” said Helberg. “You’ve been thinking about getting yourself a partner, maybe? Getting naked, feeling some skin on skin?”
“Yes, that’s exactly it!”
“Oh, I can definitely help you with that,” he said, edging towards me, hands reaching down to unbutton his shirt.
“What? No! What are you doing?” I said, backing away. “All I want is information. I really don’t want to see you naked.”
“Why not? You don’t know that until you’ve tried it.”
It was a superficially persuasive argument. True, I was interested in sex and, maybe like trying different foods, maybe I just needed to try sex with Helberg, even if he turned out to be an olive pit or a repulsive lump of garlic. But, no, instinctively I felt that sex with him wasn’t the answer.
“I want information, not sex,” I said.
Helberg was crestfallen. “Are you sure? We could turn the lights off, maybe?”
“No.”
He sniffed me. “Have you been eating garlic? Not that I mind. I don’t mind having sex with a woman who—”
“No! No sex. Definitely not.”
He huffed and redid his top button. “I got something you might like.”
“But it’s not sex,” I said, following him to the store room at the back of his office.
“See these tins?” he asked, pointing at a shelf. “It’s paint. Do you know about paint?”
“Tell me.”
“It’s how we make things a different colour. You wanted a way to tell the front doors apart? Well this is how you’ll do it. Each one of these tins is a different colour.”
I looked at the tins. They were very small compared to a door. “How does it work?”
He reached up to another shelf and handed me several brushes. “You take off the lid and then use a brush to put it on. You can cover quite a large surface with a tin of paint.”
I immediately tried to get the lid off a tin, but found it impossible. Helberg showed me how to lever it off with another tool.
“They have to be kept shut really tight. Imagine the mess if it tipped over and spilled—”
As he said the words, I tilted the open tin to read what it said on the side. I looked down to see a spreading pool on the carpet. I dipped my toe into it and spread it around.
“Cornflower Blue,” I read from the tin. “Your carpet looks better already. So do my shoes. You’re right, I think I’m going to enjoy paint.”
***
I carried paint upstairs and considered the colours as I looked along the row of doors. I nodded with satisfaction, knowing that this would definitely help. Hattie and I wouldn’t need to count down the doors, we would simply head for the red door. Why did I want a red door? I just did. I put the tins down and fished the tool from my pocket to get a lid off. The door opened.
“I thought I heard something,” said Hattie. “You’re just in time. There’s a Smiley compilation special on in a minute. All of our favourite moments, I can’t wait!”
I would have been so excited by this before, now I couldn’t think of anything worse.
Hattie looked at the tins of paint. “Is this the food you bought?”
“This isn’t the food.”
Hattie picked up a tin. “Raspberry Beret? I can’t see why we can’t just have regular beans.”
“Listen, just go inside. I’ll be in soon. I have a couple of jobs to do and I’ll join you when I’m finished.”
“Jobs? But I’ve done all the jobs. Is there something else that needs doing?” Hattie turned her gaze to look inside, searching for unfinished tasks.
“No, don’t worry. Go and watch Smiley, I’m doing something new,” I said. “I can show you when I’m finished if you like. I think you’ll like it.”
Hattie looked worried, but she went back inside and I took the lid off the red paint.
“Cabriolet,” I said, savouring the name.
I dipped the brush into the paint, and held it up, glistening brightly. I slid the brush down the door and was delighted by the transformation. I applied more and then brushed up and down, enjoying the slight drag and the sensation that I was master of this striking colour. My tongue found the edge of my lips as I worked the brush into every corner. It was enormously satisfying. For some reason, images of Levi kept nudging into my thoughts as I worked the brush up and down. I wondered if he might enjoy the feeling as much me. I carefully eased the colour into every tiny gap with a tickle of my brush and then used the full width of its head to apply a pleasing finish. I felt a small shudder of pleasure as I realised that the door was now perfect. I stood and admired it for a few minutes.
A thought came to me and I went back down to the street. The Empties were still there, not moving. I went up to the man I’d fed the olive. He was still not dead, which was good.
“Want to try painting? I really think you’d enjoy it.” I pressed the brush into his hand and led him into the complex and the door of one of the ground floor apartments. I took his hand and showed him how to paint.
“Dip in like this and then you can put the colour on the door
.”
I left him at work and approached another Empty, a woman.
“Come on. You can do yellow. I think you’ll like yellow.”
I set the woman painting the next door along and pictured the row of doors in the morning light. It would be a visual delight and so I hurried up to another door and started to paint it a vivid green colour. I lost myself in the process, although for some reason the green paint didn’t fill my head with sensation quite so much as the red had done. I finished the door and stood back. I went back to see how the Empties had got on.
I wasn’t sure exactly what had happened, but the paint was not on the doors. A good deal of it was on the road, and it was clear from the footprints and the amount of paint on their bodies that the two Empties had walked through it and possibly rolled around in it before they had started to paint a nearby car.
“Sensors are impaired. Alerting engineer. Sensors are impaired. Alerting engineer.”
The car was determined to summon help and I really didn’t want to be around to explain what had happened when an engineer appeared. I led the Empties away from the worst of the mess and wondered how I was going to clean them up. I took them inside and led them to Helberg’s office. He was down on his hands and knees, scrubbing at the carpet where the blue paint had spilled
“I have a question about how to get paint off things,” I said.
“Really?” said Helberg. He looked up and saw a dozen paint-smeared Empties crowding round his door. “Oh, for pity’s sake! What are you doing?”
“They were helping me,” I said.
“Helping…?” He waved his arms and flapped his lips uselessly. “You can’t do that. They’re property!”
I looked at the Empties. “They’re people.”
“And they’ve been turned into Empties for a reason. Debt, crime, just being useless specimen of humanity. They’re meant to be that way and left that way. You can’t just use them for some arts and crafts programme.” He made a deeply unhappy noise. “Are you trying to wreck everyone’s lives, or just mine?”
