Sweet Harmony

by Claire North

  The point of university, Harmony knew, was to lose your virginity. It was, if anything, a more important experience than getting any kind of degree – what her mum would have called “living your life” with an approving nod, even if she’d never let her imagination run to how her daughter would interpret this command. Knowing that this needed accomplishing if she was ever to be a woman – experiencing the same wild sexual delights as her schoolfriends had probably, perhaps, if you believed them – she had set about finding the perfect man for the task. Her first effort, with a Master’s student called Benji, had ended with him passed out diagonally across her bed, snoring with mighty beer-blasting stench, while she huddled in a tiny triangle of mattress left by the shape of the sprawling of his limbs, not even down to her one sexy bra, which she’d worn especially despite the fact it pinched.

  Jarek had been much more promising, and though he wasn’t quite everything she’d imagined, she was so determined to achieve her objective that she was willing to overlook his obvious flaws, including the fact that he stank of cigarettes and she didn’t really like kissing him on the mouth, or that he kept on pinching her really hard like that was a sexy thing. She knew that this moment was going to be magical, so magical it damn well would be, and that thought did as much for the moment as any actual attraction.

  The fact that she was still in a decent state of mind to blurt “Do you have a condom?” was perhaps indicative of a certain gap between fantasy and reality, but she was still proud of herself that even in a dizzy of sexual delight, with a third-year student no less, she had a good head on her shoulders.

  “What?”

  Her confidence, so hard to muster, so brief to burn, flickered and died at his expression, his rigid form. “A . . . condom. Have you got a condom?”

  Astonishment. She’d prepped herself for many things – for “But, babe, I prefer it more natural” – and was perfectly prepared to explain how it was her body, her choice, and yes, even call it off if he disrespected her opinion, magic or no. But surprise, an absolute, genuine incredulity . . . She had nothing ready for that, and was suddenly a naked girl in a room that smelled of drying laundry and boy sweat, her breasts flopping awkwardly to either side, her thighs aching, as sexually empowered as a poppadum.

  For a moment, the two of them stayed locked there, each waiting for the other to crack first, to breach the gulf of understanding between them. Finally, Jarek cracked, “Don’t you have upgrades?”

  “I . . . uh, I mean . . . ”

  “Are you a naturalist?”

  “What? No, I’ve got . . . I mean, I’ve got nanos . . . I’m not like . . . ”

  “But you don’t have upgrades?”

  “I . . . uh, no, I don’t, I mean, it’s just . . . I’ve got the basic but not . . . ”

  With a grunt, he hauled himself off her and, muttering something she couldn’t hear, fumbled among the discarded clothes on the floor for his jeans, then his wallet, while her skin gently cooled and little goosebumps began to stand up on the outside of her arms.

  He found a condom at the bottom of his wallet. He wasn’t sure how long it had been there, and fitted it awkwardly, not looking at her. The sex was more uncomfortable than she’d expected, and though it was, you know, kinda nice, and definitely informative, definitely woman-making, enlightening, she wasn’t sure if it was . . . but then she was still young and had a lot to learn, and next time she knew it would be much better.

  After, they lay, her squelched up to the wall, him half hanging off the side of the bed. She wondered if she should say something, like she loved him, or thank you, or something stupid like that. She couldn’t think of anything that wasn’t unbelievably trite, and said nothing.

  Finally, he rolled out of bed, pulled on his jeans, shirt, put his wallet back in his pocket, all without turning the light on or speaking a word. She rolled on to one side to watch him. “Aren’t you . . . Don’t you want to stay the night?”

  A shake of his head. “I’ve got a class tomorrow morning.”

  “I could set an alarm.”

  Another shake. “I’m gonna go.”

  “It was . . . I mean, it was really nice, I’m . . . we should . . . another time, you know?”

  A half nod. “Yeah. That’d be . . . Yeah.”

  He let himself out without meeting her eye, didn’t answer her calls for the rest of the week and finally blocked her on Facebook.

  Chapter 3

  This is Harmony Meads, nineteen years old.

  Five foot eight, she is blessed with long blonde hair that she once tried washing in olive oil, because that was a thing you were supposed to do, until her mum caught her and hollered, “What the hell are you doing with my salad oil, girl?!” after which, and not without a certain amount of relief given what a mess it made, she went back to normal shampoo and conditioner.

  Her hair, when worn loose, goes down to her waist, but it also tangles really quickly and takes a lot of looking after, so she usually wears it in a plait because that looks kind of assertive and practical, but also feminine, with what her friend Jenni would probably call “a promise of good things to come”.

  Until she was seventeen years old she had to wear braces, and hated the feel of them, and hated that everyone laughed at her. As a result, she learned to smile without opening her mouth until the day they came off. Then she wasn’t sure how to smile – if she was revealing her beautiful, perfectly aligned white dazzler of a grin, or maintaining her delicate near-simper. For hours, she stood in front of the mirror, practising the contortions of her face, trying to find the combination of powerful, strong, funny, witty, droll, dry, sarcastic, knowing, excited, naive and charming that a woman’s smile ought to convey.

  The effect was mixed, and even now, two years later, the joy that illuminates her face is tempered by caution, restraint, as if fearful of splitting her blushing skin with something ugly.

  She is not fat; she is not thin.

  She likes her wrists; she can wrap her thumb and little finger round them to almost halfway up her arm, but they’re not ill-skinny, not just hanging sticks off brittle shoulders. She doesn’t like the way her bum sticks out; knows it’s because she genuinely does have big hips, an actual genetic thing, but also understands that when she says it out loud people laugh, because “big boned” doesn’t mean “big boned” any more, even if you do, in fact, have big bones.

  Her eyes are grey-green. She has a mole on her left shoulder, which will be dissolved into perfect, silken flesh by her nanos when she is twenty-six, and start to regrow with a tuft of black hairs in the centre of it when she is twenty-nine.

  But this is in the future, in the time when the machines are dreaming, and Harmony Meads sleeps.

  For now, she reads online guides on how to be beautiful, sexy and successful, and understands that all these things come from within, and isn’t sure if she has it inside her, but is damned if the world is going to find that out.

  Chapter 4

  Harmony had nanos for as long as she could remember.

  Apparently, once, when she was a very small child, she’d got a cold. This had been when her dad was still alive, before the nanos were entirely reliable and the software hadn’t been released to cover some of the harder diseases like TB or influenza. Her parents had rushed her to hospital, transfixed by the horrendous amounts of snot and bright green bogies her tiny body seemed able to produce, and the nurse had tutted and found a box of sky-blue tissues, and had blown Harmony’s tiny, button nose.

  They’d injected her with nanos a few months later, and she couldn’t remember either the cold or the day her dad died, hit by the motorbike on the blind corner by the newsagent.

  Everyone at school had nanos, except Anna, whose parents had some religious thing, or maybe some hippy healing crystal thing; no one was really sure and Anna didn’t tell. Harmony’s mum covered her standard immunisation package until she was twenty-one for barely £150 a year, and at the secondary school’s recommendation she’d ag
reed to pay an extra £14.99 a month for an immunoboost that covered HPV, meningitis and whatever flu strain was doing the rounds that year. Harmony had always been good about keeping her nanos up to date, regularly checking the control panel on her phone for any updates to the tiny machines keeping her body in decent working order, and shutting down all streaming or internet browsing within the Wi-Fi zone during the period of an active transfer until installation was complete, as per recommended medical guidelines.

  There were other upgrades, of course. A couple of kids at school boasted a few. Jenni, whose parents were notoriously pushy, was put on a dietary and neurological package throughout the entire A-level period at a cost of nearly £70 a week, someone once whispered, and sure, she did OK at exams, but Harmony wasn’t convinced that wasn’t because she studied three hours a day extra during school term and twelve hours a day during revision time.

  Clara, who was the only person in the year who seemed both good at and to enjoy sports, was on a muscle-enhancing package, but that wasn’t enough to get her the football scholarship to her first university of choice, though she did make it on to the “Biomechanical Sport Therapy” course in Leeds, which made her perfectly happy.

  Harmony had never looked at getting anything for herself. She hadn’t had an infection since she was five, didn’t know what earache was, couldn’t understand the naturalists who insisted every year on getting hay fever “because nature knows best” or some such. The evidence was overwhelming, and healthcare companies like Fullife regularly ran ads to remind its current and potential clientele just what awaited them should they ever stop paying for their nanos.

  This is gastroenteritis. The patient, as she vomits, is unable to prevent her bowels opening simultaneously. Her liquefied faeces carry the virus, which will infect anyone who comes to her assistance.

  On the screen, a woman, face wracked with pain, leaned over the toilet, brilliant yellow-orange puke tumbling out of her mouth, thin white acid from her nose, while on the floor brown sludge seeped outwards, dribbling down between her thighs.

  As the nodules grow on the eardrum, hearing begins to become muddy and impaired, with certain frequencies vanishing completely until finally she understands – too late – how far the infection has gone as yellow pus begins to seep into the hollow of her ear . . .

  The day that Jarek blocked her on Facebook, Harmony opened up the nano control centre on her phone, and scrolled to in-app purchases.

  The list of upgrades that Fullife offered seemed endless. Before, that had been off-putting, too much to think about.

  Ever wanted perfect skin?

  Worried about pregnancy?

  Thicker hair?

  White teeth!

  Pancreatic support for those sugary treats . . .

  Never worry about your waistline again!

  The perfect boost for your marathon training . . .

  She found what she was looking for under sexual health.

  Take Control – your body, your choice. Never feel anxiety about unwanted pregnancy or sexually transmitted diseases again. With Take Control, you can make your choices for your body and your lifestyle. This month with 10% discount on period control when you buy anything from the “My Body, My Choice” range – never menstruate on holiday again! In the event of vaginal bleeding or discharge from the nipples lasting for more than 3 days, please contact your healthcare provider.

  The upgrade was £17.99 a month for the initial twelve-month contract, rising to £35 a month at the end of the introductory period, valid for new customers only. She sat down with a calculator. £17.99 was only four fewer drinks a month, and she didn’t even like getting shit-faced anyway. She’d just have to be careful, balance these things up. It would be worth it.

  This is Harmony Meads, aged nineteen, making a choice about her body, her life, not because of some bloke who was all into his upgrades, some jackass who just assumed everyone was like him and didn’t need a condom – not that he’d bothered to invest in any upgrades for his testicles, she mused – but because at the end of the day, she wanted to be in control.

  She hit “buy”.

  That was the beginning.

  Chapter 5

  This is Harmony, twenty-eight years old.

  The day after the first spot appeared on her chin, another appeared just above her right eye, and a slight bulge emerged around her hairline that promised future explosions.

  She tried to get the day off work again, but Graham barked, “Harmony! We can’t cover your mistakes!”

  With shaking hands, she lathered her face in pale pink foundation and wore her long hair loose to try and hide the growing, erupting pores around the side of her cheeks and jawline. A few guys in the office looked at her a little longer than was necessary just to acknowledge that she’d walked through the door, and she knew they knew, and knew they probably didn’t, or maybe didn’t care, and was certain they did, and that she’d ruined everything.

  The afternoon appointments were a disaster. A family from Lebanon was looking for the perfect penthouse – knew they couldn’t afford to be by the river, but wanted to be no more than five minutes’ walk from the Thames. She took them to several properties which, on paper at least, were phenomenally stylish and within their price range, but the dad just kept on knocking on the walls and exclaiming, “It’s made of paper! Who did the internal layout? This is an inefficient use of space!”

  Words – her usual, perfect, gushing words – faltered.

  “The kitchen’s modern design actually maximises the efficiency of the . . . ” she tried, and then caught the mother looking at her sideways, and felt herself flicker with shame and fell silent.

  “The historic warehouse conversion was once a brewhouse which overlooks the . . . ”

  But Dad just huffed and grumbled that he would never have expected such weak plastering in such an expensive place.

  No sale.

  Three days later, she glanced at her hairbrush and realised there was a felted fistful of hair caught in the twines. Bending to examine her skull in the mirror, she saw a hollow patch of pink emerging at the crown of her scalp, which no amount of ingenious combing or spray could cover.

  By now, her face was cracking under the weight of make-up, and when she went to work, the guys were obviously whispering about her.

  She ignored the bills on her doormat, the emails marked with red flags and capital letters on her computer, and scrubbed her teeth until they hurt, which couldn’t get rid of the slight yellow tinge spreading out from the tops of her gums.

  Two weeks after the beginning of Anno Acne, as Jazzy, the only other woman on the floor dubbed it, Graham called her into the office. “Harmony,” he grunted, feet up across his desk, long body rolled back, hands knitted over his six-pack as if he needed to remind himself of its firm presence beneath the blue shirt. “Let’s talk about your current performance. How do you feel it’s been going?”

  When she got back to her flat, the landlady was waiting for her.

  “It’s not that I’m unsympathetic,” she explained, “but I’ve got to do what I’ve got to do. Rent is rent, you know.”

  Harmony lay awake that night, as her armpits prickled with the strange, unfamiliar itch of wiry dark-brown hair beginning to grow, pushing up like hedgehog spikes through her flesh, and in the morning realised that the itching wasn’t detergent left in her underwear, but vaginal thrush.

  Chapter 6

  “Well yes, as the nanos shut down you may experience some . . . How long have you had . . . Ah yes, well, after that long there will be an adjustment period as your body comes to terms with the loss of protective services from . . . No. There’s nothing to be done. Except pay. Are you able to make a payment now?”

  “But I’ve been through shutdowns before. There was a hospital . . . ”

  “Yes, but you still had a lot of services running, didn’t you? Muscle, fat, digestion, skin, teeth, hair – my, there were a lot, and that’s not even counting the firewalled u
pgrades! Yes, well, I’m sorry to say, Ms Meads, that with so many upgrades now being withdrawn from your system, you will experience a transitional period, and please do make your payment soon as we don’t want you to go into punitive measures, do we?” A little laugh, a shared joke. “Oh my, that wouldn’t be good at all!”

  A letter from a bailiff left under the door. We are authorised to take goods unless you pay. We are authorised to do this whether you let us in or not. If we have to smash down the door, you will pay for the damage. You must pay £60 immediately on receipt of this letter to cover our administration fee. This will not be deducted from the overall debt you owe – it is our administration fee for contacting you.

  Upstairs, Phuong and Hailey screamed at each other through the paper floor: “Left, left, go left – there’s one high – shoot him, shoot him – Jesus!”

  Downstairs, Mr Patel sung in the shower. “ . . . She taught me to yodel /

  Yodel-oh-ee-dee!”

  “Cut that racket out!” roared Mrs Patel, voice twisted into a mechanical thing by its journey through the pipes. “Why are you always making such a racket?”

  This is Harmony Meads, eight weeks before her twenty-ninth birthday. Her carefully curated pink-peach blouses and tight-fit cream skirts are starting to bulge in all the wrong places around her gently expanding form. She tried going for a run yesterday and was tired before she left, and her whole body hurt within five minutes of a shuffle-gasp, heaving down breath, shooting pains running through her left ankle, her right calf, everything unbalanced, everything out of kilter.

  Women in compression tights with patches of see-through webbing to help define the contours of their muscled legs don’t even have to try to overtake her. Men in muscle-vests, a hint of bulging pec, a lot of heaving tricep, zoom past her with a rustle of wind. There was a time when she could do that, did that to stay in with the cool crowd, the upgraders and nano-modders who did just enough exercise on a weekend that there could still be a question mark over their perfect, honed bodies – was it nano or is it natural?