Sweet Harmony

by Claire North

  He had interesting, intelligent friends too. Not the swaggering, show-offs of the estate agents, not men (and women) whose whole careers were built around the bluster and the sell, but cultivated, clever friends who’d chosen their upgrades with real discernment, and exercised, just for that added bit of self-control, to prove that they were capable of it. Every Saturday, their photos would go up on social media, proud athletes conquering new challenges, even if the nanos did most of the work.

  Jiannis knew vegans, whose nanos were programmed to fill in the protein deficiencies of their diets; he knew teetotallers who’d paid – she had no idea how much; she couldn’t find the upgrade online anywhere – for an at-will upgrade to stimulate an endorphin and dopamine rush that was, they swore, better than LSD, but which they only used on Sundays or between the hours of 11 and 12 p.m. on Friday nights, because they didn’t need this shit to feel good. They didn’t need any of it. They made choices. And their choices made them magnificent.

  She sat down with Jiannis to compare nanos the day she moved in with him. He laughed at some of her upgrades, tutted at others – mostly at things she didn’t have – applauded her taste in many of her physical enhancements.

  “Elevation,” he chuckled. “I knew there was something about you. Christ, when I’m near you it’s just . . . Jesus.”

  For a moment, she wondered if he’d ask her to turn it off, and wasn’t sure she would. What was sex like, when your body wasn’t rushing with hormones, when your skin didn’t transmit a come-hither, all-pervasive allure, when there were just parts pressing against other parts, biology happening, instead of something extraordinary, profoundly beautiful, like it was in the movies? She wasn’t sure she could remember, but somewhere at the back of her mind the face of Jarek the third-year student floated, astonished, indignant.

  “Don’t you have upgrades?” he’d whispered, and she closed her eyes to try and drown his face in the dark, and opened them again to see Jiannis, all man, all himself, reaching out to stroke her chin, enamoured of her beauty, her wonder, herself.

  “You are beautiful,” he murmured. “You are the most beautiful woman I have ever seen.”

  Chapter 13

  Her mum had her first stroke three months after Harmony moved in with Jiannis.

  It could have been worse, the doctors said. Her nanos automatically detected the biological malfunction and rushed to the site of the clot to dissolve it before the damage could spread too far. Even though she didn’t have anything specifically programmed for the job, her mum’s insurance had an emergency medicine clause in it which could detect major events. She had to pay an extra £400 on her end-of-month bill for the unexpected activation, and didn’t walk quite right afterwards, leaning sometimes on a walking stick and finding her left leg sluggish to respond.

  “It’s a bargain!” she announced, when the bill came through. “You don’t remember, but I do – before the nanos, strokes were a big deal!”

  Jiannis came with Harmony to visit her mum in the hospital in Reading, where the medical programmers and nano consultants bickered about protocols and code, and whether to try an experimental program on Mr O’Rourke in bed six, or how to convince Mrs Ng in bed four that she needed to upgrade her liver function.

  Harmony wasn’t even especially anxious until she got to the hospital. Strokes happened sometimes – even the best programming couldn’t predict for everything, and huge leaps had been made in stemming the worst effects of age, especially if you were willing to pay for the extra packages.

  Seeing Karen in bed, surgical socks pulled up around her pillowy blue-veined calves, indignant spotted grey robe loosely done up around her bare, sagging buttocks, caused a momentary flash of worry, but it was almost immediately dispelled by Karen hollering, “Cooey! Coo-ey!” across the snoozing late afternoon ward as if her daughter might miss her over the twenty yards that separated door from booth. Embarrassment flared in Harmony’s skin, barely suppressed by Control My Blush – never be betrayed by your skin again, recommended by pro-poker players and leading TV celebrities! If swelling persists for more than four days after activation, contact your healthcare provider.

  But Jiannis was there, squeezing her hand, smiling patiently. “Your mother is a character,” he said. “You manage her very well.”

  “Cooey, cooey! Oh, you’ve brought Jiannis too. How nice. How lovely to see you.”

  “How are you, Mrs Meads?” Jiannis, white shirt, white teeth, white trousers, unfolding into a padded beige armchair next to the bed, a knight in shining armour come to visit the stricken queen.

  “Oh, you know, I cope, don’t I?”

  They stayed for forty minutes, as Karen blathered on about power walking this and local old age group that and the thing that Mrs Frith said at number twenty-six and how you couldn’t trust people these days and the local bus service and the new development by the council offices and . . .

  “Going so soon? Well, quite right, I mean you’ve got to live your life, haven’t you? I’ll be out of here soon; they’re just keeping me in for observations. Toodle-oo!”

  Harmony struggled to meet her mother’s eye, to look back as she headed for the door, smiling at nothing, Jiannis’s hand on her arm. A doctor scurried up to her as she headed for the exit, scuttling round from behind a desk where an ancient computer grunted and groaned with the effort of data. “Ms Meads? Ms Meads, I’m Dr Dalal, I’m—Excuse me!”

  Harmony only stopped walking because Jiannis did, squeezing her arm hard enough to hurt. She spun round, smile already fixed, as a diminutive woman with skin the colour of chai and scraggy dark hair held up with a mass of pins and clips scampered up to her. “Ms Meads, thank you, yes, you are Mrs Meads’ next of kin, yes, you are . . . Can I have a word?”

  “I’ll wait by the car,” murmured Jiannis as Dr Dalal scurried Harmony into a small room with coffee machine, old magazines and a bowl of plastic flowers.

  “Has anyone explained the situation to you?” Dr Dalal spoke with one hand resting over the pager at her hip, like a gunslinger ready to shoot into action, shifting her weight constantly from one foot to another, seemingly oblivious to her constant motion.

  “Mum seems fine. The nanos got the clot.”

  “Yes . . . yes, they did. But the question is, what caused the clot? Ms Meads, you need to know that this was possibly just a warning shot. We’re doing a few more tests to see if there are any obvious causes, but I would be surprised if this is the only stroke your mother experiences. Does she have K-blast or Zenblood?”

  “Uh . . . no. Don’t think so.”

  “I would really recommend that she gets them. I’m going to be prescribing them for her during her stay, but she really needs to be on them long-term. I’ll write them down; you can contact the insurance company when she’s released.” A scrawl of paper, words barely intelligible, shoved briskly into Harmony’s hand. “All better! Good, good!” sung Dr Dalal merrily, and she scampered away without another word.

  Karen was released home three days later.

  “Stairs are still a little tricky,” she mused, “And things don’t taste quite right, but I’m coping. Don’t you worry about me!”

  “Mum, do you have K-blast or Zenblood?”

  “Never heard of them.”

  “You were on them while connected to the hospital’s Wi-Fi.”

  “Oh really? What do they do?”

  “They’re supposed to help you not get strokes.”

  “Well then, I’d better get them, hadn’t I?”

  “Yeah. I think that’d be a really good idea.”

  “Can you do it for me? You know I’m not very good with this app thingy. It’s all just renal function this and optional upgrade that. Doesn’t make any sense to me.”

  “Sure. I’ll check it out.”

  She forgot about it, of course, for a few days. Work was busy, busy, busy: some really big sales going through, some fantastic properties coming on to the market, and there was always Jiannis and his frie
nds. He was proud of her, really proud; wanted her to be at everything, meet everyone.

  She only remembered on Sunday morning while he was cooking black pudding breakfast. Jiannis cooked huge breakfasts, feasts of taste, of sensory delight, and of course never put on any weight, shitting most of it out unchanged within a few hours, his nutritional upgrades having extracted what they needed as the mass of avocado, bacon, syrup, pancake, fried egg, tomato, mushroom, sausage, bean and prosecco moved through his digestive tract.

  The sight of black pudding sizzling in the pan, the sudden smell of hot, dry blood, hit her nose with a start of sensory delight and immediate guilt.

  “Shit,” she hissed, grabbing her phone and logging into her mum’s app account. Karen wasn’t ever any good at remembering passwords, and Harmony’s resentment at being used as an IT consultant for so many years had dwindled into resigned calm as she realised it was just easier – simply easier – to do it herself.

  She found K-blast and Zenblood within a few moments.

  Blood thinning doesn’t have to be frightening. With our new fibrin protocols, any injuries will clot within 15 minutes regardless of thinning protocols, while the risk of thrombosis is cut to barely 2% with our latest 3.1 update.

  The combined cost for both was £270 a month.

  “Fuck.”

  “Babe?” Jiannis, bare chest, hairless, tight jeans compressed around a perfect backside, glanced round from his sizzling, one eyebrow arched.

  “Mum’s upgrades. They’re pricey.”

  “How much?”

  “More than I think she can afford.”

  “Does she need them?”

  “They’re supposed to help prevent strokes.”

  “You’d better get them for her, then.”

  “Me?”

  “Well, she’s your mother.”

  Hot fat bouncing in the pan, a sudden rush of noise and juice as he threw the sausages in.

  Harmony scrolled down through the app, reading. Maybe just K-blast, or just Zenblood?

  The ad auto-played after she’d been inactive for more than twenty seconds.

  Immobilised by the stroke, she lies, paralysed from the shoulders down, unable to control her bladder function. It’s hard to tell if the tears she cries are from nerve damage, or fear. The risk of a deep vein thrombosis climbs every day, until finally a new clot breaks away and rushes straight to her heart. As shooting pains rush through the left side of her frozen, unresponsive body, she begins to gasp for breath, panting for oxygen that her heart can no longer . . .

  Harmony fumbled for her credit card and didn’t hesitate as she put in her details.

  Sometimes it was easier to deal with her mum by remote control, after all.

  Chapter 14

  It was at the Burns Night feast that it all began to change.

  The feast was organised by Jeremy, who was half-Scottish and had lived in Glasgow until he was seven. He didn’t sound Scottish, and lived in a four-bedroom down in Gerrard’s Cross, but what was the point of even a glimmer of heritage, he’d say, if you couldn’t have a massive piss-up once a year?

  “Fair fa yoooouuurr honest, sonssiiiieee fassse!” intoned Graham, four whiskies in as he wobbled precariously on top of the table, while the room howled and swayed around him, windows slithered with condensation, floor sticky with dry beer. “Great CHIEFtaaannn o’de puddin’ rassssee!”

  Had any argument ever been more convincingly put forward for Scottish independence than Graham’s accent, Harmony wondered?

  “Abooooooooonnn them a’ye tak your PLASE!”

  Jiannis squeezed her backside and pressed up tight as the crowd surged and cheered towards the kitchen door at the climax of Graham’s inexorable verse. With a roar of drunken delight and a shattering of glass tumbling from inebriated hands, the haggis was brought forth, a bulging, swelling sheen of translucent tissue stuffed to the gills with onion, suet, shredded heart, liver and lung, raised up high on a silver plate. The plate was spun, spun high round the room, as hands reached and clawed up for the aloof dish, before the man carrying it lost his footing and with a rupture of hot fat and crimson cooked organ it tumbled to the floor, splitting across high-heeled foot and pressed linen trouser to a howl of approval from the crowd.

  “HAGGIS FIGHT!” screamed a man, and from the kitchen more dishes emerged, smaller, fist-sized haggis on more silver plates, and immediately a woman grabbed one and flung it into the face of her neighbour like a custard pie, hooting with merriment as stomach ruptured and hot meat splattered across her chin and into her hair.

  “HAGGIS FIGHT!” cheered Jiannis, and again the crowd lunged forward, slipping on spilled drink and meat, grabbing their weapons to hurl at friend and neighbour. Harmony was swept up with the crowd, found herself grabbing a haggis in her bare fingers, the flesh slipping and warping like soap in her grasp, and as Jiannis’s face yawed huge and grinning next to hers, she shoved it bodily into his mouth. He spluttered and hooted, pawed the dripping flesh off his shirt and skin, licking it off his fingers, sucking it off his clothes, and then Harmony too was covered in hot haggis, and he was licking it off her skin, pawing it from her hair; and there were people on the floor, on their hands and knees, gorging at the shattered meat, scrambling between feet and knees and everywhere Harmony looked there was more meat, more food, a spluttering, animal feast, a wild delight of consumption – because why not?

  Why the hell not?

  There was nothing in this room that could hurt anyone, not the bacteria trodden beneath their shoes or the meat sucked off a stranger’s flesh. They could eat, eat, eat, feast and gorge and dance and party and she laughed ecstatically, drunk without the alcohol ever having reached her bloodstream, grabbed another relatively whole haggis off a passing tray and shoved it straight into her mouth, half-gagging on the juice and choking on the nuts—

  Nutrition is too important to leave to chance. With Balanced Diet, you can pre-program your optimum weight and nutritional requirements, now with added anti-constipation features. Excessive eating may lead to diarrhoea, temporary stomach cramps and cholesterol swellings. If diarrhoea does not reduce after 3 days of liquid intake, please contact your healthcare provider urgently.

  —and she’s not sure how much she’s eaten, how far she’s gorged, but her belly aches and the room is spinning and bright and she’s sucking meat off the floor, on her hands and knees literally sucking up meat like a dog, and when she looks up Jiannis is bent over another woman, her shirt pulled up, her head thrown back and mouth open in ecstasy, and he’s licking flesh off her bare, taut belly – taut like Perfect Abs, or maybe Ultimate Athlete – and as she groans, shuffling minced sheep organs into her gaping, rolling mouth, Jiannis’s tongue slithers into her belly button to extract that extra bit of pulverised lung and Harmony thinks—

  Harmony thinks that maybe—

  “Of course, no real man needs to upgrade down there because, well, it’s not the same if you’ve artificially enhanced your . . . ”

  “Natural lubrication, naturally secreted from . . . ”

  “For the part, I grew horns. It felt really essential to my character, really vital that I had the experience of that stigma, that sense of what it’s like to have horns and how that might drive me to opening the hell-gate and unleashing my servants of darkness upon the heroes and their . . . ”

  Harmony stands over Jiannis as the room writhes and crawls in food, flesh, meat and whisky, and waits for him to notice her in his wriggling exploration of this woman’s body, and he doesn’t.

  “Jiannis?” Her voice, tiny and lost over the roaring of the room. “Jiannis?”

  She taps him on the shoulder, and it is the most stupid thing she’s ever done.

  He glances up, grins a bloody grin, “Hey, babe!”

  The woman underneath his scarlet-smeared form giggles, pushing her hips against his, fumbling for a bottle of uncorked wine and sloshing down a gulp through purple lips.

  “I, uh . . . I don’t feel . . .
I think I want to go home.”

  “The party’s only just got started!”

  “I just . . . I want to go home.”

  “Babe, let’s give it another hour; it’d be rude to leave. My friends are here; it’d be really rude – you don’t want to be rude?”

  “I really want to go home. Now.”

  Something in her tone. Something she hasn’t used for a long while. He pulls himself a little higher, as the woman’s face contracts in surprise, distaste at Harmony’s sharp tongue, flesh-flecked hair, stained, crumpled clothes.

  Jiannis straightens up, squares up to her. “Babe,” he whispers, bending in close. “These are my friends. We’re staying.” A sound, just for her, his smile never faltering for the room, one hand caressing her arm, the other reaching round to squeeze her bum.

  A moment where she might have argued.

  A moment, which in later years she will remember, a paralysis of thought, a shutting down of reason that will come again, the day a woman called Gillian tells her about punitive financial services, about non-essential systems, about acne and withdrawal and . . .

  All of that is to come, of course, but perhaps tonight, for just a moment, the shadow of it reaches back to shroud Harmony in darkness, and as she teeters on the second of choosing, the universe waits.

  “OK,” she breaths, and is surprised to feel something hot in the corner of her eye. “Babe,” – a hasty added word – “babe.” “Yeah, sorry, you’re right, yeah, I just . . . need some air, yeah.” Sounds are safe, nodding, smiling, always smiling – smiling is safe. Only when she picks her way over bodies soaked in blood, slipping and sliding on lacerated flesh and smeared skin to the lady’s lav, does she wonder why she wanted to cry.

  Chapter 15

  This is Harmony Meads, twenty-seven years old.

  She lives in her boyfriend’s penthouse flat in the tower on the corner of Blackfriars Bridge, and yes, the layout may not be optimal, sounds might carry and the kitchen is a nightmare to clean, but that’s why they’ve got a cleaner and, anyway, the views! The views and the convenience and the prestige of the thing: every time she comes home she feels privileged, privileged to live here. It’s just great; it’s so great. It’s just like the magazines.