The Wipe

by Nik Abnett

  “I haven’t been through everything yet,” he said. “But I can’t find any obvious anomalies… I’d like to be more sure, and I’d like to see the source material.”

  “It’s not your job,” said Blythe.

  “Okay,” said Con, putting up his hands and rolling his chair back.

  “I didn’t mean it like that,” said Blythe, smiling slightly, and then taking a sip of her coffee.

  “Isn’t that cold?”

  “You went to get it for me. The least I can do is drink it… And, no, not quite cold yet. Why are you doing this?” she continued.

  “Do you know what I usually do during my lunch break?”

  “How would I know that? I don’t leave the cubicle for lunch.”

  “I walk around the block,” said Con. “I alternate. One day, I walk around the block clock-wise, and the next anti-clock-wise. I’d really like to walk around with a cup of coffee, but that would feel strange. So I pick up a coffee before I come back in, so it goes through the wipe with me.”

  “I’ve never understood people drinking coffee in the street,” said Blythe. “You don’t have an order at a lunch bar?”

  “I guess that’s where everyone thinks I go,” said Con. “But no. Too many people: too close together… Even with the wipe.”

  “But you walk around outside,” said Blythe.

  “I wouldn’t get through the day if I didn’t get a break from Joy.”

  “Why do you pretend to like her?”

  “I don’t, not really. I just like company, is all. I like to hear someone talking. I like to sit in a room with people… Not too many, obviously… just someone.”

  “And that’s why you’re doing this?”

  “It beats walking around the block, and it stretches my brain,” said Con. “And you’re way better company than a thousand Joys.”

  Blythe almost spat out her coffee, as she laughed with her mouth full.

  “Can you imagine a thousand Joys?” she said.

  “I can’t imagine a thousand people.”

  They sat together in silence for a moment.

  “You’ll check some more of the data tomorrow?” asked Blythe.

  “It’d be my pleasure.”

  They both turned back to their screens, aware that time was well and truly up on their project for the day. Tomorrow couldn’t come soon enough. Con wasn’t using his private connection, so there were lots of things he couldn’t do, including access the internet to check Dharma’s data, but he was willing to do this, and he was willing to do it for her. It made Blythe feel good, and it gave her more time to communicate with her newfound relation.

  Every day, when she opened her private connection, Blythe found more text from Dharma, more conversation, more details of her life, and of their shared ancestry. Dharma even started to recount some of her grandmother’s stories. They were fragmented, incomplete, dragged out of her memory by sheer force of will, but they formed a connection between them, an important connection.

  Twelve

  When Verity and Sage arrived at the house, all was quiet. There was nobody in the street, although Verity thought she saw some curtain-twitching from the neighbour opposite.

  “Hope Savery could never keep her nose out of other people’s business,” said Verity, gesturing across the street. “She must be going crazy in there, alone with her kids.”

  Sage looked where Verity was pointing. He smiled, and waved.

  “What did you do that for?” asked Verity, smiling.

  “Just being neighbourly.”

  “I bet you’ve made her day. She’ll be on the phone, telling everyone she knows that someone’s arrived at the Motts’ place… No she won’t, she’ll be sending out group texts, and posting on the neighbourhood FaceBook page.”

  “Is that so bad?” asked Sage.

  “I suppose it gives her an outlet. You’ve got to feel sorry for her, really, she’s just about the most sociable person I know, by which I mean that she’s the nosiest, and the gossipiest.”

  “Most likely to gossip.”

  “Nope,” said Verity, “I think you’ll find gossipiest is a word, and if it wasn’t before, it is now. How much do you want to bet me that Pa’s phone rings before we’re even in the house?”

  “I have nothing to wager with,” said Sage, turning out his empty trouser pockets to prove it.

  “You always have something to wager with,” said Verity, looking directly at Sage’s crotch.

  “We can’t!” said Sage. “Not under your dad’s roof!”

  “Don’t sound so shocked, and don’t be so damned prim. We’re adults. Pa knows the score.”

  “Well, I’m not sure I’m comfortable with the score,” said Sage, as Verity bent over in front of him. “What the hell are you doing, now?”

  She stood up, and showed Sage the key she’d got from under the doormat.

  “Looking for this,” she said.

  Verity unlocked and opened the garage door, and, before going in, put the key back under the door mat.

  The garage light was already turned on, from inside the house, so Verity pulled the door down until it latched shut. The front part of the garage was separated from the back with a pair of heavy plastic doors. They overlapped where they met and had rubber brushes top and bottom, making seals with the floor and ceiling.

  “When did he install this?” asked Sage.

  “The doors have been here for years. Pa’s a hobbiest, and the front of the garage always used to be full of motorbike parts. The doors were meant to keep solvent smells and spray paints out of the other half, where Mum keeps a spare fridge and washing machine.”

  “So where’s his hobby stuff?” asked Sage.

  “It’s been less, the past few years, and I haven’t been in here for a while. I guess he gave it up. You’d have to ask him.” She smiled. “Now, strip off.”

  “What! Here?”

  “Pa’s instructions,” said Verity.

  She laughed at the look on Sage’s face.

  He jumped as he heard a landline ringing on the other side of the wall.

  “I told you Hope would be on the phone before we’d even got in the house. Don’t worry. He never picks up the landline.”

  The phone cut out after four rings, and Sage breathed a sigh.

  “Right,” said Verity. “Let’s get on with it.”

  The shelves in the front part of the garage were empty, apart from some essential supplies. Verity began to take off her jacket and pull her sweater off over her head, as she picked up a lidded, plastic container. By the time she got back to Sage she was in her bra, undoing the fly of her jeans, balancing the container on her hip with one hand.

  “Seriously,” she said. “You’ve got to get naked.”

  She put the box down and took off the lid, pulling out a spray bottle of sanitizer. She squirted some on her hands, spreading it well past her wrists before squirting some on Sage’s hands.

  Then she pulled out a ziplock bag and some surface wipes.

  “For our phones and documents,” she said.

  “Okay.”

  A couple of minutes later, everything had been wiped down and was in the ziplock, apart from the paper certificates that they’d been given by the medics. Verity folded these, and put them in another ziplock bag that she slid into the box.

  Then she pulled out a thick, yellow, plastic sack, opened it, and started putting her clothes into it. Sage followed suit.

  “Good job you put trainers on,” said Verity, giving her hands another squirt. When the sack was full of their clothes, Verity tied off the top, and squirted it all over with the sanitiser. She then put their trainers in a second sack and followed the same protocol.

  She walked up to the doors, and dropped the sacks on the floor, close to them. Then she put her hand through the water from a hose for a minute or two.

  “Clever Pa,” she said, and then aimed the hose at Sage, who was holding the ziplock with their phones in it. He hoped it was waterpr
oof.

  He put his head down and his arms up, in a defensive posture, until he realised that the water was hot… not just warm, but actually hot.

  Verity showered him down carefully, and then handed him the hose so that he could do the same for her. When they were done, they showered down the yellow bags and carried them through the doors. Verity still held the bottle of sanitiser, which she’d also washed down with the hose, and Sage still had the ziplock with the phones and ids in it.

  Once they were through the doors, Verity carefully, emptied their clothes into the washing machine, putting the bag in too. She left the bag of shoes on top of the machine.

  “I think that worked pretty well,” said Sage. “What next?”

  Verity doused her hands with sanitiser again, just to be on the safe side, before they dressed in clothes from another plastic box: joggers and a t-shirt for Verity, and a pair of Pa’s pyjamas for Sage. There were also two pairs of slippers, like the ones expensive hotels provided for their guests. There weren’t any towels, but Verity and Sage were already virtually dry, apart from their hair. Verity sprayed their feet before they stepped into the slippers. She was convinced that this part of the garage had been thoroughly cleaned and sanitised by her parents, but she didn’t want to take any risks. Her parents hadn’t, so why would she?

  Finally, Verity took the ziplock from Sage, opened it, and took out her phone.

  “You can open the door now, Pa,” she said, after a moment. She smiled at something he said back to her, and hung up.

  Thirteen

  Having found her mother’s birth certificate, Dharma thought she might have enough information to find her grandmother’s. Since her mother had been an only child, and since she didn’t trust the male line for genetic matches, Dharma wanted to look for other women in the family, and her grandmother was the next obvious choice. She knew now where she had lived, at least during the Deluge. Perhaps she had been born there, too.

  Dharma had pushed her lunch break back, permanently. She enjoyed the longer, uninterrupted mornings, and the short afternoons, after she had done the work that really mattered to her.

  Her mother had always acknowledged her own mother’s birthday and had always mentioned it to Dharma. She’d even talked about them being born under different astrological signs, even though, their birthdays were less than a fortnight apart. Dharma subtracted the duration of her grandmother’s pregnancy from the timeline, and worked out that her grandmother must have been between eighteen and twenty-two if she had been studying for her first degree. She’d begin by breaking it down by year.

  “Verity Cornelia Mott,” she said. “October fifteenth, 2024, Catford.

  +Data not found+

  “Correction: October fifteenth 2023.”

  +Data not found+

  She counted down to 2020 with the same negative result each time. Dharma thought that those five years should cover it, but anything could have happened. Her grandmother might already have been pregnant while she was away from home, or she might have begun her degree late. One more, she thought.

  “Correction: October fifteen 2019.”

  +Data not found+

  If her grandmother had been born in hospital, perhaps it had been in the London Borough of Lewisham, where she lived.

  Dharma began again.

  “Verity Cornelia Mott, October fifteenth, 2024, Lewisham.”

  +Data not found+

  Undetered, Dharma went through the same years, using Lewisham instead of Catford, until she got to 2019.

  The screen blinked, and a birth registration form similar to her mother’s came up. She called on the field on the right to view the certificate, and paid the four tix.

  Dharma glanced over the document, and then zoomed in for verification. She felt the slightest quaver in her voice as she spoke the command.

  The first column was a three digit number, as she’d come to expect. The second column read, ‘Fifteenth October 2019’, and then, below, ‘University Hospital, Lewisham’. Next ‘girl’, and then her grandmother’s name, ‘Verity Cornelia Mott’. The next column read, ‘Pax Mott’, and then came Dharma’s great-grandmother’s name, ‘Faith Melody Mott, formerly Bigelow, of Stannard Court, Culverley Road Catford SE6’.

  “Catford, SE6,” said Dharma.

  +Communication?+

  “Negative. Scroll right.”

  The rest of the certificate showed that Pax Mott had informed the authorities of the birth, and that he had been a pharmacist. He had also informed the authorities, in good time, on the 19th of October, only four days after his daughter had been born.

  He had been a pharmacist. So he was clever, thought Dharma. She also realised that he would have been well placed to deal with the Deluge. Perhaps some of her grandmother’s stories, handed down by her mother, had not been so far-fetched. A pharmacist would know what to do in the event of a pandemic, perhaps not as well as a doctor, but well enough.

  Dharma’s mind was working fast, and she reacted quickly.

  “What was the distance in 2020 between Catford SE6 and Bromley?” Dharma asked. She thought it was a long-shot, but she also knew that old maps were easily available online.

  She so badly wanted these people to be her family, but she wanted better assurances. She’d seen a map of the London boroughs but she had no way to judge distances.

  A map came on screen, with a red line drawn between Catford and Bromley, both names clearly marked. A box-out read ‘6.1 miles. 25 minutes’, and next to the time was a symbol that resembled some of the cars Dharma had seen in the old movies her mother liked to watch.

  Cars moved faster than people could, and Dharma knew that was the point. She also knew that it was perfectly possible to walk six miles. She jogged three miles in a little over half an hour. Dharma’s mother and grandmother had been born six miles, or about an hour’s jog from the place she had been born and grown up with her mother.

  Dharma allowed herself to enjoy a few moments of excitement. She uploaded the certificate to her home screen, and added it as a photo. Then she walked around her cubicle for a few minutes, partly in celebration, and partly to walk off the nervous energy that had welled up inside her.

  She stopped suddenly, realising she had been going backwards through the generations. To find a genetic connection who might still be alive, she would have to move sideways and then forwards, looking for relations of the same generation as Verity and their descendants.

  Pre-Deluge census records were also in the public domain. Old birth, marriage and death records bore no resemblance to New Wave record keeping, and she wondered whether the same would be true for census records. Her next step should be to find census records for this little family, since she now had names, dates of birth, and even home addresses. She just wasn’t sure what the records would tell her.

  “Generic census record 2020,” she said

  +Data not found+

  She thought for a moment.

  “Generic census record, twentieth century.”

  A data box appeared on her screen with listings, every decade from 1901 to 1991, always in year one of the decade.

  Dharma smiled. “Generic census record 2021,” she said.

  The first page of a form appeared on the screen.

  “Scroll down, continuous.”

  The screen scrolled for several seconds, at a little faster than reading speed, but Dharma got the gist, and quickly realised that a form like that could give her a lot of very useful data.

  It would have to wait until tomorrow, though. Her lunch break was almost over and she didn’t want to begin something that she couldn’t finish.

  Dharma cleared the screen and called up the next page of her latest project. She’d be home in a couple of hours, and could have another look at the certificates she’d uploaded to decide whether she needed more to verify her findings so far. She also wanted to memorise all of the content, so that she wouldn’t have to keep referring back to old documents while looking for new one
s.

  Fourteen

  “I wish I’d let you have the extra connection last week,” said Con.

  “Why?” asked Blythe. “What difference would it have made?”

  She was filling out standard invoices on-screen, and the conversation wasn’t a distraction.

  “All the difference in the World,” he said. “If you’d started last week, I could’ve given you my connection, this week, to keep you in touch with Dharma for longer. We could’ve learned a lot more with double the time.”

  “You would’ve done that for me? What about you?”

  “Are you kidding?” asked Con. “This is way more interesting than the stuff I was messing about with. I feel like I wasted that connection. Anyway, I like the data, and I like sorting through it. It beats the day job.”

  “If you’re in the ninetieth percentile, this doesn’t have to be your day job.”

  “No,” said Con, “but then I’d be allocated my own cubicle, and I’d go out of my mind if I had to sit in isolation all day and then go home to my flat to be alone some more.”

  “You really don’t like it, do you?”

  “I really don’t. A few years ago, I had a single cubicle on the second floor for about six months. I had myself demoted to this.”

  “You couldn’t do that job from here?” asked Blythe.

  “I was dealing with confidential stuff. I couldn’t work in a shared cubicle then, and I can’t talk about it now… You wouldn’t want to know, anyway.”

  “And at home?” asked Blythe.

  “I don’t use my connection at home,” said Con. “Mum’s dead, and there isn’t anyone else.”

  “But you’re so outgoing.”

  “Not as much as you think. I didn’t speak to Joy until she started talking to me. I don’t think that woman knows how to stop talking.”

  “I wouldn’t mind so much if everything that came out of her mouth wasn’t so negative,” said Blythe, “and mostly about me.”

  “It’s been nice, hasn’t it, this past week?”

  “Yeah. I’m really beginning to think that I might have a relation out there, and even if I don’t, Dharma’s amazing.”