The Wipe

by Nik Abnett

  +You really do understand data!+

  Con hadn’t expected an immediate reply, but was impressed that Dharma had opened up a real-time connection so that they could talk. He glanced over his shoulder, but Blythe was still busy with her mother.

  +Ninetieth percentile. Like you. I can’t account for the ‘c’ and the ‘d’ in the current addresses, but everything else matches+

  +Give me a minute.+

  Dharma left the connection to Con open, and went back to the old map of Bromley, where she’d begun her search. She knew her own district well, she’d jogged it often enough, and she knew that it was a built up area. She chose the centre of the grey mass that represented Bromley town on the old map, and moved her fingers up and down the streets until she was convinced that she knew where she was. She believed that her office was in Stockwell Close, on the old map; Its New Wave address was 022/SkCcBR/BRd1.

  Dharma traced her walk home with her finger, following the streets. She lived in Harwood Avenue… She was sure of it. Her home address was 044/HrAcBR/BRd1.

  +Right, Concord. My address works out, too. I’ve checked it against an old map. My office is in Stockwell Close, Bromley BR1: 022/SkCcBR/BRd1+

  +Can you verify with a second address?+

  +Already done… You and I think alike. My home address follows the same pattern, when I traced it on an old map+

  +Can we verify by working out the ‘c’ and the ‘d’?+

  +Is your office in a built up area, Con? I wonder if the ‘c’ might be a variable, but it’s in both of our addresses.+

  +Yes. I’m right in the middle of the grey patch on my old map. The streets are old, and close together around here. The biggest local market is close, too. What about you?+

  +Same… that ‘c’ connotes a built up area+

  +Central? Or Centre… Could it mean urban centre?+

  +Sounds plausible. What about the ‘d’ in the last portion? I’m ‘d1’, but you’re d6+

  +No idea. We’ve got four addresses that match up, though, five, if we include Engleheart Road+

  +So the New Wave address system is a version of the old one… That should make it easy to find virtually anywhere!+

  +That’s crazy. Why didn’t we know this?+

  +We didn’t need to know. We all stay where we are. We all live and work in the same place+

  +It’s the New Wave law+

  Con thought about what he had typed, and realised that it wasn’t strictly true. No one had to stay where they were. It was possible to move from one district to another, with permission. When that permission was granted, a travel route was authorised and transport provided. No one travelled very much, but that was mostly because travel had to be justified and authorised. Joy had once talked about her mother having to travel to her grandmother’s funeral, across districts. The funeral had to be put on hold for almost a month, so that Joy’s mother could fill out all the forms, get permission, and receive the route and transport details.

  +Do you know where I am?+

  +I think you’re about six miles from where I am, Concord+

  +That doesn’t sound like very much+

  +It isn’t+

  +?+

  +I used to visit my mother every weekend, and jog the six miles there and back+

  +Across districts?+

  +Same district, opposite corners: packed district, so lots of zig-zagging through streets to get to her+

  +I don’t think I’ve ever walked more than a mile in my life+

  Six miles. It didn’t sound like very much at all.

  +Can I keep this connection open with you, Concord? Blythe hasn’t made a connection+

  +Yes. It’s not her fault. Her connections are few, and they’re committed. Blythe’s lovely. I think you’ll really like her+

  +I like her already. We managed to exchange a lot of personal information last week, but I’d like to talk to her more+

  +You really think you’re related?+

  +I’m almost convinced of it+

  +Thanks, Dharma. Forty minute lunch break, so I’ve got to go. Talk soon+

  +Talk soon, Concord+

  The screen blinked out, and Con switched to his company screen. Blythe turned at almost exactly the same moment.

  “How’s your mum?” he asked.

  “The same,” said Blythe. “How was your map?”

  “Enlightening.”

  “Old maps are enlightening? Weird!”

  “You’re a bit weird, though, too, aren’t you?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “You take a lot of shit from your mum, and it doesn’t seem to bother you very much… You just take it.”

  “I’ve got broad shoulders,” said Blythe, “and Mum has her reasons for being the way she is.”

  “You don’t want to talk about it,” said Con. “I get that.”

  “It’s just that Joy should be back any minute, and I don’t want to get into it, now. We can talk about it sometime, though, if you’d like. You shared details of your childhood with me, after all.”

  “Another time, then.”

  “She wants me to visit,” said Blythe.

  “And that’s a problem?”

  “I haven’t been for a couple of years. It’s a massive hassle.”

  “Different district? You’re lucky. I’ve never been out of the district.”

  “You haven’t missed much,” said Blythe.

  “Who hasn’t missed what?” asked Joy, walking into the cubicle. “I’m sure you two are plotting something. I hope it’s not to do with me.”

  “I can assure you it isn’t,” said Con.

  “I don’t trust you,” said Joy.

  “It’s fine,” said Blythe. “It’s my fault, anyway.”

  “I could’ve guessed that,” said Joy.

  “Now listen, here,” said Con. “I’ve had about enough of you. You’ve been nothing but mean to Blythe since she got here… and it’s been three years. Why can’t you just be nice for once in your life?”

  “Con!” said Blythe

  “What?” Asked Con.

  “Too harsh. You don’t know Joy’s life. Cut her some slack, for goodness sake.”

  “Wow!” said Con. “You really are nice, aren’t you?”

  “I’ve got no reason not to be.”

  Joy sat at her station, staring at Blythe, blinking hard against the tears that were forming in the corners of her eyes.

  Blythe looked from Con to Joy.

  “Sorry, Joy,” said Con.

  “I’ll forgive you this once,” said Joy. “I just wish things could go back to the way they were. I don’t know what happened while I was away, but things have changed, and I don’t like it.”

  “Sorry,” said Con, again, “but I guess you’re just going to have to get used to it.”

  Forty-one

  “Right,” said Pa. “We need to get some things sorted out, as a matter of urgency.”

  “I’m not coming home,” said Charity.

  “I’ve been talking to your mother, and we’re not going to make you come home… At least, not for the moment. You might be safer where you are, and the authorities have plenty to say about it. First of all, has Able been certified with immunity?”

  “Yes, Pa,” said Charity. “His dad was sick for a long time, and had all sorts of treatments. Able had it for a while but he had notification of his immunity before his dad died.”

  “Good. That’s one less thing to worry about.”

  “You didn’t take anything with you. Your mother says you didn’t even pack an overnight bag.”

  “I left in Mum’s dress and a pair of trainers,” said Charity. “I wanted to be able to move fast. It seemed stupid to carry stuff.”

  “You were going to make a run for it, if a guard saw you.”

  “Only if I had to. Seems a bit stupid now.”

  “I’m glad you realise that. Now, you’ve obviously got your phone.”

  “I needed to be able to talk to you. I’ve got my
id, too.”

  “Good,” said Pa. “It means your rations can be delivered to you there. Do you know how that works?”

  “Able’s been filling in the requisition forms for his dad for a long time, so it should be straightforward. There are some personal things I’ll need to add, but it’s all set up.”

  “I’ve filled out your forms to let the authorities know that you’re no longer living here. They phoned me up to find out whether there was an emergency, or a death, and why I hadn’t filled in the relevant documentation.”

  “Oh,” said Charity. “Sorry, Pa… I hope you didn’t get into trouble.”

  “More to the point, I managed to keep you out of any trouble. I explained everything that’s been going on, and I explained about you and Able, and his dad. I laid it on thick, told a real sob story.”

  “I can imagine,” said Charity.

  “Frankly, it wasn’t difficult to shed a tear over the phone.”

  “I am sorry, Pa. I really am sorry, but it’s for the best. You know it is.”

  “Anyway, the long and the short of it is that they’re not going to impose any sanctions on you, on the understanding that you remain where you are. You’re not allowed to move, Charity.”

  “That’s okay. I don’t want to move.”

  “I hope this relationship is everything you think it is. I want you to be happy, but I’m worried that you don’t know this boy.”

  “Able,” said Charity. “Call him Able… or Abe.”

  “I’m worried that you don’t know Able, and that you’ll end up miserable with each other. I can’t think of anything worse than two people stuck in a house together, hating each other.”

  “That’s not going to happen, I promise. Besides, you let Sage and Verity move down together.”

  “That’s different.”

  “I don’t see how.”

  “They’d known each other for longer, and they were older.”

  “I’m older than you think, Pa… Maybe not in years, but the Deluge has made me grow up fast.”

  “Too fast,” said Pa.

  “Besides, me and Abe probably did more talking about more things, while I was stuck at home, than Verity and Sage did in the whole two years they were dating, and they turned out all right.”

  “I suppose. I still worry that you’re very young. And I hope you’re being sensible.”

  “I’ve got my own little room,” said Charity, “with its own single bed. We don’t have to spend all our time together if we don’t want to. This house is as big as ours, and there were five of us packed in there… We survived.”

  “I like to think we did very nicely.”

  “Me, too,” said Charity. “Talking of ‘five’, how are Verity and the baby? How’s the nursery coming along?”

  “I decided not to do anything until I spoke to you and checked in with the authorities. I wanted to make sure you were settled first.”

  “Then you should get off the phone, and get on with building the baby a lovely nursery. You need a project.”

  “You’re my project, today.”

  “It sounds as if I’ve been your project since I left. Thanks for sorting things out for me. That word ‘sanctions’ doesn’t sound too pleasant.”

  “You don’t want to know, but suffice to say that you wouldn’t have been coming back here, and you wouldn’t have been staying where you are, either, if the most severe sanctions had been imposed.”

  “You saved my life, Pa,” said Charity.

  “And now you owe me.”

  “Anything.”

  “You owe it to me to stay safe, and be happy, and not to get up to any shenanigans.”

  “I’m not the shenanigans type,” said Charity, laughing.

  “I’ve made some arrangements. I don’t know what you’re doing for clothes and things, but I put in a requisition with the nice official I talked to on the phone. The forms are all filled out.”

  “What’s happening?”

  “We’re allowed to pack two cartons of your stuff, and they’ll be fumigated and dropped off with your next rations.”

  “Oh, Pa. That’s lovely of you, thank you.”

  “Don’t thank me. Your mother’s doing the hard work, going through your room, packing your clothes, and some other bits and pieces.”

  “Give her a kiss from me. And take one for yourself.”

  “This will all be over soon,” said Pax. “We’ll all get our immunisation shots and you’ll be able to kiss me in person.”

  “I hope so,” said Charity. “There isn’t anything I really need, but it’d be nice to have some of my own stuff.” She was thinking mostly about underwear. She didn’t need socks in the warm summer weather, and she could borrow some from Able. Bras and knickers would be very useful, though. She didn’t mind going without in the summer, but she’d need things when the weather turned cold again. Sharing Abe’s jeans and t-shirts was all well and good, but everything was a bit shapeless on her. Besides, she wanted the opportunity to look nice. Wearing her mother’s dress, doing her hair and putting on some makeup had really cheered her up, the day of Verity’s wedding. She didn’t have any make-up with her, or a decent hairbrush. Mum would know what to pack.

  “Let’s talk again, tomorrow, then,” said Pax. “You make sure you look after yourself.”

  “I promise.”

  “And you could say hello to Able from me. I’ll want to get to know him.”

  “You’ll like him… You really will.”

  “If he’s good enough for you, he’s good enough for us.”

  “Love you, Pa. Talk tomorrow.”

  “Bye, Darling. Love you too.”

  Able wandered into the kitchen as Charity finished her call.

  “Pa says hi,” she said.

  “He’s okay with it, then? Because I don’t think I could bear to give you up now.”

  “The authorities won’t allow it anyway,” said Charity. “I’ll make a cup of tea, and tell you all about it.”

  Forty-two

  Dharma had enjoyed her personal project, but she decided that there was much more that she could do. She had begun to be fascinated by her entire family, and any information she could add would only back up what she already knew.

  She was almost sure that this really was her family, but almost wasn’t sure enough.

  Every lunch time for the next few weeks, Dharma accessed pre-Deluge records to find more of her family, more generations going further back in time. She began by following Faith Bigelow’s line, and when she had gone as far as she could, she had a beautiful family tree, filled with dozens of surnames and hundreds of people.

  Some of the families going back to the early twentieth century and even earlier had several children. They didn’t all survive into adulthood, but some did, and there were more branches to follow.

  Dharma also began to look at infant mortality, and average life expectancy, and all sorts of other statistics that she could scrutinise and analyse.

  The World before the Deluge had been a strange and, it seemed to Dharma, often horrible place. Children died, and the life expectancy of adults was low. People had strange occupations that she had never heard of and couldn’t imagine.

  Nevertheless, people obviously found love, and married, and did the sex thing. Constance Tuke, Dharma’s grandmother, had been right about a lot of the things she had talked about in her stories. Dharma understood that her grandmother had been born before the Deluge, and that the World had been very different then. She wondered how many stories Verity had told to her daughter about her own family’s life, and how much of them Constance had believed.

  Verity’s side of the family had always lived in the Catford area. She even found a relation who had served in the World War, back in the 1940s, a member of the 101st Regiment of the Royal Engineers.

  There was no royal family in the New Wave. Most of the senior royals had died during the Deluge, and the junior members opted out of the old system. Dharma couldn’t find
out why that had happened, but Monarchy seemed a strange system. Still, she’d had a relation who’d ‘fought for King and Country’, and, somehow, that made her feel good. There was courage in her ancestry.

  When Dharma couldn’t find out any more information about Faith Bigelow’s family, she decided to follow Pax Mott’s lineage. She still didn’t trust paternity, but she got caught up in the hunt. She’d got the hang of following the data trails, and was able to verify members of his family through birth, marriage and death certificates, census records and even professional organisations. She even found some of the places that they had lived, and tracked them on old maps. She discovered where Leeds was. It was more than two hundred miles north of Bromley, and she wondered why, or how, anyone could travel that far. She knew that some goods were transported over long distances, but people, individuals didn’t travel.

  The further Dharma went back through the generations, the more people seemed to stay in one place for long periods of time.

  She began to look into the history of transport. She knew about goods vehicles, and she’d seen cars in old movies, but now she found out about the national railway system and the underground trains in London. One of Pax’s relatives had been a ‘railwayman’, one of the many professions that she neither knew existed nor understood what the job entailed. She had not known about aeroplanes, nor that people had travelled on them en-masse. Suddenly, two hundred miles was nothing. People had travelled across the World, on flights that could take several hours. They’d done it for almost a hundred years, between the War and the Deluge. But when she found out that a man had once stood on the moon, she simply didn’t believe it. The idea stretched her capacity to suspend her disbelief, beyond breaking point.

  Dharma decided that the New Wave must be much more like the old way of doing things, that the twenty-second century more closely resembled the eighteenth than any period in between. Except for one fundamental thing: in the eighteenth century people had not lived alone. She could not find a time in history, going through thousands of old census records, when people had. People, it seemed, always lived in family units, usually of two generations, and often of three. There were outliers, of course, but there were always outliers.