litro.co.uk » Issue-82

Girl, Absorbed

webmaster — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 10:00:49 +0000

Noriko sits, a girl absorbed. Beneath the old beams inside the spacious A-framed loft, she watches in silence – a full moon shines silver-grey, its pockmarked craters stark witnesses to aeons of celestial abuse. The transitory vision scatters borrowed radiance onto her face through the wide rectangular skylight. Her brown eyes sparkle and she pushes a door wide open and takes a step onto a wrought-iron balcony. Osaka swelters in mid-summer heat. There is movement on streets, rails and expressways below but all she hears is its low roar; distant traffic, far away lives.

Peripheral movement draws her back into the room. Doors shut and seal against the clammy night. The loft’s walls are crowded with framed relics from the 20th Century. Diodes draw attention to the collection’s most-prized specimens: a letter signed by Lee Harvey Oswald and a priceless fragment of pale lunar anorthosite mounted in a vacuum-sealed box. Other obscure artefacts from the worlds of sport and entertainment are on display, and the space is infused with pop culture authenticity. In a corner, beneath the intense glow of another angled spotlight, Eddie Kuramoto swivels on a high stool, languid in white jeans and a green bowling shirt. Expensive black creepers complete the look. He has a cool confidence; lean, muscular and with a rakish quiff crowning his narrow face. Sideburns trace an outline down along his distinct jaw. Without a word, he extends his right hand and twitches his fingers twice.

She implicitly understands the gesture. She wears a pale blue replica 1950s dress, with a neatly buttoned bodice and a Mandarin collar. Black bangs caress her forehead while the rest of her hair is pulled back into a neat bun. Retro-styled winged spectacles adorn her clear, pretty face. Long lashes blink over her wide eyes and reverentially, she opens the clear plastic container labelled in simple black text: Apollo XVII. Using a pair of stainless steel tweezers, she transfers the item as if it is the most delicate thing on earth, sliding the blue and gold cloth badge onto the glass surface of the Veritron. Gears hiss beneath its flat square base, a lens dilates on a hinged arm and a lid lowers, closing over the artefact. Tubes breathe in dust and particles from its surface as an artificial lung sighs in and out. Eddie flicks a switch and together, they watch a network of laser light firing down upon the insignia, revealing its intricate chemical structure in millisecond bursts.
‘Wow. This is nearly one hundred years old.’ Noriko reads the text on the bottom of the plastic container. ‘It was worn by Eugene Andrew Cernan – the last of the first men on the moon.’

‘There is some discolouration.’ Eddie’s eyes fix upon a dark brown stain on the patch’s blue background. He calls up a metre-wide projection of the item on his wall screen. Graphs and schematics blink into life. The patch sits side-by-side with an archived mission photograph that features the emblem on the astronaut’s uniform. He peers at the stain.

‘Says here they landed in the Taurus-Littrow Valley.’ Noriko continues. ‘Whereabouts is that?’ She looks up out of the skylight.
He ignores her and zooms in on loose strands of fabric. ‘Maybe it’s blood.’
She looks at him aghast and he smiles wickedly.
‘We’ll know soon enough,’ he shrugs.

The Veritron stops breathing with a long sigh. It has concluded the examination and its small red LED display starts a slow countdown. It will be another hour before it reaches a conclusion. Eddie uses the tweezers to extract the badge from beneath the lid and place it carefully back in its plastic holder.
‘I heard that people used to say the first moon missions never happened.’ Noriko studies the images on the wallscreen.

‘So where did that come from then?’ He points to the anorthosite sealed inside the vacuum.
Noriko shifts forward, sliding her neat frame off the stool. ‘It’s late, I’m going to bed.’ She moves close and kisses him lightly on the cheek. She can smell his scent, subtle and organic. Her full lips linger for just a second or two. Their eyes meet and she knows that he knows what it is that she wants.
‘Night.’ He keeps all of his attention centred upon the artefact. She pulls back and slips away, barefoot.

Noriko slumps onto the plush white fabric of the living room sofa. It is nearly two a.m. and she cannot sleep. She draws absentminded patterns across a control pad set into the arm of the two-seater, inadvertently flicking on the Historyweb. Neat bubbles and threads of twentieth century media float in a rainbow of colours before her eyes – pastels and primaries for drama and light entertainment blips, darker hues for old world events and affairs. With a flourish of crimson fingernails, she pricks each sphere back into non-existence.
Fucking Eddie.
Her smooth forehead and delicately crafted eyebrows furrow into a tight knot.
There is a trill from a shape on the elaborate Navajo rug at her feet. Something nuzzles against her exposed shin.
‘Hey Jimbo.’ She sighs.
Her anger dissipates quickly and she wraps the name in a warm spoken caress. A canine face peers up at her.
‘You are such a good little doggy, but you really should be asleep.’
She strokes the plastic sensor panel on the creature’s pearlescent white back and its face lights up with swirling patterns of joyous green.
‘Are you a tired baby?’ She checks her watch. ‘You know you’re not supposed to be awake now – we’re supposed to be preserving your battery, aren’t we?’
Jimbo pants in synthesised excitement, seeming to plead for more attention.
‘Oh well, if we keep it our secret, I guess a little cuddle won’t hurt.’
She scoops up the faux-animal and pets it with long strokes along its smooth, crafted form. It settles onto her chest and when she is sure that it is soothed, she quietly presses the sleep button at the back of its neck.
‘There you are baby, you can have some more love in the morning.’

The room and the night grow silent around her. In this sea of tranquillity, Noriko can hear a voice. It is deep into one side of a conversation. Eddie is speaking to someone on the phone and his tone rises and falls in a lilting cadence. He is laughing. There is a long pause and she thinks it’s over, but then he murmurs something again. Her brow furrows some more and her mood slips down into neglect. In a split second, she sets Jimbo onto the rug and creeps back up to the loft.

She stands at the foot of the stairs, quiet as a mouse. The loft hatch is open and she is impaled on every painful word.
‘… so when can we get together?’
A pause. She can’t believe what she hears.
‘Tomorrow? You wanna get some lunch?’
He never meets me in the daytime. Always too fucking busy.
‘Yeah, shimesaba sounds fine.’
He is quiet for a moment and she knows he is paying attention. Noriko listens, bad thoughts filling in the gaps.
‘Maybe. We’ll have to see.’ His voice is lower now. ‘Depends if you’re a good girl – or not.’ He laughs, dirtily.
She hears the phone being set down and wants to barge up there and shout and throw things at him. Rage bubbles instead into silent tears and she turns away towards her bedroom at the end of the long landing.

*

Noriko sits at the breakfast bar. Newscasts burble quietly from the counter as bright morning sun floods into the white kitchen. Eddie sits opposite, sipping a cappuccino, completely at ease in carefully torn jeans and a white cotton shirt. She hunches her shoulders up before she makes the first move.
‘So – was it genuine?’
He looks up from his coffee, puzzled.
‘The patch – was it the real thing?’
He shrugs and drains the cup. ‘Yeah. I’ve got a buyer who’s ready to pay big bucks for it. I don’t want it.’
She mutes the countertop and takes his cup away.
‘I was thinking, Eddie, maybe we could meet up today. We could go for a walk at Tennoji Park.’
‘Tennoji? Lunch surrounded by all those mangy cats?’ He looks momentarily startled. ‘Don’t think so, honey. Maybe some other time.’ He shakes his head. ‘I’m in and out of meetings all day.’
Noriko busies herself at the sink. Suddenly, he is behind her, strong arms around her slim waist.
‘Hey – you’re not upset, are you?’
Comfort comes in waves of warmth. It seems like weeks since he last touched her.
‘Look, I know I’ve been busy lately, but I’ll make it up to you, I promise.’
She leans back onto his chest as he kisses her cheek.
‘I wish you could take a day off. I get so lonely here without you.’
‘You’ve got Jimbo to play with.’
She turns to look at him and he holds her tight, his fingers massaging muscles in the small of her back.
‘But I want you, Eddie.’
He kisses her lightly on the forehead and then pulls away, quick and abrupt, grabbing his black leather jacket from its hook on the back of the kitchen door.
‘Gotta go, sweetheart.’
She imagines cupping his cheek with her palm and remembers the feeling of a day’s growth of stubble.
‘Don’t be late.’

He turns and is gone. Doors slam in quick succession as he leaves the apartment without reply.
Noriko stands alone as the empty kitchen comes to life around her, just as it does each day at eight a.m. Water fills the dishwasher, filters clean the air, hidden pumps provide nutrients and moisture to the yucca and ficus plants that line the window sill.

*

She dozes on the white sofa, her head on plush cushions, her glasses on the floor. The paperback she was reading before she drifted off has fallen down too, with no bookmark to keep her page. She twitches awake with a gasp. For a few seconds, consciousness comes and goes, and then she is present, here and now and looking to the silver starburst clock on the wall for temporal guidance. Seven twenty-four p.m. Her attention moves to the closed-circuit screen set beside the clock and right on cue, she sees Eddie’s restored 1953 Chevrolet Bel Air as it makes its way into the basement garage. Its powder-blue presence is like nectar to her senses.
Until she remembers.
Fucking Eddie -
Where he’s been.
I’ll fucking kill him.
The front door slams. She sits up, determined to ask the question now. There are footsteps in the hallway – footsteps and voices. The living room door creaks as it opens.
Eddie stands there, divine in his leather jacket and ripped jeans. Noriko melts and then freezes back up in an instance. He is not alone.
‘Hey Noriko – you had a good day?’
Noriko cannot take her eyes off the woman at his side. A gaikokujin; all bangs and Alice band, slim and blonde in a pink cardigan and mini skirt.
Eddie looks confused and the newcomer is silent.
‘This is Debbie,’ he says at last.
‘Debbie?’ Noriko repeats the name as realisation dawns slowly. How could he bring her here?
‘She, ah, wants to look at the collection – you don’t mind, do you?’ He is smiling and Debbie is smiling.
‘Hi Noriko – it’s great to meet you.’ Debbie leans her head to one side and fashions a nervous wave with her left hand.
Noriko barges between the two of them and, without a word, she storms upstairs.

Dusk is soft through the skylight, casting shadows in a dim orange glow. Noriko sits on the high stool and the tears well up at last, flowing in silence beneath the indifferent stares of dead baseball and movie stars. Her face is in her hands when she hears him ascending the stairs.
Light from the landing below turns him into a silhouette.
‘Hey.’
Eddie keeps a couple of metres between them. She wants him to come closer, but she knows she wants to hit him too.
‘Was she the one you were on the phone with last night?’ Words come in breaks between her tears. ‘Was she the one you had lunch with?’
Eddie doesn’t look at her and Noriko summons a glare through her fingers, fierce and accusatory.
‘What are you doing to me, Eddie? What are you thinking, bringing her into our home? Don’t I mean anything at all to you?’
‘Noriko, I’m sorry, it’s not… like that.’ He moves towards her and finally, he holds her in his arms. ‘C’mon, it’ll be alright.’
She leans into his chest and weeps. Her hands are wrapped into fists, held tight against her body.
‘What’s wrong with me? Have I ever betrayed you? Have I ever deceived you? Don’t I look the way you want me to?’
‘You know it’s not that.’
‘Well, what then? What is it?’
‘It’s just – it’s hard to explain.’
She feels his hand moving on her back, at first through the thin material of her white vest, and then upon the smooth skin exposed between her shoulder blades. It is like the touch of an angel, but she wishes he would stop.
‘Eddie – don’t. We can’t.’
‘C’mon, it’ll be ok. Don’t worry.’
His fingers are on her shoulders and she can feel him pressing, kneading, exploring. Her tears dry up and she wishes she didn’t feel this way when he touched her.
‘Eddie – please -‘
His fingers caress her neck now and she looks up at him, her eyes puffy and her body eager. She lets her hands relax as he unravels her. Lips part in anticipation. She surrenders to the grip around her waist and the fingers around her neck. He is over her, around her, everything to her. Noriko’s pulse quickens and a rush of excitement courses through her body as he pushes down hard on her second cervical vertebra. A click and a pop and Eddie disappears, along with the loft and the artefacts and Jimbo and Debbie.

*

It is midnight before she stirs again. Noriko wakes to find herself standing with her left hand resting on the smooth glass of the Veritron. The high stool at her side is empty and Eddie is nowhere to be seen. The room is dark save for beams of moonlight through the window and a strip of light from the angled lamp on the Veritron.

The lid closes with a hiss, enveloping her hand in its glass sheath. The lens whirs, tubes twitch and the solitary lung starts to breathe, slowly in and out, the machine somehow brought to life. She flicks a switch and the lasers fire in a painless dance that illuminates her skin.
‘Well, would you look at that.’
Noriko stares, a girl enraptured. Solid skin becomes translucent under the staccato bursts of light, and smooth flesh gives way to a swirl of fibre optics wrapped tight around polymers and a carbon-fibre skeleton. In just a few seconds, the Veritron completes the analysis, its lid slides back and its breathing stops. It sighs out in a death rattle, as if the gift of life was all too brief. Noriko stands with the moonlight and the machine.
‘You ok?’
Eddie is behind her somewhere, his voice a whisper. She hears him take a step forward and wonders how long he has been there. She is lost for a moment and then turns to look at him. Like a ghost in the in the silvery light, an apparition amid the relics. Old faces, old letters, dead rock; all bear witness as Noriko looks down at her left hand, still flat on the surface of the machine. Words come to her after long seconds.
‘Are we all just mementoes to you, Eddie?’
Her eyes flick toward him and he stares back at her, tight-lipped and unblinking.
‘Guess I should have told you.’
‘I don’t mean a thing to you, do I?’ She turns away, runs out towards the balcony, as tears stream down her face.
Osaka swelters still, but there is a breeze now that feels good on her skin. Momentary relief. City lights shimmer beneath under a brilliant moon.
Noriko climbs over the handrail, balancing. She hears Eddie cry out. She rocks on the precipice as he bursts onto the balcony. His hand reaches for her.
The city beckons and she doesn’t look back.

Richard Evans is author of the future noir novel Exilium and the short stories Half Life and Touch Sensitive. He writes about robotics, the future and the present at his blog Uncanny Valley (http://blog.richardevansonline.com).

A wikinquisitor writes his memoirs

webmaster — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 10:00:31 +0000

We’d seen heavy trolling near the capital,
disruptive sockpuppets jumping patrols.
Grandma and ShriGanesh were blocked as sockpuppets of Kolabare,
who’d been blocked as a puppetmaster back in 2.0.
Rouge Admin were to blame, or the Mergists,
depending on which rumour you believed. Cabalist newbs
were applying the Pokémon test indiscriminately.
Civilisation cracked. When I got given the mop,
I gathered my meat puppets and instructed them to salt the earth.
Don’t Listify. If you find an attack site which fails the criteria,
call in support from ArbCom and flame them all.
I was POV. We all were then.
Vying not to go Gdanzig and settle in the
trenches of an ancient edit war, we set forest fires. Deleted orphans.
Five administrators were desysopped in the purge.
Of those, one was resysopped immediately, without his eyes.
Two were nominated for deletion, and the remainder
whilst deprecating the desysopping as controversial,
exercised the right to vanish. I sat tight and was rewarded
with a parcel of land in Idaho.

James Wilkes has published two chapbooks, Ex Chaos and A DeTour (Renscombe Press). He was featured in Generation Txt (Penned in the Margins, 2006) and is interested in the overlap between poetry and visual art.

City

webmaster — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 10:00:18 +0000

Jaboc Knorrec woke, and knew that the woman was lying next to him. He struggled briefly with, then gave into the old urge. His fingers tensed and eyelids flickered along with his better judgement. He didn’t need to look, he could hear her breathing, could smell her sleeping, dreaming body as it rested beneath the quilt. All was darkness above him, and he held his eyes open against the tide of sleep pulling at him from somewhere deep within//
//underneath a steel sky he stood, and the distant hum of machinery he knew too well, with which he was too intimately familiar, called him to tend the motors of the city. He was on shift//
//she tried to turn toward him in her sleep, to lift an arm over the warm body next to her. Some compulsion prevented her completing the gesture and she sighed heavily//
//the machines provided, however inefficiently, air and food from the condensed, heated salt-water mush of the ocean‘s depths. Jaboc tended to their basic needs. He checked oil levels, measured wear on their cogs and chains. Watched over them//
//Knorrec slipped back into sleep//
//the city floated midway between the oceanic depths and the sunspotted surface, it drew heat and sustenance from the deep-sea vents where black water billowed and smoked from between the drifting tectonic plates. Not that its inhabitants often thought of it that way, it was, to them: City. Complete in and of itself.

Jaboc and his fellow mechanics had had the misfortune to have been born into the greater knowledge sufficient to preserve an uncomfortable stasis, limited in scope as it was. The institution – an inherited Masonry – failed to obscure completely the many compromises that had brought it into being; the losses that predicated the current limitations. That the City was dying, and worse, was the last stronghold of a dying race upon a dying planet. Machines plumbed the ocean’s depths for those remaining few species not dependant upon the sun – late friend turned enemy – and drew the City’s energy more by good fortune than planning from the billowing, boiling water. They provided for the recycling of breathable air and edible food.
The planet spun, as ever, about its sun. Jaboc worked, as ever, at the machines. At his shoulder a fellow mechanic joined him for a few delicate adjustments and recalibrations. A raised eyebrow and proffered wristwatch called time on their operations, and as they climbed the rungs from the lowest level of the city the next shift passed them on their way down, unrecognisable inside their bubble-helmets and ungainly protective suits, patched and repatched to keep out the cold and bruising jets that forced their way between the cracked and blistered panels. A raised hand gestured toward the airlock, Jaboc entered and removed his helmet as the City’s recycled air hissed into the emptied void.

The club was full. The club was always full; twenty-four hour shifts operated throughout the City, constantly maintaining its integrity against the deep-ocean pressures and unpredictable currents. Returning from the bar, Jaboc sipped from the cold beer in his left hand and looked for somewhere to rest the hot whisky he held in his right. A saxophone honked and wailed through the speakers hanging from the ceiling, and nearly drowned out the hum of chatter and clashing of glasses on black plastic tables.

The drummer was singing something like “woooah heavy and a bottle of bread” as Jaboc worked his elbows into a space against the wall, lifted the beer and drained it off. His eyes wandered around the crowd and pulled in a few glances and not a few glares. The girl in a bright yellow plastic one-piece apron, showing off tattooed forearms and long brown hair pointedly ignored him. The whisky was raised and sipped; cinnamon burst in his sinuses as the liquor warmed him and revived his appetite. The low ceiling dripped sweat, it ran down the walls and wet the backs of his arms; he paused on the edge of conversation as the nearest elbow nudged him – he caught the meaning sooner, as a waved arm from the bar called him to name his poison: the empty beer glass was raised, then placed on a tray which circled the room perched on a chubby childlike arm raised by the dwarf waiter. His new glass of beer found its way back by the same method that his empty glass had found its way away. The girl in the yellow one-piece approached.
“Baby”
“is it?”
“what do say to another whereabouts?”
“is it?”

The girl in the plastic one-piece pulled her shoulder straps back over a dragon’s tail and the curlicued M of MOTHER. Jaboc lifted his head and laid it back on his couch again. She took the liberty of 20 Credits from the slot next to the door of the booth. Flashed her card at Jaboc, and left the booth through the sliding door. Jaboc pulled on the cable hanging above the couch and slipped into sleep//
//his left hand twitched, his eyeballs rolled, sought the darkness for a clue. Her breath next to him lulled him into sleep//

The city’s hydroponic pastures slipped past in the corner of his eye as Jaboc reached for the ashtray built into the side of the pod. The ranks of Cannabis Indica shimmered murkily through plastic yellowed by age. The farmer raised a flattened straw hat to offer his hicks’ grin to the engineer as his pod swung in its Perspex tube and Jaboc was swung momentarily against the camber to look down upon the long green rows, fed by the constant dripping recycled water and artificial light. The papers had announced another shortage. Jaboc winced at their artificial optimism. He took a long breath on his cigarette as the pod took a sudden plunge and the city’s ranks of semi-circular levels sped past him. His card was empty. What shortage?
At the face of the ranks of machines his apprehension proved more than justified. Two clumsily suited engineers – he didn’t immediately recognise his shift-mates – struggled with an outsized spanner, tweaking ineffectually against a cog whose rivets spat pressurised black water. He rushed (as best he could in leaden boots and inflated suit) to their assistance. The huge cog shot over his head, and the rush of water that lifted his erstwhile colleagues and slammed and snapped them against a bulkhead picked him up feet first to swing him spinning into a void.

The hospital wasn’t much more than a line of sleeping-booths, with the doors jammed open and stained curtains hanging over their doorways. The booths sported the few sentimentalities allowed regular occupants; above Jaboc hung a braided cord that could have been a dreadlock or friendship-bracelet. He tolerated its greasy familiarity. He tested the bruises and sprains he’d sustained in the flume, the whole left-hand side of his skull felt soggy, otherwise he was solid as ever.

A nurse pulled aside the curtain and looked apologetically over her shoulder at the blind man whose cane tapped at her ankle gently, reassuring itself of her continued presence. Jaboc left the warm sheets happily and found a coffee-bulb steaming on the tray outside his booth, along with hospital whites, which he pulled on over his bandages and bruises, and his wristwatch, which had stopped.

There was a distinct if subtle difference in the air pressure as he moved through the bulkhead that kept the hospital apart from the rest of its tier, crowded with clubs, sleeping booths and the cheapest eateries. The pressure was higher, and it was gaining. Jaboc pressed his hands against his ears and staggered into a side-alley between two spiced-food joints, the odours perceivably green. Jaboc retched, retched and suddenly the alley was up, and the main route along which he had walked from the hospital was a precarious down, the coffee-bulb falling spinning against the wall and a spray of grey liquid following it down. His left temple throbbed and stung.

The next wrench was more of a twist, and the corridor parallel to Jaboc’s narrow perch rushed up to offer its steel resistance to his loose collection of bone and muscle, he relaxed from the impact briefly, which was when the whole world’s plug was pulled out and the painkillers still in his system spilled him out of his present predicament and into one more profound and simple//
//lights fade up over the sleepers. A quilt turned up at their chins lies oddly flat, the contours of two sleeping bodies outlined by blue shadow stand out against the grey weave. Their hands are crossed each above their breastbones.
The sleepers’ faces are uncannily calm.

From a distance their planet seems to shake and, like a punctured beachball, collapse about the point now marked by a tremendous clockwise-turning whirlpool, at the centre of which, stupendous and unthinkable, an abysmal gulf yawns with black water plunging into it from either side, like a million Niagaras.

The Spacecraft that entered the eye of the storm and fetched from it the spindle-shaped crushed steel City – and in its myriad cells the meagre remains of a once proud species – was inconceivably immense, yet it appeared a mote in the storm’s tremendous eye. It deftly scooped the City from its last perch upon the brink, where spray, super-heated into steam, had etched a labyrinth of corrosion on the softly metallic, mercury-smooth, flowing spacecraft as it extended to a silver streak and shot from the split that, like a dropped watermelon, cracked a brief crazy smile across the planet’s blue face. Then the sun’s gravity dragged the planet down, as it split along its meridian, corkscrewing into the bloated atmospheric weal of that dully combusting star.

The creatures that have effected this rescue sit bemused before the field of force that separates the sleeping aliens from their benevolent captors. The aliens sleep still. The measuring equipment keeps the sleepers in a state //of lucid dreaming, constrained by the co/mplex machinery that perceives and manages the storm boiling in the collective unconscious of those that their rescuers have been able to revive. Machines ar/e reading and recording these visions, p/sychologists study them. Every attempt to revive the aliens leading to the subject causing itself fatal injury with //whatever instrument is nearest to hand. In th/e latest experiment the aliens – who conform to this sector’s predominant binary sexuality – had been woken up gradually alongside a mate selected, as far as possible, for maximum compatibility. The first female had awoken, and attempted immediately to rush the screen in an effort, apparently, to escape its ‘/mate’. The second was being held for as long as possible upon the edge of sleep, and its responses modulated and closely measured.
//
Jaboc Knorrec woke. The sight of his captors terrified him more than the terrible paralysis that had, until his sudden release, held him aware of his surroundings but horribly unable to respond. Now he sat bolt upright, and saw the woman lying next to him. Her eyes were closed as yet. Surely he could spare her at least from the horror of their true situation. With a wild leer in his eyes, and his clawed fingers clutching at air he turned and hardly felt the stun of impact as the shimmering, fire-red, winged biologist lowered the tranquiliser gun held in her taloned left hand, and shrugged.

“Increase the dose in the female, lets keep at least one example alive for as long as we can.”

The slowly spinning collapsing star burps upon another, dusty red planet as it slowly drifts apart. The City, though hopelessly crushed and utterly sterilised, a honeycomb frozen in grey dust, reflects yet the glow of a pale, fugitive moon which, having come adrift from its companion planet, pulled within the passing field of an inertia-proofed Spacecraft, has shifted into escape orbit taking with it, for moon, the discarded City’s bare husk of humanity.

Andrew S. Bailes lives in Hackney. He is a teacher of English and Media. This story is dedicated to the memory of Arthur C. Clarke.

From a dictionary of slang, circa 2050

webmaster — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 10:00:10 +0000

Aprust n.
the name commonly given to April, for its resemblance to August.

Barclays (Bank) n British
a native of the USA, Yank. A piece of rhyming slang used by insurgents of the London Underground in the 2040s.
‘The Barclays came and torched the place.’
(New York Times, 10 March 2042)

broad, broadster n British
a refugee from the flooded counties of East Anglia. The term is derived from the former Norfolk Broads. For East Anglians, see also bloater, flounder, jellyfish, wader and webfoot.

carboid n
a foolish person, a social nuisance. Elision of ‘carbon’ and ‘android’: literally, a carbon-spewing android.

dubbya n American
an irresponsible and incompetent boss: someone promoted above their abilities. Also denotes someone with a poor grasp of reality.

goo-packer n British
anyone working in nanotechnology. Probably derived from the term coined by Eric Drexler (1986) to describe the hypothetical threat from self-replicating molecular nanotechnology.

green zone n
a delusional state of mind; the confusion inhabited by recovering alcoholics.

hornbill n
an excessive user of nanocaine. The term refers to the artificial septum available online for those wishing to avoid the questions of a plastic surgeon.

hubbert vb
to stockpile provisions in expectation of societal breakdown. Etymology disputed.

ice capper n American
a doomed attempt to redeem a hopeless situation.
‘Putting Sendecki to bat, at this stage in the game, is a total ice capper.’
(US TV sports commentary, 2046)

Janril n
a name commonly given to January, for its resemblance to April.

limpet vb British
to stay put, obstinately, in spite of disaster.
‘I made up my mind to limpet until the last roof in Lowestoft sank beneath the waves’.
(The Times, 19 October 2049)

mercurial adj
of someone who obsessively monitors the thermometer.

pumped adj British
defunct, utterly exhausted. Usually to describe a state of mind or body. The word derives from the failure of the Greenland Pump in the middle of the century.

quality time n American
torture, as in ‘spending quality time’ with someone. The expression was restricted to military slang but has spread into popular usage, notably as a niche term on pornographic websites.

shanty adj British
intrusive, unwelcome, pushy. Derogatory origins: a shanty town dweller.

shruggle n
grudging acceptance of a hateful necessity.
‘The Schultz/Hideki plan to rebuild the city on rafts met with a resounding shruggle.’
(Guardian, 28 February 2038)

towner n British
abbreviated: shanty town dweller, a refugee. Originally specific to the Surrey Hills and North Downs.

trashware n
1. American the fashion for accumulating technological gadgetry under the skin
2. World Standard English contraband trade in human organs, implicitly of dubious quality and/or provenance.

umbrellaphant n Irish
a person who, by staying under shelter to avoid the weather, has grown extremely fat.

Vera n British
a girl or woman addicted to virtual reality, or VR. Subsequently, the term has been extended to anybody who attempts to escape the relentless horror of contemporary life.

Yangtze fish n Australian
oxymoron, a contradiction in terms.

Gregory Norminton has published four novels, most recently Serious Things (Sceptre). This piece is taken from a forthcoming collection of stories. He lives in Edinburgh.

A Brief History of Combat Simulation

webmaster — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 10:00:06 +0000

Standing in front of the bay windows 
of my crisply vectored apartment 
wearing a promotional tee-shirt 
I got free from a box manufacturing company, 
looking out over the red light district 
on the lower east side of the city 
and wondering where I’m going to find my next job, 
it’s easy to forget that none of this is real.

Catch me on a bulletin board
and I’ll talk of my teenage years on Mars,
the fog bank that used to wait for me at the end of my street.
The universe felt so hopelessly unfinished.
I owned a gun that never ran out
and wandered through abandoned processing plants 
looking for something to be afraid of. 
The sky looked like a painting of the sky.
I titled it “Kronos Sandstorm and Landscape with Items.”
Buildings were still drawing themselves 
as I ran up the stairwell.

Sometimes we hunted the fog; sometimes
the fog hunted us, but it was worst for my father,
caged in a universe built purely
of flickering green text until the age of thirty,
by which point specificity had driven him insane,
his wax cylinder voice crackling over the desert.

I’m not sorry. Such advances are irrepressible:
we’ve moved into the cities, simulated Biblical traumas,
secured our magnificent fractal coastlines.
There’s nothing left out there to map.

Just shallow memories of how it used to be.
Ghost stories exchanged endlessly across a dry bar
in a virtual reconstruction of Manchester,
where folks can still remember how it all began:

when “all of this was just a co-ordinate in the planetarium”,
a gun sight in an unlit room that we decided to call home.

Ross Sutherland is a founding member of live poetry collective Aisle 16. His debut collection Things To Do Before You Leave Town is published this month by Penned in the Margins and has been described by Luke Kennard as ‘refreshingly fearless and bleakly funny’.

Waking up to the Future

webmaster — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 10:00:01 +0000

Something is wrong. Something is very wrong.

I’m lying in bed with my eyes closed, just waking up, feeling my teeth with my tongue (aware of an unpleasant film) and half-consciously exploring the crevices and gaps. Except – they are not my teeth.
I’m not awake enough to freak out; I’m more confused than scared. I tap the enamel with my finger-nail in the hope of proving something, I suppose I’m hoping it’s a dream. It doesn’t make sense otherwise.
I’m still a bit groggy and confused from yesterday. An NHS surgical team came round to do a home hernia-op on me and they insisted on giving me a general anaesthetic. I’d been told it would be a simple operation with a local, that’s why I’d arranged it while Keith was way, but when they arrived they insisted on the general without telling me why. Bloody NHS, they don’t explain anything anymore. And what have they done to my teeth?

I move my hands over my naked body under the covers. There’s nothing there. No dressings, no scar, not even any discomfort. Is that possible? Although the medical teams have come a long way with these home ops during the past few years, I expected something. None of it makes sense. And yet, as my hands continue to explore other parts of my body, I begin to understand. Yes, something is wrong. Something is very wrong.

I pull back the covers and am convulsed with an involuntary shudder. It isn’t that I don’t like what I see – everything seems to be where it should be and, objectively, everything looks good – better than it has for a long time. But none of it is mine. There is someone else’s body where mine should be. I jump out of bed and quickly get to the big mirror in the bathroom. Jesus Christ! What is going on? Here I am, a seventy-five-year-old man two weeks into retirement, looking at a thirty-something in the mirror. And, what is more, whoever it is doesn’t look anything like me.

At this point the panic is definitely rising. It’s not a nice feeling looking in the mirror and seeing someone else looking back at you – take my word for it. Who is this character? What does he want? I grab my shoulders in frustration and have an unrealistic urge to tear the flesh of the imposter from my bones.
But it isn’t only my appearance that has changed – I’m moving differently. I leapt out of bed like a bloody athlete and I haven’t done that in years. Maybe there’s no point ripping the flesh away – maybe they aren’t my bones.

My heart is beating unbelievably fast. At least, I hope it’s my heart – I’m not sure of anything at the moment. I don’t know what to do, think or feel. This is not something I’ve ever been confronted with or even considered before. And what about Keith? He doesn’t even like it when I change the type of toothpaste we use. I deliberately arranged for the operation to be done while he was away because of his nerves; he would have had kittens at the thought of the medical team cutting me open. How will he cope with this?

I continue to look at the new me in the mirror. I suppose some people regard this as progress, these total body-replacements, but if they were going to give me a new body why didn’t they do it while I was working? I could have done with a younger body when they raised the retirement age to seventy-five. These last few years have been a hell of a struggle. It’s too late now.

I sit on the edge of the bath and wonder what to do. To my surprise, after the initial shock, I’m not too worried or scared. It’s partly because the guy in the mirror is young and good looking. I mean, it isn’t exactly a Kafka trip, waking up as a giant beetle, is it? What’s so frightening about looking good? Some people would pay a fortune to look like this. And there’s no real reason for Keith to be upset. It isn’t every day a seventy-seven year-old gay finds himself living with a good looking boy like me. Even if the bones aren’t mine, the brain must be, because I’ve still got my thoughts and memories. I’m still me underneath, aren’t I?

Another reason I’m no longer panicking is because I know the probable cause of the problem. Those NHS people are always making cock-ups. Transplanting the wrong organs, taking organs from non-donors, removing body parts that are okay. I heard they incinerated a whole ward of sleeping patients by mistake not long ago. They’ve done the wrong op on me, that’s obvious. So presumably they can undo it.

I decide to phone Keith. He’s at our country cottage, getting everything ready for the big move. He’s become claustrophobic of late and seems to need the open sky. Now I’ve retired, there’s nothing to stop us moving to the cottage.

‘Hello?’ Keith says, sounding as nervous as ever.
‘Hi, it’s me.’
‘Sorry? Who is this?’
‘It’s me, Brien! What’s the matter, are you going deaf?’
‘Brien? Why are you putting on that funny voice?’
‘What! Oh God… Listen, something weird has happened and I suppose it has affected my voice as well.’
‘What d’you mean? Why can’t you talk normally?’
‘You’d better sit down. I’ve got something to tell you. Don’t start going on until you’ve heard me out. It’s going to sound a bit strange, but it will make sense if you just let me finish.’

Which, of course, he doesn’t. I should have known. I’ve never heard such screaming. I consider putting the phone down on him, he’s making such a racket. The only reason I don’t is because I think he might have a heart attack.

Eventually, he starts to calm down. He gives me a hard time for not telling him about the operation and for letting strangers into the apartment while he wasn’t there, but I don’t mind because I know it means he cares. He says he’ll drop everything and come straight back.

‘In the meantime, you’d better contact someone to explain what’s happened,’ he says.
‘Why? Don’t you want to check me out first? Maybe you’ll prefer me like this? We don’t have to tell anyone.’
‘Don’t start, Brien, please. You know what I’m like. If you don’t report the mistake and you’re found out, God knows what might happen.’
‘What can they do?’
‘What can’t they do! How many people have we known who have disappeared? How many bodies and bits of bodies are being kept in formaldehyde on laboratory shelves? What sort of retirement would that be?’
Even though he’s serious, I can’t help laughing. I knew he’d make me feel better. Keith worries so much that anyone else’s worries seem nothing by comparison.
‘It’s not funny, Brien. Just remember how long we’ve been waiting to be free. Please, don’t mess it up.’
‘Okay, okay. I’ll get straight on to it, I promise.’

As soon as I hang up, I switch on the computer. I swore on my retirement that I’d never switch it on again, but it’s the only way of contacting anyone in authority these days. You’re not supposed ever to switch off your home computer; Keith nearly had a fit when I did it. But I’m sick of the way the authorities use them to keep an eye on us – or, rather, on the dwindling workforce. If the government concentrated on making the world a nicer place there wouldn’t be a dwindling workforce. Sod them, I was finished with all that. I was retired. That’s why I figured no-one would bother about my little protest. Who cares what an ex-worker does? Once you’ve finished working you’re just a liability as far as the authorities are concerned.

The trouble is, the young man who is at the moment inhabiting my space is a mite young to retire. I go back to the bathroom for another look. I’m getting used to him already. And although I don’t want to boast because I know it isn’t strictly me, he is extremely good-looking. A nice straight nose, dark hair and perfect teeth. I could have done very well in my youth looking like this. Maybe I still can? There’s a thought. This could be an old man’s dream come true. I could dump old Keith and have the time of my life. Why not?
Shit, someone’s ringing the doorbell. That’s what I get for having mean thoughts about Keith.

I don’t rush to answer it because I’m nervous about being seen. It’s like I’m wearing someone else’s clothes, except more serious. I mean, who’s the imposter here, him or me? I wouldn’t mind so much if there was a possibility of it being a friend at the door – it would be a laugh to see their reaction to the new me – but that’s unlikely because only government officials are out and about at this time. All the workers are busy working, and retired people are encouraged to stay at home during working hours.

As I throw on some clothes, I notice again how easy everything is. No more rheumatism in the shoulder, no more hernia. There is definitely something to be said for being young. I’m beginning to think I really should keep quiet about what’s happened.

Two community policemen are standing on the doorstep. These gooks would have frightened me once with their tight black uniforms and sour faces, but I’m too long in the tooth for that now.

‘Why aren’t you at work?’ the younger one asks.
‘I’m retired,’ I say. ‘I’ve done my time.’
The looked at each other other.
‘Oh, I see, you think…. No, I’m not as young as I look. What happened was, the NHS boys came round yesterday to do a little home op on me and someone obviously dropped the proverbial bollock…’
‘You’d better come with us,’ the first one says.

I don’t protest. If you argue with these characters it only makes matters worse. That’s the trouble with living in a bureaucracy-laden state; once a cock-up happens no-one wants to take responsibility for it and it takes forever to sort out. I can cope with that. I’ve done nothing wrong and I’ve got plenty of time. The only part that annoys me is when they won’t let me leave a note for Keith.

They take me down to the local police department. It’s just as well I’ve got plenty of time because once they get me there they leave me in a room on my own for the rest of the morning. They don’t even give me a coffee. They must know of the cock-up, that had to be why they came for me, but no-one is about to admit anything.

Eventually, I’m led into a poky box of an office where a balding official is sitting at a desk and staring at a computer screen. He looks as though he enjoys his work as much as I used to enjoy mine – and the poor bastard has at least another twenty years to go. I sit down and shake my head in sympathy and dismay.
‘I see you haven’t any children,’ he says after a while, without looking at me.
What that has to do with anything I don’t know. He must know I’m gay, it’ll be in my records; so why mention kids?

‘A perk of my old job,’ I say. ‘I was given special dispensation. I was in Maintenance.’
‘I am aware of that,’ he says. Then, almost mumbling to himself, he adds, ‘No wonder we’ve got problems, people avoiding their responsibilities…’
‘Is that why we’ve got problems?’ I can’t help saying.
‘Do you think the labour shortage is amusing?’
‘Not particularly. But it’s not my problem – I’ve done my bit and now I’m retired. I was only waiting to get my hernia fixed before moving to the countryside.’
‘It’s a bit late for that.’
‘Come again?’
He looks at his screen, then back at me.
‘People like you think nothing of trying to avoid your responsibilities, do you?’
‘What’re you talking about? What am I doing here?’
‘You have a visitor. This interview will be resumed shortly.’
I shrug. He doesn’t worry me. I’ve done nothing wrong.

A policeman opens the door and I’m escorted along a narrow corridor and shown into a room where I see Keith waiting. It’s nice to see his familiar old face, even though it looks grey with worry. As soon as the policemen leaves, I rush over to the old dear to give him a hug. I’m horrified to see him recoil.

‘What’s the matter?’ I ask.
‘Who…who are you?’
‘Oh God, don’t start that. It’s me. How many times do I have to explain?’
‘Brien? But…you can’t be.’
‘What’s the matter, don’t you fancy kissing a bit of young stuff for a change?’
‘No, I don’t! Especially not here. This place gives me the creeps.’
The poor thing is near to tears
‘How did you know I was here?’ I ask.
‘They were waiting for me at the apartment. I’ve been in an interrogation room for over an hour.’
‘You’ve been interrogated? Why?’
‘I don’t know! They were horrible to me….horrible.’
His eyes are full of tears. I try to comfort him but I can tell he feels uneasy in my arms. He doesn’t believe it’s me. Poor old Keith, he’s never been able to cope with the unexpected.
While I’m still wondering how to make him feel better, his whole body shudders violently.
‘What’s the matter?’ I ask.
‘I told them we’d been together for more than twenty years.’
‘So?’
‘Look at you! You’re not more than thirty. What does that make me? This is all a set-up. They’re going to put me away!’
‘Don’t be silly, of course they’re not.’

Someone opens the door behind me. I turn to see two policemen. Then I look back at Keith. I want to hug him and I’m sure he wants to hug me, but neither of us dare do anything. One of the policemen leads him away. He looks back, his eyes still full of fear and brimming with tears. The other policemen takes hold of my arm and returns me to the balding official with the computer. I still don’t know what’s going on, but I know it’s more serious than I thought.

The official indicates for me to sit down.

‘According to our records, you were informed two weeks ago that you would be given the next available body.’
‘First I’ve heard of it,’ I say.

He’s playing with me. He knows damn well our computer was switched off, but I’m not about to admit anything. Just because I’m more worried than I was doesn’t mean I’m going to break.

‘Listen,’ I say, forcing myself to sound upbeat, ‘someone’s obviously made a mistake. I don’t need a new body; I was happy with the old one, apart from the hernia. Why can’t you just arrange for me to get my old body back and give this one to someone else? I’m not going to file a complaint or anything. I just want to get back to being like I was yesterday.’

‘That is no longer an option.’
‘Why not?’
He looks at me over the screen.
‘Your old body was incinerated early this morning.’
I feel the blood drain from my face.
‘There’s no problem,’ he continues. ‘You’ll keep the body you’ve been given – that’s why you were given it.’
‘But why? I didn’t ask for a new one.’
‘You don’t know?’ he says, almost sympathetically. And then he smiles without humour: ‘You are very lucky. You have been selected to go on. You have been given another body for the specific purpose of an extended work-life.’
‘Go on? With work? But I don’t want to. I’m retired!’
He shakes his head.
‘All retirement has been cancelled for skilled workers. There aren’t enough of you. You should be flattered. Your retirement has been commuted to a two-week break, which expires tomorrow. You will report back to your depot Monday morning.’
‘But….for how long?’
He smiles his humourless smile again.
‘It looks to me that the body you have now is good for another forty years’ work.’
‘Another forty years! Is that what all this is about?’
He shrugs.
My head is spinning. I can’t believe what is happening.
‘And Keith?’ I say after a while. ‘What about him?’
‘Forget him.’
‘Forget him? You’re talking about the man I…’
‘I said, forget him. And if you want to save yourself trouble in the future, I suggest you start looking for a wife – a real one – one who can reproduce.’
‘I don’t want a wife who can reproduce. Apart from not being that way inclined, I’m too old for that crap. I’m retired. I want to live in my country cottage with Keith and….’
He switched off the computer and stood up.
‘Wait a minute. I haven’t finished!’ I said.
He opened the door for the two policemen to enter.

Mel Fawcett is a carpenter, biker, father and writer. He is based in Camden Town. His stories have recently appeared in 34th Parallel, Apt, Twisted Tongue and Espresso Fiction.