Ectopia (17 page)

I don't see the slit. I feel the black. It prods me awake.

You stink, he says – This room stinks.

He steps across the room and pushes open the window. It's a new window that flaps open. The glass smashes against a gang of moths. They fly in a curve to sweep inside and batter against the bare lamp on the landing. They smash shadows against its white light. Orange light comes in from the street to show me ex-Dad's face. Look at ex-Dad's face and you see the skeleton inside. The face is all skeleton, old skin and bristle.

- You're such a waste, he says – Times I've slipped off a rubber and weighed the come in the palm of my hand before flushing it away. I think of all the millions and millions of sperm I've pumped out just to let em die. It's enough to repopulate the whole planet Earth with seed left over for Mars. I think of that, of all that potential, then I think of you. I look at you, lying there like a long streak of piss. I wonder what devious quality you had in your little sperm brain to wriggle your way to the top. Whatever it was, it must have dropped off with your little sperm tail, for you've sure got no quality now. You shame me. You're like vomit. I look at you and wonder how something so slimy and yellow ever splattered out of my insides.

He's talking filth, but it's poetry in its way. Words often fail him and he hits out. Now he's gushing. He's on a roll.

- You know why only boys have been born since you poked your head into the world? I've got a new theory. It's to make up for you. You're evolution's end, Steven. Evolution got to you and found itself at the dark end of a blind alley. It cut its losses and started again. Like Eve was a rib ripped out of Adam, it had to get its first building block right. You were the template for everything that's wrong about a man. Starting from you it had to build an opposite. It had to produce a real man.

He's speaking faster. Air begins to whistle round the edges of his voice. I get it now. His words are like moths and the lamp. They're flapping round some glint of an idea in that blacked-out mind of his. Hell is ex-Dad's imagination. Hell has fires. The fires are ex-Dad's ideas. He catches sight of one of em and gets a warm glow. Everyone else shivers. This idea's a big one. He can't contain it. Mom's gone. Karen scares him. Paul doesn't give a shit. He's left with me. The words are beginning to fail him now. He's got one gust or two left. His revelation's close.

- You were odd when you crawled. Then you started to walk. No happy tottering for you. You picked up your feet like they were stuck to the ground with honey. You're not normal, Steven. You make me sick. You've always made me sick. The only thing good about you is that you don't look like me. That's what kept me going. That's what made me want to try again. That's how come we got Paul.

He moves closer. His stare had gone but now it's back, like he's checking out a stain.

- How's your stomach? Still poorly?

I tense. The tension shifts muscles that hurt. The hurt shows in my face. Ex-Dad spots it. Like you spot a fly you're waiting to slam as soon as it buzzes its wings. His hand strikes down. I hear it, a flat slap of skin on skin. It's a funny sound, far away like it's underwater. My knees kick out and my head tries to lift but he's got me pinned. His hand presses down on my stomach, around and around. It feels like the touch of dry bone. I yell once and that's it. My breath's gone. Tears cover my face but I'm not crying. It's just ex-Dad squeezing my eyes dry. Soo punched me and it didn't hurt like this. Nothing's ever hurt like this. Ex-Dad's good at what he does.

- Thank God for Paul, he says – You're fainting into your mattress, he's still plugged in downstairs. He's smashed every record, broken through every barrier and still he keeps on going. He's a star, and this is countdown. He turns sixteen at midnight. We'll know what Statesquad plans for him then. I expect the world. I expect the world for my boy.

The thought turns him mellow. He takes his hand away without a final punch and leaves the room.

 

Now's all there is. Lie down sick and I lie down forever. This house is no place to be. Walk from here then I can run.

I tread the stairs one step at a time, where they're firm at the edges and don't crack. Ex-Dad's in a chair in the front room, his back to me. His head dips down toward his glass. His eyes are on Paul. Paul's eyes are flashing responses to the vidscreen. I reach the hall.

Two minutes to blastoff, ex-Dad says without turning round – Good of you to stir yourself, Steven. Have you come to sing Happy Birthday to Paul?

I turn the handle on the front door. It's locked.

- Don't worry, Dad says – The place is secured. You're safe in here. Safe as houses. That streetscum of yours won't get at you tonight.

I head for the kitchen. I'm not hungry or thirsty, but some unknown masterplan says I should eat and drink. It'll distract my stomach. Give me energy.

- Here, ex-Dad says as I pass him. He holds out his whisky bottle – Pour yourself a glass of that. Be ready to join in the celebrations.

I stare at him. He's better at staring than I am. He just grins at my effort.

- Paul's been joining me, he says – We've been sharing a nightcap.

- You're both dreks.

- You think so? Then dreks win. We're the future. Here's to dreks. Here's to the future.

He lifts his glass toward Paul, downs it, then bends to pour himself another shot.

- I've got to keep this glass charged, he says – We're set to celebrate.

He checks his watch. It's a relic, an heirloom thing, with a face and three hands. The second hand spins around like it's accurate but it's always playing catch-up. The watch is always slow but it suits ex-Dad. It sets him in the past where he belongs.

- Here it comes, he says, eyes on his watch as it ticks the way to midnight in his own screwed up little world.

In real time he's locked into yesterday. Midnight's past on any clock but his. The newday's already started, taking Paul along with it.

1.03

- Twenty, ex-Dad says – Nineteen, eighteen…

Paul's juddering on his chair and his eyes flare wide. He couldn't give a fuck about Ex-Dad's countdown. Ex-Dad's voice is like the rattle of pipes before gunge spews out the taps. You ignore it. You want the result, not the noise. Paul's as keen to get away from here as anyone. He's just not a runner. He's following a different route.

His hands grip the table and shake it so the computer shakes with him. His chair spins back on its wheels and falls on its side. Paul drops to his knees but keeps his eyes on the screen. I move round to see what's exciting him.

- Six, ex-Dad says, near shouting – Five, four…

He's shouting out the seconds from his retard watch, but the realtime birthday's already struck. What's going to happen to Paul's already happening. The screen's a mess. Waves of grey are flashing down it. I don't get the fascination. Moving closer I see the waves are made of numbers but they're too small and flowing by too fast for me to make em out. No way Paul can be making sense of this. No way.

- Three, two, one, BIRTHDAY. Happy Birthday Paul! Happy Sixteen!

Dad fills his glass so he can set the bottle down, then drains the glass so that both hands are free. He lurches across to grab Paul by the shoulders. The hold steadies him. Paul stays kneeling, gripping the table, as Dad leans over his head and peers at the screen.

- What's this then, Paul? Are you making sense of all this? Is this why you're so excited? This is your assignment from Statesquad, is it? Your reward for being the highest-scoring sixteen year-old of all time?

Paul says nothing. Only stares. The waveflow down the screen stops. A message appears.

Upload complete. Press any key to continue.

Dad reaches forward and presses the space bar.

A blue H appears from the right of the screen.
It's made to look like it's twisted together out of balloons. The H bounces off the bottom of the screen then floats up to the top left corner. A red A appears. A green P. Another P, this one in pink. Paul's face begins to relax. His mouth was slack, his cheeks and jaw rigid. Now his face eases back into a smile. The balloon message fills the screen.

Happy Birthday Paul

16 Today

The balloons in the message suddenly pop. Tatters of rubber stream into the middle of the screen then merge and swell into a large yellow blob. The blob rotates as a sphere. Dots of eyes appear, the one-line slash of a mouth and two quick curves for cheeks. It's a smiley face.

Paul giggles.

- What is it Paul? Dad asks.

I put Paul's chair back on its feet and sit on it. I don't want to believe what I've seen. Dad acts like he hasn't even seen it. He reaches for the spacebar again and presses it. The smiley face shrinks till tiny then floats around the screen. It bounces off the bottom wall, the left wall and the top. When it touches the right-hand wall it evaporates like an explosion and the speakers go oink.

Paul giggles again.

- What's it doing? Dad asks Paul, Paul the wonderson, but Paul can't speak.

- It's rebuilding his basic motor skills, I tell him.

Ex-Dad looks back at me like I'm the one insane. Paul reaches his hands to the keys. He puts the index finger of his right hand on the up arrow, the index of his left on the down. He's chosen the right keys. At least they've left him that much.

- They've downloaded him, I explain.

Paul presses the up arrow. A small bar shoots up the right of the screen. The yellow smiley blob floats slowly to the right, steering itself so Paul can bat it away. He gets excited and his bar goes shooting past. His hand-eye coordination needs work but he's happy enough. He laughs as the smiley blob shatters and goes oink.

- Paul? What's up? Stop playing. Tell me what's happened.

Paul hates being touched. Dad tests the reflexes on the uploaded version. He pulls Paul's hands from the arrows and Paul puts em straight back. His back goes extra rigid but his eyes stay on the vidscreen. Dad yanks Paul's chin round and bends down to looks him straight in the eye. He's giving the stare from close quarters. It's one of his favorite tricks. Or it used to be.

He's an old dog. It's an old trick.

Paul's eyes are blank. Nothing stares back.

Dad should have looked away. He should have turned Paul's chin back to the vidscreen and let go.

The last time Dad did what he should have done I missed it.

I've heard stories about animals. Chop off a cockerel's head and it kept running around. Spill the guts of a slaughtered pig into a bathtub and they writhed and tried to slop over the sides. That's how Paul is. They've leeched his brains but his body's still running.

He snaps his head back out of Dad's grip, then smashes it forward. He stays on his knees and keeps low. As his forehead cracks against Dad's jaw I can watch Dad's eyes. They bulge like boils ready to pop. Pull the wings off flies and that's Dad's eyes, spinning round in a panic unable to fly. I'd have laughed more but my stomach still hurts.

Ex-Dad crumples. His legs fold till he's kneeling then he keeps on falling. He's ripped up the carpet by the wall and rolled it back to get at the boards. His skull's hit the carpet. That's what saves him. The carpet's old and pink and rosebudded. I hate it. Now I hate it more for saving Dad.

The smiley blob on Paul's vidscreen drifts to the right and goes oink. Paul's headbutt snatched the cord from his ears. He hears the smiley's call but looks the wrong way. Clip the umbilical cord and drop the baby to the floor, that's how he is now. He drops his hands to the floor like he's going to crawl but slides to the side. His left cheek's on the carpet, his ass in the air. He tips over till he's on his back. His arms wave and his hands kick, but not hard.

The front room's not big. Two men flailing fill it. I slide my chair back to the kitchen door and watch.

Ex-Dad's lips are moving. He's not making sense, not even making sound, just practicing. Seeing what bits of his body are still working. He opens his eyes, looks at me, then looks away. I'm not interesting enough to look at. His head still sideways on the rolled up carpet he shifts his eyes to locate Paul. He sees Paul's bare feet kicking the air. Ex-Dad screws up his nose and sniffs. He smells the air. Gags on the air. Sits up so he doesn't gag himself to death

He stares at me. Not a bad stare. It's got pressure and focus. He's coming round.

- It's not me, I tell him - Paul's shit himself.

The shit's leaking down both legs of Paul's shorts. He spreads it on the carpet as he rolls around. It serves the carpet right. That carpet's going to have to go. Ex-Dad pulls himself across the floor to stare down at Paul's face.

- Statesquad downloaded him, I explain. Stuck here in this house all his sad old life Dad doesn't get to hear the stories that buzz the streets – I've heard about it. Never seen it before. They set you eye-recognition tasks. Promise rewards for high scores. Slip braincode into the programs so all you live for is your next plug-in to vidscreen. They build levels within levels till your eye-trigger response-time matches the fastest rate of input, then gets still better. You get to the stage where your eyes don't just react to the program, they write it. That's when they upload you.

- You can't upload people.

Dad speaks like it's a command, like you can turn your ignorance into a truth if you shout it loud enough.

- They don't want bodies, I say, and point to Paul – They don't want the body called Paul. They've left us him. They've uploaded his neural capacity. It's been sucked into the computing network. Next time you log on for biofeedback, a little bit of Paul at his best will be staring back at you. That's what's left to be proud of. Now Paul can restore his neural capacity. Starting with the smiley blob game. Sit Paul in front of that and he'll build up his old skills. Another year, all his waking hours plugged into vidscreen, and he'll be uploadable again. Maybe in time for his seventeenth birthday.

- He's shit himself.

- You shouldn't have jerked his head from the screen. They sent happy birthday letters and a smiley face. They were bringing him back gently. Grabbing his head like you did, that's like slapping a sleepwalker awake. You shouldn't do it.

- Are you saying this is my fault?

He nods down at Paul's body.

- Are you saying I've turned my own son into a moron?

You reap what you sow, I could have said, but it's a lousy time for a chat. I just watch instead. Dad rolls back the carpet to get at new boards and tugs at one of em. Nails screech and one end splinters but what the fuck. The board's long and weighty enough. He brings his feet together, like he's learning to stand, and sets the board swinging. His weight's behind it as it curves around. The board smashes through the glass of the vidscreen and keeps on moving. The terminal flies and explodes on the wall.

I guess Dads work from instinct and sometimes it's right. Paul's body shudders at the crash then changes. He doesn't sit up and take an interest. Nothing like that. He just stops flailing and lies still. Ex-Dad drops the board and kneels beside him. He cradles his head then tucks an arm under Paul's legs.

- Let's clean you up, eh Paul? he says – We'll carry you upstairs, give you a bath, and put you to bed. You get some sleep and you'll be better in the morning. OK?

He lifts Paul into his arms. Paul's head flops back but his muscles aren't gone. It's just his brain can't work his neck and mouth at the same time. He sees me, some upside down version of me, and
smiles.

Paul only smiles for one thing. He's saved up for this sixteenth birthday. He got a Statesquad rating I'll never be able to match. I can read that vacant, hanging smile. I know what he thinks.

He thinks he's won.

 

I drop parsley flakes into a can of lima beans and stir em round. It's a cooking trick Mom taught me. Fresh is in the eye, she said. Make it look green and it tastes green. Green like fresh is green.

Tears wet my face as I think of Mom's cooking. Cry for the past like that and I'll melt.

I bite my tongue.

A little blood slips down with the next spoon of beans. Mom's gone. Green's gone. Ex-Mom and ex-green. A taste of blood, that's what fresh is now.

My tongue bleeds and my tears change from soft to hard. Tears like that are juicy. I bite my tongue again.

 

Dad's stripped Paul and set him in the bath. Paul's slid down till he's flat on his back. His legs are levered at one end and his chin's in his chest at the other. Dad skims his hand and pools up water to pour down Paul's body.

- You've used up the water, I say – I could have washed myself down before you filled the bath with Paul's shit.

Ex-Dad looks up at me. It's not a stare. More like twin plugholes. Paul ripped from his terminal, Dad ripped from his bottle, their eyes are the same. It's like a pebble's dropped inside em and all you get is ripples.

Dad's in full drek mode, teary-eyed and vicious all at once. No point talking to him. The only thing dreks get the point of is a knife.

The front of his shirt's streaked with Paul's shit.

- You stink, I tell him.

There's as much sense in talking to a sewer, but at least it's not a lie.

 

I'm dreaming when Karen comes in. I know coz I feel good.

I wake and the dream's gone. Dreams don't work in daylight. All I get now is a warped nightmare. I get Karen as me. Karen with the bloody nicks on her shaved head.

- Where's Paul? she says. The bandages squeezing her tits inside her chest have forced her voice higher.

It's crazy she's still called Karen. It's like she tried all these years to grow into the name and then gave up. I'd call her Egg. It's what her shaved head looks like and one sharp crack could see her shatter. But she says she's Karen and I can't point out every lie. It's not worth it.

I look across at Paul's bed. It's empty. More than empty. His sheets are piled on the floor and the mattress has gone.

- Statesquad uploaded him.

Karen tips her head to one side at the news. She blinks, and opens her eyes too wide. Turtles are doing alright, they say. They'll outlive the last humans by decades. Rip a turtle out of its shell and this is how it'll look. Like shavehead Karen, bugeyed and confused.

- Someone pull you out of a hole? I ask her – They shake you at the sun?

She tips her head the other way.

- We're twins, I tell her – You look like a sick me, you dress in my cast-offs, but that's it. Step out on the streets and you'll die. They'll kill you just for the surprise on your face. And that's OK. Like it's OK to catch butterflies coz they don't live long in any case and what the fuck else comes bright and delicate like that with wings you can stick to your skin like technicolor tattoos. Teensquads will rip that gawp from your face. Then they'll stamp it into different expressions. It'll be fun.

- I'm leaving, Karen says – I thought you might want to come but you're nothing but a coma. A teenage coma. You're too much to drag. I'll leave you here. Where's Paul?

- Did you hear nothing last night?

- I stuff my ears with wax.

- Statesquad uploaded Paul's neural capacity. It was great. A shit-hot sixteen year-old with a hard-on for his birthday treat one minute, his lips blubbering and spraying the screen like a baby the next. If you think that was funny, you should have watched ex-Dad. He was lickered up and leering like he does, smug with that at-least-I've-got-one-kid-who's-got-what-it-takes look, when this shudder goes through him. It's like his whisky's turned to piss. He stands up like there's volts shot through his ass. He gets to Paul, hooks his fingers into his shoulders, and yanks at him. The cable breaks, the connection's broken. Best-loved Paul the terminal-boy, the home fucking genius streaking to glory through his mainframe, gets jerked loose from it all. He falls to the floor as soft as a turd. Where is he now? Last time I saw him ex-Dad was spooning the shit off him in the bathroom. Paul's wasted. He won't come round again till he's plugged in and that won't happen coz ex-Dad's gone and smashed the computer.