Ectopia (3 page)

0.04

12.10pm

I let Malik in through the gate. That's OK so long as it's one at a time. Two visitors counts as mass assembly. One's just a social.

Dad's on us before the gate closes, iron spike in hand.

- Out! he says.

Malik stands still. Dad steps closer and lifts the spike.

- I'm not here to see you, Malik tells him - I'm here for Bender.

The name throws Dad. It's not how he knows me. He gets his focus though. Looks quickly up at Karen's room to check she's not there, flirting, like he thinks she's doing all the time. Then he opens the gate and levels the spike as a barrier that he holds in both hands to push us out on the street.

- I know what you're doing, you little brown wanker, he tells Malik - Checking the layout. You're the scout. First the scout, then the gang. I've been young. I've been horny. I'm no fool. You're after my daughter. Give me time. I'll finish my defenses. No brats will get past me then. Now get out. Both of you. We don't need friends in this house, Steven. It's not a place for friends. If you come back, come back on your own.

 

- Your Dad's a drek, Malik says - I smelt it on him.

- He drinks, I admit - But he stays home.

- He steps out on the street and he's a drek. He does that, Bender, and we get him. I promise.

- Thanks, Mal, I say.

Your best mate offers to slice your Dad, you've got to thank him. It's a big deal.

 

He's got the stats on yesterday's case on printout in the back pocket of his shorts. We drop over the garden wall of a burnout from last summer, and make a cushion of brown weeds. Malik sits cross legged and spreads the stats out on his thighs. It's hard to concentrate on the paper. My eyes wander. Dark hair slicks his legs. His skin's from Asia, he says. It's some genetic throwback makes his skin so brown. I like it.

- She must be busting to get out of there, your sister, Malik says - Does he feel her up, that creep of a Dad of yours? Does he stick her one himself? Makes you sick just thinking of it. You should break her loose, Bender. Bring her out on the street. We could all go running. Far away.

- All?

- You, me and the sister.

Dad's sick, but he's not dumb. He smelt Malik right. He was casing our house. Sniffing round Karen.

Malik can have her. I don't mind. I'm not jealous. So long as he has me too.

- So what about the stats? I ask.

Malik snaps his attention back to em.

The facts: Yesterday's hit. The drek who begged for it on the reckie.

Name – Jan Stovok

A Polak or something. I didn't know you got blond Polaks.

Occupation – genebank profiler

Some job. Reading genetic samples. Picking who gets into the gene pool. Guess he'd profiled himself. Ruled himself out of the future.

Age – 25

So well past it.

Blood sample – alcohol count 0%

 

- It's a mess, Malik says - We sliced a wrong one. He didn't have a drop of licker in him.

- Your mess. You're the prime examiner. You broke the bottles.

- Mess is mess, Bender. We all share in this. You and him? You eyed each other. I saw you. He looked at you, you looked back. You must have seen something.

I see what Malik's getting at and go on conscious flashback.

Shit.

The glow. Jan Stovok had an off-white glow. It haloed his whole body.

- You screwup, Bender. You saw it. You saw the glow and never let on. You say I'm prime examiner? What about you? You're the fucking official empath.

- I was checking the physical.

- Screw you. You had the hots. Eye contact, and you gave up control. He wanted to be meat. He made you see him as meat.

- You checked this out?

- Look at the bottom of the stats. His dosage is down there. He was no drek. He's never been a drek. He was on quals. Just like you. Just like me. We sliced him, Bender. Sliced one of our own.

- Did the bodysquad get him?

- We went back. When the results came through. When you were tucked up in bed. Jan Stovok's in the communal dump. He won't be missed. Not for a day or so. We've got his card. His computer clearance code's in there somewhere. Hand it to your brother. See what he can run on it.

- Paul's not into quals.

- Your little brother's got his own highs. Natural neural connections. You've seen blue light zipping from his brain, you said. That's what we need. I'm not saying you can trust him. Just use him.

- When?

- Now.

- You've talked this through? This is a mob rule?

Malik grabs hold of my forearm, I grab hold of his. That's democracy. That's how we show it. It's been talked through. This is a mob rule.

- This is a good place, I say, changing the subject, nodding at the garden - How about a qualrun here sometime, just you and me?

Malik smiles. His eyes glitter, his teeth shine. - Great, he says – Let's do it.

The fucker. He winds me round him with promises like this, every time. I'm happy as I jump the wall. I swear it.

I'm near home before I see I'm taken for a sucker. Malik's not into me like I'm into him. I don't have to be an empath to know that.

 

10.20pm

Paul's still running Jan Stovok's card. He's goggled up and giggling. That computer flashes mindcontrol or something. He'll be plugged in for hours. We won't get a sane sound out of him till daylight.

What a twisted bustup of a day.

0.05

6.50am

Paul's asleep … I got up as he came to bed.

I've been to the reckie. Picked up the dirt where Jan Stovok bled. The dust where he died was red. Red from wine, and red from his blood. I stripped down and rubbed the dust over my body. All over. I snorted it. Poked it into my ears. Dusted my hair. Stuffed it into the crack of my ass.

Grit for the day. A way of getting real.

No-one knows I work like this. It's an empath thing I guess. When others fight, what I do looks like standing still, but it takes it out of me. It drains me. Coming to the death scene after, getting naked and rubbing myself in the blood of battle, it's charged me again. Like if the moon's shining I lay down flat on the earth and stare up into it. That charges me too.

There's no handbook for empaths. You just do what seems right.

 

11.23am

It's girl hour on the computer. Karen's going live with other locked up lastgaspers. Paul hangs out by the back wall, eyes closed, counting down the seconds till Karen's hour is up. Countdown started at 3,600, the moment he was prised away from the keyboard. It'll stop at zero, when girlchat's over and his fingers scrabble back into control. His brain's on automatic clock. He's got second-counting down to precise science.

- Get a life, I tell him.

He hears it. He takes it in. He keeps his eyes shut but answers back.

- Karen's on girlchat. You're fucking off to group session. You both live for time with others like you're nothing on your own. And that's too fucking right. You are nothing on your own. Fuck off and play.

He talks but his brain's still counting. He hasn't missed a beat. His brain's a freakshow. His mouth's on automatic crap. His face is as slack as oatmeal.

- Go fuck yourself, I say.

It's not clever but it's clever enough for Paul. I leave him to his own company. It's what he deserves.

 

8pm

The buzz is we're all excited.

Some of us are excited so we're all excited. It's a group thing. I popped a qual to feel it.

So how's it feel?

I'm coming down now. My brain's kicking in. So the feeling's got two sides.

Side 1.

The high. So fucking great.

Group tremors get to me. This new excitement, it's not a cut to the chase excitement. It's hope and greed and lust. It's coming up for air in the sewer and spotting the sky. It's thinking age won't come before triumph. It's running somewhere other than circles. There's shit to look forward to so it's living for now but life's crap, so it's sensing there's a moment better than now and it's coming. Eyes open, cogs stir, cocks stir, we grin, it's fucking great.

Side 2.

Coming down.

There's running and fucking and jerking-off and quals. Qual moments like dancing and group tremors. On the highs you forget the downings. The highs lose gloss on the downings. Highs are highs, downings are everything.

 

10.53pm

Paul lies on top of the bed, playing with himself. He doesn't come. Just arches his back and brings himself to the point of coming again and again.

He's got this thing about wasting seed. Thinks if he builds himself up like this and holds back, he'll have a great store of quality come when statesquad calls. He'll fill a tube right up on first pull and be the wonder of the reprobank.

- What's going on in your brain, dickhead? I ask him – When you close your eyes do you get zapped with streams of numbers? Do your fantasies come in binary code? Is that how it is, nursing hardons for clones they'll never release from a lab?

He opens his eyes, then closes em and starts pulling on himself again.

- You wait, Paul, I tell him – It's not long now. Turn sixteen, they'll shut down your education, you'll be running teensquad like the rest of us.

- No … fucking … way, he says.

He misjudges and come shoots up his chest to splatter white gunk on his chin.

- You've seen my scores, he says when he's recovered a bit, talking to the ceiling – Fuck with the system, the system fucks with you. You and your teensquad, you're all fucked. Do you think they need you to chase down dreks? Do you think statesquad couldn't clean every drek out of society in a morning if they wanted? Teensquad's not a job. It's not a role. It's a channel for the aggression of fuckbrains like you. It keeps you dumbucks busy till they're ready for the cull. They keep teensquads going till they choose to wipe em out. That's your future, that's your present, that's your history. Extinction. Me, I'm digital boy. The system transmits my profile as its model. They'll use me, Steven. They have to. See this?

He wipes the edge of his hand along his chest and up to his chin, gathering up his come, and holds it out toward me.

- Scores count. I'm up in the nineties. Hitting perfection for a model citizen. All of that perfection, every scrap of it, is encoded in my sperm. And I'm only fifteen. You wait till I'm sixteen. The legal age of harvesting. I get to sixteen, then you'll see. They'll fill freezers with my spunk. I'll have enough spawn to populate whole cities.

- No chance, I tell him – If they know you that well, their profile's that deep, then they know your flaw. Your genetic flaw.

I've got him now. He wipes his hand dry on the bed and sits up to look at me.

- It's a fatal gene, I explain - You caught it from Dad. Reproduce. Reproduce. Reprofuckinjuice. You've got the breeding gene. That crazy fix on living through offspring instead of through yourself. You'll die of it, Paul. It'll be the end of you.

- It's called being straight, he shoots back – It's called family life.

I laugh. Not for long. Laughter never lasts long. Just a few snorts to show him what a prick he is.

He sighs and lies back again, talking on to the ceiling.

- You won't understand. You can't. You're the tag end of a different species. You, your teensquadders, everyone older than you, you're heading for extinction. You failed. You came to an end. You came at the very end. Karen pops out from Mom's womb as a girl, and the whole universe turns itself inside out. You pop out minutes later as a boy, but those minutes include before and after, you're two twins with an age in between you. No girl's been born since Karen. Only boys have been born since you. Parents got selective. New boys are terminated when they're first scanned. There's no point adding to the problem. Mom and Dad scored high though. I got through. I'm an exception. I'm new wave. I come along in a time of new beginnings.

It's worse than I thought.

- They've got you, I tell him – You've been cruising the message boards. Picking up all their master race shit.

- It's not shit. It's obvious. Earth can't sustain us all. We've got to be selective. We've got to breed the finest from the few. That's my job. I was born to be a breeder. One of the few.

- You know that thing I do? I tell him – When I look into the future and get it right? You know I've never done it for you till now?

I've got him again. He sits up.

- I've never done it, I tell him - coz you've not got one. I've tried. I look into that space where your future should be. It's blank. A total blank. You've not got one, Paul. There's no future for you. This is it. This moment is it. That wank you've just had? It's probably the highlight of your whole fucking life.

- You mean that? he asks.

- I wasn't going to tell you. It seems wrong though, holding it back.

- I've wondered, he says – Wondered till now what side of the divide you were on. Were you the last of those that could have been a girl, or the first of us who had to be boys. Now I know. You can't see it. You really can't. You're blind to the new future.

- You're an atav, I tell him – Your brain's caught in some history program. Future? Wait till you join a teensquad. You'll get it then. On teensquad we're not stuck on breeding. We're a team. We don't need more like us. We're good as we are. When we're gone, we're gone.

Paul looks at me.

It's not compassion. Not even gloating. His eyes dilate. He's taking me in, looking for failings, finding his next step.

The last boy standing. That's what he wants to be. He'll take it that far if he has to.

 

Lights out.

 

The downing of another day.