Authors: Ben Elton
When the welcoming celebration finally ended and
Trafford had found himself a desk, Cassius strolled over
and pulled up a chair beside him.
'I would so love you to show me a little of what you do
on those big screens all day long,' Cassius said cheerfully.
'After all, I may be old but I know that I can still learn and
grow and do my best to be a better me.'
'Way to go!' shouted Princess Lovebud from where she
was introducing Cresta Fiesta to the mysteries of the office
paintball league. 'Praise the Love!'
'Praise the Love!' Cassius echoed, putting his hands
together as if in prayer and then punching the air.
Trafford glanced across the room to where Sandra
Dee was sitting quietly at her machine; her eyes had
flicked towards Cassius as he made his obsequious
display of piety. Trafford thought he saw a tiny sneer
pass across her normally impassive features.
After a little while, when Cassius was satisfied that he
and Trafford were being ignored, he leaned over Trafford's
shoulder and began to click away on his keyboard.
'Is this how you do it?' he asked innocently, while
expertly navigating the computer into the deepest recesses
of the NatDat archives. 'Is this where every second of our
lives is kept?'
Cassius steered the search program towards the year
15 BTF.
'2014 as it was known then. I've chosen it at random,' he
murmured. 'Happy with that?'
Trafford nodded and Cassius pressed the enter key.
In an instant the figures from almost a century before
were crowding the computer screen. Numbers, places,
dates, all representing tens of thousands of children who
had died before they had ever lived and before Cassius and
Trafford had been born.
'You see?' said Trafford. 'Two months . . . a week . . . a
day. If anything these children from Before The Flood died
sooner even than kids these days. Most of those that died
didn't even make it to their first birthdays. Old science,' he
whispered, 'didn't save them.'
'Apparently not,' agreed Cassius in a loud, assertive
voice, before leaning forward once more and applying
himself to Trafford's keyboard. 'But what if I do this?'
Trafford tapped the enter key and in an instant all the
figures changed.
'Do what?' Trafford asked.
'I have moved the goalposts,' Cassius replied through a
mouthful of muffin. 'I have subtracted nine months from
all the ages displayed. You will notice that the majority of
the figures are now shown as being in the negative.'
'And your point?'
'As you can see, those infants who were recorded as
dying at four and a half years old are now listed as having
died at the age of three and three-quarters. A child who
previously was listed as having died at three months now
seems to have died at
minus
six months.'
'Well, of course, you've just knocked nine months off all
the figures,' Trafford said.
'Exactly. And, as you can see, those children who
were listed as having died early in their first year are now
represented by
negative
figures. Look: four months
becomes minus five months. One month becomes
minus eight. Thousands and thousands of negative figures
representing dead children who apparently
died before they
were born
.'
'Which is clearly ridiculous. You can't die before you're
born. What are you trying to show me?' Trafford asked.
He was getting annoyed. Cassius had a rather superior
schoolmasterly manner about him which would have
been irritating even if he had been making any sense.
'That in fact these children
did
die before they were born.'
'I don't understand. All you've done is subtract a
figure . . .'
'Not any figure. Nine months. A woman's term. The
mortality figures for the years Before The Flood are not
based on the infant's date of birth. They are based on the
approximate date of
conception
.'
'I still don't—'
'Don't you see, these figures include abortion and postcoital
contraception.'
'What is post-coital contraception?'
'It was a pill a woman could take on the morning after
sex. It would effectively cause her womb to reject any
bonded cells.'
'You mean chemical abortion?'
'If you wish.'
'It's against the law.'
Trafford had been well enough educated and knew
that, in the years BTF, inducing the chemical rejection
of a pre-foetal cellular formation had been seen as a
different matter to aborting a foetus. The Temple made no
such distinction. Abortion was abortion from the first
second of conception and it was murder. The so-called
'morning-after pill' had been a not insignificant factor in
causing the Love in his anger to bring forth the flood.
'All I am pointing out to you, Trafford,' Cassius
continued with the same fixed smile on his face, 'is that
whoever compiles the infant mortality statistics does so on
the assumption that a child's life begins at the very
moment of conception.'
'Which of course it does!' Trafford insisted, looking
around nervously.
'Which it may or it may not, whatever you wish,' Cassius
replied. 'But these days the Temple does not allow abortion,
nor even post-coital contraception, and therefore current
mortality figures are calculated from the date of
birth
. In
order to compare like with like you need to count only
the
positive
numbers on these statistics from Before The
Flood, which represent only those babies that died
after
being born.'
Once more Cassius's fingers danced across the keys and
with a click he removed all the minus numbers from the
chart. The screen was suddenly almost empty.
'As you can see,' he continued, 'the truth is that there was
a time when only a tiny, tiny minority of infants failed to
reach maturity. In Britain perhaps one in two hundred, not
one in two as it is today. This was because of vaccination
and that is why I am a Vaccinator. Saving children's lives is
my calling and my sworn moral duty. It is, if you like, my
faith. I have no doubt that one day I shall pay for my
beliefs with my own life but nonetheless I must continue.'
Cassius gathered up their paper plates and cups.
'You know, Trafford,' he said quietly, 'there was once a
routine vaccination for tetanus. Had your first daughter
been born in that ignorant, wicked age Before The Flood,
she would have lived to be an adult.'
Trafford arrived back at his flat to find Chantorria
breastfeeding their baby. She was beached upon the couch,
naked save for slippers and a tea towel draped across her
two-day pubic growth.
'Hello, darling. Hello, little baby,' Trafford said to his
family. 'Hello, Barbieheart,' he added, nodding towards
the wallscreen. 'All well in the chat room?'
'Fine, thank you, Trafford,' the digital image of
Barbieheart replied through a mouthful of nachos.
Trafford leaned forward over the video games table to
kiss his wife. The room was tiny and very cluttered and it
was something of a struggle to find a way to connect his
lips with Chantorria's proffered cheek. Trafford had to
support himself as he stretched over the table by placing
his hands on Chantorria's curled-up legs.
'Ow. My veins!'
'Sorry.'
The couch was a small two-seater, only very slightly
bigger than the flat-pack it had arrived in; nonetheless it
ran the entire length of one wall. Despite this, Trafford and
Chantorria knew that they were fortunate to have so much
space. There were only three of them in the flat, which,
with its separate sleeping and living spaces, could legally
house six. The real rates of occupancy in most similar
dwellings were even more crowded than that. Any number
of extended families with as many as ten or twelve
members were living in apartments smaller than
Trafford's. The wrath of the Love had made London so
very, very small. And it was getting smaller all the time.
'Anybody sharing the joy?' Trafford enquired.
'Three,' Chantorria replied, giving a rather unenthusiastic
wave at the webcam that she had placed precariously on
the arm of the couch so that it might cover her feeding
her infant.
Trafford touched the key on his wrist top.
The faces of the three podcasters who were sharing
Chantorria's joy sprang into view on the wallscreen. Two
were mothers from elsewhere in the tenement, both naked
of course, one breastfeeding like Chantorria while the
other, who had recently lost a toddler to whooping cough,
was just there to emote. Trafford turned up the volume on
his wrist top.
'I just have to accept that all things are done for a
purpose,' the bereaved woman was saying. 'My baby is in
a better place, warm and safe in the love of the Love.'
'Hello, Tinkerbell,' Trafford said in as empathetic a tone
as he was capable of. 'You OK?'
'Coping. Thanks, Trafford. Trying to stay strong,'
Tinkerbell replied, dabbing at her eyes with pink kitchen
towel. 'I've just been saying how I know that in the end
I will be made a better me by this experience, as the
Love intends. I've been speaking to him a lot since I
lost little Gucci KitKat and he definitely wants me to
be stro . . . stron . . .'
The strength that the Love had wished upon Tinkerbell
deserted her. She broke down and wept. Trafford could
hear a background chorus of sympathetic voices
offering comfort.
'Babes . . . babes . . .
babes
.'
'Be strong, girl. The Lord will protect little KitKat.'
'The pain passes. It always does in the end.'
Trafford clicked on the share counter and a figure
appeared in the corner of the screen telling him that,
including him and Chantorria, there were forty-seven
people online sharing in Tinkerbell's pain.
'Forty-seven friends,' Chantorria said brightly. 'Lovely,
Tinkerbell, we're all really getting behind you.'
Chantorria did not add that this number stood in
marked contrast to the mere three people who were
sharing her joy, but Trafford knew that this was what she
was thinking. He knew that Chantorria felt their lack of
popularity keenly. They weren't despised particularly, they
were merely not popular, and having only three people
wanting to watch her breastfeed made her feel vulnerable.
People who were neither popular nor notorious were easy
targets for bullying. It hadn't happened yet, not to any
significant extent, but if any of the key players in their
tenement
did
take it upon themselves to have a problem
with them, they would be defenceless. In such a tight-knit
community as theirs, isolation was not healthy.
This was why Chantorria constantly nagged Trafford to
be more solicitous in his attentions to Barbieheart.
Barbieheart was the principal eyes and ears of the
building, an enormous, globular, housebound sentinel
who, although too big to leave her apartment, occupied
every room. Barbieheart could be a powerful ally but she
could also be a dangerous enemy, and which she became
depended entirely on the amount of flattery and face time
she was accorded. Despite his best intentions Trafford
found it almost impossible to bring himself to give her the
respect she considered her due.
'I've only got three,' Chantorria said with a forced laugh,
before adding in a stage whisper, 'and one of them's
a perv.'
The third spectator on the wallscreen, a middle-aged
man, pretended not to hear. Like Chantorria, he had a tea
towel on his lap.
Chantorria completed Caitlin Happymeal's feed while
Trafford defrosted two lasagnes and chilled a three-litre
bottle of Pepsi. They shared their meal over the video
game table. Trafford had tried to put a cloth on it to block
out the never-ending cycle of adverts for new games that
would shortly be available for download. He found it hard
to focus on his food among all the leaping, cavorting,
fighting, pixilated figures but Chantorria insisted that the
game table remain uncovered.
'We're online, Trafford,' she admonished him. 'Let's try
not to look any weirder than we have to.'
Trafford, knowing the logic, acquiesced. If video games
and leaping pixilated figures were fun, then clearly the
more of them that a person experienced the more fun they
had. What was not to like?
They ate in silence, silence at least inasmuch as they did
not speak to each other. The room was anything but silent,
of course. There was a karaoke reality show playing on
both laptops and the news was being streamed to the
various phones and communitainment devices that lay
about the room. There was an ad for a current blockbuster
movie running on the back of the Rice Krispies box and of
course the local community on the wallscreen were all
emoting. On top of this, the noise from all the other
laptops, communications devices and cereal boxes in the
tenement could be heard through the plasterboard walls
of the apartment.
The heat was oppressive, as it always was. Trafford
watched the sweat beading on Chantorria's upper lip as
she ate. It ran in rivulets down between her breasts. The
baby began to scream, testy in the heat as they all were.
'You two are quiet,' the voice of Barbieheart barked. 'Join
in, why don't you?'
Chantorria jumped like a startled bird and instantly
turned up the volume on Tinkerbell's face on the screen.
'I just feel lost and totally sick and numb,' Tinkerbell
said as her voice rose above the semi-muted babble. There
was such pain etched across her youthful countenance,
sufficient pain even to carve lines of anguish across the
rock-smooth solidity of her heavily Botoxed brow. 'Like a
piece of me has been cut out. I don't know what I'd do if I
didn't know God was there for me.'
'I'm here for you too!' Chantorria blurted and Trafford
winced at the obvious neediness of her tone. Did she not
understand that bullies feasted on weakness? If Chantorria
did not wish to be treated as a victim then she should not
advertise herself as a victim waiting to happen.
For a moment Trafford found his thoughts flitting to
Sandra Dee, the natural-breasted young woman whom
Princess Lovebud had tried to bully at the office. She was
not a victim. She had returned Princess Lovebud's stare
and in that small act of defiance she had effectively
defended herself. Trafford had noticed this phenomenon
before. The mob could be confused by displays of
individual courage. But it was very hard to be brave.
'Thanks, Chantorria, that's really, really awesome,' said
Tinkerbell through her tears. For a moment Chantorria
smiled but then Tinkerbell added nastily, 'Although I'm
not sure a young mum with a healthy baby to put on her
booby is exactly who I need to be there for me right now.'
Chantorria recoiled as if she had been slapped. She
reddened deeply. Trafford watched as not only her face but
her shoulders, arms and whole chest throbbed with
blotchy mortification, her nipples almost disappearing as
her skin around them burned with the colour of fear
and embarrassment.
'I didn't mean . . .' Chantorria stammered.
But Tinkerbell had moved on; she had so much that she
needed to say. It was her grief, after all.
'One good thing is my psychic,' she was saying. 'You
know, Honeymilk? She's been channelling my little boy
since he left me and he's told her he's happy where he's
gone. Honeymilk is sure of that, he's happy and he's
waiting for me with his big sister who went before.'
'Has KitKat learned to talk since he went to Heaven
then?' Trafford asked.
He said the words without thinking. He was furious
with Tinkerbell for the brutal way she had dismissed
Chantorria's efforts to bond. What was more, he
was also hugely irritated by the ridiculous notion
that Honeymilk had special powers. It was obvious
to Trafford that Honeymilk, the self-appointed
neighbourhood psychic, was a stupid, cloddish woman,
a busybody, a gossip and a liar to boot. The idea that
this moronic creature was having conversations with
toddlers who had died before they learned to speak was
simply absurd.
Trafford certainly knew
why
he had made the comment
but nonetheless he wished that he hadn't. Chantorria's
face had gone from bright red to ghostly white. She was
terrified. Trafford had dissed a bereaved mother about her
departed kiddie. Nothing, literally nothing, could be more
calculated to offend the community.
Barbieheart, who seemed capable of listening to forty
conversations at once, was on it like a shot.
'
What
did you just say?' she thundered.
'I . . .' Trafford struggled for a reply.
'Are you suggesting that Honeymilk
hasn't
been
channelling little KitKat?' Barbieheart asked in horror.
'He didn't mean that!' Chantorria bleated.
'Honeymilk . . .
feels
what my baby's thinking,'
Tinkerbell protested.
Tinkerbell was confused. After all, it was so unlikely
that anybody would publicly diss an emoting
dysfunctional that she was not entirely sure she had heard
Trafford correctly.
'Of course she feels it,' Barbieheart shouted furiously.
'Honeymilk is a brilliant psychic. She's the dogs.
Honeymilk is so there for all of us—'
'Yes, yes, that's right,' Trafford butted in, knowing that he
must extricate himself from this potentially lethal faux pas
before the other forty or so people sharing Tinkerbell's
pain began to take an interest in what he had said. 'That's
exactly what I
meant.
'
'What? What did you mean?' Barbieheart demanded
suspiciously.
'How . . . how . . . wonderful it is that, through
Honeymilk, Tinkerbell has the comfort of knowing her
baby's feelings.'
'Then what did you mean by asking if KitKat had learned
to talk?' Barbieheart asked, still far from convinced.
'Well, I meant that the fact that Gucci KitKat could not
talk when he was alive must make the feelings of his spirit
all the more intense.
Like
talking . . . but even better! An
innocent baby can say in
feelings
so much more than we
could ever say in words, and thank the Love we have
Honeymilk to . . . to interpret that for us. It's as if Gucci
KitKat
could
talk.' Trafford smiled at the webcam, his face a
picture of pious innocence.
Barbieheart bought it completely.
'Aaaaah,' she said, all anger gone now and replaced with
sugary empathy, 'isn't that a
lovely
thing to say, Tinkerbell?'
Tinkerbell smiled on the screen, confident now that she
had not been dissed, happy to be loved up.
'Yes, thanks, Trafford,' she said, 'that's lovely. Yeah.
Thanks for being there for me.'
'Any time,' Trafford replied, smiling, pleased to see the
colour returning once more to Chantorria's face.