Authors: S. L. Grey
I’m just across the aisle from the phone shop. Will I make it? I have to try. I count to three and dart out into the open. I skid in and shelter in a corner of the shop, my ragged
breathing breaking the peaceful quiet.
‘Good morning, sir. How can I help you?’ says the shop girl, completely unfazed by my panicked entrance.
‘Hi. Um.’ Fuck. What do I say?
I don’t have long to think because now the Admiral’s filling the shop’s doorway, gasping hard to get his breath back. He raises the flintlock at me again, lowers it, then
strides into the shop heady with power. Oh God. This is it.
‘I don’t know what I’ve done,’ I blabber, appealing to the girl for help. ‘I don’t know what he wants. But he’s trying to kill me.’
‘Don’t worry, I’ll speak to him,’ she tells me. ‘Ensign. I know this is an unregistered brown, but he is interviewing today and I am his sponsor.’
The Admiral looks at me with a florid glare. ‘Well, why didn’t you say so, brown? Are you karking retarded? I’ve been up and down this karking…’ He tails off as if
he realises he’s wasting his time talking to an idiot. ‘Customer Care Officer,’ he says to the girl, ‘you’re its sponsor. Ensure it’s registered by
tomorrow.’
‘Yes, Ensign.’
‘This brown has caused me enough trouble for one day. I’m warning you. If it isn’t registered by the end of shifts, I will hold you responsible.’
‘Yes, Ensign.’
With that the Admiral – the Ensign, actually – stumps out of the shop.
‘Oh, thank you. God. I thought…’ I say.
‘If I might ask, sir, what were you doing loitering unregistered? Surely you know—’
‘I know nothing. I don’t know what the fuck’s going on here!’
‘I have a victual break coming up in’ …she looks at her gelphone ‘…three moments. Would you like to devour with me?’
Huh? ‘Um, okay, that sounds good. That’ll be nice.’
‘Good, sir. I’ll try to assist you.’
I gesture towards the door. ‘Should I just, uh…?’
‘Yes, please, sir.’
I move to the doorway and stand awkwardly as she smiles a blank smile through me, ready to welcome any other customer who might come through the door. She poses there like a mannequin, just like
the smarmy android guy at the bookshop, I realise, only hotter.
The gelphone in the shop girl’s hand glows a cycle of teal and aqua, throbs and bulges for a moment. ‘Here it is, the breaktime code from Management,’ she says. She taps the
code onto her chain’s anklet and it slides open. She steps out of it and bundles the chain and the anklet neatly behind the counter. Simultaneously a dorky-looking, skinny guy in an oversized
blue Last Call T-shirt stands up like a meerkat behind the counter. My fuck, surely this guy hasn’t been crouching behind there the whole time? If his shift is just beginning, when and where
did he come in?
His
shift
? His fucking
shift
? Here’s a girl who chains herself to the shop counter by the ankle and a guy who hides behind the counter all morning and I’m standing here
worrying about when their
shifts
start.
‘God,’ starts the girl as she guides me in her direction then falls into step beside me. I follow numbly. ‘It’s been a shift. Nobody in at all and then suddenly
there’s five at a time, and there’s only one CCO per shift because it’s Slaughterday and the Management doesn’t expect it to be busy. But they always do this, crowd in in
groups, and Management sits in its vaycay tower without realising what actually goes on during Dead Shifts.’ The talk flows like water out of a bath, until it empties and slows. After hours
of hyperpoliteness, her relief is palpable. All that ‘How can I help you?’, ‘The mall’s open, sir’ must be exhausting.
‘Anyway, sorry, I’m Colt,’ she says, and stops and turns to face me. She smooths her jet hair over her neck. Her knuckles come back with a smear of blood that she
absentmindedly rubs on the hip of her jeans.
Wait a minute…
what
?
Not quite concealed under the hair is a vicious gash on her white neck, a gaping slash from her ear to her jawline. She’s tried to cover it with powder, but the thing is still moist with
fresh blood, and all the powder does is gather in dark clumps along the edge of the wound.
My God, I can’t drag my eyes away from it but then she smooths the hair over the wound again and carries on walking. ‘I’ve got plenty of tokens for McColon’s if you
don’t mind going there,’ she starts up again. ‘They’ve got a promotion going with Last Call and they wanted us to devour there for a whole month and by the second week, I
would rather go without victuals. But now it’s okay. You know, you can do McColon’s a few times a week, but not every day, don’t you think?’
She grabs my arm and pulls me out of the way of an on coming man. Another shopper who looks like he should be in hospital, his hands and face swathed in putrid, raggy bandages. ‘You
don’t want to have bodily contact with Mr Boils, rich or not. Tomas did, and he went to Wards and he never came back.’ Her touch is icy on the surface of my skin. On her fingers I feel
the remnant of sticky blood from her neck.
‘Here we are.’ The sign says ‘McColon’s’ but it’s written in the same familiar swooping yellow font as McDonald’s.
‘Clog your intestines with crap so that you don’t get hungry,’ declares a poster at the door. ‘Just 10.99.’ The kind-of-familiar clown looks fat and complacent;
peaceful, not as threatening as the usual one. The Thieving Kid in the corner of the picture is emaciated and wears street-kid rags and his usual eye-mask. ‘I’m hungry, that’s why
I do crime,’ he says in a small speech bubble.
‘Micro burgers, just 0.99.’ Another sign advertises ‘Open 38/8’.
My phone beeps. It’s probably Rhoda and the thrill of relief at the thought surprises me. I thumb open the message.
Nausea. Disappointment.
Holy. Fuck.
Where the fuck am I?
Then it hits.
Fuck.
Of course.
I’m playing a game
. I’m still playing the game! Just like in the lift. Just like in the corridors. I’ve just reached the next level.
An assortment of freaks crowds around the counter. Missing limbs, extra limbs; scabies, scabs and scurvy; pungent breath and malicious body odour; a medieval collection of mechanical aids:
archaic leg braces, corrective shoes, hearing aids, slings, crutches, unwieldy wheelchairs ferrying obese corpses, bandages on arms and feet that needed changing last month; everyone jostling
impatiently, in no semblance of order. One or two of the freaks look at me and give me a pitying smile. I huddle in the sanctuary of space to the side of the entrance, praying nobody will touch
me.
Colt looks back over her shoulder. ‘What do you want?’ she calls. The menu above the counter has the familiar lettering, but the names are different. Big Number Two, Cheeselike, Oil
and Salt Starchsticks.
Come on. Snap out of it. You have to say something. You’re playing a game. They’re waiting for input.
‘You choose,’ I call back.
Colt comes back in a minute with a tray laden with enormous cups and packages. She finds us a table and we sit. ‘I didn’t know if you wanted Supersized or Oversized so I got you
Over. Hope that’s okay? I’m so sick of fattening, so I got Super today. And plus my teeth are sore. I haven’t had all my replacements yet.’ She sucks at her massive fizzy
drink. ‘Ouch. There’s a rumour going around that SugarGas drinks make your birth-teeth sore.’
I heft my two-litre cup off the tray and take a sip. It’s like pure Coke syrup, as if they have forgotten to add any water, but put in too much gas. It bubbles stickily down my throat. I
watch as a heavy drip slicks thickly down the side of Colt’s slightly smaller cup.
She’s making conversation. She’s my ally. I’m going to need help. I’m going to need information. I’ve got to say something. ‘From what I understand,
that’s true.’
‘Oh well, it’s my fault really. I should have got my replacements by now but I’ve just been lazy.’
Mindful of my strategy of keeping Colt on my side, I mirror her as we unwrap our burgers. She has what looks like a double Big Mac, while mine is about twice as wide and twice as high.
It’s stacked in four layers. The bun looks okay, but the four platesized burger patties are bleeding. Not just seeping red juice, they’re bleeding. The thick, warm blood spurts out in a
rhythm like it has a beating heart. The patties are dolloped with ladlefuls of mayonnaise that smells rotten, the reek of sulphurous eggs mixed with the fizz of off milk. I lean closer to the thing
and lift the top portion of bun and a jet of blood shoots into my eye.
‘Ha ha,’ trills Colt. ‘Watch out! Eating disorder!’ as if this is an everyday mishap like spraying a shook-up can of Coke up your nose. ‘I got the Fat Big Number
Two for you. I hope you don’t mind. I don’t know if you’re fattening or not. It’s always awkward to assume, isn’t it?’
Info bite number one: What the fuck is ‘fattening’? ‘Do, are a lot of people fattening here?’ I ask, putting the burger down and wiping my hands on my jeans. I’m
hungry. I don’t know when I last ate. But I can’t imagine putting that flesh in my mouth. I go for a chip. It’s okay, a bit salty; I grab a handful more.
‘Kark, everyone. Either that or Starving-and-Amputating. When you look like me, there’s so much pressure to look like the magazines and things. If you don’t get admitted to
Wards at least once a month, it’s like there’s something wrong with you. I try, really, but sometimes I just stop caring. And I’ve got used to Management too.’ She stops and
takes a huge bite from her burger; blood dribbles out of her mouth and stains the translucent skin on her neck.
Management. Key protagonist. I need to gather as much intel about them as possible. ‘What do you mean?’
She chews for a while, then answers with her mouth half full. ‘They can be nasty. You must know by now. Let me see…’ She takes her gelphone out of her pocket and scrolls
through some messages. ‘Read these signals.’ She hands me the phone.
I take the lump of gel from her hand, and her icy fingers brush mine, then she sits back and tucks into her meal. I have a moment alone with her phone. I can see a phone like this is going to
be essential inventory; I’d better learn how to use it. As she passes it over, the thing moulds itself to my hand. It’s dry to the touch and settles with a matt finish into my hand,
like a taut mass of muscle suddenly relaxing to my touch. Like I’m holding a living heart. The teals and blues shimmer across it, counterpointed by more ice colours in the depths of the gel.
Projected a micron above the surface is a text message in slashing red and orange.
I don’t want to read more. I hand the phone back to Colt and open my mouth to say something sympathetic but my phone beeps. I open it under the table, ashamed of my plastic piece of shit.
A few of the cuts on my hands are bleeding again. I think of Rhoda, who seems so far, so long away. It would be nice if the message was from her, but I know it’s not.
‘Management can be bungholes, can’t they?’ says Colt. I ignore the fact that she seems to know who my message – my ‘signal’ in her terms – is from and
what it says. Maybe one of her skills is prescience or telepathy. I’ll find out later in the game. I must just be on the lookout for more clues.
‘How would I get a job here?’ I ask instead. That seems to be the next stage. Even if it’s a dead end, I’m sure I’ll learn more about the setup here if I just
follow the obvious clues for now. And stick with Colt.
‘Where would you want to work?’
‘The bookshop would be okay, I suppose.’
‘They only take people who read books. Do you read books?’
‘Yes.’
‘Do you have retail experience?’ I nod. ‘Then all you need to do is interview with Management. I’m sure you’d get the job. Not so many people around here have much
experience. Management likes hiring browns. I think they – uh, you – are harder workers.’
I’m figuring this out, I think. ‘We work hard because there’s no other choice. We only come… here if we’re desperate.’ Wherever ‘here’ is.
That’s what I can’t figure out yet. How I got dumped here. Or why. It will probably become clearer as the game progresses.
She smiles, and some colour appears in her icy skin. ‘Something like that.’ She thinks for a moment while she sucks her syrup and rifles through the shoebox of starchsticks. ‘I
wish I could work at the bookshop. I’m sure they’re more tolerant there. I bet the Management Reps wouldn’t go on about my weight all the time. I bet they worry more about ideas
and character than what people look like.’ She averts her eyes as she sucks more out of her cup.
‘Well, I think you look great.’
‘You would say that,’ she snorts. ‘I look like a karking brown.’ She’s not smiling. Fuck, I’m going to lose her. We sit in uneasy silence for a moment while
members of a grotesque family heave themselves into a booth with heavy trays.
‘No offence,’ she follows up. ‘I need to go now. My shift starts in three moments.’
‘Thanks for the lunch.’ I stay sitting. I’m not sure how to play it next. I can’t tell if she’s brushing me off, or if she wants me to walk with her. If I play it
wrong, I’m going to lose the only ally I have.
Colt notices my indecision. ‘Please walk back with me. I get a shuddering spasm from hearing fresh browns talk. When they stay, they start talking normally so quickly.’ She grabs my
hand and leads me through the stifling, malodorous crowd. When we’re outside McColon’s she notices that the blood from my cuts has spread over her translucent skin. She wipes it calmly
onto her jeans.