Moxyland (2 page)

   'So, how long before the mutation kicks in?' I ask, acting like it's no big deal, as Dr. Precious swipes at the crook of my elbow with a disinfectant swab, probably loaded with its own nano or specially cultivated germ-eating bacteria or whatever new innovation Inatec's come up with specially.

   'Oh babes,' says Andile, mock-hurt. 'Didn't we agree we weren't going to call it that? Promise me you won't use that word in the interviews.'

   'What did you have for breakfast?' says Dr. Precious unexpectedly. But her question is a ruse. Before I can think to answer (cold oats at Jonathan's apartment, no sign of Jonathan, but that's not unusual lately), she snaps the autosyringe against my arm like a staple gun. And just like that, three million designer robotic microbes go singing through my veins.

   It doesn't even hurt.

   Considering the hype, the bulk of the contract, I am expecting nothing less than for the world to rearrange. Instead, it's like having sex for the first time. As in, is that it?

   'That's it. It'll take four to six hours for the tech to circulate. Do you want me to run through it again? You may experience flu symptoms: running nose, headaches, sore throat in the first twenty-four hours. Then it'll stop. Enjoy it. It's probably the last time you'll ever get sick.'

   'All perfectly normal, babes. Just your body adjusting,' Andile chips in.

   Just my immune system kicking into overdrive to war with the nanotech invasion. But it's only temporary. People adapt. Evolve. It's all in the manual, although I haven't read all the fineline. Who does?

   'I'll see you here for a check-up next week.' Dr. Precious ejects the silver capsule from the back of the autosyringe and slots it carefully back into the case with the other empty shells. Can't leave that stuff lying around. Light catches the gleaming shells, the reflection of Dr. Precious stretched thin like a Giacometti sculpture.

   I'm already planning a timelapse, to capture the change. Only the top three layers of the epidermis, Andile was at pains to point out, a negligible inconvenience to carry with you for a lifetime.

   If I could embed a camera inside my body, I would. But all I can do is document the cells mutating on the inside of my wrist, the pattern developing, fading up like an oldschool Polaroid as the nano spreads through my system.

   My skin is already starting to itch.

 

Her timing is perfect, as always. My motherbitch manages to call bang in the middle of my morning streamcast. On an everyday, this wouldn't bug me – motherbitch is one of the favourite recurring characters on my cast, according to my Comments section, but I'm supposed to be hooking up with Tendeka to plot our criminal adventure, so it's inconvenient deluxe. 'You were late fifteen minutes ago, my darling,' she says by way of greeting and it's true, I've forgotten that she's scheduled one of our 'we have to talks' over a civilised brunch, but with the amount of sugar I'm doing, she's lucky I can remember the colour of my eyes without a mirror. I've
told
her to upload appointments to my phone. Whore.

   I smoke some more on the way to the Nova Deli, just to bring me up enough to handle, and switch my BabyStrange, currently displaying images from the gore folder, to record. You'd be amazed at what compelling viewing even the most arb of daily interactions can make – or then, if you're watching this, maybe you already know.

   I take a shortcut through Little Angola, which I only realise is a terrible mistake when I'm hit a double blow by the smell of assorted loxion delicacies and the chatter of warez in the overbridge tunnel market.

   The warez are outmode. It's not just that they're cheap useless, cos who really needs a tube of bondglue or six, except for the street kids, and there are better highs for less, but cos they're all fucking chipped. This is non-reg, but the cops have better shit to worry about, especially when it doesn't impact the corporati.

   The whole audio chipping thing was outlawed almost as soon as it hit. I mean, it was bigtime initially, with cereal boxes and toys and freeware and fucking appliances all chirping their own self-importance, jingles, promos, sound-effects, celeb endorsements, so that house spouses had to wear ear blanks to get through the supermarket. It was only a matter of time before the multinationals made it illegal, or specialised use only, but then notions of illegal don't extend to the developing. Most of the stuff now comes down from Asia or central Africa, so the chips in here aren't even speaking English or Xhosa or any of the other eleven nationals; it's all Cantonese and Portuguese and Kinyarwanda.

   It's ugly, but the effect, even cumulatively, is nowhere near as annoying as the relentless twitter of the motherbitch. I pause at a stall selling plastic belts and cellphone covers and Fong Kong sunglasses to get her a talking Hello Kitty taser that yelps for 'help' incessantly in five different languages. The vendor tries to sell me one from under the table, rather than the squawking sample that got my attention. Once they're activated, he says, you can't turn the damn things off. Better take a new one, still in the box. But I tell him it's absolutely perfect and transfer the full asking to his phone, not even bothering to haggle. He can't even keep up the pretence of being offended. Cash talks, baby.

   Between the short cut, dodging the herd of cyclists who try to run me down on the promenade, and stopping to check out the surf – negligible; the sea stretching between Mouille Point and Robben Island looks greasy and flaccid, but that doesn't mean it won't be cooking on the corporate beaches – I'm already an hour late.

   I slide into the motherbitch's usual booth at Nova Deli by the window, playing it charming, even patting that disgusting mutacute she insists on carrying around with her, draped off her neck like an albino tiger slothmonkey scarf. It bares its neat little teeth at me, the only thing at this table brave enough to express how it really feels.

   'Oh Pretzel, stop that.' Motherbitch taps it on its nose and it starts making these grovelling, warbling, purring sounds. I wish she could have settled on one species or two max. These multiple mash-up jobs make me queasy.

   She is sucking on a nutradiet. She blows a punctuation mark of vitamin-enriched smoke in my direction. 'Did you call the Sunshine Clinic?'

   'Oh, hey, I'm fine thanks, mom. Just great. Thanks for asking. Got a regular DJ gig now, Thursday nights at Replica. Met a cute girl. Several, actually. Nothing serious, no grandkidlets on the way or anything, sorry to say. Swivel's cool, bit disarrayed, but it just hasn't been the same since you stopped paying for my cleaning service. All ordinary, you know. Oh, and you'll be happy to know my ratings are up. Who said I have no ambition? Well, apart from you, obviously, but in light of this, I really think you're going to have to reconsider. I'm streamcasting live now, by the way. So if you have anything particularly entertaining to say, go right ahead. This is a good time. And how is Tyrone? Or was it Wynand? I do struggle to keep track. Which reminds me, I bought you this. In case, you know, you need to put one of them in his place.'

   I slide the Hello Kitty taser across the table towards her. It's still bleating. 'That's "help" in like five different languages, right there.'

   The waiter materialises with two rooibos lattes, like I even drink that herbal shit. While he's fussing with the coffees, motherbitch plucks up the cartoon cat canister in her napkin and drops it neatly onto the waiter's tray, with the same cool efficiency she used to dispose of the rain spiders that probably still hang out in the kitchen.

   'Your father and I have been talking.'

   'That's a first time.'

   'We've managed to agree on your problem.'

   'Can I have one?' I ask, reaching for the pack of nutradiets.

   'No, Tobias, honestly. They're calibrated for my bio-rhythms exactly. They'd just make you sick.' Which is a lie straight up, although of course they are personalised for her nutritional requirements – she pays extra for that – but at least we're communicating now.

   'So what's the problem?' I say, taking one anyway, igniting it with a light tap on the table.

   'Oh my darling.'

   'No, seriously.' I take a drag and the micronutrients kick up the sugar by 100 degrees. I am intensely interested, blisteringly smart, devastatingly witty.

   'Your habit.'

   'Which one?'

   'Toby, please. You make me terribly tired. It's unconscionable. We've decided.'

   'And that's it?'

   'Well, of course you have a choice. If you'd bothered to phone Sunshine… It's just that we won't be enabling you anymore. We've already advised the trustees.'

   I take another drag of the nutradiet. I think it's the zinc that does it, that complements the sugar, I mean. You have to watch it though, because vitamin C will kill a buzz dead.

   'Oh for god's sake. You're on something now, aren't you?'

   I lean back, put my feet on the table to a jangle of cutlery and crockery, cos there's not really space for it. If I can get her to cry, points go to me and everything else is annulled.

   'So, how is father? Still fucking his boss? What's her name again?'

   But she just looks at me.

   'Really, darling.' Even the squashy-faced marsupial is the image of bored contempt, digging under its armpit with its perfect little teeth. Chalk this one to her.

By the time I get to Stones, my mood has not improved. The pool bar is not, shockingly, exactly jamming at eleven a.m. on a Sunday, even though it's one of the few places in Long Street that's still general access. No corporati pass or proof of income required, and the cams don't work too well. Which goes a way to explaining the general dinginess and a clientele that leans towards the undesirable side of the LSM spectrum – and also qualifies it as the ideal venue to plot Tendeka's next outrageous, which he's being generous enough to allow me to guest on.

   It's a mutual beneficial. I score some quality vid that'll push up my streamcast's rankings, and he gets his exploits recorded for posterity, faces blanked out, of course. Not like those fucking idiot thug-lifers in Baltimore who were IDed and arrested by their uploads, in high-def. Tendeka and Ash are in the middle of a game, but when he sees me, he sets down the cue and crams me into a back-slapping hug of camaraderie, or maybe that should be comrade-ery for the Struggle revivalist over here. He's such a wannabe, so born fifty years too late. His dreads shoved up against my cheek smell of too much ZamBuk wax.

   'Toby! We thought you weren't coming.'

   'What, and miss all this?' I gesture at the near-empty pool hall, inhabited only by Tendeka and his go-everywhere accessory, Ashraf, a couple of oldtimers wedged in the corner, sinking their fifth beers already and not even lunch time, and the bartender, of course, who is tuned out to the soccer. The irony is lost on Tendeka.

   'Can you tone down the coat? We don't want to draw too much attention,' he says, conspiracy quiet, as if he's telling me I have bad breath. Can I tell you how crazy it is that the visuals are freaking him out when they didn't make the motherbitch so much as flinch?

   My BabyStrange is set to screensaver mode, so it clicks into a new image every two minutes. Here's a random sampling to give you an idea of what's displaying on the smartfabric that is so bothering Ten: close-ups of especially revolting fungal skin infections, Eighteenth Century dissection diagrams and, for a taste of local flavour, a row of smileys – that's sheep's heads for the uninitiated – lips peeled back to reveal grins bared in anticipation of the pot.

   'No, see, Ten, that's where you're wrong,' I explain. 'It's camouflage, hiding in clear sight. By drawing loads of attention, I actually avert it.'

   'You're not going to turn it off?'

   'That's right.'

   'Uh-huh,' he says, flat. And just in time, Ashraf swoops into the rescue, reprising once again his role as long-suffering BF and keeper of the peace. Mister fucking UN.

   'We've got a lot to get through, Ten. C'mon,' he says, nudging him back to the table.

   Tendeka goes grudgingly. Cos the fact is, kids, they need me. Can't do it without me. Security on the adboards is tighter than a nun's twat unless you've got a connection. Of course, I still have to
convince
my connection, but they don't need to know that sweet Lerato isn't on board yet.

   Ten scoops up the balls in the plastic triangle with a neat click-clack and picks out four to map out the plan. 'He's the eightball, naturally, I'm solid orange, the blue stripe is some polit-ec student they've got tagging along, a girl apparently, who better be cute, and Ashraf as the white ball to counterbalance.

   There's lots of actiony stuff, leaping about on rooftops and crawling under fences and avoiding cameras and Aito patrols. I stop paying attention five minutes in. I think we've just got to the part where we have to run across six lanes of highway, judging by the way Tendeka has the balls leaping over the cue laid across the table, when this incredible girl walks in, all juiced to kill, to give focus to my distraction.

   Even by the competitive standards of Long Street, being this city's hipster capital and all, this girl is styling, with her hair streaked in fat chunks of copper and chocolate, dirty cream boots and a charcoal cowl-neck dress over jeans, overlong sleeves dangling over her knuckles – this despite the soaring Celsius outside. I'm so preoccupied figuring out if I actually know her or just from the scene that I miss what she says.

   'Sorry, what?'

   'Do you mind?' she says again, already reaching into her back pocket for her phone, hung skate-rat off a silver chain from her belt, to log twenty rand to the table to get
tata machance
on the next game. 'I mean, if you're not busy?'