We were having such a good laugh at the expense of a fat girl staggering along on high heels; short skirt – pink, of course – stretched over a wide bottom and binding tight together her white legs with calves like a pair of plump spring onions.
She clipped down the hill holding her phone in front of her face, for all the world like the archetypal donkey following a carrot dangling from a stick attached to his own harness.
We had just decided to overtake her, to spare ourselves any more of the gruesome sight, when a message came over our earpieces. ‘Return to Zone K immediately!’
We stopped, dismayed glances passing between us, and then turned to look for the zone boundary markers. The fat girl continued downwards, evidently not covered by the instruction.
As we passed back into Zone K another message came through. ‘You are fined five penalty days.’
I’d already got eleven, which was bad enough, but Cho had twenty. Anyone who got to thirty was inactivated for a month. What that meant, what it was like, no-one knew. People who had been inactivated were unable to speak about it, but they were never much fun afterwards.
Well, you’re probably thinking, you should be more careful than to go breaking the rules.
But let me explain. We don’t know the rules.
The day before, for example, and practically every day, we walked the same way from our rooms to the shops, passing through several zones without penalty. And practically every day we’d be taking the micky out of someone or something. It was what Cho and I liked to do; observe and comment on things, usually satirically, as we saw it. So surely, the penalty couldn’t be for making fun of the fat girl. But unless there was another message of explanation, we’d never know. And there never was. The only thing to do, after obeying the instruction for a while – say half a day – was to carry on as before. One day we’d be inactivated for sure, but there was nothing we could do to make it later rather than sooner.
Cho, with his twenty five days, became reckless. He went home and wrote on a piece of paper, ‘What was that for?’, then took it onto the street and held it up to one of the cameras. They would probably have seen it anyway as he wrote it, but we’d never actually found a camera indoors. Cho wasn’t the first person to try that. It was a fair question to ask, but we’d never heard of anyone getting a response, for better or worse.
Cho, like all the others before, didn’t hear anything.
Then he started getting really silly.
‘It’s all that fat cow’s fault. I bet she’s in with them.’
‘Cool it!’ I said. ‘You don’t know any such thing. It’s one thing having a laugh at her expense, but she might be really nice.’ As of course she might. Perhaps a great one for standing up for her community, or at any rate a good friend. How would we know?
But Cho wouldn’t agree with me. He was definitely nursing a grievance. I found him later with five kitchen knives of various sizes laid out on the worktop in front of him.
‘Don’t give me that,’ he said, clearly referring to my disapproving frown. He picked one with a four-inch blade and brandished it. I was trying to think of something to say that might calm him down when he rushed outside, leaving me floundering.
In seconds I followed him, but he was nowhere to be seen. If Cho intended to harm the fat girl, there would be little chance of his finding her. We’d never seen her before that morning, so she didn’t live round here. I sat on the edge of the fountain, hoping he’d re-appear soon.
‘Stand up! No sitting on the fountain!’ came over my earpiece. What?! We always sat there to watch the world going by. There were two others sitting there now; they hadn’t leapt to their feet like me.
I waited in dread for the penalty announcement. A long minute later, ‘Warning. You must improve. Repeat: warning. You must improve.’
This was a relief and a worry at the same time. How to improve? If I couldn’t sit and wait, I might as well go and look for Cho. Maybe I’d get credit for stopping him charging around with a knife, if I could.
Near the Mirrors there he was, standing over a man’s body. Blood was weakly pulsing out around the knife sticking in the man’s throat, adding to the circular pool surrounding his head. Shoppers were passing to and fro indifferently.
Cho turned to me with a triumphant gesture.
‘What have you done?’ I groaned. ‘Who is he?’
‘I don’t know,’ Cho said, ‘but it’s OK.’
‘OK! How OK?’
‘I’ve got ten days’ remission! They told me to kill him for ten days remission!’
I’d never heard of such a thing. It was repulsive. I shook my head in bafflement. ‘Who is he?’
‘They’re not going to tell me that, are they? Ten days off. I’ve got less than you now!’ Cho was smiling, but his eyes were dead.
Suddenly Cho’s hand flew up to his ear and he listened intently. ‘I’ve got to go now.’
‘Where to? What did they say?
‘I’ve got to go.’ A line of blue lights appeared, stretching a few metres into the distance. He strode off, following the lights, which extended in front of him and went out behind him as he went. I knew this meant that he was summoned to the Depot. Its location was unknown and always changing, so the lights were needed to guide you to it. As he passed the Shapes, the fat girl appeared, took his arm and tottered along beside him. I could see them grinning at each other.
I began to follow, though I didn’t relish getting anywhere near the Depot. But almost immediately I had a message.
‘Take the knife home and clean it, for one day’s remission.’
It wasn’t as if I had any option. I was already on a warning.
I returned to the still shuddering body and took the knife handle gingerly between finger and thumb. The serrated blade grabbed sickeningly at the neck chords as I pulled it out, releasing a dark clotting jelly of blood.
As I walked home holding the knife at arms’ length, I calculated that for the moment, anyway, Cho and I were equal in penalties, for the first time since we were given our earpieces. We’d laugh about that, when Cho came back from the Depot.
I hadn’t seen Cho for a whole week when my quarterly visit to the clinic came round. It was strange going without him, not having him to talk while we had our fusions. Normally the time would go quickly while we were laughing our heads off about something. This time, it seemed to take for ever and the lad in the bay next to me scowled when I said hello, so I kept quiet after that. At last my hand was released and I stepped out of the machine, looking, as you always did, to check that there was no bleeding inside the circle mark where the fusions had entered. Not only was there no blood but however hard I looked I couldn’t see any sign of the circle.
I tried to show the nurse but I could tell he wasn’t paying attention. He kept glancing at a group of rats that were fighting over a morsel beside the death pool. ‘No worries, mate, keep looking and you’ll find it.’ He waved me away.
Right from that night I began having strange dreams. I’d be with Cho and we’d be mucking about like for real, but I’d be looking at him in a different way from real; I’d have a special nice feeling for him. The dreams got more intense each night; the nice feeling became almost painful, but still nice, and I wanted to touch him. After a week or so, I dared to and the next thing, we were writhing around on the ground grabbing at each other until I sort of burst with pleasure. I woke up and was shocked to find a sticky mess in my navel.
I could make sense of that all right. Clearly the fusions had not worked properly because we had them to stop us being bothered like that. There must have been a malfunction. I would have to report it at the clinic, and get re-treated.
For the next few days, however, my dreams returned to normal, all jolly country walks and sing-songs.
Chris Short
12 June 2011