Moxyland - Lauren Beukes [80]
Kendra
When the swivel grinds through its rotate to open onto the landing, there is an audio notice stuck to the outside of the door that activates as soon as it senses us.
'For your convenience, please find enclosed a digi map to your nearest immunity centre. This is a South African Police Services public service announcement.'
'Cunts. Jesus. Motherfuck.' Toby wipes his nose with his sleeve, rips off the GPS chip and scrunches it under his heel, only it doesn't scrunch. 'Fuck!' He picks it up and hurls it across the corridor, but it's so light it drifts to the left and ricochets off the wall with a dull plastic ting. He kicks the wall, then punches it for good measure.
He comes away shaking out his hand and still swearing. He looks shocking. His eyes are pouchy and bloodshot, and he's pale under his scrag of beard. I still haven't been able to face myself in the mirror. I'm grateful that I don't feel like he looks. He's already taken three painkillers this morning.
He cringes as we step outside the building, and tries to turn back for his sunglasses.
'There isn't time, Toby.'
'Are you chaffing me? We still got thirty-two, thirty-three hours at least. And if we don't make it, they can always come get us. They'll have a roving unit. Door-to-door delivery. Now that's servicing the community.' But he tags along anyway.
We still don't have a phone between us. When we tried to log in this morning, his connection was down. 'The cabling in this fucking building,' he muttered.
'Does it go down a lot?'
'Murphy's law, innit mate?' he says, putting on a jokey Brit accent. 'It's exactly the kind of crap that would go down today.' But I can tell he's unsettled.
Before we found the warning on the door, the plan was to find a public terminal, to get hold of his corporate friend, but now I don't know. We might just be bringing the shit to her.
'She can handle it,' Toby says. 'She's a big girl.' He spits a glob of phlegm onto the street in front of Truworths. A young house spouse coming out pulls her black leather handbag against her and steps pointedly around us.
'Yeah, fuck you too,' snarls Toby and starts coughing so badly, he has to lean against the window. Inside, there is a flurry of motion, and I grab his arm and pull him away before the security guard lumbers out to chase us away.
Glancing back over my shoulder, I catch a glimpse of my reflection in the glass of the window among the moto-mannequins in gleaming fabrics. My face is totally healed.
Tendeka
The thing is, transparency only works as a policy if you can still find a way to make the stuff you don't want people to see invisible – especially when it's out in the open. We're here to make sure there's no possibility of hiding what has happened.
Who would have thought that so many were ready to give it up, turn turtle before it even kicks in, before they even know it's going to kick in at all? Traitors to the cause.
And cowards, adds skywards* in yet another msg.
The emergency room at Chris Barnard Memorial is street level, a glass box beside the ambulance parking with a ramp that leads up and away to the parkade. There is already a queue of people outside, rumpled like they've been up all night, so everyone looks homeless. They're pale and shocked and some of the more pathetic ones have convinced themselves they're sick for real, doubled over and coughing, psyching themselves out, buying in, pushing to get to the front. There's no sign of the media.
But there will be.
There's been nothing on any of the newscasts, not even a suggestion on the alt channels, which implies that the clampdown on info is already in force. There are probably S&D teams working round the clock, scanning every blog, censoring every streamcast. Suppress and destroy.
'Here?' Zuko asks. We're standing across the road, at the edge of the parking lot for the chichi restaurants in Heritage Square. He tosses a soccer ball deftly from foot to foot, ignoring the carguard, who is beckoning that he must skop the ball