'You've forgotten, haven't you?' says my sister, her tone dripping accusation.
'No,' I say, 'of course not.' But I have. Who has time to keep track of these things? And it's morbid, dredging it up year after year. The past only holds you back. It's like a drift net. The kind you get tangled in and drown.
'It's important to her.'
'Yeah, yeah, I know. Which day is it again?'
We tried to do a pilgrimage a few years ago, at Sipho's behest, to visit the clinic where they died, because we don't have a clue where the graves are. But two days before we were set to leave, government inc. announced a new round of quarantines, which made travelling into the Ciskei impossible. When Zama and I pulled out, she tried to go anyway, on her own, without a car, with some of her Buddhist buddies tagging along. You can guess how far she got. Turned around at the first checkpoint.
She nagged for a year after that, but there was always an excellent excuse not to go, and I didn't fabricate all of them either. I've been doing a lot of travelling lately. For the moment, she's content to settle for the memorial ceremony, but I live in dread of her suggesting another attempt at our own personal hajj.
Zama gives me the day and the time we're going to meet at Cape Point for the 'ceremony'. She guilt-trips me into agreeing to host dinner as well, although she's horrified when I suggest using Communique's chefs.
'We have to cook a meal together, it's traditional.'
'I don't cook.'
'Fine. Sipho and I will cook. You do have a kitchen, right?' I have to think about that one, about when last we used the hob. I manage to convince her we should just go to a restaurant, maybe the one at Cape Point, because if Sipho cooks, we'll be eating some vegan lentil glob that you have to chew for ages. This is my idea of family, actually, a sticky morass you can't chew your way out of. We wrap up, but I try and spin the conversation out a little. I can tell Zama is secretly pleased and flattered, but it's only because I need extra material for my prerecords to throw off the spyware.
Zama likes to play the family historian. She's a font of all these great stories about our parents, but the Eskom orphanage – let's not cop to the PC term of 'trade school', even if they are cultivating proprietary workforces – has always been more vivid in my head than my idea of home, which is a patchwork of broadcast images. Green hills and sky and a threadbare chicken with long scrawny legs scratching through dust that would never yield a juicy maggot, let alone mielies. It's all cliché, a communal sepia-toned memory that all us Aidsbabies have in common.
I was only seven at the time. The baby of the family after Zama and Siphokazi, and Tebogo, who succumbed even before our parents. I just have to accept whatever Zama says, the stories polished and brittle from so much repetition.
I think I remember a clinic with walls painted a sickly avocado green, and playing Darth Vader in the sterilmask until I got a smack. In my memory it's Zama who hit me, but I suppose it could just as easily have been a nurse.
She says we used to walk miles along the railway tracks, picking some raggy weed, cosmos I think, to give to our mother. Predictably, the nurses confiscated it all when we got there for fear that we might contaminate our parents. We weren't even allowed to touch them.
I remember rows of beds crammed together and sour metal smells and a man, limbs as spindly and sharp as a locust, who terrified me. It's going to sound harsh, but I'm glad I never had to go back there, never had to deal with the reality of Thomokazi and Sam Mazwai, which is all I have of them, their names on my birth certificate. And the legacy of two sisters, one turned hippievegan-Buddhist-dropout, the other fermenting in her dead-end job at Eskom, never having graduated beyond our first parent company.
It may be partially my fault Zamajobe never made it out of Eskom. I probably had some kind of familial obligation to tell them when I realised that only the brightest and most productive get out – to better companies that pay a premium for the privilege. But they were older. They should have been guiding me. And besides, I didn't need the competition.
Within a year, I'd been handpicked to go over to Pfizer SA Primary in Cape Town, and suddenly the story sums in class were focused on medication doses rather than wattage, and the school didn't have the same level of desperation. There weren't girls selling themselves at the side of the road to truck drivers for tuck money.
At fourteen, I had my pick of bursaries at secondary institutions run by Telkom, Cisco, Wesizwe and New Mutua. I knew I wanted to get into media, and by then I knew how to negotiate, how to play the system. No more fucking around in squalid dorms with the hordes. When I took up New Mutua's scholarship, I demanded a private room, and it was great for two years.
Communique got me through a Pluslife chat room. In those days it was music sharing and flirting, before the record labels started imposing criminal sentences and meshing their crippleware with defusers. I met my first handful of boyfriends through the chats. But then one of my online friends made me a proposition of a different nature.
By the end of the day, New Mutua knew all about it and I was being forcibly evicted, marched out by security guards with Aitos, not even allowed to go back for my phone. Looking back, it's obvious that my new friend ratted me out to make sure I didn't change my mind. I never learned his real name. Headhunters are only as effective as their anonymity.
Technically, I still had another four years of training to go before officially entering the workforce, but Communique was willing to let me skip two, provided I waive the gap year that all skills institute grads are legally entitled to. But I've been here six years, almost seven, and that's starting to feel like a very, very long time.
When I get off the phone, with a whole halfhour's worth of filler for the spyware boys, I find a summons to Lesley Rathebe's office. My stomach clamps with a momentary dread, because there is always the possibility that someone has picked up the minuscule drop in bandwidth of the data being siphoned off the adboards through my newly installed backdoor.
But the meeting with Rathebe is not a disciplinary. It's about the report on the MetroBabe Strollers, and how very much she liked my outof-the-box Radio Gaga suggestion, and how very wasted she thinks I am in core coding. There's a position that's just opened up in strategic, developing new tool sets for existing technologies, and she'd be happy to back me if I were 'gutsy' enough to apply for it.
I could bring Mpho Gumede with me if I like, she says. We seem to work well together. I decline, politely. Regrettably, I tell her, and only under duress, he's too volatile. No imagination. He nearly jeopardised the Bula Metalo job.
I know, I know, it's heartless. But if I'm stuck in Communique for the duration, I can't afford to be coupled with someone who might hold me back.
Toby
In the fourth corridor, kids, I finally find something potentially useful. It's a mural, giant-scale and kif skilful, of a Nguni cow in profile, the kind you only ever see now emaciated in the background of the politsoc broadcasts about how fucked up the Rural is.
This pastoral beast, by comparison, is plump as the motherbitch's credit rating. But I catch on quickly that it's not just paint rendered ultra-realistically, it's actual hide (dark speckled brown on a dirty cream) cut to shape and mounted up fresco on the wall, which is creepy as hell. Not an obvious clue, but disregard at your peril, kids, when you got nada to go on after thirtynine abandoned rooms, that noise getting closer, and still no sign of anything resembling the Redux Core, which is the last, best, only hope for the Nemesis star system.
Under the sound of the dripping, like Chinese water torture in the reverb, and the skrawk of rusted pipes, apparently susceptible to shifts and groans, and the machinery clanking off-kilter on twisted gears, is a distinctly kitchen sound. And if that doesn't sound particularly frightening, I'd like you to imagine the gurgling of a drain remixed with the metal screech of the garbage disposal, only more organic – as if it were coming from something's larynx. Something big. And alien. And very fucking scary. Let's just say it's not e
ncouraging, kids, especially when I can't tell if it's getting closer with all the ambient noise.
Okay, but I gotta focus on the cow, or bull, if the fuck-off sharp and long horns are anything to go by. The local flavour is a nice touch – a little extra the developers threw in to mod the experience to whatever part of the world you're logging in from – like water buffalo in Indonesia. Whatever, the moo is almost a storey high, reaching nearly all the way up the factory wall to the narrow row of filthy windows (too small to climb out, too high to get to, thanks for the suggestion, I've already tried). Where they're broken, light comes in so bright and sharp it slices the gloom into thin geometric slits, swirling with dust. I've been avoiding them. It's superstitious, like not standing on the cracks, but also I don't want to be exposing myself in a bright blast of sunlight to whatever is making that noise.
And cos it seems the obvious – although it wouldn't in realworld – I collect some of the crates scattered oh-so-conveniently in the near vicinity and push 'em over to the wall in a teetering pile to get a better look at the damn thing.
There's something odd about it. The beady eye is a dissected marble, the kind with a green cat's eye twist in the centre, so it looks really fake. And the hooves and the horns are especially weird, cos they'd be the bits it would be easy to get, just stick the bones right up there. But they're made up of big oval sequins, misshapen and discoloured and overlaid on each other like scales.
On closer inspection, the hide is patchwork; no cow big enough to cover this mural on its own, but well done – you can barely see the seams. When I run my hand over the bristly texture of the hide, against the grain, dust stirs up. And there it is. I'm seriously disappointed. Could they have been more obvious? A keyhole. Now if only I had a key. I must have missed it on level fifteen. Fuck.
There is a scritching sound. I feel like it's been going on a while, subconsciously, and I'm only just clicking on to it – too involved in the goddamn moo. Or maybe it's only just started. I turn very quickly, in case it's the tick of claws on the concrete behind me, yanking out the Luger from the back of my jeans. There's only one shot, and that's if it doesn't jam.
But there is only the clank and creak and dripping. The factory floor is empty, as far as I can see into the dark recesses on the other side. The slices of light coming in from outside make it harder to see, but I've already freaked myself out too many times straining to detect movement in the shadows. And anything could be lurking among the carnage of decrepit machinery and tumbled crates and the stacks of packaging. (Styrofoam. Already cut one open, spilled out the spongy S curls onto the floor – was using them like a trail of breadcrumbs until I twigged that it would lead other things to me as much as leading me back.)
The scritching comes again and I realise, only now that it's been absent for a second, how close it is. Right here. I bring the Luger up real slow, watching for the hide to stretch and distend cos I know, I just fucking know, something grotesque is scratching patiently on the inside, like a dog at the door.
There is the faintest hint of movement and it takes me a second to pinpoint it. Light shifts on the hooves and I ease the Luger up, please fuck let it not lock up now, placing one hand against the hide for balance, which is warm now and moving steady cos the fucking cow is breathing, and the sequins aren't sequins at all, but nails, fingernails bruised black and stained, and I can tell this because there are rotten fingertips emerging behind them, scraping out and over the other nails, so that there are six layers of intertwined wilted hands tearing their way out from the wall.
As I throw myself back, pulling up the gun to fire, two things happen simultaneously. The Luger clicks, cold. And my sudden shift topples the pyramid of crates. The air opens up behind me, so I'm looking up, falling back, as the things seethe out like gas – murky, taloned things, clawing past each other to get at me, making a rustling like rice paper. And what hits me as I strike my head on the concrete is that it wasn't even the gurgler that took me out.
>> GAME OVER
I toss the plug-in to one side in disgust and wedge myself out of the gamewomb and into the barcade, lit cosily dim so that pulling out into realworld isn't so jarring. I stumble over to the bar and get distracted by a girl with relaxed curls and a mole above her mouth, old-Hollywood-style, sitting alone in one of the perspex booths. The only game she's playing is voyeur on everyone else's, multiple screens projecting the action.
'You buying?' I say, pulling in next to her.
'Excuse me?' she says, all cold surprise, like she's never been hit on before.
'C'mon. I'll get the next one. You can make it expensive. But you buy this round. I just got fragged one time and I need a commiseratory drink.'
'Oh right. You're the one who just got torn limbless by the Dark.'
'That's me. Toby. And you are?'
'Julia.'
We sit in silence for a long moment. She's waiting for me to get uncomfortable and leave. But I'm not shifting a millimetre and eventually she can't resist, if only to drive home her superiority.
'You need the BFG automatic. It's in the substation behind the geysers.'
'I looked there.'
'It's up, not down, wedged behind the pipes. And you missed the key.'
'So, if you're the resident expert, how come you aren't playing?'
'How do you know I'm not?'
I tap the tabletop to pull up the drinks menu, skim it, but it's same old. 'Tequila?'
'You are incredibly forward.'
'Do you play? Or do you just like to watch?'
She stares at me, unbelieving.
'Cos I didn't use to. I reckoned it was all time wastage, you know?' And this is true, kids. I was big-time ambition once, Masters in literature, novel ambitions, before the cast, before the sugar, before the girls. 'When I was a kid, I only ever used the educationals.'
This riles her. 'You can't simplify like that. It's all blurred now, the lines between education and entertainment.' And I've hooked her.
'What, like the kids' games? That Moxyland shit? Murder and mayhem. Training them to be savage, don't you think? It's not about making friends with kids all over the world, it's about getting ahead, getting one over.'
'But don't you think it's appropriate? Considering.'
'The world, you mean? That's a tad harsh. Is that it? Won't they learn that shit later?'
'All right. So, what should they be learning?'
'Compassion? Empathy? How to get along? Life skills?'
'You're an idealist.'
I shrug, all modest coy, as if she's bust me. I look down at my drink, cos the tequila has arrived on the conveyor that runs between the terminals, so the players won't be distracted by comings and goings, so they'll stay longer, spend more money.
'To compassion.' She grins with a sardonic twist to her mouth, taking the tequila.
'To beautiful women with a mean sarcastic streak,' I toast back.
Later, Julia comes back to the swivel with me. They always do.
Lerato
The date goes much better than I'd anticipated, but for all the wrong reasons. Stefan is as craggily beautiful as his profile photograph, and smart and lucid and engaging and funny and refined – and gay as a rainbow bumper-sticker.
'I fucking knew it,' I say, sipping on a papaya mojito, which he's taken the liberty of ordering for both of us because it's Gravity's speciality. Gravity isn't my first choice of afterhours, but in its favour, entry is strictly corporate pass, so you don't have to deal with pleb civilians. And it's set on the 44th floor of the Vodacom building on a revolving floor, so the view rotates around you at a gentle clip, mountain-city-sea, ideal for those with a short attention span for the spectacular.
'I'm sorry?' he says, slightly taken aback. Normally, I enjoy the deft manoeuvring around what can't be said, the subtle, skilful politicking of negotiations. I had an Iranian friend, Shaheema, who taught me the finer tactics of never saying what you mean, when she came out on exchange to Communique from the Emira
tes office. It's as useful in the secular corporate environment as in Persian culture. Which is not to say I'm prepared to abandon subtlety altogether when monitoring is a real concern. I lean forward, exposing maximum cleavage, and touch his arm.
'We're both adults, Stefan. We both know why we're here. Why don't you and I just skip straight to the main course.'
'Uh – I thought perhaps we could just have a quiet drink, get to know each other.'
'We could go back to my place. But I have a roommate, which might make it tricky, if we're to make all the noise we want. What about yours?'
He's utterly confused, the poor thing, but then his eyes crinkle and he half suppresses a smile, shaking his head. 'I thought you were serious. I have an audio interference, if that's what you're worried about.' He clicks the silver pen lying on the table beside his notebook. 'We can make all the noise we like. No spyware's going to pick it up.'
I toy with the glass, keeping up the flirtatious masquerade for the sake of anyone watching. 'And how do I know you're not with…'