I set the VIMbot down on the kitchen counter, holding it down with one hand, and sample that deliciously awful sound directly to my phone. I can already hear the track unfolding in my head, with that metallic teethedge in the backbeat.
I play around with that for a while, thinking about how I really like sweet-K, and what a bad sign that is. The last person I was this interested in was Tamarin, and she was psycho deluxe, especially when she bust me and Nokulelo together. But what was she expecting when I was still with Jenna when we hooked up? Forget the rational; they always think they can change you. Rearrange the furniture. What is it with that?
If I'm going to do this Kendra thing properly, I'm going to have to upgrade my gear. The way I'm figuring it, fuck Boing Boing, I'm gonna syndicate this straight to CNN or Sky News, then hit up some funding to do a proper documentary or a feature, and land a sweet deal on a major cast channel. MicrosoftTimeWarner or Al Jazeera.
I'm going to need a decent mic, a broadcastquality lens, and to stock up on extra memory – and the fridge while I'm at it. It's glaringly empty, like my bank balance, which is already looking unhealthy deluxe, even with Lerato's loan. My mother doesn't realise how much maintenance my accustomed lifestyle chows up. She would have to cut me off mid-month. Cunt.
So it's off to hook up with Unathi and make some quick cash-in-phone. When I finally make it through the traffic, it takes me another halfhour to find his dockside squat among the derelict buildings. It's borderline illegal, mainly because of the health hazard he and his slumfriends pose, but at least they're not drug dealers or human traffickers or anti-corporate terrorists, which are all the cops really care about. Occasionally, they'll get harassed, mainly for tapping into the grid and using juice they're not paying for, and they've had to move twice already in the last six months, but it's all par for the lifestyle, kids. Take note before you consider a career in the lucrative but feckless world of underground game-dealing.
A shaven-headed someone, so nondescript I can't distinguish if it's guy or girl, opens the door without so much as a heita, then vanishes into the maze of backrooms which smell of burnt rice and that heavy sour smell of humanity that hasn't had access to running water for a while.
Unathi doesn't bother to surface from the sagging wallow of the couch, which is the only furniture in the room, apart from a deflated beanbag and the scramble of consoles and wiring and six different screens blaring a mash of content into the lounge, providing the only light. He's wearing the same leopard-print vest I saw him in last time, which was at some LAN party, but when I rib him about not having any other clothes, he claims it's just cos he's got three of them. He's also shaved his head, so between him and the androgynous thing at the door, it's beginning to look like a real cult around here.
'I don't know, man. When was the last time you played?' he hedges, fiddling with the frayed tassle of the shweshwe throw that has solidified from unidentified spillage like a topographical map.
'Cut the sceptical, man. You know I can handle it.' The truth, kids, is that I can't remember. 'I've been busy, man. Diary of Cunt takes up most of my day. Have you checked it?'
'No.'
'And I've been working the decks, sampled a VIMbot earlier, which was mental.' I half raise my phone to transfuse him a copy of the Replica invite, but he's not keen. Never one for the social. 'And girls,' I add, cos I can't resist the dig at him nesting in this shithole, pre-demolition, twentyfour/seven by seven, getting it on only in Pluslife. 'Uh-huh. Maybe you could bring 'em round some time. Get me a piece of your pie. For once.'
'Sure, man. I'll do that.' And this is a lie deluxe and we both know it. Although at least it resolves the gender question of the nondescript baldy.
'Yeah, that'd be kif.'
'Kif like a spliff.'
'Want one?'
He tosses me a baggie of sugar, A-grade, and isn't it always the way that someone who never even fucking leaves the house should score the premium? I start rolling while he plugs into my data.
'You're way outdated.'
'So?'
'My clients won't dig that.'
'If I can get the shit, who cares about my track?'
'It's real competitive, Tobias. Real lucrative.'
I don't say anything. Lick the ends of the paper to fuse 'em together, which is a waste of effort when the paper's self-adherent, but fuck it. I light up, take a toke, and pass it on. Unathi takes a deep hit and shows no sign of passing it back.
'How about we start you off easy?'
'Whatever.'
'There's a new weapon in Nemesis Redux that everyone's after, but I doubt you're up for that right now. Doesn't look like you played it before either.'
'Fuck you. I can handle.'
'Uh-huh. How about Kiwi Pop?'
'What, the kid's game?'
'You'd be surprised how many parentals want to indulge their kiddies' every heart's desire. It's war out there, 'specially in virtual mutacute land.'
'Isn't there an age protection plugged in? Precisely to stop people like me from amokking among the kiddies?'
'Yeah, but I got a hack. Like candy, baby. How could you resist?'
'Exactly. I just wouldn't feel right.'
'Coming over all moral? Spare me.'
'Don't you have anything else?'
'How do you feel about meatspace? There are some interesting ARGs happening at the moment.'
'Alt reality? I don't know. Do I have to dress up?'
'You'd look so cute with pointy ears. Or fangs.' He wiggles his fingers in front of his mouth all nosferatu.
'Not a chance.'
'Okay, okay. There's a new title, just hit the market a couple of months ago. Scorpions Elite?'
'What's the concept?'
'Pseudo-cop shit. Mix of gamespace and meat. In game, it's busting heads, fragging bad guys, typical shooter. Real world is mainly detective work online, collaborating with wikis to solve clues, but also field action, shaking down informants kinda thing. It's quite kif, cos it's not only game employees, it's other players too. It ties into FallenCity Underworld, so you have other people playing bad guys. Oh yeah – and some gun battles in publisher-approved location. Although it might be too complex for you. Bit rof when you've been off the circuit so long.'
'Piss off, Unathi.'
'Yeah, I think we'll kick you off gently. Till you get a feel for it again. Here's your user ID.' He flips me a game token marked with Kiwi Pop's mascot, a pink and yellow dino-beastie thing with a toothsome grin and beady black eyes that goes by the name of Moxy. I only know this from too many afternoons spaced out with kiddies' TV.
'I got an order for a purple Blinka Stinka. It's worth two-eight. That's fourteen hundred to you. And yes, that means I'm taking 50%. It's a sliding scale. The rates will get better if you do.'
'I gotta tell you, Unathi, if I wanted to get fucked, I would have stayed in bed.'
'Yeah, screw you, Tobe. Purple, okay? Any other colour is not gonna cut it. It's somewhere on North Island, level six. Apparently. Shouldn't take you longer than a couple of hours.'
'Easy. But let's ask Moxy, shall we?' I flip the game token into the air and slap it down onto the back of my hand, heads or tails, Moxy or the game-co logo. I peel back my fingers, take a peek. The little dinosaur fucker grins up at me.
'I'm going to take that as a good sign.'
Kendra
It's almost dusk by the time I reach Mr. Muller's apartment block in District Six. I feel a twinge of guilt – I should have called first. But the elevator recognises my SIM on the approved guest list straight away, slides open, and drops me to level minus-four, sending a notification to his home™ automatically, so that when the door swings open, he is already brewing the ultra-caffeine.
He's got his wall2wall set on Karoo; pale light over scrub hills complete with a windpump, metal blades turning idly in a breeze you could almost convince yourself you felt. It's an idealised version of the Rural, peaceful, as far removed from the real thing as you can get
. At least Mr. Muller keeps the display reduced, so it only takes up half a wall, more painting than wraparound. He doesn't like to forget that it's not legit. He says it's just another kind of sedation. A lulling, he calls it. 'Watch out for the lulling,' he says sometimes, like it's something profound, especially if a commercial sets him off. Commercials really get to him. He says you used to be able to skip them, just prog them right out of your recording, but it's hard to imagine that now. Then he'll launch into a rant on how the world has evolved for the worst, although at least crime is down. But the truth of it is he likes to yell at the television, and I should just leave an old grouch and his foibles in peace.
He turns, two cups already in hand. 'Hello. I wasn't expecting you today. You're looking well. Got something new for me?'
I swap him a cup of ultra for two spools of film. He puts them on the counter as if they are holy artefacts. The counter is already looking frayed, the plastic peeling, even though the subterr is only a couple of years old. The whole thing makes me depressed, but Mr. Muller likes to joke that he's just in touch with his body. It's dragging down with age, so he's moved below ground to keep up with it. 'This way, they won't even have to bury me,' he says. 'Just lock the door and be done with it.'
Of course, he's joking. The property in this neighbourhood is far too valuable, even the swivels and the subterrs. There are a lot of oldsters living below ground, but the wall2wall scenics make it more bearable.
The major advantage, he says, is that there is no natural light to interfere with his darkroom. It's really his bathroom, the entrance hung with a tunnel of black recycling bags, because even the fake light from the projected vistas can mess with the process. The problem is getting the chemicals. He has to get them shipped in from a guy in Nairobi, which takes weeks with all the new security checks.
I had about thirty rolls already by the time I found Mr. Muller. Didn't have the slightest idea what to do with them, because there was only one lab I could find up in Jozi, and it would have been impossible for me to be involved in the process, or to fly up every time I wanted to develop a new spool. I'd gone completely overboard with the film. Partly it was the find, picking up the thirty spools for next to nothing at the market, and what else was I going to do with them but shoot? But it was also the mystery, a grand experiment. When I told him this, when I found him, Mr. Muller knew exactly what I was talking about. 'It's an alchemy,' he said. 'As much in your head as the camera.' Unfortunately, it's also horribly expensive, especially now I have to buy my film from a specialist supplier via the Net, and Mr. Muller doesn't cut me any slack.
His wife left him seven years ago. Although he doesn't go into the details, I get the idea that there was an affair involved, maybe even on his side. That's when he picked up on his old habit. There's not much call for film development these days, but he's taught me tons I didn't know from digital.
If I catch him in the right mood, he'll haul out his portfolio from back in the days when he was a photojournalist for the Cape Times, which, endearingly, he insists on keeping hardcopy. We'll flip through thousands of portraits of politicians and public figures, jazz concerts and crime scenes and the Quarantine Riots.
My favourite is the mangled wreckage of a truck engine embedded in the sludge of a driedup irrigation pond, framed by grape vines shrivelled from the temperature rise none of the farmers wanted to believe in. It's the result of a car bomb set off by a bunch of right-wing students in Stellenbosch, who thought they could do a better job than government inc. with the drought and the superdemic. The only thing they managed to accomplish was blowing themselves up.
Apparently, engines are the only things that can survive an explosion of that calibre. In Lebanon in the 1970s, the photojourns were so jaded by all the car bombs, they turned it into a game to find the engines. Not that Mr. Muller was around then, but he describes the photo as a kind of tribute. This is the way his spiel runs every time he shows me his portfolio, like it's a recording and he just has to hit play. I think this is a side-effect of getting old.
The image is beautiful, almost black and white, although he shot in colour. It's the time of day and the way he's worked the light that washes it out. But it's the evocative simplicity of the context, of the meaning he's brought to a landscape that's impressive. It's easy to gutwrench with people: Tiananmen Square or Kevin Carter's vulture baby or the Bangladesh Children's War, but investing an inanimate object with the same quality is an accomplishment.
If I was still at Michaelis, I would make this the focus of my thesis, but I walked out of classes when dad died and didn't go back to explain, and now my bursary is null and void. Jonathan keeps nagging at me to reapply, to plead extenuating family circumstances.
Actually, I wanted to use some of Mr. Muller's images, from the quarantine series in particular, as a juxtaposition for an exhibition. But when I told him about it, planning a contrast between the photos of crams of people fighting through the smoke from the burning tyre-barricades and the hack gas versus the shots I took of the stadium crowds at the Extraordinaries concert last year (on assignment for a PR company), he told me it was pretentious art school crap, that it was totally insensitive to what people in this country had endured, and thank God I'd dropped out of that awful place.
'So what's it today?' Mr. Muller asks. 'No, wait, let me guess. Portraits of street kids holding their only possessions. Reflections in rear-view mirrors. Close-ups of people's shoes on the underway.' He's always amused by my choice of subject matter, although the street kid idea is genius.
'You'll just have to wait and see, Mr. M. I think you'll like them, though. I've been pushing the film.'
'And how go your plans for the exhibition? All in order, I trust?'
'We did the final selection yesterday. It's looking good, although Jonathan's a bit freaked out by the format, too archaic, the repro …'
'Yes, yes, you told me. It won't be perfect carbon copies.'
'Unless I scan them, which goes against the whole concept of non-digital.'
'You just stick with what you know. Ignore the whole bloody lot of them, especially that Jonathan. They're blowing smoke out their asses. You ready?'
We always do the developing together. I wish I could say it's a sacred rite of the alchemical process, a communion, but really it's because he doesn't quite trust me with his expensive chemicals. I'm also not allowed to address him as Dan or even Daniel. Just Mr. Muller, which is so retro.
I reach up to push aside the black plastic bags and he gently takes my arm, pushing up the sleeve. 'My goodness. What's this?' And suddenly I'm embarrassed.
He regards the glow logo seriously. 'When I was young, I wanted to get my grandfather's number from the prison camp tattooed on my arm. A sort of homage to suffering.'
'Why didn't you?'
'Jewish. It's not kosher. And it was in remarkably bad taste. I didn't realise that at the time.' He shrugs and takes another sip of ultra, gesturing to the darkroom. 'Shall we?'
Tendeka
Sent Messages Folder / -
17/09 23h09. Toby. Not answering UR phone.
Did U get msg switching the
meet? Damn SAPS. SIM denied
entry @Don Pedros. Here it is
again. RendezV @ 19 lwr main
wdstock instead. Unimore Pack
ing co warehouse. Call 4
directions if U need. No rush
17/09 23h29 Still waiting 4U. Still coming?
Havent heard from U. Con
cerned?!?! Hour late now
17/9 23h51 Cant do it w/out our key guy!
Dont want 2 rip the plug at this
late. Get in touch!
17/9 24h12 Not cool Toby
17/9 24h17 WHERE U?!?!?!?!
17/9 24h23 FUCKER. FUCK YOU. YOU FUCK
'Little tense, bro?' Toby calls out, waltzing into the warehouse, and it's only because I don't want to set a bad example for Zuko, or scare off our new recruit, that I don't fucking slam him through a wall of crates.
The bastard actually laughs. 'Relax, china. I didn't realise this was a military operation here. So we're a little late. It's quieter on the highway now anyways.'
'Are you fucking high?' Which is a stupid question, considering his pupils are so dilated his eyes are black.
'Yeah,' he says, looking round, unconcerned. 'What is this place? Boxworld?'
'Jasmine used to work here. She kept the keys. And the alarm code,' Ashraf says, as if this conversational thread is a priority right now, as if I'm not going to see through him changing the subject.
Toby scopes her out with a leer. 'I don't think we've had the pleasure?' But before he can kiss her hand, I intervene.