Moxyland

  Now Ash has this big plan all laid out with some corporate sell-out buddy, who says he can get the project into his company's CSI program, no problem. Like getting some big dick to sponsor the whole thing isn't a total violation of everything we do.

  We have no choice but to head up to the taxi rank, cos the minibuses aren't as regulated as the trains. You don't get the corporates taking taxis, putting up with shoving in among twenty-four people packed into a space officially licensed for sixteen, or dealing with the strikes or the gun fights when the taxi wars get too heated. And some of the gamchees are willing to look the other way for a small fee, purely administrative. The trick is to do it out in the open, as if it's a normal transaction. My wallet is locked out along with all the other functions on my phone, so Ashraf transfers five times the going rate to the gamchee manning the taxi at the head of the Khayelitsha line.

  We cram in next to a mama with a week's worth of groceries and a two year-old spilling out of her lap and a guy who is too beat down to be gangster – probably just some poor asshole riding the job-hunt bus to nowhere. Not likely he's going to get anything with what's clearly a knife scar striped through his hair above his ear, which pegs him as loxion. Could be worse though, he could be disconnect. He could be living Rural or in Zim, that other suburb of China.

  'Yey! Diskonneksie. Geen moeilikheid nie, ne?' The gamchee waggles a finger at me. At five times the fare, he knows full well I'm not gonna be any trouble at all.

  I feel like shit. I'm still not breathing 100% and the muscle in my eyelid keeps spasming. It's driving me crazy, although Ash says he can't see it.

  'That's one of the things I'm talking about. The shit we can't see. The tech was only approved, what, eighteen months ago? How do they know what the long-term effects are going to be? And here they are dishing out defusings like it's a party game. It's like shock therapy, you know, dampening down excitable behaviour, frying our brains, flattening us out, so we're all unquestioning, unresisting obedient model fucking zombie puppydog citizens.'

  The mama rearranges the child on her lap uncomfortably, and Ash beckons for me to lower it a decibel. He always gets embarrassed when I talk too loud in public. It's not like anyone can hear me above the driver's bhangra rock blaring from the speakers or our greedy gamchee friend hoping to pick up a couple more fares, screeching 'Kaaaaai-ee-leetsha!' out the window in case there's any uncertainty about our route.

  'Ten. If it was about brainwashing, they'd just dose the water supply. Don't you think? Chill out, baby.'

  I lower my voice slightly.

  'I'm not talking brainwashing. I'm saying it's electroshock lobotomy. Government endorsed. And the whole water supply thing? Please. Too easy to test for. The international enviro agencies would pick that up in a second. Unless they paid them off. I mean, anything's possible. They're all corrupt, all of them.'

  Ash is wearing that humouring-me smirk.

  'Okay, okay, fine. You're right. Conjecture hurts the cause. Enough with the conspiracy talk. But you know it's true.'

  The taxi rockets around Hospital Bend, which used to feature an actual hospital, home to the world's first heart transplant, before it got turned into luxury apartments, past the nice middle-class burbs, Obs and Rosebank and Pinelands and Langa, and into the loxion sprawl proper. Don't be fooled by the cosy apartment blocks lining the highway, it's all Potemkin for the tourists. You just need to go a couple of blocks in to find the real deal, the tin shacks and the old miners' hostels and the converted containers now that the shipping industry has died together with the economy. All the same shit they've been promising to fix since the 1955 Freedom Charter or whatever it was. And despite the border patrols, the sprawl just keeps on spreading. You can't keep all of the Rurals out all of the time.

  The taxi pulls over to let us out at the circle at the entrance to Berlin, named like so many of the districts, Kosovo and Barcelona and Joe Slovo and Mandela Tribute Park, for the headline news. We get out by the massive and so very conspicuous SAPS station, and walk the rest of the way back to the club, past the tourist zone, where the rubbernecks come to get their taste of poverty and their photographs with the kiddies, maybe some love muti from the sangoma, or a taste of mqombothi beer shared around in a can between men who are only there to lend the scene authenticity, to earn a little cash to buy a Zamalek, real beer in a real bottle, because no one cares about tradition anymore. The tourists don't venture too deep into the heart of it, which means they're missing out on the drop toilets and spiderwebs of illegal electricity connections in the newest parts of the sprawl, where council hasn't got to yet.

  Ash would point out the good stuff they're missing too, the stuff he tried to show our hombre friends, the barbershop strip in Chinatown and jazz at the shebeen and the soccer club and the boxing society and the entrepreneurs hawking minutes on their cell phones (illegally with the new SIM ID laws in place) and the sense of community and how transformation has been real and important. Like it's not a total wank, where people are just as economically fucked as they were before, only now they're sick as well, or, worse, trying to escape being sick and bringing it in with them from the Rural. And that leads to spates of outbreaks all over and crackdowns, just as bad as those bad old days when the police came storming in to quarantine and deport whole neighbourhoods.

  Ash takes my hand as we reach the soccer pitch next to the club, really just a scrap of dirt that the community housing committee cleared for development, so uneven that the ball catches on clods and goes wide or random. It's good practice for the kids, Ash says; when they get to play on a real field, they'll have the advantage. We're trying to get it permanently instated, which requires more funding, more waiting, more neo-colonial cocks, no doubt.

  He fiddles with the ring on my finger. 'Do you really have to wear that?'

  'Don't start with that now, please,' I say.

  'But all the time?'

  'And what am I gonna do when Home Affairs comes knocking? And interrogates me on why I'm not wearing my wedding ring?'

  Ash snorts. 'In light of all the other transgressions? The heady whirlwind of the entire week-long romance before you got married? Or that she lives in a totally different part of the city? Or, you know, that minor detail about you not being female-inclined? I'm just saying.'

  'Then you don't need to be uptight about it. Jesus, Ash. She's a fucking refugee. Have some compassion.'

  The club smells decidedly funky, like too many sweaty kids have simply dumped their gear post-game in a pile, which turns out to be exactly the case. Ash starts plucking up the shirts and pants to take to the laundry vat just down the way. The place is looking more rundown than usual, the Kaiser Chiefs poster curling at the edges from the damp seeping through from the DIY-rigged shower next door. It's been like that for eight months already. We've applied for additional funding to get a real one, after the uniforms, after we get Streets Back back on schedule.

  I go into our room to find Zuko playing video games on my machine, when he knows full well it's only available for homework, and besides, I'm supposed to be meeting skyward* online.

  'Uh-uh, bro. Off. On the pitch. You can round up some of your playmates and practise for a couple of hours.'

  'What about the thing?' Zukes asks, because he's tagging along tonight. Ashraf doesn't like me to involve him in the extra-mural, being a minor, but between the soccer and our 'special projects', I keep him distracted, off the streets, out of the kind of trouble I got into at his age.

  'Don't sweat it,' I tell him. 'We got plenty time. We're only leaving here at nine-thirty. So hit the field already.'

  'What?' Ashraf freezes mid-scoop, sweaty crumpled shirts dangling from his arms. 'We're not still going?'

  'Chill, baby. Toby's got a friend who is going to sort it one time. I'm not going to let a disconnect stop me. It'll be smooth sailing. Promise.'

  'After that stunt at Stones, you're still counting on Toby?' Ashraf is about to get majorly wound up, but then he slices his eyes
meaningfully in Zuko's direction. 'I'm gonna do the laundry. We can talk later,' he says.

  But it's good for the kid to know what's on the level and in the open. You can't hide shit behind closed doors.

  It's better that Ashraf is off to do the laundry. He takes it as a personal affront that I spend so much time in Pluslife. 'Our life not good enough for you?'

  But before skyward*, we were Disney channel, strictly kid's stuff. We gotta step it up if we want to be taken seriously. I plug in the headphones, ignoring the huffiness in the background as Ash slams the door behind him, connect to the Plus server and I'm gone.

  Skyward* is waiting for me in Monomotapa, which is what I call my house in Avalon. With

  59.3 million registered users, it's one of world's favourite virtual escapes, which makes it easier to blend in unnoticed.

  Despite the Euro-traditional name, Avalon is Asia-centric, so the game world is six to eight hours ahead and more than half the population don't speak English, which suits me perfectly. What's the point of escaping to Plus if the world is too close to the one you just left? And besides, you can make an okay living, earning Avalon guinees (guineveres, current exchange G7.26 to the ZAR) teaching other residents English.

  skyward*'s avatar is looking uglier than usual, a stubby obese woman with a lumpy bald head and features on the wrong side of a mix of Asian and black. He says it's so people underestimate him, because even in game space everyone wants to be skinny and beautiful. I couldn't be bothered with the customising, I just uploaded a photograph and skinned it direct to my avatar. It's more honest.

  I spent more time on doing up my place. It's pretty humble, designed to be bio-friendly, all recyclable materials, solar panels on the ceiling, a wind farm in the garden. Not that you need to generate energy in-world, but it's the principle. It's a shining example to throw into contrast the kind of excesses the neighbourhood attracts, which is why I chose this location specifically.

  It's a recreation of the LA hills, which pulls in celeb wannabes by the dumpload, all avatared to resemble their current favourites, living or deceased, the Cary Grants and Tupacs and Gwyneths and Engelica Ks. The fankids go totally overboard, doing all this research online, re-creating every detail, right down to the brand of soy milk their celebrity keeps in the fridge or the mosaic tiling in the bathroom or the guest lists for their parties. Sometimes there's more than one celeb clone in the neighbourhood, and then they get into this bullshit competitive crap about who's keeping it more real. It's a symptom of everything that's wrong with our culture.

  I click the conversation window, and immediately, skyward* throws up a personal firewall that locks us into private chat.

  >>skyward*: hey.

  >> 10: Sup in the Dam, my man? Listen, I'm thinking of calling it off, I got watchlisted today.

  >> skyward*: you're gonna have to be more careful. come on, we should take a walk.

  >>10: Yeah. Okay.

  It's dead quiet this time, past midnight in Japan, so only the most devout of players are online, and I don't know why skyward* is antsy about eavesdroppers, especially in my home. But I'm not gonna take issue if he wants to play it noir. Avalon LA lends itself to that. We step outside my domicile and walk down the driveway into the night, which is far brighter than realworld, every star visible, every orbit hotel and satellite.

  We set off into the wilderness around the apartments, modelled on an idealised movie versioning of Mulholland Drive, so no gated communities, no Mexican labour riots, and there are even virtual coyotes, although I have yet to see one. Some of them are people too, playing out an entirely different kind of alternalife, which I can relate to far more than the celeb clones.

  We head up towards a hill, the one furthest from the civilisation, which sometimes means the pixels drop off the page. Gamespace maintenance doesn't pay that much attention to the uninhabited areas, not in a freeworld, anyhow. If we were on premium subscription base, we might have justification to complain.

  skyward* picks up the conversation only when we reach the top, looking down on the lights glittering in the dark. There are several parties happening in the valley tonight, no doubt careful re-creations of the real deal, thumping bass drifting up. I pull up my private settings, toggle the ambient audio to lock out the human-generated, so the incessant doefdoef vanishes immediately, leaving us with the sound of crickets and wind in the grass. Not that the grass is actually stirring – too much render time for my connection speed to handle.

  There's a flickering on the horizon, and at first I think it's some bug in the software, but as it spreads, multi-coloured, I figure that someone has hacked the sky. It's doing a northern lights thing. And that's the beauty of Pluslife. That here you can actually have an influence on the world.

  >> skyward*: i'll be straight with you. calling it off is not an option.

  >> 10: It's not a cancel. It's a raincheck. >> skyward*: it's critical we go ahead. >> 10: Hey, man. I got crisped and marked once already today. I'm down for twentyfour hours as it is. And I can't do fucking anything. I'm impotent here.

  >> skyward*: think of it as a test. prove to me that you're NOT impotent. that you can get around. how am I going to trust you with bigger ops if you can't handle a minor setback? you do still want in on the heavy impact stuff, don't you, 10? stop splashing around in the kiddie pool.

  >> 10: Don't hardball me. This is serious shit. If I get picked up in criminal activity during a watch period, that's a fucking disconnect offence!!!!!! It's easy for you to kick back in fucking Amsterdam and be telling me I have to risk a disconnect in Cape Town.

  >> skyward*: you're right. it is serious shit. either you can handle, or you're just playing. i don't have time for dabbler wannabes.

  >> 10: …

  >> skyward*: well?

  I watch the northern lights flickering above our avatars, the digital representation of myself and a dumpy woman who might or might not look anything like skyward*. The sky loops in fractals of colour, pale-blue fire washing into acid green and purple like tie-dye. Just lines of code, really. Some bored programmer, a kid with extra time to waste. No different from the wannabes re-creating some rock star's mansion. It's pretty. But empty. Just a distraction.

  >>10: Okay.

  Lerato

  Gaborone has all the soul and personality of a strip mall, or maybe the teenage blank-heads who hang out in strip malls all desperately trying to conform. It feels like a shabby wannabe cousin of Jozi – trying too hard, too much hair gel.

  This must be what Americans go through, the sour disappointment, expecting to encounter the exotic when it's all the same homogeneous crap the world over. Only it's Mugg & Bean rather than McDonald's. And this is what we are striving for? Give me Lagos any day, screw the crush and the dirt and the traffic. It's better than that blandly innocuous dust-pit.

  Did I mention the dust? I arrived with a minor chest infection, but it's like breathing silt; the air is thick with it. And it's stinking, sticky humid. Two days in, negotiations are fraught, Mpho is on the verge of a breakdown from the tension, which makes me wonder why I even need a design architect along if he can't take the pace, and I'm getting uncontrollable coughing fits for ten minutes straight. I had to excuse myself from the Bula Metalo meeting. Khan-Ross sent his PA to come see if I was okay.

  The whole thing was hideous. The city. The coughing. Mpho getting all clingy. The problem. It took us four working days to resolve it, and it all came down to the technicalities. My department. Pure fluke that the channel code our push ads were coming in on just happened to be identical to within a digit of the Botswana police authority's defuse signals. Sorting out the code was simple: it was the PR that was a total nightmare, not helped by the fact that Mpho has the EQ of a gecko. Sweet, but not exactly socially adept. He hasn't caught on, for example, that our little sexual sojourn was a one-time limited offer, valid for this particular business trip only – and only then because there's fuck-all else to do in Gaborone except fuck.

  Mph
o's about as good in bed as he is a systems designer. Same technique even – mechanical as a piston shaft and unwavering from whatever approach worked last time. And it'll work this time too, if only because he'll eventually wear you down.

  It meant I had to do a shit load of managing in both scenarios, especially with Bula Metalo. Let's face it, I can get myself off, but soothing feathers that weren't so much ruffled as plucked (because Mercedes is a major Bula Metalo client, and they were not pleased that their customers were being electrocuted by their advertising) took a lot more time and effort.

  So eventually, it was all sorted, and we're on our way home, flying deluxe economy, which is one more reason I have to get a new job, but I'm still coughing like I'm about to hack up a lung, and this fat chick across the aisle keeps giving me these dirty looks, and I know exactly what the paranoid wench is thinking. Don't think I didn't notice her call over the flight attendant, the fervent whispering.