Oryx and Crake

  The resistance movement was global. Riots broke out, crops were burned, Happicuppa cafes were looted, Happicuppa personnel were car-bombed or kidnapped or shot by snipers or beaten to death by mobs; and, on the other side, peasants were massacred by the army. Or by the armies, various armies; a number of countries were involved. But the soldiers and dead peasants all looked much the same wherever they were. They looked dusty. It was amazing how much dust got stirred up in the course of such events.

  "Those guys should be whacked," said Crake.

  "Which ones? The peasants? Or the guys killing them?"

  "The latter. Not because of the dead peasants, there's always been dead peasants. But they're nuking the cloud forests to plant this stuff."

  "The peasants would do that too if they had half a chance," said Jimmy.

  "Sure, but they don't have half a chance."

  "You're taking sides?"

  "There aren't any sides, as such."

  Nothing much to be said to that. Jimmy thought about shouting bogus, decided it might not apply. Anyway they'd used up that word. "Let's change channels," he said.

  But there was Happicuppa coverage, it seemed, wherever you turned. There were protests and demonstrations, with tear gas and shooting and bludgeoning; then more protests, more demonstrations, more tear gas, more shooting, more bludgeoning. This went on day after day. There hadn't been anything like it since the first decade of the century. Crake said it was history in the making.

  Don't Drink Death! said the posters. Union dockworkers in Australia, where they still had unions, refused to unload Happicuppa cargoes; in the United States, a Boston Coffee Party sprang up. There was a staged media event, boring because there was no violence - only balding guys with retro tattoos or white patches where they'd been taken off, and severe-looking baggy-boobed women, and quite a few overweight or spindly members of marginal, earnest religious groups, in T-shirts with smiley-faced angels flying with birds or Jesus holding hands with a peasant or God Is Green on the front. They were filmed dumping Happicuppa products into the harbour, but none of the boxes sank. So there was the Happicuppa logo, lots of copies of it, bobbing around on the screen. It could have been a commercial.

  "Makes me thirsty," said Jimmy.

  "Shit for brains," said Crake. "They forgot to add rocks."

  As a rule they watched the unfolding of events on the Noodie News, via the Net, but for a change they sometimes watched fully clothed newscasters on the wall-sized plasma screen in Uncle Pete's leatherette-upholstered TV room. The suits and shirts and ties seemed bizarre to Jimmy, especially if he was mildly stoned. It was weird to imagine what all those serious-faced talking heads would look like minus their fashion items, full frontal on the Noodie News.

  Uncle Pete sometimes watched too, in the evenings, when he was back from the golf course. He'd pour himself a drink, then provide a running commentary. "The usual uproar," he said. "They'll get tired of it, they'll settle down. Everybody wants a cheaper cup of coffee - you can't fight that."

  "No, you can't," Crake would say agreeably. Uncle Pete had a chunk of Happicuppa stock in his portfolio, and not just a little chunk. "What a mort," Crake would say as he scanned Uncle Pete's holdings on his computer.

  "You could trade his stuff," said Jimmy. "Sell the Happicuppa, buy something he really hates. Buy windpower.