Aftertaste
A short story
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Mylo swore in frustration. Rounding up the twins was not going to plan, and now Saya had done a disappearing act.
‘MIX!’ he shouted from the driveway where he was standing next to the family mobile, ‘MIX! Where are you?’
‘Here Sir.’ came the response from behind him. Mylo turned round to look down at the ancient servomotor.
‘Right. There you are. Can you go and find Saya and tell her I want her in the mobile in five minutes or we’re leaving without her! No - just tell her we’re waiting for her. Please.’
His wife was always telling him off for being polite to the household utilities, but he could not help being polite to something you could hold a conversation with, whether it be MIX or the toaster.
‘Yes Sir. I think she’s in the garden again.’ said MIX as he set off on his task, caterpillar tracks crunching on the gravel.
‘Might’ve known.’ muttered Mylo.
He knew Saya wasn’t happy about the move to Five-City, but god damn it - she had no friends here to miss, and this new job at the Downside advertising agency was going to pay twice what he was getting now writing technical articles on hydroponics. She and Tiene would just have to get used to it - this was progress for goodness sake.
The population growth accompanying medical breakthroughs over the last fifty years meant that cities were spreading over land like mould on old bread and minimising environmental impact was the really big thing now. Not even cow farts were allowed to contribute to global warming since the World Government replaced livestock farming with hydroponic protein farming, and now the move below ground. This was going to minimise the heat signature from cities and eliminate light pollution altogether, but it was a slow process. The trick, he knew, was make the move attractive, make people want to move. This was where the new job came in, and the move Downside, so that he could speak from experience of the comfortable lifestyle and rewarding opportunities.
Mylo turned his attention back to the twins.
‘Right!’ he roared at the front door ‘I want you two tykes out here and sitting in the mobile in ten seconds! Ten! Nine!’ He struggled, but successfully banished the laugh that threatened to burst from him at the sight of two little heads peeping, one round each side of the front doorway.
‘Eight! Seven!’ The two heads were looking at each other, whispering in the loud not-really-whispers of four year olds.
‘Six! Five! Four!’ The conference obviously over, the two burst from the doorway in unison, rushing their father, who fell over backwards onto the soft lawn by the driveway in mock surprise and fear at their collision with him. The three rolled about on the grass, Mylo laughing and the twins squealing their delight at their new game.
Saya sat out in the garden, the cool, lavender-scented evening breeze stroking her cheeks and lifting the hairs on her bare arms. This is it, I'm really leaving, going Downside. She absently pushed a strand of her long brown hair back behind her ear and thrust the thought aside. Now she was going to enjoy the garden, one last time, with its red roses almost glowing in the dimming sunlight and bees dancing as they collected the last of the nectar before nightfall. She raised her gaze above the trees at the end of the garden and saw that the sky was beginning to redden slightly, with the promise of a sunset full of glowing pinks and scarlet.
A tear squeezed out from the corner of her eye. She let it shudder and glisten on her cheek before it slid down to her chin and dropped, ignored, onto her top. No more sunsets, only harsh white light, and unyielding blackness. How she would miss the scorching blaze of a summer sun on her back, the velvety darkness of nights encrusted with stars sparkling silver. There wasn't even time to see the moon one last time; that shining face that had witnessed the joys and sorrows of eighteen years of her life.
Slowly, a faint whirring sound impinged itself on her consciousness. MIX, the family servomotor, was making its way down the garden towards her. Dear old MIX, how he had patiently rounded her up from her frequent childhood expeditions into the woods. She had always thought of it as a he for some reason. She smiled as she remembered the ritual game of hide and seek and curling up in an exhausted sleep on his broad back on the way home, an area normally the resting place of a tray of drinks during the dinner parties her parents often gave.
'If you listen carefully', she had told her mother once, 'you can tell what he's thinking'.
Her mother had laughed, and had asked 'MIX, what are you thinking?'.
'Nothing Clara' MIX had answered, and her mother had sent her to wash her hands before dinner.
Yet her mother had never completely convinced Saya that MIX had no thoughts or feelings, although that was what all the Techs said. She would miss his mysterious whirring and ticking and clicking - the old fashioned squat, box-like home help would be redundant down in that hole in the ground they called the Five-City Complex. Everything you could possibly want was provided by brand new bipedal androids, provided as part of the package. No need to venture above ground with its unpredictable weather patterns, impure air, germs and annoying wildlife either. The Complex Authorities were sticklers for biosecurity - with everyone breathing the same recycled air they couldn’t afford anything nasty getting into the system. Contact with Topside was strictly limited.
'Except some of us kind of like impure air with the smell of life and getting caught out in the occasional downpour' she murmured to herself.
'Pardon Saya?' asked MIX, his monotone mechanoid voice accompanied by little whirs and clicks, which sounded almost sad. Or was she imagining it?
'Nothing MIX, just thinking' she answered, 'I'm really going to miss this place!'. She sighed and uncrossed her long legs from where she was sitting on the grass.
'I suppose they're all ready and rearing to go?' she asked, hoping for a reprieve, yet knowing there would be none. The gate to Downside only opened once a week to swallow a few more souls into its great belly of rock, keeping exposure of the complex to that terrible non-sterile Topside environment to a minimum. If they did not go this evening, her father would miss the start date of his new job.
'Your father is just getting your brothers into the mobile. They are waiting for you' was MIX's reply. Saya sighed again, and climbed to her feet.
'Come on then MIX' she said, reluctantly setting off for the house.
Then she firmly lengthened her stride. Downside was going to be her life until she finished Ed-Link and found herself a job. Then she could save enough to take holidays Topside. Maybe even enough to buy land Topside, build her own house, and make a real home out in the lovely non-sterile, fresh air, with all its impurities of cut grass and honeysuckle.
Meanwhile, perhaps she would even come to like it down there. With so many people her own age in one place she was bound to make lots of friends, learn new skills. They said there were lots of opportunities Downside that Saya had never had before, and she was determined to make the most of them, at least for a while.
Tiene watched out of the living room window as her husband and two youngest children rolled on the ground and Saya came up the garden brushing grass from her clothes. So much for arriving Downside neat and presentable. She smiled briefly at what would be sweet memories for future years, the smile turning sour as the nausea returned.
She had been feeling like this on and off ever since Mylo had accepted his new job offer and agreed to move his family Downside as an example to others. Maybe it was just coincidence, or heartache at leaving the home her family had been in for generations, but she had a bad feeling about this whole thing. She had tried to put Mylo off the idea, but it was such a good opportunity that her attempts had been half hearted, unconvinced and unconvincing. It was no good talking to Mylo about bad feelings - he had no patience with women’s ‘so-called’ intuition.
Tiene grabbed her coat and picked up the house keys from where they always lay, next to the stained glass lamp on the occasional table near the kitchen door. She wandered round the house one last time, checking that no bags has been left, turning each light off and leaving each doorway with increasing reluctance. She reclaimed the twins twin toy rabbits from the front doorway, exited, locked the front door for the last time, and put the keys under the precise plant pot pre-arranged with their estate agent.
Joining her family in the mobile, she looked across at Mylo, smiled and patted his hand where it rested, ready on the steering wheel.
‘Let’s go then.’ she said, forcing enthusiasm into her voice for the benefit of her children.
They drove off into the deepening dusk.
A few miles from their old home, Mylo joined the trackway, an automated, electro-magnetic road system that allowed people to travel at speeds that would be lethal for manually free-driven mobiles. In less than half an hour, just as the dusk was finally giving way to darkness, they arrived at the gates of the Five-City Complex and joined the floodlit queue of other families in their mobiles.
A fat, florid man in a Hawaiian shirt and shorts was making his way along the line of vehicles, occasionally stopping to dab at his sweaty bald head with a red handkerchief.
‘Out you get - no - leave all your belongings behind please - they’ll all be sterilised and returned to you once you’ve gone through decontamination.’ was the jovial, booming cry, repeated in various forms all along the line.
‘I suppose we better do what he says then’ suggested Mylo, and the family proceeded to decant from the mobile.
Tiene and Saya were unhappy at leaving their belongings behind, however temporarily, but no one was taking anything from any of the other vehicles and after some discussion they did not see how they could do any different. There was another pause in the proceedings as the twins refused to leave their favoured toy rabbits behind, red screwed up faces threatening full blown tantrums and tears.
‘That’s all right there - I think you can take those through the showers with you, wee ones!’ boomed the man, clapping Mylo on the back and winking at Tiena as he swayed past.
Crisis averted, the family joined the long line of people descending an escalator to the right of the roadway. Saya gazed upwards wistfully as the last of the night sky disappeared from view. When they reached the bottom and moved off they found themselves surrounded by hundreds of other people in a huge complex of individual decontamination shower cubicles. It was noisy as parents tried to comfort tired and irritable children and others shouted in exited recognition across the sea of heads. Tiena gripped the twins hands tightly in hers while Mylo and Saya shielded them from the mass of people with their bodies, arms and elbows in play as required.
A large team of men and women were directing families to groups of cubicles so that they would not lose each other in the throng, telling each person to place their clothes in the bag provided for sterilisation purposes, assuring them that they would get them back and pointing out the gowns provided for after they had showered. Soon it was Mylo’s family’s turn. Mylo and Tiena each took one of the twins with them into adjacent cubicles since they were too young to clean themselves; Saya took one opposite. They undressed and put their clothes in the bags provided
There was a slight delay as the hundreds of people took up position under the showers - decontamination had to be simultaneous for biosecurity reasons. However, the cubicles were warm, and soon the hot water, smelling slightly of disinfectant began to flow. After the water came warm air to dry the now clean entrants to the Five-City Complex.
Saya was using the hot wind to dry her long brown hair when she heard a thump from the cubicle next door. She paused to listen and heard a soft thud from the cubicle on the other side and a brief whimper from one of the twins in the cubicle opposite - all else was quiet. Reaching out for the white cotton gown on the back of the door, she suddenly felt woozy, strange spots started moving in front of her eyes, then everything went black.
Outside the complex, a team of bipedal androids emptied the contents of the mobiles onto large trailers, ready for sorting and either re-sale or incineration. Inside, more android workers moved around the shower complex, throwing the neat bags of clothes onto smaller trailers pulled by ancient servomotors. These too would be incinerated later, the heat they generated helping to power the complex. The fat, florid man, wandering amongst the cubicles, bent to pick up two toy rabbits - his two sons would love these. Once all the bags were collected, the floors in the cubicles retracted silently. The clean, naked bodies slipped lifelessly down the chutes below for processing.
The housewarming party laid on by the new occupants of Mylo’s old family home was in full swing. The band in a large marquee on the lawn was playing soft music for those inclined to dance between courses, and oil burning lamps in the garden were providing a flickering orange light for those inclined wander there. Even the moths were joining in, fluttering around the lavender scenting the night air, and perilously close to the flames of the lamps.
The Governor finished the last mouthful from his buffet plate and stretched back in his seat with a satisfied sigh.
‘You know dear,’ he remarked to his wife, ‘that hydroponic protein is getting better and better. That almost tasted like real pork - none of the aftertaste we used to get.’
His wife smiled indulgently at him and moved off to do some more circulating. The perfect hostess in the perfect home, making sure that the guests were happy and well fed, and suitably awed by the accommodation that their status afforded them.
MIX trundled around the house and garden after her, a tray serving drinks and nibbles on his back, strange, almost sad whirs and clicks emanating from the old fashioned servomotor.