That Friday night with Grandma, Grandpa, aunts, uncles and cousins was quite overwhelming for Greta. After ten minutes in the vip, with her new found family surrounding her on every side, alternately kissing or pinching her cheeks, telling her how much she looked like her sister and asking her about life in the forest, Greta became disorientated, dizzy and nauseous. She excused herself and went to lie down.
She watched the gathering instead on a rectangle screen projected onto the wall of the bedroom. It was hard to focus on what everyone was saying and it all seemed quite dreamlike, but it gave Greta a warm feeling that she’d never felt before.. to feel that she was part of a family. This family. And a noisy and joyous bunch they were when they all got together. The room was filled with loud talking, everyone at the same time and almost constant laughter from one corner or another.
Greta watched with interest when, at one point everyone went quiet and gathered round to watch Grandma light two candles and make a blessing. Then Grandpa took a big plaited loaf of bread and a silver cup of wine and made an incantation in Hebrew to which everyone shouted ‘Amen’. It reminded Greta of ceremonial communal mealtimes in the forest, where they began by praying and thanking the Great Spirit for providing for them.
Ariel explained that their family weren’t really religious, but they kept certain traditions, like these blessings to welcome in Shabbat. Ariel and Nina smirked and joked through the rituals, but Greta thought it was beautiful and she was quite enchanted. She liked being Jewish, even though she didn’t really know what it was or what it meant. It made her happy to see that even in the depths of the city, even inside the hives, people were still keeping the spark of humanity alive, in their own ways, and not forgetting the Great Spirit.
Osama and his parents and his two younger sisters came in bearing a big tray of baklava, delicious looking sweets made with layers of delicate pastry and chopped nuts. They’d brought them fresh, still warm, from the Old City, down in the orange zone, beneath the hive. Greta wished she could try one. Osama’s parents welcomed Greta into their family as if she was their own long lost daughter. His sisters were fascinated to see the girl who had grown up in the forest and walked alone through the wilderness to return to the city, the place of her birth. To them, Greta was a fairy tale come to life and they had no end of questions for her about her life and adventures.
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In the days that followed, Greta, Nina and Freddy settled into a sort of routine, as they adjusted to the new dynamic in their family life that Greta brought into their household.
They would eat breakfast together at the kitchen table. Greta soon developed a taste for Cheery-O’s, but she also insisted on bringing fresh fruit and vegetables into the kitchen, from which she would make salads and stews. For Greta, it was novel to have so many convenient ways to cook and prepare food. The therma oven and electric stove top would be hot in seconds. In the forest, there was one big woodfired oven which everyone would bring their dishes and loaves to for baking. Here, she could cook what she liked, when she liked. There were so many more ingredients too. All you needed to do was say you wanted something and it would show up at the door, delivered by a robot, minutes later.
Greta would spend the mornings watching cooking programs, getting ideas for what she could make for supper. She liked watching ‘masterchef’, a televised cooking competition from the time before the Big Shift. It gave her a glimpse of the world as it used to be. As well as getting cooking tips, she liked the way you got to to know the contestants as they told their stories of their lives, their loves and losses, their dreams and passions. In many ways, they were the same as people’s stories were now, but in other ways, very different. None of those people had any idea what was about to happen in the world, a few short years hence. Greta liked watching them not knowing. It seemed like such an innocent time, in retrospect.
A bit later, Greta and Nina would take Sydney to the park. Greta taught Nina to climb the big trees there. Nina was scared and cautious at first, but with Greta’s help, soon gained in confidence and followed Greta up to high branches that she would never have dared to reach before. People would stop and stare at the twins clambering around, high up in the trees and shout at them to come down, telling them that it wasn’t safe. Nina would shout back, ‘It’s ok, we’re from the forest!’ There was one huge tree with long, wide boughs all around it. Greta and Nina would sit up in that tree for hours, watching all the people below who had no idea they they were there. Nina liked seeing the world from this perspective. It awakened something in her. She also liked the feeling of not being always seen. It was new to her.
For lunch, they’d get a sandwich from the sandwich bar in the park. Greta became quite friendly with the girl who worked there, who wasn’t really a girl at all, but a robot called Mandy. Greta knew that, of course, by the glowing blue ‘O’ above Mandy’s head where her stats would have been, if she’d been a human, but she decided to try to suspend disbelief. If she was going to live with robots, she reasoned, she may as well be on friendly terms with them, and she liked Mandy. Mandy always had something nice to say, something to brighten up the day. She also made very good sandwiches. They’d pick some apples and tangerines and take their picnic down to the viewpoint.
When they were out in the park, Greta wore the specs most of the time. It was simpler to just keep them on, rather than to keep on taking them off and on so as to not miss some important bit of information. The world somehow made more sense when you could also see the layer of augmented reality superimposed. In the afternoons, Greta would go through the vip training program, which took her through various stages of assimilating to the immersive virtual environment. She was instructed in how to control her surroundings and how to minimise the symptoms of PCD.. paralysing cognitive dissonance, which was the name for the reaction she’d had during her first time in a vip.
Sometimes, Greta would take her flute with her into the vip. She found that playing the flute helped reduce the PCD. It calmed her breathing and took her mind to another place. Often she’d go to Nina’s Paris studio and they’d play duets, Greta on the flute, Nina on the piano. Usually, Pierre would come around. Greta grew to almost like him. She liked the way that he treated Nina. He was incredibly sensitive, patient, attentive and very romantic. As Nina said, in her world weary way, ‘He’s better than any real boy or man.. at least any that I’ve ever met. He doesn’t expect anything from me. I can just be who I am with Pierre. He’s always there for me, always on my side. Pierre will never let me down..’ But Greta felt it was wrong of O to lead Nina on into such a fantasy. When she looked at Pierre’s face, beautiful though it was, she knew she was looking at O’s face.. or one of O’s many faces. She found she couldn’t trust Pierre, or forgive him.
Usually Greta would leave Nina and Pierre to it. Sometimes she would wander the forest, in the vip, trying to make herself believe that she was really there. But however hard she tried, it just wasn’t the same. She began to visit Osama. He was always happy to see her and would usually drop whatever he was doing to spend time with Greta. He always said that he knew when she was about to call.. he’d get a feeling.. her face would come into his mind about five minutes before she’d call. Greta felt it must mean that they had a deep connection, which she felt they did. Osama said it was since getting the noodle, he’d been experiencing all sorts of ESP.. telepathy, glimpses of the future, hearing other people’s thoughts, seeing through other people’s eyes.. He said it was quite common, but it was still very freaky.
‘You should get that checked out’, said Greta, trying not to scold Osama for being so stupid as to get a noodle.
‘Oh, I’m checked out all the time.. constantly’, said Osama. ‘Monitored all the time, even when I’m asleep. But the noodles are unpredictable, that’s the thing. You never really know, like.. how you’ll take to it.. and how it will take to you.’
‘Was it worth it?’ Greta asked. ‘Do you regret it?’
‘No way! I don’t regret it at all. It was totally worth it!’ Osama replied without a moment’s hesitation.
‘But why? Why do you need it? What does it give you? I just don’t understand.’
‘So many things’, said Osama. ‘Super-learning, for one. You know I’m studying to be a doctor? That usually takes seven years. With a noodle I can do it in one.’
‘What? How?’
‘It multiplies the neural pathways. Optimises the flow of neurons. Makes your brain more efficient, able to store, process and retrieve much more information more quickly and easily, using less energy. It’s like massively upgrading your CPU.. your central processing unit.’
‘You talk about your brain like it’s a computer. Is that how you think it works?’
‘Not how I think it works. How it actually works.’ Osama looked at Greta and made a funny face and said in a funny voice, ‘I’m a cyborg, baby!’
Greta laughed. It wasn’t really funny to Greta, that Osama had allowed O to irreversibly alter his body and mind, but somehow, when Osama laughed about it, Greta could see the light side. Things somehow made more sense.
‘Actually, it’s not quite like a computer’, said Osama, turning serious. ‘The thing is with humans is that our memories get passed down, from one generation to the next in all sorts of ways. The same goes for trauma. We carry the pain of injustices that were not only done to us personally, but that were done to those who came before us. Processing all of that can be really complicated. Healing from that is no simple thing.’
Greta thought about this and realised that it was true. How much of her own life had been shaped by trying to make sense of the Big Shift? Trying to piece together what had come before that catastrophic event and to understand what had happened since. How much anger did she still hold against O for what they had done to split her family and countless other families apart in order to pave the way for the new world? How could she ever hope to heal from any of that while it was still going on and O was still in power, ruling people’s lives with their total surveillance, huge technological advantage and their senseless protocols?
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Greta visited her grandparents every day. They were both well into their nineties, yet they were remarkably healthy. Grandpa David still liked to play tennis. Sometimes, Grandpa, Freddy, Nina and Greta all played doubles, each in their own vip. When Grandpa and Freddy played on the same team they usually won. They were both much more competitive than either Greta or Nina and took the game more seriously. Greta was still a complete beginner at tennis, but she liked it and picked it up quickly.
Most afternoons, Greta would sit with Grandma Ruth and ask her all about life in the olden days, before the Big Shift. She wanted to know all about the lives of her ancestors and quizzed her Grandma about everything she could remember about her parents and grandparents and their parents and grandparents.
The characters in Grandma’s stories seemed to all come from different parts of the world. The stories Grandma told painted a history of her people being endlessly driven out of one place after another and many being killed along the way for no other crime than their being Jewish. As many questions as she asked, neither Greta nor Grandma Ruth could explain or understand why that had been the case.
‘We thought that once we had our own country, that we’d finally be left alone and able to live in peace’, Grandma said. ‘How wrong we were.’
‘Why not?’ asked Greta, trying hard to understand.
‘Because there were people here already. This was their home’, said Grandma with a tired shrug and a sigh.
‘What happened to them?’
‘You need to understand, Greta..’ said Grandma, faltering. ‘..those people were desperate. The ones who came here to start a new country. They’d escaped from unimaginable horrors. Some had just lost their whole families.’
‘So what happened to the people that were living here already?’ asked Greta, not sure she really wanted to know.
‘Most of them we chased away, some of them we killed. A few stayed behind’, said Grandma, a shadow passing across her eyes. ‘They were scattered across the world, just like we had been. But they never gave up dreaming that one day they’d return. How did we, of all people, think that they ever would?’
Greta and Grandma both stared out of the window for a long time. Now Greta wasn’t so sure she liked being Jewish all that much after all. It seemed to come with a lot of baggage.
Grandma and Grandpa’s apartment faced north. On a clear day, such as this, from high up in the New Jerusalem hive, you could see all the way to the hills of Galilee. It seemed remarkable to Greta, that Jesus himself had walked those same hills, thousands of years ago. Had he been a real person or just a character in a story? What would he think of this place if he came back today? Would he live in the hives, or would he prefer to stay out in the hills, sleeping in caves or under olive trees beneath the stars? Greta figured he’d probably do both, bringing comfort, if not salvation, to people in the hives and also those out in the wilderness. Greta thought maybe that’s what she should do. After all, people are people wherever you go. People can’t really help where they’re born, or control all of the circumstances that govern the course of their lives.
‘Do you know what happened to Grandma Josie and Grandpa Frank? Mum’s parents. Are they still alive?’
Grandma Ruth shook her head sadly. ‘I wish I knew, Greta. I wish I knew. We haven’t heard from them, since the Big Shift. Since it happened. They just completely vanished. We tried to find them. Really, we made every effort, but after the first few years.. after things had settled down.. and they still didn’t show up.. well, we just had to think the worst. Like we did with you and your mum. How could you have been there all the time and never got in contact? It would have been so simple. We just couldn’t understand it. But, you know, a lot of people disappeared at that time. You and River and Frankie and Josie weren’t the only ones. That’s why it’s such a miracle, you coming back like this, Greta. It really is. It gives us all so much hope that maybe the others will come back too.’
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One day, Greta went with Osama down to the Old City, in the orange zone beneath the hive where he lived. She was in the vip, of course, but by this time she’d become accustomed to it and no longer suffered from PCD, or any cognitive dissonance at all. Now she could step into the vip and instantly be in any number of places, real or virtual and it seemed completely normal. Switching between realities became second nature to Greta, after the two weeks in and out of the O-zone.
Osama was there in real life and Greta’s virtual self walked alongside him through the narrow, ancient alleys of the old city of Jerusalem. Greta walked barefoot. She liked to feel the cold, smooth stone beneath her feet, the white flagstones worn smooth by centuries of footsteps of pilgrims who had travelled there from afar and of people who lived their whole lives within the city’s ancient walls.
They visited Osama’s elderly uncle, Sumud, who had a shop on the main bazaar. It was like walking into an Aladdin's cave, with its arched stone walls and ceiling, and with its piles of treasures from near and far. There were beautifully handwoven rugs and carpets, copperware embossed with intricate designs, hand-painted ceramics with brightly coloured patters, candlesticks, incense, religious symbols and good luck charms to hang on doors or walls, made from wood, silver and gold. It was said that Sumud’s family had kept the same shop in the same place for seven hundred years, throughout one set of rulers after another. Some had been better than others and some of them worse.
Greta asked Sumud what he thought about the current ruler, O?
Sumud put his hands together and looked up at the sky, or rather up at the ancient arched ceiling with the cracked plaster. ‘Alhamdulilah!’ he said. ‘The Great Leader is the best occupier we’ve had so far.’ And then he laughed so much that he went into a coughing fit.
Osama rushed to his uncle and sat him down on a pile of carpets, rubbing his back to try to sooth his coughing. He gave him his water bottle to drink from and spoke softly to him in Arabic in a worried voice, as his coughing subsided.
Afterwards, outside the shop, Osama said to Greta. ‘This is why I want to be a doctor, you see? People like my uncle Sumud. He won’t go up into the green zone and let O treat him. He’s never even been there. He doesn’t trust O.. he doesn’t trust any sort of authority.. but he doesn’t really understand what O is.. why the Great Leader is different from all the others that came before. I keep telling him he should come and live up in the hive with all the rest of the family, but he insists on staying there in the shop. In that damp, mouldy cave. It’s not good for his health, but he’s scared that if he leaves it, someone will take it. Nothing anyone can say to him will get him to budge. He went through too much before the Big Shift. Lost too much. Too many people. He can’t believe it’s all over now. There are loads of people like that, here in the orange zone and out in the red zone. People who need medical treatment but for one reason or another won’t let O help them. I want to be able to go out there and help those people.’
Greta looked at Osama in admiration. Knowing him made her want to be a better person. Now, more than ever in her life, the world seemed bigger and more complex than she’d ever imagined, but Osama somehow made it seem simple.
They wandered down through the winding alleys of the old city, Osama leading the way, which he knew like the back of his hand. Everyone seemed to know him and they all welcomed and treated Greta like she was a queen on a royal visit from a far away kingdom.
In a stone courtyard, under an old carob tree there was an old man sitting on an old wooden chair playing an old guitar. The old man had a long white beard. He wore small round glasses with thick lenses that magnified his eyes. On his head, perched a battered, old, porkpie hat which he wore at a jaunty angle. He was singing with his eyes closed, in a rich and tuneful voice, some song in ancient Hebrew accompanied by his rhythmic strumming on the guitar. The guitar was plugged into a little portable amplifier under his chair, which added volume and distortion. The music filled the little ancient courtyard, echoing off the stone walls, cascading upwards into the vaulted structure of the hive.
Osama took some coins out of his pocket and dropped them into the guitar case which lay open at the musician’s feet. On hearing the soft clatter of Obit coins (new money was made from carbon, unlike old coins which were made from metal, so they made a different sound), the old man opened his eyes.
‘Oh, hello Osama my friend!’ said the guitar player, without missing a beat. Greta waved and smiled, but the old man didn’t seem to see her.
‘Hello Bentzi’, said Osama. ‘You’re in fine voice today.’
‘Yes, it sounds really good’, agreed Greta. ‘What’s the song you’re singing?’ But Bentzi didn’t seem to hear her.
‘He can’t see or hear you’, said Osama. ‘He’s not wearing lenses or anything.’
‘Oh, right. I forgot I’m not really here’, said Greta.
‘Well, to me you are’, smiled Osama and gave her arm a gentle squeeze.
‘Can I give him some money?’ asked Greta. ‘I found out I’ve got quite a lot of money and I don’t really need it.’
‘Who are you talking to? Have you got a friend with you?’ said the old man, stopping his strumming and looking intently at the space where Greta was standing.
‘Yes, I’m with my friend, Greta. She’s from the forest. She wants to give you some money. Have you got an account? She was also asking about the song your singing.’
‘The words I’m singing come from the book of Psalms, written by King David in ancient times. It’s poetry, beautiful poetry. The music? I don’t know what you’d call it. It doesn’t really matter.. does it?’ Bentzi thought long and hard on his question, but seemed unable to reach a conclusion, so he shrugged and started strumming again, in a different key. ‘Regarding transfer of funds, so to speak.. that’s very kind of you to offer, but I don’t have an account with Big Brother O. No thank you. Not me. I’ve got no account with O and O’s got no account with me. Nothing to settle there and that’s the way I like it. No-one’s slave, no-one’s master. It’s got to be cash or nothing.. well, maybe a nice sweet pastry.. some rogelach I never say no to, do I Osama?’
‘Indeed you don’t, Bentzi’, laughed Osama. ‘I’ll get you some on the way back.’ He dropped another lot of coins into Bentzi’s case and they made their way along. Bentzi resumed his singing and it followed them down the ancient street as they made their way towards the holy sites at the heart of the old city.
As they neared the holy sites, the narrow streets became more crowded. People of all different faiths bustled to and from the place which was said to be built upon the very rock where God created the world and the first humans, Adam and Eve. The same rock upon which Abraham almost sacrificed his son to that same God. Later, the ancient Hebrews built a temple there, but later it was destroyed by the ancient Babylonians. Later, the slightly less ancient Hebrews built another temple in the same spot, and later again, that one was destroyed, this time by the Romans, who later crucified Jesus on that very same spot and from which same Jesus, later still, rose again. Later again, the Prophet Mohammed, on his Night Journey was said to have journeyed from that very rock on his winged steed, Buraq, and from there, all the way up to heaven.
Osama explained all of this as they went along, pointing out different churches, synagogues, chapels and prayer houses, each belonging to different denominations and sects. Greta was awestruck by the layers of history, all built on top of each other as well as how many different ways people found to worship the same God.
Above the holy site of the Western Wall, the Temple Mount, the Al-Aqsa Mosque, the golden Dome of the Rock, the Church of the Holy Sepulture .. all jostling for space on top of the aforementioned ‘Foundation Rock’ and fought over for centuries by representatives of the various faiths .. the hive was left open to the sky. What this looked like was a long, almost endless mirrored tunnel, the light from the sky bouncing down from a hole at the top of the hive, a thousand metres above. The effect was like looking up into a sky, but a sky that was round instead of flat. When a white cloud drifted above the light tunnel, it appeared to tumble around the sides and stretch out it spectacular ways. Greta stared upwards in wonder and awe. She was having a religious experience.
She imagined she could see Mohammed flying up on his winged horse, up towards the light, up to heaven. She saw Jesus going up there too, on the wings of David’s psalms. Looking up into the light, she felt that maybe it was all true.. maybe heaven was real.. maybe there was a reason for everything.. for her coming to this place and the strange, unlikely set of circumstances that had brought her to be in this very place at this very moment.. maybe God was looking back down at her and had a plan for her and for everything and everyone. It was a comforting feeling. It made her feel less alone and far from home.
Osama put his hand in hers and he smiled at her in a way that seemed to share the same feeling. She held his hand and smiled back and they both stared up into the light.
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Most of the time, Freddy was in his study, looking into space, searching for dark matter, staring into black holes, sometimes engaged in deep discussions with other academics in the field, but most often with O.
On one occasion, Nina and Greta managed to coax him out to come to a show, up in the arena, twenty levels up. Freddy argued that there was no point in going all the way up there just to stand in a crowd of sweaty strangers. ‘We could just go in the vips and have the same experience in the comfort of our own home. It’s not as if it’s a live show anyway. The band’s augmented. They’re just a projection. I mean, I don’t think they’re even alive any more are they? I know Freddy Mercury definitely isn’t.’
‘But it’s Queen, dad’, said Nina. ‘You really like Queen. They’ve just made a new album. They did a sequel to Bohemian Rhapsody. This is the first time anyone’s going to hear it. Apparently it explains everything.. that’s’ what they’re saying. Loads of people are going to be there. It’ll be fun. Come on, we never go anywhere or do anything.’
‘It’s not really them, Nina’, Freddy shook his head sadly. ‘I think it would just depress me and get on my nerves. Like that time we went to see the Beatles doing their new album release show. I mean, is this really what people go to see? There are so many great musicians about.. I’m sure there are.. but where’s the great music of our time? Of this time? I just don’t hear it. All I hear is this stuff made up by machine.. rehashing of old stuff, based on algorithms. Is it even music? I don’t know. Maybe young people these days just don’t have to struggle against anything any more.. or maybe I’m just out of touch.. God, listen to me! I sound like an old person!’
‘You do, dad’, agreed Nina. ‘We should go down to the orange zone sometimes. I know some really cool places.. down at the wharf. That’s where the best music scene is. Or to the hives on the south side of the city. It’s only twenty minutes in the tube. There’s live music there all the time. You should get out more.’
‘How do you know those places?’ asked Freddy suspiciously. ‘You don’t go there do you?’
‘In the vip. Not in real life.. obviously’, said Nina with more than a hint of resentment. ‘I can’t even go out of this hive without your permission, can I?’
‘Well, you don’t need to.. obviously’, said Freddy, raising his eyebrows.
‘Well, other kids do.. and it’s not even as if I’m a kid any more. I’m sixteen years old already.’
‘Ok, let’s go to the Queen concert. When does it start?’ said Freddy, more to pacify Nina and to avoid a difficult argument over an issue he’d prefer not to deal with, than actually wanting to go to see a virtual rendering of a dead rock band playing ‘live’.
As it turned out, Freddy ended up having a good time and even singing along, clapping his hands and stamping his feet to ‘We will rock you’ and getting teary eyed at ‘Radio Gaga’, which he said was even better than the original. He said that the sequel to ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ didn’t make any more sense than the first one.. but maybe that was the whole point. He had to conclude that it was a work of genius.
They came back home happy and exhilarated. Greta had found the whole experience.. the crowd of people, the loud music and bright lights.. quite overwhelming, but she was happy to see her dad having a good time. They didn’t talk about the difficult subject again for another ten days..
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Exactly one month since the evening that Greta had arrived, she was in the kitchen with Freddy and Nina, serving up a dish of couscous with roasted vegetables and chick peas that she’d made. Nina had promised she’d try it, as long as she could put ketchup on it. A familiar bell rang three times, the front door opened and a friendly little delivery robot came in carrying a parcel. Greta didn’t even jump.
‘Here you go, this one’s for you, Greta’, said the little robot going over to Greta and handing her the parcel.
‘Thanks.. er, Boris’, said Greta, reading the delivery robot’s name tag. ‘I don’t remember ordering anything.’
With her augmented reality specs, Boris didn’t look like a robot, but like a friendly little round man in his forties who appeared to be sweating slightly from his haste to deliver the package. He was wearing a woollen beanie hat which he took off and used to wipe his brow. Underneath his hat he was balding slightly. Greta marvelled at all the detail O went into, to create realistic looking and acting robots, and how they all seemed to be different in quirky ways.
‘It’s your items which were taken for decontamination’, said Boris. ‘A shawl and a pair of shoes, if I’m not mistaken. They’ve been thoroughly cleaned, down to the molecular level. I expect you’ll be glad to have them back, wont you.’
‘Oh wow! I’d almost forgotten about them. Yes, I’m really happy to have them back. Thank you.. Boris.’ She’d almost said ‘Thank you, O’, but caught herself just before she said the words. The realisation of what she’d been about to say stunned her. Mostly because she’d actually meant it. What did it mean? How could she be grateful to O .. for anything? What had happened to her in the last month? What had she become?
‘Well, good evening to you’ said Boris, turning to go. ‘Enjoy your meal. Couscous is that? It smells delicious. You should be on Masterchef, Greta.’
‘What? How did you..?’ said Greta, and then remembered, O knows everything. O sees everything.
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Opening the parcel and seeing her woven shawl and the shoes that her mum had made caused Greta to feel a surge of homesickness. She put her face into the soft woollen shawl. It was cleaner and brighter than it had been, even when it was new. It was good to feel the familiar softness, but something about it was different. It had no smell. None whatsoever. The shoes were also bright and immaculately clean.
‘Oh wow! Those shoes are amazing’, marvelled Nina.
‘Mum made them’, said Greta, stroking the fur lining and running her fingers over the intricate decorative beadwork. ‘Do you want to try them on? They should fit you too.’
‘Can I?’ said Nina, her face lighting up.
‘Sure’, said Greta, handing Nina the shoes.
Nina held the shoes as if they were crystal slippers, precious and delicate. ‘Oh my God, they’re beautiful’, she whispered. ‘I’ve never seen anything like them before. They’re so.. so.. real. Something about them.. do you know what I mean? Like.. they’ve got soul. I didn’t know mum was such an artist.’
‘Must be where you get it from, Nina. It’s certainly not from me’, said Freddy. ‘They are lovely shoes, I must say. How did she put all those beads on, Greta? It must have taker her ages.’
‘It did. She made them for me for my birthday. I think she knew I’d be going on a journey.’
Nina put on the shoes and laced them up. ‘Wow, they’re so comfortable. They’re a perfect fit.’ She got up and danced around the room. ‘I feel like a fairy of the forest! What are they made from? They’re so soft.’
‘Deerskin and fox fur’, said Greta.
Nina stopped in her tracks. ‘What, like from a deer and a fox?’
‘Yes, of course’, said Nina.
‘Euw! I can’t believe I’m wearing dead animal skin on my feet!’ Nina hurriedly undid the laces. ‘Don’t you find that gross?’
‘Not really’, shrugged Greta. ‘There are loads of wild deer around in the forest. We only kill one when we need to, and we use every part of it for something. The fox fur comes from foxes that have already died. We don’t hunt foxes.’
‘Seems they’re not concerned about contracting foxpox either’, muttered Freddy.
‘I’d never heard of foxpox till I came here’, said Greta, shuddering at the sound of the word. ‘Maybe it’s not even real.’
‘Oh it’s very real, Greta’, said Freddy. ‘If people out there in the red zone would only get vaccinated, we could stop it in its tracks. We wouldn’t all need to be on such high alert here in the green zone, trying to keep it from getting in.’
‘Well, I haven’t seen anyone getting it. Maybe it’s not as bad as all that. Maybe if people are healthy, their immune system just beats it and they get better naturally’, said Greta.
‘Wishful thinking, magical thinking’, said Freddy, shaking his head. ‘O just needs to go out there and vaccinate everyone. They could do it from the skies. It would be nothing for O to make an airborne vaccine. Just spray it from drones. People wouldn’t even know. Then we’d all be safe.’
Greta stared at her dad in horror. ‘How can you say that? That would be so wrong.’
‘Nonsense!’ huffed Freddy. ‘What’s wrong with protecting people from contracting a dangerous, contagious disease and preventing other people from catching it? If you ask me, it would be wrong of O not to do that.’
‘You can’t just go and spray chemicals on people’, Greta protested.
‘It’s not chemicals, it’s medicine. Highly advanced medicine. You and your people are still stuck in old ways of thinking, I can see. New vaccines are nothing like the old vaccines. Today’s vaccines are 100% safe and effective. There’s no risk at all.’
‘I don’t believe that’, said Greta. ‘Sometimes the old ways are the best ways. People were living that way for thousands of years before all this modern technology came along.’
‘And people had a life expectancy of about forty.. if they were lucky enough to survive childhood, childbirth, diseases and wild animals.’
‘Well, just because something is new, it doesn’t always mean it’s better.’
‘In this case, I would say that the evidence is very clear and incontrovertible’, said Freddy in his teacher voice. ‘New is definitely better than the old.’
‘No, you’re wrong!’ cried Greta, now upset. ‘You’ve got no idea because you’ve never even been out there. You don’t know how it is or what it’s like at all. You just think you know, but you’re wrong!’
‘I’m not wrong, Greta. I don’t need to go out there to know what’s happening out there. I’m very well informed, I can assure you.’
‘You think you know, but you don’t know. When it comes down to it, you just believe everything that O tells you. You never question.. never question.. any of.. this..’ Greta gestured helplessly around the kitchen and out of the window over the city skyline.
‘Any of what, Greta? I question everything’, said Freddy, quite taken aback by Greta’s outburst.
‘This! This! This!’ cried Greta, pointing to the stats above Freddy’s head and above Nina’s head and above her own head. ‘This!’ pointing to Sydney the robot dog who was on Nina’s lap, licking the last of her ketchup-couscous with his robotic tongue-straw. ‘This!’ Greta pointed to the hives outside the window.
‘What’s to question?’ said Freddy, puzzled. ‘This is the modern world. It’s’ all completely natural. It’s evolution, that’s all it is.’
‘Oh.. oh.. oh.. oh! You just don’t get it! You just don’t understand! You think you know everything about everything, but you don’t really know anything! Now I’m going to be stuck here forever! I’m never going to get home!’ cried Greta. She picked up her shoes and shawl, bundled them up in her arms and ran out of the room. She ran into the bedroom, threw herself down on the bed and burst into tears.
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Nina came to the bedroom and put her arms around Greta. ‘Hey Greta, don’t be sad. We’ll get to the forest. We’ll see mum, you’ll see. You’ll get home. Don’t worry.’
‘How?’ cried Greta. ‘Dad won’t even let us go down to the orange zone. O is watching everything, all the time. Everyone here is so comfortable, nobody wants to go anywhere.’
‘Well, even if dad won’t let us go.. in six months time.. less than six months.. we can go wherever we want. Dad can’t stop us and neither can O.’
‘Six months is ages. It’ll be the middle of winter by then. Granny Mae was right. Queenie was right. I let O get into my head.. I forgot who I am.. now I’m stuck here and I’ll never get home.’ Greta buried her face in her pillow and cried some more.
‘Please don’t cry, Greta. We’ll make a plan. That’s what we’ll do’, said Nina. ‘We’ll work out exactly what to say to dad. We’ll make him agree.’
‘He’ll never agree, Nina. Can’t you see that? Look, he even gave up one of his babies because he’s so stubborn and so scared to go out of the city. You think he’ll change his mind now? He won’t.’
‘No Greta. We’ll think of something. We’ll make a plan. Please don’t cry.’
‘Do you know what Osama told me?’ said Greta. ‘There used to be a wall going right through the middle of Jerusalem and all across the land. A great big wall, so high you couldn’t even climb over it. Just to keep his people out, just to stop them from returning home.’
‘That’s awful’, said Nina. ‘But then didn’t O take down the wall?’
‘Yes, that was the first thing O did after the Big Shift. That’s why Osama loves O so much. But, don’t you see? O made different kinds of walls. Invisible walls to trap us even more, in different ways..’
Nina didn’t know what to say. She climbed into bed with Greta and spread the woollen shawl over them both.
‘I miss her, Nina’, cried Greta. ‘I miss mum. I miss the forest. How are we going to get back? It all seems so far away.’
‘We’ll find a way, Greta. I promise you, we’ll find a way. We’ll go there soon, you’ll see. I miss mum too. You know that? Even though I can’t remember her, I still miss her. Does that make sense?’
‘Yes it does’, said Greta.
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