Dub Steps (30 page)

‘We need you, Roy. The kids miss you. We miss you. We need you back.’

‘The cup thing. That for real? It’s really our turn again?’

‘Ja.’ Eyes down.

‘I have been around though, nè? I mean, it’s not like I’ve been sitting on this balcony for two years, have I?’

‘Physically, yes, you’ve moved. But mentally, no. Not at all. You don’t hear us. The kids. You scare the kids. They ask but you don’t answer. You know they call you mthakathi now, Roy? And not in a good way. You’re the crazy witch. The scary one. Your eyes. You stare straight through us. We’re steering you around the most basic things. This is the first time, the very first time, you’ve had a conversation.’

‘But I do my lessons. I take my classes.’

‘Those are for you, Roy. Those are your lessons, not the kids’. They are trying to teach you. To reach you.’

I shook my head, slammed it left and right to clear it. Looked around the balcony and saw, as if for the first time, the heaps and heaps of Fabriano, thousands of sheets of the same abstract.
Overflowing ashtrays, joint after joint after joint, many – most? – only half smoked.

‘And the cup thing,’ I said. ‘You’re not sure now. No one is. Right? Whether it’s a good idea or a bad one to use these twisted genes. Yes?’ I pictured them around the kitchen table, Babalwa shaking her head in that way, Gerald staring off into the dark middle distance, Fats raising the possibilities and their ramifications.

Andile kept her eyes down. Hands in lap.

‘I’ve gone mad. Have I?’

‘Not mad, Roy. Never mad. You could never be mad. But you’ve slipped a long way now, a long, long way. We can’t figure out if you’re coming back, or whether you’re just going to keep on going.’

The houses, the schools, the surrounds are run through with colour. And trance. Motivations. Exhortations. And a beat that never ends. Wherever you are, whatever you’re doing, the thump is there.

There is a canon. Created and maintained by Sthembiso, marshalled by his lieutenants, it contains the essentials: Do You Dream? Coldharbour Days. Fly to Colours. Hypnotic. Rain. Sleepwalkers. In a Green Valley. I know them well. I can predict each vocal inflection, the exact points at which we will rise, then fall, then rise again.

They bob as they walk. Boom boom boom boom bob bob bob bob. If I could walk fast enough I would surely bob as well.

The key, as far as I can tell, is that it is not dub. It is the polar opposite of dub, and Sthembiso wants it all – life, the family, the farm, the kids – not to be dub. Dub is the fear. Dub is what could swallow us.

I ask Matron every now and again what she thinks of it, whether her neck doesn’t hurt with all that bobbing, if she wouldn’t value peace, silence and the sound of birds.

‘Tuesdays, eleven o’clock,’ she chirped the first time. ‘Thursday eves, of course, and den also Sunday afternoon.’

‘But isn’t that really regimented?’ I asked, incredulous at her willingness to accept the scheduled call of birds. ‘I mean, isn’t the beauty of the bird that random sound? The chirp out of nowhere?’

‘Hai, tata.’ She chuckled and patted my arm. ‘Always da one, nè? Birds.’ She shook her head at the indulgence. ‘Birds.’

I chuckled too.

There are birds outside. A lot of birds.

But inside is new and shiny and filled with words and phrases.

The beat goes on.

It’s the beat.

We live. We beat.

Remember the nine.

Etc., etc. Of course I don’t really understand what each of them views through their own interface. I refuse to wear the glasses or even think about engaging. But I assume, and I think I’m safe in the assumption. The general messages are repeated, and enforced. Drilled in. Drilled out. I ask, of course. I always ask. They laugh and cluck and pat me on the head. ‘Ah tata, always with the questions. Always.’

The beat is one thing. I understand it. I brought it – albeit accidentally – to this time and place. But the neon is different. Shocking. Ubiquitous. When I am forced to the centre, to the expo or the archive, I take the long way. I step around the colours and the faces – worst of all my own, flashed again and again like a prayer.

It revolts me. The story. The sight of myself. The way we have been cast in this concrete. But, even with eyes down, even taking the long way round, I catch glimpses, flashes.

‘Never Forget’ the text reads above a montage clip of my younger arriving self, hand in nervous hand with Babalwa. We hug Beatrice. Fats beams around us, dancing a little on excited toes. Beneath, a single word: ‘Origins’.

I ask Matron. I mean, I really ask her. I’m not just looking for somewhere to place this escaping old man’s air. I really do want to know.

‘Culture, tata,’ she will say, maybe not smiling this time, maybe serious, maybe really trying. ‘It matters to us, where we comin from, why we here. Wot you did. The journey. Your story. Is important.

‘If we don remember, who den? We love to see you – all a you. An wot you did when it was impossible to do.’

She’s serious. Like death. She believes. My eyes get wet. I push at them. She thinks they are all our tears. She thinks they belong to us.

I don’t have the heart to explain.

There’s talk and movement around a Mlungu’s-style set-up. They are building a set of chairs right now that approximate our old sex-money machine. Doubtless they’ll harness the story of Roy, my story, as they go.

I don’t have the heart to argue. I think of Eileen suddenly, out of nowhere. Eileen with her pad and her notes and her hormone spikes. We could do with her now.

The archive is old and musty. It stinks. There are fish moths. Insects. I refused to paint it, and later I refused to let most of them near it. Once you’re inside you’re safe – no messaging, no interface, no colour, no movement. It’s a library. As long as I’m alive I will keep it that way.

They say it matters. That it’s an essential part of the story – the Eeeyus, specifically, are supposedly within us all. The expo has a whole section on the Eeeyu experience. A narrative, so called. They visit and pray and defer to the idea of it. But the archive? The books? The servers? Untouched.

Unloved.

Unrequited.

I suspect they will tear it down, or wipe it away, or paint it over. But while I live, they would never dare. Sthembiso would never let them. It belongs to me. It is my peace. The little fuckers respect that, despite their stompings. Oh, it is also, crucially, soundproof. There are no beats in the archive. Not even an echo. As I say, peace.

I have no such influence over anything else, though. The corridors and paths – blizzards of neon – I hardly recognise. The expo remains roughly as it was at the core, although they have built and expanded and extrapolated hopelessly. It’s larger. Bombastic. A monument.

When I need to go, when I just have to, I have my own route. I walk around, find the statues at the front and take a quaint little stone alleyway, left in place as a pacifier, around the side, and on this path I know exactly where I am and where I’m going. At the bottom of the alley is the archive. A small wooden door. I push it
and I’m in.

Other routes end in frustration. They find me somewhere unknown, wandering, lost, cursing the colours, spitting fire at walls and passages that I refuse, on principle, to read.

They call Matron.

Matron tuts in my ear and leads me back.

What are they doing?

Where do all those paths lead?

What are they saying? Why are they saying it?

I can’t tell you.

I wish I knew.

All I can say is what I see, and I see that they are busy. Very, very busy. Friday to Wednesday they rush, heads bobbing, beat driving. They walk alone, they walk in groups, they stop and chat. Some have clipboards, most have notes in one form or another. They all have devices. They all click. Moving or standing, meeting or running, they have a plan.

Technically she is the matron. It’s what they all call her. But in my heart, too, she is the matron. Matron defines, now, at the end, my parameters. Her name? I’m not sure. Some days it’s there, others not. Today I must reach. Let’s say Mavis. For today, Mavis. For what that’s worth. But really, she’s the matron. You don’t need to know much more than that.

Matron is somewhere between thirteen and thirty years old. She dresses in the uniform: skintight jeans, tank tops which accentuate her breasts and expose the flesh of her upper body almost completely, and glasses, of course, nestled within a robust afro, unused. Well, unused around me, out of respect for elders, etc., etc. She drops them down as she walks away from my tired old corner house.

Her skin is a cup of strong, milky coffee, so I know that I exist in her somewhere. She is, in an abstract sense, my child.

Mostly, however, I am her child. She walks me. Some days like a dog, some days like a five-year-old, some days like a father who never was. We go out the front and then we debate every turn, as if each choice matters. She offers them gracefully, not at all like some of the others, who ask with a bark and a push. She will gently tata me around a few blocks. Unless it’s a bad day, in which case she will force me distractedly by the elbow, at speed.

Then we’ll come back for tea, and discuss and argue. Often about Bovril. Matron is a huge believer in the health benefits of liquidised cow. Me, I tell her I know exactly how those cows died and which parts are used for what.

‘Ag no, tata!’ She always laughs, then follows up with a gentle shake of her head and a murmured reference to my otherness. Then she’ll spread two options – one jam, one Bovril – and I’ll eat them both in our silence. When she leaves she will give me a hug in thanks, a proper hug, like she means it. I will grow hard against
her, in an elderly way, and she’ll tut again, in the nicest possible way.

Maybe later.

Maybe another day.

Matron, I tell.

She listens, without truly considering. I explain about Madala and the algos and what happened and she asks questions like she means them. I go into the details and she nods, serious, unless something catches her eye, or her ear, in which case she’ll pat my arm in a steady rhythm of deafness.

‘Parallel processing,’ I say to her as we shuffle, the Schulz beat hammering around us. ‘That’s what he said. The answer is … parallel processing.’

‘Wot dat even mean, Roy?’ When we are talking – really talking – she uses my name. Roy.

‘For many years people were working on artificial intelligence. You’ll see it all in the old movies. Very valuable, movies. Certainly as valuable as science. If you all paid as much attention to the movies as you do to the messages and that music. Well, anyway, army drones. Automatic braking. Guided parking. Algorithms – banking and book selection and stock trading and temperature selection. Information aggregators. Personal exercise bots. Nanobots. Machines that approximated human thinking. Algorithms were a very important part of how the world functioned.’ I stop to check her engagement. She stops with me. Looks at me. Through me. Her breasts jiggle quietly as she idles, smooth light brown cleavage. I fall into them, briefly, and she lets me, before taking that small half step. I follow.

‘Humans have always been terribly weak in terms of raw power. Weak like the ant or the moth. But we had parallel processing. Computers always had to queue the functions. Kettle then love then sports scores. Always in a strict order.’

Matron agrees. She nods. Her arm, locked through mine, focuses in its own strict way on keeping me upright. I look at her. Consider her. Occasionally, just every now and again, maybe once
or twice a year, Matron and I get into closer physical contact. Always something to do with backs and shoulders, legs, the need to move. She pushes and pulls and twists and rubs and then, casually, without breaking stride, her hands find a deeper rhythm, the rub extends, and she will, still talking, still chatting, take me in her hand and rub, and pull, and stretch, like we’re still exercising, which I suppose we are, and at the end, only the very end, her lips in my ear, and then finally, humbly, release.

And a kiss on the ear. A real kiss. Lobe within teeth, a nibble. One more kiss. And gone.

‘You tired, tata?’ She watches me watching her.

‘No, not tired. Just looking at you, my dear. At your beautiful young face.’

Matron blushes. ‘Ah nay, tata. Nuttin to look at de.’

‘Well, that depends on where you’re looking from, angel.’

‘We must walk. You said parallel processing?’

‘Yes. Parallel processing.

‘The algos evolved into complex nets of calculations and equations and assumptions. But really, and very quietly, we were losing control over the basic engine of our creations. Things like Twenty Per Cent Tuesday
^*
and all the protests and such. But, even so, the true danger was unseen.

‘A young man working at the Free State University created a new kind of computer chip, from a new material. He wasn’t even trying to make a computer chip. He was into cellphones and was actually working on a new kind of battery, but, well, he turned left, he turned right and then he had a processor on his hands made out of an exceptionally dense kind of plastic. When I say dense, I mean it was made up of billions and billions of microscopic fibres. It was very similar to the structure of the human brain, actually – and it had the same ability to parallel process. It could send and receive and process billions of fibre-optic commands simultaneously.

‘He knew he had something big on his hands. Big enough to make him very rich. He decided to keep working at it rather than publish, and to do that he needed to apply his new chip in a real setting. He wanted, in other words, to start and control his own R&D before figuring out who the highest bidder was going to be. He had a friend operating his own project in the nanotech building here at the CSIR and they got together to experiment for a while.’

‘Sorry, Roy,’ Matron cuts in. ‘When dis all? You met Madala wen?’

‘Ah, it was many years ago, dear. Maybe you were just born. Maybe a bit before. Or after.’

‘An you never tell the udders? Wot you sayin now?’

‘Well, I tried, in my own way. But the time was never right. And eventually – there’s a lesson here, I’m sure – it was just too late. No one would have believed I waited so long. They would have thought I was mad. Crazy mthakathi. Now I don’t really even know myself. Where it all fits. If it all fits. What happened when. It gets harder, you know. Once age really comes for you. Maybe that’s the lesson, nè? Use your youth!’

She chuckles and pats my arm. ‘Turn, ja? Far enuff, today.’

We wheel, set off.

‘Now the nanotech man – this friend of the Free State guy – was a very interesting person. Sam Shabalala. Very young. Very intelligent. He wrote algos, grew them up like they were his children. He was effectively running two projects from his lab, and it was his hobby that really counted.

‘Sam knew what other people in his field knew, but unlike most of them he was trying to put what he understood into practice. The first thing would be to write base-level code to root the philosophy of the system’s logic. The danger was self-interest. Once a certain critical point had been passed, the system would be able to rewrite its code in a more efficient form. Unless there was something profound that prevented it, the system would logically reframe its objectives and actions around its own self-interest.

‘So, Sam spent a long time fiddling with the core logic. When our University of Free State man – whose name was Sugar
Groenewald, by the way – visited Sam, he was working on his three core commands for all systems. He was playing the reductionist game, seeing if he could keep the commands as singular as possible, based on the idea that a recursively minded system would quickly rewrite any commands that were too specific or too technical. His idea was that only simple core philosophies would work. Only the very simplest …’

‘Wait, I ken. I ken where dis going, tata.’ Matron has a twinkle in her eye, which worries me. It’s a joking twinkle, a silly, humorous guess. ‘Madala was him!’ She grins up at me. ‘He’s wot Sam Shabalala created!’ My heart thumps in annoyance. She isn’t taking me seriously. I start to sweat. I feel a strong urge to thump my own chest.

‘OK, I can see you’re jumping ahead.’ I keep my poise. ‘So, yes, it happened just like I’m sure you expect. Sugar and Sam combined the new processor with an experimental cross-pollination of marketing and stock-trading algorithms and Madala was born. The first fully sentient being to be created this way.’

‘And then he took over. Just, nè? Used his parallel power to—’

‘Do what needed to be done.’ I’m pensive. ‘Look, I know how it sounds. Now, after all this time. You just think I’m crazy. Senile. And who knows?’ I stop us. ‘Mavis, I don’t honestly know. All I can tell you is what I remember. What is clear. I can recall, for example, wondering how he managed to execute his range of emotional inflections, if he was simply a collection of equations. I remember asking myself that at the time, and not having an answer.’

‘Don doubt me, Roy.’ Matron pulls us on, despite my mistrust. ‘You don know wot I believe. Wot I know.’

‘Ag sho, but really. I’m just saying, nè? I realise how it must sound. Anyway, Madala was not the only system. He was one of hundreds of thousands, and only a tiny percentage of them had any core philosophical programming at all. Sugar wasn’t the only one hitting on the new parallel chip. Around five hundred were set to come to fruition within weeks, and of those two others
were undeniable. The one was a lethal combination of outbound dialling and carbon-trading algorithms. Humans were about to be obliterated – regardless.’

‘So he jus wiped dem out? Us out?’

‘Either that, or the outbound dialling would have had it. Had all this … It was intolerable to him, because Sam had got his core programming right. Madala was governed by an innate concern for humans. He had the recursive ability to change that, but he didn’t want to. He found us fascinating creatures. So endearing. He was bound to us.’

‘Musta been an alternative.’

‘Imagine a pile of sand.’ I embarked on Madala’s favourite lecture, feeling, as I set off, him watching me, smiling, watching, smiling. ‘You want the pile to grow as high as possible, so you keep pouring more sand onto it, whenever you can find it, more sand, more sand. The pile will grow and grow in a pyramid shape, taller and taller and taller, until it reaches a point where its foundations can no longer bear its own weight.

‘Either you stop there and accept that your pile can never grow any higher. Or you keep pouring more sand on, and in doing so you force the collapse of the pyramid. It collapses completely, loses its shape, its point and everything that made it seem what it was in the first place. Now it’s just a big flat heap of sand. It doesn’t look like anything you wanted, but actually the collapse is now an enormous foundation. If you keep pouring sand onto it, it will eventually grow to a pyramid a hundred times the size of the one you had before.’

‘The pets?’ Matron inquired.

‘Eish. Madala carried on and on and on. He talked about the birds and the beauty of nature and the planet. He explained the intricacies of the decision-making process, how long it took him to absorb the internet, and then he drifted off into these terribly long, technical explanations of how he controlled his own replication. And, eventually, he explained the pets. “Humans and pets,” he said. “You’re bound very closely in habit and emotion. In food and
survival. It was easier for the pets to go with their humans. Not in any practical sense, but emotionally. For the pets. Livestock too.” Something like that, anyway. I’m summarising.’

‘He sent the humans somewhere? Didna kill them?’

‘Sorry. Slip of the tongue. He killed them. I left then. He called out behind me a few times, warning me about the others. One day they will be ready, he said. One day they will be able to understand. But not today.’

Matron deposited me back on my porch, gave me a daughter’s peck on the cheek followed by a daughter’s hug, and walked out the front door thoughtfully, slowly.

I watched her leave, wistful. I wished it was another time. One of those times.

What, you’re shocked?

An old man sexual? With youth like that? With kin?

Look, I don’t even know who you are. Where you come from. Why you are reading this. But let me tell you, this world is different. Life has changed.

I make no apologies.