Face (11 page)

“
...Did your Mum post a reply to mine?” I say firmly, to disrupt his gaze.

Cliff has
seen my Updated avatar in class, and again in the Library, so what’s with the continuing surveillance? I’m not the one hiding my face here.

“
Mum’s strictly C.O.F,” he says “the whole legal battle over EMS Naturals is not her thing.”

“Right.”

“Mum and Dad run the Campaign for Original Face, it’s their site. That’s how I found your Mum’s request. I help out with the message board sometimes.”

What d
edicated, supportive parents you have Cliff. Well done. (I am a tiny fraction impressed. Campaign for Original Face are the biggest, the last of their kind.)

“
My Mum would tell your Mum exactly why she shouldn’t be campaigning for the right to Enhancements for her EMS child,” Cliff continues. “But it’s not usually want they want to hear at this stage...”

“
Are you EMS Natural?”

“
No, I could Update anytime, if I wanted. I’m different to your sibling.”

Cliff’s silence is loaded.
I get the first gut twist.

             
“Actually I prefer to call myself an
Original
.” Cliff continues. “I choose to be this way.”

I f
eel my Smile Blocker tug at the word, Original.

              “Your sibling will be an Original too.
A face that is not a product
. Think about that, True.”

Cl
iff hugs his knees in and I see the line of a bitten down fingernail, sunken in raw skin. My stomach lurches.

“Not everybody can appreciate a fine art work, but that doesn’t diminish its value-”

             
“- in comparison to a reproduction.” I interrupt. “I read that one on your parents’ site earlier.”

Cliff l
aughs like he surprised himself.

             
“It’s still a fact. If you give it some thought.”

He sounds
so certain; this confident voice shouldn’t come from that sort of face. Because what use is an art work that nobody can bear to look at? Where’s the value in that?

“
So what happened to your face?” He says

I throw him a dirty look with no idea if it hits the mark. Frustrating.

“I Update because I can. Who wants to stay the same for the rest of their life?”

H
e looks away across the tree tops and I glare at all that tough grey fabric in profile.

“So Cliff, your turn now: why did you change schools?”

“Home study at Virtual School suits me better.” Cliff gestures with a sweep to his hidden face. “Obvious reasons.”

I follow
the gesturing hand as it drops to chest level, and burrows unexpectedly under the scarf edge. The fabric contorts. The folds billow outwards, and
this is not what I meant at all
- to be shown the problem that forced him to move schools! The hidden fingers make an up-and-down movement- it was an itch! Only an itch. The hand wriggles free. The folds settle down, intact. I try to relax my face.

“You
should meet my parents.” Cliff says. “They love talking to people like you.”

People like me?
Easy converts? Families with no choice.

Right
about now I get this rush of clarity as to exactly why I need to leave. Cliff has been my psychology experiment; I needed to assess what it does to a kid, growing up with the wrong face. In Cliff’s case, he’s clearly delusional. I mean, both of his parents actually devote their lives to campaigning for everybody else to look like him, to make him less of a freak. His parents are trying to bend the world around their son, to force a reversal into history. He appears to have absolutely no understanding of how desperately sad that is. In Cliff World, we all get to re-label the bump an “Original” and hey presto, problem solved. As if my thoughts alone could alter reality.

“
Do you like my hat? Cliff says, sliding closer. “It frames my eyes. I find that people need to see my eyes.”

I don’t need anything, so I make a point of watching the gate and making him a part of the scenery and nothing more.
He stares so that I can’t, not without creating unwanted intimacy. I get that now. A defence that works precisely because he puts people on edge.

A
young couple enter the play park holding hands. Just recently I’ve taken to imagining myself as a bird of prey taking it all in, without the need to play it back on my face. Cool, calm and definitely no unearned smiles. Cliff continues to slide along the tunnel, closing the gap. I get the final gut twist.

             
“For future reference: you are allowed to look at me.” Cliff whispers. “It’s not against the rules.”

The sudden
softness in his voice is startling and I accidently look straight up into his quiet eyes. Cliff is leaning in to press the point and for a fleeting moment I imagine myself reaching out to unwrap him. Cliff cries out. He is falling backwards and I lunge for him too late. (I didn’t even touch him!) Cliff lands squarely on the safety mat, his right hand calmly smoothing the scarf back into place.

I don’t want to look down, don’t want to give h
im the satisfaction, but I do: the fedora is retrieved with a flourish, given the once over, no damage. The way he moves, he’s pleased by my reaction, delighted with his whole performance here today. The perfectly stage exit. The young couple glance up in tandem as he walks away; a tall masked male, the girl is already on her guard in the fading light. Cliff moves at a loping strut. He could be any sixteen year old boy from behind. Only he’s not, he’s a Natural.
An Original
.

So w
hy do I suddenly feel like I’ve been played?

Chapter Fourteen

There’s something addictive about being watched.
Made-up extensions of the conversation with Cliff keep going around in my head; all his crazy opinions and statements, and all the clever replies I didn’t make in time. I’d just decided to be the one to leave, so how come I ended up last on the tunnel? That grates. I want to say something more to him, lots of things actually, but I don’t know where to start and it’s driving me mad. It’s time to get him onto paper and out of my head.

I pick up my
pencil and sketch an oval with short, precise strokes. The next stage is to shade it into the structure of a face and as the shadows appear, I settle into a kind of flow.
I find that people need to see my eyes.
Does that mean he thinks his eyes are his best feature? He could wear shades to conceal them, and he doesn’t. My pencil nib presses into the paper, darkening the rims, creating eyes that stand out from the Enhanced crowd. I spend a long time on them, pretty them up under his brows. (The angry cartoon brows have gone.) I looked into these eyes and yet, I cannot recall their colour or their exact shape or size, only their stillness. As if I was the dangerous one.

Home study at Virtual School suits me better.
Obvious reasons.
A casual remark, meant to reveal what? How bad things are, underneath that shroud of grey? I shape his black fedora, and angle the rim upwards, to reveal the whole of his Natural face to me. Considering my options for below the eyes, my pencil hovers: what did I actually see? Raw bitten-down fingernails, serious running shoes. Gangly legs in a loping strut. The real clues were in the posture; he sloped off like one of the cool kids, but how can that be? Bolstered by the delusion of C.O.F, the Campaign for his Original face run by his parents- maybe he’s some kind of a mummy’s boy?  A face far from normal, but here Cliff comes now from my pencil, holding his face as if it were.
I’m not a Natural, I’m an Original. I choose to be this way.
(Does every girl get that line? It’s like he was waiting to say it.)

Whatever is under there, it’s been sixteen years
of the same! His expressions must come easy, over familiar to the muscles beneath. Never tight, or new.
A face that is not a product:
a combination of features I won’t have seen before. Absolutely nothing like it; nothing like him.

Last time I lent him Dollar’s curls and gave him shift
y eyes and silly eyebrows, when he was just a cartoon. Today he gets to be real. He gets the self-controlled smile I heard in his voice. I like the way he’s looking up at my pencil for all the answers. Something about this portrait works. I’ve captured that intense vibe that comes off him, like
I’m
the one with all the secrets.

Chapter Fifteen

My baby is due in late September
. We know that she/he has a genetic susceptibility to developing Electro-Magnetic Sensitivity in early childhood. My husband has left, and I cannot seem to find the right time, or the words, to tell my 16 year old daughter, True. I chose to implant this embryo. Did I do the right thing? Survival tips welcome. Adelaide O’Reilly, England.

Hi Adelaide, my tip would be, move house before the birth! My 5yr old daughter has EMS and every time she gets a bug we have a five hour round trip to the hospital that will treat her with isolation ward, etc. Check if your local one has EMS facilities. We move house Friday, GOOD LUCK!! She never kept the scarf on age 2 or 3, but is OK with it now. Loads of child-friendly designs out there, I let her pick.

The best thing you can do for your unborn child is to join our campaign, Equal Rights for EMS. Be aware that the Security Council elected to make a legal loophole for medical procedures, ensuring your child’s physical well-being, but totally denying their psychological needs. This is unacceptable. EMS sufferers are denied a human right, by being forced to live as Naturals. Your child’s quality of life is in your hands. Act now. Tell everybody.

The Security Council are the good guys. (We must never forget Shanghai.) Nobody comes into this world with a guarantee of a good life. Give him the best start you can. Build self-esteem, explain prejudice early. People can surprise you. Be EMS Invincible.

Nobody else can tell you if you did the right thing. My EMS daughter has a long history of mental illness. Campaign for Original Face have been a life-line. Did being EMS Natural cause my daughter’s illness? We’ll never know for sure. Do I regret having her? Absolutely not, she brings me joy every day. My first husband left. I am happily re-married, third time lucky.

I am EMS Natural and hate it. You should have asked people like me first. I am disgusting to people, would you choose that for yourself? Of course NO but you chose it for your kid that’s SELFISH and STUPID, you wrote this because you know too late that it is wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong WRONG.

Having a Natural in the family does change things, so you need to be prepared. You and your daughter should contact Campaign for Original Face together, the helpline is brilliant. (Sounds like it would benefit your husband too?) Most important is that you don’t offload your worries onto the child as he/she grows. Dig deep and banish your own prejudice first. Allow them to grow strong. Get support from family and friends. Rise to the challenge, courage Adelaide!

I write as a former Science Correspondent, now retired. All the advice here is well-meaning I’m sure, but entirely misses the point. It must never be forgotten that the technology involved in the creation of self-replicating nanobots (by which I refer to nanobots independent of an external computer control), enabled the massacre of nearly a quarter of a million people in Shanghai, China at the turn of the century. The first International Weapons Control Treaty came too late for those individuals and their families. Do I sympathize with the plight of EMS Naturals? Yes. Do I think the human rights of the minority can be placed above the human rights, the safety, of the rest us? No I do not. Let the Security Council get on with their job. Your EMS child will be born into a society that makes more than enough allowances for their needs. Tell your daughter.