Lifespan of Starlight (2 page)

At one point I think I hear a sigh, though perhaps it’s just a gust of wind.

I don’t pick the exact moment, but there comes a time when I realise that she isn’t
breathing anymore. We barely shared more than a few sentences but the sense of loss
settles around me like a mist. The woman asked me to stay; now she’s the one who
has gone.

For a long time I stay like that, by her side. It’s only when dawn light starts to
shine dimly through the mouth of the cave that I move stiffly, reaching out to lift
the blanket over her face. One arm is resting across her stomach on top of the blanket
so I hesitate, deciding whether to move the arm beneath the blanket as well or leave
her as she is.

In the early morning light I can clearly see a single line about a centimetre long
on the back of her wrist – the telltale scar where a chip was inserted, the mark
of a citizen.

I find myself staring at it as an idea snakes inside me. If I hadn’t argued with
Mum last night, I might never have thought of this. Part of me is shocked at myself
for even considering it.

But another, more determined part of me knows that when the time comes, I’ll do it.

Our argument last night began with yet another dance around the last chunk of bread.

Mum started it. ‘You have it, Scout.’

‘No, no. It’s all yours.’ My usual response.

We were sitting in front of the comscreen, plates in our laps,
picking through news
segments that wouldn’t put us off our food. Already I’d scrolled past a famine crisis
overseas, as well as a massive fire in central New South Wales. I skipped over two
war reports without pausing. There’s always loads of stuff on about the war in East
Asia.

‘Please. I want you to have it.’ Mum placed the chunk on my plate but I shook my
head and dropped it back on hers without taking my eyes off the screen.

Mum’s a federal citizen, chipped and everything. She’s tertiary qualified too, which
means she gets full C-grade rations – more than enough food for a woman her size
and enough second-level water for a shower every other day. It’s the sort of lifestyle
that many people would envy I guess, especially if you compare it to someone on school
leaver’s rations. But split Mum’s rations in two, for her and her illegal teenage
daughter, and suddenly there’s barely enough. Water used to be our main problem,
but since I found the underground spring, food has taken over as our scarcest resource.

‘Coutlyn, please. Take it,’ Mum said, her voice rising.

I glanced over at her and shook my head, the insistence in her tone only making me
more determined.

‘You’re
not
hungry?’ she asked incredulously.

Of course I was hungry. I always am. I don’t care what anyone says, you never get
used to it. The deep hollowness that is never filled, and the constant tiredness,
nobody could get used to that. But our conversation wasn’t really about hunger; it
wasn’t even about food.

As if it’s not enough to know how much Mum had to give up in order to keep me, every
day I also have to see her fade a little more because she shares her food rations
with me. The older I’ve grown, the skinnier she’s become. Seeing that does strange
things to your mind.

When Mum finally realised I wasn’t going to take the last chunk of bread, she let
out a long sigh and clicked her fingers to switch the comscreen channel.

Of all things to bring up, it was an ad about treatments that speed the recovery
of chip scars on the wrists of newborns.

I couldn’t help a snort at one of the words they kept repeating:
unsightly
. Where
do they get off?

‘What do you think?’ Mum asked once the ad was over.

A shrug. ‘Each to their own.’

‘I’ve been saving up.’

‘You’re worried about your chip scar?’ I didn’t get her meaning at first.

‘No.’ And she said it so bluntly, so cleanly, that I knew what she was going to say
before she’d even said it, knew it like a freight train charging right at me:

‘I’ve been saving up for you.’

Now that I thought about it, I realised she’d been dropping hints for weeks. Scary
stuff about the way adult illegals are treated, and how important it is for me to
register in the education system if I’m to have any chance of landing a job. But
honestly, despite the looming registration date for the select-entry test, I hadn’t
seen this coming.

Mum wanted to give me her chip, transfer her citizenship to me, so I could finally
go to school.

‘You can’t have a fresh scar as a fourteen-year-old,’ said Mum.

Already I was shaking my head.‘No way.’

‘Listen.’ Mum flicked off the comscreen and leaned forward in her chair. ‘We already
survive on one person’s rations. Nothing has to change except you’ll be the one who’s
chipped.’

‘No, Mum.’

‘It’s your turn now, understand? I’ve been reading up, it’s a simple procedure. Nothing
has to change.’

‘No.’ How many times did I have to say it? ‘You can’t even
get
to work without your
chip. That’s not even an option. I can sort it out some other way.’

‘How, Scout? Registration for the test closes in five days.’

‘I’ll still register with your chip, okay? There is no difference because it’s going
to stay in your wrist. Where it belongs.’

‘And then they’ll map me going to work when you’re meant to be going to school?’

‘No. I’m going to fix that.’

‘How, Scout? How? You really want to risk them finding out you’re illegal? Once you
register in the school system you won’t be off-grid anymore. You realise how much
more dangerous that will be?’

‘You want to start lecturing
me
about being off-grid?’ I yelled. The tone in her
voice was scaring me. ‘I’m the one who has to live with it every day, okay? I’m the
one who knows what it’s like. Not you!’

Thinking back, I hate the way that must have sounded. How ungrateful must she think
I am? I tried to soften my tone. ‘Even something as simple as crossing the street
is hard. You realise that?’ I said carefully.

‘Okay,’ Mum was already nodding. ‘Then teach me. What do I have to do? I’m going
to have to learn –’

But the idea of Mum out there without a chip stuck right in my heart. Before I could
stop myself, I stood up and let the frustration fly.

‘No you won’t, because I won’t take your chip! Never! I don’t need your help anymore,
all right? I can handle it on my own.’

That’s when I stormed out.

In the cool morning light, I make my way up the ramp that leads out of Footscray
Park.

The park isn’t open yet, so I duck out the same way I came in. I reach the crossing
point on Ballarat Road, swipe and wait.

Just a girl. Crossing a road.

Nothing happens at first.
Voom
. Left to right. And then another. Way busier than
last night. For a moment I wonder if maybe it’s not going to work, but then I hear
the familiar drop in tone as smartcars are brought to a stop in both directions.

Then there’s a ping and a green light, just for me. Just for standing here.

My breath sounds too loud as I cross. The people in the cars wouldn’t even bother
to glance up, but I feel as if they’re
watching me. My fingertips press the chip
hard into my palm so there’s no chance of losing it. It’s sticky, still fleshy, and
in a gruesome way I’m glad, because I don’t want to forget where it came from. I’m
carrying part of that woman with me, even as I leave her behind.

Before I do anything, I’ll need to hack into the system and clean off as much of
her life as I can. Some things are set, but most records can be changed. When I’m
done they’ll have no way of tracing her chip to me, even if they find her body.

When I make it to the other side, I break into a run because I can’t wait to see
the look on Mum’s face when I tell her:

See? Told you I’d handle it. Everything’s going to be okay.

I
ROLL OVER AND
sigh at the empty space beside me. Shouldn’t have let myself doze off. Mum didn’t stir when I burst in earlier, so I slipped in beside her, planning to
lie here until she woke. When I check the time it’s even later than I thought; Mum
would have left an hour ago.

Groggily, I tap around on the upturned box beside the bed until my fingertips touch
the chip. It’s still there, tucked out of sight between the lamp and the wall.

I hitch myself up on an elbow and examine the chip in my palm, feeling the weird
sense again of that woman here with me.

I’ll make this count for something
, I say silently.
Promise.

Carefully I wipe it on an old rag, trying not to touch it any more than I have to.
Then I slip it inside my boot, beneath the lining, aware even as I do that there’s
no point hiding it. The grid would have mapped the chip making its way from the park
to here.

Mum’s typed a message on my compad:
Left you an egg. We’ll talk tonight. Much love.

Immediately, I hit reply. She can’t talk on the phone at work so I message her terminal.
Call me if you can? I have something to tell you.

The reply comes back in seconds.
You OK? I have clients all day
.

Yeah
, I type and then I go blank, staring at the screen. How do I explain what happened?
It’s a risk to say anything in a compad message anyway; the authorities are all over
these things once they find a reason to go looking. In the end I just type:
I’m OK.
See you tonight.

I cook the egg on a stovetop in the corner of our room, aware that this will be the
last time I eat food that should have been Mum’s. She’ll need most of her water rations
so I take only a few mouthfuls from the potable tap. I could swipe the sensor with
that woman’s chip, of course, but I don’t want to risk that until I’ve cleaned her
deets.

The comscreen flickers to life. Let’s see who we’re dealing with here.

First up, I run a bot that moves the screen through a set of news sites, automatically
selecting random links. It used to run on a continuous loop, but then Alistair taught
me how to code it for random clicks, which makes it much more lifelike.

Alistair lives in the room next to ours and he taught me everything I know about
computers. He’s ninety-one years old, and is as close to a genius as anyone I’ve
met. Most people
his age have been forced to retire, which means only G-level rations,
but he’s been on AA-level for years, way higher than Mum. No matter how many different
ways I ask, he still won’t tell me what job he does.

I let the bot run for a while to make sure it’s working, watching fake-me scroll
through the extreme weather alerts for today. Security would have to be pretty smart
to pick that it’s not a person browsing. Maybe a person with attention deficit disorder,
but still.

While the bot keeps running, I hack into the back end of the system and set up a
smokescreen to hide the fact I’m back here. Alistair describes this bit as sort of
scuffing dirt over a path to hide your tracks.

Now, I bring up the grid.

A map of our street comes up with every person here pinpointed as a single bright
dot. Normal citizens aren’t meant to be able to see this. Out of habit I check for
Kessa and her twin sister in the house at the end of our street, but no-one is there
of course; they’d be at school and their parents at work. Two dots come up for Mr
and Mrs Richardson in our front room after the late shift last night; and, for the
first time, I find one in our room that’s not Mum.

I stare, mesmerised by the dot. It’s strange to have wished so hard for something
all my life and feel so weird now that I have it. I guess because it’s not mine,
really. And because of the way I got it. I shudder, suppressing the memory.

Now I layer a history map over the top and the street becomes
a 3D grid. Instead
of dots, long worms stretch back from each person in 3D, mapping the paths they’ve
taken to reach their current location. It’s possible to track back in time to see
a snapshot of where everyone was on, say, Christmas morning. Or any time you like.

You can pretty much track entire lives in reverse, at least as far back as when they
first received their chip. You can access other stuff too, like ration points, health
records, job history. Alistair says names and birth certificates are kept in a separate
place because of privacy laws, but it’s pretty easy to work out who is who from the
other information.

Before I clear out the woman’s deets, I want to check out her history map. She looked
like a homeless woman, and sure smelled like one, but I can’t help wondering whether
someone might want to know what happened to her. I owe her that much. Once I wipe
her past, she’ll pretty much disappear from the grid.

I track back my own history map since I’ve been holding the chip, along the streets
of Footscray, crossing Ballarat Road this morning and then back to last night and
the park. She must have found the underground spring around six o’clock …