Lifespan of Starlight (3 page)

And there, I stop. Or rather the
worm
stops, which doesn’t make sense. It’s as if
someone’s already wiped the history map clean. Either that or at six o’clock last
night the woman suddenly appeared out of thin air.

I lean back in the armchair, staring at the empty grid, trying to work out what’s
going on. Maybe it’s just a glitch. So I pull
out of the mainframe and then hack
back in to see if that fixes the problem.

Instead of tracking backwards from now, I type in the date and time: last night at
six o’clock.

There it is again, a dead end. For a while I scroll around the park at a few minutes
before six, trying to find the woman again, but it’s hard to pick up a history map
when I’ve lost the thread.

Still not sure what’s going on, I check out her ration points. Maybe I can track
her by the delivery locations. The ration points are low level, but good enough for
someone my age and the best thing is, she hasn’t accessed them. Not even water.

I spend time tracking back her ration points, trying to see when she last accessed
them and finding nothing. Maybe she was surviving on rubbish scraps or something,
because her points are complete for months. Or perhaps her chip was malfunctioning
and she never did anything about it.

For a while I just stare at the screen with my nose scrunched, deciding whether it’s
okay to feel pleased about what I’ve found. Or rather what I
haven’t
found, because
it seems there’s no need to worry about anyone noticing that the woman’s gone; according
to the grid it’s as if she barely existed in the first place.

The job history is blank, and her school records only go as far as junior school,
which can’t be right. Her chip must have been glitchy, that’s the only way to explain
this. Plus the insertion stamp is too recent for her age, so maybe this is a replacement
chip.

A sharp sigh, and I make a decision. I set about wiping all her
deets anyway. Maybe
I can use the glitch if I’m ever questioned.
It’s the chip that’s the problem, not
me
.

With her deets cleared, I start adding my own: the grades I would have been given
if I’d been going to school, my date of birth, health records, adding the things
that would have been recorded by my chip if I’d been a real citizen. Making myself
legit in reverse. I’m expecting the glitch to cause gaps and deletions like it did
for the woman, but it all works fine.

Finally, once I’ve added all I can, I shut down the session in the mainframe. When
the front screen comes up I see I’ve been busy reading about a train crash in India,
just outside the war zone. So I switch off the bot, and regain control of the front
end. The real me, this time. Then I click through to the central website for all
the select-entry high schools and hit ‘register’.

An alert comes up warning that registration for the select-entry test will cost 550
energy rations, which I didn’t expect, but since the woman had a full quota saved,
it’s not a problem.

Then it flashes for a swipe request. I’m expecting I’ll have to take the chip out
of my boot, but first I try swiping the sole.

I hear it, for the second time this morning: a ping. Application accepted. The date
for the entry test comes up: ten days from now, already added to ‘my’ diary for convenience.
All I need bring to the test, it tells me, is a pencil and eraser. And a chip hidden
in the lining of my boot.

I sleep for a little while longer, but it’s not long before my eyes
zap open. Why
waste the day in bed when I can do so many things? A haircut in a real salon, a ride
on the fast train. But before I do anything else, I’m ticking off my number one.

It takes me a few tries before I actually make it into a cafe. The first two I pass,
my legs just keep walking, as if they simply can’t believe I’m allowed to join the
end of the queue.

Finally, I reach a small cafe near the overpass with no-one waiting outside and a
couple of spare tables near the back. I make my way to the counter as a woman with
spiky blue hair passes a table number to the guy in front of me. She looks my way
and raises her eyebrows.

‘Three hundred mil of water, please.’ I clamp my mouth shut, waiting for something
to happen, an alarm to sound or something.

‘Anything else?’

Such a simple question. ‘Maybe a …’ My eyes flit over the cakes and muffins on display
on the counter. ‘What are those?’ I ask, pointing. It comes out quietly.

‘Cornbread muffins.’

‘One of those, please?’ I ask, half-expecting her to tell me I’ve ordered too much.
But she keys it all in without blinking. The woman gestures towards a compad on the
counter as it flashes up the cost: 300 points potable water, 513 points food.

A simple swipe of my wrist past the receiver, my hand in a fist to hide the chip
pressed between my palm and a finger, and there’s a ping.

Transaction approved.

The taste of the muffin makes my brain melt. It’s like the flavour of all the meals
I’ve ever eaten, all at once, in one bite of muffin. But halfway through it, a wave
of nausea washes over me and I realise that if I keep eating I might see it all again.
I sip the water in between bites but it’s not long before I have to stop. I shuffle
back in the chair.

How insane. Half a glass of water and half a muffin sit in front of me. I’m so used
to having half and only half of everything that I seem to have a barrier against
eating more. I suddenly wish that Mum were here now, sharing with me. Except this
time, I’d be giving half my rations to her.

The other people sitting at tables are mostly adults, washing down sandwiches with
the latest coffee concentrate. A couple of guys in Murdoch High School uniforms are
getting stuck into the biggest triangles of orange cake I’ve ever seen, and I find
myself calculating how many illegals they could accept into the city if they cut
back citizen rations by maybe 300 points each day.

There are more like me, of course, mostly living outside the city limits: other single
mums like mine who couldn’t bear to lose their babies, people who campaigned against
the ration system, or are too ill to work. They’re not exiled, exactly; it’s more
that without access to water and food rations, they’re forced to go looking. Anywhere
but here.

It feels wrong to leave anything to waste, so I force myself to finish the glass
of water. Then I wrap up the remains of the muffin and take it home with me.

It’s not long until Mum’s due back so I get busy ordering food for tonight – veg
sausages, mushrooms, real butter. I still have a whole 80 points of my daily maximum
left once I’ve hit the final order so I blow them on a fresh orange, all the way
from northern New South Wales. It costs 50 credits on top of the ration points because
of transport costs, and I have this pang at the extravagance.

Just this once,
I promise myself. We have reason to celebrate.

As soon as I hear the ping from the delivery drone, I dash out to the front chute
in bare feet.

Mrs Richardson must have been waiting for her delivery too. She steps out of her
door at the same time as me, immediately looking away when she sees me.

‘Hey! How are you, Mrs Richardson?’ It’s a bit immature, but I can’t help it. Mum
hates it when I do this.

‘Yes, hello,’ she mumbles without making eye contact. I hang back while she selects
her package and shuffles towards the kitchen. She’s always worried, I think, that
I’ll ask to share her rations, but Mum and I have always coped on our own. And anyway,
we already owe the Richardsons enough for keeping quiet all these years.

When Mum moved here I was a few months old, just a single woman and her baby. The
Richardsons were really kind at first. I think they must have felt sorry for her.
In their minds, the
only way that Mum could be a single mum would be if Dad had died.

It took a few years before they realised that wasn’t true. I still remember the first
time Mrs Richardson turned away after I’d called out to her in the hallway. As if
I didn’t exist. It was around the time that I was due to start school. They must
have worked out that if I wasn’t going to school, I wasn’t chipped.

The truth is that my father’s an Egyptian national who was working here as a tactical
specialist when he met Mum. But once he’d trained the local staff, they cancelled
his visa, citing limited resources. It didn’t matter that Mum was pregnant by then,
or that he faced persecution from his own government because of the work he did here.

Now we can’t find any record of him at all, but Mum still clings to the hope that
he escaped detection when he returned and is living underground. We can’t search
for him too often because of what it would mean for us all if we were found out.

Our evening delivery is way fatter than usual tonight. Heavy. I pull it out of the
chute and carry it proudly to our room. Alistair and the Richardsons use the big
share kitchen to prepare their meals, but Mum installed a small stovetop and sink
in our room years ago so our split ration sizes aren’t obvious to everyone else in
the house.

The veg sausages are sizzling nicely when Mum comes home from work. She makes a questioning
sound and frowns at the pan. ‘Hold on, there must be a mistake.’

‘No mistake.’ I make a big show of dropping mushrooms into the pan then lift
a whole
orange
out of the box.

Mum grabs my arm before I can slice the orange in two. ‘Wait, I didn’t order any
of this. We’ll have to trigger a return request.’

‘It’s fine, Mum. Trust me.’ I slice the orange in half, take her hand and guide her
to her armchair. ‘Now, sit and eat.’

For some reason I can’t get enough of the confusion on her face as I balance a plate
on her knees. She just stares at the orange half in front of her. I can see her calculating
how many weeks of hunger we face if we’re charged for it.

‘Enjoy.’ I leave her sitting there and get back to stirring the mushrooms. The veg
sausages seem dry but they smell delicious.

Mum’s only eaten a quarter of her orange when I turn back, so I carry our two plates
over and sit next to her.

‘You can eat all of that, you know.’ I settle in and take a bite of sausage.

Mum watches me for a while and then her eyes track down to the pile on her plate.
Finally, she turns to me again. ‘What’s going on?’

A grin with full cheeks. ‘Told you I’d handle it.’ The sausage is sort of disgusting
and sort of delicious at the same time.

Mum watches me eat, her mouth a straight line. ‘Coutlyn, what have you done?’

Fork on the plate, I click the comscreen on and bring up my deets. My name. My address.
My ration points. At least the glitch doesn’t seem to be affecting the stuff I added.

Mum blinks, still taking it in, then motions with her hand to bring up her own deets.
They’re all still there. She turns to me and at last I see a flicker of delight cross
her eyes.

‘I know, right?’ I raise my eyebrows at the amazingness of it all and finally Mum
lets out a disbelieving laugh. It’s the best sound in the universe.

‘But …
how
?’ she asks, shaking her head.

‘Well …’ I cringe. ‘It’s probably best if you don’t know, but from now on you’ll
have your own rations all to yourself. Pretty good, huh?’

Mum’s smile threatens to fade. I can see her fighting to hold it in place. ‘Scout,
tell me how this happened.’

I have no idea how to say this. I’ve been shuffling through various versions in my
mind – everything between an outright lie and simply refusing to say anything – but
I realise now that I can’t lie about this, not to Mum.

Carefully I take her through last night, trying to make it clear that I didn’t plan
any of it. Mum’s quiet as I talk, listening rather than reacting. There might have
been a time when death freaked people out; I’ve studied the same history course as
chipped kids who go to school. But these days we see death all the time. On the news,
for a start, but also when retirees on 300 ration points a day waste away, or when
unchipped refugees can’t access water.

Mum asks some questions about the woman. I say nothing about the weird stuff on her
history map. Mum nods faintly once or twice but otherwise stares at the floorboards
as she takes it all in. So then I move straight into the deets I’ve already added
online. How no-one, not even government officials, could tell that the chip wasn’t
on my wrist since I was born.

It’s only when I tell Mum that I’ve registered for the select-entry test that she
snaps back into focus. ‘Wait. You’ve registered already?’

‘Yeah. So? I thought that’s what you wanted.’

She doesn’t reply, just leaves the plate on the arm of the chair, stands and takes
a few steps towards the comscreen; it’s black now, on standby, but still somehow
imposing because of its size. Her outline is reflected in the screen but I can’t
make out her expression.

After a while, I lean forward. ‘Are you … angry?’

‘No, Scout.’ She turns back to me and forces a smile. ‘I’m … sorry for that woman
but I’ve brought you too far down this path to be angry about what you did.’ She
shakes her head. ‘I only wish you’d discussed this with me before you registered
for the test. It would have been much safer if you’d registered with
my
chip. I could
have accessed that woman’s rations and you could have just …’

She trails off but I know what she was going to say. I could have just stepped into
her life. I could have taken over her chip. But it’s such a non-solution; we’d just
be transferring all my problems to her. I can’t believe we’re still discussing this.
My eyes drop to the mushrooms and sausage on her plate; she hasn’t even touched them.

‘You need to discuss these things with me first, okay? This room is registered to
me
.’

‘So?’

Mum lets out a sigh, but instead of answering she turns away, carrying her plate
to the sink and standing to bite at the sausage with her back to me. Her hands shake
slightly as she eats; she must have been hungrier than she was letting on.