Zoo City - Lauren Beukes

I cross my arms over my chest and huddle in the hard plastic chair. Joseph had been cleaning one of the machines, hunched over it scraping out the metal silt. When I whited out, I fell onto the control panel.

"Listen, I understand you're upset, but you can't blame yourself," my manager says. "Christ, these guys from the Rural can barely read and write, let alone operate machinery properly."

"It was my fault," I say.

"Who the fuck cares, the Riffa is dead," he says. I wince at the slur. My parents were staunch anti-classists, and bigotry directed at Rurals always makes me uneasy. "His family will get paid out and everyone will be happy." He sighs, then hesitates, as if deciding whether to say something. "Andrew, I'm recommending a doctor, a corporate." I look at him, not understanding. I wasn't a Corporate Citizen; I didn't get corporate medical aid. "You're doing valuable work here, and XMET looks after its own," he says.

My phone buzzes with a temporary access card to Waterfront City. He puts a hand on my shoulder, like a fat pink spider.

"Listen, take a break, and spend some time with Kara." Despite everything, I'm surprised he knows my wife's name.

My voice is shaking as I tell her what happened. I hear her little nieces laughing in the background. Playing mommy has taken on an edge lately. Kara says she just wants to give her sister a break, but to me it looks more like practice Or an invitation. Or an ultimatum.

There's a long silence.

"I thought you said the fits weren't happening anymore, Drew," she says.

"They weren't."

She breathes out deeply.

"I'm…" I want to tell her what happened. I want her to understand. But I don't. "I'm going to be home late."

Agent HK

I watch the interview again. It's hosted on a trendy subversive site, one of ours. Like everything else, dissent is easier to control from the inside.

The vlogger is American, her hair tied back in blonde dreads under a R4000 Dolce amp; Gabbana beret. She's overwhelmed at meeting a real life resistance fighter. Matthew Ibrahim, one of the Lionesses' inner circle. He comes across as bitter, cynical, the girl's adulation seems to make him tired. I wonder if he'll feel guilty when his brother dies. If he comes back for the funeral it'll be like a gift to Shaw. A chance to kill the one that got away.

So, Matt, like how did you get involved with Thaba Godima?

The draft. It appeared on my phone on my eighteenth birthday, indicated by the mandatory Governance ringtone. From that point on I had two days to reply or it was a Zimbabwean labour camp. There was no way I could join the Coporate Service Platoon and Godima was the only other option.

Were you close to Nata Mzani? Is she as hardcore as people say?

I don't know if I'd describe the Lioness in those terms. She's incredibly focused. It's part of her training. She was with an MK cadre in Angola during the First Struggle, but after it ended, she refused to take a cushy job in the new government. They hated her for it, more for opposing them. She went into exile and then returned to plant the seed that was to become the Second Struggle and Thaba Godima.

What did you do in Thaba Godima?

I was a Changent, short for "change agent". We were an elite unit trained in Godima camps to fight the power network of the ISU. Did you kill anybody? Are you kidding me?

And what was the deal with the Easter War. That was rough, right?

We had an alliance with the Soldiers of Gaia, an eco-survivalist movement who also opposed Corporate. We had a…falling out after they found some of our cadres cooking an endangered species of hare, but it was the bush, what were we supposed to do? They executed them mafia-style. It turned into a war. We only found out later it was a set-up. The ISU killed our guys and made it look like the Soldiers. We took the bait.

Like Drew will. How could he resist. I shut down the streamcast. It will be enough to link him to his brother, to bring everything tumbling down.

Drew

"Homemade bio-fuel, larnie," the cabbie says, smiling apologetically through missing front teeth. The old car splutters and jerks as he edges it into the stream of traffic, hooting as a cavalcade of black vehicles flashing blue lights roar past us

We pass the decaying Greenpoint soccer stadium. It looks like the skeleton of a giant spider squatting on the tar, the WELCOME 2010 decals faded but the plastic veneer of the grinning official mascot is still surprisingly bright. I wonder how anybody could have ever thought it was cute. It's a demon, a tokoloshe that grinned maniacally over the lean and brutal years that followed the World Cup.

We make our way slowly through the traffic toward the towers of Waterfront City. The contrast between it and the surrounding area is stark. Lush vegetation rises up from the gleaming glass towers.

I'm ushered in to see the doctor, a large man with soft, jowly face. "That's a Stone," I say gesturing at the large oil painting behind his desk of a mushroom cloud over Cape Town. I know from the art magazines my parents collected that it was called "The Spill", even though the real thing it hadn't been like that at all. There had been fires, sure, but not like that, more like a progressive poisoning of the land with radiation.

I thought it was garish, typical of Stone, the egocentric young African artist that had wowed the world, reaching superstar status before chaining herself to the body of an Aids victim in an unknown location and starving herself to death. She had documented it by webcam as her last work and her final minutes were still one of the most watched clips ever. You could buy t-shirts with her emaciated face on them at Greenmakt Square.

He motions for me to lie down on his examining table as he consults my record on the medical database. I lie still as a hovering machine scans my brain from different angles. The doctor keeps up a subdued banter through the flashes, but I hardly hear what he says.

We wait in silence for the results to appear on his desk console. "Mr. Ibrahim, there's no easy way to say this," he says finally. "You have a severe form of epilepsy that has been improperly treated." He pauses to gauge my reaction. "Your episodes, as you call them, have caused lesions to form on the brain."

I nod and he continues.

"No patented medicine exists to treat this," he says. The world contracts to a tiny point in front of my eyes. I think of Kara and the children we'll never have. I know in that moment that if I can't be helped then I'm going to leave her. To give her a chance at the life she wants. And before she leaves me.

"Wait," the doctor says. "There is an option. Lodafril. It's not patented. I don't have to tell you what that means." He watches me carefully for a reaction. I don't blame him. Offer black makt meds to the wrong person and you'd end up in a labour camp, even if you're a Citizen.

"Does it have a chance of working?" I ask. He pauses for a moment then nods. "Then I want it."

He taps his console and my phone buzzes. I look at the screen of my phone. It displays an access card with the name KADEN on it. "It's a username for a game" he says.

He gives me directions to the Kraal, a bar on the outskirts of Salt River, making me repeat them to make sure I have them. "Ask to use the White Room," he says as he leads me to the door. I nod, but he catches my eye. "It has to be the White Room. You can't reach Kaden any other way."

I exit Waterfront City and walk until I hit a Congolese internet café called the Rat Tunnels. The atmosphere is humid and the sounds of French and Portuguese come from businessmen engaged in video chats.

I call Matt. And not only because he was a med student before he joined the cause. He looks tense, like he's looking for a reason to disconnect.

Matt: Hey, long time, it's been five, six months? Drew: Longer. Matt, I really need your help.

Matt: Drew, we've been over this, I can't come back, ISU'd take me out as soon as I landed.

Drew: Don't worry I wouldn't inconvenience you like that. I buried mom and dad on my own, I wouldn't expect you to come back for a little thing like me being sick.

Matt: You're sick again? I thought that was under control? Drew: Well a lot has happened in the ten months since I last spoke to you.

Matt: Drew, please-

Drew: So right now I need your help, ok? If you do one thing in your life for me, make it this.

Matt: I've always-

Drew: Please, just listen. You've still got contacts in medical research right? I need you to find out about a drug called Lofadril.

But the moment I say the word "Lofadril" the connection cuts off. The proprietor strides across the room and looms over me.

His hands are tattooed with badly-rendered holographic ink that glitches as it shows violent sexual scenes; prison tattoos.

"What you doing, eh? he asks.

"I was just chatting," I start, but he cuts me off.

"You used a banned phrase. If ISU picks it up, they're gonna disconnect me. How I'm gonna live then?"

"I just need to-"

"No, you need to leave," he says.

It's not a request.

The Kraal turns out to be a grungy games arcade and strip club. One corner is dedicated to kids jacked into VR units; the slick grey pods that have become more commonplace than slot machines. Sickness and rising petrol and food prices have sent people from reality in their droves. "Your mind can hardly tell the difference," a faded sticker proclaims.

There's a screen in the corner showing a news report about the Left Hand of Allah, the Somalian jihadist group that had absorbed Yemenite and Pakistani terrorist cells after they had finally been pushed out of the Middle East.

The barman, a bearded, rough-looking Afrikaans guy, is watching it. "There's going to be a major war in Africa soon, you mark my words," he says as I walk up to the bar. "I hear they're offering heroin money to recruits."

"Heroin too," I say.

"Let's hope it makes their little child soldiers slow on the trigger," he says laughing. "Are you drinking?"

"A single Harm's Way," I say. It's the only drink I really know – a cheap local whisky, an offshoot of the biofuel industry.

I down the potent liquor which burns my throat. "Games look busy," I say.

"They are, some of these kidpsychos have started setting up drips so they don't have to leave their little cytopia," he says. We watch as a kid takes off his VR mask and stands staring at the room trying to focus his eyes. "Reality must be a real bad comedown."

I can't think of a way to do it, so I just blurt it out. "I need the White Room."

The smile drops off his lips.

"Never heard of it," he says.

I show him the card on my phone. He grunts and motions for me to follow him. He leads me to a completely white room with a wireless VR unit. "20 minutes," he says.

I go through the motions of creating an avatar, choosing the Randomise button to select a set of looks and skills and then hit Incarnate. Immediately I'm in a bright square, bustling with avatars.

The place has the feel of a carnival, disjointed and confusing. Lacking a plan, I make my way toward a crowd standing in the middle of the town square. They're crowding around a beautiful avatar. I feel love pour from my heart at the sight of her. I know immediately that she's a Sylb, one of the class of specially designed avatars, a perfectly synthesized being.

"The real world is pain," she says in a silky voice. "But look around you." Her arms sweep around her causing a shower of stars to erupt from her hands. "A world created by a benevolent and giving corporation," she says. "Why would you ever want to leave?"

I'm ripped from my reverie by a punch to the kidneys. I hadn't bothered with safety settings, so the pain really hurts. I turn to see a grinning leprechaun creature with wild orange hair. "You're falling for a Corporate troll, newfag," it scoffs. "That's so tacky."

I don't know what to do next, so I just say, "I'm looking for Kaden."

The thing grins. "No shit, you're in the White Room. Come on. Nobody else can see me." He takes my hand and we jump to a crumbling Grecian temple carved into the side of a rock face. The creature gestures for me to go inside, gives me a royal wave and then blinks out of existence.

I push the carved doors open and enter the dim temple. Huge angelic wings curl and uncurl behind an elegant naked woman that stands in the centre of temple floor.

"Another lost soul," Kaden says in a languid, silky voice.

"Not lost yet," I say, "but definitely losing".

Her wings unfurl to full stretch. I feel a surge of awe in her presence. Kaden sees it and smiles. "None of us are who we seem here," she says. "Are we?"

"It's a game, an illusion, that's the idea, isn't it?"

"And yet you come here for redemption in Fleshspace," she says.

"It's my last chance," I say, "without this I can't carry on."

Kaden inclines her head, "I'm here to help, not to stand in your way."

The code on my phone gives me one object in my player's inventory, a scroll. I pull it from the air and hand it to her. She looks at it and nods. She in turn gives me an object, a small golden bell.

"That will be stored as code in your phone," she says. A map to a pharmacy on Loop Street appears in the air and I grab it to store on my phone too. "Show the code to the pharmacist. He'll give you the account details for the payment."

"Kaden," I say. The avatar looks at me. "It's OK, right? I mean, there are no side effects?"

She blinks out as she disconnects.

Kara looks up and smiles as I enter, gently rocking her baby niece in her arms. She looks like a mother, she'd make a good one. Emma, the older one, six now, hugs my legs as I walk in and tells me dozens of things about her day without stopping for a breath. I smile and listen, running my fingers through her curls as she reads excitedly from the schoolwork she projects onto the wall from her phone.

After she finishes, I gently extricate myself and go into our room, closing the door behind me. I take three of the capsules from the package and line them up on the basin. Three little pigs. Three blind mice. Three chances.

After my parents died in the riots and Matt took off to join Godima, I didn't think I'd last long. I'm not a survivor. But I'd surprised myself. Sometimes it's a matter of just putting one foot in front of the other. I gulp down the pills in quick succession.

Kara puts the baby on my lap and I rock it gently. Her ancientlooking face stares up at me quizzically. Emma climbs up next to me and tries to get her baby sister to smile by making a puppet with her hand. There's a contentment one feels with children, and for a moment I truly understand why Kara wants one of her own.