Dub Steps

^{CHAPTER 55} Very, very busy

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.

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.

^{CHAPTER 56} I am her child

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[9] 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.

^{CHAPTER 57} I am not used to such journeys

Every now and again Matron isn’t around. One or two of the others will come by and check on me. They feed me and make sure that the provisions are all in the right place and that I haven’t cracked my nut on the basin or crashed into a heap in the shower I insist is still the best method of cleaning these old bones.

I am struck, always, by the bluntness of their beauty. Also, by how casual they all are with it, as if that shine is the natural way of things. I want to grasp their little shoulders and tell them, but it’s jealousy. I lust for it. We all know it.

They check on me because they suspect that it has come to that time, and of course I have spent several hours on the floor of this house in various positions of extreme strain, attempting to lift the deadweight back onto a chair, bed, sofa.

I measure inclines and gradients. I make sure that each step is an investment in turf of the appropriate type. Now, when I transport things – pots, bags, jugs of liquid – I shuffle them from post to post like freight. Kettle counter to top of fridge to next to the sink to dining room table to back of the couch to bar stool to front porch. I no longer put one foot forward, in front of the other. Rather, safer, I move a leg out at ninety degrees, then drag my body sideways to follow it. That way I can manage the load. That way the tripod holds steady for a few more metres.

That it has come to this is no surprise, obviously. We all must. I have watched other good people go, and I will follow. Even so, I find myself enraptured – shocked even, some days – by the extreme transience. It was all so weighty at the time, so dense and full of complexities, but that was then and this is now and I am simply an old, old man preparing his final mix.

When did it come to this? I wonder as I work. Exactly when did dub become the enemy, and trance the master of all things, the very meaning itself? I use headphones as I compose. As I ponder. The chances of the wrong echoes reaching the wrong ears are too high, and I don’t want to put my final moment, my Johnny Cash farewell, at risk.

Somewhere around 2064 Sthembiso was in his twenties and began flexing a considerable set of muscles. He applied them across the full scope of the farm. Soon he controlled food production and music and education and – well, wherever you turned, there was a new policy in place, a new approach, a new way of thinking and doing.

But the big shift was with the pigs.

The archives clearly, and accurately, reflect the brutality of the slaughter.[10] I suggest you consult them. They show the heads rammed onto poles. They even manage to suggest the insane stink of so many porcine corpses, all burned in a single day. Not only were all the pigs killed, they were explicitly savaged. They were to be made to understand in their bones (the survivors, that is) where the new boundaries had been set.

The archives do not show, however, what happened to English.

Sthembiso had whipped his kids into a killing frenzy, which manifested in all the hallmarks of genocide. Small squads marching up and down. Yells and smacks and grunts and male voices barking indecipherably. The muffled yet occasionally sharp screams, like metal tearing, of the animals as they were chased and sliced sounded so human it was like they were trying, even in their annihilation, to speak some kind of deeper truth to us.

I doubt very much if anyone else saw her face up there in the second-floor window. They were too busy – either killing or organising or telling themselves that it couldn’t possibly be so. But it was there, that face. I saw it. Each tear, I feared, could have been the last, the very last, she would ever be able to produce. And I’m afraid that’s how it turned out. We murdered the pigs, and slaughtered in the process her last bridge back to us.

She saw me, briefly. I wanted to wave, to reach out physically, but what do you say with your arms when your eyes and your ears and your tongue are no longer able to function? I held both my palms out and up, imploring her silently not to let go, not to leave.

But it was too late.

It was days before anyone saw her again, and even when she did eventually come back, and finally even resorted to the occasional use of words, she was as hollow as the sounds falling from her lips.

Now she sits underneath the weaver tree, her primary occupation, talking to the colony as it expands, offering useless, muttered help to the males as they thread their nests together and wait for the inevitable. When a human tries to have a similar kind of conversation with her, she stops. Folds her hands into her lap. Smiles.

Snowball’s head was never seen. Or I, at least, never saw it. Initially I told myself it could have been a mark of some kind of benevolence from Sthembiso, but over time I realised the opposite was far more likely. Now I am sure he kept it out of view to torment her, to torture us, completely. To leave us without that final, terrible yet necessary knowledge.

Why did he do it?

There was never any formal explanation, but here’s what I think.

The pigs were no threat, but their presence represented an element of life beyond Sthembiso’s control. It crept up on us quietly, the fact of his growth and his need to control. I suppose this has always been the way – you fail to see what is most obvious, the things that are actually taking shape, in your offspring. Anyway, suddenly there it was, a horrific burning heap of pork. And deep inside that fire, right in the guts of the heat, baked the ambitions of our new leader.

Now the kids fuck wildly, breed wildly – but always under his careful eyes. Our noble, calculated aims with the cup and the genetic mapping have drifted. Instinct is instinct and evolution demands diversity (and let me say now, hard as it is, that the rape of English by the dub Zambians – how else does one describe them, these people, this hidden force? – was an essential addition for us, for the group, for the future), and so they fuck and breed and I don’t even know who is who any more, it’s an endless succession of little heads running and smiling and asking and taking and the phones ring and there are screams and yells and tears and everything you would expect, really, from a bunch of apes let loose with computers and time and imagination and ceaseless ambition.

And yes, they have a god. They pray to him and he guides them, releasing small, important miracles, and they latch firmly onto each one. He is smart that way, their god – he understands that miracles need to be obvious. He keeps them in check with his titbits and they go to church on a Thursday and they scribble in their little books and make sure the rituals are kept and that the numbers add up and that the theorems apply, and really, he is smart, has been very smart, for now they pray to equations and circuits and connections and motherboards and parallel processing, of course, always parallel processing, and through their god they have learned how to switch this shit on and make the blue lights shine with actual, practical meaning, and they will go forward, they are rushing forward into something new, completely new and different.

We are, after all, human.

There is something wild in those opposable thumbs.

Occasionally I catch a glimpse of my reflection. I see – suddenly and shockingly – what I have become. A shuffling grey beard on fragile, bandy legs with a gaping guillotine tooth and a smile that shocks even its owner.

I think, not bad. Not too bad, considering. It could have been worse. I could have been worse.

The wall flashes. Message from Beatrice. She’s coming over with her long fingers and again I think, not bad. Not too bad, considering. This grey beard. That jagged tooth. This girl, this woman, this old lady, still attached to me, still holding this claw after all this time.

After the pigs I retreated.

I collect. I file. I archive. Sthembiso keeps me at it. He won’t let me stop, and he pays real attention, making sure I don’t follow my growing instinct just to form piles. I cross-reference and I cross-index and there are about seven of the little buggers who do what I say, even though no one ever goes in there. Ever. And of course there’s that fucking statue of me mounted at the front of it. The plaque has some ridiculous shit about the wizardry of knowledge and learning. Sthembiso made a speech and everyone cried, myself included. It’s strange how sentimental the years make you – even when you’re being screwed, even when you can feel the very twist, you remain pathetically vulnerable to the things you know are hurting you, must be hurting you, are actually making you sick.

Ego.

I have great-great-grandchildren – too many to count, too many names to try to file and match with faces. Their parents bring them to sit on my knee and I pat their heads and tell them whatever I can remember about a life I have pretty much forgotten myself.

They look up expectantly, following the eyes of their parents, as if I have some knowledge, some great thing to give, and that they must therefore per force receive, but are not sure how. Of course I do, I have great things, but they’re all locked up in this head and none can be put to use now. But still… still… I like them, the little ones, and some I even love – certain names and faces stick in my heart and these I favour with what little I have to offer.

Camille Paglia sits on my lap most afternoons. She’s about sixteen now and my hope is that we manage somehow to time the demise so as to leave this thing together. Can a cat be the true love of a human’s life? The one great and enduring emotional connection? As inured as I am to death – and life, for that matter – there is something about Camille and me, about how we live, that makes me want to weep. We are so close as to be welded. Of all the beings I have known and loved, she tops the list. I don’t say that lightly.

Camille is an African special, a cross of a multitude of continental feline influences, from the lion to the pet shop. Her markings are a mix of brown swirls and black accents, a shocking white chest plate and equally crisp white half-socks. She was born to Caesar and Condeleza, cats Mary secured for her first kids and who bred furiously (the cats, I mean) once they had settled into domestic life.

I couldn’t resist. She was sitting there waiting in that kitten box, calm and studied, and I picked her up and took her home.

Now we are together and we observe. I tell her what I think and she’s dismissive of most of it – but still she listens. She seems to have a natural respect for the interaction itself, and at my age I value that as much as anything else.

Of course Madala influenced my view of cats profoundly. If the trees and the plants are brothers, if the birds are my sisters, then cats are truly my kin. Maybe this was his one genuine legacy to me, his gift. The recognition of life in its widest sense.

So Camille sits on my lap, or next to me in her chair, or in the late-afternoon balcony sun. We watch the world drift by. I ruminate and she hums along. My thoughts and my memories and my ideas and my ambitions are all the same river now. Things that were so distinct in their time – in my time – but now they are simply confluence.

North, as far as my eyes can see, is the jungle. The tops of the Killarney Mall and the Sandton skyline are just visible, but now they are genuinely inaccessible for anyone other than jungle adventurers – kids with machetes and a will to explore and discover what once was. The likes of me will forever be elevated on this island, looking out and marvelling over what has become.

South is all decay: broken, sagging buildings, falling bricks and cracking roads. The city has sagged so much now as to be a jungle of its own kind – more accessible than the north but equally dangerous with its packs of dogs and other scavengers and its rain-soaked structural weaknesses. To the west the land has taken back its original desert form, Roodepoort still standing as a dusty, crumbling monument to a dusty, crumbled people. The east runs away to mountains and bush, rivers and seas, depending on whether you go up or down.

They keep coming to talk to me, the kids, to explain how much easier it could be in one of the other places. Soweto maybe, where they have taken the Calabash. Where they are resourced and free and clear, unencumbered by the forest. But there is the inescapable fact of the library, my archive. It is simply not movable, although they’re starting to talk about that too. Restructuring. Resource control. Things I thought had died with the old world that have turned out to be very much alive. I tell them to get lost – they will move and change and grow and integrate and whatever else is necessary when they find Camille and myself bones in the air. We all know.

Until then, they can leave me here looking out over my forest. Really I think they’re just after change for change’s sake – there is nothing fundamentally wrong with our farm. It is central and well stocked and self-sufficient. It might be a little leafy, a little lush, but that’s no reason to move the whole thing. There are buildings aplenty and… ag, no matter. It’s not my business any more.

Babalwa is dead. That fact was one of the hardest to process and it remains a daily challenge dealing with the sight of Fats walking the never-ending yards. He stops all the time, caught contemplating simple physical things. Trees and walls and stumps and lumps. I know his feeling. That feeling. The loss. I miss her too.

Javas is also dead. His was an easier departure to bear. I always perceived Javas as a larger-than-life force – as an essence. His presence extended beyond bodies and words and locations, and so I feel like he’s still with us. With me. I talk to him and I reply on his behalf, which I know is a sign of my own slipping functioning, but I’m willing to accept that.

Ironically, Javas spent his last years working small. As the kids brought the giants into their story of us, as his work was used to represent us, the originators, he pulled away and focused inward. He worked in his little studio inside his and Andile’s garden cottage and few were invited in.

Once, about a year before he died, I spent a week or two visiting while he worked. It was just the three of us and we spent most of the time talking, his goggles perched on top of his grey dreads, waiting, the welding iron in his hand, raised but paused. And that’s how I’ll remember him. Javas in his tattered blue overalls, goggles up, arm about to strike, talking shit about something I can longer recall, but with a shine in his eye that lit the room – the same shine that always lit my heart.

His last little pieces were all personal refuge. Javas was disturbed by how the giants had become such literal symbols of us, the parents, which they were never meant to be. He protested their use outside the expo centre, and ultimately it was his lack of power in the debate, I believe, that hurt him the most. The arguments with Sthembiso went long into the night and there was never a chance of victory, or even compromise. The giants were us. We were the giants. The expo centre was our story, told again and again and again until we were living dogma, referred to reverentially, but also completely in the past tense. We – the creatures who had purposefully spawned this future – were removed from the present.

And so he welded a true set of us, each piece the height of a water bottle and none bearing even a passing resemblance to its source. Gerald, for instance, was a warrior about to strike, spear raised, face wild. ‘The Gerald we leaned on,’ said Javas. ‘The Gerald we needed.’

Javas died in his studio, razed to ground by a welding flame turned rogue without its father, who had had, we assumed, some kind of stroke or a heart attack. The whole cottage went down. Everything built so carefully gone in an instant. Andile trawled the ashes for what remained and moved into the granny flat on the property next to mine. We are old-age neighbours.

She is the complete opposite of Fats. It’s as if her man’s death has given her more power, more energy. A sharpened vision. She’s brighter and more direct than she used to be. Faster to grab subjects and make them her own, less likely to tolerate the bullshit we all know is bullshit.

So that’s us. Four very old people waiting to die. The young tolerate us at times and venerate us at others, depending on who wants what when. I smile at them all and play up my doddery oldness whenever its appropriate, but the truth is there aren’t many of them I would trust, and there are fewer even that I like. They are enraptured with themselves and the strange forces that are driving them.

A lot – but not all – of my distaste is rooted in their youth. I am of the era when kids of fifteen were kids, not parents and lovers and politicians and scientists and the creators and destroyers of things. Thus I perceive my progeny as dangerous. Their willingness – well, eagerness really – to march onward scares me. And then there are the miracles and the cult of their religion, the details of which I have studiously ignored but the impact of which is inescapable. They are in the thrall of what they call their science, but which I – being the age I am – recognise as superstition and greed and a complete inability to discern hocus-pocus from reason and fact.

Yes, I have raised all my concerns, and no, they have not listened. They do not have the ears. They have eyes instead. Eyes only for more masts and towers, for the addition of more stations and the expanding, stretching, throttling grasp of mobile reception.

If I had any integrity, instead of nattering inanely to Matron’s breasts I would be laying my Madala experiences on the line for all to consider in the rush of their progress, but whenever I think seriously of it I realise that I am too lost in the fog. I swirl between the poles of many possible realities. I am, in other words, no longer completely linear.

Internally, of course, he exists and speaks and guides. A constant, none-too-subtle narrator in my head. He has never left.

I tried to tell Babalwa, just before she went. I held her bony little paw and began a long ramble, intended to lead us to somewhere near the CSIR, intended to open some kind of conversational door that I could slip through, bringing Madala behind me, but she was wise to it. To me. As she always has been.

‘Roy,’ she said, smiling faintly, Jessica Tandy in her last Hollywood years, ‘let it go. We’re nearly there now. There isn’t much more. We have done it. Everything that was possible. You can let go now, Roy. We are there.’

Near-death bullshit, obviously. The meanderings of the terminal mind, but still her eyes were strong and at the time it made spiritual, death-like sense. And so I stopped and bottled what I needed to tell her, only to regret it intensely when she had actually gone. Fucking Babalwa.

‘You know she always loved you,’ Fats said, sobbing on my shoulder.

‘The little bitch.’ I patted his head as gently as I could. He snorted a river back up his nose and choked on it as he laughed, muck spraying back out onto my shoulder.

‘Seriously, Roy. She asked me to tell you. Again. How much she regretted…’

I stroked his greasy old hair vigorously and patted his shoulder. ‘Nah nah nah…’ I looped it like a soothing baby mantra. ‘I know it, I know it. Knew it years ago.’

One of the kids – the doctor – told us it was some kind of pneumonia that took her. ‘But at that kind of age,’ he tutted and shook his head. There was no need to explain. We all smiled hopelessly and let him go. I wondered where and how he had studied. How any kind of knowledge could possibly have taken shape already in that little head. I marvelled also at his white coat – the arrogance of it.

Anyway, that was a few years ago and now there’s just me and Camille, with support from Beatrice and Andile. Gerald was lost up north many years back, and Fats is mostly mad. He spends his time wringing his hands and looking in the folds of his wrinkles for his wife. Recently he started charging the corners, like Tebza.

Camille sits in the sun as it breaks through the trees. Generally she does this until shortly before noon. In summer she seeks out the dappled patches, using the shade to make sure her head is protected from the heat. She moves systematically through the morning to catch the optimum mix of dapple and sun. Every now and again she’s forced to retreat into the shade to cool off. In midsummer she’ll lie in the shade while making sure a paw or two has basic contact with the sun, like she’s lightly touching a cable to a battery. In winter she hunts the heaviest rays and is resolute. She stares directly into the source and captures all of the available power on her chest. She maintains a permanent blink, her eyes paper-thin slits against the glare. Thereafter, depending on the type of day, she’ll find somewhere to pass out. If the sun is absent she barely rises at all, lifting her head only to eat.

I’ve tried to mimic her in my later years. Minimum fuss. Maximum utility. A strong warmth and stroking orientation. After much experimentation I can confirm that it is a good life. A simple life too.

At this advanced age there is no larger meaning for me. I have done all I was ever going to do – and perhaps a bit more, thanks to the novelty of circumstance. I see the world as far bigger, more frightening and more strange than ever before. Today, the simple notion of moving beyond the outer perimeter of the farm is as exotic and strange as one of those French movies. Something fascinating to contemplate, to swirl around in the mind, but not ever to actually get involved in, or really understand.

I didn’t expect to be so benign in my last years. I pictured myself forcing death to wait, somewhere beyond the gate (ah, the fantasies of middle age). Now that I am here I understand that the search for sun and warmth has as much value – more even – than any other endeavour. This I have learned mostly from Camille, who is absolutely calm in her enjoyment of each day, of each rotating moment within it.

Of course, as the sun’s rays heat me I toy with life after death, life on other planets, the various options thrown up by Madala’s muddy presence. As my body temperature rises and my skin warms and my insides glow and I watch Camille, shining and pulsating in the sun, anything – any damn thing – seems not only completely possible but really quite likely. In a world where this kind of warmth can infiltrate beings such as cats and humans, what, ultimately, is not possible?

But then the sun moves and I find a blanket and she finds a heap of something to bury herself in and the potential of the morning fades and by the end of it I accept that this is probably all there is, potential aside. In the afternoons my mind runs at high speed through the memory banks, throwing itself back into life. My heart touches the strange and formidable shape that was my father and then courses roughly over the mystery that was my mother, memories blurring so fast that they become a tidal wave of sensations, cascading over and over each other.

I wipe the tears away with surprise. I am always surprised. I think of Angie, wife of another age. My angry, fighting wife. I am struck by how badly I treated her – how willing I was to lash. Oh, the fights we had. The savage, ego-ridden fights. Embarrassing. Humiliating – I now see – for both of us to have sunk that far. I would, I think as I stroke Camille’s white fur, really value the opportunity to go back and put my hand on her cheek and let it rest there in the love I genuinely did feel for her.

But I can’t.

^{CHAPTER 58} Who do you love?

Matron was layered. She moved through the world and her tasks in it – walking me, wiping Fats’s ass, dealing with the boils and pimples of life – via the external, functional layer, which was crisp and neutral and resolute. You couldn’t shake her circumstantially. In this incarnation she had the ability to disperse calm as if handing out pills. Her presence was, in itself, the pill.

But the longer I knew her – after months, then years, of shuffling by her side – I came to recognise the complexities. On internally sunny days, she was an innate optimist. But when the clouds came, she reverted to fear. Matron, in the dark hours of self, was extremely skittish. Not specifically afraid of this or that, but frightened in general. Of the world around, of the people and of the state of her own little heart.

On Thursdays, church days, holy days, the beat would drive, volume right up, bass cranked, from the early hours, incessant. I was always alone on Thursdays (maybe a visit from Andile or Beatrice, maybe not), and Matron would invariably return in her most delicate incarnation on the Friday. Over time I easily recognised the particular set of her jaw. The grind. Also the fragility of her person. Her lacklustre approach to food, her tendency to lose concentration, the conversation, the activity. Fridays she would flicker and twitch. The exterior motions were consistent, but the right kind of idea would hit her behind her eyes. Once hit, she would scuttle for cover.

Example:

She had her clipboard against her hip and was dressed in a conservative pair of brown office slacks. Her feet were, I still remember now, strangely stockinged inside brown open-toe office loafers. We were considering the height of the bed.

‘Check. Is low, Roy.’ She stepped back to consider it properly, then moved forward again and kicked the base. ‘You OK? Sho? Not easier if higher?’

‘Ja, maybe. But then if I stop trying, if I stop working at things like getting up, soon I won’t be able to. So maybe height is good. Like exercise?’

Matron stopped. Suddenly she looked terribly, terribly young. The skin around her eyes was stretched to a confused kind of smooth. A twitching, chemical smooth. I wanted to reach out and touch it. The cheek. ‘Is that so crazy?’ I asked.

‘Crazy? No!’ She snapped back into focus. ‘Nay. Clever mebbe…’ Now she drifted again, thinking ulterior thoughts. ‘Ay, askies, tata, I’m kinda everywhere. I been tinking so many things. Den when you talk like that – bout effort being good and such – ut just make me tink dem more.’

‘What kind of things, dear?’

‘Ag, nuttin. You shouldna even have to bother.’ She consulted her clipboard.

‘Try me, you’d be surprised.’

Matron stared through my eyes, still young, still flickering. Calculating. Then she pulled her glasses from her afro and held them between us. ‘I been strugglin wif dese. Wif the big guy.’

‘What about them?’

‘Fixed hours. Everyone. Every day. Compulsory. You ken mos. Four-hour minimum. Normally is not my jol. I don come close to decisions. I jus do. But last night dey argue while I walk past and he call me in, like some kinda experiment. Start hittin me with all dese personal questions bout wot I want and wot I believe and how many kids I’m plannin for next two years. I got real bad uncomfortable.

‘I know we not supposed to ask this shit but I start tinking bout wot if de were options. Udda kinds of options, ken. Wot if rules not the only ting. And then I kinda sensed he sensed, ’cause he stop with questions and jus stare at me for a long, long time, in front of all da others, so dey all starin me, an now, I dunno, I jus feel different. Nervous. You know, proppa nerves. Like I done summin wrong. Only I don tink I have. Unless tinking is wrong. And den I tink mebbe it is. So I guess… I guess I jus feelin nervous. And den I tink bout havin to wear these’ – she waggled the glasses and then returned them to her fro, checking their position for balance and solidity before carrying on – ‘and I resent as well. Like a bit angry.’ Matron shrugged, about to cry. She breathed deep and rumbled on. ‘An also da beat. Da beat an pills. Is hard to keep going all the time. Dis I know you know, nè?’ She chuckled, too nervous to look at me. ‘He so hectic bout the beat. Bout the dub thing. He won even let the kids mix de own trance. Even if ut fast and hard like Schulz. Only wot he say. An def no other beat. Neva. Neva neva neva anudda beat but we all know dere’s more. Much more. Everybody know but is scary to say. To risk, yes? Like jazz – we got lotta jazz in your house, tata. Udder tings too. Everybody know. But the beat he won’t stop. Neva. Any time anyone even tink of it, he blitz mad with English and the Zambians and the dub. Scared. Fridays most of all I feel scared. Shaky. Even when dey slow it. The down stuff, also the same. Just slower. Same beat. Shaky. He control it all. Always.’

‘Who do you love?’ I asked without thinking.

‘Sorry?’

‘Well, where do you go when your heart is hurting, or worried, or fearful? Is there anyone who makes you feel safe – emotionally safe?’

Her eyes twitched, flicked. She peered at me as if for the first time. ‘Love? Like in books? Movies?’

‘As in the twins. Andile and Javas. For example. They loved each other.’

‘Nay. Neva. They say it’s myth. Like democracy. Mebbe ut work, by accident, but not really true. Summint that explain sex and fucking, which we don need to know now.’

‘Well, it might be something to explore. Love. As far as I ever knew it was quite distinct from sex. Involved in sex, maybe, but by no means definitely. When faced with real confusion, it can help to speak to someone who knows your heart.’

‘Who you love?’

‘Me? Well I struggled a bit in that way. Later, like now, now that I am where I am, I look back and I can see who I loved. At the time I wasn’t able, though. I just lived with it. The confusion. It became part of me. Not necessarily a great thing.’

‘An now? When you look back?’

‘I loved them all, of course. It’s easy to say that now. When you’re old you love easily. But now… well, Babalwa, of course. But Beatrice too. English. And Sthembiso. Always Sthembiso…’

‘Really? Sthembiso?’ Her eyes were widening, alert, worried. ‘But he keep you here. Locked—’

‘Locked up? No, my child. I mean, yes. Of course. He keeps me here. He has his reasons; he needs certain things from me. Fears other things, maybe. But the locking up? That was me. I put myself right here, long before he had any power or ideas or anything of the sort. I am my own jailer. Always have been.’

Matron cried. The clipboard fell half out of her hand before she caught it and then put it back against her hip. Then she faced me again, tears running. I reached out, took the clipboard and put it on the bed. Then I pulled her into my old musty chest and hugged the girl.

She sobbed into me – sobs of the young. Sobs of the innocent. I rubbed her back and cooed and clucked into her sweet-smelling afro. After a long time she pushed me away, slowly, and looked up into my craggy old lines. ‘An you, tata? Wot bout you?’

‘Of course, dear,’ I replied. ‘Me, I am full of love. For you most of all. Sadly, though, I don’t think I’m a long-term option.’

‘No, Roy!’ Matron grabbed her clipboard off the bed and pulled it to her chest. ‘You don say that. You not allowed.’

‘Yes, ma’am!’ I laughed, took her hand and tried one last time. ‘Seriously, though, you need to think about it. Your heart. Don’t let it overflow. If you’re feeling things, you need to share those feelings, discuss them, express them. Don’t make my mistake. Don’t think you don’t need love.’

‘Ag tata, I tink I just need a good fuck.’ She said it without a trace of humour, or irony, or anything. The words struck like iron.

Then she led me to the bathroom, where we discussed the slipperiness of the tiles.

^{CHAPTER 59} Of course they follow

Heaven Sent (Instrumental Mix).

Like all Markus Schulz tracks, it builds very slowly and you always know exactly where it’s going. There will be no surprises.

Steady percussion layers on the intro, then the thwump thwump thwump of the drum, then the bass lines and symbols and hand claps and the train has left the station. The lilting melody layers drift in and out, dream-like, of course. This is when those Finnish girls and boys, those Nordic ravers, those German party people, would have pushed their shiny white fingers to the sky. Then the drum and the bass line drop out suddenly and it’s all spacey, we are quiet now, empty, almost. The melody slips back in, centre stage, supported by a flutter or a whistle or some such happy beeping, up to the stars, resting now on aural cushions and clouds. The kids stand, shuffling, grinning insanely, inanely, hugging, waiting, waiting, waiting…

And bang.

They’re off.

I am amazed, shocked, that this is the soundtrack to the end of my days. That these sounds, the back track to my father’s last pathetic years, to my teenage angst and annoyance, are now the sound of authority. Of power and meaning. Of life as it will go on without me.

Trance.

And I started it.

Sthembiso’s love affair with my music collection, which was really my father’s, never ended. It was always Markus Schulz who captured him. Even as he left his teenage years behind, as he dropped all the childlike things of his past, he never let go of the candy floss, of the lure of the flock of beeps.

It is, ultimately, a blessed sound, I tell myself. A sound I should welcome. It is sometimes, in fact, the sound of life itself. Of creativity. Of music. No matter how hard it is to sleep, I must – I repeat like a Buddhist mantra – remember what it was like when there was nothing. When there were only the chirps of my brothers in the trees, only the jagged barking of insects crossing and uncrossing their legs.

I creep sometimes to the edge of it, just to see. To observe. To experience.

It is erotic, of course. Titillating. The sight of those bodies and blushed, flushed faces. The red lips and the tight tops. The tiny thin hips and the arms and hands and wrists and thighs all intertwined. The thumping heads and thumping drum.

But it is hard too, this thing. Those jaws, they grind. Always grind. Those eyes, many are beginning to reflect rather than absorb, shining like metal or plastic caught in the light. They have a lab now. (Who are they, exactly? I don’t know. When I say ‘they’, I refer, in my own mind, to the decision-making and operational unit. I refer to Sthembiso. He of the ideas. He of the action.) I saw them once ferrying scientific-looking boxes into it. Test tubes and some liquid. What do they make in the lab? It could be anything. It’s probably everything. Some of it is hard. Trance hard. Dance hard. All-night hard.

I think of my father. His narcotic grin and those insensible, inane, supercharged Monday-morning eyes. After so much change, so much difference, we’ve ended up, he and I, in the same place.

Well, almost. There are differences, of course. Babies are everywhere. Parenthood and partyhood have merged. Mothers cradle children while they dance, fondle boyfriends and feed, push prams, dance some more. We were also always at least partially dressed. These people, my children, are often almost completely naked.

Who are the parents? Who are the kids? Who is in control? Who sets the rules and who is forced to toe the line? Sthembiso is at the head of it, but other than that it’s impossible to tell. From the long distance of my age all I see is a swarming, pulsating mass of hyper-sexualised children.

We’re into the fourth generation now and I haven’t yet seen any of the signs of inbreeding. Thus, at some basic level our attempt to secure genetic diversity seems to have worked. But, to be honest, I can’t see how our small pool has created this many of them over such a short period of time. Whenever I try to add them up (I count the heads, quietly, some days) I come out with a number that exceeds the realms of possibility. There are simply too many.

I am forced, as a result, to think of Madala.

In my rare, fully rational moments I see that my children are not what I am.

I reach out. I try to touch them. But I fail. I don’t have the language. I don’t have the proximity. My fingers slide off a metallic, alien surface.

Somewhere back there Sthembiso grew quiet. He stopped asking questions. For years I took this to be the sign of a mind and a personality breaking free from its parental moorings, and it warmed me. I was watching, I believed, the maturing. Our leader. So I detached. I took the steps back, and then to the left, then the right, to accommodate a painful but necessary process. It was only after the pigs that I forced myself to look at the signs. To really look.

He could fix things. Bodies and broken bones were repaired.

Illnesses were addressed.

He could erect a cell tower.

He could program computers and build software. He could network machines across time and space and enormous, baffling distances.

He could pray.

He could lecture and speak and chant and bring people to their feet to sing and bow.

He could preach.

And he did.

In moments of vanity I tell myself I could have taken control and steered the boat in a different direction. I could have made sure that that child – all the children, in fact – remained somewhere close to my wing.

Of course this is deluded. I know that, when I think about it hard enough. Control is an advertising concept.

Sthembiso and his lieutenants initiated the great moving. All Javas’s giants, each previously unique and apart, now watch over the party area in front of the stairs leading up to the expo. The church. This is now their role. It is not insignificant. They are not aesthetic props. They are not pissed upon (literally or figuratively) or mistreated. They are venerated. Obscenely so.

Sthembiso’s art is not new. I know that. He is the preacher. The preacher who smiles with a level voice and complete freedom. A preacher sitting ready, decisions primed in the palms of his rough, impossibly experienced hands.

He leads his prayers and his lectures at the giants’ feet. I have listened in on many of these. I have watched the lips of the youngsters flapping in time with his words, I have seen them recite – from memory – his sayings.

‘Brothers and sisters,’ he says. ‘We are but few, but we have been blessed with the divine, with the revelations of science and love that will lead us into the future in a manner our forefathers could never have dreamed of. Brothers and sisters…’ He pauses, essence of Obama and Luther King and Clinton and Mandela and Tutu and Hitler on his lips, stares them down, deep into their little pubescent eyes. They lock into him and wait, and wait, until they are leaning into his eyes and his words. He takes them on.

‘Brothers. Sisters. Now that we are moving. Now that we have been blessed with the gifts of science and the land. Now that we are truly on the move, it behoves us to look back and to see with the clarity our Lord has given us the mistakes of our fathers.

‘Not to accuse.

‘Not to denigrate.

‘But to learn. To look back and learn. And when we do cast ourselves in that earlier direction, we will see – it is quite obvious now that we know how to look and what we are looking at – that our fathers forsook the most basic human skill of all. That they forsook it almost completely. They forgot how to dream. How to look into the jungle of the self, how to read the patterns and the words. And…’ Pause. Eyes. Smiles. Eager nodding. ‘And well we might ask, how did they manage to forget – forsake even – this, the most valuable ability the human has? How did they come to forget and abandon this, the root of all things? How did they lose touch with the skill that orients our minds, that provides the very gearing for what we do and how we do it? How did they forget how to dream?’

Full eyes. Wet lips. Leaning forward. All of fifteen, thirteen, eleven, ten, eight years old. Prams and babies and ecstatic yells and science and lectures and preaching. Trance.

They are completely in this thing and he is pulling them forward and of course they follow.

Of course they follow.

^{CHAPTER 60} Seeds need to spread

Let me not misrepresent these kids, these entities – whatever they are.

For the sake of historical accuracy, and my own mental balance, let me try to paint the picture as it is, with accents applied fairly over space and time.

The parties used to be very frequent, but they have dropped off to once every three or four weeks. The preaching occurs daily, but has not – yet – attained the level of stupid superstition. They seem to pray quickly in the mornings, and then, from what I can gather, Thursday, holy day, when not a trance day, involves rest and a lot of sex. They wander around naked and fuck, in other words, on a Thursday.

I need not go into too much detail concerning the sight of roaming teenage hard-ons and moist, ready vaginas. They are, obviously, impossible to ignore. They are also more than a little bit scary to me, the cocks vigorous and purple, throbbing and straining and leading their owners into… well, whatever. Thus far (thanks to the gods, whatever gods, for small mercies) the actual sex has not been something for upfront public display. Rather, one catches repeat glimpses of buttocks and thighs, arms and hands, accompanied always by a cacophony of small sighs and aroused child grunts.

On Thursdays I try to stay indoors.

But let me be fair. It’s not as if they’re running some kind of perpetual kiddie orgy. The nudity and the copulation and the day of rest have been clearly delineated. They are not random acts – they are planned and carried out according to an agreed set of rules. I won’t claim to know the rules, but I do understand that sex is a fundamentally different thing for them than it was for us, who lived in a world full of people. These kids need to fuck – they need to fuck a lot. Seeds need to spread. We realised the necessity when we created the baby farm in its first incarnation, and now the idea has become thoughtless belief – action – as ideas must if they are going to live.

So, while I find the manifestation disturbing in too many ways to describe, I do appreciate that there are reasons behind those pink little asses humping up and down in the near distance.

Still, I ask myself, do they really need a god?

Do these kids, young and frisky and free as they are, really need to tap into a higher power? Are they not capable of living and fucking and breeding on their own?

I cannot answer.

The parties have drawn deeply from the source created by my father and his kin. The DJ is pre-eminent, as one would expect, high up in his booth. All beats are, of course, underpinned by the 4/4 thump of the pre-dawn trance rhythm, a universal drive we all understand.

They (who? I’m not sure – some young thing, pert as a button, together with her stringy, flushed boyfriend) have asked me to do a set at the next party. Mthakathi has developed, by all accounts, a mystical reputation as a beat archivist as well as a general knowledge collector, and while they seem completely unconcerned with the ideas and facts I have at my disposal, the music they slobber for.

I have agreed, but with conditions. I want the pre-dawn slot. The April clouds are rolling in and the sky is darkening, so that means four to seven a.m. This will be, I suspect, my one and only headline gig and I would be lying if I said there wasn’t a small river of excitement running through me. There are things these kids have missed and have been denied. Things they are actually not allowed (I think of Matron), and I intend to bring them, to open that horizon just a tiny bit. DJ Mthakathi. Aged ninety-something. On the decks at… at what, exactly? I don’t know. There are no names for these things. No one is making posters.

^{CHAPTER 61} Heavy

There are too many of them and they’re too smart. That’s what it comes down to.

After all my work. After that fucking statue. After all the talk about knowledge and saving and information hierarchies, they want none of it. They need none of it. The information is irrelevant. What they need is the story. The design.

Nine strangers. Picked out by the holy master. By the lord our god. The nine who would redesign. All they need of us, of what we did and what we reached so long for, is our images. The outlines. Inside they have coloured their god. Or he has coloured them – whatever.

Once they put the statues out in front of the expo and gave them our names. Once the prayers and the statues and lectures began to merge… Gerald left. While my jaw dropped closer to my chin, he looked north. Eventually he turned the ignition, and went.

He would come back every now and again, this year or that year, looking all the more each time like he had stumbled across us accidentally. His eyes were wider. Slower to refocus. The words took longer to leave his tongue. He spoke only in short snatches, an abrupt two-way radio.

He took guns – many guns. He wanted the Zambians. The dub Zambians. Revenge for English. Justice for English. For himself. Some way to restore the innocence of a simple idea. A simple bloody camping trip.

Occasionally, he said he heard the bass, far off in the bush. He followed. Dub people, he said. Definitely dub people. And not in a good way.

Sthembiso debriefed him more thoroughly each time, gathering Roy Jnr and little collections of older kids together in theatrical corners, imitating a military court. Each session was longer and resulted in more tittering, more talk, more sharpening of already sharp things.

And me? Well, really, I am empty. Hollow. They may or may not be a threat. They may or may not be dub people. I find it hard to care.

I am captured, rather, in my most reflective times, by the thought of all those books stacked in such precise order. Those noble old publications. The fresh young ones. Rotting away, deprived of oxygen, of the laughter and anger, the dirty hands of life. I walk through my shelves every now and again, running my fingers across the spines, feeling the ripple of light as my touch passes, and then the disappointment, dark in the gut.

^{CHAPTER 62} Bundles of complex energy

Sthembiso is a strapping man, confident in his walk and his body. He maintains a chiskop at all times, the bald scalpiness of his skin all business and action. Never has he moved even slightly towards dreads or free growth, a reflection of his singular nature and his complete, overwhelming focus on whatever it is he is focusing on.

We maintain a respectful distance.

I display many of the obvious symptoms of jealousy and resentment in the way I interact with him. I resent what he is doing and has done with the farm, and I am jealous of… well, everything. I want that small eager boy back.

I expected something different. His aggression represents all my disappointments for what could or should have been. His presence marks the loss of my own dreams, the full and final shutdown of my own ambitions.

I make sure not to fall too gratefully into the calming impact of his presence when he decides to bestow it on me. I know – because Babalwa, his mother, told me, often – that I am remote and removed from him. That I am pointedly absent. Distant enough for it to be a matter of common cause across the farm, within my generation and among all the kids. Roy and Sthembiso have issues.

Which is fair enough, I suppose. He and I are both aware of the deeper forces that have set the trajectory of our society. The others may hail the miracles and the luck, the striking of fortune against the flint, they may hail their god, but Sthembiso and I are very aware that these have not been purely fortunate stumblings.

Still, our distance is not absolute. We have managed to find small spaces to fill out on our own. Every now and again, maybe once or twice a year, he will come and sit with Camille and me, his heavy frame sinking into one of my small stoep chairs, which buckles and breathes audibly at the weight of him.

‘Roy,’ he said the last time, about three or four months ago, ‘do you believe in fate and God and life after death and aliens and all that?’ His accent crisp, clean. The Queen’s language. It’s one of the ways he keeps his authority, wielding the power of his formality against his progeny. The rest may talk like lost grammatical orphans, when they use English at all, but Sthembiso is word-perfect. His prompts. The exhortations and motivations of the interface, these are perfect too – perfection the sign of power. Great power. Remote and decisive.

‘Jesus, boy, you’re bundling a lot into one basket there.’

He smiled. ‘Well, you know what I mean. I’m referring to—’

‘Yes, I know. You mean the spiritual. Do I pray? Do I believe there is a larger force and/or forces that have influence over the course of my life? Do I believe this waking moment is all there is, or do I believe that other forces are at play in corners I cannot see? Yes?’

He peered at me carefully and approximated a nod.

‘I’m not sure. I never have been. I can tell you this though – we are bundles of complex energy. We are combinations of circuits and neurons and cells, and we are very sensitive as a result. We are easily influenced by electricity, by energy, so I don’t see any reason why there aren’t lots of different kinds of energy out there – many that we aren’t even aware of – guiding and shaping what we do and how we do it, et cetera, et cetera.’

‘Do you dream?’

‘Of course. We all do. Depends on how many joints I’ve smoked whether I can remember them or whether they take over my entire night, but that’s just a matter of degree. Do you dream, Sthembiso?’

He leaned his elbows onto his knees, his enormous muscled body purring with potential energy. ‘God speaks to me every night.’

‘How do you know it’s God?’

‘There are things in my dreams, lessons, lessons I use in this world, and they work.’ He ran a hand over his scalp, producing a rough, sandpaper sound. ‘You know. Networks. Circuits. What we’re doing with the cell stations. Medicine. That time Thami broke his leg – I dreamed the repair, you know? I didn’t only make him sleep because I wanted him to calm down. I needed to dream. And I did. And then I knew.’

‘You think anyone else dreams like that?’

He was still rubbing his scalp. He gave a final triple rub, then stopped. ‘Maybe, but I haven’t seen or heard anything like mine.’ His eyes popped ever so slightly and suddenly I saw the little ten-year-old-boy who had organised the expo, who had chased down Eeeyus.

‘Let’s just say I know of what you speak, my boy. I don’t think your experience is the same as mine has been, but I understand what you’re saying. Not metaphorically. Practically.’

‘So, what do you think? Is it God? In my dreams?’

‘Well, what do you think? I listen to you preach, I see what you’re doing with the farm and the people and the parties and all of that, and I must say I wonder. How much of this is you? How much is the dreams? Can you answer that? Can you discern your dreams in your actions?’

His eyes popped further, then sank back. He looked silly, a pensive, troubled giant perched too delicately on a tiny frame. ‘I like to think when I’m doing things that it’s all logic, but in moments when I’m by myself, which is rare, obviously, I question where it’s coming from and why. Behind the logic, here’s this kind of swamp of motivation and, I don’t know, I don’t really even know who I am any more.’

‘You dreaming every night?’

‘Phewww.’ The air ran from him. ‘I guess. I think most nights – but also, I don’t know. You know how it is with dreams. There are the things you can remember and then there’s all the white noise in the background when you wake up, like you know a lot happened but you can’t get a handle on it.’

‘You ever speak to your mother about it – the dreams?’

‘No, I tried, but not hard enough.’

‘Sthem…’ I leaned forward. I implored. ‘Beatrice and Andile and me and Fats, we’re pretty much gone. Fats can’t find his own zipper, I just sit here with Camille and daydream, and Beatrice and Andile aren’t far behind. Time is short. So you should know. When it happened, when everyone disappeared, your mother dreamed the kind of dreams you’re talking about. If I were you, I would talk to the others about it, to Fats even. I don’t think you can carry on with these questions without finding out more about her and her dreams. That means Fats. See if you can get something linear from him.’

We talked more of the past, me clinging to the decades, all gone now, drops in the river. I asked Sthem if he was sure he was right in what he was doing, and he said all he had was his heart, and his heart wasn’t asking any questions that couldn’t be answered.

I said that will have to do.

I asked him if he was in control of the numbers – if they all added up. To me it still looked like there were too many kids, too many people. It wasn’t the first time I had broached the subject, and it wasn’t the first time he evaded it, a tetchy furrow running across his brow, followed quickly by a trust accusation – his stock reply.

This is how it has been with Sthembiso and me for years. The distance between us punctuated by these awkward occasional meetings, filled with allusions to the things in between. We chatted on for a few minutes, about the details of this and that. I probed again around the unilateral music ban – the tyranny of the trance.

Next to Gerald’s body they had found a note. Dub, his final scrawl made sure to tell us. True dub.

To me it was the scrawl of hope. Of real, honest-to-God hope – the kind based on something tangible and physical. As much as their savagery to English was just that – savagery – their presence was still, ultimately, a light. A flicker on the horizon.

Sthembiso took it in a completely different direction. For him, their dub cast our trance in a new context of conflict. Everyone knew better than even to try to slip a fatter bass line in anywhere. A jazzy beat. An old rock ’n’ roll tune… Never.

Never.

In case the message hadn’t spread far or fast enough, in case the sight of the daily departing drones, reaching ever further, bringing back ever more, did not fully carry the military message, his lectures and sermons began referencing the importance of continuity and the danger of those heavy-handed, as yet unknown but clearly existent Zambian savages, waiting, surely, definitely, with their lazy beats and their machetes and their glazed, stoned, dubbed-out eyes…

There is us, Sthembiso said. And there is them. They left Gerald’s body in a tree. Strips hanging off it. Do the math, and do not be afraid of the numbers – they tell us what we need to know.

After Sthembiso had departed that last time, I had the sudden urge to talk to Sihle, my direct offspring. As a child he tended towards the coy and annoying, but in his later years he picked up enough confidence to show that his childhood uncertainty was just that – uncertainty. Now he was in charge of the Soweto Calabash, running, by all accounts, a fairly large set-up. There was much talk of parallel digital ports and docking points and such things beyond the ken of an old half-toothed man.

I strolled slowly, carefully, along the back paths, the neon-free paths, to the main house. This, I decided, would be the time. An appropriate time to finally use the landline. I asked one of the kids to dial it up for me. It looked for all the world like an old cellphone, but it was attached by a cable to an unusually large docking base, which in turn led to a nest of thick cables, all running away in different directions. The details were beyond me, but I had seen a few of them on it and it appeared to function pretty much like an old two-way radio in the connection phase. As far as I could gather – and that wasn’t very far, admittedly – the two-way connection was required to activate the call. One had to literally summons the party on the other side via a series of rings. The other party then had to flick a set of switches.

Once all had done what they needed to do, the handset could undock from its base and be used like a phone of old.

‘Sihle?’ I bellowed down the line.

‘Hola?’ His voice was surprisingly light, like a teenager.

‘It’s Roy.’

‘Roy? Really?’ He was surprised and amused. ‘Nice, Ntate. I’m honoured. Wot’s cooking down de?’

‘Nothing really. That’s why I decided to call. Seeing as they’ve got this set-up it makes sense to use it, I supposed.’

‘Korrek. Good call. An good to hear your voice, good to hear. Tell me something exciting. Ish is pretty dead this side.’

‘Sheesh. I was hoping you could tell me. Uhhh… oh, they’ve asked me to DJ at the next session.’

‘Ja? Wikkid. Nice. Okei… I might come through. I might definitely come through.’

‘Ja. Bit weird really but thought I’d give it a shot.’

‘Sho. Mthakathi on the decks. The kiddies will love it.’ He waited awkwardly for something, some reason.

‘Well, I guess I’ll let you get back. I just suddenly, I just wanted to hear your voice.’

‘Super. Dope to hear yours.’ He sounded relieved, and just the tiniest bit impatient. ‘You live well now, Roy. Don do nuffing I wouldn’t do. Ha ha.’

‘I love you, boy.’ The words were out of my mouth before I could stop them.

‘Uh, ja. Wow. Sho. Thanks, Roy. Love you too, broe.’ Awkwardness flooded the line. ‘Uh, gotta go. I being summonsed. Shot for the call, nè? I see you soon.’

‘Yup, see you soon.’

I gave the phone back to the nearest sprog and drifted back to my cottage, thinking about the rare occasions my father had attempted similar phone calls or interactions, about the way his sudden attempts at emotional contact would strike at me, out of the blue. Nonetheless, I felt good having at least given it a go. He will remember when I am gone.

^{CHAPTER 63} I drop it

Now there is nothing. Everything I have from here is incidental. (This bag of bones is seriously sagging. That I can tell you. That is new. I reach out with weak, flopping arms. Things fall suddenly from my fingers. My feet stub into the ground – I cannot lift them.)

I pack my disks carefully. I asked the sound kids to set up one of those old CD things, the ones that mimic the original vinyl decks. I run through the set in my head. I am nervous. I will be defying. I will be risking. It’s an invigorating feeling, risk. The knowledge of the bullet. I feel alive. Thrilled.

I can hear the trance beating out from the fields. Armand Van Helden, I think.

I intend to leave these children with something deeper. With a challenge. I am going to shake them. Open their little eyes and their tiny, shrinking hearts.

Matron fetches me. Tight, tight jeans and a small pink thing up top, she’s oozing sex. Her pupils are blazing and I wonder exactly what she’s on, and if Sthem really has as much control as he believes, but… well, it’s not my business. It hasn’t been for a long time.

Up on the decks I look over the crowd – seems like there’s more than a hundred of them, little children. My children. I dab my finger on my tongue and put it to the air and they scream, then laugh, then shake those bony little asses. Matron giggles and shakes uncontrollably next to me, loving the limelight, the moment, the honoured position up high.

I bring it in slow, mixing imperceptibly from what was. They don’t notice – they’re too far out there on that plain, but I keep bringing it until we’ve switched, we’ve moved from that terrible, relentless pace into something deeper, the dub pulse pushing, insistent.

Their bodies find it before their minds do. I watch them realise in the smallest of jumps, the tiniest of increments. Then I kill the drum and it’s just the synth, lifting and lifting, and their baby fingers go up. I see Sthembiso at the back of the tent and he isn’t liking this at all. Not at all. He’s got the laser-beam stare on me and next to him there are three, maybe four of his boys, all muscles and slit eyes, and two of them I can see, even from this distance, bulge with weapons.

He holds my eyes and leans into one of their ears and a fat neck nods and slips out the back. The kids start to whoop – I mean, really whoop – they’re still lifting, their bodies know what’s coming, their ears tuning to the rebellion. It’s going to sing. It’s going to be delicious.

And I think, Jesus, here I am, a little dying man on the decks, here I really am, doing this, and there they are, loving with eyes stronger than I can imagine, embracing a thought I can no longer conceive, the little ones heading out into the future, and for a second, just an instant, in a blue and pink flash of light, I think I see Madala in his blue overall, right at the back of the tent, behind Sthem and his boys. And then he’s gone.

But the synth is still going, lifting and lifting, and now they’re impatient, they need it. There is no meaning if it doesn’t come, now, and I lift my arm, my tired old broken arm, one last time. I push it into the air and they scream and yelp like the little children they are, and then, finally, after all these years, I drop it. I drop it, at long, long last.