Chasing Oranges Read online

  chapter

  His stomach was used to it by now. Kayan Maleba however still wasn’t. He hadn't been for a while, or perhaps had never really been. Awareness had been eluding him like so many others out there. His name at the time was still Cornelius Rosewater. He was essentially, and by all means, not aware of anything, including the signs his body tried to communicate to his brain on a daily basis. For better or for worse he could not tell if he was hungry, if his bladder was bursting, if there was dust in his eye or if there was an awkward itch up his pants that needed seeing to. During the course of his adult life he’d grown completely oblivious to his own body, and lived in it like a stranger squatting in some abandoned countryside villa, waiting and hoping for better days to come.

  The grumbling grew louder, just as it always did round that time of morning. Like clockwork. He was useless without his gadget. They all were. The whole place was. The whole nation. There were those who had refused to give in to the technology. The good people, the real people. But they lived as outcasts in the underworld labyrinth of sewers and oceans of piss and shit. Down there, where the waste from the rich upper strata ran along the streets.

  The rumbling in his stomach soon turned to nauseating losses of bodily gasses, and just as it was all about to go terribly wrong, the alarm clock on his gadget rang with a loud beeping sound to remind him it was time to go to the toilet.

  The devices worked around the clock in order to keep them functioning on behalf of that better good which was Notobia. The nano-technology portable contraptions were conceived to be an integral part of their daily existence. Some even chose to have theirs implanted under their skin as a matter of convenience. Those who didn’t, carried it along in their pockets and purses, and reached for it whenever the confusing reality of life fell upon them. The gadget was, by all means, the one true common denominator that the wealthiest and blindest of Notobian citizens shared. From a young age, citizens were taught never to leave their gadgets out of sight. They were to be considered a man’s best friends. Dogs had long been banished and banned, along with dog owners. The despicable lot. The revolutionary movement of the second coming had little patience for such heinous inconveniences. In a life and death situation it was the gadget that kids were trained to turn to for inspiration. Every First Degree Notobian (FDN) had sadly come to rely on their little gadgets to keep them afloat. The thin white line separating those who took decisions from those whose decisions were taken for them, had been crossed way too long ago for anyone to remember or care about anymore. From the moment they woke up, to the moment they went to bed, decisions were made for them in the stress-free manner which the macrobiotic chip circuits of the 11th generation gadgets thoughtlessly computed, second after second of every soul-forsaken day.

  “Wake up”

  “Shower”

  “Shit”

  “Piss”

  “Breakfast”

  “Teeth”

  “Door”

  “Bus”

  “Train”

  “Office”

  “Work”

  “Lunch”

  “Piss”

  “Work”

  “Train”

  “Bus”

  “Home”

  “Dinner”

  “Piss”

  “Shower”

  “Squat”

  “Piss”

  “Sleep”

  All part of a daily routine that had been lost and surrendered to the infernal gadget, the integral part of a dream which they’d all bought into long ago.

  And just like that, as he sat there relaxing his bowels, like he’d done a ton of times before, he looked up towards the ceiling. In the corner, where the wall met the ceiling, he focused in on a crack that was forming in the paintwork. He looked up at it a little puzzled. It wasn’t much. Just a small insignificant defect in an otherwise perfectly plastered room, but it seemed to call out to him. To scream his name out unlike anything he’d experienced before. It wasn’t only the white plaster that had started to crack. Something within him was following suit. Somewhere in the deepest depth of his mind a voice asked the question, “How long have you been sitting on this damn shitter?”

  Never before had he taken the time to contemplate how long he’d been sitting on the toilet. He hadn’t done much thinking in some time. None of them had. It could prove drastically painful and possibly dangerous. So they’d been told. It had been shown to be true. Scientifically. And few could argue with science.

  Like millions of others around him, Cornelius Rosewater couldn’t remember the last time he’d had a genuine thought. The word meant practically nothing to him, as did the act of contemplation itself. Not that his memory was any better. Never thinking meant there was little for his memory cells to record and store. The memory muscles hadn’t been getting that much exercise. But lightning does strike twice. And just like that, in the space of a few days, another spark of thought showed the first signs of spontaneously combusting in his head, as again he sat ever so calmly on the toilet to empty his toxic bowels. He was in danger of processing the very second conscious thought of his adult life when, all of a sudden, something terribly evil and unknown in his gadget sensed the danger of him doing something unexpected and let off the annoying sound of an alarm. Toilet time was up. A mysterious force rushed him from his resting place, and sent him across the house to prepare himself to be acquiescently cast into the controlled reality which he and another few hundred million souls lived in. Such was the official party line. There was no escaping this. It was a new natural part of man’s evolutionary fight for survival. Gadgets could and should be counted on to take care of business. It was only those who lived in the underworld and detached from the interface reality above them who saw it all for what it was. Not to say that they had it any better. One’s man drug, is still another man’s drug.

  “When did you get fat?” He heard the voice in his head whisper from behind a corner in his mind, as he looked at the oversized belly in the mirror before him.

  “Man, the flab hanging off those tits of yours is a bloody disgrace. Shame on you!”

  The wind blew and whistled in and through his hollow thought box. The sound of water splashing and waves crashing on rocks. For a brief instance he awoke from his catatonic existence, responding to the voice. It wasn’t the first time he’d heard it. The second in fact, but numbers meant nothing to him, nor did they to anybody who was anybody. He’d not counted a single peanut since the age of six.

  His eyes met the reflection of his pale face in the sickening lights of the mirror. Worryingly he looked about himself. He had a vague idea of where the sound was coming from, but he couldn’t bring himself to believe it. His eyes moved around in circles, as if to check the inside of his eye sockets for something, or someone that might be hiding up there.

  “You’re right,” he said to himself holding his chubby stomach in the palms of his hands, “I have put on some weight.” The rest of him was quite skinny. One might have thought he was sick, such was the deterioration his figure had experienced over the last decade.

  The longest conversation he’d had with himself in over twenty-five years came to an abrupt end when the gadget sensed something was at fault and sounded the alarm. He picked it up and looked, lost, into the screen. The highly defined image of a woman deep in some multi-elliptical sexual position appeared for a split second with the intention of hooking his attention. He was hooked alright. Then the message: Time to clean your teeth.

  When he was done, like so many times before, he returned to his day-sleep having forgotten the bleak attempt to discover the source of that strange voice. His brain just wasn’t programmed for that sort of complicated computation. He proceeded to wash his hands, put on his tie and joined his wife and two children in the kitchen for breakfast.

  He’d never noticed it before, but as he walked down the corridor he looked in stupor towards the woman and the two children sat at the kitchen tabl
e. Responding to the annoying sound of the gadget he looked into the screen and read the words written across the small screen: Your wife, Clarice, and children. Twins Jeremy and Janette. Sit down for breakfast.

  Unknown to his conscience memory, this was a scene that had repeated itself on a daily basis for years. As he sat down at the breakfast table he looked over to the lady in a yellow dress decorated in awful purple flowers, his wife. She reached for her gadget in a panic. The look of dread spread across her pointy face, not having recognised the stranger. Your husband, Cornelius. Some unknown thought process within her shallow self told her all was OK and that the gadget knew best. It was indeed only her husband. Nothing to be alarmed about apparently. She let out a burst of a breath, relaxed and sat down by him. Only moments earlier she’d experienced a similar kind of asphyxiating feeling when the twins had rushed towards her and leaped at her legs, hanging at them like those weird creatures she’d seen on the box a few moments earlier.

  Holding her hand before her chest she regained her composure and handed over the bread basket to her beloved stranger. She strained a cheek muscle ever so slightly as she pouted to him and caressed his leg with her left hand. Cornelius Rosewater held the toasted piece of bread up to his face and examined it closely. Then the beep of his gadget. Eat.

  He smiled, ever so slightly. His wife smiled back. His kids Jeremy and Janette fiddled with their gadgets. They were eleven years old. Separated only by a few minutes. They were being introduced to their new realities. The age limit had been brought down from 18. There was no time to waste. Two masters degrees each and an upcoming PhD on the mystical Science of Obedience, did nothing to diminish their kiddish excitement before the exciting new toy they’d received for their birthday. Their unique existence would soon be surrendered to the very device mankind entrusted with their lives and souls. Someone, somewhere quoted a popular rock band from the early millennium that went something like, “I think, therefore I am”.

  “But if you don’t think, then what does that make you?” some echo from the vast darkness of space had come back to ask. The answer still lingered somewhere in the ether of all things unknown.

  When the bells had rung, and the table cleaned, he walked to the front door of their apartment on the 109th floor of the Liberty Imploring Tower. He took one swift look at his gadget which reminded him to kiss his wife goodbye before making for the lift. A sand grain of doubt rolled around the bowl which was his empty soul as he looked at the woman that stood before him. She was beautiful. However, the word and its very meaning still meant very little to him. He looked at her again and acquiesced silently. Time for work.

  He had reflected little on the mysterious force which pushed him to follow suit, it just felt right. He had no recollection of ever having questioned it before, but for the first time ever he began to wonder where and what he was heading to. Floor after floor after floor, he met the gaze of those who also followed suit, jostling their way into the lift getting ready for another journey to wherever the gadgets had in mind. For the first time, in a long time, or perhaps for the very first time ever, he noticed the numbers of the floors steadily decreasing on the digital screen before him. He vaguely remembered seeing them before, but never having pondered their meaning. He wondered how long the new device had been there.

  The doors to the lift opened straight onto the lunacy which was the bustling street below. Him and another 103 individuals stood there in the morning, purple-coloured sunshine. Pale in the faces, heads slanted slightly confused to one side, until one after the other the gadgets began to ring. Messages, highlighted by captivating pornographic images, appeared on screens all round like some devilish equation causing them all to move on in unison. Each with their little daily mission to complete.

  Somewhere, where people were literate, it was written in pink jelly that on that day, the 38th of Jupitan (a new month and a few days that were added to the old calendar to adjust for orbital changes caused by the Big Meltdown), something incredibly significant would happen to Cornelius Rosewater. It would start as an innocent push, a hurried fellow citizen bumping into him as they marched diligently to work across the Bronzian bridge. Just a slight nudge, but enough to send him bumping uncontrollably into the rail and causing him to drop his precious gadget into the vast depths which extended for a mile and a half beneath the bridge. All the way down, where the down-and-outs made a living. Where they scraped a desperate existence from the dust, shit and leftovers which made their way from the surface of the rich living quarters down to the shadows of the dark city below.

  Not yet realising the significance of his loss, Cornelius leaned over the railing and watched for the odd ten seconds or so it took the gadget to make it to the bottom. A little clank and rattle was all he heard. He couldn’t even be sure it was the sound of the gadget hitting the distant floor beneath. And just as he had come, he turned to the human river of people walking down the bridge and continued undisturbed until twelve minutes later when he came to a road crossing and was enveloped by a helpless feeling of anxiety. A process which had until then remained dormant in the back caves of his mind coughed a few times and tried to ponder where the body should go next. He was lost and it was going to take one miraculous task to find his way after having been asleep for so long. He felt into his pocket for his gadget but nothing. In a panic he looked back towards where he’d come from. He vaguely remembered being on the bridge and dropping something. Was it what? What was? It sure was, or at least it felt so. But what?

  For a while longer, much longer, he stood there as the world went by, unable to decide and comprehend what had happened and what he should do about it. The anxiety grew in him like a fever, starting at his feet and tensing every muscle in his body so tightly that he eventually found it hard to breathe. Undoing his shirt collar he just about avoided bumping his head as he lost his footing and couched down against a cold stone wall. The sweat profusely dripping down his face and neck. The patches starting to show on his blue collar shirt. Something within him was starting to register the new reality. He wasn’t to be the first or the last individual to lose his gadget and everything it stood for. Many had wandered off into the distances never to be seen again, perishing in the cold winter streets as their relatives continued undisturbed, the rest of society walking by ever so cool and collected. Not a worry in the world. A few had managed. Finding their way to the lower levels of the city and scraping a living any best way they could. Just as many though, had forever vanished, lost and forgotten without a hope.

  Unable to let out the slightest cry or scream he ripped at his collar, pulling with might as a feeling of suffocation began to overwhelm his chest, the scream of doom growing within his guts. He was lost to the world. There was no telling where he’d come from or where he was heading. His name, his address, his age. It meant nothing to him. Alone and afraid in a world he never made.

  The darkness began to fall on him as the sun shone all around. Holding his head desperately in between his knees he squeezed his hands into the side of his forehead as if to force a memory, a thought, something. The sponge in between his ears. Little had ever been recorded in there. It was going to be one hell of a job trying to retrieve anything from it.

  For hours he sat there in the cold autumn winds, citizens walking briskly past his mellow figure. A figure like so many others spread repeatedly across the city. Lost and forgotten souls that were hardly noticed or acknowledged. And as the fear continued to grow within his weakened body he felt a warm cozy feeling spread across his crotch area as he unwillingly wet himself. Perhaps the first encouraging sign that his mind and body were finally starting to make a connection. With a look of dismay he watched the patch grow larger and spread down to his knees as the initial warm soothing effect of the urine was soon substituted by an unwelcome acidy itch. As he scratched at his crotch like he’d never done before, he noticed the death like presence of a young man sitting across the street from him. A pale, dull expression took over his fac
e as his breath blew in the cold wind. A plastic cup lay before him in the street. He resembled a frozen piece of meat, like he had seen on occasions at the food processing plants.

  He spent his first day as a free man in the world sitting in the cold across the road from the young man, wetting himself time after time. He eventually learned that it might pay to release himself up against the cold, stoney wall of the building where he would lay for the rest of the night. There was no one there to tell him otherwise. He would have to learn, rather quickly that it was time to take responsibility for himself.

  Back home, his wife followed her gadget’s instructions to the letter and reported her husband as missing. Reports were duly made to the police and his name added to the missing people’s list. Cornelius N. Rosewater, as he was known in the citizen world of Notobia, was, according to official reports and a debatable order, never to be found again. His wife’s gadget made a sublet adjustment 24 hours after his disappearance and conveniently never mentioned his existence to her or the children ever again. It was as if he had never existed. Cornelius N. Rosewater had, for all means and purposes ceased to exist. It was time for Kayan Maleba to step into the world.