Future Girl Read online

  I go back to the hallway, but she’s charging towards the kitchen. I follow and find her glaring at her work notes on the dining table.

  ‘Do you want some wine?’ I ask.

  Instead of answering me, she swipes at the table and her notes fly to the floor, spilling across the kitchen. A chair topples with them, causing a crash I feel through my feet.

  ‘MUM!’ I shout, grabbing her. She deflates, sagging against the table, breathing hard. I’m standing on her notes. ‘What happened?’

  ‘I lost my job.’

  What?! No. That’s impossible.

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘I. LOST. MY. JOB.’

  ‘You can’t lose your job!’

  Mum’s been with Organicore since the beginning. She is Organicore – she’s their scientific foundation. Organicore is us, too – the core of our lives. This doesn’t make sense. Why would they fire her? I know she’s been struggling with solutions to the health problems, but it took her way longer than this to come up with Nutrium Sustate in the first place.

  I check the cupboard under the bench for some wine, but it’s empty. Huh? Mum never runs out. I fill a glass of water instead and hand it to her. She takes a sip.

  ‘Theyfa hips of peep. Bob Forsy too.’

  My headache tightens. Making sense of lip patterns exhausts me. Sometimes I understand Mum perfectly for hours at a stretch. Every now and again, I don’t. But now I have it: They fired heaps of people. Bob Forsyth too.

  Bob Forsyth is Mum’s colleague, but also her biggest competitor. She’s always only one step ahead of him. Her worst nightmare would be for him to step into her job.

  ‘Speak clearly, Mum. Why did they fire Bob Forsyth? No, scrap that. Why did they fire you?’

  ‘They said it was because I’m making no progress, but that’s crap.’ This time Mum enunciates clearly, and I hear her as well as lipreading her.

  ‘Well, obviously.’ I stare at Mum with my eyebrows raised. ‘What’s the real reason?’

  ‘Olprees.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Oil prices.’

  ‘What’s that got to do with your job?’

  Mum takes a long drink of water and scowls at the glass. Then she sighs. ‘Picking up the BioSpore from the farmers and getting it to the warehouse, delivering recon to subscribers, it’s all costing too much. So they’ve cut every department they can, including their research division. Even marketing is gone. You can’t run a company without investing in its future!’

  ‘That’s ridiculous.’

  ‘I know. I think Organicore may not have much of a future, Piper, and I think they know it.’

  That’s impossible too. A company that feeds sixty-five per cent of the population will always earn enough to run.

  ‘At least now they’ll have to pay the money they owe you,’ I say weakly.

  Mum looks down, her hair falling over her mouth as she says something. It sounds like train of monk monk.

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘They’ll pay me when they can.’

  ‘Which means never?’

  Mum shrugs.

  Maybe I’m going to have to get a job. But who’s going to employ a deaf person? Maybe Cesspool, like Mum suggested the other day, since they hire lots of people to make sure there’s no pornography or other inappropriate stuff being published. I’d be no good with the videos, but I could vet the text? The thought sits heavily inside me.

  I pick up the chair, set it back on its feet. ‘Early dinner?’ I suggest. Given there’s no wine, maybe food will put Mum in a better mood. Recon is delivered every second Tuesday, so we’ll have plenty of new stuff to choose from today.

  I can’t tell if Mum replies, because she’s looking down again. I take it as a yes, head out the front, and wheel in this week’s cupboard. Pressing my thumb over the scanner, I feel the click as it unlocks. But only half the slots are filled.

  I show Mum, who doesn’t seem surprised.

  ‘I hope they charged half for this!’ I say.

  ‘They charged double. I had to sell some shares to pay for it.’

  At this rate, it might be a while before we get to Europe. ‘Will they deliver the other half next Tuesday?’ I ask.

  ‘I doubt it. Because it’s so expensive to pick up BioSpore, they’re only getting it from the closer farms. So now there’s a shortage. We’re going to have to ration this, Piper. From now on, we each get one recon for dinner, but only half a recon to eat through the day. At least until we see what happens next Tuesday.’

  This is surreal – like stepping into a movie. Mum and I each pick our recon and shuffle through the mess on the kitchen floor to the breakfast nook.

  ‘What’ve you got?’ Mum asks.

  I hold up the box. ‘Minestrone.’

  ‘You say MINNA-STROANY, not MIYN-STROAN.’

  Even with civilisation collapsing around us, Mum can’t stop fretting about my pronunciation.

  ‘MINNA-STROANY,’ I repeat back to her. ‘So much for those silent es.’

  Mum taps her wristlet and our big visi-screen lights up. Lately she’s restricted our use of it to one hour a day. She picks the first half-hour, which is always news, then I get to pick the second.

  Mum’s face, enormous, looms in front of us. They’re showing old footage I’ve seen before, of her leaving some conference hosted by Organicore. She looks poised, calm and elegant. Mum taps again and the subtitles appear.

  ‘… has left Organicore. It is unclear why she and Organicore have parted ways. Could this be related to rising concerns that recon may be affecting the health of some consumers? Organicore spokesperson, Lily Jones, says the decision is part of the new, streamlined Organicore, poised to beat distribution issues …’

  My wristlet vibrates. It’s Taylor. I tap and she comes into focus on the tiny screen. She’s on a visi, sitting at a table I don’t recognise, looking happy and vibrant – the opposite of the mood going down in our house – though there are dark circles under her eyes.

  ‘Beau and me and a bunch of others are going to tunks tonight,’ she says. ‘Want to come?’

  ‘Going where?’

  Taylor makes the shape of a pipe with her hands, then crosses her wrists over in a giant X. ‘TUN-NEL X,’ she enunciates clearly.

  I rub my temples. I can’t think of anything worse: Trying to lipread in a dark nightclub, making like I’m not awkward as hell. Fake smiles, laughter, and nodding at incomprehensible words. And anyway, it’s Tuesday. How come Taylor is allowed to go out on a Tuesday night all of a sudden?

  ‘Uhm … it’s not a good time for me. Mum just lost her job.’

  Taylor covers her mouth with her hand and I catch a glimpse of bright-red skin around her wristlet. Her hand disappears so I can lipread her, and in the background Beau walks past, greeting someone offscreen.

  ‘That’s terrible!’ she says. ‘I thought your mum was the core of Organicore.’

  ‘Tay, what have you done? Did you get the implant?!’

  She holds up her wrist and grins. Sure enough, the flat screen is embedded in her skin.

  ‘Did it hurt?’

  ‘Like getting a blood test. There was a prick from the needle. Then I watched them slice into my skin with a knife but couldn’t feel anything. It was bizarre. After the anaesthetic wore off it started to hurt, but I took painkillers. It’s not too bad.’

  ‘I can’t believe you watched!’ I say. Then Mum grabs my arm and I jump. ‘What?’ I ask her.

  She gestures to the big screen, on which a plane is landing.

  ‘… Dow Index plunged another whopping twenty-three per cent, with some companies entirely underwater, including Air Australia, Tel-Event and Wealthco. Australians are panicking …’

  Oh god, our shares. Our trip to Europe. Mum’s entire savings.

  ‘Tay, I’m sorry, I can’t talk now. I’ll see you tomorrow.’

  Concern fills her face. ‘Are you okay?’

  Mum’s fingers are still digg
ing into my arm. ‘I’m fine. I’ll talk tomorrow.’

  I disconnect and look at Mum. She’s white, eyes wide.

  ‘I hope you sold a lot of shares,’ I say.

  ‘Just a few.’

  ‘Have you got enough money for me to get my bike fixed? I’ll get caught if I keep taking the tram without checking in.’

  ‘I can give you sixty dollars. I don’t have more than that.’

  ‘Mum, we need to make a plan.’

  She sags in her chair, and for the first time, she seems small to me. Her fingers drum on the armrest, and eventually she says, ‘There is one asset we still own outright: this house. If we move into the guesthouse we could rent it out until I get a new job.’

  ‘The guesthouse is hideous!’ I exclaim, then I shut my mouth abruptly. I sound like a brat.

  ‘You have a better idea, Piper?’

  But I don’t.

  ‘There’s a sink,’ Mum says, more to herself than me. ‘But no hot tap, only cold. If only I’d renovated it when I did the rest of the house – but at least I put the toilet in. Why, oh why, didn’t I add a shower at the same time?!’

  To compensate for my previous comment, I say, ‘Plenty of those new cheap apartments don’t have kitchens these days either. We’ll hardly be the only ones.’

  Mum throws me a weak smile. I can see she appreciates the effort.

  But inside I feel sick. The guesthouse? It’s just a grotty shed crammed with stuff. And where would we wash?

  ‘I’ll need to work out my morning coffee,’ Mum says. ‘The coffee machine uses too much electricity so I’ve been heating water on the stove for it.’

  ‘Oh right. But wait, don’t we have a camping cooker? From when we went to Wilsons Prom?’

  That was years ago. Mum hasn’t had time for camping in forever.

  ‘Somewhere. But we’d need gas for that. I’ll see if I can get some.’

  ‘Maybe Karen Kildare can give you another job?’ I ask hopefully. One of the perks of Mum’s job is that she works so closely with our prime minister.

  ‘I’ll call her tomorrow,’ Mum says, and I feel a little better.

  I wheel my bike all the way up High Street in search of the repair place. There are people everywhere, and it’s weird because now there are really hardly any cars around – just the occasional electric car. Instead, pedestrians have filled the roadway, trudging wearily, carrying heavy-looking backpacks. Bikes weave among the people, and every now and again the road vibrates as a tram chugs past, overloaded with passengers.

  The shops are dark, too. I miss the bright sparkle of their window displays all lined up in a cheery row. I check a camping store, and the large hardware chain, but all their solar panels have sold out. So have their gas bottles.

  My favourite café is closed, with a huge orange sticker over its doorframe: Health violation – no entry until approved. Damn. They should’ve just stuck with recon, instead of insisting on also selling wild food. I peer through the window at the front bar where they sell their recon edible art. What will their artists do for work now they can’t create meals that look like bizarre retro objects? And where will all the local high school kids go to try to compete with each other to find the weirdest after-school snacks? I’m still not over how jealous Taylor was the time I scored a Frozen Charlotte doll that tasted of hot chips and cream.

  When I reach Thornbury at last and find the bike shop, one ad among a tonne of them in its dusty window catches my eye instantly – because it’s written by hand, on actual paper! Food shortages? Learn to grow your own. A Transition Towns Workshop.

  Mum’s voice echoes in my head.

  Without Nutrium Sustate, your body doesn’t get what it needs.

  Recon won’t give you food poisoning; stick to the safe stuff.

  Remember all those colds you had when you were little?

  But it’s only been four days of recon rations and I’m feeling kind of hungry all the time. Right now, I just want a big meal – who cares if it isn’t perfectly nutritionally balanced. And surely a pack and a half of recon a day’s still enough to protect us from getting sick.

  Despite all the horror stories about wild food, even Mum braved the crowd at Allstar this week trying to get us some – not that it did much good. The shelves had been picked bare during the shopping riot last week, and apparently since then new deliveries have been sparse, with people snapping everything up as soon as it arrives.

  I take a photo of the ad with my wristlet. We don’t have much of a garden: just a tiny patch of grass out the front, and a concrete courtyard between the house and guesthouse. But still, maybe I could squeeze in some food? Grow something in pots?

  I wheel my bike inside the shop and squint into the gloom. Strung up on the wall, hanging from the ceiling, and lined up on the uneven concrete floor is a motley collection of old, mismatched and cobbled-together bikes. Some have two wheels, but lots have three, or trailers, or huge crates attached to them. The paint on most of them has rusted off, and nothing looks clean. The floor could do with a sweep.

  On the wall, someone’s written: Imagine if the GDP was replaced with a contentment index.

  What’s the GDP again? Something to do with money?

  I turn and find myself face to face with a shop guy, who’s mid-sentence, gesticulating emphatically at me with his hands. Only he’s not saying anything I expect, like Can I help you? or How are you today? Maybe it’s something about the photo I snapped of the ad out front? About my bike? Or is the shop closing?

  If Mum was here, she’d jump in quickly: She’s not ignoring you on purpose. She’s deaf. Her elbow would be in my side, and she’d be hissing to me: You have to look at the shop assistants to see if they’re talking.

  ‘I’m sorry?’ I say. Usually if I’m not wearing my hearing aids – and right now I’m not – I can’t be bothered trying to lipread shop assistants. All that effort, and for what – small talk? Though I do wish I had my hearing aids on in this particular case. This guy is hot. But it’d be undignified to grab them from my pocket and plug them into my ears in front of a stranger.

  He points to my pocket, to my ears, makes a few other hand gestures, and says, ‘Uh herry erds er wisting.’ I understand him perfectly: Your hearing aids are whistling:

  I could die. My face hot, I grab my hearing aids and shove them into my ears after all, slamming myself with a blare of white noise: trams; people talking or shouting; background music, maybe; other sounds I can’t identify.

  ‘Sorry,’ I say, and he says something back but I can’t hear him at all over the noise. I shrug.

  ‘Ordef,’ he says, bringing his fingers from his ear to his chin. You’re deaf.

  Now I get it: he’s gesticulating because he’s using sign language. I’ve never actually seen sign language before.

  ‘I’m good at lipreading – I don’t need to sign,’ I say hastily. I don’t want people seeing I’m deaf – because then they’ll assume I must be stupid as well, which is what always happens when they see my hearing aids before they talk to me.

  The guy drops his hands. ‘Oh. Okay. Fair enough.’ He seems disap­­pointed. His eyes, half hidden by his hair, are warm and sparkly bright. His jeans are scruffy, and there’s a hole in the elbow of his jumper, but his skin is perfect – smooth, gold and glowing.

  ‘How did you know it was my hearing aids whistling? No one ever recognises that sound.’

  He grins. ‘I’m a …’ I don’t catch the last part. ‘Mamamsdif.’

  My mum’s … what? Diff? No, Ddeaf – that fits my question. It’s so much harder to lipread strangers than people I know well, like Mum and Taylor.

  ‘You’re a what?’ I ask.

  Automatically, he lifts his fingers and starts making a word with them, but halfway through he realises it’s pointless. ‘Oocat feegaspell canoo?’ he asks instead.

  You can’t … fingerspell? (Is that a sign language term?) Can you?

  I shake my head.

  ‘Coda,’ h
e says, and his hands are moving again.

  Cola? ‘What’s that?’ I ask.

  ‘Child of Deaf Adult,’ he replies.

  Is that really what he just said? What CODA stands for? It’s so … stating the obvious. I nod, trying not to look too uncertain.

  He gestures to the front window and says, ‘Et larses run by my may, Essgoo.’

  If he’s talking about the workshop then I figure et larses must mean that class is. It takes a moment, but then I have it: That class is run by my mate. It’s good.

  ‘Yeah, I’m not sure I’ll go.’

  ‘Youshoo. Wall neeta know about foo, ispishna.’

  You should. We all need to know about food … but what is ispishna? He’s still talking.

  ‘Annees a great teacher, aproms.’

  And he’s a great teacher, I promise.

  Now I know what isphisna means: especially now.

  ‘Well, maybe I will.’ I glance at my bike. ‘Do you do repairs?’

  ‘Shoo, wassap?’

  He’s nodding, so I figure that’s a yes. I show him how the handlebar is askew.

  He straddles the bike, steadying the front wheel between his feet, then wrenches the handlebar to the left. I tried that, but it didn’t budge for me the way it does for him. He examines it carefully from above and evidently decides he wrenched it too far, because he yanks it back in the other direction slightly. Then he’s satisfied.

  His hair falls over his shoulder and I resist an impulse to touch it. Ummmmm …

  He reaches down and checks the tyres, then turns to me and says, ‘Daneepa.’

  I nod, assuming he’s telling me they need pumping up. Sometimes I can’t be bothered decoding everything.

  He must see the uncertainty in my eyes, because he points to the tyres and makes a pumping motion with his hand. He gestures for me to follow him, and we traipse to the back of the shop. It’s darker here. And dirtier.

  I watch him pump the tyres and tweak the wheel cover and drizzle some oil over the chain. The hairs on his forearms are white against his skin, and a black streak of grease is smeared along his left arm. Finally, he turns to me with a nod.