NOVEL NEXT Chapter Five: Love & War
I felt strange as I woke up that morning on Monday. I was actually out of bed before my alarm went off for once, my feet touching the floor just as the air horn went off. My house adamantly refused to change that alarm sound for weekday alarms- apparently it was being enforced by Sarah via her admin settings- but for once it didn’t bother me. I slapped the button to turn it off, stretched, yawned, and was out of bed before my blinds had even raised halfway. Everything felt…different…this morning.
The light from the billboard outside seemed less harsh, despite the advertisement for cheap soy pizza outside casting a harsh orange light into my apartment. The soy coffee I had, usually tasting like dishwater, and warmed to a tepid twenty degrees; was less bland somehow. I could actually make out the slight taste of coffee, and the temperature seemed just right in my mouth.
My SoyFlakes™ didn’t taste as cardboard-like as they usually did, and the accompanying protein broth that passed for milk these days was less cloying and chemical tasting. Hell, I even took the time to make my bed and tidy some things up this morning, which I never had the energy to do most mornings. I felt…alive. For once in my life, I didn’t feel motivated to doomscroll the news, and the world didn’t feel as gloomy as it usually did. It was…nice.
I thought back to the previous evening. Alice and I had spent what seemed like an eternity in her simulation before her parents called her to bed. We had cuddled under a simulated sky, not really doing much more than watching the stars and listening to the digital breeze and the rustling of the trees. She had kissed me again before I logged off for the night, and it had felt…
…it had felt wrong. No matter how much I wished we could be together for real, I was lying to her, and to myself. There was no way she could ever really be with me. I was, after all, a pauper stuck in the wrong body, living off the taxes of people like her parents. My only prospects after I finished school were to either continue living as an unemployed welfare rat, receiving only basic income and housing, and with heavily restricted amenities; or to become yet another corpo wage slave, running the rat races to survive another day. Neither of those options involved me living a life. They were simply just means of survival in a world where you either sank or swam.
Even as those usual doubts crossed my mind though, I found that part of me was fighting back. No, Alice was different. My parents may have rejected me for who I was but Alice…she had been kind to me as both Kara and Clarence. She hadn’t known I was who I was when she ran into me down at the park, but she hadn’t rejected me either. If only I could…
I shook my head, and turned to walk over to my beanbag. I was a coward, plain and simple. If I had an ounce of courage, I would come out to the girl of my dreams, and deal with the damn consequences afterwards. I was so close last night to telling her the truth. But, no matter how much I tried to rationalise things, I still couldn’t squish that ever-louder voice telling me that I was utterly, completely, and totally wrong.
I had shown up at school well before tutor group started for once, and had been able to spend some quality time in the library. Since I had shown up around five thirty, and the library didn’t officially open until six thirty- which was during tutor group- I was technically not meant to be in there.
Unfortunately for the school rules, I could walk through closed doors, and so long as I didn’t actually approach the librarians, they pretended to not notice I was there. It was an unspoken agreement between us, forged by my long standing habit of sheltering in the safety of the library, a place few people actually bothered to enter anymore.
The only reason the school even had a library at all, one with physical books no less, was that it was mandated by the Department of Education. Few students bothered with physical books nowadays, and while I appreciated the Department of Education’s attempts to increase literacy amongst modern children, it was a sad truth that eBooks and electronic textbooks were here to stay.
Hell, I could hardly talk, since I couldn’t actually pick up any of the books, let alone read the titles. The only reason I could actually see between the tightly packed shelves of books was that whoever had virtualised the school for remote learners had modelled a low-quality three dimensional representation of a bookshelf and pasted it into the environmental simulation.
All of the books not housed on the outward facing shelves at the ends of the stacks were identical nondescript clones of the same fabric bound book with a red spine; and the fronts of the shelves- which were static images of the books stored there- were badly superimposed over the model shelves. The school had clearly been working with the lowest bidder for the virtualisation, not helped by the fact that if I looked at the right angle, I could see the watermark for the model maker the bookshelves had been purchased from.
Eventually though, I was forced to leave the library when the bell for tutor group rang throughout the school. Alice and I chatted as usual, and Maxine and Jessica were both conspicuously absent for once, which was a nice change. Eventually, though, the bell rang again, and I was forced to part ways with Alice for my first period class, Modern History. My teacher for the subject was my tutor, Mr. McAdams, who was currently lecturing the class on the events of the third world war.
“So, we’ve covered so far the collapse of NATO in the 2080s, the rise of the Euroslavic Alliance in the early 2090s, and how this lead to mounting tensions between America, Europe, and the Pan-African Coalition,” said Mr. MacAdams, rubbing the back of his balding head. “And we therefore have a solid basis for the unit moving forwards. Now, who can tell me how the next major conflict, the Sino-American Offensive, started? Miss Porter, you haven’t spoken all class.”
I jerked my head up from where I’d been staring at my notes and stood up slowly, taking the time to compose an answer. “Uh, yes, sir. In 2098, the People’s Republic of China, with the backing of their allies in the rest of the Southeast Asia Directorate, launched a major offensive against the Japanese in an attempt to eliminate a major US ally. The US and Australia provided military aid to Japan, which lead to the open outbreak of war in July 2098.”
Mr. MacAdams smiled, and waved one of his hands. The floating AR screens hovering over the podium switched to show a picture of Australian soldiers picking through the rubble of a Japanese city street, collecting dog tags and assisting injured troops. The Australian troops, clad in their olive and tan combat armour, were assisted by large bipedal machines with US flags painted onto their shoulder plates. Mixed in among the Australian forces were Japanese troops, distinguishable only by the Nisshōki emblem on their pauldrons. No American troops, at least of the human variety, could be seen amongst the troops
“Good answer, Miss Porter,” said MacAdams, straightening his SynthTweed™ jacket, and pushing his glasses back onto his nose. “As you can see in this image above taken after the Battle of Shinjuku, Australian soldiers worked side-by-side with US Autonomous Infantry. This was the first time since the 2067 Geneva Accords that robotic infantry had been deployed in a lawful manner by a western nation, and paved the way for similar robots to make their way into civilian markets today. Can anyone tell me which company was responsible for creating these machines?”
Just then, the classroom door opened, and Maxine walked in, smirking. I looked at the clock hovering in my peripheral vision. It had been thirty minutes since class started, and she hadn’t been in tutor group. However, I knew that she would have an excuse. She always did.
“Miss Lampridge,” MacAdams said, frowning at Maxine. “You are thirty minutes late for class, and I distinctly recall that you did not show up this morning for rollcall. Do you have an explanation?”
The raven-haired girl grinned humourlessly, and sat down, her expression innocent. If I hadn’t been looking, I would have missed her fingers rapidly typing out a sequence of commands in the air next to her legs. It was well known amongst the student body, or at least heavily rumoured, that Maxine had been kicked out of her last school for hacking into the school network. What was known was that anyone who so much as slighted her would find their social media accounts compromised within the next few days. Fortunately, my anonymity (and lack of presence on social media) had allowed me to avoid such a situation. Unfortunately, she had other ways of messing with me.
“I’m sorry sir,” Maxine said, innocently. “But you clearly missed the note from my parents explaining that I was at a medical appointment this morning. Check your email, it should be there.”
I had no doubt that she’d composed that email before showing up to class, and had simply inserted it into the mailing system in such a way that it would look as if Mr. MacAdams had simply missed it in his queue. This had happened multiple times, frequently enough that everyone in the grade suspected it was happening, but had no evidence for or against it. Nobody wanted to be the one to bring these accusations up with a member of staff, simply because nobody wanted to be the one to draw the ire of Jessica and Maxine. As one of the two remote learners in our yeargroup, I was immune to this, as there was really nothing they could do without knowing who I really was.
I watched as MacAdams checked his email, shrugged, and turned back to Maxine with an apologetic smile. I felt a surprising amount of annoyance that he was so oblivious to Maxine’s tricks. Everything had been going surprisingly fantastic today, and now that she’d shown up, the atmosphere had done a complete 180 and gone back to being moderately depressing.
“My apologies, Miss Lampridge,” said the teacher, waving his hand through the air to close his email window. “Please make sure to catch up on the first five pages of chapter six of the textbook in your own time. Now, as I was saying…”
Thirty minutes later, class finished, and I was saving my notes and getting ready to leave. However, I found my way blocked by Maxine. I could have just walked through her, but she did something unexpected. She smiled at me, in a very peculiar way.
“So, Kara, you’re looking unusually fine today,” she said, her voice as saccharine as her smile. “Oh wait, that’s your stock avatar, my bad. Maybe you should consider using your real face. Oh wait, that would be a bad idea, wouldn’t it?”
I blinked. What was she trying to get at? “Is…is this meant to be insulting? Like, I’m not going to lie, it’s unusually…mature?...compared to what you usually sling at me, but I’m not going to pretend it isn’t confusing the hell out of me. Grow the fuck up, Maxine. I’m not interested in what you have to say.”
I walked right through her, and didn’t look back. Something about what she had said rubbed me the wrong way. I didn’t quite know what it was, but I had a feeling deep in my gut that she had been trying to get at something, and that whatever it was, I wouldn’t like it. As I walked away, I could feel her eyes fixed on me, and I could practically sense her smirk without having to see it. Then, I was around the corner, and on my way to my next class.
As I rounded the corner, I felt someone tap me on the shoulder. Surprised, I turned around to find Alice standing behind me, smiling.
“Hey, Kara,” she said brightly. “We have class with Mrs. Carter next, right?”
I smiled back. “Yeah, over in the science labs. Come on, let’s hurry before we’re late.”
She held my hand as we drifted down the corridor, passing through several students as we did. Whenever I passed through an object or person, my vision would distort weirdly as the software attempted to render a first person view of a space that happened to be occupied by a physical object. This caused the world to momentarily become a kaleidoscope of distorted colours. However, I was used to this. Alice, meanwhile, seemed slightly sickened whenever she passed through another person, and looked fairly queasy as we approached the door to the lab we were in for out next class. I stopped moving, Alice coming to a halt beside me, still holding my hand. I turned to face her.
“You OK?” I asked, letting go of her hand and patting her on the shoulder. “You look like you’re going to be sick.”
She grimaced, and waved her hand towards the still-busy corridor behind us. “I’m never going to get used to essentially being little more than a digital ghost. Passing through things makes me feel like my stomach is trying to invert itself, what with all of the distortion.”
I chuckled, and patted her on the back. “Yeah, it takes some getting used to. Besides, it’s not like you can throw up in VR. Your body is essentially comatose right now, and all of these sensations are simulated. Anyway, we have one more thing to phase through, ghost-friend. You ready?”
She groaned theatrically, and slapped my hand away from her back. “Quit that. I’ll be fine. But…could you hold my hand like you were the last bit? It makes it feel slightly better.”
I did a deep bow, and gently wrapped my hand around hers. “By your command, my lady. Shall we?”
“OK, class” said Mrs. Carter, clapping her hands. “That’s all for this week. Remember that you have an assembly next, so don’t head off to your next class by mistake. Homework for this week will be the questions at the ends of chapters seven, eight, and nine of the textbook. Dismissed!”
I stood up, and walked over to Alice, who was still closing her notetaking application and saving her lesson notes. I noticed that she was holding a simulated pen, and all of her notes were handwritten in her notetaking app with a flowing cursive script.
“Huh,” I commented, walking up, and looking over her shoulder at the window floating in the air in front of her. “You handwrite your notes? Why do that when you could type or just transcribe the notes via speech-to-text?”
She finished saving and closing her app, and stood up, phasing through the top of her desk as she did so. “My mother encourages it. She actually taught me how. She always says it helps you keep in touch with the physical world, and helps with memorisation and learning. She’s old fashioned like that.”
“She sounds like a gem,” I remarked, smiling. “You don’t seem to talk about her much. Is she a programmer like your dad?”
“No,” replied Alice, smiling faintly. “She’s an author. She’s not that well-known, so you probably don’t know her. Anyway, we need to get to assembly, don’t we?”
I checked my clock, and looked around the empty classroom. “Shit, you’re right. Let’s get going, they’re probably announcing the formal today.”
We rushed out the door together, and bolted down the corridor towards the school gym. The entire school was built over a single floor of one of the larger arcologies in the Macquarie area, so we didn’t have to go down any flights of stairs, but we did end up crossing half the complex to get to the gym. When we finally got there, we had to queue up in our tutor groups while the adults performed a headcount on students as they filed into the hall.
The hall was about two stories high, making it the tallest room in the school by far. It was about the size of two basketball courts joined at the long edges, and featured a synthetic hardwood floor covered in scuff marks and scratches from years of use. The walls were bare metal, with an integrated bench running down each side of the room. A series of doors at the back opened into the storage lockers where the sports equipment and chairs were usually stored when the hall was not in use. There was a small stage at the front of the hall, currently unoccupied. The room was lit by fluorescent lights in the ceiling, with the corners of the room illuminated by small lights built into the gaps between the walls, floor, and ceiling. There were already around two hundred students in the room, with more still filing in from outside.
As we filed in, I led Kara off to the side where the teachers usually sat. Most of the other students were sitting down on folding plastic chairs, and a few of them gave us quizzical looks as I pulled her towards a metal bench fixed to the side of the wall.
“We can’t actually sit with the other students because the folding chairs aren’t designed with collision physics,” I explained as I sat down next to Mrs. Carter, Alice hesitantly sitting next to me. “So we’ll have to sit here. Hey, miss, how’s it hanging?”
Mrs. Carter smiled at me, and mimed patting me on the head. “Oh, I’m fine, Kara. Shush though, assembly will be starting soon. You two will want to pay close attention during this one.”
As the last students filed into the room, and the doors slid shut with a hiss, the principal took the stage at the front of the room, and stood before her podium. She was a tall woman, about six feet tall, and slenderly built. She looked around the room, her sandy brown hair and sharp facial features distinct even from where Alice and I were sitting, nearly three quarters of the way to the rear of the gym. She looked almost nothing like her daughter; whose blond hair, rounded face, short height, and stocky build were engrained into my memory in the same way a deer remembers the appearance of a wolf. As the assembly quietened down, she cleared her throat and spoke, her voice being transmitted to every student’s AR glasses (and to my temporal lobe) via her podium microphone.
“Good afternoon, students,” she said, her voice clipped and professional. “And a hearty congratulations to our new class of year twelve students, who have begun their final year of education at MQPS.”
She paused, and clicked her fingers. There was a brief shower of virtual confetti from the ceiling, an effect that made me involuntarily shudder with distaste. What was with AR programmers and these awful effects? A few students, mostly in years seven and eight, started to clap, but quickly petered off when they realised nobody else was joining in.
“Now, today’s assembly will be brief, as we have only a few things to go over,” the principle continued, her voice becoming wearier as she continued to read from her invisible autocue. “However, I would like to read the traditional sponsorship for the school’s patron of the day, namely the Coca-Cola company, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Atlas Corporation. Other soft drink manufacturers use low-quality soy-derived sugars in the production of their inferior beverages. But at Coca-Cola, we believe in the recipes used by our forefathers, and continue to use our patented genetically engineered sugar cane plants for our sugar. For over two hundred years, Coke has been…”
I began to tune out the principal as she continued rattling off the long-winded advertisement in a dull monotone, an AR display behind her showing images of happy school children enjoying a bottle of carbonated sugar water filled with enough caffeine to give a horse a heart attack.
I had nothing against Coke- mainly because my parents had forbidden me from drinking it when I was living at home, and I was too poor to afford it now that I was on welfare- but it was incredibly wearing to have this rattled off to us in the hope that we impressionable young children would become yet another source of income for the big corpos when we inevitably grew up and became members of the workforce.
It was yet another item on the list of things that had turned a great start to the day into yet another confirmation of my honest belief that the world was, to put it mildly, absolutely and completely fucked. I slumped in my seat, and buried my face in my hands. Dear god, was this really
all there was to life? Advertisements being read at school assemblies? Public schools being sponsored by major corporations? Fucking history lessons on the company who regularly spewed toxic waste into the oceans, but still managed to get a tick of approval by all of the major environmental agencies across the civilised world?Then I felt a slender hand touch my shoulder, and my doubts and worries seemed to drain away. I suddenly realised Alice was talking to me.
“-ara, are you OK?” she asked, sounding concerned. “Do you need to go see the nur-“
She stopped, and then reddened, a giggle escaping her lips. I paused for a moment, realised what she had just tried to say, and began laughing as well.
“Oh yeah,” I wheezed in-between fits of laughter. “I could float in and say, ‘nurse, I think my avatar has developed a case of the digital measles. Could you perhaps code me up some medicine?’. I could even ask for her to give me my flu vaccine right to the frontal cortex!”
Alice giggled some more, and was about to say something when Mrs. Carter muted the both of us with her teacher override.
“While I understand your concern, Alice,” said the Canadian teacher sternly. “And while your joke was very funny, Kara, you are both in assembly. Behave yourselves. The next two announcements concern you and your yeargroup anyway. Please pay attention, both of you.”
I pouted theatrically at my science teacher, and returned my attention to the front of the hall. The principal was currently finishing up announcing the results of the sports carnival from the week before I met Alice.
“…and now that we’ve gotten those announcements out of the way,” she continued, the lucky students who had won medals filing off the stage behind her. “I would like to make two announcements concerning our year ten class. First off, I would like to remind our year ten students that, starting tomorrow, and for the rest of the week, you will be attending a on-campus first aid course, and will be excused from regular classes. Students who are remoting in will be assigned extra work, but will not be expected to attend school for the remainder of the week.”
She paused, and took a sip of water. “In addition, I am pleased to announce that the school has decided on a venue for the upcoming year ten formal at the end of the term.”
My heart skipped a beat. The formal was traditional for students our age, and dated back more than a hundred years. It would give me an excuse to use some of my saved money to get a formal dress skin for my non-school avatar, and wear it out in public. It wasn’t exactly optimal- I could only dream of showing up to the formal in person as a girl- but it would be a massively affirming experience for me, regardless of whether I was there as an avatar or not. And, now that I had an active relationship, I had someone to go with!
The principal continued, bringing up a screen showing pictures of the venue, a large 21st-century building with glass-fronted food stores around the base, and a large open hall inside. “The formal will be held in eight weeks, on the last day of the school term, and is open to all year ten students, current and former. The venue for the celebration will be the old Macquarie University campus, namely the graduation hall facility in the main courtyard. Further details, including ticket pricing, the dress code, and catering details are available through the school portal.”
Her next words hit me like a cannonball to the chest. “I would like to add that, due to the age of the venue, remote attendance is not possible due to the absence of current-generation networking equipment and restrictions on uplink bandwidth. Attendance in person is mandatory.”
I slumped back against the smooth metal wall, the muted sensation of the cold surface seeming to dully spread down my spine. I couldn’t attend the way I was. It would be the end of me. Certainly, it would be the end of my relationship with Alice, as meagre and young as it was. Even if she didn’t recognise me- which was possible, given how brief our contact in person had been- she would certainly not share the same connection with me.
In that moment, I heavily considered telling her the truth, and I even got as far as turning towards her and opening my mouth. But her attention was fixed on the front of the room, and I quickly lost my nerve. This was not the place or time to come out to her properly. And, even if it was, I didn’t think I had the courage to do so.
I didn’t see Alice for the rest of the day, my class schedule separating her from me shortly after assembly. After the principal dismissed the school, the mad rush for the door had given me little opportunity to talk with her as we were separated quickly by a mass of human flesh squeezing out the doors. However, as soon as I logged off my VR system, and came to in my tiny apartment, I noticed I had a message from her, sent about forty minutes ago.
Alice: Hey ghost-friend, we didn’t have much of a chance to talk after that assembly. You good now? Or should I come back later?
Kara: No, I’m good now. Sorry for the late response, judging from when you sent that message, you got off school an hour before I did.
Her response was immediate, the text scrolling across my messaging application almost as soon as I had finished sending it. Either she was a faster typer than anyone I had met, or she had a voice-to-text macro set up with her AR system.
Alice: Nah, it’s OK. I understand. I wanted to ask if you would like to come over to meet me and my parents tomorrow evening? We didn’t get the chance last time, and my mother is really interested in meeting you for some reason.
Kara: Huh. Maybe she’s just overprotective and wants to make sure her daughter is dating a respectable young lesbian?
Alice: Maybe. So…we are dating now then? It’s official?
I paused, and thought about it. We had only met two weeks ago, but we got on like a house on fire. Alice was so genuine, a rare trait in a world like the one we lived in. She was spirited, intelligent, and stunningly beautiful. Despite our short time as friends, I did genuinely feel attraction to her, and there was clearly something going on at her end. Eventually, I typed out my response, keeping it as brief as I could.
Kara: Alice, I’ve only known you for two weeks, but I love you. You’re smart, you’re witty, you’re stunningly beautiful…yes, if you’re OK with it, I guess we are dating. I don’t know if we’ll be able to make this work, but I’m willing to give it a shot, if you’ll have me.
Alice: Squeeeee oh, my mum will love this, and so will my dad! This is the first time I’ve had a girlfriend; I hope I don’t disappoint.
Kara: Alice, I know you won’t disappoint. It’s me I’m worried about. Anyway, I have a lot of homework, see you tomorrow evening.
Alice: OK, see you at six pm! I’ll go tell my parents you’re coming, and that we’re officially an item! I’m so happy 😊
With that, she logged off, and I closed my messaging app and leaned back in my beanbag. It had been a day of ups and downs, starting well before taking a nosedive early on, and then climbing back into good territory in the end. I got up and walked over to my window, staring out at the light of the city, the billboard across the street casting a dull purple light into my apartment. Maybe I could make this work. Maybe things were looking like they would change for the better. With that on my mind, I walked over to the kitchen nook to begin organising my dinner, completely missing the small delivery drone that had stopped to hover outside my window, the tiny camera lens on its bow whirring and focusing as it stared into my apartment.
I didn’t know it, but my life was about to change forever.