She inhales, feels the cool tickle of a tear on her cheek. “So, what I’m saying is—you two, you can both sort your own problems out. What happens here, I don’t care. But I’m leaving here, and going back to Wales, with a bag of these. Tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?” College sounds surprised.
“Yeah. Sorry. Tomorrow. And I wouldn’t try to stop me. Seriously.”
Pause. The sound of running liquid.
Grids shakes his head yet again. Laughs. “Shit, girl, you always was crazy. Fuck me. So you’re fighting the Land Army in Wales now, yeah? Bloc agent. You’re the big hero of the revolution.”
“Not exactly.”
“See, this is what I don’t get—I thought you’d be behind the LA? I thought that was your thing, you two? Socialism? Renationalizing the farms? Food for everyone?”
“Not exactly,” says College. “We weren’t Marxists. Not all of us.”
“Even if we were… there’s nothing socialist about the Land Army. It’s the fucking British Army, Grids. Just rebranded. It wasn’t a socialist uprising, it was a fucking military coup. It’s the same people that were in charge before the crash. Same generals, same politicians. Saying they’re doing it all for the good of the people, saying they’re doing it to feed everyone—it’s all lies. You seen what it’s like out there, outside of the cities? You seen what it’s like in the work camps? People being forced at gunpoint to work the land till they drop, literally. Their own land, land their families have owned for generations, that’s just been snatched from them. Living in fucking tents and shacks, starving to death, not seeing any of the food they’re growing because it’s all being sent to London, or to the war up in Scotland—”
“Well, what did you think was going to happen? After you broke everything? Really? What did you think? That everything would magically take care of itself? That this network of yours would somehow provide all the answers?”
“We didn’t pretend to have answers. Not for everything. That wasn’t what we were fighting for. We were fighting for people to be able to decide things for themselves, Grids. To start again. We were fighting for self-determination—”
“Well then, you got what you wanted. Self-determination? You’re looking at it.” He thumps his chest with his fist again. “I’m self-determination. The LA is self-determination. The city council is self-determination. That skinhead militia down in Knowle that’s lynching Muslims? That’s self-determination. That’s what it looks like. Lots of gangsters and warlords and fucking terrified people trying to look after themselves, trying to protect their own, and fuck everybody else. Me and all the other chancers and yardies that have carved this city up between us, trying to look after their own little bit of turf and their own people. Your self-determination is a fucking power vacuum, that’s all it is. Your revolution, with no idea of what would happen next, just created a massive hole full of people fucking each other over to stay alive.”
He suddenly looks, to Anika, exhausted. Like the fight has left him. She watches him exhale, his shoulders drop. He rubs his temples. “A’ight. Fine. You know what? You go. Do it. I ain’t going to stop you. In fact, I ain’t going to stop either of you. I can’t. You’re grown fucking adults. None of my business, I ain’t got the time. Soon as you get that shit running, the city is going to be down here tryin’ to shut it down, or getting their own shit reactivated—”
“That’s what I’m sayin’, we got to act fast. I got fucking hundreds of these, all from Mike’s shop. We get them all activated, then tomorrow at carnival we give ’em out. By the time anybody else knows what’s going down we’ll already have control of the network through pure numbers and—”
“Nah, College, nah. You didn’t hear me. None of my business.” He says it slowly, almost spelling it out. “I don’t care. I don’t want this. Twenty fucking years ago as a kid I didn’t want this, and I don’t want it now. Difference is now I got a fucking choice. Self-determination? I’m determining I don’t fucking want this.
“This is your bullshit, and it’s yours to sort out. It’s all on you, College. Just make sure it don’t blow up in your face, man. But even more, make sure it don’t blow up in mine. Make sure it don’t fuck with my shit. Because if it does, if at any point from now until I fucking die—if this bullshit starts fucking with my business I’ll see that you do swing from a lamppost. You get me?”
“Yeah.” College tries to suppress a smile. “Yeah, I get you, man.”
“Good. You fucking better. Now fuck off, both of you. I want you out my fucking sight. I got real shit to do. Take this shit with you.”
“Seriously, man, you’re making the ri—”
“Don’t want to hear it. Jesus.”
As Ty leads them out, Anika turns to College, speaks low.
“Well, you got passionate all of a sudden.”
“What you mean?”
“Listen to you in there. Few days ago you didn’t want anything to do with this when I brought it up. Now you’re arguing with the big man to let you start up the fucking network again.”
“Yeah, ha. I guess I got excited. Seeing the network up again, y’know? It works, A! It really works.”
“Yeah. I know.”
“That went easier than I thought. Jesus… he seemed to take it pretty well.”
“You think?”
“Yeah?” College shoots her a bewildered look. “No? You don’t think so?”
“I dunno. Sounded to me like he was going to have you hanged if your open-source, decentralized, basically unmanageable network ever fucks with his power structure.” She touches him gently on the shoulder. “Good luck with that.”
She pulls the ancient, battered mask back down over her face, and steps out into the pastel-shaded mists of spice.
Tyrone opens up the door of the shop, lets her in. Locks it behind her.
The girl—Mary, she must try to remember her name—is sitting at the back, hunched over her desk.
Anika steels herself, walks over to the girl. She sees she’s drawing—old chalk and felt-tip pens on scraps of paper. She looks up as Anika gets near.
“Hi.”
“Hi.” Anika smiles, trying to look as friendly as she can. “Look, Mary—I just wanted to say… Look. I’m really sorry. About what happened yesterday.”
“Sorry for what?”
“I was out of order. I should never have taken the spex from you like that. Put you through all that. Shown you what I did. I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay. Really. I’m glad. You helped me find what I was looking for, for Grids.”
“You told him?”
“Yeah. He says he’s not going to look, says he doesn’t want anything to do with the network.”
“Yeah, he just said the same thing to me.”
“I don’t believe him.” Mary smiles. “He’ll look.”
“Yeah. Maybe.” Anika tilts her head, looks at the drawing in front of the girl. Geometric shapes, explosions of color. “I like it.”
“Huh?”
“Your work. I like it.”
Mary blushes. “Oh, thanks.”
“What is it?”
“I’m not sure. Nothing, really. Just not a dead fucking face.”
Anika laughs. “Fair enough. It’s really nice. I used to be an artist myself, once. Long ago.”
“Really? Not anymore?”
“No.”
“Why?”
Anika shrugs. “People change.”
And with that Anika feels her knees almost buckle, her stomach turn, and she holds back the urge to scream, to hurl up the pain and the regret and the tears and—
“I should be going,” she says. “And again, I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay. I’ll see you around?”
“Maybe,” Anika lies. She turns and heads for the door.