I ground against her and said, “I think I’d make a pretty good father.”
“No, you’d make a great father. Now quit talking and get fathering will you?”
Pulling herself up on my shoulders, she lightly bit my earlobe. I braced both feet in the sand, toes curled for extra purchase, as she plunged down with her pelvis, riding me hard.
Chapter 23
Jonah and Mariko’s Beach House, Sisik Beach, Malaysian Geographic
Wednesday 1 January 2110, 11:40am +8 UTC
Sprawled in a tangle of limbs and blanket, I woke to the buzzing of my Devstick. I reached over, thumbed the Devstick to silent and closing my eyes tried to go back to sleep. But the Devstick had done its work.
Disentangling myself from Mariko, I got up and walked over to the shelves that we had put up on the wall facing the jungle. I pulled out one of her batik wraps and wrapped it around my waist, tying it into a knot below my belly button as I’d seen the locals do. I turned around and faced the sea. Our sleeper, large enough for four people, was against the wall to my left, positioned in the middle. Two windows flanking the bed were now shaded by the Clearfilm shading I’d put up as a temporary measure. Against the opposite wall was the railing guarding the stairs until they reached their zenith a meter up. The kitchen, shower and outlet were on the ground floor.
I went downstairs, treading lightly past Mariko, on the wooden floor that we had sanded together a couple of days ago, and walked over to the bench that we had put up that same day. It was temporary but served the purpose of holding the old-fashioned coffee percolator plus the other cooking machines. I filled the percolator with water and set it onto the electric heat pad. Searching the refrigerator I found some grapes and I ate those waiting for the coffee aroma to hit. As soon as I smelled the coffee I got out the cups and put them on a tray.
I dug the croissants out of the fridge. They weren’t as good as those from the French bakery near our old Env, but they weren’t bad. I put them under the heat and waited. The coffee percolated through and the croissants’ butter melted. I placed everything on a tray, added a tub of raspberry jam, and went back upstairs. Mariko was still sprawled out where I had left her, and I set the tray down on the floor beside the futon in front of the large Devscreen.
I thumbed the Dev on and leant back against the cushions. The late morning sun lent a hard reality to the light outside the windows and I debated getting my eye shades. Laziness winning out, I let the daily data stream flush itself out on the screen.
I flicked over to messages. There were several, mostly from acquaintances wishing me a happy New Year. But one stuck out: the subject was ‘wake up’. I thumbed it and the message read, ‘Jonah, Jonah, wake up’. I frowned and thought that’s weird but then dismissed it as a joke or spam — the sender wasn’t identified which, given that it had reached my personal contact messaging, was a surprise but not unheard of.
I reached over and got the coffee off the tray. Coffee in the morning was a new taste, but I was already a committed devotee. The smell made me hungry and the sweet dark taste made me flick data streams back to the daily feed, my brain kicking into action.
I frowned. Something bothered me but I wasn’t sure what it was. The feeling was like when you’re sure you’ve forgotten something but cannot remember what, and I couldn’t shake it. I spooned some raspberry jam onto a piece of croissant and popped it into my mouth. I felt fidgety. I picked up my Devstick to thumb the Dev again, keeping the volume down. The image changed and I was watching a roundup of global news.
The restlessness grew and suddenly an image of a stark room flashed in my mind. It felt like a dream, only I knew this wasn’t a dream. With those, if I focused, I could recall the remnant images. With this, when I tried, the images hovered just out of reach. I flicked the Dev channel back to messages and scanned the received list again.
I opened it again, and it said the same thing. ‘Jonah, Jonah, wake up’. That was it, the sender a series of numbers and an @ sign that made no sense. It was weird. Another flash hit me with searing clarity: throwing up into a recycler, a golf cart in a tube. I pressed my fingertips into my shut eyes and smoothed out over my eyebrows, pulling taut skin over my cheekbones and down my jaw, breathing deep. It wasn’t from a dream. They were memories, recent memories. Mariko gave a little snore, bringing me back to the present.
I picked up the cup of coffee and walked silently to the sliding door to the deck. Knowing the right side opened with a loud squeak, I swapped my right hand for my left to hold the coffee cup and opened the left side of the clearfilm door on to the deck. Closing the door behind me, I turned and went to the railing, leaning on it, looking out to sea. The midday sun beat harsh on the sand turning observation into a squint, the blue green of the sea easing the glare from the strip of white sand. The gap between the sea and the house was narrow with the morning tide fully risen. The sundial I’d made from a circle of wood found beside the house and mounted on driftwood showed the sun was at its zenith.
I pinched the bridge of my nose and shut my eyes to blackness, swarms of red, a new image. A white room. A naked man sitting on a Biosense. Jibril. Gabriel. The runner. My brother. The thought punched me in the stomach and I threw up the coffee over the railing into the hot white sand. I stared at the spew of coffee as I wiped my mouth and sniffed. It wasn’t a dream.
I turned to reenter the house but seeing Mariko lying on the floor, froze. The runner Gabriel was my brother. Somehow I knew that was true, and then another memory. A loud laugh, Gabriel sitting on a sleeper talking to me.
How will she react? I couldn’t begin to guess. I hoped favorably — that is she’d believe me and help me. Help me for what? I couldn’t trust my mind. What had seemed real was not, and reality was being displaced one chunk of memory at a time. One chunk of memory at a time, where had I heard that? Gabriel had said it, on the Moon. The sun beat viciously down on the top of my head. I walked across the deck and slid the door open, it protested with a loud squeak and Mariko woke, coming upright, shielding her eyes from the glare and looking at me from under the shadow of her forearm.
I walked over to her and sat down, leaning my back against the edge of the sleeper.
She said, “What’s wrong? You look like you’ve just seen a ghost.”
I leaned my head onto the sleeper and, staring at the ceiling, groaned. My head hurt. It felt as if my brain had swollen and wouldn’t fit in my skull, pressing against the sides. I brought my hands up to my temples and pushed in on both sides with knuckled fists, groaning again. Another memory came. Gabriel sitting on the sleeper opposite me, talking, and this time the images came with sound. Gabriel saying, ‘It isn’t as bad as it sounds. At the beginning you will think that you are remembering a dream, but over the course of a couple of hours, the details of the dream will be filled in with ever-increasing clarity. Your mind will return again and again to the little reservoir of information that I’ll plant and the signals, travelling from the outback of your brain, will come in ever-larger memory chunks, until you will reach the moment where this description will be relayed to you word for word, complete with the images of me and this room’.
“Jonah, Jonah, what’s wrong? Talk to me.”
The pain disappeared as quickly as it had come. I dropped my hands to the floor and looked at her.
“I’m OK. It’s all right,” I said, and reached up with a hand to stroke her cheek. She made to kiss me, but I held her off with my hand dropping to her chest and pushing lightly. “No, no kiss, not unless you want to taste vomit.”
“What, you threw up? Is it a hangover or what? You hardly had anything alky last night.”
“It’s not that. Look we have to talk, but let’s go for a swim. OK?”
“What, now? It’s midday, and way too hot.”
“Come on, trust me. It’ll be fine. Just follow me. OK?” I got up and, taking the wrap off, put on the swim outers that were lying on the bed. Without saying another word I picked up a waterproof Devstick I had and headed outside, walking down the stairs and onto the beach. I strode quickly over the hot white sand, a glance over my shoulder showed Mariko following, and I dived into the sea.
I was stroking hard in a crawl for the cliff that marked the southern end of the bay. It was about two hundred meters away from me and I had a good lead, but she was the stronger swimmer and she caught me up as I was
