Dandelion - first 5 chapters

Hello readers,

I clearly spend more time on my novels than I do on the format of this blog. Nonetheless, here are the first 5 chapters of my new novel, Dandelion, which will be released on 18/11/22. If you haven't read Chrysalis (or just want a recap of what happens) you can scroll to the bottom of this post and read the section in red first (it may also help with some of the concepts in Dandelion). I do think reading Chrysalis in its entirety first before moving onto Dandelion would be more pleasurable, though. Although, I would say that, I make about £1.30 every time someone buys it :)

Content warnings: violence, bullying, severe mental health issues, homophobic slurs. The recap mentions paedophilia and rape.

Dandelion:

Part One: Shrinking Violence

1 

For a century, Cristo Redentor (Christ the Redeemer in English), the soapstone sentinel, has kept watch, looking out in the hope of seeing something resembling peace. A peace that the man he was built to replicate thought he would bring about through his teachings roughly two thousand years ago. In actual fact, he has never seen Rio de Janeiro this devoid of harmony. The closest he’s ever seen were the protests calling for President de Mello’s impeachment in 1992. Back in those halcyon days where democracy still worked. Back when public protest, when public opinion, still mattered.

Cinelândia Square can’t contain the protesters spilling out into the major thoroughfares of downtown Rio. From the chiselled Christ’s vantage point, they look like a giant arachnid with infinite legs growing exponentially, sprawling like the city itself, creaking from the pressure of all the internal refugees. The main arteries of the city are completely blocked.

Not that anybody tries to get into the city centre for commercial reasons in 2032. Machines do most of the jobs that people used to, and climate change – whilst mostly mitigated in the West – has only exacerbated the unemployment levels as people have flocked to the cities, fleeing flooded settlements along the Amazon basin or deserting infertile farmland. Whilst most of the world had made the switch to hydrogen cars, Brazil declined; too in hock to the big petrochemical companies who were delighted someone would still give them custom.

Not that it mattered. The reductions in carbon emissions from road vehicles and aeroplanes switching to hydrogen fuel didn’t slow the effects of climate change quickly enough to save some regions. With the sheer demand for food with close to nine billion people inhabiting Earth, and even with a yearning for more plant-based diets, too much land was required to grow the sheer amount of crops. A tipping point was reached where land in certain countries, notably Brazil, became infertile and droughts became so regular that crops couldn’t be cultivated.

Job scarcity, food scarcity, and water scarcity, aren’t things that the majority of Brazilians ever considered they would experience in their lifetimes. Even in the squalor of the favelas, things were never this bleak. Even if there were countries in the world that were flush with supplies of surplus food or water to send anyone else, why would they choose Brazil as the recipient? Ran by an oppressive and often barbaric, undemocratic regime.

Down in the pulsating heart of Cinelândia Square, Roque holds aloft a burning piece of wood he took from a bench that he, his friend Yago, and a few other strangers that he has unquestioning solidarity with, just kicked to smithereens. The piece of wood is a metaphor for their country as a whole.

He doesn’t even know what he’s protesting for. He wants change, but he has no idea how to bring it about. Nobody does. With mechanised labour, capitalism isn’t bringing about anything other than diminishing returns for the majority of people. It only benefits an ever-diminishing pool of elites, and it won’t change whilst they remain in charge.

Redentor, the coincidentally-named company, as opposed to the statue, which somewhat ironically billed itself as humanity’s saviour, has only served to add to the unfolding catastrophe. Redentor conceived of, and subsequently created, what should have been the technological advancement of the 21^st century despite there still being the best part of seventy years of it still on the clock. It’s hard to fathom something else having as much potential to transform life as we know it.

Whilst other egotistical billionaires were embroiled in pissing contests, immersed in vanity projects, and nursing a hard-on for space exploration, Redentor invented the Chrysalis, a small implant which can bestow its bearer with incredible benefits; recalibrating the contents of their brains, endowing them with new abilities and knowledge, and eradicating a plethora of mental health conditions like depression or addiction.

Sadly, it’s become a members-only club. Chrysalisation, as it has become known, has become big business, and those benefits are rarely ever imparted to anyone who wasn’t already in the aforementioned pool of elites. Given that Redentor is only servicing the people with enough money to pay for it, that’s probably how the Brazilian government can sleep at night. They’re all chrysalised to the point that they are essentially programmed to block out anything that happens outside of their walled enclave. Any chinks of darkness that do seep through, and any associated guilt they may feel for causing that darkness, are simply erased, like software updates being installed, as they sleep.

Either that or they’re just monsters.

The crowd at the fringes of Cinelândia square become noticeably louder, their screams deafening.

“What the fuck’s going on?” Yago asks.

Roque shrugs in reply. “Lift me up,” he instructs as Yago crouches down to allow his legs to straddle the back of his neck. He lifts him up like he’s a girl he’s trying to impress at a music festival. Up above the crowd, he looks across the patchwork quilt of placards and protesters, and tries to establish the source of their unease.

“Shit, it’s the Military Police,” he confirms. “And they’ve got cannons.”

“What kind?” Yago enquires, knowing they’ll be fine if it’s tear gas as they’re masked up. He’ll be more concerned if it’s water cannons. If they manage to fire them from all sides they might just crush everyone to death.

“I don’t know. If you keep me fucking still I might be able to work it out, though.”

“Shut the fuck up. You’re not exactly light, are you?”

“I don’t know how, given we hardly eat these days.”

Yago grunts as he tries to keep balanced. It’s not easy in the mass of panicking people barging against him.

“What the fuck?” Roque exclaims.

“What is it, Roque?”

“Whatever those cannons are, they’re aiming them up into the air. I’ve never seen them before.”

“I have a bad feeling about this,” Yago says.

Roque cranes his neck in every direction. “The military police are at every exit. Whatever they’re about to rain down on us, we’re not going to escape it.”

“What do you think we should do? Get low?”

“Great idea. Let’s get fucking trampled to death,” Roque protests as he gestures to be lowered back down. “I think all we can do is stand our ground and just hope.”

“Hope for what? That they’ve brought out a bunch of guns that don’t do shit? Come on, Roque.”

“Hope is all we have left, bro.”

That hope is soon shattered along with everyone’s eardrums as cannons erupt from every angle. The protesters crane their necks upwards and follow the flight path of the projectiles, as if watching giants play tennis, though this crowd is more robberies and schemes than strawberries and cream. The spectators are both awestruck and terrified by what they see; metallic spheres coursing through a sky tarred by the onset of sunset, reflecting the dying light and scattering it amongst the crowd.

Everyone wants to run but there’s nowhere to go. Roque, filled with some bizarre faith that everything will be alright, stares up at the multitude of what looks like disco balls. He can’t help but feel that if this mass gathering was for some other purpose, like Lollapalooza back when it was permitted, that this would be pretty fucking cool. But this wasn’t some new-fangled light show at a festival; it was some sort of weapon being wielded by the ruthless Lagarto administration. Even as his admiration at the spectacle turns into terror, it doesn’t speed up the process. It’s as if gravity’s power cord has been pulled out from its socket.

Roque looks up as those spheres take an eternity to reach the peak of their trajectory and begin their descent back down to earth. To put him out of a misery he doesn’t want to be put out of. He wants to struggle on, to fight.

On their downwards curves, the metallic bubbles burst, thousands of smaller particles surging away from their hosts.

“What the fuck,” at least a hundred thousand people call out in unison; a protest song that wasn’t on the setlist. It’s like they’re watching something from a sci-fi film. Except this is very real and they’re in imminent danger. The tiny shards soar down to earth with more velocity and tenacity than their now-disintegrated master globes had; dart-like mini-missiles homing in on their individual targets within the crowd.

Everyone hits the deck with impressive synchronicity, as if James were playing on the main stage. They collectively cower from the arrows still glistening and grimacing in the fading evening light. The missiles land in the crowd with almost the same uniformity as the protesters had braced themselves, but the screams of panic aren’t displaced by cries of pain. Instead confusion reigns.

“Are you alright Yago?” Roque asks, daring to peek up from a crouched position and disconcerted by the lack of carnage surrounding him. It is like Lollapalooza, but the sound’s cut out and James are playing to themselves.

“I got one of them in my neck. Look,” Yago says as he yanks it out. “It’s like a thorn from a bush.”

“Oh my God,” Roque replies, rubbing his own neck before checking his bare arms for any barbs that he didn’t feel.

Yago drops the little bit of metal to the ground.

“Stop,” Roque chastises him as he goes to stamp on it. “Let me see what it is.”

“What if it’s like a bug?”

“Like a listening device?”

“Yeah, if it is then we should stomp the fuck out of it.”

“I agree, but let me look at it first.”

Cristo Redentor’s view is kaleidoscopic. He sees thousands of geometric shaped jewels bearing the same image, pairs of people perplexed at the little remnants of spheres that they’ve excavated from their own bodies. Like archaeologists uncovering something perhaps extra-terrestrial, other worldly. Roque gives the thorn the once over.

“You ever seen anything like that?” Yago asks.

“God, no.”

“Do you think it was a good idea to pull it out?” Concern is writ large on Yago’s face. He feels that maybe whatever it is follows the same rules as bullets. You don’t want to keep one inside you but you also shouldn’t take it out yourself.

“I don’t know, but I can’t help but feel like keeping something the government is using against us inside us is a good idea. Like you said, maybe it’s a bug, maybe they’re supposed to go deeper in so that people can’t take them out. Maybe you’re one of the lucky ones.”

“Not as lucky as you. You didn’t get hit.”

“I mean, I don’t know if I did yet. Did it hurt?”

“It was just like a little pin prick,” Yago responded, his quivering voice invalidating the machismo. “But you’d have known if one hit you. Definitely.”

“Maybe I was lucky then,” Roque tries to convince himself, looking up from the object he is studying forensically; cupping it carefully in his hands like it’s an endangered species of butterfly.

“I think you’re right, bro. We should trample this into the fucking ground and hope to God that it stops it from doing whatever it’s supposed to do.”

The relief of being alive is short-lived, and with lack of understanding comes further terror. If these little thorns had killed most of the crowd, but had spared Yago, then even though it would have been catastrophic, at least they’d have known where they stood – alive in a field of cadavers. The problem was that none of the assembled knew where they stood, whether they had been hit or not, and if they had what the ramifications were. All they knew was that the police were now in retreat; seemingly satisfied with whatever those cannons had achieved, seemingly happy to allow the destruction of Rio’s main public square to continue unabated. It’s not like they can really destroy something when it’s already broken, but even if they could, Lagarto and his cronies are all safe in their ivory towers anyway. Far, far away from here.

2

“Quite a predicament you’ve got yourself into there, Nakita. Huh?”

Nakita makes nothing but stifled moans as she hangs there in mid-air.

“Fucking answer me, you fat dyke.” I slap her hard on the cheek knowing full well she can hardly reply with a “yes, Violet” as she has her own tights bundled into her mouth, secured in place by strong tape over her lips.

“Cat got your tongue, bitch?” I strike her face again.

“She’d like some pussy on her tongue, I reckon,” my friend Dani chimes in. We all laugh in unison.

“You would like that, wouldn’t you? You dirty lezzer. Why are you even allowed in the same changing rooms as us? It’s fucking creepy.”

A great sense of accomplishment washes over me, having successfully manipulated Nakita into this situation. I told her last week that she should start getting changed back into her uniform after everyone else, even though it would encroach on her lunch time. She honoured that arrangement. Too petrified not to, I suppose. All it meant was that it was easier for us to get her on her own. The school’s two PE teachers have vacated the standalone building that a subject which isn’t taken overly seriously got left with. They will be over in the main building where the canteen is housed.

Even if Nakita wasn’t gagged, nobody would hear her scream.

It’s ironic that the PE teachers, entrusted with the physical wellbeing and fitness of the students, go to the school canteen and eat the same bilge that most of the students do; burgers and pizzas and fries, with fizzy drinks to wash them down, and home baking for afterwards.

There’s a proper full-size athletics track about a five minute walk from the school where, when the weather’s nice, we go for PE lessons; to practice eight-hundred metres and the long jump and such like. The aptly named Mr Currie is so fat and unfit that he drives and meets the pupils there whilst they walk with the more mobile Mrs Walsh, whose job it is to ensure that nobody tries to escape for the rest of the day whilst temporarily out of school grounds.

Nakita eats too much of that junk as well. Or at least that’s what we tell her. The truth is that she’s wearing away. Today she will wear away a little more whilst Dani, Mel and I eat our salads and a piece of fruit. As leader, I cast the deciding vote on whether we puke it all back up afterwards. We don’t do that every day, but we do have our figures to consider. Boys won’t go near us if we’re fat.

“I’m going to stop touching you now actually,” I say.

Nakita looks slightly relieved by this, but there’s still a lingering look of trepidation as she anticipates what actions might replace the slaps and punches.

“Because I bet you’re getting a kick out of it. In fact, we’ll be nice to you for a while and you can join us for lunch.”

My accomplices do as instructed and retreat from being right up in Nakita’s face. We sit down on the wooden slatted benches that line the perimeter of the changing room and take our low-calorie lunches from our school bags.

“Oh shit, I’ve just realised. You won’t be able to have lunch, will you Nakita? As your lunch is in your big manly backpack and you kinda can’t get into that right now, can you?”

“Not to mention her mouth is already full,” Mel chimes in. We all cackle again like the witches that we are. Good witches though. The toil and trouble that Nakita currently finds herself in is her own fault for being so weird. We’re casting spells on her to eradicate her likes. It’s for the wider school’s benefit. At least that’s what I tell myself. It’s mainly just something to do as school is shit and boring.

Nakita is guilty of all the illogical charges we level against her, except her weight issue and her sexual preference. I made both of those things up and the rest of the school ran with it. In actual fact, her cropped, matted hair and her big manly backpack are attributable to her being a tramp, rather than any conscious attempt at being butch. There’s every chance that her father took that very backpack to school when he was young, but there’s no way she’s passing it off as vintage. I have a belt with an elaborately-carved distressed silver buckle. That’s vintage. Nakita’s bag is just shit.

She must come from a family of tramps, or else she was just an unwanted child and they don’t give a fuck about her. How hard would it be to have just sent her to the hairdressers? And got her a big handbag from the high street to lug her books around in? Like everyone else has. Even one from Primark would have sufficed. I’ve allowed people in school to remain unscathed for a lot worse.

She’s uncool, unkempt and often unwashed. There’s a smell that follows her around; her only friend. It’s putting me off my lunch slightly. Maybe I won’t have to force myself to bring it back up.

The reason that Nakita can’t access her big, manly, allegedly lesbian-symbolising backpack to retrieve her lunch is, that she is currently hanging from it. We looped the small grab handle over a coat hook. Her arms were still in the shoulder straps as I pulled them both tight, in case gravity needed some help keeping her there. It’s a wonder that the straps have held, given how old they are. She looks like a horseshoe magnet, her face glowing bright red and her hands chalk white as the straps restrict her circulation. Like the sports kit itself, she hangs there voiceless and immobile, waiting for someone to take her off the hook and endow her with purpose.

“If you didn’t have that big butch backpack then you wouldn’t be stuck up there, would you, Nakita?”

Nakita knows it’s not as simple as that. She might have shit for brains, but she knows how fickle I am. She can’t do right for doing wrong. If she doesn’t do things which might make her fit in, she’s tormented for it. And on the rare occasion she does, she’s told not to get above her station, to know her place. She once borrowed some accessories, amusingly from Claire, one of the only girls in school who would actually dare communicate with her, for a non-uniform day at the end of term; one of those Aztec-style statement necklaces that were all the rage when we were in year ten. “Stop trying to be something you’re not,” I remember almost spitting at her, such was the force with which I said it, before confiscating the necklace. If it wasn’t Claire’s, I’d have trampled on it until it was broken into tiny pieces. Instead, I just gave it back to Claire and told her not to be so stupid.

“What fucking century is that abomination even from?” Mel joins in, making reference to the backpack

“Abomination’s a bit harsh” I joke. “And she’s from this century.”

Mel and Dani both laugh hysterically. An eerie, awkward period of silence follows the laughter. They both look at me, and then back at each other, wondering whose turn it is next to say something obscene.

“I fucking hate you,” I scream at the top of my lungs as I throw my uneaten apple at Nakita. The connection with her cheek bone making an almighty thud.

“Did you hear the fucking noise that made?” Dani stutters between fits of laughter.

“That sounded fucking painful by the way, like it smacked right off a bone,” Mel adds.

“I’m surprised it managed to hit a bone with all the layers of fat on her fat fucking face,” I shout. “Fuck it. Let’s not wait any longer. Are you ready, you guys?”

Dani and Mel set what’s left of their lunches aside, and cast each other a look as uncomfortable as the benches themselves. I reckon they probably think what I have in store is crossing the line, but they know better than to voice any discontent or they risk taking Nakita’s place.

“Come on. Get a fucking move on.” I implore, sensing their hesitancy.

It invigorates them and they hold Nakita still. Her groans increase in volume and become more desperate as maybe she too can sense the change in atmosphere, that whatever’s in store is truly awful.

I rummage around in my bag, careful to shield the chosen item from Nakita’s view to turn the tension up another notch. Often, the not knowing can be worse than finding out what it actually is. This, I’m almost certain, will not be the case here. I walk towards Nakita, slowly unveiling the item as I walk. The object glints, even under the dingy strip lighting of the weary old building. Dani and Mel have to tighten their grip on her as she begins to wriggle more violently upon seeing what it is. She tries to kick out at them too. They manage to disarm her legs, trapping one each between their own and squeezing their thighs tight together to secure them in place.

I hold Nakita’s head steady with one hand and begin carving into her forehead with the razor blade in the other. Pained screams sound at seemingly full-volume despite the gag. The audible anguish reaches every corner of the entire building and caresses every crevasse of the ceiling beams. But the only ears that hear them are wilfully deaf.

 3

Present day

It’s the last day of Chris’ first week as a postman. Approaching the first block of flats on Eudicot Grove, he is rudely welcomed by a black bin bag crashing to the ground in front of him, landing on the grass that runs adjacent to the front entrance. He looks up hoping to catch the culprit, or even just a window closing, confirming at least the flat that they occupy. He has an idea of who it was. The woman who stays in number ten is an utter scumbag; a living and breathing caricature of the Benefits Britain, single mother cliché. He cranes his head upwards. No windows suddenly slamming shut. No faces at the windows. No definite culprits; just one suspect.

He visualises the floor layout and the numbering in his head, trying to establish whether it would have come from her flat. That bottom flat is number four so the one above is… It checks out. He can’t believe how shameless some people really are. The old idiom that you shouldn’t shit on your own front doorstep should extend to dumping rubbish as well.

He reaches the security door of the main entrance and delves his hand into his pocket for his key fobs. He tries several, still not fully familiarised yet with which one is for which apartment block. He wonders how the person who did this route before ever mastered this. The fobs are all identical. He needs to invent some colour-coded system. Maybe the order that they’re in is crucial but he’s not yet cracked the previous postie’s code. Maybe after another week on the job he’ll have this down to a fine art. The fourth fob he tries does the trick and he gains access.

Chris has mainly letters to deliver, easy enough to slot through letterboxes. It’s parcels that require a signature, as well as uplifting collections or returns, which slows him down. He organised the mail for this block in the van beforehand. The letters are all in decreasing numerical order, so he takes the lift to start off on the top floor. Twenty-four, twenty-two and twenty up there, before descending each flight of stairs one at a time to do the other floors. He doesn’t object to stairs if he’s coming down them.

The only collection today is from one of the second-floor flats, and there’s one lot of parcels, from various fashion chains, all to be delivered to the flat directly beneath that one. Number ten actually, he realises, where that cretin lives. It’s always a pleasure going to see her as she bawls and curses at her child who has obvious learning difficulties. She either can’t control him, or just doesn’t want to. Chris wonders if she’s even realised that there’s something there to diagnose. She will have, he reckons, as that will indubitably furnish her with more benefit payments to spend. She really ought to have him taken off her, although the honourable thing to do would be to give him up.

He completes the top floor’s deliveries, nothing particularly interesting amongst the letters here; correspondence from a bank and a life insurance provider the only things he can identify from the envelopes. He enjoys the little insights that can be gleaned from people’s mail. At least some of the occupants of flat number twenty must be approaching their twilight years based on the fact they’re being encouraged to take up an over-fifties plan.

Chris excitedly heads down the first flight of stairs, pops a letter with a handwritten address through eighteen’s letterbox and then knocks on sixteen where he hopes to gain even more insight than can normally be obtained from knowing she gets craft supplies delivered regularly. He has yet to put a face to the name of the woman in number sixteen, one Miss V. Clark. He wonders what the V stands for. Victoria? Vanessa? Maybe even Veronica? She usually just instructs him to leave the parcel outside and she’ll get to them. An actual collection will force her to finally open the door. She’s down on the system as having regular collections every Friday. Maybe she runs some sort of online business. Perhaps she makes something saleable from all the craft supplies?

He rings the doorbell and peers into the camera lens.

“Two seconds,” her soft, bashful voice sounds out from the speaker; a stark contrast to the loutish howl of her downstairs neighbour. He hears the sound of socks or soft slippers scuffing against a wooden floor and then the clinks and crunches of several locks and deadbolts being disengaged. Incredibly security conscious given he’s the only non-resident that can access the block without at least buzzing first. What exactly is she afraid of? Is it someone within? Maybe if she’s running a business from here she has a lot of stock. Would she not have business insurance though? And who would want to steal oil pastels and tissue paper? The mind boggles.

After the symphony of percussive locks reaches its climax, the door swings open slightly, constrained by a chain. One half of V’s face can be seen in the gap, grey and apprehensive in direct opposition to the confident, pink headband she’s wearing, demanding to be noticed. She looks like a dead sprinter that has been revived for one more race, for this single interaction. Like an alien seeing a human being for the first time, unsure over whether he’s friend or foe. Maybe she really liked the previous postman. She doesn’t really need to worry on that front. He’ll be back.

Maybe she’s just hypervigilant, a term that received a lot of tuts and head-shaking in a training course he attended recently. If so, living in this fortress she has constructed would make sense. She’s impenetrable up here. She has the height advantage over all her subjects, except she doesn’t rule over them, she keeps them at arm’s length. The drawbridge pulled up.

“I’m here to collect three parcels,” he says to shatter the awkward silence. What else would he be there for, dressed like a postman?

“Can you take a step back?” she says, her bashfulness dissipating, replaced by brashness. As if Chris should know the script. He obliges though, and the door closes. Then there’s the frantic scraping noise of the chain uncoupling from its slider. The door opens again, not fully. She inches her head out into the corridor, discreetly, like a periscope trying to detect enemy vessels. There are none to find, just a baffled postman wondering why this quiet corridor is being treated like a war zone.

“Two seconds,” she repeats. The door closes again. A lock turns. Chris sighs wondering what all this palaver is in aid of. The door opens fully this time. She steps out and leans forward, laying two big parcels on the ground. She retreats back inside quickly and moves the door in front of her again covering most of her body.

Chris had enough time to get the measure of her. If it weren’t for the zombie aesthetic, she’d be quite easy on the eye. Tall and thin – too thin – long, dark hair, a nice jaw structure but her face is too gaunt, cheekbones protruding far too much, like Jigsaw from Saw. She’s wearing a loose-fitting cream jumper that nearly reaches her kneecaps, cotton wristbands the same colour as her headband, bright pink. It’s like she’s lounging just now but has tennis at five. If someone were to just plug her in at the wall she’d easily by coveted by most straight men in this town. Chris is sure of it.

“Anything nice?” Chris queries. She looks at him vacantly. “The parcels?” he says, gesturing towards the packages on the floor as he scans the barcodes to verify that they’re the correct pre-paid labels. “A present for someone maybe?”

“Are we all done?” V says suddenly, looking stressed.

“Yes, thanks.”

“Okay, bye.” The door slams shut.

“For fuck’s sake,” Chris exclaims rather than muttering under his breath. Not that she’d hear him from inside Fort Knox. That cretin down on the first floor might not be the biggest pain in this apartment block after all. Not now that he’s met tennis elbow incarnate. The inhabitants of Eudicot Grove are a right lot, either throwing bin bags or shade.

 

With shade out of the way, Chris descends the next flight of stairs and readies himself for the ray of sunshine that is Miss Bin Bags, or more accurately, Miss N. Guthrie, as the labels on her numerous ASOS parcels refer to her. He knocks the door of number ten and braces for impact.

“Shut up.” Chris can hear her scream at her son from inside, for the crime of what Chris suspects is severe autism. She has him down as a devil child. He has long lost the ability to let things like that get him down. He has seen and dealt with much worse over the years. “Get out my fucking way, I need to get the door,” she adds. Such a delightful way to address a youngster.

The door shamelessly swings open. Chris thinks that it really ought to be N who is hesitant to show her face, to not own up so readily to the dismal parenting. Instead, it’s V upstairs who seems so tentative and furtive. She is hiding something. He’s not wrong about that, but N is hiding something too. She just doesn’t seem to care enough to hide it well.

“Sorry, he’s being a little shit today,” she says. Her arm, saturated with tattoos, snatches the parcel from Chris’ hands, before he even attempts to pass it to her. The door slams shut again. His mouth hadn’t yet managed to produce speech. The manoeuvres his lips make settle upon a look of astonishment instead. What is it with the people in this place?

Two total bitches, one floor apart, but miles apart in their priorities. V clearly doesn’t care about herself, whereas N clearly cares about herself, to the detriment of her own son, probably because he isn’t what she would have chosen. She probably wanted a normal child, maybe even a girl. Nor does she care about common decency, why should she have to go to the effort of making that walk to the bin sheds? Why should she have to talk nicely to the postman? She’s far too important for that.

She prioritises her looks too. Another aspect in which they couldn’t be more different. V is naturally pretty, but looks like a celebrity in rehab, or an actress normally so beautiful at the glitzy awards ceremonies, but dumbed down for a film role where she plays a victim of trafficking.

At the other end of the spectrum, N is mutton dressed as lamb. Always comes to the door in a different outfit, pristine like it has just been taken off the rack even though the boy is often running around with no pants on, just a t-shirt, always the same one. Make-up trowelled on to give her rough-looking face the faintest trace of allure, hair is always strand-perfect, shaped into a bob with long fringe coming down like a waterfall. If he could see her eyebrows he reckons they’d be drawn on. He reckons she’s had a boob job too, although he has no before to compare her to. It’s just a hunch.

There’s not much real. There’s making the best with what you’ve got and then there’s this. Although in a society where people can now change their actual personalities, he feels like his unease towards people who only look fake should be lower down on his list of concerns. Despite this, he carries on inwardly critiquing her looks. Although some uncertainty remains over her breasts, her lips are unquestionably artificial. They’re far too prominent compared to the rest of her face, like she’s been in a fight. Maybe her boy punched her one of the times she has bawled in his face and told him to shut the fuck up.

Why can’t the people who concoct conspiracy theories about how vaccines are dangerous turn their attention to lip fillers instead? Vile things he reckons, as he tries to excise the image of Miss N Guthrie’s duck-billed chavvy-pus face from his mind and think about Miss V Clark instead. He knows she’s up to something, even if it’s N who seems more like the type. But how does he even begin to forge any semblance of connection with her, let alone prove it? He has his work cut out for him this time, that’s for sure.

 4

‘Dr N. Kajal – Psychiatrist,’ the plaque on the door reads. Light reflects off the brass plate as it swings open. Another patient passes over the threshold to exit her surgery. A subsequent exchange of pleasantries follows. A habitual smile emanates from the doctor’s face.

She returns to her room, closing the door behind her. She would normally re-appear a minute or two later, after having typed up her patient notes, and summon some other ailing soul from the waiting room. Not this time. Her next consultation is online. They all were during the pandemics, but they’ve naturally mutated into being a mix of both formats since those viruses have abated.

Some people still like the convenience of not having to travel, whereas some prefer face-to-face interaction, feeling like they get a more personal touch. Online consultations never happened at all prior to the pandemics, which would have been of little use to her next patient who suffers from severe agoraphobia. It’s a strange silver lining to the pandemics for her, being able to see a doctor remotely.

Other recent developments may also benefit her. Chrysalises offer a mental health solution like no other. Things like cognitive behavioural therapy and behavioural activation require so much input and determination on behalf of the sufferer, and as a result often fail to remedy them. A Chrysalis allows for actual modifications to the brain, through a process called a partial neurological overhaul (PNO), rather than simply offering a suite of coping strategies. The trauma that causes mental illness can simply be erased.

Britain is one of the few countries in which the state provides PNOs free of charge through its National Health Service, which in 2032 is still hanging on by the slightest of threads. However, as it continues to be underfunded year on year, only a finite amount of procedures can be performed each year. Dr Kajal’s specialist role is to assess patients to see if they’re eligible for a PNO based on a strict range of criteria. Her recommendations are then at the mercy of the board with whom the ultimate decision rests. This patient is at the top of her list without question.

Dr Kajal watches the preview video of how she’ll look on screen before going live to her patient. She adjusts the brim of the lip beneath her hijab, pulling it down lower than most people would, ensuring her forehead is covered. She clicks to commence the call.

“Hi, Violet. How are you feeling today?” Dr Kajal asks the face that has now appeared on her screen.

“You already know the answer to that,” Violet replies. The doctor nods in agreement. If ever there were a patient that should be allowed to bypass all paperwork for and simply be given the date for her PNO, it would be Violet. The doctor knows all too well her condition, and what she’s capable of.

“Are you still getting out? Going on walks along the corridor. Sometimes saying hello to… Dot, wasn’t it? Your neighbour?”

There’s an awkward silence.

“It’s okay if you haven’t been.” The doctor sounds fearful, like she’s treading on eggshells, desperate not to say the wrong thing.

“I’ve not been out at all. I don’t know how long for.”

“You haven’t been keeping track of time.” Kajal poses this as a statement, rather than a question, eager not to provoke the patient.

Dr Kajal suppresses a sigh and retains her bedside manner. She’s frustrated as they had been making substantial progress of late. She had been going a daily walk along the corridor of the storey she lived on, leaving the block completely sometimes to put the bins out. She reminds herself as she scrolls through the patient’s notes that she had even hung out and collected in a washing on separate occasions.

“You know how I feel about time.” Violet gives an indirect answer to the non-question.

Dr Kajal does know. She’s the only patient where they don’t agree upon a date or a time for the next consultation. She just chooses one and sends Violet a reminder half an hour before it. Violet always attends. No chance of any scheduling clashes. She makes enough money to pay her bills through selling various crafts and artworks online, but that work is flexible. Besides that she doesn’t leave the house. The doctor can’t get her to divulge any more details about how she manages to try and block out time.

How could she do it? She wonders, even if she wanted to.

In the mists of time itself, before any technology ever existed, even the most primitive of tribes would have been privy to the day-night cycle. Even before we started counting those cycles and delineating them into weeks and months and years, assigning those month’s names and the year’s numbers, days would have been observed as people looked up to skies to witness the sun and moon’s endless pursuit of each other, never seeming to get any closer, like points on a compass. As the sun enters stage left, the moon departs stage right, endlessly. A perpetual game of cat and mouse.

Maybe she has blackout curtains to eliminate the day-night cycle. Maybe she has some display settings on her phone which disable the date and time. Even still, there are things that happen with regularity, even without the weekly ceremony of putting the bins out for collection to remind you. The knock of the mail carrier and the printed proof of time passing on each of the letters they deliver; the yearly notification of council tax, which always costs more than it did the year before. Avoiding time seems unfeasible to Dr Kajal, but it’s what Violet claims she does without ever elaborating on how.

“Don’t be disappointed,” Kajal assures her. “Don’t be hard on yourself. It’s fine to have bad periods. You can implement the things we discussed again as of now. A clean slate. What’s done is...”

“I’ve started throwing my rubbish out of the window,” Violet announces abruptly.

“Why?” Dr Kajal asks, without judgement.

“The bin needed to be emptied, but I couldn’t bear the thought of going out there. It began to stink too much to keep it in the flat, so I threw the entire bag out of the window. What if someone reports me, though, and I get evicted? I won’t cope on the streets, exposed to all those people who mean me harm. If I get an eviction notice in the post then I’ll slash my wrists again, but I’ll do it fucking properly this time.”

The doctor remains professionally, artificially calm. She doesn’t acknowledge the mention of suicide as telling someone with suicidal thoughts not to act on them is counter-intuitive. She simply notes the mention of it on her patient record and focuses instead on strategies to stop her from being evicted.

“Was it Dot, your neighbour’s name?”

“Yes.”

“If you phoned her, would she not take your rubbish down whenever she’s taking her own? She’s nice, isn’t she? And she knows you have your struggles.”

“She thinks I’m a lunatic. You all do. And doing that denotes a week has passed. I’m not doing that.”

“I don’t think that, Violet. And I’m sure she doesn’t think that either. She won’t truly understand you because she’s never met someone like you before. You’re not abnormal. I meet people like you all the time; occupational hazard.”

Violet smiles at that comment, which makes Dr Kajal wary. She doesn’t like unexpected behaviour from patients. It’s the only time she’s ever witnessed her smile; a very pretty smile too. If only she had a similar amount of tickets as your average person does for the rides in the unfair funfair that is life, maybe seeing that smile would have been as predictable as the sun rising in the morning and setting in the evening.

“Could you not come to an arrangement with Dot? Like the one you had with your old postman?”

Dr Kajal refers to how Violet’s old postman took out her bin the day before collection day, but never told her when it was. She expects the unexpected at this point, a lurch from one from extreme to another, and a smile to turn to instant anger. She can’t quite explain why she suspects this. It’s nothing she learned from the manuals, it’s just down to experience, a hunch.

“I suppose.”

Kajal’s assumption was wrong. No anger, just apathy. It’s hard to get Violet enthused by anything. The grip that depression has on her is fierce.

“How has the other neighbour we often talk about been? The horrible one?”

“She still bangs on the ceiling. She still scratches on the front door sometimes, and covers the spyhole with her finger. As if I don’t know that it’s her.”

“Have you been using the techniques I taught you to keep calm when she’s doing those things?”

“Yes, I’ve been sticking to that more than I’ve been doing the walking to be honest. I promise I’ll try and get back into those habits.”

“That would be wonderful,” Dr Kajal replies, again feeling the inadequacy of the support she can give her. These recommendations, like cognitive behavioural therapy, are all just coping strategies which require effort and energy on the part of the service user. Things like taking deep breaths, repeatedly counting fingers, blocking her neighbour’s wicked behaviour out by putting headphones on, and trying to get lost in music. All she can offer is strategies, never solutions.

After the call, Dr Kajal sighs as she types up the notes of the call. There’s not really anything to expand on in terms of Violet’s condition. She is well and truly over the line in terms of meeting the requirements to be given a PNO free on the NHS. Unfortunately she’s a rare case whereby that alone won’t solve her problems. In fact, it might only serve to make them worse. There are aspects of Violet’s circumstances that even a Chrysalis couldn’t find a way of explaining.

 5

"Who needs to be rich when you can be made happy with what you've got?" That’s a bona fide advertising slogan used by Redentor. I wouldn't believe it were I not living through it. Ginley Sprott is proving to be more of a hindrance to liberal democracy as a semi-retired PR consultant than he was as the full-time political editor of a right-wing rag.

Alfie hits backspace and replaces ‘a right-wing rag’ with ‘one of the most prominent right-leaning news outlets in the United Kingdom.’ The editor-in-chief won’t sanction that description of The Conduit, accurate though it may be.

 He described Mitch Creighton, who holds a monopoly on all things Chrysalis-related, as ‘the most important man since Jesus Christ himself.’ Give me a break.

Sure, the things he can do are much more impressive than turning water into wine. Since wine often only serves to exacerbate depression and Mitch can, and often does, cure it. But only for those who can afford to pay, which is precisely why those who aren’t rich can’t be made happy with what they’ve got. It’s the fundamental flaw in that slogan. The poor can only become inured to their own suffering.

Not that this can be pointed out in the public space without being shouted down. The prevailing narrative seems to be that having the ability to solve the world’s mental health problems makes him the messiah without actually ever having to do it.

It can’t be proved beyond reasonable doubt, but it looks statistically likely that being chrysalised seems to bestow an individual with a more conservative political outlook.

It sounds like I’ve gone full tin foil hat, but let’s remember that was exactly how Ginley Sprott described feeling during the groundwork leading up to his seismic article that blew the lid off what the Chrysalis is capable of, what it was doing and how the disgraced former Prime Minister, Peter Lightfoot, was complicit in the whole sorry affair. Before he then decided to jump ship and work for Redentor.

Ginley said he’d never doubted himself so much on anything, but it just felt so obvious to him that the government were pulling all the strings behind the great blood heist and the madness which ensued; people being forced to donate blood in order to receive their wages in full, being surreptitiously compelled to buy more blood from the black-market for no reason at all other than to boost the nation’s coffers. All of this was a contrived scheme to conduct an egregious experiment on the marginalised within our society. All of those people are now essentially dead, but at the same time, experiencing new realities with new identities that they never consented to.

Despite his innate ability to subconsciously filter out incoming e-mails without becoming distracted, one catches his eye. The rather exotic-sounding name contravenes his oh, it’s just my boss or I’ll e-mail them back later filtering system. Alfie wonders who she is and what she could possibly want, but he files that thought away for now and continues proofreading.

Anyway, despite referencing Ginley and appealing to reason, most of the people reading this and crying conspiracy will do so regardless of what I have to say. However, ONS data, for the precious few of us that still care about facts, shows that 97% of people who have had any kind of neurological overhaul vote Conservative. On the face of it, this makes perfect sense if it’s people with lots of money who can afford it; they’re more likely to be Tory voters.

However, if you scratch below the surface, just over half of those 97% didn’t vote for the Conservatives in previous elections. Some didn’t even cast a vote at all. There are some more rational-looking explanations for this. I am not suggesting for a second that the Chrysalis is deliberately designed to make people more right-wing; even if recent events suggest that theory can’t be completely ruled out.

Maybe when you are rendered completely happy, you do start caring less about others. It’s a cliché, but ignorance is bliss. Therefore bliss must also be ignorance. Maybe having problems of your own allows you to empathise with the problems of others when at the ballot box.

Survey data also suggests that most people who say they’re getting a PNO say they’ll only ever get one, but it seems once they’ve had one they become addicted and want more. They appear to be like tattoos etched onto your brain, but rather than tribal designs and dragons, these tattoos allow people to learn Spanish overnight, or improve their golf swing. What used to be a world where appearance was everything, but substance meant nothing has now flipped on its head for the wealthiest cohorts of society. Middle class pretenders, who used to plough all their money into looking like they had loads, don’t feel that urge now.

I will make reference to another advertising slogan now:

“Whoever it is you want to be, it’s yours to make.”

That was Instagram’s tagline just over a decade ago and it drives exactly at the point I’m making. That slogan is actually a better fit for Redentor now, than it was for Instagram in 2021. Some of you will know that I am a wheelchair user. That doesn’t bother me now as much as it did when I was a teenager, back when I would only ever post pictures of me from the neck up so that some people who had never met me wouldn’t ever know. That was me making myself ‘whoever it was I wanted to be’ in a sense. But people on Instagram are seldom what they are like in reality, whereas what people become through Redentor is very, perilously, real.

My wheelchair analogy starts to run out of road here. If I had a TNO it wouldn’t allow me to leave the chair from which I’m writing this article. The problem isn’t that I don’t know how, or couldn’t learn, how to walk. The problem is that I physically can’t. I have anxiety too though, and unlike on Instagram, where I can post as many contrived pictures of me looking happy as I like, Redentor could actually remedy that for me. And then some.

Who needs a German car when you could become instantly qualified to land the job that would buy you the whole showroom? That should be Redentor’s advertising campaign. I might sell that to Mitch actually. Who needs to post their every bowel movement on social media in order to try and feel relevant when now you can pay to know that you’re the dog’s doo-dahs? People soon realise that when they’re perfectly happy, caring what anyone else thinks is no longer an immediate concern, and neither are their concerns.

This shift in societal norms has the Tories laughing all the way into Downing Street, and Mitch Creighton laughing all the way to the bank. After being briefly displaced by Jaxton Vala, the hydrogen vehicle tycoon, as the richest man in the world, he has since been catapulted back into top spot. How come all the others who have been in and around that top spot, the likes of Bezos and Musk, have all come under scrutiny? Yet Creighton seems immune.

Consider Zuckerberg too for a moment. Remember when we were all up in arms about Facebook finding ways to keep you on Facebook for longer? How do we know that Redentor isn’t employing the same strategies? It’s taken as read that Redentor isn’t going to manipulate us in any way. There was a time when we had that same faith in Facebook. Look where that got us.

Mind control isn’t advertising, but it’s the most effective form of it.

Alfie is pleased thus far with the rare opinion piece that The Custodian is allowing him to publish. He is allowed to give his opinions, but they’re usually coalesced with breaking news stories, rather than on wider societal issues. He should press on finessing the article, but something about the exotic name of the sender, Acacia, is enticing him to look at her message, like it’s a rare tropical fruit on a greengrocer’s stall that he’s never seen before. He opens the e-mail.

Hello Alfie,

I’m a Singapore-based YouTuber who conducts social experiments, many of which are on chrysalised people – which I know is a particular interest of yours. My social media handles are all @YTKaish if you need to verify me or want to check out my work. I have a current project that I think you’ll be extremely interested in given its possible effects on the political landscape.

I strongly believe that Redentor are involved in rigging elections. To prove this, I want to go to Lotus and run for mayor there. Elections will happen in November there if an opponent joins the running. So far none have, therefore no election will take place. The incumbent, Ed Pieters, will keep his hand on the tiller of Redentor’s social experiment.

The problem, as you’ll be more than aware, is that any filming or reporting of events in Lotus is strictly forbidden to protect the inhabitants from finding out that they were victims. This, however, also allows Redentor to act with impunity there, getting away with whatever they like. I need someone who I can trust to help me get this story, if there is one, out there somehow, without endangering ourselves in the process.

The favour I have to ask is this. I would be honoured if you would be my campaign manager, remotely of course, as I’m sure there aren’t enough hours in the day doing what you do for a living to come all the way to Canada. Reach out to me if you’re interested and I’ll let you know what I need, how I hope to prove what Redentor is up to, and how I fear that it could be scaled up to affect the rest of the world.

This could lead to the biggest story you’ll ever write. The challenge will be how to get the story out there… safely.

Please reply to me promptly, as even though you’re my first choice and resounding favourite, I do need to consider other avenues quickly if you decline.

Kind regards,

Acacia Redondo

If Alfie didn’t have people who filtered his e-mails, and removed all the correspondence from various unhinged individuals and trolls, he wouldn’t have taken any of the contents of this e-mail seriously. But his team will have checked out her credentials. She must be the real deal and really wants Alfie as her campaign manager.

It’s a bit of a quandary for Alfie. He feels torn between loyalties: to his old mentor and previous political editor of The Custodian, Sara Gauci, and to her ex-partner, Vic, who he has since been in regular contact with. He knows his loyalty to Sara is illogical, as she no longer exists, having had a TNO, but he can’t help but feel like he should side with her. He feels guilty for communicating with Vic, for sympathising with him.

Before he really knows what he’s doing, he’s already started replying to Acacia, confirming that he won’t be accepting her offer to become her campaign manager remotely.

He’s going to fly to Lotus and campaign with her, side-by-side.

He stops typing in disbelief at what his instinct is compelling him to do. What will his boss say? He has some annual leave, yes, but he can’t take off several weeks right now, not with elections coming up in Britain too; elections that affect millions of people, not hundreds. He could work remotely, he figures. His boss might allow that. How time-consuming will running such a small campaign actually be?

Snap out of it. Stop this nonsense, Alfie thinks to himself as he keeps his flight of fancy grounded for now and tries to re-focus on his pending deadline.

 

With the remainder of the article proofread, polished and up to his usual meticulously high standards, Alfie is poised to upload it to The Custodian’s website. As his finger readies itself for the final click of the mouse, his phone rings; a number he doesn’t recognise. It couldn’t be an impatient Acacia demanding an immediate answer, could it? Alfie supposes that if the election is soon then she can’t spend too much time standing still. Election campaigns are all about momentum.

Alfie reins himself in. There’s no way that Acacia would be that forthright. The e-mail only landed in his inbox around half an hour ago. It’s probably a new source, an informant with a new lead. He hangs fire on publishing his piece and answers.

“Hello, Alfie Fallon, The Custodian.”

“Hi, Alfie.”

He hasn’t verified Acacia’s authenticity yet by watching one of her videos so he has no idea what her voice sounds like, but he’s pretty confident it’s not this caller. She doesn’t sound particularly exotic. “My name’s Bridget Dempster, I represent Tanya Alora. I would like to discuss a potential meeting with you about a new venture she’s involved in. I feel The Custodian would be the best outlet through which to announce it.”

“Hi Bridget, I feel honoured that you’ve chosen to speak to me first and foremost. Sorry if I’m recollecting events incorrectly, but the last time The Custodian spoke to Tanya, she had a different agent, a male, whose name temporarily eludes me.”

As Alfie ponders Tanya’s last interaction with his newspaper, he feels a weird sense of déjà vu wash over him. Tanya Alora is the popstar who unwittingly catalysed all of the events that culminated in Sara ending up in Lotus. She was unlucky enough to have been caught buying a bag of illegal blood. She gave Sara some information in exchange for the media easing off her. She initially sent Sara down the path which led to where she is now, no longer Sara at all. His sense of dread is only fleeting. Alfie is not one for superstition. Thousands of journalists have spoken to Tanya Alora and a grisly fate only befell one of them.

He wonders how Sara’s getting on over in Canada, or whatever she’s called now. Alfie hopes she’s found happiness amidst all the chaos the rest of the world is engulfed in.  

Lotus, a hamlet in Alberta Province, was where Redentor decided to resettle the guinea pigs from their egregious experiment. Not long after journalists got wind of it, they flocked to the area, determined to tell the world who the people of Lotus once were, to inform the people themselves. A journalistic amnesty was called at once. It was deemed unethical to let the inhabitants of Lotus know what had happened to them. It would be too distressing. Not that that stopped some journalists devoid of any sort of empathy and oblivious to the consequences of their actions. Legislation was enacted that put an end to the interference. The world’s governments decided that it was better to allow the people of Lotus to lead the lives that had been artificially inserted into their minds. It would be so freaky to see Sara, Alfie imagines, with somebody else essentially wearing her body as skin.

Sara’s clinical, journalistic mind and dogged determination to hold the Conservatives to account is all gone now, wasted. Alfie is certain that Sara wasn’t intended to become collateral damage in Prime Minister Lightfoot’s depraved scheme. After all, what were the chances of her son becoming a blood-dealer? But boy would he have been counting his blessings that it did happen given that she was one of the foremost critics of the political-right in the UK. Alfie reckons that TNOs can be reversed, that Lewis could have been restored to his original self, but Redentor just wanted Sara Gauci out of the picture. He’s heard of several rumours of reversals happening, but he’s never been able to substantiate them. It does also stipulate in the terms and conditions of a TNO that the procedure is final and irreversible. But since when have Redentor ever been paradigms of truth and transparency?

Against the backdrop of all adversity and injustice, Alfie is hell-bent on picking up where Sara left off. If he can be even one-fifth of the journalist that Sara Gauci was, then her spirit, wherever it is – he feels queasy as he realises it’s probably computerised data in a laboratory somewhere – will have been aptly honoured.

“Benny Neguzia?” Bridget suggests, coaxing Alfie away from his tangential thoughts.

“Yes, that was him.”

“He’s still her agent, in terms of her record deals and commercial contracts. I’m more her PR person, solely for the new charitable arm of her empire, so to speak, Tanya AF. The Tanya Alora Foundation.”

Alfie’s ears prick up, despite knowing nothing about what this foundation does. Superficially, it sounds like a good thing. It’s hard to think of a better person to be endorsing a cause than Tanya Alora in the current climate. She was a pariah during the blood-money era when she bought blood from a dealer to fund her lavish lifestyle. That stigma has been healed – not just from the passage of time (see Chris Brown) – but also with the retrospective knowledge that the blood-dealers weren’t a bunch of depraved criminals profiting from a pandemic, but actually a bunch of depraved politicians profiting from a pandemic, and that the money was actually being redirected towards public spending; a stealth tax at a time where tax and public spending had become ugly words. They still are.

Alfie asks Bridget for a gist of what Tanya AF is being set up to achieve before deciding whether the prospect of a meeting is tantalising as it sounds on instinct alone. He deems it worthy and a date and time is pencilled in. Benny Neguzia will also be in attendance. Pleasantries are exchanged before Bridget disconnects the call.

 

With the article now published, and a date in the diary with Bridget, Alfie finds himself absorbed by what could be happening in Lotus. Along with North Korea and Brazil, Lotus is one of those mysterious, restrictive places, covered very partially, if at all, by Western news outlets. They are the world’s deleted scenes; ones he could be watching if only he went there. There’s so much there to pique his interest; the travails of his old friend, Sara, and her ex-husband, Vic, as well as the potential election-rigging.

The enormity of the problem that Acacia poses weighs heavy on his mind though. Alfie can’t just report on what information he manages to glean from Lotus without severe reprimand. The end of his career at best. The end of his life at worst. Redentor, even though they’re the most popular brand in the world, are very dangerous if crossed. Alfie knows that he shouldn’t be going anywhere near this. There’s a fine line between brave journalism and stupid journalism, and this is so far across that line that brave is starting to disappear beyond the horizon. Nevertheless, something is compelling him to go there, to indulge in a strange form of grief tourism, but rather than finding graves or a memorial statue, everyone is alive and well, oblivious to their own former plight and conscious of their new, amazing, carefully-curated, anxiety-free lives.

What would it be like to walk past Sara in her new form, and for her to not recognise him? What does she do for a living nowadays? Will she look exactly the same, or would he be able to tell it wasn’t really her? How will she dress? Will she be as well-off? These are all great unknowns, and great unknowns are like unpicked scabs to journalists. He consigns these thoughts to the vault in his brain filled to bursting with similar thoughts like an overflowing suitcase; all the unpicked scabs, the everyday curiosities, the leads which have yet to be followed.

Chrysalis Recap/Explainer

In 2031, Derrick Haynes invents an implant called Chrysalis which has the ability to reconfigure people’s brains, either incrementally or in order to make wholesale changes – essentially rendering them different people entirely, but in the same bodies. He wanted to alter his mother’s brain as she has onset dementia and also help his brother, who was a paedophile, by  suppress his urges.

His half-brother, Peter Lightfoot, was the Prime Minister. He and Derrick concocted a plan to trial Chrysalis on unsuspecting members of the population – the undesirables in society, people who wouldn’t be missed. To make them into something better.

They fabricated a story that all of Britain’s blood supplies had been stolen overnight by a criminal organisation known as the BPG. Lightfoot responded by implementing a system whereby donating blood essentially became currency and the BPG responded by enlisting blood dealers to sell the stolen blood back to the general public in exchange for temporarily-unusable Pounds Sterling. Derrick and Peter knew that the normal British currency would be re-instated once they had been satisfied with the efficacy of the implants.

Although the original cohort of blood dealers were people abducted by the BPG, once people saw how lucrative it was, they started to sign up. In exchange, they had to consent to getting an implant which the BPG said would keep them safe, without ever explaining what it would really do. The grand plan was to force them into undergoing a process called a Total Neurological Overhaul (TNO) which completely re-programmes their brains. Derrick wanted to see if the Chrysalis was capable of altering everything, rather than just trialling small changes one at a time. Time was of the essence if he wanted to fix his mother in time.

Liberal-leaning political journalist, Sara Gauci, and her main rival, the conservative-leaning Ginley Sprott were both trying to find out more about Chrysalis, and the scandal behind the blood-money era. They both became even more passionate about it after Sara’s son, Lewis, was abducted by the BPG and they found out he had an implant. Ginley cared as his partner, Vic, used to be married to Sara before he came out as gay. Lewis was his son too.

Having joined forces, Sara and Ginley eventually uncovered the conspiracy behind the blood theft, what the implants did, and that Peter Lightfoot had sanctioned the whole hideous debacle, and that he was a paedophile. It was too late though, Derrick had already given all of the dealers, including Lewis, TNOs and transported them with their new identities to a small hamlet in Alberta, Canada, called Lotus, which had lain abandoned for decades. Peter Lightfoot was now called Ed Pieters, and was now the mayor of Lotus.

Just like the rest of the people in Lotus, Ed cannot remember ever being the person he was before the TNO. He has artificial memories of his own history, written by employees of Derrick’s company, Redentor. Derrick also had a TNO to avoid responsibility for the egregious experimented he conducted. He became Mitch Creighton, and is now the world’s richest person – by dint of having designed Chrysalis.

Sara agreed to bury the majority of the conspiracy story in order to be given a TNO and be reunited with her son. She became Susan and her daughter became Farrah. Ginley elected not to have a TNO and stay and try and salvage the reputational damage done to the Conservative Party. Vic also declined the offer, but holds Susan, Ed, and Mitch in contempt for separating him from his children in different ways.

Ed chose a girl to take to be the child he never had. Known as Shelley in Lotus, she was sexually abused by her original father, before being taken from him and left at the mercy of the care system. She started dealing for much the same reasons as Lewis did. To make a bit of money when she wasn’t old enough to work legally yet.

She is brutally raped and murdered one night in Lotus. The perpetrator was never found, but it was blamed on rampaging meth-heads who had gone in a crime spree throughout Alberta Province in the days preceding the tragic event. However, Shelley had always hinted to Darryl (Lewis’ new identity) that her father mistreated her. Whether that was a malfunction of her implant releasing memories of her biological father, or a malfunction of Ed’s releasing Peter’s old tendencies, is not certain.