5. Old Polaroid
Old Polaroid
Dylan
Dylan turned in bed, the sun blinding her even through the pink curtains. There was noise coming from the kitchen. What the hell is that racket? Is someone in my apartment? Pots clanging, low voices. Her heart quickened. Still in evening dress, she fumbled for her phone.
It was then that she heard a familiar voice.
“Honey, you better come and eat! Early bird catches the tofu block…”
The voice of a middle-aged man dealing with his hungover, nearly thirty-year-old daughter. Of course. Her dad had stayed the night, because he had a meeting on her side of town.
She got up grudgingly, sitting upright on her bed and sticking her feet into a soft pair of slippers. That groggy feeling dominated her mind and body.
The bedroom walls screamed pink, pastel colours peculiarly vibrant in the morning sunlight. Her window was ajar, cool breeze seeping in, gently moving the rose-gold wiring decor hanging beside it.
Her snakeskin coat was still on the floor.
Her desk was a burial site of synthpaper sticky notes, assorted drawing pens, half-finished sketches, and other remnants of productivity.
Next to the black wardrobe was her collection of shoes – the latest addition her black Dr. Martens, a recent acquisition to celebrate her equally recent job.
Through the fog, her mind stuck on the boy she’d met last night.
Isaak. No last name, or at least he hadn’t given her one.
He really seemed to be trying to maintain an air of mystery about him.
Tall and fit, just any old jock you could have a conversation with over a drink.
Of course, she knew exactly who he was. Isaak Powers, retired captain of the London Lazarus.
She’d even gone to watch their home games in Greenwich Stadium back in the day.
A sudden realisation.
Oh my goddess, Dylan, did you try to kiss him? The Isaak Powers? She berated herself, though she couldn’t decide what left her more frustrated: having tried to kiss this boy…
…or having failed.
Hadn’t he given her something?
She sat at her desk chair and picked up her coat, rifling through the pockets until she found his bizarre gift: a roll of shiny, golden duct tape.
She frowned, unable to think of any reason you’d give someone you just met in a club a roll of duct tape.
Dylan imagined him as a professional present wrapper in his early retirement, quick with the fold and sharp with the scissors – and don’t even ask about his decorative string skills.
Hmm. Maybe not.
Why carry it around and give it to me?
She pored over the golden roll, inspecting it. And then she noticed something. There were faces printed on the cardboard lining of the duct tape, blue-lined sketches of an androgynous person, a blank expression as if on a particularly boring commute.
As her eyes followed the series of front and profile portraits, a sort of odd comic strip unfolded. The blank face tore a piece of duct tape from a roll like this one, and then stuck it on the side of their head.
What the fuck?
Her mind filled with questions, a pang of mild anxiety hitting her chest.
What the fuck is this? Some kind of drug? An LSD derivative? Alt-ketamine? Why would this dude, even if sweet and charming, give this to her?
No. Chill, girl. Surely this couldn’t be that.
Isaak had been a gentleman last night. He didn’t seem like the kind of guy that would have handed her a drug blotter out of the blue.
“Dylan, come on! It’s getting cold!”
Forced to a hurried conclusion, she put the tape down to some odd fashion sense or underground new vogue. She tucked the idea of the tape into the back of her mind, and then tucked the actual tape into the back of a desk drawer.
Her father was laying breakfast on the table as she emerged from her room. “Morning!” he called.
The aroma of boiled tomatoes wafted across the room. Another meal made with loving abandon.
“That smells amazing,” Dylan said as she went to sit down.
“I appreciate the enthusiasm, Dee! Haven’t heard you that excited by breakfast since you were a kid. What did you get up to last night?”
She rolled her eyes. “You’re a guest in my house, Dad. I’m old enough not to have to tell you what I’ve been up to…”
Her dad frowned. “Touchy! Can’t an interested father be curious about his daughter’s— Ouch!” He’d burned his finger trying to remove the toast from the toaster. “Can you get this? Ain’t got enough hands!”
She made for the machine as four perfectly golden slices popped out. “Were you trying to pry them out before they were ready?”
“Trying to stop them from getting burnt!” He snatched the toast from her hands and laid them onto the plates. With a knife, he slathered the plant butter generously on the slices. “You came home late though, right?” her dad pressed.
She panicked slightly, taking too long to answer. Instead, she grinned at him, hoping to diffuse his questioning. She really didn’t want to talk about the boy she’d met, or how he’d given her some weird-looking duct tape.
“Did you have fun with Talia?” he said.
“Yeah, it was great!” She could own up to that much of the evening at least. “You know, girls’ night out. Well, I guess you wouldn’t know, actually…”
Her father smiled.
They sat down. Dylan was looking forward to this.
Usually her breakfast was a bottle of protein drink gulped down as she rushed to her train.
But when her dad visited her, he’d cook every morning.
Maybe she’d get used to waking up earlier and making time for a proper breakfast…
Or maybe as soon as her dad went back home, she’d go back to her mad-dash habits.
She heaped some of the tomatoes onto her spoon and tasted them before fishing out a smoked tofu cube, dripping in the sauce.
Her dad had stayed in the guest room. Well, Dylan called it a guest room – that’s what the estate agent had convinced her it was – but really it was storage room that happened to have a window.
Still, she was lucky to be able to afford this place.
Of course she’d had her parents help, but who didn’t these days?
Her dad switched on the news. A CGI Union Jack flag flapped in the wind over the whole sixty-inch screen.
It’s the anniversary of that fucking thing. I can’t.
It seemed like her dad felt the same way, letting out a grumble.
“How come you didn’t undo this when you had the chance?” she asked.
“What do you mean?”
The telly bathed the room in blue, white, and red, displaying the flag in all of its hyperreal three-dimensional glory – a model assembled of points, vertices, and polygons, with a simulation of wind making it flutter and wave in place.
Goddess Save the Queens.
“When the Apocalypse Revolt sat down with the tech CEOs and made the new rules… You could have reversed Brexit then, couldn’t you? Everything was on the table.”
He shrugged. “It was all so new. It felt like an impossible place to be in. We had to make some concessions.”
“Well, you could have moved to the Kingdom of Europe afterwards. At least then I’d be able to travel freely in all of it.” One of many reasons to resent the generations before her parents’. And even Apocalypse Revolt hadn’t fixed this one.
“We had to stay here and see the revolution through. One day you’ll understand.” Her dad laced his fingers together, rubbing the weathered knuckles.
Things were better since the immediate aftermath, she knew, but Brexit was still a reality. The problem with climate change didn’t change people’s hearts about a decision made more than forty years before.
The flag on screen was replaced by talking heads discussing the costs and benefits of Brexit over the years. How the UK’s independence from the EU made it its own Tech Kingdom after the Dark Year.
Bleurgh. That’s enough of that.
Dylan got up. “I’m off to work. Don’t celebrate Brexit too hard.” She headed back to her room to finish getting ready.
Her dad laughed, shouting after her, “You haven’t finished your brekkie yet! And you know we were always against Brexit!”
The city landscape flew by the train window as she made her way to work.
Among the various digital displays they passed were large banners that celebrated the recent re-election of Prime Minister Elizabeth Summers, leader of the Green Party.
She was popular, and her policies had helped push the doomsday clock quite far back.
Global warming was being tackled, all hands on deck.
Yet most understood that the power of the country’s Prime Minister was limited by the First Kingdom’s designs.
The multinational companies of the past had only engorged themselves over the years to the point that they had been, for some time now, grander than nations.
To their employees, their company was more important than their country. It was their Kingdom.
Dylan’s mind drifted from Summers’s giant face to Isaak’s. A silly smile curled her lips, but she caught herself before risking displaying emotion on public transport.
It was going to be another boring day of outreach at the office.
Dylan’s department was tasked with canvassing people to go vegan.
Lots had already done so, but a small vocal minority was keeping the farms running and animals were still being mistreated and slaughtered to accommodate this resistance.