Ian McDonald: Cyberabad Days

‘Kyle, you know, that game. Well…’

Not a but , a well.

‘Well, I know it’s real educational and a lot of people play it and enjoy it and get a lot out of it, but, it’s not really right. I mean, it’s not accurate. It claims it’s an evolution simulation, and it is as far as it goes. But if you think about it, really, it’s just following rules laid down by someone else. All that code was programmed by someone else; so really, it’s evolution inside a bigger framework that’s been deliberately designed. But they don’t tell you, Kyle, and that’s dishonest; it’s pretending to be something it’s not. And that’s why I don’t like it; because it isn’t honest about the truth, and I know that whatever I say, what you do with Salim is your thing, but I do think you’re not to play it here, in the house. And it’s good you’ve got a good friend here – I remember when Kelis was your age when we were in the Gulf, she had a really good friend, a Canadian girl – but it would be good if you had a few more friends from your own background. OK? Now, how about “Wrestle Smackdown” on cable?’

The referee had gone down with a head-butt to the nuts in the first thirty seconds so it was only when the decibel count exceeded the mundane Varanasi traffic roar that security heads-upped, guns-downed and came running. A guard-woman in full colour-smear combats and smart-visor locked her arms around Kyle and hauled him out of the steel-cage match into which the under-eleven practice had collapsed.

‘I’ll sue you I’ll sue the ass of you your children will end up living in a cardboard box, let go of me,’ Kyle yelled. The security woman hauled.

It was full fight, boys, girls, supporters, cheerleaders. At the bottom of the dog-pile, Striker Salim and Ozzie Ryan. Security hauled them off each other and returned the snoopy RAV drones that flocked to any unusual action to their stand-by roosts. Parameds rushed to the scene. There was blood, there were bruisings and grazings, there were torn clothes and black eyes. There were lots and lots of tears but no contusions, no concussions, no breaks.

Then the gitmoisation.

Coach Joe: OK, so want to tell me what that was about?

Ozzie Ryan: He started it

Striker Salim: Liar! You started it.

Coach Joe: I don’t care who started it; I want to know what all that was about.

Ozzie Ryan: He’s the liar. His people just lie all the time; they don’t have a word for the truth.

Striker Salim: Ah! Ah! That’s such a lie too.

Ozzie Ryan: See? You can’t trust them: he’s a spy for them, it’s true; before he came here they never got in, since he came there’s been things happening almost every day. He’s a spy and he’s telling them all ways to get in and kill us because he thinks we’re all animals and going to hell anyway.

Coach Joe: Jesus. Kyle; what happened?

Kyle Rubin: I don’t know, I didn’t see anything, I just heard this noise like and when I looked over they were on the ground tearing lumps out of each other.

Striker Salim: That is so not true… I cannot believe you said that. You were there, you heard what he said.

Kyle Rubin: I didn’t hear everything, I just heard like shouting…

Gitmoisation part two.

Kyle’s dad: Coach Joe called me, but I’m not going to bawl you out, I think there’s been enough of that already. I’m disappointed, but I’m not going to bawl you out. Just one thing: did Ryan call Salim something?

Kyle Rubin: (mumble.)

Kyle’s dad: Son, did Ryan use a racist term to Salim?

Kyle Rubin: (twisting foot.)

Kyle’s dad: I thought Salim was your friend. Your best friend. I think if someone had done something to my best friend, doesn’t matter who he is, what he is, I’d stand up for him.

Kyle Rubin: He said Salim was a diaper-head curry-nigger and they were all spies and Salim was just standing there so I went in there and popped him, Ryan I mean, and he just went for Salim, not me, and then everyone was piling on with Ryan and Salim at the bottom and they were all shouting curry-nigger-lover curry-nigger-lover at me and trying to get me too and then the security came in.

At the end of it two things were certain: soccer was suspended for one month, and when it did come back, Salim would not be playing, never would be again. Cantonment was not safe for Bharatis.

He was trapped, a traffic island castaway. Marooned on an oval of concrete in Varanasi’s never-ebbing torrent of traffic by the phatphat driver when he saw Kyle fiddling in his lap with pogs.

‘Ey, you, out here, get out, trying to cheat, damn gora.’

‘What here, but?’

Out onto this tiny, traffic island twenty centimetres in front of him twenty centimetres behind him, on one side a tall man in a white shirt and black pants, on the other a fat woman in a purple sari who smelled of dead rose, and the phatphat, the little yellow-and-black plastic bubble, looked/sounded like a hornet as it throbbed away into the terrifying traffic.

‘You can’t do this, my dad’s building this country!’

The man and the woman turned to stare. Stares everywhere, every instant from the moment he slipped out of the back of the Hi-Lux at the phatphat stand. They had been eager for his money then, Hey sir, hey sahib, good clean cab, fast fast, straight there no detours, very safe safest phatphat in Varanasi . How was he to know that the cheap, light cardboard pogs were only money inside the Cantonment? And now here he was on his traffic island, no way forward, no way back, no way through the constant movement of trucks, buses, cream-coloured Marutis, mopeds, phatphats, cycle-rickshaws, cows, everything roaring ringing hooting yelling as it tried to find its true way while avoiding everything else. People were walking through that, just stepping out in the belief that the traffic would steer around them; the man in the white shirt, there he went, the woman in the purple sari, Come on boy, come with me , he couldn’t, he daren’t, and there she went and now there were people piling up behind him, pushing him pushing pushing pushing him closer to the kerb, out in that killing traffic…

Then the phatphat came through the mayhem, klaxon buzzing, weaving a course of grace and chaos, sweeping in to the traffic island. The plastic door swivelled up and there, there, was Salim.

‘Come on come on.’

Kyle bounded in, the door scissored down and the driver hooted off into Varanasi’s storm of wheels.

‘Good thing I was looking for you,’ Salim said, tapping the lighthoek coiled behind his ear. ‘You can find anyone with these. What happened?’ Kyle showed him the Cantonment pogs. Salim’s eyes went wide. ‘You really haven’t ever been outside, have you?’

Escaping from Cantonment was easier than anything. Everyone knew they were only looking for people coming in, not going out, so all Kyle had to do was slip into the back of the pick-up while the driver bought a mochaccino to go at Tinneman’s. He even peeked out from under the tarpaulin as the inner gate closed because he wanted to see what the bomb damage was like. The robots had taken away all the broken masonry and metal spaghetti but he could see the steel reinforcing rods through the shattered concrete block work and the black scorch marks over the inner wall. It was so interesting and Kyle was staring so hard that he only realised he was out of Cantonment entirely, in the street, the alien street, when he saw the trucks, buses, cream-coloured Marutis, mopeds, phatphats, cycle-rickshaws, cows close behind the pick-up and felt the city roar surge over him.

‘So, where do you want to go then?’ Salim asked. His face was bright and eager to show Kyle his wonderful wonderful city. This was a Salim Kyle had never seen before; Salim not-in-Cantonment, Salim in-his-own-place, Salim-among-his-own-people. This Mansoori seemed alien to Kyle. He was not sure he liked him. ‘There’s theNewBharatSabhaholydeerofSarnath DoctorSampunananandcricketgroundBuddhiststupaRamnagar FortVishwanathTempleJantarMantar…’