The Replicant, the Mole & the Impostor, Part 8
Part 2—the conclusion—of a duology where a reality event held in a refugee camp on a Greek island unfolds in an utterly unexpected manner. There will be 50 parts. Chapter 7: February.
🌝🌞🌚
Inside the neo-homestead that Hind shares with others, oblivious to the discussion outside, Kassim sits at a desk, hands on the tabletop so he can better make the gestures that the app recognizes. He’s wearing his AR-gear that connects him with his favorite virtual care provider.
“Good morning, children,” the nanny avatar—whose looks are tailored to the child she’s speaking to—says. “Did you have your breakfast? Eating a healthy breakfast is very important.”
Kassim’s nanny avatar wears a purple hijab and a black Star Wars T-shirt. Kassim loves Star Wars—he still has the Baby Yoda, R2-D2 and BB-8 face masks donated to him during the coronavirus pandemic—and often roots for the dark side, even if he knows who the good ones are. What he really likes in Star Wars is its apparent lack of ambiguity—it’s clear who the bad and the good people are. Grey areas equal uncertainty and Kassim hates that.
Unfortunately, there is a lot of uncertainty in the real world, and his nanny avatar—he calls her Princess Leia, as the outlines of her “cinnamon buns” are clearly visible under her hijab—tries to prepare him for it.
“Unexpected things can happen in the real world,” the nanny avatar says, “but I think you can deal with it, if you really try. Remember that we—” her hands make a broad sweep, indicating her and all his friends, “will always be here, every morning and every evening. We are your anchor, your safe harbor.”
“Yes,” Kassim says. “Will you always be there?”
“We will,” the nanny avatar says, “like your mother. Your mother loves you, very much. Please help her by being a good boy.”
“I will,” Kassim says. “I am a good boy. I will never go to the dark side.” No matter how cool they sometimes are, he thinks.
“Very good,” the Navatar says, “then your mother will make sure that you can always attend these sessions, every morning and every evening. You like them, right?”
“I love them,” Kassim says, applauding in appreciation.
“Well, now it’s time for your exercises,” the Navatar says. “Are you ready?”
“Almost,” Kassim says as he gets up from behind the table and moves to the middle of the room—a space cleared by his mother Hind, who has entered the room to monitor her son during the exercises.
“Can you be the bear, Kassim?” the Navatar says. “The bear walking around searching for honey?”
Kassim doesn’t answer vocally, but gets on all fours, legs slightly bent. Then he walks—using both arms and legs—across the room, and smells for honey in every nook and cranny. He makes exactly twenty rounds until he declares that he found the beehive, full of honey, and pretends to lick it clean.
“Can you be a star, Kassim?” the Navatar says. “A shining star high in the sky?”
Kassim squats, feet flat, arms crossed on his chest. Then he jumps up, extending his arms and legs wide into an X, lands on his feet, and squats again. As he jumps up from the floor, his AR-glasses let him soar into a star-studded night sky, beautiful in its stark glory.
As he reaches the apex of his jump, bursts of color emit from him like fountains of multihued paint exploding in all directions, powered by a funny sound effect.
Jump, and it goes ka-pow as bursts of blue, cyan, turquoise, ultramarine, aquamarine, and the odd lemon explode away into the night, thick jets erupting into small streams and loose droplets. Kassim shrieks along with it, it’s so exciting.
He lands on his feet and jumps up again. Ka-pew! The bright discharge is of a clownish kind, this time: jets of bright yellow, pale white, scarlet, vermillion, and pastel rose detonate upon the scene, accompanied by Kassim’s squeal of delight.
Kassim bounces back down and up once more. Ka-purr it growls as now it’s the eruption of the Purple People Eater: Tyrian, royal and electric, violet, mauve, and even some cerulean and sapphire. Kassim’s howl descends into a rumble.
Kassim repeats it twenty times. Exactly twenty times, without missing a beat. He never miscounts. Ever.
And through it all, the AR-gear tailor-made for Kassim’s head never slips away, but stays put tightly, without hurting. Hind knows this, as she’s used her own AR-gear’s lidar to exactly measure her son’s head, and compensate its fitting—with mini-servos inside its visor adapting its seal as necessary—as the kid grows. She blinks away a few tears as her son exercises—and the AR-app allows her to see what her son is experiencing—because when he’s happy, she’s happy.
“Can you be an airplane, Kassim,” the Navatar says, “with rotating propellers that pull you through the sky?”
“Oh yeah,” Kassim says, enthusiastically, as he spreads his legs, feet a shoulder-width apart, and extends his arms straight out to the side at shoulder height. Then he starts making small circles with his arms, as—inadvertently—he voices vroom, vroom sounds to announce his readiness for takeoff. In his AR-world, he appears to be standing on a runway.
As the circles he makes with his hands become bigger, the Kassim airplane virtually speeds up and thunders down the runway, before taking off as his whole body shivers from excitement. He climbs into the sky, and sees other children—he knows each and every one by name—and shouts out to them as they soar around each other, through clouds and around flocks of the most beautiful birds known to humanity.
He knows—like all his friends—that he’s only allowed twenty rounds and he tries to make the most of it, looping with his flymates, swooping with his feathered friends, not stooping down to gravity, not yet. Nevertheless, his count is true and after the twentieth runaround, he heads back to the runway, obediently, knowing by now how to control his flight by the speed, direction and radius of his arm circles, and makes a perfect landing.
Just in time, because he’s both exhilarated and exhausted. “Well done,” the Navatar says, clapping her hands in delight. “You’re a good boy. I’m so proud of you.” The Navatar with the cinnamon buns treats him to her warmest smile. It’s Kassim’s highlight of the day: a compliment from Princess Leia.
“See you tomorrow?” She says.
“Yes,” Kassim answers, as if that was ever in doubt.
“Now take off your AR-gear and go to your mother,” the Navatar says as she logs out.
Reluctantly, Kassim takes off his AR-gear. “Mama,” he says, “can I go to the playground? To play with my friends?”
“After tea,” Hind says, “and you have to be back at three.”
“Why?” Kassim is a little bit shocked, as this is outside his normal regime.
“It’s for something wonderful,” Hind says, trying to break the change in routine as gently as she can, “school.”
“But they say school is boring,” Kassim protests, as he does with anything that changes his daily rhythm.
“But not this one,” Hind says, “it’s the coolest school there is, given by Dewi.”
“One of the candidates?” Kassim says. “Mum, you’re so cool. You know Katja and Olga.”
“And you will come to know Dewi,” Hind says as she gently hugs him, “if you go to school.”
Kassim thinks it over. “I will try,” he eventually decides, “but is this only once?”
“No,” Hind says quickly, sensing her chance, “school is every day at three o’clock.”
“Okay,” Kassim says, “I’ll try. Can I go to the playground now?”
“First a cup of tea and a cookie,” Hind says, “as you’ve been exercising so hard. Then I’ll bring you.”
—In the News—
In the rapidly expanding world of AR-space, users are reporting a kind of virtual graffiti emblazoned on the walls and façades of several of the world’s biggest pharmaceutical companies. The graffiti is not visible in the real world, only when people are using their—increasingly popular—AR-glasses.
Examples of the graffiti are:
“Take responsibility for using refugees as guinea pigs in legal limbo areas, Beaker.”
“Fayser distributes experimental medicines to refugees, then lets them rot as they develop horrible side-effects.”
“Compensate the victims of your untested drugs in the Greek refugee camps, Rorschach.”
Yet, even though the AR-graffiti is only visible in AR-space, the IT teams of the Big Pharma companies have not been able to erase them. The endurance of these messages in what is considered an ethereal realm has both garnered much sympathy for its cause and huge admiration for its execution.
As reported here, here, and here, pharmaceutical companies are suspected of delivering untested drugs to refugees in several camps on the Greek islands, with greatly mixed results. Some refugees seem to have benefitted from them, while others have suffered severe side effects, including death. Because the refugees in the camps have no clear legal status, they are unable to pursue lawsuits against the pharmaceutical companies.
Beaker, Fayser and Rorschach have been approached for comment, but we have not received any replies as of this date. Furthermore, we are receiving reports that the offices and laboratories of other pharmaceutical companies are also experiencing similar so-called AR-graffiti in growing numbers. On top of that, several NGOs like Amnesty International, Greenpeace, and even Médecins Sans Frontières have been calling for a boycott of these companies for non-essential medicines, stating that “during the COVID-19 crisis Big Pharma took extra care not to rush the testing of vaccines, which was a step in the right direction. Unfortunately, some of them have reverted to their pre-coronavirus selves; that is, profit before ethics. We condemn any pharmaceutical company that uses defenseless refugees as their guinea pigs.”
Josette Barkham reporting for The Guardian-AR;
Author’s note: the Ides of March still continue for me personally, and the haruspex foretells that they will continue until April. Yet I carry on, hoping for better times. Many thanks for reading, and even more for your suppport!