label and she wore no name badge – Naila wondered if she even had an official job title – but everyone at the Reg Office seemed to accept Miss Cookie’s dominion as if it were the sky itself.
Today she was wearing white flats and a faded teal polyester trouser suit, her spectacles sitting on the top of her head like a modernist tiara. As she neared, the knot in the queue loosened and explanations erupted. Miss Cookie patted the air until everyone quieted.
‘This man is just doing his job.’ She pointed at the guard, who nodded vigorously. ‘And you do not need to insult people, Mrs…?’
‘Makupa,’ said the Chinese woman, lifting her chin.
‘Oh-oh? You see.’ Miss Cookie turned to the guard. ‘She even has a Zambian husband. You have come for registration, Mrs Makupa?’
‘Eh-eh.’ The woman reached into her bumbag. ‘My beth setifiket is samweya heeya.’
Miss Cookie took the wrinkled sheet and wrangled her glasses down, Caucasianing her nose. ‘Mmm! Born in Siavonga! So Mrs Makupa, do you already have a Reg Card?’
‘It expired and they did not let me vote! Nexti time,’ she raised a finger, ‘it will be different.’
‘Yes, one man, one vote. That is very important,’ said Miss Cookie. ‘We are sending renewals to Miss Naila here for our new electronical programme.’ Miss Cookie put her hand on the woman’s back to guide her towards the office. But Mrs Makupa planted her feet.
‘Why am I being singode out? Where is the big bwana?’
Naila winced. Miss Cookie let her hand fall from Mrs Makupa’s back and rose to her full height. She swung her glasses back up to the top of her head, like a queen crowning herself.
‘I am Nkuka Mwamba,’ she said. ‘I am the bwana. This young lady will be beading you.’
‘Beating me?’ Mrs Makupa squealed.
‘I thought government doesn’t want us to call it beading?’ Naila whispered to her boss as the three of them proceeded to Electronical Administration. Miss Cookie shot her an evil look and huffed off to her dungeon.
Naila led Mrs Makupa – ‘Am Mai, you can call me Mai’ – inside the office and offered her a seat. Then she stupefied her by flooding her with the technicalities of the beading process and the details of the consent form. Mai listened closely and asked just one question: ‘It is flee?’
Naila nodded and unlocked the cabinet and pulled out the Digit-All beading equipment. She tugged her rubber gloves on and unwrapped the hygienic syringe, peppering Mai with jokes and chitchat along the way to distract her. Mai became almost girlish, bantering back, giggling at Naila’s snark about the guard’s stinky uniform. They were both still laughing when the blood began to spray.
‘I’m so sorry!’ Naila pressed a square gauze firmly to the finger. ‘I’ve never hit a vein.’
Mai was curiously calm, given her tantrum in the queue. ‘It is fine,’ she sighed. ‘Am used to blood. I wek at a fishery.’
* * *
‘So we know,’ Joseph said as Naila rolled over to light a post-coital spliff, ‘that everything that goes on in the mind is the result of a physical process.’
They were in her Ibex Hill flat. He was explaining how Jacob’s Moskeetoze worked.
‘Light waves hit the lens of the eye, sonic waves hit the eardrum, texture agitates skin cells. Neurons themselves transmit biochemical signals that may derive from the genetic code of an ancient virus…Anyway, most of our mental activity is made up of the actual movements of physical things. But human consciousness isn’t physical. It can’t be measured.’
‘Not even like IQ or with a CT scan or whatever?’
‘No, IQ measures intelligence, not consciousness – and all it really tests is your ability to take tests, plus it has a long history of racial bias. I thought you would have learned about that—’
‘Ya, whatever. Okay so, consciousness is what then?’ She flicked ash off her tit.
‘It’s something beyond the physical – it’s a meta-phenomenon. So if the physical activities of the mind are like insects, then consciousness is the swarm. Or maybe the hum that—’
‘Oh, like Tabitha’s job at Tweather. Their tag line is something like “A Hive for The Change”.’
‘Yes, a hive mind is the same concept. We used to use satellite imagery and meteorology to do the weather before The Change. But now that global warming has made the weather so erratic, it’s more efficient for us to get live updates. So, we might say each person’s tweet about the weather wherever they’re standing in the world is like one