neuron firing. Tweather gathers them together to create a shifting data map.’
‘So Tweather is like the consciousness of The Change?’
‘Yes. And Jacob’s Moskeetoze have a kind of consciousness, too, because they communicate.’
‘Huh.’ She took a drag off her joint. ‘So how come you know all this?’
‘I was an early investor,’ he said. ‘I gave him a loan for his first design. He sold that prototype to the General, but he’s building some new models, and now that I’m not working on the vaccine, I help out with his ideas. It’s not official but we’re kind of family—’
‘So you guys are a swarm?’ She smirked. ‘Do you share his consciousness?’
‘No,’ he snapped. ‘You don’t share consciousness with someone, you form one together. I can’t even know for sure that you have a consciousness, that we see the same—’
‘Ugh.’ She tipped her head back against the wall. ‘Not this again! Colours exist.’
‘We can never get outside our own minds. I can never know if my blue is your blue.’
‘But,’ she straddled him, ‘I know that you know that I know when you’re about to come.’
She crushed the spliff in an ashtray and ground her pelvis against his. The thin layers of underwear between them quickly came off and they were at it for the second time that morning. To prove her point, Naila stilled her hips when he was close and moved achingly slow, inching them towards a staggered climax: her first, then him.
She swung off him, pulled her panties back on and watched him dress, measuring how his body had changed since their first time in the UNZA hostels. He had filled out and his skin had cleared and tightened, as if it had just been waiting for the flesh to come.
He stepped into the bathroom. She lifted her laptop onto her bare thighs. She had missed her phone date because of that second bout but Tabitha’s icon was still up – videochat was her preferred retro-techno medium. Naila clicked on it and the app made its bleeps and bloops, like a cascade of underwater bubbles. The call failed – a bubble burst in a shower of coins – then Tabitha tried to call back and failed. They went back and forth for a while, easing into conversation through technological commiseration. Finally Tabitha glitched into view.
‘Sup, bitch,’ she sang. She was topless, doing her make-up, using the laptop camera as a mirror.
‘Hey girl hey.’
‘Howzit in the boondies?’
‘Dull as fuck. You coping without me?’
‘Meditating helps.’ Tabitha stood up and turned around. She was wearing midnight-blue yoga pants spangled with stars. Her constellated bum hitched left-right, then bounced twice.
‘Twerking is meditating now?’
‘Darling,’ Tabitha turned back to the screen and sat down, ‘it’s the absolute best way to decode the mysteries of the womb. Unleash yourself. You need to awaken your cunt.’
‘I just came twice in one hour. How’s that for awakening?’
‘Where is he?’ Tabitha’s eyes scanned around. ‘I know you didn’t do it yourself, you lazy bitch.’
‘Taking a piss.’
‘Hmm, good hygiene.’ Tabitha returned to applying her lipstick. ‘I hope he did you right, girl. It’s important to let only the best energy into your kundalini.’
‘You’re definitely using the word kundalini wrong.’
‘Wha’evs.’ Tabitha delicately kissed her lips inward, spreading the copper. She reached off-screen and grabbed a purple mug with white letters that read: DECOLONISE YOUR PUSSY.
‘Where did you get that?’ Naila laughed.
‘This?’ Tabitha sipped from the mug. ‘It’s turmeric tea from a Nubian village.’
Joseph came in, his hair a gleaming cap, his green eyes sparkling with damp. He leaned over and craned his head around the laptop screen to wave. ‘Hi, Tabs.’
‘Greetings, black b-b-b-brother,’ she replied, her voice laddering with the bad connection.
He straightened out of her view, cupped his hands under his chest and jiggled them with a questioning look.
‘Ya, she’s topless,’ Naila intoned. ‘Avert your eyes lest the sight of nipples blind you.’
He twirled his finger at his temple. Tabitha was in the middle of a story about Nubia.
‘…missed my flight from Cairo to Jo’burg and this Sufi tech guy was like, “Dude, go see the real pyramids.” So I took the train fifteen hours to this Nubian village where you can still drink Nile water and see the pyramids – the real ones, not the whitewashed ones. The lengths people will go to erase the blackness of our ruins! So anyway, I’m the only one in the pyramid tomb, in its, like, womb, right? So I start communing, do some yoga and shit, and right as I’m really getting into