The first HoloGraft Jamie got was ratchet. Oversized. Floated up the river by bandits the likes of which were everywhere since Poppim sat her fascist peach on Albion’s throne. The Final Deluge, shimmying past flood barriers and defences faster than dykes in the club used to shake their arses gushed up from the south coast, taking out Albion’s lesser citizens as Poppim called them. A righteous act. Funny how the waters didn’t touch her little crescent of a city, leaving the rest of the United Kingdom nothing but a disbanded archipelago. If there truly was a righteous smiting from Mother Nature, it’d have struck that bitch first.
Jamie shifted in the HoloGraft, shrugging the gargantuan shoulders over hers in an attempt to make them move when she did. It didn’t work. Newer models, so she’d heard, required nothing more than an implant, a quick prick into the skin and then bam! You’re a beefcake. Projected light beams and gauzy reflector shields made a near-inscrutable second skin. They even said you could combine it with neurotransmitters, bio chems, and souped-up temporary body mods to make it feel like you’re in that body. Imagine: strength, agility… you’d never be afraid to step outside your dug out.
But this. This piece-of-shit model was a leaden exoskeleton. Discontinued, out of date, and made specifically to fit someone way bigger than the five-six slender flesh prison Jamie wielded, Jamie hated it. Still, it was better than going out exposed.
* * *
The black-market trade travelled around what was left of the country with the ebb and flow of the new tidal system, shipping worthless junk from the city of Albion to the archipelago because up here, it wasn’t worthless. It’s funny what desperation does to the market. Once you get past the borderlands of northern Albion that huddle around the rest of it like a foetal mother crying into the engorged river, resources become scarce. And the demand for HoloGrafts, food – hell, anything – gets fatally high.
‘They’ve toys aplenty.’ Rhys’s heels thumped against the hollow steel of the old dryer on which he sat and in which they stored perishables. Squinting, he aimed his toothpick at Jamie. ‘Poppim lets new tech leak into the back alleys so’s she can test it on the proles.’
‘It’s already dystopia out there, Rhys. We don’t need your conspiracy theories.’ Jamie could feel sweat meandering down her spine, saturating the greying band of her underwear. She pressed the worn button on the vizor and the HoloGraft shuttered down. ‘And the last thing I need before I go on a perilous rekkie is your nonsense.’
There was a pause in Rhys’s rhythmic leg-swinging as he fired his toothpick at her. ‘Bitch.’ It sailed past the HoloGraft’s skein, causing the pixels to distort. ‘Imagine if we could get our hands on a new one though. All integrated image stabilisers and shit.’
Wearily, Jamie nodded. She didn’t find chasing impossible dreams a healthy habit.
‘How’d I look?’
Rhys slunk down from the dryer and assessed. ‘Like you’re a seven-foot muscle-bound white guy with a penchant for doling out whoop-ass. Hot.’
‘Great. Right, out the way; I never know how long I’ll get on the charge with this.’
Rhys’s nose wrinkled with concern. ‘Be-’
‘Careful. I know.’
He grinned. ‘I was going to say, be badass, but yeah, careful too.’
* * *
It doesn’t matter what you are, it matters who everyone thinks you are. And as Jamie picked her way past the rusted junk littering the perimeter of the western crags, she tried to exude unfuckwithable confidence. Eight months into life on the northern archipelago and the swagger didn’t come easy, but it was hella more convincing than Rhys’s mince. The toe of her HoloGraft’s frame chipped a jagged-toothed vase over the edge, its remnants shattering as gravity tumbled it onto the rocks beneath. How long would it take the ocean to smooth glass – or bones – into something treasurable?
As Jamie clambered down into the cove, sunset-bloodied waves lapped the cliffs. The tide was still ebbing, eddying past the rocks carrying flotsam and broken promises, but it wouldn’t be long before ebb turned to slack, then flood. Jamie had found others caught before, their HoloGrafts holding their bodies fast like birds in a cage, wedged into rocks as the water rose, then subsided. She shouldered the memories aside, checking the horizon for the smugglers’ fishing boat, seeing nothing.
Soon, it would be dark.
* * *
At last, the whine of an engine. Jamie stepped forward, sliding in the shingle, waving a HoloGrafted arm thick as a tree trunk. The boat was coming; today was a good day. There’d be food. And medicine. Maybe even toilet paper.
Under the HoloGraft, her brow furrowed as the boat failed to slow. Instead, it accelerated, veering away from the coastline. Shit.
Jamie froze as the fading whine of the engine was overtaken by the whirr of a drone above. She edged back under the shelter of the overhang as a patrol drone sped toward the retreating boat.
Wind deposited the peacekeepers’ words onto the beach. ‘…must’ve been meeting someone. Check…’
‘Psst!’
Jamie reached for the knife at her waist.
‘Over here!’
A canoe, scuffed and barely wider than Jamie’s HoloGrafted hips, carried two men, their pixels flickering with sea spray, paddles engulfed in meaty hands. The one in front gestured for Jamie to climb in as he held them off the rocks. In the stern, the other brandished his paddle like a weapon. The danger was clear, but so was the risk of being found by the patrol. Of being sent to a research facility. Jamie scrambled from shingle to boat, kneeling low and praying the peace keepers hadn’t spotted them.
The man in front turned to grin lopsidedly.
‘Let’s go,’ growled the second.
Swiftly, they paddled, keeping under the shadow of the crags until they were safe.
* * *
In the future, everyone is trans. That’s how Jamie saw it. And now here they were, three men in a boat slicing through waves, trying to present as the butchest most terrifyingly strong strongmen of the islands for the sake of their safety.
But why had they rescued her? Could they see she was weak? Was she about to become cannibal soup?
The one in front laid down their paddle. ‘The tide should pretty much take us from here. Just requires a bit of steering from Taz. I’m Elle.’
‘Elle! They could be anyone.’
Elle shifted so they could glower past Jamie at Taz, bracing their knees against the side wooden spars. ‘I told you, I got good vibes.’
Taz glared.
For Jamie, it was surreal. Best not to rock the literal or metaphorical boat. She introduced herself, wondering if the others felt the same protection of names which didn’t immediately reveal their gender.
‘We saw you loitering at the cove for pickup. We were gonna wait until you’d gone before making our own trades. Then the patrol came. Figured that even while its every ‘man’ for himself, there’s still enough Us versus Them camaraderie to save you. Taz didn’t agree, but… it’s my turn to lead the mission.’
Taz grunted, using their paddle like a rudder to manoeuvre the boat toward a stack of rocks until together, they brought the canoe side-on to the shore.
Jamie made to exit, but suddenly Taz’s knife was at her throat. Shit.
‘Taz!’
Taz and Jamie watched in disbelief as Elle flipped their HoloGraft off. Taz’s brow creased, but they dropped the knife, if somewhat reluctantly.
Jamie’s heart almost stopped. It’d been months since she’d seen – really seen – anyone but Rhys, and here this person was, observable and windswept and eyes bright with moonlight. And their voice…
‘Elle, she/her. Give us a hand getting the boat out and we’ll call it even.’
Jamie stepped out. Should she take her HoloGraft off too? No… That felt too… vulnerable.
They hauled the canoe up the shore into the mouth of a cave. Whoever Taz was, they were strong. As Jamie coiled the boat’s painter, the others whispered.
Eventually, Elle called over to Jamie, grinning. ‘Join us for dinner? Our guess is you were expecting food from that run.’
Jamie hesitated. This broke every rule she and Rhys had. Yet to her surprise, she found herself nodding her giant, scar-covered man head.
* * *
The cave gave way to an entire impossible-to-navigate-if-you-hadn’t-spent-the-last-several-months-calling-it-home tunnel system.
‘When the waters rose, most fled north, to the highlands. Logic said, the higher the altitude, the better your chances. What we didn’t know then, was that Poppim-’
‘That bitch.’
‘That bitch!’
‘-made a deal with corrupt gods; she keeps up a stream of sacrifices, they keep her patch of London, sorry, Albion above water. Well, it turns out science has its own weird ways, and being underground, even in the midst of rising sea levels, can be a damn good option. Ah! Here we are.’
It was magnificent.
The light must’ve been artificial but it felt like the sun, like real sun. Plants, fresh and gloriously green, dripped from almost every wall and flourished under small domes... Vegetables! Holy moly, Rhys would love this place.
‘Impressive, isn’t it.’ Elle folded her arms and smiled wolfishly. ‘It’s a collaborative effort, but luckily there’s some real nerds here because I don’t know a damn thing about hydro-watcha-call-it generators.’
‘Hydroelectric power.’ Curled up on a driftwood bench, blue hair willow-draped over a book, the group’s apparent chief nerd made Jamie’s heart skip. She flicked her eyes to Jamie, causing Jamie’s cheeks to redden, then nodded to a tunnel behind her, the golden glow of the sun-like light caressing the softened hollows of her face and the plump curves of her lips as she spoke, rendering her the picture of beauty. ‘There’s a natural flow nearby we’ve rigged.’ And certainly not like someone who had to fight for their daily bread, meds, and hygiene.
She walked over to where Jamie was standing and stuck out a – HoloGrafted ? – hand. ‘Hayle. Want to charge your ‘Graft before you head back?’ She gestured to a rack where several bulky exoskeletons hung, plugged into a buzz-emitting box. Rhys and Jamie were still scavenging old battery packs.
‘Yeah?’ Jamie managed. She powered down the HoloGraft and stepped awkwardly from its embrace. Elle placed it alongside the others, flashing a grin.
Taz returned with a large pot with water, which he dangled over the fire and then, with a sideways glance at Jamie, stood at the HoloGraft rack with his back to the others. He deactivated the muscle suit, taking care to keep himself covered as he replaced it and selected another, lighter, shinier HoloGraft. He put it on reverently, pulling it around himself with… joy? Then flipped the switch, and turned, transformed.
Hayle’s eyes never left Jamie’s.
Before, Taz had been styled as a threat. A big sign saying Fuck Off. Now, Taz was beautiful. Chiselled jaw, slim hips, high cheekbones and eyes which looked so alive, so in contrast to how Jamie had seen them earlier. Hayle started talking about how animals puff themselves up to avoid predators – “Much like we do on this resource-scarce archipelago where no help is coming, no law is stronger than survival…”.
‘There’s no need for a fight if you can convince your enemy you’re dangerous.’
But wasn’t she? Wasn’t this? HoloGrafting not for the sake of survival but for living?
‘They made this, too.’ Hayle gestured to her own ‘Graft, studying Jamie’s face. ‘We could make you one? Just show us.’ She rummaged in the drawers, then produced a sketchpad and pencil. ‘Whoever you are.’
Behind Jamie, Taz spoke, their voice rich, smooth. ‘We were waiting on new ‘Graft tech from the smugglers, but we still have enough of these midway suits to create a more… affirming one for you.’
What?
Jamie felt her chest tighten. ‘I need- I have to leave.’
She grabbed her HoloGraft, dragging it behind her as she stumbled from the cave. To think, people were starving – Rhys was starving – and people like Taz and Hayle and Elle were squandering resources on... Jamie stopped.
She thought of Rhys.
He thought of Rhys.
Jamie could go home and show Rhys, This is who I really am.
He turned back. Better to go home in his true skin than live another day in one that didn’t fit.
George Violet Parker is a writer, performer, facilitator, and Disabled and Queer Artist of the Year 2022. They co-founded Queer Stage Revolution, host Cabinet of Curiosities, and co-host Rebel Riot Poetry. Their performance history includes V&A Performance Festival, Edinburgh Fringe, Manchester Pride, Queer Britain, Pride in London, Fashion Week, and IDAHOBIT. They were a featured artist at 16 Days of Activism…, and a H&T slam winner. Their work appears in Mslexia, The F-Word, Financial Times, Bi+ Lines, Arachne Press, The Feminist Library, and more. Their novel was published by Reconnecting Rainbows Press. They received Arts Council-funding to write their second novel, in which world this short story is set!
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