Child Garden Read Free Page A

viruses had been derived from herpes and implanted DNA directly into nerve cells. Others were retroviruses and took over the DNA of the brain, importing information and imagery. Candy, they were called, because the nucleic acids of their genes were coated in sugar and phosphates. They were protected against genetic damage, mutation. People said that Candy was perfectly safe.
    Milena did not believe them. Candy had nearly killed her. All through her childhood, she had been resistant to the viruses. There was something in her which fought them. Then, at ten years old, she had been given one final massive dose, and was so seared by fever that she had nearly died. She emerged with encyclopaedic knowledge and several useful calculating facilities. What other damage had the viruses done?
    Milena tested herself. Once, she tried to steal an apple from a market stall. It was run, as so many things were in those days, by a child. When Milena's hand touched the apple's dappled skin, she had thought of what it cost the boy to grow the apples and haul them to market and how he had to do all this in his spare time. She could not do it, she could not make herself steal. Was that because of the virus? Was it part of herself? She could not be sure.
    There was one virus to which Milena knew she had been immune. There was one thing at least that she was sure was part of herself. There was no ignoring the yearning in her heart for love, the love of another woman.
    This was a semiological product of late period capitalism. So the Party said. Milena suffered, apparently, from Bad Grammar. Bad deep grammar, but grammar nonetheless. This made Milena angry. What late period capitalism? Where? It had been nearly one hundred years since the Revolution!
    She was angry and that frightened her. Anger was dangerous. Anger had killed her father. He had been given so many viruses to cure him of it that he had died of fever. Milena was certain that one day soon, the Party would try to cure her, too, of anger, of being herself. Milena lived in fear.
     
     
    Everyone was Read at ten years old, by the Party. It was part of their democratic rights. Because of advances in medicine, representative democracy had been replaced by something more direct. People were Read, and models were made of their personalities. These models joined the government, to be consulted. The government was called the Consensus. It was a product of late period socialism. Everyone was a part of the Consensus, except Milena.
    Milena had not been Read. She had been too ill with viruses at ten years old to be Read. Her personality was still in flux; a Reading would have been meaningless. She had not been Read, but she had been Placed as an adult. Would they remember, soon? When she was Read, her Bad Grammar and her petty crimes would be discovered. And then, as a matter of social hygiene, she would be made ill, in order to cure her.
    Milena was frightened of dying when it happened, like her father. Had he been resistant as well? Her father had died, in Eastern Europe, and her mother had fled with Milena to England, where the diseases were milder. Then she too had died, and Milena had grown up as an orphan in a foreign land.
    She had grown up with a head full of theatrical visions. She loved the mechanics of rotating stages, of puppets, of painted flats being raised and lowered. She loved the cumbersome, stinking alcohol lights that blazed with brightness found only in theatre. She thought about such things as the effect of alternating bands of white and yellow light cast over a white, white stage. She loved light. She toyed with hazy ideas of productions that consisted only of light. No people.
    At ten years old, Milena had been Placed for work in the theatre, as an actress. This was a mistake. Milena was a terrible actress. There was something unbending in her that refused to mimic other people: she was always herself. She was doomed always to fight to stay herself.
     
     
    Most mornings, a