Pigs get fat and hogs get slaughtered

I would have sworn we had traveled back in time. Coming from Utah, the hallways of SLC International showed the wear from the enormous humanity that spilled through its terminals, but they still gave a solid feel of established civilization. Through a series of flights and layovers, each bringing closer to Maputo in increasingly smaller craft and ports. Finally arriving at the terminal in Maputo, it felt like a makeshift frontier port where the efforts toward professionalism had long been abandoned. I could tell it had been a busy hub somewhere in the past. But that polish was now gone.

We landed late in the day, but the sun was in full shine, or well above the horizon. I could count the times I had been out in full shine on one hand. Stepping from the plane, we climbed down the staircase to the sandy tarmac. It was all very exciting, I had never set foot on an actual tarmac before. I didn’t even elbow T-roy back into the cabin to steal a few extra moments to myself when he craned his neck around me at the door. The excitement was quickly chased away by the punishing heat that swept up with the dust into our faces by a gust from the slowing engines. My joints were wet with sweat before we even reached the rows of large glass double doors. The doors no longer shut automatically and the sand blew freely into the corridor, making the building feel like a trespass on the coastal desert. Stepping into the foyer, the air was hot and dry as a furnace drafting across my face, aggravated further by the full-body sun suits that we had to wear to be outside for any length of time. The sounds here were exciting too. The engines of the taxis and busses passing through the terminal ramp answered to no laws of exhaust or noise controls, and I distinctly recall the sounds of livestock from the streets outside. I had heard these sounds before, isolated and electronically produced from my visys, but never live and unsolicited, surrounding me. The people spoke with a musical cadence, and made no efforts to hush their conversations to our passing. The voices were all around me, and the newness of it filled my ears.

It made me laugh, mostly to myself, to see Dad so out of control. We didn’t speak the language or know anyone here so his usual calm and collected attitude dissipated about two sentences into his first conversation with a local. He had set everything up before we left home, but that plan was now being challenged by the reality of Maputo.

Frequent use of the words "Namaacha", “Swaziland” and "Sub 42" did earn looks of understanding that together, with copious amounts of our savings, eventually invoked the English response “Hellmouth?” from a thickly bearded man. The deep timbre of his voice actually vibrated something inside me.

“Sub 42,” Dad repeated encouragingly and pointed to the floor. “Sub 42. In Swaziland”. Are you Namaacha?” Dad’s heart rate seemed to slow a step.

The dark-skinned man nodded calmly, “Namaacha Tours. I am Tau. You are the American, Phillip.” His lips pulled tighter across his face in a genuine smile to put Dad at ease.

Breathing a large sigh of relief, “Oh, thank goodness. I was getting really worried that we had missed something,” Dad was talking as he turned to wave us towards the bus.

I stared at Tau. The whites of his eyes, or at least what should have been white was a fleshy yellow/brown and crisscrossed by veins. He held my glance as I stared at his. “Is this what the stalker’s eyes looked like?” I thought to myself. His glance narrowed and pinched tight until only the dark black of his iris remained, pushing me to turn away.

A rickety cab over engine bus arrived to Tau’s signal who then made a similar gesture to us to get in the back of the bus. He struck me as harsh and hurried now, causing me to freeze, holding my carry-on tight to my chest. After an awkward pause, he noticed my reluctance and beamed a wide smile revealing a motley scattering of teeth that seemed to have been cleaned with the same care and effort as the airport terminal behind us. I’m not sure if it was the smile or the teeth that urged me to action, but I jumped in the bus and tucked in closely between Mom and Dad, leaving just enough room for T-roy to squeeze in uncomfortably.

Another man boarded after us, alone and wearing a sweat-stained button-up collared shirt and carrying a jacket in this ridiculous heat. Mr. Jacket was also not a local and must have been headed to the substation. This bus had only one destination, Sub 42 in Swaziland.

The bus was small with only 4 rows of vinyl seats, and everyone kept their luggage close. The floor was dirty and it vibrated with a tickling rhythm from the combustion engine. I had seen some vehicles with combustion engines in movies, but I hadn’t actually sat in one before. The curiosity fading quickly as the smell and heat emanating from the floor caught my attention. I looked at Mom with a raised eyebrow, caught somewhere between amazement and disbelief.

“Yeah, petrol engines,” she said quietly with a polite smile.

Finally, a young couple boarded. The man couldn’t have been more than 20 and she was younger. Our crew was complete and we pulled away from the terminal. The bus shaking mightily as we picked up speed.

Passing through a series of increasingly larger lanes, we were bussed from the crowded stinking airport and up along the beautiful Mozambique Coast. I was actually thankful to be passing this way during the daytime. The ocean waters were light blue and crystal clear. “This might not be so bad after all,” I thought to myself. I would have completely missed it in a night crossing. My seedling of hope withered over the next few hours as the coast faded and we headed inland towards the steppes of the mountains and the terrain transitioned rather abruptly from coastal sands to grasslands and craggy valleys jutting up from the hillsides. I traced the route on my vysis. Dad said I shouldn’t use it much. The electric battery could run for about a day, but the hydrogen cell could keep them going for well over a week. But out here in the land of petrol engines, who knew when we’d get access to hydrogen cells again. The constant swaying of the bus and drone of the noisy petrol engine rocked me slowly to sleep.

***

I was roused awake by the stillness of the bus. Everyone else was looking rather tensely out of the driver’s side window. T-roy was still blissfully snoring away clutching his bag like a stuffed animal. We were at a checkpoint, where a stern-looking soldier was raising his voice excitedly. He wore a beret and camo fatigues and his skin was so dark it could have been deep purple. His teeth and eyes flashed bright white against the matte of his skin.

“This is probably the border guard. I was told they can be quite obstinate about travelers to the substation. Don’t worry, the travel guide said it’s all for show,” Dad put his hand on my shoulder.

Our bus driver replied calmly in a language I didn’t know, which had the effect of driving the guard into a near rage. Turning back to us, “He say we need to pay the entry fee to get through his border.” The driver held out his hand expectantly and lazily opened his eyes slightly wider, clearly a gesture for us to fund the bribe.

Each of the passenger groups dug through their belongings and came up with more cash and placed it in his hand. Some mumblings of disagreement became audible from the young couple.

The bus driver turned unhurried to the guard and handed over the haphazard stack of cash.

This exasperated the guard into a frenzy of agitation. He slapped the money out of the driver’s hand (into the guard post) and picked up his rifle. His voice escalated to a sense of urgency that sent panic through our bus as he continued railing in a language we didn’t understand. He came out of the post and marched hurriedly over to the door of the bus with this rifle swung over his shoulder. The driver had opened the door before the guard had emerged from the post.

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His voice continued to trill up and escalate the intensity as he stomped onto the little bus which swayed with each boot fall. T-roy, startled awake, flung his backpack across the van narrowly missing an open window. It landed with a dull thud as the guard paused ever so slightly to take an inventory of the occupants, before locking eyes with the single guy. Mr. Jacket didn’t hesitate before handing over all the contents of his wallet, a fistful of bills.

Clinching his jaw, but seemingly satisfied, the guard turned to the next in line, the young couple sitting ahead of us. The young man tried to handle himself calmly, while not looking the soldier in the eye. Dad was pulling the remaining cash out of his wallet. I knew he had another wallet, and so did mom, but he only carried this one for people to see. The soldier eyed the wad of cash the young man had put in his hand. Both of the young couple were staring down at the seat in front of them, not daring to look up. The soldier lingered there for a minute looking at the back of the girl's neck and shoulders. A sinister smirk danced across his face as he turned to Dad, who already had the outstretched fist of cash and allowed the inside of his show wallet to hang open and empty.

The soldier’s eyes cut to T-roy and then back to me. They paused there, raising slightly. He then turned back to the young bride and shouted something in Swazi.

The bus driver translated, never looking back from the front windshield, “He say she go with him”.

The young husband looked up timidly to find the guard motioning towards his bride. Triggered, the young man swelled up, being roughly half the guards size and even less his equal in combat.

Instantly cocking the rifle and leveling the gun at the man, the guards white teeth shown beneath the sinister smirk now widening to a smile. The bride had begun screaming sobbing pleas at the soldier. The chaos lurched towards a crescendo.

“Noooooooooooo!!!!!” the volume of the guttural yell that bellowed from the back of the bus startled everybody. Even the guard was shaken and lost focus on his target. Mom ripped open a secret pocket on her sunsuit and ripped out her wedding ring. Sparkling gold and, now what I understand to be a massive diamond flashed in the air. To me, it had just been her wedding ring all the years till now, commonplace. But to see it in this setting, and the attention it commanded, showed me the value of Dad’s gift to her.

“No lady, he take you too!” the bus driver said in English, again without turning around.

“Take this, it’s all we have, and leave!” Mom shouted at the guard.

His eyes cut back to the young bride and then back to the diamond. Another small cab over engine bus appeared trailing dust down the road towards us. They’d be here in a few minutes. The guard looked over us to the next group he would extort and snatched the diamond from mom’s hand. He collected most of the cash he could grab quickly, stuffed it in the cargo pocket on the slide of his thigh, and rushed back to his post. The bus swayed as his weight departed.

“Sylvi?” Dad said quietly asking if she was ok. Mom sat down in disgust and anger and roughly wiped the tears from her cheeks.

The border gate opened and the guard hurriedly waved us through. He wanted us long gone before the next customers arrived. I felt so ashamed, just sitting there and riding away, knowing what that guard would do to the approaching van.

“All for show?” she scoffed under her breath, never turning to look at Dad. T-roy sheepishly scampered over and grabbed his bag off the floor.

***

A couple of hours later, under the dim yellow halo of light from our bus, we came to a rocking stop under squealing brakes. The sun was below the horizon, but dusk still showed the dense encampment of tents surrounding the parking lot. The whole trip from the airport probably took about 5 and a half hours, including the border stop, but it felt like we had traveled a very very long way under the punishment of the bus.

“We arrive!” The driver proclaimed, then opened the door without consideration for his passengers, and stepped down from the bus, and walked towards a path leading between two larger tents into the shadows. Mr. Jacket scrambled to follow him, causing the driver to turn around and point toward a small tent on the edge of the parking lot. “You, check-in,” he explained. Then he turned and disappeared into the shadows, leaving us to meander wearily towards the “new arrivals” tent.

A humanoid bot stood behind a desk labeled, “concierge.” There was obviously a place on the desk designed for us to lay our visys. The group all eyed each other suspiciously. The young bride sat down in a row of chairs to adjust her shoes.

“Alright then!” I laid my visys down on the pad without even looking to my parents for permission.

“Good evening…Sam. My records indicate that you are a minor in this facility and must be accompanied by an adult. Do you have an …,” I ripped my visys off and gave a “Aren’t you so happy with yourself?” leer towards Dad.

He laid his visys on the pad, and the voice picked up without a beat, “good evening Phillip. It’s so good to have you join us.” The visys has dozens of factors to validate our authentication. Nothing as crude as a fingerprint or iris scan would suffice for the simplest of transactions. Our fingerprints, iris scans, heartbeat signature, bio scans of our breath, cadence of movement, voice, recent behavioral history and many more factors are compiled together to produce a probability of identity. The more important the transaction, the higher the probability required to authenticate an identity. Dad blew into a tube and then entered a long series of code into his visys. The probability stood at 83%, which was high enough to draw up to $5,000 from a bank back home.

“Please continue, Phillip. We much reach 95% for your entry confirmation,” the droid continued.

Dad then placed his hand on a plam rest of the droid’s counter, and his finger in the groove that drew a minuscule blood sample throgh a 0.1 mm needle so small the skin closes without much of a sensation at all, like a mosquito bite without the itching afterward. Taken together with his PulseOx and heart-rate and positive genetic identity and probability trail of his whereabouts and behavior for the last several hours all combined to provide a probability of 97% that this was in fact, Phillip James Hulse, my Dad. That was pretty solid. An identity of over 98% requires a human identity notary. The machines still couldn’t get that last 2%.

The rest of us followed, each needing to reach 95% convergence of factors to confirm our identities. The others were kind enough to let our family all go first and stick together. Each of our groups was shown to different tents as space allowed. It was fully dark by the time we reached our tent and they had already returned from eating breakfast.

“Here you go, hon,” an American woman brought up a cloth bag with some fresh food from dinner. “We always take one, the extra food…for the unexpected guest,” she said with a genuine smile and motioned the sack towards us. “There is always an unexpected guest.” She gave me a wink.

“Expectantly unexpected?” I shot back with a grin. Knowing that we had something to eat did a great deal to improve my mood.

“Yes, something like that, sweetheart. My name is Mel,” she said and handed the contents of the cloth sack over to Mom. “There are four of you?” she checked. With Mom’s nod, she walked us over to a batch of empty bunks grouped together. “We have a group for you here, you can all stay together. There aren’t a lot of ‘rules’. We are each here for our turn at processing and commitment.”

“Commitment?” I asked.

“Yes, honey,” her southern draw would have been patronizing from anyone else, but she carried it off beautifully. “You commit to putting up all of your Earthly assets in exchange for the journey into the substation. There’s a period of time before they are exchanged, but you must commit them, and undergo the screening and background checks before you can move on to the next station.

“In any case, most of the rules don’t need explaining. Don’t hurt people, in all of its forms. Respect each other and learn to get along.”

Mel made it all sound so simple, and we were exhausted. Mom, Dad, T-roy and I all shared the sack of fruits, breads, and some processed meals and water. I would have turned my nose up at this food a month ago, but it was perfect tonight. The bunks were hard but clean and I laid there for a while, listening to the sounds coming through the thin barrier between me and the night as camp aroused from sleep. They were night stalkers…we were stalkers, and the lights came on across the complex and lit our tent like a paper lantern.

“What are you working on, Dad?” I asked with a yawn. It was time to get up, but I was exhausted.

“I’m updating the travel advisory. That border guard was not all bluster and show. He’s getting greedy and someone is going to get hurt,” he spoke while typing hurriedly into his visys. “Pigs get fat and Hogs get slaughtered!”