Chapter Thirteen
The last pureblood
No sooner had Julie finished her story than there was an urgent knocking at the door and in burst Auntie Bessie.
“Thank goodness, I thought I would find you both here. I’ve been looking everywhere for you two,” Auntie Bessie huffed.
Auntie Bessie paused to take in the scene before her. Julie lay in Chantel’s arms on the bed; her face stained with tears as Chantel consolingly stroked her hair. Auntie Bessie’s excited grin immediately disappeared.
“Why so sad?” queried Auntie Bessie. “Cheer up now Julie dear. You’ve been back on the ship for all of a day and you’re already bawling your eyes out. Surely coming home is not that awful is it?”
Julie managed to muster a smile from behind her reddened eyes.
“Auntie Bessie,” she laughed. “You know how happy I am to see you again. Its other things on this ship that bother me.”
“Julie,” Auntie Bessie sighed, joining Julie and Chantel on the bed. “You’re like a daughter to me you know that don’t you.”
Julie gave Auntie Bessie a reassuring hug in agreement.
“I wasn’t running away from you when I left last time Auntie Bessie,” Julie sobbed. “It was so hard to leave you.”
“There, there dear,” Auntie Bessie comforted Julie. “No need to explain. I understand your reasons completely. I know how difficult Condor can be at times and I know you two have had your differences. He does care for you though Julie, body and soul.”
Julie let out a small sob in recognition of Condor’s affection and confirmation that his sentiments had always, and were still, entirely reciprocated. Auntie Bessie sat up suddenly, becoming acutely aware of Chantel’s presence and rebounded back into her usual maternal composure. Chantel observed the dynamic between Julie and her adopted mother with interest. Since Brad had died, the relationship between Chantel and her own mother had cooled significantly. Her main contact with her mother in recent years had been the laboured communicator conversations where she spent the entire time desperately scrounging for topics of conversation. The interchange between Julie and Auntie Bessie reminded Chantel of a time when her mother had been just as warm and familial. That was before the shadow of Brad’s death began to linger over the family like a grief-stricken ghost.
“Now, then. The reason I came to find you both is that I actually had something to ask Chantel,” Auntie Bessie explained nervously.
Chantel perked up unexpectedly. For some reason she was oddly drawn to the overbearing Auntie Bessie and eager to impress her. Auntie Bessie looked her square in the eye letting Chantel know that she had a serious side that was not to be messed with.
“Chantel, I scanned the contents of the intellectual property files that Condor extracted from your hard drive. You are aware that you have a movie called Soul on your hard drive. Are you not?”
Chantel was taken back. For some reason she had forgotten that the movie with the glitch had also been extracted by Condor and that he and his crew now had access to the footage showing the purebloods. Chantel nodded.
“Are you aware of any irregularities experienced with this movie?” Auntie Bessie probed.
Chantel hesitated for a moment, before deciding that it was better to confess rather than deny the information she had at hand. She closed her eyes for a moment, then blurted out her story.
“I know what you’re referring to. You must be wondering about the purebloods. There’s a glitch on the movie Soul that shows footage of purebloods. That’s why Beren and I made this journey to the south-western quadrant. That’s why we hired Julie to take us north to Lagos from Cape Town. We were chasing the purebloods. The whole idea of leaving our homes on this jaunt across the world seems crazy now, come to think of it. But the glitch appeared on the movie I downloaded, which I then showed to Beren. Once an idea gets into Beren’s head, it’s hard to persuade him otherwise. He became obsessed with the footage of the purebloods and we decided to come all the way out here to find them. Based on the coordinates in the glitch, we think they are in a place that used to be called Freetown. It’s in an area north of here that’s now in the wasteland zone; a part of the world we know nothing about. There are no traces of this place in any of the webpages on the Pangaea mainframe that I could find. From the books that Beren read while he was in—uh, university, he said the place was founded as a city for emancipated slaves, who were—”
Chantel stopped abruptly, realising that neither Julie nor Auntie Bessie would know about the world’s history of slavery. Any remnants of information remaining from that time, over five hundred years ago, would have been wiped out in the great mainframe disaster long ago. She decided that this was information they did not need to know for the moment.
“Step back a minute Chantel,” Auntie Bessie commanded. “I’ve seen what’s on the glitch. There’s many, many purebloods shown in the footage. You think they are all in this place, this Freetown?”
Chantel shrugged her shoulders.
“That’s why we were going there to find out. Back in the south eastern quadrant, in Sydney anyway, the rumour is that all the purebloods are extinct…that there’s just no more of them anymore on the face of the earth. When Beren and I saw this, when we saw what was on the glitch, we just had to find out for ourselves.”
Auntie Bessie raised her eyebrow quizzically.
“What if I told you that there is one pureblood I can vouch for…I thought he was the last one left in this world, but if it turns out there are more…”
Julie and Chantel each gave Auntie Bessie a stunned look and this time it was Julie that broke the silence.
“Auntie Bessie, but how do you even know of the existence of any purebloods. Of all the places we’ve been in the world, we haven’t seen any real purebloods, even in the places where we thought they would be.”
Auntie Bessie stammered slightly before continuing.
“Julie, I know you’ve always asked me about my life in the wasteland zone. Well…I haven’t been entirely honest with you. There’s more to my past life than I told you before. We lived in a community in the wasteland zone, as you know. Our little band of people was like a breakaway group from civilisation. We were completely sustainable in the wasteland zone. We built our own dam; we grew our own vegetables; we even raised our own pigs and chickens by taming the wild animals roaming the rubbish stacks. Julie, you may not believe it, but life was good. We enjoyed living a completely autonomous existence away from it all. The only reason we even had contact with the outside world was if the outsiders came to the shores of our wasteland zone to trade, like the day you and Condor rolled up on the beach. My lord, was that a surprise!”
Auntie Bessie chuckled with nostalgia.
“That day Julie, was like the past running at me from behind and knocking me off my feet. How could I forget my little nephew Condor for so long? To see him all grown up like that – and captaining a ship! – I suddenly realised that it had been years since I’d seen my family, especially my dear sister. I couldn’t believe she had been gone for so long and that Condor had been left all alone. Thank goodness he found you Julie. I always remember him as being such a sensitive boy. The deaths of his parents must have been so hard on the poor, poor lad.
But anyway…pardon me, I digress. Yes, Chantel, you want to know about the pureblood. Well, let me get to that. Our little community in the wasteland zone, we had few rules. We prided ourselves on being an egalitarian society. Things just got done without us having to set out who was going to do it or what they were going to be paid. We didn’t care about all that. But there was one thing that we did care about; the only thing we cared about was that our leader was okay. Wolram. He was, by default, the only reason our little community functioned the way it did. He didn’t instate himself in power; he didn’t claim to be the ruler; there were no contests for leadership. There was never even any dispute about Wolram being the decision-maker. I don’t know what the genesis of his aut
hority was, but from what I understand, when the community started out it needed a leader and there was no way of determining who it should be. Wolram was the natural choice…because, well he was different. He was a pureblood. His word was like gospel. He made the decisions, and it worked. Things just flowed naturally from there…and that’s what it was like ever since I joined the community.
That’s why I’m so intrigued about this glitch, Chantel. Wolram, always claimed that he was the last pureblood. It made him more…powerful to us I guess, for us to believe he was the only one of his kind. I don’t think he was lying to us about this. I think he actually thought that there weren’t any other people out there like him. He always said that he couldn’t remember at all how he got to the community and what his life was like before he got there. This could be the biggest clue we’ve ever had about where Wolram came from.”
Auntie Bessie turned excitedly to Julie and Chantel.
“Don’t you see what this means? she exclaimed. “There’s more purebloods out there. Wolram is not the only one. They aren’t extinct!”
Chantel tried to process this information. She wasn’t sure what she expected from the footage in the glitch. She wasn’t even sure if she had dared to believe before that the purebloods in the glitch had been real. Auntie Bessie’s revelation confirmed that actual purebloods, or in her case a pureblood, existed. Her first thought was that she needed to tell Beren. They had steered themselves far off course after being commandeered by the Kazaa. She would tell him that they needed to continue their journey to Freetown.
Julie was shocked at the latest revelation from Auntie Bessie.
“Auntie Bessie, you’ve never spoke of your time in the wasteland before. All this time I thought you were kept prisoner there. You didn’t mention anything about this, this Wolram or this community you lived with there. Whenever you spoke of living in the wasteland, you sounded so unhappy. Had I known that we took you away from all that…that you were actually content there, well…”
Auntie Bessie gave Julie a comforting hug.
“Julie, you don’t need to feel bad. I have no regrets about my decision to join your crew. It all worked out for the best as well, don’t you think? I got the chance to know you, didn’t I?”
Chantel was once again touched with the poignancy of Julie and Auntie Bessie’s relationship and ached for something similar with her mum.
“So this pureblood, this Wolram that you mentioned Auntie Bessie, do you know if he is still alive?” Chantel asked.
Auntie Bessie paused. It was clear that she hadn’t even thought of this possibility.
“I’ve been away from the community for so long now…I never thought that he might actually be dead by now. I guess he is a mere mortal after all, but strange to think of him that way when he was always larger than life to us…”
“Can we find out by any chance?” Chantel asked.
Julie turned Chantel in disbelief.
“Chantel, do you know what you are saying? There isn’t any communicator reception in the wasteland zone; there’s no connectivity there to any of the mainframes. The only way of communicating with the people in the wasteland zone is to go there yourself. It’s been over a decade since Auntie Bessie left the community. We don’t know what it’s like now; we don’t know what’s there; we don’t even know if the same community is in existence.”
“That’s what I’ll need to do then,” Auntie Bessie chimed in. “I have to go back and show Wolram this glitch. It’s the only way for him to find out about his past and to let him know that there might be others like him out there. It seems almost impossible to believe that there are as many purebloods as there were shown in the glitch. If there are really that many purebloods still alive today…”
Julie threw her hands up in the air.
“I don’t believe what I’m hearing! Auntie Bessie, you’ve been away from the community for so long now. You can’t expect things to be like they were when you left. You want to go all the way back there now for what’s on this, this glitch…and what exactly is this footage you guys are both talking about anyway? It’s just dawned on me that I have absolutely no idea what you are going on about.”
Auntie Bessie winked at Chantel.
“We need to show Julie the glitch. Then she’ll see why she needs to take us to Freetown,” Auntie Bessie cheekily suggested.
As Auntie Bessie directed Julie to the files on the hard drive in the CCC to download a movie called Soul, Chantel wondered what the next step would be from here. She was flabbergasted with the news that Auntie Bessie knew of a pureblood from her previous community. She was even more amazed that Auntie Bessie wanted to travel back to her previous community to inform Wolram about the glitch and the possibility of other purebloods. Chantel wondered how tight the community must be if after all these years, one of its members would still go to so many lengths to try to appease her former leader. Chantel suddenly remembered that Beren was still with Condor in the CCC. She had so much to update her friend on. Recalling Condor’s remark about Beren’s arms from the previous night, she wondered if Condor had told Beren about the hippo fairies and the obligations they were under to row their shift. It dawned on her that she and Beren would also be subjected to compulsory rowing shifts if they stayed on the Kazaa. She would have to tell Beren of Auntie Bessie’s story and the possibility that there might still be a pureblood living in the wasteland zone. She wondered if he, having come this far on the adventure, would be willing to join them on the next stage of the journey, which seemed to Chantel like it would be heading into the wasteland zone.