‘And that,’ Fats bellowed as we walked awkwardly towards each other, ‘is our ever impeccable sis Beatrice.’ He gave her a fake advertising hug and introduced us all. ‘Beatrice is never, ever, caught out,’ he observed as I shook her hand and Babalwa fell into her arms in a child’s hug. ‘Regardless of the circumstances, even in the midst of the apocalypse, sis Beatrice is impeccable. It’s the CEO in her’ – he was unable to stop – ‘she brings style, grace and a little bit of sexiness to every occasion.’
Beatrice shot him a look, blushed a little and told us how happy she was to see us. She joined the tour as if she was also new to the place, listening intently to Fats’s explanations and introductions. We wandered through the property, picking up new members with every stop. The greetings ranged from wild hugs and yells from Andile (the loudest noise, it turned out, we’d ever hear from her) to a smile from Javas, and a gentleman’s handshake from Gerald. Fats marched us through the facilities in the dark, waving his torch around a series of vague shapes and forms. Eventually the group wound downstairs to the deck area overlooking northern Johannesburg, below which was a glimmering solar bank. The panels covered the entire slope underneath the deck, a space of about three hundred square metres. The panels blinked a confident silver in the moonlight.
‘This, really, is it.’ Fats waved his hand in a full arc around the panel area. ‘This has been our mission since we found each other. Power, people, is everything. And what makes this lot work are the batteries. They are the latest, the very latest, in fact, from Germany. These babies can store for over four days.’
‘It was all set up when we got here. That’s why we chose it,’ Lillian, the plump white American, whispered at me conspiratorially. ‘All we’ve done is add more panels.’
We stood in silence for a while, blinking back at the panels.
‘Anyone hungry?’ Beatrice asked, looking at Babalwa with motherly concern, then at me. ‘You must be hungry.’
‘Starving, thanks.’
‘OK, a lightning pass over the rest then, just so they can get their bearings!’ Fats pulled us back upstairs, through the cavernous foyer and into one of the other wings. ‘This is Tebza’s domain, eh, Tebza?’ The first room in the wing was packed with old-school flat-screen monitors and blinking green and red lights. Teboho blinked at us from the back. ‘Tebza is pinging wildly at the walls, hoping to find a connection to something somewhere. Like those people who send radio signals to space looking for aliens. He’s also setting up a WAN[3] to cover this house; then we’ll move it out to wider areas. The idea, obviously, is to get to a point where we start connecting to other terminals in the city, the country, the continent and then the world. The hope, obviously, being that some people somewhere else are doing the same thing. The other hope, more localised, is that re-establishing some form of net will help deal with Tebza’s digital withdrawal. Eh, Tebza?’
Teboho pulled a very slim silver something out of his pocket, clicked twice, and returned it without looking up.
‘The other thing,’ Fats continued blithely, ‘is the whole flying bit. But I’ll let Lillian tell you about that.’
Lillian stepped forward, cleared her throat and began talking like she was presenting a conference paper. ‘Drones are the starting point, obviously. We have secured three from the Waterkloof Airforce Base, but the relationship between the drone and the software is complex – hence the WAN work Teboho is doing. If we can’t set up a link between the plane and the software, we won’t be able to capture the imagery and then there’s no point. But the drones, really, are a stepping stone to the larger aim of flight.
‘There are planes and fuel we can access, but what we don’t have and what we really need are pilots. So that machine there’ – she pointed out a large PC box with an ancient sixty-inch screen attached – ‘is our pilot training machine. At the moment we’ve only got a kiddy-game simulator running, but we’re aiming to source a proper training simulator and to learn how to fly. Then it’s a question of being brave enough to try it in the real world.’ She took a deep breath. ‘Then the next—’
‘Thanks, Lillian.’ Fats cut her off. ‘Good summary. OK, kids, last stop before food, the garden. This way.’
We trooped behind him, obedient. As we walked I thought more about Fats. Ad Fats. With effort, I remembered him as less headmaster and more free radical; most people were jealous of him because it was never clear exactly what he did. He wasn’t practical. I never, for example, saw him cook anything up on Photoshop, or write a line of copy, or sketch out a brand idea or a conference map. Fats Bonoko was the ideas man, the guy who breezed past your shoulder saying, ‘Love it’ or ‘Nice, but maybe try a softer green for the housewives’. He was, I remembered, also an experiential specialist, which meant he created events for brands. Parties. Boat trips. Cooking tours. VR extravaganzas. Experiential campaigns equated essentially to brand-activation projects – Fats was the guy who took ‘it’ off TV, whatever ‘it’ was, and delivered ‘it’ to people in the flesh, so to speak.
‘This,’ Fats boomed as we trooped out the kitchen door, ‘is our day-to-day survival patch. There’s a lot more going on food-wise outside the house, but this is where we go when we need quick stuff for cooking.’ We gathered around a vegetable garden – much of it protected by various combinations of green netting.
‘Beans, spinach, carrots, potatoes, lettuce, cauliflower, herb garden, et cetera. Obviously, our major long-term challenges are meat, milk and any kind of dairy. But the vegetables are the foundation. Andile, care to explain?’
Andile snorted. ‘It’s mos a veggie patch, Fats.’
‘Right, thanks.’ Fats brushed through the insult and rounded on myself and Babalwa. ‘Any questions, guys? We’re pretty much an open book here. I know this must be a bit overwhelming for you after all this time alone, but if there’s anything specific you want to know, hit me. Or anyone else.’
We glanced at each other. Babalwa shrugged, shy.
‘Um,’ I piped up uncertainly, ‘I guess the only one for me is, like, are there rules or something? Who decides who does what and why… all that kind of stuff?’
Andile and Javas coughed simultaneously. Lillian smiled. Gerald frowned and scuffed the garden soil with a toe. Beatrice stared straight ahead, unmoved.
‘It’s a collective,’ said Fats. ‘We all do what needs to be done. We agree on what we can. But really it’s about everyone taking responsibility, nè? Ubuntu, et cetera.’
‘It’s like Survivor,’ added Andile, giggling out of the corner of her mouth.
‘Only no one gets voted out,’ Fats said as he herded us back through the kitchen door.
The evening rushed on. We gathered and regathered in small groups, discussing ‘the situation’ and sharing anecdotes and experiences, most of them revolving around waking up to an empty world. Beatrice set to in the kitchen, making lettuce and tomato sandwiches – from our garden, Fats stressed, all from our garden.
Disquiet rose from my toes, trickled through my gut and into my aching tooth and my head.
Conversely, Babalwa lit up slowly with social fluorescence. I had never heard her voice this light, her laughter this floaty. In small but definitive ways I was already no longer her primary reference point. As for me – despite my better judgement, despite everything I knew to be sensible and right – I wanted to go home.
3
The beginnings of the WAN are well documented in the digital section of the Malema Library, St John’s campus. This section is well worth exploring on historical and technical levels. Tebza’s role in digital development is often overlooked.