There is no crime, only sickness.
In the future, Neos dread a detective nurse asking the fateful question: ‘Are you well?’
The disillusioned, reclusive Ben Evoli is an Infinite—an elite whose reputational wealth is beyond measure. A successful mindwriter of entertainment and lifestyle toys, he’d sacrifice it all for daughter Saf, and troubled son Mal. His apparent lack of mission in life makes him a target for ambitious nurses all over the world, who would Consign him for a Cure.
Detective Nurse Eir Frijberg reignites zeal for curing Greed. During a raid on the Infinite’s Inductee Gala, where Ben is a reluctant guest of honour, her plans are thwarted. When an old taboo is exposed, her adversaries multiply.
Maddox Price, a scheming Infinite who keeps coming back from the dead, traps Ben and pressures him to oppose the health guilds.
As Eir is embroiled in scandal, she comes to believe in Ben, and faces overwhelming forces and her one-time adjutant and lover, Vör Hoyur.
Ben must accept the true power of his products, which could kill millions. As century-old secrets emerge, destiny propels Ben into an inevitable battle with himself, and only the love of his family might save him.
There is no crime, only sickness.
In the future, Neos dread a detective nurse asking the fateful question: ‘Are you well?’
The disillusioned, reclusive Ben Evoli is an Infinite—an elite whose reputational wealth is beyond measure. A successful mindwriter of entertainment and lifestyle toys, he’d sacrifice it all for daughter Saf, and troubled son Mal. His apparent lack of mission in life makes him a target for ambitious nurses all over the world, who would Consign him for a Cure.
Detective Nurse Eir Frijberg reignites zeal for curing Greed. During a raid on the Infinite’s Inductee Gala, where Ben is a reluctant guest of honour, her plans are thwarted. When an old taboo is exposed, her adversaries multiply.
Maddox Price, a scheming Infinite who keeps coming back from the dead, traps Ben and pressures him to oppose the health guilds.
As Eir is embroiled in scandal, she comes to believe in Ben, and faces overwhelming forces and her one-time adjutant and lover, Vör Hoyur.
Ben must accept the true power of his products, which could kill millions. As century-old secrets emerge, destiny propels Ben into an inevitable battle with himself, and only the love of his family might save him.
‘Are You Well?’ — Sombra
Lành Hiền Rồng (Gentle Dragon) …
If ever a nurse’s personality is a perfect match for the rainbow uniform, it’s Field Nurse Skye Merewether’s. For her, Field Nurse is a mis-title; she ventures from behind our clinic’s reception-desk only for shoppers looking for insomnia treatments or a little more pep in their bedroom performance. Hearing her, y’all might believe nutes are magic potions full of mystery and arcane properties.
‘She’s harmless,’ other nurses say. ‘Leave her alone, unless you covet her position as receptionist for the rest of your mission.’
Skye is the last of the everything-happens-for-a-reason brigade. Anyone would think, in this world—where science concurs with spooky action at a distance—there’d be no need for reiki, or meridians, or astrology. Yet, if anyone flutherbombs Skye in her home, they’d see dolphin mobiles and unicorn figurines, frilled-neck lizard totems, dreamcatchers hanging in every room and—lining up on a sunny window-sill—a collection of antique bongs.
Hai, Skye is a believer in almost anything—anything except serious attempts at Curing anyone.
‘It all evens out in the next cycle,’ she often says, with a blank smile for cryptic emphasis. A smile blanker than her eyes.
This morning I make the mistake of approaching the clinic by way of the arcade connecting the mall’s courtyard with the esplanade where our reception fronts. Skye, as usual, is in the arcade café, her yellow hair a scatter of hay around her strangely ruddy face, gulping down tall glasses of chamomile tea while telling fortunes from coffee cups. If I have my way, I would Consign her for this alone.
‘Everyone knows it’s just playing,’ she’ll defend, but she never reads the remains of your aya tea because, ‘Ayahuasca is serious business.’
She sits at her favourite table facing the arcade in the front of the café, her unusually beady pale ice-blue eyes shooting acupuncture needles at all who pass.
‘Giving up on your Infi quest?’ she mocks, sounding brighter than sunbeams, while revealing slightly buck teeth. Maybe I could push past and ignore her. No luck. ‘Ben Evoli is a waste of time, you know. Especially for a noviciate. Many others these passing years play at catching him.’
Despite wishing I could ignore her, I stop by her table and say, ‘There’s no catching patients. We’re health care professionals, no police force.’
Skye snorts and says, ‘She do the police in different voices,’ probably quoting one of those ancient scriptures she loves so much. ‘So what heinous acts are you catching him at this morning?’ She fixes me with her creepy eyes. ‘Coughing up a secret garbage mine? Torturing kittens? Stealing gelato from babies? Roasting babies over a slow fire?’
I quip, ‘Only till their hair catches fire.’
Skye guzzles the last of her tea like throwing down a lager at closing time. I shake my head and set off. She skips after me, catches my shoulder and pivots me around. Her eyes are bulging balloons full of horror. Her finger snaps over her mouth. Shhhhhh! ‘No invoking the White Witch around here. Ever.’ Her fingers scrabble. From her chatelaine, she unhinges a gewgaw and hastily kisses it.
‘What?’ I’m playing dumb, of course. I know all about Detective Nurse Eir Frijberg, who they call the White Witch.
‘Just … please. You want her mad Valkyries poking around here?’
I make my best calm down gesture, and resume skipping. The arcade splays into glaring sunlight on the esplanade. Skye taps me on the shoulder. ‘He’s meditating again, no?’ she asks, as if sharing in a conspiracy. ‘Talking with wasps, perhaps?’
I look at her like she’s wearing a coat of flying-fox droppings. Feeling a chill. I ask, ‘You are among his fluther before?’ Is she spying on me spying on Ben?
She shrugs. ‘You are careless of other nurses in your fluther. It’s how they’ll have enough for Consigning you for a Cure one day.’
At the reception entrance, the doors slide open. ‘Before he’s meditating, he has 4 million in his fluther.’ I answer. ‘Millions. Why should I notice you among them—all the desa locals, traders, professional and creative colleagues, reputation consultants and proxies …?’
She grins with victory. I stop and bleat after her. ‘… lovers; ex-lovers; would-be lovers; detractors and antagonists; potential blackmailers … every one more interesting than you.’
She’s already inside. I feel stupid for calling after her from the footpath. With a huff, I stomp after her.
‘A nurse should always notice other nurses in her fluther, Little Dragon,’ she instructs, taking her place behind the reception desk. She squares her shoulders and lifts her chin, playing judge at a judicial bench. She pats and strokes the desktop like an object of veneration.
The waiting area is empty. For when patients arrive, I should help her replenish the biscuits and tea by the fabby. Instead, I skip down the corridor for the day-care rooms. Ahead, the corridor walls brighten. From a dull grey, they glow in swirling designs of pastel rainbow colours.
‘Put the big stuff aside, Little Dragon,’ she calls out before I’m safely down the corridor.
‘Gentle…. It’s Gentle Dragon,’ I correct, for at least the 14th time. ‘But you should call me by my proper name, Lành Hiền. Field Nurse Lành Hiền Rồng.’
Skye waves me off. ‘Field Nurse, no Detective Nurse. Forget Ben, the dull Infi. We’ll never Consign him.’
I retrace the corridor for, and rehearse a little before saying, ‘The White Witch, Eir Frijberg—the one you say we should never speak of? She is convening a conference of all the great health camerati. It’s happening right now in Copenhagen. Our own KK sends delegates from Singapore.’
‘High politics rarely affects a day in the life here,’ Skye dismisses. ‘You’re a long way from Singapore or Osaka. Or Copenhagen.’
‘Know you what they are discussing?’
‘No?’ She’s lying. I doubt there’s a minster or clinic anywhere immunised against the gossip.
‘Eir has a task group investigating Infinites, they say.’
‘Is this what they say? Then join it,’ Skye says. ‘I’m sure there’s a little dragon-shape hole in their skill-set they’re wetting themelves about filling.’
I harrumph the proud air out. I should taste better than believe I could shift her on anything. ‘Should I pull up another stool behind the reception desk then? Tell me. Which nutes are best for curing acne?’
‘Sorry for dissolving your delusions, Little Dragon—you’re misestimating the grandeur of our mission. Most of it is dispensing nutepaks. With occasional Warrants for petty jealousies, random acts of Gluttony … Maybe you catch some Fred Nerks lording their insignificant social status over a neighbour … it’s all nothing but personal Mind hygiene. That’s all. We clean the toilets of Minds. We get in early and regular before it all makes you vomit. That’s how we do it. One little Cure at a time.’
Encountering Skye leaves me pacing the clinic. Normally at this time of morning, with the detective’s lounge empty, I’d steal in, brew a pot of aya, then settle into the couch in the corner behind the door, recline it back, and go flutherbombing. I might get 30 mins before the shift’s desk nurse finds me and assigns me some mind-numbing field patrol. Sending nurses out on the beat is all window-dressing—placing mannequins in rainbow uniform where they’re most visible. We could patrol from a couch in the clinic, of course. Or, while perching on toilets in our homes. But field work is a tradition.
Gah! As I think those words, I hear them in Skye’s voice. Sorry for dissolving your delusions, Little Dragon. Outside the detective lounge, I stop as if Skye’s words stretch an impenetrable film across the doorway, trapping me in a solidifying resin of indecision. 7 Hells, Skye. Who are you? Just some disillusioned cynic, envious of my untainted dedication. You wish me a failure. How poor a mission is yours, cleaning toilets of the Mind. There are far more pressing needs in front of our noses, in this village, this desa. We have our own Infi—Ben Evoli—and his family, who deserve our fearless care. He’s ill. I know he’s ill.
With a clenching jaw, I will away Skye’s undermining, and flop in a couch. Take a deep breath and search for Ben’s fluther …
‘I’m going up for the station for collecting a package,’ Ben calls as he opens his front door.
‘They no deliver, is it?’ Ben’s partner Aisha calls from the kitchen. ‘Fine,’ she adds.
‘I fancy a walk.’
‘You go without breakfast you think?’
‘No appetite.’
‘I’ll eat Bapa’s one!’ his son says tongue and lung—so loud his words resound off every wall in the house. Outside, cockatoos screech.
‘Walao eh! Mal, it’s early,’ Aisha scolds him. ‘Always with the noise like that lah,’ she says in her mash-up Singlish.
Aisha is, as Ben always introduces her, his one istri (his one wife). She missions as a Field Procomplement of Misi Pemulihan Seletar (Seletar Recovery Mission), one of Singapore’s oldest disaster recovery missions. Is Aisha beautiful? Plain? There she is, pressing coffee, wearing an oversize taupe tee and cream trackydaks. Barefoot. Glittering fingernails and toenails, the polish must contain her own DNA if she plans for travelling outstation today, or she has no care a station’s spooky field will erase it. Her streaky dark hair falls about her scalp in a short shag style. Deep round eyes and snubby nose dominate her flat face. A triangular jaw frames thin lips around a small dash of a mouth.
Ben skips out for the sunlight. Hot and humid already, the atmosphere is a wet sponge cake. Fragrances of grapefruit and lime on the terrace blend with frangipani and eucalyptus from the avenue. The last wisps of evaporating morning fog are spiralling dervishes dancing over dewy grass. A sea breeze whispers up the harbour, bringing scents of salt and oyster shells, sand and seaweed. The heat is rising like a giant kite.
Ben flops on the slippy dip a few paces from his front door, gives a push and slides the four levels down. He sets out at a dour skip, crosses the avenue where hammocks hang between trees, like huge creamy calico clams swallowing sleepy heads whole. Farther around, waking villagers yawn and stretch in front of the longhouse. Hawker cooks are steaming dim-sum and stir-frying noodles. Roti canai are puffing up on griddles. The air is moist with the smell of Milo.
In the park, Kaboobie—the desa’s wandering-zoo camel—sniffs at a bed of solar flowers which frazzle his thick grabby lips with an electric jolt. In a nearby tree, a kookaburra chat-kaks as if it’s coughing up a lamb bone. Galahs and corellas squawk. Cicadas sing.
Motor whirring, a tukky follows Ben like his pet. Its maker is a new mobil-fabbing mission eager for customers. It will follow Ben up the hill until the station, its simple machine mind ever-hopeful he will climb aboard. It accelerates a little, then brakes. Repeating this over without approaching too near, its wheels quiver; its motor whirs up and down, whimpering. It sounds cute and pitiable, which is a deliberate part of its mindwriting.
‘Aiyo!’ Ben curses at the tukky. ‘I just want a skip.’
The tukky cries.
Ahead, Field Nurse Kwon Chang patrols her beat, her uniform of rainbow fatigues standing out among even the more flamboyant costumes of the locals. She watches the tukky, raises her eyebrows, deciding whether she should shoo it away.
A cricket ball smashes a front-yard window. Scampering boys flee giggling with guilty glee. A household drone wheezes as it vacuums up shards of glass. If the house has no window-squirter, one will roll down from the council chambers in quick time.
Between Ben and the corner, Detective Nurse Dayang Seri from Regional Investigations skips towards a young man in his mid 40’s. Berahim Pelawi. Others on the avenue make space. Berahim sees Dayang and fears what’s coming. He stops and spreads his arms either side, his palms forward. Gulps his heart down, rises on the balls of his feet preparing for escape. Panic floods his eyes.
Ben gawks. His pet tukky hangs back a few metres, ever hopeful.
Field Nurse Caleb Jensen from our local clinic is tailing Berahim from Ben’s direction. ‘Berahim Pelawi!’ she calls out with tongue and lung. This is always exciting. ‘Are you well?’ she asks, invoking the procedure for Consigning a patient.
‘Yeer, perawat.’ Berahim’s voice cracks. ‘Terima kasih for asking.’
My colleagues close within an arm’s distance of Berahim. Both stand in aikido hanmi. Caleb places her hand on Berahim’s upper arm, as a caring friend or relative might. She looks down into his eyes with softness. I must work on this look. My reviews say I’m either too stern or too sensual.
‘You require care,’ Caleb says.
‘No … no, please. I am well … I just … please.’
‘Yeer,’ Dayang soothes, calm and hypnotic. Both nurses embrace him. ‘We know.’
‘No …’
‘You have Lust.’
‘No.’ Tears trickle from Berahim’s eyes.
His case is one of those love-going-wrong-going-obsessive stories: boy meets girl, boy expects girl, girl declines. Boy gets angry, confirms girl’s suspicions. So far, no case for health intervention. However, when Berahim develops a habit of recording hollies of her—intimate hollies … well, we’re no bashful society, but those spark interest from the clinic. Our detectives discover he plays those hollies, over and over, in his Mind’s eye, no matter who he has sex with. We have a pattern of downward-spiralling obsessive behaviour right there.
‘Let us assist you.’
‘No, please …’ Berahim’s lips thin; his mouth toughens; his eyes turn hard. He’s about—yes. He coils, throws off the nurse’s embrace—which only invites my colleagues take him down. His face meets the press-soil pavers of the avenue pathway. There is no blood, no splintering teeth. There will be no bruises. Our nurses are skilful.
Witnesses replay hollies of Berahim’s brief dash: there’s his break from the nurses’ embraces; Caleb draws Berahim’s arm behind his back, the deft tap of toe against ankle throwing Berahim off balance. There’s Dayang cradling the falling Berahim so he meets the path like a feather landing on a bed.
Dayang and Caleb lift him on his feet. ‘Please, we are here for your care,’ Caleb explains, with soothing compassion.
‘Open your mouth,’ Dayang says. Berahim, crestfallen and sweating, complies. Caleb reaches for her utility belt, produces a foil package. She tears it, removes a swab which she rubs on the inside of Berahim’s cheek. Kinder than a spray in the face.
The swab works quick. Berahim is expressionless, a gently swaying tree, feet almost uprooting from the ground. Kwon joins the other two nurses with a folding stretcher for bearing Berahim. For a simple case like this, I doubt they’ll move him to a minster—Medlow Bath, Darwin, Singapore. He’ll stay in our local clinic for his Cure.
Ben retreats for the fringe of the spectators, radiating dread. A stony stare of guilt. Changing his mind about the tukky, he waves it over; takes a seat in the back. It whistles a happy tune. All over the world, Ben’s millions of fluther-bombers will want for riding tukkies from the same manufacturers.
Ben Evoli …
Are you well?
A nurse’s concern for our welfare is so professionally authentic, it’s acerbic.
Are you well?
Why have I such dread for Berahim? He needs care and he’ll receive it. Like millions before him, and the millions who will follow, he’ll spend just a little time in therapy—in his case, no more than a couple of months, by my guess. After, he’ll be renewed, refreshed, liberated. So, why would Berahim so dread the prospect of a Cure? Y’all know the answer. We neos live such healthy, peaceful lives, we must conjure some imaginary bogey woman. It’s our evolutionary hard wiring: in the absence of cancer, war, crocodile attack and daytime soap operas, we cast nurses as our monsters under the bed.
For sure, having those antiseptically caring rainbow paratroopers taking even an hour of one’s liberty is an icky prospect—with their matronly soothing croons and their religiously enraptured smiles. We fear them stripping our fluther away, truly separating us from our family, friends and flutherbombers. We dread the vacuum the secrecy leaves. Ask a Cured neo about their experience, and the clearest accounts are of weird dreams, good food, comfortable beds, and whiling away hours playing holly sports and games. No one recalls any therapy as such—other than a regular nute regimen. There are no electrodes; no lobotomies; no holes in heads; no exorcisms; no human centrifuges; no ice baths; no orgone energy accumulators; no greasy brass steampunk contraptions; no straightjackets; no fever inducements; no teeth pulling. And—most relieving of all—no accounts of talk therapy.
Now y’all are thinking, any of those cruel sap atrocities could be part of the nurses’ regimen. How would we know? But look at the fabbies they install in clinics: nothing gothically horrible—certainly nothing they could fab nasty machines with; only nutes, food, clothes, and fresh linen. Perhaps the secret step in a Cure is torture by thick blankets and fluffy pillows.
Or perhaps it’s all sex’n’drugs and rock’n’roll in there.
Are you well?
It tastes almost religious. Neos fear religiosity with the same shivering whispers they reserve for corporations. What were those ancient, organised religions good for?—graveyards of orphans; sex abuse; hijacked planes; crusades; manifest destinies; human sacrifice; burning at the stake; corrupt presidents; and cheesy sing-alongs with tambourines and cheap untunable guitars. Any wonder we regard nurses with the same queasiness we might a bottom-patting priest.
For how long will Berahim remain a patient? A few weeks? A month or two? He’ll emerge emotionally fitter, happier and more productive. Yet his friends and family—in the absence of an explicit narrative of his treatment—will wonder if the old Berahim emerges from the clinic at all. Or worse, his Cure renders him less than he is once before.
Do you truly believe you are good? Incapable of committing obscenities? What if you had a parallel life detached from the other – would you still live by your moral code?
Rarely do stories profoundly challenge your conceptions of self and reality. This one rebases you, repeatedly, until you are Cured of your old ways.
From a world diluted with dystopian future novels, emerges – no, evolves – a new kind of story, something...better. One where humanity has moved on. Homo sapiens – disdainfully nicknamed, Saps – are extinct. A new breed of human – Neos – are apex predators.
Depiction of Neo culture is as immense as it is captivating. You play voyeur to a society which in one breath, titillates; the next, appalls. A world which unknowingly exists centuries after an event horizon, pulling you with it into a black hole of destruction. Like any good drowning, you'll find yourself gasping for breath before being plunged again into despair - you'll be left wondering how to spook the hell out of there.
Attention to detail is second to none (okay, maybe to Tolkien), notably the language. There's nothing like reading an entire novel in an advanced form of your beloved Regal English to make you feel like the inferior species. Do not give up - embrace the ways of your descendants.
Author M launches us centuries into our darkest futures, while infusing us with a nostalgia trip of present-day experience. With relief, M handles the mind-boggling, space-time-warping concepts with a finesse akin to Brian Cox dumbing down another of Stephen Hawking's patronisingly “brief” answers to the conundrums of the universe.
Steeped in pop culture references (Saint Ronald Macdonald's, a contender for funniest line ever written), 7 Cures shows us how fragile and superficial we are, while simultaneously treating us to a veritable Where’s Wally game of Who can spot the most lyrics from great songs?
I haven't even started on the characters, but rest assured, each and every one is sublime in their own right and holds up a mirror to the extremities of our souls.
If Sirstanley Kubrik were still with us, surely he'd fight to realise 7 Cures as a screenplay. Imagine the Droogs' expressions to learn they could multiply to satisfy every whim, or Nurse Ratched's to discover a Nursing Camerati where an entire population could be brought in for a Cure. Imagine no more!