Hybrids: Saga Competition Winner
A thrilling sci-fi novel set in a believeable – and terrifying – near future… Hybrids is the winning entry to the HarperCollins nationwide new author competition with SAGA Magazine.Johnny Online and Kestrella are hybrids – victims of "Creep", a pandemic sweeping the country which causes sufferers to merge with items of technology when over-exposed to their use. Kestrella persuades a wary Johnny to help her find her missing mother, but the Gene Police have other plans for him…Powerful, compelling, and narrated alternately by Johnny and Kes, it questions our human dependence on technology, and our reactions in the face of nationwide panic. This was the outstanding winner of the Children's Book Writing Competition run in conjunction with SAGA Magazine.Orange-prize winning author Helen Dunmore – one of the judges – says: “The writing is sharp, the dialogue good, and the action pacey and page-turning. But there’s a real depth to this story, too. Like all good fiction it makes the reader see the world in a different light.”
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HYBRIDS
DAVID THORPE
To my mother
Declaration of the Rights of Hybrids
Hybrids are human:
Hybrids may be genetically changed, but we’re still your children. The hybrids’ cause is a cause for every human being, because anyone might catch the virus.
Society—you cannot abandon us.
Hybrids have equal rights:
When humans become hybrids they have to keep the same rights as healthy people. These rights are freedom, owning things, being safe and not being persecuted.
As with healthy humans, hybrids’ freedom can only be limited by anything that might harm someone else or stop others being free in the same way. But if the government makes laws which give some members of society more rights than others, then those deprived of their rights must still be able to fight for those rights to be given back to them.
Hybrids must unite:
Hybrids have the natural right to expect that society will protect and help them. If the government doesn’t respect this right, then hybrids must band together, for in togetherness is strength.
If the government does not protect us, then hybrids have no choice but to defend themselves, by any means at their disposal.
posted Monday, 11.00 a.m
Table of Contents
……Johnny Online’s Blog……Hybrid Nation……
5. Playing with the Rhinoceros
13. The Centre for Genetic Rehabilitation
17. The dump at the end of the world
18. The Hybrid Resistance Army
As soon as I saw a beautiful girl pushing open the door, I remembered I’d arranged to meet her here. She hovered in the doorway, peering shyly around the gloom from beneath long dark eyebrows. Compared to everyone else in the dump she stood out like a sixth finger: flawless skin, tangled black curls, expensive Japanese clothes—a sense of style. Watching her, I felt in my genes that something was going to change. A rush in my circuits that said ‘opportunity knocks’.
But I was scared of change. Change was not my friend.
I usually came to this backstreet café for losers called the Twisted Strands, because Francis, the owner, would let me buy just one drink and sit here for hours, no worries. Before I could compose myself the girl had sat down opposite and was trying to peer under my hood.
“Johnny Online?”
I grunted through my speakers.
“Am I late?”
“I wasn’t keeping track of the time.” I watched her getting used to the sound of my electronic voice and what serves for my face these days. “It’s OK to stare,” I said. “I’m used to it.”
“I’m sorry,” she blushed. “I’m a bit nervous. I’ve never met anyone I’ve chatted to online before. But this is an emergency.”
“So you said,” I replied, putting a flashing exclamation mark on my screen that reflected off her own face. I observed her confusion in its light; it was one of a number of reactions people have to the way I look. “Why not buy me another coffee and tell me all about it?”
She went to place an order. Francis handed her an all-day breakfast—juice, sausage, egg, toast—which she came back with and placed in front of me.
Too bad I couldn’t eat it. I took out my flask, poured the juice in, connected my tube and began to suck it down. She didn’t gawp like some.
“Don’t worry,” she said, “I’m used to strange habits.”
“Oh yeah?” I asked.
“See?” She gave me a quick flash of her left arm, slipping back the sleeve of her alpaca coat to reveal a mobile phone emerging from her hand. I saw her transition point: the way the flesh changed colour, texture and substance where her hand stopped being a hand.
“OK,” I nodded. “I’ve seen a few of that type.” I was suddenly sad for her. “Problem when you want to upgrade to a newer model, isn’t it?”
She bit her lip.
“Sorry. Tact isn’t my best feature.” I tried to put a reassuring smile on my screen.
She began to tuck into the breakfast she’d bought me. “Look, I’m trusting you, just by being here. And you can trust me, so relax, Johnny. It’s not as if I’m a Gene Police agent or anything. You know my name—Kestrella. It’s French after my mother. Hey, your own point looks bad.”
She’d been staring at where my skin turned into liquid crystals, just in front of my ears. I pulled my hood forwards.
“I don’t have a mother,” I blurted.
“But everyone has a mother!” she cried.
“Mine did a runner. When she saw what I’d become.”
“Now it’s my turn to say I’m sorry.” She put her pale little hand on my mittened, grubby one. No one had done that for years.
I jerked it away. “I don’t want to let you down, but…I-I have to go now.”
I hurried out on to the tired street. Beneath the orange lights I pulled my hoodie tight around me. Keeping my head down I dodged the few pedestrians who were out, aware of her following me. I turned a corner on to the Walworth Road, my shoulders hunched. I was striding as fast as I could, but she was faster.
