Joanne got a job in a hotel on the seafront, inside the Inclusion Zone. Mostly it was scooping bones from out of dirty water, wiping plates after long banquets. When the kitchens were quiet she took to the stage, dancing in a chorus of Orchid Girls, or standing all assistant-pretty by some guy that had Post Traumatic Stress Disorder but pretended to be a magician. It was strange the Acts those soldiers liked to watch. They liked the Card Tricks and the Neon Lives, they liked the Knife Throw and the Body Bag. But more than anything they loved the Futures.

The guy who did Futures in those days was called Omar. He made a big play of everything, as was the style of the time, speaking in a loud voice, fluttering his eye lids, shaking, twitching, moaning and acting all mysterious. Some of it was pure theatre, some of it was symptoms and the rest was just side effects of the stress medications. He was worst in winter time, because it brought up memories of trenches and snow. They weren’t his memories but that didn’t matter to him and he’d writhe at night and call out voices saying please please, gas gas and no no, and all that old soldier talk that no one really wants to hear about it anymore.

He (Omar) died when Joanne was 15. Then came another bloke to do Futures but he was caught stealing food or doves from the Palace gardens and got executed. Then for some time there was no Futures in the hotel and the soldiers grew proper restless and the Acting Night Manager came and asked her (Joanne) if she would do it and she remembered the old advice that her talent could bring success and she forgot the part that said it could also bring trouble which is very often the way in stories, that the idiots inside them have such poor or selective memory, and this fact leads to their end.

Her first few appearances were soon the stuff of a legend. Soldiers came from miles around to see her do futures. Soft and intermittent was her voice, as a line on a Satellite Phone, or so the poets say. Generals came and demanded private audience. Some lads from Cleethorpes came over in a minivan. The heads of a Microchip Corporation also bade her do Futures for them and paid a handsome price. Her Futures were warm like honey, soft like skin of a boy, sharp like Exactor Knives.