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    Mr Goop
Ivor W. Hartmann
 
Ivor was born and raised in
Harare, Zimbabwe. He publishes Story Time , an online magazine of African
fiction, and co-edited the anthology African Roar . He won the Baobab
Prize for Mr Goop .
     
Tamuka hated Mr Goop; it wasn't
as if it was really his anyway. He had the unfortunate distinction of being one
of those kids. The ones with poor parents who could not afford to buy their
children Geneforms of their own. Just this morning before class, in the
translucent, dome-sealed playground, Tamuka had yet again been a victim. Well,
at least he had not been alone this time: two younger kids and their inherited
family Geneforms had also endured the playground circle of laughter and cruel
taunts.
     
    Mr Goop stood
motionless outside the classroom; Tamuka could see its vague shadowy humanoid
outline through the frosted glass wall. The adult-sized Mr Goop was too big to
be allowed in the classroom. While everyone else in his class had their
small—and very cute—Geneforms dozing on their desks or sitting quietly on their
shoulders, he had Mr Goop standing outside.
    Mr Goop. Tamuka
shuddered at the name given to the Geneform by his grandfather, Manenji
Zimudzi. A bad joke, Tamuka had been told when he had asked him. One that
Grandfather had made when he had first bought it in better days, long before
Tamuka's father was even born, about it being a genetically manufactured lump
of goo, which became a walking Mr Goop. And the name had stuck. It would
respond to no other, no matter how hard Tamuka had tried to train it.
    Tamuka then thought
of Grandfather, alone on that mountain top in Nyanga where they had buried him
last year. Tamuka wondered if Grandfather was lonely up there, and vowed to nag
his mother into going to visit him. The truth was that he really missed
Grandfather; he was the one person who always had time for Tamuka, no matter
the hour or the problem. But during all the commotion that had surrounded
Grandfather's death—Mother in floods of tears, Father being strong for
her—no-one had bothered to ask Tamuka how he felt about it all.
    "Tamuka, what is the
name of the English Isles' capital city?" asked his teacher, Mrs Mudarikwa,
breaking the spell of memories that surrounded Tamuka.
    "London," blurted
Tamuka.
    The class around him
erupted in laughter. Mrs Mudarikwa, a wizened old lady whose wrinkles probably
outnumbered the dunes of the seaward deserts, motioned for silence. But then
she gave him that look, the subtle one reserved for her brighter students that
showed a slight disappointment, that always left Tamuka feeling very
disappointed with himself.
    "No, Tamuka that
used to be the capital until… Who can tell me?" Mrs Mudarikwa asked, once the
laughter had subsided. A dozen eager hands shot up and she chose Tiny, of all
people. Tamuka groaned inwardly. Tiny really was a small lad, not that it
stopped him from becoming the ringleader in Tamuka's Geneform circle of
humiliation.
    Tiny glanced at
Tamuka, a smirk plastered on his pixie face, then he turned a solemn face back
to Mrs Mudarikwa, "The great floods of 2040, Ma'am, forced the permanent
relocation of the English Isles' capital city from London to Birmingham."
    "That is correct,
and can you tell me why the Great Floods occurred?" asked Mrs Mudarikwa.
    "In 2040, due to the
exponential runaway effects of global warming," Tiny replied promptly, "the
entire continental western shelf of the Antarctic caved into the South Ocean
and melted. This created, in addition to the 70-metre rise by 2020 from the
melting of the Arctic and Greenland continental ice shelf, a total 90-metre
rise in global sea level and the loss of over 1,710,000 square kilometres of
the Earth's low-land seaward areas." Tiny smiled proudly. And at that moment,
Tamuka couldn't decide who he hated more, Mr Goop or Tiny.
     
As Tamuka crunched his way home between the disused railway tracks, he fiddled with his oxygen
mask. Mr Goop followed silently