Colour tattoo of rainbow-coloured binary code on a forearm, with dark curved lines at the sides and the word Coexist below, replaced by religious and peace symbols.

Rainbow binary code and Coexist tattoo on forearm

Lettering · Forearm · Colour · Photo

The tattoo shows rows of binary digits in a gradient running from red at the top through orange, yellow, green and blue to purple at the bottom. Dark curved lines frame the block on both sides. Along the base, the word Coexist is spelled out with the letter o and the letter i replaced by a crescent moon, a peace sign, a Star of David, a yin yang and a cross. The ink is bold and solid on pale skin, with the design filling most of the frame.

Lettering Forearm Crescent moon Peace sign Yin yang Cross Rainbow

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Nobody on the second floor of the Ancoats bureau could read binary, so when Harold Pell pinned the first printout to the notice board, we assumed it was a stock list. Twelve rows of eight digits, shaded from red at the top to violet at the bottom, as if someone had run a tin of paint down the page. Ruth from payroll was the one who sat down with a biro and a pad and worked it out, letter by letter, while the kettle went cold behind her.

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We were a mixed lot by then. Dev Mistry brought samosas in on Fridays and ate at his desk through the holy month, so nobody was offended when he kept the window shut. Anat left at four every Friday for Shabbat and came back on Sunday with a sheet of gold stars for the filing trays. Sunny sat in the stairwell with his eyes closed at lunchtime and said it was the only quiet place in the building. Harold had never said a word about any of it, which was why nobody believed the cards had come from him.

I was the one who punched them. Harold had handed me the sheets on a Tuesday with instructions to run them through the reader after hours and say nothing, and I did, because it was his name on the contract and I was twenty-two. Ruth finished her pad on the Thursday. The sentence was the one from the old declaration, the one you learn at school and forget, and under it were the little symbols in their row: a crescent, a peace sign, a star with six points, a yin and a yang, a cross.

Dev read it twice and laughed in the short way he had. Anat folded her arms. Harold came in late, looked at the board for a long time, and took the printout down. Then he pinned it back up, a little crooked, and went to make the tea himself.