INVERSE FALL
By
Katie M John
Copyright 2011 ©
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“They’ve switched the weather to rain again. It’s unusual for Them to do so twice within one week. It makes the people maudlin. There must be issues with the crops in Area Four. They’ve been experimenting for years to get the smell of rain right – the blend of salt and vegetation; the sweetness. But even if they managed it, the rain would still be too hard, too much like needles.
Nobody wants to work in Area Four; it’s too much a reminder of home that isn’t. In A4 they even have trees and hills with little cottages dotted amongst the fields. It’s like the time before but there is no birdsong or vast open sky. The sky lies flat against the glass domed roof. Somehow its familiarity makes it worse – almost like it is a mockery of what has been lost.”
She falters in her step as if she has been suddenly pained. It is these kinds of poetic ramblings that have put her in this position. She has only known me the time it has taken for her to meet me at reception and walk me through security. She thinks I am a visiting minister from a satellite dome on the Asian continent. (The people are led to believe there is more than one.) She’s been told that I’m from the Ministry of Ethics; a guardian of truth and right. She has no reason to fear. I’m amazed at her openness. I get the impression she’s lonely and that is why she is so keen to talk to me. I smile as if I understand, and somewhere deep inside, part of me does but I can’t quite remember the time that she is talking of and so the nostalgia does not affect me in the same way. Her name is Maria. She is twenty years old. She would be beautiful if she didn’t have her hair pinned back so tightly or wore such thick glasses. Before I can think to speak she quickens her pace and carries on,
“The Sphere is divided into thirteen areas. Imagine the segments of a clock face with a perfect circle at its heart – this is known as Area One - The core of the new order, the centre of our existence. Very few people have been to A1. It sits, contained within its own spherical structure and rumour has it, that inside that sphere is an exact replica of this one… and so on… and so on, until it is no bigger than a child’s snow globe and the supreme order is smaller than a battalion of toy soldiers.”
She laughs a little nervously and then, realising she is laughing alone, she abruptly stops, turns back to face me and flashes a slightly embarrassed smile as if she has suddenly become aware of a social faux pas. She holds out her hand and I meet her half way. I smile back. Her grip is firm, more what I would expect from a man than the small boned woman in front of me, but it is brief – as if the feel of my hand displeases her. If it does, she is too polite to show it.
“Sorry, I should have started by telling you my name. I’m…”
“Maria.” I finish her sentence for her.
“Yes,” she laughs, “you know that already…okay.”
“Sorry, that was rude – I shouldn’t have cut you off. Please continue.”
She smiles as if trying to relocate her well practiced speech of introduction. She looks pale; the lab coat washes out her complexion. I wonder if she ever spends time in the sunlight away from the humming electric lights. She turns heel again and starts walking, retrieving her identity swipe card from her pocket before we approach the door. It is a well practiced movement. She is an almost smooth cog in the machine.
“I’m an A2, which makes me a scientist…” she pauses, smiles and sweeps her hand over her coat as if hinting at some form of irony but it is too subtle a humour for me to register. “Kind of gives it away hey?”
I nod in response, hoping that she doesn’t think I’m completely soulless. “Yes. Your badge made it clear.”
“I suppose, in the eyes of many of the inhabitants, that makes me one of Them; but so few Naturals work in A2, that it is hard to believe I truly belong here. Most of the work done here is done by ARTs – Advanced Robotic Transforms. Lab work suits them; measurements and data, it’s what they are best at. Besides myself there are a couple of other Naturals here to do the interpretive side of things, to do the theoretical work. ARTs can process but not hypothesise. Not that on looking with an unfamiliar eye, you’d be able to tell the difference between an ART and a Natural – well not until you got close enough. They’re convincing simulacra, but once you’d been here for an hour or so, you’ll begin to guess that something isn’t quite as you’d expect. You’ll start to puzzle why every now and then you walk past somebody you’d swear you had only seen five minutes ago. And, in a way, you wouldn’t be wrong. After all, with only one hundred different ART avatars available, there is bound to be some confusion.”
In Area Three, where I’m originally from, the ARTs are less evolved than these. It works on a carousel model, the ARTs being transferred down the Areas as new progress is made. Area Three is Education and Media. In Three the ARTs are mainly information storing devices; living internet search engines that wander around the classroom, retrieving information and answering student questions. They’re still quite mechanical. There would be no mistaking them for a Natural even if it wasn’t for their generic uniform of grey slacks and jumper. Here it is different.”
She pauses, busy trying to untangle her lanyard from her pen in her pocket. It is the longest time she has been quiet since we met. It gives me a chance to look round properly without distraction. It is the first time that I’ve been inside a Sphere Lab and I’m slightly taken aback. There are hundreds of people working here but, far from a sea of uniformity, there is an almost weirdly carnivalesque look to the place. Marie has noticed that I have stopped walking and is scanning my face with a raised eyebrow before a smile sends out a sunbeam.
“So you’ve noticed their slightly outlandish costume – hard to miss really.”
“Yes. Why are they dressed like that?”
She laughs; it has a bitter edge. “The Elites in A One came up with the genius plan to give each ART a bank of clothes which would help him fashion an individual identity; paradoxically making him blend in more. The funny thing was, thinking the task of allocating clothes to three hundred ARTs was a little bit of a mundane, repetitive task, they put a team of ARTs in charge of the project, making the clothes and allocating the packages. Of course, the ARTs had no understanding that clothing was an historical or cultural expression and so now, to the general amusement and bemusement of the Naturals, we’re surrounded by a whole cast of pantomime characters, where ‘men’ dressed in frockcoats are working next to ‘men’ in togas. If it wasn’t all so serious, it would be bloody hilarious. You have no idea how difficult it is handing over a scientific report on cutting edge bio-endochrigenics to a ‘man’ dressed in a doublet and codpiece.”
Marie laughs and I respond. My laugh is perhaps a little louder than it should be causing the nearest handful of ARTs to look up and seeing us laughing, join in. Marie puts her hand over her mouth and I clamp my mouth shut. The ARTs return to their work.
“They understand humour?” I ask impressed but unsettled.
“No. They can read laughter on the face and make a response accordingly. They laugh but they don’t get the joke. There is a little side project working on ART humour – using voice recognition technology to get ARTs to be able to scan tone of voice so that they can register humour rather than just read laughter
. They’re not having much success. It seems they can’t get past the timing issue.”
“Why go to such efforts – clothing and laughter?”
“It’s not for the ARTs, it’s to make the Naturals feel more comfortable working alongside them. The Elite think that integration through individualism will settle some of the prejudices that the Naturals harbour towards the ARTs.”
“I thought the Elite wanted rid of individualism.”
“They do – they already have if you haven’t noticed. Who walks around in a toga or top hat these days? Everybody is only ‘individual’ within the safety of collective norms – even those that make a point of being unique do it in a uniform manner. Uniqueness is more of a fashion statement than a true philosophy. This project kind of backfired a little. Maybe the ARTs have a sense of humour after all.”
She winks rather than running the risk of setting the laughter response off again. At last we make it to her office and I am relieved that it is a personal space; that we have left the ARTs behind. They have unsettled me in a way that I’m not able to articulate; something about them terrifies me, as if something malevolent is hiding beneath their silicon skin and empty laughter. Marie invites me to sit and offers me a coffee from the machine, which I decline. Coffee no longer agrees with me.
“I’m not entirely sure what to say. I mean, I don’t know how different or similar The Sphere is to where you come from – I’m afraid of boring you with the obvious.”
“Tell me whatever you think relevant to your life here. Imagine I am an alien from outer space and I’ve just dropped in.” I smile. It isn’t too much of a stretch of my own imagination to believe in this scenario.
“Okay. My life here; I’ve worked her for three years. I was twenty last week. I was born in Area Six, part of the ‘Breed to Succeed’ programme; just as most new generation Naturals are. Fertility is now a precious commodity and needs to be closely monitored and managed. I was moved to Area Three at the age of two and placed with parents who were teachers. They’d lost their child a year before and as I had been assessed and found to have ‘advanced intellectual capacities’, it was a good match.” She uses her fingers to enclose parts of the statement in inverted commas.
“How do you feel about that?”
“Not every Natural is destined for such a privileged position, or the perks that I have and so I guess, I’m lucky. Some of the Areas have a hard way of living with scarce resources and underground lawlessness. Each area has its own particular focus. I won’t list them here; you’ll soon work them out as you travel around.
“And the ‘Breed to succeed’ programme?” I know that I am taking a risk, asking her so directly to comment on an Elite programme, but in a way I would not be sorry for her to be suspicious, for her to act more innocently than she is.
“There is little choice; the virus that wiped out most of the human race attacked the reproductive system, infecting and scarring the fallopian tubes, withering them to uselessness. Funny don’t you think how human’s almost insatiable drive to reproduce caused the end of it all? But you know all about ‘The History’ I suppose.”
“Yes I do,” I smile reassuringly, “but I’m interested in your version of events.”
She’s continues talking and I am half listening because there is something in the way she is speaking that tells me she has reverted to dogma; there’s nothing to be learnt about her from this. I’m slightly relived that maybe she has grown suspicious after all and is now building her defences. Talking with Maria seems to have triggered my memory bank and where there was nothing moments ago but a grey screen, now images are playing out across the surface.
They are the memories of an increasing civic hysteria as the initial relief of a falling birth-rate was replaced with panic. The rate at which it fell, plummeting within decades to barely a trickle, as if man had been hit with a curse of biblical proportion, was a shock to everyone. Every night the news reported the daily figures on a graph, a constant line tumbling downwards. We were offered explanation after explanation; of sexual diseases ravishing the young and the devastating impact on fertility, of lust and selfishness, of lifestyle choices and prioritising of goods over offspring.
And, at the same time as all of this accusation of the people, there were whispers of a government birth control policy, secretly implemented three decades earlier, which had spun out of all control. A few radicals claimed they’d found contraceptives in the tap water and processed junk foods; the sustenance of the poorer and less educated (valued) sectors of society. The government denied such a social engineering policy with violent and passionate rhetoric. ‘The Government is a loving father to all its children.’ As if to prove their quest to populate they offered IVF treatment to any eligible couple, but the levels of success were lower than expected. We were one of the lucky ones. We conceived a child but by then the world was already in free fall.
Apocalypse accelerated. Without enough people to run the complex systems that supported humanity, crops failed, people starved. Medical supplies dwindled, people died. Nuclear Power plants overheated, people burnt. Dams burst, people drowned. Disaster after disaster, all man made; every month, another million people gone and no babies coming to replace them. I’m jolted from my memories by a silence that has emerged between us. She has finished what ever it was that she was saying.
“And is that what you believe – you believe in the virus?” I ask.
“Oh yes – it was terrible. ‘The New History, the official and concise history of humanity’, explains how the twenty first century was an orgy of sex, violence and excessive materialism. It is a warning for us never to repeat the crimes of the past. It is a warning to every one of the vile dangers of love. Love was really the virus; moving people to passion and lust rather than responsibility.”
Her mouth twitches and I know that she is lying. She has retreated to the safety of well-rehearsed propaganda.
She’s paused to take a mouthful of coffee and the thought that she shouldn’t be drinking caffeine in her condition suddenly blooms out of nowhere. My eyes track down to her belly. That is, after all why I am here; to see if the allegations are true.
“And now, life in The Sphere - do you think that it is better?” I ask her this knowing she has no comparison; knowing that she has only ever known this way of life. Her answer will be textbook and it allows me to return to my unfurling memories which are coming through so clear now, as if every detail had been burnt onto a memory disc.
Contingency plans were made; resources – which included humans – were channelled into the making of The Sphere. Europe was selected as the perfect location. Cool and wet in the North, Warm and dry in the South. Over the course of twenty years, the whole of European civilisation and culture was taken apart brick by brick, book by book, boxed up and labelled. Anything that was not thought of value was bulldozed and dumped far out at sea.
At first, of course there were protests. People had already lost so much that they clung to their heritage as if it were life itself. Fortunately, for the dissenters and problem makers, humans had become too rare, no matter how awkward they were and so they were taught their lesson in other, more poetic ways. For a system so hell-bent on destruction it was a cruel stroke of creativity. Work camps were made for those branded as criminals or obstructers; their punishment to break up and destroy anything considered superfluous to the New World; after all, the Ark could only take things two-by-two. But it wasn’t like the people didn’t get a say; great televised polls were held in which the people voted for which two art works, books, buildings they wanted to take with them from each century. The rest of the works were photographed, scanned and held, the people were assured, for all time in digital records. After all why was there a need to have the Roman Coliseum taking up valuable land space when a perfectly restored digital version would be available for anyone to download in the comfort of their own home? Why have the original, dusty works of Shakespeare held in a l
ibrary somewhere, when the digital version could be available to all through their digital reader? It was ‘foolishness’, the elite said, ‘to hang on to the empty corpses of the past.’
“Even though I was small, I remember my father’s increasing agitation and how he started a mass petition to save the arts; I also remember how they came in the night and arrested him to the soundtrack of my mother’s screams.”
Marie’s words filter through and I’m brought abruptly back to focus. She’s abandoned the text book; she’s talking of unsafe matters. “Pardon?” I ask and I’m desperately hoping I’m mistaken, that she isn’t about to sign herself over.
“My father, he was one of the luckier ones, at least he wasn’t incarcerated in a camp, but he returned four weeks later a broken man. Day after day the Elite placed a mallet in his hand and forced him to smash the statues in the rose gardens of Musée de Rodin. After that, he never slept in peace again. The nightmares were relentless, he told us how Rodin haunted him, how the sculptures screamed and bled, cursing him to hell. He called it the genocide of History.”
“You know that it is forbidden to talk of it, Maria.”
“Yes, sorry. Forgive me? He died only a month ago, in difficult circumstances. The grief has made me foolish. No harm was intended by it.”
“The future?” I smile tightly. “What you are doing here, Maria, is a good thing though? The ARTs are an amazing triumph of human endeavour and intellect. You must be proud of working on such a project.” I’m feeding her a lifeline. I’m desperate for her to applaud the scientific progress. State herself as a supporter of everything that is happening; to declare herself well and truly a friend of the Elite.
“Yes, the work here is very intellectually satisfying. It’s quite extraordinary how quickly the advancements are happening. To think that only forty years ago they only had the most basic carcass that could move and follow command; glorified robotics. The Sphere has created an efficiency of progress. Every scientist left on the planet was drafted to work on the ART programme. Within just five years of working here, they had their first ART. They named him Adam – who says scientists don’t have a sense of humour.” She lets out a wry smile, “There was no need for Eve. He was quite something; he could walk, talk and process information through the relationships of colour, size and movement which, as you have seen today, meant that he could even laugh along with humans. Although he was amazing in many ways, he was still very robotic, his skin far too shiny and static, his hair too course, his laugh too long so that he was always the last one laughing. I can take you down to the archive unit later and show you if you like.”
“Thank you, I’d like that.”
“Within three years they had the ARTs that they now have in District Three, (the Education sector) and then three years after that we have the ARTs you’ve seen today working in the lab. They are the ‘perfect human’, without sin; only programmed with good. They have no concept of disobedience, stealing, hating or loving. They are not distracted by human desires.” She blushes as her hand falls to her belly and she looks towards the window before going on,
“Progress has been somewhat halted more recently. It seems that we have advanced the ARTs as far as possible within the remits of ethics.” She smiles acknowledging my status as a minister of that department. “There was discussion at one stage to try and push the ART development further. Some argued that there was an amazing opportunity to develop the ART programme to create a special group of advisor ARTs that would work alongside the Elite in Area One. Imagine the possibility of having advisors that were able to scan and upload every political strategy ever implemented, that had knowledge of every philosophy and theory ever thought; economic, social, scientific and moral; beings physically strong, with endless stamina, with no need to sleep, utterly objective, totally focused and able to interact with, rather than just respond to humans.”
“That’s a powerful vision.”
“It’s a vision bordering on insanity, which is why the project was terminated, you’ll be glad to hear.”
“Whilst the project was running, did they have any success?”
“Limited, in the early stages they had some positive results with the implanting of memory chips into human brains but it didn’t solve the problem of physical fatigue and degeneration, the real quest was to transplant the human brain into an ART frame – that way the individual would continue to live – hypothetically forever; they would just need parts replacing as they wore.
At first, the effects were disastrous, death after death as the surgeons took the living brains of criminals and transplanted them into the silicon bodies of the ART. Eventually, they were able to successfully transplant the brain, connect the neural connectors to the nerve endings, fusing Nature and ART but as quick as the jubilation began, it ended. The problem with nerve tissue is it doesn’t heal properly, the scarring effects the ability for the brain to transmit signals. After a few weeks the brains died or degenerated to the most basic function of opening and closing the eyes and mouth so that they looked like living ventriloquists dummies. There was no other option than to terminate them.
Word got out about the ‘The Fusion programme’ and it became too volatile a political situation. The people had been nervous enough about the development of ARTs in the first place and it had taken several years for people to accept them as a necessary evil. But, there is only so much the people would tolerate and the blurring of lines between ART and Naturals will not be abided. Feelings ran high, small rebellions broke out in the lower areas. They argued that if ART and human became one, humanity would become redundant. With unified surprise, Area One publically declared the programme officially terminated. Lessons learnt. The people listened to. The Elite benevolent and caring.”
We’re interrupted by a man wearing an interesting nineteen-eighties punk concoction and I’m not sure if he is an ART or a Natural with a sense of humour.
“Maria, apologies for interrupting you and your guest but I need a word – urgently.” Indeed his tone is urgent; desperate almost.