Cloud Atlas

by David Mitchell

  Did Boom-Sook never even talk to you … interact with you, in any way?

  He addressed me like purebloods speak to a cat. It amused him to pose me questions he fancied were incomprehensible. “Hey, 451, is it worth azuring my teeth, d’you reckon, or is sapphire just a passing fad this season?” He did not xpect cogent answers: I did not disabuse his xpectations. My reply became so habitual, Boom-Sook nicknamed me I-Do-Not-Know-Sir451.

  So for nine months nobody observed your skyrocketing sentience?

  So I believed. Boom-Sook Kim’s only regular visitors were Min-Sic and Fang. Fang’s real name was never used in my hearing. They bragged about their new suzukis and played poker, and paid no attention to fabricants outside Huamdonggil comfort hives. Gil-Su Noon, Boom-Sook’s neighbor, a downstrata postgrad on scholarship aid, banged on the wall to complain about the noise from time to time, but the three xecs banged back louder. I saw him only once or twice.

  What is “poker”?

  A card game where abler liars take money off less able liars. Fang won thousands of credits from Boom-Sook and Min-Sic’s Souls during their poker sessions. Other times, the three students indulged in drugs, often Soap. On these occasions Boom-Sook told me to get out: when toxed, he complained, clones disturbed him. I would go to the faculty roof, sit in the water tank’s shade, and watch swifts hunt giant gnats until dark, when I knew the three postgrads would be gone. Boom-Sook never bothered to lock his lab, you see.

  Why was it that you never met Wing027 again?

  One humid afternoon, three weeks after my arrival at Taemosan, a knock on the door distracted Boom-Sook from his facescaper catalog. Unxpected visitors were rare, as I have said. Boom-Sook said, “Enter!” and hid his catalog under Practical Genomics. My postgrad rarely glanced at his texts, unlike me.

  A wiry student poked the door open with his toe. “Boom-Boom,” he called my postgrad. Boom-Sook sprang to attention, sat down, then slouched. “Hey, Hae-Joo”—he faked a casual manner—”what’s up?”

  The visitor was just passing to say hi, he claimed, but he accepted the offered chair. I learned Hae-Joo Im was Boom-Sook’s x-classmate but had been head-hunted by Taemosan’s Unanimity faculty. Boom-Sook told me to prepare tea while they discussed topics of no importance. As I served the drink, Hae-Joo Im mentioned, “You’ll know about your friend Min-Sic’s appalling afternoon by now?”

  Boom-Sook denied Min-Sic was a “friend,” necessarily, then asked why his afternoon was appalling. “His specimen, Wing027, was burnt to bacon.” Min-Sic had mistaken a minus for a plus on the label of a bottle of petro-alkali. My own postgrad smirked, giggled, snorted “Hysterical!” and laughed. Hae-Joo then did an unusual action; he looked at me.

  Why is that unusual?

  Purebloods see us often but look at us rarely. Much later, Hae-Joo admitted he was curious about my response. Boom-Sook noticed nothing; he speculated about compensation claims by the corp sponsoring Min-Sic’s research. In his own, solo research, Boom-Sook gloated, no one cared if an xperimental fabricant or two “got dropped” along the path of scientific enlitenment.

  Did you feel … well, what did you feel? Resentment? Grief?

  Fury. I retreated to the anteroom because something about Hae-Joo Im made me cautious, but I had never felt such fury. Yoona939 was worth twenty Boom-Sooks, and Wing027 worth twenty Min-Sics, by any measure. Because of an xec’s carelessness, my only friend on Mount Taemosan was dead, and Boom-Sook viewed this murder as humorous. But fury forges will. That day was the first step to my Declarations, to this prison cube, and to the Litehouse in a few hours.

  What happened to you over summer recess?

  Boom-Sook should have deposited me in a holding dormroom, but my postgrad was so eager to go hunt fabricant elk on Hokkaido in Eastern Korea that he forgot to do so, or assumed a lesser strata drone would do it for him.

  So one summer morning, I woke in a wholly deserted building. No echoes from well-trafficked corridors, no time bell, no announcements; even aircons were turned off. From the roof, the conurb fumed and trafficked as usual, and swarming aeros left vapor streaks across the sky, but the campus was empty of students. Its ford parks were semivacant. Builders were resurfacing the oval square in the hot sun. I checked the sony’s calendar and learned today was the beginning of recess. I bolted the lab’s door and hid myself in the anteroom.

  So you never set foot outside Boom-Sook’s lab in five weeks? Not once?

  Not once. I dreaded separation from my sony, you see. A security guard tested the lab door every ninthnite. Sometimes I heard Gil-Su Noon in the adjacent lab. Otherwise, nothing. I kept the blind lowered and the solars off at nite. I had enough Soap to last the duration.

  But that’s fifty days of unbroken solitary confinement!

  Fifty glorious days, Archivist. My mind traveled the length, breadth, and depth of our culture. I devoured the twelve seminals: Jong Il’s Seven Dialects; Prime Chairman’s Founding of Nea So Copros; Admiral Yeng’s History of the Skirmishes; you know the list. Indices in an uncensored Commentaries led me to pre-Skirmish thinkers. The library refused many downloads, of course, but I succeeded with two Optimists translated from the Late English, Orwell and Huxley; and Washington’s Satires on Democracy.

  And you were still Boom-Sook’s thesis specimen—putatively—when he returned for the second semester?

  Yes. My first autumn arrived. I made a secret collection of the flame-colored leaves that drifted on the faculty roof. Autumn itself aged, and my leaves lost their colors. Nites became icy; then even daylite hours frosted up. Boom-Sook dozed on the heated ondul most afternoons, watching 3-D. He had lost a lot of dollars in dubious investments over the summer, and since his father was refusing to pay his debts, my postgrad was prone to fits of temper. My only defense against these tantrums was to act void.

  Did it snow?

  Ah, yes, snow. The first snows fell very late last year, not until twelfth-month. I sensed it before I woke in the semidark. Snowflakes haloed the New Year fairies decorating the courtyard windows: entrancing, Archivist, entrancing. Undergrowth beneath the neglected statue in the courtyard drooped under the weight of snow, and the statue itself assumed a comic majesty. I could watch the snow fall from my previous prison cube, and I miss it here. Snow is bruised lilac in half-lite: such pure solace.

  You speak like an aesthete sometimes, Sonmi.

  Perhaps those deprived of beauty perceive it most instinctively.

  So it must be around now that Dr. Mephi enters the story?

  Yes, Sextet Eve. It was snowing that nite, too. Boom-Sook, Min-Sic, and Fang burst in at hour twenty approx, tox-flushed, ice on their nikes. I was in the anteroom and barely had time to hide my sony: I remember I was reading Plato’s Republic. Boom-Sook wore a mortarboard hat, and Min-Sic hugged a basket of mint-scented orchids as big as himself. He threw them at me, saying, “Petals for Spoony, Sponny, Sonmi, whatever its name is …”

  Fang rifled the cupboard where Boom-Sook kept his soju and tossed three bottles over his shoulder, complaining that the brands were all dog piss. Min-Sic caught two, but a third smashed on the floor, triggering relapses of laughter. “Clean it up, Cind’rella!” Boom-Sook clapped his hands at me, then pacified Fang by saying he’d open a bottle of the best stuff since Sextet Recess came only once a year.

  By the time I had swept up every glass shard, Min-Sic had found a pornslash disney on 3-D. They watched it with xpert relish, bickering over its merits and realism, and drinking the fine soju. Their drunkenness had a recklessness that nite, especially Fang’s. I retreated to the anteroom, from where I heard Gil-Su Noon at the lab door, asking the revelers to be quieter. I spied. Min-Sic mocked Gil-Su’s glasses, asking why his family couldn’t find the dollars to correct his myopia. Boom-Sook told Gil-Su to crawl up his own cock if he wanted peace and quiet when the civilized world was celebrating Sextet. When he had stopped laughing, Fang spoke about getting his father to order a tax inspection on the Noon clan. Gil-Su Noon fumed in the do
orway until the three xecs pelted him away with plums and further derision.

  Fang seems to have been the ringleader.

  He was, yes. He chiseled open the fault lines in the others’ personalities. Doubtless he is currently practicing law in one of the Twelve Capitals with great success. That nite he focused on riling Boom-Sook, by wagging the soju bottle at the kodak of the dead snow leopard and asking how dopey the prey were genomed down for the tourists. Boom-Sook’s pride was inflamed. The only animals he hunted, he retorted, were those with viciousness genomed up. He and his brother had stalked the snow leopard for hours in Kathmandu Valley before the cornered animal leapt for his brother’s throat. Boom-Sook had a single shot. The bolt entered the beast’s eye in midair. Hearing this, Fang and Min-Sic faked awe for a moment, then collapsed in raucous laughter. Min-Sic thumped the floor, saying, “You are so full of shit, Kim!” Fang peered closer at the kodak and remarked that it was poorly dijied.

  Boom-Sook inked a face on a synthetic melon, solemnly wrote “Fang” on its brow, and balanced the fruit on a stack of journals by the door. He took his crossbow from his desk, walked to the far-end window, and took aim.

  Fang protested: “No-no-no-no-no-no-no!” and objected that a melon would not rip the marksman’s throat out if he missed. There was no pressure to make a clean hit. Fang then beckoned me over to stand by the door.

  I saw his intention, but Fang interrupted my appeal, warning that if I did not obey him, he would put Min-Sic in charge of my Soap. Min-Sic’s grin wilted. Fang sank his nails into my arm, led me over, put the mortarboard hat on my head, and placed the melon on the hat. “So, Boom-Sook,” he teased, “reckon you’re such a hot-shit marksman now?”

  Boom-Sook’s relationship with Fang was based on rivalry and loathing. He raised his crossbow. I asked my postgrad to please stop. Boom-Sook ordered me not to move a muscle.

  The bolt’s steel tip glinted. Dying in one of these boys’ dares would be futile and stupid, but fabricants cannot dictate even the terms of their deaths. A twang and an airwhoosh later, the crossbolt crisped into melon pulp. The fruit rolled off the hat. Min-Sic applauded warmly, hoping to thaw the situation. I was awash with relief.

  However, Fang sniffed, “You hardly need laser guidance to hit a huge great melon. Anyway, look”—he held the melon’s remains—”you only just clipped it. Surely a mango is a worthier target for a hunter of your stature.”

  Boom-Sook held out his crossbow to Fang, daring him to match his own skill: hit the mango from fifteen paces.

  “Done.” Fang took the crossbow. I protested, despairingly, but Boom-Sook told me to shut up. He drew an eye on the mango. Fang counted his paces and loaded the bolt. Min-Sic warned his friends that the paperwork on a dead xperimental specimen was hell. They ignored him. Fang aimed for a long time. His hand trembled, slitely. Suddenly, the mango exploded and juiced the walls. My doubt that my ordeal was over was well founded. Fang blew on the crossbow. “Melon at thirty paces, mango at fifteen. I’ll raise you a … plum, at ten.” He noted a plum was still bigger than a snow leopard’s eye, but added that if Boom-Sook wanted to admit he was indeed, as Min-Sic had said, full of shit and decline the challenge, they would consider the sorry chapter closed, for a whole ten minutes. Boom-Sook just balanced the plum on my head, gravely, and ordered me to hold very, very still. He counted his ten steps, turned, loaded, and took aim. I guessed I had a 50 percent chance of being dead in fifteen seconds. Gil-Su banged on the door again. Go away, I thought at him, No distractions now …

  Boom-Sook’s jaw twitched as he cranked back the bow. The banging on the door grew more insistent, just centimeters from my head. Fang blasted obscenities about Gil-Su’s genitals and his mother. Boom-Sook’s knuckles whitened on his crossbow.

  My head was whipcracked around: pain sank teeth into my ear. I was aware of the door flying open behind me, then of xpressions of doom on my tormentors’ faces. Lastly, I noticed an older man in the doorway, snow in his beard, out of breath, and thunderously angry.

  Boardman Mephi?

  Yes, but let us be thoro: Unanimity Professor, architect of the Merican Boat-People Solution, holder of a Nea So Copros Medal for Eminence, monographist on Tu Fu and Li Po; Juche Boardman Aloi Mephi. I paid him little notice at that time, however. Liquid trickled down my neck and spine. When I dabbed my ear, pain seemed to electrocute the left side of my body. My fingers came away shiny and scarlet.

  Boom-Sook’s voice wobbled: “Boardman, we—” No help was offered from Fang or Min-Sic. The Boardman pressed a crisp silk handkerchief against my ear, and told me to keep the pressure steady. He took a handsony from an inner pocket. “Mr. Chang?” he spoke into it. “First aid. Hurry, please.” Now I recognized the sleepy passenger who had accompanied me from Chongmyo Plaza eight months before.

  Next, my rescuer stared at the postgrads: they dared not meet his gaze. “Well, gentlemen, we have made a very ominous start to the Year of the Snake.” Min-Sic and Fang would be notified by the disciplinary board of major debits, he promised, and dismissed them. Both bowed and hurried out. Min-Sic left his cloak steaming on the ondul but did not return. Boom-Sook looked inconsolable. Boardman Mephi let the postgrad suffer for some seconds before asking, “Are you planning to shoot at me with that thing, too?”

  Boom-Sook Kim dropped the crossbow as if it were superheated. The Boardman looked around the messy lab, sniffing at the neck of the soju bottle. The octopoid rapine on 3-D distracted him. Boom-Sook fumbled with the remo, dropped it, picked it up, pressed stop, aimed it the right way, pressed stop. Boardman Mephi spoke, finally. He was now ready to hear Boom-Sook’s xplanation of why he was using his faculty’s xperimental fabricant for crossbow practice.

  Yes, I’m curious to hear that, too.

  Boom-Sook tried everything: he was inxcusably drunk for Sextet Eve; he had misprioritized, ignored stress symptoms, chosen friends unwisely, gotten overzealous while disciplining his specimen; it was all Fang’s fault. Then even he realized he had better shut up and wait for the ax to fall.

  Mr. Chang arrived with a medicube, sprayed my ear, dabbed coag, applied a patch, and gave me my first friendly words since Wing027. Boom-Sook asked if my ear would heal. Boardman Mephi’s abrupt answer was that it was none of Boom-Sook’s business as his doctorate was terminated. The x-postgrad blanked and whitened as he saw his future slide downstrata.

  Mr. Chang held my hand and informed me my earlobe was torn off but promised a medic would replace it in the morning. I was too afraid of Boom-Sook’s recriminations to worry about my ear, but Mr. Chang added we would now leave with Boardman Mephi for my new quarters.

  That must have been very welcome news.

  Yes, xcept for the loss of my sony. How could I bring that along? No feasible plan came to mind. I just nodded, hoping I could retrieve it during Sextet Recess. The spiral stairs took up my attention; descents are more hazardous than ascents. In the lobby, Mr. Chang produced a hooded cloak for me and a pair of icenikes. The boardman complimented Mr. Chang on the latter’s choice of zebraskin design. Mr. Chang answered, zebra skin was de rigueur in Lhasa’s chicest streets this season.

  What reason did the Boardman give for your timely rescue?

  None, as yet. He told me I was being transferred to the Unanimity Faculty on the western lip of campus and apologized for letting “those three toxed xec tapeworms” play games with my life. The weather had prevented a timelier intervention. I forget what well-oriented, humble reply I gave.

  The campus cloisters were festive with Sextet Eve crowds. Mr. Chang taught me to shuffle thru granular ice to gain traction. Snowflakes settled on my eyelashes and nostrils. Snowball fights ceasefired as Professor Mephi approached; combatants bowed. The sense of anonymity afforded by my hood was delicious. Passing thru cloisters, I heard music. Not AdV or popsong but naked, echoing waves of music. “A choir,” Boardman Mephi told me. “Corpocratic sapiens can be callous, petty, and malign,” he said, “but higher things, too, thank Chairman.” We listene
d for a minute. Looking up, I felt as if I was rushing upward.

  Two enforcers guarding the Unanimity Faculty saluted and took our damp cloaks. This building’s interior was as opulent as the Psychogenomics Faculty had been spartan. Carpeted corridors were lined with Iljongian mirrors, urns of the Kings of Scilla, 3-Ds of Unanimity notables. The elevator had a chandelier; its voice recited corpocratic Catechisms, but Boardman Mephi told it to shut up, and to my surprise, it did. Once again, Mr. Chang held me steady as the elevator sped, then slowed.

  We xited into a spacious, sunken apartment from an upstrata lifestyle AdV. A 3-D fire danced in the central hearth, surrounded by hovering maglev furniture. Glass walls afforded a dizzying view of the conurb by nite, obscured by the haze-brite snowfall. Paintings took up the inner walls. I asked Mephi if this was his office.

  “My office is one story up,” he replied. “These are your quarters.”

  Before I could even xpress surprise, Mr. Chang suggested I invite my distinguished guest to sit down. I begged Boardman Mephi’s pardon: I had never had a guest before, and my manners lacked polish.

  The maglev sofa swung under the distinguished man’s weight. His daughter-in-law, he said, had redesigned my quarters with me in mind. The Rothko canvases, she hoped, I would find meditative. “Molecule-true original originals,” he assured me. “I approved. Rothko paints how the blind see.”

  A bewildering evening—crossbolts one moment, art history the next …

  Certainly. Next, the professor apologized for failing to recognize the xtent of my ascension on our first meeting. “I assumed you were yet another semi-ascended xperiment, doomed to mental disintegration in a week or two. If memory serves, I even dozed off—Mr. Chang, did I? The truth now.” From his post by the elevator, Mr. Chang recalled that his master had rested his eyes during the journey. Boardman Mephi smiled at his chauffeur’s tact. “You’re more than likely wondering what you did to bring yourself to my attention, Sonmi451.”