by Rick K. Reut
The old man fell silent for a few seconds and then turned his speech to a totally different topic.
“The difference or, should I say, the distance between Superman and Man is as big as that between Man and Beast. Man is just a transitional link in the evolutionary chain, while Superman is its final goal, the ultimate species, so to speak. And that ultimate species is,” his trembling hand drew a “T” sign in the air, “Transsexual!”
“Trans-sexual.” Adam echoed again.
“Yes! That’s right! Trans-sexual!”
“But what…”
“… is that transsexual?” the old man foresaw his question.
“Yes,” the young man nodded, sliding to the edge of his seat.
“Ha!” Helmholtz snorted. “Well, strictly visually there is barely any difference between them and ordinary women. Apart from them being unbelievably beautiful, of course,” he added, with a lecherous leer. “However, one can call these women ordinary only when they are fully dressed. For when they are undressed,” a salacious smile stretched the old satyr’s lips,” they happen to be totally extraordinary.”
For a second the old man fell silent again. His bleary eyes went out like two broken headlights, sinking into the dreamy darkness behind his face.
“However,” his eyes ignited again, “I see no point in describing what these women look like with words. And since I am not skilled in the art of sketching, I guess you’ll just have to find it out for yourself. Think of it as a surprise that awaits you on the mainland. All you have to do is get there. Believe me, it’s worth it. And remember, you are on the right track. If there’s any hope for humans to be happy, it lies with them.”
“Yes, but how am I…?”
“… to get there?!” cried the old man as the pendulum of his good mood swung back to its exact opposite. “How the Ford should I know!? Can’t you see that I’m just a crippled old man? The doors of the New World State are shut to me forever!” he shouted, casting aside the covers and exhibiting the rest of his pathetically withered body wrapped in pale-gray pajamas that made him look like a mummy. “Believe me, I would give everything I’ve ever had to be in your shoes right now. For then I could go to a place where they have come this close to defeating death!” he cried out, holding his forefinger and thumb twitching an inch away from each other right under Adam’s nose.
“That’s right!” he went on, waving his wiry arms in mounting excitement. “They say that soon a cure from death will finally be found. It is as inevitable as that I won’t be there to see it. Now I can only regret that they didn’t do it when I was still young and healthy. But I was simply too stupid to think of this possibility back then. You know, they could have kept me in pretty good physical shape until now if I had only been smart enough not to leave the place. And for what?! For this!?”
He snatched the Brave New World book from the bedside table, shook it in the air and then flung it to the farthest end of the room in a fury. Seizing the sparse scraps of his snow-grey hair with both hands, the old man froze, shaking with rage. He stayed like that for some time, but not too long, for his strength soon failed him, and he fell back on his pillow utterly exhausted. His wrinkled hands slid down to cover his faded face.
All this time Adam had been staring at him in dismay. Is it possible that this old man is even more miserable than me? he thought, feeling his uniqueness being threatened.
“Leave!” the old man finally muttered through his hands.
But Adam was too busy with his own thoughts to hear him. All he heard was Helmholtz saying something.
“I beg your pardon?”
“I SAID GO!” the old man exploded to the top of his booming voice, before collapsing into another coughing chasm. “Go – ekhe-ekhe – and take – ekhe-ekhe – that ass wipe with you – ekhe-ekhe!” He bellowed between the bursts, pointing at the pages of the Brave New World scattered all over the bedroom floor.
Adam saw no sense in arguing. Accompanied by the old man’s thunderous coughing, he crossed the room and knelt in the corner to pick the crumpled pages from the stone floor. It was literally littered with them, like an autumn street with leaves.
As soon as all the sheets were stacked together, Adam stood up, pressing the mixed-up manuscript to his chest, and was about to leave the bedroom, but lingered in the doorway. He looked back at the old man still coughing himself inside out and saw scarlet stains on the snow-grey blanket. The sight made the young man shudder.
“Would you like me to call the nurse?”
“I fired that witch”, coughed the old man, violently. “And you – ekhe-ekhe – you go to Ford – ekhe-ekhe – before I per… – ekhe-ekhe – before I personally send you to him, you – ekhe-ekhe – son of an un-decanted slut!”
After this last remark, Adam saw no sense in reasoning with the old man at the moment and mutely dissolved in the doorway darkness.
The old man continued coughing for some time, and then slowly started to calm down. With sporadic bursts still breaking out of his concave chest, he stared into space, his faded eyes sliding up and down the ceiling, the walls, the furniture, the floor, and finally the window, dark and drawn with similarly faded blinds. It is hard to tell what he was thinking and if at all, trapped in one of those states of mindless apathy that so often step on the heels of highly emotional scenes.
The old man stared at the back of the blinded window for quite a while, blinking blankly, before he began to show signs of – bad, old and dying, but still – life again. He slowly turned his head to the bedside table, stretched out his hand and, having opened the top drawer, pulled out a small plastic bottle. The old man brought the bottle close to his bloodshot eyes and tried to focus them on the sticker, which said:
“SOMATIN”
(Soporific)
After checking the sticker, he slowly unscrewed the lid and looked inside: the bottle was almost full. He tapped two tangerine-colored pills onto his palm and placed them on his tongue. Then he dropped back his balding head, like a plucked old cock trying to crow at the break of dawn, and swallowed. As he did so, he winced and was about to put the bottle back, but suddenly stopped and stared at the sticker. After studying it for some time, his eyes caught sight of a warning line written in tiny, barely noticeable letters on the back of the bottle:
“Danger! Do not exceed the recommended dosage!”
Having read and reread the line at least three times through his tight-clasped teeth, the old man musingly murmured a piece of rhyme he had engineered more than eighty years earlier:
''Hug me till you drug me, honey;
Kiss me till I'm in a coma:
Hug me, honey, snuggly, bunny;
Love’s as good as soma.”
Then he lifted his burning, bloodshot eyes from the bottle and beheld his own broken, barely recognizable reflection in the looking glass on the wall with another satanic smile slowly sprawling across his face as he added:
“So doth death
seem to be
tonight
to me… ”
With these words the old man emptied the entire bottle of sleeping pills into his mouth and began to chew them with maniacal resolution till they turned to a sticky, shapeless mass that could fit into his throat. Finally, he swallowed and laid his hoary, swan-necked head back on the pillow. He lay like that for a few minutes, staring at the pale ceiling with the smile of satanic satisfaction still lingering on his lips.
“I’ve finally fooled you, old fart,” they seemed to be saying.
Soon the smile faded from his face. So did the smoldering, almost extinguished eyes as the old man slipped into a deep, dark, dreamless stairwell of sleep he would never wake from again.
Chapter Five
Five minutes after one more officially timed orgy was over, soaked in sticky she-male sperm and so looking like a wet dream come true, they were taking a shower among the statues. They were, as before, none other than Chief Caretaking Continent Controller Gianna Globe and Central London H
atcheries and Conditioning Center Director Darlina Downing, let alone the sparkling-clean set of students.
The students’ light season suits, together with their T-phones and purses, were neatly laid out on the nearby silicone settees in perfectly symmetrical order. So were the suits of Controller Globe and Director Downing. It was, in fact, one of the first and foremost written laws of the New World State, stating that everything had to be kept in order that was perfect and preferably symmetrical, for symmetry was the quintessence of perfection, and perfection the quintessence of taste and truth. As for order, it was believed to be the essence of everything, but mostly wealth and welfare, which was utterly unthinkable in chaos, since chaos was considered contrary to cosmos and consequently any creative activity. According to the authorities, no wellbeing could be possible without the activity that creates it. As another aphoristic adage of the age asserted, “the greatest activity is creativity”.
Logical, very logical was the word for this world, amazing in all its aspects, and especially in the aspect of the people that populated it. The people who, due to the daring breakthroughs of biotechnology, could be finally called flawless. And indeed “flawless” was the first word that came to one’s mind, when one gazed at Gianna Globe’s gorgeously gene-engineered body, bathing in the afternoon sun after a refreshing shower.
With its bulging, balloon-like breasts and a pear-shaped pair of bubbly buttocks, sliding into two shapely thighs and then the curvy, carefully carved calves, ankles and feet, the Controller’s body looked like a love bundle of succulent flesh presented from the future past perfect state of mind for the entire even braver new world to see. Combined with the crow-black hair cascading from the crown of the Controller’s head (chameleon-colored eyes, straight nose and thick-lipped, shell-like mouth concealing two rows of perfectly pearl-white teeth), let alone the enormous embodiment of fertility hanging high-spiritedly between Its Freudship’s endlessly long legs, the bundle betrayed a rational animal of a very rare breed.
Drying the dark hair in the warm southern wind, the animal stroked it with Its faultlessly manicured fingers in front of the awe-struck students. As if mesmerized, rows of shining sea-blue, sand-brown and grass-green eyes were watching every move Gianna Globe made.
Having stepped out of the bathing pool under the students’ openly admiring stares, the Controller accepted a sperm-white silicotton towel with a pink T-shaped emblem sown on it from the steel wiry hands of an AI robot chambermaid wheeling a whole tray of such towels around the fountain and distributing them among the still naked participants of the fairly recently finished orgy.
Having wiped Its wet dream of a body dry, Gianna Globe majestically sauntered to one of the silicone-covered settees to retrieve Its standard soot-black Controller’s suit.
Since the cancellation of the caste system and with it the remaining rudiments of class society, black had no longer been considered the color of Epsilons, and had become the color of Controllers instead. Its essential symbolic nobleness was finally recognized for what it was – the color of night, out of which the whole wide world had been decanted, according to Our FordorFreud’s Brave New Testament. Testes or testicles was the key word for the testament’s title, and the key itself was the Capital “T” letter printed on all the Big Books’ covers, as well as all the globalized New World State’s official currency bills, which had stood truly tall in a society of round state monopoly till the time of the Second Coming, when the World State was finally able to afford a full switch from the Capitalist to the Communist type of economy, rendering all capital completely redundant.
After slipping into Its soot-black suit, the Controller settled on one of the settees, crossing Its long, curvaceous legs before an even longer lecturing speech. Waiting to be properly introduced as soon as the students finished their toilets, Controller Globe yawned, staring dreamily into the distance of the garden, contemplating something far beyond their understanding. Its faultlessly manicured fingers covered Its mouth, then slid down to a T-shaped pendant between Its breasts and fondled it for a while, while Director Downing cleared Its cock-sore throat to address the audience.
“My dear young trannies,” It said solemnly. “Right now Its Freudship, Chief Caretaking Continent Controller Gianna Globe is going to give you a little lecture on the history of our neo-modern, post-gender society, starting with the Second Coming of Our FordorFreud. Or simply Freud, as He often chose to call Himself when enlarging on certain psychological matters our guest is most probably going to touch upon, too. So, listen and learn.”
With these words, the Director stepped aside and, turning to the Controller, drew a sacred “T” sign on Its chest. Copycatted by the class, It began to clap, thus triggering a thunderous round of applause, coincidentally backed up by a strong waft of wind surging through the lime trees’ leafage.
Like an orchestra conductor, the Controller duly returned the sacred “T” and then motioned the clapping to die down to total silence, broken only by a playful yell of infantile ecstasy in the background.
“Ladies and gentlemen!” Gianna Globe started and then just as suddenly stopped Its speech, slyly eyeing the astonished audience that didn’t have one single lady or gentleman among them.
“It’s hard to believe, but that’s exactly how spokesmen used to address their audiences for hundreds and, in some places, even thousands of years before the Second Coming, thus always dividing them into two different linguistic concepts and consequently two different ways of cognitive self-conception. These treacherous language games left our poor predecessors with no other choice but to continuously see themselves standing in insurmountable opposition to one another. In the meantime, this opposition, produced not so much on social and psychological as on physical and physiological grounds, was the main reason for universal human unhappiness at that time.”
“This may seem shocking, but you must know that almost as long as mankind existed, they either didn’t or deliberately refused to see one simple and fairly self-evident fact of life. The only reason why people were not happy was because most of them were not sexually satisfied to the extent and in the way they wanted to be. And the result of this was exactly what they now teach you at your Obsolete History Class. That is, the history of humankind. And what is the history of humankind but a hideous blend of shame and disgrace?! Shame and disgrace!” stressed Controller Globe, gazing at the deep-blue horizon above the students’ sunflower-like faces.
“Pride, Greed, Envy, and Rage,” the Controller continued, emphasizing each word by unbending a finger of Its right hand raised high up in the air against the sun-lit summer sky. “These are four deadly sins that humankind had to suffer from. Not somewhere else, in some other mystical underworld, which pre-transsexual Christians used to call Hell, but right here on Earth.”
The Controller stood up and took several steps towards the transfixed students.
“To be totally true, there used to be three more major sins. But we no longer consider them such, since, in the course of our civilization, they have lost their power over us. They are what our ancestors used to call Sloth, Gluttony and Lust. However, if you come to think of them hard enough, these so-called sins are not so much sins as simple human needs grown out of proportion, because they weren’t adequately addressed. And the only reason why we’ve managed to overcome them over the past seven decades of the Second Coming is because we’ve learned to satisfy them on time.”
“The cardinal difference between these three little vices,” Gianna Globe gently touched the T-shaped pendant between Its breasts, “and the first four truly tremendous sins, is that the latter, unlike the former, are not basic human needs but consequences of these needs not being properly satisfied. The basic needs of a human being, like of any other animal, are to feed, to fornicate, and to have as much free time as they need for that. And if you deny them the satisfaction of any of these three needs, they will inevitably become greedy to save what they’ve got left, proud and vain to compensate for what
has been taken away from them, and, finally, envious and enraged with those who are lucky to have more”.
The Controller fell silent for a few seconds to let the direct current of new data connect with the students’ brains before it went on.
“Boosted by the sentiment of solidarity, these ill feelings also make individuals mix into groups of equally deprived members of society. These groups then form what the prominent philosopher and prophet of the pre-fordean age Carl Marx called a class, particularly the lower class. The lower class is conceived as opposed to other, more prosperous classes: the middle and the higher. However, all the classes can be roughly divided into those who have and those who don’t. Those who don’t always seek to attack those who do in an attempt to retrieve what they have been unjustly bereft of. Those who do, on the other hand, seek to protect their prosperity from these attacks, constantly attempting to counterattack.”
“As a result of this deplorable phenomenon called the Class Struggle, there are continuous casualties on both sides of the front line that divides the said classes. Victory is certainly a much more frequent guest on the side of those that have rather than those that have not. That is because, even though the have-nots exceed the haves in numbers, the haves exceed the have-nots in power. And power is always more important than mere numbers, just like quality is more important than mere quantity. However, the horror, the suffering and, of course, the dirt-black cloak of death happen to be spread all over the battlefield where these struggles for recognition and equality take place.”
Once again, Gianna Globe fell silent, searching the student’s faces for signs of the said feelings – for they had to have them at least for a while in a surrogate state of mind in order to be properly warned against the mistakes of the past generations – swiftly spreading over them before wiping them out with confident optimism.
“But fortunately for all of us, due to the combined efforts of the Controllers’ Council, and with the blessing of Our FordorFreud’s Sacred Spirit,” Controller crossed Its chest with a no less sacred “T” sign, watching the students do the same, “we no longer have to worry about it these days. For it will soon be precisely seventy-seven summers since we finally found the way to escape this frightful fate of almost all naturally born human beings. A fate none of us, genetically perfect creatures are doomed to remain prisoners of anymore.”
