by Claire North
“People – people and governments – try to punish people like us for being rich. Envy, that’s all it is. Why should I give up money that I earned, so someone else can live off the state? If they can’t pick themselves up, like I did, then I don’t see why I should give a damn.”
I move through the room, skimming a credit card here, a phone there. This is the research stage. I don’t need to say very much; a hello, a goodbye, and then if I need to return to the target, hello again, goodbye again. But I want to talk, I need to talk, words silent on my tongue, so I say: “Oh my God, that’s so interesting, you’re so right,” because that’s what Rachel Donovan would say, and then I realise I hate the words, so I smile a different smile and say, “Actually, no, fuck you, fuck you and your arrogance, fuck you and your selfishness, fuck you for thinking that you deserve what you have, for thinking that because you know which little green numbers would get greener, because you knew how to play with abstract quantities and mathematical variants, you somehow deserve to rule the fucking world.”
Mouths drop, people move to summon the staff, to complain, there’s a woman here, there’s a woman in a red dress and we thought you vetted these people before they came, we thought you were selling us demure little children who were only interested in us for our money and knew how to pretend, what the fuck is this?
But I turn away, and push through the crowd, and feel like the queen of the universe, and by the time the man has found a manager to complain to, he’s forgotten what it was he was going to complain about.
Only briefly, only for a moment, do I remember that I am a thief, and that I lost the moral high ground a long time ago.
“Fuck you,” I repeat to myself. “Fuck that.”
Discipline in all things.
I am a machine.
I am my smile.
I am delight.
Okashi, delight, joy, enchantment. An old-fashioned word, much beloved of Sei Shōnagon, who found her delight in the little beauties of this life. A sprig of cherry blossom, delicately borne by a handsome boy. The icy cold of snow falling from a clear sky. I find all this wonderful, she wrote, and marvel that others do not.
I am okashi.
I stand on a balcony overlooking the street, a glass door separating me from the rest of the party. A few people have stepped outside too, away from the light nothing-music and the swirl of people in Dior, Hugo Boss, Chanel, Armani. I observe them haggle over the price, champagne flutes in hand, smiles never faltering. I count patent-leather shoes and gold wristwatches, tailored shirts and cashmere socks, and feel for a moment almost ashamed.
“I’m looking for someone who’ll be there,” says a man who introduces himself to me as Geoff – just Geoff. American accent, greying hair. “My work takes me places, but sometimes, when I come home, I just want to have a few days with someone who I can hang out with. We’ll go to the cinema, maybe the theatre, we’ll have supper together, and yes, I’d like the relationship to be sexual, but I don’t demand monogamy, she can lead her own life, do her own thing, I’ll put the money into her account in advance.”
“It’s a good deal,” whispered a woman in my ear after Geoff turned away, confused by my polite rejection. “It’s better than what most men want.”
A recollection of a similar system, an ancient idea. Danna. Patron to geisha in medieval Japan. Sometimes the relationship was sexual; sometimes artistic; sometimes an undefined, unspoken agreement between geisha and patron that it was considered uncouth to ever express. How little the world had changed.
“Do you have Perfection?” a woman asks another, their bodies turned as though they are contemplating the view, their eyes flickering constantly back to the room. I only half tune into their conversation, my eyes drifting shut, the wind cold against my skin.
“Yes, it’s just wonderful. How many…?”
“Two hundred and thirty-three thousand!”
“You look sensational on it.”
“I am, I am, I feel sensational, it’s just changed my life. You know, this is how I got into this party?”
“Seriously?”
“I hit two hundred and thirty thousand and there it was, just like that, the invitation in my inbox, a gift from Perfection – find the perfect man for the perfect woman. And so good, I mean, look at this place, so good, the men just so…”
“I know.”
“And have you seen him? I mean, I would just for the fuck, just for that body, but he owns like, one of the biggest tyre manufacturing companies in East Asia or something.”
“God, with a body like that…”
“Jesus!”
“Do you think he has Perfection too?”
I squeeze my eyes shut, let out a breath, count to ten, look for the three men I was meant to be tracking.
Okashi, okashi, I am okashi.
“I’m looking for the perfect woman,” explained one, a Brazilian man with a gold watch the size of my fist – bespoke, engraved, nightmare to fence even if I could be bothered stealing it. “I need her to have at least eight hundred thousand points on Perfection, and be willing to work to reach a million.”
“That’s very precise.”
He stared at me like I was an idiot. “A man can’t be perfect until he has a wife,” he explained. “Marriage is the union of two hearts, two bodies, two souls. Whoever she is, she has to be perfect too.”
“And how do you measure that perfection?” I asked. “Will your app tell you?”
“Of course it will,” he replied. “That’s how I’ll know.”
I stole his watch.
Something of a spite had settled over my soul.
On my ninth day, I followed Mrs Goto.
Apartment 718, forty-three years old, divorcee of two years’ standing, currently re-engaged to Mr Moti of apartment 261 – the perfect man, for the perfect woman. How I was learning to loathe those words.
Her driver took her towards the Meiji Royal Gardens, but she showed no interest in this royal spread of land, in its arching bridges and hanging trees, crafted so that every step changes the vista that you might behold; instead she buzzed at an anonymous white door to an anonymous white building, which closed with a pneumatic hiss behind her.
Anonymous reinforced doors always engage a thief’s curiosity. At seven p.m. I stole the security pass from a guard going off-shift, and at two a.m. I broke in by climbing the rubbish chute from the rear car park, his swipe card in my pocket and internet-purchased lockpicks in my bag.
Private medicine. Easy to identify: public medicine doesn’t have as many potted plants or espresso machines. Sofas are not padded leather, carpets are not thick and clean, departments are not laid out with little brass plates, no one is happy to see you.
I had imagined plastic surgery. (“So much happier with my body,” whispered one man on 430,500 points who I shared sake with. “Even with exercise and good eating, I just didn’t look like the way men look in the movies until I got Perfection.”)
You didn’t get to 1×106 points in Perfection without some sort of surgery, I had concluded. Even the most beautiful, even the most astoundingly naturally beautiful, had something tweaked, tucked or smoothed. Perfection seemed to be an inhuman quality.
Yet, walking through the treatment centre, past doors labelled with the names of professors and doctors, departments and facilities, I saw no sign of surgical operating theatres or recovery rooms. I moved at the speed of someone who shouldn’t be remarked upon, and trusted to my condition to protect me from comment should I encounter any of the cleaning staff or night guards.
Counselling, coaching, detox therapy, physical therapy, dietary therapy – the doors rolled by, and I didn’t understand what they were doing here, or why they mattered. At a door marked “spectrocraniotomy” I stopped, and with my stolen security pass, let myself inside.
A white room: white floors, white walls. A large red couch in the middle, stainless-steel column supporting adjustable parts. Lights, wires, inactive machines, acronyms an
d characters in katakana and hirogana. A skullcap attached to a central hub of machines. A pair of goggles plugged into network cabling. A server hidden behind one cupboard wall, top of the line, ninety thousand US dollars just for the basic hardware. A flick of a switch, and the goggles produced light, images flashing across the lenses too fast to follow.
A cardboard box of brochures told me more than my thin grasp of neuroscience. In English and Japanese it read:
Exclusive to the 106, the treatments provided by our clinic will help you find the perfect you within. Confidence, self-esteem, optimism, ambition, and dedication – if you’ve come this far, they all lie within you, and with our revolutionary new service we can help you find the strength to be the person you want to be.
Pictures.
Perfect women in the chair, skullcap on their heads. Earbuds pushed in, connected to a sound I couldn’t hear. Nose clips, a sensor stuck to the tongue, or perhaps not a sensor, perhaps something else, a thing creating sensations, senses. Clips on the fingers, a needle in the arm, drugs and electricity.
Perfect men in perfect white shirts, the sun at their backs, beaming proudly.
Perfect families playing with their perfect children on perfect beaches by sapphire seas.
Testimonials from clients.
I used to have to pretend that I was someone I wasn’t, and whenever life went my way, I would think that I hadn’t earned it. The treatments helped me see the world in a new way. I am worth so much more than I ever thought.
And below, a picture of a woman in a silk suit, arms folded, shoulders back, head high.
What is my life worth? asked the caption, as the city spread out beneath her through great panes of glass. My life is perfect now, and I make the world better by simply being.
The door to the room opened; a cleaner all in blue.
Surprise on her face, then immediately suspicion. If the world remembered me, this would be a low point, a failure, for here I am, undeniably doing wrong, and in the moment of uncertainty I feel guilt flash across my features, before I lock my smile in place. Giving my description to the police in ethnically not-so-diverse Tokyo would be easy, but I am nothing, I am the slight start in your chest which you later will put down to hiccups, I am the fear that faded as quickly as it came, I am
(worthless?)
practically forgotten already, as I push past her and run for the door.
Chapter 45
A suspicion growing, which now I acted on.
By stealing the identity of a journalist from the San Francisco Chronicle who looked perhaps a tiny little bit like myself, I got a meeting with a junior housing minister. He bowed as I entered, and I bowed lower, and we exchanged cards with both hands. As well as his normal card, he produced another, which transpired to be a dozen or so incredibly thin cards, each made of pressed platinum, his name engraved in gold.
“I donate them to the temples,” he explained, as I turned one between my fingers, feeling the sharpness of the edge. There must have been something of the thief in my face, for he quickly pulled it back, slipping these precious objects back into their hiding place. “It is both a financial gift, and a means of ensuring my name is remembered.”
I locked my smile in the attack position, and looked the minister up and down, adding up the value of his suit, his bespoke leather shoes, his watch – a beautiful piece, the face changing gently as the hands moved, the moon to conquer the retreating sun. In the 1500s, watches had been filled with symbols of Death: Death beating on the bell, creeping from his cave; Death waiting at the end of every dangerous hour. How time had changed.
My mind, wandering, again; there is a human in the room, there is company, he can see me, he can see me, focus on that.
Questions – the easy ones first, gently prepared. How long in his job? New challenges in housing? Changing demographics. Over-population in urban areas? Loss of rural communities? Planning laws. Tenant protection. Market imbalance. The 106 Apartments.
“Ah, yes, a beautiful piece of design, no?”
Beautiful indeed, and was I right in thinking that he was personally involved in the project?
“Not personally, not involved, but yes, I helped give it clearance.”
But wasn’t there a building standing there already?
“Unsafe building, terribly old, the residents living in unsanitary conditions, terrible, really, terrible.”
Low-income families evicted from their homes, sent away from the city and—
“That is the worst way of seeing it!” he interrupted, suddenly sharp, suddenly hostile. Strange how fast the switch may happen. In a society where good manners are king, the breakdown of such formalised structures rapidly reveals a need to not only save face, but to save face by chewing off the face of your adversary.
I do not need him hostile, so I bob in my seat, smile humbly, bat my eyelids, throw out a few harmless questions – new initiatives, lessons learned, wisdom acquired – and only at the very very end, as I stand up to leave, snapping my satchel shut around my entirely redundant notes, do I ask, quiet, conspiratorial:
“Do you have Perfection?”
His eyes dart up from the leather top of the desk where they had rested, to study my face. “Seven hundred and ninety-four thousand, five hundred,” I murmur, gentle as you like.
“Nine hundred and eighty-one thousand, four hundred,” he breathes, eyes now fixed on my face. “It’s changed my life. I thought I was worthless, now I know I can do whatever I want.”
“That’s how I feel.”
“I am a better person, now.”
“Me too.”
He leant forward, and I bent in to join him, so close I could feel his breath against my neck, feel him enjoy it, the heat rising in his skin, stayed still, didn’t flinch, didn’t curl away. “I got two hundred and fifty thousand points the day the 106 project went through. ‘You have made the perfect decision,’ it said. ‘You are building the perfect life.’ It is the perfect home.”
I smiled and nodded, and said nothing in reply.
He beamed at me, like an old friend happy to discover that time has not diminished our bond, as I walked away.
Chapter 46
A different party, another day. A gathering for the 106, for the elite, for the perfect. I stole one of the caterer’s badges, wore black shoes, black skirt, black shirt and white gloves, and walked in with a tray of sashimi served with green-tea powder, just as the party was getting warm.
All the perfect people, they chatted so easily, laughed so high, spoke so fair.
Hands picked treats off the tray, made by a chef flown in specially for the night, each mouthful marked with a calorie count and vitamin breakdown.
Perfection knows what you’re eating! said a card on my tray.
I let hands take food, then went to the bathroom, locked myself into a cubicle and changed. Dress by… someone… I’d stopped caring. Shoes by… someone else. I’d had to skim six credit cards, grab as much cash as I could before the accounts were closed, and even then fashion had nearly broken my budget.
Perfection was not for the poor.
I stepped back into the party, a beautiful woman who’d always been there. I drank champagne, ate sashimi, nodded at anecdotes about fashion, film, technology, power, and in this manner made my way towards my mark.
There she was, standing where she always stood, Filipa, just behind her brother. Her bracelet, silver, a mathematical challenge in metal form, still around my wrist. I hadn’t taken it off since she gave it to me. I looked, and saw that, like me, she was imperfect. The only imperfect woman in the room, though she tried so hard to fit in. Her smile was not dazzling; her wit was not razor-edged. Her nails were not perfectly lacquered, her dress was – such a sin – the same dress she’d worn last time, and out of season. And more, something else, a thing I’d seen before.
Sorrow, in her eyes, sorrow in her lips, closed and tight, as she watched the room turning.
You cannot be sad and be perfect.
I slipped into position beside her, watched in silence the perfect people with their perfect lives turn, turn and turn again, before I spoke.
“Thought is feedback,” I said, and her eyes rose to me, though her head did not turn. “Social anxiety triggers a physiological alarm. The physical reinforces the social. Through very few cycles, we may become convinced of fallacies. That we are afraid of people. That we are worthless. You and I could be perfect, if only we could tame that weakest part of ourselves – our thoughts. Do you not agree, Dr Pereyra-Conroy?”
Her eyes turned to me, and I thought I saw the glimmering of tears in them. “Yes,” she said, at last. “I do.”
“You do not have Perfection,” I said.
She answered without hesitation, eyes still on mine, studying my face. “No.”
“In the 106 Club, you may receive treatments. What do they do?”
“They make you happy.”
“Perfect?”
“Better.”
“Define better.”
Her lips sealed, a physical pressing together, her eyes flickered to her brother, chatting idly away. “Smarter? Sharper? Wiser?” I suggested. “Confident. Ambitious. Sexy. Sensuous. Just like they are in Hollywood.”
Her eyes, back to my face, a slight tilt of her head. “I make the technology,” she breathed at last. “My brother designed the parameters of what it should achieve.”
Now I looked at him, Rafe Pereyra-Conroy, back straight, smile bright, shaking the hand of a stranger. Smooth as a millpond, hard as marble, bright as moonlight in a starless sky.
“How does it work?” I asked.
She spoke fast, blank, staring at thoughts only she could see. “High-speed reinforcement learning. Neuroplasticity is on your side. Positive values are extolled. Positive behaviours are reinforced. Dopamine released on the mimicking of positive actions. Electrical stimulation activates axon terminals. Visual and auditory aids. In early testing, we inserted electrodes into the heart of the brain. All thought is feedback, social anxiety triggers a physiological response, fear, terror, sweat glands, capillaries dilate, blood pressure, respiration—”
