The Kubic Kat mentor sat at his desk, and nodded. Sally sat opposite him, perusing Mr Smith’s logs. "You are too bad, daddy! Way, way too bad!"
She looked into his eyes, “But why? I still don’t see why we need to create this Kubic Kat character.”
The mentor sat next to her, heavily, and sighed. “My dear girl, did you not read Nineteen Eighty Four in your Leadership course at university?”
“Of course, Winston Smith was a tragic, almost comic, hero.”
“No, no, no! You have clearly missed the point of Smith’s character. And your teachers were surely remiss in their duties in not correcting your misunderstanding.”
He stood up and turned to look out of the high window that looked down on the ant-like life of the masses.
“Winston Smith was an anti-hero. His character is, in fact, essential to the existence of Big Brother. Without Smith, Big Brother could not exist. Emmanuel Goldstein was a fictional character within the book. He too played his role, but as an imaginary, made-up persona, he could not function as a true counter-point to the state actor. For that role, Big Brother had need of a real person. A person made of flesh and bone, and capable of independent thought and action! And yet at the same time both controllable and ultimately compliant. The need was for a being so schizoid in his true nature that the death drive could be manipulated to ensure that he would betray himself, even to the point of sacrificing his own existence.
“In the end we see Smith in the Chestnut Tree Café, sipping gin. His time at the Ministry of Love is over, the torture finished. And all that remains in his life is the bullet to the head, for which he passively waits.
“We know that he is fully aware of his impending end, and yet we see him happy and content, indeed, for the first time in the book, Smith is at peace.
“Now what kind of sane being, aware of their impending death sits placidly waiting?
“We know that the only such persons are schizoid masochists.
“This is what is required of Smith by the state, by Big Brother.
“He must pacifically sacrifice his life for his love, for his absolute loyalty, to the state.
“You know originally Blair planned to call his book ‘The Last Man’, but books have a way of running away from their authors, and the Smith character certainly did that. In the end his death drive, the ultimate self-destructive urge, and his emasculating masochism defines Smith. And there is no way, if we - the readers - see this, that we can accept the dichotomy with the title’s claim to hyper-masculinity. Recall his betrayal of Julia is a defining point in his alteration, in finding his true self. An act, that in its very brutality, is the absolute rejection of the erotic, life-giving sense of self. In claiming to wish that Julia, and not he, should face the rats, he gives up his pretence of self-worth, and with it his masculine identity and accepts that, at best, Julia is the male, the aggressor, the guilty.
“And so we can see that quite the opposite of the original title is true. Smith is central to the authority, to the legitimacy, of Big Brother. Without Smith, the coward, the fool, the ineffective rebel, Big Brother would wither and die. A society such as ours, such as Nineteen Eighty Four’s, can only prevail in the constant presence of aggression. Smith’s revolution is a key component in the state’s war against its people, as is the rebellion's inevitable failure.”
Sally sat in thought, biting on her lower lip. “But if we can build these Kubic Kats, then what is the point? I mean, why don’t we just make everyone a Kubic Kat. Then we would not need these fake revolutionaries.”
“A fair point. And indeed, just as we have implemented a universal kill switch, so too, eventually, all the serfs will become Kubic. At that point in time we will not only be able to dispense with creatures like our Mr Smith, but indeed the entire middle class. Then there will be the purity of the ruled and the rulers. No middle strata needed to interface the one with the other. Computers will eventually take the drudge out of even this laborious and dirty chore. But that is a long time in the future. Perhaps in twenty or twenty five years we will have progressed with this technique to the point where it can be generalised. Then at a certain age, each child will be implanted with the robotic swarm virus, and will in the passage of a few weeks have their brain interlaced with units of the swarm. Their action will be our volition. Their will shall be our command. Their lives will be our playthings.”
“I am not sure I would like to have my brain controlled so fully by a computer!”
He laughed, then lent over her a planted a fatherly kiss on her forehead. “Oh my dear child! We are the rulers. None of this applies to us! Do you think we have a kill switch in our heads?”
“Speaking of that, what exactly is a kill switch?”
“Well, as you are aware, at birth an identity chip is implanted in the base of every child’s skull. Officially this is supposed to act as a method of absolute identification, but even from the start it was used to track and surveil every person so equipped. For the poor, or serf, class the functions are necessarily rudimentary. Such devices simply track location upon command, and when in close proximity to a data loop will capture and transmit the ambient audio information in the person’s locale.
“But for the middle, or manager, class the devices are far more sophisticated, and can capture, store, and forward not only audio, but stereo-optic video; we can even read the subject’s mood. The very latest ones can, of course, even capture latent speech, which is the same technology we used to communicate between Smith and the swarm.
“Regardless of the functional richness of these devices they all share a common ‘back-door’ function. They each house a small charge of mercury fulminate, along with a fragmentation sphere. When we trigger a bulk local kill command, then anyone within a radius of approximately 100 meters will have the charge triggered. The detonation ruptures the fragmentation sphere which instantly severs the spinal column. The remaining fragments are driven up into the base of the brain. Paralysis is instant, and death occurs within a fraction of a second. It is really quite humane.
“A more specific global signal can be sent out to target a single individual. These people simple fall down dead. Recall, we can never let ourselves be at risk from the masses. Control must be absolute. But while we can end any attempt at revolution with the flick of a switch, we still need slaves to cook our food, and to carry out the trash; in other words, to do the heavy lifting.
For a moment a look of genuine concern passed across Sally’s face, “God,” she said, “it is almost like we are parasites.” Sadly the look did not last very long.
Her father sat down across from her, his face beaming. “Yes, my dear that is exactly it! And the very best parasites are those that are so devious, so clever, that the host is never even aware of their presence. Eventually, just as the jewel wasp jacks into the brain of its cockroach victim and guides the roach to its doom, we too, will be able to manipulate the entire body of the human genus.
“No volition, no will, no moral outrage. We will simply govern, and the people will accept, without question. It will be perfection.”
“And then what of the Kubic Kat?”
“Ah once we are there, we shall no longer need such contrivances! But for now we need to have such individuals, either in the pipeline, ready for deployment, or active in the field. We need them to justify the regime; they must act as the very fulcrum with which we bend and shape the will of the people to cleave to our own viewpoint. Without such drivers we would be sore pressed to explain the agony to which we subject the people. They must have some sop to give their life meaning.”
“And of Tony?” even as she said the name she realised how dangerous it was to utter it in that way.
Her father looked at her sternly, and she averted her gaze. He relented a little, “Honey. No matter what you say. No matter how you feel, and no matter how angry you might make me, never look down. You are a leader, so you must never submit!”
&
nbsp; She looked up again, but there was colour in her checks.
He sat back down, opposite her, and looked into her face. “Ah, that was always the danger, always the risk. That you might feel for him. That in raising him from the mire, and empowering him to a level close to our own, that you might develop feelings for him. Feelings of a most inappropriate kind.” He paused, “You feel a little attraction? Or is it maybe guilt?”
“Oh no! I could never love a man like that! I had to make him. I had to repair each flaw in his miserable soul. I had to give him Fulvia, and I had to watch him fall in love with her!”
He pursed his lips in contemplation, “Then what?”
“It’s just that I built him. And now we are going to destroy him utterly. When we are through, nothing will remain. It will be as if my work was never there. It will have no meaning”
“Oh no, my dear! The shadow of the ghost of your work will lay its pall across the whole world. Everywhere you look, at the fear in people’s eyes, at the despair in their hearts, you will know that you wrought that. That it was your hands that doled out those portions of hopelessness.” He reached out his hand, and touched her face gently, like a lover would. “You never need to fear that your work is for nothing. You, and I, and the other leaders, will always know the truth!”
He sighed, and then sat back in the chair. “You know you will have to kill him?”
“Why me? That was never part of the plan!”
“Yes it was, it was always part of the plan!” he paused to gaze thoughtfully out of the window, “If you make it, you must break it, my Dear.”
He turned back towards her, leaned forwards, and took her face in his hands. He gazed deeply into her eyes. “Surely you understand what is required? To break him we must first get him to betray Fulvia. And she must know of this betrayal. She must know, totally and completely that he is in love with you, and always has been. She must be made aware of the fact that he is just using her for cover; that she means nothing to him.
"Then he must see her one last time. He must see that she knows of his betrayal. And he must then execute her with his own hands. Once he has sacrificed everything he loves, you must do the same to him. And when you place the barrel of the gun in his mouth he will welcome the sweet release of death, to blot out the misery that is his life. He may even thank you for it.”
“Will it be me, using him as a remote, when he kills Fulvia?”
“No, he must do it by his own hand. Only in that way will he realise that he is utterly lost. We will offer him a choice. He can kill Fulvia quickly, or watch while you are tortured to death slowly.”
Sally looked rather aghast at that prospect, “And what if he chooses Fulvia?”
“He won't. Once he has seen the look of betrayal in her eyes, he will know that she is lost to him, and will therefore choose you.”
Sally looked off into the distance, “I will so enjoy watching her being destroyed! Especially by the man that she believed loved her.”
“Yes, I am sure you will… But the more important question is: will you also enjoy your destruction of Mr Smith?”
She paused then smiled somewhat coyly, “I rather think I will.”
– The End –
If you have enjoyed this book then why not purchase the author's upcoming book 'The Time Traveller' (Due to be published in Q1 of 2014)
T h e K u b i c K a t
The darkest future is the one that is yet to come…
In an age where freedom has no meaning, and liberty is now unknown, everyone lives in the shadow of the panopticon.
Only by the creation of a Kubic Kat can there be any hope for the future. But is this Kubic Kat what he seems to be? Or are darker forces secretly at work?
From the humorous beginnings to the breath-taking conclusion this book will force you to re-evaluate your preconceptions about technology and the direction that the world is now taking.
If there is only one book that you will read this year, then it should be this one.
The Kubic Kat Page 19
