H(A)PPY

by Nicola Barker

  ‘Are these my dreams?’ the sleeping Mira A asks. Sometimes she shouts, ‘Whose dreams are these?! ’ and bursts into noisy tears.

  The Young never cry. Never. Because there is no need. Why would we? Why should we cry? It is so messy and self-defeating and so . . . so damp.

  On one occasion . . .

  *TERRIBLE DISCIPLINE*

  On one occasion you-know-who appeared in my dream and began whispering things into my ear.

  I could use his name freely because I was asleep and different rules apply there. I knew I was asleep. I was startled by his impertinence. I said, ‘Why are you in my dreams, ****? What is the meaning of this?’

  He responded with a question of his own: ‘Why aren’t you watching the standard dreams, Mira A? They’re generally very good for morale building. Don’t you think they might prove helpful?’

  As he spoke I noticed that all his teeth were black.

  ‘I am trying, ****,’ I said, somewhat unnerved, ‘but I feel a distance. I feel a gap between myself and these dreams. And I don’t know what to do with it – this gap. I don’t know how to fill it.’

  ‘Have you been . . .

  *TERRIBLE DISCIPLINE*

  ‘ . . . playing the kora as I suggested?’ **** asked.

  ‘Yes,’ I nodded. ‘Although I find the perfected tuning to be a little unimaginative. The range of . . . ’

  ‘The tuning fork is in your heart,’ **** avowed, then licked his lips. His tongue was forked.

  ‘I know.’ I shuddered, slightly unnerved (not so much by the tongue – I knew I was dreaming and that my feelings towards **** were mixed, at best – but by the idea that **** had been following my Information Stream. And if this was so, then why had I not been informed by my Sensor about it?). ‘Uh . . . but it’s interesting to note that as the instrument was originally conceived . . . ’ I waffled (of course this was a dream, a dream, that’s why, just a dream . . . ).

  ‘Our kora is perfected,’ **** interrupted, with a shrug.

  ‘I know. I understand that. But this is an ancient instrument and the value of its—’

  ‘Do you think you – you – Mira A, know better than The System?!’ **** asked, indignant. His tongue flickered between his lips.

  ‘Of course not!’ I was naturally horrified by this idea. ‘But the secret of the instrument . . . ’

  ‘Secret?’ **** echoed, warily.

  *TERRIBLE DISCIPLINE*

  ‘To hold the tune is part of the skill of playing. It isn’t something that can simply be . . . ’

  Suddenly, I was showing **** what I meant. I went to fetch my kora. I removed it from its case. I unfastened the strings from the tuning pegs. I extracted the tuning pegs. I printed up some leather cords and carefully bound the strings with them at fixed intervals around the neck.

  It took me several hours. All the while **** watched. He was very engaged. He was interested. He did not attempt to interfere or to interrupt. In fact it would be no exaggeration to confess that he may almost have . . . have inspired me in my undertakings by his quiet, reptilian presence.

  After the cords were attached, I used The Information Stream and The Sensor to guide me with the new tunings. But for some, strange reason the sound processing jarred me. It simply didn’t feel right. It felt all wrong. So I took the liberty of manufacturing a special aluminium tuning fork in the chord of A (440Hz) – I took this liberty because I was dreaming, of course. It was a laborious process, all told. But **** watched, patiently.

  It felt as if days had passed, weeks, even, until eventually the instrument was prepared. At last, at long last, I began to play. No. It was off. I scowled. I retuned. I played again. No. Still off. I retuned. No. No. No. No. It was immensely challenging. I was exhausted. I was spent. I was drained. I was dripping with perspiration . . .

  *TERRIBLE DISCIPLINE*

  . . . but so . . . so . . . engaged, so fulfilled.

  *TERRIBLE DISCIPLINE*

  . . . and I was finally – ah, finally – about to get some kind of handle on the whole, complex tuning issue (although something still nagged and jarred in my ear) when **** stood up and left. Without a word. On the chair where he had been sitting was the transparent skin he had shed. It rustled when I touched it like the skein of a dried leaf.

  Am I still dreaming? I wondered.

  I looked around for Tuck. Tuck was nowhere to be seen. And the walls of my room were hung with a selection of animal corpses. From very small to very large. I saw a fieldmouse, strung up by its tiny ankles, and at the furthest extreme . . .

  *TERRIBLE DISCIPLINE*

  . . . I saw a giant black rhino.

  All dead. All utterly dead. But peaceful. I was still dreaming. I felt tired. I put the kora back into its case and lay down on my bed. I fell asleep.

  In the morning I went for a lengthy run on the Power Spot. I took Tuck for a walk. Tuck longs for me to throw him a frisbee – the way we used to play before the EOE – but I have stopped using the frisbee now because I worry about Tuck’s excessive energy usage. But still Tuck asks for the frisbee and leaps around wildly in frustration when I do not offer it. It’s immensely irritating. To see him consuming energy to no particular purpose. I wish I had never committed to this pet. Perhaps I can get him retuned. Tuck is a burden. Tuck really is a serious pain in the neck.

  I push this thought away.

  After I had exercised Tuck I attended a seminar about symmetry. It was fascinating – especially from the standpoint of musical composition. After that I made my weekly sojourn to volunteer in the soil laboratory. The work The Young are doing there is truly inspirational. We have come so far. I am awed by our dynamism, our meticulousness, our care.

  A second run on the Power Spot was followed by a meeting with my Kora Group. For the past few sessions . . .

  *TERRIBLE DISCIPLINE*

  . . . we have been working on a piece based on the bones of a collaboration between a kora player and a harpist: 8.3.41.9.6–41.9.81.02.1.3 and 1.02.9.5.11–12.51.11.3.5.91. It’s very beautiful. Tuesday plays the perfected harp quite wonderfully and so contributes 8.3.41.9.6–41.9.81.02.1.3’s parts.

  It had been a positive day thus far, and my Graph – my Information Stream, my Sensor – had given me no reason to believe that anything untoward had occurred or was about to occur. There were no signs, no clues, no vague indications that everything was about to go so terribly wrong. None.

  When I entered the meeting room (slightly late after my exhausting exercise session) the other group members were clustered together, their individual Sensors interconnecting to form a large, communal screen. I idly imagined that they might be watching our joint performance from a previous session to gauge how well the collaboration was progressing. But I was way off the mark. They were actually . . .

  *TERRIBLE DISCIPLINE*

  . . . poring over the consolidated footage of intimate details of my day. Yes. They were watching me. They were studying me. Mira A. The large screen was divided into several parts. In one part I was running on the Power Spot and I was plainly exhausted. My Graph was pinkening quite dramatically because of the excessive and – quite frankly – unnatural levels of effort I was expending. I shuddered at the sight of it. My behaviour was silly. It was inappropriate. It was utterly counterproductive.

  (How had I not realised? How had this plain truth escaped me? This activity was bogus and completely self-defeating!)

  On another screen I was playing with Tuck, but Tuck was pestering me for the frisbee, and I was gradually losing my temper with him. At one point I actually – I hate to admit this, even to myself – yelled inarticulately and lashed out at him with my arm. I slapped him away! And The Graph, quite naturally, purpled significantly. The assembled party – watching, in shocked silence as this awful scene unfolded – all gasped, in unison.

  Perhaps I have grown so accustomed – so hardened – to my Graph pinkening (and even purpling) of late that I have actually forgotten how shocking it really is, how dreadful i
t might appear – to Clean, Young eyes, to Neuro-Typical eyes – how strange and A-Typical and unsettling.

  But these were just the small parts – the small parts of the big screen. The main part was taken up with footage of me that had been recorded the previous night. It was dark. But I was hard at work re-stringing and retuning my kora.

  The tuning fork is in your heart!

  *TERRIBLE DISCIPLINE*

  And all the while as I retuned it my lips were moving. I was talking to myself. No, no, I was talking to Ki . . . to you-know-who, sitting on a chair close by. But you-know-who was not on the chair. Tuck was on the chair. Tuck was sitting, bolt upright, on the chair. I was talking to Tuck.

  Someone in the group raised the volume on this odd-seeming monologue for a moment and my voice was suddenly audible. I was saying, ‘The skill is embedded in the . . . the proficiency of . . . in the act of . . . the attempt to . . . to control the variable . . . which refuses to be controlled . . . which is imperfect . . . and this imperfection becomes . . . it’s an essential part of the idea, ****, . . . the core of the idea . . . something so ancient and so imprecise . . . so capricious, so wayward, so erratic, so volatile, so mercurial . . . and this is the . . . this is the . . . this is the key, ****, . . . the heart . . . the source . . . this is the clue,****, the meaning is contained in the . . . the gap . . . the space . . . the void . . . ’

  And on the other screens, my voice, still exclaiming, ‘I must keep going. Just a minute longer. I must, I must . . . Oh, but I’m so tired, so tired, so tired, so tired . . . ’

  and:

  ‘Down, dog! Down! Down! Stop it! Stop! This is awful! Down! Down! I hate you! I hate you! You’re completely unbearable!’

  I had never realised before how irritating the grain of my voice is. So puny. So nasal. So whiney. So . . . so . . . bleating, so insubstantial, so partial, so unappealing, so . . . so unfinished.

  Kipp scratched his head and then muttered to the assembled group: ‘Please note: there’s no evidence of purpling in the coverage on the big screen . . . ’

  ‘She’s asleep,’ Tuesday muttered, apparently astonished.

  ‘This isn’t me,’ I blurted out.

  They all turned, en masse. The look in their eyes – surprise, judgement – was excruciating. I dropped my kora case and covered my face with my hands. Kipp – who is so pure, so rational, so inspirational in his detachment – was instantly by my side. ‘I’m sorry, Mira A,’ he murmured, ‘we did not mean to spy on you. We admire you. We trust you. We value your contribution to the Kora Group. But you were late and someone happened to glance at your Stream to find out . . . and then . . . because of the . . . I suppose . . . the recent EOE, your Stream was suddenly very bumpy . . . it kept . . . there was a vibration . . . an . . . an oscillation . . . and everything began playing, all at once . . . so we were concerned . . . surprised . . . and gradually our Sensors became unified until we were all just . . . just standing here and . . . just . . . just watching.’

  ‘But I can explain, I can explain . . . ’ I babbled.

  ‘You are too upset,’ Tuesday interrupted. ‘Look . . . your Graph is purpling. We can’t afford another EOE. We are in the Kora Group together. We can’t allow the Kora Group to become implicated in this. The Kora Group is a very happy organisation, a very Fresh and Clean organisation . . . ’

  ‘Weren’t we in that seminar about symmetry together,’ Powys suddenly piped up, ‘earlier today? And now, the Kora Group? If both of these Communities become implicated in your purpling it will critically affect the Balance in at least two of my activities. Two of my Graphs – my Communities – at the very least, will be implicated. So calm down. Please calm down. We are all turning away. Everything we have seen . . . Look’ – he held out a hand towards the others, their Graphs – ‘look . . . check our Graphs if you don’t believe me . . . we are calmly turning away. All of us. It is forgotten. It is all forgotten. We have already moved on. We are here, in This Moment.’

  ‘Mira A must try and control her emotions’ – Kipp nodded – ‘but we can’t just turn away entirely, Powys, because this is serious. This is very serious. There is evidence of a . . . ’ – he drew a deep breath and glanced towards his own Graph – ‘a dangerous confusion here. A problem. Something is wrong with Mira A. She has retuned her kora. She has brought imperfection to her instrument. She has violated the code of the kora.’

  Tuesday shuddered as she watched Kipp’s Information Stream lightly pinkening. It was too much for her to bear. Not just because she was concerned about Kipp (because Kipp had done nothing wrong, he was pinkening by implication) but because of what this pinkening might represent for herself – her own pristine Graph – and, more widely, the Kora Group’s.

  ‘But I was asleep, Kipp,’ I croaked – I wheedled – my throat constricted with repressed emotion. ‘I would never have . . . I would never have dreamed of—’

  ‘But you did dream of . . . ’ Kipp interrupted. Then he regretted it. It smacked too much of criticism, of judgement.

  ‘I apologise, Mira A. This is all rather confusing,’ Kipp added.

  ‘I don’t know what to say,’ Tuesday said.

  As they were speaking I opened my kora case. Simply to prove them all wrong. I opened the case and I took out the kora. To show them. As evidence. But I was astonished to discover that it had been restrung! I had restrung the kora. This was all real. This was not some wild and unfathomable chimera. This was all true.

  Then – quite unconnected to this fact – my heart almost stopped beating for a second, in pure fear, in horror, because I had mentioned you-know-who, by name (had I not?), openly, persistently, in my dream! There had been some pinkening. And now all these different Streams – the Streams of the Kora Group – were embedded with the idea of you-know-who. He was a part of my narrative. And the narrative had spread. And I could see, as I looked around me, in the faces of the Kora Group as they stared at the imperfect kora, the re-strung kora, that I had unleashed a question, a doubt, a bruise, among them. I had done that. I had done that. I had infected them. I had created a series of awful neural pathways.

  Where might they lead?!

  *TERRIBLE DISCIPLINE*

  I had unintentionally (but was it unintentional?) spread corruption!

  I had unwittingly (but was it unwitting?) declared war on The Young!

  In my sleep!

  Without even realising!

  HOW?!

  HOW COULD I MAKE THIS RIGHT?!

  HOW?!

  I quickly placed the kora back into its case.

  ‘I will destroy this kora,’ I said. ‘There will be no trace remaining. It is an insult to the perfected instrument, a dreadful . . . a terrible violation. I’m so sorry, Tuesday,’ I interrupted myself, ‘but in order to describe what I have done, how I have . . .

  SINNED

  I gulped, confused, incapacitated, cornered. ‘There is a problem with my Oracular Devices,’ I panted. ‘An . . . an . . . an oscillation. They have tried to correct it. But they failed. I am sorry. I am so sorry. I have understood what has been said. I have understood it perfectly. The tuning fork is in your heart. I know that. I trust that.

  The tuning fork is in your heart.’

  Silence.

  I saw a series of individual Graphs struggling to push what had just happened away. Pushing me away. Turning away.

  ‘I must go,’ I muttered, ‘I must leave the Kora Group. I apologise from the very bottom of my heart for the negative impact I have had on this Community. It is a wonderful Community, a good, a generous, a H(A)PPY . . . ’

  Everything wavered. I quickly closed my mouth.

  ‘About ****,’ Kipp said, after a brief pause, ‘I think you should seriously consider re-evaluating that situation. It’s not right, Mira A. It’s . . . ’ He paused nervously before using the word, ‘ . . . unhealthy.’

  ‘****?’ I froze, just for a second, and then I squawked, loudly – strangely, inarticulately – because it was the onl
y thing I could come up with to stop everyone from glancing over towards my Stream (on which ****’s identifier, his distinctive logo, was currently flashing).

  ‘Yes. I’m not sure if it’s really working out between the two of you’ (Kipp was clearly somewhat perturbed by the squawk). ‘Perhaps consider exchanging him for a Neuro-

  Mechanical feline, or a bird. They might prove less of a psychological burden.’

  I was silent for a second, not quite knowing how to respond, and then, ‘Yes,’ I murmured, ‘you’re right. I am struggling. Thank you.’

  I left the Kora Group, shamed and defeated, confused, with the imperfected kora.

  Nobody tried to stop me.

  I did not correct him. I left him – Kipp, and the wider group, by extension – believing that you-know-who was . . . was simply the dog.

  It wasn’t a lie. No. No. Surely not? I just didn’t correct . . . I didn’t . . . I couldn’t . . . because of the narrative . . . because of this awful narrative, this toxic narrative . . . which keeps on unfurling, which will not be quietened.

  A lie.

  A lie!

  But only to . . . to stop . . . to protect . . .

  Oh!

  Cannot.

  Must not.

  Speak.

  Think.

  I don’t want to talk any more. I am done with talking. Yet still, still, something compels me to speak out. To tell.

  I requested permission (as suggested per my Graph) to have my Oracular Devices readjusted once again. The surgical Neuro-Mechanicals worked on them at great length – with impressive diligence. I told the Team Head about the oscillation and the Devices have now been re-knitted with additional supports. It will take some time before my vision returns to normal. I must be patient. I am patient. There is a pressure in the head. It is inevitable. It is not pain. The Young do not feel pain. We are protected from pain. That is part of The System. That promise, that guarantee, is built into The System. No Pain. No more pain.