by Lavie Tidhar
Coincidentally, the heating system in his room failed. The grey radiators, became ice cold and no longer circulated hot water. Arvardan checked them and realized the problem wasn’t with the pipes. Since his neighbors were suffering the same fate, it meant that the heating system was failing as a whole. The one positive effect of this failure was that it reduced the stench in his room. The negative effect, however, was that his room turned into an ice cellar. The low temperature covered everything in the already–uncomfortable room with an additional layer of frost. The only source of warmth in the room was the computer. Arvardan put on all his winter clothes, crawled into bed, and pointed the exhaust fans of the computer toward him.
The appropriate authorities decided that “heat” and “furnace” and other similar words were also temporarily sensitive words, so Arvardan had no way of drafting a complaint to the heating supply agencies. All he could do was to wait quietly. Other than his fingers moving over the keyboard, he tried to remain very still, so as to conserve body heat. On the fourth day after the heating system had failed, the radiators finally began to clatter and rattle with the sound of hot water flowing through them. The room warmed up again, and “heat” and “furnace” and similar words returned to the List of Healthy Words. So e–mails and BBS forum posts were filled with sentiments like “We congratulate the appropriate authorities for restoring heat so quickly to bring warmth to the people in need!” and “The people’s government loves the people!” et cetera.
But this was too late for Arvardan. He fell sick with a cold, a terrible cold. His head hurt as though someone had shot a dumdum bullet into his skull. All he could do was to lie on his bed and wait for the doctor. The doctor arrived at his home, put him on an IV, gave him some nameless pills, and told him to rest. This sickness lasted several days, and he had to give up that week’s Talking Club meeting. His body just wasn’t up for it, and Arvardan thought he was going to die.
Arvardan lay on his bed, filled with regret. The Talking Club was his only joy in life, and now he couldn’t even go. He covered his head with his blanket and thought, Would Wagner bring something special to the meeting this time? Would Lancelot bring his two children? And Artemis… If Arvardan weren’t there, who would she have a “frank exchange” with? Wagner or Lancelot? He also thought about Duras. At the last meeting, Duras had reached the point in the story where Winston told Julia, in their secret meeting room, “We are the dead.” Julia also said, “We are the dead.” And a third voice then said, “You are the dead.”
Duras had stopped when she got to this point. Arvardan had desperately wanted to know what happened next. Who was the third voice? Was it the Party? Would Winston and Julia be arrested? What was going to happen to them?
“Let it be a cliffhanger,” Artemis said to him. “Then the whole next week our lives will be spent in the joy of anticipation.” And then the two went back to the joy of frankly exchanging.
Arvardan’s sickness lasted ten days. The first thing he did after he felt well enough was to get up and look at the calendar on the wall. Today was Sunday, a Talking Club meeting day. Arvardan had missed one meeting, and he felt like a man dying of starvation. Even in his sleep, he dreamed of talking at the Talking Club.
Arvardan washed his face and carefully shaved off his thick stubble with a rusty razor. He brushed his teeth and smoothed down his bed hair with a towel and some warm water. Due to his sickness, the appropriate authorities had issued him some extra supplies, including two croissants, two ginger beers, and a packet of fine sugar. He wrapped these carefully in a plastic bag, and put the package inside his coat pocket to bring to the Talking Club to share with everyone.
Arvardan got off the bus, felt for the package hidden inside his coat, and walked toward the Simpson Tower. Halfway there, he lifted his head, and an icy chill seized his heart, forcing him to stop in his tracks.
Something was very wrong.
He looked up to the fifth floor. Before, the window from Artemis’s apartment that faced the street had been covered by pink curtains, but now the curtains were pulled to the sides, and the window was wide open. If there was a meeting of the Talking Club today, Artemis would never have left the shielding curtains open. And keeping the windows open was odd, period. In the Capital, the air outside was terribly murky. No one would have opened the windows to let in “fresh air.”
There was no Talking Club today. Something else was going on. Arvardan stared at the window, and his heart began to beat furiously. He took his hand out of his pocket, put a cigarette in his mouth, then leaned against a utility pole, and forced himself to be calm so as not to raise the suspicion of passing pedestrians. Suddenly he saw something that made him almost faint. A single idea filled his mind.
“There would be no meeting of the Talking Club this week. There will never be a meeting again,” he mumbled to himself, his face the color of ashes.
He saw a contraption that looked like a radar dish, hidden in a corner on this side of the street. Arvardan knew exactly what this was. It was what he had been designing the software for: the new, high–powered, active Listener. The device was capable of sending out active electromagnetic waves to capture vibrations made by voices against walls and windows from a distance, and examine such speech for sensitive words.
If such a device had been installed right near Artemis’s home, then that meant the Talking Club was completely exposed to the view of the appropriate authorities. The active Listener’s penetrating waves would easily pierce through the lead curtains, and transmit the Club members’ words verbatim to the ears of the appropriate authorities.
This invention defined a new era. The appropriate authorities no longer had to wait passively for warnings. Instead, they could at any time actively inspect any speech made by anyone. Arvardan could easily imagine what had happened next. Everything that Artemis and the others said was recorded by the appropriate authorities. Then the police broke into her apartment and arrested all the members of the Talking Club who were present. After they conducted a search, all that was left was the empty room and the empty windows.
Arvardan felt a knife was being twisted inside his heart. He did not think that he was fortunate to have escaped capture. His stomach churned, and nausea rose from his stomach to his mouth. He wanted to vomit, but he couldn’t — “vomit” was itself a sensitive word. His body, only just recovered, could not take the hit. He began to shake as though he was suffering chills.
He dared not continue forward. He turned around, boarded another bus, and shut his mouth even tighter. When Arvardan returned to his own building, he saw that another active Listener was being installed nearby. The dark antenna extended into the sky, and along with the other antennas around the Capital, it wove an invisible, giant Web in the sky that covered everything.
He dared not stop to look. Keeping his head low, he walked past the active Listener, and returned home without stopping. Then he hid his face in the pillow, but dared not cry out loud. He couldn’t even say, “Fuck you, you sonovabitch.”
After that, Arvardan’s life returned to normal — just as before, it was stagnant, restrained, passionless, healthy, and without any vulgar joys. Lancelot had said that the result of the war was that the people’s desire for freedom would push language to the edge of death. The death of the Talking Club led to the deletion of “talking,” “opera,” “frank,” and “exchange” from the List of Healthy Words.
Although it was still possible to use numbers, the number “1984” was shielded. One morning, without any warning, Arvardan was simply assigned a new Web Access Serial that no longer contained that string of numerals. This also meant that programmers like Arvardan had to constantly ensure that their programs did not compute illegal numbers. This added greatly to the workload, and Arvardan was even more exhausted.
What happened later in Nineteen Eighty–Four Arvardan would never know. Duras, the only one who did know, had disappeared completely. So what happened to Winston and Julia would forever be a myste
ry: like the fate of Lancelot, Wagner, Duras, and Artemis.
He worried the most about Artemis. Every time he thought of that name, Arvardan could not control how depressed he became. What happened to her? Was she completely shielded? If that was the case, then the only trace she left in this world would be a pseudonym in the memory of a programmer.
Three weeks after the disappearance of the Talking Club, everything remained calm. No one came after Arvardan. He thought maybe it was because the others had refused to give up any information about him. Or maybe it was because they didn’t really know who he was — the person they knew was a programmer named Wang Er. In the Capital there were thousands of programmers, and Wang Er was just a pseudonym.
Life went on peacefully. No, to be precise, there was one bit of difference. That would be the List of Healthy Words: words disappeared from it at a faster and faster pace. Every hour, every minute, words vanished from it. As the pace of revision for the List quickened, e–mails and BBS forum posts became more and more vapid and banal. Since people had to use an extremely limited set of words to express an inexpressibly wide range of thoughts, everyone more and more preferred silence. Even the secret codes and hidden clues became fewer.
One day, Arvardan lifted his head from the computer. He stared at the grey, hazy sky outside the window, and his chest spasmed. He coughed in pain, and drained the distilled water from his cup. He threw the disposable plastic cup into the trashcan, also made of plastic. Listening to the dull sound of plastic hitting plastic, he thought his own brain was also filled with a pile of trash. He rapped his knuckles against his skull. Indeed, the same empty dull sound came out.
He put on his coat and filtering mask and walked out the door. He did not wear a portable Listener because it was no longer necessary. The Capital was filled with active Listeners, ever vigilant for the presence of sensitive words. The entire Capital now was just like the Web, healthy and stable.
Arvardan had a legitimate excuse for going outside. He had decided to turn in his permit for BBS service. It was no longer necessary to use this service. E–mail, BBS forums, Web sites — everything was now the same.
The calendar said it was spring, but outside it was still very cold. Tall, grey buildings stood like a forest of stone in absolute zero. Gusts of wind carrying yellow sand and polluting exhaust gas rushed between them and filled every available space, making it impossible for anyone to escape their suffocating presence. Arvardan put his hands in his pockets, shrank into his coat, and continued to the building for the Department of Web Security.
Suddenly, he stopped, his feet frozen in place, incapable of movement. He saw Artemis, standing under the streetlight before him and wearing a black uniform. But what a change had come over her! She seemed at least ten years older, her face full of wrinkles. There was none of the vitality of youth left in her. She heard his steps, turned around, and her dark eyes seemed especially empty. She stared past Arvardan into the distance, without focus.
Arvardan had never expected to meet her at this time in this place. His heart, long dormant, now was lit by a few sparks. But his dull and exhausted nerves were incapable of feeling the simple emotion of “excitement.” The two stared at each other for a while. He finally walked next to her, and tentatively moved his lips, as though he wanted to say something to her. But when he took out the latest edition of the List of Healthy Words distributed earlier that day, he found it was empty — even the last word had been shielded by the appropriate authorities.
An address flashed in his mind — luckily, it was not yet possible to shield the mind with technology. Perhaps it was now time to take a trip to the mountains. He had nothing more to lose.
Someone has to do this.
And so, Arvardan maintained his silence. He passed by the expressionless Artemis, and continued his forward progress. His silhouette eventually melted into the equally quiet, grey crowd.
The whole city seemed especially silent.
[1] Hiroshi Watanabe is also the name of a present–day Japanese animator.
[2] Wang Er is the name of the protagonist in stories by the Chinese writer, Wang Xiaobo.
Planetfall
Athena Andreadis
Athena Andreadis is a Greek author resident in the US, where she is a researcher in molecular neurobiology. She is the author of To Seek Out New Life: The Biology of Star Trek, and edited the feminist SF anthology The Other Half of the Sky.
I. In the Depths of the Sea
Nine generations past planetfall
Through the haze of her dark blue mane, the mershadow gazed sternly at her youngest. She had often warned her not to go near the shore. Afterward, forever would she long for the hostile land, where her skin would crack and she would wither.
The youngster, eyes as smoky as her mother’s, felt unrepentant. She already knew starfire — they spent many nights on the foam. She knew of the landers, too. They had not been here long, said the Elders. They could not understand the People’s singing — yet they trod as lightly as the whisper of a calm sea. Many came to rest in her people’s domain, bearing the gifts of their kin. She longed to catch more glimpses of them. She wanted to encompass the whole world, sea and land, for her lays.
It eased the elder’s mind that, for a while, her child would have to stay near. Her turn had come to watch the Sea Rose.
The Sea Rose… the great burden and joy of the mershadows. It bloomed unpredictably once every thirteen cycles of the wanderer that cast light on the night. Between dusk and dawn, a single blossom came alive. It granted to its watcher one wish, so the Elders sang. In exchange, for each cycle of the Wanderer, a vigilant mershadow guarded it and nourished it with her salty, greenish blood.
And so, as soon as the Wanderer started waxing, the youngster dutifully nested near the mound where the Sea Rose slumbered. It stood on a leafless stem, bluish–black like its guardian’s hair, at the bottom of a deep crevasse filled with slate–green pebbles.
As the last night of her watch started to lighten into dawn, she sighed with regret and relief. The Sea Rose would not bloom in her turn. She was looking forward to recovering her strength and seeing the dry gardens once again, filled with all those blossoms that had no names in her tongue.
And just then, the water turned transparent, so transparent that she could see the pale sliver of the wanderer. She could distinctly hear the dream birds’ trills, the mist cats’ hunting calls, all the way from the distant hills of the dry lands. On the barren seafloor, the Sea Rose slowly unfurled. Its angular petals glimmered blue–green, like the precious nodules that her people occasionally found on the ocean floor. The water around it broke into jeweled prisms.
The youngster knew what she wanted to ask of the Sea Rose — she would ask for songs that might help the landers understand her people. But just as she prepared to sing her plea, an intricate object slowly twirled from the waters above and came to rest gently upon the blossom.
Hesitantly, she touched it — and a storm of yearning broke in her mind. Endless striving, anxious love, fear, longing… Meanwhile, alerted to the unfolding of the Rose, the mershadows began to congregate around the mound and its guardian.
“My child, what did you ask?” said her mother.
“I did not think to wish,” whispered the youngster. “The landers’ amulet — it spoke to me…”
And at that moment, they realized that the Sea Rose had not folded. For the first time, the only time, the sunrays touched it. It burned in colors of the fires that fuelled the star cores. Then it closed.
She became her people’s greatest bard. And her lineage kept the amulet until they returned it to the landers, on the night that the two Peoples sang together — and understood each other’s words.
II. The Sea of Stars
Four generations past planetfall
Four generations after planetfall, strife arose on Glorious Maiden. The planet, beautiful but stark, almost entirely ocean, sorely tested mettle and resources. Some hearths wanted to start
ocean farming, despite the decision made even before planetfall to leave no footprint on the planet. The argument got bitter enough that several tanegíri withdrew from the council and armed their hearths.
So Sefanír, tanegír of the Sóran–Kerís hearth, first among equals, fitted herself into her kite, snapped the struts taut and flew to the storm–guarded southern archipelago, seeking to end the conflict.
“Why should we trust people who would separate us into powerful and powerless? Who no longer enter the Dreaming?” asked dark–voiced Sháita, tanegír Dhaíri. The Dreaming… as dangerous as following the songs of the dwellers of the deep. People were known to never emerge from it. They wandered inside it, eyes half–open, till they died.
“I will Dream,” replied Sefanír, drawing herself up to her considerable height. “But if I emerge from it,” she added, her blue eyes flashing, “will you agree to a truce and return to the council?”
Sháita chuckled, her long silver braids floating like cirrus clouds on her black tunic. “If you emerge,” she said, “you won’t need my agreement. The southern hearths will follow you without question or demur.”
Next dawn, Sháita led her to a tiny room facing the small inner courtyard. It was bare and windowless but for an opening high up that showed a patch of sky. She lowered the marís bowl on the stone floor, then put her hand on Sefanír’s shoulder.
“I would rather that our people were not divided and that we stayed true to our original resolution. But if we’re to unite them, I cannot be seen to let you bypass this test,” she said quietly. “Remember this, if you have forgotten it. If a man enters your vision whose hair is as pale as winter seagrass, come out of the vision in any way you can. Or you won’t come out at all.”
