by Exurb1a
Live your dream! appeared on the screen in sparkling glitter and span around and Matella and the plastic man danced.
The next shot was of Matella walking up a busy street. She began rating random members of the public’s dresssenses on a scale of 1 to So Not Hot.
Adam turned off the wallscreen.
The next day he went to the address on the card. It was a government facility. He was given a ticket and stood in a queue for half an hour. Then his number was called and he went into a sterile, chromium room.
The technician asked him to lie down on the bed. He did so and she fitted a small wire frame to his head.
“So,” she said. “What appears to be the problem?”
“Just a few strange thoughts, I guess.”
She started up the wire frame. A few lights on it shone blue. “Ah,” she said. “Invasive thoughts. Very common. Of what nature?”
He said, “Oh, you know, all sorts.”
She examined a pad on the desk and said, “I have the Office of Oversight report here. Thoughts outside of marriage. That’s quite natural. The crime isn't thinking them, it's hiding them. You know that of course. Get all the thoughts out all the time. Would you like me to correct the invasive thoughts for you?”
“I’m sure it’s just a problem with the band,” Adam said.
The technician glanced at him sceptically. “Well, would you like your band replaced then?”
He felt sick. He’d heard rumours about the procedure, surgeons going in through the back of the head. The band didn’t actually touch the brain, probably, but still it would have to be peeled off from the skull.
“No thanks,” Adam said.
“Well, if there isn’t a problem with the band, and you won’t have it exchanged, there’s not much more I can do.”
He sat up. “What happens now?”
“I’ll let the Office of Oversight know what the situation is. They’ll decide what to do next.”
She turned back to her pad, waiting for him to leave. He said, “I’m sorry, but what can it see?”
“What?”
He tried to sound as casual as possible. “What does the band really see? I mean, is it every passing thought or just the really big emotional stuff?”
She muttered, “The resolution is very high these days. Everything from internal dialogue to the deepest subconscious fantasies, I would imagine.” She smiled, eyes still on her pad. “Hey, they’ve just released the Fluffy beta. Twelve minutes of nothing but good cheer. And it’s free to try!”
“That sounds nice.”
Adam left the examination room. The queue was very long now. Tens of men and women were waiting on their feet, eyes shifting from side to side, biting their lips.
A suited man at reception shouted, “How are we all feeling today?”
Many of the waiting people shouted, “Great!”
The man began a chant and then attempted to coordinate a room-wide Mexican wave.
Adam caught the train.
A man was watching a video on his pad, the volume blaring. Adam recognised the voice immediately. It was Matella. “Water, water, water!” she was singing. “If you’re hungry, eat some water instead and those pounds will fall off!”
Adam looked out the window. The city was passing by very quickly, a set menu of concrete and metal and glass.
How does one eat water? he wondered. It’s no more possible than drinking bravery or fucking time.
Imagine it, trying to eat water. You’d sit there with your knife and fork and go at the thing and every time you put the fork to your mouth there’d be nothing on it.
Where is my report now? The report about my brain. Is it with the Office of Oversight already? Who is reading it? What are they thinking? And if it is a person reading it, will someone read a report on what that person is thinking?
Work had given him two hours for the band-check appointment. That left him 40 minutes still free.
He got off the train at Mornington Station on a whim. He watched his feet to see where they would take him. They took him up and out of the station. They took him past the laboratories and crystal electronics factories. They took him to the fitting halls where babies went to get their bands implanted.
They took him to the city wall.
It was a clear day. The countryside was visible for miles below. It was brown and green and savage. It was completely unkempt.
And beyond all that, just a spire or a tower visible, was Gumption.
“Fine weather,” said a policeman, approaching behind.
“Yup,” Adam said.
“Look at all that green, too.” The policeman produced his pad and took photos and ran them through filters. He showed a few of them to Adam. “What do you think?”
“The sepia one is very good.”
“Yeah. I’m a great photographer. Everyone’s always saying that.”
“I’m sure, yes.”
“Lots of people use my photos for their profiles.”
“That’s really good.”
The policeman continued to stand beside him. Adam said, “I’m just admiring the view.”
“Right you are,” the policeman said. He nodded to Gumption. Smoke was billowing from something or other over there. “Fucking savages, burning wood!”
“Yup.”
Still the policeman wouldn’t leave. It occurred to Adam that this was rumoured to be a prime suicide spot. He thought about assuring the policeman he had no intention of killing himself but that would be quite a strange thing to come out with.
Instead he said goodbye and crossed the street. When the policeman was gone he turned back to the view. He focused particularly on that smoke cloud, on Gumption. He knew why his legs had brought him here now, to this spot, to observe this thing. Alba Lamm lived in Gumption, among the savages, a savage herself. It had been that way for ages.
He dared not have the thought consciously for fear of another grilling by the Office of Oversight, but somewhere, beneath the minutia and daydreams, beneath the mechanisms of self-awareness, beneath even the automatic processes, he wondered what it was she was doing today. This hour. This second.
That evening was Dinner Night. Each couple was randomly assigned a Dinner Night every ten days and, if they wanted, also assigned a restaurant.
Jodie wore a very tasteful black dress. Adam wore a suit.
It was a nice restaurant. There were real waiters working there, part of the appeal of the place presumably.
Jodie spent a lot of the meal taking photographs of her steak. She ran the photos through some filters. “What do you think?”
Adam said, “Yes, it looks very good.”
“What do you like about it?”
“I like the lighting.”
“I’m always really good with the lighting. Do you know that I won lots of awards for photography in school?”
“Yes, you’ve told me a few times.”
She showed him photos of the awards.
Dessert for both of them was a single, small chocolate on a plate covered with a dribble of sugary sauce. They were both given tiny knives and forks. Adam went to cut into the chocolate.
“Wait!” Jodie said. She took a photo from several angles. “Okay, now get down really close to it.”
“What?”
“Get down really close to the plate and smile.”
“I don’t want to.”
“Oh go on. Put your face really close to it. Then make a silly smile.”
“No thank you.”
He went to put his fork in but she pushed his fork back. “Make a silly face,” she said. “Go on, a really silly one. Matella says—”
“Would you stop it?”
Her face went blank. “You have issues,” she said. “I’ve always said you have emotional issues. I can’t believe we matched. You’re rude and mean.”
“Let’s go home.”
“Now you’re being really mean.”
“I’m just tired.”
“Yo
u’re really awful when you’re like this.”
He tried to recall the standard advice for this sort of situation. Nothing came to mind. He was silent for a long time. A couple from the next table was clearly watching and pretending not to.
His pad vibrated. He took it out. It was a message from the janitor of their apartment building congratulating Adam and Jodie on taking such a nice photo of a dessert chocolate.
Adam said, “I’ll see you back home.”
He paid his half of the bill and left.
Chill out, he thought. Everyone gets annoyed. Chill out and just remember people have it much worse. Don’t be ungrateful now. Don’t be ungrateful for a house and a partner and a chocolate dessert. Your shoes are comfortable. Your health is exemplary. Don’t be ungrateful now.
Jodie caught up with him at the bus stop.
“Don’t be like that,” she said.
“Yeah, I’m sorry. I guess I just want to talk sometimes. Why are you always taking photos of things?”
“You’re really mean,” she said.
“Yes, I know.”
“Have you calmed down now?”
“Can we have a meal sometime when we don’t bring our pads?”
“Oh, so you’re still angry?”
People have it much worse, he thought. Don’t be ungrateful. A house, a partner. Dessert chocolates.
“No. I’ve calmed down,” he said.
She kissed him. He felt the heady rush of a repaired evening.
They went home together.
Adam laid in the dark for a long time, thinking and not thinking. Thinking in an indirect way in the fashion one knows the sun is there without having to look straight at the thing.
He went to work the next day, staring at the concrete passing on the train, his mind centred on nothing, or nothing much. He felt the band at the back of his mind like a leather strap, tightening. More commuters were watching Matella. Today she was giving another lecture on romance.
Adam heard that strange, made up accent say from a pad, “You deserve the best. You deserve the best.”
Why do I? Adam thought.
He worked the morning shift with his thoughts nowhere, dimpling the little plastic widgets, passing them onto the next conveyor belt. The work was just slightly too complicated for a machine, though not complicated enough for a qualified engineer.
He made a mood alteration request, for Productive. The request was granted and then he didn’t mind dimpling the plastic so much.
He ate lunch in the mall and returned to the factory for the afternoon shift.
A new foreman came down and put some music on and made everyone do a dance that involved wiggling their hips a lot to techno. The man filmed the whole thing and promised to tag the best dancers.
Adam worked some more.
The man on the machine in front was covertly watching something on a pad.
“Hey, what’s that?” Adam said.
The man checked for the foreman, then showed him. It was Matella, red-lipped, ice-pale. She was sat in a perfectly made up bedroom. She said, “If your partner tries to talk about something too serious, why not ask them about a recent sports game or plan a trip together?”
To the man Adam said, “You like this stuff?”
“She makes a lot of sense.”
“Yeah.”
He took a batch of the plastic dimples down to the cellar. He requested a session and they let him into the electromagnetic testing room. The technician inside was called Laura. She had a kind face, Adam had always thought.
“Usual procedure?” Laura said.
“Yes please.”
She sealed the door. She applied the equipment to the dimples, testing for radiation.
“How’s everything?” she said, relaxed now.
“Yeah, fine. You?”
“I’m okay.”
He left a suitable pause. Then he said, “The bands don’t work in here, do they?”
She glanced at him seriously. “No.”
Another pause. He said, “I don’t feel well.”
She didn’t look up from the dimples, just kept testing them.
Later, he could not explain why he said what he did. “I don’t want to get you in any trouble. You can ignore all this if you like. But you must be the only person who regularly gets time away from band monitoring. You spend hours in here every day. The bands don’t record, so they can only see what you stream. I think so anyway.”
She still didn’t say anything.
He continued, “Is there a way I could spend some time with myself? No monitoring. No watching. No photos.”
Laura said, “Are you working for the Office of Oversight, Adam? Because that’s just the kind of thing they’d say.”
“No,” he said.
“And how do I know that?”
He wanted to say something absolute, something that would prove everything. “I don’t know.”
She had a sudden tiredness about her. He noticed she wasn’t wearing any makeup. He spent a few seconds reacquainting himself with what actual skin looked like.
Finally she sighed. “Here’s what we’ll do,” she said. “I’ll be gone in a week. If you want I’ll tell you how to stop the band sometimes. But it’s dangerous for me. I can’t have you leaving this room and thinking about it, telling them what’s going on with your stupid thoughts. So you’re going to remove the conversation from your memory. You come back in a week and I’ll tell you all about it.”
“Where are you going?” Adam said.
“Out.”
“How will I know to come back if I don’t remember this conversation?”
“You always come down on Tuesday afternoons. I’ll still be here.”
“What if I don’t come? I won’t remember.”
“We’ll see, all right?”
She set up a shared workspace in their minds so she could watch him removing the memory, could check it was genuine. He went to remove it. Pausing, he said, “How come you keep all of this in your head? Don’t they read you too?”
“Sure, but I just think about something else. It’s a talent. Maybe you’ll learn.”
“I don’t feel well,” he said.
“I know.”
Boning Night came and went. As did Date Night. The next Thursday there was a group dinner for all the factory workers and everyone wore suits and dresses and looked nice. They snapped endless photos of their food. Many people found a corner and photographed themselves smiling widely and stood in thought for several minutes trying to come up with witty captions.
Later Adam was walking home when he noticed a young dog hiding beneath a car. He bent down. It had no name tag. It was not a pedigree but an unspecific mix of various breeds, championing none of them. Perhaps it was just one year old. Adam put his hand out and the dog licked it and licked it. He picked it up, bought some dog supplies from the pet store, and took it home.
“I have a surprise,” he said, entering the house.
Jodie said, “What is it?”
“You spend all that time on your pad looking at puppies. Well…”
She screamed with delight when she saw it. He put it down and fed it, then placed it very close to her. He said, “You can pet him if you like.”
“Just a second,” she said. She took a photo, then another, then another. She stared at her pad a long time.
“What are you doing?” Adam said.
“Lydia got a puppy last week. Everyone went crazy for it, a Labrador. Wait till they see this!”
“You can pet him if you like,” he said again. The dog stared up at her with enormous chocolate eyes.
“Just a second,” she said, playing with the filter software.
A few minutes passed.
He took the dog into the living room and sat with him in the dark and the dog fell asleep on his chest.
Tuesday afternoon. He had a full tray of plastic dimples. He went downstairs to the EM room. Laura was in there. She greeted him politely. She shut t
he door. She explained their last conversation, then played a recording to prove it was genuine.
He said, “Well, what now?”
She gave him a transparent clip. It looked exactly like a band diagnostic tool some of the health freaks used on themselves. She said, “This goes on the back of the head. It sets up a fake band profile. You can think about whatever you like while you’re wearing it. They won’t know. When you take it off, it will automatically erase any memories from the entire time you’ve been wearing it.”
Adam said, “What’s the point if I can’t remember anything afterwards?”
She shrugged. “It’s better than getting caught.”
There was a silence. “Do I owe you for this?”
She shook her head.
“Well, you’re taking a big risk. Can I give you something in return? Put in a good word with the foreman?”
“I told you last time, I’m leaving soon.”
She scanned the dimples with a careful, detached poise.
“How will I remember what the thing is for if I keep forgetting?” Adam said.
She said, “That’s easy. Small thoughts can be hidden. If you feel like thinking directly about the thing, jab yourself with a pin.” She pulled one from her hair. “Keep this with you all the time. Whenever you start thinking about it, put the pin into your leg. It has to go deep, it has to hurt. That should keep it down. Don’t ever, ever think about it directly.”
“All right, thanks.” Instinctively he said “You’re going to Gumption, aren’t you? You’re breaking out.”
“Maybe,” she said.
“Why?”
She said, “Have fun with your new toy.”
He felt like a child. And in the way children want to skip all the years of hardship and just ingest their parents’ knowledge for free, he wanted to know what made her face so sad. But he also knew no amount of explaining would communicate the thing, just as no amount of explaining will convey calculus to a toddler.
Laura said, “I’m going to tell you a secret now. A rather big one. I’ll feel better if I tell it to you. But when it’s out you’re going to remove it from your memory.”
“Is it about Gumption?” he said.
“Yes.”
He found himself standing outside the EM chamber remembering very little.
