a rational man

by J S Hollis

  peter was distraught. he ran to doctor claus, the local alchemist, and shoved a bag of jewels into his hands.

  “make me the worlds most reliable man,” peter said.

  “are you sure you want what you demand?” the doctor asked. “the world has a way of changing while we remain still.”

  the desperate hunchback looked the alchemist in the eyes and said, “make me the most reliable man in the world.”

  the doctor nodded and turned to his shelves, which were crammed with liquids and powders. he pulled down a glass of luminous orange liquid and gave it to peter.

  “drink it and then lie down on your front over there.” the doctor motioned towards a rug in the corner of the room.

  peter drank the potion and fell asleep on the rug. when he woke, the doctor was turning something in his back. it was a brass windup key.

  “now whoever turns this key can control you,” the doctor said. “once the winding stops, you will fall asleep. you will be as reliable as clockwork.”

  the doctor wound peter up and sent him to beatrice. beatrice looked bemused when she saw her disfigured admirer.

  “you can never prove you are reliable enough for me, peter.”

  “but i can,” peter responded, while trying to withhold a smile. he told beatrice about the key and how she could take complete control of him.

  beatrice smirked. “well, i guess you have proved yourself,” she said.

  peter hugged her and was the happiest man in the world until his cog stopped. beatrice never wound it up again.

  my grandma turned to me. “sebastian,” she said, “now you have the chance to wind peter up again.”

  a picture of a hunchback toy projected out of our visipaint. (we still used it then.) i burst into tears. once peter was printed, i never wound him up. i wouldnt let anyone else do it either.

  christmas 2054 was different. we had our traditional breakfast but earlier than usual and then walked down to pentonville highstreet, which was bright in the unobstructed sun. we stopped next to da giovanni, the best pizza place, and there alongside it was the entrance to the food kitchen. a small sign with the initials pfk (public food kitchen) hung above a frosted glass door from another century. i could have sworn it had never been there before.

  “its been there for as long as i can remember,” dad said. “check W.”

  i did check and it had been there for years, but a part of me clings to the idea that it was placed there that day and that history and W were edited to include that door. why anyone would have the time or reason to make that change is beyond me. a part of me believes it nonetheless.

  some effort had been made to festivise the pfk room. the owners had set up a generic alpine chalet design for the walls. it was uninspiring but better than the bare reality for the few people without eyescreens. for them there was little more than some sagging mouths of tinsel.

  mum handed me a peeler and a sack of potatoes. i could have cried. the unexpected transition from present receiver to potato peeler came as a shock. i was momentarily convinced that this was a divine test of my resolve. that my family had been meted out some cruel misfortune, which required me to peel potatoes with great enthusiasm. so i did. i remember peeling and peeling until the christmas dinner was steaming from various stoves and dishes.

  then the clients began to arrive. they were different. there was something about their clothes. they had made no attempt to design them. they were just colours (and not even hypersaturated ones). and they didnt quite fit. not in a fashionable way or as a modesty protest. the fibres were just old. unable to correct to the individuals sizes.

  i didnt ask my parents who these people were. i had learnt that questions often got me in trouble. i assumed they were a special group, like royalty, who we were required to serve. i helped serve the food but began to get tired, so went to sit at the end of one of the benches, next to an elderly man who had tried to dress smartly and was poking rather ruefully at his nut roast. he turned to me and smiled and then just began talking. the conversation was inescapable.

  “nice to meet you, sebastian.”

  “you too, mr fairholme.”

  “you look just like i did when i was your age. if only i had known then what i know now. dont become an accountant. of course you wouldnt. you cant! ha. it might not look like it now but i was doing well, you know. had a house, etcetera. then, you know, or maybe you dont, but well, the slump came and everything was gone. too old to retrain by then. tried to start my own business. that was a mess. i should have seen it coming. but i hung on for as long as i could. not that anyone has done anything to help us.”

  “what about the kitchen?” i asked.

  “youre a good kid,” he said, “but the kitchen is just enough to keep us watchers content. its even in the name. when it went from soup kitchen to food kitchen, no one took the time to realise one of those words was redundant.”

  “leave the poor kid alone,” a woman said. “go tell someone who cares.”

  “ill speak to whoever i want to speak to.”

  he saw me flinch at his slightly raised voice and his gaze dropped to the table. “sorry about that,” he said. “you better run along now. just remember what i said.”

  i can see that mans face but it has merged with the face of an old man from a christmas movie i once saw. and behind his face, out of focus, are many hundreds of people. they created some hubbub, but compared to a stanhope christmas lunch, it was a solemn affair. some people even sat alone, which struck me as incredibly rude. i was never allowed to sit alone. i was told to introduce myself to strangers and to say i was pleased to meet them whether i was or not.

  until recently i believed that day at the food kitchen had set me on a track to be a good, caring person. i believed it was the moment i saw reality, and reality was a hunchback, not a beautiful princess. it was the moment i was handed perspective and saw my mission in life. the moment i realised there were people who wanted my life, who watched my life, though there was something stopping them from grabbing it.

  there was no such day. understanding, if i have it, has been deposited within me, clandestinely, layer by layer, like the ash below a fire. while we had gone to a food kitchen that christmas, the room was rather charming with its long wooden tables made from old doors. i had peeled potatoes for about five minutes before boredom set in and i began to discreetly watch my friends christmas days through my eyescreens. the clients didnt look so different to the volunteers. some clothes were loose and plain but many were very smart. some of the younger men and women had rather more distinguishable features than i was used to, perhaps because their parents hadnt predetermined them. but i am one to talk. people call my nose “roman”. a polite way of saying “big”. i went around the kitchen introducing myself to strangers, saying i was pleased to meet them. most played along. one man asked, “are you?” and when i insisted that i was, he apologised. “dont mind me,” he said, “insincerity passed me by.”

  i forgot that my dad spent most of that day speaking to journalists. his campaign to be elected mp for pentonville was underway and he was trying to get his message about full employment across. “surviving isnt living,” he kept saying. “a green england is a working england.” there was applause after his speech. nobody wanted to be noticed for not applauding.

  i remember a bathtub and temperatures. a memory that comes shortly after i started wearing eyescreens and earaids. i was unprepared for the new world of sound and vision. i lacked sufficient cynicism to dismiss the representations as illusions. the hot drinks in the hands of pedestrians glowed a comforting red. other kids “space” shoes hit the ground with a satisfying “boing” and appeared to bounce off like bunny feet. i wanted everything. when walking home from school on those cold january days, the walls on our street showed me images of myself luxuriating in a bath beneath indestructible bubbles and whirling steam. i pestered mum fo
r a week and she bought me the advertised bubble bath: earthsoap.

  the reality was no match for the virtual bath. if the bath steamed, it was too hot for me to enter, and by the time i got in the bubbles had dispersed.

  i remained undeterred. i sought out my dad and employed him in the mission of finding the formula for the perfect bath. he agreed and said, “if we can land a man on the moon, im sure we can find you the perfect bath.” ive begun to wonder whether shooting things into space says less about humanity than we thought.

  we started by looking for the perfect bath temperature and volume. a series of trial and error baths led to contradictory results. a bath at 39.1 celsius was both “nearly there” and “painfully hot”. and so dad gave me a dressing gown to wear before my bath to ensure i entered it at a consistent temperature.

  further trial and error baths indicated that my bathing paradise could be found at 39.2 celsius and a depth of 40 centimetres, provided my dressing gown was at 24 celcius beforehand. we programmed the bath to these settings but still there was no consistency. if the bath tub was particularly cold, then a higher starting temperature was required. and sometimes the water seemed to lose its heat rapidly. dad suspected it had something to do with the hardness of the water and began to investigate different filtration systems. but his research didnt get very far. the media criticised him for allowing me to have too many baths. given his political aspirations, he ended our mission and encouraged me to take showers instead. his face was convincingly disappointed when he told me. i suspect that he may have been pleased to have a reason to stop.

  the recordings largely support my recollections of these events. although i didnt realise at the time that dads support and encouragement were partially motivated by his desire to advertise the new dressing gown he had designed. he also received sponsorship from earthsoap, which was linked to the number of viewers we had during bath time. my mum was there too, it seems, but i dont remember her sitting patiently with me taking records of the bath temperature. i can only remember my dad sitting on the toilet noting down the temperatures.

  my most accurate memories are of watching. i remember watching sex for the first time. i stumbled across it while scrolling through W. i cant have intended to find it because i was too young to know what it was. i happened to be watching what other people were doing and, unsurprisingly, they were having sex.

  i saw it while staying at my grandmas cottage in kent. the day was devoid of divisions. an abstract grey. grandma donatella asked me what i wanted to do after breakfast. i shrugged. she suggested a walk and i consented. soon we were walking hand in hand in silence along the vineyards behind her garden. i was looking out for grapes to squish.

  “do you like staying with me, sebastian?” my grandma asked.

  “yeh …”

  “but?”

  “i cant say.”

  “you can say anything to me, darling.”

  “but you might be upset. mummy told me not to say things that upset people.”

  her dress billowed and she pulled it in. then she took my shoulders and crouched in front of me. i stared at her hair, which clung to the side of her head like ivy.

  “look at me, sebastian. feel my skin.”

  she presented her plump upper arm. i touched it.

  “its thick, isnt it.”

  i nodded.

  “so what you say cant hurt me. ok? im a tough old woman. so what dont you like?”

  “your house.”

  she chuckled and stood up. “why not?”

  “i dont understand it.”

  “whats there to understand?”

  “the stairs are hidden. theres a fireplace but you have heating.”

  “oh, i see. its just old, sebastian. it made sense once. ill explain it all to you when we get home.”

  a fat drop of rain hit my nose and left me blinking.

  “not again,” grandma said. “hurry now.”

  she picked me up and we ran back into the cottage. she took me into the lounge, cleared some clothes from the sofa and plonked me down on the empty space.

  “are you cold?”

  i shook my head. it was sweltering in the cottage and my clothes had only been peppered with raindrops.

  “ok, i will leave you here for a minute and make us some drinks. take these.” she gave me her glasses.

  “now dont play with my writing. ok? you promise?”

  “yes, grandma.”

  as soon as i had the glasses on, i opened W as a screen and searched for my parents. at first, i didnt recognise them. they were nude and in a sideways embrace. then my fathers face broke free. his eyes were unfocused. dark and light legs intertwined. they were grappling and kissing. they looked like they would consume each other. then my mothers face, eyes closed.

  “what are you so scared of?” grandma said, as she crossed the room and took off my glasses. “oh, i see. shall we give your parents a little privacy?”

  she flicked across her vision. “your mother is going to be angry with me.”

  “why?”

  “she says i keep treating you like an adult.”

  “oh.”

  “do you want to know what they were doing?”

  “no.”

  it was a mistake many people i know have made. looking to see what their parents were up to and then finding them engaged in an act of love.

  full freedom of vision, being able to see everything that has happened and is happening, has its benefits. i recognise that. but W can be dangerous too. i have seen children almost gouge their eyes out to stop their eyescreens from projecting the horror of their parents sex directly into their brains. they are too shocked to simply move onto a different scene. they wish their parents had applied a “do not disturb“ message to their W feed but forget that would draw even more attention than it would repel. ignorance may be bliss but it can also lead you to some unpleasant places.

  i am disgusted by the thought of my parents having sex (even though the thought of my mother alive should fill me with joy). it makes my skin crawl before i even picture it. but i wonder why? most children would want to be reassured that their parents are attracted to each other. and yet the evidence of it is monstrous. and parents dont want to see their children having sex or masturbating. we are comfortable with sex except when it involves our family members. perhaps there is something evolutionary in it. maybe it is envy. our parents are there for us, not for each other. perhaps we just dislike it because we will be labelled “weird” if we are caught watching. could such a deeply felt reaction be cultural?

  perhaps. during my degree i learnt that until the twenties, what people did in the bedroom was largely kept private and the main resistance to W was from those who didnt want their sex lives in the public domain. people wanted to keep sex private, even though they willingly published videos depicting the rest of their lives. sex was such a sensitive subject that recordings of it were used to blackmail and embarrass. and yet attitudes changed sufficiently, allowing W to take root.

  my tutor said culture, not anything inbuilt or rational, had kept sex private. she argued that the private and sacred nature of sex was a hangover from the one god religions. the bible promoted each human as special and their actions as important and worthy of the judgement of god. sex makes us feel special, and both most and least human. revealing it to society exposed the truth that we are flawed beings and hardly the asexual eunuchs of biblical fantasy. rather we are no more special than an ant carrying a fragment of leaf.

  for a time, progress required the lie that humans did something more than reproduce. but the next stage of human progress required humans to be blind to any differences that cannot be bought. this began with the camera and exploded with the internet. by the time of W, humanity had reduced the idea of individualism to the difference between each persons possessions. sex had become categorised an
d commoditised. websites broke sex down into a list of who, what, where, when and how big. it became harder to pretend it was something sacred to be kept between lovers. and so humans drew back the curtains and accepted the camera into their bedrooms, for ease, for safety and because they forgot why they had drawn the curtains in the first place. but a relic of the biblical reverence for sex was preserved and as a result we continue to frown upon those who spend time watching other people have sex.

  this was her view, but im sceptical of such a broad brush approach to history. would the change have happened without W? what if the twenties had been more secure and privacy less dispensable?

  for whatever reason, humanity succumbed to W and conceded the final semblances of privacy for a greater purpose, and with it, maybe, the individual died in all but how we dress. this may be good, in some utilitarian way, but for me it is rather dissatisfying. society has been so drained of the individual that i find sex has no appeal unless it is in one of those awkward old films, where a penis is almost never seen and women keep their bras on. in those sex scenes, it is still a stolen moment, shared only between two lovers.

  sometimes i confuse films with life. when i cant remove my eyescreens because my eyes are dry, i panic because i remember the pupils, that film where the minds of a group of school children are taken over by their lenses. and i can barely look at a cutthroat razor since i saw a sliced eyeball in a black and white film. this confusion might explain why the memory of seeing my parents have sex is more accurate than others.

  i dont know what it says about me, remembering the virtual better than the real. maybe its the same for everyone. the virtual exists in a particular space. it is always a presentation of sorts. perhaps that makes it easier to remember.

  there must be a reason. memories have a hidden purpose. you may be able to find this purpose by looking back and challenging your recall, but what is left then? i wish i had never looked back. i have no idea what to do with the rubble of my past. i may have successfully exposed my prejudices but now i dont know what to believe. how can i trust my decisions when i know that they always seem right until they are wrong? leave your memories. you can never be there again, as you were then. your past is a work of art.