Cloud Atlas (24 page)

“A maximus sourpuss, Mr. Warlock-Williams!”

“But now I’m happy as a pig in clover! Eh?”

Mrs. Bendincks smiled, ’twas a ghastly sight. “We’re here to help you reorientate. Now, I understand you were in publishing. Sadly”—she tapped her head—”Mrs. Birkin is less able to record Residents’ Committee meeting minutes than she once was. A fine opportunity for
you
to jolly well get
involved!”

“I still
am
in publishing! Do I
look
like I should be here?” The silence was intolerable. “Oh, get out!”

“Disappointed.” She gazed at the leaf-littered lawn, dotted with worm casts. “Aurora House is your world now, Mr. Cavendish.” My head was cork and the corkscrew was Gwendolin Bendincks. “Yes, you are in a Rest Home. The day has come. Your stay can be miserable or pleasant. But your stay is permanent. Think on, Mr. Cavendish.” She knocked on the door. Unseen forces let my tormentors exit but slammed it shut in my face.

I noticed that for the duration of the interview my flies had been wide open.

Behold your future, Cavendish the Younger. You will not apply for membership, but the tribe of the elderly will claim you. Your present will not keep pace with the world’s. This slippage will stretch your skin, sag your skeleton, erode your hair and memory, make your skin turn opaque so your twitching organs and blue-cheese veins will be semivisible. You will venture out only in daylight, avoiding weekends and school holidays. Language, too, will leave you behind, betraying your tribal affiliations whenever you speak. On escalators, on trunk roads, in supermarket aisles, the living will overtake you, incessantly. Elegant women will not see you. Store detectives will not see you. Salespeople will not see you, unless they sell stair lifts or fraudulent insurance policies. Only babies, cats, and drug addicts will acknowledge your existence. So do not fritter away your days. Sooner than you fear, you will stand before a mirror in a care home, look at your body, and think, E.T., locked in a ruddy cupboard for a fortnight.

A sexless automaton brought lunch on a tray. I’m not being insulting, but I truly couldn’t tell if she or he was a he or a she. It had a slight mustache but tiny breasts too. I thought about knocking it out cold and making a Steve McQueen dash for liberty, but I had no weapon except a bar of soap and nothing to tie it up with except my belt.

Lunch was a tepid lamb chop. The potatoes were starch grenades. The canned carrots were revolting because that is their nature. “Look,” I begged the automaton, “at least bring me some Dijon mustard.” It showed no evidence of understanding. “Coarse grain, or medium. I’m not fussy.” She turned to go. “Wait! You—speak-ee—English?” She was gone. My dinner outstared me.

My strategy had been wrong from square one. I had tried to shout my way out of this absurdity, but the institutionalized cannot do this. Slavers welcome the odd rebel to dress down before the others. In all the prison literature I’ve read, from
The Gulag Archipelago
to
An Evil Cradling
to
Knuckle Sandwich
, rights must be horse-traded and accrued with cunning. Prisoner resistance merely justifies an ever-fiercer imprisonment in the minds of the imprisoners.

Now was the season for subterfuge. I should take copious notes for my eventual compensation settlement. I should be courteous to the Black Noakes. But as I pushed cold peas onto my plastic fork, a chain of firecrackers exploded in my skull and the old world came to an abrupt end.

On behalf of my ministry, thank you for agreeing to this final interview. Please remember, this isn’t an interrogation, or a trial. Your version of the truth is the only one that matters
.

Truth is singular. Its “versions” are mistruths.

… Good. Ordinarily, I begin by asking prisoners to recall their earliest memories to provide a context for corpocratic historians of the future
. Fabricants have no earliest memories, Archivist. One twenty-four-hour cycle in Papa Song’s is indistinguishable from any other.

Then why not describe this “cycle”?

If you wish. A server is woken at hour four-thirty by stimulin in the airflow, then yellow-up in our dormroom. After a minute in the hygiener and steamer, we put on fresh uniforms before filing into the restaurant. Our seer and aides gather us around Papa’s Plinth for Matins, we recite the Six Catechisms, then our beloved Logoman appears and delivers his Sermon. At hour five we man our tellers around the Hub, ready for the elevator to bring the new day’s first consumers. For the following nineteen hours we greet diners, input orders, tray food, vend drinks, upstock condiments, wipe tables, and bin garbage. Vespers follows cleaning, then we imbibe one Soapsac in the dormroom. That is the blueprint of every unvarying day.

You have no rests?

Only purebloods are entitled to “rests,” Archivist. For fabricants, “rests” would be an act of time theft. Until curfew at hour zero, every minute must be devoted to the service and enrichment of Papa Song.

Do servers—unascended servers, I mean—never wonder about life outside your dome, or did you believe your dinery
was
the whole cosmos?

Oh, our intelligence is not so crude that we cannot
conceive
of an outside. Remember, at Matins, Papa Song shows us pictures of Xultation and Hawaii, and AdV instreams images of a cosmology beyond our servery. Moreover, we know both diners and the food we serve comes from a place not in the dome. But it is true, we rarely wonder about life on the surface. Additionally, Soap contains amnesiads designed to deaden curiosity.

What about your sense of time? Of the future?

Papa Song announces the passing hours to the diners, so I noticed the time of day, dimly, yes. Also we were aware of passing years by annual stars added to our collars, and by the Star Sermon on New Year’s Matins. We had only one long-term future: Xultation.

Could you describe this annual “Star Sermon” ceremony?

After Matins on First Day, Seer Rhee would pin a star on every server’s collar. The elevator then took those lucky Twelvestarred sisters for conveyance to Papa Song’s Ark. For the xiters, it is a momentous occasion: for the remainder, one of acute envy. Later, we saw smiling Sonmis, Yoonas, Ma-Leu-Das, and Hwa-Soons on 3-D as they embarked for Hawaii, arrived at Xultation, and finally were transformed into consumers with Soulrings. Our x-sisters praised Papa Song’s kindnesses and xhorted us to repay our Investment diligently. We marveled at their boutiques, malls, dineries; jade seas, rose skies, wildflowers; lace, cottages, butterflies; though we could not name these marvels.

I’d like to ask about the infamous Yoona
939
.

I knew Yoona
939 better than any fabricant: some purebloods know more of her neurochemical history than me, but perhaps these individuals will be named later. On my awakening at Papa Song’s, Seer Rhee assigned me to Yoona
939’s teller. He believed it was aesthetically pleasing to alternate stemtypes around the Hub. Yoona
939 was tenstarred that year. She seemed aloof and sullen, so I regretted not being partnered with another Sonmi. However, by my first tenthday I had come to learn her aloofness was in fact watchfulness. Her sullenness hid a subtle dignity. She decifered the orders of drunk customers, and warned me of Seer Rhee’s ill-tempered inspections. In no small part it is thanks to Yoona
939 that I have survived as long as I have.

This “subtle dignity” you mention—was it a result of her ascension?

Postgrad Boom-Sook’s research notes were so sparse I cannot be certain when Yoona
939’s ascension was triggered, xactly. However, I believe that ascension merely frees what Soap represses, including the xpression of an innate personality possessed by all fabricants.

Popular wisdom has it that fabricants don’t have personalities
.

This fallacy is propagated for the comfort of purebloods.

“Comfort”? How do you mean?

To enslave an individual troubles your consciences, Archivist, but to enslave a clone is no more troubling than owning the latest six-wheeler ford, ethically. Because you cannot discern our differences, you believe we have none. But make no mistake: even same-stem fabricants cultured in the same wombtank are as singular as snowflakes.

Then I stand corrected. When did Yoona
939’s deviances—perhaps I should say singularities—first become apparent to you?

Ah, questions of when are difficult to answer in a world without calendars or real windows, twelve floors underground. Perhaps around month six of my first year, I became aware of Yoona
939’s irregular speech.

Irregular?

Firstly, she spoke more: during offpeak moments at our teller; as we cleaned the consumers’ hygieners; even as we imbibed Soap in the dormroom. It amused us, even the stiff Ma-Leu-Das. Secondly, Yoona’s speech grew more complex as the year aged. Orientation teaches us the lexicon we need for our work, but Soap erases xtra words we acquire later. So to our ears, Yoona’s sentences were filled with noises devoid of meaning. She sounded, in a word, pureblood. Thirdly, Yoona took pleasure in humor: she hummed Papa’s Psalm in absurd variations; in our dormroom, when aides were absent, she mimicked pureblood habits like yawning, sneezing, or burping. Humor is the ovum of dissent, and the Juche should fear it.