The Holy Machine (8 page)

22

Several months after the evening in the
New Orleans
, I met Marija in the street, just off Darwin Drive. I had finished some work at the offices of a small leather-importing company and was on my way to Lucy’s. It was on January 22nd. I can place the exact date, because it was the same day that President Kung introduced his Normative Precepts Bill, listing the ‘intellectual criteria’ which were to be used to determine a whole range of decisions from whether or not a text could legally be published, to whether a person was eligible to retain Illyrian citizenship:

(1) No entity may be asserted to exist, unless the effects of its existence can be measured.

(2) No statement may be asserted to be ‘true’ unless (a) the basis of this assertion is a properly controlled and replicable scientific procedure OR (b) the ‘truth’ of the statement would
in principle
be testable by such a procedure…

And so on.

‘Hello, George! How are you? It’s ages since I saw you.’

I had stopped going to the Holist League meetings. I had stopped doing anything much except working fifteen hours a day, sleeping and visiting Lucy, who I now saw three or four times a week.

‘I… decided I didn’t want to carry on with the meetings.’

She nodded.

‘Yes, sure. That’s fair enough…’

‘No!’ I blurted out. ‘It wasn’t because I was afraid. It wasn’t that I was afraid of O3 and all that.’

She looked surprised. ‘I know. Why did you think I meant that? I don’t think of you as the sort of person who is put off by that kind of thing. I don’t think of you like that at all.’

This abolutely astonished me.

‘A bit of a talking shop, you thought?’ Marija asked. ‘A bit earnest and self-important?’ She nodded. ‘I thought that was what you were thinking about us that evening in the bar. I could feel your distaste. Well I must admit, that’s what I’ve begun to think too.’

A police robot walked past us and Marija was silent until it went by.

‘You can never tell which way they are looking can you?’ she said. ‘Or how much they can hear.’

She made a little dismissive gesture of dislike. She had a delightfully animated face.

‘Bad news about Kung’s new scheme though, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘You wonder what on earth else we can do.’

She glanced with a frown at the back of the police robot as it moved slowly down the street. Then smiled at me.

‘Listen, it’s really nice to see you. I was just going to get the subway home. Why don’t you come and have a drink with me if you’ve got a bit of time?’

* * *

In her small apartment in the district of Newton, Marija poured me a glass of red wine.

‘Yes, I was thinking of giving up on the League myself,’ she said.

‘What about Paul?’ I asked.

She gave a wry smile.

‘He’s gone back to Brazil,’ she said shortly.

I didn’t know what to say. The ebb and flow of human relationships were a complete mystery to me.

Marija settled into a large cushion.

‘To be more specific,’ she said, ‘he had a wife and three kids waiting there for him all along, but had carelessly forgotten to mention them to me.’

‘Oh.’

I gulped my wine.

She smiled, ‘You were thirsty. Do you want some more?’

I nodded.

‘I suppose the League
is
just a talking shop,’ she said with a sigh. ‘But there must be some way of fighting back against this… this stifling
flatness
. Do you know what I mean? It’s as if Ullman and Kung and all of them have been trying to make us live in two dimensions.’

I nodded.

‘They tell us that only things that can be measured are true,’ she said, ‘But if something can be imagined or dreamed about then surely it does exist in some way? Do you know what I mean? Maybe in reality there is no truly altruistic act, for example, just like they say, but the
idea
of altruism still exists doesn’t it? Even things like the Garden of Eden exist in that sense, or the Fall, or the great Dance of Shiva.’

She had grown up in Auckland, in an old-style ‘Western’ country where atheists lived side by side with believers of many different kinds, but I had always lived in Illyria and I had almost no idea of what she was talking about. And yet what she said did strike a chord with me. I longed too for a wider, more generous reality.

‘Okay, maybe they’re not real in the way that this table is real,’ Marija said, ‘but they are still in some way real. Perhaps even in some ways
more
real…’

She smiled.

‘Do you ever have that dream,’ she said, ‘where you are in a house and you are looking for an extra room which is somehow missing?’

‘Yes! I have!’ I exclaimed. I almost shouted in fact, so surprised was I to find that something so private and interior could be shared by another person.

‘You have? The very same dream?’

She studied my face carefully for a few seconds, then nodded. To my surprise I managed not to look away.

‘It’s nice when you meet someone else who has dreamed the same dreams,’ she said.

So it was.

‘I think Ullman and Kung have made Illyria a house with most of its rooms sealed off,’ she said. ‘It’s not
science
that’s at fault. It’s a sort of narrow literal-mindedness… I feel like I need to smash my way out somehow, or else I will suffocate. Do you know what I mean?’

I nodded.

‘Sometimes I think the AHS have the right idea,’ Marija said slowly in a much more tentative voice. I could see her watching for my reaction. The AHS after all were violent enemies of the state, and their members were hunted with great ruthlessness.

‘Yes, I suppose they try to smash their way out with bombs. Or smash a way out for all of us.’

‘Exactly – they just refuse to accept the rules, even if it means violence. And maybe in the end people in general just
can’t
accept those rules. Maybe that was part of the reason for the Reaction.’

‘Even the robots can’t accept them, it seems,’ I said.

‘Yes! Even the
robots
can’t live in two dimensions.’

She studied my face again, curiously, as if noticing something new..

‘You really do feel for those robots don’t you? You understand them in some way. I think I do too. I suppose that’s why I stuck with that silly job at ICC.’

She laughed.

‘Hey this is interesting! Are you hungry, George? Why don’t we go out for a meal or something?’

Now here is a strange thing. Here I was, a very isolated young man who longed to break out into the world. And here was Marija, a very attractive young woman who I’d always liked very much, suggesting we spend the evening together. I was in a position which I’d longed for and which I’d feared I would never reach. You’d think that I’d have been more than happy to accept.

But instead something inside me suddenly froze. I felt a wave of revulsion that appeared as if from nowhere, revulsion for Marija, revulsion for being together, revulsion for friendship and talking and flirting. I was suddenly aware of the biology of it: my body, her body, hormones, itchings… just silly biological itchings dressed up as a social game.

‘No. No, I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I’ve got to be somewhere else.’

‘Oh, pity,’ said Marija with a disappointed shrug.

She started to pick up the empty wine glasses.

‘You know you really are a dark horse, George. It would have been good to get to know you better.’

But I’d got up already and was putting on my jacket. It was all to do with fear of course. Fear was breaking out all over me. Soon she would be able to see it and I hated the idea of that. I really didn’t want her to think of me as a creature of fear.

I suppose that was the reason I suddenly blurted out an extraordinary thing:

‘I don’t know if you know any way of contacting the AHS?’

She gave a whistle.

‘Now that is
dangerous
, George. I mean, when O3 catch people…’

She didn’t need to finish her sentence. A clear vision came unbidden into my mind of a bare white windowless room deep underground, lit with very bright lights, and of a prisoner in there who would never see daylight again, screaming and screaming.

‘I know,’ I said.

‘Well I know people who know people,’ Marija said, ‘I could see if someone could get in touch with you.’

‘I’d like that,’ I said.

Marija smiled and, to my consternation, suddenly kissed me.

‘Well,’ she said, ‘have a good time at whatever important place it is that you’re going!’

23

Down in the subway there was a crazy black man with ragged clothes and heartbroken eyes.

‘We are all fallen!’ he cried. ‘We are all in darkness. Darkness, darkness, darkness! Listen to me! We can’t even see who we are! We can’t even see each other’s faces! We can’t even tell how far we have fallen! Oh no, no, no! We can’t so much as glimpse that lovely light, far, far above us! We live in dark tunnels. Listen to me, people, listen to me! We are like moles, we are like blind fishes in the darkest depths of the sea!’

As the train moved off I glanced out of the window and saw two men in suits taking the black man by the arms and dragging him away.

I must be mad, I told myself, as I sat down beside an elderly Albanian woman. I could have spent the evening with Marija. But instead I’m going to spend it with a machine.

I could get out now, I told myself as we drew in at Newton South Station, I could go straight back to Marija just as quickly as I got here. I could go straight back and tell her my appointment has been cancelled.

The Albanian woman struggled wheezily to her feet and a young South Asian man took her place. I started to move. But something inside me pulled me back.

The train plunged back into its tunnel.

She doesn’t really like me, I told myself in Galileo Central. She just feels sorry for me. I’m a lame duck that she’s decided to be kind to. She’s one of those kinds of people. Probably she has a whole collection of lame ducks revolving around her.

The South Asian took a computer game out of his pocket. A fat American lowered himself into the seat opposite to me. A silver security robot stared in impassively through my window as the train set off again.

‘Hawking West,’ said the train as we emerged into the light of another station, ‘Alight here please for Western and Memorial lines.’

I don’t know if I really even like
her
, I told myself. All this wanting to change the world, all this agonizing and philosophizing, all this wanting to get to the bottom of things. So
serious
. It’s not really the kind of thing that I…

‘Doors closing now,’ said the train.

On Pythagoras Station, two security robots were dealing with a group of drunken Arabs, picking them up two at a time by their collars and carrying them towards the exit.

‘Damned squippies,’ muttered the American. ‘Why do we let them in at all?’

The South Asian got off the train. A Chinese civil servant sat down beside the American.

My thoughts moved off at a new angle. If you don’t like her, I asked myself, how come you’re prepared to risk your life to prove to her that you’re really not a coward?

‘Sorry we’re running a couple of minutes late,’ said the train. ‘I hope this hasn’t caused any inconvenience. This is Schrödinger Station. You can change here for the Coastal and Mountain Lines.’

Get out now, I told myself. Go back!

My brain even sent signals to my limbs to move. It was almost as if a shadow of me actually did stand up and get off the train – and who knows, perhaps in another version of my life story, this is what really happened? But in this version other signals prevailed.

The well-lit train rushed back into the darkness.

You are an empty shell, I told myself, as the train opened its doors on Skinner Station. There is nothing inside: no thoughts, no real feelings. No wonder you go to Lucy, an empty shell like you.

There was a pigeon on the platform that had somehow found its way down into the tube. It went to peck at a scrap of food that lay by the feet of a man sitting on a bench, but just as it was getting close, its fear suddenly outweighed its hunger and it scuttled back again, only to turn again and gingerly edge back towards the food.

‘Take care, doors closing,’ said the train.

And with a strange surge of shame and excitement and dread, I realized that without any doubt at all I
would
get out at the next station, which was in the heart of the Night Quarter, and only five minutes from the house where the ASPUs waited.

I would get out, oh yes. But I wouldn’t get back on the return train to Marija.

I remember a Serbian woman on the escalator in front of me, telling a friend about a trip to the Beacon.

‘There are lights,’ she said, ‘and strange plants, and huge animals, and even a place where it is completely dark except for stars going round and round… and this strange music. That was lovely: the singing stars.’

24

The syntec receptionist knew me well by now.

‘Good evening Mr Simling, nice to see you. Lucy is in the lounge.’

I plunged into the dark red room, instantaneously blotting out Marija and the strange tube journey and the Beacon, along with everything else in the world outside.

Lucy was looking delectable in a little white lacy negligee.

‘Oh George!’ she cried (Initial Greeting IG: 5439/r), ‘It’s
great
to see you again! I’ve missed you so much, darling!’

‘I can’t wait to get naked with you again,’ she murmured up in her room, as she ran her thumb, with its imbedded infrared reader, over my credit bracelet.

I put my arms round her, lifting her negligee up above her sweet breasts, kissing her hungrily…

‘Oh I love you, Lucy,’ I couldn’t stop myself from saying it now, ‘I love you, I love you, I love you!’

Twenty-five minutes later it was all over. I had had sex with Lucy. I no longer wanted sex with her. There was nothing more to do than get dressed again and creep off home. (And if I had stayed with Marija we would still be talking and drinking wine and a whole evening would lie ahead, full of strange new possibilities.)

I was bitterly, desperately, disappointed with myself.

And yet when I looked at Lucy, sitting on her bed watching me, I still loved her. I still loved this empty shell, even when the lust was all spent.

‘I love you,’ I whispered, ‘I love you, I love you, I love you.’

Lucy looked at me.

‘What am I?’ she asked.

She spoke in a strange monotone, quite unlike her usual warm and animated voice and her face was blank, like a person in a trance.

‘You are an ASPU, Lucy,’ I said, simply, too surprised to consider my response. ‘You’re a syntec. You’re a kind of machine.’

For about another two seconds, the face remained completely blank and motionless – and then quite abruptly, her normal friendly expression returned.

‘That was really nice George. Will I see you again soon?’