by Kim Newman
‘Maybe being “constantly monitored” leads to “emotional instability”. Not to mention being called a “zenvol”.’
‘You’ll have to mention that to Big Thinks.’
‘Is he the boss-man among equals?’
Richard chuckled. ‘He’s an it. A computer. A very large computer.’
Vanessa snapped her fingers.
‘Ah-ha. There’s your culprit. In every sci-fi film I’ve ever seen, the computer goes power mad and starts killing people off. Big Thinks probably wants to take over the world.’
‘The late Mm Zhoule would cringe to hear you say that, Vanessa. He’d never have deigned to use such a hackneyed, unlikely premise in a story. A computer is just a heuristic abacus. Big Thinks can beat you at chess, solve logic problems, cut a pop record and make the monorail run on time, but it hasn’t got sentience, a personality, a motive or, most importantly, arms. You might as well suspect the fridge-freezer or the pop-up toaster.’
‘If you knew my pop-up toaster better, you’d feel differently. It sits there, shining sneakily, plotting perfidy. The jug-kettle is in on it too. There’s a conspiracy of contraptions.’
‘Now you’re being silly.’
‘Trust me, Richard, it’ll be the Brain Machine. Make sure to check its alibi.’
‘I’ll bear that in mind.’
* * *
They first saw Tomorrow Town from across the Yorkshire Dales, nestled in lush green and slate grey. The complex was a large-scale version of the sort of back garden space station that might have been put together by a talented child inspired by Gerry Anderson and instructed by Valerie Singleton, using egg boxes, toilet roll tubes, the innards of a broken wireless, pipe-cleaners and a lot of silver spray-paint.
Hexagonal geodesic domes clustered in the landscape, a central space covered by a giant canopy that looked like an especially aerodynamic silver circus tent. Metallised roadways wound between trees and lakes, connecting the domes. The light traffic consisted mostly of electric golfcarts and one-person hovercraft. A single hardy zenvol was struggling along on what looked like a failed flying bicycle from 1895 but was actually a moped powered by wing-like solar panels. It was raining gently, but the town seemed shielded by a half-bubble climate control barrier that shimmered in mid-air.
A pylon held up three sun-shaped globes on a triangle frame. They radiated light and, Richard suspected, heat. Where the light fell, the greenery was noticeably greener and thicker.
The monorail stopped outside the bubble, and settled a little clunkily.
‘You may now change apparel,’ rasped the machine voice.
A compartment opened and clothes slid out on racks. The safety straps released them from their seats.
Richard thought for a moment that the train had calculated from his long hair that he was a Ms rather than a Mm, then realised the garment on offer was unisex: a lightweight jumpsuit of semi-opaque polythene, with silver epaulettes, pockets, knee- and elbow-patches and modesty strips around the chest and hips. The dangling legs ended in floppy-looking plastic boots, the sleeves in surgeon’s gloves.
‘Was that “may” a “must”?’ asked Vanessa.
‘Best to go along with native customs,’ said Richard.
He turned his back like a gentleman and undressed carefully, folding and putting away his clothes. Then he took the jump-suit from the rack and stepped into it, wiggling his feet down into the boots and fingers into the gloves. A seam from crotch to neck sealed with velcro strips, but he was left with an enormous swathe of polythene sprouting from his left hip like a bridal train.
‘Like this,’ said Vanessa, who had worked it out.
The swathe went over the right shoulder in a toga arrangement, passing under an epaulette, clipping on in a couple of places, and falling like a waist-length cape.
She had also found a pad of controls in the left epaulette, which activated drawstrings and pleats that adjusted the garment to suit individual body type. They both had to fiddle to get the suits to cope with their above-average height, then loosen and tighten various sections as required. Even after every possible button had been twisted every possible way, Richard wore one sleeve tight as sausage skin while the other was loose and wrinkled as a burst balloon.
‘Maybe it’s a futopian fashion,’ suggested Vanessa, who – of course – looked spectacular, shown off to advantage by the modesty strips. ‘All the dashing zenvols are wearing the one-loose-one-tight look this new century.’
‘Or maybe it’s just aggravated crackpottery.’
She laughed.
The monorail judged they had used up their changing time, and lurched off again.
* * *
The receiving area was as white and clean as a bathroom display at the Belgian Ideal Home Exhibition. A deputation of zenvols, all dressed alike, none with mismatched sleeves, waited on the platform. Synthesised Bach played gently and the artificial breeze was mildly perfumed.
‘Mm Richard, Ms Vanessa,’ said a white-haired zenvol, ‘welcome to Tomorrow Town.’
A short Chinese girl repeated his words in sign-language.
‘Are you Georgie Gewell?’ Richard asked.
‘Jor-G,’ said the zenvol, then spelled it out.
‘My condolences,’ Richard said, shaking the man’s hand. Through two squeaking layers of latex, he had the impression of sweaty palm. ‘I understand you and Varno Zhoule were old friends.’
‘Var-Z is a tragic loss. A great visioneer.’
The Chinese girl mimed sadness. Other zenvols hung their heads.
‘Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring’ segued into the ‘Dead March’ from Saul. Was the muzak keyed in somehow to the emotional state of any given assembly?
‘We, ah, founded the Foundation together.’
Back in the 1950s, Varno Zhoule had written many articles and stories for science fiction magazines, offering futuristic solutions to contemporary problems, preaching the gospel of better living through logic and technology. He had predicted decimal currency and the vertical take-off aeroplane. Georgie Gewell was an award-winning editor and critic. He had championed Zhoule’s work, then raised finance to apply his solutions to the real world. Richard understood the seed money for the Foundation came from a patent the pair held on a kind of battery-powered circular slide rule that was faster and more accurate than any other portable calculating device.
Gewell was as tall as Richard, with milk-fair skin and close-cropped snow-white hair. He had deep smile and frown lines and a soft, girlish mouth. He was steadily leaking tears, not from grief but from thick, obvious reactalite contact lenses that were currently smudged to the darker end of their spectrum.
The other zenvols were an assorted mix, despite their identical outfits. Most of the men were short and tubby, the women lithe and fit – which was either Big Thinks’s recipe for perfect population balance or some visioneer’s idea of a good time for a tall, thin fellow. Everyone had hair cut short, which made both Richard and Vanessa obvious outsiders. None of the men wore facial hair except a red-faced chap who opted for the Puritan beard-without-a-moustache arrangement.
Gewell introduced the delegation. The Chinese girl was Moana, whom Gewell described as ‘town speaker’, though she continued to communicate only by signing. The beardie was Mal-K, the ‘senior medico’ who had presided over the autopsy, matched some bloody fingerprints and seemed a bit put out to be taken away from his automated clinic for this ceremonial affair. Other significant zenvols: Jess-F, ‘arbitrage input tech’, a hard-faced blond girl who interfaced with Big Thinks when it came to programming-dispute decisions, and thus was the nearest thing Tomorrow Town had to a human representative of the legal system – though she was more clerk of the court than investigating officer; Zootie, a fat little ‘agri-terrain rearrangement tech’ with a bad cold for which he kept apologising, who turned out to have discovered the body by the hydroponics vats and was oddly impressed and uncomfortable in this group as if he weren’t quite on a level of equality with
Gewell and the rest; and ‘vocabulary administrator’ Sue-2, whom Gewell introduced as ‘sadly, the motive’, the image of a penitent young lady who ‘would never do it again’.
Richard mentally marked them all down.
‘You’ll want to visit the scene of the crime?’ suggested Gewell. ‘Interrogate the culprit? We have Buster in a secure store-room. It had to be especially prepared. There are no lockable doors in Tomorrow Town.’
‘He’s nailed in,’ said Jess-F. ‘With rations and a potty.’
‘Very sensible,’ commented Richard.
‘We can prise the door open now you’re here,’ said Gewell.
Richard thought a moment.
‘If you’ll forgive me, Mr Jep— ah, Mm Richard,’ said Mal-K, ‘I’d like to get back to my work. I’ve a batch of anti-virus cooking.’
The medico kept his distance from Zootie. Did he think a streaming nose reflected badly on the health of the future? Or was the artificial breeze liable to spread sniffles around the whole community in minutes?
‘I don’t see any reason to detain you Mm Mal-K,’ said Richard. ‘Vanessa might pop over later. My associate is interested in the work you’re doing here. New cures for new diseases. She’d love to squint into a microscope at your anti-virus.’
Vanessa nodded with convincing enthusiasm.
‘Mal-K’s door is always open,’ said Gewell.
The medico sloped off without comment.
‘Should we crack out the crowbar, then?’ prompted Gewell.
The co-founder seemed keen on getting on with this: to him, murder came as an embarrassment and an interruption. It wasn’t an uncommon reaction. Richard judged Gewell just wanted all this over with so he could get on with things, even though the victim was one of his oldest friends and the crime demonstrated a major flaw in the social design of Tomorrow Town. If someone battered Vanessa to death, he didn’t think he’d be so intent on putting it behind him – but he was famous for being sensitive. Indeed, it was why he was so useful to the Diogenes Club.
‘I think as long as our putative culprit is safely nailed away, we can afford to take our time, get a feel for the place and the set-up. It’s how I like to work, Mm Gewell. To me, understanding why is much more important than knowing who or how.’
‘I should think the why was obvious,’ said Gewell looking at Sue-2, eyes visibly darkening.
She looked down.
‘The arbitration went against Buster, and he couldn’t accept it,’ said Jess-F. ‘Though it was in his initial contract that he abide by Big Thinks’ decisions. It happens sometimes. Not often.’
‘An arbitration in a matter of the heart? Interesting. Just the sort of thing that comes in a box marked “motive” and tied with pink string. Thank you so much for mentioning it early in the case. Before we continue the sleuthing, perhaps we could have lunch. Vanessa and I have travelled a long way, with no sustenance beyond British Rail sandwiches and a beverage of our own supply. Let’s break bread together, and you can tell me more about your fascinating experiment.’
‘Communal meals are at fixed times,’ said Gewell. ‘The next is not until six.’
‘I make it about six o’clock,’ said Richard, though his watch-face was blurred by the sleeve-glove.
‘It’s only f-five by our clock,’ said Sue-2. ‘We’re on two daily cycles of ten kronons. Each kronon runs a hundred sentikronons.’
‘In your time, a kronon is 72 minutes,’ explained Gewell. ‘Our six is your—’
Vanessa did the calculation and beat the slide-rule designer. ‘Twelve minutes past seven.’
‘That’s about it.’
Richard waved away the objection.
‘I’m sure a snack can be rustled up. Where do you take these communal meals?’
Moana signalled a direction and set off. Richard was happy to follow, and the others came too.
* * *
The dining area was in the central plaza, under the pylon and the three globes, with zinc-and-chrome sheet-and-tube tables and benches. It was warm under the globes, almost Caribbean, and some zenvols wore poker-players’ eyeshades. In the artificially balmy climate, plastic garments tended to get sticky inside, which made for creaky shiftings-in-seats.
An abstract ornamental fountain gushed nutrient-enriched, slightly carbonated, heavily fluoridised water. Gewell had Moana fetch a couple of jugs for the table, while the meek Sue-2 hustled off to persuade ‘sustenance preparation’ techs to break their schedule to feed the visitors. Vanessa cocked an eyebrow at this division of labour, and Richard remembered Zhoule and Gewell had been planning this futopia since the 1950s, well before the publication of The Female Eunuch. Even Jess-F, whom Richard had pegged as the toughest zenvol he had yet met, broke out the metallised glass tumblers from a dispenser by the fountain, while Gewell and the sniffling Zootie sat at their ease at the table.
‘Is that the building where Big Thinks lives?’ asked Vanessa.
Gewell swivelled to look. Vanessa meant an imposing structure, rather like a giant art deco refrigerator decorated with Mondrian squares in a rough schematic of a human face. Uniformly dressed zenvols came and went through airlock doors that opened and closed with hisses of decontaminant.
Gewell grinned, impishly.
‘Ms Vanessa, that building is Big Thinks.’
Richard whistled.
‘BeeTee didn’t used to be that size,’ said Jess-F. ‘Var-Z kept insisting we add units. More and more complicated questions need more and more space. Soon, we’ll have to expand further.’
‘It doesn’t show any telltale signs of megalomania?’ asked Vanessa. ‘Never programs Wagner for eight straight hours and chortles over maps of the world?’
Jess-F didn’t look as if she thought that was funny.
‘BeeTee is a machine, Ms.’
Sue-2 came back with food. Coloured pills that looked like Smarties but tasted like chalk.
‘All the nutrition you need is here,’ said Gewell, ‘in the water and the capsules. For us, mealtimes are mostly ceremonial, for debate and reflection. Var-Z said that some of his best ideas popped into his head while he was chatting idly after a satisfying pill.’
Richard didn’t doubt it. He also still felt hungry.
‘Talking of things popping into Zhoule’s head,’ he said. ‘What’s the story on Buster of the bloody fingerprints?’
Jess-F looked at Sue-2, as if expecting to be contradicted, then carried on.
‘Big Thinks assessed the dispute situation, and arbitrated it best for the community if Sue-2 were to be pair-bonded with Var-Z rather than Buster.’
‘Buster was your old boyfriend?’ Vanessa asked Sue-2.
‘He is my husband,’ she said.
‘On the outside, in the past,’ put in Jess-F. ‘Here, we don’t always acknowledge arbitrary pair-bondings. Mostly, they serve a useful purpose and continue. In this instance, the dispute was more complicated.’
‘Big Thinks arbitrated against the arbitrary?’ mused Richard. ‘I suppose no one would be surprised at that.’
He looked from face to face and fixed on Sue-2, then asked: ‘Did you leave Buster for Mm Zhoule?’
Sue-2 looked for a cue, but none came.
‘It was best for the town, for the experiment,’ she said.
‘What was it for you? For your husband?’
‘Buster had been regraded. From “zenvol” to “zenpass”. He couldn’t vote.’
Richard looked to Jess-F for explication. He noticed Gewell had to give her a teary wink from almost-black eyes before she would say anything more.
‘We have very few citizen-passengers,’ she said. ‘It’s not a punishment category.’
‘Kind of you to clarify that,’ said Richard. ‘I might have made a misconclusion otherwise. You say zenpasses have no vote?’
‘It’s not so dreadful,’ said Gewell, sipping nutrient. ‘On the outside, in the past, suffrage is restricted by age, sanity, residence and so on. Here, in our technomeritocracy, to
register for a vote – which gives you a voice in every significant decision – you have to demonstrate your applied intelligence.’
‘An IQ test?’
‘Not a quotient, Mm Richard. Anyone can have that. The vital factor is application. BeeTee tests for that. There’s no personality or human tangle involved. Surely, it’s only fair that the most useful should have the most say?’
‘I have a vote,’ said Zootie, proud. ‘Earned by applied intelligence.’
‘Indeed he does,’ said Gewell, smiling.
‘And Mm Jor-G has fifteen votes. Because he applies his intelligence more often than I do.’
Everyone looked at Zootie with different types of amazement.
‘It’s only fair,’ said Zootie, content despite a nose-trickle, washing down another purple pill.
Richard wondered whether the agri-terrain rearrangement tech was hovering near regrading as a zenpass.
Richard addressed Sue-2. ‘What does your husband do?’
‘He’s a history teacher.’
‘An educationalist. Very valuable.’
Gewell looked as if his pill was sour. ‘Your present is our past, Mm Richard. Buster’s discipline is surplus.’
‘Doesn’t the future grow out of the past? To know where you’re going you must know where you’ve been.’
‘Var-Z believes in a radical break.’
‘But Var-Z is in the past too.’
‘Indeed. Regrettable. But we must think of the future.’
‘It’s where we’re going to spend the rest of our lives,’ said Zootie.
‘That’s very clever,’ said Vanessa.
Zootie wiped his nose and puffed up a bit.
‘I think we should hand Buster over to you,’ said Gewell. ‘To be taken outside to face the justice of the past. Var-Z left work undone that we must continue.’
‘Not just yet,’ said Richard. ‘This sad business raises questions about Tomorrow Town. I have to look beyond the simple crime before I make my report. I’m sure you understand and will extend full cooperation.’
No one said anything, but they all constructed smiles.
‘You must be economically self-supporting by now,’ continued Richard, ‘what with the research and invention you’ve been applying intelligence to. If the Prime Minister withdrew government subsidies, you’d probably be better off. Free of the apron strings, as it were. Still, the extra cash must come in handy for something, even if you don’t use money in this town.’