Slabscape: Dammit

by S. Spencer Baker

  ‘Security against who? I thought you said you had a right to be here?’

  ‘We do. Your Sis won’t interfere with us, it’s just we’re not the only Unkos onSlab.’

  ‘How many more Unkos are there?’

  ‘We don’t actually know, but we’ve heard strong rumours that there are several groups of Unkos on Upside who have started cooperating with each other. It’s a bloody travesty! What’s the point of being an Unko if you go around cooperating with everyone? They’ll wind up building another state that way. More rules, more restrictions, more bloody bureaucracy. Next thing you know they’ll be trying to annex us and you know what happens when you get annexed? Taxes!’

  Dielle was finding it hard to dredge up any sympathy for the problems of the militantly independent. ‘But if they’re on Upside, doesn’t that mean they can’t get here? They’d have to go through our bit to get to you, wouldn’t they.’

  ‘The irony of your lot being our buffer-zone against our so-called fellow Unkos does not escape us.’

  ‘So the Naturalists feed you and clothe you and provide your security. Seems like a pretty one-sided relationship to me.’

  ‘I suppose it would be if it wasn’t for the fact that they share the same genetic defect as us all. They can’t procreate without genetic intervention.’

  ‘So you are matriarch to the Unkos and the Naturalists?’

  She beamed. ‘I give them their children,’ she said. ‘They aren’t perfect, by design, but they are ours.’

  ‘But I don’t understand. If you have the technology to create humans without flaws, why don’t you? Surely any parent would want their children to have the best possible chance?’

  ‘It depends what you mean by the best possible chance. It doesn’t necessarily mean that everyone is the same and flawless.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because that isn’t what makes humans human. Look, take a simple, verifiable mathematical fact. For as long as humans have been human and up until the gene wranglers screwed it all up and the human race wound up being infertile, humans bred almost exclusively by accident. People had sex because they desired sex. They had a hunger for it and that hunger was impossible to deny. We still have the same hunger, even though it now serves no biological purpose, but it’s going to take a lot longer than a few hundred years to break the programming of millions. For 99% of our genetic history, pregnancy was the unintended consequence of the urge to copulate. Everybody was an accident.

  ‘When humans started to understand the consequences of their actions, the birth rate went down. They didn’t need so many mouths to feed and the women didn’t want to destroy their bodies, serially flirt with death or repeatedly endure the physical trauma of giving birth. Neither did they want to incessantly re-burden themselves with the overhead of demanding infants. But did that stop us having children by accident? No, of course it didn’t. Now, here’s the interesting bit. If humans fully understood the consequences of their actions and didn’t have that it will be alright, it won’t happen to me gene then they would have died out. Wars, famines, diseases and natural disasters would have sent us back to the stone age. But because we habitually over-bred, by accident, we were able to ride these things out. The human race survived because of its lack of ability to foresee the consequences of its actions, not despite it. It has always been that way. And without that same gene we would never have taken the risks we needed to take to explore our environment, discover new lands and invent new technology to feed, clothe and protect ourselves. Risk-taking relies on the human ability to deliberately ignore the full consequences of our actions. That gene, let’s call it the blind-spot gene, makes a big difference.’

  ‘So what’s your point?’

  ‘Your optimisation algorithms up there consider the blind-spot gene a weakness. They think it’s debilitating for humans to be genetically inclined to ignore the consequences of their actions. They decided it was preferable to be able to foresee every possible outcome and plan for them, so they took the bloody gene out! Consequently, your precious citizens take almost zero risks and make fewer mistakes.’

  ‘Sounds like a good idea to me,’ said Dielle. ‘Why would we want to make mistakes?’

  ‘Because it’s only through taking risks and making mistakes that new things happen. It’s called creativity. It requires a blind spot.’

  ‘So Unkos have blind spots.’

  ‘In spades! So do all the Naturalists, naturally.’

  Dielle sipped his tea and pondered. He knew something hadn’t felt right since he’d been re-fammed, but he hadn’t been able to put his finger on why he felt uncomfortable most of the time. Maybe the matriarch had just given him a clue. Maybe he needed to get to know these people. Maybe the girl with the red hair was waiting for him outside. ‘You know that feast going on out there?’

  ‘Sunday lunch?’

  ‘Do you think there'll be any left?’

  When he found her, she was dancing on a hollow wooden platform and when she spotted him she dragged him onto it and made him dance too. He wasn’t very good at it, but that didn’t matter because she was. She was better than good, she was dazzling. She moved as if she could control gravity by sheer will. He’d already seen the most famous athletic dance troupe onSlab perform an intricately choreographed zero-g interface ballet and that had been breathtaking, but what this woman could do on her own, with nothing to accompany her other than the sound of her shoes hitting a resonant floor, far, far outshone that. This dance was about the thrill of life and exuded a passion for being human that he’d never been close to before. Sure, he thought, Kiki had passion and energy on tap any time she needed it. But it wasn’t the same. Kiki’s enthusiasm felt manufactured and superficial compared to this. This was pure joy. And he still didn’t know her name.

  She taught him the steps with a flashing smile and a body as lithe as a whip. She showed him how to leap without changing place, rise without falling and spin without tripping over his feet. He felt like a clown. Compared to her he seemed clumsy, gauche and inept but he loved every minute of it. They stopped for a break and a tankard of sparkling, fermented brew. The locals, having satiated their hunger but not their need for drink or conversation had coalesced into separate groups where jokes were being shared and arguments were flaring and subsiding like flash storms over a tropical sea.

  There was a commotion on the other side of the arena as a game of Burley broke out. Spectators formed a moving corral around the two teams as they bumped and jostled for the possession of two head-sized cloth balls and a pair of arm-length poles with a bowl on each end. The primary object of the game was to catch a ball in one end of a pole, which was called a punter, and run toward one of the two A-frame goal posts set into opposite ends of the arena. If the runner was impeded, he had the option of flipping the ball to any teammate who was also in possession of a punter, and the dash for the goal would continue as long as the ball was caught cleanly in the punter’s bowl, or corrie. When a ball was not inside a corrie, it was technically dead or lagged and could not be run with but could be tossed to a teammate as long as he was in full possession of a punter at the time the ball was thrown. Alternatively, and more dangerously, the punter could be thrown to the dead-ball holder, or lagger. Communication between the lagger and the punter bearer was usually made near-impossible by the yelling of the crowd and the opposing sides’ attempts at interfering with the line of sight between them. This resulted in many occasions when all the punters and balls were in the air at the same time, tumbling and spinning through the dust clouds above the writhing scrum of semi-inebriated, laughing and swearing players.

  Occasionally, someone would make a break for a goal and the crowd would part to let the runner through. This was a great cause for confusion and rapid tactical decision making because, while the team with the ball would need to protect the runner from being tackled, any weakening of the scrum meant that the opposing side would stand a better chance of capturing the remaining ball and he
ading for their goal, thereby neutralising the potential score. If a runner wasn’t confident he could reach the goal before being brought down he had the option of using the punter to hurl the ball through the triangle above the crossbar for one point. Running beneath the crossbar with a ball in a corrie scored three points, however the ideal was for a team to get both balls onto each corrie of one punter. If that happened, the runner had to be protected at all costs because this was called a double corrie, worth ten points if carried intact across the goal line, and almost always meant the end of the game. Successfully executed double corries were extremely rare because the crowd, not wanting the game to end, would charge after the hapless runner alongside the opposing team and all hell would break loose.

  Dielle, with no Sis to query, had watched all this going on for quite a while and still had no idea what was going on. It looked like carnage to him. He spotted several bloody lips, some of them on women who seemed to have no problem competing against the men. He worried that his spirited companion might want to join in and he’d lose her completely.

  He leaned closer and raised his voice. ‘You know they want me to read to you?’

  ‘To me?’ she said, eyes sparkling like emeralds as she kept track of all four game elements. ‘Sure why d’they want that? I’ve no need of it.’

  ‘Not you specifically. The Naturalists. The Unkos say you’ve found a book and you need someone to read it to you.’

  ‘Do they now?’

  ‘Do you ever answer a question with a direct answer?’

  ‘Of course I do. Why don’t you ask me one?’

  ‘Will you tell me your name?’

  ‘And why would you want to know it?’

  Dielle looked at her and ached. He could have told her why he wanted to know in such precise terms that he’d have been breathless before he’d finished his first sentence. He could have told her so well that she would probably have run away screaming, or laughing, and he’d never see her again.

  ‘See what I mean?’ he said. ‘Another question.’

  ‘But they’re so much more interesting than the answers don’t you think?’ She stood up, pirouetted and skipped off to get a better view of the match. He had no choice but to follow. No choice at all.

  The man re-appeared and reduced his choices to less than zero. ‘The Matriarch has given her blessing.’ He shook his head. ‘There’s no accounting for it.’

  ‘So that’s good then, eh?’ said Dielle hopefully.

  ‘You have a job to do and so do I. Mine is to deliver you to yours.’ He turned his back, once again expecting to be followed. Dielle looked wistfully over at his unnamed desire, caught her eye, and waved goodbye. She waved back and smiled. He thought he saw the slightest look of concern in her eyes and his heart raced. Then he wondered what she might be concerned about and his heart raced faster. He briefly considered making a stand and not going with the man, but he watched how the crowd parted before them and the deference everyone showed to his guard-guide. It might be interesting to see what they wanted him to do, he thought. More interesting than the alternatives anyway.

  They passed through a laneway that separated a terrace of military-style two-storey buildings and turned left into a quadrangle. High walls reflected the muffled roar from the Burley spectators down into the courtyard. A black and cream checkerboard of paving stones fanned out in a spiral from a large fountain in the middle of the square. Loops of sparkling water splashed lazily into a clover-leaf pool surrounded by worn stone benches. At the far side of the courtyard was a white building with a pitched roof and a half-dozen vertical slits for windows. The man walked over to a heavy door set into a stone arch in the corner, hefted it open and dragged Dielle through. Lines of chairs and desks faced a low stage with a single bare table on it. In every chair sat a small child and the face of every small child was turned toward Dielle. Some smiled hopefully, some looked on with a mixture of curiosity and caution, and others managed to mix disdain and dismissal with such expertise that Dielle guessed they had been taking lessons from the man who had just bolted the door behind them. They walked to the front of the class, through the field of sunflower faces.

  ‘Now children,’ said the man with a softness of tone that surprised Dielle, ‘this is your new reader. I know you’ve had to give up the Burley to be here, but you’ll be polite to him unless he’s not to you.’

  They replied as one: ‘Yes Fayder!’

  ‘And is there an Unko among us now?’

  ‘No Fayder!’

  ‘And will you keep it that way for as long as there’s reading to do?’

  ‘We will, Fayder!’

  ‘Right then,’ he said. He strode over to a metal plate set into a side wall, and reached down the front of his tunic. He pulled out a key the size of his palm and unlocked the panel which swung out on two sturdy protruding hinges. Inside the safe were four shelves of battered books with a drawer at the bottom. The man heaved the drawer open and took out a hessian-wrapped package the size of child’s tombstone. He carefully placed it on the desk in front of Dielle and untied the braided rope that bound it. Before he opened the cloth to reveal the contents, he turned to Dielle.

  ‘I’ll have your word that you will never divulge the name or contents of this book to anyone outside these walls,’ he said.

  ‘Why?’ said Dielle then caught the look in the man’s eyes. ‘I mean yeah, sure.’

  ‘I’ll have your word, you vacuous puppet.’

  ‘What word?’

  ‘You’ll swear to me upon whatever thing or person you consider the most sacred that you will not break your promise to me on this.’

  Dielle thought for a moment. He wasn’t sure if he would have considered any thing or person sacred. Until today.

  ‘I swear to you on my own life that I will not reveal the contents of this package to anyone outside of these walls,’ he said.

  The man looked at him with contempt. ‘On your life then. It will be,’ he said. He pulled back the cloth.

  The cover of the book had a photograph of the Earth that had been taken coming back from the moon. The planet was a crescent, with more than two thirds of it in shadow, so Dielle could only make out a sliver of detail. He could see clouds and a hint of a blue ocean and perhaps some mountainous land. It looked, thought Dielle, breathtakingly beautiful. A deeply buried part of him experienced the tug of longing.

  ‘It’s a catalog,’ he said, ‘apparently of everything on Earth, and it’s the last one.’

  ‘Aye, so I’ve been told and you’ll read it to the young ones,’ said the man. ‘I’ll be sitting at the back in case there’s any trouble.’

  ‘Trouble?’ Dielle looked around at the class. They didn’t look the least bit threatening to him.

  ‘Not with them, with you,’ growled the man, striding off and leaving him to face the expectant kids.

  Dielle gave them a warm smile. ‘My name is Dielle,’ he said. ‘That’s like a letter D and a letter L put together. A long time ago I used to be known by another name and in those days I used to live on the Earth which is what this catalog is all about. He hefted the book up to the class to show them the cover.

  ‘You’ll be careful with that!’ shouted the man. ‘Sure, it’s priceless.’

  Dielle put it back down gingerly.

  ‘But even though I lived there when I was your age,’ he continued. ‘I have no memory of it at all because when I got old I was put into a kind of cold storage and when I woke up here I was all young again but I had no memories of who I used to be.’

  ‘Did I ask you to fill their heads with this nonsense?’ growled the man, walking back into the centre of the room and directing his words to the children. ‘Pay no attention to this claptrap about frozen people. It’s just the type of thing these eejits mess around with up there. They’re all demented.’ He turned back to Dielle and snarled: ‘Just read it will you?’

  ‘My point,’ said Dielle defiantly, ‘is that I’m as keen to see what’s inside this
book as you are so we’ll learn about it together, shall we?’ The man went back to his seat and sat down angrily. Score one point for Dielle, thought Dielle.

  As he carefully turned each tissue-thin, grey page, he learned more than he expected. He learned some wild and fascinating ideas from Earth, and he also learned that he loved reading to children. They sat in rapt attention, sucking up everything he had to say. There were murmurs of approval when he read out ‘Utopia or Oblivion’ and a flurry of gasps when he told them about an operating manual for ‘Spaceship Earth’ but for the most part they sat in silence, listening to the wonders of a planet they would never see.

  Dielle read to them for over an hour. Then he noticed a boy at the side of the class who was trying to attract his attention.

  ‘Why is your hand up?’ he asked.

  The boy stood up. His hair was the same colour as Hers and he had the same tiny brown spots on his skin. ‘Sir, I need to be excused, sir.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I need to pee, sir.’

  ‘You need to what?’

  ‘To pee!’ said the boy, his face getting redder as he bounced from one foot to the other.

  ‘Why?’ said Dielle. The kids stifled giggles.

  The man stood up at the back. ‘Gawan Fintan, yer man’s an eejit,’ he said. The boy rushed over to the side door. ‘Just because he can read doesn’t make him clever. Anyway that’s enough for today. You’ll all tell your mams you’re to be back here the same time tomorrow. Now off you go.’

  The class dissolved into a jumble of scraping chairs and let-me-out energy that raised clouds of dust as the kids pushed their way through the side door.

  The man had already carefully re-wrapped the catalogue and locked it in the safe before the last child left.

  ‘Was that what you wanted then Fayder?’ asked Dielle.

  The man looked around sharply. ‘Don’t you ever call me that,’ he growled.