Even Braver New World State

by Rick K. Reut

  “Any questions?” asked Controller Globe, bending all the five fingers back into one fist and finally lowering Its hand.

  As soon as It did so, Judith – the hyperactive red-haired student Director Downing was so fond of – raised one of Its own.

  “Yes, my dear!”

  “O,” flushed the flower-like lady-boy finding Itself impaled on Its Freudship’s inquisitive stare, “I was just wondering why we always divide the Age of Our FordorFreud into His First and Second Coming? For it sounds almost as if His First Coming was…was…” It stuttered in search of a suitable word, “… was a mistake. And yet how could… how could…”

  “I see what you are trying to say, my dear,” said the Controller, coming to the young tranny’s rescue. “And this is a very relevant, question, which I will now try to give a most thorough answer to. You see, the First Coming of Our Great Prophet was not so much a mistake as the first step towards the Second Coming.”

  “Try to think of that like this. When you set yourself a certain goal – for example, getting to the door of this dining hall,” Gianna Globe turned towards the “Exit” sign, “ – you cannot reach it with one single leap no matter how hard you try, for it is simply too far away. It takes a certain amount of time divided into a certain number of steps. And you,” It turned back towards the students, while taking a step towards the sign, “have to take all of them to get there. But you can’t take all of them together or at once. And you surely can’t take the last or even the second step without taking the first one first. The same thing happens to be correct in case of Our FordorFreud. Only His goal was not reaching this door, but universal happiness of humankind. And His first and foremost step to it was His experimental “T” model.”

  The Controller sketched the sacred “T” on Its torso by drawing an imaginary horizontal line from Its left nipple to the right one – and then a vertical line from between Its bulging breasts – past the bellybutton, – and all the way down to the pubic area. The students duly did the same.

  “This first step,” the Controller went on, “was subsequently supported by many more steps, which brought us as far as this time. But, as I’ve already said, none of it could have done in one single leap. The First Coming was what we can now call a transitional period from the old cowardly world to the brave new one, and the Second Coming – from the brave new one to the even braver new one. The means we used to be happy in the former are now considered old and out of date. For example, our embryo-engineering and conditioning techniques gave us a chance to cease the class struggle, but we still had classes, or castes as they were called back then. We simply couldn’t cast the lower castes out right away because we needed them to do all that disgustingly primitive but socially indispensable manual work. However, the mentioned method of predestination allowed us to reduce the probability of potential restlessness and discontent to an absolute minimum even among the Alphas. The price we had to pay for it was a purely unaesthetic reminder of what a retarded human being can look like if its breeding and upbringing are given away to blind chance. Of course, we took the blind chance under control, put it on a conveyer and learned to use the deficiencies of the human organism for our benefit. But it was still a pretty ugly picture to see, even though it was no longer potentially explosive,” explained the Controller, closely watching the students’ reaction.

  “Fortunately, further development of those technologies allowed us to abolish all crude manual labor altogether by introducing artificial intelligence and implementing it into machines. From then on we no longer had any need for Epsilons, Deltas, Gammas and even Betas. We could now, anachronistically speaking, make everyone an Alpha double plus. Which was precisely what we did, ceasing the production of Betas, Deltas, Gammas and Epsilons, and starting to experiment with the sexes until we finally came up with a completely unique unisex creature. This creature then gave us an outstanding opportunity to overcome the mentioned sex and gender binary, thus eradicating all the discontent among the Alphas.”

  “What concerns the remaining pre-transsexuals, we simply scattered them along the coastlines of the world’s numerous Isolated Islands, after giving them all necessary facilities for agriculture so that they would be able to provide for themselves. Their current communities are, in fact, examples of pre-modern civilizations in miniature. We certainly keep them under constant control, just in case they try to start developing advanced weapons of mass destruction. All that is not only for our but for their own sake as well. To paraphrase an adage of the pre-modern ages that suits our present perfect times: the Devil or, shall we say, Anti-Freud always finds work for idle and especially sexually unsatisfied hands,” cited the Controller, putting Its own hands together and then rubbing them a little.

  “As for all other hands of our New World State of Both Body and Mind, to quote from our transsexual anthem, I see no reason why we should keep them unsatisfied any more than we already have. And so, I suggest that we take a little vote on expediting the upcoming Trans Time, and ask all those in favor of this initiative to raise their hands,” concluded the Controller, raising one of Its own.

  As it might have been expected after such a scrumptious meal, the decision had unanimous support, with all the students springing to their feet and throwing off their clothes to join Director Downing and Controller Globe in another official Trans Time orgy.

  Chapter Six

  The Isle of Man was like a small and seemingly self-sufficient state, shut off from the rest of the world by a secretively whispering, sometimes sighing or simply snoring sea. There were only three ways to escape from there.

  The first one would have to be by boat, ship or some other sea vessel. Such vessels, however, were very rare and had recently ceased coming completely. This additional safety measure came straight from the Controllers’ Council as the New World State’s central legislative and executive body.

  The second way would be by swimming. But only if you were Lord Byron, James Bond and simply stupid enough to try it blended together in one decanting bottle. After all, even if you did manage to get past the coast guard, equipped with all sorts of state-of-the-art surveillance and sea-tracking devices, you would still be left with about sixty miles to swim to the shores of the mainland in constantly troubled and terribly cold waters. And if you did reach the other side of the strait in the end, no matter how heroic this act appeared and actually was in itself, it would still be in vain, for you would be instantly spotted, seized and sent back anyway. And that would be for one reason only: you would have to look no less attractive than a porn movie actress of yore to ever even try to blend in with the crowd – a task next to impossible for any man capable of completing the previous two.

  And the third, the last and the only promising possibility to get off the Island under ordinary circumstances would be either by trans-plane or trans-copter. For that, however, one would have to have a special permission sanctioned by no fewer than three Caretaking Controllers, which was an incredibly rare privilege and proved to be a matter of enormous exception. Such exceptions were made mostly for scientific or entertainment purposes.

  Having worked as a mailman for the past eight years, Adam Marx remembered reading something about it in one of the newspapers he had delivered. However, he couldn’t recall the contents of the article well enough to know exactly where to go. So, he went to the only place that came to his mind and had something to do with authority.

  The very next day after his augural visit to Helmholtz Watson and a very nerve-stirring and therefore totally sleepless night that followed, he went straight to the office of the Island’s Chief Warden.

  As soon as the first gray rays of a sick-looking morning dawn squeezed through a throng of black-bellied, rain-pregnant clouds crowding on the skyline, and then through the raggedy blinds on an iron-barred window of the wretched hovel he lived in, Adam hopped out of his bed and, before he himself had time to realize it, was already dressed and drifting down a desolated street with a couple of cups o
f repulsively cold coffee grouching in his guts.

  Together with his hunched shoulders, elbows pressed close to his sides and hands shoved deep in the pockets of his frayed jeans jacket, the cigarette smoke curling around his head gave his slouching figure a strange resemblance to a small freight train of frightful thoughts trailing behind him in barely perceptible wagons of made up mind.

  The train was desperately trying to make it on time, which for some reason he felt like he was already running out of. It was as if the place of his destination, the Brave New World he was bound for, would no longer be there when he arrived. Adam was afraid that his only hope for happiness would vanish in film-thin air with the velocity of a pornographic wet dream if he didn’t speed up before waking. It was really a race against his own anxiety rushing ahead like a wild horse harnessed into his hurriedly hurtling heart.

  It was with this hurtling heart, hammering huge nails of nervousness into his chest, that Adam approached the porch of a pale-blue, six-storied building on the south side of the Island’s coastline, ditched his tenth or twelfth half-smoked cigarette, exhaled and entered.

  It took him about two hours to get past the gorilla-like sentinel guarding the way to the warden’s office. Adam killed this time in the waiting room, doing nothing but feeling anxious and flipping through a stack of soiled fishing magazines he himself had delivered there a few years earlier. That was before the office door finally flung open, revealing a pudgy, pig-faced midget of about fifty, wearing round steal-rimmed spectacles. The midget looked like a nibbled cigar stub, similar to the one sticking out of the corner of his mouth. Strongly smelling of soured sweat and smoked sausages, the stub wordlessly waved him in.

  “So, how can I help you, Mister Marx?” he addressed Adam through a thick screen of smoke that hung in the foul, conditioning-free air of the office after a more or less formal introduction.

  “Well, actually…” and abruptly all Adam’s determination was gone. Like the smoke of that same ten or twelve cigarettes he had left behind smoldering out in the still sleepy streets and alleys backtracking his way to the warden’s building.

  They sat on the opposite sides of the warden’s writing table. The warden held his plump hairy hands with short stubby fingers entwined on its edge. Barely reaching it with his chubby chest, covered with a creased, sweat-soaked shirt, he leaned forward and stared at Adam inquisitively.

  “Well…” Adam repeated in panicky indecision, his eyes, like lice, running up and down the warden’s hairy hands.

  They were not so much hands as paws of some predatory animal, concealing a set of razor-sharp claws. They looked like they were preparing to leap forward and tear Adam’s heart out of his nerve-strung body and then shred it to tiny pieces of neatly folded paper the warden would later devour for dinner.

  Totally transfixed, like a rabbit looking at a lion, Adam couldn’t take his eyes off the predator’s paws he was certain his whole future was now caught in. A butterfly in a spider’s web, he knew that from now on he would have to be at the man’s mercy. But he also knew what kind of merciless beast any man could be, and this knowledge filled him with blood-curdling fear.

  “Well?” the beast cut in, impatiently, encouraging his visitor to speak.

  “Well-uh… ” mumbled the young man, who was still searching for the right words, “I was just wondering if… ah… if…,” he stammered, not knowing how to finish the sentence so that it wouldn’t sound too suspicious and thus turn out to be a sentence to death.

  “If…?” prompted the beast, leaning farther on forward and scanning Adam head to foot with his short-sighted, button-shaped eyelets.

  “If…” the young man finally collected all his courage and muttered as coherently as he could,

  “…ifitwaspossibleformetoseetheworld?”

  The words came out slurred into one and were succeeded by a second of surprised silence.

  “See what?” the beast snapped the silence and turned his head as if tune his hairy ear to the young man’s mouth. “I didn’t quite catch it.”

  “The world,” Adam blurted, before holding his breath in tense expectation.

  The beast scowled sinisterly, turning into an absolute animal in Adams eyes.

  “Hm. Sorry, but I still don’t get it,” he said coldly. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but you seem to have just wondered if it was possible to see the…,” he held a meaningful pause, “…world?”

  The word fell off his fat lips and hung in the smoked-up air.

  “Yes,” coyly whispered the young man, holding his breath again.

  “You mean to say… to see the world outside the Island?”

  “Yes,” Adam repeated even quieter, all the remaining bravery being sucked out of him by the brute’s scrutinizing stare.

  The pig-headed predator stared at the young man for some time in scowling silence, as if trying to think. Then duddenly he pulled the smoking cigar stub out of his mouth, grunted and blew up in a bout of unrestrained guffawing.

  “Ha-ha-ha!”

  It was like an explosion of a human-sized fragmentation grenade, sending tiny splinters of sweat and saliva all over the place, while the brute’s body was jolting back and forth in the swivel armchair from the machinegun bursts of laughter:

  “See the world! – Ha-ha-ha! – You’ve got to be kidding me! – See the world! Does this place look like a tourist agency?! – Ha-ha-ha!

  With each following explosion Adam’s head squeezed deeper and deeper into his shoulders until it could barely be seen from under the collar of his jacket. An embodiment of embarrassment, he had no idea what in what he had just said could provoke such a reaction.

  Meanwhile, choking on own laughter, mixed with tears of mirth streaming down his hoggish cheeks, the warden was having the time of his life.

  “Ha-ha-ha! Ha-ha-ha!! Ha-ha-ha!!!”

  It took him quite a while to calm down. Finally, still snorting and wiping the waterworks off his flushed face with his soiled sleeves, he said:

  “Well, you have truly made me laugh, kid. And for that alone I will probably not report your reckless request to the appropriate authorities this time. That is, if you promise to behave in the future. I can only imagine how desperately naïve one must be to come to the Warden of the Island with something like that in mind. I mean, what the hell were you thinking?”

  “Well, for starters, I thought you’d tell me the truth,” Adam retorted, annoyed by the disrespectful derision of his dream.

  “The truth?! The truth of what?!” wondered the warden, merrily.

  “Of if it is possible,” came a contrastingly serious answer.

  “Possible?! He-he-he!” sniggered the warden, whose name, by the way, was Swayne Swinesteiger. “Sure! Why not?! In principle, purely physically – yes, it is possible! But in your case – I don’t think so!”

  “Why?” Adam asked bluntly, his growing anger shooting confidence into his voice.

  “Why? Ha-ha-ha! Why!? O, my Ford! That kid wants to kill me! He wants to know why! Ha-ha-ha! Help! Somebody, please, help!”

  Suddenly the office door burst open and on its threshold grew the gorilla-like guard Adam had already come across in the anteroom. Apparently, he’d heard the warden’s contrived help cries and come around to see what the ado was about.

  “It’s all right, Lou! This kid here just wants to joke me to death,” said Swinesteiger, as soon as his laughter let him. “So your services aren’t really necessary right now!”

  Glaring at Adam, the gorilla-like guard growled something incoherent and then slowly made himself scarce, shutting the office door behind his disproportionately broad back.

  As soon as the guard was gone, the warden went on:

  “Honestly, Mister Marx, I’m going to get a splenic rapture or even a heart attack with these questions of yours. Which makes me think that you are either a very sophisticated professional assassin, or a circus comedian dying to perform abroad? Whichever way it is, I can clearly tell that you are tired of our
little Isle of Man here and hope to expand your horizons to the wide transsexual world out there? Frankly speaking, I understand the nature of your urge. I wouldn’t mind taking part in one or two of their Trans Time orgies myself, if you know what I mean,” grinned the warden, giving Adam with a weird-looking wink.

  “I mean, who wouldn’t? But, you see, I am a man, just like you, my friend. And hence my place is here, on this Island. Besides, they wouldn’t take me even if I wanted to. My body is too old to respond to the cocktail, and so I am not worth the effort. They don’t need real men like me out there anymore. To tell you the truth, they don’t need any men at all these days. Except perhaps…,” he raised his eyes to the ceiling as if remembering something, “…but never mind.”

  “Never mind what?” asked Adam, grasping this thin line of hope with his sparkling eyes, as his anger had changed for candid curiosity in the course of the caretaker’s confession.

  “Forget it! It’s too humiliating.”

  “What?!” Adam persisted.

  “I said, forget it,” said Swinesteiger, turning serious as he stood up from his seat. “No real man would ever agree to that,” he added, walking to the window.

  “Agree to what?!” cried Adam, completely forgetting where he was.

  Swinesteiger turned around and shot a sharp look at Adam, then snorted and spun back to the window, blowing smoke through his flaring nostrils, like a small dragon. The dragon stood like that for some time, smoking and staring out in silence, slowly stewing in his own thoughts.