by Claire North
I leant forward on the table, twining my fingers, resting my chin on the arch of my hands. “Why not kill Filipa?” I asked. “She built Perfection.”
“Better to kill Rafe – he turned it from a science project into something he could sell. Filipa has always been a frightened infant; she thought she could program people to be smarter, kinder, braver, because these are all the things she is not. Rafe saw her work and transformed it into an algorithm that makes rich people richer, poor people poorer; that divides the ‘them’ from the ‘us’ and profits from the self-doubt of humanity. He made the 106.”
“There have always been elites. Three quarters of the UK cabinet are millionaires. Winning a seat in the US Congress costs anywhere in the region of ten million US dollars. The 106 is nothing new.”
“But the treatments are.”
My breath stuck in my throat. She saw it, saw me fight not to show it, saw me lose, smiled at my effort. I realise that I am afraid – very much afraid – of Byron14. “Tell me about them.”
“What have you observed?”
“You have everything Filipa ever created for Perfection here,” I replied, tapping the USB stick. “The code of the app, the names of people who used it, the science behind the treatments – and at cut-price too. Tell me what I want to know.”
A sigh, overplayed, she leant back in her chair. This is one of the many things she is willing to give for free, a little truth, perhaps, to smooth over all the lies. “The treatments were created by Filipa Pereyra. An awkward child punished for being awkward which of course made her more awkward. She has learned a degree of skill in covering it now, but it is only an… algorithm, shall we say. A routine learned by the numbers, as she tries to compute her way through life. I would say that she is very lonely.”
I think she is.
(You are a stranger to me. Is it you?)
(How excited she had been to meet me, that last time.)
“Go on,” I breathed.
“She studied the mind. Her family let her; no point involving the sister in affairs of business, that was all going to the brother – but her research grew expensive, difficult. They didn’t fully comprehend what she was working on, not until she went bankrupt, too much of her own funding poured into the effort. This was some… two, three years after her father died? Rafe bailed her out, but he is a businessman more than a brother. The price was her research. She accepted, of course. Didn’t matter to her who owned her work, so long as she could keep going. The treatments began as an experiment to help children with severe speech impediments. I believe there is something to do with electrodes – it’s all very technical.”
Deep brain stimulation. Use of an electric probe to induce weak electric current, causing activity in otherwise unstimulated parts of the brain. A largely untried tool, though some promising developments in treatment of depression, schizophrenia, stroke – further research required.
(Where had I read that? In Tokyo, in the hotel, researching Filipa. “All thought is feedback,” she said. “Repetition of a thought strengthens neural paths.” A simple sentence, easy to say in a hurry, assured not to cause offence, and within it, the building-blocks of consciousness.)
Byron, less interested in the how than the what. “The results were of limited interest to Rafe, of course. He could sell them for a bit, but they weren’t something he could advertise in the papers. Then his sister told him what the ultimate aim of her research was, and of course, he became far more interested.”
“And what was the ultimate aim?” I asked, sensing the answer already, tired by the suspicion, about to become certainty.
“To make everyone better. All people. Perfection is just a lifestyle tool. Positive activities are rewarded, negative punished – nothing new. The treatments are the next step. You take an ordinary human mind, with all its flaws and fears, and impose upon it a…” a pause, a smile, Byron chuckling over the word, no humour in her laugh, “… a ‘better’ pattern. From doubt – confidence. From terror – bravery. Anxiety becomes ambition; humility becomes assurance. The treatments edit out the patterns of human behaviour which are considered imperfect, character flaws you might say, and replace it with a model of humanity that is… shall we say – and I think here we should – shall we say ‘perfect’? The perfect man. The perfect woman. In and of itself, an appealing idea, perhaps. Filipa was in love with it – not with the concept of perfection, but with the very simple notion that she could make people better. When she began, she could give a voice back to the speechless, help people suffering from depression to find a level from which they could begin to rebuild. She programmed away phobias, helped the shy woman speak in front of a crowd of her peers, all with science. Easier to do science, for Filipa, than human things, I think. Then Rafe took her product, and redefined the end goals. No longer was success the overcoming of extreme anxiety – treatments were to be offered to the 106, to help this new elite become something more. Rafe asked himself what behaviours it would be… sexy to reinforce. What it was that his buyers might want to become. He found perfection. A perfection defined by the magazines and the TV soaps, by movie stars and captains of industry. Perfectly charming. Perfectly refined. Perfectly confident. Perfectly ambitious. Perfectly a monster – would you go so far?”
Parker, smiling at me in Tokyo. Refusing to help when I was burning in Istanbul.
“Yes,” I said. “I think I would.”
“Filipa has created a device to make everyone perfect, and the same. Perfection sells Nirvana in an electromagnet.”
Nirodha and magga, freedom from samsara, the end of the Buddhist eightfold path.
“Perhaps it is a kind of heaven,” I mused. “Perhaps the 106, when they are perfect, are also free.”
“Perhaps they are,” she replied, rolling the chopsticks between her fingers. “Free from doubt, anxiety, guilt, compassion, empathy, and all that it brings. It will only be a matter of time before the treatments are rolled out to more than just the 106 Club. They are a good test sample; volunteers, monitored through Perfection. But Rafe sees the profit in it, and I have no doubt it will sell. Can you imagine a world in which everyone has treatments? Can you imagine a planet covered in happy, smiling, perfect clones?”
“Yes. I think I can.”
“And are you not appalled?” she mused, laying the chopsticks down on the edge of her mat, over-played surprise on her face. “It is obscene.”
“Many things are obscene – what makes this your battle?”
“Ah, I see – may I not simply have a cause? Environmentalists protest against climate change, and yet Arctic meltwaters haven’t hurt their puppies yet.”
“You won’t tell?”
“Will you tell me why you stole the Chrysalis diamonds?”
“I wanted to fuck up some spoilt rich people. I wanted them scared and humiliated. My friend – she wasn’t my friend – had Perfection, and was very alone, and I didn’t spot it, and she died, and they didn’t give a fuck and I thought… fuck them. It was a momentary lapse in my professionalism.”
“It sounds like a cause to me.”
“It wasn’t; it simply wasn’t. You won’t tell me?”
Byron picked at a piece of kimchi with the end of her chopsticks and didn’t answer.
I sat back in my chair, arms folded. The USB was between us, and for a moment I considered walking out, throwing it into the sea, see if that wiped the smile from her face.
Neither of us moved. At last I said, indicating the stick with my chin, “What will you do with the information on this?”
“Imagine.”
“No. I have spent a lot of time imagining. Sometimes fantasies need to stop.”
“I will sabotage Perfection, destroy it from within. I will show humanity that it is obscene, and no one will forget.”
I flinched, and she saw the motion, didn’t understand it, a flicker of a frown. I licked my lips, looked down and to the side, asked the floor, “Will people die?”
“Perhap
s.” The USB stick between us, the base-code of Nirvana, heaven without doubt, a world without fear. Her head, tilted slightly to one side, eyebrows raised. “Is that a problem?”
“Perhaps. I think… yes.”
“To destroy Perfection, I must destroy Rafe’s ability to sell it. To prevent people seeking treatments of their own accord, the damage must be significant.”
“There are ways to achieve that which don’t involve corpses.”
“Perhaps you’re right. Perhaps not.”
Silence. I opened my mouth to say this is obscene, all of it, laughable, obscene, unworthy, we, unworthy, we ourselves unworthy, to judge, to be, to speak, a killer and a thief, ridiculous, of course, simply ridiculous.
No words came.
Instead, our hostess. Ceramic bowls full of broth and noodle, cabbage and strips of fried tripe, fish balls and, of course, more kimchi, to burn the taste away.
Byron was good with chopsticks. Held the bowl up with both hands to blow steam away from the surface. Slurped down soup, no need for spoons.
I said, “Can you replicate the treatments?”
“If this contains all of Tokyo’s data? Yes.”
“Can you strip out Rafe’s programming?”
“Why?”
“There are parts of Filipa’s design that deserve to survive. You said it began as speech therapy, as a treatment for depression…”
“Once you start attempting to reprogram the human brain from without, there’s no stopping it,” she retorted, harder and sharper than I think she’d meant.
“Hasn’t that always been the argument against all science? Gene therapy, retrovirals, plant modification, atomic energy…”
“From which we have the potential to cure cancer, crops that can sustain a human population in the billions, drug-resistant bacteria and the nuclear bomb,” she snapped. “I am no Luddite, but if the history of humanity has taught us anything it is that we are children, and this is not a toy we should use.”
“I think you’re wrong,” I replied. “I think there is something within Filipa’s treatments that could help me. I agree with you on practically everything you’ve said – I agree that they are obscene, and what they have become is vile. But the fundamental technology, as Filipa intended it, is neither good nor bad, merely a tool. I think it will help me become something I haven’t been for a very long time, and I need to know if you have the ability to unpack that information, or if I need to go back to Filipa to get what I need.”
Surprise, whole and true, a flash across her face. My voice had risen, our hostess was staring from across the room. Byron put the bowl down, chopsticks to one side, took a moment to gather her thoughts, at last breathed, “Do you want treatments?”
I let out a breath that had been cramping somewhere at the bottom of my stomach, and said, “Yes.”
“In the name of God, why?” Horror, indignation, incomprehension, of me, of herself. Could she think she had begun to know me and now discovered that she had been so wrong?
“Because people forget me,” I replied. “And I’ve been lonely for too long. And it was fine. I was doing fine. I had my… my rules. Run, count, walk, speak, knowledge, always, knowing things, filling up that place where… where there should be other things, things like… like work or friends or… but I was fine. I was doing fine. Because that’s what had to be done, it was… and then I saw Parker. The one and only Parker of New York, remembered the words, remembered writing them, reading them – didn’t remember him. He’s had treatments, though. And I remember him now.”
Byron, pressing her chopsticks flat together, then lifting both her hands and gently interlacing the fingers, a conscious act, a physical reminder to herself to be something, or not to be something else. Neuro-linguistic programming; a rubber band around the wrist. Swish and I am something else, swish and I am calm. She was calm; she was calmness.
Swish swish. Whatever I do, in this moment, I am terrified.
Slowly, comprehending/not comprehending, eyebrows down, lips tight: Byron, considering.
To consider: to turn over in one’s mind. To think carefully.
Consider the lilies of the field whose bloom is brief
We are as they
Like them we fade away
As doth a leaf
Does knowledge hold back tears? “Consider”, poem, Christina Rossetti, b.1830, d.1894, does knowledge drown out the place where fantasy should be, imagination, dreams of friends and love? Does breath fill the void where I should have humanity, grown and nurtured by human experience, experience of humans? Am I nothing more than this?
(Google search: perfect woman. Lips like celebrity x, hair like celebrity y, husband, car, house, diamond ring, young, white, child, maybe two – there was a time when I wanted to be perfect, nothing stood in my way because there was no one around me, behind me, with me, only myself, only my will, Nietzsche, will to power, Christianity, the triumph of weakness, words always words and thoughts and words and shut up shut up shut up!!)
Then she said, “To be forgotten is to be free, you know that, don’t you?”
Easy, an easy thing, a tiny part of a greater argument, I heard the words and my hands hit the table so hard and fast that soup sloshed over the side of her bowl, cutlery tinkled, she jumped and I screamed, “I have never been free!”
My voice, loud enough to make the hostess duck, loud enough to frighten all other noise, so that the silence, when now it came, had the room to itself, deafening.
I am my breath. I am my ragged, gasping breath. I am rage. I am my tears – when did they come? I am injustice. I am damnation. I am here, I am real, remember me, remember this, how could anyone forget? How can you look on my red eyes and my blotched face, hear my voice, and forget me? Are you even human? Am I?
At last, she said, and she was kind, “All right.”
I am my fingers gripping the table.
I am the table.
Body of plastic and metal.
I am cold.
I am the sky growing dark outside.
I am the washing sea.
Tears are merely salt water and warmth on my face; nothing more. Chemicals. Mucin, lysozyme, lactoferrin, lacritin, glucose, urea, sodium, potassium, that’s all tears are. A biological mechanism for the cleansing of the eye. Curious fact: tears of emotion have a slightly different chemical composition than basal or reflexive tears.
I am knowledge.
And again, Byron says, and there is so much kindness in her voice, an old woman smiling at me across the table, resisting the temptation, perhaps, to put her hand in mine, “All right.”
I made her write down the terms of our bargain.
Why: having delivered the base code of Perfection, Byron14 to give to Why, as soon as available, access to and knowledge of treatments such as may make her memorable.
Signed by both.
Neither of us offered up thoughts on what would happen in the face of betrayal. It would have been rude.
I took a photo of the napkin on which our deal was struck; so did she. Then I made her take a photo of me, my face, holding the napkin beneath it. She asked why; I said to remember.
She didn’t ask why again.
We ate dinner, and she told me a joke she’d heard once from a Russian oligarch about fish. It was long, and surprisingly dirty.
I felt the salty lines on my skin where tears had dried, but they were someone else’s tears. I was only my voice. I told her the one about the patriarch, the rabbi and the mullah.
She laughed, hearty and true, and when the bill came paid without asking, and looked out at the now-dark sea and said, “How shall we keep in contact?”
“I will send you a message with my instructions. You keep the napkin – a reminder of your commitments.”
“I am not likely to forget.”
“No,” I replied, without rancour. “You will forget. But I’ll help you remember.”
“We have a deal, though I don’t understand your terms.”
“You are an extraordinary woman, Why,” she mused. “Strange as it has been, I am glad to have made your acquaintance.”
“My name is Hope,” I replied. “You’ll have the opportunity to make my acquaintance again.”
I waited for our hostess to clear away the dishes, put my napkin on the table by the USB stick, smiled politely, and was gone.
Chapter 57
Things that I miss about being remembered:
• Friendship
• Love
• Company
• Truth
• Understanding
• Perspective
Things it is impossible to do alone:
• Build a monument
• Kiss
• Get references
• Play poker
• Talk through problems with a friend
A question: is it worth letting Filipa stick electrodes in my skull, erasing every aspect of who I am and what I believe in, if it permits me to be remembered?
I lie awake in the night, and have no idea.
Chapter 58
The ferry back to Mokpo.
Byron was on it, sitting in the same spot again, eyebrows drawn, fists tight balls in her lap. Had she slept last night? There were dark rims round her eyes, perhaps she’d been kept awake by the sound of the sea.
I passed her a couple of times, and she looked surprised every time, marvelling that her powers of observation had let her down.
I smiled once, frowned once, ignored her the third time, returned to my seat with a bottle of flat fizzy water, took a sip, returned to watching the sea.
Climbing off the ferry in Mokpo, knees loose after the sea, Byron briefly looked concerned, but shook her head and walked briskly into town, no need to consult a map.
I followed her to the station. She saw me several times, but as each time was the first time, she made nothing of it. She bought three tickets to three different destinations, boarded the first train, then got off as the doors were about to close; I stumbled foolishly after her, she saw me, my cover totally blown, but again, fine, she would forget.