by Exurb1a
He went back upstairs and worked until the early evening.
Walking home he saw a large crowd outside the exhibition centre. He spotted Jodie in it. He went over. “Hey. What’s going on?”
“Oh, didn’t I say? Matella’s giving a talk tonight. It’s about star signs.”
“That sounds nice.”
A very tall man with slicked hair and a ruffled shirt leaned over. “Jodie says you’re a Capricorn,” he said.
Adam stared at the man’s beard. There was not a hair out of place. Adam said, “What’s a Capricorn?”
Jodie and the man sniggered. She said, “This is Todd. He’s from the office.”
“Hi Todd.”
The man declined the basic invitation to introduce each other and pulled out his pad and set it to one of those photo filters superimposing bunny faces in real-time. He took a photo of himself and Jodie. He took another. They made wide grins like they were at a theme park.
“Shall I meet you back home?” Jodie said.
“All right.”
He walked the five blocks or so back to the house. The air was warm and pleasant and the streets were quiet.
He remembered the fake band in his pocket. He stabbed himself with the pin. He felt his leg go a little warm with blood.
Back at home the dog went insane and Adam sat on the floor with it for a long time rubbing its ears, letting the thing bound about and come back to him, never ceasing to be impressed with the world.
It occurred to him he had the house to himself for the first time since Matella’s last visit to the capital city. He thought about inviting some friends over, but could think of no one he’d particularly like to see.
He went out into the garden with the fake band in his pocket. He set up a deck chair. The dog jumped up on his lap and went to sleep. He petted its head a long time. He put the band on.
He looked up at the few visible stars. The light pollution was strong. Still, there was the Sagem cluster, that spot humans allegedly came from originally; the little blue-green planet nesting somewhere amid the black.
And there was the seat of the empire too, invisible though still majestic somehow; the Marquis of the empire perhaps even now dispatching war fleets, making trade deals, shouting at assistants.
Adam knew they did not use bands on any other world. That was a fad native to his own. It was rumoured even that they were illegal elsewhere.
The fake band was too tight, but he felt an enormous release all the same. He let his mind wander in that way explicitly advised against from the first day of school. He thought about Jodie. He thought about the photos. He thought about the stupid putz with the long legs and the great beard and the arcane knowledge of Capricorns, whatever a fucking Capricorn was. He thought about the men from the Office of Oversight. He thought about the city wall. He thought about Alba Lamm.
She had been among the last to legally leave the city for Gumption, just as the penalties were coming into effect. That must have been fifteen years ago. He doubted she would even recognise him. But he knew he would recognise her.
They had not been lovers. They had barely been friends. Perhaps their entire period of acquaintance consisted of only four separate conversations.
The first time he saw her had been in the university cafeteria. She was sitting alone and fiddling with the back of her head. He said, “You all right?”
“I think my band is loose,” she said.
“How is that possible?”
She ran thin fingers along her scalp. “It’s like I can feel it in there. It’s like it’s poking out.”
He shrugged and went off to class.
He saw her the next week. She wasn’t fiddling with the back of her head. He said, “How’s the band?”
“I got it taken out,” she said and ate some beans.
“What?”
“Oh, it was driving me crazy. Stupid thing, I never asked my fucking folks to put it in when I was a baby, did I?”
She had a lightness to her face now. He wanted to end the conversation but couldn’t. He said, “What does it feel like?”
“What does what feel like?”
“Not having a band, I mean.”
She shrugged. “The same. Only, I can’t make myself happy if I’m not and no one’s snooping on my thoughts. So that’s nice.”
“What if you get sad?” he said.
“What if I do?”
“Well what will you do about it?”
She looked at him blankly. “Then I’ll be sad,” she said.
Back then it was possible to turn one’s band off. She pressured him a little to try it and he did. They blew off class and took a walk around the university. She led them to a field by the Narrative Dynamics building and they laid down in the grass.
She said, “It’s funny, I used to come out here a lot to look at the clouds. It’s nice to watch them. One day I started getting all these ads on my pad for camera lenses that take great photos of the sky. Isn’t that gross?”
Adam said, “Bands don’t work like that…”
She stared like he was an idiot. “Have you been living under a rock? Of course they work like that. Why do you think there’s a whole department of government logging all our fucking daydreams?”
“I don’t buy into the propaganda,” he said, feeling clever.
She rolled her eyes. She said, “Some friends are thinking about going to Gumption.”
“That’s a daft idea.”
“Why?
“Well, what’s there to do in Gumption?”
He had learned not to think about Gumption. Even back then it was heavily frowned upon. But for that hour, without his band powered, he allowed his mind to wander.
There were the stories of course, of orgiastic savagery, of ritual murder, of wild excess. Every year a few twenty-somethings broke away to go live there. They never came back. Or, perhaps they tried and were not let in. Either way that was fine.
Adam said, “My mum says Gumption is full of savages.”
Alba snorted. “Did you know Gumption was here first?”
“Bullshit.”
“Sure isn’t. When the first colonists came they set up Gumption. Like, maybe two centuries ago. That was the first city on the planet.”
Adam said again, “Bullshit.”
“Well whatever.”
She lit up something that looked like drugs. She passed it to him. “What is it?” he said.
“Good for you.”
He tried it. It tasted a bit like honey. “What is it?” he said again.
“Off-world stuff, from Aerth.”
He began to feel good. He smoked some more. He passed it back. She finished it.
The sky took on a luminous quality. The clouds dribbled by, each drop of water vapour knowing exactly where it was bound for.
He got out his pad.
“What are you doing?” Alba said.
“Taking a photo. The sky looks lovely.”
“A photo for who?”
“I don’t know, for me. To remember.”
“People who spend all their time taking photos will just remember taking photos. Souvenirs only make you think of buying them, don’t they.”
He put the pad down.
They went back to class, not talking.
He asked around about Gumption. His generation repeated the same stories of the city that he already knew. The older folks backed up a few of Alba’s claims. Most just looked at him suspiciously though.
The last time he saw Alba Lamm she was lying against a tree in the university courtyard. He went and laid down beside her.
He said, “When are you going?”
“Tomorrow.”
“Why are you telling me the truth?”
She snorted. “What are you going to do about it?”
She covertly began to smoke one of her laced cigarettes. She offered him some but he declined. He said, “What do you think Gumption is like?”
She shrugged. “Don’t know. I
’ll tell you what it isn’t like. This. All of this. They don’t give a shit about posing. They don’t even have pads, most of them. They live how we used to.”
There was a long gap. He wanted to fill the gap by saying, How did we used to live? but thought better of this. She picked up on it anyway.
“They talk there. They don’t have two personalities, one for the house and one for the world. They’re actual.”
“The old folks said it’s savage there, that they don’t even have decent comms.”
“So what. Better to live as a free animal than a caged woman.”
He thought she was stupid. He thought she was clever. It is always like this with idealists. One scorns their passion, all the while secretly admiring their passion.
“I hope you like it,” Adam said.
And she took his hand, just for a moment, and gave it the smallest of squeezes, then drew her hand back.
The first executions came soon after. ‘Deserters’, they were called.
They were strung up in the city square and injected with a black formula of some kind. The event was streamed across the city, and apparently broadcasted to Gumption too, to make the point. People mostly stopped leaving after that.
But Alba Lamm was already gone.
Now sat in the garden with the dog on his lap, he wondered what Alba Lamm was doing that moment. Most of all really he just wondered if she was alive. And if she was alive, if she was happy.
There was a crash from the house.
Jodie appeared at the back door. She called out his name.
“I’m here,” he said.
The dog went running to her. She ignored it. Behind her, the man with the perfect beard appeared. “I brought Todd home for a bit.”
The dog rubbed its side against Todd’s trousers. He firmly pushed it away with his foot.
“Have fun then,” Adam said.
“It’s Free Night tonight, so…”
“Yes, I know.”
“If you want to bring someone home, you can.”
“I don’t feel like it. Goodnight.”
They went inside. He heard giggling and kissing from the bedroom. Todd leant out and closed the window.
The curtains lit up occasionally with camera flashes.
Friday. He set his mood to productive and dimpled the widgets and stabbed himself with the pin when he felt the forbidden thought coming. At lunchtime the foreman came to him with another man, taller and shrewd-eyed.
The foreman said, “Adam, this is one of our friends from the Office of Oversight.” Adam shook his hand. “He’d like to ask you a few questions.”
Adam’s heart began to palpate. “Hello.”
The man looked Adam over, very quickly, foot to head. He said, “You were acquainted with Laura Arendt, the EM technician?”
Adam stabbed himself in the leg with the pin. “I saw her occasionally, yes.”
“You’re aware she has departed?”
“I haven’t seen her around in the last few days, no.”
“Mm…” the man said and looked him up and down again. “Did she mention anything to you about her plans to leave the company?”
“Not that I recall.”
The man stared a while. Legend had it that some of the higher Oversight members received band streams directly into their heads, a kind of awful telepathy.
He pressed the pin in further. He sweated.
“Would you consent to a deep probe?”
“What is that, sir?” Adam said.
“You’ll be taken to a very sophisticated government facility in the centre. Everyone’s pleasant. They will perform a small outpatient procedure, making a complete digital backup of your brain’s connectome. This will be analysed for any anomalies.”
Adam tried to smile politely. “What kind of anomalies?”
“Well, perhaps you contain a memory of Miss Arendt that at the time seemed entirely innocent, but on closer inspection will reveal something of her criminal motives.”
He tried to think and not think. To panic and not panic. “That sounds fine,” his mouth said.
“Excellent,” said the man and did not smile. “I’ll arrange it with the foreman here.”
They both took their leave and moved to the back of the factory.
Adam kept his thoughts on dimpling the widgets. His legs were shaking and he attempted to overlook it. He wanted to shit.
He went to the toilet. He put on the fake band. Safe now, he rested his head against the cubicle door and screwed his eyes closed.
Run.
No. Not that.
Carry on.
Oh fuck, what then?
Run.
No. Not that.
He took a notebook and pen from his pocket. He wrote: “STAY CALM.” He did not recognise his own handwriting, such had been the fifteen years since using it.
He put the paper in his pocket and felt somewhat like he’d done a thing.
He sat back on the toilet and tried to think of nothing. There was a humming from somewhere, perhaps a generator. There was the smell of disinfectant. In here the world had an immutable sterility to it.
I should like to shit outside from time to time, Adam thought. He took out the piece of paper again and wrote: “SHIT OUTSIDE OCCASIONALLY.” He put it back in his pocket.
He thought a little of Alba Lamm, then Laura Arendt. He took the band off.
He looked down at the fake band, confused, remembering nothing beyond entering the cubicle.
He exited the toilet and went back to work, worrying still.
Walking home that evening he noticed another Matella conference gathered in the main square. Nearing, he saw it was not a Matella conference at all, but a justice ceremony for that week's deserters. They were strung up in a line atop a wooden podium, seven of them, four men, three women. One was Laura Arendt.
He pushed through the crowd to the front. Everyone was quiet. Their faces appeared impartial.
A man in a black robe was giving a long, droning speech about the importance of solidarity.
A few of the deserters were crying, but Laura Arendt wasn't. She had her eyes fixed calmly ahead, expression neutral. He tried to catch her eye.
The man finished his speech and gestured to someone off-stage. A technician climbed the podium and produced a vial of black liquid. Ignoring the screaming from the first deserter she injected him and he cried out to his mother, then went still. She injected the second man and he didn't cry out. She moved to Laura Arendt. Laura Arendt took the needle without flinching and sighed. She looked about at the crowd. Her gaze stopped on Adam. She stared a moment. Then she closed her eyes.
Adam came home to the smell of cooking. Jodie was in the kitchen and called out hello. Adam entered and found Todd at the table.
“Hi,” Adam said.
Todd said nothing.
Jodie said, “Lasagne. Does that sound nice?”
Adam said, “Yes, that sounds nice.” He stood there a while saying nothing.
“Oh, I invited Todd over for dinner too. You don’t mind, do you?”
“No.”
“You can have someone over if you want?”
“All right.”
He downloaded a quickmeet app. He matched fairly quickly with a girl called Lyra. He mentioned there would be a dinner party and she could come over if she wanted. She accepted.
Adam sat in the living room, the dog asleep on his leg. The doorbell rang. Lyra looked presentable enough, in that cosmopolitan well-raised way. They shook hands. He invited her in.
They sat on the sofa and talked a while. She took a few photos of the dog. She volunteered her life story. It was not unusual: a stuckness, an uncertainty, trapped in that nether corridor between adolescence and some pipe dream of “real life” that one seems to find themselves in during their twenties.
There was a squeal from the kitchen and Todd and Jodie danced past, twirling.
“Who’s that?” Lyra said.
“My wife.”
Lyra went in and introduced herself. She did not come back out. Adam sat and listened to them laughing and shrieking for a while.
They sat around the dinner table then. Jodie mounted her pad on a little steadydrone and insisted on taking a group photo from seven angles. She said sagely, “Matella says seven angles is the very minimum.”
“How true,” Lyra said.
Jodie put on a track Adam didn’t know, some old flashblitz number. They ate without talking for a while, the music deafening.
Then Todd said flatly, “What do you do.”
No one said anything. He looked up at Adam. “I’m talking to you.”
“What do I do?”
“That’s what I said.”
“I work in the Technical District.”
“Like, a grunt?”
Adam took a large swig of beer. “Yes.”
Silence. Adam said, “What do you do?”
“I work for Metronomy. It’s an experimental online art magazine exploring themes of corporeality and empirical liberation. I can’t imagine you’ve heard of it.”
“I’ve heard of it.”
“Maybe look it up some time.” Todd twinned his pad with the wall. Nine foot high images appeared of him alongside smiling people, some of them Adam recognised as online personalities. Todd said, “This is me with Jim Wattock. And Annie Smatter. And Mistress Carlie. And John Ribgobble.” The next photo was of him and Jodie, both of them naked from the waist up. Jodie and Lyra giggled. Todd said, “Oops, that one got astray!” He continued to scroll through the pictures.
Lyra said, “You know, I was in the same bar as Annie Smatter once. Or, she left just before we arrived but someone swore she was in there. Imagine it! Annie Smatter. Meeting Annie Smatter.”
Adam said, “Isn’t that the woman who sells her used tissues?”
There was a long pause. Todd did not look up from his plate and said, “It is called Aesthetic Biological Recycling and Annie Smatter is a genius.”
“I could do that. I had a cold just last week. I should’ve boxed them all up, not thrown them down the toilet.”
“Adam…” Jodie said. “He’s so silly sometimes. I’m sorry he’s so silly.”
Todd put up more images on the wall, this time of tissues, crumpled in various configurations. He said, “This one is my favourite. It’s called Rococo. It signifies both the internal torment of the artist, as well as her groundbreaking positive outlook.”