Chapter Five:
History of the Family

Home sweet home.  I lived here for so many years, but it’s still a shock. So much space, so much privacy, and when you sleep, you’re not drifting around the city… a body at rest… and that snow, you can’t do anything to the outside of your apartment, even if all you wanted to do was project crystals.

 I must have worked on a hundred books about Christmas… it’s our most popular series… was, our most popular series.  The presents, the decorations, the meals… it’s hard to imagine all of it together.  I remember seeing pictures of single family homes, in the Gorge, with plastic snow and tinsel, strings of incandescent bulbs producing as much heat as light, and giant inflatable snowmen… I think they called him frosty… you try to imagine it, but that was just the outside… no one really knows what was going on inside a house like that – one of those battery powered ski villages sending tiny figures up and down, around and around, so that anyone unable to actually go could live vicariously.  I should stop before I throw up.

Terina told us that the Executioners wanted to get rid of Christmas altogether, but their calculations showed that it would cost more to dissuade people than to retrain them.  Now decorations are limited to sound and light, there are no special meals for anyone except a very lucky few, and all presents are digital or software based.  I remember what my grandfather used to say, “sometimes you just have to accept the peasant festivals of the peasants you’re trying to rule, if you want to rule them, you know?”

       “Mortimer, how long have you been standing there.”
       “Hello Mother, maybe fifteen minutes, it’s been a while, I was just looking around.”
       “I think you can get a better sense of the place from inside, don’t you?”

Inside, outside?

       “Do you like the snow flakes?  Your father got the machine as a holiday bonus this year for efficiency beyond expectation.  It can produce over a million different flakes, just a like a real storm, you know?  Isn’t it lovely?”

My mother, Blithe in name alone; she was born a Sumner.  She changed her name, butthat was the extent of it.  I resent her for working for the Executioners, she resents me for not following her footsteps.  I couldn’t ever do it… I don’t think she knows where she’s going…

       “Okay Mortimer that’s quite enough day dreaming.  I won’t allow you ruin Christmas like you ruined…

Like I ruined…

       “Just come inside and say hello to everyone.”

       “Okay everyone, Mortimer’s finally here, say hello and try not to ask too many probing questions; I don’t think he can handle them right now.”
       …
       …
       …
       …

They don’t recognize me?

       “Hello everyone.”
       “Hello Mortimer.”

Hello mass of impenetrable familial indifference.

       “How have you all been, its been so long, it’s nice to see you.”
       “We’ve been fine, thanks for asking, we’ve missed you too Mortimer.”

No wonder I dream about this evening for months in advance.

       “Okay, that’s great.  What can I do – is there anything left to do before dinner?”             “Oh no Mortimer, just come in and put your things down, take a look around we’ve done so much to the place since you were last here.”

The walls in my apartment are just a grey synthetic, so they can be sprayed down… I’m not allowed to put anything on them… even if I could afford something… my injection station is on the outside of the bathroom door, the rest is a single room… the apartments don’t even have viewing screens.  I can’t believe some live like this while the rest of us just cycle through the System’s arteries and veins, like service cells, back and forth, maintaining the heart… what about our hearts?

Whenever I’m here, I wonder what it was like to be rich in the Gorge.  It seems like everyone was rich… but maybe some were richer than that… what would that have been like?

       “Before you all start eating, I would just like to say thank you for being here and having Christmas with us again this year.  And I would also like to thank the Executioners whose wisdom and vision not only saved us from certain doom, but also gave us the bounty on which we dine tonight.”

She always did have a way with words, that’s my mum.

       “Mother, the soup is wonderful, you know I don’t quite trust that machine, but it is really good.”
       “Thank you Mortimer.  I’m glad you think so.  I’ve heard of potatoes, but I’m not at all sure what a leek is.  Anyway, the recipe had a very high rating so I tried it.”
       “…?”

I just said I like the soup.

       “What?”
       “Well there has been so much going on, with you, and with work, I was hoping that we could talk about some of it now that we’re sitting down.”
       “There’s isn’t that much to say… there was an unfortunate incident, at my desk, with my supervisor, which I don’t remember that well, and the rest has been a series of well intentioned but ultimately misguided efforts to help me.”
       “Terina, that’s your supervisor?”
       “Yeah.”
       “Why are the efforts to help you misguided Mortimer?”
       “Because there’s nothing wrong with me.  There’s so much chaos and delusional fantasy engulfing the human world right now… why is everyone worried about me?”
       “Because we love you Mortimer.”
       “Right… why isn’t dad saying anything?  I know Grandma doesn’t like to talk her way through solid meals, but what about him?”
       “Mortimer, you know that the investigation into the incident at work is still pending and that as employees of the – ”
       “Right.  So I came all the way here for Christmas and dad isn’t going to say anything to me for two whole days because it might contaminate an investigation his office is conducting… or is it worse than that… maybe dad is the one investigating me… just to prove his loyalty… what does he get if he liquidates his son?  How efficient does that make him beyond expectations?  Is there even a light based decorative Christmas apparatus nice enough to reward such exemplary behavior?”
       “Mortimer, calm down, we all support you, it’s just that – it’s more complicated than that now.”
       “Fine, okay, I just want you all to know, that things are getting pretty strange out there, in the world of the unprotected, and a lot of people are talking about the end of all of this – some kind of opaque cataclysm or revolution… I’m not saying anything at all and somehow I’m the madman.”
       “Maybe that’s the problem…”
       “Wait what…?
       “Maybe that’s the problem Mortimer – that everything is changing, and you’re still the same.”
       “I don’t know what that means.  I just wanted to come here and be with you and dad and grandma over Christmas because everyone is losing it so completely – and so completely convincingly… and I thought… I thought if anyone could reassure me that the System is in no danger…it would be you guys… you don’t understand mum, they’re preparing boats and digging holes and practicing all kinds of escape protocols… they’re the ones that are crazy… not me.”

As mad as that sounded, I think I made my point. 

 What was that face?

       “Why did you look at dad like that… when I said that…about the leaving… what’s going on?”
       “Well Mortimer, the Nexus employees have been running some drills as well.  Some unprecedented drills, I should say, in the event that – ”
       “In the event that what?”
       “Mortimer, you know that neither I nor your Father are in any position to speak about the intentions of the Executioners – ”

Disclaimer.

       “ – But it is our feeling now that some very significant and wildly incomprehensible event is on the horizon.”

You too? 

Supporting characters dwindle on the madman’s descent.

       “So what are they planning to do with you; what’s the plan Mother?”
       “They’re calling it an irreversible incident.”
       “Which means what?”
       “Which means we will go into lock down in the bunkers beneath the Nexus offices, prepared to wait until the end of whatever happens.”

I always imagined my Mother and Father winding parallel, two banks of a river - I’m the river.  I imagine the bridges built across the river, built over me… winding… double footprints down a helix path.

I imagine it always like this, every generation, two made better in one born new; discarding what was weak in yourself, for what is strong in the other.  On and on like this… maybe I imagine us getting better, getting stronger, getting smarter? 

 Maybe I’m naïve.  Maybe it’s a darker corridor, or not a corridor at all. Maybe there’s no direction at all – just a chamber. A huge tent, poorly lit and stuffy… with everyone wandering around and groping… trying to find a way forward… or a way out.

       “Hey… mum, hold on… I’m sorry… why do you look so sad?”
       “Once they lock the gates and send us below to the bunker, no one will be able to get in or out until the world has been completely restored – no one.”

Maybe it’s not for the better, for the stronger, for the smarter… the changing… maybe we’re just winding our way blindly, around whatever obstacles there are; not better, not stronger, not smarter… like a tree growing around a barb wire fence, or a vine climbing a brick wall.  What if one day the fence comes down, or the wall crumbles?  What then?

       “But there’s still turkey, tonight, Mortimer – are you listening?”
       “I’m listening, I mean, I here you.”
       “Nothing’s changed yet, and we love you, and we think that it’s just, maybe, a medical problem, maybe something in your – maybe you could just do what the doctor says, maybe if it works you can come with us.”
       “Okay mum.”
       “Doesn’t it seem strange to you, Mortimer, that everyone around you is preparing for the future, and you can’t even handle the present.”
       “I hadn’t really thought of it that way.”
       “Your just sick that’s all.  It’s just a problem.  If you would take the medicine.  If you would listen to your Father and I.”

Alive alone or dead with everyone else.

       “There’s a difference between life and death Mortimer, between surviving and dying, you have to get back to a place where you can see that.”

       “Mortimer can I talk to you before you go to sleep.”
       “Oh hi grandma, I didn’t hear you come in.  Yeah, please if you have a minute, you didn’t say anything at dinner.  Can we sit in front of the big windows near the digestion pools?”
       “Of course.”

My grandmother… 

Constantine:  Goodnight Mortimer.
Mortimer:  Goodnight Constantine.

       “Mortimer, sit.  I can’t begin to tell you how worried we all are about you.”
       “You’re not worried about me, I’m just something in your control to be anxious about… in the middle of so much that’s completely out.”
       “You don’t understand.  We’ve been through this before.”
       “With Grandpa?”
       “I’ve already wasted too many words trying to bring someone back.  It’s all the same, again.  I think you understand that.”
        “Am I just like him?”
       “I don’t know Mortimer, what do you think?”
       “I don’t know either, I don’t think I knew him well enough to say.”
       “You know, it starts with admitting you have a problem.”
       “If it were that simple, we wouldn’t be having this conversation… I don’t know what’s happening to me, I don’t feel any different.  All these apocalyptic pre and post occupations seem so peripheral, they seem so beside the point, so divorced from the real problem.”
       “And what’s the real problem Mortimer?
       “The problem is that none of this makes any sense: these liquid meals, this near-sighted calculus, these metrics that sum surviving without a line for love… or thriving.
       “…”
       “Can I ask you a question?”
       “Of course Mortimer, anything.”
       “What happened to him, to Grandpa?”
       “A miscalculation.”
       “Precipitated by?”
       “A serious error in judgment.”
       “So I am just like him…”
       “I don’t know Mortimer, when it was happening, and when your mother was young, there was no time to think about any of it, about what he was going through.  In those days, equivocation was the highest crime, because fortitude in the face of the rebuild was the greatest virtue.  When they came for him, we just assumed they were right. We had to, to believe in ourselves and carry on.”
       “But they weren’t right?”
       “It’s not that, it’s just so much more complicated in real life, than a diagnosis, than a plan.  We couldn’t help him because we didn’t know what he was doing, he didn’t tell us anything.  Nothing useful at least.”=
       “What do you mean?”
       “He came to me one night, a winter night like this while everyone was sleeping, and said, ‘I’m running away to join the circus.’   That was the beginning.”

       “There was a middle and an end.”
       “Please don’t make me go through this with you Mortimer.”
       “How come nobody ever told me?  You all act like some conclusive event swept him out of our lives.  I need to know what happened to him… in case it’s happening to me.”
       “Do you know what your grandfather did for work Mortimer?”
       “He wrote for an encyclopedia publisher, just like me.”
       “For one of the smaller publishers that Retro-Corp absorbed around the time you were born.  Do you know what it was like for them, during the consolidations?”
       “For who?”
       “For people like Tranquil, for the real publishers and writers, for the film makers, for the musicians.”      
       “I’ve never really thought about it.”
       “During the Gorge, art lost touch with reality, with peoples’ lives – it became pure entertainment, titillation, simulation.  But there were people, even then, who resisted, who pursued reality differently, who made a different kind of art.”
       “What did grandpa think it was?”
       “A negotiation, between the human heart and an indifferent world.  A space created by joy and suffering to resist the inevitable.  Or at least slow it down.”

A conversation… between humanity and time…

Tell me about your life…

Tell me about your family…

Tell me about your dreams…

Are you afraid to die?

       “…And when the Executioners took over?”
       “When they took over, all negotiation ended; between lovers, between friends, between people.”
       “I’m sorry grandma, we can stop, I didn’t mean to drag you through this on Christmas.  I just thought – ”
       “He would come to me, his voice broken, and tell me we weren’t supposed to live like this; speaking the language of mathematics and living inside models.  But that was still just the beginning.’”
       “So what did they do, what did grandpa do?”
      “They thought that as long as someone carried on, as long as someone was making real art – art that conjures the world instead of just leering at it – then we’d all be okay.  They stole cameras, recording equipment, printers and presses – sometimes they even posed as Executioners coming to collect ‘dangerous and wasteful machinery.’”   

       “And that’s when they came and took him away, when they found out?”
       “No.  Things started slowly, and at the beginning they were careful.  I wouldn’t even have found any of this out, except that – ”
       “Except that what?”
       “Except that there was another woman, or I thought there was another woman.”
       “Who was she?”
       “Celestini Carmen.  I found plane tickets for her and Tranquil in our house – some of the last commercial flights allowed.  I thought they were having some kind of end of the world affair.”
       “But they were just collecting equipment.”
       “That’s what he said.  Now I believe him.  Even in those days nobody was having flesh sex – and in any case your grandfather’s mythic passions were always more intense than anything his physical or erotic appetite could manage.”
       “If you believed him, why didn’t you help him?”
       “You don’t understand Mortimer, we were so hungry and tired.  We never met anyone he worked with, there was never any proof, there was only – ”
       “What?  There was only what?”
       “I can’t Mortimer, please don’t ask anymore.  If you ask, and I tell you, you’ll follow him and fall with him outside the range of acceptable cognition and – ”
      “Stop grandma. Just forget the legalities, it doesn’t matter anyway.  Either you tell me what happened and I go about this less conspicuously, or you leave me to crash my way through it alone with the almost certain result that I’ll be incarcerated or liquidated.”

       “They were working on a book.”
       “A book?”
       “It wasn’t just a book, he said it was an antidote.  He said if they could circulate it, human imagination could be saved.”
       “And they printed the book, and the executioners found out, and they came for grandpa?”
       “Not exactly.  I don’t think so.  I don’t know for sure if they published any copies.”
       “What do you know for sure?”
       “I know there was a disagreement between Tranquil and Celestini, over the direction of the resistance.”
       “And she turned him in.”
       “…”
       “Why didn’t you help him, defend him or something.”?
      “There wasn’t anything we could do.  And anyway – ”

       “You didn’t really believe him.  You were all too exhausted and scared to consider the possibility of his sanity.

Just like me.

       “Mortimer.”
       “So if I find the book, and it is was grandpa said it was, then he wasn’t crazy, he was just a threat – to the Executioners and to this Celestini Carmen character.”

Just like me?

       “Please Mortimer, don’t.  It’s too dangerous.  They’ll find you if you go looking.”
       “They’ll find me anyway.  How can I not look?  How can you die without knowing if it exists?  How can you tell everyone that he was taken away because of a breakdown when you don’t even believe it’s true?”
       “We don’t have the luxury of belief anymore, Mortimer, it either is or it isn’t now.  It doesn’t matter what you think, it only matters how you perform.  You know that.  If you choose to turn your back on it, then this place, this city and its walls and its measurements will find you and take you away from everyone that loves you, just like Tranquil – no matter what it is you believe you’re doing.”

Consider the options.

I could upload my imprint, this whole nervous system, these tissue scars… chop it up, break it down, stuff it all into wires… send it all through circuit boards.  I would be with the family, and feel that I was, but I would never touch them again.

I could strap myself in for interstellar flight, pawn body in a robot army, extended mind of one mind.  I would learn the truth about our teaming universe, see double suns set, fall asleep in the silent generosity of the vacuum… but I would never take the suit off, and I would never touch any of it with my hands.

Or…

I could let it all go: the fear, the worry, the uncertainty… just let it all go, follow the clues and solve the riddle for myself.

I'm bound and remember the words I’ve been given,
I share my knowledge with eyes that will listen.

I have to find that book… at least it I can hold in my hands.

       “Goodnight Mortimer.”
       “Good night grandma.”
       “Merry Christmas.”
       “Merry Christmas.”

C:  Mortimer wake up.
M:  I was having the strangest dream.
C:  I thought we didn’t dream anymore.  Was it a new dream, or is it reoccurring?”
M:  Reoccurring.
C:  It was the same as before?
M:  Same… but different.
C:  Do you want to open some presents?  Everyone is waiting for you.
M:  Sure let’s go.

I think there was a time when all kinds of crazy objects passed back and forth during the Christmas holidays.  They put an end to all of that – too wasteful.  We can still have the holiday, still give presents, but nothing physical… digital presents for use in virtuality… no possibility at all of a practical gift… unless you live or work in the digital worlds…

       “Can I give something to Constantine?”
       “Of course Mortimer go ahead.”
       “Here Constantine, just a small token of my appreciation… and admiration.”
       “Oh Morty, new boots, they’re really nice too. Thank you, it’s nice to have an uncle that pays such close attention.”
       “Well I couldn’t really get our conversation out of my head.  Mum, there’s actually something there for you from all of us.”
       “Really?  I wasn’t expecting anything other than the new lighting apparatus.  You all are too nice to me.”
       “Just open it up mum, I think you’ll like it.”
       “Oh my goodness, is this what I think it is?  I’m not sure I understand.”
       “It’s your own digital residence mum.  It’s a Chalet replica from the Gorge, it should have snow all year round and a view of the mountains.”
       “You shouldn’t have.”
       “We just thought, since you like Christmas so much, it might be nice to have a place of your own around the holidays to spend some quiet time or to entertain.  The codes for the deed should be in the package and it’s partially furnished with period antiques so…”
       “Really Mortimer, that’s very nice, I think I’ll enjoy spending time there.  All of you that’s very nice, thank you.  Now Mortimer, we have something small for you, if you’d like to open it.”
       “Sure, thanks mum, I don’t really need anything at the moment but… oh… wow… it’s a new digital proxy.”
       “Your very own.  It’s just a starter kit – stock features – but it’s been mapped to your face and I went ahead and got the voice analysis done with some old messages I had saved, so it should sound like you.”
       “Thanks mom.”
       “Well your father and I just thought it might give you something else to focus on while you’re waiting to see what happens with your job.  Who knows, maybe you could even talk to Constantine about getting a job in virtuality – once you get your avatar some proper clothes and a transport card.”
       “Thanks mom.”

If…                             

It takes the virtual to excite the real,

Then…

It takes the digital to animate the physical,

Else…

It takes fantasy to have reality?

Maybe reality is a hard fight for existence after all.