The Holy Machine

22

Several months after the evening in the New Orleans, I met Marija in the street, just off Darwin Drive. I had finished some work at the offices of a small leather-importing company and was on my way to Lucy’s. It was on January 22nd. I can place the exact date, because it was the same day that President Kung introduced his Normative Precepts Bill, listing the ‘intellectual criteria’ which were to be used to determine a whole range of decisions from whether or not a text could legally be published, to whether a person was eligible to retain Illyrian citizenship:

And so on.

‘Hello, George! How are you? It’s ages since I saw you.’

I had stopped going to the Holist League meetings. I had stopped doing anything much except working fifteen hours a day, sleeping and visiting Lucy, who I now saw three or four times a week.

‘I… decided I didn’t want to carry on with the meetings.’

She nodded.

‘Yes, sure. That’s fair enough…’

‘No!’ I blurted out. ‘It wasn’t because I was afraid. It wasn’t that I was afraid of O3 and all that.’

She looked surprised. ‘I know. Why did you think I meant that? I don’t think of you as the sort of person who is put off by that kind of thing. I don’t think of you like that at all.’

This abolutely astonished me.

‘A bit of a talking shop, you thought?’ Marija asked. ‘A bit earnest and self-important?’ She nodded. ‘I thought that was what you were thinking about us that evening in the bar. I could feel your distaste. Well I must admit, that’s what I’ve begun to think too.’

A police robot walked past us and Marija was silent until it went by.

‘You can never tell which way they are looking can you?’ she said. ‘Or how much they can hear.’

She made a little dismissive gesture of dislike. She had a delightfully animated face.

‘Bad news about Kung’s new scheme though, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘You wonder what on earth else we can do.’

She glanced with a frown at the back of the police robot as it moved slowly down the street. Then smiled at me.

‘Listen, it’s really nice to see you. I was just going to get the subway home. Why don’t you come and have a drink with me if you’ve got a bit of time?’

In her small apartment in the district of Newton, Marija poured me a glass of red wine.

‘Yes, I was thinking of giving up on the League myself,’ she said.

‘What about Paul?’ I asked.

She gave a wry smile.

‘He’s gone back to Brazil,’ she said shortly.

I didn’t know what to say. The ebb and flow of human relationships were a complete mystery to me.

Marija settled into a large cushion.

‘To be more specific,’ she said, ‘he had a wife and three kids waiting there for him all along, but had carelessly forgotten to mention them to me.’

‘Oh.’

I gulped my wine.

She smiled, ‘You were thirsty. Do you want some more?’

I nodded.

‘I suppose the League is just a talking shop,’ she said with a sigh. ‘But there must be some way of fighting back against this… this stifling flatness. Do you know what I mean? It’s as if Ullman and Kung and all of them have been trying to make us live in two dimensions.’

I nodded.

‘They tell us that only things that can be measured are true,’ she said, ‘But if something can be imagined or dreamed about then surely it does exist in some way? Do you know what I mean? Maybe in reality there is no truly altruistic act, for example, just like they say, but the idea of altruism still exists doesn’t it? Even things like the Garden of Eden exist in that sense, or the Fall, or the great Dance of Shiva.’

She had grown up in Auckland, in an old-style ‘Western’ country where atheists lived side by side with believers of many different kinds, but I had always lived in Illyria and I had almost no idea of what she was talking about. And yet what she said did strike a chord with me. I longed too for a wider, more generous reality.

‘Okay, maybe they’re not real in the way that this table is real,’ Marija said, ‘but they are still in some way real. Perhaps even in some ways more real…’

She smiled.

‘Do you ever have that dream,’ she said, ‘where you are in a house and you are looking for an extra room which is somehow missing?’

‘Yes! I have!’ I exclaimed. I almost shouted in fact, so surprised was I to find that something so private and interior could be shared by another person.

‘You have? The very same dream?’

She studied my face carefully for a few seconds, then nodded. To my surprise I managed not to look away.

‘It’s nice when you meet someone else who has dreamed the same dreams,’ she said.

So it was.

‘I think Ullman and Kung have made Illyria a house with most of its rooms sealed off,’ she said. ‘It’s not science that’s at fault. It’s a sort of narrow literal-mindedness… I feel like I need to smash my way out somehow, or else I will suffocate. Do you know what I mean?’

I nodded.

‘Sometimes I think the AHS have the right idea,’ Marija said slowly in a much more tentative voice. I could see her watching for my reaction. The AHS after all were violent enemies of the state, and their members were hunted with great ruthlessness.

‘Yes, I suppose they try to smash their way out with bombs. Or smash a way out for all of us.’

‘Exactly – they just refuse to accept the rules, even if it means violence. And maybe in the end people in general just can’t accept those rules. Maybe that was part of the reason for the Reaction.’

‘Even the robots can’t accept them, it seems,’ I said.

‘Yes! Even the robots can’t live in two dimensions.’

She studied my face again, curiously, as if noticing something new..

‘You really do feel for those robots don’t you? You understand them in some way. I think I do too. I suppose that’s why I stuck with that silly job at ICC.’

She laughed.

‘Hey this is interesting! Are you hungry, George? Why don’t we go out for a meal or something?’

Now here is a strange thing. Here I was, a very isolated young man who longed to break out into the world. And here was Marija, a very attractive young woman who I’d always liked very much, suggesting we spend the evening together. I was in a position which I’d longed for and which I’d feared I would never reach. You’d think that I’d have been more than happy to accept.

But instead something inside me suddenly froze. I felt a wave of revulsion that appeared as if from nowhere, revulsion for Marija, revulsion for being together, revulsion for friendship and talking and flirting. I was suddenly aware of the biology of it: my body, her body, hormones, itchings… just silly biological itchings dressed up as a social game.

‘No. No, I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I’ve got to be somewhere else.’

‘Oh, pity,’ said Marija with a disappointed shrug.

She started to pick up the empty wine glasses.

‘You know you really are a dark horse, George. It would have been good to get to know you better.’

But I’d got up already and was putting on my jacket. It was all to do with fear of course. Fear was breaking out all over me. Soon she would be able to see it and I hated the idea of that. I really didn’t want her to think of me as a creature of fear.

I suppose that was the reason I suddenly blurted out an extraordinary thing:

‘I don’t know if you know any way of contacting the AHS?’

She gave a whistle.

‘Now that is dangerous, George. I mean, when O3 catch people…’

She didn’t need to finish her sentence. A clear vision came unbidden into my mind of a bare white windowless room deep underground, lit with very bright lights, and of a prisoner in there who would never see daylight again, screaming and screaming.

‘I know,’ I said.

‘Well I know people who know people,’ Marija said, ‘I could see if someone could get in touch with you.’

‘I’d like that,’ I said.

Marija smiled and, to my consternation, suddenly kissed me.

‘Well,’ she said, ‘have a good time at whatever important place it is that you’re going!’