Michael Sullivan - Hollow World

“Pattern designers are working ’round the clock to create Ellis Rogers wear,” Pol explained, seeing Ellis staring back at a gawker who wore an identical flannel shirt and jeans.

Pol had enormous amounts of energy, finding time to report to Warren each night even after a long day of appearances. Apparently it was important to keep the technology-deficient farm informed on Ellis’s global impact.

That day, he and Pol had stood under the illuminated dome of Challenger Deep, and looked up at a dead, dark world of empty water. They were too deep for fish. Ellis had preferred the city of Atlantis, an artificial coral reef surrounding a thousand-story-tall see-through city, also known as The Aquarium . The Deep was just scary. The knowledge of all that water above left Ellis haunted by the thought of a crack in the glass.

“It’s wonderful. The whole world is going Ellis Rogers crazy,” Pol said. “People are sharing your speeches. Ellis Rogers masks are big, and a hyper-realistic interactive holo featuring an interview with you is the most popular in the world for the second straight day.”

“I’m surprised people aren’t having plastic surgery done,” Ellis said.

“Plastic surgery?” Pol asked.

Ellis gestured at his face. “You know, it’s where doctors alter your features surgically. With all this desire for individuality, I’d think more people would have done it.”

“There are limits to self-expression,” Pol said. “People want to be individuals—not different.”

“How’s that?” Ellis spotted another Ellis Rogers wannabe entering the sea-dome, this one with the same JanSport pack slung over one shoulder.

“Putting on clothes, even applying a tattoo, just adds a layer of identity. It doesn’t fundamentally change a person. People don’t want to be something different—they aren’t dogs longing to be cats or even horses wanting to be zebras, although they might paint on stripes to look different. You’re fascinating to all of us. Not only because of your divergence from the norm, but your complete acceptance of it. You honestly don’t mind being separate, being alone in your singularity. This courage is what so many of us admire when we see you. We’d like to think we’d be just as comfortable standing out, being a real individual, but actually doing it—that’s a bravery beyond most of us.”

The backpacker offered Ellis a shy smile. He smiled back, embarrassed for staring. Ellis casually looked up at the dome where the illuminated ocean was filled with vents and motes. While what he saw was real, it looked more artificial than anything he’d seen in Hollow World.

“You see, there’s a comfort in belonging to a whole. Humans are social animals,” Pol explained. “But people don’t live together in groups like in your day. Once it became possible to survive separately, those traditional groups like families and tribes dissolved. In Hollow World they maintain a sense of community by being the same—exactly the same. They live any way they like, keep what hours they choose, follow such pursuits as they find interesting, while believing they’re always part of a greater whole. They don’t really want to be different so much as noticed—recognized.” Pol held up his maimed hand. “Those of us at the farm are different. Permanent alteration will be part of our future. And you’re a big part of that future.”

“What sort of future is that exactly?”

“I suppose that will be up to us, now, won’t it?”

Ellis’s growing popularity was putting pressure on the ISP, and Pol had him make speeches at most of the places they visited. He got better at speaking, although most of what he said at each stop was identical. He talked about how different the world was now, thanked the ISP for saving his life, and expressed his appreciation to all of Hollow World for their warm welcome. Pol had him follow this with a plea for help in convincing the ISP to release the original female pattern so he didn’t have to be so isolated. Pol insisted he repeat the one is the loneliest number line from the first speech. When Ellis admitted it came from a song, Pol dug it out of the Wegener Archives and blared the recording before and after each speech, making it the Ellis Rogers theme. Occasionally he heard people singing it, usually the ones in the flannel shirts. At his speeches, the crowd, hundreds of identical voices, would sing the song together.

In addition to tourist attractions, Pol took him to a sporting event and an art exhibit, but Ellis found the historic sites and museums to be the most interesting. He was delighted by the chance to visit Egypt’s pyramids—which looked a little worse for wear but were still hanging in there. He also had the chance to walk through the South African Museum of Prejudice and Segregation, the ruins of New York, and the Forbidden City of China. The most interesting by far, however, were the famed Museum of War and Museum of Religion, both located in the historic city of Jerusalem.

Pol arranged for Ellis to have special access to the vaults in the Museum of War, where he got to see the stockpiles of weapons—those items they didn’t have room for on the official floor display—weapons still considered dangerous. They had preserved everything from Greek bronze-era swords, to British ship cannons, to American thermonuclear bombs. What shocked Ellis the most was that the themes of the two neighboring museums were similar: the tragic mistakes of humanity . While Ellis believed in God, he recognized the contributions in terror and bloodshed such beliefs had generated over the long history of mankind. One exhibit redefined the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse as greed, pride, fear, and religion—the leading causes of war.

While riding on a moving walkway through a tunnel, various scenes from history were played out on either side by lifelike, but fully digital, constructs. A narrator said, “The errors in judgment were unfortunate but necessary roads taken on the long journey from the barbarity of the past to the enlightened peace of today.”

Behind him, Ellis heard someone explain how at one time roads were physical things rather than mere metaphors.

The crowds were significantly smaller in Jerusalem—the museums were less popular than the Mars simulators or see-through Atlantis—but Ellis was captivated as he walked the timeline of humanity’s religious history from prehistoric burial mounds containing personal items that suggested a belief in an afterlife, to the last active church in El Grullo, Mexico—eventually destroyed by the Great Tempest. Ellis entered holos where he could stand in churches, temples, and mosques and listen to sermons about the growing apathy toward God or experience virtual battlefields so realistic that he jumped out to avoid being sick. The Three Miracles and the ISP were responsible for the final eradication of war, but religion had disappeared much sooner, and the cause was far less definitive. Organized belief wasn’t outlawed. There had been no discovery refuting the faithful’s claims, no great atheistic crusade. Religion, it seemed, had just been forgotten.

Each night Ellis returned to Wegener with Pol, to a room as spartan as the home of Geo-24. Ellis didn’t care; he just wanted a place to be alone. The grueling schedule kept him joined with Pol like a newlywed couple on their honeymoon, and Ellis was growing weary of both Pol and the tour. He’d recovered from his surgery, but told Pol he was still suffering from fatigue just to get a break.

He spilled the contents of his backpack on the bed and sat like a kid on Halloween night, looking through his haul. The flashlight, his compass, water purifier, first-aid kit, matches, rain gear—still in the bag with the Target store label. This was all he had left. Spotting a bag of peanut M&M’S, he tore it open and popped a red one in his mouth, savoring the taste of the twenty-first century like never before.