David Mitchell - Cloud Atlas

We paused at the foot of a double-helix staircase. This is an old-style elevator, Mr. Chang xplained. “The university xercises students’ bodies as well as their minds.” So I battled gravity for the first time, step by step, grasping the handrail. Two students descended the down-helix, laughing at my clumsiness. One commented, “That specimen won’t be making a bid for freedom anytime soon.” Mr. Chang warned me not to look over my shoulder; I did so, foolishly, and vertigo tipped me over. Had my guide not caught me, I would have fallen.

It took several minutes to ascend to the sixth floor, the topmost. Here, a slitted corridor ended at a door, slitely ajar, name-plated BOOM-SOOK KIM. Mr. Chang knocked, but no answer came.

“Wait in here for Mr. Kim,” the chauffeur told me. “Obey him as a seer.” I entered and turned to ask Mr. Chang what work I should do, but the chauffeur had gone. I was quite alone for the first time in my life.

What did you think of your new quarters?

Dirty. Our dinery, you see, was always spotless: the Catechisms preach cleanliness. Boom-Sook Kim’s lab was, in contrast, a long gallery, rancid with pureblood male odor. Bins overflowed; a crossbow target hung by the door; the walls were lined with lab benches, buried desks, obsolete sonys, and sagging bookshelves. A framed kodak of a smiling boy and a dead, bloodied snow leopard hung over the only desk to show evidence of use. A filthy window overlooked a neglected courtyard where a mottled figure stood on a Plinth. I wondered if he was my new Logoman, but he never stirred.

In a cramped anteroom I found a cot, a hygiener, and a sort of portable steam cleaner. When was I to use it? What Catechisms governed my life in this place? A fly buzzed lazy figures of eight. So ignorant was I of outside, I even wondered if the fly might be an aide and introduced myself to it.

Had you never seen insects before?

Only rogue-gened roaches and dead ones: Papa Song’s aircon inflows insecticide, so if any enter via the elevator, they die, instantly. The fly hit the window, over and over. I did not then know windows open; indeed, I did not know what a window was.

Then I heard off-key singing; a popsong about Phnom Penh Girls. Moments later a student in beach shorts, sandals, and silk weighed down by shoulder bags, kickboxed the door open. Upon seeing me he groaned, “What in the name of Holy Corpocracy are you doing here?”

I bared my collar. “Sonmi 451, sir. Papa Song’s server from—”

“Shut up, shut up, I know what you are!” The young man had a froggish mouth and the hurt eyes then in vogue. “But you’re not supposed to be here until fifth day! If those registry dildos xpect me to cancel a five-star Taiwanese conference just because they can’t read calendars, well, sorry, they can suck maggots in an ebola pit. I only came in to pick up my worksony and discs. I’m not babysitting any xperimental clone still in uniform when I could be sinning myself sticky in Taipei.”

The fly hit the window again; the student picked up a pamphlet and pushed past me. The whack made me jump. He inspected the smear with a laugh of triumph. “Let that be a warning to you! Nobody double-crosses Boom-Sook Kim! Now. Don’t touch anything, don’t go anywhere. Soap’s in the boxfridge—thank Chairman they delivered your feed early. I’ll be back late on sixthday. If I don’t leave for the aeroport now I’ll miss my flite.” He went, then reappeared in the doorway. “You can talk, can’t you?”

I nodded.

“Thank Chairman! Fact—for every moronity, there’s ten registry clone-bones somewhere committing it as we speak.”

What … were you supposed to do for the next three days?

Xcept watch the rolex hand erode the hours, I had no idea. It was no major hardship: servers are genomed for grueling nineteen-hour workdays. I passed idle hours wondering if Mrs. Rhee was a grieving widow or a glad one. Would Aide Ahn or Aide Cho be promoted to Chongmyo Plaza seer? Already, the dinery seemed impossibly distant. From the courtyard I heard pins and needles of sound, from shrubs mobbing the Plinth. Thus I first encountered birds. An aero overflew, and many hundreds of swallows poured upstream. For whom did they sing? Their Logoman? The Beloved Chairman?

The sky curfewed, and the room darkened for my first nite on the surface. I felt lonely, but nothing worse. Windows across the courtyard yellowed-up, showing labs like Boom-Sook’s, housing young purebloods; neater offices, occupied by professors; busy corridors, vacant ones. I did not see a single fabricant.

At midnite I felt toxed and imbibed a sac of Soap, lay in the cot, and wished Yoona 939 was there to make sense of the day’s legion mysteries.

Did your second day outside provide any answers?

Some: but yet more surprises. The first stood across the anteroom from my cot as I awoke. A pylonic man, over three meters tall and dressed in an orange zipsuit, was studying the bookshelves. His face, neck, and hands were scalded red, burnt black, and patched pale, but he did not seem to suffer pain. His collar confirmed he was a fabricant, but I could not guess his stemtype: lips genomed out, ears protected by hornvalves, and a voice deeper than any I heard before or since. “No stimulin here. You wake when you wake. Especially if your postgrad is as lazy as Boom-Sook Kim. Xec postgrads are the worst. They have their asses wiped for them. From kindergarten to euthanasium.” With a giant, two-thumbed hand, he indicated a blue zipsuit half the size of his. “For you, little sister.” As I changed from my Papa Song’s uniform into my new garment, I asked if he had been sent by a seer. “No seers, either,” said the burnt giant. “Your postgrad and mine are friends. Boom-Sook called yesterday. Complained about your unxpected delivery. I wished to visit you pre-curfew. But Genome Surgery postgrads work late. Unlike slackers here in Psychogenomics. I’m Wing 027. Let’s find out why you’re here.”

Wing 027 sat on Boom-Sook’s desk and switched on the sony, ignoring my protests that my postgrad had forbidden me to touch it. Wing clicked the screenboard; Yoona 939 appeared. Wing trailed his finger along the rows of words. “Let’s pray to the Immanent Chairman … Boom-Sook doesn’t make that error again …”

I asked Wing, could he read?

Wing said if a randomly assembled pureblood can read, a well-designed fabricant should learn with ease. Soon a Sonmi appeared on the sony: my collar, 451, circled her neck. “Here,” said Wing and read, slowly; In-Dormroom Cerebral Upsizing the Service Fabricant: A Feasibility Case Study on Sonmí-451 by Boom-Sook Kim. “Why,” Wing muttered, “is a no-brainer xec postgrad aiming so high?”

What sort of fabricant was Wing-027? A militiaman?

No, a disasterman. He boasted he could operate in deadlands so infected or radioactive that purebloods perish there like bacteria in bleach; that his brain had only minor genomic refinements; and that disastermen’s basic orientation provides a more thoro education than most pureblood universities. Finally, he bared his hideously burnt forearm: “Show me a pureblood who could stand this! My postgrad’s Ph.D. is tissue flameproofing.”