David Mitchell - Cloud Atlas

Purebloods see us often but look at us rarely. Much later, Hae-Joo admitted he was curious about my response. Boom-Sook noticed nothing; he speculated about compensation claims by the corp sponsoring Min-Sic’s research. In his own, solo research, Boom-Sook gloated, no one cared if an xperimental fabricant or two “got dropped” along the path of scientific enlitenment.

Did you feel … well, what did you feel? Resentment? Grief?

Fury. I retreated to the anteroom because something about Hae-Joo Im made me cautious, but I had never felt such fury. Yoona 939 was worth twenty Boom-Sooks, and Wing 027 worth twenty Min-Sics, by any measure. Because of an xec’s carelessness, my only friend on Mount Taemosan was dead, and Boom-Sook viewed this murder as humorous. But fury forges will. That day was the first step to my Declarations , to this prison cube, and to the Litehouse in a few hours.

What happened to you over summer recess?

Boom-Sook should have deposited me in a holding dormroom, but my postgrad was so eager to go hunt fabricant elk on Hokkaido in Eastern Korea that he forgot to do so, or assumed a lesser strata drone would do it for him.

So one summer morning, I woke in a wholly deserted building. No echoes from well-trafficked corridors, no time bell, no announcements; even aircons were turned off. From the roof, the conurb fumed and trafficked as usual, and swarming aeros left vapor streaks across the sky, but the campus was empty of students. Its ford parks were semivacant. Builders were resurfacing the oval square in the hot sun. I checked the sony’s calendar and learned today was the beginning of recess. I bolted the lab’s door and hid myself in the anteroom.

So you never set foot outside Boom-Sook’s lab in five weeks? Not once?

Not once. I dreaded separation from my sony, you see. A security guard tested the lab door every ninthnite. Sometimes I heard Gil-Su Noon in the adjacent lab. Otherwise, nothing. I kept the blind lowered and the solars off at nite. I had enough Soap to last the duration.

But that’s fifty days of unbroken solitary confinement!

Fifty glorious days, Archivist. My mind traveled the length, breadth, and depth of our culture. I devoured the twelve seminals: Jong Il’s Seven Dialects; Prime Chairman’s Founding of Nea So Copros; Admiral Yeng’s History of the Skirmishes; you know the list. Indices in an uncensored Commentaries led me to pre-Skirmish thinkers. The library refused many downloads, of course, but I succeeded with two Optimists translated from the Late English, Orwell and Huxley; and Washington’s Satires on Democracy .

And you were still Boom-Sook’s thesis specimen—putatively—when he returned for the second semester?

Yes. My first autumn arrived. I made a secret collection of the flame-colored leaves that drifted on the faculty roof. Autumn itself aged, and my leaves lost their colors. Nites became icy; then even daylite hours frosted up. Boom-Sook dozed on the heated ondul most afternoons, watching 3-D. He had lost a lot of dollars in dubious investments over the summer, and since his father was refusing to pay his debts, my postgrad was prone to fits of temper. My only defense against these tantrums was to act void.

Did it snow?

Ah, yes, snow. The first snows fell very late last year, not until twelfth-month. I sensed it before I woke in the semidark. Snowflakes haloed the New Year fairies decorating the courtyard windows: entrancing, Archivist, entrancing. Undergrowth beneath the neglected statue in the courtyard drooped under the weight of snow, and the statue itself assumed a comic majesty. I could watch the snow fall from my previous prison cube, and I miss it here. Snow is bruised lilac in half-lite: such pure solace.

You speak like an aesthete sometimes, Sonmi .

Perhaps those deprived of beauty perceive it most instinctively.

So it must be around now that Dr. Mephi enters the story?

Yes, Sextet Eve. It was snowing that nite, too. Boom-Sook, Min-Sic, and Fang burst in at hour twenty approx, tox-flushed, ice on their nikes. I was in the anteroom and barely had time to hide my sony: I remember I was reading Plato’s Republic . Boom-Sook wore a mortarboard hat, and Min-Sic hugged a basket of mint-scented orchids as big as himself. He threw them at me, saying, “Petals for Spoony, Sponny, Sonmi, whatever its name is …”

Fang rifled the cupboard where Boom-Sook kept his soju and tossed three bottles over his shoulder, complaining that the brands were all dog piss. Min-Sic caught two, but a third smashed on the floor, triggering relapses of laughter. “Clean it up, Cind’rella!” Boom-Sook clapped his hands at me, then pacified Fang by saying he’d open a bottle of the best stuff since Sextet Recess came only once a year.

By the time I had swept up every glass shard, Min-Sic had found a pornslash disney on 3-D. They watched it with xpert relish, bickering over its merits and realism, and drinking the fine soju . Their drunkenness had a recklessness that nite, especially Fang’s. I retreated to the anteroom, from where I heard Gil-Su Noon at the lab door, asking the revelers to be quieter. I spied. Min-Sic mocked Gil-Su’s glasses, asking why his family couldn’t find the dollars to correct his myopia. Boom-Sook told Gil-Su to crawl up his own cock if he wanted peace and quiet when the civilized world was celebrating Sextet. When he had stopped laughing, Fang spoke about getting his father to order a tax inspection on the Noon clan. Gil-Su Noon fumed in the doorway until the three xecs pelted him away with plums and further derision.

Fang seems to have been the ringleader .

He was, yes. He chiseled open the fault lines in the others’ personalities. Doubtless he is currently practicing law in one of the Twelve Capitals with great success. That nite he focused on riling Boom-Sook, by wagging the soju bottle at the kodak of the dead snow leopard and asking how dopey the prey were genomed down for the tourists. Boom-Sook’s pride was inflamed. The only animals he hunted, he retorted, were those with viciousness genomed up . He and his brother had stalked the snow leopard for hours in Kathmandu Valley before the cornered animal leapt for his brother’s throat. Boom-Sook had a single shot. The bolt entered the beast’s eye in midair. Hearing this, Fang and Min-Sic faked awe for a moment, then collapsed in raucous laughter. Min-Sic thumped the floor, saying, “You are so full of shit, Kim!” Fang peered closer at the kodak and remarked that it was poorly dijied.

Boom-Sook inked a face on a synthetic melon, solemnly wrote “Fang” on its brow, and balanced the fruit on a stack of journals by the door. He took his crossbow from his desk, walked to the far-end window, and took aim.

Fang protested: “No-no-no-no-no-no-no!” and objected that a melon would not rip the marksman’s throat out if he missed. There was no pressure to make a clean hit. Fang then beckoned me over to stand by the door.

I saw his intention, but Fang interrupted my appeal, warning that if I did not obey him, he would put Min-Sic in charge of my Soap. Min-Sic’s grin wilted. Fang sank his nails into my arm, led me over, put the mortarboard hat on my head, and placed the melon on the hat. “So, Boom-Sook,” he teased, “reckon you’re such a hot-shit marksman now?”

Boom-Sook’s relationship with Fang was based on rivalry and loathing. He raised his crossbow. I asked my postgrad to please stop. Boom-Sook ordered me not to move a muscle.