David Mitchell - Cloud Atlas

The maglev sofa swung under the distinguished man’s weight. His daughter-in-law, he said, had redesigned my quarters with me in mind. The Rothko canvases, she hoped, I would find meditative. “Molecule-true original originals,” he assured me. “I approved. Rothko paints how the blind see.”

A bewildering evening—crossbolts one moment, art history the next …

Certainly. Next, the professor apologized for failing to recognize the xtent of my ascension on our first meeting. “I assumed you were yet another semi-ascended xperiment, doomed to mental disintegration in a week or two. If memory serves, I even dozed off—Mr. Chang, did I? The truth now.” From his post by the elevator, Mr. Chang recalled that his master had rested his eyes during the journey. Boardman Mephi smiled at his chauffeur’s tact. “You’re more than likely wondering what you did to bring yourself to my attention, Sonmi 451.”

His question was a handshake: Come out, I know you’re in there . Or, I feared, a trap. Still with a server’s wariness of acting too pureblood, I feigned polite incomprehension. Mephi’s xpression of complicity told me he understood. Taemosan University, he said, generates 2 million–plus library download requests per semester. The vast majority are course texts and related articles; the remainder relate to anything from real estate to stock prices, sportsfords to steinways, yoga to caged birds. “The point is, Sonmi, it takes a reader of truly eclectic habits for my friends the librarians to bother alerting me.” The professor switched on his handsony and read from my own list of download requests. Sixthmonth 18th, Epic of Gilgamesh; Seventhmonth 2nd, Ireneo Funes’s Remembrances; Ninthmonth 1st, Gibbon’s Decline and Fall . Mephi, bathed in mauve sonyglow, looked proud. “Here we go … Tenthmonth 11th, a brazen-as-you-please cross-search for references to that cancer in our beloved body corpocratic, Union! Speaking as a Unanimityman, such a—could I call it ‘lust’?—for creeds of other worlds alerts us to the presence of an inner émigré. It is idiomatic in my field that such émigrés make the finest Unanimity agents. I knew we had to meet.” He then xplained how he had identified the sony’s inquisitive owner as Nun Hel-Kwon, a geothermist from blizzard-prone Onsōng … who had died two winters before in a skiing accident. Boardman Mephi assigned a gifted graduate the old-fashioned detective’s task of tracing the thief. E-wave surveillance located the sony in Boom-Sook Kim’s lab. Imagining Boom-Sook reading Wittgenstein defied all credulity, however, so Mephi’s trusted student had implanted a microeye in every sony in the room during curfew six weeks ago. “Next day, we found our dissident-manqué was no pureblood but, apparently, science’s first stabilized ascendant and sister-server of the notorious Yoona 939. My work, Sonmi 451, can be taxing and hazardous, but dull? Never!”

Denial was plainly pointless .

Indeed: Boardman Mephi was no Seer Rhee. In a way, my discovery was a relief. Many criminals say the same. I sat and listened to his account of the interdepartmental squabbles that broke out when he reported his findings. Old-school corpocrats wanted me euthanized as a deviant; psychogenomicists wanted me to undergo cerebral vivisection; marketing wanted to go public and claim me as Taemosan University’s own xperimental breakthru.

Obviously, none of them got their way .

No. Unanimity won a stopgap compromise: I could continue studying in my illusory free will until a consensus of opinion could be reached. Boom-Sook’s crossbow, however, forced Unanimity’s hand.

And what did Boardman Mephi intend to do with you now?

Frame a new compromise between those interests competing for a slice of me, then enforce it. Billions of research dollars had been spent in corp labs, unsuccessfully, to achieve what, simply, I was, what I am: a stable, ascended fabricant. To keep the genomicists happy, an array of vetted scientists would conduct cross-disciplinary tests on me. Mephi, dipping his hands into the heart of the 3-D flames, promised these tests would not be onerous or painful, or xceed three hours per day, five days out of ten. To win over the Taemosan Board, research access would be auctioned: I would raise big dollars for my masters.

Did Sonmi 451’s interests enter this simultaneous equation?

To a degree, yes: Taemosan University would enroll me as a foundation student. I would also have a Soul implanted in my collar so I could come and go on campus as I pleased. Boardman Mephi even promised to mentor me when he was on campus. He withdrew his hand from the fire and inspected his fingers. “All lite, no heat. Youngsters nowadays wouldn’t know a real flame if their nikes were set alite.” He told me to call him Professor instead of Sir.

One thing I can’t work out. If Boom-Sook Kim was such a buffoon, how had he attained this holy grail of psychogenomics—stable ascension?

Later, I asked Hae-Joo Im the same question. His xplanation ran: Boom-Sook’s thesis jockey sourced his supply of psychogenomics theses from an obscure tech institute in Baikal. The original author of my x-postgrad’s work was a production zone immigrant named Yusouf Suleiman. Xtremists were killing genomicists in Siberia at that time, and Suleiman and three of his professors were blown up by a car bomb. Baikal being Baikal, Suleiman’s research languished in obscurity for ten years until it was sold on. The agent liaised with contacts at Papa Song Corp to instream Suleiman’s ascension neuro-formula to our Soap. Yoona 939 was the prime specimen; I was a modified backup. If all that sounds unlikely, Hae-Joo added, I should remember that most of science’s holy grails are discovered by accident, in unxpected places.

And all the while Boom-Sook Kim was blissfully unaware of the furor his plagiarized Ph.D. was causing?

Only an obdurate fool who never squeezed a pipette could remain unaware, but yes, Boom-Sook Kim was such a fool. Maybe that, too, was no accident.

How did you find your new regime in the Unanimity Faculty? How was it as a fabricant, actually attending lectures?

As I was moved on Sextet Eve, I had six quiet days before the new regime began in earnest. I walked around the icy campus only once: I am genomed to be comfortable in hot eateries, and xposure to the Han Valley winter on Mount Taemosan burned my skin and lungs. On New Year’s Day I awoke from curfew to discover two gifts: the battered old sony Wing 027 had given me and a star for my collar, my third. I thought of my sisters, my x-sisters, thruout Nea So Copros enjoying Starring Ceremonies. I wondered if I would one day depart for Xultation, my Investment repaid. How I wished Yoona 939 could attend my first lecture on secondday with me. I still miss her.

What was your first lecture?

Swanti’s Biomathematics; however, its real lesson was humiliation. I walked to the lecture hall across dirty slush, hooded and unnoticed. But when I took off my cloak in the corridor, my Sonmi features provoked surprise, then unease. In the lecture hall, my entry detonated resentful silence.