David Mitchell - Cloud Atlas

It didn’t last. “Oy!” a boy yelled. “One hot ginseng, two dog-burgers!” and the entire theater laughed. I am not genomed to blush, but my pulse rose. I took a seat in the second row, occupied by girls. Their leader had emeralded teeth. “This is our row,” she said. “Go to the back. You stink of mayo.” I obeyed, meekly. A paper dart hit my face. “We don’t vend burgers in your dinery, fabricant,” someone called, “why’re you taking up space in our lecture?” I was about to leave when spidery Dr. Chu’an tripped onto the stage and dropped her notes. I did my best to concentrate on the lecture that followed, but after a while, Dr. Chu’an’s eyes roamed her audience, saw me; she stopped midsentence. The audience, laughing, realized why. Dr. Chu’an forced herself to continue. I forced myself to stay but lacked the courage to ask questions at the end. Outside I endured a barrage of aggressive snideries.

Did Professor Mephi know about the students’ unfriendliness?

I think so. At our seminar, the professor asked if my lecture had been fruitful; I chose the word informative and asked why purebloods despised me so. He replied, “What if the differences between social strata stem not from genomics or inherent xcellence or even dollars, but merely differences in knowledge? Would this not mean the whole Pyramid is built on shifting sands?”

I speculated such a suggestion could be seen as a serious deviancy.

Mephi seemed delited. “Try this for deviancy: fabricants are mirrors held up to purebloods’ consciences; what purebloods see reflected there sickens them. So they blame you for holding up the mirror.”

I hid my shock by asking when purebloods might blame themselves.

Mephi replied, “History suggests, not until they are made to.”

When, I asked, would that happen?

The professor spun his antique globe and answered merely: “Dr. Chu’an’s lecture continues tomorrow.”

It must have taken courage to return .

Not really: an enforcer escorted me, so at least no one flung insults at me. The enforcer addressed the second row of girls with courteous malice. “This is our row. Go to the back.” The girls melted away, but I felt no triumph. It was the girls’ fear of Unanimity, not their acceptance of me, that prevailed. Dr. Chu’an was so flustered by the enforcer that she mumbled her entire lecture without once looking at her audience. Prejudice is permafrost.

Did you brave any more lectures?

One, on Lööw’s Fundaments . By request I went unescorted, preferring insults to xternal armor. I arrived early, took a side seat, and kept a visor on as the lecture hall filled. I was recognized nonetheless. The students regarded me with mistrust, but no paper missiles were launched. Two boys in front turned around: they had honest faces and rural accents. One asked if I really was some sort of artificial genius.

Genius is not a word to bandy so casually, I suggested.

Hearing a server talk made the pair marvel. “It must be hell,” said the second, “to have an intelligent mind trapped in a body genomed for service.”

I had grown as attached to my body as he had to his, I responded.

The lecture proceeded without event, but when I left the hall, a small riot of questions, miked walkmans, and flash nikons was waiting for me. Which Papa Song’s had I come from? Who had enrolled me at Taemosan? Were there more of me? What were my views on the Yoona 939 Atrocity? How many weeks did I have before my ascension degenerated? Was I an Abolitionist? What was my favorite color? Did I have a boyfriend?

Media? On a corpocratic campus?

No, but Media had offered rewards for features on the Sonmi of Taemosan. I hooded and tried to elbow my way back to the Unanimity Faculty, but the crush was so thick, my visor was knocked off and I was floored and badly bruised before two plainclothes enforcers could xtricate me. Boardman Mephi met me in the Unanimity lobby and escorted me back to my quarters, muttering that I was too valuable to xpose myself to the prurient mob. He rotated his rainstone ring vigorously: a habit when tense. We agreed, from then on my lectures should be dijied to my sony.

What about the xperiments you were obliged to undergo?

Ah, yes, a daily reminder of my true status. They depressed my spirits. What was knowledge for, I would ask myself, if I could not use it to better my xistence? How would I fit in on Xultation nine years and nine stars later with my superior knowledge? Could amnesiads erase the knowledge I had acquired? Did I want that to happen? Would I be happier? Fourthmonth arrived, bringing my first anniversary as a specimen freak on Taemosan, but spring did not bring me the gladness it brings the world. My curiosity is dying, I told Professor Mephi one pleasant day, during a seminar on Thomas Paine. I remember the sounds of a baseball game drifting thru his open window. My mentor said we had to identify the source of this malady, and urgently. I said something about reading not being knowledge, about knowledge without xperience being food without sustenance.

“You need to get out more,” remarked the professor.

Out where? Out to lectures? Out on the campus? Outings?

Next ninthnite, a young Unanimity postgrad named Hae-Joo Im elevatored to my apartment. Addressing me as Miss Sonmi, he xplained that Professor Mephi had asked him to “come and cheer you up.” Professor Mephi held the power of life and death over his future, he said, so here he was. “That was a joke,” he added, edgily, then he asked if I remembered him.

I did. His black hair was crewcut maroon now, and his eyebrows on-offed where they had been unadorned; but I recognized Boom-Sook’s x-classmate who had brought the news of Wing 027’s death at the hands of Min-Sic. My visitor looked around my living space, enviously. “Well, this beats Boom-Sook Kim’s poky nest, doesn’t it? Big enough to swallow my family’s entire apartment.”

I agreed, the apartment was very spacious indeed. A silence inflated. Hae-Joo Im offered to stay inside the elevator until I wanted him to leave. Once again, I apologized for my lack of social grace and invited him in.

He took his nikes off, saying “No, I apologize for my lack of social grace. I talk too much when I get nervous, and say stupid things. Here I go again. Can I try out your maglev chaise longue?”

Yes, I said and asked why I made him nervous.

I looked like any Sonmi in any old dinery, he answered, but when I opened my mouth I became a doctor of philosophy. The postgrad sat cross-legged on the chaise longue and swung, wonderingly, passing his hand through the magnetic field. He confessed, “A little voice in my head is saying, ’Remember, this girl—woman, I mean—I mean, person—is a landmark in the history of science. The first stable ascendee! Ascendant, rather. Watch what you say, Im! Make it profound!’ That’s why I’m just, uh, spouting rubbishy nothings.”

I assured him I felt more like a specimen than like a landmark.

Hae-Joo shrugged and told me the professor had said I could use a nite out downtown, and he waved a Soulring. “Unanimity xpenses! Sky’s the limit. So what’s your idea of fun?”

I had no idea of fun.

Well, Hae-Joo probed, what did I do to relax?

I play Go against my sony, I said.

“To relax?” he responded, incredulous. “Who wins, you or the sony?”

The sony, I answered, or how would I ever improve?

So winners, Hae-Joo proposed, are the real losers because they learn nothing? What, then, are losers? Winners?