David Mitchell - Cloud Atlas

I do not claim it was wise, only necessary. Hae-Joo also worried that it might “unearth buried things.” I responded that I had buried too much of myself, so the postgrad agreed to accompany me, on condition that I went disguised as a consumer. The following ninthnite he showed me how to upswirl my hair and apply cosmetics. A silk neck scarf hid my collar, and in the elevator down to the taxi he fitted dark ambers on my face.

On a busy fourthmonth evening, Chongmyo Plaza was not the litter-swarming wind tunnel I remembered from my release: it was a kaleidoscope of AdVs, consumers, xecs, and popsongs. Beloved Chairman’s monumental statue surveyed his swarming peoples with an xpression wise and benign. From the Plaza’s southeast rim, Papa Song’s arches drew into focus. Hae-Joo held my hand and reminded me we could turn back at any time. As we got in line for the elevator, he slipped a Soulring onto my finger.

In case you got separated?

For good luck, I thought: Hae-Joo had a superstitious streak. As the elevator descended, I grew very nervous. Suddenly, the doors were opening and hungry consumers riptided me into the dinery. As I was jostled, I was stunned at how misleading my memories of the place had been.

In what ways?

That spacious dome was so poky. Its glorious reds and yellows, so stark and vulgar. The wholesome air I remembered: now its greasy stench gagged me. After the silence on Taemosan, the dinery noise was like never-ending gunfire. Papa Song stood on His Plinth, greeting us. I tried to swallow, but my throat was dry: surely my Logoman would condemn his prodigal daughter.

No. He winked at us, tugged himself skyward by his own nikestraps, sneezed, oopsied, and plummeted down to His Plinth. Children screamed with laughter. I realized, Papa Song was just a trick of lites. How had an inane hologram once inspired such awe in me?

Hae-Joo went to find a table while I circummed the Hub. My sisters smiled under sugary toplites. How unflaggingly they worked! Here were Yoonas, here was Ma-Leu-Da 108, her collar now boasting eleven stars. At my old counter on west was a fresh-faced Sonmi. Here was Kyelim 889, Yoona’s replacement. I got in line at her teller, my nervousness growing acute as my turn approached. “Hi! Kyelim 889 at your service! Mouthwatering, magical, Papa Song’s! Yes, madam? Your pleasure today?”

I asked her if she knew me.

Kyelim 889 smiled xtra to dilute her confusion.

I asked if she remembered Sonmi 451, a server who worked beside her, who disappeared one morning.

A blank smile: the verb remember is outside servers’ lexicons. “Hi! Kyelim 889 at your service! Mouthwatering, magical, Papa Song’s! Your pleasure today?”

I asked, Are you happy, Kyelim 889?

Enthusiasm lit her smile as she nodded. Happy is a word in the Second Catechism: “Proviso I obey the Catechisms, Papa Song loves me; proviso Papa Song loves me, I am happy.”

A cruel compulsion brushed me. I asked the Kyelim, didn’t she want to live how purebloods live? Sit at dinery tables instead of wiping them?

Kyelim 889 wanted so badly to please, telling me, “Servers eat Soap!”

Yes, I persisted, but didn’t she want to see Outside?

She said, Servers don’t go Outside until Twelvestarred.

A consumer girl with zinc-ringlets and plectrum nails jabbed me. “If you’ve got to taunt dumb fabricants, do it on firstday mornings. I need to get to the gallerias this side of curfew, okay?”

Hastily, I ordered rosejuice and sharkgums from Kyelim 889. I wished Hae-Joo was still with me. I was jumpy in case the Soulring malfunctioned and xposed me. The device worked, but my questions had marked me as a troublemaker. “Democratize your own fabricants!” A man glowered as I pushed by with my tray. “A bolitionist.” Other purebloods in the line glanced at me, worried, as if I carried a disease.

Hae-Joo had found a free table in my old quarter. How many tens of thousands of times had I wiped this surface? Hae-Joo asked, gently, if I had discovered anything valuable.

I whispered, “We are just slaves here for twelve years.”

The Unanimity postgrad just scratched his ear and checked no one was eavesdropping: but his xpression told me he agreed. He sipped his rosejuice. We watched AdV for ten minutes, not speaking: a Juche Boardman was shown opening a newer, safer, nuclear reactor, grinning as if his strata depended on it. Kyelim 889 cleared the table next to us; she had already forgotten me. My IQ may be higher, but she looked more content than I felt.

So your visit to Papa Song’s was an … anticlimax? Did you find the “key” to your ascended self?

Perhaps it was anticlimactic, yes. If there was a key, it was only that no key xisted. In Papa Song’s I had been a slave; at Taemosan I was a more privileged slave. One more thing occurred, however, as we headed back to the elevator. I recognized Mrs. Rhee, working at her sony. I spoke her name out loud.

The immaculately dewdrugged woman smiled up with puzzled, luscious, remodeled lips. “I was Mrs. Rhee, but I’m Mrs. Ahn now. My late husband drowned in a sea-fishing accident last year.”

I said that was just awful.

Mrs. Ahn dabbed her eye with her sleeve and asked if I had known her late husband well. Lying is harder than purebloods make it look, and Mrs. Ahn repeated her question.

“My wife was a qualities standardizer for the Corp before our marriage,” Hae-Joo xplained hastily, putting his hand on my shoulder and adding that Chongmyo Plaza was in her area and that Seer Rhee had been an xemplary corp man. Mrs. Ahn’s suspicions were aroused, however, and she asked xactly when that might have been. Now I knew what to say. “When his chief aide was a consumer named Cho.”

Her smile changed its hue. “Ah, yes, Aide Cho. Sent north, somewhere, I believe, to learn about team spirit.”

Hae-Joo took my arm, saying, “Well, ‘All for Papa Song, Papa Song for All.’ The gallerias beckon, darling. Mrs. Ahn is obviously a woman with no time to fritter.”

Later, back in my quiet apartment, Hae-Joo paid me this compliment. “If I had ascended from server to prodigy in twelve straight months, my current address wouldn’t be a guest quarter in the Unanimity Faculty: I would be in a psych ward somewhere, seriously. These … xistential qualms you suffer, they just mean you’re truly human.”

I asked how I might remedy them.

“You don’t remedy them. You live thru them.”

We played Go until curfew. Hae-Joo won the first game. I, the second.

How many of these xcursions took place?

Every ninthnite until Corpocracy Day. Familiarity bred esteem for Hae-Joo, and soon I shared Boardman Mephi’s high opinion of him. The professor never probed about our outings during our seminars; his protégé probably filed reports, but Mephi wished me to have at least the illusion of a private life. Board business demanded more of his time, and I saw him less regularly. The morning tests continued: a procession of courteous but unmemorable scientists.