David Mitchell - Cloud Atlas

Your Testimony must stand as you speak it, despite my protests. I—we must progress…. How long did you watch this slaughter?

I cannot recall, accurately. Perhaps ten minutes, perhaps an hour. I remember Hae-Joo leading me thru the dining area, numbly. Purebloods played cards, ate noodles, smoked, worked at sonys, joked, engaged in ordinary life. How could they know what happened in the underbelly and just … sit there, indifferent? As if it were not living fabricants being processed but pickled sardines? Why did their consciences not scream for this obscenity to end? The bearded security guard winked, saying, “Come back soon, honeysuckle.”

In the metro back to the flophouse, as the commuters swayed, I “saw” cadavers on the monorail. Ascending the stairwell, I “saw” them hoisted aloft the xecution room. In his room, Hae-Joo did not switch on the solar; he just raised the shutter a few centimeters to let the lites of Pusan dilute the darkness and poured himself a glass of soju . Not a word had passed between us.

I alone, of all my sisters, had seen the true Xultation and lived.

Our sex was joyless, graceless, and necessarily improvised, but it was an act of the living. Stars of sweat on Hae-Joo’s back were his gift to me, and I harvested them on my tongue. After, the young man smoked a nervy marlboro in silence and studied my birthmark, curiously. He fell asleep on my arm, squashing it. I did not wake him; the pain turned to numbness, the numbness to pins and needles, then I squirmed out from under him. I spread a blanket over Hae-Joo; purebloods catch rogue colds in all weathers. The city readied itself for curfew. Its smeary glow dimmed as AdVs and lites switched off. The final server of the final line would be dead by now. The processing line would be cleaned and silent. The slaughtermen, if they were fabricants, would be in their dorm-rooms, if purebloods, at home with their families. The Golden Ark would sail away tomorrow to a new port, where the reclamation would begin afresh.

At hour zero I imbibed my Soap and joined Hae-Joo under the blanket, warmed by his body.

Weren’t you angry with Union for xposing you to the Golden Ark without adequately preparing you?

What words could Apis or Hae-Joo have used?

Morning brought a sweaty haze. Hae-Joo showered, then devoured a huge bowl of rice, pickled cabbage, eggs, and seaweed soup. I washed up. My pureblood lover sat across the table from me. I spoke for the first time since we entered that protein-xtraction line. “That ship must be destroyed. Every slaughtership in Nea So Copros like it must be sunk.”

Hae-Joo said yes.

“The shipyards that build them must be demolished. The systems that facilitated them must be dismantled. The laws that permitted the systems must be torn down and reconstructed.”

Hae-Joo said yes.

“Every consumer, xec, and Juche Boardman in Nea So Copros must understand that fabricants are purebloods, be they grown in a wombtank or a womb. If persuasion does not work, ascended fabricants must fight with Union to achieve this end, using whatever force is necessary.”

Hae-Joo said yes.

“Ascended fabricants need a Catechism, to define their ideals, to harness their anger, to channel their energies. I am the one to compose this declaration of rights. Will—can—Union seedbed such a Catechism?”

Hae-Joo said, “This is what we’re waiting for.”

Many xpert witnesses at your trial denied Declarations could be the work of a fabricant, ascended or otherwise, and maintained it was ghosted by Union or a pureblood Abolitionist .

How lazily “xperts” dismiss what they fail to understand!

I, only I, wrote Declarations over three weeks at Ūlsukdo Ceo, outside Pusan, in an isolated xec villa overlooking the Nakdong Estuary. During its composition I consulted a judge, a genomicist, a syntaxist, and General An-Kor Apis, but the Ascended Catechisms of Declarations , their logic and ethics, denounced at my trial as “the ugliest wickedness in the annals of deviancy,” were the fruits of my mind, Archivist, fed by the xperiences I have narrated to you this morning. No one else has lived this life. My Declarations were germinated when Yoona 939 was xecuted, nurtured by Boom-Sook and Fang, strengthened by the tutelage of Mephi and the Abbess, birthed in Papa Song’s slaughtership.

And your capture came shortly after completing your text?

The same afternoon. Once my function was fulfilled, there was no reason for Unanimity to let me run free. My arrest was dramatized for Media. I handed my Declarations on sony to Hae-Joo. We looked at each other for the last time; nothing is as eloquent as nothing. I knew we would never meet again, and maybe he knew that I knew.

At the edge of the property a small colony of wild ducks survive the pollution. Rogue genomes give them a resilience lacking in their pureblood ancestors. I suppose I felt a kinship with them. I fed them bread, watched water walkers dimple the chrome-brite surface, then returned to the house to watch the show from inside. Unanimity did not make me wait long.

Six aeros sharked over the water, one landing on the flower garden. Enforcers jumped out, priming their colts, and belly-snaked toward my window with much hand signing and fearless bravado. I had left the doors and windows open for them, but my captors contrived a spectacular siege with snipers, megaphones, and an xploding wall.

You are implying that you xpected the raid, Sonmi?

Once I had finished my manifesto, the next stage could only be my arrest.

What do you mean? What “next stage” of what?

Of the theatrical production, set up while I was still a server in Papa Song’s.

Wait, wait, wait. What about … everything? Are you saying your whole confession is composed of … scripted events?

Its key events, yes. Some actors were unwitting, Boom-Sook and the Abbess, for xample, but the major players were all provocateurs. Hae-Joo Im and Boardman Mephi certainly were. Did you not detect the hairline cracks in the plot?

Such as?

Wing 027 was as stable an ascendant as I: was I really so unique? You yourself suggested, would Union truly risk their secret weapon on a dash across Korea? Did Seer Kwon’s murder of the Zizzi Hikaru fabricant on the suspension bridge not underline pureblood brutality a little too neatly? Was its timing not a little too pat?

But what about Xi-Li, the young pureblood killed on the nite of your flite from Taemosan? His blood was not … tomato ketchup!

Indeed not. That poor idealist was an xpendable xtra in Unanimity’s Disney.

But … Union? Are you saying even Union was fictioned for your script?

No. Union prexists me, but its raisons-d’être are not to foment revolution. Firstly, it attracts social malcontents like Xi-Li and keeps them where Unanimity can watch them. Secondly, it provides Nea So Copros with the enemy required by any hierarchical state for social cohesion.

I still can’t understand why Unanimity would go to the xpense and trouble of staging this fake … adventure story .

To generate the show trial of the decade. To make every last pureblood in Nea So Copros mistrustful of every last fabricant. To manufacture downstrata consent for the Juche’s new Fabricant Xpiry Act. To discredit Abolitionism. You can see, the whole conspiracy has been a resounding success.

But if you knew about this … conspiracy, why did you cooperate with it? Why did you allow Hae-Joo Im to get so close to you?