It was back to normality. Omo, Flora and Nike sat in their rooms doing ‘productive’ work. Some more ‘productive’ than others of course. Omo was good at ‘productive’ work. He didn't like questions and didn't really care about answers so he was great at the daily tasks required by ‘productive’ work. His credit score rolled upwards. In contrast for Nike it was a constant battle to stop himself losing all the credits he'd just worked for by asking yet another expensive question.
Whereas Omo accepted he was part of The PROJECT⌂ and never queried either his own place in the system or The PROJECT⌂ itself, Nike would find himself in the middle of a batch of ‘productive’ work, thinking out loud, ‘So what is The PROJECT⌂ anyway?’ Which would start the knowledge bank credits rolling on the US™ screen THE PROJECT⌂: Definition. A social and scientific experiment with a generation. And he’d just wasted another 10 credits for no real information. Nike just knew it was a deliberate ULTIMATE® policy, designed to get as much ‘productive’ work out of everyone as possible. Whereas in a similar situation Omo would just accept and Flora would shrug her shoulders and look for another way of regaining credits, Nike preferred to look for a way to shortcut the system. Omo and Flora didn’t think, as Nike did, that questions could have a meaning. To them, the meaning was part of the system. You just played your part, did your ‘productive’ work and enjoyed the process. Because the more ‘productive’ work you did, the more ULTIMATE® would tailor the kind of work you did to your interests. That was your reward. Soon enough you didn’t feel like you were doing work at all. It was one long round of virtual consumption, offering more than enough to keep you happy for hour after hour. But the rationale didn’t work for Nike because he refused to fit into the patterns. He was marked down as a system anomaly. Project Kids were essentially the guinea pigs of the ULTIMATE® consumer testing system. It was the biggest ethnographic study ever. The most comprehensive social engineering experiment since The Final Solution. Twentieth century consumer based computer survey systems were as nothing to this new ULTIMATE® way of achieving disclosure from citizens. And The PROJECT⌂ was the experimental forefront, the shop window for a whole new kind of citizen. It was creating people who lived only to produce and consume virtual knowledge, virtual memories, virtual relationships. They had become cost effective slaves who happily consumed their slavery and thought it the cutting edge in post democratic freedom. The promise was of everything tailored to the individual. Meanwhile the individual was tailored to the ULTIMATE® template of citizenship. Result? Perfect. All-embracing. Terrifying. And unnoticed. For the participants, it seemed to be a really simple, really good deal. Project Kids were given a home and everything they needed to maintain a high living standard in the ULTIMATE® world. In exchange, their ‘productive’ work in the ULTIMATE® economy was open to constant analysis and scrutiny. The price they paid meant they got the best of everything, were first in the queue for new virtual experiences and were generally shielded and protected from the outside world. In the outside world it could be a lot harder to spend your life in the pursuit of virtual consumption – you had to do a lot more work for a lot less reward. Most ordinary people still had to pay their way at least partially through some practical, real-time work. And in a world where the best was perceived as ULTIMATE® virtuality, people didn’t want to be condemned to a daily diet of reality. As ever, people wanted the latest, the best, the ULTIMATE®. The PROJECT⌂ was this desire made manifest. And currently only for the privileged few. Project Kids were told Just do your tailored ‘productive’ work and everything will be well. Okay to be in The PROJECT⌂ you had to give up your past and your family but you were getting the ULTIMATE® present and were a significant part of the ULTIMATE® future. Life didn’t get better than that, surely? It was enough and more than enough for most Project Kids but not for Nike. He still felt unsettled by something he couldn’t quite put his finger on. And so he asked questions. About things he shouldn’t. In a world where History no longer had a meaning, Nike couldn’t help himself asking ‘historical’ based questions. And while ULTIMATE® prided itself on tailoring ‘productive’ work schedules to specific interests, you couldn’t stay focussed on history all the time. History was an ULTIMATE® no go area. While Nike was coded a high-risk participant, in fact he was of great value to the ULTIMATE® system because his data tested the system algorithms to their capacity. Inevitably he was on a high priority counselling list which meant that his social counsellors were meant to monitor him much more closely than your average Kid. Which they did. So in point of fact Nike was more controlled than most Project Kids. Of course he didn’t know that. He thought he was playing the system and the system knew it was playing him. It was not a long term sustainable situation. It was like a very complex game of chess. For example Nike would artlessly ask questions such as, ‘When did The PROJECT⌂ start?’ and elicit the standard ULTIMATE® response, THE PROJECT: History. The PROJECT⌂ started in 2016 though the seeds of its existence were developed in History through the many consumer based surveys and networks of the early new millennium. In 2016 ULTIMATE® technology through the 3 generation development of the US™ screen system brought about the possibility of setting up the virtual environment of THE PROJECT⌂ in a physical form for a selected number of the chosen generation. What the standard ULTIMATE® response didn’t say about The PROJECT⌂ was that the selection process was rigorous in some very unusual ways. Ways which involved economic transaction. Project Kids thought they were special, chosen, but with no idea how they had been chosen. ULTIMATE® took a pro-active stance as well, seeking out the ‘right’ kind of kids and buying them from parents who were struggling in a post recession era. The same parents were often using the newly legalized ULTIMATE® drug HABIT∞ to excess. It was the designer drug to end all highs and in the mid 20’s it put parents into the kind of debt that made refusal no option. The early 21st century obsession with celebrity soon spiralled out of control as a generation who wanted to be ‘celebrities’ were offered the virtual opportunity through their offspring just by signing them up to The PROJECT⌂. Usually Project Kids were either the product of parental obsession with the celebrity culture or they were sold to feed their parents drugs habit. They were victims of the twin desires for money and fame. Not so unusual. Not so special. Nike could keep asking questions till he was blue in the face, or ran out of credits on this ‘productive’ credit line, and he would never find the little nuggets of information that really gave the meaning to the subject. He could find out that, THE PROJECT prides itself on the quality of its accommodation. As an explanation of the Project House he lived in. Project Houses were modelled on the best student accommodation possible in the Universities they had replaced. Nike’s own accommodation had indeed been student accommodation at the now defunct University of Edinburgh. The information he’d worked to receive did not explain why this method of living was adopted. There was no explanation of why University had become a virtual consumer camp. It was the sort of question no-one, not even Nike, thought to ask. Everyone was kept so busy with all the meaningless questions they lost the will or the skill to ask questions with meaning. This represented one of ULTIMATE®’s better tactical advances. The whole relationship between questions and answers had changed since Einstein said ‘the important thing is never to stop questioning’ and Levi-Strauss proposed that ‘the wise man doesn’t give the right answers, he poses the right questions.’ (That’s Levi-Strauss the French anthropologist not the manufacturer of the branded jeans.) ULTIMATE® had invested a lot of time and money in question and answer theory. And Project Kids were the testing ground for making sure that the population would only ask the right kind of questions to receive the ULTIMATE® answers. For example: ULTIMATE® had a vested interest that the question ‘Why do we have barcodes?’ would be rendered into a meaningless definition and ‘historical’ explanation suitable to the ‘productive’ work schedule appropriate to Nike’s developmental plan and, for the cost of some 30 credits, give the answer: BARCODES: Definition. Primitive versions were developed in history as a machine-readable code in the form of a pattern of stripes printed on and identifying a commodity. ULTIMATE® developed this technology and utilized a form of tattooing to implant the coding into the body, thus making the interactive process between consumer and computer one-step and constantly available. ULTIMATE® barcodes are a fundamental tool in the US™ system, allowing what used to be a primitive wi-fi capacity dependent on hardware, to become fully personally integrated. Nike got answers from his questions, but no substance. Although he might have thought he knew the ‘history’ of the ßß™ (body barcode), he didn’t know the meaning. And he certainly didn’t understand that it was the meaning that mattered. He lived with the practicality, accepting it as normal. In the ULTIMATE® world Project Kids were amongst the first to have the barcodes technology embedded into their wrists. In 2020 ßß™’s were generally considered a progression of the body art tattoo fashion which in 2014 had seen all the best Brands find ways to encode themselves onto your body in a physical manifestation of personal consumer choice. By 2015, going into a shop such as Marks and Spencer was easy when you waved your M&S barcoded arm at the security guard, who smiled and offered you a discount. You didn’t need money because the M&S symbol was scanned and immediately withdrew the money from your bank account. The days of real money were numbered. The days of reality were numbered. ULTIMATE® changed the shopping experience too. Real shops were highly inefficient. Real products were expensive. A transition period saw all shops become more like Argos warehouses and pretty quickly the requirement to actually go into a shop and buy a real product became redundant as people could do all their virtual shopping for virtual product online. The basics were still produced of course, but when food became ULTIMATE® food and clothing became ULTIMATE® clothing and all brands became ULTIMATE® brands, retail ‘therapy’ changed in a fundamental way. Virtual retail therapy was born and flourished. The ULTIMATE® ßß™, worn by the likes of Nike, while effectively a sophisticated interface device, also acted as a tracker. So as long as there was a US™ somewhere in the vicinity, you could tell where the Project Kid was. By 2030 the system had not been rolled out universally, but it was coming. And there was a time when people worried about carrying identity cards! Project Kids had what might have been considered in the twentieth century the life of a permanent teenager. They spent all day every day playing online games or engaging in chat rooms, forums, online surveys and the like. Day in, day out they lived their virtual lives under ULTIMATE® scrutiny effectively functioning as guinea pigs for all the best and newest technology that ULTIMATE® had to offer. It was part of ULTIMATE®’s motivational algorithm. They were the geese who would lay the golden egg. But they were battery farmed geese, kept in a gilded cage, creations of a system it was no longer possible to question or challenge in a meaningful way. To ask, ‘why did The PROJECT⌂ come into being?’ would elicit the answer, at a price of 20 credits that: The PROJECT⌂ is ULTIMATE®'s way of changing the world for the better. After spending 20 credits of your hard earned ‘productive’ work on that, is it any surprise that Nike didn’t pursue with the question ‘Better for whom?’ It would be better for ULTIMATE® that's for sure. Nike was resiliently inquisitive, though lacking direction and focus. On a whim, when he tried to find out what ULTIMATE® actually was, he would lose credits for a whole hour’s ‘productive’ work for the answer: ULTIMATE®’s mission statement is that social advance and scientific development go hand in hand. When foolish enough to ask ‘What is a corporation?’ he got the standard response: CORPORATION, OR COMPANY: DEFINITION. A group of people authorized to act as an individual and recognized in law as an entity, especially in business. The question that should have been asked might be: ‘Correction. What is the point of a corporation?’ This was the kind of question the US™ avoided answering. Fortunately, before arriving at that potential scenario, Nike normally gave up on his questioning and went playing Intergalactic enemy warfare to raise more credits. The system won again. Questioning a system has rarely ever been considered appropriate behaviour for members of that system. ULTIMATE® was no different and when Nike did it his actions were flagged up for Pryce to take special notice of. Which he did, usually. But just sometimes, Pryce didn’t take the kind of action he was supposed to in these circumstances. Because however much Pryce found Nike a pain in the ass, he also had a sneaking respect for his questions. Sometimes he even thought about using his higher level access to get answers with more depth. Not necessarily more meaning, but more depth. His rationale was that maybe he could impress Nike if he did so. He imagined the day when he might see a flicker of admiration come at him out of Nike’s eyes, instead of what he thought he saw. It seemed like pity or disdain but might just have been adolescent apathy. Somewhat inevitably, the questions Nike started asking after his trip to his Nan’s wirelessly transferred themselves to Pryce’s system and flagged up ‘a referral’. The consequence was that Pryce had a situation to sort out. Again. Sometimes Pryce thought Nike just asked these questions to get him to come running. It felt like Nike was pulling his strings. He didn’t like the feeling. He thought about not going. But with Graham on his back, he thought it best to avoid any further potential problems. He didn’t need another dressing down this week. So Pryce trudged to The PROJECT⌂ House where Nike, Omo and Flora lived. On the short walk, he tried to develop an optimistic viewpoint, reflecting that at least he now had a purpose to his day’s work. The optimism didn’t last the distance of the walk however and Pryce returned to his prior conviction that it was just Nike jerking him around again after all. He had to stop deluding himself that Nike was giving out a cry for help, or call for comradeship. It was not a request for guidance, it was just Nike being Nike. Pryce’s relationship with Nike was complex. He didn’t see himself as a father figure, after all families had been abolished but he nonetheless felt a special bond. Pryce often looked at Nike and wondered how similar he had been at the same age. Pryce had been obsessed with the twists and turns of the psychological “thriller” genre whereas Nike played ULTIMATE® versions of such games obsessively on the US™. Yet Nike took psychological gaming to a whole new level. Sometimes it seemed to Pryce as if the boundaries were blurred. Pryce wondered whether life was all a game to Nike and his generation? And then he questioned whether he’d had any more of a grip on the distinction between fantasy and reality at that age. Or any age. Despite all the differences, in more subtle ways their concerns were quite similar. If Pryce and Nike had realised how much they had in common they would have been surprised. Pryce had his own set of keys to The Project House. It was part of the deal that he could come and go as he liked. Privacy was not an ULTIMATE® concept. The kids were all in their rooms, as they should be, engaged in ‘productive’ work. Their existence was essentially virtual, contained in their own ULTIMATE® space. They didn’t have a scheduled meeting with Pryce due so they were not expecting an interruption. Not wanting to disturb Omo and Flora, Pryce went straight to Nike’s room. He did pause to knock on the door first. Even though it wasn’t in the handbook, Pryce was old fashioned enough to think you should have some respect for personal space. ‘Damn.’ Nike’s response to Pryce’s entry. ‘Sorry?’ Nike turned round. ‘Oh, it’s just that I was about at level 24 and you put me off…’ Nike grinned. ‘No hard feelings?’ ‘No, but you could bump me twenty credits for the inconvenience.’ Silence. ‘This isn’t a scheduled meeting is it?’ Nike asked, finally wondering why Pryce was there. ‘No. But we need to reassess your ‘productive’ schedule in the light of the topic areas you’re asking about, because, as you say, you’re running low on credits. Again.’ Nike just grinned some more. ‘Can’t help asking questions,’ he said. ‘Is there a problem with that? I thought that’s what the task was. Ask questions?’ As ever, Pryce intended to follow the standard question format when he started his ‘productive’ interview with Nike. But as ever, it didn’t work out that way. Within seconds he had the uncomfortably familiar feeling that Nike was bending the interview his way. And it was taking Pryce all his energy to keep on track. Pryce took a deep breath, determined to stay in control. ‘So what is this line of questioning you’re following, about?’ ‘What do you mean?’ ‘The questions about The PROJECT⌂ and ULTIMATE®? Why are you asking these questions?’ ‘Because I want to know.’ ‘But what do you want to know. And why? ‘ ‘Why not?’ Pryce paused. Nike was just playing with him now. Probably just bored because he was low on credits and couldn’t interface with the US™ properly any more without doing some ‘productive’ work. And it seemed Nike was allergic to ‘productive’ work. He was a pain in the butt. Pryce shrugged away the small feeling of regret which suggested that if he had more knowledge himself, if he could have given Nike an impressive answer, he would raise himself in status and Nike would start to see him as someone to respect. As ever, he was confused by his feelings when he tried to analyse them. Maybe it wasn’t regret. Maybe he didn’t want to form a meaningful relationship with Nike, maybe he just wanted, for once, to beat him at the game. ‘Ah, it’s just because you think you shouldn’t? Just to be awkward. Do you have to be awkward? You are in a privileged position here, isn’t that enough for you?’ Like so many adults before him who wanted but didn’t know how to gain respect from young people, Pryce resorted to a tactic that came across as patronising. And was not going to work. ‘How do I know it’s privileged?’ Nike grunted. Pryce wasn’t falling into that trap. He readjusted his position. He tried friendly, but again it came across as patronising. He really wasn’t good at this. He wished he was. ‘Look Nike, I’m here to help you. But we need to understand what your interests are in order to tailor your ‘productive’ work schedule into something fun for you and useful for us.’ Nike rolled his eyes. Same old same old. Except, for an instant he caught sight of an off guard Pryce. What he read in Pryce’s face at that moment was a man desperately trying to connect. Nike didn’t know how to interpret this and for a fleeting instant he thought that maybe Pryce found it all as much rubbish as he did. Was it possible Pryce might not be the enemy? Could they actually have something in common? But Nike didn’t have enough experience or understanding of empathy to create his own answers for these silent questions. He reverted to type. It’s a game. He’s the enemy. I have to win. ‘But Pryce, the problem is, I don’t know what I really want to know till I start asking questions, and then I never seem to get far enough along the questioning before I run out of credits….’ He saw a flicker of something beneath the counsellor calm. It could have been understanding. It could have been fear. ‘I think I get you,’ Pryce responded. It was just playing for time. ‘So what can we do about it?’ Nike demanded. Never one to sit back once he had the slightest advantage. And he read the situation as one where he could take the advantage if he was smart enough. So he did. ‘Uh…’ Pryce had lost his way. ‘Maybe if we went through a session together,’ Nike suggested, ‘so you can see my problem.’ Pryce thought about this. Sounded harmless enough. He was still trying to work out how Nike had changed the situation on him. He was supposed to be in control. He was the one who should make the suggestions. He gave up. ‘Okay. Shoot. Pick a topic.’ Nike hummed and haah’ed over the options on his US™ screen. ‘See, I might ask… what’s the point of a corporation?’ Pryce intervened before the question was logged. ‘No, you need to be more specific. What is the point isn’t a good question type.’ ‘Why not?’ ‘Uh… because it’s a few levels in and you need to start general and work towards specific.’ ‘Oh. Okay. Can you show me?’ ‘Yes. You are in the Functional section of your ‘productive’ schedule so you need to be asking about the existence and working of things, not their point or purpose. And you need to remember that you are asking Historical questions. Which you should avoid.’ ‘Why?’ Nike smiled. He knew full well why. Pryce was not going to be drawn on that one. He carried on, ‘For example, if you want to know what a corporation does, you might ask, ‘Give me the definition of a corporation.’ Nike’s US™ obliged. CORPORATION, OR COMPANY: Definition. A group of people authorized to act as an individual and recognized in law as an entity, especially in business. ‘I hope that’s on your credits,’ Nike observed. Because I’ve already asked that question and I don’t know where to go with the answer. ‘Yes, these are all on my credits, for training purposes,’ Pryce reassured him. ‘Okay, then can I ask why?’ ‘Why what?’ ‘Why would you make a group of people able to act like an individual?’ ‘I think that’s too deep.. you won’t have the credits to get there in one step and you’ll have to go through a lot of steps to get to the answer. It would be better to ask – what was the historic function of a corporation?’ Pryce forgot until it was too late he’d just told Nike to avoid questions on History. CORPORATION: Historic Function. To act in the best interests of its shareholders. Specifically in maximizing profit. ‘You see,’ Pryce pointed out, keen to steer away from History again. ‘Now you can get more specific. You can find out about shareholders or about profit.’ Pryce thought he’d delivered a clear, simple explanation of how to use questioning theory to achieve a result. Without any real purposive aspect to the question. As it stood, Pryce had forgotten and Nike had never known what more or less every late twentieth century person took for granted; that the point of a corporation or limited company is simply to get bigger, richer, more all-encompassing. To make a mint for its shareholders. It was one of those ‘factoids’ of life that had become obsolete in the ULTIMATE® era. If either Pryce or Nike had thought it important they might have asked who the shareholders of ULTIMATE® actually are. After all, there's got to be someone behind the company. Someone living exceptionally well off the profits. But it wasn’t a question either of them thought interesting enough to ask. And that showed the success with which ULTIMATE® operated. Pryce had been well trained in the structure of question formation and he was passing on that knowledge to the wayward Nike. But the meaning behind the questions was of no benefit to ULTIMATE® and therefore training would not be offered in asking questions to obtain personal meaning. And Pryce’s next question was really asked in order to reaffirm his role as mentor, an attempt to gain some respect from the young man who could usually run rings round him. It wasn’t a question calculated to derive meaning. ‘What is profit?’ Pryce asked. The US™ screen obliged once more. PROFIT: Definition. An advantage or benefit. In History financial gain: an excess of returns over outlay. The bedrock of the failed capitalist society. ‘Uh, so what?’ Nike asked. He was bored. Pryce didn’t know when to quit. Oblivious to Nike’s boredom, Pryce was absorbed in the questions as much as in the session. Despite himself he found the analytic forms of questioning fascinating. Pitting himself against a system to gain information gave him a kick. ULTIMATE® had seen that in him all along. Maybe he was better suited to pure theory after all. But surely, surely he could get Nike interested in this too? He just had to get the boy enthused about the way you questioned. Adopt a meta-level approach. Nike had the intelligence after all, he just lacked the application. And a good mentor…. Pryce broke from the reverie and asked the next question, carried away on his own inner thoughts. ‘What does the phrase profit motive mean?’ Pryce continued. Nike didn’t have enough time to frown, realizing that his session was being hijacked, before the answer came. IN HISTORY the profit motive became seriously compromised from the year 2010 and over the following ten years ULTIMATE® social research and development put a lot of work into finding a way to rebrand the concept. Economists were tasked with finding alternatives to the money economy. A whole new version of monetary policy developed and after the Global Recession, following the collapse of not just capitalism but history, profit was down-graded to the definition of an historical concept. Effectively, in the ULTIMATE® system, profit no longer has any valid meaning. This was a nice, smart answer. And Pryce didn’t believe it for a moment. Nike, well, he wasn’t really interested. But he had to look for a way back into the game. A way to divert Pryce. Put him back in second place. So he asked, ‘What is monetary policy?’ Pryce cancelled the question. ‘Now that’, he said, ‘is another example of the way you just ask questions without really thinking through what information you want to receive.’ Nike shrugged. ‘It’s a functional question isn’t it?’ Pryce ignored this. It was just Nike being cute. ‘Just what do you want to get a definition of monetary policy for?’ Pryce asked. ‘Because I don’t know what it is,’ Nike answered. ‘It’s nothing,’ Pryce responded. ‘Nothing any more, because it was part of the failed historical economic system and it won’t give you any more useful knowledge to know the definition. Believe me.’ For one moment, Pryce understood the gulf between his generation and Nike’s. What had been his life was now History and History didn’t exist. So a huge part of his identity had been lost. What was all a game to Nike had once been a huge part of Pryce’s reality; the part he’d made his life’s decisions on. All the definitions in the ULTIMATE® world couldn’t show Nike the truth that Pryce had witnessed first hand regarding the shift in monetary policy. Following the collapse of the banks and the bankrupting of many of the western economies, people became wise to the fact that governments had supported the discredited financial institutions with their hard earned money. People became angry that public debt had spiralled and that they were forced to pay time and again for the greed and mismanagement of the banking system. Even if Pryce told Nike this, it would be a story, a fiction, not something of value or relevance to his life. It was an irrelevance in the ULTIMATE® world of 2030. The greatest reality for a previous generation had become obsolete in the face of ULTIMATE®’s social transformation. Pryce still remembered it. In 2010, people were just glad to be heading out of a recession. They could just about accept that ‘austerity’ measures would have to be put in place. That we would all have to suffer in the new style of government. The myth held for a while. But by 2015 when ordinary people realised just how much and what they were being expected to pay back for a party that only the banks seemed to have been invited to, they got very, very angry and this anger threatened democracy and freedom and rule of law. Of course Pryce remembered. It had been his life. However, in 2030, if people knew what was good for them, they had long stopped thinking about these failed systems and instead they worked within the ULTIMATE® system, towards a brighter future. Ruminating on a lost past was not the way to happiness. Pryce was tasked with teaching Nike that the past did not provide answers which would give him a ‘productive’ life as part of The PROJECT⌂. Pryce checked himself and proceeded with caution. ‘I think it would be better if we could find another kind of topic for you to work on, Nike, and get you away from history for a while. I’m sure part of your frustration with it is that it’s essentially just pointless… let’s find something you are really interested in and work from there.’ Pryce realised he’d overstepped the mark in his futile attempt to gain Nike’s respect. And that he was possibly projecting his own desires onto Nike. Poor psychology. Poor counselling skills. He needed to accept that their worlds were fundamentally different because their generations were worlds apart. In the battle for reality, Pryce’s “real” world had lost out to ULTIMATE®S “virtual” alternative. And that was Nike’s world. Pryce had to work with Nike in the ULTIMATE® world, not try and impress him with knowledge of a world that no longer existed. He reflected as to whether maybe it was his fault that Nike had become obsessed with History. It was certainly up to him to rectify the fault. Nike shrugged and grunted in affirmation. ‘Whatever.’ ‘Okay. We’ll sort it out at the next scheduled meeting’ Pryce agreed. ‘Till then, why don’t you try and get to level 30 of your gaming. INTERGALACTIC ENEMY WARFARE isn’t it?’ Nike pulled a face. ‘Credits?’ ‘Oh of course… I’ll put a hundred gaming credits on your account. That should see you through till our meeting.’ ‘Thanks’ ‘And Nike’ ‘Yeah?’ ‘Use it for gaming NOT for asking questions…. ‘ ‘Sure thing.’ E. HAPPY BIRTHDAY - RIP
Helen answered the knock on the door. Archie from next door stood outside, holding a square cardboard box. ‘It’s for you. Came to the wrong room.’ Archie was a man of few words. For one moment, just a short moment, Helen wondered if this was Archie’s inept way of giving her a present but looking at him more closely she realized he was simply annoyed that he’d been disrupted from his Memory Bank. Helen and her birthday were nothing to him. ‘Oh. Thanks. Sorry for the trouble.’ He shrugged. ‘And I’ll have your chair back by seven.’ Archie peered round the door, ‘Not here yet?’ Helen shook her head. ‘Young people.’ Archie snorted and headed off back to his room, leaving Helen looking at the large, square cardboard box he had delivered. There was no sign of posting, no indication to where it had come from or what it was. She put it down on her table and was about to open it when there was another knock on the door. ‘Happy birthday, Nan.’ It was Nick, along with Omo and Flora. Fulfilling their promise. ‘It’s so good to see you.’ Helen found herself embracing all three of them. They all took it, though it was unclear which one of them was most embarrassed by the show of affection. It was clear, however, that Nick had primed his friends to indulge his Nan on this, her 70th birthday. He was still young enough to believe that seventy was quite an age, especially for someone in an ULTIMATE® Home who could not be expected to live much beyond seventy two. Statistically speaking. This was a significant event for all of them. Nick cleared his throat. ‘We didn’t know what to get you, Nan.’ ‘That’s okay. You didn’t need to get me anything. You being here is enough.’ ‘Yeah, but a present. It’s traditional, isn’t it?’ ‘Tradition. I hope you haven’t been wasting your credits finding out about tradition? No time for the past, eh?’ Nike shuffled awkwardly… ‘Anyway. There is one thing you could give me. Well, do for me, if you know how.’ ‘What?’ Helen pointed at the US™. ‘It’s still playing up. I wondered…’ Omo butted in. ‘I’m sorry, we really don’t know how to fix this.. you need to get a technician.’ Helen laughed. ‘Oh no. I wasn’t wanting you to fix it. I was wondering if you knew how to..’ she whispered, ‘switch it off.’ There was a silence. Switch it off. Who switched off their US™? Could you do it? Why would you want to? It would be like turning off a part of yourself. Losing a fundamental part of your identity. Omo shuddered at the thought. Nick laughed. ‘Well… we could try,’ he went up to the US™ screen… waved his hands around in front of it, fiddled around the side and touched a few things, seemingly at random. Nothing as exciting as a flash or bang happened, but the screen’s images scrambled, pixelated and, well, you might say died. At any rate it went blank. Omo and Flora stared, amazed. ‘Is it off?’ Helen mouthed. ‘Why did you want it off?’ Nick asked loudly, smiling. He waved his barcoded arm at the screen, but no response. ‘Well, I’d say it’s off.’ Nick responded affably. ‘If it’s not robbing me of credits, that’s good enough for me.’ ‘Thank you.’ Helen beamed at her grandson. ‘I was hoping it could be a day like the old days. A day without interference from ULTIMATE®. A real day. Just for once.’ Omo and Flora looked uncomfortable. ‘Fair enough.’ Nick was unfazed by her request. It was a small enough gift for his Nan. And after all, it hadn’t cost him anything. At least nothing he knew about. ‘It means, I hope it means, we can talk more… freely. And whatever questions,’ she looked at Nick, ‘you feel compelled to ask, I can answer without the inconvenience of you losing knowledge credits.’ Nike smiled at Helen. She was pretty cool, this old woman. He was glad he’d come. It might be fun after all. Certainly it was going to be different from the usual day spent doing ‘productive’ work as part of The PROJECT⌂. He knew that being a Project Kid was a privilege, but it didn’t feel like it most of the time. Then again, he didn’t have anything to compare it against. Not that he could remember. ‘Thanks, Nan.’ They sat down. Awkwardly at first, the generations with nothing in common. And it was to break the ice that Nike asked the question, ‘What’s in the box, Nan?’ ‘Oh, I don’t know. I’d forgotten about it.’ Helen turned her attention to the box resplendent on the table. ‘Is it a present?’ Nick asked ‘I don’t know. I suppose I should open it.’ Helen gingerly did so. The kids sat there, in awe. A real live birthday present. What could it be? They all gasped, even Helen, when she opened the package and saw what was inside. It was a birthday cake. A big, round birthday cake, with icing and writing on it. ‘Oh my.’ Helen was speechless. ‘What is it?’ Flora asked. ‘It’s a cake. A birthday cake. Traditional, isn’t it, Nan?’ Nike was proud he knew more than Flora. And he was impressed by the size of the cake. ‘Is it an ULTIMATE® birthday cake?’ Omo asked. He thought perhaps this was something ULTIMATE® did for their old folks. Young people didn’t care about cakes, or birthdays or presents; they got all they needed and wanted in the normal course of interactions and ‘productive’ labour, but old people, they lived in a different time, it might be a nice gesture to do something to remind them of the old days… ‘No.’ Helen was stunned. ‘It’s real.’ ‘Real?’ Nike rolled his eyes. What was it with his Nan and her bizarre understanding of the word real. Of course it was real. There it was, sitting in front of her. He looked more closely at it. ‘Hey, Nan, there’s writing on it.’ He read it out, ‘ Helen. 70. R.I.P.’ He paused, then couldn’t help himself, ‘what does it mean?’ ‘R.I.P?’ Helen had tears in her eyes. ‘It’s a message Nick. A message from the past.’ ‘How can that be? Where did it come from, Nan?’ Nike was confused. More confused than he usually was. Nike was confused and Omo was feeling uncomfortable. Flora took charge of the situation. ‘Tell us about it,’ she said, ‘we’d love to hear.’ Helen took a deep breath and began to tell. ‘I don’t know where it’s come from. How could I? But the message makes me think it could be from your grandfather.’ ‘But he’s dead, Nan.’ ‘I know he is. But R.I.P… I don’t know who else..’ Helen couldn’t allow herself to believe that Randall might be alive, but she couldn’t come up with any other rational explanation. She dismissed the thought. She was just being emotional. It was silly. She was a silly old woman, confusing the past and the present. ‘What does R.I.P mean?’ Nike asked, thankful that he’d managed to disable the US™ screen. Otherwise he’d have lost half his month’s credits by now. This was too strange a situation not to ask questions. ‘It used to mean Rest In Peace,’ Helen laughed, ‘Yes. It would be something you put on a wreath when someone died.’ Omo squirmed. ‘That’s a bit sick. Sending you a cake telling you you’ve died.’ Omo was unsettled and really puzzled. What could it be if it wasn’t an ULTIMATE® cake? And if it was? There was a dark side to ULTIMATE® he knew that, even if people didn’t like to talk about it. ‘No, Omo. It’s better than that. R.I.P is also the initials of… are you sure that screen’s off Nick?’ Nike nodded. ‘Would you check?’ Nike asked loudly, ‘What does R.I.P stand for?’ and waved his barcoded arm at the US™ screen. Nothing. Not even a flicker. He smiled at Helen. ‘It stands for the Rural Interests Party,’ she said. The kids looked blank. ‘What’s that?’ Nike of course. He couldn’t help himself. Helen didn’t know where to begin. ‘Let’s cut the cake first, have a drink and I’ll tell you.’ That sounded like a good idea. They cut the cake. Each took a large slice. It was incredible. They had never tasted anything like it before. ‘That’s what I mean by a real cake,’ Helen said. ‘How can it taste like that?’ Flora was amazed. ‘It’s a type of cake called a Victoria sponge.’ Helen replied. ‘It’s made with eggs, real eggs and butter, real butter and flour and I’m guessing sugar beet, cause I don’t know how they would get cane sugar, and raspberries, real raspberries….’ ‘It certainly doesn’t taste like any cake I’ve ever had,’ Omo said, licking his lips. ‘No. This is real food, made with real ingredients, not the synthetic stuff we usually eat,’ Helen smiled, ‘It’s a real taste of the past for you all.’ They polished off the cake between them. And even the tea they politely drank to wash it down with tasted better. Helen looked at the empty plate, as Nike licked the last of the raspberry off the knife. ‘No evidence left, that’s handy,’ Helen said. ‘Now, I’ll tell you about the R.I.P.’ They sat back, ready to listen. But not ready for what they were about to hear. ‘Before ULTIMATE® came to power, during the economic collapse, there was a last ditch attempt to find another way, to hold onto the old ways. Rural people, who didn’t want to lose their way of life, banded together. It started before that, with fuel protests and moved onto trade protests and…’ Helen noticed that the kids were looking blank. ‘You have no idea what I’m talking about do you?’ They shook their heads. ‘Doesn’t matter, Nan. Just keep telling us.’ ‘Okay. Well, it used to be the case that people split into rural folk and urban people. And the urban people made money and consumed products and the rural people farmed animals and grew crops and lived with nature not with commerce. And even though agriculture became an industry and then was destroyed as an industry though BSE and Foot and Mouth and quotas and GM crops and finally ULTIMATE® creating the alternative to real food, by synthesizing everything, there were people who still wanted to live this real life. And they formed the Rural Interests Party, to try and protect their way of life.’ ‘It started off peacefully enough. We lived on farms or smallholdings, and just didn’t buy into the consumer capitalist model. We tried to be self-sufficient and mind our own business and keep to ourselves, and for a while ULTIMATE® left us alone. But not for ever. I don’t know what changed things. Maybe all the urban people couldn’t let go of their dreams for a rural idyll and ULTIMATE® deemed that RIP made them uncomfortable and less compliant to the ULTIMATE® way of life. Maybe they just wanted the space we took up. It’s possible ULTIMATE® never saw us as a threat but just wanted everyone to be their consumers. Whatever the reason, things changed about 2014 and the ULTIMATE® way became hard to resist. Before then we were kind of left alone. They might call us names, like hippies, or gypo’s or something, but they didn’t really bother us and we didn’t bother them. Certainly by 2018 things turned ugly and people in RIP began to challenge the ULTIMATE® way of life.’ ‘How?’ Nike couldn’t imagine how you challenged ULTIMATE®. ‘First it was just an outright rejection of citizenship. Peaceful marches, organised activities. But pretty quickly it turned to violence. I was never for that. I believed that if we just left them alone, they’d leave us alone and we’d get forgotten and things would be all right. Well, things would be pretty tough, because we had to take a big drop in our standard of living what with the new regime, but it was preferable to becoming part of the whole ULTIMATE® world. But that was when we thought there was a choice, an alternative. In 2016 RIP had split into two main factions, one which just dropped off the radar you might say, keeping their heads down and losing their rights, identities and profiles within the system and the other of which decided to confront ULTIMATE® head on, using their technology, tactics, and marketing. It was in danger of becoming a brand in its own right. But a brand that wasn’t ULTIMATE® which by that time was more or less unheard of.’ ‘Your grandfather, Randall, didn’t like the idea that RIP might get sucked into ULTIMATE® the way everything else seemed to. He’d got involved before your mum (she looked at Nike) left and took you to The PROJECT⌂. He’d tried to steer a middle path, but after…. well, between 2016 and 2018 he got involved in what they called terrorist activities, him and a few others, but really he was just trying to protect what was his. Protect me, and your parents and you and keep us safe, away from ULTIMATE®. But the problem is, when you challenge a system like that overtly, they come looking for you. And they did.’ ‘What did they do?’ Nike asked. ‘Well, they burned our farm and took away your grandfather and…’ Helen paused, still unable to say it, ‘and killed him. They sent back his watch with a message telling me that he was dead.’ ‘And my dad?’ ‘Do you remember your dad?’ ‘I’m not sure. I think I might. I haven’t thought about it in years.’ Nothing in Nike’s PROJECT⌂ life encouraged him to think about this past. He had no memories of it in his Memory Bank and his few questions were always blocked. But he had a sort of shadowy feeling, somewhere in his brain, that told him he might remember something, if he tried hard enough. ‘There’s time for that. Not now. I can tell you things about him Nick. But I don’t want to get you in trouble. We’ll have to be careful. For now, you need to know that your dad did not want you to go to The PROJECT⌂. He and your mum split up over it.’ She took a deep breath, trying to keep the raw emotion sparked off by the memories under control. ‘Your dad went off looking for your grandad, but when he came back, he assured me that grandad was dead.’ ‘Killed by ULTIMATE®?’ Omo couldn’t believe it. ULTIMATE® had saved the world, not killed innocent people who just happened to disagree with them. If Nike’s grandad was killed by ULTIMATE® he must have done something pretty wrong. But Omo realized that now was not the time to voice this opinion. Best keep his mouth shut and see what happened next. Helen continued, ‘Yes, by ULTIMATE®. I know it’s hard for you to understand now, even more than ten years on, because they don’t broadcast it around any more but the ULTIMATE® death squads were real and very, very efficient. And they still exist.’ That was scary. And probably not true. Omo couldn’t believe it. Helen was old, probably going senile and certainly telling him things he didn’t want to hear. Without any sort of proof. Now he understood why she’d wanted the US™ screen off. The US™ screen wouldn’t corroborate anything she was saying. He was sure about that. He might even ask some questions later, on his own, just to be sure. ‘And what happened to my dad?’ Nike wouldn’t let it go. Chip off the old block there. No wonder he was always in trouble, Omo thought. He looked at his flatmate with new eyes. He didn’t want the trouble to spread his way, and he was beginning to think this was inevitable. How did you go about changing your living accommodation? Pryce would know, if he ever dared to ask him. ‘Well, after your mum left, taking you to The PROJECT⌂ he was gone for months looking for your grandad, and when he came back he tried to get the farm working again, but it was hard and his heart was no longer in it. I helped where I could, and we struggled on for a couple of years but then in 2020 he disappeared too. They told me he’d drowned himself. That’s when I checked myself into an ULTIMATE® home. My life was over. There was no hope. I’d lost my husband, my children, my grandson… what was there to fight for any more? I’m not proud of it, but I was ill and frightened and… I couldn’t see a way to carry on. I gave in. I know it.’ ‘I think you did the sensible thing.’ Flora hadn’t spoken in a while, but she had that girl’s knack of trying to make sure that everyone felt comfortable. Omo was relieved. He knew someone should speak but he didn’t know what to say. Nike looked stunned. He was still trying to compute the information. ‘Well, I did what I did, and I’ve been rotting here for the last ten years. And then, today…’ Helen pointed at the empty cake box. ‘This. A sign.’ ‘But what’s it a sign of?’ Nike was bursting to know. ‘I don’t know. Maybe you will help me find out?’ ‘How? How can I find out?’ ‘I really think we should be going,’ Omo finally spoke. He knew this was getting out of hand. He knew Pryce wouldn’t like this. Come to think of it, he didn’t know if Pryce had even sanctioned this visit. They could be in big trouble already and they were certainly going to be in bigger trouble if they hung around here any longer. He just knew that. And however much he liked Nike, this was out of his league. Omo just wanted a quiet life. ‘Yes, yes of course you must go. You don’t want to waste your time here with an old lady’s memories,’ Helen smiled. ‘It was good of you to come. It’s certainly been a… memorable birthday.’ The kids got ready to go. It felt like a balloon had been deflated. Not that they knew what balloons were. No one needed balloons these days. No parties, no balloons. But they had a sick feeling in their stomachs that couldn’t be explained by the rich, real cake. A feeling like something good had turned very sour, and a lack of understanding why it had happened. The feeling might be described as fear. It was an emotion that ULTIMATE® was trying to breed out of the Project Kids. Like all emotions. What did they need emotion for? Emotion wouldn’t make them more ‘productive’ after all. Omo made sure that he avoided a repeat of that embarrassing embrace by scooting out the door as quickly as he could. Flora submitted to a peck on the cheek from Helen but followed him as fast as was polite. Nike hung back. Helen held onto him. Kissed him. And somehow, he wasn’t embarrassed. She also put something into his pocket as she whispered to him. ‘Come back. On your own. I want to talk to you about this. I think this could mean your grandfather is alive. I need your help. Please.’ Looking back on it, as they sat in their common room later, Nike couldn’t believe what had happened that afternoon. None of it seemed plausible or real by any definition of the word he could comprehend. But he put his hand in his pocket and felt the watch Helen had put in there. His grandfather’s watch. He didn’t dare take it out while Omo and Flora were in the room but he was going to look at it as soon as he was on his own. And he was going to go back to his Nan to find out the truth. That brought him up short. The truth. What was truth? What was real? What was his Nan about to get him into? TRUTH: Definition. The quality of or state of being true. What is accepted as true is what is in accordance with fact or reality. Nike realized that these definitions were all just part of ULTIMATE®’s way of getting more ‘productive’ work out of you. Using up more of your credits going round and round in circles. Defining and re-defining things in terms of each other ad infinitum. Pointless. Meaningless, as Flora kept telling him. Helen sat alone after the kids had gone trying to make sense of what had happened too. Things hadn’t turned out the way she’d expected, anticipated or planned. The cake had brought a random element into proceedings. With ULTIMATE®, life was predictable, and today had certainly not been predictable. She thought about the cake itself. It was surely a sign. A message proving that somewhere, somehow, someone from RIP was still active and still remembered her. Wanted her to know that. Wanted something from her? But what? She didn’t dare to hope that Randall could be alive, but someone, somewhere had something to tell her. And this was the first contact. She’d have to be very careful though. She had no idea what she was getting into. Or what she was about to get Nick into. But the boy had a right to know. Surely. About his family. About the other life. The world that ULTIMATE® had tried to kill. The world his mother had sold him out of. You might say she was giving her child a chance of a better future, but the way Helen saw it, her daughter in law had sold her grandson, to a live experiment. And that was wrong. Helen didn’t know how she would give Nick the information that far from giving him up to The PROJECT⌂ to ensure he lived a better more privileged life, Lauren had sold him for a fix of drugs. But she knew one day she would have to. The memory was every bit as shocking as the original event. They were at home one day late in 2016. Torquil was desperate but not as desperate as the gaunt Lauren who needed her next fix. ‘You can’t take him,’ Torquil pleaded, knowing that Lauren could and would do whatever she wanted. She always had. ‘Dad, stop her.’ ‘I’ve got legal rights,’ Lauren spat. ‘He’s my son. He deserves to live a proper life, not the weirdo alternative life you people are subjecting him to.’ There was a standoff in the sitting room. The young Nick became more and more distressed as he was tugged between his parents, his grandparents shocked but unable to intervene. Lauren held her son fiercely. ‘I’ve got ULTIMATE® on my side,’ she said, showing Randall the contract she’d signed. ‘It should have been signed by us both,’ Torquil said. His father showed him the contract. With his name on it. ‘I never signed it.’ Torquil was blazing. ‘I would never…’ ‘If you don’t let me take him, I’ll make sure that ULTIMATE® know all about you and….’ The threat was unspecific but it was enough. There was nothing reasonable people could do in this unbelievably unreasonable situation. Clearly Lauren would stop at nothing. ‘Help me, dad,’ Torquil begged. ‘We have to let him go.’ Randall replied, stern and shocked. And within minutes Lauren, and a confused Nick, were gone. That was when the cracks really began to show. The first time Randall couldn’t save his family from ULTIMATE®. The first time a son realised his father wasn’t invincible. The first time Helen thought her father might be right that you can’t fight city hall. Helen was woken by a knocking on her door. It was a somewhat irate Archie, looking for his chair. It was seven thirty and she’d promised he’d have it back by seven. Not that he needed it for anything, but it was his property and she should have returned it. All evidence of the cake was gone. Archie noticed the blank screen, however. ‘I’ll report that to the wardens,’ he said.’ You don’t want to be without a functioning screen.’ Little did he know how much Helen wanted, no craved, being without a functioning US™ screen. How much she wished she was back at the farm, away from the ULTIMATE® prison they called a home. Free. In reality. Not just as a concept. Day by day, to see the sun, feel the wind and rain against your skin free. Not as a memory. As today. Every day. The cake proved that somewhere, somehow, there were people experiencing this. Who ever made the cake must have chickens, cows, a plough for the wheat field. Seeds and fertilizer, and maybe a dog…. It wasn’t just a dream. Someone was still living this life. And they knew where Helen was. And they cared that she knew. Helen had given up noticing that her room was small. What did it matter? A bed, a US™, a chest of drawers and a wardrobe. A chair to sit in. All standard issue ULTIMATE® Home products. She still didn’t like but had grown used to the institutionally insipid magnolia walls. She never thought that would happen. It was a daily reminder that Victims had no choice in the matter. They were lucky ULTIMATE® took care of them. In History people had had to rely on the state, and by 2020 Care in the community was as much a myth as Helen of Troy. Ideals died with the ₲₨ΩHist. Everything was re-invented by ULTIMATE® one little piece at a time, without anyone really noticing it, until there was nothing but ULTIMATE® everywhere.
Sure, Helen could remember a time when you still ate Mars Bars and Big Mac's, bought Persil, wore Levi's, shopped at Tesco or Walmart, and when people raved about these things. And then, later, when people became cynical and raged about these things. And then when the products became ULTIMATE® Mars Bars, ULTIMATE® Coca-Cola, ULTIMATE® credit. And after that, when caring capitalism went into its cocoon, to emerge as the new, improved, ULTIMATE® world where brands were all subservient to the ULTIMATE® brand. Where Brand Loyalty became a one party state. Everyone was branded and everyone was part of the Brand. And they loved it. In Helen’s eyes everything had become corrupted. Even memory. Memory was now mediated through ULTIMATE® and you were supposed to consume it through the US™ screen. But Helen could not bring herself to do this. The alternative was to use her own memory. She hoped that by keeping it active she could retain it, but it was a difficult task. Increasingly things only came back as little more than soundbites and the temptation was to go to the Memory Bank where you could get a full colour real-time recreation of events from your life. Helen still felt this was cheating. And avoided it as far as possible. Total avoidance was impossible. She looked at the magnolia walls. And was back ten years. ‘Magnolia, how insensitive,’ she’d said as she entered her room for the first time. The attendant hadn’t picked up on her displeasure. ‘It’s a most practical colour,’ she replied. ‘It’s institutional,’ Helen pointed out. ‘This is an institutional home,’ the attendant replied without a hint of irony before showing Helen how she could close and open the blinds and giving her basic instructions in the US™, a thing Helen hadn’t ever seen, never mind interacted with before. ‘And this is your Memory Bank….’ the attendant was running through the regular routine for new victims (sorry, residents), ‘You can place any memories in here and replay them when you like. You can link it from your…’ she tailed off, realising that Helen had not come with the requisite software to enable her to link her memories – Helen was a rural victim and had not kept up to date with technology. ‘Oh well… you’ll have a lot of time here,’ the attendant carried on, undaunted, ‘I suggest you put aside some time each day to add to the Memory Bank and before you know it the hard work will be done and you can just sit back and enjoy.’ Helen had felt there was a hidden threat even in this. Log your memories before your brain atrophies and all you can do is consume memory, not create it. And she was right. The whole thrust of the flagship ULTIMATE® ADAS® (Advanced Dementia Adaptive System) was to allow people to consume memories which they would in no way know were their own or not. Did it matter? As long as the memories kept them quiet and happy in the moment? Helen had tried to go along with the system. Okay, even at first it had been half-heartedly, but she had tried. The first thing that popped into her mind was magnolia. So magnolia it was. Left alone, she felt somewhat embarrassed, talking to herself out loud, not realising that the Memory Bank could tap right into your thoughts if you so instructed your laser embedded brandloyalty barcode chip. The one she’d just had ‘linked up’ to the central database. It itched just slightly for the first few days but you quickly forgot. No worse than the microchips people had put into their pets in the days when people had real pets with real desires to wander. Pets you could talk to so it didn’t seem you were talking to yourself. ‘Magnolia. Who could come up with such a travesty?’ she observed, ‘how could you take something as beautiful as magnolia blossom and pervert it into the most insipid paint colour known to man?’ She sighed. But that wasn’t memory. The statement led to the memory. The memory now came flashing back… It was 1990. Helen was in the garden with Catriona, then aged nearly four. The magnolia blossom was at its finest which meant it must have been early May. It was hot. They were drinking home made lemonade. ‘Me like the bubble tree,’ Catriona said. ‘I like..’ Helen corrected her instinctively, the way parents do when they are in the middle of teaching the vagaries of English to their offspring. Then she actually listened to her daughter. ‘The bubble tree?’ she asked. Catriona had pointed at the magnolia tree. ‘Bubble tree,’ she repeated, smiling. On closer inspection she was right, the magnolia blossoms did resemble bubbles. Even as she was correcting her daughter, ‘It’s called a magnolia tree, darling,’ Helen appreciated the wonder of a world where you could make up your own words, creating meaning for the first time. The wonder of childhood. And how quickly it passed. Catriona had once been wide eyed and innocent. How different from the wasted, thin, scared woman she had been the last time Helen had seen her alive. The memory broke. Helen stopped thinking. But the US™ had stored it. The summer afternoon with the lemonade, the sun and the bubble tree was there for ever. Immortalised. And available to others for a price? Helen did not believe stored memories were personal. And that both annoyed and sickened her. But what could she do about it? For a couple of years Helen had pursued a love/hate relationship with the Memory Bank. It was like itching a scab. She didn’t want to put things there but she didn’t want to forget. Well, sometimes all she wanted to do was forget, but she didn’t want to forget permanently. So she went through phases of storing vast amounts of personal memories on her bank and phases of cold turkey where she refused to think about the past. Except during those times there was really nothing else to do in the VCC except review those memories you’d already stored. It was several years into her ULTIMATE® life before Helen worked out a way to co-exist with the system. Once she discovered that you didn’t have to talk out loud to get your memories transferred, she had always been suspicious that her private thoughts would transfer themselves to the Memory Bank. Eventually, through trial and error, she found that by sitting in her chair, eyes shut as if asleep, she could think her own thoughts, relive her own memories and if she had no credits left in her Memory Bank and didn’t activate any connection via her barcode they didn’t get stored in her Memory Bank. It only worked when she was out of credits though. So she tried to stay out of credits. Which was difficult because ULTIMATE® provided all their residents, even those in VCC Homes, with a basic level of memory credits per month. It was the ULTIMATE® pension. Helen tried to use them up on trivial memories so that she could save the really personal and private stuff for herself. She wanted to think for herself in her private world, not interact with the ULTIMATE® social environment. Lately, she’d taken to using Nick’s offer to ‘trade’ them. She didn’t know how he diverted the credits and she didn’t care. He wanted them, she didn’t. It was a good deal. And there was so little else she could give him. Thinking for yourself was neither necessary nor encouraged in the ULTIMATE® world because the US™ could do it for you, or at least hold a repository of information that made personal thought unnecessary. And the past was an outmoded concept. History had been consigned to the trash bin, not even the recycle bin, and people who spent too many credits chasing historical detail could find themselves in hot water. Old people were given enhanced access to their Memory Banks as a means of keeping them quiet, but their interactions were also part of ADAS® system. There was a requirement for data. The likes of Helen could provide the data which would then be used to help them should they require the service. The ULTIMATE® world came at a price. Re-inventing the present and paying for a future was only really possible where people remained ignorant of the past. The real past. Reality. That wasn't an ULTIMATE® concept. It was an ULTIMATE® product of course and could be bought with credits via the US™ like everything else. Like real plastic flowers. Helen shook her head. Those kids thought that plastic flowers were real. Reality to them meant something you could hold in your hand, nothing more. Reality was the opposite of virtual. Virtual was the world they lived in, the world they embraced and reality was an outmoded concept, reserved for the likes of Helen. Nick's generation didn't have any idea of what a REAL flower was like because they'd never held a real flower. No one grew them any more. Why would you? When all life's interactions were via the virtual world who needed flowers shedding petals all over the place? In fact, it must have been quite extreme for them to actually spend credits buying her these ‘real’ plastic flowers. REALITY: Definition. What is existent, or underlies appearances. Resemblance to an original. In common parlance, in reality means in fact. And fact means whatever ULTIMATE® says it means, Helen thought. You didn’t even have to get into the existentialist or post-modernist concepts of reality. ULTIMATE® had blown them out of the water. It just didn’t matter any more what you the individual thought, or how you felt you stood in relation to the outside world. ULTIMATE® had rebranded reality the way it had rebranded everything else. The real plastic flowers sat still on her shelf. Perfectly fresh, perfectly real, perfectly plastic. Mocking her. Proving that ULTIMATE® owned reality as well as everything else in 2030. Everything except what was in your head. And they tried to relieve you of that too, via the Memory Bank. How had the world come to this Helen wondered? She remembered when Google and MySpace, Facebook and Twitter were the all singing, all dancing, must have lifestyle toys for a generation. How excited her son Torquil had been when he came back from a trip to his sister at college and started pouring out the incredible wonders of the world wide web circa 2004. How he’d begged to be allowed to use the computer for ‘social networking.’ To have a laptop in his bedroom. ‘Get real mum,’ he’d said. ‘It’s the future. You can’t run away from the future,’ with all the certainty of a fifteen year old. ‘And when will you ever have time to use this stuff?’ His dad had pointed out as they sat round the family dinner table. ‘You’ve school, then I need you round the farm…’ ‘I’ll do it instead of TV,’ Torquil pleaded. ‘If you’ve time for TV you’ve time for study,’ Randall had pointed out. ‘ You’ve as much of a brain as your sister. You could go to college.’ ‘I want to be a farmer,’ Torquil asserted, ‘like you, dad.’ ‘Then you’ve no need for computers,’ Randall pointed out. Conversation over. Helen was glad techno worship had been a fad Torquil had grown out of. He had enough concept of a real life to avoid the virtual temptations of MySpace, Bebo and Facebook in his impressionable early teens. And by the time he was seventeen and they were moving he had grown out of it. Or so they’d thought. Yet it had got him in the end. ‘Should we buy the lad a computer?’ she’d asked Randall back in 2004. ‘He can use the farm computer,’ was Randall’s response. ‘A computer is a tool remember, not an object of desire.’ He had smiled at her, sharing the memory of how they’d met, when computers were indeed objects of desire, which was lucky because they were pretty pitiful tools at that point in history. Another memory stored in the Memory Bank. Another memory Helen often wished she could wipe away because the urge to look was too powerful and the viewing was too painful. ULTIMATE® technology led the world towards a sparkling transformation. From their start point as a toy for adolescents in 2005, by 2020 social networks and personal vaults had become the intellectual equivalent of the progression from the riverbank through the twin tub to the fully automatic washing machine that washed at 15 degrees and never shrunk your clothes. How happy everyone was to embrace them. How everyone migrated their hard drives onto ‘clouds’ and let loose all their stored personal information. Then it was not just information, it was their entire lives which moved into the virtual world. People’s facts and fictions all made it into cyberspace and the Memory Bank was born, ready for ULTIMATE® to register it and exploit it like everything else. Yet Helen still remembered when clouds were a feature of the weather, not a personal storage system. Still, you couldn't do anything about it, you couldn’t change it and you definitely couldn’t fight it. Helen remembered being Torquil’s age and having a similar conversation with her dad. It was 1975. She wanted heated tongs. She wanted to impress a boy and he was busy swooning over the girl with the curliest hair in class. It was war. ‘But dad, everyone has them,’ she employed the familiar teenage mantra. ‘What does your mum say?’ He employed the standard response. ‘She says no, but…’ Helen still hoped she had enough girlish charm to wind her father round her fingers. She’d always been a daddy’s girl. ‘Well, you can’t fight city hall,’ came the response. ‘I don’t want to fight anyone. I just want to get some hair tongs so I can curl my hair…’ Helen grumped. ‘And why is curled hair so important all of a sudden?’ her dad asked ‘Everyone has it… well, it’s cheaper than a perm..’ she tried. He wasn’t buying that one. ‘You have beautiful hair, Helen. You are beautiful as you are. Why try to change yourself?’ ‘It’s for boys.’ Her mum came into the room, spoiling things as she always did. ‘It’s not for boys,’ Helen threw back, ‘it’s for me. For my self-confidence.’ ‘I hope you aren’t the kind of person who has to style themselves with the herd in order to have self-esteem,’ her dad said in his best not angry but disappointed voice. ‘I thought we’d brought you up better than that.’ ‘It doesn’t matter.’ Helen just avoided slamming the door as she stamped up to her room to indulge in some teenage moping before getting sidetracked into a good book. She never had curly hair. Nor did she believe her dad’s often repeated ‘city hall’ claim. Not then. She’d only bought that when she moved into the VCC home as a sixty year old, broken woman. By 2020 her own life experience had taught her that with ULTIMATE® you could try but you couldn't win. She had lived with that fact every day for the last ten years. Today was her 70th birthday and Helen, with the face that in her youth may have launched a thousand ships, or at least turned a few youthful heads found herself crying for a world that no longer existed. A life that no longer existed, not just a life she could no longer have. It JUST DIDN'T EXIST. Memory was powerful but treacherous. And memory was not reality. Helen acknowledged that reality had been reinvented into ULTIMATE® reality, and knowledge and memories were the intellectual property of ULTIMATE®. Of course she had easy access to them at a reasonable price. And she was supposed to be grateful for that. Her only weak act of resistance was to keep her personal memories in her head, away from scrutiny. But this in itself made them worthless. She had nothing to share and no one to share them with and her private memories would die with her. What kind of reality was that? What meaning? Helen had often measured herself up against nature and felt herself small. She remembered a sense of insignificance when, as a young woman, and then as a not so young woman, she'd stood on a deserted beach, or looked up at a night sky, or stood in the middle of a field or a forest, marvelling at the acres and acres of blue sky above her. Nature had been in charge then and even though only a fool would consider Nature benign, it gave you a sense of yourself in the world. Yes you were small, you were insignificant, but you were a part of something wonderful. Yet ULTIMATE® had killed nature. Like history, it just didn't exist any more in any meaningful way. It was ULTIMATE® who had constructed and owned the lives of Nick's generation and all generations since. ULTIMATE® was the only wonder of the post-postmodern world. Which left Helen as part of what was a dying generation with all the punch knocked out of them. It was proof that capitalism would get there in the end. Although ULTIMATE® had seen to it that concepts like capitalism and socialism no longer existed any more. In reality or in virtuality. ‘You can’t fight city hall, dad.’ Helen brushed her straight hair and decided she was just going to try and enjoy the company of the kids. Be sociable for once. What did they call it now? Live social networking? It was worlds away from the last 70th birthday she’d attended. 1966. The family had made the trip to the Edinburgh New Town apartment of her Uncle Bert and Auntie Alice. It had been quite a trip for the family, across the newly opened Tay and Forth Road Bridges. ‘Daddy, how do they stay up?’ she’d asked. ‘Is it magic?’ ‘No, Helen. Engineering,’ had come his response. ‘More cleverer than magic,’ she’d opined. ‘More clever,’ her mum had corrected. And at Uncle Bert’s she’d been running up the flagstone pathway in her haste to greet them and tell them about the bridges. She tripped and fell and when she picked herself up, she saw them all laughing at her. ‘It’s not funny,’ she said. And they laughed all the more. ‘It’s not fair,’ she cried. ‘Innate sense of justice that one,’ said Uncle Bert. ‘She’ll make a great lawyer.’ Helen didn’t know what a lawyer was but she was certain she didn’t want to be one. ‘I want to be an engineer,’ she retorted and they all laughed even more. ‘You’ll have your hands full with that one,’ Bert told her dad. And she remembered the musty old-people smell and the wing backed chairs and floral patterned china and textiles and the cake on doilies and how Auntie Alice had pressed a threepenny bit into her hand as they were leaving and whispered, ‘Buy yourself a sweetie.’ It was a long, long time ago. Helen wished she’d managed to get something better to offer the kids to eat than ULTIMATE® coke and ULTIMATE® cup cakes. But she’d left it too late and had to beg stuff from the kitchens. Somehow she’d forgotten you couldn’t just pop out down to the supermarket any more. She had always hated the fussiness of floral pattern suites but she would have given anything for a room like Uncle Bert and Auntie Alice’s in which to celebrate her 70th birthday. Since she’d entered the ULTIMATE® Home, Helen had kept to herself. She mostly stayed in her room and avoided the shared spaces. Most people did, if they knew what was good for them. The lounge rooms were frequented only by those who had run out of memory credits and wanted to play ULTIMATE® BINGO to win some back, or who couldn’t be bothered with the work that involved and just wanted to witter or rant an incessantly pointless steam of consciousness. There was no meaningful social interaction, she’d quickly learned that. The residents of Victim Homes were little more than guinea pigs for the latest ‘advances’ in ULTIMATE® technology. Like everyone else in the system their data was the only precious thing about them. But their data was ‘end of life’ data, with only two ways out, madness or death. Helen preferred to keep herself to herself. And her memories private. While she still had them. But today would be different. Today she'd share her time and her life, for an hour or two, with her grandson and his friends. And they would have a nice time. It would be an experience which she could store in her own head, irrespective of what might make it into the Memory Bank. In preparation for the party, Helen had moved the furniture around to try and gain most space, but whatever she did, even borrowing a utilitarian chair from Archie next door, didn't make the space seem big enough for four people. Not once the table she'd managed to acquire to put the food on was in place. Auntie Alice would be birling in her grave. Genteel Edinburgh New Town it was not, even though it had once been a five star hotel in a prime location. Helen wished she could have got ‘real’ food. She still couldn't get used to the idea that ULTIMATE® food was in any way real. Oh yes, it was on the plate in front of you. It looked good, it tasted good (well, it tasted...) it even smelled good after a fashion – one gets used to anything after ten years but Helen's memory told her that it wasn't like the birthday food she had at her 10th birthday or her 21st birthday or even her 40th birthday. And on her 50th birthday, Nick had been born. Cakes and candles were for him from then on, though he didn’t even remember that now. He didn’t even know when his own birthday was. The Project Kids had no value for the personal. They were socially constructed beings in the ULTIMATE® world. Birthdays were part of a life before ULTIMATE® and the memories were not stored. She knew it wasn’t possible, but she had hoped the date just might stir something in him. It hadn’t. ‘Come on mum, blow out the candles,’ Torquil had shouted excitedly. ‘Yes, quick, before the fire brigade come thinking the house is on fire,’ Randall had added, jokingly as the bright glow from the forty candles the kids had painstakingly stuck on the birthday cake they’d made themselves stood on the table. ‘Before the wax burns the cake,’ Catriona added, concerned that her first great culinary effort would be spoiled. It had been a simple birthday cake, a bit lumpy and heavy, but it had been made and shared with love. Helen laughed. A cake with seventy candles. What kind of fire risk would that be? She sighed at the memory of thirty years ago. The family she had loved and lost. The ULTIMATE® world had certainly changed her reality. In the past she'd had hope for the future. Now she had none. Not for herself and more importantly, not for Nick, her sole living relative. She understood that this was Nick's world but she felt it was as hopeless for him as for her. That didn't seem right. She didn't know him well, of course, but there did seem some form of connection. Maybe he was just flattering her, but she thought she saw something of the curiosity of her own youth reflected in him. It was that curiosity which got him overdrawn on his knowledge credits every month and that was what kept him coming back to her. She filled a gap. She knew he was using her, but she was happy because if you turned it another way, it meant she still had something to offer. Something to give. Something real. So maybe there was hope for Nick. Everyone else she cared for was dead. Back in 2000 she’d blown out the 40 candles and made a wish. In 2030 she couldn’t remember that wish. Even without a candle, surely at seventy years old she owed herself a birthday wish. Randall would have done something special if he’d been there. But he wasn’t. And because he wasn’t, nothing could ever be special in a world which had become less like living and more like existing and now seemed more like a living death than a life, virtual or real. She blew out an imaginary candle. Made a wish. Her wish was, for one day, to live like she wasn’t afraid, wasn’t without hope, wasn’t just an inconsequential statistic in the ULTIMATE® system. To be real. Just for a day. Pryce was having a bad day at the office. Pryce invariably had a bad day at the office these days. It made him wonder but not question (he was beyond questioning) why it was that his job was so aspirational. On the face of it Pryce had everything one could wish from the ULTIMATE® lifestyle he’d bought into some twenty years ago. But somehow, something didn’t fit. Perhaps it was because he was prone to question his own place in the order of things. Personal reflection was not part of the ULTIMATE® deal. Life was for living not for thinking about. But somehow Pryce couldn’t break the habit. And it made him depressed.
Depression of course didn’t exist in the ULTIMATE® world but that didn’t stop the feeling of pointlessness Pryce experienced on a daily basis. He was forty years old and felt his life had passed him by. He was going nowhere, his wife couldn’t stand the sight of him and his job took up all his time. Twenty years ago he’d wedded himself to Angela and to ULTIMATE® and the honeymoon was definitely over in both respects. With nothing to look forward to, he allowed his mind to wander back to the twenty one year old man he had been nearly twenty years ago in 2011, when he'd made the life-changing decisions he now felt depressed by. In 2011 the ULTIMATE® Corporation had been cutting edge. Secret. Aspirational. A job with ULTIMATE® was a job for life in a world where nothing was certain. It had the mystique of the secret service with the security of the civil service and the pay packet of investment banking. Pryce shared the aspirations of his generation and had wanted some certainty in his life. Yes, it was a career he'd aspired to. Then. Not now. Now he knew better. Pryce wondered if he was the only person who questioned the ULTIMATE® world. Everyone else around him seemed happy, got on with their lives. No one else seemed to face each morning with a gloom in the pit of their stomach like he did. It made Pryce question where the problem lay. Was it with ULTIMATE® or was it with him? Either way, Pryce didn’t want to get up in the morning. He sometimes wondered whether he was that unusual. Whether everyone else felt the same as him but in the ULTIMATE® world everyone kept their emotions close to their chests, because ULTIMATE® had written emotion out of life. That had been part of the deal. And Pryce had signed the contract. Pryce mused that maybe he was more representative of his generation than anyone would like to admit. He wondered if his peers felt, like he did, that they’d sold themselves to the ULTIMATE® way of life not realising the long term consequences of their actions. As people always did. They bought the pretty package and didn’t think of the payback terms. But how would he ever know? The beauty (if such you could call it) of the ULTIMATE® system was that no one ever expressed such feelings to one another even if they had them. Of course, Pryce might be the only one who felt like this. An individual in a world which had negated the value of individuality. That could explain his depression. He knew that if he presented his thoughts to his boss (as of course he should) he would be sent for re-training. Which would be even more tedious than the life he currently lived and would also probably result in a lack of privileges. And he couldn’t imagine that would make him feel any less depressed. Any change was likely to be a change for the worse, so he kept his thoughts to himself. He sighed. Perhaps life had been and was always like that. Perhaps reality never lived up to the dream. It was 10pm. He was still in the office. Something was wrong. Angela, his wife, would be mad when he got home late again. She was always mad these days. Whatever time he got home. At least if it was 11pm he could just fall into bed and sleep and not spend three hours in pointless arguments, designed to disturb his sleep. Pryce often wondered whether Angela was at the root of his problems. Nothing unusual there for a married man. He couldn’t work out whether he had a problem with Angela or she had a problem with him or whether no one was temperamentally suited to be with the same person over twenty years. After all, people changed over twenty years. He wasn’t the same person he had been in 2010. Was it so surprising that Angela was also unrecognisable from that time? Was this the problem? ULTIMATE® reckoned so. It was, after all, the ideological basis of the social counselling section, where he’d worked for the last five years. Pryce had become involved with work for The PROJECT⌂ at its inception in 2016, contemporary with the first “intake” and had stayed there ever since. He’d enjoyed it at first. It had been a change from the pure theory work he’d been involved with before that. It offered him a chance to work “with people” and more specifically with “kids”. Looking back, by the age of twenty five his relationship with Angela had already become rocky. He wanted children. She didn’t. Angela’s solution, ‘Get a job working with them. Just don’t bring them home.’ He’d bought it. Angela could be very persuasive. And now, the way things were, Project Kids wouldn't have to worry about marital relationships because ULTIMATE® had made marriage a thing of the past. The demise of the nuclear family (a concept that was bound to end in a cataclysmic explosion) was completed by 2020. In actuality, Brand had long since become the new family. And when globalisation took over, tribal branding became outmoded and all allegiance was transferred to the ULTIMATE® brand. You had to move with the times and the transition was seamless to most of the population. They just wanted the good times to go on indefinitely. ULTIMATE® delivered. Sign up and don’t worry about the small print. It was ever thus. Pryce would have gone home right then, even back to another argument. At least it would be human interaction. And maybe, if he played it right, Angela would act like the lover she’d once been not the wife she had then become. Despite all the evidence, Pryce hadn’t completely lost hope. If he just did or said the right thing…. However, his boss Graham had been most insistent that Pryce did not leave for the night before they’d spoken. That was three hours ago. And Pryce was still waiting for the interface. So here he was, with time to kill, twiddling his thought-thumbs and trying not to get more depressed. His job as Project Counsellor was to manage other people's emotions not to have problems of his own, so his depression or mid-life crisis or whatever it was, had to stay bottled up inside. Pryce decided to vent his maudlin mood by logging into his Memory Bank. Hang the cost, he had plenty of overtime due anyway. He knew it was pointless, he knew it was irrational. He knew it wouldn't change anything, but hey. The present was garbage, so maybe he could find some solace in his past. ‘MEMORY BANK RECALL: 2010.’ Pryce spoke to his US™ and up came the options. GRADUATION REDUNDANCY JOB OPPORTUNITY Oh well, why not go back to the beginning? He chose GRADUATION. And in the blink of an eye, there it was playing out for him on the US™. He didn't pick the option of JOIN IN. He was above that after all. It was just for analysis. Just to make sense of the past, not to vicariously relive it. There was Angela. As she’d been at his graduation. Attractive. Funny. In love with him. She was raven haired. He hadn’t known then that it had come out of a bottle and that her natural colour was mousy. He didn’t know then that Angela didn’t “do” natural. He bought it. Who wouldn’t? Angela was still the kind of woman who always got a response. Even fully clothed, she oozed a kind of sexuality that made a man feel somehow he was acting improperly. She always wore her blouse with just one button too many undone, a challenge NOT to look which made you look all the more. And made you feel dirty about doing so. It wasn’t that she had the best body in the world, but she certainly knew how to use it to the best advantage. Angela had caught on quickly to the Lara Croft Avatar style of plasticity. And rendered it human. You might well say her “graphics” were amazing. Yet she was real. In the days before ULTIMATE® shifted the reality goalposts, Angela was well on the way to becoming a mistress of the art of ULTIMATE® reality. ‘What’re you looking at?’ Angela had challenged Pryce on their first meeting. It was his twenty first birthday party. Somehow he’d managed to avoid her through three years of university and now, just before graduation, there she was. It was the first of many mysteries. He still didn’t know who’d invited her, and the US™ didn’t have that perspective on offer. Retrospectively he could see himself squirm. Yet at the time he remembered he’d thought he was so cool. How come if these were his memories, he looked totally different to how he had felt then? Just whose side was the US™ on? ‘I… sorry… I wasn’t looking,’ was hardly the response of a cool guy now was it? That was followed by the laugh. Angela had a dirty, dirty laugh which haunted you for days. At least she had in those days. These days she didn’t laugh. All that came from her mouth these days, at least as far as Pryce was concerned, was cutting criticism. Pryce sighed. He was using up credits here and it wasn’t making him feel any better. He backtracked the memory. It was more than he could bear to watch Angela like that. And himself. It had been a time that had promised so much. How had life got in the way and changed the story? What had he lost in this ULTIMATE® life which told him he was a winner? Pryce took his Memory Bank back to before Angela. Before graduation. He had been a clever scholar. Gone to a good university. Studied psychology with information technology. He was mature for his age and determined to get a good job, not just loll around like a stereotypical student for three or four years. He’d had more motivation. More self-respect. He liked a good time, sure, but he was driven. Or so he’d thought. Pryce, like so many of this cusp generation, was able to remember that life had been uncertain, with the possibility for things to go very, very wrong. It was a perspective most people never visited in their Memory Banks, but Pryce couldn’t help himself. Call it nostalgia, call it what you like; from time to time Pryce went in search of meaning in the vaults of his Memory Bank. And his position as social counsellor allowed him access at levels which would have been questioned among people of lesser standing. Because he was supposed to be above the kind of wallowing that he was currently indulging in. Pryce was expected to be a fully signed up member of the ULTIMATE® reality, not a middle aged man putting rose tinted spectacles on a world which had collapsed. ULTIMATE® didn’t deal with dreamers. Not unless it was an ULTIMATE® bought dream. Pryce was putting himself in a compromised position. Of course he thought no one knew. But with ULTIMATE®, someone always knew. Pryce fastforwarded the memory. This was the kind of time travel people would have wet themselves over in 2000. Now it was just so many taps of a keypad or touch screen and there you were, surfing through your life, back and forward at will. By 2030 most people didn’t bother with their memories because the everyday life experience contained more than enough to keep their unquestioning minds occupied. They favoured instant gratification which was paid for unwittingly through the very tasks which gave the gratification. This was the power of ULTIMATE® as it presented itself to the general population. You had to be pretty asynchronous in the pecking order to feel like you were being exploited by ULTIMATE®. And even if you did, a quick trip to your Memory Bank would remind you that things could and indeed had been a whole lot worse BEFORE. Pryce went back to his graduation memory. He had been a young man full of hope, in a time of ridiculous uncertainty. It was the summer of 2010. Europe was in turmoil. Britain was in meltdown despite all calls for a “stable” government. Stability was far away from the reality of everyday life. Like everyone else in 2010, Pryce found himself smack bang in the middle of the ₲₨ΩHist, known then simply as the recession. When he'd started at University the Credit Crunch hadn't even been a reality but by the time he graduated in July 2010, jobs were scarce and beggars couldn't be choosers. And Pryce, like everyone else, was up to his eyes in debt. His dreams of a stable, serious career were being hijacked by global economics so he took the first job the milk round offered him. He was lucky. A blue chip company with a decent reputation was prepared to take him on as a graduate trainee. He didn't feel lucky though because it was in Industrial Psychology. It sounded tedious as hell. It was tedious as hell. But it was a job. For a while. About six months. Then things really began to bite. Despite the promise of the ‘new politics’, companies went down and businesses went bust and everyone was very, very scared. And Pryce was made redundant. At least that's what he'd been told at the time. Now, looking back at it, something didn't quite add up. He played with the perspectives on the US™ and came to the conclusion that actually he'd been headhunted. He’d had his mind on other things at the time of course. He zoomed in on the conversation with Angela. ‘Of course you should take it.’ She was adamant. ‘I’m not so sure,’ he voiced his indecision. ‘That’s so typical you,’ she shifted her body so that he could do nothing else but look down her cleavage as she spoke. ‘You can never see an opportunity staring you in the face. You never make the right move.’ Had he misinterpreted her comments? Had they been deliberately provocative? Obtuse? Pryce watched the ensuing scene like watching a car crash, though it hadn’t seemed like that at the time. Life certainly changes ones perspective in memory as well as everything else, he reasoned. He’d reached out for Angela. His “move” was obvious. She’d pulled back from his initial kiss. He was confused as to the signs. He was always confused as to Angela’s signs, but this time he thought he knew what she wanted from him. ‘Will you marry me?’ he asked, down on one knee, his face level with that bottom button, his mind more on the immediate possibilities of the next twenty minutes rather than the next twenty years. She pulled him off his knees. Rolled him onto the couch. Got him into a position he couldn’t get out of and gave him what he thought was his reply through a physical rather than a linguistic response. Only once that was over did she speak. ‘If you take the job at ULTIMATE®, I’ll marry you.’ Twenty years on, re-viewing the memory, Pryce had to admit that it had been that way, but he really, really couldn’t remember things happening in quite that sequence. He’d been sure the seduction was Angela trying to give him confidence. Now it sounded like an ultimatum and accorded with his present feeling that he'd been sucked into the ULTIMATE® Corporation without ever knowing it. Three months later, Angela and he were married and Angela was working alongside him at ULTIMATE®. A year later, Angela was outstripping him workwise and he was no longer looking forward to undressing her at the end of a long day. Work came first. Work always came first. And from this memory, it seemed like work had always come first with Angela. Pryce felt used. By Graham, the boss he was sitting here waiting for at 10.35pm, by ULTIMATE® who had bought his life and given him a virtual package in return and most of all by Angela, who seemed to have been manipulating him all along the line. Pryce realised he no longer loved Angela. His feelings for ULTIMATE® were more complex. In 2011 he had been like everyone else. Aspirational. Earning money was aspirational in those days. And economic fear created a whole new set of aspirations. You couldn't say no to a career in the ULTIMATE® Corporation even in 2011. Even though you didn’t really know what you were buying into; if you got so far as to hear about them, to get offered a job, you knew you were going to be in on the start of not just the next best thing but the ULTIMATE® best thing. It was going to be bigger than Microsoft. Bigger than McDonald's. Bigger than Unilever and Levi's, GlaxoSmithKlineBeecham, and Monsanto and Coca-Cola and Mars and Tesco and Google and all those companies, brands and corporations ULTIMATE® inevitably swallowed up over the next, incredible decade when the world was re-inventing itself out of the ₲₨ΩHist. Had history not been eliminated, the period 2010-2020 might have been referred to as the age of recessions, mergers and buyouts. It was the journey from corporate imperialism to the new world. In the new world there was just one Brand Loyalty and it was to ULTIMATE®. Totalitarianism rebranded as consumerism. Wrapped in a pretty package and desired by all. Total global domination. Achieved through acquiescence. Pryce had always thought himself lucky to be there or thereabouts at the right time. Just luck. Now he wasn't so sure. One way or another, his memory had cheated him. As he replayed the scene with Angela from twenty years ago again (telling himself he was doing so not because he wanted to remember their first sexual union but to make sense of his life – and not quite convincing himself on that point) he found there was an air of predictability about it all. An air of design. In the same way as it seemed unlikely that ULTIMATE® had got so big by chance, it seemed unlikely that he was just taken up in the Economic Tsunami that went with it. One thing Pryce knew about ULTIMATE® was that nothing was left to chance. So why, then, had he foolishly held onto the belief that his part in the whole thing was down to luck. ULTIMATE® didn't do luck. ULTIMATE® did complete world domination. You only had to look at their slogan: ‘scientific advance and social development go hand in hand’ to realise that this was an all encompassing ideology. You could almost hear the ‘Have a nice day with that, sir.’ Back in 2011 when the phone rang and ULTIMATE® offered Pryce the job he'd been sceptical about, he was delighted. The first day sold him on the idea that a man with his qualifications would fit right in. His thesis on question theory impressed them – or so they said. And he had a wedding to plan. Of course he understood that he'd be a small cog in a big wheel and he didn't mind that. It would be better than Industrial Psychology. He felt for the first time that he had a future, a niche, that he was a stakeholder in life. He had no idea how big that wheel would get of course. No one did. Or did they? He was still wondering this when the US™ switched to INTERFACE mode. His relief was shortlived. It wasn't Graham. It was Nike, one of his protégés from The PROJECT⌂. Pryce sighed. Nike was an all right kid, but he did tend to call at inopportune moments and with inappropriate questions. Particularly when he'd run out of his own question credits. You had to be on your toes with Nike, because before you knew it, he'd have stripped your account bare. It was nearly the end of the month and Pryce had been planning to carry over his credits. This evening had already given them a hammering, and no Project Kid was going to hijack what he had left. ‘Nike. You know my office hours end at 8pm. What is it?’ ‘Uh... yeah...’ Nike was obviously thrown by Pryce's hostile reaction. ‘It's okay. I'm waiting for my boss to interface anyway. But I haven't got all night. Shoot.’ ‘Uh. Well.. .it's... I'm not sure if it's all right, but I wanted to ask you..’ Pryce bridled. ‘If you've run out of knowledge credits Nike, you know what to do. Do some ‘productive’ work.’ ‘No. No. It's not that sort of a question.’ Was there ever any other kind of question from Nike? Pryce doubted it. ‘Well?’ ‘It's kind of a protocol sort of thing.’ ‘What?’ The kid was talking in riddles. Even though Pryce had graduated top of his class, he knew that twenty years on just about any snot nosed Project Kid could wind him round their finger. That was the way knowledge had changed. They had it all on a plate. They didn't have to learn it or work at it they could just flip it up any time they wanted. They knew how to manipulate systems he barely understood. He'd need to be very careful here; he sensed Nike was about to take advantage. And he didn't want to be robbed blind and then have to file a report about it too. That was too much. ‘Come on Nike. Just tell me what's on your mind.’ ‘No. It's not my mind. It's just... well, Omo said I should ask, but I think I don't need to. But Flora said yes, maybe and so... I wanted to know if it's all right to go to my Nan's birthday party?’ Pryce nearly fell off his chair laughing. ‘Your Nan's having a birthday party?’ ‘Yeah. She's seventy. Next week. She lives in an ULTIMATE® Home and she doesn't have any other family, so I was thinking....’ ‘A birthday party? You want to go to a birthday party?’ ‘Yeah. Well.. is it cool?’ Perhaps it was because it was late at night. Perhaps it was because he'd earlier been viewing his own 21st celebrations. Perhaps he was still ruminating on the confusion of meeting Angela for the first time. Perhaps it was because he was distracted, wanting Nike off the US™ before Graham came on. Whatever the reason, Pryce dropped the ball. Missed the point. ‘Yeah. Sure. I don't see why not.’ ‘Cool. Thanks mate. That's all.’ And Nike was gone, leaving Pryce to pick up the pieces. Which of course he didn't have time to do. That's the way mistakes happen though, isn't it? You're doing one thing, thinking about another, something else comes in from left field and before you know it the thing you were going to check on files itself away and you don't revisit it again till it rears its ugly little monster head as the problem it is. But Pryce didn’t have time to process Nike’s request because immediately, Graham came on the US™. Graham was three rungs higher up the ULTIMATE® ladder than Pryce and ten years younger. He was smarter, he was ruthless and he certainly didn’t have depression. Graham would have been one of life’s winners in any society but he was lucky enough to be an ULTIMATE® winner and he intended to stay that way. He would do anything to climb the ladder. And did. Pryce knew this about Graham and was reasonably wary of him. What Pryce didn’t know was that Graham was currently having an affair with Angela, Pryce's wife. It was not the kind of question you'd think to ask the knowledge bank really is it? Or exactly the kind of question Pryce would have liked to ask, but not one he wanted the answer to. Like so many men before him, he shut his eyes to the signs and looked elsewhere for the root of his problems. ‘Hey. Caught up on things?’ Graham was cool and chatty and over-friendly in exactly the way that men are when they are having an affair with their colleague’s wife. ‘'Bout ready to call it a day, anyway,’ Pryce replied, hoping Graham might pick up on his tone. It just came across as weak. He realised he shouldn’t have bothered trying to sound cool, he was just giving Graham more leverage. Pryce never seemed to win where Graham was concerned. It irked him. But what could he do? ‘Is there a problem?’ Graham was digging for something. Graham was always digging for something. You'd have thought he had a PhD in undermining, as well as a Masters in thought control, if only Graham, at his tender 32 years had ever been to University. It used to be that people went to University, or college or failing that the University of Life. ULTIMATE® changed all that. Using the McDonald's University paradigm before them, ULTIMATE® created their own, specific educational opportunities, and Graham had walked right in and sailed right through. Graham was an ULTIMATE® success. Ugly little bugger, but his liasion with Angela proved that success means more than good looks to a certain kind of woman. To most kind of women, probably. Graham was lucky enough to have been born in a generation where how clever you were at coding your avatar to look and act cool was more important than your own physical attraction. And power always sells product. ‘No problems Graham. No. I'm just tired. It’s been a long day.’ Silence. A classic Graham tactic. Pryce had said all he wanted to, but couldn’t bear the silence and had to give more. ‘I'm not sleeping too well at the moment,’ he admitted. Bang. Too much information. ‘Oh. Sorry to hear that. Problems with Angela? D'you want to book in a session?’ Graham did not sound sincere. He sounded smug. ‘No. It's fine. Just a lot on my mind.’ Pryce hated the likes of Graham to be aware he had any kind of problem. Far less talk about it, or see it. And he certainly didn't want a counselling session. With Graham or anyone else. Talking with Graham never made things any better and Pryce was usually left with the uncomfortable feeling that all he’d done was release information cheaply which could be used against him in the future. ‘I'm fine. Really.’ ‘Oh, all right. If you're sure,’ the weasel Graham replied. The tone told Graham all he needed to know. He’d got to Pryce. Needled him. Job done. He knew fine what Pryce's problems were. He was most of them, after all! ‘But hey, let’s book in some time to check on your workload. Some time next week, eh? Fix it up with the secretary. Night.’ And that was it. Graham gone, Pryce in bits and Nike's request forgotten. Which was why it didn't get written down in the casenotes. Helen was nearly seventy. If she was in the community you wouldn't say she was old but it was old for VCC people. That's people, like Helen, who lived in ULTIMATE® homes. VCC was a kind of shorthand slang for such places. Helen, who had an awkward sense of humour, said it was an acronym for Victims of Conspicuous Consumption or Victims of Caring Capitalism, but really it was shorthand for Victims of Credit Crunch. Such people were generally known as Victims and being a victim has never been a good thing to be.
VICTIM: Definition. A person injured or killed as a result of an event or circumstance, or destroyed in pursuit of an object of gratification. A dupe. CREDIT CRUNCH: Definition. A term created by the media in 2008 to mark the beginning of the End of History, representing a sudden reduction in the availability of loans and other types of credit from banks and capital markets at given interest rates. HISTORY: Definition. A time in the past when people worried about what had happened before their own time and tried to use their worries to predict what would happen in the future. A pointless exercise EXAMPLE: History is bunk. Of course the people living through it didn't know that was what it was then. It was just another recession. A V shaped, or a W shaped or a bath shaped recession. Any shape you like wasn't going to save the financial institutions. Despite government bail outs time and again, the threat to economic theory led to a need to reinvent the world yet again, a reinvention that would take at least a generation, but by 2030 it was already just LIFE as we know it today. Memories were short, if they existed in 2030. Without History there was no need for memory and ULTIMATE® had worked hard to undermine and diminish collective memory. Personal memory was stored, archived; a commodity to be viewed on a screen, not an emotion to be experienced. There was no longer any need for history and no longer any need for memory. Under ULTIMATE® you could split things into the periods: ‘in History’ and ‘today.’ No one paid much attention to ‘in History’ since it had long ago been shown that history was unimportant to the flourishing of the modern world. The world didn’t even look forward any more. People just looked into the virtual world which was all that existed, all around them. Virtuality was all that was real in the ULTIMATE® world. Omo, Nike and Flora stood in the reception of VCC Holyrood and didn't like what they saw. It was clean, it was bright, it was airy, but somehow it was..... not nice. Not the sort of place you'd want to end up. Which wasn't surprising, because the only people who ended up here were people who were VICTIMS. The disabled or those without families to support them, those who had fallen on hard times or for some reason or other had not prospered under the current economic system. People who had made no provision for their futures, or who had made provision for their futures but had invested unwisely and suffered as part of the Economic Crash. This was what the Credit Crunch which became the Downturn, which became the Global Recession to End History, afterwards referred to as ₲₨ΩHist, became. Victims. Not a nice word. Not a nice thought. Not a nice thing. But an accurate description. And there were plenty of them. Too many. They were a drain on resources and it's lucky for everyone that they usually didn't live beyond 72. Statistically speaking. In that respect, Helen was old and living on borrowed time. ECONOMIC CRASH: Definition. In History, a downturn in the economy. In current parlance the cut off before which our current system did not function. A time of uncertainty where people, governments and countries were living beyond their means, using now outmoded and illegal methods of economic and financial activity. GLOBAL RECESSION: Definition. In History, a period of global economic slowdown where global economic growth is 3 percent or less is ‘equivalent to a global recession’. Following the increasing regularity of global recessions in 1990-1993 , 2001-2002 and 2008-2010 the ULTIMATE® CORPORATION stepped in to reverse economic declines, introducing a new model and wiping away the last vestiges of the failed global economic system. This was finally achieved in 2020, leading to the stable economic system we now enjoy. Helen didn’t need the definitions, she’d lived the life. She still remembered. But interacting with the US™ was not something you could avoid and it passed the time. Unlike most people, however, Helen didn’t believe all she was told. Standing outside Helen’s door, there was one embarrassing thing Nike had to get out of the way. ‘Guys. My Nan. She's old. I mean, she looks okay. Not too wrinkly.. but she's weird and she has some strange.. well, you know... quirks.’ ‘Such as?’ That was Omo. Omo didn't like the unexpected. The odd. The unusual. It made him feel uncomfortable. He didn't like feeling. And he particularly didn't like feeling uncomfortable. ‘Uh... she tends to call me NICK.’ ‘Nick?’ ‘Yes.’ A pause. Nike explained. ‘It was a name in History.’ ‘Oh. Okay.’ Omo accepted it. Life was easier if you just accepted odd things. Usually. ‘Nick.’ Flora repeated it, rolling it round in her mouth, ‘sure she's not just hard of hearing? It sounds kind of like..’ ‘No. She calls me NICK okay. Don't question it. Just deal with it and don't laugh, or correct her or..’ ‘Nick.’ Flora tried it out again. ‘I like it. It sounds nice.’ Nike and Omo exchanged a glance. Girls. What could you do? Now, ready for anything, they knocked on the door. There was just a moment’s delay then Helen's voice called out clearly, ‘Come in.’ And in they went. ‘Hello Nan.’ ‘Oh, Hello Nick. I thought it was them, bringing my lunch. Hang on a minute... I'm sorting through things on my memory vault....’ A black man became president. Economics became God and God became commercialised. The ULTIMATE® CORPORATION filled the gap, took over, and saved the planet. THIS MEMORY HAS BEEN MOVED AND STORED FOR YOU AT NO EXTRA CHARGE. Nike, Omo and Flora stood obediently in the small square room, trying not to look too closely at the screen, but failing, since there was little else to look at in the sparsely furnished space. It was a pitiful 60 inch screen compared to the 90 inches they were used to, but it took up the whole of a wall. They did understand that really it was respectful to treat a Memory Bank as private unless you were invited to share the memories. And an old person’s Memory Bank. Well.. that would have all sorts of things you probably shouldn’t know about. Especially one who had lived in History. But how did you avoid looking? There was nothing else to do. Nowhere else to look. Omo began to feel uncomfortable. Again. Dammit. Why did that always happen? Images and sounds flickered from place to place, like so many Windows closing down and opening up and trying to fight each other for their proper file. Helen was a Windows Vista woman in a world which had forsaken Microsoft for ULTIMATE® technology. ‘Sorry... sorry... I'm,’ she was flustered. A voice blared out. Helen. The face that launched a thousand ships. ‘What?’ Nike couldn't help himself. The US™ screen replied, as it was programmed to do. Within a nanosecond it biolaser© read the barcode tattooed on Nike's wrist and charged the question to his account. HELEN OF TROY: Definition. In ancient mythology, known as ‘the face that launched a thousand ships’ referring to her incredible beauty which is credited as the cause of the Trojan war. THIS HAS COST YOU ONE KNOWLEDGE CREDIT. ADDITIONAL OR SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION IS AVAILABLE FOR ANOTHER TEN CREDITS. AFFIRM? Nike was angry with himself. He'd come here to avoid asking questions and he was barely in the door. However, it proved his point and he grinned at Omo. ‘Told you her vault was awesome.’ Finally Helen managed to sort herself out and power down her random memory folder. ‘It's nice to see you. And your friends. What brings you all the way over here?’ Nike dutifully kissed his Nan and handed over the plastic flowers which Flora had obtained at a cost of only thirty minutes ‘productive work.’ Plus delivery. Helen took them, held them up to her nose and smelled them. ‘They smell just like real ones,’ she observed. Nike, Omo and Flora exchanged puzzled glances. ‘They are real ones, Nan.’ Nike said. She got confused. She was old. What could you do? Nike slowed down and made himself very clear. ‘Nan. This is Omo and Flora. He pointed at each of them, so she would be sure. O-M-O and F-L-O-R-A....’ ‘I'm not deaf Nick. Or glaikit.’ ‘What?’ Oh, no. Another question. GLAIKIT: Etymology. A Scottish word meaning stupid, foolish, thoughtless, lacking in… Helen interrupted the US™’s flow by talking over it, though it was unclear whether her comments were primarily directed at the US™ screen or at Nike. eleHele ‘Not deaf. Not stupid. Okay?’ ‘Sorry Nan.’ ‘That's okay Nick. You're a good boy to bother visiting me. It's been ages. What brings you here?’ Surely she'd just asked that? ‘Nothing Nan. Just wanted to see you. And Flora has a question.’ ‘A question. Are you allowed to ask the kind of questions I can answer?’ She laughed, in a half-mocking way. ‘What's the world coming to?’ They exchanged surreptitious confused glances. But there was obviously nothing wrong with Helen's eyesight or mental faculties because she clearly saw their glances and accurately read them. She responded, ‘That's a rhetorical question.’ Laughing as she saw Nike's face drop, Helen waved at the US™ screen. ‘Have this one on me.’ RHETORICAL QUESTION: Definition. A question not requiring an answer, used for literary effect. Helen spoke to the screen. ‘Example from my life?’ The US™ screen spoke back: THAT WILL BE ONE MEMORY CREDIT. YOU HAVE 99 MEMORY CREDITS REMAINING FOR THIS MONTH. CHOOSE WISELY, ULTIMATE® MEMORY BANKS WORK FOR YOU TO ORDER AND PROTECT YOUR MEMORIES. FOR ALL ETERNITY. THIS WEEK WE HAVE A SPECIAL OFFER.. ‘Yes, yes...’ Helen waved to fast forward. ‘Answer the question.... Example from my life?’ The screen replied: EXAMPLE FROM LIFE: You were in high school. You were studying Plato's Republic Nike couldn't help himself, ‘Plato's Republic?’ YOU ARE NOT AUTHORISED TO ASK THIS QUESTION. YOUR CREDIT IS INSUFFICIENT. Nike turned to Flora.... ‘Go and ask for me?’ Helen cut in. ‘Plato's Republic was an ancient Greek philosophical work which discussed the meaning of justice, introduced the theory of forms and considered the immortality of the soul. Oh, and poetry. He was a very influential political theorist.’ ‘Oh, okay.’ Nike was glad he hadn't wasted credit on that one. Who cared? Back to the US™ which had paused, waiting to complete its task. MEMORY RECAP: You were in High School. You were studying Plato's Republic. Your teacher was the headmistress. She used to ask questions about the text and you all sat there, dumbstruck because none of you understood. She used to make you sweat and then after a long pause she used to say ‘it's not a rhetorical question.’ She thought this was funny. You thought it was mean. You thought she was mean. Nike felt they'd gone down a blind alley. And he'd flagged up his credit rating for all to see. That was annoying. Why couldn't he control his desire to ask questions? It wasn't normal. He wasn't normal. He needed to do something about that. Perhaps he should flag it up at a counselling session with Pryce. Some modification was in order, clearly. And if the system wouldn’t modify, he’d have to. It was getting irritating, and expensive. Nike's problem extended beyond asking more questions than he could ever gain credit for. He wanted knowledge. To know things. They used to be called facts. Things. They interested him. He couldn't help it. It was like an addiction. And if he couldn't feed it one way, he'd feed it another. Absently, without any real thought and certainly without reference to the retailer’s recommendations, he pressed his sleeve and started recording as Helen spoke. ‘When I was young.....’ Nike felt a wave of relief wash over him. Now all he had to do was sit back and listen. He’d get information by proxy and store it to make sense of later. That was the way to cheat the system. It wasn’t something people did in general, so it wasn’t protected against. Nike knew a lot of short cuts to the system. Had he worked as hard on ‘productive’ work as he did finding cheats for the system, he’d get in a lot less trouble. But, that’s life. This way, when he got home, he could listen to it all again and he'd have lots to feed his thirst for knowledge. Without ever having to log in to the knowledge or Memory Banks. This would save him so many hours of ‘productive’ work, he could probably see it through till the end of the month, when his slate would be wiped clean and his credits restored for another month. Job done. In theory. Of course, in practice, Helen's utterances would raise so many more questions than they answered and Nike had just committed himself to a life, if not of servitude to ULTIMATE® productivity, then at least to a great many hours doing things he'd rather not do. Answering meaningless questions instead of asking meaningful ones. Productive consumption it was called. He hated it. He was smart enough to keep that thought to himself. ‘What's the problem, Nick?’ Nike came back from his reverie to find Helen asking him an unanswerable question. ‘Nothing.’ ‘You were miles away.’ ‘Sorry.’ He smiled, ‘Uh, Nan. I was just wondering if there was a way you could bypass the US™ and just you know, talk to us?’ She smiled back, ‘Yes, yes, of course. I'm fed up with it anyway. It's playing me up all over the place.’ She waved her barcoded arm at the screen and gave it the instruction ‘hibernate.’ It flickered back at her in an alarming manner and then went to some kind of screensaver. It was something the Project Kids had never seen before. As close to magic as they could imagine – if they had had the concept of magic. They lived in a world where the US™ was a permanent feature of life. To even imagine it as other than central was a step further than Omo could have gone. He was baffled. He’d never heard the command ‘hibernate’ and he didn’t know what it meant. ‘Wow,’ Nike opined. ‘How..?’ Helen waved at him to stop. ‘If you are going to ask how did I do that, I wouldn’t. Ask a question and it’ll come out of hibernation. It’s programmed that way. Unfortunately. We have to find other ways of asking questions, if it’s questions you want.’ ‘How?’ Nike wasn’t a natural. The screen flickered again and Helen once again suggested it ‘hibernate’ which once again, it consequently did. ‘Don’t put the sentence construction on it. Say the word you want me to talk about and I’ll talk.’ ‘Hibernate.’ Nike tried not to inflect the word. ‘It’s what some animals do in the winter. It’s a way of staying in a dormant – that’s like a sleeping state,’ Helen replied. ‘Not off then?’ ‘You can’t turn the US™ screen off Nike,’ Omo butted in. ‘Everyone knows that.’ ‘Yes. Unfortunately,’ Helen replied. If Omo had been the inquisitive type he might have asked Helen why she would want to turn it off. But he didn’t. She turned to Omo... ‘You have experience of fixing screens, Omo.’ It was obviously a question but she managed to deliver it in an uninflected manner and the screen did not respond. Nike was impressed. So his Nan knew some cheats as well. Good for her. Omo shook his head. ‘That's okay. I'll get a technician. It’s been playing up a bit recently. A lot of what you might call random activity.’ ‘Maybe you’re not following instructions..’ Omo began, trying to be helpful. ‘Maybe.’ Helen smiled. ‘Nan, Why do you call me Nick? The screen flickered. ONOMATOLOGY:…. ‘Override and hibernate.’ Helen spoke with authority. The screen obeyed. Nike found it amazing. Omo found it disturbing. Flora was still wondering if tigers slept through the winter and if so why. But she knew they weren’t supposed to be asking questions so she kept that one for later. She had plenty of credits left for the month because she did plenty of ‘productive’ work. Helen knew he wouldn't have been able to resist asking questions. Not her Nick. Despite the generation gap, despite the fact that his life was unrecognisable from the one she had lived or lived now or perhaps because of that; they had that in common. A thirst for knowledge. And it came in the form of questions. Luckily, she had some answers. ‘Onomatology. It’s the study of names. The study of the origin of names.’ She turned to Omo. ‘Do you even know why you are called Omo? Or Flora?’ ‘No.’ They answered in chorus. ‘Do you?’ asked Flora. None of them had ever thought to question their names. ‘Names have meaning?’ Nike was amazed. ‘Yes.’ Helen prepared herself for a long afternoon. ‘In the olden days people used to have books and books of names for babies. It took them weeks and months to decide and many arguments’. ‘Of course in Scottish tradition your middle name was your maternal grandmother's surname. Which Nick, would make you Nicholas Blair Christie.’ ‘That's a mouthful,’ Omo commented. ‘My name's Nike.’ ‘It isn't. It's Nicholas. I was there. In those days, Nike was a training shoe. A logo. A brand. A sort of flash with a tag line JUST DO IT. That's Nike. It was ripped off from the Ancient Greeks. The Goddess Nike Athena...’ This was all so much Greek to Nike! Helen paused for breath. ‘But Nicholas. Of Greek origin meaning Victorious people. Often attributed in relation to the ancient Bishop reputedly considered to be Saint Nicholas. You’ll have heard of Saint Nicholas?’ It was a question, but not a direct question so the screen remained dormant. ‘No.’ All three shook their heads ‘Father Christmas. Santa Claus.’ ‘Uh yeah, sure, maybe.’ Omo was beginning to feel stupid and he didn't like feeling stupid any more than he liked feeling uncomfortable, or for that matter feeling in general. ‘Something to do with Coca Cola, before it became ULTIMATE® coke.’ Omo wanted to show he knew something. He didn’t like this game, if it was a game. And if it wasn’t a game he liked it even less. Nike was getting a bit frustrated too. ‘Nan, I think we're getting off the point aren't we? You were telling us about names, not giving us a seminar in Brand Loyalty.’ Helen nodded. ‘Patience, Nick. All in good time. Join me in a cup of tea. ’ While it wasn’t a question, all three shook their heads again. Tea. What kind of a drink was tea? ‘Of course, tea is too old people for you,’ Helen observed, ‘I’ll pour it out anyway. In case you want to try. Of course it’s only ULTIMATE® not real tea, but what can you do? Okay, I'll get on with the story. Are you sitting comfortably?’ And without waiting for their response, or the response of the screen to a potential question, she continued, ‘Then I'll begin.’ And laughed. They had no idea why. Helen gave up. Watch With Mother was long, long ago and the world had changed since the 1960's. Oh boy, had it changed. ‘At the beginning of the 21st century, people got bored of calling their children by traditional names and celebrities started experimenting, using places and fashionable items as names. Then ordinary people jumped on the bandwagon, following celebrity fashion as they always did, and by the time the Credit Crunch had become the ₲₨ΩHist people wanted to find new ways of identifying with the new economic order and so they began to use brand names for their children. Omo, for example. Your parents must have had a sense of humour.’ Omo looked blankly at her and before Nick could ask the inevitable ‘why?’ Helen continued. ‘Omo was a washing powder. Omo washes whiter, Omo washes brighter. With a bright new powder for a bright new world.’ ‘Oh.’ Omo didn't see the joke. None of them did. They couldn’t contextualise and so couldn’t hope to see the humour. Making racism a thing of the past was the legacy of the Black man in the White House. After this presidency, you couldn't judge someone on the colour of their skin any longer. Black men became white men out of political expediency, like women had became honorary men in times of war throughout history. It was a kind of social evolution. It might have been ULTIMATE® inspired. Helen continued, ‘Though the word's origin is Greek, for scapula, that's a shoulder blade. The Omo Brand prided itself on the notion that dirt is good, providing children with a way to explore their worlds and express their creativity. It espoused notions of freedom, enabling everyone to reach their potential. Its demographic was those people who wanted value for money as it was always a lot cheaper than its rival PERSIL. But they were both made by the same company. Some people said all washing powders were the same...and that caused a bit of a furore for a time but...’ She paused for a moment to ask the US™ ‘What is the Omo Brand? Detail please.’ The screensaver flickered and came back to life. Helen winked at Nike. ‘It has its uses,’ she observed, ‘and saves me the boring bits. My memory isn’t what it used to be.’ OMO BRAND: Detail: A Brand of the company UNILEVER,one of the early ULTIMATE® CORPORATION buy outs. Other Brands in the Unilever stable included Persil, PG Tips, Dove, Lynx and many other products in the food, personal and home care environment. THAT WILL BE ONE KNOWLEDGE CREDIT. YOU HAVE 406 KNOWLEDGE CREDITS LEFT FOR THIS TIME PERIOD. ANY UNUSED CREDITS CAN BE CARRIED OVER INTO YOUR NEXT TIME PERIOD. ADDITONAL BRAND INFORMATION IS AVAILABLE FROM ONLY FIVE CREDITS. Then, as if exhausted by its work, the screen flickered and died again. But this time it went blank instead of to screensaver. It didn’t look like ‘hibernate’ mode any more. Helen shrugged. A blank screen was a relief really. She remained convinced, like many of her generation, that US™’s were more trouble than they were worth. ‘And me?’ Flora asked, quite without realising she’d asked a question. The US™ didn’t seem to notice either. At any rate, Helen got there first. ‘You were named after margarine.’ ‘What's margarine?’ That was too obvious. The US™ hummed, and started on the word MARGARINE, but with a swift wave of her hand Helen cancelled the request and answered herself. Omo found himself focused on whether the screen had a hardware or software problem. It was certainly not functioning properly. He was not convinced the ‘hibernate’ setting was strictly legal. That bothered him. Like any good citizen. ‘A fat based replacement for butter and hard fats,’ Helen said. And as the screen remained in sulk mode, that piece of knowledge cost no one anything. Nike was impressed with how these facts just flowed off Helen's tongue. She was like a live knowledge bank. He supposed in History, before ULTIMATE® ran things, people would have to have this kind of knowledge stored in their own heads. It was primitive, but strangely compelling to him. He wondered if it was genetic. Was it something he'd inherited from Helen? He'd ask Pryce. No. Maybe he wouldn't. Maybe this wasn't something he wanted modified out of his DNA. Helen was still explaining the origins of Flora's name. ‘Flora was a Latin word for flower (Latin was a language that was dead long before even I was born) and the product was made with sunflower oil, which was supposed to be healthier than animal fat. And was also better than palm oil, which was the generic oil used in those times. Palm oil was a terrible thing because they cleared all the rainforests to grow it, to satisfy demands, and in doing so they destroyed fragile eco-systems and many wild animals became extinct because of it. Specifically orang-utans. I bet you don't even know what an orang-utan was?’ Flora shook her head. ‘No. But I wanted to ask you. About tigers.’ ‘What about tigers?’ There was no response from the screen in relation to Helen’s question this time. ‘I..’ Flora faltered. She was still clearly moved by her experience and didn't want to cry in front of Nike's Nan, ‘I saw a live stream the other day. Of the last tiger. We saw it dying. Live. It was horrible.’ ‘And your question?’ ‘Well. I wanted to know why?’ ‘Why what?’ (The US™ would not demean itself to come back to life for such an impoverished construction.) ‘Why did it have to die? Why did it live in a zoo? What is a zoo like and what were tigers like?’ The questions kept flowing out, like the tears had flowed before. ‘Where did they live when they weren't in zoos? What is a wild animal? Why can't we have them now?’ Flora finished, exhausted. And now the US™ didn’t know where to start. It made the most confused, grinding noises; unearthly and primitively mechanical. Helen used the override command again. Omo might have observed that the screen didn’t look happy if he could have imagined the emotion of happiness applying to an inanimate object, which of course he couldn’t. He just noted that it was not behaving in the standard way. He was glad he wasn’t a technician. He’d never thought it possible to play about with the screen the way Helen was doing. Meanwhile Helen was dealing with Flora. Offering her the verbal equivalent of a tissue, to mop up the question tears. ‘That's a lot of questions. No wonder you came to me. You couldn't possibly have enough ULTIMATE® credits to get all those questions answered. Not without hours of ‘productive’ work.’ Helen smiled. That wry, mocking smile which made you feel that she didn't really take the whole ULTIMATE® thing seriously. Which was dangerous. And which was probably why she was here, living in a Victim Home instead of out in the community living a happy and productive life. ‘So I'll tell you,’ Helen continued, ‘but I'm mercenary in my old age. Like ULTIMATE® there's a price for my knowledge.’ Flora's face fell. ‘Don't worry. I don't think it's too high a price to pay. I just wanted to invite you to my birthday party.’ A birthday party? Nike had never been to a birthday party. Not since he was about six anyway. He had a hazy memory of it. But not one he could find in his Memory Bank. There was nothing on his Memory Bank before he was 10. Nothing from before he started at The PROJECT⌂. He’d never considered that before. It was strange. But there was so much else for Project Kids to focus on, Memory Banks tended to get overlooked. They were for people who didn’t ‘have it all.’ And as Pryce kept reminding him, as a Project Kid he did ‘have it all.’ Whatever it all was, Nike wasn’t sure it was enough. He realised no-one had responded to Helen’s request. She sat there, hopeful. He took an absentminded sip of tea. It wasn’t that bad actually. He refocused. A birthday party. For an old woman? Boy, these old people were really strange. Helen was speaking again. ‘I'm seventy next week. And I was hoping we could have a little celebration. Will you come? Will you all come?’ ‘Of course,’ they replied in chorus. ‘We'll have tea, and cake and candles and it'll be like the old days.’ Helen smiled. Then frowned. ‘Do you mind? Would you mind indulging me?’ Omo couldn’t figure out whether the US™ was faulty, or huffing, or didn’t deal with personal questions of the construction ‘do you mind?’ But it stayed silent. Unlike Nike. ‘No, Nan. We'd love it,’ he said. And almost meant it. ‘Existence is useless!’ Nike shouted gleefully as he threw the controls into hyperdrive, pushing the spaceship towards the black hole, risking all in an attempt to break the space-time continuum.....
‘Pizza?’ ‘May as well... I've just crashed and burned YET again.’ Nike turned from the console and grinned at Omo, the purveyor of the pizza. ‘Where's Flora?’ ‘In front of the US™ as usual,’ Omo replied. A shriek from the direction of the ULTIMATE® US™ screen proved his hunch to be correct. The boys ran towards the common room to find Flora jumping up and down in an aggravated manner. ‘What's up?’ they asked in unison. She pointed at the 90 inch screen which held pride of place on the feature wall. On it was a tiger, in a poor state, effectively breathing its last. ‘Look,’ she gasped. ‘It's the last tiger. The very last. Dying.’ ‘Uh, huh.’ The boys were unimpressed. ‘Pizza?’ offered Omo. Flora threw him the dirtiest of glances. Nike realised he'd better try another approach. ‘Where'd you get that programme from?’ ‘It's a live stream,’ she replied. Now Nike was interested. ‘No. No way. They never.... it's got to be archived.’ ‘NO.’ Flora was adamant. ‘I'm telling you. This is a live stream. We are watching the last tiger in the world DYING right now, right here, in our living room.’ Omo squinted closer at the caption in the bottom righthand corner. ‘No, Flora, it's in a zoo, in Berne.’ Omo was good at missing the point. ‘What's a zoo?’ Nike asked. ‘Where's Berne?’ The reply came as a spoken response simultaneously typed out on the lower left quadrant of the screen. ZOO: Definition. Short form of zoological gardens. A public garden or park with a collection of animals for exhibition or study. BERNE: Place name. Capital of Switzerland. Founded in 1191 – The period known as the medieval period in history. Toblerone chocolate bar and Emmental Cheese brands originated here. Albert Einstein worked here. THIS INFORMATION HAS COST YOU TEN KNOWLEDGE CREDITS. FOR MORE INFORMATION… ‘Stop it,’ Flora screamed. ‘I can't see what's going on. Stop asking stupid questions. Just WATCH.’ The boys sat on the sofa either side of Flora who had sunk back into the luxurious faux leather, and munched on their pizza as the tiger breathed its last. When finally it was dead, a commentary began, giving details on ‘the once mighty tiger....’ Flora cried. Omo and Nike were shocked. They'd never seen Flora cry before. In fact, neither of them was sure they'd ever seen anyone actually cry before. Not live, in front of them. It was a day of firsts. And lasts, if you were the tiger. Nike wasn't too bothered by the tiger. It wasn't the sort of thing he was interested in. And he couldn't afford to ask questions except on the things that DID interest him. Asking questions only got you into debt. Nike was running out of credit at the ULTIMATE® knowledge bank. He was always running low. He asked too many questions. And where knowledge is a currency, being overdrawn was always a danger for a guy who couldn't stop asking questions. Being overdrawn is no fun. It meant that instead of playing the usual games he would have to do some ‘productive’ consuming. Nike hated being ‘productive’. PRODUCTIVE: Definition. In History being productive of or engaged in the production of goods or producing commodities of exchangeable value. In current parlance being ‘productive’ is a component part of the ULTIMATE® way of life where to be ‘productive’ is to engage in activity directed by ULTIMATE® (usually the engagement or analysis of consumer behaviours) with the aim of gaining knowledge or memory credits which can then be exchanged via the ULTIMATE® knowledge and Memory Bank system. Nike had developed quite sophisticated ways to cheat the system. Omo didn't like to ask questions. Wasn't interested. So Nike traded knowledge credits with his pal on a daily basis. But it had come to the point where he'd used up nearly all the credits on Omo's vault as well. And if Flora ever stopped crying about the tiger and went back to her own knowledge vault, she'd find that her password had been hacked and her bank account raided too. Nike wasn't proud of that, but it was like an addiction. However much Flora tried to explain to him that it was pointless... because knowledge wasn't meaning and meaning was personal and so there was no point to any of it, other than the point you created yourself in your own vault... Nike just couldn't stop asking questions. So, now that he was in a barren desert, it was time for more drastic action. ‘We should go and see my Nan.’ Nike suggested. ‘Why?’ A question from Omo. That was unusual. But it was not a real question. Not a question with meaning. For Omo, ‘why’ was like grunting. No thought went into it, it was just a knee jerk reaction and he didn't care if he got an answer or not. Questions didn't interest Omo, and answers interested him even less. Omo was a model citizen in that respect. ‘She's got lots of stories to tell. Her vault is amazing. And (this was for Flora) she'll know about tigers. She knows all about animals and nature and that sort of historical thing.’ Nike put his best case forward. The deal was done. They would go and visit Nike's Nan. ‘We should take her something. Something real,’ Nike said. ‘Something real? What?’ Flora replied. Omo just sucked on an ULTIMATE® sweet and said nothing. Nike answered, ‘I don't know. What do old people like?’ The US™ screen replied. GIFT GIVING: In History, a Scottish tradition. On visiting family members or acquaintances, one would take a gift of some sort. Acceptable gifts included a range of consumer items such as Flowers, chocolates, wine.. Live animals and expensive consumer items are not appropriate. YOU HAVE 10 ULTIMATE® CREDITS LEFT TODAY. ‘Boy,’ said Omo. ‘You're really going to have to be careful on the questions now. ‘It's not fair,’ replied Nike, ‘I didn't even want an answer to that one. I wasn't even asking a question. I was just thinking.’ Omo laughed. ‘Don't think out loud, Nike. How many times has Pryce told you that?’ He put on Pryce's accent, ‘Thoughts are best kept in the head. Meaning is personal and thoughts are personal. There is no currency in thought or meaning so don't bring it into the public arena.’ ‘All right, all right.... give me a break,’ Nike replied, ‘we'll get her some flowers. Where....?’ Flora cut him off short. ‘I'll sort it Nike. I can buy things without losing question credits. I know how to shop.’ ‘Thanks Flora.’ ‘No problem. Now get me some pizza will you?’ The boys went off to provide Flora with pizza, happy that she was eating at last. And that finally they'd distracted her from that hideous tiger. In the kitchen they waited for the ‘ping’ which would tell them the pizza was done. A whole four minutes. That's because they didn't have the newest microwave. You could get a pizza in 36 seconds if you had the latest model but who needed their pizza in 36 seconds? Who cared? While the Project Kids were supplied with all their requirements, if they wanted the very best of the best, they had to put in more ‘productive’ work. And it wasn’t worth it for a microwave when there were so many other things you could do with your credits. So they waited the regulation four minutes. Normally not a problem, but today it seemed like a long time to stand in a kitchen waiting, so the boys resorted to conversation. Of a kind. Conversation was an art going the same way as the tiger, certainly amongst Project Kids such as Omo and Nike. They were better at doing, or avoiding, ‘productive’ work. Their lives were lived virtually and real interaction was neither encouraged nor considered normal. Of course they talked to counsellors when schedules had to be changed or the like, but most needs could be met by a virtual exchange. ‘It wasn't pretty was it?’ Omo said. ‘The tiger? No. It was kind of ratty. I reckon it would be better off dead than living like that.’ ‘I meant Flora crying.’ ‘Oh.’ ‘Girls used to cry all the time,’ Omo observed. ‘In History. I saw about it on the US™. Cry and cry and cry.’ ‘Why?’ Nike mouthed... he was wise to this. If he asked this question out loud he'd break his credit limit and he'd have to spend the rest of the day in ‘productive’ work to regain his balance. ‘Not clear,’ Omo replied, ‘Emotions. Hardship. Love. All kinds of silly things. NOT things you should be asking questions about. Not with your credit rating.’ PING. That was the pizza ready. BRAND LOYALTY
THE ULTIMATE BOOK OF CHOICE AND VALUE A-Z Cally Phillips Throughout January a chapter a day will be posted so that you can read it in advance of publication of All Moments. You can, of course, buy the book. |