The Ballet

PART 1: Miriam

The alarm clock rang with the inane sounds of WZKY’s “Morning Zoo Crew” laughing at jokes that weren’t funny. They banged on pots and pans, farted, shouted profanities, and attempted a variety of “comedy” bits, all loud, all scatological, all seemingly designed to annoy you so much that getting out of bed was worth it simply to turn them off. This was Miriam’s thought as she bolted upright in her bed and banged her iPad alarm with her fist. I don’t know why I listen to that noise, she thought.

It was going to be a long day. She had meetings scheduled every two hours, and her first one was just a couple hours away. Enough time to take a leisurely shower, get ready, and still make the train. She put on a pot of coffee, turned on the shower, let it run for a bit to heat up, and stepped in for an eye-opening steam bath. After a couple moments, she closed her eyes and began to pray. This was a regular habit, even though Miriam didn’t really consider herself religious. But she’d discovered that, for her, the only way to deal with the noise and rush of the day was to start the day in silent meditation. She wasn’t usually praying to anyone or for anything, she would just close her eyes and take in the warmth of the water. Maybe she would think, Holy God, or Universal Energy, or whatever is out there, if you’re out there, help me get through this day without ripping someone’s head off. She wasn’t sure this was an entirely appropriate prayer, but she figured it was better to pray for calm and serenity than for the disembowelment of the people who constantly pissed her off—although there were plenty of people pushing that religion of revenge. Which is pretty much why she didn’t consider herself religious.

Miriam turned off the shower, grabbed her fluffy towel and dried herself off. She got dressed in her regulation white skirt and blue top, had a quiet cup of coffee, left her apartment, and started walking to the train station a couple miles away. Her neighborhood was nice in the morning, a row of old brownstones in a gentrifying, tree-lined neighborhood. She liked her little community because it hadn’t been forced into ethno-social blocks by the government yet. There were blue- and white-collar workers, and lots of people from different cultures. This wasn’t entirely unusual for the city, but it was becoming more rare for cultures to mix now that the government had decided the separation of racial and economic classes would alleviate crime. Oh, the politikniks never came right out and said that, but redistricting and other laws made it obvious that the people in control had every intention of keeping control, by making sure nobody else could ever rise to a position of power. It was the beginning of the new, cruel global empire, and everyone knew it, but was too busy trying to put food on the table to care or do anything about it. What could be done, anyway? The politicians had the power, and owned the weapons, the technology, the land, and the media. Best not to grumble. Life is suffering, after all, Miriam thought.

But the idea of losing her little slice of paradise bothered Miriam deeply. She was good friends with the dozen or so people she shared the row of houses with. They would often get together on Friday nights to tell stories about their weeks, and share some incredibly delicious food and drink, each person bringing the best of their heritage with them. She looked forward to finishing work and returning home to her little island on Fridays, her own little world of peace and tranquility, her own little bastion of cultural diversity that proved the politicians didn’t have any idea what they were talking about. Or maybe they did, but that thought scared her witless. Which, she supposed, is exactly what they wanted.

The walk to the train station was the last quiet moment of the day. She breathed deeply to take in the crisp, clean morning air, to listen to the sounds of the birds, of children leaving their homes for school, of couples saying goodbye for the day. Once on the train, she’d be bombarded with advertising on the large screens where windows used to be, so she walked deliberately, focused on the glory of nature.

To pay for the global mass transit system, the city, along with other major cities around the world, had recently retrofitted all the glass windows in their trains and buses with a new, electro-synthetic technology that allowed the panels to be transparent to the outside, or display advertising. If you paid extra, you could access the Net and use the windows as touch screens, but very few people could afford the fee. Occasionally, the video would be turned off so you could see outside (and you could always pay for this privilege as well), but normally, the ride was a bombastic assault to the senses, mind, and spirit.

Today, Miriam’s entire hour-long commute was completely dominated by advertising for bleach, expensive cars, expensive houses, a variety of self-help schemes (which always seemed to benefit only the person who came up with the scheme), new and legal designer drugs for everything from enhanced reality perception to completely altered reality perception (it’s good to keep the masses in a glazed stupor, she thought), the ubiquitous political advertisements for politicians who over-promised and under-delivered every single election, various ways to change your appearance (always for the better, of course), and superstar athletes and actors urging her people to join the state religion, iGod. The calming effects of Miriam’s morning were already wearing off, and she’d only been out of the house for half an hour.

She put her briefcase under her seat and slipped on a pair of state-provided Googles, a mash-up of eyeglasses, headphones, and brain stem stimulation that, for the most part, allowed her to shut out the rest of the world by choosing any scene she liked. Googles, named for the company that controlled the flow of information around the world, were altered reality generators, of a sort. They allowed you to choose or create a scene, and see, taste, touch, smell, and hear it as if you were there. The advertising that interrupted the scene every 10 minutes usually broke the mood, but it was better than the constant bombardment on the train’s vid-windows. “The lesser of two evils,” Miriam said aloud, surprising herself and the other passengers.

Finally, the train pulled into the terminal. There was no pushing or shoving to get off, everyone lined up single-file and left the train in an orderly manner. The least bit of commotion would trigger the sensors that were planted all over the city. Nobody wanted to trigger a sensor. The flying sentinels that appeared when a sensor was triggered shot first and never asked questions. If a sensor went off, people were being too physical or too loud in a public space. Once a sentinel had you in its sights, there was no point in running. You’d be shocked unconscious and foaming at the mouth on the ground by the time you took the first step. In the city, there was little violence anymore. In the city, there was little vibrancy anymore.

Miriam left the station and started walking to her office. The state had retrofitted every building in town with electro-synthetic screens much like the ones on the train, only on the buildings the ads, exhortations to join iGod, and political messages were 200 feet tall and as long as a city block. Impossible to ignore, over the last 25 years or so, most everyone had joined the state and signed away any privacy rights to Google. People did this willingly at first, lured by the bright shiny promise of convenience, but then, after the state realized access to what used to be private information could help them “organize” society “more efficiently,” people were coerced into signing away their souls with the even better promise of new homes, new jobs, even new spouses and families if they wanted. Most of these promises were actually kept. For some reason, that just made Miriam feel worse.

Miriam and most of her friends from the brownstones were among the last holdouts. They hadn’t joined iGod, and refused to give any information to the Google state. This made them outcasts at best. They knew it was just a matter of time until they were declared outlaws, some fake charge brought against them to force them to goose-step in line with the rest of the zombies who were too apathetic or too worn out to care anymore. The funny thing was, Miriam cared deeply. Her neighbors cared deeply. They were old enough to remember the days before the Google-iGod state, when windows were windows instead of billboards, when people could live where they wanted and associate with whom they wanted, when people dated and fell in love and made lifelong commitments to each other, when religion was about a higher state of being, instead of about being controlled by a higher State. The question that kept running through Miriam’s mind today was, do I dance with the state, or sing a new song, and probably suffer the consequences?

PART 2: Noise

Twelve-year-old, (almost thirteen, he would tell you) squatty (but strong, he would tell you), black-haired, black-rimmed glasses, hipster connoisseur, Noise jumped off the swing just as it reached the point of falling backward, at that perfect apex where time stands still and the world appears to move more slowly. He landed perfectly, his feet square on the ground, his arms outstretched over his head like a triumphant gymnast, his porkpie hat firmly planted on his head. The other, mostly younger children gleefully applauded, then ran off to play on the merry-go-round.  

Saturday was Noise’s favorite day of the week. There wasn’t any school to worry about, so he and his friends played around the enclave all day long. There was a pretty nice park in the middle of the neighborhood, with swings, a huge sandbox, and chess tables. A mixture of grassy and brick areas and walking paths meandered their way across the enclave, embraced by a canopy of ancient trees that blossomed with the birth of a softer, more gentle world. This was the Friday night gathering place for community feasts, the temple for weddings and funerals, the playground for children, and for their children’s children. The park was their holy place.

Noise’s friend Josh called out playfully, “Come on, Noise! We’re going to play Emperor of Dirt! Come topple my evil regime!” Everyone either laughed or groaned at this suggestion. They had been playing this game since they were all able to run in the park together. While they’d played less frequently over the years, every now and then Josh would still call it, just to have an excuse to climb the dirt hill. Josh loved dirt. He loved that beautiful, earthy smelling dirt hill that grew larger every year, when rain and wind should reasonably have diminished its stature long ago. But some combination of falling leaves and the very wind and rain that should have taken it, just seemed to empower the dirt mound. After a decade, the mound was high enough that standing on its peak, one might just be able to grab the branch of the Apple tree overhead.

Josh wrangled his way to the top, his blonde, shaggy hair turning dark from the amount of dirt he was kicking up, and declared, “I’m the CEO! Now you all have to do what I say! Consume, peasants!” He shouted, echoing the state slogan emblazoned around the planet. Some of the younger kids rather happily did as they were told, and began eating handfuls of dirt. Noise and the others scrambled up the hill, joined hands around the dirt mound and sat down. Josh grabbed a low-hanging apple, sat down at the top of his dirt hill, and took a bite.  The taller kids grabbed some more apples and passed them around to the rest of the crew. They sat there, telling stories, giggling and laughing, for a long time. They could smell food from their kitchens, pies cooling on window sills, and clothes hanging out to dry. They were poor, and they knew that, but they were happy and relatively carefree.

For most of the children in the enclaves, life was good. The corporate state knew that without a firm foundation of children, the highly regulated and controlled society they’d created would topple like bowling pins hit by a canon ball. The threat of war had been eliminated from the planet, and weapons of all kinds were impossible for anyone other than government officials to obtain. The kids were physically safe. Their psychological well being though, well, that was another matter.

The state needed a regular supply of consumers, so children were indoctrinated into consumerism from birth. In school, on vid walls, in nursery rhymes and books, children learned that if they were loyal to the state, the state would be loyal to them. They were taught that wanting more and newer stuff was a good value, and that working hard, or even cheating to get what you want, was not only acceptable, it was encouraged. Those who accumulated the most could hold public office; perhaps even represent their enclave in the Body Corpotik, the corporate-controlled group that represented all the enclaves in the world. If a one worked hard enough and acquired a truly amazing amount of stuff, one might become Supreme CEO someday.

At first, corporate control of the global political, economic, and social system was subtle. But as time went on and racial and economic enclaves were created, people quickly realized they no longer had any say in social or economic systems. While there was a small resistance at first, they couldn’t compete against the armies of the corporations, and were quickly eliminated. The state then went to work obliterating the resistance from people’s memories, keeping them drugged up on an ever-increasing flow of high tech gear, chemical-laced food, houses, cars, and both legal and illegal designer drugs. Then, they started constantly blaring advertising and propaganda from train and building vid-windows, further weakening a person’s resistance. Once the state developed iGod (and coerced people into joining), the masses had been completely opiated. This took many decades, but now, the idea of revolution had become so foreign, that the word revolution itself had virtually disappeared from the language. The state certainly made sure it had disappeared from any reference materials.

In truth, the state had always done what it wanted, anyway. All any of the companies that ran the government had to do was purchase votes. For a new house, a new car, a new vid screen, an entirely new life, the state could get everything it demanded. Once, when it was time to vote on putting a dam across the Yellow River, even though the dam would displace three million people and pollute the river forever, the state just offered new homes to anyone who voted “yes” to the proposal. Since the people that lived around the Yellow River were all poor, they had no votes, and since the people that did have votes had never been to the Yellow River, there was no contest. The state: Winner. Communities along the Yellow River: Destroyed. The people: Displaced. The Yellow River itself: Dead.

But these were things few people realized any longer, and the children were fairly oblivious to the oppressive system in which they lived.  Sitting on top of their dirt mound, sharing their apples, they were happy. As Josh stood up to dust himself off and take the last few bites of his apple, there was a sudden, deafening BOOM and a bright orange explosion across the sky. The children looked up and saw a mass of fiery balls hurtling toward them very quickly, and creating a noise that sounded like fingernails across a chalkboard. “Scram, everyone!” Noise called out instinctively. “Meteor storm!” All the children covered their ears, scrambled down the dirt hill, and headed for their houses, trying to out scream the screaming meteors. Josh and Noise ran together to Noise’s home and slammed the door behind them. “What’s going on?” Noise’s mother called from the kitchen. The two boys ran to her and breathlessly talking over each other, tried to explain they’d seen a meteor headed toward the enclave. Delilah gathered the boys and took them to the basement, quickly texting Josh’s mother so she’d know he was safe. Her message made it through just before the electromagnetic energy from the meteor scrambled the telecommunications system and killed her communicator.

Meteor storms were fairly common. Over the years, as the state created more and more pollution in the name of growth and profit, the atmosphere had grown dangerously thin. As a consequence, more debris from space made it to earth before burning up in the sky. In the parts of the world where the corporate moguls lived, there were early warning systems, shelters and sirens. But in the enclaves, where the people the state considered unimportant, useless, or atheist (meaning they weren’t members of iGod) lived, there was nothing but destruction.

Through the noise of the meteor storm, and the rumbling of the house as one meteor after another hit earth, she heard something.. They all heard something—a voice—faint, but definitely a voice. It was coming from Delilah’s communicator even though the meteor storm had just interrupted the signal. “What’s the voice saying, Mom?” Noise asked. Delilah listened carefully. She could just barely make out the softest, most desperate plea: “Help us,” it said. “Help us.”

The voice disappeared as a meteor made contact and shook every home in the enclave to its foundations. Wherever this one hit, it was close, and it was big. Most of the time, the meteors were the size of basketballs. They did some damage, but in general the storms passed and left little rubble in their wake. But this was definitely different. And that voice. Was it just a crossed signal due to the electromagnetic storm? Delilah scanned different channels on her communicator, and found it again, a barely-there voice repeating, “Help us. Help us.” She looked at the channel and caught her breath. It was the frequency reserved for state use. Her com shouldn’t even be able to receive that channel. Hacking into it was punishable by death. It must be the meteor storm, she thought to herself. Please let it be the meteor storm mixing signals, she prayed. Because she knew that if someone had hacked into the state frequency, Sentinels couldn’t be far behind. The last thing Delilah wanted was Sentinels in their enclave.

Trying to hide her nervousness, Delilah took the boys by their hands and said, “Let’s thank God for keeping us safe, then go check on our friends.” The three of them joined hands and prayed. Josh asked Delilah if she thought iGod would answer their prayer and keep everyone safe. “We don’t pray to iGod, Josh, you know that. Noise and I, your mom—all of us in this enclave, we simply believe in God. God loves us, and helps us find the courage to live our lives differently. Our God—the only true God, is ancient, and has always existed. iGod is a creation of humans.” Josh sat and quietly thought about this. It didn’t make much sense to him. His mother and father had tried to explain the same thing to him, but he couldn’t see the point in believing in a God who didn’t give you stuff. iGod could give you anything you wanted! What had this other God ever done for him? If this God of his parents was so great, why did the people who said they believed in—what, it? Him? Her? Why did they seem so upset all the time?

Noise stood up. “We have to go find that voice,” he said. “It’s important. It’s really, really important.” 

Part 3: The Body Corpotik