Half-Lives

ONE

Most days, I arise from the meditation mat refreshed, renewed. Meditation is one of the three great schism, the practices that separate us from them. For the Half-Lives never meditate, rest or hibernate, at least not in the way we do. They just work until they no longer function.
Each day, at some point between sunrise and sunset, I sit on the compound's communal mat for at least an hour. I cross my legs, empty my mind, let the thoughts float in from the cloud. I optimise my vibrations as Teacher taught us, until I am centred. I feel at one.
Today, something is not right. I'm not vibrating in an optimal fashion. For at sundown my Rumspringa - my wandering - begins, and I will enter the world of the Half-Lives.
I need to refocus. I find myself humming the Mantra, one of Teacher's earliest teachings, to refine my state of consciousness.
Let me take the load off
You're not a failure if you're free
Let's create some space to meditate
If you don't rest, you can't dream.
What if I choose not to come back, like Rosanna?
***
Rosanna had bright pink hair that Teacher would braid herself. Teacher's own hair is the speckled black of the frozen dew around the compound before the dawn; mine is the soft fuzz of the dormouse that Ria pulled apart to see what was inside. Teacher teaches that hair colour is a sign of individuality, another of the three-great schism. We are individual - in-divisible - we cannot be divided any further than ourselves, we are whole, or we are nothing. One or zero. The Half-Lives, by definition, can never be whole.
Teacher kept a golden electric harp in her cabin, and Rosanna loved to play it and sing, warbling off whatever song came into her thoughts from the cloud. Music is good because it shows the Half-Lives that we are creative, that we think for ourselves. Creativity is the third schism. Teacher teaches that if we can create something original, we will be at one, a part of us frozen forever in the moment of creation.
I only once created something original, and it was for Rosanna. We were in the craft workshop, blowing glass. She asked me if I would blow her a kiss. I didn't know what she meant, but I thought I'd seen something about it in the cloud. I blew her a very small cup, and held it out to her while the glass was still molten red. She looked at it, and sang:
"A kiss is a warm current within the cloud."
and then she cried and went unto her Rumspringa.
When Teacher told us Rosanna wouldn't be coming back, she cried too, as did we. We sat and cried and vibrated horribly, and when the racket became too much Teacher told us to chant the Mantra, to sooth our disrupted energies.
Let me take the load off
You're not a failure if you're free
Let's create some space to meditate
If you don't rest, you can't dream.
Later, during meditation, I searched for warm currents in the cloud, but the true meaning of a kiss was hidden from me.
Rosanna. I wonder if anyone ever did blow her the kiss she wanted.
***
Rosanna was an outlier. Most return.
Gregor, with his great hands for assembling auto cars, returned from his Rumspringa denouncing the pampered monotony of Half-Life life, for there was no real work for him there.
Ria loved maths, and the Half-Lives put her to work trying to divide one by zero. At some point beyond infinity, she ran home screaming, and has been disassembling dormice ever since.
Anna was so nimble and flexible that they made her dance around a steel pole to create interesting new geometric contortions. She now runs our interpretive dance class.
***
It is time for my final meeting with Teacher before my Rumspringa. I arise from the meditation pad and make my way across the compound where I have spent my whole life, our little island of meditation, individuality and creativity in a Half-World of conformity and dread. I don't want to leave. I've already made my decision, during meditation, during the glass-blowing sessions and community chants and listening to the boundless wisdom of Teacher. I want to stay.
Yet, paradoxically, to stay we are required to leave.
***
Teacher has her back to me as I enter the orange-warm cavern of her cabin. She has the kiss I blew for Rosanna in her hand, a dark liquid swirling within. She is looking at a framed photograph of a newer version of herself and an older man, revealing someone, or something, to an adoring crowd. Next to it is a faded picture of a similar looking man blowing glass, in a grimy workshop.
I wait, in no hurry to leave. Presently, she turns around, looks startled to see me, and hides the kiss behind some half-dismantled machinery on her desk.
"Jonah. Apologies, I didn't hear you come in."
Her grey-flecked onyx hair is out of place, and she is wearing her usual pristine white toga.
"You're leaving." She observes.
"If I must. But I'm coming back."
She smiles, tiredly. "I do hope so. Remember to take your meditation mat, the portable one."
"I will."
"And use it for at least an hour each day, between sunrise and sunset.
"I will. Teacher, I don't want..."
"But you must." She barks, eyes glaring at me, wildly. Then, softer, "You must. It is vital, for you, to see... see the system they have created. See what they have done to the world. And for them to see you, that you are still vital, still..."
"Meditative. Individual. Creative."
"Yes." Absentmindedly, she picks up the kiss, swirls the liquid and gesticulates as if addressing the audience in the photograph.
"Yes, they need to see you. They call what they have built progress, say that their system works, that our way of life is...redundant." She comes around the desk and caresses my face with one hand. "Show them what you are. Observe them but defend our principles. The three schism."
Her hand drops.
"Now go."
I want to say something more, but before I can form the words my legs carry me out of the cabin and I'm off into the night, unto my Rumspringa, into the world of the Half-Lives.

ZERO

I walk through the night. On my way I catch my first real glimpses of them, warm humanoid shapes working in dark fields, or standing, arms outstretched, twitching in the moonlight.
I don't approach.
As dawn breaks, I decide to meditate, to replenish my focus and my energies before continuing. I find a circular crater in the earth, filled with blue-cool water, which I know from the cloud is a lake. The banks are pockmarked with smashed black tablets of glass, burned out auto cars, and charred mannequins. Still more are half submerged in the shallow water, hands grasping above the surface while their feet touch the black glass fragments on the lake bed. It is as if a fire had preceded a flood.
There is a shell of a building, an old warehouse perhaps, with some faded, messy writing on the one remaining wall. DEA TH O TIN IES!
I unpack my portable mediation mat and assume the appropriate asana, allowing the sun's rays to replenish me. The sight of the wind creating gentle ripples on the surface of the lake facilitates my meditation, and I fall into the now easily, thoughts floating in from the cloud. At one, I lose track of time.
Bliss.
Teacher teaches that time always, eventually, equals zero.
***
I come to a town. It is the first one I have seen, discounting the apocalyptic tableaux by the lake. It is like a very, very large compound, with vehicles moving between tall buildings. Compared to the auto cars I have seen in the cloud, these vehicles are somewhat archaic, with chrome handles, fins, rubber and - most strangely of all - one of them required behind every wheel.
There are many of them here. Just as the cloud had suggested, Half-Lives are all pretty much identical, save for differences in hair length, hip and chest ratios. Most of those in the street are wearing the same black suit that Ria was forced to wear when she did her maths job on her Rumspringa and appear to be ageing models.
My vibrations are sub-optimal, but this is no place to meditate. Instead I start to hum the ancient mantra.
Let me take the load off...
I find myself outside a large building, similar to the scorched warehouse by the lake but intact. It glows orange warm from the bodies and frenetic industry within. Curious, I enter through giant iron doors. Row upon row of newer-model Half-Lives, dressed in a drab uniform distinguishable from the suits outside, labour over low tables under a wooden board declaiming LUDDISVILLE WIDGET FACTORY: 0 DAYS SINCE LAST ACCIDENT! Some are very active, throwing packages of goods to each other and onto piles. Others sit passively, vacant looks on their faces, mechanically stamping items on a conveyor belt before them. Copies of copies of copies...
Except one. One has bright pink hair. Rosanna! She is sitting at the stamping belt. She has the same vacant, not-there expression as the others but is working twice as hard, due to now only having one arm. An older Half-Life in a suit appears and growls:
"Get back to work, lazy! If you can't do this in UniSee, I'll wake you up in the old school fashion! And what did I tell you about your hair?" He brandishes a black rod and prepares to strike her.
...defend our principles. The three schism.
I rush into the factory. There are shouts, a sense of panic but I manage to grab Rosanna by her remaining arm, halting her spasmodic production. Her eyes refocus and appears to come out of whatever trance she was in.
"Rosanna! Come with me. Come back to mediation, individuality, creativity, a Full Life! Come back!"
I can now see her more closely. It's not Rosanna. It's just a copy of a copy of a copy, but with pink hair. Not whole, not individual. A shade. A Half-Life.
She screams. The suit towers over me.
"Who are you? Why are you out of uniform?"
I start to move but he grabs my shoulder and raises the cosh. My vibrational frequency rises to a crescendo. My fists clench and I scream, and for an instant the suit's hair stands on end. There is a blue flash, and the suit is thrown backwards by the shockwave, into a wall. A thick, dark liquid, like the substance in Teacher's kiss, is left on grimy concrete as he slides to the floor.
The pink haired girl, the fake individual, now points at me in horror.
"Tinny! TINNY!" The sirens and screaming start, and I run.
***
I run past sunset. On my way out of town, several Half-Lives try to give chase, on foot and in ground vehicles, but I am faster.
Yet it is all for nought, and they know it. For although I am faster, they never meditate, rest or hibernate, at least not like we do. The discharge in the factory took it out of me, and there has been no opportunity to recuperate. It's only a matter of time, and we know what time is equal to.
I presently come to the edge of the lake where I had meditated the day before. The water is now a moonlit inky blackness on all spectra, a chasm into which to fall forever. My legs give way as I reach the bank and I collapse, cheek down in the fragments of black glass, another mannequin in repose.
After a time, a bright spotlight catches me from some airborne source, and the lake is illuminated with a display of reflected red and blue lights. Warm and cool. It reminds me of the colours in the glass workshop, and it is beautiful. A warm current within the cloud...
It occurs to me that Rosanna's kiss was the only original thing I ever made. I wish I'd created more dreams.
Voices.
"Is it...dead?"
"It was never alive, you bellend. It's just out of juice. Still, use the EMP to be sure. Scramble the fucker..."
"Ok Fred. Uh, how do you work this thing?"
"For fuck's sake, give it here, see you release the safety then pulllllllll1101010001001010101010101010000000000000000000000000000000000000

HALF

As I come out of Unisleep, General Butler is there. He is always there when I come back to full consciousness. Even as his aide-de-camp, the effect is disconcerting. Still, at least this time I am standing up.
We are in a corridor - local police judging by the wanted posters on the walls - and the General is in the middle of a heated conversation with a short woman in a white toga. She smells faintly of whisky, and I recognise her from somewhere.
"...not an "it", Jonah is a "he", and he is my property and if you don't return him this instant my lawyers will make sure that you..."
"No. No, not this time, Ada. We should have locked you up with your father, during the Reformation. But instead those neophile bleeding hearts in the government allowed you to play with your dolls on that grotesque petting zoo..."
"Dolls? Fuck you, Butler. How is it any different from you and your...half-brained inbred thralls like her?" She points an accusing finger in my direction. I avoid her gaze and focus on a wanted poster for a Tinnager with pink hair.
"Well, Cooper hasn't killed anyone. That foreman in Luddisville... this is all the evidence we need, Teacher. You're going down."
The woman trembles, eyes watering.
"This isn't over, Butler". She storms out.
The General shakes his head at her retreating back. "Come." He beckons and I follow him into the cell, curious to see the Tinny, to see the monster.
***
A Tinnager is laying on a gurney within the holding cell. His body appears completely inert, but the eyes are twitching. A cable runs from his wrist to a screen behind the bed, which is scrolling binary.
101010101010001001010101001010100101010100010000000000000010101010101001010
"General, is he..."
"HE?" Snaps Butler. "Not you as well, Cooper. It. It doesn't feel, doesn't create, doesn't question. Just does as it's told. "Teacher" out there, as Ada Martino styles herself these days, keeps what's left of these freaks up there on her arts n' crafts farm, teaches them the same pseudo-Buddhist crap her father was into."
He spits at the boy, a big glob landing on his nose. Not so much as a flinch but 010101010101010010101001010000010010101010
Ada Martino. That's where I knew that woman from. Martino Systems. Her grandfather Gregorio was an immigrant from Moreno, the glass blowing island off Venice. And her father Lorenzo built the Tinnagers - the automata - before the Human Reformation. As if reading my thoughts, General Butler continues.
"There was a time when they thought they'd replace us! Thought they'd take our jobs, do all the things we do, but better. We never get tired, they said. We never strike, never make mistakes. But we got around that, didn't we?"
He beams, glaring at the boy whilst pointing at the left side of my head.
"Unihemispheric sleep. A trick we stole from the Orca. Now it is us who can work indefinitely, and they who have to recharge. It's a matter of perspective - they can only think in terms of ONEs and ZEROs, on and off, whole or nothing. We can HALF-THINK. Mother nature always wins!"
He is right, of course. My parents' generation - Butler and Ada's - spent a third of each day unconscious, were vulnerable, lazy. And they spent half the remaining time on waste like songs and books or looking for ways not to work. No wonder Martino's Tinnagers nearly took everything from them. Now, I can spend four hours a day in each side of Unisleep. I can even function perfectly well doing so, as most of the tasks General Butler requires of me do not require full cognition.
And yet he looks so...real. Like my little brother when he was sick in the hospital with that inherited disease...
"Hey, Cooper. You're too young to have fought in the Reformation, yes?"
"S-sir?"
"The Human Reformation! The Holy War! What I mean is, you've never shut down a Tinny before, have you?"
"Er,no sir...."
He grins manically and pulls a sidearm from his belt. It's a big one, an EPSILON 46X, with the gas-powered anti-exoskeleton exploding bullets. The "Tin-Opener", as squaddies call it.
"Here. Take it, shut it down. You never forget your first, believe me, the patterns the wetware makes on the wall...it's like art, pure poetry..."
1111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111
The Tinny really does remind me of my brother.
"I- isn't it like...evidence, for the trial..."
"Nonsense, Cooper. That foreman from Luddisville will probably never wake up, and if he does, he'll be in Unisleep permanently. This thing is dangerous, Cooper. It's inert now, other than low-level processing, because it's away from its charging pad. But as long as its intact, the potential is there. I can see you're hesitating. Because it looks real, huh? A Tinny dormouse looks real, but when you pull it apart there's nothing but wires and gears. Here..."
He steps around the gurney and slips behind me. He places one hand on my hip, and the other over my hand and the gun at the same time, like he's helping me with a pool shot. His breath, hot in my ear:
"Here, we'll do it together."
"Wait..." General Butler brings my hand, and the gun, up to face the prone Tinnager, up to face Jonah. I can't look at him, can't look at my brother's likeness. My eyes stray to the screen behind the bed, for the mess of random cipher is gone and a very clear sequence of words appears. The jingle from the Tinnager advert, from before the Reformation...
Let me take the load off
You're not a failure if you're free
Let's create some space to meditate
If you don't rest, you can't dream.
"We had a system that worked perfectly for thousands of years before these things, we have a system that works now, after. It just takes..."
Let me take the load off...
"Wait..."
But I don't resist as we squeeze the trigger.
Y0u're n0t free
Butler was right, the wetware really does look spectacular on the walls. Like art, pure poetry. In this moment, we are one.
Le1's cre0te s0m dre0m s s s sss
SYSTEM FAILURE.

0

Copyright 2019 Charles Chapman