The therapeutic benefits of OBLIVION

Outside it is early, Aida’s legs affected by heavy sleep carry her from an unmade bed toward a window inside her tiny apartment, rubbing sleep away from her eyes, she lets the soft pre- morning lights of Halvala flood into focus.

Endless beautiful facades and monolithic structures dominate the skyline, all around them automated vehicles move in murmurations, wheeling and swooping and changing direction at a moment's notice.

Her old knees ache from a hundred years of living without physical augmentations or genetic enhancements.

Summoning a deep breath, Aida raises her hand, like an orchestral conductor she begins tracing shapes in upwards and downwards motions, moving with the automated vehicles outside, the silhouette of her elderly body is visible through her thin nightgown as she dances around the room.

Aida wishes she could freeze time for a moment, and live in the pleasantness of the dawn indefinitely.

Instead, the soft light soon gives way to brighter harsher light, and the slow hum gives way to heavy metal productivity, the facades that had reflected so beautifully now reveal the excessively frantic lives on the other side.

Aida finds it all a little too dismal and exhausting for her taste so she moves away from the window.

On the horizon the Institute of Morality looms above all else, a great pyramid in the sky, home of the revered Philosopher Queens, the true orchestrators of life in Halvala. It is the Institute of Morality’s own self imposed mission to ensure all citizens live a productive and above all else an infinite existence.

Shifting her attention to a knock at the door, Aida is surprised to greet her manager and closest confidante. The scrupulous and fantastically cynical Farfallina Di Losco, she is dressed in a long orange coat over loose fitting white slacks and a white shirt, holding a casually stylish handbag and looking amazing.

“Lovely to see you darling, a little early though, are we not?”

“Good morning Aida, we... need to talk,”

“Good news I assume?” Aida asks wearily.

Farfallina helps herself into the kitchen, “Tea first,”

“Darling, tell me we don't have a problem with the opening this evening?”

Farfallina nods for Aida to take a seat.

Tonight is set to be the opening for Aidas final exhibit, a beautiful book-end for an iconic career in the arts. It is an extremely personal piece in which Aida wishes to challenge the modern ideological systems underlying the commodity of immortality.

An exhibit aptly titled ‘The therapeutic benefits of oblivion’.

It is a project that began a hundred years earlier, at the home of well known art critic Zainab Khan, Aida was dining amongst honoured guests considered the most influential and prominent of fashionable society when she found herself subjected to the following conversation...

“I don't even know why humans ever wanted to live forever, I'm bored literally alllllll the time”

“Yeeeeeees, so true,”

“And every time you die, The Institute just scoops you up and brings you back online, whether you like it or not!”

“...and it’s soooo expensive, I don’t know how most people could ever pay the debt,”

“That’s how they get you dear,”

“That’s how they get you, indeeeeeed.”

… and so on.

It was during this sharing of ideas that Aida first began to feel an unease with not only the tedious and shallow nature of the conversation but at the tremendous ease in which she has always stood to benefit from the very system that allowed such mediocrity to flourish.

Was it not her duty as an artist to challenge such an authority? She thought.

What is gained from art when nothing is at stake? Pretty things, that's what. And the world is already full of pretty things.

Assuredly, the night continued on despite Aidas newly acquired introspection, that is until she announced.

“I am going to have my augmentations and enhancements removed!”

One by one, guests fell silent, looking to Aida with blank inscrutable stares.

“Is she mad?” A voice came from the crowd.

The allure of eternal youth was simply too potent, the cost even if exuberant, was still justifiable when stacked against the mortal alternative. The Philosopher Queens had made sure to reiterate this point time and time again.

But the passion in Aidas voice when she spoke was so rarely evoked in Halvalian culture the effect was almost shocking for those present.

“Well, only an artist could possibly be so dramatic, am I right?” laughed Zainab Khan, uncomfortably.

“Indeed..indeeeeed.” Came the replies.

“I’m serious,” insisted Aida, but she might as well have said it to herself as a humdrum of noise and laughter lifted back into full flight again.

Emboldened with a new sense of clarity and undeterred by the lack of reciprocal vision, Aida removed herself from the dinner party.

Moments later and as though guided by providence, she found herself at one of the many centres for human enhancement located in and around Halvala.

It was here, to the complete disbelief of the centres staff that Aida requested they remove each augmentation and that all her genetic enhancements be rolled back, as close to original as possible.

It took a strange mixture of arguing and pleading before a doctor finally agreed to undertake the procedure. They agreed on the grounds that Aida was an established artist and resolved that her reasoning came from a creative place, and far be it from them to try and understand the whims of a creative.

That night after many hours Aida left the centre, and for the first time in two hundred years felt the winds of irreparable damage wash over her temporarily youthful body.

And back to now, Aida, the only physically aged human currently living on earth, is waiting with anticipation to hear what her manager Farfallina Di Losco has to say about this last minute, possibly tragic news regarding her long awaited reveal to the world.

“You mustn't keep me waiting dear? I am on a finite schedule after all!”

Farfallina has the decency to oblige, moving in a timely manner she joins Aida.

Placing two ceramic cups on the table between them, Farfallina looks Aida earnestly and squarely in the eyes.

“Do you remember what you said when you first approached me for representation?”

Aida struggles to remember.

“You quoted one of those prehistoric philosophers that you admire so much.

‘The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that…’”

“...your very existence is an act of rebellion” Aida says, finishing the sentence for her.

“Albert Camus” she ruminates,”So very agreeable those ancient humans,”

“And do you remember what I said in return that day?” Asks Farfallina.

Aida searches her memory again but comes up short.

“I gave you a warning, I reminded you that the Philosopher Queens would never take kindly to an unsanctioned exhibit, especially one that is so obviously misaligned with their values.”

This line of thought triggers impatience within Aida, possibly another side effect of mortality.

“Yes, yes, I’ve heard it all before, I’ve been hearing it my whole life. But that is exactly the point, isn’t it my dear?”

“I took the job didn’t I?” Says Farfallina, “I was glad to take it...You weren't wrong to want to challenge the institute”

“Weren't? You’re speaking in past tense now Di Losco? Don't tell me you’re losing your nerve?”

“They got you Aida!”

A shocking revelation indeed.

“You’re saying they have found out about the exhibit?”

Farfallina nods.

“Well what are they going to do, arrest an old lady? And for what, being old. My gosh, do they truly have nothing better to do?”

Farfallina slides the two cups closer to Aida.

“I need to give you a choice, a terrible choice but first I need to tell you what you've missed”

Aida attempts to process her thoughts, ‘...a choice … a terrible choice… what - you’ve - missed...’

“Tell me darling. What exactly have I missed?”

“Zainab Khan.”

“What has that rat done?”

Farfallina explains in great detail that the centre for human enhancement that Aida approached a century earlier had acted under specific instructions from the institute of morality. It was Zainab Khan who tipped the institute off the second she had left their home all those years ago. They wasted no time reporting Aida for dissidence, from then on the philosopher queens had decided to keep a closer eye on the situation.

“They did indeed modify your augmentations darling and genetic coding, but only what was responsible for preventing ageing and it seems they had them noodle around with a few other things while you were under.”

Aida listens without interruption to every word Farfallina has to say.

“This is not your opening night darling, this whole thing is a ruse daaarling.”

“What the devil do you mean Farfallina?”

“They control your memory Aida, here”

Farfallina removes a holopad from her handbag and passes it to Aida. It projects an article written by Zainab Khan, a review for Aidas newest exhibit.

An exhibit simply titled ‘Oblivion’. It reads: ‘No artist has sacrificed more to demonstrate the horrors of what life without the institute of morality might look like for the citizens of Halvala.’ It is accompanied with a five out of five star rating and images of Aida surrounded by people moved to tears.

Farfallina speaks in a sympathetic tone “Like I said, they got you, Aida, they have paraded you around Halvala as a public program. A tragic tale of death and ageing. They have you on display as a fucking spectacle.”

Farfallina reaches for Aidas hand.

“They take your short term memory to ensure they can keep doing it! And now, well like I said, I need to give you a choice.”

... a choice… a horrible choice…

Aida looks at the two cups of tea placed before her, on the table.

“I have gone to great risk to bring you this choice, I'm afraid I lack the courage to make it for you darling, for that I am truly sorry.”

Aida nods in acceptance.

“Drink this tea here and it all stops. It will happen quickly and it will happen painlessly, the institute will lose the ability to parade you around supporting their own ends, or perhaps more accurately they will lose the ability to revive you.”

“And this one?” Aida asks, pointing to the other tea cup.

“This is peppermint tea,”

“So that is my choice? Oblivion or peppermint tea?”

“I’m afraid so darling and unfortunately we do not have much time left, the first program for today is set to begin any moment”

“Tell me, Farfallina...”

“Anything, darling,”

“Are all the reviews as favourable as that rat, Zainab Khan’s?”

With tears in her eyes Farfallina responds, “They say you are the toast of Halvala darling, a true visionary.”

Aida takes a moment before deciding to drink the tea. Instantly Farfallena stands and empties the untouched poison into the sink.

“You have relieved me of a great burden today, Aida. Thank you.”

Aida nods again in acceptance.

“Thank you, Farfallina.”

And then it begins, just as Aida had witnessed while reading Zianab Khan’s article. First the room darkens. From the darkness a dazzling illumination of artificial light begins to redefine the space.

The experience finds Aida suddenly outside of herself.

Unknown faces begin filling the space from outside.

A low frequency synthetic hum accompanies a multitude of green lights projected from a single point, they scatter throughout the room and come to rest, spelling the word oblivion across the now blacked out windows Aida had danced in front of only moments ago.

A sea of beautiful youthful faces continue to fill the room, each awash in artificial colour. Some weeping, some gasping. Each one of them moved with real emotion.

Through the crowd Aida watches Farfallina make her way toward the exit. Before leaving she looks back meeting Aidas gaze with a look of solemnity and mouths the words… ‘Break a leg, darling.”