Utopia

“I can’t explain. It was too horrible,” said the first person.

“You should try. I’ve had enough adventures; I’m un-shockable,” the other replied, laughing contentedly, sinking lower into the bath.

“I went outside the city.”

“Sure - all the good ones start with leaving the city! Haven’t you noticed?”

“No - this wasn’t a Vision. I really left the city.”

“Oh.” The pace dropped. “That explains how you got your body in that condition!” An attempt at light-heartedness. Then, more cautiously: “I’ve never met anyone who’s been outside the city before.”

“Me neither,” replied the first person.

After a moment, the other said: “I try to stay online as much as possible now. You know, be productive. Something about actually being in your body now feels kind of… old-fashioned? I’m only down here - on the Maintenance Level - because I kept waking up.”

“Sometimes I like to get up and just move around. Do you remember when just the city was enough?”

“No. Sounds terrible.”

“It was different then. The body is a part of the mind, you know. Yes, it's old fashioned… but there’s sensory acuity in the body. That's why we still have them. You feel things…deeply. Perhaps not as much detail. But often I find I have better Visions afterwards.”

“I’ve never even thought about going outside the city! There’s nothing out there. We have everything here. It's Utopia.”

“The machines go out there all the time.”

“They’re made for it. We’re different. More sensitive… Just look at you! You might need a whole new body. If you want to see what the machines do you can go on a ride-along anytime. A Mining simulation. Or Manufacturing.”

“But don’t you want to know what’s outside?”

“Well… I’ve done a million ride-alongs. I was into it for a while. You know, those “How Is It Made“ Visions. Actually, simulations are better than realtime. You can see more. It's mostly just raw materials. And waste, on the surface, from Manufacturing. The underground stuff is pretty cool. It’s like they know where to look. But they’re just workers, they don’t have any thoughts or feelings. ”

“Yeah. They do know where to look. There’s mapping.”

“ I guess so. We’re lucky to have a rich planet.”

“We are.”

“Well, we do our job. We are as important as the machines. More so. Our Visions sustain consciousness throughout dimensions. Without us, the machines would just stop. Or eat everything… Wow. I don’t usually have these kinds of interactions.”

“I followed them out.”

“The machines?”

“Yes. They go out at regular intervals. There’s nothing to stop you from doing it.”

“Except the dust. And the darkness… and the general pointlessness of it! There’s nothing good out there. You could have got disconnected! Then you might never be able to get back online.”

“It’s only dark half the time. The rest of the time there’s light, just like there is inside the city. Or in Visions.”

“Hmm. So what did you see out there?"

A pause.

“At first, it was just desert. The machines rumbled off into the distance, much faster than I could go. They stirred up a lot of dust - I had to set my sensitivity as low as possible. It was ripping at my skin. It felt very bad.”

“Of course. We aren’t made to go outside the city.”

“So I wandered a long while. I don’t know how long exactly. I went far, but I had no reference. I tried to imagine it was a Vision - though I can’t imagine why you’d have one like that. You’d have to be a masochist.”

“What’s a masochist?”

“Never mind. So I wandered, in a blur. The intensity of sensation was visceral. Cold, sharp pain, all over me - like broken teeth. The heat, the atmosphere was heavy, sickening, rushing all around me louder than I thought I could bear. Every centimetre of my skin was searing, white hot, screaming with a pain worse than I ever imagined...”

“I thought you said your sensitivity was low?”

“It was. And I thought I was a curious person.”

“Well - what did you expect?! We are not machines. We have bodies to transfer sense data - not to go outside! We do subtle work. We explore the multiverse, at a level the machines cannot access - where the exploratory becomes generative. Our consciousness is fluid. We are barely even here in the city any more. We are everywhere. The machines can go outside. They can go anywhere, on this planet and others. They’re coarser creatures, even the nano machines and matter compilers. But we can go everywhere… There is no place for our sentience - our sensitivity - outside the city!”

“Ha ! “The exploratory becomes generative!” I’ve had that Vision. Generic, more like. I’ve always found that 'We Are The Source' stuff… unsatisfactory. I don't mean to be reductive, but is there no more to sentience than generating randomness?”

"Resistance is statistically insignificant, they say."

Silence, for a moment. They were the only two on the maintenance level. The bath lapped gently, propelled by some unseen movement, as countless nano machines attended the two bodies immersed in fluid, cleaning and re-building simultaneously.

“So you went, there was nothing out there - and it was very bad - so you came back. Dirty, for sure, that’s why you’re down here. But you’re fine. At least, you will be. A rough adventure, we’ve all had them. What was so horrible about it?”

“ I saw a person.”

“Outside the city?”

“Yes. At least, I thought it was a person, at first, til I got up close.”

“What was it ?”

“It looked like us. But… decayed. Like a human, but shrunken and leathery… withering on its skeleton. Like old fruit. But it was alive.”

“Where do you get these words? They sound… ancient! And what do you mean, OLD fruit?”

“Well - have you ever had a Vision with a feast? Where you consume organic matter, with your face, like they did aeons ago, when we were animals?”

“When we were animals? Yes, I think so. The animals crush other organic matter inside of them. And it feels good - like you want to do it more - until you do it too much.”

“Yes. Have you have stayed there long after the feast is over, to see what happens?”

“No. Why would I do that?”

“The point is that simple organic matter falls apart, eventually. At least, the fruit did. It checks out. Simple organic matter was part of the waste on the surface, once. I looked it up on the metadata.”

“People actually do that?!”

“We have access to all of the information in the multiverse, and you’re not interested to look at it?”

“To be honest I like high-velocity exploration, social triumph and sensory gratification experiences in my Visions," the other reflected. "I’m not sure I believe there was a person out there.”

“Believe whatever you like.” As the first person spoke, they looked down to their closed hand, which remained out of the water, resting on the bath tank. It moved slowly, palm-upward, between the two of them. Whatever it concealed was dusted with sandy earth. The other sensed a solemnity.

“I don’t know if it was a person. It was like us… but smaller, like an animal. Hunched, decrepit. The whites of its eyes were yellowed, thickened to opacity. Around the aperture, pale blue. And gray, even green almost. There was humanity in them - consciousness, it seemed. At least, the apertures were aligned - an intelligence. Their movements were rapid, like a scavenger… But it looked back at me. It held my gaze...”

“...Around its eyes, the skin was papery and furrowed - not supple like ours. Deep creases embedded its eyes, like crevasses in a rock formation, a desert viewed from far above, skin somehow dried out and folded over… cracking open from over-use. At a finer level still, an irregular lattice, an offence to geometry, a million crenulations, puckering around every intersection of contours.

And the rest of its face... as if somehow, a countless expressions had left their mark, and as if the weight of history had caused the whole gruesome thing to hang from the more prominent parts of the structure beneath. Cheekbones, jawline, temple - aspects we might consider aesthetic - made ghastly by sagging, porous flesh. And it was secreting fine beads of some kind of liquid…”

“Stop. You’re giving me a bad feeling... like I’ve eaten too much at the feast.”

“It gets worse. As well as the droplets of liquid, it had hairs growing out of its skin - not thick and consistent, like hair with which we may adorn our heads. Or all over like an animal. But sparsely - so you could see through to the skin beneath. There was more on the top of its head, and it was longer, iron gray, startled into a ghost of a crest, but too scarce to cover the tightened, pink, radiation-scorched horror of the skin that stretched over its skull.

"The hairs gathered more around its orifices, unsettlingly. Around its mouth. Thickened moisture. Lips shedding layers, pinker within. Its teeth were irregular, eroded, protruding from flesh, like an animal. I can scarcely bear to remember it. There were tiny rows of hairs growing out of the lids of its eyes. And all over its body. Thicker on its arms too. Like sensory antennae - a crude interface indeed.

"In pathetic adornment, it had covered itself, partly, in pieces of finely interlocked fibre… It must have crafted them from the waste. It was so dirty. More dirty than I am. Covered, soaked, caked its many crevices, like it had been dirty forever…”

“Ok - enough - I get the idea. Even in your strange language. What do you have in your hand? ”

The first person’s fingers unfurled. A small metal object, attached to a chain, shaped as a heart, an ancient rune, origins long forgotten. Once, it was ornate. Now, smoothed by the sands of time.

“It opens, look. There’s something inside.”

“It’s an image but it’s flat. It's a person!” The other was amazed.

Inside was a picture of what would have once been called a young lady with tumbling, auburn hair. Now, her features were barely distinguishable from the background, faded almost to white. The first person and the other peered at the locket in quiet awe.

“I almost forgot I was on the Maintenance Level. That felt like a Vision! How did you get this thing?”

The first person hesitated, feeling a flush of a sensation they had not felt before, as far as they could remember. At least, not in many bodies, many incarnations.

“I took it from the person outside. From around its neck. I picked up this after I knocked it to the ground. I think… I killed it.”

“I probably would have killed it,” said the other, kindly.

“I didn’t mean to. It was getting close to me, grasping at me. It was making a strange sound. My sensitivity was low. I was in a haze. The air all around me was screaming. My skin was burning. I’ve never felt like that before. I struck out… to protect myself…” the first person stopped.

“You know,” said the other, “You won’t be able to take that little thing with you once we leave the Maintenance Level. It’ll dissolve in the bath and be processed. We’ll be sterilised and repaired so we can get our bodies back online.”

“I know,” said the first person. “I just wanted to hold on to it for as long as I could.”