DARK SCIENCE FICTION

More is Beauty

A Dystopian Tale

Photo by Romeo Varga on Unsplash

(A new revision of an old tale)

Freedom is Slavery — George Orwell

More is Beauty — Thomas Boyer, Jr.

When Thomas Boyer, Jr., the richest and most powerful man in all the land, discovered that public consumption had leveled off and showed no signs of ever rising again, he sponsored a study to find out why this was.

Messengers were sent far and wide and they, as charged, took the consumption pulse of every province and city in the land.

They all arrived at the same conclusion: People need to sleep.

Ah, thought Boyer, if people didn’t have to sleep, they could buy and consume so much more.

“Find me someone,” he said (or yelled, for he yelled most of the time) to his small army of Personal Assistants. “Find me someone who can figure out how to keep people awake twenty-four/seven.”

“And I need him now,” he added like a threat — which is precisely what it was.

“Yes, Sir,” said the Personal Assistants with one voice, then filed out the door to carry out orders.

The Personal Assistants were very good at what they did, and within the week, they returned with Forrest Anderson, a tall young man in jeans and with a ponytail who knew all about sleep, for he had studied nothing but sleep and its whys and wherefores for most of his life.

This tall, young ushered-in man had not been offered a seat, so he stood, hands clasped behind his back, regarding the richest man in the land with evident curiosity.

Looking up and without any throat-clearing whatsoever, the richest man in the land said, “I want you to make me a pill that will keep people awake twenty-four/seven.”

“For how long?” said Forrest Anderson.

“For twenty-four/seven,” said Boyer, who did not like to repeat himself. When he spoke, people should listen.

“No, I mean awake for how long? A week, a month, a year?”

“Oh, forever,” said Boyer.

“Hm,” said Forrest Anderson. “I’m not sure that can be done.”

“I am sure it can be done,” said Boyer in that way of his that made other people sure as well — if they valued their heads.

“That is going to take some time,” said Forrest Anderson.

“Some, but not much,” suggested/warned Boyer.

“I need a laboratory, and I need equipment, and I need assistants,” said Forrest Anderson.

“You will have all that,” said Boyer.

And so it was that Forrest Anderson, who in his late teens had discovered the human biological quantum clock that regulated sleep, made Thomas Boyer, Jr. a pill that could and would keep the population awake twenty-four/seven, three hundred and sixty-five days of the year.

Boyer was very pleased with this pill, and he named it Awake.

Once he had verified that the pill did indeed work, he threw Forrest Anderson in a dungeon and tossed the key in his trash can, for he did not want this bright young man to get any ideas about making a better pill for someone else, or heaven forbid, to come up with an antidote.

That very evening, a cleaning lady found this odd-looking key in Boyer’s trash can, and since it was a beautiful thing, she decided to keep it.

When she got home, she asked her husband what kind of key it might be, and to her surprise, he recognized the type: “This,” he said, “is a dungeon key. Why would a dungeon key be in Mr. Boyer’s trash can?”

“I don’t know,” she said.

They put it away in a drawer.

With Forrest Anderson safely locked away and now that the production line of the Awake pill was up and humming, Boyer proclaimed a new law for the land: Everyone must take one Awake pill each morning for the rest of their lives, regardless of age.

To make sure this law was followed, he then established a Pill Police who were given detectors that could sense whether a person had taken the pill or not.

A first offense (not taking or forgetting to take Awake) brought a warning.

A second offense was death.

After a few televised such deaths, the population got the message and turned into dedicated pill-takers.

As a result, and much to the delight of Boyer, buying and consuming began to rise, and rise, and just kept on rising, for no one slept anymore but now stayed awake to buy and consume twenty-four/seven.

All the while, Boyer got richer and richer and richer, though not happier.

One day, five of Boyer’s most trusted advisers were shown into the great man’s office. They had requested, and he had granted this audience.

Boyer’s secretary closed the door behind them.

“What do you want?” said Boyer, without looking up from his task at hand.

“We have some, well,” and some clearing of throats here, for they all liked their jobs and liked their heads as well.

“You have some, well, what?” said Boyer, now looking up.

“We have some bad. Well, not really bad, say disturbing news.”

“What is this disturbing news?” wondered Boyer.

“India, China, and Africa are using up far too many of our resources.”

“And?” said Boyer.

“And their rate of consumption keeps growing, faster than ours, in fact, the Awake pill notwithstanding. At this rate, there will soon not be enough for us.”

This got Boyer’s attention, and he sat upright in his large chair. “This is worse than disturbing news,” he said. “This is terrible news.”

The five advisors looked at each other, each wondering whose head was about to roll.

“What do we do about this?” said Boyer.

“That’s a very hard question to answer,” said his advisors. “India’s and China’s and Africa’s populations keep growing, and as these countries grow richer, each citizen buys and consumes more and more, and they all look to our land as a model of comfort and luxury, and they all want what we have,” said one advisor.

“If they keep this up,” added another, “we are soon going to need more than just this one planet to provide the resources for all this consuming. We are going to need two, three, five even, or more, perhaps. Planets.”

“What. Do. We. Do. About. This?” said Boyer.

The advisors looked at each other again, wondering about rolling heads and who would be missing them.

Finally, the most senior and most trusted advisor to the big man risked an observation. “It’s not as if we could kill them all off,” he said.

“Now, there’s a thought,” said Boyer. Then he said, very loudly — loudly enough to be heard through doors and walls and floors even — and very emphatically, “PAs. Get in here.”

The small army of PAs arrived, notebooks at the ready, awaiting new orders.

“The populations of India, China, and Africa are threatening our well-being and consumption growth,” he said. “We need to get rid of them.”

No one answered, nor did anyone write anything down.

“Did you not hear me?” said Boyer.

“Yes, Sir,” said the PAs.

“How do you mean, get rid of them?” said one of the PAs — the bravest one.

“Get rid of,” said Boyer, each word slowly, “as in wipe out, kill off, exterminate. Do you need more synonyms?”

“No, Sir,” they all said in unison, advisors included.

“Find me someone who can figure out a good and untraceable way to remove them all,” said Boyer. “Someone good with viruses, for example.”

“Yes, Sir,” said the PAs, and turned as one to carry out his order.

And so, before long, a horde of messengers was scouring the land for a virus genius who could figure out how to wipe out the populations of India, China, and Africa, without harming the great land itself or any of its allies and without a trace.

Meanwhile — freedom-loving people being what freedom-loving people are and doing what freedom-loving people do — a grassroots resistance to the Awake pill had begun to form, led by Susanna Fairweather, a mother of three, who had fled to her off-the-grid deep-forest cabin with her husband and children to avoid the Pill Police and that cursed pill.

From there, she had, using messengers and snail mail to stay under the digital radar, managed to contact and gather other like-minded pill resistors in the land to form a small but growing movement.

They decided to set Forrest Anderson free, for yes, by now it was well-known that the inventor of the Awake pill had been thrown into the Boyer dungeon.

Forrest Anderson, they reasoned, would be the only one who could design an antidote to Awake, and an antidote to this evil pill was what the land needed the most.

And so it was that they found out about the dungeon key. The cleaner was only too happy to give it to them.

Shortly thereafter, Susanna Fairweather and three others sprang Forrest Anderson and brought him back to the Fairweather cabin.

“Do you know what is going on now?” Susanna asked Forrest.

“No,” he said. “Tell me.”

She did. Then she asked, “What are the side effects of the Awake pill? I am sure there must be some.”

Forrest Anderson looked concerned. “That’s just it,” he said. “I’ve given this some thought — I’ve had the time, as you know — and I guess that two things will soon begin to happen if they have not already.”

“Which two things?”

“People are running down their quantum clocks by using up genetically allotted awake hours at an alarming rate. The body only provides so many, you know, and by staying awake as they do, they will deplete that store.”

“And?”

“And people will start to die ahead of their time, as it were.”

Susanna Fairweather looked very concerned. Then she asked, “And the second thing?”

“And the second thing is that if you take Awake for too long, I’m afraid it might sterilize you.”

Even more concerned now, Susanna Fairweather asked, “How long is too long?”

“I don’t know. A year, perhaps, give or take.”

“Oh, my,” said Susanna Fairweather, shaking her head, for it had been well over a year now that the pill had been mandatory. “That is terrible news.”

“I know,” said Forrest. “I tried to tell them that we needed more time to consider the side effects. To run trials. But Mr. Boyer is not a good listener.”

“Oh, my,” said Susanna Fairweather again.

“Yes, I know,” said Forrest.

“Oh, my,” said Susanna Fairweather again. Then she asked, “You designed the pill. Can you make an antidote?”

“Not without a lab and more time than I believe that we have.”

“Are you saying that the Awake pill might kill or sterilize the country? And that we are too late to stop it?”

“That is what I am saying,” said Forest Anderson.

“Oh, my,” said Susanna Fairweather for a fourth time.

Back at Boyer headquarters, PAs brought in a large and spectacularly well-dressed man named Hunter Jack, a virus genius who said he could solve the India-China-Africa problem for Boyer.

“Let’s hear it,” said Boyer.

“A cloud,” said Hunter Jack. “A viral cloud that covers the Earth for four weeks.”

Boyer nodded. Envisioning. Yes. So far so good.

“This cloud will kill most humans who breathe the air, and will sterilize those too healthy to go down on the spot, so to speak.”

“Why not kill them all, on the spot?” suggested Boyer.

“A virus that virulent would kill all animal and plant life, too,” said Hunter Jack. Then added, “Which might not serve your purposes.”

Boyer nodded. Then asked, “And our land? And our allies?”

“They will be inoculated to shield them from the virus,” said Hunter Jack. “I have already devised the antidote.”

“Beautiful,” said Boyer. “Beautiful.” And actually smiled.

“We will have to make those inoculations mandatory,” observed Hunter Jack.

“Naturally,” said Boyer.

At the cabin, Susan Fairweather listened to the emergency broadcast that directed every citizen in the land to report to the nearest hospital for an important inoculation. Against a rapidly spreading deadly virus, the very stern announcer said. Inoculations were mandatory, he added.

“What virus?” she asked Forrest Anderson.

He shook his head. “I haven’t heard of any such thing.”

“What is he up to then?” she said.

“I don’t know.”

“I’m going to take my children to the local hospital,” she said. “Just in case there’s something to this. You should come too.”

“I can’t,” he said. “They’ll spot me and arrest me. But you go, just to be on the safe side.”

What Thomas Boyer, Jr. was up to (to answer Susanna Fairweather’s question) was to inoculate every man, woman, and child in the land.

However, he had, on profitable second thought, decided to leave his allies — along with the rest of the world — in the dark, and had not extended the inoculation service to them. This, of course, was to safeguard the long-term supply of natural resources for the land, he told Hunter Jack, who agreed. Good idea. Wise move. Foresight. Sir.

Once all the people in the land had been vaccinated, Hunter Jack’s virus cloud was released from a fleet of high-altitude warplanes, and within days the entire planet was covered by a blueish-white cloud whose tendrils reached all the way to the ground, and that swept a viral mist across all the world.

Much was made of this cloud in every country, including the land, and even more was made of it once people everywhere (except in the land) began to take ill and die. Only the young and very healthy were strong enough to withstand and survive the virus.

At first, many countries blamed the land for the cloud, but Boyer said, look, we are as much a victim to this natural disaster as you are. Our land is covered, too, as you know. And since that, of course, was true, the other countries soon stopped blaming the land — being too busy by now burying their dead.

Forrest Anderson soon died, too, for there was no way for him to avoid breathing the contaminated air, while Susanna Fairweather, her husband, and her children, along with two other families that also lived in the cabin, survived, since they all had been inoculated.

Two years later, those in the world who had survived the cloud were now discovering and confirming that, yes, definitely, they were sterile, and these populations would soon die out.

Unfortunately, for the human race, the same conclusion was now being reached by the people in the land. For even though they all had survived the cloud, they all had, as decreed by law, continued to take the Awake pill. And this same conclusion was that, yes, they, too, were now sterile. The people in the land would soon die out, too.

Thomas Boyer, Jr., who, of course, had been safely inoculated against the virus cloud, had never trusted the Awake pill (privately heeding Forrest Anderson’s repeated warnings that more testing was needed), and so had never taken it. Thus, he came to live out his sterile, childless life, witnessing his handiwork — the slowly unfolding catastrophe of mankind’s demise.

A regrettable side effect of the precious pill.

Leaving only the few who had refused to take Awake, but had been inoculated against the cloud, and of those, there were not many. Among them, though, are three families in a cabin deep in a forest.

The years have rushed by, a thousand of them now, undisturbed by those few humans who survived the catastrophe and who have since clung to life.

And among these few humans, one name has survived a millennium that has seen global warming recede, and ocean levels drop again as the ice caps reformed and anew provide safe abodes for polar bears and penguins.

One name has survived and is remembered as the first mother of those who remain and who now, at last, begin to see their number rise again:

Susanna Fairweather.

A band of perhaps twenty or so is entering the ruins of New York City by hand-carved canoe, the bridges long since collapsed and the tunnels caved in. They make landfall and set foot near West 57th Street, which will take them to the big park in the middle of the city, where another small band of humans has made their home.

Many buildings still stand, though the majority have collapsed to some degree or other.

Some of the people who now set foot on Manhattan Island offer a silent prayer to Susanna Fairweather, the mother of all good things, that they will find their fellow humans in the park in good health and glad to see them. Others are trying to make out the lettering on the few still-standing street signs.

© Wolfstuff

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