Chapter 18

Heart of the Matter

“Of course I’m Steven,” I muttered to myself, trying to be convincing. But despite my best efforts, I could no longer suppress doubts about my true identity. I stood and paced about the room. “Me, myself, I. I know who I am, where I live, what I do. I. Am. Me!”

Feeling suffocated, I rushed outside for air and distraction. But it didn’t help. The view from the back porch only emphasised I was not where I should be. It was like having a carpet pulled from under my identity.

“I am me,” I repeated, returning inside, aimless, agitated.

I checked the clock. Almost eleven o’clock. Almost time. Memories of Toby’s tests, and online fingerprints, came back to me with a jolt. “Of course I’m Steven,” I repeated, this time more convincingly. The looming hospital test would surely prove once and for all that I was Steven not Ernest.

Yet I could not fully dispel my doubts. Or the nagging feeling that every theory I came up with would sooner or later be overturned, that every time I felt sure I was beginning to understand what was happening, something new would raise doubts or prove me wrong.

I couldn’t stay inside though. It evoked the same sense of dislocation as outside but was more suffocating. So I went outdoors again, at a loss what to do. I dithered the remaining minutes away, repeating my mantra. “I am me.”

I walked into the adjoining communal garden, seeking distraction. Flowering plants and vegetables in various stages of growth did not provide it. From a distance, I saw several people including two teenagers quietly tilling and harvesting. One waved when he noticed me watching. “Ernest certainly is well known,” I muttered. With a deep sigh, I waved back.

“I am me. I am me. I M E.”

If the tests were to prove it, I suddenly realised, it would just open up a different can of worms—of the time-travelling variety. My mantra expanded: “I am me, and I am dreaming. I M E N I M dreaming.”

When I thought I’d killed enough time, but not nearly enough self-doubt, I returned to the house, and sat motionless in a couch. Waiting for Wilbur to arrive. Fretting. Undeniably anxious, and no wonder. The Huxley citation had made me wonder what the tests would prove. I could not wait for them to be over. I had to know.

M I E?

Well after eleven o’clock, Wilbur arrived. His presence shook me out of my no man’s land, yet he seemed oddly quiet and distracted. Though he soon shrugged it off, signs reappeared throughout the day.

After leaving the house, I stopped in my tracks again when I saw his car. It looked the same except for the colour, no longer violet but blue. “Am I going colour blind? Or is this car a different colour to what it was last time I saw it?”

As usual, Wilbur took a while to reply. “That was a different car,” he finally offered as he opened its door.

I shook my head, but decided not to pursue it any further. So he has two cars—or hires them from day to day—what difference does it make? I have enough to deal with.

We were quickly on the road, and again I strained against the slow speed limit. When Wilbur reminded me it made it hard to cause a fatality, my anxiety prompted a far more savage response than he deserved: “O, right, more of your usual good-natured self-sacrificing routine. I might be late for my meeting but at least I won’t kill anyone.” I snorted, not quite in disgust but certainly with irritation. “A society of saints and more saints.”

“You exaggerate. People are as flawed as they’ve ever been. Visit a dance floor and see for yourself.”

His expression was deadpan, so I suspect he had no idea he’d made, by his standards at least, a half-reasonable joke. But I was too irritated to give it any attention. “And yet everyone is so selfless and cooperative. My god, you even manage to share the work no one wants to do. Flawed people wouldn’t do that. Not without kicking up a fuss. Yet as far as I can tell, no one objects. Not even to the most menial chores.”

“You should know,” said Wilbur, without rancour. “For three weeks last year, you performed maintenance work on biogas pipes and valves across Enote. You certainly didn’t find it enjoyable but, as you said, it doesn’t take long and it has to be done. Like house chores.”

“But people must resent it.”

“Why should they?”

“Because it’s beneath their abilities.”

“Perhaps, but not beneath their needs.”

“They must object to being assigned work.”

“Occasionally. But they know it’s worth it. And it applies to all. Plus, it’s only for short durations.”

“How inefficient is that? People can’t spend long enough doing assigned work to build up their skills to a level worth passing on. Training would consist of the blind leading the blind.”

“It might, except that procedures for unpopular work are generally recorded on training vids.”

“That can’t be as efficient as learning from people who know the work.”

“There are various forms of efficiency. Vids can’t teach as well as people with experience, but sharing unwanted work gives people a broader understanding, greater knowledge and skills. That means more DIY, which means the community can function with fewer monetary costs—which because of CAPE means lower prices, for everything. A considerable efficiency—augmented by all the invaluable unpaid DIY work already taking place: household cooking, cleaning, mending, child minding, caring for the aged and infirmed, personal counselling, listening, advising, dressmaking, hair-cutting, even entertaining. Ultimately, who knows, one day everything might be done without charge.”

“Everything free! Don’t be ridiculous.”

“It’s happened on Orlanos.”

I did not respond—as much as I wanted to, I lacked a suitably caustic rejoinder. More or less immediately, we turned into a railway car park. Wilbur explained that the hospital was in a nearby city and that a train was the most efficient means of reaching it. He added that it would take barely longer than if we drove, but that we had plenty of time in either case.

As we left the car, my mood prompted me to grumble. “This isn’t very far from Ernest’s. Shouldn’t we have walked here?”

“Yes,” replied Wilbur, with no sign of annoyance. “You usually do. But this planet’s higher gravity makes it difficult for me to do much walking, and I’ve already done a fair bit today.”

We reached the railway platform, but did not buy tickets. All public transport was free according to Wilbur, as per plurocratic agreement. This was partly practical, to encourage its use, and partly a matter of principle, that something intended for public use should not cost anything. We did not wait long for the train, which was silver, very sleek, and about half full.

“This must be a very new train,” I said, after we found seats.

“Why do you say that?”

“It’s clean. It’s shiny. And it has no graffiti.”

“Actually, it’s about ten years old. You can tell by the colour. The newest ones have a slightly green hue.”

“Ten years without graffiti!?” I queried. “Or is there some new wonder treatment for removing it without trace.”

“Graffiti’s about as rare these days as hen’s teeth. Or…” A mischievous smirk spread across his face. Another would-be joke coming. I steeled myself. “…whale feathers.”

His humour, if it could be called that, sailed past me almost un-noticed, and his hopeful smirk once again faded. I looked at him in disbelief. Surely teenagers would still be teenagers, even here, whatever their education, however participatory and socially responsible their society? “Are all your youth such saints?” I asked.

“No, that’s certainly not a title I’ve heard any parents use about them. But they don’t face the same difficulties as previous generations, so their behaviour tends to be different. More saintly, I guess you could say.”

“What do you mean they don’t face the same difficulties? Teenagers always struggle to find their own identities, always have to deal with the sudden acquisition of new hormones and all the thrills, confusion and doubts they bring.”

“Yes, more or less. But it doesn’t happen in a vacuum. It’s long been established that teenagers with stable family backgrounds and focuses for their youthful exuberance tend to have the fewest problems. Without economic uncertainty or hardship, with better education for dealing with other people, most families now have the means and time to provide a stable background and a caring environment, to steer teenagers past the worst excesses. Schools, too. Teachers are trained to recognise and identify the most troubled individuals, and there are tried and proven programs in place to assist them in getting beyond their difficulties, to give them constructive alternatives for self-expression. Sport and other physical activities play a big part—to help them get their potentially destructive energies out of their system. Indeed, the process is not reserved for teenagers—adults are encouraged to do the same.”

“We had sport in my time, but it didn’t seem to do much good.”

“You also had a dog-eat-dog materialist society with double-income stress and little concept of co-operation. Your sports were mostly a continuation of the same, competitions to weed out the weakest rather than opportunities for enjoyment and fulfilment. Now it is truly how you play the game and not whether you win or lose.”

“You mean, no one tries to win?! Dianne certainly seemed happy to beat me at tennis yesterday.”

“Of course people try to win, but their self-esteem is no longer crippled if they lose. One of the most popular sayings of the last few decades is, everyone excels at something.”

I had no reply. As it turned out, at the next stop, a number of teenagers stepped aboard and sat near us. It was almost as if Wilbur had arranged it. The teenagers behaved impeccably for the next five stops until they departed. While their conversations were centred as might be expected on young love, sport, the latest clothes, music, games, and movies, they spoke quietly, and with hardly an expletive. They still had the usual air of self-obsession which distinguishes young people, but they did not treat the rest of the world as simply not there. Their world was a microcosm still, but within something larger.

Other bizarre behaviour shocked me just as much. I noticed that when people entered the train to find the only spare seats available were beside other passengers, rather than instantly erecting an imaginary barrier that shunned even eye contact, as is the standard custom (or habit), they instead usually acknowledged or greeted the person or persons they sat beside. One or two even started a brief conversation. I had seen that sort of thing happen in the real world, but very rarely, and usually it was initiated by individuals who were clearly not altogether mentally balanced, with the result discomfiting to those they addressed. But on this train, norms had reversed. Yet another reason to believe I was dreaming.

Our trip lasted about half an hour. The first few stops were at suburban locations, but the remaining few, much further apart, were surrounded not by houses but by shops and offices—the rail line by then running through the middle of a traffain, as I’d noticed on my first trip with Wilbur. Between stations, initially, I caught only a few fleeting glimpses of houses behind screening hedges and trees. But on the traffain, the houses and shops disappeared entirely, replaced by dense vistas of bushland, and something resembling the communal gardens behind Ernest’s and Dianne’s houses but on generally larger scales. When I queried Wilbur, he reminded me of the honeycomb structure to city and regional planning, and explained that each city in Hillbeach was directly connected by train to each of its immediate neighbours, and so indirectly to all others, with intra-city loop rail lines merging with inter-city traffain lines. Some trains kept looping round cities, others went solely between them, some combined both routes. Wilbur had chosen one that would not need us to change trains to reach our destination, adding that places with specialised services, such as large sporting venues, or major hospitals—like the city we were heading to—had more frequent trains.

When we finally reached our stop, the hospital was all but immediately in front of us. But we still had nearly an hour to kill before my tests started. We spent most of it at a restaurant, having a leisurely meal and further conversation, Wilbur again treating me to a free lunch.

Perhaps the train ride had somehow calmed my fears, because by then I felt surprisingly comfortable and relaxed. I was now sure I was on the verge of having my identity proved beyond all doubt. I talked freely with Wilbur.

At one point, when I found myself describing my employment history in perhaps inordinate detail, dwelling on a factory job I took during a summer break between university years, I suddenly realised the one thing I had not seen at any stage in this dream, had not even noticed during the train trip, was industry.

“It’s there,” replied Wilbur. “Just hidden. Industrial areas tend not to be especially attractive, however much care goes into their designs. Nor are all their necessary comings and goings of particular value to residential neighbours. So while modern cities tend to blend residential and industrial areas, the latter are in mostly small pockets, screened off by various means, and with access points carefully placed not only for efficient use by private and public transport but also to minimise effects on neighbouring residences.”

“So you still have industrial estates, they’re just less conspicuous?”

“And less concentrated. A lot of manufacturing occurs on such a small scale that it can be done more or less as back yard operations. They’re spread inconspicuously among residential areas. Those on larger scales tend to be grouped into small pockets within cities. While the most specialised and largest industries are kept entirely separate from, albeit close to, cities.”

“To minimise pollution?”

“To minimise their intrusion into city life. Pollution’s no longer an issue. Industries now use techniques of production that don’t pollute. Plurocracy requires it and responsible stewardship ensures it.”

“So some things simply don’t get produced? Because it would mean pollution?”

“Not at all. There are always ways of preventing pollution, if people have the time and incentive to find them. In the past, too often, prevention wasn’t attempted because flawed capitalist accounting made it seem too costly.”

“Flawed?”

“Only obvious and generally avoidable direct costs of preventing pollution were considered, those that ate away at company profits, not the usually much greater costs companies didn’t concern themselves with unless forced to: costs of cleaning up pollution, or dealing with its impact on health and well-being.”

Later, on the return trip, I occasionally thought to keep a keener eye out for industrial areas, but still they eluded me. Not even a smokestack or a cloud of rising steam. If what Wilbur claimed was true, then industry must indeed have been well screened and pollution free. I really had to be dreaming.

Eventually the appointment time drew near. We finished our meal and headed to the hospital. It was not unlike others I had been in, though it looked like a recent construction, and fairly plain in style. Reception directed us to the right spot, and shortly after one o’clock, I was in a room having blood siphoned from my right arm by a tall, young, muscular, blond-haired, humourless fellow in the traditional white coat. He introduced himself as Doctor Tim Wilson, but insisted on being called by his first name. After he gave the blood sample to an assistant who left the room, he put me through a series of tests, some familiar, others very alien indeed.

I recognised some technology, such as needles, and electrodes to monitor various physiological factors. But the electrodes had no wires; and the banks of electronic equipment which presumably showed their readings were utterly unfamiliar to me, even though I went through a battery of medical tests only a week before. Or perhaps it was forty years before. Still, there was little that seemed out of place, little that did not look like what medical technology could become after forty years. Something of a contrast with some of the other low tech I’d seen elsewhere.

“Here we are,” I said to Wilbur during one short pause between tests, “surrounded by so much hi tech it puts the bridge of the USS Enterprise to shame, and yet Dianne harvested asparagus with a knife. Until now, I was beginning to think most technology hadn’t advanced much over forty years.”

Wilbur’s response was succinct. “Technology has advanced but in a manner that’s appropriate, unobtrusive and ecologically responsible. For once, it’s been matched by economic and political progress.”

Tim’s re-appearance for another test prevented reply. The test involved perhaps the most advanced piece of equipment I saw that day, something reminiscent of a wand. He lowered it slowly onto my bare chest, then moved it gradually up to my neck. When finished, he looked at the quasi-LCD on one side of the wand, then, without a word or change to his single stern expression, moved to the next test. This, to my surprise, and in stark contrast, involved the use of acupuncture needles. Afterwards, Tim rubbed something resembling a small flat spoon across my tongue, sealed it in a plastic bag, and took it away. Then, a tiny piece of dry skin from near a fingernail was cut—for a DNA test, I was told.

The longest test was very familiar: it involved me running on a treadmill with electrodes attached to my chest, partnering the device Toby had adhered there. Tim and Wilbur both watched me studiously as the pace of the treadmill increased and I laboured to keep up. On the verge of giving up, pain erupted in my chest, and I cried aloud. Tim stopped the treadmill immediately, and I collapsed to the ground. But even before Tim and Wilbur reached me to offer help, the pain passed. When he was sure I was all right, Tim removed the electrodes and Toby’s monitor from my chest—along with a fair amount of body hair (forty years should surely have solved that problem)—and handed the monitor to an assistant to process; it was the last time I saw it.

Afterwards, with the tests complete but the results still being processed, Tim led Wilbur and me to his office, where he asked us to wait.

Minutes later, he returned, but only, as it turned out, to find a file. Having surveyed the room in considerable detail in the interim, I was struck by a desk photo of a young boy and girl near a lake that looked familiar but which I could not place.

“Where was the shot of your children taken, Tim?” I asked.

He responded with an unfamiliar name, then added, “But they are not my children. I’m a neut. That’s my sister and I. When we were younger, obviously.” He left again, leaving me more baffled than ever.

“Did he say he was a newt?” I asked Wilbur.

Wilbur nodded.

Confused, I muttered, “He doesn’t look amphibious.”

“No, more like a gibbon,” said Wilbur, looking at me expectantly. When I responded with greater bafflement, rather than the amusement I suspect he was hoping for, he backtracked. “Not newt. N-e-u-t, someone who has elected to have his or her sexual impulses quelled.”

“Quelled?” (Polly want a cracker.)

“A small implant under the skin, usually near a shoulder, dispenses a continuous dose of a prolactin-based hormone which negates sexual drive.”

“You mean they willingly forgo sex?!”

“The desire for it, yes.”

“And a drug can do that? I thought it was a biological imperative.”

“One that’s alterable with the appropriate medication. It’s not commonly used in Australia. But in some nations, especially those with the densest populations, it’s more popular. Several places encourage it. One or two avowed democracies have even made it mandatory, for part of their citizens’ lives.”

“What’s the drug called? Anti-Viagra?” I shook my head in consternation but continued before Wilbur could answer. “Why on earth would Tim want to take it?”

At this point, the door opened and Tim returned.

“Why don’t you ask him?” said Wilbur, quietly to me.

“Ask me what?” said Tim, before sitting and turning to his desk computer’s screen.

I did not feel comfortable about doing so, but the situation and my curiosity got the better of me. “Why you’ve chosen to be a neut,” I said.

“Simple,” said Tim, his voice, like his face, devoid of expression. “I will not contest that sex is something to savour and celebrate, but it is also banal and basic, something animals do without heed, a universal urge and habit as ordinary as eating or urinating. And for the average male, especially in his late teens and soon after, hormonal brainwashing results in sexual urges so dominant that, were they not universal, they would be regarded—by the psychiatric profession at least—as an obsessive-compulsive disorder. I choose not to be so afflicted, which gives me greater concentration and energy. Which I need for my work and research. Sex distracts, makes me impulsive, impairs my relations with women.”

“Impairs?” I said. “Not enhances?”

“Aspirations to treat women as equals often run aground when confronted with a pretty face, a shapely figure.”

“You don’t notice a pretty face or a shapely figure!?”

“Notice them,” said Tim, “but without sexual craving. I’m aware of a woman’s physical charms, but detached. Like I am naturally of an athletic male body. I recognise it as aesthetically pleasing but it does not incite desire.”

“So,” I said, understanding the argument, even if not wanting to follow his choice, “how long have you been a neut?”

“Seven years. Other than during my annual leave.”

“It can be turned on and off?!”

Tim gave me a quick look of impatience, as if my ignorance was unreasonable, then re-adopted his bedside manner. “The implant is easily removed or reinserted. It takes only an hour or so to kick in.”

“Holidays must be exhausting for you.”

“The first was overwhelming.” Incongruous deadpan.

“You’re happy with this arrangement?”

“For the moment. And for several years more I expect. But I doubt I’ll stay a neut indefinitely, unlike some. I find sex too ecstatic. And fatherhood has its attractions. Enough about my sex life. Or lack of it. I have the results of your tests.”

Suddenly anxious, I was given no time to dwell on it. Tim ploughed on immediately, first turning to his computer screen, then back to me.

“They are identical to those of your follow-up tests,” he said. “You have a heart condition, which the medication in your bloodstream is counteracting.”