One Billion Drops of Happiness (5 page)

Alfred and Kristina married and she very quickly fell pregnant. At this time, an extremely elite scientific laboratory in New York offered Alfred a job he could not refuse. Incredible pay plus the chance for him to finally undertake research that could change the world. Until now he had merely been tinkering with the genome of Nordic krill, biding his time until he could find somewhere that would take him on, some organisation completely accepting of his explosively unconventional ideas.

As much as he loved his home country, he was frustrated by his fellow scientists’ unwillingness to allow him to experiment in the way he desired. He felt suffocated by his own profession. Alfred’s admirable gift of lateral thinking kilometres ahead of his contemporaries had held him back rather than advanced him. He professed that if only he was given the resources, he could easily find cures for many of the ills of the world. Naturally, his fellow scientists had not taken much notice of this obstinate big-talking codger. The world has experienced many of this breed to no avail; you can talk the talk but can you walk the walk?

Unable to be granted this list of conditions and resources, Alfred refused to devote his work halfheartedly and instead absorbed himself in his branch of marine biology. It suited him well for it was a solitary life; he suspected he had lost out on several jobs owing to his introspective character. Everybody prefers to hire the life and soul of the office rather than the man likened to the stocks and shares you forget exist until they start coming up trumps. For many years he enjoyed his steady trickle of work, preferable to isolating genes in fruit flies as per his previous employment.

Thus, in 2024, Alfred and Kristina upped sticks to America, filled with all the hopes one would expect them to harbour. Kristina, who had never travelled out of Scandinavia, was optimistic that her new land would provide equally ample photographic opportunity. She had enjoyed great success in her native country as a freelancer and did not see a reason that this should not continue.

Baby Amethyst was delivered soon after their arrival in New York City and for a few years everything ticked along quite nicely. Looking back, as Alfred had confided in his daughter, perhaps these appearances had deceived him right under his nose. Twenty years flew by in a blur, as life often does when viewed from the end of the reel. Amethyst was schooled at the best academies, spoke a perfect blend of Norwegian, English, French and as was the increasing trend, Swahili. Kristina took to her new life with gusto, her photographic compositions of the gargantuan city adorning the walls of the most celebrated galleries in the district. But soon she felt she had captured all that the city had to offer. At heart she was a nature lover, fascinated by the ever changing presentation of the natural world; the opportunities were stratospheric.

Unfortunately she could not achieve such potential from the confines of the city. As more years passed and her daughter grew up into an independent, self-confident young woman, Kristina found herself yearning for her former life. She was rather isolated in her conundrum, because conveniently, for the first time in his life Alfred was beginning to find a real niche in his research. He and a team of the finest scientists had begun making real headway in finding possible cures to a myriad of diseases, and as a result, Alfred’s connection with his wife began to diminish.

By this time, Kristina was still a young woman by the ever ageing population’s conventions. Then one day, quite unprovoked, something seemed to tweak irreversibly out of place. She came home and demanded that if Alfred had a shred of love for her, he would consider moving back to Norway where they could regain a semblance of their former happiness and their waning connection. She was fed up of her creative lull, of the city that seemed to race towards an impossible level of modernity without leaving thought for what ought to remain sacred. Nothing was sacred anymore. Hell, childbirth no longer even required a man! She was tired of this life and wanted to return home.

Alfred viewed this sudden outburst as incredibly selfish, and did not take her seriously for a moment. Anger was ignited and exchanged, understanding was not attempted. As the years went by, the arguments were hazed out of memory until only the sum of the tension remained in Alfred’s memory; that of returning home from the laboratory one day to find her gone, just like that, without a trace. Presumably back to Norway but he never knew for sure. In his obstinacy, he continued to toil at work, pouring all his vestigial hurt and confusion into finding as many cures as he could. One could suggest years later that perhaps the emotional upheaval Kristina left behind was part of the very machinery responsible for changing the world forever.

Amethyst was extremely scarred by the events of that particular summer, and overcome by hatred for a mother who could abandon her, resolved never to speak to her again. In later years, an elderly Alfred who was now filled with revulsion for his latter inventions, tried in vain to track down his only love, but to no avail. If only he had come to his senses before 2080, it would have been easier to find her. After the Inauguration of New America, foreign governments became hostile and defensive to any enquiries coming from the metamorphosed country.

Ergo Alfred spent the remainder of his years wistful and lovelorn with his memories; the only relic of all the fierce words said and unsaid being the slow motion image of her beguiling, strangled eyes pleading for him to understand her.

President Okadigbo scrutinised the mirage for a long time, his eyes darting up and down furiously until evidently he found what he was looking for. His face lit up with sheer glee. He knew he was supposed to click his Suppressitor if he felt such extreme emotion, but he had always secretly enjoyed feeling the inimitable buzz of utter happiness. He did not care about the myriad of government-funded case studies showing that the majority of breakdowns were actually borne from citizens feeling overjoyed for too long. It was like an addiction; once they’d had a taste for it, a small proportion of crafty people would hunt out any situation which might replicate that illicit high – of course often leading to disastrous consequences.

What seemed to please Okadigbo so greatly was the monthly report on the government’s finances. For the last few months it had been delivered to him, the news had been getting better and better. Sure, Okadigbo had failed mathematics terribly back in his school days in the Old World, but even he was smart enough to recognise that the large number of zeroes at the foot of the mirage meant that the government coffers were very full indeed.

Since 2080, the citizens of New America had been so rigorously controlled that unemployment was a word which any day was about to be unceremoniously erased from the dictionary. With everybody working seven days a week, production was at its highest since records began and, inevitably, the economy soon began to prosper out of all control. No government from any age in history had ever experienced this wonderful problem. There was money oozing out of every speck of dust in town.

He waggled his fingers with delight, before turning to peer slowly and dramatically around his office just in case there was a subordinate lurking unseen. They had a habit of doing that sometimes. Several occasions when he had been enjoying a sneaky mid-afternoon snooze, he had awoken suddenly to find numerous pairs of beady eyes staring down at him. Damn subordinates. He wondered if they were being sent to check up on him. The cheek of it!

Confident that the coast was clear, his finger hovered over the mirage. He felt guilty. He nudged his Suppressitor. He had done it so many times before, what was the difference now? Nobody had ever suspected. He would just tell them that the coffers had leaked a little.

Besides, he needed so many new things for his house. However did the country expect him to perform his job so flawlessly if he was living in a pigsty? He was not like the younger generation; not even the strongest Suppressitor in the land would ever stop him caring for the finer things in life. And if his silk rugs did not compliment his dining table well enough then it really was time for a change.

Feeling suitably persuaded, Okadigbo jabbed the button. Instantly, a large amount of money was successfully siphoned into his personal account. The President grinned and inhaled deeply, allowing the fumes of joy to permeate his body to the core.

* * *

Xandria strolled along the moving walkway silently admiring the latest advert popping out of a nearby billboard.

‘The new Hercules Rodolfo clothing line!’ it trilled, ‘wear one cell thick in one Celsius!’ A generic looking model burst out of the technicolour mirage wearing the lightest, thinnest of fabrics. Before Xandria’s eyes a flurry of visual snowflakes erupted around the serene model who promptly started spinning on the spot to enable an all round view of the product. Xandria could feel the chill emanating from the mirage as if to demonstrate that indeed, only one layer was required in the coldest of conditions.

Manmade fibres were enjoying an exponential peak in their existence. People nowadays went about their business wearing the sheerest of materials. All clothing was uniformly cut because it was frowned upon to wear anything that was not strictly comfortable; it slowed the pace of work. The people of New America tittered at how the olden folk used to wear an array of strangely patterned clothing adorned with fussy accessories such as zips and buttons. How alien it seemed now that such yarns were cut in a suggestive manner - often rather tight or revealing expansive flesh - all for the purpose of attracting the opposite sex. This was not required anymore since Suppressitors quelled any basic human desire for procreation. The reproductive laboratories downtown scooped in fantastic business all year round when any family decided to extend their line. Without continuing the lineage, the momentum of progression would rapidly stall.

The mirage soon faded out and was immediately replaced by a giant model of the latest cell phone, which promised to bring the temperature and smell of the other caller’s environment into their mirage when the call was answered. All you had to do was have the cell embedded into your arm. As if to demonstrate, a gush of intense humidity infused the billboard as the mirage turned into a tropical beach scene. A faint waft of salt breezed into Xandria’s nostrils. She walked faster, mentally urging the moving walkway to speed up.

Tonight she was meeting Henry Excelsior for dinner at one of the finest restaurants in the city. At thirty-two-years old apiece, they had been family friends for nearly their whole lives. Not the sort of friendship that people in the Old World claimed to enjoy, but a regular acquaintanceship that had watched him grow from a small, somewhat sullen boy into one of the most successful entrepreneurs in New America. Their relationship had never been close, after all, whose relationship was these days, thus Xandria wondered whilst walking why Henry had called her out of the blue after so long.

She finally drew up to the restaurant and slipped gratefully into the staged ambience of plush tinkling ivory.

‘Madam, may I help you?’

Xandria smiled politely and headed wordlessly straight past the maitre d’.

Whenever her mother dined with her, Amethyst unfailingly retold her anecdote of the short period of time many years ago when robots manned every restaurant in the city. What an unusual experience it had been, and how the robots had served every dish in a perfect perfunctory manner. The government had been battling a dilemma of whether the use of robots should be rolled out nationwide. For decades the technology surrounding them had been improving dramatically. Soon they started to resemble perfect human beings instead of the rather clumsy attempts of the early twenty first century.

One day, a diner in one of the cheaper, tawdrier eateries in the city had ordered a standard dish from the a la carte menu. The robot serving him had looked confused for a few seconds before enquiring once again. The diner repeated his choice. Again, the robot paused. A couple of seconds passed in silence. Then all of a sudden the robot, as if possessed by some dark innate force, lurched forward and strangled the diner to death. This was in the time before medicine was advanced enough to bring someone back from a fatality. Therefore it didn’t take much humming and hawing from the government officials before they passed a sturdy law banning all usage of robots. People had always entertained misgivings about them and this was the ultimate proof that robotic humans were always going to be a different kettle of fish you just could not trust.

The rest of the world followed suit, gleefully banning the creation and usage of these devilish contraptions forevermore. Manpower is better than robot power; let us be self-reliant on our own skills, they preached, relieved that once and for all this issue was resolved. Things had started to get rather sticky in the robot industry as experts battled it out, still trying to come up with an appropriate universal code of ethics for the beasts.

The Old World could probably barely remember those former days of unification now. Even after the Inauguration the anti-robot law had not been revoked, but perhaps one day the issue would be fished out and rehashed.

Xandria presently spotted Henry who was tucked away in a conspicuous corner. He was well known for shunning any limelight outside of his enterprises; those in snooty circles frequently labelled him as an antisocial oik.

‘Xandria.’ He stood and nodded curtly. Tonight he was wearing his standard shade of dark granite from top to toe. Despite not caring for his garb, he always looked immaculate.

Xandria felt a cool wash of serenity spread over her body. Her Suppressitor must have sensed burgeoning anxiety.

‘Hello Henry. It’s been a while.’

Henry motioned for her to sit at the table. An unusually large leafy pot plant obscured their faces from the rest of the room. It was rather gaudy for the expensive taste of the place; Xandria privately wondered if it had been hastily ordered there by the ever-controlling Henry. What on earth did he want to talk about?