Spring Term

as the story goes, technological modernity had crept up into the world like ivy climbing an oak. From the deep recesses of the soil, it had climbed up and up around the tree, feeding upon the tree almost unto the tree's death, but it had not yet killed it. Much of the tree had been lost, yet there still existed the core of the tree, which could only be seen from certain angles, during certain parts of the day. In the midst of that said moment, that moment of exceptionally late technological modernity, in a company dorm cafeteria a woman in a company outfit was selecting one of the plates of apple pie from under a heat-lamp and placed it upon her yellow plastic tray when she realized and recalled a strange experience she had had overnight, at some point in the night, perhaps towards the rising of the sun. She recalled seeing a room with computers in it, and a large square table with bright things upon it, like a little land or a map of a land but all illuminated with an internal glow, little glowing round glass dishes or plates, and she wondered how she could have witnessed such a thing when she had been sound asleep. Still in her daze, she slid her scrip card under the scanner and took her tray over to where her work-friend was sitting.

Her friend, 001-283-933-401, 401 for short, said: "Hi, how's it going, I hope you and your family are well."

Our central character, 226-483-050-555, 555 for short, replied: "Hi, how's it going, I hope you and your family are well."

Formalities aside, 555 opened today's sandwich to see what was inside. Whatever it chemically was, it was the green of her dorm room wall. Perhaps it was something mixed with phosphates. Without looking up, she asked 401: "Is today phosphate day?"

"It's phosphate day, her friend replied: "All day." She look around quickly to see if anyone had heard her.

"Phosphate Day," said 555 sadly. She looked around in precisely the same way her work-friend had before saying, "I had something of an experience this morning."

"Hmmm. I don't think you should tell me about it."

"I thought I was some place else entirely. I thought I was in a room full of computers, with something like a model of a city made of little glowing glass discs on a table in the middle of it all."

"Weird. Sounds like you have to have your diet adjusted."

"It was like nothing I've ever experienced. 401, have you ever heard of 'dreams'?"

"Of course I have. Think I never studied history, folklore? I'm pretty good at understanding superstitions. Ever heard of the rabbit foot?"

"The way you're saying it, 401, is that you never even entertained the idea that such phenomena are real."

"Of course not. So, wait, are you saying you think you had one?"

"I think so, yes."

401 drank some of her day's liquid before putting her head in her hands to ask, seriously: "Are you off your diet? Did you miss a dose?"

555 replied: "No, I'm all dosed up right."

"Maybe you should go for an adjustment. I've heard tales about events like this; I wouldn't want to see you run off to be with the mountain-wild people."

555 interrupted: "I'm not going off there, no, but it's something that happened to me, and it was strange, and I'm trying to tell you about it."

"Fine! What about it?" She leaned back as if to distance herself from whatever garbage was about to be thrown.

"Like I said, it was like I was in a room, and in the room there was a model of a city, but the city was a living thing, though made of glass. It was like I could see lights in the windows going on and off, and I could hear the hum of it all, all the electricity and machines."

401 shrugged. "Sounds like you're sick, if you ask me. Oh, look over there, shh. It's the new one, 593, we haven't met though I've heard about her."

555 turned slightly to see a curvy blonde passing her scrip card under the scanner. She turned back around. "Yes, I've seen her."

"Dreamy," said 401, drinking liquid. "I wonder if she'll be assigned to someone. She's heading this way."

555 looked up; 593 was standing over her. The latter said to the former: "Aren't these scrip cards dumb? We all eat the same stuff anyway, so why bother?"

The former replied: "It's an extra layer of security, that's all. Also it gives the overwives a way of knowing where we are at all times, they care for us so much."

593 smiled crookedly. "Yes, we have to let them know about our every move." She went away to sit at a distant table.

401 whispered: "She was flirting with you!"

"You think so?"

"Oh, it was so obvious! Asking your opinion about something and everything! I wouldn't be surprised to see you've been assigned to her."

555 looked across the cafeteria to 593, and found herself thinking about that dream of hers again, as if the two phenomena were connected. She stopped herself at that moment, with the realization that she was thinking in an old way, in a roman way, or whatever the word was for it. She knew she shouldn't think of any of it in that way ... because that didn't make sense. Perhaps she would have to go off to the medical centre to see if her metabolism was working right.

"I'm off," she said, and hurried to the medical centre. She described her symptoms, and they adjusted her. "If you find yourself going through nights with such thoughts again," she was told, "come see us immediately."

With much relief, 555 went to her work station, downed a pill, and got right down to doing whatever work she had to do, for whatever reason, producing something for someone somewhere, with only little twitches here and there as the thought of 593 crossed her mind.

The ivy continued to grow, and covered over another part. There was little chance the tree could live much longer than a couple more days

 

Ann stopped the program; it wasn't working out at all; some variable was off, but which one? The project was due the following day, and in its current state she simply couldn't turn it in. She'd called it the Utopia Project, and that's what it was meant to be, but something was off somewhere, she would have to change something, and run it again, though her theoretically-arrived-at 1024 generations, to see what could be changed, after all, it's the variables that count the most.

She returned to the code, intending to change one value in it. She wanted more coffee, but that could wait a bit. It was eleven-thirty PM already! All the values lay before her. Which to change? The technology percentage? The cultural value? Or was it all because of the beliefs she'd given her little simulated people? She raised the empathy rating. Yes, she'd set it a little too low; she'd been bummed out the day she'd chosen that value, she recognized; some extra empathy should make a difference to the behaviors in the program. She said a little prayer before starting her computer running its iterations. She switched it on, went to her kitchen, and made herself some more coffee.

 

that night, 555 was watching a comedy on television about a group of foolish engineers when someone knocked at her dorm door. She opened it, and it was 593, of all people, the woman she'd met just that day, standing there with bright eyes and carrying nothing. 555 invited her in, and 593 did in fact come in, and she sat herself down upon a convenient chair near a convenient table. 555 sat down opposite her, wondering if the newcomer had been assigned to her. 593 noticed 555's new bottled prescription on the table and seemed to sneer at it briefly.

She said: "Those things dull the senses."

555 replied: "We have to dull our senses a little bit. There's too much going on all the time."

593 changed the subject. "You're probably wondering if I've been assigned to you."

"Actually, yes, I was wondering that."

593 flipped her head around. "Frankly, I don't know who I've been assigned to. No-one's told me, and I haven't inquired."

555 shifted around, nervously, a little. "So, why are you here?"

"Hmm it's just you looked and sounded interesting. There's got to be something interesting about you, and I want to uncover it."

The obvious came to 555's mind immediately--the vision of the computers and the model in the middle of them, and that the news had almost certainly gone around--but she played dumb, knowing as she did there was a pretty good chance this 593 girl was in reality working for the overwives. Instead, 555 said: "I do my part, and that's about it. I'm a terribly ordinary person. You got me confused with some fantasy of yours."

593 returned to looking at the prescription bottle. "Ordinary people don't have to get narcotized to idiocy."

"I'm not getting narcotized to idiocy, as you call it. My biological basis is simply off a little bit. It's well within the range of behaviours."

593 looked over at the video screen. "We could have a little more privacy if we disconnected that thing."

555 was alarmed. "We can't disconnect it; we're no qualified technicians."

"I betcha we can."

"I don't mean it that way. I mean it's a ... what do you call it ... a crime to do it if you're not a qualified technician."

593 went over to the video screen. "There's nothing complicated about it at all." She moved it to one side so she could see behind it. "It's just a little switch, that's all." Her hand moved downwards, unseen by 555. No noise was heard, and nothing appeared to be affected. "I think we have it now; I think we have some privacy."

555 was shocked. "The overwives probably know you've done that. They're probably got a squad car heading our way right now."

593 shrugged and laughed. "Honestly, they're not that competent. They're not. I worked with them one summer when I was a little girl. They don't know as much as they pretend to. They probably won't notice anything until it's morning, and by then it'll be a whole different world."

555 waited for 593 to continue, and soon she did. "A lot can happen in one night, you know. As a matter of fact, something going to happen fairly soon, in ten minutes or so."

"What's going to happen?"

"Well, I got some friends coming over."

"Am I holding a party for you?"

"No, it's not a party, don't worry. They won't be here that long; only long enough for you to get some clothes together and throw them all in a suitcase or something."

555 had heard of people being arrested in the middle of the night; not anyone she knew personally, but rumours went around about people who vanished and were simply never seen again. All very mysterious: but 593 didn't look like an authority: quite the opposite, in fact. "So you're going to be taking me somewhere? Is this an arrest, an abduction maybe?"

593 to the dorm door. "Nothing like that, not quite that, but yes you have to come with us. You can decide later if you want to come back here, after a week. It'll be all up to you. In any case, it's only a week. You can consider it a vacation."

"Shouldn't I tell someone? My office manager, say?"

"Don't worry about that. Everything will fall into place, no problem. Nothing you do at work is worthwhile, you know."

555 thought for a moment. Yes, 593 was right about that. She wouldn't be missed one bit. She said: "I'd still like to know where you're taking me."

"It's a trip to the countryside."

555 had never been to the countryside. "Isn't the countryside dangerous? Monsters and so on?"

"Don't worry about monsters. They'll be more afraid of you than the other way around. You hang your food from trees and they'll leave you alone."

"From trees? What kind of food can you hang from trees?"

593 didn't have the opportunity to respond that that moment; a loud knock at the door changed the atmosphere. As she was going to the door she said: "So get some stuff together; we've got some way to travel. About five hours all told."

555, always obedient, did as she'd been told. An old suitcase from who remembered where came in handy. When she turned towards the door, she saw two strangers there. They were waiting for her in silence. 555 snapped the case shut; 593 said: "We can get you introduced later on. Right now, it's best if we leave quietly."

555 replied: "Yes, that's leave quietly. Where we're going, and why, I suppose I'll find out in due time."

593 nodded. "You'll get used to it. However, if you want to back out now, simply say so. This isn't an abduction. It's just an offer to show you something you've never seen before."

555 looked at the three of them at the door. She said: "I don't see any reason to disobey you. Lead the way

 

Ann was shaking her head as she read what had been written. Surely something should have changed! It had only been one parameter altered, but still: maybe there was something wrong with the machine itself. Computers are so complicated these days that no-one can even tell if they're working right, or what the problem could be. Vastly, vastly complicated.

Ann stopped blaming the computer so outright. "Don't blame the tools," as her mother had once said to her: "Only bad carpenters do that."

Time was racing on, and the project wasn't getting anywhere. It wasn't at all close to being acceptable. Ann knew she had to test the machine itself to see if the variables were actually doing anything ... variable. (She didn't know what she was trying to express.) Maybe the variables are being skipped over altogether.

After making a safe copy, she went into the core lines of the program. All the variables were there. She changed a variable from seven to twenty-seven, another from 5,000 to zero, and on and on she went, distorting the world inside the machine to a state which would not be recognizable ... or otherwise. Would it work? Would it change? She started its iterating, and waited.

 

and 555 dozed off in the vehicle as it travelled through the great darkness. There was nothing to see, and conversation was at a semi-voluntary standstill. The wheels over the smooth road vibrated her into lethargy, and she had no idea how much time had passed before the vehicle started to slow, and stop, still in the great darkness. That was when 593 broke the silence. "We're here," she said quietly, almost reverently, to 555.

The driver got out, and so did the woman beside her. 593 got out, circled around, opened the door for 555, a door which had been locked from the outside. Only the half-moon, occluded by stray clouds, offered any illumination, above what 555 thought she recognized as a forest of trees. She heard one of the other women trudge off into the darkness; 555 stretched her arms, legs, and sternum. She could wait for a long time, she knew, for something to happen: in school she'd once won an award for patience.

A light came on ahead of the vehicle. It was a light attached to a post planted in the ground. 555 could then see there was a building just beyond the light. It was a brown building, and its sides could be seen to be rough in texture. Someone in drab clothing came out of the building and waved. 593 nudged 555 forward; the driver and her companion got back into the vehicle as 555 walked carefully over the outrageously uneven ground to the brown building.

The person standing near the building held out her hand and said: "Hello, my name is Jane."

555 managed to stay obedient and not object to the statement's impossibility. She merely said: "Hello."

'Jane' looked past 555, to 593, and said: "I hope you're right about this."

The voice behind 555 said: "I'm pretty sure I'm right."

"Good. Because the cemetery's getting a bit full." She looked at 555. "That was just a joke."

555 said: "Oh." (She didn't understand a bit.)

"We'll get you to your room now. You're probably quite sleepy."

"Yes, I am. Will I find out some time where I am and what I'm to do here?"

"If you decide you should stay, you'll do work."

"Oh, I can do work. I work every day, at work."

"And something special work, too, possibly."

Behind her, 593 snickered and said: "You don't know what work is, 555. What do you do at work?"

"I read emails from customers, and I reply to them, if I know the answer."

"What are these customers after?"

"They're after things. They have to get replacement parts for things, and they have to get new things."

"Would you believe me if I told you that none of it is real?"

"Of course it's real. Why would I be doing it otherwise?"

"What would you say if I told you your job is part of a simulation whose only intent is to get you to add data about your average personality to a gigantic database that's powering strange projects that just happen to be taking place on the planet Mars?"

'Jane' (hereafter Jane) interrupted: "None of this is of any importance right now. 555, you'll find out all sorts of other interesting things about your world soon enough, but now we have to get you into this world here. Bring your bag and follow me."

555 picked up her bag and followed Jane inside, into a vast open space with furniture like tables and chairs, all made from wood, and on the walls were pictures of things that were arranged like natural landscapes albeit seen from a great distance. Shelves with rectangular things on them separated the pictures. Four doors leading to other places or to outside were also distributed along the walls. of a piece it was all almost arranged like 555's dining hall, but only in its spatial characteristics.

Jane led the way through a door and into a hallway with more doors. 555 then noticed the place smelled old; she associated then the scent with parts of the cellar of her building, which she'd accidentally stumbled upon when she'd been a girl: the smell of decay, or living, or something like that. Jane opened a door and pointed 555 to go in. 555 went in. A bed was in there, and a little desk and a chair below a window, and a black rectangular thing was on top of the desk.

"You can get some rest now," said Jane. "That is, unless you have further questions?" she questioned.

555 asked: "How will I know when to wake up and be alert?"

Jane smiled. "Yes. Feel free to wake up when you want and come out of here. Otherwise, we'll come in to get you if we think you've slept too long. Take it easy; take it very easy."

The door was closed, and 555 was as alone as she had been some six or so hours before. She put her suitcase down at the foot of the bed and sighed wearily. The place was silent. No machines hummed; no electricity whirred. She pulled the chair out and sat down. The window above her showed nothing but blackness. She examined the black rectangle and was surprised to find that it opened on something like a hinge, and that pages were inside it, all stuck to the hinge, and the pages had writing on them. She didn't know what to make of it: was it a manual storage device? She found the beginning of the text and read some of the opening paragraphs. Someone named God created the universe, and the animals, and things she couldn't pronounce. Then it talked about two people, but when it started talking about the two people, it stopped making any sense. Two people? Why two people? Her eyes were growing heavy; she could ask someone about it in the morning, if it felt like the appropriate thing to do, ask questions that is. She got into the bed, still in her clothes, and fell asleep. The lights didn't dim, for some strange reason

 

Ann saw it all happening, but she didn't know why it was happening. She'd changed all the variables, but the world hadn't changed. She was frustrated. It was four-thirty in the morning, and she hadn't proven what she'd wanted to prove. The experiment was a failure....

Or was it? What if she reversed her thesis? "It's a matter of mathematical determinism. As sure as two plus two equals four, no matter the variables, the program itself is adding too much information on its own, and thereby nullifying all the variables; the variables are cancelling one another out such that only bare computation occurs. The program doesn't work, and there's no proof the result can ever be changed." It looked like that was all she could do; she would disprove her original thesis. And ... doesn't science work that way, eliminating theses hither and thither? She'd had a thesis, and she'd disproven it. That should count for something.

So Ann, knowing she could defend what she had done in her experiment, set all the variables to zero or null (depending on the variables' possible states). (She could disprove her inversion, after all!) She set the program to run, through the same number of generations, and went to bed. When she awoke at noon, she saw the results.

 

strangely, 555 woke. Her mist cleared. With the sun having risen, the room looked much cleaner. She could hear birds like she'd never heard birds before. They didn't sound absolutely miserable like they sounded in the city.

She got up and left the room.

A pleasing odor greeted her. Something somewhere smelled very nice, tasty-like, as far as she was able to understand it. She went out into the big room to see some dozen people sitting and eating. She waited briefly, then Jane came up to her. Jane said: "There's no need to be shy, come, have something to eat. Here, I'll introduce you to Anne."

Anne was older than 555; in fact, significantly older. 555 hadn't met many people as old as this Anne. 555 figured that staring would be out of line. She figured she would have to be simple and receptive and take comprehension slowly. What was this place, and why had she been brought here?

Anne said: "Hello, welcome to our little community. My name is Anne."

"I'm 555, thanks."

Anne grimaced. "Well, we'll have to see about that. You can change your name later today. We think you'll want to."

They gave her a plate of some hot food. She didn't know what it was, but she ate it obediently. She was hungry, after all, and whatever it was, it tasted good.

Jane came back when the meal appeared to be over. She looked at 555 and pondered aloud: "Should we show you the farm or the medical laboratory first?"

555 said: "I can't say. I've only heard about the former, and I don't know what the latter would be."

Thus, the farm was first. In a large open space, there was a collection of buildings of various sizes, mostly made of the brown material of the central house. 555 could barely understand what she was being shown. Animated things, almost like people but not people, small people in most cases, moved around. Animals of some sorts. Sometimes they ran, sometimes they walked, and they made the most unusual sounds. It had to have some kind of explanation which she trusted would be forthcoming. Somehow, she understood, all these buildings and creatures were involved in the production of food. She marvelled that such a thing was possible. However, they were living in a modern world, and many undreamed-of things were possible in it.

Jane told her: "We all share the burden of the work, and we're all paid by our corporation. It's a very fair system."

555 nodded, though she didn't understand a bit of it. Something in the whole system looked suspicious; it's not that she wasn't independent-minded; however, there seemed to be something very anti-social in what she was witnessing. Now she felt that what she was seeing was actually a throwback to an earlier era. Otherwise, why wasn't anything especially clean?

"Let's move on. There's something very important, of the utmost importance, that I have to show and explain to you. Follow me."

Jane led 555 past some buildings and together they arrived at a building that looked like it was made out of steel: good solid steel. Jane had to wave a plastic card around to get in, then they were in a spotless corridor. "We can't go all the way in," she explained, "but we don't have to, not yet."

She led 555 over to a window that separated the hallway from a brightly-lit room, a clean and tidy room of computers arranged around a table of some sort, and on seeing it, 555 thought it resembled that place she'd had that morning fantasy about. Jane saw 555's puzzlement and said: "Yes, it's very much like the room that was in your dream."

555 wasn't put off by this revelation. She said: "You know about it?"

"It's part of the reason you're here. The other part is that you were even capable of dreaming at all. Only dreamers can understand the project we're upon."

555 didn't question any of it. She was taking it all in one minute at a time. I'm here because they want me here, and that's enough for me. However, she did manage to ask: "So, what's going on in there?"

"It's our central project; it's what we're here for. We're trying to revive an old method of making people."

"There used to be another way?" 555 had been educated; she knew where people came from: namely, an underground complex somewhere around Hatchery.

"Another way, yes. It's a way that will increase our genetic diversity in roughly predictable though precisely unexpected ways."

"And that matters?"

"We think everything has become too limited. We should set in motion a method through which we, as a species, can discover now things rather than go through the motions endlessly. We can get off the wheel, and start moving forwards again into a new uncertain future."

555 didn't understand any of that, so she said: "Do I have a part in this whatever-you-call-it? Is that why I've been brought here?"

Jane put her hand on 555's shoulder. "Yes. We want you to be the first. You're our little dreamer. And your pelvis is wide."

"So, what do I have to do?"

"You'll have a little surgery, and you'll be artificially inseminated, as the language in the old books goes."

555 was astonished but submissive. "What will come of that?"

"You'll give birth to what's called a child."

"That's pretty extreme, don't you think? I've come across those ideas once or twice, birth and all that, and I don't really get them, but I fear them."

"You'll be with us, and we'll take special care of you."

555 shrugged. "I guess so. I'm willing to go through with it. Why not?"

Jane was smiling with happiness. "Everything will go well, 555."

555 said: "I think I want to change my name first, though."

"Whatever you'd like."

"Okay, then. I came across a name last night; it's a kind of an anagram for 555."

"Oh? What?"

"Eve