Though I wasn't a Rebel or a Weasel from the Underground, I once despaired totally of having a sensible place in society. My hopelessness was so thorough that thoughts of death occupied me night and day. My current work now bathes all my previous dark thoughts in the deepest irony. Just a year ago I wished to extinguish myself. I was simultaneously drifting and dangling, questioning the wisdom of the State, a breath away from curses and irrevocable acts. Now I cherish each second. I awaken with such an outflow of hope and anticipation that I sometimes fear my heart will burst from happiness. Had the frozen moon begun to glow like a hot sun it would have been no less of a change, yet the very simplicity of my story still amazes me.
One morning, attempting to retain the fortification of sleep, not wishing to journey to my tedious work, I was shaken awake by the harsh clatter of the telescreen. I was sure the old contraption was broken, but the bastards can fix telescreens now without even coming into your room. I kept my eyes closed as the voice ordered me to report to the Ministry of Employment. The voice was hard and left no room for argument or forgetfulness and believe me, in those airless days, I was a magician of forgetfulness. I was ordered to see a Mr. Orriman at eleven o'clock sharp. When I finally opened my eyes it was nearly ten.
Mr. Orriman sat behind his silver desk and stared into my file. Seated, this State official was larger than most men standing, and had a mouth that seemed to take up half his face. I found him at once despicable, impassive, arrogant and enviable. He sat behind his desk as if part of the metal: safe, blameless, like some minor deity endowed with incredible strength, growing stronger, declaring without words his incontrovertible identity. And me, so stunned that my own name seemed foreign and dreadful to me. He didn't speak for the longest time—surely a tactic designed to unnerve me—reading, pressing buttons on a console with fingers quicker than sparks of electricity. He coughed periodically, harshly, by plan I'm sure, as if summoning forth reluctant assistants.
"This is your fiftieth job," he said without anger, not accusing me of anything, still reading. Orriman looked like a man who never slept or moved or existed apart from his desk. I simply nodded yes, trying as best I could to recall even a dozen of my past jobs. For a full and inescapable minute I thought of when I worked in a House of Terata, tending the misshapen and malformed. My job then was to stroke the inmates, for hours at a time, to reduce their cries and screams to whimpers.
"The State is very worried about your record," the immense State official started out slowly, his voice as even as the hum of a perfect machine, interrupted only by slight coughing defects. I wanted to offer him something for his hacking, but I forced myself to sit motionless—that's the only way to act with these officials or they really squeeze you into a corner. Too many times I've listened to that complaint in one form or another, from male lips, in authoritative female voices, from indistinguishable echoes, in dreams, in the rushing of sonic trains, in the flushing of toilets. "The State is very worried..." Always uttered with benevolence. The State cares. The State stays up long hours into the cold night and agonizes over me and my fifty jobs.
"Don't you want a job of permanence?" Orriman asked me in his perfect voice, his fist-sized lips moving with effortless precision.
"Permanence," I sighed, as if the word were the name of an object adored beyond belief. A forbidden object, coveted and caressed despite regulations. What I wouldn't do for work that made enough sense to me that I would want to continue doing it.
Orriman rocked forward like a motorized piece of construction equipment suddenly engaged, rumbling into activity, and said, "Remember, perfectibility is the key word. The State believes in the perfectibility of even its most wayward Citizens."
Ah, that word again, the key word, perfectibility, hammered into my mind since I was a troublesome child. I nodded in response to the word as if it were clawed and had hold of my muscles and thoughts.
"But now, finally, your category has been determined without chance of error. Your imperfections and winding history, should I say, have been fed into our new computer, devised solely for difficult-to-place Citizens. You will be category L-10863," he said with a sudden wave of his head. Look how utterly obvious it is, his moving head said.
"Which is?" I asked with an indifference I could see troubled him, but which I had cultivated over the years. Even with my fifty excursions into boredom and futility, the man actually expected me to drop to my knees and thank the State for its selfless concern and tireless pursuit of perfectibility. To tell the truth, until that moment I thought perfectibility was excrement. After all, I had once worked in a crowded House of Terata.
Orriman paused, narrowing his eyes so they shone like thin, brilliant suns about to explode. Then, breathing in enough air for ten deep breaths and spreading his long arms to enfold the room, my dear Mr. Orriman answered my question: "An Inspector of Suicides..."
He spoke on, probably some obligatory speech, but I didn't hear. The first words had acquired a tenacity and endlessness that defied sense: they became the air, the room, Orriman's monstrous lips, the thunderous beat of my revived heart. Inspector of Suicides. Those words, I knew, were the turning point of my life, veritable birth pangs. From the living, jaded, sullen dead on the verge of even deeper death, I was transformed into an unencumbered baby, trembling at the thought of a fresh start. I felt blemishless, the proud possessor of magnificent wings I was eager to try out. There was no need to warn me that this was my last chance, that no one was given a fifty-second opportunity to be useful to the State, that the pursuit of perfectibility had its limits. Mr. Orriman talked powerfully into the suddenly lenient morning, but I only heard the natal words and all they evoked: "Inspector of Suicides..."
Cloaking my body like the warmest sun is my solid orange uniform, glowing with persistent messages, starkly simple, and readily identifiable as the garb of an Inspector of Suicides. I am not permitted to wear the uniform when I am not on duty, but I secretly put it on in my room, and parade about the windowless confinement, pleased that I now have not only a uniform and a place, but a purpose. Purpose! Place! All my life, the succession of aimless pursuits, the barrage of reprimands and souring dead ends, the warnings, the constant disarray, the sheer tenebrous existence, have miraculously led to my reward and I am no ungrateful wretch. Fifty jobs, fifty deaths, teach you something. Bless the State and its obsession with perfectibility.
My uniform excites me more than a woman in a House of Affection; I stir myself against all regulations, as if to make amends for all the barren years, the futile thoughts, the dry misgivings, the thoughts of death. The orange uniform glows and I feel welded to its radiance and warmth. The click of the telescreen or footsteps outside my door frighten me and I rush into the bathroom and crouch in the dark. It's not that I am cowardly, not me, not after wrestling boredom and staring full-face into emptiness, but I do not want to have my ability to work restricted. Still, the allure of the uniform during my off-duty hours is great. If only the State would allow me to work twenty-four hours a day, I would take any medication in order to forfeit sleep. I would like to make love with my orange skin on, but where could I find a partner who would not betray me? I only await her appearance and fragrant complicity.
Today I feel invigorated. Yesterday was a fruitful day and I am still dancing in its remembrance. Five glorious cases. Two or three make for a satisfying day, but five is the very essence of joy. I dread the days when there is only one case, especially when it is early in the morning and I am confined to a long day of waiting and pondering what has gone wrong. And the rare days when I am not summoned to a case are hell, the hell of boredom and waiting, the hell of feeling you are of no real use. But, thank the wisdom of the State, those days are infrequent; the majority of my days contain at least three cases. Let me recount the five cases that illuminated my yesterday and should embrace memory for some time to come. There will be no need for memory tablets.
I was at my first case before dawn, aglow in my fiery orange uniform, starting to speak my preliminary report into my recorder. The thin body hung from the ancient tree in some ceremony out of a long-forgotten past. A dozen effortless and pleasant ways to terminate and this fool endured unnecessary pain. The futility of the Rebels is beyond my comprehension. A crowd was already assembled, buzzing with speculation and camaraderie. A child jumped up repeatedly and tried to touch the hanging man's feet. The crowd burst into applause when the little one finally hit the feet and set the mute body spinning. One man had set up an easel and was carefully painting the scene. Several others were taking photographs, their clicking machines making the sound of agitated insects.
I took the official photographs, gathered all the necessary information and knew it would be a simple report to write, even about a hanging Rebel with his rope of rags. It was enough to state that the self-terminant employed an ancient, unsanctioned form of suicide; any speculation about the motive or the self-terminant's past when dealing with Rebels is unnecessary. I pressed my summoner buzzer and left as the crowd waited to witness the work of the Disposal Unit.
As I rode the sonic transport, strangers smiled at me, asking questions that I answered with false authority. I actually dared to fabricate self-terminants, to talk of days with ten cases, to populate a world that I could only long for. When I slid down the exit chute, several clattering passengers followed me. Whenever people see me in my orange uniform they gaze and admire, and a few adventuresome ones even tag along. As I glanced back at the unusually large group following me, I fought back any outward signs of excitement. I must be cautious; public emotion can only lead me into serious trouble. For many of the other Inspectors it is only a job—we are cautioned to keep a salutary distance from our work—but for me it is a reason for living, for not finally despairing and taking the Rebel path.
I prefer the indoor self-terminants. Regulations prohibit the moving of a suicide until an Inspector arrives, even if that means a week; then, after the investigation and preliminary oral report, the body is taken by a Disposal Unit to one of the State Cremation Furnaces and burned. New, better Cremation Furnaces are being constructed all the time. There is much talk of doubling their numbers. One of my jobs, I recall, was as a Cremation Furnace cleaner, and I despised the loathsome drudgery, sweeping ashes, always sweeping the eyeless, boneless ashes. That job ended when my keen-eyed supervisor saw me eating ashes.
To my great joy, my communicator buzzed before I even reached my waiting station. The instruction tape flowed out from my belt panel and my next destination was spelled out in the happiest letters. On the three-hundredth floor of the magnificent People's Tower where thirty-five thousand Citizens loyally toil for the State, a woman hurled herself against a high-voltage electricity bank, one of the original methods of sanctioned self-termination. She was baked beyond recognition, but her co-workers already had gathered all her possessions and dossier and I was able to give my preliminary report without any complications. The floor was crammed with workers as word of my arrival spread through the building. As I left, one worker nudged me and said, "She was my lover."
"You will find another, on the same floor, no doubt," I said to the man as I left the People's Tower by way of an external elevator. The self-terminant's brown and unworldly image rode comfortably down with me, whispering secrets too dark to reveal. At moments like that it was difficult to believe I had a past so overwhelmed by emptiness and doubt. True work is real meaning.
My first unusual case of the day—I don't consider a Rebel and his primitive exit as unusual or even challenging—occurred late in the afternoon, after I had digested my nutrient pills and was relaxing in the afterglow of my morning's activity. Not only had the man managed to acquire an ancient firearm, the type soldiers used many wars ago, but he killed ten others before shooting himself through the heart. I had never seen an actual case of murder, although I had heard of them, off the record, off course, and I searched the body from head to toe for revealing signs. I wanted to know the motives of the self-terminant, who would have been no more than an ordinary Rebel had be not lined ten strangers against a wall and shot them. Executed, I learned later, was the word used in the last century. In my final report, I used for the first time the word insane. I would be questioned for that usage later, but I was at a loss for a better description.
I was positive then that I had encountered my first insane person and wondered how many more, outside of the insanity-drenched Underground, there were. In the past, the insane were not rare, but therapeutic science and the marvels of pharmacology had supposedly eliminated them. It was that fixed, full smile, without regret or guile, so content in oblivion, as if in possession of great wealth or boundless secrets, that assured me of the dead man's madness. He was disintegrated in a manner no different from an ordinary self-terminant. The ten persons he had executed had to be disposed of separately and the account of their deaths was not disclosed to the public. Murder, according to the State, had been eradicated, along with all disease, undesirable weather and inequality. Any man, woman or child has the equal opportunity to self-terminate when and where desired, to gain the status of Citizen Hero by departing in an orderly and willing manner. Except, of course, the teratisms confined to the Houses of Terata. I would be incinerated in a second, if I, as they liked to say in the last century, "spilled the beans" about the murders.
My last two cases of the day were routine, except that I realized with a brain-shaking jolt that they were my nine hundred and ninety-ninth and one thousandth since I had begun work a year ago as an Inspector of Suicides. Self-terminant 999 took a simple capsule provided at any State Choice Outlet and the one thousandth, who should have had some significance besides her extreme youth, breathed in the sleeping gas at a community Death Centre, not far from where I had my eventful interview with Mr. Orriman. I looked at the young girl's—she was a child, really—expressionless face and thought of Mr. Orriman, certain he was still safely behind his desk.
After submitting my one-thousandth report, I began to be plagued by worry. It is at this juncture that an Inspector of Suicides is reviewed for possible promotion. The last thing in the world I wanted was a promotion. I received a commendation attesting to my efficiency, competence and dedication after my five-hundredth report, for which I felt only the faintest stirring of pride. For me, work is everything. Not that I don't want the elevated rank, but then I couldn't witness the bodies of the self-terminants first-hand. I would become a report reader, a functionary entombed on the six-hundredth floor of some safe shrine erected to perfectibility. If I couldn't study their bodies after the act, I would feel lost, back to the airlessness of the days when I stumbled from job to job, worrying the State. If the State assessed my work as worthy, I would be promoted to an Inspector of Inspectors of Suicide. Then after a few more loyal years of work, to Superintendent of Inspectors of Inspectors of Suicide. I would be content for the rest of my days just to inspect self-terminants and submit my reports. I didn't need a larger apartment or windows. I didn't need anything except my work. If I had the privilege of speaking to the Chief Superintendent of Inspectors of Inspectors of Suicide himself, I would tell him exactly that, regardless of the consequences. It is said that he personally inspected twenty-five thousand self-terminants; that his submissions are maintained in a special section of the Self-Termination Archives. Perhaps one day I will be allowed into the hallowed Archives and I can see for myself. Imagine, a photo-display of twenty-five thousand. The faces, the melodies of termination, the eternal meanings. In the days when the Chief Superintendent was an Inspector you didn't have to accept a promotion. Those were the days the State allowed Citizens a few more choices, before the Underground started its virulent growth and extraordinary measures had to be instituted. For twenty-five thousand I would die the happiest death.
Now I only wait for my one thousand and first, not for promotion or glory or a lustrous place in the Archives. I dream of epidemics of suicides, of being so busy and exhausted that I can no longer distinguish between waking and deepest sleep. The old hands tell me that I've hardly seen anything yet, a year is nothing.
I keep expecting surprises, but the routine and patterns prevail. I have already investigated a hundred suicides at the State Houses of Affection. I learned quickly that Houses of Affection are not only common sites for self-termination, but extremely logical locales. After the pleasurable indulgence, the draining journey into one's most uninhibited fantasies, for some all that follows is the logic of self-termination. I rarely visited the Houses of Affection before I became an Inspector of Suicides. I simply did not like the company of polite love workers in the bright rooms of the Houses of Affection. I am told the love workers are mechanical, but it would take an advanced technician to tell. There are so many vile rumours circulated by the Underground that unless the source is an official of the State, unverified information should be questioned. But to me, when I conducted my investigations, the love workers always seemed real.
This morning, after a vivid dream about a seven-hundred-storey building in which every room was filled to the ceiling with self-terminants, I received a summons to report tomorrow to the office of my work zone's Inspector of Inspectors of Suicides. I fear only the worst: a promotion. Perhaps, if I am fortunate, I will be reprimanded for a past transgression, maybe for the use of unsanctioned language; there is still the matter of my insanity speculations. But even worse, I so like to open the eyes of self-terminants if they aren't already open, against all regulations, and study them, searching for what, in the last dark century, was called a soul. A soul, what a quaint and fragile term; unsanctioned, meaningless in the State's official lexicon. Why do I find the eyes so fascinating and central, as if they're perfect little balls of colour and secrets, not extinguished but only suspended, waiting for the moment in which to flee the captivity of the body and float intelligently away? Usually people just stare, refuse to betray their inner thoughts or emotions, even in death, especially in death, good Citizens to the end. Emotions, the State has scientifically proven, are responsible for what happened last century, before I was created, before a faltering civilization needed to be refashioned and equipped to withstand any such destructive foolishness in the future. The future is now secure. Self-termination keeps everything stable and orderly. I often wonder why I spend so much time thinking about a century I never lived in and that did not produce anything worth remembering. I'm not a Rebel nor do I long for the Underground. It's not natural to concern oneself so much with the past. The dark century is buried as it should be. To be precise, I was created on the tenth day of the new century, three months after the final war which at long last awakened the people to the folly of emotions, to the dark and dangerous caves that needed to be cemented closed forever or else...
I thought too much about my appointment with the Inspector of Inspectors. My communicator directed me to the vast Sector A-West Relaxation Beach and I hoped my work would ease my anxiety. There, near the stroking waves, was the self-terminant. Though many were gathered around the swollen body, just as many did not move, refusing to leave their browning. To brown, to blacken in the severest heat, is good. The case was without complication and quickly completed. I summoned the Disposal Unit and walked away, careful not to step on any of the browning Citizens. I feared that this might be my last case, my mind fouled with the thought that the uniform of an Inspector of Inspectors of Suicides is white and cannot stir me.
"Suicide is evil," a tremulous voice called to me as I stepped from the sand onto the polished walkway. Instinctively I reached for the emergency alarm on my belt panel, but hesitated. The man looked relieved, but still frightened, his eyelids fluttering, seeming to emit a code asking for pity or mercy. "Suicide is evil," he repeated, a little louder, taking a step closer in my direction. Those who had been following me fled in fear of contamination. The pale fellow was one of the Underground. Once, perhaps, I told him—my worry over my fate generating indulgence—but all that was in the last century, before the grim wars, when couples used to marry, when there were storms and quakes, when large cities were catacombs of fear and distrust, when perfectibility was less than an illusion, when people could not even live a hundred years. I told this Weasel from the Underground that now there are only orderly cities, safe buildings, perfectibility, the security of the State, continual life until self-termination. Forget the past, I warned him.
"When people still wrote books, not just reports," the pale Weasel from the Underground said, his quaver steadied. He handed me a pamphlet and then rushed away, as if fleeing the clanking of a Disposal Unit.
I had seen the Underground's pamphlets before and knew better than to read such scribble, yet as I neared the office of my work zone's Inspector of Inspectors I turned down a narrow passageway between buildings and read anyway, as if the invisible sun were commanding me to defy authority and risk infecting my mind. The Underground tries to disseminate material that suicide is improper, wrong, the way the State keeps power and control. In their usual simple-minded and disjointed thinking, the Underground has gone so far as to announce that the idea of suicide is a weapon of the State, a tool for tyranny. In the last century, the Underground claims, suicide was discouraged, even regarded as undesirable and sinful by some. The Underground denounces Rebels and Citizens of the State with equal fervour. I find it difficult to follow their reasoning and desire for a different, contaminated world. The Weasels from the Underground seem to want disease and storms. Only calamity and retrogression and sterility can come from their foul ideas. I threw the pamphlet away, feeling it would detonate my body if I held it a second longer.
I walked into the office of my work zone's Inspector of Inspectors with my head full of the Underground's fallacious arguments. I just wanted to keep my job.
The promotion was irrevocable. My objections were met first with disbelief, then with a stern warning. Already I am stripped of my orange uniform and draped in this funereal white. I feel a lie, a masquerader, an invader in the ivory skin of another, one whom I despise. I wonder if my eyelids will be pried open and some curious Inspector will search for a reason and a soul. I hope I wink at the Inspector. I hope some reflex will surprise him and pierce the armour of all he is trained to do and be. The Underground seems just as futile. What would I do in the Underground, worship their pale ideas, accept their belief that suicide is evil? I might as well go back to my fifty jobs of desolation. The Underground is just another false job. I will go to a House of Affection and exhaust myself with pleasure, the maximum pleasure. I will cut off the head of a State love worker and find out if it is woman or machine. Imagine, I could be an executioner if the rumours are false. Or a destroyer of a State machine. These thoughts do not repulse or frighten me. Strangely, I look forward to slicing through flesh or fabric, to being executioner or destroyer. Then I will attempt to be inventive with my exit, even with my white uniform on. Maybe I will burn down a House of Affection and let the flames lift me from my captivity. No one has ever done that in this century...
CHIEF SUPERINTENDENT'S DECISION:
EXPUNGE IMMEDIATELY
EXPUNGE IMMEDIATELY
EXPUNGE IMMEDIATELY
EXPUNGE IMMEDIATELY
EXPUNGE IMMEDIATELY
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