Chapter 3 - Traditions
On the whole, Miranda is not unhappy that her contract time is up, she has planned for this for a long time, and everyone else has too, thanks to social media 'in' The Cloud.
Of course, knowing exactly when you'll die has many advantages. You can zero out your credit and make your last farewells; and no one gets shocked. You are still fully in command of your faculties and suffer no pain, not even a sniffle. And her little angel was so beautiful as a baby. It would have been a dreadful shame to have terminated the pregnancy.
Angela's 21st birthday, just two days from now, coincides with God Freyja Day (Good Friday) this year.
When Miranda fell pregnant, she knew that the child would be born in the time of Ēostre, the goddess of fertility. Calculating the date seemed quite complicated but thankfully Ariel, her VPA, was able to calculate the dates and days of the week in a flash.
Ariel has been a godsend and companion for as long as she remembers.
As she thinks about this and remembers a short article: Siri and Cortana, in Computing Today, that described how Virtual Personal Assistants (VPAs) evolved Ariel brings it up on a nearby screen:
Siri and Cortana - the evolution of Virtual Personal Assistants (VPAs)
For a very long time, people have used tools to extend their body. A draftspersons pencil or framer's hammer becomes an extension to their hand. This can be even more intimate if they have a prosthetic limb and again if they have a synthetic or transplanted organ. At some point the tool ceases to be an external object and becomes a part of their extended body. Way back in the twentieth century people had Filofaxes, actual books in which they kept information about their lives that they couldn't or didn't want to remember. And for some of these people a book became an extension of their person. Not of their hand but of their brain, because it acted as part of their memory and ordered their thinking. In due course the Filofax was replaced by a primitive electronic memory device with a time management function, that also doubled as a calculator. Now other traditional brain functions were being shared with a tool. This was quickly followed by devices that added telephone communications and a camera and could even beat the average person at sophisticated games requiring a kind of intelligence, like chess. Many people had hand held mobile devices still called 'phones' that were hosted in the primitive telecommunications networks and then progressively the World Wide Web. Connection to the World Wide Web provided access to relatively huge external computing power. At this point everything changed. People stopped storing their data and related applications on their local device and instead stored it on a networked storage area in what became known as the original Cloud or to us: 'the dumb Cloud'. At around this time the first personal assistants like Siri and Cortana were developed. They were an inevitable advance on the primitive assistants that started to appear in unconnected devices, such as animated paper clips and the like, soon after personal computing became a reality. Once hosted in the Cloud instead of on a particular device the same personal assistant was available through any Cloud linked device. A new generation of 'virtual' personal assistants had become device independent. They existed in the Cloud and were accessible from almost anywhere: a phone; a tablet; a desktop; even an old-style television set; anywhere in the world. Phones could translate between languages and had cameras that if pointed at foreign script could translate it into spoken words in their own language. As they had with calculators, a generation earlier, many younger people soon found it easier to use a 'phone', that could read any text to them in their own spoken language, than to learn to read the script themselves. Once they had calculators most people no longer needed to know how to divide or multiply long numbers or to know the yards in a mile. Now, they no longer needed to read more than a word or two on a sign or to write a sentence. Making actual phone calls became a minor function that was handled by the assistant in the background and the word 'phone' disappeared. When quantum computing systems massively expanded raw computing power, The Cloud became artificially intelligent and personal assistants now called Virtual Personal Assistants began to resemble real people and talking to them is like remotely talking to any other friend through a Cloud connected device. It was a small step to 3D screens and polarised glasses, contacts or lenses or just virtual glasses to give the Assistants another dimension in virtual reality. Just as Europeans once had difficulty telling Chinese from Japanese and Korean, you don't need to distinguish French, from English or German. Any script is rendered into your own spoken language by your VPA. Now it is unnecessary for you to be able to 'read' this script - these funny marks on a screen or document because your VPA is reading it to you. And you needn't worry about learning to 'read' or speak a foreign language because your VPA can be called up from almost anywhere in the World when you need him or her. All you need is a Cloud connected device. If you don't have a pocket screen handy, any screen like a 'chat table' or a 'digital coffee glass' at a Roasters Hangout will do. Today most people regard their VPA as their most intimate friend. I'm sure you do. And it's all thanks to The Cloud. Computing Today, Feb 2084 |
With George and Alex and Mary's twins, Miranda has four natural grandchildren. Against the tide, she has tried to ensure that they all become literate and have an appreciation of poetry, music, art and culture in general. Maybe little George with his love of fantasy is one hope for a future, in which traditions and at least five thousand years of human culture are valued.
They will all be at the party. The three step-grandchildren, the half brothers and sisters, will be here too. Like all extended families these days, it can seem confusing when Miranda explains it to new acquaintances. Four natural grandchildren is the normal regulation number in two generations, so maybe entering a Ten-Two contract wasn't such a good idea.
Then as her thoughts turn back to God Freyja Day, Ariel again anticipates her interest. Was she thinking out loud?
God Freyja Day (also Good Friday)
The last day of the week before the festival of Ēostre is the pagan day of the God Freyja, after whom Friday is named (Freyja an Avatar of Ēostre) The day was usurped, together with Easter* by the early European Christians as 'Good Friday': the day of crucifixion before an annual Christian festival in commemoration of the resurrection of Christ, observed by Christians on the first Sunday after the full moon that occurs on or next after 21 March, the vernal (northern spring) equinox and the mythical Jewish Passover (also a spring festival). *[Easter /'eestuh/. noun: Middle English ester, Old English eastre, originally, name of goddess; distantly related to Latin aurora dawn, Greek eos; related to east.] Recently the day has been restored as the beginning of the Festival of Ēostre: celebrated by neo-pagans and Hippies. Except during the Festival, Hippies worship in a state of detachment from the physical: living as their Avatar in the virtual world of The Cloud. Thus, they are said to: 'get high' and 'squat' in The Cloud. Annually, at the Festival of Ēostre they 'come down' or 'drop out' for the ritual: Running of the Fields: collecting wildflowers, hemp and mushrooms in the physical world; while scantily dressed in Indian cotton. Moon in his influential thesis: The Origins of Hippie Religion, asserts that the Hippie expression: "Hey, you, get offa my Cloud!" and the related expression: "Cool it man!" have their roots in these practices: the first a rejection; and the second an invitation to join them on their Cloud, referencing the temperature drop at high altitudes. Another, unattributed, source asserts that the origin of the first is a popular song referencing Hippie attitudes to the followers of other religions; and the second to an angry person who was said to be: 'getting heated'. The majority of people now follow neo-paganism. Neo-paganism is a better match for the modern civic economic duty to consume. Neo-paganism provides a market for many more goods and services than other religions. At its height Christianity was a religion of abstinence. Later, while few embraced an ascetic lifestyle, marketing opportunities were still far too seasonal: mainly limited to an orgy of spending for the Midwinter Festival (the putative birthtime of Christ); and otherwise to a confectionary binge around 'Easter'. Neo-pagans consume at full-steam year-round and have no guilt about 'using it then throwing it away' or 'not waiting but experiencing it now'. Their priests don't tell them that materialism or self-indulgence are sins.
The Universal Encyclopaedia |
Given the religious connotations, God Freyja Day seems an appropriate day to be sacrificed.
Some of Miranda's friends are neo-pagans but Miranda is not into religion. There are just too many religions in The Cloud and it's hard to keep track of the many doctrinal intricacies and rituals, spells and blessings that pepper the conversations of the acolytes. Keeping track of their internecine disputes over doctrine, who hates whom and who eats what, is difficult enough when planning a dinner party, without becoming personally embroiled.
Miranda has been reprising her wonderful life a lot these past days and her thoughts have gone back to her last pregnancy again.
When she realised that her child might be born at Ēostre she really wanted to keep this baby, but out of her love of tradition, not from any mystical affiliation. And although she was not yet 40, she feared that she was already approaching menopause. It was now or never. The options were clear: a termination; or she and Bertram could sacrifice their old age for the right to have a third child. But the sacrifice would not be until Angela reached adulthood and that seemed like the distant future at the time. She would be almost 60 and Bertram is two years older. But who knows what might happen in between? They might be killed in an accident or the law may change. So, to deliberately go ahead with the pregnancy would commit them both to signing a 'Ten-Two'.
Miranda remembered them weighing the choices and her tears and cajoling:
In the end Bertram, ever the gentleman, said he would support me in whatever I decided. But I'm sure he wanted another child too. Was I selfish in persuading him to sign his death warrant?
Maybe that was a factor in our growing apart? But mostly that was his very rectitude and his boring, conservative outlook on life. He drove me mad going on and on about 'the need, and indeed our civic duty', to continuously increase our personal consumption in a post-Malthusian economy. He droned on and on about how, as population declines and the production of goods is centred in remote robot facilities, managed by software hosted in 'The Cloud', we each need to order more and more stuff, to be delivered by more and more (appropriately) drones.
How many times have I heard about the 'Bread and Circuses Imperative' and the need for a greater proportion of the population to be engaged in artificial and imaginary occupations in the services sector that mask their primary role as consumption units? Or how his precious Economic Development Agency is inventing ever more mindless sporting codes and events; mostly delivered through or organised in The Cloud. They were constantly finding new ways of: providing gambling for the 'punters'; developing ever more ridiculous blockbuster movies based on comic book fantasies; staging drug addled pop concerts and youth festivals; and creating virtual games and 'reality' entertainment.
How could I resist irresponsible, colourful, Ferdinand with his grandiose claims of distant royal affiliations; his boundless faith in Karma, as if he was a character in a story or play that always ended the same way; and his exotic physical presence?
Of course, I wouldn't have noticed him if his name had not been Ferdinand, my namesake Miranda's beau in The Tempest. It's called nominative determinism. The name we are given can influence the paths we take in life.
"What's in a name?", asks Juliet.
See, I've lived a Shakespearian life, she thinks.
I even named my VPA's Avatar: Ariel.
Although it's not Shakespeare, 'The Importance of Being Earnest' always has Ferdi and me in stiches - a walk on the Wilde side - Ha-ha.
She busies herself arranging the candlesticks while she daydreams:
'To lose one parent is unfortunate. To lose two looks like carelessness.'
Was it a twist of fate that, after our breakup, Bertram had no trouble producing little Charles with Samantha. But what was she thinking? He had already signed a 'Ten-Two' and they are there in the public domain for all to see. Maybe she likes short relationships? Is she a gold-digger? She's twelve years his junior.
She can be a bit of a bitch, 'must be good in bed!' as my friends would keep telling me.
Anyway, she'll be at his side on Friday; and Charles will be without his daddy, at only fifteen.
More charitably, she muses:
Perhaps Samantha had thought there would be a further reprieve. But that would be unfair, Bertram now has four children carrying half his nerdy genes, twice the proper number.
Anyway, this will be one party Bertram won't bore to death! Along with the birthday girl, we'll both be the centres of attention.
Socrates took hemlock in the midst of his friends because the alternative was exile. I will take it in payment for the life of my child, my children.
Yes, on Friday evening like Socrates we'll take the Hemlock from the hands of our friends and drink.
We have not lain together for years now but this Friday, an hour before midnight, Bertram and I will lie down together side by side, for one last time, surrounded by family, lovers and friends.
The synthetic Hemlock is said to be lovely - the most delicious thing I will ever taste.
Our bodies will then fly away. Not to Valhalla, but in a medical waste recycling drone.
Miranda doesn't believe in resurrection.
