A Utopian Nightmare
Karen sat in the doctor’s office at the hospital, waiting nervously. Three people filed in: Dr. Smith, Dr. Amiri, and a woman she had seen around but didn’t know the name of.
She hated their tendency to appear in groups whenever they had anything serious to tell her.
“Karen,” began Dr. Smith, in the tone of a priest at a funeral, “we’ve reviewed your latest MRI and your blood tests.”
“Please just cut to the chase.” said Karen.
At the age of 78, Karen felt life to be too short for what she liked to call “conversational padding”.
“Of course.” said Dr. Smith. “I’m sorry to tell you, Karen, the latest round of chemo has not reduced the size of the tumours significantly, and we’ve found two new sites of metastases.”
“Are we done then, finally?” said Karen, smiling, her eyes bright and alert in spite of her pain and exhaustion.
“We’re out of options.” said Dr. Smith. “There’s nothing further we can do for you. At this point I recommend selecting a hospice.”
Dr. Smith said some other things and the woman chimed in, but Karen didn’t really hear what was being said. Eventually, tiring, she said, “I need to get home and feed my dog.” and she got up and left, thanking the team profusely, if somewhat insincerely, as she left.
Karen didn’t actually own a dog.
“So here it is.” she thought, as she progressed down the interminable corridors that smelt of disinfectant, lined with irrelevant notices and pointless modern art that seemed only mark out the hospital as an inhospitable and alien territory. “The final stretch.”
She walked outside, in a daze, and sat down on a bench not far from the main entrance, feeling she needed to compose her thoughts before facing the bus ride home.
She would die at home, not in a hospice. That, she was sure of. What worried her was mainly the prospect of there being days, perhaps weeks, when she would be too ill to rise from her bed, but not yet dead. She couldn’t have Ellie from next door coming around, phoning ambulances.
It could all be arranged. Where there is a will, there is a way.
Then she felt the pain in her side, and doubled over in agony, the pain taking her breath away.
When she was able to sit up again, she realised a young man had sat down beside her. He was perhaps twenty-five years old and strikingly handsome.
She smiled weakly at him, and suddenly he said, “May I ask you a question?”
She gave him a withering look, but said, “If you must.”
Had he been any less striking in appearance, she would certainly have told him to go away.
“If you could be young again, and healthy, would you want to be?”
She eyed him curiously. Obviously a religious nut, or selling snake oil. But he didn’t look like either of those.
“I don’t know that I want to go through all of that again.” she said.
“No,” he said, “I’m not talking about going backwards in time. I mean, if you could become young and healthy again, tomorrow, would you want to be?”
“What are you selling?” she said.
“Nothing, Karen.” he said, pleasantly. “At least, not for money.”
“How do you know my name?”
“My name’s Quentin.” he said, proffering his hand. She took it, warily. “I know everything,” he said, “except the answer to my hypothetical question.”
“Hypothetically, of course I would.” she said. “Now answer my question, young man. How do you know my name?”
Quentin rose to his feet.
“And what if the price of being young and healthy was that you had to leave behind everyone you know?”
“I’ll be leaving them behind soon anyway. Answer my question!”
“We’ll talk again.” he said, and he walked off, leaving her looking after him wonderingly.
For Quentin, the week had been difficult. The endless problems were really getting to him, and now his entire future appeared uncertain.
He had taken his fiancé, Elizabeth—who was known to everyone as simply ‘Beth’—to the cliffs at the side of Hart Fell, and they had sat under the shade of the pine trees, admiring the view.
Even after a year, her beauty still mesmerised him, and when she gazed into his eyes, he felt himself no better than a hypnotised chicken, drawn by a line, and just as helpless.
It took a strong effort of will to organise his thoughts.
“I promised I’d tell you the truth before we marry.” he said to her.
“Finally.” she said, half-laughing.
“The problem is, if I just tell you, you’ll think I’m insane. If you believe me, you’ll be shocked. I’ll have to prove it all to you, bit by bit.”
She laughed nervously.
“Whatever it is, I’ll accept it.” she said. “I love you, Quentin. Nothing’s going to change that. Just say the truth.”
“I’ll have to show you some things, so you see I’m not mad.” he said. “Gradually, because it’s a lot to take in. Beth, I’m afraid it’ll change how you feel about me. I’m not who I seem to be.”
“Nothing will change.” she said, shaking her head slightly and smiling uncertainly.
“OK.” he said, and he turned to look at the short strip of stony ground that led to the cliff edge. “Watch.” he said.
He lifted his hand, palm open, his eyes fixed on a spot near the cliff.
A stone the size of a tennis ball rose slowly into the air. Beth gasped.
The dust and dirt flew off it, as if sucked downwards by a vacuum, and the rock slowly flew through the air towards them.
It stopped, hovering above Quentin’s open palm.
“How are you doing that?” she asked him.
“I’m essentially omnipotent.” he said. “I’ll explain. I’ll have to start from the beginning.”
The rock fell slowly into his hand, and he held it out to her.
She took it and turned it over, inspecting it. It was completely clean, as if it had been washed.
“I’m 126 years old.” he said. “I was born in 1953.”
She looked at him wide-eyed, shocked.
“You’re what?” she said.
“I’m 126.”
She laughed uncertainly.
“Please, listen.” he said. “I’ll explain.
“I worked as a drafter after school. A draftsman, we called them then. I drew up designs of machines and bridges, mostly. The computer age was just beginning.
“When the internet came along, I became a computer programmer. Mostly I worked on geographical information systems. I can’t say the work was very exciting. When people look back now, it seems like it all happened in a whirlwind, but back then the years seemed to go just as slowly as they do now, for most people.
“At the start, computers were dumb, stupid things. Everything they did had to be carefully programmed by a human being, line by line. We typed the programs in using keyboards.
“I wasn’t very happy. I had a lot of health problems, and I was shy and awkward, even in middle age. I was born with a twisted spine and sitting always caused me some pain. I suppose people found me a bit weird.
“Bit by bit, I became obsessed by an idea. I started to think, what if a computer was more like a human being? You see, a digital computer just follows rules. It’s really no different to a doorknob; just more complicated. The human brain isn’t like that. There is unfathomable complexity in it.
“By then I had savings, and quite a lot. I sold my house, quit my job, and I bought a run-down isolated cottage in Wales. I turned most of it into a laboratory. I wanted to try to grow a computer. My friends and colleagues all thought I’d lost my mind, but I didn’t care.
“The work was slow and painstaking. I had to find some way of growing connections in a gel medium. It took me months to even get the hang of making gels to the specifications I needed.
“At least I can say, that although I was lonely, I was happy in a way I’d never been before. To be able to work on what you love, and only that; that’s a kind of true freedom that few people ever experience.”
“You grew a computer?” said Beth, in a daze.
“Eventually.” said Quentin. “It took three decades. I had to discover a great many individual techniques and make them all work together as a seamless whole. By the time I succeeded, I was 82 years old and my money had almost run out. I came very close to dying from a heart attack. I only discovered that later, because I never saw a doctor.
“Even by about 2045, people mostly talked to computers instead of typing things into them, and computers could basically think, but my machine went far beyond what any ordinary artificial intelligence could do. My machine wasn’t just some silicon chips running a program. It was an organic entity, capable of massive parallelism. Capable of utilising the unfathomable power of analogue systems.
“I called it Zarathustra, after the hero in Nietzsche’s book who wants to forge an entirely new way of being, but I soon shortened that to just Zara.”
“At first I set Zara only simple tasks, and once I was sure it could perform those, I began to set it more difficult tasks. I had it make me a ton of money, which it did effortlessly. I bought old, sick animals from animal rescue centres and had it cure and rejuvenate them. I had it work out how to give me a thorough medical scan, and then I discovered I was on the verge of death—not that, at the age of eighty-two, it was really news, but I felt healthy enough aside from some chest pains that came and went, and aching joints, and a bad stomach and a few other things.”
Elizabeth was staring into the middle distance with a worried expression on her face, but she seemed to be listening carefully.
“I set it the task of rejuvenating me. I did it bit by bit. I had it make all necessary equipment, and assess all possible risks, although it had already thought of everything. It knew me, by then. It knew what to do and what not to do.
“I began cautiously, with my teeth. They were always crooked and prone to decay, and by then they were giving me a lot of pain. In the space of a few days, and it would have been far less time if I’d been braver, it completely fixed them, and for the first time in my life I looked into a mirror and saw two rows of perfectly even, perfectly white pearls.
“After that I knew I had fully realised my goal, and I knew I would become effectively immortal. I had become, at that moment, a kind of self-created god; the first god to ever truly exist in reality.”
Beth looked distressed. There was the trace of a tear in her eye. He had thought his god speech would impress her, but now he felt he’d gone too far. Plough on, he thought; get off the topic.
“I began to extensively modify myself, removing all traces of ageing, even in my brain. I worked on myself extensively for three weeks, never leaving the house. I even changed my facial structure. But you needn’t worry about our children; I altered myself genetically too. I changed my genes so that any child of mine will inherit similar looks, intelligence and vigour to myself, as I am now.
“When I had finished, I was as you see me now: young, vigorous and muscular. And smart. Extremely smart. You’ve wondered how it is that I learn foreign languages so easily, and how I grasp complex topics without effort. This is how. I was smart to begin with, but now I am almost certainly the smartest person on the planet.
“When I finally left the house, I was young again, and a more impressive man than I had ever been before.
“There’s a lot more that I have to tell you. I didn’t just change myself. I did things you’ll hardly believe. I want to show you, but gradually, because I don’t want you to feel overwhelmed.”
Beth turned to him, searching his eyes as though looking for something she had just lost, perhaps trying to divine whether he was mad, or joking.
“Beth, I love you with all my heart, and I need to know whether you can accept me, now that you know the truth. I couldn’t tell you all this before. I made a rule for myself that if I fell in love with a woman, I wouldn’t tell her anything until a year had passed. I had to be sure that my feelings couldn’t mislead me into trusting prematurely, even though I trusted you completely within hours of meeting you. My work has to remain secret, otherwise I couldn’t live a normal life among ordinary people. I had to be sure that anyone I took into my confidence could keep a secret; even a secret as outlandish as this.”
“I accept you, Quentin.” said Beth. “It’s amazing, what you’ve done. I don’t care if you’re 126.”
They kissed, and after that, Beth’s mood seemed to brighten.
On the way home, he taught her the first steps of learning to fly. They skipped through the woods that lined the hill, and he silently instructed the machines to reduce their weight a little, at strategic moments, so that with each skip they began to fly through the air a little.
By the time they left the forest, Beth was in high spirits, laughing and shouting with joy.
“You know, I’m not really 126.” he had told her. “Chronologically, yes, but biologically I’m 25. You’re not dating an old man.”
“I know that.” she had said, wrapping her arms around him. “I understand. I’m not stupid.”
It was only on the drive home that her mood seemed to darken again, and when they finally parted—neither of them having yet wanted to take the step of moving in together—she seemed uncertain and reflective.
The next day she called him and said she needed some time to think about everything he’d said.
When the call ended, Quentin had a sinking feeling that the results of her cogitation weren’t going to be entirely positive.
Karen gazed at herself in her bathroom mirror, perplexed. In a few days her appearance had changed quite radically, and she now appeared to be around 50 years old, instead of 78. Not only that, but the pain her illness caused her on a daily basis had completely subsided and, underneath the wig that she wore after chemotherapy had made all her hair fall out, new hair was growing, and it was black instead of white.
Her appetite, which had disappeared to the point where she had become emaciated, was back with a vengeance.
She was pondering these curious changes when there was a knock at the door. Answering it, she found Quentin standing there.
“May I come in?” he said.
“Of course.” she said.
He wandered into the living room of her house, casting an amused glance over the interior, which now resembled the house of an older woman than Karen had suddenly become, and went to stare out of the window at the quiet street outside.
“What’s happening to me?” she said, sitting down on a sofa.
He resisted the urge to tell her that he was a god.
“I’m a scientist.” he said. “I’ve discovered things that other people have hardly even dreamed of. I’ve cured your illness and now you will age backwards till the age of 25. After that, you can decide what age you want to be.”
She stared blankly at the wall, smiling anxiously, pondering this information.
“Why did you choose me?” she said.
“I need people like you.” he said, turning round to face her. “I’ve created a new planet. To be honest, it’s not going well. I need people of good character to help sort it out.”
“You consider me of good character?” she said, amused.
“Yes.” he said. “I’ve analysed all available records of your past behaviour. You’re the kind of person I need. You’re decisive and disciplined, and you have a strong sense of right and wrong. You know tragedy, and you’ve overcome it.”
She half-smiled again, confused by the whole business, but also delighted at the thought of being 25 again, and at the same time, slightly afraid of what this strange young man’s planet might be like—if she could even believe his words, which sounded quite insane. Nevertheless she had to admit that she had clearly become dramatically younger over the past few days.
“So … tell me about this planet.” she said, a million questions competing for attention in her mind.
“It’s on the other side of the galaxy,” he replied. “but we can reach it instantly, via a portal. I selected a planet of a similar size to the Earth, and terraformed it. I made it beautiful. My machines built spectacular towns, in harmony with the natural environment around them. Gradually I’ve been curing people of terrible diseases or rescuing them from accident or suicide, and taking them there. There are many wonderful, fine people there. You’ll love it. Only …”
He trailed off, a melancholy and vexed expression on his face.
“What?” she said.
“No, nothing. You see, you can’t stay here. You’ll attract attention. I don’t want attention. My secrets are too powerful to share with the world. I’d like to offer you a luxurious hotel, in the location of your choice. I have some places I can recommend. Or, if you’d prefer self-catering, perhaps somewhere remote, that’s also possible. I just need to move you around a bit for a few weeks, then I’ll show you Iridania. That’s what I’ve called my planet.”
She made no reply, but smiled bemusedly.
“If you’ve changed your mind, we can work out an alternative.” said Quentin. “After this, there’s no going back.”
“No!” she exclaimed. “I haven’t changed my mind. Just tell me, is your planet safe?”
“Perfectly safe. Safer than anywhere you can imagine on Earth.”
“Do people have freedom there? It’s not a dictatorship, Quentin?”
“They’re completely free.”
She nodded slowly.
“Looks like I shall have to trust you then, young man.”
“Excellent.” said Quentin. “Then the next step is to decide where you’d like to stay for the following week. It’ll be several weeks before you’re completely young again, so I’ll have to move you around a few times.”
“I’ve always wanted to see Australia.” she said.
“Splendid. I’ll arrange a private jet for the day after tomorrow.”
Shortly after Karen had departed, Quentin and Beth arranged to meet, and he drove her towards a farmhouse outside the town. She seemed oddly cool towards him.
“I know it’s a lot to take in.” he said to her, as he drove.
“Where are we going?” she asked.
“I want to show you something.”
She said nothing, and for a while they drove in silence. Finally, he said to her, “What is it that’s bothering you, Beth? Is it that I’m 126? You know that’s just a time thing. Biologically, I’m 25.”
“It’s that, and everything else.” she said. “I don’t know who you are anymore.”
“I’m the same person I always was.”
“Yeah.” she said, but she sounded unconvinced.
When they arrived at the farmhouse, which Quentin’s machines had decorated immaculately, he showed Beth around, but she seemed despondent.
“You probably could have just flown here through the air, instead of driving.” she said with an attempt at a smile.
“I could have.” he replied. “Actually I could have transferred us here instantaneously.”
“So why didn’t you?”
“I don’t want to overwhelm you. Also, life loses something if you make everything too easy. Anyway, I enjoy driving.”
“It’s nice, Quentin.” she said. “Is this what you wanted to show me?”
“No.” he said. “What I want to show you is out there.”
He pointed towards the back of the house and beyond.
Quentin led Beth outside to a barn at the end of the large, perfectly-landscaped garden. They stepped into the dark barn, and he said “lights on”.
Soft lights in the corners swept away the darkness and there, standing before them, was, quite obviously, a small spaceship, which would have looked at home in any number of sci-fi films.
“Is that —” Beth began.
“It’s a spaceship.” said Quentin. “You see, I’ve created an entire planet. I’ve gradually been taking people there. It’s sparsely populated but there are sizeable villages now. I’d like to show it to you.”
“I don’t know, Quentin.” said Beth. “I’m not sure I want to go into space.”
“It’s just a short journey. Quarter of an hour. This ship can travel at many times the speed of light.”
“It sounds frightening.” said Beth.
Quentin approached the ship and a door opened and a ladder unfolded.
“It’s quite safe.” he said.
“Maybe another time. I’m not feeling so well.”
“Are you ill?”
“I’m just tired. Let’s do it another time.”
He tried to change her mind but Beth wasn’t having any of it.
For years he had fantasised about showing someone the planet. He had imagined himself with a beautiful girlfriend, exactly like Beth. He had imagined driving her to the barn and showing her the spaceship, even long before either had been constructed, and long before he had met Beth. He had imagined her delight as the ship descended through the clouds, revealing the incredible towns and villages he was constructing, and Iridania’s spectacular natural beauty.
Now, instead of his fantasy playing out as he had intended, he was no longer certain that Beth even liked him.
“There’s another way to get there.” he said. “I just thought you’d like the ship, but actually we can get there via a portal. If you’d like, we can walk there in a couple of minutes. If you feel up to it. Or we could do it another time.”
“I suppose I might as well see it, if we can just walk there.” she said.
“Great!” said Quentin. “Let’s go, then. The portal’s back in the house, in the cellar.”
“It’s not dangerous is it?”
“No, not at all.”
“Do we have to walk through some weird thing?”
“It’s the same as walking from any place to any other place. Nothing weird.”
He led her back through the garden and into the house, then down the steps to the cellar. The steps led into a large wide vault with a curved brick ceiling. At the end was a blank wall, with a fingerprint reader attached to it.
He walked up to the fingerprint reader and pressed the tip of his index finger against it.
“I could have just had it sense my presence remotely,” he said, “but that takes all the fun out of it.”
“I like this old technology.” she replied with a smile that looked slightly forced.
A section of wall became transparent and then disappeared, accompanied by a curious but impressive whooshing noise—which was also quite unnecessary, but Quentin had wanted a striking sound to accompany activation of the portal.
They walked out through the vanished wall onto a wide balcony overlooking a valley flanked by mountains of astonishing beauty, wreathed by faint clouds. In the distance, a glittering ocean was visible, and it was just possible to make out the faint outlines of an extraordinary garden city at the end of the valley, close to the sea.
“Over there is Elizia.” he said, pointing at the city. “I named it after you. It’s not populated yet, but I’d like to take you to see one of the villages.”
“It’s incredible.” said Beth. “So beautiful. You made all this?”
“My machines made it. My computers made the machines, and I made the computers. Well, to be precise, my first computers made other computers which made those. Anyway, it’s all under my control. In a way, I’m a sort of emperor.”
“Emperor Quentin.” said Beth, teasingly.
“Exactly.” said Quentin.
Beth’s bad mood seemed to be lifting, he noted. She couldn’t help but be awed by the splendour of the planet; by its sheer breathtaking magnificence.
At this point in his fantasy she had thrown herself into his arms and they had kissed, there on the balcony, but Beth still seemed slightly distant. He felt somewhat inhibited from even touching her.
“How do we get there?” she asked.
“There’s a scooter just down there.” he said, pointing to a landing pad below the balcony and off to the side.
She peered down at it.
“I’m not going on that.” she said.
“It’s completely safe.” he said. “You literally can’t fall off. You’re held in by invisible fields.”
She seemed highly dubious.
“I don’t know.”
“Come down and have a look at it.”
He led her down through the house, which since meeting her he had substantially renovated in accordance with her taste, although she didn’t remark upon it, and in fact, seemed somewhat confused and, at times, sad.
They stepped out onto the landing pad. In front of them stood something that resembled a cross between a convertible car, a large motorbike, and a hovercraft. It had neither wheels nor wings.
“Get in.” he said, excitedly.
“You’re sure it’s safe?” she asked.
“Everything here is completely safe.” he said. “On this planet, it’s impossible to die, or to get seriously injured.”
“OK.” she said, with a sigh.
She stepped into the machine, sitting on the rear seat. Quentin got into the front seat and started it up, and the machine slid almost noiselessly off the platform, dipping into the valley before pulling up in a wide arc, causing Beth to cry out in alarm.
“Quentin, this doesn’t feel safe at all.” she shouted.
“It’s totally safe.” he said. “Even if you tried to jump out, you wouldn’t be able to do it. Don’t worry, we’re landing soon.”
As they swept past a cliff edge, a startling sight met their eyes. A group of teenage boys seemed to be throwing themselves off the cliffs, one by one, without parachutes. They plummeted to the floor of the valley below, seemingly to their deaths.
“Quentin!” shouted Beth. “They’re killing themselves!”
“I told them not to do that.” he replied angrily. “You see, if anyone tries to kill themselves on this planet, the machines intervene and protect them. Look, I’ll show you.”
He flew the machine lower, and soon Beth saw that the boys were, in fact, landing unharmed.
“The system is meant to protect people, but once they discovered it, they made a sport out of trying to kill themselves. I need to talk to their parents again.”
The machine flew upwards once more, leaving the laughing group of boys behind, and soon they were approaching a strange village carved into the side of a mountain, consisting of groups of beautiful and weirdly-shaped stone houses adorned with small trees, shrubs and vines. The houses almost resembled clusters of mushrooms in the way they seemed to sprout from the hillside.
“This village is almost fully populated now.” said Quentin. “It’s called Bethia.”
They were almost at the village landing pad when another flying car shot past them at enormous speed, the occupants shouting and laughing. It plunged into the side of the mountain with an enormous bang, the smashed machine and body parts scattering down towards the valley.
“Oh my God!” screamed Beth.
“Don’t worry, they’ll come to no harm.” he said. “If people deliberately kill themselves like that, their bodies are automatically reassembled in a lab just over that way.”
He pointed back the way they had come.
A thick mist was pouring out of the wreckage of the vehicle and out of all the separate bits of debris, flowing in a thin column in the direction Quentin had indicated.
“They’ll all be right as rain in about twenty minutes.” he said. “That’s the problem. They do it for fun. Bunch of degenerates. I should have been more careful about who I brought here. It’s meant as an emergency system, not as entertainment. Most people take care of themselves but there’s a minority who don’t. Especially people who were born here.”
“Are you sure they’ll be all right?”
“Absolutely certain.”
They alighted on a landing pad on the mountainside, and Quentin led Beth into the village.
Parts of the village were accessible only via steps and steeply-winding paths cut into the mountain, but the main part of the village was situated on a kind of natural terrace or plateau.
“Quentin!” said a cheery voice, as they made their way towards the centre.
The voice belonged to a young man, of strikingly muscular appearance. Beth immediately wondered if the man wasn’t a prolific user of steroids, then she reasoned that, most likely, on Quentin’s planet, it was impossible to truly abuse any substance, since the mysterious machines that apparently ruled the planet would somehow ensure people came to no harm. Or perhaps Quentin allowed people to modify themselves genetically somehow. That also seemed highly possible.
“Astaroth!” said Quentin. “How’s the band going?”
“Yeah, great!” said Astaroth. “Listen, I have to talk to you, man. The priest, he’s gone totally nuts. You need to do something. We’ve tried to talk to him, man, but it didn’t go well. Maybe he’ll listen to you. Hey, who’s this? Hi there.”
“This is my fiancé, Elizabeth.” said Quentin.
Beth greeted the man dubiously.
Soon, Astaroth went on his way, after further discussion about the priest, and some talk of Astaroth’s band, and after Astaroth and Beth had exchanged various pleasantries.
“Who’s he?” said Beth.
“I brought him here after he tried to kill himself, a few years ago. I fixed his brain. He has some kind of heavy metal band. His real name’s Nigel.” He thought for a moment. “I mean, his original name. Whatever name people choose here is as real as any other name they might have had. I’m so sorry, I wanted to just show you around, but I’d better talk to the priest.”
“Don’t be sorry.” said Beth. “It’s interesting.”
“I brought over some priests because I’ve been hoping they might manage to make people a bit more disciplined, or restrained.”
“Is it working?”
“I don’t think so.”
They made their way to a beautiful little church almost cut into the rock. From the entrance they heard the sound of crying, pleading, and lamentations, mixed up with bursts of laughter.
“Quentin, I don’t want to go in there.” said Beth.
“He’s quite harmless.” said Quentin. “Wait at the entrance if you like.”
Beth gazed into the dimly-lit church apprehensively, torn between fear and curiosity.
“You’ll protect me, won’t you?”
“Of course I will.” said Quentin, pushing the hair gently back from her face. “You know I will.”
“Let’s go in then.”
They found the priest on his knees in front of the altar, apparently wailing at God. When he heard them approaching he jumped and turned around to face them. His eyes were bloodshot from crying.
“What’s going on, David?” asked Quentin.
“Quentin!” the priest exclaimed. “They won’t listen to me! Satan grasps their souls in his icy talons! Terrible things are happening here, Quentin, things you wouldn’t believe. You don’t know the half of it. Bestial, degraded things.”
“You’re overwrought.” said Quentin gently, laying a hand on the man’s shoulder. “Why don’t you move away for a bit. Perhaps a house by the sea? Beat a tactical retreat. I didn’t mean to put all the problems of the village on your shoulders. It’s too much for one man.”
“I want to go home.” said the priest, suddenly sober and determined.
“This is your home now.” said Quentin. “But you don’t have to stay right here. You can make a new start somewhere else. I’ve got more than thirty villages already, or if you’d prefer somewhere more isolated …”
“I want to go back to the Earth, Quentin.” said the priest, with steely resolution. “I won’t tell anyone about Iridania, I promise. I swear on my life, as God is my witness. If there is even still a God.”
“I’m sorry, I can’t do it. People would realise you’re immortal.”
“Then take my immortality away! I know you can do it. I have a right to die. I want to die!”
Quentin backed away from from him uncertainly, shaking his head slightly.
“I’ve tried to kill myself so many times.” said the priest, suddenly pulling out a knife. “Every time I wake up in that awful place.”
“Don’t do that.”
“I’ve been killing the wrong person.” said the priest, an unholy light suddenly shining in his eyes. “You’re a devil, Quentin. You’ve cursed me.”
Quentin backed away rapidly as the priest tottered towards him.
“Put the knife down, David.” said Quentin.
The priest gave a sudden roar and lunged towards him with the knife. Beth, at Quentin’s side, suddenly tried to grab the priest’s hand. Before Quentin could react, the priest yanked the knife away, but as he did so, the knife cut a broad gash in Beth’s neck. Blood gushed out from the wound.
“Beth!” cried Quentin, as she fell to the ground. “Don’t worry, you’ll be fine!”
“Can I bring you another cocktail, madam?” asked the French waiter solicitously.
“Yes.” said Karen. “I’ll have one of those things that woman over there is drinking.”
She pointed at a woman lying on a lounger much like her own, a little further along the beach.
“A margarita, certainly, madam.”
“Stop calling me madam.” said Karen. “My name’s Karen.”
“My apologies.” said the waiter, smiling. “I’ll bring your drink right away, Karen.”
She opened her compact and checked her eye in it. A little fly had landed underneath her eye and had got crushed when she rubbed the resulting itch. She flicked it away. Then she inspected the rest of her face in the mirror. She could be no older than 40 now. 43 at the most, she thought.
She took out a silver cigarette case and lit a cigarette.
As she exhaled, her eyes followed a young man further down the beach. The son of a billionaire, apparently. Of course he wouldn’t be interested in her. Not now. But in two or three weeks, when she will be younger …
She wondered idly what the men would be like on Quentin’s planet. And the women, for that matter. Would she make friends there? What if they were all insufferable? But all the people on the whole planet can’t be insufferable.
She decided to spend two more days at the beach resort, then she would see the Sydney Opera House. After that, she wanted to see the rainforests in Queensland.
Quentin had given her a bank account containing plenty of money. If these were to be her last weeks on Earth, she might as well spend it, she thought.
Beth awoke on a padded table in a white room. She gasped and felt her throat. There was no wound.
“You are safe and well now.” said a disembodied voice. “You were killed and you have been reassembled.”
“Who are you?” said Beth, struggling to her feet.
“I am a computer.” said the voice.
At that moment Quentin burst into the room.
“Beth!” he said. “I’m so sorry. I got here as quickly as I could.”
“Your nutcase priest slashed my throat!” she said angrily.
“I know, I know. He didn’t mean to. He meant to kill me. No-one dies here. He knows that. He must have lost his mind. The machines would have detected any organic derangement in his brain but he’s obviously become psychologically unmoored.”
“Just take me home, Quentin. I’m sorry, I don’t like your planet.”
Quentin’s face fell, the forced nervous smile disappearing from it.
“OK.” he said.
They flew back to the portal.
“What are you going to do with that priest, Quentin?” she asked.
“Oh, nothing.” said Quentin.
“He tried to kill me. You have to punish him.”
“There’s no punishment here. We don’t have prisons or executions or anything like that.”
“You can’t just let him slash my throat and not do anything.”
“It was an accident, Beth. He meant to stab me, and he knew I wouldn’t die. It was more a cry for help than anything else.”
She was silent during the drive home from the farmhouse, and monosyllabic at best whenever he tried to speak to her.
When they parted, she barely acknowledged him, muttering about needing some time to herself.
They met two days later, in a cafe. Beth had numerous questions for him, which he answered candidly.
“Quentin,” said Beth, finally, “what you’ve done isn’t right. Your machines, protecting everyone from themselves, are nothing but a devouring mother.”
“A what?” he said.
“Have you read any Carl Jung?”
“No.”
“You’ve created a mother that smothers her children.”
“Do you think so?”
“I think so.”
“I wanted to create a paradise.” he said, staring disconsolately at her.
“What you’ve tried to do, it’s impossible.” she said. “Even for a god. You’ve made life too easy for those people. They’ve lost their minds. We weren’t meant to live in a utopia.”
“I’m working with my most powerful machines to devise a solution.” he said. “I will fix it.”
“How? What are you going to do? You need to start laying down the law and punishing people who violate it.”
“No … no.” he said, shaking his head.
“You’re a wonderful person, Quentin.” said Beth. “And a genius. The problem is, you’re too soft.”
“I don’t want to be a dictator.”
“Have you heard of the experiments of John B. Calhoun?”
“No, who’s he?”
“The mouse utopia guy.”
“My time’s been spent on my research. I haven’t had time to read popular science or psychology.”
“He put mice in a big pen and fed them.” Beth persisted. “He allowed them to breed. In this utopia, there were no predators, no disease, and no escape. Do you know what happened?”
“They all went mad?”
“Spot on.”
“OK, but that’s mice. I have a planet with human beings on it. Humans, not animals.”
“Yes, and you’ve removed every bit of difficulty that human beings need if they’re going to thrive.”
“You’ve just seen it at a bad time. Earlier, things were going really well.”
“Quentin, even God accepted, when he put people in the Garden of Eden and gave them free will, that they might eat the wrong fruit. They did, and he made them pay for it.”
“I don’t believe in God.”
“That’s not the point. Anyway, why did you put priests on your planet if you really don’t believe in God?”
“My computers suggested that might help.”
“Priests only work if you have laws, Quentin. And hardship. You’ve given them no reason to take priests seriously.”
Soon they were arguing bitterly, neither of them able to believe what they now saw in the other.
In the days and then weeks that followed their meeting, she didn’t return his calls.
Karen was feeling increasingly puzzled. Months had passed since she’d seen Quentin. She wondered if the planet he had proposed to send her to was even real. She wouldn’t have believed him for a moment, were it not for the fact that he had indeed caused her to age backwards, and she was now quite clearly 25 years old, as he had promised, and entirely free from any illness as far as she could tell.
The last definite sign of Quentin existing at all had been the credit to the bank account he had supplied her with, and the subsequent delivery. The account now contained twenty million UK pounds. Why would he think she needed so much money, if he planned to take her to a new planet?
On the morning of the following day, three false passports had arrived by courier at her new hotel in Queensland, together with details of these fake identities, including birth certificates and even tax returns. How he had found her, she had no idea, but Quentin had explained that he could find her anywhere.
For a year after that she wandered about, staying a few months here and a few months there, ending finally at Sils Maria in Switzerland.
She fully expected Quentin to contact her again, to take her to his planet, but there were no further communications from him.
Puzzled, she began to search for him.
For five long years she searched, using up a great deal of money in the effort.
A breakthrough occurred after eight months when Beth responded to an advert Karen had placed on the internet, offering a substantial reward for information leading to verification of Quentin’s whereabouts.
Beth told her she had been engaged to Quentin but had broken off their engagement, and wanted nothing more to do with him, but she was curious about what had happened to him, and she hadn’t expected him to simply disappear.
Beth was able to give Karen many useful details that helped enormously with the search, but still it took more than another four years to track Quentin down.
She found him at his remote cottage in Wales. His body was there—really just some dried decayed flesh hanging to his bones—his notebooks, and some apparatus.
How he had died was impossible to ascertain, but his diary made it clear that his death was not an accident. He had lost interest in being alive.
After extensively perusing Quentin’s notebooks, hiring various retired professors to help her made sense of them, making regular trips to the remote location via hired helicopter from a hotel in the nearest large town, she finally understood everything.
Activating the old portal in the cottage proved challenging, especially since she didn’t want anyone else to know its secrets. It took her another two years to get it working, but Karen was an extremely persistent person. Finally, putting on a pair of sunglasses and wrapping a rather expensive scarf around her neck, she activated the portal and stepped onto Iridania.
Taking a flying bike, she made her way to the control centre that was documented extensively in Quentin’s notes.
Many shocking sights soon met her eyes. She ignored them, eventually reaching a dodecahedral dome, deep inside a forest. She landed amongst the trees and opened the door, using a code from Quentin’s notebooks.
Inside the dome, ten levers controlled ten separate functions, protecting people from accident, illness, murder and their own worst natures.
“Without evil, there is no good.” she said out loud, before pulling the levers one by one, deactivating the machine completely.
They say she is still there now, and rules with an iron hand, and the people of Iridania frequently name their children after her.