One Billion Drops of Happiness Read online

  One Billion Drops of Happiness

  PROLOGUE

  ‘What is the use of human suffering?

  To teach us humility? To deepen our reservoir of strength?

  Worlds before mine, the wisest men spoke of too much sunshine creating a desert and how only in sorrow could we truly discover ourselves. But why are some people destined to endure a lifetime of agony whilst others are free to gambol through their years in peace?

  Maybe they are not truly happy, and in order to glimpse a fleeting moment of luminous sunshine you have to let the rains and the winds and the thunder batter your soul until it can sing finally that: ‘Here is the pinnacle of my journey; this is what the fight and the torment was for; I am alive and I have seen and felt every nuance, every iota of what it is to be human.’

  I write this to pass the days. How much longer I shall live I cannot say. Eighty, ninety, a hundred more years before they come for me? Until then I can only think and wait and remember the series of events which have caused my world to change for eternity.

  PART ONE

  2114

  ONE

  Alfred Reinhardt was one hundred and fifty one years old the morning they came to Sign him Off. He had been expecting it for a long time now, but when his hundred and fiftieth birthday had come and gone without event, he began to hope they had quite forgotten about him.

  But the system never lost track. Today his name flashed up on the computer, signaling an end to the existence of yet another New American citizen who had come of age. Five anonymous workers wearing pure white from head to toe were immediately dispatched to the address glowing from the suspended mirage in the room. To the workers, this was just another day. They did not stop long enough to take notice of the name, to pause and realise the irony of the person they were about to dispose of. Reflection was outmoded these days; it was often quipped that if everybody thought too much, civilization would surely grind to a halt.

  * * *

  ‘No! No!’ The strangled cry reverberated around the marble walls of the hundred and eightieth floor apartment.

  ‘No! No! No!’

  There was a flurry of activity followed by a loud crash and an ensuing panicked yelp.

  ‘Get your filthy hands off me!’

  ‘What on earth?’

  Amethyst Reinhardt came careering round the corner wearing the most garish ensemble. Her life partner Doric trailed in her wake, both citizens wearing expressions of complete alarm.

  ‘Not now! Get off me you beasts!’

  The harrowed pleas could only be identified as coming from Amethyst’s father, Alfred. He was her biological father – a quaint relic from the society of yesteryear.

  ‘Dad?’

  The pair sprinted down the long mirrored hallway to Alfred’s study where they were finally confronted with the vision of the head of their household being forcibly ejected for Sign Off.

  Five nondescript workers from the Government Bureau were grappling effortlessly with the elderly man, almost as if they were allowing a slight struggle to amuse themselves.

  ‘Get...gone…you ...philistines!’ Alfred’s voice scraped painfully against his throat. To be fair, he seemed to be putting up a valiant fight, but they were used to this.

  Half the cohort seemed to accept their fate with grace and serenity the moment they spied the five nameless workers strolling towards them. Everybody knew what they signified. After turning one hundred and fifty – sometimes a short while shy if they were having a quiet day – Sign Off was to be expected. They never forewarned anybody, for the only being that knew was the computer when it plucked a name at random. All that was certain was that eventually, everybody would meet the same end.

  Having warning would be counterproductive anyway; the soon-to-be-departed citizens in question might start shirking their duties or even hide, which would merely cause a nuisance to the smooth running of society. Even worse, they might stop using their Suppressitors and become introspective in the face of their mortality. It was unthinkable really; New America had no time to look back and ponder.

  Those who struggled like Alfred Reinhardt today seemed to possess an intense inner disquiet that ignited upon sight of the white-clad workers. It was put down to the fact that these folk were born of the century before the last. Things had been different back then; these people had made enormous adjustments in their lifetime. The workers were more than well equipped to deal with outbursts, but the sooner they could get back to headquarters and use the Vapour, the better.

  In the corner of the study, Xandria Reinhardt, beloved granddaughter of Alfred, stood trembling, quietly transfixed upon the terrible scene. She barely noticed her mother stumbling into the calamity. All she could focus on was an ebbing realisation of something – she knew not what – and a clawing pain in her ribs. The room took on a glazed quality. She stared blankly at her grandfather as the workers fought calmly to immobilise him. She knew that this would be the last time she ever saw him again.

  Her mother meanwhile was emitting the strangest strangled noises that Xandria had ever heard. Sobbing. She had seen the phenomenon in multimedia demonstrating what happened to humans when they didn’t use a Suppressitor. But she never expected to see it in her mother of all people. Why? And where was her Suppressitor? What had possessed her? And how shameful to act this way in front of company! The Reinhardts were a highly respectable family after all, not recent immigrants from the Old World where this kind of behaviour was the norm.

  ‘It’s all wrong, it’s all wrong!’ Alfred gasped wildly, still flailing his sinewy limbs. ‘Don’t take me! I’m not finished, not finished! Please…need to take it back…take it all back…’

  Those peculiar feelings were beginning to rise in her chest. Those feelings she had read about since she was a child; the feelings which only arose when something was really, really wrong. It was as if time had stopped. She had never waited so long to click before. What if she didn’t? But the feeling was too horrifying to bear thinking about. Every second longer her fingers were paralysed; the sensation multiplied in droves and swarms. It was as if some terrible monster was gnawing away at her insides. Now she knew why the Suppressitor was deemed so paramount to the country. What could become of people if they were plagued with this demon every day?

  ‘Leave it behind….leave it…Norway…’ rasped Alfred, his captors beginning to get the better of him. He was in all sorts of limb locks by now. The veins in his neck were visibly fluttering. He turned his head sideways as much as he could muster, his taut blue eyes imploring Xandria’s very core.

  ‘Dearest Xandria, don’t let them…turn against it…the whole thing…wrong…think…feel!’

  The workers had ushered him wordlessly to the elevator. They had not uttered a syllable; it was not necessary. Xandria’s mother knew there was no point trying to stop them, no point trying to plead or bargain. It was as much use as trying to stop the rain outside.

  Meanwhile Alfred had slackened in their vice-like grip. His eyes were damp, his frustrations had leaked out. Only grief remained. Notably, he was not wearing his Suppressitor. His family had silently gathered.

  ‘I love you,’ he wheezed as the doors opened. Amethyst jumped forward, silent tears rinsing over her cheeks.

  ‘I love you too…Dad…’

  There was a shocked silence, as the weight of those old fashioned, almost forbidden words suffused the already muggy air. Doric held her back, biting his lip. His face was drawn. Xandria gazed at her grandfather. Words could not leave her mouth, they could not form. Her beloved grandfather was disappearing behind the sliding doors. Her grandfather who had taught her to read, who had patiently explained the workings of the world; her grandfather w
ho had given her everything. This was too much to bear. Her head was hammering now, she felt like she was being shredded down the midline.

  She closed her eyes and tapped her Suppressitor. And the world went calm.

  * * *

  The death of Alfred Reinhardt, although society preferred the neater term of ‘Signing Off’, came as an insuppressible shock to the people of New America. This was not for sentimental reasons, for sentiment had become extinct long ago. People had quite simply forgotten about his existence. It was a testament to how many years had flown by since his name was synonymous with all things modern and revolutionary.

  Reinhardt had been an eminent scientist in the time leading up to 2080, the year of the renowned Inauguration of New America. He had spent those years alongside the most prodigious brains in the industry, innovating a range of vaccines which could completely eradicate every ill that plagued the human race. Together they worked painstakingly and laboriously until they cracked all the secrets of molecular biology, eventually coming up with four key vaccines that could be delivered at birth. As science progressed, the number of necessary vaccines was gradually reduced until just one teeming inoculation was all that was required for each and every newborn.

  The immediate effect of such remarkable developments was the marked elongation of the human lifespan in New America. This had been increasing progressively over the years of the last century, but careful calculations revealed that on average, one hundred and fifty years was what could be expected from a human borne of the new era. Extensive brain scans and talks about population control created the general consensus that it was wasteful to live much longer than that. There was only so much one individual could contribute towards human progress; room had to be made for younger more fertile brains that could maintain the rampant acceleration.

  It was all very well coming up with the age of obsolescence, but the trouble was, it was very hard to simply die in the year 2114. With the effects of the infallible vaccines, combined with the micro-molecular approach to medicine and surgery, a man could pretty much be drawn and quartered and still live to tell the tale. No trauma was ever too late; man had truly conquered time.

  After all the triumphant jubilation surrounding the vaccinations, Alfred soon came up trumps again with the discovery of a Vapour that could immaculately dispose of small objects without trace. At that time, strong pushes were being made to eradicate all backward household items and furniture which were no longer of use to the revolutionising society. The Government themselves had hit a bit of a brick wall in conjuring up ideas to dispose of such items. Shipping them off to the Old World would have had to be paid for by someone, and the President had made it clear it was not to be New America.

  Therefore, a young Alfred went to demonstrate his new Vapour to the higher powers, showing them carefully how in the closed presence of a sufficient quantity of this substance, any small item could completely disappear. He brought along the contents of his old bookshelf to prove his point. Before everybody’s eyes, the Vapour filled the glass container and by the time the mist had cleared, the container was completely empty.

  The government was swift to buy the patent from Alfred, and he was only too pleased to sell it. He did not enjoy doing business; his pure pleasure was derived from exercising his brain behind the scenes. Doing so made him feel useful; he felt like he was contributing to the birth of a better world. Plus he needed the money to house and educate his family; these things did not come cheaply.

  What Alfred did not expect from his beloved Vapour was the subsequent news that it was to be used on humans to assist with the escalating dilemma of population control. There were too many people in the country mooching about aimlessly. Prior to researchers identifying the age of obsolescence, the swathes of elderly citizens were forming a bottomless drain on the economy. They were too old to do anything productive, yet too healthy to perish at a reasonable rate, as was only polite. Some people complained that they were taking up space in a fashion similar to the aforementioned problem of useless furniture.

  The government was pressurised to create legislation relating to this prickly matter. They had the Vapour to deal with the material clutter lying around the country, yet they would have to really rack their brains hard to tackle the population problem. Vast sums of money were flung at the laboratories until one day, some smart alec pointed out that they were wasting their time trying to come up with something new when the solution had been staring them in the face from the beginning.

  Now focused in the right direction, the government scientists soon found a way to cleanly inject the same Vapour as a liquid, yielding exactly the same effects. Humans could now disappear forever. It was as simple as that. The responsibility of informing the inventor was passed slapdash onto a gawky young citizen who worked in the laboratory as a cleaner. His protestations unheard, he was instructed to write a cursory note to Alfred detailing the latest developments of the Vapour. How his blood had frozen upon reading that it had been secretly and successfully tested on a willing volunteer. How he had stayed awake for weeks, his innards a landslide of rubble, furious at himself, furious at the government. His brainchild being used for this? He simmered alternately with contempt, with horror, with despair. He felt that he could never forgive himself; he had unknowingly abetted the rise of dehumanisation. There was nothing he could do to stop it, and it would only spiral from here. Death had been turned into a simple, clinical process. No trace, no sentiment.

  The government was aware that such a Vapour had the potential to be abused by unauthorised hands. Extremely tight security measures were put in place so that only a few people could have access to it to use in a controlled, authorised environment. Everybody knew it existed, but only a very small number could say they had ever seen the elusive Vapour in action. And the government liked to keep it that way. Their inventions belonged to New America only. Countries from the Old World had petitioned for innumerable nifty inventions, primarily the Vaccinations, to be available to them, but had quickly backtracked in revulsion when they were informed they could only do so under the condition that their country became an addition to New America. Almost like a satellite state. Thank you but no thank you, came the huffy responses. Unexpected death is the fabric of what it is to be human.

  Following the distressing abuse of his creative mind, Alfred gradually became a recluse, spending more and more time tucked away in his study. He had not realised society could change so much in one lifetime. Consequently, he spent the last thirty five years of his life desperately seeking meaning to his existence; real meaning. Not the kind of meaning you could manufacture and wear on your neck, the government’s latest hare-brained scheme soon to be unveiled. He slowly rebuilt his ailing library on the sly, finding old works of the great philosophers often shipped in from Europe disguised as other items. Books were not banned per se in the new civilisation, but greatly frowned upon as they took up space and it was outdated to fill one’s head with frivolous ideas from the stagnant days of the past.

  In the months of 2114, before his Sign Off, Alfred had adopted a sense of intangible urgency to whatever he was working on behind closed doors. Xandria had noticed that when he emerged in the evenings he seemed more peaceful than he had ever been before; it was as if he had resolved something deep in the depths of his conscience.

  Her mother and Doric, too, seemed slightly changed. Her mother Amethyst had always been on the bohemian spectrum, but more recently had been showering unnerving amounts of affection on the whole family. It didn’t make Xandria comfortable at all; that sort of behaviour was not conducive to anything. Her generation was the first not to have lived through a previous era without all the adjuncts she was accustomed to. Outpouring of emotion was something she was unfamiliar with and something she had never herself felt. She didn’t trust her mother at all when she was acting so strangely. Xandria was on the cusp of promotion in her job at the government and any smear on her good name would ensure she came plummeting right
down the career ladder, (but thanks to modern medicine only minor trauma would ensue).

  TWO

  ‘Zebediah gone?’

  ‘Gone!’

  ‘He can’t be gone!’

  ‘Zebediah Voss?’

  ‘…to where?’

  ‘Did he get Signed Off?’

  ‘He was only a hundred…’

  ‘Did he have a life partner?’

  ‘How should we know?’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘Did he forget to click?’

  ‘You can’t forget to click, immigrant!’

  * * *

  It was not the first time that Bathsheba Ermez had been called an immigrant. Since her arrival in New America six months ago she had been trying fervently to get to grips with her new culture. Her mother had warned her she was making the biggest mistake of her life; her father had wept into his ghormeh sabzi. She would rather be Signed Off than reveal to her fellow citizens that she had been born quite naturally. The old way. It had taken months of acclimatisation in a special centre for her to learn the nuances of this modern society; that death was a scheduled event and children were born from a special serum implanted into women. They were already dabbling with embryos that needed neither man nor woman to flourish.

  When she was finally given her Suppressitor, she wore it proudly and prominently, as if it was a secret uniform others would see and accept her for. She found herself using it only a little at first, when she missed home or wondered about her lost family, but the acclimatisation had almost re-conditioned her psyche to depend on it to balance her emotions. Nowadays she was just about using it as an instinct when she could feel a warm surge of old emotions, but still found herself clicking more in the presence of others. They became suspicious if immigrants were not using them enough. The new civilisation was hyper vigilant of people from the old lands coming in. Raw with their inflammatory emotions, they could easily unsettle the finely tuned equilibrium of artificial serenity.