I

‘Do you really work for GX? I mean, you are so young.’ Said the doctor, smiling and impressed.

In the blink of an eye, I analysed by intuition the composition of that smile on his face, half of which made of a warm welcome, a third of cheerfulness, with the rest sixth of confidence and strength - all of them acting together to make every new patient feel at home, calm and relaxed, ready to tell their entrusted doctor about any problems they had encountered, even before the tea was served.

This was just one of the bestselling Frexpress series developed by GX. Don’t know how to break the ice with a stranger, but work in a profession having to deal with new people on a daily basis? No stress. Try out the latest Frexpress C-For-Cheer to perfect your smile with a professional finish - a unit dose will last you five days and a half. I grinned. But I pretended not to have noticed the secret formula behind his smile and noded, ‘thanks. I always take that as a compliment.’

‘So... how can I help?’ He offered a bigger smile.

‘I guess there’s just something wrong with my eyes.’ I said, ‘my visual perception becomes so strange lately as if I’m looking things through coloured lenses, sometimes dotty red ones, but mostly blue... I mean, I can no longer sense colours accurately anymore.’

‘Ah. That is interesting. Let me have a look first. Now... don’t blink.’ He put on the examining glasses and stared straight into my eyes. When I was still a child, I had always mistaken them for old fashioned sunglasses that the pre-Ulti humans had craved for.

‘Interesting. There doesn’t seem to be anything wrong with the hardware. How long has the symptom lasted?’

‘A while ago. In fact, twenty-eight days ago, after an accident.’ A GX employer is always confident with memory capacity. ‘The weather ceiling of the City had problem last month, so I was sent with the team to diagnose and fix it... you know, I’ve been working for GX as an engineer in the maintenance branch since I graduated from college. We take care of the gigantic infrastructure systems of City Ult, to make sure that energy, information and other essential resources flow smoothly across the City. But the ceiling had some dysfunctions...’

‘Yes, I remember it. Raining all the time, though the weather regulators had announced it to be a sunny dry season before the monsoon which is planned for next month.’ He looked out into the sky and smiled, proud, ‘the Umbrella of Ult. Look. How beautiful.’

I looked out and I saw blue again - when I was supposed to see something pink. The Ulti saying goes, ‘If you need more energy in life, look up to the sky. The colour of dream, the glow of happiness, the life of rosy pink.’

‘But I can’t see the sky in its normal colour anymore, Mr Doctor, there’s something wrong with my sights... the way I perceive colour tones. Now I only see blue when I look up. Cold blue. Sometimes with red spots. Or other types of distortions which come less often. Since twenty-eight days ago when I was working to fix the City’s Umbrella and fell off by accident.’

‘I don’t see any record of you being hospitalised last month. Were you hurt bad? Was it in the brain?’

‘No, it was no big deal. I only broke a leg, but a girl assistant who is a part time worker for GX helped to fix it on the spot. And I can assure you there was no injury to the head...’

‘Can’t be too careful,’ he smiled again and insisted on a full set of examination, ‘you’ll have the result next time you come visit.’

II

Well. So I waited. And regretted the fact that my employer had to pay for the extra fees charged by the doctor for the full examination, although GX is one of the biggest and wealthiest corporations in Ult. I always regard rational resource allocation as a great virtue, and any waste is waste no matter how small it might be - a value shared by my colleagues. We calculate for the good.

But when I returned, I was surprised that the money didn’t go into pure waste, as the doctor seemed to have found a genuine discovery.

‘I have good news for you, Mr Engineer,’ said he in a high pitch.

The smile on his face looked rather bizarre indeed. In fact, my symptoms had been getting worse during last week (I made a mistake in work the other day - first time ever in my entire career), so when I looked at his smile, I saw a bluish complexion instead of the normal healthy pink, with the muscles somehow twisting, as if the ingredients of Frexpress C were acting too vigilantly against irregularities that loomed large. ‘And a bad news, too?’ I couldn’t help but asked, in a calmer voice than expected.

‘Well... yes, I suppose you could say that. The good news is: there’s nothing wrong with your body, Mr E. It works in perfect order. And in fact, your hardware, especially the vision system, is superior than the Ulti average. By that I mean you are gifted in observing details, am I right, Mr E?’ Then his smile twisted again before he continued speaking, ‘... well actually I couldn’t help taking another Frex C this morning before we met, doubling the advised dose... but I suppose you still noticed it, perhaps even during your first visit, the fact that my body is deficient to act in a nobly indifferent way you and your colleagues are naturally capable of: to conceal the excessive emotions.’

I saw relief on his face when he made his confession. But that professional smile soon reappeared even though he didn’t mean it, as a result of overdose. ‘I’m sorry to hear that, Mr D. I truly am.’ I said, trying to sympathise, but I knew from his difficult reaction how indifferent I still appeared. And by that moment I suddenly experienced shock. For a while I couldn’t sense anything, except for dark red spots covering up my sights and dead silence.

Then his voice came in gradually as if from a distance, ‘... now I can’t be more certain what has happened to you, Mr E. Do you suffer from sudden distortions of senses, especially visual ones?’

‘Yes. Especially visual distortions.’

‘You suffer disproportionately from visual biases simply because your vision system is more sensitive compared to other senses, though I don’t think the other senses are lucky enough to be exempted from distortions. Do you experience difficulty with breathing, or irregular heart beats?’

‘I haven’t paid particular attention to that, but I’ll check.’ So I searched through my memory, and replied, ‘I think you’re right, Mr Doctor, your assumption is consistent with evidence. Do you want to have a look at the records? I can sent you an unencrypted copy instantly in the form of mind diagram...’

‘Please do. I won’t read the records now, but they might be useful later... Well, but that’s not the point. The point is, young man...’ As if not knowing how to phrase what was in his mind, he fell into silence.

But it was strange how he addressed me. Someone else might just get offended if they are addressed not by the name of their profession when it’s already known. The disrespectful ‘young man’ is also offensive enough in its own right. My colleague and friend Al is just one of those guys easily annoyed by wrong forms of address, though I’m not particularly bothered by it.

‘Young man, let me explain by asking you a few questions first.’ He finally spoke again, ‘you should have learnt from your history teachers that the pre-Ulti humans never saw sky in the same colour as we see it. They saw things in a boring way, and they always needed lights during the night, otherwise it would be nothing but darkness in front of their eyes. Yet we are different. Our sensational capabilities have been greatly enhanced.’

‘Yes, I’m well aware of that. We can still perceive the environment around us in the conventional sense of ‘darkness’, because our eyes are sensitive to the slightest lights. Theoretically, we can still ‘see’ in absence of light, because we are hardwired to transmit detective rays to extend visions further.’

‘True - like the sonar system of bats, only with different mediums. Now, tell me, why do we always see things with a rosy glow?’

‘Well, I thought I had explained it. Because our vision system is enhanced. The glow helps us to see through the dark.’

‘Yes, yes, but why a rosy glow, rather than any other colour? Don’t you think the choice is too artificial?’

‘No, I’m not particularly bothered by it. Physics says colours don’t exist objectively. They’re nothing but creation of the mind.’ I replied, then with a pause, ‘unless, you are talking about politics. The City Council found it a genius idea to embed the auxiliary status monitoring unit within our primordial sensation of colours - the change in the hue of our visions is probably the most intuitive way to inform us of our mood.’

‘Yes, yes!’ He looked a bit too excited, and this excess might cause him trouble if a police happened to pass by. Excessive emotions are as threatening as someone pointing at you with a gun. My teachers told me how the pre-Ulti humans went into killing activities, or in another word, ‘war’, because of their ineptitude to control irrationality and allowed it to escalate.

‘But what does it have to do with my problem?’ I remained calm, as I knew he’d be too inferior to inflict harm on me, ‘a(chǎn)re you suggesting that the status monitoring unit embedded in my body is broken?’

‘It can’t be! We have done a full examination to make sure the hardware is working in perfect order!’ He took another Frex C, and apologised for his uncontrollable loud voice.

‘But neither can my mind or mood go wrong,’ I smiled. ‘I don’t think I need to remind you of the fact that I work for GX. My parents told me I was born with the gift to stay detached. From people as well as from circumstances. Always. That’s why I got a position in GX so young. And that’s why I had known you were taking Frex C before you told me, because the formula was developed based on a study of a group of GX employees, in which I was one of the selected eighty-nine.’

‘Impressed. Very impressed.’ Mr Doctor was finally able to smile and speak normally again thanks to Frex. ‘But believe it or not, exceptionally acute visual sensation like yours can increase the vulnerability of that rare gift of impartiality to unexpected circumstances. Without remedy, you will not only lose control over your temper, but excessive emotional fluctuations will also cause further damage to your body (sometimes irreversible), starting from your vision, the most delicate of all.’

‘That sounds awful.’ I replied after a short pause, ‘now before you give me the prescription, Mr Doctor, I would really appreciate you telling me why this is all happening to me.’

He sighed, ‘because you’re in love, young man.’

III

Love. The last cancer of human race.

Al, another Mr Engineer of GX, sometimes mentioned people getting terminated when they got themselves into this trouble as was occasionally told by the news. The police took them away, cleansed their memory, and recycled what was left of them. Some were forced, but most Ultis pleaded for such treatment for common good of the City when they realised that they were beyond remedy.

But I never knew that such a remote thing could ever come to me. When the doctor warned that I had to take it seriously and cooperate with the curing process, I didn’t even have a clue where things first went wrong.

‘I’ve had a girlfriend since college, and most Ultis do have relationships legally, right?’

‘There’s nothing wrong with relationships, but love is dangerous. Take the pills twice a day, which will act to reduce the sensory distortions. A robot lady will come to your residence no later than tomorrow afternoon for your companionship. Your family, your girlfriend and your employer have all been informed of your illness. They will take care of you and come to your assistance when needed. Best of luck.’

I saw that big smile on his face signalling the end of our appointment. But I had one last question that truly unsettled me. ‘Doctor,’ I asked, ‘who did I fall in love with?’

‘Well, I don’t know,’ he shrugged, ‘but as far as the treatment is concerned, that’s an irrelevant issue, isn’t it?’

So I went home, still in confusion. I had a very pleasant relationship with my current girlfriend. I mean, a healthy relationship that did not involve any of the risks or perils of love.

When I got home, I saw two ladies, both elegantly dressed, engaging in a conversation in a typical civilised Ulti manner. One, as I recognised, was my girlfriend; and the other was the robot lady as she stood up at the sight of me, smiling, ‘I’m honoured to be at your service, Mr Engineer of GX. Miss Intelligence has informed me of your habits and preferences in addition to the default values stored in my data library. I hope we will have a nice time together during your treatment.’

‘Thank you for taking care of Mr E on my behalf.’ My girlfriend smiled at Lady R before she turned to talk to me, ‘I’m sorry to learn that you’re ill, Mr E. And I wish you’d get better soon. Please don’t worry about me and focus on the treatment. I was informed earlier that if you could not make it and had to be sent for termination which is the worst case scenario, there are still seventy-five alternative Mr Es out there that match me well, although I guess I might miss you nonetheless. But take the treatment first, Mr E. I’ll wait for your return, as there’s a fair chance of ninety-seven percentage in favour of your recovery, unless you fail to comply with the treatment. You know I always have confidence in my estimates, because I work for the largest information processing agency of the City.’

‘I’m proud of you, Miss Int,’ I smiled at her, ‘a(chǎn)nd I’m also proud to assure you, my closest partner of body and soul, that you’re not the one whom I had an irrational crush upon. Our relationship is always reasonable and decent.’

I saw a subtle relief on her face, through a blue hue which had ceased to disappear since three days ago. Research has not shown whether the disease of love is contagious among loved ones or not. But it’s always safer to stay away from the ill. ‘Well, thank you for your kind remarks,’ she kissed me goodbye, ‘a(chǎn)nd I look forward to making love with you again, after you are cured. Your parents have asked me to send their concerns, as they are currently too occupied to visit you in person.’

‘I appreciate that.’

IV

I was advised by my employer to take rest during the treatment, as work related stress is among the most suspected causes of the ill of love. Besides, my conditions were getting too severe for the work that required precision and accuracy anyway.

Lady R explained the disease to me. ‘If you push yourself too hard, Mr Engineer of GX, you are more risk-prone. An overly dense schedule will reduce your joy index below the threshold value, which proves to be damaging to the mental immune system in the long run. This is usually alarmed by a reduced rosy glow of things in the sight, a signal for the need of a break. But sometimes if people fail to recognise the change themselves, they might miss the critical point for self-adjustment and resort to irrationality which they themselves are often unconscious with...’

‘Lady G, I think you are absolutely professional.’

‘Thank you for your kind remarks, Mr Engineer.’

‘I have a curious inquiry, though,’ I smiled, ‘why is love such a dangerous business?’

‘To clarify the concept, I think what you meant was ‘spontaneous love’, as opposed to a legitimate relationship.’

‘Yeah, I think that was what I meant.’

‘The reason is straightforward. In a spontaneous love relationship, people are exposed to too much uncertainty. If you are in love, you tend to have high expectations for your loved ones. But such expectations are not based on rational calculation, leading to risks of disappointment and pain...’

‘Please wait a minute,’ I interrupted, ‘what exactly is ‘disappointment’? I have come across the word for many times, but never experienced it in person in my entire life.’

‘The experience of disappointment and pain belong to a category of emotions that are labelled as negative and undesirable. They have been extinguished and outlawed in Ult. You do not come across such feelings anymore in Ult. If anyone intentionally causes you pain in Ult, they will be sentenced accordingly.’

‘But I think I understand what pain is,’ I recalled the accident, ‘last month I broke my leg, and that really hurt. I had never experienced anything like that before.’

‘You are correct, that was pain. Few people have it now because regular pains are eliminated by medical means before they can reach you, such as childbirth or surgery. However, it was a physical form of pain. When you are infected with love, you could experience something worse, as pain related to love is more irregular, chronicle, and there is currently no effective medicine. Also the extent varies between individuals. Thus some may suffer more than others, and...’

‘I’m still not convinced. Surely being hurt, or ‘disappointed’, is a negative thing, but does love necessarily entail pains? What if expectations can be fulfilled? For instance, I have a very sound relationship with my girlfriend. We don’t ‘disappoint’ each other. Never has she caused any distortion in my senses. The sky was always rosy pink above us.’

‘Because spontaneous love is irrational, whilst legitimate relationships are rational.’

‘What’s the difference? I’m still confused.’

‘Because you are infected. That’s why you are asking such an irregular question. Everyone else will agree that my explanation is valid and sound.’

I thought Lady Robot was getting tautological. In my city robots are sophisticated enough to fool an ordinary eye. But I know instantly whether they are humans or not the moment I detect the tautological element in their arguments. That exposes the limits of their intelligence, the evidence that their wits are indoctrinated rather than naturally developed. A natural human should be more independent and critical in the mind.

‘Mr Engineer, I think it’s time for you to take the medicine and the treatment.’ She drew closer to me with her pleasant fragrant body. A body designed for my taste.

‘Sure.’ I smiled, ‘I’m going to take a shower first, so why not wait for me in my bedroom?’

‘That sounds like a good plan. We will have a pleasant night together.’ She smiled.

V

But I never returned. I abandoned my residence, the prescription and the lovely Lady R, whose charm I could not have resisted if, and if only I could see things normal again. I guess most Ulti men would also lose half of their sexual appetite when they see a woman with dark blue skin in their bed, however perfect her shape might be. We are just too addicted to the lovely pinky tone.

And I fought off the rest half by reminding myself of one single question that was deemed as trivial by common Ulti sense: who did I fall in love with? Does she, or maybe he, also suffer from sensory distortions? For me, there was just one thing fatally wrong with the entire argument against love: surely if I could identify the one I crushed upon, we could figure something out together: you know, just take it positively like treating a normal relationship, fulfill each other’s expectations, get legitimised, and never to be hurt again.

When I ran out of my residence, I had no idea where to go. Reason told me that the police would come after me sooner or later, since my escape was equivalent to a formal refusal of the treatment. Was I beyond remedy already? No idea. But how could one diagnose me with insanity when it was the supposedly professional Lady R who ran into a tautological fault?

She was wrong. Maybe they were all of them wrong. And I could be the one who was right: that love is innocent.

VI

I wandered around purposelessly, under the dark blue sky, until I saw the grand building of GX, and was surprised to find it cold, dark, and empty.

During daytime, or when my sights were still healthy, the sight of GX on the horizon had been one of the most amazing scenes one could think of, secondary only to the glowing rosy sky. The chic metallic texture of the building had a grey colour of itself, so it went so well with the pinky glow that every Ulti, especially the elites among them, constantly see. But why all this emptiness now, when the magical glow disappeared?

I entered the building and couldn’t feel worse. I had become somehow used to the visual and audio distortions by now, but after entering GX, I had serious problems with breathing, as if the air inside was devoid of oxygen.

How absurd! I had been working in this building for several years! Everything was safe and normal. ‘Colour is nothing but the creation of mind. So is pain.’

I pushed on as I tried to convince myself that everything uncomfortable was mere illusion.

Then a familiar voice entered my mind from distance away, ‘what are you doing here while your Lady R is still waiting for you in bed, Mr Engineer of GX?’

I looked up and saw someone standing in my way. I could not see his face clearly but I shouted, ‘hey! Al, I know it’s you! I’m so glad to see you here! So glad!’

‘Don’t address me by the name, Mr E. I’ve told you more than a thousand times not to do so. It’s an intrusion of privacy to call one by the name in public space. Moreover, calling by name is an indication of intimacy, whereas intimacy is a risky business that every Ulti should stay away with, especially for an elite like you.’ Al’s familiar voice of aloofness and arrogance.

‘That’s bullshit, Al! I’m not going to address you as Mr E because I’m a featureless Mr E myself, substitutable at the City’s convenience! Don’t you think the Ulti way of addressing people is a bit weird? Have you never questioned it yourself?’

‘You are critically ill, Mr E, though I did not expect the symptoms to worsen so quickly. Let me take you to Mr Doctor again, perhaps you are still within his remedy, before the police come after you.’

‘No! No!’ When he tried to pull me out of the building, I resisted blindly as my eyes could hardly see anything at all now. But I was so weak compared to a healthy Ulti. Then I suddenly felt enlightened and cried it out, ‘why do I suffer more when I approach you - are we in love, Al? Is that you who has caused me so much pain? Are you here to come to our mutual rescue?’

‘You sound absolutely ridiculous. You are too sick to think or talk.’

I was laid on the ground and able to breathe again. I knew by intuition that I was outside the building. But I did not feel any better. The abstract vocabularies in the category of the de-legitimised group of feelings that I had learnt in school suddenly made sense to me, so I knew as sharp as a pre-Ulti poet that my body was tired, my mind messy, and miserably at a loss, as if part of my chest was pumped out by tight air.

‘What happened to me, Al?’ I asked, strengthless.

‘I’m surprised that Lady R’s treatment did not work for you, Mr E. You know I myself have always wished to get a little bit infected, just a little bit, just to see how a Lady designed for me would look like.’

‘Seriously, tell me what happened, please...’

I heard a sigh. ‘You really got yourself into trouble, Mr E. Can’t believe that you had the guts to do it yourself. You know I always thought I was a qualified competitor of you. Always. Since childhood. And since the first day we were both admitted by GX. But I was wrong, as I will never dare do anything to engineer my own memory and mind, even if badly hit by this corruptive disease of love.’

‘No way,’ I sneered at the idea, ‘if I had done anything to my memory, I would at least remember the act of erasing part of the memory. The impression of the act would stay. But since I cannot recall doing such a disgusting thing to myself, I can’t have...’

‘I’m not interested in discussing the technical details with you, but it seems that you are badly in need of hospitalisation now.’

‘No, Al, I’m sober, more sober than ever before. Tell me whom I fell in love with, as it’s such a frustration that I don’t even know where this intense feeling is coming from...’

‘As far as the treatment is concerned, that question is trivial.’ He sounded exactly like Mr Doctor, and continued in an even more indifferent voice, ‘The worst aspect of love is its cancer-like property. When one gets infected and goes beyond the point of remedy, the disease gains momentum of its own. The patient begins to refuse treatment and confuses what’s logical and what’s not...’

‘Now you sound like a great philosopher!’ I cried in desperation, as I heard the sound of ambulance drawing close.

‘But it was you who said it. Love has gained momentum of its own.’ He looked down.

I was not sure whether my last sight of him, so severely distorted by dark red spots, was actually his unmasked sympathy.

VII

When I woke, I found myself arranged sitting in front of three inspectors. The most senior one was a mid-aged woman. Of course, one could not tell an Ulti’s age by his or her appearance. We are too good at concealing imperfections, be it natural defects or signs of aging. And we are getting better at it. But a sharp vision also enhanced by artificial means could still tell that the slight stiffness of her facial expressions was typical of the last generation of women who had to go through plastic surgeries before genetic means to the perfection of beauty fully fledged to maturity.

‘Mr Former Engineer of GX, or henceforth Mr Void, how do you feel now? I suppose your eyesight has been repaired, in which case, congratulations.’ She remarked in that noble indifferent voice.

‘Yes, my eyes are sharper than ever before,’ I replied honestly, ‘but I still feel at a loss. I suffer from the dream I had during the passing out. It was a terrible dream.’

‘If, Mr Void, you are referring to the part of memory that has been restored to you, you might wish to be kindly reminded of the regulation on the treatment of infected citizens of the City of Ult. Anybody failing to comply or already beyond the means of rescue is to be sent for termination due to the security risks posed to the commons by tolerance of the possible contagion.’

‘Indeed I appreciate the reminder that you kindly offered, ma’am, but still I have to confess that I loved that girl.’

‘The assistant who fixed your leg? She’s not even an Ulti.’ Another voice murmured scornfully.

‘Yes! She! Could anyone tell me where she is now?’

Deadly silence. I closed my eyes in exhaustion. Something wet and warm came down over my face. Tears.

I knew that the inspectors looked away in disgust. Bursting into tears in front of others - most inappropriate for an adult Ulti, possibly worse than excretion in public, since in the former case shameful emotions are also involved along with unpleasant fluids.

‘You still have one last chance to decide for yourself, young man, to return to normal or to face termination, for the Inspectors of Ult regard highly the virtue of humanity. Now you may speak to your previous colleague and friend, the distinguished Mr Engineer of GX. He might bring you back to rationality.’

So Al was allowed in when the three inspectors left.

‘Don’t speak to change my mind, Al, unless you come to tell me where she’s gone.’

Al looked at me with such indifference. As if we had not played football together when we were still boys and when the sport was yet to be out of fashion. As if he was not the one having lunch with me every workday, always surprised to see that I had chosen the same dish over and over again even though there were so many other options available in the posh restaurant of GX. And as if we had not commented upon news everyday, with a heated debate over the scandal of a politician who denied his non-Ulti origin even when evidence was strongly against him.

‘That Mr Politician is surely to be condemned, not mainly because of his imperfect origin but because of the lie he told the public. That was simply morally wrong.’

‘I don’t think that’s the point, Al, as every Ulti is a skilled liar. We simply have to be. And perhaps we shouldn’t pay so much attention to politics anymore, when its job is outperformed by so many other efficient organisations and is increasingly reduced to a trivial role of public entertainment. And mind that annoyed expression on your face, it looks stupid and ugly.’ I liked to finish my remarks with an impartial smile in those rosy old days.

Now Al simply stared at me with indifference and said, ‘I don’t come to waste my time. Therefore, I will not engage in the fruitless enterprise of persuading you to forget that refugee who once worked for GX as part time. I knew she had infected you with the ancient disease as early as you first told me that the colour of the sky had subtly changed into a beautiful purple - that was six months before you broke your leg.’

‘You knew it all along? And you also remember her, don’t you?’ I smiled, though my heart ached, for I had not seen her since that accident, ‘I’m not surprised that she impressed you, too. After all, she got promoted to work for GX as a part time despite the impurity of her origin. She is special.’

‘You might want to be reminded of the fact that sometimes GX employs defect humans instead of the more efficient robots not because of economic but of moral considerations. The City has to make sure that even the weak can exercise the human right of labour, even at additional economic costs. But that does not mean the weak is no longer the weak. Nor does it mask her all-too-visible imperfections.’

‘So why do you still come to me, my friend? Now I’m also corrupted and imperfect. Just like the one I love.’

‘I come to reason with you. Stay with us and return normal, Mr Former E. You know you have gifted acute senses and no one is better at diagnosing the occasional dysfunctions of complex machine systems than you. The annual maintenance expenses that you could save is equivalent to the cost of constructing a quarter of the GX landmark, or of holding ten debate shows of the politicians.’

‘Yes, how can I forget: what else but the cause of common good?’ I ridiculed.

‘You have to understand, Mr Former E, that our society deserves its name and fame. The City of Ult. The ultimate metropolis. Nowhere else on earth or in history may you find perpetual peace but in Ult. A land devoid of war, violence, or any other forms of suffering. Even the weak are well protected, tolerated and integrated in the City. And most important of all, we as citizens are finally safe once and for all: fully autonomous individuals with perfected body and genuine longevity, no more threats or any sense of vulnerability.’

‘All at the expense of intimacy and love,’ I lamented.

‘But that’s trivial.’ He coldly commented, ‘You cannot be too greedy to have all. Sometimes critical decisions are to be made, however difficult it might be.’

‘I will argue no more, my friend, as I’m tired of wasting time. I have made up my mind not to return Ulti again. But I do plead the Supreme Court of Ult to consider my offer: I will tell them the secret of why I identify so well the ills within gigantic infrastructure systems of the City. In return, I want a sentence of downgrading to an imperf rather than termination.’

‘No, the Court is most unlikely to grant you that permission. Downgrading to non-Ulti is just too inhumane to consider. There are rare but successful cases of upgrading, where young humans of imperfect origin, after years of pushing through limits, which always incur significant pains of transformation, finally become fully Ulti. But for an Ulti to return to the primitive race, nobody will ever survive the torture of losing the previous privileges. Even if you do survive, you will age like a pre-Ulti and die soon. However, and this is also a trivial question,’ his indifferent face trembled slightly, as if the muscles were protesting against the prolonged effort of overstretch, ‘may I enquire the reason behind your decision to downgrade? I always admired the sharpness of your mind and the sometimes ruthless decisiveness of your actions, Mr Former E. But I’m not always able to fully appreciate the rationale that underlied.’

‘Ultis are advanced rational beings, capable of engineering a world so wonderful and perfect that our ancestors could only dream of: a life of rosy pink as they called it. But I’m somehow tired of living that way anymore. For me, eternal life is no different to static death.’ I couldn’t help sneering at the thought of the idea of ‘Ult’ again.

But Al did not reject my remarks. He just looked at me in silence.

So I went on, ‘Al, do you know how I felt about that girl? I didn’t know I was in love until she disappeared. When I looked up in the old days, I used to see her cleaning the Umbrella up there, though we never talked. We only had direct contact during the last maintenance work of the Umbrella, which took the team an awfully long period of time and gave us a chance to know each other. Despite her imperfect origin, there was something Ulti in her that immediately caught my attention. She told me once how much she admired the way I smiled, although she knew the tricks too. I knew rationally we could not become a legitimate couple, so I didn’t waste my time by taking her seriously. But since then, I thought my memory had gone wrong. You know how powerful our memories are, that we are capable of retrieving the finest detail of a past moment even if we were not paying particular attention to it at that time. When we settle in bed, we may review in our minds what’s happened during the day, pretty much like how the pre-Ultis watched recorded videos. But after knowing her in person, I began to see strange scenes in my mind... things that I knew had never happened in the past yet still kept coming into my mind.’

‘What did you see?’

‘I saw us together. Me and her. We were sitting above the Umbrella, looking up into the real sky. Rains fell upon us with so much tenderness. And I smelled the intoxicating fragrance of the ancient season of Spring that she had described to me.’

‘Strange that you saw things that has never happened. Your memory went wrong indeed.’

‘But it was not faulted memory,’ I smiled, ‘it was imagination.’

‘Imagination? The lost capability our ancestors once possessed?’

‘Yes. Just like you I thought as Ultis we no longer needed it anymore. Why do we still imagine, now that we’ve achieved the ultimate goal of perfection? But I thought differently after she told me how it felt to be an ordinary human: yes, without skillful concealment and the Ulti culture of aloofness, there is a constant loss of security by exposure of the self. And yes it’s also true that a primitive human doesn’t see things at all during the night when the darkness befalls.’

‘Indeed. They don’t see the rosy glows. Their sky looks cold in the day and absolutely dark during the night.’

‘But there are also stars out there in the dark! I remember the way she exclaimed,’ again I couldn’t help but smiled, as her excited rosy face reappeared in my memory, ‘a(chǎn)nd it was all from that single moment that I was suddenly able to imagine again.’

Silence.

‘So,’ asked Al, ‘you want to downgrade yourself to preserve the ability to imagine? But surely there are alternative ways of doing this. You don’t have to make yourself suffer.’

‘No, not exactly. Have you never felt anything wrong with the society we live in? I wasn’t too bothered until I had that dream during my passing out. And then I made up my mind to go deep down to find what’s truly missing in Ult.’

‘You mean the restored memory of yours? What happened exactly?’

‘I did not engineer my own memory. At least not consciously. I could not remember the one I loved because as a fully evolved Ulti I was hardwired to erase parts of the inconvenient truth automatically. Our brains select what we can remember in order to eliminate potential harm. So each day I met the person I loved, I could put on that impartial charming smile as if nothing had happened between us beyond what was considered rational. And each time I talked to her I acted with such indifference as if I had not seen the imagined starry sky that she had inspired me with. Yet on that very day when I finally spotted the broken units of the Umbrella, I had a sudden shock - finally I came to understand why I had this natural instinct to detect dysfunctional units of a complex machine system. Because each time I approached the flawed units, my senses were slightly distorted, producing an aggregate judgement alarming me that somewhere near went wrong. But the feeling was so subtle that I did not even knew it was sensory distortion at all. I had mistaken it for the gift of intuition until the day I discovered the three broken units responsible for Umbrella’s leakage. That moment - although my brain was quick to react in self-protection and erase it soon - I realised that it was as if the gigantic system of Umbrella were experiencing something the pre-Ultis described as pain, so that it weeped, just like the way she did when I told her I sincerely wanted to sympathise her ancient imperfections. Have the intelligent systems developed something analogous to emotions the pre-Ultis had? I don’t know. But only a few seconds later, I committed a cardinal crime by coldly telling that girl, who was the first to come to my rescue, that she had better become stronger and never allow the shameful tears to reappear at sight of someone else’s broken leg. So after that accident I never see her or her tears again.’

Al did not make any comment.

Maybe it was just too much of an ancient complication for him to fully comprehend. After a short pause, I smiled, requested for the proceeding of my case.

VIII

The grand building GX was under refurbishment.

A young Miss Engineer who was in charge of the project spotted something strange with the rosy Umbrella high above. She asked a Mr Engineer who happened to come by, ‘I think the Umbrella is leaking, which might affect the refurbishment project.’

‘I agree,’ he looked up, then replied with a smile, ‘I’ll tell Al to manage it.’

‘Who’s this Mr Al?’

He looked at her and said, ‘you must be new to GX, Miss Charming E. Al is a senior engineer at GX, though strangely enough he insists on everyone calling him by the name, rather than the more suitable Mr Senior of GX. By the way, he’s the project manager for Complex Machine Sensitivity as well as the one everybody turns to when the Umbrella needs maintenance. He knows an imperf - I mean, a non-Ulti - who seems to be gifted in diagnosing the problems.’

‘That’s strange indeed.’ She whispered to herself. But she had more important work to do. She always wanted to outperform the others and stay tough against any challenges, so she had to be attentive to even the smallest details such as the leakage of rain drops which might cause unintended effect to her project. As she walked out of the building in an elegant Ulti manner to examine the cause of leakage in person, her young perfect body was immersed in the rosy glow from the sky above.

She looked up. ‘How beautiful. The colour of dream, the glow of happiness, the life of rosy pink.’

Suddenly, she had a most absurd experience: all the pinky glows disappeared, and for a moment her sights suffered from a severe hue bias, as if she was looking through first intensely red then dark blue lenses. And there she stood, while an old man slowly walked by, apparently an inferior non-Ulti for all the imperfections only too visible of him. He still had clear eyes, though, but somehow as if by intuition she knew that he was blind.

And there she stood, wondered, till that Mr Engineer whom she had spoken to a minute ago ran to her, asking warmly if she was alright.

‘I’m fine, thank you.’ She smiled, still in wonder of what had happened just now. But when she looked back, the old man had disappeared, and the sky became perfectly pinky and normal again.

[fin]

原創(chuàng)英文小說(shuō)，中文自譯版本鏈接http://www.reibang.com/p/64e05b015ef8