Hae-Joo led me to a stylish café platform where he bought a styro of starbuck for himself and an aqua for me. He xplained that under the Enrichment Statutes, consumers have to spend a fixed quota of dollars each month, depending on their strata. Hoarding is an anti-corpocratic crime. I knew this already but did not interrupt. He said his mum feels intimidated by modern gallerias, so Hae-Joo usually works through the quota.
I asked him to tell me how it feels to be in a family.
The postgrad smiled and frowned at the same time. “A necessary drag,” he confided. “Mum’s hobby is collecting minor ailments and drugs to cure them. Dad works at the Ministry of Statistics and sleeps in front of 3-D with his head in a bucket.” Both parents were random conceptions, he confessed, who sold a second child quota to get Hae-Joo genomed properly. This let him aim for his cherished career: to be a Unanimityman had been his ambition since the disneys of his boyhood. Kicking down doors for money looked like a fine life.
His parents must love him very much to make such a sacrifice, I noted. Hae-Joo replied that their pension will come out of his salary. Then he asked, had it not been a seismic shock to be uprooted from Papa Song’s and transplanted into Boom-Sook’s lab? Didn’t I miss the world I had been genomed for? I answered, fabricants are oriented not to miss things.
He probed: Had I not ascended above my orientation?
I said I would have to think about it.
Did you xperience any negative reactions from consumers in the galleria? As a Sonmi outside Papa Song’s, I mean.
No. Many other fabricants were there: porters, domestics, and cleaners, so I did not stand out so much. Then, when Hae-Joo went to the hygiener, a ruby-freckled woman with a teenage complexion but telltale older eyes apologized for disturbing me. “Look, I’m a media fashion scout,” she said, “call me Lily. I’ve been spying on you!” And she giggled. “But that’s what a woman of your flair, your prescience, my dear, must xpect.”
I was very confused.
She said I was the first consumer she’d seen to facescape fully like a well-known service fabricant. Lesser strata, she confided, may call my fashion statement brave, or even antistrata, but she called it genius. She asked if I would like to model for “an abhorrently chic 3-D magazine.” I’d be paid stratospherically, she assured me: my boyfriend’s friends would crawl with jealousy. And for us women, she added, jealousy in our men is as good as dollars in the Soul.
I declined, thanking her and adding that fabricants do not have boyfriends. The mediawoman pretended to laugh at my imagined joke and xamined every contour on my face. She begged to know which facescaper had done me. “A craftsman like this, I have got to meet. Such a miniaturist!”
After my wombtank and orientation, I said, my life had been spent behind a counter at Papa Song’s, and so I had never met my facescaper.
Now the fashion editor’s laugh was droll but vexed.
So she couldn’t believe you weren’ta pureblood?
She gave me her card and urged me to reconsider, warning that opportunities like her do not happen ten days a week.
When the taxi dropped me at Unanimity, Hae-Joo Im asked me to use his given name from then on. “Mr. Im” made him feel like he was in a seminar. Lastly, he asked if I might be free next ninthday. I did not want him to spend his valuable time on a professorial obligation, I said, but Hae-Joo insisted he had enjoyed my company. I said, well, then, I accept.
So the xcursion helped dislodge your . . . sense of ennui?
In a way, yes. It helped me understand how one’s environment is a key to one’s identity, but that my environment, Papa Song’s, was a lost key. I found myself wishing to revisit my x-dinery under Chongmyo Plaza. I could not fully xplain why, but an impulse can be both vaguely understood and strong.
It could hardly be wise for an ascended server to visit a dinery?
I do not claim it was wise, only necessary. Hae-Joo also worried that it might “unearth buried things.” I responded that I had buried too much of myself, so the postgrad agreed to accompany me, on condition that I went disguised as a consumer. The following ninthnite he showed me how to upswirl my hair and apply cosmetics. A silk neck scarf hid my collar, and in the elevator down to the taxi he fitted dark ambers on my face.
On a busy fourthmonth evening, Chongmyo Plaza was not the litter-swarming wind tunnel I remembered from my release: it was a kaleidoscope of AdVs, consumers, xecs, and popsongs. Beloved Chairman’s monumental statue surveyed his swarming peoples with an xpression wise and benign. From the Plaza’s southeast rim, Papa Song’s arches drew into focus. Hae-Joo held my hand and reminded me we could turn back at any time. As we got in line for the elevator, he slipped a Soulring onto my finger.
In case you got separated?
For good luck, I thought: Hae-Joo had a superstitious streak. As the elevator descended, I grew very nervous. Suddenly, the doors were opening and hungry consumers riptided me into the dinery. As I was jostled, I was stunned at how misleading my memories of the place had been.
In what ways?
That spacious dome was so poky. Its glorious reds and yellows, so stark and vulgar. The wholesome air I remembered: now its greasy stench gagged me. After the silence on Taemosan, the dinery noise was like never-ending gunfire. Papa Song stood on His Plinth, greeting us. I tried to swallow, but my throat was dry: surely my Logoman would condemn his prodigal daughter.
No. He winked at us, tugged himself skyward by his own nikestraps, sneezed, oopsied, and plummeted down to His Plinth. Children screamed with laughter. I realized, Papa Song was just a trick of lites. How had an inane hologram once inspired such awe in me?
Hae-Joo went to find a table while I circummed the Hub. My sisters smiled under sugary toplites. How unflaggingly they worked! Here were Yoonas, here was Ma-Leu-Da~108, her collar now boasting eleven stars. At my old counter on west was a fresh-faced Sonmi. Here was Kyelim~889, Yoona’s replacement. I got in line at her teller, my nervousness growing acute as my turn approached. “Hi! Kyelim~889 at your service! Mouthwatering, magical, Papa Song’s! Yes, madam? Your pleasure today?”
I asked her if she knew me.
Kyelim~889 smiled xtra to dilute her confusion.
I asked if she remembered Sonmi~451, a server who worked beside her, who disappeared one morning.
A blank smile: the verb remember is outside servers’ lexicons. “Hi! Kyelim~889 at your service! Mouthwatering, magical, Papa Song’s! Your pleasure today?”
I asked, Are you happy, Kyelim~889?
Enthusiasm lit her smile as she nodded. Happy is a word in the Second Catechism: “Proviso I obey the Catechisms, Papa Song loves me; proviso Papa Song loves me, I am happy.”