Art: Mairi Archibald
We see them as dots in three colors; red, yellow and green. We can guess their next move. We can see everything that crosses their minds. We are the guests of their minds, even though they don’t notice us.
I was bored. I had no tension dot; all of them were green. It was good news but I wasn’t happy. I needed a challenge, something that didn’t exist for me in this concrete building. The other employees peered into their small monitors, controlling the behaviour of their dots.
Yesterday, the most exciting thought that I blocked from the mind of a dot was this: why must I pay for my stepdaughter’s expenses? Last week, one dot was thinking about choking the neighbour’s dog for barking the whole night. And the last month, a dot thought about the origin of cats and where they came from. These were the most noticeable cases that I could be proud of blocking; the yellow dots.
I drank my breakfast coffee quickly. It was hot, but felt good. I was pleased with myself for not waiting for it to cool down like other people. The green dots, the green dots … damn these green dots. Perhaps because I was new, they gave me this area where the people’s thoughts had been accommodating our codes over several years, and their minds had become conservative and prudent.
But while I was throwing the cup into the rubbish bin under my desk, I saw it. There it was, my red dot, my first red dot.
Upper-level employees had been detecting the red dots for years. They were no different to yellow or green for them, but it was a great discovery for me and made my heart pound like crazy. I had to open the dot, read its mind map and block the negative thoughts in the shortest possible time, and finally report it to my senior management.
“I want to kill myself. I want to be free.”
Oh my God, a suicide case! I opened it, assuming it would be a thought about assassinating the president or doubting the whole system. But the description of the thought showed that it was just a suicide. A thought that had crossed the red line; it was a great start for me. It wasn’t moving, it was just developing the suicide idea and thinking about ending its life. We never had any information about where the dots lived or what gender they were. They were just intelligent dots that had to be under control. I clicked on the dot and its name appeared on my screen, DK 101077.
With some simple code that I typed, I removed the suicide idea from its mind forever. Sometimes a guardian angel does his work behind a desk.
It was my first red dot. I appreciated it for having such a thought. Now I wasn’t that amateur, inexperienced employee. They should apply the label to someone else. I hoped the red dots would start flowing to me and get me promoted.
“No, don’t be stupid. Nobody is controlling us. Why? Because you can think about everything you want right now. Come on, think about a nuclear bomb, can’t you? Ok, everything’s good? All right, get back to work.”
We always had such discussions with the new ones; we, the experienced employees. After two years working here, now I was a member of an elders’ club; a man who had turned several reds into green. Now I was the manager of my own section on the floor. I only dealt with those reds that operators didn’t know how to manage without hurting the dot’s brain.
I should have been happy, but I wasn’t. My screen monitor was empty in those days, no dot, no map. It meant I had no influence on anyone’s life anymore. I had been peering into the empty screen for weeks, till my lucky day arrived. The big red dot, my beautiful big red dot.
I put on my glasses, then laid my hands on the keyboard like a professional piano player. “Let’s see what we have. Oh, something bad is here.” I opened its mind map.
“Am I the only one who can hear the voices?”
“What does that mean? Our voices? Or its delusional voices?”
“I should write it down.”
“Writing?! Ok, beautiful big red. Goodbye.” But suddenly its name caught my eye: DK 101077.
“Oh, my God! Is that you? It’s been a while, my old friend. But sorry, I should turn you. Or should I?”
If I made it green, I wouldn’t have any red dots for a long time. Besides, it was my old friend: my first red dot. My finger remained floating in the air; apparently the piano player had forgotten his note.
For almost two months, DK wrote down everything that crossed its mind. And I was its only reader. It wrote about everything, ranging from the morning dew on a flower petal to doubting the existence of aliens. Its ideas were not so organised at first, but got better when it became more experienced at writing.
First, I promised myself that I would turn it when a new red came to me. But when the red dots filled my screen like raindrops; saving my own dot was the only thought I had.
“Can you hear me, God?”
“I’m not your god, DK.”
“Why am I so different from everyone else?”
“Ok, ok. This game is over.”
“Do I have a particular responsibility on my shoulders?”
“You’re made of irresponsibility.”
Now or never. I typed some simple code. It could end all its strange thoughts. And when it read its notes, it would find them meaningless.
“I want to write a book; a book about everything I imagine. Please help me.”
Was I weak? Was I too kind? Or did I really want to read its book?
“I know you as a guardian angel. You don’t belong to this world. You chose me, so I dedicate this book to you. It’s not a book like every others. It’s not about being passive and just living your life. It’s about things that I’m feeling. Things that exist but nobody sees them. It’s a story of a world that I can’t see in other people’s minds, the world of…”
I let it use imagination.
“… imagination.”
Why I couldn’t stop it? Did somebody prevent me? Was somebody reading my mind? I had to stop it; it had gone too far. Hearing its thoughts was a harmful addiction. I shouldn’t have been a victim of its imagination. Now I needed more complicated codes to turn it, which may cause brain damage, even though I didn’t want to use them. So it may die because of my irresponsibility.
It finished the first book very soon; it spent many days thinking about this book with its inchoate imagination. I liked its work. If it had sat in front of me, I would have encouraged it for hours. It was seeing the world in a pure and innocent way.
“I should give my book to a friend to see what other people think about it.”
“No, no, my DK. I read it; it’s perfect. Please, no.”
“I wish the whole world understood what I’m thinking.”
“Damn, DK. Don’t put me in this situation.”
“Maybe there are other people like me. I should find them.”
That’s it.
After a six-month one-sided friendship with DK, I had to say goodbye with a few code lines.
“I…”
Enter.
You’re gone, my red dot; my beautiful red dot. Now everything is green.
“No, nobody is controlling us. You can think whatever you want. Think about destroying the Earth right now. You see? Nobody is controlling you. You’ve been chosen from the people. You’re lucky. Understand?” The manager of a small section was talking excitedly with the new ones. After this many years, I still sometimes went to the refectories on the lower floors. Such discussions were interesting to me. Now my office was on the top floor, below the general manager’s floor. Nobody knew exactly what the general manager’s duties were. He worked on cases beyond other people’s abilities.
I didn’t deal with the dots anymore; I was destroying the patterns now. A pattern consisted of a lot of big red dots following the same line of thought and with a similar mentality. I was working on a pattern that I named the ‘butterfly pattern’ because of the way it looked. It took months to write code just to visualise the butterfly. Then I would send the code to the lower floors so they could turn the dots one by one.
The writing process of my complicated code was nearly finished. I had worked for months on it. When the day came, I said goodbye to the big butterfly. It lost its wings first and then its body broke apart into a thousand dots. I leaned back, happy with the result. But something impossible happened. After a few minutes, the dots attached together again. I ran the code one more time but it was pointless. My efforts ended with complete failure. Which part of my code was wrong? I had destroyed more complicated patterns before. Apparently I was dealing with difficult opponents; it was a good challenge for me. I had to write the best code of my life, a code that would make me proud for the rest of my life. I think it was on the eighth day that I found the answer with a code that could duplicate itself for an infinite time. There was no way for any butterfly to survive.
“Hey butterfly, you’re ready to say goodbye?”
Suddenly a dot from the head of the butterfly detached itself and went to the corner of the screen. I hadn’t run my code yet, so that couldn’t have been the reason. Somehow it seemed to break its mental connection with the others, or maybe it had detected what I was going to do. In a strange way, I felt familiar with it. So I clicked and opened its map.
DK 101077.
“Of course it’s you.”
I wasn’t an emotional person; I never have been. But my eyes got wet and my hands started to shake when I saw its name.
“I’m glad to see you’re alive. But you’ve gone too far. You’re a member of a pattern now.”
“I know you’re supporting me.”
“It wasn’t the case last time.”
“I have a big responsibility on my shoulders.”
“It’s all my fault. I let you get in trouble.”
“You’re my guardian.”
“No, I’m not.”
“You have a responsibility too.”
“Wait a minute. You can hear me?!”
A note appeared on the screen: I can feel you.
I was shocked.
“You’ve been my guardian in the worst of times.”
“I can run the code right now. I can destroy all of you; I have this power.”
“You are different from others.”
“No, I’m not.”
“You were the starter.”
“Now I’m your finisher.”
But I couldn’t run the code. What was preventing me? The red dot went back to the head of the butterfly. Were they controlling my mind or was I controlling theirs? Did they have so much power now? If united minds could make such a beautiful pattern, why would I destroy it? The doubts took over me.
I neither destroyed the butterfly, nor let it go. I could make a decision. I was in control of my mind. Or was I?
This butterfly had come a long way. It needed one more step to fly; yeah, one step, one floor.
“I’ll put your destiny in the general manager’s hands. Goodbye, beautiful butterfly. I hope you always fly in the sky of imagination.”
I sent the special case to the general manager.
I hoped he had doubts too.
Born in 1985 in Iran, Peyman Saremian is an animator, graphist, short film maker and a writer. He mostly writes science fiction and fantasy, loves to imagine alternative universes and challenge reality. If his characters let him get away, he works on his scripts and short films too. He’s currently working on his first novel.