10

The unexpurgated memory puts Hatsuka in a bad mood for the rest of the day. Max doesn’t meet her in the canteen at lunch, so she sits with Bobby and Adalmut, who are working on Efficiency. Rumour has it that their latest report is entitled ‘A Holophin CEO?’ Bobby is eating cashew nut butter with a breadstick and offers her the jar. He is strict Russian Orthodox and therefore fasts from meat and dairy approximately 200 days of the year. How does he square the Holophins’ “all-out assault on human consciousness and the five points of the senses” with his faith?[1] Hatsuka isn’t sure. It is likely that his Holophin helps him.

The turning point for Holophins as a desirable consumer product was the discovery that they could not only remind you about the tedious HR meeting, present your data in a clear and understandable package in a fraction of the time it would take you to do so, but actually, bodily take the meeting in your stead. And that everyone else at the meeting could simply “send their Holophin” too. Sending your Holophin didn’t even involve physically placing your Holophin anywhere, as Holophins were permanently connected to one another. The meetings took place on the head of a pin, as it were. You could access a visual representation of the conference and see yourself and your colleagues sitting around a big table (design and décor of your choice, clothing likewise) talking over the items on the agenda. But like the photographs developed from a deep-space telescope, this was a mere rendering of what was actually going on. The minutes were sent to everyone in a 10-point summary, but even these were found to be sufficiently humdrum that they could be read and responded to solely by the Holophins. Terms like “matters arising”, “minutes”, “apologies for absence” – would be taught in History lessons from now on, icons of the Age of Bureaucracy.

This revolution was less a technological advancement than a lengthy case study Hatsuka worked on (and excelled at) in her first year. Exactly what was accomplished, qualitatively or quantitatively, via committees in a plethora of different businesses and institutions? And the answer was 0.002% efficiency, the very nature of the “meeting” as mode of communication or occupation being 99.998% self-cannibalising. Hatsuka had witnessed hour-long department meetings in which up to 33 minutes was given over to arguing over irrelevant mistakes in the minutes from the previous meeting, mistakes made all the more likely by that meeting having had to fit into 30 minutes or less due to matters arising from the prior minutes to that meeting, and so on and so on.

Are you not handing an awful lot of control over to the Holophins? asked one of the Holophins in a televised debate. No. Taking off a Holophin is as easy as taking out a pair of headphones.

She feels too sad to eat.

‘What’s up, Hatsuka?’ says Adalmut, the look of concern on her face must be exaggerated – Hatsuka hardly knows her, really – but no less sincere for that. Sometimes we should be touched that someone wants to go to the bother of pretending to care about us. Isn’t that in itself a kind of love? So overrated, honesty.

‘I’m fine, babe,’ says Hatsuka, and spends the rest of lunch making conversation about their research. She respects their work. Adalmut was instrumental in the implementation of Vladimir Propp’s theories in the Holophin’s Narrative Centre.

When Bobby and Adalmut leave she puts her head in her hands and travels through her system of imaginary corridors made of purple vectors. She takes a look at the Holophin she gave to the homeless man. He has not sold it. It is behind his ear. Hatsuka sees what he sees. He has moved to a bench outside the city museum. The pigeons have been replaced by little balls of fire zipping around the municipal square’s screensaver. He is adapting to his new life with a Holophin. The myriad strangers who pass him, those striding with purpose, those loitering by the monument look more solid, more real. He can access anything and everything about them, and he can ask them how they feel about that. Soon, if Hatsuka’s hypothesis is correct, he will be earning a living and making a valuable contribution to society. He has become an icon on a giant flat screen. He is learning what it feels like to be clicked on.

[1] An uncharacteristically harsh pronouncement from Bobby’s parish priest.