A Perfect Vacuum (16 page)

But life itself does not, after all, consist of personal contacts with servants, lawyers, employees of hotels, agencies, airlines, stores. On the contrary: the contacts and relationships we most desire lie outside the sphere of services bought and sold. One can pay to have computer assistance in selecting a mate, but one cannot pay to have the behavior one chooses in a wife or husband after the wedding. One can buy a yacht, a palace, an island, if one has the money, but money cannot provide longed-for events—on the order of: displaying one's heroism or intelligence, rescuing a divine creature in mortal danger, winning at the races, or receiving a high decoration. Nor can one purchase good will, spontaneous attraction, the devotion of others. Innumerable stories bear witness to the fact that the desire for precisely such freely given emotions gnaws at mighty rulers and men of wealth; in fairy tales he who is able to buy or use force to obtain anything, having the means for this, abandons his exceptional position so that in disguise—like Harun al Rashid, who went as a beggar—he may find human genuineness, since privilege shuts it out like an impenetrable wall.

So, then, the one area that has not yet been turned into a commodity is the unarranged substance of everyday life, intimate as well as official, private as well as public, with the result that each and every one of us is exposed continually to those small reversals, ridiculings, disappointments, animosities, to the snubs that can never be paid back, to the unforeseen; in short, exposed—within the scope of our personal lot—to a state of affairs that is intolerable, in the highest degree deserving a change; and this change for the better will be initiated by the great new industry of life services. A society in which one can buy—with an advertising campaign—the post of president, or a herd of albino elephants painted with little flowers, or a bevy of beauties, or youth through hormones, such a society ought to be able to put to rights the human condition. The qualm that immediately surfaces—that such purchased forms of life, being unauthentic, will quickly betray their falseness when placed alongside the surrounding authenticity of events—that qualm is dictated by a naïveté totally lacking in imagination. When all children are conceived in the test tube, when then no sexual act has as its consequence, once natural, procreation, there disappears the difference between the normal and the aberrant in sex, seeing as no physical intimacy serves any purpose but that of pleasure. And where every life finds itself under the solicitous eye of powerful service enterprises, there disappears the difference between authentic events and those secretly arranged. The distinction between natural and synthetic in adventures, successes, failures, ceases to exist when one can no longer tell what is taking place by pure accident, and what by accident paid for in advance.

This, more or less, is the idea of A. Waynewright's novel,
Being Inc.
The mode of operation of that corporate entity is to act at a distance: its base cannot be known to anyone; clients communicate with Being Inc. exclusively by correspondence, in an emergency by telephone. Their orders go into a gigantic computer; the execution of these is dependent on the size of the client's account, that is, on the amount of the remittance. Treachery, friendship, love, revenge, one's own good fortune and another's adversity may be obtained also on the installment plan, through a convenient credit system. The destinies of children are shaped by the parents, but on the day he comes of age each person receives in the mail a price list, a catalogue of services, and in addition the firm's instruction booklet. The booklet is a clearly but substantively written treatise, philosophical and sociotechnological—not the usual advertising material. Its lucid, elevated language states what in an unelevated way may be summarized as follows.

All people pursue happiness, but not all in the same way. For some, happiness means pre-eminence over others, self-reliance, situations of permanent challenge, risk, and the great gamble. For others it is submission, faith in authority, the absence of all threat, peace and quiet, even indolence. Some love to display aggression; some are more comfortable when they can be on the receiving end of it. Many find satisfaction in a state of anxiety and distress, which can be observed in their inventing for themselves, when they have no real worries, imaginary ones. Research shows that ordinarily there are as many active individuals as passive in society. The misfortune of society in the past—asserts the booklet—lay in the fact that society was not able to effect harmony between the natural inclinations of its citizens and their path in life. How often did blind chance decide who would win and who lose, to whom would fall the role of Petronius, and to whom the role of Prometheus. One must seriously doubt the story that Prometheus did not expect the vulture. It is far more likely, according to modern psychology, that it was entirely for the purpose of being pecked in the liver that he stole the fire of heaven. He was a masochist; masochism, like eye coloring, is an inborn trait and nothing to be ashamed of; one should matter-of-factly indulge it and utilize it for the good of society. Formerly—explains the text in scholarly tones—blind fate decided for whom pleasures would be in store, and for whom privation; men lived wretched lives, because he who, fond of beating, is beaten, is every bit as miserable as he who, desirous of a good thrashing, must himself—forced by circumstances—thrash others.

The principles of operation of Being Inc. did not emerge in a vacuum: matrimonial computers have for some time now been using similar rules in matchmaking. Being Inc. guarantees each client the full arrangement of his life, from the attaining of his majority until his death, in keeping with the wishes expressed by him on the form enclosed. The Company, in its work, avails itself of the most up-to-date cybernetic, socioengineering, and informational methods. Being Inc. does not immediately carry out the wishes of its clients, for people often do not themselves know their own nature, do not understand what is good for them and what is bad. The Company subjects each new client to a remote-monitor psychotechnological examination; a battery of ultrahigh-speed computers determines the personality profile and all the proclivities of the client. Only after such a diagnosis will the Company accept his order.

One need not be ashamed of the content of the order; it remains forever a Company secret. Nor need one fear that the order might, in its realization, cause harm to anyone. It is the Company's job to see that this does not happen; let it trouble its electronic head over that. Mr. Smith here would like to be a stern judge handing out sentences of death, and so the defendants who come before him will be people deserving nothing less than capital punishment. Mr. Jones wishes he could flog his children, deny them every pleasure, and in addition persist in the conviction that he is a just and upright father? Then he shall have cruel and wicked children, the castigation of whom will require half his lifetime. The Company grants all requests; sometimes, however, one must wait on line, as when the desire is to kill a person by one's own hand, since there are a surprising number of such fanciers. In different states the condemned are dispatched differently; in some they are hanged, in others poisoned with hydrogen cyanide, in still others electricity is used. He who has a predilection for hanging finds himself in a state where the legal instrument of execution is the gallows, and before he knows it he has become the temporary hangman. A plan to enable clients to murder with impunity in an open field, on the grass, in the privacy of the home, has not as yet been sanctioned by the law, but the Company is patiently working for the institution of this innovation as well. The Company's skill in arranging events, demonstrated in millions of synthetic careers, will surmount the numerous difficulties that presently bar the way to these murders on order. The condemned man, say, notices that the door of his cell on death row is open; he flees; the Company agents, on the lookout, so influence the path of his flight that he stumbles on the client in circumstances the most suitable for both. He might, for example, attempt to hide in the home of the client while the latter happens to be engaged in loading a hunting rifle. But the catalogue of possibilities which the Company has compiled is inexhaustible.

Being Inc. is an organization the like of which is unknown in history. This is essential. The matrimonial computer united a mere
two
persons and did not concern itself with what would happen to them after the tying of the knot. Being Inc., on the other hand, must orchestrate enormous groupings of events involving thousands of people. The Company cautions the reader that its actual methods of operation are
not
mentioned in the brochure. The examples given are purely fictitious! The strategy of the arranging must be kept in absolute secrecy; the client must never be allowed to find out what is happening to him naturally and what by the aid of the Company computers that watch unseen over his destiny.

Being Inc. possesses an army of employees; these make their appearance as ordinary citizens—as chauffeurs, butchers, physicians, engineers, maids, infants, dogs, and canaries. The employees must be anonymous. An employee who at any time betrays his incognito, i.e., who discloses that he is a bona fide member of the team of Being Inc., not only loses his post but is pursued by the Company to his grave. Knowing his habits and tastes, the Company will arrange for him such a life that he will curse the hour in which he perpetrated the foul deed. There is no appealing a punishment for the betrayal of a Company secret—not that the Company intends this statement as a threat. No, the Company includes its
real
ways of dealing with bad employees among its trade secrets.

The reality shown in the novel is different from the picture painted in the promotional pamphlet of Being Inc. The advertisements are silent about the most important thing. Antitrust legislation in the U.S.A. forbids monopolies; consequently Being Inc. is not the only life arranger. There are its great competitors, Hedonica and the Truelife Corporation. And it is precisely this circumstance that leads to events unprecedented in history. For when persons who are clients of different companies come into contact with one another, the implementation of the orders of each may encounter unforeseen difficulties. Those difficulties take the form of what is called “covert parasitizing,” which leads to cloak-and-dagger escalation.

Suppose that Mr. Smith wishes to shine before Mrs. Brown, the wife of a friend, to whom he feels an attraction, and he selects item No. 396b on the list: saving a life in a train wreck. From the wreck both are to escape without injury, but Mrs. Brown thanks only to the heroism of Mr. Smith. Now, the Company must arrange a railway accident with great precision and in addition set up an entire situation in order that the named parties, as the result of a series of apparent coincidences, ride in the same compartment; monitors located in the walls, the floor, and the backs of the seats in the coach, feeding data to the computer that—concealed in the lavatory—is programming the action, will see to it that the accident takes place exactly according to plan. It must take place in such a way that Smith
cannot not
save the life of Mrs. Brown. So that he will not know what he is doing, the side of the overturned coach will be ripped open in the very place where Mrs. Brown is sitting, the compartment will fill with suffocating smoke, and Smith, in order to get out, will first have to push the woman through the opening, thereby saving her from death by asphyxiation. The whole operation presents no great difficulty. Several dozen years ago it took an army of computers, and another of specialists, to land a lunar shuttle meters from its goal; nowadays a single computer, following the action with the aid of a concert of monitors, can solve the problem set it with no trouble.

If, however, Hedonica or Truelife has accepted an order from the husband of Mrs. Brown, which asks that Smith reveal himself to be a scoundrel and a coward, complications ensue. Through industrial espionage Truelife learns of the railway operation planned by Being; the most economical thing is to hook into someone else's arrangemental plan, and it is precisely in this that “covert parasitizing” consists. Truelife introduces into the moment of the wreck a small deviation factor that will be sufficient to have Smith, when he shoves Mrs. Brown out of the hole, give her a black eye, tear her dress, and break both her legs into the bargain.

Should Being Inc., thanks to its counterintelligence, learn of this parasitizing plan, it will take corrective measures, and thus will begin the process of operational escalation. In the overturning coach inevitably it comes to a duel between two computers—the one belonging to Being, in the lavatory, and the one belonging to Truelife, hidden perhaps under the floor of the coach. Behind the potential deliverer of the woman and behind her, the potential victim, stand two Molochs of electronics and organization. During the accident there is unleashed—in fractions of a second—a monstrous battle of computers; it is difficult to conceive what colossal forces will be intervening on one side in order that Smith push heroically and rescuingly, and, on the other, that he push ungallantly and tramplingly. More and more reinforcements are brought in, till what was to have been a small exhibition of manliness in the presence of a woman turns into a cataclysm. Company records note the occurrence, over a period of nine years, of two such disasters, called GASPs (Galloping Arrangementive Spirals). After the last GASP, which cost the parties involved nineteen million dollars for the electrical energy, steam, and water power expended in the course of thirty-seven seconds, an agreement was reached on the strength of which an upper limit to arrangementing was set. It may not consume more than 10
¹²
joules per client-minute; excluded also from the actualization of services are all forms of atomic energy.

Against this background runs the action proper of the novel. The new president of Being Inc., young Ed Hammer III, is personally to look into the case of the order submitted by Mrs. Jessamine Chest the eccentric heiress-millionairess, since her demands, of an outre nature, not to be found in any catalogue, go beyond the reach of all the rungs in the Company's administrative ladder. Jessamine Chest desires life in its full authenticity, purged of all arranging interference; for the fulfillment of this wish she is prepared to pay any price. Ed Hammer, against the advice of his advisers, accepts the assignment; the task, which he puts before his staff—how to arrange the total absence of arranging—proves more difficult than any so far tackled. Research reveals that nothing like an elemental spontaneity in life has existed for a long time. Eliminating the preparations for any particular arrange-plan brings to light the remnants of other, earlier ones; events unscenarioed are not to be found even in the bosom of Being Inc. For, as it turns out, the three rival enterprises have thoroughly and reciprocally arranged one another; that is, they have filled with their own trusted men key positions in the administration and on the board of directors of each competitor. Aware of the danger created by such a discovery, Hammer turns to the chairmen of both the other enterprises, whereupon there is a secret meeting in which specialists having access to the main computers serve as advisers. This confrontation makes it possible, finally, to ascertain the true state of affairs.