헉슬리의 '멋진 신세계' 풍의 어느 여고생의 영어 소설

[hotlip]

Summary of UNEDITED 

  It’s the 23rd century, people have neural implants that regulate strong emotions. Everyone agrees it’s the greatest invention of the 23rd century. It’s a world without pain, without sadness, loss, fear. In it, May works as a restorer, watching people of the old world through tapes. They are clumsy, exaggerated, and unstable. They’re also alive.

  This story stems from the question: When humanity finally overcomes pain, what’s to gain and what’s to lose? It doesn’t say that pain is beautiful, or necessary. It merely suggests a possibility, that love and the trace it leaves can’t be whole without loss. That without the lows, the highs might not feel so high.

UNEDITED by JW Lee

  May sat quietly on a chair, her head resting on her hands. All around her endless shelves filled with old records and tapes were filled to the ceiling. May got up with a big sigh and picked up a tape from a desk nearby. She plugged it into the reader and the lights dimmed, the projection swallowing up the shelves.

  Birthday Party 2043. was written on the tape. A man wearing a paper crown was laughing so hard he had nearly folded in half. A woman was laughing along with him, so hard that tears were running down her cheek. Behind them a child shrieked with joy and jumped off his chair to hug the man. Four minutes later the projection switched off and the tape slid out of the reader. May found a smile on her face that hadn’t been there for the past few days.

  That was one of her favorite tapes, and this was her job. She was a Restorer. She worked in the cultural heritage department in the national museum of history. She was to pull up the old world out of failing media and catalogue them according to feeling and time. Selected tapes would earn a place in the old world exhibit. People visited it like visiting the ancient Rome exhibit, an empire long gone in the past. Well, it didn’t exist anymore. Everyone wore the same clothes, used mostly the same technology, shared mostly the same social norms as the old world.

  However, the old world had strong feelings. People in the new world had neural implants that moderated their feelings, adjusting them if they were too strong. You could still feel, but strong feelings like grief and depression were prevented. Everyone agreed it was the best invention of the 23rd century. Even though May also had neural implants she couldn’t help feeling something strange while working. Today, the birthday party tape made her cry a little. She thought they looked alive. She didn’t know what she meant by that, since she was alive too. “Work fast, have a blast!” Only when the ice cream truck passed by blasting the standard slogan did her time begin to tick again. May got back to work and managed to finish half her chores before lunch.

  She went out to get sandwiches with her coworker Max. Max kept humming a song he heard on a tape. It went like: “It’s never over, all my blood for the sweetness of her laughter. It’s never over, she is the tear that hangs inside my soul forever”. May almost laughed out loud because she couldn’t make sense of what she heard. “What is that song supposed to mean?” Max looked over at May as if he were in a trance. His eyes were glassed over. “I don’t know… god, I don’t know but my head hurts so bad.” Max rummaged through his jean pockets and fished out a tylenol. May passed him a water bottle that was in her purse. “Pay a visit to your implant technician. Do you some good.” May advised.

  It was that night she found the journal. It came in a box of undated personal belongings, the kind of donation nobody in the department wanted to process because it was slow, tedious work. May was cataloguing the box and opened the journal to check for a date, when a sentence made her halt. “I would rather have my heart broken a hundred times than never love deeply enough for it to break”’May couldn’t understand. It was like listening to Max singing his strange song again. Why would a heart break when you love? What did they mean by heart break? Heart failure? Perplexed and unable to find a date, May put the journal back in the box. She felt a throb in her frontal lobe and went to her desk to find some tylenol.

  May went home that day but no matter what kind of painkiller she took, the throb in her head stayed. Desperately she banged her head against her pillows but that just added to the pain. Unable to stand it much longer, she called her implant clinic. “Hello? It’s May. I know it’s last minute but can you schedule a maintenance appointment for me right now? I need help.” May said imploringly. “Ok, Dr. Hughes will see you at 6pm.” a nurse replied. May quickly put on a fur coat and stuffed a few hundred bucks in her purse. She headed downtown in her car, and found herself humming the birthday song.

  Strangely, her headache became more bearable. On the way to the clinic May stopped at the traffic lights and happened to see someone proposing. Through the window of a fancy restaurant she saw a man on his knees holding a diamond ring. The woman in front of him smiled and clapped happily, people seated around the couple watched for a while and went back to talking with their own partners.

  May remembered a tape she’d watched after lunch. The tape also contained a proposal in a fancy restaurant. However the couple in the tape were crying and shrieking with huge smiles on their faces. People around them were clapping and cheering for them. The atmosphere was different, a tone of joy that seemed almost extreme. Everyone in that tape looked like they were exaggerating their feelings or copying old cartoons. It felt bizarre, like the weird dreams you have before waking up in the morning hungover.

  May arrived at the clinic. She parked her car in the parking lot next to the building and headed inside. She exchanged waves with a few nurses who were cleaning up. One of them told her to go straight into Dr. Hughes’s office. She did so, and the old doctor greeted her warmly. “May! It’s been a while, dear. How are you feeling today?” Dr. Hughes smiled up at her from his chair. “Hi Dr. Hughes. I have a throb in my frontal cortex.” May said. Dr. Hughes nodded and motioned for her to lay down on the examination table. “It’s your job. Lots of old world emotions and information to process, eh?” Dr. Hughes asked as he put a metal instrument to May’s head. “Yupp…” May replied in a slurred voice. For some reason, the metal instrument made her sleepy. The instrument kept beeping softly as she dozed off. She actually dreamt.

  In the dream May saw a young woman sprawled on the floor, bawling her eyes out. She looked like she had been crying for a long time, her face was red and puffy, around her were heaps of used tissues. May woke up to a large beep. “Oh, voila! The device in your emotion regulation area is expired. You’re gonna have to come back for a replacement next week, I’ll have the replacement custom made in California.” Dr. Hughes told her.

  May went back to work the next day. She soon wondered if she should take the day off because with every tape or record she played, her headache got worse. After lunch, she decided to tell her coworker. “Hey Max, I think I should go home early today. I have a really bad headache.” “Alright, but we’ve gotta get the undated personal effects catalogued by Thursday.” “Yeah I can manage.” “Ok then. You know what they say. As long as you can get the job done, have all the fun.” May was walking back home when she saw a strange flyer. It said in big bold letters: DRAMATIC GROUP. Dramatic group? Not a drama group or drama club? She quietly took a tear-off tab.

  That night she headed out to attend a dramatic group meeting. Just once, cause I’m curious. She thought. The group met in the basement of what had once been a church, back when people still brought their unbearable feelings to be understood rather than corrected. There were five of them. A woman named Natalie ran it, gently like a support group. May was surprised when the gentle voice told her they were disabling their neural implants. “We’re not telling anyone what to do.” Natalie said. “This isn’t a protest. It’s just some of us who want to know what it was like to be whole in the old sense. That’s all. You don’t have to decide anything tonight.”

  The procedure to disable an implant wasn’t technically illegal. It wasn’t discussed at all. It required a small device, a magnetic key that a retired technician had built outside the radar of the government. May found herself saying yes before she was certain of the answer. Chills ran down her spine as Natalie put the device on her head.

  She closed her eyes shut and tried to breathe easy, to clear her head. Someone held her hand and May squeezed it for comfort, like it was a stuffed animal. The first thing she felt after the device had been removed was fear. It surged through her like a tidal wave from the core of her heart to her fingertips. She understood at that moment that she had never been afraid before. Everything she had called fear was a cushioned version of it, a portrait instead of the actual person. “It’s okay. Just let it pass through you.” The person holding her hand said in a deep soothing voice. Mara gasped and reached for the device. She was about to put it on her head and reactivate her implant. However, she couldn’t bring herself to eliminate the feeling of happiness that had been there since the fear first started. At first it was tiny compared to the fear, but it was surging up, filling her with warmth from the tips of her feet.

  With a final gasp May dropped the device. It fell with a metal clang on the floor, sounding like a church bell in old records. May looked up and saw a pair of blue eyes. It was the man holding her hand, he had brown hair and blue lips. “Oh, your lips are blue.” May blurted. “I’m cold.” He said and walked away.

  “That’s Matt. Anyways, welcome to the fam!” Natalie exclaimed. “Call me Nat. This is Bella.” Nat waved her hand to a red haired girl who smiled and waved at May. “This is Dylan,” She pointed to a dark haired man. “And August.” A blonde man waved at her. May introduced herself to the group and they chatted for a while before going back home.

  The next morning she woke up to a sunrise that undid her. That was the word for it. Undid. She’d seen sunrises every day before going to work. She always thought they were pleasant, pretty colors. This one though, came through the window in streaks of rust and rose-gold and something almost violet, and she swallowed, unable to make words of it. She stood at the glass with her hand pressed against it. She wanted to reach through the window and hold the sky, drink it, catch it and throw it on a canvas. The food gained a new flavor that it had been withholding before. The music gave her feelings now, not just pleasure but much diverse ones. Prelude in C Sharp Minor by Rachmaninoff actually made her chest ache. She had to sit and listen closely until the piece ended, while thinking: How could I have missed this? The whole time it was here.

  May began to attend every meeting, and each time her feelings for Matt grew. He listened in a way that made her feel visible, he was so many feelings at once. He got frustrated, he got delighted. Once he got so angry at a story about a government official who stalled her museum funding that he stood up and paced around, as May watched in awe. He wasn’t like all the other calm people she met in her life, and falling for him didn’t feel like falling for the partners she had before. She’d been in stable relationships that ended mutually, without either experiencing heartbreak. She understood how a heart could break now, she felt like standing at the edge of a cliff with no railing. “I’m scared of you.” She told Matt one night, Matt had offered to walk her home after a meeting. “Thanks.” He smiled happily. “I’m afraid to lose you too. I love you too.” He said and it made May feel like she was on a roller coaster ride. She thought of the journal. “I would rather have my heart broken a hundred times than never love deeply enough for it to break.”

  The government found the group four months later. They found a cluster of people in their data whose biometric monitoring had gone completely blank. They’d merely come to check if they were alright. The government’s response was unlike what May expected, or any of them for that sake. No arrests or threats. A single administrator arranged a meeting and sat across from the six of them in the church sanctuary. “I want to know what you ask from us.” The administrator named Khloe said. “So correct me if I’m wrong, but you request depression, postpartum psychosis, PTSD, crippling anxiety and suicide.”

  A long silence followed. May listened to Matt’s shallow breathing. “Is that what you want for everyone? For eleven year old girls who douse themselves in gasoline because her father did what fathers used to do, and she didn’t have an implant to stop her emotions from becoming a pile of ash?” More silence followed. May said no in her head. Terrible memories of tapes about war and abuse came alive in her mind, taunting the past four months she had spent with new feelings and love.

  She understood now that feelings didn’t come in sortable boxes. You couldn’t choose a pleasurable tape and replay it till you lose your breath from laughing. You had to hurt, to cry uncontrollably until you were dry of tears. You had to scream with rage at someone you love and long for them again because they became someone you loved. Her lips felt glued shut every time she tried to say “I’m sure I want this for everyone. This new depth of emotion!” Khloe watched them become silent, but didn’t show any expression‎ of triumph. She looked on with calmness and curiosity. “No,”

  Natalie broke the silence. “We’re not telling anyone what to do. This isn’t a protest. However, we do want to suggest freedom of choice.” Natalie talked about a new act, at eighteen or any point after, each adult could choose whether to keep the implant or let go. No penalties for either choice, no moral hierarchy in the paperwork. The government accepted the offer and soon it was called the Volition Act. Ninety percent of the population kept their implants. May was surprised that ten percent had decided to remove the implant. She understood why so many rational people would decline removal. On her worst days, she wished she was one of them.

  May moved in with Matt in a new city. They weren’t engaged yet but they were talking about marriage. One day they went out to get groceries, when a car accident happened right in front of them. “Whoops, better hope they’ve got insurance.” Matt said as he opened the car door. They heard a woman scream. “Liam! No my baby!” May frantically opened the door and ran toward the sound. Matt was already kneeling next to the mother. The mother was screaming, but there her facial expression‎ was eerily calm. She was wringing her hands, but she just stood there and watched her baby wriggle and scream under the car. Even her scream sounded fake, like she was acting. With her new sensitive emotions, May felt sick in her stomach as she watched the mother.

  The mother looked unreal, like she was dreaming, like she was a character in a thriller. Then May saw Matt climb under the car. He was holding the car up with his arms and pushing his body into the crevice. “Matt no!” May ran toward him but the upper half of Matt’s body was already under the car. He pushed the baby out and the mother grabbed it. “Thank you!” She exclaimed and ran away. May was just a few miles away from him when the car fell with an earsplitting boom. Her drawn out scream mingled with the car’s and the commotion around the scene.

  The funeral was held on Tuesday, three days after the accident. Matt’s family decided the burial place would be the backyard of their house. May attended the funeral with a black dress and puffy eyes. She had a scheduled appointment for reinstalling her implant the next day. She couldn’t stand it. The pain was unbearable, unlike anything she’d ever experienced before. She wished she could tell the administrator, Khloe, that she regretted everything. She didn’t wish this on anyone, especially not her poor self.

  She understood that her tears were different from the others around her who were merely performing. Their tears were on time, socially correct. Her tears were dreadful heart break, a complete collapse, devastating grief. She could no longer feel her face or her feelings. She now knew that tears really could dry out. “Why?” She shouted out loud. “Why does one have to hurt? Why did he have to die?” People looked at her with discomfort. Angry and embarrassed, May tried to leave but her legs failed her and she fell. Through her foggy eyesight, she saw Natalie and Dylan come and they carried her into the house.

  May rested on an armchair, taking deep breaths to calm herself. Out of the corner of her eye she saw a framed photograph of Matt. There was one with Matt stretched back, laughing his head off to something off camera. Next to it Matt was asleep in a hammock with his mouth wide open. Matt’s mother had been in the room. She sat down next to May. After a hesitant silence, she blurted out a question that May had been asking herself. “Do you regret it? Removing the implant.” May looked at the photos once more. Seeing Matt’s face made her cry, but it reminded her of the love that was once there, so very much present. “I’m happy to have my heart broken because it’s proof that I loved deeply enough for it to break.” May thought. Then she said it out loud. Matt’s mother stayed silent for a while and stood up. May watched her as she walked away with a new uncertainty.

May now gained a certain answer to the question that replayed in her head since the day she first met Matt.

  She knew she’d become uncertain again through many points in her future but for now she knew, she made the right choice. She was the remaining recording of Matt now, he would never die, at least in the memories of his loved ones. May let the tape run all the way through, unedited, not looking away from a single frame.