The Birth of Love (22 page)

It is not important whether I live or die.

Transcripts of interviews with members of the anti-species conspiracy of Lofoten 4a, Arctic Circle sector 111424

Part 3, 3.30–4.30 p.m. 15 August 2153 Interview with Prisoner 730006

At time of commencement the prisoner will not disclose her real name.

Prisoner 730006, you are aware you stand accused of the capital crime of conspiring against the Genetix and thus against the survival of humanity?

Yes.

The Protectors are very disappointed in you. They fear you have behaved in a reckless manner, dangerous to all. What do you say to this?

I hope they will one day find true understanding and this miasma that surrounds us will be banished. I hope this for them as I hope for it myself.

They regret to inform you that while they seek to assess all matters reasonably and dispassionately, your case – and that of your associates – must be considered a crime. We are appointed to discuss with you the precise nature of this
crime and to relay information to the Protectors. Do you understand?

I understand the plane of existence you are summoning me to recognise and I recoil from its every element.

Your co-conspirators have made full confessions. They have pleaded for clemency from the Protectors. There is a chance this clemency may be granted to them, and to you also, if you all co-operate. Do you understand?

I understand this is what you are saying to me. Whether it has any relation to the truth, to the reality of all things, I do not know.

You will find that we speak truth, for the protection of the species, Prisoner 730006. Can you explain firstly how you came to be living in the Restricted Area?

I was sent there.

Sent there? By whom?

By a force beyond my comprehension.

What force?

I do not know precisely what it is but I believe it drove me out of Darwin C.

You had lived in Darwin C all your life?

Yes, my parents …

Correction, sperm and egg donors.

… were sent there from their home.

Correction, Lofoten 4a, Arctic Circle sector 111424. How
did it come to pass that you left Darwin C?

I was driven out of the city. My longing for something else – I was not entirely sure what it might be precisely, but I sensed I must search for it – caused me to leave. I began to realise that we had fallen somehow, that we had lost everything that mattered. But I did not know whether I might regain anything; I just felt I had to get out.

How did this so-called realisation happen?

I do not know. There was a day – I was working as usual …

Your allotted role, Prisoner 730006?

The nurture grounds, sector 1127.

You worked with Prisoner 730004?

I do not know anyone of this name.

Your area of specialisation?

I cared for babies.

Correct ‘babies’ in the usual way for the record. Had you been harvested as legally required?

Yes. At the age of eighteen like everyone of my generation I was stripped of my biological right and deprived of joy.

Correction, the Prisoner was harvested and her womb was closed. How did you meet the other members of your anti-species conspiracy?

The process was very slow. Of course, we had been taught to think in an entirely different way, and so we had to unlearn the previous ways and gradually intuit another sort of understanding. At first we did not really know what we craved. We
were only able to define our desires negatively. We knew what we did not want. That was everything around us, everything we had ever known, and so it was hard to imagine what we did want. If it even existed on the planet. If it remained to us – some of us remembered aspects of our early childhoods, and they were a source of inspiration, these shared memories of something else. But we were fumbling in the dark.

You had been taking the advised doses of hormone readjustment?

Of course. No one has any choice about this.

You are arguing that you felt like this despite taking the advised daily dose?

Yes.

We assume you attended Species Survival Courses A, B and C?

Naturally. No one has any choice about that either.

So you were fully aware that your thoughts and subsequent actions worked directly against all the emergency measures currently in place to protect the species?

I was aware that if I was found out I would be condemned, yes.

And you understood that it was necessary for you to be housed in Darwin C in order for as much land as possible to be used for mass-scale farming to support the species?

Yes, that is what I had been told.

And yet you continued with your course of action anyway?
It was as if I was being directed by something beyond me. Stronger than me. I could not resist this direction.

How was your group formed?

Somehow we were drawn together. There was never a point at which we were a group. We were not a society, there was nothing formal. We never met together until we were in the crate. First there was someone and then another, and then someone else and then another. We recognised something in each other. It was an accumulation, a burgeoning of spirits.

How many were you?

I cannot tell you.

Why not?

Numbers no longer hold any meaning for me.

You all had a tenuous link to Lofoten 4a, Arctic Circle sector 111424?

It was our home, yes.

You felt this, though you had never seen it?

Yes.

Who was it that devised the plan to abandon your posts and desert to the Restricted Area?

No single one of us. As I explained, we were drawn into this course of action, by this unfathomable power, this force around us.

You are not being honest, Prisoner 730006. On behalf of the Protectors, we must remind you how important it is that you are honest and precise.

I am telling you the truth as I experienced it. We did not have a leader. No one directed us. Gradually we found a way. We came to understand that we would do these things, that we would risk our lives. As I said, it was as if a greater something was directing our behaviour. It is not precise and certainly it is not like anything I was taught in Darwin C. It was not provable by experiment and it did not conform to any of the established scientific arguments. I am afraid it was all irrational and perhaps absurd, if you subscribe to the worldview of Darwin C and the Protected Area. But that was the thing. We no longer subscribed to this worldview. I cannot be more precise than that.

Prisoner 730006, who is the Magna Mater? Is she this woman you call Birgitta?

The Great Mother …

Correction, egg donor.

… of the world.

Prisoner 730006, can you answer the question clearly?

She is … Well, there is something I remember. A song the guides sang. When we took the boat across the sea. I remember it so vividly, though events of that day are otherwise confused in my mind. Somehow the song imprinted itself on our memories of that strange day and then later we sang it on the island.

Correction, Lofoten 4a, Arctic Circle sector 111424.

What do you mean by this, Prisoner 730006?

It is an old song. I do not know how old.

Where does it come from?

I do not know. As I said, our guides sang it as we crossed, and then we remembered it and sang it later.

Who were your guides?

Well, they seemed to be people, ordinary people wearing rags or tattered clothes but there was something luminous about them, as if they were possessed with unusual grace. I could not see their features because their faces shone. But perhaps I was unaccustomed to the sunshine, the broadness of the sky, the wide-open sea.

Prisoner 730006, we advise you for your own protection not to insult the Protectors with such responses. How did you get from Darwin C to Lofoten 4a, Arctic Circle sector 111424? Please be very careful about how you answer this question, Prisoner 730006.

The mechanisms were not important. The momentum was incredible. When I saw the sea I understood it more clearly.
It was like being washed by a tidal surge. A surge of energy and love.

Once more your answer is meaningless. You understand our questions, we assume?

I understand the individual words but somehow the way they are combined is obscure to me.

What do you mean by this song you sang?

All I can express to you is ambiguity. Gaps and the unknowable. The ancient beauty of things. For me, the song explained some things I had been unable to understand for some time. Or not really explained, perhaps that is overstating it. I never had a sense that anything was truly explained to me. It was all vague inference, suggestion, half-heard harmonies, resonating within me. Something chiming with something else.

This is not a clear answer.

I fear I have lost all this so-called clarity you admire.

What do you mean by this, Prisoner 730006?

Life is very mysterious, to me.

Life is not mysterious. We understand very well how life is generated. This knowledge is central in the struggle to protect the species.

You are wiser than I am.

Of course we are. We speak on behalf of the Protectors, who are most just and wise. Do you also adhere to the delusion of your group, that this woman Birgitta birthed a progeny of the species?

Birgitta brought life onto the planet, yes. It was magical to behold. Impossible, but there before us. Defying everything we had been taught.

You are all deluded. You are suffering from a collective delusion.

Perhaps you are right. It is true, we have no proof, except the evidence of our eyes and our shared experience. And the beautiful miraculous baby who was born to her.

Correction, progeny of the species. There was no such thing, Prisoner 730006. How long has your state of delusion lasted?

My state of joy has lasted for many phases of the moon.

How many years and months?

I do not know.

How long were you living on Lofoten 4a, Arctic Circle sector 111424?

I do not know. I no longer thought in hours or even days or months. The moon waxed and waned. Then again and again. The tides rose and fell. There were hot phases and less hot phases. Occasionally a cooling breeze, those were the most wonderful times of all.

What did you do there?

We lived naturally and so sometimes this stripped us of dignity and hope, as the natural world does, and sometimes we railed against elements we could not control. A storm which ravaged our crops. Rain so hard and thick it swamped the soil. Or the blistering sun, which threatened everything we
had worked so hard to cultivate. We suffered, but we were permitted to survive. Something perhaps took pity on us. A reprieve was granted to us, a sort of desperate victory. Imperfect as we were, we were allowed to exist on this beautiful island, and the soil sustained us. Even now, though I know I will never see that island …

Correction, Lofoten 4a, Arctic Circle sector 111424.

… again, I spend each night looking up at the sky and thinking that it is the same sky, or nearly enough, that hangs above us all. That the ancient rocks and trees, the beautiful mountains sliding into the sea, the fragile mosses and the swirling birds, are all still there, under the sky. That the land will endure, somehow, even as the species fades from the planet.

Prisoner 730006, you are aware that it is a crime to predict the destruction of the species and on behalf of the Protectors we must warn you instantly to desist from such remarks.

I am aware that we are not permitted to contemplate the natural end of the human race.

Prisoner 730006, do you accept that your actions are reprehensible? That such selfish resource abuse cannot be permitted if the species is to survive?

I can be certain of no such thing. I live out my small allocation of years. I love the planet and the circling progress of darkness and light. But I have no knowledge of how my actions will affect anything.

Then you must be guided by the Protectors who act to protect you and the species.

I understand that I must be punished. Within the system established in Darwin C I am a criminal.

Correction, you must be allocated a new role in the struggle for the survival of the species.

I do not mind that. I do not mind dying. Perhaps I wish I was dying among friends and not in this place. But I have lived more fully than I could ever have imagined in Darwin C. Even now I know I have been fortunate. I saw the birth of Birgitta’s child.

Correct ‘child’ for the record. Why do you maintain this delusion that Birgitta produced a progeny of the species?

I saw the birth.

On behalf of the Protectors we must advise you to struggle against these delusions and overpower them.

Why must I?

You are not permitted to ask questions.

Then I cannot understand why I must try to convince myself that something I saw was not the truth.

You did not see it.

You were not there.

We do not need to have been there. It is not possible for a closed womb to be fertilised. We are certain of this.

I do not know what is possible in your world. It is possible in mine.

Our world is your world, Prisoner 730006.

I know that is not true.

It is true. On behalf of the Protectors we ask you again, who is the Great Egg Donor?