Читать книгу The Transition - Luke Kennard, Luke Kennard - Страница 14

WEDNESDAY WAS KARL’S first night to cook. His tablet announced that he was to make a simple but nourishing cheese and egg tart with wholemeal pastry and a spinach salad with home-made vinaigrette. The ingredients were all in the Smart Fridge and Smart Cupboard. When Genevieve got home from work she found him in the kitchen wearing a blue and white striped apron. He had flour on his forehead.

‘Ha ha ha!’ she said.

‘Thanks,’ said Karl.

‘You know, pastry is one of those really simple recipes which is almost impossible to get right,’ said Genevieve.

Karl flicked a fingerful of raw egg and grated cheese at her and she screamed.

‘My work clothes!’

‘Oh. Sorry.’

‘God.’

She stalked upstairs and Karl listened to the rest of a documentary about peak oil as he kneaded the bowl.

‘It’s delicious, Karl,’ said Stu. ‘Genevieve, did Karl cook much before?’

‘Pasta and pesto,’ said Genevieve. ‘Fish fingers.’

‘Well, he’s a natural, isn’t he?’

‘Please,’ said Karl. Although he was pleasantly surprised by the texture of the pastry – flaky but consistent. Janna poured a greenish liquid into their glasses from an oddly shaped bottle: a tall, wide neck and square base with the periodic table printed on it. Saturday was alcohol night – the rest of the week was dry.

‘This is a vitamin drink developed by one of our former protégés,’ she said. ‘The ones before the ones before you guys. It made the Journal of Nutritional Science – one of the first supplements to genuinely enhance your diet. I don’t know anything about the technical side, but … She’s a millionaire now.’

Karl took a sip of the cold vitamin drink. It tasted a little like Germolene.

‘Mm.’

‘So do you have protégés staying with you all the time?’ said Genevieve. ‘It must be exhausting. Are our replacements already lined up for when we leave?’

‘No,’ said Stu. ‘It’s the same for all the mentors: six months on, six months off.’

‘Like a lighthouse keeper,’ said Genevieve.

The tablet prompted them both to keep a journal at 10 p.m. every night. There were no rules on the content, but it had to be at least 500 words and the grammar check could tell whether or not it was basically literate.

‘This is going to be a novel by the end of the scheme,’ Karl complained.

Genevieve looked up from her typing.

‘That’s the point,’ she said. ‘The best ones are made available to future protégés. We get access to the online library in week 3. Karl, are you actually reading any of the daily bulletins?’

‘The what?’

‘Are you paying any attention at all?’

‘Sure.’

‘I get the feeling your heart’s not really in it.’

‘I’ve had a lot of work.’

‘I mean you’re the reason we’re here.’

‘I’m aware of that.’

‘I know you are.’

‘Well, then.’

Genevieve laughed.

Karl began transcribing their exchange on his tablet.

Halfway through his first sentence he looked up. When Genevieve paused he said, ‘How does this work with our TGU vows?’

‘This? Oh, it’s not relevant,’ said Genevieve. ‘This is a private network. It’s not the same at all.’

‘I don’t know if I’m comfortable with it,’ said Karl.

‘So call your sponsor.’

‘We haven’t spoken in a year.’

Karl hadn’t felt the need to consult his sponsor in a while. As far as he was concerned the Great Unsharing had broken the worst of his internet addiction and he no longer needed to observe its dogmas. The Great Unsharing had been founded three years previously by a child named Alathea Jeffreys. The logo was a graphical silhouette of her face at nine years old on a blue background. Alathea represented the first generation to be ‘commodified without consent’; from birth to early childhood everything about her had been documented, stored and shared with complete strangers by her parents, the first wave of social networkers whose internet use had transitioned over a decade from drunken party photos to political posturing to holiday snaps to baby scrapbook. ‘Where was our opt-out?’ asked Alathea. ‘What choice did we have? I was a public domain image when I was still in my mother’s womb.’ Alathea called for a mass strike from social networks, and then from the internet in general. A degrading, dehumanising place. The Great Unsharing gathered publicity from columnists and commentators and via the very networks from which it encouraged withdrawal. ‘I want to share something that happened to me in the coffee room after church last month,’ ran a typical editorial at the time. ‘I was there with Simon and our newborn. A young man of our acquaintance asked if he could take a photo of my baby. A little unusual, perhaps, but I tend to look for the best in people. I said yes, of course. He held up his smartphone and, flash, that was that, or so I thought. But later I saw him leaning against the wall working avidly on his phone. I approached and saw that he was playing a computer game. He made no effort to hide it from me, so I looked over him at the screen. The sick game involved drop-kicking an animated baby at a rugby goal, or over a rainbow or into the sea, and the program was able to use photographs to alter the appearance of the baby. With horror it dawned on me that he was kicking my baby.’

The movement struck a chord with Genevieve and, after discussing it, she and Karl agreed to sign up. Karl often found himself sitting with his smartphone going between five social networks and three separate email accounts, and, if he had no new messages, a simulation of a social network called Humanatee which was entirely computer-generated and passably amusing for its similitude to the real thing, albeit with no repercussions. Achieving nothing, praying for the battery to die so that he could read a book. One night they held hands and deleted their profiles from three networks, twelve years’ worth of photos, opinions and comments on other people’s opinions. It felt like flushing a toilet. The Great Unsharing encouraged participants to delete their email accounts, too, which they both felt was a bit extreme. Within two years the movement had reduced the user base for social networks by a third.

‘We’re not trying to be sanctimonious or didactic,’ read Alathea’s official statement. ‘The fact is, most of the time you go online, within about five minutes you’ve directly engaged with something that makes you genuinely unhappy. You’ve either given or received indignation. This is a reduction of what you are and what you can be as a human being. Imagine if instead of doing that you asked an elderly neighbour if they needed anything from the shops? Or went for a walk. Or studied Greek. Or had a conversation with someone in your house. Just try it for a week and observe the effects on your mental health.’

The following year it was revealed that Alathea Jeffreys didn’t exist; that she was the invention of a middle-aged American academic called Dr Cary Gill and formed part of his post-doctoral Sociology research into authenticity for the University of Bristol. By this point the followers of the Great Unsharing were no longer involved in the forums where the hoax was revealed and so they missed much of the outrage, the debates and the counter-outrage.