Fiction Park
The Cosmic Correction
Imagine a world where all your needs are taken care of. Would you be happy?Subash Chapagain
If anything differentiated Shanya from rest of the women at the Sanctuary, it was her resistance. Her eyes were a deeper shade of blue than the others’ and her skin better tanned; but the rebel she nested in her soul was far more intriguing than anything else.
When Neer was first introduced to her, he thought that she was a lunatic.
Then that they’d inured for months, he felt as if her lunacy had gradually seeped into him drip by drip, and he couldn’t help adoring her to the hilt.
But it’s not the main story!
“So how do you like it here?” Neer had asked her on a cold evening a few days after his arrival, when they met at dinner.
“I don’t. I know I ought to, but I don’t like it here. I miss my place back in Haiti,” Shanya answered, and hastily asked him how he ended up at the Sanctuary.
“Through a chain of several misfortunes,” Neer replied. He told her about the earthquakes that brought his whole village down to rubble and took away his entire family.
When the quakes hit, Neer was left contorted with the pain of losing his family. If he wanted anything at that moment, it was to leave his village and escape to a distant place where he didn’t have to witness the relics of the disaster that constantly reminded him of his loss. When those foreign officials from the Sanctuary came to his village and approached him with their resettlement plan, Neer didn’t give it a second thought. He had agreed right away to their offer as if that was his calling!
“We’re quite alike, we share a common misery. And we’re doomed here!” Shanya fixed her gaze into his as she spoke. She looked sorry, but uttered nothing more.
“Why do you always sound so sad? I can’t find any reason why one should dislike this place.” He didn’t mean to be rude, but he couldn’t help speaking my mind.
“Do I? My bad, if I do. But aren’t all real things sad?” She continued, “I thought I was lucky when those white men told me that I could come live here. But I was wrong big time. I never expected to live such an engineered, dumb life.”
Shanya had by then figured out that it was on account of his sheer obliviousness that Neer had agreed to spend the rest of his life at that establishment far from his homeland. He could comprehend that she too was there for prospects not so different than his. Nevertheless he still had no clue what made her detest the refuge so much.
The Sanctuary was quite a cosy place, built almost to perfection. It had endless space and they were told that they had built it on the ocean’s floor though they could never get to its edge to look upon the waters. The buildings were all painted in white and blue, and housed thousands of homeless people like them. They were offered good, plentiful food and provided with every other thing needed for a luxurious survival; and the occupants seemed content with what they received.
The residents could play video games or watch movies on large screens every night. Almost all of their errands were run by robots; all they needed to do was learn how to operate the gadgets that controlled them. Those robots were more than amazing. It was euphoric how on someone’s birthday those intelligent machines sang birthday songs and played music and performed merry dances. Back home in Neer’s village, they didn’t even have electricity, and birthdays never bothered people.
He couldn’t ask for more. Well, how could he?
In return to this cosmic favour, all they had to do was just one thing—not unplug the tiny chips from their wrist attached since the first day at the Sanctuary. The chips were deemed to work as tags, and the superintendents, time and again, assured them that they’d do them no harm. The inhabitants, on the other hand, obediently complied to the decree; and most of them fancied the idea of an electronic appendage.
Things rolled on. People were mostly busy on their smart screens and tablet computers. Shanya was Neer’s sole ‘real’ acquaintance, but he could meet her only for a matter of minutes during lunch and dinner. Now and then, he thought of making friends with other occupants and even tried to reach out, but his introversion usually took over the feeling. Though at times he shared few words with others, he never really could get along with them.
The routine days were passing on an easy, yet lifeless pace. Often during daytime having nothing much to do, Neer strolled around the blocks wondering what would it have been like had he not registered to live there. Would he be happier? Would his life be this easy? And sometimes, he daydreamed of secretly flying back to his village just for the sake of checking on his fellow countrymen. Were they missing him?
One such cloudy day when he was rambling out of boredom, Neer caught sight of something unusual. Three guards were clutching a man by his arms and escorting him towards the main office building. His hands cuffed, a neurotic disgust perspired off the dark brown skin of the man’s sweaty face as he was being forced step by step towards the admin house. He must have done something to offend the officers, Neer thought, and in confusion carried on with his walk. The incident bugged him all day long though.
Later that day when Neer met Shanya at dinner, he immediately jumped in, “Do you have any idea why one would be cuffed and carried to the admin? Today afternoon I saw a gentleman being…”
“Shh…Keep your voice low, will you? You can’t go around talking aloud things like this.” She produced her fork and continued in a lower voice, “I told you I never really liked this place. You know why?”
“Why?” Neer was more than interested now.
“This place is a fabricated cage. You don’t get to be yourself here; and most of these people don’t even realise that!”
“What makes you say that?” Neer intoned. He was unable to make heads or tails of what she was uttering.
“The man you said you saw being escorted yesterday, do you know what he’s accused of?” He didn’t know and Shanya could read that from his confused eyes.
“Reading books, and painting. I’ve seen few other men being taken to the Correction Centre in the past for reasons like that.
This place is cursed, believe me. Those people who fund the Sanctuary don’t want us to do anything creative, you see.” She was breathing heavily as she spoke.
“Why didn’t you tell me this before?” Neer couldn’t resist asking.
“Why would I? I hardly knew your name then.”
She went on, “I had heard some officers talk few days back. They were chattering about how they lured us into getting here and how their experiment was going to be a success. I bet we’re being monitored as human subjects. We’re nothing here but ciphers and guinea pigs. They feed us, stuff us up with comfort and they don’t let us grow. If I could, I would run away this moment. It’s a pity that I can’t. No one can.”
All of a sudden, a sadness took over Neer. The wrist-chip, the robots, the luxury—all started to make sense to him and he felt like puking. Now he realised how he had never seen people in the Sanctuary sing or play music or dance. The robots did all those things and were smarter, so to speak, than the occupants!
“The chips on our wrists are not just barcodes. They’re programmed controllers that manipulate our human temperament.” Shanya’s face flushed into red as she said so. A deep, cold feeling crawled into Neer’s nerves and his heart pounded with contempt. Shanya was silently staring into his eyes with an empathic gaze. He stared
back, and as he did, he felt helpless. The feeling wetted the rim of his eyes. The sirens over the ceilings of food court started to buzz, indicating that the dinner time was almost over.
“So?” Neer’s voice was blended with a marooned viscosity.
“So…Let’s call it a day. Goodnight. Till tomorrow, dear.” Shanya kissed him on forehead and walked towards the exit.
She was just about to reach for the door when someone called her name, “Miss Shanya, you’ve been called upon by the admin officer.” Neer could see one of the guards from yesterday approaching Shanya.
Disdain rode sparkling in her eyes, and she gave an agonised glance to Neer. Neer, as he watched her being taken away, whispered back in anguish, “Goodnight, dear.”