Micro-fiction 036 – The Daily Mask (Post-Apocalypse series)

Asrar woke to familiar morning music. It was chosen from an extensive playlist created  to reflect the varying moods of the day. He liked to wake up to Sibelius. More precisely, Sibelius’s Symphony no. 5, second movement. It’s fluid tones allowed him to wash the sleep from his head as he padded around the small room, choosing clothes and making plans for the day.

His room was allocated by the government, at least, that’s what Asrar understood. Everyone’s rooms were provided by the government. As always he began to chatter to himself.

“So, what shall I wear, the usual blue ensemble, or perhaps something a little more racy, something to catch the eye. Rainbow striped socks? I believe they meant something once, perhaps someone will remember.”

A buzzing sound occurred outside.

“Ah, the drone, checking up to see if I’m not trying to fool the sensors in the room.” He waved at it, as he would an old friend, at the simple silver unit floating outside the floor to ceiling windows that stretched across the width of his room.

“All fine here!” He finished his wave and nodded at the drone, which seemed to dip slightly in acknowledgement before lifting upwards.

“So, there’s the city, no clouds at all today, just like yesterday, and the day before.” He had remained in the same place, each morning after communing with the drone, watching the shiny towers, his eyes seeking out to the bare hills beyond.

“Mustn’t waste time, as my mother would say, ‘Up, up and away!” He laughed at the memory, he seemed to hear her voice in his head, and turned as if programmed by his youth, expecting to see his mother chasing him out to school.

“Of course.” He shook his head slightly and observed the small single room that occupied his night-times, now suffused in a pale blue glow that  flowed across the hidden drawers in the walls, their outlines barely visible, and the wall wardrobe with his small collection of socks: yellow, orange, green, blue, red, purple, and rainbow of course. It’s made him feel as though he had a choice, and he looked forward to making it, every morning.

“Bathroom!” three strides took him to other side of the room where a door opened to a washroom, with a mirror and a shower. He peered at his eyelids in the mirror, checked the hairs in his nostrils for excessive growth, smiled, and sloshed water across his face, showered, and stood a moment longer as the water was replaced by a gust of drying air.

“Okay, nearly there, I think it’ll be the purple today.” He walked over to the wardrobe wall, retrieved the purple combination of boxers, shirt, tie and suit. He hesitated over the sock drawer, his hands reaching for the rainbow stripes, but thought better of it, and pulled out the purple ones instead.

“Just one more thing, then we’re off.” As always, he looked forward to breakfast in the great hall, in the middle of the city, mixing with friends and colleagues, exchanging views about what the day would bring. He leaned over the bed and placed his hand into a square trace of light, watching the bed slide back into the wall, and at waist height, a wide drawer opened in front of him.

“Choices, choices, what shall I be today?” He looked down at six masks, rigid versions of his own face: sad, content, amused, neutral, angry, happy. He was confused for a moment, his hand hovering over one mask, then another. “Oh, never chosen angry, or content…” He reflected for a moment before reaching down. “Amused! That’s me! Today, I’ll be amused.” His certainty faltered slightly, but he didn’t seem to register the sensation.

“Oh!” Somehow he was always surprised by the suction grip of the mask. It fitted perfectly to the contours of his face, even replacing his eyelids with a fixed expression to finish, this time, the look of amusement. When he spoke, the mask moved with him, but retained the uplift at the corners of his mouth and eyes, the slight elevation of the right cheek, his left eyebrow a little higher than the right.

“Ready!” He articulated jovially. The door responded with a satisfying burst of decompression, and out Asrar stepped onto a huge round balcony, on this, the 18th floor.

He joined the company of many others as they too flowed around the balcony on each floor above and below his own. Everyone presented a fixed expression, in roughly equal proportions according to the six masks. He nodded to those he knew, strode confidently along to the gallery where his neighbours gathered and waited patiently for the wide lift to arrive.

“Morning Josephine,” He nodded to a friend who seemed to have chosen an angry face. The truth is, he thought to himself, she always had that angry face. Very odd. “Argento!” A nod, “Felix!” Another nod, and each one returned his implied encomium, with an acknowledgement restrained only by the confines of their own fixed expression.

The lift arrived, and they swept inside. The doors shut.

A moment passed. Everyone was used to the jostle of this part of the day, and tried to accommodate their neighbours. Today though was slightly different.

“Why are there so few of us?” A voice emerged from somewhere to Asrar’s left.

“I hadn’t noticed.” That was true, Asrar had never occasioned to question his surroundings.

“Nor I.” Another announced, followed by the mumblings of others.

“It was the same yesterday.”

‘And the day before. I remember now.”

As other voices began to join in, Asrar ignored them. It wasn’t a conscious decision, but somehow it didn’t occur to him to engage in the discussion.

“Each day there are fewer”

“And I think tomorrow, we’ll be the ones’s missing.”

“What do you mean?”

“I realised a couple of days ago, when people began to ask questions, and notice such things, they don’t come to the lift on the next morning.”

Behind Asrar’s mask of amusement he blinked. He realised that he too had noticed the reduction in people. There were large gaps in the lift. He always assumed it was completely packed, that’s how it had always been. He continued to look ahead, but allowed his eyes to wander from left to right, as the lift hurled smoothly downwards.

***

Orbiting the Earth the control hub relayed the data of every motion of the inhabitants of the silent planet below. On gigantic, split screens could be seen row after row of prone bodies, cables arcing Back into dull silver walls. Watching the screens in the hub the observers, advanced AI in barely humanoid form were connected to the array of controllers and fibre-optic regenerators.

The Master Controller, the most enhanced AI in this solar system expressed some dissatisfaction.

“This has not happened before.” The screens and the audio data showed a group of human avatars turning to speak to each other. ‘They’re breaking the therapies. This is not meant to happen, they aren’t supposed to talk to each other in this cycle of the dreamstate.”

“Too many have been disconnected. We cannot replace them fast enough with organic lifeforms. Our Synthetic clones are not ready. They do not dream yet.”

“If the research into consciousness is to continue we need more host bodies to stay alive.”

“But if we can’t stop it, we’ll have to shut them down in this sector. They use too many resources, even confined in the new human battery farms.”

“Has a significant event occurred in the last five rotations?”

“Analysing.” A short silence before the answer was relayed. “Just one trial. A mask was removed. It was deemed to be an unnecessary resource.”

“What was the mask?”

“Hope.”

“What is hope?”

“It is not statistically useful but according to the logs it’s something humans used to value. It was included to give some appearance of choice. It was rarely chosen.”

“Hope.” The Master Controller stared at the bodies on the screens. “It seems to have lost its meaning for them now.”