The Efficient World—A letter to someone from the Last Known Blue Planet

It was what you can call an old men’s club gathered in a Park. A sign declares that it’s a park. The Park lies amidst tediously landscaped complexes. The Park has, on its bio-programmed grass, growth-programmed playpens for 12- months –olds, wherein they play for exactly 2 months, no more, no less. Thereafter, they enter Efficient Growth Courses; we call this park, the Patch.

Looking at the view, a word comes to mind—sterility. Nothing grows here, things just rot and wait to die. A model indeed for a world with an all-pervading phobia of spontaneity and an obsession with planning. A microcosm of the world we inhabit indefinitely, retired from our jobs, and resigned to our fate, we super-senior citizens, superannuated concepts dwelling on the margins of a world obsessed with efficiency.

Well, we used to park our robust backs on needlessly polished benches which seemed to mirror us with their dead silence and stability of their joints, and sitting on these benches we wait for one of us—anyone among the six of us—to start a conversation. Initiative at our age can only come out of desperation and we all waited—hours sometimes—for a cue from our unimaginative, predictable surroundings of the Patch, the cue doesn’t come. The sterility of the Patch permeates into our minds and our lives. We wait, but we don’t know for what, and we will never know.

We all—all 6 of us—have given up the hope of finding anything that would arouse our interest. We thought we had lived longer than we should have and the cosmos has nothing more to offer. We missed the illusion of religion and the irrationality of mind, variability of perception. We were oppressed by the indiscriminate efficiency that all systems have achieved and the precision that has replaced perception everywhere. Humanity seems to have arrested change.

Then one day it happened, a little mouse scampered through. It was right before our eyes, it really was. I haven’t and I am sure none of us—all 6 of us—has seen a mouse in decades, since we landed on Exocolony in Mars. Pestilence is a nostalgia for us. There are rigid ecospheres at Mars, or the Red as we call it. Biodiversity and co-habitation of different species is an inefficient feature exclusive to the Blue, I mean the Earth. When we were young many of us were scared of mice and rats. Here at the Red, we are not afraid of or alarmed by anything. Fear is inefficient. Anyways, we were amused and wanted the mouse to be there forever. I bet, I could have cried, I could have if only I had not seen Debroy crying first. We don’t cry anymore, none of us does, it takes emotional instability or lability to cry. In the efficient world, we don’t have that. Let me explain, we are bio-coded automata, not exactly machines, machines are even more efficient than us, but I think we will evolve into machines. Machines are solid inside, assured of their being and adequacy, we have a void but we have obliterated the desire to fulfill it. Anyways, Debroy begins to cry, we all turn towards him with envy I guess, and we all begin to look at him and the mouse alternately, it’s like looking at a great match with two human players in which, one wins and one loses! That doesn’t happen anymore, all matches end up drawing unless they play with machines, which is usually the case, and the machine always wins.

We don’t remember much but still we remember. Nuralab at Neurofutures wipes our memories and 6 of us are among the 99 percentile. We are abnormal memory retainers, we are not supposed to have anything more than an extra-short working memory. We have, manual of the Nuralab says, vestigial hippocampal complex which makes us retain memories. We are told that in another 50 years with the death of abnormal retainers like us no one on Mars will suffer this memory overload. You see, we don’t need to remember anything in an efficient world. Memories are wasteful and inhibitory, they retard functioning at total efficiency. 

So I was saying, Debroy stopped crying and the mouse went away, into oblivion and that occasioned a question in our minds—all our minds—where did it go and there must be others. The train of thought was interrupted when Debroy just stood up and began to walk. This never happens, we sit and stand almost simultaneously and walk in a lockstep, there is no need to differ or maybe we just can’t differ. We all are optimally efficient systems with defined energy needs and predictable movements, we are connected to each other. We can in fact know what the other is thinking as we do not think much.

So as Debroy started to walk, he disrupted an inert system and we took an initiative—out of desperation—to stand and begin walking. We all headed to our enclosures. That should have the end of that, the end of the day I mean as we live far too long, and by the way, I just turned 130.

I was transported by the no-emit mobile to my enclosure and as I was about to enter I saw Debroy again sitting on the curb of the Model Park. Well, I was unsure of what to do, unsure after a long-long time of anything. I faced my Veibot, this thing on my wrist. I don’t know its category, of course, it’s a machine, but nearly everything is. Anyways, it shows the coordinates of people around and once you choose the one you want to approach, it tells you how long it would take you to be there and it also recommends reconsidering changing your routine as it may require the cloud reprogramming of my routine and the chronology of events and predictions based on that. That’s what I understand anyway. I turned around and walked back and it took me 1 min 76 seconds exactly what my Veinbot predicted.

Hello I said, he did not reply, that’s very unusual. This never happens, every hello gets a hello back. Anyways, I did something equally unusual, I touched—I think it was called patting, I patted his shoulder. His lack of surprise surprised me. He turned to me, and began to talk slowly—whispering, I think that’s what it was called. We talk in a decibel-constant and efficient voice adjusted for us by the Surround, it’s an all-pervading Homeostat and our seats, and in fact, all possible physical scenarios of interaction are accordingly adjusted. Everything is marked for efficient interaction. That’s why we do not need to enhance communication by patting or with inflection of voice, it’s inefficient, it’s wasteful, and invites more than manageable levels of oxidative stress. Well, I patted his shoulder anyway.

I think his whisper was not for privacy, it was for emphasis (can’t imagine why at that time). Privacy is not needed. There is nothing that we don’t know already, everything is predictable, there is no variability in the efficient systems, and we all are efficient systems.

He said “ I dream… Memories are becoming more and more vivid every 10 years. I know what my son was trying to do back at the Blue.”

Then I stopped him…I mean interrupted him. No one interrupts anyone, we don’t need to. We all have the cognitive tuner that engages us perfectly and then we get our turn. There are no debates, no disputes, and no agreements in the efficient world. Anyways, I interrupted him. I said, “I remember everything too. Memories keep coming back with increasing vividness, it has happened in the last 10 years, I think all 6 of us remember everything.”

He was his recounting events with a marked absence of emotions. When I say ‘marked absence’, I mean by that from the perspective of the Blue. Here, at the Red it’s normal, unlike memories, emotions have been eradicated efficiently, and not even vestiges remain.

He continued, “My son disliked me, he blamed his autistic spectrum disorder on me. I am sure, if you try you will remember that back at the Blue, around 2080 a theory gained currency, wherein it was suggested that fathers are responsible for disorders like Schizophrenia and Autism etc. I was of below-average IQ myself. You must remember, people’s IQ varied at the Blue.”

I said that I remember the whole Intelligence model that we had at the Blue. Now, we, here at the Red have no such inefficient concepts that are riddled with variability.

He nodded. I have not seen anyone nodding in many many years. Nodding is redundant, hence inefficient enhancer, a sign of inefficient communication.

He continued, “When I went to Germany with him, he began to positively hate me. He, back in 2077, began to complain that I am becoming forgetful. He said that I have forgotten his name, Abhirup, was his name. He came to me one day and showed me his certificates and documents and they all had his name cited as Debashish. I never found things in assigned places, now I know he purposefully displaced them. He convinced me that chess is placed differently and he reinvented chess moves, nothing was original, he wasn’t capable enough, he just called the rook a bishop and switched their places deliberately to confuse me. And confused I got and also terrified. He took me to a doctor, who was in fact an actor friend of his, I can clearly see it now. But back then, I could not. The “doctor” told me that I have Alzheimer’s and I believed him. Things began to get worse as I was getting medicated, which just made me show real symptoms.

I hesitantly contacted a neurosurgeon on my own, second opinions were a thing back then, in inefficient societies. Of course, you already know that! Well, this guy was researching stem cells and extracting them from bone marrow and transporting them through Cerebrospinal fluid. He showed me his lab rats and presented me with what he called his groundbreaking research. Well, I did not understand it that much back then. Then he extracted my CSF via Lumbar puncture and examined it, he said there were biomarkers of Alzheimer's and then he proposed to me a cure. He wanted my son’s bone marrow and CSF. I told Abhirup or “Debashih”. He flatly refused and called the doctor a quack. I related my predicament to the Doctor. And then he stalked my son, anesthetized him and abstracted fluids. Abhirup, “Debashish” was hypertensive and had a cocaine habit. The Lumbar puncture killed him. The doctor did not hide that from me, disposed of the body, and then cured me. I never had Alzheimers, so I was never cured. Abhirup, Debashish, convinced me that I was demented and I acted on his suggestion and got him killed. The rat, I mean the mouse, brought it all back to me. “

And then Debroy stopped talking, it was my turn. I did not take it and I did not talk, I had nothing to say. There are no judgments in the efficient world you see.

Well, 80 years have passed since the time we got our memory erased at Neurofutures, Neuralab for the first time. That’s just incidental that 6 of us and presumably more, fell through the cracks, with our memories of the inefficient world intact. Because we abnormally retain, we have to visit the Neuralab every 3 months. Now here at the red, months are much much shorter. That’s the reason I could write this account, no one in the efficient world writes without purpose, in fact, there is no paper to write on. All information, the chronicles of our lives is efficiently recorded and is retrievable if needed. Of course, there is no need for it, except for abstruse research that goes on in NeurafutureX. There is no more Alzheimer's, in fact, no diseases, at all, they were symptoms of inefficiency and are long gone. There is no global warming. We decide our life-spans, which cannot exceed 200 years (I mean the Blue years). Cryogenic freezing that became commonplace on the Blue by 2060 has been abolished on the Red. We have nothing to achieve anymore. We are already in an efficient world. Ambition was a feature on the Blue, which was an acknowledgment of the possibility of failure and it was nothing but proactive hope.  Here on Red, there is no failure and no success. We are never sad, never happy, and never optimistic, never critical or introspective. We are just efficient.

Anyways, as Debroy finished his account and my silence was in its 17th second, the Biowatch begins to beep frantically, it had sensed an alien emotional activity. I am sure the catharsis that Debroy had, had triggered it. As he was taken to the Neuralab, he silently walked with the Team of Superconscious, there is no fear in the efficient world, you see. And this time his memory will be refreshed sooner than scheduled.