Cloud Atlas

Then I stand corrected. When did Yoona~939’s deviances—perhaps I should say singularities—first become apparent to you?

Ah, questions of when are difficult to answer in a world without calendars or real windows, twelve floors underground. Perhaps around month six of my first year, I became aware of Yoona~939’s irregular speech.

Irregular?

Firstly, she spoke more: during offpeak moments at our teller; as we cleaned the consumers’ hygieners; even as we imbibed Soap in the dormroom. It amused us, even the stiff Ma-Leu-Das. Secondly, Yoona’s speech grew more complex as the year aged. Orientation teaches us the lexicon we need for our work, but Soap erases xtra words we acquire later. So to our ears, Yoona’s sentences were filled with noises devoid of meaning. She sounded, in a word, pureblood. Thirdly, Yoona took pleasure in humor: she hummed Papa’s Psalm in absurd variations; in our dormroom, when aides were absent, she mimicked pureblood habits like yawning, sneezing, or burping. Humor is the ovum of dissent, and the Juche should fear it.

In my xperience, fabricants have difficulties threading together an original sentence of five words. How could Yoona~939—or you, for that matter—acquire verbal dexterity in such a hermetic world, even with a rising IQ?

An ascending fabricant absorbs language, thirstily, in spite of amnesiads. During my ascension, I was often shocked to hear new words fly from my own mouth, gleaned from consumers, Seer Rhee, AdV, and Papa Song himself. A dinery is not a hermetic world: every prison has jailers and walls. Jailers are ducts and walls conduct.

A more metaphysical question .?.?. were you happy, back in those days?

Before my ascension, you mean? If, by happiness, you mean the absence of adversity, I and all fabricants are the happiest stratum in corpocracy, as genomicists insist. However, if happiness means the conquest of adversity, or a sense of purpose, or the xercise of one’s will to power, then of all Nea So Copros’s slaves we surely are the most miserable. I endured drudgery but enjoy it no more than yourself.

Slaves, you say? Even infant consumers know, the very word slave is abolished throughout Nea So Copros!

Corpocracy is built on slavery, whether or not the word is sanctioned. Archivist, I do not wish to offend you, but is your youth dewdrugged or genuine? I am puzzled. Why has my case been assigned to an apparently inxperienced corpocrat?

No offense taken, Sonmi. I am an xpedience—and yes, an undewdrugged xpedience, I am still in my twenties. The xecs at the Ministry of Unanimity insisted that you, as a heretic, had nothing to offer corpocracy’s archives but sedition and blasphemy. Genomicists, for whom you are a holy grail, as you know, pulled levers on the Juche to have Rule 54.iii—the right to archivism—enforced against Unanimity’s wishes, but they hadn’t reckoned on senior archivists watching your trial and judging your case too hazardous to risk their reputations—and pensions— on. Now, I’m only eighth-stratum at my uninfluential ministry, but when I petitioned to orison your testimony, approval was granted before I had the chance to come to my senses. My friends told me I was crazy.

So you are gambling your career on this interview?

.?.?.?That is the truth of the matter, yes.

Your frankness is refreshing after so much duplicity.

A duplicitous archivist wouldn’t be much use to future historians, in my view. Could you tell me a little more about Seer Rhee? His journal weighed heavily against you at your trial. What manner of seer was he?

Poor Seer Rhee was corp man, to the bone, but long past the age when seers are promoted to power. Like many of this dying corpocracy’s purebloods, he clung to the belief that hard work and a blemishless record were enough to achieve status, so he curfewed many nights in the dinery office to impress the corp hierarchy. In sum: a whipman to his fabricants; a sycofant to his upstrata, and courteous to his cuckolds.

His cuckolds?

Yes. Seer Rhee should be understood in the context of his wife. Mrs. Rhee had sold her child quota early in their marriage, made shrewd investments, and used her husband as a dollar-udder. According to his aides’ gossip, she spent most of our seer’s salary on facescaping. Certainly, her seventy-plus years could pass for thirty. Mrs. Rhee visited the dinery from time to time to inspect the latest male aides, gossip added. Any who spurned her advances could xpect a posting to bleakest Manchuria. But why she never used her apparent corp influence to advance Seer Rhee’s career is a mystery I will not now live to see solved.

Yoona~939’s notoriety must have threatened the seer’s “blemishless record” severely, wouldn’t you agree?

Certainly. A dinery server behaving like a pureblood attracts trouble; trouble attracts blame; blame demands a scapegoat. When Seer Rhee noticed Yoona’s deviations from Catechism, he bypassed destarring and requested a corp medic to xamine her for reorientation. This tactical mistake xplains the seer’s lackluster career. Yoona~939 performed as genomed, and the visiting medic gave her a clean bill. Seer Rhee was thenceforth unable to discipline Yoona without implying criticism of a senior corp medic.

When did Yoona~939 first attempt to make you complicit in her crimes?

I suppose the first time was when she xplained a newfound word, secret, one slow hour at the teller. The idea of knowing information no one else, not even Papa Song, knew was beyond my grasp, so as we lay in our cots my teller-sister promised to show me what she could not xplain.

When I next woke it was not to the glare of yellow-up but to Yoona, shaking me, in the near-dark. Our sisters lay dorming, immobile but for minute spasms. Yoona ordered me, like a seer, to follow her. I protested, I was afraid. She told me not to be, she wished to show me the meaning of secret, and led me into the dome. Its unfamiliar silence fritened me further: its beloved reds and yellows were eerie grays and browns in the curfew lite. Seer Rhee’s office door leaked thin lite. Yoona pushed it open.

Our seer lay slumped on his desk. Drool glued his chin to his sony, his eyelids remmed, and a gurgle was trapped in his throat. Every tenthnite, Yoona told me, he would imbibe Soap and sleep thru to yellow-up. As you know, Soap affects purebloods more powerfully than us, and my sister kicked his unresponding body to prove the point. Yoona found my horror at this blasphemy merely amusing. “Do what you like to him,” I remember her telling me. “He has lived with fabricants for so long he is very nearly one of us.” Then she told me she would show me a greater secret still. Yoona xtracted Rhee’s keys from his pocket and led me to the dome’s north quarter. Between the elevator and the northeast hygiener, she told me to xamine the wall. I saw nothing. “Look again,” Yoona urged, “look properly.” This time I saw a speck, a tiny crack. Yoona inserted a key, and a rectangle in the dome wall swung inward. The dusty darkness gave no clue. Yoona took my hand; I hesitated. If wandering around the dinery during curfew was not a destarrable offense, entering unknown doorways surely was. But my sister’s will was stronger than mine. She pulled me through, shut the door behind us, and whispered, “Now, dear sister Sonmi, you are inside a secret.”

A white blade sliced the black: a miraculous moving knife that gave form to the stuffy nothing. I discerned a narrow storeroom, crammed with stacked seats, plastic plants, coats, fans, hats, a burnt-out sun, many umbrellas; Yoona’s face, my hands. My heart beat fast. What is that knife? I asked. “Only lite, from a flashlite,” answered Yoona. I asked, Is lite alive? Yoona answered, “Perhaps lite is life, sister.” A consumer