A Utopian Story
Chapter One: Richard Blaine
Rick Blaine woke up and wondered what day it was. Squinting, he looked through the bedroom door at the screen on the wall of the living room. 9:10 a.m., Sunday, July 5, 2047. He felt amazingly good, considering what kind of a day he had yesterday. He ran a hand through his few strands of hair and walked the three steps to the bathroom where he did his usual morning rituals, humming the verse to “As Time Goes By” over and over, even as he brushed his teeth with Calhoon’s toothpaste.
Then he went back in the bedroom and lay back down on the bed, completely nude, and stared at the ceiling. He felt damn good! And he saw no reason for doing anything more than just spending a quiet day at the apartment, watching some wall, having a little supper and just taking it easy. He deserved it after all he had been through lately.
His body was filled with lassitude but his mind was clear. As he closed his eyes, smiling, he thought back on what he had recently experienced. All of it was crystal sharp, almost as if he were reliving it—meeting Ilsa again after all these years, getting the letters of transit, dealing with Major Strasser and Captain Renault, seeing Ilsa and Victor off at the airport—He went over it in detail in his mind, remembering how it was in Paris, before the Germans came…
As it had happened, he remembered, it had been tense, and frustrating, and full of self-pity. But for a while he thought that he and Ilsa might have a chance, and then last night... But looking back on it, especially as good as he felt physically and mentally, it seemed more ironic than sad, more adventurous than stressful.
He spent the next four hours on his bed, reliving his past life, with the events of the past week in Casablanca and the time he and Ilsa had spent in Paris most clear and immediate, but with hundreds of other memories of other exploits—journeys, cases, love affairs, dangers—lurking in the background. He had done so much in his lifetime!
It was around two p.m. when he got up and headed into the living room. He lived in a normal-sized apartment for Cableville, the living room measuring 3 meters by 3 meters, plenty big enough for his recliner and reward box, and of course, wall screen. The bedroom was a little smaller, having only a single bed in it. The bathroom was big enough for a throne, a lavatory and a shower stall. The kitchen was the smallest room, with only a microwave oven in the far wall.
Dodging the recliner he headed into the kitchen. The microwave had a packet inside, as he knew it would, and he pressed the big red button above the oven. Two seconds later he opened the door and took out the packet, tore off a seal and tilted it to his mouth. Malted Oneirine, just the ticket! He had gotten so used to the spicy delicacies of Morocco that on this day of rest he sort of craved the blandness of Malted Oneirine.
How about some wall? he thought. He finished the last of the liquid and put the empty container back into the microwave. A few short steps later, he was enwombed in his beloved recliner. From his sitting position he pushed a big red button on the wall and the clock and date display changed to a wall-sized screen. In the middle it read, “Cableville M-2683”.
A sultry, muted sax melody filled the room as the screen changed into the billowing curves of a soft, rippling velveteen cloth, in moving shades of ochres, browns and deep violets. Rick was entranced. The music and the sensuous ripples of the cloth combined to move him into another place and time. Late 1940s Los Angeles, it turned out. He sat back in the recliner and didn’t move a muscle as the story streamed past, with its socio-political undertones, its cynical hero, its labyrinthine plot.
When it was over he exhaled heavily and shook his head in amazement. What a great movie! he thought, as he reached into his reward box and brought out a hemp burner and ball of compressed hemp. It had all of the classic elements of a mystery and completely believable characters... he rambled on in his mind as he put the ball in the burner where it immediately began emanating a thin white, wispy smoke. He placed the burner on the top of the reward box and turned back to the screen. The film was starting again.
By eleven that night he had seen the story three more times. He had spent the day just as he wanted, taking it easy and indulging himself. Hey, he deserved a day off, he thought. Running a nightclub was no picnic, and if you think you can find a lost love, stay out of the clutches of some sadistic Nazis, then give away the woman you love—all for a higher principle!—and not need a day off, then hey, you’re a better man than I am. Rick Blaine was ready to pack it in after a perfect day.
He went into the kitchen and saw that the microwave had a fresh packet of food in it. He pressed the button and took out the packet, opened it up and drank. Good stuff, that Malted Sonomine. He really wasn’t up for any kind of fancy food. After all, he was getting ready for bed.
He went into the bathroom and did his usual nighttime ablutions, brushing his teeth briskly with some Calhoon’s toothpaste, then dropped down on the bed and within minutes was sound asleep.
Chapter Two: Jacob Gittes
Jake Gittes woke with a start, and was relieved to see that he was in his apartment. Through the door into the living room he saw that it was almost 10 on Monday, July 6, 2047. He must have gotten some much-needed sleep—he felt pretty good. As his memories of the preceding days rooted in his mind he sat up on the edge of the bed. He remained there with elbows on knees, his hands over his eyes propping his head up for a minute, then three steps later was in his bathroom. As he brushed his teeth with Calhoon’s toothpaste his mind overflowed with warm, yet sharply detailed memories and thoughts.
Evelyn Mulray was what he thought about. He didn’t care about the valley’s water problems or Noah Cross or Hollis Mulray. His nose didn’t even bother him anymore, except a little at night. But why did Evelyn have to die? The memory of last night’s shooting in Chinatown was delicately clear in his mind, along with the pain, but surprisingly he felt as if the worst had passed, and that all he needed was a quiet day at home. Sooner or later he’d have to settle up with Noah Cross, but for today he deserved some peace and quiet—maybe a little wall—here in his apartment, far, far from Chinatown.
Jake, who always slept in the nude, emerged from the bathroom wearing nothing and decided there was no reason to put anything on. He fell onto the bed on his back and stretched his full, 5’ 6” frame over its edges. His eyes closed, he felt a wave of supreme lassitude sweep over his body. His nose, which had been slit the week before by a weaselly gangster who looked like Roman Polanski, no longer hurt at all. There was only the pain of Evelyn’s death, which somehow now, almost seemed for the best.
In his mind he went over the events of the past weeks, remembering how that redheaded actress had posed as Evelyn Mulray, suckering him into a scandal with him as the stooge. That sure wasn’t a happy time, but in hindsight, it made for a damn good story, Jake thought with a chuckle.
But that was how he met Evelyn Mulray. It didn’t take long for her to get her hooks into him and by the time he had slapped her secret out of her, he was in deep, too deep. He had to dodge the cops as well as Noah Cross and when he heard she was headed to Chinatown, he knew it was going to end bad. The pain of last night in Chinatown, with the blare of her car horn as accompaniment, played through his head, rebounding from pillow-like receptors, never catching root... appreciated, but never felt.
Around 2 p.m. he pulled himself out of his reverie and headed into the kitchen. In the microwave, as always, was a packet of Malted Oneirine. “Good!” he grunted to himself. After all of the spicy foods he’d been eating in the greasy spoons of LA, some sensible Malted Oneirine sounded perfect. He pressed the red button and two seconds later he opened the oven and took out the packet. He tore off the tab and swigged it down in one gulp. He put the wrapper back in the microwave and went into the living room and his recliner.
“You know,” he thought to himself. “I think I’ll just stay home all day and watch some wall.” Smiling, he pressed the big red button on the wall by his reward box.
The time:date display stayed on the wall in front of him.
This had never happened before. Jake tried it again, pressing with more pressure this time. Nothing.
“What’s going on here?” he spoke out loud. In his experience, when you pressed the button, you got a movie. Nothing complicated, no switches or dials, just one button to watch a movie. He was confused, and that put quite an edge on his good mood. He had reconciled the events of the past week in LA, and he had blended the memories with the thousands of other memories that lived in the back of his brain. His feeling that everything is fine and that he deserved a day of rest was being undermined by this non-functioning button.
Jake Gittes, scandal detective, reached back his small fist and hit the button with all his might. “Owwwww!” he howled, but only because he expected it was going to hurt. The pain never came and in his relief Jake heard a small ping behind the button, as if something mechanical had shifted. The screen suddenly came to life with a centered message, “PBS City D-1463”, which soon changed into the face of a wild-looking man, bald on top with a cowlick on each side of his forehead swept up into horns. He was wearing sunglasses and sported a trim, brown beard.
Jake felt better immediately, although the “PBS City” message was mystifying. He had a vague memory of the phrase, but nothing he could easily grasp. Cableville was where he lived and he hadn’t really considered there might be places other than that. He leaned back in the recliner and devoted his full attention to the man on the screen.
“—anyway, that’s my theory. You can take it or leave it. I really don’t give a—”
The wild man’s face was replaced by that of a female commentator. “That was in 2013 when Knees Calhoon first proposed his radical new social welfare policy. It’s hard to see now why it wasn’t embraced wholeheartedly, but we must remember that it was a much more superstitious time.”
Jake had never seen such a film. He had memories of hundreds of adventurous romps throughout the world, dramatic family episodes, even hilarious mistaken-identity capers, all of which he had lived, but nothing like this. It was just the dry life history of some guy named Knees Calhoon who had started a new welfare policy back in 2023.
According to the “documentary”, as the movie was called in the film, welfare in the U.S. consisted of giving a minimum of food, clothing and shelter to those who, for whatever reason, couldn’t pay their way. In addition to the minimum services, there was a general air of severe disapproval attached to receiving welfare. The old Protestant work ethic was still in effect.
Calhoon changed all that. His reasoning was that what made traditional welfare fail was that the recipients were unhappy. How could they not be? They lived on the very edge of survival and on top of that, everybody else looked down on them. The secret to welfare success is to come up with a way to continue to give each recipient minimal support—hence, minimal outlay to the taxpayer —but at the same time keep the poor slugabeds as happy as larks.
To Calhoon, the answer was as plain as the smoke in his face. Drugs. And not just any drugs, especially not the ones approved by the FDA to keep everybody feeling just as bad as they would if they didn’t take anything at all. No, what was needed was a drug that would make a person feel absolutely great about living in a minimal space, using minimal resources and producing minimal garbage.
Jake was astounded. There was something eerily different about this movie, or documentary. He had the feeling that this was something that really happened. That’s not what movies are for, he protested to himself. Movies are fantasies to take you away from your lives for a day. They’re a reward for all the hard work you had done that previous day, or week, or month. But this— This is something he wasn’t sure he liked.
He continued to watch, never taking his eyes off the screen, even when he took out a hemp ball and burner and lit it up.
Calhoon worked it all out. Every man, woman and child on earth was guaranteed a small apartment with minimal daily food, a movie (of course), and an article of clothing, if asked for. This was basically what welfare was offering them at the time. But in addition, Calhoon provided a drug that would insure that the apartment dweller was happy about his daily routine.
There were many failed trials, but eventually it was found that a sequence of oneirine and sonomine, taken at regular intervals in a 24-hour period, would cause the following behavioral pattern:
(1) 8-10 hours sleep
(2) 4-6 hours of meditation about life
(3) 8-12 hours of a desire to watch wall
But what really made the whole thing work was a special drug called fenderine, which is the main ingredient in Calhoon’s toothpaste. Its effect is to make the person believe that the memories that are foremost in his mind are his real memories. He becomes whatever persona is most vivid and immediate in his memory, at least for the rest of that day.
People who opted for welfare were housed in huge buildings called Cableville, while those who elected to work lived outside, in what was called PBS City. Cableville residents were shown only escapist adventure films on a single channel; everyone else in PBS City had 10,000 channels to choose from.
Upon hearing this, Jake Gittes sat up in his recliner. This was extremely disturbing, but at the same time, fascinating. Connections were crackling in his brain, ones that didn’t get made often. He felt a little disassociated, as if he were two or more people for a second. He stared at the screen.
There were scenes of people lying on beds in apartments just like Jake’s, all of them smiling. Knees Calhoon was seen with important heads of state: the president, the anti-pope, the King of Hollywood. His policies in place, his fame secured, he spent the rest of his life republishing the works of Harry Stephen Keeler and writing the definitive history of the Trim-Trio, published posthumously by Ramble House.
The documentary ended with Calhoon’s death of pan-sexual asphyxiation at the age of 97 in the year 2044. On his bearded face was a smile very similar to those of his Cableville apartment dwellers.
Jake lit up another hemp ball from the reward box, which always had a fresh supply every morning, and watched the movie about Knees Calhoon five more times. During the third time he got up from his recliner and put his hand on the doorknob of the front door. Even with the screen distracting him with grey and brown images of the horned Calhoon, he could feel that the door was fake. It was all just a wall, with a door painted on and a plastic doorknob attached. He sat back in the chair and continued to watch.
Around 11 p.m. he felt hungry and walked into the kitchen. The screen went out as soon as he left the room, replaced by the time:date display. He pressed the red button and took the Malted Sonomine packet out of the microwave. He really felt like having a tasteless, malty drink before bed after all that greasy LA food. After chugging the drink, he put the empty packet back in the oven out of habit and went into the bathroom.
He brushed his teeth with Calhoon’s toothpaste, took a quick shower, and spilled into his bed. Jake Gittes, jaded detective and former LA cop, fell asleep long before midnight.
Chapter Three: Kneesius Calhoon
Knees Calhoon woke up in a bad mood, even though he felt great. He looked all around at the tiny apartment and thought, this does look about as minimal as you can get. No clothes, nothing but a bed, a chair, a bathroom and a microwave. Oh yeah, and a reward box. And the wall. All in all, not such a bad deal, his mind insisted on saying. But then the memory of what he had done came back to him in full force and he felt like he should be mad.
Here he goes and solves one of his society’s biggest problems and he gets put in one of his own Cableville apartments. And to dig the knife in a little deeper, they make a documentary about him and tack on some fakealoo about his retirement and death. Well, he was going to see about this. He’d investigate this from A to Izzard! But not today. He deserved a quiet day at the apartment, to rest up from all of the world traveling and hobnobbing he had been doing lately, promoting his new social policies. Maybe some wall would be nice.
He sat up on the bed and out of 20 years’ habit, strode into the bathroom. He brushed his teeth with Calhoon’s toothpaste and plopped down on the bed. His memories of life as a social engineer were so crystal clear, he began reliving them, one after another as the morning drew long.
He knew what had happened. Something had gone wrong with his wall and he had tapped into a PBS City show, instead of his usual Cableville adventure. His memories told him that he had spent the last decades creating and refining the Cableville welfare system, but the show implied that it might be just an artifact of a drug called fenderine.
It was all so confusing, even though his mind was hyper-alert. But one thing was clear: he deserved a day of rest. And maybe some wall.
Around 2 in the afternoon he got up from the bed, had some Malted Oneirine and sat down to watch some wall. After he’d relaxed for a while he’d look into the disturbing news about the welfare state and his contributions to it. He’d also see if there was another way out of the apartment other than the fake door.
He pressed the red button on the wall and the date:time changed to “PBS City D-1464”. Below it a message read: “Beginning a 5000-part series on Mass Murderers, Serial Killers and other Unfortunates of the Twentieth Century.”
After watching a fascinating documentary about a mid-20th Century tyrant six times, Knees Calhoon, hero of the welfare state, performed his usual nighttime rituals and went to bed.
Chapter Four: Adolph Hitler
The Chancellor of Germany awoke around 10 a.m., feeling damn good considering all that he had been through in the past twenty years...