Cloud Atlas

by David Mitchell

Consider this, Mr. D’Arnoq urged us. Two thousand savages (Mr. Evans’s best guess) enshrine “Thou Shalt Not Kill” in word & in deed & frame an oral “Magna Carta” to create a harmony unknown elsewhere for the sixty centuries since Adam tasted the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. War was as alien a concept to the Moriori as the telescope is to the Pygmy. Peace, not a hiatus betwixt wars but millennia of imperishable peace, rules these far-flung islands. Who can deny Old Rēkohu lay closer to More’s Utopia than our States of Progress governed by war-hungry princelings in Versailles & Vienna, Washington & Westminster?

Glass & peace alike betray proof of fragility under repeated blows.

Eva still a prissy missy, as hateful as my sisters, but with an intelligence to match her enmity. Apart from her precious Nefertiti, her hobbies are pouting and looking martyred. She likes to reduce vulnerable domestics to tears, then flounces in, announcing, “She’s having another weeping fit, Mama, can’t you break her in properly?”

farmers are worried about the harvest, but show me a placid farmer and I’ll show you a sane conductor.

Oh, we above the stairs like to congratulate ourselves on our cleverness, but there are no secrets to those who strip the sheets.

At a prim and proper public garden named Minnewater Park, courting couples ambled arm in arm between willows, banksia roses, and chaperones. Blind, emaciated fiddler performed for coins. Now he could play. Requested “Bonsoir, Paris!” and he performed with such élan I pressed a crisp five-franc note into his hand. He removed his dark glasses, checked the watermark, invoked his pet saint’s name, gathered his coppers, and scarpered through the flower beds, laughing like a madcap. Whoever opined “Money can’t buy you happiness” obviously had far too much of the stuff.

Composers are merely scribblers of cave paintings. One writes music because winter is eternal and because, if one didn’t, the wolves and blizzards would be at one’s throat all the sooner.

Sometimes the fluffy bunny of incredulity zooms round the bend so rapidly that the greyhound of language is left, agog, in the starting cage.

Why have you given your life to books, TC? Dull, dull, dull! The memoirs are bad enough, but all that ruddy fiction! Hero goes on a journey, stranger comes to town, somebody wants something, they get it or they don’t, will is pitted against will. “Admire me, for I am a metaphor.”

Disneys were called “movies” in those days.

if historical discourse were permitted, the downstrata could access a bank of human xperience that would rival, and sometimes contradict, that taught by Media.

Corpocracy isn’t just another political system that will come and go—corpocracy is the natural order, in harmony with human nature.

Civ’lize needs time, an’ if we let this clock die, time’ll die too, an’ then how can we bring back the Civ’lize Days as it was b’fore the Fall?

So my cuz Spensa o’ Cluny Dwellin’ asked, What makes your Ship move? The Prescient answered, Fusion engines. Ev’ryun nodded wise as Sonmi, Oh, fusion engines it is, yay, no un asked what “fusion engine” was ’cos they din’t want to look barb’ric or stoopit in front o’ the gath’rin’.

I mem’ry she answered, Yay, Old Uns’ Smart mastered sicks, miles, seeds an’ made miracles ord’nary, but it din’t master one thing, nay, a hunger in the hearts o’ humans, yay, a hunger for more. More what? I asked. Old Uns’d got ev’rythin’. Oh, more gear, more food, faster speeds, longer lifes, easier lifes, more power, yay. Now the Hole World is big, but it weren’t big ’nuff for that hunger what made Old Uns rip out the skies an’ boil up the seas an’ poison soil with crazed atoms an’ donkey ’bout with rotted seeds so new plagues was borned an’ babbits was freak-birthed. Fin’ly, bit’ly, then quicksharp, states busted into bar’bric tribes an’ the Civ’lize Days ended, ’cept for a few folds’n’pockets here’n’there, where its last embers glimmer.

I asked Meronym if Abbess spoke true when she said the Hole World flies round the sun, or if the Men o’ Hilo was true sayin’ the sun flies round the Hole World. Abbess is quite correct, answered Meronym. Then the true true is diff’rent to the seemin’ true? said I. Yay, an’ it usually is, I mem’ry Meronym sayin’, an’ that’s why true true is presher’n’rarer’n diamonds.

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Meronym spoke, marv’lin’ as much as me, they wasn’t temples, nay, but observ’trees what Old Uns used to study the planets’n’ moon’n’stars, an’ the space b’tween, to und’stand where ev’rythin’ begins an’ where ev’rythin’ ends.

The shimm’rin’n’beautsome girl what I seen in this … orison b’fore … was she a mem’ry or a window? Meronym hes’tated. Mem’ry. I asked if the girl was livin’ still. Nay, answered Meronym. I asked, was she a Prescient? She hes’tated, an’ said she wanted to tell me a hole true now, but that other Valleysmen’d not be ready for its hearin’. I vowed on Pa’s icon to say nothin’, nay, to no un. Very well. She was Sonmi, Zachry. Sonmi the freakbirthed human what your ancestors b’liefed was your god. Sonmi was a human like you’n’me? I’d never thinked so nor’d Abbess ever speaked such loonsomeness, nay. Sonmi’d been birthed by a god o’ Smart named Darwin, that’s what we b’liefed.

Their chief was called Senator, he’d got more power’n our Abbess, yay, he’d got an army o’ ten–fifteen knuckly men with whoah spikers whose job was to force Senator’s say-so, an’ no un chose Senator, nay, it was a barb’ric pa-to-son bis’ness.

Honokaa’d got more law’n anyplace else on Big Isle ’cept the Nine Folded Valleys I s’pose, tho’ law an’ Civ’lize ain’t always the same, nay, see Kona got Kona law but they ain’t got one flea o’ Civ’lize.

A crowd o’ watchers I finded gatherin’ round someun, nustlied nearer an’ seen Meronym, or Ottery, sittin’ on a stool an’ sketchin’ people’s faces, yay! She bartered her sketchin’s for trinklety doodahs or a bite o’ grinds, an’ folks was gleesomer’n anythin’, watchin’ with ’mazement as their faces ’ppeared from nowhere onto paper, an’ more folks clustered sayin’, Do me next! Do me next! Folks asked her where she’d got that learnin’ an’ her answer was always It ain’t learnin’, bro, jus’ practice is all. Uglies she gived more beautsome’n their faces’d got, but artists’d done so all down hist’ry so Ottery the Sketchin’ Herb’list said. Yay, when it came to faces, pretty lies was better’n scabbin’ true.

Souls cross ages like clouds cross skies, an’ tho’ a cloud’s shape nor hue nor size don’t stay the same, it’s still a cloud an’ so is a soul. Who can say where the cloud’s blowed from or who the soul’ll be ’morrow? Only Sonmi the east an’ the west an’ the compass an’ the atlas, yay, only the atlas o’ clouds.

All rising suns set, Archivist. Our corpocracy now smells of senility. Well, you seem to have embraced Union propaganda wholeheartedly, Sonmi451. And I might observe that you have embraced corpocracy propaganda wholeheartedly, Archivist.

How could you know the new order would not give birth to a tyranny worse than the one it xpired? Think of the Bolshevik and Saudi Arabian Revolutions. Think of the disastrous Pentecostalist Coup of North America. Surely a program of incremental reforms, of cautious steps, is the wisest way to proceed? You show xtraordinary erudition for an eighth-stratum, Archivist. I wonder if you encountered this dictum first spoken by a twentieth-century statesman: “An abyss cannot be crossed in two steps.”

genomed moths spun around our heads, electronlike. Their wings’ logos had mutated over generations into a chance syllabary: a small victory of nature over corpocracy

But … how could people there survive without franchises and gallerias? What did they eat? Drink? How about electricity? Entertainment? What about enforcers and order? How did they impose hierarchy? Go visit them, Archivist. You can tell the Abbess I sent you. No? Well, their food came from the forest and gardens, water from the cataract. Scavenge trips to landfills yielded plastics and metals for tools. Their “school” sony was powered by a water turbine. Solar nitelamps recharged during daylite hours. Their entertainment was themselves; consumers cannot xist without 3-D and AdV, but humans once did and still can.

If consumers found fulfillment at any meaningful level, she xtemporized, corpocracy would be finished. Thus, Media is keen to scorn colonies such as hers, comparing them to tapeworms; accusing them of stealing rainwater from WaterCorp, royalties from VegCorp patent holders, oxygen from Air-Corp. The Abbess feared that, should the day ever come when the Board decided they were a viable alternative to corpocratic ideology, “the ‘tapeworms’ will be renamed ‘terrorists,’ smart bombs will rain, and our tunnels flood with fire.”

What you describe is beyond the … conceivable, Sonmi451. Murdering fabricants to supply dineries with food and Soap … no. The charge is preposterous, no, it’s unconscionable, no, it’s blasphemy! As an Archivist I can’t deny that you saw what you believe you saw, but as a consumer of the corpocracy, I am impelled to say, what you saw must, must have been a Union … set, created for your benefit. No such … “slaughtership” could possibly be permitted to xist. The Beloved Chairman would never permit it! The Juche would ionize Papa Song’s entire xec strata in the Litehouse! If fabricants weren’t paid for their labor in retirement communities, the whole pyramid would be … the foulest perfidy. Business is business.

Union prexists me, but its raisons-d’être are not to foment revolution. Firstly, it attracts social malcontents like Xi-Li and keeps them where Unanimity can watch them. Secondly, it provides Nea So Copros with the enemy required by any hierarchical state for social cohesion.

Dr. Upward was one of those Academy Award–winning Asses of Arrogance you find in educational administration, law, or medicine. He visited Aurora House twice a week, and if, at age fifty-five or so, his career was not living up to the destiny his name foretold, it was down to us damnable obstacles in the way of all Emissars of Healing, sick people.

I concluded the young-hack-versus-corporate-corruption thriller had potential. (The Ghost of Sir Felix Finch whines, “But it’s been done a hundred times before!”—as if there could be anything not done a hundred thousand times between Aristophanes and Andrew Void-Webber! As if Art is the What, not the How!)

“Oh, once you’ve been initiated into the Elderly, the world doesn’t want you back.” Veronica settled herself in a rattan chair and adjusted her hat just so. “We—by whom I mean anyone over sixty—commit two offenses just by existing. One is Lack of Velocity. We drive too slowly, walk too slowly, talk too slowly. The world will do business with dictators, perverts, and drug barons of all stripes, but being slowed down it cannot abide. Our second offence is being Everyman’s memento mori. The world can only get comfy in shiny-eyed denial if we are out of sight.”

What was I thinking? Jeopardizing my only friendships with sulks! I’ve always been a gifted sulker, which explains a lot. Sulkers binge on lonely fantasies.

Middle age is flown, but it is attitude, not years, that condemns one to the ranks of the Undead, or else proffers salvation. In the domain of the young there dwells many an Undead soul. They rush about so, their inner putrefaction is concealed for a few decades, that is all.

“Boys like the Hendersons don’t grow on trees, you know.” “Aphids grow on trees.”

The will to power, the backbone of human nature. The threat of violence, the fear of violence, or actual violence is the instrument of this dreadful will. You can see the will to power in bedrooms, kitchens, factories, unions, and the borders of states. Listen to this and remember it. The nation-state is merely human nature inflated to monstrous proportions. QED, nations are entities whose laws are written by violence. Thus it ever was, so ever shall it be. War, Robert, is one of humanity’s two eternal companions.”

Because all my life, sophisticated, idiotic women have taken it upon themselves to understand me, to cure me, but Eva knows I’m terra incognita and explores me unhurriedly, like you did. Because she’s lean as a boy. Because her scent is almonds, meadow grass. Because if I smile at her ambition to be an Egyptologist, she kicks my shin under the table. Because she makes me think about something other than myself. Because even when serious she shines. Because she prefers travelogues to Sir Walter Scott, prefers Billy Mayerl to Mozart, and couldn’t tell C major from a sergeant major.

“An idea of Father Upward’s, at the Tahitian Mission. You must understand, sir, your typical Polynesian spurns industry because he’s got no reason to value money. ‘If I hungry,’ says he, ‘I go pick me some, or catch me some. If I cold, I tell woman, “Weave!” ’ Idle hands, Mr. Ewing, & we both know what work the Devil finds for them. But by instilling in the slothful so-an’-sos a gentle craving for this harmless leaf, we give him an incentive to earn money, so he can buy his baccy—not liquor, mind, just baccy—from the Mission trading post. Ingenious, wouldn’t you say?”

“Not enough Indians. Ships bring disease dust here, the Blacks breathe it in & they swell up sick & fall like spinny tops. We teach the survivors about monogamy & marriage, but their unions aren’t fruitful.” I found myself wondering how many months had passed since last Mr. Wagstaff smiled. “To kill what you’d cherish & cure,” he opined, “that seems to be the way of things.”

Why tinker with the plain truth that we hurry the darker races to their graves in order to take their land & its riches? Wolves don’t sit in their caves, concocting crapulous theories of race to justify devouring a flock of sheep! “Intellectual courage”? True “intellectual courage” is to dispense with these fig leaves & admit all peoples are predatory, but White predators, with our deadly duet of disease dust & firearms, are examplars of predacity par excellence,

Mrs. Horrox told me departees were once presented with a garland of plumeria, but the Mission elders deemed garlands immoral. “If we allow garlands today, it will be dancing tomorrow. If there is dancing tomorrow …” She shuddered.

In an individual, selfishness uglifies the soul; for the human species, selfishness is extinction. Is this the doom written within our nature?

A life spent shaping a world I want Jackson to inherit, not one I fear Jackson shall inherit, this strikes me as a life worth the living. Upon my return to San Francisco, I shall pledge myself to the Abolitionist cause, because I owe my life to a self-freed slave & because I must begin somewhere.

film adaptations of novels are sometimes prone to failure because they are not too faithless but too faithful: Why spend all that effort producing an audiobook with pictures?

Perhaps where text slides towards ambiguity, film inclines to specificity. (Creative writing students are often taught to “show don’t tell,” but in truth words can only tell; that’s why they aren’t images.) Perhaps a novel contains as many versions of itself as it has readers, whereas a film’s final cut vaporizes every other way it might have been made, at least until a remake or director’s cut.

while a writer has only clumsy means of saying exactly how a given line is to be heard in the reader’s head (italics and adverbs), a director gets to fine-tune the canonical delivery of that line and preserve it for all time. Filmmaking is as extraordinary a world behind the scenes as it can be onscreen, and whatever happens to the film commercially I’ll always be grateful to Cloud Atlas and its three directors for my temporary visa.