The Last Mimeo On Earth
David knew a little about paper. In his
private plastic bubble, in a single men' s
district of the vast underground city under the
South Pole, David had quite a pile of old books
and magazines, at least three dozen. While not
forbidden from keeping hard copy, screeners
who looked too deeply into the old history might
inadvertently type a forbidden word or phrase
into an official file. And soon after they would disappear.
David was a screener. On an improbably overpopulated Earth, after the
slogan "A Job For Everyone!" became law, jobs were analyzed and divided
up so that four or five people could do the work once done by one. A
screener spent his workday sitting in front of a System terminal. Keepers,
builders, low level techies, gofers, badgers, fixers, meds, bullies and even
supes were forbidden to learn to read. To the screeners the System
interface was seamless. Sliding their fingers over a smooth tablet, they
could quickly move about through the vast areas of information kept in the
System. Not meant to do physical work, take action, or make decisions,
scanners tended to be obese. And nearsighted. The System terminals were
everywhere, always on, their two-way display screens always watching.
A high level techie or an Illit might have their very own reader
assigned to them, equipped with a portable terminal. It was an Illit' s job to
deliberately know nothing about anything, assign tasks, and make decisions.
"Knowledge Is Tyranny!" was another slogan from the dark days of the
climate changes. As the population migrated towards the cooler poles and
the great cities of the former temperate zones became flooded tropical
jungles populated by savages, the Illits emerged as the dominant political
power. Above them, maintaining totalitarian control through their
cybernetic domination of the System, lurked a very small group of brilliant,
demented control addicts . . . the Octopus.
Nearly a century after the forced retreat from fossil fuel industrializa-
tion, the earth' s climate had begun to cool, and the Octopus was moving to
resettle the abandoned temperate zones. Their monopoly on information, their exclusive knowledge of history, engineering and mathematics, their
Super User status on the System, and their near-immortality (permitted by
secret access to advanced medical techniques not fully understood by the
Meds who operated the machines), had kept them alive and in power since
the Holy Reagan Revolution.
Only the free readers, or "fans" as they secretly called themselves,
opposed the Octopus. A free reader was usually a builder or a fixer,
occasionally a gofer or even a particularly clever supe, who had survived
childhood dietary mind-control indoctrination intact and entered adulthood
with a clear head. Most of the population unknowingly stumbled about in a
junk-food and soft-drink induced and maintained daze, reduced to a life of
slogans ("Love Your Job!" "Always Ask The Illit" "Have You Spoken In
Tongues Today?" "Death To Free Readers!") . The free readers recruited in
small cells, taught reading and traded information. Survival was hard.
People could disappear at any moment, whisked away by the bullies, the
Illits secret police army. The System was programmed to recognize danger-
ous qualities in a citizen such as curiosity, intelligence or disobedience.
Bullies were part cyborg, hard wired to the system, selected for the lowest
possible levels of blind obedience and brute insensitivity.
Free readers could not openly use the System, so they communicated by
paper. Paper was rare, the forests it once came from mostly gone. People
barely knew what it was when they saw it. Down at the flea market David
had recently found, amid a stack of something called "Popular Hot
Rodding," a small magazine crudely printed on soft pulpy paper. It was
called "Lem' s Luminary" and it was full of reviews of old books. At the
bottom of the title page was a cryptic note: "Distributed by FWA."
David wanted to know more about FWA. He' d known of free readers for
quite a while and had been hoping to be contacted by them. Screeners were
a problem for the free readers. They were too often caught, and the bullies
could usually torture the names of their cell members out of them. Many
free readers had disappeared . . . into the food processing sectors.
"Lem' s Luminary" also had a chatty editorial where the editor
lamented his printing problems, talking about his "mimeo" and "typer"
and how he was running very low on "stencils, ink and paper." David knew
something about these. Exploring in the tunnels of an abandoned military
base he had found a copy of "The Preventive Maintenance Monthly," a
sort-of comic book that had instructed soldiers in equipment maintenance.
In addition to explaining how to replace the safety switch on an M79 tactical
nuclear warhead (a "factory recall"), grease the equilibrator on an
M103 tank, and replace a stripped range correction gear on a M13 ballistic
computer, it described cleaning and operating a "mimeograph machine."
David also knew where there was just such a mimeograph machine. He'd
found it in a forgotten storeroom below the Admiral Byrd Museum. All the
other things mentioned in "Lem' s Luminary" were there too, ink, stencils,
paper, even a "typer."
During his periods of recreation David had begun to produce his own
"fanzine" on the old typer. Taking "Lem' s Luminary" as a model, David
had already written a review of each of his books, along with a synopsis
of several articles from magazines, newspapers and pamphlets he had
collected. Now he was stuck on writing his chatty editorial. For years he
had only dreamed of writing the way he wanted to write, using his own
words. He'd imagined himself pretty good at it. As a screener he was
required to enter data and comments into the System, but there were strict
protocols and formats for all key entry. To add something to the database
you needed the proper password, which was usually made up on the spot by
the overseeing Illit, who promptly forgot it. Things were always fouled up.
Builders could wait for days for the instructions they needed, gofers
constantly wandered the corridors following confusing directions provided
by the usually wrong Illits.
Sitting in front of the typer in the dusty forgotten room, illuminated by
a single bare overhead lightbulb, David had writers block. He didn't know
enough about it to call it that. He had no dictionary, no thesauri. He didn't
quite know whom he was writing to or how he was going to distribute it to
them. He had never dared discuss his outside reading interests or his
fanciful ideas with the other workers. There was a catch in his throat, a
tightness in his chest, as he labored to introduce himself to this unknown,
barely glimpsed audience. He did not know who the fans were or what FWA
was. He was unsure that he would be able to make the old mimeo work --
but every fiber in his body, every convoluted twist and turn in his brain
seemed to be tuned, oscillating in harmony with this dimly perceived
audience. Time turned in on itself. David felt profoundly as if he were
walking through a sunny wild-flower filled meadow with the sweet sound of
harp strings in his ears and an ever expanding glow emanating from deep
within his proud chest. A beautiful lady, smiling, ageless, wearing a flow-
ing white gown and holding a shining wand before her, came floating down
from the sky in front of him, and she began to speak, "Davidphan, we have
been waiting for you . . . "
But the draft of cold air and the rattle at the door brought David back
to Antartica, to the forgotten storeroom. And there was the sound of a
theremin humming nearby.
TO BE CONTINUED . . .
Data entry by Judy Bemis
Hard copy provided by Geri Sullivan
Data entry by Judy Bemis
Updated November 20, 2002. If you have a comment about these web pages please send a note to the Fanac Webmaster. Thank you.