Holophin E-Book

Luke Kennard

• Herausgeber: Penned in the Margins
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

Seitenzahl: 92

Beschreibung

A sparky, image-rich novella that reboots familiar genre themes. - The Telegraph A compelling adventure in cyberindustrial espionage - Annexe Magazine Wonderful reading, imaginatively fresh, technically surprising [...] It deserves to sell millions. I haven't read so much joy since Heartsnatcher. - Gists & Piths Holophin needs a couple of hours of your time and is going to do something to your head. - Edward Field Like David Mitchell, [Kennard] seems to have assimilated a wide range of influences in such a way that whatever he lays out, he has considered all the angles. In this case, what starts as a tight, imaginative flight of fancy, soon collapses in on itself. - Adrian Slatcher

Leseprobe

About the Author

Luke Kennard is the author of four collections of poetry and two pamphlets. His second book, The Harbour Beyond the Movie, was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Collection in 2007. His criticism has appeared in Poetry London and The Times Literary Supplement. He reviews fiction for The National and lectures in Creative Writing at the University of Birmingham.

Holophin

Luke Kennard

Penned in the Margins

LONDON

published by penned in the margins

Toynbee Studios, 28 Commercial Street, London E1 6AB, United Kingdom

www.pennedinthemargins.co.uk

All rights reserved

© Luke Kennard

The right of Luke Kennard to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patent Act 1988.

This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Penned in the Margins.

First published 2012

eBook ISBN 978-1-908058-07-2

Print ISBN 978-1-908058-06-5

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

“You can’t go home again.”

— Marshall McLuhan

TAKIN INDUSTRIAL PRESENTS

— THE HOLOPHIN —

A GOOD ANGEL ON YOUR SHOULDER

— OR BEHIND YOUR EAR —

CONTROL OF NEGATIVE THOUGHTS; WEIGHT LOSS OR GAIN; CONFIDENCE; ALLEVIATION OF SOCIAL ANXIETY; SUCCESS IN BUSINESS AND PERSONAL LIFE; HAPPINESS; CONCENTRATION AND FOCUS; ACHIEVEMENT OF LONG- AND SHORT-TERM GOALS; INCREASE OR REDUCE AMBITION; OVERCOME INSOMNIA, ANTI-SOCIAL BEHAVIOUR, ADDICTIONS AND PHOBIAS; LOVE AND/OR HOPE; INSPIRATION AND TIME-MANAGEMENT.

YET TO CAST YOUR NIGHTED COLOUR OFF? HOLOPHIN GRIEF MANAGEMENT: BRING BACK YOUR LOVED ONES IN THE IMAGINATION OF YOUR HEART. POSITIVE THINKING; SELF-DISCIPLINE AND HABIT CONTROL; SAY GOODBYE TO UNWANTED AND TROUBLING THOUGHTS! REMOVAL OF HESITATION AND DOUBT; SENSE OF HUMOUR ENHANCEMENT; ESCAPE FANTASIES AND REALITY MASSAGING; BOREDOM AND ROUTINE INTERRUPTION.

NOT TO MENTIONA COMPLETE AND FULLY-INTEGRATED MEDIA CENTRE; YOUR OWN ORCHESTRA, CINEMA, THEATRE, TELEVISION, RECORD COLLECTION, WHEREVER AND WHENEVER.

A PERSONAL ORGANISERWHICH NOT ONLY REMINDS YOU ABOUT THAT IMPORTANT MEETING, BUT ATTENDS IT IN YOUR PLACE AND MAKES ALL THE RIGHT DECISIONS! A SOCIAL NETWORKTHAT REVEALS THE INNERMOST THOUGHTS AND WORKS OF EACH AND EVERY ONE OF US.

PERCEPTIONS ALTERED!MAKE ANYWHERE FEEL LIKE HOME; BE A STRANGER TO NO-ONE; MASTER THE ART OF BEING ALIVE!

1

See Hatsuka reach the corner of her street. Her rucksack is a highly stylised velveteen head of Pimiko the Shaman Queen and there is a lot of cat hair on her coat. Over her shoulder we see Max approaching the road from the other side. Max’s face lights up like a pinball table on a multiball bonus when he sees her and they race each other home. It is recycling day and the truck has already made its rounds. Green, blue and red plastic cubes are scattered up and down the street as if a giant box of Lego has been emptied over town. They weave in and out of them. Max leaps a green box to draw level with Hatsuka who, with the last of her sugar rush from the candied Wizard hats she won in the debate[1], out-sprints him to the sliding door of their apartment block. Today is an exciting day as the one billionth Holophin has been sold, making the Takin International School the most profitable business in the world. And businesses are everything now. Countries, with their languages and customs, are retained for sentimental reasons only, and paying any more than lip service to them is considered weak-minded. The door is activated by their necklaces – little obsidian cat faces – and the house mother, who knows that encouragement is the best way to pacify, says, ‘You win again, Hatsuka!’ Hatsuka punches Max on the shoulder. ‘Maybe you could use a couple of hours in the gym.’ Max pouts as they reach their apartment door. ‘Maybe you could use a couple of hours in the Shutupinator,’ he says.

[1] (This House Believes That Stress is a Fabrication of the Left [Hatsuka had successfully proven that it was in fact a fabrication of the Right])

2

Hatsuka likes to get her homework done as quickly as possible, regardless of quality. If possible she will do it in the five minutes it takes the other students to put their books away and slide their chairs under the tables. Max will happily spend hours perfecting his work and is quite content to leave it until tomorrow. In this sense they are good lab partners. The Takin International School sets a lot of homework. Some of it is fun, such as Hatsuka’s project on the interactions between Mr Pibbs, her real cat, and Dr Pepper, a robot cat built in class. Both rub against her legs when she pauses in the hall. She has already sold the patent for a piece of moulting code which allows Dr Pepper to shed and regenerate his fur. She stirs red powder into a glass of milk and sits down at the table.

You can access the Holophin’s interface simply by closing your eyes: a hallway with doors and drop-down menus. You can customise its appearance from a limited set. Hatsuka favours the retro look of the first Holophins: a simple corridor made of purple vectors. You can wander down it in your mind’s eye. She enters Visual and selects a warm effulgence to emanate from every object. A sense of home. She opens her eyes.

Surrounded by a nimbus of golden light, Max goes to the window and takes out his clarinet. His Holophin beams the score to Rachmaninov’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini onto the glass. He clears his throat and starts to play. The taste of the reed makes him see bulrushes, a pond, wildfowl.

‘That’s from an advert. What’s it for?’ asks Hatsuka.

Max blows a sour note.

‘Your bum, I think,’ he says.

Hatsuka notices with irritation that he uses the English bum rather than his native butt. Half Japanese, half English, she adores the American accent. All the best cartoons were American and you never quite shook that off. A voice that entertains, legitimises, suspends your disbelief. Why on earth would an American want to sound English? He carries on playing. He has to practice for the Team Building Residential.

Max is not called Max. His given name is Immanuel. When Hatsuka was introduced to him on induction day she misheard Immanuel as Maximillian and said, ‘Can I call you Max?’

‘I guess so,’ said Immanuel, faintly baffled. The name stuck. Everyone calls him Max. The instructors and the students.

They both study at the Takin International School as boarders. In the mornings: Logic, Rhetoric and Grammar. In the afternoons: Nano-technology, Engineering and Marketing.

3

She calls her father. He appears in her mind’s eye. Laughing as always. The reception is terrible as always. Her parents cannot work the stripped-down Holophin she sent them just to make calls. They appear in her head, laughing and apologising. As she has been too busy to visit for - can it really be? - a year now Hatsuka has actually taken to writing to her parents.

As well as a seat of learning, the school is the sole manufacturer and retailer of Takin Industrial’s Holophins. Holophins have the appearance of small holographic dolphin-shaped stickers. They are equipped with advanced artificial intelligence and can communicate wirelessly with any computer terminal or network. They produce sound through a tiny internal speaker which can be amplified by its proximity to certain surfaces. Primarily, though, the Holophin speaks directly into your auditory centre. There are countless independent software producers working on new functions for the Holophin. In the last five years they have branched into every sector. Health. Finance. Education. Admin. Among the most popular functions are perception and personality modulators.

You can see coloured stars bursting out of everyone’s mouths when they talk. You can make everyone prettier. By following the Holophin’s training you can make yourself up to 45% more charming, 20% more patient in every social interaction. On the fringes of this are the memory inflectors – the most impressive and the most unpredictable. Anecdotally there are reports of users left permanently psycho- and physiologically affected by memory modulation. There is no evidence for this yet, but the software is not recommended. Holophins are charged by being stuck on the flesh of their owner. A high carb diet is recommended.

Hatsuka blinks, closes her eyes and thumbs through a batch of 200 photographs. Holophin tattoos. Holophins stitched directly into the flesh. A Holophin beneath the skin. She is looking for the least unattractive for the vote next week. The mandatory Holophin implant is one of the more controversial policies of the Takin International School, but it has shown such extraordinary results with sex offenders, murderers and criminals of every stripe that they are currently working on several penitentiary contracts.

Student accommodation is paid for by the students’ own research and development, which leads to a hierarchy between lab partners. Hatsuka and Max, something of a power couple among their year-group, live in a luxury condo [see Drs Helen and A. Ambrose Meols’ Infant Cohabitation with Minimum Supervision]. Animatronics is all practice. Mindless busy work when compared to the Holophins. Max’s current coursework is embedding them with a sense of Status Anxiety. Hatsuka is collaborating on this while undertaking her own pet project in ad hominem attacks. The Holophins are unusually receptive to this. There’s something gleefully malevolent about them. Already her test-Holophins are accusing one another of misapplying the term ad hominem. ‘It doesn’t just mean getting personal, you moron! It has to undermine the argument!’ Tim Takin, the headmaster and CEO, is being interviewed on the news. Dinner tonight is white fish substitute in white sauce served with kelp. Max leaves his kelp.

4

Hatsuka’s interest in the art of debate began with her parents’ decision to send her to the Takin International School four years ago. It was a cold summer’s day, the summer after primary school. The day her mother gave her the Pimiko rucksack.

She is sitting in the snug of her condo, but the smell of cut grass and goose excrement seems to fill Hatsuka’s nose. Memory Enhancement software is Hatsuka’s only vice.

They were walking through a park and Hatsuka’s father was imitating the ducks. Some were real ducks, some were robot ducks and Hatsuka’s father claimed you could spot the robots by how they responded to your quack. Something knowing about it, he maintained. No doubt the work of the little geniuses at the Takin International School. He was so proud of Hatsuka.

– It’s a novelty factory, said Hatsuka’s mother.