Calban At Home ( Marta & Gallanol Ch.5)

CHAPTER FIVE: CALBAN AT HOME. Copyright David Kirtley 2007

Calban had returned to the place he called home. As he entered his personal number in the doormaster he had mixed feelings. Placing his finger on the panel the computer was able to verify that he was actually the card and house owner he purported to be. He stepped inside as the door removed into the wall to let him enter.

The mixed feelings were a sense of having been here so many times before. There was a feeling of release and relaxation because he could now unwind away from the gaze of all the other aliens who lived in the city and be his real self. The other feeling was the by now familiar one of having been here before every working day for years without having achieved anything. Every day he went out and came back without a sense of having achieved anything he could really value. It was not the life he had expected. It was not the life he had been promised when young. But it was the life he was trapped in. It gave him nothing he really wanted, no sense of personal achievement at something important, nor even any real entertainment or enjoyment while at work. In the evening he was back where he started – another day of his life wasted. At twenty-five Calban still felt he had many years to go and the panic he knew would come upon him when he started to get old had not yet arrived. Even so, all expectations had gone and he would live like this until he retired, making the best of a bad life.

It might not have been so bad if Calban could make some use of the little private time granted to him. His own time was enough to feed and clean himself, to sleep and study if he had continued to follow the advice given to him by everyone who had ever advised him. He had reached a level where it was possible to stop studying as long as he remained capable of doing the work allotted to him. He had taken the option given to him, recognising no reward except further pain and a loss of his own identity if he continued further on the path of further study. He had probably accepted the easy option to avoid the more severe depression which might have followed. At least the way he lived now allowed him to relax and indulge himself for at least a part of the day, a part of the day, which was at least his own even if it was worthless in terms of achievement.

The waste of his own evening time was something Calban could not easily forgive himself for. Every evening was a time when all effort left him. He would watch the Vidscreen and achieve even less than he did at work although he enjoyed it far more. The enjoyment was not particularly fulfilling because it was mixed with a feeling of self-disgust at his own inactivity and of boredom because his entertainments were not real and repeated themselves as the weeks went by.

Wearily he flung his bag onto the floor among a pile of his last few days clothing. A sudden impulse encouraged him to deal with one of those little chores which could always be put off but had to be done sometime. Calban only did these tasks when he felt energetic, although they involved little effort really.

Unusually for this time of day he found himself able to gather all the dirty clothes together and take them to the washer tube in the wall. It was a job he usually reserved for the early morning while preparing himself to go out into the city for work if he had time. He was usually in a rush to avoid losing credits by late arrival at work but sometimes there was just enough time to fit it in. Although his mind was sluggish early in the morning he was fresher. He pressed a few buttons for temperature, wash time, soap, quantity and strength and spin time. There were so many options he had learned his own standard program so that he could run the same one every time. As with all the mundane things of life, which included his work, he wished to deal with it efficiently, without allowing it to impinge on his conscious mind too much. He built it into his routine and thereafter changed it as little as possible. That was the only way to prevent the mundane from taking over his life completely.

Before he turned his mind to food needs Calban reached for the remote control. His finger fumbled to find the switch to put the Vid on as quickly as possible. The room came to life as the Vidscreen flared up. The setting was on Channel 500, featuring the latest news. This channel was usually sufficient to occupy him while he took off his coat, tie and shoes. The flat was always warm so there was no need to wear much clothing. The Vid transformed the place from a lonely one into a warm environment with the kind of company that could never do him harm or make him feel uneasy.

One of his favourite newsreaders was the blonde and attractive Martia Catiorna. She was onscreen giving the latest on the biggest news story of the moment. Famous Nardyrrian film star Faldrian Damyrron had announced his retirement from public performance in response to the series of unfounded allegations and investigative reports by journalists into his private life, which stemmed from the allegations made by his ex-mistress, after her full revelations about his string of unfaithful relationships some months before.

Calban was cynical enough to recognise that the whole affair was not important, but like most of the people on the continent, he was fascinated by the unfolding story. In common with the rest of the continent, he was probably fascinated mostly because his own life was so different from Faldrian’s. Although the news reporters and journalists seemed to compete amongst themselves to make the most moral statements and public debate seemed to demand it, Calban guessed that most of the people’s seeming fascination with the subject betrayed an interest in the actor’s sexual “misdemeanours”, which revealed their own secret desires. Calban hated the hypocrisy. The Vid Database contained everything one could ever wish to see of these non-illegal sexual misdemeanours.

“Freedom of speech”, freedom of art”, “freedom of belief”, “freedom of choice” were enshrined in the Martan constitution and in most of the constitutions of the world, along with the most important one, “freedom to trade”. The reality was somewhat different. There were many rules and regulations about almost everything, for example a lower access age of twenty-one to many of the adult-oriented goodies on offer in the Database, which was enforced by the personal access code used in the Vidbase, which included an age cut-off for large sections of the Vidbase. But Vidscreen was in everyone’s flat and what a person watched in his or her flat remained a very private right, which as far as Calban knew could not be recorded by anyone in authority.

What good were these freedoms, thought Calban, if the end result was a dry and fruitless life like his own, and which most people patiently suffered. Freedom of speech was pointless if one had no friends to talk to. His parents would not have listened to him even if they were in the same room now. His complaints would have fallen on deaf ears, a wall of silence.

Freedom of art was useless if one was diverted into a life of mundane and visionless activity and there was no time to develop any personal arts. He only had time for relaxation at the end of a day and that was not much.

Freedom of belief existed of course. So what? No one could control the thoughts of human beings even though tasks, petty or difficult, were constantly being placed on them by the system.

Freedom of choice might have made Calban laugh if he had a sense of humour because it so obviously did not exist. He was thinking of the choices he had exercised in his path through life, educational and career choices. But he could not think of any choices he had made which were not choices between education or careers of what seemed like equal tedium and disinterest. Or they were obvious choices, paths his teachers or parents, or employers had told him he ought to follow. These were no choices at all. The only choice he could remember making was the one to stop studying when he completed his last level of exams. He feared that even that choice might one day be taken away from him. There was of course a freedom of choice in what to read or watch or listen to on Vidscreen although even that was limited by what he knew and by the sheer volume of what the Vidbanks actually contained. He ought really to explore them more instead of following the tried and tested choices.

Freedom to trade was an inalienable right but it meant little to Calban. Where could most people find the capital to develop a new business? What hidden markets remained unexplored and untapped? A person of his own nature and background could do little else but obey instructions. That was not much of a freedom.

Satiated by the food provided by his food console Calban ordered up his regular course of vitamin and protein supplements. These he believed would make him strong and give him the energy he needed to survive each day at work. Millions like him did likewise. He had eaten too much again. He knew it, but somehow his appetite was always very large when he returned home from work. A long afternoon’s work into early evening was broken only by a quarter hour break for drinks and the afternoon snack.

Calban’s House did not allow their employees to eat too much at this time because it had been found statistically that work performance suffered if employees were allowed to overindulge themselves in food. It was now thought to be best practice to allow employees to eat a small sensible snack which would give them sufficient energy to work well, but not sufficient to allow brain and body to slow down while food was absorbed. Like the other millions Calban overindulged himself when he returned to the lonely confines of his own room, although, as far as he knew, he was the only one who responded in this way. Other people were role models to him, who he expected led lives of resolute self control and high mental efficiency. He would observe such people at work. They seemed to be the majority. After food there was little energy left for anything involving effort on his part.

With slow inevitability, his interest in the gossip Channel 500 had to offer waned. Martia Catiorna was beautiful when she appeared intermittently. The mere sound of her voice inspired him but the words she was saying had nothing more to offer him. He had heard these reports a thousand times before. They were all the same.

Slumped in his favourite chair he reached for the remote control, which was never far away. He flashed onscreen the databank menus and launched into the selections which normally relaxed him at this time of the evening. He whisked through a selection of the options to see which one he wished to use tonight. He often returned to the same old favourites. Familiarity increased his enjoyment. But tonight he felt like something unfamiliar. He flashed through the live Vid Channels. They were not of course really live, but they were new films on current release, or current programmes. A handsome, muscled man ploughed himself in to the vagina of a gorgeous leggy blonde who lay prostrate on a chair much like the on he was sitting on. He had not seen these performers before. The woman caught his imagination immediately. Calban could not pretend he was the man in the film as he performed for a long time before his audience of possibly millions. The woman seemed to Calban to be one of the best he had ever seen. Her body was without fault, every muscle perfectly sculpted. It was her face which stood out most of all. She seemed to be ageless, like many of these people. To Calban’s inexperienced eye he assumed that the people who could do this sort of thing in real life must be older than himself. Otherwise how could they have the confidence? Rationally he knew she might well be younger than himself. A pornog performer was ageless to her or his audience. They existed on film and were thus consigned to the Vid Data Bank for eternity. They could be resurrected at the mere press of a button. The real performer would wrinkle and die. She might never look this way again, but to her audience she was always like this. She was moaning gently as her body was pushed backwards and forwards by the man.

Calban knew nothing of their lives. How did they become pornog stars? Did they have to compete and take endless performance tests to entitle them to their career like everyone else in the world? If so theirs was an enviable career in Calban’s view, because they were able to reach the heights of their career while still young. No one else could achieve this because the increasing barriers of education had ensured that no one would be knowledgeable to do an interesting job until they began the downward slope of their natural lifespan.

No one he had ever come into contact with had ever mentioned anything about how people became pornog performers. It was another world, which was never mentioned in polite (working) circles. The general public were ignorant about the whys and wherefores of pornog but at least they had access to it privately. There were groups of men everywhere in workplaces whom Calban observed, who often joked about the subject. Some of them were married, others were not. But Calban was convinced none of them knew anything about the industry or anyone involved in it. Sometimes Calban had been included in such conversation, but he never knew quite what he was expected to say, burdened as he was with the knowledge that he was not the sort of person women found attractive or interesting, and that his daily routine gave him virtually no opportunities to talk to women. He was always very withdrawn about the subjects of women or sex when spoken to by another man, particularly if that man was known to be married or to have a girlfriend. That made him feel inadequate, and the mere mention of the subject invariably made him retreat into a resentful silence. He was not averse, however, to revealing his interest in the adult Vidbanks. This was somehow expected by certain types of men who would have ridiculed him if he had not been honest.