One Billion Drops of Happiness Read Free

click?’
    ‘You can’t forget to click, immigrant!’
    * * *
    It was not the first time that Bathsheba Ermez had been called an immigrant. Since her arrival in New America six months ago she had been trying fervently to get to grips with her new culture. Her mother had warned her she was making the biggest mistake of her life; her father had wept into his ghormeh sabzi. She would rather be Signed Off than reveal to her fellow citizens that she had been born quite naturally. The old way. It had taken months of acclimatisation in a special centre for her to learn the nuances of this modern society; that death was a scheduled event and children were born from a special serum implanted into women. They were already dabbling with embryos that needed neither man nor woman to flourish.
    When she was finally given her Suppressitor, she wore it proudly and prominently, as if it was a secret uniform others would see and accept her for. She found herself using it only a little at first, when she missed home or wondered about her lost family, but the acclimatisation had almost re-conditioned her psyche to depend on it to balance her emotions. Nowadays she was just about using it as an instinct when she could feel a warm surge of old emotions, but still found herself clicking more in the presence of others. They became suspicious if immigrants were not using them enough. The new civilisation was hyper vigilant of people from the old lands coming in. Raw with their inflammatory emotions, they could easily unsettle the finely tuned equilibrium of artificial serenity.
    * * *
    The fourth President of New America, Olivier Okadigbo, had just been hastily informed by his subordinate that Zebediah Voss, introvert inventor of the Suppressitor, had quite disappeared.
    ‘What do you mean disappeared?’ spluttered Okadigbo, highly miffed and a little embarrassed that he had by no means been the first to know.
    ‘His apartment was found empty, completely stripped. All that was left was his Suppressitor on the dining table,’ the subordinate replied sluggishly. He had been through this charade with many other people already.
    ‘This is the 22 nd century, you can’t just lose someone! I don’t understand! What does this mean? Will someone tell me what this means?’ Okadigbo leapt to his feet, furiously jabbing at his 24-carat-diamond Suppressitor. This seemed to have the desired effect for he immediately shrunk into his chair again resignedly. ‘Did he have a life partner? Damn it, I only saw him three weeks ago. We dined at The Claude and he said he thought it remarkable that leopard goulash could still be served so sang-froid.’
    The subordinate looked vaguely amused. He was used to the pint-sized Okadigbo and his fluctuant moods. Only yesterday in sheer aggravation had he spat reams of water at him mid-sip upon discovering that there had been yet another meeting scheduled without his knowledge. Okadigbo struggled for power; he sometimes felt that he would be more important if he were not President, like the runners-up of major competitions who in the long-run always seemed to have more success than the over-hyped winner.
    Okadigbo, too, had been an immigrant when the new society was officially inaugurated. He had been particularly zealous with his proclamations of ‘this wonderful new civilisation, so very forward, so very modern,’ that thanks to his remarkable gift of sycophancy he had rather quickly worked his way up to become President. Even today he still tingled with pride upon reading his name in official government documents; he had made it.
    The plain and ordinary citizens gave him much unquestioned support, but if he was very honest, he felt more decorative than functional. In the flushes of emotion before his Suppressitor kicked in he sometimes registered pangs of insufficiency, of frustration. But what were those words in this modern age? The Suppressitor had all but made them redundant! Long live the Suppressitor, long live