The Magnificent Lightness of Being

By Archibald Grey

Mpohor City is a futuristic utopia managed by an all-powerful artificial intelligence. Jacob Młynarczyk is an 800 year-old adolescent grappling with the meaning of life, death, art, and autonomy in a perfectly regulated world.

 

A coming of age story set 2000 years from now, The Magnificent Lightness of Being takes place in the perfect future we all secretly dream of. But do we all wish it would actully come true?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Hubris Books
• Release date: May 11, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223378686

Archibald Grey

Archibald Grey is the reasonably well selling author of the novels Muriel and The Inheritance, and the story collection The Crashing Tide. He has had his short stories rejected by many of the most prestigious conventional and science fiction publications in both print and digital, and he is noted for having won no awards. Archibald lives in Semolina, Canada and has no pets or children.

Book preview

Part 1

Through the jungle, a path wove. Well-kept, with tidy borders, a neatly-trimmed tunnel of deep green foliage, fine white gravel under foot. A breeze rolled over the canopy above, bringing the boughs to bend and wave, the leaves to shiver and shake, the air suddenly filled with a wash of gentle noise. From somewhere far off came the sound of voices. Distant, like the ghostly whispers heard in the hiss of a cassette tape after the music has faded away.

The quivering, fuzzy echoes of booming and bellowing, a shout, a scream, the strange ululating burst of a crowd’s laughter, the rising wave of applause—thin and spectral, like the gusting waves that sweep through a wash of rain on stone streets heard through a half-open window—distinctive, and yet easily lost behind the rustling of the deep-green ferns dangling from long, curving spines like a thousand spindly, brown-tipped tongues; behind the endlessly variable squawking and warbling of a thousand birds, their primary-coloured plumage hidden somewhere within the jungle’s emerald tumult.

Lost in gloomy meditation, Jacob was unaware of the verdant splendour around him, insensitive to the susurrations of his light shoes on the fine gravel path beneath his feet, deaf to the delicate friction of his loose silk sleeves as they brushed against his skin, and yet somehow not to those most distant echoes of human voices. Another great swell of wind arose and washed over the canopy above him, bringing with it its froth of the ten-thousand-mouthed roar, not quite dragging him out of his reverie but tugging at him, nipping his skin—the magnetic sound of a large mass of human beings all gathered in one place.

He continued walking without any sense of urgency, pacing slowly along the canopy-sheltered footpath that meandered through the jungle of his equatorial home. The path forked ahead of him, one branch leading further off into the jungle, and the other toward the countersunk bowl of the amphitheatre which projected the crowd’s roar up toward the heavens, and Jacob, in spite of himself and unaware that he was even making a choice, chose the latter; and felt an unacknowledged resonance grow within him as that human tumult grew louder step by step. This choice was a tiny change, of monumental proportions. Like matching poles of two magnets turned toward one another, he had for uncounted days, years, perhaps decades been repulsed by such sounds, such experiences, such shared being. But now it was as though that magnet inside of him had turned by some sliver of a degree, and the unseen force which had been holding this balance in place had weakened just enough—and repulsion was slowly becoming attraction.

With each step the magnet in his heart turned a little further, and the pull became a little stronger, and as he approached the jungle’s edge, breaks in the heavy foliage began to grow. From between them came flickering glimpses of primary colours, great blocks of synthetic stone infused with bright pigments of unadulterated colour.

Jacob emerged from the overhanging canopy of the jungle path into a tight clearing—which, seen from afar, looked as if he were emerging from a dark tunnel cut into the a great escarpment of green stone. The surrounding jungle stood, massive, undulating, a naturally arising edifice, enveloping the amphitheatre within a perfect, well-groomed half-circle—creating an optimized enclave of order in the heart of the roiling chaos of tropical wilderness.

Emerging from the warm, close gloom of the jungle tunnel’s mouth and into the open light of the artificial clearing, Jacob shimmered; the complex geometric arabesques of his multi-coloured silk-like robes flapped with the gentle breeze and the relaxed swing of his limbs—like a confused pixel trying to flicker all the colours of the visible spectrum at once. The metaphorical camera in our mind’s eye pans out in a great sweeping arc; up, over, and across the tall stone-like wall of the amphitheatre—down into the broad semi-circle of seats; a half-bowl filled to the brim with happy, chattering people. And when we cut back to Jacob, his dark brown skin wrapped in shimmering colour, the sound of their voices frothed up and over the edge, filling the clearing with the sound of energy and excitement—and within Jacob it created a strange, expectant tension; unpleasant and yet invigorating. The babble grew, and the strange attraction pulled and pulled.

Down in the carefree and frolicsome tumult, from within the forest of mingling bodies, each body of which stretched and wandered and chit-chatted, using the brief intermission to take a rest from being entertained, a face chanced to look back.

Around that face, other heads nodded, eyebrows wiggled, lips tightened into smiles or loosened—hands gesticulated, flapping in time with oscillating jaws and vocal chords. The face, disbelieving of what it saw, returned to tracking the chattering tongue-work of its nearest neighbours, and then, unsure, glanced back again, its expression of polite attention and curiosity morphing slowly into a toothy, pink-gummed smile. Porter—thin and wiry, with a broad, flat nose and angular jaw, skin dark like the bark of a moringa tree shaded from the rising sun by its clusters of small leaves—stepped forward and began to wend his way along his row, dodged through the babbling crowd and stepped into the aisle staircase that descended toward the stage below. On that platform was a bare void of synthetic stone, the becalmed eye in the centre of a human half-tornado of happiness and relaxed ease; it waited for the second act of the drama to fill it, to give it life.

Porter rushed up the steps toward Jacob, took him by the shoulders and gave a friendly shake; looked at him as if his presence were some sort of miracle, What the hell are you doing here?

By way of a cryptic answer Jacob simply nodded toward the stage, where an actor had emerged and begun to pace slowly downstage toward the crowd. Clad in a long, sweeping robe of synthetic satin, so dark and so matte that it seemed to swallow all of the light that hit it into a void of perfect darkness, the woman made no effort to draw attention to herself. Each step downstage was slow and measured, proceeding with glacial and theatrical slowness. Jacob’s eyes soon lost interest and began to wander over the giggling, chatting crowd.

Gradually, the half-tornado of mirth and excitement petered out as the audience noticed the void-woman creeping toward them and fell into hushed expectation. Porter put his hand around his friend’s waist and turned to watch the action, I thought you were bored of this idiocy...

Jacob glanced toward Porter, and failed, only just, to hide his distaste for the scene and his discomfort with his friend’s affectionate physical contact, It’s been such a time since I was last at one of these; there’s something about it that I thought I missed—though now that I’m here, I’m not so sure what that was.

The woman on the stage finally reached its edge, then spread her arms and took in the whole crowd. Porter whispered, his words almost inaudible as he patted his friend’s chest with his free hand, Well, I, for one, am glad you’ve decided to grace us with your grave displeasure.

The woman’s voice rose, rich and mellifluous, synthetically amplified by hidden speakers embedded in the wall behind her, such that she seemed to be standing directly next to each member of the audience; Jacob shivered. Dear friends. Rested and reinvigorated as you now most certainly are, allow me to return to my tale; its tragic conclusion awaits.

A gleeful gasp went up in the crowd as a man and a woman suddenly emerged from the wings and dashed toward the front of the stage. They skidded to a halt and saluted to the crowd with their bamboo swords—then as one turned toward each other and struck dramatic poses; hands on hips and sword points aimed at the opponent’s heart. From the woman warrior’s side of the stage, a man emerged and flitted nimbly up behind her and kissed her on the mouth—the crowd whistled, and yowled, and cat-called—then he flitted back to sit on the edge of the stage to kick his heels and watch the battle begin. At the sight of the kiss, the swordsman on the other side of the stage tensed, enraged, preparing to attack.

The satin-clad woman intoned, No heart can withstand the tragedy of friends and lovers turned bitterest enemies. We have witnessed lovers smitten, the deceit which sundered their entwined embrace, the aching pain of betrayal. All that remains for this final act is to discover who shall triumph, Leona the betrayer or Leonard the betrayed.

With a cry and the scuffled padding of bare feet, the two warriors dashed toward one another, swinging and lunging and parrying great blows of vicious violence. The sun’s earthwards-hurled rays glinted madly across the silver and gold strands woven through their polka-dotted leotards and the crowd cheered and groaned, each calling the name of their favourite fighter—and to Jacob’s ears it was as if he were standing in the centre of a herd of mewling cats-in-heat.

With a scream, Leona lunged, but with a deftly twirling pirouette, Leonard dodged, and then swept his blunt and useless sword across the back of Leona’s thigh. She tumbled to the ground with a screech and one half of the crowd leapt to their feet in dismay. Jacob tried to care, but failed.

Yet, feeling as though he should demonstrate some sort of reaction, he leaned toward Porter, The choreography is quite nice, they’re dancers by training, I assume.

Receiving no answer in the ensuing seconds, Jacob looked to his friend, who had let go Jacob’s hip and was bouncing gleefully at his side, clapping and shouting the male fighter’s name, Leonard! Leonard! Leonard!

Leona, writhing and grasping at her feigned injury, screamed and screamed, dramatically, and the crowd screamed, sympathetically—and the scratchy, screeching roar was like a saw blade on Jacob’s ears.

Leonard, triumphant, strode to his vanquished opponent and lifted Leona’s chin and held his wooden blade to her throat. Light sparkled with majestic malevolence from the silvered tip of his impotent sword and something made Jacob look back over the heads of the crowd to see a bright spot of white light aimed down at the stage. Jacob grimaced, sighed, then turned back as the crowd alerted him to the fact that Leona, seemingly defeated, had miraculously reached out and grasped her fallen sword, and then rammed it between her opponent’s legs. Porter wailed in dismay, and the other half of the crowd shot up out of their seats, everyone screaming and wailing in earnest sympathy.

Leonard, too, wailed and flailed, sprawling to the ground—his artfully-hurled sword arcing high into the air and landing with a clatter, far upstage and far away from the audience. For Jacob, the brief silence that fell was as if he lay in the rocky shallows after a shipwreck, battered by wind and waves, waiting to be engulfed by some great wave and swept back out into the ocean—drowned by current against whose power he could not swim.

That great wave came when the woman hobbled over to where