Love in the Space Age

She put on her space helmet and tried not to look at the rugged landscape. It was not romantically wild nor was it primitive and untouched. It was like a face which had been scarred and burnt by corrosive acids and infected by ulcers like a face in a video nasty. This was the landscape of one of the asteroids. Human beings had fought a star war there and the land was bleached and burnt. Pinnacles shot out of the hurt earth like bony figners. There was no sign of plant life. It had been destroyed in the sxplosions.

She had been born on the earth. Of her childhood, she remembered little and that little was painful enough. There was a room with gray walls and they seemed to come down and suffocate her. And she was wet and miserable and crying. Her voice seemed hoarse and incessant in her ears. Sometimes a woman came and gave her things to eat and cleaned her. She was taken out and there were other children. But there was no one who knew her. These were her first memories. She learnt to read and found that in the age of ignorance people lived in houses and had fathers, mothers, brothers, and sisters were rivals. Everybody owned everybody else and there was jealousy, possessiveness and domination. She was lucky that she had no parents---she had been born in a test tube. But, somehow, she did not feel fortunate when she read about mothers caring about her daughters. And when she read about love, she did not know what it was. One of her teachers told her that she would find out when she grew up.

And she did find out. The central office of Space very kindly arranged for her to meet young males when she was fourteen. They were compassioante enough to allow men and women to enjoy the pleasures of love as early as possible. It was wrong, intoned the Chief Administrator, that people should be restrained. This was the custom in the age of ignorance. One evening she was conveyed to another part of the earth. Lights flashed and drums beat in a pyramid shaped building. She was given a capsule and the lights turned wild in her mind. The drums beat in her temples. She found herself carried away in a hall where bodies swayed, gyrated, swung and tore off each others’ clothes. She laughed in abandon and thousands of mirrors reflected wildly copulating bodies. And this continued till she lost count of events. But her mind was active, keen like a hawk and her body was aware of whatever gratifications were being provided to it. Then everyone rested. She was given a drink. She drank and became calm, listless. This was another kind of pleasure. She drew back from the orgy and sat all alone. She did not mind her loneliness any more. Then it was gray in the windows. She was taken back to her place of work.

Work: that was the worship of the age. She had worked everyday since she was a baby. She had heard about the indolence of the age of ignorance. But the books showed small child heroes who worked in factories and mines since they were three. They used to creep into mines and dig out coal, and when they got back, the sky was as black as coal. But this was a very long time ago. She enjoyed reading about Tom Sawyer--- O but what a sinfullylazy, good for nothing child; what days of wasteful leisure---and yet she always thought of green grass and trees and an open meadow and sunshine. She had not seen such a landscape except in pictures or in films. But such films and pictures were rare---people enjoyed sensation and sensation was always provided.

When she was fifteen, she went to the central office of the solar system. Here life was much too busy to think. But sometimes when she heard that they had wiped out ignorance, spite, greed and illiteracy she was enthusiastically grateful to the authorities for having been allowed to work in the main office. Such lectures were given almost every day. She had always heard such things and now she accepted them with all her heart. Tom Sawyer was guiltily suppressed in some hidden nook of her brain. She flew from planet to planet at the speed of light and wherever she went she found the same mask-like faces, the same words, the same machines and the same masses of maps and plans.

One day when she was going to Venus her spacecraft developed a strong whining sound in the engine. It whined like a hungry puppy. She was told to proceed to space station A-14. The space station approached and a black hole yawned out to swallow her spacecraft. She steadied herself for the landing and in another moment she was going into the steel stomach of the dragon-like space station. When her aircraft stopped, she alighted. She had a headache. She took off her space helmet and walked in. Several computers were working all around. One of them came near and stopped. She looked up and found herself looking into a pair of highly intelligent brown eyes. Suddenly she realised that this was not a computer. It was a human being. The helmet was removed. She found herself addressed by a young man. He was smiling. She liked his face.

‘So that’s your spacecraft’, he said genially.

‘Yes. It has an odd sound in the engine’.

‘Like a puppy’.

‘I heard a puppy on Mars---yes, like a puppy in pain’.

He laughed: ‘It is in pain’.

‘But pain cannot be felt by machines’.

‘I was joking’.

She was embarrassed. She knew nothing about jokes. But he did not say anything which she could not understand. He talked to her in a gentle voice. She had never known anyone talk about nothing for so long. Just then her wireless receiver told her that her aircraft had been repaired.

‘I must be off’, she said putting on her helmet.

‘Why?’

She was again surprised. She did not know what to say. Maybe the question contained something which she was not aware of. Perhaps he would say he was only joking.

‘I am going’, she said tentatively.

‘You cannot go’, he said with a smile.

‘I am the man who signs the documents of the aircraft’.

‘But the message...’

‘Was given by robotos’.

This had never happened before. All around was the reality she knew. Robots were industiously at work. Machines hummed. But in front of her stood a man. His face was still smiling and his eyes were twinkling with mischief.

‘But the work will be delayed’, she said in a confused voice.

‘The work! Man was not made for work. Work was made for man. I too have been neglecting it because these moments will never come back again’.

She looked at him in blank incomprehension. Suddenly she found her heart palpitating. She guessed what he meant, though such things usually happened only in the evening scheduled for them.

‘Oh’ she said brightening up, ‘do you want to make love to me? I do have my pills’.

The face in front of her did not stop smiling. For a moment she felt he would take her to his room. Then he shook his head slowly.

‘I do not want to make love to you’,he said gently. ‘I want to love you’. Again she did not understand. He turned back quickly: pressed a bell, and signed a paper which was presented to him.

‘You can go’ he said quietly.

She walked into her aircraft and the engines roared into life. The dragon swallowed her and then there was an infinity of darkness all around her.

That night she was so perplexed that she could not eat her meal. No one noticed. It was bad manners to talk or make friends. People had learnt to speak only when required and then only about practical matters. In books she found all about the art of conversation. But today she wanted to talk to someone. A few days later the central office announced some new laws. One of them was that those who wanted to sabotage the great principle of work would be killed. Every loyal citizen was supposed to report such people. Such people, it was alleged, were trying to corrupt others. They wanted to introduce selfishness. They ought to be eradicated. When she heard this she felt stunned. Now she knew what kind of man had been talking to her. No wonder she did not know what to think of him. She wanted to report him immediately but suddenly realised that she did not know his name. She tried to find out from the space station A-14 about the astronaut but it was not possible. She did not know when she had been there and without knowing the exact record she could not find his name.

She went to another planet. Here she found that the new plans had been implemented. There was so much food that it had to be destroyed. It was uneconomical to send the food to the other planets. They had enough anyway. Besides, the real reason for producing this excessive food was to keep people busy. In Mars they had given leisure and the results had been disastrous. People, unused to leisure, had felt lost. They identified their selves through their job. The women had no children to bring up and the men did not know what to do when they did not work. They knew the pleasures of drugery and orgies but what could they do when these too were denied. Many committed suicide. Small cubicles were seen bespattered with blood. Blue bodies were found swollen in gutters. Then the central office had outlawed this deviant practice.

One day she found herself in the Mediterranean. This used to be a sea but now it was a black cavern. There was oil in it and it was difficult to go near it. When human beings had turned the earth upside down in quest of energy, metals, elements and minerals; this sea had been dried up. At its bottom treasures had been discovered. But men had fought for them and the great bed of the sea had burst into myriad coloured fluids which had merged into a dusty black fluid which now remained in the yawning cavern where once the Mediterranean rolled in its glory. As she was hurrying away towards an inland spot, another apacecraft landed near the shore.

An astronaut emerged, walking on unsure legs as if not used to walking. He came near her. When he took off her helmet she was taken aback. It was the astronaut she had met ten years ago at space station A-14. She could report him immediately now. She started fumbling with her wireless set.

‘Do it later’, he said with a smile. ‘Let me tell you a few things’.

‘I am here on duty. I have very little time’.

‘I know. You have always been on duty. Our life is a long duty. But listen, you do have time enought for that’.

She felt she wanted to listen. After all no one talked like him. He actually smiled and said such strange things. Almost against her will she stopped fumbling with the wireless set.

‘Yes’, she demanded.

‘You will have to sit down and relax to understand me’, he said. His eyes were mocking her. She felt like the day when a child had ruffled her hair. She had been so pleased-but-she had to go back to the class. Punctuality was inculcated. It was a duty. And that child had never come back. Perhaps that child was not punctual enough to be given freedom. She sat down.

‘I have been following you’, he said.

‘How do you get the time to do all this?’ she asked him.

‘I control time. It does not rule my life. But I did not come to argue. I came to talk to you about yourself’.

She nodded her head. She was enjoyingit. But somehow she also felt guilty.

‘It is not easy to say what I am saying. I am doing it only because---but you would not understand. Not yet’.

‘I do not understand you’.

‘You will’, he said with sudden emphasis, ‘You will. Listen, we are living in hell. They have established the most successful dictatorship in the world. They have convinced us that work is the aim of human life. It is a new form of asceticism. Just as the mediaeval monks did not want human beings to enjoy themselves, our government does not want it either. They have removed all human emotions. They have made us puppets in the name of the community. But what is the community? They are people like us. And all of us are busy like beavers to serve the system. If we do not work we feel lost, we kill ourselves. But they are afraid of allowing us to think for ourselves. You see this is tyranny. No one disagrees with the government because such disagreement is disloyalty. They are cruel murderers, exploiters’.

She was trembling. These strange words had assaulted her unprepared senses. She was thirsty. She drank some water but it did not

Written 1992;