The O.D. (38 page)

“When you, the individual, arrive back at your birth, which now occupies the same point in time as your death, you will be able to look back and say with honesty that you feel no guilt. You won’t have to seek forgiveness from God or anyone else because a second,
reverse
lap would have allowed you to make good the damage in
actual
terms. Forgiveness is a concept invented to paper over our lack of awareness at the time of our misdemeanors.”

A delegate from the Ukraine stopped breathing and died at this point, but it had nothing whatever to do with Pilot’s speech. The man’s colleagues wouldn’t even notice his demise for another hour. A heavy drinker, he had, they thought, merely fallen asleep.

“There’s a kind of physical reversal of time in people with Alzheimer’s Disease,” Pilot continued. “For them, the end of the first lap is the onset of the disease and the second lap consists of peeling away memory layers in reverse chronological order until all that is left of the individual are their earliest memories from childhood and then infancy. The next stop is birth, which for them is also death.

“These people get nearer to time reversal than the rest of us. No one can physically walk through the past doing those things I just said, but a
collective
form of the same process
is
possible.” Pilot counted to ten in his head to give the translators time to catch up.

“If you treat all of humanity as one person, grant them a lifespan of five hundred years, and call today the halfway mark, then our subject will have been born in the late Eighteenth Century – roughly the beginning of the Industrial Revolution.

“We’ll make this person male, because the motivating force of this first lap has been very much male in its nature. He has been charging forward since birth with blind invention – incredibly intelligent on the one hand and grossly insensitive, arrogant and irresponsible on the other. Now that he has reached our imaginary mid-way line, we’re calling to him to turn around and go back.”

Pilot shook his head, conceding the tallness of this order.

“That is the nature of the problem. How do you stop nine billion stampeding people, turn them all around and march them off in the opposite direction when all they know is forward? How do you convince them that the way ahead is
behind
them?

“That is the job that faces us now. If you want to give this job a name,
Dismantlement
is as good a word as any. Abbau… Demontere… Ontmanteling… Avtackla… Smatellamento… Demontowac… Demantelement.”

Pilot had been speaking with exaggerated slowness from the beginning of his address to allow time for translation, but the word ‘dismantlement’ he had translated himself.

“The job specification of Dismantlement is simple: to achieve the same population level, and comparable quality of air and water, green space, forestation and wilderness by the twenty-third Century as we had in the eighteenth. We’re now at the point of
must
return
– the beginning of the longest revolution in human history.” Lethal silence filled the Mother Dome like radon.

“We cannot determine the shape of our island by walking around its coastline,” Pilot continued, borrowing Vaalon’s words of twelve years earlier. “So bear with me while we fly over it at altitude.

“Returning to our global person, as well as turning him around, we need to change his sex. For the next two hundred and fifty years, a
female
order must supercede the male one which has dominated through history, otherwise Dismantlement – synonymous with protection, care, nurturing and sensitivity – won’t be possible. Benevolence and compassion flows in the hormones of both sexes and we must bring them to the fore. With the correct disposition and a clear vision, we will be able to dismantle the machines and practices that are killing us. Illustrations…

“The arms industry. The black flashdrives in your information packs contain the roadmap and timetable for a global disarmament programme designed to dismantle the arms industry down to the last bullet and the last arms dealer within forty years.” The opposing poles of the human magnet before him – positive/negative, applause/silence in equal strengths – gave Pilot cause for satisfaction. That so many seemed emotionally in favour of killing the arms industry surprised him. He wasn’t confident his next target would be as well received.

“Globalization. We propose the deglobalization of world trade and the dismantlement of the multinationals. The red flash drives contain a detailed blueprint for restructuring multinational companies into groups of smaller, more ethical and more accountable entities. Twenty of the most eminent thinkers in the corporate world have lent their expertise to the authorship of not just attainable multinational company dismantlement, but of a further dozen sensitive dismantlement issues covering commerce, business and industry. Differing cultural and national mores have been recognized and accommodated across all of these proposals, and the word
profit
has been redefined.

“Urbanization. We propose a gradual disurbanization of the world’s cities. How? The average life of a New York skyscraper is thirty or forty years. Replace every other building with an open space for parks, squares and allotments, put a ceiling of four storeys on all rebuilding, and by 2260 Manhattan could be the same pleasant town it was in 1760, but with all the technological advances we enjoy today. This is the template for all cities. Dismantlement will create a new balance.

“Remember, we’re talking about a timescale of two hundred and fifty years, so it’s not going to be as disruptive as it may appear. Dismantlement can happen gradually. But it has to happen
consensually
.”

Pilot paused to allow the translators time to catch up.

“The current Dismantlement map includes all the developed nations as a matter of course. Depending on which Dismantlement we’re talking about, additional countries may be added to this list.

“Those nations listed under each Dismantlement should, if they all act together, effect the desired changes on those countries currently outside their influence, and therefore not yet prospects for inclusion on the Dismantlement map. They will quickly see the stark choice before them – dismantle like the rest or suffer.” Pilot glanced down at Aaron Serman, sitting sphinx-like and unreadable in the front row. Next to him, Macushla was following the bullet points in the folder on her lap like a theatre prompt, ready to cue when necessary. Apart from the shaky beginning, her partner was doing well.

“Dismantlement starts at the top,” Pilot continued. “Like tearing down a building, it has to be done one brick at a time, because it is a building we still occupy. The top countries, the top people in government, commerce and industry – that’s where Dismantlement begins. The workers have had their revolutions, now it is the turn of the managers. The reason it has to start with them is simple. The underdeveloped countries will only consider halting their own mindless charge towards the seemingly gold-paved streets of globalization if they see the developed countries ripping up those very same streets and walking back to join them halfway.”

The vacant expressions before him showed Pilot that he had hit a brick wall. He decided to go off-piste. It was Mara’s job to return him to the script after he’d made his point. “To those of you at the top looking down, your fears are understandable. Today, you are at the peak of your game, the peak of your competitiveness, drive and potential. By your way of thinking, there is no stopping you… But there
is
. The foundations are crumbling beneath your feet.” Pilot chose a particularly corpulent corporate type at whom to aim his next words.

“Imagine being told that you have cancer. The worst news you could possibly hear. The good news is that it’s operable, and your chances of survival are good if you take your medication as instructed. It isn’t Eydos telling you of your condition, it’s the Earth. Turn your considerable skills towards self-healing and the world will heal with you… and your great-great-grandchildren will stand a chance of being born.”

Austin Palmer winced. Len Wenlight clenched his fist. Lim Lin Hok nodded imperceptibly.

“Industrial and commercial Dismantlement will be the task of the developed nations,” Pilot said, returning to message, “but its positive effects will be felt everywhere. It is a daunting task, but one which has had the benefit of much preliminary work already.

“Today, on Eydos, we are officially opening the
Office
of
Dismantlement
– The O.D.. OD is an acronym in English of where we as a civilization stand on the balance sheet and the medical chart. We are
overdrawn
on our account with the planet and we have
overdosed
on our indulgent borrowings. I’m sorry if this play on words does not translate into your language. The basic truth remains. Our destiny is to die in poverty – very soon, at our current rate of spending.

“Most of you came here believing this congress would be a waste of time – that vested interests and politics would ensure that nothing was agreed and that nothing would be achieved from it, like a football match without a referee. This time, it’s different. Because this time there’s an independent arbiter.” He looked over his shoulder at the Secretary General, who was nodding her head in affirmation for all to see.

“There was only one place the Office of Dismantlement could be located to overcome the massive barrier of global lethargy and partisanship which threatens our survival. Only one place that has
everyone’s
interests at heart. And when I say everyone, I’m drawing a line from you straight through to your descendants in the twenty-third and twenty-fourth centuries. To make sense of Dismantlement, you have to look way beyond your own lifetime.

“One of the most important jobs of The O.D. will be to keep the various Dismantlement programmes on the boil. Collective human concentration has no staying power. To keep the resolve of our global person alive for
two
and
a
half
centuries
is going to take some doing, especially when our circumstances begin to improve. Dismantlement stops
only
when
the
job
is
finished
.”

Pilot took several gulps of water from his glass, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, then looked up at the vast curved ceiling, glowing with the transluscence of white jade.

“Let me describe the Office of Dismantlement to you. One room – the cockpit of a jumbo jet fuselage atop the grounded ocean-going barge
Ptolemy
. It has no desk, no phone, no filing cabinet, no computer. The Office of Dismantlement is not a place of work. It’s a symbol. A reminder that the principles of Dismantlement are lodged at the only truly neutral point to be found on the planet. They will remain there until the job is finished.

“The actual work of Dismantlement will take place elsewhere – in office blocks, government ministries, factories, laboratories… in people’s attitudes… in their conjugal beds.”

‘S-N-O-W-B-A-L-L-I-N-H-E-L-L’, CNN’s Chief Correspondent typed in large caps on his tablet, not in spite, but in sympathy.

“In six administrative centre
s−
Lucerne, Switzerland; Niigata, Japan; Cambridge, Massachusetts; Lima, Peru; Wellington, New Zealand; and Mumbai, India – we are providing facilities for the study, research and strategic planning of Dismantlement. These places will be both University and Ministry. We will be recruiting professionals from the sciences, academia, economics, industry and other crucial disciplines to administer and coordinate the work of these six centres – people to define the terms of Dismantlement within specific regions… to determine the priorities for change… to draw up the timetables for change… and to anticipate the knock-on effects of Dismantlement from one area to another.

“These six centres, working strictly to the Dismantlement blueprint drawn up on Eydos, will set the parameters for action which individual governments should then, with the much vaster intellectual and economic resources at their disposal, put into practice. We on Eydos are lucky in that we are already where the rest of you could be in 250 years’ time. Our job is to ensure that you all get there too.”

On a signal from her partner, Macushla lifted an object covered in a colourful patch of dacron cut from one of the mothballed hot air balloons and approached the stage. Pilot moved to the edge of the platform to take it from her, then returned to the podium.

“The planet Earth is out of control, thanks entirely to her dominant species, homo sapiens,” he said, positioning the object on the lectern. “Today, we have a choice. Let the garden grow wild by letting human nature take its course, or use our brain power – that most remarkable, yet most misused of tools – to exert control over where we are heading and avoid needless suffering in the future.” Pilot removed the dacron and raised Jane’s bonsai tree above his head. “With Dismantlement we are attempting to shape our destiny by controlling our expansion and keeping it within the bounds of our growing tray, the Earth. As in the art of bonsai, we do this through cutting, pruning, wiring and careful tending. Dismantlement is all about containing ourselves without losing our shape… about restricting our outward growth without curbing our inner development. This tree will live in The O.D. on board
Ptolemy
as a living symbol of the skills we have to learn and apply over the next two hundred and fifty years.” He placed the bonsai tree on the stage in front of the podium, catching Macushla’s reassuring eye for a millisecond, then returned to his position behind it.