THE BIG DAY

DONALD MALCOLM

Computerised mechanisation — less working hours = more leisure = boredom and eventual stagnation. A benevolent government would have to think of something to keep the individual happy. How about a modern form of gladiatorial games?

* * * *

THE woman, her long, raven hair flowing behind her like a banner, ran to him across the moon-cold sands, her gown a flickering of lambent yellow flame.

She was calling his name above the gentle thunder of the surf. He reached out his arms towards her.

THE DAY IS TUESDAY, 5TH OF MAY, 2046. THE TIME IS 5 A.M. IT IS TIME TO PREPARE.

THE DAY IS—

He clawed his way out of the dream like a man saved from drowning. He was still partially submerged, but the woman was fading fast.

The voice, issuing from the grill next to his left ear, began for the third time: THE DAY IS—

‘I know what day it is!’ he snarled, opening his eyes with an irritable snap. He detached the electrodes from his skull and stowed them away in what it amused him to call the dream decanter. As with everything else in his life, even his dreams were programmed.

The fact that he was awake registered in the appropriate memory circuit of the Central Computer, 24.15663 miles away from the sub-computer at reference 3-N5-2-18-5. The town, the district, ‘Peoplebox No. 2’, as he thought of it derisively, the storey, the room number.

Putting his hands behind his head, he gazed up at the pale lemon plastic ceiling, the tint chosen exactly to harmonise with his personality. It was a funny colour for an ego, he reflected. But maybe it wasn’t so bad. Mr. Gresham in Room 6: his ceiling was a screaming red. He’d caught a brief glimpse of it, one day.

Outside, an uncomputerised bird chirpily welcomed another day. The Big Day.

While one part of his mind dwelt again on the dream, another part was running a count-down on the computer.

Four, three, two, one. Silently, he began to form the words along with the machine.

THE OCCUPANT OF 3-N5-2-18-5 HAS FAILED TO RISE FROM HIS BED. IF HE HAS NOT DONE SO IN TEN SECONDS HIS RECORD WILL BE DEBITED.

He began counting again. He took a malicious delight in defying the computer, within limits. At the count of nine, he bounded out of bed, like a boxer who had been taking a rest, and began to shadow-box, his breath coming in sharp snorts through his nose. The plastic floor was pleasantly warm beneath his spatulate feet.

So much for Ava and James, he thought, a trifle gloomily. No more the tragic Flying Dutchman; once again, and inevitably, he was Mark Hanson. At least they hadn’t done away with names. Yet. He slaved fifteen hours a week, five hours a day, as a Junior Programmer at the district electronics complex. As part of his regulated leisure, he was active in the Old Film Society.

He struck a naked pose. Behind him, the bed had folded into the wall. ‘I am master of all I survey!’ he intoned, his voice ringing like that of Olivier before Agincourt. And what he surveyed wasn’t much. He was facing the window, with its personality-orientated curtains, in a design of quiet whorls, like questing mouths. He pirouetted slowly to his left, like a music-box figurine. The shower had appeared, with mechanical rabbitiness, from the ceiling, and waited to receive him, a sacrifice to daily hygiene. Next to it, in a sealed bag, his clothes for the day lay in a slot.

Above it, the Mural of the Month glowed, a meaningless cacophony of shapes and colours. It was based, as he knew, on the North Five District Group Harmony Personality, but it jarred him. As if sensing his hostility, it writhed like an angry snake.

Next, on the corridor wall, was the door, keyed to his unique infra-red wavelength. Where the bed had been, a seat now extruded and a table stuck out, like a hanged man’s tongue, from the third wall, Dialafood Disc at the ready, pristine utensils swathed in plastic. His eye travelled next to the blank part of wall that would open, at the right time, to reveal his personal possessions.

His built-in clock was warning him that the computer would be after him again, if he dallied much longer. The wall to the right of the window hid behind its plastic facade a television screen.

Resolutely, he averted his gaze from the window and the blue brightness beyond. Master of all I survey! The words were sour in his mind.

Briskly, he stepped into the shower, forestalling the computer’s rebuke by a micro-second of time. He grinned as the transparent sheath slid up from the floor and water, at just the right temperature, and mixed with soap, needled his body. He slapped and rubbed at himself, although it wasn’t necessary, as the shower was, naturally, one hundred per cent thorough. But flesh was a subjective reality in an objective world. Perhaps it was the only reality, he didn’t know. The slap and rub routine made him feel more of an individual and less of a cypher.

The mixture changed, first to warm, then to cold. He liked that bit least of all. The water went off and blasts of hot air billowed around him, drying the moisture quickly and efficiently.

If he had been pushing to the dark recesses of his mind what day this was, the pile of clothes before him dragged the knowledge out into the open.

This was no familiar office shirt and shorts, with light underwear and shoes.

The white suit was thicker, heavier, and one-piece. There was also heavy one-piece underwear and coarse socks. And the shoes— He wondered how he would manage to endure their weight. But even as he touched them he felt a thrill compounded of fear and pleasure. The rig-out was completed by a helmet, scarf, goggles, and gloves.

Leaving them, he went swiftly to the window and looked down. His heart was booming. Laid out was a diabolically designed two-and-a-half mile racing circuit, distilled from the elements of the Ring and Le Mans, Indianapolis and Sebring. His gaze followed every bend and twist and curve, then wandered beyond it. There ran one of the super highways that held Britain in a ribboned embrace. Even as he watched, a great silver liner bus flashed along on its cushion of air, heading north at three hundred miles an hour. The railway system had long gone, but that particular liner bus was called The Flying Scotsman.

PLEASE STAND BEFORE THE AUTODOC, the grill requested.

He took another look down at the waiting circuit.

Waiting for him.

He moved to the autodoc, situated above the television screen, and a bunch of probes, like tentacles, swooped on him, checking him over, as they did every morning.

His mind wandered, shutting out the intimate gropings of the tentacles. He knew what day it was. His day. The day he would go down to that circuit and drive a car: a racing car. He would be one with the ghosts of Fangio and Clarke, Ascari and Hill. He would experience the thunder of the engine, the feeling of controlled power under acceleration, the bite of wheels on the track, the sensation of fleeing from a world that had fallen into the clutches of mindless machines.

He would have a machine that he could bend to his will. Exhilaration flared in him.

The autodoc found him perfectly fit, as he knew it would, and retracted its probes, like a satiated monster. He went and put on the underwear and the socks, leaving the suit.

He kept his eyes on it as he moved to the table and dialled orange juice, bacon, eggs, toast, butter, marmalade, and Russian tea.

The meal appeared, prepared exactly as he liked each individual item. He ate automatically—normally he enjoyed his food—his mind reliving the highlights of the many old racing films he had watched at the Society. Even the memory made his blood tingle with anticipation and fear.

One day in the year everyone was completely free of the machines, at liberty to match his, or her, wits against whatever they chose to do. For him, this year, it was car racing.

There were always accidents, of course. One of the daredevils in the complex had been bitten in two by a shark a few years previously. He’d seen the film of the tragedy a number of times at the Society. It had always fascinated and repelled him. But accidents were a necessary—even desirable—concomitant of the Big Day, as it had come to be known.

Life in a computerised society was featureless, safe, dull. There was plenty of everything for everybody. Although people were allowed one Big Day per year, comparatively few took the opportunity to loosen the deadly chains. Life was too safe, too good, to risk throwing away. Mark had long considered that people no longer realised that life was for living, not for hoarding against a stagnant and unknown future. The treacly tenaciousness of society bored and frustrated him and he longed to break free.

But the whole world was in the same grip and there was nowhere to run. Man had turned his back on space and the stars. They beckoned in vain. Instead, Earth had been tamed and turned into a garden, from the depth of the oceans to the heights of the mountains, from the poles to the Equator.

6 A.M. PLEASE INDICATE NOW YOUR DECISION BY PRESSING THE APPROPRIATE BUTTON.

He popped a dental pill into his mouth, rose, and walked to the window. Behind him, the table was cleared silently and folded away. The grill waited. Again, he stared down at the track. A blood-red car sat at the starting grid. His mouth was dry. Press a button: make a decision. Press the blue NO button and sink into oblivion for another year. Press the red YES button-

He glanced sideways at the buttons, like mamillary Good and Evil. He was curiously incapable of reaching a decision. There were elusive thoughts, half-hidden desires, trying to break the surface of his mind. For the first time in his life he was deeply afraid of something and he didn’t know what it was.

He rubbed his hands together. The grill crackled. He took two paces and his finger executed the red YES button.

6.05 A.M. PROCEED TO THE TRACK.

He pulled on the suit and, carrying the other things, went to the lift that ran down the centre of the building. There was no one else about. The door opened and he stepped inside the lift. He had chosen early morning, because he thought he would feel fitter both in mind and in body. As the lift descended, he admitted to himself that there was another reason. The names or numbers of people who chose to take advantage—if that was the right word, he considered wryly—of the Big Day were never disclosed. He knew that very few in his building would do so.

Many of the faint-hearts took vicarious pleasure in seeing the daredevils off and he hadn’t wanted that. He wasn’t sure that he was doing the right thing. Again, he hadn’t been sure on any of his six previous Big Days. He’d started at fifteen and he had survived, although the pot-holing adventure of two years ago had almost proved fatal.

So he had decided to go out early, have his ten circuits of the track, and then try and settle once again in the dull rut of society for another year.

The lift reached the ground floor and the door opened. The hallway, flooded with sunlight, was bleak and empty, and somehow he felt cheated. Strange exhilaration filtered through his body, like lava running along faults in the Earth’s crust, seeking a way out. And the way out was violent, through the mouth of a volcano.

There should have been cheering crowds, like those that had greeted the racing heroes of old. People should have been clapping him on the back and wishing him ‘Good luck’ and little boys should have been thrusting out grubby, demanding pieces of paper for his autograph, not wanting to wait until after the race, in case he was killed, an Arthurian knight on wheels.

The exhilaration persisted, although overlaid by a sense of anti-climax.

Outside, the sunlight struck him a glaring blow and he shielded his eyes. There was a solitary official standing beside the low, red Formula Two Lotus, the type in which Clarke had won his immortal victory at Indianapolis. They had spared no detail. He had asked for an exact copy. He didn’t recall Clarke’s car having been blood-red, but that didn’t matter.

The official consulted his vocaboard and said in a bored voice: ‘3-N5-2-18-5, Mark Hanson.’ There was no question. Would-be suicides were in short supply. One car, one driver. Hanson took the proferred hallucina-pill. He acknowledged the statement and the receipt of the pill, speaking into the vocaboard microphone. The official walked away without a word.

He rolled the pill between his fingers. His brow furrowed. The pill was dark blue. The colour had always been pale green, before. It probably wasn’t important so he swallowed it.

He was standing next to the car, which gleamed in the morning light. He ran his hand over the windscreen and the steering wheel and the bodywork, rejoicing in the power that would live under his direction. He walked slowly round the car in silent admiration. Then he climbed in, sliding his legs in until he was practically lying down. For a brief instant, he felt as if he was going into a pothole again and the memory brought a sourness to his throat. Precise details of how he had extricated himself from that predicament had always been vague in his mind, no matter how hard he had tried to recall them.

The pill was taking effect and already he was slipping into another world. He started the engine and the car growled like a disturbed cougar. There was no sound, except the singing of a bird and, far away on the road, the faint passage of a liner bus.

Then, gradually, he became aware of festive crowds and milling mechanics and the muted purr of the other cars and the smell of fuel and oil and rubber. And fear.

He adjusted the scarf about his mouth and pulled the goggles over his eyes. Almost delicately, he engaged first gear, handling the short stick like an artist’s brush, and let the car roll slowly forward. The cars were straining at the leash. He heard his name shouted. The starter’s flag came down with the finality of an executioner’s axe—

The Lotus surged away and, of course, he was in the lead, and hugging the inside of the track. Behind him, the other cars snarled their frustration and the wind whipped at him. The rev-counter rose rapidly and he was doing over a hundred miles an hour along the straight, the wheels singing on the track.

The first, sharp, right-hand curve was rushing towards him and he braked slightly and drifted the car round, continuing to hold the inside position. The car was handling beautifully. He was free again, for the first time in a year and he shouted aloud into the tearing wind.

The straight was very short, here, and he was coming into a bend. He braked, double-declutched, changed down, then accelerated. Oil on the track. The car slewed as he gripped the wheel and, for the brief instant that he was facing the wrong way, he saw a G.T. Ford, closely followed by a Ferrari, starting to take frantic evasive action. Then he was round again and gunning the engine to catch another Lotus. The Ferrari shot past on the inside, but the G.T. Ford ploughed into the embankment on the outside and burst into flames.

He was lucky to be still alive. The oil patch had been real. The part of his mind unaffected by the drug realised that, and was afraid. Why had the oil been put on the track? Was someone trying to kill him? But that was absurd. People didn’t go around killing each other, these days. Aggressive traits were carefully filtered out, which was probably the reason why so few people took up the challenge of the Big Day. He fretted at the problem.

Relentlessly he piled on the miles, passing the Lotus and the Ferrari in quick succession. This was what life was all about! Another G.T. Ford was just ahead of him, its driver skilfully following every curve and bend, giving Hanson no chance to take him. For five laps he hung grimly behind the Ford’s exhaust, his nostrils and throat clogged with the smell of fumes and burned rubber.

Everything was so real—The pyre of the crashed G.T. Ford still burned every time he passed it. Feelings … sounds … smells….

The image—if it was an image—of the Ford ahead of him began to fade. In its place there was a blur which gradually became a face of a young, handsome man.

Where-? At the Old Film Society. The man who had been bitten in half by the shark! His hands continued to guide the car, to do all that was required.

The man was smiling. Another face appeared at his left shoulder. That of a beautiful, long-haired girl. The one who had fallen down a mountain-side, on her Big Day, two years ago. He had seen the film at the Society.

Who had taken those films and for what purpose ? When he thought about it, he recalled that there were quite a lot of such films at the Society, all recording; the deaths of people on the Big Day.

The faces faded and the Ford was there again. His opportunity came. The Ford took a bend too sharply and the front off-side wheel went off the track. The driver wrenched his steering wheel, over-compensated, and Hanson’s Lotus thundered through the momentary gap, causing the Ford to brake hard.

The car whined round the track, with only two laps to go. His mind was a vortex of confusion and terror. But reality, all three hundred and sixty-four days of it, was minutes away. He did not want to return to his stale existence. Did he have to ?

The faces were there again, smiling, and the girl was holding out her hands to him. Like the woman on the moon-cold sands. Briefly, behind their heads, he glimpsed an ebony darkness scattered with still pin-points of light, then it was gone.

His goggles were misting with sweat. The steering wheel shook like a live thing in his hands. The car was going faster, faster, and the brake didn’t respond. Fear constricted his breathing. Everything beyond the car was a blur of grey.

The car slewed in the oil patch. His mind snapped like an over-taut elastic band. He was spinning, falling, falling.

He saw the Lotus flipped on its back and slewing along the track like an overturned beetle. He saw himself lying prone, with people bending over him. The scene was shifting, indistinct.

‘You can waken up, now.’ There was faint pressure on his shoulder.

He felt very calm and rested. He opened his eyes. The man and the girl were there, smiling. A second man, older, in white, seemed to be pleased with his reaction, and he, too, smiled.

‘I’ll leave you with him,’ the man in white said. ‘He’s going to be all right. He’ll be able to understand what you tell him. The sedative will ensure gradual return to total awareness.’ He smiled again at Mark and went out.

‘I’m Ronnie,’ the young man said, ‘and this is Helen.’

‘Both of you are dead,’ Mark said, without alarm. ‘I’ve seen the films of your deaths at the Society.’

‘You did see the films, Mark. But did you actually see me fall down the mountain? Did you actually see Ronnie bitten in half by the shark?’

Mark glanced at the girl. His mind refused to get agitated. ‘No … But, if you weren’t killed, what was the purpose of the films?’

‘As you can see, we’re very much alive!’ Ronnie said in parenthesis, squeezing Helen’s hand. ‘The purpose was to give an impression of death. Look.’

He stepped aside and Mark could see a screen on a wall. Ronnie was swimming in green water. He wore a scuba suit and carried a harpoon gun. The scene mixed to a shot of a shark, cruising lazily. Then followed a sequence of Ronnie’s fear-filled eyes, the shark’s teeth, Ronnie trying to fire the harpoon, a flurry of bodies, man and shark, obscured by sand stirred up from the sea bed, then fade-out.

‘A dummy took my place, thank goodness, in that final shot, although I knew nothing about it at the time. I woke up, just like you, in a room, such as this, to see people whom I thought were dead.’

‘Now you’ll want to know why,’ Helen took up the story. ‘We are part of a group deeply concerned about the dominance of machines over our daily lives and what it is doing to people, collectively and as individuals. Everything is regulated. Imagination, initiative, curiosity, aggression: all have been ground out of the human character, leaving useless shells without drive or goal. Man has turned in on himself and is on a downward path to stagnation and eventual extinction.’

‘We want to show you something,’ Ronnie said. ‘We can talk as we go.’

Mark followed them into a long, brightly-lit corridor with many doors leading off it. He was now wearing a lightweight costume and soft shoes and he noticed that his companions, and most of the people they passed, wore a similar garment.

Helen carried on with her story. ‘Certain people in high places decided that something must be done to salvage something of man’s crushed spirit. Against opposition from others who wanted to preserve the status quo, the Big Day was started.’

They turned right into another corridor. Mark wondered if the place was underground, but refrained from asking at present.

The Big Day had a much deeper purpose than the relief of frustration with society. The instigators wanted to find people with guts, courage, a sense of adventure, as well as the more obvious attributes of intelligence, and so on. When someone had proved himself, he was “removed”, as Ronnie puts it, from the rut, and brought here.’

‘What if someone objected?’

‘Occasionally, that happens,’ Ronnie answered, ‘but, after we’ve explained what we aim to do, they elect to stay.’

They entered a room. In one corner a group of men and women were clustered around a blackboard, covered in abstruse mathematical symbols. A window ran the full length of the wall opposite the door.

Mark found himself looking out at a huge cavern. People bustled about, on foot, or in small electric trucks, with an air of planned activity. He caught his breath when he saw the spaceships, one completed, the other evidently in the last stages of construction.

‘We’re not going to attempt to change society here,’ Ronnie said. ‘We’re going to make a new start, on one of the planets of Tau Ceti.’

‘Starships,’ Mark murmured, ‘not spaceships.’

‘Yes,’ Helen said. ‘There’s still much work to be done, people to train, skills to learn. This is a kindergarten for a new race of men and women. Out there, among the stars, is the school. Will you join us ?’

Mark smiled. Hand-in-hand, the three of them left the room.

Down in the cavern, the starships awaited the Big Day.