Short story.
Here is a little story I've written for an informal competition my friends and I are having. I still don't have any ideas for a title, so suggestions are welcome!
There is a country so far away that even those who live far from us do not know its name. In this country is a city, nestled between the placid fury of the ocean and a jagged cordillera which rises stark behind them. Ruins of adobe walls dot the outskirts and the tops of the hills. The inhabitants of this city live quiet, unobtrusive lives: cycling and weaving baskets, trading and dancing, profiteering and flirting. While the world squawks and flaps beyond them, they continue their happy, uneventful existence and children still toss marbles down alleyways.
Water is piped into the city from the streams and rivers which cut through the surrounding countryside and from large reservoirs to the north. Treatment plants purify and cleanse the water to make it drinkable and it flows from water towers into the main system of pipes which services the homes of the people of the city. They awake in the morning, they stretch and yawn, stumble into their kitchens and bathrooms before the day’s business begins, they turn on their taps and voila, hey presto! - water emerges, clean and clear and beautiful, rushing over hands and bodies, poured into mugs and glasses. Water for bathing, water for brewing coffee and tea, water for washing dishes, water for drinking. It is the nearest science has come to a miracle.
One day, years ago, everything changed. The people of the city began to notice something unusual about their water; a tint to its colour, a tinge to its taste. Some water was pouring from taps entirely yellow, or green, or pink. After the initial hysteria and panic, the government reliably informed the people that following stringent scientific testing of the highest calibre, the water was still safe to drink. The city Governor appeared on television drinking a glass of blue water to prove it.
“I’d feed this to my own children!” he declared, a grim smile on his face.
For a brief moment, it appeared that normality would return, albeit a normality comprising multi-coloured water. But more was to come. The mysterious foothills and the forbidding cawing of the birds around the mountains had long deterred tourists and travellers, and now it seemed that the forces of those mutinous regions were taking hold; for it was discovered that the coloured liquid pouring eagerly from taps and showerheads across the city was not water at all, but rather concentrated and purified personality traits. The yellow water, of course, was cowardice; those who drank a glass in the morning were likely to want to spend the rest of the day shivering under their sheets. Green was jealousy, and I am sad to report that incidents of domestic violence rose sharply among drinkers of the green water, both male and female. Blue water was courage; red water, lust. The entire gamut of human emotions was available to the population at the twist of a tap, and consequences poured forth as rapidly as the water itself. Young women found themselves inundated with advances from previously shy suitors, businessman bartered harder than ever, with physical fights a common result. Amateur balloonists threw caution to the wind and set sail, more often than not ending tangled and bruised in nearby forests. The Minister for Education spent half an hour bathing in courage and the next morning attempted an ill-fated coup against the Governor. Young people began copulating outside nightclubs and against the walls of their neighbours’ homes at dinner parties; sexual health clinics strained under the workload.
In those early days, emotions poured out of taps at random with all the attendant chaos you may imagine. But after a few months of solid work in the water towers and pipe systems, the government managed to regulate the water, although they could not identify the source, nor the reason, for this strange phenomenon. The underground system of pipes was entirely re-fitted, at a cost which nearly bankrupted the city. Emergency plumbers were called to service all homes, installing multiple taps in each household, which were routed in to the appropriate pipes below ground, such that each household could now choose the emotion it wished to drink or bathe in each day. The people were delirious with joy. Courage! Euphoria! Confidence (similar to courage, but a slightly paler shade of blue; calmer but somehow more satisfying to drink)! All were available, at all times.
Through all of this, Pietr, a young man living in a typical apartment in the Western part of the city, made his strategy. He - like many others - began stockpiling the emotions in case of shortage. Before long he had cupboards full of water like a rainbow: bottles of envy, bottles of flirtatiousness, bottles of ennui, and bottles of bitterness. At first, of course, the “positive” emotions were popular; who would want to shower in doubt before a day at the office? Good spirits reigned, with selfishness and unabated lust following quick on its winged heels. But after a while, people began to experiment, bored of their routine emotions, and craving depth, variety, texture. Some would mix waters together in interesting combinations and spend the day alternately yelling at their boss and then coming on to him; others would beat a stranger half to death in the street and then crouch weeping over the victim. Pietr was conservative by nature, and began drinking only small amounts of confidence, or ambition.
“This will get me that promotion I always knew I deserved!” he whispered to himself in the morning.
Pietr carried a hip flask with him at all times, filled each morning with the emotion he wished to feel each day. It was wonderful! He was promoted twice at work in a year and moved out of his poky apartment into a beautiful new build home in the more prosperous South of the city. He bought a brand new car and started wearing an expensive imported wristwatch. But through all his prosperity and comfort, one thing remained beyond his reach: the heart of his true love Alyssa. Alyssa was radiant and beautiful, and Pietr gazed at her from his new office each day as she typed and made phone calls to increasingly important clients. He would furtively swig a mouthful of confidence and saunter up to her, and with the unflappable air of a man who knows how to get what he wants, he would invite her to dinner at the new Spanish restaurant which had opened in the centre of town. She looked cryptically at him, her dark brown eyes with an unreadable countenance. “No, thankyou.”
Day after day he tried to woo her, bolstered by his increasing doses of water. He tried mixing traits together in imaginative ways, but after a series of humiliating encounters (notably his attempt to serenade her in the centre of the office on a home-made balalaika to the tune of “The Girl from Ipanema”), his spirits began to flag. He knew Alyssa was unattached, and thanks to some surreptitious investigation in the office filing system, he knew that she lived near to his old apartment in the West of the city. A hip flask full of lust, topped off with a shot of paranoia, proved the perfect recipe. One calm evening, he took a city tram back to the West and crouched behind the hedgerows of Alyssa’s garden. He watched, enchanted by his heart’s desire, then quickly dashed below her window to better observe her.
Alyssa hummed to herself (“The Girl from Ipanema”, Pietr noted) as she rummaged in a cupboard and produced a mysterious object Pietr couldn’t identify. He pressed his nose to the glass to see it better. It was a metallic rectangular thing with what looked like pistons along one side and a kind of nozzle protruding from one end. Alyssa flicked a hidden catch and a lid on top of the object flipped open.
“There we go,” she said, and turned on the tap. Pietr instantly recognised the purplish tint of angst which poured out. Alyssa seemed to shudder, and poured the water into her device. Pietr watched, transfixed, as she plugged the device into the wall and it began to rattle and shake on her kitchen top. She was immersed in her task and didn’t notice as Pietr moved further along the window to improve his view.
“Come on, come on,” murmured Alyssa, and finally the device was ready. She took a glass from a cupboard, held it below the nozzle and pressed a button. Pietr marvelled. Water emerged! Real water! Not the colourful, rainbow stuff, but the real thing - pure, tasteless, clean, transparent! Pietr gaped and Alyssa turned, dropping her glass in shock as she saw him.
Ten minutes later they sat at opposite ends of her sofa, the purifier (for that is what it was) between them on the table. Alyssa told him how her father, a research scientist at the University, began developing the purifier several months before. Hers was a prototype, but seemed to work. Pietr stared. “But why?” he asked. “I don’t understand. We have everything we could want! We can make the world in our own design now! We aren’t slaves any more, Alyssa; slaves to our hearts or our minds, we aren’t just functions of our nerve endings and the neutrinos firing in our frontal lobes and cortexes. This is evolution. We make the choices, we direct ourselves and the world - we can be anything we choose!”
“Yes, you can take down a bottle from a shelf and fill yourself up with emotions. But it’s so packaged, so... planned.” She struggled for words. “There’s no spontaneity any more, Pietr.”
“Yes, there is, Alyssa, there is! I have four litres of it on my shelf! We can be spontaneous any time we like!”
Alyssa sighed.
“It’s fake, Pietr”, she replied after a pause. “None of this, it’s not real. What good is an emotion if it doesn’t come from within? How can you expect me to want you, to want to be with you, when everything you feel is a scam, a ploy, a strategy? There is no Pietr now. There is only a simulation of something Pietr wants to be. If I threw away all those bottles, Pietr, until nothing was left, if I poured every one of them down the drain - what would be left of you?” She looked at him. “What would be left of Pietr?”
On the hills and highways above the city, jacarandas swayed in the breeze as dusk began to fall, and further, beyond and into the thick forest, streams of all colours known to man delved and dashed over pebbles and rocks. The lights of the city were beginning to flicker, a calm and lonely orange over desolate plains of human isolation, as Pietr, staring at his hands in Alyssa’s apartment in the Western part of the city, realised that he no longer knew the answer to her question.
There is a country so far away that even those who live far from us do not know its name. In this country is a city, nestled between the placid fury of the ocean and a jagged cordillera which rises stark behind them. Ruins of adobe walls dot the outskirts and the tops of the hills. The inhabitants of this city live quiet, unobtrusive lives: cycling and weaving baskets, trading and dancing, profiteering and flirting. While the world squawks and flaps beyond them, they continue their happy, uneventful existence and children still toss marbles down alleyways.
Water is piped into the city from the streams and rivers which cut through the surrounding countryside and from large reservoirs to the north. Treatment plants purify and cleanse the water to make it drinkable and it flows from water towers into the main system of pipes which services the homes of the people of the city. They awake in the morning, they stretch and yawn, stumble into their kitchens and bathrooms before the day’s business begins, they turn on their taps and voila, hey presto! - water emerges, clean and clear and beautiful, rushing over hands and bodies, poured into mugs and glasses. Water for bathing, water for brewing coffee and tea, water for washing dishes, water for drinking. It is the nearest science has come to a miracle.
One day, years ago, everything changed. The people of the city began to notice something unusual about their water; a tint to its colour, a tinge to its taste. Some water was pouring from taps entirely yellow, or green, or pink. After the initial hysteria and panic, the government reliably informed the people that following stringent scientific testing of the highest calibre, the water was still safe to drink. The city Governor appeared on television drinking a glass of blue water to prove it.
“I’d feed this to my own children!” he declared, a grim smile on his face.
For a brief moment, it appeared that normality would return, albeit a normality comprising multi-coloured water. But more was to come. The mysterious foothills and the forbidding cawing of the birds around the mountains had long deterred tourists and travellers, and now it seemed that the forces of those mutinous regions were taking hold; for it was discovered that the coloured liquid pouring eagerly from taps and showerheads across the city was not water at all, but rather concentrated and purified personality traits. The yellow water, of course, was cowardice; those who drank a glass in the morning were likely to want to spend the rest of the day shivering under their sheets. Green was jealousy, and I am sad to report that incidents of domestic violence rose sharply among drinkers of the green water, both male and female. Blue water was courage; red water, lust. The entire gamut of human emotions was available to the population at the twist of a tap, and consequences poured forth as rapidly as the water itself. Young women found themselves inundated with advances from previously shy suitors, businessman bartered harder than ever, with physical fights a common result. Amateur balloonists threw caution to the wind and set sail, more often than not ending tangled and bruised in nearby forests. The Minister for Education spent half an hour bathing in courage and the next morning attempted an ill-fated coup against the Governor. Young people began copulating outside nightclubs and against the walls of their neighbours’ homes at dinner parties; sexual health clinics strained under the workload.
In those early days, emotions poured out of taps at random with all the attendant chaos you may imagine. But after a few months of solid work in the water towers and pipe systems, the government managed to regulate the water, although they could not identify the source, nor the reason, for this strange phenomenon. The underground system of pipes was entirely re-fitted, at a cost which nearly bankrupted the city. Emergency plumbers were called to service all homes, installing multiple taps in each household, which were routed in to the appropriate pipes below ground, such that each household could now choose the emotion it wished to drink or bathe in each day. The people were delirious with joy. Courage! Euphoria! Confidence (similar to courage, but a slightly paler shade of blue; calmer but somehow more satisfying to drink)! All were available, at all times.
Through all of this, Pietr, a young man living in a typical apartment in the Western part of the city, made his strategy. He - like many others - began stockpiling the emotions in case of shortage. Before long he had cupboards full of water like a rainbow: bottles of envy, bottles of flirtatiousness, bottles of ennui, and bottles of bitterness. At first, of course, the “positive” emotions were popular; who would want to shower in doubt before a day at the office? Good spirits reigned, with selfishness and unabated lust following quick on its winged heels. But after a while, people began to experiment, bored of their routine emotions, and craving depth, variety, texture. Some would mix waters together in interesting combinations and spend the day alternately yelling at their boss and then coming on to him; others would beat a stranger half to death in the street and then crouch weeping over the victim. Pietr was conservative by nature, and began drinking only small amounts of confidence, or ambition.
“This will get me that promotion I always knew I deserved!” he whispered to himself in the morning.
Pietr carried a hip flask with him at all times, filled each morning with the emotion he wished to feel each day. It was wonderful! He was promoted twice at work in a year and moved out of his poky apartment into a beautiful new build home in the more prosperous South of the city. He bought a brand new car and started wearing an expensive imported wristwatch. But through all his prosperity and comfort, one thing remained beyond his reach: the heart of his true love Alyssa. Alyssa was radiant and beautiful, and Pietr gazed at her from his new office each day as she typed and made phone calls to increasingly important clients. He would furtively swig a mouthful of confidence and saunter up to her, and with the unflappable air of a man who knows how to get what he wants, he would invite her to dinner at the new Spanish restaurant which had opened in the centre of town. She looked cryptically at him, her dark brown eyes with an unreadable countenance. “No, thankyou.”
Day after day he tried to woo her, bolstered by his increasing doses of water. He tried mixing traits together in imaginative ways, but after a series of humiliating encounters (notably his attempt to serenade her in the centre of the office on a home-made balalaika to the tune of “The Girl from Ipanema”), his spirits began to flag. He knew Alyssa was unattached, and thanks to some surreptitious investigation in the office filing system, he knew that she lived near to his old apartment in the West of the city. A hip flask full of lust, topped off with a shot of paranoia, proved the perfect recipe. One calm evening, he took a city tram back to the West and crouched behind the hedgerows of Alyssa’s garden. He watched, enchanted by his heart’s desire, then quickly dashed below her window to better observe her.
Alyssa hummed to herself (“The Girl from Ipanema”, Pietr noted) as she rummaged in a cupboard and produced a mysterious object Pietr couldn’t identify. He pressed his nose to the glass to see it better. It was a metallic rectangular thing with what looked like pistons along one side and a kind of nozzle protruding from one end. Alyssa flicked a hidden catch and a lid on top of the object flipped open.
“There we go,” she said, and turned on the tap. Pietr instantly recognised the purplish tint of angst which poured out. Alyssa seemed to shudder, and poured the water into her device. Pietr watched, transfixed, as she plugged the device into the wall and it began to rattle and shake on her kitchen top. She was immersed in her task and didn’t notice as Pietr moved further along the window to improve his view.
“Come on, come on,” murmured Alyssa, and finally the device was ready. She took a glass from a cupboard, held it below the nozzle and pressed a button. Pietr marvelled. Water emerged! Real water! Not the colourful, rainbow stuff, but the real thing - pure, tasteless, clean, transparent! Pietr gaped and Alyssa turned, dropping her glass in shock as she saw him.
Ten minutes later they sat at opposite ends of her sofa, the purifier (for that is what it was) between them on the table. Alyssa told him how her father, a research scientist at the University, began developing the purifier several months before. Hers was a prototype, but seemed to work. Pietr stared. “But why?” he asked. “I don’t understand. We have everything we could want! We can make the world in our own design now! We aren’t slaves any more, Alyssa; slaves to our hearts or our minds, we aren’t just functions of our nerve endings and the neutrinos firing in our frontal lobes and cortexes. This is evolution. We make the choices, we direct ourselves and the world - we can be anything we choose!”
“Yes, you can take down a bottle from a shelf and fill yourself up with emotions. But it’s so packaged, so... planned.” She struggled for words. “There’s no spontaneity any more, Pietr.”
“Yes, there is, Alyssa, there is! I have four litres of it on my shelf! We can be spontaneous any time we like!”
Alyssa sighed.
“It’s fake, Pietr”, she replied after a pause. “None of this, it’s not real. What good is an emotion if it doesn’t come from within? How can you expect me to want you, to want to be with you, when everything you feel is a scam, a ploy, a strategy? There is no Pietr now. There is only a simulation of something Pietr wants to be. If I threw away all those bottles, Pietr, until nothing was left, if I poured every one of them down the drain - what would be left of you?” She looked at him. “What would be left of Pietr?”
On the hills and highways above the city, jacarandas swayed in the breeze as dusk began to fall, and further, beyond and into the thick forest, streams of all colours known to man delved and dashed over pebbles and rocks. The lights of the city were beginning to flicker, a calm and lonely orange over desolate plains of human isolation, as Pietr, staring at his hands in Alyssa’s apartment in the Western part of the city, realised that he no longer knew the answer to her question.