Lebanon [Sci-fi]

Beirut, Lebanon. 10th June 2087.

84 electric blue eyes, carbon copes of Militia XY1, listened to the new MA system proclaim that all displaced Palestinians living in Bulwark I, II and III, must be immediately deported to Bulwark IX.  

“You are unable to error, to feel fatigue or emotion. So go out there now and get the rest of those bastards.” 

He wiped the spit from his chin, stepped down from the podium, and whilst staring into the face of Escort XX3, he picked up the dice, rolled them three times, and moved his attack from Beirut to Baabda.

Aubrey- Ency. November 2109. 

A large, brass elephant trunk wound its way from the kitchen below to the very place where Aubrey was sat. The café was covered with tuscan sun tiles that opened beneath every table. Her papaya-coloured tablecloth shimmered brilliantly, letting her know that within seven seconds, her table would open and her food served. She quickly shuffled her brass goblet to the right, spilling just a single drop of hot mulled wine. She placed her documents back within her briefcase and with a sharp glance at the lock, they were secured. Cache.

An eleven inch diameter space dissolved in front of her. The brass trunk presented itself, holding a citrine stone plate laden with honey covered makroud and pistachio qatayef bites. Quickly, the plate was deposited upon the table and the trunk returned to the kitchen below. Aubrey pressed the peridot button located to the left of her plate and particles of citrine stone pirouetted in the air, forming a set of high quality, makeshift cutlery. As she ate, Aubrey looked out over Greimierz graveyard and for the third time that week, saw the same  gypsy lady dressed in a deep periwinkle al-Khimar.   

7 minutes passed. A transparent screen appeared beside Aubrey, presenting Ganesh, the elephant-headed God.

“Is everything satisfactory for you today, Miss Edington?” 

“Yes, quite so,” she replied habitually.

“Very well. Enjoy your gouter Miss Edington,” and with that said, he disappeared. 

She returned her gaze to the little, stooped lady outside. The world beyond The Elephant House was tragically bitter. Hushed by the white dictator, not quite illuminated by the street searchlight, she remained stooped, out of sight, brushing flakes from falling on the dead; digging. 

Boulos- Beirut, Lebanon, 2087.

17th June, 2087.

     -My First Diary Entry.

They sit in their high-rise offices, and watch my people forced into a network of bulwarked mini-states. It is as if they are looking at things from the shelter of a server room. To them, we are glitches, we are the enemy; the clan in their superficial game of ‘Clash of Clans’ that must be annihilated. They send out a code and boom, we are deleted, erased, a cookie. Backspace. Incognito. We too are spectators in this hideous game of warfare. We are not elements in what goes on. We have no citizenship. Two days ago I discovered that us Palestinians, here in Lebanon, have no right to pass on any property or inheritance. Only God knows what will happen to my dear daughter, Anisa, and her husband Aafii. 

Last week, thirty AI militia moved me, Anisa, the Sawaya, Tariq, Vohra and Salem family to Bulwark II. Aafii was taken and we don’t know where. The conditions are bearable. Anisa keeps complaining that she is suffering from constipation and fatigue. She cries at night which makes her vomit. She is weak. I am so worried about her. I don’t know if coming to Lebanon was the right thing to do, but we could not have stayed in the West Bank. I lost my wife, my two youngest children, and six grandchildren there. Now, it’s just me and Anisa. In Bulwark II, we are still given access to an interactive cooktop, but everything else has been confiscated. Yesterday, I found a simple baba ganoush recipe on Pinterest and made it for Anisa and I. She loved it. I simply clicked and ordered the ingredients I needed on the Casino website. It only cost me £3. The cleaning facilities are very primitive here. We are provided with one shower between eight, and the hot water is shut off between 9.30 in the morning and 9.30 at night, and then again between 11.30 at night and 5.30 in the morning. I often take a cold shower, but It’s June at the moment so it’s not too intolerable. I cannot even imagine what this will be like come February. Despite all of this this, I feel somewhat lucky. My friend Abdel told me that almost all of bulwark III is a labyrinth of poorly structured tents, surrounded by a faulty sewage system. His baby daughter died from Cholera last week and his wife was shot by a militia robot for demanding that her daughter be seen by a nurse. Mr Tariq told us that they are now sending the brains of the dead to a laboratory in Tripoli, where they are developing cryopreservation. I know what they are doing! They want to exterminate the Palestinian race, to create an AI Arcadia; a paradise of political puppets. We will be redesigned like those barbarians who murdered my family.

Quick digression:

The beautiful thing about the human soul is endurance, it’s inexhaustible engine, it’s affiliation with the eternal. But what happens when this engine is transformed into it’s literal meaning? There will be nationals in a nation that does not exist; a virtual world; a perpetual present, an orbiting microwave. It’s funny when you think of it like that… thrown in as a simple bean and cyborged. One bitter sip, one glitch, and thrown before the next Nespresso capsule undergoes the trial and error process. We will all be Fortissio lungos before you know it. 

***

 I saw Abdel two days ago when I went into central Beirut to purchase some acetaminophen for Anisa. He looked like an animated skeleton. The personification and embodiment of death. What have they done to him? I have known Abdel since I was five years old. Our dads worked together at the local pharmacy. My dad was a dispenser and his dad worked on the tills. Abdel had three brothers, all of them dead now. Two were killed in Palestine, and Wael, the youngest, was shot by Militia XY13 when we first arrived in Lebanon in November last year. 2086.

I want to write this diary, because I have no idea what will happen to us next. I need to keep a record of how the goddam Jews in Israel have gradually suppressed the rights of Palestinian people and how, here in Lebanon, the government and militia are doing all in their power to prevent the process of naturalisation. But then what even is naturalisation anyway? Nothing is natural anymore. I need to write this, not just for me, but for Anisa and Abdel. For the baby who died. For Wael. For all of us. 

However, I need to be careful. When I entered Lebanon, it was mandatory that every living being must have the biometric cookie implant. This not only makes online shopping more efficient, but keeps a store of all my behavioural patterns and physical traits. Everything, even the great novels of Orwell and Bradbury are ironically becoming dangerously intelligent. Every book in the grand library here in Beirut has a touch sensor. Every bar has an optical scanning device in the entrance. Every street has an audio surveillance camera. Everywhere is censored. They are watching me, following me, listening to me, and storing all of this within me. I am betraying myself, and I cannot do a thing about it. My own cyborged body is now my enemy. Anyway, it is almost 8.40 in the morning, and it is a Tuesday. In 22 minutes I should be at Bulwark II Tabac shop, purchasing my weekly stamp. I collect them! If they don’t hear me over the audio camera say: ‘This weeks stamp please’ in a prosaic monotone, without a hint of intonation,  they will send two members of the militia XY over for a cross-examination. I have managed to smuggle in some throwaway cleaning gloves, so every time I write I must wear a new pair and burn the old, so that this diary is not stored within my cookie, and they will have no idea that it exists. I will have to write between 7.52am and 8.39am when I take my daily bath, that way no time is unaccounted for. I will then burn the gloves when I light the  fire at 11.00 every morning, as to avoid suspicion, but for now, I must run.

Goodbye for now, and GOODLUCK to my future reader and sympathiser,

Comrade Boulos.        

Beirut, Lebanon. 10th June 2087.

84 electric blue eyes, carbon copes of Militia XY1, watched the little man with the cybernetic arm step off his podium and out of sight. Militia 204 to Militia 288 turned to face Beirut. A symphony of silence flared into the city as 84 militia slid open their polypropylene rectus muscles and abstracted 84 tourmaline canisters. Black. Schrol. Protection from earthly demons. Sarin. Protection from the Palestinians. In unison they marched. First to Bulwark I. 

***

Escort XX3 stood up. She had once been a 17 year old girl from Kanazawa, Japan. She died when her father sold her to, what the Japanese called, the ‘floating city’ in Kyoto. A sky scraper city. A city with secrets. Cause of death, unknown. In 2065 her body was sent to Tripoli. With her onyx black hair, narrow eyes and porcelain skin, her reincarnated body was in high demand. Aristocrats and officials from Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Israel gathered in the City of Jasmine to place bids on XX3. He won. The man with the cybernetic arm won. XX3 was sold to the Lebanese government and she will remain there, fully charged, without any inclination of her past. An unidentifiable identity. A citizenless citizen. The hyper-real. 

***

“Crème de Noyaux, Master.”

“Put it on the table XX3,” he replied curtly. 

Her translucent cheeks blushed. Her eyelids clicked closed. Her head clicked forward. She nodded, opened her eyes and set his crystal glass upon the hovering table screen, adjacent to his uneaten macaroon. Pistachio. She sat down, folding her legs as to expose just a glimpse of her rouge, slip underwear. She took a sip of raspberry Chambord, and licked the residue from her lips. 

“Your move,” he said.

Without taking her eyes off of his, she moved her defence to Baabda and smiled seductively.

Within the minute that elapsed, four Palestinians were murdered in Bulwark I,  and he took his first sip of Crème de Noyaux.  

Anisa- Beirut, Lebanon. June 15th 2087.

“I’m pregnant, Galila,” Anisa whispered.

She spoke quietly into her coter; a prohibited communication transmitter.  

“I found out last week when I went to visit some redundant doctor in Hamra. Abdel has gone and my coter cannot seem to reach him, so I thought of you. I need help. The baby is due in November. My father doesn’t know. I do not want to have this child. I feel so weak. Please meet me Monday, 5.40 in the evening, Al Falamanki on Monot street. They know that we both eat there regularly. We will order the grilled halloum steak served with figs dipped in sugar syrup, for two. We ate that last time. You will order half a bottle of wine, rouge. You will drink it and I will pretend to. They will think that everything is normal. Our cookies will not betray us this time. They can’t.” She paused for three seconds, the message saved and off the coter went into the brutal streets of Beirut. 

***

Dareen Al-Amin invented the coter in 2061 at the age of 22. He graduated from Al-Azhar University in Gaza, and from there, made a living working within a small digital store in Gaza’s luxury shopping mall. Al-Amin was assassinated at the young age of 30 after he resettled in Tyre, Lebanon, and had developed the coter so that it could transport audio messages back to Palestine. It was thought that the coter was possibly aiding a Palestinian rebellion, and so Militia -X63, an old, discontinued model, poisoned him with Sarin whilst he took his daily trip to Bohsali Pastry store. Due to the microscopic size of the coter, few have managed to survive, Anisa’s being one. 

***

The audio camera, insidiously situated just 1.3 meters away in a wilting juniper tree, overheard Anisa. Stored. Picked up by Agent XY304. Sent to Beirut. Received by Agent XX217. Sent to Consul XY. Received. Stored and sent to Him. The siren rang. Steward XY1 approached him with the news. He rose.

“Find Anisa Ganem, daughter of Boulos Ganem. Age 31. Cookie number 020256. Track her down and kill her. I want that coter found and Galila Totah too”.

Agent XY304 received the mandate and sent a 3D holographic display of himself to SISXY100’s Apple Watch with brief instructions on what to do. 

“Anisa Ganem must be dead within three days. I want Galila Totah and the coter bought to HQ5 for a cross examination and then we will decide on what to do with her. You have three days, exactly 72 hours, and if this is not achieved you will be shut down. Do you understand?”

“SISXY100 understands Agent XY304 completely”.

Agent XY304 disappeared and SISXY100 headed to the canteen for a glass of bourbon whiskey.

Mason Kelly [SISXY100]- Beirut, Lebanon. June 15th 2087.

***

SISXY100, formerly known as Mason Kelly from Cleveland, seized the one-seated table near the window, far from the projector and Him. This was SIS Office 1, the one with the best view of downtown Beirut. Kelly sat in the far left corner of the canteen, close to both the whiskey tap and the Jack Links Original Beef Jerky dispenser. Kelly joined the Lebanese SISXY in 2086 after the US sent 300 troops to Beirut to disarm all militias and announce the deployment of the official Lebanese Armed Forces. However, operations did not succeed, and after a brief trip to Tripoli, Kelly returned to Beirut as a member of the SISXY. 201 troops were accounted for as becoming members of the SIS, Militia, Steward or Agent Services. The remaining 99 never left Tripoli and their whereabouts remains unknown. 

***

The deepest hue of liquid caramel filtered down his chin as he watched an old man hand out cardboard boxes of Joyce’s pain perdu on the street below. The stench of whipped cream and chocolate reminded him of adolescent days spent wandering aimlessly up and down the Hershey isle at Walmart; pushing trolleys and grinning stupidly at heavyset mothers and their oleaginous children. A Palestinian man queued. Despite the corporeal, carmine aura that skirted around every Palestinian upon leaving their designated Bulwark, his angular face and gaunt frame set him apart from the fleshy Lebanese. When he reached the counter, Kelly watched him as he was shooed away and spat on by a young girl wearing a full body, open crotch, fishnet stocking suit. She could only have been 19 years old, Kelly thought to himself as he downed his fifth glass of bourbon whiskey. 

Four hours passed. 68 hours left. 8.5 glasses of whiskey drank. 16 strips of beef jerky consumed. 680ml of sweat produced. 

“Can SISXY302 pull-up a seat opposite SISXY100?” SISXY302 asked.

“SISXY302 can,” Kelly replied. “Fancy a whiskey?”

“Fancy?” 

“I mean would SISXY302 like a whiskey?” 

“Yes. A whiskey. Many thanks associate SISXY.”

Kelly stood and picking up his glass made a start for the exit. The last thing he wanted to do was to sit and discuss how many Palestinian people had been relocated to Bulwark IX and whether the militia would hit their daily quota. All he wanted was to be alone in the comfort of his own capsule. He had recently bought a selection of classic American movies and hoped to make a start on Apocalypse Now. As he winded through the flood of people congregating for the evenings aperitif, he caught a glimpse of his newly appointed supervisor surrounded by six escorts all wearing red, white and green slip dresses. The Lebanese flag of course. He juggled with three shot glasses of liquor, whilst the tallest of the women fed him sticks of cucumber dripping in lebnah paste. His flaccid gut hung loosely over his neatly ironed, linen trousers, sending a wave of nausea over Kelly. Suddenly, the 16 strips of beef jerky came hurling up his throat, and before he could turn and run, he vomited over his new Valentino Garavani leather camo trainers. Human biological functions, such as vomiting, were not only prohibited, but indicated a serious technological malfunction. 

Silence. 

Summary of Creative Writing Piece

This piece is somewhat experimental and has developed from an initial idea about a story regarding Palestinian refugees who fled Lebanon. In July 2016, I went to help at Kofinou refugee camp in Cyprus. Here, I took two families to Larnaca beach and learnt about their escape from Lebanon, where they were denied citizenship and lived in ghettos. One women told me of how her child and husband were shot in the ghetto by armed Lebanese soldiers for no apparent reason. The story of these two families inspired me to right a politically influenced, science-fiction, modern piece, involving AI robots, government secrets, intelligent cities and the hyper-real. In my final year at University I also studied Utopias, and discussed at length whether technology can aid in the development of a utopia or whether it will propel us into an inevitable dystopia. Therefore, I have tried to break out of my comfort zone and write a dystopian piece that exposes political, ethical and social dangers that arise from the relationship between intelligence and international conflict. 

The date in which the characters are living is 2087, 69 years into the future. Therefore, it could be considered speculative fiction. Although I have set this story in the far future, my aim is to highlight how history has a tendency to repeat itself, and how with regards to the hyper-real, living in an ever-present, cyclical now poses its own threats and a degree of violent ignorance. The somewhat stunted chapters that alter in perspective are influenced by William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying. I feel as though this structure allows me to delve deeper into the attitudes held by various characters, of whom have different nationalities, ages, levels of consciousness and professional roles. This structure also seems fitting with modern-day technology, whereby our attention is diverted in lots of different directions at one time, making it difficult to complete a task without intervention. 

This text could develop into a longer piece of fiction, which I will briefly summarise:

The Lebanese government has created an AI militia that practices ethnic cleansing, (a subject particularly relevant at the moment in regards to places such as Myanmar). The militia are programmed to force Palestinian people into ghettos, much like in Palestine itself. The militia are seen as ‘autonomous weapons’, making them ubiquitous and cheap as the materials are easy to obtain. Therefore, they can be mass produced and easily replaced. Accordingly, in Tripoli, a laboratory is practicing cryopreservation, where not only are they reincarnating people as AI robots, but turning hostages into AI robots that serve their needs. (This is Inspired by the experiments carried out at Ravensbrück concentration camp that were claimed to benefit the Germans). Mason Kelly is an example of an American soldier who was captured and experimented on, but where the operation was not successful. When Kelly is designated the task to kill Anisa, he is the one to tell Boulos to flee immediately. It is then that they flee Lebanon on the fishing boat and land in Kofinou thirty hours later. Here, the Cyprian government is working in collusion with the Lebanese. They transform refugees into meat at the nearby slaughterhouse, which you can see, quite clearly, from the camp. This benefits the failing Cyprian economy and provides an answer to the refugee problem. When word spreads, the family escape to the Dhekelia camp; a UK sovereign base, that sends refugees over to the UK. This base is run by uncorrupt officials who are oblivious to the proceedings at Kofinou. The unborn baby is born and is sent to the UK. ‘Ency’ is a fictional, futuristic place inspired by Edinburgh, Colmar and Nancy in France. In 2109, at the age of 22, the unborn baby, now known as Rola, is the ‘gypsy lady dressed in a deep periwinkle al-khimar’. Rola collects and sells bones on the black market. (Grey-friars is known for its thin top-soil, and bones have been found rising to the surface). This is where Aubrey, a young journalist, meets Rola and uncovers the truth about her past, of which Rola learned through her grandad’s diary.

From this point, I am still thinking of how to link everything together. I would like Aubrey to go to Lebanon and Kofinou and find out the truth, of which she writes a novel about. Kelly is killed and the past about Escort XX3 is to be revealed, detailing the horrors of trafficking from the Far East. When Aubrey goes to Lebanon she will not be able to tell the difference between an AI robot and a real, conscious human. She will write about this in her novel and the reception will be a mixture of paranoia, technological commendation and hysteria. She will receive emails and mail asking fundamental questions about artificial intelligence that we must ask ourselves today, at which point the novel will end. Like Sinclair’s The Jungle, I’d like this piece to end with a strong political message, distant from the characters themselves, as once again, this will accentuate the move away from real, intimate human relations. 

As you can see, this piece is a little messy and would need a lot of work. But it is these sorts of issues I would like to focus on and depict in my creative writing.