The Three-Module Heart

***

For the first time in my life I felt tired of the happiness module today. This was not an easy revelation; indeed, I hear it never is. My father had such an experience himself, two cycles after he had turned eleven. He had explained the feeling to me in much detail, in exaggerated tirades about the importance of passing wisdom from one generation to the next. All such information had been, until recently, like dumping water on a stone; retained temporarily, but washed away soon-after by the warmth of the sun.

One thing most of all was senseless to me in his explanations, being that ‘tired’ was indeed an emotion. In fact, you can buy tired modules in the back of most major retailers for half the price of a candy bar. Jnovnysk, a weaver in a village to the south, is the only one I have ever heard of who had actually bought the damn thine, apparently to “provide meaning to excitement” (obviously preposterous.)

However, it appears that my father was indeed correct! Although it is possible there is a fault in my happiness module, it is hard to doubt the consistency of the artisans, and my father had in no way skimped on the price. It would appear that whatever this tiredness is, it is not primarily an emotion. Perhaps it is a mechanism of the intellect, the same that alerts me if I am hungry or over-full.

Father says that a proper balance for adults is the following: For two tenths of a cycle, happiness; for one tenth of a cycle, sadness; for two tenths of a cycle, inspiration; for one tenth of a cycle, excitedness; for two tenths of a cycle, contentment; for the remaining two-tenths, a sleep module. He has tried to convince me to buy a ponderous module to use for two tenths of a cycle each month, citing the old texts the village elders always talk about, but I find that dubious. If they really are a great authority, it wouldn’t be hard to show me why.

The good news is that my mind may simply be playing tricks on me. I got to listen to Lasske from the village to the north (Juvel? Jubil?) give one of his famous speeches, and I must say I found it quite compelling. His argument was essentially this: if the purpose of sadness, calm, and (hah!) tired modules are indeed to heighten the positive versions, then they are unnecessary, as it is simple to cut out the middleman, and at most swap between two or three positive modules.

When I told my father this compelling bit of rhetoric, he found the idea most repulsive. “Parbak!” he said, yelling and looking at me all mad after putting in an anger module, “you can’t just live in a fantasy world!” he made all kind of drastic gesticulations. “You can’t live in a fantasy world. You live in this world.”

But he’s wrong, obviously. Living in a fantasy world is super easy.

Sign off: four-tenths and a half of cycle.

I have made some progress in quieting my mental shakes, but also many great setbacks. While I thought the switch from happy to content would be simple and relatively without extremity, this is deeply false. Content is a most expensive, high-end, and legislated module, with a mandatory time-limit of two-tenths of a cycle. After attempting to use it, I comprehend why with much lucidity. In such a state, it appears that all is as it should be, and that to change is to be in error. For the entire duration of the module, I simply sat and read from the Red Vine series of tablets. It was only when the module powered off, and I returned to default that I noticed any time had passed at all. I have resolved to never use contentment again. I cannot believe that all adults have gone through this ‘phase of discovery’ – how do they survive? I attempted the sad module and set the dial to auto-disable after one tenth of a cycle. I was filled with a profound sense of despair and dread for the future and never-ending rumination on my past failures which appeared in that moment to be without end.

It was after this that I realized that I am perhaps a Broken. I write this section in default, because to do so with any other module would be to disgrace my objectivity in layers of self-pity or self-satisfaction. My first piece of evidence is as follows: while in my pitiful state, my father claimed that he had never seen anyone quite so miserable with such little cause. He described his own use of the sad module as reflective and melancholy, while mine was almost unbelievably sullen and despairing. Indeed, I asked Father 2 and he said the same thing! Same for my older siblings.

To test this hypothesis, I locked the door to my room with a mod-sensitive lock, and put in the anger module. Needless to say, the walls were riddled with holes, and any furniture made of soft materials was soon scattered in bits on the floor. The only reason I left the state is because, in a fit of rage, I decided that the world must see my fury, and attempted to change temporarily to a different module to bypass the lock. Needless to say, it was disconcerting to exit this state and observe the results of my actions.

However, I do not notice this same circumstance with the positive modules – up until yesterday, I was told I am an ordinary youngling, and I have been using the happiness module since my creation.

Noticing this, I spoke with my brother who is a module machinist, and his friend who is a modulist, and they have concocted a machine that will perhaps fix my perplexing neuroticism. They said that they had already conceptualized the machine: a customized heart with more slots for modules, and smaller modules, now in a thin rectangular shape in place of blocks. They propose that if they complete their machine, and I allow them to operate, I shall be fixed. It is most serendipitous that they were working on such a project, because I have heard greatly negative things of Brokens. It always begins with one thing, perhaps their modules gray out within them (horrifying to see happen!) or perhaps their module becomes attached to their heart and will not be removed. I do not wish to end up like them, no matter what.

– Sign off: one tenth of cycle.

III

I have not written in many days. I am not sure what to write, or how to write it, or even what words to use. I have entered a world of radical uncertainty, more uncertain than the confused module, perhaps more than if all three slots in my trichamber heart were filled with ‘confusion’. It is as if I am looking at an object and seeing it be at once red and green; from one moment I may be filled with a primal euphoria and wonder for the world, and the next I am in a pit of despair and horror at my misdeeds. The ‘waves’ of emotion are bad, (I cannot think of a better adjective) they come without warning or changing of modules.

The assumption of myself and my sibling would be that when implanted with happy, energetic, and sad modules, these would balance one another and I would be provided with a moment of calm interplay between the emotions. Instead, it is as if all three of them are worms wriggling within me, moving around and through each other, merging with each other into strange and unidentifiable groans of feeling. It has provided what the ancients called the Great Delineation, some things are now evoking of sadness and others of happiness, there is no unity, there is no great one which is refracted through the module. The world is no longer whole, it is made up of many tiny whisks of object-shaped sub-emotions that influence me, and I feel a leaf adrift in a wind blown through the tornado unable to do anything but observe. Despite my sibling’s frantic trying, I cannot shift back to how I once was, and now I am more broken ever, but it is all now too much, as at least the sadness was singular, and not a big group of small sadnesses.

– Sign off: Nine-tenths and one quarter of a cycle.

There was a swimmer in the lake by the south village, I watched as the small green critter made its way north to south, and I felt myself in it, I noticed its movements and where it looked and that is not as singular as it would like you to believe, that it is not deceptive but instead unassuming, and I ran the length of the river, my legs burning with exhaustion but sending my mind those joyous signals of events, and I felt fear when I saw an eater (a ten-foot one!) approaching and saw its pupils spin around its eyes, and let out a sigh of relief when I saw it move by, though the swimmer did not show any emotions if it felt any (how could it – no modules) and i watched and swooned over the little thing while it stopped to eat, gobble gobble gobble it munched the little gray pellets on the dirtside and went back on its merry way, and when it was one-twentieth of a cycle away from Lbych (its destination? its home?) it was eaten, and i sobbed and sobbed and sobbed.