The Overman Culture

by Edmund Cooper

Genres: Science Fiction; Sci-fi Action & Adventure; Post-Apocalyptic sci-fi; Space Opera

Synopsis

A boy's struggle to grasp the forbidden truth about his world... Michael was quite young when he discovered that some of his playmates bled if they cut themselves, and some didn't. For a long time he didn't think about it. Nor did it seem strange to see Zeppelins being attacked by jet fighters above London's force field, or glimpse Queen Victoria walking with Winston Churchill in the Mall. Not at first. But later he thought about these things - he couldn't help it. The world was real, and yet unreal. It was all desperately worrying. So Michael and his friends formed a society to investigate the world around them. Despite the terrible things they discovered, things that made some of them insane, they never actually guessed the truth about the Overman culture. Until Mr Shakespeare told them.

Release date: September 29, 2011

Publisher: Gateway

Print pages: 184

Sample

Michael had a good memory. He remembered things significant and insignificant. He remembered—if hazily—when he was young enough to be fed milk only. He remembered the odd child who disappeared from play school, and he remembered the other child who fell (or was pushed?) from the high window and lay all smashed and crumpled on the ground, but not bleeding. And he remembered how he had wanted to know about words, how you could keep them, how you could fix them—perhaps like a drawing—for ever.

He remembered nightmares and fantasies and a growing sense of oddness. He remembered when he first began to hope that people would hurt themselves a little so that he could see if they would bleed. He remembered the questions that did not seem to be properly answered. He remembered that Mother and Father had never ever raised their voices. He remembered his first walk by the River Thames, his first visit to the cinema, his first knowledge of air raids. He remembered when desire first stirred in his flesh, and when he began to love Emily Bronte.

Sometimes he thought he was mad. Sometimes he thought he was sane. Then he began to think he could be both sane and mad…

It had always been Mother who gave him milk from the bottle. He was sure of that. Always Mother. Always the same kind of smile. Sometimes, particularly when he was tired, drifting in the twilight between waking and sleeping, he could see her face now as it must have seemed then—vast, calm, pleasant, filling half the world.

Mother had always been calm, Mother always was calm, Mother always would be calm. And, for reasons that he could not understand, that, too, seemed terrible.

Father was different. Father was a bit abrupt—stern, even. He always had been, always would be.

Sometimes, Mother and Father laughed. Chiefly, they seemed to laugh when Michael asked silly questions. Michael did not know why the questions were silly. But Father said they were; and so, for a time, he thought they must be.

Later, there were the bigger questions, leading in the end to the biggest question of all.

Where does childhood end and maturity begin? Where do dreams border with reality? Where does truth separate from fantasy? These were problems that haunted Michael. They had been haunting him a long time, long before he had the words to describe them clearly. Before the bricks were abandoned in the nursery, before he rejected the talking teddy-bear because somehow he knew it was a traitor.

Early memories, early dreams. Early delights, early nightmares. The Thames was beautiful and blue, and on a spring morning a small boy could sit on the Embankment wall, staring down through the clear water at shoals of trout playing hide and seek among boulders and water-weed. The sun was warm and the sky hazy; and even with the sounds of war bumping and crumping and thudding away on the other side of the force field, London was sweetly silent. The Sunday silence was best of all. Somehow it seemed to throb.

“What is a force field, Father?”

“That’s a big question for a little boy… See, the swans are chasing the trout. Do you think they will catch any?”

“The swans aren’t chasing the trout, Father. The swans are just floating. The trout don’t like moving shadows… What is a force field?”

“Michael, there are some things you can’t properly understand. A force field is something you can’t see, but it is like a big umbrella. We live under it, and even if the laser batteries can’t destroy the enemy missiles, they still won’t get through the force field. Shall we walk home, now? I think it might rain.”

“Yes, Father.”

Father was very good at predicting the weather. Amazingly good.

Mother had an electric sewing, machine. She liked to make things, and she made almost all of Michael’s clothes; but the strange thing was that she seemed to prefer to do most of the sewing by hand. She liked embroidery, and she liked to sit in the evening listening to the wireless—the Palm Court orchestra, or the Beatles, or Nelson Eddy and Jeanette Macdonald—with her needle in her hand.

There was one particular piece of embroidery that Michael remembered. It was to be a new bed quilt for him, covered with lots of small silky animals. It took a long time to complete. For several nights Michael watched his mother working on the shape of an elephant. Each night she seemed to be having to embroider again a part that she had done on a previous night.

Michael was curious. He wondered if she could not see too well by lamp light. He wondered if, in daylight, she would examine her work, be dissatisfied with it and unpick the stitches.

At last, he asked her about it. But she only laughed. “What a quaint little boy you are, Michael. I don’t think you can have been watching me very carefully. Of course I don’t unpick the stitches when you are at play school. That would be silly.”

But thereafter, the bed quilt progressed at a faster rate.

Mother had golden hair, Father had light brown hair, Michael had black hair. One day he asked his parents why this should be so.

Father answered. “It just happens that way, Michael. That is the way it is. Hair comes in different colours like noses come in different shapes and lengths. No two things or people are ever exactly the same. Remember that. It is important… And Michael. You ask a lot of questions. It shows you are clever. But people can be too clever, and then they get unhappy. Happiness is a great thing, Michael. Happiness and contentment. That is what we want you to have. We want you to lead a happy life. So, don’t worry your head with too many questions. It is much more important to enjoy yourself. Now run outside and play for a while, then you will be really tired, and you will sleep well and not have any more of those silly nightmares.”

But Michael remembered that the child at play school who fell from the high window and lay all smashed without bleeding had yellow hair. And he remembered that the little girl who fell on her knees in the playground and cried when the blood came had black hair.

And he knew that he liked her very much. And he wondered if it was because she could bleed.

Michael could bleed. Secretly, he would occasionally cut himself a little to make sure he could still bleed. Vaguely, he was afraid that one day he might change. He was afraid that one day he might find no blood left inside him.

Michael liked being at play school better than he liked being at home. And that was another thing that puzzled him. He felt he should have wanted to be with Mother and Father more.

Play school was a big house in Hyde Park. Every day—except, of course, on Saturday and Sunday—Mother took Michael to school on her bicycle. All the mothers took their children to school on bicycles.

There were lots of children at play school. Some had golden hair, some had brown hair, some had black hair. Some could bleed if they hurt themselves. Michael liked the children who could bleed best of all.

One day he asked a golden-haired child called Virginia if she ever cut herself. Virginia shook her head and ran away, laughing.

Later, Miss Nightingale came and talked to Michael by himself while the other children were sleeping after lunch. Miss Nightingale was very pretty. She had brown hair.

“Michael, why did you ask Virginia Woolf if she ever cut herself?”

“It was a joke, Miss Nightingale.”

“It doesn’t sound like a joke, Michael. Do you ever cut yourself?”

“No,” he lied.

“Why should you want to ask her that?”

Again he lied. “I don’t know.”

Miss Nightingale smiled. “Never mind. The most important thing is to be happy, Michael. Strange ideas can make people unhappy. Try to be like the other children.”

“Yes, Miss Nightingale.”

“Go to sleep, now. This afternoon we shall have a picnic tea in the park, and we shall play some exciting games, and we shall all be happy.”

“Yes, Miss Nightingale. Thank you.”

Michael’s best friends were Horatio Nelson, Ernest Rutherford, Jane Austen and Emily Bronte. At one time or another, he had seen them all bleed—even if only a little.

Play school was pleasant, but sometimes it could be boring. There was drawing and painting, and acting and singing, and games and sleeping. The teachers told stories, the children told stories, and there were walks in the park.

But most of all, Michael wanted to ask questions. But there never seemed to be much time for questions, because the teachers were always busy organizing some activity or sharing out the toys or putting out the paints; and the children were busy being children, busy being happy by not asking questions. Most of them had already decided that questions were a waste of time. Sooner or later, they thought, they would learn about important things just naturally. Like they learned how to do lots of things that would make them happy but tired, so that they would sleep without having bad dreams.

Michael had bad dreams. He did not tell Mother and Father about them any more. Bad dreams made Mother and Father think that he was not tired enough to be happy and sleep well.

Sometimes he dreamed that the force field had broken, and then all the German and Japanese and Italian war machines came screaming into the lovely city of London, burning everything and leaving nothing but a great black pit in the earth. Sometimes he dreamed that he was walking, walking, walking—until he fell off the edge of the world, tumbling round and round down a great tunnel of darkness. Sometimes he dreamed that he was completely alone, that London was empty, and that he was the only person who had ever been able to bleed.

The odd child, the child who disappeared, came into Michael’s bad dreams. And remained in his dreams for ever. Because, although the little boy disappeared after the incident at play school, Michael was determined that he should not wholly disappear. Now and then, before he drifted off to sleep, Michael deliberately recalled the terrifying scene so that the child whose name he did not know would enter his dreams and be part of him for always.

It had happened one day when the paints were being used, when large sheets of paper had been clipped to all the easels, and when Miss Nightingale had told the children how splendid it would be if they all painted pictures of their fathers and mothers.

The group of children had been painting happily and noisily and messily for a while. Then suddenly the odd child had splashed paint all over his picture, had thrown his brush on the floor and had just stood there, shaking and screaming.

Miss Nightingale had not been in the room when it happened. But she came back very quickly and tried to comfort the little boy.

“What is it, cherub?” she asked gently. Cherub was a favourite word of Miss Nightingale’s. “What has happened? Has somebody been naughty and spoiled your lovely painting?”

“I hate all the children!” sobbed the odd little boy. “I hate every boy and girl! I hate myself!”

“Why?” asked Miss Nightingale. “Why do you have this terrible hate?”

“Because we are not people,” he screamed. “Because we are not real people… Because none of us can take off our heads!”

Miss Nightingale did not try to reason with him. She did not say anything. She just picked him up very gently and carried him, still kicking and screaming, out of the room.

That was the last Michael ever saw of him.

Later, Miss Nightingale said that the little boy had been ill because he had had too many bad dreams. And she asked everyone to forget what had happened because it was much more sensible to remember good things than bad things. It was thinking about bad things that brought bad dreams and unhappiness.

After several days, hardly any of the children remembered the incident; and even if they did, they remembered different versions.

But Michael remembered. And he promised himself he would always remember. Because, somehow, he knew that it was important to remember the bad things.

Even the dreams.

Michael did not know how old he was, but he knew quite a lot about what went on in the world. He learned about what was happening from the news broadcasts on the wireless; and sometimes there were programmes on the television, too.

He knew that Britain and America and Russia were at war with Italy and Germany and Japan. He knew that the important cities on both sides were protected by force fields which the bombers and the missiles could not penetrate. He knew that out there in the unprotected parts of the world, people were being hurt and killed and armies were fighting each other. He felt very sorry for people who were n. . .