Brian W. Aldiss - Total Environment

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Introduction

Will man be able to continue to produce enough food to support rapid population increase? Some

scholars have faith that scientific technology will produce sufficient food and other resources. Others,

dating from Thomas Malthus' famous essay on population in 1798, feel that man's increase in numbers

will eventually outstrip man's ability to feed the increased numbers and mankind will be faced with a crisis

of survival.

While scientists in many disciplines have studied and debated the equations of food and energy

production vs. population growth and try to project the probabilities of man's biological survival, some

sociologists have raised this important question: Assuming that massive populations can physically survive

on earth, what changes in social organization will be required if societies of billions of people are to

function? It is not unlikely that man's social world will be altered in as yet unimagined patterns, and with

these changes man's beliefs and values will be altered as well.

"Total Environment" is set in a world that has managed its food shortages, but where individuals perform

experiments on other human beings to test the effect of high densities of population on human social and

psychic functioning, much as some behavioral psychologists today study rats to investigate the same

question. Following the inhabitants of "Total Environment" as they adjust to their artificial conditions, one

sees some familiar social processes at work— intragroup status hierarchies developing, groups forming

for protective functions, and commitment and fatalistic attitudes toward their way of life emerging. Is their

social world a simple extension of our own? There are two crucial questions here: Will large populations

in limited space produce the kind of social world portrayed in this story? In the future, will man's moral

and ethical values permit him to commit other human beings to experimental "total environments?"

Total Environment

Brian Aldiss

"What's that poem about 'caverns measureless to man'?" Thomas Dixit asked. His voice echoed away

among the caverns, the question unanswered. Peter Crawley, walking a pace or two behind him, said

nothing, lost in a reverie of his own.

It was over a year since Dixit had been imprisoned here. He had taken time off from the resettlement

area to come and have a last look round before everything was finally demolished. In these great

concrete workings, men still moved—Indian technicians mostly, carrying instruments, often with their own

headlights. Cables trailed everywhere; but the desolation was mainly an effect of the constant abrasion all

surfaces had undergone. People had flowed here like water in a subterranean cave; and their corporate

life had flowed similarly, hidden, forgotten.

Dixit was powerfully moved by the thought of all that life. He, almost alone, was the man who had

plunged into it and survived.

Old angers stirring in him, he turned and spoke directly to his companion. "What a monument to human

suffering! They should leave this place standing as an everlasting memorial to what happened."

The white man said, "The Delhi government refuses to entertain any such suggestion. I see their point of

view, but I also see that it would make a great tourist attraction!"

"Tourist attraction, man! Is that all it means to you?"

Crawley laughed. "As ever, you're too touchy, Thomas. I take this whole matter much less lightly than

you suppose. Tourism just happens to attract me more than human suffering."

They walked on side by side. They were never able to agree.

The battered faces of flats and houses—now empty, once choked with humanity—stood on either side,

doors gaping open like old men's mouths in sleep. The spaces seemed enormous; the shadows and

echoes that belonged to those spaces seemed to continue indefinitely. Yet before… there had scarcely

been room to breathe here.

"I remember what your buddy, Senator Byrnes, said," Crawley remarked. "He showed how both East

and West have learned from this experiment. Of course, the social scientists are still working over their

findings; some startling formulae for social groups are emerging already. But the people who lived and

died here were fighting their way towards control of the universe of the ultra-small, and that's where the

biggest advances have come. They were already developing power over their own genetic material.

Another generation, and they might have produced the ultimate in automatic human population control:

anoestrus, where too close proximity to other members of the species leads to reabsorption of the

embryonic material in the female. Our scientists have been able to help them there, and geneticists predict

that in another decade—"

"Yes, yes, all that I grant you. Progress is wonderful." He knew he was being impolite. These things

were important, of revolutionary importance to a crowded Earth. But he wished he walked these eroded

passageways alone.

Undeniably, India had learned too, just as Peter Crawley claimed. For Hinduism had been put to the test

here and had shown its terrifying strengths and weaknesses. In these mazes, people had not broken

under deadly conditions—nor had they thought to break away from their destiny.Dharma— duty—had

been stronger than humanity. And this revelation was already changing the thought and fate of one-sixth

of the human race.

He said, "Progress is wonderful. But what took place here was essentially a religious experience."

Crawley's brief laugh drifted away into the shadows of a great gaunt stairwell. "I'll bet you didn't feel that

way when we sent you in here a year ago!"

What had he felt then? He stopped and gazed up at the gloom of the stairs. All that came to him was the

memory of that appalling flood of life and of the people who had been a part of it, whose brief years had

evaporated in these caverns, whose feet had endlessly trodden these warren-ways, these lugubrious

decks, these crumbling flights…

The concrete steps, climbed up into darkness. The steps were wide, and countless children sat on them,

listless, resting against each other. This was an hour when activity was low and even small children

hushed their cries for a while. Yet there was no silence on the steps; silence was never complete there.

Always, in the background, the noise of voices. Voices and more voices. Never silence.

Shamim was aged, so she preferred to run her errands at this time of day, when the crowds thronging

Total Environment were less. She dawdled by a sleepy seller of life-objects at the bottom of the stairs,

picking over the little artifacts and exclaiming now and again. The hawker knew her, knew she was too

poor to buy, did not even press her to buy. Shamim's oldest daughter, Malti, waited for her mother by

the bottom step.

Malti and her mother were watched from the top of the steps.

A light burned at the top of the steps. It had burned there for twenty-five years, safe from breakage

behind a strong mesh. But dung and mud had recently been thrown at it, covering it almost entirely and so

making the top of the stairway dark. A furtive man called Narayan Farhad crouched there and watched,

a shadow in the shadows.

A month ago, Shamim had had an illegal operation in one of the pokey rooms off Grand Balcony on her

deck. The effects of the operation were still with her; under her plain cotton sari, her thin dark old body

was bent. Her share of life stood lower than it had been.

Malti was her second oldest daughter, a meek girl who had not been conceived when the Total

Environment experiment began. Even meekness had its limits. Seeing her mother dawdle so needlessly,

Malti muttered impatiently and went on ahead, climbing the infested steps, anxious to be home.

Extracts from Thomas Dixit's report to Senator Jacob Byrnes, back in America:To lend variety to the

habitat, the Environment has been divided into ten decks, each deck five stories high, which allows for an

occasional pocket-sized open space. The architecture has been varied somewhat on each deck. On one

deck, a sort of blown-up Indian village is presented; on another, the houses are large and appear

separate, although sandwiched between decks—I need not add they are hopelessly overcrowded now.

On most decks, the available space is packed solid with flats. Despite this attempt at variety, a general

bowdlerization of both Eastern and Western architectural styles, and the fact that everything has been

constructed out of concrete or a parastyrene for economy's sake, has led to a dreadful sameness. I

cannot imagine anywhere more hostile to the spiritual values of life .

The shadow in the shadows moved. He glanced anxiously up at the light, which also housed a spy-eye;

there would be a warning out, and sprays would soon squirt away the muck he had thrown at the fitting;

but, for the moment, he could work unobserved.

Narayan bared his old teeth as Malti came up the steps towards him, treading among the sprawling

children. She was too old to fetch a really good price on the slave market, but she was still strong; there

would be no trouble in getting rid of her at once. Of course he knew something of her history, even

though she lived on a different deck from him. Malti! He called her name at the last moment as he jumped

out on her. Old though he was, Narayan was quick. He wore only his dhoti, arms flashing, interlocking

round hers, one good powerful wrench to get her off her feet—now running fast, fearful, up the rest of

the steps, moving even as he clamped one hand over her mouth to cut off her cry of fear. Clever old

Narayan!

The stairs mount up and up in the four corners of the Total Environment, linking deck with deck. They

are now crude things of concrete and metal, since the plastic covers have long been stripped from them.

These stairways are the weak points of the tiny empires, transient and brutal, that form on every deck.

They are always guarded, though guards can be bribed. Sometimes gangs or "unions" take over a

stairway, either by agreement or bloodshed.

Shamim screamed, responding to her daughter's cry. She began to hobble up the stairs as fast as she

could, tripping over infant feet, drawing a dagger out from under her sari. It was a plastic dagger, shaped

out of a piece of the Environment.

She called Malti, called for help as she went. When she reached the landing, she was on the top floor of

her deck, the Ninth, where she lived. Many people were here, standing, squatting, thronging together.

They looked away from Shamim, people with blind faces. She had so often acted similarly herself when

others were in trouble. Gasping, she stopped and stared up at the roof of the deck, blue-dyed to simulate

sky, cracks running irregularly across it. The steps went on up there, up to the Top Deck. She saw legs,

yellow soles of feet disappearing, faces staring down at her, hostile. As she ran toward the bottom of the

stairs, the watchers above threw things at her. A shard hit Shamim's cheek and cut it open. With blood

running down her face, she began to wail. Then she turned and ran through the crowds to her family

room.

I've been a month just reading through the microfiles. Sometimes a whole deck becomes unified under a

strong leader. On Deck Nine, for instance, unification was achieved under a man called Ullhas. He was a

strong man, and a great show-off. That was a while ago, when conditions were not as desperate as they

are now. Ullhas could never last the course today. Leaders become more despotic as Environment

decays.

The dynamics of unity are such that it is always insufficient for a deck simply to stay unified; the young

men always need to have their aggressions directed outwards. So the leader of a strong deck always sets

out to tyrannize the deck below or above, whichever seems to be the weaker. It is a miserable state of

affairs. The time generally comes when, in the midst of a raid, a counter-raid is launched by one of the

other decks. Then the raiders return to carnage and defeat. And another paltry empire tumbles.

It is up to me to stop this continual degradation of human life.

As usual, the family room was crowded. Although none of Shamim's own children were here, there were

grandchildren—including the lame granddaughter, Shirin—and six great-grandchildren, none of them

more than three years old, Shamim's third husband, Gita, was not in. Safe in the homely squalor of the

room, Shamim burst into tears, while Shirin comforted her and endeavored to keep the little ones off.

"Gita is getting food. I will go and fetch him," Shirin said.

When UHDRE—Ultra-High Density Research Establishment—became operative, twenty-five years

ago, all the couples selected for living in the Total Environment had to be under twenty years of age.

Before being sealed in, they were inoculated against all diseases. There was plenty of room for each

couple then; they had whole suites to themselves, and the best of food; plus no means of birth control.

That's always been the main pivot of the UHDRE experiment. Now that first generation has aged

severely. They are old people pushing forty-five. The whole life cycle has speeded up—early puberty,

early senescence. The second and third generations have shown remarkable powers of adaptation; a

fourth generation is already toddling. Those toddlers will be reproducing before their years attain double

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Brian W. Aldiss - Total Environment

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