The Heart Goes Last by Margaret Atwood Read Free Book Online Page A

teenaged Conor, who’d had a collection of rhymes like that. He watches as Charmaine and all of the other women in the group leave the room. Sandi and Veronica don’t look back, but Charmaine does. She smiles brightly at Stan to show him she’s confident about their decision, though she looks a little anxious. But then, he’s a little anxious himself. What are these astounding new things they’re about to learn?
    The men’s workshop leaders are half a dozen young, earnest, dark-suited, zit-picking graduates of some globally funded think tank’s motivational-speaking program. In his past life, the part of it he’d spent at Dimple Robotics, Stan encountered the type. He disliked them before; but, as before, they can’t be avoided, since the workshop classes are mandatory.
    In a jam-packed day of back-to-back sessions, they’re given the full song and dance. The rationale for Consilience, its history, the potential obstacles to it, the odds ranged against it, and why it is so imperative that those odds be overcome.
    The Consilience/Positron twin city is an experiment. An ultra, ultra important experiment; the think-tankers use the word ultra at least ten times. If it succeeds – and it has to succeed, and it can succeed if they all work together – it could be the salvation, not only of the many regions that have been so hard-hit in recent times, but eventually, if this model comes to be adopted at the highest levels, of the nation as a whole. Unemployment and crime solved in one fell swoop, with a new life for all those concerned – think about that!
    They themselves, the incoming Positron Planners – they’re heroic! They’ve chosen to risk themselves, to take a gamble on the brighter side of human nature, to chart unknown territories within the psyche. They’re like the early pioneers, blazing a trail, clearing a way to the future: a future that will be more secure, more prosperous, and just all-round better because of them! Posterity will revere them. That’s the spiel. Stan has never heard so much bullshit in his life. On the other hand, he sort of wants to believe it.
    The final speaker is older than the zitty youths, though not that much older. His suit is of the same darkness, but it looks lusher. He’s narrow-shouldered, long torso, short legs; short hair too, clippered around the neck, combed back. The look says: I am buttoned-down.
    There’s a woman with him, also in a dark suit, with straight black hair and bangs and a squarish jaw; no makeup, but she does have earrings. Her legs are good though muscular. She sits to the side, fooling with her cellphone. Is she an assistant? It isn’t clear. Stan pegs her as butch. Technically she shouldn’t have been here, in the men’s sessions, and Stan wonders why she is. Still, better to look at her than at the guy.
    The guy begins by saying they should call him Ed. Ed hopes they’re now feeling comfortable, because they know – as he does! – that they’ve made the right choice.
    Now he would like to give them – share with them – a deeper peek behind the scenes. It was a struggle to get the multiple permissions needed to set up the Positron enterprise. The powers that be did not decide easily; more than one policy guru’s ass was on the line (he smirks a little at his own daring use of the word ass ), as witness the howling when the scheme was first announced in the press. The spokesmen, or rather the spokespersons – Ed glances at the woman, who smiles – have braved a lot of indignant screaming from the online radicals and malcontents who claim that Consilience/Positron is an infringement of individual liberties, an attempt at total social control, an insult to the human spirit. Nobody is more dedicated to individual liberties than Ed is, but as they all know – here Ed gives a conspiratorial smile – you can’t eat your so-called individual liberties, and the human spirit pays no bills, and something needed to be done to relieve the