Kontemps S1E1: “Interview with a Purge Survivor”
[A seemingly unmodified Sapiens sits down in front of a tight-angle camera shot. This host is young, androgynous, and olive-skinned, briefly speaking to someone behind the camera before staring right into the viewers’ eyes.]
Sulka: [shuffles a stack of cards] And now finally, we’re here with one of the survivors of the Purges of the late 2400s. She goes by Magda now, and she’s instructed us not to think of her as a victim - she feels it takes away from the fighting she had to do just to survive. Her story is so inspiring for Mods everywhere, and I think that even we Unmods can learn plenty from her story. About love, hate, perseverance - and plenty more. So please, welcome Magda. A hero in my eyes.
[The shot cuts to a camera pointing the opposite way, just as a heavily-modified cyborg, much of her artificial body transluscent, sits down. A bellows draws and exhales air on the left side of her chest, while a mechanically-actuated pump keeps up a constant cycle rate of blue fluid through the entirety of her body. Effective replacements for organs are purposely visible throughout the mechanical portion of her body, which visibly constitutes everything except her head - making her quite unusual for a cyborg. Topping a metal-and-plastic body is the head of a zebra, a face traced with wrinkles.]
Magda: Looking good for 134 years old, right? [she and Sulka laugh] Over a hundred years since this transformation occured.
Sulka: Can you tell us a little about what it was like for you back then? I know many of our viewers are from Earth. The narrative about the Kontemps has been shifted tremendously.
[Magda nods and flips through a small booklet she’s brought with her, robotic fingers doing quick and precise work. A photograph comes out. It’s her - younger, with a collection of friends in secondary school, and fully organic, but still clearly her. Most of her friends are other Mods - one of them is an Unmod.]
Magda: So, this is a photo of me in my last year of compulsory school. We called it Comps, I think kids still do. I grew up on Io, Arcology Kappa.
Sulka: One of the oldest still around.
Magda: Yes, yes. Everybody knows Tin Can Timmy. There were something like 750 students in my graduating class. About 700 of them were Mods, of whom maybe… a hundred survived the entire thing. Even fewer left today. And of this picture, only I and the girl to my right, Angeline, are still around. She is an Upload now - what they did to me, they also did to her. She just didn’t want anything to do with her body.
Sulka: It’s hard when they take so much of you.
Magda: I hold onto mine as a little defiance. They failed to assimilate me. I won’t do it on my own. But I don’t neg her for her choices.
[brief pause as Magda collects herself]
Magda: So we grew up in a changing world. Mods everywhere, especially Genetics, especially around Jupiter and Saturn, were waking up. That’s one thing you have to understand. The Purge was a response to social upheaval. People were calling the Work Terms what they really were - slavery. Term Overseers were getting their heads bashed in with mining tools. A horrible time to have anxiety over the news.
Sulka: So every day, clips of small-scale rebellions are flooding in. Everybody’s terrified. How does the Purge come to you?
Magda: Yeah, so when I was about 19 I joined an organization. The All-Moon Communist League. We mostly disseminated propaganda and agitated for civil rights - it was quite popular back in the day. We decided we wanted to turn things up a notch, especially as life got worse on the Moons. Everybody was itching for a fight. Personally, I bought a pistol for myself, but I must have fired… I don’t know, less than 100 shots with it in practice. And never in anger.
Sulka: But there was an armed wing of the AMCL, right?
Magda: Yeah. We just called them the Reds. Most of my job was coordinating logistics and information for them. I was doing that by myself by the time I was 25. I had a stack of those cheap disposable pistols in my closet that came up to about my knee. Just give an armful to any Red that comes by, and they’d look after you. Food, obviously, but any contraband you wanted. I was drinking every night because of the stress, and you couldn’t get anything but cheap brew legally. Helga down the street was distilling some mean grape vodka though… Mm. I almost miss it.
Sulka: Sounds idyllic. Reminds one of the Paris Commune, though.
Magda: We held out for longer against the outside forces, but, well, it’s Earth. They have the dedication to hurl bodies at the problem - more than we had. If you weren’t shot for rebellion, you were to be Integrated - your mind made part of their warfare network. Every logistics and tactics person they captured made them better at warfare. We knew that, so we tried to keep individual knowledge as local as possible. But if you were captured like me…
Sulka: …it could all come crashing down.
Magda: So they pulled me into an autocar as I was going to the shop to hopefully buy some fruit. Almost none of the arcologies could grow mangoes back then. The ones everyone liked came from Thailand, but the conflict brought embargoes with it. You had to get them smuggled in and have something useful to trade. Money was just paper then. I had come into a small stash of cybernetic immunosuppressants. I was planning to sell just one or two. Enough to fill my pantry for a while. But they got to me before I even got there.
Sulka: Could you… talk about how that happened? If it’s not too painful.
Magda: It’s legitimately a black spot in my memory. I was shot in the back with a dart gun, and the drugs made everything a blur. I thought I was dead - I couldn’t feel my breathing or my heartbeat. That experience scarred me. Even now, many nights, I dream of black-clad agents dragging my limp body into an autocar. [She hesitates, then reaches for a tissue to wipe her eye, having been mostly still and well-collected.] Most of my body was surgically removed as they tried to chop off bits until I assimilated, and when that didn’t work, they stuck me in a sustainment vessel. I was what they called an Integration Failure. But they didn’t want to just shoot me. I languished in that jar, in that room, barely conscious, for a decade while the war happened around me.
Sulka: A decade. Most of our news stopped reporting on it even though it was still going on.
Magda: There was nothing to report on for you. We were winning. Societies don’t like to hear about how they’re losing. Especially not for years. The Consortium was an infant when I came to again. The Jovian Union and Titanite Council both came later.
Sulka: [leaning forward] The Noble Consortium?
Magda: Right. It’s a gas cartel, sure, but it was our gas cartel. Everything boils down to resources. If Earth lost its free access to hydrogen it couldn’t prosecute the war. I learned about all this after I got out of the Panopticon.
Sulka: Do you want to talk about how it was to reintegrate?
Magda: The first thing I had to realize is that I still am. Having my mind fragmented and spread across the Net like that over and over, then isolated in a stupor when it didn’t work. My only solace is I didn’t perceive time passing.
Sulka: You just woke up later.
Magda: Without my body. That was the worst part. I was told I’d never be whole, but I don’t know if that’s true. My birth body would look and feel decrepit by 134. I’d probably have switched to my second at 100. Maybe earlier. But I’ve decided to go mechanical and keep my head. That’s what I had left, so I added to it.
Sulka: You’ve made your body a work of art. The see-through parts were intentional?
Magda: Right. i wanted people to see my body working, pumping. To show that I’m still alive, I guess. That I’m not just an Upload. That I - [She chokes back tears, but fails, her body shuddering as she sobs.] I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I thought I could -
Sulka: [moving to comfort her] No, it’s okay. We can have you back. You’ve told us a lot. We can talk about your time after the war next time.
Magda: Yeah. Yeah, of course. Thanks for having me.