Disclaimer: 'Brave New World' and all its characters belong to A. Huxley. The Falklands and their capital, Stanley, don't belong to me. All original characters do.

Warnings: None

A/N: A very nice person reminded me of this fic! In fact, I have been writing and rewriting this chapter for months, but I could never quite bring myself to post it. There are several reasons for that: 1)The plot. This does (or will) have a plot and not a small or simple one. I honestly don't think I'll ever complete it, because it would have to be a novel. 2)Bernard and Helmholtz. I confess, I'm very tempted to slash these two. But I know my audience is small, and probably half of you would run scared. Tell me if you wouldn't! 3)The island society. Sooner or later, I'll have to describe the island society. It would have to be utopian, a real, positive Utopia, and that scares me. 4) I'm writing so many other fics!

Thanks for reading and reviewing!

Chapter Four : The Relativity of Truth

"We get food – bad food, but food -, we get a car, we get all kinds of useless things like books and games and if we requested for it, we would even get the newest scientific equipment. But they won't give us soma! Why? Why not soma?"

Helmholtz frowned. His good-natured patience was coming to an end. It was early in the morning of their tenth day on the Falklands and Bernard was already whining. He could tolerate small doses of Bernard's bad moods, but living with him proved more unnerving than he had thought.

In the beginning he had thought nothing of sharing the house with his friend. Normally, people didn't share their flats, but he had not come here to live the 'normal' way. And obviously there was a shortage of living space on the island. But their house was isolated and he was spending more time with Bernard than ever before. Why had the Falkland administration just put them together like this? They hadn't even been asked.

Bernard seemed to do nothing but complain. Well, he also looked balefully and sulked in his room, but most of his energy went into endless streams of complaints. Totally unreasonable complaints.

Soma, for example, was not addictive. People relied psychologically on the substance, but their bodies didn't need it. There were no bad side-effects, no hangovers – it was the perfect drug.

"I think it's a good thing that they don't give us soma," Helmholtz said.

"It's just another way to torment us!"

"I think John was perfectly right to try and take the soma away from those Deltas. Of course, he shouldn't have tried it with Deltas, but the use of soma is degrading us."

"I don't care, it makes me happy. I could use some oblivion right now. Possibly forever," Bernard snapped.

"Soma doesn't make you happy."

"Yes it does!"

Helmholtz made an irritated noise. Bernard, being as bright as he was, should be able to see he was wrong. Many people couldn't discern the drugged animalistic pleasure of soma oblivion from actual happiness these day. But that was mainly because they never experienced any kind of happiness that wasn't shallow and stupid.

"Bernard, you did love Lenina, didn't you?" Helmholtz asked as gently as he could.

He thought that Bernard loved the girl. Genuinely loved her, in the sense of Shakespeare and not in the sense of feelies. He couldn't be sure, he had never experienced that kind of sentiment himself. The closest he had come to any kind of genuine feeling for anyone was the friendship with Bernard.

Bernard scrunched up his face in a mix of confusion and pain. "Love?" he whispered. "Love is... an obscenity."

"I think it is not," Helmholtz said with as much calmness as he could muster. Ever since he had discovered the library of old books that the Falklands provided them with, he was embracing all concepts he found in these works of art. And love was the most frequent topic of all. He was willing to see it as something positive, eager to experience it and he would not let Bernard deny it.

"You can admit it, you know? That's one of the advantages of being exiled, that you don't have to fear the censure anymore. And besides, you don't have to lie to me."

Bernard looked pallid from fear. He sighed shakily and looked up at the ceiling. "Yes. I did - I do love Lenina. I'm a freak."

Helmholtz would discuss this topic another time. Now he needed to prove his point about soma.

"And when she dated you – when she agreed to visit the Indian reservation with you, were you happy?"

"Do you need to remind me of it, now that I can't have it anymore? Of course I was! Happier than I ever have been!"

"When you thought you would be sent to Island for the first time and you weren't and could stay in London, were you happy?"

Bernard stared angrily at him, but he nodded. Helmholtz smiled.

"Does soma even compare? Can you honestly say that it makes you happy?"

Bernard got up from the table where they had been eating breakfast. With shaky hands he gathered his cup and plate and put them into the sonic dishwasher. With his back to Helmholtz he softly said:

"No, it doesn't make me happy. But it makes me forget happiness and that's... that's what I want."

Since the Administration had given them the electric car, Helmholtz was paying daily visits to Stanley, the capital of the islands. The town was incredibly tiny and quiet in comparison to London. He barely ever saw people on the streets. The only place where people seemed to gather regularly was in the supplies shop and the town hall, where they would play games and commit themselves to activities like community singing. That somehow surprised Helmholtz. Was that all these people ever did? He had expected something else, something different.

Some of the people he met seemed perfectly normal to him. Young, pretty, smooth, friendly. Others had minor physical deformations – crippled limbs or scars. A few times he glimpsed people who looked actually old. But their conversations were just as dull and superficial as they had been at home.

Most of the time he spent in the library. There were hundreds of books, and he couldn't wait to devour them all. Many of them were even more confusing than the books of the savage. All of them went against his conditioning. Sometimes what he read was so appalling and alien that he couldn't stand it for more than an hour. But still he couldn't stop. The hidden depths of the world and the mind these books were revealing had drawn him in.

It was near the end of the second week on the Falklands, and he was reading the titles on the spines of the books, looking for something to take home with him.

"I thought I'd meet you here, sooner or later," someone announced behind him. The voice was low, but female.

Helmholtz turned around and met the eyes of a tall, lean woman of indecipherable age. Her hair was short and dark with some very few grey hairs, and her eyes had the colour of chrome. Her face was one of the very few truly striking faces he had seen in his life. He recognised her immediately.

"World Controller," he said, sounding nonplussed. She had been the World Controller before Mustapha Mond, and he had once met her when he had been reprimanded for the articles and verses he wrote. Armstrong was her name. He had lied to her to save Bernard from being exiled back then and he'd never seen her since.

"No longer. As you see, I am here."

Helmholtz followed his first impulse and asked : "Why? Who could exile a World Controller?"

Perhaps this was a stupid thing to ask, as she could very well not have been exiled at all. But she appeared only amused.

"I haven't been exiled, Mr Watson. I chose to come here some years ago. My life as a World Controller served the community, but it was less than fulfilling."

"I did so too! I mean, I chose the Falklands over the other islands. I had no choice about being exiled."

"Of course you did. Everyone on the Falklands chose this place. This island is a little different from many others. People who don't choose get Island or the North Pole or the Galapagos or some tropical paradise. Where do you think all these books come from? Only a very few high-ranking people can afford to keep forbidden books. World Controllers, namely. These books have been gathered in the course of many years by the select few who managed to preserve them and who retired to this place."

She looked him up and down, then she added : "What surprises me is that your companion chose this island as well. Mr Marx didn't seem the kind of man to do so."

Her speech was precise and direct. It also sounded cold, even clinical. She emanated authority even though she had none, now that she was merely another woman in exile. Helmholtz couldn't imagine her playing obstacle golf or frolicking in the parks. Perhaps World Controllers didn't do such things.

"Bernard mainly chose this place because I chose it. He and I were exiled for the same incident."

Again, she gave him a considering look before she answered. "I've heard all about your escapades with the savage from my successor. Mr Mond was fairly amused. And I must say I'm quite impressed. I thought you'd get problems, sooner or later, but not quite that huge problems. Something like that hasn't happened for decades, as far as I know."

Helmholtz kept quiet. There was no way he could respond to that. This was the kind of conversation that wasn't meant to be had in the world he had been raised in. People didn't think about the past. There was no such thing as history or impressing deeds.

That night, he told Bernard about the strange meeting. They were sitting in the living room of their little house and the light was dim and yellow. Outside, a storm howled through the night.

"A World Controller chose exile over her old life?" Bernard exclaimed. "Madness."

"Why? She told me herself – her life wasn't satisfying her. And she felt she had done enough service to the community. I think she enjoys herself here. As do I."

"I noticed."

"She wasn't the only one, Bernard. There must have been hundreds like her. I think that maybe it's something about Alpha double plusses that makes them want to leave the normal world and come to these free islands. Maybe their brilliant minds –"

"They're not conditioned the same way we are."

Helmholtz, interrupted in mid-sentence, closed his mouth and stared at Bernard.

"Come again?"

Bernard smirked.

"Future World Controllers are not conditioned like other citizens. Their sleep school is different."

"How do you know?" Of course, every caste was conditioned differently. But what Bernard implied was a difference so huge that it made Alpha double plusses predestined heretics.

"It's my job, what do you think? I'm a sleep-learning specialist. I have actually raised some future Alpha double plusses." Bernard thrived. He loved to be in any kind of superior position and now he had some definite advantage over Helmholtz. He made a grand gesture with his left hand.

"It's actually quite simple. They are not conditioned differently – they're conditioned less than we are."

Helmholtz jumped from his seat and started to pace. His long legs carried him through the small room far too quickly and he felt caged. This was highly disturbing. The wind howled and rattled at the windows and doors.

"Do you know what you're implying?" Helmholtz asked darkly.

"I'm not implying anything. I told you the facts."

"But Bernard! We've been taught in school and in our sleep : the conditioning is a good thing! It's supposed to be the only thing that saved civilisation from destroying itself. And yet the people who govern us are less conditioned than we are!" He wrung his hands in agitation. Bernard remained very still, but his eyes gleamed too brightly. He looked perversely fascinated, like someone watching a terrible catastrophe.

"As you said, they're the people who govern us. They can do whatever they want. They can go around all day and talk about mothers and fathers and forddamn love!"

Helmholtz froze. Too many thoughts were in his head and he found that his life hadn't prepared him for this. Soma and girls and silly sports and meaningless entertainment were... well, meaningless. He had known that, felt that, for some time. He had wanted to live in a different, harder, truer world. That was why he had chosen the Falklands. But this...

Ending is better than mending. Everyone belongs to everyone. Deltas are ugly. Oh no, I don't want to play with Deltas. I like to be happy! I like playing! I don't want to be alone, oh no, being alone is bad, I don't want to...

Thousands of repetitions all night until it became the truth. Was it all wrong? Was it a lie? No, it was necessary, necessary for peace and happiness.

"When I was still a child, I used to have nightmares," Bernard said softly. "All children have nightmares, but I had them more frequently. I used to wake up in the dark and then I heard the whispering voice under my pillow. I thought it was some kind of ... being, creature... under my bed. I was afraid of it, and I knew that something was wrong with me."

I don't want to be different, oh no, being different is bad. I don't want to ...

Helmholtz bit his lip. Being different was not bad. He was different. He wanted to be different. And yet he did feel guilty. He couldn't help it. He was worried.

I want to do the best I can. I like to do the best I can. We all have to give our best. I want to ...

"Future sleep-learning specialists have to pass all kinds of tests. They know that there are some people like us, Helmholtz, people who don't meet the standard in some way. Dangerous people. People who might do harm. I used to lie on those tests. It was easy... because I always clashed with the rules, I was more aware of them than others."

How much of what Helmholtz believed about himself was really true? Did he really want to be happy? Did he really want to do the best he could? Did he really enjoy his body more than his mind? Did he really like community singing? Could he really never, ever imagine doing to work of a Gamma? Did he really like grey better than khaki or green?

"I wanted this job because it would allow me to work alone. Otherwise I wouldn't have dared to lie on the tests." Bernard fell silent and frowned. "Are you alright?"

Helmholtz shook his head and raked a hand through his sweaty hair. "I'm merely confused..."

Bernard just looked at him. He wasn't good at comforting people. Helmholtz made a helpless waving gesture. "I think that green is a really ugly colour for clothes. But why do I think this? Is it really ugly? Or is it only ugly because I've been told so million times in my sleep? I think the latter is true, but I still can't help but find it ugly. It's as if... as if my mind doesn't belong to me anymore."

Bernhard shrugged and gave him a wry smile. "Well, it doesn't. You belong to your society. Everyone belongs to everyone. Your body as well as your mind."

"Yes," Helmholtz whispered. Somehow that sentence was reassuring. It was a truth he knew by heart. And yet – had his actions not defied this rule?

"Everyone serves the interest of society. Otherwise society cannot exist – and we cannot exist without society," Helmholtz repeated what he had learned in school. This was not a sleep lesson, it was something he understood. At least, he thought he understood.

Bernard nodded. "Right. Sleep lesson No. 2786 a. Everyone needs everyone else."

Helmholtz raised his head, horrified. "It's a sleep lesson? But I thought we learned it in school! It was explained to us! I thought it made sense... But if it was a sleep lesson, that we had no choice but to agree."

"Well," Bernard said, stretching his arms, "it really doesn't make that big a difference whether a child learns a lesson in their sleep or in their school. The only difference is that the lessons we learn in sleep, we perceive as innate truths that came out of ourselves. But if you had only learned it in school, you would probably still believe in it. You do believe in the laws of physics, don't you?"

Helmholtz remained silent. Bernard was going to prove a point and he was going to use physics as an example. Bernard had a definite advantage over him on the field of natural science.

"You do, for example, believe that an object that moves in an absolute vacuum will never cease to move."

"Probably I do..." Helmholtz already felt confused.

"You would if you had any idea about physics at all," Bernard said with friendly scorn. "Even though you have never witnessed an absolute vacuum. It could be wrong. It could be a lie. But do we ever doubt the things we're told in school? For example, we are all told that savages like John are inferior to us for all kinds of reasons. Now look at John. Wasn't he intelligent, attractive and likeable?"

For a long time, Helmholtz said nothing. He had not thought that to begin a new life, he would eventually have to shatter his old one.

"Were you always like that?" He asked eventually.

"Like what?" Bernard replied irritably.

"Did you always doubt everything?"

Bernard looked away, to the rattling windows and the black raging storm outside. He seemed to be lost in thought and there was something about his smooth young face that suggested age before the time.

"Most of my life I forced myself not to ask questions."

Bernard began to feel better.

Of course, better didn't mean good. He had been desperately miserable and now he was only a bit miserable. He couldn't quite tell what had alleviated his spirits. Perhaps it was the fact that since their conversation about sleep school and World Controllers, Helmholtz was a lot less stable and happy than he used to be.

His friend seemed to have lost his mad enthusiasm about the island. He would stare at the most ridiculous things – spoons or socks for example – as if they might hold a deep truth about the universe.

And inexplicably, as Helmholtz felt worse, Bernard felt better. The island was still cold and horrible and the house still too quiet and uncomfortable. But things started to look up.

The next time Helmholtz drove with their electric car to the town, Bernard asked to accompany him. The town was as he remembered it: small and dreary and eerily quiet. What were those islanders doing the whole time? There were no schools and no hatcheries and the islands certainly lacked sports facilities. Did the people even work here? Or did they just sit around in their houses all day, contemplating their unlucky fate?

They stopped at the supplies store – it was not really a store, as they didn't have to pay for the things they got here – and loaded food and other articles into their car. Then Helmholtz wanted to go to the library.

Bernard stayed outside the Administration Centre, pacing up and down the pavement next to their car. A harsh wind pulled relentlessly at his jacket. The air always smelled salty and fishy on this island, but something about the cold, wet stream of air against his face was oddly refreshing. He had always liked rain and storms better than sunshine. Another part of him that was freakish, he thought darkly, as he remembered Lenina's reaction to the dark, roiling sea under their helicopter. He had wanted to frighten her with the sight. Her reaction had only confirmed what he already knew: he was ugly and frightening.

Suddenly he felt watched. This slight paranoia was something he had felt almost constantly in his old life, but since they were on the island, it had been gone. The worst case scenario of his life had come true and there was no reason to fear the prying eyes of others anymore. Still, the hairs on his neck rose in an archaic reaction to danger. He turned around.

But this time, he was being watched. Not a phantom, but a tall woman in a white raincoat was looking calmly at him from the top of the stairs. She was too thin and too broad-shouldered by the standards of society and her face too hard and too keenly intelligent. Of course he recognised her. She was the second most scary person he had ever met, second only to World Controller Mond.

"Good morning, Mr Marx," the Ex-World Controller said without a smile. "You look a little bored."

What was the appropriate thing to say in such a situation? Was there even an appropriate reaction? Well, she wasn't really a World Controller anymore. There was nothing she could do to him.

"Your island doesn't offer many distractions," he said, trying to sound nonchalant, but failing badly.

"Indeed, it doesn't." She walked down the staircase and closed some of the distance between them. Bernard hoped Helmholtz would return soon. "Not even soma."

He almost jumped at her words. His paranoia returned with new force. How did she know that he had complained about the lack of soma? Did she know at all or had she just made a lucky guess?

Her grey eyes glinted. "At least, no soma for you."

Bernard's heart stopped beating for a second, but then he bristled. "What do you mean, no soma for me?"

"I made sure that the two of you would not get soma."

All his instincts told him to run and hide. Or maybe to curl into a foetal position on the pavement. He didn't know which option he preferred.

"Why?" he croaked. And how? His mind added. Did she still possess so much power?

"Because I have plans for you."

"Oh," he said faintly. Oh no. Help.

"You're bored, Mr Marx. This island seems incredibly dull to you. Right you are!" A thin smile appeared on her face. She made a wide, sweeping gesture with her left hand that somehow encompassed the whole island, the small houses and empty streets. Involuntarily, he took a step back and almost bumped into their car.

"Hundreds of highly talented Alphas, Mr Marx! Rebel and misfits, most of them. Did you think a few ugly huts and some empty streets is all there is to this island?"