This Perfect Day

"Christ, Marx, Wood, and Wei Led us to this perfect day. Marx, Wood, Wei, and Christ All but Wei were sacrificed. Wood, Wei, Christ, and Marx Gave us lovely schools and parks. ''Wei, Christ, Marx, and Wood Made us humble, made us good."

- Child's rhyme for bouncing a ball

This Perfect Day is a 1970 science-fiction Coming of Age Story by Ira Levin, the story of a boy named Li RM35M4419 (aka "Chip") who grows up about 200 years in the future. His world, known as "The Family", is unified under the authority and control of a gigantic supercomputer named UNICOMP, a computer that allocates resources, assigns jobs, and makes every important decision with perfect machine efficiency.

Unfortunately, the computer tends to wipe out creativity, initiative, and passion in pursuit of its efficiency. It attempts to control people by drugging them.

This story is about how Chip learns and relearns the truth about this society, learns ways to fight it and escape from it, and falls in love.


 * A.I. Is a Crapshoot -- Notably averted, as UNICOMP does EXACTLY what it's designed to do: run humanity with absolute efficiency.
 * Badass Grandpa -- Papa Jan. He helped build UNICOMP as a young man, came to regret it, then inspired Chip to destroy it, and gave him information on how to do so. Taught Chip how to pass through scanners without touching his bracelet. Did exactly whatever he wanted to, despite the oppressive nature of the society he once helped create. Wei Li Chun also counts, since his current body is that of a former athlete, and he keeps it in peak condition.
 * Big Brother Is Watching -- Everyone must touch their bracelet to a scanner when walking through doors, so UNICOMP knows where everyone is at all times.
 * Chekhov's Gun
 * Papa Jan's tunnel. Karl's picture of the horse. The leaf-shaped dry spot on the stone. The boat waiting on the beach. The blue patches covering up the islands on pre-unification maps.
 * Papa Jan talking about the tunnel and wanting things, Chip talking to Lilac and King about the islands, Dover talking about the islands as devious prisons.
 * Code Name -- The members of the secret group of undertreated members all give themselves nicknames, such as Leopard, Hush, Sparrow, Snowflake, Lilac, and King. Chip and many other untreatable members give themselves nicknames, or give nicknames to their friends and families, as Papa Jan did. Others give themselves nicknames once they reach the islands, such as Dover and Buzz.
 * The Complainer Is Always Wrong -- Practically the national motto of The Family.
 * Cool Old Guy -- Papa Jan again.
 * Cool Old Lady -- Julia, sister of General Darren Costanza, who finances the strike team sent to destroy UNICOMP.
 * Crap Saccharine World -- The world of The Family seems to be a utopia, with poverty and hunger and violence all eliminated, where everyone is happy and helpful and satisfied. But it has a dark secret. Then, of course, there's the island of Majorca/Liberty, which has more freedom, but less of everything else good.
 * Crystal Dragon Jesus -- Jesus Christ is important enough in the national founding mythos of the Family for "Jesus" to be one of the four names for boys, with "Mary" as one of the four names for girls. But they always depict Jesus beardless, and as fully human, leaving out all the supernatural aspects of his life and message.
 * Evil Versus Evil -- The Family Versus Majorca-one is a dystopia that brainwashes its citizens to conform to its idea of perfection, while the other is an outright repressive police state. People who escape from the former wind up mistreated by the latter.
 * Fantastic Slurs -- Natives of Majorca call immigrants "steelies", after their bracelets, and unawakened members of The Family back on the mainland "dummies". Immigrants return the favor by calling the natives "Lunkies", but not where they can hear it.
 * Food Pills -- Every meal for every member of The Family consists of a "totalcake", a vaguely described confection that provides all needed calories and nutrients, along with a choice of Tea or Coke as a beverage. Halfway through Chip's life, Totalcakes finally become available in "a pleasing second flavor".
 * Future Food Is Artificial -- No one who has tasted real food wants to go back to totalcakes.
 * Groin Attack -- The initial response to Rape Is Love.
 * Inherent in the System -- On the one hand, you've got The Family, whose helpful, unselfish, pacifist members would never think of hurting anyone, thanks to the drugs and genetic engineering, but the computer that controls every aspect of their lives euthanizes them at age 62 to conserve resources. On the other hand, you have the islands, which are either anarchic hellholes where the Law of the Jungle rules (Americanueva/Falklands) or tyrannical military dictatorships complete with an Apartheid system (Liberty/Majorca). You can't solve the problems of either without creating the problems of the other one. Chip still decides that, if he can't beat the system, he'll break it.
 * La Résistance -- The undertreated members Chip joins quickly discard any notions of attacking UNICOMP, and content themselves with smoking tobacco and having a little extra sex. The Islanders try to attack UNICOMP on a regular basis, but always fail due to infiltrators joining the strike teams and sabotaging their sabotage efforts. Chip eventually becomes a sort of one-man resistance movement inside the secret ruling circle of The Programmers.
 * Master Computer -- UNICOMP is this trope all over.
 * Mismatched Eyes -- Chip has one brown eye and one green one. While living with the Programmers, he agrees to have this fixed, and his green eye replaced with a normal brown one, as part of his scheme to fool Wei Li Chun into thinking Chip was adapting to his new life with the Programmers.
 * The Mole -- Shepherds like Dover are sent out to the islands by the Programmers to join groups coming to attack UNICOMP and prevent as much bloodshed as possible, as well as ensure there's no actual threat to UNICOMP, and help co-opt the attackers into joining the Programmers.
 * Newspeak -- Aside from making "fight" and "hate" into horrible cusswords, everyone is referred to as a "member" of the Family, not as a "person". Males are "brothers" and females are "sisters" within the family. People who act selfishly, violently, or try to exercise any sort of freedom are called "sick" and given treatments to "cure" them of these tendencies and desires. When rumors are whispered of secret island societies outside of UNICOMP's control, the inhabitants thereof are called "incurables" or "untreatables".
 * One World Order -- Bob Wood, one of the four semi-mythical founders of The Family (one of the two that Ira Levin made up), got his claim to fame by presenting the unification treaty that unified the world under computer control. We learn nothing else about him.
 * Raven Hair, Ivory Skin -- Snowflake, one of the undertreated members, has pale, snow-white skin.
 * People's Republic of Tyranny -- The island of Majorca, run by a military dictator as an apartheid state keeping the "immigrants" impoverished and disenfranchised, is officially named "Liberty".
 * Perfect Pacifist People -- Subverted.
 * Punch Clock Villain -- What Chip inadvertently becomes, working as a Genetic Taxonimist to further genetically engineer humanity into boring sameness. Also, arguably, what everyone else is forced to become as treatments and such force them to snitch on their fellow members and enforce conformity.
 * Rape Is Love -- Chip rapes Lilac while kidnapping her away to the island, and once they reach the island, they get married and have a kid.
 * Restraining Bolt -- Everyone in The Family gets one, via treatments and genetic engineering, to make them quiet, peaceful, helpful members of society, who are not distracted by sex or emotions and go about their assigned tasks cheerfully and willingly.
 * Salvage Pirates -- When Chip and Lilac first approach Majorca, they are met at sea by a rowboat sailed by "Darren Costanza", who uses the name of the military dictator of the island as a pseudonym, and he steals their boat and leaves them floating alone in the middle of the sea.
 * Scannable Man -- Everyone has metal bracelets with their nameber on them, which must be touched to scanners in most doorways, to obtain permission from UNICOMP to enter or exit.
 * Science Marches On -- The sort-of-portable "telecomps" resemble early-generation laptops, UNICOMP's memory banks are huge steel boxes that must be kept supercooled at all times to preserve their superconductivity. Not a bad extrapolation for the era it was written in, but much of it seems laughably outdated today. On the other hand, despite being written a decade after the DNA code was cracked, Chip's job as a Genetic Taxonomist involves looking at genes through a microscope to tell them apart by visual appearance alone. At one point, new microscopes are introduced that reveal differences between genes "once thought to be identical".
 * Also the bracelets themselves. A modern author would use implanted RFID chips. Although that would make them much harder to counterfeit and "false touch".
 * Single Biome Planet -- Earth has been converted to one of these with the aid of weather control technology. It only rains at night, on a pre-published schedule.
 * Space Brasilia -- Every building in every city has been built post-Unification, so they are all basically the same featureless blank slabs of windowless concrete. However, there are a few references to certain cities having older-style layouts with narrower plazas between buildings, monorail systems prone to breakdowns, and so forth. And, while living with the Programmers, Chip participates in the Architecture Council, debating changes to building styles for future city construction and renovation.
 * There Are No Therapists -- Subverted HARD. There are far too many therapists. Everyone is assigned an "advisor", a sort of combination psychiatrist, father-confessor, and parole officer. Once a week, everyone must visit their advisor, confess their sins (violent or selfish thoughts or actions) and snitch on anyone else they saw acting violently or selfishly, or even acting slightly odd in any way whatsoever.
 * Unusual Euphemism -- "Fuck" is a perfectly acceptable term for the act of sexual copulation among the Family, with no pejorative connotations. "Fight" and "hate" are horrible cusswords to them, however, and "cloth" is slang for lies or other untruths.
 * Utopia Justifies the Means -- Practically the personal motto of Wei Li Chun.
 * You Are Number Six -- Everyone in the Family has one of eight first names, then two letters, two numbers, another letter, and four more numbers. The first two numbers are even the last two digits of the year of their birth.
 * You Mean "Xmas" -- Despite literally no one being religious any more, they still have a Christmas holiday. Plus Marxmas, apparently on Karl Marx's birthday. And New Year's Day is now Unification Day, complete with the traditional greeting of "Happy New Year! Happy U Year!" Wood's and Wei's birthdays are also holidays, but don't get cutesy names.
 * Zeerust -- In a parody of ultra-modern 1960's architecture from the likes of Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe, all buildings in the world of The Family are huge, functional, featureless, windowless slabs of concrete. Several other aspects intended to look futuristic now look downright quaint, such as the luggable "telecomps" and airports with outside escalators to the planes rather than enclosed jetways.