Past, Present, and Future
(published in ANALOG Science Fiction and Fact, 12/1991 issue)
“This operation,
doc, it ain’t gonna hurt, is it?”
Doc O’Malley gave
one of her famous “Everything will be just fine” smiles that
everyone who used her clinic floated away from the examination room
with. Pete Abelson remembered when that smile delivered out of a
smooth, freckled fact, a face just out of – just out of wherever it
was doctors come out of when they were getting started; a face that
had come with wide, green eyes, as though the Lord Himself had wanted
to emphasize the point. That was back when she had just come up and
started the clinic. Thirty, maybe forty years ago, if Pete
remembered right. Only yesterday. Now the face wrinkled almost as
much as his own, and the eyes, through still green, had been pinched
by crows’ feet for many years. Her once copper hair, which used to
flow down to her shoulders, was pulled back behind her head in a
tight, gray bun. Comes from workin’ too many eighteen hour days,
Pete thought to himself; should’a cut down to to twelve or
fourteen, if she wanted to stay young and pretty. If she wanted to
get a husband.
“I promise, you
won’t feel a thing, Pete.” The smiled, she still had that.
“Those city hospitals are very good about things like that.”
“Ya mean, they
gonna knock me out?” He felt guilty at once at the question, for
he hadn’t meant anything about her doctoring. “Not that there’s
nothin’ wrong with a little pain, mind you. I always said it’s
good for the soul.” Besides, it wasn’t her fault she never could
afford all those expensive city medicines. But he couldn’t shake
the pang of guilt.
She was shaking her
head. “I’m sure they’ll use a local anesthetic. But don’t
worry; they’ll have a general anesthetic by just in case. But I
guarantee you that they won’t need it. The brain can’t feel any
pain, didn’t you know that?”
That didn’t sound
right to Pete. Wasn’t your brain where you felt everything? But
if Doc O’Malleu said it, it had to be true; he’d learned that a
long time ago. “No, I can’t say I ever heard that.” He nodded
slowly at the revelation. “Learn somethin’ new every day.”
Doc O’Malley
smiled again. Half an hour later she had finished her examination,
and pronounced him fit as a an eighty-two year old man had any right
to expect. Not that she had to tell him that; a feller who could
walk a mile to the well every morning, no matter how cold it was, and
chop his own firewood didn’t have a lot to worry about, not as far
as he could see anyway. He’d be a darn fool to have this operation
if he wasn’t in as good a condition as he was. “Of course,”
she cautioned him anyway, “They’ll want to put you through a lot
of tests as the hospital too, just to make sure. But I’m sure
you’ll fly through those; you’re healthier than most of those
city types half your age.
That was what she
was saying anyhow. But her eyes; they were looking at him kind of
funny, like they were one of those X-ray or MRI machine’s he’s
seen when they thought he had cancer, must have been twenty years
ago now. Like she was trying to find another way of seeing him,
because her old way hadn’t told her what she wanted to know. “So
what’sa matter?” He finally challenged her. “C’mon doc, I
ain’t stupid, ya know: tell me what’s on yer mind? What’s
wrong?
”Hmmm?” It was
as though he’d snapped her out of a daydream. “Oh, nothing.
Nothing at all. I mean, I was just wondering – ah, well -- you
know.” He thought she was never going to stop stammering around
like that. But finally she got to the point: “I mean, you are
eighty-two years old, after all.” She looked pained, struggling
for the words to say whatever she was trying to say. “Why--”
she struggled at her failure, “I mean--”. She held her hands
out at him, as though she were fending off an attack. “Don’t get
me wrong. I think getting your diploma is a wonderful thing, but--”
“Doc, I ain’t
ever seen you so tied for words,” he said. “Just spit it out,
for cryin’ out loud. Gettin’ m’schoolin’ is a wonderful
thing, but what?”
But she was grinning
and shaking her head. “But nothing. It’s a great thing, that’s
all. I’m just getting foolish in my old age is all. Sorry.”
He nodded soberly.
“Yeah. Well, havin’ an implant is terrific, I suppose, but it
don’t stop foolishness. That’s up to the feller.”
She laughed and
offered him her hand. “Good luck, Pete.”
The hour’s walk
home seemed to take hardly ten minutes; Pete was stepping up on this
front porch almost before he realised he’d chewed up the miles of
dusty roads. As usual, the foards of the porch floor groaned beneath
his feet, reminding him of their ancient need for repair. As always,
he nodded at the gentle nudging, promising to get around it before
another summer was gone, then muttered to himself when the door
clattered shut behind him and he figured he was out of earshot.
Puttling a kettle on the stove, he sat at the kitchen table and
caught his breath while it worked up to steam. Always it was
something that needed fixing, last year it had been the new roof,
year before that the wind sashes, year before that when the lightning
bolt had tossed the old oak – the only thing on his land that had
been older than him, save the land itself – against the chimney and
took off about half of it. Year before that was something else, but
he couldn’t remember what anymore it was as though the oak had
dropped a wall between him and the more distant past.
He remembered when
didn’t mind all the constant fixing, when he even looked forward to
the chance to use up strength that would otherwise have tearing up
inside him. Of course, that was when he could half hundred pound
logs all day like it was nothing.
He had built the
house with his own hands, so long ago that he sometimes looked at the
gnarled bones and wondered if the will his hands anymore. Must have
been forty-eight. Back after The War, he remembered that for sure.
Took him what seemed like years, working evenings and weekends,
whenever pa could spare him from the farm and the lumberyard. When it
was done he bought Molly here, raised two daughters while losing two
– that was before Doc O’Malley – and watched as the world
around him grew more distant every day, more mysterious and
incomprehensible. Things like bombs that could blast whole cities,
and rockets that could send them halfway around the world in a
catnap, and machines that would think, and men walking on the Moon,
and no doubt that that he’d never gotten around to hearing about
because he never had the time of the talkin’ to hear. But the
details were lost now, encased in a fog of thick time, behind the
curtain of time the oak had brought down. Even Molly was gone now.
All he could remember now were the feelings, mostly the helpless awe
of understanding that history was being made and he wasn’t part of
the making.
Which was something
he’d always taken for granted.
Absently, he pulled
out the letter again, placed it on the kitchen table alongside the
filled medical forms which he’d carried home with him in his back
pocket. Twisting his bifocals around his ears, he picked up the
single sheet of fax paper and read it again.
Dear Social
Security Recipient:
According to
records maintained by the Social Security Administration, you are are
not in legal possession of a degree or certificate of graduation of
other such documents which indicate of an approved course of study an
accredited public or private high school or equivalent. It is the
purpose of this correspondence to inform you that under Article II,
Section 24 of the Literacy and Educational Improvement Act of 1997
you, being of age sixty-five or older, entitled to full compensation
from the Social Security Administration for expenses incurred in the
pursuit of such degrees or certificates. In addition, you are
entitled to 80 percent compensation for expenses incurred in the
pursuit of advanced degrees, up to and including the level of Doctor
of Philosophy.
Please do not
hesitate to contact this office for any information you may require in
applying for this compensation, or concerning your rights,
qualifications, and obligations under the LIA.
Very
Truly Yours,
ARTHUR
A. BREWINGTON
Administrator
Even
Chester hadn’t been able to figure out what the heck it was trying
to him. “Government talks stranger all the time,” was all he’d
been able to offer after a half dozen tries. “Why don’t you take
it to Doc O’Malley? She deals with that kind of talkin’ all the
time. Me, I just deliver the mai; I’m not supposed to read it, you
know.” He’d delivered that last statement with a practiced
shrug, just as je
d
been doing for as long as Pete could recollect.
“Yeah,
I ‘spect that’s the thing ta do,” Pete had agreed.
He
had sat in the waiting room for over an hour, leafing through the old
magazines which he was sure had never changed since the first time
he’d come here. He didn’t recognize the two other people beside
him; they had looked away when he’d entered, and pretended not to
notice him the entire time. A young woman and a child. New around
here, no doubt about that. He assumed the child was hers, although
he couldn’t tell for sure; they pretty much ignored each other,
too. The woman looked impatient enough. When Doc O’Malley finally
poked her head in to ask for the next patient, the woman seized the
child’s hand announced her rights in a challenging voice. O’Malley
smiled at Pete before vanishing with the twosome.
It
seemed only a few minutes later when he was summoned back. He did
not see the woman and child. He took a seat in the examination room
and waited for O’Malley to finish whatever she was doing in her
office. Finally, she bustled in and sat before him, folding her hand
on her lap in a distinctively uncomfortable manner, as though
something were missing from them. She looked worried. “What can I
do for you, Pete? I haven’t seen you around here for quite a
spell. Hope everything is all right?”
“Oh,
‘bout as well as can be ‘spected.” He fished the fax out of
his pocket and unfolded it neatly, then handed it to her and waited
while she scanned it. The glint of her contacts reminded Pete why
she didn’t need glasses for read.
She
looked at him funny when she had finished, like she was all worked up
inside about something. She almost bit her lip, something Pete had
never seen her do. “Wow. Are you going to do it?”
He
accepted the paper back, and returned it to its sanctuary. “Am I
gonna do what, doc? I was hopin’ you could tell me what it was
sayin’.”
She
laughed, not at him of
course, and translated the letter. That was when she told him about
the implants. It took several tried before Pete grasped just what
she was telling him. “You have to understand Pete,” she
concluded, “Education has changed a lot since you – both of us,
for that matter – were at school.”
“I
figgered that,” he said. “But I never figgered they’d start
stickin’ things in yer an’ stuff. That don’t seem – well,
natural. Why can’t I get schooling the old-fashioned way? Used to
be good enough.”
Her
smile was weak this time. “Not anymore, I’m afraid. Nowadays
there’s just too much you have to know. Nobody can remember all of
it and hope to keep even a fraction in their hear. But that’s not
the main reason. When we were kinds so much school time was devoted
to memorizing facts that few people ever learned how to think or be
creative. That’s not very efficient, if you think about it.”
She shook her head. “I remember a social studies teacher back in
high school making memorize all ten sentences of the Gettysburg
Address. Now, if I need something like, all I have to do is pop in
the right module, and it’s there. If I had been able to do that
back in school, that time memorizing it could have been spent
reflecting on what the words mean. And if every school child in the
last, say, hundred years had been able to do that, just imagine how
much better a world we would have today.”
Pete
tried to imagine, but frankly, he wasn’t exactly sure what it was
he was supposed to be doing. “Four score’n’ seven years ago
our forefathers ...” he started reciting; but he couldn’t go any
further than that.
“Fathers,”
O’Malley corrected him.
“What’s
a score score anyway?” he asked, grateful at finally having though
of the question of someone who could answer it.
“Figure
it out for yourself. “The Declaration of Independence was signed
in 1776. The Gettysburg Address was delivered in 1863. That’s
eighty-sever years. Subtract seven
and divide by four. Twenty years.”
Pete
struggled with the arithmetic in his head, finally deciding he would
have to do it on paper. But that wasn’t the point. He could have
thought of that way of figuring it out himself. In fact, it seemed
pretty obviously now that he knew it. “I ‘spect I’m not smart
enough fer schoolin’,” he decided. “Mebbe that’s why I only
got up to five or six grade, don’t quite remember anymore.”
“You
don’t understand, Pete,” O’Malley castigated him. “Nowadays
they teach you how to
me smart.”
He
was still confused. “Them implants do that?”
He
though she sighed, but the action caught so quickly that even a
moment later he was no longer sure. “No no,” she said. “The
implant doesn’t do anything to you. All it does is give you access
to all the world’s
knowledge – er, that is, all the knowledge on its public databases.
Think of it as adding off-line storage capacity to your brain to do
more processing. But you have to learn, or relearn, how to use your
facilities...”
At
the time, he hadn’t understood a word she was saying. But he could
tell, from the way she said them, that whatever the implants were or
did, or however they worked, they weren’t something to be afraid
of. Especially once she told him (and was surprised that hadn’t
already known) that she’d one herself for almost five years now.
(“One of the older models; I guess I’ll have to have it replaced
in another year or two.”) Course, that didn’t exactly mean they
were something to be desired either. Pete knew he would have to
think about that. So he accepted the papers Doc O’Malley offered,
promising himself he would read them over real careful, and not
decide anything until he was sure he’d understood every word of it.
The fact that it was being offered for free only made him
suspicious, of course; nothing was for free
after all, least of all anything the government was offering. He’d
learned that back in The War. But the fact that he would have to pay
a price, even one that he couldn’t know in advance, did not mean
the compensation would be worthwhile. I was simply a risk, another
of sever, that he would have to weigh in his decision.
A million needles
were boring into his brain from all angles, slicing through skin and
bone and gray matter with ice-cold razor edges. The needles reached
deeper and deeper, through layers of dreams he had not eve been aware
of until they cut into and screamed out their agonies like bone
exposed by slivered glass. Reaching down directly into his soul. He
struggled to thrash out, but nothing happened. The leering faces
above him held him with black rubber gloved hands, hands that were at
once gentle yet irresistible in their grip on him. The faces were
concerned. “You’re not taking this in the right spirit Mr.
Abelson,” they, or at least one of them, said. “Don’t you
want to join the twenty-first century?”
He knew what his
answer was, but rough hands were shaking him, stirring the words in
his mouth like rocks before an avalanche. The faces and the needles
congealed into a thick haze, then evaporated. He became aware of a
somber darkness, then a clarity of sensations around him. A bed.
Morning light streaming in through a window. Strange odors in his
nostrils. The hands were still shaking him.
He groaned and
opened his eyes. A slender, white-smocked woman stood over his
crumpled body. “Mr. Abelson? Mr. Abelson, wake up. You have to
get up, sir. Can’t have you laying around in bed all day, wasting
the doctors’ time!”
He sat up. No, he
tried to sit up; it was several moments before he realized that his
body hadn’t responded to the commands from his mind. Then he was
sitting up, the slender figure turned out to have the strength of
King Kong. He thought she was going to rip his arms out of their
sockets. “Lemme sleep,” he pleaded with the figure, but she
would have none of that. “Sooner you’re up on your feet, the
sooner you’ll be going home,” she insisted, gently yet
obstinately. “And don’t call me Molly; my name is Charlene.”
A quick smile flitted across her face when she said that.
He let Molly, or
Charlene, or whoever she was – she was no Doc O’Malley, that was
for sure – lift him to a standing position, and leaned on freely as
she dragged him around the tiny hospital room. Blood stirred, and
pieces of the last twenty-four hours started sifting together again
as sleep burned away. He reached up, probing, and found the metallic
patch on his scalp where they’d inserted the probe. The skin
around the patch was sore and hot. “They really done it,” he
said, in a disbelieving whisper he’d only meant himself to hear.
But the moment the words were out of his mouth Charlene pulled his
hand away from the patch with a disgusted sniff. “If you play with
it,” she warned him as though she were speaking to a child,
“It’ll get infected, and then we’ll have a big problem on our
hands, won’t we? Now – do you need some help in the lavatory?”
Like hell I do, he
thought to himself, shaking his head.
“OK, well there’s
a buzzer in their in case you change your mind. You press it, and
I’ll come running. Understand?”
When she was gone he
sat down again and searched his head for any signs of anything
different. Nothing felt different. He tried reciting the Gettysburg
Address silently, but nothing would come, except that he he
remembered it was fathers, not forefathers. Then he remembered Doc
O’Malley talking about modules or something like that, something
you had to “pop in” before the implant could do any good. So
where did you get these modules? He sure didn’t have any. Maybe
you got them –
“Ans how are you
this morning, Mr. Abelson?”
He hadn’t realized
that someone had entered the room. A slightly vacuous, middle-aged
face, with a leering grin, stood before him, holding one of those
hand-helds he’d seen Doc O’Malley using from time to time. Seemed
like everyone around her had them. Pete recognized the fellow as one
of the surgeons, Dr. – uh – Barclay, if he remembered right. Or
one of them had been a Dr. Barclay. He decided this was that one.
He shrugged. “Bit
rougher’n usual gettin’ up. I ‘spec that’ll pass though.”
He suddenly realized why Barclay was looking at him just
contemptuously enough to register while not giving Pete cause to
take open offense. “Guess I gave you fellers a rough time
yesterday. I sure didn’t mean to get crazy like that, I can tell
ya.”
“That’s one of
the reasons we keep general anesthesia around,” was all Barclay
said about it. He punched the hand-held several time, then sat on
the foot of the bed. “I realize you’re anxious to try out your
implant right away, but the incision will take several weeks to heal
fully; until then, you can expect some irritation whenever you pop a
module in. Once it heals though there shouldn’t be any discomfort.
If there is, contact me right away. I also want to see you if you
have any flu-like symptoms, or a fever, or any unusual stiffness in
your joints or neck. You shouldn’t have any problems though, not
if you take the antibiotics I’m going to prescribe for you. But if
there are, don’t ignore them. Do you understand, Mr. Abelson?”
If anyone else asks
me if I understand like that, Pete decided …
Barclay patted him
on the shoulder patronizingly. “I admire you, Mr. Abelson. Not
too many people your age have the courage to do this, you know.”
Then he punched his hand-held some more and was gone. Pete rubbed
the should absently, trying to find out exactly where Barclay had
touched him, but failing.
He wondered if he
had done the right thing after all.
“You understand,
Mr. Abelson, we don’t normally get students of your – ah –
seniority, Not that we aren’t overjoyed at seeing the more mature
segments of the population taking advantage of what is, after all, on
of the most fundamental rights of every human being, that is, an
education. But we may not be, uh, immediately equipped to deal with
your special needs. You do understand, don’t you?”
In the past few
days, Pete hot gotten pretty good at this sort of thing. “Yer
tryin’ ta tell me that I’m old, and you ain’t sure how to deal
with old folks like me, right?”
Ms. Glaser looked as
though she just found her mouth full of tar. He’d noticed they all
looked like that whenever you translated their words for them.
Almost like you were using bad language. “You’re not that –
advanced – Mr. Abelson,” she protested (he was getting used to
that, too). “Besides, age discrimination went out a long time ago.
I just want you to know that we understand you are, shall we say,
‘enhanced in facilities we are unaccustomed to serving.’”
Talking like that seemed to loosen her up, and she even started to
smile tentatively. Actually, she wasn’t too bad looking when she
smiled. “And that we are prepared to meet the needs those
facilities create.”
“Jus’ tell me
where the school is an’ when class started ‘n I’ll be there,”
he said enthusiastically.
It was several
seconds before he realized that what Ms. Glazer had done was stifle a
bout of laughter. The effort had sent a ripple across her thick,
middle-aged body, a wave of hilarity which rose through her neck and
made her cherubic face swell momentarily, like a pink balloon about
to burst. She was composed again almost instantly however, and even
looked a little embarrassed at her near outburst. “I’m –
afraid we don’t have schools and classrooms anymore, Mr. Abelson.
Nowadays, all educational services offered through the public net.
You know, through computers?”
I know what the darn
nets are, he wanted to bark at her. But a sickly, almost frightened,
sensation had just burrowed into him. “Ya mean, I got to have a
computer t’get my schoolin’?”
“I’m afraid so,
Mr. Abelson,” she confirmed his fear. “You’re not saying you
don’t have one, are you?” She took a deep breath, then pulled a
hand-held from her desk and started making entries. “Didn’t you
know you were entitle to whatever facilities you required to full net
services when you turned sixty-five?” She stared at him almost
incredulously.
Pete shook his head.
“Ain’t nobody done told me.”
“Well you are, you
know.”
She said it as
though it was somehow his fault for not knowing. Pete knew what he
wanted to say, that he’d never asked anyone for anything in this
life, that where he came from folks didn’t help themselves until
they were asked. But there was another question on his mind,
something else he didn’t understand. “Don’t I got to have a
phone to get on the net?”
Glaser gave him
another disbelieving stare, this time with a full two or three
seconds on an expression Pete had never seen before, like she was
looking at a space alien or something, for crying out loud, then made
more furious entries. “Is there anything else you’ll be needing,
Mr. Abelson?” she asked when she was finished.
He was tempted to
ask her how he was supposed to ask a computer to be excused whenever
he went to the outhouse. “What about them modules I keep hearin’
about? Ain’t I gonna get need some a them?”
More entries. This
time when she was done, she looked a little relaxed, almost jovial
even. “I think you’re going to be a real challenge, Mr.
Abelson,” she promised him, or maybe it was a warning. “But
don’t worry, we’re going to pull you through all right!”
He tried smile hack
at her, but his jowls held back, and not just from age. “Right.”
He felt his molars grind together.
He ran his hands
over the smooth surface of the dish, and tried to feel the signals
streaming in from outer space, bouncing off the silver skin toward
the antenna. Somewhere above his head, about twenty thousand miles
above it in fact if that contractor had known what he was talking
about, a bristling cylinder of metal and electronics was floating in
the sky, beaming invisible signals across almost half the world.
Bringing the world to him. It made Pete dizzy, thinking about it.
He looked back
toward the house, his eyes following the furrow in the earth where to
optical fibers had been laid. The furrow lay on the same path the
oak had when it crashed into the chimney, three years ago. There was
something ominous about that which he didn’t like. Oh, he knew why
they had built the dish in the same spot the oak had stood for what
must have been centuries, that it was the clearest spot on his land,
but that didn’t make it feel any less sacrilegious. Or whatever he
was feeling. Like he was desecrating a burial ground. Kt stung him
with a guilt he couldn’t find the roots of, however deeply he dug.
Uncertain what to
make of it all, he went back inside, ignoring the protests of the
porch door. The computer was still humming on top of the kitchen
table, at the other end of the same bundle of fibers which sprang out
of the wall jack and meandered across the floor and up one of the
table’s legs. He sat down at the table. The message “Download
complete” was sprawled across the bottom left corner of the
screen, and Pete saw that the module had been ejected and was lying
loosely on the drive. He picked the tiny thing up – it had had
about the same size and shape as a bottle cap, if he remembered right
– careful not to touch the contact strip with its stiff metal
hairs. It sat like a shiny new nickel in his gnarled hands, full of
possibilities. And fears. He could hear pa’s voice in his head,
saying exactly what he knew pa would have said: “If the Lord meant
us ta ...” were the first words out of pa’s mouth whenever some
new piece of technology came along. Pete suddenly remembered those
long evenings out on the porch, arguing about such things while the
mosquitoes hummed around them in the cooling air. He closed his eyes
and listened to the mosquitoes now humming in the grass, and felt pa
and his ominous words beside him again. Pa had always thought that
mankind would only come to a bad end, trying to outdo the Lord in
what the Lord had given them. Pete had never understood such
sentiments at the time of course; even after The War you had kept him
optimistic about things, and then when Molly came along, well … pa
gave up after Molly came along.
The computer was
still humming at him. Pete lifted the module up to the metal patch
on his head, and neatly inserted it – it seemed to grab the patch
and insert itself. Either way, he felt nothing; it was as though
he’d tapped his head lightly, and then forgot about it. Closing
his eyes, he made another attempt at the Gettysburg Address. Again,
nothing happened. How were you supposed to work this thing anyway?
Now that he thought about it, it occurred to him that nobody had told
him that. He’d just assumed it would be obvious.
Then ...
He stood up as
though he’d been stabbed by a hot needle, then spun around, only to
be shocked again.
“Please lie down,
and we will begin the lesson.”
He started for the
pantry closet, for the gun he hadn’t fired in years. But the voice
cracked him from behind again, and again he spun. He felt his hear
tighten with the realization: it was coming from inside his head!
That – thing – was talking to him.
He clawed it out of
his scalp at once, not knowing what stopped him from hurling it
against the wall. Maybe it was the way his hand was trembling; he’d
never seen it shake like this, not even that time – must have been
thirty years ago, because there hadn’t been any around these parts
for that long – that big, black bear broke into his house and he’d
had to to face it with nothing but a broom handle. Scared like he
didn’t his next breath would come from, fighting for normal
breathing. Why hadn’t someone told him the darn thing would talk
to him? He had a mind to go back to them and tell them what he
though of their almost giving an old man a heart attack like that.
In fact –
Then he closed his
eyes and pictured what Barclay and Glaser would do if he did that.
Probably laugh their heads off at him; oh, and right into his face of
course, but they would take no pains to hide just what they though.
His face and ears stung red at the though of facing that humiliation.
Then he thought of
Molly.
Reluctantly, he
reinserted the module, this time resisting his instinctive fear when
it spoke to him. It didn’t seem right to be lying down in the
middle of the day like this, even if it was to calm him down; which
was his last though before a heaviness settled onto his chest and the
world around him retreated into a thin haze at the edge of the
universe.
He found himself
huddling in his coat and stovepipe hat against the stark November
weather. Edward Everett, the great orator, had just concluded two
hours worth a passionate speech that would be filling the headlines
of the nation’s newspapers in the days to come, but would then be
all but forgotten to history. He of course, did not know this; he
only knew that the words had not stirred him, that they had not
driven off the chill of the season, anymore than the five months
since the terrible battle had driven off the coldness of death all
around him. But he had not come here for Everett anyway, whatever
that professional and polished throat had to say. His only pleasure
in the man’s fire was in seeing it finally extinguished by the
cheers of the crowd, for he knew then that what he had come all these
miles for would soon be ascending the platform.
When it happened, he
was disappointed. Despite the man’s unusual height – Lincoln had
been a six-footer at a time when most men were almost a foot shorter
– there seemed to be little impressive about the president.
Lincoln looked almost common, just another man, drawn and tired.
Only the throng of soldiers which threatened to crush him indicated
there was anything important about the man. He shut his eyes and
tried to picture how Washington or Jefferson would have looked on
that platform. Like gods, he decided. One thing he’d heard was
true enough, though: the president didn’t look like a man you
would want to sit down at a table with a deck of cards. His small,
black eyes seemed to encompass everything in the crowd, shifting
around as though they trusted nobody and everybody at the same time.
Nor did he look discomforted by the cold at all, although he wasn’t
even wearing a hat.
Of course, perhaps
if he had been through what this man had endured for the last two and
a half years, a little think like November chill might not bother him
much either.
Lincoln looked for a
moment as though he were leafing through some papers in his hands,
then the sheets vanished and he was gazing into the crowd: “Four
score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth on this
continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the
proposition that all men were created equal.” He said the words,
simply, not spoke them as Everett had; the president was talking to
the crown as though they were all his friends – no, more: his
brothers. Lincoln was talking to him.
It seemed like only
seconds later: “ … and that government of the people, by the
people, and for the people shall not perish from the earth.” The
great figure turned and walked down from the platform, accepted with
tired but but unyielding grace the handshakes from those fortunate
enough to be near him, and then disappeared into the mass of
soldiers. For a while he remained standing in the same spot, unable
to believe he had come so far to hear so little. He felt cheated.
All that blather about brave men fighting and dying to defend the
idea that all men are equal; they were defending the sanctity of the
Union, God damn it, not some foolish notion about the Negro being
equal to the white man! Didn’t the president see that if the rebel
states were allowed to get away with secession, soon the entire
nation would disintegrate? The fool!
Disgusted, he spat
on the ground with such force that his had nearly toppled from his
head, and turned away to find a carriage that would take him back to
his lodgings. His only consolation was that the speech had been so
short it would undoubtedly be soon forgotten.
Pete opened his eyes
and sat up in his bed, fully alert. It had not been a dream; his
dreams always broke up when he wakened, into little pieces that
didn’t make any sense and which he forgot completely within
minutes. This experience was still as clear and solid as though he’d
just gotten off that carriage and was going over the events in his
head. Every word Lincoln had spoken still rang in his mind like like
a bell, and the cold and the smell of the graves were still in his
nostrils. In short, if he hadn’t known better, he would believe he
really had just traveled back in time and attended a great moment in
history.
He removed the
module again, and studied it, not sure what to think. He felt the
same as before; at least, licking the insides of his his mind left
the same taste taste on his tongue. It was just that – that it
didn’t feel entirely like his own mind anymore. Like he’d let
someone else inside it and now he would have to share it. It was a
feeling he didn’t like.
“The implants work
differently for different people,” Doc O’Malley explained. “I –
hope you don’t find this insulting, but – your experience was
pretty much the same as what children go through when they first
start using implants. Until you learn how to access the database
under your own control, the AI feeds it to you in a way you can
handle.” She paused for a moment, then smiled; it was a strained
expression this time. “I guess I should have realized that would
happen with you.”
Pete frowned. “Ya
mean, I ain’t smart enough ta use the implant right.” The
realization bit him with humiliating harshness. “I told ya--”
“I told you, the
implants teach you to be smart,” O’Malley interrupted. For a
second he thought he saw anger descending over her face, but the
cloud cleared as quickly as it had gathered. “It’s like anything
else; a skill you have to practice and master. It doesn’t happen
overnight, but you’ll learn it all right. Everyone does, whatever
their background – well, except people with serious brain damage,
who need repair and rehabilitation first – and your brain is as
sound as anyone elses.”
“For an old
codger, ya mean,” he completed the thought for her, knowing she
wouldn’t.
“If I thought
that, I wouldn’t have passed you on your medical exams. Stop it,
Pete: you know me better than that.” Her eyes were getting moist
around red rims; she’d been genuinely hurt by his words, for the
first time Pete ever saw.
All he could think
to say, however, was “Nearly scared the crap outa me. Pardon my
French.” He’d never used language like that in front of her
before.
“I’m sorry
Pete,” she finally said. “You’re right: I should have
anticipated it, and warned you.” She took a deep breath. “Now
you know, though. So, what are you saying: that you want to have it
removed? That can be done, just as easily as putting it in. If
that’s what you want.”
He thought about it;
not for the first time, but now that he knew it could be done, he
realized he was being forced to a decision. “Doc?”
Her eyes were still
moist.
“What’re the
implants really fer?”
The question
obviously surprised her. “I told you--”
“I know what ya
told me. But ya didn’t tell me they get inside yer head like that.
Make ya see an’ hear what they like.” He waited to judge her
reaction before carrying on. “It’s doing things to my mind,
ain’t it?”
Body language
answered the question. “It’s exploring your mind,” she
explained, impressed by the distinction. “Once it figures out your
mental processes – how your mind works – then it can teach you
how to access the database in a more direct fashion. It’s nothing
to be frightened of. We all go through it – well, just not as
intensely as you did.”
She wasn’t smiling
as she spoke this time. Pete knew why. For the first time in thirty
years she wasn’t being straight with him. Not that she was
actually lying; just not telling him the full and honest truth, the
way she’d always had. He knew quietly but firmly, like the way you
turned that turning leaves meant winter was coming, or the way Molly
knew she in a family way even before her belly started swelling.
Like there was no point having opinions about it; you just accepted
it and dealt with it as something you had no control over. Life was
going to be different from now on, significantly different. It made
him feel strange in his stomach; as though he’d swallowed something
he could never bring back up again. “So what you’re tryin’ ta
tell me is, it has to figger out out how to read me before I can read
it.” Still, he knew she wouldn’t tell him the full truth, unless
he stumbled upon it himself somehow. Which he had a feeling he
would, sooner or later.
She nodded, not
quite seeing him directly. “Yes. That’s about it.”
He shook his head
obstinately. He was missing something. If the implant could read
him, then – then what? Why was she holding back on him?
She suddenly leaned
forward and gripped his shoulders in both hands. “Believe me.
It’s not brain-washing you, or anything else – questionable.
Think of it as a teacher you keep with you all the time. In fact,
it’s better than any human teacher, because it knows exactly what
you need and how you need it. And it’s attention is 100 percent
personal; you don’t have to share its time with anyone else. In
short, it gives you exactly what education is supposed to be; a
personal tutor, whenever you need it.”
Pete waited for Doc
O’Malley to release him before responding. “OK, I hear you,
Doc,” he said when she did. This time he summoned his courage,
though. “But – but I can’t help but feelin’ it’s more’n
that too.” Again, he didn’t know; or the knowledge was
maddeningly just out of reach. “I’ll be honest with ya Doc; it
scares me some. Scares me right down to the bone.”
Maybe that was all
it was, he reflected immediately. He was just frightened, that was
all. A foolish old coot, scared of what he didn’t understand,
scared because it was something no one had even dream of when was a
young feller. Frightened like pa, out on the porch.
“What was that,
Doc?”
O’Malley was
saying something he would never have imagined her saying. “I said,
I’m afraid of not having the implant. Human beings and the
technology to destroy this world are a deadly combination if you
don’t have enough education to know how to stop.” She gave him a
piercing gaze. “You we’re in World War Three, Pete. But what
you might not realize is how restrained it was – nothing like the
previous world wars. Well, we were lucky, incredibly lucky. Can you
imagine a war of that magnitude with the technology we have today,
and without that kind of luck?” She didn’t wait for an answer.
“I’m not just talking about war either. Stupidity and ignorance
have become more dangerous than deliberate evil now. I mean, do the
wrong this with nuclear waste, or genetic engineering, as you could
wipe out all humanity. And I’m terrified to think what something
like nanotechnology could do if we’re not wise enough.”
She took a deep
breath, let it out deliberately. “That’s why I thought it was so
wonderful when you decided to get an implant. The way I see it, if
someone like you is willing to do it, then there’s hope for
humanity after all.”
Pete wasn’t sure
he followed everything Doc O’Malley was saying, but the words felt
right, he had to admit that. It eased his fears, at least some; it
was the same Doc O’Malley he’d known for thirty years. But he
still sensed to was concealing something from him.
“Of course, if you
want to have the implant removed, like I said, it can be done. I can
make the arrangements anytime you want.”
He heard pa arguing
with him. The mosquitoes in his ears.
“If they take it
out, I won’t get m’degree, will I?”
“No, I’m afraid
that will be one consequence.” She looked as though she wanted to
say more, but she didn’t.
He nodded, shrugged
his lean, hard shoulders. “Guess I got ta keep it in then,” he
decided. He saw the confusion in O’Malley’s face. “It’s the
was Molly woulda wanted,” he explained.
“Molly?”
Pete knew it was
hopeless, that there were just some things you couldn’t understand
unless you went through them yourself. O’Malley had never had a
family, had never had children of her own. But he had to tru. No,
he wanted to try. He took out his handkerchief and blew his
nose noisily, what he always did when he was waiting for words to
come to him. “When our oldest went off ta college, must a been the
proudest moment in Molly’s life.” He grinned moistly. “She
became a doctor too, ya know that? Works at some big hospital in
Boston now. Hardly ever see her; mebbe once every coupla years.
Last time was when they laid Molly to rest. Must a been – must a
been --” but he couldn’t remember. Beforethe big storm though,
before the oak fell. Everything before that was kind of far off, as
if in a evening haze. “She done good, real good. I’m proud a
her too.”
O’Malley was
trying to look like she understood, though Pete knew she didn’t,
couldn’t really. “I see. So seeing her children go to college,
Molly pushed you to finish your schooling.”
He had to bit his
tongue. Course Molly never pushed him, not exactly anyway, not
intentionally for sure. But Pete knew that trying to explain it
would just lead to misunderstanding. “Yeah. Somethin’ like
that. So. Ya see, I got to do it.”
It was a few
moments, moments in which she looked like she was thinking about
something else, before she said, “Well, whatever your resons, you
won’t regret your decision. I guarantee that.”
He studied her
through pinched eyes. “No, I ‘spect I won’t. Well!” He
suddenly slapped his legs with such force that the sound echoed
through the tiny room multiple times. “Guess you’ve spent ‘nough
a yer time time talkin’ to an old old fool.” He stood.
She followed him up
an shook his hand. “Cut it out, Pete. You aren’t a fool, old or
otherwise, and you know it.” A warm smile melted some of the
tension still in the air.
“Yeah,” Pete
said. “I ‘spect yer right ‘bout that, too. Only, I wish I
could stop being scared.”
“There’s nothing
to be afraid of.” But the almost mechanical repetition of the
claim only had the opposite effect. He though one last time to
challenge her, but couldn’t do it; if he were wrong – well, he
figured he didn’t have another thirty years to build their
relationship again.
He stopped at
Molly’s grave on the way home. The headstone hadn’t changed
(silly to think it would):
MOLLY
ABLESON
1948
– 2023
Beside it stood the
smaller stones of the two sons he had lost. One had been a
stillborn; he’d always decided, albeit with difficulty, that it
didn’t count, that there wasn’t anything anyone could have done
about that. The other though – he had known that old chain saw
needed fixing, that he shouldn’t have let Ben use it. Still, if
Doc O’Malley had been there, she could have stopped the bleeding in
time. As it was, by the time he’d managed to get the boy to a
hospital he was already gone. If he hadn’t been so stubborn,
hadn’t – hadn’t insisted that an Abelson always pulled through
–
“I know ya never
forgave me for that,” he said to the silent gravestone. Course
she never said anything back, not even in his imagination. But there
was always a coolness about her afterward that had never entirely
gone away, even after so many years, not even after the girls came.
A coolness she had taken with her to this grave. Pete could feel it
even now, even after all the years he’d stayed away from the
graveyard. An end of summer chill, a muting of the crickets that made
him shiver inside with expectation – of what, he’d never known.
He’d lived with that melancholy anticipation of winter for half his
life now; she had never let him forget, yet was never obvious about
it enough to give him cause to protest – not that he could have
protested. It was as though the Lord Himself had used her for His
punishment.
It seemed as though
he turned from the silent graves even before he heard the sound.
Perhaps that was because it had started so subtly, so gently; a thin
crackling in the distance, like embers snapping in a fire, or a
thunderstorm breaking over the next valley.
He stared into the
woods, in the direction the sound had come from, but saw nothing.
But the sound gathered in force, and quickly crescendoed to an
immense, crashing climax. It echoed for a while through the wall of
trees, and finally died along with the eddies of smaller reports
which had gathered around it like falling dominoes. Finally it
stopped altogether, and then – nothing but an opposing deep silence
to match it. Only gradually did the symphony of birds and insects
and the rustlings of small animals return to the usual level,
insisting that nothing had happened.
Sometimes, it
happened like that. The old trees were usually felled by storms, but
sometimes they went of their own free will, or so it seemed. Like
they knew their time was up, and saw no point to hanging on out of
sheer stubbornness. Like they knew the Earth had to cleared for new
growth. Pete knew that somewhere out there a fresh oasis of sunlight
had opened up in the forest; and that by spring, seedlings would be
fighting over the new territory.
He continued looking
in the direction the sound had come from for a few more minutes, then
headed off towards the house. He did not look at the graves again.
Another summer
departed. The snows did not melt until March, and spring only
brought thick rains which turned whatever passable roads left into
hopeless quagmires.
Still, the pick-up
truck – once fiery red but now so mud spattered that only memory
could reveal its original fire – fought its way through the
slippery ooze which would once again be a carpet of dust in a couple
more months. For almost an hour it had struggled with the almost
impenetrable muck; at least half a dozen time it looked as though it
had finally gotten stuck for sure. Hours passed. In good weather,
that was walking time.
O’Malley knew it
would be too late. Her hand-held was already essentially telling her
that, but she didn’t need that bit of high-tech to tell her that
Pete could not have survived this long. The read-outs showed that
the infarction had been massive. Still, she grabbed her black bag
and all its miracles with her, and made a mad dash for the front
door.
“Pete!” When
there was no answer she went back for her ax, and used it with
irrational fury on the door, too overcome to check whether it was
even locked or not. The porch floor swore its protests beneath her
feet.
“Pete!”
He was lying on his
bed, eyes closed, a quixotic smile frozen on his face. The sight of
the eerily placid expression stopped her: a heart attack like that –
he should have been grimacing with pain, or at least folded over the
table, his hands clutching his chest. Instead, he looked as though
he’d just drifted off, and decided to never return.
Then she realized:
he had been somewhere else when it happened. A quick probe of his
scalp found the nickel-sized disk, still firmly attached to his
implant. She pulled out the hand-held, and confirmed that the
implant was still sending its distress signal, along with streams of
data – data which she fully believed now only because she saw it
with her own eyes. Only the most rudimentary of brain activity was
left.
She slumped to the
floor and cried for a while. Then she went to the kitchen and logged
herself on to the net through the still humming if antiquated
computer. The necessary calls were made in a precise, business-like,
almost military, fashion. They would be here soon enough.
It had been seven
months. O’Malley tried to do the calculations in her head, but her
usually astute math abilities failed her this time. She knew that
the older the brain was, the longer it took for the mental patterns
to be deciphered and uploaded. Say, two or three hours with Pete,
though there was little experience with someone his age; it also
depended on on how often he’d used the implant, but she had no way
of knowing that now. The fact that he still been interfacing in this
primitive way was not cause to be optimistic, but she just didn’t
know. Perhaps another month or two had been needed. That still left
hours to upload eighty-two years worth of data and memories onto the
net. Not a lot of time. But perhaps it had already been computed.
She could only hope.
She inserted the
module he’d been wearing into his computer, and clicked the
“Upload” command. The old drive whirred and hummed for several
minutes, before the message “Data verified; no additional entries
found” appeared on the dusty screen. She breathed easier,
although she knew that still didn’t mean for certain that
everything had been collected.
Of course, whatever
had been received, however incomplete, was still an important
addition to the storehouse of human knowledge and experiences that
the living would benefit from. Pete’s death, however tragic, had
freed that knowledge for all humanity. She made a mental note to
start scanning the database the first opportunity she got.
She went outside, in
the mud and the still drizzling rain, and stood beside the metal
dish, waiting for them to come. Beside her, one of several oak
seedlings which had taken root in the clearing was struggling toward
the sky.
