by Vernor Vinge
Weekdays, Miri was off at school; a limo pulled up for her every morning, always at the moment that the girl was ready to go. Bob was gone nowadays, “to be back in a week or so.” Alice was home part of each day, but she was in a distinctly short-tempered mood. Sometimes he would see her at lunch; more often, his daughter-in-law was at Camp Pendleton until midafternoon. She was especially irritable when she came back from the base.
Except for Reed Weber’s therapy sessions, Robert was left much to his own devices. He wandered around the house, found some of his old books in cardboard boxes in the basement. Those were almost the only books in the house. This family was effectively illiterate. Sure, Miri bragged that many books were visible any time you wanted to see them, but that was a half truth. The browser paper that Reed had given him could be used to find books online, but reading them on that single piece of foolscap was a tedious desecration.
It was remarkable foolscap, though. It really did support teleconferencing; Dr. Aquino and the remote therapists were not just invisible voices anymore. And the web browser was much like the ones he remembered, even though many sites couldn’t be displayed properly. Google still worked. He searched for Lena Llewelyn Gu. Of course, there was plenty of information about her. Lena had been a medical doctor and rather well known in a limited, humdrum way. And yes, she had died a couple of years ago. The details were a cloud of contradiction, some agreeing with what Bob told him, some not. It was this damn Friends of Privacy. It was hard to imagine such villains, doing their best to undermine what you could find on the net. A “vandal charity” was what they called themselves.
And that eventually got him into the News of the Day. The world was as much a mess as ever. This month, it was a police action in Paraguay. The details didn’t make sense. What were “moonshine fabs” and why would the U.S. want to help local cops close them down? The big picture was more familiar. The invading forces were looking for Weapons of Mass Destruction. Today they had found nuclear weapons hidden beneath an orphanage. The pictures showed slums and poor people, ragged children playing inscrutable games that somehow seemed to deny the squalor all around. There was an occasional, almost lonely-looking, soldier.
I’ll bet this is where Bob is, he thought. Not for the first time—or the thousandth—he wondered how his son could have chosen such an ugly, dead-end career.
EVENINGS THEY HAD something like a family meal, Alice and Robert and Miri. Alice seemed happy to do the cooking, though tonight she looked like she hadn’t slept for a couple of days.
Robert hung around the kitchen, watching mother and daughter slide trays from the fridge. “TV dinners, that’s what we used to call this sort of thing,” he said. In fact, this stuff had the appearance and texture of delicious food. It all tasted like mush to him, but Reed said that was because his taste buds were ninety-five percent dead.
Miri hesitated the way she often did when Robert tossed out some idea she hadn’t heard before. But as usual, her response was full of confidence. “Oh, these are much better than TV junk food. We can mix and match the parts.” She pointed at the unmarked containers sizzling in—well, it looked like a microwave. “See, I got the ice-cream dessert and Alice got…angel-hair blueberries. Wow, Alice!”
Alice gave her a brief smile. “I’ll share. Okay, let’s get this into the dining room.”
It took all three of them to carry everything, but no second trip was needed. They set the food on the long dining table. The table cloth was an intricate damask that seemed to be different every night. The table itself was familiar, another hand-me-down. Lena’s presence was still everywhere.
Robert sat down beside Miri. “You know,” he said, more to probe reactions than anything else. “This all seems a bit primitive to me. Where are the robot servants—or even the little automatic hands to put the TV dinners in the ’wave and take them out?”
His daughter-in-law gave an irritated shrug. “Where it makes sense, we have robots.”
Robert remembered Alice Gong when she had married Bob. Back then, Alice had been an impenetrable diplomat—so smooth that most people never realized her skill. In those days, he had still had his edge both with verse and with people; he took such a personality as a challenge. And yet, his former self had never been able to find a chink in her armor. The new Alice only imitated the composure of the old, and with varying success. Tonight was not one of her better nights.
Robert remembered the news about Paraguay and took a stab in the dark. “Worried about Bob?”
She gave him an odd smile. “No. Bob is fine.”
Miri glanced at her mother and then chirped, “Actually, if you want mechs, you should see my doll collection.”
Mechs? Dolls? It was hard to dominate people when you didn’t know what they were talking about. He backed up: “I mean, there are all the things that future freaks have been predicting for a hundred years and that never happened. Things such as air cars.”
Miri looked up from her steaming food. At one corner of the tray there really was a bowl of ice cream. “We have air taxis. Does that count?”
“That gets partial credit.” Then he surprised himself: “When can I see one?” The Robert of old would have dismissed mechanical contrivances as beneath any mature interest.
“Any time! How about after dinner?” This last question was directed at Alice as much as Robert.
That brought a more natural smile to Alice’s face, “Maybe this weekend.”
They ate in silence for a moment. I wish I could taste this stuff.
Then Alice was onto the topic she must have been saving up: “You know, Robert, I’ve been looking at the medics’ reports on you. You’re almost up to speed now. Have you considered resuming your career?”
“Why, of course. I’m thinking about it all the time. I’ve got new writing ideas—” He gestured expansively, and was surprised by the fear that suddenly rose in him. “Hey, don’t worry, Alice. I’ve got my writing. I’ve got job offers from schools all around the country. I’ll be out of your way as soon as I get my feet solidly on the ground.”
Miri said, “Oh no, Robert! You can stay with us. We like having you here.”
“But at this point don’t you think you should be actively reaching out?” said Alice.
Robert looked back mildly. “How is that?”
“Well, you know that Reed Weber’s last session with you is next Tuesday. I’ll bet there are still new skills you’d like to master. Have you considered taking classes? Fairmont High has a number of special—”
Colonel Alice was doing pretty well, but she was handicapped by the thirteen-year-old at Robert’s side. Miri piped up with “Yecco. That’s our vocational track. A few old people and lots of teenage dumbheads. It’s dull, dull, dull.”
“Miri, there are basic skills—”
“Reed Weber has done a lot of that. And I can teach Robert to wear.” She patted his arm. “Don’t worry, Robert. Once you learn to wear, you can learn anything. Right now, you’re in a trap; it’s like you’re seeing the world through a little hole, just whatever your naked eye sees—and what you can get from that.” She pointed at the magic foolscap that was tucked into his shirt pocket. “With some practice you should be able to see and hear as good as anyone.”
Alice shook her head. “Miri. There are lots of people who don’t use contacts and wearables.”
“Yes, but they’re not my grandfather.” And there was that defiant little thrust of her jaw. “Robert, you should be wearing. You look silly walking around with that view-page clutched in your hand.”
Alice seemed about to object more forcefully. Then she settled back, watching Miri with a neutral gaze that Robert couldn’t fathom.
Miri didn’t seem to notice the look. She leaned her head forward, and stuck a finger close to her right eye. “You already know about contacts, right? Wanna see one?” Her hand came away from her eye. A tiny disk sat on the tip of her middle finger. It was the size and shape of the contact lenses he had known. He hadn
’t expected anything more, but…he bent close and looked. After a moment, he realized that it was not quite a clear lens. Speckles of colored brightness swirled and gathered in it. “I’m driving it at safety max, or you wouldn’t see the lights.” The tiny lens became hazy, then frosty white. “Uk. It powered down. But you get the idea.” She popped it back into her eye, and grinned at him. Now her right eye was fogged with an enormous cataract.
“You should get a fresh one, dear,” said Alice.
“Oh no,” said Miri. “Once it warms up, it’ll be good for the rest of the day.” And in fact the “cataract” was fading, Miri’s dark brown iris showing through. “So what do you think, Robert?”
That it’s a rather gross substitute for what I can do simply by reading my view-page. “That’s all there is to it?”
“Um, no. I mean, we can fix you up with one of Bob’s shirts and a box of contacts right away. It’s learning to use them that’s the trick.”
Colonel Alice said, “Without some control it’s like old-time television, but much more intrusive. We wouldn’t want you to be hijacked, Robert. How about this: I’ll get you some trainer clothes and that box of contacts that Miri mentioned. Meantime, give some thought to attending Fairmont High, okay?”
Miri leaned forward and grinned at her mother. “Betcha he’s wearing inside of a week. He won’t need those loser classes.”
Robert smiled benignly over Miri’s head.
IN FACT, THERE had been job offers. His return had percolated onto the web, and twelve schools had written him. But five were simply speaking invitations. Three were for semester artist-in-residence gigs. And the others weren’t from first-rank schools. It was not exactly the welcome Robert expected for one of “the century’s literary giants” (quoting the critics here).
They’re afraid I’m still a vegetable.
So Robert kept the offers on ice and worked on his writing. He would show the doubters he was as sharp as ever—and in the doing, he would overleap them, to the sort of recognition he deserved.
But progress was slow on the poetry front. Progress was slow on a lot of fronts. His face actually looked young now. Reed said such complete cosmetic success was rare, that Robert was a perfect target for the “Venn-Kurasawa” process. Wonderful. But his coordination remained spastic and his joints ached all the time. Most ignominious, he still had to hike down to the john several times each night to take a leak. That was surely the Fates reminding him he was still an old man.
Yesterday had been Weber’s last visit. The guy had a menial mind, but it was exactly matched to the menial aid he provided. I’ll miss him, I suppose. Not least because now there was another empty hour in every day.
And progress was especially slow on the poetry front.
For Robert, dreams had never been an important source of inspiration (though he had claimed otherwise in several well-known interviews). But wide-awake attempts at creativity were the last resort of pedestrian minds. For Robert Gu, real creativity most often came after a good night’s sleep, just as he roused himself to wakefulness. That moment was such a reliable source of inspiration that when he was having problems with writing he would often go the pedestrian route in the evening, stock up his mind with the intransigencies of the moment…and then the next morning, drowsing, review what he knew. There in the labile freshness of new consciousness, answers would drift into view. In his years at Stanford, he’d run the phenomenon past philosophers, religionists, and the hard-science people. They’d had a hundred explanations, from Freudian psychology to quantum physics. The explanation didn’t matter; “sleeping on it” worked for him.
And now, coming out of years of dementia, he still had that morning edge. But his control of the process was as erratic as ever. Some mornings, his mind was awash with ideas for “Secrets of the One Who Came Back” and his revision of “Secrets of the Dying.” Yet none of these morning brainstorms contained poetical detail. He had the ideas. He had concepts down to the level of verse blocks. But he didn’t have the words and phrases that made ideas into beauty. Maybe that was okay. For now. After all, making the words sing was the highest, purest talent. Didn’t it make sense that such would be his very last talent to return?
In the meantime, many of his mornings were wasted on garbage insights. His subconscious had turned traitor, fascinated by how things worked, by technology and math. During the day, when he was surfing his view-page, he was constantly diverted by topics unrelated to any artistic concern. He had spent one whole afternoon on a “child’s introduction” to finite geometry, for God’s sake…and the big insight he wakened with the next morning had been a proof of one of the harder exercises.
Robert’s day time was a grinding bore, an endless search for the right words, all the while trying to ignore the lure of his view-page. His evenings were spent putting off Miri and her attempts to stick foreign objects onto his eyeballs.
Finally, morning insight came to his rescue. Rising toward wakefulness, thinking dispassionately about his failure, he noticed the green junipers beyond his window, the yard painted in soft pastels. There was a world outside. There were a million different viewpoints there. What had he done in the past when progress hit roadblocks? You take a break. Do something different; almost anything. Going back to “high school” would get him out of this, get Miri out of his hair. It would certainly expose him to different, even if narrow, viewpoints.
Alice would be so pleased.
04
AN EXCELLENT AFFILIANCE
Juan Orozco liked to walk to school with the Radner twins. Fred and Jerry were a Bad Influence, but they were the best gamers Juan knew in person.
“We got a special scam for today, Juan,” said Fred.
“Yeah,” said Jerry, smiling the way he did when something really fun or embarrassing was on the way.
The three followed the usual path along the flood control channel. The concrete trough was dry and bone white, winding its way through the canyon behind the Mesitas subdivision. The hills above them were covered with iceplant and manzanita; ahead, there was a patch of scrub oaks. What do you expect of San Diego North County in early October?
At least in the real world.
The canyon was not a deadzone. Not at all. County Flood Control kept the whole area improved, and the public layer was just as fine as on city streets. As they walked along, Juan gave a shrug and a twitch just so. That was enough cue for his Epiphany wearable. Its overlay imagery shifted into Hacek’s Dangerous Knowledge world: The manzanita morphed into scaly tentacles. Now the houses that edged the canyon were large and heavily timbered, with pennants flying. High ahead was a castle, the home of Grand Duke Hwa Feen—in reality, the local kid who did the most to maintain this belief circle. Juan tricked out the twins in the leather armor of Knights Guardian.
“Hey, Jer, look.” Juan radiated, and waited for the twins to slide into consensus with his view. He had been practicing a week to get these visuals in place.
Fred looked up, accepting the imagery that Juan had conjured. “That’s old stuff, Juanito.” He glanced at the castle on the hill. “Besides, Howie Fein is a dwit.”
“Oh.” Juan released the vision in an untidy cascade. The real world took back its own, first the landscape, then the sky, then the creatures and costumes. “But you liked it last week.” Back when, Juan now remembered, Fred and Jerry had been maneuvering to oust the Grand Duke.
The twins looked at each other. Juan could tell they were silent messaging. “We told you today would be different. We’re onto something special.” They were partway through the scrub oaks now. Coming out the far side, you could see ocean haze; on a clear day—or if you used Clear Vision—you could see all the way to the ocean. On the south were more subdivisions, and a patch of green that was Fairmont High School. On the north was the most interesting place in Juan Orozco’s neighborhood:
Pyramid Hill Amusement Park dominated the little valley that surrounded it. The underlying rock was more a pointy hill than a pyrami
d, but the park’s management thought “pyramid” was the sexier adjective. Once upon a time it had been an avocado orchard, dark green trees clothing the hillsides. You could see it that way if you used the park’s logo view. To the naked eye, there were still lots of trees. But there were also lawns, and real mansions, and the launch tower. Among other things, Pyramid Hill claimed to have the longest freefall ride in California.
The twins were grinning at him. Jerry waved at the hill. “How would you like to play Cretaceous Returns, but with real feeling?”
Pyramid Hill managers knew exactly what to charge for different levels of touchy-feely experience. The low end was pretty cheap; “real feeling” was at the top. “Ah, that’s too expensive.”
“Sure it is. If you pay.”
“And, um, don’t you have a project to set up before class?” The twins had shop class first thing in the morning.
“That’s still in Vancouver,” said Jerry.
“But don’t worry about us.” Fred looked upward, somehow prayerful and smug at the same time. “‘UP/Express will provide, and just in time.’”
“Well, okay. Just so we don’t get into trouble.” Getting into trouble was the major downside of hanging with the Radners. A couple of weeks earlier, the twins had shown him how to avoid a product safety recall on his new wikiBay bicycle. That had left him with a great martial-arts weapon—and a bike that was almost impossible to unfold. Ma had not been pleased.
“Hey, don’t worry, Juan.” The three left the edge of the flood channel and followed a narrow trail along the east edge of Pyramid Hill. This was far from any entrance, but the twins’ uncle worked for County Flood Control and they had access to CFC utilities support imagery—which just now they shared with Juan. The dirt beneath their feet became faintly translucent. Fifteen feet down, Juan could see graphics representing a ten-inch runoff tunnel. Here and there were pointers to local maintenance records. Jerry and Fred had used such omniscience before and not been caught. Today they were blending it with a map of the local network nodes. The overlay view was faint violet against the sunlit day, showing communication blind spots and active high-rate links.
