by Barnes, John
You can’t really say it was unrequited love, since I never said a thing about it. Furthermore, she, along with the entire rest of the universe, appeared to be unaware of anything other than my friendship, and that was mostly confined to three kinds of interaction with her: when she pitched, I caught; when she played forward, I played goal; and when one of her entourage of little kids would break a toy, she’d smile at me and say “Please” and—if it were humanly possible—I would fix it. Though none of those were the relationship I wanted to have, I could just barely admit to myself that I wanted anything else, and my ideas about what feelings and experiences ought to go into that imaginary relationship were extremely fuzzy. I kept quiet, looked for a chance to talk to her whenever I could, and lived in terror that the other guys would find out and my life would become a hell of endless mockery.
At least, if religious war came, as everyone was now expecting, there wouldn’t be much fighting right where I was, because Spokane Dome was deep in a heavily Ecucatholic area. Many tiny Protestant churches had gone Ecucatholic all at once in the Great Rejoining of 2004, and there just hadn’t been enough of the highly educated computer geeks around to form more than a small minority for cybertao.
Because Spokane was such an Ecucatholic town, the municipal orphanage almost always held a Christmas/Hanukkah pageant, carefully kept bland enough not to offend cybertaoists (who, if not driven out, would celebrate anything with anybody). When necessary it could be easily modified to slip in a nod to Ramadan. And in Spokane, like any place where the population ran heavily to Ecucatholicism, 2049 was going to be a big, big year for the Christmas pageant.
Seemingly on the brink of death, during another false alarm, in early September, Pius Benedict had proclaimed that Christmas of 2049 was to be dedicated to celebrating, and praying for the continuation of, the forty-seven years of world peace we had had—and the fact that no one would have suggested waiting for the fiftieth anniversary pretty much told you everything about how little faith anyone had by then that we could make it that far.
After a couple more scares, and a brief moment when it looked like he might have a miraculous remission, the pope finally died on December 7, and the first fighting of what started as the War of Papal Succession, and finished as the War of the Memes, began on December 14, almost before the debris stopped falling from the atom bomb that gutted Rome and killed the whole College of Cardinals.
The Municipal Orphanage went ahead with its plan for the Christmas pageant anyway—it’s hard to cancel a plan so late in the game, it was every bit as hard to believe the world was going to go to war again as it had been that peace could last, and besides all the practicalities, people really felt like they needed Christmas, to take a break from the grim news and to try, just once more, to summon up whatever they could of peace on Earth and goodwill toward men.
The bioweapons and weather weapons of the Eurowar fifty years ago had gotten humanity on Earth into its present mad predicament, and kept it there because they were much easier to let loose than to call back. You couldn’t walk a kilometer anywhere in the inhabited, or formerly inhabited, parts of the Earth without seeing the traces of some horror. This time, with a whole long generation of better technology, perhaps we really would live up to the potential pointed out by Marc-Paul Prevert, the head of the commission that was supposed to find a peaceful solution (and who would be assassinated himself in the first hours of 2050, torpedoing the last hope): “We now have the means to kill the whole population of the planet and send it into an ecological catastrophe that will last a hundred thousand years, a capability to make all our past madness seem a mere caprice.” The bitter joke at the time went that this was all a beautiful illustration of the principle that “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.”
Once again, though, that’s me thinking of it as an adult looking back and saying “Oh, so that’s what was going on.” From my standpoint, December of 2049 was a month of interesting explosions and weapons on the flashchannel, adults acting mysteriously upset—and my lucky break.
Ms. Kirlian had been appointed the director of the pageant because many years ago she had been an amateur actor, because she was liked and trusted by all us kids, and most of all because nobody else had the patience. She followed the usual rules for such things: make sure that key dramatic roles go to older kids who are less likely to panic or freeze, and try to have one of the older kids on stage at all times so that the little ones can be rescued if need be. As a practical matter, that meant that Tammy, even though she was extremely untalented dramatically (she spoke her lines in a drawling monotone like she was scared that someone might hear or understand her), was going to play Mary, since that would put her in nearly every scene, most importantly every scene that involved large numbers of small children.
I, on the other hand, was more of a force for intimidation than an influence for moderation, and therefore I was the Head Shepherd. My official role was to walk in at the right moment and say, “Behold, we have seen a great light and an angel said we ought to come here. Where’s the newborn king?” (I guess Ms. Kirlian was about as much of a playwright as she was a director.) My unofficial role was to keep all the smaller boys, who were playing Miscellaneous Shepherds, from running amok backstage until it was time for our entrance.
“What does ‘miscellaneous’ mean?” one of them whispered to me, on seeing the program.
” ‘Well-behaved,’” I lied, hoping to have some positive effect.
“Oh, does not,” he whispered back. “You’re just making that up so we’ll behave.”
“You’ve caught me,” I said. “It’s a breed of sheep. Now shut up or I’ll punch your face in.”
Our audience was made up of a small minority that wanted to be there and a large majority unfortunate enough to be compelled. Since we had no parents, the city dragooned whoever it could: bored kids from the schools doing their charitable bit by coming to watch us be humiliated; city officials, who were there so that someone would take pictures of them with the poor orphans, and the pictures would then appear on local flashchannel; city employees whose supervisors had pressured them into attending. A smattering of people from the local churches had either been arm-twisted by their pastors or were badly starved for entertainment. Finally, the Doleworkers whose duty station was the orphanage brought their families to see us. They were the ones who really mattered to us kids.
We shepherds had just entered, knelt, and presented a dozen badly worn stuffed toys (anything that could be presented as having once resembled a sheep) to the porcelain doll wrapped in a blanket, which was portraying the nonspeaking role of Baby Jesus. To my deep relief, my ragged gang of Miscellaneous Shepherds had pretty much held formation, knelt more or less simultaneously with suitable reverence, and not made a mess of things.
My assigned position was kneeling behind them, first of all because I was taller than any of them, and secondly because if they started to giggle or whisper it gave me a chance to do what Ms. Kirlian had said, and put a hand on their shoulders to “steady them down.” I figured if they didn’t steady when I did that, I could hit them in the back without too many people seeing, and I had made sure that that was what the boys figured, too. So far, though, things were going unexpectedly well. I hadn’t even needed to do any steadying.
Our Joseph was played by a kid named Joseph, about my age, our only acting talent. He was a small dark-haired boy with a delivery so clear and expressive that it made the rest of us look more foolish than anything else could have. At this exact moment he was making a long speech about what a nice bunch of people the humble shepherds were, having brought all these lambs. Just what a newborn baby was going to do with a dozen lambs was beyond me.
Then Tammy’s line, as Mary, was supposed to be “We thank thee all very much, oh shepherds, and so does the baby.” It had been shortened and modified repeatedly as Ms. Kirlian had gotten more and more frustrated with Tammy’s flat delivery, and that was what caused the problem; she told
me later she just couldn’t remember which version of the line she was supposed to say.
Unfortunately, that line was the cue for the Three Wise Men to enter. Our Three Wise Men were three nine-year-olds who had been drilled, drilled, and drilled not to jump their cues (after an unfortunate crown-crushing collision, in dress rehearsal, between Melchior and a late-entering Miscellaneous Shepherd). They weren’t about to come in until they heard “so does the baby.”
Seeing Mary’s paralyzed-with-terror stare, I realized what had happened, and tried to feed a cue. I said, “Us shepherds are lim glad that thee likes the sheep.”
The cue remained malnourished, but Joseph caught the idea and gave it a shot, too, saying, “We thank thee very much, oh shepherds.”
Tammy froze all the more completely, now that Joseph seemed to have stolen one of her lines. I was out of ideas (or good ones anyway) and when Joseph and I made eye contact, he gave me a micro-shrug, as if to say, Okay, now what?
I stood up, to be heard better, pointed my face in the direction of the dark where I hoped the Wise Men were waiting, and said, very loudly and firmly, “So does the baby.”
Three Wise Men, thinking they had missed their cue, charged in at a speed that robes made out of old sheets were never designed to accommodate. The first one fell flat, the other two fell over him, and the shepherds were bombarded with carefully wrapped shoeboxes, which were fortunately empty and contained no actual gold, frankincense, or myrrh. “Pick’em up,” I whispered to the shepherds, “and give them to Mary and Joseph.”
This was working pretty well, especially because my awkward whispering of directions—aided by Joseph, who understood at once and pointed the shepherds to where to put the Wise Men’s gifts—was almost entirely covered by the peals of laughter from the audience. We might have gotten away with it, except that Tammy’s malfunctioning memory finally fired. Maybe “detonated” was the word for it. For the first and only time, she was fully audible when she said, “We thank thee, oh shepherds, and so does the baby.”
The Three Wise Men got up from their bewildered heap, where they had been lying still and trying not to be noticed. As one Wise Man, they grabbed their gifts and carried them offstage, now convinced that they had entered early. Mr. Farrell told me, the next day, between fits of giggles, that for one moment he’d had the impression that the Wise Men had been offended at being mistaken for shepherds and had taken all their stuff back.
The shepherds, animals, and Holy Family watched in amazement as the Three Wise Men took up their entry positions in the wings. A long moment crept by. The crowd noise died down to embarrassed giggles. Not sure what else to do, I whispered to Tammy, “Say it again, real loud.” I must have whispered too loud, because the audience started laughing again.
Nevertheless, Tammy did as I suggested, and this time the Wise Men entered, handed over the shoeboxes per instructions, and moved to their places. The audience applauded wildly, and the show went on; other than a wing falling off one angel, we had no more trouble that night.
After the show, we had punch and Christmas cookies, and Santa paid a visit. It was an election year coming up, so Mayor Bizet was there to be seen by the flashchannel, playing Santa Claus. (We all knew that he was Mayor Bizet, and not really Santa Claus, because he explained to us that he was, and further added that Santa had personally authorized him to stand in for the night. It was a good way to keep little kids from blurting out the obvious truth.)
When it came my turn, I was much too big a kid to sit on his lap, but I walked up there to get whatever Santa had for me—the first time in my life I ever hoped for new clothes instead of a toy. To my pleasant surprise, I got a new shirt and three brand-new packages of socks. I blurted out a “Thank you” and was about to go sit down when the mayor added, slightly muffled by his cotton-batting beard, “So you are the heroic shepherd who rescued the show.”
“Uh, I just kind of helped,” I said.
“Good enough,” Mayor Bizet said. “The secret of impressing a crowd is to do the right thing at the right time. If you do it intentionally, that’s just so much icing on the cake. Now, I happen to have some things to present in my capacity as mayor, as opposed to my capacity as jolly old elf.” (I saw one of the people in suits who were taking pictures of him give the mayor a thumbs-up; I always wondered afterwards how much of the speech had been prewritten.) He pulled out a small envelope. “At the Arts Center, for the whole week from now through Christmas Eve, we’re having a festival of family movies—movies are sort of like the flashchannel, but with no interaction, on a very big screen that you sit in the dark and watch. So here are two free passes so that you and a friend can go to all the shows. The gift includes public-transit passes too, so that you can get to the Arts Center.”
I was amazed and in awe; I didn’t care a thing about movies, which I had seen a few times because the orphanage had a few of them and a projector. But it was tickets for two, which meant—if I had the nerve—this might be the lucky break I would have been waiting for, had I been able even to imagine so lucky a break. I stammered a thanks, put the precious envelope into my shirt pocket and buttoned it closed, and sat down. Ms. Kirlian led the applause. I’m not sure if I’ve ever felt more appreciated at any time in my life since that night.
Pretty much, that was how it started. Later that evening, when they were teaching us older kids how to dance, I bravely volunteered to be Tammy’s partner—after all, she was only half a head taller than I was. As we shuffled around in a state of complete confusion, trying to follow Mr. Farrell’s directions, I managed to blurt out that I wanted her to go to the movies with me. She seemed pretty startled and said, “But that’s not fair. It was all my messing up that caused the problem in the first place.”
Our feet tried to come down in the same place at the same time, and we both half-tripped. Mr. Farrell said, firmly, “Lead, Currie, you’re supposed to lead.”
As far as I could tell, if I did that, most likely it would be much easier for everyone to see who was making the mistakes, which was the last thing I wanted. We got back into the vicinity of the beat and I said, “I don’t care about fair or not, it’s my pass and I’d rather go with you.”
“Really?” she asked, as if perhaps she was wondering whether I was crazy.
“Really.” My nerves were shot; at least I wasn’t going to step on her feet, since I was too tense to move.
“Currie, loosen up! You’re holding a girl, not a block of wood!”
I could have told Mr. Farrell, I suppose, that I’d have been much more relaxed holding a block of wood, and that he had nicely identified the exact problem. But I just tried to move as if I weren’t in a state of terror. It didn’t seem like a good idea to beg, but on the other hand the suspense was killing me. I was trying to think of a way to rephrase the request when she said, “Well, I guess if you want, I’ll go. It would be different from sitting around this place watching the flashchannel every night.”
“Currie,” Mr. Farrell said, “you might try bending your knees. If you start relaxing now, you might be able to get your first date by the time you’re thirty.”
“He just got it,” Tammy said, loudly. The room turned to stare at us, and Mr. Farrell’s jaw flapped a couple of times. I felt like I was going to turn bright purple, I hoped that I would sink through the floor … and I saw Tammy grinning at me, freckles, crooked teeth, green eyes, and all, and didn’t care a bit.
“Well,” Mr. Farrell said, after a moment’s recovery, “then all the more reason to practice.” It wasn’t a great line or even very funny, but I think everybody wanted an excuse to laugh.
It took me three nights at the movies to muster the nerve to hold hands with her, and it wasn’t till Christmas Eve that we tried kissing (with indifferent results), but from then on, in the little world of the orphanage, we were an “item,” and very happy to be. Nothing much was going to break us up, ever; sometimes you just know those things.
During the next few weeks, while Ta
mmy and I were exploring “being a couple,” fighting spread through border districts all over Asia, and local governments seceded from the world government and set about raising armies. The Ecucatholics splintered so many ways that no historian ever kept a definitive scorecard. Bombs and riots and assassinations filled the flashchannel. Prevert was gunned down as he came out to talk to the press about the proposed settlement, and only a few specialists ever even bothered to learn what had been proposed. The world was crashing back into chaos, but for Tammy and me, everything was just falling into place.
<> Three years later, the world was still at war. By that time there were battle lines and fronts, and most people had managed to get away from them.
In the summer of 2051 the first meme had exploded into the world’s consciousness, the crude and primitive thing called “Goodtimes.” Two months after that, a hundred modified versions of Goodtimes were competing with each other. Six months later, that small beginning had exploded into a diversity of more than four thousand different memes, all locked in a mutual struggle for supremacy.
When I was still a kid, back in the orphanage, the whole idea of a meme terrified me; now, four decades later, though I can understand the fear of being controlled by a meme that would not take care proper care of you, I can’t seem to reconstruct why I was so afraid of all memes; I was much more afraid, in Dave’s hideout, when I didn’t have a meme. But at the time, I know, people were not only afraid to go on-line or to phone somewhere through a head jack—the two ways you could be infected by Goodtimes—they were afraid of almost any contact with any information processor. News stories told of people throwing out digital clocks and handheld calculators, trying to “play it safe.”
