Our Future is in the Air

by Corballis, Tim

Janet said, ‘It’s okay.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘I don’t know if living here is just a crisis situation or a real thing. I can’t quite believe I don’t live in the house I shared with Pen anymore.’

  Lilly wondered how long it took to shake off the vestiges of the past. How distant was the future?

  Janet said, ‘I worry it’s just you being kind.’

  ‘No. I really believe in people being together. We all do. This place, the home, the household, is where all the battles have to happen.’

  ‘That’s the sort of thing Pen might have said!’

  ‘Well, what do you think?’

  ‘Oh, yeah. I like it.’

  She turned her head quickly and awkwardly and kissed Lilly on the face, half planting the kiss (accidentally?) on Lilly’s mouth. Lilly didn’t react, but they kept their faces together for a moment, sharing breath. Marcus joined them, his weight on the sofa next to Lilly. He put his arms around both of them, brought his own face in close beside theirs. Was Peter upstairs crying now? None of them could hear him. Janet put her hand on Marcus’s hair, turned and kissed him too, and his lips responded to hers briefly. All three were together like this. They were all faces for each other, all breath. The communes, thought Lilly, seemed to be all about noise and laughter, children running between the legs of the adults, the talk and the sharing of meals. But this—it was as if they were almost inside one another, and so silent. Their eyes were all open, looking intently. Then Lilly laughed and kissed Janet and Marcus in turn, imparting her laugh to them. Janet’s laugh was breathless. Marcus was wide-eyed and had pulled his dressing gown firmly to one side so it didn’t come free. (An unspoken whisper passing between them, mind-to-mind: ‘Where is Pen?’). When Lilly stood, taking Marcus with her, Janet sat up straighter as if to follow. Should she have followed? But she stayed.

  ‘What we build crumbles, no matter how strong we make it.’

  ‘The world was caught in its flightless tension. The future was approaching—but what future? This was the situation in 1975. Construction of the World Trade Center buildings had been cancelled and the area around it had reverted to the status quo of small retailers, although on land still marked for development. But the future in which those buildings stood, nonetheless, and were destroyed—that future was coming. The world was immobilised, divided into its corners. National currencies, starting with the US dollar, had been floated. Here was another certainty gone—the idea of VALUE contained a bar of gold (a UNIVERSAL). Following the depreciation of the dollar, the loss of demand for oil from the aviation industry, and America’s aid to Israel, the OPEC states had raised the price of oil and, shortly after, proclaimed an embargo on oil exports to the US. Anything that could be built would have to be built on freely floating currencies—local islands of value. But what future was coming? Despite the availability of images, everything seemed reduced to HERE and NOW. Had the future been reduced to images of itself?’

  ‘You mean that temporal contour technologies were related in some way to money and finance? To the uncertainty of floating values—to currency speculation, for example?’

  Marcus left early and took a long detour on the way to the hospital. This morning, the city seemed like a grey place, and his work even more so. He enjoyed, for a moment, the thought that at least he didn’t look like a doctor. His outpatient support group gave him contact, each afternoon, with a community—a static and struggling one, caught in its own cycles. What sense could there be of people making their own world?

  He missed Pen. (But: last night.) Did Pen hope for everything to be swept away? It had sometimes seemed like it. On his walk, he knew he was walking, in a sense, into a secret, away from the house, and from everything that was important to Lilly. A few times he stopped, as if taking in a view, but in fact he was wanting to turn and walk home. Then he made up his mind and carried on, running a few steps as if to get himself into the spirit.

  That afternoon, he cancelled the support group again. As he left the hospital, he felt the weight of something. Again, the sense of shaking, of a trembling anger. He met TK down the road from the gang house, and together they drove towards the old airport site. The runway had grown a shanty town of prefabricated buildings amidst the hangars. They drove through it to a hangar, whose door was partly open, leaving a yard’s width gap that stretched up the height of the building. They got out of the car and Marcus entered alone, following TK’s instructions.

  The man said, ‘You want to plug in.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘I thought you would.’

  Something spun in him. He felt Pen’s gestures in his body, as if he were here to throw it all away, all of it. The facility was set up inside one of three large aircraft fuselages occupying the hangar. A heavy metal cylinder, looking like an old steam engine boiler standing on end, served as the cabinet; next to it were generators that fed power into an array of solenoids welded around the cylinder, as well as other soldered circuitry neatly stashed behind.

  ‘First time?’

  ‘First time.’

  A laugh. ‘Okay.’ The man started the generators. The enclosed space filled with the noise and fumes. Marcus took out his wallet and handed over the money. Now this was real—an uncomfortable reality, marked by the money and his absence from work.

  ‘Do I need to tell you anything? You know what you’re getting yourself into?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘The best thing is just to do it, anyway. You’ll see. Where do you want to go?’

  ‘Wellington.’

  ‘Okay, that’s easy.’ There were a number of circular metal plates mounted on a complex mobile frame around and above the cylinder, and the man shifted them carefully into a new position.

  ‘How do people manage this with their own kit?’

  ‘Ah, they usually just set it up once and keep it pointed at the same place. Get it right first time with TCL.’

  ‘Is it hard to get it pointed at the right place?’

  ‘Nah. You’ve got to know what you’re doing, how to use a map and a compass to orient the kit, how to read the vector tables.’

  ‘What happens if there’s an object already there?’

  ‘Everyone asks that.’

  ‘What happens?’

  ‘Nothing. The tunnel displaces gases and small objects, and if it encounters large masses at its end it just stops. It’s just like something moving gently into place—you can’t push a mass into the middle of another mass. The tunnel vector does come down from above, so if it encounters anything significant as it opens it decays more rapidly, above where it’s been set. And a few milliseconds earlier in time, I guess.’

  ‘Oh. That’s good.’

  ‘It’s just physics. Two things can’t be in the same place at the same time. You do have to watch for falls though.’ The man was talking while standing at a bench, taking up tracing fluid into a syringe.

  ‘Falls?’

  ‘Coming out in midair.… You look like you’ve got good veins.’

  ‘I’ll do it.’

  ‘Suit yourself.’

  Marcus put on the tourniquet—hardly needed—and injected himself with the fluid. He waited for some sensation, but there was nothing. Why should there be? The man said, ‘You’ll have to wait forty minutes. Settle in, then.’

  He waited. Was there something, after a while—some sharpness in his vision? It was a sharpness that might simply have been a result of his attention to it—there was no sense, as with cannabis, that objects loomed forward to the sight, or took on otherworldly vibrancies, ballooning out of themselves, as with magic mushrooms. Why make these comparisons? In any case, there was nothing in it, only a question or hint, and why not? It was just an inert tracing fluid, a matter of the physics that would carry his body through the tunnel. Nonetheless he couldn’t shake an urge to watch himself, his senses, his thoughts. He closed his eyes, then squeezed them tight. What was he doing? There was no going back. His outpatient group was not
a matter of any urgency—but now the thought of the room with its assembled patients contrasted painfully with the dim tube of the airplane fuselage, the fumes, the TCF kit, the used syringe next to him. Should he think of it as some kind of fall? From what heights to what depths? Everything around had the character of deception—not of baseness, but of simple unreality. In fact, hadn’t the same sensation of unreality been with him since last night? Or did it also have to do with Pen’s absence? The world had been rendered unstable.

  He wondered if he might stand and leave—but not through the opening in the fuselage and through the hangar door, but right through the solid stuff, the plane’s skin, the hangar’s wall.

  ‘You’ll have to lose the shoes—they’re too big, they won’t come back. Wear these. They should be about your size.’ The man was standing in front of him with a spray bottle. ‘Strip down to one layer. We’ve got to do each layer of clothes individually. We don’t make them too wet.’

  Marcus hesitated.

  ‘You want to wear a jumpsuit? Keep your clothes clean?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  The man’s face was impassive. He went out of the hull and came back with a set of overalls. ‘This is impregnated with the fluid.’

  Unreality now, in his clothing, shoes, and in his veins. The man sprayed the fluid on his beard and hair.

  ‘You should be all right soon. Just relax.’

  But Marcus could not sit down again. He stood, taking some steps back and forth.

  Finally, after more waiting, the man said, ‘Okay.’

  The way into the chamber was through a low door in the metal—he had to crawl into it and then stand as the man shut the opening, cutting out all light. He said, not loudly enough, ‘Where am I going?’ There was no answer. The question—where was he going exactly?—somehow only arose for him now. What part of the city? What did he expect to find there? Pen would not be waiting for him. Was there a noise? Was it possible to see shapes and objects? Was he, in the pitch black chamber, SEEING HIS OWN EYE, HEARING HIS EAR? There was nothing else to pay attention to. He wondered if he had to pay attention in a certain way, to move in time by means of the attention he paid, the thoughts he had. No, his body was an object. Did everyone who travelled share his thoughts about the SELF-WORK of it, the thinking and waiting, the thought that thinking might speed the process, speed time itself, that in the darkness he need only think himself to the future? Could his mind—possibly. Ah. The. No. He could often sense the struggle in his patients’ minds about whether they could think themselves out of their illnesses, as if they had caused them by thought in the first place. Were they right? Or were their bodies simply objects? Not only. But you don’t do it by. Thought. So that. A fly, a fly. There would be nothing. The chamber, sealed off. And then, through the nothingness of it, through, for, what would go on to become. What then, as a swirl through empty, as a light, as sea, as sky, as fly and carry on. What part of? Next next next, only next, nothing and the passing, but passing become nothing but passing and the next next how can it? As well as. Then. He. He arrives. That much is clear. It seems clear enough when it happens. A room, wires. If there is a moment of terror somewhere, a terror that there will be only a departure and no arrival, then the terror is soon enough overcome. Why, what can. To fly, though, no, why, a collection of figures and shapes all caught. Not yet. And the surprising, finding out, findingout, outfinding finding and. Finding out feeling feeling out outfeeling finding, so that nothing finds nothing feels nothing out nothing nothingout. Hard to remember in such a state what. So when? No arrival no no only next only next and then another next all those nexts all work, all next, work on one another to. An instant that reminds him he might lose it all, everything, Lilly and the girls, his job, the house. What next? What is lost is. Is it possible to get lost in the middle of a TCF transition, to get dismantled (psychically) and not reassembled? He has never heard of anything like it. But the terror that it might be possible—that remains. It remains. But it’s his body that travels—and a tunnel like any tunnel. A room, wires. Here: windowless, and a heavy damp air. Why here? This time he shouts it louder. Of course, the man cannot hear him. He is alone in a windowless room, clearly abandoned, with great bundles of wires hanging from one of the walls. There is no door—though, of course, he hasn’t yet turned around, and light is coming from somewhere casting his dim shadow in front of him into the room’s haze. Something like paralysis—but when he experiments with an arm, it moves. The paralysis is no physical symptom, but the result of being transformed into an object out of place, distant and irrelevant. The lysergide compound in his system is the only link he has to his family. Foreignness through and through, that he should be here, contaminated and contaminating. Nothing he says can reach back. His daughters are grown up—older than him. Lilly? And he himself? The room’s corners hesitate in their being. Is this another effect? How fully is he here? Is there some way in which he could be said to oscillate between two times, two beings? He wills it—he hopes desperately to be back, even while here. This future, it is abandoned and functionless, empty of people; it is small and dirty; there are marks on the walls. Maybe it is time to turn around. So: a door and a window, but not leading outside—instead, through them is visible a larger space, presumably some kind of industrial building, with high dirty windows and an empty floor wanting machines. Some panes are missing. He walks to the door. He pulls it, but it doesn’t move. Locked? The man has sent him inside this locked and abandoned portion of the world to be? The man is now older, possibly dead. What world is out there? He leans against the door with his shoulder and it comes open after all, sending him stumbling slightly out into an overflowing brilliance—a bright high day that is painful to the eyes and skin. He tries to register the future in himself, as if he were an instrument. Its wind ruffles him; everything here, every object, is filled with itself in this light, wavering in this fullness between simple existence and the status of metaphor. Solidity is, in this future, identical to shimmering ghostliness. Time infuses everything. Pen must be right—how can there be people here? There is no room for them; there is only room for shape and colour, for a thousand movements adding up to a wave, a conspiracy of movement over everything. Dust and leaves blow, grass blows, leaning in coordinated gestures. He turns on the asphalt forecourt of the building. It is squat, white and yellowed, marked by graffiti. There are hills. He should try to orient himself in the city. How much time does he have left? A wire fence—locked gate, but with a gap that is easy to slip through and out onto the street. He needs a phone booth, or at least a phone book. He chooses a direction to run in—towards a momentary glint of light. Running, he feels fine—he fits into this anonymous world. They are nowhere, the woman he loves and his girls. A pang that makes him think of turning back to the building. They are older, strangers, marked by thirty-three years of time. How could he take them up in his arms?

  Here—a small shopping centre. Miramar. He recognises the shops, not so very different from how they were. There are people. They pay him scant attention. Sure enough, a young woman is sitting, looking at a portable phone. He stares at it a second. There is a phone booth here, but no telephone book in it. He stands in front of it. Should he ask someone? He needs to know whether Pen has a future. Or is he hoping to see Pen, somehow, still as young as he was, on his own travels? He is not sure which way to turn. Over the top of the traffic noise, there is another sound—deeper, and distant. It bolts and surges through the background of the future of the suburban shopping centre. It is getting a little louder, though still not deafening. He looks around, then up at the sky. It’s still hard to look into the brightness overhead—is it the tracing fluid? Why are his eyes taking so long to adjust? Then he sees the moving arrow above, certainly the source of the sound. There can be no doubt: a large passenger jet. Has his own past, one in which every effort has been made to cancel this future, dissolved? What can he return to? Lilly! And more, the girls—what can they understand? What impossibilities has he en
tered? How can they survive, thrown onto this tangle of history? Can he return to them? He has heard some rumour of new portable phones that, like computers, can be used to find out anything. Who told him that? One of his patients? He should ask the young woman. Can she find out if Penwyn Evans is alive? She is still sitting on the footpath, leaning back against a tiled shopfront.

  ‘Hi. Excuse me.’

  ‘Hi.’

  ‘Can you use your phone for finding something out?’

  She looks at him. ‘Nah, sorry. Not with this.’

  ‘Oh.’

  She laughs. ‘You a ghost?’ She looks at his overalls and smiles.

  ‘I guess so. I need to find someone. I don’t think I’ve got much time.’

  ‘Sorry. You’ll need to ask someone else.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘I’ve never seen a ghost.’ She stands up. ‘How come your clothes are dry?’

  They stand looking at each other. She says, ‘Doesn’t matter.’ She says, ‘You’re an echo from the past.’ Does she really say it? ‘Are you real?’

  He squints into her face. He could ask the same. Her voice is his, and his hers. The jet’s noise. No noise but the voice and hers. Shit. ‘Wait!’ Wait, waiting noise. Why this, when simply going through a tunnel? He must remember to ask. Time is the falling apart of things. Wait, and they fall. Wait, apart, the noise noising, and a strain of things, a noisy fall and falling fall, falling and time, time is the experience of time. What thoughts. Wait thoughts. Falling thoughts, noisy and fall and and. All of time, time in thought, waiting and time stops and over slips, overslips, timeslip. Slips and slips momentslip a slip a slide of moments. Waitslip the time following and falling, failing failslip tripslip. Is that all? Darkness. Dark noise, noise slips in sight becomes light, darklight. Dark and the hollow ring of silence. Silence—

  ‘The lens-tunnel orbits—however, the traveller is not physically present but exists in a state that is not fully understood. That is to say, it is understood from a THEORETICAL or PHYSICAL point of view, which could also be called an EXTERNAL perspective, but very little can be said about the INTERNAL or SUBJECTIVE state of the traveller. It is likely that no documentation of the experience is possible. Some have characterised it as the experience of “becoming-object”, as if the traveller is so caught up in the pure otherness of physical reality that subjective being is disrupted. Consciousness, if it is possible at all, seems to be relayed only through the skittering of surfaces and signs. This subjective state arguably lasts throughout the whole travelling experience, and even for some time after the traveller’s return.’