Our Future is in the Air

by Corballis, Tim

  ‘Why don’t we know? We can travel in time.’

  ‘It’s illegal. But I don’t know. I’m sure there are plenty of images of planes and airports. I’m also sure there are interests in your time who want to keep the information framed in a certain way. Governments, insurance companies, banks. I don’t know.’

  ‘Can you travel? Is there still… ?’

  ‘It’s still possible, of course. No one does. No one really talks about it, except in nostalgic ways. Nostalgia for the future! I guess there are probably users out there, I don’t know.’

  ‘Why? What happened to it? I know it was illegal, but… ’

  ‘There are better trips to be had. Ha! There’s all kinds of other drugs. I think TCF is a minority thing. You just don’t hear about it. I’d like to know as much as you why that happened. I mean, it is normal; TCF and TCL are absolutely normal now as a kind of background technology—so normal as to be invisible. They’re almost completely owned by the banks. They’re finely tuned to investment purposes, and everyone, vicariously I guess, uses them—’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘No. I don’t really either. Not many people do. They’ve become just another technology for the financial services industry.’ Then, ‘Pen, if I understand it, he had these ideas that value was being sucked out of our time by your time. That people in your time, and banks, were starting to spend money based on the promise of work that was done in the future. Because you could see it, completed in the TCL imagery. You’d put future value on your books. But that itself leads to a certain kind of future, a future where the money has already been spent, so the work can’t be done, the future can’t be made after all. Weirdly, he thought that our time had no future because of it. I don’t know. I think he thought that meant some kind of crisis was due. I’ll write something about it one day.’

  ‘It doesn’t make any sense.’

  ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Normally I get visits from people with quite specific questions, quite specific reasons for being here. Your time is running out.’

  ‘I was asking about computers, I suppose. I guess you’re a kind of computer expert?’

  A laugh. ‘No. This is normal. Anyone—anyone with a sufficient level of income and education—can do what I did. There’s so much that people have stopped thinking about.’

  ‘Who are you then?’

  ‘I’m a lecturer here. I’m a social scientist.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘I’m interested in all this, with your time and our time. It’s my project, my research. I’m interested in what they’re doing with TCF, what they’ve done with it. My colleagues don’t consider it a topic worthy of study.’

  Marcus says, ‘I’m not sure why I’m here.’

  In the pause, an instant of sadness—the last few moments, ones in which the pressure to speak only results in silence. Does the woman feel the same thing? He doesn’t know her name, though it is written on her door. He also doesn’t know the name of the man who sent him—the man who has dispatched him on each trip.

  ‘There must be some.’

  ‘I’m not sure.’

  ‘I’m surprised.’

  ‘Who then?’

  ‘Not many people do.’

  ‘I don’t underst.’

  ‘—This part, it always… ’

  ‘… it was illegal… ’

  ‘Do you mind if I look away?’

  So that the words form their own company. What does it look like? Does he dissolve into? Other perspectives are difficult to hold. A mutual fading—a disappearance. The detachment of things; things pulled away from surfaces and words, leaving them light. Future lightness. Detached from thinglike support and ungraspable. Ungrasping too, detached, become. Face, averted, leave-taking. So singing and the world taken without itself, its skin skinless and nothing, dissolving in pictures of. Itself. Noself, unself, dissolved within skinless and ungrasping, face, fact, objectless. What sense? Only sense and nothing beyond, so sense becomes senseless surface of unsurfaced. Climb up and look out, out of your own eye. No view. Back, detached, surfaceless face, retained and lost.… ?mih htiw gnihtemos gnikaT… Particlewaves and their overlappings, their distinctness. Facereflectedinthem or contained. This was getting easier each time, or harder? What limit to the possibilities of—? Black was disappointing in contrast. No, not black, notblack. Everything a not of thing, not nothing even, but notthing, notno notyes just. The surface of things a not of them, and not. Negativity stacked like bricks. Notstack, not pile, building with surfaceless faces of nothing, not surface but the not face, what is built of. Hello? No ‘no’ ‘‘no’’ etc. Echo up without height. And down, past ‘no’, past no, to. A certain freedom in this. A constructive ability. Thought gesture of the unmind. Constructing unconstructing. And pierced. Through with an edge. A mathematically thin intrusion into. Where had that come from? Was that darkness, afterall, light? ‘Whoa, you’re spinning out.’ ‘Oh.’ ‘I haven’t seen this for a while. Out you come.’ Light resolved into light, no, into black, a reduction, and handsarms so that there was carry/assist and deposit. So surfaces and the impossibility of telling whether objects are behind them thingwise. Chair. ‘Maybe you’re trying to hold on to it all. Let go. You’re back.’ His face. The man’s face. That was resolved, at least. ‘Fuck.’ Fuck. ‘Yeah.’ Youme. ‘What’s happening?’

  ‘You’re spinning out. I don’t know why.’

  ‘Shit.’

  ‘Take a deep breath. It’ll pass.’

  ‘Passpass.’

  ‘Uh huh.’

  ‘But it’s not like I was just thinking it all. Not so much.’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘I mean there’s nothing to hold on to so I can’t exactly hold on to.’

  ‘Try this.’ The man passed him a pen.

  ‘Oh.’ He could hold it after all. ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Sometimes this happens.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘I usually think of it as if someone’s trying too hard to stay in the future. I used to see it more a few years back. People wanting it so much.’

  ‘Really? Can you do that with your… ?’

  ‘Or maybe we just gave you too much tracing fluid or something.’

  Was this: things ‘popping’, one by one, back inside their surfaces? With each sweep of the gaze, a grasping, a filling out of the world, as if the gaze itself filled the world at the same time as it received the world’s forms.

  ‘I actually kind of like… ’

  ‘You mean the future? Or the transition?’

  ‘Is there any difference?’

  ‘I think you need to take it easy. I know what you mean, though. It is pretty amazing.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘But you can’t hold on to it. It always passes.’

  Was that a tear, forming on Marcus’s cheek and then, retrospectively, finding itself a trail from the eye? He tried to hold it in.

  ‘Man, you can cry if you want. It’s not a problem.’

  Marcus said, ‘He’s dead.’

  ‘Oh. Shit.’

  ‘You know who I mean?’

  ‘Um, your friend. I’m really sorry.’ A pause. Then: ‘Did someone… tell you that? Or did you see something? How do you know he’s dead?’

  ‘Someone told me.’

  ‘Okay. Did he say how… ?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Okay. I’m so sorry, man, that’s… ’

  The man seemed to know something already. Or, there was something not quite right about his reaction. Marcus nodded at him. Maybe it was still the transition affecting him. The tears were coming now onto a face that was still uncontorted, looking out at the world with curiosity, as if the surfaces were filled now with nothing so much as Pen, his death, the sadness of it. It blended with things and flooded them. Rain came out from inside, pouring up and saturating them. Marcus stood and leaned out to the curved side of the fuselage to feel it. It was dry, o
bject-like and unconcerned. Pen was nowhere. He stayed, head down between both arms, which were held out against the fuselage supporting him. He let his tears down straight from his eyes.

  Janet said, ‘We have a reckoning to do.’

  Kenneth said, ‘I know. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Yeah, okay, sorry, good.’

  ‘It wasn’t just me, was it?’

  ‘You should have told me.’

  ‘I really—I haven’t been myself. I was so… ’

  She listened to the silence. Then: ‘No, it wasn’t just you. I think it was mostly me.’

  ‘If I’d told you?’

  ‘You should have told me about Pen, and you should have told me you were married.’

  ‘You wouldn’t have made love to me?’

  ‘I don’t know. It’s too complicated.’ Then: ‘Well, we did it. It doesn’t have to be a big deal.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘I know you don’t think like this—but it’s only sex.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That doesn’t mean I’m happy with you. Not by a long way.’

  ‘Why did you do it?’

  A pause. ‘I thought I would use you. I thought, I even thought it might hurt you. But only for a second. You were there, and… you’re actually…’ Then: ‘But you know, as soon as I’d thought about having you, I thought about how you might like it. I don’t like to enjoy someone if they’re not enjoying me.’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘Good.’

  He said, ‘You didn’t really start it. Not on your own.’

  ‘Well, good too.’

  ‘Did you like it?’

  ‘Don’t!’

  ‘Did you?’

  ‘… Of course.’

  He said, ‘I don’t know… it’s too complicated. We’ll be talking about this forever.’

  ‘Oh no, we won’t! Not if I have anything to do with it.’ That seemed to bring on a more lasting silence, before Janet asked him, ‘Is he really dead?’

  ‘Yes. I saw his body.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘I don’t know. I went back—’

  ‘You don’t know?’

  ‘I went back to the scene. The body was gone.’

  ‘… Kenneth, what’s going on?’

  ‘The body was gone. The whole scene. I don’t know.’

  ‘But you’re—’

  ‘It’s not just me involved. I’m not involved. There’s someone in police intelligence—he showed me the body, but now he denies all knowledge.’

  ‘Fuck.’

  ‘I can’t go back.’

  ‘I don’t know what difference it makes. Does it make any difference? If he’s dead, I can forget him. I don’t want to forget him. I’ve already forgotten him. God. I can’t see his body? Where is it? Where would they have taken it?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘They can’t do that.’

  ‘I know. But they can do anything.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘No. I don’t know. I don’t know! I find it so frustrating that I don’t know. It’s… at every turn I’m blocked. I was trying to help.’ Then: ‘I thought I was caring for you.’

  ‘That’s why you didn’t say.’

  ‘Yes. Yes. Did you need to know? I’m not sure, maybe I was wondering, still, whether you needed to know.’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘Sometimes keeping things secret can be good for people. Can’t they? I don’t know. It’s what I’ve always thought. I’m not able just to change that thought. It must be right, mustn’t it? I don’t know.’

  ‘It came out in the end.’

  ‘I felt so tenderly towards you.’

  He looked devastated for a second. His face seemed to fall open as if it might gasp the last breath in the room. Shouldn’t Janet be the one who was in mourning? Was she unfeeling? He was devastated, we might guess, at the loss of his tenderness towards her, at the thought that it had been the one and only time he would experience such a feeling. But in his state, he repeatedly put himself underneath her, bowing down, grovelling. Was it his prostration that blocked her feeling? He put her in a role in which collapse was impossible. But, after all, he had found something out for her. She looked at him as he sat with his head down in his hands, eyes invisible to her. His tenderness, his mention of it—did it move her? Underneath everything, now, was Pen’s death.

  She said, ‘You have to keep helping me.’

  He looked up.

  ‘That’s all I’m asking. Keep helping me. Don’t do anything else.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘You can help. I think you can help. We need to find him, find his body.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘After that, I’ll know what to do.’

  The inhabitants of the house were in a sombre mood. The new member ate silently with them and hardly went out. They understood that there was tragedy surrounding him—that he had brought the news of Pen’s death. The next meeting was subdued as they waited for Kenneth to introduce himself, formally, as it were.

  He said, ‘I like this. This isn’t the kind of thing I’m used to, but I do like it. I’m from a different kind of…’ Then: ‘You’ve all met me though. I’m Kenneth. Do I need to say more?’

  ‘Just a bit.’

  ‘Well. Thanks for letting me stay here. I’ve left my job and my family, and I don’t have anything else.’

  ‘Is your family okay?’

  Kenneth was silent. Was he going to prostrate himself again, beg forgiveness? Instead he said, ‘I hope so.’

  ‘They’re involved in what’s happening here. Whatever is happening in his house, with you, with Pen, also involves your family.’

  He said, ‘I know. But how? What can I do? I don’t think I can go back.’

  ‘The usual? Give them some money. See the children.’

  ‘Yes. Oh, yes.’

  After a pause, the meeting turned to other things: budget matters; what needed to be planted in the garden. Kenneth took on the role of observer, then felt uncomfortable. Could he give up the habit of watching, of taking the measure of people, gathering information about their personalities and their interactions? At the same time, he couldn’t quite ‘leap in’ and participate in decisions about food or gardening. What was his status? How fully was he here? However much he was welcomed into the house’s community, he was aware of a felt difference between himself and them. He was also eating their food. Should he offer to give money to them?

  CHAPTER NINE

  ‘Were there future images from all parts of the world?’

  ‘TCL images from outside the First World tended to be bleak. This cast doubt on developmentalist economic theories—the idea that Third World nations could follow or import the economic development of the West—and influenced their later decline. Rumours also circulated about the fragmentation and collapse of the USSR, though the veracity of these was stringently denied from Moscow.’

  ‘What about what could be learned about the First World itself?’

  ‘Images tended to focus on fashion, architecture and “consumer technology”. Indeed, from the beginning, TCL influenced current fashions in a “futuristic” direction. There was, of course, a fascination with the scale and possibilities of technological progress.’

  ‘And people’s lives?’

  ‘It was very difficult to gain any real insight into people’s lives. There were suggestions of a post-monetary economy, though this was probably a fringe belief. There was no evidence of how such an economy would operate, whether through gift-exchange, generous extensions of credit, or some other mechanism.’

  ‘We heard rumours of extreme wealth.’

  ‘Yes, combined with extreme poverty. These extremes are nothing new however, and it is easy to focus on examples and forget about the more widespread tendencies. It could be argued, though, that the technological advances that have been witnessed would be impossible without great accumulations of value in the hands of specific individuals or groups.�
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  ‘What kinds of groups?’

  ‘Corporations, states.’

  ‘Are there no signs of a protest movement?’

  ‘Some images of large-scale future protest have been circulated. It’s unclear what is driving these protests. It is no doubt the same as ever: perceptions of injustice and exploitation; workers demanding a greater share of their productivity. What was most notable though is the fact that there are, relatively speaking, so few signs of a united protest movement.’

  ‘The Vietnam War has already ended. Are there no other wars to come?’

  ‘There are occasional images of war.’

  ‘Who is fighting whom?’

  ‘It has been very difficult to establish what states are involved in the wars being fought in the future. The images are ambiguous. They show military technology on the one hand, and anonymous destruction and war dead on the other. They seldom show two sides of a conflict in the same image. There are images of prisoners, often being mistreated.’

  ‘And there is no protest about these wars?’

  ‘Yes, there have been isolated anti-war protests, some large—but no concerted, popular movement.’

  ‘Do you think that our vision of the future is so confusing, so difficult to consolidate into a clear overall picture, because of the limitations of temporal contour technology? Or is it an aspect of the future itself?’

  ‘How could we know the difference? Though I suspect it is in large part due to the technology. Don’t all times have their patterns, their logics, which you can understand if only you have enough information? It seems unlikely to me that the future is as confusing and fragmentary as our view of it.’

  ‘Are there other explanations?’

  ‘Some have suggested that there has been a combined effort by financial institutions and regulators to keep the information vague.’

  ‘Why would they do that?’

  ‘I don’t know if it’s true. But visions of the future allow for financial speculation, while knowledge doesn’t. Knowledge of the future and visions of the future are distinct. Financial speculation is built on vision, but it requires incomplete knowledge.’

  Janet and Kenneth approached a young officer behind the front desk. ‘We’re here to see Shanks. Is he available?’