Before they had a chance to talk again about travelling together, Marcus had a call from Tama asking to meet up with him after work. They arranged it for the following day.
‘TK said he had a visit from your man.’
‘My man?’
‘The TCF guy. You’ve been getting deep in it?’
‘Oh. Really? TK? What—why?’
‘There’s something going on here, Marcus? Anyway, TK wasn’t very happy. He asked me to talk to you, so here I am.’
‘There’s nothing going on—not that I know about.’
‘Come on, Marcus. What have you been up to?’
‘Yeah, I did some travelling.’
‘Well, something bad’s happened with that. I don’t know what it is, but it was bad enough to make your guy come to the Black Power house and look for TK and his mate.’
‘What did TK say?’
‘He just said the guy was kind of agitated. He said he didn’t want you showing up again.’
‘Oh.’
‘Now TK’s worried he’s in some trouble. Kind of agitated himself.’
‘Shit. I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t apologise to me. It’s not me. The boy can look after himself, don’t worry.’
‘What kind of trouble am I in?’
‘This is to do with Pen? I don’t know. You know better than me, right?’
‘No.’
‘What have you been doing?’
‘I’ve been doing TCF. A few times.’
‘Why?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘You should think about that then. Shouldn’t you?’
‘I know Pen was doing it. I guess I was following him, trying to find something out.’
‘I get that. I suppose—’
‘He’s dead.’
‘Shit.’
‘Yeah. He’s—’
‘How do you know?’
‘It’s a long story. It really is, it’s… ’
‘Marcus, man, what’s going on? I don’t get all this. I get TK coming to me, saying it was a mistake having anything to do with you. They’re okay, but I wouldn’t want to get on the wrong side of Black Power… ?’
‘What? Really—?’
A laugh. ‘Nah, they’re cool. Dead, huh. Shit, poor guy. How? Actually—do I want to know?’
‘I have no idea. We were told by this guy… he was with the SIS. He knew something, he saw Pen’s body, I don’t know.’
‘So you are mixed up in something.’
‘I don’t feel like I am. The TCF guy has been acting kind of strange, though… ’
‘You know, not many of our young people ever got into TCF. I’m glad about that. I mean, not in a big way. But when they do, it’s like they’re plucked out of the world, you know? They’re taken away. I know TK and his mates do it sometimes, but they keep it under control. He’s got the gang around him, for what it’s worth, and they keep him sensible enough. You got people too, haven’t you?’
‘Yeah.’
‘That’s good.’
‘Those girls of yours. They’ll keep you here.’
A pause. ‘Yeah.’ Then, ‘What did you mean, taken away?’
‘That’s just what someone said to me. I haven’t really known anyone who’s gone down that path. But you know, there’s so much about this modern world that pulls people away from their land and their people. I moved to the city when I was a teenager, I should know. Maybe it’s the same? Maybe it takes people away from the little bit they’ve got left of the day. Throws them off into the future. I know they come back, but maybe they don’t completely come back.’
A silence.
‘It’s just the same stuff, you know. Whatever stops us working. I don’t just mean going to work. I mean working, working on the life we’ve got.’
‘I know. It’s just—the life I’ve got… the life I’ve got seems to be tied up in the future. I think Pen was killed in the future.’
‘Shit. Is that possible?’
‘Why not? I don’t know.’
‘And then his body just… ?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Have you told anyone?’
‘Nah, it’s just a feeling.’
‘Sometimes you’ve got to trust those feelings, eh? This spy you’ve got. He know about it?’
‘I don’t know what he knows.’
‘You trust him?’
‘Yeah. He’s just a confused guy. He’s having all kinds of trouble.’
‘But you haven’t told him.’
‘No.’
‘Marcus, I don’t know what to say. You know, I can’t tell if this is some bad shit you’re doing to yourself, or if it’s something big out there you’re tangled in. My own hunch is that you should quit with the plugging in. I don’t see how it’s going to help.’
‘But I keep thinking, what if we’re just not using it right? What if I can find a way for it to—’
‘Maybe you’re right. But are you going to do that, discover that, all on your own? You’ve got to be careful.’
‘Lilly knows.’
‘You and Lilly against the world.’ A laugh. ‘Sorry, I don’t want to judge you. I can’t tell you you’re wrong. Just don’t give up on the day, you know? On now.’
A pause. Marcus said, ‘You told me once, years ago, I think, that Māori live with the past. That your ancestors are not gone, that they’re around you… ?’
‘That’s right. You could put it something like that. They’re there in the tekoteko, and other places. They’re there in our kids’ faces.’
‘So there’s no big difference between the past and the present.’
‘I know what you’re saying. I do. Why not bring the future into it too, eh? We got these faces that come to us from the future, and we’re living with that now too.’
‘Is it true?’
‘I don’t know. I heard people talk like that, about their kids and their descendants, sure. They’re what it’s about too.’
‘So TCF is just a part of that. TCL images are like photos of the past, they bring it closer. Except they’re about the future.’
‘I’m not dismissing it, Marcus. It’s all part of what we live with now. But your travelling… I’m not comfortable with that. It crosses a boundary. It takes you away. When I think about what’s here now, in the day, you know, I think about what’s worth fighting for. What we’re working and fighting for. What we take hold of. When I think about the past, and about the future too, it doesn’t take me away from the present. It makes me all the more present. You know?’
‘Yes.’
‘That’s why I’d be careful. But you’re not me. You’re a white boy from Southland.’
‘I never believed in travelling. I kind of fell into it. Yeah, it is taking me away. I can see that. I can see it’s a danger. But having done it… ’
‘You’re hooked.’
‘I hope not. Shit. But if we can, you know, get over that, get over the addiction, I still think the view of the future—it gives us something. I don’t know what yet.’
‘That’s a junky talking.’
A laugh. Then, ‘Pen. I haven’t said goodbye to him properly. I can’t.’
‘That threw you into it?’
‘I think so. It set me off on TCF in a way I don’t quite understand. Fuck, poor Pen. The time I really felt his death, though, was after one of my trips.’
‘You need to look after yourself, man. Especially if you’re going to carry on down this path of yours.’
‘I don’t know if I am. I don’t know how I can, if the guy doesn’t want me to go back. But I have to find out what happened to Pen. He saw something in it. I think. He was chasing something.’
‘Yeah. But he’s dead. That doesn’t seem good to me.’
‘How did TCF become entangled with the finance sector of the economy?’
‘The growth of financial capitalism received new impulses around the beginning of the 1970s: the end of the Bretton Woods agreement, the est
ablishment of a US fiat currency, the floating of currency values; but also the oil shocks and the beginning of a general, long downturn in the world economy. This was around the time that TCF and TCL technologies were becoming widely disseminated. The TCF/TCL negotiations were certainly part of the US–Soviet détente, which could be said to have contributed to a decline in economic dependency on the US by Western nations. It is a matter for debate whether the technologies themselves were instrumental in bringing about the turn towards finance, or whether financial institutions saw them as opportunities to invest funds that might have equally been directed elsewhere.’
‘The technology was already illegal by the time the banks were developing their uses of it?’
‘TCF travelling by individual humans was illegal, but other applications remained acceptable. It has to be remembered also that the banks had been growing in size and influence since the early 1960s—they were increasingly grouped into multinational consortia able to operate across national boundaries, if not altogether outside the influence of nation states. These consortia conducted a great deal of research into the possibilities of short-distance and ultra short-distance temporal contour technology, in effect the creation of lens/tunnels only a very short time into the future. Initially it was intended as risk-reduction technology for currency speculation. Banks competed over the promises they could make about the guarantees based on future currency data. The technologies were highly protected—physicists were hired away from the public institutions for the purposes of exchange rate prediction. No major technological breakthroughs were made by the banks—no predictions were in fact forthcoming, and no short-distance TCF or TCL was developed—but they were able to compete based on the calibre and reputation of their technical staff.’
‘Banks put more research into the technology than states?’
‘Yes. There was an effective privatisation, at a global level, of the legal application of temporal contour research throughout the 1970s. The results of the research were owned and kept secret by the banks for commercial reasons. As we have said, no genuine technical developments seem to have been made in any case.’
‘But temporal contour technology was, from then on, conducted in secret?’
‘Effectively, yes. The banks did, as is well known, develop ways to turn existing temporal contour technology to speculative purposes, creating markets in information about future development. This was partly a matter of the ownership of future information by the banks, and partly a matter of converting long-term investment into short-term betting, allowing current returns on large future projects by assessing their outcomes before the fact.’
‘Was there a complete absence of state regulation?’
‘No. Regulation did not disappear, but was, over the 1970s, generally reoriented towards the protection of corporate rights to the technology.’
‘States actively facilitated the redirection of temporal contour technology into financial instruments?’
‘Yes, for the most part. States in general retained a great deal of power, but realigned that power with corporate interests rather than the interests of their citizens.’
‘Wasn’t the availability of future information inimical to the very nature of speculation? How is it possible to speculate on something that is known in advance?’
‘The instruments are complex, but it has to be emphasised that temporal contour technologies have never given fool-proof access to the future. There has always been debate about the changeability of the future, about the possibility of alternate futures, futures other than the one that has been foreseen. In any case, it has never been possible to tell very much about the future from the information that is retrieved, just as it is difficult to tell very much about the workings of a factory from a photograph of it. The banks have argued that these factors make future trading a legitimate speculative enterprise—though, of course, their interest lies also in arguing that their own information is unassailable. This is the paradox of future trading—that it relies on both trust and chance at the same time. The future economy has been characterised by some critics as a “fictional economy” for some of these reasons—a kind of confidence trick, based on the bluster of institutions about their technical capacity and accurate assessment of the future. In many ways, the trade that has developed is a trade in images.’
‘Despite the technology, accuracy cannot be guaranteed?’
‘It is worth noting that financial regulators, and ultimately financial institutions themselves, had a strong motivation for ensuring that future knowledge be kept imperfect. A guarantee of accuracy about the future would mean continuous perfect investment. It would mean constant, flawless growth in the economy, based just on confidence. It would also mean the end of capitalism. Why invest at all, if the future is perfectly known? Capitalism requires a finely managed combination of fear and hope—both drive it onwards. Fear and hope both die, if the future is certain.’
‘We have to tell them.’
‘But they’re being so kind to me. They’ve let me into their home.’
‘That’s why we have to tell them.’
A pause. ‘Will they throw me out?’
‘Shit, probably. But you didn’t kill him, Kenneth. Not that you’re all innocence either.’
‘Do you want to throw me out?’
‘Oh, forget that. This is something temporary anyway, you staying here. Until it isn’t.’
‘What does that mean?’
A laugh. ‘That’s how it works sometimes.’
‘We should tell them. That’s fine.’
However, that evening, amid the comings and goings inside the house, the opportunity didn’t arise. The following day, Janet and Marcus left together with the children—Janet had work at the school for a few days. Peter was limping a little today, and seeming quiet and pale, but he left with them for school. Kenneth found himself at a loss. Should he visit Kim? It seemed likely, if Kim was still involved in TCF, that he had some connection with Pen’s travelling. Did Kim know who Kenneth was? Would he talk? What, in any case, would Kenneth ask him?
Lilly came in, back from dropping Sarah at Playcentre. ‘Hi.’
‘Oh.’
‘Anyone else home?’
‘I think someone might be upstairs… ?’
‘I never know.’ A laugh.
‘Lilly, I have something to say.’
‘Oh, good. Can I just get out of these shoes—’
‘I know things about Penwyn. I want to tell you. All of you.’
‘Don’t you think you should wait until—’
‘He was working for us. For the SIS.’
A pause. ‘Pen?’ She laughed. ‘No. Pen! You sure you weren’t working for him?’
‘I’m sure.’
She became serious. ‘You should tell everyone, not just me. Wait until—’
‘I’m starting with you. Pen was involved in something. We were both involved in it. There was some secret thing, some big shifting thing we were involved in. There were shadows and secrets, great shifting… ’
‘Fuck. What are you on about? What did you do?’
He sat at the kitchen table. She sat too, as if automatically.
‘I don’t know what I did. I can’t say. It is complicated. Sometimes our actions get thrown into the mist and we don’t know what consequences—’
‘I have no idea what you’re on about.’
‘It was all a long time ago.’
‘Tell me. You have to tell me now.’
Kenneth told Lilly about the Fedorovians, and about Pen’s involvement and his continued use of TCF. After a time, she said, ‘And Janet knows about this.’
‘I’ve told her, yes.’
She laughed. ‘So many secrets.’
‘Everyone has secrets. The world is a place of secrets.’
‘Not for everyone. It’s an occupational hazard, that kind of thinking. What are you going to do about it?’
‘The world?’
‘About P
en.’
‘I didn’t kill him.’
A silence. ‘Why do you say that?’
‘Because I didn’t. I’m not a murderer. I’ve always done what I thought was right—and the world takes that and twists it.’
‘I didn’t say… but listen, this man, the one in charge? Did he kill Pen?’
‘Kim? I don’t know. I’ve only just found out where he operates.’
‘Operates? Is he a surgeon?’
‘He works at a TCF facility.’
Our Future is in the Air Page 20
