Our Future is in the Air

by Corballis, Tim

  ‘Would someone… ?’

  ‘I don’t know who could have done it.’

  ‘But you know where he was.’

  ‘More or less. I’m not sure I could work anything out if I went.’

  Silence. ‘Who would… but have you thought… are you sure he was killed?’

  And more silence.

  ‘It could have been an accident. Who would kill him? It doesn’t seem likely.’

  ‘It could have been.’

  ‘You didn’t think of that? That it might have been an accident?’

  ‘Yeah, I did.’

  ‘In all your flitting back and forth… ’

  ‘I haven’t travelled for a long time. Listen, I’m sorry, there’s not much time left… I need to ask something. About medicine.’

  A small smile. ‘We don’t bring back the dead. Not yet.’

  ‘It’s Pen’s son. I have a bad feeling. He’s come down with something that the doctors can’t explain.’

  ‘I’m not a doctor… ’

  ‘Your computer?’

  She looked at him. ‘I wish computers could do all you think they do.’ Then, ‘Why don’t I just try to find out if he’s alive?’

  ‘Oh yeah, of course. Peter Evans.’

  ‘What’s he got?’

  ‘He’s had something with his joints called Still’s Disease? But then he just fell into a fever and won’t come out. Maybe it’s unrelated. I don’t know.’

  ‘I’ll try to find something out.’

  ‘Thanks. Find out if there’s any medical research… ?’

  ‘I’ll try.’

  ‘It was easy to think of Pen Evans as plotting something in those days. His background in the protest movement suggested that he could only be hoping to intervene, to change things, to shock, to express his anger. People who knew him said, as I understand it, that it seemed to simmer in him. He was secretive about his activities, too, so that when they were discovered there was an understandable tendency to see some conspiracy in them. His untimely death, cause still unknown to us, added to that feeling. However, the more we look at the evidence of what he was doing, the more it seems like a relatively modest research programme. It was driven by something that looks very much like curiosity—a desire to understand. Perhaps, under the surface of that curiosity, there was a degree—a high degree, even—of frustration. We believe that he worked largely independently, but visited a handful of future contacts, all intellectuals of some kind and unlikely conspiracists, whatever their beliefs. The desire to change things is easily sublimated into the desire to know—to remove oneself from the world, to gain perspective, at the very least, so that one can map out the barriers against which one has so often collided. Pen was complex, like us all. He was angry and withdrawn.

  ‘His complicity with security services is one of the more puzzling aspects of his history, but it is a signal perhaps that he found it difficult to fully commit to any organisation. Did his reservations about the Fedorovians, his sense of psychological distance from them, allow him to be used to betray their secrets? He let himself be manipulated, especially by the agent Kenneth Grey. Perhaps this role, the gathering of information for Grey and his colleagues, was what led to his later desire for his own knowledge?

  ‘We know that he took notes on institutions such as the Mont Pelerin Society and on international banking. He was using TCF as a research tool to understand the development of the world. He didn’t share the Fedorovians’ faith in the future; we think, rather, that he saw the future as a warning, a kind of individualist nightmare. We think he wanted to know how the world would become like that. He wanted to find the seeds of that world in his own time. We don’t know how much he knew about the political power that banks and other financial institutions were acquiring—their effective takeover of New York City in the year of his disappearance, for example.

  ‘Banks in New Zealand were still state- or community-run enterprises, and the influential economists were a long way away. It was hard to understand how the conglomeration of banking or the rise of economic liberalism could affect New Zealand. The country was isolated and small, run, it sometimes seemed, by a caste of family farmers with sons in the police force. Even though the seeds of individualism were all around him, it was difficult for Evans to see how the big changes that were clearly to overtake the world could reach here. New Zealand was conservative but protected from everything by its isolation; it was also a place where social progress was easy. At the same time, being in such an isolated place, access to the centres of such change seemed cut off to him. There were no planes to board.

  ‘All this is only our conjecture of course, based on what little we have been able to discover about his activities. But if we are right—if the things he witnessed in the future were for him nothing but a sign of how things would become worse, even worse—then his attempt to understand must have been tinged with a terrible melancholy, a feeling of the senselessness of all his activity, all the knowledge he might glean. Having a child who, we assume, he must have loved deeply, can only have added to that feeling. Unless, of course, he felt as if that future might after all be changed, as if time might be steered off on a different course from the one presented to us by the machines.’

  Shanks was at the door one evening. Everyone in the house gathered in the lounge. Shanks said, ‘I have the remains. I’m going to have them cremated. I think it’s best.’

  No one spoke for a moment. Janet said, ‘You didn’t call them “remains” before.’

  ‘I’m sorry. He’s… well, if it’s any comfort, it’s just the natural process of decomposition.’

  Janet said, ‘You know, Shanks—strangely, it is. It is a comfort.’

  Marcus said, ‘Will ashes be enough?’

  Janet said, ‘Yes. It’ll do.’

  They called Pen’s mother and brother, there and then, so that they could arrange to come to Wellington for a service. Shanks shrugged afterwards. Was he unsure what to say? On the way out, he talked briefly with Janet. ‘I’ve found out where they are.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Kenneth Grey and Kim Denby.’

  ‘Are you going to arrest them?’

  He sighed. ‘I think we should do something about Denby.’

  ‘Do something about him?’

  ‘He’s been engaging in illegal activity for years.’

  ‘And you knew about it for years, didn’t you?’

  He sighed again.

  She gave him a push, almost playful. ‘C’mon. Don’t be a square.’

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘Don’t be a… um. What will you gain by arresting him?’

  ‘We don’t hope to gain.’

  ‘Bullshit. I want to come with you when you go to them.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘They up at that commune? Where Kim’s ex is?’

  ‘Um. How did you know?’

  ‘I just kind of wondered.’

  ‘I’m going as soon as possible.’

  ‘Tomorrow morning then?’

  ‘All right.’

  The next day was a Saturday—so, as it turned out, they all went: Janet and Shanks in his car, Lilly, Marcus and the children following in theirs. Shanks said to her, ‘I didn’t expect a whole family outing.’

  ‘I guess you don’t have a family of your own.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Kenneth does.’

  ‘Grey? Oh yes, I knew that.’

  ‘Maybe that’s his problem, eh?’

  ‘Maybe.’ Then, ‘Though it doesn’t seem to be much of a problem to him right now.’

  She didn’t respond. Her silence set the scene for much of the drive. Were there questions he could answer? But she couldn’t trust any answers he gave. Unlike Kenneth, whose face often gave away any truths he was withholding, Shanks only presented a hard and illegible surface. She turned from him and looked out her window at the alternating views of land and water.

  Finally they turned inland to the commune. Sh
anks, of course, knew exactly where it was, though he claimed not to have been there. Across a bridge to a metal road that finally petered out, not long after it passed through the gate to the property. A drive along ruts that cut through the grass under a stand of eucalypts, then out to the lawn in front of the buildings.

  There was some kind of meeting in progress outside the commune’s main house. Lilly said, as she emerged from the other car, ‘I haven’t seen a place like this for years…’ They had parked close to the assembled group—maybe fifteen adults. Various children were present too, sitting at first, but now standing and running away to form a meeting of their own at some distance. Kenneth and Kim were not to be seen. Marianne recognised Janet, stood, and came to her. ‘We kinda wondered what was going to happen. We were trying to work out how long they could stay for.’ Then, ‘You brought… ’

  ‘My friends. My family, I guess.’

  ‘Your kids?’

  ‘No. Sort of. My son’s in hospital.’

  Somehow, the arriving group took on the nature of a delegation. Spontaneously, Marianne pressed her nose to Janet’s; and then a line formed, the children on both sides running up excitedly to join, as they each shared breath with everyone in the other group. Shanks shuffled uneasily and grimaced as he took part. The formal proceedings went no further after that—instead, it gave everything a slight air of festival.

  Shanks said, ‘Where’s Grey? And Denby?’

  ‘Oh, surnames!’

  ‘Someone’s fetching them, I think.’

  Once they arrived, there was after all a more formal round of introductions. Kenneth and Shanks did not quite acknowledge one another. Kim took part, with exaggerated gestures, as if performing a role for distant observers. Finally he said, ‘Has he come to arrest me?’

  All eyes, then, on Shanks. It was a strange moment. Shanks stood still, but his face went through various contortions. One of the commune members said, ‘I thought he looked like a pig.’

  Janet said, ‘He’s agreed to give us Pen’s remains.’

  There were shrugs and looks. Shanks, as if in his defence, said, ‘Yes, yes I have.’ In fact, it did seem like he, not Kim, was being judged—though the two also seemed to share some secret look between them. A trial, a festival, all in one? The children were losing interest, and once again formed their own mobile committee. Dani and Sarah were, for now, excluded, and hung around their parents’ legs. What else could Shanks say? ‘I don’t know.’ Then, ‘Fuck it.’

  ‘Language!’

  ‘There’s children present.’

  He said, ‘No.’

  ‘Hey, we’ve got drugs on the premises. Arrest us!’

  ‘And a kit.’

  Laughter.

  ‘I said no. I didn’t exactly bring backup.’ Indicating Lilly, Marcus, Janet and the girls. ‘I’ll arrest you some other time.’ Then, a small smile, something secret to himself, as if his contortions had been part of an act.

  The commune members, after a moment of discussion, almost all moved away. They seemed to realise that this was no longer their discussion—the problem of Kim and Kenneth would be solved by the new arrivals. There was work to do, washing and tending the plots. While Shanks lit a cigarette, Marianne signalled to Janet and took her aside. Kim joined them. Marianne said, ‘We’ve been travelling.’

  ‘Oh?’

  Kim said, ‘Yeah. We’ve been trying to find out something about your son.’

  ‘Oh.’ Then, ‘Why? What have you been trying to find out?’

  ‘It’s the least we could do.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘There are things the future can give us. I still think that.’

  ‘What have you been doing?’

  ‘Trying to find out about his future. Trying to find out about his condition.’

  ‘And? Have you found something?’

  ‘We can’t find him in the future. But that doesn’t mean anything. It’s common, weirdly. I don’t know why. It happens. It doesn’t mean anything bad in itself, I don’t think.’

  ‘Marcus said the same thing.’

  ‘You can’t necessarily just find people, even with repeated visits.’

  Janet said, ‘No.’ A silence. Then, ‘You think TCF is a cure for everything? You really think that?’

  ‘I don’t. Not everything.’

  Marianne said, ‘It’s not that. Sorry. We didn’t mean to give you hope for any kind of answer. There wasn’t any answer. I just thought you should know we’d been doing it. Thinking about him, and you.’

  Kim said, ‘We talked to Susan Whitstone a few times, and she used her computer to find some information for us. Articles, medical research. Shit, it’s complicated… ’

  Marianne said, ‘She said she thought medical research was getting really specialised, really technical. It’s often privately owned.’

  ‘And the diagrams… we didn’t have time to read anything, of course. The diagrams of people, like diagrams of machines, like the stuff I used to see when reading about TCF kit, wiring and physics… ’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Oh, nothing, just that it’s complicated. This thing he’s got? It was only described by doctors a few years ago. In the meantime, in the future, you know, they’ve got decades of research on human systems. Systems, metabolic pathways… God. Maps of people so that you wouldn’t know where to start. They take people apart and put them back together. Some patients with Still’s Disease, you know, they get new hips or knees put in when the old ones stop working. It’s amazing what they know.’

  ‘So there’s a cure? They can fix what’s wrong?’

  Marianne said, ‘No. I think there are possibilities, a number of thoughts about what happens. In the disease. Like it’s the body’s systems turning on itself, one system fighting another system, or something.’

  Wasn’t a body just a body? Wasn’t he just Peter? ‘How can his body fight itself?’

  They looked at her. Marianne said, ‘There are some possibilities. Some drugs. But I don’t think many of them would be available now. We could try to find out? Or, some people thought that if you didn’t eat wheat products… ?’

  ‘That’s ridiculous.’

  ‘But they’re still searching for something, for a cure.’

  Janet said, ‘Even with all their technology… ’

  Kim was still awake with enthusiasm for the image of the human that he’d witnessed—maps of systems like electrical circuits, as if they were all held loosely together in the body, as if there were no body, just porous processes. Marianne however saw something of Janet’s frustration. She said, ‘Sorry we didn’t find out more.’

  ‘That’s okay.’

  Janet herself, though, wasn’t entirely immune to the enthusiasm. She did see it—the thought of a MAP OF THE HUMAN BEING. Was it a map, though, into which the human being itself seemed to vanish?

  Kim said, ‘They’ve built whole animals. It’s not long before they’ll be building humans too. Piecing them together from their genes. Using viruses to insert new genes into people.… Wild. I don’t understand it at all.’

  Marianne said, ‘There’s complications and other syndromes that we don’t even know about in our time.’

  ‘And the human body’s a set of algorithms.’

  Marianne gave him a look.

  ‘Or it’s all populations and data, so much data… ’

  Shanks, who had come close while they were talking, said, ‘Sounds like you had a bad trip.’

  Janet yearned for Peter. His small body, made into a bundle of processes, not quite running smoothly. There was a silence. Then she said, ‘I want to go.’

  Marianne said, ‘Sure, I’ll fetch your children.’

  ‘No, I want to go. To the future.’

  ‘Today?’

  ‘Now. I know what I’m getting myself into. It won’t be the first time.’

  Shanks began to protest, then stopped.

  She said, ‘Can I use the kit?’

 
; Marianne looked at her. ‘You’ve done it before?’

  ‘Yes. A long time ago. I don’t think I made the most of it.’

  They went to fetch the others. When they were all gathered, Marcus said, ‘I’m coming too.’

  Lilly said, ‘Not without me.’

  Janet said, ‘Is the chamber big enough for three?’

  ‘It’ll be cosy.’

  Janet was still under the spell of the thoughts Kim and Marianne had brought back, and she felt herself to be permeable to a whole array of factors around her—to the others, to the wind and radiation off the sun. Words, in such circumstances, were taken apart and made into vibrations—cheapened and made easy. Did they mean what they said? The atmosphere was insubstantial, as if that future had seeped back through the tunnel with Kim and Marianne. The future, pulling them to itself.

  ‘We have to find the kids and let them know we’ll be a while.’

  ‘I don’t think they’ll mind.’

  They found them playing by the stream. While they watched Lilly and Marcus with the children, Kim said to Janet, ‘Susan told us that all of it is starting now, in our time. There’s a lot of research already. There are already books saying that people are nothing but vehicles for genes, that biology explains everything. Pen used to talk about people being absent in the future. Is that what he meant?’

  Janet said, ‘Maybe. Maybe it was one of the things he meant.’

  The roots of the future, in their own time? Janet, despite herself, didn’t find the image of the body’s dissolution to be a pessimistic one. Perhaps that was why her immediate reaction was to want to go to that future, to feel it. Would it be palpable? Susan had been talking about the arcana of medical research, not the facts of everyday life. There was something both glorious and modest about being shot through with foreign bodies, with incomprehensible molecular action. It did explain a lot. Today the light of the sun streamed through her and through everything. What better day to throw herself on the future? Was there hope for Peter in this trip? No, it was just a short journey before she returned to be by his side. (In fact, was her enthusiasm only a way to cope with his illness—as if he had never been alive, or not in that way? As if, should he die, his processes would just keep spinning, his material subsist and dissipate, join the world?)