Afterwards, they gathered at the house. Janet said, ‘I’m not taking him back to the hospital.’
‘What if he takes a turn for the worse?’
‘They’re not doing anything for him.’
‘Are you sure?’
A silence. Then, ‘He needs to be here.’
Peter was in the room, playing with the girls, sitting, or moving sluggishly at best. He looked pale and exhausted. What could Janet say? What was sadder—seeing him like this, or seeing him confined to a bed in the intensive care ward? Pen’s mother was visibly upset at the thought that he might not go back to hospital, but she said nothing.
For Lilly, Marcus and Janet, everything seemed different. The world had a new sheen to it. For now, at least, everything was flows and eddies, including themselves—momentary wave peaks against the world’s background swell. Time coursed through it all, but, seen from a certain, distant perspective, it moved in no particular direction. They were no different from Pen—or what they had thought was Pen—circulating through it, dispersing and feeding the world with their bodies. Why send Peter back to the hospital where he would be so deliberately boxed, seamed, tacked together with rough machinery? He lay there on the floor, still, but smiling and talking to Dani. There was of course the thought that that smile might be lost—and with this they remembered their clichéd tears, part of everything else that surged here and there through everything.
Kim watched them with a knowing smile. He whispered to them, when he had a chance, ‘You guys are still out of it.’
‘We brought a bit of the future back.’
No one stayed late. Kenneth left for an unknown destination. Kim, too. Mrs Evans departed for her motel in a businesslike manner, and promised to be back tomorrow to help with the weeding.
It all joined up. Secrets revealed, the world’s secrets and revelations. The nature of it all. And then, everything after all stitched into an image of unstitching: the swirl of matter, (non-)human matter up and down at once. This then, at once. At once boundary broken and erected, becoming being holes in itself, a surface of its own flows and holes, all this working its way through—who? Difficult, the changing. Bounded matter world breath. No changing, no change no surface surchange and surge, slipchange change without change nochange change surface changeface—it throws surface and up and through or howso whataround whatfor whathalf halfchange remaining half halfway change and change and nochange. Why this? Uncoupling of language and machine. Time takes a step to the side of itself so change change nochange so it falls and rises change change a chant change a chant skips a step and steps stepping surface none surface none change none none none howso whataround whatfor whathalf halfsurface halfface halfvisiblesurface and meaningless now just face surface sides halves all synthesis movements of history ticks and change and no-one to listen. No audience no I just the rattle of shapes. Time itself echoes tealeaves. No not that. Words words fallen on them. Good as any, though, loose, just (non-)identical with themselves (un-)attached and waiting. What for?
Early the next morning, Dani wakes them. ‘Mum! Dad! Janet!’ She races to the bed where the three of them are lying, Lilly in the middle. She jumps onto it, her feet slipping between the various legs under the covers. ‘It’s Peter.’
Janet says, ‘God, what’s—?’
‘It’s Peter!’
Janet sits up suddenly. ‘Do I need to come?’
Before she has a chance, Peter himself comes in—he’s running, and he jumps onto the bed just as Dani has, knocking her down in the process so she tumbles across Marcus. Peter trips and dances between their shins. Sarah runs in behind him. They are all there, shining. There is no stopping them. As if they, their energy, their chaos, is about to overflow themselves, their bodies, any story, any surface that contains them.
ILLUSTRATIONS
Page 13, ‘Stability margins of TC-lens ionospheric field line tethering’
Figure 16, from Louisa S. Cook’s Geometrical Psychology or the Science of Representation: an Abstract of the Theories and Diagrams of B. W. Betts (George Redway, 1887), p. 126.
Image sourced from The Diagram 16.1: thediagram.com/16_1/figure16.html
Page 28, ‘Early large horizontal format TCF chamber’
‘Schematic diagram of a Variable Density Wind Tunnel—open throat design by NASA / Langley Research Center (NASA-LaRC)’, by Eastman Jacobs and Ira Abbott, 1932.
Image sourced from NASA Images: nasaimages.lunaimaging.com/luna/servlet/detail/nasaNAS~2~2~5799~107421:Schematic-diagram-of--VDT----open-t
Page 115, ‘Gavrilović diagram showing temporal zones and potentials’
1. Diagram of the Coanda Effect (2005) by user Helmut Stettmaier
Image sourced from: commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:CoandaEffect3.png?uselang=en-gb
2. ‘Multiply connected twins paradox overview’ (2011) by user Boud
Image sourced from: commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Multiply_connected_twins_paradox_overview.svg?uselang=en-gb
Page 126, ‘An image from the future’
‘Molecule diagram from earth-grown crystals’ (2011) by NASA / Marshall Space Flight Center
Image sourced from NASA Images: https://mix.msfc.nasa.gov/abstracts.php?p=171
Page 129, ‘Notes from a therapy session’
‘Data for Abruptly Beginning Magnetic Disturbances, 1906–1909, No. 1’, in Terrestrial Magnetism and Atmospheric Electricity XVI, No. 2, June 1911.
Image sourced from The Diagram 10.2: http://thediagram.com/10_2/buitenzorg.html
Page 189, ‘Surveillance apparatus used by Kenneth Grey’
‘Wiring Diagram for an Unspecific Crypto Device’ (c. 1935) by William F. Friedman, William F. Friedman NSA Collection.
Image sourced from Internet Archive: archive.org/details/41701829074115
Page 265, ‘Levine et. al.’s diagram of macroscopic temporal spin interactions’
‘Five space waves leaving an earthed vertical aerial of appreciable capacity’ by H. M. Dowsett, Wireless Telephony and Broadcasting (Gresham Publishing Co.), 1924.
Image sourced from The Diagram 12.1: thediagram.com/12_1/fivespace.html
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I was lucky enough to have a year as the Victoria University of Wellington Creative New Zealand Writer in Residence, where I worked on the first draft of this book.
Many thanks to Victoria University and Creative New Zealand, and especially all the staff of the International Institute of Modern Letters for their friendship and support.
Thanks to Ashleigh Young, whose close editing tightened and generally improved the text of Our Future is in the Air, and to everyone else at Victoria University Press. Thanks as well to Philip Kelly for a beautiful cover design, and to Fiona Amundsen for suggesting the title.
Thanks and love to all my comrades, and to my family, Ingrid, Lena and Natasha Horrocks.
Our Future is in the Air Page 26
