The Infinite Future

by Tim Wirkus

  Craig D. Ahlgren, for one, resented every public utterance Harriet made. After I’d finished near the top of my class at Vanderbilt, Craig’s law firm had taken me on as an associate. To say that my first few years as an attorney were hectic would be an understatement. Not only did I make sure that I was always among the last to leave the offices each night, I also showed up to every work-related social engagement I was aware of: lunches, retirement parties, client functions, pickup basketball games, fishing trips. It was exhausting but seemed to be paying off. Each passing year yielded an increase of winking hints that if I kept this up I’d make partner before I knew it.

  Anyway, the point is Craig Ahlgren was my boss and whenever he saw Harriet Kimball quoted in an article, he’d wander into my office, hands in the pockets of his dark suit pants, and say simply, “The papers can’t get enough of your old friend.” Then he’d raise his eyebrows in a look of teasing disapproval and wander right back out the door.

  At first I wasn’t sure whether this half-joking response was the tamped-down product of true outrage or displeasure feigned for the sake of some intra-office ribbing. I found out the answer one Thursday evening when I went to the Salt Lake Temple to do an endowment session—a ceremony in which participants ritualistically contemplate their relationship with the divine. I was sitting in the back row of the first ordinance room, and things were taking a little longer than usual to get started. Attention wandering, I looked around at the mural that covered the walls and ceiling of the crowded room—a primordial scene of roiling waters, jutting rocks, and thick clouds of blue, white, and faintest pink. Lost in contemplation, I didn’t notice the latecomer enter the room until he was sitting next to me, and even then not until he’d whispered, “Danny, nice to run into you here.”

  It was Craig Ahlgren, looking very much at home.

  “Hi Craig,” I whispered back.

  I wasn’t unhappy to see him necessarily, but I had been looking forward to having a couple of hours to myself when I wouldn’t have to think about work. Craig settled into his chair. At the front of the room an officiator announced that there’d been a mix-up with the ordinance workers assigned to this session but the ceremony would be starting as soon as things got straightened out. He thanked us all for our patience, and with those words a quiet restlessness filled the room—whispered conversations and the gentle susurrus of fabric sliding against fabric as people shifted in their seats.

  “You know,” whispered Craig, leaning toward me. “I’ve been thinking a lot about Harriet Kimball lately.”

  “Oh yeah?” I whispered. “What about her?”

  With his left index finger he adjusted the dimple beneath the knot of his white tie, a gesture I recognized from high-stakes professional conversations as a sign that Craig was formulating the most precise possible expression of a strong and complicated sentiment.

  “When it comes to Mormonism,” he began, “the newspapers are always more interested in listening to people like Harriet—you know, people who have dissented from the Church—than to people like you or me. People like us are orthodox, devout, and comfortable in our faith. The press sees us as being either brainwashed or insidious, or both. We don’t register as sentient, self-aware beings to them.”

  He paused, glancing around at the room’s flawlessly maintained nineteenth-century craftsmanship—the white moldings, the mural, the intricately pieced glasswork above the door.

  “People like Harriet,” he continued, “could be doing so much to rectify that situation. She has the ear of the media, but what does she use it for? To lift herself up. To talk like one of them just so everyone’s clear that she’s not one of the ignorant, unwashed mass of savage Mormons.”

  Craig smiled, more a baring of teeth than an expression of happiness.

  “What makes me most upset,” he continued, working to keep his voice at a whisper, “is that she hides behind this screen of supposed intellectual idealism, telling everyone, including herself, that she’s only after the truth, whatever that might mean to her. There’s no self-interest there, according to her. No desire to cause trouble. It’s all so obvious, though. What she’s really after, Danny, is the acceptance of the world. She wants to fit in. She wants to be respected by all those who point their fingers and laugh at the Church. And she’s succeeded is the thing. The media treats her like the only enlightened Mormon in America, and that’s fine I suppose. That’s her business. That’s the decision she made a long time ago. But do you know what, Danny?”

  And here a look of bone-deep satisfaction overtook Craig’s face.

  “Harriet can say whatever she wants to the media,” said Craig. “Harriet can disparage the Church until she’s blue in the face. At the end of the day, though, what really matters is that Harriet’s out there, and you and I, Danny—we’re in here.”

  He gestured at the ordinance room and, presumably, at the larger edifice that contained us.

  “We have the temple,” he said. “And we have everything it represents.”

  He clapped me on the shoulder.

  “You’re in the right place tonight,” he said. “And I’m proud of you for making that decision.”

  “Thanks,” I said, unsure of what else to say.

  The tardy ordinance workers had arrived at some point during Craig’s speech, so I was rescued by the beginning of the endowment ceremony.

  • • •

  Given Craig’s regular disparagement of Harriet, when her face appeared on my computer screen the day after my phone conversation with Tim, I was surprised to see a bright, pleasant woman looking out at me rather than the glowering wraith I’d been subconsciously expecting. She looked really good, in fact—well rested, more fleshed out, much happier than the last time I’d seen her. The perpetual defensiveness that had hung about her in a cloud was gone as well, replaced by an easy air of authority. Here was someone capable of properly appreciating the news of The Infinite Future’s publication.

  “Can you see me all right?” she said.

  “Yeah,” I said. “You’re coming through just fine.”

  “Good,” she said, reaching out and tilting her camera back so it no longer cut off the top of her head. “Earlier this week I was presenting remotely at a conference in Melbourne and my video feed was a mess, apparently.”

  With a what-can-you-do shrug, she made another minor adjustment to her camera.

  “Are you at your cabin?” I said.

  She sat in front of an overcrowded bookshelf, with several more books piled at her elbows on the desktop before her.

  “No,” she said. “I received a two-year research fellowship from the Arrington Institute in San Diego, so I’m in California right now.”

  “Wow,” I said. “Congratulations.”

  “Thank you,” she said. “I’m working on a history of late-twentieth-century Mormon feminism. It’s slow going, but of course it is. Anyway, how about you? Are you still in Provo?”

  “No,” I said, and then told her how I’d gone to law school at Vanderbilt and was now an associate at Craig Ahlgren’s law firm in Salt Lake.

  “Congratulations,” she said, sounding like she really meant it. “Where in town are you living?”

  “I just bought a little house in the Avenues,” I said.

  “Good for you,” she said.

  “Things are going well for me,” I said, unsure why I felt the need to reemphasize the point. I couldn’t stop myself, though. “I’ve also been seeing someone for a few months now, so—yeah.”

  Harriet’s supportive smile briefly turned to one of amusement before she recomposed her face and said I must be very happy.

  “Yes,” I said.

  I wasn’t lying about seeing someone, per se, but it also wasn’t the kind of relationship I’d otherwise brag about. A few months earlier I’d run into Christine Voorhes, former stooge for the Coalition of Aggrieved Chri
stians, on the steps of the Salt Lake City County Building. She recognized me right away, and after chatting for a few minutes—she was now a partner in a practice in town that had a reputation for not messing around—we exchanged numbers. Not long after, we started meeting up intermittently for late-night restaurant meals and sweaty make-out sessions in the backseat of her pearlescent Lexus GS. She never invited me over to her house, and I never invited her to mine, and so it went.

  One time I asked her, as we crossed a restaurant parking lot toward her car, if she ever would have been interested in the younger, less successful version of me she’d met so many years earlier.

  “The great thing about you, Daniel,” she said, hooking her arm around mine, “is that you’re whatever I want you to be.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” I said.

  Instead of answering, she pulled her keys from her coat pocket and with a squeeze from her leather-gloved thumb, unlocked her Lexus.

  It was strange, this specter from my floundering past reappearing in my more successful present, a reminder of how far I’d come and, conversely, of my inability to completely free myself from that grim period in my life.

  “Sérgio is joining us, isn’t he?” said Harriet, glancing at her watch.

  “He’s supposed to be,” I said.

  I was about to check my email to see if something was up when a third chat square blossomed on the screen and there was Sérgio, sitting in the computer lab of the Biblioteca Anita Garibaldi, arms folded over the guitar-playing image of Nara Leão on the front of his black T-shirt.

  “I apologize for my lateness,” said Sérgio. “The library’s been having trouble with its Internet today.”

  Where the passing years had invigorated Harriet, they seemed to have drained Sérgio of his vitality. His hair was grayer and his face, if not quite gaunt, possessed a troubled angularity.

  “No need to apologize,” said Harriet. “Daniel and I were just catching up.”

  “Very good,” said Sérgio, nodding wearily. “Now I understand, Daniel, that you have some exciting news for us?”

  I’d been hoping to build up to it, but Sérgio’s briskness forced my hand.

  “Yeah,” I said and then told them what Tim had told me the day before.

  “Wonderful,” said Harriet. “That’s very exciting. Welcome to the glamorous fellowship of published translators, Daniel.”

  “Thanks,” I said, although her response wasn’t what I’d been looking for. This wasn’t about me—I’d long ago given up on my own literary dreams—but about Salgado-MacKenzie, that pseudonymous entity who still inspired a complicated awe within me. Hadn’t I done something important here? Hadn’t I contributed to a phenomenon so much bigger than myself?

  “This is also good for the cause, though, right?” I said, half jokingly.

  “The cause?” said Sérgio, and I could see heavy bags under his eyes that hadn’t existed seven years earlier.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Spreading the good word of Salgado-MacKenzie.”

  “Ah,” said Sérgio, scratching his beard. Maybe it was the Internet connection, but his voice sounded like it was coming from the bottom of a well. “Of course.”

  What was going on here? Why wasn’t Sérgio as excited as I needed him to be—was it jealousy? I hadn’t really thought through the fact that I would be the one with my name on the cover, or at least on the title page, below Salgado-MacKenzie’s own.

  “And really, Sérgio,” I said, trying to make up for any possible envy, “it’s all thanks to you.”

  “Yes,” said Harriet.

  There was an awkward pause as Sérgio’s image froze on my computer.

  “Hello?” I said. “Sérgio? Are you still there?”

  “Yes,” said Sérgio, his response preceding his reanimation on the screen by just a few beats.

  “You were just frozen,” I said.

  “Ah,” said Sérgio.

  For a second I thought he’d frozen again, but he was actually just sitting very still. This seemed less like jealousy and more like Sérgio had been drained of all his vital humors.

  “So, Sérgio,” said Harriet as the pause grew more uncomfortable. “What have you been up to lately?”

  He looked somewhere beyond his computer screen, as if searching for a cue card.

  “Oh yes,” he said after a moment, looking back into the camera. “This will be of interest to the two of you. I’ve been given a remarkable opportunity recently.”

  “What’s that?” I said, a little overenthusiastically in an attempt to compensate for Sérgio’s lack of enthusiasm.

  “About a year ago, I convinced the Cooper siblings to donate their papers to the Biblioteca Anita Garibaldi,” he said, his weary eyes staring straight into his camera. “So I’ve been busy for the past several months scanning and cataloging everything the library acquired.”

  “That’s great!” I said.

  “Yes,” said Harriet. “Congratulations!” She paused. “But I thought they hadn’t hung on to much of their Salgado-MacKenzie material.”

  “That’s the impression Madge gave when I first met them in Idaho,” said Sérgio without relish, “but I suspected otherwise. Or rather, I hoped otherwise. You see, when the manuscript of The Infinite Future turned out to be less of a revelation than I’d anticipated . . .”

  Had I been the only one to have such an otherworldly experience with the novel? Why was this not going the way I’d hoped it would? I fought back an urge to just shut off my computer and walk away.

  Sérgio continued: “I remembered something Rex had mentioned, that when he submitted the novel to various publishers, he’d included unpublished stories of Irena Sertôrian. So what had become of those stories, I wondered? Given their penchant for mystique, I knew I couldn’t ask the Coopers directly, so I began a long and patient correspondence with them.

  “The first coup was convincing them to allow the extant portion of The Infinite Future to be translated and published, if we could find anyone willing to do so. For the next phase, which lasted three years, I slowly drew them out, playing hard to get as they fed me a detail here and a detail there about their pseudonymous career, until finally they admitted to me that they still possessed every single page they’d ever written as Salgado-MacKenzie. From there it was only a matter of time before I convinced them that for the sake of posterity, etc., etc., they should donate their papers to the library that employed me. And so,” concluded Sérgio, “here I find myself.”

  “Good for you,” I said, again with too much enthusiasm.

  “Were there many unpublished stories?” asked Harriet.

  “A couple dozen,” said Sérgio with a sad and enigmatic smile.

  “Wow!” I said. “You must be over the moon.”

  “Over the moon?” he said, brows furrowed.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Like really, really happy.”

  “No,” said Sérgio. “I know what ‘over the moon’ means.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  Much to my dismay, Sérgio seemed even more deflated now than he had when our conversation had begun, a caul of grief clinging to his heavy head.

  “What are the stories about?” I asked softly, the gloom beginning to infect me through the screen of the computer.

  “Most of them are fairly minor entries in the Sertôrian saga—weaker versions of stories that actually made it into print,” he said. “A couple are different. A couple aren’t too bad.”

  “What are they about?” I said. “The couple of good ones, I mean.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” said Sérgio. “Let me check the catalog I’ve been working on.”

  His hand moved to the mouse on the desktop, and after a few clicks he said, “Here, I’ll read you a summary: The year is 4658, and the most popular sport in the galaxy is a much-evolved version of jai alai. A
s the new season commences, billions of fans follow with wonder the meteoric rise of a new team whose controversial style of playing wins them as many enemies as it does matches. The Twins of Boundless Fury, as the duo is known, confound opponents and commentators alike with their preternatural ability to hurl the pelota from their cestas at unprecedented speeds.”

  This prompted a soundless chuckle from Harriet.

  “When the sport’s governing body initiates an official inquest into the team’s background, though, the Twins of Boundless Fury simply disappear,” continued Sérgio, “prompting loyal fans everywhere to pore over scorecards, game films, and magazine interviews for any clues pertaining to the team’s origins or current whereabouts. Over the ensuing months, this search comes to eclipse the sport itself in popularity, until a young fan-turned-researcher discovers a secret about the vanished duo that will redefine the sport—and humankind—forever.”

  Sérgio looked back into the camera, then intoned: “Both twins were, in fact, Irena Sertôrian.”

  “That sounds pretty good,” I said.

  Sérgio’s baleful face stared out at me from the screen. He shrugged, and his image was fleetingly pixelated. Before the melancholy could engulf us all, Harriet, who’d been silent through this exchange said, “Sérgio, is everything okay?”

  He drew a deep breath. He nodded, and then, contradicting himself, shook his head.

  “On paper,” Sérgio began, eyes averted, “I’ve found exactly what I’ve spent my whole life looking for. I’ve met Salgado-MacKenzie and I’ve read all of his—or rather their—published work. I should be, as Daniel put it, over the moon. As you’ve gathered, though, I’m not.” Sérgio drew a hand down his face. “There’s a dream I’ve been having ever since our trip to Idaho. Not every night, and sometimes I’ll go months without dreaming it, but then it returns, jarring my slumber and clinging to my mind for hours after I wake.”