by Sandi Gamble
Jace and I looked at one another, our eyes showing our growing confusion. Where was she leading us? What had we done?
She continued past the administration building and across the athletic fields. Upon the lush, nearly endless expanses of lawn where many of our classmates were engaged in sporting events and mock battle engagement. Although the focus of our education was on our intellectual development, social research had determined that in order to maximize intellectual potential, it was necessary to fully engage the body as well.
Although there had long before been some differing perspectives on the mind-body relationship and connection, by this time, there was no dispute. Mind and body were inexorably linked. Absent a disability, it was nearly impossible to develop one without the other.
Just watching the other students running along the fields made me long to be out there with them. In perhaps one of the few other differences between Jace and me, I was significantly more physical and athletic. I could run and run for hours, enjoying the sensation of my muscles being engaged. I could push myself to run faster, jump higher, swim harder and revel in the challenge.
Jace thought such activity to be more of a nuisance than enjoyment.
Of course, his attitude seemed to have no bearing on his physical skills or ability. He was the only one of our cohorts capable of out-dueling me, out-running me, or climbing higher and faster.
“How can you do that?” I asked him one time after we had concluded a match with the long lances, a match that he had won by points.
“Do what?” he asked, nonchalantly removing the padding we wore for the games.
“Beat me?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t think about it,” he added.
That, as you can imagine, infuriated me. “That’s what I’m talking about! I never see you engaged in any physical activity other than what is required. You don’t practice. You don’t work out. You don’t even enjoy it, and yet you’re the best out here! Even better than me!”
He nodded. “Ah, so that’s what’s gotten you upset,” he observed with an objective coolness that had me ready to jump on him and pummel him! “You’re upset that you lost the match.”
“Of course I’m upset that I lost the match,” I snapped at him. “Isn’t the entire point of a match to win?”
He laughed. “And you’re not even just a little bit happy for me, having won?” he asked.
“Not at all,” I growled. “In fact, I’m quite certain that I’m even angrier because it is you who has beaten me.”
“That’s wonderful!” he said, clapping his hands.
“Wonderful? What’s wonderful?” I demanded, wrapping my arms around myself if only to keep them from throttling him.
“You’re angry that I beat you and angrier still because I make it look effortless, right?”
I scowled at him. “I suppose.”
“Let me ask you a question. When one of our classmates feels upset because we score so high on our tests – without studying – are they justified?”
“Hey, we study! At least I do.”
He smiled. “Our classmate doesn’t know that.”
I looked at him suspiciously. “Are you saying you practice and that I just don’t know it?”
He shrugged. “I’m saying that it may be good for us once in a while to realize we might not always be the best – for whatever reason.”
I could feel a frown tugging at my lips. “Well, if I’m not the best then you are. I can live with that.”
He laughed. “And when I’m not, you are,” he noted. “But there may be a time when neither of us is, and we have to be able to deal with that too,” he said.
I shook my head. “Not going to happen,” I said casually.
“Maybe not. But the whole purpose of our training is to be able to deal with the very thing we never expect. Any computer can amass data and spit it back – even in creative ways. But it takes an interesting mind to be able to prepare for something that’s never been.”
I stamped my foot. Just when he was being infuriating, Jace always managed to prove himself to be more thoughtful and insightful than anyone I’d ever known. I couldn’t stay mad at him. I was just grateful that he was my friend.
I sighed.
Jace nudged me. He knew what I was thinking as we walked along the fields but he wanted to keep me focused. We had fallen a bit behind Ann and her quick pace. Well, I had fallen behind. Jace slowed down to make sure I caught up.
We hurried to catch up as Ann walked past the Science building and then toward the Information Complex.
I looked at Jace as if to ask, “What are we doing here?”
Ann stopped in front of the Information Complex. She studied our expressions. “Still no idea?”
I looked at Jace and then back to Ann.
“Jace?”
He looked at the building then at Ann. She nodded with an expression that seemed to suggest satisfaction.
“Come on,” he said, heading into the building.
We didn’t take the elevator. As soon as she headed to the staircase, I felt my breath draw in.
“Ah, figured it out, have we?” She turned and smiled at me and then at Jace.
Two weeks earlier, I had been reading in my room when Jace knocked on the door. “It’s open,” I called out, recognizing his knock.
He came into my room.
“What’s up?” I asked him.
“What are you up to?”
I nodded at the computing pad in my hand. “Differentials,” I said.
He looked around the room. It seemed like he didn’t know exactly what to say next, which was highly unusual for Jace. If there were anything I would say about Jace, it would be that he always knew what to say.
“What’s going on?” I asked him. “You’re acting funny.”
He opened the door and looked in the hallway. Then he came back in. “Come with me,” he said.
I shrugged. “Sure.” It didn’t take much to convince me to tag along with Jace. Besides, I was way ahead with the differential material. I shut off the computing pad and put it on my bed. Then I slid to the floor and followed after Jace as he went out the door.
We followed the path from the dorms for a little while but then, when we came to the playing fields, rather than walk around, we cut across the lawn.
“Where are we going?” I asked him. He remained silent and thoughtful.
Having spent a number of years trusting Jace in his adventures, I didn’t really expect him to answer, but I always asked. I just followed along, past the Science Building and toward the Information Complex.
He pushed open the door, and we stepped inside. The air was cool and dry. It felt unlike any other building I’d been in at the Academy. And why would I have been here? We had no classes here, no instruction. It was one of the handful of places at the Academy that didn’t capture my attention at all. But clearly, it had captured Jace’s.
“Shhh,” he hissed, putting his finger to his lips as the sound of footsteps approached us. “Come here,” he whispered, pulling me into a doorway.
The footsteps came closer and then passed, receding away along the wide, tile floor.
“What’s the matter?” I asked him. “Aren’t we supposed to be here?” Even though I hadn’t been in the Information Complex, it was my understanding that every place on the Academy’s campus was available to us unless it was locked or specifically noted to be off-limits. I had seen no such sign suggesting that we were not to be in the building.
And yet Jace was behaving as if we were doing something wrong.
“Jace?”
“Everything’s fine,” he said. “Come on,” he added, stepping out from the doorway.
We followed what seemed to me to be a maze of hallways. Left. Right. Right. Left. Until we came to a staircase. Jace started to go downstairs. He looked back once to make sure I was following him.
Staircases at the Academy were strange, wondrous things. For the most part, we
went in elevators or escalators if we had to move from elevation to elevation. There were also times when we moved along lateral walkways. We almost never took stairs. When we did, the stairwells were well-lit.
After the first flight down – which was lit like every other staircase I’d encountered at the Academy – we entered another staircase. This one was not as well-lit, or as wide as any of the others. The railing was wood, polished it seemed from many hands running along it.
One flight down. Another and then another.
“Jace?”
He didn’t answer until we’d gone down four flights. At the landing, he pushed open a door.
“Oh my…”
He stepped aside as I entered a place I had never experienced before. Even so, being there took my breath away – just like Jace knew that it would. We had entered what had been called a “library.”
Of course Jace and I were familiar with books. It was just that in our experience, books were old and inefficient. We viewed everything on computer tablets. Pages were turned virtually. And what did it matter? The words were the same.
Well, it did matter. I liked the physical sensation of turning pages. What was lost in the inability to immediately cross-reference every possible text from the tablet was more than made up for with the simple, physical pleasure of holding a book, touching its pages and taking delight in the exquisite scent that a book often gives off.
I loved it, and I knew that Jace did as well.
Now, here in this place, there was floor to ceiling books. Shelf after shelf, after shelf of them.
“My God, Jace! How did you find this place?”
He shrugged in that mysterious way of his. “I just happened upon it,” he said.
I looked at him then, and I narrowed my eyes. “Just happened upon it? Seriously?”
Jace looked just the slightest bit sheepish. “Okay. I came into the Information Complex just to explore. I’d never come in before and I was curious what was in here.
“I wandered for a while, just looking around. No one seemed to particularly mind that I was here. For the most part, it seemed to me that there were just offices here, cubicles and workstations.
“Nothing particularly interesting.” He sighed. “I was getting ready to leave when I heard a door open. I took note of it because the door creaked like we’d been taught doors had done long ago.”
It was true that doors opened and closed nearly silently now. Just a soft whoosh of air. So to have a physical sound. A creak. That was fascinating. It gave me a shiver and made me imagine what life must have been like when all doors opened and closed like that. Just the thought of it fascinated me so I could imagine what actually hearing it did for Jace.
Jace and I shared a love of the “old world” and how things were. There were times when Jace wished he could have lived then. Not me. I liked learning about the past, but I was pretty happy with the world I inhabited.
“Just imagine what it would be like,” he once said, “actually working on a farm. Growing fresh food.” He closed his eyes and let his imaginings become real for him.
I shrugged. “It would be all right I guess,” I said acknowledging him, but I wasn’t enthusiastic about it. Even if I didn’t share his enthusiasm about experiencing the past, I really liked his nostalgia for it. Not only did I find it fascinating, but I also took to heart the old adage that one not able to learn from the past was destined to relive it.
And based on what I knew about the past, I did not want to relive it!
“Are you sure we’re supposed to be down here?” I asked Jace.
He just kept walking. I stayed just inside the doorway for a moment but then when he’d disappeared around one of the stacks I felt very vulnerable, so I hurried to catch up with him. I found him kneeling down on the floor with an oversized book in front of him.
“Look at this,” he said, staring down at the pages opened before us.
He had taken an atlas out from the stacks, and it showed land masses that did not correspond with current land masses.
“This is what the world looked like,” he said, half to himself.
I was drawn to the pages and could not help but kneel down so I could look closer. I drew my finger along the coastline of various continents.
Jace jumped up and, leaving the atlas on the floor, motioned for me to follow him to another place in the stacks. He stopped and pulled a volume from the shelves.
“Look at this,” he said, handing me the small book.
I studied the cover. There was a picture of a girl, not much older than Jace and I. She had dark hair and dark, haunting eyes. I read the title. “Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl.” I turned it over in my hands and then looked at Jace.
“What’s this about?”
“I am not one hundred percent sure,” he admitted. “I’ve only read a small bit of it. But from what I’ve read – and from what I’ve managed to learn about it, there was a terrible period during the twentieth century…” He went on to briefly talk about a cataclysm known as the Second World War.
“Barbarism,” I shuddered when he was finished. However, even as I rendered my judgment, I knew that such qualities still existed in people. Society could work very hard to teach and breed such aspects of human nature out of us, but ultimately we are still what we are. Even the tamest dog retains the ability – and nature – to bite.
In all that I had read and learned, I knew that people had a marvelous ability to engage in a broad spectrum of ways, from love to hate, charity to cruelty.
Jace and I had even spoken about it over the years.
“Do you really think people are capable of terrible cruelty?” he asked me one time.
I thought for a moment, not about my answer but about how I wanted to best communicate it. Neither of us was the kind to simply make assertions or to mimic the lessons we were taught. We were both too relentless in our curiosities and our intelligence even at the young age when we had the conversation.
The question itself had grown out of a scene he and I had not long before witnessed. We had been walking through the woods and had come upon some foliage that I had learned about long before with my mother.
“When you see these…” she told me, pointing out the sharp, orange-colored leaves sticking stiffly from low, bristled stems, “… steer clear of the path.” Then she looked forward and back carefully as if to make sure that the path was clear.
“Why, mother? Are they poisonous?”
I related the lesson I had learned that day. As if to make the lesson that much more powerful, two short-legged boars approached from different directions.
I saw them before Jace. “Come!” I whispered hurriedly, dragging him behind some bushes where we could see without being seen. Then, just as had happened that long-ago day with my mother, the two boars fought themselves to a benumbed draw and staggered off, neither of them enjoying any of the meal they had both come looking for.
That day, my mother had witnessed the scene and taught me a lesson about cooperation. Jace and I, seeing a similar scene, spoke about a different lesson.
“Such violence,” he sighed.
“They are hungry,” I noted.
“Do you think it was hunger alone that caused them to behave in such a way or do you think it is in their nature to be violent?”
I thought it was a smart and compelling question. After all, if it were the nature of the boars to be cooperative, they would have cooperated as a default response. Instead, their immediate response was to violence.
We talked about it for a while and then Jace asked what I thought our natures were. “Are we violent or are we cooperative?” he wondered aloud. He looked me directly in the eye. “What do you think, Ari? Are we peaceful creatures who cooperate or are we violent and dangerous?”
I gave it some thought. “I would have to say we are both,” I decided finally. “Certainly we are capable of violence.” I nodded toward the small volume in my hand. “This episode in history demonst
rates it. And we are, after all, still human beings at the base level,” I noted.
“But…”
“Yes, but,” I said, cutting him off. “But we are also capable of recognizing that aspect of our nature and of trying to blunt it. We can create music and art. We can cooperate – indeed, we have learned that our survival is dependent on cooperation.
“Still,” I continued, thinking out loud. “If we were not so prone to violence and selfish behavior, the Ministry would not devote so much energy to teaching us not to behave in such negative ways. Clearly, if we have a gift greater than the short-legged boar…”
Jace laughed at the comparison. “Ari, don’t be ridiculous!”
I raised my hand in protest. “I’m not being ridiculous. I am speaking about essential natures. Some of these we share with the beasts of the fields. There can be no doubt about it. However, where we rise above the boar is that we, recognizing the limitations of our natures, can seek ways to minimize those weaknesses and maximize our strengths.
“The boar has the capability to butt itself silly while fighting over some food. It cannot elevate itself above such non-productive behavior. But we, I think, while possessing plenty of barbarism in our natures also have the ability to recognize that barbarism cannot move the human enterprise forward.”
As we removed ourselves from behind the bush, both deeming it safe to return to the path, Jace softly applauded. “That was a brilliant exposition, Ari,” he said, genuinely pleased by what I’d said. “I fear though that it is not the entire explanation.”
“What do you mean?” I asked as we continued on our way.
“Well, while I think it is certainly wise to teach and train us to work cooperatively and to the larger benefit, there may indeed be downsides to how effectively we remove or hide essential aspects of our natures.”
I looked at him curiously. At the time, I could not grasp what he was suggesting. In fact, I don’t think he fully appreciated what he was trying to sort out. But over a great deal of time and thought, the importance of his insight would become more apparent.
