Dylan paused to gather his breath.
“Now is there anything distinctively American about the desire to make oneself? Probably not. But the worship of immodesty, of outsize individual ambition and to hell with everyone else, that was very American. Wasn’t it responsible after all for giving us the Promethean technological capabilities that ultimately allowed us to hoist ourselves with our own petard? Ironic, isn’t it? Not that the end of American exceptionalism wasn’t in many ways a good thing, of course, but for those generations who were riding the crest of that high and beautiful wave, the end hurt pretty bad.”
The students looked at him like he was speaking some alien language their omnis couldn’t translate. Sherman raised his hand.
“Yes?”
“Why do you always talk about America in the past tense?”
“Because it’s over, Sherman. The wave broke and rolled back. America is now on the order of Greece or Rome.”
“That’s not what my dad says.”
“Oh? What does your dad say, pray tell?”
“He says people like you are dramatic.”
“Does he? Well, I do teach drama, so I guess the shoe fits. What does your father do, if I may ask?”
“He’s a financial accountant.”
Was it too easy to tell Sherman that he thought people like his father were accountable?
Probably. It took all he had to hold his tongue.
• • •
When Dylan got home, he was so aroused by the Chen/Astrophil investigation that he rushed right past Erin and the baby to the bedroom. “Don’t mind me,” he said.
“Whatever.”
He instructed his omni to lock the foglet door, and then took down the box and placed it on the bed. He hadn’t expected to tempt fate again so soon, but it had occurred to him in the car that maybe Mei-Ling—or Jade, or whatever her name was—had written him other letters too and that these might serve as further clues to her whereabouts. In truth, if there weren’t any further clues here, then he had no idea where to begin. So he spent the next half hour meticulously inspecting every letter in the box in search of either of the missing person’s names, or at least matching penmanship. He turned up none of the above.
He did, however, discover that he had received at least two other letters from Wendy Sorenson, the sixteen-year-old from Hawaii who claimed to be his biggest fan and who had offered to marry him in her first letter. It was possible he’d thrown out even more letters from her when cleaning house; these were just the greatest hits, and they were every bit as provocative as the first:
Wendy Sorenson
243 Moana Street
Laie, HI 96762
Dear Mr. Greenyears:
I am with my parents on a trip in Utah. It is very beautiful here. I have seen snow only a couple of times in my life, and the first time I don’t even remember (I was four). Anyway, my parents and I went skiing all day today, then we went to dinner at this really fancy steak place that smelled like blood, and then we came back to this lodge we’re renting and my parents went off to bed. Now it’s just me out here in the living room by the crackling fire and I’m immersing myself in Nocturnal Fears and touching myself. There is a hole in me exactly the shape of you. Someday you will come to fill it. I believe this. I pray for it every single day. I love you, Dylan Greenyears.
I am dead serious,
Wendy Sorenson
The third letter was the briefest, and in some ways the most bizarre:
Wendy Sorenson
243 Moana Street
Laie, HI 96762
Dear Mr. Greenyears:
It dawned on me that I’ve been coming on strong and that you may not be ready to embrace your destiny yet. That’s okay! I will tone it down and wait patiently, but please know that when you do come around, I will be here for you with boundless love and an intact hymen.
Eternally,
Wendy Sorenson
No wonder he had kept these! That he had no memory of their specific content attested to how spoiled he’d been in those days, but as he reread them now, he was overcome with a wistfulness so visceral and acute that, by virtue of the small trove of wisdom he’d acquired in his nearly four decades of life, he instantly recognized what a danger they posed to his long-term well-being. “You can’t repeat the past,” Nick tells Gatsby. Dylan had taught that book a hundred times; why could he never internalize that elementary lesson?31 Why did popping the lid back on this box, putting it away and returning to the living room, have to feel so damned despite himself?
31_____________
Not long ago a student had informed Dylan of a recent film adaptation of that novel. Dylan had been genuinely intrigued until the student went on to inform him that a really great actor named Leonardo DiCaprio starred as Gatsby. The coincidence was almost enough to make Dylan believe it wasn’t one, that Leo had the longest middle finger in the universe.
He returned to the living room. Erin was lying on the couch in her pajamas, breastfeeding and watching Earth news on the ceiling. It struck Dylan that Junior spent more time with Erin’s tits on a daily basis than he himself had in the past half-decade.
“Hi, hon,” Dylan said. “Sorry. I had some time-sensitive stuff I had to finish up.”
Erin mouth-smiled, close-lipped as if to say Do you really think I care what you do?
“How was your day?” he asked.
“Exhausting,” she said. “Every time I manage to fall asleep, this one is just waking up.”
…Ambassador of Culture to Spiral Arm 4 has petitioned the UN on behalf of several local governments to begin making true molecular scans of the Seven Wonders of the World for an Earth-themed amusement park to be located on the third moon of Bradbury…
“So have you given any more thought to moving back home?”
Erin asked.
“Not yet. Christ, give me a little time, would you?”
She held the baby’s head up and repositioned herself. Dylan watched it suck.
…the Olympus Mons Accord forbids the true-scanning of certain forms of intellectual property, including sculpture and landscape architecture. It does not, however, explicitly outlaw the copying of natural geographic formations…
“I’m just saying,” she went on. “It’s tough looking after three kids by myself every day.”
He was too tired to hold his frustration in check: “It was your idea!”
“So?”
“So don’t you think maybe you should stop bitching about it now that you got exactly what you wanted in life?”
“Eww,” she said, as if she’d just drunk some spoiled landflounder milk. This annoyed him no end, this sound of hers. She’d been doing it since high school whenever she wanted to express that his words or ideas were repulsive to her.
…while others argue that Beauty itself is subject to laws of inflation, and that the existence of two Grand Canyons will automatically devalue each by half…
“I fucking hate it when you do that.”
“What?”
“That sound. It’s immature as hell. Can’t you find some grown-up words to express yourself with?”
“Fine,” she said.
“What ‘fine’?”
“Just fine,” she said.
“I fucking hate that too.”
“What now?”
“That simper. The self-pity. The whole bit.”
“Well maybe you should have married someone else then.”
So it had devolved to this already. Goddamned entropy.
…some have argued that we should be making copies of our entire planet, life and all, throughout the cosmos on a regular basis so as to increase our potential for long-term survival after the Earth as we know it is inevitably destroyed…
“You know what?” he said, “Maybe you’re righ
t. Maybe I should have.”
“Do whatever you want,” she said. “I don’t care. I hope you’ll be happy someday.”
“Don’t patronize me.”
“I want to move back home. I am moving back home.”
“Erin, you brought this up like two days ago. Can you at least give me a reasonable amount of time to think about it? Okay? It’s not like this is a little move around the block. You’re talking about 2,001 light years. It’s complicated. At least acknowledge that it’s a little fucking complicated, would you?”
“Whatever. I have to pick up Tavi at her swim lesson.” She bundled Junior in her arms, his jaw still locked on her swollen nipple, and fled the room. Dylan was pretty sure she was going off to cry. That annoyed him too.
Dylan’s omni asked him if he wanted to continue the Earth news. He told it to shut up and went back to the bedroom, ears wailing like banshees.
By the time he asked himself if this was really such a good idea, the point was moot: the box lay open on the bed, and the old dead world was flooding into the room again. The Chen/Astrophil trail having dried up, he reread all three of Wendy Sorenson’s overtures, and if replying to them had seemed like it might be a bad idea just a few minutes ago, it now seemed to him about the best idea he’d ever had.
He directed his omni to compose a message to one Wendy Sorenson in Hawaii—happily, there appeared to be just one—and to copy verbatim the message that had worked so well on Ashley Eisenberg. Naturally he made sure to alter the particulars:
Hi Wendy. My name is Dylan Greenyears. You may remember that I was a fairly well known actor in the middle-nineties? Well, I was just looking through some old mail and I came across some letters you wrote me. This may seem odd coming so late, but I wonder if you’d like to get together sometime? I’m living rather far away these days, but I’d be happy to come to Hawaii if you’d like
to meet up sometime. No pressure at all,
of course.
Sincerely,
Dylan Greenyears
Having sent the message, he lay back on his bed, stared at the ceiling, and had barely begun playing with himself when his omni informed him he had a reply. That was fast.
My dear Dylan, I always knew you would come looking for me someday. When do our worldlines at last converge?
He replied:
Are you still in Hawaii?
Yes
Are you free next Sunday?
Free at last.
Where shall we meet?
I have seen it in my dreams. Pick up a kayak at Kailua Sailboards and Kayaks, Inc. I will reserve one in your name. Then paddle out to the Mokulua Islands. Be warned: it’s farther than it looks. There is a cove on the makai (ocean-facing) side of the larger island, Moku Nui. Paddling there will be tough, but it’s important that you do it, like symbolically. I will meet you there at 6:45 am. We will almost certainly be alone. I have waited so many years for this.
Great! See you then.
Amen, amen, and amen!
Her lack of inhibition was refreshing. Erin was always so sane.
He finished playing with his hardware, the old-fashioned way, sans reality augmentation, and then he lay back on the bed, listened to the banshees wail, and wondered what he’d just gotten himself into. It wasn’t long before he fell asleep, though that didn’t restrain his unconscious from hammering out the details of his plan.
As soon as Erin walked in the front door, he sprang to his feet and met her in the living room.
“Da—y!” Tavi said.
Dylan picked her up. “Hey, baby. How was swimming?”
“Good,” Tavi said, pronouncing that word almost as if it rhymed with mood.
Dylan stared Erin in the shadowy alcoves of her eyes. “I’m sorry I lost my temper earlier.”
She didn’t exactly smile, but her frown grew a touch less committal.
“I’ll think about moving,” he continued. “I just need a little more time. This is kind of a big deal for me, you realize. I always swore to myself I would never go back there.”
“I know,” she said. “I’m sorry too. I’m just so sleep-deprived lately, it doesn’t take much to set me off.”
He leant over to hug her, Tavi giggling there between them, and for a moment all was right with the worlds. He almost regretted that he was about to disturb them again, but as his mother used to remind him whenever he tried to back out of anything as a kid, a commitment is a commitment.
“You know what’s going to help me think about it?”
“What?”
“Cindy’s insisting that I go to another conference.”
Erin stopped hugging and screwed up her face. “Come again?”
“‘Special Education in a Post-Disability Age.’”
“You’re kidding me?”
“No.”
“Earth?”
“Boston.”
“When?”
“This weekend.”
“This is absurd.”
He nodded. It was absurd. He’d done his research for the sake of verisimilitude—there really was such a conference—though when it came down to it, he wasn’t sure he didn’t actually want her to cop to his infidelity this time around. Because what was the worst that could happen? He was reasonably sure she wouldn’t leave him, couldn’t leave him, any more than he would or could ever leave her. No, the worst that would happen was that he and Erin would feel things together again. These wouldn’t be good feelings necessarily, but they would be powerful and serve to remind them that they were alive and that it mattered what they did with their time and their bodies. If only for a little while, he’d resume center stage in her life. He realized how pathetic it was for him to see himself as being in any way in competition with his own children, but at the same time he felt how sad it was that he should have to squeeze his sense of self-worth from the distant past like water from a dying succulent. If only he could forego the limelight altogether and embrace his obscurity, but damn it he’d been Jesus and Elliott and Jack, he’d floated on eyeballs and fucked in the moon; how, now, having basked in so much light, could he possibly make peace with the dark?
“Do whatever you need to do,” Erin said, and then she excused herself to go make dinner. It was perfectly clear to Dylan that she’d just made a conscious choice not to engage. It was less clear to him whether this made it the warmest or coldest of responses.
In any event, he would take her at her word.
• • •
Dylan stepped out of the RiboMate at Honolulu Intragalactic Spaceport at four forty a.m., bought a bottle of champagne (Prosecco, actually) at the duty-free vending machine, and then traveled by light rail to Kailua Sailboards and Kayaks, Inc., where he picked up the plastic yellow kayak that had been reserved under his name from a smiley bodybuilder who summarily talked him into buying a six-hour osmotic Hydropatch for automatic hydration while on the ocean and automatic oxygenation while under it. He helped Dylan peel off the back and affix it to the side of his neck.
Clenching the kayak’s grab loop between his middle and ring fingers, Dylan set off for the beach—about two blocks away. The wheels on the little trailer barely seemed to help. He could have paid a bit more for the motorized trailer, but he was determined to do this the old-fashioned way. Romance was a rather antiquated notion, depending as it did on distance, difficulty, and death, all of which had been largely superseded by technology, but for better or worse, Dylan missed it.
Once he’d managed to get through the sand and into the shallows, he found that boarding the kayak was no cakewalk either. He belly-flopped onto it and awkwardly pulled himself into what felt like a rather precarious seated position. He took up the black plastic oar and began to row. For a moment he thought he was home free, but then tepid waves began crashing into his face, turning the kayak parallel to the shoreline and making it all
but inevitable that one of them would barrel-roll him. He didn’t have to wait long before finding himself faced with the seemingly impossible proposition of belly-flopping onto the kayak again, but in deeper water now, where his feet didn’t touch bottom. Unfortunately the oxygenation module of the Hydropatch kicked in only underwater, because by the time he succeeded at crawling into the seat and rowing out past the breakers, his bodily oxygen reserves were pretty well spent. He took a few moments to catch his breath, to watch the dog-walkers watch him from the ludicrously white beach, and to confirm that the champagne bottle hadn’t shattered in the hatch.
Now was he home free? He was not. When he set to paddling again, he quickly realized that he didn’t know whether the tips of the oars were meant to curve up or down. Did you spoon the water or, like, ladle it? He tried both and settled on the former. Steering was no more obvious at first, requiring as it did a sort of counterintuitive directional logic à la parallel parking. And while he soon fell into a rhythm, paddling was rough on the arms, and those islands, which had been right there when he’d first glimpsed them from the shore, now seemed to have migrated a good mile toward the horizon. To make matters worse, the morning sun was now blasting him in the face and he was already sweating bullets. Well, he had wanted romance. Here it was.
Nevertheless, despite the unforeseen difficulty, Dylan couldn’t help but notice how insanely beautiful this place was. He had never been to Hawaii before. There were analogues on New Taiwan, but no equivalent, at least not where his human sense organs were concerned. The New Taiwanese atmosphere had a colder cast to it, a quality of tarnished brass, whereas here on Earth, here in Kailua anyway, the heavens shone a warm and radiant blue. And the translucent sea, this aptly-named Pacific, was so pure and gemlike in its blue-green gradations that it seemed to correspond to something elemental in his psyche. The ocean on New Taiwan was rather more like the dark, windswept Atlantic of his youth.
By the time he approached Moku Nui, it was already 7:13 by omni. Despite the inducements of a lovely little crescent of vacant beach on the south side of the island, he paddled against great resistance, inner and outer, to the windier back, where Wendy had instructed him to meet her. The waves were burlier here, liquid muscles expanding and contracting and all but overpowering Dylan’s sorely underprepared and acutely burning arms and lungs. It was hard to imagine how all of this could possibly be worth it, but there was no going back now. He pressed on and by and by arrived.
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