“Do you speak English?” Evan started to ask. Stupid question. “Do you understand what I’m saying?”
“Do you understand the words that are coming out of my mouth?” The thing raised its voice into a high pitch.
“Holy shit.” Evan whispered to himself this time. He stared at the thing. It stared back at him, making eye contact, unlike the seated man. Was this thing mocking him? Evan didn’t think so. “L.T.. I’ve made contact.” Evan spoke into the comm mic, but didn’t take his eyes off the two men. “We’ve got two human beings here. One requires medical attention for a leg wound, the other…well, shit, you’ll see when you get here.”
“Houston, we’ve got a problem…”
Evan did not reply to the rotting man’s comment. “Who are you, Gary?”
“I’m the guy behind the guy behind the guy.” Gary looked up at Evan nervously. “Where’s that from?”
“I have no idea. But that’s the guy, right? Standing next to you?”
“I shall call him Squishy,” said the thing, and that’s when it dawned on Evan. “And he shall be mine. And—”
“Wait a minute. Wait a minute!” Evan held up a hand and lowered his Model 7. “That’s a line from a movie, isn’t it? That’s Finding Nemo or some shit, right? I watched that with my nephew…”
“Give that man a Klondike bar!” Gary exclaimed. “Let me ask you, soldier…” His voice got all serious. “What would you do for a Klondike bar?”
“Gary? Gary, listen to me, okay? Talk to me. What’s the story here? Where did—”
“What’s the story morning glory?” the rotting man chimed in.
“—where did you guys come from?”
“From out there.” Gary scooted around on his butt and pointed, back towards the way they’d come. In the Outlands.
“Thar be monsters…”
“Gary. Does this guy have a name?”
“Sure he has a name. Why wouldn’t he have a name?”
“Gary—”
“That would be kind of funny if he didn’t have a name, wouldn’t it?”
“What’s his name? What’s this guy’s name?”
“Mickey. His name is Mickey.”
As if on cue, a clump of Mickey fell off into the grass.
Evan grimaced. That was disgusting. “What happened to Mickey? Why’s he like this?”
“I was born in Mississippi…” Mickey was reciting “…a poor black child.”
“Who is Gary to you?” Evan asked Mickey directly.
“He’s an angel.” Mickey’s tone was hushed. “Straight from heaven.”
“Gary, you can hear me, right?” Evan was studying the thing named Mickey. “You understand me, right?”
“Sure I understand you. Why wouldn’t I understand you?”
“Your friend…He’s sick, right?”
“Demented and sad,” Mickey confirmed. “But social.”
“I don’t understand you, Mickey. I think you’re quoting old movies and things, but I don’t...Maybe…”
“That’s because I speak jive, stewardess. Comprende? What chew talkin’ bout, Willis?”
“Okay, listen to me.” Evan knew this wasn’t going to get him anywhere. These guys were whacked. “There are some people who are coming here right now. They’re going to help you both out. All we gotta do—”
“All we gotta do is focus—focus!” Mickey stomped his foot in place and more of him dropped off to the ground. “Dammit, Jim, I’m a doctor, not a bricklayer!”
“Okay, Mickey, that’s okay…” This guy is far gone, Evan thought. Just look at him. “Hang tight, all right? And we’ll—”
“Show him the picture, Gary. Show him the picture.”
Gary touched his bleeding leg gently. “Here—” He reached into his shirt and Evan immediately shifted the barrel of his Model 7 back on him.
“Whoa-whoa-whoa!”
“Don’t shoot me!” Gary looked genuinely frightened. “Why would you shoot me? I just want to show you the picture.” The wounded man looked like his feelings were hurt.
“I take your fookin’ bullets!” Mickey cried out with a cheesy accent.
“What picture?” Evan shifted the Model 7 slightly.
“Don’t shoot—why’d you want to shoot? You already shot me once…”
“I’m sorry about that. We didn’t mean it. There are some people coming to help you now, okay? What picture is Mickey talking about?”
“It’s here, in my shirt.”
“Okay, get it out.”
“You won’t shoot me.”
“I won’t shoot you.” Evan lowered the barrel of the Model 7.
“I ain’t gonna kill ya, Frank.” Flies buzzed around Mickey’s head, and the bits of himself littering the area where he stood. “Manolo, shoot dat piece a shit!”
“Go ahead, Gary,” encouraged Evan. “It’s okay.”
Gary reached into his shirt and returned with a crumpled photograph.
He put his hand out to Evan with it, but then hesitated, drawing back.
“What’s that noise?” He scanned the sky, jerking his head around.
“Those are helicopters.” Evan tried to assure him. “Those are my friends. They’re going to help you.”
“This is Romeo Fox Trot.” Mickey stared at the growing specs in the sky. “Shall we dance? Cue the Valkyries.”
“Let me see the photo.”
“Here.” Gary held it up and Evan took it. He unfolded it and looked at the man and woman pictured.
He didn’t recognize the woman, but the man...
“Gary, where’d you get this?”
“It’s his.” Gary indicated Mickey.
“Where’d you get this?”
“You smell that?” Mickey replied.
“I asked you where you got this picture.”
“And I asked you if you can smell that.” Evan looked at Mickey anew. There was something different in the man’s voice and gaze now, some lucidity that had previously been absent.
“Smell what?”
“That’s the smell of victory. Someday…someday this war is going to end.”
Evan looked at the picture again. It was a man and a woman, and they were both dressed up. Evan knew about old customs and knew this was a wedding photo. The woman looked pretty, beautiful. Evan didn’t know her. The man, though…
The helicopters descended on them, whipping up the grass and scrub.
“Fly away, pelicans!” Mickey waved them away with the stub of a hand, the stub with the thumb still attached to it. “Fly away!”
…the man, Evan thought, studying the picture. He knew that guy. Dammit. It was his friend, Anthony.
* * *
“Well, just in case I don’t say this enough…” Anthony addressed the eight students in his senior seminar. “…it’s been a pleasure working with all of you guys these last few months.”
Today’s session would be the last one for a six-week period, during which most of the students would work the land, harvesting and plowing, sowing the winter wheat. Others would be shipping out and starting their basic training in the Defense Forces.
“You’re a super bright bunch.” Anthony looked from one student to the next. “And, together, I think we’ve thought out some things that I know I hadn’t thought out by myself.”
There were low murmurs and nods of consent. Anthony truly liked the students in his class, and they liked him. He’d been a teacher for three years, and though he didn’t consider himself the brightest teacher in the world, he knew his relationship with his students was better than a lot of other teachers. If he didn’t have an answer to a question, Anthony was honest with his class, but then he always led them in the search for that answer. Other teachers Anthony knew, or had known as a student himself, weren’t comfortable admitting their ignorance.
“So for today’s final discussion, I thought we’d talk about some of the dystopian societies we’ve read about this last term.” Anthony’s course was titled To T
ake Options: Critical Pedagogy and the Dystopian Moment in the Twentieth Century. Like many of the courses offered at the Open University, it crossed disciplines and was cross-listed under Philosophy, History, Anthropology, Sociology and the Foundations of Education.
“Tomorrow, most of you will be out working in the fields, but remember—we’re back here for the end-of-term in six weeks.” Even those attending boot camp would be done in four weeks and come home for a month before shipping back out. “At which time, I expect second drafts of your papers.”
That first week back from break would be a busy one for Anthony. He’d have to read through various papers and have individual conferences with these students and others—discussions meant to guide their research and writing. Anthony would never assign a grade on a first draft, only on a second draft. And those would be returned with suggestions on how to revise their papers and possibly raise their grade, if the students were interested in doing so.
“I’ve handed back your papers with my comments and suggestions…” The students leafed through the pages Anthony had returned to them. “…and I thought today maybe we’d return to Therborn to help guide our discussion. Who remembers what Therborn had to say about ideologies?”
Anthony didn’t have to wait long for an answer. These guys were really into the subject matter.
“Therborn was a professor at Cambridge University,” answered Julio. “He said that ideologies tell us what exists, what’s real and what’s possible.”
“That’s right.” Anthony smiled. Julio really got into this stuff, and was a voracious reader in addition to the assigned class material. “Ideologies tell us what’s real, what’s good, and what’s possible. But let’s break that down. If I said to you, what is an ideology, how would you answer that?”
Julio and Felice went to answer at the same time.
“No, you go ahead,” Julio encouraged.
“Thanks. Ideologies are—they’re systems of thought and beliefs that structure a society.”
Anthony nodded and threw it out to the class. “Example anyone?”
“National Socialism in Germany in the 1930s,” said Justin.
“Communism in the Soviet Union in the second half of the twentieth century,” Tricia added.
“Capitalism and democracy in the United States at the same time.”
“Okay, Maine, good. And why is it that we usually don’t recognize ideologies?”
“Because we’re in them,” answered Jermaine. “It’s like Sartre said, we’re in the soup.”
“They structure our lives,” offered Erin. “They order our lives.”
“You’re both right.” Anthony’s students were seated in a horseshoe with Anthony’s chair in the middle of the open end of it. “That’s why we don’t notice ideologies, because we’re caught up in them, right? And it’s not until we confront an ideology that’s radically different from our own—that’s when we might notice what is going on. You wanted to say something, Justin?”“
“Yeah. Ideologies structure what we accept as common sense. The assumptions we make about our daily lives and realities.”
“They most definitely do that.” Anthony agreed. “Jermaine. You look like you want to talk.”
“Yeah, well…The word Therborn uses is interpolation, right?”
Jermaine was gaunt, bald from his treatments, and wearing away. He’d missed part of the term because he’d been in the hospital. But even when he’d been confined to a bed in the cancer ward, he hadn’t fallen behind in his studies. Anthony had visited Jermaine several times in the hospital.
“Right.”
“And he took that word from Althusser, right?”
“Yes he did.”
“And Althusser killed his wife or something?”
“Yes, he strangled her.”
“Right.” Jermaine said it like his point was obvious.
“Oh, come on, Maine.” Tricia and Jermaine were always butting heads in a friendly way in class. Anthony thought there was an attraction between the two of them. Tricia looked to Anthony. “What’s that called? It’s an ad hominem argument.” She looked back at Jermaine, who was smiling at her through his sunken cheeks. “Taking apart someone’s ideas because of something they believed, or the way they lived their lives.”
“Hey.” Jermaine was still smiling. “I’m not the guy who killed his wife.”
There were a few grins and chuckles around the room.
“Tricia,” said Anthony. “You’re right. That’s what an argumentum ad hominem is. But remember, Maine, Therborn was critical of Althusser in his own way. It’s hard for us to imagine this, but Althusser had an enormous influence on what was called the left—especially those who identified as Marxists or Post Marxists—in the 1960s and 70s.”
Jermaine nodded and smiled at Tricia once more before turning back around in his seat.
Anthony continued. “Well, let’s consider ideologies in light of some of the works we’ve read and discussed this year. Megan, in your précis you said you wanted to write about technology and power. Are you comfortable sharing your ideas with the class? Where do you want to go with that?”
“Well, I’m interested in the use of technology in dystopian novels.” Megan was incredibly bright and extremely pretty. Anthony admired her for these attributes as well as her unassuming demeanor.
“Can you share some examples you have in mind?”
“Okay, like in 1984, the telescreens that are everywhere and see everything you do.” Megan listed some examples off the top of her head. “Ender’s built-in monitor. The precogs in Dick’s Minority Report.”
“The Ludovico Technique in Clockwork Orange,” offered Julio.
“Oh, definitely.”
Anthony thought he saw an opening for a question he’d been meaning to broach. “So we’ve read about the twentieth century and the early twenty-first, and some of the technologies people thought were going to become realities back then. Does anyone remember any of those?”
“Cars that drove themselves,” said Tricia.
“Self-aware computers.” Jermaine smiled at Tricia as he said it, and she smiled back.
“Laser guns.” There were a few snickers at Justin’s comment.
“Jetpacks.” Open laughter accompanied Felice’s remark.
“Y2K?” Maxwell didn’t sound too sure of himself.
“Sure, Max,” said Anthony. “Y2K. Everyone thought the world was going to shut off and not reboot, right? All because of a bunch of ones and zeroes.” Everybody grinned. These were young adults coming of age in an irradiated world, a world taken back from the undead hordes. In comparison to this reality, something like Y2K would be mildly amusing to them. “And those technologies or issues never materialized, right? So, what do you guys think? Do you think twentieth-century people would be disappointed?”
Julio answered. “I think they’d be happy. They were spending hundreds of billions of dollars on ‘defense’ in the U.S. alone in the early two-thousands. Today we spend what? Maybe ten million here in New Harmony?”
“All we have to protect against is Zed.” Felice picked up Julio’s point. “No one is going to be stupid enough to develop and use another nuclear weapon. We’re dying as it is.” After she’d said it, she darted a nervous glance towards Jermaine, but his attention was on Tricia. “So the government’s able to spend money on people and the infrastructure. That’s important to do, what with—” Felice cast another quick look towards Jermaine, hoping no one noticed her doing so “—all the radiation and illnesses.”
“Good point,” conceded Anthony. “Let’s see if we can’t situate these novels and their use of technology in the dominant ideologies of their days. Anyone want to give it a try?”
Megan motioned, indicating she was up to the challenge. “Ayn Rand’s Anthem. Rand was part of a libertarian surge in what? The 50s and 60s? All about stressing the dangers the individual faced from the collective. It’s like when Equality goes to the World Council with his dyna
mo. He’s thinking they’ll hail him because the generator can make people’s lives easier, better. But what do they do? They chase him out and they tell him that whenever something isn’t thought up by all, it just isn’t true.”
“Lowry touched on a similar theme in her Giver.” Jermaine was back in the conversation. “The little kids wear jackets that have to be fastened down the back, so they’d have to button each other’s jackets.”
“What was Lowry’s point with the jackets, Maine?” Anthony prodded.
“The kids were learning interdependence. Again, that whole idea that collectivism was a problem, that an extreme form of individualism was what was good.”
“Which is exactly what Rand and even Lowry in her way were championing, right? Forcing a contrast between the individual and the group. Like it’s either/or.”
“A dualism,” Erin said.
“Which you could contrast with…what?” Anthony left the question hanging.
“A non-antagonistic dualism,” answered Julio. “Or at least that’s the term Plumwood used.”
“I didn’t like that book,” Jermaine said.
“Which book?” asked Anthony.
“The Giver.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know. It felt unoriginal. Too derivative.”
“When you get to a certain level,” Maxwell pointed out, “everything’s derivative.”
“Okay, maybe that’s true.” Anthony listened to Jermaine and wondered how much time the kid had left. When he’d visited Jermaine in the hospital, the doctors hadn’t been very optimistic. But here he was, back in class. “…I think a writer’s task,” Jermaine was explaining, “is to mask that. Not let it be obvious.”
“So Lowry didn’t do that for you?” Just because the kid was dying didn’t mean Anthony wasn’t going to challenge him.
“Honestly? No.”
“That’s fine. But let’s get back to Megan for a moment. What is it about the use of technology in dystopian novels that interests you?”
“Well, I mean, the whole idea that technology was going to be something that made our lives easier, right? And then, here it is in all these novels being used to make people’s lives worse.”
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