Analog SFF, November 2006

by Dell Magazine Authors

"No, important things. I'm—you don't know what I've done in the last twenty years, Don. I've—I've done things. But there's a lot more I want to accomplish. I just need more time, is all."

  "I'm sorry, Randy. Really, I am—"

  "If you'd just call McGavin, Don. That's all I'm asking. Just make one phone call."

  He thought about snapping that it had taken forever to get through to McGavin the last time, but that was none of Randy's business. “I'm sorry, Randy,” he said again.

  "Damn it, what did you do to deserve this? You're not that special. You're not that bright, that talented. You just fucking won the lottery, is all, and now you won't even help me buy a ticket."

  "For Christ's sake, Randy..."

  "It's not fair. You said it yourself. You aren't even interested in transhumanism, in life extension. But me, I've spent most of my life pursuing that. ‘Live long enough to live forever'—that's what Kurzweil said. Just hold on for a few more decades, and we'll have rejuvenation techniques, we'll have practical immortality. Well, I did hold on, and it's here, the techniques are here. But I can't afford them."

  "They'll come down—"

  "Don't fucking tell me they'll come down in price. I know they'll come down in price. But not in time, damn it. I'm eighty-nine! If you'd just call McGavin, just pull a couple of strings. That's all I'm asking—for old time's sake."

  "I'm sorry,” Don said. “I really am."

  "Damn you, Halifax! You've got to do this. I—I'm going to die. I'm going—"

  Don slammed the handset down, and sat quaking in his chair. He thought about going upstairs to see Sarah, but she couldn't understand what he was going through any more than Randy Trenholm did; he so wished he had someone to talk to. Of course, there were other people who had undergone rollbacks, but they were totally out of his league—the financial gulf separating him from them was so much greater than their shared experience of rejuvenation.

  A while later, he headed upstairs, and went through the motions of getting ready for bed, and, at last, he lay down, next to Sarah, who had already turned in, and he stared at the ceiling—something he found himself doing more and more these days.

  Randy Trenholm was right, in a way. Some people probably should be kept around. The last of the twelve men who had walked on the moon had died in 2028. The greatest thing the human race had ever done had happened in Don's lifetime, but no one who had actually ever set foot upon the lunar surface was still alive. All that was left were photos and videos and rocks and a scant few poetic descriptions, including Aldrin's “magnificent desolation.” People kept saying it was inevitable that humans would someday return to the moon. Perhaps, thought Don, he might now live to see that, but, until they did, the actual experience of those small steps, those giant leaps, had passed from living memory.

  And, even more tragic, the last survivor of the Nazi death camps—the final witness to those atrocities—had died in 2037; the worst thing humanity had ever done had also passed out of living memory.

  Both the moon landing and the Holocaust had their deniers: people who claimed that such wonder, and such horror, never could have happened, that humans were incapable of such technological triumphs, or of such conscienceless evil. And now, every last one of those who could gainsay that from personal experience was gone.

  But Donald Halifax lived on, with nothing special to attest to, no important experience to which he alone bore witness, nothing that needed to be shared with future generations. He was just some guy.

  Sarah stirred in her sleep next to him, rolling onto her side. He looked over at her in the darkness, at the woman who had done what no one else had ever done: figured out what an alien radio message meant. And, if Cody McGavin was right, she was the best bet to do it again. But she'd be gone all too soon, while he would go on. If the rollback were only going to work for one of them, it should have been her, Don knew. She mattered; he didn't.

  He shook his head, his hair rustling against the pillow. He knew logically that he hadn't taken the rejuvenation away from Sarah, that its success with him had nothing to do with its failure for her. And yet the guilt was oppressive, like the weight of six feet of earth pressing down upon him.

  "I'm sorry,” he whispered into the dark, facing the ceiling again.

  "For what?” Sarah's voice startled him. He hadn't realized she was awake, but now that he turned his head to face her, he could see little reflections of the dim outside lights in her open eyes.

  He scooched closer to his wife and gently hugged her to him. He thought about letting the words he'd spoken apply only to his having been short with her earlier that evening, but there was more—so much more. “I'm sorry,” he said at last, “that the rollback worked on me but not on you."

  He felt her expand in his embrace as she took a deep breath, then contract again as she let it out slowly. “If it could only have worked on one of us,” said Sarah, “I'm glad it was you."

  He hadn't been expecting that at all. “Why?"

  "Because,” she said, “you're such a good man."

  He could think of no reply, and so he just held her. Eventually, her breathing grew regular and noisy. He lay there for hours, listening to it.

  * * * *

  Chapter 17

  It was time, Don knew, that he got a job. Not that he and Sarah were desperate for money; they both had pensions from their employers and the Federal government. But he needed to do something with all the energy he now had, and, besides, a job would probably help get him out of his deepening funk. Despite the physical wonders of being young again, it was all weighing heavily on him—the difficulty in relating to Sarah, the jealousy of old friends, the endless hours he spent staring into space while wishing things had turned out differently.

  And so he walked over to North York Centre station, just a couple of blocks from their house, and got on the subway at the station located beneath the library tower there. It was a hot August day, and he couldn't help noticing the scantily clad young women aboard the train—all of them healthy-looking, tanned, and lovely. Watching them made the trip go quickly, although he was stunned, and a bit embarrassed, to note that a girl who got off at Wellesley had in fact been looking at him with what seemed to be admiration.

  When he reached his own stop—Union Station—he got out and walked the short distance to the CBC Broadcast Centre, a giant Borg cube of a building.

  He knew this place like—well, not like the back of his hand; he was still getting used to that appendage's new, smooth, liver-spot-free appearance. But he no longer had an employee's passcard, and so had to wait for someone to come and escort him up from the Front Street security desk. While he waited, he looked at the full-size holograms of current CBC Radio personalities. Back in his day, they'd been a collection of cardboard standees. None of the faces were familiar to him, although he recognized most of the names.

  "Donald Halifax?” Don turned and saw a slight Asian man in his mid-thirties, with incongruous peach-colored hair. “I'm Ben Chou."

  "Thank you for agreeing to see me,” Don said, as Ben got him through the gate.

  "Not at all, not at all,” said Ben. “You're a bit of a legend around here."

  He felt his eyebrows go up. “Really?"

  They entered an elevator. “The only audio engineer John Pellatt would work with? Oh, yes indeed."

  They left the elevator, and Ben led them into a cramped office. “Anyway,” he said, “I'm glad you came down. It's a pleasure to meet you. But I don't get what you're doing applying for a job. I mean, if you can afford a rollback, you hardly need to work here.” He looked around the windowless office. It happened that they were on the fifth floor, and so should have been able to see Lake Ontario, but no matter where you were in this building, it felt subterranean.

  "I can't afford a rollback,” he said, taking the seat Ben was gesturing at.

  "Oh, yeah, well, your wife..."

  He narrowed his eyes. “What about her?"

  Ben looked cornered. “Um,
isn't she rich? She decoded that first message, after all."

  "No, she's not rich, either.” Perhaps she could have been, he thought, if she'd struck the right book deal at the right time, or had charged for all the public lectures she'd given in the first few months after the original message had been received. But that was water under the bridge; you don't get a second chance at everything.

  "Oh, well, I—"

  "So I need a job,” Don said. Interrupting his potential boss probably wasn't a strategy a career counselor would have approved of, he thought, but he couldn't take this.

  "Ah,” said Ben. He looked down at the flatsie reader on his desktop. “Well, you did Radio and Television Arts at Ryerson. Good man; so did I.” Ben squinted a bit. “Class of 1982.” He shook his head. “I was class of 2035."

  The point was obvious, so Don tried to deflect it by making light of it. “I wonder if we had any of the same instructors?"

  To his credit, Ben snorted a laugh. “And how long did you work here at the CBC?"

  "Thirty-six years,” said Don. “I was a recording-engineer/producer when I..."

  He backed away from saying the word, but Ben provided it, underscored by a crisp nod of his head: “Retired."

  "But,” continued Don, “as you can see, I'm young again, and I want to go back to work."

  "And what year did you retire?"

  It was right in front of him, Don knew, on his resumé, but the bastard was going to force him to say it aloud. “Twenty Twenty-Two."

  Ben shook his head slightly. “Wow. Who was prime minister back then?"

  "Anyway,” said Don, ignoring the remark, “I need a job, and, well, once the Mother Corp is in your blood..."

  Ben nodded. “Ever worked on a Mennenga 9600?"

  Don shook his head.

  "An Evoterra C-49? Those are what we use now."

  He shook his head again.

  "What about editing?"

  "Sure. Thousands of hours"—at least half of which had been cutting physical audio tape with razor blades.

  "But on what sort of equipment?"

  "Studer. Neve Capricorn. Euphonix.” He deliberately left off model numbers, and he also refrained from mentioning Kadosura, which had been out of business for twenty years now.

  "Still,” said Ben, “the equipment keeps changing all the time."

  "I understand that. But the principles—"

  "The principles change, too. You know that. We don't edit the same way we did a decade ago, let alone five decades ago. The style and pace are different, the sound is different.” He shook his head. “I wish I could help you, Don. Anything for a fellow Ryerson man—you know that. But...” He spread his arms. “Even a guy fresh out of school knows the stuff better than you do. Hell, he knows it better than I do."

  "But I don't have to be hands-on,” said Don. “I mean, the last while, I wasn't much, anyway. I was mostly doing management, and that doesn't change."

  "You're exactly right,” Ben said. “It doesn't change. Meaning a guy who looks twenty-something isn't going to be able to command respect from men and women in their fifties. Plus, I need managers who know when an engineer is bullshitting them about what the equipment can and can't do."

  "Isn't there anything?” Don asked.

  "Have you tried downstairs?"

  Don drew his eyebrows together. “In the lobby?” The lobby—the Barbara Frum Atrium, as it was technically known, and Don was old enough to have actually worked with Barb—contained nothing much except a couple of restaurants, the three security desks, and lots of open space.

  Ben nodded.

  "The lobby!” Don exploded. “I don't want to be a fucking security guard."

  Ben raised his hands, palm out. “No, no. That's not what I meant. I meant—don't take this the wrong way, but what I meant was the museum."

  Don felt his jaw go slack; Ben might as well have punched him in the gut. He'd all but forgotten about it, but, yes, in the lobby there was a small museum devoted to the history of the CBC.

  "I'm not a bloody exhibit,” Don said.

  "No, no—no! That's not what I meant, either. I just meant that, you know, maybe you could join the curatorial staff. I mean, you know so much of that stuff first hand. Not just Pellatt, but Peter Gzowski, Sook-Yin Lee, Bob McDonald, all those guys. You knew them and worked with them. And it says here you worked on As It Happens and Faster Than Light."

  Ben was trying to be kind, Don knew, but it really was too much. “I don't want to live in the past,” he said. “I want to be part of the present."

  Ben looked at the wall clock, one of those broadcasting units with red LED digits in the middle encircled by sixty points of light that illuminated in sequence to mark passing seconds. “Look,” he said, “I've got to get back to work. Thanks for dropping by.” And he got up and extended his hand. Whether Ben's shake was normally limp and weak, or whether he was being delicate because he knew he was shaking an eighty-seven-year-old's hand, Don couldn't say.

  * * * *

  Chapter 18

  Don returned to the lobby. It said something nice about Canada that anyone could walk around the vast Barbara Frum Atrium, looking up at the six floors of indoor balconies, and watch while all sorts of CBC personalities—the Corporation frowned on the use of the word “stars"—came and went, unaccompanied by security guards or handlers. The little restaurant Ooh La La!, which had been there forever, had tables spilling out into the atrium, and there was one of Newsworld's anchors enjoying a Greek salad; at the next table, the lead performer in a children's show Don had watched with his granddaughter was sipping coffee; crossing over to the elevators was the woman who currently hosted Ideas. All very open, all very welcoming—of everyone, except him.

  The broadcasting museum was tiny, and tucked off to one side, clearly an afterthought in designing the building. Some of the stuff predated Don. The kiddie program Uncle Chichimus was before his time, and This Hour Has Seven Days and Front Page Challenge were shows his parents had watched. He was old enough to remember Wayne and Shuster, but not old enough to have ever thought they were funny. But he'd learned his first French from Chez Hélène, and had spent many happy hours with Mr. Dressup and The Friendly Giant. Don took a minute to look at the model of Friendly's castle, and the puppets of Rusty the Rooster and Jerome the Giraffe. He read the placard that explained that Jerome's bizarre color scheme of purple and orange had been selected in the days of black-and-white TV because it had good contrast, and had been left intact when the program switched to color in 1966, giving him a psychedelic look, an unintentional reflection of the times.

  Don had forgotten that Mister Rogers had gotten his start here, but there it was, the original miniature trolley from that show, back when it had been called Mister Rogers’ Neighbourhood, the last word notably sporting a U.

  No one else was in the museum just now. The emptiness of the handful of rooms was a testament to the fact that people didn't care about the past.

  Monitors were showing clips from old CBC shows, some of which he remembered, much of which was cringe-worthy. In the vaults here there must be tapes of dreadful stuff like King of Kensington and Rocket Robin Hood. Perhaps some things should be allowed to pass out of living memory; perhaps some things should be ephemeral.

  There was some old radio and television hardware on display, including machines he himself had used early in his career. He shook his head. He shouldn't be curator of a museum like this. He should be on display, a relic of a bygone age.

  Of course, he didn't look like a relic—and the Canadian National Exhibition no longer had a freak show; he could just barely remember visiting the Ex as a child and hearing the barkers call out descriptions of fish-tailed men and bearded ladies.

  He left the museum, and left the building, going out the Front Street entrance. There were other broadcasters in town, but he doubted he'd have better luck with them. And, besides, he liked working on radio drama and audio documentaries of the kind nobody but the CBC made anym
ore; as far as other broadcasters would be concerned, his CV might as well have said he painted cave walls at Lascaux.

  Don had arrived at the entrance to Union Station, which was at the bottom of the U comprising the oldest part of the subway system. He headed downstairs and passed through the turnstile, paying the normal adult—rather than senior citizen's—fare, and then took the escalator down to the platform. He stood beneath one of those digital clocks that hung from the ceiling. A train came rushing in, and he felt his hair whipping because of its passage, and—and he was transfixed, unable to move. The doors opened, making their mechanical drumroll sound, and people jostled in and out. Then the three descending tones sounded, indicating that the doors were closing, and the train started moving again. He found himself stepping right up to the edge of the platform, looking at its departing back.

  A little boy, no more than five or six, was staring out the rear window at him. Don remembered when he used to like sitting in the front car as a kid, watching the tunnel speed by; the rear car, looking back, was almost as good. There was a grinding sound as the train banked, turning to go north, and then it was gone. He looked down onto the tracks, maybe four feet below, his toes sticking over the platform's edge. He saw a gray mouse scuttle by, and he saw the third rail, and the notices, covered with grime, that warned of the electrocution danger.

  Soon enough, another train was coming down the curving track; its headlights cast mad shadows in the tunnel before it became visible. Don felt the vibration of the train, inches from his face, as it zoomed past him, felt his hair whipping again.

  The train stopped. He looked into the window facing him. Most riders got out at Union, although a few people always rode the train around the bend.

  Around the bend.

  This was the time-honored method to do this, wasn't it? Here, in Toronto, it was the way the despondent had handled things since before he'd been born. The subway trains roared into the station at high speed. If you waited at the right end of the platform, you could jump in front of an incoming one, and—

  And that would be it.

  Of course, it wouldn't be fair to the train's operator. Don remembered reading years ago, in the Star, about how devastating it was for subway drivers when people killed themselves this way. The drivers often had to go on extended leave, and some were so afraid that the same thing would happen again they were never able to return to their jobs. Stations in the downtown core were forty-five seconds apart; there wasn't even time for the drivers to relax between them.