by Jim Stark
"My mouth!" said Steve, much louder than he'd intended. His mind was on the verge of a nuclear meltdown as he tried to reconcile the delicate and beautiful idea of love with something he'd always considered to be ... well, pornographic.
"Your tongue, Steve,” said Winnie tenderly. “It's not dirty. If it's an act of genuine love, it's about as intimate as it gets. And it—uh—cuts both ways, if you get my drift."
"Aw jeeze,” said Steve as he turned sideways in his chair and put both hands on his face. “Look,” he said as his palms slowly parted, “I—uh—what do you say we get some food and talk about something else for a while? I'm afraid I still can't—uh..."
* * *
After spending three hours at the headquarters of Whiteside Technologies, Winnie felt relieved to walk out the revolving doors and into the afternoon brilliance. Her two-hour meeting with Dr. Secord had been tiring and stressful, especially following on the heels of her difficult session with Steve.
Steve had left just before 2:00 p.m. to attend Bill Doyle's funeral, in downtown Ottawa. That was the other thing Steve had talked to her about. He blamed himself for Bill's death, in a way. He felt he shouldn't have stayed overnight at the office last Friday. It was only Bill's second night after leaving the Church. He seemed to be coping well ... surprisingly well ... for the first twenty-four hours after he'd been forcibly weaned from the Catholic God, but Steve felt that he should have anticipated the breakdown that led to his suicide.
Winnie had not been able to help much on that front. Neither she nor Steve had a LieDeck operating during their hushed conversation in the cafeteria, but ever since the device had been around, most people felt they had to tell the truth. There were too many ways of getting tripped up later if you lied. The problem here was that she agreed with Steve. In her view, it was partly his fault. He should have known. He should have been there with Bill last Friday night, and she wanted to advise him that he should talk about that error in his eulogy, admit it, and express his regret.
She had wanted to say all those things to Steve, but she feared it might be too much, or too soon, and she did not want his suicide on her conscience. She had tried to think of how a Human Three might deal with a situation like this while Steve stared blankly at his food. In the end, she had copped out. “In no way was it your fault that Bill Doyle took his life,” she had fibbed, and it had smoothed out his hurting, contorted face.
She thanked Debbie Collier again after being escorted out to the waiting Patriot car. “I'm going to the Ottawa General,” she told the same agent who had traipsed dutifully behind her through the Carlingwood Mall. As she climbed into the backseat, she realized that she had never even asked the man's name. How very Human Two of me, she thought. It must be the stress. She considered apologizing, or rectifying the situation, but decided finally to let it slide. She put her head back and closed her eyes.
Her other purpose in going to Whiteside Technologies today was the cause of her stress. She didn't want to hide this matter from Victor, but neither had she been inclined to tell him about it ahead of time.
She disagreed strenuously with his decision to wait until events had “settled down” before going to the public with the results of his exploration of human nature. For twelve years, out at his rented farm near Manotick, alternately driving cab and working on the LieDeck, he had talked out loud to himself, plumbing what he used to think of as his soul, searching for answers. For most of that time, the devices he'd had to work with were not perfect, slightly less than a hundred percent accurate, but in spite of that problem, Victor had never really doubted his methodology, or his results.
Since those first thrilling revelations with a relatively reliable LieDeck, his premise had been that we humans know a great deal about ourselves subconsciously that we don't know consciously, and since the human voice triggered a beep on the LieDeck even if it was only the subconscious mind which objected, the LieDeck proved to be a marvelous microscope for viewing and studying one's own soul ... one's identity, at any rate, one's real identity, as an individual and as a member of the species.
Victor had validated his approach with his first perfect LieDeck, the one that he had put into the cast and ultimately given to Randall Whiteside (and subsequently got back). As he had done the previous Thursday—it seemed like a lifetime ago—he again showed Winnie how to use the LieDeck on herself, and he watched intently as she confirmed his technique with self-addressed questions and answers. She found out that the reason she rarely went to movies had nothing to do with the sex and violence in film today. It had to do with her fear of fire, a fear of stampeding people in a burning theater. She found out that she liked to fish not so much because she enjoyed eating fish, but rather because she liked catching fish—killing fish, actually—a disturbing insight. She also discovered that it wasn't ideological choice that made her vote NDP every national election. She voted NDP because her father voted NDP, and even at age thirty-eight, she was still scared of what her father would say if she did otherwise.
Winnie was the only person that Victor had explained his ideas to, in full, and she found that she had no choice but to agree with his approach and, far more importantly, with his conclusions, not just because they seemed to make sense, but because she could LieDeck-verify them for herself, make the same kinds of discoveries about her own soul, or psyche, or whatever. The fact was; humankind had evolved from a purely instinctive creature to what we are today, a creature both instinctive and rational—a quantum leap, as it were. Fact was, we didn't understand this duality with our rational minds, meaning “consciously.” Fact was, we did understand it, perfectly, on the subconscious level. Fact was, with the help of the LieDeck, that understanding could be elevated to the conscious mind. And the simple fact was that a second quantum leap, which Victor had described as a planned transition from Human Two Consciousness to Human Three Consciousness, was perfectly logical, even if it wasn't readily verifiable with a LieDeck. It was not only within our potential as a species to be Human Three, or to become Human Three, it was virtually inevitable, because of the LieDeck ... or at least it seemed to be. Yes, it would take many years and a lot of hard work to define what Human Three Consciousness was, exactly, but through this procedure of conversing with one's own subconscious, Winnie had come to accept Victor's view that the post-LieDeck consciousness of human beings would be as radically different from our pre-LieDeck consciousness as Homo sapiens was from the ape!
Where she parted company with Victor was in tactics—his maddening decision to wait. The international crisis that had been caused by the LieDeck—or rather triggered by the LieDeck, she corrected herself—was deepening dangerously. There is a chance that he's right, she said in her mind, a small chance that his new conception of human consciousness might exacerbate an already unstable situation. But there's an even better chance that this theory is exactly what humanity needs to survive the LieDeck Revolution!
She and Victor had used a LieDeck during their heated debates of this question, and what it came down to was that they both felt they were right, and that the other person was wrong. It was annoying that the LieDeck was no help at all when an argument came down to opinions. The only difference was that Victor readily agreed that he might be wrong. Winnie, on the other hand, knew she was right—or, more accurately, and as the LieDeck had forced her to admit, felt that she knew she was right, believed that she was right. She had asked Victor to yield, for once, even begged him, but although he had flip-flopped on the issue several times already, there was now no moving the man.
There had even been a call from a Jacques Lafontaine, in the Prime Minister's Office, asking for the reel-to-reel tapes, demanding them. Victor had told him to get stuffed. He had hidden those tapes, and he would not tell Winnie where, try as she might to pry that information out of him. That was what ticked her off. She had repeatedly assured him that she wouldn't take them or tell anyone where they were, but still, he wouldn't say.
So, she had made an executive decision and spi
lled the beans, all of them, into a tape recorder, under the careful questioning of Dr. Emile Secord, the distinguished chair of the Psychology Department at the University of Montreal. The meeting had been arranged on the QT by Randall Whiteside himself. Dr. Secord had been astounded, confused and not terribly pleased to have his perceptual foundations rocked by a member of the working class, and a woman at that. But he had been both fair and thorough, and he had promised to keep this new theory a secret for one day, a day that he needed anyway to sort through the transcript of the two-hour tape that he and Winnie had made. He had also promised to talk to her again, tomorrow, to show her his completed report before he gave it over to the government and the media.
Winnie didn't have to believe his promises, what with her LieDeck sitting on the desk right beside the tape recorder, but she also knew that he would have difficulty keeping his commitments. He was up there right now, she knew, in the Whiteside Tech sound studio, in a daze, furiously asking himself questions ... and answering them, LieDeck-verifying himself, and finding out that much of what he thought he knew about the human psyche, much of what he taught, was wrong, or at least incomplete and amateurish. Winnie hoped he would keep his word, so she would have time to explain her actions to Victor before he heard about them on TV. She had already resolved to talk to Victor tomorrow, at noon ... he was at his best, his most flexible, at that time. Men are weird that way, she thought, in their moods—more Human Two than women. Nah, she corrected herself silently. That would get beeped for sure.
She rubbed her eyes and fluffed her hair as the Patriot car merged onto the eight-lane Queensway, heading east, downtown. There was almost no traffic, an odd thing for rush hour, and what little traffic there was was mostly going the other way, west, out of the city. That spoke volumes. She was afraid of how Victor would react when she told him about her chat with Dr. Secord, but mostly she was afraid for the future of Planet Earth.
The state of the world bothered her, a lot, but she had few people she could really talk to about it. Victor wasn't even in the running any more, because that always led back to the argument over whether to release the reel-to-reel tapes. Her several girlfriends would blab, for sure, and Steve's plate was already full when it came to troubles. Mr. Whiteside and Cam are another class of people, she said to herself, or at least not available to me for lengthy chats, and Helen's never around ... or too busy. Noel was a great cook, but a dead loss on any subject other than food. Bobby Thompson, the Human One that Randall had moved into the lodge, wasn't even the same species. The Donovans had their own problems to deal with. And Annette ... well, as Winnie had been reminded forcefully by Patriot, Annette was unaware of all that had happened to the world since the shooting—by her own choice, mostly, but also with the collusion of all who had come into contact with her.
"Want to look at the paper?” asked the driver, with a flicked glance in the rearview mirror.
"Sure, thanks,” said Winnie.
He handed it back, and she separated off the front section. “War in Romania,” said the headline above the fold, in Second Coming typeface. “Russians utter nuclear threat,” it said in a smaller sub-headline. Below the fold was an article about Godfrey's plan to take back the UN, to recall Canada's ambassador to the United States, to get tough with sex-abusers, and most importantly, to tackle the epidemic of suicides. “No ‘injectees’ so far,” she noticed in the third paragraph. Terrific, she thought. When she had first heard about Godfrey's idea of using the nation's hospitals to end life, she'd thought it was idiotic, but if it worked ... ?
Also below the fold was an article about another funeral that was to take place today, that of former prime minister St. Aubin. His body had been flown back from Australia, and he was to be buried in Québec City, at five o'clock this afternoon. In half an hour, Winnie realized when she checked her watch. “Lover jumps too,” she noticed in the subtitle. Darlene Trahan, the Native woman who had been identified as “the partner” in Louis St. Aubin's kinky sex trip, had followed her only paying customer by leaping off a similar high-rise balcony, with remarkably similar results.
Winnie put down the paper for a minute and wondered what kind of attitudes a Human Three might have towards sex, and whether this area of life would continue to ruin marriages and careers. Her mind wandered back to a deliciously absurd day back in 1993, when Prince Charles's shot at assuming the British crown was royally torpedoed by the release of a taped phone call that he'd made to Camilla hyphen-something ... Parker-Bowles, she remembered ... a tape in which the assumed heir to the throne, still married to Princess Diana at the time, told his erstwhile paramour he wished he could be “turned into a Tampax.” Oh yuck, Winnie shivered as that bizarre memory faded. Weird dude!
Most people would see Louis St. Aubin's escapade as equally “yucky,” but in the absence of a God, there was no harm done, and old Louis and young Darlene seemed to have enjoyed the game, by all accounts. Certainly death seemed a bit of a steep price for an unauthorized orgasm. Later, she thought, I'll talk to Victor about this, when things settle down, or I'll talk to Steve, when he gets himself more together.
She turned to page two of the Citizen and found a major think piece on the state of the nation. “Martial law: Day 2,” said an ominous headline. She didn't even scan this article. Below it was an article entitled “The world in brief,” which outlined the current state of disarray and death in dozens of countries, giving each only five or ten lines of ink. And in alphabetical order, for crying out loud, she said to herself. Flavor-of-the-day insanity.
She glanced over the headlines on pages three and four. There was an article on the undoing of the WDA, which was apparently happening swiftly and easily with the aid of the LieDeck, although details were being withheld so the process could go forward at all possible speed. “UN toothless, thanks to WDA legacy,” one headline said. On page five, she noticed an article about a judicial inquiry that had been called into the 2002 death of George Cluff, Victor's mentor, pal and former employer. Bingo, she said to herself. The Alpha reporter who had interviewed Annette and sparred with Victor had done the right thing after all. He'll be really pleased to learn about that.
On page six, Winnie found a brief obituary for the famous hockey star of the previous century, Buckminster Thadeus Ash. Twenty years ago, when she was still a teenager, he had seen her at the local bar, at the British Hotel in Quyon, and tried to seduce her. She had indignantly refused, of course, but now she wasn't so sure that she didn't regret that decision. She didn't read Buck's obituary, however, because further down page six, her eye caught a short piece about a priest, a certain Father Dent, who had finally admitted to masturbating young boys at a summer camp run by the Catholic Church. Jeeze, that's the camp Steve used to help out at.
Winnie remembered seeing snippets of that story for many months—parishioners stood by their man, their spiritual leader, an “all-round fine fellow who simply couldn't have done such a thing.” His bishop had been told years earlier, and had swept the matter under a rug. The victims finally went to the police, who laid eight charges. Father Dent had pleaded innocent, indignantly. But now that the time for his trial was at hand, he had changed his plea to “guilty,” shocking almost no one. “We were only twelve at the time,” the eight boys, who were now men, had told the press, “and Father Dent said it was a way to get rid of evil spirits.” Well, Winnie thought, after five pages of violence, I guess we had to get on to the sex. Human Twos are so pathetic, and all because it's so easy to lie—or rather it was so easy!
There was a sidebar to this story. “Churches, synagogues, mosques empty as religious beliefs evaporate,” read the headline. Long time coming, she said to herself. But too bad, really ... maybe.
Next came the editorial page, something she had always refused to read, except for the letters. She was about to turn to page eight when she noticed that most of the letters were about the LieDeck, and about Mr. Whiteside, about putting him in jail or arresting him, preventing him from making any
more of these troublesome devices. Some letters called for further public demonstrations at the Whiteside plant. That won't happen in this paranoid environment, thought Winnie. Not now that there's fear of a nuclear war. She made a mental note to read those letters more carefully later, with Victor, when she got home.
"Mind if I keep this?” she asked.
"Not at all,” said the agent.
"This is one edition of the Citizen worth sticking in a drawer,” she said as she folded the front section in two and crammed it into her large purse.
"Might as well,” he said. “Probably won't be any paper tomorrow, they said on the radio."
Winnie was surprised. The driver hadn't strung that many words together since they'd left the lodge. “How so?” she asked, leaning forward and resting a forearm on the back of the passenger seat.
"Well, a lot of the workers at the Citizen went AWOL, and half of the stores that sell the paper are closed anyway, and there's almost nobody out shopping, as you saw, and the home delivery kids aren't even showing up. And ... and they said over fifteen percent of the population has left the city already. By tomorrow, it'll be up to twenty-five percent or even thirty percent, I bet. Maybe even more!"
"Jeeze, where'd they all go?” asked Winnie.
"Wherever they could.” He shrugged. “Some cottagers are taking in two or three families at a time up in Norway Bay and points west, for upwards of six hundred dollars a day, I heard. You can't get a hotel reservation in any small town in North America for less than a thousand dollars a day ... that's if you can find a room at any price. People want to get away from potential target areas—cities ... military bases ... nuclear power plants ... major mining sites. If they—"
The agent had a message coming in on his earpiece and picked up the mike. “Yes sir. We'll be there in five minutes or so. I'll call in as soon as I discharge the passenger.” He replaced the mike ... and didn't pick up his previous train of thought.
