Here & There
Page 14
It seems that the two of them have internalized the Colonial Effect: their existences are completely and utterly entangled with the other. As a result, tension and conflict spring forth from a lack of options.
What’s important to grasp, however, is that neither of them ever consider the relationship itself flawed, part of the problem, or the problem itself. Whatever is going on is not because of how they are or how they feel about each other. Which is why they can, and must, put whatever it is aside for a few moments and sit together on their swing. They love each other.
This lull, though comforting, also makes the last instance more unnerving. What we see on the Department’s nanofeeds seems completely mundane.
Eve sits on the porch swing. She’s reading again. She comes to a stopping point, dog-ears a page, and puts the book down. She stands up, still holding the book, and walks at a leisurely pace down the front steps of the veranda, disappearing from view behind the hedges.
A few moments later, she strolls back up the steps, carrying her book in one arm and Otto in the other. Her right arm is swung around his lower back, his legs scissored around her right side, bottom resting on her hip, his hands resting on the top of her shoulder, holding the Flip Cam.
She opens the screen door, and the two of them disappear into the house heading upstairs.
If recording storage space had been needed, a section like this would have surely been deleted. I myself even watched it on fast forward and considered it an unnoteworthy moment.
At least from that camera angle.
But watching once again, looking at the footage found on Reidier’s hard drive—the footage recorded from the Flip Cam he gave the boys—it’s a very different event.
Otto and Ecco sit together on the front lawn. Otto’s manning the Flip Cam. He focuses on their feet. Otto’s bare left foot presses against Ecco’s bare right foot. Their heels push together, both sets of toes curling against the other’s. The boys giggle.
Otto swings focus to the ground between their legs. An anthill in the lawn. Otto leans in close, focusing on the ants running in and out of the opening at the top.
A finger points into the frame. From the angle, it’s obviously Ecco’s. It lightly brushes some of the sandpile away. The ants scurry away and then return to assess the damage and begin repairs. The ants find the finger still there. Some of them crawl up its side.
A laugh emerges offscreen from Ecco. A second from Otto quickly starts up.
The finger is joined by the thumb and pinches an ant between the two nails. Then the finger gently places both parts of the severed ant back on the anthill.
The camera swings back again to a close-up of their toes curling against each other. More giggles.
In a disorienting lurch, the camera angle pulls back into a God shot. It’s a baffling few moments until bits of Eve swing across the screen. She has just picked up Otto from the front lawn.
After some quick adjustments and judging from the shot directly into her ear, it appears Eve has secured Otto on her right hip. The frame jostles up and down with each step she takes. Otto turns the camera back on his brother.
It is literally an over-the-shoulder shot, with Eve’s shoulder obfuscating the foreground, and the image of Ecco sitting at the anthill, staring after them. He doesn’t cry out or ignore them. He just sits and watches, bouncing in the frame as it gets smaller with every step Eve takes.
The screen door creaks as Eve opens it. As it slams shut, it pixilates Ecco. Then Eve takes a turn and marches upstairs. The camera angles down on the stairs and finally cuts out.
Reidier eventually walked by the front door and gazed out to his new lawn and went to retrieve Ecco. This matter was never brought up inside the house. Did he and Eve discuss it while out on errands one day? Did they have a fight about it? Or did he simply write it off? Did he proceed with the hope that eventually Eve would snap out of what might be described as some sort of late-term, bipolar postpartum depression?
Maybe.
Maybe Eve meant to go right back out and get him. She couldn’t carry both the boys and her book? Or perhaps her back was sore from unpacking, and she could only carry one child at a time?
As easy as it is to jump to judge her, it is premature.
Especially considering the episode she had at the end of their last winter in Chicago.
TITLE CARD: GALILEE 6:21
TITLE CARD: EXPERIMENT 42
CONTROL ROOM, GOULD ISLAND FACILITY - 2007-09-26 15:49
IS1 O’Brien sits in his respective seat at the ready. Dr. Reidier sits wearing his tweed sport coat, his fingers tapping at the keyboard as he executes a series of final commands into the system.
The distant HIGH WHINE of the Quark Resonator rings out.
Dr. Reidier leans back and mumbles something inaudible to himself. Finished, Dr. Reidier turns to the camera.
DR. REIDIER
(serious and confident)
Biologics have proved a tad more tricky than we, and Director Pierce, had hoped. However, as Robert Pirsig says, experiments are never failures when they fail to achieve predicted results. They’re failures when they fail to test the hypothesis in question, when the data they produce don’t prove anything one way or another. Something like that. (half smiles at camera) For Experiment 42 we are maintaining the same quantum chromodynamic and energy levels from Experiment 41, however we are trying ████ entanglement swap. So, without any further ado . . .
Dr. Reidier nods at IS1 O’Brien and flips up his Plexiglas cover over Contact Button Alpha. His thumb absentmindedly runs back and forth across his lapel pin while . . .
IS1 O’Brien similarly addresses Contact Button Bravo.
DR. REIDIER (CONT’D)
Let us, as Samuel Beckett advises, “Fail again. Fail better.” In three, two, one, go.
Dr. Reidier and IS1 O’Brien simultaneously press Contact Buttons Alpha and Bravo.
CUT TO:
MIRROR LAB - SAME TIME
SPLIT SCREEN, on right side CLOSE-UP: empty reinforced-acrylic sphere over target pad.
LEFT SIDE, CLOSE-UP: orange sits inside reinforced-acrylic sphere over the transmission pad.
Orange remains perfectly still.
At 2007-09-26 15:51:00.40955543 a silent FLASH of a flame encircles the orange, like a mandorla, and both disappear leaving behind a heterogeneous pile of (what is later determined to be) various carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen compounds, along with oxidized iron particles.
NOTE: 400 picoseconds prior to flare-up, on the left side prior to transfer, the flame “halo” surrounding the orange tessellates, but not the orange.
RIGHT SIDE, at 15:51:00.40955543, the orange appears on the target pad. It appears intact, its spherical structure solid. On the outside of the acrylic sphere, frost immediately accumulates.
CONTROL ROOM - 15:51:05
Dr. Reidier turns to IS1 and raises his eyebrows in a “Check it out” manner.
O’Brien nods encouragingly.
DR. REIDIER
Well that was dramatic.
TARGET ROOM - 15:51:55
Dr. Reidier stands over the prototypical orange.
The HIGH PITCH of the Quark Resonator fades out.
Dr. Reidier cautiously pokes at it.
The rind resists momentarily, but suddenly capitulates and gives way. A thick, brownish orange juice pours out, covering the pad and dripping down into the lower hemisphere of the acrylic sphere.
GEARS SPINNING NOISE ramps up and down as the Boson Cannons and Pion Beams retract.
Dr. Reidier smells the tip of his finger (which has some of the “juice” on it). Then lightly dabs it on the front tip of his tongue. He squints his eyes in contemplation.
Dr. Reidier turns to face the control room.
DR. REIDIER
Well, that’s funny. Saccharinely sweet . . . There’s no acetic acid.
(pokes at rind)
Maybe that and the D-limonene volatile oil in the rind are what flared up on the tr
ansmission side. Muffled the quark echo?
(beat)
O’Brien? Thoughts?
Over the intercom
IS1 O’BRIEN (OS)
Fail again, fail better, sir.
DR. REIDIER
Nobody likes an insubordinate, O’Brien.
Dr. Reidier brushes his fingers against his thumb rapidly, in an effort to shake off stubborn residue.
DR. REIDIER (CONT’D)
Cleanup on aisle 6.
VII
A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything.
~Friedrich Nietzsche
Shallow men suggest luck or circumstance. Strong men claim cause and effect. Discovery is itself a lie told by the ego.
~Zampanò
Lying to ourselves is more deeply ingrained than lying to others.
~Dostoevsky
Excerpt from University of Chicago, iTunes University episode, Dr. Kerek Reidier lecture from his Physics of Science Fiction course, December 5, 2005
“Judging from a number of your test scores, today’s lecture might be of particular interest: how to build a time machine in four easy steps.”
A laugh ripples around the lecture hall.
“I see I’ve struck a nerve. As always, what we’ll be addressing is not the immediate feasibility of an idea, but rather its theoretical viability. We all remember Lois Lane’s painful date with destiny.”
Another murmured laugh.
“While Superman had the ability to fly and be super strong, he could do nothing to prevent the trauma from the rapid deceleration her body experiences when the Man of Steel catches the high velocity Lois in his arms after she falls out of a helicopter. Likewise Superman cannot help us with time travel, even though he tried by flying backward around the earth and reversing its rotation. I’m afraid once again he underestimated the damage of deceleration. And also showed a complete lack of understanding of temporal dimensional analysis.”
Pause.
“But let’s get on with our four steps in time as laid out in Seife’s Appendix.”51
Reidier flicks on a projector, flicks off the lights, and brings up his first PowerPoint slide. It’s a figure of a man standing in his kitchen sticking his arm through a black spherical blob hovering in midair. Across the kitchen, another blob hovers, out of which comes the man’s hand holding a coffee mug, which he extends to cavemen percolating coffee over a fire.
“Step one, construct a small, but stable wormhole, making sure to keep both ends at the same point in time. Like say, in your kitchen. Yes, I can anticipate the hands shooting up the darkness beyond my projector, but this is neither the time nor the place to pursue such banal inquiries as to how we would build one of these. For that you’ll need to take my course next trimester or just go buy one at your local annelid shop.
“Step two, attach one end of your wormhole to something very heavy. Take the other end and stick it to a spaceship that can achieve speeds of at least 90 percent the speed of light and send it on its way. Due to the time dilation52 described by Einstein’s relativity equations,53 every spaceship year will be roughly equivalent to 2.3 years on our beloved terra firma. Clocks at each end of the wormhole will tick away at different speeds. For ease’s sake, let’s say we sent out our expedition in 2000.”
Next slide, a diagram of the spaceship flying through space (represented as a flat ribbon) away from Earth. The mouth of the wormhole is still attached to Earth, the tail to the ship like one long celestial string of spit. Off to the right, the ship heads toward the edge of our universe, and the ribbon of space U-turns below, entering hyperspace (picture a horseshoe-esque path).54
“Everybody with me?”
Silence in the dark.
“Good. Step three is relatively easy. We wait for a bit. Say forty-six years, Earth-time. Then we find a nice M-Class planet, like Reid-upiter, and bring the wormhole there.”
Next slide, same horseshoe-bent space layout, Earth where it was on the top prong but directly beneath, on the bottom prong, the spaceship now rests on Reid-upiter. The wormhole stretches taut between the two, an obvious shortcut through real space.
“Now, by passing through the wormhole, you can go from 2046 on Earth to 2020 on Reid-upiter. Or vice versa. If you were especially forward thinking, you could have started our little mission way in advance with, ironically, step four. You could have sent a message to Reid-upiter long before you began, and arranged for the Reid-upiterians to do the reverse process, beginning in 1974, Reid-upiter time that is.”
“By the time you got there in 2020, the other wormhole could bring you back to Earth for the year 1994, i.e. six years before you even left. Using both the wormholes together, you could skip from 2046 Earth time, to 2020 Reid-upiter time, to 1994 Earth time and have jumped back in time more than a half century.”
“A bit of advice, sell your dot.com stocks at the beginning of 2000 and then short the hell out of them.”
More laughter in the dark.
Often the creation of this report feels like time travel.* Traveling from familiar settings to alien surroundings, only to double back again and find that, even though I’ve gone in a circle, I’ve arrived in a completely different place. A shuffle of papers puts me four years back, and a shift of the eye to another pile on my desk drops me in at only a few months ago.
* * *
* Amen, Mama. Amen.
* * *
In those notes, those short stories, those video records, e-mails, journals, and audio recordings, everything is as it was. Safe. Or at least preserved.
Unlike a true time traveler, I can effect no change, create no paradox. I am impotent. A mere detective hunting echoes. The tracks are elusive and deceptive. It’s like reading Braille with gloves on.
The source material itself is, not unreliable, but somewhat skewed. It’s the nature of the material. As Luc Sante suggested, it’s impossible to separate self-consciousness from the confession.55 It is not simply an act of laying oneself bare, exposed, and completely vulnerable. A confession is still framed in a narrative, situated within context. Additions and omissions are inevitable, even though quite possibly unintentional or unconscious. E-mails are written to someone, journals for a “secret” reader. Lectures are a performance. And videos offer a confined frame of verisimilitude. But is the footage from the nanobugs objective?
The occupants of 454 Angell appear unaware of the NBs’ existence. To a certain degree, we can accept their feeds as “true” performances. Still, in this ubiquitous unedited coverage, a distance—an inauthenticity—exists. Educated to be cinematically literate, inundated with the mores of reality TV, I find myself longing for tracking shots, a close-up on a character’s eyes, a focus on a subconscious fidget. Without it, I feel like I am being held at arm’s length.
Ironically, the constant coverage and terabytes of video records of the Reidier home obfuscate rather than illuminate. It’s like that old story where the cartographer of the Empire set out to draw the most comprehensive map of the kingdom: he pays so much attention to detail that it ends up exactly covering the territory. As Baudrillard says, “The territory no longer precedes the map, nor survives it. Henceforth, it is the map that precedes the territory . . . it is the map that engenders the territory.”56 As time passes, it is the territory, the original subject, that deteriorates to shreds, slowly rotting, but the map persists. Explorers of the now can do little more than wander around “the desert of the real.”
I am not sifting through the remains of the Reidiers, but the allegory of them. The cartographer’s mad project has digitized their essence, performing a sort of alchemy that reduces their lives to two dimensions. Baudrillard’s insights have an uncanny resonance in this world where “the real is produced from miniaturized units, from matrices, memory banks, and command models—and with these it can be reproduced an indefinite number of times. It no longer has to be rational . . .”57
So the reality of the Reidiers will be reduced and
reconstituted out of the record of the Reidiers—something new, mined out of both the self-aware performance of video blogs and writing and the non-stop feeds from microscopic nanocorders.
In other words, something hyperreal in a space with no atmosphere.
I only discovered the record of Eve’s episode in Chicago after weeks into watching them settle into Providence. It wasn’t the NBs picking up some kitchen conversation or some pillow talk. No. Despite their saturation of surveillance, the Department still missed this somehow.
It was footage, once again, recorded by Reidier’s motion-detecting webcam.
Reidier sits at his desk chair working on his computer, facing the camera. His eyes zigzag, tracking movement across the screen as he clicks away with his mouse. It’s an unnerving viewing experience, watching the outside world from inside the computer, as blind to what’s on the screen as we are to the color of our own eyes.
Reidier finally leans back and stares at the computer. Presumably he found what he was looking for. His eyes remain fixed on one point on the screen, i.e. he’s not reading or searching.
After several minutes, he reaches forward and makes a decisive click. He rests back in his chair and watches a video that we can only hear.
The light sounds of someone shifting papers around. Slow. Sporadic.
An occasional patting sound.
At a distance, muffled by walls and floors, a door opens, footsteps, door closes. Stamping of feet.
“Allô?” Eve’s dampened voice. “Allô . . .”
Muted sounds of activity upstairs. The closer light sounds of paper shifting have stopped.
“I am back. And famished. Where is everybody?” Eve singsongs.
More footfalls and dimmed shuffling sounds. A creak as a door opens.
In a much clearer, unobstructed voice Eve announces, “I have found you. I know you’re down here. The light led me, oui.”
Crisp, bare clunks increase in volume, like someone pattering down old stairs into an open basement.