Interface

by Neal Stephenson

  The other bedrooms had been turned into a hightech wonder­land. Zeldo filled Mary Catherine’s old bedroom with computers and James’s with communications gear. Mom’s sewing room was full of medical stuff. The two guest bedrooms were set up with bunk beds and mattresses on the floor so that the nurses and therapists could alternate between sleeping and working without leaving the house.

  Everything that Dad did now - every tiny motion of his thumb, every twitch of his lips - had huge informational ramifications that Zeldo could plot and graph on his computer screens. Thousands of connections had now grown into place between Dad’s neurons and the biochip, and hundreds of new ones were still being made every day. All of the impulses passing from his brain outward into his body and back passed through these connections, and could be monitored by the biochip. Even when Dad was sleeping, it amounted to an overwhelming flow of information, like all the telephone calls being made into or out of Manhattan at a given time.

  There was no way to understand all of it. No way to keep track. The best that Zeldo could do was keep a running tab on what was happening, building up a statistical database, maybe get some sense of which connections were being used for the thumb and which for the left eyebrow. Still, it was fascinating to watch.

  That all of these things worked was no news. The chip had worked in the baboons and it had worked in Mohinder Singh, after all. The real question on their minds was: how much damage had the strokes done to other parts of Cozzano’s mind, for example, memory, personality, cognitive skills?

  The fact that he still wanted to watch the same TV show, still thought it was funny, and still knew how to program his VCR answered several questions. It was good news on all fronts.

  But mostly Cozzano watched the news and public affairs pro­grams about the presidential campaign. They would pin the latest newspapers and magazines up on a reading stand in front of his face and he would pore over them, his eyes flicking back and forth between the coverage on the televisions and the printed page.

  Only then - after he had got control of the TV channels and had caught up on the newspapers - only then did he start working on speech.

  They set an ambitious schedule for him, worrying that they might stress him out and overwork him, and he left that schedule in the dust. First thing in the morning, the physical therapists came in, at first helping him move his limbs, later, when he got the hang of that, running him through exercises. Then the speech therapist came in and got him to put his tongue and lips in certain positions, got him to make certain sounds, and then to string those sounds together into syllables and words. Following an afternoon nap, the physical therapists would come back in and work on the parts of his body that they had missed in the morning. During the evenings he could relax, watch TV, read.

  He exercised his speech during physical therapy and he exercised his body during speech therapy. He also exercised both of them while he was pretending to take his afternoon nap, and then he exercised them all evening long when he was supposed to be taking it easy. He even woke up in the middle of the night and exercised.

  Getting up out of the wheelchair was an ambitious goal that he wouldn’t attempt for a few weeks. In the meantime there were a few things he couldn’t do for himself, such as going to the toilet, taking baths, carrying in wood for the fireplace, and swapping tapes in and out of the VCR. Nurses, aides, and family members had to do these things for him.

  Almost two weeks after the implant, Mary Catherine came down for another visit. She had been doing so much driving that they had gone to the trouble of leasing a car, a brand-new Acura luxury sedan, so that she could make the trip in comfort and safety. The evening she arrived, she had a conversation with Dad.

  “Vee… Cee…rrr,” he said.

  “VCR. You want me to do something with the VCR?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay. What do you want me to do?”

  Dad aimed the remote shakily toward the TV cabinet and hit the EJECT button. The VCR spat out a tape.

  “You want me to take this out?”

  “Yes.”

  “You want me to put a different tape in?”

  “Yes.”

  The TV cabinet had a shelf along the top with a few dozen videotapes in it, mostly old family tapes or favourite movies. Mary Catherine began running her finger along the line of tapes.

  “New!” Dad blurted.

  “You want a new tape?”

  “Blank.”

  “You want a blank tape.”

  “Yes.”

  Mary Catherine rummaged around in the cabinet until she found a six-pack of fresh blank videocassettes. Dad always bought them half a dozen at a time at Wal-Mart. He always bought everything in vast, bulk quantities, dirt cheap, in huge drafty warehouse like stores out in the middle of the prairie.

  She unwrapped one and stuck it into the machine. “Okay, what should I do with this old one?” she asked, wiggling the tape she had just removed”

  “Label.”

  The fresh videotape had come shipped with a number of blank labels. She peeled a couple of them back and stuck them on to the black shell of the cassette. Then she dug a small felt-tipped marker out of her purse. “What do you want to call this?”

  Dad rolled his eyes as if to indicate that this was not important, he would remember what it was. Mary Catherine grinned and looked him in the eye, pen poised over the tape, challenging him.

  He looked her right back in the eye. “Eee… lack… sun.”

  “Election.”

  “One,” Dad said. The fingers of his hand trembled and jerked uncertainly. Finally the index finger extended, while the other fingers clenched into a loose, jittering fist.

  “Election One,” Mary Catherine repeated, writing it on to the top and side of the tape. “Does this imply that it’s the first in a series?”

  Dad rolled his eyes again.

  Later, after he had gone to sleep, Mary Catherine curled up on the living room sofa with a bag of microwave popcorn, rewound “Election One,” and watched it.

  It was outtakes from election-related news coverage from the past week or week and a half, ever since Dad’s thumb had gotten nimble enough to control the machine. Most of it had to do with the peculiar, stereotyped behavior patterns of men competing in state primary elections. It made good training for a neurologist. Hours and hours of men walking around under bright lights, moving with the spasmodic gait of candidates. A candidate walked on two legs like a normal man, but every time he sensed that he was in a position that would make a good photograph, he would stop and freeze for a moment as if suffering a petit mal seizure, and turn toward the nearest battery of cameras. No candidate could climb on board a vehicle or enter a building without freezing for a moment and giving the thumbs-up. Handshakes all lasted for hours, and the candidate never looked at the person whose hand he was shaking; he looked toward the audience.

  Super Tuesday, Illinois, and New York were history. California wouldn’t happen for weeks. By this point in the campaign, the nominations were usually settled. But there was nothing settled about them this year. Both parties were running several candidates. The flakes, the paupers and the weaklings had long since been weeded out. The remaining strong contenders had been beating one another mercilessly. By the time the real campaign began on Labor Day, neither of the two surviving candidates would have any reputation left.

  Maybe the GOP would try to draft Cozzano. But she had to ask herself - Dad had to be asking himself - what was the point of parties anyway? All they did was get in the way. Ogle was right.

  The film crew showed up in Tuscola a few days later. It consisted of a producer, a cameraman, and an audio person who happened to be female. They rented a couple of rooms at the Super 8 Motel on the edge of town, out near I-57, a short drive from the Cozzano residence.

  The producer was named Myron Morris. He came with the personal recommendation of Cyrus Rutherford Ogle, who continued to phone Mary Catherine at work from time to time, just keeping i
n touch. She had a series of conversations with him: Ogle on a plane or in a car or hotel room somewhere, and Mary Catherine standing in the hallway at the hospital, usually in the neurology ward, where the comings and goings of various para­lyzed, epileptic, senile, psychotic, or demented patients provided a useful reality check.

  Ogle had first brought up the idea of a film crew just a few days after the implant. He had gone about this in typically diplomatic fashion, in a late round of the conversation, after greetings, small talk, chitchat about politics, and a little bit of gentle probing into the Governor’s condition.

  “This is like your baby learning how to walk: it’s only going to happen once,” he pointed out. “And consequently, you’re going to want it on film. It might seem like a weird idea now, but believe me, sooner or later, maybe ten years down the road, you and the Governor are going to wish that you could go back and watch him saying his first words and taking his first steps.”

  “We have a camcorder stashed back in the garage,” Mary Catherine said. “I’ll get it out.”

  “That’s an excellent idea,” Ogle said encouragingly, “and make sure that when you’re finished, you break off the little plastic tab on the videocassette so you can’t record over it by accident.”

  “I’ll do that,” Mary Catherine said, trying to hide the smile in her voice.

  A week later they spoke again. It was the same routine: small talk, chitchat, and all the rest.

  “Did you dig up that long-lost camcorder?” Ogle said knowingly.

  “Yes,” Mary Catherine said.

  “But it doesn’t work.”

  “How’d you know?”

  “Old ones never do,” Ogle said. “The first time you put them away in the garage, you lose half the pieces.”

  “There’s a little black box that is supposed to charge up the battery,” Mary Catherine said. “I can’t find it anywhere. Dad knows where it is, but he can’t tell me at this point in his recovery. So maybe I’ll go buy a new one.”

  “Don’t do that,” Ogle said. “There’s too many camcorders floating around the world not being used for you to go spend money on a new one.”

  “I sense that you have a scheme on your mind.”

  “As usual you are right. I know some people. People who are very good working with film and videotape. Who would be glad to come in to Tuscola and spend some time videotaping your father’s recovery.”

  “Is that right.”

  “Yes, it is. We could send out a three-person crew as soon as you give the okay.”

  Mary Catherine laughed. “Well, I must say that is an exceedingly generous offer. To think that three people who presumably have jobs and families could come all the way out to Tuscola and donate their time and expertise to making some home movies for the Cozzano family.”

  “Isn’t it a remarkable thing?” Ogle said.

  “You realize that this recovery process is going to stretch out over a period of several weeks. Possibly months.”

  “Yes, I know that.”

  “Don’t these people have anything better to do during this part of their lives?”

  “Nope. They sure don’t,” Ogle said.

  Mary Catherine let a long pause go by. “What’s going on here?”

  “I’ll tell you,” Ogle said. “Your dad’s gonna get better. I know he is.”

  “I appreciate that confidence.”

  “At that point he’ll be a healthy, strong, middle-aged man with a great deal of popularity, in Illinois and in the rest of the country. And based on his past behavior I have this feeling he’s not ready to retire yet.”

  “I couldn’t say.”

  “And I don’t know what he’ll choose to do with the remaining, best years of his life. But would it be fair to say it’s not out of the question that he might continue with his current career in politics?”

  “Who knows?”

  “Well, if he does continue in politics - even if he just wants to run for mayor of Tuscola - I would very much like to serve as his media consultant.”

  “I’m looking at my watch,” Mary Catherine said, “and noting the time. I think you just set a new record.”

  “For what?”

  “For beating around the bush. You’ve been talking to me for a month and this is the first time you’ve come out and said that.”

  “Well, I hate to be direct,” Ogle said. “It’s just the way I am.”

  “Please continue.” She sighed.

  “If he were to make that choice, and if he were to hire me, I would want to make campaign ads explaining to the voters who William A. Cozzano is and why he would be a good man to vote for. And as a man who understands the media, I cannot think of anything that would tell voters more about the character of your father than some footage - discreet, dignified - showing his slow and difficult recovery from the terrible, terrible tragedy that overcame him. And, because it is my job to think ahead, it has occurred to me that, if all these things were to come to pass, I would not to able to make such advertisements unless I had footage of the real thing.”

  “So you’re willing to spend, what, tens of thousands of bucks to put a film crew in Tuscola fulltime, just on the off chance that he will recover fully, choose to continue a career in politics, and choose to hire you as his media consultant.”

  “What can I say,” Ogle said. “I’m an optimist.”

  Ogle was up to something. That was no surprise. Mary Catherine wasn’t a professional politician but she wasn’t a complete moron either and she had known from the beginning that Ogle must have some kind of agenda.

  Her first reaction was not to trust him, not to get herself entangled in anything. To play it safe, in other words. She had been noncommital when Ogle had suggested that Dad might want to continue his career in politics. The fact was, of course, that Dad very much did want to continue it. She had something of a duty to help him. Not to close off any options that he might want kept open. And if she failed to accept Ogle’s suggestion, she’d be blowing an opportunity. Being the overprotective daughter.

  Besides, she still wasn’t committing the Cozzanos to anything. There couldn’t be any harm in letting some people hang around and film Dad. Later, when he had recovered more fully, then he’d be able to make the command decision. If he didn’t like Ogle, those people would be out on their asses.

  Mel wasn’t crazy about this. But he had changed his tactics. He no longer challenged Mary Catherine on every little point, just grumbled and simmered a lot in the background. Just to give him something to do, she had him deal with Ogle’s lawyers. They drew up an agreement that gave the Cozzanos absolute, permanent, unequivocal control over any films, videotapes, audiotapes, or other media that Ogle’s people created on Cozzano property. Mel was good, Mel knew how to make the agreement airtight, and by the time Myron Morris and his two assistants pulled into Tuscola in their four-wheel-drive Suburban, Mel was as satisfied as he could ever be that this thing was above board. There was no way they could pull anything sneaky.

  Mary Catherine was astonished the first time she saw the crew in action. Myron Morris himself wasn’t there; he had hung around quite a bit for the first day or two, then excused himself. That left the cameraman and the sound woman. The sound woman was carrying some heavy-duty gear: a big reel-to-reel machine slung over a shoulder strap, with an assortment of microphones. But the cameraman was packing a cheap piece of junk: a home-style VHS camcorder not much different from the one that was rusting away in the Cozzanos’ garage.

  “Why are you using a home camcorder?” Mary Catherine asked him, when he wasn’t actively filming Dad.

  He shrugged. “That’s what Myron said to use. I don’t get it either.”

  “Where’s Myron?”

  “Scouting.”

  “Scouting?”

  “Locations. He’s looking around the area.”

  “Why? Is he planning on producing a movie in Tuscola?”

  The cameraman shrugged. “I’m just repeating his words.�
��

  She found him outside of town, at the old Cozzano farm. His giant Suburban was parked along the shoulder of the country road, looking as if it might roll over into the ditch. Morris had jumped a fence into a cornfield and was walking down one of the freshly plowed rows, his shoes sinking into the soft black earth. Every few paces he would stop walking and turn toward the farmhouse, which had been rebuilt by Dad and his cousins after the tornado destroyed it in the early fifties. He would lift a short, stubby black telescope to one eye and peer through it for a few seconds. Two or three of these devices were hung on ropes around his neck, clacking into one another as he walked.

  Mary Catherine parked behind his Suburban, jumped the ditch, and vaulted the fence. Fence-vaulting was something she had known how to do, expertly, since an early age; in the extended Cozzano family, kids who couldn’t vault fences got left behind and never had any fun. In her fancy grownup clothes it was slightly more complicated, but nowadays she had the advantage of height. Half a mile away she could see her second cousin Tim out plowing the field on one of the old tractors.

  Myron Morris noticed her approaching. He stopped, waved, and stood there for a few moments, hands in pockets, watching her approach. Then he picked up one of the short stubby telescopes and used it to peer at her. He dropped that one and looked at her through another. Then another.

  “What are those things?” she asked as she got closer.

  “They simulate what I would see looking through the viewfinder of a camera with a particular lens on it. It’s just a visual device that makes it easier to frame one’s shots, figure out where to put the camera.”

  “I’ve been following you around town” she said. “People said they’ve seen you out at the park, the high-school playing field, the old train station.”

  “I don’t get out to Tuscola very often,” he said. “So as long as I’m here I thought I’d get to know the place.”

  “Don’t you think you’re getting ahead of the game? Dad’s staying at home.”