“And what’s with the tubes and wires then?” I asked, still baffled. “Why fiddle with their memories?”
“Search me,” said Vera, once again plugging away at the keypad. She spent a minute or two poring over the information displayed on the unit’s screen before she finally resurfaced.
“It’s very strange,” she said. “It’s almost as though the programmer wants these people to have . . . well . . . to have different views of the way things work. To change their understanding of things. Their brains are changing to make them remember scientific principles that weren’t discovered until after they’d gone dormant. Upgrading their knowledge, I suppose.”
I raised a disapproving brow. I didn’t condone this unnatural tampering with the beans of frozen ancients.
“Seems like a waste of time to me,” I said, not masking my disapproval. “These decamillennial chumps have done their time. They’ve hung around Detroit, doing their part, for epoch upon epoch. Probably pitched in with Abe, from what you tell me. It seems to me that they deserve a good long nap and not to have that nap interrupted by liquified extension courses, however informative, about science. Leave schooling and self-improvement to the young. Let sleeping chumpsicles lie, I say. They’ve earned it.”
“But I just don’t get it,” said Vera. “Why would anyone want to reprogram some of the most ancient and powerful minds in history — why make them see things differently? Why create a network wired to change the minds of ancients? It doesn’t make any sense.”
I could readily agree with the psychic twerp on that score, but didn’t see this lack of sense-making as any cause for alarm. I mean to say, it had been a good long while since I’d counted on things to make sense.
“A point of order,” I said.
“What’s up?” said Vera.
“You mentioned that we had to come down this elevator in order to find Zeus and save the world. Unless your directory of names suggests that Zeus is chilled inside one of these tube thingummies—”
“Sarcophagi.”
“—these sarcophagi, as you say, then I don’t see how this brief pit stop advances the quest. No Zeus, no hint of Zeus, no maps toward Zeus’s location. A total bust. And as for saving the world—”
“I’m sure this is important,” she said. “I just don’t see why. I mean,” she continued, tapping rapidly on the keypad and making a series of quick gestures on the touchscreen mounted beside it, “why in Abe’s name would someone be teaching decamillennials all about . . . let’s see . . . this one’s twelve thousand years old, and within the last twenty-four hours she’s learned . . . what . . . that teleportation is impossible.”
This caught me in the vicinity of the third waistcoat button.
“What do you mean she’s learned that teleportation is impossible?” I said.
“What do you mean, what do I mean?” said Vera. “Teleportation is impossible. She wouldn’t have known that. Theories supporting the possibility of teleportation have been around for years and years. Nothing ever came of it, though. It was recently shown to be an absolute impossibility — a total violation of physical laws. But if she went dormant years ago, she likely expected that teleportation might eventually be possible.”
I stroked the chin. This struck me as probative — though probative of what, I couldn’t be sure. I mean to say, just one day ago I’d travelled by teleportation, only to see the whole teleportation industry retroactively burned from the threads of Detroit’s history because (a) the Author had apparently decided He was better off without it, and (b) in His wisdom the Author had given Isaac Newton the means to prove that teleportation failed to square up with the physical laws that governed Detroit. It was dashed inconvenient of the Author to make these changes while I was midway through a quest that required a good deal of mobility, but one learns to take the rough with the s.
“What is she being taught now?” I said.
“That’s odd,” said Vera.
“What’s odd?” I asked, though in the circumstances it probably would have been easier to point out anything nearby that didn’t qualify as odd.
“Their most recent memories. They’re all focused on one topic. But it’s very strange.”
“In what way?”
“It’s just — why on earth would decamillennials need to know about new approaches to quantum mechanics?”
Chapter 12
On the cue “quantum mechanics,” I had, of course, started visibly. I was about to relay a few well-chosen phrases concerning how, in recent days, this quantum note had been entering my life more often than one generally expects, when the words were dashed from my lips by a booming mechanical voice which seemed to explode all around us.
“NEW DATA RECEIVED,” it cried, if you can call it a cry when a voice erupts from an automated doodad which, whatever its capacities, presumably lacks emotion.
“COMPOUND GENESIS IN PROGRESS.”
This utterance coincided with an increase in the volume of the pervasive thrumming sound, which was now harmonized by a chorus of buzzings, whirrings, and pings from various bits of machinery stationed all around the periphery of sub-basement nine.
Whether it was the announcement which called Vera to action, or the buzzings, whirrings, and pings, I cannot say. But whatever the cause, Vera bustled away from the sarcophagus in a sou’sou’westerly direction, heading toward a large computer thingummy standing some yards off. She passed her fingers nimbly across its touchscreen, calling up a variety of numbers, symbols, and pictographic whatnots which meant nothing to me but seemed to make an impression on her.
“Someone’s changing the compounds. The liquid pumping into the decamillennials,” she announced. “They’re revising the memory upgrades — changing what they’re being taught.”
“Who do you mean by ‘someone’?”
“Who knows?” she said, fingers still tap-dancing along the touchscreen, “but I’ve traced the flow of data back to Detroit University.”
For the second time in the space of about three minutes this young boll weevil had unmanned me. From what she’d tried to explain to me thus far, I had gathered that some person or persons hitherto unidentified had been tossing spanners into these decamillennials’ memories for some inscrutable purpose. The thrust of this meddling, it seemed, involved jacking up these dormant persons’ knowledge of quantum mechanics. And now it seemed the person or persons responsible resided in — or at least sent transmissions from — Detroit University. Well, I’ve never been one to believe in coincidences, and it seemed to me that all indications pointed in one direction, viz, Newton comma I.
“Isaac Newton!” I said, sharing my deductions with the class. And if a note of triumph entered my voice, who can blame me? I dislike being baffled, and the piecing together of these clues brought me no small measure of intellectual satisfac.
“What about him?” said Vera.
“He must be the blighter who’s keeping these decamillennial fogies in cold storage, hooking them up to this cranial web, and pumping their heads full of new ideas!”
“Why would he do that?”
“Now there you have me. But I’m sure that it’s him doing it. We got together in his office at Detroit University just yesterday, and he vouchsafed to me he’s more or less obsessed with quantum thingummies. Brain patterns, too. He didn’t go deeply into the whys and wherefores, but he did say it had something to do with making sure his calculations matched up with what he referred to as ‘empirical observation.’”
“So you think he’s using these people to do what — double-check his figures?”
“He didn’t strike me as a chap who needs his figures double-checked.”
“But why would he be feeding them data? Why would he want to change their memories?”
“Making great minds think alike, as it were?” I said, and even as it crossed my lips I realized that, so far as gags go, this wasn’
t one of my best. It thus came as no surprise that Vera didn’t respond to this slice of repartee by slapping the Feynman back and issuing peals of rib-rattling laughter.
Her actual reaction wasn’t one I would have expected.
She just stood there, looking about as stunned as a landed cod. I mean to say, she stared off vacantly into the distance, her lips moving slightly as though she were attempting to recite some forgotten snatch of poetry which she’d memorized in her youth.
I knew at a g. that this was not some passing bout of psychosis or other mental whatdoyoucallit, for I recognized the symptoms: this was television at work. Though Vera was physically with us, her mental self was elsewhere, remotely viewing some tidbit from the future, or from her past, or from some far-flung, hitherto hidden spot in the present.
This carried on for the space of eight or nine seconds, and I was on the point of prodding the young shrimp to see if I might achieve anything in the way of rebooting her software, as the expression is, when her eyes suddenly widened and gave the impression that they were about to leap from their parent sockets.
Vera unleashed an exuberant cry. “The Rules!” she cried, “I’ll bet it’s all about The Rules!”
“What Rules?” I said, taken aback.
“I just had a vision.”
“So I gathered. You mentioned Rules.”
“The Rules that make Detroit tick. You must remember. The images just came back to me. You were in my shop when I told Ian he’d never find his wife until he managed to learn The Rules. He found his wife, didn’t he?”
“Yes.”
“So he must have learned The Rules!”
“It stands to reason: QED.”
“And you were there when he found Penelope, right?”
“I was.”
“So what were The Rules?”
“I haven’t a notion. I was preoccupied at the time. Thinking of this and that. You can’t expect a busy man like me to keep track of everything.”
She seemed to take this in stride.
“That’s okay. It’s just — well — it seems to me that Ian’s quest to learn The Rules must be related to what’s going on here. I mean, if Isaac’s teaching all of these decamillennials about his experiments, about any new discoveries he’s made, maybe he wants them to know The Rules that Ian was searching for. The ‘Rules’ must be things like quantum mechanics, classical physics — he wants the ancients to know The Rules that govern Detroit.”
This seemed like a massive stretch to me, but I didn’t wish to wound the enthusiastic pipsqueak, so I strung along.
“I suppose that’s possible,” I said. “But why bother teaching any bally ‘Rules’ to decamillennials? What’s the motive? That’s what I want to know.”
“Who knows?” said Vera. “But we know Abe told you that Isaac is the world’s most dangerous man. You know he’s interested in gathering data about brain patterns — especially those involving people with Beforelife Delusion. And we’ve just figured out that he — or someone else at Detroit University — is pumping ancients’ brains full of serums that rewrite their memories and make them seem to ‘remember’ modern science.”
“Which takes us where?” I said, a touch more eagerly than I’d intended, for she seemed on the precipice of a climactic revelation, if precipices and climactic revelations are the things I’m thinking of.
Her answer came as a disappointment, for she simply shrugged a shoulder or two and said, “Search me.”
“So what do we do next?” I said.
“I suppose we head to the fourth floor.”
“The . . . the fourth floor?” I said, suppressing a shudder. With the recent rush of events, I’d briefly lost sight of our reason for being in City Hall in the first place, and this reminder of our fearful purpose washed over me like a sudden wave of nausea.
“You mean . . . the floor where they issue . . . marriage licenses?” I said, doing my best to sound brave, but failing to come within several miles of it.
“Among other things,” she said, laughing heartily. “We’d better get up there before the office closes.”
It was a deadline I’d have been happy to watch whoosh by. Say what you will about the futility of putting off the inev., the procedure can, if timed just right, buy you a couple of extra gulps of free air. Vera did not appear to subscribe to this philosophy, for she wore the fixed, determined expression of one who would count the day lost if yonder sun were to set without her having an official marriage license gripped in her mitts.
“Do you — I mean — does it strictly require both of us in attendance?” I said. “I mean, couldn’t you, perchance, look after this bit of administrivia yourself?”
I’m the last man to heap burdensome errands upon the delicately nurtured, but I am a man of spirit: if I’m to be condemned to the electric chair I’ve no intention of checking the plugs and throwing the switch myself.
“I can handle it,” she said. And then this young stripling, revealing herself as a pearl of the fairer sex and a champion among all women, said words for which I shall forever be grateful. They ran as follows: “I noticed a bar in the lobby. ‘Off the Record,’ I think it’s called. Why not pop down there and have a drink or two while I take care of the paperwork?”
This came like manna in the w. Indeed, it’s not going too far to say that I have rarely heard a suggestion which I liked more. It occurred to me once again that, when it came to a choice of marital fauna, one could have done far worse than this prophetic gem in human shape. I mean to say, if one is forced to climb the scaffold, one is lucky to be spared an itchy rope, and it’s hard to imagine a cozier instrument of strangulation than this Vera Lantz. I took her suggestion on board and adopted it as the official Feynman Party platform.
For me, it was the work of a moment to pop back into the elevator and ride the thing to the lobby, bidding Vera a quick farewell as she rode on to the fourth floor, where she would, I presumed, set about the task of making this engagement of ours an official government-sanctioned sentence.
I made my way to the bar, quietly thanking Abe for having the foresight to provide his civil lackeys with handy access to the blushful Hippocrene throughout the course of their working day. I could understand the need. A dismal career spent poring over applications, stamping licenses, and filing triplicate forms in service of bureaucratic masters is enough to blot the sunshine from any life, and could be rendered bearable only through frequent, large-economy-sized doses of high-octane lubrication. The lubrication Abe provided flowed through this ground-level saloon which, as Vera had portended, went by the name “Off the Record,” which I presumed was some journalistic gag about the passing of state secrets. The bar was fully furnished with plastic upholstered booths and shiny barstools which had been polished, no doubt, by the equally shiny trousers of municipal workers in need of mind-numbing refreshment.
I approached the bar as harts do when heated in the chase, eager to get my hands on a much-needed tissue-restorer.
“What’ll it be?” said the apple-cheeked pubman manning the taps.
“A spot of brandy,” I replied. “Or perhaps a double.” And then, reflecting on the fate which lay before me, I amended the order by pleading for him to fetch the cask.
Having supplied me with the needful, the bartender stood nearby, engaging his stool-occupying patrons in entertaining chit-chat. For the next few minutes I contributed nothing to the proceedings, most of my attention being focused on getting a shot or two of brandy across the tonsils before joining the repartee. When I did finally bend an ear to the buzz of ongoing conversation, what I overheard was this:
“Three more of ’em, eh?” said the barman.
“That’s right! Three more Napoleons,” said a chap who seemed to be midway through a bucket of something fizzy and green and decorated with cherries — the drink, I mean, not the chap, who was decorated with a
ppropriate workday fashion.
“You don’t say,” said the barman. “That’s how many this week. Eleven? Twelve?”
“Fourteen,” said green and fizzy. “And at least . . . hic . . . twenty-five last month. But wha’ would anyone want wif Napoleons?”
“I’ve met some nice ones,” said a lanky, bright-eyed bird perched on an adjacent stool. She was wearing a feathered cap and nursing a stein of something frothy. “Some very nice ones. Napoleons can be friendly.”
“I’m not sayin’ they ain’t friendly,” said green and fizzy. “But why would anyone take ’em away? They can’t be . . . hic . . . disappearin’ all on their own. Mark my words. Someone’s takin’ ’em.”
“I haven’t seen one for days. It’s like they’ve all disappeared,” said Frothy Stein.
“I’ll bet it’s Abe,” said the barman, who didn’t literally tap the side of his nose in a conspiratorial manner, but by his facial expression and tone of voice implied a certain amount of side-of-nose tapping. “Probably gathering all of them up for treatment. They’re all princks, you know. Napoleons. They think the beforelife’s real. Can’t have them runnin’ around, stirrin’ up trouble.”
“I’ve heard that, too!” said green and fizzy, belching a volley of greenish fumes which could have powered a small engine. “The beforelife stuff. Part of the wossname. Thingy. Agnostic somethingorother. Criteria.”
“Diagnostic criteria,” said Ms. Stein. “It’s a feature of the disorder. All Napoleons think they’ve lived somewhere else before Detroit, and they think they’ll go back to that life some time in the future.”
“Makes no sense. How would you get from here to there?” said the barman.
“More to the point, there’s no ‘there’ to get to,” said the stein. “The beforelife isn’t real.”
“But where are they disappearin’ to?” said green and fizzy, in wanton contravention of any number of grammatical conventions.
“Like I said,” said the barman, “they’ve gone for treatment. Mad as hatters, every one of them.”
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