The president says we’re going to convert ninety percent of all industries to cybernation. In fact, anything that can be cybernated will be. They have to be. Almost everything, from the mines to the loading equipment to the roads and trucks and the unloading equipment and the arrangement and dispersal of the final goods at central distribution points.
Are six years enough to do this?
And who’s going to pay for this? Never mind, he says. Money is on its way out. The president is a goddamned radical. He’s taking advantage of this situation to put over his own ideas, which he sure as hell never revealed during his campaign for election. Sometimes I wonder who put The Ball up there. But that idea is sheer paranoia. At least, this gigantic WPA project is giving work to those who are able to work. The rest are on, or going to be on, a minimum guaranteed income, and I mean minimum. But the president says that in time, everybody will have all he needs, and more, in the way of food, housing, schooling, clothing, etc. He says! What if Project Toro doesn’t work? And what if it does work? Are we then going to return to the old economy? Of course not! It’ll be impossible to abandon everything we’ve worked on; the new establishment will see to that.
I tried to find out where Myrna lived. I’m making this record in my office, so Carole isn’t going to get hold of it I love her—Myrna, I mean—passionately. I hired her two weeks ago and fell headlong, burningly, in love with her. All this was in 1977, of course, but today, inside of me, is 1977.
Carole doesn’t know about this, of course. According to the letters and notes from Myrna, which I should have destroyed but, thank God, never had the heart to do,
Carole didn’t find out about Myrna until two years later. At least, that’s what this letter from Myrna says. She was away visiting her sister then and wrote to me in answer to my letter. A good thing, too, otherwise I wouldn’t know what went on then.
My reason tells me to forget about Myrna. And so I will.
I’ve traveled backward in our affair, from our final bitter parting, to this state, when I was most in love with her. I know this because I’ve just reread the records of our relationship. It began deteriorating about six months before we split up, but I don’t feel those emotions now, of course. And in two weeks I won’t feel anything for her. If I don’t refer to the records, I won’t even know she ever existed.
This thought is intolerable. I have to find her, but I’ve had no success at all so far. In fourteen days, no, five, since every day ahead takes three more of the past, I’ll have no drive to locate her. Because I won’t know what I’m missing.
I don’t hate Carole. I love her, but with a cool much-married love. Myrna makes me feel like a boy again. I burn exquisitely.
But where is Myrna?
True date: October 30, 1981
I ran into Brackwell Lee, the old mystery story writer, today. Like most writers who haven’t gone to work for the government propaganda office, he’s in a bad way financially. He’s surviving on his GMI, but for him there are no more first editions of rare books, new sports cars, Western Reserve or young girls. I stood him three shots of the rotgut which is the only whiskey now served at Grover’s and listened to the funny stories he told to pay me for the drinks. But I also had to listen to his tales of
Nobody buys fiction or, in fact, any long works of any kind anymore. Even if you’re a speed reader and go through a whole novel in one day, you have to start all over again the next time you pick it up. TV writing, except for the propaganda shows, is no alternative. The same old shows are shown every day and enjoyed just as much as yesterday or last year. According to my records,
I’ve seen the hilarious pilot movie of the “Soap Opera Blues” series fifty times.
When old Lee talked about how he had been dropped by the young girls, he got obnoxiously weepy. I told him that that didn’t say much for him or the girls either. But if he didn’t want to be hurt, why didn’t he erase those records that noted his rejections?
He didn’t want to do that, though he could give me no logical reason why he shouldn’t
“Listen,” I said with a sudden drunken inspiration, “why don’t you erase the old records and make some new ones? How you laid this and that beautiful young thing. Describe your conquests in detail. You’ll think you’re the greatest Casanova that ever lived.”
“But that wouldn’t be true!” he said.
“You, a writer of lies, say that?” I said. “Anyway, you wouldn’t know that they weren’t the truth.”
“Yeah,” he said, “but if I get all charged up and come barreling down here to pick up some tail, I’ll be rejected and so’ll be right back where I was.”
“Leave a stern note to yourself to listen to them only late at night, say, an hour before The Ball puts all to sleep. That way, you won’t even get hurt.”
George Palmer wandered in then. I asked him how things were doing.
“I’m up to here handling cases for kids who can’t get drivers’ licenses,” he said. “It’s true you can teach anybody how to drive in a day, but the lessons are forgotten the next day. Anyway, it’s experience that makes a good driver, and . . . need I explain more? The kids have to have cars, so they drive them regardless. Hence, as you no doubt have forgotten, the traffic accidents and violations are going up and up.”
“Is that right?” I said.
“Yeah. There aren’t too many in the mornings, since most people don’t go to work until noon. However, the new transit system should take care of when we get it, sometime in 1984 or 5.”
“What new transit system?” I said.
“It’s been in the papers,” he said. “I read some of last week’s this morning. The city of Los Angeles is equipped with a model system now, and it’s working so well it’s going to be extended throughout Los Angeles County. Eventually, every city of any size in the country’ll have it. Nobody’ll have to walk more than four blocks to get to a line. It’ll cut air pollution by half and the traffic load by three-thirds. Of course, it’ll be compulsory; you’ll have to show cause to drive a car. And I hate to think about the mess that’s going to be, the paperwork, the pile-up in the courts and so forth. But after the way the government handled the L. A. riot, the rest of the country should get in line.”
“How will the rest of the country know how the government handled it unless they’re told?” I said.
“They’ll be told. Every day,” he said.
“Eventually, there won’t be enough time in the day for the news channels to tell us all we’ll need to know,” I said. “And even if there were enough time, we’d have to spend all day watching TV. So who’s going to get the work done?”
“Each person will have to develop his own viewing specialty,” he said. “They’ll just have to watch the news that concerns them and ignore the rest.”
“And how can they do that if they won’t know what concerns them until they’ve run through everything?” I said. “Day after day.”
“I’ll buy a drink,” he said. “Liquor’s good for one thing. It makes you forget what you’re afraid not to forget.”
8
True date: late 1982. Subjective date: late 1974
She came into my office, and I knew at once that she was going to be more than just another client. I’d been suffering all day from the “mirror syndrome,” but the sight of her stabilized me. I forgot the thirty-seven-year-old face my twenty-nine-year-old mind had seen in the bathroom that morning. She is a beautiful woman, only twenty-seven. I had trouble at first listening to her story; all I wanted to do was to look at her. I finally understood that she wanted me to get the case reopened, to use the new plea of rehabilitation by retrogression.
I was supposed to know that, but I had to take a quick look through my resume before I could tell her what chance she had. Under RBR was the definition of the term and a notation that a number of people had been released because of it. The main idea behind it is that criminals are not the same people they were before they became criminals, if they ha
ve lost all memory of the crime. They’ve traveled backward to goodness, you might say. Of course, RBR doesn’t apply to hardened criminals or to someone who’d planned a crime a long time before it was actually committed.
I asked her why she would want to help a man who had killed his mistress in a fit of rage when he’d found her cheating on him?
“I love him,” she said.
And I love you, I thought.
She gave me some documents from the big rec bag she carried. I looked through them and said, “But you divorced him in 1977?”
“Yes, he’s really my ex-husband,” she said. “But I think of him now as my husband.”
No need to ask her why.
“I’ll study the case,” I said. “You make a note to see me tomorrow. Meantime, how about a drink at the Rover bar so we can discuss our strategy?”
That’s how it all started—again.
It wasn’t until a week later, when I was going over some old recs, that I discovered it was again. It made no difference. I love her. I also love Carole, rather, a Carole. The one who married me six years ago, that is, six years ago in my memory.
But there is the other Carole, the one existing today, the poor miserable wretch who can’t get out of the house until about twelve noon. It’s true that I could come home earlier than I do if it weren’t for Myrna. I try. No use. I have to see Myrna.
I tell myself I’m a bastard, which I am, because Carole and the children need me very much. Tom is ten and acts as if he’s two. Mike is a four-year-old in a twelve-year-old body. I come home from Myrna to bedlam every day, according to my records, and every day must be like today.
That I feel both guilt and shame doesn’t help. I become enraged; I try to suppress my anger, which is born out of my desperation and helplessness and guilt and shame. But it comes boiling out, and then bedlam becomes hell.
I tell myself that Carole and the kids need a tower of strength now. One who can be calm and reassuring and, above all, loving. One who can handle the thousand tedious and aggravating problems that infest every household in this world of diminishing memory. In short, a hero. Because the real heroes, and heroines, are those who deal heroically with the everyday cares of life, though God knows they’ve been multiplied enormously. It’s not the guy who kills a dragon once in his lifetime and then retires that’s a hero. It’s the guy who kills cockroaches and rats every day, day after day, and doesn’t rest on his laurels until he’s an old man, if then.
What am I talking about? Maybe I could handle the problems if it weren’t for this memory loss. I can’t adjust because I can’t ever get used to it. My whole being, body and mind, must get the same high-voltage jolt every morning.
The insurance companies have canceled all policies for anybody under twelve. The government’s contemplated talking over these policies but has decided against it. It will, however, pay for the burials, since this service is necessary. I don’t really think that many children are being “accidentally” killed because of the insurance money. Most fatalities are obviously just results of neglect or parents going berserk.
I’m getting away from Myrna, trying to, anyway, because I wish to forget my guilt. I love her, but if I didn’t see her tomorrow, I’d forget her. But I will see her tomorrow. My notes will make sure of that. And each day is, for me, love at first sight. It’s a wonderful feeling, and I wish it could go on forever.
If I just had the guts to destroy all reference to her tonight. But I won’t. The thought of losing her makes me panic.
9
True date: middle of 1984. Subjective date: middle of 1968
I was surprised that I woke up so early. : Yesterday, Carole and I had been married at noon. We’d driven up to this classy motel near Lake Geneva. We’d spent most of our time in bed after we got there, naturally, though we did get up for dinner and champagne. We finally fell asleep about four in the morning. That was why I hadn’t expected to wake up at dawn. I reached over to touch Carole, wondering if she would be too sleepy. But she wasn’t there.
She’s gone to the bathroom, I thought. I’ll catch her on the way back.
Then I sat up, my heart beating as if it had suddenly discovered it was alive. The edges of the room got fuzzy, and then the fuzziness raced in toward me.
The dawn light was filtered by the blinds, but I had seen that the furniture was not familiar. I’d never been in this place before.
I sprang out of bed and did not, of course, notice the note sticking out of my glass case. Why should I? I didn’t wear glasses then.
Bellowing, “Carole!” I ran down a long and utterly strange hall and past the bathroom door, which was open, and into the room at the other end of the hall. Inside it I stopped. This was a kids’ bedroom: bunks, pennants, slogans, photographs of two young boys, posters and blowups of faces I’d never seen, except one of Laurel and Hardy, some science fiction and Tolkien and Tarzan books, some school texts, and a large fiat piece of equipment hanging on the wall. I would not have known that it was a TV set if its controls had not made its purpose obvious.
The bunks had not been slept in. The first rays of the sun fell on thick dust on a table.
I ran back down the hall, looked into the bathroom again, though I knew no one was there, saw dirty towels, underwear and socks heaped in a corner, and ran back to my bedroom. The blinds did not let enough light in, so I looked for a light switch on the wall. There wasn’t any, though there was a small round plate of brass where the switch should have been. I touched it, and the ceiling lights came on.
Carole’s side of the bed had not been slept in.
The mirror over the bureau caught me, drew me and held me. Who was this haggard old man staring out from my twenty-three-year-old self? I had gray hair, big bags under my eyes, thickening and sagging features, and a long scar on my right cheek.
After a while, still dazed and trembling, I picked up a book from the bureau and looked at it. At this close distance, I could just barely make out the title, and, when I opened it, the print was a blur.
I put the book down, Be Your Own Handyman Around Your House, and proceeded to go through the house from attic to basement. Several times, I whimpered, “Carole! Carole!” Finding no one, I left the house and walked to the house next door and beat on its door. No one answered; lights came on inside.
I ran to the next house and tried to wake up the people in it. But there weren’t any.
A woman in a house across the street shouted at me. I ran to her, babbling. She was about fifty years old and also hysterical. A moment later, a man her age appeared behind her. Neither listened to me; they kept asking me questions, the same questions I was asking them. Then I saw a black and white police car of a model unknown to me come around the corner half a block away. I ran toward it, then stopped. The car was so silent that I knew even in my panic that it was electrically powered. The two cops wore strange uniforms, charcoal gray with white helmets topped by red panaches. Their aluminum badges were in the shape of a spread eagle.
I found out later that the police throughout the country had been federalized. These two were on the night shift and so had had enough time to get reoriented. Even so, one had such a case of the shakes that the other told him to get back into the car and take it easy for a while.
After he got us calmed down, he asked us why we hadn’t listened to our tapes.
“What tapes?” we said.
“Where’s your bedroom?” he said to the couple.
They led him to it, and he turned on a machine on the bedside table.
“Good morning,” a voice said. I recognized it as the husband’s. “Don’t panic. Stay in bed and listen to me. Listen to everything I say.”
The rest was a resume, by no means short, of the main events since the first day of memory loss. It ended by directing the two to a notebook that would tell them personal things they needed to know, such as where their jobs were, how they could get to them, where their area central distributing stores were, how to use their
I.D. cards and so on.
The policeman said, “You have the rec set to turn on at 6:30, but you woke up before then. Happens a lot.”
I went back, reluctantly, to the house I’d fled. It was mine, but I felt as if I were a stranger. I ran off my own recs twice. Then I put my glasses on and started to put together my life. The daily rerun of “Narrative of an Old-Young Man Shipwrecked on the Shoals of Time.”
I didn’t go any place today. Why should I? I had no job. Who needs a lawyer who isn’t through law school yet? I did have, I found out, an application in for a position on the police force. The police force was getting bigger and bigger but at the same time was having a large turnover. My recs said that I was to appear at the City Hall for an interview tomorrow.
If I feel tomorrow as I do today, and I will, I probably won’t be able to make myself go to the interview. I’m too grief-stricken to do anything but sit and stare or, now and then, get up and pace back and forth, like a sick leopard in a cage made by Time. Even the tranquilizers haven’t helped me much.
I have lost my bride the day after we were married. And I love Carole deeply. We were going to live a long happy life and have two children. We would raise them in a house filled with love.
But the recs say that the oldest boy escaped from the house and was killed by a car and Carole, in a fit of anguish and despair, killed the youngest boy and then herself.
They’re buried in Springdale Cemetery.
I can’t feel a retroactive grief for those strangers called Mike and Tom.
But Carole, lovely laughing Carole, lives in my mind.
Oh, God, why don’t I just erase all my recs? Then I’d not have to suffer remorse for all I’ve done or failed to do. I wouldn’t know what a bastard I’d been.
Why don’t I do it? Take the past and shed its heartbreaks and its guilts as a snake sheds its skin. Or as the legislature cancels old laws. Press a button, fill the waste-basket, and you’re clean and easy again, innocent again. That’s the logical thing to do, and I’m a lawyer, dedicated to logic.
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