by Jerry
When people forgot how to read, we replaced important signs with audio bulletin boards. When they forgot how to drive, we beefed up the public transportation systems. When they forgot to show up for work, we created programs to either drive them out of their homes or bring the work home to them. When they forgot . . . You get the point.
But it wasn’t enough.
And there are fewer of us fighting the problem every year. Last count—and this was nearly two years ago—ninety-seven percent of the world population had contracted the disease.
For both those with and without CDS, suicide seems to be the preferred method of cheating the disease. There was a time when we couldn’t even keep them all buried.
For those who struggle on, time is running out. Already, food grown in rural areas has stopped making it into the cities. The factories in the cities are falling silent one by one as the effort to remember how to operate them becomes more than people are willing to endure. Though birth rates are up because people have forgotten about birth control, population growth is outpaced by infant mortality rates because we’ve forgotten how to care for our children. Though there’s very little violence in CDS’s world, lethargy and ignorance claim just as many lives every year.
I wonder if the virus didn’t do too good of a job afterall.
—Jahrling, Thomas J., Let Me Explain, self-published, 2008.
Leaving the Marionette Theater behind, Bob enters a dense area of underbrush, trees, monolithic rocks, and winding trails. It’s called the Ramble and its thick warrens were the earliest gathering place for gays in New York. The gays have long since forgotten they used to meet in the Ramble’s secret coves and leaf-strewn byways. In fact, most of the gays have forgotten they’re gay. The process of coming out runs far longer than they’ve now got retention capability to handle. Bob, of course, knows nothing about the Ramble or gays. The mere concept of sex between two men would seem not only absurd, but wrong to him. Without memories and experiences upon which to draw, he has only instinct and hormones to motivate his prurient interests, and for him these are devised for promulgation of his species.
For the moment, however, his mind is occupied with the two men he’s just left behind.
“They’d like to kill each other,” Bob tells the night. An owl calls out and Bob answers. “Prophet and Orin, that’s who. It’s their individuality which makes them so violent.” As soon as that escapes his lips, he’s rethought it. “Or is it fear? I can see where they’d be afraid of catching what all the rest of us have. I can see where that would drive them both to create an almost theological viewpoint for dealing with it. With Prophet, it’s acceptance. With Orin, it’s a dogged determination to triumph in the end. I’ve no doubt that Orin’s got his entire life history stored on a pocket computer just in case. I’ve also no doubt that Prophet has none.
“Then again, maybe it’s their fear of being the last ones who know what it’s like to remember what they did yesterday, the last to know how we all got like this, the last to know the name of a specific pond in the park. That in itself, could be an incredible burden.”
Beyond the Ramble, he comes upon water again. There’s a beautiful bridge arching over the pond’s moon-stippled surface. Beyond the bridge there’s a breathtaking fountain. Beyond that, another open field. He cannot begin to imagine how one would build such a bridge or fountain. But he thinks he might, if he had enough time, clear such a field. Not everything, he decides, is lost.
“I know one thing. I know that if having my memory means living my life to put such beliefs as Prophet’s and Orin’s above everything else, even the safety and well-being of another, then I’m better off knowing that by tomorrow I will have forgotten them both.”
And he says nothing more as he crosses Sheep Meadow and the Heckscher ball fields, coming at last to the puppet house.
Forget the dead, the past? Oh, yet
There are ghosts that may take revenge for it,
Memories that make the heart a tomb,
Regrets which glide through the spirit’s gloom,
And which ghastly whispers tell
That joy, once lost, is pain.
—from “The Past” by Percy Bysshe Shelley
That which is behind me is of no concern.
I need only keep my eyes on that which lies before me . . .
Because that defines my path in life.
—Unknown [attributed to Jeremiah Prophet, b. 1976, d. 2010 (?)], spray painted on the wall in a Manhattan subway station
To Bob’s complete and utter amazement, there’s a puppet show in progress, with an audience sitting rapt in the carefully arranged benches. He takes a seat toward the back and, for the moment, simply enjoys the show.
“I know you can’t remember, but here’s the deal,” squeaks a marionette mouse, “I’m supposed to eat the cheese and you’re supposed to eat me.”
A scraggly tom cat scratches its head and sweeps a baffled expression across the audience. “I’m supposed to eat you?” The audience laughs at the cat’s incredulous tone.
“I’m quite confident that that’s the way it’s always been,” replies the mouse.
The cat moves its paw, revealing a wedge of Limburger. It looks at the cheese. Looks at the mouse. Looks at the cheese. Finally, the cat looks at the audience. “But I was really looking forward to that cheese!” In that moment, when the cat’s attention is on the laughing audience, the mouse darts forward and snatches up the cheese. Then, with a quick snap of its heels, it’s gone, taking the cheese with it.
“My cheese!” wails the cat. Agitated, it runs about madly for a few seconds, but then it stops and settles down. “Oh well, I suppose it’s all been worth it,” the cat says philosophically, “if it gets me out of eating mice.”
Bob wonders about the creativity of the puppeteer, who must surely have written this skit after the spread of the CDS virus. Perhaps it’s another immune, like Prophet and Orin. A simple peek behind the curtain and a few choice questions would give him the answer, but Bob decides he’d rather believe that creativity has survived CDS.
“Where on earth have you been, Kevin?” exclaims a slim brunette as she slides onto the bench beside him. Bob looks her up and down and, though he finds her extremely attractive, he doesn’t recognize a thing about her.
“Uh oh,” she sighs, “I’ve seen that vacant look before. You set your briefcase down on the subway again, didn’t you?”
“I don’t know,” he stutters.
“You don’t even know who I am, do you, Kevin?”
Kevin?
She slides closer, putting her arm around him. “It’s me, baby. Julie.”
“Julie?”
“Your wife, silly.” She takes a handful of photographs from her purse and shows him one. It’s the two of them, though years younger. White dress. Tuxedo. A cake. There are words on the back of the photograph, though he can’t read them. The handwriting, however, looks familiar. “Kevin and Julie Mueller,” she says, tracing the words with her finger, “June 21st, 1995.”
Kevin Mueller? It sounds no more familiar than Bob McGiveny. Still, she smells wonderful and warm. And something about her feels right pressed against his side. It’s possible, he thinks, that some of our neurons remember better than others. It’s possible that our sense of touch has a memory all its own. He tests his theory by running his fingertips along the line of her jaw, across her lips, down the length of her arm. He decides it’s true, maybe for no better reason than he wants to believe it’s true, but that’s reason enough.
Touch has a memory.
“Let’s go home,” Julie says. She consults a pocket computer for the address and they leave the puppet show behind to stroll hand in hand through the park.
Her hand in his is the most familiar experience he’s encountered all evening. The smooth breadth of her palm is a perfect match against his own. Nerve and skin cells, flesh and blood and tactile palm patterns—even the CDS virus—recognize the proximity and the rightness of h
er.
WAITING FOR THE RIDDLERS
Charles Sheffield
They gave new meaning to the phrase “nagging uncertainty . . .”
Humans and Riddlers may have misunderstood each other j from the first moment of contact. That is one conclusion of this report. It is also, if I may be allowed to interpolate a personal statement as the official head of Earth’s delegation, our probable best hope.
The problem was partly one of expectations. Mile-long spaceships; vast flotillas, girdling Earth in their thousands and bristling with weapons; subtle ethereal messages, drifting in as radio signals from the stars and requiring painstaking decoding after their detection.
Sorry; none of the above. No one, in all the millions of words written about first contact, had told us to be ready for a single, stubby vessel. No one had told us to look for four fronded purple plants sitting in garbage cans of dark soil.
Even after the first shock, we didn’t do well. How was our delegation to know that the plants were no more than a habitation, and the Riddlers themselves comprised a commensal intelligent multi-cell mold that lived among the roots?
Luckily, they took it very well. Maybe I should say, we thought they took it well; with the Riddlers, you could never be sure of their thinking. I can be sure, though, that their interpretive equipment produced a most realistic chuckle of amusement when I explained our misunderstanding. “Not a problem,” it said. “It takes all sorts to make a Galaxy. This won’t count against you when it comes to acceptance within the Federation. Why, we doubt if we’ll even bother to report it.”
Words intended to reassure (I think) but also enough to alarm me and the other five delegation members who had flown with me up to the Riddler ship.
“What will count against us?” I asked.
“Very few things. Of course, it would be a mistake to fire any more of those silly nuclear rockets at us. A number of Federation members strongly believe that new applicants ought to be potty-trained before they are considered eligible for admission. But we happen to believe other criteria are more important. Go back home and wait. We will beam down to you three questions, in increasing order of difficulty. Your answers, provided to us in each case within twenty-four hours of asking, will be used to decide your eligibility.”
Note that they did not say “riddles.” The name that the media of Earth gave them, the Riddlers, came about only because of their first question. They termed it the establishing question.
“What is it that walks on four legs in the morning, two legs in the afternoon, and three legs in the evening?”
An odd beginning, for beings with no legs at all. Or was that itself a hint, offered to us at the very start? I’ve wondered about that, a hundred times. Suppose the tubs of soil and the fronded plants housed nothing but transmission and receiving equipment, and the Riddlers themselves remained far away? Suppose they did not want us to know their true shapes, for good and sufficient reason?
Those suspicions only came to me later. At the time the question seemed so simple and familiar that we were at first reluctant to give the answer. However, we couldn’t think of any sensible alternative, so twelve hours after we received their transmission I sent our answer to what has been known to humans for four thousand years as the Riddle of the Sphinx: “The creature that walks on four legs in the morning, two legs in the afternoon, and three legs in the evening is a human being.”
“Thank you.” Their reply came at once. “Sounds fine to us, but if you will please wait . . .”
What alternative did we have? Their ship zipped away from Earth orbit, with an acceleration that made it clear they had the inertialess drive we have wanted for so long. One day later the Riddlers were back.
“The second question we will term the question of judgment,” they said. “Who is the greatest human who has ever lived? It is desirable that humans agree on the answer that you provide to us.”
If the first problem had been trivially easy, this one was impossibly hard. The greatest human? What did the adjective mean? Was it a trick question? Did all humans have to agree on the answer? How significant was the fact that the Riddlers had giggled in the middle of the transmission?
We had twenty-four hours. We could have spent twenty-four years without reaching a consensus. We didn’t know how the Riddlers judged greatness, and requests for clarification produced no answer from them. Greatness might be scientific, artistic or religious. It could mean the tallest or fattest human. It might be in terms of all-around accomplishments, rather than achievement in only one field. It could even mean—though no one but Admiral Rawson supported the idea—the most successful military conqueror.
The arguments back on Earth were horrendous. Twenty-two hours of heated discussion produced bunches of candidate names. Christ, Shakespeare, Napoleon, Mozart, Newton, Confucius, Bach, Moses, Da Vinci, Mohammed, Aristotle, Julius Caesar, Einstein, Buddha, Socrates, Imhotep.
Twenty-two hours also proved that humans would never agree. Moslems vetoed Christ and Buddha. Artists vetoed scientists, scientists pooh-poohed the list of artists. Minority groups complained of Western Judeo-Christian bias. Feminists objected to every name, and proposed an all-female slate of candidates.
Consensus? Forget it. But no answer was the worst answer of all. As head of the delegation, I was forced to make a decision. I sent our reply: “The greatest human who ever lived was the one who discovered the use of fire.”
It was a cop-out, of course, since we could not offer a name. All I can say is that we avoided all problems of race, color, creed, religion, gender, and sexual preferences, and someone had to decide.
“Very good,” the Riddlers said. “A most interesting answer. If you will please wait.
Their ship vanished, as rapidly as before. This time we waited for over three weeks, biting our racial metaphorical fingernails. Finally the Riddlers returned.
“The last question we will term the question of ethics,” their transmission said. “It is more complex than the first two, so please listen carefully. Are you ready?”
“We are ready.” But I wasn’t sure what the Riddlers meant by “ready,” and I crossed my fingers when I said it.
“Let us suppose that you are accepted into the Universal Federation of species. As you expand through the Galaxy, you encounter numerous other star-faring ’civilizations. Suppose that you meet an unscrupulous and ambitious race, which, following an Earth tradition, we will call the Bad Guys. The Bad Guys seek to gain an advantage over humans, but they do not know you well. To learn as much as possible about you, they undertake a diabolical experiment. On a remote Earth-like planet, far off the usual space-lanes and with no intelligent life, they introduce a tribe of animals genetically close to humans: chimpanzees, brought there from Earth. However, by means of an externally imposed radiation field, the Bad Guys raise the intelligence of the chimps to match the intelligence of humans. The Bad Guys can then observe the development of a native civilization on the planet, without ever allowing their own presence to become known, and they will learn more about humans. Do you understand?”
“Certainly. But we have not heard a question.”
“We have not yet asked one. To proceed: humans, traveling those far-off regions of the Galaxy distant from the usual spaceways, discover the planet on which the Bad Guys are conducting their experiment. The Bad Guys flee, leaving intact the engine that generates the intelligence-enhancing field. It is discovered by the human explorers.
“The humans now face a dilemma. Suppose that they go away and allow the augmenting field to remain in operation. Then, when the elevated chimps achieve spaceflight and move beyond their home planet, the brave explorers will decline to animal intelligence and be unable to operate their ships. They will inevitably die. The way to the stars will be closed. The alternative is to turn off the field, allow the chimps to lapse back to primitivism, and hope that time and evolution will permit the development of a naturally intelligent species on the planet. Do you understand all
this?”
“Completely.”
“Then here is your question: What should the humans do?”
This time, oddly enough, there was almost no disagreement among the thousands of human groups who had fought so bitterly about the answer to the second question. We could have sent our answer within a few hours. I waited, but only because it seemed impolite to offer a quick answer to what the Riddlers had said would be the hardest question.
Finally I beamed our consensus: “To an intelligent creature, the loss of intelligence is as bad as or worse than death. If the radiation field were to be turned off, an intelligent species would be destroyed. That is unconscionable. The field must be left on, and the humans must go away.”
“Very interesting,” said the Riddlers. “Thank you. That is an illuminating answer. If you will please wait . . .”
The ship again did its high-acceleration vanishing trick. We waited.
We are still waiting. It has been almost a year and a half since they left, but there is no sign of the Riddlers.
I do not think that they will be coming back. We failed the test. It is as simple as that.
Isn’t it?
I would certainly like to think so.
THE SAUCER MAN
Jeff Hecht
“You’ve got to give up the flying-saucer business, Jack. It’s history. That’s why you’re in Lawrence, Iowa, complaining about motels from a pay phone.”
I sighed. “Look, Angie, it’s my only saleable skill.”
“Not very saleable, Jack. You’ve got to change with the times. Even my channelling clients get bigger bookings than you. Alien abductions are hot now. Can’t you get your alien friends to snatch you for a few experiments? Work a little sex into it, and I can get you plenty of gigs on the West Coast. You could pull in a couple thousand every night of the year, not four or five hundred a pop for a month or two.”