by Mendy Sobol
My turn comes. I leave the wooden pew, marching up the aisle past all those dark faces, the white girl from Grosse Pointe, feeling like a cornflake in a bowl of raisins. I’ve brought a dog-eared copy of John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme that I stole from WELL’s record library at Wellston. Setting it on the platter, lifting the tone arm, carefully placing the stylus in the black vinyl groove, I wait, not ready to look at Evelyn, not ready to say goodbye. Except for crackling from the RCA’s speakers, everything is silent, even the crying stops.
As Coltrane’s soaring saxophone prayer fills the church, the mourners join him, erupting with “Hallelujahs” and “Praise Gods.” I find my lips moving, my voice growing louder, rising above the others, joining them, leading them, simply repeating Evelyn’s name—“Evelyn! Evelyn!” And Coltrane sounds for all the world like he’s playing just for her.
That’s when I look beside me into the open casket. And there’s my friend, dressed in a white satin gown, looking beautiful, looking like a Supreme.
PART SEVEN
MELORA
Chapter Forty-Seven: Melora
Meg was right all along.
“Spend one day working at the clinic,” she said. I stayed for six months. Changing bedpans. Changing bandages. Changing my mind.
I would’ve stayed longer, but the Minister of Defence ordered my ass back to Saigon to fix some programming glitches in People’s Army surface-to-air missiles. Personally, I’d spend that money on education, or medical care, or shit, I don’t know, pizza. But after what Vietnam’s been through, who can blame them?
So Meg was right. Or maybe that woman’s a fucking bruja. Either way, I’ll never see her again. Or Tesla.
Or Toby.
In Saigon, the timer I set is counting down. HYDRA, Tesla’s many-headed monster, up-and-running right under the nose of my CO, a party-appointed pendejo who can’t tell a microchip from a potato chip. Hacking into IPI’s Net and finding Bruin was easy. Wellston still accepts IPI blood money, still links Bruin to their Net. They say it’s for historical research, but the real reason is no one ever gave enough of a shit to cut the link. Besides, with Toby in prison and me half a world away, why not let their guard down? They caught the bogeymen, so who the fuck do they have to be afraid of?
In my office at the Defence Ministry, Tesla’s last message, his first message, the real message, is loaded on my computer and ready to drop. When Tesla changed it, he didn’t know where it was going. I do. To 1970. To Bruin. To Toby.
Will it prevent my war? Will it keep Coop, Grendel and the others out of jail? Will it save Darin’s life? Tesla doesn’t know. He doesn’t know what will happen to me. He only knows there won’t be any nukes dropped on Vietnam or Afghanistan. And he knows Toby will die.
I could change my mind. Try another way. Try to save him. Haven’t slept in months thinking about that one. Tesla’s got his dreams, and I’ve got fucking nightmares. But I could send a different message, right? I’ve thought of hundreds of them. And then what might happen? Wars? Famines? Pandemics? Peace and love? Or maybe the fucking Martians attack.
I don’t know. I can’t know!
Oh, shit. I’m so fucking weak. That’s why I set the timer and got outta Dodge. The hydrofoil from the port in Saigon to Vung Tau took ninety minutes, long enough so there’s no fucking way I can turn back in time. The fare was cheap, too. Especially for a one-way ticket.
The South China Sea isn’t the Gulf of Mexico, but Vung Tau has four good beaches— Front, Back, Pineapple, and Paradise. The humid air smells sweet and salty, the sand hot beneath my feet, the breakers churning. Looks like I’m spending my last day in Paradise.
Forgive me, Coop. Forgive me, Maggie. Forgive me, Captain Rusk. You deserved better. You too, Tesla. Even you, Meg. I never apologized for shitting all over you.
And forgive me, Toby, for doing what you asked.
I pull out my hearing aid, the one Joey bought me when we were kids in St. Francis, and stick it in my pocket. Stripping off my tee shirt and stepping out of my cutoffs, I ignore the staring tourists and run into the suddenly muffled surf, diving headfirst into a breaker, swimming and swimming straight out from shore, until I can’t see the tourists or the breakers or the beach. I kick over onto my back, closing my eyes, floating in the vastness of warm, clear, salt water.
Then, I sense… something. Something big, its smooth gray form slicing through the water, coming fast.
I dive. It dives with me. I look, and through the salt-water’s sting, I see it.
It’s different from my Gulf of Mexico devil ray. Bigger. Way the fuck bigger. Fifteen feet long. No horns, but a wide scoop mouth and white belly, spotted, like a dog.
I dive deeper, not sure if it’s following. My hand touches bottom, hair floating around my face, plastering down against it as I turn and kick upward.
There he is, five yards away, undulating his huge body, staring at me, wondering what the fuck I am.
Is he dangerous?
Does it matter?
I swim upward, spinning as I swirl past him.
C’mon, diablito, we’re running out of time. C’mon—dance with me!
PART EIGHT
TOBY
Chapter Forty-Eight: Toby
“How’s he doin’ that?”
I was so surprised, I said it out loud. I’d pulled up Tesla’s last message. But as soon I read it, a new one appeared!
Toby— I miss you.
Damn! Did Tesla figure out how to send messages through the Engineering Department link? Helluva way to break the news!
Okay, Tesla, how ‘bout this—
Tesla— If you miss me so much why don’t you get your ass down here and help with this program? Toby
At first no response. Then—
Toby— Is that you? Where are you? What are you working on? Tesla
Well that’s a head scratcher. He knows where I am, he knows what I’m workin’ on, and he damn well knows I’m dyin’ to find out how he’s doin’ this!
Tesla— You were expecting Harpo Marx? I’m at the Physics Department working on the computer-linking program. Where else would I be? The question is, where are you, and how are you sending these messages? You’ve been holding out on me, Tesla! Toby
No answer. Tesla’s lettin’ the drama build!
But ten minutes go by, and there’s still no answer.
Okay, I get it. He wants me to figure it out for myself!
So I scroll back to the message that was waitin’ for me when I logged in, lookin’ for clues.
Toby— Couldn’t find you at home or Beef ‘n’ Bun. ROTC Action meeting tonight. Meet me at Franklin Hall 2100 hours. THIS IS THE BIG ONE. Paul
In the blink of an eye Burnside House replaces Franklin Hall. And in the next instant Franklin Hall reappears, replacin’ Burnside House.
Tesla’s gotta be workin’ over at Engineering. But that doesn’t explain the instantaneous appearance and disappearance of entire sentences. If he’s makin’ changes through the link with the Engineering Department computer, deletions and additions should be occurrin’ after a pause. Maybe he imbedded the changes directly into entries he made on Bruin before I got here, programmin’ them to appear only after I logged in, playin’ one of his practical jokes and tryin’ to freak me out.
No. Not Tesla. Not lately anyway. It’s been a while since he joked about anything. But still, it’s just like him to bust my balls and make me wait until I see him at the meeting!
The meeting. Thinkin’ about the mystery of how Tesla programmed the shiftin’ messages was a lot easier than thinkin’ about what they said. And thinkin’ about the meeting made me remember the nightmare.
Last night’s Richmond Military Institute dream had been particularly vivid, especially bad. Everyone in their rooms, shinin’ shoes, shinin’ brass belt buckles, tightenin’ Windsor knots in black neckties, hurryin’ down dark corridors and stairwells to mess formation. Then fire. Fire and smoke. In the hallways, in the stairwells, smoke and panic.
And screamin’, screamin’ for help. There, there at the foot of the officer’s ladderway, in dress khaki, Tesla, Tesla on fire, burnin’, burnin’, callin’ out through smoke and flame, “Toby! Toby!” Then another voice behind me. A woman. A beautiful woman with chopped black hair, quicksilver wires danglin’ from behind her ears like Star Trek jewelry. A woman I’d never seen before, yet familiar, important to me, illuminated by fire, pointin’, cryin’, cryin’ out, “Save him! Save him!”
Nightmares always come after the phone calls.
“Toby Jessup, please.”
“Speakin’.”
“This is William.”
“What do you want, Willie.”
“The usual, Mr. Jessup.”
“Are you ever gonna to tell me your real name?”
Silence.
“Okay, okay. Here’s my report. But I’m tellin’ you, this is the last time. Understand?”
“Go ahead,” Willie said, makin’ it sound like a threat.
“The ROTC Action people are gettin’ some support ‘cuz of Cambodia and Kent State. Kent State wasn’t your idea, was it Willie?”
“I’m listening.”
“Anyway, I don’t think you’ve got anything to worry about. I’m pretty sure I can talk ‘em out of doin’ somethin’ stupid.”
“It doesn’t matter. We’ll be ready for them.”
“What the hell’s that mean?”
“Is there anything else?”
“No. No, that’s it. But I mean it, Willie. I’ve kept my part of the deal for four years. I’m a month from graduation, but I’m done. Finished. No more. Ya’ understand, Willie?”
“Thank you Mr. Jessup. I’ll be in touch.”
And the son of a bitch hung up.
It seemed so fuckin’ harmless when the commandant called me into his office. I was a senior, and he knew I’d been accepted at Wellston, knew my family didn’t have the money to pay for it. The note said he wanted to meet with me, “…to talk about some scholarship opportunities.” But when I got to his office he wasn’t there. A brown-shoed, blue-suited civilian sat behind the desk instead.
“At ease, Mr. Jessup. Have a seat.”
I hadn’t been standing at attention.
“Mr. Jessup, my name is Mr. Duke. I’ve got a proposition for you, a way to help you get through college and serve your country while you’re there.”
“I told the commandant I’m not interested in ROTC.”
Duke smiled. “Yes, Mr. Jessup. I’m aware you have no interest in a military career. That’s not at all what I had in mind.”
His proposition was simple. “Have you read about the radical groups forming on college campuses?”
“I’ve heard of SDS.”
“There are far worse organizations than SDS, Mr. Jessup. There are students who want to burn buildings and plant bombs. There are students who want to rob banks and use the money to buy weapons. There are students who want to kill people. All in the name of peace, Mr. Jessup, all in the name of peace. The only way we can stop them from bombing and burning and killing, from trying to destroy our way of life, is with information.”
“So what do you want me to do?”
“Nothing complicated, son. Go to college, take your courses, go to football games, go out on dates. In other words, be a regular college student. And report what you see and hear to us.”
“Who exactly is ‘us’?”
“Us, Mr. Jessup, are the people who are offering you a free ride to Wellston University.”
Talking myself into making the deal was easy. I wanted to go to Wellston. I couldn’t afford it on my own. And besides, I was a nerd. I’d never meet any radicals, never have anything to report. I was screwin’ Duke and his pals good. I’d get my tuition paid, and they’d get nothin’. If that’s the way they wanted it, that was fine with me.
Except four years had passed, and the whole world was different. I was different. And it wasn’t fine with me any more.
When I woke from last night’s dream, I was hot and sick, my heart racing, stomach churnin’, like I was gonna puke. I could still hear Willie, no emotion in his voice—We’ll be ready for them. My head felt like someone had shaken one of those little plastic dioramas filled with water and fake snow. But when the snow settled, I knew, more than ever, that violence never helped anything. Knew that after Cambodia and Kent State the war would have to end soon. Knew I had to do somethin’, say somethin’, to stop the two people I loved most in the world from makin’ a terrible, dangerous mistake.
I never say much at meetings. Just listen, joke around, suggest ways we can use Bruin. But tonight’s different. I’ll have to speak up, have to find the words. And after the meeting, I’ll tell Tesla and Meg, tell them everything. I hope they’ll forgive me, hope they’ll understand.
Alright. Gotta head out soon, but I’ll type in a little more code on the linkin’ program before I leave. I wish I could stay here all night. Continue workin’, continue life as it might have been before Mr. Duke, before Willie, before this whole fuckin’ war.
But that’s history. And I can’t change history.
8:45. Time to pull up my socks and put on my jock. Time for the meeting at Franklin Hall.
Standin’ in the doorway, feelin’ the chill of the cold, May, New England night, I flick off the lights. And turnin’ to Bruin one last time, for no particular reason, say, “Goodbye.”
PART NINE
PEACE
Chapter Forty-Nine: Paul
Last night the dream came again. The war, the ROTC meeting, the fire. Toby, Meg, Melora. Butler, Applewood, the Mekong clinic. The dead. Students like Bill Schroeder, Allison Krause, Jeffrey Miller, Sandy Scheuer, Phillip Gibbs and James Green. American and Vietnamese infantry, marines, aviators, medics, and nurses, remembered on walls and war memorials. Ian and thousands like him whose names grace no monuments but who died serving their country nonetheless. And civilian victims whose only memorial was the anguish of their families. The dream left me awestruck at the sight of towering mushroom clouds from nuclear explosions that never happened, yet did happen, could happen again, in any version of history I choose. And at the end, it woke me, clutching at my face in a nightmare of pain, feeling scars that aren’t there, scars from a different lifetime.
Yet despite my nightmares, I welcome the dreams. I welcome them because they’ve been my guide.
Paul Atreides, the hero of Frank Herbert’s Dune, saw the future so precisely, saw it so many times, he could pilot an ornithopter even after going blind. I’ve lived history so often in my dreams, I can almost move safely through life with my eyes closed. Yet this time I’ve had to be careful, living exactly as the dreams tell me, making the same choices, the same mistakes I made the first time, making sure I don’t upset the course of history again.
Even so, I must have messed up. America went metric in 1975. Disco never happened. The Watergate DNC office didn’t get burgled. Or the cover-up succeeded. Either way, Nixon finished his second term, got his Four More Years! Made the most of them, too. Recognized China, passed the National Environmental Policy Act, abolished the draft, and legalized gay marriage. Go figure.
The wars go on endlessly, but since Nagasaki, thank God, no one’s dropped another nuke. So far.
I’ve tempted fate a couple of times. I developed a Web browser named Toby. And though I promised Melora I’d never contact her, a promise I’ve kept, I have followed her camouflaged electronic trail. It wasn’t easy, because if it were, the FBI and Interpol would have found her years ago. She goes by the name Blackbeard and spends her time hacking into securely firewalled corporate and government networks around the world, leaking their secrets online. The only trace she leaves behind is a Polynesian-style graphic of a Gulf Coast devil ray. She’s so far underground even I can’t find her physical location, but in case she has dreams and comes looking for me, I left her a clue: I created an app for training novice programmers, naming it Melora.
For all that, I’m glad the dream
takes me no further than this moment. Because now, I’m free.
One last time I read the message on my screen: Toby— Couldn’t find you at home or Beef ‘n’ Bun. ROTC Action meeting tonight. Meet me at Franklin Hall 2100 hours. THIS IS THE BIG ONE. Paul
With regret, with sorrow, I exit Bruin’s memory, bringing HYDRA up on my monitor.
Press “Delete.”
A new message appears: Are you sure you want to permanently delete this program?
Yes, I answer. Yes.
And that’s it. Decades spent fulfilling the dream’s mandates. And now, at last, with whatever time I have left, I can pursue my own dreams.
Retiring from IPI is the first step. The young guns running the company won’t miss the old fart once-upon-a-time legendary programmer, will be happy they don’t have to fire me. Many years and many millions spent researching HYDRA, a failed program. No mention in the annual report, just one line in the profit-and-loss ledger under the column headed Adjustments.
IPI stock options have made me a wealthy man, and if my 401-K ever runs short, all I have to do is visit Santa Anita or Golden Gate Fields. I have my dreams of Toby and his Thoroughbred programming tweaks to thank for that. I also have my programs, Toby and Melora, and thanks to IPI, the knowledge, capital, and experience to market them. But the thought of staying in California, emulating other successful Silicon Valley businesses, becoming the next IPI, feels hollow. And with no dreams to guide me, the hard part will be finding inspiration elsewhere.
In the middle of the mild California winter, inspiration arrives. A copy of the Applewood Record sent by my Uncle Joel with a note—
I’ll bet this brings back memories!
In part it was the article about thieves stealing copper pipe from Dickens Hall on the abandoned Hilversum campus, heedlessly spilling hundreds of gallons of heating oil, costing the city thousands of dollars to clean it up, dollars the city didn’t have. In part it was the story about WFMH closing its studio in the old house on the ghost campus, moving to a renovated warehouse in Hoboken. Mostly it was the front-page picture captioned, “Citizens clean graffiti.” And there’s Terrell, James, and Roxy scrubbing gang tags from a W.E.B. Du Bois School wall.