by Lisa Mason
But she still has to wait out this dreadful night. What to do?
“You know what?” she says. “I’m hungry. Ravenous, in fact.” Best thing she can think of to settle that sharp, empty feeling of another lover leaving her is chilled wine and hot food. She uncorks a crisp chenin blanc at once. “You kids eat today?”
“You know I can’t eat, Ruby,” Chi reminds her. One day, when she remarked how much shorter it looked, he showed her his nutritional necklace and confessed he actually eats the beads—nutribeads, he calls them—which she thought was hilarious. He sternly lectured her about contamination in the food of this Now that a t-porter like himself cannot expose himself to. Right. He’s so gaunt, she can practically see what he’ll look like dead. He doesn’t sound very convinced now himself.
“I can’t eat, either, Ruby,” Starbright says, poking at her ribs through her blouse. Since the abortion, the kid has become nearly as thin as the magazine models she studies so intently. Ruby well remembers that age, filled with raging ambition and self-doubt.
She shrugs. “Suit yourself. I’m cooking. You two watch the street. Tell me if anything is happening out there.”
Ruby has been so busy getting ready for the riot, she hasn’t had time to go to the market. And all those dire warnings about stocking up on food for a state of siege. She’s got nothing in her cupboard but bits and scraps.
She slices six heels of bread—whole wheat, rye, five-grain—lengthwise and slathers the bread-fingers with safflower butter. She sprinkles on garlic powder and sets them under a low broiler.
What else has she got? A dozen eggs, thank Isis. She cracks them all into a bowl, beats until they’re frothy with parsley, black pepper, sea salt, and oregano. She stirs in the dollop of salsa she’s got left over, thick and hot with cayenne and an exotic herb called cilantro. She takes out her two cast-iron skillets. Ma always said cook in iron ‘cause it’s good for the blood.
She coats the first skillet with olive oil, turns the burner on low. She dices baby carrots from Chi’s garden, a red onion, two wilted scallions, a tomato, a tiny zucchini, garlic-packed mushrooms from a jar. Half a red bell pepper that’s seen better days, but it’s good. She peels the last lonely garlic clove. An Aries moon is good for cutting, but watch your fingers.
She tosses the vegetables in the first skillet, turns up the heat. Juice pops. The scents of frying onions and garlic toast fill the kitchen.
She plunks a chunk of safflower butter in the second skillet and drizzles that with chili-sesame oil. Yum. When the butter foams, she scoops in the egg-salsa mixture. Meanwhile the vegetables are reducing. She adds more garlic, more garlic, more garlic. When the eggs are nearly cooked, she folds in the vegetables.
What other leftovers has she got? She sprinkles the last of the grated Parmesan, which soaks up vegetable juices like a sponge. A cube of cheddar, another of Gruyere, a finger of Swiss. She dices pieces of cheeses. Salvador Dali said Jesus is cheese. In you go, Jesus. She covers the skillet, turns the burner off.
She removes the pan of toast-fingers and turns the broiler on high. She takes off the lid and places the skillet under the broiler for exactly fifty-three seconds, no more and no less.
Cheese bubbles and the herbs release their scents.
And, lo! Chi and the kid are hovering around the kitchen. The cats hover, too, trilling and purring. Cats always know good food.
“Here we go,” Ruby says, taking out the skillet. “A little bit of everything. I hereby christen this dish my Summer of Love Spicy Eggs. I’m glad no one wants to eat. More for me.”
Eleven o’clock. Everything quiet. Clayton deserted.
Morgana phones. “The S Squad is sweeping the streets tonight.” The S Squad is the city’s special police force, operating for the express purpose of closing hippie gathering spots in the Haight-Ashbury. “A big bust at 615 Cole.” A friend of Morgana’s placed her one permitted phone call to the House of Magick. “”It’s all just suspicion. The Man’s got nothing but a flushing toilet.”
Hippie gathering spots? Suspicion? Ruby pours herself another glass of chenin blanc and works out their story. Chi is the son of a friend of Ruby’s deceased mother who lives in Paris, and Starbright is Chi’s cousin from New York. They turn the music and the lights down low and devour Ruby’s Summer of Love Spicy Eggs and garlic toast.
It’s the first time Ruby has seen Chi eat food. He packs it away, like a skinny six-foot-four twenty-one-year-old ought to. Nutribeads, right. That’s better, she thinks, pleased at his ecstatic expression over her leftovers. The kid wolfs hers down, too. “Wow,” she keeps saying. “It’s not Swanson’s frozen Salisbury steak.”
She leaves Chi and the kid to their feast and goes to the living room window, anxiously peering out. Papa Al, Teddy Bear, and the cluster of patients still stand guard at the clinic door. But now they lounge on the stairs, toking, passing a bottle around. A patrol car glides down Haight. The Hells Angels haven’t shown up, for which Ruby breathes a relieved sigh. She likes the barbarian with the fur hat, Chocolate George. He’s got a righteous reputation and actually drinks chocolate milk, instead of beer. But as for the rest? She dreads the sight of hogs and colors. The Angels are notorious for hating blacks, Jews, women, anyone else not white, the police, other bikers, and each other. They are not the kind of folks you want partying at your doorstep.
Ruby wanders back into the living room, where the kid curls up on the couch and Chi sprawls on a chair.
“I can’t believe I ate that.” Chi rubs his washboard stomach and sips the wine Ruby insisted he try. “I think I’m getting heartburn.”
“Heartburn? You get heartburn?” Starbright says. There it is, again, the kid’s belligerence. Why? Chi has never excited more than a tolerant smile from her or an eye-roll at his crazy stories. What is this anger?
“Yes, Starbright, I’ve got a stomach just like you.”
“Oh, but I thought you were so superior. Different than us.”
Ruby sits in her rocking chair, settling Alana the Angora and Luna the bluepoint on her lap. Sita the sealpoint balances on her knee. Her boy cats, Ara and Rama, crouch at her feet. The cats didn’t care for spicy eggs but they eagerly devoured bits of cheese. Ruby feels good, considering, except for this tension between Chi and the kid. “Different how?”
Chi shakes his head at Starbright, a warning in his eyes. But the kid won’t stop.
“Oh, he’s different, Ruby. He showed me this afternoon. Didn’t you, Chiron Cat’s Eye in Draco?”
He gives her a pleading look.
“Oh, yeah. He’s got this thing like an electric plug, only it’s really, really tiny and it’s right in the back of his head. Gross! And he’s got a girlfriend.” To Chi, “Why didn’t you tell me you had a girlfriend before you started following me around?” To Ruby, “He’s got this girlfriend who walks around naked all the time, and she’s got a plug in her head, too. He says they plug their brains into telelink—isn’t that what you call it, Chi? They link into a place that a computer creates called telespace.”
“Plug your brain into a computer?” Ruby says. “I love science fiction, but what kind of nightmare is that?”
“The hardware enters at the base of the skull, yes,” Chi says. “The wetware interfaces with the arachnoidal membrane over the brain, then connects inside at various lobes.”
“That sounds awful!”
“It’s not awful,” Chi says, flushing. “Telespace is a miracle. It was a quantum leap. You could compare telelink to when people first mastered electricity, manufactured light bulbs, and lit the night. Or first understood bacteria, how microscopic organisms can kill, and how to fight them. Or developed the internal combustion engine, invented automobiles and airplanes and rockets. Or discovered the silicon chip. Ruby, in a decade, your calculating machine will be a laughable antique.”
“Not so fast, sonny,” Ruby says, sitting up. “I have fought for my calculating machine.”
“Telespace, and our ability to telel
ink, has made possible the mastery of data so vast and so fast, you can’t conceive of it. Telespace enabled access to ten thousand years of Archives. Enabled us to develop tachyportation and terraformation.” He sits back with his glass of wine, haughty and arrogant. “You cannot possibly realize.”
“When I first got to the Haight-Ashbury,” Starbright says, matching his tone, “I realized all kinds of things about life. My life, the way it was before the Summer of Love. My parents. Sex and death. School. And friendship. And love. You know what I flashed on when I tripped that one time, Ruby?”
“What’s that, kid?”
“I flashed on a photograph in my biology textbook of a monkey used in a sleep experiment. They put handcuffs on it so it couldn’t fight back or move and they stuck electrodes into its poor little skull and connected wires to a computer that monitored its brain waves. Some kids in my class thought it was funny, but I didn’t think it was funny at all. That’s what I thought of when I touched your neck, Chi,” she says to him. “When you told me you and your girlfriend plug your neckjacks into a computer. You’re no better than that poor little helpless monkey.”
He sputters. “That’s ridiculous! That’s reactionary! Telespace frees us!”
Starbright goes and sits at Ruby’s feet, rearranging Ara and Rama around her knees. She hooks her elbow over Ruby’s knee. “The monkey died.”
Chi shakes his head, pours another glass of wine. “Everything dies.”
Ruby reaches down and tangles her fingers in Starbright’s hair. The kid is on to something.
“You keep talking about the cosmicists, Chi,” Ruby says. “How are far out they are. Do cosmicists link into this telespace thing, too?”
“Of course. I’m a cosmicist.”
“Uh-huh. And what does it mean to be a cosmicist?”
“We believe in the Cosmic Mind. In the cocreatorship of reality by humanity and the Universal Intelligence. We believe in assuming responsibility for each individual’s actions because each action affects all of spacetime. To give is best. Live responsibly or die.”
“You also keep hinting about how rich you are.”
“My family and I have been living responsibly.”
“Why, that’s a principle of the hip community, too. Free yourself from media propaganda and the consumer culture.”
That stops him for a minute. “Well. The cosmicists have been able to launch major projects, like the Mars terraformation, by conserving funds and investing them over decades. Over centuries,” he says. “President Alexander outlawed deficit spending in the United States in 2093 and worked for decades after that to establish an economy based on True Value.”
“But you’re privileged,” Ruby persists. She recalls the killing looks he and Leo Gorgon have exchanged. “Fish ponds in the Sausalito hills? Domed estates? Hmm?”
“Not all cosmicists are rich,” he says, but his tone is defensive. “But all cosmicists have restructured their values from what you know. They’ve learned the honest and genuine desire to serve the world. They’ve put aside self-interest, greed, and corruption. They believe in opportunities and hard work. And they’ve taught their children these new values, too.”
“I see. But I don’t hear you saying you and your family gave up your fortune for your honest and genuine desire to serve the world.”
He’s silent.
“Well, did you?”
Chi sighs. “No, and why should we? Life by definition is greedy, hungry, self-indulgent. Life isn’t self-sacrificing. Death is the only true sacrifice.” He sighs again. “No, we have no intention of giving away our family fortune. Yes, we expect a return on our investments.” He stands and paces. “Cut me some slack, Ruby. You own the Mystic Eye. You—of all people I’ve met during the Summer of Love—believe in success. I’ve heard you argue many times with Leo Gorgon about incentive and free enterprise. And the future will prove you right, Ruby. The choice to succeed is right.”
“You offered me a choice on the roof. I could have picked up one of Gorgon’s Molotov cocktails and flung it to the street with my own hand.”
“But you didn’t.”
“But I could have.”
“But you didn’t and, as of the moment you didn’t, you never could have. Don’t you see? That probability collapsed into the timeline, not out. Our spacetime is conserved.”
“Wait, wait. What you’re saying is you t-porters allow that the past may not be what you thought it was? That the timeline you keep talking about is some kind of process? A set of probabilities?”
Starbright’s mouth falls open.
Ruby astounds even herself. “Right, am I right?”
Chi smiles, but his eyes are icy. “We could never have developed tachyonic transmission without allowing for some continuous cocreatorship between humanity and the Cosmic Mind. Bits of probability are always collapsing into the timeline. Cosmicist philosophy embraces that notion.”
“I don’t believe it!” Ruby cries and claps her hands. The cats look up, blink, then return to their cat-naps. She lowers her voice. “I can’t do this, no, no, no, I can’t do that. The Grandmother Principle is gonna getcha.”
“The mandate of nonintervention and the Tenets have a sound purpose,” Chi says quickly. “If a probability collapses out of the timeline, we’re all in big trouble. That’s why the Luxon Institute for Superluminal Applications invested so much research and money into the Summer of Love Project. To conserve the timeline during this Hot Dim Spot.”
“I still don’t get it,” Starbright says. “How can reality be probable?”
“Well, in quantum physics,” Chi says, “reality is always a set of probabilities. The theory goes back to Schrodinger’s Cat.”
“You mentioned that once before,” Ruby says, stroking Luna’s silky blue-gray fur. The bluepoint purrs and gazes up with liquid sapphire eyes. “Whose cat was that?”
“Schrodinger’s. Twentieth-century physics. The Heisenberg uncertainty principle is from your Now, not mine. The notion is that at every moment reality is manifesting, it also branches off into probabilities. We as observers participate in the process. That’s why it’s so hard for the Archivists to reduce Hot Dim Spots to a single narrative.”
“But what does that have to do with a kitty-cat?” Starbright says, scratching Ara’s chin. Ara yawns prettily.
“Um, it was an experiment. A thought experiment.” Chi gulps wine. “See, a cat is placed in a box. A device inside the box releases a lethal gas that will kill the cat. No one knows if the gas has been released or not, or if the cat is dead or not, until they open the box. Until someone looks, the cat is alive and dead at the same time.”
Ruby sits bolt upright. Starbright pulls Ara and Rama into her lap.
“What?” Ruby says in her sweet-as-poison voice.
“I didn’t make it up!” The cats stare at Chi, blue and gold eyes blazing. “A physicist, Edwin Schrodinger, proposed the thought experiment in 1935.”
“Nineteen thirty-five, uh-huh. And what nationality was Edwin Schrodinger?”
Chi rubs his forehead. “He was Austrian.”
“Achtung! Sehr gut, Beelzebub!”
“It’s horrible, I know,” Chi says miserably. “I never thought much about the way thought experiments were expressed until I met the two of you. All Schrodinger’s Cat does is demonstrate how spacetime exists as a set of probabilities that can be mutually exclusive until we observe a probability collapsing into the timeline. That’s all.”
“No, you’re talking about a gas chamber,” Ruby says. “A real experiment some Nazi scientist designed making a gas chamber. Right, am I right, Herr Chiron?”
“It’s just a metaphor. I always thought it was just a metaphor. Our techs use it to this Day.”
“A metaphor,” Starbright says. “Well, according to Professor Zoom, I’m a pussy. Put me in the box. Let’s wait for the gas. Am I alive? Am I dead? What a groovy thought experiment to demonstrate the probable nature of reality.”
“
I’m sorry,” Chi whispers.
“You bet your ass you and all your kind in the future are sorry.” Ruby stands, scattering the cats. “If you remember one thing to tell your people, you remember I told you this, Chiron Cat’s Eye in Draco. I told you before and I’ll tell you again. Dig it: the way you think about things shapes the way your reality is.”
“I will remember,” he declares, eyes flashing.
“Liberate Schrodinger’s Cat!” Starbright cries and raises her fist.
Chi raises his fist, too. “Liberate Schrodinger’s Cat!”
The tiny Angora with golden eyes and plumy white fur arches her back and mews. Alana is hungry again.
*
Ruby goes down to the shop, checks her locks, peers out the peephole. Still nothing but Papa Al and Teddy Bear and a posse of longhaired boys. Everyone’s toking and drinking and whooping it up. It’s good to see laughing people out there. Let them whoop. For the first time in her life, Ruby shivers when she thinks about the future.
So peaceful and quiet. When was the last time the street was so quiet at midnight? She hates this, being barricaded in her own place. She finds the hammer, pulls out the nails, takes down the plywood planks. She unlocks her door and steps outside. The air is fresh, tinged with sage incense.
Then suddenly it’s happening.
A flatbed truck careens around the corner of Clayton and Haight, a gang of twenty crammed in back. A truckful of shouting people!
Sweet Isis! Do they have shopping bags filled with knives? Machine guns?
They shout at her, “Peace and love! Peace and love, sister!”
They’re throwing things off the truck.
Bricks, stones, Molotov cocktails?
They’re throwing flowers onto the street. A long-stemmed carnation lands at Ruby’s feet.
August 8, 1967
Inquest
for the
Ungrateful Dead
13