by Sue Lange
The band took up “Bringing in the Sheaves,” with a rolling funk bass line accented on the two and four. The choir sang in a call and response style with “Bring ‘em on in” being the response. The audience joined in for the final chorus which went on for an hour or so, heightening in volume as time went on and inciting audience members to enter the aisle and jump to the band’s insidious beat. jWad beat the back of the seat in front of him with his hands, using the entire row in front of him as a drum kit. The end of the song brought relief to the exhausted believers. Everyone but the choir members and the master of ceremonies flopped into seats to breathe.
The members of the Perpetual Motion Club each reacted in their own way to the spectacle. May and jWad shouted and sang with the sinners. Christine, experiencing a sinus attack, excused herself to the bathroom where she remained for the duration. Elsa stood unmoving, watching it, considering it, confused for the most part but keeping her eyes on the black box. Gerry Martin was certainly a showoff, a tease. But Elsa wearied towards the end and slumped down into her seat.
When the music had finally died, and the crowd settled, the woman began again. “You have come tonight to see the unveiling of my latest perpetual motion machine.” She stepped away from the podium, bringing the mike with her. She talked slowly, soothingly, quietly to the crowd.
Elsa sat up in her seat and breathed through her mouth. The tension was killing her.
“This is my latest creation,” Gerry Martin said. “One which is fully tested and functional. I have looked forward for many months to this moment when I would unveil it and prove to you and the world what God in his infinite capacity is capable of.
Most of you here are believers, you do not need proof of the existence of God as manifested by the making and breaking of physical laws. You know by the light inside yourselves of his existence. God bless you. God bless you!
But some of you are weak. You need my proof. You need to see God’s power. I say unto you: Get behind me! Do not approach me. Do not tempt me.” Here her voice rose in volume. She began shouting.
“How dare you enter my presence, you messenger of Satan! Do not spread your filth and disease here. Your wickedness! You are unclean. Go and clean yourselves and when you return, we shall unveil God’s love. We will reveal the light. Go sinners! Go unbelievers!”
A rolling snare had been playing throughout the tirade and now it turned into a march as the band took up a chorus. The choir joined in on a “Jesus Loves Me” in 2/4 time—a military version with intention, anger almost.
“I cast you out of my presence!” the master shouted. “All you of wavering faith, repent and be saved!” At first one lone man, sweat soaking his short-sleeved shirt came forward. He was a small man. Older. Tears streamed down his face. He tried to articulate his failing, but failed even at that. Finally he gave in and blubbered, “Forgive me,” as he stumbled up to the front and fell to his knees before the orchestra pit. The master came around to the front and placed her hand on the man’s bowed head. “Repent and be saved!” she shouted.
Soon others came forward. One or two from the side aisles. Then suddenly a stream of repentant believers were leaving their seats and asking forgiveness and begging not to be sent away. May and jWad joined the stream, faking a need for redemption just to be able to participate in the glow. Christine was still in the bathroom.
Elsa sat stunned and stoically unbelieving. She had not been prepared for a Saturday night revival. Raised in the Unitarian atmosphere of free thought, conversation, and debate in all matters evangelical, Elsa had never entered a traditional church. She had no idea that believing in perpetual motion was the same as being saved.
Most of the seats were by now empty, with only a few unsatisfied customers still waiting for the unveiling. They were the true believers, they’d come, like Elsa, for information. For answers. For the missing piece of their own personal puzzleworks in the basements of their homes. They looked around, recognized each other, and shook their heads sadly.
After an hour or so of watching the singing, the praising of god, the dancing in the aisles, it became obvious to the few faithful ones that truly believed in perpetual motion that the velvet cloth covering the box would not be removed tonight. The others, the joyful sinners, had lost interest in the machine and were now wallowing in the moment, slobbering on the floor in a horizontal, yet very energetic position. The choir members left the stand and danced around the orchestra, the podium, and the black box. The minister walked amongst the newly saved, expressing praise, blessings, and head touching.
When jWad and May, sweaty and red-faced, finally returned to Elsa, they found her grinding her teeth, unsmiling with eyes wide open.
“Wow, I feel like a beer!” jWad said. He shook Elsa’s shoulder. You?”
“Yes!” shouted Elsa, jumping up.
Numbing herself seemed the most appropriate thing to do. She grabbed jWad and pulled him around, pushing May ahead of her. Heading up the aisle they met a blotchy-faced Christine who was finally returning from the bathroom. Elsa spun her around as well, and then, pushing aside the revelers in the aisle, led the group out to the lobby and into the street. They ran the two miles to their car.
jWad and May smoked in the front seat all the way home. Christine sat far to the left side in the back. She kept her head hanging out the open window as she gasped for breath and babbled about lack of air. The two up front laughed and teased each other and sang to the songs blaring from the iPod he’d plugged into the car’s stereo. Every once in a while he’d shout, “Hey, I thought we were going to get some beer,” to no one in particular.
Elsa, in the back with Christine, did not say a word the entire ride. She chose instead to stare out the window on the right side and wonder if she should be mad at Jimmy for not being here to comfort her or glad that he hadn’t witnessed this latest, greatest defeat. For some reason admitting Brown, Lainie, and everybody was right didn’t seem nearly as painful as having Jimmy know she was a failure.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Elsa didn’t, in fact, say a word for several days. She stayed in her room all Sunday except when she ventured to the kitchen for a pb&j and glass of milk. Monday she went to school, but spoke to no one and barely paid attention to the teachers’ lectures. She took no notes, turned in no homework.
Tuesday was better. After dinner, she headed down to her workshop in the basement determined to finally follow her mother’s orders and clean up the mess. She stared at her contraptions and the notes stuck on the panels and instrument dials for ten minutes. Without touching so much as a single resistor she turned around and retreated upstairs.
Wednesday she gathered courage and visited the Internet, following links to PMM debunking pages and found lots of information on Gerry Martin and her traveling evangelical circus. How could she have been so blind to miss all that? Back then she had found the pro-Gerry Martin sites, none of which mentioned praising God. Lots of BELIEVE!s all over the place, but nothing about eternal life. It was as if Google itself was rigged in favor of Gerry Martin; all searchers of information on perpetual motion phenomena found routes to this woman’s site and nothing that disagreed with or disapproved of her. Or had Elsa followed only the sponsored links in her initial searches back then? Sponsored by Gerry Martin’s propaganda apparatus? What kind of scientific mind did she have so devoid of skepticism?
Thoughts of winning FutureWorld slowly disappeared during her days of mourning as the rug unraveled beneath her. Without the last bit of information she had expected to get from Gerry Martin, her own machine would never work. And if she chose to believe the debunking web sites, Mr. Brown, her mother, Sir Isaac Newton, Leonardo Da Vinci, and the rest of the civilized world, her machine could never work. It didn’t go against God’s will so much as the laws of the universe.
Maybe God could perform miracles, maybe she did need to believe. Perhaps it was moments like this when Born again Christians are born. But then the saying “God helps those who help themselv
es” insinuated itself. So she pondered how to help herself. She envisioned the lost FutureWorld prize, the lost Science Society invitation, the lost college opportunities. Life on the streets was her future now. Drug addiction. Her mother was not about to support her and not even a rousing pep talk from Dad could solve this problem. Not much for God to work with, she was afraid.
She settled for a night of mind-numbing TV, the respite for everyone on the brink of self-knowledge when they discover they are a failure and can do nothing about it.
Thursday after school she watched TV with a glass of Jetsream soda and continuous stream of iHigh.
Friday after school she watched TV with a glass of Jetstream soda and continuous stream of iHigh.
Saturday she watched TV all day. Sunday she did the same.
For five days she sat through cop shows, talk shows, afterschool specials, reality TV, music videos, celebrity gossip, sports commentary, NOVA, prime time soap operas, I Love Lucy reruns, and SpongeBob SquarePants. Everything went in and out without making a dent in her problems.
Finally early Sunday evening, half way through a history channel special on inventions that shaped the world as we know it, the doorbell rang.
When the Dr. Zhivago theme sounded a second time, she listlessly peeped through the spyhole and there was Jimmy.
“Open” she commanded the door.
“Hi,” he said.
“It sucked,” she said.
“I heard. May told me. She enjoyed it apparently, but it sounded . . . macabre, I guess you’d say.”
She turned and walked into the kitchen, leaving him to figure out that he was welcome to come in. He followed her and leaned against the door jamb as she made up her mind what to do and say.
“Want something to drink?”
“Sure.”
She pulled a couple of glasses from the cupboard and the Jetstream from the fridge, poured drinks, and then sat at the table with them. He took a seat.
“Sorry I couldn’t get here sooner, but I figured you probably didn’t want to talk about it.”
She sneered. “You were busy with your ‘friends’.” She exaggerated the “friends” to let him know she didn’t approve and didn’t really believe they were his friends. She was his only real friend even though she abused him every chance she got. All that was in the way she said “friends.”
Jimmy ignored the subtext. “Am I still in the Club?”
Elsa had been rubbing the bridge of her nose with the heel of her hand. She stopped and looked up at him. Jimmy was so dumb. “The Club isn’t sanctioned, perpetual motion isn’t real, we can’t win FutureWorld. What’s the point?”
“The Club is important beyond all those things.”
“Oh god! Don’t tell me you actually want to keep going with that stupid thing.”
“It’s not stupid. It’s one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen somebody do.”
“Why, because it’s such a failure?” Elsa felt a tightening in her throat. She hoped this would be over quickly before her eyes started welling up. The last thing she needed was for Jimmy to see a tear in her eye.
“Maybe. But it’s not really a failure. You’re the one that said groundbreaking ideas never win anybody over right away. It takes time. You need to keep going and finish your project so everyone will see the beauty. If you quit now, it’ll prove everyone right.”
“Jimmy, perpetual motion is a farce. We can’t win.”
“I know it’s a farce. Everyone knows it’s a farce. That doesn’t mean it’s not beautiful. You’ve been saying that all along.”
Elsa hung her head. She didn’t know what to tell Jimmy now. He had no idea that she had actually been trying to build one that would work. He believed her sales talk. And he wasn’t letting this thing die. She rested her forehead in the palm of her hand. Jimmy was so dumb.
“Do you want me to go?” he asked.
Yes, she screamed in her head, but to him she quietly said. “I guess so. I’m very tired and . . . tired.” She wanted to say confused, but she didn’t want him to know that. “Thanks for coming,” she said, standing up from the table. He said his goodbye at the door, giving her a friendly pat on the shoulder before leaving. Through watery eyes, she watched him go and then went up to bed. She fell into a light sleep.
***
With the force of a thousand screaming Jetstream signs (and Jimmy’s annoying optimism) the answer hit Elsa at two a.m. and jerked her violently awake. She sat upright gasping for breath. Her mind’s eye struggled between the dream camera zooming at light speed into the black velvet box and the reality of her nighttime bedroom.
Throwing back the coverlet and jumping up from the bed, she ran to her computer and fired up the Internet. She traveled to Northawken High’s site, visiting the past winners of the FutureWorld competition. Last year Cynthia Williams won for a traffic router program, the year before that Jim Green’s BMX simulation game won. Before that it was an interactive galactic map. Software. That’s what was winning. When she searched the past twenty five years of winners, she found nothing but software. Not only was software the only winner, it was the only type of entrant. No one worked in reality anymore. Would she even have won if she’d invented a PMM? Would anyone have cared? Certainly no one would have believed. Oh how she hated that word.
She remembered now all those monitors at last year’s competition, exhibiting flashy games or more secure security. Some of the racier entrants bragged of hacking feats. It was as if all of science had turned into a mere tool for a big life. There was no more science. No more questioning. It was all market-driven. What do the people want? That’s what the scientists give them. But science and technology are not the same thing. Science begins with a question. Technology ends with an answer. But not always the answer to Science’s question.
Why do people, most of whom have no interest in science, leave it up to the eggheads to ask the questions? And why do the eggheads simply bow to the demand for technology from such uncaring, uncreative, non-visionaries? People like liars and false prophets and profiteers and boring people and stupid students and uncaring basketball players and evil drug addicts? People who only want what they want and what they want is not much more than a healthy return on investment.
Can’t we celebrate the impractical once in a while? Besides, isn’t the impractical the foundation of great progress? If people hadn’t been searching for free energy all this time, would Archimedes’ pump, complicated gear systems, or solar collectors ever have been invented? Would Da Vinci have come up with anything at all if he hadn’t foolishly tried to get something from nothing?
Why don’t science teachers teach that? Why do they just pooh-pooh all the history and celebrate only new ideas? Doesn’t that just confuse people, like mothers who last year greeted you each day with a cheerful “Good morning, dear,” but this year only grunt with disgust when you enter the room? And why? Because you have an affinity for an old idea?
She ran down to the workshop and looked at the numerous half-completed devices: the magnets, the belts, the wheels, the pumps, the inverters, the transformers, the solder, the glue, the clamps, the housings, the casings, the boards, the lacquer, the paint, the outlets, the pipes, the plaster, the steel, the leather, the copper, and the hemp.
It was all so beautiful. For somebody that was so dumb, Jimmy was pretty slice.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Monday she texted every single member of the Perpetual Motion Club, including and especially Jimmy: meeting tonight. Seven p.m. No excuses.
Grudgingly they all showed up, but only because of the Jetstream soda and chips. jWad and May drank a quart each of Foster’s before coming. Elsa ignored their half-closed eyes and talked as if they were actually listening.
Christine alternately listened and applied nasal spray. Her winter cold had lingered despite the fact that April was here.
Jimmy was Jimmy. She glanced at him now and then, bolstering her resolve.
“We’re going to
have an entry in FutureWorld,” Elsa announced once the thing had begun.
“What are you going to do?” Christine asked, marginally interested.
“We are going to put together an exhibit on perpetual motion,” Elsa answered.
“Ow, wow,” said jWad. “Are we going to sing and shout and get saved?” He was definitely on board with the idea.
May giggled.
“No!” Elsa said. “Not like that. This is going to be real. I mean a real explanation of perpetual motion. We’ll explain what it is and why it doesn’t work with a series of models.”
“Oh yeah?” jWad said, still on board with the idea. “Like in the Frederick’s of Hollywood catalog?”
May giggled again.
“What is it about science?” Elsa asked, ignoring jWad’s comment and speaking mostly to Jimmy who listened intently even if a bit absent mindedly.
“It sucks!” jWad, May, and Christine answered.
“Precisely. No one likes it,” Elsa responded.
Jimmy shrugged. “Actually—”
She cut him off. “It’s hard.” She began pacing behind the bar like a lecturer beginning to ramble. “It makes no sense half the time. Except that it does. There are enough people that take the time to work through the process and come out on the other side that we’ve progressed to the state of, er, progress that we have. If science sucked so bad, no one would have invented the wheel and we’d be stuck with bark flatbeds dragged around by dogs. But we’ve gone so far beyond simple understanding that no one ever bothers trying to figure anything out anymore. We just give up. It sucks.”
“It sucks,” jWad repeated.
“It really does,” May said.
“Actually—” Jimmy said.
“But only because no one is taking the time to show it doesn’t,” said Elsa.
“So you’re going to do that?” Christine asked.
“Yes, we are. We all are.”