“Pretty warm out, don’t you think?” Nathaniel said.
Erica shaded her eyes. “A bit. Maybe we can go some place out of the sun?”
“Do you have something in mind?”
“Oh, yes,” she said, and they walked toward her house.
In her bedroom, Meadoe held the hand still under her belly, and she walked hand in hand with Nathaniel down Harriston Boulevard. They went in her front door. A brief kiss. A fumbling with buttons and snaps. They laughed in the afternoon’s warmth, nearly stifling in the house, oblivious of heat and atomic bombs and milk trucks.
Meadoe forced her eyes open to the bedroom’s darkness. Their laughter rang in her house, echoey and distant. Moonlight slanted through the window, gathered in a form lying beside her.
His eyes were open, staring into her own across the years. Young eyes, long dead. They blinked.
“I’m not who you think I am,” said Meadoe.
The voice barely made it to her ears. It could have been no more than a breeze outside. Her own heart thudding in her veins. As light as a lover’s touch. “I know, Tokyo Rose,” he said, then the room was empty and twenty degrees cooler.
August 8, Saturday: Final Reel
“So you haven’t seen evidence of the ‘ghost’ since Wednesday night?” Joan pulled her notepad from a briefcase. She was in her therapist’s mode now, harder, more brusque than Joan the friend.
“No. He’s gone.” Meadoe leaned back in her chair.
“How can that be? You didn’t change history. He still died on August 6, 1945. You told me Erica Weiss believed it was her fault, that she still believes it, so why would he disappear?”
Meadoe smiled. “I don’t know, really, but I don’t think I changed history. I changed the ghost. It’s quantum physics, like I told you before—the uncertainty principle. Individual electrons are in all possible positions. History plays itself out in all ways.”
“Parallel worlds?” Joan wrote on the pad, and Meadoe couldn’t tell if she was taking her seriously or not, but she didn’t care. Couldn’t Joan feel it in the house? How much sweeter the air was? How much easier it was to breathe?
“Maybe, but I don’t think it’s that simple. Parallel spirits maybe. The worlds aren’t discreet. Nathaniel intersected here. I just showed him another way it could have turned out.”
Joan tapped her pen against the page. “You sound different. What’s going on?”
“Remember last week when you asked me what I feared most?”
Joan nodded.
“I found out what it was, and I conquered it.”
“In the dream?
“In the dream.” She remembered holding Nathaniel’s hand back. She’d said, “wait,” and he’d stopped. The power was in her then; it was in her now. She had control. “Come on, I want to show you something in the bedroom.”
“What?”
“You’ll see.”
In the bedroom, Joan looked around. “Did you clean the windows? It seems brighter in here.”
Meadoe shook her head. She hadn’t noticed it before, but Joan was right. The room was brighter. She sat on the edge of the bed, waiting. Joan paced the room.
“Look at the collage,” said Meadoe.
Joan contemplated the wall and found it almost immediately. “Where’s Tokyo Rose? And who is that? How did you get that picture under the varnish?”
Meadoe smiled. She’d seen it Thursday morning when she awoke, happy, nearly ready to sing, and she’d lain in the bed in languid glory. Her eyes followed the Life covers to the drawing, only it wasn’t Tokyo Rose anymore. Smiling from the penciled portrait, as stunning as any of the movie stars, a black-haired girl, curls waving around her ears. Erica Weiss. In Nathaniel’s hand, a date, August 7, 1945.
Joan said, “He was already dead.”
Meadoe bounced against the bed’s edge. “Just in this world, Joan. Just one of him.”
TEACHING
When I heard the learn’d astronomer,
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,
When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide,
and measure them,
When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with
much applause in his lecture room,
How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,
Till rising and gliding out I wandr’d off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.
—Walt Whitman
William stared at the DeskTop unit for a long minute before sighing wearily and opening it. It was the latest release of the hardware, and its shiny surface felt softer than his old one, like leather, and it opened easier too, popping slightly as the fold vanished into an unmarked screen. The keyboard flopped open and the unit, no thicker than a sheet of cardboard, was ready to go. His earphone squeaked in his ear, then announced that beside the normal traffic of essays, tests, video demonstrations, speeches, and other student work which the DT had already evaluated, commented on and recorded into student profiles, he had received sixty-four messages since yesterday, two which might require his attention. He eyed the three column list: mostly run-of-the-mill correspondence that included a couple of thank-yous from departing students and eight petitions for admission into his class from the retiring Leslie Franklin’s roster. None seemed out of the ordinary, so he okayed the virtual-William’s handling of them and the unit instantly sent pseudo-personal replies that mimicked his style and provided the individualized, educationally appropriate prompts to each student. V-Bill, William thought, a friendlier, more professional, patient and approachable version of myself.
The two flagged messages he put aside for the moment, though a flashing reminder in the corner of the work space reminded him not to forget them.
Eight new students pushed his class list over six-hundred for the second time this month, so he called up and signed a standard request for numbers reduction and sent it to Central Education; as he expected, the reply, with its somber logo of Socrates teaching a group of rapt students, scrolled instantly on his screen acknowledging his request while extolling the virtues of the profession and how “We must each make the sacrifices in these challenging days of tight budgets.”
He ran the numbers over again in his mind. If he spent only five minutes on each student, and he worked ten hour days, he would get to each student once every five days. That was assuming that all he did was contact students, but most days, he’d spend the morning handling unique student problems, addressing paperwork concerns or corresponding with Central Education. Only in the afternoons that he wasn’t sitting in on group hook-ups through the DTs or going on field trips like today’s could he contact his students individually.
William sighed again and let his eyes rest on Leslie’s photograph that sat on the shelf above his table. He thought, she always knew how to handle the load. Her dark eyes focused somewhere to the side, behind the photographer; a strand of red hair blew across her cheek and she was laughing. In the background, a fountain sprayed into the sunlight, each drop catching a glint of brightness. She’d signed it herself and real-mailed it forty-four years ago when they were both students in the first totally DT school to graduate with teaching degrees.
While pouring coffee from his single cup brewer, he thought about how controversial and cutting edge school had seemed then. The DT monitored and measured their progress every step of the way, providing instant feedback. No waiting for papers to be graded. No weeks of not “getting” the material until some the teacher noticed (if she or he did at all) the problem. No moving through the curriculum at the “average” student’s pace while the slower ones fell farther and farther behind and the quicker ones grew bored. The teacher, through the DT, recognized their strengths and played to them; identified their weaknesses and helped them address them. It had encouraged William to do group projects with Leslie. Their learning styles complimented each other we
ll, and they’d pushed each other to co-valedictorian status.
Through the DT, education had become again that visionary ideal: one teacher to one student. Grades were replaced by competencies. When they demonstrated they knew the material they moved on. He remembered when students were “graded,” and the whole idea seemed ludicrous now. He and Leslie had joked about it. Leslie had said, “Any grade other than an ‘A’ indicates that learning isn’t done yet.” William agreed then. He still agreed, but he couldn’t muster any passion for the thought. He put his coffee down. It tasted dull and flat this morning.
Although William had never physically met Leslie—she lived in Vancouver while the farthest north he’d gotten was Wyoming—they’d kept in close contact since graduation through their DeskTops. Over the years, gray streaks gradually marked her auburn hair, but she laughed the same way and often. Every once in a while, he’d see a glimpse of the pose in the photograph. His fingers ached to type her code to tell her “Hi,” to find out how she would face the day, but she’d told him that her DT would be locked away for months while she real-toured Europe. “I’m going to touch the Arc de Triomph,” she’d said crustily to him last week. “And I don’t want some voice in my ear telling me anything that I can’t learn by being there.”
Six hundred students, he thought, and Leslie’s not here to lighten me up.
He tapped the blinking reminder, calling up the two problem messages the v-Bill couldn’t handle.
Fourteen-year-old Kimo Yu’s mother died yesterday, the first message said, and she wouldn’t be able to make today’s field trip to the canyons of Canyon Lands National Park. William scrolled through her history: generally a type four, agressive/abstract learner, she’d made good progress in spatial visualizations and practical math. Her current area of interest, geology, didn’t fit her vocational potential profile well, but the DT had planned a course of study that would funnel her back into her strengths by the time she was sixteen. The DT highlighted a closeness to her mother and recommended a two week suspension of instruction, followed by a gradual reintegration into the program with an emphasis on spiritual and grief relieving literature. William noticed Guenther’s Death Be Not Proud on the reading list and deleted it. “Too grim,” he muttered.
He studied her image for a moment: thick glasses—glasses were in again as a fashion accessory—covering non-oriental looking eyes, then he recorded a personal condolence and sent it. He couldn’t recall ever meeting her, and the DT confirmed that in her six years of study under his guidance, they’d never crossed paths.
The second message came from Jonas Wynn’s father. Jonas, the note said, had dropped his student DT out the window of the Tampa to Denver transrail at better than one hundred and forty miles an hour. Not only did Dad have to explain to transrail officials how his son could get what was supposed to be an unopenable window open, he also had to replace the DT before today’s field trip.
William tapped for Jonas’s picture and profile. A hard-eyed boy stared back at him angrily. Twelve years old. Type six, passive/defiant. Something about the boy’s face seemed familiar, and William searched his personal attention records for the last six months, finding that five weeks ago he’d spent a few minutes trying to come up with an appropriate response to an awful short story the boy had written that involved, among other things, a legless cow cattle drive. Two months before that, William saw, he had tweaked the DT’s recommendation for medical treatment for what the boy’s doctor had called “willful attention deficit disorder.” Neither Biomeds or Chemmeds helped, and even the new attention/retention hormone enhancements made no difference. William thought, in the old days, before DT education, Jonas would have been labeled “learning disabled.” Now educators recognized that everyone was learning disabled in some form or another, and more than half the population received meds as part of the curriculum.
For Jonas, the meds were dropped and the DT had been reduced to situational learning prompts since the boy was ten, offering information whenever Jonas appeared interested in anything. As a result, the DT reported, Jonas showed interest less often and responded to the prompts less appropriately as time progressed.
William frowned. The boy should have been flagged months ago. Why not? He ran a quick diagnostic and found that the DT had labeled the boy as fitting the type six profile perfectly, and that his behavior was not outside of that learning style’s norm. Since Jonas’s Individual Education Plan, or I.E.P., corresponded to his progress, attitude and actions, there’d been no flag.
“Of course,” murmured William. “If the damned computer says he’s not learning anything, and he actually doesn’t learn anything, prediction matched the outcome and nothing must be wrong.” William arranged for a replacement DT to be ready for Jonas at the park entrance.
He called up the day’s progress monitor which showed him responding to each of his six-hundred students’ I.E.P.s. The DT, through six hundred v-Bills, simultaneously lectured, directed reading, contributed to a network panel discussion, asked questions, offered advice, emotionally counseled, annotated literature, praised achievement and motivated the underachievers.
Messages flicked by so fast, he couldn’t keep track of them.
The DT cleared; his earphone sounded an attention ping, then reminded him that the shuttle to the canyon and his awaiting field trip would be leaving in fifteen minutes. While he dressed, the phone continued to tell him facts about the geology lesson and to fill him in on the fifteen students he would be leading in this real-lesson. The only student who sounded even vaguely interesting was Jonas. “And he dropped his DT out the window,” said William to the empty room. “I’ve got to get out of teaching.”
On the hour long shuttle trip to the park, an elderly man sitting next to William drew him into a conversation, discovered he was a teacher, and before long, with the gentle whoosh of tires on the road as a backdrop, the man was rhapsodizing about school when he was a child. Filling the rest of the seats, other travelers swayed with the shuttle’s motion. Some stared blankly out the windows; some leaned over their DTs, keying in information or studying their displays. Gray privacy shields hid the occupants of some seats.
“Loved my school,” the old man said with a tremulous voice. “Solid brick building. We used to wait outside until the bell rang. That’s when school began, with a bell. No bells nowadays. Not nearly.”
William nodded, watching cactus and patches of brown desert grass slip by. “School doesn’t really begin or end anymore,” said William. “Learning happens when the opportunity arises. Individualization is the key, so there’s no need for a structure to meet in.” He thought idly about querying the DT on the subject. He could call up pictures of old schools and the history of building based education if wanted.
“We had classes,” continued the old man. “I still meet with my graduating class every other year. We used to do it every five years, but we’re getting older, you know. No guarantee that we’ll all make jumps that big.” He laughed to himself. “Loved my teachers too. Not all of them, of course, but most of them. Overall, they did me good. Got some good grades. Got me my diploma.”
No grades any more, thought William, only descriptors of progress. No diplomas, only knowledge and performance profiles that changed from day to day. No classes, as in “The Class of 2045.” A student never graduated. “We’re life long learners now,” said William. This is the “party” line, he thought, and he couldn’t say it with any enthusiasm. His own “class,” all six hundred plus of them, ranged from eight years old to seventy-nine. Except for special occasions, like today’s field trip, they had no reason to meet each other, and very few of them had. Central Education matched students with teachers based on teaching and learning styles, so that his students were spread all over the globe.
The old man pointed at the DT. “Of course, with those you know a lot more about your students. I could hide out in the back of my class. Could pass notes, you know. Wasn’t a very efficient system, I guess.”
<
br /> “Yes, I guess not,” said William, tapping the DT’s cover. “I’ve got all the information…” He paused. They crossed the state line into Utah. “… But I don’t know any of them.”
The old man sighed and sat back in his chair. William didn’t understand why he’d said that. Leslie’s retirement, he decided, had thrown him off stride.
“Well,” said the old man, “teaching’s still a tough job.”
After a while, the man went to sleep. William pulled a privacy shield down from the ceiling, cutting off sight and most of the sound from the shuttle, and called v-Bill. The work area shimmered for a second, then his own features focussed in the DT on his lap.
“Hi, William,” v-Bill said. He signaled to somebody off screen. William suspected that the v-Bill was married. V-Bill never said anything, but the gardenias on his desk that William would never have on his own, or the sense that he was interrupting a conversation to talk to William, hinted to some presence in the house other than v-Bill. William guessed that the DT added these touches to make the v-teacher seem happier and more content than William felt.
“How’s everything?” said v-Bill. “Been working hard?”
William didn’t answer, but studied his electronic double for a moment. His hair line had receded over the years, drawing a line higher and higher on his forehead. Not bald really. Definitely aged though. In v-Bill’s eyes, William could still see his own youth, a kind of sparkle, a liveliness as v-Bill waited for William to speak, as if v-Bill was expecting William to get a joke they shared, to join him in laughter. William wondered if he still looked like that, or if the face on the DT was totally counterfeit, false not only in content, but appearance too.
William said, “You’re not real, you know.”
“Oh,” said v-Bill, sounding disappointed. “So you’re in that state of mind again, huh?”
“If you were real, you wouldn’t always be so damn self confident.”
Flying in the Heart of the Lafayette Escadrille Page 7