The Media Candidate – politics and power in 2048

by Paul Dueweke

  * * *

  The day of the science fair finally arrived. On that one weekend each year, the screeches, laughter, and tears of the pursuers of round balls yielded to the screeches, laughter, and tears of the pursuers of scientific truth. Friday evening was reserved for the setup of the displays. Then Saturday morning would bring the judges to scrutinize each entry and rank it among Trumpet’s finest young scientists.

  When the Townsends brought Susie’s material into the gymnasium that Friday night, the setup had already been well choreographed. Luke knew exactly how the Legos were supposed to be arranged, in fact he was the one who had suggested using them. The tabletop display with its artistically arranged materials nestled in their appropriate places was his personal contribution. Every time Susie or Martha would rearrange his display, they were met with Luke’s retribution whereupon he would reinstate its correct order.

  Elliott stood back and contributed pride. The Townsend crew worked like a well-oiled machine and was completed before many others could even choose a leader, which was usually done by attrition.

  Bobby Schneider’s booth was next to Susie’s. He was a seventh grader with an engineering project consisting of a plastic model of a 1957 Ford Fairlane 500 with a sign “This is how cars used to be made” and a model of a new Jaguar with its sign “This is how cars are made today.”

  Bobby’s sister knocked the Jaguar off the table, breaking off a fender and a bumper. Bobby responded by pushing her into another project, a homemade liquid-crystal computer display, which tumbled to the floor ripping off electrical contacts. Gloria Falquist was a little upset at seeing her work treated so rudely and with one swat of her vengeful arm, sent Bobby’s engineering triumphs careening across the floor.

  The Ford survived with minor scratches. The Jag was totaled. It had become a one-wheeled convertible without a windshield or a hood. Bobby included no conclusions, but the message seemed clear: hang on to your old Ford.

  The levity surrounding the science fair was soon to end. Tomorrow morning was judgment day, and there was more than a pair of skis riding on its outcome.

  The judges worked from 8 AM until noon reading abstracts, notebooks, and conclusions of the 88 entries and examining piles of gear. As in earlier years, environmental science was the most popular entry. At exactly noon, Ms. Dobbs opened the doors of the gym and invited the anxious participants to enter. Susie was, of course, near the front of the line and pushed passed several other kids to race to her booth. The rest of the Townsends were quite a ways back, and only Luke broke and ran when he got through the door. He ran up behind Susie, tugged on her right sleeve, and shouted, “Ok, Otter, what color skis you gonna pick?”

  Susie shook him off with such violence that he fell to the floor.

  “What’d you do that for?” he yelled. But by the time he regained his feet, she was gone. He looked around and could only see children dancing and hopping about with blue, red, and green ribbons and their parents beginning to filter in. The noise approached the pain threshold in every direction but was especially loud two booths down where an eighth grader, Melissa Macon, was shouting for her parents to hurry up as she waved to them with a blue ribbon and a white ribbon. Elliott and Martha finally arrived and stood beside Luke.

  “Is that the best prize, Daddy? Is that what that means?”

  “No, Luke, that’s not what Honorable Mention means,” Martha said. “Maybe your father could explain to you what it means.”

  “Well, Daddy, is it better than first prize? What does it mean?”

  “It … ah … means … it’s the prize they give you if they don’t want to hurt your feelings. … The judges didn’t think it was any good. … Dobbs didn’t think it was any good.”

  Elliott slowly reached for the three evaluation forms. The one on top was from N. Mayfield. Under the comments section it simply said, “Good job.”

  The next evaluation comment was from R. Rock and said, “Nice display.”

  The last form bore the name S. Dobbs and read, “This project is devoid of the human qualities that mark the environmental sciences and direct the cause of enlightened human ecology as we evolve from the unconscionable state of technology expansionism to the state of perfect environmental harmony.”

  “That goddamned bitch!” Elliott whispered. “That goddamned bitch!”

  “I feel terrible about this,” whined Martha. “I feel like it’s all my fault.” Elliott looked up with surprise to meet her gaze. “About a week ago, Susie asked if she could trust you because you told her to use her data the way it is and not worry about some other kind of truth or something. I told her that you’re the scientist and you should know more about this kind of thing than either of us. If I’d just kept my mouth shut, she probably would have gotten the right answer.”

  “Daddy, did you know Susie was going to lose? I thought you were helping her so she’d win.”

  “Well, Dr. Townsend,” Martha’s icy words broke against Elliott in stormy waves, “what do you have to say?”

  But Elliott was no longer listening. He began walking around the science fair with a mission. On the next aisle, he found the seventh-grade first prize, a model of a short section of DNA by Sally Mipps. A pretty blonde girl posed before it for a photo with her blue ribbon. “Jesus! Goldilocks plays with her tinker toys and wins a prize,” he said to himself but loudly enough so the man behind the camera suddenly rose above it and followed Elliott with his eyes.

  Elliott trudged down the isle again, stares and disbelief retreating from his stern. His own eyes darted from side to side, searching every booth, inspecting each project for the telltale symbol of triumph. “Ah, here’s another blue ribbon,” he said pushing aside several excited people to gain access to the front row. Before him was the fifth grade first prize, a hastily colored time line of the last hundred years chronicling many of the species that had become extinct during that period. At the far right of the time line, the young prophet questioned, “When will Homos Apiens become extinct????”

  Elliott leaned over to Charlie Ringwood and said, “I’ll bet your boy spent a lot of time on this project last night. It shows!” Charlie’s smile evaporated as Elliott pushed away to continue his search, muttering as he left, “Christ, he must be sleeping with Dobbs.”

  As Elliott continued along the aisles overflowing with smiles and flashes, drops of sweat formed and fell from his nose. His eyes became frantic and squinted as he zigzagged his way down each aisle, pausing only enough to check out the ribbon on each exhibit, leaving a trail of jostled people behind him. The people he encountered had no faces, no names. He was as ignorant of the feelings in his wake as he was of his constant mutterings. He stopped a couple of times to reread the Dobbs comment he clutched in his left hand. “This project is devoid of the human qualities—”

  “Who the hell is she?” he muttered, bumping into the faceless Mr. Compton, who tried to ignore the intrusion as he resumed a conversation with the chairman of the school board. “This is all bullshit, not science. Doesn’t Dobbs know the difference between bullshit and science?”

  He rounded the corner of the last aisle and came face to face with Richie Stevens, who was ecstatic about winning the first prize for the sixth grade. He elbowed Richie aside to gain his position in front of a neatly executed geologic cross section of the valley beneath the city. The various strata were represented by different colored sands in a plastic case that must have spent its earlier life as an ant farm. “So, Mr. Stevens plays in a sand box and wins a blue ribbon. You must be very proud of your sandbox, Richie,” Elliott said to the young boy as his mother pulled her son aside, whispering something in his ear. Then Elliott asked him with a grin, “Check it for cat shit?”

  Before the several shocked looks could register on him, he was gone. He continued his serpentine walk down that last aisle, still not finding what he was searching for. As he walked blindly around the corner of that last aisle, he
heard a crunch under his left foot. He picked up the broken plastic pieces and put them together in his hands. Looks like the hood of a model car, he thought. “Wonder if this is from the grand prize winner.”

  Elliott dropped the pieces and began a march back toward the Townsend green ribbon. As he rounded the corner of that aisle, he noticed a crowd around a display near the now-deserted Susie Townsend booth. He pushed to the front and stood before the newly dedicated shrine of science at Trumpet Elementary, the grand prizewinner. Large letters across the top proclaimed “Our Environment—A Critical Overview.” On the center billboard was a collage of glossy pictures clipped from expensive magazines depicting a broad range of “environmental horrors.” A picture of a garbage dump featured a plastic shopping bag blowing in an otherwise unsullied breeze and the caption “plastic packaging defiles our landfills.” Another photo showed brown water streaming out of a pipe into a mucky river with the caption “industry desecrates our rivers and streams.” A picture of a high-rise condominium complex was accompanied by “developers destroy our wetlands.”

  Elliott stood motionless except for the heaving of his chest, which coincided, with the uncontrolled sounds of his labored breathing. He looked to the right and saw a blue ribbon for first prize in the eighth grade. Partially covering that was another ribbon, this one as white as the fur of the endangered harp seal pup. Its golden center proclaimed “Best of Fair.” By now, Melissa Macon had moved away from him at the request of Ms. Dobbs.

  Elliott’s hand trembled as he reached for the evaluation sheets. The one on top was signed by S. Dobbs. Its comment section was filled with perfectly formed letters: “Environmental science studies the relationship between humans and the earth on which we reside. It relates to how we treat the earth and how we heed the cries of its inhabitants. In it, we consider our errors and how we can rehabilitate a planet all but destroyed in our reckless plunder of the very resources on which we depend. This excellent project embodies the very soul of those principles and should be a guide for those students who follow.”

  “Can I help you, Mr. Townsend?” came the unheard question from Ms. Dobbs.

  He looked up at the display and he saw process-control flow-charts for a state-of-the-art recycling plant. Blinking and refocusing, the flow charts became a picture of a nuclear power plant. He glanced to one side and saw a detailed energy analysis of the glass bottle cycle, which evolved, with his eye massage into a picture of an enormous tree half way between towering into the forest canopy and its final submission to the chain saw.

  “Mr. Townsend, can I help you find you daughter’s exhibit? … Mr. Townsend! You appear to be lost, and we would like very much to help you locate young Ms. Townsend’s booth so we can finish taking our pictures here for the year book.” Ms. Dobbs took Elliott’s arm to move him away from the prize-winning display.

  Elliott turned with a snap toward the voice. “What?”

  “I said, we are trying to take some more pictures here and—”

  Elliott looked down at the evaluation sheet in his hand. He slowly began to crumble it.

  “Mr. Townsend, that is not your property!” Ms. Dobbs ripped half of it from his hand. “Now look what …”

  “You bitch,” he said in a controlled voice.

  The group went instantly silent as Elliott and Dobbs faced each other. Dobbs was the first to react. “If all you can do is—”

  “Do you call this hype, science? Look at it, Dobbs!” His voice rose in frenzied swells. “It’s nothing but bullshit! Show me the science!”

  “Look, Townsend, if—”

  “This whole show is bullshit, Dobbs! My girl worked for months to compete with bullshit. Why didn’t you just call it a bullshit fair? You don’t know what science is!”

  By now, Mr. Compton and two of the larger faculty had arrived. Martha and Luke also arrived with Susie. Their mouths gaped as three men hustled Elliott toward the door. Nearly the entire assemblage of the science fair convened around the scene. As the eruption reached its climax, every pair of eyes attended the small posse shuffling away from the grand prizewinner.

  Melissa stood flanked by her mother on one side, holding her hand, and by her science teacher on her other side. Dobbs, however, played no part in the consolation. Her attention fixed on Elliott Townsend as he approached his final exit from Trumpet Elementary. She published compassion with her hands, one expressively encased in the other, and with the erectness of her body, stern but sensitive.

  But her eyes told a different story. They gleamed with the grandeur of a full moon. They sparkled full, bright, and zealous. Her cheeks could not disobey the subtle commands of her eyes as they stretched upward delicately. Even her lips responded like the tide lifted by a distant moon. Ms. Dobbs experienced a euphoria that she skillfully concealed, but for her eyes. Her eyes revealed a story of triumph and vindication.

  No one could read that message, however, because every eye was fixed on Elliott, every eye but his own. Just as Mr. Macon heroically opened the door, Elliott wrenched one arm free and swung about to face Dobbs. He alone looked into her eyes for an eternal moment. And her look penetrated him. His protest evaporated and an odor of defeat rose from him. His captors smelled victory and thrust their victim out. They slammed the door shut.

  When Elliott finally returned home, he faced a sullen, silent front. He scanned the faces, busy with make work tasks, closed to him. Luke studied a book with artificial attention. Martha scrubbed sparkling china.

  “Where’s Susie?” Elliott asked.

  “In her room,” came the cold response from Luke as he rose to leave the living room. As he walked past his father, Elliott put his hand on his shoulder. “Snake,” he whispered. Luke twisted sideways, and Elliott’s hand grasped only air as Luke continued to his room and closed the door with a click.

  Martha interrupted his silent stance. “We got a ride home with the Beldens.”

  Elliott reached into his left pocket. “Oh. I have the keys here.”

  “Lucky for us, Susie had a house key.”

  “Yeah, I guess I better get the car,” Elliott said softly.

  “That would be nice.”

  Elliott approached Martha and touched her. “I’m sorry, Marty. I’m sorry.”

  Without turning or even slowing her incessant scrubbing, she responded in a guttural tone, “Don’t you dare touch me. Don’t you ever touch me again.”

  Elliott inhaled the vengeance and repelled. An Arctic blast buried his retreating hand as her toxin infected his body and capsized his spirit. He trembled at the finality of her passion. Without realizing how, he found himself standing outside Susie’s room. His hand knocked gently, received no response, then reached for the doorknob. Susie’s room was dimly lit by the darkening sky. A figure in dirty running shoes lay in a ball on the bed.

  “Susie? … Susie? … I just …”

  The figure rose halfway. “How …” she sobbed. “How could you do that?”

  “I … I don’t know what to say, Susie. I’m—”

  “Just get out of here! I don’t want to ever talk to you again!” She picked up something on her bed and threw it. It hit Elliott and fell to the floor. Susie rejoined her pillow. Elliott picked up her science-fair notebook.

  In his hands he held the tear-stained results of her exhausting labor. The pages sang to him with the hours that he’d spent with his young protégé. Elliott recalled when he’d given the notebook to Susie and explained the importance of keeping a detailed account of her activity. He replayed that day and others as he fondled the notebook. Elliott dropped the book and his daughter’s career on the corner of the bed and left the room.

  The next day, Elliott said he was way behind on a project at the Lab and spent the whole Sunday there. It became increasingly common for him to not return home until after the children had gone to bed. After a while, the Lab became his sanctuary, and he embraced it.
His old family seemed to thrive in his absence. His work became increasingly exciting as he immersed himself more deeply into the projects. Year after year, he provided the Lab with a fertile imagination and boundless energy and enthusiasm. It provided him with a caring family, a responsive receptacle for his devotion.