by Sandi Gamble
Meanwhile, I weighed the small volume that I held in my hands. “What do you think it was like for her?”
“You mean, hiding in the attic?”
I shook my head. “No, not just during the fighting. I mean before. Living in the 20th Century. Do you think she was happy before all these terrible things happened? Did she go to school? Did she have brothers and sisters? What were her parents like?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know how much we can tell by one book. But there is so much here about how different people lived…”
He walked down the aisle and took another volume from the shelf. This one had many more pages than the first. It was by a writer named Charles Dickens. “David Copperfield.”
“It’s heavy,” I noted.
He nodded in agreement. “It was written many years before the Anne Frank diary,” he said. Then he told me a bit about the world inhabited by David Copperfield, at least as portrayed in the book.
“That’s horrible!” I cried out, thinking about the conditions that so many young people experienced. “Not having enough to eat? Living in such squalor? It’s horrific. I can’t imagine…”
“I know. But that was just how people lived. That wasn’t even a time of war. It was just the way society was structured.”
“People were so greedy,” I said.
“People are greedy,” he pointed out. “At least, if we are considering essential natures,” he added.
I tried to impose the world of David Copperfield on our own and I couldn’t. The way all people were treated and cared for in our society just did not compare. The idea of allowing anyone to flounder and to squander their potential seemed so… so… barbaric. Almost crueler than the war in its way.
“And this,” he said, hurrying down and around the stack, coming back with another book.
I tried to pronounce the name of the writer. “Doy... doy... Dostoevsky?”
He smiled. “Dostoyevsky,” he said, pronouncing the name fluidly.
“How did you do that?” I asked him with wonderment.
He crooked his finger and bade me to follow him. We entered another room, this one with workstation after workstation equipped with primitive recording equipment. “This is how people once learned to speak foreign languages,” he said. “It allowed me to not only pronounce this Russian writer’s name but to read the book in its original language.”
He smiled, very proud of his accomplishment. Clearly, Jace had been putting his spare time to very practical use!
“I still don’t feel right about being in here,” I noted. I looked around. In the ancient, fluorescent light Jace’s face had an unnatural appearance, almost like a mask.
“I’m sure it’s all right,” Jace said confidently. “After all, there are no notices restricting access.”
He was right about that. But by the same token, nothing was suggesting that we belonged in the room. And it wasn’t as if it was easy to find, after all.
“Who do you think uses this room?” I asked him, looking beyond the recording devices and into the larger, book-filled room.
“Researchers, I would think. Although in all the time I’ve come here, I’ve never seen anyone else.”
“I think we should put everything back where we found it and leave,” I said.
He nodded. “You’re probably right. But it’s cool, isn’t it? I mean, look at all these books,” he said as he closed the door to the recording room.
I had to agree that it was pretty amazing. Still, I was ready to leave. When exiting the library area, I noticed on the wall near the door a notation made by an author – Angela Clarke who simply said, “A library is not just a reference service: it is a place for the vulnerable. From the elderly gentleman whose only remaining human interaction is with library staff, to the isolated young mother who relishes the support and friendship that grows from a baby rhyme time session, to a slow-moving thirty-something woman collecting her CD’s. Libraries are a haven in a world where community services are being ground down to nothing. Libraries are vital, their worth cannot be measured in books alone.” This small passage moved me more than anything else that I had seen that night with Jace. What a lonely world it must have been, and yet somehow I felt that I fitted comfortably right into it. It all made sense to me. Our libraries were very different to the one that I found myself in and taught many cultural and societal antidotes, but none shared such desire and pain as this one.
Still, I was ready to leave, and I was very happy when we were back by the playing fields again.
I did go back with Jace several times after that. I ended up reading a great many books that I would never have read, and learned about a great many things I never learned in my lessons with mother or in my formal lessons at the Academy. Even so, each time I went to the library with Jace, I was relieved to leave again. I always carried a feeling that we were doing something we should not do.
That feeling was at the heart of my reaction to Ann bringing us to the door of the library that day, when she asked, “Still no idea?”
I swallowed hard. Unlike our interaction with the headmaster, when I had been perfectly certain of what I was saying and of being right, I felt very unsure about whether we had been doing something appropriate.
“It was my idea,” Jace volunteered, his voice never wavering. “I discovered this place and then when I saw how wonderful it was, I just couldn’t imagine not sharing it with Ari.” He then looked Ann directly in the eye. “Do you know how wonderful this place is?” he asked her.
There was a twinkle in her eye as she started to answer. “Yes, Jace,” she said. “I do know how wonderful a place this is. I should. I am responsible for it.”
Well, you can imagine how stunned we both were. It must have shown on our faces because Ann, whose expression had remained quite serious, suddenly laughed. “Close your mouths, both of you.” She tsk’ed and shook her head. “You look ridiculous like that.”
We dutifully closed our mouths, but that did not end our surprise at what she’d said.
“Ann?” I began.
She raised her hand to quiet me. “I suspected one or both of you would discover my little project sooner or later. I should not have been surprised that it was much sooner. You two are the most inquisitive and intelligent students the Academy has seen in its history…” She said this with no particular emotion but as a statement of fact. As a result, neither Jace nor I really reacted to the statement.
“In any case, I am pleased that you’ve discovered my project. I had discussed with the headmaster whether or not to simply bring you here myself but felt that it would be wiser to wait until you had discovered the library on your own.”
“The headmaster knows we’ve been here?” I asked, surprised again.
“Of course,” she said easily. “There is not much that the headmaster does not know. He is responsible for this Academy and everything and everyone in it. It is in his – and our – best interest that he is aware of everything.” She brought her hands together. “In any case, let’s go inside and see what we can learn.”
Jace and I followed Ann along a path that was very familiar to us. She led us first to the stacks that held the atlases. While Jace had found a number of atlases that showed maps of the world as it used to be, she took out other volumes, volumes that helped to understand not just the land masses and the changes that they experienced but also many of the factors that contributed to the changes over the years.
“Looking back,” she said with a steely distaste in her tone, “it is astonishing to think of how foolish the people and their leaders had been. Even as an environmental disaster unfolded right beneath their noses, they did not act to stop it. Even worse, their actions and behavior was so short-sighted as to actually accelerate the destruction.” She closed her eyes and shook her head.
“Our social scientists have spent years and years trying to discern the how and why of such self-destructive behavior so that we can better remove it from our own practices.�
�
I glanced at Jace. This was exactly the conversation that we’d had many times before, never with a clear resolution. But something in his expression made me certain that this was not the time to note that.
“You read about some events and social conditions that plagued mankind for hundreds and thousands of years. Poverty. Cruelty. The unequal distribution of resources.” Ann continued.
“Greed had been endemic to the human condition for so long,” Ann sighed and shook her head. “We have striven to remove it from our own condition. Our social scientists and political leaders have been single minded in their determination to create a world in which everyone is treated fairly.” It was decided before our ancestors exited the Arc that a universal basic income would be introduced to ensure that no person or persons were left behind, or wanting for basic needs. Even though the income is scaled depending on your standing in society, not one person is left without food, shelter or their daily needs. What could be fairer?
I felt something deep within myself bristle. Fair? Was fairness all that we aspired to? I knew that I did not want to be treated – and forced to be – like everyone else. I was certain that Jace did not.
“Have you found these volumes interesting?” Ann asked Jace and me.
Jace did not hesitate. “I have,” he said honestly.
“And you?” Ann asked, turning to face me directly.
I thought for a moment. “I don’t know that I have felt as strongly about them as Jace has. They have confused me at times, which I don’t really enjoy.”
Ann laughed. “No, I don’t suppose that being confused would be a sensation you would enjoy. Certainly, it can’t be something you’re used to experiencing.”
She was, of course, right. While there were many things that I confronted for the very first time in my life, few of them actually confused me. Between my prior experience and my logical thought process, I could easily accommodate new and even strange things into my worldview without being confused or troubled by them.
But the things I was seeing in the books that Jace had found left me feeling a bit lost. The cruelty of primitive people disarmed me and, their seeming pigheadedness in the face of an environmental disaster. Their short-sightedness in dealing with global hunger. Their seeming insatiable desire to fight in wars – the results of which almost never accomplished any significant betterment to people or the world.
“I just do not understand the motivation,” I said, still searching for an adequate way to explain what I was feeling. “I mean, they were people. We are people. And yet, our society is so different. Our people act so differently.” In quiet reflection though I knew it was because we were socially conditioned to behave in a certain way. I would never dare voice that opinion though.
Ann nodded sagely. “Well, we have had the benefit of learning from their disastrous experiences,” she noted. “And after they had caused so much harm, we really had no choice but to change the way we behaved. Over time, with a determined change in behavior, there came about a change in being.”
“So the psychological follows the physical?” Jace asked, listening intently to Ann’s explanation. “The body has the advantage in the mind-body equation?”
Ann was quiet for a moment. I don’t think that even knowing how special Jace was, she expected the question from someone as young as he was. I would hazard that she would have not expected the question from anyone regardless of age. In our society, some things were simply taken for granted. That the authority of the person speaking was never questioned, neither tacitly or overtly. Neither Jace nor I were very good at showing that kind of deference.
“Not exactly. And not always,” she said after a moment of consideration. “However, I think it is accurate to say that when the individual has been trained to react a certain way, then his or her mind ceases to seek the old way of thinking.”
Jace nodded. “But we have seen instances when, for example, even the most tamed of animals react in fierce ways when presented with the right stimuli. Why would we suspect that humans, much more complex, would lose their ability to react in a manner that is essential to their nature?”
Ann smiled. “Perhaps I did not explain myself quite as clearly as I wanted to,” she conceded. “I do not mean to suggest that anyone completely loses aspects of their essential natures. Rather, their tendencies are blunted. It is less and less likely that they will resort to more primitive manners of behavior.
“For example, the many generations that our system has been in place has seen the spirit of cooperation overtake a natural tendency to think selfishly. That is not to say that we do not sometimes have to contend with instances of selfish behavior. But our cultural imperative is to blunt such behavior while,” she paused and turned to the books on the shelves nearby, “we know from these works of fiction and nonfiction that the cultural imperative not only allowed such greed and selfishness but actually promoted it. As a result, instances of greed, selfishness and violent acts were not only common but essentially excused.”
The answer seemed to satisfy Jace. At least for the time being.
I appreciated what she had to say, but there was still the niggling concern of what was lost with the cultural blunting of this aspect of people’s nature. Even without the benefit of Jace’s discovery of the library, I had learned about the greedy behavior of primitive people of centuries past. What hadn’t been as clearly answered though was, what became of the positive aspects of those individualized motivations?
After all, there had to be those as well.
Little did I know that the next few moments would begin to help me understand my question more fully and, in the process – and in ways that I doubt that Ann intended – make me question the work of the Academy and our society.
CHAPTER FIVE
A “VISIT” TO THE PAST
In any case,” Ann went on, “I did not bring you here just to show you that I was aware that you’d visited the library. As I said, we knew that you would discover it soon enough. The question was, what to do about it when you did?” The works contained within this knowledge base are limited to a very few people.
Jace and I looked at her with a shared look of astonishment. I could not have been sure at that moment, but later, when we spoke about what happened, we both discovered that we’d shared the same reaction, that we were trapped in some disturbing dynamic. We had spent our lives wanting to excel in all our studies. The Academy was our singular goal. We had achieved all that we’d hoped to achieve up to that point in our lives. We were somewhat celebrated for our gifts. And yet, in this instance, it became apparent that even our “missteps” were anticipated and planned.
I had read in one of the books that Jace had shown me, the feelings of someone who longed only to be ‘free’. I felt exhilarated by that passage and the emotion that the character captured. I felt such a life and experience was available to me. But, as soon as Ann uttered those words, I felt as though that exhilaration extinguished.
Jace felt the same.
Perhaps more importantly, we both knew as one that our disappointment was one thing that had to be held close to ourselves and not shared with Ann, or any other authority figure.
It seemed either that our reaction was very successfully hidden or that Ann had not even been looking to see how we might react to her statement. I personally thought that it was the second of the two possibilities. Although I had only begun to get to know Ann, there was something about her that I related to very well. There was no question that she was a perfect authority within the Academy, attending to her duties with precision and certainty. She not only taught with great determination but her counseling of some students was exemplary.
In particular, her counseling of Jace and me.
The question was, did she know just how fundamentally different Jace and I were? And if she did, was she surreptitiously encouraging a kind of rebellion within us that was unheard of at the Academy and our society or was she trying to hem us in?
> She had the confidence of the Headmaster, and that was something that she needed to keep. Perhaps even he understood that it was in the exception that the rule was proven and that Jace and I were truly “exceptions”.
I was only beginning to have a sense of these questions and many others. For a long time, I would not bother to fully articulate them. Sometimes they would feel as a sensation brushing through my thoughts. It would only be later, after the Event and all that followed that these questions and thoughts would come to dominate my imagination.
“The Headmaster was not as certain as I about what to do after you’d had a chance to discover and explore the library. He felt that anything less than censure would just ‘encourage’ you in what he called deviant ways. But I impressed upon him that your ways were hardly deviant and that you were simply exercising the gifts that you’d been given, gifts that our own tests had demonstrated to be real.
“You will have to be aware,” she added, her voice dropping just a bit, “that the Headmaster is concerned with how far and how fast to let you explore.” Her expression impressed upon us that even though we were respected and recognized for our intelligence at the Academy, there was a limit to how far we could go. It brought to mind something my mother had long ago taught me when we were in the fields, exploring.
We had come upon a family of wild beasts. One of the calves seemed to have taken it upon itself to be nurturing to a smaller, weaker sibling.
I watched in fascination and delight to see such generosity in nature. But then, even as the calf brought food to its weaker sibling, the sire attacked, killing both the calves, the generous one and its weak sibling.
“Mother!” I cried out in astonishment.
She hugged me and hushed me, telling me to dry my tears. “You see, my child,” she said softly, “in nature and the world, what is different can only be tolerated within reason. Then it becomes freakish and finally dangerous.” She held my face and looked deeply into my eyes. “Remember that, my dear daughter. Always.”