by Anthology
It’s 1:00 p.m. now. We just watched the first rockets take off. Ten of them, one after the other.
It’s 1:35 p.m. Via satellite, we watched the Japanese missiles.
We just heard that the Chinese and Russian rockets are being launched. When the other nations send theirs up, there will be thirty-seven in all.
No news at 12:30 a.m., June 5. In this case, no news must be bad news. But what could have happened? The newscasters won’t say; they just talk around the subject.
7.
True date: June 6, 1980.
Subjective date: May 13, 1980
My records say that this morning was just like the other four. Hell.
One o’clock. The president, looking like a sad old man, though he’s only forty-four, reported the catastrophe. All thirty-seven rockets were blown up by their own H-bombs about three thousand miles from The Ball. We saw some photographs of them taken from the orbiting labs. They weren’t very impressive. No mushroom clouds, of course, and not even much light.
The Ball has weapons we can’t hope to match. And if it can activate our H-bombs out in space, it should be able to do the same to those on Earth’s surface. My God! It could wipe out all life if it wished to do so!
Near the end of the speech, the president did throw out a line of hope. With a weak smile—he was trying desperately to give us his big vote-winning one—he said that all was not lost by any means. A new plan, called Project Toro, was being drawn up even as he spoke.
Toro was Spanish for bull, I thought, but I didn’t say so. Carole and the kids wouldn’t have thought it funny, and I didn’t think it was so funny myself. Anyway, I thought, maybe it’s a Japanese word meaning victory or destruction or something like that.
Toro, as it turned out, was the name of a small irregularly shaped asteroid about 2.413 kilometers long and 1.609 kilometers wide. Its peculiar orbit had been calculated in 1972 by an L. Danielsson of the Swedish Royal Institute of Technology and a W. H. Ip of the University of California at San Diego. Toro, the president said, was bound into a resonant orbit with the Earth. Each time Toro came near the Earth—“near” was sometimes 12.6 million miles—it got exactly enough energy or “kick” from the Earth to push it on around so that it would come back for another near passage.
But the orbit was unstable, which meant that both Earth and Venus take turns controling the asteroid. For a few centuries, Earth governs Toro; then Venus takes over. Earth has controled Toro since A.D. 1580. Venus will take over in 2200. Earth grabs it again in 2350; Venus gets it back in 2800.
I was wondering what all this stuff about this celestial Ping-pong game was about. Then the president said that it was possible to land rockets on Toro. In fact, the plan called for many shuttles to land there carrying parts of huge rocket motors, which would be assembled on Toro.
When the motors were erected on massive and deep stands, power would be applied to nudge Toro out of its orbit. This would require many trips by many rockets with cargoes of fuel and spare parts for the motors. The motors would bum out a number of times. Eventually, though, the asteroid would be placed in an orbit that would end in a direct collision with The Ball. Toro’s millions of tons of hard rock and nickel-steel would destroy The Ball utterly, would turn it into pure energy.
“Yes,” I said aloud, “but what’s to keep The Ball from just changing its orbit? Its sensors will detect the asteroid; it’ll change course; Toro will go on by it, like a train on a track.”
This was the next point of the president’s speech. The failure of the attack had revealed at least one item of information, or, rather, verified it. The radiation of the H-bombs had blocked off, disrupted, all control and observation of the rockets by radar and laser. In their final approach, the rockets had gone in blind, as it were, unable to be regulated from Earth. But if the bombs did this to our sensors, they must be doing the same to The Ball’s.
So, just before Toro’s course is altered to send it into its final path, H-bombs will be set off all around The Ball. In effect, it will be enclosed in a sphere of radiation. It will have no sensor capabilities. Nor will The Ball believe that it will have to alter its orbit to dodge Toro. It will have calculated that Toro’s orbit won’t endanger it. After the radiation fills the space around it, it won’t be able to see that Toro is being given a final series of nudges to push it into a collision course.
The project is going to require immense amounts of materials and manpower. The USA can’t handle it alone; Toro is going to be a completely international job. What one nation can’t provide, the other will.
The president ended with a few words about how Project Toro, plus the situation of memory loss, is going to bring about a radical revision of the economic setup. He’s going to announce the outlines of the new structure—not just policy but structure—two days from now. It’ll be designed, so he says, to restore prosperity and, not incidentally, rid society of many problems plaguing it since the industrial revolution.
“Yes, but how long will Project Toro take?” I said. “Oh, Lord, how long?”
Six years, the president said, as if he’d heard me. Perhaps longer.
Six years!
I didn’t tell Carole what I could see coming. But she’s no dummy. She could figure out some of the things that were bound to happen in six years, and none of them were good.
I never felt so hopeless in my life, and neither did she. But we do have each other, and so we clung tightly for a while. May 18 isn’t forgotten, but it seems so unimportant. Mike and Tom cried, I suppose because they knew that this exhibition of love meant something terrible for all of us. Poor kids! They get upset by our hatreds and then become even more upset by our love.
When we realized what we were doing to them, we tried to be jolly. But we couldn’t get them to smile.
True date: middle of 1981. Subjective date: middle of 1977
I’m writing this, since I couldn’t get any new tapes today. The shortage is only temporary, I’m told. I could erase some of the old ones and use them, but it’d be like losing a vital part of myself. And God knows I’ve lost enough.
Old Mrs. Douglas next door is dead. Killed herself, according to my note on the calendar, April 2 of this year. I never would have thought she’d do it. She was such a strong fundamentalist, and these believe as strongly as the Roman Catholics that suicide is well-nigh unforgivable. I suspect that the double shock of her husband’s death caused her to take her own life. April 2 of 1976 was the day he died. She had to be hospitalized because of shock and grief for two weeks after his death. Carole and I had her over to dinner a few times after she came home, and all she could talk about was her dead husband. So I presume that, as she traveled backward to the day of his death, the grief became daily more unbearable. She couldn’t face the arrival of the day he died.
Hers is not the only empty house on the block. Jack Bridger killed his wife and his three kids and his mother-in-law and himself last month—according to my records. Nobody knows why, but I suspect that he couldn’t stand seeing his three-year-old girl become no more than an idiot. She’d retrogressed to the day of her birth and perhaps beyond. She’d lost her language abilities and could no longer feed herself. Strangely, she could still walk, and her intelligence potential was high. She had the brain of a three-year-old, fully developed, but lacking all postbirth experience. It would have been better if she hadn’t been able to walk. Confined to a cradle, she would at least not have had to be watched every minute.
Little Ann’s fate is going to be Tom’s. He talks like a five-year-old now. And Mike’s fate . . . my fate . . . Carole’s . . . God! We’ll end up like Ann! I can’t stand thinking about it.
Poor Carole. She has the toughest job. I’m away part of the day, but she has to take care of what are, in effect, a five-year-old and an eight-year-old, getting younger every day. There is no relief for her, since they’re always home. All educational institutions, except for certain research laboratories, are closed.
The p
resident says we’re going to convert ninety percent of all industries to cybernation. In fact, anything that can be cybernated will be. They have to be. Almost everything, from the mines to the loading equipment to the railroads and trucks and the unloading equipment and the arrangement and dispersal of the final goods at central distribution points.
Are six years enough to do this?
And who’s going to pay for this? Never mind, he says. Money is on its way out. The president is a goddamned radical. He’s taking advantage of this situation to put over his own ideas, which he sure as hell never revealed during his campaign for election. Sometimes I wonder who put The Ball up there. But that idea is sheer paranoia. At least, this gigantic WPA project is giving work to those who are able to work. The rest are on, or going to be on, a minimum guaranteed income, and I mean minimum. But the president says that, in time, everybody will have all he needs, and more, in the way of food, housing, schooling, clothing, etc. He says! What if Project Toro doesn’t work? And what if it does work? Are we then going to return to the old economy? Of course not! It’ll be impossible to abandon everything we’ve worked on; the new establishment will see to that.
I tried to find out where Myrna lived. I’m making this record in my office, so Carole isn’t going to get hold of it. I love her—Myrna, I mean—passionately. I hired her two weeks ago and fell headlong, bumingly, in love with her. All this was in 1977, of course, but today, inside of me, is 1977.
Carole doesn’t know about this, of course. According to the letters and notes from Myrna, which I should have destroyed but, thank God, never had the heart to do, Carole didn’t find out about Myrna until two years later. At least, that’s what this letter from Myrna says. She was away visiting her sister then and wrote to me in answer to my letter. A good thing, too, otherwise I wouldn’t know what went on then.
My reason tells me to forget about Myrna. And so I will.
I’ve traveled backward in our affair, from our final bitter parting, to this state, when I was most in love with her. I know this because I’ve just reread the records of our relationship. It began deteriorating about six months before we split up, but I don’t feel those emotions now, of course. And in two weeks I won’t feel anything for her. If I don’t refer to the records, I won’t even know she ever existed.
This thought is intolerable. I have to find her, but I’ve had no success at all so far. In fourteen days, no, five, since every day ahead takes three more of the past, I’ll have no drive to locate her. Because I won’t know what I’m missing.
I don’t hate Carole. I love her, but with a cool much-married love. Myrna makes me feel like a boy again. I bum exquisitely.
But where is Myma?
True date: October 30, 1981
I ran into Brack well Lee, the old mystery story writer today. Like most writers who haven’t gone to work for the government propaganda office, he’s in a bad way financially. He’s surviving on his GMI, but for him there are no more first editions of rare books, new sports cars, Western Reserve or young girls. I stood him three shots of the rotgut which is the only whiskey now served at Grover’s and listened to the funny stories he told to pay me for the drinks. But I also had to listen to his tales of woe.
Nobody buys fiction or, in fact, any long works of any kind anymore. Even if you’re a speed reader and go through a whole novel in one day, you have to start all over again the next time you pick it up. TV writing, except for the propaganda shows, is no alternative. The same old shows are shown every day and enjoyed just as much as yesterday or last year. According to my records, I’ve seen the hilarious pilot movie of the “Soap Opera Blues” series fifty times.
When old Lee talked about how he had been dropped by the young girls, he got obnoxiously weepy. I told him that that didn’t say much for him or the girls either. But if he didn’t want to be hurt, why didn’t he erase those records that noted his rejections?
He didn’t want to do that, though he could give me no logical reason why he shouldn’t.
“Listen,” I said with a sudden drunken inspiration, “why don’t you erase the old records and make some new ones? How you laid this and that beautiful young thing. Describe your conquests in detail. You’ll think you’re the greatest Casanova that ever lived.”
“But that wouldn’t be true!” he said.
“You, a writer of lies, say that?” I said. “Anyway, you wouldn’t know that they weren’t the truth.”
“Yeah,” he said, “but if I get all charged up and come barreling down here to pick up some tail, I’ll be rejected and so’ll be right back where I was.”
“Leave a stem note to yourself to listen to them only late at night, say, an hour before The Ball puts all to sleep. That way, you won’t ever get hurt.”
George Palmer wandered in then. I asked him how things were doing.
“I’m up to here handling cases for kids who can’t get drivers’ licenses,” he said. “It’s true you can teach anybody how to drive in a day, but the lessons are forgotten the next day. Anyway, it’s experience that makes a good driver, and. . . need I explain more? The kids have to have cars, so they drive them regardless. Hence, as you no doubt have forgotten, the traffic accidents and violations are going up and up.”
“Is that right?” I said.
“Yeah. There aren’t too many in the mornings, since most people don’t go to work until noon. However, the new transit system should take care of that when we get it, sometime in 1984 or 5.”
“What new transit system?” I said.
“It’s been in the papers,” he said. “I reread some of last week’s this morning. The city of Los Angeles is equipped with a model system now, and it’s working so well it’s going to be extended throughout Los Angeles County. Eventually, every city of any size in the country’ll have it. Nobody’ll have to walk more than four blocks to get to a line. It’ll cut air pollution by half and the traffic load by three-thirds. Of course, it’ll be compulsory; you’ll have to show cause to drive a car. And I hate to think about the mess that’s going to be, the paperwork, the pile-up in the courts and so forth. But after the way the government handled the L. A. riot, the rest of the country should get in line.”
“How will the rest of the country know how the government handled it unless they’re told?” I said.
“They’ll be told. Every day,” he said.
“Eventually, there won’t be enough time in the day for the news channels to tell us all we’ll need to know,” I said. “And even if there were enough time, we’d have to spend all day watching TV. So who’s going to get the work done?”
“Each person will have to develop his own viewing specialty,” he said. “They’ll just have to watch the news that concerns them and ignore the rest.”
“And how can they do that if they won’t know what concerns them until they’ve run through everything?” I said. “Day after day.”
“I’ll buy a drink,” he said. “Liquor’s good for one thing. It makes you forget what you’re afraid not to forget.”
8.
True date: late 1982.
Subjective date: late 1974
She came into my office, and I knew at once that she was going to be more than just another client. I’d been suffering all day from the “mirror syndrome,” but the sight of her stabilized me. I forgot the thirty-seven-year-old face my twenty-nine-year-old mind had seen in the bathroom that morning. She is a beautiful woman, only twenty-seven. I had trouble at first listening to her story; all I wanted to do was to look at her. I finally understood that she wanted me to get her husband out of jail on a murder rap. It seemed he’d been in since 1976 (real time). She wanted me to get the case reopened, to use the new plea of rehabilitation by retrogression.
I was supposed to know that, but I had to take a quick look through my resume before I could tell her what chance she had. Under RBR was the definition of the term and a notation that a number of people had been released because of it. The main idea behind it is that cr
iminals are not the same people they were before they became criminals, if they have lost all memory of the crime. They’ve traveled backward to goodness, you might say. Of course, RBR doesn’t apply to hardened criminals or to someone who’d planned a crime a long time before it was actually committed.
I asked her why she would want to help a man who had killed his mistress in a fit of rage when he’d found her cheating on him?
“I love him,” she said.
And I love you, I thought.
She gave me some documents from the big rec bag she carried. I looked through them and said, “But you divorced him in 1977?”
“Yes, he’s really my ex-husband,” she said. “But I think of him now as my husband.”
No need to ask her why.
“I’ll study the case,” I said. “You make a note to see me tomorrow. Meantime, how about a drink at the Rover bar so we can discuss our strategy?”
That’s how it all started—again.
It wasn’t until a week later, when I was going over some old recs, that I discovered it was again. It made no difference. I love her. I also love Carole, rather, a Carole. The one who married me six years ago, that is, six years ago in my memory.
But there is the other Carole, the one existing today, the poor miserable wretch who can’t get out of the house until I come home. And I can’t come home until late evening because I can’t get started to work until about twelve noon. It’s true that I could come home earlier than I do if it weren’t for Myma. I try. No use. I have to see Myma.
I tell myself I’m a bastard, which I am, because Carole and the children need me very much. Tom is ten and acts as if he’s two. Mike is a four-year-old in a twelve-year-old body. I come home from Myma to bedlam every day, according to my records, and every day must be like today.
That I feel both guilt and shame doesn’t help. I become enraged; I try to suppress my anger, which is bom out of my desperation and helplessness and guilt and shame. But it comes boiling out, and then bedlam becomes hell.