Afterword to “A Smaller Government”
Stories about shrinkage have a long history in science fiction, going back at least as far as the early twentieth century and including such stories as “He Who Shrank” by Henry L. Hasse, published in 1936 and the classic 1957 movie “The Incredible Shrinking Man,” based on the novel by Richard Matheson. However impossible they may be, these stories challenge us to consider, even visualize, the scale of the universe around us, which is a reality from the smallest to the largest.
A satirical treatment of the theme can of course also expand our minds.
This story was written for Fast Forward 1, an anthology edited by Lou Anders, who may hold the record for fastest decision by an editor on any of my stories; he accepted “A Smaller Government” in one day.
NOT ALONE
“I don’t know about Jerome Sivan,” Agnes Mead said, after I’d told her that I’d already agreed to be one of his subjects. “Saw him on a C-SPAN debate this weekend, and he just tore this minister apart. The way Sivan attacked religion, he looked like a missionary in reverse.” Agnes sounded worried, almost frightened. “It’s all superstition to him, just an adaptation we picked up in order to survive. He says faith’s totally outlived its usefulness.”
The man she described didn’t sound like the kindly professor type I had met. Jerome Sivan had turned out to be a slightly plump bearded man in a rumpled jacket and baggy slacks. He’d smiled warmly at me, ushered me to an armchair, then sat down behind his desk.
“You’ve read the material the receptionist handed you?” he asked.
I nodded, although the brochure hadn’t told me much more than the newspaper ad, just that the medical school needed subjects for a new study. Dr. Sivan had been doing his experiments for a couple of years by then, as I found out later, but hadn’t yet published any results.
“We’re working on ways to lower tension and stress,” he told me. That was supposedly the purpose of the study, but I wouldn’t have known the difference if he’d admitted he was doing something that involved the brain and temporal lobes and magnetic induction and what-have-you. “Of course we’ll need your informed consent, but I don’t expect there’ll be any physical or mental problems later on.”
I was a bit taken aback. “Oh, I didn’t think…”
“Well, I don’t expect problems, but there are no absolute guarantees. That’s why you should take your time to think things over.” He sounded awfully reassuring, and there was also the fact that all of his subjects would get a small fee, which I could use since I was still looking for a new job, and free medical follow-ups for at least a year after that. There weren’t going to be any shots or experimental drugs, either, so it was hard to see what could go wrong.
He didn’t mention anything about his personal beliefs, because that would have affected his results. I found that out later. I found that out too late.
“I’ll think it over,” I said, even though I’d already made up my mind to go ahead.
“You do that,” he replied.
* * * *
I’d always thought of myself as religious. I went to Mass and said my our Fathers and Hail Marys and never doubted that God was around looking out for me, but I didn’t really think about God that much. Once in a while, it would occur to me that there had to be something more, something overwhelming that could take me out of myself, make me actually see the face of God, but then the next day would come, and I would forget about all of that. Maybe I’d have some kind of overpowering mystical experience someday, but if I didn’t, in the meantime I would just do the best I could.
Better not to think about all of that, anyway, I decided, because I’d been waking up in the middle of the night more often and lying there, paralyzed with terror, wondering if anybody could be sure of anything at all, thinking that maybe there was nothing else except us and the world and the rest of space, that there was no meaning to any of it. That was what Jerome Sivan believed, according to Agnes. How could he live like that? How could anybody, thinking that we were alone, with no purpose? That was the kind of idea that kept me lying there, awake in the dark with what felt like a vise constricting my chest, unable to move until Tom snorted in his sleep or turned over on his side and I could put my arms around him and fall asleep again.
* * * *
I went to the medical school for my first session, not knowing what to expect. Jerome Sivan met me at the entrance, told me to call him Jerome instead of Dr. Sivan, and led me down a long hallway to a small room. The door had padding on one side, and the walls of the room made me think of a padded cell. A console sat in one corner, and two lounge chairs with thick leather cushioning were on either side of a table that held what looked like a transparent football helmet.
“You’d better put these on,” Jerome said as he handed me a pair of ear mufflers. “You’ll need them. It can get kind of noisy in here, that’s why we had to put the lab at the end of this wing.”
That explained the padded walls. For a moment, I was tempted to leave, but I’d signed the release and didn’t like the thought of breaking my promise, so I put the mufflers over my ears and settled myself in the smaller chair. Jerome adjusted the helmet on my head; surprisingly, it was so light that I could hardly feel it at all. Two thin wires seemed to be resting just above my ears, under the mufflers.
Jerome left the room. I closed my eyes and waited. There was a low roaring sound as the floor began to shake under the chair. I clung to the chair arms, wondering how this was going to help anybody overcome tension and stress.
And then God was in the room with me. I not only knew it, I could feel it. God was with me and inside me in the room and the air and the city outside the medical center and everywhere. I felt God’s presence and the purest happiness I’d ever felt, ecstasy and wonder and joy and eternity and love. This was what it would be like to be in heaven, I thought. I wasn’t all alone, I’d never be alone again.
I don’t know how long I was there, but the feeling of joy stayed with me even after Jerome came back into the room, removed the helmet, and helped me to my feet. “Feel all right?” he asked.
“I’m fine.”
“Will you be able to drive home?”
“My husband’s picking me up on his way home from work.”
Jerome insisted on accompanying me to the lobby, but didn’t ask me about any reactions, saying that he’d get a full report from me next time. Maybe my face told him everything he needed to know.
Tom was over an hour late getting to the center and muttered something about an accident on a nearby road. “Sorry about that,” he said.
“No problem.” I hadn’t even noticed how late he had been until I’d looked up at the clock near the reception desk.
We drove home in silence. Tom didn’t have much to say and I was content not to talk.
* * * *
That deep happiness was still with me even after days had passed. Everyone around me—Tom, my friends, the neighbors—all seemed like shadows, or ghosts. I would walk outside my house and feel as though I was flying above it; my neighbors would greet me and I would suddenly have an almost overpowering desire to share my joy with them. Days went by when I lost track of time, when I’d begin to load the dishwasher or take out the vacuum cleaner and then forget what I was doing. I would be going back to the medical center in a week, and that was all that mattered. I’d be close to God again, and all I’d have to do in return is tell Jerome exactly what I saw and thought and felt.
* * * *
Tom said, “I’m worried about you.” He had found me standing by the washing machine, my hands resting on the laundry basket, and all I could recall was that I’d gone down there sometime during the morning. He led me up the stairs and sat me down at the kitchen table. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong.” Happiness welled up inside me. The feeling of love for Tom and our home and
our city and everything else in the world was suddenly so powerful that I nearly wept. I tried to tell him what I felt, how I saw things now, what the difference was between just thinking something’s true and really feeling it inside yourself. I couldn’t go on as I was, acting as though this world was all that mattered.
“You hardly ever leave the house. You sit around with that vacant look on your face.” He clutched at my hands. “It’s that study, isn’t it, all those sessions with Dr. Sivan, that’s what’s doing this to you.”
“You don’t understand.”
“It has to stop, do you hear me?” Tom’s eyes were slitted with anger, his face growing red, but his rage seemed like a distant storm that would soon pass. He couldn’t see that our old life was impossible for me now.
* * * *
I went in for my last session, not knowing that it would be the last. I closed my eyes and felt the room shake and reached out toward the light, but eternal joy suddenly turned into a sharp bright stab of pain.
Jerome was leaning over me. I had never seen how ugly his face was before, how pitted and pockmarked his forehead was. The air seemed thicker, harder to breathe, the padded walls drab and dark. It was impossible for me to move. A feeling of dread came into me, worse than any of the fears that used to haunt me in the middle of the night.
Jerome got hold of Tom, and somehow Tom got me home. The study was halted after that; there would be no more sessions for any of the subjects. The medical school sent me a form letter explaining that they regretted any unforeseen circumstances while pointing out that the release I had signed absolved them of any responsibility. I wondered how many others had ended up the same way—dead inside, with a soul that was no more than a burned-out husk.
* * * *
Jerome insisted on visiting me, even though I hadn’t asked to see him. Tom met him at the door, ready to throw him out of the house, but settled for glowering at him while Jerome explained the true purpose of his study. It had nothing to do with relaxation techniques; what he was actually doing was proving that he could produce mystical experiences in anyone, that it was just a matter of stimulating the temporal lobes of the brain. Some subjects had felt the presence of God, and others would talk about love or transcendence or an invisible presence, but any such sensations were the result of electronic pulses and no more.
“What I didn’t anticipate was that a few of you would burn out,” Jerome went on. “I never intended anything like that to happen. But you have to see—this doesn’t change anything, not really. Think of yourself as being rid of a delusion. That’s all your beliefs about God are, you know. You can learn to live without them—you’ll be better off in the end.”
He couldn’t see it, couldn’t understand what I had lost. Without my faith, I was lost; that was what I’d been taught and what I had believed, when it was simply something I had taken for granted and later on, after my experiences in the lab had convinced me of its truth. I felt nothing, and wondered if I ever would again.
Without faith, I was damned. That had always been my assumption, faith was the buoy I had clutched to keep from drowning in doubt. I stared at Jerome and realized then that not all emotion was lost to me, that I could still feel rage. Damned I might be, but I would not be alone, not in this world or the next. Jerome was damned, too. I clung to that thought, and felt a tiny flicker of joy.
Afterword to “Not Alone”
This story was a challenge for me, given that my stories tend to be longer rather than shorter. I wrote it for Damien Broderick, who was then fiction editor for the Australian popular science magazine Cosmos, and the word limit for stories there was about 2,000 words. That was the first challenge. The second was that Damien, a formidable writer and intellect himself (he is a prolific writer of science fiction and nonfiction, inventive speculator about the future, recipient of the Distinguished Scholarship Award given by the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts, and was termed “the Australian polymath” by the late Sir Arthur C. Clarke), was a demanding editor and had no compunction about offering stern criticism and asking for rewrites. In my case, as I recall (my memory of rewrites tends to be hazy, maybe because memories of intense pain have a tendency to fade over time), “Not Alone” required several rewrites. Not that I’m complaining; if you’re lucky enough to have a demanding editor and enough discernment to know when the editor’s giving you good advice (as opposed to trying to get you to write a different story altogether), your story can only benefit, as this one did.
THE DROWNED FATHER
The airline had promised reimbursement for his ticket, but Lucas was still irritated as he boarded the bus. From here, it would take three hours to get to the airport in Norris, and he wouldn’t be home until at least two in the morning, assuming that he could get a cab in any reasonable amount of time.
A quick glance around the bus’s interior revealed worn seats. Lucas took a book from his carry-on, hoisted the bag into the overhead bin, then sat down. Maybe he would get lucky and have two bus seats all to himself.
People wrestled their luggage through the aisle and settled into the seats around him. Lucas was grateful that he had brought only a carry-on; most of his fellow passengers had looked extremely unhappy while being told that their checked-through baggage would catch up with them in a day or so. He flicked on one of the overhead lights and opened his book; if anyone sat next to him, he meant to look busy and avoid conversation. He had just reached the end of the novel’s first chapter when the pilot announced that they would be landing in Alton instead of at the airport in Norris because of an engine problem, but not to worry, they would all be taken care of and after all their personal safety was what mattered to the airline.
A valise hit the seat next to him. Lucas looked up to see a slender blond woman in a dark blue blazer, then lowered his eyes to his book, ignoring her as she secured her bag overhead and slammed the bin’s door shut. She sat down, fidgeted as she settled a large purse on her lap, then heaved a sigh.
“I don’t have any luck with planes,” the woman said. “Last time it was three hours late taking off and we had to sit there the whole time on the tarmac.”
Lucas said nothing.
“Next time I’ll drive, I don’t care how long it takes. Beats going through all that airport security.”
Lucas peered at her from the sides of his eyes, noted that her attractive face was fine-featured, with a model’s prominent cheekbones, and that she had far too much eye makeup on, then returned to his book.
The bus trembled and growled as it rolled away from the airport. “Whatcha reading?” the woman asked.
He closed the book and turned it to show her the spine.
“All’s Well,” she said, reading the title, “by Mack Vernon.” She let out a breath.
“I started reading his novels a couple of years ago,” Lucas said. “A friend of mine loaned me the first book in his Loren Reynolds series, and I was hooked.”
“That was Good Intentions,” she said, surprising him by knowing the title of the first volume.
“That’s it,” Lucas said. “After that, I got Early To Bed and All’s Well from an online book dealer, but even without the dust jackets, they cost me a pretty penny. This dealer has a paperback of Idle Hands, too, but he’s asking a hundred dollars for it, which is kind of rich for my blood, even if Vernon may be one of the best suspense writers ever. I just hope I can find the rest of the series without having to pay a fortune.”
“He only wrote seven of them,” the woman said, “so you’ve only got four more to buy, and they can’t all cost that much.”
She was holding his interest in spite of himself. “You wouldn’t happen to have any of his books, would you?” he asked.
“Afraid not. Once…” She fell silent and looked away.
He opened his book and tried to focus on the page.
“What do you think of Atlanta?
” the woman asked, clearly intent on keeping their conversation going.
“I was in Sarasota. Atlanta was just where I changed flights.”
“Down there looking for a job?”
“No,” he replied. Old memories were coming back to him, of sitting in other buses and expounding on his own fictitious accomplishments.
Actually, I’m a writer, he would say to the passenger next to him when asked about what he did. He would make up titles, tell stories about working with editors who in real life had rejected everything he had ever submitted to them. Sometimes the other passenger, having only a vague idea of what writers did and inflated notions about the glamour of the literary life, wanted to hear elaborate tales of pending book contracts and trips to Manhattan and writers’ workshops and book signings and speaking gigs and queries from Hollywood, until the life he had conjured up while traveling seemed more real to him than his actual life. If he talked it up enough, he had once thought, maybe it would someday become a reality; he might wake up one morning to find his writing done, and volumes of his published work sitting on his bookshelves.
“As a matter of fact, I’m retired,” he said to the woman.
“You don’t look anywhere near old enough to be retired,” she said.
“I took early retirement.” He had been practical, postponing his dream of writing for a steady job and a pension. Now, with his fixed but dependable income, he had all the time he could want to read and travel and tell himself that it still wasn’t too late to go back and write, that lots of writers didn’t get anywhere until their middle years, that he had been smart to make the choices he had, and that one of these days, now that he could afford it, he would sit down and write the stories that he knew he still had inside himself.
He lifted his book and held it closer to ward off any more discussion.
“I was visiting my sister in Decatur,” the woman said. “My half-sister, actually. Mom got married again after she and my dad broke up.”
Puss in D.C. and Other Stories Page 18