Sense of Wonder: A Century of Science Fiction

by Leigh Grossman

  “In fact you all should do a story on it—I mean, not right this second, but in a few months, maybe, when the program’s a little further along and NASA’s happy, you and Joe should come over to the factory, shoot some pictures. Write this thing up. I’d give you the exclusive. You guys beat out all the other papers, get a little glory. We’d sure love the PR. That never hurts. You come and I’ll give you the guided tour of the place, how’s that?”

  He adjusts his tie again on the way to reaching into his coat and coming up with a business card. The card has a spinning globe on it, with tiny lights flashing here and there as the world spins. Coopersmith smiles. “Cool, isn’t it? The engine’s embedded in the card. Doesn’t take much to drive a little animation. You be sure and have Joe give me a call real soon.”

  He turns his back, striking up another conversation almost immediately. You’ve been dismissed. Heading over to where Joe stands balancing a plate of ribs, you glance back.

  Coopersmith with eyes downcast listens to another man talk, his hand fiddling with the knot on his tie again.

  You might not have been sure at first, but you are now: He was the one on the catwalk, watching as you edged around the factory floor while the Virgin paid her visit.

  Joe says, “So?”

  “He offered us the exclusive on their new program for NASA.”

  “You have been blessed, my son. An overlord has smiled upon you.” He tips his glass.

  * * * *

  When you tell Margarita what you suspected, she isn’t surprised so much as hurt. Even though she’d been certain of the fraud, the fact of it stings her. By association, you’re part of her pain. Although she welcomed you back with a kiss, after the news she doesn’t want to touch at all. She withdraws into smoke and drink, and finally wanders off with her cold black camera into the colonia, disgusted, she says, with the human race and God himself. You begin to realize that despite her tough cynical skin, there’s at least a kernel of Margarita that wanted the miracle in all its glory. Beneath your rejection, does some part of you want it, too? Once in awhile in seeking for truth it would be nice to find something better than truth.

  Later, in the dark, she comes back, slides down beside you on the mattress and starts to cry. From her that’s an impossible sound, so terrifying that it paralyzes you. It’s the sound of betrayal, the very last crumb of purity floating away.

  You reach over to hold her, and she pushes your hand away. So you lie there, unable to take back the knowledge, the doubt, the truth, and knowing that the betrayal will always be tied to you. There’s nothing you can do.

  * * * *

  The first opportunity you have, you swap your goggles with Gabriel Perea. The only place you can do this is at lunch. You have to wait for a day when he carries the goggles off the assembly line straight to the lunch area. You sit with him, listening to other workers ask him things about the Virgin. He looks at you edgily. He knows he’s supposed to pretend that you’ve never met, but you’re making this impossible by sitting there beside him. Making the switch is child’s play. Everyone’s staring at him, hanging on his every word. You set your goggles beside his, and then pick up the wrong pair a minute later and walk away.

  Close up, you can see that his goggles have a slight refractive coating. He’s going to know immediately what’s happened, but with luck he won’t be able to do anything about it. He won’t want to be seen talking to you in the middle of the factory.

  If Perea remotely shares your suspicions, he hasn’t admitted it even to himself. This makes you think of Margarita, and your face burns with still more betrayal. It’s too late, you tell yourself. This is what you came here to do.

  Two days later, ten feet up in the forklift, you get what you wanted: The Virgin Mary appears to you.

  It’s a bare wall, concrete brick and metal conduits, and suddenly there she is. She floats in the air and when you look through the cage front of the forklift she is floating beyond it. The cage actually cuts her off. It’s incredible. Wherever you look, she has a fixed location, an anchored spot in space. If you look up, her image remains fixed, sliding down the glasses. Somehow the circuit monitors your vision, tracks the turn of your head. “Feedback loops”—wasn’t that what Coopersmith said? It must be automatic, though. She may recognize the geometry, but not the receiver, because the first thing out of her mouth is: “Te amo, Gabriel, mi profeta.” So much for divinity. She doesn’t know you’ve swapped goggles even if the goggles themselves do.

  She is beautiful. Her hair, peeking out beneath a white wimple, is black. The blue of her robes is almost painful to see. No sky could match it. Her oval face is serene, a distillation of a million tender mothers. Oh, they’re good, whoever created her. Who wouldn’t want to believe in this Mary? Gabriel couldn’t help but succumb.

  The camera in your pocket is useless.

  She reminds you of your duty to your flock. She promises that you will all live in glory and comfort in Heaven after this life of misery and toil, and not to blame—

  In the middle of her speech, she vanishes.

  It’s so quick that you almost keel forward out of your seat, thank God for the harness.

  You can guess what happened. Management came out for their afternoon show, and things were wrong. Gabriel Perea, the poor bastard, didn’t respond. He’s still somewhere, attaching diodes to little green boards, unaware that divinity has dropped by to see him again.

  You lower the forklift, and get out, unable to help one last glance up into the air, looking for her. A mere scintilla, a Tinkerbell of light would do, but there is nothing.

  Nothing.

  The last hour and a half you go about your business as usual. Nothing has changed, nothing can have changed. Your hope is they think their circuits or the goggles malfunctioned, something failed to project. Who knows what sort of feedback system was at work there—it has to be sophisticated to have dodged every solid shape in front of you. They’ll want to see his goggles at the end of his shift. No one seems to be watching you yet. No one calls you in off the floor. So at the end of the day you drop the goggles in the trash and leave with the others in your shift. Everyone’s talking about going home, how hot it is, how much they’d like a bath or a beer. Everything’s so normal it sets your teeth on edge. You ride the bus down the highway and get off with a dozen others at your colonia and head for home.

  It’s on the dusty cowpath of a road, on foot, that they grab you. Three of them. They know who they’re looking for, and everyone else knows to stay out of it. These guys are las pandillas, the kind who’d kill someone for standing too close to you. A dozen people are all moving away, down the road, and the looks they give you are looks of farewell. Adios, amigo. Won’t be seeing you again. They know it and so do you. You’ve seen the photos. The thousand merciless ways people don’t come home, and you’re about to become one.

  The first guy walks straight up as if he’s going to walk by, but suddenly his elbow swings right up into your nose, and the sky goes black and shiny at the same time, and time must have jumped because you’re on your knees, blood flowing out between your fingers, but you don’t remember getting there. And then you’re on your back, looking at the sky, and still it seems no one’s said a word to you, but your head is ringing, blood roaring like a waterfall. Someone laid you out. Each pose is a snapshot of pain. Each time there’s less of you to shoot. They’ll compress you, maybe for hours, maybe for days—that’s how it works, isn’t it? How long before gasoline and a match? Will you feel anything by then?

  You stare up at the sky, at the first few stars, and wait for the inevitable continuation. The bodies get buried in the Lote Bravo. At least you know where you’re going. In a couple of months someone might find you. Will Joe come looking?

  Someone yells, “¡Aguila!” and a door slams. Or is that in your head, too?

  Footsteps approach. Here it comes, you think. Is there anything you can do to prepare for the pain? Probably not, no.

  The face that
peers down at you doesn’t help. Hispanic, handsome, well-groomed. This could be any business man in Mexico, but you know it isn’t, and you remember someone telling you about the narcotraficantes investing in the maquiladora, taking their drug money and buying into international trade. Silent partners.

  “Not going to hurt you, keemo sabe,” he’s saying with a sly grin, as though your broken nose and battered skull don’t exist. “Couldn’t do that. No, no. Questions would be asked about you—you’re not just some factory cunt, are you?” His grin becomes a sneer—you’ve never actually seen anyone sneer before. This guy hates women for a hobby. “No, no,” he says again, “you’re a second rate wedding photographer who thought he was Dick fucking Tracy. What did you do, hang out with the Juarez photo-locos and get all righteous? Sure, of course you did, .” He kneels, clucking his tongue. You notice that he’s holding your Minox. “Listen, cholo, you print what you’ve uncovered, and Señor Perea will die. You think that’s a threat, hey? But it’s not. You’ll make him out a fool to his own people. They trust him, you know? It’s all they got, so you go ahead and take it from them and see what you get. We care so much, we’re lettin’ you go home. Here.” He tosses the camera into the dirt. “You’re only a threat to the people who think like you do, man.” Now he grabs your arm and pulls you upright. The world threatens to flip on you, and your stomach promises to go with it if it does. Close up, he smells of citrus cologne. He whispers to you, “Go home, cholo, go take pictures of little kids in swimming pools and cats caught in trees and armadillos squashed on the highway. Amateurs don’t survive. Neither do the professionals, here. Next time, you gonna meet some of them.” Then he just walks away. You’re left wobbling on the road. The gang of three are gone, too. Nobody’s around. Behind you, you hear a car door and the rev of an engine. A silver SUV shoots off down the dirt road, back to the pavement and away.

  You stumble along the path to the colonia. Your head feels as tender as the skin of a plum. Your sinuses are clogged with blood and your nose creaks when you inhale. People watch in awe as you approach your shack. In that moment you’re as much a miracle to them as Gabriel Perea. They probably think they’re seeing a ghost. And they’re right, aren’t they? You aren’t here any longer.

  Margarita’s not inside. Her camera’s gone. There’s no one to comfort you, no one to hear how you were written off. The heat inside is like the core of the sun. Back outside you walk to the water barrel, no longer concerned with what contaminants float in the water. You splash it on your face, over your head. Benzene? Who cares? You’re dead anyway. You touch your nose and it’s swollen up the size of a saguaro. Embarrassing how easily you’ve been persuaded to leave. It didn’t take anything at all, did it? One whack and a simple “Go away, Señor, you’re a fool.” What, did you think you could change the world? Make a difference? Not a second rate wedding photographer like you. Not someone with an apartment and a bed and an office and a car. Compromised by the good life. Nobody who leads your life is going to make the difference over here. It takes a breed of insanity you can’t even approach.

  Baum was dead wrong about everything. He simplified the problems to fit, but they aren’t simple. Answers aren’t simple. You, you’re simple.

  Two little girls kneel not far from the barrel, cooking their meal in tin pans on top of an iron plate mounted over an open flame. There’s a rusted electrical box beside them, with outlet holes like eyes and a wide slit for a switch. It’s a robot face silently screaming. The girls watch you even when they’re not looking.

  Long after it gets dark you’re still alone inside. Margarita must be off on some adventure, doing what she does best, what you can’t do. You’ve had hours to build upon your inadequacy. Run your story and they’ll tear Perea apart. He was doomed the moment he believed in the possibility of her. Just like the Church and the little Catholic boy you were once. When you see that, you don’t want to see Margarita. You don’t want to have to explain why you aren’t going any further. All you can do is hurt her. Only a threat.

  You pack up your few things, leaving the dozen film canisters you didn’t use. Let the real photojournalist have them. “Nada que ver,” you tell the empty room.

  Back across the border before midnight, before your life turns back into a pumpkin—better she should think you’re lying under three feet of dirt.

  * * * *

  A month rolls by in a sort of fog. Booze, pain killers and the hell-bent desire to forget your own name. Your nose is healing. It’s a little crooked, has a bluish bump in the middle. Baum keeps his distance and doesn’t ask you anything about your story, though at first you’re too busy to notice. Then one day you find out from the sports editor that Joe got a package while you were gone, and although nobody knows what was in it, when he opened it, he turned white as a ghost and just packed up his office and went home. Called in sick the next three days.

  When you do try and talk to him about what happened, he interrupts with an angry “Don’t think you’re the first person who’s been smashed on the rocks of old Juarez.” Then he walks away. They got to him somehow. If they wanted to, they could get to both of you. Like the wind, this can blow across the river. That message was for you.

  Then one day while you’re placing ad graphics, Joe Baum comes over and sits beside you. He won’t look you in the eye. Very softly he says, “Got a call from Chicken Man. Margarita Espinada’s dead.”

  You stare at the page on the monitor so hard you’re seeing the pixels. Finally, you ask him, “What happened?”

  “Don’t know. Don’t know who did it. She’s been gone for weeks and weeks, but he said that wasn’t unusual. She lived mostly in her car.”

  “Auto loco.”

  “Yeah.” He starts to get up, but as if his weight is too much for him, he drops back onto the chair. “Um, he says she left a package for you. Addressed to him, so maybe whatever happened, she had some warning.” With every word he puts more distance between himself and her death. “There’s gonna be a funeral tomorrow.”

  “So soon?”

  Baum makes a face, lips pressed tight. Defiantly he meets your gaze. “She was dumped in the Lote Bravo awhile ago.”

  * * * *

  Pollamano nods sadly as he lets you in. “¿Quiubo, Deputy?” he asks, but not with any interest. His eyes are bloodshot, drunk or crying, maybe both. Some others are there inside. A few nod—some you remember. Most of them pretend you aren’t there. Her body lies in la Catedral, three blocks from Chicken Man’s current abode. You shouldn’t see it. Their newest member took pictures. Ernesto. He was there, following the cops with his police band radio the way he always does, always trying to get to the scene before they do. He’d taken half a dozen shots before he saw the black boots and realized whose body he was photographing. They’d torn off most of her clothes but left the boots. You remember the one who warned you off. The boots were left on so everyone would know who she was.

  Everyone drinks, toasting her memory. One of them begins weeping and someone else throws an arm around him and mutters. One of the others spits. None of them seems to suspect that you and she spent time together. In any case, you’re an interloper on their private grief. Not one of them.

  Margarita must have known you weren’t dead—otherwise, why send a package for you?

  Late in the afternoon, everyone has shown up, almost two dozen photographers, and some unseen sign passes among you all, and everyone rises up and goes out together. You move in a line through the crowds, between white buses in a traffic snarl and across the square to the neon cathedral. Orange lights bathe you all. Ernesto with his nothing mustache runs up to the door and snaps a picture. Even in this solemn moment, his instinct is for the image. A few glare at him, but no one chastises him. You gather in the front pews, kneel, pray, go up one by one and light your candles for her soul. Your hand is shaking so hard you can hardly ignite the wick.

  * * * *

  After everyone else has left he gives you the package. It’s nearly
the size of a suitcase. He says, “She left it for you, and I don’t violate her wishes. She was here a couple times when I wasn’t around. Using the darkroom.”

  You pull out a folder of photos. On top is the picture of you she took the first day you arrived in Colonia Universidad. You look like you could take on anything. Just looking at it is humiliating.

  Underneath is her collection of shots inside the factory. The top photo is Gabriel Perea standing all twisted and pointing. Foam on his mouth, eyes bugging out. The image is spoiled because of some fogging on the left side of it as if there was a light leak. Whatever caused it lit up Perea, too.

  You almost miss the thing that’s different: He’s not wearing his goggles.

  You go on to the next shot, but it’s a picture of the crowd behind him, all staring, wide-eyed. She’s not using a flash, but there’s some kind of light source. In the third, fourth and fifth shots you see it. It shines straight at Perea. There are lens flares in each image. The light is peculiar, diffuse, as if a collection of small bulbs are firing off, making a sort of ring. The middle is hard to make out until the sixth picture. She must have slid on her knees between all the onlookers to get it. Perea’s feet are close by and out of focus. The light is the center of the image, the light which is different in each shot.

  “Jaime,” you say, “do you have a loupe?”

  “Of course.” He gives it to you. You hold it over the image, over the light. Back in the lab at the Herald, you’ll blow the image up poster size to see the detail without the lens—the outline, and at the top of it a bunch of smudges, a hint of eye sockets and mouth, a trace of nose and cheek. Can an AI break loose from its handlers? you wonder. Does it have a will? Or is this the next step in their plan?

  You give the loupe back.

  He says, “That Perea is gone. Disappeared. People are looking all over for him. They say he was called up to heaven.”