The Waning Age

by S. E. Grove

  calvinopio: We’re not interacting.

  hglt: Well, we’re interacting through text.

  calvinopio: It’s not the same thing.

  hglt: That’s true, but it’s better this way. It creates better conditions for testing.

  calvinopio: I still don’t understand what the test is.

  hglt: Your answers to my questions are part of the test, and your response to being here is also important to the test.

  calvinopio: Are you checking if I try to escape or something?

  hglt: Nothing so dramatic.

  Calvino? Are you still there?

  calvinopio: Can you give me any evidence that you are real?

  hglt: What do you mean, Calvino?

  calvinopio: I have this feeling I am typing to another screen.

  hglt: I assure you, I am very real!

  calvinopio: But I’ve never met you, so to me it doesn’t feel that way.

  hglt: Hm. I can see where you’re coming from. But my being “real” or not doesn’t influence the outcomes here.

  calvinopio: Of course it does. Because it changes how I feel.

  hglt: That’s an excellent point, Calvino. I really hadn’t thought about it that way.

  calvinopio: Can you tell me something about yourself that a program couldn’t? Like what you had for breakfast? Or what you did for fun when you were my age? Or something?

  hglt: Sure. Let’s see . . . For breakfast, I had a spinach smoothie.

  calvinopio: That sounds gross.

  hglt: Ha! It was really good, actually. As for what I did for fun when I was your age . . .

  Let’s see. I grew up in a rural area, so I did a lot of bicycling. I used to bike along the path made by the power lines. And I had a collection of arrowheads.

  calvinopio: Did you play much with other kids?

  hglt: Not much. Honestly, other kids thought I was kind of strange! Ha.

  calvinopio: I’m sorry, Dr. Glout. I know how that feels.

  hglt: Thanks, Calvino. It’s okay. Because then everything changed when I got older. When I waned.

  calvinopio: Then you were all strange!

  hglt: Haha. Yes—well put. You’re right, of course—that’s the irony of it. As a child, I never felt strange. I thought everyone else was strange. But then, after waning, I really did feel like I was the strange one.

  calvinopio: You *felt* like the strange one?

  hglt: You’re right, of course. I used the word “feel,” which is inexact. It’s hard to explain, Calvino. I had this sense that something was wrong. But ALL the time. For me, it was a tremendous relief to be able to take synthetic affects, which I could fortunately afford. They made me feel functional again. I’ve taken them ever since.

  calvinopio: I think I don’t have to say this to you, because it seems you maybe are real and already get this. But now imagine what it’s like for people like my sister and my mom who feel like something is wrong and can’t do anything about it.

  hglt: I know, Calvino. I know.

  17

  NATALIA

  OCTOBER 12—MIDDAY

  My new employers might have been heartless, but they did have good taste in neighbors. I devoured a plate of perfect dumplings in the restaurant downstairs while reading Joey’s message about trendy churches. The verdict: there were many of them. It was a broad category. And I didn’t know enough about Dylan’s awakening to predict which brand of religious folly had inspired his passion. There were at least a dozen places in San Francisco, another twenty in the East Bay, ten or so in Marin County, and toward San Jose . . . There were too many to count. I finished my dumplings and tried not to let the list crush my sense of conviction.

  Looking out the window of the dumpling restaurant, I gave myself a minute to watch a girl my age fake-wrestling with her younger sister. Their mother, who presided over a mountain of fresh fish laid out on ice, was watching them impassively. Unworried, unfazed. Everything was normal. The little girl giggled uncontrollably as her sister turned her upside down and carried her off around the block.

  Cal had now been missing for more than twenty-four hours.

  I gave myself a stern internal talking-to. Yes, the list of churches was long. And there remained the possibility that Dylan was no longer even in the Bay Area. But it was just a task. A task with many steps. Many boring steps, and I simply needed to complete them. At the end of those steps, I would find Dylan.

  Using a paper map and a pencil, I marked the locations of the San Francisco churches on Joey’s list and numbered them in order of proximity. I probably wouldn’t get to them all today, but I could at least try. This was going to be a lot easier with the cleaning car, I thought to myself with an inward grin. If the Crystal sisters wanted to abandon me to a terrible fate, the least they could do was give me a little free mileage. Lavishing thanks on the dumpling chef, I paid my bill and made my way outside.

  The first two churches on my list were in the Tenderloin. I took a bus down to Market and then walked west. The neighborhood had pretty much managed to preserve its seediness over the decades. After a brief blip of good fortune decades earlier, when a square inch of San Francisco property cost more than most people make in a year, the Tenderloin slid comfortably back into disrepute and ruin. Now it could keep up with Oakland as a capital of hard times and vice. Food wrappers and a pair of soggy socks hung on a metal fence. The scrap of dry grass behind it smelled of urine. A waterlogged paper sign hung taped to a lamppost; below a frantic MISSING!!! was the photo of some child, sweet and smiling and incongruous. On Pine Street I was greeted by two long-legged ladies wearing high heels and lingerie and very broad hats. They invited me upstairs, I complimented them on their hats, and they returned the compliment. “Never skimp on sun protection!” I said, wagging a finger at them. They giggled their agreement.

  A block up I had a confusing conversation with a man who was clearly still feeling the effect of the panic he’d taken that morning. “Stop! Stop!” he said, barring my way with his hands. He had on a dirty button-down, dirtier pants, and most of one left shoe. When he waved his arms around, I got a little dizzy from the smell. “You can’t go in there!” he shouted. I could see the sad little plaque for the church on the building entrance. It read LIGHTGATE above an adequate drawing of an iron gate.

  “Why not?”

  “Leo says the snakes have gotten bigger.” He spoke in an undertone and with his eyes wide.

  “Have you asked Leo to get rid of them?” I asked.

  This startled him. “Get rid of them . . .” he echoed, lowering his arms.

  “Leo’s a big boy. He should be able to.”

  The smelly man looked deflated. I moved to step past him and he dashed off across the street. “Stop! Stop!” he shouted at another pedestrian. “You can’t go in there!”

  I opened the door of Lightgate and found myself in a dank little foyer that hadn’t been cleaned in a long time. A door to the left hung open, and through the door was a tiled room with folding chairs. Its only light came through a grimy, barred window that looked onto Pine Street. There was no one in the room, but I could hear voices elsewhere. It was an unusual conversation.

  “Pain.”

  “Yes!”

  “Remorse.”

  “Yes!”

  “Forgiveness.”

  “Yes!”

  Then it went back to pain again. I listened to this cycle three times before venturing toward the door at the back of the room. Knocking lightly, I tried the knob and found it unlocked. Beyond the door was a tiny closet of an office with a tinier desk. The woman sitting there looked up at me. The long, straight hair, beaded headband, and halter top made it evident that she favored the 1970s. She was taking some heavy synaff that made her smile very mellow. Pupils somewhat dilated, corners of her mouth relaxed. She seemed about a
s sharp as a sponge.

  “Hi, bienvenida,” she said, with a warm, familiar tone.

  “Hi.” The voices were a little louder here, but I couldn’t figure out where they were coming from. “I’m trying to locate a family friend that I’ve fallen out of touch with. His name is Dylan Hoffman.”

  Her brow furrowed. “Dylan Hoffman,” she echoed. She shook her head. “I don’t know him. But I’ve only been here a couple months.”

  “How long has Lightgate been here?”

  “Two years.”

  “Could you ask someone else if they’ve heard of him?”

  She blinked. “Sure.” She stood up and I backed out of the office. As I followed her into the main room I realized that the halter top was practical as well as stylish; all along her shoulders and upper back, red welts were healing. Four of them new, many more old. They were about six inches long and an inch wide at the middle, scarlet at the center and crusted at the edges. One of them wasn’t healing well: inflamed with white spots. I hadn’t pegged her for the self-flagellating type. Very trendy indeed. She opened a flimsy door and leaned in. After a murmured conversation with an invisible person beyond the doorway, she withdrew, closing the door quietly. “Liz has been here for a year and a half and she hasn’t heard of him, either.”

  “Thanks.” I didn’t have all day to spend with her. I asked her to look in her records to see if there was any mention of Hoffman and I left her my number. She agreed.

  I didn’t talk to anyone at the next place, Ascension. A placard on the inner door said MEDITATING. PLEASE PRESERVE THE SILENCE! Through the half window I could see about fifty people sprawled out on individual blankets; they made a crazy quilt of patterns and colors and bare feet. It looked to me like they were all taking a nap.

  Ascension was more put together than Lightgate. Stand-alone building, big sign out front, table with brochures. The brochures said that the founder was a fellow named Milo Burrows and that he’d been the congregation’s leader since its founding seven years earlier. It seemed an unlikely place for Dylan Hoffman, but I made a note on the map about possibly returning to Ascension.

  I walked uphill toward the third place: Brothers of Light. I’d actually heard of this one, because they ran an orphanage. The building had once been a movie theater, before the film industry went bust, and it sat unassumingly on the corner of Van Ness, a massive box of unwashed windows. Even from the sidewalk I could see kids running up and down the stairs, chasing one another, dawdling and looking out onto the street. It was like watching an ant farm. From the looks of it, Brothers of Light was just as overcrowded as every other orphanage in the country. Sometimes the tax break isn’t enough incentive, I guess. And not everyone has commitments like Cass and Tabby. And Mom.

  A tired-looking Brother of Light was standing on the stoop, arms crossed, staring out at the traffic on Van Ness. He had a trim beard and deep-set eyes and a monk’s robe with the hood down. Luring him into conversation was harder than I thought, since he seemed at the brink of collapse from fatigue. When I finally got him to understand that I was looking for a church that might cater to disenchanted philosophers, he brought himself into focus and told me that the Brothers of Light were old-fashioned Catholic. “New name, old faith,” he said wearily, making it sound like this was the cause of his exhaustion.

  “Got it,” I said. I gave him a friendly pat on the shoulder. “Chin up, buddy. You’re doing good work.”

  He looked at me with incomprehension. Then he blinked, and a brief smile flickered across his face. “Thanks,” he said, looking in my eyes for the first time. “God bless you.”

  When I glanced back at the next corner, the tired monk had disappeared.

  The next place was in Japantown, and I had trouble finding it. After walking around in circles on Sutter Street, I finally found the door next to a sushi place that advertised its menu with dazzling neon. Beside it, the nondescript door with the sign ASHAEL’S CAVE was hard to spot. But the unlocked entry confirmed I was in the right spot. I took a well-lit flight of steps down to a door. This one was also unlocked. Beyond it was a corridor lit entirely with candles, which didn’t strike me as the safest proposition in an unventilated basement, but I didn’t plan to stay long. Ashael’s Cave seemed more respectable than the other places I’d been to. A woman with a long white dress and a bonnet—yes, a bonnet—emerged from a closed door to meet me. “Welcome,” she said. “The orientation is this way.”

  I thought about explaining the mistake but decided not to. I could always cut the orientation short. “Thank you,” I said. I followed her down the corridor and around the bend. Another door opened onto a sunken courtyard, where an unexpected amount of sunshine poured in on a well-conceived Japanese garden. Another woman in a bonnet was speaking to three women, all in regular clothes like me, who sat on wooden stools before her. Bonnet #1 gestured to an empty stool and I took it.

  Bonnet #2 gave me a nod of acknowledgment as she went on speaking. She looked to be about fifty, with wiry hair springing up at the edges of the bonnet. Her eyes had that unshakable stillness that I sometimes see in the very devout. “But in many ways, Puritan values, appropriate as they are to our time, also have to be updated. Puritans were not the most forward-thinking with respect to the rights of women,” she said wryly. There were quiet laughs from her listeners. I couldn’t disagree with her there. “What we’ve tried to do is join the best advances of our time with the best virtues of the Puritan ethic. Humility. Modesty. Hard work. An appreciation for simplicity. An awareness that all things are granted to us through the grace of God. And fear—yes, fear. Not fear of petty dangers around us, but a righteous fear of God, who is powerful in all ways.”

  Hm. It seemed Ashael’s Cave wasn’t for me. There was already enough fear in the world, thanks very much. For cheap, too. I glanced back at Bonnet #1 and was about to get up to extract myself from the orientation when I heard Bonnet #2 wrapping up. “Instead of lecturing for longer,” she said, “I’d rather give you the chance to speak with me and Deliverance more informally. Please feel free to ask any question that comes to mind, and enjoy some tea.” She gestured to the low table beside her, where a Japanese pot stood steaming in the sunshine.

  The three women were eager to talk to Bonnet #2, so I ventured back to where Deliverance was standing next to an azalea. Did Puritans bow or shake hands or what? I wasn’t sure. I put my hand out tentatively, and Deliverance shook it. “Nat Peña. I should have explained when I came in,” I said to her, “I didn’t know about the orientation. I’m actually here looking for a family friend. His name is Dylan Hoffman. I was told that he had become a minister in a church like this one.”

  Deliverance had a surprisingly pretty face beneath the bonnet. Snub nose, freckles, and long lashes. Her big blue eyes took me in as I talked. “He wouldn’t be here because Ashael’s Cave is only for women,” she explained.

  “Oh. Right.”

  “But the name sounds familiar.”

  I waited and watched her blue eyes thinking.

  “We all take Puritan names when we join the church, but we keep our last names. There’s a very popular minister in Marin who has his own church. It’s called Mordecai’s Hill and the minister goes by Mordecai Hoffman.”

  I wanted to pour blessings upon Deliverance’s freckled face, but I settled for an energetic thanks. “That must be it. Thank you so much.”

  “They don’t advertise,” she continued. “So it’s a little hard to find. We’re not quite as extreme, being in the city. I’m pretty sure they don’t use technology at all at the Hill. Do you want directions? I think Steadfast has been there.” She gestured to Bonnet #2 as she said this.

  “That would be very helpful.”

  Deliverance walked me over to Steadfast, who was deep in conversation with one of the three visitors. The woman seemed hooked. She was nodding emphatically as Steadfast talked. “Excuse me, Steadfast,�
� Deliverance interrupted her, putting a hand gently on her arm. “This is Nat. I told her you knew the way to Mordecai’s Hill.”

  Steadfast looked at me with faint suspicion. She had none of Deliverance’s smoothness; she was all hard edges and zeal. But she gave me directions. “Yes,” she said. “I do know the way. It’s north of where the San Quentin prison complex ends. Follow the bridge to Marin County and stay on the coast route until you reach Point Reyes Station. You’ll see a marker for Mordecai’s Hill before you arrive in Inverness. It’s a small sign, painted by hand on plywood. Very easy to miss.” She said this with palpable disapproval.

  “If you’ve been there, maybe you’ve met the minister? Mordecai Hoffman?”

  She frowned. “I have. He is very committed, in his own way, but I have met very few men who have a genuine spirituality.”

  I thanked Steadfast for the directions and left the Japanese garden accompanied by Deliverance. In the candlelit corridor I thanked her again and climbed the steps to the outside world.

  As I opened the door, my mind was on where I could get a car for the trip to Marin, wondering whether I could nab a Crystal Cleaners car as early as this afternoon. I had one foot on the pavement and another on the landing when I stopped.

  Eight Fish. They were watching the door and clearly waiting for me: Bad Lipstick and seven others. The two boys were not among them. These were all bigger Fish, who had been around the block many more times than I wanted to count. The girl with the bad lipstick, still wearing bad lipstick; a lady bodybuilder with a crew cut and a baseball bat; another woman with a mass of braids dyed green, mermaid style, holding little tridents; three men of assorted sizes who sported square beards and automatics; two older men, one with a machete and a long mustache, the other with a whip and chaps. My eye snagged on the mermaid, who looked familiar. They were a colorful crew. It took me only a fraction of a second to do the math. I stepped backward, pulled the door closed, and threw the bolt at the top of the door frame that I’d seen out of the corner of my eye.