The Waning Age

by S. E. Grove

  Glout was waiting for me to say something. The music near him crashed to a climax. “I am not totally surprised,” I finally said. “It was evident in his behavior.”

  “Yes,” Glout agreed. “I thought you would say that. The problem,” he went on, “is that from RealCorp’s point of view, Cal’s brain is an incredible opportunity. We only know of a few hundred cases like his. In the US, a couple dozen.”

  “Okay,” I said again.

  “As a consequence, RealCorp has changed Cal’s profile. As of tomorrow, all seven research departments will be able to . . .” I could hear him reaching for a word that was both accurate and palatable. “They will determine independent research protocols for Cal. Independent of mine. And I can tell you from personal knowledge that they will be less delicate. Some of them much less delicate.”

  “What does that mean?”

  Glout didn’t answer right away. “Well, for starters, a standard protocol is to observe the test subject’s response to undue stress.”

  It took me a moment to translate. “You mean torture.”

  Glout didn’t respond. We had reached the winding roads again, and Cass was taking them slow due to the fog. For a few seconds I watched the headlights of oncoming traffic appear ten feet away, the cars materializing suddenly like machine phantoms. “Why are you telling me this?” I asked Glout.

  He was walking away from the parade now. The noise of the crowd had died down, and the music was a distant, whimsical warble that floated on the air. “I feel responsible,” he said. “And . . .” He hesitated. “I like him. Calvino is unlike any other kid I’ve met. I can’t say there are many ten-year-olds who have pushed me to think differently about my work. Self-aware but not self-involved. Vehemently interested in others. Relentlessly curious.” He gave up trying to pinpoint it. “I don’t want to see him get hurt. Lastly,” he concluded, “you should know that I have a very long-standing enmity with more than one of these researchers. I am a little worried that their actions with Cal will more reflect the enmity with me than the importance of the research opportunity.”

  His comment called to mind the articles I’d read, the venom of those scholarly exchanges. So Glout hated them and they hated Glout. Which is why he felt synafftically responsible and why he was telling me in advance that Cal was likely to be turned inside out and lobotomized on Monday.

  “Before you ask,” he said, “officially, I can’t do anything. I can’t let him go for the same reasons as before. Nothing there has changed.”

  We turned a corner that I knew placed us on a cliff above the Pacific. Yet the ocean was nowhere to be seen. Fog lay over it all the way to the horizon, as heavy as a dream from which you cannot wake.

  “But I am in charge until nine tomorrow morning,” Glout said, not shouting anymore. “If you happened to be at RealCorp at an odd hour, say six fifteen in the morning, it might be possible for you to talk to Cal briefly.” On his end a door opened and shut. He had walked into a smaller space—a café, by the droning sound of milk being steamed in the background. “Miss Peña?”

  “Yes, Dr. Glout. Thank you.” I shifted De rerum because it was slipping. My hand was sweating. “I will be there at six fifteen.”

  “Very good.” He paused. “I’m sorry I can’t do more.”

  “See you at six fifteen,” I said. I closed my book and put it in my bag. Joey and Tabby were staring at me, and Cass was shooting her eyes up at the rearview mirror every five seconds. “It was that guy Glout at RealCorp,” I said unnecessarily. “He said that Cal isn’t just not fading. He’s, like, reverse fading. So starting tomorrow other researchers will have access to Cal, and Glout predicts it will be nasty. If I want to see Cal one last time I have to go to RealCorp at six fifteen tomorrow morning.”

  There was a long pause. Cass stopped looking at me. She focused on the road and her eyes narrowed.

  “What are we going to do?” Joey asked.

  “We’re going to get Hoffman to sign these damn papers is what we’re going to do,” Cass said, her voice level and deadly.

  I hoped that would happen. I really did. But I also knew now there was no way Cal would be in RealCorp after tomorrow morning. I would get him out if I had to burn the place down to do it.

  26

  CALVINO

  oct-14

  11:32 a.m.

  calvinopio:

  Essay: Describe a time when your emotions were at odds with your instincts. How about a time when your emotions were at odds with what you knew to be rational? By Calvino Peña

  Dr. Glout, thank you for calling Nat and promising to give her my letters. I will answer your question. But I want you to know that I am only doing this because you promised to give Nat my letters.

  I have spent a lot of time thinking about this and I can’t think of an example. The reason is that there are always emotions in both directions. What I’m saying is that one emotion is at odds with another emotion, and my instincts fit with one or both emotions. And it’s the same for being rational. Though it may not be visible to you, the same is true with adults.

  This is an example that happened to me.

  People in my grade play something called poker. It’s not a card game, it’s a game where you have to show no emotion. Only it’s not really a game, it’s more of a dare. Some people really don’t feel anymore, others are only pretending not to feel. So it’s a dare to see whether or not someone who has pretended to fade already really has. Maybe not so much a dare as a test. They test each other by saying things that will bring out an emotion in someone who can still feel.

  So this is the example I have to explain what I mean about emotions in both directions. There is a girl in my class called Greyson and she used to be my friend before she faded. This happened at the end of last year. Some people had already faded and others were changing one day to the next. I would never know when I got to school whether Greyson would be herself or not. She was pretending that it had already happened, but I could always tell as soon as I saw her how much she could feel that day.

  Greyson and I were sitting in the alley (where the dumpsters are behind the school) when Kate and Plex came around the corner and came up to us. (Plex is a nickname.) They came and sat down in front of us. Greyson was not fading that day but she made her face totally blank. I was pretty nervous.

  I guess it’s good that no one ever asks me to play poker because I am so bad at pretending it isn’t interesting. Although they find other ways to be jerks of course.

  Kate said to Greyson, Let’s play poker. Fine, Greyson said. I don’t remember what Kate said first, but it was something pretty mean. Then Greyson said something about how Kate had no friends. I could tell she had no idea what to say. Kate’s face didn’t change at all because she of course had completely faded. Then Kate said, I heard your mom is giving you away as soon as you fade. She can’t wait. She has been counting the days.

  I could see that Greyson was trying really hard not to cry.

  Part of me wanted to cry too. Part of me wanted to hug Greyson and tell her it was okay. Part of me wanted to hit Kate really, really hard. Part of me wanted to say something smart that would just make Kate and Plex go away. Part of me wanted to just disappear and be by myself. Some of these were instincts and some of these were rational and all of them were emotions.

  This is what I mean. I don’t think it makes any sense to say that the three things are separate. I know it probably makes sense to you, but I just don’t think you can split them apart like that. I think that wherever there are reasons and instincts there are also emotions. I have seen this going on in adults too. The quiet voices I was saying, sometimes there is more than one and they are telling you to do opposite things. Even if you cannot hear them, their words are affecting you.

  hglt: Thanks for this thoughtful reply to the question, Calvino.

  calvinopio: Do you understa
nd my example?

  hglt: I think I do. The kind of ambivalence you’re describing must seem like second nature to you—something that happens quite often. But however ordinary it may seem to you, it’s an incredibly complex reaction that cannot really be produced by the synthetic affects we have today.

  calvinopio: So are you saying that even with really expensive synaffs adults never feel contradictory emotions? Never feel ambivalent?

  hglt: That’s a good question. There are some synthetic affects that release simultaneously and create something _similar_ to ambivalence. But that’s what’s so tricky. It’s not _exactly_ like ambivalence. What you described in the “poker” encounter was an interplay of emotions: each one was affecting the others. Imagine that your mind is a bowl of water and you add five drops of paint color. They would all swirl and combine—that’s what you’ve described happening with your friend Greyson. In adults, we can’t get that effect. It’s more like having separate bowls of water—one green, one red, one blue—in your head at the same time.

  calvinopio: Wow. Do you remember the last time you felt ambivalent for real?

  hglt: There have been many times as an adult where I have experienced the situation described in the prompt: my (synthetic) emotions have been at odds with what I know to be rational. But I think the last time I truly felt ambivalent was as a teenager, when I left Fresno to go to college.

  calvinopio: You still had emotions as a teenager?!

  hglt: I did. So did many other kids my age. Waning didn’t universally happen at age ten yet. That was many decades ago. I’m really old!

  calvinopio: So you felt emotions the whole time you were a teenager.

  hglt: Yup. And that adolescence really made me who I am. Honestly, I don’t think I’d care as much about affect decline if I hadn’t lived through adolescence with emotions.

  calvinopio: Wow. Why were you ambivalent about leaving Fresno?

  hglt: It’s hard to explain in retrospect. You are very good at explaining your emotions, but I don’t have your expert way of teasing them apart!

  calvinopio: Can you try? It is helpful for me to hear it.

  hglt: Sure. I both loved and hated Fresno. On the one hand, it was lonely and I felt bored a lot. On the other hand, it was safe. I knew everything about it. Moving to the city felt exciting but scary. It was also scary because my parents had just waned—before me—and I felt like I had lost them. Moving away seemed so complicated. I felt guilty and sad about leaving them, but I also felt hurt because they didn’t care in the least that I was moving away.

  calvinopio: Because they had waned.

  hglt: Exactly. And I also felt something that I had trouble explaining to my parents: the power of unpredictability. To them, the unpredictable future had simply become a set of rational choices that would be made when they needed to be made. Not to me. The unpredictable future was combustible. Fraught. They didn’t understand that unpredictability meant volatility.

  calvinopio: Yeah. Adults don’t get that. What happened after the move?

  hglt: Well, very soon afterward I waned. And all of the things that had seemed like problems didn’t anymore. I had different problems.

  27

  NATALIA

  OCTOBER 14—MIDDAY

  Mordecai’s Hill seemed less serene and more uncanny in the fog. The place radiated an air of neglect, and you could sense that the energy of its inhabitants was bent on something as obscure and unattainable as salvation rather than on the incremental, tedious, and material business of surviving.

  After poking around the houses closest to the road, we found the New Puritans gathered in their stick-wood church, sitting silently side by side on the wooden benches. It is California, after all. Even the Puritans meditate. Cass and Tabby and Joey and I sat down quietly at the back of the church, and I prepared myself for a long wait.

  The church was just as striking in the fog. It was thick enough to fill the vault, so the ceiling appeared to be made of gray cloud. Through the splintered walls, I could see the hills of the estate appearing and disappearing like great hunchbacked wanderers in search of something long lost. There wasn’t much to study with the Puritans. I could see a lot of shoulders and a lot of bonnets. And then there was Hoffman. He sat on a raised wooden stool at the front of the congregation, his head slightly bent, his eyes closed. He had a blond beard, cut close, and neat blond hair. Slim shoulders under a blue denim shirt. Hands well used to work. Frayed jeans. Old but cared-for laced boots. Apparently the men and women adhered to different sartorial standards.

  Close to eleven a.m. he opened his eyes and looked at his watch. He stood up and folded his hands together. After a minute he spoke. “When you’re ready to join us, open your eyes.”

  The people before him began to stir, lifting their heads and making slight noises as they shifted on the benches.

  Hoffman ran his eyes over them—considering, not critical. “Four years ago,” he began, with a thoughtful air, “a former colleague from the university invited me to a concert. A famous violinist was touring the West Coast. Famous because she rose above the technical perfection expected of musicians to offer something more—something we rarely see now: a rendering of the music that conveyed emotion.” Hoffman paused and looked at his silent parishioners, a slight smile playing across his face.

  I’m not what you would call an expert on Puritan religious services, but it seemed to me that Hoffman was departing pretty radically from the script. Well, they were New Puritans. Clearly they did things differently. Also clearly, Hoffman was taking something that made him feel very, very good. He seemed relaxed and confident and buoyed by a sense of effortless well-being. I didn’t think it was the hot springs.

  “I went to the concert,” Hoffman continued. “And the violinist played beautifully. It was true—the music conveyed emotion, even if it could not move its listeners to feel that emotion. There was reluctance and dread, grief and despair, triumph and joy. There was a sense of indelible spirit—a sense of God’s majesty.” Hoffman waved his arms around like he was directing an imaginary orchestra. “And because my friend knew her personally, I was able to speak with the violinist after the performance. I complimented her on the music, and she thanked me.” Hoffman gave us the slight smile again. This time it was more supercilious. “Then I told her my impression—that God moved through her music. That she was animated by grace. The violinist did not like this. She said to me, ‘It’s not God. It’s called practice.’”

  Hoffman let out a loud, hollow laugh. The congregation echoed it with a precision that made me itchy. Hoffman continued, a look of sharp glee in his eye. “I did not contradict her. I merely nodded and let the matter pass. But I thought to myself, Pride—you are a wicked thing indeed. A wicked thing, and a dangerous thing, and sometimes, as with this musician, a dangerously beautiful thing.

  “Only four months later, my friend told me the sad news. The violinist had suffered an accident. A routine biopsy had resulted in a severed nerve, and her right hand was irreparably damaged. She would not, as far as they could see, ever play again.”

  Hoffman raised his arms, and with a flourish he waved them back and forth, bringing the imaginary orchestra to a crescendo, then a sudden, crashing stop. “Given. And taken. By the grace of God.”

  The congregation around him intoned: “Given and taken by the grace of God.” It was a phrase they had said many times. They made it sound like an aphorism: a thing so true that it had become pointless in its repetition.

  It was ugly. The parable of a great artist wounded and severed from her art, and here a crowd of vultures gloated over the loss. Maybe that sense of effortless well-being I saw in Hoffman’s face was only partly synaffs. Maybe he was just as high on religious self-righteousness. I shifted on my seat.

  It was then that Hoffman saw me.

  I’m not sure why he hadn’t seen me before. He was s
taring out at the congregation, and I thought he’d looked our way—we visibly stood out. Lack of bonnets, for one thing. Maybe he had faces he searched for among his parishioners, or maybe he was so consumed by the pithiness of his own story that he couldn’t really focus on anything else until it was over. When he saw me, he stopped. The look of smugness vanished as if yanked from his face, exposing the naked expression underneath: he was startled, confused. Something like hope crept in at the edges of his eyes.

  He was looking at me, but he was seeing my mother, Lila.

  In the sudden silence, I got up from the bench. I walked out of the church and down the hill a ways. I waited. After a few seconds I heard the whole congregation reciting something in a dull monotone that was probably a concluding prayer. And then Hoffman came barreling out of the church into the thinning fog, looking wildly in every direction until he saw me, as if I might have been carried away by the mist.

  He slowed as he neared. His gaze had become desperate and searching, but when he stopped a few feet away from me, his expression changed. The air went out of him, and he crumpled like a sheet falling from a clothesline. “You’re not Lila,” he said.

  “I’m her daughter. Nat.” I held my hand out.

  He shook it sadly. “You look so much like her,” he announced. “So much. I thought—I don’t know what I thought.” He scrutinized my face. “But you’re younger than she was.”

  I nodded. “By a bit. She must have been about thirty when you met her.”

  “Yes. More than a decade ago.” His blue eyes grew remote. They were focused on that other time. “Wow, suddenly it seems like last year.”

  The congregation had begun to leave the church, and they walked past us downhill, many of them casting looks our way. I saw Cass and Tabby and Joey at the door, and I waved them off. Cass nodded and signaled that they’d be inside the church.