Otherness

by David Brin

  The surgeon cut. There came a loud pop, as if a balloon had suddenly burst. Her distended belly collapsed abruptly, like a tent all at once deprived of its supports.

  The technicians stared, blinking. Trembling, the stunned surgeon reached in. Reiko felt him grope under the flaccid layers of her empty womb, seeking in bewilderment what was no longer there.

  Applied Topology. She remembered the name of a text, one of the courses they had given her son, and Reiko knew it stood for shapes and their relationships. It had to do with space and time. And it could be applied to problems in transportation.

  The hands did more things to her, but they could not harm her anymore. Reiko ignored them.

  "He has escaped you," she told them softly, and the angry, envious, mad kami as well. "He learned his lessons well and has made his mother proud."

  Frustrated voices filled the room, rebounding off the walls. But Reiko had already followed her heart, beyond the constraints of any chamber or any nation, far beyond the knowledge of living men, where there are no obstacles to love.

  Detritus Affected

  Physicians swear a Hippocratic oath whose central vow is "Do no harm." I wonder—how many other professions might do well to set that goal above all others?

  Schliemann, uncovering Troy, gave birth to modern archaeology, begetting it in sin. His clumsy pits tore through the gates and temples of forty levels—three thousand years—callously scattering what might have been sifted, deciphered, all to prove a fact that wasn't going anywhere. Patience would have revealed the same truth, in time.

  The next wave of diggers learned from Schliemann's wrongs. They went about "restoring" ancient sites, sweeping dust from Disney-prim aisles of artfully restacked columns. Such conceit.

  Today we save dust, sampling pollen grains to tell what blossoms once grew on the hills surrounding Karakorum, or Harappa, or fabled Nineveh.

  In truth, we have conceits all our own.

  FRIDAY

  Look, see this broken plastic wheel? Part of a cheap toy, circa 1970. Giveaway prize in some fast-food outlet's promotional kiddie meal. Seventy grams of carboniferous petroleum cooked under limestone sediments for two hundred million years, only to be sucked up, refined, press-molded, passed across a counter, squealed over, then tossed in next week's trash.

  And here's a flattened cardboard box bearing the logo of a long-defunct stereo store, stained on one side by a mass of nondescript organic matter, which we'll analyze later in lab, sampling and correlating what garbage once flew between these hills. Hills overlooking fabulous L.A.

  Science, and especially archaeology, is never ideal Professor Paul used to tell us. In the present, as well as the past, real life is all about compromises. Not as lofty a slogan as a Hippocratic oath, I'll admit, but what do you expect from a profession based on rooting through the cellars, garbage heaps, and vanities of bygone days?

  We managed to dig down past the thirty-meter level this week, into rich veins of profligacy from a time that knew no limits. It is a smorgasbord feast of information, and I want to analyze everything. Each gum wrapper. Each crushed Styrofoam peanut and brown ketchup stain. I fantasize computers potent enough to work backward from the positions I find each of these wonders in, tracing how they came to be jammed next to each other under this great pile. I dream of reversing their tumble from grunting, stinking dump trucks, reenveloping them in wrappers of shiny black plastic, and following each bundle back to its source—the effluent of a single twentieth-century home.

  It can't be done. Not today. It would be like asking Schliemann to sift for pollen instead of ripping through ancestral walls in search of gold. Perhaps future researchers will dissolve ancient cities, atom by atom, recording the location and orientation of each molecule so that the dust of pharaoh, slave, and temple cat might be tagged, trajectoried, and finally reassembled on a chip like God's own jigsaw puzzle, resurrecting the dead in simulated splendor, if not the hoped-for afterlife.

  My techniques are crude in comparison to what may come. Only a minuscule portion of the raw data we dig up is captured on photos, slides, and these journal entries. "Slash-and-burn archaeology," Keoki called it last week, in black humor.

  Yet each evening, when the day's work is done, I climb out of our trench to look across the vast expanse that is Hyperion, and am consoled. Our trench is just fifty meters by fourteen, while the landfill stretches far away in all directions.

  Mile after mile of garbage. The largest midden—the largest single thing—ever built by human civilization. Bigger, by volume, than even China's Great Wall.

  There'll be plenty left over, after we are through digging here. Plenty of data for others to plumb through later, with fine future sieves.

  I'm no Schliemann. I do little harm.

  MONDAY

  Sometimes an object strikes me in a certain way, and I wonder—could this have once been mine?

  I am bemused by how different that makes this research from any other I've done. My own father or mother might have thrown out this box, that sofa or old turntable, back when I was very young. The thought makes me sensitive to toys. Pathetic, broken bits of plastic and metal. They grow less electronic and more sturdy with each meter we descend into the past, affecting me with something between deja vu and a poignant sense of lost innocence.

  Then my beeping pager interrupts, and I must climb back to the present world, dealing with the latest crisis.

  Never have I faced so much political aggravation on a dig! Each day some old fart bureaucrat comes on-site, scratching his head and muttering confused objections. Even the infamous red tape of India pales in comparison. There, or in Egypt, you could smooth things over with a little honest baksheesh. Here a bribe would just land me in jail without ever discovering what it is these people want!

  One learns to be resourceful. Always, in every government department, one can find some bright youngster who is off the formal chain of command. The idea boy. Trouble-shooter gal. This techie plays no office games, but simply makes things run. Boss is usually terrified of Wunder-Kid, so I invite them up together. All moon-wrapped in full breathing gear against the occasional methane blurp, they get a full cook's tour. Nearly always the young guy goes crazy over something we've found, leaves with an armload of gamma-sanitized "memorabilia" . . . and makes damn sure we get our permit, license, whatever.

  Works every time.

  It's been much the same with the press. One curmudgeon city editor had it in for us from the moment our department got this grant. Tried angling stories about disease germs, festering in the dump along with five billion ancient disposable diapers. Radio DJs and Net Jockeys came to our rescue . . . so effectively the cops had to cordon off Sanitation Road, keeping out hordes of young amateurs who flocked up to "help out."

  Los Angeles. Who can figure? Some old-time rocker once said—"No place is ever weirder than your own native land." Maybe that's why, after years exploring the past far away, I finally came back home to dig.

  WEDNESDAY

  Inch by inch we descend, uncovering mundane wonders. For example, we keep finding newspapers so well preserved they could even be ready by moonlight. So much for biodegradability. No archaeologist ever had better help dating strata.

  Household mail is a rich font of information. Charge slips and bank records found their way into the trash, along with old tax files and all kinds of revealing junk mail. When my student Joyce Barnes released some wonderful stats on TwenCen credit-slavery, a retiree group in Laguna filed suit under some old privacy laws in an effort to stop the dig. That storm blew over for lack of public support. Today's kids hardly know what an envelope is. If it's not in the Net, what do they care?

  Meanwhile Leslie surveys dietary patterns of Angelenos past. When we penetrated beyond the era of microwave ovens, he found a sudden shift in the packaging poisons found in ready-to-heat food residue. The Department of Urban Pathology at UCLA has expressed keen interest in this work.

  Zola chose to study the "replac
ement threshold" . . . at which point it used to be more price effective to throw out a machine than repair it. Nothing better typifies the subject era than the sight of countless appliances—from TVs to dishwashers to stereos—all tossed because newer, better models cost less than a technician might charge to find a burned transistor.

  Keoki pays the freight, testing rich veins of complex organics and heavy metals for our industrial sponsor. It's a long shot, but if the assay proves out, Fabrique Chang may bid to come mine Hyperion. One generation's junk can be the next's mother lode.

  So much for all that talk earlier, about setting fields aside for future archaeologists. Maybe it's human nature to spoil what we strive to comprehend. Maybe we're all Schliemann, under the skin.

  Oh, don't be so cynical, Joe-boy. It's late. Put away the journal and go to bed. Tomorrow is another day.

  FRIDAY

  By now I thought we'd wrestled with every county, state, and federal agency, from public health to Indian Affairs, but I never expected to be stopped dead by the Coroner's Office!

  Zola found the bones down at South-22, a neat row of ribs sticking through a pile of dingy rags. At first we thought it was a pet, some large dog. On realizing they were human, we had no choice but to report it. We're digging in strata from A.D. 1958, after all. It might be somebody's long-missing great-uncle.

  What a mess! Reporters and detectives trampling through the pit. Hot lights reviving dormant aromatics, making the place stink to Sheol. Yellow police tape stretching back and forth in a confusing maze. Fortunately, some of the cops seem competent and sympathetic. I watched as one young homicide investigator worked delicately with a brush and evidence kit. I couldn't help kibitzing about the effects of time and anaerobic chemistry on fingerprints. Finally—perhaps to shut me up—Lieutenant Starling invited me through the cordon to help.

  Turns out our jobs have interesting overlaps, and even more interesting, quirky differences. Afterward we cleaned up and talked shop until late. Her profession seems narrowly focused from my point of view. But I can relate. We're both in the business of piecing together clues, reading hidden stories.

  This morning the lieutenant overruled her gruff sergeant to let us resume work at the north end, while her crew keeps fussing down south. It's hard not to be bothered by all the commotion nearby, but I exhibit calm concentration for the sake of the team. We are professional time travelers, after all, privileged to visit the past. No distraction should make us forget our jobs.

  SUNDAY

  At a pace that makes glaciers seem juggernauts, the Earth's Pacific Plate grinds alongside the North American Plate. Unlike the head-on collision shoving up the Himalayas, this glancing blow makes modest mountains. Where Hyperion now squats once lay a gentle valley where mule deer grazed and condors soared. Quite recently, in geologic time, the Shoshone discovered a rough paradise here. Then, in an eyeblink, Spaniards came to graze their cattle. Hopalong Cassidy filmed exploits where I stand each day, or rather, many meters lower down, where molder the smothered roots of ancient oaks.

  When burgeoning Los Angeles engulfed these hills, little upland valleys like these seemed ideal sites for dumping refuse. Regiments of trucks came and went, day in, day out, their way lit by torches burning off methane gas as buried garbage fermented. More matter moved here in just one year than Rome put into its roads. More than was shifted for canals at Suez or Panama. Then, sooner than anyone predicted, a flat plain stretched between former peaks, and the trucks had to move on.

  Nowadays the gas gets piped away. You can't build on this kind of unsteady fill, so no one expected visitors to this abandoned place, despite its poetical name. Not until slow processes someday turn detritus into a new kind of stone.

  Then we arrived to dig and pry.

  No human trait ever stirred up such trouble as curiosity.

  MONDAY

  Detective Starling finished her investigation. Her report—inconclusive, except to say the bones date from the time of the surrounding stratum.

  Net tabloids are rife with speculation about gangland executions. Artists' renderings show mobsters ceremoniously interring their victim beneath a sea of waste. Getting the dates all wrong, someone nicknamed the skeleton "Jimmy H."

  Unfortunately for sensationalists, there were no obvious signs of foul play. That didn't keep some of the police brass from trying to shut us down. But Helen saw no legal cause and refused to sign the order, so we're back in business! After a decent interval, I must find a good way to thank her.

  TUESDAY

  The day after work resumed, I found a strange note in my mailbox. Scrawled on real paper in a thin, cramped style, it simply read—LEAVE IT BE!

  Some kook, I guess. Why should anyone care about a half-dozen eggheads, scratching around in garbage?

  WENDESDAY

  Europeans laugh when Americans speak of "history." As for Los Angeles, you can find every nationality on Earth within ten minutes of downtown, but each draws its heritage from somewhere else. Here in the "World City" everyone is rootless and often glad to be cut loose from the past.

  Besides, who needs to dig in order to know this place? L.A.'s story is well-documented in newspaper files, ledgers, videotapes. Was any culture ever so self-involved? Books on current slang and pop culture come out every year. As they say about pornography—nothing is left to the imagination.

  Still, there is something special about the layers we visit. They represent a time and place unlike any other, when people remade reality in new, garish colors, unrestrained by precedent. Towering creativity mixed with profound stupor. Rock bands and symphony orchestras. Stench and stainless steel. Nothing compares save renaissance Florence, also the object of scorn, hatred, and ultimately envy. Someday people may romanticize TwenCen L.A. as they do the time of Michelangelo.

  And pigs might fly?

  They do. One Angeleno took his pet porker hang gliding. I have the newspaper in front of me, circa 1978.

  What a place.

  THURSDAY

  No time for a personal entry tonight.

  Today's big discovery—this time at South-31—four more sets of bones.

  FRIDAY

  My, what a fuss. They're still hollering downtown, but the upshot is obvious. They need expert help, and the only place to find skilled hands quickly is right here on-site. I'm sitting quietly, twiddling my thumbs till they ask.

  SATURDAY

  They asked. Helen gave us a one-day cram course on how to be Junior Crime Scene Investigators, then deputized us and put us to work. Since then it's been slow going, but we're used to that. Only big difference is we don't have to watch our budget, agonizing over what to put in labeled plastic bags and what to discard. Near the bodies we save everything.

  Everybody in the world wants to come to Hyperion. The crowd-control cordon stretches miles. Helicopters buzz, along with scores of whirring autocams, sent over by newsie-mags and hobbyists. Police drones snap up those straying too close. Still, it's quite a din.

  The press is calling it "Jimmy's Pit." Reporters scan old missing-person files like bloodhounds, eager to break the story of the year—who the victims were, why they were dumped here, and who might've dunnit. The city is having a wonderful time.

  Well, not everybody. I found another note last night, on coming home.

  STOP IT NOW, the scrawled piece of paper read. BEFORE YOU REGRET IT.

  Too late, whoever you are. Events now have their own momentum. Tomorrow we start lateral holes, expanding the trench in case one or two more bodies might lie buried nearby.

  Funny what bothers you at a time like this. Amid all this furor, what bugs me is the coincidence . . . how unlikely it was that we should have randomly chosen a site directly over Jimmy and company. To a scientist—and a detective, I suppose—coincidence is an awfully suspicious thing.

  MONDAY

  Zola was in tears when she reported finding the child. A five-year-old, judging from the little bones. This time the clothing was well preserved. A pin
k and blue print dress. We all stared as Keoki and a police pathologist worked. That was when we realized this was no gangland dumping ground.

  Half an hour later Leslie gave a shout. He had found another pair of skeletons. Then, suddenly, it seemed diggers were yelling from all sides. Autocams began colliding overhead as newsies dived in for pix and we scurried from one set of remains to the next. In minutes word flashed across the Net to every continent.