Hazards of Time Travel Page 17

  What is meant by the “self” in self-control or self-knowledge?

  The self is most commonly used as a hypothetical cause of action. So long as external variables go unnoticed or are ignored, their function is assigned to an originating agent within the organism. If we cannot show what is responsible for a man’s behavior, we say that he himself is responsible for it. . . . The practice resolves our anxiety with respect to unexplained phenomena and is perpetuated because it does so.

  Whatever the self may be, it is apparently not identical with the physical organism. . . . A self is simply a device for representing a functionally unified system of responses.

  In quoting and paraphrasing Skinner, somehow I’d come around to seeming to agree with him—I could not now remember what I’d objected to, initially. I was struck also by Skinner’s remarks on the “absence” of self-knowledge—this, too, from the primary work, and not our textbook: One of the most striking facts about self-knowledge is that it may be lacking.

  There was something terrifying here. And yet utterly clarifying. If I could not know myself, I could not know anything—if the lens is smudged, the vision will be smudged.

  My pen fell to the floor. My blue book was filled with smudges, sentences crossed out, misspellings. But now, there was no more time—the last of the blue books were being gathered by proctors, most of the desks in the drafty gym had been vacated, a frowning proctor was approaching me with his hand extended—“Miss? Exam’s over.”

  Like Wolfman the proctor was a quiz section instructor. Obviously, he didn’t know “Mary Ellen Enright”—Wolfman had not mentioned to him that he had a brilliant undergraduate this semester . . .

  With a polite smile I surrendered the blue book. My skin felt bathed in sweat. I was deeply ashamed. Yet, I was suffused with hope. Wolfman will be impressed. He will see that I could have written an A+ paper, but tried for something more. He will—forgive me.

  When I stood from my desk my legs were weak. I looked around for Wolfman—he was halfway across the gym, stacking blue books into a pile. He and another proctor were laughing together. The exam-ordeal was nothing to the proctors as observing rats running a maze, or pigeons pecking desperately at a key that refuses to move, or a cat reacting in terror when it is shocked, is nothing to experimenters.

  Throughout the two-hour exam Wolfman had ignored me. Or perhaps Wolfman had been oblivious of me. At about the halfway point there’d been a mild commotion in another part of the gym, where a student or students had been caught cheating, or (possibly) had become suddenly ill; while I’d been hunched over my essay I’d heard lowered, intense voices, and I’d heard the sounds of someone being led from the room, but I had not glanced around. I wondered if Wolfman had been the proctor involved.

  I took some time to put on my fleece-lined jacket, which was heavy, and tugged at my arms. It was very cold outside: nine degrees Fahrenheit.

  Strange how, in Zone 9, there was true winter. In our sector of NAS-23 there had not been “winter”—low temperatures, snow—in decades, though my parents spoke nostalgically of “winter” as of other phenomena now bygone, mere memories.

  Then, I left the gym. I was one of the last students to leave the gym. A shining light fell upon me as I stepped outside.

  Everywhere were banks of snow. Blinding-white.

  Wainscotia Falls, Wisconsin, was a place of snowy hills, tall trees topped with snow. It was a place of beauty, I thought. Yet—it was not my place.

  I did not want to die here. So far from anyone who knew me or loved me. Or felt responsible for me.

  In the fresh frigid air my breath steamed. I realized that I was very tired though it was only mid-morning—the entire day stretched before me, unfathomable. I thought—If I fail, I will lose my scholarship. I will be vaporized.

  Stumbling and short of breath I ran in the direction of the central campus. I did not glance back to see if Wolfman might be following me nor did I hear Wolfman, or anyone, call after me—

  Adriane! Ad-riane!

  The Failing Grade

  Wolfman said, “I told you.”

  “Told me—what?”

  “Not to be ‘original.’ Not to be ‘analytical.’ Just give the answer—the minimum.”

  Stubbornly I protested, “But the exam questions were all so obvious. I could have written the answers in my sleep.”

  Wolfman laughed. I felt a hot flush rise into my face.

  I said, “I thought Professor Axel might appreciate a response that wasn’t like every other response. I thought, if you showed the essay to him . . .”

  “Are you serious? Axel hasn’t glanced at an undergraduate exam in twenty years. Even an A+, which you didn’t get, Axel wouldn’t trouble to read. Graduate students don’t interest him, let alone undergraduates.”

  I was stung by Wolfman’s casual remark. Which you didn’t get.

  Still stubbornly I said, blinking back tears of disappointment, “I wasn’t thinking of a grade, Ira. I didn’t write the exam for a grade. I didn’t learn the course for a grade. I didn’t do all the outside reading I did, for a grade. But I’d thought—”

  Wolfman squeezed my icy fingers, which had the effect of stopping my mouth.

  “It’s over now, ‘Mary Ellen.’ You didn’t fail, except by your own exalted sense of yourself. And I am not your instructor ‘Dr. Wolfman’ any longer.”

  Wolfman My Love: Selected Memories

  “‘Adriane.’”

  Only when we were alone did Wolfman call me by this name. He would be the only person in Zone 9 to call me by this name.

  And when we were in a public place, or a quasi-public place, he called me “Mary Ellen” or, more often, “Miss Enright.” It did not matter that no one was near us, as in the university arboretum where we walked sometimes, not holding hands, not touching, but close together as companions.

  We hadn’t returned to the bomb shelter. We’d begun going to Wolfman’s apartment, after dark. Where we rarely stayed long.

  As Wolfman said, now we weren’t instructor and undergraduate, it was not wrongful for us to see each other, as it would have been otherwise.

  “Still, you’re too young. Or, I’m too old.”

  Slyly I thought—Yes. But I can wait, to catch up with you.

  ONCE, AND THEN A SECOND TIME, I’d made my way through the Museum of Natural History, to look for the steep steps descending at the rear of the museum, and the entrance to the bomb shelter. I recalled the combination lock that Wolfman had turned carefully in his fingers, but of course—I could never have recalled the combination itself, I hadn’t seen so closely.

  It was strange, I hadn’t been able to find the entrance to the bomb shelter.

  Each time, I’d lost my courage and returned to the lighted area at the front of the museum. I’d heard Miss Hurly call my name, or a sound of voices in the library, visitors expecting to find someone on duty at the checkout desk, and hurried breathless back to my post.

  In a vexed voice Miss Hurly said, “Mary Ellen, where were you? I called and called you—I went to look for you in the museum—but couldn’t find you. And now—here you are.”

  “But Miss Hurly, I was here all along . . .”

  The woman did not believe me, that was clear. Once, Professor Harrick was waiting for me also with a stack of documents to be (re)typed.

  In a mild panic I thought—But where have I been, if I haven’t been here?

  “THAT’S RIDICULOUS. That never happened.”

  Wolfman laughed at me, when I’d begun to tell him about the “foreign” students in the dining hall, who’d seemed to recognize me as an Exile, on the morning of the psych exam.

  “You were hallucinating out of exhaustion and worry. Just forget it.”

  “But, if I see them again . . .”

  “You won’t see them again, Adriane. I promise.”

  AND THEN: walking with Wolfman on Quad Street, south of the campus.

  In this public place we were not—quite—a coup
le. Rather, we resembled individuals who’d happened to meet by chance and were walking together in the same direction, by chance.

  A tall man of about thirty, bareheaded, with thick dark hair, dark eyebrows, a face that glowered with thought. A girl not yet twenty, in a heavy fleece-lined jacket that hid her hair and part of her face, and seemed a size or two too large for her. A girl intensely aware of the man beside her.

  This was late Saturday morning, in February 1960. Following a night of snowfall. And the sidewalks, and the streets, hastily shoveled and plowed, glaring white.

  We had not been together the previous night. (Where Wolfman might have been, I had no idea. Whom he might have brought back to his apartment, I didn’t want to speculate.)

  Let’s meet. I want to see you. How have you been?—so Wolfman had contacted me.

  Since the psych exam when I’d failed to follow Wolfman’s advice and Wolfman had punished me with a bare blunt C on the exam, and a B in the course—“That should have been an A. But isn’t.”

  I’d felt rebuffed. But I’d thought—What does a grade matter? I am fortunate to be alive.

  And I thought—No grade can matter in Exile.

  Since the psych exam there’d been a precarious sort of tenderness in Wolfman, toward me. Mingled with exasperation, and concern. I didn’t want to think that this was the kind of feeling an individual might have for a younger sister or brother.

  In this public place, with so much to say that could not be said safely in any public place. I wanted to take hold of Wolfman’s arm, or grab his (gloved) hand, but didn’t dare.

  Wanting to ask him if, the night before, he’d been with any woman—the woman with the stark staring eyes, for instance, who so clearly liked him. I’d found out that her name was Cornelia—“Nelia”—she was an older graduate student in social psychology. But no. You must not intrude. His private life is his own. He is not your lover.

  It was then that I saw, as we were crossing the street, several dark-skinned young men approaching us. These were graduate students, obviously “foreign”—their eyes moved onto me, and onto Ira Wolfman, and back onto me, with expressions of intense interest—almost, I’d have thought recognition.

  In that instant I was stricken with fear. As we passed the young men I could hear them speaking in undertones to one another in their unintelligible speech. They are talking of us—are they? What are they saying?

  In a daze I managed to cross the street but on the curb, I came to a dead stop. Like a laboratory creature that has been conditioned by a menacing visual stimulus to “freeze”—can’t comprehend why he has been overcome by paralysis—I shut my eyes and stood very still until Wolfman prodded me.

  Wolfman asked what was wrong?—and I told him, in a barely audible voice, “Those were the students—just now.”

  “What students?”

  “The ‘foreign’ students. Who’d seen me—I think they’d recognized me—in the dining hall last week . . .”

  Wolfman glanced behind us. “Who? Where?”

  Were they gone? Had they never existed? I could not bring myself to look around.

  “How would you know who they were? You didn’t memorize their faces, did you? ‘Foreign’ students all look alike, in Wainscotia, Wisconsin.”

  Quickly I walked along Quad Street. Nearly colliding with pedestrians. Slipping-sliding on the slick sidewalk, so that Wolfman had to take hold of my arm, to steady me.

  “I saw them, Ira. I did. They saw us.”

  Wolfman laughed in his way of dismissal, that was also a way of comfort.

  “Maybe they were psych students. Graduate students who’d been auditing Axel’s class. Maybe they know me—nothing to do with you at all.”

  We’d left the Moore Street commercial neighborhood, that was hardly more than two or three blocks. We were on the university campus now, making our way steadily uphill in the direction of the main library. Around us was a snowy expanse blazing with noontide light. Seeing that I was very quiet Wolfman took hold of my wrist that was bare between my jacket sleeve and my glove—a gesture of unexpected intimacy, in this public place.

  “Didn’t I tell you, Adriane—there is nothing to fear from them? There is no them.”

  I BELIEVED that Ira Wolfman loved me then. In some way, that was perhaps not a sexual way, or a way of possession, he loved me.

  A BEAUTIFUL PLACE. I wanted to think, a safe place.

  This was the university arboretum, north of the campus.

  In the NAS-23 that both Ira Wolfman and I knew there were no longer “public” lands—desirable city and state parkland, and 90 percent of the old, national parks like Yellowstone, Grand Canyon, Yosemite had been sold to private interests, mining, fracking, logging, and vacation places now for the very wealthy. Trespassing on these lands was now punishable by death. (The most egregious felonies in NAS were in the category VPR [Violation of Property Rights] second only to Treason and Questioning of Authority.) Beautiful privately owned shore lands along the Atlantic and Pacific coasts were protected by ten-foot electrified fences and gates manned by armed security guards. The only “parks” remaining for public use were vacant lots filled with rubble, wetlands and landfills, uncultivated land contaminated by chemicals and waste. (The Burnt Fly Bog Superfund in New Jersey, ten miles from Pennsboro, was claimed to be “safe” for picnicking and water sports but it was rare to see any visitors there above ST4.) And so it was a thrilling surprise to me to discover the Wainscotia arboretum.

  Wolfman, too, loved the arboretum. It was the place that had “restored his sanity” when he’d first arrived in Wainscotia, a dazed and demoralized twenty-year-old who had been, at the time of his arrest and teletransportation, a brilliant undergraduate at NAS-Cambridge (formerly Harvard) majoring in computer science, math, and cognitive psychology.

  Wolfman had been a runner, too. But in Zone 9, in the early 1950s, the only individuals who “ran” were athletes in training. And the only “running shoes” were ordinary sneakers.

  The Wainscotia Arboretum adjoined the Wainscotia Agricultural College but extended for hundreds of acres into forestland abutting Wainscotia Bay, that emptied into vast Lake Michigan to the east—which I’d never seen except in photographs and on a map. (The lakeshore fell outside the ten-mile radius of my official confinement, as, to the west, the much smaller Lake Hallow lay outside my confinement.) By February 1960 I had not ventured more than two or three miles from the epicenter of my residence in Zone 9, which was Acrady Cottage.

  Wolfman spoke disparagingly of his “epicenter”—which was Greene Hall on the university campus.

  “If I want to, I’ll leave—maybe. Just walk away. Or better yet, bicycle.”

  When Wolfman spoke in this way I felt both thrilled by his bravado and uneasy. He said:

  “It has been observed, in laboratories, that animals in cages are sometimes fearful of leaving their cages, even when their doors are left open. Even when their doors have been removed.”

  “But—this isn’t us, is it? I don’t understand.”

  Was Wolfman saying such things to test me? Did he want to determine how reckless I was, or how diffident? In the desperation of loneliness I’d many times fantasized running away from Wainscotia, and violating The Instructions—but I’d never come close to such a dangerous act.

  I didn’t doubt that I was under surveillance in Zone 9. My figure was projected onto a screen, somewhere. If I left the ten-mile radius I might be “vaporized”—instantaneously.

  For hadn’t I witnessed the vaporization of the high school boy Z., in a DDS attack? Hadn’t I seen the expression of incredulity on Z.’s young face, in the instant before his head exploded like a nova?

  I’d begun to tell Wolfman about seeing the execution on a TV monitor in the Youth Disciplinary Division of Homeland Security, but Wolfman cut me off short—“If it was a TV monitor, you were probably seeing just a reenactment. You have no way of knowing if the execution was authentic.”

  “It was auth
entic! It was actual, and horrible. There were four of us being interrogated—high school valedictorians who’d been given ‘Patriot Democracy Scholarships.’ We were told to confess to being conspirators, and if we didn’t, one of us would be ‘disciplined’ . . .”

  “There is absolutely no way for an ordinary citizen to distinguish a ‘virtual’ staging from an ‘actual’ event. Especially via TV. Believe me!—I know.”

  Why was Wolfman not more sympathetic? I knew that the boy, whose name had begun with Z, had been executed—it was no reenactment, but actual death. I knew.

  Domestic Drone Strike: a matter of less than sixty seconds to liquefy the subject, with a laser ray emitted by a flying object no larger than a robin, that self-implodes at the strike-target and is itself vaporized.

  I was trembling with indignation, and anxiety. The boy’s death was a sight I would not ever forget for, unlike other recent memories, it had been imprinted vividly into my brain.

  “Maybe you’ve never seen a DDS, Ira. I have.”

  This was a sad little boast. Wolfman seemed about to reply to it, then did not, hiking briskly ahead of me.

  On this bright sunny-snowy day we were hiking in the arboretum. Our breaths steamed for it was well below freezing. We took care not to walk too closely together and we did not ever grip hands—of course. Often, Wolfman walked ahead of me, like an expert hiker showing the way to a less expert hiker. We did not usually talk much for Wolfman preferred silence in the arboretum. He’d told me, in an undertone, hearing other hikers chattering to one another, how he’d like to vaporize these rude people who ruined the silence and beauty of the arboretum for others.

  This was shocking to me. Just the term—vaporize.

  How could Ira Wolfman of all people say such a thing, even in jest?