Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World (34 page)

The path stops at a clearing. At the far end stands a structure like a warehouse. No particular sign betrays the building's identity. There are no unusual contraptions, no lines leading out, nothing save the queer droning that seems to emanate from within. The front entrance has double doors of solid iron; a few small openings ride high on the brick wall.

"This seems to be the Power Station," I say.

The front doors, however, are locked. Our combined strength fails to budge them.

We decide to walk around the building. The Power Station is slightly longer than wide, its side wall similarly dotted with clerestory vents, but it has no other door. One recognizes in the featureless brick walls something of the Wall that surrounds the Town, though on closer inspection these bricks prove much more coarse. They are rough to the touch and broken in places.

To the rear of the building, we find a smaller house of the same brick construction. It has an ordinary door and windows hung with grain sacks for curtains. A soot-blackened chimney juts from the roof. Here at least, one senses human presence. I knock three times on the door, but there is no answer. This door is also locked.

"Over there is a way in," she says, taking my hand. I look in the direction she points.

There, in the rear wall of the Power Station is a low portal with an iron-plate door ajar. I stand at the opening and remove my black glasses before entering. She stands back, not wanting to go in. The building interior is dark. There is no illumination in the Power Station—how curious that it does not power a single light of its own—and what scant light that does stray in reveals only empty space.

My eyes are nocturnal creatures. I soon discern a figure in the middle of the darkness. A man, slight of build, faces what appears to be an enormous column. Apart from this central shaft of perhaps three yards width, extending from floor to ceiling, there is no generator. No geared machinery block, no whirring drive shafts. The building could well be an indoor riding stable. Or a gigantic kiln, the floor laid with the same brick as the walls.

I am halfway to the column, before the man finally notices me. Unmoving, he turns his head to watch my approach. He is young, his years numbering perhaps fewer than my own. His appearance and manner are antithetical to the Gatekeeper in every way. Lanky and pale of complexion, he has smooth skin, with hardly a trace of beard. His hair recedes to the top of his broad forehead; his clothes are neat and well pressed.

"Good-day," I raise my voice over the noise. He looks at me, lips tight, then gives a perfunctory nod. "Am I bothering you?" I shout again. The man shakes his head, then points to a panel bolted fast to the column that has occupied his attention. I look through a glass peephole in the panel and see a huge fan mounted parallel to the ground, the blades driven by some great force. What fury is tamed here to generate power for the Town?

"Wind power?" I can barely hear myself ask.

The man nods, then takes me by the arm and conducts me back toward the portal. We walk shoulder to shoulder, he a half-head shorter than I. We find the Librarian standing outside, anxiously awaiting my re-emergence. The Caretaker greets her with the same perfunctory nod.

"Good-day," she says.

"Good-day," the man answers quietly.

He leads us both to where the noise is less intense, behind the small house, to a cleared acre in the Woods. There we seat ourselves on crop stubble scythed close to the ground.

"Excuse me. I cannot speak loud," apologizes the young Caretaker. "You are from Town, I suppose?"

"That is right," I tell him.

"The Town is lighted by wind," he says. "There is a powerful cry in the earth here. We harness it to turn the works."

The man looks to the wintering ground at his feet.

"It wails up once every three days. There are great underground deposits of emptiness here. On days with no wind, I tighten the bolts on the fan, grease the shaft, see that the valves and switches do not freeze. And I send the power generated here to Town, again by underground."

The Caretaker shifts his gaze about the clearing. We are walled in by tall, dark forest. The soil is black and tilled, but there is no sign of plantings.

"I like to do things with my hands. When I have time, I clear back the Woods. I am alone in this, so I cannot do large things. I work around the tall trees and choose less angering places. In spring, I grow vegetables. That is… Have you both have to come here to observe?"

"Yes, something like that," I say.

"Townfolk almost never come here," says the Caretaker. "No one comes into the Woods. Only the delivery man. Once a week he brings me food and necessities."

"So you live here alone?" I ask.

"Why, yes. For some time now. I can tell the mood of the works just by its sound. I am talking with the apparatus every day. That is reasonable, I have been here so long. If the works are in good condition, then I am at ease… I also know the sounds of the Woods. I hear many voices." "Isn't it hard, living alone in the Woods?" "Is living alone hard?" the Caretaker says. "I mind the Station. That is, I live here, in the Woods but not
in
the Woods. I do not know much further in."

"Are there others like you here?" asks the Librarian.

The Caretaker considers the question, then nods. "A few. Much further in, I believe there are more. They dig coal, they clear trees. I rarely meet them, I have hardly spoken to them. They do not accept me. They live in the Woods, but I live here. That is… I go no deeper in and they almost never come out."

"Have you ever seen a woman around here?" she asks. "An older woman, perhaps, who looks like me?"

The Caretaker shakes his head. "No, not one woman. Only men."

I look at the Librarian, but she says nothing more.

Encyclopedia Wand, Immortality, Paperclips

"JUST great," I said. "So I'm screwed. How far gone are these circumstances of yours?"

"You mean the circumstances in your head?" asked the Professor.

"What else?" I snapped. "How far have you wiped out the insides of my head?"

"Well, according to my estimates, maybe six hours ago, Junction B suffered a meltdown. Of course, I say meltdown for convenience sake; it's not as if any part of your brain actually melted. You see—"

"The third circuit is set and the second circuit is dead, correct?"

"That's correct. So, as I was sayin', you've already started bridging. In other words, you've begun't'produce memories. Or't'fall back on our metaphor, as your subconscious elephant factory changes, you're makin' adjustments via a channel to surface consciousness."

"Which I gather means that Junction A isn't fully functional? That information is leaking through from my subconscious?"

"Strictly speakin', no," said the Professor. "The channel was already in existence. Whatever we do't'your cognitive circuits, we must never sever that channel. The reason bein' that your surface consciousness, your first circuit—developed on nurture from your subconsious—that is, from your second circuit. That channel's the roots of your tree. Without it, your brain wouldn't function. But the question here is that with the electrical discharge from the meltdown of Junction B, the channel's been dealt an abnormal shock. And your brain's so surprised, it's started up emergency adjustment procedures."

"Meaning, I'll keep producing more and more new memories?"

"Fraid so. Or more simply, deja vus of sorts. Don't differ all that much in principle. That'll go on for a while. Till finally you reassemble a world out of these new memories."

"Reassemble a world?"

"You heard correct. This very moment you're preparint'move to another world. So the world you see right now is changin' bit by bit't'match up. Changin' one percept at a time. The world here and now does exist. But on the phenomeno-logical level, this world is only one out of countless possibilities. We're talkin' about whether you put your right foot or your left foot out—changes on that order. It's not so strange that when your memories change, the world changes."

"Pretty academic if you ask me," I said. "Too conceptual. You're disregarding the time factor. You're reversing the order of things."

"No, the time paradox here's in your mind," said the Professor. "As you create memories, you're creatin' a parallel world."

"So I'm pulling away from the world as I originally knew it?"

"I'm just sayin' it's not out of the realm of possibility. Mind you, I'm not talkin' about any out-of-this-world science-fiction type parallel universe. It's all a matter of cognition. The world as perceived. And that's what's changin' in your brain, is what I think."

"Then after these changes, Junction A switches over, a completely different world appears, and I go on living there. There's no avoiding that turnover—I just sit and wait for it to happen?"

"'Fraid so."

"And for how long does that world go on?" "Forever," said the Professor.

"I don't get it," I said. "What do you mean 'forever'? The physical body has its limits. The body dies, the brain dies. Brain dies, mind ceases. Isn't that the way it goes?"

"No, it isn't. There's no time to tautologies. That's the difference between tautologies and dreams. Tautologies are instantaneous, everything is revealed at once. Eternity can actually be experienced. Once you set up a closed circuit, you just keep spinnin' 'round and 'round in there. That's the nature of tautologies. No interruptions like with dreams. It's like the encyclopedia wand."

"The encyclopedia wand?" I was evolving into an echo. "The encyclopedia wand's a theoretical puzzle, like Zeno's paradox. The idea is't'engrave the entire encyclopedia onto a single toothpick. Know how you do it?" "You tell me."

"You take your information, your encyclopedia text, and you transpose it into numerics. You assign everything a two-digit number, periods and commas included. 00 is a blank, A is 01, B is 02, and so on. Then after you've lined them all up, you put a decimal point before the whole lot. So now you've got a very long sub-decimal fraction. 0.173000631… Next, you engrave a mark at exactly that point along the toothpick. If 0.50000's your exact middle on the toothpick, then 0.3333's got't'be a third of the way from the tip. You follow?"

"Sure."

"That's how you can fit data of any length in a single point on a toothpick. Only theoretically, of course. No cxistin' technology can actually engrave so fine a point. But ihis should give you a perspective on what tautologies are like. Say time's the length of your toothpick. The amount of information you can pack into it doesn't have anything't'do with the length. Make the fraction as long as you want. It'll be finite, but pretty near eternal. Though if you make it a repeatin' decimal, why, then it
is
eternal. You understand what that means? The problem's the software, no relation to the hardware. It could be a toothpick or a two-hundred-meter timber or the equator—doesn't matter. Your body dies, your consciousness passes away, but your thought is caught in the one tautological point an instant before, sub-dividin' for an eternity. Think about the koan:
An arrow is stopped
in flight
. Well, the death of the body is the flight of the arrow. It's makin' a straight line for the brain. No dod-gin' it, not for anyone. People have't'die, the body has't'fall. Time is hurlin' that arrow forward. And yet, like I was sayin', thought goes on subdividin' that time for ever and ever. The paradox becomes real. The arrow never hits."

"In other words," I said, "immortality."

"There you are. Humans are immortal in their thought. Though strictly speakin', not immortal, but endlessly, asymptotically close to immortal. That's eternal life."

"And that was the real goal of your research?"

"Not at all, not at all," said the Professor. "It's something that struck me only recently. I was just seein' where my research would take me and I ran smack into this one. That expandin' human time doesn't make you immortal; it's subdividin' time that does the trick."

"And so you decided to abandon me in immortality, is that it?"

"No, no, no. That's completely by accident, too. Never intended that at all. Believe me. It's the truth. I never meant't'do anything of the kind. But if you act now, you can choose, if choice is what you want. There's one last hand you can play."

"And what might that be?"

"You can die right now," said the Professor, very business-like. "Before Junction A links up, just check out. That leaves nothing."

A profound silence fell over us. The Professor coughed, the chubby girl sighed, I took a slug of whiskey. No one said a word.

"That… uh, world… what is it like?" I brought myself to voice the question. "That immortal world?"

"Like I told you before," said the Professor. "It's a peaceful world. Your own world, a world of your own makin'. You can be your self there. You've got everythin' there. And at the same time, there is nothin'. Can you picture a world like that?"

"Not really."

"Still, it's your consciousness that's created it. Not some-thin' just anyone could do. Others could be wanderin' around forever in who-knows-what contradictory chaos of a world. You're different. You seem't'be the immortal type."

"When's the turnover into that world going to take place?" asked the chubby girl.

The Professor looked at his watch. I looked at my watch. Six-twenty-five. Well past daybreak. Morning papers delivered.

"Accordint'my estimates, in another twenty-nine hours and thirty-five minutes," said the Professor. "Plus or minus forty-five minutes. I set it at twelve noon for easy reference. Noon tomorrow."

I shook my head. For easy reference? I took another slug of whiskey. The alcohol didn't register. I didn't even taste it. My stomach had petrified.

"What do you plan to do now?" asked the chubby girl, laying her hand on my lap.

"Hell, beats me," I said. "But whatever, I want to get above ground. I can't see waiting it out down here for things to take their course. I'm going up where the sun is out. Then I'll think about what comes next."