| |
If Max had spent a solid week guessing what might happen if Thea ended up stored—not that he would have wanted to dwell on such a possibility for a minute, let alone a week—he would never have guessed she’d get so interested in politics. If he didn’t want them to grow further apart, he would have to work up some interest of his own. But that would take some time; for now, he just made encouraging noises as Thea rattled on about the meeting she’d rushed off to attend after their morning call.
“All these bigwigs are going to join forces, and resources, lobbying for a series of publicly funded Utopian communities. They’ll start with one, see how it goes, learn from its growing pains, and start some more. It’s pretty exciting.”
“That’s cool, I guess. Depending on who decides what’s Utopian.”
Thea looked slightly miffed. “Well, the principles made sense to everyone involved. I’d actually expected more disagreement, but as people chimed in with their ideas, they all seemed to be heading in the same direction. I guess ideas really can have their moments in history.”
Max couldn’t, offhand, remember having lived through any such moments, but he vaguely recalled books he’d read in school that talked about them. “So what are these ideas everyone felt good about?”
Thea bit her lip, the way she did when she tried to remember something. “Rotating leadership; communal ownership and pooling of assets; hi-tech farming; making and selling handcrafted goods; invitations to artists and artisans to come live and work; solar-powered everything . . . . That’s all I remember right now. But we’re meeting again in a couple of days. I’ll take notes this time, so I can tell you all about it. Maybe you’ll end up one of those artists in residence!”
Max had a hazy feeling that some of those pieces might not fit together perfectly; and he wasn’t sure such communities could support themselves, unless the government was supposed to support them indefinitely. But if it made sense to Thea, it probably made sense, period.
* * * * *
The most junior worker in the Oversight and Retention Department (what everyone except the stuffier management types called Peep and Keep) looked over his notes for the second time, finding three more typos. He should probably break down and use Spell Check like everyone else; but he could still hear his mother’s rants on the subject, all about homonyms and real-but-wrong words chosen by accidental free association. And rereading also let him see where he’d drifted off into bureaucratese. Not that his supervisor would mind. In fact, she’d probably prefer it: bureaucratic jargon seemed to relax her.
He was supposed to pay as little attention to the substance of the conversations as possible. Right. “Don’t think of brown monkeys!” But most of the time, it was boring enough that nothing lodged in his memory. Lately, though, he’d noticed a change, a fad of sorts, with politics replacing much of the complaints and nostalgia and bragging one-upmanship that used to fill his reports. The johnnies in charge had tried to whip up this sort of political interest when the voting rights legislation passed; maybe it had finally happened.
Well, it wasn’t his job to spin hypotheses, and even if it had been, how was he supposed to know just why these rich leftovers of people were becoming more interested in changing the world they’d left behind?
* * * * *
“I thought you were going to have that segment arranged by now. Even with your meetings and all, you said you could manage.” Even to himself, Max sounded like he was whining. But he’d never had to worry about Thea sticking to a schedule before. He wouldn’t have taken on this new project if he’d expected such problems; and he’d made promises assuming she’d have her piece ready.
Thea looked stricken, which made Max feel even more like an asshole. “I’m so sorry, baby! When the group asked me to work on the charter for the first planned community, I was so excited that I must have lost track. Can you get just a couple of days’ extension?”
He should be glad that she’d found a consuming interest, one she could still pursue. That she wasn’t pining for all she’d lost. That it didn’t tear her up inside, the way it did him, to think of her never riding her surfboard again, or cooling off by rolling in wet sand and then diving into the waves to wash off.
He should be happy for her.
But damn it all, he’d never thought Thea would leave him hanging! And how could she care more about writing rules for people she’d never met than about the music one of their best friends would conduct at his first really big concert?
“Max? Can you get more time?”
For the life of him, he couldn’t pretend that everything was okay. “I guess I’ll have to try. If you still want to be part of the project.”
Thea actually gasped. “Of course I do!”
Had he hurt her feelings? He never wanted to do that. But he had feelings too; and he hurt.
* * * * *
One of the regulars at the meeting, a man who had recently started up a theater troupe as well, started things off with an announcement. “I’m changing my name. So from now on, please call me Jim.”
The woman to Thea’s right cocked her head to one side and said, “O-kaaay . . . . Would you mind saying why?”
The man flushed. “Because my family and friends keep complaining about how much I’ve changed! Why am I doing this, why am I saying that, why do I care about anything I haven’t cared about for the last twenty years!”
Thea’s ears pricked up. “So you’re sort of calling their bluff. Saying that if they can’t accept you as the person they know and love, even if you’ve changed, then you’ll take them at their word.”
“Exactly!” The man’s shoulders relaxed, which showed Thea how tense he had been when making his announcement. He hesitated, then added, “Though I have to admit I hope the gesture gets through to them. I’m not sure I’m ready to be Jim for the rest of my . . . Well, you know what I mean.”
Thea looked around the room. Quite a few people were nodding in agreement or identification.
Their leader for the month cleared her throat. “Well, is everyone ready to get started?”
Thea and “Jim” had living quarters near each other. That made it easy for her to walk with him after the meeting. Thea started out by asking him about the theater troupe, which actually sounded like fun, if not an activity she had ever dabbled in before. Once she had him chatting, it took very little to bring him back to the subject he had raised already. He had plenty more to say on the subject, and she contributed just enough to keep him talking. Outspoken as Thea could be, she had still learned the art of active listening.
“Anyone who keeps up with new science and technology, and thinks about how those developments affect our daily lives and our public institutions, is going to change their mind now and then. I’ve changed my mind over the years, and I’ve admitted it. They didn’t accuse me of becoming a stranger before. Is change so different when it happens to someone stored?”
And: “People afraid to change will end up hiding from facts! Do I have to turn into a coward to keep my family?”
When she got back to her own quarters, Thea undertook some historical research, checking her memory of a few anecdotes that seemed pertinent.
There was that miner, Phineas Gage, who’d had a metal rod blown through his head in some explosion. It had changed his personality quite radically, making him short-tempered and unreliable (not to mention profane in his word choices). His friends, it chilled her to learn, had come to feel that he was “no longer Gage.” She had also not known that many of the man’s personality changes were temporary. At what point had those friends decided that “their” Gage had returned to them?
The great neurologist Oliver Sacks had written about an old woman, around ninety years old, who found herself becoming noticeably less inhibited, more (in her words) “frisky.” That turned out to be the result of tertiary syphilis. And after she was diagnosed, she deliberately chose a course of treatment that would arrest the progress of the disease without repairing the “damage” that had changed her behavior. She liked the person she had become. But Thea could find no information on how her family and friends had received those changes.
And the prophets, the “saints” like Joan of Arc, whose visions might well have been symptoms of temporal lobe epilepsy—if they had somehow been cured of that condition, they would have been less historically significant, and possibly would have lived longer, but would they have become different people?
How much could someone change before it was appropriate, before it was fair, to question that transformation? How much, before loved ones had some excuse for changes in their own feelings?
She had thought to raise the subject in her next talk with Max; but in the end, she fell back on the less volatile communication of a written message. She told him about “Jim,” and about the history she had checked. And then she reviewed the ways that Max himself had evolved since they met.
You’ve always loved music, but you used to be all about playing, being on stage with girls going crazy. Now you’re a superbly talented composer, and while you still like girls to notice you, you don’t always notice them.
(At least, he hadn’t when she was there at his side. . . .)
You used to waste money on smuggled tobacco cigarettes. Now you just take a friendly toke with your friends, or a few more with me.
(More on those nights when they knew they would make love for hours before bothering to sleep. . . .)
You used to be close to your dad, but not your mom. Then you started making an effort to learn about her past, where she came from, how she got to be so sharp-tongued and difficult. And now you respect the hell out of her.
You used to think tattoos were pretentious. And now, my love, you design the most beautiful tattoos for me.
She had thought of challenging him outright to tell her whether he believed his love had a limit, how much it depended on the bundle of traits and beliefs she had accumulated during her corporeal lifetime, or those that had characterized her when she died; but her courage did not, in the end, carry her so far. So she simply asked him to write back sharing any thoughts her message had stirred.
In another few minutes, it would be time to call Max. Thea checked her mail and was relieved to see that he had already written. Holding her breath for a moment (and she would stop apologizing, even to herself, for thinking in those terms!), she was further relieved to see the length of the message. He had not evaded the question or retreated into his less articulate mode.
You sure gave me plenty to think about.
I looked up that miner and the old lady. And I thought about the saints.
We all change. And when we promise to love someone and stay with them no matter what, we know they’ll change, and that we will too.
If someone gets sick, so sick they turn into someone they wouldn’t want to be, then the people that love them should show that love by fighting the sickness and helping the person get back to who they want to be. But I don’t think you’re sick, and even though you’ve changed, there’s nothing about you now that either of us should have any problem about loving. So I’m sorry I’ve been a dick.
Thea laughed and dabbed away tears, then went on reading.
And if, somehow, you change so much, or in such a way, that I think you wouldn’t have wanted it to happen, then I’ll fight for you. Because I love who you are, and I won’t let either of us lose the fantastic person you are, if anything I can do would save you.
That was all, except the drawing at the end, a sketch of two people, of the two of them, sitting on the sand, cuddled close together, watching the waves come to shore.
* * * * *
Max read over his message, even though he’d already sent it, and waited for Thea’s call. He could have called her first, but he could use more time to get ready for talking to her again.
If he hadn’t written that one thought, if he’d had a reason for not writing it, then he probably shouldn’t say it.
Yes, he had to give her room to grow. Yes, her new life and new friends were bound to change her. Yes, being involved in politics was usually a good thing, and even more so for people who had little else to tie them to the world of the living, or whatever.
But Max had a bad feeling about all this, and he couldn’t say why. With all the explanations and reasons and logic Thea had given him or he had recited to himself, something was still bugging him, making him more than a little nervous.
He’d said that if the time should come, he’d fight for the Thea he knew and loved. He hadn’t said how unsure he was that he would know when that time came.
