Insistence of Vision (3 page)

But for all the courage and heroism shown by fantasy characters across 4000 years of great, compelling dramas – including fine legends crafted by recent masters like Tolkien, Bradley, Martin, Rothfuss and Vance – what has happened by the end of these stories? Good may have triumphed over evil and the land’s people may be happier under Aragorn than they would have been, under Sauron. Fine. But “under” is their only choice.

Ponder the
palantir
– a wondrous glassy object that lets Aragorn see faraway places, collect information and converse with viceroys across the realm. Does that sound at all familiar to you? In Gondor,
palantirs
are reserved for the elite. Mass-produced
versions
won’t be appearing soon on every peasant’s tabletop from Rohan to the Shire. (The way our civilization plopped such a miracle on
your
desktop.) Nor will peasants see Gandalf producing libraries, running water, printing presses or the germ theory of disease. Only little Peregrin Took seems to grasp and demand a glimmer of alternatives, till he is bullied out of it.

The trend toward feudal-romantic fantasy may seem harmless. But I have to wonder why so of our few fellow citizens are interested – nowadays – in humanity’s truest heroes. Heroes like Pericles, Franklin, Faraday, Lincoln, Pankhurst, Einstein and so on freed us from a horrid, feudal way of life that, ironically, seems so alluring to jaded modern eyes.

Rejection of Optimism

But let’s be fair now. The deep river of nostalgia flows not just through fantasy novels and films, with their feudal images, chosen-ones, prophecies, and kingly lineages that rule by right of blood. Ever-more often, we’ve been seeing chosen-ones and dour gloom more often in sci fi, too.

Notions of human self-improvement… or ambition of any kind… are derided. Almost like an immunal rejection to the 1960s can-do spirit of
Star Trek
, wave after wave of authors and film directors seem to have “discovered” dark cynicism as a storytelling style, calling it fresh and original… as if they invented it. Tales about regret, navel-contemplation and disdain toward any semblance of optimism now seem to fill the sci fi magazines and awards nomination lists, with science fiction scholar Judith Berman diagnosing: “no more than a handful of stories... look forward to the future.”

As critic Tom Shippey put it, in a Wall Street Journal review:

As science fiction approached the millennium, it began to trade the future for the past and real worlds for fantasy or virtual realities. We’ve had “cyberpunk,” with “biopunk” coming along a little uneasily behind... Other popular sci fi scenarios include alternate history (“looking backward,” as if to wonder where things went wrong) and its nostalgic spin-off “steampunk” (fantasy with a history-of-science additive). The popularity of post-apocalyptic novels suggests that no convincing techno-future can be imagined.

Shippey’s essay is insightful and important, though I do quibble with that last point. Progress isn’t impossible to imagine. It just takes hard work.

Any lazy author or director knows this trick; it’s astonishingly easy to craft a pulse-pounding plot and get your heroes in jeopardy - via either prose or film - if you start by assuming civilization is nonfunctional! That your fellow citizens are fools and all their hard-wrought institutions are run by morons. If accountability utterly fails and 911 calls are only answered by villains or Keystone Kops… and the Old Galactic Republic never does a single thing right... then you can sniff some coke and scribble almost any story-line. It writes itself! Bring on the special effects and heavy sighs over inevitable human doom.

No, I am not denouncing all works that express skepticism toward progress. Some do arise from stronger roots than mere cynical laziness. Among these are sincere and deeply-moving critiques of modern civilization’s many faults. But here is where a delicious irony emerges. For, as we hinted earlier, the best and most savagely on-target critiques are helpful in moving us forward through the minefield of progress.

This is why genuine sci fi tragedies like
On the Beach
and
Dr. Strangelove
may (arguably) have helped to prevent nuclear war.
Soylent Green
(as we said) moved millions so powerfully that it helped to root the environmental movement. “This does not have to happen,” say Huxley and Orwell and Slonczewski and Tiptree, in their masterful
self-preventing prophecies
. “Be smarter people. Be
a
better
people.”

It is still a rebel viewpoint! Far more tales preach the opposite sermon:

“Give up hubris and arrogant ambition: renounce so-called progress and the technologies that advance it. Seek wisdom in older ways.”

I’ve explored both of these moods in stories and novels. Both can deliver great (or poor) art. But we should always be aware whether a story is trying to convince us to
try harder…
or to
give up.

And yes, this has a context that extends far beyond mere literary genres. Suppose that optimistic or ambitious or targeted-warning stories like golden age sci fi really were a brief historical aberration? More broadly, what if the cynics are right that democracy, science and other freakishly creative innovations of the Enlightenment truly were temporary, or else delusions? That Darwin will always rule, after all, drawing us back into the dark, old ways?

Moreover, what if this pattern happens to everyone, not just on Earth but across the galaxy? Could
nostalgia and renunciation
explain the great silence that the SETI searches have found out there across the cosmos? Race after sapient race choosing to hunker in feudal – or pastoral or tribal or reverential or zen-like or whatever – simplicity, cowering away from ambition or the stars? After all, suspicion of change pervaded nearly every religious and mythic tale coming down to us from that long epoch preceding science fiction.

Some of it was great art! I’ve spent countless hours with Odysseus and Dante and Rama and the Monkey King. We can learn important things, both by heeding the lessons that ancient stories try to teach... and sometimes by reaching diametrically opposite conclusions.

Because
we
are the rebels. We who think that change might (possibly) bring good.

Nostalgists who doubt this are welcome to criticize! That searing light of rebuke is exactly what enables us to move forward, while avoiding the pitfall-penalties of hubris. Keep pointing out potential failure modes for us to take into account – and then evade as we forge ahead.

But let there be no mistake. Quenchers and belittlers represent the past. Ten thousand years from now, the stories that will be remembered will be those that encouraged.

The authors who say to us, convincingly…
let’s try.

WHAT WE MAY BECOME

ᚖ

Insistence of Vision

ᚖ

She’s pretty-enough. Plump in that I-don’t-give-a-damn kind of way.

And
unblurred.
I can see her. That makes all the difference.

“Did you just visit the Dodeco Exhibit?” I ask, while she drinks from a public fountain.

Seems a likely guess. Her sleeveless pixelshirt shimmers with geometric shapes that flow and intersect with mani-petaled flowers, shifting red-to-blue and emitting a low audible rhythm to match. She must have copied one of the theme works on display in the museum, just up a nearby flight of granite steps, where I glimpse crowds of folks visiting the exhibition.

Wiping her mouth with the back of one hand, she glances up-down across my face, making a visible choice. Answering with a faint smile.

“Yeah, the deGorneys are farky-impressive. A breakthrough in fractalart.”

Gazing at me without suspicion, she’s bare-eyed – a pair of simple, almost retro, digi-spectacles hang unused from her neck. Clear augment-lenses glint in sunlight, here at the edge of Freedom Park. But the key feature is this: she’s not wearing them. I have a chance.

“There’s nobody better’n deGornay,” I counter, trying to match the with-it tone of her subgeneration. Navigating with a few tooth clicks and blink commands, I’ve already used my own specs to sift-search, grabbing a conversational tip about neomod art.

“But I really like Tasselhoff. She’s farknotic.”

“You-say?” The girl notches an eyebrow, perhaps suspecting my use of a spec-prompt. I worry she’s about to lift her own glasses... but no. She continues to stare-bare, cocking her head in mock defiance.

“You do realize Tasselhoff
cheats?
She ai-tunes the cadence of her artwork to sync with the viewer’s
neural wave!
Some say it’s not even legal.”

Bright, educated, and opinionated. I am drawn.

Several blurs pass nearby, then a visible couple. The man sidles in to use the drinking fountain. So many people—it gives me an idea.

“But Tasselhoff does offer a unique... say, it’s awful crowded here. Are you walking somewhere? I was strolling by the Park.”

Ambiguous. Whichever way she’s heading, that’s my direction too.

Brief hesitation. Her hand touches the digi-spectacles. I keep smiling.
Please don’t. Please don’t.

The hand drops. Eyes remain bare-brave, open to the world and
just
the world.

She nods. “Sure. I can take the long way. I’m Jayann.”

“Sigismund,” I answer. We shake in the new, quasi-roman fashion, more sanitary, hands not contacting hands but lightly squeezing each others’ wrists.

“Sigismund. Really?”

“Cannot tell a lie.” I laugh and so does she, unaware how literal I’m being.

I can lie. But it’s not allowed.

She doesn’t notice what happens next, but I do. As we both turn to leave the Museum steps, I glimpse the penguin-garbed man staring at me through his pair of specs. He frowns. Appears to mumble something...

...before he and his wife abruptly become blurs.

ᚖ

Walking together now, Jayann and I are chatting and flirting amiably. Our path follows the edge of Freedom Park. We stay to the right as joggers pound along, most of them visible but some blurred into vague clouds of color—Collision-Avoidance Yellow. I hear them all, of course—barefoot or shod, blurred or unblurred—pounding along the trail, panting away.

I offer a comparison of deGornay to Kavanaugh, deliberately naive, so she’ll lecture for a while as we skirt a realm of leafy lanes. Specs don’t work in there. No augmentations at all. That’s why it’s called Freedom Park. Few would expect to find a creature like me at the edge of what, for me, is cursed ground. And that’s why I come.

To my left the city roars with stimuli, both real and virtual, every building overlaid with meta-data or uber-info. I can tune my specs to an extent. Omit adverts, for example. But my tools are limited, even primitive. Half the buildings are just solid blocks of prison gray to me.

My walls.

No matter, I’m concentrating on what Jayann says. Her enthusiasm is catching. Even endearing. Mostly listening, I only have to comment now and then.

I hear voices and glance back, stepping aside for two hurrying adults—one of them a clot of vagueness, the other unedited and brave. Visible as a lanky-dark young man. My specs even reveal his name and public profile.

Wow. Just like in better times. Before I lost the power that everyone around me takes for granted.

Godlike omniscience.

“Well, I have get back to work,” Jayann says. “I’ll shortcut through here.” She indicates a tree-lined path, clearly inviting me to come along.

“What do you do?” I ask, diverting the subject. I take two steps, following her. Already there’s a drop in visual resolution. I daren’t go much farther.

“I work in sales. But I’m studying art history so I can teach. You?”

“Used to teach. Now I help a public service agency.”

“Volunteer work? That’s farky and sweet.” She smiles. Though backing down the path, she’s starting to grow fuzzy. I’d better talk fast.

“But I manage to come here—to the park and Museum—every Tuesday, same time.”

And there it is. Totally lame and stunningly old-fashioned, but maybe that will intrigue her.

She grins.

“Okay, Mister Mysterious Sigismund. Maybe I’ll bump into you again, some Tuesday.”

It’s all I could hope for. A chance.

Then hope crashes. She grabs her specs.

“Wait. Just to be sure, let me give you my—”

“Say, is that a bed of gladiolas? This early?” I ask, purposely stepping past Jayann, walking down the path, counting steps and memorizing it as best I can. The Park’s e-interference grows more intense. Then, abruptly, my specs cut off completely. I’m blind. But it’s worth it if she follows. If that prevents her from looking at me through those glasses.

I keep walking, several more paces, toward the memorized flower bed. Bending over, I take off the now-useless ai-ware, pretending to look. But I chatter on, as if able to see bare-eyed, hoping she followed me down here, where specs don’t work.

“You know, they remind me of that deGornay –”

“Bastard!”

A pair of fists hammer my back, then a foot slams into my knee from behind, sending me crashing into the shrubbery. Pain mixes with humiliated disappointment. And even worse...

... my specs are gone! I grope for them.

“How dare you!” She continues screaming. “You... you liar!”

My left hand probes among the crumpled flowers, searching.

“I... I never lied, Jayann.”

“What were you planning? To get all my info, my address, to break in and murder me?”

“My crimes weren’t violent. Look them up. Please, Jayann....”

“Don’t you
dare
speak my name! What are you doing?”

“My specs. Please help me find them. Without them...”

“You mean these?” A rustling sound. Turning toward it.

“I can’t see without them.”

“So I’ve heard.” Her voice drips with anger. “Instead of prison, take
convicts and
blind
them
.
Let ‘em only see what
special specs
deliver direct to the brain. So they can’t see anyone who
chooses
not to let a criminal see them.”

“Yes, but—”

“You stole that right from me!”

Against better judgment, I argue.

“You could have looked... with specs... seen my warning marks...”

She howls incoherent fury. I envision her there on the path, clutching my specs, shaking them. “I ought to smash these!”

“Please give them to me, Jayann... and guide me back to the street. I’ll never bother you again, I swear....”

I try to sympathize with her sense of betrayal. But her rage seems extreme, for a social offense... charming a young woman into talking to me, bare-eyed, for a while.
Mea culpa.
I would pay for it. But did I deserve a pounding with fists? Screamed threats?

Making a best-guess, I run. Gravel underfoot for eight good steps, then grass. I correct, meeting path again...

...before tripping over her outstretched leg and sprawling face-first. “Jayann.... I’m sorry!”

“Not
half
as sorry as you’re—”

I leap up, stagger forward again. There was a slope down from the street, I recall. And now I hear the joggers panting. Traffic sounds beyond. With that bearing, I run again.

No more hope of getting my specs back or reporting for work. My sole thought is to reach the sidewalk and then just
sit down
, pathetic and still. Word will reach my probation officer. Ellie will come get me. Lecture me. Possibly impose punishment. Though it’s all recorded and I swear, I don’t think I committed any actual—

Traffic noise is louder. Joggers curse as they weave around me. I wish I could see even blurs.

Someone plants a hand against my back and
shoves.
I hear brakes squeal.

ᚖ

Lying in a hospital bed, I listen as Ellie explains about how lucky I am. What a fool I was. How close I came to breaking rules and lengthening my sentence. Or losing my life.

“Would you prefer a cell? The savagery of prison life? At least you can work. Pay taxes. Live among us.”

That makes me laugh.

“Among you. Right. Among the blurs.”

She lets that sit a while, then asks.

“Why, with so little time left on your sentence... why take such chances?”

How to answer, except with a shrug. Was Robinson Crusoe ever lonelier than I feel, here in the big city, imprisoned by electronic disdain?

Ellie takes silence as my answer. Then she tells me the final outcome of the fateful afternoon at Freedom Park.

ᚖ

Months later, I see her at the museum. Jayann sits a few steps up from where we met. Despite a thick sweater, I can tell she’s lost weight.

I slip on my new specs. Super-farky, they supply a wealth of information. God-like tsunamis of it. Nametags under every face that passes by, and more if I simply blink and ask for it. The basic right of any free citizen.

Under
her
name, flaring red:

CONVICTED FELON

Attempted 3rd degree murder

I almost feel guilty. My thoughtless, desperate, well-intended flirtations led to this.

But then, did anyone deserve what she tried to do, that day in a fit of offended pride?

As my own punishment chastened me—perhaps made me better—will she learn as well? There are second chances. There is second sight.

She looks around, seeming (except for those virtual scarlet letters) like a regular young woman, taking in the sun and breeze, though with a melancholy sigh. Her spec-mediated gaze passes over me...

...then onward. For to her, I’m just another blur.

I turn, leaning on my cane, to leave. Only then, glancing at the calendar within my virtuality, I realize.

It’s Tuesday.