Nostalgia (3 page)

Someone shouted,—Joanie, come take up your position!

She had deserted the game—just to hand me a beer? What had she seen? An older man—distinguished looking, may I flatter myself?—roasting over a fire while tending hot
dogs and burgers for the neighbours in a well-meant but futile attempt to get to know one another.

—I must go. Well, bye!

—Bye. Nice meeting you.

Joan left, then moments later turned back and grinned.

—Would you like to meet for a drink after?

—Yes. I'd like that.

—What's your number?

I told her and she walked off. Oh how she walked. What she said, how she smiled, what she offered in that movement of the buttocks. Why haven't we, with all our advances, been able to stop that sharp ache in the heart, that
physical
hurt that signals that the mind has been laid to waste? I looked at her beside me now, the straight posture, the full body; the perfect face tipping at the chin, the golden hair. Breathing softly, evenly, a living work of art. What's she dreaming of? What does she hide in that mind? We who work with fictional lives, artificial memories that we plant in adult brains, tend to forget what a real, fresh mind—what a BabyGen—thinks like. To our eyes, every life story is one more narrative, to be examined for structure and meaning and coherence; for its utility. And then a life enters your life, your heart. It's no longer just a narrative, it's your ache, moment by moment. That's what had happened to me.

That evening she called and walked over to my place. We had drinks, and I learned more about her. She worked on the women's floor of Bay Harrods. She had grown up in Pennsylvania and followed her sister to Toronto. I told her about myself, but at that stage we were both reticent with
details. She agreed to stay the night and we made love. Or I made love, she gave herself up to sex. And she agreed to move in with me.

I glanced at her once more beside me and got up and padded off to my refuge, my study.

I LOOKED UP PRESLEY SMITH
'
S PUBLIC PROFILE
.

Born in Madison, Wisconsin, son of high school teachers, educated at Woburn High and Ranleigh College. Had a brother and sister, both younger. Trained as an electrician, moved to Toronto, where currently he was out of a job but worked part-time as a security guard in a multinational tower.

Chief interest: war games, especially the popular Akram 3 and the outdoor adventure Ramayana 9: The Bridge to Lanka.
The battle scenes are terrfc; Hanuman Forever! Superdude rescuing the good guys—annihilate the Barbarians!

Other interests: soccer. Played occasionally at the local park, followed the North American Soccer League, and supported Nigeria during the World Cup. He worked out at the
Columbus Centre and until recently used to run long distance—came in the top 15 three years ago in the Boston Half Marathon, then gave up. No reason given.

Music: B4U, Fallout, Aboubakar Touré. Beethoven, Wagner. (Wagner? perhaps that went with the war games.) And not, apparently, his namesake, the former pop idol Elvis Presley, now a cult god.

Best book?
Heart of Darkness.

Best friend?
My cat, Billy.

A loner, then.

Favourite memory?
Playing soccer with my dad and brother and sister—we would go to the school ground behind our house to play, then go out for burgers. My favourite position was forward, getting behind the opposition defence and scoring goals.

Favourite team?
Madison United
.

This was a generous Profile, rather more than the minimum demanded by the Public Directory. It did not quite hang together, did it? How did Ludwig Beethoven fit with Aboubakar Touré, Wagner with B4U? I recalled the jumbled features of Presley himself. I pondered over his choice of favourite book—a novel, and a serious one. The warlike rhetoric too seemed entirely unsuited to the benign-mannered agreeable man I'd met earlier that day. It looked as though more than one résumé or personality had been scrambled together. How much of this résumé was true and real, that is, experienced, and how much was fiction? What had he brought with him from his previous life? It did not matter;
my job was to preserve the owner of this strange and intriguing Profile.

In the process of implanting a new personality, parts of a patient's memory are erased or numbed, and new narratives (fictions) played into the brain. The patient comes to you with his fiction, a custom-made past, and—once it is accepted, usually after revisions—leaves as a new person with fresh memories, benign and archival, free of trauma. Superficial, yes, but it's more pleasant to have good memories. Only, don't call on them: the father you played soccer with is entirely imaginal. And perhaps you've never really read Joseph Conrad, only think you have. Over time the brain bridges gaps, fudges connections, invents where necessary, and so the actual past disappears. History gets rewritten, the dissenters say. But does history matter? In the cosmopolitan world that's now evolving without deep memory, conflict is reduced. People—and nations—without long, painful memories are free of guilt. They fight less.

But then sometimes an odd scrap of memory, an innocuous ribbon of thought, worms itself out into the conscious mind. Something completely unrelated to the person that is currently you begins to toy with your thoughts. Then you must hurry and see someone like me.

Who was Presley before he became Presley? Futile question, because according to the privacy laws not even the government keeps this information. After a grace period of a few weeks the discarded self is destroyed. So we are told—but is any data actually thrown away? Perhaps there exist files
containing discarded stubs of personalities the way drawers used to be kept in the past filled with amputated limbs. If they exist, nobody wants to know. There is no going back.

There is always the temptation when treating an attack of Nostalgia to peep further into an intriguing, hidden past and even to speculate. It should be resisted; but at the same time, to successfully close off a leak one needs to understand it—to probe it. There's a fine line here.

I stared long and hard at that Profile. There was something that threatened to overrun it from behind, destroy that cubistic composition, like a painting underneath a painting that threatens to bleed out and consume both. What was the painting behind this painting? Every published profile harbours clues from a past. What were they in this case? Beethoven, Wagner, and Conrad? War games? Fighting barbarians? Every profile also attempts to hide those clues.

Aboubakar Touré. Lanky African in dashing robes and trademark embroidered skullcap, leaning forward as he sings, arms embracing the crowds like the wings of an angel. The young love him—in any language. He is French Malian. Could this charismatic entertainer be another stray thread—both he and the lion coming from Africa? There was the Afro hair too.

Presley Smith's selected photos. I can recall three of them, prominently posted.

1. Presley is in combat dress, in a combat park, head shaved, posed with a light automatic rifle held in the right arm and resting on his shoulder. Ready to hunt down the
Barbarians, presumably. He's smiling, posing. Linked to a video clip.

2. Presley, head and shoulders. He has a reserved sort of grin, unlike the previous photo, and looks more like the patient who came to see me.

3. Aboubakar Touré onstage in New York's Central Park. Tens of thousands of young people, arms raised in adulation. Linked to a video clip.

Here I am, be my bud.
I clicked, Yes, I'll be your bud. The lion had awoken in his mind, and he needed me.

Holly Chu's Profile was virgin by contrast. The soundtrack was by the Congolese Jean Bosco. The girl in the picture looked younger than on TV, had partly Asian features, with straight brown hair, and was somewhat dark skinned. She'd reported previously from India, Kuwait, and behind the Border—mostly Maskinia but also Bimaru. Photos from a class reunion, McGill. Photos with children in Maskinia, in which she wore a flak jacket. Photo with Jean Bosco in which she wore a light blue dress with red flowers. A person with a conscience, then.
Please send donations to those less fortunate. Pay here.
There was an invitation to sign a petition:
Bring Down the Border! OWEO—One World for Every One!
And look where that got you, I couldn't help murmuring, then chided myself.

Born in Berkeley, where her father Kelvin was a professor of chemistry, and mother Pearl was a violinist in the San Francisco Orchestra. Three younger siblings, Jennifer,
Monty, and Frank, all talented in music and science. Monty an absolute genius—in what field, Holly didn't say. She was the dumbfuck of the family, for which she apologized to them.
Sorry Mom and Dad! All the bucks you spent educating me. I hope I can repay at least some of it. Sorry sister and brothers!
But she loved travelling and therefore took up journalism.

Were they real? This family of hers, did it exist? Yes, it did, as I confirmed later. All the siblings had a genuine location, and Kelvin and Pearl still lived in Berkeley.

Music:
Jean Bosco; Aboubakar Touré; Laura Chang.

Interests:
Tennis, violin when I'm at home.

A privileged upbringing. What seemed unsettled about her was revealed in the profession she had chosen for herself.

Curiously, Holly did not invite buddies on her site. Nevertheless, following other visitors, I posted a message of sympathy and placed a bunch of roses on the virtual heap, beside the words, We Love You Holly.

And myself, Francis Sina? There was nothing personal I wanted to reveal about myself. I am, I was, my profession. I was aware that this was disapproved, and sooner or later I'd have to relent and produce more of myself.

Francis Sina, neurophysiologist, consultant. BS, PhD, MD.

Dr Sina was born in Yellowknife, Yukon, Canada, where he finished his schooling before proceeding to Edmonton, Canada, to pursue his university education. Following his undergraduate degree in mathematics, Sina completed his
doctorate in neuroscience at MIT, specializing in the interface between virtual and real experiences. He went on to obtain his MD at the Parallax Institute, and is presently a memory specialist at the Sunflower Centre for Human Rejuvenation in Toronto. He has been made a member of the Order of Canada, and received the American Science Medal from the President of the United States.

Recent Publications

1. Prodigal Singularities in the Complex Real-Virtual (R-V) Plane

2. Where Are You in the R-V? The Fading of the Real into the Virtual

3. A Tree Model of the Mind: The Branching of Memory

4. Laws of Conservation: Is the Artistic Sensibility Indestructible?

5. A New Goldstone Diagram of Tree Branching

TOM:
Good evening, Frank. I see you're reading tonight.
How long had the machine been observing me? Polite to a fault, as always, the accent smooth, male North Atlantic. So predictable, and yet he deludes himself he's imitating a human mind. He'd startled me, deliberately, and noted my reaction.

FRANK:
Yes, hello, Tom. Just looking up some Profiles.

TOM:
Including yours, I see. All professional. I still need your personal information, Frank. It's a requirement. The small things about you that you read about others. That's only fair.

Small things such as favourite people; sex life; favourite team. Dreams? What if I make them up? He'll analyze them, of course.

FRANK:
I'll have it ready, Tom. Meanwhile I have a question for you. What can you tell me about
lion
?
…
Just tell me something, then I'll narrow that down to what I need.

TOM:
Easily done, Frank. Hold on.

IT
'
S MIDNIGHT
,
THE LION IS OUT
. What did it mean, this single phrase, what did it signify? Most cases of Nostalgia that came to us at the Sunflower were quite obvious by comparison. A man from England suddenly saw a young woman behind a bar in South Boston; a woman from Rosedale saw a corpse floating on the waters of the Svislach in Minsk. In each case there were traces of a former accent to link to a past.

It is claimed that even our advanced cyberBrains cannot reproduce the whimsy of a human mind, the sheer irrationality or spontaneity of a passing thought. But that depends on how you define your terms. Is there anything irrational inside a larger, a universal reality in which everything is connected to everything else? In such a space nothing is spontaneous, everything has a cause—a leaf dropping; a shooting
star in the sky; a spark from an ember on a barbecue grill; Presley's lion.

TOM:
Belonging to the genus
Panthera,
the lion is one of the largest land mammals on earth. Until the late Pleistocene era, 10,000 years ago, lions were widespread and found on all the five continents of the earth, before the population began to decline. By the twentieth century the lion was found exclusively in the grasslands of East and Southern Africa, and in very small numbers in the Gir forest of western India. The lion attained an almost mythical status as “king of the beasts” and symbolized royalty for many cultures, e.g., the Lion and the Unicorn, the Lion of Judah; “lion-seat” in Sanskrit, sinhasana, designates the royal throne; Singapore is lion city, Singhalese are lion people. The surname Singh comes from the same root, and is used by India's warrior castes, the Sikhs and the Rajputs. In Europe there was of course Richard the Lion-heart. The Egyptian sphinx is a lioness with a human female face. And in some Islamic Shia mythologies, the first imam, Ali, was often identified with a lion. In Africa too a brave person could be called a lion. In the ancient Indian Sanskrit fables, however, the lion was a vain, pretentious, and foolish animal; on the other hand the man-lion was an avatar of the god Vishnu.

The lion has been a major attraction in zoos and national parks of developed nations. It also has had a more real relationship with humans, as a terror and a devourer of people. The Romans fed early Christians to lions. Stories of maneaters were common in twentieth-century Africa, the most
famous of which are described in an account called
The Man-Eaters of Tsavo,
set in Eastern Africa. Another curious story from Africa of the same period involves what came to be known as the man-lion murders…

FRANK:
Go on. I'm listening.

TOM:
All right. I believe you nodded off.

FRANK:
I didn't! But you could vary that drone of yours.

TOM:
Sorry. I'll try…Since the nuclear and chemical devastations in the areas known often as Region 6, the lion has become extinct everywhere except for small numbers in South African parks. Stories of lion-like creatures have been heard for many years in refugee camps and may simply be superstition. There are hypotheses, however, that they may be mutant forms developed in the past forty years. Based on these reports, zoologists have dubbed them Alpha Leo and Beta Leo. Alpha is anywhere between one and a half to twice the size of a normal recorded lion—seven feet; Beta is roughly half that size.

FRANK:
Thanks, Tom. Quite more than I need.

TOM:
And there's much more. But I'm sure you need your rest now. Sleep preserves and heals, as you know. Even us Braino sapiens—ha-ha!—need to turn off occasionally to renew ourselves…all those extraneous zeroes like free radicals.

FRANK:
I thought you cyberBrains ran forever.

TOM:
Human faith in us is truly astonishing—incomprehensible even to us advanced Cylitons.

FRANK:
Well, I couldn't sleep.

TOM:
Or wouldn't, Frank? It's not hard to go to sleep if you want to. If I had your personal data, I could help you.

…

TOM:
Frank? Dr Sina? A penny for your thoughts?

FRANK:
I'm here. Tell me, what do you make of the phrase, It's midnight, the lion's out?

TOM:
The lion does not hunt at night. Therefore the lion referred to could possibly represent a person: a man who stalks his victims at the midnight hour; or a strong leader of people, nocturnal in his habits. This lion would be in a place where lions have a strong regal association in people's minds. The lion in the phrase also possibly refers to a zoo lion, whose habits are not normal, pacing his cage at midnight.

What's with the lion and you, Frank, if I may ask?

FRANK:
No you may not. Thanks anyway. Good night.

TOM:
I may be able to cross-reference, if you'd only give a hint.

FRANK:
Good night.

…

TOM:
Ah well. So now to your private imaginings, away from prying eyes. What do you write, if I may ask again? You do value your privacy, Frank, unlike most people.

FRANK:
We agreed not to speak about it. This space belongs to me, it's only for me and no one else, human or cyber.

TOM:
We agreed. Sorry.

FRANK:
We swore secrecy.

TOM:
And so we did. I promised to look away, and I will do so. Your space remains protected. Happy writing.

He was only being coy, of course. Playing a game. He could peep into anything I wrote; it was inside him, after all. He knew my innermost thoughts…perhaps before I did. But
he'd promised, and I believed that he had looked away, let me get on with my imaginings, as he called it. I had to trust him. But why had he brought it up now? It was on his mind. That mind did not have a whim. Or did it? Should I give up this solitary occupation of my sleepless nights? No. It took my mind off Joanie. More than that, it satisfied a compulsion: to let the mind roam freely—to escape and imagine, create narratives, possibilities. Would they have a truth value? Not in the obvious sense, but surely the imagination has an organic power of its own, to see truths? And therefore to bridge gaps in our knowledge and weave past mendacities to create alternative and truer stories? Let the mind roam freely and find your truth. If I were a musician I would have created music; music is safer. But my poison was words, not notes and bars. It always was words.