Sense of Wonder: A Century of Science Fiction (502 page)

The phone wakes you at noon. Baum has an invitation to a reception for a Republican Senator on the stump. “All our best people will be there. I could use a good photographer and you can use the contacts.”

“Sure,” you say.

“You’ll need a tux.”

“Got one.”

“You’ll need a shower, too.”

How he figured that out over the phone, you can’t imagine; but he’s right, you do smell bad, and it’s only been a week. When you get up, your whole body seems to be knitted of broken joints. It’s a test of will to stand up to the spray. Being pummeled by water feels like the Rapture, pleasure meeting pain.

* * * *

It’s an outdoor patio party with three Weber Platinum grills big enough to feed the Dallas Cowboys, half a dozen chefs and one waiter for every three people. Everybody wants to have their picture taken with the Senator, who is wearing tan makeup to cover the fact that he looks like he’s been stumping for two weeks without sleep, much less sunlight, and you’re glad it’s not your job to make him look good.

As it is, you end up taking dozens of pictures anyway. Baum calls most of the shots, who he wants with the Senator, whose faces will grace the paper in the morning. He introduces you to too many people for you to keep track of them—all the corporate executives and spouses have turned out for this gala event. When he introduces you to the head of the Texas Republican Party, just the way he says it makes it sound as if you are beholding a specifically Texan variety of Republican. For a week you’ve been living in a shack with dirt floors among people who cook their food on stoves made from bricks and flat hunks of iron, and here you are in a bow tie and cummerbund, hobnobbing with the richest stratum of society in El Paso and munching on shrimp bigger than your thumb, a spread that would feed an entire
colonia
for days. It’s not just the disparity, it’s the displacement, the fragmentation of reality into razor-edged jigsaw puzzle pieces.

And then Baum hauls you before a thin, balding man wearing glasses too small for his face, the kind that have no frames, just pins to hold the earpieces on. “This is Stuart Coopersmith.” He beams at you—a knowing smile if ever there was one. To Coopersmith, he says, “He’s the guy I told you about who’s into image manipulation.” He withdraws before he has to explain anything to either of you.

“So, you’re Joe’s new photo essayist,” he says.

A smile to hide your panic. “I like that title better than the one they gave me at the paper. Mind if I use it?”

“Be my guest.” If he recognizes you, he shows no indication.

“So, what do you do that I should consider taking
your
picture, Mr. Coopersmith?”

He touches his tie as he names his company. It seems to be a habit. “Across the river?”

“La
maquiladora
. You guys make what—”

“Control devices. We’re all about control.” There’s a nice, harmless word for someone in the big black budget of government bureaucracy, flying under the public radar.

“It’s more than that, though, right? Someone told me, your devices actually learn.”

“Pattern recognition is not quite learning, not like most people think of it. Something occurs, our circuit notices, and predicts the likelihood of it recurring, and then if it does as predicted, the circuit loops, and the more often the event occurs when it’s supposed to, the more certain the circuit becomes, the more reliable the information and, ah, the more it seems like there’s an intelligence at work. What we know to be feedback
looks
like behavior, which is where people start saying that the things are alive and thinking.”

“I’m not sure I—“

“Well, it’s no matter, is it? You can still take pictures without understanding something this complex.” Coopersmith says this so offhandedly, you can’t be certain whether you’ve been put down. He flutters his hand through the air as if brushing the subject away. “We just manufacture parts down here. We do employ lots of people—we’re very popular in the maquiladora. Like to help out the folks over there.”

You nod. “So, what’s on deck now?”

He looks at his champagne glass, then glances sidelong, like Cassius conspiring to kill Caesar. “Oh, some work for NASA. For a Mars flight they’re talking about. Using GAs to predict stress, breakdown—things they can’t afford in the middle of the solar system. The software will actually measure the individual’s stress from moment to moment, and weigh in with a protective environment if that stress jumps at all. It’s still pattern recognition, you know, but not the same as on an assembly line. I suppose it’s really very exciting.”

“Amazing.” It’s probably even important work.

“In fact you all should do a story on it—I mean, not right this second, but in a few months, maybe, when the program’s a little further along and NASA’s happy, you and Joe should come over to the factory, shoot some pictures. Write this thing up. I’d give you the exclusive. You guys beat out all the other papers, get a little glory. We’d sure love the PR. That never hurts. You come and I’ll give you the guided tour of the place, how’s that?”

He adjusts his tie again on the way to reaching into his coat and coming up with a business card. The card has a spinning globe on it, with tiny lights flashing here and there as the world spins. Coopersmith smiles. “Cool, isn’t it? The engine’s embedded in the card. Doesn’t take much to drive a little animation. You be sure and have Joe give me a call real soon.”

He turns his back, striking up another conversation almost immediately. You’ve been dismissed. Heading over to where Joe stands balancing a plate of ribs, you glance back.

Coopersmith with eyes downcast listens to another man talk, his hand fiddling with the knot on his tie again.

You might not have been sure at first, but you are now: He was the one on the catwalk, watching as you edged around the factory floor while the Virgin paid her visit.

Joe says, “So?”

“He offered us the exclusive on their new program for NASA.”

“You have been blessed, my son. An overlord has smiled upon you.” He tips his glass.

* * * *

When you tell Margarita what you suspected, she isn’t surprised so much as hurt. Even though she’d been certain of the fraud, the fact of it stings her. By association, you’re part of her pain. Although she welcomed you back with a kiss, after the news she doesn’t want to touch at all. She withdraws into smoke and drink, and finally wanders off with her cold black camera into the
colonia
, disgusted, she says, with the human race and God himself. You begin to realize that despite her tough cynical skin, there’s at least a kernel of Margarita that wanted the miracle in all its glory. Beneath your rejection, does some part of you want it, too? Once in awhile in seeking for truth it would be nice to find something better than truth.

Later, in the dark, she comes back, slides down beside you on the mattress and starts to cry. From her that’s an impossible sound, so terrifying that it paralyzes you. It’s the sound of betrayal, the very last crumb of purity floating away.

You reach over to hold her, and she pushes your hand away. So you lie there, unable to take back the knowledge, the doubt, the truth, and knowing that the betrayal will always be tied to you. There’s nothing you can do.

* * * *

The first opportunity you have, you swap your goggles with Gabriel Perea. The only place you can do this is at lunch. You have to wait for a day when he carries the goggles off the assembly line straight to the lunch area. You sit with him, listening to other workers ask him things about the Virgin. He looks at you edgily. He knows he’s supposed to pretend that you’ve never met, but you’re making this impossible by sitting there beside him. Making the switch is child’s play. Everyone’s staring at him, hanging on his every word. You set your goggles beside his, and then pick up the wrong pair a minute later and walk away.

Close up, you can see that his goggles have a slight refractive coating. He’s going to know immediately what’s happened, but with luck he won’t be able to do anything about it. He won’t want to be seen talking to you in the middle of the factory.

If Perea remotely shares your suspicions, he hasn’t admitted it even to himself. This makes you think of Margarita, and your face burns with still more betrayal. It’s too late, you tell yourself. This is what you came here to do.

Two days later, ten feet up in the forklift, you get what you wanted: The Virgin Mary appears to you.

It’s a bare wall, concrete brick and metal conduits, and suddenly there she is. She floats in the air and when you look through the cage front of the forklift she is floating beyond it. The cage actually cuts her off. It’s incredible. Wherever you look, she has a fixed location, an anchored spot in space. If you look up, her image remains fixed, sliding down the glasses. Somehow the circuit monitors your vision, tracks the turn of your head. “Feedback loops”—wasn’t that what Coopersmith said? It must be automatic, though. She may recognize the geometry, but not the receiver, because the first thing out of her mouth is: “
Te amo, Gabriel, mi profeta.
” So much for divinity. She doesn’t know you’ve swapped goggles even if the goggles themselves do.

She is beautiful. Her hair, peeking out beneath a white wimple, is black. The blue of her robes is almost painful to see. No sky could match it. Her oval face is serene, a distillation of a million tender mothers. Oh, they’re good, whoever created her. Who
wouldn’t
want to believe in this Mary? Gabriel couldn’t help but succumb.

The camera in your pocket is useless.

She reminds you of your duty to your flock. She promises that you will all live in glory and comfort in Heaven after this life of misery and toil, and not to blame—

In the middle of her speech, she vanishes.

It’s so quick that you almost keel forward out of your seat, thank God for the harness.

You can guess what happened. Management came out for their afternoon show, and things were wrong. Gabriel Perea, the poor bastard, didn’t respond. He’s still somewhere, attaching diodes to little green boards, unaware that divinity has dropped by to see him again.

You lower the forklift, and get out, unable to help one last glance up into the air, looking for her. A mere scintilla, a Tinkerbell of light would do, but there is nothing.

Nothing.

The last hour and a half you go about your business as usual. Nothing has changed, nothing can have changed. Your hope is they think their circuits or the goggles malfunctioned, something failed to project. Who knows what sort of feedback system was at work there—it has to be sophisticated to have dodged every solid shape in front of you. They’ll want to see his goggles at the end of his shift. No one seems to be watching you yet. No one calls you in off the floor. So at the end of the day you drop the goggles in the trash and leave with the others in your shift. Everyone’s talking about going home, how hot it is, how much they’d like a bath or a beer. Everything’s so normal it sets your teeth on edge. You ride the bus down the highway and get off with a dozen others at your colonia and head for home.

It’s on the dusty cowpath of a road, on foot, that they grab you. Three of them. They know who they’re looking for, and everyone else knows to stay out of it. These guys are
las pandillas
, the kind who’d kill someone for standing too close to you. A dozen people are all moving away, down the road, and the looks they give you are looks of farewell.
Adios, amigo
. Won’t be seeing you again. They know it and so do you. You’ve seen the photos. The thousand merciless ways people don’t come home, and you’re about to become one.

The first guy walks straight up as if he’s going to walk by, but suddenly his elbow swings right up into your nose, and the sky goes black and shiny at the same time, and time must have jumped because you’re on your knees, blood flowing out between your fingers, but you don’t remember getting there. And then you’re on your back, looking at the sky, and still it seems no one’s said a word to you, but your head is ringing, blood roaring like a waterfall. Someone laid you out. Each pose is a snapshot of pain. Each time there’s less of you to shoot. They’ll compress you, maybe for hours, maybe for days—that’s how it works, isn’t it? How long before gasoline and a match? Will you feel anything by then?

You stare up at the sky, at the first few stars, and wait for the inevitable continuation. The bodies get buried in the Lote Bravo. At least you know where you’re going. In a couple of months someone might find you. Will Joe come looking?

Someone yells, “¡Aguila!” and a door slams. Or is that in your head, too?

Footsteps approach. Here it comes, you think. Is there anything you can do to prepare for the pain? Probably not, no.

The face that peers down at you doesn’t help. Hispanic, handsome, well-groomed. This could be any business man in Mexico, but you know it isn’t, and you remember someone telling you about the
narcotraficantes
investing in the maquiladora, taking their drug money and buying into international trade. Silent partners.

“Not going to hurt you,
keemo sabe
,” he’s saying with a sly grin, as though your broken nose and battered skull don’t exist. “Couldn’t do that. No, no. Questions would be asked about you—you’re not just some factory cunt, are you?” His grin becomes a sneer—you’ve never actually seen anyone sneer before. This guy hates women for a hobby. “No, no,” he says again, “you’re a second rate wedding photographer who thought he was Dick fucking Tracy. What did you do, hang out with the Juarez photo-locos and get all righteous? Sure, of course you did, .” He kneels, clucking his tongue. You notice that he’s holding your Minox. “Listen,
cholo
, you print what you’ve uncovered, and Señor Perea will die. You think that’s a threat, hey? But it’s not. You’ll make him out a fool to his own people. They trust him, you know? It’s all they got, so you go ahead and take it from them and see what you get. We care so much, we’re lettin’ you go home. Here.” He tosses the camera into the dirt. “You’re only a threat to the people who think like you do, man.” Now he grabs your arm and pulls you upright. The world threatens to flip on you, and your stomach promises to go with it if it does. Close up, he smells of citrus cologne. He whispers to you, “Go home, cholo, go take pictures of little kids in swimming pools and cats caught in trees and armadillos squashed on the highway. Amateurs don’t survive. Neither do the professionals, here. Next time, you gonna meet some of them.” Then he just walks away. You’re left wobbling on the road. The gang of three are gone, too. Nobody’s around. Behind you, you hear a car door and the rev of an engine. A silver SUV shoots off down the dirt road, back to the pavement and away.