The Dream of Doctor Bantam (17 page)

Did you feel that she owed this to you?

No—but I mean, I did bring her in to the Institute first. It was because of me. And I mean—I know time isn’t real; I know that nothing really causes anything. I know that she would have done what she did with or without me. But I guess that’s part of it—I’m not strong enough not to feel that way.

What way?

Like I’m a good person on my own terms. Like I’m only good because I caused someone to be better.

Go back to strong—go deeper on strong.

I’m not strong anymore. I feel like it makes me stronger to be close to her. I feel like if she leaves—I’ll dry up and crumble away.

Are you okay?

I’ll be okay. Give me—give me a minute.

How did you resolve your feelings of betrayal toward the object in the moment?

I said to give me a minute. Don’t ask me to tell you this now.

How did you resolve your feelings of betrayal toward the object in the moment?

I told her that if she stayed with me I’d work really hard to get her pregnant so she could have a baby like she wanted.

Oh. And how did the object react to this?

I started talking about how it would be. How I’d keep trying for as long or as often or whatever as she needed me to. How she didn’t even need to have me touch her; I’d just, you know, into a test tube or something and we could pour it in, real fast.

She started to shake, kind of—she told me to stop it. But I just kept going. I described to her what the kids might look like, based on how we looked and stuff. She went into the bathroom and I followed her. I told her I’d support her—I’d play with the kids, ball for boys and Barbie for the girls—told her how they’d be the luckiest kids anyone had ever raised—how they’d be Unbound 0–0, from the time they were eight, how they’d have all the benefits of an Institute education. She tried to push me out of the bathroom. I pushed back at her. Something went—I mean, something went kind of crazy for a moment.

Go deeper on crazy.

I guess I must have hit her. I guess she must have started screaming.

Describe what the object was screaming.

She wasn’t screaming anything. She was just screaming. She screamed until her voice gave out and then she kept trying to scream, but nothing was coming out of her mouth. She was out of air. It was just like—croaks. Like doors opening somewhere down there.

What did you do?

I didn’t do anything. There wasn’t anything to do. I felt like she was like bomb circuitry or something.

Did you feel sexual desire for her in that moment?

I just felt kind of sick.

What did the object do?

She kept trying to scream for a while, and then she sat down on the floor. But she wasn’t crying or anything. I remember that—I remember her sitting there with her skirt kind of flopped up over her thighs, her blouse still unbuttoned, her red hair hanging in her face. I would have remembered if she’d cried.

Then she looked up—and it was crazy. It was like there was a different person who had replaced the first person. She looked up at me with these amazing eyes—they were so calm—they were so completely rational.

I apologize, she said. That was a timebound reaction.

How did that make you feel?

I felt—kind of like I was crashing into something. But no—that’s not right. Good. I felt good. I smiled, and she smiled too. We decided to smile.

Go deeper on good.

It was like I saw the old Patrice kind of scream herself out and melt away in that moment. It’s like she wouldn’t be weak anymore. It’s like—she recovered. She even said she was sorry for screaming. I feel like she’s become the new Patrice, the better Patrice for good. She’s never going to—to break like that again. She’s never going to let anyone get close to her like that again.

And since that night—Jesus, I guess it was two weeks ago—everything’s been amazing. She’s full-time on staff. We’re both getting closer and closer to zero. It just goes to show you—there really are happy endings, you know?

This is so amazing—I haven’t—talked about this before. I feel so much better.

Do you miss her?

Well, I mean—we still work together and everything. We’ll still see one another. It doesn’t matter if I miss her or not. This is the right thing to be doing. I’m sure of it. I’m so proud of us both. Every day—ha ha, I mean every moment in time—we’re incorporating our identities more and more with the Institute’s. We’re just learning more and more how, you know—how to survive.

Thank you.

Thank you. Oh man—this is amazing.

END OF INTERVIEW 10/28/02:011: ROCHE

INTERVIEW 10/28/02:012: MARECHAL

[ARCHIVIST’S NOTE: The interview materials normally included here were pulled on 07/04/05 for review by the Board of Advancements pursuant to the procedure for making an Unbound Declaration for the subject of inquiry. The documents will be restored on or after 09/15/05 once all research into the subject’s character pre-advancement is complete. Apologies to whoever reads this file in the interim. —ARCHIVES]

POST-INTERVIEW SIMULTANEOUS COUNSELING

The interviews with each subject were read to their corresponding objects. The objects were asked if they understood what one another had said about them, and if they agreed. Roche 0–10 agreed with Marechal 0–9’s assessment of him. Marechal in turn agreed with Roche’s assessment of her and added to the record:
You were right to hit me. It made me a better person
. Both agreements were filed and the relationship was declared to be disincorporated. Both parties shook hands and left to get a cup of coffee together and discuss the group project due on the following day.

FULFILLMENT OF PURPOSE:

Fulfilled. Productivity restored to nominal levels for both identities following necessary period of readjustment (to be expected for identities whose rank has not yet reached Ideal Degree 0–0—UNBOUND, and who are thus not yet in perfect and total control of their emotional natures at all points in time).

RECOMMENDATION FOR ACTION:

None further required; everything is fine.

“You know what I like most in the world? Smiling at people, knowing that I’ve helped them become better at being just who they are. So smile at me, everyone—and one day, soon, I’ll smile at you.”

—Alistair Bantam, Founder

1

It was hard work, carrying someone on your handlebars. Julie had wanted to see Patrice in front of her as she pedaled; she wanted to let Patrice lean back into the breeze with her hair fanning out in the wind; the bike fell over twice; Patrice started to complain; Julie let her ride behind. Patrice’s hands folded over the place where Julie’s ribs met; her breasts were vibrating against Julie’s back. She pedaled faster, took the roughest roads.

Thanks for taking me to work, Patrice said when they’d arrived.

No problem, said Julie. Pick you up at eight. Come here.

She leaned out and after a moment Patrice leaned in. College kids stared at them; the Dillo bus honked as it hissed to a stop at the corner by the old Baptist church, picked up its passengers, and rolled on.

After Patrice went inside Julie locked her bike to the rack and walked to the Retrograde next door, not feeling the pavement.

What’s the girliest, most fanciful drink you can make? she asked the gawky barista. Because you’re going to give it to me free of charge.

And she did, wide-eyed: eggnog and espresso and foam whip and cinnamon and caramel syrup—and Julie drank it in long, slow gulps, and it was fantastic. It was good times all around.

I’m still worried about you, said Michael in the kitchen one evening while Julie was making pasta with mushrooms and tomatoes.

I’m worried about you, said Julie. Has mom asked you to marry her again?

Michael looked into his coffee cup. She stirred her pasta.

This is the first time I’ve seen you in four days, he said. Just where are you going?

I’m here now, aren’t I? she asked.

You are here now, he said.

The pasta was starting to stick to the side of the pot; she lifted it from the heat and dug at the metal with her wooden spoon.

So there’s no problem, she said.

Where are you going? he asked. Who are you spending all this time with?

Patrice, she said. And Ira, sometimes.

Patrice, he said. Ira. Have we met Patrice? Have we met Ira?

When she turned the flame off she could hear the television glowing from Linda’s room. She turned it back on and set the saucepan on the burner.

No, you haven’t, she said.

Maybe you should invite them over sometime for dinner, he said.

Why? she said. You come over for dinner all the time; you don’t need an invitation.

She drained the water and started cutting up the tomatoes.

Your mother invites me, he said.

Then we’re glad to receive you, she said.

She came around behind him and threw her arms around his neck; he started when she touched him. She ruffled his curly hair, like he was eight, and she went back to the cutting board, whistling
Je ne veux pas travailler
.

I’m glad to see you’re so happy these days, he said.

I’m over the moon these days, she said.

I’m glad, he said again. I wish we saw more of you. Your mother misses you.

She sighed.

We were having such a nice conversation, she said.

She does, said Michael. You should consider it.

I don’t want to talk about it with you, she said.

She set the plate of food in front of him and in front of her. She took the other plate down the hall in front of Linda’s room, set it on the floor in front of the door, knocked briskly, like a prison guard, and went back to the kitchen. She sat down, lit a cigarette, picked up her fork, held the fork in one hand and the cigarette in the other. One was going to have to give.

Michael was already eating.

This is delicious, he said.

Thanks, she said, putting the fork down.

So, is Patrice nice? he asked.

She definitely is, Julie said. Then, as she put her cigarette out in her glass of water: In bed.

They didn’t talk after that. He went to watch TV with Linda and she did the dishes and sat on the floor of Tabitha’s bedroom for half an hour, thinking. Someone had made the bed in her absence. Someone had replaced the fitted sheets: the new ones were cream-and-chocolate, bought for company long ago, rarely used. What had happened to Tabitha’s old sheets, she had no idea.

She read over the
Funky Winkerbean
strips collected and remixed in her composition book.
Funky Winkerbean
had at some point become something bleak, terrifying.

She got on her bike and went to Patrice’s. She really had planned to stay home.

There were times when she was
on
, when she wouldn’t take no for an answer, when she felt Patrice clench against her hand with walnut-cracking Kegel precision many times over and when they stared together at shapes in the ceiling stucco, a worthless game because she couldn’t even remember the names of the animals she was seeing. And then there were times when her fingers got tired, when she lost feeling in her jaw. There were times when she was grinding against a bronze thigh, her heart floating inside her like tissue paper blowing in a Christmas morning fan, and she’d say something—oh God you make me soo wet, something inane and basic like that—and she’d say something back, and soon enough they had cigarettes lit, they were talking, she was going into the other room to start coffee brewing and she remembered, oh yeah, oh
shit
, like she’d left her keys or her bag somewhere.

There were times when she just wanted to sleep. And there were times when she just wanted to fuck, and Patrice wanted to work instead.

The Institute got in a crate of DVDs toward the beginning of August, weird things manufactured out of some contract studio in New York. Julie and Patrice went to buy a TV together so they could watch them. She tried to hold hands with Patrice as they browsed the electronics aisles at the Circuit City; Patrice’s hand kept slipping free. Instead Julie let her hand rest on the
plastic-chrome edges of different sets, flat screens and plasmas, and she talked about the ratio of pixels to dollars like she knew what she was talking about. A man with a ponytail, a goatee, and a black Pantera T-shirt smirked at them; Julie shot him a thumbs-up. He went back to his wife (teal T-shirt, white shorts, blond ponytail worn on top) and his kids, two miniature versions of him, pale rat tails growing out of the back of each boy’s head. Kids were running from set to set looking for the one with the video games.

Children are wonderful, whispered Patrice, staring at them.

I guess, said Julie. If you like, you know, noise and destruction.

Some children are very wellbehaved, said Patrice. There are some students at the Institute who have children. I had a child in one of my courses once. She was very well-behaved and eager to learn.

You have children at the Institute? Julie asked. Isn’t that illegal?

Patrice sulked and swatted her on the shoulder.

Of course it isn’t illegal, she said. I want to have children one day. I’d probably have some already if it wasn’t for the Institute.

Julie laughed, quietly, the sound drowned out by television fuzz.

What’s funny? Patrice scowled.

Nothing, said Julie. You’d just be the worst parent ever.

I’d be a wonderful parent! said Patrice. You’re just being hateful. You know that I’d be a wonderful, caring, loving parent!

I can see it now, Julie snickered. Kids get home from school, ask for a snack. Thirty minutes later they come to check on you and find you in the kitchen in front of a jar of peanut butter with a knife in your hand, top of the peanut butter still perfectly smooth, you can’t bear to put the knife in it. Later you run drills on the Machine to see if they’ve done their homework. Then you go to work at the Institute and they hitchhike to school, hand in hand, dirt caked on their faces, and a concerned teacher picks them up in her SUV, and all the way to school they try to explain to her about how her identity is confused while they’re fucking around with the radio dials and rolling the power windows down and up.

Patrice threw Julie’s hand down and stalked over by a display of camcorders, peering out of fisheye glass lenses like heads on stakes. She pretended to be studying prices and features. Julie came over to her, set her fingers on Patrice’s shoulder.

Hey, she said. It was just a joke. What’s wrong?

I shouldn’t have expected you to understand, said Patrice.

Julie bit her lip. She waited a moment longer—Patrice kept pretending to study the camcorders—and Julie moved on. She stopped in front of a silver plasma-screen, one with a built-in DVD player, one with a satellite access built in. After a moment, she could hear Patrice breathing beside her. She turned and smiled.

Check it out, she said. This is a TV that truly fits our lifestyle. Young girls on the go, curling up with the hottest movies by night.

Let’s take it and go, said Patrice.

It’s two thousand dollars, said Julie. No.

Then let’s just go, said Patrice.

What, said Julie. Are you mad about the kids or something? Do you want me to what, knock you up? It may be difficult.

I shouldn’t have expected you to understand, said Patrice again.

They bought a tiny set with a built-in player, all that they could reasonably carry home on the bus with them. Julie apologized at some point in transit. They set it up in the living room on a cinder block and watched the Institute DVD on a blanket with popcorn, the kernels floating in a lake of melted butter.

The movie was about a group of college friends. One was a girl and one was a boy and one was a black boy. They were all in college: the white girl was a history major, the black boy was a computer science major, and the white boy was a physics major. They had a study session together and talked about how they had midterms coming up, how they had trouble understanding some of the material. They talked about some of the issues they were having in their classes. Between them was a wide blue bowl filled with apples. Each of them held an apple in their hands while they talked, but none of them bit into the skin. They just held the apples.

Third act, apples are poisoned, said Julie. Black kid dies. I’m really good at this.

Shh, said Patrice.

The girl in the movie was talking about a flyer she had found in her mailbox. The flyer advertised concentration courses for students available at the Institute of Temporal Illusions near the campus. The black boy and the white girl both seemed to think it was a great idea to take courses at the Institute, that this would be a good way to really improve their performance on the upcoming exams. The white boy seemed more skeptical, saying that his professor, Dr. Steele, said that you had to use the scientific method to assess whether or not a thing would be good for you before you did it. That’s crazy, said the black boy. How would you ever do anything new if you followed that advice? The white boy seemed confused by this, but just said that Dr. Steele said it, and he was the head of the physics department, so it must be true. The black boy and the girl argued and eventually convinced the white boy to take the concentration course.

The next scene showed the white girl and the black boy on the Machine. An gentle-faced white woman smiled at them while they did some simple drills, in which they learned that older teachers and relatives had in the past told them things that damaged their self-esteem and made it hard for them to learn history and computer
science. The black boy had been told that
he would never amount to anything
by an older white male teacher and the white girl had been told that
pretty girls didn’t need to study
by an older white female teacher, which made her think that if she studied, she would become ugly. Thanks to the Machine and the helpful woman from the Institute, they moved past these delusions. Their faces shone with light and hope; the synthesizers swelled.

Meanwhile, the white boy was packing his books from a review session with Dr. Steele. Dr. Steele had a nasal voice and a bad cough, and as the white boy was leaving the room, he told him to wait. He told the white boy that he had noticed that he was not performing up to his potential in the class. The white boy said that this was true, but that he was going to take some extra courses at the Institute of Temporal Illusions to help him improve. Dr. Steele was very upset at this. He said unkind things about the Institute of Temporal Illusions, about how they were a bunch of crackpots who didn’t believe physics was real.

But is physics real? asked the boy. I’ve always wondered about where force even comes from, or how do you know that there are quarks?

Never mind the technical details, harumphed Dr. Steele. Here, he said, I’ll give you a better way to improve your performance on this test—the best method science has to offer. He handed
the white boy pills in an orange prescription bottle.

The white girl and the black boy met for another study session. The same bowl of apples was on the table, untouched, and they were wearing the same clothes they had worn in the first scene. They were concerned about their friend, who had been acting moody and angry lately. Just as the white girl was describing the dark circles under his eyes and the twitch he had developed in his fingers, the door slammed open and the white boy entered. He indeed had dark circles under his eyes, and his lower lip hung open; his teeth, wild and sharp, showed through. He stalked around the room, saying terrible things to them—oh, so you started the meeting without me, I see; I guess your precious Institute really taught you all kinds of useful things. They explained, quite reasonably, about all of the benefits they had received from their concentration course, about how nice everyone at the Institute had been to them, about how the good things they were receiving went far beyond mere study help. I have more energy, the black boy kept saying. So I can do more, be more productive in my life. The white boy said that they were insane, that they should be locked up. It’s not scientific, he said. If it’s not scientific, it’s not true. He repeated it in a scream. The black boy and the white girl looked nervously at one another. The camera cut to a clock ticking, its slow sound run through an echo chamber to add reverb and menace.