The Emoticon Generation (14 page)

“Yeah?”

“You didn’t make me a liberal, you know. Don’t think it takes any of the emotional, intellectual, spiritual, historical basis on which we built this country, on which I built myself.” I shake my head, about to tell him I didn’t think that, when he looks down, and in an even weaker voice says, “What does it matter? It doesn’t matter.”

~

“I remember one of my first missions...”

It’s been eight hours since he had learned the news. Neither of us has left the room. As he speaks, his eyes are floating, seeing a past that hasn’t been there for more than seventy years. “We were sitting behind one of the hills outside Jaffa’s market...” He speaks softly, dreamingly. “We thought we were snipers... Our mission was to shoot Arabs and cause as big a mess as possible... I was the lookout. I wanted to be the sniper so much. ... I wanted to kill Arabs. ... I remember thinking that: I wanted to kill Arabs. ... But no Arab adults came when we were there, only children. ... Then we got a radio call, and were told the mission was aborted, and that we had to leave ... I wanted to kill so badly... We were children, playing children’s games.”

He looks at his right arm, deep in thought.

I’m afraid to move my hands or to even shift weight in my chair. He seems so fragile to me, so broken. Any movement on my part might cause him to snap out of it and leave. And then he would go through the rest of it on his own, at home.

I can’t stop looking at him.

Suddenly, he mumbles, “Children’s games... Children’s games... I haven’t been a child in...” and his eyes are suddenly infinitely fatigued, “...in
so
long.”

~

“My father always said... When you grow up... You have to work. Work is food. Work is respect. A man who does not work has no respect... I kept true to that all my life... The minute the war was over, I had a job... Even during the Mandate, I was working for the freedom of the country. ... The Knesset... Making a new country, a good country, as a minister...”

Suddenly he squints. “Why did I think of that? Why this saying, of everything my father had told me? Why...” And then realization appears in his eyes. And with it, almost immediately, is light. A spark of light, for the first time in hours. “Ah! I was going to be a gardener! When I was just a kid, that’s what I wanted to do. Yes!” He smiles, sadly. “My mother learned about this, so she waited for my father to get home. She spoke to him, and then he came to speak to me. I needed a real job, he said. Being a gardener, that is not a real job.” And as he speaks, the spark in his eyes grows slightly brighter. “I’d forgotten about that.”

~

“I always had a green thumb when I was a kid. I had a small garden behind my family’s apartment... I used to go in and look at it and take care of it every day. ... I figured out how much shade each flower needed... I figured out when to water the plants and when it was best to keep them thirsty a bit... I brought books upon books from the library, telling me about the different kinds of plants. And when my Dad came to me and explained I needed to be serious... I dropped everything about gardening... I never drew another book from a library. Can you imagine that? Not one book.”

He looks at me and there seems to be a gleam in his eye.

For a second, I start to believe he was beginning to feel better. But it couldn’t be. His world had collapsed.

~

He had been quiet for fifteen minutes, looking at his fingers, as they move on the table. It looks to me like he is playing a very slow piano or as if his fingers are playing some sort of game. His gaze follows his fingers with mild fascination, as if surprised by their actions.

He breaks the silence, “I wanted a plant nursery... wall to wall with roses... daffodils... lilies...” his fingers are still playing on the table, and his mildly fascinated gaze follows them. “Persian alliums... the cyclamen, before they were protected, were fantastic... I love them to this day...”

He leans back, and I could swear that for a minute he was resting.

~

“I haven’t touched flowers in decades...” He hadn’t spoken about anything that had to do with the assassination in forty minutes. “I haven’t looked at them... No, that’s not true. I’ve looked. From afar, when I happened to come across... I never bothered thinking about it, but I remember my eyes getting stuck on the site of a beautiful garden, and every time that happened Dinah would ask me what’s wrong, why am I dreaming...”

He smiles. And there is a longing in his smile. Is that longing not sadness about all that he had lost today? For a split second I think it might be. But, no. I’m wrong about that.

~

He looks at me, and his eyes are as sharp as they had been when he had come in. But they are also different. They are sharp in thought, but not sharp in bite. “So what if gardening isn’t a vocation?” his eyes look at me, sharp but not cutting. “I mean, so what? Who cares?”

I shake my head. I don’t know what we’re talking about anymore.

~

He leans back, and he seems taller and not as sickly-thin as when he had come in. “I loved my childhood, Mr. Sanders. I loved my childhood.”

I don’t understand what he’s trying to say, but I have to say something. So I smile back at him and answer his words, “Me, too.”

“Did you?” he says, smiling. But my own smile cracks.

~

He slams both hands on the table, not aggressively, but to help him get up. “Well,” he said. “Time to go home.”

I stand when he stands. “Are you sure?” It’s six ten a.m.

He turns to face me with the briskness of a young man. “I’m sure. Thank you for your work, Mr. Sanders. And your honesty. And your understanding during this night.”

He offers his hand, for the first time. I shake it heartily. “It was a pleasure to meet you, sir.”

He shrugs it off. “If you say so.” He doesn’t care about that anymore.

I look at him as he exits the room. If I didn’t know better, I would say by his walk, from behind, that the man was forty years old. He’s tall, his back is straight, and he is no longer dragging his feet. He walks with energy and lightness of foot.

Right before he disappears, as he crosses the door, he looks back at me and nods. And I notice that all his wrinkles have disappeared.

FREEDOM IS ONLY A STEP AWAY

“They said it could never happen, but scientists have discovered the secrets of imagination! The full story after these messages.”

Roger looked up from his newspaper and eyed the television screen suspiciously. Then he craned his neck and called, “Joan!”

“What?” she yelled back from the kitchen.

“Come here!”

“What is it?”

She was obviously planning to stay in the kitchen and finish washing the dishes.

“Come here. Quickly! Before the news comes on again!”

Roger heard the sound of dishes being put down, the faucet being turned off, and then some shuffling. But Joan didn’t appear in the corridor. The first commercial ended and the second one came on.

“Quickly!”

Joan emerged from the kitchen, walking slowly, her hands wet. 9-year-old Russell clung to her side, and behind him 5-year-old Rose peeked.

“What? What’s the rush?” Joan said.

“The guy on the news said scientists have discovered the secrets of imagination.”

“What?” Russell said. It was too surprising and Dad said it too quickly, but it sounded interesting. Rose looked up at Russell. He held her hand.

“What does that mean?” Joan said, still wiping her hands on the apron. “What did they do?”

“I don’t know. The guy said scientists know the secrets behind imagination.”

The second commercial ended and the third one began.

“Come on! You can’t believe what they say on the news, Roger. They’re teasing you so you’d keep watching.”

“They said ‘Scientists have discovered the secrets of imagination’,” he even lowered his voice, mimicking the anchor. “How can you walk that back? It must mean
some
thing.”

Joan shook her head. “They’re fooling you. You can’t put imagination in a scientific formula. What are they going to do? Bottle it?”

“Just wait ten seconds.”

Joan made a face, but turned to look at the end of the commercial.

Russell, also intrigued, looked at the TV while leaning on his mother’s leg. Rose, intrigued because Russell was intrigued, leaned on Russell and looked at the TV.

The commercial finally ended and the news came back on. “And we’re back,” a blond TV anchor said. “Our bottom-of-the-hour item for the day is nothing less than a scientific breakthrough of historic proportions.”

“Hmmm,” said Joan.

“Scientists at the Roseman International Institute of Sciences have created a scientific process that captures man’s imagination on their screens. Jack Seuter has more.”

The visual changed to another blond man holding a microphone outside a building with a sign ‘Roseman International Institute of Sciences’ on it.

“We are standing where scientific boundaries have been shattered. A group of scientists, led by Dr. M. Burrows have been able to capture Man’s imagination on their screens. To better explain it to you, I tried it,” he lowered the register of his voice, “on myself.”

Joan shifted her weight from one leg to the other. Russell adjusted his posture, clinging to his mother’s leg. Rose held tighter to Russell’s side. The corner of Roger’s newspaper could no longer hang in the air on its own, bent backwards, and fell.

On the screen, Jack Seuter was lying inside what looked like an ordinary MRI machine. In the background, Seuter’s voice continued speaking, “I was put inside this machine for thirty minutes. First, they asked me preliminary questions to create a baseline of my brain. And then they asked me to use my imagination and
invent
a news story so they could capture my imagination at work.”

The image changed to scientists in lab coats looking at colored images on computer screens. “Two hours later,” Seuter’s voice continued. “Doctor Burrows’ team called me back to show their results.”

Joan bit her lip. Roger sat up. Russell looked at his mother. Rose held tighter to Russell’s pants.

Jack Seuter was now seated in an academic office. A 40-year old man, dressed in jeans and a suit with the nametag ‘Dr. M. Burrows’ pinned to his suit, was turning the computer screen so that Jack Seuter could see it. The images looked like regular MRI images.

“I sat down with Dr. Burrows,” Jack Seuter’s voice spoke again.

Jack Seuter, in Dr. Burrows’ office, pointed to the computer screen and said, “Now this is me normally?”

“Yes. That is the baseline of you which we had established.” Doctor Burrows clicked on the mouse and the colors in the MRI picture changed. “The innovation we bring to the table is not in seeing something that couldn’t be seen before, but in realizing that imagination is a process, and being able to narrow down that process to certain spots in the brain, thereby following the process from beginning to end. This next picture is when we asked you to make up a news story using your imagination. Observe the
process
. First, neuron activity is increased here.” He pointed to a red circle around a black spot in the back of the brain.

“This is me imagining?”

“No, not yet. Imagination is a process, and we are showing you the ‘before’ picture. The red circle is your brain creating shortcuts of what it already knows. It needs data to imagine, but it separates the data here, in this small circle, and will no longer require these parts of the brain that have gathered the data in the first place.”

“Okay.”

“Next,” Dr. Burrows clicked on the mouse again, and the picture changed. “As you can see, there is another activity here.” Blue spots were now clearly visible inside and outside the circle.

“What is that?”

“That is you
trying
to imagine. You clearly are not asked to imagine much, and you tried, stretching, so to speak, the wrong muscle. We then asked you questions,” as he spoke, he quickly clicked past five pictures that looked more or less the same, “taking you off your guard.” With the next three pictures, the blue slowly dissipated. “The ‘effort’ disappeared. Then right here,” he clicked again, and this time there seemed to be yellow bolts of lightning that connected between the black middle the red circle surrounding it. Dr. Burrows pointed with excitement to the yellow lines. “This line is the feat of imagination.”

Seuter’s mouth half fell open, “Am I watching...
imagination
?”

“Part of that process, yes. Watch.” He kept clicking, and the yellow lines consistently vanished and reappeared elsewhere in the red circle. “These yellow lines that look like lightning are the second stage of the imagination action. They emerge from what is known – in red – to what is imagined – the orange middle. Then, after the small flashes of yellow lightning,” he kept on clicking, “You suddenly had a big, meaty flash of yellow lightning. Immediately following this,” he clicked again, “the entire middle is now completely new and active.” The middle was full of orange colors. “This,” he pointed the orange circle, “is what you have imagined. By this point, you have imagined the story you will soon tells us. This is all done in less than a quarter of a second. Then, even as small yellow lines keep appearing, improving the story you have imagined, other lines of activity here bring the information from the newly orange part back into the red circle, ‘what is known’, and from that point seep back into the other parts of the brain. At this stage, the red circle area, now containing new information as well as old one, brings forth new flashes of yellow lightning to the center, improving on the story you were telling us, while you were telling it.”

He froze the picture. “At this exact point in time, you told us your story. You said a tornado came and swept up the Roseman Institute, flipped it in the air, and landed it right at the same side, completely upside down.”

Jack Seuter suddenly looked like a child caught doing something naughty. He looked at the camera with a child’s wide eyes, “That’s what my brain came up with.”

“It’s perfectly natural,” Dr. Burrows said.

The image changed at once to Jack Seuter interviewing Doctor Burrows in a corridor, “Let’s be serious for a second, Doctor Burrows. What does this mean for
us
? What have you learned about mankind? What are the secrets of imagination? What is the meaning of your scientific breakthrough?”

“The breakthrough of what my team has achieved is in what it promises in the future. By being able to observe the process of imagination
as
a process, we can slowly fine-tune our understanding as time goes by. Even at this early stage, we have discovered many things, the least of which is that the yellow lines are almost always the same in all humans and that it is a process of simple, repetitive action.”

“I’m sorry. I’m sure I couldn’t possibly have heard you correctly.”

“I said that it is a process of simple, repetitive action. In each of us, the action is unique to us. In that way, one person’s imagination always tends to imagine the same
sort
of new things, while another’s imagination imagines a different sort of new things. These actions are automatic for each of us.”

“I’m sorry. Did you say imagination is... automatic?”

“In a very strange way, it is. Basically, what our research seems to point out is that at any given point, your personal imagination takes ‘all that you know’ and performs a certain action on it, giving you a result of something that is outside ‘all that you know’. Thus imagination never comes up with something that you know to be real at the time of imagining. But now ‘all that you know’ includes the imagined item, which means that performing that same action of imagination now would result in imagining something else, something outside ‘all that is known’ now. The same action gives you different results at different times, simply because your base of knowledge is slightly different. In that way, waiting a minute or an hour or even a second, results in imagining something completely different.”

“I’m not sure I understand.”

“That’s all right. This is just preliminary. And I’m sure it’s just the tip of the iceberg. In the following months, we will continue to analyze the data, gather even more test cases and come up with a tangible and coherent result or results that will hopefully teach us something new about ourselves.”

“You heard the doc,” Jack Seuter was standing alone in front of the Roseman Institute. “Scientists have unlocked the keys to the secrets of imagination. We will keep you updated in the upcoming months, as more and more strange information will no doubt flow out of the Roseman International Institute of Sciences. What will they discover? I’m sure that is something,” he smiled, “we
can’t
imagine. Over to you, Cliff.”

“Thank you. A fascinating report. Moving on to celebrity news—”

Roger raised the remote and turned off the TV.

Joan made a face and turned around, “Well, that was a waste of time.”

Roger was up on his feet. “What? What do you mean a waste of time?”

Joan was heading back into the kitchen, while Russell and Rose stayed in place, looking at her leave, “I mean it was a waste of time. Do you need me to
imagine
a better way to say it?”

By this time, Joan had disappeared into the kitchen. Roger ran after her.

“It’s exciting! It’s the forefront of science!” Russell and Rose heard their father shout. “Scientists are figuring out the secrets of our brain!”

“Really?” their mother was saying in the kitchen. “Imagination is automatic, that’s what they’re figuring out? A four year old child knows that can’t be true.”

Rose looked at Russell. Russell pointed at his own head. “I imagine... I’m a cow,” he whispered.

“You don’t know,” Roger was saying in the kitchen, “If a team of doctors says it’s true, then—”

“Then the team of doctors are damned fools, is what they are.”

“I imagine I’m a sheep,” Rose whispered. “Baaaaah.”

“Imagination can’t be automatic,” Joan was saying.

“I’m a dog,” Russell whispered to Rose. “Woof! Woof!”

“Maybe,” Roger was saying in the kitchen, “they meant another kind of automatic. You don’t know.”

“I’m a flying dog,” Rose whispered. She spread her arms and started running around the room, flapping her arms, “Woo-oof! Woo-oof!”

“Imagination will never be automatic,” Joan was saying in the kitchen. “No matter what kind of automatic you’re talking about.”

Russell started to flap his arms as well and to run in circles opposite his sister, “Woo-oof! Woo-oof!”

“Imagination is something... you can’t touch.”

“Woo-oof! Woo-oof!”

“Imagination is something... you can’t imagine.”

“Woo-oof! Woo-oof!”

“Imagination is... It can’t be caught...”

“Woo-oof! Woo-oof!”

“Or explained...”

“Woo-oof! Woo-oof!”

“...Or understood. Like a soul.”

Russell, growing tired, looked his sister in the face, extended his tongue, and gave her a spit-rich raspberry.

“Imagination is like your soul. Science will never find it.”

Rose, laughing, now stood in front of Russell, and raspberried him right back.

“Now let me finish washing the dishes.”

“I was in the middle of reading the newspaper, anyway.”

“Good, then.”

Russell and Rose ran to their room, laughing.

Roger returned to the living room and sat back on the sofa, picking up his newspaper.

~

A month and a half later, the Grant family was sitting at dinner. All four ate at the dinner table, in front of a muted television. Roger looked up.

“Hey, that’s the guy from the thing,” he said.

Joan, Russell, and Rose looked up.

“Who?” Joan said.

“The imagination guy. The guy from the thing. The scientist imagination guy.”

Dr. Burrows was seated next to a fair-haired news anchor, and the two were talking.

“What are you talking about?” Joan said.

“Wait. Hold on.” Roger looked for the remote. “You know, the guy who said he found the cure to imagination. I mean, the science of imagination.” Roger stood up to get a better look for the remote when he realized he was sitting on it the whole time. “You know, how imagination works.”

“Oh, the idiot,” Joan said as Roger pointed the remote at the TV.

Roger turned the sound back on. “The list of discoveries we have made stemming from our research is quite wide,” Dr. Burrows was saying. “Some deal with the minutia of the chemistry of the brain, the electricity of neurons, neural nets, and so on.”