No Direction Home Read online

  “What’s this tempis look like?” a reporter says.

  “Well, it’s sort of…” the captain begins. “Wait a minute,” he says, “I’ve got a sample right here.”

  He reaches into the small sack and pulls something out. The camera zooms in on the captain’s hand.

  He is holding a small plant. The plant has broad green leaves and small purple blossoms.

  Dr. Phipps’ hands begin to tremble uncontrollably. He stares at me. He stares and stares and stares…

  May 12, 2062, I am in a small room. Think of it as a hospital room, think of it as a laboratory, think of it as a cell; it is all three. I have been here for three months.

  I am seated on a comfortable lounge chair. Across a table from me sits a man from an unnamed government intelligence bureau. On the table is a tape recorder. It is running. The man seated opposite is frowning in exasperation.

  “The subject is December, 2081,” be says. “You will tell me all you know of the events of December, 2081.”

  I stare at him silently, sullenly. I am tired of all the men from intelligence sections, economic councils, and scientific bureaus, with their endless, futile demands.

  “Look,” the man snaps, “we know better than to appeal to your nonexistent sense of patriotism. We are all too well aware that you don’t give a damn about what the knowledge you have can mean to your country. But just remember this: you’re a convicted criminal. Your sentence is indeterminate. Cooperate, and you’ll be released in two years. Clam up, and well hold you here till you rot or until you get it through your head that the only way for you to get out is to talk. The subject is the month of December in the year 2081. Now, give!”

  I sigh. I know that it is no use trying to tell any of them that knowledge of the future is useless, that the future cannot be changed because it was not changed because it will not be changed. They will not accept the fact that choice is an illusion caused by the fact that future time-loci are hidden from those who advance sequentially along the timestream one moment after the other in blissful ignorance. They refuse, to understand that moments of future time are no different from moments of past or present time: fixed, immutable, invariant. They live in the illusion of sequential time.

  So I begin to speak of the month of December in the year 2081. I know they will not be satisfied until I have told them all I know of the years between this time-locus and December 2, 2150. I know they will not be satisfied because they are not satisfied, have not been satisfied, will not be satisfied…

  So I tell them of that terrible December nine years in their future…

  December 2, 2150. I am old, old, a hundred ten years old. My age-ruined body lies on the clean white sheets of a hospital bed, lungs, heart, blood vessels, and organs all failing. Only my mind is forever untouched, the mind of an infant-child-youth-man-ancient. I am, in a sense, dying. Beyond this day, December 2, 2150, my body no longer exists as a living organism. Time to me forward of this date is as blank to me as time beyond April 3, 2040, is in the other temporal direction.

  In a sense, I am dying. But in another sense, I am immortal. The spark of my consciousness will not go out. My mind will not come to an end, for it has neither end nor beginning. I exist in one moment that lasts forever and spans one hundred ten years.

  Think of my life as a chapter in a book, the book of eternity, a book with no first page and no last. The chapter that is my lifespan is one hundred ten pages long. It has a starting point and an ending point, but the chapter exists as long as the book exists, the infinite book of eternity…

  Or, think of my life as a ruler one hundred ten inches long. The ruler “begins” at one and “ends” at one hundred ten, but “begins” and “ends” refer to length, not duration.

  I am dying. I experience dying always, but I never experience death. Death is the absence of experience. It can never come for me.

  December 2, 2150, is but a significant time-locus for me, a dark wall, an endpoint beyond which I cannot see. The other wall has the time-locus April 3, 2040…

  April 3, 2040. Nothingness abruptly ends, nonnothingness abruptly begins. I am born.

  What is it like for me to be born? How can I tell you? How can I make you understand? My life, my whole lifespan of one hundred ten years, comes into being at once, in an instant. At the “moment” of my birth I am at the moment of my death and all moments in between. I emerge from my mother’s womb and I see my life as one sees a painting, a painting of some complicated landscape: all at once, whole, a complete gestalt. I see my strange, strange infancy, the incomprehension as I emerge from the womb speaking perfect English, marred only by my undeveloped vocal apparatus, as I emerge from my mother’s womb demanding that the ship from Tan Ceti in the time-locus of September 8, 2050, be quarantined, knowing that my demand will be futile because it was futile, will be futile, is futile, knowing that at the moment of my birth I am have been will be all that I ever was/am/will be and that I cannot change a moment of it.

  I emerge from my mother’s womb and I am dying in clean white sheets and I am in the office of Dr. Phipps watching the ship land and I am in the government cell for two years babbling of the future and I am in a clearing in some woods where a plant with broad green leaves and small purple flowers grows and I am picking the plant and eating it as I know I will do have done am doing…

  I emerge from my mother’s womb and I see the gestalt painting of my lifespan, a pattern of immutable events painted on the stationary and eternal canvas of time…

  But I do not merely see the “painting,” I am the “painting” and I am the painter and I am also outside the painting viewing the whole and I am none of these.

  And I see the immutable time-locus that determines all the rest—March 4, 2060. Change that and the painting dissolves and I live in time like any other man, moment after blessed moment, freed from this all-knowing hell. But change itself is illusion.

  March 4, 2060 in a wood not too far from where I was born. But knowledge of the horror that day brings, has brought, will bring, can change nothing. I will do as I am doing will do did because I did it will do it am doing it…

  April 3, 2040, and I emerge from my mother’s womb, an infant-child-youth-man-ancient, in a government cell in a mental hospital dying in clean white sheets…

  March 4, 2060. I am twenty. I am in a clearing in the woods. Before me grows a small plant with broad green leaves and purple blossoms—Temp, the Weed of Time, which has haunted, haunts, will haunt my never-ending life. I know what I am doing will do have done because I will do have done am doing it.

  How can I explain? How can I make you understand that this moment is unavoidable, invariant, that though I have known, do know, will know its dreadful consequences, I can do nothing to alter it?

  The language is inadequate. What I have told you is an unavoidable half-truth. All actions I perform in my one-hundred-ten-year lifespan occur simultaneously. But even that statement only hints around the truth, for “simultaneously” means “at the same time,” and “time” as you understand the word has no relevance to my life. But let me approximate: let me say that all actions I have ever performed, will perform, do perform, occur simultaneously.. Thus no knowledge inherent in any particular time-locus can effect any action performed at any other locus in time. Let me construct another useful lie. Let me say that, for me, action and perception are totally independent of each other. At the moment of my birth, I did everything I ever would do in my life, instantly, blindly, in one total gestalt. Only in the next “moment” do I perceive the results of all those myriad actions, the horror that March 4, 2060, will make has made is making of my life.

  Or… they say that at the moment of death, one’s entire life flashes instantaneously before one’s eyes. At the moment of my birth, my whole life flashed before me, not merely before my eyes, but in reality, I cannot change any of it because change is something that exists only as a function of the relationship between different moments in time, and for me life is
one eternal moment that is one hundred ten years long…

  So this awful moment is invariant, inescapable.

  March 4, 2060. I reach down, pluck the Temp plant. I pull off a broad green leaf, put it in my mouth. It tastes bitter-sweet, woody, unpleasant. I chew it, bolt it down.

  The Temp travels to my stomach, is digested, passes into my bloodstream, reaches my brain. There changes occur which better men than I are powerless, will be powerless, to understand, at least up till December 2, 2150, beyond which is blankness. My body remains in the objective timestream, to age, grow old, decay, die. But my mind is abstracted out of time to experience all moments as one.

  It is like a deja vu. Because this happened on March 4, 2060, I have already experienced it in the twenty years since my birth. Yet this is the beginning point for my Temp-consciousness in the objective timestream. But the objective timestream has no relevance to what happens…

  The language, the very thought patterns, are inadequate. Another useful lie: in the objective timestream I was a normal human being until this dire March 4, experiencing each moment of the previous twenty years sequentially, in order, moment after moment after moment…

  Now on March 4, 2060, my consciousness expands in two directions in the timestream to fill my entire lifespan: forward to December 2, 2150, and my death, backward to April 3, 2040, and my birth. As this time-locus of March 4 “changes” my future, so, too, it “changes” my past, expanding my Temp-consciousness to both extremes of my lifespan.

  But once the past is changed, the previous past has never existed and I emerge from my mother’s womb an infant-child-youth-man-ancient in a government cell a mental hospital dying in clean white sheets… And—

  I, me, the spark of mind that is my consciousness, dwells in a locus that is neither place nor time. The objective duration of my lifespan is one hundred ten years, but from my own locus of consciousness, I am immortal—my awareness of my own awareness can never cease to be. I am an infant am a child am a youth am an old, old man dying on clean white sheets, I am all these mes, have always been all these mes will always he all these mes in the place where my mind dwells in an eternal moment divorced from time…

  A THING OF BEAUTY

  “There’s a gentleman by the name of Mr. Shiburo Ito to see you,” my intercom said. “He is interested in the purchase of an historic artifact of some significance.”

  While I waited for him to enter my private office, I had computcentral display his specs on the screen discreetly built into the back of my desk. My Mr. Ito was none other than Ito of Ito Freight Boosters of Osaka; there was no need to purchase a readout from Dun & Bradstreet’s private banks. If Shiburo Ito of Ito Boosters wrote a check for anything short of the national debt, it could be relied upon not to bounce.

  The slight, balding man who glided into my office wore a red silk kimono with a richly brocaded black obi, Mendocino needlepoint by the look of it. No doubt, back in the miasmic smog of Osaka he bonged the peons with the latest skins from Savile Row. Everything about him was just so; he purchased confidently on that razor-edge between class and ostentation that only the Japanese can handle with such grace, and then only when they have millions of hard yen to back them up, Mr. Ito would be no sucker. He would want whatever he wanted for precise reasons all his own, and he would not be budgable from the center of his desires. The typical heavyweight Japanese businessman, a prime example of the breed that’s pushed us out of the center of the international arena.

  Mr. Ito bowed almost imperceptibly as he handed me his card. I countered by merely bobbing my head in his direction and remaining seated. These face and posture games may seem ridiculous, but you can’t do business with the Japanese without playing them.

  As he took a seat before me, Ito drew a black cylinder from the sleeve of his kimono and, ceremoniously placed it on the desk before me.

  “I have been given to understand that you are a connoisseur of Fillmore posters of the early-to-mid-1960s period, Mr. Harris,” he said. “The repute of your collection has penetrated even to the environs of Osaka and Kyoto, where I make my habitation. Please permit me to make this minor addition. The thought that a contribution of mine may repose in such illustrious surroundings will afford me much pleasure and place me forever in your debt.”

  My hands trembled as I unwrapped the poster. With his financial resources, Ito’s polite little gift could be almost anything but disappointing. My daddy loved to brag about the old expense-account days when American businessmen ran things, but you had to admit that the fringe benefits of business Japanese-style had plenty to recommend them.

  But when I got the gift open, it took a real effort not to lose points by whistling out loud. For what I was holding was nothing less than a mint example of the very first Grateful Dead poster in subtle black and gray, a super-rare item, not available for any amount of sheer purchasing power. I dared not inquire as to how Mr. Ito had acquired it. We simply shared a long, silent moment contemplating the poster, its beauty and historicity transcending whatever questionable events might have transpired to bring us together in its presence.

  How could I not like Mr. Ito now? Who can say that the Japanese occupy their present international position by economic might alone?

  “I hope I may be afforded the opportunity to please your sensibilities as you have pleased mine, Mr. Ito,” I finally said. That was the way to phrase it; you didn’t thank them for a gift like this, and you brought them around to business as obliquely as possible.

  Ito suddenly became obviously embarrassed, even furtive. “Forgive me my boldness, Mr. Harris, but I have hopes that you may be able to assist me in resolving a domestic matter of some delicacy.”

  “A domestic matter?”

  “Just so. I realize that this is an embarrassing intrusion, but you are obviously a man of refinement and infinite discretion, so if you will forgive my forwardness…”

  His composure seemed to totally evaporate, as if he was going to ask me to pimp for some disgusting perversion he had. I had the feeling that the power had suddenly taken a quantum jump in my direction, that a large financial opportunity was about to present itself.

  “Please feel free, Mr. Ito…”

  Ito smiled nervously. “My wife comes from a family of extreme artistic attainment,” he said. “In fact, both her parents have attained the exalted status of National Cultural Treasures, a distinction of which they never tire of reminding rue. While I have achieved a large measure of financial success in the freight booster enterprise, they regard me as nikulturi, a mere merchant, severely lacking in aesthetic refinement as compared to their own illustrious selves. You understand the situation, Mr. Harris?”

  I nodded as sympathetically as I could. These Japs certainly have a genius for making life difficult for themselves! Here was a major Japanese industrialist shrinking into low posture at the very thought of his sponging in-laws, who he could probably buy and sell out of petty cash. At the same time, he was obviously out to cream the sons-of-bitches in some crazy way that would only make sense to a Japanese. Seems to me the Japanese are better at running the world than they are at running their lives.

  “Mr. Harris, I wish to acquire a major American artifact for the gardens of my Kyoto estate. Frankly, it must be of sufficient magnitude so as to remind the parents of my wife of my success in the material realm every time they should chance to gaze upon it, and I shall display it in a manner which will assure that they gaze upon it often. But, of course, it must be of sufficient beauty and historicity so as to prove to them that my taste is no less elevated than their own. Thus shall I gain respect in their eyes and reestablish tranquility in my household. I have been given to understand that you are a valued councillor in such matters, and I am eager to inspect whatever such objects you may deem appropriate.”

  So that was it! He wanted to buy something big enough to bong the minds of his artsy-fartsy relatives, but he really didn’t trust his own taste; he wanted me to show him something he would wan
t to see. And he was swimming like a goldfish in a sea of yen! I could hardly believe my good luck. How much could I take him for?

  “Ah… what size artifact did you have in mind, Mr. Ito?” I asked as casually as I could.

  “I wish to acquire a major piece of American monumental architecture so that I may convert the gardens of my estate into a shrine to its beauty and historicity. Therefore, a piece of classical proportions is required. Of course, it must be worthy of enshrinement; otherwise, an embarrassing loss of esteem will surely ensue.”

  “Of course.”

  This was not going to be just another Howard Johnson I or gas-station sale; even something like an old Hilton or the Cooperstown Baseball Hall of Fame I unloaded last year was thinking too small. In his own way, Ito was telling me that price was no object—the sky was the limit. This was the dream of a lifetime! A sucker with a bottomless bank account placing himself trustingly in my tender hands!

  “Should it please you, Mr. Ito,” I said, “we can inspect several possibilities here in New York immediately. My jumper is on the roof.”

  “Most gracious of you to interrupt your most busy schedule on my behalf, Mr. Harris. I would be delighted.”

  I lifted the jumper off the roof, floated her to a thousand feet, then took a Mach one point five jump south over the decayed concrete jungles at the tip of Manhattan, The curve brought us back to float about a mile north of Bedloe’s Island. I took her down to three hundred and brought her in toward the Statue of Liberty at a slow drift, losing altitude imperceptibly as we crept up on the Headless Lady, so that by the time we were just offshore we were right down on the deck. It was a nice touch to make the goods look more impressive—manipulating the perspectives so that the huge, green, headless statue, with its patina of firebomb soot, seemed to rise up out of the bay like a ruined colossus as we floated toward it.