Chapter 22

Beside Myself

Ernest, still dazed, turned his attention to me, and blinked more rapidly, obviously doubting his eyes. “I must be hallucinating,” he said. “It looks like I’m standing in front of me—right there.” He pointed at me.

“It’s not a hallucination,” said Wilbur. “Ernest d’Alembert, meet Steven Stone. When you were transported to 2030, he also transported—from then to now.”

Ernest grew incredulous.

My frustration built. “And I was supposed to have transported back when you returned here.” I turned to Wilbur. “What went wrong?”

“I don’t know.” He studied the time viewer, thinner smoke now rising from it. “This is most puzzling. Not only your failure to be transported, but Ernest’s appearance here.” He turned to Ernest who was making efforts to stand up. Diffidently, I leant him a hand. “In the original transfer, neither of you moved in space, only time, so I expected you to return to now beside the stream where you were.”

“Am I supposed to understand that?” asked Ernest.

“Sorry,” said Wilbur. “Not yet. A long story. Later. First, how are you feeling?”

“Fine, but a little tired.” He took a seat. “Then again, that’s been a problem ever since I left here—or now, I suppose.” His eyes narrowed in puzzlement. “I thought you told me the time viewer could only view the past.”

“That’s what I thought, too.”

“Have I changed history? I did my best not to interact.”

“As far as can be told, you’ve had no effect. But then, if you have changed history, I doubt it could be detected.”

“What are you talking about?” I said. Sharing a room with my doppelganger, still grappling with how I alone remained out of my time, I nevertheless tried to dispel the feeling of being a spectator to the discussion. “If history changes, of course we’d notice.”

“Would we?” said Wilbur. “The people within the history? If Ernest’s presence in 2030 caused different events to unfold than would have happened in his absence, we, some distance down the stream of time, would be aware only of events that finally did unfold. The original events that occurred in Ernest’s absence would, in simple terms, be gone: as far as the present moment is concerned, they would never have existed. On the other hand, of course, Ernest’s actions may not have changed history at all, but instead have merely ensured that it occurred just as it was known to have prior to the resonant swap taking place.”

Thanks mostly to all the sci-fi I’d consumed, I managed to follow Wilbur. I think. Time travel always seemed to me full of paradox, and I was never quite sure if I understood the logic properly or if I’d simply become familiar enough with it to accept it as incapable of being understood. Or indeed if it made any real sense at all or was instead just inventiveness masquerading as logic.

“Which is more likely?” asked Ernest.

Wilbur seemed oddly uncomfortable. “It is a moot point, as I doubt we could ever be certain which actually occurred. But one thing is certain: despite your best efforts, even your stealing of food, not to mention being noticed doing it, could have had significant consequences. You are familiar with the butterfly effect, I presume.”

Ernest nodded, but I hesitated. I was certainly familiar with the concept of an extra flap of a butterfly’s wings ultimately causing a hurricane that would otherwise never have arisen. But perhaps, by 2070, “butterfly effect” meant something entirely different, like maybe the consequences of wearing overly tight underwear—not that the context suggested such an interpretation. Still, it was yet another doubt to add to all the uncertainties besetting me, including the fundamental one to which I soon gave utterance. “So what now?” I said. “How do I get home?”

Wilbur’s poker-face did not shift, not even when he realised Ernest had quietly fallen asleep. “I don’t know. I’ll need to give this more thought.” With a gentle nudge, he woke Ernest (who started on seeing me, then remembered). “For the moment, I think the best thing is for you both to return to Ernest’s house and keep a low profile. Certainly all of this should be kept to ourselves, for the time being at least, until matters are more certain. So, please make efforts not to be seen together. To that end, you should leave separately.”

“I’ll go first,” said Ernest, stifling a yawn, “if it’s all right with you, Steven. The sooner I get home to bed, the better.”

I put up no resistance, and followed soon after, staying barely longer than was needed for Wilbur to verify that the smoke no longer rising from the time viewer wasn’t a sign of melted circuits or anything serious but a normal consequence of its fuses burning.

When I arrived at Ernest’s, he was already sound asleep, on top of his bed, not having bothered even to undress. At a loose end, still feeling trapped but now no longer with a sure hope of escape, I paced up and down the house. Earlier thoughts returned: was I in something larger than it seemed? Did I glimpse the true reality only in what seemed to be dreams?

I even made a ludicrous attempt to shift my shape, in the hope it would force the dream to end, to disintegrate into the ‘true’ reality of life on Orlanos. But I remained firmly on Earth, in Ernest’s house, in my usual form. Trapped.

I decided I could not stay there, I had to get out.

I quickly wrote a note, explaining to Ernest that I was borrowing his Babel to use a car and go for a drive, I knew not where. And that is what I did.

It didn’t help at first, merely killed time. I stayed within Chord, aimlessly turning from one street into another. I didn’t see anything much different from what I’d already seen, other than one or two slower traffains, and, in contrast to Jibilee’s rectilinear street grid, many other parts of Chord which had very different patterns: curved roads with closed courts, grids based on triangles, even hexagonal designs.

Eventually, I wandered without realising into an industrial area. Very well hidden. But like no other I’d seen. Buildings were clean and colourful, some very ornately designed, each signed just enough to serve the purpose. Shrouded by tall trees, with no sign of rising fumes, outlet towers, even oil stains. An ecologically and aesthetically sensitive form of industry I could barely believe possible.

I hastened out of the area, reminded again of how I did not belong. Without intending, I soon found myself on the main traffain, surrounded by greenery. Judging by the signage and the location of surrounding hills, Chord soon receded fast behind me. I tried to get my bearings using the sun. I was heading roughly south—towards Melbourne, I realised. Or whatever had taken its place. As good a direction as any, I decided, given the limited options available. So I continued.

When I saw a sign for the next city, I turned off the traffain into a residential area that looked much like what I’d seen of Chord, though there were enough variations of design, style and topography to avoid the sense that the same city had been cloned. Clearly, modern town planning was not all linear, but tended to follow the natural lie of the land. Still, my vague hope of finding something reassuringly familiar was not fulfilled. Despite considerable wandering, I didn’t see anything within the city that was recognisable as from my own time. Eventually, I found my way back to the main traffain and continued on in my original direction.

The rural expanse that followed was smaller than the last, but the city that followed also suffered, in my eyes at least, from the same varied sameness as its predecessor. Staying on or near the traffain, to make it easy to find my way back, I grew despondent.

At the next city, I stayed on the traffain until it neared the city centre. There I finally had some luck. Between two new yet oddly old-fashioned, utterly unfamiliar buildings, was an old hotel I recognised—a little changed, with a new colour scheme, and looking in somewhat better repair than I remembered, but recognisably the one I knew. Old in my time, it had been preserved under an historical trust classification. Surprised it was still there, I parked the car, and walked inside.

Never a great frequenter of pubs (not being fond of the taste of beer) I was nonetheless familiar with the sight that greeted me when I opened the door. If not for the clothes, it could have been the inside of any pub from any time in the last century or more. Amid a din of conversation and clinking glasses and cutlery, people ate and drank and laughed, played billiards and pool and darts, engaged in fiery debates and friendly persuasion. Eyes sparkled, hands clasped, grins flashed, lips touched. Boasts were made, jokes told, stories exaggerated. Lust was in their hearts, love in the air, and spilt liquid on the tabletops. Even coasters had familiar scenes of sport and scenery.

“What can I get you?” asked a voice from behind me, as I leaned against the counter watching the activity.

I turned to find the source of the voice: a young man with a broad smile, watching me keenly.

“Oh, uh,” I said, not having had any intention to drink. Then I remembered I had no means to pay—other than by using Ernest’s Babel. I still had strong qualms about that. “Let’s see.” I feigned a fruitless search through my clothes. “Nothing I’m afraid. Looks like I left my Babel at home.”

The bartender lifted his eyes skyward in mock disgust, then pinned me with them. “In that case, you can have one on the house. But just the one.”

“Very kind of you,” I said, surprised and touched. “But why?”

“Why not? Hardly fair to have you waste your time coming here, is it? Besides, I like the look of you.” He winked, arousing homophobic doubts and fears, but I put them aside when he took it no further. “So what’ll it be?”

It turned out not to be the only drink I had. After wandering with it for a closer look at a darts game, I was asked by the victor if I also played—before long I found myself losing to him in no uncertain terms. Then, in a similar fashion, I stumbled into a game of pool, followed soon after by another which I actually managed to win. In the process, I was shouted to two other drinks.

I spent most of the afternoon there, talking, playing, drinking (though I was careful not to repeat my performance at Jibilee’s monthly meeting, this time pacing myself to ensure I’d be sober enough to drive). I kept my true identity to myself, giving my name as Ernest only when asked. And though I joined in with conversations, I did more listening than talking.

What I heard was reassuring. Human nature hadn’t changed. Institutions and systems might have been revamped to help bring out the best in people, but everyone still had much the same hopes and fears, the same desires and goals, the same capacities for enjoyment and conviviality. People still faced the ultimate existential question: what do I do with the time I have? But they differed inasmuch as they seemed to have found more agreeable, sustaining and benign answers to that question. In among all the tales I heard, there were none of war or violence, of stress or hardship. Apart from an oft-cited worry that the Australian cricket team might lose the World Cup the coming summer, the most significant concern that day was from a father who bemoaned his daughter’s choice in boyfriends. Traditional indeed.

In retrospect, the feast after Jibilee’s meeting revealed much the same, had I been open then to seeing it, instead of grappling with the shock of the new. In the pub, I was still shocked, and grappling with a sense of entrapment, but at least I was in a building I knew, full of people engaged in familiar activities—at last more aware of commonalities than differences.

Late in the day, I drove back to Ernest’s without mishap (other than some navigational errors), more at ease, still wanting to return home but at least not feeling so out of place. The notion that I might be an Orlani lost in some dream, even more intestinally convoluted than the one I was in, now seemed especially ludicrous.

When I arrived at Ernest’s, a cool change was bringing light showers. In the last stages of preparing a meal, Ernest had been awake long enough to freshen up, call Wilbur, and be filled in on the whys and wherefores of his unwitting time travel. And to cook enough for me to share a sensational vegetarian dish, spiced unlike anything I’d ever tasted (“traditional East African”).

Surprisingly, we conversed with ease. I’d expected our identical appearances to be an obstacle, that conversation might be like talking to a mirror. I’d also wondered if I might feel threatened by a homosexual doppelganger. But instead, after it quickly became apparent that we were very different people, I found myself feeling entirely comfortable with Ernest—putting aside the sight of his appalling cyan vinyl jacket. (After I mentioned I’d been wearing his clothes but that our tastes differed considerably, he pulled out a small trunk from the back of a closet and offered me my choice of its contents: old clothes he no longer wore, far more conventional and to my liking. Effusing thanks, I immediately changed into the most conservative items.)

He asked much about historical events in my time. But he told me much more that I did not know about his time, often in a ceaseless stream of words the speed of which I could never have matched, and often accompanied by extravagant gesticulations.

For instance, in addition to many new nations now straddling old boundaries (as the Bangladesh film had mentioned), there were many Liechtenstein-sized ‘city-nations’ who had decided to go it ‘alone’. Whereas several larger nations had split into loosely affiliated meta-national groups. Hence, California, having long behaved as one, was now officially a nation (to their own delight, and perhaps even more to that of their neighbours). Only a few nations still resisted plurocracy and a free lunch, increasingly in the manner that avowedly communist China resisted capitalism in my time—in pronouncement more than fact. Globalised liberation, according to Ernest.

To my surprise, despite—or perhaps because of—the world’s increasing number of ‘nationalities’, xenophobia had decreased. Even Europe’s neo-Nazis had dwindled to a mere handful of isolated, aging die-hards.

“As you might expect,” said Ernest, “for most people to stay alienated in a system based on co-operation and participation is not easy. You are surrounded by others taking part and reaping the rewards of plurocratic stewardship. You have community. Resistance is futile.”

I did not reply, just sipped some wine. But my body language must have been obvious.

“You are not convinced, are you?” said Ernest. “You have doubts about freelunchism?”

I almost snorted wine through my nose. “Quite a few. Probably the biggest is, maybe it’s just too good. Too easy. Unlimited credit! Free housing! Free food and health care and education, one-day working weeks. There’s no pressure on people, nothing to push them to improve or excel. Aren’t hardship and stress necessary for that? Wouldn’t a utopian society never facing disaster or threat stagnate? Lose its highest best qualities? Become apathetic, lazy, and eventually degenerate into something more primitive? It’s a bit like what I understand about evolution: environmental change forces species to adapt. Without change, without hardship, even evolution would stop in its tracks. Doesn’t enufism run the same risk? Its constancy and security must stifle progress. There’s nothing in it to egg people on to greater achievements. They just content themselves with enough. Isn’t that right?”

“Yes, that is essentially correct as regards material satisfaction, but fortunately there is much more to life than that. Our society today is eager to progress further, materially if that can be arranged responsibly and to genuine benefit, but also socially, and spiritually. Our fundamental aim is improvement—of ourselves and of the world of which we are part. What better motivation to excel than such a goal? And how unlikely it would cause us to stagnate? As for the theory of evolution, well that has limited if any applicability to the subject. For one, it neglects people’s innate self-motivating abilities. We can and do provide our own push when given the opportunity—especially in regard to areas of interest or concern.”

“Some might push themselves,” I objected, “but surely many don’t. They’re too lazy or just not inclined.”

“Some. But they can always be taught or encouraged. Ultimately, it is a matter of choice. Besides, it is hardly necessary for everyone to be motivated—for most of recorded history, the human race has advanced largely due to the efforts of a few, a handful of individuals. It’s little different now.”

“And you really progress? Without stress or hardship?”

“What may be true in general for evolution is not necessarily true for an individual species. Hardship may prompt innovation—though sometimes it can be regressive—but certainly the thriving of recent years has sponsored leaps of understanding and knowledge, art and design, that I would suggest outdo anything of the past. Medicine, technology, ecology, food production, fundamental physics—many disciplines have overcome hurdles not long ago thought to be insurmountable. No wonder! People have more time to spend on such matters, and resources have been freed up from other distractions.”

I shook my head. “But how? No matter what I learn, I still can’t see how it could have happened. It’s too massive a change for people to have accepted—or for vested interests to have allowed.”

“Not at all. It happened because it was a clear alternative full of obvious advantages that appeal to self-interest, such as a one-day working week, free food and housing. That much was obvious even in 2031 when A Free Lunch was first noticed on an Australian website.”

“We invented it?!”

“Perhaps. No one has ever worked out who was behind the obvious pseudonym.”

“Not even the publisher of the book?”

“The book is just a hard copy of what was self-published on the Net. But its author…” He shrugged. “For years, I’ve been trying to discover who was responsible, lately with Wilbur’s help, but so far without success.”

“But how did it all change? It must have taken more than just a book.”

“Of course. But that was the starting point. It caught the attention of enough people for some to implement a basic form of plurocracy on the Net. Enabled by freeware, it was initially small scale, incomplete and scattered, but functional nonetheless. And it soon grew and interconnected, especially after yet another inevitable economic downturn occurred. In the wake of that, and pressured by the increasingly pervasive plurocratic network and the enufist political parties it spawned, governments gradually adopted free lunch policies, promoting them as visionary and pragmatic despite having earlier condemned them as foolhardy and idealistic. At first, it was just the least confrontational ideas, and usually under different names of course. But they worked—and quickly. Before long, even politicians started to sense the inevitable. Rather than wait to be swept out of power by the ever more popular enufist parties, many tried to reserve one last place in the history books by initiating referenda to officially adopt freelunchism. In Australia, it was passed overwhelmingly.”

“How could that have happened?” I said. “Why didn’t corporations stop it? They had the motivation—and the power.”

“They perhaps had the power, but ultimately not enough motivation. At first they were adamantly opposed. Officially at least. Some media tirades were positively evangelical in their zealous commitment against enufism—full of quasi-scriptural reminders of failed central planning, the advantages of a free market, free trade, globalisation. As if they were the only options. As if decentralised planning is not possible. Or retaining the market’s motivation to improve and innovate while removing its punishment for failure or bad luck.”

He paused briefly to sip his wine, but not long enough for me to think what to interject.

“Even so,” he continued, “behind the official objections, there were unofficial doubts, fanned by the growing popularity of a detailed alternative. As the world grew ever more interconnected, it became increasingly obvious that everyone had to sink or swim together. Yet this was increasingly hard to reconcile with how competitive globalised markets produced a steady stream of losers, by constantly shifting investment to countries with lower wage rates, taxes and regulation, subsidies and offsets—selective protectionism that tilted the allegedly level playing field towards the rich. But if losers were inevitable, so too were their inconvenient tendencies to protest, resist, even terrorise. No wonder even corporate leaders had their doubts, unofficial though they might have been. Was a free lunch perhaps more likely to share peace and prosperity? Was it more capable of avoiding tensions that prompt protest and strife?”

Another sip, again too brief to divert Ernest. “Of course, however deep the doubts, freelunchism was never going to be openly promulgated by corporate media monopolies, nor supported by other corporations—at least not until after the Net’s introduction of plurocracy, ironically perhaps the ultimate form of globalisation. When that happened, corporate campaigns to suppress plurocracy met so much popular opposition, even from within the corporations’ own ranks, that self-doubt and internal contradiction defeated them. Eventually, they resolved, reorganised, and scaled down; disseminated their knowledge and experience, and their more sensible equipment, to local people; and passed into history.”

I shook my head. “I still find it hard to understand how it all could have started.”

“So do most of us even now. It was very gradual don’t forget—evolution rather than revolution. Quite unlike the dog-eat-dog shock therapy that many communist countries employed to birth themselves, and to later revert to free markets. But there must have been any number of chance events that hurried the transformation along, as well as many that slowed it down. Still, it was sure to happen, as soon as there was enough agreement as to what to change to—and as soon as there was Net plurocracy.”

He emptied his glass, and refilled it, apparently satisfied that he’d said all that was necessary.

I felt I should make an effort to repudiate his explicit and implicit criticisms of the world and time I knew—but I found I could not bring myself to do so. Not just because I expected to be overwhelmed by another round of counter-arguments. It had more to do with doubting my own case. I’d been in this future for nearly a week, and, perhaps belatedly, it had forced me to reassess the systems and orthodoxies of my own time: not only were they losing some of their appeal, but worse, from my point of view, they were starting to seem a tad arbitrary. That did not stop me from wanting to return home, to be with my wife and family again, but I had to concede, there were aspects of the return I would not welcome. I was beginning to think this future—this dream of the future—had a few things at least to recommend it.

In any case, the silence lasted barely a second or two before there was a knock at the front door.

I remained in my seat, lost in thought, as Ernest left the room.

“Been practicing a new speech have you?” came a familiar voice from the doorstep.

“No,” said Ernest, a little uncomfortably, “just thinking aloud.”

“I’ve got to talk to you Ernest,” said the other voice—Yvette’s voice.

“Of course,” said Ernest, even more uncomfortably.

Suddenly shaken from thought, I realised it might be wise to make myself scarce. I stood, looked hastily for the best place to hide. But Yvette’s voice drew rapidly closer.

“This masquerade you’ve been performing,” she said, “pretending to be Steven—I was speaking with a psychologist at the party last night. He thinks—”

Her voice stopped abruptly as she entered the doorway to the lounge, and saw me walking out of the room as hurriedly as my attempts to be silent would allow. We both stopped in our tracks. Her jaw dropped, then she spun to stare at Ernest a step behind her—he looked almost as ruffled as I felt. She turned to stare at me again, her mouth still wide open in shock. She closed her eyes, opened them, blinked, turned to face Ernest, then swapped her attention several times back and forth between the two of us—before she eventually backed up against the doorframe and demanded, “Will one of you please tell me what the hell is going on?”

Almost at once, it became the turn of Ernest and myself to drop our jaws. As I moved towards Yvette, not sure what to say, but wanting to lend comfort, I stopped in my tracks. Before my eyes, her long-sleeved floral shirt blurred and shifted, and in moments was replaced by a decidedly different, short-sleeved, grey, striped T-shirt.