Chapter 6

Choices

“Have you forgotten even the nature of modern money?” he gently asked, lowering his hand.

“No,” I grated, angry again. “I never remembered it in the first place. I am not Ernest.” I sighed loudly. “Remind me next time I dream of you to make you less stubborn.”

“Perhaps,” said Wilbur, as if I’d said nothing, “you should study the matter on your own.” He moved to the bookcase, and scrutinised its contents carefully. “The Net has an abundance of information of course, and there are a number of vids in your collection that provide concise explanations of most topics you’d be interested in. But perhaps the best starting point would be to read this.” He pulled a book from the shelves, and handed it to me. “It might even jog your memory back.”

I was ready to again deny that my memory needed jogging, but thought better of it. It would have been a waste of breath. Instead, I decided to take up Wilbur’s suggestion of self-education. What else was there to do? Apparently I couldn’t wake myself up, so I might as well spend my dream time as usefully as I could. I’d certainly need to learn more if I was ever going to trip Wilbur up in his explanations.

I took the book from his hand. It’s title: A Free Lunch. “This must be a dream,” I said, turning the book so its cover faced Wilbur. “There’s no such thing as this.”

“Why don’t you read it anyway?” he said with a gracious but tired smile, and started walking out of the room. “I really must be going.”

“Just one more thing,” I said, following him. “You said something about ‘vids’? Do you mean videos?”

“Of course,” he replied with a gentle sigh, stopping in the lounge. “You have an extensive collection on your computer.”

“Can I watch them on the TV?”

Sighing more deeply, he moved toward the TV. “Of course,” he said, grabbing what was obviously a remote control device sitting near its base. “All your audiovisual devices are networked.” He handed the remote to me. “Just use the menu – it should be fairly obvious.”

I quickly studied the controls and found many familiar icons. “Some things never change. Although I’m surprised you still have computer files. No innovation to replace them in forty years?”

“Cars are still in use, nearly two centuries after they were invented,” said Wilbur moving to the front door. I followed him. “And toilet paper,” he added.

“And a keyboard for the computer!” I replied. “I would have expected voice control instead.”

“It’s available, but, like me, you grew up using a keyboard,” he replied wearily. “I remember you telling me you never could get the hang of voice commands.” He turned to me as he opened the door. “I’ll be over first thing tomorrow morning. But call me if you need me, ok?”

“Sure,” I said, suddenly grateful. His obstinacy in believing me to be Ernest no longer seemed important let alone infuriating. “And…” As usual, I could not properly voice my feelings. I settled for a cliché. “Thanks.”

He smiled and started to walk off. “See you tomorrow.”

I closed the door, returned to the sofa, poured another glass of port, and opened the book. Now, I thought, I’ll find the flaw in the design. The overlooked detail. I fully expected to quickly and easily find a glaring inconsistency in the book, one – or several – that would reveal Wilbur as a liar, and his alleged future as a pretence. “Bankers don’t exist!” I chuckled to myself, scanning the book’s table of contents.

But the book was not what I expected. For a start, its publication date was 2026 – not the supposedly up-to-date tome I was expecting at all. And although it was mostly a fairly dry read – unavoidably so given the subject matter – it was relieved somewhat by the author’s sardonic if occasionally juvenile wit (evident in his or her choice of pseudonym: I.C.Futcher).

A version of the diagram Wilbur had drawn was in the first chapter, with an explanation more rigorous and, at times, more eloquent than his, but no different in content. Additional detail about the nature of credit took my attention: I studied it keenly, hoping desperately, though ultimately in vain, to fault it. It distinguished credit provided to producers from that borrowed by consumers. For producers, prices must be set high enough to cover their costs, make a profit, and repay their debt and its interest. But whether funded by credit or not, still businesses who profit – whether by producing goods and services or by lending money – deprive others of doing so.

On the other hand, consumer credit actually increases purchasing power, enough to cover profit margins – for a while at least. In fact, enough consumer credit could cover every producer’s profit, although actual consumer expenditure would never be spread so evenly as to achieve this. Even if it did, it would work only initially, because repaying consumer debt requires eventually foregoing some other purchase, which again means that eventually not every producer profits, or else the consumer defaults on the debt and the lender fails to profit. Credit ultimately fails to ensure the affording of profits because lenders themselves seek to profit: if they succeed, someone else must lose. Looking at the processes over time, and at producers and lenders together, profit and loss still must balance.

I pushed on (though I returned every now and again to the section with Wilbur’s diagram, in the unfulfilled hope that a fresh examination of it would reveal its flaw). Subsequent chapters provided details to support the first’s contention that what were widely thought of as the world’s most intractable problems were mere symptoms of the underlying disease – capitalism. Market competition for profits, it was claimed, not only ensures instability, makes costs and prices fundamentally inaccurate, and creates unnecessary work, it also inevitably fosters poverty and inequality, and generally causes rampant ecological degradation. Addressing the symptoms without curing the disease was futile.

Absorbed despite my misgivings, I continued reading until well after midnight, when I must have fallen asleep.

I was awakened by a soft dawn, still in the sofa, the book open on my lap, the upsetting diagram staring at me.

Surprise – not at the book, nor the surroundings, but that I’d fallen asleep. No surprise at waking somewhere other than in my own bed – until I realised I hadn’t been surprised by it!

I leapt to my feet like a hiccupping marionette.

It was too cosy, too familiar – yet I knew it wasn’t home, and that I wasn’t Ernest.

I had to be dreaming – dreaming that I had just been asleep for a few hours, and was now fully refreshed from it (and from a long ‘slumber’ the preceding day). At least I couldn’t remember ‘dreaming’ during my just finished ‘sleep’. But then I remembered the dream within the dream, at Wilbur’s, of Yvette as a demon. And realised walking the bush road naked must also have been another dream within a dream. It was all a dream, at one level or another, I was sure - even more sure now that I’d ‘woken’.

“Wake up properly,” I said to myself. To no avail.

I wanted it to end. I wanted to go home. Even dreaming, I missed Yvette. And the kids. I had to wake up properly soon. Surely?

But I didn’t.

“Why is this happening?” I asked myself aloud. Why was my subconscious putting me through it? Why pretend I’d been transported forty years into the future?!

Forty years. My age, next birthday – less than two weeks away.

I hadn’t felt especially bothered about turning forty. Other recent birthdays had also had little impact. Ageing held only one real concern for me: my hair continuing its gradual migration from the top of my head to my ears, upper cheeks and other egregious locations. A nasty image oft came unbidden: of retirement years’ baldness inadequately camouflaged by the ultimate comb-over, eyebrows brushed up and over my scalp (perhaps parted in the middle).

But maybe my lack of concern about turning forty was just a front, something I’d convinced myself to believe but really didn’t. Perhaps some deep discomfort resided in my subconscious, suppressed to such an extent that this elaborate dream was the only way it could reach the surface? Perhaps I was in fact deeply worried about getting older but unwilling to admit it even to myself? Perhaps I was even having a mid-life crisis?

Suddenly desperate, and lonely, in need of action to distract unwelcome thoughts, I attempted again to contact Yvette. I called information, jotted down the two numbers I’d previously located. When I called the Wunsa Pond number, an elderly male voice answered.

“Can I speak to Yvette Stone, please?” I said.

“She’s unavailable at the moment. Can I take a message?”

Was there something oddly familiar about the voice? I could not quite grasp what. “Who am I speaking to, please?” I said.

“This is her husband.”

“O, I’m sorry. I think I must have the wrong number. Sorry to have bothered you.”

The other number was just as much a waste of time. Though I spoke directly to an Yvette Stone, she was a middle-aged spinster who was utterly confused by the call.

I tried to reassure myself that it didn’t matter, that as far as this dream was concerned, I was on my own. All I could do was look forward to seeing Yvette again when I awoke. Really awoke. Whenever that might be.

For further distraction, I decided to take a shower. Something ordinary to counteract the overarching strangeness of recent events.

But even after all the shocks I’d experienced, the shower came as yet another surprise – unlike the water-scarce toilet, it was perfectly normal. A control for setting the water’s temperature, sliding glass doors, a fine miserly spray, unspectacular tap handles – it was everything I was used to. Half expecting a gust of hot air to burst forth and dry me the moment I turned off the water, I instead was forced by its absence to resort to the conventional method of using a towel. As I dried myself, I belatedly realised the lump behind my ear, ever less bothersome, was now without pain, and no longer swollen.

Since I could not find anything resembling a shaver, I had no option but to keep my stubble. Its length was consistent with Wilbur’s story about me being unconscious for almost a day. “It’s a dream,” I reminded myself.

I searched through Ernest’s wardrobe, for clothes to wear. It contained not one item in plain colours, not even simple denims. Most of the other people I’d seen in the streets and restaurant dressed far less flamboyantly, more or less as normal – only Ernest seemed to have the dress sense of a colour blind costume designer for an experimental dance company, beset by a permanent hangover.

Some time and considerable deliberation later, I resorted to the least ornate pair of trousers, dark olive mostly except for white hems and linings; a relatively simple shirt full of grey, black, and white fractals; and a light V-neck top, white at the neck but darkening gradually to a sort of faded burnt orange at the cuffs and hem. Far too brash for my tastes, but better than what I had been wearing, and much better than other options, such as a widely flared pair of woollen slacks in four alternating primary colours, legs split to the knee like a skirt; a bright green, floral, short-sleeved, velvet shirt with silver pockets as reflective as mirrors; and a cyan pseudo-vinyl jacket – full of convoluted frills, frays, belts, loops and multiply coloured pockets – the thought of which still makes me shudder.

Best not even to mention the underwear.

Oddly, I felt no sense of being an invader, not even soon after, when I tidied Ernest’s room. I began to wonder: shouldn’t I have felt out of place, at least a little guilty or uncomfortable at using someone else’s house and clothes? Was my lack of discomfort evidence that I really was Ernest?

No, of course not. Ernest didn’t exist. It was a dream.

Hungry, I prepared a light breakfast. The stove was familiar enough – despite its odd icons – to allow me to boil a couple of eggs. And the toaster worked as any toaster, though like the kettle it didn’t require a socket. As far as futures went, this one seemed an odd mix of the familiar and the outlandish. Some technology, like most of the kitchen facilities, was barely different from what I knew, but some of the rest, like the restaurant menu-tabletop, was novel, if not exactly unprecedented. It made sense, I decided: how could my subconscious be expected to invent something startlingly new for absolutely everything? Even if I dreamt of a future millions of years distant, rather than just forty, it would surely contain familiar elements. Like forks and flowers, underpants and doors. As well as extrapolations of the familiar. And, undoubtedly, as I belatedly realised, devices from long-forgotten sci-fi novels.

Eating, I felt oddly grateful for the normalcy of the day so far. Then – not for the first time – I realised how utterly normal my life had become. A growing concern, prompted perhaps by the looming birthday, but also by how the years were racing past me ever more quickly. Best not to dwell on such unpleasant unavoidable facts, but hard not to at times. Especially since the chest pains started. Nothing like the prospect of a possibly premature death to focus attention on one’s life.

A loud knock at the front door interrupted my breakfast reverie.

“Good morning,” said Wilbur, on the doorstep. Next to him: a man about my age, a little short, with a thick ginger moustache, sparkling blue eyes, pasty complexion. His short-cropped hair failed to hide his advancing baldness, and he wore an eye-bruising floral shirt.

Before I could reply to Wilbur’s salutation, his companion rushed forward, shrieked “Ernie, Ernie, Ernie,” encircled me in a strong embrace, and buried his head against my shoulder. “Are you feeling all right?” he cried. “Is there anything I can do for you?” He lifted his head, looked me straight in the eye, his arms still around me.

Immobilised by surprise, not knowing how to respond, I looked from him to Wilbur and back again – several times.

“O, it’s true,” said the man, with anguish. “You don’t remember me. You don’t remember poor old Mattie! O Ernie!” A tear began to form in one eye, and he threw his head against my shoulder again. “Ernie, Ernie, Ernie,” he wailed.

I looked to Wilbur, with no doubt a confused expression, hoping he’d explain.

Suddenly Mattie turned an imploring gaze on me. He inhaled deeply. “O Ernie,” he sighed.

“Do I know you?” I said, almost in a whisper.

Tears erupted, streaming down Mattie cheek’s. “Even in the biblical sense,” he said. “Perhaps this will help you remember.” Then, to my unmitigated horror, he kissed me passionately on the lips.

I struggled from his grip and pushed him away, feverishly wiping my mouth. “What the hell are you doing?!” His anguish and tears stopped, instantly turning to quivering disappointment. We both turned to Wilbur. “Who is this?” I said loudly.

Wilbur finally spoke. “This is Mattie Lindquist.”

“O Ernie,” wailed Mattie. “You must remember me. We were married for almost ten years.”

“Married?!” I exclaimed. I could almost feel a tail feather sprouting.