10105 ASTRONOMY WITHOUT A TELESCOPE An interactive story book by George Jenner. Edition 1.2 September 1995. copyright (c) 1995 Press to continue. endtext 10110 This is an interactive story. To read this story you have to type something at the end of each page then press . Just by itself will usually let you read through the story, but you will get stuck in a loop eventually. You will then need to ask a question to move on. You need at least two "interesting" words in your question for the computer to make sense of it. In general, that means nouns and principle verbs. It also means that correct spelling is much more important than correct grammar in your response. Press for help (what there is of it!). If you get stuck there are some hints here. The most important one is a reminder that you play the part of a character interrogating the character called Connie. has information about some of the function keys that might help you. Press to continue. endtext 10115 Press for information about the program, the book and the author. To leave the book at anytime, type "bye" at the beginning of the line, then press and the program will put in a bookmark for you. Press now to begin the book, and remember about for help. endtext 10204 ASTRONOMY WITHOUT A TELESCOPE ACT 1: R(OT)ATIONAL CONTROL endtext 10205 At 4 minutes past midnight on January 1st, 2001, at Dubbo Base Hospital in Western New South Wales, somewhere on a wobbly line joining the great observatories at Parkes and The Warrumbungles, the cry was heard of the first baby born in the Federal Republic of Australia. That was Warren who, growing up under the southern sky, came to love astronomy. A few years later Connie, who would later become his wife, was born in the heart of the violent landscape of Los Angeles. It is Connie who is talking to you, and you are her doctor. You can ask her anything, but seeing that her story involves both psychoanalysis and astronomy, you can begin in either of those directions by typing "Siggie Freud" or "Eddie Hubble". Don't worry if it takes you nowhere, or doesn't tell you exactly what you want. Just try again. Take your time and watch your spelling. Just remember that in the course of psychoanalysing Connie you are asking her to tell you the story. endtext 10305 In the second paragraph of his "Introduction to psychoanalysis", Siggie Freud says the first thing for the therapist to do, contrary to normal medical procedure, is assure the patient that you can't promise anything. So much for comfort. Such are the promises of life that bring them to psychotherapy in the first place. In the first paragraph he says he is going to treat his readers as if they know nothing. One hundred and fifty years later we are all experts. endtext 10306 Oh Doctor Freud Oh Doctor Freud How we wish you had been differently employed But the set of circumstances Still enhances the finances Of the followers of Doctor Sigmund Freud ... from a song by three blokes whose name's I forget. They were with Harry Belafonte live at Carnegie Hall in the early 1960s. endtext 10310 One hundred and fifty years after Freud was writing the essence of psychoanalysis and psychotherapy is more easily recalled than those elements of physics and chemistry that we have forgotten since high school. This is because it is dramatic and makes good fodder for the myths we create as our society progresses. Thus it is that we talk about psychotherapy, and indeed enter it, as surely as we could write a story about a racket of car thieves, or an escaped virus that endangers the planet - myths that evolve inextricably with our society and our language. Myths, I suppose, are a way of understanding the world in which we live. To understand we have to explore. To explore we need a hidden goal, something hidden from view. And you sit there, comfortable and secure, asking me endless questions to guarantee your fee. "Tell me about so and so." "Did that make you angry?" "Were you jealous of her?" "Why did you think he was lazy?" And on and on.... endtext 10315 Explorations. Connie's exploration takes her into the almost divine complexity of her brain and its growth through birth, childhood, family and work. Martine's exploration takes her to see the details of space so deep that it is removed by almost unimaginable distances, spanned by the fleetness of photons. Warren explores too, in his way, but being a wimp he is content to be satisfied by beauty and only rarely outruns his past. I am Connie. Warren is my husband. You might think Martine is between us. endtext 10405 What do you mean people like me are resistant to traditional psychotherapy. What's a person like me? Haven't you got a mind probe or something? endtext 10406 That's what I said then. I could wish. But there is nothing - there is no instrument we can build, no matter how big or small, that will allow us to study completely and safely the workings of the brain. Nothing mechanical or electrical or radiative is subtle enough. No there are no instruments except ourselves, and words our only tools. There are no dreams to analyse, no demons to exorcise, no bad parenting to overcome, no birth or developmental defects that can be surgically or genetically corrected. Just a person having to come to terms with a free will which is subservient to herself. Just a person learning that the species is an organism. endtext 10410 This isn't the first time I've seen a psychiatrist actually. I was fifteen. I'd been caught shoplifting. Typical, isn't it. The only time I've ever stolen anything in my life and I got caught. I was fifteen and I didn't understand my feelings then. I think I did it to annoy my parent, even though I thought they were good to me. The police said I was too depressed to punish, so they sent me to hospital. I guess my parents weren't so much poor as cheap." endtext 10412 Me? I'm a foreigner. I was born in LA. That's where I fought my childhood wars. endtext 10415 I had a twin brother, and since my father favoured him I used to emulate him. I was such a tomboy. I suppose I overcompensated sometimes. I was more of a boy than my brother. He shot himself with a twenty-two rifle. endtext 10420 Well, for example, for my fifteenth birthday my parents gave me a rifle. Don't look so surprised! My dad said, 'you always tried to be a boy. A rifle is a good present for a boy.' It was one of those simple old fashioned things for hunting. It wasn't just the same type of rifle. It was the rifle my twin brother had shot himself with. endtext 10425 The doctor couldn't believe it, and the social services were pretty militant in the States those days, so I was put into community care. I wasn't allowed to leave my foster family until I was 18. They were nice enough to me, but on my 18th birthday I waved bye bye, jumped on a plane and came to Australia. I've never been back to the States. Anyone who knew me there is probably dead by now. More importantly, everything I have is here. Everything I've worked so hard for. Not just the farm, no, but until not so long ago my peace of mind. I think I loved my father deeply, and something here made me remember that. endtext 10426 She and my father were partners - more alike in many respects than any twins could be. Except she hated me more. That's what I thought anyway. I just didn't want her to feel obliged to be my mother, but I couldn't suppress her resentment. I knew she have loved my brother. Perversely, she blamed me for his death. But she was pretty. I'm glad at least that I look like her and not my father. You can't place my eyes, can you. They are an Aztec mystery. endtext 10430 That was in 2023. I got a few jobs pretty quickly in bars or restaurants and went to the university. They made me do some more school before they let me into ... guess what I enrolled in. Psychology. Anyway, I met Warren in one of the university bars. He was such a dag. Red hair, skinny legs. I put out my hand, and he stood away from me as he shook it, you know the way country men do, sizing you up and squeezing your hand. Then he said ... well I told you what he said, didn't I? endtext 10435 There is a theory that the stars in Los Angeles were caused by gunfire, each trace of lead causing a hole in the perpetual black dome. The theory didn't take hold since no one can see many stars because of the pollution - air, light, and probably noise. Near observatories in America they make the street lights yellow so the astronomers can filter it out easily with sunglasses on their telescopes. Connie never owned the right sort of sunglasses, and her father would have stolen them from her anyway. Nevertheless the stars were there. They were hidden, though, like Connie's secrets. endtext 10440 A SECRET SPOT I have just walked a long way in the sunlight which followed much rain. Through twists, through turns - Pathways like convolutions of the brain where travellers hide their coming and swerve to avoid wet branches. I have found a secret spot Where no one could ever find me. An isolated place like no other, for here no one could ever find me. Yes I have found a secret spot and now, at last, I can divulge my innermost thoughts. (as if it were night) endtext 10505 No, a bushman can't survive on city lights, Opera, rock and roll, and height of heights, His moon shines on the Silver Brigalow, Shimmers down the inland river flow, Out there where the Yellow Belly bites. From a song by John Williamson endtext 10510 At 4 minutes past midnight on January 1st, 2001, at Dubbo Base Hospital in Western New South Wales, somewhere on a wobbly line joining the great observatories at Parkes and The Warrumbungles, the cry was heard of the first baby born in the Federal Republic of Australia. I am not suggesting that his parents were aware of this possibility when they created his seed, but if they were not, then perhaps they were acting on an instinct that the child would need just the small measure of glory that his unusual, though celestially arbitrary, time of birth would bring him. endtext 10515 That's how he introduced himself to me. He was rather proud of it, but in a way that made me think he was grabbing for something. Well he was so weak otherwise. He had nothing to offer. Do you know I've done some checking. You know how the time zones change in steps of an hour or half and hour? Well guess what. Astronomically speaking, he was actually born the day before - last century. I haven't told him. I'm waiting for the right time. endtext 10520 His mother suggested, "we should call him Australia. you know, like they did with babies born on January 1st, 1901 when we got the Federation." "No that was for babies born on Australia Day," said her husband. "Why don't we call him Warren, after my father." The mother smiled to see her own father come in to see his new grandson. He came to the cot, peering in proudly at the sleeping infant. "You're a lucky boy to have the same name as both your grandfathers." He kissed his daughter and added, "but you should have called him Australia." So he was named, and the poor bastard had to carry Warren Australia Simpson with him, everywhere he went, for the rest of his life. endtext 10525 His childhood in Dubbo was only remarkable in that it never really ended in that complete surrender to the discomfort of maturity. His school grades were just above average; his sporting prowess was just below average; he had many friends and few enemies. There was just one thing he did in which his friends did not participate; partly because it was within his own family, but mostly because it was nothing illicit and it had nothing to do with girls. How, after all, when you are fighting acne, can you be excited by going out to grandfather's farm to sleep outside and look at the stars? endtext 10530 Grandfather, whom we last saw at the hospital, lived 60 kilometres away from the city, and although Dubbo is not huge the light it produced was enough to diminish the visibility of the stars at night. Warren's first memory of this was when he was about 10, staying the weekend with his grandparents. Instead of sleeping the summer nights on the wooden verandah, protected from the mosquitoes by the gauze surround, his grandfather took him down to the river where they fished for Yellow Belly and slept under the stars. They lit a fire in the barbecue, then let it die as Grandpa pointed out the stars and the constellations. "Makes you want to say something poetic, eh Warren?" "Shh, Grandpa. I think I got a bite," was all he said. endtext 10535 As he grew, Warren's visits did not become more frequent, yet he looked forward to them intensely, for he had caught Grandpa's awe and passion. He read books on astronomy, bought the magazines, and even talked Grandpa into buying a 100 mm Newtonian telescope through which they looked at double stars, planetary nebulae, and the moons of Jupiter. Once they even thought they had discovered a comet, but the sky clouded over and it was never seen again, even by the observatories they called. He was happy, yet his parents chastised him for playing childish games with Grandpa. There was no place in their own worlds for atavistic dreams, for in technological societies our children must be logical giants, trained in the suppression of the desire to be idle. endtext 10540 At Sydney University he enrolled in Engineering, determining to finish a physics degree on the way and perhaps become an astronomer. He told the girls, "hi! I'm Warren. I was the first baby born in the Republic, and I've just discovered a comet - sort of." He told the boys the line didn't work, and they drank more beer, got very good at snooker and, eventually, some of them passed their engineering degrees with 52 percent passes. endtext 10545 I have no idea why his famous professor friend takes notice of him, if that's what you mean. It's an irritating question, really. He takes more notice of her than of me, and I suppose you want me to take that as implied criticism. Is that what you mean? It's hardly something to make me irrational, even if it were true - is it now? Warren's nowhere near as clever as me, anyway. Besides, he's a weakling. endtext 10605 Warren's graduation was in 2023, the same year Martine Reuter finished her PhD at the Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium. She was a little older than Warren, even though her second birthday was two years, two months and twenty nine days after his. On that day she was actually eight, if I may be allowed to speak sidereally again, for she was born on February 29th, 1996, in Luxembourg, into a wealthy banking family. What a drive she had. With a fierce intellect and the taste of money in her baby formula, she grew fat on the bulging land of Europe, a Europe in the prime of its peace and wealth in the early twenty first century. endtext 10610 Her parents told their friends, "she's doing a thesis on a theory of everything." "It's a Grand Unified Theory of all four atomic forces, Dad." "Well that sounds like everything to me. Is it mathematical?" "Profoundly." "Then you'll at least get a good job in market analysis." Actually she took a job at her old university which had just begun the design of a new radio telescope with the University of Sydney - in Australia. endtext 10615 Two children, both born at celestially arbitrary but mundanely interesting times, were to change the course of astronomy - indeed the course of knowledge and, after their own lives, the course of humanity. But at that moment, Warren was too busy drinking beer on the proceeds of his first paying job, and Martine was still a young woman in a hurry, seriously over-achieving in the academic world. Besides, they were not to meet for many years yet. endtext 10620 The stars in Luxembourg, from the point of view of looking at them, are better than in London, Paris or Brussels - but only just. Europe is too crowded to escape its dimming light, and the skies are too crowded with clouds if you find a nice dark spot in which to sit with your telescope. The nights were pretty bloody cold, too, and for undirected mortals the cafe's hold greater attraction than the snow of the hillside. Warren's nights were cold sometimes, too, out in NSW. He knew little of snow, however, and the way it makes the sky darker. endtext 10625 What makes people look at stars? What makes people look into brains, for that matter? Warren looked because he could see, and saw beauty where he looked - defining beauty as that which attracts a beholder. Martine looked because she could describe what she saw, and she saw beauty in descriptions, in their accuracy and their simplicity. Thus the career of a theorist is born. endtext 10630 THREE WISHES I'd like to reproduce the joys of night As easily as we shut it out. If we could believe the cold, Satisfied that it carries no message - Or capture the taste of air In something more tangible than memory - Then it might still be summer in my room. endtext 10805 On our time scale, astronomical action is usually pretty dull - the only exceptions being catastrophic, such as collisions with asteroids or stars that blow up without telling us first. But strangely, that's never stopped anyone, and the metier full of lonely nights on the cold mountain tops has never been short of recruits. So sing after me: do do sol sol la la sol fa fa mi mi re re sol sol sol fa fa mi mi mi re sol sol fa fa mi mi mi re do do sol sol la la sol fa fa mi mi re re sol - attributed to W. A. Mozart, aged 5 endtext 10905 Astronomy was in a golden period in the twenties. Hubble II had finally been repaired, most countries were cooperating with its finance and swapping research, and new photographs of every "seeable" object in the sky were being made at higher and higher magnifications and resolution. And as always with so much to see and study, there were ever increasing numbers of questions, none of which Warren could answer. Nor did her really want to, for he preferred looking at the pictures. He kept a copy of an astronomy magazine with a retrospective of the first black and white edition of the Hubble Atlas of Galaxies. He was at peace with those wonderful images of silent arks of stars, unimaginably large and unimaginably distant, and far from questioning he was at peace with their beauty. endtext 11005 At the University she was visiting the library to see a particularly excellent graduate thesis by Walter Andrew Simpson when she was distracted by the unusual name next to it which was, of course, Warren Australia Simpson. She laughed and pulled the thesis off the shelf, opening to discover what Australia Simpson had achieved. Discovering that Warren's thesis was on telescope design, and that on the first page was a photograph of Warren joyfully flying a kite on his grandfather's farm, she was even more intrigued, and sat to read the Introduction of "Rotational control of unframed, orbiting liquid mirror telescopes": endtext 11010 From the Introduction to "Rotational control of unframed, orbiting liquid mirror telescopes", Warren Australia Simpson: In astronomy circles they speak of the "Hubble double wobble troubles" that began with the launch of Hubble II, the first, and so far only, space based liquid mirror telescope, launched with a faulty bearing that distorted the mirror. In liquid mirror telescopes, the large primary mirror is formed by a spinning disk of liquid metal like mercury (though in space they used a much lighter alkali alloy). If you take a bucket of water and spin it in the earth's gravitational field, the surface of the water will form a parabola, the shape of most telescopic mirrors. This is easy to do on the surface of the earth where the earth's gravity provides the acceleration, and many large telescopes have been constructed. The problem is that they only point straight up. endtext 11015 Space has other problems - notably the lack of a gravitational field to form the parabola. On Hubble II, this was provided by using light sails. These vast, lightweight sails were attached to the frame holding the spinning disk, and the pressure from the photons from the sun accelerated the telescope against the sun's gravity. The telescope is working now, of course, but the troubles they had ... it took five years to get the axis of the spinning liquid aligned perfectly with the acceleration vector. endtext 11020 In this thesis I propose a method of construction and telescope control that combines both the axial and radial accelerations, orbital trajectory, and eliminates the troublesome bearing. Using contemporary materials, a telescope with a mirror of 250 metre diameter could be launched. endtext 11025 What! Martine was initially amused to read Warren's proposal. Such schemes had been proposed for years and laughed away as being unpractical. But they were also a little awed and scared by the proposal: "what the hell are we going to see with such an instrument?" This, too, is not a trivial question. And once we saw it, would it answer anything we really want to know? But then, if it's going to be fun, who cares for the trivial question of justification? endtext 11105 Some say Martine's career was reminiscent of a comet impact on Jupiter - as if she broke into fragments and crashed into anyone she met, lighting them both with the brief glory of the fire of her brilliance, then passing on as the ripples of the impact die away, leaving the person she passed with little more than the scar of her impact, yet feeling strangely enriched by it. It was an academic career, in university and observatory, almost the reality of Warren's dreams, yet so deep were his dreams that he would not have known envy had he known Martine earlier in his life. endtext 11205 Warren, too, was thinking about space telescopes - sort of. He wasn't really thinking of telescopes, but we find him one windy spring evening flying his kite - the same that he had pictured in his thesis. It was a model of his orbiting liquid mirror telescope. He himself played the part of the sun's gravity by holding onto a string attached to a metal disk. That disk was elevated by the "solar sails" attached by strings. The damn thing was tricky to launch, but once in the air it stayed there, spinning happily until the wind died away. endtext 11210 A model of Hubble II would have looked ridiculous - three large kites holding up a metal frame in which a large disk sat on a bearing being turned by an electric motor. In Warren's design the sails provided the lift and the spin, obviating the need for a massive frame and the "troublesome" bearing. This not only halved the weight, thus decreasing launch costs, sail area and construction time, but with active sails - that is sails whose orientation and sheeting were constantly controlled by computer to steer the craft and trim the telescope - gave more accurate control of the parabola and telescope focusing. endtext 11215 That was in 2045. Martine was in Australia again for work on the European-Australian Transworld Radio Aperture Synthesis Telescope. It was arguable that she never actually had a need to come to Australia since if there was ever any physical work to do, like tightening a bolt or painting a door, it would not be her doing it. Even the computers fixed themselves, leaving the boss with nothing to do at all, except theorise from time to time and reapply for funding. She stopped to salute her colleagues at the University of Sydney before she went to see the outback installations. More to the truth she would see the stars that she missed in the light soaked European cities, and even in Sydney where, on a very good night, you might just be able to see Sirius. But outback she saw stars. On a warm summer night she lay on her back underneath the southern sky and, momentarily, her intellect did not matter. Those things out there were no longer giant balls of fusing particles, agglomerated in millions of statistical ways - they were, simply - hell! They were just the bloody stars. endtext 11305 That was about the same year I met Warren, now that you make me think about it. And her too. I think I actually heard her give a paper at a conference in Sydney. Of course she didn't remember me since I was merely serving sandwiches - just until I got a proper job you understand. No, Warren wasn't at the conference. Yes he was always interested in astronomy, but he was neither bright enough, nor industrious enough to compete with the top students. He was always so lazy. He used to look through picture books - you know of stars and galaxies and telescopes, but he was just a minor engineer in a small appliance factory. I think he was in charge of buying wood or something. endtext 11310 No, as I said, Warren wasn't at the conference. I met him in a pub after work. He was alone when we came in, and when he saw us he stuffed an astronomy magazine back into his bag. That's when he said to me 'hi, I'm Warren. I was the first baby born in the Republic, and I nearly discovered a comet.' endtext 11312 I told him I'd just finished work for the day - serving cocktails to real astronomers. I didn't mean it to be hurtful, and he laughed. He's good natured, you see, and that's always a challenge. And it's about the only thing he had in common with Martine Router. endtext 11315 Martine was never a threat, if that's what you were implying. They didn't meet until - more than twenty years later. We had been on Warren's grandfather's farm - he more or less inherited it since no one else wanted it - it was such a dump. Anyway we had been there for - oh maybe 18 years. It was in 2045. I remember because it was the year the floods nearly wipes us out and we had so much to do to rebuild the irrigation. endtext 11320 I don't know what she was doing there. Interfering, mostly. That sounds antagonistic, does it? I JUST TOLD YOU WE HAD NO TIME TO SPARE. THE QUESTION WAS NOT TRIVIAL. when will you see clearly enough, Doctor? When do you think you will know how my mind works? endtext 11325 The farm was a dump. When Warren's grandfather finally died he had been retired for forty years, and the place had just run down from virtual neglect, despite the presence of a manager - a so called manager anyway. Every piece of machinery was from last century - they even used stuff that was completely manual. But you're not interested in farm management, are you? The point is I had to work hard to get the place moving. We were poor farmers to be sure, but any sacrifice was a joy to me. Any responsibility was my food. That farm was going to be mine as much as Warren was. endtext 11405 It's true that Australia is a big country. There aren't all that many people either, but accidents do happen - particularly with Europeans who tend to forget that they should drive on the left hand side of the road. Nobody was hurt, but Martine's hired car was ruined. As they swapped names and insurance companies, Martine noticed Warren's name. endtext 11410 "You're not Warren Australia Simpson are you?" she asked. "Am I famous now?" "I don't know. But I happened to read your thesis last week." "My thesis?" "For your degree." "Really? That was twenty years ago. I don't remember much. I suppose it's all out of date now." "No not really. I've been thinking about it. What do you think we could see with a 250 metre telescope?" "Lady, you could see my dick from Paris with that one. Even better - you could see a micky weed on Mars." "I beg your pardon? My English is not very good." endtext 11415 So without realising it would change the course of astronomy forever, an accident happened just outside Dubbo on a sunny spring afternoon. Then the red dusty fringe of Warren's hair, jutting below the brim of his hat, moved with the first gust of the approaching afternoon storm. He said to her, as they leaned on her broken car, "I don't think you hurt my truck very much. I had my Space Telescope Kite out just the other day. If we hurry, we'll be able to fly it before the rain gets here." And Martine did go with him, attracted by his boyish enthusiasm, the lack of guile, and the rippling strength of his farming muscles that tickled her when he laughed. endtext 11420 They were flying the kite when I returned home. The wind was dying having failed in its promise of rain, and my thoughts were straying over the wheat crop. I saw Warren's truck then, with its crumpled front fender, and was angered by the careless treatment of my property. Then I saw the kite rise into view above the silver brigalow. "He's flying that bloody space kite again, the loafer," I mumbled. I walked quietly over to him and surprised him, "working hard?" Warren trembled. "Hello Love. This is Martine from Luxembourg. She drives on the wrong side of the road." He kissed my cheek clumsily, flushed by guilt, confused as usual by its origin. endtext 11425 Who knows what makes people suspicious of others at first meetings, but when Martine reached out her hand to me, I took it in a way that Martine mistook for timidity, but I was feeling the hand, feeling the air, for the way to determine the threat I felt. Warren spoke again. "She's an astronomer." Ah that's what it is, I thought. She's a dreamer. endtext 11430 "Is she staying?" "I've invited her to stay for a couple of days." "Oh Warren we have so much work to do." "It's alright," said Martine. "If it's going to be a problem I will go." "No, no, no," I said. "I want you to see our stars tonight. And we'll barbecue the yellow belly Warren caught in the river." Warren suddenly adored me, like a cute little child! He hadn't made a friend for twenty years, and now he was joyful, but he saw the kite falling. "Hey, careful!" His warning cry was too late, for the wind had dropped while they were not looking, and the kite had slowly lowered itself into the branches of the brigalow, tearing the solar sails. "Mind you," I said, unconcerned for the kite, "the river is so full of that pernicious European Carp there are hardly any local fish left." endtext 11505 After the barbecue, Grandpa's telescope came out. "Show her where you discovered the comet, Warren" I said. "Did you discover a comet?" she asked. Warren shuffled and made a sound in his throat. I had finished clearing away the remains of the barbecue and was slightly drunk from the local wine. I said "it's how he introduced himself to me. 'I was the first baby born in the republic and I nearly discovered a comet.'" Warren was embarrassed, and tried to hide it with professional sounds. "It was just near epsilon Crucis," he said, aligning his grandfather's 100 mm reflector to peer into the heart of the Southern Cross. "Unfortunately it was never confirmed, was it Warren." My laugh was wicked in drunkenness, for it was only then that I lost control, like releasing the strings of a kite. endtext 11510 Martine spent two nights on the farm. The first, after the barbecue, she and Warren slept under the stars, under the southern sky in perfect viewing conditions, where the clouds of Magellan float directly overhead like soft cotton balls. Martine, uncomfortable and unused to the open air, slept fitfully until sunrise. The second night it rained so we gave her a comfortable bed, in which she closed her eyes and thought about the discomfort of the night before, enjoying the memory immensely. endtext 11515 "I'll drive you to the airport," I said after breakfast. In the car she said, "Warren is a dreamer. If I didn't keep an eye on him the farm would fall to pieces. Look. This place was a clapped out twentieth century farm when we came here. I've worked my arse off for fifteen years to get it up to date - or at least to the point where it makes a slight profit. And I can hold it together, but only if Warren stays on the ground and helps me. People like you give him exotic ideas." "I'm sorry. I had no idea you had problems." "We have no problems," I replied, too aggressively. "I'm sorry. Do you want me to wait for the plane? Thank you for staying. Have a good life." endtext 11605 I can't believe how angry I was. And you know, I don't think I had ever really released rage before. I just didn't know what to do. Instead of driving home I went to the river, sat on a rock and cried my eyes out. I couldn't control my body; the sobs that came from so deep within me seemed to tear at my muscles, trying to rip them away from the bones as they dug their way through me. It was truly wretched. And I didn't know why. Before that I had been so peaceful - I mean I may have had a few disagreements with Warren from time to time, but they passed easily as they should with normal people, but this time I was racked with pain endtext 11610 Did you see them together on the cover of Time? That was years ago of course. They made a joke of it - the accident that changed the course of science. It may have done so, but it also twisted the core of my soul, and sitting in agony with my feet in the dirty water of the river, I determined not to let them be forgiven for it. endtext 11705 I never actually fired a shot from the gun my father gave me. True. The first shots I ever fired were from Warren's grandfather's shotgun. I found it at the farm and cleaned it up and went duck hunting one day. Christ I was so angry that day. There were no ducks, but the wattle was out so I shot all the flowers off one of the trees. The flowers were beautiful, of course, but I was allergic to them. Yes that was a lie. I'm not allergic to anything. Maybe I just hated the part their beauty played in reproduction. No that's a bit deep I'm afraid. I was just angry so I shot the shit out of a tree. Don't read anything more into it than that. My ears were ringing for a week! endtext 11710 I really didn't mean to fire it in the house. And truly, I don't even remember loading it. And no one was hurt so I don't know what the big fuss is all about. I mean televisions are cheap. I brought him a better one. What more could he ask for? He was so childish about it. Every night after that he would make a big fuss about picking one pellet out of the wall or a piece of furniture. I admit I made a mess, but why did he have to keep on about it. Never saying anything. The bastard was driving me mad. He'd eat his dinner, pick a piece of lead out of the wall then go and spend an hour talking to Martine about their precious telescope. Great way for me to spend the night, wasn't it? endtext 20000 ACT 2: THE FEASIBILITY OF CONTROL endtext 20105 From: Martine Reuter: Brussels: 1 January 2050, 19:18 hours Dear Warren Australia Simpson First, Happy new year and happy birthday! Second, do you remember me? Five years ago I ruined your car and let your kite drop into a tree. But I took a copy of your thesis back to Europe with me. Now the good news is that I've received funding for a feasibility study for a 250m orbiting liquid mirror telescope. Will you come and join the team? We want your ideas. It would mean living in Brussels for at least a year. Let me know soon. You can stay with me for a while. My children have left me with a big empty house. Your wife (sorry, I've forgotten her name - Cannie? or something?) is welcome to come too, though there is no job for her. Martine Reuter. endtext 20110 He swaggered into the room looking as pleased as I've ever seen anybody, grinning like he usually only does with six beers and a few sausage sandwiches inside him. He had taken a print-out of the letter and he waved it in my face as if it were a trophy. "How would you like to go and live in Belgium?" "I beg your pardon?" To tell the truth I thought he really was drunk. I'm sure he didn't even have a clue where Belgium was. "I've just been offered a job in Belgium for a year." "I don't understand." "As an engineer. Don't you remember that I'm an engineer? Didn't I ever show you my dissertation on telescopes? Don't look so blank darling. Do you remember five years ago we had a visitor here. An astronomer. We had a barbecue and flew my kite." endtext 20115 "I remember. She was a suspicious character if ever I met one. Astronomer my fat uncle. She was just a tourist." "She has offered me a job, Connie." I still did not quite understand, but his grin filled me with foreboding. He was easy to control, but I never, ever, needed to hurt him. Honestly. "So you do remember. Her name was..." and had to pause to read her name - which was probably the last time it was fully out of his mind, "... Martine Reuter and she knew about my ideas for a giant space telescope. Now she's offered me a job to help design it." "You're nearly 50 Warren. Don't you think it's a bit late for a change of career?" "But Connie. I'd be working on the greatest science experiment of all time. Doesn't that mean something to you?" "Only that you know nothing about science. It's just a bigger telescope." endtext 20120 Warren was always quick. He never tried to change my mind by arguing about something on which I had already decided, and yes I do decide quickly but contrary to what you think, Doctor, I do know my own mind. Anyway, he changed tack. "But wouldn't you like to get away from here for a while? To live in Europe for a year or so? Farming is hard work." "Ah finally you see the point. I have worked, haven't I." I pushed Warren into a chair and stood before him, boring into him silently before pacing. We have a wonderful floor for pacing. I even have my favourite shoes, for pacing, with the tiniest of pin heads projecting from the heels so they tap loudly on the wooden floor without damaging it. So I sat him in the chair and danced before him. endtext 20125 He wanted to run, of course, you could see that clearly in his eyes, but was held in the armchair as surely as if a tangible, immovable load was placed in his lap. He tasted dread and tried to block his ears when I spoke. It was a memorable performance - even for me. I said nothing new or particularly cruel, but I spoke for an immeasurable time. "We can't leave the farm for a year. The very idea is ridiculous. I've worked too hard to keep this place viable. I'm not leaving it to someone else to ruin. And why does she want you anyway? You were never a very good engineer. Even that thesis you're so proud of - now that someone has actually read it - was marked low. She's just being polite to make the offer. She knows you wont come..." endtext 20130 My arms? What do you mean "wild"? Yes I suppose I do, but I'm trying to picture that scene, and when I rouse on him I wave my arms around for effect. Does it matter if I do it on purpose or not? Anyway, my arms were waving rather wildly, and I don't think Warren had ever seen me so ... well wild. My voice was alternately hurt and hurtful, and I spoke at such speed that my words blurred one into the next. "You're a funny little boy sometimes you know. I wonder how it was I let myself get tangled up with you, to let you control my good nature. If I wasn't so easy to manipulate I would have left, should have left years ago, but no! I have to tell myself its my wifely duty to stay and look after you, to stay and make sure you don't let your farm and your life go to complete ruin. I used to be so loving. Everybody said so. Everybody liked me, didn't they Warren? But you bring me down. My God you make me so depressed I could scream. I used to laugh and all I do now is let this anxiety fill my guts, creep up my body into my soul and eat away at my liveliness - it's eats my life and I can't do anything about it because I owe you my duty. And you can't see it you bastard. You never looked for it. You never cared about it. You never even thought about it or realised there might be something in existence besides your petty world of dreams in the sky." endtext 20135 Warren suddenly found strength and stood, screaming at me to shut up. He stood erect, wild eyed and crazy. "Just once," a whisper now, "... just once can't you admit that some of this might be your..." The whisper trailed off. He was unable to finish and was suddenly, abruptly confronted with my laughter. He ran outside, followed by my ridiculing cackle, and seeing the milky way stretched across the sky he tried to call for help, but all that emerged was a frustrated groan. He went inside to pick up his grandfather's 100mm reflector. He was angry and had difficulty locating anything he knew or that interested him in the viewfinder. He put his hand under the stool to move it back inside, but it had been so long since he had done any observing that he did not know that wasps had made his observing stool their home. Enraged at being invaded, one of them stung Warren on his finger. Warren picked up the stool and flung it as hard as he could at the telescope, satisfactorily denting the metal tube and ruining the mirror forever. It was too dark to see the wasps, so to evade them he sprinted off down a path into the first wheat field, eventually tripping in a hole and falling on his face, where he remained, sobbing quietly, as much because he did not know the cause of his sadness as because of his anger. endtext 20140 I think for a while he actually had thoughts of going to Brussels. I know he checked out flight information. He's so stupid, you know. He has no idea how clever I am with the comm's system. I've always logged his calls, though I rarely checked them more than once a month after I realised how boring he was to spy on. I don't know why, I just did. And because I allowed him to do all the communicating for farm business, he never saw me use it except as a vidphone or telephone. Even that was rare since - well you know I don't have a lot of friends. Living on a farm is good for that, even if modern communication stuff has tried its best to destroy it. So I knew he checked out a plane, and even made a booking, though he didn't transfer funds. What he did do is pack his bag. I didn't need modern technology for that. I just noticed that his suitcase was dusted and that his clothes had been put back neater than usual in his draws so I wouldn't suspect anything. Kind of like the way you can tell a drunk driver by the way they stick exactly to the speed limit. endtext 20205 Fortunately it was January and they were predicting floods. I don't mean I wanted a flood, I just wanted Warren to stay, and I wanted him to decide that he couldn't leave. I could see he was still delicate after the barrage I loaded on him when Martine first contacted him. Floods always provide a few judicious crises. When it floods we have to pump water out of the main dam into the river, or it would spill over and drown all the sheep. I suppose it seems childish of me, but I programmed the pump so that it only spoke Spanish. endtext 20210 It was awfully funny. After a week we had received over 200 mm of rain, and I saw Warren wander off down the paddock to speak to the pump. For some reason its link to the house was not working, though of course I know nothing about that, did I. I could not resist following him, despite the rain, and I caught up with him just as he got to the pump. "Why aren't you talking to the control unit at the house?", he said. The pump replied, "špor favor se€or?" Warren was cranky. He said, "what the bloody hell does that mean?" and kicked the pump with a muddy rubber boot. "Why aren't you talking to the control?" "šPor favor se€or?" endtext 20215 "Good grief." He saw me coming up behind. "There's something wrong with this bloody pump." He turned back to it and said, clearly, "turn on." Nothing happened. He kicked it again and, with unusual truculence, suggesting to me his recent irritation, he yelled, "turn on you bloody mongrel and pump some water into the river!" "šPor favor se€or?" "What's it saying, Connie? Can you understand it?" "No idea," I said to him. I said then to the pump, "Pump, run diagnostics." "Por favor se€ora?" Wasn't that a nice touch - it could tell I was a woman. "Have you got a phone?" Warren asked me. "Why would I have a phone?" "Well let's get out of the rain and ring the factory." endtext 20220 The factory, being in Germany, interrogated the pump by telephone and told Warren there was nothing wrong with it. He went out and stood on the levy bank and worried, and I almost thought myself that he wasn't going to solve it. I only wanted him to feel needed, not to ruin the farm. He had to phone them three more times - the last when the dam was about to spill over - before he said, "well the bloody thing doesn't speak English." "Well what does it speak?" asked the factory. "Gibberish." "Did you try changing the language. It speaks fifteen, you know, but only one at a time. Say 'language' then 'English', and see what happens." Well he sprinted off through the rain, and just before the first drops spilled over the pump said to him, "yes please sir?" endtext 20225 I just love it when it's so trivial. endtext 20305 Although he did not go to Europe, Warren did continue his correspondence with Martine, developing as warm a friendship as can exist over electronic links. She sent him drawings and copies of her reports, always expressing an interest in his opinion, soliciting his ideas. "So she gets your advice for free anyway," I said. "She's only humouring me. And it's not as if I spend much time on it." "Just every spare moment you have." endtext 20306 This was actually not true. Despite Connie's constant and successful insistence on modern farming practices, they did not find themselves with more and more time as clever mechanisation took over the work of their aging strength, for unless you have an army of serfs, farming work is never done, and, clever as they are, modern farm machinery, with satellite positioning, telematic control from the farm's central computer, and environmental safeguards, are in many ways more useless than people. A similar vein runs through the farms of history - the work never ends. For while there is certainly a factory somewhere that could make a machine capable of going down to the southern fence of the north- east paddock and fixing the hole in it, it would be expensive and not good for much else - and Warren would have got impatient with it if it asked whether the hole was in the fence or the paddock. endtext 20310 How should I know if he felt oppressed. He did withdraw almost completely from me, I suppose, but why should that be my fault. All of a sudden he seemed to discover what he felt all along was his true vocation, and as long as he did his farming duties why should I care about the way he filled his nights? I never understood how they could stand it anyway. I mean they say life is slow on a farm, but you should see it in space. endtext 20315 Have you noticed that when they show pictures of satellites moving in orbit they speed them up to about 50 times the speed of light to make them look interesting. It was the same with Warren's animations of his space telescope. The thing turned - I mean that was apparently the point - the turning made the mirror somehow - but God it was so slow unless he sped it up to such a speed it would fall to pieces. So how did he get inspiration for that? By lying under the stars - just star gazing. That's what he said, but we can't mix it up, can we doctor. He was escaping from me. He needed a space of infinite dimensions to escape from the way I oppressed him. It was my job to make sure that not even the universe was big enough for him to hide in. endtext 20405 The way you make me talk - as if our lives were problematic. We were more or less happy in those times, perhaps because he was so weak, and I already knew not to expect anything from life. Our serious problems were rare, for his character was weak, and he was cautious enough to avoid inciting my aggression. Thus life quietly passed on the farm, though eventually we were forced to take on a manager. We were both past official retirement age, and the Board of Employment kept raising our taxes until we created some jobs. It's idiotic when they have the right to do that. It was our place - entirely our place. We should have been able to run it how we liked. The point is we were past retirement age, so the state interfered by giving us even more time to fill. They keep us alive, they keep us idle. So many people, so little to do. It's Warren's blessing, isn't it, that he is happy doing nothing except lying on his back looking at the sky. It's the happiness of an idle mind. endtext 20410 Can you believe how pathetically naive he was? He thought she wanted him as an engineer - my Warren. He was mine, and the pathetic boy didn't even have the hots for her. He hasn't even got enough passion to make me jealous, nor try to. Can you wonder that it made me boil over? He took everything I gave without reacting, and even now I'm convinced it was because of stupidity and not complaisance. Even if they do build that telescope he wont be able to see past his nose. Damn good nature. It's so difficult to understand why it exists. endtext 20415 Was I telling you about their phone calls? Pretty dull stuff from your point of view - as a psychodude. Hey, a word from my childhood. Analyse that one. Maybe I'm not completely integrated in this country yet. Anyway, they talked maybe once a week. Always the pretext was the telescope. Warren would show her his drawings and ideas, she would nod sagely and say how useful he was to her, then ask when he was coming to Brussels. It was usually late night for her, and she was invariably drinking a beer, appealing to the simple Australian male in him. "It's the beer capital of the World, Warren. A different brew for everyday of the year. Here, try some of this - oh I forgot - you're still in Australia." endtext 20420 I don't know how much he actually contributed to the telescope. Martine was always effusive with her praise if his ideas, and usually waited a few weeks until he asked her about them before she told him what was wrong with them. I interfered with them a little, but it was difficult and I nearly got caught out once. But they made me so cranky. They couldn't touch - I made sure of that - but they were so happy together. Them and their dopey obsession. endtext 20425 In the obsession of his moment, He excluded me. In burning his desire, He lit nothing but his own life. Eluding quotidian grasp, He suspected freedom. endtext 20505 He carried his drawing pad everywhere. If we had been social he would have taken it to parties, asked the guests what they thought, sought contributions and stolen ideas. He tried to design everything - from pulleys for the sheets to launch rockets to carry the stuff into space. He was energetic, I'll give him that. He even made a good attempt at relearning his engineering. I saw him struggling with some math once. I mean struggling. He was using an antique paper textbook which made its way in a parabolic curve into the fireplace before he phone-dumped a decent tutor into his notepad. It still wasn't good enough though. Technology might march on, but the brain marches the other way - but why am I telling you that. Would you like me to tell you more about the brain, doctor of mine? Would that be avoiding something? endtext 20510 Alright, so Warren was obsessed. Big deal. I could handle it. And he had made a friend. I could handle that too. I just made sure Warren stayed at home so that they couldn't touch, and their imaginations were too deeply set in their space project to think of getting into a more fancy phone relationship. I didn't want any of that virtual funny stuff in my house, thank you very much. They were content with vision and sound, or pretended to be. I suppose once you've talked about the stress failure properties of various metals for half an hour the libido is suppressed. I thought spaceships were supposed to be phallic. Maybe space is dead without the symphonic music of the movies that make it dance. Maybe it really is a vacuum - for energy, for ideas, for dancing in all its forms. Of course they sometimes giggle and it's not when they are talking telescope, but when they are talking about me. They are supposed to be grown-ups, and she is supposed to be in charge of a zillion dollar project. I wouldn't trust her to organise a piss-up in a brewery. endtext 20515 "Connie. Guess what. Martine is coming to visit." "What? When?" "She can stay for a couple of days. Isn't that great." He stopped. Suddenly his enthusiasm waned, like a child forced to do chores while everyone else played. You could here a little voice in his head go, "damn it. Do we have to go through this?" as he sat heavily in the old favourite chair. It has become rather cute. He knows if he says "are you angry" I wont be, and if he says "you're not angry," I will be, and that each alternative is equally dreadful. So he said, "well are you angry or not." That wasn't good enough for me, for I need a definite foothold if I am to start properly. I just stood before him and waited, and because I wasn't uncomfortable it made him very much so. He squirmed, then, standing, tried to escape, saying, "well if you can't make up your mind ... " I pushed him back into the chair. Isn't strength funny. Farmers are very strong men, and Warren was as tough as any. I could push him with a finger. endtext 20520 Jealous? Why? He had never expressed any interest in her romantically. They behaved like children, really, for their concerns were not influenced by responsibility. Scientists like to play, don't they. It's not as if they are accountable for what they do, like we normal people. Like doctors, eh? You have to be sure you're cutting off the right foot. What I mean is, if they were emotional at all, they didn't let the consequences get in the way. endtext 20525 "Hello Connie. It's nice to see you again. You look well." "Hello Martine. Why did you take so long to come back." "I was hoping you would visit me, actually." "We like it here. This is our home. Warren wouldn't like to leave it. Things fall apart when he's not around." "Really? Haven't you got neural control of the sheep?" "Of course. But that just helps us round them up. It doesn't help us control the weather. Weather it controls the wether or not is a different matter altogether." I must admit I giggled. Her English was not up to that, but she stumbled on. "So what does the manager do then?" "He interferes and makes bad decisions. He relies too much on advice from experts. The farming network is all well and good, but it's no substitute for knowing your own land." "Like you do." "Like Warren does. He grew up on this land. His blood fertilises the soil here, and only he knows what's best." "So much for technology." "Quite." endtext 20530 Martine and Warren got pissed at the barbecue. I suppose I did a bit, too, but I felt excluded. And when Warren excludes me, tries to loosen his collar, my hold on him, he lets himself into danger. It was obvious, now that they were physically close to each other, that they were lustful. I remember the raging filling up behind my eyeballs. I remembered my youth in the chicano slums of Los Angeles, and I had to drink, to make sure I wouldn't have the strength or coordination to rip her eyeballs out, and maybe to help me try it. endtext 20535 They were talking about their telescope, feeling the hot air between them, buzzing with the flames from the barbecue and unspoken lust. Oh but I have never seen Warren so bold. He looked across to me, and in the darkness he almost appeared defiant. I said nothing as I stood to go inside to sleep. But my look said, "just you try it," and he crumbled. One look was enough to tighten the leash. I was happy that I would not have to punish him. As he said goodnight and I walked past them to the path to the house, I saw him turn from her, lest he see her pity, for it would only add to his own. It's the burden I keep on his back to make sure he can't move too quickly. endtext 20540 Of course I can be sure they didn't. He couldn't. He wouldn't have the courage. He wouldn't have the strength. I mean the strength of character. Even if I was asleep drunk. endtext 20545 Isn't a small suspicion enough? What's the difference between a small suspicion and a big suspicion? A big suspicion is proof, and if you have that, you have surety. And that'd be no fun. I am not contradicting myself. As you say, that would be characteristic of someone who needs help, and I'm here for Warren's sake, not mine, aren't I? endtext 20550 "I'm glad she came," he said. "We've become good friends over the phone, but you can't really know until you've seen them in person, can you." "Drop the psychology Warren. You don't know what you're talking about." "You were happy to see her, too, weren't you Connie?" "What makes you think so." "I'm not smart enough to tell, really. As you know, I know more about the psychology of sheep than people. But you've been walking faster since she's been here, and that's always a sign that you're happy. When you've got something to think about you walk faster, and you're happiest when you're thinking, aren't you Love?" endtext 20555 Sometimes it seems while I stand motionless, Two walls creep up behind me. The gap between the walls closes quicker than linearity of parallax, For the chance of escape is fleeting. The walls meet, The corner forms, So fear rises exponentially, Sympathetically my back is trapped. endtext 20605 The day she left I watched Warren say goodbye then saunter off into the machine shed to avoid me. It was a blistering January day, and even in the early morning the sweat of his brow soaked through his hat, yet he wouldn't remove it, afraid I would see his face, see his joy, see that behind his eyes he was plotting. I panicked. The way he walked. He swaggered, almost confident in manhood. I had never known him to have a reserve of strength, yet I panicked, for I knew never to predict a human being with certainty. endtext 20610 He hid himself for an hour. I sat in the shade of the verandah, tasting bile, letting the flavour bring its stored resonant images of violence; strangely enjoying the memories of my childhood on the edge of the gang wars in Los Angeles. I was just a bystander, but my parents both worked in munitions factories, and my father ran a fairly lively contraband business after dark. I was allowed to play with all sorts of guns, immobilising foams and occasionally a laser grenade. What I remember most though is the nausea inducing infrasonics, for the taste of bile brings back the bone shaking fear of those monsters. Now again these memories bring back the smells; of burning flesh and blood, of decay, of misery. We lived in misery and had to be content with chemical release. Explosions, drugs, adrenalin: everything was chemical release. endtext 20615 The only weapon on the farm was Warren's grandfather's shotgun. It was at least a hundred years old, and I suppose it was imprudent to take it out and shoot it without checking it. It was so simple - two barrels with mechanical firing mechanisms. I couldn't believe it. Anyway I put two cartridges into a silver brigalow near the machinery shed where Warren was hiding. Then I let the butt of the rifle run along the corrugated iron wall of the shed, bumping regularly, ringing inside. I dropped the rifle and went inside to find Warren. He was sitting on one of the old tractors. His eyes were wet and his lips pursed; the tensed muscles of his face quivered. I went and took his hand before he urinated. Sometimes he loves me just too much for physical control. endtext 20620 He was more composed in the evening. He was bold. "Did you think I might leave you," he asked. "Well its impossible Warren. Of course I wouldn't think that. You couldn't leave me. Anyway, you wouldn't leave me in charge of grandfather's farm, would you?" "What was the gun for if you thought that." "What gun?" "I heard the shots. You scared me." "Oh chicken. Come to mummy." I held him to my breast. It had been a long time. I felt comforted. endtext 20705 The ejected ball of shot from a shotgun spreads out. I wonder if this is because at the moment that the ball leave the barrel each individual shot has a component of momentum not parallel to the barrel, so there would be some jostling as the shots fly along their path, thus gradually pushing outwards. Perhaps it is because the velocity of the air over the outer edge of the shot at the outer edge of the ball; higher velocity on the outside, so pushed from the inside; the way a wing gets its lift. Whatever. The shot spreads. The best shotguns are designed so the shot spreads out in the pattern of a duck in flight. In this way, maximum damage is inflicted on the duck, especially if the duck is at such a distance that the shot has spread to the dimension of that duck. A human head is similar in proportion to the body of a duck. It is a bit harder, but this can be compensated for by shortening the distance from the barrel to the head. Throughout the relatively short history of the shotgun, many have found some measure of comfort in this. endtext 20710 "Why have you been so depressed lately, Warren? You walk around like there was no tomorrow, kicking up the dust and getting the house dirty." I smiled, trying to make light of the question. But he saw it as an accusation. "Is it so difficult for you to understand, Connie?" "Why yes, Darling. We have such a good life here, don't we. There is no reason to be depressed." "I have to go feed the sheep. Call them in, will you?" "All right. To which paddock?" He walked out the door without answering, so I sent out the code for the top paddock. That would give him the longest walk to find them. endtext 20805 He was different at night when he worked on his telescope, occasionally having lively discussions with Martine. Usually he spent his time staring at the computer screen; sketching, colouring in his sketches, calculating, doing more colouring in. I think he was more comfortable with colouring in than with the tensile strength of fabric. Sometimes I watched his back. Sometimes I went outside and watched him through the window. Sometimes I pointed the shotgun at him. Sometimes I annoyed him by ignoring him completely: when a person is obsessed, like Warren wanted to be by the telescope, it is difficult to know if you have moved them. endtext 20810 I played with his files sometimes - his designs that is. I can admit to you I tried to sabotage the space telescope. Just for fun. Who knows, maybe I changed the course of history. endtext 20815 For example, once Warren worked for several months on the make up of the fabric that would be used for the sail cloth. He spent a long time working on tensile strength, maximum area, acceleration tolerance et cetera et cetera. He was proud of his work, and maybe it did have some engineering merit. But I sent it for him. Instead of his data I wrote, "Martine! I have a great idea. The sail cloth should be purple." endtext 20820 Warren was confused by the reply. "That's fantastic Warren. How did you know about that new fabric from Dupont. It's as strong as anything else they've got, and it can be micro-perforated. That lowers the weight tremendously without having such big holes that the light goes through it." endtext 20825 Sometimes it worked differently. Warren designed a pulley that would coil the sheets to trim the sails to change the orbit of the telescope. I thought it was a bit complicated, so I substituted part of a drawing from the instruction manual of our new washing machine. Whoever designed the standard domestic network probably didn't realise how much fun I'd have with it. The reply was curt. "Very funny, Warren. TrŠs drole." He just hit his forehead, said, "oh well, I'm just a simple farmer after all," and went on unabashed to design the instrument platform at the focus of the telescope. endtext 20830 Focusing. The construction of an image. Like when the brain receives two flat pictures from the eyes and creates a three dimensional world from them. Like when a puppy has its nose rubbed in its urine and then is thrown outside. Like when a child gets an ice cream or a smack or a kiss or a frown or a teddy bear or a hiding. To focus on consciousness; to deny the right to instinct. endtext 20905 I have considered your mind probe, Doctor, and I have rejected it. It seems to me a fast and painless way of you avoiding your duty. It is not at all as I imagined, that I should stick my head under a hood that went into a machine with lights. There are too many layers of neurons. It would have to sort out the signals from all layers, all of which are buried and tangled with other layers. I see you call them wrigglers, these burrowing electrodes. Worms finer than a hair that burrow into the brain, sliding between the neurons, listening to their calls. Tiny golden worms infesting my brain, trying to find my mind in the physical construct. Isn't it a general problem with life, not just science - you can't observe without changing what is being observed. For to observe my brain from within you have to get a signal to the outside, and my mind would listen to that signal and learn it. It would become part of my memory. endtext 20910 But isn't that what you're trying to do with all this talking? Endless sessions on the couch, trying to change me by observing - or making me observe - what my life is? How is that different? endtext 20915 You don't want to say it, do you, doctor. You think you are in control of this. You are trying to change me. You are trying to be my little god. Or will you tell me its just scientific curiosity that makes you peer into my brain. Just like the harmless mediaeval astronomers lying on a hillside tracking the trails of the planets. It's just scientific curiosity, isn't it. Hell no! You're trying to change my beliefs, and I'll tell you something for free. I'm perfectly happy that the world is flat. And I'm perfectly happy with the way I am. To change me is to give me delusions. To give me delusions is to give me hope. And what's beginning of the doctor's creed? At all times - comfort. Medicine failed when you thought you were doing more than just a patch up job, when you lost the ability to comfort, when you realised respect could bring wealth. Bugger it. Get me some water will you. Shall we continue? Stop grinning damn you. We shall continue, and you may look, but don't touch. Where were we? endtext 20920 When the worms go in they go in numbers - 50,000 at a time is not uncommon. They are injected into the same place in solution, each being programmed to slither its way to a predetermined part of the brain, to monitor the signals there and transmit knowledge of local activity. I think it is best to monitor them in a three dimensional representation. I don't mean that that is the best means of interpreting the signals, for that is such a complex job it must be done by the computer; but that same computer would miss the joy of seeing the incredible beauty of the three dimensional display of the worms' performance. Imagine a brain shaped ball, filled with microscopic glow worms, each one in touch with the other and with the outside, and represent the transmissions to other worms and the outside by the tiniest of sparks; you have a ball of sparkling golden wonder. The brain is no longer a grey lump with the consistency of off milk, but a very pretty thing indeed. endtext 20925 That is one reason why I refused to let them inspect me with worms. The other, as you said, is that you could not predict the change it would make in me. It would change my memories. It could change my behaviour. I need to retain explicit control over those possibilities. I am paying you well to help me do it by myself. Keep the beasts in the jar, Doctor. Keep them in the jar. endtext 21005 The feasibility study for the telescope took seven years. Contrary to what they thought, I followed its progress fairly closely, being careful not to let the grand nature and huge scope of the project interfere with my purely personal interest. Martine once again, and for the last time, invited Warren to go to Brussels. This time it was for the final presentation to the various bodies that would fund her telescope. She wanted to show him off like a cute little toy from outback Australia. "I got my inspiration from this koala. Don't you love the way he smiles?" endtext 21010 It's difficult to reconcile her relationship with Warren with her position in the world of science. Our world view from the farm is limited, despite the speed of the contemporary world and its images. Since the budget for the telescope was so vast it was to be a delegation from all the space faring nations. To build such a huge instrument in space would be the biggest engineering feat in history, but it was not definite that everyone on the panel was awed by concepts. Do you see what I'm trying to say, Doctor? What did a woman in that position want with my little Warren? endtext 21015 Warren was quite agitated during the final stages of the study. His work on the farm was shoddy, and his concentration was weak. I finally prodded him. He said, "the feasibility study for the telescope is almost over." "So?" "It turns out that it's feasible." "So why does that worry you, Warren. You're a farmer." "You know how involved I am, Connie." I kept my silence, for I could see that he was delicate. Something was building in him that I had not suspected. "Do you think they will build it?" I asked. "She has to get the money first, doesn't she." He said it petulantly. My little child. I wanted to laugh, when perhaps I should have crushed him with kindness. "And the bitch has never given you a cent for your advice. It was your idea, for christ sake. She will owe you." Life, for people like Warren, appears to be more than survival, and the poor dear was crying again. I held him to my breast and stroked his hair. endtext 21020 "Connie. Martine has invited me to Brussels again. To go to the final presentation before the funding body." "Why you?" "Why not me?" He looked lovely, standing before me defiant and tall. Did I tell you anytime how handsome he is? Not just his face, which could perhaps have made him a pretty boy, but his strong body, his sun and work hardened skin. He was an animal adapted to his physical environment. But his mental environment was mine, and I had long directed its evolution. I said, "because, Warren. I need you, and I'm staying here." "What do you need me for." "Nothing. And everything. I love you Warren, and I need you. That's all." I left him then. I hoped he would not try again. endtext 21025 But I knew he would, so before he did I let him see me go hunting with his grandfather's shotgun. I caught his eye later that night, after he had been talking to Martine. I winked at him. I pouted. Then something took me from withing and I tripped him and straddled his belly. I kissed him until he cried, then I cradled his head through the night. endtext 21105 She rang Warren the night before. "Are you sure you wont come?" "It's a little late. Besides I have nothing to offer." "But you were the inspiration behind the whole thing, and we need everything we have to convince the committee. It's getting harder to sell science every year. Proper science I mean." "Like looking at stars?" "I mean objective science." endtext 21110 "Every second paper I see these days is riddled with mumbo- jumbo about religious practices in animals, the moral viewpoint of climbing plants..." "The physiological basis of satanic worship?" "Exactly Warren. That's exactly what I mean. I want to do proper science. I want to look into the hearts of quasars and galaxies and see what makes them glow. I want to see stars being born, and watch them die. I'm doing what everyone else should be doing." "Defining our place in the universe?" "I'm denying that we are anything special, by defining us as simply a part of the universe, and we can't understand ourselves except by viewing the rest of the universe objectively." endtext 21115 Here is a list of some of the things you wont see with a big telescope: black holes, worm holes, phlogiston, ether, the circles of paradise, Mount Purgatory, an electron, your own eye, your neighbour's mind, x-rays, a propagating photon, super strings, dark matter, Aristotelian logic, boolean logic, a dream passed, whatever is between a body and its shadow, the pen you lost (until you buy another the same), profound television, tachyons, the money in your pocket, the other side of the mountain, the other side of the fence, the other side of the argument, the chewing gum before you tread in it, the accusation coming, the second coming, the winter coming ... Under certain viewing conditions you will be able to see around corners. endtext 21116 We know there is a planet around á-Picoris. One can tell that a Jupiter sized object has swept out the dust that lies in the star's orbital plane, creating a ring at a distance of 5 AU - about Jupiter distance. The planet has an angular size of about 1 arcsec at 16 light years, and I want to map it. endtext 21205 "Oh Warren, this telescope is going to be incredible. I'll make maps of planets around other stars. I'll be watching the beginning of the universe as it burns." "Will you show us the pictures at least." "It's not just for me." "But it's your life, isn't it?" "Will you come? I'd love to see you in person again." "I can't, Martine." "Why?" "Why? Connie is sick. I can't leave her." "Just for a couple of days." "She need's constant care." "From you?" "From me, yes." "Is it so serious?" endtext 21210 Warren paused, horrified, annoyed to be horrified by such a small thing. She had made him lie. Suddenly the depth of his weakness crept though him, a wave of nausea overcoming his sense of self, and drowning what was left of his esteem. But I had never made him lie before! And to Martine. It was ridiculous, and he was a child, helpless in his thraldom, but in that initial nausea he sensed the little lights of truth; that he was the slave to his wife's isolated narcissism. Yet he could not name it, and in his ignorance his depression began. "Are you alright Warren?" Martine was asking. Warren sighed a little. He said to Martine, "I'm sorry Martine. I'm staying. Call me if you want me on video during the conference but I can't leave. Good luck." He terminated the call as the nausea swept through him again, then he doubled in his chair and fell to the floor. endtext 21215 I did not find him until much later - several hours after our normal bedtime. At first I thought he may have actually gone to Europe, but I had more faith than that. I heard the noise of a muffled explosions, and eventually I found him in the machine shed, sitting on and old tractor with the shotgun across his lap. He was holding a bloodied handkerchief to his ear, and with the torch I could find easily the circle of pockmarks in the iron wall behind him. He said, "I couldn't. You need me to look after you, don't you." I took the gun and pointed it at him. "Go to bed you simple bastard." He got up slowly off the tractor and shuffled down the yard. There was still a cartridge in the gun, so I fired it into the roof of the shed. He moved faster now, but there was regret in his boots, and they dragged. endtext 21220 In the morning, about the time his plane would have been landing in Brussels, where he could have been with Martine as she spoke to the heads of science from the World's largest nations, I took him to Dubbo Hospital - for the first time since he was born. endtext 21305 Martine was not hopeful the day of the final presentation. How was she going to convince the USA, Europe, Russia, China and Japan to cooperate when every recent attempt at scientific cooperation had failed. And no one wanted to go back into space since the debacle of the Martian colony. That had almost started a war on mother Earth. But she had to try; in seven years her telescope had overtaken her life, obsessing her actions. Her family had moved away, and she socialised little. Her few friends saw her seldom, and when they did they asked her about her curious boyfriend in Australia. "He's just a phone friend," she said. "He listens to my ideas." endtext 21310 "First let me give you some numbers. Our eyes, on a good night, can resolve objects about 1/20 the diameter of the moon. The first Hubble Space Telescope had a mirror 2.4 metres in diameter. Without the distortion of atmospheric blurring we get on Earth it had a resolution of about 0.06 arcseconds - which is about 1/30000 of the diameter of the moon. Hubble II..." "When it worked," interjected the delegate from Europe, an avowed money pincher. "... when it worked was about 10 times better than that. Our telescope will 100 times bigger." " endtext 21315 It will collect 10 000 times as much light, so we will see objects 500 000 times fainter than those seen by ground based telescopes." "Such as?" China. "Well for instance - my research is interested in the resolution which will be to about 0.0006 arcseconds. Some of you will be familiar with NGC 5128." As she spoke, an image of a galaxy came onto the wall screen. "This is a galaxy first seen by the British astronomer John Herschel while observing from South Africa in the 1830s. He called it 'a most wonderful object... cut asunder... by a broad obscure band.'" "It looks a bit like a brain!" said the delegate from the USA. "Oh yeah," said the delegate from Europe in agreement. "If you look at the brain from above, that is." "Quite," said Martine, biting her lips to still them. endtext 21320 "Anyway, at 16 million light years, this is the closest extra- galactic radio source to us believed to be powered by giant black hole. This is the standard model that has been around for nearly a century without being resolved. Some of my fellow astronomers have been losing patience and offering other models which are more or less ridiculous. It's time to solve the matter and move on. Hubble II was not powerful enough, since at that distance it could only resolve objects about 2 light years apart. We need to look right into the heart of the galaxy, and to do this we need a telescope that can resolve to 1/20 of a light year at that distance. And we can see right into its heart - and there we will see such gravitational forces that will either confirm or dismiss the standard unifying theory of atomic forces." endtext 21325 "And you don't imagine you'll see anything ridiculous, Professor Reuter?" asked the delegate from the USA. She laughed and demurred at the stab. "I guess I'm getting old and impatient. Only people are ridiculous, and if I'm wrong I'm prepared to wear it. Is that the idiom? Anyway, my astronomical theories are not the point. This will be for everyone, and we won't know what we see until we see it, will we?" endtext 21340 It is strange that international politics, like everything else to do with human society, is a fickle and unpredictable thing, and can, against all odds and expectations, occasionally deliver completely unexpected bouts of cooperation. So it happened this day, partly because of Martine's talent, partly because of the vision, and, perhaps, partly because of the strong Belgian beer; so Martine and her team were given fully 75% of the money they asked for. She screamed with joy, filled the delegates glasses once more and proposed a toast. "Long life, long vision." One of the delegates' aids quipped to another, "we'll bloody well need it if we're to see the thing work in our lifetime." He was right, for it would take at least twenty years before the telescope would be operational. The date of the toast was the 29th February 2056 - Martine's 15th birthday, or her 64th sidereal year. endtext 21405 It has long been known that when excited at the resonant frequency of the visceral mass, the human body experiences discomfort. Your guts are suspended on a muscly spring which bounces up and down at frequency between 10 and 16 hertz. The wavelength of sound at these frequencies is very long, so you need decent loudspeakers to get any power. This is related to the reasons for the increasing size of bass musical instruments, but that has also to do with the frequency response of the ear. Anyway you need two whopping great loudspeakers. You need two for focusing, for by varying the phase difference of the signal to the speakers, you can make the sound in front of them interfere constructively or destructively. These big speakers usually come disguised as a normal police van. If you see such a van backing towards you, run like buggery. endtext 21410 The laser grenade is a nice, if unreliable, device that converts the energy release of a chemical reaction into electricity while it is flying towards its target. That electricity is stored in a capacitor which, after a time, releases its stored energy through a dozen spinning crystal rods which create so many megawatt lasers for about a microsecond. This is just enough time to burn satisfactorily through human flesh and ignite some combustible material, but in general the damage to property is minimal, thus it has strictly limited use by the general rioter. endtext 30000 ACT 3: LEARNING TO FLY endtext 30105 "Hello Warren. How are you." "I'm OK. What's the news?" "You should have told me you were going to hospital." "Never mind that." He was drowsing off, feeling the influence of the sedatives. "Did you get the money?" "Yes. It's great news." "You got the money?" "Nearly all of it. Our telescope is going to fly!" "Oh that's great," said Warren. "I'm happy for you." He said he was happy, and perhaps he was, but his face was listless and his smile ingenuous. His blood ran with drugs, yet his veins ran with blank disappointment, so that his feelings were written plainly on his white face. endtext 30110 "Is there something wrong Warren?" "Nothing much. My depression that's all. It's been getting worse." "Are you taking something for it?" "No. I'm staying in hospital for some tests. Maybe for a week or so." "I have a few days off. May I visit?" "Would you?" "I can take tonight's Mach II from London. See you for lunch tomorrow." endtext 30115 It was me that Martine met first at the hospital. I was, well, lurking outside Warren's room, pestering a useless young doctor when she saw me. You could see she wanted to avoid me, but it was too late. "Hello Martine. So good to see you. I hear congratulations are in order." "Thank you Connie. Is this Warren's room?" "Oh you mustn't go in. He's been sedated." "Sedated? What in the world has gone wrong?" "He tried to attack me while I was feeding him. I had to scream for help. It was simply awful. Come for coffee?" endtext 30120 We went to the canteen in silence, a silence which was only broken by the approach of a doctor. "Mrs Simpson?" "Yes?" "Hello. I'm Doctor Jones, the psychiatric registrar. May we talk alone for a moment." "Oh it's alright. Professor Reuter is a close friend of the family. She's just flown in from Europe to see Warren." "Please. It would be better." Martine rose, saying, "I'll be in the garden." endtext 30125 The Doctor was silent for a moment, allowing me to ask, "do you know what is wrong with my husband?" The Doctor gathered strength. "You're husband will be fine with a little rest. I'm more concerned about you." "Me?" The Doctor attacked. "You are aware, aren't you, that all treatment in this hospital is automatically videorecorded? "Recorded?" "Yes. There is a camera in each room - legal reasons you understand. So I'll be blunt. I've just watched you attack your husband and drive him into a rage." He set up a portable screen on the table and replayed the meeting. I did not want to claim immediately that it must be a forgery, so I my waved her arms in the air and ridiculed the Doctor's version of events. "Didn't you see that? He attacked me." The Doctor paused. "I'd like to recommend you take some psychological tests." "Me!" endtext 30130 "Would you now? Well if that is not the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard! I was only trying to make him take his medicine." "Please Mrs Simpson. Let me be frank. I know that your husband is our patient, but it is my concern that his symptoms are caused by his relationship with you, his partner. The more we know about you, the better we know how to treat him." "I think you'll find that if there is anything wrong with me, which there isn't, it is entirely due to my husband's weaknesses, which I spend my entire life compensating for." "So you'll do it?" He evidently did not believe I would consent, for he sighed with resignation and began to stand. "Even if it's to prove I am wrong. Please?" "Since you speak so frankly. And if you don't take up too much of my time." He smiled. It was a nice smile, considering he was such a rude, interfering bastard. endtext 30135 I returned briefly to Warren's bed, and churlishly said to him, "because of you they think I'm crazy." At that moment, Martine nosed through the door. "Is he awake?" she asked. "I wish he was." It would have been more fun if I he tried to attack me again. endtext 30205 The psychologist told me I was perfectly normal, but curiously avoided all her questions and referred me to a psychoanalyst. I was outraged, but it was tinged with fear, I suppose, since I actually followed the advice. I could not admit to fear then, of course, so I called it curiosity. The psychoanalyst laughed and said, "some people are always afraid of new scientific advances." "What's new about being crazy?" "You're not crazy Connie," she said, looking seriously at the coded referral from the psychologist. She was silent for a long time, letting me fidget in my chair. She said, "I'm not sure I'm actually the right person to deal with. I've only had two other cases like this, and after several years of traditional psychotherapy, neither improved. There are many people with your disease, Connie, but very few of them will accept it as a disease, and such is its nature, even fewer will accept treatment, and of them, we can cure even fewer." "You're hedging like the psychologist now. Get on with it." endtext 30210 The Doctor was silent a moment longer, then with decisiveness lay down the folder and said, "I'm going to tell you what you have that is wrong. But I want you to promise me not to get angry, and to think about everything I say before reacting. And most of all ... have you studied science at all?" "I did psychology and biology at university for a while. I'd have done honours - my marks were good enough - but I had to prepare to get married and go to the farm with Warren." "That's very good, Connie. So you know that when I speak, I do so from the depth of the scientific method, and that everything I do to treat you is based on many years of patient research. Do you believe that?" "I'm told you are the best in the area." "But do you believe me?" "I wouldn't be here otherwise." endtext 30215 "Good. Now I want you to do something very difficult. Forget everything you have heard, or learned, about the separation of science and morality." "The objectivity of science?" "And its isolation in our description of the universe." "Why?" "Because, Connie, you are pathologically evil." endtext 30220 "You have a disease which we know as 'evil nature' in society. It can be cured, but not by me. I, too, are stuck in the old ways." And so she referred me to you. endtext 30305 The identification of evil as a disease, like alcoholism, was controversial and not accepted by all practitioners. Some said, 'hell, it's as true as anything in psychotherapy,' and just went along with it. Others admitted that people did what others considered morally wrong, but that was there choice even if it was a manifestation of some other mental disease, such as schizophrenia. But evil - manifest as continuous lying, scapegoating, self aggrandisement and malignant narcissism - that's a matter for God and the law, not for doctors. It was seated in the deepest, most inaccessible and inflexible parts of the subconscious mind. Therefore its treatment required the most powerful analytical tools available to modern psychotherapy - the couch and weekly consultations for as many years as the patient's medical insurance company would stand. endtext 30310 One of the symptoms of evil people is their inability to believe they have a disease: there are no bumps, pustules or weeping sores, and they blind themselves to metaphor. Thus they rarely ever enter treatment willingly, and if they do it is under perverse circumstances. I entered partly because I was getting old and bored with the farm, which I had improved so much it virtually ran itself, but mostly to prove to everyone that anything that happened to me was really Warren's fault. I stayed in treatment, perversely, when I discovered he would be under even greater control - not that the doctor would have seen it that way. endtext 30405 The study of the pathology of evil is a new science - as new as the study of its morality is old. Perhaps, for completeness, we should do a quick historical survey. endtext 30410 First the word. From the Oxford dictionary: Evil is simply bad or harmful. It's an old English word, yfel, from the Old Saxon and Old High German ubil, from the Gothic ubils, from the Germanic ubhilaz. There is no truth in the rumour that it came to English from the Hebrew word for life, "havvah". That actually gives us the latin word "eva", which gave the old English word "efe", which gives us the modern word "Eve". Also, the rumour that Devil is from the French "D'Evil", that is "belonging to Evil", is also false, as devil comes to us from the Greek "diabolos", the accuser. endtext 30412 Evil is also an anagram of "live" and contains "lie". endtext 30414 Plato avoided the problem of evil. Even in his time there was plenty of other stuff to write about, such as the advocacy of totalitarianism. endtext 30416 Sextus Empiricus, a Skeptic philosopher, said on evil, "Those who affirm positively that God exists cannot avoid falling into an impiety. For if they say that God controls everything, they make Him the author of evil things; if, on the other hand, they say that He controls some things only, or that He controls nothing, they are compelled to make God either grudging or impotent, and to do that is obviously an impiety." endtext 30418 Chrysippus, a Stoic philosopher; "There can be nothing more inept than the people who suppose that good could have existed without the existence of evil. Good and evil being antithetical, both must needs subsist in opposition." endtext 30420 Plotinus (AD 204-270: the Earth is a copy of the Intellectual Divinities, and evil exists because it is an imperfect copy. Evil comes from sin, which comes from free will, and this takes truth from the determinists and the astrologers. endtext 30421 St Augustine (354-430): he believed evil to be some kind of substance, but came later to believe that it was from the perverseness of will. He was pre-occupied with sin, or at least the question of sin. In his early days he liked having a good time. endtext 30422 John the Scot(about 800 to about 877): we sin because we are free and have turned away from God, in whom there is no idea of evil. Evil is unnecessary and is a privation of good. endtext 30424 Spinoza(1632-77): if we acquire a vision of the world which is analogous to God's, we will see everything as part of the whole, and as necessary to the goodness of the whole. Therefore, "the knowledge of evil is an inadequate knowledge." Evil only appears when we regard parts of the universe as being self-subsistent. endtext 30426 Nietzsche (1844-1900) :his expressions of good and evil are so paradoxical that I cannot understand them, let alone put them into a pithy fragment. He seemed to require the increase of evil over good so that we may become strong in our fight to overcome it. I don't know what he thought evil really was but he belongs here, however, since his "Thus Spake Zarathustra" inspired some music that has been so often used to animate pictures of space that it has become a clich‚. endtext 30428 Three Proverbs: Evil communications corrupt good manners. Evil doers are evil dreaders. Of two evils, choose the less. endtext 30430 Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good. [Romans 12:21] endtext 30432 Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil. [Isaiah 5:20] endtext 30434 I have often thought upon death, and I find it the least of all evils. [Francis Bacon, 1561-1626] endtext 30436 Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. [Matthew 6:13] endtext 30438 (Some affirm that we say) Let us do evil, that good may come. [Romans 3:8] endtext 30440 All spirits are enslaved that serve things evil. [Shelley, 1792- 1822] endtext 30442 Eschew evil, and do good: seek peace, and ensue it. [Psalm 34:14, Book of Common Prayer version] endtext 30444 So farewell hope, and with hope farewell fear, Farewell remorse: all good to me is lost; Evil be thou my Good. [Milton, 1608-1674, Paradise Lost] endtext 30446 Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears; I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him. The evil that men do lives after them, The good is oft interred with their bones. [Shakespear, 1564-1616, Julius Caesar] endtext 30448 "Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears." "What have you got in the bag?" "Ears!" [Rinse the Blood off my Toga, by those two Canadian dudes - Wayne and Schuster?] endtext 30450 Two evils, monstrous either one apart, Possessed me, and were long and loath at going; A cry of Absence, Absence in the heart, And in the wood the furious winter blowing. [Ransom, 1888-1974, Winter Remembered] endtext 30452 Some of your hurts you have cured, And the sharpest you still have survived, But what torments of grief you endured From evils which never arrived! [Emerson, 1803-1882, Borrowing] endtext 30456 Few and evil have the days of the years of my life been. [Genesis 47:9] endtext 30458 We have seen Good men made evil wrangling with evil, Straight minds made crooked fighting crooked minds. [Muir, 1887-1959, The Good Town] endtext 30460 Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil. [Psalms 23:4] This interesting psalm also contains the relevant lines: The Lord is my shepherd: I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters. [Psalm 23:1] endtext 30464 Don't lets make imaginary evils, when you know we have so many real ones to encounter. [Goldsmith 1728-1774, The Good-Natured Man] endtext 30466 The love of money is the root of all evil. [1 Timothy 6:10] endtext 30468 He that will not apply new remedies must expect new evils; for time is the greatest innovator. [Bacon 1561-1626] endtext 30470 All nature is but art, unknown to thee; All chance, direction which thou canst not see; All discord, harmony not understood; All partial evil, universal good; And, spite of pride, in erring reason's spite, One truth is clear, Whatever is, is right. [Pope 1688-1744, An Essay on Man] endtext 30472 Resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. [Matthew 5:39] endtext 30474 St Thomas Aquinas [1225-1274]: he refuted the claim that God cannot know evil, since because He knows good, he must know the opposite. He thought evil was unintentional - something caused accidentally by good, in the way an artist can draw rubbish with a fine pen. endtext 30476 Boethius [in Consolations of Philosophy, 524] says that evil is nothing, since God can't do evil and God can do anything. endtext 30478 Leibniz [1646-1716] noted that the world contained a greater surplus of good over evil than any possible world; it is therefore the best of all possible worlds, and the evil it contains affords no arguments against the goodness of God. endtext 30505 Pathologically, evil is classed as a "binding" disorder. Binding, as well as being the process by which the brain collates data from individual neurons to form an "image" or perception, is the way the brain binds those perceptions to form an overall "meaning". In a good person, the binding is done altruistically, that is the meaning is assigned in a context of "the good of the species". In a bad person, the meaning is assigned in a context of "for the good of the individual," or the perceiver. endtext 30507 The problems of consciousness. The active pursuit of an understanding of consciousness is new - as a hard scientific pursuit that is. It began in the late twentieth century with experiments on the firing of individual neurons, and the gradual understanding of the role of quantum mechanical effects in the binding problem. The "binding problem" is a statement of, for example, the way the mind forms an image from the disparate firing of unconnected neurons in the visual cortex. endtext 30509 But the human brain is a product of evolution, just as is the brain of a dog. A dog's brain has finite capacity of understanding, and so therefore has that of a human. A dog cannot understand quantum mechanics, and so, some argued, there will be things beyond the capacity of humans to understand. What they forgot is that a dog does not need to understand quantum mechanics, but that people do. And that is a statement of the way brain science has progressed. We create the need to understand, then we find the way. And the need is provided by the evolution of curiosity, which is perhaps the more curious itself than the evolution of consciousness. endtext 30510 You make me laugh, Doctor, you and your scientific treatments. To cure evil! As if Hitler would have been a nice guy had he drunk chamomile tea after his meals. Or if we could give radon water to the inquisitors of the church. Would Pilate have washed his hands in it? Perhaps that's what really saved Barabas. Is there a chance that diet is the secret of a happy society? So what are you going to do to me, now that you know my disease, now that you know I am bad? Oh kill me with laughter. How I fear your needles! Have you got a pill for me to take? And you get paid for this. You're no better than any other charlatan, and that's what they've always said about modern medicine. endtext 30515 Oh! so you are amused? That must mean the treatment is nothing I can pay for. That's what amuses the doctor, isn't it? endtext 30520 You've told me about the worms. And I told you to keep them out of my head. If you search, you search from where you sit. If you're going to change anything in my mind, you will do it with speech alone. You are not to touch me. endtext 30525 Yes my husband does have a hobby. Why do you ask? Has it something to do with my treatment. You want me to what? Well if that isn't the funniest thing I've ever heard. The day I take an interest in telescopes is the day the heavens come down to meet us face to face. endtext 30530 Warren? Why do you want to talk to him? He wont come, I tell you. I wont let him. He's got nothing to do with this. You're supposed to be my doctor. Mine! You hear me. This is my problem. It's my disease, and I'm not bloody well sharing it. endtext 30535 Is there no other way? endtext 30537 You say "no" and I laugh. The promise of finesse in my control of Warren tickles me. Cure me and take his life away. Isn't it lovely that others can make such curative sacrifices? endtext 30605 When Martine again urged Warren to come to Europe to see the work on the telescope, for example, even he could not understand the depth of his evasion. "You know I can't leave Martine. Connie needs me here." "Why, for god sake. Can't you leave her for a couple of days." "Her analyst says I have to be here all the time for her treatment." "And what, precisely, is her treatment?" "Well she goes for her consultation every week. That's the main thing. Otherwise it's up to me. I have to stay here and ..." "Well?" "I have to stay here and give her attention and affection. The doctor says I have to love her." endtext 30610 "Is this medicine or pop songs?" "It's not funny, Martine." "Well it's not new either." "I have to ignore her lies." "And it certainly doesn't sound like science. How long is the treatment supposed to take?" "Could be forever." endtext 30705 Of course it was science, since love, like fear, is simply a response of the human brain. It is subjective terrain, though, and only brave scientists dare tread it. Yet it is better to call it subconscious than subjective, since the response is usually divorced from logical control, whereas subjective response is not. A man with a gun will make you freeze, whereas an evaluation of an impressionist painting will make you speak bullshit in proportion to the amount you want to impress the person you are talking to. Whatever. It was difficult to get words such as "love" and "fear" into a scientific treatise of brain function, but only because of the fear of ridicule. Fortunately a scientist came along who loved ridicule. He had flair, colour, extremely bad taste in clothing, a jewel in his tooth, and a regular TV spot on which he practised that thing regarded by all scientists as an anathema: publication by press conference. endtext 30710 He called himself Django Le Tete d'Oeuf, but neither that nor his purple suits would have propelled him to his popularity if he did not have the infuriating habit of being frequently right. If you've seen footage of that old entertainer Liberace you might get the general idea of his style, though he carried less jewelry and, in the beginning at least, spared his audience the mutilated Chopin. Unfortunately the fact remains that whatever you do to Chopin, it is still far more entertaining than a science lecture. Django knew that, and knew that his purple suits and jewelled tooth were not compensation enough, but passionately wanted to get his message across. So he developed "The Visual Symphony of the Brain". His theories he illustrated on a huge screen in front of which he danced, explaining what the moving sparkles of light were. It was an image of the brain, or parts of it, illustrating Django's theories of emotional memory; his theories of love and fear, good and evil. Of course the whole thing would have failed if he had not, in typically bad taste, employed a pianist to accompany the whole thing with mutilated Chopin. endtext 30715 He took a volunteer from the audience. Actually he grabbed a skinny, nervous-looking middle-aged woman by the hand and dragged her to centre stage. Suddenly the lights dimmed. Above her head a blue strobe, slow like a police light, lit up her hair. A piercing siren sounded for five entire mind numbing seconds then stopped. The blue strobe continued and a man jumped out from no where, held up a shot gun and pumped five rounds into her chest. endtext 30720 They were blanks, of course, but she fainted anyway. Django was not finished his demonstration, however. When she revived, and while she was still to stunned to protest, he did it again. The lights dimmed. The strobe. The siren. The silence .... and then nothing. There was no gunman, but still she screamed and fainted. "You see, kids," said Django, "for the rest of her life, whenever she hears a siren, she's going to think she is about to be shot. The brain has done something very important in that short time - it has formed an emotional memory. Let's go to the holo display and take a geek at this on a neuronal level. Harry, how about some Choppers?" Harry obliged with a Chopin nocturne, suitably mutilated to match the colours of Django's brain map. endtext 30725 Standing in front of his brain map he looked more like an American weather forecaster than a scientist, and his enthusiasm bubbled over infectiously. "You see all the activity in the visual and auditory cortexes?... or is that cortices ... anyway, you can see them lit up. That lovely green sparkle is the short term memory of the siren and the strobe activating new potentials. From her reaction I would bet that those memories last a long time, but they will fade if not reinforced. endtext 30727 "But they wont fade completely, will they?" "No!" they shouted. "Will they?" "No!" they shouted louder. "Why?" No response. "You don't know do you? I'll tell you. Harry! How about a prelude for the long-term potentiation display." Harry obliged, and so did the display, showing light green neural pathways changing as they are reinforced by the potentials of fear. "If any of that long term stuff appears, she'll probably never forget. Look at it work - so quick and dirty. What a great thing the brain is! Is she still here? I want to try it again." She was not still there. endtext 30730 "Now the emotional memory system, which is for building our response to fear and love forms before other types of memory, like for remembering girls phone numbers. So any emotional memories we have from the time before we developed much ability to remember day to day events will affect us for the rest of our lives. That's why so many of us are so warped. Let's take a look at a warped brain. Better play out of tune for this, Harry." An image appeared, showing red and green pathways in the brain, the red outnumbering the green manifold. "Look at this. Potentials of memories of love, and of fear. It takes so little to create a memory of fear, but that's only half the problem. Without guidance, any sensory input could be interpreted as something that should be responded to by fear. This is evolution overreacting if you ask me, so I've thought of a way to change it." endtext 30735 "There are two ways to suppress the potential of fear aligned neural pathways. The first is boring because it would take years and years of talking to a shrink, so I don't think anyone will ever try it. The second way is real quick. I do it with my 'worms'" The audience cheered. They loved the worms almost as much as shooting someone. "Military Polonaise, Harry." They hoped it would be their own turn next to volunteer. endtext 30745 Of course Django was challenged from all parts of the scientific community, either through jealousy or simple disagreement. He invited anyone to come onto his show to disprove his theories. Some took him up, but their science did not matter, since the contract included a tiny clause about the need to sing and dance before the science was discussed. But that's science by television. Fortunately, or not, it needed a character like Django to survive. But he was one of a kind, so like Liberace and the dinosaurs, he is gone and sadly missed, for no one can replace him. Yet his theories are still very much alive and working in psychotherapy. They are working on me, aren't they. endtext 30805 So I passed ten years, weekly visiting your couch, talking my head away. It must have seemed like all I wanted. Those years rolled by on the farm with nothing much changing except the weariness of its occupants, and the increasing time Warren spent lying under the stars at night. He had never replaced the telescope he ruined one night in rage, though he occasionally looked through binoculars, through which he could see quite clearly the galaxy NGC 5128 and the band across it that made it look like a brain looked at from above. He also used them to make a systematic search for comets, hoping to rectify his lost chance at glory. Otherwise his time was of silent contemplation and what for him passed as prayer, which was his wonder at the beauty above him. endtext 30810 And during my treatment you constantly urged me to take an interest in what interested him. Or at least pretend to. You've never understood why I come to see you, have you, dear Doctor? You admitted from the beginning that if I have the disease I have, that is the disease you say I have, resists all attempts at treatment. So why would I come to see you? endtext 30815 So I took an interest in astronomy. Or did I pretend to take an interest? Of course I was not really interested in astronomy itself, nor telescopes in general, nor the flying telescope in particular. I had found the place where I wanted to spend the rest of my life hiding, so why should I want to see what is outside? endtext 30820 But you urged me, and since I thought it might help to find out why I am here, I followed Warren's correspondence with Martine. I did anyway, of course, but now I took note of details that did not interest me before. This was about the time that they started to build the launch track in the Hamersley Ranges in Western Australia. As far as I was concerned, the other side of Australia might as well have been in orbit, but it excited Warren that his country took part in the experiment. What excited me was the attempt to stop it. I had an affinity with the protestors. Why? Maybe because I'm a little bit indian; and because they imposed the authority of foreign money on land owned by the aborigines. Maybe because it annoyed Warren. Probably because Martine met her lover there, and it made Warren jealous. endtext 30825 The launch rail was an old idea from last century, finally made good in the isolated rocks of the Western Australian deserts. The track for the rail gun starts a few meters north of the Tropic of Capricorn. It then runs almost due north for twenty kilometres, through cuttings and tunnels, before turning up the side of Mt Meharry. Because the mountain was not the optimum shape, tunnels were drilled through it as well, so that the track might curve gently in its gradual change to the vertical. The motive power for the trains while still on their rails was provided by electricity, fed through the superconducting rails to the trains suspended on their magnetic cushions. Martine liked to watch it from the air. It fed her newly enriched taste for power to watch the machines slice up the mountain. endtext 30830 The resemblance to trains is slight, for they are merely cylinders with a nose cone. The cylinders are cupped in the tubular rail, suspended by magnetic levitation, and twisted as they are accelerated towards the top of the mountain. Fortunately there was never anyone aboard, for they were spinning five times per second by the time they reached the top, so they left like a bullet leaving a gun. Once it has left the tunnel at the tip of Mount Meharry, the train becomes a rocket, and the rocket engine ignites to continue the acceleration. Because it is spinning, the conservation of angular momentum obviates the need for fins. Martine liked to watch it in her dreams, where everything ran without friction, when the brain was insulated from the desert sand outside. She pushed the sand away, like protesters. endtext 30835 Each rocket carries 15 tonnes. There was a launch nearly every day for three years of the initial phase of the space telescope construction, then at least once a week until its completion. The dreams were more powerful and lustier than the darkest of chocolate. She awoke, sweating, crying; not from nightmares, but from visceral tear of the thrust into space. endtext 30840 When the rocket leaves the tunnel its velocity is nearly 3000 kilometres per hour straight up. The pressure change at the exit is considerable, and causes great stress on the structure that supports it. The acoustic shock is considerable, for the pressure change is well above the limit of linear propagation of acoustic waves in the atmosphere. The sound pressure level generated is about 185 dB. Depending on the atmospheric conditions on the day, this can be heard 100 kilometres away as an explosion: where the low frequency rumble resonates with your body cavity, inducing nausea like the infrasonic cannons. It was love. And love breeds love, whereas power, they say, breeds contempt. endtext 30845 None of these ideas are new, of course, as anyone who is familiar with speculation in science, or fiction, could tell you. The big difference is that in speculation one has rarely to deal with the forces of environmentalism. The visible works of the mass launcher, and the infrastructure to support it and the telescope factory beside it, were enormous. The best place for it, they said, was the desert. The desert was a song. She needed a teacher. endtext 30850 Of the reasons Mt Meharry were chosen as a launch site, including the proximity of iron ore and a nearby port at Dampier, was that nobody lived there. It was a thousand kilometres at least to the nearest big town and they did not want noise complaints. Actually there were a few people there - some miners, graziers, a few small towns, some aborigines, some cattle and some sheep, fifteen million rabbits, two million feral cats, two wombats and a bandicoot - but no one that really mattered. Not compared to the advancement of science, anyway. endtext 30905 The rail of the gun ran through dreaming land, all of it esoterically sacred to the aboriginals who once lived there. It was the land the early Dutch navigators thought unfit for habitation. A few hundred years later the English found Iron ore in what they called the Hamersley Range. Mount Meharry, a hill by any other continental standards at 1251 metres, stands at the Eastern Edge of Hamersley Range National Park. It seems to be the first step in making a bigger telescope: carve up a mountain. And while bulldozers are still used as carving knives, the first step in protesting will be: sit in front of a bulldozer. endtext 30910 His first thought was, "I suppose I must make a fire, now that I am here. But how?" He paused, for dark was falling and everyone else had left. "I am virtually naked, and I know I will need warmth. Soon I will need to cook, to release nutrition, to eradicate toxins. I will be hungry soon, and I will need to cook. I am alone and will need comfort. I am in the bush, I am alone and I know I will need comfort tonight, as well as protection from the cold. "I must make a fire. I am glad I am here but I need to make a fire. But how?" But he had forgotten how, for such things do not pass genetically. He was a lone black man, divorced from his ancestry, trying to save it. He pulled his only thin blanket around him and huddled into the blade of the towering, silent bulldozer. endtext 30912 "May I join you?" Martine stood before him with a flask of coffee and two mugs. He smiled at the hot flask and motioned her to sit, but his smile was quickly tempered by his suspicion of her. "What do you want?" he asked, taking a mug from her. "To talk. That's all." "You're not going to try anything stupid?" "You know we are not allowed to touch you on this land." "Because it's mine." "Do you want some milk? I can get some milk for the coffee." She stood and walked away, diffusing his belligerence with grace that seemed sincere. That's what he thought, but it was early morning and he had just woken. endtext 30914 He rubbed the sleep from his eyes and scratched his stubbly chin, wishing he could shave or wash, but he could not move until some relief arrived. Relief? Not very likely, but his plea for help might bring two or three up from Perth. It's too bloody far, Keith, they had told him. endtext 30915 Martine returned. She asked him his name. "Keith Simpson. I gather you are Martine Reuter." "Simpson? Is that a common name?" "You think I should be called Walmidgi or Wilpilara or something?" "No I know someone else called Simpson, that's all." "Is he black?" "No." "Is he a lawyer?" Martine spilled her coffee. "Don't tell me you're a lawyer." "So I know I have the right to sit here until I die." "Oh I don't care about the protest. The father of my child is a lawyer. I've been annoyed with them for forty years now. If you want sugar you can get it yourself." She sat heavily beside him, spilling her coffee again, soiling her trousers in a most un- Luxembourgish way. endtext 30916 He thought, "she's about my age. Fairly well kept, too." But they were silent for a long time. He wanted to confide in her, and the longer they sat together, the less he saw her as an enemy. He wanted to tell of how he felt alive now, how this mission gave him strength. He would say, "yesterday when I set out, when I first took my shoes off and felt the grass with my toes, when I removed my clothes and let my body breathe, there was no one to watch me but the garden and its animals. A blue tongue lizard watched me, flicking its tongue at me, as if I was interesting. That seems like only yesterday because time is keeping pace with me, by which I mean that I no longer give regard to the one dimension that displayed the progress of my past. This may be a failure on my part, but the question of time, though interesting to itself, does not interest me now that I am threatened. Universal questions and catholic absolutes are so quickly buried under the needs of a moment." endtext 30918 "So, naked, I walked away from my shoes. And in the heat of the afternoon the lizard remained bored. I laugh then, because the only time I ever enjoyed my garden was when I left it forever. I left it alone, to be untended, to grow, to let the animals and plants tangle themselves together, to create knots of existence without misguidance. Now it grows by itself, creating convolutions, colourful convolutions bleeding into the grey order, and so it grows and acquires knowledge." endtext 30920 "But that was yesterday and now I am here in the bush alone with my road weary blisters wondering how I will make a fire, for I fear another night alone. The garden I have found is untended, so there is wood, there is fuel. But I am distressed immediately to realise that it has rained recently. The sandy seeping ground is dry but under the leaves on the ground there is moisture and the dead wood lying around is damp. Then I discover dry wood from the trees, untrained and beautiful in the twisted savagery of chaotic nature. Dry wood is my first success. This is the first discovery I have ever made. The fear of the approaching night at last softens, and I spend the next hour collecting wood." endtext 30922 He knew it was foolish to have a crush on her. While she asked him about his tenure, he just wanted to feel her legs, her fat, waterfed legs. They reminded him of his old supervisor's tubby legs. In his time as a corporate lawyer, the hard unplastic glossy shoes covered toeless artificial feet and echoed as the heels cut holes in the hard nylon corridors, and the echoes found walls of glass through which we could see them from our cells. Echoes are stupid because they do not know that we cannot touch them anyway. Echoes run away and die not knowing that they are welcome as long as they carry no information - just euphony. endtext 30924 In this bush you cannot hear any echoes. All sounds here are absorbed by the hazy blue oil of the sparse trees; and the trees are generous and fair, for they trade sound for sound, ever giving susurrations for the stertorous utterance and moans of my passing and my ripping of branches. They gave him dry wood. He took it from them regardless of anything the tree might feel. Regarding what he felt for the tree as his new friend. He will reward the tree by not pissing at its base when he wakes in the night, frightened by the never ending sound it makes in the stillness between winds. endtext 30926 So the black man discovered dry wood, but did not know how to light it. "Wasn't it cold here last night?" asked Martine. "I'll make a fire tonight." "And you'll sleep under the stars?" "Well obviously. I haven't got a tent, and I'm not moving from my site in front of the bulldozer." "Well it's nice sleeping under the stars," said Martine. Was it? He had never slept so in his life. This was the first chance he had ever had to live his heritage. endtext 30928 He found some grasses which could be teased to make tinder. Scraps he picked up occasionally. He collected scraps and pasted them in memory. A whisper he heard in the corridor could be tasted, dissected, analysed, added to other whispers. But if it continued to tease then he vomited and tasted it yet again. Then he pressed it together with other scraps of grass, and bunched it and teased it and the threads became vulnerable and exposed to air. The scraps of tinder are primed and they wait for a spark. Fat legs pounds his face again, and he returned to suppression, he returned to realising other people's discoveries into the wisdom of the modern routine. endtext 30930 "I wanted to make a fire last night, but I haven't any matches. And your lot wont give me any." Martine knew they were trying to freeze him out, hoping his support would never come. She said, "can't you make one? Iron and flint? Quartz on quartz to strike a spark?" "I have no experience of those things." "Well if you manage to get one started I'll sleep out here with you," said Martine. But he had experience of despair and could recognise its approach. What did she want, this woman? endtext 30932 And always we have ideas. Always we must try something. Perhaps wood turned on wood will work, though it irks him to think so primitively. Dark is approaching now and the need is great for fire. He makes a bow from a supple branch torn desperately from a young tree, but he has no twine to tie the ends, to keep the bow or to turn the fire drill. He has no time to find the twine or the drill or a piece of hardwood to turn the drill on to create heat and flame. Once she said to him "You cannot leave until you have created something worthwhile. You will not sleep. You will not eat." And so he worked all night and the next day and night. He continued without sleep and food and even water until he thought he could approach her with what he had made. He could not find her. He searched the next night and day, still without food and sleep and water and finally he found her sitting in a cool breeze and listening to a waterfall and talking gently with her equals. He interrupted and she stopped and looked at him, not expectant but annoyed. "Look what I have done," he said, and held out my arms to show her. "Who are you?" she asked. endtext 30934 He walked outside then, and walked again home, where he lay on his bed and tossed his soul between fitful sheets for hours until finally, at sunrise, he slept. Fitfully he slept because the sun slowly climbed higher and yellow rays burned his eyelids and made his body sweat. The heat did not wake him by itself, though, and he slept until the dryness in his mouth had created a parchment of his palate. He crawled down the sandbank and dipped his head in a still pool, drank, and retched because the water was foul. But he was revived by the shock, and made sensible enough to move to where the stream was running and the water sweeter, and there he could drink his fill and start another day. But that was then, and this woman Martine is now, interfering with his only chance at finding a destiny, any destiny, any hope. endtext 30936 He was making a bow to turn a drill to make fire. He needed a string for the bow, so he cut a length of leather from his belt, and this was rather stiff because he was so fat, so he whipped it against the blade of the bulldozer until the thong was pliable. So then he tied it to the bow and began to look for wood for the drill and the base. He remembered that some pines burn well and with sparks. endtext 30938 Of course he was late to work because he had slept too long, and she castigated him loudly. Everyone heard, but that did not worry him as much as her disapproval. She came to see him at his desk later that day, and she castigated him again for he had torn one of the legs off the desk and had broken off the foot and whittled a point. He was rubbing the stick between his hands, rotating it like a primitive hand spun fire drill, but the top of the desk was plastic and he could not rotate the drill fast enough to reach ignition temperature. Also, he was using shredded office paper for tinder, and that is not ideal. She said, "race memory?" endtext 30940 So this time he gathered some dry grass, and during afternoon tea he teased that grass into fine filaments. He tried again with the new tinder and again she caught him and castigated him loudly. The chiding went on for a long time and finally she asked him why he did this, and he had to admit to her that he loved her and that he did this to please her. She stopped. She was quiet. She told him to go home and rest and to call her in the morning. They had to get a new desk for him, because he could not work at a desk with only three legs. He asked if it could have a wooden top. endtext 30942 Those experiments at the office were now valuable in that he knew how to make tinder from dry grasses. Now how had found some suitable pine for his drill and was almost ready to begin. If he could make a fire for the night he would be comforted. Then there was the promise from that woman that she would stay if he could make fire. They would talk together all night - she of the highest technology, and he of the oldest. endtext 30946 In the old days the other one never waited for him. He rang and said he would be back yesterday, but he heard about the telescope works so he came north to the launch site instead, suspecting he was needed. With just a few things he came here. Now he rotates his fire drill and he sees smoke. It has taken him hours of failure and experimentation, but he sees smoke, and he knows how gently to blow on the tinder and there are flames. She said that it would be different when he returned, and he hopes she meant she would be kinder. She said his new desk would have a wooden top. endtext 30948 And she was true to her promise. His new desk does have a wooden top. He could break it and feed it piece by piece into the fire he had made, and tonight he will be comforted by the heat and light it gives. More significantly, he will be comforted by the companionship it brings, for he remembered Martine's promise. endtext 30950 Together they made tea over the fire in front of the bulldozer, until the shadows overtook the day and the stars began to shine. "Tell me why this land is sacred to you," she asked. "You mean you know nothing about it, yet you want to tear it up?" "It's just a bit of dirt." "Then why not do it in your own country?" "Well for one thing, the launch rail is almost as long as my country is wide. We'd have to flatten a dozen villages. People live there." "They used to live here, too," he said, quietly rubbing his hands on his tea mug, wishing the light would fade completely so he could not see the land he had not learned. He was defending the shrine of his ancestors. His name was Keith, and he didn't know the stories except in published versions in English, the language of the successful invader. endtext 30952 In English, then, their only language in common, he told her the myths he had read in books, focusing on the dreaming myths of how the stars were made. "First the Milky Way..." "The pathway of Zeus!" said Martine. "For the Gunwinggu it is a rope made by Balmadj to keep Bindag-Bindag, her husband, from copulating with their daughters. And that over there is the Gomerindji constellation." "The Plieades? The seven daughters of Atlas and Pleione. We intend to have a very close look at it when the telescope flies. It's a globular cluster." "It is seven sisters who became stars escaping from a man who wanted to copulate with them. He's the morning star now." "A planet. Usually Venus, though sometimes Mercury. The vulgar have difficulties with them. Want some wine?" She poured without waiting for an answer. "Tell me more," she said. "Are all the stories about copulating", she giggled and they talked all night, or at least until the wine ran dry. He waited till she slept before creeping away to urinate, and he did not go too far, for he did not trust her yet, and she could easily command the bulldozer to flatten his campsite if he was not there. endtext 30954 "Hi Warren. Did you watch the news?" "Martine? Are you still at the launch site." "Yes. I couldn't miss the first bulldozer rush. It was incredible. Those things move dirt like butter. They go straight though mountains. I'm glad I got out of the way." She giggled. Warren suspected she was drunk. "But what about the protesters," he asked. "Oh Keith took care of them." Suddenly she burst into laughter, turned away and called, "Keith! Keith, come over here and say hello to Warren." Keith's face, scruffy and stubble from his week camped in front of the bulldozer, filled Warren's screen. He was evidently very drunk. He burped, turned and kissed Martine on the cheek, burped again and said, "G'day. You're not Warren 'Australia' Simpson are you?" Martine's giggle turned to raucous laughter, and the screen went blank. endtext 31005 "Hi. My name's Warren. I was the first baby born in the republic, and I nearly discovered a comet once." endtext 31105 "I see your girlfriend is being unfaithful." "I beg your pardon?" Warren had not heard me come in. "What are you doing sneaking up on me like that. Were you listening." "I had decided to take an interest in your telescope, that's all." "By interfering." "Darling, what are you so cranky about." "I'm not cranky. If you must know I'm very happy. Didn't you see? My telescope is going to fly." "Yes, but only because your girlfriend is a prostitute." endtext 31110 He became white and still. I felt the worms begin to crawl inside my head, and the heat of the extra blood flow flushed my face with health. This was a good one. He had no defence for himself without admitting his feelings for her, supposing he knew them, and none for her since he evidently agreed with me. I stood in front on him tapping the floor, trying to be irritating. It felt so nice after all those years of suppression. All that lying on the couch, promising to try to be nice to Warren. It all fell away as I soared in glorious abandon, my wings flapping, razor honed blades of laughter. But Warren found some courage from somewhere; perhaps from his anger at Martine. He said, "you are supposed to be making me love you. Isn't that what the doctor said?" He stood and walked across the garden to the paddock. endtext 31115 I watched him from the farm control console. He stopped at the shed and took out the shot gun. I was worried for a moment, sensing a new suicidal desire in him, but I did not move. Instead I just watched him walk off into the paddocks, across toward the dam. I sent out a signal to all the sheep to follow him, and soon he was walking across a ploughed field like a Pied Piper, followed by hundreds of woolly rats. Of course when he walked into the dam I told the sheep not to follow him. I still wasn't sure what he was doing, though. He turned to the camera he assumed I was using and held up the gun. He was waste deep and thought that was enough, for from there he could fling the gun into the middle of the dam. The bastard. He knew I hated water. I tried to send the sheep in after him, but the system overrid my command. I kicked it. I was hungry. It was time for lunch. I ate voraciously, joyously, laughing whenever I thought of my first attempt at being interested in astronomy and telescopes. endtext 31120 The day was hot so by the time Warren returned to the house his clothes were almost dry. He sat at the kitchen table without changing and made a rude sandwich of bread and cheese. But he had no appetite, and when he looked over at me still gorging he put the sandwich down without even nibbling. He said weakly, "I'm sorry, but I think it will be better this time - without the gun I mean. I hope so, for that took all my strength." He was weeping, and before long the years of effort, his expenditure for my cure, burst through in great heaving sobs. Pathetically he tried again to nibble his sandwich. endtext 31125 You see then that my treatment had little overt affect on my personality and behaviour, and what effect was discernible could just as easily have been attributed to aging and natural growth, as to the mysteries of self exposure of the mind and the microscopic search of my brain. I wished sometimes for demons, for the alternative seemed idiotic - I was beginning to develop an irrational belief in the existence of love. What I mean is that I think for the first time in my life I felt contrition, and I cannot help but link the two concepts. endtext 31205 My cure might have been quicker but for that incident, for although Warren stayed with me, it drove him outside. He used to spend hours every clear night, lying on his couch under the stars. If there were too many clouds he simply sat inside with a viewing helmet on, switched into the optical telescopes on the comet-watch cluster of satellites. With that he could look at any part of the sky from an orbital telescope, a view he could never hope for from the garden. Yet, although it was beautiful itself, he always claimed it couldn't match the beauty of naked eye observation on a clear night. He was lucky to have such good eyes, yet hated the modern adoptive optics that robbed stars of their twinkle. I had needed lens-corrective surgery years ago. Still, it was better than the antique prosthesis I wore as a child, and which always broke in a fight. endtext 31210 So sometimes I joined him outside on clear summer nights. I was uninvited, but he did not seem to mind. I sat, uninterfering, and looked at Warren or the sky. But I could not stay that way as long as he could. I never did see the point. endtext 31215 Warren and Martine continued to communicate, but he never did visit Europe to see her, and she was too busy to see him except on the occasions when she came to the Australian desert to inspect the work on the new mass driver that would be used to launch the more durable parts of the telescope, such as the sail cloth and the liquid metal. She noticed that Warren was weakening, though it seemed to be more through a constant drain on his enthusiasm than the natural tug of age. But his eyes were always peaceful, if a little sad. She asked him why, but it was many years before he understood himself, and even more before he would tell her. Once they were sitting on the verandah on a cool summer evening. I came to join them, bringing tea and biscuits. "Don't let me interrupt," I said. endtext 31220 "I was telling Warren about the space construction. All the materials are in orbit now, and it's a matter of assembling them." "Before you sail them away from Earth." "You know how it will work then?" "Warren has been telling me about it." "Really. I thought you took no interest, Connie." Warren laughed. "She doesn't really," he said. It is funny. I used to be intensely interested, but in a different way. It was a marker of change. endtext 31225 I have a viewing helmet, too, now. Sometimes Warren and I watch the construction work of the telescope. There are six observing satellites clustered around it so that the construction may be monitored on earth. We prefer the full helmets so we can look in all directions and feel we might actually be up in space with them. He explains to me where each vehicle is going when we see a rocket flare, and what each of the structural beams will do when we see them fixed in place. It's like a floating junk yard up there, but every one in the ballet seems to know what is happening. At first glance it looks so disordered, but like goody-goody people every where, they are intent on the defeat of entropy. I was annoyed that I had to make so much effort to despise them. endtext 31230 My psychotherapy sessions have been going for fifteen years now. Warren and I have stopped working entirely. The manager is young, exuberant and, though I hate to admit it, competent. The tractors are smarter than ever and the neural implants in the sheep never fail like they used to. It only takes one person and a microphone to run a farm these days, though you still have to fix a fence occasionally, though they transmit warnings to the sheep not to run into them. endtext 31240 There was another breakthrough that I should tell you about. Some nights, as I said, I went outside to sit beside Warren as he looked at the sky. Sometimes he tried to hold my hand, and I would withdraw. The breakthrough was the fifteenth time. That is when I let him hold it. At that time I still had to clear my mind lest it disgust me. endtext 31245 But that was ten years ago, ten years before the telescope flew. A few years later, when construction was quite advanced, they began the delicate work of deploying the structural support for the sails, and the even finer work of setting the sails themselves. I was finished with you by then, of course, and though my life had changed I felt no different - not profoundly anyway. I had come to see the depth of Warren's commitment to me, and I wondered about it as a strange thing, far stranger than his amateur commitment to the space telescope which, to the rest of the world, had consumed his life for seventeen years now. But still, I didn't love him. Even then my only care was for our remoteness, for the maintenance of my escape. endtext 31250 One night soon after thinking these things it rained. The farm needed it badly so we did not complain and sat inside with our viewing helmets on, watching the construction work on the telescope. Until that time there had been no disasters during either the launching of equipment or construction. Then we watched it in the silence of our space. We saw two ships, unmanned naturally, tugging at the corners of the first sail, slowly unfolding from its storage. Even though it was micro- thin and perforated, it was twenty kilometres square and therefore had considerable mass. So when it tore at a point near one of the craft, the loss in inertia made that craft lose control - too rapidly for the observing ship to evade it. Three people were killed in the collision, and the sail ruined. It was a lot more spectacular than usual - watching the telescope construction that night. endtext 31253 And Warren was swearing. He said, "the bloody idiots. I told them to unfurl it in pieces and then sew it together. But they never listen to me, do they. No, not bloody Warren Australia Simpson. The whole thing was only my idea, for Christ sake!" I had the urge to laugh at him. I felt joy again, but I had control, and instead of crushing him with his own petulance, I left the room. endtext 31255 I went into the garden and searched for a frog. It took me an hour but I wanted to kill something bigger than an insect. When I eventually found one I crushed it with my heel. My heart was racing, but I felt oddly stupid, as if this was not where I should be. My emotions were controlling me, but instead of berating Warren as I should, a part of me had logical control. It was very easy to crush that frog, but I could not understand why. It was your fault. It was you that fitted me with new valves, a new way to vent my anger. endtext 31257 But then, as my heel crushed the tiny, innocent mind of the frog, I realised it was all unnecessary. I had so much energy to waste, and it all went entropically. My mind craves disorder, and suddenly I was given a jolt, like the electric impulse that fires the frog's leg to kick. Someone was trying to kick my mind from within, and nothing was happening. More specifically I felt no joy. I had behaved normally, but the joyous flush of blood did not come. I cursed you. I cursed you very loudly and harshly. Then I went inside and took Warren's hand. Then I kissed him. Then he looked confused. I smiled, a bit wanly I must admit, and with diffidence. And finally he cried. endtext 31260 The very last time Martine visited the farm she was as vital as ever, enthusiastic about the telescope which was nearing completion. Warren was drawn and quiet, and yet again she asked him why. He laughed. "I'll tell you. Because for the last ten years I've actually been in love with Connie." He began coughing, looking apologetically at Martine. But the coughing continued and she had to run to me for help. endtext 31305 But he hung on, like some hold on for Christmas or the birth of a child. Warren was waiting for the flight of the telescope, and when Martine visited they had just finished unfurling the sails, and the solar wind had begun to fill them. In only a few more weeks the disk was spinning, and was given the gentle shove it needed to take it out of its far earth orbit. Untethered, the sails would accelerate the disk away from the sun and the process of wetting the lenticular disk with liquid metal could begin. endtext 31310 It took nearly a year more till it was ready. That was in the summer of 2077. Warren and I saw on the news that the new space telescope was expected to return it's first images that night. Neither of us said a word, and after dark Warren went out and lay with his binoculars in his observing couch, watching the procession above him with his usual patience. I brought the phone out to him, and roused him from his daze. I sensed his weakness and knelt by him, holding his trembling hand. "Hi Warren," said Martine, her jubilant image lighting up the screen. "Hi Martine. So tell me the news. Is it working?" "It's perfect, Warren. It's just perfect. Do you want to see the images?" "Just tell me what you see. Where are you pointing it?" "Right into the heart of the galaxy NGC 5128." "Hey we can see that from here." "But you should see what we can see. It's just incredible." "What do you see Martine?" "We see more stars." endtext 31315 Warren laughed a little, though it brought on a cough, and his heaving chest rocked the phone onto the grass. I picked it up, saying, "are you alright? You should come inside." "Are you there Warren?" asked Martine. "I'm here," he said when the phone was once more on his chest. He giggled. "So you can see more stars. I thought that would be about the strength of it." endtext 31320 "It is unbelievable, Warren. It's not just stars - I mean the you would think they would look like a random arrangement, or a gravitational centre or something. But there is nothing like that. There seems to be a strange order, and there are filaments of light between them as if... "As if what?" "Well that's it, Warren. I haven't got a clue. Here, have a look." The image from the space telescope filled the telephone display, but Warren was not looking at it, content to stare straight up, smiling. But it captivated my attention, for it reminded me of something. The points of coloured light filling a sphere and dancing filaments between them: it reminded me of my worms. endtext 31325 Martine asked, "what do you thing it means, Warren?" He just giggled a little and mumbled, "build a bigger telescope, see more stars." "What did you say, Warren? I can't hear you," said Martine. "What did you say you thought it was." "He's asleep Martine," I said. "Okay. I have to go anyway. Busy day ahead! What do you think it looks like, Connie?" I laughed and said good night, terminating the call, adding with an inaudible grunt, "you ought it ask it, not me." I turned to Warren. The rotten bastard. He wouldn't even look at the pictures from his precious telescope. I smiled at our ultimate compatibility and held his hand. But he did not respond for his strength had failed for the night, letting him sleep beneath the stars of the black southern sky, beneath the retina of his god. endtext 31405 So I knocked him to the ground, where he lay whimpering. I took his precious damn telescope and shoved it in his ear. "Guess what I can see Warren. ­Nada! Absolutely bloody nothing. You'd need your giant telescope to see something inside that lonely old space." It was an old joke, I know, but I never said I was funny. Properly funny people are even crueller than me, though, so don't you criticise before thinking of the last joke you made. And now you make me sound sanctimonious by making me justify what you have called my guilt. I don't feel the need to do that, and if I ever do its into the flooded river I go. endtext 31410 When we looked deep we started to see things. We could map the positions of the lights, and trace the vectors of the filaments that seemed to connect them. And we knew that information flowed. But that's all we knew. The flow itself is intangible, so what does it care about our desires, our curiosities, our weaknesses, our need to get pissed on Friday nights, our secret desires for young lovers and old wisdom, our treasures and our despites, our prejudices and our bookshelves loaded with inherited nonsense, our reason for being and our need to find a reason for being. endtext 31415 When we analysed the vectors of the light filaments we realised it was thinking about itself. To us its many coloured lights were beautiful, but we wondered if it thought of itself as beautiful, in a way that some of us think of ourselves as ugly, and faint at the sight of brains and blood smattered over the concrete wall behind the firing squads of the revolutions. There was no reason for us to think that it was thinking, but now we know it is talking to us, reaching out for a celestial friend, and who knows, despite being many light years across its centre, perhaps it has not the means to make something to help it look for itself. What self-respecting thinking being would spend its entire life thinking about itself. But we haven't seen any of its kids. endtext 50000 There may not be an end. In the long run it may just depend on your view of the future of the universe. So go and check out the sky. Maybe it has a question for you. endtext endoffile