The Last Rational Man Page 11

then there wasn't much point in worrying about twenty first century diseases.

  My lover, possibly my wife, had breakfast ready for me in the kitchen. She had, or, as I was beginning to internalize, we had a small table and couple of chairs in the kitchen. A white ceramic sink with two separate faucets sat on top of a metal cabinet. We had a gas burner on a small countertop. A thin gas line ran to a refrigerator in a corner. I had seen gas powered refrigerators mentioned in an old thermodynamics text, but had never seen one. I walked over to the fridge, and peered behind it. Sure enough, there was a small flame burning next to the cooling coils.

  "Honey, Jimmy will be waiting for you."

  "Ah, right. Just curious."

  "As always. But you've looked at that refrigerator a hundred times already."

  I grunted, my mouth full of scrambled eggs. She seemed satisfied with my response.

  I finished eating, not quite sure what would happen next. As it turns out, most people's lives are pretty well regimented, and it doesn't take as much effort as you might expect to take over somebody else's role in life.

  We left the house together. Rebecca left me with Jimmy, who was in fact waiting for me outside. She ran off to catch the streetcar, while Jimmy and I set off for the port. I found it easy enough to keep up with Jimmy's conversation. Men don't talk much among themselves, besides the occasional grunt or curse, so Jimmy didn't notice that anything was odd about me.

  Our work was what manual labor is always like, everywhere and every time. We moved boxes and bales around, cussing and sweating, ate the lunches our loving wives had packed, and sweated and cursed some more.

  Jimmy invited me to stop at a bar on the way home, but I opted out. I was having a hard enough time fitting in without having to mingle with my old buddies at the bar, my old buddies that I had never met in my life. Fortunately, Jimmy decided to skip the bar himself, and walked home with me. I am not sure that I would have found the way back on my own.

  On the way home we passed a bookstore. It was a 'professional' bookstore. A sign in the window explained that they carried scientific texts, medical texts and law books, and that whatever they didn't have in stock they could order for delivery within two weeks. There were a few books on display, simple hardcover volumes embossed with the name of the book and author. The day of fancy graphics on textbooks hadn't arrived yet.

  I wondered what physics texts they would have. This was the beginning of the era of modern physics, so some of the 'classics' might already exist. There were no physics books on display in the window, and I considered going into the store to see if I could find any. My main concern was Jimmy, who wasn't the bookish type, and was already getting antsy waiting for me by the shop window.

  I was about to give up on the whole idea, when a book in the store window caught my eye. It looked vaguely familiar. It was familiar! It was 'Everyday Practical Chemistry'. My grandfather had had a copy, which I received as an inheritance – and now I would own my own. Jimmy waited patiently while I went into the store and bought the book. During the rest of our walk home he couldn't avoid commenting on what a waste of money it was, buying books like that. I wanted to tell him that it was better than wasting money on drinks, but thought better of it, and ignored his chiding.

  When I got home, Rebecca and dinner were waiting for me. We ate quickly, macaroni and cheese, and then Rebecca led me off to bed again. We did need to eat, but it was of secondary importance. Love-making was our highest priority. Frankly, it suited me fine.

  This constant lovemaking in the days before the pill was invented could only have one result, one which we both looked forward to. Sure enough, not six months after passing through the looking glass, Rebecca became pregnant.

  I was quite nervous as the pregnancy advanced. Things weren't completely primitive back then. There were hospitals and basic sanitation, but basic diagnostic techniques, like ultrasound imaging, hadn't been invented. Even penicillin was not yet available. Rebecca, though, was ecstatic, and more importantly, quite healthy. After waiting the requisite nine months, plus an extra week (a bonus for first-time parents), we were rewarded with our first son.

  If you have ever had children born to you, you will know how happy, shocked and confused I was. Our son was born in the local maternity hospital, and we name him Alan. Rebecca and I had discussed both girls and boys names, and we had agreed upon Alan because, well we just liked the name. What Rebecca didn't know, and what I could never tell her, was that Alan was my father's name, and I chose it in an ironic mood, a twist on the family custom of naming kids after dead relatives. The thing was, I had just named my kid after a relative who hadn't even been born yet.

  Eventually I had to leave the hospital, and go home to get some rest.

  It took me a long time to fall asleep. Having just turned into a father made me think about my own family, and the life I had left so long ago in the future. I wondered how my mother was doing. Did she wonder what happened to me? Were my aunts still saying 'Just like Pa?' When I finally fell asleep, images of my parent's house flitted through my dreams.

  In the morning I found myself alone for the first time since I had come through that mirror. I had to find my own clothing. Pants and shirt were no problem, but I had to rummage through the drawers to find a pair of socks. I found the socks in the bottom drawer, and was about to close it when I noticed a shoebox buried under the socks.

  I opened the box. There were a bunch of old photos in there. Mostly photos of people I had never met, though I would probably be expected to recognize them when I met them.

  Rebecca appeared in a couple of photographs. And – so did I. There I was, at some formal occasion, perhaps our wedding. The photograph looked familiar. I looked at it more carefully. Sure, I had seen that photo before, on my mother's mantelpiece. It was a photo of my grandfather as a young man. Sure enough, just like Pa.

  A Man of Good Taste

  "You have heard of our restaurant, I assume?"

  "Of course. It is famous in the Islands."

  "Famous, or perhaps infamous. It depends on your point of view, I suppose."

  My host was a huge man, tall, broad, and fat. His face was bloated as well, though it was mostly hidden by his unkempt beard. His blue eyes glanced calmly at me, as if there was nothing unusual about our plans for the day.

  He wore what passed for formal dress in the Islands, long slacks and a polo shirt, as opposed to shorts and a complete lack of shirt. As a journalist, I was dressed in a similar fashion. It is always best to mix in with the natives, unless they are shooting at each other.

  We walked down the twisted path that passed for Main Street. The city planners hadn't worked very hard at planning. One could say that the Islands in general were very deliberately unplanned. Unplanned by design, courtesy of the Islands' fabulously wealthy dictator/owner Sir Hardly Fine.

  It was an amazing stroke of genius. Take a bankrupt island economy, one where anarchy prevailed and law and order was a distant dream, and find the local resource that could be turned into hard cash. An island with no natural resources, lousy agriculture, and an uneducated populace. What could one possibly sell?

  Well, Sir Hardly, known as 'Hard' to his friends, had figured out exactly what would sell. Anarchy, if it was marketed just right, could be a gold mine. Your well-to-do western citizen leads a boring life. Sure, sometimes he watches a football game, and gets all excited about some team of another, but it's artificial, and deep down inside he knows it. Buying a new SUV or luxury car might be a bit exciting the first time around, but it becomes routine after a while. And need I tell you how routine sex is for most people?

  But at night, they turn on their televisions, and watch the real world, the Third World, fall dramatically apart. They watch their favorite anchorman, reporting from a nasty civil war off somewhere they've never heard of, and though they don't admit it, they're jealous. That reporter is in danger. He's wearing a flak jacket. Bombs and missiles are exploding all around him. His adrenalin is flow
ing like crazy - hell, he's got more adrenalin than most of us have blood. He's alive, really alive.

  So they sit there, night after night, all comfortable in their suburban homes, watching comfortable canned TV shows, making comfortable love with their comfortable spouses, and dying for some excitement, some real excitement. So they go to a hockey game, and watch other guys having an exciting time hitting each other. Or they don't even pretend they are watching team sports, and they go to watch boxers, or go to a car race and hope somebody crashes spectacularly. And that is the problem. It's all spectacle, there is nothing real. They may as well watch a chess game.

  Sir Hardly could hardly spell his own name, but he saw the business opportunity. A place where almost everything goes, where almost anything is possible, a place with real excitement, real danger, real adrenalin.

  Anarchy as a tourist attraction. The trick was in managing the danger, make it just the right kind of danger, just the right amount of danger. People will accept a small risk of being shot. That type of risk is exciting. Dying of dysentery, on the other hand, is dull – you may as well stay home and watch the game, and die slowly of boredom.

  So the Islands were born. The place where the sewage system worked, but the police force didn't. Where con-men, thieves, and prostitutes of every