Sixty Days and Counting - Kim Stanley Robinson 12 стр.


Remind me to buy dry wood next time.

Anna took her bowl back into the kitchen. Water was still running, but it wouldnt for long. She filled her pots, and a couple of five gallon plastic jugs they had in the basement. These too would freeze eventually, unless she put them near the fire. They needed a better black-out routine, she saw. She took them out to the living room and saw the boys settling in. This must be how it had been, she thought, for generations on end; everyone huddling together at night for warmth. Probably she would have to work from home the next day, though her laptop battery was depleted. She wished laptop batteries lasted longer.

Remind me to check the freezer in the morning. I want to see if things have started to thaw.

If you open it, it will lose its cool.

Unless the kitchen is colder than the freezer. Ive been wondering about that.

Maybe we should just leave the freezer door open then.

Maybe we can get the fire going in it!

They laughed at this, but Anna still felt uneasy.

They built a city on the coffee table using Joes blocks, then read by candlelight. Charlie and Nick hauled an old double mattress that they called the Tigers Bed up from the basement, and they laid it right before the fire, where Joe used it as a trampoline which looked like it was going to slingshot him right into the feeble blaze.

When everything was arranged, Charlie read aloud some pages from The Once and Future King, about what it was like to be a goose migrating over the Norwegian Sea a passage that had Anna and the boys entranced. Finally they put out the candles, and fell asleep

Only to awaken all together, surprised and disoriented, when the power came back on. It was 2 AM, and beyond the reach of the smoldering gray coals the house was very cold, but fully lit, and buzzing with the sounds of its various machines. Anna and Charlie got up to turn the lights off. The boys were already asleep again by the time they got back downstairs.

The next day, things were back to normal, more or less, though the air was still smoky. Everyone wanted to tell stories about where they had been when the power went off, and what had happened to them.

It was actually kind of nice, Charlie said the next night at dinner. A little adventure.

Anna had to agree, though she was still uneasy. It wouldnt have been if the power were still off.

THREE Going Feral

Again foul weather shall not change my mind, But in the shade I will believe what in the sun I loved.

Thoreau

Against the pressure at the front of ones thoughts must be held the power of cognition, as a shield. Cognition that could see its own weak points, and attempt to work around them.

Examination of the relevant literature, however, revealed that there were cognitive illusions that were as strong or even stronger than optical illusions. This was an instructive analogy, because there were optical illusions in which ones sight was fooled no matter how fully one understood the illusion and its effect, and tried to compensate for it. Spin a disk with certain black and white patterns on it, and colors appear undeniably to the eye. Stand at the bottom of a cliff and it will appear to be about a thousand feet tall, no matter its real height; mountaineers called this foreshortening, and Frank knew it could not be avoided. From the bottom of El Capitan, one looked up three thousand feet, and it looked like about a thousand. In Klein Scheidegg one looked up the north faceof the Eiger, and it looked about a thousand feet tall. You could not alter that even by focusing on the strangely compact details of the faces upper surface. In Thun, twenty miles away, you could look south across the Thunersee and see that the north face of the Eiger was a stupendous face, six thousand feet tall and looking every inch of it. But if you returned to Klein Scheidegg, so would the foreshortening. You could not make the adjustment.

There were many cognitive errors just like those optical errors. The human mind had grown on the savannah, and there were kinds of thinking not natural to it. Calculating probabilities, thinking about statistical effects; the cognitive scientists had cooked up any number of logic problems, and tested great numbers of subjects with them, and even working with statisticians as their subjects they could find the huge majority prone to some fairly basic cognitive errors, which they had given names like anchoring, ease of representation, the law of small number, the fallacy of near certainty, asymmetric similarity, trust in analogy, neglect of base rates, and so on.

One test that had caught even Frank, despite his vigilance, was the three-box game. Three boxes, all closed, one ten-dollar bill hidden in one of them; the experimenter knows which. Subject chooses one box, at that point left closed. Experimenter opens one of the other two boxes, always an empty one. Subject then offered a chance to either stick with his first choice, or switch to the other closed box. Which should he do?

Frank had decided it didnt matter; fifty-fifty either way. He thought it through.

But each box at the start had a one-third chance of being the one. When subject chooses one, the other two have two-thirds of a chance of being right. After experimenter opens one of those two boxes, always empty, those two boxes still have two-thirds of a chance, now concentrated in theremaining unchosen box, while the subjects original choice still had its original one-third chance. So one should always change ones choice!

Shit. Well, put it that way, it was undeniable. Though it still seemed wrong. But this was the point. Human cognition had all kinds of blind spots. One analyst of the studies had concluded by saying that we simulate in our actions what we wish had already happened. We act, in short, by projecting our desires.

Well but of course. Wasnt that the point?

But clearly it could lead to error. The question was, could ones desires be defined in such a way as to suggest actions that were truly going to help make them come to pass in one of those futures still truly possible, given the conditions of the present?

And could that be done if there was a numb spot behind ones nose a pressure on ones thoughts a suspension of ones ability to decide anything?

And could these cognitive errors exist for society as a whole, as well as for an individual? Some spoke of cognitive mapping when they discussed taking social action a concept that had been transferred from geography to politics, and even to epistemology, as far as Frank could tell. One mapped the unimaginable immensity of postmodern civilization (or, reality) not by knowing all of it, which was impossible, but by marking routes through it. So that one was not like the GPS or the radar system, but rather the traffic controller, or the pilot.

At that point it became clear even mapping was an analogy. Anna would not think much of it. But everyone needed a set of operating procedures to navigate the day. A totalizing theory forming the justification for a rubric for the daily decisions. The science of that particular Wednesday. Using flawed equipment (the brain, civilization) to optimize results. Most adaptive practices. Robustness.

At that point it became clear even mapping was an analogy. Anna would not think much of it. But everyone needed a set of operating procedures to navigate the day. A totalizing theory forming the justification for a rubric for the daily decisions. The science of that particular Wednesday. Using flawed equipment (the brain, civilization) to optimize results. Most adaptive practices. Robustness.

Something from ecology, from Aldo Leopold: Whats good is whats good for the land.

Something from Rudra (although he said from the Dalai Lama, or the Buddha): Try to do good for other people. Your happiness lies there.

Try it and see. Make the experiment and analyze it. Try again. Act on your desires.

So what do you really want?

And can you really decide?

One day when Frank woke up in the garden shed with Rudra, it took him a while to remember where he was long enough that when he sat up he was actively relieved to be Frank Vanderwal, or anybody.

Then he had trouble figuring out which pants to put on, something he had never considered before in his life; and then he realized he did not want to go to work, although he had to. Was this unusual? He wasnt sure.

As he munched on a power bar and waited for his bedside coffee machine to provide, he clicked on his laptop, and after the portentous chord announced the beginning of his cyber-day, he went to emersonfortheday.net.

Hey, Rudra, are you awake?

Always.

Listen to this. Its Emerson, talking about our parcellated mind theory:

It is the largest part of a man that is not inventoried. He has many enumerable parts: he is social, professional, political, sectarian, literary, and is this or that set and corporation. But after the most exhausting census has been made, there remains as much more which no tongue can tell. And this remainder is that which interests. Far the best part of every mind is not that which he knows, but that which hovers in gleams, suggestions, tantalizing, unpossessed, before him. This dancing chorus of thoughts and hopes is the quarry of his future, is his possibility.

Maybe so, Rudra said. But whole sight is good too. Being one.

But isnt it interesting he talks about it in the same terms.

It is common knowledge. Anyone knows that.

I guess. I think Emerson knows a lot of things I dont know.

He was a man who had spent time in the forest, too. Frank liked to see the signs of this: The man who rambles in the woods seems to be the first man that ever entered a grove, his sensations and his world are so novel and strange. That was right; Frank knew that feeling. Hikes in the winter forest, so surreal Emerson knew about them. He had seen the woods at twilight. Never was a more brilliant show of colored landscape than yesterday afternoon; incredibly excellent topaz and ruby at four oclock; cold and shabby at six. The quick strangeness of the world, how it came on you all of a sudden now, for Frank, the feeling started on waking in the morning. Coming up blank, the primal man, the first man ever to wake. Strange indeed, not to know who or what you were.

Often these days he felt he should be moving back out into the park, and living in his treehouse. That would mean leaving the Khembalis, however, and that was bad. But on the other hand, it would in some ways be a relief. He had been living with them for almost a year now, hard to believe but it was true, and they were so crowded. They could use all the extra space they could get. Besides, it felt like time to get back outdoors and into the wind again. Spring was coming, spring and all.

But there was Rudra to consider. As his roommate, Frank was part of his care. He was old, frail, sleeping a lot. Frank was his companion and his friend, his English teacher and his Tibetan student. Moving out would inevitably disrupt that situation.

He read on for a while, then realized he was hungry, and that in poking around and thinking about Emerson and Thoreau, and cognitive blind spots, he had been reading for over an hour. Rudra had gotten up and slipped out. Aack! Time to get up! Seize the day!

Up and out then. Another day. He had to consult with Edgardo about the Caroline situation. Best get something to eat first. But from where?

He couldnt decide.

A minute or two later, angrily, and before even actually getting up, he grabbed his cell phone and made the call. He called his doctors office, and found that, regarding a question like this, the doctor couldnt see him for a week.

That was fine with Frank. He had made the decision and made the call. Caroline would have no reason to reproach him, and he could go back to the way things were. Not that something didnt have to be done. It was getting ridiculous. It was a an obstacle. A disability. An injury, not just to his brain, but to his thinking.

That very afternoon, the urgency in him about Caroline being so sharp and recurrent, he made arrangements to go out on a run with Edgardo. It was an afternoon so cold that no one but Kenzo would have gone out with them, and he was away at a conference, so after they cleared themselves with the wands (which Frank now questioned as fully reliable indicators), off they went.

The two of them ran side by side through the streets of Arlington, bundled up in nearly Arctic running gear, their heavy wool caps rolled up just far enough to expose their ears bottom halves, which allowed sound into the eardrums so they could hear each other over the noise of traffic without shouting or completely freezing their ears. Very soon they would be moving with Diane over to the Old Executive Offices, right next door to the White House; this would be one of their last runs on this route. But it was such a lame route that neither would miss it.

Frank explained what had happened in Maine, in short rhythmic phrases synchronized with his stride. It was such a relief to be able to tell somebody about it. Almost a physical relief. One vented, as they said.

So how the heck did they follow me? he demanded at the end of his tale. I thought your friend said I was clean.

He thought you were, Edgardo said. And it isnt certain you were followed. It could have been a coincidence.

Frank shook his head.

Well, there may be other ways you are chipped, or they may indeed have just followed you physically. Well work on that, but the question now becomes what has she done.

She said she has a Plan C that no one can trace. And she said it would get her down in this area. That shed get in touch with me. I dont know how that will work. Anyway now Im wondering if we can, you know, root these guys out. Maybe sic the president on them.

Well, Edgardo said, elongating the word for about a hundred yards. These kinds of black operations are designed to be insulated, you know. To keep those above from responsibility for them.

But surely if there was a problem, if you really tried to hunt things down from above? Following the money trail, for instance?

Maybe. Black budgets are everywhere. Have you asked Charlie?

No.

Maybe you should, if you feel comfortable doing that. Phil Chase has a million things on his plate. It might take someone like Charlie to get his attention.

Назад Дальше