After Death(99)
Superhacker is expanding operations to other nations, where changes have already been occurring in dreaded anticipation of his or her intention to broaden the mission. What will be will be, but what was before had become intolerable.
There are those who say that the human heart is deceitful above all things (which is true) and that lying is essential to grease the often grinding wheels of human relationships (which might be true as concerns relatively harmless falsehoods like insincere compliments, even flattery). But when Superhacker began to press the case that truth and the derivative of truth called “common sense” were in such short supply as to threaten the world, civilization had been fast sliding toward an abyss from which there might have been no return, a future of lawlessness, ginned-up hatred, irrational ideologies, and war. Perhaps this experiment in veracity will ultimately fail, but all polls show that a large majority of the populace finds that life is better these days, and polls can’t be fudged in this new world.
Winter has arrived in Idaho. Yesterday, the sky was clear, and birds glided across like figure skaters on wind-polished ice. This morning, the clouds are thick and gray and lowering with a warning that autumn will soon seem to have been a dream. The big thermometer fastened to the wall of the back porch indicates the temperature is thirty-eight degrees and falling.
After a breakfast of bacon, eggs, fried potatoes, thick cuts of toasted and lavishly buttered raisin bread, washed down with orange juice or coffee, Peter and Susan and Edward mount their horses. They ride the meadows high and higher, their breath smoking from them in lesser plumes than it smokes from Bree and Hwin and Puzzle.
They rarely speak, for the evergreen forests and the golden meadows and the great mountains rising to bare-rock summits are nature’s version of a cathedral. No matter how familiar the scene, their hearts are taken by awe. The vistas are supremely grand, so that the world seems newly created, full of promise and free from iniquity across its hemispheres, which is but a lovely illusion. Peter knows that the Earth will never be as innocent as it appears here and now. A reckoning can’t be avoided, only delayed—but it has always been thus.
Lucy, a golden retriever, accompanies them, often straying toward one scent or another that intrigues her, never venturing too far. She races ahead to roll and wriggle in the grass. Come spring, such frolicking will bejewel her coat with the bright petals of torn wildflowers, and soon there will be snow to drape her in ermine.
A rifle is sleeved on Peter’s saddle. After a long absence, gray wolves make their home in this territory once more, but he’s watching primarily for a mountain lion, which is the greater threat to Lucy. He hasn’t used the rifle for any purpose other than to fire a shot that scares a predator away. He hopes to get through life without killing another human being, and he prefers to pass his remaining years without killing any creature at all.
The vision of an eventual Singularity, a decades-long dream of transcendence, that is in fact a yearning for absolute power, has come to pass in him. And here is the irony always present in human affairs: He wants no power over others. He is trying to use his gift to thwart those who want control over their fellow men and women, to use truth to disperse power more widely than it’s ever been before, so each person is free from the lies that have previously trammeled them. Succeed or fail, it will be a fine adventure.
Toward the end of the second hour of their ride, as they are heading home, the first snow falls. With no wind to hurry them, the huge flakes wheel down in graceful spirals. Lucy halts, looks up in wonderment, and then gambols across the meadow, leaping to bite the flakes from the air as if they must be manna.
Words come to Peter from a poem by William Butler Yeats that Shelby Shrewsberry loved: We must laugh and we must sing We are blest by everything Everything we look upon is blest.
NOTE
Some of the chapter titles in this novel are taken from poetry that I admire. A list is provided here for the curious reader.
A Bridge over Troubled Water. “Bridge over Troubled Water” by Paul Simon.
Leaning Together, Headpieces Filled with Straw. “The Hollow Men” by T. S. Eliot.
Voices as Meaningless as Wind in Dry Grass. “The Hollow Men” by T. S. Eliot.
In the Twilight Kingdom. “The Hollow Men” by T. S. Eliot.
The Pain of Living and the Drug of Dreams. “Animula” by T. S. Eliot.
The Red-Eyed Scavengers Are Creeping. “A Cooking Egg” by T. S. Eliot.
We Are Encompassed with Snakes. “Choruses from ‘The Rock.’” by T. S. Eliot.
What Life Have You If You Have Not Life Together? “Choruses from ‘The Rock’” by T. S. Eliot.
The Only Wisdom We Can Hope to Acquire. “East Coker” by T. S. Eliot.
Here in Death’s Dream Kingdom. “Eyes That I Last Saw in Tears” by T. S. Eliot.
Life You May Evade, but Death You Shall Not. “Choruses from ‘The Rock’” by T. S. Eliot.
A Troubled Guest on the Dark Earth. “The Holy Longing” by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
There Comes a Moment When Everything Is Still and Ripens. “Grappa in September” by Cesare Pavese.
With Spiders I Had Friendship Made. “The Prisoner of Chillon” by Lord Byron.
Who Rides at Night, Who Rides So Late? “The Invisible King” by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
The Night Isn’t Dark; the World Is Dark. “Departure” by Louise Glück.