Hazards of Time Travel
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Along with not smoking, she also didn’t eat potato chips, glazed doughnuts, Cheez-bits, M&M’s, and those little cellophane bags of Planters peanuts that were our favorite snacks while we were studying, that left salt all over our fingers. She didn’t eat any kind of chewy meat like beef or pork or even chicken, sometimes. She’d eat fish casseroles.
Which was why she was so skinny. Flat-chested, and her hips flat, like a guy’s, she didn’t have to struggle into girdles like the rest of us.
Didn’t even know what a “girdle” was—just stared at Trishie’s when she was getting dressed for a frat party, like she’d never seen anything so scary!
Scholarship girls in Acrady Cottage studied, hard. We worked long hours at our desks for we had to retain B averages or lose our scholarships. But Mary Ellen Enright worked harder, and longer than any of us—so far as we knew, Mary Ellen did almost nothing else except her schoolwork, and her part-time job in the geology library!
At her desk with her back to the room, and to her roommates, she was unnaturally still, concentrated upon her work motionless as a mannequin but so tense, you could see the tension in her neck and shoulders.
As if she was holding back a scream, or a sob.
Yet she remained at her desk, with the crook-necked lamp shining a halo of light onto the desktop, for as long as she could endure it—if none of her roommates objected to the light.
(At first we did not object. We had no trouble sleeping with a single light on in the room. But as time passed, and we grew less patient with our misfit-roommate, we did object, and Mary Ellen took her work downstairs to the work-study lounge where she would disturb no one, and no one would disturb her. And sometimes she slept there, on a couch. And we did not have to hear her sob herself to sleep!)
It was hard to say what was wrong with Mary Ellen. The way she’d stare at us, and look away—like she’d seen something scary—made us think there was something wrong with us.
We hoped (sort of) that she would drop out of school. Or transfer. This was cruel of us, and not very Christian—we were not proud of such thoughts. But we were girls who’d only just graduated from high school a few months before and maybe Mary Ellen scared us, so close to the edge. Close to mental and physical collapse as we’d sometimes felt ourselves away from home for the first time and at the University of Wisconsin–Wainscotia where 9,400 students were enrolled.
A certain percentage of freshmen dropped out in the first several weeks of their first semester at Wainscotia. You’d hear of someone—mostly girls, but there were boys, too—who just “broke down”—“couldn’t sleep”—“cried all the time”—“felt lost.”
But Mary Ellen seemed determined not to be one of these. She was deeply unhappy and seemed to us—(to some of us, at least)—on the verge of a nervous collapse but there was something willful about her—like a cripple who doesn’t seem to know she’s a cripple, or a stutterer who doesn’t seem to know that she’s a stutterer.
Another strange thing: alone among the girls of Acrady Cottage Mary Ellen Enright received no mail.
And yet stranger: Mary Ellen Enright seemed to expect no mail, for she walked by the mailboxes without glancing at her own.
We asked our resident adviser Miss Steadman what she thought we could do to make Mary Ellen less lonely and Miss Steadman suggested leaving her alone for the time being, for “Mary Ellen” had traveled a long distance—from one of the eastern states like New York, New Jersey or Massachusetts—and was feeling a more acute homesickness than we were feeling, whose families lived in the state and whom we could visit on weekends by bus.
Is “Mary Ellen” Jewish? we asked.
Miss Steadman said she did not think so. For “Enright” was not known to be a Jewish name.
But she seems like she’s from—somewhere else. Like she’s not an American—sort of.
Miss Steadman frowned at this remark which clearly she did not like.
Miss Steadman would tell us only that Mary Ellen Enright was the sole resident of Acrady Cottage whose complete file hadn’t been made available to her, as our resident adviser. She’d received a file from the office of the dean of women for Mary Ellen but it was very short, and some of it had been blotted out with black ink.
Hilda McIntosh described how in the first week of classes she’d come into her room on the third floor one afternoon—and there was her roommate Mary Ellen Enright standing in front of Hilda’s desk staring at her typewriter.
This was Hilda’s portable Remington typewriter, one of her proudest possessions which she’d brought to college. Not everyone in Acrady Cottage had a typewriter, and those who didn’t were envious of Hilda!
And there was Mary Ellen staring at the typewriter with some look, Hilda said, “way beyond envy.”
Like the girl had never seen a typewriter before! Like it was some new invention.
So Hilda said, speaking softly not wanting to startle Mary Ellen—(but startling her anyway, so that she jumped, and quivered, and her eyelids fluttered)—You can try it, Mary Ellen, if you want to. Here’s a piece of paper!
Hilda inserted the paper into the typewriter. Hilda indicated to the girl how she should type—striking several keys in rapid succession.
The girl just stared blank-faced.
Like this, see? Of course, you have to memorize the keyboard. That comes with practice. I learned in high school—it isn’t hard.
The girl touched one of the keys, lightly. Like she hadn’t strength to press it down.
In a faint voice she said, It doesn’t w-work …
Hilda laughed. Of course it works!
The girl peered at the back of the typewriter, as if searching for something missing.
In a faint voice saying, But—there’s nothing connecting it to—to …
Hilda laughed. This was like introducing a rural relative to, well, an indoor toilet! Funny.
Look here, Hilda said.
Hilda sat down at her desk and the keys clattered away like machine-gun fire:
SEPTEMBER 23, 1959
ACRADY COTTAGE
WAINSCOTIA STATE UNIVERSITY
WAINSCOTIA FALLS, WISCONSIN
USA
UNIVERSE
The new girl Mary Ellen stared at this display of magic—the flying keys, the typed letters that became words and sentences—and could not seem to speak. As if her throat had shut up. As if the clattering typewriter frightened her. As if she couldn’t bear the sight of—well, what was it? Hilda couldn’t imagine.
Hilda encouraged Mary Ellen to try the typewriter again but Mary Ellen backed away as if it was all too much for her. And suddenly then, her eyes rolled back in her head, her skin went chalky-white—and she fell to the floor in a dead faint.
TYPEWRITER
“Mary Ellen?”
One of them was speaking to me. She’d come up behind me.
I was very frightened. I knew there were informers like my brother Roddy—of course. But I could not comprehend if I was behaving like a guilty person or whether, in my EI status, I was behaving in a manner appropriate to my circumstances.
The girl was the one called “Hilda McIntosh.” She had a round bland moon-face and a very friendly smile. Her hair was a chestnut-colored “pageboy.” I could not bring myself to look her in the face, still less in the eyes, for fear of what I would see.
The empty gaze. The iris in the eye the size of a seed.
I wondered: Was this person an informer? Did she know who Mary Ellen Enright really was? Had she followed me?
It was often the case, here in Zone 9, that individuals followed me. Yet in such practiced ways, I could not be certain that they were following me by design or by coincidence.
I’d had to escape from—wherever it was—the lecture hall in the building near the chapel—Hendrick Hall—as oxygen was being sucked from the room by the others—(I’d counted sixty-six student-figures seated in steep-banked rows)—and the professor-figure at the podium continued lecturing on the rudiments of logic. Some Y is X. X is M. What is the relationship of M to Y?
I did not cross the green. The open, vulnerable expanse of the green. Making my way like a wounded wild creature close beside buildings and through narrow passageways in order not to attract attention.
Not daring to glance up, to see who was “seeing” me.
The EI will be monitored at any and all times during his/her exile.
Violations of these Instructions will insure that the EI will be immediately Deleted.
In a sequence of hills, mostly downhill, approximately one mile to Acrady Cottage where I would hide in the third-floor room assigned to “Mary Ellen Enright.”
It was the epicenter of the Restricted Zone 9. It was my imprisonment. Yet, I felt safe there.
I entered the cottage by a side door. Made my way up the back stairs hoping not to be detected by any girl-figures and I avoided the resident adviser’s suite on the first floor where the door was always flung open in a way to suggest Welcome! but which I worried might be an informer’s trick.
It had been a blade twisted in my heart, that my brother Roddy had informed on me. I could not recall much of those terrible hours of interrogation at YDDHS but I did recall this revelation and my shock and yet my unsurprise for Of course, Roddy always hated me. He would wish me Exiled—or worse.
I wanted to think that one day I would see Roddy again—and I would forgive Roddy. Tears stung my eyes for I could not bear to think that Roddy did not want my forgiveness.
But if I confronted Roddy, it would mean that I would see my parents again. Desperately I wanted to think this!
It was a time, early afternoon, when the freshman residents of Acrady Cottage were mostly out.
I was counting on being invisible. I could not breathe normally, if I knew myself visible.
In these early days in Zone 9 I did not think of those others who might be in Exile here—for surely there were others like myself. Like one trapped in a small cage who has no awareness of others similarly trapped, and in her desperation no sympathy to spare, I could only think of my own situation.
Hurrying up the stairs. Panting, and sweating. For it was a hot dry September in this place, and Acrady Cottage was not air-conditioned.
In Zone 9 very few buildings were air-conditioned. Evidently in this era air-conditioning was rare. And what air there was, to my dismay and disgust, was often polluted by cigarette smoke.
Astonishing to me, my roommates smoked! Each one of them. As if they knew nothing about cigarettes causing cancer, or did not care. Worse, I saw their annoyed expressions when I coughed and choked and yet—how could I help myself? Smoking had been banished in NAS-23 for as long as I’d been alive. (Intravenous nicotine was promoted in its place.)
Thinking Is this my punishment? Secondary smoke inhalation.
Had to wonder who my roommates really were. Why I’d been assigned to room 3C of Acrady Cottage, with these individuals. In NAS-23 it was said—“No accidents, only algorithms.” I could not think that there were coincidences in the stratagems of Homeland Security. I could not think that at least one and perhaps all of my roommates were informants assigned to Enright, Mary Ellen.
Possibly, one of them was a robot. But which one?
SUCH RELIEF, when I was alone in our room.
(But was I ever “alone” in our room?)
That prevailing odor of cigarette smoke like body odor made my nostrils pinch.
Here was my opportunity to examine a clumsy black machine with a keyboard on the desk of one of my roommates—a “typewriter.”
I’d heard of typewriters of course. I’d seen photographs of typewriters and my parents had spoken of owning a typewriter, I think. (Or had it been my grandparents?) But I had never seen an actual typewriter, from an era before computers.
In a kind of trance I stared at the strange machine. Something about it that made me uneasy.
So badly I missed my laptop computer, I felt almost faint. I missed my cell phone, that fitted so comfortably in the palm of my hand it was like a growth there, a rectangular luminous eye.
Could not comprehend the logic of this machine. Could it be so crude, only just—typing?
No Internet? No e-mail? No texting? Only just—typing?
There was nowhere to look in or about the typewriter! There was no screen.
Profound to think that this clumsy machine connected with no reality beyond itself. Just—a machine.
You were trapped in yourself, at a typewriter. You could not escape into cyberspace. In Zone 9, you could not access cyberspace.
Hard to comprehend: in 1959 cyberspace did not exist.
And yet, that was not possible—was it? For one of the great accomplishments of the twenty-first century—we’d been told and retold—was the establishment of cyberspace as an entity separate and distinct and (presumably) independent of human beings, thus independent of constraints of time and space.
Not that I’d ever understood this. To truly understand you’d have to know math, physics, astrophysics, the most advanced computer science that was in fact, in NAS-23, classified information …
“Mary Ellen?”—the voice was close behind me.
The smiling girl had crept up silently behind me—“Hilda” was her name. She’d scared me so, my heart leapt in my chest like a shot bird.
Hilda was very friendly of course. They were all very friendly.
Their eyes eating at me, like hungry ants. Memorizing, assessing. Planning the words they would use in their reports to Homeland Security.
In her flat midwestern voice that seemed mocking to my ears Hilda was saying that the machine was her “almost-new Remington,” of which she seemed to be proud.
“You can try it, if you want to. Here’s a piece of paper!”
Hilda inserted a sheet of paper and rolled it into position. She indicated to me how I should type, striking several keys in succession—random keys, with her deft fingers.
But I just stared. I was feeling light-headed.
I would have tried to speak but my tongue felt like cotton batting too big for my mouth.
Hilda said, “Like this, see? Of course, you have to memorize the keyboard. So that your fingers type without you having to think. That comes with practice. I learned in high school—it isn’t hard.”
I touched one of the keys. Nothing happened.
“It doesn’t w-work …”
Hilda laughed at me. Not maliciously but as an older sister might laugh at a naïve younger sister.
“Of course it works, Mary Ellen! Like this.”
Mary Ellen. Was this name uttered in a friendly way, or in a mocking way?
I wanted to think that the girl-figure “Hilda” was actually a girl like myself, who was being sincerely friendly. I did not want to think that the girl-figure was a registered agent of Homeland Security or (possibly) a virtual representation of an undergraduate girl manipulated on a screen by a (distant) Homeland Security agent teasing me in my Exile in Zone 9.
It was distracting to me, that Hilda stood so close. Many of the girls of Acrady Cottage stood close to me, and caused me to back away. Our way of behaving with one another in NAS-23 was noticeably different: the unspoken rule was do not come close. Since the arrest, and the terrible sight on the TV monitor of the boy executed, I was in dread of strangers coming too close. My skin prickled with the danger.
Hilda was so very friendly, so nice, she seemed entirely oblivious of my wariness. It would be said of Hilda that she was a “pretty” girl—(as it would be said of me, I was sure, that I was a “plain” girl). Shorter than I was by at least two inches, and plumper. Where my body was lean almost like a boy’s her body was shapely as a mature woman’s. Like the other girls Hilda wore a sturdy brassiere—a “bra”—that might have stood by itself, made of firm, metallic-threaded fabric; beneath her clothes, this “bra” asserted itself like an extra appendage. Half-consciously I shrank away hoping that Hilda would not, seemingly unconsciously, brush against me with her sharp-pointed breasts.
Hilda sat at her desk with an exaggerated sort of perfect posture like a young woman in an advertisement and typed, rapidly and flawlessly, to demonstrate to me how easy “typing” was:
SEPTEMBER 23, 1959
ACRADY COTTAGE
WAINSCOTIA STATE UNIVERSITY
WAINSCOTIA FALLS, WISCONSIN
USA
UNIVERSE
“See? Now you try it, Mary Ellen.”
September 23, 1959! It could not be true—could it?
This was Zone 9—of course. This was my Exile. I must accept my Exile, and I must adjust. Yet—
The horror swept over me: this was eighty years into the past, and more. I had not yet been born. My parents had not yet been born. There was no one in this world who loved me, no one who even knew me. No one who would claim me. I was utterly alone.
“Mary Ellen? What’s wrong?”
With a look of genuine—sisterly—concern, Hilda reached out for me, even as I shrank away.
“Don’t t-touch me! No …”
I was terrified, nauseated. Yet too weak to escape—a black pit opened at my feet, and sucked me down.
THE LOST ONE
Help me! Help me—Mom, Daddy …
I miss you so much …
It was a ravenous hunger in me, to return home. A yearning so strong, it seemed almost that a hand gripped the nape of my neck, urging me forward as in a desperate swooning plunge.
I am all alone here. I will die here.
THEY’D STRAPPED ME DOWN. Wrists, ankles, head—to prevent “self-injury.”
A painful shunt in the soft flesh at the inside of my elbow, through which a chill liquid coursed into my vein. It was a mechanical procedure they’d done many times before.
In a flat voice the pronouncement: subject going down.
I saw myself as a diminishing light. A swirl of light, turning in upon itself and becoming ever smaller, more transparent.
Abruptly then—I was gone.
Dematerialization of the subject. Teletransportation of the subject’s molecular components. Reconstitution in Zone 9.
“‘MARY ELLEN ENRIGHT.’ This is she?”
The question was put to someone not-me. Yet I could observe the lifeless body from a slightly elevated position and felt pity for it.
Like a zombie. Exiled.
I would wonder—Does a zombie know that it is a zombie? How would a zombie comprehend.
This was funny! But laughter caught in my throat like a clot of phlegm.
In this very cold place. Where blood coursed slow as liquid mercury.
I was very confused. I could not clear my head. My brain had been injured. I had heard them joking.
NSS it was called—Neurosurgical Security Services. Rumors had circulated in high school. The subject was taboo.
Before teletransportation they’d inserted a microchip into a particular part of my brain called the hippocampus, where memory is processed before being stored elsewhere in the brain. At least, I thought this must have happened. I did not think it had been a dream.
Part of my scalp had been shaved, a pie-shaped wedge of skull removed, the microchip installed. (Evidently) I felt no pain. A zombie does not feel pain. Even the sawed-out portion of the skull and the lacerated scalp were cold-numb and remote to me. And yet I felt such a powerful wave of gratitude, I could have wept—They did not remove my parents from me. They left me my parents at least.
For that part of my brain might have been removed, which contained all memory of my parents.
In Exile you cling to what you have, that has not (yet) been taken from you.
From this cold place I was carried, with others who’d been teletransported, in a vehicle resembling an emergency medical van.
The vehicle did not move rapidly. There was no siren.
This was not an emergency but routine.
The vehicle made stops at several destinations, before mine. In my semiconscious state I had little awareness of what was happening. I was trying to speak to my parents whose faces were vivid to me in their concern for me. I was trying to say In four years I will see you again. Don’t forget me!
I could not have said if I was seventeen years old, or seven years old.
I could not have said which year this was. I had no idea where I was.
We had left the lights of a city and were traveling now in a vast rural night. It was astonishing to me, stars in the night sky overhead were large and luminous as I had never seen stars before in my old, lost life.
The air was purer here, in Zone 9. So sharp to inhale! The night sky was not obscured by the scrim of pollution to which we were all accustomed in the old, lost life.
We who were being carried in the van in the night were strapped to stretchers and could not turn our heads to regard one another. We were very tired, for we’d come a long distance.
It might have been the case, not all of the teletransported had made the journey fully alive. It was not clear to me initially whether I was fully alive.
One of the other teletransported was hyperventilating in panic. Something must have gone wrong with his medication. I could not turn my head to see. Or, my head was strapped in place. I held myself very still and breathed calmly as Dad would instruct me in the presence of the Enemy. I thought—They will vaporize him. It was a desperate thought—They will vaporize him, and not me.
At the next stop, I was taken from the van.
Unstrapped from the stretcher, and made to stand.
“Use your legs, miss. There is nothing wrong with your legs. Your brain sends the signal—left leg, right leg. And your head—lift your head.”
I was able to walk a few yards, before I collapsed.
In the morning I woke beneath a thin blanket, on a lumpy cot. The bandages were gone from my head. The straps were gone from my wrists and ankles. Most of the grogginess had faded.
It would be explained to me: I was a freshman student at Wainscotia State University in Wainscotia Falls, Wisconsin. I had arrived late the previous night, feverish. I had been brought to the university infirmary and not to my residence. And now, in the morning, since my fever had disappeared, I was to be discharged.
“Your things have been delivered to your residence, Miss Enright.”
“Yes. Thank you.”
“Your residence is Acrady Cottage, on South University Avenue.”
“Thank you.”
Acrady Cottage. South University Avenue. It was up to me to find this place, and I would do so.
I was feeling hopeful! Small gulping waves of wonder would rush over me from time to time, amid even the paralysis of fear.
For the crucial matter was: my parents were living, and I would return to them, in four years. My parents had not been “vaporized” even in my memory.
And the crucial matter was: “Mary Ellen Enright” was evidently a healthy specimen. She had not died in teletransportation. If her brain had been injured, it was not a major injury.