Losing Schwartz

by Maxwell James

Part V

A young man has become disillusioned. He quits the local collective bookstore when it becomes apparent that reality works differently from the spark he’s carried inside himself his whole life. He listens to his self-possessed friend, a brilliant electronics engineer, who tells him that his politics don’t mesh with human nature. And his friend should know: he’s the one who made it that way.

“What?” I asked. A current ran through my body.

But Schwartz didn’t answer me.

“Why’d you give it all up?” he asked instead.

“What are you talking about?”

“The whole deal: the bookstore, the Movement, all your hopes and dreams. Why’d you quit?”

“I told you: I thought the people involved were hypocrites. They were out for themselves. They don’t realize it, but they are.”

“How’d they get that way?”

“Well... I don’t know... I... I guess they were born into it.”

“Born into what?”

“The world like it is.”

Schwartz surprised me by nodding. “And how’d it get that way?”

“How am I supposed to know?”

“You can’t. But what do you think?”

“I don’t know... there are these... habits that people fall into.”

“Exactly,” Schwartz says. “And no one can see anything else. Like any other alternative’s been erased. And inside, all there is is the monster. What choice do they have?”

“Yeah,” I said.

The punk rock had stopped. A fatigue swept over me, one that I realized had come many times in my life, but that I now noticed and understood for the first time. It came with knowing that I would never find a way to spit out what I had, but even with that knowledge would still be impelled forward by a disease-like hope that would leave me staggering forever through a world where I did not belong.

“Have you ever seen my workshop?” Schwartz asked suddenly.

I jumped. My heartbeat rose.

“No,” I said.

He stood and walked over to the plywood wall behind him. A rectangular piece had been cut out of it and reconnected with hinges. Schwartz opened the makeshift door and snapped on a light. He turned back to me.

“Come on,” he said.

I got up and followed him. I was annoyed for feeling nervous. Despite how much I wanted to separate myself from him, there was still a spell Schwartz cast.

But what I saw was surprising only because it was so mundane.

On the far wall was a workbench. Beneath it were two tool cabinets and a stool. The wall behind it was covered by fiberboard riddled with holes into which were mounted small metal hooks, from which hung tools, some I recognized and some I did not.

There was a stand-up lamp just next to the door that shone onto the top of the workbench, revealing a smaller halogen lamp arranged over a circuit board and several other components, and several tools — a pair of needle-nose pliers, a soldering iron, and a set of small screwdrivers, all spread out on the bench next to an ashtray overflowing with butts. Schwartz’s latest project.

To my left, against the wall, was a tall metal shelf full of milk crates and bits and pieces of electrical equipment in various stages of repair.

I felt almost disappointed. His mind used to wander while we sipped whiskey, and I’d ask him what it was. He’d say, “Nothing.” But I knew a greater part of him than what I saw was absorbed in esoteric challenges involving forces beyond my grasp.

I assumed that his confidence and self-sufficiency had something to do with how much more in tune those forces were with the current reality, and a part of me always hoped I could unlock them and in the process discover a new dimension of significance. Maybe then Schwartz’s confidence would be mine.

But all I saw in this room was a static suspension, like stacked cartons in a shipping container. No wonder he saw nothing else; there was no crack for any light to dribble in or for himself to see out.

I thought of my room and its oblong angles and rounded corners, its cracks and dingy scents, and of all the rooms I’d been to in this city strewn with books, newspapers, action figures, desks, chairs, clothing, figurines, empty bottles and cans, drug paraphernalia, and musical instruments, how willing those rooms were to allow anything to pour in, waiting for their function to be given to them because the people who lived there couldn’t provide it.

And that, I finally realized, was how Schwartz managed to cast his spell: by mercilessly abandoning anything not functional. It was not that he was more aware of the world, but that he was so successful at not caring about anything that wasn’t useful to him.

Schwartz walked across the room to the plywood wall that split the two cubicles apart, towards another passage identical to the one we just came through, except that the door had not been re-mounted. He turned on another light in that room and walked in.

I was not prepared for what I saw. The room overflowed with cables running at all angles like spider webs, taped together in bushels and suspended by string. Several large modules sat at various spots, cables and wires bursting out of them like geysers, then running up to the wall and the ceiling. In the center of the room was a chair, and above the chair a headset too large for any head.

Schwartz walked across the room, his tall frame navigating effortlessly through the maze of wires, to a console made from an ancient personal computer. He flipped a switch next to it and the system rumbled on line. Each module in the room started, the soft roar of fans and the illumination of tiny lights blinking on and off.

I stood at the door. Schwartz began typing. He typed for some time. I watched as windows opened and closed.

After a long silence that anyone else would find awkward, Schwartz turned to me on his swivel chair. He leaned forward, his egg-shaped head catching the light at his temples and the slight hunch of his posture highlighted.

“So, what do you think?” he said with the hint of a smile.

“What is this?”

“I don’t really have a name for it. Just something I’ve been working on.”

I looked at the room again. This mess did not belong in Schwartz’s world. It was an invasion of something foreign and subversive. No wonder he was nervous about it.

“A lot of work, I guess?”

“Yup,” said Schwartz.

“What is it?”

Schwartz shifted in his seat. “I’m not sure,” he said.

“What’s that mean?” I asked.

“What it sounds like,” he said. “It just... didn’t turn out like I hoped.”

“What’d you hope for?”

Schwartz looked right at me again. “I hoped to figure out what was on your mind.”

“What?”

“Well... not your mind... just people like you.”

I looked at the chair, and the headset. The fans roared softly like idling engines.

“I’ve known other people like you through the years, people who seemed stuck on something that wasn’t here. You take what I pride myself on the most and make it feel like a shortcoming. I wanted to know for sure if you were right. So I let myself consider ideas I wouldn’t ordinarily.

“Most people know about brainwaves, electrical signals inside the mind that can be read. But what people know about them is vague. There are only a few categories of them that are understood, based generally upon your level of overall mental activity. But there are differences based upon what you are thinking about.

“This was what interested me: the idea that when the mind works in certain ways, it can be read as a specific signal. It seemed reasonable to suggest that different states of minds, different worldviews, have a different signal to go along with them, so if you could find a way to read those signals, you could possibly experience their state of mind.

“So I went about finding those signals. It took a lot of work, but it happened; I developed a device that could search for these patterns, and then magnify them, and allow a person to interface. Or at least I thought I did. ”

Schwartz looked at the machine.

“I started using it a few months ago. It’s different than I expected. It heightens your own state of mind. I thought it was an interesting discovery, even though it had failed in its original goal. I felt like it gave me confidence. I would use it just before I’d go out to meet you. I thought I was finally going to get to you. I thought it was because I was becoming more in tune with the world. It didn’t occur to me that maybe it was the other way around.”

Schwartz paused. Now we both stared at the machine.

“The other night, after you stormed out, I started thinking differently. I think you told me that you wished you’d grown up in another era, so you could figure out what went wrong. You said selfishness began to take hold, and that it bent people out of their proper shape. I’d say it was just human nature. I told you as much, then you left. There was something you were holding on to. It caught me.

“I started doing some research, and it pulled me in. There was something to it. Every time change was on the horizon, there came a sudden and irrational reaction. I started to wonder. I started to wonder if maybe I hadn’t failed to reach the signals like I thought, but that instead of me experiencing them, they were experiencing me.”

The fans roared sharp.

“That’s crazy, Schwartz,” I said.

“I agree,” he said.

“I mean, how could you change the past?”

“I have no idea,” he said. “But if these strings have run beneath the world since the beginning of time, and somebody yanks them, what’s going to happen?”

“That’s crazy,” I said.

“I agree. This is just what I suspect.”

“You suspect you are responsible for the current state of the world?”

“Yes,” Schwartz said.

“I think you’re a megalomaniac,” I said.

He looked down and exhaled. “I figured,” he said.

“To actually believe that you — just you — could somehow cause the fate of humanity to go awry, this is a new level of self-righteousness for you, Schwartz, an absolutely new level. And here you are, acting all apologetic and regretful for misusing your omniscient power or something. Christ! You really are pitiful.”

Schwartz rolled his eyes.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, there goes the child again,” I said.

“Did I say that?” Schwartz asked.

“It was suggested.”

“I don’t think it was,” Schwartz said. “You’re just eager to get your shots in.”

I paused. “It just... sounds a little bit out there, that’s all.”

“It is a little bit out there,” he said.

“You really think this?”

“Yeah.”

“But you don’t know?”

“How would I know?”

“So what do you want me to do about it?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” he said.

He pointed at the machine.

“No,” I said.

“It won’t hurt you.”

“Absolutely not.”

“Look, I’ve used it repeatedly, and I’m just fine.”

“This is too weird. This is not something I need to mess with.”

“But there’s no need for you to be afraid.”

“I am not afraid. That’s not what this is about.”

“Then what’s it about?”

“Everything I was saying before, Schwartz. About the difference between you and me.”

“You’re missing the point.”

“What point, Schwartz? That I’ll miss my chance to mold reality according to my wishes? Believe it or not, that’s really no big loss.”

“Why not?”

“It’s against everything I believe in.”

“And what’s that?”

“I think you know.”

“Humor me.”

I felt stupid saying it, but I did anyway. “I’d like to see people learn how to put themselves aside, and think about what is good for everyone, and be willing to accept that maybe it won’t be what they expect.”

“And you’re sure that’s what you really believe?”

“Yes,” I said.

Schwartz pointed to the machine. “Then what are you worried about?” he asked.

I looked at the machine.

“I mean, you’re sure of yourself, right?” he added. “And, in any case, you think it’s all crazy, so if that’s true, nothing will be harmed.”

I didn’t answer. There was too much sloshing around my head. All those people smiling and hugging. Talking about working together. Joining collectives and movements. Showing solidarity for an afternoon here and there, then going home and locking themselves back in the cage of their existences.

“Don’t you realize that you have an opportunity here that almost nobody gets?” Schwartz said.

And that almost-a-face. It floated there, but not because I saw it. Only because I knew it by instinct.

“You say you hope for a better world,” Schwartz said. “You say it constantly. Is that true? Or do you just want something to complain about?”

“You don’t get it.”

“No, I guess I don’t,” said Schwartz, “because unlike you I’ve never sat and said woe-is-me. I’ve always done the best I can with what I have, even if it’s not much, while you float around inside your head and wring your hands because the world won’t snap to. Now, when an opportunity comes along, you hem and haw.”

“For me it’s different, Schwartz. I don’t do things just because I can.”

“And when do you do something?”

“When I’m sure it’s right.”

I was scouring my mind. Trying to climb in and pull out what seemed so clear at the edges of consciousness but flitted away whenever I reached for it, off into the wilderness of the unrealized.

Schwartz went on, oblivious. “Think about all the people out there, all those weak, lost people who can’t find anything beyond themselves. They do what they can even though it might be wrong because they feel like they have to. They hope that whoever knows what needs to happen will do the same, and not sit on it. What would they think if they saw you now?”

I looked at Schwartz. I knew who he was talking about. I was left with only one insufferable option.

“Okay,” I said.

Schwartz looked up at me. There was a moment where I knew he caught something.

“You sure?” he asked to save face.

“Of course I’m sure,” I said.

Schwartz stood up, deftly navigating though the canopy of wires. “Okay, then,” he said.

He moved to the chair, took hold of the lamp side-arm that held the headset, and moved it up. “Have a seat,” he said.

I walked over and sat down. Schwartz lowered the headset. I tingled all over when I felt the tiny pinpricks across my scalp as small metal pins connected with my scalp and the headset covered my eyes. I could still see the fluorescent-lit room through the cracks between the wire and mesh.

Schwartz sat down on his chair and rolled back to his console. My eyes darted over to him. He was typing into the console. He seemed to be in another world.

I felt the pressure of the tiny pins and breathed in and out.

I closed my eyes. I couldn’t see anything.

My heart raced.

I heard a pulse, what I swore was the sound of the energy Schwartz sent through the network of machinery.

Proceed to part 6...