The University of Dreams and Knowledge

by Harry Lang

conclusion

“I’m getting to that. My father fought the effects of the interface. Before he even knew why he knew it was something to resist. Dr. Glorn told him why and helped him do it. My mother wanted no part of it, so he decided to make peace with her and keep things quiet for my sake. He could do that at home because he had hopes for me, but when he went to work and saw the men around him he couldn’t stand it. Here were people like him, made in the likeness of the One Almighty like him, cut off from their own potential by the interfaces and the fear that kept them in use. Decent men — or at least they could’ve been. Did you know the interfaces affect the conscience as well as cognitive functions?”

Grimble did not know that but he had wondered why he was able to do things that decent men wouldn’t do.

“Dr. Glorn tried to warn him. He told him to only talk to people showing signs of resistance. But Pop was stubborn and not the most subtle guy in the world. He tried to enlighten the men in his gang, but they wouldn’t hear it. Eventually they got so irritated that they broke his leg and threw him down a shaft.

“So there’s your order, Professor. My father, his potential untapped, dead because of his beliefs. No justice, no remorse from the perpetrators, not even the conviction of right and wrong. The ignorant miners, sweating in the darkness, risking life and limb. They’re capable of making tremendous improvements in the way they do their work but their natural intelligence is crushed. They commit crimes and sleep soundly because their conscience is artificially anesthetized. Dr. Glorn, dead because he threatened somebody’s randomly conceived orthodoxy. Again, no justice, no remorse from the perpetrator, no conviction of right and wrong.”

“The world is what it is,” shrugged Grimble.

“God is what He is, Professor. The world is what we make it.”

“Really? Look around, young man! Look at the piles of junk and useless buildings. What did you call this place? The Failures? This is what your fantastic thinking produces. Talk about randomly conceived! This is the world you are making. Chebma — may I be permitted? — Chebma, I understand your revulsion to the interfaces, believe me I do. My head still hurts. And obviously at least some of us may be able to survive without them. But I ask you: do you really want to unleash the inevitable chaos? Don’t you agree that order, even the imperfect order of orthodoxy and the interfaces, is the only road to survival and progress?”

“I might if it was our order and our orthodoxy.”

Grimble felt a wave of anxiety sweeping him toward panic. This was exactly what he had feared. It was too late simply to kill Lorink and be done with it; his run-in with the old ladies had ended his career as an assassin. Without the ultimate answer of brute force he would have to fight ideas with ideas and out here his opponent held all the advantages.

“What do you mean?”

“You said it yourself. Look around. It’s been over a thousand years since the onslaught. In that time we’ve managed to reinvent the steam engine, sort of, given how poorly they work. We can generate direct current electricity. Apparently there used to be something called alternating current, which was much more useful, but it’s beyond us. Mostly we make these piles of junk.

“And yet every living person is supplied with prosthetic body parts to overcome birth defects, and sophisticated brain interfaces that last for centuries. Where did they come from? We’re running out of daylight, so I’ll narrow it down. Either they are the product of human technology, which brings us back to the advanced civilization of the Green Earth, or they were left here by the invaders. Both societies are alien to us! The interfaces don’t serve us; we serve them!”

“That’s some conclusion,” said Grimble. His head was starting to throb; some connection was being made and he was powerless to control the direction of his thoughts. “I mean the chain of suppositions...”

“I’d be happy to examine that chain link by link, but the real question is simple. It’s simple! Will we be slaves or masters? Will we go on being machines or will we be men? Will you give up all that makes you human...?”

“Human?” The pain was staggering, flaming through every nerve in his body. What if the boy was right? Where did the interfaces come from? The orthodoxy he enforced bore no resemblance to any old literature he’d read; what did it mean?

What if he had been serving monsters?

“I... gods! I...” The surge of pain engulfed him like a tidal wave. The world turned blood red and vanished.

* * *

“So. You are teaching again.”

Dr. Jerph’s overwhelming presence filled the small dark office like a billowing thundercloud. Grimble noted that the giant blocked the exit much like the Cyclops in The Odyssey. If only there were sheep...

“Yes Doctor. I’ll start after the break. I’ve been meeting with individual students to get an idea of what I’m in for.”

The Cyclops snorted. “It wouldn’t surprise me if you orchestrated the whole thing. You never were enthusiastic about your duty.” He glanced nervously at the untidy stack of pages on the edge of Grimble’s desk but said nothing about it.

“Not this particular duty, I confess.” Grimble tossed another sheet onto the stack. He considered showing Jerph the bruises and the bandage around his ribs but that would only give the monster an opportunity to decry his lack of courage and fortitude; he certainly wouldn’t comprehend remorse.

“Well then. What’s done is done. The dean of faculty is happy to have you back in the classroom. Orthodoxy will have to make do.” His eyes were now locked upon the stack of pages and Grimble saw beads of sweat on his upper lip.

The intercom buzzed.

“Yes, Grael?”

“Dobrik Snett is here.”

“Ask him to wait, please.”

Jerph rose to leave and Grimble realized there really was something odd about the ease with which he moved. He had the brief but pointed impression that Jerph was much stronger than he let on.

“I suppose I’d better get back to Omicron Hall and begin the search for your replacement.”

He started for the door but stopped. Turning to Grimble he said, “I’m curious, Professor. Maybe you won’t mind telling me. Why do you wear those ridiculous gauntlets? We all know you have hands. That’s why we wanted you for the field work. You’re the only academic who can fire a gun.”

“Oh,” said Grimble, blushing a little. “It’s a habit I picked up as a child.” He then looked Jerph square in the eyes and was alarmed by the cold menace they returned. “It’s uncomfortable to feel different, isn’t it?”

To Grimble’s surprise the menace shifted to fear. Jerph looked away and left without another word.

“Send in Mr. Snett, please.”

A gangly young man with a mop of red hair and explosions of freckles entered, looking around as though he had stepped into the throne room of some ancient monarch.

“Mr. Snett. Please, have a seat.”

“Thank ’e, sir.”

Grimble leafed through the young man’s file. “So. How did you like your freshman year?”

“Passin’ tolerable, sir, though I am a bit homesick.”

“Are you indeed? I suppose you’ll be going home for the summer?”

“That’s the plan, sir, yes.”

“I see you’re from Eastmine. That’s a long way. Know Mrs. Glorn, do you?”

“I do, sir. She were... she is the schoolteacher there.”

“How about the Lorinks? Do you know them?”

“Nar, not tremendous well,” answered Snett. “They lives... they live in the neighborhood. My old dad used to know Mr. Lorink a bit, afore he passed.”

“I see. Well, have you declared a major?”

“I have, sir.” The young man brightened at the change of topic. “I’d like to be a teacher and concentrate on history. Mrs. Glorn says they’ll be needing teachers in Snaketown. She expects the population will start to grow afore... before long.”

“Does she?” Of course the population will grow once word gets out about the interfaces.

“Yes sir. I don’t know how she knows so much about so many things but she’s never wrong.”

“Tell me young man, what do you hope to learn from old literature?”

“Oh, a good many things, sir. First off, it’s part of history isn’t it? Those folks didn’t think like we do, did they? Maybe they have a thing or two... to show us...”

“Are you all right?”

“Yes sir. Just a headache is all.”

“Get a lot of headaches, do you?”

“Now and then,” said Snett. “I sees Dr. Kledge for ’em when I’m home. He explained about how our brains change as we get older and how the interfaces have to be adjusted to keep up with it.”

“I see. Well Mr. Snett, it looks like we have an excellent year ahead of us. A lot of work, but I expect you’ll enjoy it.”

“Thank... thank you, sir. I expect I will.”

They shook hands, Grimble taking Snett’s natural left in his disguised right. The young man relaxed his grip but Grimble held on.

“I say, do you plan to see Mrs. Glorn?”

“I do, sir.”

Grimble still did not let go. There was a decision he had reached days ago but now that it was time to act it was difficult.

“I... I have something for her. I wonder; would you mind taking it?”

“Oh, not at all, sir, not at all.”

Grimble went to his desk and picked up an envelope. He handed it over quickly before he had a chance to change his mind.

“It’s important. See that nothing happens to it.”

“I will, sir. I’ll take good care of it.”

The young man turned to leave. As he passed Grael’s desk in the outer office Grimble called after him. “By the way, Snett. Ask Mrs. Glorn what to do about those headaches.”

“Sir?”

“Remember, she’s never wrong.”

He watched the boy limp out to the corridor, wondering what Mrs. Glorn would do when she read his confession to her husband’s murder.

“Any more appointments, Grael?”

“No, Professor. You’re all clear.”

“All right. I have some work to catch up on. Why don’t you call it a day?”

Grimble closed the door and put his head down on the desk. He was exhausted and the muscles along the back of his neck were sore. Now that the interface had been deactivated he noticed its weight. He thought for a moment about that late afternoon among the Failures when Lorink had picked him up and run all the way to Mr. Glarchy’s house. With complete disregard for orthodoxy, social order and personal sovereignty Glarchy had disconnected the overloaded interface, thereby saving his life.

He picked up the light stylus but his disguised hands were clumsy. He pulled off the gauntlets and dropped them into the wastebasket.

The manuscript he had started before the trip to Eastmine was still in the drawer where he had left it. Looking over the glowing blue words scrawled across the golden pages, he wasn’t surprised to find they were gibberish. He crumpled up the sheets and tossed them into the wastebasket.

Taking a deep breath, he began to write. There was no headache to warn him away from dangerous thoughts or convict him of any transgression. There was no fear to bind him to the prevailing order. There was nothing but his words, rolling effortlessly from the stylus, forming themselves into verses and stanzas or roaming free and wild among the colors and shapes of blank verse.

He worked until it was dark and the pale yellow lights of his office flickered like candles in a draft. Beyond his open window there was silence broken only by the sparkling music of crickets and the soulless echoes of bats patrolling the night sky.

Grimble switched off the lights, locked the office and left the building. The campus was absolutely silent. The buildings were invisible, submerged in a black sea of sultry air. A few drops of starlight struggled through the haze of the moonless night, adding no illumination to the nearly perfect darkness.

There was one light, shimmering weakly on the sluggish waves of heat and humidity. A single spark, pale and yellow, flickered through a narrow window in Omicron Hall.

Grimble thought about the gun locked in his desk. He thought about row upon row of empty, uncomfortable buildings adorned with incomprehensible artwork, shivered at the implications and thought about the gun some more. He thought about the blossoms of potential crushed and uprooted by nightmarish devices, of humans cynically pitted against other humans, and he could feel the gun heavy and solid in his strong right hand.

He returned to the office, opened the drawer and picked up the weapon. He had only killed once. It had brought him no satisfaction but this time...

Who was he kidding? He was no killer.

He put the gun away and took out the poetry he had just written. It was not brilliant; neither was it the “useless product of an aimless intellect” as Dr. Jerph might observe. He laughed. If literature was so useless why had Jerph sent him to kill a writer?

Why indeed?

Grimble smiled. It was the first smile he could be sure was his. Now that his thoughts were his own he didn’t know if he believed in the Green Earth or the One Almighty. Maybe he would someday but for now it was enough to know his enemy.

Making himself comfortable he picked up the light stylus and began rewriting. He had to be sure his weapons were sharp.