The Long Utopia

48

AS IT TURNED out, as Rocky eventually came to figure it, by the time the Next came to ‘collect’ him, Stan had started to whip up so much trouble at Miami West 4 that there were all kinds of people who would have been glad to see the back of him regardless.

On the very day the Next came for him, in fact, Stan was preaching. Then again, most days he was preaching now, since coming back from the Grange with a head full of new ideas.

In the heavy afternoon sunlight of a late spring day, in this footprint of Miami – at the foot of the space elevator, an eggshell-blue thread that connected Earth to sky – Stan sat on the roof of a low concrete bunker and looked out over his fellow stalk jacks, a hundred or so of them gathered before him. And the crowd was in turn being surveyed by uniformed state cops, company security guys, and presumably by other agencies undercover. Ready for the trouble which seemed to be attracted to Stan.

And Stan Berg said, ‘Apprehend. Be humble in the face of the universe. Do good. Eleven words. Three rules. There endeth the sermon for the day, unless you want to hear a few lame gags …’ Laughter.

Even Rocky, at the back of the group, could hear him clearly. Aged just nineteen, Stan had developed a way of projecting his voice.

Rocky stood here with three women. Roberta Golding, the enigmatic Next woman who had escorted them to the Grange. Melinda Bennett, the young Arbiter, who had revealed herself to Rocky as a Next on his return, living quietly among ‘ordinary’ people, just as quietly intervening to help keep the peace – or, if you listened to Stan, to anaesthetize mankind into passivity. And Martha, Stan’s mother, listening to her son preaching, who quite clearly did not want to be here, and yet just as clearly could not bear to be anywhere else.

This was a meal break before the evening shift, and Stan had attracted a good crowd. Stan himself looked totally at ease as he took a bite of his sandwich, and a sip of alcohol-free beer. He said now, ‘You know, I never did like numbers much.’

That raised a chuckle from his fellow workers, who knew Stan was one of the brightest in the pool and had forever been turning down training chances in favour of staying with these people, the stalk jacks, his friends – friends who were increasingly his followers.

‘Oh, I was good at the numbers. Wouldn’t deny that. I could count to three before I was, well, three.’ He pulled a face. ‘Which confused me. But round about then I figured that I mostly didn’t need the numbers that go much beyond three. There was only one of me, two of my parents, together we made three.’ He looked down at his lunch. ‘I got three sandwiches here, three beers. I guess I’ll be needing the john three times during the shift.’ He looked around with a grin. ‘And I’ve been figuring, if I was to ask somebody smart, I mean really smart, what life was all about – how I was to live it – I think I’d measure that smartness, not by how many words he or she spouted, not by how many books he or she had written—’

He picked up a book now from his pile of stuff. Rocky recognized a battered old copy of Spinoza’s Ethics. Stan threw it out into the crowd, and people jumped to grab it.

‘No,’ Stan said, ‘I’d think they were smarter the more they boiled down their wisdom. The closer they got to the number three – to three simple rules of thumb, if you like. Who needs more than three? Such as.’ He held up his left thumb. ‘Rule of the First Thumb. Apprehend. Which is a nice word if you roll it around your mouth. Apprehend.

‘It doesn’t just mean “understand”, although it includes that meaning, fully. It means you should face the truth of the world – not let yourself be fooled by how you’d like it to be. You should try to be fully aware of the richness of reality, of the mixed-up complexity of all the processes going right back to the birth of the stars that have produced you and the world you live in, and this very moment …

‘And you need to apprehend other people too, as best you can.’ He gazed out at upturned faces. ‘Even those close to you. Especially those close to you. “You cannot love what you do not know.” That’s from an old religious teacher, some saint or other. That makes sense, doesn’t it?’

‘I grok you!’ somebody called, to general laughter.

Stan grinned back. ‘That’s catchier. And here’s another way of saying this. Be here now. Which is the title of an Oasis album.’

One of the senior engineers, an elderly British guy, raised a solitary whoop in response. ‘Gone but not forgotten, Stan!’

‘Be here now. If you have a god, then consider that every moment you’re alive and aware in this glorious world is a moment of awareness of that god – and to live in that moment is the only way you can be aware of your god …’

Melinda murmured, ‘Now he almost sounds like Celandine.’

Martha said fiercely, ‘But there’s also some Spinoza in there, I think. For all you brainiacs dismiss the work of mere humans. Also the rationalist atheists who said our ethics must be drawn from human experience … I’ve tried to study this stuff. So I could find ways to talk to my son. Did you see who caught the book, by the way?’

Rocky had. ‘Mo Morris.’ One of the innermost group Stan called his ‘buddies’, and some of the jealous outsiders referred to as ‘superfans’ – if not by some more pejorative term – and who Martha called the ‘misfits’. Mostly young, mostly male, they were odd, needy characters, at least in Martha’s view, for whom Stan’s sudden charisma, revealed when he got back from the Grange, filled a hole in their lives they’d barely even known existed. Now here they were, lapping up every word, recording Stan on their phones and tablets, or just slavishly writing down every word he uttered, every lame joke. Certainly none of them had hung around with Stan before his secret journey. They were a growing flock from which Rocky, his oldest friend, the only one around him now aside from his mother who’d really known him before, was increasingly excluded.

And yet Rocky couldn’t walk away, any more than Martha could. For Rocky feared for Stan’s safety.

Stan was still talking. ‘And you know what I’d expect this smart person to say to me next?’ He stuck up the thumb on his right hand now. ‘The Rule of the Second Thumb. Be humble in the face of the universe. Of course if they were that humble they wouldn’t be laying down the law in the first place. Be humble. You got to be aware of your limits, right?’ He glanced up at the space elevator. ‘We all have meaningful jobs on this thing. But you do what you can do. Unless you can solve fourth-order differential equations you ain’t going to be much help in the design office, are you?’

‘I bet you could solve them, Stan,’ called up one of the buddies.

Stan shrugged. ‘Not beyond third-order. I told you I can only count up to three.’

Laughter.

‘Be humble. Some of you are paramedics, first responders. The first thing they teach any medic is do no harm. Isn’t that right? Help if you can, but at least don’t make things worse in your ignorance. But to accept that limit you need to know your ignorance. Here we are building this mighty monument. We know what it’s designed to do, we’ve all seen the projections and the business models: the fruits of the sky brought down to this Earth. But none of us knows what effects it’s going to have, not in the short, medium or long term. We live in a reality that’s not just complicated, it’s chaotic. Unstable. So, be humble in the face of the universe. Know the limits of what you can achieve, what you can know. And in a chaotic universe, at least don’t snafu stuff even more than it already is snafued …’ He raised an arm and mimed flicking his middle finger at the cable. ‘You know, I have this fantasy that if I touch this big guitar string just right I could set up this huge oscillation … That’s one small pluck for a man, one giant twang for mankind—’ Hastily he stuck his hand in his pocket. ‘Best not take the chance!’

More laughter.

Roberta tapped Melinda’s arm. ‘That’s getting a response from the agitators.’

This was Melinda’s and Roberta’s term for a wider circle of ‘friends’ of Stan’s. Mostly older than the misfits, many of them blue-collar workers, men and women, they were union leaders, organizers, campaigners – some of them even disaffected middle management. From their circle had come the leaders of the most damaging down-tools strike the beanstalk project on this world had seen so far. They seemed to want to use Stan and his gatherings as a focus for discontent with LETC, the other contractors and the government.

Melinda murmured, ‘All Stan’s talk of hubris, of overreach. That’s been a common thread in their own talk. It’s a theme they can use to challenge the position of their corporate and political masters.’

Roberta nodded. ‘Stan may also have been unwise to speak of bringing the beanstalk down. Even to raise such an idea, however playfully, will ring alarm bells with the security agencies.’

Martha glared at the agitators, who were smiling and nodding at each other as Stan spoke. ‘Look at them. Such hard people. Troublemakers with their own agenda. I know that. And the cops know it from the way they keep an eye on them.’ She sighed. ‘If only Stan knew it too. He’s so innocent, for all his brains.’

Rocky knew there were real tensions here in Miami West 4, and had been long before Stan had begun his self-appointed mission. The beanstalk project was falling well behind schedule, and was eating its investors’ money. The problem had always been keeping hold of the workers. This was after all the Long Earth, and even Florida West 4 was pretty empty and wild and exotic. In the heads of the young elevator workers, old dreams were forever being subverted by the new. All of which forced the management to try to tie down their workers with restrictive contracts, or to reward them handsomely to keep them on side – which, of course, gave leverage to those who sought more.

Meanwhile the Next, as represented by Roberta and Melinda, had their own concerns about Stan and his message, and as he spoke on Rocky heard Melinda and Roberta exchange short bursts of quicktalk.

‘But you see,’ Stan said now, ‘I would want to ask this hypothetical person advising me to be a bit more active. Apprehend. Be humble in the face of the universe. Well, I could sit on my butt and manage that.’ He glanced around, as if in surprise to find himself still on his concrete plinth. ‘In fact I am sitting on my butt, but that’s by the bye. I think they’d sum up the rest something like this, with the Rule of the Third Thumb.’ He looked down at his own two thumbs. ‘Now, you see, I haven’t really thought this through. Because I ain’t got a third thumb.’ He looked down at his crotch, innocently. ‘Of course I could improvise.’

One of the buddies called, ‘Not with your mom standing in front of you, you won’t!’

Rocky saw Martha’s glare at that. She hated to be referred to by any of this bunch of inadequates, as she called them.

‘OK,’ Stan said, with a grin. ‘Take the third thumb as read. What’s important is the rule, which is: Do good.’ He looked down at his mother now. ‘That sounds a little bland, right? Kind of Mom-and-Pop instructions for when you’re about seven years old. But the question is, how should you do good? After all the right path isn’t always clear – everybody knows that, you face dilemmas about that every day.

‘Well, if you’re faced with some situation, some dilemma, remember the other rules of thumb. Apprehend. Try to understand the problem, the people involved, as much as you can. Be humble in the face of the universe. Make sure you don’t screw things up further, at least.

‘But you can do more. Do the good that’s in front of you. If somebody’s hurting, or about to be hurt, try to save them. Figure out who’s vulnerable, in any situation. Who’s got no power, no choice? It’s a good bet that you won’t go wrong if you help them. Even so, there may be situations where that’s not clear. So there’s a much older rule I came across, which some call – or versions of it – the Golden Rule: do as you would be done by. Would you want this done to you? Would you want to be saved from this situation? If so, do it. If you’re not sure, don’t.’ He shrugged. ‘You’re not going to get it right every time. It’s impossible to get it right every time. We live in a chaotic universe, remember? Be humble. But I figure it’s worth trying to get it more right than wrong …’

People started asking questions now.

Melinda sighed, listening absently. ‘Hear that? Some of them call him “Master”. Others are writing it all down. I think we just heard the Sermon Under the Beanstalk, delivered by a messiah called Stan.’

Martha almost snarled, ‘He’s just a kid.’

Roberta said gently, ‘With respect, Mrs Berg, I don’t think that’s fair. His message is simple but contains great depth – a depth which I am sure will be revealed by contemplation and exegesis in the months and years to come. Apprehend: one could take that as a mandate to achieve full awareness, indeed full self-awareness. To master the passions, for example – not to eliminate them, but to ensure they don’t control you. Be humble in the face of the universe: hidden in there may be a mandate for our management of the world, of all the worlds. We should embrace diversity, for example, for we can never know the consequences of our interventions in a maximally complex system like a biosphere.’ She glanced at Martha. ‘You’ve said you are not religious. You did not raise Stan in that tradition. His sermon sounded free of religion, humanist, perhaps even atheist. Yet buried deep in its implications there was even a guide as to how to approach God – any god, or gods. Consider that every moment you’re alive and aware in this glorious world is a moment of awareness of that god – and to live in that moment is the only way you can be aware of your god … That’s the basis of a creed that even the Next could embrace. And all of it packed into just eleven words, delivered by a man just nineteen years old.’ With liquid-bright eyes she looked around, at the crowd, the young man on the plinth. ‘This is not a trivial moment. This is the birth of a movement. Potentially a religion. A new force in the affairs of humanity.’

Rocky felt his temper flare. ‘By which you mean, dim-bulb humanity. It wouldn’t be the first time we “dim-bulbs” have dreamed up a new religion, even without your help.’

Roberta said, ‘But, you see, the problem is these “rules” of Stan’s have come from a Next, not a dim-bulb. For that’s what Stan is, whether he wants to admit it to himself or not – for all he’s rejected our own tentative thinking so far. He’s trying to build a bridge between Next and humanity, clearly. But his teaching could be profoundly destabilizing.’

‘Good,’ Rocky snarled.

Melinda frowned. ‘You need to keep your voice down.’

‘In fact, Rocky, I need you to come with us.’ A woman’s voice, speaking quietly.

Rocky turned, startled. Standing there was a woman Rocky didn’t recognize: late middle-aged, in traveller’s gear, with greying blonde hair under a sun-bleached hat, she was stern, silent, intimidating.

Roberta nodded. ‘It is time, then. We need you to help us save him, Rocky. And to get him out of here.’

‘Save Stan?’ Rocky asked wildly. ‘Save him from what?’ He turned on the middle-aged woman. ‘And what the hell do you want?’

She looked like she wanted nothing more than to just light out of here. And yet she held his gaze. She said, ‘I’m one of you – not a Next. And I hate this as much as you’re going to. But I came to help convince you they’re right, Rocky. And you, Martha. Stan must come with us, for he has a duty to perform. In a place called New Springfield.’ She smiled, oddly sadly, wistfully. ‘He’s going to be a hero, Rocky. I’ll tell you as much as I understand myself, I promise.’

This was the beginning. When Rocky began to learn for the first time that the Next intended to take Stan away from this place. And that they needed Rocky to help.

‘Who are you?’

‘My name is Sally Linsay.’