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Chapter 7
September 16
Disturbing the Field
T
MY USUAL EARLY HOUR I sat at the computer to do some work on the passage
that I would be reading in the evening, but it was Albertine who wrote:
Twenty-one years in the hotel business, and what have
I got to show for it? Nothing. Nothing at all. Less than
nothing, since we’re in debt beyond our eyeballs. Once I had hopes
for this place, and Peter certainly had his dreams. Together we made
our plans and hatched our schemes, but little by little it has all slipped
away. Now there’s nothing. Nothing but emptiness and exhaustion.
I thought that I would have made this place into something
by now. It would be chugging along and it would bring us a reliable
income. I thought we would be comfortable now, but we are not comfortable
at all. We are both anxious and unhappy, and I am disappointed and
angry.
He has a place to go, his past. He can get away
from here, and does, for a while every day, but I’m here all the time.
It’s a prison. It’s a nightmare. I am isolated, and
if I can’t sell this hotel I’m stuck here. Stuck here.
Lately, though, I’ve been thinking about Manhattan.
In Manhattan I can get a job. I can get a job, and I’ll be in the
world. What job can I get? I haven’t done anything but run
this place, if you don’t count the jobs I had as a teenager. I have
this idea, that I could teach a course on how to run an inn, a small hotel.
Okay, even I laugh at the thought of it, but it’s not as ridiculous as
it sounds. I think I would call it “How to Run a Small Hotel” or
“How Not to Run a Small Hotel” or “How to Run a Small Hotel into the Ground”
or “Do As I Say, Not As I Did.” Maybe it could be a continuing education
course. It has been a continuing education course. |
IN THE AFTERNOON, I walked up to Albertine at the desk and said, “Let
me take you away from all of this, at least for the afternoon.” She
protested, pleading work, but I pointed out that with only two guests staying
at the hotel, this was the perfect opportunity to refresh ourselves before
the hordes arrived for the weekend. I took her by the hand and led
her to the dock, and I thought I could feel her spirits lighten as we approached
it. I pumped the launch, she started it up, I cast us off, and with
Albertine at the wheel we escaped the confines of Small’s Island.
She was smiling all the way across the bay.
We drove the Small’s van to Foggy Cove and spent a couple
of hours just walking around. We came upon a little Victorian house
undergoing renovation, and we daydreamed a bit about getting enough for
the hotel so that we could buy the little house outright. Albertine
guessed that our living expenses would be tiny. We could relax.
We ate dinner at the Foggy Cove Inn. They had sent
me a coupon for a free meal. It was supposed to be good only during
the week of my birthday, but I lied and no one questioned me.
We drove back to Babbington, I pumped the launch nearly
dry, and we were back at the hotel in time for me to read episode seven
of Dead Air, “Disturbing the Field,” as advertised. |
 |
|
HEN
I WAS A BOY, there was quite a lot of interest in flying saucers.
This was the popular name given to unidentified flying objects that were
supposed to be the ships of voyagers from other worlds. Though they
were called saucers, they resembled hubcaps. There was also quite
a lot of interest in hubcaps at that time. (Since then, interest
in flying saucers, inhabitants of other worlds, and hubcaps has declined.
Today, it is limited to isolated groups of fanatics. Things change.)
I make no claim to having been immune to these popular
enthusiasms, will deny neither the modest collection of hubcaps that I’d
accumulated nor the flying-saucer detector that I built from plans in Cellar
Scientist magazine.
The detector was a simple device: just a few pieces of
wire, a compass needle, a battery, and a bulb. The plans included
two diagrams: a “pictorial” and a “schematic.” Here is the pictorial,
drawn from memory:

Here is the schematic, also drawn from memory:

You see the difference. The pictorial depicts the thing
as we would see it if it were assembled by a professional using the highest-quality
components, but the schematic is a depiction of the essence of the thing;
instead of showing the thing, it shows the point of the thing,
its function and meaning, the ding an sich. The pictorial
is an attempt to represent the object, but the schematic is an attempt
to represent the ideal underlying the object. All the electrical
projects I built in my boyhood career as a builder of electrical projects
included in their instructions both types of diagram: one for the realists
and one for the idealists, the dreamers.
Was it the realists or the dreamers who were most expected
to expect the detector to work? I’m not sure. I know that I
never really expected it to work at all. I tried not to expect any
of my projects to work; it kept the level of disappointment down.
In order to expect it to work, I would have had to assume
that as a flying saucer passed overhead its engine (highly advanced, of
course, and employing a source of power unknown on earth) would cause a
local disturbance in the magnetic field, which would make a compass needle
swing aside from its normal north-south orientation, and when the detector
was finished, a remarkable phenomenon occurred: I bought that underlying
assumption. I was proud of my work; because I was proud of my work
I wanted to feel that it was work worth doing; because I wanted to feel
that it was worth doing, I had to accept its conceptual underpinnings;
so, I did.
When one accepts something like that, one does not want
to be alone with one’s beliefs, feeling like a solitary deluded dreamer,
so one seeks another who can be persuaded to accept the same beliefs.
I turned to Porky White, who ran a clam bar in the older part of town,
near the bay.
I climbed onto a stool at the counter and set the detector
in front of me.
“Nice work,” said Porky. “What is it?”
“It’s a flying-saucer detector,” I said.
“How does it work?”
“Well, first I have to get it aligned.” I rotated the
base until the needle was steady within the ring of wire. “There.
Now, if a flying saucer passes by, it will disturb the magnetic field—”
I paused. If Porky was going to object, if he was
going to refuse to accept the underlying assumption, if he was going to
say that my detector rested on a base of preposterous delusions, this was
the point at which he would do it.
He folded his arms across his chest and nodded his head
and said, “Because of the anti-gravity drive, I suppose.”
“Right,” I said, without, I think, betraying my relief.
“The needle will swing and touch the wire, the current will flow, and the
bulb will light.”
We both looked at the detector for a while. Nothing
happened.
“How do you know it’s working?” he asked.
“Well, there are two tests,” I explained. I took
a magnet from my pocket. “This is the positive test,” I said, and
I passed the magnet over the detector. The needle swung, and the
lamp lit.
“Wow,” said Porky.
I put the magnet away. The needle settled down and
aligned itself north-to-south, resting in the center of the wire circle,
with the lamp unlit.
I said, “This is the
negative test.”
“Oh. I get it,” said Porky. He came around
the end of the counter, walked across the room, stuck his head outside
and scanned the sky. “Amazing!” he shouted. “Not a saucer in
sight!” |
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From a mid-life crisis of failed dreams and an uncertain
future, Eric Kraft weaves a beguiling, affectionate comedy of love and
possibilities.
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Lynn Harnett, Portsmouth Herald,August 30, 1998
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Copyright © 1998
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