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neatly trimmed sideburns who wore his uniform hat at a rakish angle. A sign
above the windshield said
Your driver safe, courteous, and below that, on the slide-in name plate,
Wilbert Caul.
I felt like I was coming out of a nightmare. I felt happy. I stretched some of
the knots out of my back. A young soldier seated across the aisle from me
looked my way; I smiled, and he returned it briefly.
 You were mumbling to yourself in your sleep last night, he said.
 Sorry. Sometimes I have bad dreams.
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 It s okay. I do too, sometimes. He had a round, open face, an apologetic
grin. He was twenty, maybe. Who knew where his dreams came from? We chatted
until the bus reached the station; he shook my hand and said he was pleased to
meet me. He called me  sir.
I was not due back at the library until Monday, so I walked over to
Yonge Street. The stores were busy, the tourists were out in droves, the adult
theaters were doing a brisk business. Policemen in sharply creased trousers,
white gloves, sauntered along among the pedestrians. It was a bright,
cloudless day, but the breeze coming up the street from the lake was cool. I
stood on the sidewalk outside one of the strip joints and watched the
videotaped come-on over the closed circuit. The Princess
Laya. Sondra Nieve, the Human Operator. Technology replaces the traditional
barker, but the bodies are more or less the same. The
persistence of your faith in sex and machines is evidence of your capacity to
hope.
Francis Bacon, in his masterwork
The New Atlantis, foresaw the
Utopian world that would arise through the application of experimental science
to social problems. Bacon, however, could not solve the problems of his own
time and was eventually accused of accepting bribes, fined forty thousand
pounds, and imprisoned in the Tower of London. He made no appeal to God, but
instead applied himself to the development of the virtues of patience and
acceptance. Eventually he was freed. Soon after, on a freezing day in late
March, we were driving near Highgate when I
suggested to him that cold might delay the process of decay. He was excited by
the idea. On impulse he stopped the carriage, purchased a hen, wrung its neck
and stuffed it with snow. He eagerly looked forward to the results of his
experiment. Unfortunately, in haggling with the street vendor he had exposed
himself thoroughly to the cold and was seized with a chill which rapidly led
to pneumonia, of which he died on April 9, 1626.
There s no way to predict these things.
When the videotape started repeating itself I got bored, crossed the street,
and lost myself in the crowd.
* * * *
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