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kleenexwomanMore Philip K. Dick. This is just very talky.
All through the long car ride to Berkeley, Marty kept staring at his high school transcript. It was almost all A's and B's, except for his senior year; it had plunged down to mostly C's then. Apparently, he'd been a much better student in the new timestream. The first day back, he was actually astonished when Strickland had just given him a curt nod instead of collaring him and screaming in his face.
So his grades hadn't kept up. So what? His GPA was good enough to get him into Berkeley. His parents were rich enough to pay the tuition now. And George—this George—was an alumnus, which was another surprise; the old George had never gone to college.
"You're going to love Berkeley," George told him for the fiftieth time. "It'll be good for you to get out of Hill Valley and meet some new people. Open your mind."
Marty thought his mind was open enough already, but he didn't say anything.
"It was the best four years of my life," George said. "I met some of my best friends there."
"Like who?" Marty asked.
"Oh, nobody that you'd remember meeting," George said. "You're going to meet one of them today, though."
"You didn't tell me we were going to hang out with your old college friends," Marty said.
"His name's Phil; he was basically my mentor. Like the Doc is to you," George said. "I think you'll like him."
Marty shrugged.
"God, I haven't seen Phil in years," George said. "Not since Gloria's funeral in 1973."
"Who's Gloria?" Marty asked.
"You never met her, either," George said. "It doesn't matter." He shrugged. "She killed herself, as I remember. Took too many Nembutals."
Marty fiddled with the tuning knob on the car radio.
Ω
The restaurant turned out to be a tiny hole-in-the-wall Chinese joint called Horselover Fat's.
"We used to come here all the time," George said, pushing the door open.
Marty glanced at the menu. "When you were in college? It's kind of expensive, isn't it?"
"Well, the prices have probably changed…Phil! Hey!" George waved at a bearded man sitting in a corner booth.
Phil nodded gravely as they came over. "Hello, George. This is your son? The one you based "From the Gods" on?"
Marty gave his dad an incredulous look. "You wrote a story about me?"
"When you were sixteen. You don't remember reading it? I showed you the copy of OMNI. You said it was the creepiest thing you had ever read and then you wouldn't speak to me for two days," George said.
"Oh. Why not?"
George shrugged. "I guess you didn't like the story."
"Well, yeah, apparently. So what was it about?"
"Oi!" A dark-haired young man with a goatee slid into the booth. "Hey, you're that "From the Gods" kid! So do you really have tentacles instead of—"
"Kevin, shut up," said a woman behind him. She had long black hair twisted into braids and was wearing the thickest glasses Marty had ever seen anyone wear. "I'm sorry," she said to Marty. "My little brother has no concept of tact."
"I understand what it is," Kevin said. "I just choose not to employ it."
George grinned. "Kevin! Junie! I didn't know you were coming."
Junie scooted across the booth, next to the wall, and patted the seat next to her. "Come," she said. "Sit. Let us catch up with each others' lives."
George obeyed. Marty found a chair and sat at the end of the table.
They ordered drinks. The waitress brought them all beers without asking. George didn't say anything, so Marty tried his and then asked for a Pepsi instead.
"I haven't been doing anything interesting," Phil began. "Not since I had that stroke four years ago, anyway."
"Nothing interesting? They made a movie out of one of your books," Kevin said. "He's so modest."
"A movie? Which one?" Marty asked.
Phil rolled his eyes. "Ach, Blade Runner. It was barely based on "Androids", anyway. I wish I had nothing to do with it."
"You're that Phil? Philip K. Dick? Can I have your autograph?"
Phil looked over at George. "Have you been raising your son to annoy celebrities on purpose, George?" Seeing the look on Marty's face, he laughed. "I'm sorry, I'm just kidding," he said.
"You've been working on your exegesis, haven't you, Phil?" Junie asked.
"It's not ready yet," Phil said. "Junie, what have you been doing? You never told me."
"Research," Junie said. "On Asperger's syndrome. You don't want to hear me talk about it; it's really a very boring subject unless you're a psychologist or you actually have it."
"Thank you for sparing us," Kevin said. "My turn, right? Yeah?"
"If you want," Junie said.
"I," Kevin announced proudly, "am a swibble repairman."
"What's a swibble?" Marty asked.
"A swibble, young man, is the wave of the future," Kevin told him. "In thirty years, there will be one in every household. They will be as ubiquitous as the television is now."
"I mean, what does it do?"
"How the hell should I know? They haven't even been invented yet," Kevin said. "But when they are, I will know how to repair them."
Marty considered this. "So how do you know that someone's going to invent them?"
"Because I repair them. If someone had never invented the swibble, I wouldn't be able to fix them, would I?"
"But you don't," Marty said. "You can't fix something that doesn't exist."
"Hey, do I go around invalidating your existence? Be polite. Young people these days," Kevin grumbled.
"Far too many of them," Phil agreed sarcastically.
"I almost remember being that young," Junie said.
"I can remember being that young," Kevin said.
"I hated being that young," George muttered.
Junie absently slid her hand over George's. "We were so idealistic then. Little radicals."
"Radicals?" Marty tried to remember what he knew on that subject. "Dad, you were a hippie?"
"This was 1956, Marty. We were before hippies," George said.
"I was a hippie," Kevin said.
"You graduated in 1968. You were young enough to be a hippie," Junie said.
"Somehow," Phil said, "I can't imagine George being a hippie."
"I can," Kevin said. "George, you'd look good with long hair and bellbottoms."
"Don't forget the platform shoes," Junie giggled. "The mark of a true radical!" She sighed. "I was a horrible teenager. I was such a little megalomaniac. I used to walk around high school hating all the pretty, popular kids and wishing I could take over the planet and kill them all. Or make them my slaves and send them to work in the salt mines."
"You were like that freshman year, too," George said. "Remember what you called Lorraine when you met her?"
"A social automaton," Junie said. "I don't regret it, either. I couldn't stand her."
"Why not?" Marty asked.
"Oh, she was so vapid. Not an original thought in her head," Junie said.
"She wasn't vapid," George said. "Just very down-to-earth. There's not a lot of time for philosophy and introspection in a small town, you know."
"You managed it," Junie said.
"I didn't have anything else to do," George said. "I didn't have any friends, except for…I didn't have any friends at all."
"I could tell you didn't from the first time I saw you in the library," Junie said. "You were so awkward."
"I remember that," George said. "I actually dropped my books when you walked up to me. Just out of sheer nervousness."
"And I asked you if there was anything wrong."
"And I told you that pretty girls made me nervous."
"And I told you that I wasn't pretty, so there wasn't any reason to be nervous around me," said Junie. "It worked, too."
The waitress brought plates. "I already ordered for us," Phil said. "Chicken lettuce wraps. It's the best thing they have here," he told Marty. "The specialty of the house."
Marty tried one, then shoveled six onto his plate and decided to visit Horselover Fat's as often as he could.
"George," Phil said, "do you remember that alien visitation you told us you had?"
"The one in high school?" George asked.
"No, he means the one you had yesterday," Kevin said. Junie glared at him. "Sure," Kevin continued, "why wouldn't he? He's only got a best-selling book about it."
""A Match Made In Space", right?" Junie asked. "I read that."
"What did you think?" George asked eagerly.
Junie thought for a moment. "It read a little like Bradbury," she said. "Very nostalgic."
"Like Jack Finney," Phil said.
"Who's Jack Finney?" Marty asked.
"Oh, he wrote "Invasion of the Body Snatchers"," George said. "The book, I mean."
"I loved that movie," Kevin said. "Remember when it came out, Junie? We went to see it and I told Mom that you'd dragged me to one of those romance movies instead, to get you in trouble—"
"I told her that," Junie said, "because she didn't like monster movies and I thought she'd be mad if we went to see one."
"He wrote a lot about time travel, too," Phil said. "Jack Finney. 'Time After Time'—that was a whole book of his time travel stories. The man was obsessed with time."
"He was obsessed with the past," George said, "not time. The past and how it trickles away."
"Dust in the wind," Kevin said.
"Right." Junie said. "Socrates."
"Kansas," Kevin corrected her. "Aaaallll we are…is dust in the wiiiiiiiiiind…" he warbled, waving his beer bottle back and forth like a conductor's baton.
"Someone get the man a microphone," said Marty.
"Karaoke!" Kevin cackled. "Hey George, remember when—"
George rolled his eyes. "Don't remind me."
Marty laughed. "Dad, you did karaoke?"
"Once, and I was drunk," George said. "I don't have a very good singing voice."
"You don't have to, for karaoke," Phil said. "The audience provides the illusion of skill."
Junie propped her chin on her hands. "I thought you were pretty good onstage," she said. "Very passionate. What song was it you did?"
"Ah…"These Boots Were Made For Walking", I think it was," George said.
"He was sobbing the whole time," Kevin said. "Kid, your dad—and I hate to inform you of this—is a weepy drunk."
"I know," Marty muttered.
Kevin sighed. "Damn good times."
Junie folded her hands on the table. "So," she said. "Alien visitations, was it?"
"It was? Oh yes," Phil continued. "Anyway, I've been thinking about that recently. You remember when "Star Wars" came out—"
"I remember that! I was only eight then," Marty interjected. "I loved that movie."
"You have good taste," Kevin said. He pointed his bottle at Marty. "Which did you like better—" He was interrupted by a fresh round of beers (and one Pepsi) delivered by the waitress.
"So," Phil said, once the waitress was out of earshot, "I saw "Star Wars". And I think that something similar to your encounter happened to George Lucas."
"I thought so too," George said. "But whatever happened to him must have been so different—I mean, in the movie, Darth Vader is a monster."
"That doesn't have to mean that the Darth Vader who visited Lucas was also a monster," Junie said. "He might have just used the name, right?"
Phil shook his head. "No, there are too many parallels in the movie itself to what I've been saying all along."
"What the hell kind of parallels could you see? It's a kid's movie, Phil," Kevin said. "It's got…little green Muppets."
"I think," George said, "that I see where you're going with this. The Empire that you're always going on about—"the Empire never ended"—that's the Empire in the movie, right?"
Phil grinned and slapped his hand on the table. "Exactly, although I was going to add that the Empire in the movie is clearly analogous to the Roman Empire. Lucas knew what he was talking about."
"What about the Vulcan part?" Marty blurted. "Remember, he said he was Darth Vader from the planet Vulcan. That's from 'Star Trek,' not 'Star Wars'."
George glanced at Marty. "How did you know that? I didn't think you had read my book," he said.
Marty shrugged.
"The Vulcan part is pretty obscure," Phil said. "But I figured that out, too. Vulcan was the Roman god of iron."
"The Black Iron Prison again," Kevin said.
"It's a metaphor," Junie explained to Marty. "Phil uses it as a metaphor for the discrepancy between human perception and reality."
Marty took a second to figure that out. "Like the Wall."
"What wall?" George asked.
"Pink Floyd's "The Wall". The whole album is about how Pink Floyd—that's the name of the fictional singer—builds up walls between himself and the world," Marty said. "It's a really good album."
"I liked "Dark Side of the Moon" better, myself," Kevin said.
"The metaphor of the Wall is actually pretty good," Phil said. "The Black Iron Prison, after all, is an artificial construction created by the blind god Yaldaboath."
"Now you've lost me," Marty said.
"Trust me," said Kevin, "you're better off lost in this case. Once you get Phil talking about Yaldaboath and the Sophia and the lost gospels, he'll never stop and you'll be here for hours."
"If you don't like it when Phil talks about religion, then change the subject," Junie suggested. "I happen to find it fascinating when he talks about his theories."
"I can change the subject," Kevin said. "So—Darth Vader, then. Why would he be called Darth Vader?"
"Well, Vader would come from "invader", wouldn't it?" George suggested. "Just without the "in" part."
"There's no significance in that," Phil said. "If the "in" was left off, the word wouldn't have any meaning."
"It might," Junie said. "Depending on the root word, I mean. What's the root of "invade"?"
Kevin turned to George. "English major, what's the root? Tell Junie."
George shrugged. "I never really cared about the roots of words," he admitted.
"You should," Phil said. "The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use the words."
"But the word "vader" doesn't have any meaning," Kevin said. "It's a word without a root."
"You can't have a word without a root," George said.
"I thought you didn't care about word roots," Kevin said.
"I just know that each word has to have a root, somewhere," George said. "You can't just make up a word at random and have it suddenly be part of the language."
"I bet you," Kevin said, "I bet you a dollar that I can think of a word without a root."
"That's a stupid bet," Junie said. "You'll just make up a nonsense word."
"No, I mean a word that's already in the English language," Kevin said.
"I'm not going to bet on it," George said. "Just tell me which word you're thinking of."
Kevin looked disappointed. "The word "quiz"," he said. "In Victorian England, somebody made up the word and went around writing it on walls. Don't remember who, though."
"But that's not a true lack of origin," Phil said. "It came to stand for anything that was hard to figure out, just because the word itself was hard to figure out."
"Still, the word itself—just "quiz" without the meaning—doesn't have any root in any language."
"Maybe it was an onomatopoeic word," Junie said. "Aboriginal tribes do that, assigning words that sound like sounds. Of course, we'll never know—it could be anything. It could have been a childhood babble."
"Childhood babbles," Kevin said, "never have any effect on anything."
"I have to object to that statement on general grounds," George said. "Nothing can not affect anything."
"What the hell does that mean?" Kevin asked.
"I mean, nothing affects nothing. No, wait…" George was getting flustered.
"Invert it, George," Phil suggested. "Do you mean that everything affects something?"
George grinned and slapped the table. "That's it! That's what I meant to say."
"Isn't that from chaos theory?" Marty asked. "When a butterfly in China flaps its wings, we get a hurricane?"
"Yeah, it's something like that," Kevin said. "Phil, that's it, isn't it?"
"I wouldn't know," Phil said. "Science fiction writers, I am sorry to say, really do not know anything. We can't talk about science, because our knowledge of it is limited and unofficial, and usually our fiction is dreadful."
George snorted in laughter. "Yeah, that about sums it up."
Kevin turned to Marty. "So how does a seventeen-year-old kid like you know about chaos theory?" he asked.
"The Doc—one of my teachers," Marty muttered.
Kevin shook his head. "Jeez, what they're teaching kids nowadays. Anyway, I really think I can disprove that version of chaos theory."
"You can't disprove it," Junie said. "It's a complex mathematical theory. You're a dropout."
"That doesn't mean I'm not good at math," Kevin said.
"But you aren't," said Junie. "Even if you had finished college, you'd be lousy at math. You always were lousy at math. You bragged about how lousy at math you were."
"Yeah," Kevin admitted cheerfully. "But I can still disprove it by example."
"Disproving something by example is a stupid way to prove anything," Junie protested.
"I don't know. I think I'd like to hear this," George said. "What's your proof, Kev?"
"Okay, imagine you're out in deep space," Kevin said. "And there's nothing around that can be affected by you. No solids, no liquids, no gases, no chemical reactions, no atoms, no radio waves, no UV rays to be blocked, no light, nothing. You're not even giving off light. Now," he finished, "if you wave your hand—it won't make any difference in the rest of the universe." He sat back.
There was silence. Then Marty said, "Yeah, but it would make a difference to you because you're in outer space."
Kevin shrugged. "Okay," he said, "so maybe there's just a random human in space."
"Wouldn't the human explode or implode or something?" George asked.
"Yeah. So?"
"So its blood and body parts would drift off and interfere with other objects," George said. "Eventually, I mean."
"Okay, so maybe something that won't explode," Kevin said. "A single particle."
"What kind of particle?" Junie asked.
Kevin gave his sister an incredulous look. "What do you mean, what kind of particle?"
"Some particles are naturally unstable and tend to give off radiation," Junie said. "Plutonium, for example. If the particle was a plutonium particle, it would give off radiation and interfere with other objects." She grinned. "So tell us the properties of this particle, man. What's it like?"
"It's not important," Kevin said. "Look, it's just a theoretical particle."
"Doesn't the fact that we're talking about it indicate that it made some kind of impact on the universe?" Phil asked.
"No. The existence of the particle has nothing to do with the fact that we're talking about it," Kevin said. "Look, it's a moot point, okay? Deedle-deedle-queep."
Another round of drinks came. They sat silent until Junie spoke. "I've been thinking about what you said, George. About it being "vader" without the "in". Maybe it means that Darth wasn't invading. He was…outvading from within, if that makes sense."
"No," Kevin said.
"Kind of," George said.
"It makes perfect sense," Phil said.
Marty blew bubbles in his Pepsi.
"I mean, maybe Darth Vader was a manifestation of your internal anxieties," Junie explained. "You subconsciously really wanted to go to the dance with Lorraine, but for whatever reason you couldn't admit to yourself that you wanted to—that would have been being assertive, which you weren't."
"A messenger from the id!" Phil crowed.
George nodded. "That makes sense. I mean, it's much simpler than thinking that he was really an alien…"
Kevin shook his head. "No. Couldn't have been."
"Oh, why the hell not?" Junie snapped.
"Because Darth Vader exists," Kevin said. "We already know he exists."
"Because we're talking about him?" Junie asked sarcastically. "I thought you just eliminated that as a line of reasoning."
"No, because George Lucas had a Darth Vader," Kevin said. "And our George's Darth Vader existed before he knew about Lucas's Darth Vader. QED."
"For once, you have a point," Junie said. "So you're accepting Phil's explanation for the visitation?"
"Yes," said Kevin and George at the same time.
Junie sighed. "So George's Darth Vader was an emissary from the malevolent beings who created the Black Iron Prison, a.k.a. the Roman Empire, and George Lucas knew this and tried to express it in "Star Wars"." She shrugged. "It all sounds perfectly sane to me."
George stared at the ceiling. "Then why," he murmured, "did he visit me? What was the point of that visit, if…"
"Let's think about this logically, shall we?" Junie suggested brightly. "What were the consequences of that visit?"
"Well…It made me ask Lorraine to the dance," George said.
"And you two got married," said Junie. "And…?"
"Had me," Marty offered.
"If that's the end result," Kevin said, "then Marty is somehow instrumental in the continuing reign of the Black Iron Prison, right?" He turned to Marty. "You're not planning to vote for Reagan or anything, are you?"
"What does that have to do with it?" Marty asked.
"It's not the same as with Nixon," Phil murmured. "I can't work up any animosity toward Reagan. I see him as caught up in historic trends that are so powerful, he was literally brought to power, the way Hitler was, which was legally and by a very large majority…"
"Deedle-deedle-queep," said Kevin, and burped. "Phil," he explained to Marty, "hated Nixon. Thought he was the Antichrist. His idea of a dystopia was a world where Richard Nixon was running for a fifth term. Phil, didn't you write a book about it?"
"A parallel universe," Phil said. "Where Nixon—well, it wasn't actually Nixon, it was a politician I based on Nixon—had turned into a totalitarian dictator."
"And Marty caused it," said Kevin. "Because Darth Vader was responsible for his birth."
George laughed. "I really don't think that Marty's birth was what Darth Vader was aiming for," he said.
"Maybe it was just the consequences," Phil said. "Maybe if you hadn't married Lorraine, you would have done something else that would have defeated the Black Iron Prison."
George shook his head in disbelief. "Like what? What could I have possibly done?"
"Wrote a book," Phil said. "Think of how much you could have written if you had never married and had kids."
"I don't think my writing would be that different," George said.
"Nah," Kevin said. "I think it's obvious what George would have done if Darth Vader hadn't commanded him to go to the dance with Lorraine."
"Well, don't be cryptic about it," George said. "I want to know what I could have spent the rest of my life doing."
"You and Junie," Kevin said. "You guys would have gotten married."
Junie barked out a disbelieving laugh. "Me? Married?"
"To George," Kevin pointed out.
"Even so. I would be a lousy wife. I can't…clean. Or whatever it is that housewives do," Junie said.
"George wouldn't care," Kevin said.
"I wouldn't care," George confirmed.
Junie shook her head. "Anyway, who says I'd want to be married to George? Or that he'd want to marry me?"
"I wouldn't have minded," George said.
"A hopeless romantic," Phil said.
"Junie, I always thought you had a crush on George," Kevin said.
"I did not," Junie said. She folded her hands primly. "I always thought I made it perfectly clear to everyone that our relationship was entirely platonic."
"Well," George said, "I really liked you. I wanted to ask you out."
"Dad!" Marty was mildly shocked.
Junie blushed and stared at her plate.
"He's drunk," Kevin said. "That's why he's admitting his long-repressed love."
"He can't be that drunk," said Phil. "He's only had three beers."
"Our George does not hold his liquor well," Kevin said. "Thought you knew that, Phil."
"So why didn't you ask me out?" Junie asked.
"I thought you weren't interested in dating at all," said George. "You never had any dates."
"That's because I never met any men I was interested in besides you," Junie said.
"I find that hard to believe," said Phil. "I know for a fact that there were many perfectly eligible college men whom you would have liked."
"But I never met any of them, did I? It was always either those awful ambitious business majors who thought they were so much cleverer than me because they were men, or those dropouts who played guitar and thought they could make every girl who passed fall in love with them on the strength of a few lousy chords. Oh, and after college, you know who I dated? I went out with the men who came into my office for psychological help. I called it "social gradualism" and I wrote a whole paper on it." Junie's face was red. "A whole fucking method of therapy so that I could justify my lousy love life."
"Actually," Kevin said, "that explains a lot."
"Oh?" Junie said. "Does it now?"
"Yeah. Like that guy you brought home one year who was obsessed with rats. Or that other guy, the one who stared at the air conditioner during his whole visit. Even Mom thought they were both a little off."
"Well," Junie said, "now you know." She stared at her plate.
"How was he obsessed with rats?" Marty asked.
"He had them as pets," Junie said, not looking up. "Millions of them in his house. They had to tear it down because it was so infested. I went there before they tore it down; there were droppings all over the place."
Kevin pushed his plate away. "Thank you, that's killed my appetite."
George cleared his throat. "I think we had better get going," he said. "I have to get Marty to his dorm room by eleven."
"They don't have official hours at the dorms anymore," Marty said. "I don't have to be there until check-in tomorrow."
"Nevertheless." George stood up and almost crashed into the waitress, who was setting down a small tray of fortune cookies. "Oh, I'm sorry." The waitress gave a little bow and backed away.
"Would you mind driving me to my motel?" Junie asked. "I don't have my car here."
"Kevin can't drive you?" George asked.
"I'm taking Phil back to his house," Kevin explained. "It's in the opposite direction. We already decided."
"All right," George said. He leaned over and hugged Phil. "Take care."
"Take a fortune cookie," Phil said. George absently shoved one into his pocket.
Kevin had already cracked his open. "This is the weirdest fortune I've ever gotten in a cookie," he said.
"What does it say?" Marty asked.
"Eli llama something," Kevin said. "This is another language. I got a defective fortune."
"It's Aramaic," Phil said. "It means—"
"I'm staying at the Kamakiriad Motel," Junie told George. "It's only a few blocks from here." She stood up, then kissed Phil on the forehead. "Goodnight, Phil."
George waved to Kevin. "Goodnight, Kevin."
"See ya, guys," Marty said.
"Marty, come on," George said. Junie was already outside, waiting by the door.
Ω
Nobody said anything during the short ride to Marty's residence hall. George helped him unload his luggage, then gave him twenty bucks and the number at the motel he'd made reservations for. "Call me if you need anything," he said. "I'll probably be leaving by noon tomorrow."
Marty didn't bother to unpack. He tossed his duffel bag into the closet and curled up on the bare mattress in his clothes.
All through the long car ride to Berkeley, Marty kept staring at his high school transcript. It was almost all A's and B's, except for his senior year; it had plunged down to mostly C's then. Apparently, he'd been a much better student in the new timestream. The first day back, he was actually astonished when Strickland had just given him a curt nod instead of collaring him and screaming in his face.
So his grades hadn't kept up. So what? His GPA was good enough to get him into Berkeley. His parents were rich enough to pay the tuition now. And George—this George—was an alumnus, which was another surprise; the old George had never gone to college.
"You're going to love Berkeley," George told him for the fiftieth time. "It'll be good for you to get out of Hill Valley and meet some new people. Open your mind."
Marty thought his mind was open enough already, but he didn't say anything.
"It was the best four years of my life," George said. "I met some of my best friends there."
"Like who?" Marty asked.
"Oh, nobody that you'd remember meeting," George said. "You're going to meet one of them today, though."
"You didn't tell me we were going to hang out with your old college friends," Marty said.
"His name's Phil; he was basically my mentor. Like the Doc is to you," George said. "I think you'll like him."
Marty shrugged.
"God, I haven't seen Phil in years," George said. "Not since Gloria's funeral in 1973."
"Who's Gloria?" Marty asked.
"You never met her, either," George said. "It doesn't matter." He shrugged. "She killed herself, as I remember. Took too many Nembutals."
Marty fiddled with the tuning knob on the car radio.
Ω
The restaurant turned out to be a tiny hole-in-the-wall Chinese joint called Horselover Fat's.
"We used to come here all the time," George said, pushing the door open.
Marty glanced at the menu. "When you were in college? It's kind of expensive, isn't it?"
"Well, the prices have probably changed…Phil! Hey!" George waved at a bearded man sitting in a corner booth.
Phil nodded gravely as they came over. "Hello, George. This is your son? The one you based "From the Gods" on?"
Marty gave his dad an incredulous look. "You wrote a story about me?"
"When you were sixteen. You don't remember reading it? I showed you the copy of OMNI. You said it was the creepiest thing you had ever read and then you wouldn't speak to me for two days," George said.
"Oh. Why not?"
George shrugged. "I guess you didn't like the story."
"Well, yeah, apparently. So what was it about?"
"Oi!" A dark-haired young man with a goatee slid into the booth. "Hey, you're that "From the Gods" kid! So do you really have tentacles instead of—"
"Kevin, shut up," said a woman behind him. She had long black hair twisted into braids and was wearing the thickest glasses Marty had ever seen anyone wear. "I'm sorry," she said to Marty. "My little brother has no concept of tact."
"I understand what it is," Kevin said. "I just choose not to employ it."
George grinned. "Kevin! Junie! I didn't know you were coming."
Junie scooted across the booth, next to the wall, and patted the seat next to her. "Come," she said. "Sit. Let us catch up with each others' lives."
George obeyed. Marty found a chair and sat at the end of the table.
They ordered drinks. The waitress brought them all beers without asking. George didn't say anything, so Marty tried his and then asked for a Pepsi instead.
"I haven't been doing anything interesting," Phil began. "Not since I had that stroke four years ago, anyway."
"Nothing interesting? They made a movie out of one of your books," Kevin said. "He's so modest."
"A movie? Which one?" Marty asked.
Phil rolled his eyes. "Ach, Blade Runner. It was barely based on "Androids", anyway. I wish I had nothing to do with it."
"You're that Phil? Philip K. Dick? Can I have your autograph?"
Phil looked over at George. "Have you been raising your son to annoy celebrities on purpose, George?" Seeing the look on Marty's face, he laughed. "I'm sorry, I'm just kidding," he said.
"You've been working on your exegesis, haven't you, Phil?" Junie asked.
"It's not ready yet," Phil said. "Junie, what have you been doing? You never told me."
"Research," Junie said. "On Asperger's syndrome. You don't want to hear me talk about it; it's really a very boring subject unless you're a psychologist or you actually have it."
"Thank you for sparing us," Kevin said. "My turn, right? Yeah?"
"If you want," Junie said.
"I," Kevin announced proudly, "am a swibble repairman."
"What's a swibble?" Marty asked.
"A swibble, young man, is the wave of the future," Kevin told him. "In thirty years, there will be one in every household. They will be as ubiquitous as the television is now."
"I mean, what does it do?"
"How the hell should I know? They haven't even been invented yet," Kevin said. "But when they are, I will know how to repair them."
Marty considered this. "So how do you know that someone's going to invent them?"
"Because I repair them. If someone had never invented the swibble, I wouldn't be able to fix them, would I?"
"But you don't," Marty said. "You can't fix something that doesn't exist."
"Hey, do I go around invalidating your existence? Be polite. Young people these days," Kevin grumbled.
"Far too many of them," Phil agreed sarcastically.
"I almost remember being that young," Junie said.
"I can remember being that young," Kevin said.
"I hated being that young," George muttered.
Junie absently slid her hand over George's. "We were so idealistic then. Little radicals."
"Radicals?" Marty tried to remember what he knew on that subject. "Dad, you were a hippie?"
"This was 1956, Marty. We were before hippies," George said.
"I was a hippie," Kevin said.
"You graduated in 1968. You were young enough to be a hippie," Junie said.
"Somehow," Phil said, "I can't imagine George being a hippie."
"I can," Kevin said. "George, you'd look good with long hair and bellbottoms."
"Don't forget the platform shoes," Junie giggled. "The mark of a true radical!" She sighed. "I was a horrible teenager. I was such a little megalomaniac. I used to walk around high school hating all the pretty, popular kids and wishing I could take over the planet and kill them all. Or make them my slaves and send them to work in the salt mines."
"You were like that freshman year, too," George said. "Remember what you called Lorraine when you met her?"
"A social automaton," Junie said. "I don't regret it, either. I couldn't stand her."
"Why not?" Marty asked.
"Oh, she was so vapid. Not an original thought in her head," Junie said.
"She wasn't vapid," George said. "Just very down-to-earth. There's not a lot of time for philosophy and introspection in a small town, you know."
"You managed it," Junie said.
"I didn't have anything else to do," George said. "I didn't have any friends, except for…I didn't have any friends at all."
"I could tell you didn't from the first time I saw you in the library," Junie said. "You were so awkward."
"I remember that," George said. "I actually dropped my books when you walked up to me. Just out of sheer nervousness."
"And I asked you if there was anything wrong."
"And I told you that pretty girls made me nervous."
"And I told you that I wasn't pretty, so there wasn't any reason to be nervous around me," said Junie. "It worked, too."
The waitress brought plates. "I already ordered for us," Phil said. "Chicken lettuce wraps. It's the best thing they have here," he told Marty. "The specialty of the house."
Marty tried one, then shoveled six onto his plate and decided to visit Horselover Fat's as often as he could.
"George," Phil said, "do you remember that alien visitation you told us you had?"
"The one in high school?" George asked.
"No, he means the one you had yesterday," Kevin said. Junie glared at him. "Sure," Kevin continued, "why wouldn't he? He's only got a best-selling book about it."
""A Match Made In Space", right?" Junie asked. "I read that."
"What did you think?" George asked eagerly.
Junie thought for a moment. "It read a little like Bradbury," she said. "Very nostalgic."
"Like Jack Finney," Phil said.
"Who's Jack Finney?" Marty asked.
"Oh, he wrote "Invasion of the Body Snatchers"," George said. "The book, I mean."
"I loved that movie," Kevin said. "Remember when it came out, Junie? We went to see it and I told Mom that you'd dragged me to one of those romance movies instead, to get you in trouble—"
"I told her that," Junie said, "because she didn't like monster movies and I thought she'd be mad if we went to see one."
"He wrote a lot about time travel, too," Phil said. "Jack Finney. 'Time After Time'—that was a whole book of his time travel stories. The man was obsessed with time."
"He was obsessed with the past," George said, "not time. The past and how it trickles away."
"Dust in the wind," Kevin said.
"Right." Junie said. "Socrates."
"Kansas," Kevin corrected her. "Aaaallll we are…is dust in the wiiiiiiiiiind…" he warbled, waving his beer bottle back and forth like a conductor's baton.
"Someone get the man a microphone," said Marty.
"Karaoke!" Kevin cackled. "Hey George, remember when—"
George rolled his eyes. "Don't remind me."
Marty laughed. "Dad, you did karaoke?"
"Once, and I was drunk," George said. "I don't have a very good singing voice."
"You don't have to, for karaoke," Phil said. "The audience provides the illusion of skill."
Junie propped her chin on her hands. "I thought you were pretty good onstage," she said. "Very passionate. What song was it you did?"
"Ah…"These Boots Were Made For Walking", I think it was," George said.
"He was sobbing the whole time," Kevin said. "Kid, your dad—and I hate to inform you of this—is a weepy drunk."
"I know," Marty muttered.
Kevin sighed. "Damn good times."
Junie folded her hands on the table. "So," she said. "Alien visitations, was it?"
"It was? Oh yes," Phil continued. "Anyway, I've been thinking about that recently. You remember when "Star Wars" came out—"
"I remember that! I was only eight then," Marty interjected. "I loved that movie."
"You have good taste," Kevin said. He pointed his bottle at Marty. "Which did you like better—" He was interrupted by a fresh round of beers (and one Pepsi) delivered by the waitress.
"So," Phil said, once the waitress was out of earshot, "I saw "Star Wars". And I think that something similar to your encounter happened to George Lucas."
"I thought so too," George said. "But whatever happened to him must have been so different—I mean, in the movie, Darth Vader is a monster."
"That doesn't have to mean that the Darth Vader who visited Lucas was also a monster," Junie said. "He might have just used the name, right?"
Phil shook his head. "No, there are too many parallels in the movie itself to what I've been saying all along."
"What the hell kind of parallels could you see? It's a kid's movie, Phil," Kevin said. "It's got…little green Muppets."
"I think," George said, "that I see where you're going with this. The Empire that you're always going on about—"the Empire never ended"—that's the Empire in the movie, right?"
Phil grinned and slapped his hand on the table. "Exactly, although I was going to add that the Empire in the movie is clearly analogous to the Roman Empire. Lucas knew what he was talking about."
"What about the Vulcan part?" Marty blurted. "Remember, he said he was Darth Vader from the planet Vulcan. That's from 'Star Trek,' not 'Star Wars'."
George glanced at Marty. "How did you know that? I didn't think you had read my book," he said.
Marty shrugged.
"The Vulcan part is pretty obscure," Phil said. "But I figured that out, too. Vulcan was the Roman god of iron."
"The Black Iron Prison again," Kevin said.
"It's a metaphor," Junie explained to Marty. "Phil uses it as a metaphor for the discrepancy between human perception and reality."
Marty took a second to figure that out. "Like the Wall."
"What wall?" George asked.
"Pink Floyd's "The Wall". The whole album is about how Pink Floyd—that's the name of the fictional singer—builds up walls between himself and the world," Marty said. "It's a really good album."
"I liked "Dark Side of the Moon" better, myself," Kevin said.
"The metaphor of the Wall is actually pretty good," Phil said. "The Black Iron Prison, after all, is an artificial construction created by the blind god Yaldaboath."
"Now you've lost me," Marty said.
"Trust me," said Kevin, "you're better off lost in this case. Once you get Phil talking about Yaldaboath and the Sophia and the lost gospels, he'll never stop and you'll be here for hours."
"If you don't like it when Phil talks about religion, then change the subject," Junie suggested. "I happen to find it fascinating when he talks about his theories."
"I can change the subject," Kevin said. "So—Darth Vader, then. Why would he be called Darth Vader?"
"Well, Vader would come from "invader", wouldn't it?" George suggested. "Just without the "in" part."
"There's no significance in that," Phil said. "If the "in" was left off, the word wouldn't have any meaning."
"It might," Junie said. "Depending on the root word, I mean. What's the root of "invade"?"
Kevin turned to George. "English major, what's the root? Tell Junie."
George shrugged. "I never really cared about the roots of words," he admitted.
"You should," Phil said. "The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use the words."
"But the word "vader" doesn't have any meaning," Kevin said. "It's a word without a root."
"You can't have a word without a root," George said.
"I thought you didn't care about word roots," Kevin said.
"I just know that each word has to have a root, somewhere," George said. "You can't just make up a word at random and have it suddenly be part of the language."
"I bet you," Kevin said, "I bet you a dollar that I can think of a word without a root."
"That's a stupid bet," Junie said. "You'll just make up a nonsense word."
"No, I mean a word that's already in the English language," Kevin said.
"I'm not going to bet on it," George said. "Just tell me which word you're thinking of."
Kevin looked disappointed. "The word "quiz"," he said. "In Victorian England, somebody made up the word and went around writing it on walls. Don't remember who, though."
"But that's not a true lack of origin," Phil said. "It came to stand for anything that was hard to figure out, just because the word itself was hard to figure out."
"Still, the word itself—just "quiz" without the meaning—doesn't have any root in any language."
"Maybe it was an onomatopoeic word," Junie said. "Aboriginal tribes do that, assigning words that sound like sounds. Of course, we'll never know—it could be anything. It could have been a childhood babble."
"Childhood babbles," Kevin said, "never have any effect on anything."
"I have to object to that statement on general grounds," George said. "Nothing can not affect anything."
"What the hell does that mean?" Kevin asked.
"I mean, nothing affects nothing. No, wait…" George was getting flustered.
"Invert it, George," Phil suggested. "Do you mean that everything affects something?"
George grinned and slapped the table. "That's it! That's what I meant to say."
"Isn't that from chaos theory?" Marty asked. "When a butterfly in China flaps its wings, we get a hurricane?"
"Yeah, it's something like that," Kevin said. "Phil, that's it, isn't it?"
"I wouldn't know," Phil said. "Science fiction writers, I am sorry to say, really do not know anything. We can't talk about science, because our knowledge of it is limited and unofficial, and usually our fiction is dreadful."
George snorted in laughter. "Yeah, that about sums it up."
Kevin turned to Marty. "So how does a seventeen-year-old kid like you know about chaos theory?" he asked.
"The Doc—one of my teachers," Marty muttered.
Kevin shook his head. "Jeez, what they're teaching kids nowadays. Anyway, I really think I can disprove that version of chaos theory."
"You can't disprove it," Junie said. "It's a complex mathematical theory. You're a dropout."
"That doesn't mean I'm not good at math," Kevin said.
"But you aren't," said Junie. "Even if you had finished college, you'd be lousy at math. You always were lousy at math. You bragged about how lousy at math you were."
"Yeah," Kevin admitted cheerfully. "But I can still disprove it by example."
"Disproving something by example is a stupid way to prove anything," Junie protested.
"I don't know. I think I'd like to hear this," George said. "What's your proof, Kev?"
"Okay, imagine you're out in deep space," Kevin said. "And there's nothing around that can be affected by you. No solids, no liquids, no gases, no chemical reactions, no atoms, no radio waves, no UV rays to be blocked, no light, nothing. You're not even giving off light. Now," he finished, "if you wave your hand—it won't make any difference in the rest of the universe." He sat back.
There was silence. Then Marty said, "Yeah, but it would make a difference to you because you're in outer space."
Kevin shrugged. "Okay," he said, "so maybe there's just a random human in space."
"Wouldn't the human explode or implode or something?" George asked.
"Yeah. So?"
"So its blood and body parts would drift off and interfere with other objects," George said. "Eventually, I mean."
"Okay, so maybe something that won't explode," Kevin said. "A single particle."
"What kind of particle?" Junie asked.
Kevin gave his sister an incredulous look. "What do you mean, what kind of particle?"
"Some particles are naturally unstable and tend to give off radiation," Junie said. "Plutonium, for example. If the particle was a plutonium particle, it would give off radiation and interfere with other objects." She grinned. "So tell us the properties of this particle, man. What's it like?"
"It's not important," Kevin said. "Look, it's just a theoretical particle."
"Doesn't the fact that we're talking about it indicate that it made some kind of impact on the universe?" Phil asked.
"No. The existence of the particle has nothing to do with the fact that we're talking about it," Kevin said. "Look, it's a moot point, okay? Deedle-deedle-queep."
Another round of drinks came. They sat silent until Junie spoke. "I've been thinking about what you said, George. About it being "vader" without the "in". Maybe it means that Darth wasn't invading. He was…outvading from within, if that makes sense."
"No," Kevin said.
"Kind of," George said.
"It makes perfect sense," Phil said.
Marty blew bubbles in his Pepsi.
"I mean, maybe Darth Vader was a manifestation of your internal anxieties," Junie explained. "You subconsciously really wanted to go to the dance with Lorraine, but for whatever reason you couldn't admit to yourself that you wanted to—that would have been being assertive, which you weren't."
"A messenger from the id!" Phil crowed.
George nodded. "That makes sense. I mean, it's much simpler than thinking that he was really an alien…"
Kevin shook his head. "No. Couldn't have been."
"Oh, why the hell not?" Junie snapped.
"Because Darth Vader exists," Kevin said. "We already know he exists."
"Because we're talking about him?" Junie asked sarcastically. "I thought you just eliminated that as a line of reasoning."
"No, because George Lucas had a Darth Vader," Kevin said. "And our George's Darth Vader existed before he knew about Lucas's Darth Vader. QED."
"For once, you have a point," Junie said. "So you're accepting Phil's explanation for the visitation?"
"Yes," said Kevin and George at the same time.
Junie sighed. "So George's Darth Vader was an emissary from the malevolent beings who created the Black Iron Prison, a.k.a. the Roman Empire, and George Lucas knew this and tried to express it in "Star Wars"." She shrugged. "It all sounds perfectly sane to me."
George stared at the ceiling. "Then why," he murmured, "did he visit me? What was the point of that visit, if…"
"Let's think about this logically, shall we?" Junie suggested brightly. "What were the consequences of that visit?"
"Well…It made me ask Lorraine to the dance," George said.
"And you two got married," said Junie. "And…?"
"Had me," Marty offered.
"If that's the end result," Kevin said, "then Marty is somehow instrumental in the continuing reign of the Black Iron Prison, right?" He turned to Marty. "You're not planning to vote for Reagan or anything, are you?"
"What does that have to do with it?" Marty asked.
"It's not the same as with Nixon," Phil murmured. "I can't work up any animosity toward Reagan. I see him as caught up in historic trends that are so powerful, he was literally brought to power, the way Hitler was, which was legally and by a very large majority…"
"Deedle-deedle-queep," said Kevin, and burped. "Phil," he explained to Marty, "hated Nixon. Thought he was the Antichrist. His idea of a dystopia was a world where Richard Nixon was running for a fifth term. Phil, didn't you write a book about it?"
"A parallel universe," Phil said. "Where Nixon—well, it wasn't actually Nixon, it was a politician I based on Nixon—had turned into a totalitarian dictator."
"And Marty caused it," said Kevin. "Because Darth Vader was responsible for his birth."
George laughed. "I really don't think that Marty's birth was what Darth Vader was aiming for," he said.
"Maybe it was just the consequences," Phil said. "Maybe if you hadn't married Lorraine, you would have done something else that would have defeated the Black Iron Prison."
George shook his head in disbelief. "Like what? What could I have possibly done?"
"Wrote a book," Phil said. "Think of how much you could have written if you had never married and had kids."
"I don't think my writing would be that different," George said.
"Nah," Kevin said. "I think it's obvious what George would have done if Darth Vader hadn't commanded him to go to the dance with Lorraine."
"Well, don't be cryptic about it," George said. "I want to know what I could have spent the rest of my life doing."
"You and Junie," Kevin said. "You guys would have gotten married."
Junie barked out a disbelieving laugh. "Me? Married?"
"To George," Kevin pointed out.
"Even so. I would be a lousy wife. I can't…clean. Or whatever it is that housewives do," Junie said.
"George wouldn't care," Kevin said.
"I wouldn't care," George confirmed.
Junie shook her head. "Anyway, who says I'd want to be married to George? Or that he'd want to marry me?"
"I wouldn't have minded," George said.
"A hopeless romantic," Phil said.
"Junie, I always thought you had a crush on George," Kevin said.
"I did not," Junie said. She folded her hands primly. "I always thought I made it perfectly clear to everyone that our relationship was entirely platonic."
"Well," George said, "I really liked you. I wanted to ask you out."
"Dad!" Marty was mildly shocked.
Junie blushed and stared at her plate.
"He's drunk," Kevin said. "That's why he's admitting his long-repressed love."
"He can't be that drunk," said Phil. "He's only had three beers."
"Our George does not hold his liquor well," Kevin said. "Thought you knew that, Phil."
"So why didn't you ask me out?" Junie asked.
"I thought you weren't interested in dating at all," said George. "You never had any dates."
"That's because I never met any men I was interested in besides you," Junie said.
"I find that hard to believe," said Phil. "I know for a fact that there were many perfectly eligible college men whom you would have liked."
"But I never met any of them, did I? It was always either those awful ambitious business majors who thought they were so much cleverer than me because they were men, or those dropouts who played guitar and thought they could make every girl who passed fall in love with them on the strength of a few lousy chords. Oh, and after college, you know who I dated? I went out with the men who came into my office for psychological help. I called it "social gradualism" and I wrote a whole paper on it." Junie's face was red. "A whole fucking method of therapy so that I could justify my lousy love life."
"Actually," Kevin said, "that explains a lot."
"Oh?" Junie said. "Does it now?"
"Yeah. Like that guy you brought home one year who was obsessed with rats. Or that other guy, the one who stared at the air conditioner during his whole visit. Even Mom thought they were both a little off."
"Well," Junie said, "now you know." She stared at her plate.
"How was he obsessed with rats?" Marty asked.
"He had them as pets," Junie said, not looking up. "Millions of them in his house. They had to tear it down because it was so infested. I went there before they tore it down; there were droppings all over the place."
Kevin pushed his plate away. "Thank you, that's killed my appetite."
George cleared his throat. "I think we had better get going," he said. "I have to get Marty to his dorm room by eleven."
"They don't have official hours at the dorms anymore," Marty said. "I don't have to be there until check-in tomorrow."
"Nevertheless." George stood up and almost crashed into the waitress, who was setting down a small tray of fortune cookies. "Oh, I'm sorry." The waitress gave a little bow and backed away.
"Would you mind driving me to my motel?" Junie asked. "I don't have my car here."
"Kevin can't drive you?" George asked.
"I'm taking Phil back to his house," Kevin explained. "It's in the opposite direction. We already decided."
"All right," George said. He leaned over and hugged Phil. "Take care."
"Take a fortune cookie," Phil said. George absently shoved one into his pocket.
Kevin had already cracked his open. "This is the weirdest fortune I've ever gotten in a cookie," he said.
"What does it say?" Marty asked.
"Eli llama something," Kevin said. "This is another language. I got a defective fortune."
"It's Aramaic," Phil said. "It means—"
"I'm staying at the Kamakiriad Motel," Junie told George. "It's only a few blocks from here." She stood up, then kissed Phil on the forehead. "Goodnight, Phil."
George waved to Kevin. "Goodnight, Kevin."
"See ya, guys," Marty said.
"Marty, come on," George said. Junie was already outside, waiting by the door.
Ω
Nobody said anything during the short ride to Marty's residence hall. George helped him unload his luggage, then gave him twenty bucks and the number at the motel he'd made reservations for. "Call me if you need anything," he said. "I'll probably be leaving by noon tomorrow."
Marty didn't bother to unpack. He tossed his duffel bag into the closet and curled up on the bare mattress in his clothes.