Stefan Molyneux
  • 2 years ago
https://freedomain.com/freedomain_books/the-future/

Centuries in the future, an old man awakes from cryogenic sleep to face the judgement of a utopian society that barely survived his past abuses of power. In the vein of 'Atlas Shrugged, philosophy, philosopher Stefan Molyneux has created a compelling and powerful work of imagination. He vividly describes the wonderful future that mankind can achieve - and the barriers to getting there - and all that we need to leave behind to finally live in peace...
Transcript
00:00 The Future by Stephen Molyneux Chapter 39
00:03 I demanded to be moved from my hospital room. But Cornelius said we might as well wait.
00:12 I would be either free or punished within ten days.
00:17 Ten days to judge a million crimes. A million years. A million defenses.
00:29 And if I were found not guilty, what would I do? Would I be accepted? Would I be praised?
00:39 Would I be revered? Would I be a hero to the low or an inspiration to the average?
00:48 I have a mind that races in the face of a problem. It's like a circling rat chewing
00:56 through ropes or chains. It doesn't rest until it breaks into the clear. Freeze me!
01:00 I sometimes feel that I am merely along for the ride in my own mind. Fingers larger than the
01:10 world push me here and there, shield me from rain and flick back the lightning.
01:14 Destiny is just humility in the face of forces larger than yourself.
01:23 And I sometimes feel like the finger puppet of the universe,
01:27 pointing at the future, drawing mankind in a mad rush to...
01:31 I smile inwardly. If something guides me, it never lets me know the destination.
01:41 I pay along the way, that's all.
01:44 I don't feel much anxiety about a judgment or a trial or the consequences.
01:54 This is a soft universe of tender-hearted children,
01:59 shielded from the claws of nature by soft blankets and fuzzy bears.
02:04 They have turned the world into a womb, an amniotic sack of absent beasts.
02:13 I don't begrudge them that, I suppose. We sharpen our claws for wet work when they face a desert.
02:23 I don't have much to fear from them, I think.
02:26 And I wonder...
02:28 There was a short story when I was in my teens, refutation of the cliche that in the kingdom of
02:35 the blind, the one-eyed man is king. The blind could hear everything. The one-eyed man had no chance.
02:45 This world woke a predator in me. I'm not sure how wise that was, not to let sleeping jackals lie.
02:56 Morality is weakness, I think they have that right.
03:02 They claim to have bulked it up, but it's just gym strength, not street fighting might.
03:07 I am still getting the lay of the land, that much I know.
03:15 I haven't yet matched wits and will with anyone here.
03:18 There's no point showing your full strength until the boss battle.
03:22 Other than Cornelius's strange anger, I haven't seen anything here that would even give me pause.
03:30 I've actually giggled in my mind, imagining the prosecution to come. How different it would be
03:39 from my day when we pointed cold-eyed ideologues at our enemies, shut them into prison, and
03:44 [sigh]
03:50 the abusers of children, the eugenicists, the 90% reduction hyper-environmentalists,
03:58 the socialists and communists, the gigglers and pointers at the body politic,
04:03 the leather-bound Puritans and Bible-thumping fetishists, the whole grand crew of ghouls.
04:10 Oh, how we begged to be discovered, how we yearned for our dark artistry to be unveiled.
04:18 But how easy it was to evaporate those who closed in on the circles of power.
04:26 Conspiracy theory! What a grand phrase. Who could have imagined that people who loved power
04:36 and control might ever collude with each other to gain and keep it?
04:40 No, I believed the slogans. We just had to say that someone or something threatened democracy,
04:52 and off they would scamper, baying and sharpening and hunting.
05:01 I did sometimes miss the old days, when we had to actually lift a finger,
05:08 not just use the magic spells of programmed clichés and child-free hysteria.
05:14 Maybe I was sent here to toughen them up. Maybe it is they who need to be awakened.
05:30 I waited for the strange voice, but it was silent. I wanted to goad it into speech,
05:37 but felt so tired. So tired and so full of strange new hope for the future.
05:48 If I am from the duelling past, and it is to be swords at dawn, who can beat me?
05:58 Also, what could their punishments be, these deeply silly people?
06:04 I would miss the food. That tree restaurant was incredible. I can still taste that meal.
06:13 It makes me wonder what the hell my wife had been serving me all those years.
06:17 I remember one of my advisors, after we launched the war, he was asked by a reporter how he was
06:27 handling it, and he said, "Oh, I'm sleeping like a baby. I wake up every two hours screaming."
06:32 It was funny, because it was so untrue. It was a story to relate to the sheep,
06:42 so they could imagine taking center stage in our play called Conscience.
06:46 We invaded for false pretenses. Welcome to war. That's the whole story. We get too many people,
06:55 too many dummies, too many bills to pay, too many dependents. We have to bleed them off.
07:01 I visited a farm when I was 15 in South Africa, where we had to cull the deer because all the
07:09 natural predators had been chased off by agriculture. "If you don't shoot the deer,"
07:14 the farmer said, "they'll just eat all the crops and starve to death,
07:17 which is much more cruel than being killed in an instant."
07:22 We had lots of natural predators in the past. Illness, starvation, accidents, infection. But
07:28 all that had been chased away by modernity. This world seems to have killed them completely,
07:33 a mass murder of natural limits. The great wars arose from the great peace.
07:43 Peace and plenty swell the population. Everyone wants something for free, and genuinely believe
07:50 those who make such mad promises. But the devil always gets paid. Everything you take
07:59 that you have not earned will be paid for. The amazing thing about my generation was that we
08:06 had inherited so much wealth that we could actually shift the burden to the next generation,
08:11 which we promptly did. I charge for what people demand. They want free things they know I take
08:25 from others, and they genuinely seem to believe that there will never be a price.
08:29 That's the wild effect of the fall of religion. No one believes they have a soul anymore,
08:38 so no one knows how much will be paid for greed.
08:43 I never take anything that is not willingly offered. Everyone knows that there is no such
08:53 thing as a free lunch. Beg to have something for nothing. You become nothing. I don't empty
09:03 people out. I just collect the bill. I have no fear of this modern world.
09:13 They seem to know nothing of me. They have forgotten I exist, and so I will rule.
09:30 I fall asleep with a half-smile on my face, as has been my habit for many decades,
09:37 now many centuries, so that my dreams will be more pleasant. I long ago found that forcing
09:45 my face into a particular expression pulls my mood behind it at Jane's funeral.
09:50 I've always been curious about the dreams of powerful men. What did Napoleon see every night?
10:00 It's almost never recorded. You can never trust anyone, but I would dearly like to know.
10:06 I have simple dreams of dominance and fellowship. I practice climbing fiery trees,
10:16 navigating rapids with churning water snakes, crooking elbows and drinking mead with the
10:22 dwarves and elves of the Senate and Congress, roasting right-wing journalists, the usual.
10:29 I always know that my dreams are my dreams, and I can almost always wake on command.
10:37 You don't love control like I do and surrender to your own unconscious.
10:43 But this night, I fell asleep in a hospital room and woke up in a hospital room.
10:57 In a hospital room.
10:58 With my father.
11:02 I yawned in my dream, just as I did on that day.
11:09 It's so boring, really, this entirely predictable cycle of life. Garbage.
11:22 Yes, my father was a Titan. And then he got old and frail and lost his bulk and shrank into a
11:32 bundle of diapered sticks. And he fell into death because I rose in life and I was there to replace
11:40 him just as my son was there to replace me. And I could never understand all this depth and drama
11:46 about the fact that we live because our elders die. And the one time I saw the full-length Hamlet,
11:55 I itched to march on stage and punch him square in his powdered jaw. Stop shrieking and kill or run.
12:03 I couldn't wait for my father to die because the chair was wicker and wicked uncomfortable.
12:16 My mother was quite a bit younger than him. A typical old politician and young beauty queen.
12:22 And she was equally bored, although she covered it better with random sniffles. But I swear,
12:29 she played sad songs on the radio to help her mimic grief better.
12:34 Even my father was bored and would have hit fast forward if he could.
12:42 When you know someone is going to die, just making them comfortable can feel like a slow
12:50 boat ride to eternity. My father and I only found value in mentorship. He had great instincts
13:05 and you had to dominate a room with a smile and a stare. His will was like a glacier, cold,
13:13 slow moving and irresistible. It was an old cartoon when I was a kid. Caveman looking up
13:21 at a huge wall of ice saying to another caveman, "Say, is that wall of ice closer today?" That
13:28 was my father. He powdered gold and pulled it on the underside of his will, smearing it along
13:37 the sewage tracks of backroom politics. His crutches were legendary. He once waited forty-one
13:46 years to pay back a woman who voted against him. "It's not about her. It's about everyone
13:52 watching," he growled in low rent satisfaction. He taught me how to overcome odds, overcome
14:02 obstacles, overcome wills and personalities, how to find weaknesses and chisel wide in hypocrisy,
14:10 how to use the power of the intelligence agencies to gather information on enemies,
14:15 secure in the certainty that everyone has a weakness, everyone has a flaw, everyone is
14:20 desperate to keep something silent. Find that. You own them. He taught me how to be up front
14:31 with your weaknesses, to publicize your demons, to ask for forgiveness so you would never have
14:35 to ask for permission. The devil looks like the devil, son. That's why he can never be blackmailed.
14:46 People love a rogue. They love a sinner who redeems. The only thing they care about is
14:53 confidence, which they mistake for competence. Oh, my God, he would laugh.
15:00 Most people live lives so petty that any greater man looks like a god to them.
15:07 If you don't attack yourself, you are bulletproof. Critics who can't find purchase just find other
15:14 targets. They're terrified of weakness. That's why they bully. So never appear weak. They'll
15:18 leave you alone. Oh, he taught me everything there was to know about climbing the backs of the broken.
15:29 And I loved him for it in my way. He found value in watching me rise. And I found value in his advice.
15:42 Ah, but I was young. My thirties. Death meant almost nothing to me.
15:48 But you can't overcome death anyway, so what did he have to teach me about?
16:01 Watching him fade and fall, powerless to resist, let alone win, was terrible.
16:11 Because he had no utility for me anymore. This wasn't a foe he could teach me to beat,
16:20 so what the hell did we have to talk about? I was terrified that he would ramble about his past,
16:29 dig up old scores, demand I fight some abstract battle, fall into his second childhood of early
16:35 memories, and call me by the name of some pet raccoon he domesticated at the age of five.
16:40 I was terrified that he would be terrified,
16:49 and that that might bleed the jugular of my heart-pounding ambitions.
16:57 What was the point of it all, son? I wrestled and won and fought and bled and died a thousand
17:03 deaths, and pushed well-armed words to create a maze of control in the nation.
17:08 And here I am, just where I started, in a bed I can't get out of with a goddamn diaper on.
17:17 Don't do what I've done, son. Don't you live your life for power and control and others.
17:25 Don't imagine that all the ink you stack on people's necks will mean a damn thing at the end,
17:30 or anywhere near it. Don't marry an idiot for her beauty. Don't leave your children to cast
17:37 the spells of law over a compliant population. All this I have learned too late, but not too late,
17:44 to save you. And then he would force a promise out of me to be a good father, a good friend,
17:52 a good man, everything that he was not. Having pushed me off a cliff, he would now demand
18:02 that I flap my arms and reverse course. Sorry, Dad. Patriarchal physics don't flip for death.
18:20 None of that happened. We played cards. He complained about the nurses, studiously avoided
18:27 imaginary plans for later, and demanded every detail of my newly-minted political career.
18:33 He was still determined to give me advice, and worked hard to break up my go-nowhere relationship.
18:43 I listened outside the door, unembarrassed by security, as he talked with my mother,
18:52 wondering if he had any greater depth in his decay. But it was nothing. It was nothing.
18:59 He told her about some secret accounts, a hidden laptop with bitcoin, recommended several
19:05 boyfriends for down the road, and told her to play Shine on You Crazy Diamond at his funeral.
19:12 He also told her exactly who not to invite.
19:15 Edward wanted to be there. Screw him. He missed the shot. That could have made me a pro tennis star.
19:21 Dig up Maribel. She might still be alive. She was a hell of a babysitter.
19:27 Taught me stuff I still use on you. That should be celebrated. Often overlooked.
19:31 And use my prom date picture at my reception, the one with the hot German girl.
19:36 You can cut her out. But that was the last time I had great hair.
19:39 He gave lists of reporters to Ghost, and recommended his college roommate for his biography.
19:45 His mind was sharp until the end, unlike his father, my grandfather,
19:52 who foamed at the mouth and regularly believed that his pyjamas were on fire.
19:55 Hell, all life has been so busy. We got the will done. So much to do.
20:02 I kept the papers from Panama, even though I wasn't supposed to.
20:07 Have the lawyer look at them. Burned them, probably.
20:09 I also wrote some of a stupid autobiography a few years ago. Toast that.
20:14 Don't let any stupid secrets spill out.
20:18 He gave keys and locations for secret storage facilities, passwords to various accounts and
20:29 lockboxes, and kept demanding that she remember everything. Write down nothing.
20:35 Nothing. Nothing is encrypted. Try to only speak to people at the beach or swimming pool. No phones.
20:42 It was endless. It reminded me of when I hit an armadillo with my dirt bike once as a kid,
20:51 and as it died, its curled up body opened up, its legs widening like a slowly yawning mouth.
21:03 As he died, his secrets flew free.
21:07 Because my father's wishes mostly involved grudges, my mother had no trouble remembering them.
21:18 But then,
21:26 in my dream, I opened up like an armadillo. Because
21:32 it was like hearing a song on the radio that you used to love and found you loved still.
21:40 In my dream, in a long lost hospital room buried under five centuries of
21:50 dust, age, and catastrophe, my father gripped my arm. Five cards lay on his chest like red-patterned
22:00 Moroccan tombstones. "Son, son," he said, "I've lived a good life. It's all been worth it.
22:09 And I know you hate this stuff. I've been avoiding it, but I'm shutting down. I'm
22:17 gonna start singing Daisy, Daisy." I had a good career. I made it more than halfway, but
22:27 you can't remember the name of any senators from Rome. You remember a few emperors,
22:35 the military leaders, the philosophers, and no one else.
22:43 I gave up a lot to get to the middle, and that sucks. I'm not going to be remembered
22:51 by many people. There will be a lot of folks at the funeral, but five minutes later,
22:55 you'll tell stories about me to your kids, show them some pictures, I guess,
23:03 but it won't mean much. They'll have nothing to say to me about, to their kids.
23:12 I don't have any stories big enough to last the test of time.
23:17 I'm no Teddy Roosevelt, no Stalin. He smiled painfully.
23:24 I lived in the middle, where the whole of the donut is. Not much competition.
23:36 And I wish, I wish I had pushed more either way, either to the top or to you and your siblings and
23:49 your mom. It was like that space between the beat. You need it for the song, but no one remembers.
24:04 I know it's embarrassing. I know it's ridiculous. But I'm going to actually be
24:09 on my deathbed, and you better promise me this. Promise me this. His hands gripped me with
24:15 surprising strength. His monitors beeped, but I could now only feel the silence between the sounds.
24:22 You give it your all. You hold nothing back, whatever path you take, to the top or to others.
24:32 Get everything. Power, power pulls you away from people, and I ended up with neither.
24:42 I'm just a slightly taller tree in the forest. Nothing special. And it means
24:49 going invisible to people while you build up your strength.
24:59 I wanted prominence and effect. I didn't build enough of a base, make enough connections,
25:05 frighten enough good people. If you're going to love people, leave power. If you're going to love
25:15 power, but you can't leave people because you need them. But you all have to swim like salmon
25:21 in the current to serve power. Everything for the sake of the God we serve, capitals or not.
25:29 And for God's sake, have them turn that morphine drip up. I can still feel my toes.
25:33 And so he rambled into incoherence. Strangely powerful words lighting up my consciousness
25:45 like a falling strobe light lost in deep water.
25:55 And he died. His mind like a city struck by a meteor. Glowing and dark and dead all at once.
26:07 And I distinctly remember trying to pry his hand from my arm, almost giggling as I imagined sawing
26:18 it from his wrist and carrying it with me forever, fingernails bound to bone.
26:23 And I awoke from the room in my mind to the room around my body,
26:33 from the deathbed of the past to the living bed of the future.
26:38 And I could not for the life of me remember whether it was a dream of a memory or a memory
26:48 of a dream. But I knew it was the reason I would never, ever be forgotten.
26:58 Chapter 40.
27:05 One deathbed inevitably breeds another, but I was the only one to get away.
27:18 When I got sick, I knew deep in my bones, because the sickness was deep in my bones,
27:25 that I would not get away. I've always hated this idea that you can bravely fight an illness.
27:32 That's all nonsense. You just cross your fingers and hope that somehow you
27:36 can escape the collapsing masonry of mortality.
27:39 Doctors don't care. Even if you were famous, a president, you're just another flesh suit on
27:47 their conveyor belt to the grave. It's the end of your life. It's just another 10 minutes on their
27:54 rounds. I don't blame them. You have to cauterize your nerves in the face of everyone else's needs.
28:00 It's the only way to stay sane. Power is the ability to bestow gifts.
28:06 When doctors lose to death, they can't give you anything, so they run.
28:14 When I was little, I saved up to buy a double album of War of the Worlds. This is the only
28:20 way you could hear music in those days, and I was thrilled to get it. I wanted to practice
28:25 talking like Richard Burton. I was so excited. But the indifferent, bland cashier at the record
28:34 store didn't care, even though it was expensive, even though I was just a kid.
28:37 She just rung it up, snapped her gum, and said, "Next!"
28:41 "What you love, no one cares. They're too busy loving their own stuff to notice yours."
28:51 It was a good lesson.
28:53 My doctor, knowing his job was done, was fresk and indifferent. Like when my wife went to the
29:07 hospital with a miscarriage. It was a disaster for her. It was just triage for them. No one cared.
29:12 He handed me over to my family as quickly as possible.
29:16 My middle son, the athlete, was a pious cliché, saying that death comes to everyone,
29:25 that I was going to a better place, that we would meet again.
29:28 "But heaven would be hell for me," I said. "Why?"
29:34 "No elections. The top job is already filled."
29:37 It was blasphemous. I always enjoyed shocking his delicate, soulful sensibilities.
29:45 My daughter, the youngest, was as useless as boobs on a bill, full of tears and unspecified regrets.
29:58 My colleagues, well, they sent notes, or at least their assistants did.
30:04 But I wasn't expecting anyone to show up, and I wasn't disappointed.
30:08 I had no more to offer them than the doctor had to offer me.
30:13 They just wanted to move on to my replacement and start massaging his feet.
30:16 Who is supposed to remember you when they can't profit from you?
30:20 I have enough integrity to not blame everyone for exactly what I did.
30:26 My wife, well, her place in society was secure, her finances rock solid, and she was young and
30:35 pretty enough to take a second lap. And she kept reminding me that she had prepared
30:39 for this day for decades, knowing how much older I was.
30:41 It's funny, because you desperately want to hang on to life when you're well.
30:52 But after a certain span of sickness, you kind of get ready to go.
30:58 It's like when I was a kid, I loved going to airports and flying on planes.
31:03 But the excitement wore thin pretty quickly, and by the time I became an adult, I just
31:09 took pills to knock myself out. I hated the discomfort, headaches, and numb buttocks.
31:14 Even when I got my own plane, I still hated it and breathed a prayer of relief when the
31:18 wheels touched the ground again. I had been flying high my whole life.
31:26 I was uncomfortable, and comfort was not returning. So I was ready for the end.
31:42 It was my eldest son who told me how to escape death.
31:51 He told me about Walt Disney and others who had frozen themselves before dying.
32:00 It was ridiculous, but it began to worm its way into my consciousness.
32:10 An escape hatch, a deus ex machina that could skyhook me out of my inevitable descent.
32:16 It's fine to have acceptance when there's no hope, no option. But to give up when escape
32:25 is possible is not a wise surrender to the inevitable, but a cowardly collapse in the
32:30 face of the possible. "It's not just for you, Dad," he whispered in the dark.
32:37 "Imagine being able to talk to George Washington, King Arthur. It's almost a responsibility to the
32:43 future, to the historians to come. And you would get a chance to actually shape your own legacy,
32:51 to answer questions, to not be a piñata of future blame. You would be a window into the
32:58 world that is, to the world that is to come. And who knows? It might not just be you.
33:06 My brother might be right. Maybe we will all meet again. And you are not so old. Who knows
33:13 how long people might live in the time to come? And old age might not be like it is now. It could
33:19 be anything. Youth reinforced. I think you owe it to yourself, to us, to the future and our legacy.
33:30 I'll sleep easier at night knowing that we might have a chance to polish our name in the future.
33:35 "Why surrender when you can escape?"
33:39 The whispers went on and on, even when I'm pretty sure he thought I was asleep.
33:46 But they wore me down, or rather aroused my hopes.
33:53 I felt a draw in my mind as I veered off the train tracks leading down to nothing.
34:04 "I left it in his hands. He proved a cunning offspring, as was fitting. It was all a secret.
34:16 Cryptocurrencies changed hands. Decades-long conspiracy theories gained potent fuel.
34:21 And I chose the time of my own demise.
34:30 I no longer tried to make my peace, but rather planned my resurrection.
34:35 I was frozen with bitcoins and gold. I went to death with my disease.
34:45 Only one of us would win in the long run.
34:52 And that last night before the switch was thrown and I was dethroned from circulation,
35:00 my eldest sat hunched beside my bed, constantly flipping back his annoying bangs.
35:06 I was totally bored at my annoyance toward him.
35:13 It was an old and utterly predictable ache, like an old man's arthritis before a storm.
35:21 He had reformed himself under my blows, hardened like metal under fire,
35:30 remade in the dented impression of my infinite image.
35:34 And he was doing well in the blood-oiled machinery of power.
35:39 He had moved from grad student to software entrepreneur, and his future looked as bright
35:45 as a nuclear sunrise. He had married just the right kind of woman. Pretty and calculating,
35:53 humble and dominant, benevolent and implacable.
35:57 She was pregnant now. It was a race between the grave and grandfather,
36:02 one now by the willed glacier of undeath.
36:05 I was frightened, perhaps for the first time.
36:15 That I would somehow feel the ice enveloping me,
36:18 and feel chilled in a bloodless embrace for centuries, like my mother's womb.
36:24 I remember the first time I put my hand in snow, how unbelievably cold it was.
36:32 And I had a recurring nightmare as a child that I was lying in a coffin with
36:37 concrete being poured over me, hardening me into trapped immobility forever.
36:42 But, of course, I reasoned with myself. If I felt cold with no blood,
36:48 it was equally probable that I would feel trapped in a coffin as well,
36:52 feeling the maddening tickle of hungry worms and the buckle of the wooden walls
36:57 as the spreading tree roots slowly pushed through.
37:00 I might catch the occasional scent of flowers as my wife pursued the photo-op
37:06 of leaving roses on my headstone.
37:09 And I might also be disinterred for some court case, some trial.
37:15 And then I would be like the seashells I collected as a boy,
37:20 which smelled and rotted and were thrown out by my mother.
37:23 I would dig up the shell from the sand, which was just broken shells, really,
37:28 and think of all the billions of shells deep underground,
37:34 below the beach, below the ocean, below the land,
37:37 and imagine how blinding it must be for a shell buried for a million years
37:42 to be washed up into sunlight and have life on its calcium again,
37:47 my fingers instead of a crustacean.
37:50 And I remembered being far from my family,
37:59 just smudges and shadows in the middle distance.
38:04 Just smudges and shadows in the middle distance,
38:06 isolated under the blue bowl of the sky and the crawling covers of the waves.
38:12 And I remember yearning for solitude on a solitary planet.
38:20 People overwhelmed me.
38:26 That was the truth.
38:28 I had to control them because they overpowered me.
38:33 One of us had to get lost and it was never going to be me.
38:36 And an old childhood joke flowed through my mind.
38:40 "If you break your legs climbing those rocks, don't come running to me."
38:43 And I could have happily dissolved that day,
38:52 broken into shards, the shells beneath my toes,
38:58 and joined the cycled billion-year march of broken life from sunlight to seafloor,
39:04 round and round, the useless bits of useless bodies
39:08 swirling like the scarves of a magician beyond loss,
39:12 beyond fear, beyond desire.
39:16 And I wanted to walk into the ocean that morning
39:25 to join the cracks of crabs and the waste of the dolphins.
39:29 And I played with it, nothing too serious.
39:34 I walked up to my chest and felt the thuds of the waves against my face,
39:39 and that felt personal, like Poseidon was slapping me to turn me back.
39:44 And I waited for life to meet me to
39:54 to meet me to erupt within me and turn me back to the land.
39:58 Because I suddenly wasn't sure if I was going to enjoy my life
40:06 or even be good for the world,
40:11 which struck me as an entirely different category, alien almost.
40:20 But it turns out it is not the dead relatives that beckon you forward,
40:24 but the live ones who pulled you back.
40:28 I wasn't serious. I wasn't going to drown.
40:34 I was just waiting for something to turn me back, something to turn back for.
40:41 I can't remember what happened that day.
40:45 I only remember what happened next,
40:48 though I have not thought of it in close to 600 years.
40:51 A hand grabbed my neck and yanked me up,
40:58 not back, but up like a savage hook-footed spider.
41:02 I was pulled to shore faster than the waves could push me,
41:06 and my father loomed over me, easily eclipsing the sun,
41:11 and he punched me in the face and slapped me side to side.
41:17 And I remember the light getting brighter and darker
41:20 through the orange kaleidoscope of my closed eyes.
41:22 And I remember tasting blood and thanking him in my way,
41:30 because he was the life that brought me back.
41:34 He was my reason for standing on land.
41:38 He cared enough to "Don't do it!"
41:41 He kept repeating, and it was ambiguous.
41:45 It was confusing. To do what?
41:47 I was being beaten by the sea.
41:51 What was I supposed to stop doing in that moment?
41:54 I wasn't resisting. I was praising,
41:59 because he might have genuinely saved me from whatever hypnotic song was far out at sea.
42:04 What was I not to do?
42:06 Embarrass him, of course.
42:15 Shame him.
42:16 Confront him with anything he might have done wrong.
42:19 Kill his career by killing myself, perhaps.
42:25 And maybe he did only care about the effects of...
42:30 not me, myself.
42:35 But you can't be overly picky in this life.
42:37 And here was someone who cared about me enough to race into the salt
42:42 and pull me from the undertow of a momentary weakness.
42:45 And he would not let me dissolve into the tide,
42:51 into stupid ideas, into anger and ridiculous protest.
42:55 And for what?
42:57 I mean, everyone has these moments.
43:03 Or you think of turning into oncoming traffic,
43:06 or taking one step too far off a cliff edge,
43:11 or jamming a nose trimmer into your eye.
43:13 That is the devil of mortality at work,
43:17 reminding you of your well-being through imaginary drive-bys.
43:20 It was nonsense, but I remember the pounding satisfaction as he hit me.
43:31 That he had noticed me gone,
43:35 somehow spied my black head among the waves,
43:38 defined my devilry and sprinted to save me.
43:41 The lesson went on.
43:47 Too long.
43:49 We both knew that,
43:51 but the bloody intimacy of the instruction was hard to set free.
43:55 My face was a mess.
44:00 Cleaning it with the bitter seawater was sweet agony.
44:04 And my father held my hand.
44:08 As we walked back to the picnic,
44:10 he explained that I had body-surfed into a rock,
44:15 and I have always appreciated lies that tell the truth.
44:19 And I was taken to the hospital,
44:22 and I kept that secret forever.
44:26 I meant something.
44:30 I was something.
44:35 Someone cared.
44:37 And my mother seemed to believe it.
44:42 And I would occasionally wonder whether you could see
44:46 one smudge trying to disassemble another smudge
44:49 in the bright beach distance.
44:50 But curiosity always leads to disaster in relationships,
44:56 so she just skated on the frosting,
44:58 and let the cake be, so to speak.
45:04 And I told my story with pride at school
45:07 about surfing into an outcrop.
45:09 And my scars and stitches were much admired,
45:13 and I gained great status with the courage of my fortitude.
45:16 And I realized that whatever wounds you,
45:20 elevates you.
45:22 And I thanked my father again in my mind
45:29 for the gift he had given me of caring and superiority.
45:34 Bravery is just a kind of gratitude.
45:37 And I was deeply grateful.
45:40 I pitied the boys without fathers.
45:46 And as I was pulled from the sea by my father,
45:56 so I was pulled from my dream by Cornelius.
46:02 He entered my hospital room with a piece of paper.
46:05 Hard copy, old school.
46:08 He said, "Good morning, the charges are in."
46:10 I sat up in my bed.
46:12 I felt my face instinctively to remind myself
46:16 that my wounds were dead.
46:17 My dream was done.
46:20 "It's a shock," said Cornelius,
46:24 "but I don't think a bad one.
46:26 Do you need a moment?"
46:27 "No."
46:27 "Okay."
46:30 "It is one count of child abuse."
46:34 I waited.
46:36 "No, that's it."
46:39 I laughed.
46:41 "What?
46:42 What about all that trash talk at the restaurant yesterday?
46:49 My infinite crimes, Nuremberg wars, debts, indoctrination.
46:54 Now I'm accused of abusing my son, my eldest?"
46:59 Cornelius nodded.
47:00 "Oh my God, you absolute wimps!" I cried.
47:06 "What the hell does a man have to do around here to catch a war crime?"
47:10 Cornelius said, "I have trouble knowing when to take you seriously."
47:15 "This is like dinging Hitler for kicking his dog.
47:19 Let's keep that analogy private."
47:22 "Sure, sure."
47:23 "So I'm gonna be judged for parenting in a fairly typical manner for the time,
47:30 and that's gonna be,
47:31 that's the entire axe hanging over my neck, this little toothpick."
47:36 Cornelius pursed his lips.
47:38 "Well, it is the most serious crime in our society."
47:41 "Discipline? I know, I know.
47:44 Hitting children, that's the most serious crime?"
47:47 "Well, that's how crime was eliminated, by not hitting children."
47:52 I paused, my mind racing.
47:53 "What are the punishments?"
47:56 "Restitution, or ostracism.
47:59 No DRO will enforce any contract for an unrepentant child abuser."
48:02 "I don't know what restitution means in this case."
48:07 "Well, that is, that depends on the circumstances.
48:13 I'm sure you will gain some excuse for history,
48:15 and the fact that there were no mandatory scans for your children.
48:18 Give me an idea.
48:19 It's the most serious crime.
48:20 What are the consequences?"
48:22 "It's kind of unprecedented."
48:24 "I know, I'm paying you by the hour.
48:26 Stop beating around the bush."
48:28 "Well, in the past, child abusers often made apologies,
48:33 made restitution, sometimes money, sometimes charity,
48:36 and a few of them have been sentenced to spreading the message
48:39 of peaceful parenting in statist societies."
48:41 "So, no hanging?
48:48 You know this, and still made comparisons to Nuremberg?
48:51 I'd fire you if I had a clue what the hell was going on.
48:55 I'm not going to be locked up.
48:58 No firing squads, just...
48:59 What?
49:01 I have to go do missionary work among the unwashed
49:03 about not yelling at your children?
49:05 Oh my god, I'm so glad I didn't waste any anxiety
49:09 on this clown show of a society.
49:11 I'm glad you're taking this well."
49:15 "This is a walk in the park.
49:17 Well, good."
49:18 I paused.
49:20 "And I don't know the rules of these laws of yours in any great detail,
49:26 but it's all just...
49:26 It's going to be hearsay, isn't it?
49:29 Not even that.
49:30 I never talked about...
49:31 that.
49:33 How does anyone know other than the possible effects?"
49:37 "Apparently your eldest son wrote an autobiography after your death.
49:41 You're freezing, I mean.
49:43 So, I assume it ended up in the fiction section."
49:46 He was always resentful, loved to trash me at every opportunity.
49:49 Although he always traded on my name.
49:51 That was his leg up the weasel.
49:53 Cornelius said,
49:54 "I know this is just between us, but you might want to drop that habit."
50:00 "Oh, don't worry.
50:02 I can play the dutiful father."
50:03 "Don't do that either.
50:06 That is a weakness of our defense, that you knew how to parent well in public."
50:10 I waved my hand.
50:12 "Okay, okay, the Aristotelian mean it is.
50:16 But this is great news.
50:18 I do my time, which isn't even time, and I'm free to rejoin society as I see fit."
50:24 Cornelius nodded.
50:27 "But it won't be hearsay."
50:30 While I get to interrogate his autobiography, they have a witness.
50:36 My face froze.
50:43 The implications went scurrying in every direction like cockroaches under a sudden searchlight.
50:48 A witness?
50:50 What do you mean?
50:51 Like some recording?
50:53 Some video?
50:55 That might be evidence, but it's not a witness.
50:57 A witness would—
50:58 And suddenly, I knew.
51:03 My son, whispering to me about immortality.
51:13 Saying we would meet again.
51:15 That I would not be alone.
51:20 My son.
51:25 Cornelius looked surprised.
51:29 He gestured at the piece of paper.
51:30 "That's what they claim.
51:32 He was found shortly after you.
51:33 He went through the same procedure."
51:40 "Oh, my God," I whispered.
51:44 And as if no time had passed, I hated him all over again.