23



I didn’t linger for very long at the farmhouse but followed a dirt road that was parallel to the paved road that ran in front of the house. It was about an eighth of a mile between the two roads. After a short walk, I came to another abandoned house. This was a much more modern house. It was ranch-style, long and low to the ground. Its exterior was yellow brick and it stood on a small hill, with a half-circular driveway that ran from one part of the road to the front part of the house and then back to another part of the road. Since the house had a carport, the driveway was primarily used for the convenience of guests. Maybe the house had been the scene of frequent parties and get-togethers. Among other tell-tale signs of abandonment, the front door was entirely missing. I decided to look inside. When I walked in, I was immediately struck by the acrid smell of an old fireplace, which dominated the front room. There was not one piece of furniture in the house. It had been stripped of everything that could be easily carried off and could be used or sold elsewhere.

I continued down the road. The next house I ran into looked habitable but there was no sign of any people. There wasn’t even a corybantic dog. An eerie silence prevailed. The house itself had a faux Tudor style to it. The shutters and the eaves stood out as they were more elaborately designed than other houses in the area. Because I suspected the house was still occupied, though no one was presently home, I remained standing on the road and did not venture into the yard. I did look intently at the house for several minutes because I had a feeling of déjà vu about it.

I finally ran into some people after another half-mile or so. It was two farmers talking about the weather. They were sitting on their respective tractors. Their fields were adjacent to each other and they had coincidentally finished plowing at the same time and the same place.

They greeted me as I sauntered up. I returned their greeting.

Farmer 1: “Beautiful day for a walk. I’d be taking one myself if I didn’t have fields to plow.”
Farmer 2: “We have to take advantage of the day while there’s still light. The night is coming.”
I felt like I was hearing code. What were they really saying?

Nodding my head to where I had just come from, I responded, “Sad to see those abandoned houses back there.”
Farmer 1: “The old farm belonged to my grandparents and then my parents. I grew up there. There were still alive and living there when I started farming so I built my own house. Had no reason to keep the place up after they died.”
Me: “How about the yellow brick house?"
Farmer 1: “That was my younger brother’s home. He loved the land, but he hated farming. He and his wife died in a car accident before they had any children.”
Farmer 2: “The last house you came to is mine. My wife works in town and the kids are at school. Right proud of it. I designed it myself.”
Me: “I was surprised a dog didn’t bark at me.”
Farmer 2: “We do have one, but he loves spending all day in the woods. He’ll be back home at dark. Sometimes he’ll be hungry, but sometimes not. He’s a very self-sufficient dog.”

What was it about that house that reminded me of the past? Nothing came to mind. It was just a feeling. Like so many.

But maybe it was nothing at all. But then again, maybe it was a case of pre-déjà vu, because there gradually came into my line of sight two people standing under an oak tree. It was the man and the woman of the future. Here was real déjà vu, because the exact scene of a few chapters back was being replicated. Smoke was once again rising from a small campfire and the scent of succulent beef roasting above an open flame was redolent in the midday air. When I reached them, they greeted me with a mug of cold unhomogenized and probably unpasteurized milk. Quite refreshing, if I do say so myself.

I was glad to see them. I had a few questions.

Me: “Don’t you think it’s about time you told me who you work for?”
The woman, “PSI. Possible Solution Incorporated.”
Me: “That name doesn’t exactly exude confidence.”
The woman: “We’re brutally honest to a fault.”
Me: “Is it affiliated with a government?”
The man: “The governments in our time are small and are only concerned with giving traffic tickets.”
Me: “You got pretty fast drivers in the future?”
The woman: “We’ve got really fast flyers. Hard to keep them below Mach 3.”
Me: “So you’re with a private outfit?”
The man: “Yes, and a fringe one at that. Ten thousand years after our time, PSI will be held in much greater esteem. But that’s a story for another time.”

Before I could ask any more questions, the man announced that the steaks were ready. Conversation during the meal was on anything but business.

After the meal, the man said, “We know you’re getting tired and a little frustrated. That’s to be expected, but you need to hold on just a little longer. Think you can?”
I tried to sound energetic, “Of course.” I also tried to exhibit a stiff upper lip, but in that regard, I think I failed.
The woman, “We have one more exiled thinker for you to visit. We believe he has some important insight into the third and final stage of your mission.”

Things were beginning to melt and merge in my mind. I remember meeting an exiled thinker who lived in a treehouse, but for the life of me, I couldn’t recall his name or if I learned anything of value from him.

Me: “Why do you call them exile thinkers. What country exiled them?”
The man: “It’s just a phrase we used a quite a bit when we were dealing with ancient Greeks and Romans. It would be more correct to say they are eccentric hermits.”
Me: “What’s the name of the one I’ll be visiting next?”
The woman: “Socratic Virtue.”
Me: “Are we slipping into allegory here?”
The woman: “No, that’s his real name. His parents were Joe and Jane Virtue.”
Me: “Does he live in a tree?”
The man: “Oh, no. He lives in a Quonset hut.”

Socratic Virtue lived in the Black Hills of South Dakota on a few acres of land he had purchased in 1951 with money from an inheritance. His grandfather, Demosthenes Virtue, had made a bundle on Wall Street, buying and selling the stocks of World War I gun manufacturers. When he died in 1949, he left a tidy little sum to each of his twenty-seven grandchildren.

Socratic was a good fit for the scholarly life. Too young to be drafted in World War II, he spent the last few years of the 1940’s studying physics, astronomy, and calculus at the University of Chicago. While there, he attended the classes of Enrico Fermi, one of the atomic bomb pioneers, who was chiefly responsible for the creation of the atomic pile, the forerunner of a nuclear reactor.

Socratic was not a good fit for the social scene of the atomic bomb crowd. They worked hard but they also partied hard. Maybe they sensed that were they were doing could have a profound negative impact on the world and partying was a way of not thinking bout it. Socratic didn’t sense it. He knew it and thus began his gradual withdrawal from the world.

With his inheritance, he moved to South Dakota in 1951, bought the afore-mentioned land, and built a Quonset hut on the property. I met Socratic on the very cold, very early morning of December 31, 1970. He had been in a state of hermitization for 19 years.

I knocked on the door of the hut and it opened of its own accord. Socratic must have installed an automatic door-opening device. Perhaps he had been inspired by Star Trek. I entered a small foyer. On the wall was a somewhat unsettling inscription written in red letters and which read: “The past is bloodless. The present is bloody. The future will need a blood transfusion.”

The foyer led into a large room dominated by books. The books were on shelves, off shelves, on the floor, on the desk, on the table, on top of chairs. Books, books everywhere, but not a place to sit. Socratic must do his best thinking while standing.

I finally spotted Socratic. He was standing in the corner, you guessed it, reading a book. Wherever he was at the moment, it wasn’t in this reality. It took me several minutes to grab his attention.

When he finally looked at me, he said, “Why are you here?”
I responded, “I want you to tell me about end of the universe.”

Socratic put down his book and walked over to a chalkboard that I hadn’t even noticed due to the clutter in the room. He drew a shape that looked like the earth on the board.

Socratic: “This is the universe, both actual and potential. Begin at the top or the north pole. Surround it with bulldozers. These bulldozers are storehouses and transmitters of the building blocks of the universe. The rest of the earth is nothing but dirt or potential. The bulldozers all start moving at the same time at the same speed. As they move dirt or potential, they leave behind building blocks: atoms and molecules, matter and energy. The universe from a tiny starting point is now expanding in all directions. The bulldozers keep moving along. They are all moving south, creating more universe as they go. They cross the equator. They keep moving relentlessly south. The universe keeps relentlessly expanding. It’s all going smoothly, divinely so to speak. Then all the bulldozers, who have been moving dirt or potential out of the way and leaving in its stead a universe with consistent, natural laws across the board, all end up at the same point. They are surrounding the South Pole. But they don’t stop. They keep going and they all run into each, and because they all have the exact same strength they quit moving. It’s a stalemate.
Me: “Is that the end of the universe?”
Socratic: “No. If they could stay that way the universe would be fine. It just would no longer be moving toward infinity.”
Me: “Why can’t they maintain a stasis?”
Socratic: “Because they are bulldozers. They only know one thing and that is to move out of the way whatever is in front of them.”
Me: “I don’t think I like where this is going.”
Socratic: “That’s not my problem. Should I go on?”
Me: “Yes.”
Socratic: “Because they are bulldozers, they have no choice in what they will eventually do. I think you’ve already guessed it.”
Me: “They turn around and move back in the direction from which they came. Moving, aka destroying, everything in their way.”

Socratic put down the piece of chalk he had been using and went back to the book he had been reading when I had rudely interrupted him. That was my cue to leave.

It was still morning and it was still cold in South Dakota. Now the universe felt that way too.