Flying in the Heart of the Lafayette Escadrille (10 page)

For Jonas, the meds were dropped and the DT had been reduced to situational learning prompts since the boy was ten, offering information whenever Jonas appeared interested in anything. As a result, the DT reported, Jonas showed interest less often and responded to the prompts less appropriately as time progressed.

William frowned. The boy should have been flagged months ago. Why not? He ran a quick diagnostic and found that the DT had labeled the boy as fitting the type six profile perfectly, and that his behavior was not outside of that learning style’s norm. Since Jonas’s Individual Education Plan, or I.E.P., corresponded to his progress, attitude and actions, there’d been no flag.

“Of course,” murmured William. “If the damned computer says he’s not learning anything, and he actually doesn’t learn anything, prediction matched the outcome and nothing must be wrong.” William arranged for a replacement DT to be ready for Jonas at the park entrance.

He called up the day’s progress monitor which showed him responding to each of his six-hundred students’ I.E.P.s. The DT, through six hundred v-Bills, simultaneously lectured, directed reading, contributed to a network panel discussion, asked questions, offered advice, emotionally counseled, annotated literature, praised achievement and motivated the underachievers.

Messages flicked by so fast, he couldn’t keep track of them.

The DT cleared; his earphone sounded an attention ping, then reminded him that the shuttle to the canyon and his awaiting field trip would be leaving in fifteen minutes. While he dressed, the phone continued to tell him facts about the geology lesson and to fill him in on the fifteen students he would be leading in this real-lesson. The only student who sounded even vaguely interesting was Jonas. “And he dropped his DT out the window,” said William to the empty room. “I’ve got to get out of teaching.”

On the hour long shuttle trip to the park, an elderly man sitting next to William drew him into a conversation, discovered he was a teacher, and before long, with the gentle whoosh of tires on the road as a backdrop, the man was rhapsodizing about school when he was a child. Filling the rest of the seats, other travelers swayed with the shuttle’s motion. Some stared blankly out the windows; some leaned over their DTs, keying in information or studying their displays. Gray privacy shields hid the occupants of some seats.

“Loved my school,” the old man said with a tremulous voice. “Solid brick building. We used to wait outside until the bell rang. That’s when school began, with a bell. No bells nowadays. Not nearly.”

William nodded, watching cactus and patches of brown desert grass slip by. “School doesn’t really begin or end anymore,” said William. “Learning happens when the opportunity arises. Individualization is the key, so there’s no need for a structure to meet in.” He thought idly about querying the DT on the subject. He could call up pictures of old schools and the history of building based education if wanted.

“We had classes,” continued the old man. “I still meet with my graduating class every other year. We used to do it every five years, but we’re getting older, you know. No guarantee that we’ll all make jumps that big.” He laughed to himself. “Loved my teachers too. Not all of them, of course, but most of them. Overall, they did me good. Got some good grades. Got me my diploma.”

No grades any more, thought William, only descriptors of progress. No diplomas, only knowledge and performance profiles that changed from day to day. No classes, as in “The Class of 2045.” A student never graduated. “We’re life long learners now,” said William. This is the “party” line, he thought, and he couldn’t say it with any enthusiasm. His own “class,” all six hundred plus of them, ranged from eight years old to seventy-nine. Except for special occasions, like today’s field trip, they had no reason to meet each other, and very few of them had. Central Education matched students with teachers based on teaching and learning styles, so that his students were spread all over the globe.

The old man pointed at the DT. “Of course, with those you know a lot more about your students. I could hide out in the back of my class. Could pass notes, you know. Wasn’t a very efficient system, I guess.”

“Yes, I guess not,” said William, tapping the DT’s cover. “I’ve got all the information . . .” He paused. They crossed the state line into Utah. “. . . But I don’t
know
any of them.”

The old man sighed and sat back in his chair. William didn’t understand why he’d said that. Leslie’s retirement, he decided, had thrown him off stride.

“Well,” said the old man, “teaching’s still a tough job.”

After a while, the man went to sleep. William pulled a privacy shield down from the ceiling, cutting off sight and most of the sound from the shuttle, and called v-Bill. The work area shimmered for a second, then his own features focussed in the DT on his lap.

“Hi, William,” v-Bill said. He signaled to somebody off screen. William suspected that the v-Bill was married. V-Bill never said anything, but the gardenias on his desk that William would never have on his own, or the sense that he was interrupting a conversation to talk to William, hinted to some presence in the house other than v-Bill. William guessed that the DT added these touches to make the v-teacher seem happier and more content than William felt.

“How’s everything?” said v-Bill. “Been working hard?”

William didn’t answer, but studied his electronic double for a moment. His hair line had receded over the years, drawing a line higher and higher on his forehead. Not bald really. Definitely aged though. In v-Bill’s eyes, William could still see his own youth, a kind of sparkle, a liveliness as v-Bill waited for William to speak, as if v-Bill was expecting William to get a joke they shared, to join him in laughter. William wondered if he still looked like that, or if the face on the DT was
totally
counterfeit, false not only in content, but appearance too.

William said, “You’re not real, you know.”

“Oh,” said v-Bill, sounding disappointed. “So you’re in that state of mind again, huh?”

“If you were real, you wouldn’t always be so damn self confident.”

V-Bill leaned back in his chair and made a steeple of his hands in the middle of his chest, a gesture that William lately had felt looked patronizing, so he’d quit doing it. The DT hadn’t picked up the change in his behavior yet, but it wouldn’t be long before v-Bill quit doing it too.

“I have bad days just like anyone else,” said v-Bill. “We could talk about it if you’d like.” He appeared concerned, as if William’s aggressiveness puzzled and hurt him. What was weird, William realized, was that even though he knew that v-Bill was only a construct, a brilliantly concocted amalgam of his own personality, mannerisms and DT augmented expertise, he found he almost wanted to tell him what was wrong: that he wasn’t positive that he should be a teacher anymore, or if he had ever been a teacher. He caught himself feeling sorry he’d been rude.

Suddenly angry, and unsure of why he’d called him in the first place, William said, “I’m not in the mood for this kind of self gratification.” He cut the connection. Instantly his earphone squeaked and a warning flag flashed in the corner of the work area. William tapped it, and the DT reported his own interaction with v-Bill as problematic and needing his personal attention. William smiled. The DT couldn’t handle his conferences with himself, which was probably why Central Education frowned on teachers communicating with their alter egos.

The shuttle lurched, and William raised the privacy shield. They had entered the park and had begun the long, winding climb to the visitor’s center on the rim of a canyon.

Naturally, all his students recognized him when he met them in the main lobby. They gathered around, DTs tucked under their arms or in backpacks, to shake his hand.

“William, at last, we meet face to face,” one said. William’s earphone whispered the student’s name and a personal fact that he could use to establish rapport, and William greeted him as if they were old friends, which, as far as the student was concerned, they were. As the rest made their hellos, the earphone prompted him continuously. All the time he shook hands, though, commenting about each student’s progress or asking about their hobbies, William scanned the crowd looking for Jonas Wynn. Hundreds of people filled the lobby: his own class and others, but also what looked like a couple of retirement groups, families and foreign tourists, all waiting patiently for their chance to walk one of the many guided trips into the canyon. The logistics of running a national park must be staggering, thought William. But he didn’t see his reluctant learner.

Finally, just as the visitor center dispatching officer announced his class’ departure gate, William spotted Jonas. Smaller than his picture implied, and much, much more frail, the boy moved uncertainly toward their gate, making labored progress as he squeezed between other people in his way.

“Over here, Jonas,” William shouted. The boy scanned the crowd blankly for a second, then his eyes settled on William. Some emotion flickered across Jonas’ face, an unreadable grimace. He pushed past the last intervening groups to join the class just as their gate whooshed open and the visitor center tour program started in their earphones.

William turned and followed his class out the door under the “STAY ON THE TRAIL” sign. He’d done this tour several times before, so he knew that they had to move rather smartly to keep up with the park’s description of where they were. He wouldn’t speak to them as a group until the first “meditation” rest a half mile farther along the canyon rim, just before the trail wound down into the canyon itself.

The sudden brightness of the noon sun made him blink away tears as he walked on the cement path. He wiped his eyes. To their left, a sandstone talus slope spotted with juniper, rose to the road they’d arrived on. Beyond that, a pale bluff of soft-curved rock marked the horizon. To their right, on the other side of a guard rail, the canyon, a thousand feet deep and a mile wide gaped invitingly. A pair of canyon swifts swooped in the updrafts. A bird called, a lovely trill of notes that died hauntingly away on the last tone, but he couldn’t tell if it were virtual through his earphone or if a real bird had made it.

Jonas walked just in front of him, his thin shoulders tightly bunched under his shirt. His glance darted to each side, as if he were afraid someone would catch him looking, and twice he turned back over his shoulder and caught William’s eyes.

“Nice day for this, isn’t it?” offered William.

Jonas jumped, and said nothing.

At the first rest stop, William gathered the class and recited some Edward Abbey and Thoreau from memory. He didn’t need the earphone to prompt him on this, but he felt programmed just the same. Behind him, he knew, sunlight danced in the canyon, and his students were reacting to the real-lesson by contrasting it to the v-lessons. Later, they’d all ooh and ah about how much more profound their moment with nature had been compared to the vids from their DTs. This was experiential knowledge and fit exactly into each of their DT driven I.E.P.s.

But he didn’t feel as if
he
were learning anything. Not only did he feel that he was indistinguishable from any prerecorded presentation, but the canyon itself felt virtual. He saw what the park determined he should see. He heard what the park determined he should hear. The tour controlled all of it, and he felt no hint of exploration any more, no hope for discovery.

As he reached the end of the Thoreau piece, and their attentive faces were focussed on him, he noticed Jonas at the back of the class, looking down at his shoes, scuffing some sand on the trail back and forth, and he felt exactly the same feeling about Jonas that he felt about the park. Where’s my chance to teach him? he thought. What can I do that the charts and diagnostics haven’t already told me? I am, he thought, predigested. My path has been determined.

The class applauded when he reached the end with Thoreau’s words, “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.” But William mouthed the words emptily, and realized that like v-Bill, he too was all form and no content.

His earphone pinged, and the park program urged them to proceed down the trail into the canyon. There, it said, they could see the “sands of time cut away” and that they’d “pass through million of millions of years with each downward step.”

His class turned away obediently and filed onto the narrow stairway with its protective handrails. William watched them leave. I can give you nothing, he thought. He knew that for the next twenty minutes, their earphones would direct their attention to the rock formations, to the pinion pine that clung precariously to tiny outcroppings, to the vistas beyond, and when they reached the next rest stop, where he was supposed to speak again, that the DT would recognize he was not there and fill in with something appropriate. The class wouldn’t know that he was supposed to accompany them the whole way. They’d never miss him.

Jonas, the last student, vanished down the trail, and William remained, leaning against the cool sandstone rock he’d lectured to them from. Within a minute, he heard the footsteps of the next group coming down the path, so he climbed over the low restraining fence and hurried out of sight up the canyon rim.

Within fifty yards of where he’d left the path, his earphone chirped, and an official sounding voice warned him that he was violating park rules and must return to the marked trail. William pulled the earphone out and placed it on top of his DT. His hand seemed strangely empty without it; a breath of air cooled the sweat in his ear. Then he continued walking the rim.

He thought about Leslie Franklin. They’d talked every morning for the last forty-four years, but they’d never met. She’d married twice during the years. He’d attended the ceremonies electronically. He’d consoled her when the first marriage fell apart, and then when her second husband passed away. They exchanged gifts on Christmas and birthdays. They’d co-authored papers together. He wondered what she smelled like. He wondered what it would have been like to have touched her hair.