Rollback (13 page)

"But I don't have to be hands-on," said Don. "I mean, the last while, I wasn't much, anyway. I was mostly doing management, and that doesn't change."

"You're exactly right," Ben said. "It doesn't change. Meaning a guy who looks twenty-something isn't going to be able to command respect from men and women in their fifties. Plus, I need managers who know when an engineer is bullshitting them about what the equipment can and can't do."

"Isn't there
anything
?" Don asked.

"Have you tried downstairs?"

Don drew his eyebrows together. "In the lobby?" The lobby—the Barbara Frum Atrium, as it was technically known, and Don was old enough to have actually worked with Barb—contained nothing much except a couple of restaurants, the three security desks, and lots of open space.

Ben nodded.

"The lobby!" Don exploded. "I don't want to be a fucking security guard."

Ben raised his hands, palm out. "No, no. That's not what I meant. I meant—don't take this the wrong way, but what I meant was the museum."

Don felt his jaw go slack; Ben might as well have punched him in the gut. He'd all but forgotten about it, but, yes, in the lobby there was a small museum devoted to the history of the CBC.

"I'm not a bloody
exhibit
," Don said.

"No, no—no! That's not what I meant, either. I just meant that, you know, maybe you could join the curatorial staff. I mean, you know so much of that stuff firsthand. Not just Pellatt, but Peter Gzowski, Sook-Yin Lee, Bob McDonald, all those guys. You knew them and worked with them. And it says here you worked on
As It Happens
and
Faster Than Light
."

Ben was trying to be kind. Don knew, but it really was too much. "I don't want to live in the past," he said. "I want to be part of the present."

Ben looked at the wall clock, one of those broadcasting units with red LED digits in the middle encircled by sixty points of light that illuminated in sequence to mark passing seconds. "Look," he said, "I've got to get back to work. Thanks for dropping by." And he got up and extended his hand. Whether Ben's shake was normally limp and weak, or whether he was being delicate because he knew he was shaking an eighty-seven-year-old's hand, Don couldn't say.
 

Don returned to the lobby. It said something nice about Canada that anyone could walk around the vast Barbara Frum Atrium, looking up at the six floors of indoor balconies, and watch while all sorts of CBC personalities—the Corporation frowned on the use of the word "stars"—came and went, unaccompanied by security guards or handlers. The little restaurant Ooh La La!, which had been there forever, had tables spilling out into the atrium, and there was one of Newsworld's anchors enjoying a Greek salad; at the next table, the lead performer in a children's show Don had watched with his granddaughter was sipping coffee; crossing over to the elevators was the woman who currently hosted
Ideas
. All very open, all very welcoming—of everyone, except him.

The broadcasting museum was tiny, and tucked off to one side, clearly an afterthought in designing the building. Some of the stuff predated Don. The kiddie program
Uncle Chichimus
was before his time, and
This Hour Has Seven Days
and
Front Page Challenge
were shows his parents had watched. He
was
old enough to remember
Wayne and Shuster
, but not old enough to have ever thought they were funny. But he'd learned his first French from
Chez Helene
, and had spent many happy hours with
Mr. Dressup
and
The Friendly Giant
. Don took a minute to look at the model of Friendly's castle, and the puppets of Rusty the Rooster and Jerome the Giraffe. He read the placard that explained that Jerome's bizarre color scheme of purple and orange had been selected in the days of black-and-white TV because it had good contrast, and had been left intact when the program switched to color in 1966, giving him a psychedelic look, an unintentional reflection of the times.

Don had forgotten that Mister Rogers had gotten his start here, but there it was, the original miniature trolley from that show, back when it had been called
Mister Rogers' Neighbourhood
, the last word notably sporting a
U
.

No one else was in the museum just now. The emptiness of the handful of rooms was a testament to the fact that people didn't care about the past.

Monitors were showing clips from old CBC shows, some of which he remembered, much of which was cringe-worthy. In the vaults here there must be tapes of dreadful stuff like
King of Kensington
and
Rocket Robin Hood
. Perhaps some things
should
be allowed to pass out of living memory; perhaps some things should be ephemeral.

There was some old radio and television hardware on display, including machines he himself had used early in his career. He shook his head. He shouldn't be curator of a museum like this. He should be on display, a relic of a bygone age.

Of course, he didn't look like a relic—and the Canadian National Exhibition no longer had a freak show; he could just barely remember visiting the Ex as a child and hearing the barkers call out descriptions of fish-tailed men and bearded ladies.

He left the museum, and left the building, going out the Front Street entrance. There were other broadcasters in town, but he doubted he'd have better luck with them. And, besides, he liked working on radio drama and audio documentaries of the kind nobody but the CBC made anymore; as far as other broadcasters would be concerned, his CV might as well have said he painted cave walls at Lascaux.

Don arrived at the entrance to Union Station, which was at the bottom of the U comprising the oldest part of the subway system.

He headed downstairs and passed through the turnstile, paying the normal adult—rather than senior citizen's—fare, and then took the escalator down to the platform. He stood beneath one of those digital clocks that hung from the ceiling. A train came rushing in, and he felt his hair whipping because of its passage, and—

—and he was transfixed, unable to move. The doors opened, making their mechanical drumroll sound, and people jostled in and out. Then the three descending tones sounded, indicating that the doors were closing, and the train started moving again. He found himself stepping right up to the edge of the platform, looking at its departing back.

A little boy, no more than five or six, was staring out the rear window at him. Don remembered when he used to like sitting in the front car as a kid, watching the tunnel speed by; the rear car, looking back, was almost as good. There was a grinding sound as the train banked, turning to go north, and then it was gone. He looked down onto the tracks, maybe four feet below, his toes sticking over the platform's edge. He saw a gray mouse scuttle by, and he saw the third rail, and the notices, covered with grime, that warned of the electrocution danger.

Soon enough, another train was coming down the curving track; its headlights cast mad shadows in the tunnel before it became visible. Don felt the vibration of the train, inches from his face, as it zoomed past him, and felt his hair whipping again.

The train stopped. He looked into the window facing him. Most riders got out at Union, although a few people always rode the train around the bend.

Around the bend.

This
was
the time-honored method to do this, wasn't it? Here, in Toronto, it was the way the despondent had handled things since before he'd been born. The subway trains roared into the station at high speed. If you waited at the right end of the platform, you could jump in front of an incoming one, and—

And that would be it.

Of course, it wouldn't be fair to the train's operator. Don remembered reading years ago, in the
Star
, about how devastating it was for subway drivers when people killed themselves this way. The drivers often had to go on extended leave, and some were so afraid that the same thing would happen again they were never able to return to their jobs. Stations in the downtown core were forty-five seconds apart; there wasn't even time for the drivers to relax between them.

But that had been back when the trains had had human drivers. These days, they were operated by sleek mechanicals, courtesy of McGavin Robotics.

The irony was tempting, and—

And he was trembling from head to toe. Suddenly, his body sprang into action, moving as fast as it could, and—

—and he just barely squeezed through the doors before they rumbled shut. Don clung tightly onto a metal pole for the whole trip home, like a drowning man grasping a log.
 

Back in 2009, Sarah had spent at least as much time discussing the Dracon questionnaire as she did teaching astronomy, and the topic often spilled over into evening conversations with Don. One night, when Carl was down in the basement playing
The Sims 4
, and ten-year-old Emily was at her Girl Guides meeting, Sarah said, "Here's an ethical dilemma that came up on the SETI newsgroup today. Some of the SETI researchers think they know what the aliens are trying to determine with their survey, which means we could give them the answers they want, in hopes that they'll keep up contact with us. So, should we lie to get what
we
want? This is, just how unethical is it to cheat on a survey about ethics?"

"The Dracons are probably at least as clever as we are, no?" had said Don. "So wouldn't they see through any attempt at deception?"

"That's what I said!" Sarah replied, sounding pleased to be vindicated. "The instructions for the questionnaire make it quite clear that the thousand responses we send should be produced independently and in private. They say there may be follow-up questions, and any consultation among participants will ruin those. And I suspect they've actually got some sort of way of determining if the answers are all from one person, instead of the thousand individuals they'd asked for, or are from a group that collaborated—you know, by some sort of statistical analysis of the answers."

They were doing general cleaning up. With both of them working during the days, housework ended up being a low priority. Don was dusting the mantel. "You know what I'd like?" he said absently, looking at the framed Emily Carr print on the wall there. "One of those big sixty-inch flatscreen TVs. Don't you think it'd look great right here? I know they cost a fortune right now, but I'm sure they'll come down in price."

Sarah was gathering up sections of newspaper. "You should live so long."

"Anyway," he continued, "you were saying about the Dracon questionnaire?"

"Yeah. Even if we did want to fake it and have a committee draw up all the answers, for some of the questions we honestly don't know what the 'right' answer is."

He moved on to picking up the used mugs from the coffee table. "Like what?"

"Well, like question thirty-one. You and another person jointly find an object that has no apparent worth, and neither of you desire it. Which of you should keep it?"

Don stopped to ponder, two yellow mugs in his right hand, and one in his left; at sixteen, Carl was learning to drink coffee. "Umm, I don't know. I mean, it doesn't matter, does it?"

Sarah had finished gathering newspapers, and nipped into the kitchen to dump them in the blue box. "Who knows?" she called out. "There's obviously
some
moral point here that the aliens are getting at, but no one I've spoken to can see what it is."

He followed her in, rinsed the mugs under the faucet, and then put them in the dishwasher. "Maybe neither of you should take the object. You know, just leave it where you found it."

She nodded. "That would be good, but that's not one of the allowed answers. The survey is mostly multiple choice, remember."

He was loading a few plates into the dishwasher. "Heck, I don't know. Um, the other guy should take it—'cause, um, 'cause that's me being generous, see?"

"But he doesn't want it," she said.

"But it might turn out to be valuable someday."

"Or it might turn out to be poisonous, or to belong to somebody else who'll be angry over it being taken, and who will exact revenge from whoever stole it."

He shook his head, and put an Electrasol tab into the detergent cup. "There just isn't enough information."

"The aliens think there is, apparently."

He started the dishwasher, and motioned for Sarah to follow him out of the room; the machine was noisy. "Okay," he said, "so you
can't
just give the Dracons the answers that'll make us look good, because you don't know what those are in all cases."

"Right," said Sarah. "And, anyway, even for those questions we
do
understand, there's debate about which answers
would
make us look good. See, some of our morals are rational, and others are based in emotion—and it's not clear which ones the aliens would prize most."

"I thought all morals were rational," Don said. He looked around the living room, gauging if anything else needed tending to. "Isn't that the definition of morality: a rational, reasoned response, instead of a knee-jerk, visceral one?"

"Oh?" she said, straightening the pile of current magazines—
Maclean's, Mix, Discover, The Atlantic Monthly
—that lived on the little table between the couch and the La-Z-Boy. "Try this one on for size. It's a standard puzzle in moral philosophy, a little number called 'the trolley problem.' It's called that because a British philosopher came up with it. Her name, by the way, was Philippa Foot—two fetishes in one, if you stop to think about it. Anyway, she said this: say a streetcar is out of control, rushing along its tracks. And say there are five people stuck on those tracks, unable to get away in time—if the train hits, it'll kill them all. But you happen to be watching all this from a bridge over the tracks, and on the bridge are the switching controls, including a lever that if you pull it will cause the streetcar to be diverted to another track, off to the left, missing the five people. What do you do?"