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GENERATION GAP


Page 3 of 4

by Stanley Schmidt

This story originally appeared in Artemis Magazine Issue #1, Spring 2000, and is copyright 1999 by Stanley Schmidt, all rights reserved. This story may not be reprinted or republished without the express written permission of the author.
It is currently on the Hugo Award ballot for Best Novelette of 2000.


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13 June 2000
Dear Robby,

If you've peeked, you already know who this is from, but you probably don't believe it. Bear with me; I'll convince you.

My first proof is that I'm answering the letter you wrote to yourself on March 22, 1968. Who else knew about that? I'm not sure how long ago that was, for you. There's some intrinsic uncertainty about when this will be "delivered," and I wanted to be sure you got it after you wrote your letter. Otherwise it wouldn't make any sense to you. I read yours a few years later than I was supposed to, and I'm sorry about that. I'd say you did well to get it to me at all, with all that can and will happen in a couple of decades -- and it was a neat idea. Thanks for writing!

You're partly right that generation gaps are caused by people forgetting things as they age, but there's another part: they learn new things. You're sincere and earnest, but you lack experience. For example, I agree that it's sad and dangerous for people to live entirely through their kids, but it's an easy trap to fall into. At your age you can hardly imagine how much you have to give up and how completely your life revolves around kids, if you care about doing a good job with them. You will; I did. And Mom and Dad did better than you thought.

You also haven't yet grasped the fact that intelligent, caring people can sincerely disagree. I haven't changed my mind, at least not much, about what you/I said in the back seat of the car after Harry's funeral. But I very much regret saying it at that time and in that way. It hurt Mom and Dad terribly, and I don't know any way to take that back.

I appreciate your advice, but now let me give you some. Things didn't work out for me quite the way you expected; maybe it would be better if they had -- and maybe they can for you. More about that later . . .

I don't want to spoil all the surprises for you, but let me hit a few highlights of how you turned into me. You already know that I got more and more heavily into antidraft and antiwar activity, but still did well in school. I kept it up in college, and my professors all seemed to think I had great potential. It was a heady feeling. Despite all the time spent fighting the draft, I felt like the embryonic physicist in me was on a roll, picking up steam that would lead to really great things.

I remember a period when my classes started hitting me with much hairier math than I'd ever dealt with before. I felt like a mountain climber getting altitude sickness and wondering if I'd ever be able to make it to the top. But when I got past that I could look out and down and see the whole of physics spread out all around me. I could see how it all fit together, and how beautiful it was. And I could look up and see the summit, and know at last that I was going to make it. If I'd kept climbing, Robby, I would have been a great scientist. I felt like I had a fire roaring in my brain, forging new understanding, and nothing could stop it.

Right now you're getting worried and asking yourself, "So what did?" I'll get to that. But you're also asking yourself, "What ever happened to Rachel Flanagan?" There's another proof that I am who I say I am. Who else ever knew about your crush on her? Certainly she didn't; you never did work up the nerve to tell her. There's another lesson for you, Robby: the most glorious dreams in the world aren't worth a damn unless you do something about them, and you can't always wait till later. Anyway, Rachel's going to go off to MacLaren College in Canada. Before that happens, you're going to meet a girl who's a lot less shy than either you or Rachel. Her name is Gloree Lindelle. She's tall, blonde, beautiful, popular, ambitious, and she's going to sweep you off your feet. She did me, and we wound up both going to IU and spending more and more time together.

This is where it starts getting weird -- the part you'll find hard to believe even if you've accepted the idea that you're writing to yourself from 30 years in the future. Gloree so bewitched me that when she started hinting that she didn't like my draft resistance, I listened. I drifted away from the rallies, and when I got a premature draft notice through a bureaucratic mixup, I didn't even fight it. I just went. Unlike Harry, I got through it all right, at least superficially. I wasn't hurt, but I saw enough combat to make me fear I'd been right in the first place and this really was a terrible thing that I should still be fighting against rather than in. But I fought that feeling down and muddled through.

Gloree waited for me. When I came home we got married and had a couple of kids, and on the whole we've been pretty happy -- but I couldn't do science any more. The fire had gone out. My grades began to slip, and with some nudging from Gloree I switched to an MBA program. Now I'm a CEO for a minor aerospace contractor; we do some work for NASA, but their program has lost steam just like I did. I shouldn't complain, but I'm not really satisfied. I keep thinking I could have done better if I'd gone a different way.

That's where you come in; you can. You do have the potential to become an important creative scientist, Robby; I could have if I'd kept up the momentum I had early in college and not let the war drain it off. And, much as I like Gloree, I think Rachel would have helped me better along the path I really wanted to follow.

Now the bombshell: she would have. She was just as shy as you, you nitwit, but had just as big a crush on you. Yes, I know. I read letters she left for me after she was killed. She was crazy about you, and she was everything you imagined she was. You would have loved her, and she would have loved you, if you'd given yourselves a chance.

Bombshell #2: Rachel's going to die in an accident unless you stop her. September 24, 1970; 2:32 PM, in front of the administration building at MacLaren. She'll be on her way to an antiwar meeting -- she became active in such things in college -- and she'll have so much on her mind that she'll do a stupid thing. She'll be looking straight ahead and walking fast, and dash out to cross the street without looking. She'll step right in front of a tank truck that won't be able to stop, and that will be the end of Rachel.

Unless you make sure it doesn't happen. Wouldn't that be changing the past? We don't know; there are a lot of uncertainties in our models. Even if it does, will it be changing my past -- or will it just create a new branch, on which another you/me will be happier than I am here? I don't know, but I'm willing to do the experiment.

I do know this: if you're reading this and thinking about it, we've already proved that the past can be changed in at least one of those senses -- because I never got a reply to the letter you wrote.

So my advice is this: go for it. Go after Rachel now; don't let her die. She's better for you than Gloree. And if you can keep your momentum -- who knows what you can do with your dreams?

Think about it.

Robert

"Man," Robby said aloud, "this is really weird! Who'd pull a sick joke like this?" He looked again at the parts about his letter and his crush on Rachel, and added under his breath, "And how?"

Obviously somebody -- he couldn't imagine who -- had been into his private things and read the letter. That would have told them enough to pull this.

But when he ran up to his bedroom and dug into his closet, he found everything just as he'd left it. His letter to his future self was right where it belonged, its seal fully intact.

He found that oddly unnerving. Not that he wanted anyone else to read that letter -- except himself, twenty years hence -- but if they had, it would have explained at least part of what was going on. Finding the letter undisturbed left him without a clue.

He sat there for a long time, staring at the envelope he'd sealed himself and reading the mysterious aerogramme over and over. Could it be what it claimed? Could the things it foretold be true?

Rachel being killed? Some cheerleader type coming after him and remaking him in her own image? Him wimping out and turning soldier?

Ridiculous! And sick, he repeated to himself, his eyes drawn again to the part about Rachel's death.

A car crunched in the driveway and the screen door slammed downstairs. Either Mom and Dad had come home, and the other wouldn't be far behind. He hastily stuffed everything back into his treasure chest, ending with the letter from "Robert" -- which, by now, he had practically memorized. Then he threw the closet back together, donned nonchalance, and went downstairs. "Oh, hi, Mom," he said with a smile. "How'd it go?"

He thought a lot about Robert's letter in the coming months. He remained skeptical about its authenticity, but never came up with a better explanation for its detailed references to his letter and things he'd never confided anywhere else.

But if the aerogramme really was from Robert, that raised tantalizing and disturbing questions about how much of its content was true. Was Rachel really waiting for him to make the first move? Would she welcome it as eagerly as in his daydreams? Might it even save her life? It certainly was a temptation to try -- and if Robert had seen direct evidence and knew, what did he have to lose?

Did the axiom "Never trust anybody over thirty" apply even to his older self? He had to suspect it did. On the other hand, Robert's advice was supposedly based not only on his own experience, but on careful consideration of Robby's advice to him. That suggested that Robby's letter had actually had some of the effect he'd intended. If so, and he had an unexpected chance to draw some return benefit from it, shouldn't he?

He felt increasingly that he should. He began looking with real determination for a suitable moment to approach Rachel.

But before he quite got to it, something else happened that threw him off course.

Robby had not even thought about going to the prom; listening to his classmates' continual prattle about it was one of the more annoying features of spring. He didn't even think about asking Rachel there. He wasn't a party animal, and he doubted she was either. He was still plotting his move, but thinking more along the lines of a movie or a concert. Maybe even a picnic in the park.

So he was completely unprepared when a girl he hardly knew stopped him one day in the hall after lunch. He was walking along, minding his own business, when she materialized out of an alcove in front of him and said, "Excuse me. Robby?"

He stopped, confused. He was not used to being accosted by willowy blondes with shimmering ponytails cascading halfway down their backs. She looked vaguely familiar, he thought; he suspected he'd seen her around school, but couldn't quite place her. She hardly looked dressed for school; a lot of guys must find that clingy purple minidress quite distracting. Looking half at her and half past her, he stammered, "Yes?"

"I'm in your third bell study hall," she said. "I ve been wanting to meet you for a long time, but you never seemed to notice I existed." Actually he had; now that she mentioned it, he remembered seeing her sitting across the aisle and dismissing her as decorative, but just another airhead. She smiled a dazzling smile, like a searchlight in his eyes. "So I finally decided I'd have to make the first move. I hope you don't think that too forward of me."

"Uh, no . . ." Actually it did seem pretty forward, compared to him and the way he'd been raised, but this sort of thing was becoming more common and accepted these days. He'd just never expected to be on the receiving end of it.

"Good," she said. "Well, here's the situation, Robby -- " She cut off abruptly and wrinkled her nose. "You're not really a Robby, you know. That's a little boy's name. I think I'll call you Rob. Okay?"

"Uh, okay." He smiled in spite of himself. Nobody had ever told him he'd outgrown his nickname before, and he rather liked it. "Sure."

"Great! Well, anyway, Rob, here's the deal. I've been watching you and I'd like to get to know you. Do you have a date for the prom yet?"

"Not yet," he said woodenly. He felt himself blush.

"Well, why don't you go with me?"

That floored him -- not so much the fact that she was taking the initiative, but that a virtual stranger who looked like her should be asking him. "With you?" he echoed incredulously. "I don't understand. Why me? You could go with anybody you--"

"But I want you," she said, smiling sweetly. "The only question is, would you mind going with me?"

"Well. . . I'm flattered that you'd ask. But I should warn you, I. . . can't dance.

"I'll teach you," she said brightly. "Deal?"

He felt like a freshly landed fish flopping around, trying but failing either to understand what was happening or to find a believable excuse to say no. Finally he gave up and managed to return her smile. "Deal!" He wondered inwardly, What have I got myself into?

"Great!" he heard her say. "Got to get to class now; we'll work out the details later. See you around, Rob!"

She was ten paces away before he remembered. "Say," he called after her, "this is embarrassing, but I don't even know your name."

She stopped, pivoted gracefully, and grinned with perfect composure. "Oh, I guess you will be needing that, won't you? I'm Gloree Lindelle."


After the initial shock wore off, Robby -- or Rob, as he increasingly thought of himself -- found it harder and harder to shrug off Robert's letter. This was just too eerie. But how much of what it described was immutable, and what might he change?

He wasn't even sure how much he wanted to change. Despite his misgivings about plunging into such an alien environment as a prom, he went and actually enjoyed it, thanks entirely to Gloree. She did teach him to dance, and she was fun to be with. Occasionally a small part of his mind tried to tell him she had many of the qualities he'd found so shallow in other girls, but she had such an uncanny knack for anticipating what would please him that he heard less and less from that part. Soon they were dating steadily, and he thought less and less about Rachel.

Ironically, it was only when his and Gloree's relationship was well established that he finally shared a few extracurricular words with Rachel. It was right after graduation, when all the kids were milling around in their tuxes and formals, fending off congratulations from their families in the auditorium lobby, itching to get off to parties. Rachel, looking surprisingly pretty in her gown, came up to him and with a shy smile said, "Well, Robby, we made it. So what will you be doing?"

"I'm going to IU," he said, wincing slightly at the "Robby." "Think I'll major in physics. You?"

"MacLaren College," she said. "You probably never heard of it. It's in Canada. I'm leaning toward journalism, and maybe math."

"Oh." He hoped she couldn't see his shock when she said MacLaren College. "Well, good luck. It's been nice--"

Just then Gloree came up and grabbed him by the arm. "Come on, Rob! They're waiting for us." She literally dragged him off, remembering as an afterthought to call over her shoulder, "Congratulations, Rachel. See you around." Then she turned back to Rob and half-whispered, "I did get her name right, didn't I?"

Gloree had already decided to go to IU by the time Rob did, and she hinted later that his decision had been a major factor in hers. He didn't see how that could be, since he'd never even talked to her yet; but she explained that she had set her sights on him long before and asked around to learn everything she could about him.

The summer after graduation passed in a perfect blend of the idyllic and the exhilarating. Again he attributed much of that to Gloree's attention -- but not all. That July was when Apollo 11 landed on the Moon, and for the first time ever, human beings walked on another world. Rob and Gloree watched it together; it was one of the most thrilling moments of Rob's life. He thought Neil Armstrong's first words got it exactly right. He felt almost as proud as if he'd helped put the Eagle there himself, and justified the feeling by his promise that he would help, a lot, with some later giant steps for mankind.

Gloree said it was "nice," but she obviously didn't feel the moment's majesty and import as Rob did. That disappointed him a little. He almost felt that she was applauding the astronauts not because what they did was so important, but simply because Rob was interested in it and therefore she should be, too.

When school started, she was at least supportive of his enthusiastic pursuit of his studies. He was determined to be a very good scientist, if not a great one, and both he and his professors were quite confident that he would. Every time he earned another plaudit for something extraordinary he'd done, Gloree added her oohs and aahs to the chorus. She didn't even complain when he grew a beard.

The only sour note was that she was much less supportive of his antiwar and antidraft activities. Those embarrassed her, she said. He had such potential, he was on his way to such a brilliant career, why must he act as if he had no gratitude at all for the country that made it all possible? He tried to explain that that wasn't it at all -- that it was precisely because he so loved his country that he was determined to turn it away from what he saw as a grave error -- but she never seemed to understand. He wasn't sure she even really listened. She had a Plan for their future, and was determined to support everything that fit into it and stamp out everything that didn't.

But she was fun to be with, when she wasn't doing that, and she showered him unendingly with a kind of attention he had never seriously dreamed of getting. He liked that; so gradually he talked less and less about "peace" activities, first to Gloree and eventually to anyone. He never reached the point of saying that the war was a good thing, but Gloree pushed him inexorably down the road toward conventional patriotism and (he wasn't really sure when this entered the discussion) matrimony. Somehow he found himself engaged by the end of their freshman year; and by the time they returned as sophomores, he'd agreed that maybe the quickest way to end the war would be to help fight it. So if he was called he would go, and she would wait for him.

He went along with it, and often told himself he was very lucky to be engaged to someone like Gloree -- but he never felt really comfortable with the part about the draft. It still didn't feel right; and sometimes, late at night, he was nagged by the feeling that he'd sold out, that he was slowly and unceremoniously burying an important part of himself.

Somewhere along there he remembered he'd saved Robert's letter from the future, and he got it out to reread what it said about this period of his life. The description so far was unnervingly accurate. Did that mean it was all immutable? Maybe so -- but would Robert have bothered to write it if he really thought so?

If he could change anything, what would he change and how would he change it? It was too late to start dating Rachel in high school. . . .

Stop that! he chided himself. You're engaged to Gloree, she's a great girl, and it's unfair to her to be thinking now about how it might have been with somebody else.

But he couldn't help it. They were starting their sophomore year now, and that was when the letter said Rachel would die -- unless he prevented it. Just a few more weeks. . .

As that deadline drew closer, Rob reread the last part of the letter oftener and oftener. No, he told himself, he was not going to make a last-ditch play for Rachel; the very thought was absurd. But if there was a chance that he could save her life, and nobody else in the world even knew she would be in danger -- could he live with himself if he didn't at least try?

By the third week of September, the question was preying heavily on his mind. Meanwhile Gloree was pushing him hard to set a wedding date, and he got a notice to report for a draft board physical. . . .

By the time the decision came, it seemed automatic. He couldn't think of any way to explain to Gloree or anyone else where he was going, or why, so he didn't. He just walked off campus the morning of September 23, bought a bus ticket, and climbed aboard.



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