Raxx barked a dry laugh. Then another. Wentworth grunted in response. This elicited another laugh out of Raxx, and slowly it grew until they were both having a good chuckle. Neither of them said anything more, retreating into their own thoughts. They continued to pass the flask back and forth while the fire burned low.
Finally, as Raxx was thinking about getting out his sleeping mat, Wentworth spoke. “So I finished that book you gave me.”
“Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance?”
“Yeah.”
“What did you think?”
“Well, at first I didn’t think too much, thought it was just a bunch of mystical nonsense. But then he starts talking about real world problems. So I read it again. Now I’m reading it a third time — I’m halfway through it but I think I know what he’s getting at. You know how he talks about the Classical and Romantic approaches to knowledge? At first I thought he meant the scientific and mystical approaches, before I figured out the context.
“He says the Classical approach is exemplified by things like manuals, blueprints, and design sketches — all the boring analytical stuff that comes along with tech. You can see why I’d mistake Classical for science — but science isn’t that. Science is a hell of a lot more than that. That’s where the Romantic comes in. For Romantic he talks about his friend who appreciates the motorcycle in its final stage, as a beautiful machine, a ticket to freedom, but doesn’t want to understand the underlying principles. His friend wants a magic carpet, not a motorcycle. That’s why I mistook Romantic for Mystic — but it’s not that. See, why does a Mechanic build a motorcycle in the first place? It’s because he’s building a Romantic ideal. The author’s friend can only see the Romantic, and completely misses the Classical underpinnings.
“But the Romantic isn’t just prettiness, it isn’t just merely aesthetic — and aesthetics don’t equate to useless. That’s why he mentions the incompetent mechanics. The guys who just read the manuals, put in their time, and don’t care about the end result — to them it’s just a paycheque.”
“The technicians.”
“Yeah, the technicians. Just like his friend is only living in the Romantic world, the technicians are only living in the Classical world. Not only are their lives empty, they’re also incompetent. Because they’re not looking at the bike as a whole, because they’re not caring about it, they end up screwing it up worse than it was in the first place.
“The whole idea behind machines is that we can understand them, we can figure out what makes them work, and design them to do what we want them to do. We use our understanding to make ourselves greater.”
“That’s why I’m a Mechanic, man. It’s all something that I can understand, that I can use to change the world into what I want it to be.”
“It’s all math.”
Raxx’s brows furrowed. “Yeah… I guess it is.”
“The book got me thinking. You know Raxx, before I read it I used to be one of those Romantic guys — I never realized that I could figure out the whole machine, I only fixed the parts that I’d been taught to fix. You’re not like that, you don’t let ignorance get in your way. You learn what you don’t know, and chart a path through it. Except in one field.”
“And what’s that?”
Wentworth pulled out his Datapad, and tossed it over to the prone form. Raxx caught it, holding it apprehensively.
“How does this thing work?” asked Wentworth.
“…I’d say that it does your thinking for you. What am I supposed to say?”
“At its base level, it’s nothing but electronics. The same stuff you were using to put together those radios. It’s a machine, just really, really small — electrons and nuclei bouncing off one another, nothing but mathematics, ones and zeroes, clicking like clockwork. It’s a completely different sort of machine, but the principles are the same, the math is the same — it’s designed to think for you, but your truck is designed to drive for you. You decide how much thinking it does. You could figure it out just like anything else.
“At their core, there’s no fundamental difference between trucks and computers.”
Raxx stared at the screen, watching the cursor blink. “You just might be on to something there.” He handed it back and lay down again. “You know, I was taught that all of the old tech was evil… but that was just my tribe. Other are okay with machines, but everybody says that those things are what started the war. I gotta think about it first.” He pulled out a cigarillo and lit it, staring up at the ceiling. “You know, it’s funny that the book got you thinking about mechanics, but me it got thinking about ethics. See, here’s the thing — let’s say you want to be moral. Well, where do you start? The first thing you gotta do is gain knowledge. What’s the difference between a good act and an evil act? It’s the situation. Something’s that’s right to do in one situation would be wrong in the other, and vice versa. Even if you’re just talking about giving someone a kiss, well, it doesn’t take much imagination to think of situations where that’d be rude, or even evil. And it gets more complex from there — when and how should you punish? When and how should you be kind? Both can hurt people, in different ways. It’s all about knowledge — learning about people, families and relationships, and even tech — it all goes hand in hand.
“You know, in some ways it was a big relief for me. I already knew everything that was wrong with my family, but I didn’t believe it. Man, there was some seriously unhealthy stuff going on there. But I’d always learned that truth came from the majority — so if everybody else thought what was happening was okay, who was I to speak different? But, see, that book showed me what the difference was — how I could know that I was right—” he sat up suddenly, resting on an elbow. “Do you know what it is? Do you know how we can tell that we aren’t the crazy ones? It’s because we listen to different ideas. We’re not locked up to the first idea that gets in our heads. Logic is just math, isn’t it? And math’s the same for everyone.” He leaned back again. “How about you show me how that machine of yours works when we get back to Sauga? It’s probably about time I learned.”
Wentworth nodded. The fire had burnt down to embers. “Do you know what else is funny? In a way, that book did the same thing for both of us.”
“How so?”
“It got us to realize the difference between blindly accepting facts, and critically thinking about them. You with your ethics, me with machines… but even then, you and I, we’ve always been doing that, haven’t we? Sure, we’ve both been affected by our environments, but both of us have always sought after free thought… and there’s nobility in that. Anybody half-intelligent can be trained to think, but some people have it innate. The born free-thinkers.”
“Too damn few of us, man.”
“Ain’t that the truth.”
Chapter 33
They awoke in darkness. A stronger wind current had started up in the subway network, howling with a dry moan. The fire had guttered out into black ash.
They crawled back up to the surface to eat breakfast, as hungry for the light as they were for the meal. It was midmorning and overcast. The rain had stopped but there were puddles everywhere. After hot coffee and a couple strips of jerky they continued exploring. The subway tunnels made an oval through the city, and they were determined to see it all the way through.
Rubble and cars still littered the ground but they’d moved to a part of the city with fewer skyscrapers. It was finally possible to travel across the surface, but still everything they found was broken and rotted.
Around noon they arrived at a crossroads filled with small shops and walk-ups. It was there they found the bookstore, on one of the corners. Feeling a burst of their initial excitement, they began exploring. The interior was heavily stylized and open-concept. Where the wallpaper wasn’t peeling they could make out ancient quotes written in cursive script. The lower level had been damaged by flash floods from the vicious fall storms, the waters had raced through the aisles overturning shelves and destroying their contents before seeping down to the lower levels of the city. So they climbed to the second storey, hoping to find something that had survived there. The first book they tried to pull off broke, its spine peeling away where they pulled on it. With the second they were gentler and managed to pull it off intact, but it would not open. Dry mildew had grown through its pages, binding them together and ruining them. All the others were equally worthless. Some had turned into brittle dust, others had undergone slow chemical decay, and still others had simply rotted into black mould. None of them were readable, and the waxy magazines which had survived on the lower level were as useless as the ones Wentworth had found in the subway kiosk the day before.