The Emoticon Generation (18 page)

The Barbie-like reporter raised her eyebrow, and looked at the camera. “You heard it from a man who was there: This makes the Sixties’ freedom movement pale in comparison. We seem to truly be at the edge of an historic revolution. But how long can this last? Over to you, Bob.”

Roger turned off the phone with a sigh.

The light turned green, and he accelerated.

“Dad?”

“Russell?”

“Did you think about it?”

“What? About what?”

“What’s a revolution?”

“Hmm... A revolution, Russell, a revolution is when everything changes. And nothing stays the same.”

“Ah,” Russell said and leaned back. Then he shot up again, “I don’t understand.”

“Ask Mrs. Miller,” Roger said.

~

A week later, during his lunch break, Roger was sitting at his desk at work.

Work in the paper company he was working for had ground to a halt in the last few days. Production has been halved, and he himself has been sitting in his office with the door closed, unable to put in any actual work time. During the last few days, he had just sat there in front of his computer, leaning back, staring at the ceiling: unable to work, but unable to imagine, either.

He turned up the volume on the news network feed that had been consistently running in the background for the last few weeks. Political Arena was coming on.

“Today in Political Arena, we’re putting in the arena the revolutionary movement that has simply overtaken each and every one of last month’s news cycles. And, boy, do we have a doozy! Even though everyone seems to land on the side of imagination and freedom, we’ve brought proponents of both sides. On the one side, we have Mr. Lautner, formerly the Education Under Secretary of the United States between the years 1992 and 1998. Did I get that right?”

“Absolutely.”

“You are here to represent the old school, literally,” the 40-year-old Sam Stone, a political-speech-writer-turned-journalist laughed at his own joke. “The one that’s being washed away by this new trend.”

“I wouldn’t call it ‘old school’—”

“Under Secretary Lautner, let me introduce your opponent. In this corner, we have Dr. Sheen, one of the more prestigious neurosurgeons in the world. We have had occasion to talk to you before in news items that touched on your profession. But as I understand it, after the wonderful discoveries by Dr. Burrows regarding the imagination and the freedom hormone, you have quit your job?”

“Yes.”

“You have... Do I understand this correctly? You have taken your children out of school?”

“Yes. I have 3 children, aged 9, 11, and 15, and I have taken them all out of school. I’m teaching them at home. I’m teaching them to be themselves. I am a product of what, until a few days ago, was considered to be the best education possible, and I am telling you today that the education I received is utter nonsense. We are teaching our children to be robots.”

“Now, wait just a second,” Under-Secretary Lautner raised a finger and put it powerfully on the desk. “We are not limiting the children, we are opening them to—”

“Mr. Under-Secretary! When we put our children’s imaginations in cages, we might as well be putting the children in cages!”

“Now, wait, wait, wait! Let’s have order in this discussion. Under Secretary Lautner, what is your response?”

“My response is that having fun and jumping in fountains and taking holidays is all nice and well. But at the end of the day, people have to return to their jobs, or the economy collapses. When the economy collapses, you’ll have people on the streets, but for very different reasons.”

“Now wait just a—”

“Please let me finish. We have to put our children back in school so that they may have an opportunity to become productive members of this society.”

Dr Sheen sneered, “Productive!”

Roger gave his chair half a spin, turning his back to the screen, then leaned back fully, looking at the sky through the window.

The television continued behind him, “Yes! Productive! We need doctors and lawyers, we need postmen and, yes, even bureaucrats. We need people to make sure we have light in our homes every day. We need people to know how to build computers, how to make water reach our homes, how cars work, how televisions work, how radios work. We need all these people. This new fad of society will lead to anarchy. Which may be attractive to the child in us, but nothing good can come of it.”

The doctor leaned back and put his legs on the news desk. “You, sir, are old, that’s what you are.”

“Old?! You’re ten years older than me!”

“And yet you are older,” he shrugged. “In every possible way. An old, stuffed shirt. A grown-up,” Doctor Sheen said in disgust.

“Decorum, Dr. Sheen,” Sam Stone interjected.

“You can drop the ‘Doctor’ title, because right now it’s a sign of shame, not respect. Now, I’m not attacking you. I want to help you, Mr. Under Secretary. I want you... to be free. I want you to just imagine a little bit every day, Mr. Under Secretary. Just imagine. The freedom hormone will be released into your brain a little bit every day.”

“I know how the process works—”

“You
know
it, but you haven’t
felt
it! If you would have felt it, you would never be sitting here, representing the old model.”

“Sir, we have people who imagine on a daily basis. In fact, they do it for a living. They’re called artists, authors, painters, dancers, actors. And from what I understand, most of them do not live the lives of happy children, but of tortured adolescents.”

Doctor Sheen shook his head. “Yes, most artists have been historically tortured, because society kept trying to force into cages the one asset that breathed life into them.”

“I doubt that very much.”

“Mr. Under Secretary, if you would have actually gone
through
the process, as I have, you’d realize you’ve been living your life for the wrong reasons, that you’ve been fighting the wrong fights, that you’ve been angry when pleasure was only a step away. If you would have
felt
it and not
known
it, you would have been dancing in the streets, just like the rest of us.”

“That way lies anarchy, Doctor Sheen.”

Doctor Sheen leaned forward, and whispered forcefully. “No. Not anarchy. Something better. Everything’s changing. A revolution is coming. This isn’t someone’s idea or philosophy. It isn’t an ideological movement. There are no interests here, no manipulation from above. The reaction of the people is authentic. And we’re all reacting in the same way, because this reaction, this feeling, this knowledge of empowering freedom comes from the way we are hardwired. It is built into our framework, into our DNA. This is natural. This is what we were meant to do, meant to be. This is the next step in human history, sir!

“The tide is turning. Whether you shake your fists at it or not, the tide is turning, sir. And a revolution is coming. And all people like you will either learn to imagine... or be left to look at the human race rise to new heights while leaving you far far below, shaking your fists in disapproval.

“This is a new step in human history. Something like this has never happened before.”

“That, Doctor, is not true. This has happened before.”

Roger sat up in his chair, as did Doctor Sheen. “Oh? When?”

Roger turned around and looked at the screen.

“I have no doubt the streets looked quite the same almost two thousand years ago, when Rome burned.”

Roger pursed his lips together even as Doctor Sheen laughed loudly. “Nice demagoguery there, Mr. Under Secretary. In the same way I could say that bureaucratic thinking such as yours led to such regimes as Stalin’s Russia. But I won’t say that, because that would be insulting to at least one of our intelligences.” Doctor Sheen stood up suddenly. “I’ve had it with the boundaries in this little place. I have the jungle of my mind to roam through with my family. It’s been only a slight pleasure.” As he walked out, he leaned near to the Under Secretary’s ear and whispered a few words. The mikes caught it, “A revolution is coming. En garde!”

Doctor Sheen straightened and left.

“Well,” Sam Stone seemed to have been caught off guard. “We’ve seen the revolution continue right here. I believe our audience will agree that this fight is all old versus new, the homo sapiens of the future versus the dinosaurs of the past. Wouldn’t you say so, Under Secretary Lautner?”

Under Secretary Lautner pursed his lips, “No.”

Roger’s cell phone buzzed.

“Spoken like a true dinosaur. I love this new trend of saying what I think. Viewers? We’ll be back after this short break. Don’t go away.”

The phone recognized the number as Russell’s school. He muted the computer.

“Yes?” he answered.

“Mr. Grant? Am I speaking to Russell Grant’s father?”

“Yes, you are. What happened?”

“Nothing to be alarmed about, Mr. Grant. This is Principal Jackson, from Russell’s school.”

“Okay.”

“I’ve just wanted to inform you – and I’m making this call personally to all of the parents – that, well, as you may know, in view of everything that’s been going on, we’ve asked for instructions from the Department of Education about how to educate the kids.”

“Yes.”

“And we’ve received the following instructions: school is to proceed as per the previous guidelines, nothing has changed. Which personally I saw as good news. Unfortunately, as a direct result, more than two thirds of our teachers have quit.”

“What!”

“Surprising, but true. In seeking substitute teachers, it turns out that there is now a lack of those, as well. Following the Department’s reissuing of its guidelines, teachers and substitute teachers have been quitting right and left.”

“The teachers just quit?!”

“They did. They are refusing to teach the students in a way they believe would harm them. Now, all our students are still here, and they’re being taken care of. We are here to take care of them, not just to teach them. At present we can only do the former and not the latter. We’re simply keeping them in their classes until the day is done. After lunch we’ll be trying to fill their day with gym activities outside. Which is about all we can do. Tomorrow we’ll do the same, and the day after that, until we come up with a solution. However, as the situation stands, we would certainly understand if any parent wished to take his or her child out of school for whatever reason. We will not stop you. Russell won’t learn anything in school today.”

“Wow. I see.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Grant, I am now going to make this phone call to the parents of other children as well.”

“Yes, yes, I understand. Thank you for telling me.”

“Have a good day, Mr. Grant.”

Mr. Grant hung up. Russell stared at the computer screen. People in their thirties were standing on a rooftop and shouting at the sky.

After twenty seconds of thought, Roger reached for the phone and dialed Joan’s number.

~

A week later, after dinner, after Russell had gone to sleep, after Joan had cleared the table and Roger had washed the dishes, Rose had trouble sleeping. Joan and Roger allowed her to stay awake and watch TV for another hour. She promptly fell asleep on the sofa half an hour later.

The news was playing softly in the background: news reports of tornado warnings in the south. Roger and Joan decided that moving Rose now would wake her. It was preferable to wait another half hour until her deep sleep. This meant they had time to have the talk they’ve been putting off for the last few days.

Joan spoke first, “We’re going to have to start thinking about home schooling Russell.” Russell’s school had been nothing more than a kid-depository for the last week. “And next year, Rose.”

Rose stirred, but did not wake.

Roger rubbed his eye “Home school? What, we’re going to teach them?”

Joan shook her head.

Roger said, “We both can’t remember anything worth a damn from grade school.” Joan nodded. Roger continued, “And do we have time?”

The two sat in silence. Roger’s eyes wandered to the TV. Commercials just came on.

“How about a private tutor?” Joan said.

Roger leaned back. “Really?”

“The other parents, that’s what they’re talking about. If school can’t supply teachers, then we need to get some ourselves.”

Roger made a face. “Money.”

One commercial gave way to another commercial.

Joan looked at it for a few seconds, then looked back at Roger.

“Russell needs to go to school,” she said. “And we’ll find a good tutor, one that won’t give him headaches or block his mind.”

“Is teaching any good? Is learning any good? What if what Dr. Burrows is saying is that teaching is bad?”

The second commercial ended, and a third one appeared in its place.

Joan said, “We’ll find the money. Scrimp, save... You know.”

“Yeah.”

Roger sighed. “Even if teaching’s bad... Worst case, he grows up to be us.”

Joan laughed slightly and nodded. She took Roger’s hand in hers. “Best case?”

“Hmmm....”

Roger caressed her fingers.

“Best case,” Joan said. “He grows up to be something better.”

Roger looked in her eyes, “What’s that?”

Joan shook her head, then their eyes locked. A few seconds later, Roger broke the moment and looked sideways. The news had already come on.

A bearded man in his late forties was being interviewed. The name ‘DR. STONE, EDUCATION ADVISOR TO THE PRESIDENT’ appeared at the bottom of the screen. Roger increased the volume just enough to hear.

“We are at an historical tipping point,” he was saying. “In fact, we are past the tipping point. Things will never return to the way they were. The entire Western human society is being swept away by a real and unprecedented revolution. The question is: We know where we’re coming from, but where are we going to tip to? Where is history going? Can we take charge of the change that’s coming?”

“And you put your answer in your book, Dr. Stone?” asked the black anchor with perfectly straight hair.

“I do more than that. One place we can go is anarchy. Let’s face it, it’s fun for a day, but it’s bad in the long run. But there is another option, you see. It is still possible to educate people –
and
children – without putting anyone’s brain in a cage. We can teach our kids without having them become like us.”