Orfeo

by Richard Powers

Like all boys’ names in the age of social networking, it began with a J.

Music forecasts the past, recalls the future. Now and then the difference falls away, and in one simple gift of circling sound, the ear solves the scrambled cryptogram. One abiding rhythm, present and always, and you’re free. But a few measures more, and the cloak of time closes back around you.

They have directions, but the hopeless kind of directions midwesterners give: north, south, east, west. Left and right would be too easy. It’s as if the brain of every farmer out here in the endless Cartesian plan of prairie is magnetized.

I, too, had nothing to say, and I tried to say it as well as I could. What harm could so small a thing as saying nothing do to anyone?

How small a thought it takes to fill a whole life. How small a thought.

We’re either hungry or dead. Don’t talk to me about finer distinctions.

You’re in touch. I thought you hated him. Richard? I loved Richard. And I loved you. I just hated the two of you together.

Out East, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, a molecular geneticist makes a novel organism from scratch, one with its own genetic code. It won’t be dangerous, a panel of scientists says, unless it escapes the lab. Everything gets loose, a panel of historians says. Life is an escaped experiment, say the artists, and the only real safety is death.

Els asked how much of a person’s brain could be dead and still qualify as normal. The question confused Dr. L’Heureux. He seemed not to make a strong distinction between normal and dead. And all the medical evidence was on his side.

Now and then, Richard tweaks the right ascension control knob. He almost looks like he knows what he’s doing. A massive sigh escapes him, as wide and filmy as the night sky. He straightens and steps back. Have a look. Els does. The field of view is black. Once you hear the music of the spheres, Bonner says, as if the idea has just occurred to him, the stuff you earthlings make is a bore. What am I looking at? There’s nothing there. Look harder. Els does. There’s still nothing there. There’s nothing there for a long time. Then there is.

Els doesn’t answer. Words are for people who know things.