Christine was the quiet daughter of a lumber industry family, and her life walked the subtle line of what was of her, with occasional flirtations into what she might have wanted to be. A wife, then mother, then widow, she wasn’t the sort to carry the things she had lost or gained along the way. She traveled light. Today, for example, she carried only a medium sized vinyl Canucks gym bag as luggage. As she finally approached the bus stop, probably unknown to her, three other people began to prepare for travel. One of the people was in San Francisco, another in Los Angeles and the third was me, in Seattle, realizing that I was nearly out of money. All four of us were heading for Las Vegas. Ten days from now, only two of us would remain.
Christine climbed onto the bus carefully. She was careful because she was now quite old, and partly because this trip was just too important. She made her way to her seat, put her bag in the space above her, and then sat down with a long breath. She looked out the window as the Coliseum-Library disappeared around a corner and she mouthed the word “goodbye.” As the bus rolled through the streets of shops lined in Chinese, Japanese and Arabic lettered signs, she felt a lightness in her stomach. At her age she felt a number of sensations in her stomach, but rarely was lightness one of them.
Christine had lived in her small retirement home apartment for nearly twelve years. She remembered a few good years at the beginning followed by more that felt like they were slowly darkening, but then, unexpectedly, came February. That was when, as the frozen rain fell outside her window, in the grey shadow of the looming Rockies, Christine began to feel a change. It was as if a different version of her self was slowly growing from within. At first it was a bit frightening, but soon she could only feel the warm excitement of its presence. The inner version grew larger,and larger, until one day, it was the size of her, and so she was new. This new version of herself came complete, not only with optimism, but with a plan. It was because of the plan that she knew that on June 12th, at exactly 6:00 a.m. she would pack her bag and leave the nursing home. The attendant at the front desk would be asleep and she would be free to leave.
The plan worked exactly as she somehow knew it would and now she was on the bus. Since February, Christine had also had dreams. The dreams were so clear that she really didn’t think that the term “dream” applied. They seemed more like memories of things she had yet to do. In most of the them she was surrounded by flashing lights, music and people. The people near her were familiar to her, almost as if they were family. The word family, however, had never meant very much to her. So it was strange that she should pick this word to describe these people. After all, what could she say of the children that she'd raised or the man that she'd married? The children had left and now never spoke to her. She'd stood by her man until his unfortunate, but not devastating, death. The people in the dream felt closer than any of these others who'd been called family; they reminded her of herself.
*
There is something else on my laptop. I have taken so long to mention it because frankly, I’m not sure if I should have made it. The census bureau doesn’t know about it, and I doubt that they would condone it. Even though I learned with Morton that it was wrong to ever try to apply pattern predictability to humans in any real way, I still wrote some software. In those days at home, sitting in my underwear, talking to Fibo as he rolled around on my floor waiting for food, I programmed. The question was simple: How did human beings progress, on the average, over their lives? I didn’t want to know by personality or anything else so random, though, I wanted to know numerically. And so I decided to watch their numbers change. Incomes rose, then declined. Children were born, more in certain areas than others. People married, then separated, then married again, and they all lived in places and had incomes and ages.
The part that I don’t like to mention, and that the Census Bureau would likely not approve of, is that I tried to predict what would happen next. I took the real data and projected how the numbers would change over time. Then, when more data was gathered, I compared the numbers to see if the real human had done what my simulated human counterpart had predicted. If they hadn’t, the equations were modified to learn more from the new data. Then the projections continued. On the screen, all that anyone would see were numbers changing, but what I see, past the numbers, is the person: in their house with their car and their wife and dog and their baby and the whole thing. Click and slide the mouse and watch the numbers move backward in time; divorced people become married and then single and then dependants again. Slide it into the future and what comes next? And why did I want to know?
I took a break on my own drive to Las Vegas to pull out the old laptop. Sitting in my car in a coffee shop parking lot near the highway, I turned it on and ran the software. I was able to get an internet signal from the shop and so I decided to download newer census data. The data arrived and I hesitated, then clicked on the program that I had nicknamed SenseUs. The program processed the new data and formulated projections with this newer information. This often took up to twenty minutes. I decided to buy a coffee. When I returned, a pop-up message was on the screen. Something was wrong. What I was seeing was statistically impossible. I double-checked the numbers. Numbers rarely lie, though. Somehow, there were two very special people living in America. I would have to think more about them later, though. I was down to the fifty dollars in my wallet and I had a long drive left to Las Vegas, where hopefully luck would be a lady and chip in for gas.
Christine switched to the Greyhound bus on the southern edge of town and then watched as it crossed the green fields that lay between her country and The States, as most Canadians called it. She showed her passport and answered the standard border questions.
“Where are you going today, Mrs. Ellis?”
“To Las Vegas, of course.”
“Of course, and how long will you be staying there?”
She knew not to tell the truth. “Just one week.”
“Do you have anything to declare?”
It was then that she looked the young man in the eyes, his chest covered in a bullet-proof vest and said, “Just that life is a bigger mystery than you’ll ever know, but that by knowing this, you’ll enjoy it so much more.”
The man’s blank expression turned into a smile. “I’ll try to remember that, Mrs. Ellis.”
“Good,” she replied and soon the bus was moving again. It approached the stone monument that marked the actual line which is often dotted on maps. Then, first the driver, then Christine, and finally even the portable bathroom at the back of the bus, were in America. It wouldn’t be too much longer. She smiled and fell asleep.
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