Moving Pictures

Moving Pictures
By William Levy

Ever'body tol’ me, Timeloopers was the people ta work for. An' it's pretty good, 'cept for the other day.

See, what it is they do, is bring folks back from the past.

It's real complicated, has sumpen ta do with DNA, an' stored mem'ries, and cross-comparin'em, but that's kinda boring, an' I sorta fell asleep during the trainin' lecture anyway.

What it comes to, is they can clone people who died a long time ago, with mem'ries an' everything.

My job was to kinda look after the folks they brought back, after they was finished growin'em.

So, I show up yesterday, and they assigns me to this new guy, named Leonard or sumptin'. The bosses were all fired up about'em, 'cause of his knowing all about some old stuff called 'movies'.

That's really why they do that, the clonin' and stuff. It takes some serious cred to bring somebody back, and the reason they do it is what they call 'mining the past'.

Stuff from th’ old times is always good for a show, and there's a lot we dunno much about.

Seems this guy was a real whopper, chock fulla stuff they wanted, an' since I was the best handler, they assigns me this Lenny guy.

He was nice enough, not a screamer like soma these gummers. Kinda skinny, dark hair that wanted to stick straight up, but shiny little eyes that watched everything like just seein' was some kinda treat.

Even said 'Thank-you' after I helped him into his chair.

We rolled on down to the commissary, an' he got his first taste of solid food. Just a taste, though, 'cause he had a ton a' questions. Some of 'em I knew, like when we got ta Mars, but some I didn't, like howcum the chair dint have wheels but still rolled. The bosses like the way I answer questions from my patients. They say I don't worry them with too much, and I kinda calm'em down, get 'em used to bein' back.

After lunch, I was s’posed ta take 'em to see Mr. Marcum. He's the legal ethics guy, an' he has to have a talk with the new old people as soon as he can.

Hey, new old people. That's kinda funny, if ya think about it.

So, we go to Mr. Marcum's office, it's real nice, got truewood shelves an' everything, and Mr. Marcum meets us at the door, calls me Mr. Dona and everything.

Leonard, he says, can I call you Leonard? And Lenny he nods, but I can tell that upsets him a little.

Has Mr. Dona been taking good care of you? Lenny nods again, and I feel pretty good, even though I dint do much.

Leonard, we got a problem here, but we also got us an opportunity, too.

Lenny asks, what's the problem? Won't my HMO cover this? I dunno what that is, but both of them laugh, so I grin too.

No, no, says Mr. Marcus, the problem is a little deeper. You see, we're not allowed to clone people.

Lenny, he starts looking worried. I tense up a bit, too. This's where some of these guys get a little crazy.

So, are you criminals?

Mr. Marcum laughed again. Actually, what I should have said, is we're not allowed to do so for very long. You see, for research purposes, we can clone a whole person, but we're not allowed to keep them alive for more than a day.

He shrugged his shoulders, and I was impressed. I seen him do this a hundred times, and he always made the same moves the same way. What a pro!

Lenny just looked scared, and said why?

Mr. Marcum, he says it's a legal thing, has to do with the sacred nature of life, an' how we can't just play with makin' folks here and there, and Lenny, he asks, well, then why did you make me?

Thing is, he says, after you died, things got a little mixed up, and we lost a lot of history. It's about the Thirty-second century, from your viewpoint, and almost no records survived. Our only chance to learn about the past, really know the past, is to bring back witnesses.

Lenny speaks up at this point, an' I can tell he's getting' mad. If this DNA thing works well enough to bring back somebody, memory and all, why don't you just analyze the DNA to get the answers you want?

Mr. Marcum smiles again. Leonard, he says, I wish we could do just that. But the information we want is complex, and not even our best computers are as good at interpreting meanings as a person.

Why me, then, says Lenny. I wasn't a witness to anything, I was just a… His eyes opened real big, and he relaxed back inta the chair.

He talks real soft. Movies. I watched movies. He got louder. You want the movies!

He got soft again. But how? I can tell you all about it, but with only a day….

Mr. Marcum got real intense. We have a way. We can search your memories, combine them with other memories from the same time period, and recreate these movies, along with your associations so that we can truly understand them. But, he says….

This is the part that always gets me. And them.

He spread his hands in a sad way. It's very painful. And we can't do this without your permission.

Lenny was thinkin' hard, I could tell.

And if I don't give you that permission?

Mr. Marcum lowered his hands. Then, we take care of you till a day has passed, and your body expires. And all those things you know, those movies, expire with you, lost to time, unless we're lucky enough to find another cluster strand to give us a movie critic.

You won't just do another of me?

Mr. Marcum shook his head. That wouldn't be ethical. Besides, if you turned us down once, you'd probably do it again. And, this is a fairly expensive process.

All those films. Lenny kinda spaced for a bit. Then he shakes himself, smiles up at
Mr. Marcum, an' says, let's get started.

Mr. Marcum smiles back, an' pressed a click on his wrist. Some of his people hurry in, with cells an' everything, an' the whole thing is wrapped up fast. Then I roll him down to the Download Lab.

I don't like that part of my job, even for the ones who were nasty.

Y'see, Mr. Marcum was lyin', just a little. We can still get the memories out of the ones who don't wanna sign. But they're not as good, an' we can't use all of'em, some sort of legal thing. I don't like it, it makes me feel funny.

Lenny was a nice guy though, so I took extra care makin' sure he was comfortable.
I was fast with the drinks when he got thirsty, an' even held his hand and wiped the sweat offa his face when he started to cry.

The techs were impressed with his output. One of'em said there were more associative links than they'd ever got before, which I hadda explain to Lenny was real good.

After about four hours, they were finished. I asked Lenny if he wanted to sleep, but he said no, he wanted something to eat. So we rolled on back to the commissary.

On the way, we passed one of the reviewing rooms. The door was open, and there was lots of laughing going on.

What's that? Lenny asks, and I tell him, it's where they take a look at the stuff they got. They seem to be enjoying it, he says. Maybe it's one of mine. 'Sides, I could use a laugh, and he winks at me. So we go on in.

I never shoulda done that.

The room had half a dozen bosses, which made me pretty nervous, so I wasn't looking at the display at first. When I did, it was kinda strange, flat, an' no colors, sorta gray. Some guy was on a roof, up on some sorta display, talkin' to some woman and some guys about how he hadda jump off. The roof, I think. Kinda funny, an' I was gonna laugh, when I saw Lenny.

He wasn't lookin' at the display; he was lookin' at the bosses. An' cryin'.

I rolled him outa there as quickly as I could. One thing I've learned, is when the bosses smile, you smile, too. We headed down to the commissary, an' Lenny was so quiet I thought he was asleep after all.

But when we got there, he asked for a sandwich and a cold one. I got'em, plus a set for me, and we sat near the window. The view's nice; you can see most of the way up the mountain.

After a while, he looks at me 'stead of the mountains, and he says, Mr. Dona?
It felt funny. Most of the time, I get called mister when I'm gonna get yelled at, or the bosses wanna make a happy on somebody. But when he said it, it sounded natural, like he meant it. I sat up a little.

What do they do here, really? He says, real soft again.

Displays, I answer.

Displays, he says back. And these displays, are they important? Do scholars come from all over to study them?

I hadda grin at the idea. Nope, I says, I dunno what a scholar is, but I don't think anybody spends time studyin' the displays. They're more for regular guys.

He sat back and rubbed his face. So, these displays are funny? When I nodded, he goes; they aren't saving history here, then. They're just making fun of the primitives.

Oh, god, it's a cheap sideshow, then he cried again.

I dint get it. Wasn't this stuff supposed to be funny? I asked, and he calmed down.

He started to 'splain about the folks that'd made the, the films, he called'em, and how they were tryin' to show other folks stories about what was, and sometimes what wasn't. But most of all, they were tryin' to show people something about themselves, the inside part. An' how there were some that you were supposed to laugh at, 'cept it was more with than at.

He kept talkin' about it, an' I listened, his voice getting' softer and softer, until I realized it was morning again, an' he was gone.

The clean-up crew took his body away, and I went home to bed.

I woke up cryin'.

When I went in that day, I sweet-talked Inga, down in Compilation, into makin' a prerelease copy of the whole file, one without the editing an' laugh track an' stuff. I couldn't risk leavin' the shop with a bootleg, not till the release that night, so I hid it in my locker until the next day. When the bosses dropped me a copy of the display as a bonus for good work, I peeled off the label, stuck it on the cube, and walked it out the front door.

I took it home, an' started watching. It was hard at first to get used to one-track stories and a flat display, but I began to see something. Plus, with the simple format, there's a heckuva lot of 'movies' in there. Chubb says he thinks about five thousand.

Oh, yeah. Didn't mention, I showed it to some of my friends, and they popped copies.

It's been about a week, and I hear folks on the outer colonies are popping copies.

Got to see that movie the bosses were laughing at, about some John Doe gummer.

It's not one of the funny ones after all.

But it's one of my favorites. Whenever I watch it, I think of Lenny, up there on the roof, tryin' to explain it to some of the bosses.

But they never seem ta get it.

I think I'm startin' to.