"Bioscience labs," Sharif cheerfully explained. "They're mostly underground." He fed Robert's Epiphany with pointers to images and details. Ah. So these doorless, windowless structures were not some twenty-first-century experiment in communal living. In fact, there weren't more than a few dozen people inside them. The connecting corridors were for biosample transport.
Monstrous things might gestate in these buildings and in the caverns below. But salvation, too. Robert gave them a little salute. Reed Weber's heavenly minefield was created in places like these.
These were the anterooms to UCSD. He braced himself for unintelligible futurism: the main campus. His car drove down Torrey Pines Road. The intersections were almost as he remembered, though there were no traffic lights and no stopping. Cross traffic interleaved with smooth and eerie grace. Someday I must write a lighthearted piece about the secret life of automobiles . He had never seen one stop for much longer than it took passengers to get off and on. Out in the desert, his car had departed almost immediately, stranding him. But by the time he got back to the road, another had pulled up. The devices were always moving. He imagined them circling the county, forever maneuvering so that no customer ever need wait more than a few moments. But what do they do at night, when business is scarce ? That would be the topic of his poem. Were there hidden garages, hidden car parks? There had to be garages for repair work — or at least equipment swapouts. But maybe there was no other stopping. This was the stuff of both poetry and futurism: Maybe at night when demand fell and they otherwise would have to sleep without profit in some empty lot, maybe then they conspired to clump together like Japanese transformer toys… to become freight trucks hauling cargo that was too big for UP/Express.
In any case, the old parking lots on the north side of campus were gone, replaced by gaming fields and house-of-cards-style office buildings. Robert had the car drop him at the edge of the old campus, near where Applied Physics and Math used to be.
"Nothing looks the same, even where there were buildings before." In fact, there seemed to be more open space than he remembered from the seventies.
"Don't worry about it, Professor." Sharif was still audio only. It sounded as if he were reading from a brochure: "UCSD is an unusual campus, less traditional than any other in the UC system. Most of the buildings were rebuilt after the Rose Canyon earthquake. Here's the official view." Suddenly the buildings were sturdy, reinforced concrete, much as he remembered.
Robert waved the fakery away, a gesture Juan had showed him early on. "Hands off the main view, Mr. Sharif."
"Sorry."
Robert walked eastward across campus, sampling the ambience. On the gaming fields, there was just as much rushing around as in the 1970s, half a dozen separate games of touch football and soccer. Robert had never participated in those, but one thing he'd admired about UCSD was that the students played sports that were semi-pro spectator events at other schools.
Up close… well, the people he passed looked ordinary enough. There were the familiar backpacks, with the handles of tennis rackets sticking out the top like assault rifles.
Many people were talking to themselves, sometimes gesturing into the empty air, or jabbing fingers at unseen antagonists. Nothing new in that; cellphone addicts had always been one of Robert's pet peeves. But these folks were more blatant about it than the kids at Fairmont High. There was something foolish about a fellow walking along, suddenly stopping to tap at his belt, and then talking to the air.
The new, numerate Robert couldn't resist keeping count of what he saw — and he soon noticed something the old Robert might not have: There were many college-age kids running around, but there were too many old people. One person in ten looked really old, old as Robert truly was. One in three were lean and spry, the twentieth-century cliche of "active senior citizens." And some… it took him a while to spot the few where modern medicine was all on target. Their skin was firm and their stride was strong; they almost looked young.
Then the most encouraging sight of alclass="underline" a pair of old duffers coming his way — and both of them carrying books! Robert felt like grabbing their free hands and dancing a jig. Instead he gave them a broad grin as they walked by.
Sharif agreed that stepping into an ordinary building — or even the campus bookstore — wouldn't be an effective way to find real books. "The university library is your best bet, Professor."
Robert walked down a gentle slope. The eucalyptus grove was more overgrown than he remembered. The dry crowns rustled in the breeze above. The debris of bark and twigs and branches crunched under his feet. Somewhere ahead of him, a choir sang.
Then, through the trees, he saw the Geisel Library. Unchanged after all the years! Well, the pillared supports were covered with ivy — but there was nothing virtual about it. He walked out from under the trees and stared.
Sharif's voice popped up, "Professor, if you'll bear to the right, the sidewalk goes to the main — "
That was the way Robert remembered, but he hesitated when the other's voice dropped away. "Yes?"
"Oops, heh. Just detour around to the left. There's a mob of singers blocking the main entrance."
"Okay. What is all the singing about, anyway?"
Sharif made no reply.
Robert shrugged and followed his invisible guide's suggestion, walking around the north side of the building, down to what had been a lower-level parking lot. From here the library towered above him. He remembered when it was built, the criticisms: "It's an expensive white elephant,"
"We've been hijacked by space cadets." In fact, it did look like something brought down from outer space: the six aboveground stories formed a huge octahedron, touching ground on one vertex and clasped by fifty-foot pillars. In Robert's time, the structure had been concrete and sweeping glass. Now the vines extended past the fifth story, obscuring the concrete. The library still looked like it came from heaven, but now it was an ancient gem-mountain, and the clasp was the green of a supporting earth.
The singers were louder. It sounded as if they were singing "La Marseillaise." But there were also chants that sounded like a good old-fashioned student protest.
He was well under the overhang now. He had to look straight up to see the undersides of the fourth, fifth, and sixth floors, to see where the concrete finally emerged from the ivy.
Strange. The edges of each floor were straight as ever, but the concrete was laced with irregular lighter lines. In the sunlight those lines glinted like silver wedged in stonework.
"Sharif?"
No answer. I should look up the explanation . Juan Orozco could do such searches almost without thinking. Then he smiled: the silvery crack lines were a kind of playful mystery — and that might be their explanation. UCSD had a tradition of weird and wonderful campus art.
Robert started toward the short stairway that led to a loading dock. This looked like the most direct way into the library. There was a faded au-thorized staff only sign painted on the wall. The freight door was rolled down shut, but a second, smaller door was ajar. From within he could hear some kind of power saw — carpentry? He remembered what Juan had said about getting Epiphany's default local views. He waggled his hand tentatively. Nothing. He gestured again, a little differently: Oops . The loading dock was plastered with keep out signs. He glanced up the hillside; somewhere beyond the crest would be the main entrance. Epiphany showed him a mauve nimbus pulsating in time with the singing. Words floated above the music "A has la Bibleotome !" — "Down with the Librareome Project!" Now that he was hearing both real and remote voices, the music was close to cacophony.
"What's going on, Sharif?"
This time there was an answer: "It's just another student protest. You'd never get in through the front door."