I am known to be born in this valley with my parents well-known and alive until recently and I can remember my childhood here in detail but at the same time I can also clearly remember my other childhood, the real one, and my youth in the world outside.
My original home is in one of the Mid-Wests better areas for soaring with ridge up-drafts that can be relied upon and some very useful thermals over the extensive plowed areas on the plains beyond. When all else fails there is always the thermal above the Wal-Mart car park. What then could be more natural than that soaring should become my sport of choice and that I should buy myself a Standard Cirrus to look down on the world from Mount Olympus. I came to know the home state well.
But I come to my last flight. My last forever I would imagine. How the scene below changed I do not know. I didn’t notice the change, sudden though it must have been. I just accepted it in the way that we accept illogical scene changes in our dreams. There was still a plain below me but it was now a valley plain which couldn’t exist this close to home. I had been up less than ten minutes. The valley was about one hundred and twenty square miles and completely ringed in by high vertical bluffs. But how could I know that? This was my first inkling that the place even existed. And how could I know that it was 1928 in this valley and not part of the twenty first century?
I found myself to be already below the level of those bluffs and in urgent need of some lift. I was not to find that lift and had quickly to decide where my fragile bird could best be put down. With in- flooding local knowledge, I was able to accomplish this with only minor damage. But where exactly was this valley located? My normally trustworthy Global Positioning System could give me no indication.
I had come down within a hundred yards of the Crothal-Gatewell highway. ( If by some remote chance this missive reaches the outside world, I should explain that the valley has two service towns Crothal and Gatewell. There is rivalry between the two. I live in Crothal.) I was waiting little more than half an hour when the Berry’s Reo Speedwagon appeared in the distance. Frank and his brother Wendel are butchers, their shop three doors down from my own, and one or the other delivers to outlying areas on Tuesdays and Fridays. This time it was Frank. He’d not seen a sailplane before, as might be expected, and walked around it in some amazement. He had rope on the Reo, a wise precaution on many of our local dirt roads, and we used it to secure the plane parts once it was disassembled.
That seems to be how I got here although it may be just another implanted memory. It is difficult to be really sure of anything.
Frank dropped me off at my shop door and there was my name on the window.
THE RADIO SURGERY
Sales and Repairs
Ralph Fletcher
Proprietor “How come you didn’t open today?” he asked. And what could I say? That I’d never actually been there before? I avoided the subject. “If I hire one of Greg Morton’s drays tomorrow would you come with me to get the Cirrus?” I could see in his eyes that he did not know what I was talking about. “The sailplane,” I amended. But it was clear that he knew nothing of any sailplane.
It appeared that I had carelessly left the shop door unlocked, someone had anyway, and the keys were on the workbench. There was some valuable stock out on the showroom floor, top-of-the-line Majestics and Gulbransens but in this valley they were unlikely to be taken. Delinquency of any sort is almost unknown. The group programming tends against it.
This clearly was no new business. There were sets awaiting repair and others already repaired, complete with work docket, waiting to be picked up. It appeared to be my handwriting on the dockets. There was a chassis upside down on the bench and I knew the problem it had come in with and that I’d been having difficulty curing that problem. Another set I had left running on the signal generator, volume well down, hoping that its intermittent fault would make an appearance. In saying ‘I’ I mean that other Ralph Fletcher all of whose memory I seem to have inherited with the shop. Where was he anyway? What was he? What had happened to him? I was to find that he had left me a good reputation, both as to honesty and to skill as a radio repairman, and a helpful bank balance as well.
No outside radio signals can be received in this valley and this has led to the setting up of two amateur broadcasting groups one of which uses the rooms above my shop. The first station was in Gatewell and, if they had one, we had to have one too. My former self had seen the advantage of a Crothal signal, helping them to setup, providing the upper floor rent free. Broadcasting hours are 5 pm to 10 pm and the programs are entirely amateur. A children’s hour with various ‘uncles’ and ‘aunts’ And yes, there’s an Uncle Ralph. Local news and stock prices at six. Then a program of phonograph records borrowed from Holroyd’s Music Shop who are given the appropriate plug in return. The rest of the evening is made up of local singers and musicians among them more than our share of child prodigies. Overall, it’s an entertainment of variable quality with the occasional panic and hasty fill-ins when someone is late but while it remains a cachet for someone to be heard on air there will be no shortage of hopefuls.
I took the hired dray out the next day by myself and, as I would soon come to expect, there was no sign of the Cirrus, no indication that it had ever been there. The Night-People could not allow any contamination of their Petrie-dish culture. That was three years ago.
I must explain a little about the Night-People and that can only be a little. I do not know who or what they are or why they are doing what they are doing. I can only think that we, the people in this valley, are some kind of social experiment. I have not seen even one of these night dwellers, nobody has, and yet they are all pervasive. They are our interface with the outside world and, to a large extent, create what is seen here as reality. ‘Night-People’ is my name for them. No-one else seems to even suspect their existence.
Farming in this valley produces far beyond the needs of the local market particularly in dairying and livestock production. Milk churns left at the roadside stand are found to be empty in the morning and an appropriate credit has appeared in the farmer’s bank account during the night. Stock penned for external sale disappear in the same way. Again a bank credit results. A dealer can order a new Ford or Hupmobile and several mornings later it will be found in his yard. A newsagent will find bundles of the Denver morning papers outside his door when he opens for business. Film cans just turn up at the movie house. It might be thought that one could hide and see who does all this but I must be the only one who has ever tried. Never again! They knew that I was watching. I thought myself well concealed but they felled me. How? I don’t know. I woke at first light feeling that the sky had fallen on me and yet there was not a mark to show. It was my warning.
Everyone and everything else here is soundly asleep by 11 pm. They are switched off. Click! Just like that. It doesn’t work on me though. I am a poor sleeper and take the day’s worries home from the shop. I often get up, dress again, and go out for a walk to physically tire myself out, unwind. It’s safe enough as long as I’m in bed with curtains drawn by twelve. And what a difference between the night here and the night outside. Outside, there was always traffic and the hum of distant traffic, people walking, lights everywhere, and businesses open regardless of the hour. Here there is nothing. No lights, no dogs, no stray cats, no cricket love calls, no racoons scouting trash cans. No noise at all! One can easily believe oneself the only thing alive.
The banks are a real mystery. There are two local banks. The Valley Merchant Bank and the Farmers Union Bank each having a branch in both centres. There is, of course, no such thing as electronic funds transfer. Checks and cash are used for local transactions with daytime business being written up by hand in ledgers. Transactions beyond the valley are also apparently written up by hand but during the night. The question is HOW? When goods are ordered from outside by phone or mail, the appropriate amount is somehow transfered from the buyer’s account. Credit is available for local trade but not for external transactions. It is strictly bank debit.
I keep in well with my bank manager ( Since ‘29 one needs to) and I asked how he felt about this after-hours business: his having no control over it. “Everyone has gone home. The ledgers are locked in the vault. All the doors are locked. So how does it happen”? My query was dismissed with a shrug of his shoulders and a face that said ‘stupid question.’ I didn’t tell him I’d been pole-axed while watching his precious bank.
For the greater part of the first two years, I spent week-ends and public holidays searching the bluffs for a way out of this prison. There is none. Which raises a couple of questions. The most obvious being, “How are heavy items spirited in and out?” I know how I got here but what about the original people? There were no sailplanes or helicopters then.
Another problem is the electricity supply. We have a Valley Power Company which is bank debited for its bulk supply. We have no generating plant in this valley and I can state it as a definite fact that no power lines enter the valley. So where does the power come from? Since there has never been an outage, no-one has thought to ask that question but me. And there will never be an outage. That is one of the few things I am sure of.
The same holds true for telephone lines. None come in. There is a manual exchange here in Crothal and another in Gatewell and either exchange can put you through immediately to the other. This service is not considered a toll call. It is when you ask for tolls that something strange takes place. Neither town has a toll exchange and yet the operator can put you through to tolls simply by putting your plug in the appropriate socket. A woman’s voice, always the same voice, greets you with, “Tolls here,” Toll calls are necessarily business calls. No-one but myself is aware of having family or aquaintances on the outside. I have asked for my real home number only to be told that no phone number can have that many digits.
Normally, there is no need to give the number. It is enough just to name the company, Grigby- Grunow, Atwater-Kent, or Zenith “Please” and this seemingly omniscient woman can put you straight through. I ring out occasionally when a part is needed urgently but I don’t believe that the woman I speak to next is the switchboard operator at the relevant company nor that the man that she switches me through to is really in the spare-parts department but, never-the-less, I get my parts.
Several times I have tried to draw these men out—if men they be—to get them to let slip their mask a little. I have asked in a friendly fashion such conversation starters as, “What’s the weather like over your way?” or “Who do you fancy in the world series?” I am probably being too obvious but, just the once, I had some slight success. I got an out of character, “Why can’t you just be happy like everyone else?” I am their failure. Even when apparently alone, I can feel their attention. I talk to them. Tell them what it’s like to be forced to live with constant anomalies. Have a bit of a grizzle. I can expect no reply but there’s no one else to understand me. Just knowing there’s an ear there seems to help somehow.
I am having problems in believing that it must now be 20 something in the world outside. The radio parts I receive are genuine maker’s parts and from firms which have been long out of business. Parts, such as valves, that have not been manufactured even for replacement purposes for sixty years or more, their cardboard sleeves new cardboard. And the cars that come in are not the result of restoration by some enthusiast but are clearly only recently off the production line with the usual attendant faults. The brochures and catalogues that come in are not reproductions. Sears-Roebuck and Montgomery-Ward do a lot of business here from these catalogues. If it is really 2000 plus, how could this happen? Perhaps it’s 1931 out there the same as here. In the three years that I’ve been here there’s been neither sight nor sound of a plane or any sign of contrails. In a country that has–or did have–thousands of commuter flights each day this hardly seems possible. That is, assuming that this valley is in North America. Then there’s the fact that my Global Positioning unit didn’t work here. If there were no satellites, it couldn’t work. And why are there no outside radio signals?
Deciding what is real here is just so difficult. History is in many cases manufactured. As an instance, a large number of the local boys were over in France with General Pershing. Quite a few were killed. That is indisputable local fact. But! Ask anyone to name even one of those men and they will mumble in confusion and slide away from the subject. There are no War Memorials, no Honor Rolls, which is probably an indication of the real truth. How would those boys have got out of here anyway?
This lack of memorials is a strange oversight. The artifacts of history are normally crafted at the time when a new historical fact is impressed on the group mind.
And there definitely is a group mind. My friends are insisting with one voice that it is time that I got married. That they do so means that our unseen overlords have reason to want me married. And my friends are naturally of one mind as to whom I should marry. It is Rachel Berry the sister of Frank and Wendel. I seem to be the only one aware that until very recently Frank and Wendel had no sister. Even they don’t know that. The sister has come complete with numerous family memories and unassailable relics that go all the way back to babyhood. She is a ring-in just as I am and I wonder if she knows that herself. And if there are two of us, are there more?
But why pair us? The only thing that I can think of is that we have been brought in to provide some genetic diversity, although, if that were so, wouldn’t it make more sense for our masters to mate each of us with their existing stock. In this valley everyone is related in some way to everyone else. There is a strong family resemblance. I would suspect that they stem from an already-closely- related group of ancestors but, then again, the whole history of the place may be fiction. It could have been cobbled up a day or so before I flew in.
Population numbers seem to be under tight control. There are no large families. Two children is the norm with three in enough cases to balance out the only child and infertility. Four children are entirely unknown. This is not conscious abstinence or contraception. It apparently just happens. It is not unusual for fertility to fall off among animals when there is overpopulation but it is surely unusual among humans. Just one more strange thing here.
So anyway, for whatever reason, it looks as if I’m going to marry Rachel whether either of us wants it or not. Actually, I do want it. Normally, I resist being made to do anything but Rachel seems a nice level-headed girl. That word ‘seems’ again and I can only hope that it is my own thinking. My hormones approve anyway. It will be interesting to see if they will allow us more than the regulation number of children.
I have come to adapt to this life. Perhaps because the ’them’ and ‘me’ has become ‘us.’ I have become involved by subtle increments. There are extra stools in the work area and people just wander in and plonk themselves down for a chat. It’s that sort of town. I can talk without getting myself side-tracked and I like it. Many of these ‘unwitting sheep’ have become good friends, people that I really admire. If it’s bondage they’re in, it doesn’t seem to be doing them any damage. They are quietly happy and who is to say that ’they have no right to be happy when they are not free.’ Maybe I have been the one disadvantaged. The bogus parts man asked me, “Why can’t you just be happy like everybody else?”and it has come as a surprise to realize that happiness has crept up unnoticed: that this cage has become a home that I would now hesitate to leave.