Richard Powers - Bewilderment

“How was that?” I asked him on the way back to Madison.

He shrugged. Pretty good. But people are touchy, aren’t they?

THE PLANET STASIS looked so much like Earth. The flowing water and green mountains where we touched down, the woody trees and flowering plants, the snails and worms and flying beetles, even the bony creatures were cousins to those we knew.

How can that be? he asked.

I told him what some astronomers now thought: a billion or more planets at least as lucky as ours in the Milky Way alone. In a universe ninety-three billion light-years across, Rare Earths sprang up like weeds.

But a few days on Stasis showed the place to be as strange as any. The planet’s axis had little tilt, which meant one monotone season at every latitude. A dense atmosphere smoothed out fluctuations in temperature. Larger tectonic plates recycled its continents with few catastrophes. Few meteors ever threaded the gauntlet of massive nearby planets. And so the climate on Stasis had stayed stable through most of its existence.

We walked to the equator, across the layers of planetary parfait. Species counts in every band were huge and filled with specialists. Each predator hunted one prey. Every flower kept a pollinator of its own. No creature migrated. Many plants ate animals. Plants and animals lived in every kind of symbiosis. Larger living entities weren’t organisms at all; they were coalitions, associations, and parliaments.

We walked on to one of the poles. The boundaries between biomes ran like property lines. No flux of seasons blurred or softened them. From one step to the next, deciduous trees stopped and conifers began. Everything on Stasis was built to solve its own private spot. Everything knew one, infinitely deep thing: the sum of the world at their latitude. Nothing alive could thrive anywhere else. A move of even a few kilometers north or south tended to be fatal.

Is there intelligence? my son asked. Is anything aware?

I told him no. Nothing on Stasis needed to remember much or predict much further out than now. In such steadiness, there was no great call to adjust or improvise or second-guess or model much of anything.

He thought about that. Trouble is what creates intelligence?

I said yes. Crisis and change and upheaval.

His voice turned sad and wondrous. Then we’ll never find anyone smarter than us .

THE TECHS GOT A KICK OUT OF ROBIN. They liked to tease him, and, amazingly, he liked being teased. He enjoyed it almost as much as he liked conducting his own private feedback symphonies and directing his own private training animations. Ginny told him, “You’re really something, Brain Boy.”

“Definitely a high-performing decoder,” Currier agreed. The two of us sat in his office surrounded by toys, puzzles, optical illusions, and life-affirming posters.

“Is that because he’s so young? Like how kids learn a new language without trying?”

Marty Currier tipped his head to one side. “Plasticity has been documented at every stage of life. Habit impedes us as we age as much as any change in innate capacity. These days we like to say that ‘mature’ is just another name for ‘lazy.’”

“What makes him so good at the training, then?”

“He’s a distinctive boy, or he wouldn’t be in the training in the first place.” He picked up a Rubik’s dodecahedron from his desk and toyed with it. His eyes turned absent and I knew who he was daydreaming about. He spoke, more to himself than to me. “Aly was the most incredible birder. I’ve never seen anyone so focused. She was pretty out there, herself.”

My head snapped to attention in resentment and anger. Before I could tell him he was a creep who knew nothing at all about my wife, the door opened and Robin spilled in.

Best game ever .

“Brain Boy really racked up the points, today,” Ginny said, squeezing his shoulders from behind like a coach massaging a prize boxer.

When everyone starts doing this stuff, it’s going to be really cool .

“Exactly what we think.” Martin Currier set down his puzzle and raised both hands in the air. Robin ponied up to his desk and gave him ten. I took my son home, feeling like the future’s guardian.

I COULD SEE THE WEEKLY CHANGES. He was quicker to laugh now, slower to flare. More playful when frustrated. He sat still and listened to the birds at dusk. I wasn’t sure which qualities were his and which came courtesy of his team . Each day’s small changes blended into him and went native.

One night, I made a planet for him where the several species of intelligent life traded bits of temperament and memory and behavior and experiences as easily as Earthly bacteria trade snippets of genes. He grabbed my arm, smiling, before I could add the details. I know where you stole that one from!

“Do you, now? Who told you?”

He spread his fingers and attached them to my skull, making a sucking sound, as bits of our personality flew back and forth between us. Wouldn’t it be cool if everybody started to do the training?

I put my fingers on his skull in exchange, sucking bits of his private emotions out through my fingertips and into me, accompanied by appropriate sound effects. We laughed. Then he clapped my shoulder, like he was calming me down before sending me to bed. The gesture was so preternaturally adult. It came from a place that hadn’t been there the week before.

“So what do you think?” I tried for amused and offhand. “The mouse. He’s changing?”

His eyes took hold of the puzzle. He remembered, and the solution blazed in his eyes. Still the same mouse, Dad. I just have help now .

“Tell me how that works, Robbie.”

You know how when you talk to someone stupid and it makes you stupid, too?

“I do know that feeling. Very well.”

But when you play a game against someone smart, you start making better moves?

I tried to remember if he’d spoken like this a month ago.

Well, it’s like that. Like walking onto the playground. But three really smart, funny, and strong guys are walking with you .

“Do… they have names?”

Who?

“These three guys?”

He laughed like a much younger kid. They’re not really guys. They’re just… my allies .

“But… there are three of them?”

He shrugged, more defensive, more like my son. Three. Or four. Who cares? That’s not the point. Just: like, they’re helping to row the boat or something. My crew .

I told him he was my mouse of mouses. I told him his mother loved him. I said he should always feel free to tell me anything interesting that he was finding out about the boat ride.

Maybe I hugged him too hard on my way out of the room. He pulled away and shook me by the upper arms.

Dad! It’s no big deal. Just… He stuck out a pair of fingers from each hand and crossed them against each other. Hashtag life skills, right?

GUSTS OF ROBIN’S OLD IMPATIENCE rocked him, waiting for the spring’s first farmers’ market. He hit on the idea of taking his paintings to school to find some buyers. He had a mailing tube under his arm and one foot out the door to catch the bus when he sprang that plan on me.

“Oh, Robbie. That’s not a great idea.”

Why? His voice wavered on the edge of raw. You think they’re too crappy?

The respite had spoiled me. I thought we were in the clear. I thought his team had rowed us to safety.

“They’re too good. Your classmates can’t afford to pay you what they’re worth.”