Double Tears
Chapter 141
“Everyone will be tracked, cradle to grave, with no possibility of escape.”
—Dave Eggers, The Circle
WE HAD THREE VEHICLES among us at Donna’s. My truck, Livy’s Wrangler, and Rachel’s Yaris. For the hell of it, we decided to take the Wrangler. It looked like a good day and even if it was too cold in the morning, we had visions of taking the top off on the way home. And so, at way too early o’clock, we walked into the National Services Regional Office.
I don’t know why I felt so nervous. I understood Livy being called in to be tested for her athletic ability as opposed to her athletic aptitude. I couldn’t think of a single reason either Rachel or me should be called in for more testing. Yes, it was optional. But something about the words, ‘We believe this additional testing will be a benefit in placing you when you begin your service,’ just sent chills down my spine. They might as well have said, ‘You’ll regret it if you don’t test.’ I remembered the pressure they put on the school to get me to take calculus when I’d decided my math days were done. What were they about to pressure me for now?
“Hi!” said the bright young thing who greeted us. “I’m so glad you decided to come in for more testing. Olivia Dayton? This is April Levinson. She’ll show you to the locker rooms and tell you what you need. We do the athletic testing over at The Plex, so you’ve got a little walk ahead of you. I assure you that by the time you finish and get back here, your friends will be waiting to go home. Have fun.”
Livy and April left. April had a backpack and Livy had her gym bag. I had a feeling the walk over to The Plex was just a warmup.
“Now,” our greeter said. “I’m Joanna Lark. I’m sure you have a million questions… but so do we!” she laughed. “Let’s just say that the National Service is growing. Not just in numbers but in opportunities. There’s been a lot of bad press lately regarding corps members being enslaved to do back-breaking manual labor. The Service is not a prison. So, we’ve been on the lookout for people who score high in influencing others. The Service wants to maximize their experience. Certain flags popped up on your profiles that indicate you could be one of those influencers.”
“So, you want us to convince others the Service is a good thing and will help them in ways they can’t imagine?” I asked. I was ready to walk out. Fuck ’em!
“I don’t know,” Joanna said. “I took the expanded test last fall and when they showed me what I’d be able to do, I signed up for six more years so I could work with gifted and talented individuals and guide them in planning their service. This is my third year and I love it.”
She reminded me vaguely of Adrienne and I thought most of Pod Cheer-up could do her job. Rah rah!
“What are we supposed to do?” Rachel asked.
“It is very similar to the testing you have already taken,” Joanna said. “This battery of tests will explore your identified aptitudes and determine if you also have skills to go with them. It’s very much like your friend Olivia is undergoing. She has a strong athletic aptitude, but we need to assess whether she has the ability and skills to join part of the elite athletes training in the National Service. The tests are once again computerized and you will have a private booth in which to work. Keep in mind that we are looking for both speed and accuracy. Kind of like a typing test,” she tittered. “Do you need a restroom before you begin? Once you hit the start button, you’ll have sixty minutes to answer as many questions as you can. Then you’ll get a fifteen-minute break to answer nature’s call. Following that will be another sixty minutes. Remember, we only have a million questions for you!”
She laughed but based on Ray’s testing, I thought she probably wasn’t far off. If we answered four questions a minute, we’d provide somewhere near 500 answers they could use for or against us. She seated us in our booths with headsets on and reminded us again to work as quickly as possible. Right. And then the test was underway.
“How was it?” Rachel asked when we stepped outside to wait for Livy.
“Tricky,” I said. “I don’t know what your test was like but mine only used my music and language aptitude questions to determine if I was a threat to the system.”
“Likewise. What I don’t understand is why me? Your public profile includes things like the music video, the meme, and your comments about the succession and constitution. None of that kind of thing is part of my public profile.”
“You are identified in the pod and productions, though. You were in the video,” I reminded her.
“Then why not Beca and Desi and Brittany? Oh, my God! Do you think Joan has been called in to test some more? She’ll come out a radical revolutionary!”
“They might be testing her and Em, too. I think they called me because I was public and you and Livy because you are seniors. Beca, Desi, and Brittany have another year to go before the level of their threat can be assessed. Cindy isn’t really on their radar until she takes the NSRE this spring. It’s the same as the invitation I got to audition for the National School of the Arts. It just casually mentioned that I should bring my musical partner.”
“I might be getting paranoid,” Rachel sighed.
“It’s not paranoia if they’re really out to get you.”
“We’re continuing to analyze trends,” Ray said when we called him Saturday afternoon. Everyone at Donna’s was listening in on the call. “We’ve seen people in service being called in for additional testing and being reassigned as a result. Some looked like rewards and some like punishment. This is the first we’ve seen people being called in before they join, except for specific auditions and tryouts like Olivia went through today.”
“Do you think they’ve targeted us because of the video?” I asked.
“Yes. At least in part. But whether for good or bad is the question. There are things going on in the National Service administration that we’re having some difficulty tracking,” he said.
“Like what?” Donna asked. She’d been over twenty-one when the Service began and didn’t have to serve. She was fiercely supportive of those of us who did.
“The new president has been in office just two months. There was such a powerful backlash over the lockdown of the corps and the reassignment of people to agricultural work that National Service became a higher priority even than normalizing relations with Mexico. Her congress immediately passed legislation to redact the national emergency clause used by the former president. But they didn’t replace it. By law, anything not explicitly stated in the law may be governed by the rules and regulations.”
“Great. Another 400 pages of gobbledy-gook,” I said.
“Possibly. But the president wants the entire book of rules, regulations, and procedures reviewed and rewritten without the military overtones. Then she wants the book passed into law so it can’t be changed—like the UCMJ, Uniform Code of Military Justice. That has pluses and minuses. On the positive side, it would make it harder to misuse the book to reward or punish corps members based on political issues. On the other hand, exceptions would be almost non-existent. Equal treatment under the law would mean no exemptions or special circumstances. What we see as likely is that the regulations will be prescribed in the new book, but there will continue to be a secondary book of procedures that is subject to interpretation and change.”
“What does that mean for us?” Livy asked. “That trainer I worked with today did all the testing I’d expect to go through for a University review. Agility, speed, accuracy. But she also kept asking subtle questions about what I believed the role of an athlete representing her country in international competition to be. It was like she was not only testing me, but interviewing me.”
“We found that out in the testing, too,” I said. “There was either a person guiding the questions on that test or it’s the smartest AI I’ve ever heard of. It’s like I was being interviewed by a computer. And unlike the logic diagrams we went over based on multiple choice questions, this one included short essays like we had on the old PSAT. One actually asked me for 250 words defending the 28th amendment or supporting its repeal. There were follow up multiple choice questions I swear were based on my essay.”
“That is indeed a new breed of AI,” Ray said. “My guess is that an individual was guiding the AI but that’s only speculation.” He paused and seemed to be contemplating Livy’s original question. “Joan has been comparatively happy with her service,” he said. “She is getting to do exactly what she hoped to have as a profession. She wasn’t happy about the national emergency fiasco, of course, but she was at work and did a good job. They are recruiting her heavily to remain in service after her two years are up. They’ve even suggested the new work might include her own blog about impressions of the service. Based on what you’ve told me, I’m feeding a new line of questioning into our computer. What would be the characteristics we would want in an ambassador for the National Service? The questions you’ve been asked lead me to believe they are looking for people who would be in public relations.”
“Even after our music and comments?” I asked.
“If we can assume your music and comments became influencers over policy, then swinging you to support the service while maintaining your influence would be a high priority.”
“Wow!”
“I don’t know how I feel about that,” Rachel sighed. “I could probably get behind it if I thought the service was really going to live up to the expectations painted when the amendment passed. The biggest issue I see is the intentional splitting up of established relationships. Sending Emily to California and then the middle of Kansas. Joan to Chicago. Livy and me to God-knows-where. And the four who will enter service next year. If we were treated like families in the military, we’d at least have a major chance of being stationed together.”
“Hmm,” Ray said. “I wouldn’t discount the possibility that you answered questions regarding your relationship today. It’s possible they are pushing toward that kind of solution. I’d say that as soon as possible, your pod should formalize its relationship and membership. Consider it, anyway.”
There was no fanfare accompanying our release of the new video that night. It was only a YouTube release since we’d streamed it live two weeks ago. I did, however, send the link to Bruce. Never heard back.
Sunday was a study day. The final term started the next day and we all wanted to be ready. None of our teachers were going to slack off. Spring term was always the toughest since that was when teachers crammed in everything they hadn’t covered the rest of the year. I personally wanted to be well ahead of everything in the next two weeks so spring break would be absolutely clear. Em was coming home.
That also made three weeks until Easter and our concert. Which meant I’d spend at least a couple of hours every other day rehearsing with Cindy and the quartet. Before we accepted the gig, I checked with all of them to make sure they were local and available during spring break. The same was true of my video crew. We were going to stream the whole service live and then they’d edit it down to just our ten-minute sextet for release on YouTube.
We’d also would be rehearsing with the orchestra periodically after school since the spring preview concert was in a month. And that turned out to be my biggest task. Monday morning LeBlanc called me aside before class and handed me a new guitar case. It was big!
“This is not for your sextet,” he hastily explained. “But I’d like you to try it and see if it works for the Shubert we’re doing. Your part in that is fairly simple and I think it will be a good testing ground to see if you can handle this instrument.”
“Is this…?”
“A viola da gamba. We’ll talk about how you feel about it after you’ve had a chance to try it out. If it looks like something that we can work with, I have an instructor who will take you separately during rehearsal and teach you the finer points.”
“Oh. Yes, sir. I’ll see what I can do.”
It took him a bit to get class started as he wanted to work with the woodwinds on a particular segment. That gave me an opportunity to get the guitar-like instrument out of its case and check the tuning. I’d already found out the main six strings were tuned like my guitar. The body of the viol was bigger than my guitar but the neck was shorter. It was fretted and the bridge was curved so I could use the bow. I had no idea what the seventh string was for.
“How tight do you make your bow?” I whispered to Darrell, our violist. He sat right in front of me. He took my bow from me and compared it to his. It was a lot bigger. He passed my bow down to Rhonda, our cellist, and asked her to adjust it. She made a few adjustments and dragged it across her strings then handed it back.
“Okay, let’s go to the top of the Shubert. Jacob, do you have the viol figured out?” LeBlanc asked. If he expected me to play this already, we were going to have a long chat.
“I think it’s in tune, but what is this bottom string that doesn’t even go over the fretboard?”
“That’s a drone. Tune it to B1, but don’t worry about playing it in the Shubert. At least not yet.” I tuned and dragged my bow across the string. A bass answered me from across the room. “You’ll note that you are down an octave and a fifth from your normal low of E2 or a fifth lower than your double bass counterpart at E1. When it’s called for, that gives you the lowest note of the stringed instruments. Everyone. First measure. Instruments ready.” LeBlanc gave the count and brought everyone in. The fingering came along just fine, but I had trouble getting the bow on the right string. It would just take practice, I suppose. LeBlanc cut us off. “Jacob.”
“Yes, sir?”
“I just realized you have only the way our strings hold their bows as a guideline. Traditionally, you hold the viol between your knees and reverse your hold on the bow so your hand is on the hair side instead of the stick.” That got a couple of interested stares from the cellos and basses. Interestingly, though, it allowed me to hold the neck in a more natural position and canted the instrument slightly toward my left hand. In this position, the new grip on the bow was much easier. The bow was pointed slightly down. We started the piece again.
I missed as many notes as I hit during the first run-through but it was not as bad as I thought it would be. I learned a variety of markings in the score for which direction I was supposed to bow and how long a stroke it should be. It was kind of a cool instrument.
“Well?” LeBlanc asked as we headed to lunch.
“I think I could get the hang of it if that’s what you want, sir.”
“Bowmanship certainly plays as important a part in this as your picking does with the guitar. If you are willing to work with it for a couple of weeks, the owner of that fine instrument will come in to work with you for half an hour in the second half of class.”
“I’ll do my best, sir.” I hurried to catch up with Cindy for lunch with the pod.
“Rhonda called it ‘jerk-off bowing’,” Cindy laughed at the table.
“What?”
“Well, she bows the cello like this,” Cindy said, making a sawing motion with her hand. “You move like this.” She demonstrated and without the bow in her hand it was almost the same as the universal sign for jerking off.
“How am I ever going to live that down?” I asked as our mates laughed. “You know what else is going to be difficult? There are only seven frets. So, I only go up less than an octave on each string. The guitar has nineteen frets. Definitely be some new fingering involved once I get used to it.”
I didn’t know I’d be starting my lessons on the new instrument as soon as lunch was over. LeBlanc waved me to a rehearsal room where I met Herr Richter. I’d actually met him briefly once before. He was the concertmaster for the Community Orchestra we played with a year ago. I was never actually on stage with him like Cindy was, but he’d shaken my hand after the recital.
“A pleasure to work with you, Jacob,” he said. “One can never learn too many instruments. I picked up this viol thirty years ago when I was touring Europe. Excellent instrument.”
“It has a lovely sound, sir. I hope I can bring out the best in it.”
“We’ll certainly improve what you were scratching out during the earlier rehearsal,” he laughed. I hadn’t even realized he’d been in the room. “Now let’s start with some fundamentals. This is a bass viol. As you have already seen it has a drone string that is never fingered. We could probably improve the sound of that last piece you practiced by just sawing on the drone through the whole thing.” He laughed but I thought he might be serious.
“Have I tuned it correctly?” I asked.
“No, but you have tuned it adequately. While the viola da gamba is tuned in fourths like a guitar instead of fifths like a violin, it has a variety of tunings. I noted, for example, that in your Sunday morning concert a few months ago, you used Flamenco tuning on your guitar when that lovely dancer worked behind you. Starting with the standard guitar tuning for the viol is a way for you to adjust quickly using the fingering you are accustomed to and the sheet music that was prepared for your use with the guitar. Soon, we’ll move into more traditional tuning for the viol which is a half-step below what you are accustomed to.”
And that quickly, I was into my first lesson on the bowed version of what was to become my major instrument when playing with an orchestra. Herr Richter included a lot of history. For nearly two hundred years, orchestra music was written and arranged for viols of various sizes. These preceded the violin family which rose in the 1700s and in a matter of twenty years completely replaced the viola da gamba. I also found out why I was supposed to hold the bow in the ‘jack-off’ grip, as Rhonda called it. I actually had a finger stuck through between the stick and the hair so I could apply pressure to the hair and change its tautness.
After school, I had my first daily practice session with the viol. This instrument would remain locked in Mr. LeBlanc’s music locker and I would not be taking it home to practice. After I found out the bow alone was worth over $350, I figured the instrument was probably worth a lot more than my guitar.
“Hey, baby. Thought I’d wait around and walk with you,” Rachel said when I finished an hour’s practice.
“You know I love it when I get to spend time with you. Even if it’s just walking to our cars. Time seems so precious these days,” I said when I’d given her a welcoming kiss.
“Isn’t that the truth. Um… There’s an ulterior motive,” she said as she leaned against me.
“Do tell. Are you kidnapping me to your basement dungeon to have your way with me?” I laughed.
“Don’t we wish! I’m afraid there is someone else who needs your attention if you’ll agree to it. And don’t worry, your girlfriends have said it is entirely up to you. We aren’t going to pressure you but we have no objections, either,” she said.
“What’s going on?” I asked as we approached my truck. A familiar figure was dwarfed next to the driver’s door.
“Hi, Jacob,” she said. “Um… I was wondering if we could slip away and have sex for a while.”
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