Afterword

I Feel Fine

March 2016

“It’s the end of the world as we know it (and I feel fine).”

R.E.M., 1987

My younger daughter told me that she loves when an author includes a chapter to tell the reader how everyone turned out. I like that idea so I’ll do it now, starting with a fundamental aspect of the setting of the story, the Cold War.

Like a wet blanket draped over our California lifestyle, the Cold War added a background level of dread that may be hard to remember and even harder to imagine for those who did not live through it. The knowledge that global thermonuclear war could break out at any moment had a way of lodging itself in the psyche. Younger readers have no memory of the 20th Century and may not have spent much time in history class on the latter part of that century, so I will explain the lifting of that blanket. For a century defined by two world wars that brought mankind suffering and death on an industrial scale, and a nuclear capability that threatened to make those wars seem like a picnic in comparison, the biggest news of the 20th Century was actually a feel good story: mankind finally decided that exterminating itself and leaving a barren, glowing planet behind was a bad idea.

Curiously, there was no headline proclaiming this biggest of all news stories, the end of the Cold War. Historians agree that it took place sometime between 1985 when the Soviet Union got a new leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, and 1991 when the Soviet Union was abolished. During this period I was too busy attending college, starting my first real job, and meeting my beautiful wife to notice such heady developments. Sometimes history has a way of happening when we are not looking.

The end of the Cold War had a transformative effect on another aspect of the book’s setting, Cupertino and the greater region nicknamed Silicon Valley because of valley companies’ focus on the development of silicon computer chips starting in the 1960’s. During my childhood, the main employers in Silicon Valley were the defense industry and high tech manufacturers, primarily involved in computer chip production. Both of these industries thrived on the global fear and mistrust that characterized the Cold War era and resulted in a massive arms race between the Western world and the Eastern Bloc. The Strategic Defense Initiative or “Star Wars” is often credited with finally winning the Cold War. Lockheed, the dominant Silicon Valley employer during my childhood, was a prime contributor to that program, which many now see as a colossal bluff by the United States. In the high-stakes poker game that was the Cold War, the bluff worked and the Soviet Union folded its cards when it realized it could not keep up with the America’s defense spending.

With the end of the Cold War, however, Silicon Valley’s economy was forced to change. The internet, social media, biotechnology and self-driving and electric cars became a prime focus of valley companies. All of these efforts are certainly a better use of the talents and fertile imagination of the valley’s workers than dreaming up novel ways to kill off an entire planet.

Young Jack would be surprised and a little saddened to know that, with the end of the Cold War, all those military airplanes he watched flying into Moffett Field have departed for good. Now, the only military planes that make that approach to Moffett Field are a couple of C-130’s and Blackhawk helicopters used by an Air National Guard search and rescue unit for peaceful purposes. Air Force One can also be seen flying over on a somewhat regular basis as the president flies into town to pick up campaign funding from Silicon Valley billionaires. Oh, and there is also a fleet of Google corporate jets stationed at Moffett. In a uniquely Silicon Valley move, Google took over operations of Moffett Federal Airfield in 2015. Now Google has its own personal Silicon Valley airport, saving its executives precious minutes in its far flung efforts pursuing its mission to “Don’t be Evil”.

At this point, my daughter is asking me, “But Dad, what about the people. What happened to them?” Unfortunately, prior to writing this book, I had not kept in touch with any of the characters who populate this story (outside of my family) since the end of grade school or high school at the latest. The good news is that Silicon Valley has given us a social media industry that is tailor made for catching up with old friends. My daughter helped me navigate the latest social media applications and here is what we learned:

We could not find any evidence of Miss Nancy, Mr. Gatos, Mr. Goldman, or Mrs. Rathburn, perhaps because they are too old to have an online presence. However, I did find Mr. Carlos. He is retired in Idaho, the vice president of a club centered on his Marine Corps unit in Vietnam. I communicated with him via email and can report that, sadly, he did not marry Miss Nancy or hold on to his baby, that 1967 Mustang. He regrets losing touch with both of them. I am especially saddened to have lost track of Miss Nancy. However, Mr. Carlos was able to update me on Manny, the boy in the manual wheelchair who always wore gloves. Manny excelled in wheelchair athletics and moved to Ohio where he now works for a company that makes high tech racing wheelchairs that utilize titanium and other modern materials to make strong, lightweight chairs for athletes.

Surprisingly, Rob Kane holds elected office at the county level in a Midwest state. Chuck is living with his partner in San Francisco and is the proprietor of a movie memorabilia shop. Hank moved to Nevada and runs his own drywall installation business. As mentioned, Monique moved away after Christmas 1975 and I could not find her online. Perhaps she changed last names by adoption or marriage, so her internet trail has run cold. Eddie continued to dominate in sports and earned a scholarship to a Division 1 college football program in California. He did not make the NFL due to injury, however, and is now a successful insurance agent in the Central Valley of California. I found Tran online last year. Through a series of emails, I learned that he is an executive at a biotechnology company and actually works about twenty minutes away from where I work. We realized that we could meet halfway for lunch just ten minutes from our offices and we even picked out a lunch spot. We fully intend to do just that one of these days, when it is convenient. It just hasn’t been convenient over the course of a year.

As for my family, my dad retired from his work on spy satellites at Lockheed many years ago. He and my mom live in the same house. My sister stayed in the area, got married and has two grown kids. I also remained in the area. I married a girl who I first met in high school and whose father also worked at Lockheed, on submarine-launched nuclear missiles. We had three children who attend or attended the same local high school that my wife and I attended. Fremont Elementary School was torn down and converted to a very nice park some years back. This is a rare example of new open space being created in an area where it has been devoured voraciously.

Over the years, my wife and I tried to give our children a taste of what it was like for us growing up in Silicon Valley in the 1970’s. We picked blackberries in the same creek as Hank and I did, we went fishing, built and launched model rockets and model airplanes, and rebuilt a classic Mustang. But my kids’ childhood world was vastly different from mine. For instance, the orchard where my friends and I fought epic dirt clod battles is now the site of Apple’s massive “spaceship” headquarters building.

It would be too easy to say that my childhood days were the good old days and that they are now gone for good. But my kids enjoyed their own childhood and have defining memories of those years just like I do. Besides the simpler things my wife and I showed them, they also have memories of video games, the internet, and cell phones and probably get bored hearing about how we survived in the “old days” before these necessities were invented.

As it turns out, my mom was right, Robin did inspire my career choice. I didn’t become a doctor, though, and I haven’t cured any disease. I did, however, become an engineer specializing in Assistive Computer Technology, a field which uses computers to help people perform tasks that they otherwise would not be able to do. Some of what I work on would have been useful to Robin, mostly because computers can now recognize words before they are done being typed. This cuts down on the number of keystrokes, which greatly reduces the effort required to communicate. With the rapid advance of technologies such as voice recognition and artificial intelligence it is not inconceivable for someone as profoundly disabled as Robin to soon integrate almost seamlessly into a classroom or work environment.

I don’t have that dream anymore, the dream about the end of the world. I probably haven’t had it for over twenty-five years. Ironically my childhood world, shaped by the Cold War, did end – just not in the ominous way that dream threatened. In fact, I was so busy with my young adult life that I was not even looking when that world ended and a new one began. Recall when I paused and reflected at the spot where Robin’s wheelchair tipped over, then turned forward from that time and place, into my future. By setting down this story I too have stopped and reflected on my childhood years and am moving forward, ready to face the future with the same wonder and anticipation that I used to bring to an after school adventure with my friends.

I am now ready to take that small wooden biplane model from beside my keyboard and place it back on the memory shelf where it has rested all these years. On that shelf is a faded, curled, crudely painted watercolor picture that Robin made for me using a paintbrush in her headband. In the picture, a yellow sun reigns over a wide blue sky, untroubled by clouds or airplanes. On a grass field below, a yellow-haired girl stands holding hands with a smaller, brown-haired boy. When she gave me the picture to reciprocate for my biplane gift, Robin explained that she is the girl in the picture, freed from the confines of her wheelchair, and I am the boy. In an unpainted rectangle where blue sky should be, she typed these words:

dear jack,

i never walked on grass

but i hope that someday i will with you

thanks for being my friend

love,

robin

Even all these years later, I sometimes see Robin in my dreams. If I am feeling anxious or helpless I might dream of that moment when Robin’s wheelchair is tipping and I dive to try to stop it, knowing my effort will be in vain. But other times, I see Robin in my dream as that girl in her painting and I am that little boy. We never talk – I have no voice for her in my head – but we walk together on that grass, beneath that sun. I am taking her to meet my friends and my family, but I can’t shake the feeling that time is slipping away. There is never enough time in happy dreams.