The Voices of Time (short story)

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The Voices of Time is a dystopian science fiction short story by J. G. Ballard. It was first published in 1960. It is an early example of the Inner Space type of story which drove the New Wave movement in the 1960's. Its primary theme is one which was common in the New Wave, that of entropy and the breakdown of all things.

[edit] Plot

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

In a sense, the story has little or no plot. Instead we follow a scientist, Powers, who is in a state of mental and physical decline. He works at a research clinic in a landscape of hills and dry salt lake beds, somewhat like the deserts of California. He has done research into psychiatry and neurosurgery but has resigned, as he finds his hours of wakefulness getting shorter and shorter. He seems about to become yet another Sleeper, one of an increasing number of people who lapse into a coma from which they cannot be roused. Many such are housed at the clinic.

Powers records his feelings, and his last interviews with his therapist, in a journal in which he also records strange epigrams, such as "Goodbye, Eniwetok." Along with excerpts from recordings of interviews, these entries drive the story forward and provide a counterpoint to the standard third-person narrative.

Powers' last subject was another scientist called Whitby, who committed suicide, but not before carving an elaborate mandala into the bottom of an empty swimming pool. As we find from Powers replaying recordings of interviews, Whitby was convinced that life itself was in decline, that evolution had peaked. Life, and particularly humans, would become simpler as time went by:

Five thousand centuries from now, our descendants, instead of being multi-brained star-men, will probably be naked prognathous idiots ... grunting their way through the remains of this Clinic ...

Whitby's own research involved using highly tuned X-rays to selectively activate the so-called "silent pair" of genes in animals in plants. The results are bizarre creatures that can sense time or gamma radiation, or have grotesque changes like an external nervous system. Powers himself keeps finding wild animals with strange mutations, such as a frog with a lead-lined shell on it.

Powers is stalked, and somewhat tormented, by Kaldren, a scientist who has been surgically altered so that he does not sleep. Kaldren scrawls huge numbers in places where Powers will see them, apparently representing some kind of countdown. Kaldren's latest girlfriend, a unearthly beauty he calls, ironically, Coma, approaches Powers on Kaldren's behalf. We learn much of what is going on through Powers' explanations to her.

Powers explains that the "silent pair" phenomenon is closely linked to the Sleepers, so by implication he also has the genes. By activating them, Whitby seemed to show that the pair are a last-ditch attempt to jump-start evolution and preserve life on Earth.

Powers consents to visit Kaldren in his home, a bizarre spiral structure which is supposed to represent the square root of -1. Kaldren shows him his collection of Terminal Documents, his obituary of the human race. They include, not only works of literature and transcripts of the Nuremburg trials, but such ephemera as an EEG recording of Albert Einstein. The numbers which so obsess Kaldren are received as radio transmissions from other galaxies. It has been estimated that when the countdown reaches zero, the Universe will have just ended. Kaldren grabs Powers by the arm and warns him:

You're not alone, Powers, don't think you are. These are the voices of time, and they're all saying goodbye to you ... every particle in your body, every grain of sand, every galaxy carries the same signature ... you know what the time is now, so what does the rest matter?

Powers has for some time been recreating Whitby's mandala on a grand scale, using concrete on an old artillery range. Having performed some procedure on himself, he goes to it one last time, lost in a wash of sound only he can hear, coming from the rocks, the ancient hills, and the very stars themselves. At the center of the structure, turning toward the great galaxies that broadcast Kaldren's countdowns, he feels a stream of time coming to bear him away, and gives himself up to it.

His body is found by Coma, just as Whitby's was found earlier. Whitby's lab is in chaos as the life-forms have mutated and run riot, and it is obvious that Powers has used the equipment on himself. Kaldren secludes himself in his house.

[edit] Trivia

Ballard's story is more psychological than scientific, so some inaccuracies are inevitable. One concerns the countdowns that Kaldren collects. He says that the actual numbers are much longer than the ones with which he harasses Powers, which are 24-digit numbers. According to Kaldren, the actual ones received have "50 million digits". In fact, a countdown to the death of the Universe would use much shorter numbers. Even if the shortest possible unit of time, the Planck time, was used, the life of the Universe could be expressed with as few as four hundred digits. The current age of the Universe, in units of the Planck time, is thought to be a 61-digit number.

One of the background stories involves the experiences of a group of astronauts who landed on the moon. They sent back messages describing meetings with beings from Orion who revealed the truth about the Universe to them, and were never heard from again. The name used for the astronauts is the "Mercury Seven". The actual astronauts for Project Mercury were announced in 1959, the year before this story was published. It is likely that Ballard simply co-opted the name. If he did not, then we must assume a coincidence of cosmic proportions.