Oh Pure and Radiant Heart by Lydia Millet (shoe dog free ebook .txt) 📕

tell you how we came to be here—only that we are. And we find ourselves in a bankrupt society—

—Hear hear! said the man with the pigtail, and nodded as he reached for a tray of champagne glasses.

—He pulled these people off the street and paid them to come in, didn’t he, said Ben to Szilard.

—a society, went on Oppenheimer, —that has done nothing since we left it, nothing since the split-second after the flash of the Trinity device—

—The first bomb, stage-whispered Larry, standing behind Oppenheimer with Tamika at his side. —The one they tested in the desert in New Mexico before they dropped it on Hiroshima.

—Nagasaki, in fact, said Szilard. —The bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima was never pre-tested. It had a uranium gun trigger, not plutonium implosion. It was as close to a sure thing as you get in applied physics.

—but die a long death, said Oppenheimer. —A death that continues today. And this society, this complex of societies is dying because it has failed to learn—with all its newfound information and its high technology, its vast systems of data collection and analysis, its high-speed communication—that the world was not made to be the plaything of men.

—I can’t believe this, groaned Ben. —He’s a preacher now? He’s going to deliver a sermon on modern morality?

—Oppie can be a little sanctimonious at times, said Szilard. —But of course he’s entirely correct.

—That was what shocked us most, said Oppenheimer, and raised his cigarette to his lips, agitated. —That it does not shock you, that it does not stun you all and send you reeling with horror, this long death of civilization unrolling before your eyes. And it is not enough for man to kill his own kind: he has to take the rest of life with him too.

—That is so true, said Tamika. —Right?

—Right, said Larry, and a few guests behind him nodded.

—Trees! said a woman beside them. —Trees only give to this world. What crime has a tree committed?

—And so we do have something to say to all of you, all of you who are willing to listen, went on Oppenheimer. —Leo and Enrico and I all have a message for the citizens of this new world we’ve been, as it were, reborn into.

—I do not have a message, said Fermi softly but firmly.

—We’re only men of science. None of us are politicians. We can only speak from the heart, as people who entered into this desecrated landscape from another time and who may be able—I make no boast, but this is what we feel—who may be able, for that reason, to see the state of things with greater clarity than those who have lived within this prison all their lives.

—We’re all prisoners of the man! someone yelled.

—Because all around us we see signs of imminent catastrophe. We see commerce run rampant. We see the rich devouring the poor …

—This from a man with a brand-new platinum cigarette case, said Ben.

— … and even worse, devouring the land we all depend on for sustenance, the land and the waters and the life they give us. We also see factionalism and greed building to a fever pitch …

—Fever pitch, repeated a fat man in a greasy tanktop. —Damn right!

— … and to all of this, because we see crimes against God and man everywhere, crimes like the proliferation of these weapons to which we helped give birth, these weapons of mass destruction whose terrible legacy—

—I can’t stand this, said Ben. —I’m stepping out for a breath of fresh air.

—Good luck, said Szilard.

—… see avarice building toward an apogee of extinction, a great and horrible end in which the vices of the human race literally consume the earth.

Ben, on his way to the apartment door, stopped in his tracks because of a contortionist sitting on the carpet in front of him. He was twisted up like a pretzel. Ben stood there gaping, barely listening to the speech behind him.

—… that all the countries of the world, both rich and poor, abandon their nationalistic fervor, said Oppenheimer, and stubbed out his cigarette while fishing in his breast pocket for a new one with his free hand. —In short we want to propose that the United Nations, that much-maligned body, that body that has apparently been so undervalued and so underused—

—United Nations? asked the man with the pigtail, confused.

—propose that that body full of noble potential act to bring all countries together to form a global peace, a global union that works for the good of all men …

—And women! put in Tamika.

—across the world. This is the only way, I repeat, the only way, to even attempt to control the spread of nuclear arms to what politicians in so-called nuclear powers are now calling “rogue nations.” This is the only way to control the growing global trade hegemony of corporations, which as you all know, I’m sure, are increasingly taking on the power, but not the responsibilities or accountability, of government—

—Fuckin’ A! said the fat man in the wifebeater.

—And the only way to establish lasting security and realize—we dare to dream—a world free from the threat of imminent and total destruction, a world without a sword of Damocles suspended above it on a fine thread, a world that has among other things abolished, for the sake of a glorious future, these weapons we know to hold all of humanity—and more than that, all living things on earth—hostage.

—A glorious future! murmured Tamika’s bald friend, and fell sideways into Larry, who caught her.

Ben was still staring at the contortionist, who had started walking around bent over backward on all fours.

—Go Oppie! shouted someone unseen, and clapping started at the back of the crowd and moved forward.

—Blow out the candles, man, said Larry when the noise subsided, and Oppenheimer, holding his cigarette away from the cake, leaned forward and obliged.

—So we propose, said Oppenheimer, slightly breathless behind the delicate drifts of candle smoke, —world government. We propose a unity, not of corporations across the globe,