Better Off_ Flipping the Switch on Technology - Eric Brende [66]
“Are you feeling all right?” he asked.
“I’m fine,” I wheezed.
“You know, you don’t have to continue.”
“I’m fine.”
“Well,” the bishop went on, “if you’re sure now. There is another job we could use your help on. But only if you want to.” He led me into the barn. We had to squeeze sideways to get past the metal elephant, which filled up most of the doorway, but once in a back area came to an enclosed space in which the machine’s discharge flap rose and fell, like a flopping tail, to make way for the excretion of digested grain. I was at the very bowels of the beast. A small boy was fitting grain sacks around the tube and lugging them away as they filled.
For a couple more hours I took turns with the boy filling sacks—a task that in my fogged-over imagination bore a strong resemblance to the removal of elephant turds. My sense of smell was inoperative, precluding minor distinctions.
When at last I felt I had made an adequate showing, I excused myself. My head felt about to split open, and my skin was as dry as parchment. I wandered home dazedly, like an astronaut on the surface of the moon.
I was bedridden for three days, tossing and turning in a feverish delirium.
The only thing worse than unconsciousness was coming to. I sat up abruptly with a chilling realization: threshing wheat without modern equipment had shocked me out of my senses. It appeared to be a form of naked physical toil that only a glutton for punishment would willingly engage in. Was there a need for more machinery here?
With the throbbing headache I had now, it was hard to recover any enthusiasm for life without motors. Maybe it would be easier, until I had time to think things over, for Mary and me to rent a sports car, escape to San Francisco, and eat sushi by the Bay. For that matter, I could take up a career in Silicon Valley, commute to work, and forget about ever returning to M.I.T.
My mind began circling back over the events, again and again, finally coming to something that didn’t fit.
The heatstroke had been selective. The other workers had come out okay. It had struck only me.
Why not them? Why me?
I was comparatively out of shape, yes, but this had been their first day in the new threshing season, too. Was I so physically unfit?
Then I remembered the week of traveling. When we weren’t riding in a car, we had been sitting inside air-conditioned buildings. Meanwhile, back home the temperature had steadily risen, and presumably the Minimites had adjusted along with it. I alone hadn’t. If anything, I had made a reverse adjustment.
I checked my hunch in a medical guide. The body, I read, normally takes two weeks to adapt to major temperature changes. This is a physiological process, altering blood-flow patterns and increasing the capacity to sweat. Any too-sudden introduction of hot or cold can overwhelm adaptive mechanisms.
The book went on to explain why I had become so weak in the heat. Because I was unable to sweat adequately, my circulatory system tried to compensate by rerouting blood from my body’s core to the skin and extremities, thus carrying oxygen away from the muscles. My muscles simply ran low on fuel.
But the failure of my cooling system was caused by interference from an electric one: the air-conditioning had weakened me.
But if threshing per se did not refute the possibility of Minimatic convenience, then something else appeared to do so: heat.
After getting back on my feet, I still quailed at the heat. If quiet magnified the possibilities of free time, heat shriveled them. Heat rerouted blood flow to the skin, draining the brain. Contemplative serenity wilted in the heat. Heat drove Mary and me to distraction—and to mutual uninterest. It even discouraged sleep. There was no rest even during our rest.
The sleepless nights