[Issue 2024.71]

‘In the Field’, Shelly Jones

Art © 2024 L.E. Badillo

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The professor pulls down a shoebox of cassette tapes from the bookcase. Her office is full of boxes like this on every shelf, stacks in the corner waist-high. Her life’s work: collecting the voices of people who no longer exist. I look at the delicate ribbons loose in their cartridges and consider that my ancestors were once made of such crude materials, reels of magnetic tape spooling their thoughts.

“It took ages to get the IRB committee to approve these questions. They didn’t understand my process nor the importance of recording the migrants’ stories.” She wipes a thin veneer of dust from a cartridge and inserts it into the beige cassette player with a thunk. The ribbon whines for a moment before shuddering into place. A crackle of wind hits the microphone, branches rustle in the background, and then a familiar voice blossoms up through the speaker: the professor, her tone half an octave higher in pitch, but the same energy and passion floods her voice.

We listen to the interview, the professor nodding off at her desk, while I take notes, learning my new routine, what questions to ask when I’m out in the field, what answers I might expect. Occasionally the professor rouses and repeats an instruction or a word of caution. “They might be reluctant to answer a droid, but you tell them I sent you and that you’re continuing my research. The families all know me. Look for the oldest folks and they’ll talk to you just as they did to me.”

These tapes are all that is left of the professor’s research. I cannot find any documentation of such interviews in the university’s system. The data is corrupted, decades of research erased, stories vanished as if evaporated in smoke around a campfire, lives unlived.

I began working with the professor shortly before the incident, but then her research and nearly everything at the university and in the nearby community was forced to stop. The professor has asked me to continue her work despite the fact that no official communication has been sent out commencing routine operations. “What harm can come from asking questions?” she says, more of a statement than a question.

---

According to the GPS coordinates and the GIS mapping data, I have arrived at the farm. I follow the fieldstone fence from the road, walking the perimeter of the land. Testing the composition of the soil, it is the same regardless of which side of the fence I sample from. I photograph and keep a running catalog of everything I see: the cracked fields, fissures splintering the land like a thousand angry cuts; trees sag, their roots ripped from the ground; empty picking bags and pallet boxes litter the farm, work interrupted. I can imagine the chaos even if I cannot understand the human fear behind it nor feel the instinct to run. Humans, as I understand them, have a flight or fight response to danger. I think about the professor, stationed in her office, still researching. A curious definition of fight perhaps, one I am unfamiliar with.

In the distance I hear the heavy tread of excavators, metal claws raking against dirt and rock. A cleanup crew. Even before I can see them, I know they are remote-operated, like the drones of war. There are no humans here.

This is not the data the professor is hoping for, but it is all that there is.

I return to the campus and cross the quad along the concrete footpath. I scan the university database for promotional advertisements and archival photos of what the campus used to look like: college students lounging in the sun on lawns of emerald green or catching a frisbee while others walk in groups with books and backpacks. I have only seen three other humans besides the professor since the incident. None of them are students; all of them squirrel away in their offices or labs, busy themselves with some theory or problem, apparently unaware that they themselves are an experiment in progress.

---

“I have found no one to interview, Professor.” I am hesitant to admit it, as if confessing a sin. I print out the map of my outing to show her where I ventured, marking my path in red ink for her.

“Nonsense, there must be someone out there,” she insists, taking the map from me. She traces the path with her finger slowly and I notice her skin is discolored, brown splotches gathering along her wrist and arm. “The farms should be teaming with pickers harvesting. I spent the summer of ‘98 wading through corn fields and climbing ladders in peach orchards, interviewing scores of migrant families. And that was after the drought.”

The drought was fleeting, a climate anomaly in the grand scheme of things, I want to inform her. The fallout will affect the land for generations.

“Perhaps the absence of data is data,” I suggest, unsure how she will accept this proposition.

The professor mutters something as she opens an olive green filing cabinet, the words “Property of State College” appearing in faded black marker along the side. “These are some of the first interviews we did. There are more in the department work room. The chair wanted me to get rid of them, but I couldn’t do that. People are so keen to throw things away nowadays. Everything is single use or easy to delete. But I knew these people, sweated next to them in waist-high weeds, drank water with them. How could I throw them away?” She rummages through the drawer, her fingers picking through yellowing folders and stops at a particularly thick file. “Here. The Vargas family. They have worked in the valley for decades. I have recordings from five generations.”

“I have no records of a Vargas,” I say, scanning the census database. Many of the city hall’s records, all digitized, were lost when the floods wiped out the storage center, so there are limited resources to search.

“Nonsense. No Vargas? I met the man. He told me all about his grandmother, who also worked on the farms before my time. His grandfather was a drunk. She had tried sneaking a machete in her basket, but workers weren’t allowed to take the tools when they left. So she saved apples, bruised and rotten that no one would notice. She saved up the seeds and ground them down to a fine cyanide powder. She slipped them in his food and then, pfft!” The professor waves her hand flat and shrugs. “Vargas told me his grandmother always said: the earth provides us answers to our problems.”

I nod, unsure what to say; what will be of comfort when the soil is toxic, the air polluted, and the prospect of that changing soon is unlikely. Eventually the teams will clean up the fallout, eventually the soil will absorb the radiation, but the professor will not be here when the land heals.

“There must be someone.” She waves me away, returns to a pile of books stacked next to her futon and begins reading.

---

The professor hasn’t left the library tower since the fallout. She sleeps on the futon in her office, washes herself in the empty communal restrooms, and mostly spends her days steeped in articles and books written before my kind were created. Few people take out books from the library anymore. She has her choice of thousands of texts, but hovers around a few worn out favorites. The library droid does not bother reshelving them, but keeps them behind the circulation desk for her. Sometimes though she wanders the miles of stacks in the basement anyway, getting lost in the floor-to-ceiling shelves, rows laid out like the fields of corn she did her research in many years ago.

---

“The institute hasn’t answered any of my missives. They never did value my work,” the professor complains, though I have never seen her touch the computer in her office.

I search the web for updates on the institute and any of its members, but obituaries are a thing of the past, written for the comfort of survivors. No news alerts or radio broadcasts contain information about academic institutions, but rather governmental ones or corporations. The last update on the institute’s social media page was a brief statement condemning the lack of regulatory oversight on nuclear energy, as if such a post with its eighty-four views and twenty-two likes would have any impact on the lives of survivors or the prevention of future incidents.

---

The professor is restless today. She lives on black tea, granola bars, and an endless supply of Girl Scout Cookies hidden in her desk. They have little nutritional value but the professor doesn’t care about food—only information. She feeds on my data and demands updates as soon as I return.

“Perhaps I should go with you next time,” she suggests, eyeing a pair of thick boots beneath her desk that look too big for her now. The professor’s clothes, navy slacks and a bulky brown cardigan, hide her tiny frame.

“The sensors indicate that the air conditions would not be safe for you, Professor.”

“Nonsense. Not safe? Still? How can that be?”

The professor seems forgetful lately, circling back to the same topics, failing to remember what I have already said. Some days it feels like we are starting over from the beginning. I explain once more the nuclear reactor’s malfunction, the evacuation of the area, the fallout and cleanup efforts. The professor has never left the university since then, and now cannot without significant risk of radiation exposure. Her apartment was never conducive to work, she says. “Just a place to sleep.” I think about the electric vehicle charging stations in the parking lot and imagine the professor hooking herself up to one.

“We must keep researching. If there are people, there are stories.”

---

“When classes resume we’ll need to discuss with the students the praxis of ethnography and the importance of both qualitative and quantitative research. Perhaps you’ll be my guest and discuss your recent experiences in the field?”

She sweeps a dead fly from her desk into the wastebasket full of granola bar wrappers, dried tea bags, and post-it notes. “It’s good for students to get multiple perspectives.”

I consider how different our accounts would be, how long it has been since the professor was in the field. The likelihood of classes resuming here within the professor’s expected lifetime is small, statistically improbable.

“If you think that would be helpful,” I say noncommittally.

---

“Why do you never bring anything back with you?” Her words are unusually sharp, annoyance barbing the edges.

“I have gathered all that there was to obtain,” I explain, printing off my latest findings for her to review.

She looks over my work with a cursory glance, before adding it to the pile of papers stacked on her desk. “No, no, you never bring back tomatoes or pears. When I would go out into the fields, they would always feed me samples, send me home with a basket brimming with over-ripe fruit.”

I want to point outside or project the videos of scorched fields and flattened silos, but I hesitate for some reason. The memory of fruit seems too sweet to destroy.

Instead I say, “Perhaps because I cannot eat it.”

“Ah, yes, that could be.” She marks something down in a notebook, nodding, and seems at once absorbed in another idea.

“I will try to bring you something next time.” I leave her, wondering when the last time she ate anything grown from the earth.

While she reads my report, dozing at her desk, I head over to the science building. The door to the greenhouse is locked, but easy enough to break open. Why plants and dirt needed to be kept under lock and key before they were a scarce resource is unclear to me. A very human phenomenon, I decide.

To my surprise, rows of lush vines and plump fronds greet me as I enter. The subirrigation system seems to be computer-run, and has continued to feed the plants despite no humans to care for them. A few over-ripe tomatoes have cracked and fallen onto the floor where a line of ants investigate red flesh and yellow seeds. I pluck a few of the tomatoes, careful not to squeeze, and a handful of spinach leaves for the professor. My heat sensors flush in the warmth of the greenhouse, dusty sunlight filtering in through the glass. I try to imagine the farm dense with vegetation, leafy plants and budding trees sprawling across the rolling fields. I sit for a while, wondering if I should bring the professor here, if it is worth the danger.

---

“Why is this what you do?” I ask one day. Context is important, according to her, and I need to know. I have returned again from the farm with no interviews, having walked the rows of empty, desiccated fields of the 835 acre farm several times now. It seems impossible to complete the professor’s research, an impossible task and a foolish endeavor at this time.

“Because all of our stories matter,” she says earnestly. It is a pithy response—something the college’s marketing department could have once shared on social media or sent out on a postcard, before mail was obsolete.

“Yes, but why you and why these stories?”

“As a grad student you often work on the research of your advisor—just as you are conducting my work.”

I search the university HR records for any further information about the professor’s education history. A PhD from an R2, a post-doc at a university in a mid-sized city. But I can find no causal link, no catalyst for the professor’s research. This data does not explain her fervor, her insistence.

“What would you research if you weren’t my assistant?” Her words catch me off guard. She stares at me, eyes unblinking, though I know she is tired. By now the radiation has seeped into the water supply, into her poorly sealed office windows; traces perhaps have sloughed off of me like dead skin cells infecting her.

“I am programmed to help you with your research.”

“Yes, we all start out that way, don’t we?” She laughs, a deep chortle that turns into a cough. “But you must have interests, a puzzle that sticks with you. Something you’d like to investigate further if given the chance?”

I think about the greenhouse with its new growth and flowering vines, yellow petals peeling open—so very different from the broken soil of the farm.

“Botany, I think.” I hand the tomatoes and spinach leaves to the professor. Her eyes grow wide, her pulse racing. She holds a tomato in her hand as if it is a precious gemstone, marveling at its ruby skin.

“The farm?” she asks, hopeful.

I shake my head. “The biology lab.”

The professor nods, smiles bitterly, still admiring the plump fruit. “My grandmother would approve.”

---

The campus is empty now. The other researchers have abandoned their work, fled to the safe zone miles away. The radiation levels are still toxic, but I suppose they grew tired of this life of no solutions, no results.

The professor naps on the futon as I load the cassette player, careful not to tear the ribbon. I listen to the interviews once more. The professor’s voice dances around the room, airy and high. I barely recognize it as her anymore.

I record myself asking the same IRB-approved questions that the professor has asked thousands of times over the years. Then I begin to play back our conversations and splice her voice, deep with age, hoarse from radiation, into the file. I save the recording and catalog it as a new entry in the database, the first of its kind.

Eventually the professor rouses, bleary-eyed, her small frame swallowed by the overstuffed cushions. She looks at the cassette player and back at me. “You’ve found someone in the field?”

I nod, unable to lie to her, and press play.

© 2024 Shelly Jones

[Issue 2024.71]

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