Future Imperfect
Norman S. Giddan, Ph.D.

THE BOOK

Doc and Angie are recently married psychologists in their mid-twenties at Stanhope College in 1970. Doc, committed to helping college students, finds himself enmeshed in the conflicts of the radical era on campus. He raises bail money for those arrested in protests, risks his career by avoiding the requests of government agents for information about student leader David Haley, and provides assistance to students and fellow faculty members during encounter groups. Doc's wife treats families and single parents, but appears to have some suspicious psychic powers, is often correct about future events, and spends time with Tarot cards, candles, and interpreting an individual's auras.

Doc's confidant is Dr. Tony Scarfelli, a brilliant professor of genetics whose professional ego is as inflated as his capacity for intimate relationships with women is limited. Doc complains frequently to Tony about Angie's preoccupations, which annoy and embarrass him, but which he feels are eerily tied to good things happening for him professionally, with negative experiences in store for his enemies or opponents.

Angie and Doc fail to conceive a child, something that Doc appears to want more than Angie. In fact, Angie refuses to consider an excellent opportunity to adopt a young girl during a vacation in Barcelona. Doc seeks solace and medication for his problems from the university psychiatrist, Dr. Pillsley.

Next, the story moves to 1980 with a different emphasis in campus life. Radicalism and the hippie influence have been replaced with issues concerning minorities and access to education and good jobs. LaToya McClain, a minority freshman from a ghetto environment, is Doc's mentee. Her pregnancy and unsuccessful suicide attempt disturb Doc, who is already embroiled in committee work and federal grant preparation for minority services. A series of circumstances cause his efforts to backfire, and forces within the college conspire to prevent him from a promotion and a key role in the new minority student services. He is defended by a young attorney, David Haley, the student radical leader befriended by Doc and Angie during the early 1970's.

Angie's role is called into question over several incidents, primarily a scene in their attic where Doc discovers a letter indicating he is descended from a slave woman. He suspects Angie of setting up the discovery and doesn't believe it. Increasingly, he is mystified and distrustful of Angie's behavior, but does nothing more than complain to Tony and his psychiatrist. In essence, both tell him to stop whining, that he's got a great wife. Tony and Doc continue to debate the causes and consequences of their disappointment with the current crop of college students. They assume that social, political and historical factors are the root causes, with technology near the top of the list, for so much conformity. Even more attention is paid to the breakdown in Angie's behavior. She briefly abducts an infant from her clinic and then returns it. The child, ironically, was the product of Tony's one-night stand with a student. Conflict between Doc and Tony intensifies over the latter's behavior with women. Doc continues both to brood and obsess about his life with Angie and to receive medication from his psychiatrist.

As we enter the 1990's, both Doc and Tony are involved in productive relationships with Brad and Barb, highly individualistic graduate students in genetics. Doc and Tony host a week-end survival experience for ten undergraduates, who have to live on the beach without their electronic gadgetry and other high tech toys. The students leave the experiment en masse, though they had begun the event successfully. Still childless, Doc and Angie, along with Tony, visit a commune and to their surprise, all help Barb and Brad give birth to their daughter, Hope.

Guilt over her lack of fertility is the final trigger leading Angie to confess she's a half-alien scout from the planet Gen. She has a long story of how she was raised as an alien, has been unable to conceive a child on earth yet, felt guilty and ashamed for covering up her time identity. Doc is floored, hurt and angry, while Tony believes her story that the earth's water supply has been poisoned to affect the DNA of all newborns after 1965. Angie insists that all children, adolescents, and young adults are at the peril of control by alien forces due to genetic manipulations. Tony's own research parallels Angie's description of the knowledge and influence of her alien planet. Doc prefers to believe Angie's mentally ill, a view shared by Dr. Pillsley, who hospitalizes and medicates her for paranoid schizophrenia. Angie tells a far-fetched story of abduction into a space ship by the President of Gen, but Doc thinks she's experiencing delusions and hallucinations.

Due to Doc's run-ins with minority faculty over the leadership of the new services for minority students, and Angie's bizarre behavior, Doc and Angie are asked to leave campus. An outpouring of love and respect occurs at a farewell party, with Angie's symptoms in remission, yet her story believed wholeheartedly by Tony. He claims to have an antidote or vaccine for the influence of DNA by those from Angie's world. Doc and Angie are united in their plan to travel to Europe as part of a new life after they leave Stanhope College.

At its most transcendent level, this is a story of the struggle for control and influence over the development of children and youth. Doc had assumed that social and cultural forces were paramount, especially with respect to conformity, while Tony's research and Angie's alien diatribe emphasized genetics and DNA effects. Two parallel paradigms, one human and the other alien, move in the same causal direction, yet ultimately clash head-on. Changes in the preoccupation and increasingly similar behavior and attitudes of collegians are mirrored by the difficulties and disturbances which characterize Doc and Angie as individuals, their marriage and their relationship to Tony. Students move from activists to careerists to conformists over a twenty year span, while Angie has a psychotic break and Doc is treated for chronic depression and anxiety.

Excerpt

The bright overhead sun played through the trees. Silvery streaks of light flashed through the golden shadows, momentary bright glints that caught my attention. "Couldn't be lightning?" I said.

Angie replied, "No, it's…" She stopped short. Then she added, "I mean, yes it is. I guess it is."

Tony was sarcastic. "Or, is it a spaceship? Maybe there really are UFOs or spaceships from other planets." He couldn't keep his mouth shut, even at a time like this.

It took all my courage, but I asked, "Angie, did you know things would end up like this? Your Tarot cards, the candles, the auras, the crystal - you knew, didn't you?"

She paused and looked to the heavens. "Yes." She sighed heavily.

I said, "Are you god-damn crazy?"

Tony asked her, "Are you more than a psychic? Do you have supernatural powers?"

"Yes," she said. She maintained her composure. Her face was open, but worried, narrowed eyes looked directly at Tony. "Our people never launch a big war or violent attack, not like the old movies at all." Then Angie hugged and tried to kiss me.

I backed away. "My mind is racing. I'm overwhelmed. Where do I begin? You've been my wife. You never told me. I'd walk out if I were twenty-five again. Do you think you made this all happen? What in the hell are you talking about?" Another part of my mind thought the unthinkable--a lot of things began to make sense.

"I could see it. I knew it. I was put here to monitor our lives, my dear, to keep things on track so to speak. Our kind decided to go slowly. Our president is very patient. It's taken decades. I know it's hard to believe, so hard to accept."

Tony asked, more tentatively now, "You are human, aren't you?"

"Of course, I am. At least half of me is. You can pinch me. I feel, I cry, I love. But part of me is something else. It must be obvious to you both now that I could never have a normal child on Earth. I've wanted to explain a million times. I hated lying to you, Doc, even if it was a sin of omission. At last, I can tell the truth."

I closed my eyes. I paced furiously then sat down again. I couldn't think clearly. Were all of our years together a lie, a cruel joke? She wasn't my wife. I had a fleeting impulse to push her off the planet. My wife was a raving lunatic.

"Oh, my God. Is it like my work with DNA?" Tony asked, twirling his mustache furiously.

"We're ahead of you, Tony, but that's exactly what it is. Non-parent DNA is used to alter infant human embryos any way we want. Then through that process, individual children and youth become one of us and loyal to us. There are many of our advanced scouts and space stations in other galaxies also undetected by humans. I'm part of the advance team of explorers, kind of an astronaut who came to live here. We will ultimately take over. It will be good for all of us. The worlds in space will be united. We will all be one. Infinity will no longer be feared. Eternity is ours. The future is ours." She paused, gazed at me, then at Tony, raised her arms into an arc. "Well, it's yours, too."

Now Angie lowered her head slowly onto the table, wrapping her arms around it as a shield. She cried softly, gentle sobs barely noticeable to us. "I felt so horribly guilty when Hope was born, Doc. I knew that's all you've wanted these years--our own child. It's worse too somehow, Tony, because I know you want a family. I've lied and covered up, never told the truth. I've wanted a child, too, more than you know." Angie's heaving chest was now punctuated by her wildly flailing arms. She bolted upright suddenly and screamed, "I had no fucking choice! I am what I am. Damn it!"

I was tearful, flushed. "I don't believe a word of it. Well, I do believe the guilt. I should feel even more than I do. I should be horribly angry. If I believed it, I'd feel betrayed. No real truth from my wife. What a joke." Was there a hole I could put these bones in? The world had finally broken my heart.

She wiped my eyes with a tissue. We sat down on the bench side by side. She held my hand. I wanted to pull it away. She said, "I know. I've always loved you. I still do. You know that."

"There are so many questions. You said you had no family, they were gone, and we had none." Tears ran down my cheeks.

Future Imperfect is the third and final installment in the trilogy which includes Wild Orchards and Two Sweeties. Each novel is concerned with a different period of life, disturbed adolescents acting-out in a group home, elderly women surviving long-term care, and the increasing conformity among college students since 1970. One unifying theme highlights the joys and frustrations of the "helping relationship," as psychologist Doc intervenes with varying degrees of success in the lives of his patients and clients. His personal and professional struggles mirror the often tortured lives of those whose conflicts he treats.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I am indebted to two outstanding professional staff at the Medical College of Ohio, Jack Meade and Roy Schneider, who were instrumental in preparing the cover art and photo.

Professor Al Cain, former chair of the Department of Psychology at the University of Michigan, read and re-read early drafts before providing gentle, insightful, yet brutally honest critiques.

Ms. Susan Malone, a novelist and professional editor from Ennis, Texas is nothing short of a "psychoanalyst" of editorial advice. She understood what I was trying to do and say well before I did, and then made me think it was all my idea. I thank both Al and Susan for their extraordinary help.

Sincere gratitude is deserved by Ms. Kathy Woeller, who prepared the manuscript, somehow able to decipher my chicken-scratches on lined yellow tablets.

To Jane, whose encouragement and support made it all happen. I send love and thanks. She doesn't require a N.Y. Times bestseller!

THE AUTHOR

Norman S. Giddan, Ph.D., a former university administrator, is a clinical psychologist and psychotherapist. A retired clinical professor of psychiatry at the Medical College of Ohio, he has written or edited seven nonfiction books on psychological development and treatment. Educated at Michigan, Illinois and Stanford, he is married with two adult children and three grandchildren. He has traveled primarily in western and southern Europe, North America, and the Caribbean. Dr. Giddan has written three novels. Two Sweeties, originally published in 1999 by Authorlink Press, was a finalist for the Ariadne Prize. Wild Orchards, published in 2000 by Denlinger's Publishers, Ltd., received a certificate of merit from the Opus Magnum Discovery Awards, and was the subject of the screenplay Disorder recently completed by Hollywood writer-director Jeffrey Bloom. The latest novel, Future Imperfect, marks the final installment in a life-span trilogy, with stories of nursing home patients, disturbed adolescents, and current college students.