Uma Hawkins turned instinctively to the right, clearly the public space of tourist class, gesturing for Anye Se to stay close to her as they found their seats. She paused momentarily, wondering at the dull, nearly concussive thud, a sound alive deep in her inner ear, but then remembered they were close to the harbor and reasoned the sound was simply one of the enormous tugs or freighters sounding, a horn or asking a bridge to open and make way for its imminent passing.

Awkwardly she and Anye Se walked sideways down the aisle, searching for their seats.

Stowing her briefcase in the overhead, she saw, beneath the cuff of her white blouse, the summer’s tan of her wrist broken by the curious pale and now pained recollection of the missing bracelet which had for so many years graced that spot.

‘Don’t anguish for loss,’ she thought reminding herself not to worry about the bracelet. ‘Someone,’ she hoped, a child repeating her catechism, ‘will surely find it,’ and she realized, snapping shut the overhead, ‘she had never really reckoned with absolute, irreconcilable loss.’

She struggled to put that and all the images of people clamoring for attention out of her thoughts. The frown crossing her face, creasing her forehead, did not detract from her simple loveliness. She obliged her thoughts to narrow, as the space before her and Anye Se seemed to shrink.

The congressional hearings they would attend, she knew, would be important. Now was time to think about the task at hand. She left off thinking of the FCC, corporate interests, the public trust, all of the issues so important in the conscious world of responsibility, liability, honor, and due process.

They located their seats, joining an elderly man already comfortable and peering out the window. She and Anye Se settled in, as did the other passengers, waiting, as the scheduled time for take-off approached.

The plane, disconnected from the terminal and turned, seemed, in its lurching but recognizable journey, stopped. The time for take off passed, yet the plane, stilled in its resting place, bore none of the usual signs of an imminent departure.

After a delay sufficiently long to persuade Uma to reach above her, re-open her brief and resume study of the annotated pages, she then placed her leather valise, empty now, into the overhead compartment. Bent over her work, penciling in notes, correcting small errors, a last chance before arriving at the Federal Communications Commission; she glanced at Anye Se and, satisfied she was not put off by her neglect, carried on.

She recollected where they had left off yesterday and why indeed they had been obliged to go to Washington at all.

…………

“Your Honor,” Uma Hawkins said gracefully, “that is exactly the point.”

The assemblage before and all around Uma looked more like a sit-in at a peace protest rally in the sixties, a quiet if somewhat chaotic and disorganized gathering of a hundred different stripes of the local populace, all wanting not only to make a statement for themselves, but even moreso to be present, to see the event and perhaps articulate some support for their midnight host, Steven Dunifer.

“A child does not have to be paying attention, Your Honor, and just as we acquire language he or she will absorb the visual and auditory information the media promulgates.” In the midst of the scuffling and sub rosa noises of a large crowd, well behaved but clearly not all accustomed to the near funereal quiet of an appellate hearing room, many eyes turned to the judge.

“So how, counselor,” the judge queried, “does that impact these hearings?”

Uma Hawkins was quick to rejoin. “Your Honor, that is exactly the point. Because, Your Honor, if a child will absorb anything it is given, as water will taste much like anything that pollutes it, it is our responsibility, truly it is every-one’s responsibility, especially the broadcasters, those who deliver information, to be held to the highest standard. They have ‘in situ’ standing as parents, ‘in loco parentis,’ your honor, a position reserved forever, through common law and case law for the courts, and by the courts alone, but most certainly the broadcasters and technology production companies who make cell phones or wireless devices.”

“But counselor,” the justice was quick to reply, “I fail to see how this is a responsibility of the broadcasters and especially of the technology providers. The natural conclusion to that line of argument would be that even adults in some circumstances are not responsible, do not pay attention, are simply not mindful of what they hear or what the broadcasters say.”

Uma was stunned at the apparent and utter simplicity of the truth.

“With all due respect, Your Honor, fundamentally and in a cultural and technological vacuum you are absolutely correct. But our world has shrunken and the broadcasters do not live in different geographic regions where mail takes three weeks to deliver and cultural twangs and colloquialisms are dispositive of someone’s ethnic heritage anymore. We exchange information in seconds. With the click of a mouse a child in Nome, Alaska or an Athabascan Indian in Colorado will learn about the violence in the streets of Chicago or the bombing of the USS Cole within five seconds of the rest of the world. In this age everything matters, Your Honor, and, though not the proximate cause of the facts of the news, the very power of the modality now makes the broadcasters broadcasting an element of the news. It’s a force of the facts of change for good or bad. And if every time you use your cell phone the ring-tone is the MacDonalds theme song, or the service is free because every time you open the phone the first text message says, ”Don’t forget your latte,” or “Campbell’s, um-um good,” how can anyone be strong or independent enough to resist the insidious nature of such a bombardment. We all have to agree,” Uma Hawkins said, “whichever side of the bar we sit on, knowledge is power.”

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