A Large Anthology of Science Fiction

by Jerry

  “I don’t want to do anything,” I said. “Except get stoned again.”

  Cindy picks up her towel and holds it up to her chest, barely covering herself. She starts out of the bathroom but then turns back to her reflection.

  “Let’s hit the road.” I say.

  Cindy doesn’t stop staring but just nods at herself.

  “Let’s get going.”

  “You know . . .” Cindy says, “I can’t stand myself like this.”

  Coming Down

  “Hi,” Mrs. Smith said. She pushed open the plywood door and stood in the frame, blocking my path and exhibiting herself for my appraisal. She was wearing a peach colored silk robe that stopped at her thigh. “You came,” she said.

  “Yeah.” I wasn’t sure what I was affirming. “Let me in.”

  She moved aside, just enough for me to squeeze by, and I staggered into the darkness of the apartment.

  The only source of illumination was a spotlight aimed at the center of the room. A metal folding chair had been set in the beam, and Mrs. Smith went to it and sat down.

  “They’re filming us now. They keep demanding more details,” she said. “Have your eyes adjusted yet? Can you see the camera?”

  I could. There was a vague triangle in the corner, and a blinking red light.

  “I keep it dark so they won’t see me,” Mrs. Smith said. She opened her peach colored robe and pulled my prescription bottle from her inside pocket.

  She shook one of my pills into her hand, broke open a capsule and took a taste of the drug. “My husband is a good man, but he does what he’s told. He does whatever the Brotherhood tells him. They say stop taking pills, so he does. They say they want to record us, to videotape everything, and he lets them. Of course he let’s them. What else can he do?”

  “Give me my pills,” I said.

  “They won’t help. You’re off the routine; the pills won’t work fast enough. But, I’ve got some smoke. Why don’t you do some smoke and calm down?”

  I sat next to her, on the floor, and she produced a paper package from her robe. She sprinkled green leaves onto a rolling paper and twisted it into shape for me.

  “Hold it in your lungs,” she said.

  I took one drag after another, and the symptoms of my withdrawal intensified. I leaned back, letting my head rest on the metal seat of the chair, and watched the purple fog above my head.

  “I’m withdrawing,” I said.

  “Look at this,” Mrs. Smith said.

  I opened my eyes, adjusted myself into a more upright position.

  And then Mrs. Smith handed me a microwave oven. A neon colored, bright orange, microwave oven.

  “What’s this for?” I asked.

  “Just keep your eye on it.”

  The incongruity of the major appliance went beyond its unexpectedness; something about the microwave was wrong. I couldn’t quite believe that it was really there, that such a microwave oven could even exist.

  “What’s wrong with it? There’s something wrong with it, but I don’t know what it is.”

  “Open it,” Mrs. Smith suggested.

  Inside, sitting on the rotating glass plate, was a smaller microwave oven—an older model. The older microwave had only a single dial. And, as I sat and watched, this older microwave grew. It grew until it filled the inside, it grew until the outer microwave started to groan from the pressure.

  “Keep your eyes open,” Mrs. Smith said.

  The outer oven gave way, it cracked along the corners, and the black box inside emerged.

  “What?” I asked as a trickle of orange plastic flowed onto my hands, into my lap. The inner microwave replaced the outer facade; all that was left of the newer model was a pool of melted orange plastic.

  Mrs. Smith plugged the black microwave into the wall, and dropped a plastic grocery bag into my lap. Inside the bag was a Swanson’s TV dinner.

  “Let’s see if it will cook,” she said.

  I tossed the TV dinner inside and without setting the temperature, without the option of setting anything, I pressed the start button. We watched as the cardboard package spun around and around.

  “It still works,” I said.

  “Yes.” She pressed the release button and the microwave popped open, and then she peeled back the paper lid of the TV dinner. Steam wafted up and the brown goo inside was bubbling.

  Can’t Drive 55

  The future is a hallucination. I see it shimmering across the horizon, a city of cylinders and squares, and I’m amazed at how it floats. The future is unreal; it’s red and green, like Christmas.

  The Yugo has a television screen where there once was a speedometer, and there is a jet stream where the exhaust pipe used to be.

  “We’re flying,” Cindy says. She’s strapped in next to me, wearing a spacesuit and talking through a small slit in her helmet. “Flying.”

  The future is a hallucination, a joke, but I press down on the gas anyway. I want to reach this glimmering city on a hill before it fades into the ether, before it reverts back.

  The Pink Powder of Oprah Winfrey

  I broke into Cindy’s apartment, my old apartment. Slipping a credit card between the door and the frame I was in, and the first thing I did was head to the bathroom, to the medicine cabinet. I scanned the dozens of bottles inside; brown vials full of little pink pills. I read the labels, starting at the top there was Aging, Continuity, Memory, and so on . . .

  On the bottom shelf, the labels were more specific: The Internet, Beanie Babies, The Clinton Administration, Howard Stern . . .

  I took “Desert Storm” and “Generation X” from the bottom row and read the fine print. I was supposed to take these pills twice a month, on an empty stomach. I grabbed another bottle, one called “Oprah Winfrey,” and pressed down on the childproof top.

  I pulled the gelatin shells apart, and considered the powder. I licked the tip of my index finger, and took a taste.

  “Today we’re going to talk to the parents of kids who can remember their past lives,” the television blared from the living room. I closed the medicine cabinet and went to see what was on.

  A thin Oprah Winfrey walked the steps up into the audience. “These children can remember family and friends from a time before they were born.”

  I approached the set and turned it off but Oprah kept talking. I grabbed the electric cord, yanked it hard, and found that the television wasn’t even plugged in.

  “You go girl!” the television blared, and then shut off abruptly. I took another taste of the pink.

  “It’s me . . .” Oprah told a child in a bodycast. She was standing over him in his hospital room, and his mother wept as Oprah shook the boy’s fingers, the only part of his body that wasn’t sheathed in plaster. “It’s me . . . Oprah.”

  I walked to the bathroom and washed Ms. Winfrey off my hands; I turned the bottle upside down over the toilet.

  The capsules floated in the blue water; they bobbed up and down inside the bowl for a long time before I gathered up the nerve to flush.

  Withdrawal, Pop Music

  There was a specter haunting the end of the twentieth century, a specter that I’d always known but couldn’t name. But, once I flushed Oprah Winfrey, suddenly I knew the words. I watched pink powder swirl in the toilet, listened to the sucking sound, and remembered the lyrics to every Top Forty pop song released between 1980 and 1984: Purple Rain, Too Shy, Stray Cats Strut, the Safety Dance, Melt with You, Hello, Cars, Down Under, 99 Luftballons . . .

  Every single scrap of Pop Music including Pop Muzik was playing across my brain, and it all made sense.

  Video killed more than the radio star, I realized. I wanted a new drug, but had to whip it. Someone was watching me, and they’d blinded me with science.

  I sat down on the tiled floor, and tried to clear my head of the politics of dancing.

  “Just say no,” I told myself. “Just say no.”

  Slowly, and amidst a cacophony of inner pop, I cleared my medicine cab
inet. One by one I dumped the contents of the brown bottles into the toilet, and flushed.

  “I’m still standing,” I said, staring into the mirror and trying to recognize the face that stared back at me. It was a young face, unmarked by time. I was changing, like a microwave oven, but I kept going, kept flushing. “Let’s go crazy,” I told the young man that looked back at me from the mirror. “Burning down the house.”

  Driving Since the Seventies?

  “I think time must have stopped before we were born,” I say.

  “Oh, gag. Spare me.” Cindy rolls down the passenger window and flicks her ash. She’s smoking cigarettes, even though she doesn’t . . . didn’t used to, or isn’t going to, smoke.

  “How do I look?” Cindy asks. She pulls up the bottom of her shirt and ties a knot under her breasts, and I find that I’ve got another erection. I wish that I’d grabbed her when I’d had my chance in the motel.

  “You look good,” I said. “Sexy.”

  “Thanks.” She takes another hit off the cigarette and leans back, resting her elbow half out the window.

  “But you’re not listening,” I said. “This static feeling has been going on for a long time. Since the seventies for sure.”

  “Whatever,” Cindy says.

  Orange Powder and Ronald Reagan

  I made myself dinner, boxed macaroni and cheese, and watched Big Bird on television as I waited for Cindy to come home from work. I watched Sesame Street because the cable wasn’t connected anymore.

  “This is the year 1980. You’re in the wrong time,” Big Bird said.

  “I’m cursed. I can’t return to my own time, to my mother and father, to my Egypt, until the curse is lifted,” some kid pharaoh explained.

  It was a rerun. It was the episode where Big Bird gets lost in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

  I stirred orange powder and margarine into the noodles and sat down in front of the television set. Was the apartment regressing? It was impossible to tell, everything Cindy and I had was old to begin with.

  “Will you help me solve the riddle?” the prince asked.

  I was afraid to eat my dinner. I read the list of ingredients on the back of the box, and worried that the orange powder might have gone bad.

  After Sesame Street and the pledge break I switched over to NBC. The network didn’t come in perfectly, but after adjusting the antenna I could just make out what it was I was seeing.

  The presidential debates were on. Walter Mondale and Ronald Reagan were going to have it out on taxes, defense spending, and the death penalty. I watched the fuzz build up on the screen, the reception wavering, and waited for the candidates to be announced.

  The front door creaked open and I could hear the sound of Cindy’s keys jangling as she put them down on the front table.

  “Hello?” she asked as she stood in the front hall. “Who’s there?”

  “I’m watching television,” I said.

  Cindy didn’t take off her raincoat but stepped into the front room, dripping onto the hard wood floor. She unzipped her coat, and I could see that she was dressed in her usual khaki skirt and green turtle neck, but she looked odd. She looked false, too young for her outfit.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked.

  “I told you. I’m watching tv.”

  Ronald Reagan ambled up to his podium, smiled at the audience, and flipped through his notes. Walter Mondale’s podium remained vacant.

  “Well, I’m glad you asked that,” Reagan said. Nobody had asked a question yet, and Mondale’s podium was still empty.

  “There you go again . . .”

  “Mr. President,” one of the journalists on the panel interrupted. “Mr. President.”

  “I refuse to make age an issue in this campaign,” Ronald Reagan said. “I don’t want to take unfair advantage of my opponents youth and inexperience.”

  “Mr. President, the opponent has not . . . Mr. Mondale has not arrived.”

  “Well, I . . .”

  Cindy stood in front of the television screen, waving her hands in front of my face and unzipping her raincoat, she was insistent. “What do you want?”

  “Well, I . . .” Ronald Reagan said.

  Cindy turned off the television and crossed her arms. “What are you doing here?”

  “I have something . . .” I started.

  Cindy brushed her fingers through her damp hair and sighed a put upon sigh.

  “I have something to show you.”

  Ms. Pac Man and the Men In Black

  It only took a few hours for Cindy to come down. She’d been skipping her medication, forgetting her schedule, for days already. She told me how much I’d hurt her, told me that she wasn’t sure she wanted to see me anymore. I agreed with everything she said, but I didn’t leave. I told her I wanted to talk it out, and I waited for the drugs to wear off.

  Without drugs Portland was different. The light rail system was gone, and instead of Starbucks, Blockbuster, and the Gap, there was a record shop, a sports bar and a 7-11. And nobody looked right, everyone had big hair.

  Cindy started to get dizzy, she saw streaks of color. She said she wanted something cold to drink.

  “Do I want a slurpee?” Cindy asked. “Yes. I want a slurpee.”

  An electric chime sounded as we entered the convenience store.

  “Do you have an espresso machine?” I asked the clerk.

  “No.”

  “Not a real espresso machine, but one of those automatic jobs with the stale coffee and the chemicals? You know, one of those cappuccino machines?” I asked.

  “Are you on drugs?” the kid asked, quite seriously.

  “See anything different?” I asked Cindy. “Anything seem strange?”

  “I want a slurpee,” Cindy said.

  There were two video games in the far corner, Donkey Kong and Ms. Pac Man. Two men in business suits were hunched over the controls.

  “Are you on drugs?” the kid behind the counter asked. “Are you voters?”

  “One slurpee, please.”

  “Get it yourself,” the kid said.

  I went to the back of the store, and while I filled a paper cup with red slush I watched the video game screens. Pixels of light dashing around. I closed my eyes and listened to the repetitive music and bonking noises.

  “What’s up, Mister?” one of the men asked. He’d stopped playing and was coming my way. He was about six feet tall and he wore a black suit, a silver badge, and almost no expression. “You okay?”

  A pink ghost devoured Ms. Pac Man and the game ended.

  “How’s your girlfriend? She feeling a little woozy?” the man asked.

  “She’ll be all right.”

  But they didn’t let it alone. The man playing Donkey Kong stopped. He stepped back from his machine.

  “You know what time it is?” the Donkey Kong player asked.

  “It’s a little after ten.”

  “What year is it?” the Ms. Pac Man player asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  The Ms. Pac Man player grabbed my elbows and pulled my arms behind my back. He spun me around and forced my face down, onto the glass surface of the video game maze. The top players’ initials flashed across my cheek. FUC, BLT, and CDL held the high scores.

  “Take a guess.”

  “I’d say maybe 1983 or ’84,” I said.

  “I’ll get the girl,” the Donkey Kong player said.

  The Ms. Pac Man agent slammed my face against the glass again, and I was afraid the screen would break, but then he pulled me up and looked me in the eyes.

  “You stopped taking your medicine, didn’t you?” the Donkey Kong man asked Cindy as he pulled her over, sent her sprawling against the slurpee machine.

  “You need to start over,” the Ms. Pac Man agent said. He grabbed my arm and tore my shirt sleeve open.

  He held the syringe up in front of me, showed me the symbol printed on the side. The Starbuck’s mermaid smiled from the needle.

 
“You said before that you wanted some espresso,” the Donkey Kong man asked.

  “No,” I said. “Not really.”

  “That’s what you said.”

  “I’ll have an iced latte,” Cindy said. Her eyes were dull, unfocused. “Or a slurpee?”

  “Just sit down and the barista will make you a grande iced latte,” the Ms. Pac Man agent said. And he plunged the needle into my arm.

  I sat down on the tile floor and listened to the sounds from the games: I heard Donkey Kong shake the rafters. I heard Ms. Pac Man as she consumed the dots.

  A Cup of Coffee and the Morning Paper

  I came back to consciousness in midstream, chewing a stale scone and then washing it down with a double mocha. What year was it? The air conditioning and natural lighting confused me as I looked around for some sort of clue. It looked like it was morning already.

  “When is it?” I asked.

  “What?” Cindy asked. She was sipping an iced latte and tearing a paper napkin into little bits.

  I went to the counter, to the newspaper rack, and bought a copy of USA Today. It was dated January 23rd, 2000, but the front page photograph was of Ronald Reagan. “His legacy lives on in campaign 2000,” the caption read.

  I used my visa card, signed my name on the dotted line.

  What year was it? It was impossible to tell. USA Today reported corporate mergers and the deregulation of television and quotes from the campaign trail, but it didn’t mention whether Donald Duck was seventy or eighty-six. Madonna was making a movie, the Backstreet Boys were at the top of the charts, and George Bush was not going to apologize even though he was very sorry.

  I flipped through the paper and drank my mocha, but the news didn’t help me decide anything.

  “I’m thirsty,” Cindy said.

  The Crater

  My apartment building was gone, the whole street was missing. Instead there was a giant crater and a few shards of glass. Even the foundation was gone.

  “What year are we in?” I asked.

  “This is where you live?”

  “There was a building,” I said.

  “It’s two thousand and something,” Cindy said.