The most astonishing thing to David about the whole system, however, was the treadpad. He looked down at it now, where it sat slightly elevated above the basement floor. It was a circular, black rubber platform, about six feet in diameter. It functioned like a treadmill—except that it could carry the gamer in any direction. One moment the gamer could walk forward, and the tread beneath him would move with his feet so that he had the experience of taking steps without actually covering ground. And then, if he wanted to change directions, he had only to do so, literally, and the direction of the tread would shift with him. He could walk—or even run or jump—in any direction and never actually step off the pad. And of course—this had been a major concern for Lila—the treadpad included straps just like any treadmill at the gym, to keep the user from flying off when it was moving at high speed.
Absent mindedly, David picked the VR headset up from the coffee table and turned it over in his hands. For a moment, he thought of the many hours he had sunk into video games when he was a college student—and even, embarrassingly, a twenty-something procrastinating on finishing his accounting certificate. Those were the days of the old Nintendo and Sega consoles. David grinned to himself. He had thought those pixilated two-dimensional games were extraordinarily advanced. Zelda . . . Commando . . . Super Mario Brothers.
And now he was holding in his hands a portal to another world. He could never have imagined such a thing then.
David glanced around the room. Absolutely no sign of Malcolm. He felt a quick tug of annoyance. Where could his son have gone off to? David carried a nagging insecurity that Malcolm resented their weekends together. He was usually able to brush this aside; after all, Malcolm was an eighteen-year-old young man, preoccupied with his last summer before college. Of course he wasn’t necessarily itching to hang out with his old man.
But it did bother David. He felt a growing distance from Malcolm. And he had to admit that he was terrified at the prospect of his son going off to college. How would he and Lila handle seeing Malcolm now that he was an adult and off on his own? He’d only get a few weeks off during the school year here and there, and technically, the custody agreement was meaningless now that Malcolm was a legal adult. David was worried that his son would slip away from him.
And now here he was to pick Malcolm up for one of their rare weekends together, and Malcolm was nowhere to be found. What was he supposed to take from that?
He looked at the headset in his hands again. A mild curiosity played at the edge of his consciousness. Malcolm had probably slipped out to play a quick game of basketball with the Wilder twins who lived at the end of the block. He’d be back any minute and the two of them would get out of here. What if, on the drive back to David’s condo, they could actually connect over Malcolm’s interest? What if David knew a bit more about this VR contraption and had some worthwhile questions to ask about it?
Impulsively, David stepped onto the treadpad and hooked its straps to his belt. He slipped the gloves over his hands. And finally, he pulled the headset over his eyes.
For a moment, David thought he hadn’t put the goggles on correctly. He was still in Lila’s basement, looking at the same dilapidated couch and shabby rug. He took a few steps forward toward the far wall. He could see in fine detail the gloss finish of the paint.
“I put the goggles on wrong,” David thought. “It’s not working.”
On an impulse, he reached out a hand and passed his fingertips over the surface of the wall. It was smooth to the touch . . . but his fingers were encased in the ribbed metal gloves.
David stepped back abruptly. The VR was working. He was experiencing the same room he had just been in . . . but through the electronic landscape of the headset, gloves, and treadpad.
David’s heart quickened.
“Incredible,” he thought.
He didn’t know what he had expected. Pixilation? Glitches in the graphics? This felt exactly like reality . . . but it wasn’t. It was virtual.
David turned in a slow circle, the treadpad moving undetectably beneath him, taking in the whole room. It was definitely Lila’s basement; and yet, there was something unfamiliar about it. It seemed brighter somehow. He looked around for the old floor lamps he had brought from his bachelor pad when he and Lila were first married—and didn’t see them anywhere. What was lighting the room?
Slowly, David’s gaze traveled up to the ceiling. There were several recessed columns of light, built into the ceiling itself. Those definitely hadn’t been there when he had come down to the basement only five minutes ago. In fact, Malcolm would have mentioned if Lila had had work done on the basement, especially something as involved as a new lighting system.
And now that David was taking a closer look . . . these lights weren’t like anything he’d ever seen before—not just at Lila’s house, but anywhere. They were round tubes, reminiscent of fluorescent lights, but softer and narrower.
Out of curiosity, David let his gaze fall from the lights to the place on the wall at the foot of the stairs where he knew the light switch was. There was no light switch there.
Instead, there was a gray panel with several small knobs, each glowing with a faint greenish light at its center. David took a slow step toward the panel, and then stopped abruptly.
He was definitely not in Lila’s basement.
And yet everything around him was so convincingly real.
In one smooth, quick motion, David pulled the goggles off.
And now he was standing in Lila’s basement.
He looked up at the ceiling. No lights. Just white paint, peeling faintly in the corners.
At the far ends of the room stood the two floor lamps he knew so well.
And there, on the wall by the foot of the stairs, was a plain, everyday light switch.
A little thrill of excitement thrummed through David. It was the same rush he’d gotten the first time he’d booted up Zelda and had begun to guide Link across the screen.
Grinning sheepishly, feeling almost embarrassed by his boyish enthusiasm, David put the headset back on.
This time, he moved swiftly and purposefully. He walked in a broad circle around the perimeter of the room. He ran his hand along the glossy surface of the wall again. He walked to the strange panel of knobs on the wall and turned one, then the other. The lights brightened and dimmed.
Then, out of sheer curiosity, David started up the stairs.
In the living room, David had the same feeling of déjà vu that he had experienced in the basement. This was Lila’s house—but not Lila’s house. The same odd and strangely beautiful recessed lighting was in the ceiling here, too. The furniture was different: lighter, newer. And curiously designed. It seemed indescribably modern. The arms of the couch were curved in graceful arcs; the coffee table was minimalist and yet constructed of a rich, dark, solid material. Like wood, but inorganic somehow. There were no familiar photos of Malcolm hanging on the walls; in their places were strange photographs. Or perhaps extraordinarily life-like paintings? They were serene landscapes that seemed much more finely detailed than any photograph David had ever seen before. One was a still, blue lake, so sharply defined that he felt as if he could reach out and dip his fingers into the water. The other was a mountain ridge, and David could see every needle on the pines that dotted the landscape.
David crossed the room, absently running his hand over the fine, yet sturdy furniture as he moved. Each texture was specific under the pads of his fingers. Everything felt stunningly real.
He pushed open the kitchen door and felt his breath catch.
Here, again, was the familiar layout of Lila’s kitchen. The bay windows on the far wall, the cooking island in the center of the large, square room. But the kitchen appliances were completely foreign to him. Where once there had been a wall of cabinetry, there was now a large, shining unit, constructed of the same inorganic material as the coffee table in the living room. It had a flat screen set in its center, and small doors running down its side. Its
surface was smooth and polished, no hint of an oven or range or any other familiar sign of cooking.
“What the hell does that do?” David said.
He peered at the place where the sink had always stood. There appeared to be a sink here, too—at least, there was a granite basin. But David honestly couldn’t tell where the water came from. There was a console above the basin on the wall, with various opaque buttons and switches.
He pressed a button at random.
A fountain of cool water bubbled up from the bottom of the basin.
He laughed to himself and ran his fingers through the water. They came away wet and glistening.
David suddenly felt an overwhelming urge to get his bearings. He wanted to understand where he was. He wanted to orient this house in space and time—to get outside.
With a burst of movement, David shut off the water, then pushed out through the kitchen door and headed down the front hall. He was vaguely aware of more photographs hanging on the wall on either side of him, the images so sharp and clear that it seemed they might draw David into their landscapes.
David threw open the front door and stepped outside. Then he paused, gaping.
He had walked into another world. He moved slowly down the front path to the driveway, as if in a dream. The layout of the street and the architecture of the homes were as they had always been . . . but everything else was new, unfamiliar, eerily gleaming in the early evening sunlight.
Even the ground beneath David’s feet was strange. He wasn’t walking on concrete or gravel or any other known form of pavement. In place of the stone slabs he had put down himself a decade ago, the path was constructed of some kind of corrugated metallic material. The driveway was more of the same, shining in the sunlight. And there was a vehicle parked on it, but it was not a car. It was a sleek, dark half-sphere, entirely symmetrical, with no appreciable front or back. It had no wheels or tires; instead, it rested directly on the metallic surface of the driveway. David could see no vents, no indication of where the engine might be or how exhaust might escape the system. There weren’t even any variations in the surface to indicate doors or windows, just that smooth, black material, the same all over.
David passed the vehicle in slow motion, staring, almost afraid to reach out and set a hand on it. At the foot of the driveway was a tubular structure, poking straight up out of the crisp, tightly mown lawn in the exact place where the mailbox used to stand. It had no opening that David could see; it was just a metal pole.
“Where do the letters go?” David wondered, childlike.
He continued down the street in a fog of amazement.
He and Lila had purchased the house just a few blocks from downtown Flint, because it was convenient both to Lila’s school district and David’s accounting office. Now, unconsciously, he found himself wandering toward the city center.
At first, he was so awe-struck by the curious material that formed the street and sidewalk surface under his feet, by the odd vehicles and the inexplicable mailboxes, that David kept his gaze low. But then, light reflecting off the tops of the houses around him forced his eyes upward.
The street was bordered on both sides by the houses that David knew so well. He could see the same Victorian and Edwardian architectural influences that were common in the older neighborhoods of Flint . . . except that in place of the tiled roofs, David saw shining, jet-black panels.
Could they be solar panels?
Had he stepped into a world where Flint, Michigan, of all the cities in America, was powered not by coal but by the sun?
Movement caught his eye, and he saw the telltale long, white blades of a wind turbine turning over the rooftops.
And that’s when David realized: there were no power lines. No wires whatsoever ran overhead. Here and there he saw large poles that appeared to be streetlights, although the bulbs were cone-shaped, delicate structures, unlike the glaring, sodium orange orbs he was used to. Other than these lamps, there was none of the usual power network—at least not that David could discern.
David quickened his pace. He suddenly felt an overwhelming urge to be downtown, to take in this new vision of Flint. What would it be like? What sorts of people lived here?
At that moment, a blast of wind struck him. He turned his head and caught a fleeting glimpse of one of the black semi-spherical vehicles passing on the street beside him. It moved in absolute silence, hovering a few feet above the roadway on nothing more than a cushion of air. And it was traveling at an impossible speed. In the instant that David registered its presence, it was already gone.
“Noted,” David thought to himself. “Stay safely on the sidewalk.”
A moment later, he had rounded the bend at the end of the neighborhood street, and he was downtown.
Suddenly, the sidewalk was teeming with humanity. Men and women passed him at a hurried clip, some deep in conversation with each other, and others seeming to be conversing with thin air. Clearly, they were using some kind of portable communication device, but David didn’t know what to look for to explain it. Could they have tiny, practically invisible earpieces? Or wearable devices, like watches or lapel pins? He couldn’t tell without staring blatantly.
And the clothing . . . Many of the women wore knee-length, light dresses in an asymmetrical style, their necklines plunging to sharp points below their left or right collarbones. The men wore something akin to suits, but their jackets were cut much shorter, falling just to their hipbones. And rather than long, wide lapels, most of the jackets had short, tabbed Mandarin collars. He saw no neckties. The colors were all muted and subdued, slate grays and blues so dark they were almost black.
But there was something else that arrested David’s eye as he watched the people milling about him. What was it? What was different here?
And then it struck him, all at once.
These people were of every hue on the planet. He saw in their faces shades of red-tinged mahogany, deep ebony, sand and parchment, pale peach . . . he saw features of every imaginable shape, from broad and flat to sharp and long. Almond eyes and round eyes and everything in between.
The Flint David knew was “diverse” as well, but it was a segregated diversity. Sure, the law books had championed integration long ago, but the stark color lines that defined the city’s neighborhoods reflected a different reality: people knew where they came from and where they belonged. In that Flint, Michigan, David’s tiny, Black-Jewish family was an anomaly. And in some contexts, a sore thumb.
Now, gazing at this roiling mass of undifferentiated humanity, David felt powerfully moved. What was this game that Malcolm was playing? Who had designed it? Unconsciously, David put out a hand and braced himself against the brick wall of a building beside him. He couldn’t name the sense of relief and optimism flooding him; it was not a feeling he had ever associated with Flint before.
David felt the rough surface of the bricks he was leaning on and turned to look at the building’s façade. It was the old First National Bank, built in the early twentieth century and still standing today, a staple of downtown Flint. A strange feeling of vertigo washed over him. Everything was so old—and so new. Familiar and foreign.
David felt as if the air pressure in his inner ear were building. And then, he realized that no, his ears weren’t popping. He was hearing something: the long, shrill wail of sirens in the distance. The moment he realized this, the bank door swung open, and four people emerged.
The four of them hesitated for only a split second in the doorway, and then broke into a run. David had to flatten himself against the side of the bank to avoid a collision, and as he did, he caught sight of the faces of the four people. They were about his age, their features showing the gentle lines of maturity. A woman at the head of the group wore her long hair in a tight, narrow braid tumbling down her back, and a streak of silver ran through it from the crown of her head to the tip of the braid.
She looked directly into David’s eyes as she passed and said clearly, “Bereft.”
“What?” David thought. “Is she talking to me?”
But before he could hesitate a moment longer, she called to him, “Run! Unless you want to be toggled!”
And then she was gone, sprinting at a remarkable speed, her willowy arms pumping at her sides, and the three others with her—two men and another woman—matching her pace.
The sirens screamed in David’s ears, and he saw nearly half a dozen sleek, black vehicles gliding toward the entrance of the bank. The sirens were emanating from somewhere inside the vehicles, and flashing red and blue lights danced over their shell-like forms.
“Cops,” David thought.
And an instant later, he was running, without knowing how or why he had decided to move. He trailed the group of four by only a few yards, feeling urgently, inexplicably that he needed to stay with them.
Seconds later, he heard shouts behind him and turned to see uniformed police officers, men and women, pouring out of the vehicles on the street outside the bank. They were dressed in pale blue-gray, the color of the sky before a July thunderstorm. They wore black helmets emblazoned with the words “POLICE” above their visors, and each was clutching a large, black weapon with a long barrel.
“AK-47s?” David thought. But he didn’t have a moment to spare to look closer. He could feel his heart hammering in his chest, and he gasped for air as he willed his feet to fly over the metallic sidewalk. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d run anywhere; he had long ago given up trying to keep up with Malcolm on the basketball court, and if he went to the gym at all, it was to listlessly tug at the rowing machine. Running was not exactly his purview.
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