by Mike Driver
For eight hours they listen to the men, the President saying a word here, there, letting them know that he, too, bears witness. The priest comes in the tenth hour, and the women speak to the men one last time alone.
Thirteen minutes later the director turns off the recording for the final time. No-one questions him.
On the twenty-fifth anniversary, three years before his own death, the speechwriter speaks of the president. Not as a bigot or a crook or a tragic elder statesmen, but as the man he had been during those hours.
The man who sat in his suit at a terminal in the corner, the headphones clamped around his ears, arms crossed over the keyboard in front of him. Eyes closing, head falling, sagging mouth set in stone as the men sang euphoric and died next to the plaque that bore his name.
Perhaps that weight had crushed him, embrittled him, pressure and heat fusing sand into rock and glass soon to shatter.
The speechwriter quoted in his memoirs - we are all broken by the world, but afterwards some of us are stronger at the broken places.
“I don’t want to say this,” said Danforth, but he did. “Have you thought about dying?”
“It’s a risk.”
“Does it bother you, I mean. The fact that - and I’m speaking personally here, not ex cathedra - that you’ll probably die there.”
Morris stared out the window at the tracks curving towards the station.
“You ride in a car, eat red meat, God forbid you still smoke. ‘I’d rather die for something than of something’?”
“You don’t worry about supplies? If you’ll make it on your own?”
“You’ve seen the pictures. We’ve strewn three warehouses across four acres. And besides,” Morris said as the train hissed to a halt and they unstrapped themselves, “if the world left us there - if there were no followup mission, no second try?”
He pushed his lower lip out and shook his head. “It wouldn’t be the type of world I knew, not anymore.”
Danforth nodded and paused to one side as they stood at the door after the others had all left.
“You’ve made your decision then, haven’t you?”
“Yes.”
Danforth looked at him and smiled. Morris gave half a grin and stepped into the airlock. “I’m scared half to hell, and nervous a ways past that, but I’ll do it.”
“We wouldn’t think of sending someone if they weren’t.”
They turned and cycled into the corridor to the main memorial and showed their identification badges to the guard at the exit lock. He scanned and nodded them through. Helmets on, they cycled out.
The mesh walkway above the regolith ran for a dozen yards before arcing up in a two-hundred-meter bridge across the landing site. They walked across in silence, seeing the bulbous dome of the return module still nestled in its cradle.
The footprints, the flag.
The observation area on the far side of Tranquility Base served as the stage. Dozens of figures in suits - American, and Chinese, Russian, Indian - sat facing the podium, a tripod and camera, the Earth in their midst rising in the background.
Morris sat with the rest of his crew in silence. Danforth took the podium. Nobody talked here except for emergencies and anniversaries.
They met on the fiftieth. And, fifty years to the minute later, their suit comms crackled to life. The deep gravelly voice of a long-dead president filled their ears, scratchy as they would have heard it here in the summer of ‘69.
“Fate has ordained that the men who went to the moon to explore in peace will stay on the moon to rest in peace.
“These brave men, Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin, know that there is no hope for their recovery. But they also know that there is hope for mankind in their sacrifice.
“These two men are laying down their lives in mankind’s most noble goal: the search for truth and understanding.
“They will be mourned by their families and friends; they will be mourned by the nation; they will be mourned by the people of the world; they will be mourned by a Mother Earth that dared send two of her sons into the unknown.
“In their exploration, they stirred the people of the world to feel as one; in their sacrifice, they bind more tightly the brotherhood of man.
“In ancient days, men looked at the stars and saw their heroes in the constellations. In modern times, we do much the same, but our heroes are epic men of flesh and blood.
“Others will follow, and surely find their way home. Man’s search will not be denied. But these men were the first, and they will remain the foremost in our hearts.
“For every human being who looks up at the moon in the night to come will know that there is some corner of another world that is forever mankind.”
And then Danforth raised his head and the director of the ISA introduced the crew of the 2020 Mars Colony Mission, led by Commander Aaron Morris.
SISYPHUS AT TWELVE
by Tom Barlow
“Don’t forget Jacob’s appointment at 3:45” my mother Gwen said. “You’re coming with us. After last week, I’m not leaving you home alone.”
I finished a short message to my boyfriend Aaron and flipped my wrister closed with a snort. So what if I’d had him over while my parents were out shopping the day before. It wasn’t like we were having sex or anything; my parents kept me too young for any of that.
“I’m tired of being eight,” my brother Jacob whined. “Claire’s twelve; why can’t I be twelve too?”
“Don’t complain,” our mother said. “Some kids never make it past five.”
The clinic wasn’t nearly as busy as I remembered it. The waiting room seemed homier, with a working fireplace at one end, a large real-water aquarium at the other.
Jacob was obviously nervous, which Mother ignored, choosing to play a game on her wrister. I slid across the couch until I could put my arm around his shoulder.
“Scared?” I said.
He nodded. “I had a good year. I don’t want to forget our pony ride at Jackson Hole. And Dad promised me a puppy for Christmas. Don’t let me forget the puppy.”
“There’ll be a whole new set of experiences,” I said. “You’ll enjoy them, too. And I can remind you about the puppy.” I’d have to do it quickly, though, I thought; I was due for retrogression myself very soon.
After a short wait, a door slid open and a white-gowned woman holding a tablet stepped into the room. “Jacob Wooster?”
Gwen put a hand under his arm and tugged him to his feet. “This is Jacob.”
The woman stepped over and took him by the hand. “Hi, sweetie. Why don’t you come with me?”
I watched with sadness as the nurse half-dragged Jacob through the door.
“How long does it take?” I asked Gwen.
“About two hours.”
I did some algebra homework as we waited. When I grew bored, I said, “Did you get ‘gressed when you were a child?”
“Retrogressed,” Gwen corrected. She was always correcting me, like I was a moron. “You ask me that every year. They didn’t have it when I was young.”
“So they didn’t give you AgeHalt?”
“Didn’t have that either. I’m 41 and I’ve lived every year of it just once.”
“But you could halt at any time. Why don’t you?”
“Halting aging doesn’t work very well on anybody after they reach their twenties,” she said, sounding exasperated at my questioning. She must have been really engrossed in her game, not unusual. “You’ve seen those women with young eyes and an old chin. Don’t they look peculiar?”
I nodded, although the truth is I found most adults funny looking. “How old am I?”
“You’re twelve.”
“No, I mean if I wasn’t ‘gressed.”
“But you were, so there’s no use in discussing it.”
“I wish you weren’t so afraid of teenagers,” I said. “What kind of a monster do you think I’ll become?”
“According to your father, by giving you time to grow
up more gradually you won’t end up as your typical unpleasant teenager.”
“So you were an unpleasant teenager?”
She glared at me before returning to her game.
I resumed my homework until, bored with that, I tapped into my net. Unfortunately, my circle kept eroding as my friends aged out or were ‘gressed, and I couldn’t remember after each retrogression which friends I’d made the year before. The cloud was no help; the clinic also purged my cloud closet of all data added the previous year.
Gwen interrupted me. “Now remember; don’t confuse your brother by referring to things that happened in the last year. It’ll be better for him to have a fresh start.”
“Like you never tell me what I missed,” I said, trying not to sound bitter.
At that moment the white-gowned woman appeared, leading Jacob back into the room.
“All done,” she said, beaming.
I stared at my brother, trying to spot any difference that would clue me into the last 12 months having been wiped from his mind. He looked just the same.
I took a seat in the back next to him on the way home. “How do you feel?” I asked.
“When am I?” he said, rubbing his forehead the same way our father did every time he got fed up with our behavior, which seemed to be a nightly occurrence.
“It’s October 11. 2033. Tomorrow’s your eighth birthday. Again.”
“Are we having a party?”
“No party,” Mother said from the front seat as the car steered through traffic. “Just the family. You need your rest.”
I was lying in bed that night, crying about the prospect of losing Aaron when I was ‘gressed again, when it occurred to me to write a letter to myself. I could give it to my best friend, Emma Rosa, and Emma could give it back to me on the other side of the procedure.
The idea seemed like such a good one that I soon wondered if perhaps this wasn’t the first time I’d had it. The notion energized me, and I began a thorough search of my room.
I found a loose staple among those that held the fabric cover to the bottom of my box spring. Sure enough, there was a hand-written paper diary inside. It was dated two years before.
I turned to October 11. It read, “Jacob ‘gressed today. He was worried about forgetting the meteor shower we saw while on vacation at Jackson Hole. It got him jazzed about astronomy. I promised to remind him, but I’m not sure I should. It’s hard enough knowing that you’ve had your memories wiped; to know how much you missed makes it worse.”
I raced through the diary, finding surprises on every page. I’d had a crush on Barry Filster? He was now a year older than me, and not even in the same school. My best friend that year had been Evelyn Best, an arrogant girl I couldn’t abide now. Emma wasn’t even mentioned; she was probably ten that year, since her father didn’t believe in the age suppression process.
I was shocked when I read the entry the day before I’d been wiped. I’d seen Barry holding hands with Evelyn. I’d actually been grateful to go in for the ’gression that time.
I shared my discovery with Emma the next day during lunch period.
“I’m not surprised,” Emma said. “You’ve been twelve ever since I first knew who you were.”
“You never told me that.”
“It’s hard to know what to tell you people. You know, the ‘gressed.” Emma slid the pickle off my tray and, holding it by her fingernails, took a bite. “You know how it is. You see a kid one day, you’re best friends. The next day, she doesn’t even remember you existed. It’s hard for us that are aging normally.”
“Make me a promise. I’m going to write down everything I don’t want to forget. I want you to give it to me after I’m wiped.”
Emma looked skeptical. “I’ve been down that road, and it didn’t work out too well. I told Tammy Tuttle and it just made her miserable. She wasn’t the same after she was ‘gressed, and her friends refused to accept her as a younger kid.”
“I can handle it,” I said.
Emma rolled her eyes. “You think that Aaron will be interested in a child when he becomes a teenager? Get real.”
“Will you still like me if I get ‘gressed again?” I asked that afternoon as Aaron and I sat outside the school killing time before walking home.
He was playing with the hair that all the girls found so attractive, blonde woven into dreadlocks falling onto his shoulders. “Undoubtedly,” he said. “How long until you’re due?”
“A week and a half.”
“So soon?”
“How about you?” I said.
He frowned. “I’m due just after Christmas, but Todd and Ellen have decided to let me grow up this time, as long as I don’t screw up. Apparently, I’ve done better this time around at being twelve.”
My stomach lurched. “So you’ll be thirteen and I’ll be twelve again. Will you still care about me?”
“Undoubtedly,” he said.
“But we’ll be in different schools,” I said, trying not to sound forlorn. “You’ll be in eighth grade.”
“But we’ll be on the same campus. Don’t be such a worrier.”
“Maybe you could talk your parents into holding you back another year?”
“Why would I want to do that? You know how it is to be twelve; no independence. Since I’m chipped, Todd and Ellen know where I am all the time. I can’t legally have it removed until I reach eighteen.”
I had to get my parents to let me age. If not, I was going to lose the only boy I’d ever love.
But they would. Not. Even. Listen. Gwen and Wade were the most stubborn, maddeningly logical people in the history of the world. In addition, my father had been part of the team that perfected regression, and he took any criticism of the results personally. They also had no problem dishing out what they thought was fair punishment: a night sleeping in the closet, a week without supper, a month without my wrister.
“You got B’s across the board on your grade card,” Wade said that evening. “Last year you had almost straight C’s on the same curriculum.”
“We can tell her now,” Mother said, “since she’s so close to her retrogression and won’t remember.”
He shrugged.
“Honey,” she said, “we held you back three times when you were Jacob’s age, and each time you did better. If we give you another run through twelve, you can turn those B’s into A’s. It’s all about your future. Mediocre people have no place in the world today; we want you to be superior.”
That evening brought even worse news.
“We’ve been reading studies about retrogression,” my mother said, “about how hard it is on children who stay in the same school afterwards.”
“Well, duh,” I said.
“Don’t be rude,” Gwen said. “What I’m getting at is that, after your retrogression the week after next, we’re moving you to a different school, The Stanhope School for Scholastic Excellence, where you can have a brand-new start.” She nodded, encouraging me to agree.
I could have just screamed at my parent’s cluelessness. I bit back my reply, instead shoving myself away from the table and running out of the room.
“Stanhope?” I said, trying to hold back the tears. “All those rich snobs? I’ll stand out like a zit on the tip of my nose.”
“My cousin goes there,” Emma replied. “He’s not completely gross.”
“It’s clear over on the other side of town. I’ll spend half my day on the El.”
Emma got a dreamy look in her eyes, which caught my attention; when she was like that, she often came out with an interesting comment.
“You could take your parents to court and ask to be set free from them,” she said. “It’s called emancipation.”
“Don’t be stupid,” I said. “What court is going to give a twelve-year-old her freedom?”
“But you’re not twelve, see.” She leaned forward in excitement. “From what you told me I think you’re probably more like twenty, if you figure it from your birth date.”
Emma got the far-away look again for a moment, then said, “Maybe you could come live with me. I bet Dad would go for it; he hates retrogression. He’s a good Catholic, so he thinks it’s a perversion.”
I could barely breathe at the prospect. “Wow. Give me a little time to think about it.”
Did I really have the nerve to confront my parents? This was a step that would change my life. For. Ever.
I stayed up half the night reading about emancipation; apparently the Supreme Court had not ruled on the issue for the ‘gressed yet, since the tech was less than 10 years old, although several cases were working their way through the system. One law firm kept appearing on the sidebars of my search page; Wilhelm and Wheelock, attorneys at law. Emancipation Specialists.
On a lark, I called them on my wrister at three in the morning. I was pretty sure a live person answered, although simulants were pretty convincing these days.
He introduced himself as Phillip Wheelock. He appeared young for an attorney; still in his twenties, I guessed. Maybe he was on AgeHalt, but his hands looked young too.
He didn’t ask how old I was right away, which pleased me. He smiled and asked me to explain my problem. I did so, all in a rush, with a nagging feeling that I wasn’t making much sense. He nodded, though, as I talked, asking an occasional question along the way.
“Very interesting,” he said when I finished. “You have a legitimate concern, if you’re truly at least eighteen by the calendar. Having someone that will offer you a safe place to live while you mature would certainly help your case a great deal.”
He tented his hands and leaned toward the camera. “You should understand that it will cost you some money to proceed on your behalf. Do you have money of your own?”
“I have $20,000 in a savings account that my grandma left me,” I said. “But my parents don’t let me tap into it; it’s for university.”
Wheelock nodded, his tongue briefly poking the inside of his cheek. “If the account is in your name, and you’re over eighteen, that money may be yours to do with what you will. Let’s assume for the moment that we agree to represent you. What we’ll need first is a copy of your birth certificate, to show you’re old enough to hire us to represent you. Unfortunately, that’s not something we can legally access. Can you put your hands on it and upload a copy to me?”