Mitigated Futures

by Buckell, Tobias S.

***

  Sarah’s tattoos run up the side of her arm. Flames and exhaust pipes. She’s a Maker. Tinkers with speed. Builds some of the fastest cars and races them.

  Software’s right. She’s dangerous and passionate. I grew up around here. The idea to settle back in and root twitches deep inside me.

  ***

  When she asks what I do, I say:

  I love people on fire: the ones who’re so imbued by a passion that they glow when they talk. The ones that veer into near transcendence. Like her.

  And no, I’m not talking about the dogmatics: the preachers and fire-and-brimstone types.

  I’m talking about the type of person who looks like their insides have been hollowed out and a bulb plugged in so that the light of powerful ideas seep out from their eyes, mouths, and pores every time they shift and move.

  My goal in life was always to try and show the world that light I saw.

  The last guy I interviewed like this: he was the guy who banned all cars on a Caribbean island.

  ***

  A perfect test bed: an island. Just like this rust-belt city was an island amid the corn.

  Energy is expensive on an island. So they tested out a no-car environment, showed how the transportation savings were stimulatory to the economy. Shocked the world. Some say they led the way.

  Inspiring enough that midwestern cities were trying it. All these old pockets of density, created by forefathers back in the early 1900s. Politicians talked about ‘main street.’ No one made those anymore.

  ***

  She was upset to find out I was here to document the experiment. Even more that I admired the man who had sparked this flame. She was here, after all, to protest.

  How could she not be?

  They were going to rip the heart out of what she loved. Gear and smoke and incredible machines.

  ***

  Such a thin line between love and hate, I notified the algorithms later that night.

  The Rainy Season

  When I created the Kickstarter for this anthology, one of the levels I set allowed a backer to purchased a custom-written story. They could create the concept, and I would bring it to life. Just a day after the end of the project, Doselle Young and I were chatting about how the Kickstarter went. He couldn't believe no one had snapped that reward up and set me to writing a story of their choosing. He thought it was a wild idea.

  Before I knew what was happening, I had a commission from Doselle: write a story about Elaine, a coastal refugee coming back to her childhood home. A home devastated by chemical rains.

  The moment I read the email describing his concept, I had visions of beachgoers on towels wearing gas masks. A wild juxtaposition, and one I looked forward to writing...

  Elaine grabbed her duffel bag and wrestled it down from the overhead rack and looked out the windows of her stopped train at the new station's winglike roofs curving overhead. She didn't recognize any of the waiting faces in the Encinitas terminal, though it was hard to tell by just the eyes. So many people wore surgical masks.

  Which reminded her. She pulled hers on. The air was slightly hazy today.

  She wondered idly if she should consider a full respirator. Back in Michigan Kenneth certainly seemed to consider it a good idea. "You can't risk breathing in that coastal air," he said. "Who knows what's in it?"

  "Only tourists wear full respirators," she'd protested.

  "You're not that different," Kenneth said. "You don't live there anymore. You haven't for a very long time."

  Fair enough. Still. People wearing full respirators were something to chuckle at. Out of towners. She'd be inside soon enough, Elaine thought. And stepped out of the train into the bright sun.

  A few minutes of meandering around the slowly thinning crowd, and she realized that no one would be here to pick her up, as promised. She relented and got into a cab.

  She should have known better than to trust that Beverly and Jack would actually pick her up, as promised. Welcome home, Elaine, she thought.

  ***

  Everything had changed. That she expected, but it still hit her. When you lived somewhere you slowly saw the raw physical nature of the world shift. A building here, or there. Starts scattered across locations.

  But when you came back to somewhere you lived after an absence, it all happened at once. Your brain had to process and work had to update that model of realness minute after minute as you looked around and saw change after change. The place wasn't the same. The place you lived no longer existed. In the same geographical location is a new place, with some traces of the things that you used to consider that location still surviving.

  And there was no driver up front to ask questions like 'what happened to the chicken place that used to be in this corner?'

  Well, that was a stupid question, wasn't it? It was gone. It didn't matter anymore. She hadn't been here to see it go. It didn't care that she cared that it was gone. And probably neither did anyone else.

  She stopped trying to catalogue the differences, to expect certain signs and buildings at certain points. This was a new city. This wasn't really coming back, this was arriving for the first time. She was different. Encinitas was different.

  Deal with it, she told herself.

  As the car drove itself down the 101, winding along the coast, she caught glimpses of people laid out on the beach, their faces hidden behind bug-like gas masks. It was like an invasion of the rubbery sea-people, Elaine thought to herself.

  It had all been perfectly normal to her, once.

  ***

  Beverly and Arc Jack stared at her when they opened the door. Their eyes had a dull haze to them as they just stared at her, reaching for some memory.

  "Hello?" Elaine prompted.

  The words were a spark to their fuel. They suddenly moved into action. "When did you get in?" Beverly asked.

  "You came?" Jack (she'd never thought of him as Arc Jack, a name he'd legally changed to when living briefly with some hazed out girlfriend) said, nodding his head slowly, in that bird-like way Elaine had always hated.

  "Of course I fucking came," Elaine snapped.

  Beverly stepped between the two of them. Ostensibly to grab the canvas duffel bag Elaine shouldered. But it was a shielding move. "It's an honest question," Beverly muttered. "It's been six years. We haven't seen you in six years."

  "I sent an email," Elaine said. "I sent texts. I explained I'd be taking the train up from San Diego after flying in."

  Jack scratched at bleach blond hair and looked pained. "Email?"

  "Jack isn't good at checking that stuff, you know that," Beverly said, a hint of accusation in her tone.

  "I sent you a message," Elaine said.

  Beverly bit her lip. "It's not a good time right now, and a lot of people sent me messages. I'm sorry we weren't there to pick you up."

  They locked eyes for a second. And Elaine decided a fight over not being picked up would get them nowhere. We're all adults here, she thought. All on the edge. Elaine stepped over plastic toys and metal cars as Elaine shuffled her in and quickly closed the door.

  "We weren't expecting you. Tomorrow we can put together the bunks for the kids, they're already in bed though. I don't want to wake them up. Unless you want to sleep in..."

  Elaine shook her head and looked down the tiny hallway. "No," she said quickly. "No. The couch is fine."

  She'd left home in the silent, groggy morning hours. Crisp fall air and the smell of coffee. Quiet kisses goodbye and feeling of... something like a reddened, dead leaf spinning slowly as it wafted to the ground. She'd been balled up tight inside for the whole trip, getting tenser as she got closer to the coast.

  Now she was a spring-tight wad of self control as she put her bag down next to the couch. "I could get a room. At a hotel."

  "Oh, Jesus Christ," Beverly snapped. "I'm sorry we weren't ready for you. I'm sorry we don't have a room yet. I can go get the kids up..."

  "Bev!" Jack pleaded. "Bev."

  Elaine sa
nk onto the couch. "The couch is fine. I've been in cramped seats all day. It's just fine. I just need to wash my face."

  Beverly hovered over the couch, and then banked off toward the kitchen to angrily clean up. Through the cut out in the wall Elaine saw several carefully wrapped casseroles, and lots of other plastic dishes. Offerings from neighbors. Food to get you through a hard time.

  The house reeked of melted cheese and pasta.

  In the toothpaste and hard-soap encrusted bathroom Elaine pushed aside shaving cream and cologne to perch her old leather travel bag on the marble sinktop so she could wash her face and brush her teeth.

  She looked in the mirror, past her fly-away hair and to the room on the other side of the hall. The door was open. An old plastic rocking chair anxiously leaned forward in the late evening light. Elaine stared at it until she realized she'd stopped brushing her teeth.

  That absence. The lack of something in the house. It kept pricking the back of her neck.

  An empty rocking chair.

  ***

  One of her favorite spots had always been the deck. They were close to the edge of the state park, and everything had been built up around them. The richer folk carving elaborate space out so they could have their ocean views. But their ancient little beach house creaked on.

  If you looked straight ahead, and paid no attention to the noise, it was you, the rocks, and then ocean going on for ever and ever.

  The sun glinted over the gray surface, and Elaine scratched at the edge of her gas mask, then slipped it up to sip coffee.

  Jack joined her, slipping in right next to her. "Didn't think you'd be up this early," he said. "Jet lag and all."

  "The couch is shit for sleeping on," Elaine said. "My back is twisted. I barely slept."

  "She'll get you in a real bed tomorrow."

  "Doesn't matter." Elaine sighed, the sound louder than it needed to be thanks to the mask. "It isn't important."

  Jack nodded. "She's real angry."

  "I know. Six years. I'm sorry. It just... it wasn't easy. I never fit. I forgot to call. And then it felt like it would be awkward if I did. And then it got easy to not call. Because I wasn't here. And I didn't have to."

  "That's not why she's angry," Jack said softly.

  Elaine heard something in his voice that signaled that she needed to pay attention. Jack had always been more in tune with Bev. If he felt like he needed to say something, she should listen.

  "It's the will," Jack said.

  "What about it?"

  He rubbed his forehead, tapped his feet. Avoided her eyes. "You didn't come back because of the will?"

  "I haven't seen the will. Damn, Jack, I haven't even thought about the will." Elaine put the coffee down on the deck.

  "Never even wondered about the beach house?" Jack looked around.

  "Figured it was Bev and you. You moved in with him." It made sense to her. And after she'd legged it for the midwest, she figured she'd all but divorced her own family. They'd raised her. But they weren't really blood. She hadn't expected anything.

  Jack shook his head and looked down between the slats of wood at the sandy ground below. "Nah." He snorted. "The old man left it all to you, Elaine."

  Elaine suddenly felt like she'd had the world yanked out from underneath. "The fuck?"

  "All that's left is the house, and a few dollars in savings. But he left it all to you."

  She stared at Jack. "Why?"

  He shrugged bony shoulders. "Figured you to be the more mature one. Will says you get to decide what's done. Think he was never really happy about the fact that we both had to move back in."

  Elaine pulled her knees up to her chin. She didn't want to have to think about what happened with the house. Or what to do. Or what was fair. "Bev isn't mad, she's scared," she whispered.

  Jack said nothing.

  The door to the deck slid open with a loud thunk. Bev stood in the frame, one of her sons in one arm half dressed in black, a clip-on bowtie dangling from his neck. "Are you my aunt?" he asked loudly.

  "We don't have much time," Bev said. "Hannes says the storm's going to hit soon. We need to get to the lagoon or it'll be canceled."

  Elaine stared for a moment at the formal tux on her nephew and struggled to remember the five-year-old's name.

  Wow. She'd really yanked the string and bugged out, hadn't she? No standing bridges left.

  Alec, she thought. His name was Alec.

  "Wear something nice," Bev warned them both, before retreating back inside.

  Elaine looked out to the ocean and saw darkness on the edge of the horizon. She hadn't bothered to check the weather report.

  ***

  The edge of the storm hit in the middle of the ceremony. Three men in their seventies had turned up to pay their respects, wearing bright floral shirts and baggy pants. They stepped forward and fondly remembered out loud the old days, and surfing off the coast. Late nights on the beach. Driving up and down the coast.

  Offshore fishing.

  It was a litany of familiarity.

  And before Beverly, Jack, or Elaine could step forward it began to rain. Elaine pulled the mask out of her purse and fastened it over her face. Jack looked up at the clouds and stuck out his tongue.

  Beverly slapped his hand. "Empty the ashes, Jack. We need to leave. Alex, do not imitate your uncle."

  Alex. Of course. I'd been one letter off.

  "Shouldn't we..." Jack waved a hand around. "You know? Say something?"

  Beverly looked at the clouds. "We need to leave. It's going to get bad."

  The rain thickened. The old men trundled off, slapping each other on the back. I pushed the mask hard against my nose for a better seal.

  "Good bye, dad," Jack said, and began to scatter his ashes.

  The rain spread his remains into the mud.

  I had no idea if this was what he had wanted, but I wasn't going to ask or second guess. I stood and thought about the emptiness in the house, and tried to engage with the fact that he just wasn't here anymore.

  We did stand in silence for a bit, and then returned to the car.

  As everyone piled back in I pulled my mask off and stood behind Beverly. "Bev?"

  She turned around. The rain plastered her carefully styled hair flat to her forehead. I shivered. I'd run away from this intensity. But standing in front of her, I wanted to reach forward and dive back in. Build that bridge.

  No no no, shut up, leave it alone, shouted another dwindling voice further inside me.

  I blinked. "I didn't know about the will," I said. "I didn't want to cause trouble."

  "You didn't know?" Beverly looked incredulous.

  "Not until Jack told me."

  "He didn't talk to you? You two didn't plan this?"

  I stepped back. "Why would I plan this? What is this?"

  "You know."

  "No, Bev, I don't. I don't know." I was breathing heavily now, my face streaming wet with rain. The words flowed. "So why don't you tell me?"

  Her lips curled slightly. "It's even worse, then. If you never talked. He just died, never hearing again from you. And still he did this. Left you the house. And you can't even appreciate it."

  "I didn't want it." Elaine stepped closer. "I swear."

  "You should want it," Bev said. "Because it is the family's. The house has been in the family for four generations now. But you could care less. Because you aren't really a part of the family. You don't want it, or us. You found out you were adopted, and since then you didn't want jack shit to do with us. You don't even want the greatest gift our father could give any of us."

  The rain smelled sharp. Chemical sharp.

  Pull it in, Elaine urged herself. Take control, mollify her, and get in the damn car. But in the rain she could see the outline of Bev's attitude. She could read that her body language signaled 'ungrateful bitch' in bright red.

  And as prickly as she was, Elaine usually stepped back from the cliff. Usually walked away.

  Or even r
an away entirely from it all.

  She stepped forward. "Maybe," she gritted. "Maybe he gave it to me because he didn't think his own daughter could keep it together enough to make the right call. Between both of you moving back in with him, he had time to get a real close read on you both, right?"

  Bev's eyes widened and she slapped Elaine.

  They both stood and stared at each other.

  Then Bev got in the car and shut the door. "Maybe you're right," she shouted from inside. "So why don't you get your own damn ride back to the house."

  Elaine's mouth was half open, cheek still stinging.

  Jack was in the back with the kids, and he had a 'what the fuck?' expression on his face. He slid the window down as Bev started to pull away. "You're tripping, Elaine!"

  "I know," Elaine said, still stunned by what she'd said. Sure she'd thought things like that. Unvoiced suspicions, old family wounds. Festering.

  Jack threw her gas mask out of the window at her. "The rain, idiot. You're tripping."

  They shot away, bouncing over the dirt road, headed back towards asphalt. Elaine leaned over and picked up the mask. It had broken against a rock.

  "Shit," she whispered, feeling a bit dizzy from the fumes around her. Shit. What pyschotropics were falling out of the sky today? What was she inhaling? Something that had dropped her barriers to saying what was on her mind.

  Shit.

  "This is why I left," she shouted at the darkening sky. She looked back toward the muddy spot where they'd scattered the ashes, and then stumbled back toward it. "I didn't deserve the slap. But I think I needed yelled at. That wasn't very nice of me."

  Oh dad, she thought, looking down at the ground. But you'd know that. He hadn't slapped her after she'd come in from a heavy storm, high out of her mind because she was local and wouldn't be bothered to wear a mask. She'd laid it all out there. Called him a deadbeat loser surfer who'd been lucky enough to be given a house so he could burn out slowly by the beach.

  And more. The stuff ambitious young people say, when the light in their eyes was still unbridled and unblunted by a wider world.