I bend down by Freya’s spot in front of the hall closet and kiss the crown of her head. “Back soon,” I tell her.
Outside the air feels cool but dry. Here and now there’s no such thing as an all-clear day and, with a few exceptions, no reason to fear what the weather will bring.
I walk idly in the direction of the hospital, not in any hurry to arrive, my right hand digging into my pocket for a cigarette that I don’t want to want. I have it lit for roughly six seconds before I toss it to the ground and crush the ember under my shoe, fighting myself now. Impulsively, I yank the entire package free, scrunch it in my hand, and toss it into the nearest garbage where it falls on top of an oily napkin and a can of Tab.
I want to pick the cigarettes up and shove them back into my pocket so badly I can taste it. Ash and desperation. I fight that too. If I can survive the trip seventy-eight years back in time, recover my memory despite the scientists’ wipe, and successfully evade the director and his men, breaking a ten-month-old habit should be no sweat.
Once I reach my bike and climb on, the ride distracts me from the craving a little, but I resolve not to tell Freya that I tossed the cigarettes yet. I need to quit for myself first. If I make it through the next couple of days without a smoke, I can share the news with her.
Inside our building I squish into the elevator with my bike. The enclosed space smells like meaty pizza and my stomach begins to rumble. Thirty seconds later I’m sliding my key into our door. I was sure I locked it when I left, but it’s open. I turn the knob and wheel my bike into the hallway.
The apartment entranceway reeks of pizza too, so maybe Freya ordered from Domino’s. I hope so. We ate a couple of hours ago but I’m already hungry again.
I lean my bike against the wall and venture into the living room, expecting to find Freya on the couch with a fat slice of pepperoni and sausage pizza in her hands. Instead, I almost trip over the overturned chair that’s been pulled away from our dining table. Did she fall again? I shouldn’t have left her. I should’ve waited until she’d gone to the doctor and been given a thumbs-up.
No. It’s not that. It’s worse. My gaze leaps around the living room, landing first on the coffee table. The magazines, cactus, and other plants it was littered with when I left are scattered across the floor as though someone swept the table clean with a stroke of their arm. The lamp shade’s crooked too. The record player hangs open and the handful of vinyl albums I own have been emptied onto the ground, their hollowed-out sleeves lying haphazardly among them.
I run into the kitchen and step into the middle of an identical scene, all the cupboards ajar, the handful of towels we normally keep in the bottom drawer lying scattered along the counter with the stove manual and record player warranty. We bought the record player second-hand, but the old hippie who sold it to us still had the warranty. I don’t know why we kept the paperwork. Nothing we have is worth much.
Now I’m running. Into the bathroom and then the bedroom. Searching for Freya and making a silent wish that this is only a robbery. The pair of ten-dollar bills that was on top of our bedroom dresser earlier today is gone. Someone has rifled through everything we own, torn our clothes off the closet hangers, and tossed our underwear, socks, and shirts onto the floor so I have to wade through them to reach the other side of the bed and peer into the nightstand. We never had anything important in it—just a stack of bills and receipts. On top of the nightstand there’s a photo of a blond boy in a small oval frame, a model from a department store ad who Freya thought looked like her brother when he was younger. Of everyone from home, he’s the one she misses most.
“Freya! Freya!” Shock’s kept me quiet until now, when her name explodes from my larynx as I lumber back through the apartment, looking for missed clues. She wouldn’t have left without leaving a note. Not when she knew I’d be back before long. That means she must’ve been here when the place was hit.
Who else would take her but them? An invisible hand reaches inside my chest and twists my organs sideways. When Freya and I first started running I thought I’d lost everything but didn’t understand why. She’s been miles ahead of me all along, and in her absence I feel as if I’m being forced to play her part. Only I don’t have her ability, just instinct.
I imagine her being hurled into a car trunk, her head smacking against the interior. The mental picture sends me cringing worse than a brutal punch to the gut. The simplest thing could hurt her now and what they’ll do to her is anything but simple. The bastards want to make her forget all over again and they don’t care what it will cost her. Or maybe this time they mean to skip the procedure and just kill her instead. They see us as a threat that we aren’t—a tremor that would send their house of cards crashing and ruin the world’s second chance.
My thoughts are dark and horrible, every last one of them. But I can’t let it end like this. There has to still be a chance. We can’t have come all this way for nothing.
I don’t know where to start looking, but nothing matters now except finding Freya.
I have to go.
Five: 2063
Thursday, August ninth was Du Monde Day and as usual, Bening, Rosine, Kinnari, and I went to the National Mall for the annual celebration. Angry clouds were spitting down on the mass gathering and the day had a weather rating of three, indicating the rain would probably soon be worse and there was some possibility of tornadoes in the area. The Montana Emergency Management Agency’s tornado tracking technology was fairly accurate—and should’ve been capable of warning us if we needed to evacuate the immediate area before anything hit—but Mother Nature was still capable of surprising us and the crowd of over a million and a half that stretched from the Capitol building to the Lincoln Memorial seemed antsy as President Ortega took the stage to the strains of the national anthem. There’d been a bombing in Kansas City two months earlier that had destroyed miles of Zephyr track and killed five civilians, and lately the Dailies had been ramping up our fears that there were larger terrorist attacks to come. It didn’t matter how many SecRos were among us keeping guard on the National Mall; people felt like sitting ducks. If a tornado didn’t get you, maybe a terrorist-designed virus would. Our scientists were constantly updating the Bio-nets that protected us but no one could forget the hemorrhagic fever that had killed one hundred and thirteen people in Denver five years earlier.
As President Ortega waved, we all raised our voices to join in the singing of the national anthem. To remain silent would’ve been as unpatriotic as staying home.
“Oh brave nation, born of two mothers.
Oh brave nation, ever brighter, ever stronger, ever free.
From far and wide, united, we stand on guard for thee.
Our sanctuary, our glory, lie within your hills and valleys.
Your waters run clear, your skies remain sacred.
Forever, brave nation, we exult you.
Hands on our soaring hearts, feet grounded in your soil.
And this be our motto: there is nothing too great you can ask of us
Nothing we will not cede
May the star-spangled banner long wave
over our brave nation, the land of the free.”
Du Monde Day—a tradition the French had started two decades earlier and that had rapidly spread to most of the countries across the globe that were still functioning as civilized—was full of contradictions. Morning Dailies aside, it was intended to be a twenty-four-hour period where U.N.A. citizens stayed off gushi and joined their countrymen and other nations in celebration of vraie vie. The irony was that while in theory, United North America professed to love authentic life, it had little fondness for it in practice. The country ran on the toil of robots and the hope that the majority of its citizens would remain asleep or silent to its abuses of power.
For the U.N.A., Du Monde Day was mainly a PR exercise. The feed sent out from Billings, D.C. to other countries would reveal a mass of citizens so dedicated to their nation and to the value of real life that th
ey had braved the wet weather, storm warnings, and the looming threat of terrorism to gather at the National Mall. Meanwhile, many of us wouldn’t have been standing in the eerily damp bluster if the SecRos didn’t keep track of attendance. We’d all heard rumours about the government making inquiries about area residents who stayed home.
Next to me, Kinnari was shivering, and I watched her reach into her collar to inch up the warmth setting on her clothing to better protect her from the elements. As was tradition, the crowd joined hands as the president began her address. She praised our courage in coming to the National Mall to celebrate with her despite the weather and said she would require more of that courage from us in the days ahead to continue the battle against terrorism and the fight to restore our country’s natural environment.
“We are marching towards ultimate success,” President Ortega declared. “I know you can feel this and that we are a proud, strong people dedicated to each other and to this fine, brave dream realized in the flesh as United North America. John F. Kennedy, one of the United States’ finest presidents, once said, ‘As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them.’ And so on this day, and every other, I ask you to live by the ideals of the U.N.A. and the authentic life it reveres. If you do so, it will reward you by continuing to offer back to you everything you need.”
One and a half million people roared and clapped in appreciation, the wind biting at our skin and the clouds malevolent. The sporting and acrobatic demonstrations held in the airspace above the National Mall were still to come. So was the yearly skystory display—overhead hyperrealistic recreations of great moments in U.S. history played out against a backdrop of clouds—and the live musical performance by opera singer Arlette Courtemanche. Unlike most pop music sensations, Arlette was a genetic original, not a spliced star, a darling of the official grounded movement.
Physical segments of the Du Monde celebration were cancelled because of the weather almost every year, and a low boo echoed throughout the crowd as it was announced that the high winds had made the acrobatic and sporting performances too dangerous. Arlette glided out onto the stage with an acoustic guitar around her neck to the sound of that disapproval. She looked exceptionally small in the distance, which reminded me of Isaac and made me wonder, like I had on and off all week, what would happen at the library art lessons the next night.
Because opera wasn’t my thing, I wasn’t paying much attention to Arlette initially. But it only took a few seconds to realize that she wasn’t actually singing opera. Her fingers were strumming the chords of what sounded like an old folk song. Bening and Rosine swapped knowing looks and before I could ask them what was going on, the song had captivated me.
It was about us. The U.N.A. when it had been the U.S.A.
“From California, to the New York Island
From the Redwood Forest, to the Gulf Stream waters…”
Nearby, someone began to sob. Only one person at first and then pockets of desolation began to spread throughout the National Mall, an inner sadness made audible. I heard someone behind me declare, in a pained voice, “Why is she doing this? Today’s supposed to be a celebration, not a lament.”
“A lament’s more honest,” a contrary voice said back.
I glanced over my shoulder, my eyes landing on the face of a man several years older than my mothers. Tears had burnt his eyes a brilliant watery blue, a colour and emotion so arresting that it took me longer to look away from him than it should have.
Sandwiched between descriptions of the national beauty of the old America, the song kept returning to the simple refrain, “This land is your land, this land is my land.” With every word, the song stung. The Redwood Forest, suffocated. California, deserted. That was U.N.A. reality. Chills inched up my arms as I straightened my back and squinted at Arlette in the distance, remembering she’d been born in San Jose, before Canada had been unified with the United States and before the evacuation of California. Either Bening or Rosine had said so when they’d seen the Du Monde Day program.
Arlette’s longing for the country of her birth, a place that didn’t exist in the same way anymore, put a lump in my throat I didn’t know how to get rid of. What did it feel like to love your nation that much? I’d been raised to believe the U.N.A. was a colossal compromise of principles. There were so many worse places in the world that eco-refugees attempted daily to reach our shores in hope of obtaining what we had. Food, water, some semblance of security.
And with all that, it still wasn’t enough. The U.N.A. had to stand for something greater. That was what the grounded movement had drilled into me since I could speak.
I believed it there and then—standing motionless on the lawn of the National Mall, listening to the cries of people who had lost something dear to them—more than I ever had. This land should be ours. Not the Ros’ and not the government’s. And our lives, for better or worse, should’ve been our own too. Lived in the real world, in real time, not wasted on a virtual universe. A mob near the stage had begun to shout at Arlette, either not realizing they were dismissing their own past or not caring. I laughed soundlessly; we couldn’t even agree on the matter of the land being ours. As wholeheartedly as I believed in a grounded life and true freedom, millions of others preferred force and illusion. There was no true unity in the U.N.A. We were like a random group of people shipwrecked on an island together.
I’d known that already, but not the way I came to realize it on that afternoon. I probably would have gone to the Billings Library the day after even if I’d never heard Arlette Courtemanche bring people to tears, but she stirred something inside me out on the National Mall during that rainy Du Monde gathering. I didn’t want to wait years, maybe decades, for the U.N.A. to change. If we waited, maybe it would never become the better place we dreamed of. If we waited we would likely only run out of time, run out of oxygen, run out of undamaged DNA to continue the species with.
It felt as if I was probably already too late when I strode into the Billings Library on the evening of August tenth with a pad of paper under my arm and a sharpened pencil tucked behind my ear. It felt more like an act of stubbornness than one of rebellion. You can’t give up when you and the people you love are still living and breathing, even if logically you know your days are numbered. I was overflowing with the need to do something. Scared as I was, I was ready.
The smell of cloves reached me in the hall before I stepped into the brightly lit room one of the librarians had directed me to. The old U.S.A. had closed most of its public libraries thirty-five years earlier, but when the grounded movement succeeded in having grounded education restored in 2050, many of the libraries were reopened. I loved the aroma of old paper and the heaviness of a book in my hand. But the cloves reeked, countering my warm feelings for the library, even as the stench revealed that the same instructor I’d encountered in one of the Fairfield camp dormitory levels was teaching “Authentic approaches to life through art.”
Seats were arranged in a semicircle around him, an easel in front of each one, and I dropped into one of the few remaining empty chairs, glancing slyly at the other people in the classroom. They all had their own pencils and sketching pads, but aside from that there was no visible common denominator between the students—my classmates were of various ages, races, and genders, and Isaac was not among them. Nobody paid me the slightest attention and soon the instructor was guiding us through a shading exercise.
There was a reason I hadn’t done any drawing since I was eight years old and my egg, as I followed along with our instructor, looked morosely saggy on the otherwise unblemished paper. I did a little better at the line drawing exercise and listened to the instructor wax on about the relationship between art and the love for physical life. “You can’t devote yourself to capturing the life force in the crook of someone’s little finger, for example, and not realize the perfect uniqueness of that individual,” he said. “That appreciation for the un
ique unites us, when we let it. Real perfection is flawed, not sterile like what one encounters on gushi.”
“Lots of people don’t like imperfection,” the brown-skinned, dark-eyed woman seated next to me interjected. “And the more time they spend on gushi the less tolerance they have for it. How do we combat that in other people?”
“Does anyone have any ideas?” The instructor whirled around, his eyes scanning the room in search of someone ready to volunteer a nugget of wisdom. “You.” He pointed at a middle-aged man with a beard, who spluttered and shook his head. “You, then.” The instructor’s finger aimed my way.
“By stealth,” I joked. “So they don’t know we’re doing it.”
The instructor smiled but we both knew I hadn’t really answered his question. If I knew how to make people appreciate the merits of being grounded, I wouldn’t be sitting in his class. That was the problem; I didn’t know how to help.
No one had a sound answer for the woman, and by the time we’d completed another exercise and the session was beginning to break up, I was asking myself why I was hanging out in the Billings Library pretending to be an artist. Did Isaac get some kind of kickback from referring people to the course? Had he been stringing me along with that talk of doing something to help? It seemed I’d wasted most of my night. Before long it would be curfew.
A few of the other students were talking amongst themselves as the instructor began to pack his things away. My chair screeched as I impatiently pushed it back along the floor and got to my feet. The woman next to me—the one who’d posed the question about tolerance—stood up quickly alongside me. I guessed she was in her early twenties, older than me but not by more than five years.
“Will you be back?” she said. “Things get more interesting as we progress.”
“Someone else promised the same thing about the class, but I don’t know, I think it might have been a misunderstanding.” I stifled a yawn. “I don’t have much artistic ability and I’m leaving Montana soon, anyway.”
Tomorrow Page 6