FutureDyke

by Lea Daley

  The sealed crates, coded to my fingerprint, opened at the slightest touch. When I lifted that first lid, waves of memory washed through me like flashbacks from a drug trip. It was a million years since I packed these boxes—and yesterday. This one held my most cherished possessions: old books with genuine printed pages. Aged texts on photography. Lesbian novels and essays. But my pocket reader was there too, freighted with a lifetime of digitized literature. I slipped that tiny rectangle from its sleeve. Unfolded it. Snapped it into rigidity. The screen was light as a leaf of paper in my hands—and almost certainly useless.

  At the bottom of the crate, I found the unbearable: my photo albums. I couldn’t open them yet. Mer’s face would be shining from every page. And our garden, our kitchen, our cats, our friends. All long gone. One day I’d be able to confront those images. This was not that day.

  Brushing away tears, I unsealed another box. Clumsy fingers found a lumpy bundle. I unrolled padding until an ancient analog camera tumbled into my hands. It wasn’t my last instrument, or my best. Instead, it was my first antique. A weighty SLR—the seductive friend that had led me into an archaic world of two-dimensional photography.

  I lifted the camera to my eye, cool metal against dampening flesh. Pressed the shutter button, smiling at those faint metallic clicks and whirs. I knew without asking there’d never again be film for this machine. I set it down gently, with incredible regret. If nothing else, it would make an excellent paperweight—if only I had paper!

  The rest of the carton was filled with artwork and the tools of my trade. Stacks of silver-based photographs, for which I’d developed an unexpected audience. Hundreds of holograms, each preserved in every possible medium. A set of portable lasers, without which the holograms were nothing but fuzzy, indecipherable patterns. I’d need to spend a great deal of time with this crate, figuring out what was salvageable.

  Next up: a box dense with sweaters, jeans, shirts, shorts. Of all the things that might have become obsolete while I slept, clothing had never crossed my mind. I looked down at my body—clad to the eye, nude to the touch—and laughed. As I lifted the garments, they seemed impossibly coarse and heavy. Here was the lesbian “uniform” of my ancestors’ day. Lavender T-shirt. White painters pants. Rainbow-striped suspenders. I’d bought that outfit in a retro shop for the costume party where Mer and I were destined to meet. Longing to recapture that vanished time, I buried my face in ancient cotton.

  After a long while, I folded the shirt tenderly and turned my attention to a fourth crate. Which took my breath away. It was a surprise from Meredith, full to bursting with the kind of toys she collected for her kindergartners. In the classroom, they were playful introductions to science, math and art. Here they were delightful amusements that would forever bring Mer to mind.

  Touched to tears, I sorted through the bin. Where I found spinning tops. Changeable wire mandalas, their graceful silver loops punctuated with tiny crystal beads. Half-a-dozen noisemakers. Jewel-toned glitter wands. Thunder tubes, from small to large. A quartet of nesting dolls. Old-fashioned jacks in a soft leather pouch—along with a petrified pink rubber ball. A lacy sandalwood fan. Candy swirl marbles so luscious they did look edible. Folding puzzle cubes with miniature images by Monet, Cassatt, Klimt, Frankenthaler, Michaelson, each appearing and disappearing at the turn of a wrist. And much, much more. I plucked out a Whee-lo, set it in motion. Watched the little disk blur as it raced the rails. Felt a familiar whirring in my bones. But Mer’s most precious gift was nestled between neatly folded sweats in the sixth container I opened. A small box, sheltering a MoVaDod earpiece. Meaning “Mobile Voice-Activated Data-on-Demand.” The once-upon-a-time universal portal for Cloud-based digital retrieval. And beneath that box, a costly paper envelope. Which contained a message typed in Mer’s iconic font: “Darling, if the future permits, request the compilation called ‘Mothball Magic.’”

  A low moan roared through me. Meredith was—had been—a singer, a musician. And her message could only mean one thing. For years I begged her to record my favorite songs so I could access them whenever work separated us. She’d never taken me seriously—or maybe she hadn’t taken herself seriously. “Mothball Magic” was clearly intended to rectify that oversight, a farewell gesture that would rip me apart.

  Could the technology of this brave new world extract sound from a twenty-first century Cloud? On Planet Earth? At that moment, I was glad I didn’t know. I couldn’t have borne to release Meredith’s enthralling voice into this alien air. Suddenly I was very tired. I pushed myself upright. Clasping the little box to my heart, I raised my bracelet, walked through the wall and fell into what passed for bed on Jashari.

  But I was way too wired for sleep. After much tossing and turning, I gave up, got up, slipped back into my new room. Which was dark. Impenetrably dark, as only a sealed environment can be. Like being inside one of my own packing crates. And I didn’t want it any other way. I crept across resilient tiles until outstretched fingertips struck a stack of cartons. Wrapping both arms around a cool, impersonal container, I embraced my past. Mourning loss beyond comprehension, wrenched by irony. Because what good was escape from early death when all I loved had ceased to be?

  * * *

  I must have slept. And someone had put me to bed in the storage room. Now I was suspended in midair, curled on one side. Light glowed around me, soft as dawn. Maybe it was pure imagination, but my forehead seemed to tingle from gentle stroking, and a spicy scent teased at my memory.

  I shook off those fantasies and rose, eager to explore more containers. Within moments though, wry laughter rippled through me. Because everything I’d packed was dear to my heart—and nearly all of it useless. Yet I yearned for many possessions I hadn’t thought to include. Little things, foolish things, impossible to explain.

  I missed the hard toffee candies that were scattered through every briefcase, every knapsack back home. Prohibited, I suppose, by the restriction on perishables. I called up their sweet, crisp shatter with heightened appreciation. Here, food materialized three times daily in a compartment in my lodgings. It was plentiful and satisfying. Beautifully presented. Unrelievedly bland. Wholly lacking in contrast, surprise and the dangerous lure of cholesterol. A single piece of fresh fruit would taste like paradise.

  I missed my family’s recipes—all our traditional dishes—though I couldn’t imagine how I’d prepare them in my present circumstances. I missed candlelight. Wicker baskets. My sketchbook. I longed for my favorite bath oil. And even though my rooms were warm enough—always, in fact, the ideal temperature—I ached for the worn flannel robe Meredith gave me on our first Christmas together.

  I wished for ordinary playing cards—the kind my great-grandmother used for canasta. Their appearance on starched linen always presaged fresh flowers, the finest china, special snacks and frail old voices raised in fierce competition. I’d left Nana’s cards in my desk, never guessing what significance they held for me.

  And I had an illogical desire to rummage through my wallet. To handle pliant lab-leather, to thumb through its contents. I wanted to examine my long-expired pilot’s license, with its confirmation that I was Leslie A. Burke; Female; DOB: 12-06-42; Hair: Aub.; Eyes: Grn.; 70 ins; 130 lbs; Perm. Res.: 322 Wisteria Court; Webster Groves, MO 63119-2461-57; UCA. I wanted to flip my lucky penny. To flash my transacode, to purchase something. Anything.

  Whatever financial assets I had on Jashari would derive from a small percentage of my insurance policy. By legal mandate those funds were invested on my behalf at the time of cryodeath. To ensure I’d have some resources in the future. Which meant I might be sitting on a decent nest egg by now—assuming those arrangements had endured. The alternative? This little apartment could be a space-age debtor’s prison.

  “I need some answers!” I yelled into the ether.

  “Please be more specific.”

  The voice was low, melodious, androgynous. It seemed to emanate from the rear of the cluttered room. My heart pounded as I scan
ned the walls, the ceiling. No visible speakers anywhere.

  Hastily, with trembling hands, I unstacked a dozen cartons. Found myself face-to-face with a life-sized paper doll—or a rough equivalent. Its “body” only a few inches thick and tinted a pale, unmodulated flesh tone. Features minimally suggested. “Hair” a single, sculpted mass. Gender unspecified.

  “What the fuck?”

  “Earth-based English, archaic,” the mannequin responded, with only a faint movement of “lips.”

  “Tell me something I don’t know!”

  There was the slightest hesitation. Then: “Jashari is an artificial asteroid in the Centauri system. By your reckoning, the year is 6195 C.E. Your assets currently total four-hundred-sixty-three billion Standard Units, with interest accruing hourly.”

  Ooo-kay! That was something I didn’t know—several somethings! I’d have to frame further questions very precisely—and be careful what I wished for.

  “What are you?”

  “I am A.I.∞, Mark 2:17.”

  I laughed, perhaps hysterically. “I get the first part. I’d need to look up the rest in the New Testament.”

  “The last copies were archived at the Huntington Library, LACAL, United Continent of America, Planet Earth. However all were destroyed during the defeat of the Christian Resistance Movement in 2233 C.E.”

  My mouth dropped open. “Even the Cloud-based files?”

  The mannequin spoke again, as if eager to explain: “Practitioners of other religions vastly outnumbered followers of the mythical Nazarene. Total eradication of the Bible, in all its forms, was an inevitable outcome of world unification.”

  Those words thundered through me. All of Christian doctrine undone? Rendered as quaint and irrelevant as Greek mythology? I’d never been religious, but Christianity had wielded outsized influence on my culture. Its obliteration was more astonishing than anything yet revealed on Jashari. The news shattered a thousand subconscious structures. Legions of paradigms slipped and shifted, leaving me speechless.

  “Are you all right?”

  “I will be in a minute…It’s just hard to imagine Christianity—”

  “Not that. Your left hand. Which twitches. Every twenty seconds.”

  Just then my palm turned up. “It’s my light meter!”

  Again, that brief pause. “Light meters were outmoded by your time.”

  “True. But I was obsessed with antique photography—I collected mechanical cameras and equipment. A terribly extravagant hobby, of course. Anyway, I came across an old light meter in a retro shop. It worked perfectly, and I seemed to get better shots when I used it. So I always carried the thing—and I guess I checked it frequently.”

  “Every twenty seconds.”

  “Maybe. I think I used it like a worry stone.”

  There was that telltale silence again. “Let me save you the trouble. A worry stone was an object some Earthlings used to soothe themselves.”

  “Hmmm…”

  I grinned. “Was that a real ‘hmmm,’ or are your cylinders just firing?”

  “A reflective reverberation. Denoting cognitive interfacing and cross-referencing of unfamiliar data.”

  It felt terrific to have an actual conversation! Somehow I wasn’t self-conscious with her. “This is weird! I just realized I’ve begun to think of you as female.”

  “I am here to serve. I can be whatever you wish me to be.”

  “Oh, no! You could never be what I wish you to be!”

  “Are you attempting to melt my matrices? I am required to meet your needs—or self-destruct in the attempt.”

  “I see it all now! Leslie Burke and her Electronic Dyke!”

  “Atomic-era, Earth-based English. Slang for female homosexual. Originally derogatory—”

  “Stop! What I don’t need is for you to keep defining my own world.”

  I could have sworn she looked sheepish. “Understood. And for your information, I am a VTO—a Variable Techno-Organism. I can become a female-identified model, if you like.”

  Too ridiculous! I was laughing and crying, admitting for the first time how very lonely I was. “Wait here,” I ordered. As if she could follow me. After fumbling through a crate, I grabbed the lavender T-shirt and painters pants, then dashed back to her. “This will help the illusion.”

  I dropped the top over the VTO’s flat shoulders. Wadded up other clothing to add bulk. Draped the pants on a storage carton to suggest she was seated there. Crooked a leg to give her a more natural look. Finally I added the bright suspenders. “You have to keep your pants on, woman—we hardly know one another!”

  Then I blew her a kiss and went to bed.

  Chapter Three

  That night, in dreams of surprising peace and comfort, the mannequin was alive, ambulatory, laughing—a friend. But when I awoke, I was alone again, unendurably alone. I couldn’t stand to see the VTO so still and confined in the storage room. To pass the time, I reached for a book, one written before my birth by Lutan Serenghi.

  For lesbians of my era, Serenghi was an authentic hero—a charismatic revolutionary in the ongoing struggle against world unification. Her unflinching support of individualism was validating, an argument for the right to preserve our “perversity.” Not surprisingly, she’d been on a collision course with powers whose resources vastly exceeded her own. Not surprisingly, she’d been arrested. Tried. Sentenced to jail time. Lots of jail time.

  A few years after Serenghi’s incarceration, someone smuggled a handwritten manuscript from her prison cell and released it into the Cloud. A pastiche of poetry, parable, philosophy and art, it quickly achieved cult status. The book was designed to be read in any order, with each section amplifying the others, and was routinely likened to the I Ching or the Tarot. Many of my contemporaries used it similarly, as a vehicle for discerning future direction.

  That contraband volume transformed Serenghi from a nameless dissident in an obscure Asian nation to a rallying point for the global resistance movement. A decade into her sentence, authorities reported their prisoner missing. Was Serenghi executed one bleak night? Had she escaped? We’d probably never know. It was like being engrossed in a megathriller, then finding someone had deleted the ending. Except far more consequential.

  Friends bought me my copy of Serenghi’s book as a parting gift. It was a first edition. Printed on real paper, with hard covers front and back. So rare I couldn’t guess at the cost. Plainly they hoped I’d find solace in those pages. But even when confronting death—aka cryosleep—I had scant interest in spiritual texts. Only gratitude compelled me to read Serenghi’s work from front to back. And on close examination, that book had a peculiar power, seeming to hint at truths just beyond my grasp.

  As much as anything, I was captivated by the illustrations—delicate watercolor paintings. Unlike ever-shifting hyperpix, those images would never change. Still I often discovered details in them that I’d overlooked or failed to appreciate. And I marveled at Serenghi’s clandestine success. How had she’d acquired pens, paper, pigment, brushes? Concealed her project from patrolling guards? Persuaded someone to go public with her manifesto?

  The back cover featured the standard voice strip, along with a hologram of the author. Taken in midlife, the portrait captured both Serenghi’s strength and pain. Rocking the book slightly, I savored her apparent dimensionality. Then I ran a fingertip across the recording, hoping to activate it. But the mechanism—whatever it was—had suffered from the centuries. I hadn’t the slightest chance of liberating that impassioned message. And why was I so ignorant about technology from my own time?

  Hungry for Serenghi’s voice, I tried to reconstruct the passage I’d often played during my last days on Earth. But all I could retrieve were fragments, questionable in their veracity. “Seek—it is an inborn imperative. Create—there is no higher value. Nurture—every living thing requires care. Choose—lest others choose for you. Act—it is your moral obligation. Persevere—every cause demands commitment. Survive—you are uniqu
e and irreplaceable.”

  I’d heard those words just moments before, four thousand years ago. And never again. Sighing, I flipped the book open. To my horror, several pages disintegrated in a downward drift of brittle flakes. How had I forgotten this was now a priceless artifact? I gathered up that little pile of fiber and disposed of it. Then I picked up the book again, turning the yellowed leaves with chastened fingers, most likely the last living person who recalled the name of Lutan Serenghi.

  Hoping to apply her experience to my own predicament, I searched for revelation. But nothing I read rocked me that day. Perhaps her ideas hadn’t traveled well. Or possibly my haste and carelessness had deprived me of her most brilliant insights. Because those minute scraps of paper—tossed so thoughtlessly into the recycle chute—might have been rich with wisdom. Or maybe I was simply too tired just now to make use of her guidance. And why was I always so tired?

  * * *

  I must have drifted off, because I woke with a start. Though everything was still as death, I felt certain a sound had broken my sleep. I listened with focused attention, but the silence seemed only to deepen. Rolling out of “bed,” raising my bracelet, I plunged into the storage room.

  Then I screamed.

  Someone had arranged my belongings in orderly piles against the rear wall. Someone had consolidated the empty crates into nested towers. And—just as in my dream—the mannequin was moving about freely. “Most sincere apologies for disturbing you. I dropped something.” She made the requisite bow, then cocked her head at me expectantly.

  I was dumbstruck, one wrist elevated, bracelet warm against my arm. The VTO was still wearing my antiquated garments, only now the curves were all her own. I couldn’t help noticing how nicely rounded she was, though the shirt hung loose, the pant legs were rolled multiple times and the suspenders were backward. When I found my voice, it sounded high and querulous. “What have you done?”