The Man in 14C: A collection of science fiction stories

by K. J. Gillenwater

  Not until the first day of work, however, did she find out what she’d signed on for. An old news van showed up at her building. She’d been told that wardrobe was up to her. Their budget didn’t allow for wardrobe. She’d kept a handful of nicer things in her expansive walk-in closet. They’d have to work.

  A teenage girl greeted her as they zoomed across the city to their first assignment. The girl read off the particulars of that day’s work. The show entailed focusing on a single family who were about to lose their home. Lucinda would interview the family, wring out every sob story possible about their old life before the crash and how they’d ended up destitute. After taking a tour of their home, pawing through their personal belongings and taking some shots of the family outside their house, Lucinda was supposed to turn to the audience and ask for viewers to help the downtrodden family with their plight. A hotline number would appear on screen and donations were taken.

  Lucinda, not one to care about ethics or decency, dove into the work. She’d faked sincerity for so long, it came naturally to her. In the early seasons of her new job, she’d garnered quite a following. The audience watching The Home Front remembered her from National News Today. She received quite a few pieces of fan mail. People loved to be snoops and watch someone in a worse situation than themselves. The show took off quickly. There was no end to the supply of forlorn families in dire straits. The show was cheap to produce, emotionally over-the-top and played on everyone’s fear that they would be next to have Lucinda Quant show up at their front door.

  One day, the van drove her to a familiar part of the city. Her old neighborhood. Most of the people who lived here were already dirt poor before the financial meltdown. Lucinda wondered about the selection for today’s show. The audience seemed to respond best to episodes about the once-well-to-do and their descent into the poor house. Watching former vice presidents of big companies or plastic surgeons with a sliced-and-diced trophy wife going belly up was infinitely more satisfying to her viewers than watching one of their own.

  Lucinda wondered what the crew would think of her if they had any idea she came from one of these very same rundown brownstones with the boarded up windows and broken steps.

  The van stopped. Her teen girl assistant slid open the door. The girl mumbled something about how ‘gross’ it was and how she hoped they’d be done with this shoot early.

  Lucinda stepped out of the van and caught sight of a familiar face – her mother sitting on the stoop, boxes piled around her, Lucinda’s siblings wailing and crying.

  Lucinda’s gaze met her mother’s. Lucinda plastered a smile on her face, grabbed the mike and nodded at the cameraman to start filming. Without missing a beat, she stepped right up to her mother – a woman she hadn’t seen or spoken to since she graduated from high school – and asked her the first question she always asked the families on her show: “So, tell me about your life, Mrs. Quantillo-Hermosa. How did you end up here? Our audience would really like to know.”

  The Man in 14C

  Contest: This was K.J.’s entry for the XPrize Short Story contest using the following prompt: At 4:58am on June 28th, 2017, the passengers on board ANA Flight 008, en route from Tokyo to San Francisco, are cruising at an altitude of 37,000 feet, approximately 1,500 nautical miles off the West Coast of the United States. A small bump, otherwise noted as a barely perceptible bout of turbulence, passes Flight 008 through a temporary wrinkle in the local region of space-time. What these passengers will soon find out as they descend into SFO is that the wrinkle has transported them 20 years in the future, and the year is now 2037.

  Write your own story from the perspective of the passenger in Seat 14C.

  Additional rules stated that it must be a positive story that includes a lot of ideas about what technology and advancements will be around 20 years into the future.

  My mind burned. A muddled mess of stray thoughts, worries, and images. I'd heard the term before: chemo brain. My doctor in Tokyo didn't understand. I didn't know if such a term existed in Japanese.

  I had looked up the word 'fog' on my phone and used it: "Kiri." I'd tapped my head.

  He'd nodded slowly, dawning recognition on his face. A grim set to his mouth.

  The treatment I'd sought out in Japan - against the wishes of my wife, Judith - had been a failure. Most experimental treatments were iffy at best. But this one had better odds, fewer side effects. Plus, I'd always wanted to visit Japan.

  When I needed my mind the most, it failed me. I couldn't put the pieces together. Our plane sat on the runway in San Francisco in the mid-morning light. I wanted to comprehend what had happened during our flight. The odd turbulence, the flash of light, and now no one's phone could pick up a signal. Our devices were dead. My seat companion, an older Japanese gentleman in a suit and tie, stared out the window. A woman seated across the aisle from me cried.

  I wanted Judith there to explain. Her calm, cool words. Her soothing hands on my arm. A light squeeze to bring me back, straighten out my thoughts. She'd turned our house in the Berkeley Hills into a sanctuary of lavender-scented candles and 'clean' foods that were supposed to either cure my pancreatic cancer or slow its progress. I couldn't remember which.

  Although I'd wanted to give up (Would one more Peanut Butter Pomegranate Smoothie really do the trick?), Judith wouldn't let me. She had a combination of femininity and toughness I admired, loved, cherished. The perfect wife for the last eighteen years.

  A flight attendant made an announcement over the speaker. "San Francisco authorities have directed us to Concourse X..." Uncertainty clear in her voice, a tremble, a whisper in her co-worker's ear. "All passengers please remain seated. Thank you."

  A din arose in the cabin. Something wasn't right. The rumble from my fellow passengers grew. Most were Japanese. I was one of the few American passengers scattered throughout the cabin. I couldn't understand most of the conversations around me.

  I was reminded of the University of Tokyo Hospital. Doctors, nurses, patients everywhere, but my ears tuned out the language as gibberish. They'd had to call my name three times before I'd recognized it.

  The Japanese man in the window seat said something and pointed. He tapped his finger on the glass. His words had a tone of excitement - or fear. I looked out the window at the runway. Instead of seeing airplanes lined up along the concourse, I saw sleek, elongated 'planes' with no windows and low-profile wings that hugged close to the fuselages. On these 'planes' were logos I'd never heard of before: Galactic Air, Aero-Blue, SpaceJet.

  My mouth gaped. On the ground beneath them I saw strange cars loaded with luggage. Robotic arms grabbed each suitcase and bag, gently and quickly stowing them into a cargo hold. When complete, the cars floated away. I saw no wheels and no mechanism to move them, only a foot or so of empty air beneath.

  "We have arrived at the gate." The flight attendant announced. A different voice this time. This woman sounded more grounded in her words, more solid in relaying the news. "The authorities will be boarding the plane. We ask for your patience at this time. They have asked to address all passengers before disembarking."

  Silence fell over the cabin. Although I and the other passengers had seen impossible things outside the plane, none of use could reconcile it with our brains. Maybe I didn't have chemo brain after all. Maybe what I'd experienced since we passed through that rough patch of air turbulence had been something more serious.

  I glanced at the 'car' floating away outside. My stomach dropped.

  What was going on?

  ***

  The San Francisco Airport authorities had herded us into an airport lounge that morning, usually reserved for club members who bought first class seats and had money to spare. Some of my fellow passengers had headed straight for the bar. Some of us had sat in the cushy chairs scattered around the room. When we'd run out of chairs, someone had brought in padded folding chairs.

  Two nights ago they'd swapped out the chairs for cots. We'd been trapped in the lounge ever since,
as if we'd survived a natural disaster and were riding it out at a FEMA camp. News had been sporadic. Reactions mixed.

  One wall of the lounge was a giant, paper thin screen. The only 'television' like device in the room. It came on automatically when we entered. A gorgeous image of Mount Fuji at sunset with clouds scudding by in the background filled the whole screen. The setting sun turned the mountain red, which reflected in the waters of Lake Yamanakako. The waters rippled slightly, and the picture was so clear, so rich, I wanted to reach out and dip my finger in the water. The scent of lavender filled the air.

  Or did I imagine it?

  The scent so familiar, so soothing made me long to see my wife, be back in my home.

  I was still in shock, like the rest of the passengers. We didn't know if we were being made fools of or if the authorities had told us the truth - the year was 2037. We'd traveled twenty years into the future. The air turbulence had not been a storm. We had passed through some kind of portal that had launched us through time.

  My thoughts trickled over the meaning of what happened. Where was my family? My parents? My wife? My daughter? What would they be thinking today as they heard the news? I'm sure our hosts here at the airport - correction: spaceport - wanted to keep us in the dark because they were worried we couldn't handle the truth, the loss of twenty years' time and the confusion and panic that came with it.

  I had no such fears. After the failure of treatment in Tokyo, I knew my life span would be short. Maybe six or nine months at most. Pancreatic cancer was a swift and deadly one. I did not expect to experience much of 2018. But here I was, a time traveler transported to a future earth. Perhaps a future earth where cancer no longer existed, where treatments and survivability had turned the corner. Maybe the impossible was already possible.

  "Mr. Anthony Pasquale, Seat 14C, please come to the front." A slim woman dressed in a perfectly tailored suit and a glossy gold blouse called me forward. She held a thin sheet of what looked like metal, the size of a notepad. Thin as a piece of paper.

  I carefully made my way through the crowd. They'd only called a few other names before mine. I'd watched as each passenger was led away through the door we'd entered. Other Americans. The Japanese likely would have a bit more difficulty being reunited with their loved ones. A different process, perhaps.

  "I'm Anthony Pasquale." I smiled at the pretty blonde. Her hair was twisted into a fantastic cloud of braids and fine pieces that floated around her head, defying gravity.

  She looked up from her metal sheet. I could see that it was actually a screen, but instead of the bright backlit smart phones of two decades past, the image on the screen wasn't harsh at all. Fine 3-D images popped up from its surface. "Judith Pasquale and her husband are here to pick you up. James will escort you." The blonde splayed her fingers through the images, they swelled, sank, and reformed into some new 3-D image.

  I couldn't grasp the technology nor the information she accessed. I wanted to find something familiar in this future world, but was having difficulty. At forty-two, I'd felt very comfortable in the technology of my era. I considered myself knowledgeable. Already I could see catching up would be difficult.

  James, a well-muscled Asian man, taller than most, waited for me near the entrance door we'd passed through earlier. "Mr. Pasquale? Come with me."

  I left the blonde and her mysterious metal plate behind. I processed the words she'd said - Judith Pasquale and her husband. Judith had remarried. My heart sank. I reassessed the facts of the matter. I'd gone missing for twenty years, most likely thought dead. Did I really expect Judith to remain alone for long? Our child had started in high school, only a few years more, and she would've been by herself.

  I followed James down the concourse. It seemed the spaceport - rumor flew around the waiting area that airports had fallen out of fashion and near-space and space flights were the thing - had been closed for our strange arrival. Once again, they probably did not want us to be frightened by the news, exposed too rapidly to change.

  I wanted to ask James a million questions, now that I had him all to myself, but I resisted. My physical condition was weak. I probably looked it. Gaunt, pale of face, clearly ill in some way. Meeting Judith would be enough of a jolt to my deteriorating system. Did I really need to find out everything all at once? Slow and a little bit at a time seemed best.

  "Mrs. Pasquale is through this door." James stopped at a door labeled Medical Testing Station. "She has been briefed on the details of your arrival. We have prepared guidelines to help reintroduce you into society. Please take precautions and welcome to 2037."

  He opened the door, handed me a pamphlet, and I walked through.

  ***

  "Tony, is it really you?" Judith rose from the chair she'd been sitting in. She came at me in a wave of fruity perfume and well-tailored clothes - a pair of linen trousers and a shiny blouse, like the blonde, but hers in a pale pink. Her face had aged, as was to be expected, but not as much as I would've feared. Her figure remained trimmer than one would think for a woman of sixty-one.

  "Judith..." I embraced her. "I'm so glad you're here." Over her shoulder I saw myself seated in a chair. Twenty pounds heavier, older, but with more hair.

  Was my chemo brain giving me hallucinations?

  She released me, and then awkwardly glanced from me to the man in the chair. "Maybe I shouldn't have brought Anthony."

  "Anthony?" I couldn't take my eyes off of him. "I don't understand."

  Judith urged me to sit in a chair opposite the two of them on the other side of a small table. Physical distance meant emotional distance. I could sense it.

  "Anthony is my husband. A clone. I had him made five years ago." Her beautiful brown eyes welled up with tears. "I missed you so, Tony." She reached across the table to grab my hand. "And they said they could make him just like you - but without, well, the problems."

  I knew what she meant - without the cancer.

  "Mandy? Was she okay with this?" I thought of my only child. I'd flown to Tokyo the day before my daughter's thirteenth birthday. Twenty years had passed, and now she probably had a life of her own. Although my heart hurt at the years I'd missed, with my illness I hadn't expected to experience her arrival to adulthood.

  "Of course." Judith seemed surprised by the question. "She was actually the one who suggested it. I'd been so lonely, Tony. So lonely. Mandy couldn't stand to see me like that." She sat back and laid her hand on Anthony's arm. "Anthony, this is Tony."

  Anthony, who'd wisely only watched the interaction between us, spoke for the first time. "Glad to finally meet you."

  We shook hands.

  I shivered at the feel of my own hand. Bizarre and troubling.

  "Is this normal? Clones, I mean. Is this what people do now?" I'd had questions before I'd come into the room, but these were not the questions I'd imagined I'd be asking.

  "A few." Anthony answered in a rich voice that wasn't the one I heard in my own head.

  Is this what I sounded like when I talked?

  My heart raced. I couldn't grasp had happened. I was twenty years in the future, my wife had married my clone, and my daughter - well, my daughter had gone along with the plan. I didn't know where I would fit in to such a family, such a future.

  My wife had started over with an older, but better, version of me. "No one has really explained to me what happens now. Am I your responsibility? Am I going home with you? Or am I some ward of the state?"

  "The treatment, in Tokyo, I know it didn't work." Judith leaned forward, calmly changing the subject. "They didn't know what happened to the plane, but the doctors were able to tell me that much."

  "No, it didn't work. We both knew it was a long-shot."

  "Treatments are much more advanced now. Your type of cancer has been long wiped out through gene manipulation and Med-i-Drones." She touched Anthony's arm. "They fixed his DNA, Tony, and they can do the same for you, too."

  "Judith was able to order corrections during the clone process."
Anthony spoke as if this were distantly related to him. "I'm sure you noticed there are a few differences between us." He raked his hand across his thicker, fuller hairline and cracked a smile.

  "I noticed." I guess if I had been given the chance to create a Judith clone, I would've tweaked a few things myself.

  Judith blushed. "We've arranged everything for you. We should be able to get to the clinic in just a few minutes. The authorities have kept the press at bay for the moment. "

  "So they haven't figured out a way to fix that, eh?" My cancer-weakened body hadn't affected my sarcasm one bit, nor had time travel, apparently.

  Judith sighed. She didn't view me as her spouse any longer, but more like an irritating kid brother. Although my memories of our marriage were fresh, and my love for her deep and unshifting, I knew it was not the same for her. Anthony was her husband now, and I was, well, a complication.

  "There's a genetic treatment center in San Francisco. Mandy will meet us there." She set one of the flat metal things the flight attendant had been using on the table between us and swept her fingers over its paper-thin surface. A three-dimensional image appeared of a young couple. It was as if miniaturized people stood on the table in front of me.

  "That's Mandy with her husband, Joe."

  My daughter.

  I sucked in a breath of air. My thirteen-year-old daughter was now a woman in her mid 30s. Striking. Tall. Her long brown hair twisted into tendrils and braids. Miniature Mandy picked up a toddler from the ground and settled him on her hip.

  "Oh, and that's Noah. He's older now. Your grandson. This picture isn't that recent."

  I was a grandfather at forty-two.

  Judith flicked her fingers as if she were turning a Rolodex. The image of Mandy disappeared.

  "Oh." I wanted more time with the miniature version of my daughter. I tried to imagine the years that had passed, what had happened to her? How had she handled the 'death' of her father? Did she go to college? What did she do for work? How had she met her husband? So many questions to be answered.