by David Brin
Determination.
Time to end this.
Carmody felt eyes turn this way as the window swung wide and his left foot planted on the sill, pushing till he stood, teetering along emptiness.
“Bob. What’re you doing?”
Carmody glanced back and smiled at his co-workers, none of whom rose to stop him.
“I’m taking the easy way out.”
And – after inhaling one more deep breath – he jumped.
ᚖ
Carmody’s gut roiled with caveman terror as the first few floors swept by – an unpleasantly inconvenient reaction. But at least his life didn’t pass before him.
He knew he should be composing himself, but as wind stung his eyes and tugged his hair, a distracting shadow encroached from an unexpected direction. Carmody flinched aside in time to see another figure hurtling Earthward. Business suit flapping, clenched fists outstretched as if trying to outrace Carmody to the pavement. He recognized Dickerson of accounting.
Well, that sonovagun always seemed much too-tightly wound.
Oh? An honest part of himself replied. And what are you? Taking the coward’s way out.
Carmody told his busy, frantic mind to shut the hell up and to focus on what mattered, with so little time left. Only does anything at all matter, at this point?
Abruptly, he heard someone else speak. A shout, overcoming the throbbing wind, but conversational, nonetheless.
“Dickerson is such a maroon! I was at the same meeting when Mr. Saung told us all to jump. But you don’t see me showing off like that!”
He glanced left to see a woman dressed in the slick, pinstripe uniform of a company attorney. He’d seen her around. Instead of plunging superhero-style, she had arms spread like Carmody, delaying the unpleasant inevitable. A rightward eyeflick detected no sign of Dickerson, plunging on ahead. So now it was the two of them.
Told you to jump? Boy, that Saung is a hard case. Much worse than Patel. In fact, maybe I should have stayed and fought it out….
Carmody almost replied to the woman – some dark humor about falling with her, not for her. But no. He saw her frown, devoting herself to a look of concentration. preparing for the fast-looming street.
That’s what I should do.
Grimly, Carmody strapped the goggles back onto his head. Bearing down and gritting his teeth, he mentally recited a personal chant.
I am a son of light. I am a son of light. I am a son of light…
Nothing. Opening his eyes briefly, he saw that he was halfway to the ground, with much less than half the time left before… going splat upon the broad apron that now surrounded every downtown building, protecting pedestrians and vehicles from plummeting jumpers who missed their cues.
Splat. Me? Come on, focus!
I am a son of light. I am a son of light. I am a son of light…
He tensed specific muscles in his arms, back and thighs – and felt electric tension course along his spine, at last. A crackling that was molten, electric and fey, all at the same time, seemed to fizz from every pore. It hurt like hell! But he kept up the mantra, frowning hard and willing power into his fists. His feet.
I am a son of light. I am a son of light. I am a son of light…
From his scalp implants to the tips of Carmody’s toes, power erupted, along with pain.
I am a son of light… and I can fly!
Bottoming out just a couple of stories above the splat barrier, he caused second floor windows to shake with the roar of his passage.
Carmody flew….
ᚖ
…and almost collided with half a dozen others, amid a throng zooming above Broadway. Carmody’s percept throbbed with warning shouts and small fines applied against his commuter account. But he managed to maintain concentration, leveling off and settling into an uptown flight path without injuring anyone.
Damn, no wonder they say you should always use a standard launching catapult. Skyscraper-jumping is for idiots! Or, at least, folks who aren’t out of practice like you, fool.
He turned onto Seventh Avenue, banking in a wide swoop that gained altitude as well. It almost felt… fun, for just a bit, though the tight maneuver made his stomach tense and churn.
Okay then. What had Gaia reminded him to do? Assuming he was about to be fired from his job and become a house-husband, he might as well at least cover the checklist.
Oh yeah right. Pick up Dad.
Carmody turned back on the goggles’ aroma detectors and followed a scent of liquid nitrogen. He carefully descended to a low-slow lane, barely dodged impact with a skylarking vette, and did a body tuck to land squarely in the catcher’s mitt at Seventh and Fifty–Eighth Street.
With ringing ears and scraped palms, Carmody unrolled and dusted himself off, as body-repair implants swiftly dealt with the usual bruises, though not without harsh twinges.
“Hey, watch out!” came a cry from above. He hurriedly stepped aside to make way for the next flying person, coming in for a semi-crash-landing.
“There’s got to be a better way,” Carmody muttered under his breath. “Sometimes I wish we still had subways.”
Ten minutes later he had signed at the desk for his father. The old man was tucked into a carrier pouch, strapped to Carmody’s chest. Awkward and heavy, but with room left to stuff in that carton of eggs.
If I took the car, I’d have to pay ecobal fees and parking… but I’d also have a spare seat to strap him into. Or the trunk. Oh, well, being unemployed will have compensations.
He took an elevator to the fifth floor catapult room, paid his dime and stood in line till it was his turn. Enviously, he watched some teenagers hustle past the people-launcher to an open air platform, where each one took a running start and then sprang into the sky. Well, of course anyone could do that, if you had plenty of free time to practice… and the agility of youth. Why, twenty years ago Carmody had been quite a big deal at his local hoverboard park. And he wondered if anyone still used them anymore, so graceful, silent-smooth. And it didn’t hurt when you rode a board! Only when you fell off.
“I am a son of light,” he murmured, preparing his mind for the coming jolt-and-fling, always disagreeably jaw-jarring. “I am a son of light.”
“You’re MY son,” groused a voice within the carrier pouch. “And need I remind you that it’s dark in here?”
Carmody rolled his eyes.
“Hush dad. I gotta concentrate.”
But he unzipped the pouch to a safety stop, so his father’s gel-frozen head could look out a bit. And despite further parental commentary, Carmody focused on the mantra, controlling his implants much better this time, with less emotion and less pain, as the robot attendant held a taut saddle for him.
“I am a child of light…”
This catapult needed tuning, alas. It flung him with a nauseating initial spin. Fighting to correct, Carmody gritted his teeth so hard he wondered if chipped one. This time, at least, he managed to enter traffic without incurring too many micro-fines.
“I can fly… I can fly…” he convinced himself, while roaring ahead, weaving two hundred meters above the street, tired but homeward bound.
“I... can... fly…”
ᚖ
Dad just had to keep kvetching.
“You call this traffic?” he demanded, after Carmody complained for the third time, while cruising over the southwest corner of Central Park. “When we first moved to this city, during the Big Reconstruction, only taxis and buses could fly! And just in narrow lanes! At least once a month, some fool would do a forced landing onto the groundstreet, clogging things, almost like the traffic jams you see in old movies. Now, just look at you punks, complaining about getting to flit about like gods!”
Carmody glanced toward the free zone above the Lake, where no rules held – where fliers darted about with abandon, doing spirals, spins and loops. Sure, that looked kind of god-like, if you thought about it. Maybe Dad had a point.
But miracles don’t seem that way, when
they become real life chores.
“Like my own Pa used to bitch and moan about his airplane flights.” Dad’s voice – or a reasonable facsimile, querulous and chiding – emerged from the encapsulating globe. Now transformed from expensive cryo-cooled to economical plasticized-state, he wasn’t even legally a person, the comments produced by an inboard AI whose algorithms query-checked their estimated reactions against the billions of neurons in Dad’s gel-stabilized brain, staying relatively true to what he might have said, in real life.
“My Pa would fly from Raleigh to Phoenix on business and then back in two days, eating peanuts and watching movies while crisscrossing a continent that his great-grampa took a year to cross by mule, and almost died! But all he could talk about were narrow seats and luggage fees. And having to take his shoes off. Went on and on about that!”
Yep, this sure sounds like my old man – the same lectury finger-waggings, without fingers. And if I hadn’t promised to keep him on the mantel, for at least ten years, I’d find that lake over there an attractive place to dump his nagging skull, right about now.
But Carmody knew he wouldn’t. At current rates of neuroscience progress, within a decade the emulation would be much better, perhaps simulating the old guy’s better, deeper side, maybe even some wisdom, too. And perhaps, someday, the glimmering, ever-alluring promise of “uploading” to wondrous realms of virtual reality. If I want my own kids to take care of my head, I suppose I should set an example.
Anyway, wasn’t this just another example of what Gaia had been nagging him about, lately? A crappy attitude, taking everything too hard. Over-sensitivity to life’s inevitable harsh edges. An imbalance of grouchy sourness over joy. Okay, things weren’t going too well, right now. But something was definitely wrong inside, as well, Carmody had to admit.
He’d been resisting adjustment, and no one on Earth could force him. I can straighten out all by myself, he grumbled, knowing how puritan and old-fashioned it sounded.
They used to prescribe drugs. He shuddered to imagine what an un-subtle bludgeon that must have been. Nowadays –
I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to adjust my implants just a little, to let me see a picture wider than just downsides. So I can choose to cheer up a little easier. Especially if I’m going to be looking for another job. Be a better husband and father. Maybe go back to my music. Or at least concentrate better when I have to fly!
On impulse, Carmody swung left at Eighty-Third and cruised between condominium towers with their own landing ledges on every floor. Wary for incautious launchers, he slowed to a near hover at the end of the block, exertion stinging his eyes as he looked down and west at PS43, where little Annie attended second grade.
The school’s protective force field shimmered like reflections off the Hudson, a kilometer further west. A brilliant safety feature, invented just in time to give parents some piece of mind that their children were safe from harm – the dome sparkled every time an object crashed into it at high speed, erupting with half-blinding brightness whenever the impact was especially hard. In just the few seconds he had been watching, dozens of flashes forced Carmody to damp down the filters of his goggles.
Thank heavens for the dome.
WHAM! Another collision, as a student slammed against the inner surface, caroming amid a cascade of electric sparkles before zooming off again, to swoop and cavort amid some incomprehensibly complex playground game. Giving chase, a girl sporting red boots, garish epaulets and a ponytail struck the force-field with her feet, amid a shower of sparks. Crouched legs helped her spring off again, in hot pursuit.
Carmody had no such endurance. Concentrating, biting his lip, he managed touchdown at a flier’s platform on the condominium building’s roof. Then he stepped to the edge, muscles and nerves twitching.
Kids. Their generation already takes it all for granted. They’re the ones who’ll roam the sky with real freedom, painless and comfortable – all of them – with the powers of superheroes. He sighed. I just hope some of them appreciate it, now and then.
He looked for Annie... and the goggles picked her out from the recess throng. A small figure, dark hair kept deliberately natural, though with a tidy ribbon, she flew amid a formation of friends, in a calmer, less frenetic game.
Annie’s own specs must have alerted her to the parental presence, because she split off from her pals, doing a lazy dolphin glide just inside the closest part of the barrier, back-stroking, giving Carmody a wave, a smile. It filled his heart so swiftly, in such a heady rush, that he actually swayed.
Then a bell sounded. Recess ended. Juvenile implants tapered down, damped by teacher control, forcing them to land. He stood there, intending to watch till Annie filed back inside the school... only then Carmody’s phone rang. A curt, businesslike summons, impending at the left edge of his percept.
The boss. Crap. And just when I was remembering how good life is. Well, let’s get this over with. I was a company hotshot till last year, so there ought to be a decent severance.
Mr. Patel’s image wasn’t aivatar but true-view, beamed from his office. Carmody grimaced, knowing that his own glowering expression would be conveyed to the manager, and not caring much. Resigned, he felt determined to face what was coming, with dignity.
Look, I know this wasn’t a great day... he was about to start. But Patel spoke first.
“Bob, I wish you had stayed, but I understand your reasons. Look, I know things haven’t been great, lately... I didn’t pay close enough attention to personnel dynamics and I thought you were exaggerating your concerns about Kevin. But his stunt today proves you were downplaying, instead –”
Carmody interrupted.
“Then you know it was his doing –?”
Patel shrugged. “Sure. Oh, he used a new grilf trick that’s hot on the streets, right now. But come on! Like we don’t have people out there, hovering over the new? Arrogant putz, his worst sin was having such a low opinion of our skills!”
“Huh... then my work...”
“I’ve got the report. It needs several polishes before I take it upstairs, but I think your trend analyses are unassailable. You just underestimated market obstinacy. It needs a phase factor of at least two weeks to take into account how everyone holds on to their biases and assumptions for dear life. But we can pounce on the transport upswing in ten days. Good work! You’ll have my notes for those polishes by the time you get home.”
Carmody reversed his own assumptions. Instead of asking about his severance package, he decided to switch tracks.
“Not tonight. It’s been a rough week and I’m decompressing. Taking the family out for a sunset picnic and a fly-stroll. Tomorrow can wait.”
If Mr. Patel wanted to demur, he quashed it quickly.
“Well, okay. Tomorrow then. Only fly carefully, will you? I just replayed your jump today... everybody has. They’re calling you Mister Almost-Splat!”
Carmody couldn’t stave off a wry smile. That sort of nickname could do a fellow good, in his line of work. Nobody would call his bluff for a while.
“Tomorrow then,” he replied, before signing off.
He glanced again at PS43, now quiet under its almost-invisible protective dome. It was still another hour and a half till school would let out. Annie was in a carpool, anyway, so no need to wait around. In that case – maybe he could make it home in time to surprise Gaia. That is, if anything ever surprised his wife.
Carmody looked westward across the expanse of roof and pondered. The nearest public catapult was a block away... and Mr. Almost-Splat was feeling pretty daring, right about now.
“Son, are you sure you want to...” asked the gel-stabilized head of his father. Then the old man’s gelvatar wisely shut up, letting Carmody concentrate as he sped along the rooftop toward the farthest edge.
We’ll have our revenge, he thought while his legs pumped hard, picking up speed. The best kind of revenge, for having to watch our kids surpass us in every way. The satisfaction of watching their children surpa
ss them!
Heck, I’ll bet Annie’s son or daughter will come equipped with warp drive!
But they’ll bitch and complain about it, all the same.
Suddenly filled with fire and pain and a volcanic sense of utter thrill – a child of light launched himself over the parapet-edge with a shout, toward the great, orange ball of a settling sun.
Oh yes, he added. Eggs.
Mustn’t forget eggs.
Story Notes
One of humanity’s great talents is adaptability. We can get used to almost anything. Indeed when I teach writing, I try to get students to grasp how much of a strange situation – perhaps one that is far away in space or time or technology or even species – you can convey simply by showing what your protagonist takes for granted. If something is happening that the reader finds weird, she will feel more curiosity if the main character finds the event somewhat normal! That mere fact speaks volumes about the character, about the world-situation, and so much more – without having to do any explaining at all.
In “Transition Generation,” that trait of growing-accustomed is taken to an extreme. Indeed, it is the story’s topic.
How is it that we early 21st Century moderns – beneficiaries of so much success and wonder – almost never pause to notice how far we’ve come? Standing on the shoulders of countless generations who worked themselves to the bone, so that we might become (at least in their gaze) quasi-gods? The answer to that question is simple. Our job and task is not to wallow in pleasure or appreciation. It is to strive! To move life and civilization forward – by dint of sweat and worry and hard work – the same as earlier generations did for us.
There is always a crisis! There will forever be obstacles, problems to overcome… or, upon failing, try something new.
And yet. Try this. Notice on some warm day when you hear a grumble-rumble in the sky. Pull over to the side of the road. Open your window. Glance at the winged aluminum tube that is cruising by, up there. And imagine what nearly all of your ancestors would think, right now. Stop and blink and look again. Those are your tribe-folk up there. And some time during the next year it will be you.