Welcome to Dystopia

by Gordon Van Gelder

  We have already briefed HR and Security about the implications for DataNex, but I appreciate your checking with me to confirm. Please let me know if you require any additional information.

  Best regards,

  Perry

  P. Ellis Nevars

  Associate Corporate Counsel

  DataNex

  To: Luther Beckshire-EXEC

  From: Liz Ferry-PRODUCT GROUP

  Subject: Vibrante Updates

  Luther,

  Wanted to assure you that everything is fixed now.

  Security conducted the exit interviews with the two former employees yesterday evening. We are confident that they will not be sharing any proprietary information about the Vibrante with outside organizations. There had been an attempt to send screenshots from a company laptop to an external server, but Security anticipated and dealt with that breach.

  I’ve also gone over procedures with the external QA contractor to make sure companies are getting employee data alerts on a daily, rather than weekly, basis. Their slow response, plus some errors by Comette’s HR/Legal, contributed to the problem. We’re monitoring them going forward.

  Sales met last week with two Fortune 500 companies and one government agency interested in the Vibrante program for large, multi-site employee groups. All three are ready to begin using our enhanced data capabilities for HR purposes as soon as the FDA is out of the picture. We’re drawing up contracts.

  Two of the prospects asked about getting data on employee galvanic skin responses for use by their internal security teams. Can you put some pressure on Gil and Engineering to fast-track those sensor features for the 2020 rollout? Marketing is working up a GSR pricing model that dovetails with sales goals. We can go over it at tomorrow’s meeting.

  Best regards,

  Liz

  Liz Ferry

  Manager, Vibrante Fitness

  DataNex

  HIS SWEAT LIKE STARS ON THE RIO GRANDE

  Janis Ian

  My heart was broken long before we met, so when love came sneaking up, it was completely unexpected.

  I’d grown up in the shadow of The Wall, but never given it much thought. It had always been there. It would always be there. I was grateful to be living on this side, where the Rio Grande provided water for the agricultural station my father ran, and kayaking provided some small relief from the late April humidity. I loved seeing the huisache bloom, their feathery yellow flowers mirrored in the river’s edge. My favorite time of day was early morning, before the worst of the heat. I would sit in my secret place and watch the sunlight glisten on the river, pretending the sparkles were stars that had fallen to earth the night before.

  When I was young, I’d sometimes “borrow” my mother’s binoculars and focus on the migrant families working the fields to the north. They fascinated me, the way their children seemed to run everywhere without any sign of supervision. The way the women carried naked infants in slings across their breasts. The way they’d stop occasionally to nurse, or hold the infant aloft as it did its business in the grass. I’d never seen an adult woman’s breasts before, and as mine began to bud, the thought of what they’d become fascinated me.

  And I must admit, I loved to look at the men as they worked bare-chested in the sun. Loved the way a drop of sweat would make its way from the nape of a neck to the top of the shoulder blades, then along the alley between, down and down and down, until it finally disappeared into parts unknown. Loved their wiry muscles, bunching and flexing as they grabbed at the plants, making my own still-forming parts throb and pulse. I had no name for it, this feeling of desire, but I gloried in it nonetheless.

  I fell in love with Roger when he asked me to the 10th grade dance. I’d been hopeful, but still, it came as a surprise. I was nothing to look at, although my lineage was good. Father a supervisor, mother a tracker—both respectable jobs, requiring intelligence, stamina, and leadership qualities. And, as Roger pointed out one starry night, a certain ruthlessness. Laughing, he said I’d managed to inherit them all, and some lucky fellow’s children would benefit from it one day.

  That actually made me blush.

  We dated all through high school, progressing from dry, fumbling kisses to “cupping,” as we called it. Roger would cup my breasts in his hands and tenderly kiss them through the fabric of my brassiere. In turn, I’d cup his balls through the fabric of his Bermuda shorts, lifting and assessing them until I could see his penis straining at the front, begging to be freed.

  To this day, even seeing Bermuda shorts on a department store manikin gets me all hot and bothered.

  But we never went “all the way.” We were saving that. I wasn’t sure for what, but it seemed like the right thing to do. My parents liked his parents, his parents liked my parents, and the backgrounds all checked out. Still, something in us hesitated. I used to think it was because we knew it would never work out in the end, but perhaps it was just cowardice.

  I cheered for him at the football games, when his tight end went on the offense to break the line. I helped with his Spanish, since his tin ear made it nearly impossible to understand his labored sentences. He wanted to be a tracker, like my mother, and I encouraged him to get the best education possible. I knew a tracker needed grounding in geology, and topography, and half a dozen other subjects unavailable at our local community college. When he dreamed about attending Texas A&M, I even wrote the application for him.

  He broke my heart on graduation day, taking me out to a beautiful dinner at the best our little town had to offer. Making sure it was public, so I couldn’t make a scene. Telling me without a shred of shame that we’d been great for high school, but now it was time to move on. Saying that as much as he’d enjoyed the fooling around, withholding himself had seemed the best way “to not get tied down.”

  He thanked me for being a good sport.

  He paid the bill.

  He pulled out my chair.

  He walked me home, and left me alone at the door.

  I didn’t cry that night. I was too ashamed. When my parents asked how the evening had gone, I simply said I was tired, and made my way upstairs. I fell asleep almost immediately, and my dreams were filled with bronze-skinned men. We walked through the fields naked, letting the tall plants brush against our skin, weaving and waving and caressing without end. Strong arms lifted me into the wind, higher and higher, reaching toward the sky until I finally let go in one huge, orgasmic rush, and shuddered back to earth.

  The next morning, I left early and went to my favorite place. There, hidden by the blackbrush and clapweed, I wept until my eyes were too puffy to see. I rinsed them in the river and made my way home.

  That evening, I announced to my family that I’d broken up with him. “He’s just too slow,” I said. “I’ve kept it from you because I didn’t want to cause tension, but I had to write his college application for him. I had to walk him through Spanish class, too. I don’t know how he’ll manage in college, but I don’t want to find out the hard way.” He’d been fine for high school, I added, but it was time to move on.

  And move on I did. Through my mother’s contacts, I managed to get an internship at LICE, our Local Immigration and Customs Enforcement. I began learning about the migrant workers who populated our fields, everything from their immigration status (H2-A visas, allowing them to stay as temporary workers) to breeding habits (birthrate dropping steadily, no one knew why). I learned that the word “temporary” didn’t have much meaning any more, because we needed them there to plant, and harvest, year round. The migrant workers had become the breadbasket of America, and we couldn’t let them go.

  Because of Mother’s status in the field, I was trusted with information most interns never saw. There were problems with The Wall, problems nobody had foreseen. No one knew if there were similar issues on the other side; they’d cut off all communication in my great-grandparent’s time, when it was first built. But there were plenty of problems on our side.

  I’d always been t
aught that the snipers were there to keep people from coming over the wall to our side. Now, I learned they were there mainly to keep people in. Trackers like my mother were occasionally permitted to “go over,” but the migrant families who’d been here when the wall went up, stayed, generation after generation, whether they liked it or not.

  The distant gunfire we’d occasionally hear wasn’t from LICE agents defending our borders. It was from LICE agents shooting desperate workers as they tried to climb The Wall and get out.

  I was troubled by what I learned, troubled enough to discuss it with my parents. Of course, they already knew all about it. My mother explained what a mess the country had been in before, terrorists running rampant and drug culture invading even the whitest homes. The Wall went up, immigration cracked down, and the country returned to its previous peaceful state.

  Wasn’t I grateful I never had to worry about being raped when I walked home at night? Didn’t I understand that keeping those people here was, in a sense, saving them from the gang warfare that infested their own homeland? Besides, none of them were really Mexican any more. That was just a myth, like Palestinians claiming parts of Israel as “home.” True, the migrants weren’t really American either, but at least they had food, shelter, and a place to live.

  Put that way, it all made sense. And I had a steady job waiting for me, if I keep my head down and didn’t make waves.

  I rose through the ranks, from intern to Watcher to head of Enforcement and Education. I had my own desk, name plate and all, with an official title. I wouldn’t say I was happy, but I was certainly settled,

  And then came Gabe. “Gabriel Alfonso Alvarez,” to be exact. Fourth generation green card holder, the right handed down from his great-greats in a direct line after the moratorium on new citizenship applications went into effect. Those original green cards, usually held by university professors or tech geniuses, were a closely guarded privilege. Even the head of our field office had never seen one before.

  It had only been a few years since Roger’s betrayal, but during that time I’d convinced myself it was for the best. I’d slammed the lid on my desire so hard, I barely felt anything, even when I touched myself. The occasional bout with a vibrator was enough to release any built-up tension. As for the men around me, when I compared them with what I saw through my field glasses, they were pasty-faced and bloated. It would feel like being stroked by a dead fish. I’d set sex, and all thoughts of sex, completely aside.

  So the hot flush that ran from my toes right up my hairline when Gabe first spoke my name was a shocking reminder that I still harbored a craving for contact. I managed to stammer something intelligent, like “How on earth do you know my name?” before lapsing into red-faced confusion.

  Laughing, he pointed to the plate on the front of my desk, saying “You would be ‘Señorita’, then? Not ‘Señora’?”

  “Yes,” I responded in my best I’m-the-teacher-here-don’t-get-out-of-line voice.

  He sighed dramatically, slumping for effect. “A pity. Your offspring would be beautiful.”

  Beautiful.

  He thought I was beautiful.

  Not “genetically clean,” or “well groomed,” but “beautiful.”

  I don’t know that I’d ever spoken to a Hispanic person before, other than the women who cleaned our house over the years. They patiently let me practice my language skills on them. “Buenos dias, señoras,” I would say, and they’d respond with “Buenos tardes, señorita.” I would ask, in halting Spanish, how their day was going. “Bueno, señorita, bueno. Estamos muy contente,” they’d say, and we would be finished with the lesson.

  I still dreamed of them, though, as I had all my life. Dreamed of Hispanic men, their golden bodies glistening in the sun. Wondered whether drops of their sweat had watered the tomato I brought to my mouth. Slowly savored a peach, licking the skin and imagining the sweet salt of their perspiration on it. And here he was, calling me “beautiful.”

  I was lost.

  Not that I was blind, nothing of the sort. I looked at him long and hard before agreeing to anything permanent. There were concerns. Gabe had tried his hand at half a dozen jobs, but never settled on anything. He had a small inheritance from his parents, and it was enough to provide the necessities, but not much more. Despite his obvious intelligence, he had no real drive. He’d come here, to our little town, hoping to find his passion.

  And then, he found me.

  I’d like to say it was love at first sight, but it was more like instant lust. He asked whether I was seeing anyone, then took me to lunch. We stayed through dinner. He walked me home, striding confidently through the town, oblivious to the stares and whispers. He moved sinuously, muscles obeying without thought. I could feel them through the sleeve of his shirt when I took his arm. It was like walking with a tiger.

  I want to be clear. I loved him then, as he was, and I love him now, as he is.

  We dated for several months, while my parents ran the usual checks. I understand it was much the same during the age of AIDS, when two people interested in sex would go to the doctor together and get tested. Protective measures. After all, no woman in her right mind wants to get pregnant and then find out her child’s genes also came from an anarchist or, God forbid, a terrorist.

  Gabe came up clean in every respect, for three generations back. No questionable antecedents. No criminal elements. Nothing but your basic hard-working American dreamers.

  After that, events moved along by themselves. We married with little hoopla, took our honeymoon in San Antonio, then settled down. Thanks to my parents, he was able to get a job supervising workers in the broccoli fields. He seemed to enjoy himself.

  As for me, I was deliriously happy. Every pent up emotion came roaring out the first time he touched me. I think I even fainted for a moment.

  He was an incredible lover, knowing just how far to push and just how long to make me wait. And, he was inexhaustible. We’d make love first thing in the morning, have breakfast, go to work, come home, make love again, have dinner, and sometimes make love for a third time. There wasn’t a spot in the house we hadn’t tried, from the guest shower to the kitchen table.

  We didn’t plan on children, at least, not yet. I wanted him all to myself. I loved to watch him, shirtless in the Texas heat, as he mowed the yard. I needed to feast my eyes on his skin, and imagine what the night was going to bring. Just the sight of his fingers buttoning a shirt made me wet. Absurd as it sounds, watching him take out the trash made me weak at the knees. I was in perpetual rut, and it showed no sign of ending.

  Back at work, things were different. There was tension around the border, whispers of trouble passed desk to desk when no one else was listening. More and more of the migrant workers were dying, of old age, of illness, of simple neglect. We saw the reports and were told to ignore them. “Don’t worry. They breed like rabbits,” one supervisor said.

  But that wasn’t true. The migrant laborer’s birth rate had begun falling a year after they were told they were permanent guests here, and the decline had continued. According to the Homeland Security statistics, we had less than half the workers we’d had three generations back—and almost twice the regular population. Asking Americans to work under those conditions was unthinkable. Paying a decent wage, which might allow migrants to send their children to school and work their way out of the fields, was unaffordable. Americans wanted cheap food, be it soda pop or brussel sprouts, and they didn’t much care how they got it.

  The anxiety I felt at work began to surface in our home. As Gabe moved around, from broccoli to tomatoes to sweet corn and snap beans, he began to know individual families. He’d come home each day and tell me their stories as we lay sweating in the heat, exhausted by foreplay and its aftermath. He worried over them. He felt helpless.

  There was one little boy he kept returning to, a seven year old named Hector. The child was obviously very bright, Gabe said, but he’ll never have the chance to be anything but a “potato pul
ler.”

  When Gabe started talking about changing the system from without, if it couldn’t be changed from within, I realized his kind heart might be his undoing.

  I worried over it incessantly. The more involved he became with the migrants, the more I begged him to distance himself. He began to resent what he termed my lack of empathy. I began to resent his willingness to throw away everything his family, and mine, had worked for over the years.

  “Aren’t you grateful to your ancestors for making sure you never have to live like that?” I’d ask. “Don’t you owe them something for their bravery, their willingness to rise above their beginnings and make this their permanent home?”

  And he’d respond that the workers’ families had been brave as well, coming to a new country where they didn’t even speak the language, working in the fields, hoping their children would have a better life too.

  We’d argue, pushing and pulling, going around in circles. I’d bring up our future children; he’d answer that he didn’t want them growing up in a world where only those who already had, could have more. I’d tell him that for every bright little Hector, there were a hundred slow-moving dullards who were fit only to till the soil. He’d tell me that if my parents hadn’t gotten enough protein, I’d be a dullard as well. And so on and so on.

  Frustration grew on both sides until I reached for him one morning, and he pushed me away. I rubbed against him, whispering in his ear, but he rolled over and ignored me.

  A few evenings later, he came in and immediately hopped in the shower, then fell asleep on the couch. When I woke him up to bring him to bed, he said he’d forgotten his hat that morning. He thought he had a bit of sunstroke, but just in case he was getting sick, he’d sleep on the couch instead of our bed.

  And so, slowly but surely, the love making stopped. I felt like I was losing my mind. My body was used to constant satiation, an erupting geyser that was suddenly capped off. The pressure began to build. I could relieve myself just so many times before I began feeling like a narcissist. Frankly, I only found my own body interesting when Gabe was playing with it. Otherwise, relief was a mechanical necessity, and I hated it. I was desperate for something that would take my mind off my body, and not finding it at home, I looked for it at work.