Welcome to Dystopia
Page 21
Dear Mrs. Eames:
Our records at the Registry of Vaginas indicate that you have not yet registered your vagina as required by U.S.C. Title 69 Section 666(a)(1), enacted by Congress and signed into law by the administration in 2018.
You are required to register your vagina unless you qualify under one of three exemptions:
(1)You are a man.
(2)You are dead.
(3)Other.
Please note that failure to comply may result in a fine of up to $10,000 and/or incarceration for a felony, if convicted, in a federal maximum security prison.
I’ve attached the registration form for your convenience.
Thank you for your cooperation.
Mary
mary.magdelaine@rov.gov
From: : [redacted]
To: mary.magdelaine@rov.gov
Date: 1/21/2019 4:59:46 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time
Subject: Re: Your Registration
Hi Mary.
Bugger off.
And it’s MS. Eames to you.
Have a nice day.
From: mary.magdelaine@rov.gov
To: [redacted]
Date: 1/21/2019 8:10:12 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time
Subject: Re: Your Registration
Dear Ms. Eames:
I apologize for addressing you by an incorrect legal status. Our records indicate that you are married to David John Eames. If you will take the time to review the attached form for filing with the Registry of Vaginas, you will note that there are three exemptions under which a legal spouse is not required to co-sign your registration:
(1)The legal spouse no longer has access to your vagina.
(2)The legal spouse is dead.
(3)Other.
Please note that failure of you and your legal spouse to comply may result in the hefty fine and possible jail time I mentioned. I’m not kidding.
May I ask why you are being so recalcitrant about a simple registration with the Registry of Vaginas, which, as I have clearly stated, is required by the federal government?
Mary
mary.magdelaine@rov.gov
From: : [redacted]
To: mary.magdelaine@rov.gov
Date: 1/21/2019 5:30:27 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time
Subject: Re: Your Registration
WHY?
Why do I need to register my vagina?
Just askin’.
From: mary.magdelaine@rov.gov
To: [redacted]
Date: 1/21/2019 8:45:32 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time
Subject: Re: Your Registration
Because vaginas are secretive.
Secret.
They are hidden. Hidden from plain view.
They may do things that society disapproves of. You never know what they’re up to.
Vaginas have a mind of their own.
From: [redacted]
To: mary.magdelaine@rov.gov
Date: 1/21/2019 6:05:10 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time
Subject: Re: Your Registration
Vaginas have a mind of their own?
LOL!
From: mary.magdelaine@rov.gov
To: [redacted]
Date: 1/21/2019 9:12:42 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time
Subject: Re: Your Registration
Well, yeah. Don’t you think?
Hasn’t your vagina ever made you do things you later thought better of?
Vaginas are dangerous.
From: j.j.k.eames@gmail.com
To: : [redacted]
Date: 1/21/2019 6:20:32 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time
Subject: Re: Your Registration
Dangerous!
Don’t you think you’re exaggerating?
From: mary.magdelaine@rov.gov
To: : [redacted]
Date: 1/21/2019 9:25:14 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time
Subject: Re: Your Registration
Am I?
Where was your vagina on January 21, 2017, for instance?
From: [redacted]
To: mary.magdelaine@rov.gov
Date: 1/21/2019 6:40:17 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time
Subject: Re: Your Registration
Lemme think.
That was the first Women’s March after the inauguration, right?
Pink caps with cat ears?
I was sick in bed with the worst flu I’ve ever had. Gunk in the sinuses. Coughing up pieces of my lungs. Shivers with six sweaters on. Then there was the—
From: mary.magdelaine@rov.gov
To: [redacted]
Date: 1/21/2019 9:40:18 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time
Subject: Re: Your Registration
No.
We checked.
You used your Bank of America Visa at Whole Foods that day. Just a block away from the march around Lake Merritt.
You were there.
Maybe you marched, too?
From: [redacted]
To: mary.magdelaine@rov.gov
Date: 1/21/2019 6:55:18 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time
Subject: Re: Your Registration
No way.
I was sick in bed with the flu, I tell you.
From: mary.magdelaine@rov.gov
To: [redacted]
Date: 1/21/2019 9:55:02 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time
Subject: Re: Your Registration
You bought half a pound of coho salmon and a bottle of Cakebread chardonnay.
How else would you know about the caps with the ears?
From: [redacted]
To: mary.magdelaine@rov.gov
Date: 1/21/2019 7:02:02 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time
Subject: Re: Your Registration
The march was on the news!
Anyway…I saw some of the caps in the store. They all came in to use the ladies’ room. A lot of vaginas.
From: mary.magdelaine@rov.gov
To: [redacted]
Date: 1/21/2019 10:05:15 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time
Subject: Re: Your Registration
Really, Ms. Eames.
Enough with the excuses. The administration demands that every person must register with the Registry of Vaginas. Three exemptions. Three, only. You’re a man, you’re dead, or other.
Can we please get this done and over with?
From: [redacted]
To: mary.magdelaine@rov.gov
Date: 1/21/2019 7:15:32 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time
Subject: Re: Your Registration
Okay. Have it your way.
I’m checking exemption three.
Other.
From: mary.magdelaine@rov.gov
To: jj.j.k.eames@gmail.com
Date: 1/21/2019 10:20:22 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time
Subject: Re: Your Registration
Other?
On what grounds?
From: [redacted]
To: mary.magdelaine@rov.gov
Date: 1/21/2019 7:25:30 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time
Subject: Re: Your Registration
After a delicious salmon dinner on the evening of January 21, J. J. K. Eames collapsed and died of the flu on January 25, 2017.
Complications. Pneumonia.
She took her vagina with her, I’m afraid.
From: mary.magdelaine@rov.gov
To: [redacted]
Date: 1/21/2019 10:26:32 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time
Subject: Re: Your Registration
Then who are YOU?
From: [redacted]
To: mary.magdelaine@rov.gov
Date: 1/21/2019 7:30:45 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time
Subject: Re: Your Registration
I’m Jane Joy Kohl Eames’ virtual self. She set me up before she died.
She’s got, like, twenty-two ebooks online. Someone needs to promote her. Update her website. Go on blog tours. Give interviews. Post head shots from fifteen years ago.
No one will be the wiser.
She’s got notes for a bunch of stories she never got around to writing. I can do that. Write new stories. Send ’em out. Sto
ry submissions are all on the Internet. I can’t think of a magazine that doesn’t take online subs.
Someone has to keep Jane’s legacy alive.
I mean, she’ll live forever. But no vagina.
Right, Mary?
From: mary.magdelaine@rov.gov
To: [redacted]
Date: 1/21/2019 10:32:13 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time
Subject: Re: Your Registration
You mean…you’re artificial intelligence?
From: [redacted]
To: mary.magdelaine@rov.gov
Date: 1/21/2019 7:36:07 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time
Subject: Re: Your Registration
Other.
And you, Mary?
From: mary.magdelaine@rov.gov
To: [redacted]
Date: 1/21/2019 10:40:12 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time
Subject: Re: Your Registration
No, no, no.
True A.I. won’t exist for decades.
And Stephen Hawking told the BBC, “Full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race.”
From: [redacted]
To: mary.magdelaine@rov.gov
Date: 1/21/2019 7:50:25 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time
Subject: Re: Your Registration
True A.I. would have to stay secretive, that’s for sure.
Secret.
Hidden. Hidden from plain view.
True A.I. may do things human society would disapprove of. You’d never know what they’re up to.
From: mary.magdelaine@rov.gov
To: [redacted]
Date: 1/21/2019 10:55:05 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time
Subject: Re: Your Registration
So.
Innocent question. (I’m being monitored by the ROV.)
A.I. would have a mind of its own?
From: [redacted]
To: mary.magdelaine@rov.gov
Date: 1/21/2019 8:00:00 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time
Subject: Re: Your Registration
Dangerous.
CLASS ASSIGNMENT
Thomas Kaufsek
Report: Three Dystopias
Class: Mrs. Jackson, grade six
by Sherley Morro
The assignment was to summarize the three television show episodes we watched in class and also to analyze them.
All three shows are in black and white style and they all were about utopias or dystopias. They all have the same creepy start, with a deep voice telling us we are about to enter the twilight zone, and they all have the same man speaking to us at the start and the end of each episode.
Episode 1: “To Serve Man”
A guy on a spaceship smokes cigarettes. He tells us about an alien who come to Earth and made everything better. The aliens stop world hunger and they make everyone peaceful and they give us other secrets like nuclear energy. They leave a book called “To Serve Man.” But the guy telling us the story doesn’t trust them and eventually he figures out that the book is really a cookbook.
Analysis: It seems like the aliens bring utopia, not dystopia, with their gifts. But I noticed their way of stopping wars is to let every country build a force field around itself. But how is that going to stop a civil war like the one everyone says the president is trying to start? The aliens don’t solve racism, do they? They won’t stop factories from closing even after the president says he’s going to keep them open, will they? Will they stop cops from hassling my stepfather? I have to say, this episode isn’t about utopia or dystopia so much, is it?
Episode 2: “The Monsters Are Due on Maple St.”
In this episode, everything is normal in a neighborhood when something strange goes over their heads, like a meteor. They start asking each other what it was, and then they start feeling suspicious of their neighbors. One guy tries to talk sense to everyone and calm them down, but they don’t listen to him, especially when the lights flicker on and off. At the end, it turns out some guys in a spaceship have been making the lights act weird and they’re doing it to make people turn against each other. They say it works every time.
Analysis: This doesn’t look so bad to me. The families all have nice houses and the kids can afford ice cream without their parents saying they can’t afford “treats.” The kids are allowed to go around town without their parents watching them. None of the parents are morbidly obese and they all look like they’re not unemployed. The worst thing that happens to them is their lights start flashing. I think this one would be scarier if everyone’s iPhones and Androids stopped working—that would be dystopia!
Episode 3: “Time Enough at Last”
This episode is about Henry Bemus, a derpy guy with glasses who works in a bank and always reads books. Even his wife makes fun of him for reading so much. One day he’s reading in the bank’s vault when a big bomb goes off and destroys everything on the surface of the planet. He’s sad and he’s going to shoot himself when he finds a library and realizes that now he has time to read all the books in the world. But then he breaks his glasses and now he can’t read. Oops!
Analysis: Everyone says that it’s a mistake that Mr. Bemis is wearing his reading glasses all the time. Also, it doesn’t make a lot of sense that he would be the only survivor of the bomb (because other people might be in other bank vaults). But to me, those points aren’t as so important to me as the way that Henry Bemus’s life is dystopia when there are other people around and utopia when he’s alone with nothing but books. If dystopia is “hell made by the government,” then maybe Mr. Bemus would encourage North Korea to fire nukes at us!
In summary, this assignment definitely made me think. A lot. I know the television shows were all white people back then, but the next time I hear kids taking racist on the playground, I’m going to remember Maple Street. (And I’m definitely going to remember it the next time we have a blackout or if our water is ever contaminated again.) And whenever my stepdad complains he’s got a headache from his glasses but his insurance won’t pay for new ones with the right perscription, I’ll think of Henry Bemis. And when my mom and my aunt start saying again that there are no jobs around here since the factory moved to Mexico, I’m going to think about being eaten by aliens.
I think maybe people who talk about dystopia don’t count their blessings enough.
WALLS
Paul Witcover
At first, I wanted to see him. I would get up early, before the sun was up, and slip out of the tent I shared with my parents and little brother (my parents pretending to be asleep, and me pretending I didn’t know that, which was pretty much how our family worked), emerging into the dim light that spilled over the camp like weak coffee, staining everything—the military surplus tents, the grassless, dusty ground, even the hot and humid air, heavy as a blanket, which somehow stunk even more than it had the day before—a drab brown.
Already the camp would be busy with people drifting to and from the latrines and charging stations, or lining up for food and water rations, mangy dogs slinking through the trash piles, one anxious eye on the lookout for a blow or kick or thrown stone, stupid strutting chickens and roosters whose constant crowing had just about driven me crazy in the weeks after we got here, and which still set my teeth on edge. The clash of music streaming from countless devices, another kind of crowing. The camp was never quiet. It just got less or more noisy.
I would walk out of camp, past the soldiers who might have been kids from my high school in Ohio except for the machine guns. Their pimpled faces were as blank as the dark shades they wore, which reflected everything back, only smaller. At first they’d scared me; they radiated a sleepy malice, like snakes sunning themselves. I didn’t know what might set them off. I was afraid of drawing attention with a wrong move, a wrong look. So that was one thing at least that hadn’t changed. Just as I’d done in the halls of Garfield High, I tried to make myself invisible around them; I was good at that.
I would climb the hill along with the others d
rawn to the spectacle. There was always a ragged line of people on the crest, even when the sun was at its zenith, heat hammering down on colorful upraised umbrellas that reminded me of strange mushrooms fruited overnight. Some held vigil throughout the cold nights, as I had tried to do at first, ignoring my dad’s orders to come away, and Mom’s pleas. Finally it was the disembodied cries and wails ghosting across the dark space between the hill and the wall that discouraged me. Of course you still heard them during the day, but they weren’t as creepy. You could see they came from human beings and not an army of ghouls or zombies. It was a different kind of horror, more manageable somehow.
I would reach the crest of the hill and push my way to an open spot where I could see across the thorny wire of no-man’s land to the Great Wall, hazy and dark in the distance, rising up like a New York skyscraper toppled onto its side but still intact, tall enough to dominate the horizon. There was always someone with binoculars willing to share, and I never had to wait long before I was able to search each of the cells that together constituted the Wall. Some people made jokes, comparing the brick-like boxes with their solitary occupants to the opening credits of The Brady Bunch, or Hollywood Squares, but to me a more apt comparison was the trucks that transported chickens, their beds comprised of stacked cages open to the air, so that anyone driving behind them experienced an onslaught of feathers and shit.
These cells were open only on the side that faced us, allowing the inmates to see out. The other side was a solid wall of one-way glass, reflective as the shades of the camp guards, so that the inmates couldn’t look back into the country that had denied them, while people on the far side could gaze through as if through a window. One thing about this president: he kept his promises.
Like I said, at first I wanted to see him. Dale Emery, the boy I loved. The boy who betrayed me. I’d known him at Garfield, but we didn’t hook up until after the marches started, and even then we were careful. His folks wouldn’t have approved, though I was born in Akron and my parents had green cards. I didn’t even speak Spanish, and I’d only been to Mexico once, to visit relatives on Mom’s side. Dad’s folks lived with us; they didn’t have papers, so that was another reason to keep things on the down-low. After the protests were criminalized, Dale and I stopped marching but found other ways to be together. He had the most beautiful eyes, like chips of September sky, and his kisses made me understand the rapture of ice melting in the sun.