Our only practical recourse, then, is to use default ourselves. We must conceive—and somehow make real within ourselves—the nation that the our leader would have given us, a nation for which the nonsense I have described above would have been a dim memory or a horrific fantasy, we must keep possibility and hope alive by acting as if the alternative, the real life of the nation had been ours and we would have been able to put paid to what the excellent Michael Savage described as “the mental disorder of liberalism.” In that alternate history, in that counterfactual world, the full forces of the State would have been turned against the avalanche of verminous nihilism, even that shadow of a “multi-party” deceit would have been purged and we would be living in a cultural situation at least striving toward equality and justice. We would have had a Head of State who understood that the only real service is self-service and that lesson, given so fiercely to the addle-headed polity of the problematic might have saved us.
But it is too late. Surely the lessons of the decades have taught us this—life has taught us this—life has taught us plenty and all we can do is accommodate ourselves to the uneven and tragic flow of history. The only good news can be given at the end: We have persisted into a world in which an original anthology of such speculation has been commissioned. We can perhaps take comfort from that if not the color of the situation itself.
(Fortunately I can remind both of us that the above is fiction. We have the comfort of noting that this uncomfortably speculative anthology is for its conscripted but eager contributors just an exercise, a kind of spiritual exercise, an exploration of a haunted and nonexistent alternate reality. We do not live in the world in which they—and therefore we—lost. We live in the world in which they—we—won. Let the practices continue. Let the resettlement camps continue to open across the nation [and when fully occupied] their gates). Let the fire begin. No longer their world but yours, no longer distant fire but the smoke drifting through and over the landscape of the camps. We have been trudging inexorably this way for all those years since 11/22/63 and now we are about to vault over the darkness.
I hope that I have performed satisfactorily. As you know, in the past, so long before this unpleasantness, I had some minor recognition as a writer of speculative fiction.
A copy of this by statute to the Dept. of Control and Coordination.
As ever,
Barry N. Malzberg (Jew 5,271,009 of Sector 14)
FAREWELL
Mary Anne Mohanraj
The noise at O’Hare is a dull roar of voices, rising and falling, dissolving into chaos. We must almost shout to hear each other, packed into long lines that press against each other, sticky in the June heat, waiting to get into the building.
My mother frowns, raising a folded newspaper over her head to block the relentless sun. “Keep Raj inside. You know how dark he gets at the end of the summer. He looks like such a blackie—he won’t be safe.”
“I know, Amma.” I wince to hear her use that term, but my mother is an old woman, and there’s only so much you can expect of her. And she’s not wrong—since the latest growth spurt, Raj could easily be mistaken for a young black man. Especially at night, should he venture into the wrong part of town. Lately, it seems like everywhere is the wrong part of town; John and I have started making Raj come straight home from school. It feels like we’re stealing away his childhood, what’s left of it.
“Oh, kunju.” She is squeezing Raj too tightly again, pressing him against her sari-clad breast. When my mother was young, first immigrated to America, she had worn saris daily, but as the years passed, she’d adopted western dress—miniskirts in the 70s, slacks in the 80s, eventually even jeans. My sisters and I teased Amma about the miniskirts from the photos, given how she’d policed our own Catholic school uniforms. Our skirts had to reach farther down than our fingertips could stretch. She protested, “That was the style!” We harassed her mercilessly, but Amma held firm. She’d always been strong-willed, the kind of person who knew her own mind, and would not be moved; she’d stood fast against the winds of change. I’d never thought that she could be toppled like this.
My son looks at me with pleading dark eyes, too well-mannered at fourteen to pull away, but clearly wanting his mother to rescue him. That’s my job, isn’t it? To save my children from anything that might ever hurt them? That was why we pulled them out of the defunded public school two years ago, where the newly-approved textbooks started rewriting history. The new charter school makes them say prayers before lunch, but at least they’ll still talk about Dr. King.
“Mom?” His voice breaks on the word, and I sigh, the sound lost in the human roar surrounding us. The line shifts, finally, taking us a few steps closer to the glass doors, where we must part ways. Only my mother will be allowed inside. Her returnee badge hangs, bright yellow, from a cord around her neck.
“Let him go, Amma.”
She squeezes tighter. “How can I? My angel, my brilliant boy. He will forget his Ammama.”
“I won’t, Ammama. I promise.” Raj says it fiercely, sincerely, and I know he means it in the moment. But the weight of years piles up; memories fade with distance, blurring at the edges.
When I was a child, letters came, from my grandparents in Sri Lanka. Thin blue paper, onionskin-thin, covered in cramped, tiny writing. The postage was expensive, especially given the exchange rate, so they crammed as many words as they could onto the page. My father wept, the only time child-me ever saw him cry, when word came on one of those letters of my grandfather’s death. Too far, too expensive, too difficult to cross the waters for the funeral. Appa might lose his job, and the job was the only thing letting him stay in America.
Now tears stand bright in my mother’s eyes, and she brings the edge of the cotton pallu up to mop them dry. Through the 90s and the 00s, saris almost disappeared from Amma’s daily wardrobe, brought out only in full splendor for weddings and similarly grand functions. Those were richly embroidered, shimmering gold and brilliant jewel tones, worn with her gold thali necklace and dozens of heavy gold bangles. Yesterday, packing up her belongings into the two small suitcases that were allowed, Amma insisted that my sisters and I keep the saris and the bangles—besides, she said, there will be nothing to celebrate there; I won’t need them.
Instead, she pulled out her old cotton saris, everyday wear. Women wear dresses and slacks in Sri Lanka, too, of course, but my mother seems determined to return to the world of her childhood, a colonial world where children wear crisp white uniforms to school, where women dress in sun-faded saris, their long black hair pulled back into tight braids. Her own hair is liberally streaked with white now; she stopped coloring it when my father died.
Amma clings to Raj, as if his newly-tall frame can hold her upright, can anchor her here. But he has no power to save her. She came to America with her doctor husband, became a citizen, had three daughters. She expected to grow old and die here, as her husband had, just last year. But now, fifty years after their arrival, she has been denaturalized, her citizenship revoked with the stroke of the president’s pen.
Amma finally releases the boy, who takes a quick step back to my side. “You’ll come to visit?” Her voice, strong for so long, quavers. She has turned into an old woman overnight.
“Yes, Amma. Of course.” It is a bald-faced lie, and we both know it. My status is too precarious to risk leaving the country—I was brought in on a green card as a child, naturalized decades ago, but it is only my marriage to a white man that is letting me stay. All around us, brown people are lined up, entire families, each toting their two allowed suitcases. Some silent, trying to imagine what life might look like, in a homeland many left decades before. Most talking, talking, making plans, filling up the fear with words. So here I am, saying farewell to my mother. My sisters, who failed to marry white men, are already gone. “We’ll talk online. Every day.”
Amma grabs my arm, squeezes it hard, her fingers digging into the flesh. The nails on her hands are cracked—she hasn�
��t been taking care of them, hasn’t had a manicure or even applied polish in what looks like weeks. I should have been paying more attention, should have taken her to have them seen to. There’s been so much to do, and so little time to do it. “Talk to John. You must convince him to apply for jobs in Sri Lanka. That would be the best way.”
Sri Lanka doesn’t want him. They are unhappy enough at being forced to accept so many repatriated ex-citizens; strong-armed by US diplomacy, the threat of American guns. As it is, they’ve created a new status for the returnees; my mother and sisters are allowed in, but denied the right to vote, to effect any kind of political change. And white people—white people aren’t welcome at all.
I have plenty of complaints about the Sri Lankan government, but on that one issue, I sympathize. My stomach roils with what white people, mostly white men, are doing to us. At night, I lie beside my husband and try not to blame him for other men’s cruelties. Sometimes I fail. Three nights ago, John slid his hand under the covers, reached to cup my breast, and I froze in response.
What’s wrong? he’d asked.
Just do what you want. Take what you want. That’s what your people do, isn’t it?
Unfair, unfair, but I’d wanted to hurt him, and I had. He let go, slid away, and we endured a cold silence until sleep finally, mercifully, descended.
I gently patted her hand on my arm, hoping it would convince her to loosen her grip. “Yes, Amma. I’ll talk to John.”
“He should have been here. You shouldn’t have had to drive me here yourself.” And then she is pulling me into her arms, and my face is buried against her soft neck, warm with the scent of jasmine and orange blossom. My father had loved those scents, and it is as if they trigger something deep within me, tears that are rushing up, eager to burst free. I have been calm up until now. I have to stay calm, for her, for my son. My body is shaking with the force of my need to stay calm.
“John had something else he needed to do.” IUDs had gotten scarce, impossibly expensive, and most companies had stopped covering them. But John’s university insurance would still cover our ten-year-old, Jenny, who, thank god, was fair-skinned enough to pass for white. The underground clinics that served brown girls hadn’t been able to get their hands on IUDs for years.
It was just bad luck that the only opening the doctor had was on the same day my mother was leaving. I couldn’t tell Amma what they were doing—she was a good Catholic, an old-school Catholic, and she wouldn’t understand. Children are a blessing, she’d always said. They were, they were—unless you couldn’t care for them. Then, they simply broke your heart.
I wouldn’t let Jenny face that decision, not until she was an adult, at least. She hadn’t wanted to go this morning, not ready to accept what her still-maturing body might be at risk for, but I’d insisted. It was a parent’s job to protect their child, to make them do what was good for them, even when it hurt. Like the times I’d had to hold her still, despite protests and tears, to draw out a sharp splinter.
The line shifted again, and again, the movement finally separating us, breaking Amma’s hold on me. Here we are, at the doors, two security guards flanking them, impassive in their black riot gear. I hold out a suitcase to my mother, and Raj offers her the other; after the briefest of hesitations, she squares her thin shoulders and takes them in her hands. Amma bites her lip and turns away, passing between the guards and through the sliding doors without another word. Is that kindness, that she forebears a final plea? Or anger, that I am not coming with her? Probably both.
My sisters aren’t pleased that the responsibility of caring her is falling onto them—I am eldest, it is my job. But I have two children here who need me, now more than ever; they have to be my first priority.
As long as I am allowed, I will stay.
THE AMAZING TRANSFORMATION OF THE WHITE HOUSE DOG
Ron Goulart
The afternoon that the head of the Alternative FBI called at his Uncle Josh’s Robotic Lab/Residence in Georgetown, Norbert Dawes was in the first-floor workroom checking up on the most recently completed robot canine, Fido #7. The silver-plated robot wasn’t in his cage but sprawled on a candy-stripe love seat watching footage of today’s protest marches in nearby Washington. A wave of about two-thousand protestors was moving closer to the White House with signs reading Return Our Library Cards! At the tail end of this protest group, another one was following, demanding Stop Teaching Russian in Our Grammar Schools!
Norbert was a borderline tall man of twenty-nine, borderline good looking. “How in the hell did you get out of your darned cage, Fido?”
The silver-plated robot shifted his sprawl. “I watched a docudrama about safecracking on the telly, Norby,” he said. “By the way, how’s your quest for a job going? The Guild, Bascom & Vespucci ad agency fired you from the Creative Department over three months ago.”
“Two months ago, when they relocated their offices to Tangiers where copywriters are cheaper.”
“A pity the current administration cancelled unemployment insurance or you could coast for a bit longer.”
Straddling a chair, Norbert asked, “Okay, how’d you turn on the TV?”
“I’m his new improved model, and your dear uncle built in all sorts of extras,” replied Fido #7. “And I’ve modified myself quite a bit on my own. I can now get all the movie channels and I can scan all of the World’s Greatest 100 Books that I should read before I kick off.”
“That’s impressive, but—”
“I like to keep well versed, Norb. I am also watching the President’s daily diatribes. What a maroon, as Bugs Bunny might say.” He hopped off the love seat and settled on the floor. “Also taking classes in calculus, porn, and hypnotism. If I’m going to be pretending to be the President’s White House Dog, I’ve got to be well steeped in all sorts of stuff.”
Norbert jerked upright. “Where did you get that goofy notion?”
The robot dog rose up on his metallic legs. Tilting his head upward toward the off-white ceiling. “From above, dear buddy. Right now, Uncle Josh is talking to some gink who’s top man in the Alternative Federal Bureau of Investigation.”
“You can listen in?”
“Obviously.”
“Does my uncle know that you—”
“Sure, part of my duties as—”
“Norbert, could you pop up here to the second parlor,” came his uncle’s voice out of a wall speaker. “There’s a fellow from Washington I’d like you to meet.”
Despite the fact that the second parlor was a high-ceilinged room with off-white walls and black-and-white furnishings it felt cozy. This was due to the large, deep simulated fireplace Uncle Josh had invented and installed and never gotten around to patenting.
On the black-and-white floating coffee table were a coffee urn, two cups, and a gilded cage in which, on a swing, sat a bright yellow robot canary who could sing one hundred light opera pieces. She was set on silent at the moment.
Uncle Josh rose. “Norbert, this is J. Edgar Nofzinger, the Chief of the Alternative Federal Bureau of Investigation.”
“Pleased to meet you, young man.” The AFBI man was borderline short and plump, wearing a conservative gray suit. “Understand you’ve been lending him a hand since you got canned.”
“Well, actually what happened—”
“The President of the United States wants a robot dog for the White House,” cut in the scientist.
“Actually,” explained Nofzinger, “we have to replace the White House dog we acquired for him.”
“Why is that?” asked Norbert. “I just saw a special report on NBC about the President frolicking on the White Lawn with Hound Dog and having members of the Cabinet throwing a stick for him to fetch.”
“I was hoping to get to throw a stick, but I didn’t make the cut,” the AFBI chief said. “But let me give you a little back story.” He paused to try his coffee. “The President, soon after taking office, started getting literally millions of letters and tweets from his admirer
s. They all said that he ought to have a dog in the White House. They said Nixon had a dog, FDR had a dog. It was a national tradition. Nixon had Checkers and FDR had Fala. We knew who FDR was but had never heard of Fala. Be that as it may, when over eight million suggestions came—more than any president since Woodrow Wilson has ever received—we went and got a dog, a full-grown one. The best-looking canine ever to belong to any president. A large part of those who communicated with the President thought the White House dog should be named Hound Dog as a tribute to America’s greatest singer, Elvis.”
“In fact, Big Momma Thornton introduced the—”
“No time for fake facts. Our problem is that the President turns out of be allergic to dogs. Dander and so forth,” he said. “The entire staff of the Mayo Clinic has said he’s the healthiest man ever to be president, but he has this one tiny flaw. So we want a robot version of Hound Dog. We can’t have the leader of the country going achoo!
“Mr. Nofzinger also likes the idea that my robot animals can talk if need be.”
The AFBI chief nodded. “Give him somebody to keep him company and shoot the bull with him during the wee hours when he’s tweeting.”
“I’ll have Fido #7 tuned up and looking exactly like the real Hound Dog one week from today,” said Uncle Josh. “$400,000, up front.”
“A bit steep. But we can take the amount from some useless public service giveaway,” Nofzinger told the scientist. Now, we’ll pick up you and the new improved Hound Dog next week and slip you into a rear entrance of the White House. You can come along if you wish, young man.”
“Yeah, I just might.”
“We’ll be in a panel truck that has MISS LIBERTY YUMMY 100% COWBURGERS on both sides in red, white, and blue.”
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