A Song for a New Day

by Sarah Pinsker

  “Why are you going?” Jaspreet would ask each interviewee.

  “They say it’s better to get some distance between people.” Or “I just don’t feel safe anymore.” Or “People cross the street when they see my pox scars. It’s not like I’m contagious anymore.”

  I pictured their grand pilgrimage, their stately moving trucks, an endless search for the place where fear wouldn’t follow them. The homes she documented were a mix: large houses abandoned by the professors who no longer needed to live near their shuttered campuses; gentrified and ungentrified row homes; row homes that had been vacant long before any of the current troubles. Jaspreet gave statistics for the number of homeless people versus the number of available houses, the number of people who’d left in each of the previous four years.

  The film was well made, but I was distracted. My mind kept juxtaposing my parents’ neighborhood, where nobody was going anywhere. It kept playing with thoughts of family and community and what makes a place a home, all overlaid with this gathering of people whose lives had collided with mine, the potluck dishes on the table, the things we’d written on the wall, the cheering and the compliments for Jaspreet’s work, their mutual understanding that this film was art and politics and a statement on what it took to stay, and what it took to leave, and what it meant to have no choice in the matter.

  People chatted late into the evening, and for once I stayed downstairs, drinking and snacking and getting to know my roommates’ friends. When everyone finally left, I asked Jaspreet a question I’d been waiting to ask. “That street in the scene with the community garden. Where’s that?”

  Jaspreet rewound to look at which one I was talking about. “Not all that far from here. A whole block of vacants in pretty decent shape.”

  I copied the address and looked it up after we were done cleaning. Then I started researching realty agents. I had a wonderful, terrible idea for how to use my “Blood and Diamonds” money.

  PART TWO

  15

  ROSEMARY

  Baltimore

  Rosemary’s bus hit Baltimore as the sun began to set, lighting the skyscrapers in pink and gold and purple. She leaned against the window and wondered what it would be like to be in one of those rooms when the light struck this way. She didn’t even know if those tall buildings were still in use. Were they residences or offices, and how were they counted in congregation laws?

  “We’ll be stopping in five minutes.” The bus guard’s voice, piped into each locked compartment, was loud enough to make her jump. It had been hours since he had spoken. “Please make sure to collect all of your belongings. Anything left behind will be destroyed.”

  They came off the highway exit, passed under a plate scanner, and were spit out beside a crumbling stadium. Two razor-wire fences formed a perimeter around it, even though it didn’t look like there was much to scavenge. This wasn’t one of the stadiums where SportHolo games happened, she was pretty sure. And how were they filmed, for that matter? The players couldn’t all be in individual boxes like the musicians. Rosemary filed that question away for another time.

  She remembered going to a baseball game once as a kid, in the Before. The noise, the terrifying drop behind the bleachers, vendors hawking pretzels and ice cream and drinks, the players specks on the diamond far below. She wasn’t sure why anyone used to pay to sit out in the weather and watch tiny people when SportHolo brought them right into your living room, large as life.

  SportHolo hadn’t yet taken off when the stadiums shut down, she guessed. Or there was some other aspect she had been too young to recognize, something sociological, ritual. Often when her parents talked fondly about the antecedent to something that was clearly better today, it was because of the nostalgia factor.

  The bus lurched on into the city, catching seven red lights in a row. It had been a smooth ride for the most part, but now the seats rattled and knocked like the farm truck. Maybe they had switched to a human driver after exiting the freeway; maybe it was just bad roads. Rosemary tried to keep her stomach in its proper place, concentrated on the map overlaid by her Hoodie and finding the best route from the bus drop-off to her hotel.

  By the time it stopped to discharge its passengers, on what looked to Rosemary like a random street corner, she was more than ready to get off the bus. She headed toward the exit holding her small bag in front of her to navigate the narrow aisle between compartments; it added a buffer between her and the person ahead if he stopped abruptly. She paused for a second on the last step, looking up at the buildings, down at the sidewalk. I’m here, she thought. I can do this.

  After so many hours riding, her legs wobbled a bit with her first steps, like the ground beneath them was still moving. She walked three blocks to the hotel, enjoying the chance to stretch a bit.

  The hoodmaps had left out pedestrians; they’d made her expect empty streets. Wide sidewalks let her keep her distance from the other walkers, but it was still a good reminder that even with all her preparation, real life was different. How did that Whileaway song go? I walked in with open eyes / and still you caught me by surprise. She didn’t even know what to open her eyes to, so she guessed she’d be surprised a lot.

  The hotel lobby was the most ostentatious nonvirtual space she’d ever been in; she checked to see if she’d forgotten to switch to clearview on her Hoodie. Chandeliers like constellations, casting a golden light over the slick white counters, all speaking cleanliness and warmth and comfort to an exhausted Rosemary. Too many firsts for one day.

  She stepped into a service booth, tapped her phone on the pad. The low battery light flashed. She wiped it against her side and tucked it back in her pocket.

  Reservation confirmed, the screen read. Welcome, Mx. StageHoloLive. Please confirm identity.

  That didn’t bode well. She tapped her ID to the reader, her heart sinking.

  ID does not match name. Please place fingerprint against glass.

  She put her finger on the smudged glass, trying not to dwell on all the other fingers that had touched it, then hit the button for assistance when it didn’t accept her fingerprint, either. The screen switched over to a cheerful-looking av, a middle-aged Mexican guy. “How can I help you? ¿Cómo puedo ayudarle? Please state another language if English or Spanish is not your preferred language.”

  Rosemary wondered how someone was supposed to parse that third sentence if English wasn’t their preferred language. “I’m here on business. My company sent me, but I guess someone goofed and didn’t put my name on the reservation.”

  “I’m sorry to hear about that mix-up on your company’s part. Please be advised our hotel cannot be held responsible for mix-ups on your company’s part.”

  The repetition clued her in that this was an assistance bot rather than an actual person’s avatar. She wondered if there was a second button for human assistance if the bot didn’t understand her situation. Surely this wasn’t an uncommon occurrence.

  “I’m sure if you call SHL they can verify I’m the person on the reservation,” she said.

  “I understand you want me to call essaychel to verify you are the person on the reservation.”

  “Yes!”

  “That name is not a name we associate with this account. Please verify.”

  “StageHoloLive. SHL, not ‘essaychel.’” She tried not to get too impatient with the machine. If bots improved their performance, companies would phase out their customer service specialists, and she’d have no Superwally job to fall back on. Maybe she ought to be celebrating its failure.

  “Please wait while I call StageHoloLive.”

  Yes. “Thank you.”

  She waited a minute, two. Her phone buzzed. A single-word message from some nameless logistics assistant: “Sorry.”

  A moment later, the bot spoke again. “StageHoloLive has changed the name on the reservation to ‘Rosemary Laws.’ This identity matches your identit
y as confirmed by your identification, your fingerprint, and visual ID points.”

  “Yes. Thank you.”

  “Our records show you have not stayed at a hotel in our franchise before. Our hotel chain policy is to check the identity of all guests against all public lists of terrorists, sex offenders, and violent offenders. Please stand by. If your name is on the list of sex offenders or violent offenders, you will be placed in a special wing, provided you have no outstanding warrants. If you are on the list of terrorists, you will not be permitted to stay at our franchise.”

  Rosemary waited. She wondered whether the hotel pinged the police if somebody did have outstanding warrants—or if they were on an active terrorist list!—and what the special wing for violent offenders looked like, and if it counted people who had acted in self-defense. Pretty harsh to never be allowed on a regular hotel wing again if you’d served your time.

  “Congratulations, your name is not on any lists of known terrorists or offenders. We apologize for the inconvenience of the wait. Your fingerprint will grant access to your floor and the lobby floor. Your room number is 2507. Welcome to the Marton family of residential experiences.”

  “Thank you. Um, what floor did you say?”

  “Room 2507 is on the twenty-fifth floor. The elevators are past the service desk on the left. Have a good evening.”

  Rosemary slung her bag back over her shoulder and followed the bot’s directions to a bank of doors she presumed were elevators. It was silly, but she hadn’t wanted to admit to a machine that she didn’t know how to operate an elevator.

  “How many in your party?” a screen between two of the doors asked, in audio and visual.

  “One.”

  A door to a small compartment opened and she stepped inside. The door closed behind her, faster than she expected. She pressed her finger to the ID pad, and the number 25 lit up. It was the top floor listed, but she had counted at least thirty from outside. Maybe this was like the SHL compound and they had extra floors to increase their square-footage-to-occupant ratio.

  She steadied herself as she found herself pushed slightly toward the floor. It was a neat sensation. A screen at eye level proclaimed:

  Every floor of our hotel is individually reinforced and blast-guarded.

  Our elevators do not pick up more than one party at a time.

  Marton hotels comply with all congregation and occupancy laws.

  All surfaces in every room are sanitized between visits.

  Please conserve water.

  Your safety, health, and comfort are our primary concerns.

  The door opened again on the twenty-fifth floor. She followed wall placards with numbers to her room and pressed her finger to the lockpad, saying a silent prayer that it recognize her so she didn’t have to go back downstairs. It worked. The lights came on as she opened the door.

  She locked both dead bolts and the chain behind her. There was a button marked Do Not Disturb beside the light switch. She didn’t know why somebody would choose to be disturbed, but if there was a way to opt out, she approved. She dropped her bag on the bed and ducked into the bathroom to scrub the bus and strangers and fingerprint pads off her hands. The water shut off twice, and she had to wait a minute each time for the timer to reset; apparently even fancy hotels weren’t immune to conservation laws. A little gold placard on the toilet tank informed her they used a gray-water system like the one at the farm.

  The room itself was dominated by a vast ice-white bed. An all-in-one gym ate the remaining floor space. A quick glance in her Hoodie told her seven hundred Veneer options were available for this room, all for varying outrageous fees. She didn’t think she’d be allowed to expense turning her room into an aquarium.

  She crossed to the window instead. After a moment struggling to figure out how to operate the curtains, she gave up and slipped behind them.

  Her window faced the city. The view from the twenty-fifth floor gave her a new angle on the world. She was in one of the high-rise windows she’d seen from the bus, the ones catching the sun and bending it. The buildings that filled in the grid spread before her, most shorter than her own. Some had decorative features: spires, gargoyles, things she didn’t know how to name. Others were smooth, featureless, but no less beautiful in their attempts to reach the sky. One had a tower that spelled out BROMO SELTZER instead of numbers around an analog clockface; the clock was stopped, and she’d never learned to read one, anyway. Somehow the jumbled architecture combined for an aesthetically pleasing whole. She hadn’t been more than a few blocks yet, but even way up here she felt a hum, an energy, from the collected presence of so many people in one place. Or maybe it was the whizzing flocks of package and surveillance drones, or maybe she imagined it.

  She pulled up her hood and looked out the window with a map overlay. Two point three miles to her destination, straight north. The overlay highlighted the direct route and offered some transit options cross-referenced with a risk map, cross-referenced with time of day. It looked safe enough to walk, at least while it was still light out. Five p.m., so there’d be plenty of time to stretch her legs, get there in daylight, and get a sense of the city. That was her mother’s phrase. After she had reassured her mother for the millionth time that she would be safe, her mother had said, “Well, if you have to go I’m so glad you’ll be there long enough to get a sense of the city.”

  “What does that mean?” Rosemary had asked.

  “Cities—at least how they used to be before, obviously I don’t know how they are now—have, well, not personalities, but flavors, I guess you could say? Some felt like they had a lot of history. And some felt modern, and some felt quaint, and some felt touristy or trendy or busy or laid-back.”

  “Were you in that many?”

  “It wasn’t a big deal then. You know that. I grew up in Boston, went to school in Chicago, took a job in Atlanta, then another in Pittsburgh. You were a city kid until you were six. You’d have been one for real if I had convinced your father to stay there, but he wanted land . . .”

  Rosemary had heard all that before. She couldn’t imagine having grown up in a city. She’d gone to middle school and high school online, worked online, hung out with her friends online, dated online. She remembered classrooms from Before, had vague recollections of Fourth of July parades and the one baseball game. In her head, when she pictured those events now, she was the only one there.

  “I thought you were glad we moved away, so you could raise me in a safe place.”

  “I’ve never been so glad of anything. Look, I’ll deny this if you tell your father, but I like the idea of you having a little bit of adventure. Safe, controlled, message-your-mother-every-night-to-tell-her-you’re-alive adventure.”

  Rosemary promised to be careful, promised to check in. Said she was tired, which was true, and probably going to bed early, which was not a lie because it had contained the word “probably.” Her eagerness to make up for failure in Jory beat out her exhaustion. She was going out.

  Now, climbing a steep hill, Rosemary wondered how much personality the cities still had left. The streets near the hotel were nearly empty, though blooming Bradford pear trees added a festive and pungent note. She wasn’t sure whether people still worked in the office buildings towering overhead. The streets themselves looked well maintained—the asphalt glittered—and the shops looked closed for the evening, not forever.

  She passed a museum, an honest-to-goodness museum, with thick security fencing. She wouldn’t even have known what it was if her map hadn’t told her. Inside, she pictured a few guards and an army of camera drones, showing the exhibits to the masses at home. She couldn’t remember whether she had ever visited this particular museum in hoodspace. She’d never thought about what the museum buildings themselves looked like, either; all their class trips spawned inside, and the drones had their own paths, flying through long hallways, zooming in and out and a
round the art. This exterior was stately and serene, elegant even behind the razor wire. She examined it for a moment then kept walking, looking for the city to reveal itself.

  * * *

  —

  Aran Randall’s instructions guided her the last few blocks. There’s a row of empty storefronts on the block before, he had said. Notable for the fact that one was a clothing store, and before they locked the door they moved all the mannequins to the front. He hadn’t mentioned it had been a kids’ clothing store, and the mannequins were all kid-sized zombies, posed in the window like they were trying to get out. A hand outstretched here, a forehead pressed to the glass there. Some of the other abandoned stores had broken glass, but maybe this one was too creepy for anyone to mess with.

  Cross the street, and on the opposite side, there’ll be a stretch of boarded-up row houses. They’ve all had their front steps stolen—they were marble, and don’t ask me how somebody can steal giant marble slabs without anybody noticing or saying anything, it happened way before we were around. The doors looked bizarre, standing three feet above the sidewalk, opening onto empty space. Some had spray-painted messages on the plywood-covered doors and windows. “Want to buy this house?” asked one, with a smaller “Hell no—it has no floors inside” handwritten beneath. “If you hear an animal trapped in here call the city” read another.

  The first-floor windows on 2020 are boarded up, too, and they’ve soundproofed it, so you won’t see or hear much from the outside. You can tell which one it is because it still has its front steps, and the upstairs windows have glass. They turn on the outside light on nights when there are bands. Wednesdays and Saturdays. Rosemary had believed Aran’s directions; she’d ridden hundreds of miles to follow them. Still, she was relieved they played out as he’d described. The mannequins, the empty houses with the floating front doors, the lamp like a beacon. She didn’t know any reason why Aran would have taken the time to lie to her, but she hadn’t allowed herself to dismiss that possibility until she had seen the place with her own eyes. What had Victor said about Aran? “Don’t believe everything he says.” She’d never pursued that particular comment.