Generation A

by Douglas Coupland

  Do Craigs always put exclamation marks at the end of everything they say? In any event, just at that moment, one of those large American mobile homes—a Winnebago—drove up the crescent-shaped driveway and parked by the front door, and a dozen more Craigs emerged. The party had begun. I was not, however, so hypnotized by the Craigs that I did not recognize that moment as one of temptation. I knew I could either accept or reject the house on the hill and the fun within—life does not throw a person many moments where the fork in the road is so clearly evident. For once, I decided I was going to take the less scrupulous path.

  The low road I had chosen was what the Craigs called a “kegger,” drinking copious amounts of Czech lager and placing ever more numbers of exclamation marks at the end of everything they shouted at me and at each other.

  “Long live Aberzombie & Feltch!! Woohoo!”

  “Apu, you’re the best!!”

  “The best at what?”

  “Man, you’ve just gotta love this guy!!”

  Another Craig brought in what he called a doobie and lit it. “Monster ganja, Apu!!”

  I was horrified: drugs. “I am sorry, Craig, but I cannot partake of your doobie—I am a guest in your country and do not wish to be deported. Also, I come from a land of strict drug laws and I have a lifelong fear of becoming bum candy within the Sri Lankan penal system. I’m sure your prisons cannot be much better.”

  “More for us, then, dude!!”

  I looked around for Andrea, who’d promised to come. I very much wished to discuss with her my theories on how to keep the inventories of B- and C-level stores fully charged with as many sizes and styles as possible without engendering undue returns of off-size garments.

  That, and I thought she might wish to be carnal with me.

  Increasingly large numbers of increasingly drunk he-Craigs and she-Craigs came up to me and made buzzing noises and pretended to sting me. Almost everyone was recording me on some sort of device, and a shadow crept over me, a shadow called . . . vlog.

  I asked my new friends if the party was being vlogged in real time, and their response told me that a life without vlogging was unthinkable. The Craigs also showed me the cellphone images of me while I was speaking with Leslie from the New York Times—as well as the dead bee from that bizarre sting that happened to me in some other life. I had reincarnated while still inside my own body.

  My old office: the clutter and its sad cardboard cubicle partitions, the guava bin at the back now a beige clot of pixels on a fuzzy screen. I recalled its smells: incense and the scorch of rubber military plane tires hitting the runway’s tarmac; Hemesh’s dismal Adidas cologne and the peanut butter and rice cakes I kept in my drawer as lunchtime rewards for when I upsold over ten units of anything priced more than $19.99.

  This was when Andrea arrived. I noticed that she was having a heated discussion with a dozen or so people just outside the door who were definitely not Craigs. I went over to view these people more closely, and when they saw me, they screamed, then ran towards me in a typhoon of need and desperation.

  Andrea was furious. “Bloody hell, who posted tonight’s party online?”

  Everybody had.

  “Get these fucking cud-chewing hicks off of Apu.” Andrea orchestrated the removal of non-Craigs from my body. We looked and saw dozens more non-Craigs walking up the driveway like movie zombies. One non-Craig drove an ancient Volvo onto the majestic weedless lawn, branding tire skid marks on its green fur. I climbed up the baronial main staircase. Its carpeting was so deep and lush that I felt I was walking the expensive all-wool gold-card-customers-only version of the front lawn.

  I sat on my bed and looked at the chest of drawers that was in my room. I wondered what I could possibly put into it, aside from my stylish new wardrobe. In Sri Lanka, a dog in a doghouse owned more than I did. Could I ever be a Craig? No. A person must be born into Craigdom, with its multiple ski holidays, complex orthodontia, proper nutrition and casual, healthy view of recreational sex.

  My mouth twisted unpleasantly—the taste of Czech lager had turned sour. I went to brush my teeth. I opened the mirrored door of my bathroom cupboard to find two shelves heavily stocked with Solon.

  Andrea’s voice came from behind me. “Don’t be shocked, Apu.”

  I had never actually seen Solon before, though I knew it was that year’s new wonder drug. The evil Hemesh once discussed it, calling it a drug for spinsters and convicts. “My old boss said Solon was for people who did not want to think of the future.”

  Andrea smiled. “Sort of. You live in a constant present. It makes life more intense. You’re not needy. You don’t stress about things. You can take people or leave them. Solon turns you from a dog into a cat.”

  “But to not think of the future? All of you smart and rich young people—whose future could be more charming and golden?”

  “The future? Not for me. Not for us. I’m happy to think about next year’s product lines, but I don’t want to think about next year’s web headlines and enter a doom spiral.” She came close to me, and I could feel the heat from her body radiating through her blouse. She smelled like apricots. “Wouldn’t want that, would we?”

  “All of you take Solon?”

  “Absolutely.”

  I hesitate to say this, but at that point she dragged me over to the bed and straddled me. I was feeling . . . heightened. This was the first time I had ever—well, you can understand. I had always imagined it would be with the Vietnamese girl who works at the naan stall beside the Vespa repairman in the local farmers’ market.

  “Andrea, this is so . . .”

  “It’s the first time for you?”

  “I am perhaps not a man of the world . . .”

  “Oh, be quiet.”

  We had started to kiss—bliss—when the door swung open. Craig Number One: “Christ, it’s Dawn of the Dead out there, Apu. Those people want your blood. We have to get you out of here.”

  “Where will I—?”

  “Out the window! Come on, Apu, schnell!”

  ZACK

  The apple was delicious. It snapped cleanly to my bite, was crisp without being hard, and was oh so juicy. I sat in the truck’s cab, savouring its tart, pear-like notes. It was a Braeburn variety that had been hand-pollinated in a boutique apple ranch in Southern Oregon. Braeburns had once been an important commercial apple variety. They had originated in New Zealand in the 1950s, and by the last decades of the twentieth century had been planted in all the major apple-growing regions of the world. Braeburns once accounted for forty percent of the apple production of New Zealand. Even in Washington State, the largest apple-producing area in the U.S., where Red Delicious and Golden Delicious had always held sway, Braeburns had been in the top five varieties grown, prior to the pollination crisis.

  The parallels between the dildo-ization of corn and the crunchification of apples are hard to miss. Braeburns grew quickly, produced heavily and stored well. Best of all, they shipped without bruising. At a time when consumers were starting to look for something more exotic in their weekly shopping, Braeburn was the right apple at the right time. Unfortunately, when the bees vanished, they were totally fucked.

  I finished my Braeburn and stashed the core in the glove compartment and then squandered my generous gasoline credits driving from nowhere to nowhere, watching the listless small clouds in the sky. They reminded me of my appendix floating in a rubbing alcohol–filled mayonnaise jar when I was ten.

  I saw a dozen bee-themed mailboxes and fields of grass with out flowers, no hawkweed or wild yarrow or blue vervain; my mission became to collect a bouquet for my hard-working harem of raging she-beasts, even though this made me feel hypocritical, as, since I talked with Sam, I’d just stopped being into them. I drove and drove, but all I could find were dandelions, efficient self-pollinators that basically reproduce through floral masturbation. Even flowers have their scuzzy side.

  I came home empty-handed, but that was moot, as those girls who remained looked at me
with the enthusiasm teenagers feel for summer school. They were clearing out. Rachel had already packed most of her things onto a truck bed and was just loading her rationed gas canister into the truck’s strongbox when I got home.

  “Rachel?”

  “Save it for your Aussie friend, Sam. We’re outta here.”

  “She’s Kiwi, not Aussie. Where are you guys going?”

  “To find someone who thinks of us as special. That’s all any girl wants, Zack.”

  “But all of you are special to me—”

  Rachel shushed me. “No need to phone it in, Zack.”

  End of an era.

  SAMANTHA

  Hello earth!

  It was as Finbar and I drove home from our day trip that I had my first big out-of-body event—in one swoop I was up above the car, watching Finbar and myself. I knew that it was me in the passenger seat, yet all the strings had been cut between me and . . . me. I was dead, yet alive; alive, yet dead. I thought, Cripes, is this the afterlife? If so, I’ve screwed up royally. Was I a ghost? From my aerial viewpoint, I tried to see if I had arms, and when I couldn’t see any, I freaked. I remembered a TV show where the hero is immortal and is stabbed and shot but always survives. But what if he got vaporized in an atomic blast? Technically, he’d still have to be immortal, right? But his problem is that he’s now nothing but dust. Do the dusty scraps and bits of rubble from his body magically come together from the jet stream and make him a fresh new hero again? Does he rise from the ashes? Or does his spirit still live, except now he’s screwed because he has no body in which to put himself, so he becomes a disembodied entity blanketing the planet, everywhere and nowhere, like ozone.

  And then I was back in Finbar’s car and the moment was over. Finbar looked at me and asked if I was okay. I gave him a patently fake yes, and he didn’t push it. “Home in twenty minutes,” said the dashboard, using the voice of Peppermint Patty from the old Charlie Brown cartoons.

  When we got back to his place, I ran to the computer and called Zack while linking my camera into the house’s wireless system.

  “Sam?”

  “Zack.”

  “Hi.”

  “Hi. Did you buy your apple?”

  “You remembered! It was crisp and juicy, thank you. It was a Braeburn.”

  “Braeburns? My uncle used to grow them. I wrote a Braeburn essay almost every year going through school.”

  “You did?”

  “I did. Braeburns were one of the first ‘bi-coloured’ apple varieties, a trait that in the 1990s came to be essential for sales success. The first wave of supermarket apple varieties were either bright red Red Delicious or shades of solid yellow or green like Golden Delicious and Granny Smiths. But the Braeburn had modern colouring and a sweet but never sugary flavour that made it first of the new-wave of modern apple varieties.”

  “I’m impressed.” Zack then sent me a link, and I watched Harj at a house party with hundreds of Aberzombie & Felch staffers somewhere in Ohio.

  “What?”

  “That’s what I said.”

  Harj was walking up a staircase, dressed like a Fitch clone—he certainly didn’t look like the guy in the photos from the New York Times.

  “That’s Harj?”

  “It is. They’ve made him over and christened him Apu.”

  “How on earth did he end up with them?”

  “No idea.”

  There was a pipping sound on our connection, a sound that the world had gotten used to since the Americans stopped paying their satellite bills to the Chinese—the sound of disconnection. “Zack call me when—”

  VeeeeeeeeEEEEp!

  Dial tone.

  Silence.

  Bloody hell.

  Doorbell.

  I opened the door to find Louise from the Project Mellifera Response Team on Finbar’s steps.

  “Hello, Sam. How are you?”

  “I’m doing okay. Do you want to come in?”

  “Sure.” Louise doffed her coat and looked around. “Nice place.”

  “It is.” I went to the computer. “You’re never going to believe who I was just online chatting with.”

  “Who?”

  “Zack.”

  “Good. That saves me some time searching around. The global Response Team wants to get you and the four others together.”

  “Why?”

  “Research, I imagine. This comes from the top. I’m just following orders.”

  JULIEN

  The black hood was removed from my face, and before me was . . . Serge?

  “How was your coma, Sean Penn?”

  “Shit. How long was I out?”

  Serge’s expression implied bad news. “It’s been three months, Julien.”

  My face collapsed and he burst out laughing. “Sorry, I couldn’t resist. You’ve been out for five minutes. Drink some orange juice, and when you’re done that, we’ll get some potato salad and some wurst in you.”

  A purse-lipped woman gave me a carton and a coffee mug. The orange juice was real. I said, “This is real orange juice. Who’s paying for it? My father will freak if he gets the bill. He’s an accountant. This is Switzerland.”

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  “What’s going on—am I under arrest?”

  “No, you’re not under arrest. You’re in my care, and we’re going on a trip together.”

  “Where to?”

  “Haida Gwaii.”

  “Haida what?”

  Serge said, “It’s a remote island off the western Canadian coast—near the southern tip of the Alaska panhandle.”

  Haida Gwaii? Canada? Alaska? Antarctica? He might as well have said we were visiting the moon.

  I shrugged. “At least I won’t have to go back to the Sorbonne.”

  Serge handed me a plate of food. I ate it like a dog eating from a bowl. When I’d taken the edge off my hunger, I asked, “So why are we going to this Gwaii place? What’s there?”

  Serge said, “It’s the site of the last known active bee’s nest. The others will be there, too. Zack and Sam and Harj and Diana.”

  “When do we leave?”

  “After you eat.”

  “What about my stuff ?”

  “You don’t have any stuff.”

  He was right. I owned nothing. The contents of my room had been taken away and had yet to be returned.

  I finished the last of my food. “Let’s ditch this dump.”

  Crossing the pole in a military transport plane was a new experience for me. I stayed up in the cockpit for much of the flight, curious to see the soot lines the Russians had drawn—crazy zigzagging patterns of carbon stripes on the remaining ice packs, soaking up heat, accelerating ice break up to create new shipping routes. The pilot said, “The carbon speeds up iceberg calving by a factor of a thousand.”

  As I looked down on the world, I had a fleeting sensation of mastery over my universe. I felt like I was helping the SS Yamato flee a destroyed planet in pursuit of a new home amidst an overwhelming darkness . . .

  The Yamato and her crew—aided by an antimatter woman, Teresa of Telezart [known as Trelaina in the dubbed English version]—face the onslaught of the Comet Empire, a civilization from the Andromeda Galaxy that seeks to conquer Earth, led by the Great Prince Zordar.

  The Comet Empire has restored to life Earth’s greatest enemy, the Gamilonians’ leader, Desslar, who is eager for revenge.

  After a massive battle that destroys both Earth and Comet Empire forces, the Yamato crew defeats Zordar’s, but at the cost of the ship and their lives.

  Finally, my life was a story. My days would no longer feel like a video game that resets to zero every time I wake up, and then begs for coins.

  DIANA

  I arrived in Haida Gwaii a few hours after Serge and Julien. Apparently, Serge had been instrumental in landing us all in our neutral chambers—which at the time seemed like a good thing. And he was also pretty hot, and we were on an island, soooooo . . . fuck me ragged, Joh
nny Bravo. Julien, on the other hand, made very little impression on me, nor I on him: Annoying baby dumbfuck.

  “Nice to meet you, Diana.”

  He had a generic European accent and was ill-dressed for the sheets of rain that greeted our arrival and our subsequent piling into an ancient Carter-era pickup truck. “Learn to coordinate your clothes, dipshit. The bees chose you?”

  “Yes, they did.”

  We drove to the site of the last known active beehive, which was now a UNESCO World Heritage site. It was in a mossy region on the north coast, just south of the Sangan River, where the wet peat soil drowns the roots of evergreens. Scientists and wannabe shamans had long ago picked the site clean of dirt, gravel and rocks.

  This strangely lifeless circle rested within a landscape that was not unlike a six-foot-deep sponge cake. Serge told us that the bordering forest has the highest density of living organisms per square foot of any place on earth, and that was easy to believe. Within that forest, from all directions—up, down and sideways—life squished out like a Play-Doh Fun Factory. We stood quietly, and I felt I could hear the forest growing. We heard a raven’s chalk-chalk cluck.

  In any event, nature wasn’t as novel an experience for me as it was for Julien, who seemed to have been born inside a video arcade. In the wilderness of our new island home, he flip-flopped from awe to boredom to awe to boredom, finally settling on petulance.

  We were staying in the small town of Masset, population 770, in one of many government-built houses left behind when the Canadian military decommissioned a radar facility in the 1980s. Since then, the buildings within their untreed lots had variously stood empty, been made over by hippies, been vandalized, been burned down, been converted into salmon smokeries and, in the case of our house, been given just enough care throughout the years to ensure inhabitability. It could have been a house in my neighbourhood in Northern Ontario; to Julien, it was no better than a crack den. He promptly hogged the best room—“the best,” in this case, having a view of a snippet of ocean; my window looked out onto the char-coaled stubs of a similar house that, to judge by the growth of brambles and huckleberry, had burned down before 9-11.