New America (3 page)

“I’m sure she’ll be here
soon,” I said brusquely because I had the sense Steve was trying not to laugh
at my situation. “How about you?” I said to change the topic. “You married?”

“Sure am. Twenty-six years.
Got a daughter too.”

“Do you speak with her much?”
I asked.

“Who?”

“Your daughter.”

“Ah, you think she’s back in
the old country. Nah. She’s here with us. Was twenty-one when we miniaturized
and said she wanted to join us. We didn’t pressure her or nothing. It was her
call. She’s an artist, a painter, see? That’s what she does all day. Paints.
Was never one for school, dropped out of college. Wasn’t interested in getting
a job and working at something she hated all her life neither. So here she is.”

I nodded but didn’t say
anything. There was an ongoing debate to raise the age limit of miniaturizing
to twenty-five or even thirty. I was for this. After all, miniaturizing wasn’t
drinking. It was permanent. Did a twenty-one-year-old kid really know what was
best for them at that age?

“So how you finding it here?”
I asked.

Steve shrugged with his lips.
“I like it. The wife and daughter do too. Some things take getting used to.
But, yeah, we like it.”

I was going to ask him what
took getting used to when he added, “Say, why don’t I throw you a bar-b-que
tonight, Bob? I’ll invite some of the guys over. I know how the first few days
and even weeks can be. Give you a chance to get to know some folks, pick their
brains if you want.”

“I, well—yes, sure,” I said,
thinking the last thing I wanted to do was sit around my empty house tonight,
alone. “That wouldn’t be too much trouble?”

“Not at all. Let’s say
seven?”

“Should I bring anything?”

“This is New America, Bob-o,”
he said. “We got everything we need, don’t we?”

☼

After
speaking with Steve I ditched my plans to find the Shoplex. I felt sluggish and
unmotivated and went to the upstairs bedroom instead and passed out on the bed.
When I woke the blinds were drawn, indicating it was night out. I panicked,
thinking I had slept through the entire evening, and the bar-b-que Steve had
organized for me, but the clock on the wall read quarter to seven.

Relieved, I freshened up in
the bathroom, had a sonic shower, then put back on the self-cleaning clothes
the hospital had provided. Despite what Steve had said about having everything
you needed in New America, I would have liked to have brought a bottle of wine
over…or maybe a six-pack of beer, as Steve seemed to be more of a beer guy.

Nevertheless, I didn’t want
to be late, so I left the house empty handed and cut across the lawn to Steve’s
front door. I was scanned and announced to those inside. A few moments later
the door slid open to reveal a mature redhead clad in a dress with bold stripes.
In her youth she had probably been the cute girl next door, though the years
had hardened her features and padded her frame. Even so, her green-blue eyes
were lively and welcoming.

“You must be Bob!” she said.

“And you must be…sorry, Steve
never told me your name.”

“Carly. Carly Woods. Come on
in. Come meet everyone.”

I followed her through the
house, which was much more lived in than mine. My pulse quickened, and I
realized I was nervous. I hadn’t been to a social gathering for some time; I
was out of practice. Maureen and I had largely kept to ourselves after our
daughter’s death.

We stepped through a doorway
to the backyard.

When Steve had mentioned he was
going to invite “the guys” over, I imagined he meant his male friends, so I was
surprised to find two women sitting at a patio table with him.

“Bob-o,” he said, standing.
He wore a green cap now and held a bottle of beer in his hand. “Good to see
you, buddy. Jane, Rachel, this is the new neighbor I told you about.”

The women stood and shook
hands with me. Jane was tall and drop-dead gorgeous with long-lashed electric
green eyes and a mountain of brown curly hair. Rachel was petite and thin, with
brown eyes and straight brown hair. She wore little makeup and her face was
bland, though she was oddly attractive in a puckish way.

“My, Steve,” Jane said, not
taking her eyes off me, “you never said you had such a handsome neighbor.”

“Cool your jets, Jane,” Steve
said. “I told you, he’s married.”

“I’m simply being friendly,
Steve,” she said. Then to me: “Congratulations on your marriage, Bob. It’s a
rare thing these days.”

“Maureen and I are a bit old
fashioned,” I said.

Carly said, “Steve mentioned
your wife—Maureen—she didn’t come with you? Have you gotten in touch with her
yet?”

“No, not yet,” I said simply.

“How hard is it to get in
touch with someone?” Steve said.

“She doesn’t have a phone
anymore.”

“She knows you’re here though.
She hasn’t tried calling you?”

“No,” I admitted.

“I don’t know about that,
Bob. Sounds sketchy to me—”

“Would you care for something
to drink, Bob?” Carly asked me, shushing her husband with a look.

“A beer would be great,
thanks,” I said.

“Back in a jiff.” She
disappeared inside.

The rest of us sat at the
table. I took the seat next to Jane and across from Rachel and Steve.

“So where are you from, Bob?”
Jane asked.

“Boston. Born and bred.”

“Oh my. Old LA would be a big
change for someone from Boston, so NLA must be something else for you?”

“It’s blowing my mind a little.”

“Oxymoron!” Carly said,
returning from inside. “Everyone drink up!”

“You don’t have to tell me
twice,” Steve said, and guzzled half his beer. Rachel and Jane took small
ladylike sips of their wine.

“It’s a drinking game we
play,” Carly told me as she passed me a glass of cold beer. “You hear someone
use a figurative language device, you shout it out and everyone else has to
drink.”

“It’s a retarded game,” Steve
said. “But it gets these girls drunker than…”

“Ooh…close call, Steve,”
Carly said.

“See what I mean?” Steve
said. “Retarded. You have to watch everything you say.”

“Anyway, Bob,” Jane said,
resting a hand on my forearm. “One thing you can be certain of here. The
weather’s going to be an improvement for you.”

“How long have you been
here?” I asked her.

“About a year now. No, maybe
a year and a half.”

“How do you like it?”

“You get used to it.” She
removed her hand. “It’s not…how should I put it? It’s not like they make it out
to be.”

“Look, Bob,” Carly said. “I
know you’ve done your research before you came, just like all of us. You’ve
heard all the good, and you’ve heard all the bad too. That’s life. You’re
always going to have someone who loves something, and someone who hates the
same thing. Personally, I think New America is great. Give it a few weeks and
you’ll soon forget you’re in a New City, or that you’re yea big.” She pinched
her thumb and index finger together so they were almost touching.

“That’s not completely true,”
Jane said. “I might go a few days without thinking about the old world. But you
don’t ever forget it, not completely, and you don’t ever forget you’re ‘yea big,’
to use Carly’s phrasing.”

“I never think about it,”
Carly protested.

“Well, that’s you, Carly. Me,
I’ll be sitting down, having dinner, and it’ll just hit me that I’m half an
inch tall, that if it weren’t for this dome, a hungry bird could swoop out of
the sky and gobble me up before I had time to scream.”

“Don’t be so melodramatic,”
Carly told her.

“It’s true.”

“You’re talking
hypotheticals,” Steve said. “It’s like saying—”

“Simile!” Carly said.
“Drink!”

“That’s no fucking simile.
What, I can’t say ‘like’?”

“You were comparing.”

“Hell I was. If you hear me
out, all I was saying is…it’s like saying the earth didn’t have no atmosphere.”

“That’s not a simile, Carly,”
Jane said.

“No, it ain’t,” Steve said.
“And, if that were the case, if the earth didn’t have no atmosphere, then we’d
all be dead. But I don’t hear you going off about the earth not having no
atmosphere.”

“Do you guys miss anything in
particular?” I asked them.

“Travel,” Jane said
immediately.

“Ever hear of virtual
reality?” Steve said.

“You know that’s not the
same.”

“Pretty darn close.”

“You’ve tried it?” Jane asked
me.

“No,” I said. “The idea of
having a computer intelligence inside my head creeps me out.”

With full immersion virtual
reality, you were injected with nanobots no larger than blood cells. The
microscopic machines searched out the neurons in your brain responsible for
your visual and auditory and other senses. They intercepted the neurochemical
signals from your real senses and replaced them with signals corresponding to
the simulated reality environment, so if you waved at somebody in whichever program
you were running, you didn’t move your real arm but a virtual one.

“The bots aren’t permanent,
Bob,” Steve said. “They’re removed after your trip.”

“They mess with your nervous
system.”

“They’re too small to do any
damage. They’re as harmless as bacteria.”

“I VRed to the Barbados maybe
three months ago,” Jane told me. “And I gotta say, the island felt pretty empty,
and the AI weren’t all too bright, and it was missing out on all the subtleties
of the real thing. Not to mention you have to break the illusion every now and
then to take care of your bodily functions.”

Steve said, “You hear about
that guy who died of a heart attack because he refused to leave wherever he
was? Didn’t take a shit for ten days. Got so backed up his heart just gave up.”

“Where do you get this
stuff?” Carly said.

“It’s true. I’ll look it up
right now.”

“Please don’t,” Jane said.
Then to me: “Anyway, that’s your answer, that’s what I miss. Traveling. Full
immersion VR is pretty good, but it’s…well, it’s sort of like New America,
isn’t it? A little bit…off?”

“Okay, okay, enough New
America bashing,” Steve said. “You’re going to scare Bob back up the rabbit
hole.”

“You know that’s not
possible,” Jane said.

“Really, Einstein? It was a—”
He clamped his mouth shut.

“Metaphor!” Carly sang.
“Drink, people!”

☼

The dinner
of burgers, sausages, and salads was quite good. I found myself to be ravenous,
not only because I had not eaten since the day before, but because New People,
given their small size, burned energy at a relatively high rate. We continued
discussing New America. Steve and Carly were clearly proponents of life here,
while Jane continued to butt heads with them, though I didn’t think she had any
deep-seated malcontent toward New America; rather, it seemed she simply liked
playing devil’s advocate. Rachel, intriguingly and a bit unnervingly, didn’t
speak more than a dozen words all evening.

At ten thirty my eyes grew
heavy from the beer, and I decided to take my leave. I thanked Steve and Carly
for their hospitality and said goodbye to the others. Rachel announced she was
leaving too, so we left together.

Standing out front the house,
she said, “So how was your first day?”

“It was…okay,” I said. “It
was nice meeting all of you.”

“Ignore Jane and most of what
she says about New America. She just likes to stir the pot sometimes.”

“You didn’t get much into the
debate.”

“Because everybody here has
an opinion of New America, and everybody’s always telling you that opinion. I’m
sick of it. We’re here. It is what it is. Let’s move on.”

“Sound advice,” I said. “I’ll
keep that in mind.”

Rachel brushed an errant lock
of hair from her face. “I’m just down the street. 3710.” She pointed. “If you
ever need anything, come by.”

“That’s a kind offer. Thank
you.”

She tiptoed and kissed me on
the cheek. Her lips lingered a beat longer than appropriate.

“Goodnight, Bob,” she said,
and started away

I watched her for a long
moment, then I crossed the lawn back to my house.

☼

I was
tempted to call Maureen, to let her know that New America wasn’t so bad, that
I’d already met some nice people. But I didn’t. I’d only had three beers, but
that was three more than I usually had on any given night, and if the
conversation with Maureen took a turn for the worse, I didn’t want to say something
I might later regret. Better to go to sleep, wake up fresh, call her then.