Roberto & Me (12 page)

I'm sure he was right. There were certain advantages to living this way, I tried to convince myself. Sometimes all the cell phones and emails and text messaging we have to communicate with one another prevents us from ever talking face-to-face. It was peaceful in Bernard's world. With no air-conditioning and no constant hum of machines, you could hear birds chirping. You could hear the silence. It was nice, in a way.

But I wouldn't want to live that way, and I couldn't
help but feel disappointed. This wasn't what the future was supposed to be like. It was almost as if I had traveled to the past instead.

“Can I ask you a personal question?” I asked Bernard.

“Ask away.”

“Are you…Amish?” I said.

“No,” he replied, laughing.

“So does that mean everybody lives like this?”

“Pretty much,” he said.

“What happened?” I asked. “It's like everything went backward. And why did you bring me here? It seemed like it was pretty important when you were in my room.”

“It is,” he said. “It's
very
important. Let's talk in the barn. We'll need some privacy.”

“
I NEED TO SHOW YOU SOMETHING,” BERNARD SAID AFTER A
long walk to the barn. He closed the door behind us.

A couple of horses looked up when we came in but went right back to eating their hay. In the corner of the barn was an old wooden desk. Bernard opened a drawer and took out a large, rolled-up piece of paper.
He slid off the rubber band and unrolled the paper on top of the desk. I leaned over to look at it.

At first I thought he was joking.
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“What happened to Florida?” I asked.

“Oh, it's still there,” Bernard said. “But it's submerged.”

“That's a joke, right?” I asked.

“No, it's not,” he replied seriously.

“Disney World too?” I asked.

“Yeah. Submerged.”

“Is that why you said the Marlins and Rays are no longer in the majors?” I asked.

“It's hard to play baseball underwater,” Bernard told me.

Wow. That must be thousands of square miles—gone. Houses. Schools. People. When I was little, we took a family trip to Florida. Disney World was one of my first memories.

“What happened?” I asked.

“You'd better sit down, Grandpa,” Bernard said, pulling over a chair for each of us. “When you were young, there were these things called polar ice caps.”

“I know what polar ice caps are,” I said. “I learned about them in school.”

“Well, they're not there anymore,” Bernard informed me. “The temperature of the ocean kept getting higher and higher until the ice caps melted. It was a long time ago. Anyway, when they melted, the level of the oceans rose. A lot of places got flooded. Most of Florida disappeared. Some islands in the
Pacific disappeared entirely. Millions of people had to move to higher ground. A lot of them died.”

“Why did the temperature go up?” I asked.

“You mean you really don't know?” Bernard asked.

“Not exactly,” I replied honestly. “Something to do with global warming?”

Bernard sighed as he rolled the map back up and slipped the rubber band around it.

“‘Warming,'”
he said with a snort. “I hate that word. It sounds like a
good
thing. Do you know what carbon dioxide is, Grandpa?”

“Sure,” I replied.

“Well,” he said, “when you burn oil, coal, or natural gas, it gives off carbon dioxide. It took nature millions of years to create all the fossil fuels that were buried under the surface of the earth. And in about one century, humans burned most of it. Back home in your time, they pump 30 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the air each year.”

“And that heats up the atmosphere and the oceans,” I said.

“Right,” said Bernard. “You asked me about flying cars. Grandpa, we don't even have
regular
cars anymore! The oil ran out
years
ago. World War III was fought over what was left of it.”

“There was a world war fought over oil?” I asked.

“In the forties,” he said, “before I was born. Grandpa, the reason why you don't see airplanes in the sky here is because we don't have any fuel for
them. The reason why you don't see anything made from plastic here is because plastic was made from oil. All those plastic bags, plastic toys, plastic junk…”

“I didn't know that plastic is made out of oil,” I admitted.

“When the oil was gone,” he continued, “they burned coal and wood for fuel. But that gave off carbon dioxide too. All that carbon dioxide was trapped, and the earth's atmosphere eventually heated up to the point that the ice caps melted and the air was virtually unbreathable.”

“I know global warming is a problem,” I said, “but I didn't know it was that bad.”

“Grandpa, do you know what month it is right now?” Bernard asked me.

“July?” I guessed.

“It's December,” he told me. “It's 90 degrees out, and it's December. Grandpa, I have never seen snow in my life. Can you imagine how hot it gets here in July?”

“A hundred and ten?” I said.

“Hotter,” said Bernard. “You see, everything is connected. Oil was burned, which heated the atmosphere and the oceans. The ice caps melted, which made the sea level rise and cause flooding. Temperatures went up, which forced plants and animals to move, adapt, or become extinct. Food became scarce. Weather became more extreme. We have a tornado here just about every week.”

“What happened to downtown Chicago?” I asked.
“Was it destroyed by a tornado?”

“There are
no
cities left, Grandpa!” Bernard exclaimed. “Since your time, people have died by the millions from starvation, disease, and dehydration. We're the lucky ones. My folks knew how to farm. At least we're alive. Grandpa, there's the possibility that we might not make it to the year 2100.”

“You mean our family?” I asked.

“I mean the human
race
,” Bernard replied seriously. “Civilization is dying, Grandpa. Human life on Earth is
dying
.”

“I…I didn't know,” I began.

“Grandpa, in school they told us that people knew about this problem around the turn of the century. Is that right?”

“Well, yeah,” I told him. “It's all over the news. They always talk about going green and saving energy. Stuff like that.”

Bernard threw up his hands.

“So why aren't you doing anything about it?” he asked.

“We are,” I told him, a little defensively. “I turn off the lights when I leave a room. I take shorter showers. My mom and I reuse our water bottles. We separate our garbage.”

“You separate your garbage?” Bernard said with a snort. He shook his head sadly.

“That's not enough?” I asked.

“Not by a long shot,” he replied.

“So that's why you brought me here,” I said.

“Grandpa,” Bernard told me, “we're desperate now. Look around. This is what's going to happen if the people in your time don't do something. The world that you know is going to come to an end.”

“What do you want me to do?” I asked.

“It's simple,” he replied. “You have to stop burning fossil fuels for energy.”

He kept saying
you
. As if I personally was responsible for ruining the world.

“Look, I don't burn
anything
,” I said. “I'm just a kid. I can't—”

“Listen,” he interrupted. “In my social studies book, it says that in 1961, President Kennedy vowed to send a man to the moon within ten years. And in 1969, we did it. And my book says that in 1939, America started a program called the Manhattan Project to build an atomic bomb before the Nazis could build one. And in 1945, we did it.”

“So?”

“Well,” Bernard said, “if you can put a man on the moon in less than ten years and build an atomic bomb in six years, how long could it take to stop burning fossil fuels and switch to other kinds of energy?”

“It's not so easy,” I told him.

“I know!” Bernard said, raising his voice. “That other stuff wasn't easy either! But it's gotta be done! You've gotta get solar panels up on every rooftop, on every surface where the sun shines! You've gotta get turbines up in every field where the wind blows! There's hydroelectric power, nuclear power,
geothermal power, hydrogen fuel cells—all kinds of power. But you've got to go home and convince everybody to stop burning stuff to produce energy. That's why I brought you here.”

“A lot of people are gonna be upset when I tell them this,” I said.

“Yeah,” Bernard said, “well, they're gonna be pretty upset when they have to live like this too.”

The horses suddenly became restless in their stalls, stomping the floor and snorting.

A bell rang outside in the distance. Bernard said it meant dinner was ready.

When we opened the barn door, there was a welcome chill in the air. The wind had kicked up, and the sky had turned gray.

“Uh-oh,” Bernard said as we stepped outside.

“What's the matter?” I asked. “Do you think your mom will be angry that we didn't wash up?”

“No,” he replied. “It looks like a storm is coming. They used to call Chicago the Windy City. They had no idea. We've had to rebuild our house twice, but we can't keep doing it. Come on!”

The distance from the barn to Bernard's house was about the length of a football field. We started running, and about halfway there the rain began coming down. It actually felt good to me after being in the heat, but Bernard had a worried look on his face. Then he suddenly stopped, turned around, and pointed behind us.

I had never seen a tornado before. Well, on the
news, of course. And in that old movie
Twister
. But seeing one in person was an entirely different experience. It was a beautiful thing, in a way. I had to stop and marvel at the huge funnel of swirling blackness. It was probably a few miles away, but I could smell it.

It was probably a few miles away, but I could smell it.
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“Mom!” Bernard screamed. “Dad! Everybody! Into the shelter!”

Before Bernard and I reached the house, we changed direction and headed toward the field where we had been playing ball. His parents came running out of the house, holding hands with two little girls.

“Who are they?” I yelled to Bernard.

“My sisters!” he yelled back.

I had to stop for a moment. I had
three
great-grandchildren!

“Hurry, Grandpa!” Bernard screamed, grabbing me.

The wind was whipping all around us now, as the tornado was clearly moving in our direction. Bernard
stopped at a spot where there was a large piece of plywood on the ground. He picked it up to reveal a hole big enough for us to fit into.

There was a wooden ladder inside the hole. Bernard ordered me to climb down the ladder. He followed, and then helped the rest of his family.

This was no time for formal introductions and chitchat. Bernard's mother lit candles while his father pulled the plywood back over the top of the hole. The two girls were huddled in the corner, crying.

Even with the candles, it was still very dark in there. I could hear the wind howling above us. The tornado was getting closer.

The shelter was just high enough to stand in, and surprisingly big. There was room in there for shelves full of canned foods, tools, and medical supplies. In fact, there was even a second room. Bernard shoved me in there and closed the door behind us. It was pitch-black until he started turning the crank on an emergency flashlight. The light flickered on.

“I was afraid this might happen,” Bernard whispered in my ear. “You've got to go home, right away.”

“You mean home to Louisville?” I asked. “Shouldn't I wait until the storm blows over?”

“No,” he said. “You've got to go
now
. If something happens to you here and you don't make it home, well…”