Yesterday (21 page)

It’s funny, Garren’s already spent so much of his time outside the country but it seems what he wants most is to leave again. “Maybe you still will,” I tell him.

We have to take a streetcar after we get off the subway and when we arrive at Lou Bianchi’s house hauling everything we own with us, I feel as though we’re oozing teenage-runaway vibes. The homes in Lou’s neighborhood are tiny and claustrophobic but brightly painted and welcoming. There are two wicker chairs on his porch, even though it’s winter.

Lou himself answers the doorbell when I ring. I know it’s him before he asks if I’m Lisa Edwards (the fake name I gave him). I also sense, as Garren and I follow Lou into the house, that he’ll be able to help me remember but that it will be at a cost. I’m about to lose something and I can’t see what.

Only that it will make me unhappy.

Lou shows Garren into a small waiting room at the side of the house and then leads me to his offi ce downstairs. I see a tape recorder laid out on the desk. Lou notices me eyeing it and says, “So you can play back everything you had to say while under hypnosis if you want to.” He rubs the underside of his beard and adds, “You’re younger than I thought.”

“I’m twenty,” I lie. “But I get that all the time.”

Lou motions for me to sit in the lounge chair in the center of the room. As I do he hands me a release form to sign.

It frees him from any guaranties or liabilities and I jot the name Lisa Edwards down on the dotted line and give the form back to him along with the forty-fi ve-dollar fee. Lou fi shes a receipt out of his top desk drawer and scrawls the date and his signature on the bottom. The entire time my stomach’s fl uttering. I can’t stop worrying about the unhappiness I sense ahead.

Lou mentions my sister and stresses that there are no certainties when it comes to hypnotherapy but that he’s going to do his best to help me. He asks my sister’s name (which I give as Sarah) and whether there’s any particular information or events about her that I’m hoping to remember. I tell him that I just want to remember what it was like to be with her but also what it was like to be with my parents before her death because I sense that they haven’t been the same since losing her.

I hope I’m not fucking up my chances of success by leading Lou down the wrong path but I’m afraid I’ll scare him away if I get anywhere near the truth. Lou explains a bit about hypnosis and does a relaxation exercise with me.

He has a voice like trees rustling in a warm wind. It makes me feel fl oaty and calm. And then we’re stepping into my subconscious, Lou Bianchi’s voice guiding me into a tran-quil meadow. I hear birds sing and can feel the heat of the sun on my face. Slowly, a mist begins to descend and then he’s leading me backwards in time through the fog. “Back to when you were four years old and in the presence of your dear sister, Sarah,” Lou intones.

I’m fully aware of my lie and why I told it, but in my current state I no longer want to hide anything from Lou and I amend, “I don’t have a sister. I have a brother. His name is Latham. I think he’s dead.”

My words don’t come as a surprise to me. It feels as though I’ve always known the truth.

“Tell me about your brother, Latham,” Lou suggests.

I begin to cry under my breath. I promised Latham I’d never forget.

Lou’s Zen voice instructs me to relax. He reminds me that I am observing the past but no longer inside it. My sor-row recedes but doesn’t disappear as I listen to him say, “In a moment I’m going to count from one up to ten. When I reach ten I want you to go to a happy time with Latham. You will be fully aware of all the details that surround you— the sounds, sights, smells and whoever else is nearby. Take your time observing and when you’re ready I want you to describe everything that’s happening for me.”

Lou begins his slow count upwards and when he reaches ten I’m like a person reborn. The fi rst time I came into the world I was a blank slate, instinct without knowledge. That was approximately sixteen years ago. The second time, a little over a month ago, others deliberately reconstructed my consciousness, playing God. This third time I’m born complete with knowledge and an unobscured view of the truth.

I feel like the fi rst astronaut who landed on the moon, like I can see the arc of twenty-fi rst-century human existence in a way that few people would ever believe possible.

We’ve come so far but fallen so fast. We’re our own worst enemies and this time it really might be the end.

I stare seventy-eight years into the future and tell Lou everything.

The weather changed faster than expected. Too many trees died in the Amazon— billions and billions of

them— and the planet lost its buffer against global warming. In the United States climate change denial was completely swept away by the late 2020s when the droughts grew longer and the storms more severe. There were heat waves and heavy downpours on a scale North America had never known. Drought ravaged the Southwest resulting in the beginning of a mass migration north and away from the coasts. Eventually many coastal cities were entirely deserted due to rising sea levels. However, New York remained a symbol of national strength and fl ood barriers were erected to protect the city from aggressive storm surges.

In Canada too, certain regions were drying up while others were the victims of massive fl oods. Scientists through-out the continent began plans to divert major rivers to areas starving for rain and to construct gigantic dams to contain runoff from rain in mountains that they knew would soon stop freezing.

Near the end of the 2020s a fascist-leaning Canadian government ill-equipped to deal with the constant fi res raging in the west and host of other environmental disasters, provoked mass protests that led to enormous unrest. In the instability a national political party that sought to merge Canada with the United States rose. It was widely supported by a Canadian population who feared chaos and violence and was elected to power in 2031. Negotiations began with the United States government immediately and on October 26, 2032, a new nation— the U.N.A. (United North America) was born.

In 2036 the center of U.N.A. government was relo-cated to Billings, Montana, where the climate was more moderate and its inland position was a strategic military defense advantage. Around this time automation that had begun in the industrial revolution evolved to include the ever-more- popular presence of robots in the home (as domestic servants and companions) and workplace. Within the next fi fteen years the retail, manufacturing, hospitality, security and health sectors quickly came to rely on robots to fi ll the majority of their positions. In turn this caused acute unemployment and by the mid-2040s mammoth social welfare camps had been erected in the majority of inhabitable states.

The citizens who resided in these camps were referred to by those still employed as “the Cursed.” Because the residents were required to perform manual labor in the camps, the very existence of the social welfare camps caused additional unemployment. Several studies documented that once the Cursed were forced to rely on a camp for basic needs, they were unlikely ever to gain employment outside one again.

By 2055 the U.N.A. unemployment rate was 36 percent in a population of 500 million.

Even with these crippling economic conditions much of the world continued to regard the U.N.A. and Northern European countries (which suffered a similar unemployment rate except Norway and Sweden where robot employment was permitted only in sectors that would endanger humans) as a safer and more prosperous place to live than their homelands. For decades now large swathes of Africa, Southern Asia, the Middle East, Southern Europe and Latin America have been ravaged by drought, torrential fl ooding and dangerous sea level rises making much of their terrain uninhabitable. Hundreds of millions of environmental refugees continue to sweep across Northern Europe and the U.N.A. In response Northern Europe and the U.N.A. have bulked up their defenses with a force largely composed of robots that are commanded by human members of the military. The defense force’s chief aim is to keep foreign nationals off its soil.

In the U.N.A. the robot units that patrol and guard the country’s borders and surrounding oceans are popularly known as DefRos. Inland, homeland security units that constantly monitor highways, schools, government and public offi ces, shopping zones and other highly traffi cked areas for disturbances are called SecRos. Because of their more direct dealings with citizens, these units are constructed to strongly resemble humans and are skilled in human communication as well as defense.

While several companies manufacture DefRos and SecRos alike, Coppedge-Hale Corp is the government’s larg-est supplier. Despite the omnipresent military force, terrorist attacks on domestic soil have become more frequent. There is great anger with the West, both for causing irreparable environmental damage worldwide and its continuing hostility to eco-refugees. Several of the attacks have been against vertical farms (where the majority of crops are now raised) in urban centers, others against the Zephyr, the extensive high-speed domestic railway network that expanded as world oil supplies dwindled and air traffi c became heavily restricted. The worst threats have been biological in nature as terrorists designed an array of viruses. In 2058 a fast-acting Ebola-Hanta copy-cat causing hemorrhagic fever was deployed at Union Station in Denver, killing 113 people within hours.

These are all well-known facts children of 2063 are free to read in textbooks about the twenty-fi rst century, and I continue to tell Lou Bianchi, who has given up questioning me about my fake sister Sarah to focus on my unlikely tale, everything I can think of about changes someone from 1985

could barely hope to understand. I explain about the Bio-net, the network of nanites operating inside people of the future.

Not everything about the time is darkness and threat— many of humanity’s old illnesses have been eradicated. There is no more cancer, diabetes, Alzheimer’s or AIDS. The U.N.A.’s people are strong and healthy. Even unwanted pregnancy and obesity is prevented by the Bio-net. No one goes hungry (except illegals who have somehow made it past DefRo defenses), and life expectancy is well past the age of one hundred. Much human trauma is repairable thanks to the nanites. Limbs can be regrown, damaged cells repaired, heart attacks and strokes prevented.

However, our strengths have become our weaknesses.

Now the terrorists aim their threats at our Bio-nets, programming them to destroy us like they did in Denver. U.N.A.

scientists quickly erect their defenses via our nanites, constantly updating their programming so that no new bioter-ror threat can take down many U.N.A. citizens with it.

On the Dailies broadcast each morning, the government informs us of these threats and advises us how strong in spirit all U.N.A. citizens must continue to be. If the news is especially bad the Dailies will often remind us of a dark time in U.N.A. or United States history when goodness and right prevailed. Because much of our news also comes from our allies in Northern Europe, the Dailies play many quotes from British Second World War Prime Minister Winston Churchill— mostly ones that contain the word “courage.”

Directly after the Dailies and breakfast it’s time for school, which the U.N.A. resurrected thirteen years ago and which runs year-round, Monday to Friday. The process of phasing physical schools out began in 2025 and continued for fi fteen years before they were formally retired in 2040. For the next decade all school-age children were taught at home by EdRos and through an early version of gushi (a full-immersion virtual-reality system indistinguishable in quality from real life). Thanks to the Bio-net, gushi is now advanced enough to be experienced directly from within people’s own nervous systems rather than on a screen. Entertainment, interactive fantasy games and stories, sexual experiences (commonly called “mashing”), broadcast of the Dailies and travel to faraway places occur largely in gushi. However, in the decade when gushi was used in place of real-world education many young people began to suffer from mental health issues due to the social isolation and overdependence on virtual reality.

As a result of these problems, when the government decided to return to the former school system, they looked far into the past for inspiration. All former school buildings were destroyed and Victorian—

style structures erected in

their place. Teachers were required to dress in clothing that wouldn’t have looked out of place in that era while students wore short-sleeve gray unisex jumpsuits with a collared white shirt underneath. Physical textbooks began to be produced again and the importance of participation in sports as part of one’s program of well-being was emphasized.

All students spend their seventh through eighteenth years in the U.N.A. school system. Gushi access is blocked on school property but is encouraged as harmless entertainment after hours, as long as one participates in moderation.

In fact, most people’s sexual lives occur almost entirely on gushi where they feel free to experiment without pain or discomfort, in complete safety where there is no limit to what is possible. “Mashing” is considered ecstasy precisely because it’s only what you want it to be and
all
that you want it to be— orgies, sex with aliens or mythical creatures, acro-batic physicality that would be impossible to emulate in real life without injury.

The only time the majority of people engage in sexual relations with another live person is as part of a fertility ritual when they’re ready to have children. Marriage still exists for the purpose of raising offspring but love matches are rare. Most people (of all sexual orientations) use the Service to unite them with a suitable life partner. The Service has been performing DNA and personality matches for over twenty-fi ve years. So accustomed to gushi mashing are the majority of people that the Service has to train newly married citizens in how to have sex with each other so that no one will be harmed attempting unsafe activities during a fertility ritual. Love matches and what people now refer to as “grounded” sex is largely frowned upon in the U.N.A.