|
|
Dr. Everett Clinton Raines, Jub.D., couldn’t find a single soul who enjoyed cleaning toilets. So 156 years after taking his doctorate and 27 years after playing a substantial role in the establishment of the Freude Three colony, where he remained a thought leader and a sort of elder-among-elders, he returned to academia, this time to pursue a degree—or rather to acquire practical expertise, if you asked him—in robotic engineering.
This wasn’t the first time that Dr. Raines had reinvented himself, but the stakes had never been higher. At risk—the very founding principle of Freude Three: the premise that in a sufficiently large closed system of fully actualized human beings, if every citizen were free to follow his or her joy, all discord would disappear, and a utopia—a heaven-on-earth—would naturally evolve into being.
In the early days, …more
[ SEE PREVIOUS DRAFT ]
By the time I got to Angie’s neighborhood, I didn’t see any ambulance or highway patrol cars. I looked for signs of an accident, a mark on the pavement or something out of place. But what she’d said on the phone had been real sketchy on details, so I wasn’t even sure I was searching in the right spot. There, in front of the Diamond Shamrock, where the road makes a lazy s—were those skid marks on the wet asphalt? Had that light pole always tilted a little to the right? Maybe it had.
I’d driven to Angie’s house a thousand times, but not usually in the early hours of the morning, and not after being woken up from a hangover sleep by a hysterical phone call. And I hadn’t made this trip very often in the rain …more
When I am 18, I will go up on the surface to fight beside my brothers. My mother says that she needs me too much to let me go sooner. She says that she cannot tend the plot of hydroponics beds by herself. Every day she tells me what a good worker I am. She wants me to believe that she could not produce our quota without my help.
I know what she is afraid of. She knows that most of our people who go out there never come back down below.
I cannot wait until I am 18, so I fight in the ways that I have found to fight. It is not much. …more
To be honest with you, I don’t make a lot of wishes. Somewhere near the age of seven centuries, I realized that I already had the power to bring into existence anything I desired. Don’t get me wrong…I’m not saying I can defy the physical laws of the universe to make the impossible possible. But around that time, I began to realize that I could mold my own desires to conform near-perfectly to everything that could be. And remember: the limits on what’s possible aren’t what they used to be.
But you asked me to make three wishes, so here goes.
Number one, I wish I could forget the wrongs that I never had an opportunity to make right. There aren’t many of them. When you live as long as I have …more
Loteria is a traditional Mexican game similar to bingo, played with a tarot-like deck of picture cards. In card number 34, El Soldado, I see M., my “ex‑husband” of eight years and still one of my very closest friends. Long before I knew him, M. was one of the thousands of Mexican-American soldiers from Corpus Christi, a native of the area where his family has probably lived since it was still part of Mexico.
The brown and smoky tones of the card remind me of a photo of M. from his service during the first Gulf War. He served as a specialist in the U.S. Army stationed in Saudi Arabia …more
This morning he told me, “I have never been in love on Valentine’s Day before.”
When I hung up the phone, I tried to weigh those words against the measure of my own memories of Valentine’s Day. I thought of elementary school, of making valentines for our mothers. We crafted lopsided hearts of red construction paper folded down the middle, outlined in number-two pencil, and cut out clumsily with blunt little scissors. (The green-handled lefty scissors never cut worth a damn.) For decoration: borders of white paper lace, globs of Elmer’s glue, magic markers, and stickers depicting bouquets of flowers and bow-and-arrow-wielding cherubs.
…more
Mrs. Martineau is not going to be happy about the spy satellite in my front yard. It doesn’t matter that it’s not my fault. As far as she’s concerned, I can’t do anything right. In her narrow little mind, the hunk of scorched aluminum and copper jutting out of my azalea bed will be just one more sign of my anti-social tendencies, like my habit of putting the recycling bin out by the curb before 7 p.m. on the night before recycling day, or the “parade of questionable characters” who come and go from my house at all hours.
Things started off okay with Mrs. Martineau. On the day I moved in, she brought over a plate of cookies.
“Welcome to Timber Trails! We’re so pleased …more
By the time I got to Angie’s neighborhood, the ambulance and the highway patrol cars were gone. I tried to find any sign of an accident, a mark on the pavement or something out of place. But what she’d said on the phone hadn’t been too clear on details, so I wasn’t even sure if I was searching in the right spot. There, in front of the Diamond Shamrock, where the road makes a lazy s—were those skid marks on the wet asphalt? Had that light pole always tilted a little to the right? I think maybe it had.
I’d driven to her house a thousand times, but not usually in the early hours of the morning, not usually after being woken up from a hangover sleep by a hysterical phone call. And not very often in the dark, in the rain, …more
Not a day goes by that I don’t think about the ones who didn’t make it to “escape velocity.” About my parents, who were already past their seventies when the longevity therapies were introduced. About my brother, one of the last victims of cancer, before we understood how it could be turned off and on at will. I think most often about my baby sister. She couldn’t overcome her moral objections to life prolongation, and so I watched her age catch up with mine, and then I saw her overtake me, grow old, and finally die of a disease that had been all but eradicated in our generation. We were of the generation that came to be called “The Millennials,” both because of the timing of our births and because we were the first humans to live a thousand years.
…more
It’s going to be different this time. I’m going to be more patient with my next creation. I’m going to play the “merciful and just” role instead of the “angry and vengeful” thing. I’m not going to give them tests they can’t help but fail. I’m not going to throw temptation in their way every time they turn around, then blame them when they fall. I’m not going to demand sacrifices—no first-born sons, no bloody, smoldering animal parts, no prophets or messiahs to be swallowed by whales or nailed to crosses. I’m not going to require them to glorify me. I’m not going to ask anything of them at all. I’m going to recognize their limitations and try to be okay with it. I’m not going to shroud myself in mystery. I’m not going to leave any doubt about …more
|
|
Recent comments