Yesterday (21 page)

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 sorrow 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 first 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 first astronaut who landed on the moon, like I can see the arc of twenty-first-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.

T
he 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 flood 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 floods. Scientists throughout 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 fires raging in the west and a 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 relocated 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 fifteen years the retail, manufacturing, hospitality, security and health sectors quickly came to rely on robots to fill 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 flooding 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 offices, shopping zones and other highly trafficked 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 largest 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 traffic 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 copycat 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-first 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 bioterror 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 fifteen 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, acrobatic 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-five 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. and what remains of civilized society elsewhere. Despite the Bio-net’s ability to shield people from sexually transmitted diseases there is a widespread distaste for the exchange of bodily fluids.

However, there are those who support
grounded
experiences of all kinds over gushi participation and believe robot employment should be heavily restricted to boost human employment numbers. The grounded movement regarded the reformation of the physical school system in 2050 as
a major victory. Generally, supporters of the grounded movement also oppose the identity wiping of eco-refugees, suspected but unproven terrorists and other political dissidents. Because the government only executes proven foreign national terrorists, the government itself considers its actions against eco-refugees and others as lenient and forgiving. In reality, once their personalities are wiped and covered (W + C) with a new persona that is programmed to devoutly support the state in any way it can, these apprehended foreigners and formerly noncompliant citizens are sent to work with hazardous materials or under dangerous conditions. Often the W + C prisoners are sent to perform toxic environmental cleanup alongside robots or assist in storm evacuations and high-risk rescue operations.

The grounded movement continues to protest this treatment and promote the value of a life rooted in reality but its more radical members have on occasion overstepped the boundaries of what the government is willing to humor as civic participation and become W + C victims themselves. Though the movement contains some very eminent and powerful citizens, individual members must be circumspect in speaking of their views and stress pacifism as the only acceptable way to attain their goals. Calls for revolution are not tolerated by the U.N.A. government. Protest rallies that involve even the slightest property damage are not tolerated by the government either. The U.N.A. leaders and the governments of its allies are more powerful than they have ever
been yet they also face more internal and external threats than ever before.

In 2059 a limited nuclear exchange between Pakistan and India tore holes in the world’s ozone layer. The war was over water and was only one of many such wars for resources but in this case the use of nuclear arms and resulting damage to the ozone layer caused reduced crop yields and exponentially increased DNA damage worldwide. The number of eco-refugees spiked and, along with them, the threat of terrorism.

It’s no wonder, in an existence as harsh as this, that people seek to disappear into gushi, a virtual world where any comfort or excitement a person desires is theirs for the taking. I come from a place and time where every citizen is implanted with a microchip containing their identification at birth. The SecRos and DefRos are capable of reading the chips from a distance of thirty feet. Citizens have been murdered for their chips or had their dead bodies mutilated for them. These stolen chips then arrive on the black market where they are implanted in someone else’s arm for a price because despite the might of U.N.A. security forces, there is a continual leak of refugees and potential terrorists into U.N.A. territory.