by Amor Towles
“God bless the phone company,” he said.
Holding the door open with a foot so that the light wouldn’t go off, Sam put all of Nick’s change in the slot and dialed Annie’s cell.
But as soon as he heard the call going through, he realized he’d made a big mistake. What he should have dialed was their landline—because Annie never carried her cell phone around the apartment. When she got home, she invariably put it on the credenza by the front door, along with her keys and her wallet. Even if she heard the phone ringing, she would never make it across the apartment in time.
Sure enough, after five rings the phone went to voicemail.
Sam couldn’t remember how long a payphone call lasted, but when the beep came, he didn’t waste any time. He told Annie he was sorry. He told her he was sorry that he was late, sorry that he hadn’t made it for dinner, sorry that he hadn’t been able to call. There were other things he was sorry about, too, but, worried that he was running out of time, he paused, expecting a recorded voice to interrupt and demand twenty-five cents for another two minutes.
But Sam hadn’t run out of time, and he found himself standing there holding the receiver to his ear without speaking—like someone who was waiting for the person at the other end of the line to respond.
“Annie, I’m so sorry,” he finally began, but the line went dead.
Sam stepped out of the phone booth into the rain and found himself looking up at the neon sign. Maybe his eyes were playing tricks on him, or maybe some of the neon tubing momentarily reflected the headlights of an oncoming car, but Sam was almost certain that for one clear second the olive at the bottom of the martini glass blinked on.
After staring for a moment, Sam strode to his car. Letting the door close at its own pace, he pushed the ignition and drove to the exit.
Where would you like to go? asked the GPS.
But Sam turned off the system. He didn’t need it to tell him how to get to where he was going.
A Table for Four
At 10:45, Nick and Beezer were sitting alone in the empty bar at one of the four-tops with a cup of coffee and a glass of beer. It was closing time, more or less, and Nick had some cleaning up to do, so he should probably have sent Beezer on his way, but it was still raining and Beezer didn’t have a car, so Nick decided to give him one on the house while he was having his coffee. On occasion, Nick did that—let Beezer stay for a while after closing, as long as he didn’t talk too much.
As they sat there drinking quietly, reflectively, the door to The Glass Half Full swung open and in walked Mr. Contours, drenched to the bone. Standing in the doorway, he gave the bar a once-over. Then he put a hand in his suit pocket and began advancing toward their table. For a moment, Nick wondered if this crazy bastard had returned with a gun. Beezer must have thought the same thing, because his face went white. But when Contours reached their table, he collapsed into the chair across from Nick and, without saying a word, took his hand from his pocket and slammed something down. When he removed his hand, there in the middle of the table, illuminated by an overhead lamp, was a small plastic container, at the bottom of which was a cloudy white substance.
“Holy shit!” said Beezer, pushing his chair back with a jolt, like it was some kind of explosive.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” said Nick.
Contours didn’t look smug. He didn’t look smart or victorious. He looked like someone on the verge of a resolution.
Without Nick or Beezer asking, he explained that when he went back to Vitek, he had to bang on the door for fifteen minutes before a security guard would let him in. It took another fifteen minutes to get some guy named HT on the phone so that he could get back his kit and caboodle.
When he finished talking, neither Nick nor Beezer spoke. The three of them sat there in silence, not looking at each other so much as at the middle of the table—at that small plastic container in which there was and wasn’t their future. In which there was and wasn’t ours.
A NOTE FROM THE CURATOR OF THE FORWARD COLLECTION
A year and a half ago, my partner and I were driving across the Rocky Mountains, not far from where I live. The aspens had just begun to turn, and the air was redolent with all the smells I associate with fall: incense, dirt, the start of decay. As we drove, we were debating some emerging technology I’d read about in Scientific American and circling around the larger topic of growing up in the bubble of rapid change and technological advancement. While a lot of it has been amazing, some of the change has come with effects we’d rather roll back.
How does anyone know at the moment of discovery where their work will ultimately lead?
Should we let that uncertainty stop forward momentum, or do we roll the dice and let the chips fall where they may?
How does it feel to change the world?
These questions intrigued me, so much so that I wrote a story about it. But my obsession didn’t stop there—I also wanted to know what other writers would write when posed with the same questions.
And so this collection was born and filled with writers whose minds work in ways that fascinate me.
N. K. Jemisin (the Broken Earth trilogy) is writing fantasy and speculative fiction like you’ve never even fathomed. Paul Tremblay is the greatest horror novelist working today, and his novel A Head Full of Ghosts still gives me nightmares. Veronica Roth created an unforgettable world and populated it with amazing characters in her iconic Divergent trilogy. Andy Weir captured the imagination of the world and scienced the shit out of his already-a-classic The Martian. And Amor Towles, with A Gentleman in Moscow, has simply written one of the best novels I’ve ever read. I recommend it every day.
I asked these writers to be a part of a collection that explores the resounding effects of a pivotal technological moment, and to my great delight, they said yes. I knew they’d deliver the goods when it came time to write their stories, but I was not prepared for what an abundance of riches this collection would turn out to be.
I hope, once you’ve read these six mind-bending stories, that you’ll agree.
Blake Crouch
Durango, Colorado
May 3, 2019
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Photo © David Jacobs
Amor Towles is the author of the New York Times bestsellers Rules of Civility and A Gentleman in Moscow, which was named one of the best books of 2016 by the Chicago Tribune, the Washington Post, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the San Francisco Chronicle, and NPR. His short story cycle, The Temptations of Pleasure, was published in the Paris Review.
