The Future Was Now

by J. R. Harber

  “I thought you said it was your parents’ party,” Eli teased.

  “Yeah, well, it’s their party, but it’s my birthday!”

  He took off at a run through the woods, down the hill toward the town, not caring if his friend was keeping up. As he reached the town square, he skidded to a stop, nearly colliding with his nineteen-year-old sister, Hannah.

  “Asa!” she cried, cheeks flushed with excitement. Her light brown hair had slipped free of its braid.

  Asa put on a mock-exasperated face. “What is it now?”

  “Happy birthday!” she exclaimed, throwing her arms around him. Asa laughed and hugged her back.

  “You said that this morning! Has the party started without me?”

  Hannah shrugged. “It’s all Mom and Dad’s friends so far.” She grinned. “Did Mom and Dad give it to you yet?”

  “Give me what?” Asa pretended ignorance. Hannah rolled her eyes.

  “You know what! Oh, come on, Asa, you’re twenty-one! Aren’t you even a little excited? Your life is about to officially start!”

  Asa shook his head, blond hair falling across his forehead. He brushed it back. “I like to think my life started twenty-one years ago,” he said dryly. “Come on, everybody’s over there.”

  They started toward the party. Asa’s parents, Sarah and Isaac, had gathered a few of their friends around the set of tables in a corner of Rosewood’s picturesque town square, and everyone had brought food. Asa’s friends Seth, Noah, Marc, and Zeke were off to one side, near the group but not part of it. His mother spotted him and waved, and he felt a sudden clench of regret.

  She’s going to be heartbroken.

  Asa ran ahead of Hannah and swooped his mother into a hug, lifting her off the ground and swinging her around. She was wearing a long green skirt, and it swirled prettily around her ankles, the shiny, hand-sewn details catching the light and sparkling.

  “Put me down!” she protested, laughing as he obeyed.

  “Me next!” his father joked, putting an arm around his wife’s shoulders.

  “I’ll do it,” Asa warned.

  “Isaac, don’t tempt fate,” Asa’s mother said, and it was as good as a dare.

  Asa kissed his mother on the cheek, grabbed his substantial father around the waist, and lifted him off the pavement. He set him down again almost immediately, panting. His mother was laughing so hard she had tears in her eyes.

  “Are you laughing at my son, Sarah?” Isaac said with a grin.

  “No, I’m laughing at my husband,” she managed to say, still giggling, and Isaac kissed her forehead. Asa smiled, feeling he was on the edge of something new.

  Something inside him seemed to be whispering, This is the last day. Treasure all of it.

  He turned in a small circle, taking in the square: the pristine white monolith at the center that seemed to reflect the sunlight, brightening a day that was already bright; the trees, still young by the standard of trees, thick and green with the first leaves of the season; and the lush verdant fields beyond the square. Even the drones seemed lively, swooping around the square or hovering in place, always watching.

  I can’t be nostalgic for a place I haven’t left yet! Asa chided himself. Yet nostalgia was not the right word—it was something like the opposite. He was twenty-one, and despite his denial, Hannah had captured his feeling precisely. My life is about to start.

  Everything he had ever resented about Rosewood had ceased to matter; the insularity, the sheer smallness of the place would never bind or constrict him again.

  Asa looked across the square at the little crowd gathered around the vegetable stand, picking up tomatoes and squashes, comparing and discussing them.

  Most of them have their own gardens. They go to the vegetable stand for the gossip as much as for the food.

  It was the kind of thought that once would have made him despair, to imagine a lifetime spent inventing little tasks and little chatter, spinning whole years out in measured circles. What would there be to look back on when it came time to leave for Sanctuary? Not a lifetime but a single day, repeated over and over until you scarcely noticed the rising and setting of the sun. But now he was free of it.

  “Asa!” Hannah called.

  He rolled his eyes before turning around. I don’t think I’ve ever heard my own name called so many times in one day.

  “Come on, there’s something for you!” she called.

  He trotted back to the group. Eli stood next to Asa’s mother. His own parents were sitting at one of the tables. Sarah held out a small box. It was a slim white rectangle with the State seal stamped on it. In the lower corner a small label read “Asa Isaac Rosewood, 21 Yrs.”

  He grinned.

  “Asa,” his mother said, “twenty-one years ago, you came into our community, and for twenty-one years you have been cherished and educated, taught to live by the Social Contract that binds us all. Now you are fully a member of adult society.”

  “Thanks, Mom!” Asa said and made a grab for the package. Sarah snatched it away before he could grasp it.

  “I’m not done. Now you have the means to live your life however you wish, within the bounds of the Social Contract.”

  “I know, Mom, you don’t have to make a speech.” Asa looked down at his sneakers.

  “Let your mother say what she wants to say,” Isaac cut in. “We’re both so proud of you, Asa.”

  “I didn’t do anything.”

  His parents exchanged a glance. “You’ll understand when you have children,” his mother said and handed him the box.

  “Thanks,” Asa muttered, gauging its weight in his hand.

  His parents’ cloying affection, for him and for each other, was stifling. He turned away and opened the box. Inside was what he knew he would find: a phone with a lightweight silver-colored casing and his name inscribed on the back.

  He touched the button at the top. The screen lit up. He had seen at least a dozen others go through the process, so he quickly obeyed the instructions as they appeared onscreen, holding the device up so it could scan his face and confirm his identity. When he had provided enough confirmation that he was, in fact, Asa Isaac Rosewood, the screen went black for a moment, then lit up with a familiar face.

  “Happy birthday, Asa,” said the Chancellor. He smiled warmly, little wrinkles appearing at the corners of his striking blue eyes.

  Asa smiled back in spite of himself. It’s just a recording, he reminded himself. He can’t see you.

  “I am so pleased to welcome you into adult society,” the Chancellor continued. “May you find contentment and be fulfilled. And remember to be careful of bridges, Asa!” He winked, and then he vanished, the screen abruptly black again.

  Asa started. It might have been only a recording, but it had been recorded specially for him. The Chancellor knew each citizen—perhaps not well, but he knew a little about them all, enough to record a personal twenty-first birthday message for every single one.

  “What did he say? I didn’t hear,” Hannah said, pushing up against Asa’s shoulder.

  Asa put the phone carefully in the pocket of his jeans. “He said, ‘Be careful of bridges.’”

  Hannah laughed. “He really does know you!”

  “I guess so.” Asa smiled to himself.

  Bridges were the obvious thing. When he was ten, he had attempted to climb the one spanning the South River, and he had failed. He fell into twenty feet of water and was completely submerged, even his head going under. He had managed to struggle out, somehow, as a few friends watched in horror from above. One ran for a grown-up as Asa lay gasping for breath on the bank; no one dared to go near him. The old doctor, Levi, sped up in one of the town’s cars, leaping out almost before he had come to a stop. As he bent over Asa, there was no spark of hope in his brown eyes.

  “Did you go all the way under, son?” he asked gently, and Asa nodded, pushing himself up to a sitting position.

  He coughed and spat out water, then looked up at the do
ctor’s grim face. “Am I going to die?”

  Levi didn’t answer. The doctor had Asa take off all his clothes and sealed them in a case. He sprayed Asa down with a substance that burned his skin, and another that made it numb, then gave him a worn blue robe to put on. Levi drove him home in silence.

  When Asa’s mother came to the door, Levi said, “Asa, go to your room.”

  Sarah’s eyes widened. “Where are his clothes? What’s wrong with his skin?”

  “Is Isaac here?” was the last thing Asa heard clearly before closing his bedroom door.

  He could have held it open a crack and listened, but he didn’t need to. Kids knew as well as grown-ups what happened when you fell in the water.

  It was an amoeba, but people called it the Bug. It got in through your mouth or your nose and crawled up in your brain, and you were dead from fever and madness within ten days. Some people didn’t even make it to three. There was no vaccine against it and no cure. And while there were always stories of someone who had survived, somebody who had fallen into a lake that had killed dozens yet managed to come out unscathed, those were only rumors of rumors. Someone knew someone two communities over who had heard it from someone else. Those stories were just legends.

  Asa sat on his bed and looked out the window, pressing his forehead against the glass. The back garden was outside, lush and blooming with vegetables and fruit, but all he could see was the dirt.

  I don’t want to die. He couldn’t even cry.

  Asa didn’t leave his room after that. He heard people coming and going, heard sobs and whispered conversations in the living room, but he just leaned out the open window, breathing the air because it was his last chance.

  Two days passed, then three, then four, and he had not yet run a fever. Levi came every day. He was the only person Asa saw besides his mother and father. Levi took vital signs and asked him questions, simple math problems and simpler questions still: How old was he? What was his sister’s name?

  He’s trying to see if the Bug’s got my brain yet, Asa thought, but he just answered the doctor’s questions, then went back to the window. He memorized all the trees and their branches, all the plants in the garden. He noticed when new flowers appeared in the field or when rabbits had been eating the tops of the carrots. Six more days passed, and the whispers turned heated.

  “No one … ten days …”

  “Possible? …” His mother’s voice rose above the rest.

  “Stories … legends …” said the doctor.

  Twenty-five more days passed; the tomatoes grew overripe. His mother was neglecting the garden. Then one morning, his father came into his bedroom.

  “Get dressed, Asa,” he said with uncharacteristic gruffness. “You’re going back to school.”

  And that was how Asa became a legend.

  “Asa!” called his Aunt Ruth, just arriving with some freshly baked bread, and he sighed, turned, and smiled, bracing himself for the rest of the party.

  People came and went. Asa lost track of who had or hadn’t stopped by. His father’s two brothers showed up as the sun was setting, brandishing a fiddle and concertina, and began to play without prompting. Zeke produced a harmonica from his pocket and joined in as Seth grabbed his beloved Julia’s hand. Two of her friends pounced on Noah and Eli, dragging them out to dance.

  It grew dark and the lamps came on, lighting up the square with a gentle glow. Asa looked up at the sky; the stars were dulled a little by the artificial light, but they were still strewn thick across the sky, ancient and enormous. Asa shivered. For an instant, the fiddle sounded thin, the square was tiny, the people fragile.

  Suddenly, the drones scattered around the square all began to hum. Conversation halted, and the music stopped, the fiddle cutting off a second late with a high-pitched squeak. The drones swarmed toward the white wall at the center of the square and circled above it. Most of the people followed, gathering around as two drones dropped and positioned themselves on either side of the blank wall. Asa lagged behind a little.

  The drones’ humming stopped abruptly. Both sides of the wall lit up with the same projected image of the Chancellor. Eli caught up to Asa and elbowed him.

  “Hey, turn on your phone,” he whispered. “Let’s watch on it!”

  “It’s bigger on the wall,” Asa objected, but he turned the phone on and held it out to Eli as the Chancellor began to speak.

  “Good evening, everyone,” he said with a smile, spreading his arms in a gesture of welcome. He was in his office tonight, as he often was, but he was standing, leaning back casually against his desk.

  Asa glanced at Eli, who was grinning, his eyes fixed on the little phone screen.

  “I can’t wait till I have one of these,” he whispered, and Asa rolled his eyes good-naturedly.

  “What an exceptional week it’s been,” the Chancellor continued. “Our clean water reservoir is at its highest level in years, thanks to the gifted engineers of the State and to every one of you. I know that each of us helps ensure the safety of our supply. There is truly no higher purpose than the protection of our society, and we can only achieve it together.”

  His deep voice reverberated with the last words, and Asa felt a sudden sense of pride. I’m part of adult society.

  “Today,” the Chancellor went on, “I’m going to take a few minutes to highlight one of the people who exemplifies the values of our society. Some of you will know this person, but all of you will know people who are very similar. You know, the reason I like to do this every week is to remind all of us just how important each of our individual contributions are and to remind us what it is we’re contributing to.

  “In the years of chaos before the Founding,” he said, “people in communities like ours might have said things like, ‘Why should I worry what happens to Fairfield?’—sorry, Fairfield, you’re just an example,” he said with a wink, and a laugh rippled through the crowd, then vanished as the Chancellor’s face grew serious. “They might have said things like, ‘Why should I worry about Fairfield? I don’t live in Fairfield! In fact, if Fairfield wasn’t around, maybe my community would have more!’ and that …” The Chancellor sighed and shook his head, looking down for a moment, then he faced the camera again with steel in his eyes. “That was the tragedy of the old society, and it was the ugliness, the rot at its core. It was an insatiable greed that our ancestors lived with, and it wasn’t just bad for Fairfield! It was bad for everyone. Because thinking like that will corrode you from within. It will consume a person, and it will destroy a society.”

  He looked grimly at them for a moment. Then his face relaxed, and Asa let out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding; all around him he heard people doing the same.

  “So, we don’t think like that,” the Chancellor went on assuredly. “And not just because it’s dangerous, but because it’s a lot easier to help each other out, right? So, I like to do these little highlights to remind us all that even though we might live in communities that are far apart—even though most of us will never meet!—we are all in this together.

  “The person I want to talk to you about tonight is a wonderful woman named Abigail who lives in—and you may have already guessed—Fairfield!”

  A still photograph of a woman, holding a toddler, appeared on the projection. They both had dark hair and light brown skin, and both were laughing wildly. The projection switched to a drone feed video of Abigail and the child sitting on the grass outdoors. They were playing with a bright blue wooden puzzle. It had pieces cut out into common shapes, and the child was attempting to put them into place.

  “Abigail is thirty years old. That is her with her young daughter, Rebecca. Rebecca is learning shapes, as you can see! Abigail is known in Fairfield as a wonderfully intuitive person. Everyone who knows her says she is a good person to help talk through a difficult problem.”

  The feed switched to a gathering in a community square; it could easily have been Rosewood, Asa thought, except for the unfamiliar people.
Abigail was amid the crowd, talking and laughing.

  “Abigail and her husband, Joshua, have been married for nine years,” the Chancellor continued. “They waited to have children because they wanted to spend some time together first, just the two of them, which I think sounds just lovely.” The feed switched back to the Chancellor’s office. “I think Abigail is just an amazing woman, and we are very lucky to have her in the Fairfield community.”

  He smiled widely.

  “Next week we’ll all get to meet someone else, and I am so glad that we will. Although we may live in our own communities and be spread far apart from each other, we are all part of our greater community. We are, truly, all in this together. I’ll see each of you again next week.”

  The feed switched off; the wall went blank again, and Asa stretched. The sounds of the village square rose again as people chatted, and some began to walk away toward home.

  “Are you gonna watch The Challenge?” Eli asked, and Asa shook his head.

  “Nah,” he said. “I’m kind of tired.”

  Eli shrugged and handed back Asa’s phone. “Suit yourself. See you tomorrow!”

  “See you tomorrow,” Asa echoed with a pang of guilt. He started off toward home; as he crossed the square, the wall lit up again as familiar theme music played.

  “I wanna watch,” a little boy complained as his mother tugged his hand.

  “It’s not appropriate for someone your age,” she said tightly, glancing back at the crowd that had remained to watch. Asa passed them, looking down at the cobblestones and picking up his pace.

  He didn’t want to see anyone else, didn’t want to repeat the lie, “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “Asa!” Someone called to him from a few yards away, but Asa pretended not to hear. He hurried out of the square and up the road toward home for the last time.

  In the morning, Asa told his mother and father he was leaving.

  “I don’t understand,” Sarah said, gripping the handle of the coffee pot so tightly her knuckles were white.