Fictions

by Nancy Kress

  “Okay.”

  “Make some coffee first, okay?”

  Andrea didn’t drink coffee this late in the day, but if it would help Natalie talk to her, she would drink axle grease.

  At the kitchen table, Natalie talked. She explained the iarrthóir “course” (travesty to bill it as a genuine discipline!) She explained the locket. (Why hadn’t Andrea’s mother, whom Andrea had never really gotten along with, ever told her about this superstition handed down in her family?) She explained what had happened to her on the commuter train: “Only I can’t explain it in words, Mom, because it doesn’t involve words, but it was real. As real as you sitting there now.”

  Andrea nodded, trying to not reveal her total rejection of everything she was being told, trying not to piss off Natalie any further. This was going to require very careful handling. Her daughter—the victim of a cult. At least Natalie said she wasn’t going there anymore. But the illusions and the lies. . . .

  Natalie finished with, “I don’t expect you to believe me, Mom. But it happened. It was real, a real way of knowing.” Her eyes shone with conviction, and her expression was serene.

  * * *

  In bed, Natalie lay very still, held the locket, and tried to will her mind to go again on the iarrthóir it had taken before.

  Nothing happened. You could not will that knowledge, which required a letting go of will.

  Still, she thought wistfully as she drifted off to sleep, wouldn’t it be lovely to be able to replicate the experience—the most important experience of her life!—the same way that her mother could replicate experiments in the lab?

  Yes. It would.

  * * *

  Tossing off her blankets in a too-hot room, Andrea got up and opened the window. The sounds of West End Avenue of a Friday night in spring drifted in: police sirens, an ambulance from New York-Presbyterian, taxi horns, young people calling to each other. The fresh air cooled her sweaty body.

  Natalie had looked so sure . It was all nonsense, of course, and would have to be dealt with very carefully. Damn Grandma Maloney! A folklore superstition that belonged in the “auld sod” at least two hundred years ago, not here and now, not in her daughter.

  But Natalie had looked so sure. So happy. So much at peace.

  It would be nice to believe in other ways of knowing, to escape the sometimes sterile, sometimes futile, sometimes frustrating constraints of science.

  Yes, it would.

  2017

  COLLAPSE

  2017: 46-ounce jar of whole dill pickles, on sale: $3.26

  None of them existed.

  Matthew McAllister, rigid in seat 12C, watched SFO security personnel work their way down the aisles of ANA Flight 008, Tokyo to San Francisco. Security looked as baffled and frightened as the passengers but hid it better. There the resemblance ended. Security didn’t even resemble their ANA counterparts on the flight, pilots, and attendants. They wore different uniforms in different colors—fuchsia? really?—and two of the men had hair shaved in fanciful swirls with scalps dyed to match their uniforms. They held long slim wands placed parallel to each passenger’s face.

  “Get away from me!” the woman in 11C screamed. She shoved the man with the wand, who said only, “Sorry, ma’am, I’ve finished now,” and moved on.

  When it was his turn, McAllister said quietly, “Camera?”

  Maybe it was McAllister’s quietness, or his expensive suit, or the friendliness he injected into his voice. The man answered him, equally low, “Facial recognition device with retinal scan.” Only much later, when McAllister knew how common was the acronym FRS, did he realize the significance of the man’s using the entire cumbersome name of the device. San Francisco Airport already knew that no one on ANA 008 belonged here.

  From what he could see now through ghostly fog, the airport looked like any other anywhere, any time.

  Already weary from the overnight flight, they’d been held over an hour on the tarmac. Nobody’s cell worked. If there’d been conflict over allowing the plane to land, shock and fear and argument in the cockpit, McAllister didn’t know about it. He was merely a passenger. Seated on the aisle, his precious briefcase beneath the seat in front of him, he hadn’t bothered to watch the approach or landing, just one of so many, on so many business trips. From what he could see now through ghostly fog, the airport looked like any other anywhere, any time.

  The woman in 11C erupted again. “I demand that you either let us off this plane or explain what’s going on!”

  A groundswell of agreement, muttered and agitated but not yet a mob. Another man entered the plane. His suit, too, was fuchsia, but otherwise looked more like what McAllister thought of as normal.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, we ask for your patience. There is an anomaly with this flight. Your captain requested emergency landing at San Francisco, but there is no flight plan on record for ANA 008. Not here, not for this time.”

  The muttering grew louder. Someone called, “It’s a regularly scheduled flight!”

  Someone else: “Tell us what’s happening or let us off the damn plane!”

  Several people stood, moving into the aisle.

  “Yes, all right!” the official said quickly. “Come with me.”

  People pocketed their useless cells, unloaded luggage from the overheads, carried babies. McAllister filed down the jetway with the rest, carrying his oversize briefcase. The gate area was empty except for more officials in fuchsia, too many officials. Airport shops and restaurants were shuttered with metal grids fine as spider silk, insubstantial as fog.

  No metal shutters looked like that. No security team wore fuchsia. No international airport was empty early on a Tuesday morning.

  “This way, please, ladies and gentlemen.”

  Far down the concourse, a SWAT team burst from an elevator, moving fast.

  Not here, not for this time.

  People shouted questions, milled in confusion, gaped at the advancing SWAT team. More and more people emerged from the jetway. McAllister moved quickly into a side corridor. Through an empty food court, past shuttered stores he didn’t recognize, down an unmoving escalator. He made it to another concourse just as a spider-silk grid descended from the ceiling, closing off the entire concourse.

  Baggage Claim held the usual tired crowd waiting for luggage, hunting for relatives, hurrying toward ground transportation. No one looked at any of the TVs suspended from the ceiling, except McAllister.

  The TVs looked like hollow boxes, in which holographic figures, two newscasters made of light, sat discussing an executive order from President Diane Burkhardt.

  Not for this time.

  2022: 46-ounce jar of whole dill pickles at our everyday price: $5.14

  By mid-morning, it was major news: The Flight From the Past. Lost for twenty years, no wreckage ever found. Interviews with the “miracle survivors,” bewildered or furious or terrified, frequently all three. Tearful reunions, mothers staring in disbelief at grown sons last seen as toddlers. Then the harder reunions: husbands facing wives now married to someone else, people whose elderly parents had died.

  I’m the lucky one, McAllister thought, not without irony. He had no wife, children, parents, girlfriend; he’d always preferred it that way. He’d escaped the swarms of newspeople, government officials, and scientists tormenting the other Flight 008 passengers. He had cash in his briefcase from the currency exchange in Tokyo. He had hefty bank and brokerage accounts, and without instructions to the contrary, those went on forever. He had—

  He had hysteria rising in his throat like bubbles of carbonation. He forced it down. Control. It was what would get him through, what had always gotten him through. He could do this.

  On the train to Sacramento, he held the briefcase tightly on his lap.

  The train, a mag-lev, raced through the countryside almost too fast to see anything. Each car had holo-TV. McAllister listened to the news, watched the passengers, tried to make out patches of scenery. Concentrated on learning as m
uch as he could about what had changed in twenty years and what had not.

  San Francisco still shrouded itself in fog. He saw little of the actual city.

  Female fashion had become more modest: no mini-skirts or crop tops, although jeans were still tight. Women’s hair was short and curly, young men’s shaved in weird patches.

  Ubiquitous V-R parlors, their holosigns emerging from the fog in gaudy colors: FORTY SCENARIOS! PLAY NOW!

  Beyond the city, the fog cleared. Many roofs were covered by rough green-white . . . something. What was that about?

  Mountains and trees did not change.

  A packaged turkey sandwich tasted just as bland and unappealing as always. This was oddly comforting.

  TV still had commercials: Chevrolet, Coke, a remake of a movie—“the megahit classic!”—that McAllister, who liked movies, had never heard of.

  His cell still didn’t work. The woman across the aisle took a piece of cloth from her pocket, unfolded it, and began speaking. Images appeared on the cloth.

  And then the mag-lev slowed for a sharp turn, passing the most important thing in this world: a field of cucumbers. Nothing else had shocked him as much as those plants, yellow flowers open to the sun. Acres of cucumbers.

  He sank back in his seat, knuckles gone white on the briefcase. How?

  Keep control.

  2027: 46-ounce jar of whole dill pickles. $7.99

  He didn’t expect his apartment, a sterile micro in a low-rise building not far from where he’d grown up, to still be his, not after twenty years of delinquent rent. But it stood down the block from his bank, so he spent a few minutes gazing up at its third-floor windows. The mixed-use neighborhood had gentrified a little in two decades but hadn’t otherwise changed as much as he’d expected. The pocket park was better maintained. Houses that had once had tricycles and saplings in their yards now had electric cars and mature trees.

  A middle-aged woman said, “Matthew McAllister?”

  He turned. Carrie Donnigan, whom he’d known since high school. She’d been twenty-three, six years younger than he when they’d dated. A little heavier, still pretty, rings on her left hand. He forced a smile.

  She said, “It is you! Well, I haven’t seen you since you moved away so abruptly—what, twenty years ago? You never said good-bye, you know!”

  “No. Sorry.” He’d broken up with her six weeks ago. The usual reason—she’d shown signs of caring too much, of wanting a real relationship.

  “How are you? What brings you back to your old stomping grounds?”

  “Bank business.” The bubble of hysteria was rising again. Control. “How . . . how have you been?”

  “Great.” Her smile seemed genuine, without reproach. “I married Sean Persing. We have two great kids. You remember Sean?”

  “Of course.” They’d been on the basketball team together in high school, the last time McAllister had made a friend. Except for Erik, of course.

  Carrie laughed. “Of course you do—you always had a good memory. Are you in town long?”

  He had no idea. “Depends.”

  “Well, come to dinner! Sean would love to see you again. Here, I’ll trans my wrister code.” She did something to the slim bracelet on her right wrist and waved it toward McAllister. “There, now we’re in touch again. Oh, Sean’ll be so pleased. So what have you been doing? Are you married? Kids? Where do you live now?”

  “No. New York. Sorry, but I have to go—bank appointment. But first—what are those pale lichen-thingies on so many roofs?”

  Carrie smiled. “Good one, Matt. It’s nice that you finally developed a sense of humor. And fashion, too—love the vintage suit. Very New York. Now, don’t forget to call.”

  2028: 46-ounce jar of whole dill pickles, ONE PER CUSTOMER ONLY! $9.45

  Carefully McAllister set his briefcase on the floor of the bank manager’s office. He clasped his hands tightly on his lap. He had just learned that he was dead.

  “You must have known,” said the manager, a woman wearing a brown pantsuit of severe cut except for small ruffles on the shoulders, “that a passport which expired nineteen years ago wasn’t going to let you steal an identity. Even if you didn’t know that Matthew Richard McAllister’s accounts closed when his will was probated.”

  “I . . . it . . .”

  “Please leave the premises before I call the police.”

  McAllister left. He collapsed, shaking, onto a stone bench in the tiny park as the full, actual nature of the catastrophe washed over him.

  Dead. He’d made the will decades ago, when he’d scored with his first patent. Too busy to move from his modest apartment, too busy to have a life except for intermittent sex with Carrie Donnigan, he’d had the bank set up a brokerage account, a business line of credit, estate planning. There was going to be money, lots of money. He was sure of that. It made good sense to control where it went, sometime in the far future. His parents had passed on; he had no siblings; he left his budding fortune to his cousin Bill. They weren’t close, but McAllister had preferred Bill to his sisters, the Giggle Twins.

  His cell said NO SERVICE, but he could access stored data. He found his cousin’s address, on the other side of Sacramento, walked to a major avenue and hailed a cab. If Bill had moved . . .

  He hadn’t. He’d died.

  His wife—widow—hadn’t changed much. Eileen was still beautiful in a trashy sort of way, still greedy, still heartless. Her shock at seeing McAllister had lasted only a moment, replaced by the steely coldness that had existed between them since McAllister urged Bill not to marry her.

  “You’re dead,” Eileen had said.

  “Clearly not.”

  Her apartment was jammed with packing boxes, pictures leaning against the wall, a rolled-up rug. Eileen folded her arms across her chest.

  “I’m moving. Bill died six months ago, of one of the only cancers they can’t cure. Typical of him. But you don’t know that because you were on that Japanese flight that’s all over the news, weren’t you?”

  She was quick, had always been quick, but without imagination. A plane transported in time didn’t interest her at all. Instead she said, “I inherited from Bill, including everything you left him. He never spent it, never lost hope that you’d be found, poor sap. The money is mine now, Matt, and you’re not getting any of it, so forget that idea right now.”

  “Eileen—”

  “No. You tried to get me out of Bill’s life. Now I want you out of mine. Go make another pile of money with that oh-so-inventive brain of yours, or sell your story to the movies, or whatever. I don’t care. Just go now.”

  He’d never realized how much she’d resented his trying to save Bill from her suffocating control.

  2032: 46-ounce jar of whole dill pickles: $12.26

  One option left. McAllister couldn’t rent a car, having no valid driver’s license or credit card. The holonews at the bus station said the government was issuing “emergency IDs” to the passengers on Flight 008, but to get one, he’d have to go back to San Francisco and prove who he was, and then he’d belong to officialdom and the press. They would control him utterly. No. The bus had no gasoline exhaust and no driver. Ordinarily, this would have fascinated him, but the hysteria was creeping in again, and he put his hand over his eyes and tried to talk himself into calm.

  “You all right, sir?”

  An elderly lady, sitting next to him. He didn’t want to talk to her. He nodded and feigned sleep. When he finally opened his eyes, she was knitting. The homely, archaic task somehow steadied him. Not everything had changed. His sleep became real.

  He woke an hour out of Sacramento, feeling more in control. The old lady was still knitting.

  “Ma’am . . . can I ask you something? I’ve been out of the country a while. What are those green-white lichen-like things on the tops of the houses and barns?”

  Her answer was precise, surprising him. He’d underestimated her. “The climate-coolers? They have a high albedo to reflect sunlight
back into space. My grandson—”

  McAllister wasn’t interested in her grandson. “And how long have Greyhound buses been driverless?”

  “Oh, you have been away for a bit, haven’t you? Years now. Very safe, no need to worry.”

  His fingers closed on the briefcase, which he’d declined to stow overhead, as if it were a life raft in a choppy ocean.

  “No, I . . . what game are those kids playing?” Three or four children, dispersed throughout the bus, bent over tablets. On the closest one, McAllister could see holograms folding into themselves and then rising again up in different shapes. Every once in awhile, a child would pop over the back of the bus seats and grin in triumph, and the boy near McAllister would scowl and concentrate harder.

  The woman said, “You’ve never heard of Polyhedron? Where did you say you’ve been living?”

  McAllister stopped asking questions. His fingers closed on the briefcase, which he’d declined to stow overhead, as if it were a life raft in a choppy ocean.

  2037: 46-ounce jar of whole dill pickles, $1.98

  It was sunset before he’d walked from the bus depot to the farm. No other way to get there, or to tell Erik he was coming. McAllister was hot, sweaty, shaky inside. Erik had been so much older than Bill, if he too had died . . .

  Sunset, with vivid colors that had not changed in twenty years, in a million years, gave way to twilight. The sky, wide and clear over farmland, purpled, showing the first bright summer stars. Roadside weeds bloomed, Queen Anne’s lace and buttercups and, briefly, the smell of wild strawberries.

  The briefcase grew heavier. McAllister trudged past fields of corn, celery, melons. At the first field of cucumber, he stopped and activated the flashlight on his cell.

  The cukes were Eurekas, nearing harvest. He ran his finger over the large leaves, hairy stems, firm fruit. No mushy feel at the flower end, which would have indicated inadequate pollination. Slicing cucumbers could be grown parthenocarpically, but pickling fruit required pollination. No beetles, carriers of mosaic disease. Cucumbers were more tender than tomatoes or peppers; whatever had worked here would work on other crops as well.