2034

by Elliot Ackerman

  “No one here trusts us, not even our own people. We’ll never be Americans,” the girl said bitterly. She sat slumped next to her mother, the two of them side by side in the stern of the dinghy. Her mother held the tiller; she didn’t look at her daughter, but at the horizon, trying to keep them on course.

  “You don’t understand,” her mother eventually said. “We are from nowhere and have nothing. We have come here to be from somewhere and to have something. That is what makes us American.”

  The two sat silently for a time.

  A spray of water came over the bow as they crossed the wake of a much larger ship, the uncaring wave almost swamping their small dinghy.

  When they arrived off the coast of the Naval War College, they drew in the sail, lifted the tiller, and dropped their small anchor. Their dinghy bobbed in the gentle swells. The two of them, mother and daughter, didn’t speak. They watched the shore, the familiar pathways, the office where he had once worked, the life they’d once had and, perhaps, would someday have again.

  * * *

  17:25 June 12, 2037 (GMT-6)

  New Mexico

  The ranch house was built in the center of her one-hundred-acre plot. The renovation had taken three years and most of her savings, but Sarah Hunt was starting to feel as though it was home. The house itself wasn’t much, a single floor with exposed timbers and rafters. She still didn’t have anything to hang on the walls and wondered if she ever would. Most of her photos she kept in storage. On a few occasions since retiring, after one sleepless, sweat-soaked night or another, she would go out to the shed in the back of the house and consider burning the single box that contained the photographs.

  But it hadn’t come to that, at least not yet.

  After Shanghai, the dreams got worse. Or not necessarily worse, but more frequent. Night after night she would be standing on the dock with the seemingly infinite parade of ships offloading their cargo of ghosts, while she searched for her father. She never found him, not once. Yet she remained unconvinced that her searching in the dreams was futile. For a long time, she hoped that when she finished her new home, the dreams might stop. And if they never stopped, she at least hoped to find something or someone recognizable in them. That hadn’t yet proven the case.

  She had gone on and off medication to no effect.

  She had spoken to therapists who only seemed to want to bury her beneath the weight of her own words, so she’d stopped talking to them. Each day, she walked the perimeter of her property, though it made her bad leg ache. Eight miles from her nearest neighbor, her plot of high desert brought her a modicum of peace. Despite the dreams, out here she could at least sleep. After the strike on Shanghai, she’d gone nearly a week with no sleep at all, her nerves so frayed that Hendrickson had to fly out to the Enterprise and relieve her of command himself, in the midst of the ceasefire negotiations being brokered by New Delhi. He had been gentle with her then, and he had remained gentle with her in the three years since. Predictably, he’d stayed in the Navy, pinning on a third star in his ascent to its highest ranks. A reward—and a deserved one—for the role he’d played in brokering the peace.

  On his visits, which had become less frequent, he always assured her that there was nothing she could’ve done to prevent Shanghai. She hadn’t been the one to issue the launch order. Once the nine Hornets had departed the Enterprise there was nothing she could have done. If anything, the one Hornet getting to its target might have proven crucial to ending the war. During the ceasefire negotiations that followed, it had been essential for hawks like Wisecarver to make the face-saving claim that they had avenged the attacks against Galveston and San Diego. Without that claim, Hendrickson felt certain no ceasefire agreement would have been signed.

  “This wasn’t your fault,” he would say.

  “Then whose fault was it?” she would ask.

  “Not yours,” and they would leave it at that. For the first year and into the second, Hendrickson would offer to help her in the ways he thought she needed help. “Why don’t you come stay with us for a bit?” or, “I’m worried about you out here on your own.” He thought it might be good for her to get back on the water again. Healing was the word he’d used. Hunt had reminded him that it was no accident she’d bought property in New Mexico, a landlocked state.

  In the third year, on one of his now-rare visits, the two had decided to take a stroll around her property before dinner. During a lull in their conversation, she finally asked, “Will you help me with something?”

  “Anything,” he answered.

  “I’m thinking about adopting.”

  “Adopting what?” he replied, as if he were hoping she might say a cat or a dog.

  They continued to walk in silence, until, eventually, Hendrickson muttered, “Whosoever destroys one life has destroyed the world entire, and whosoever saves a single life is considered to have saved the whole world. . . .”

  “What the hell is that supposed to mean?” she asked.

  “Isn’t that why you want to adopt?”

  “I never thought I’d hear you quote scripture.”

  Hendrickson shrugged. “I heard Trent Wisecarver say it once. Though I don’t think he believed it. Do you?”

  They had come to a portion of her fence that needed mending. Instead of answering, Hunt bent down and cradled one of the heavy joists in her arms. She lifted with all her strength, exhaling sharply as she jammed its end into an upright. It would hold, at least temporarily, until she could make a permanent fix. She did this again with the joist’s other end. Then she wiped her dirty hands on the front of her jeans. “I’ve already started the adoption process,” she said matter-of-factly. “I’m not asking for your opinion. I’m only asking for your help. They require letters of reference. You’re a war hero; one from you might mean something.”

  Hendrickson didn’t answer. They finished their walk, had their dinner, and the next morning he left. A week passed, a month, and then several more. She fixed the fence on her property. She remodeled the ranch house, turning her study into a nursery. Her application for adoption continued its slow, bureaucratic progress. She provided bank statements. She submitted herself to interviews, to home visits. She knew the odds were stacked against her. She was a single woman and over fifty years old—or “of an advanced age,” as phrased by the New Mexico Children, Youth, and Families Department. But none of this would disqualify her. What would disqualify her, she feared, was what had happened on the open ocean three years before. Would her government entrust her to nurture a single life after entrusting her to end so many? She didn’t know.

  Then, quite by surprise, a sealed letter arrived in the mail. She didn’t need to open it. Hunt understood what Hendrickson had done for her. She forwarded along this letter to the adoption authority. The process continued. Step by step she moved through it, transforming herself into a prospective mother and transforming her isolated ranch into a suitable home. The social worker assigned to her case, a no-nonsense official who seemed impervious to chitchat and who wore a modest gold crucifix outside her turtleneck, reminded Hunt of Commander Jane Morris, which reminded her of the John Paul Jones. Hunt was so haunted by the resemblance that on the home visit she’d chosen to sit alone in her living room as opposed to walking through the house with the social worker, a breach of manners that likely didn’t work to her advantage. When the social worker finished her hour-long inspection, she exited the nursery and commented, “You’d never know you’d been in the Navy walking around this house. You don’t have a single photo out.”

  Hunt hadn’t had a response, or at least not one she felt prepared to give.

  Before she left, the social worker told Hunt she would receive a phone call in the coming days as to her eligibility to become an adoptive parent. In the days that followed, Hunt hardly slept. Her dreams returned with a ferocity she hadn’t known since immediately after Shanghai.

  The ships unload their cargo. . . .

  Panicked, she searches for her fa
ther, knowing she’ll never find him. . . .

  On and on the dream spirals, only increasing in intensity. Until, one morning, in the midst of her dream she is released from her familiar terror by a sound. . . .

  Her phone was ringing.

  * * *

  17:12 November 24, 2038 (GMT-6)

  Kansas City, Missouri

  The bedroom hadn’t changed in two decades. Posters of fighter jets, from the Corsair to the Phantom to the Hornet. A Super Bowl victory poster from 2017, the year Tom Brady became the GOAT. Varsity trophies littered the desk, a football player rushing, a batter hitting, their shoulders blanketed by a thickening layer of dust. History books were piled beside the trophies, including a dog-eared paperback of Baa Baa Black Sheep, an autobiography by Colonel Gregory “Pappy” Boyington. In the center of the desk was a letter first opened four years before, the envelope yellowing with age at its corners. It had come back from the Enterprise with the rest of his personal effects. His father kept it there. When missing him became too much, his father would sit vigil at the desk and reread the letter.

  Hey Dad,

  You’ll probably hear from me on the phone before you get this letter. But in case it’s much longer than that before we talk, I wanted to put pen to paper. These past few days, I’ve been thinking a lot about Pop-Pop. My first-ever memory is of him telling me stories from the Pacific. Later on came Pop’s stories about Vietnam. And, of course, your stories. (If you were here, I’d ask you to tell me the one about the camel spider and sheet cake again.) But more than my memory of all those stories is my memory of wanting a story of my own. One that I could tell you. And goddamn if I haven’t gathered a few out here.

  We’ve been waiting to launch for days now (the weather’s been bad) and that’s given me time to think. I want you to know that I went into this clear-eyed. All I ever wanted was to hold my own in this family. And I feel like I’ve done that. But I suspect something else will soon be asked of me, something more than what you, Pop, or even Pop-Pop had to do. And if I have to do that thing, I want you to know I’m okay with it. If I’m the last in our family ever to fly, it makes sense that I’d have to give the most. When you build a chain, you cast the last link a little thicker than the rest because that’s the anchor point. The most punishment always falls on the anchor point.

  That’s it—that’s all I’ve been thinking about.

  Be sure to keep taking your heart meds.

  And thanks for the carton of Marlboro Reds.

  I love you,

  Chris

  The old man finished reading. He gazed out the window, to the fields they used to play in. It was late autumn. The leaves were collected in great piles. He carefully refolded the letter and placed it in its envelope. He sat alone in the chair as the afternoon moved toward darkness. Occasionally, in the distance, he could hear the dull sound of a plane as it passed invisibly overhead.

  * * *

  07:40 April 16, 2039 (GMT+5:30)

  New Delhi

  Sandeep Chowdhury had a flight to catch. His taxi to the airport would arrive in a few minutes. The night before, he’d packed meticulously. This would be his first trip back to the United States since he’d left Washington as part of the peace delegation five years before. He brought an assortment of clothing, including a suit he would wear to formal meetings, but mostly he packed items to wear in the camps around Galveston and San Diego, which were filled with the internally displaced who had yet to resettle. It was strange for Chowdhury to wonder whether or not he should bring extra soap or toothpaste to an American city, where once you could buy anything. But no longer. At least that was what the security officer at UN headquarters in Mumbai had said.

  Truth be told, Chowdhury’s distancing from America started when he’d resettled his mother and daughter in New Delhi. His mother, who had now reconciled with her aging brother, was reluctant to leave him. And if his mother was reluctant to leave her brother, Chowdhury couldn’t leave his mother—particularly in light of Ashni’s attachment to her grandmother. The girl had already been through so much with the loss of her own mother. This tally of familial obligations led Chowdhury to resign from the administration and stay on in what his uncle insisted on calling “your home country.” Once Chowdhury had made that decision, he was pleasantly surprised to discover that his expertise was in high demand. After the New Delhi Peace Accords, both the political world and business world opened up to him in a way he could never have anticipated. Not only had he served in the highest levels of the US executive branch; he was an India expert (or simply Indian, if the offending party hadn’t read his CV). International lobbyists, think tanks, venture capitalists, sovereign wealth funds—they aggressively courted him with board seats, stock options, and prestigious titles such as “Senior Distinguished Fellow” as they vied for his expertise as part of a general clamor to understand India’s ascendance as an economic and political juggernaut.

  For Chowdhury, this meant that he’d had no reason to go back to America. However, packing for this trip, that word, back, came to mind again. Although success after success had come to him since resettling in New Delhi, a certain bitterness remained in how he had left home. How often had he replayed the events of five years before in his mind, wondering if a different set of decisions might have led to a different set of outcomes. He thought of Wisecarver too, whose obstruction of the Indian defense attaché had eventually come to light, a scandal that cost the administration its next election, so that even had Chowdhury stayed on he would’ve soon been out of the job. But none of that had ever alleviated the deeper wound, which wasn’t the loss of life, as tragic as it had been, but rather the sacrifice of America itself, the idea of it.

  Chowdhury had packed one suitcase and a carry-on, a daypack he could take when he traveled into the camps. His office at the UN High Commission for Refugees had also advised he bring a sleeping bag. Depending on road conditions and available accommodations, the chance existed that his delegation might need to stay one or two nights in the wretched camps, a detail that Chowdhury kept from his mother, who wouldn’t have approved. Cyclical outbreaks of typhus, measles, and even smallpox often sprouted from the unbilged latrines and rows of plastic tenting. These diseases had ravaged communities far and wide, only heightening the cost of the war. Their own hometown of Washington, D.C., had lost nearly fifty thousand residents to a vaccine-resistant strain of rubeola two years before. Chowdhury had wanted to return then to help, but his mother had convinced him not only to remain in New Delhi but to submit his application for Indian citizenship. Which he reluctantly did. “You need to accept that this might be your home,” she had said. Still, he couldn’t quite believe that the America he remembered, the America that Kennedy and Reagan had both called “the city upon a hill,” might vanish.

  Except America was an idea. And ideas very seldom vanish.

  Whenever he despaired, he reminded himself of this.

  With his bags set by the front door, he stepped into his study, which had once been his uncle’s study, the very room where he’d learned of the attacks on Galveston and San Diego. At the corner of the desk sat a photograph of his great-great-grandfather, Lance Naik Imran Sandeep Patel of the Rajputana Rifles. This wasn’t the photo from the Delhi Gymkhana that his uncle had shown him years before, but a photograph from later on in his great-great-grandfather’s life, after his career in the army, once he’d made a modest fortune selling arms during Partition to the newly formed Indian government. Although the forty years between photographs had obscured the resemblance of the young and old versions of the same man, the gaze was unmistakable. It was unrequited, hungry for more—to do more, achieve more, to make a better, safer, more secure, more dignified life. It was, in Chowdhury’s estimation, a distinctly American gaze, though the man had never set foot in America.

  When he considered his great-great-grandfather, and considered Reagan and Kennedy—who felt like grandfathers of another sort—and their shared vision of “the city upon a hi
ll,” he felt assured by the notion that America, as an idea, did not depend upon any particular set of borders to endure. In fact, on this UN-sponsored humanitarian trip, he would be doing his part to restore American ideals to its very shores.

  Outside, his taxi pulled up. Chowdhury messaged the driver to wait a minute. Another idea rang discordantly in his mind, an idea from another of America’s forefathers. These were words spoken by a young Abraham Lincoln two decades before the calamity that became the American Civil War. All the armies of Europe, Asia, and Africa combined, Lincoln had said, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest, with a Buonaparte for a commander, could not by force take a drink from the Ohio or make a track on the Blue Ridge in a trial of a thousand years. . . . If destruction be our lot we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen we must live through all time or die by suicide.

  A nation of freemen.

  Chowdhury counted himself among that nation, no matter where it might exist, in Washington, New Delhi, or elsewhere. And so he would travel back to America, hopeful that the spirit of that nation had yet to abandon the place. He had one last item to pack. Opening his desk drawer, he reached for his two passports: Indian and American, different shades of the same blue.

  His hand hovered indecisively over them both. He had a flight to catch. Time was growing short. The taxi began to blare its horn. He stood, the seconds bleeding away. For the life of him, he couldn’t decide which to choose.

  “Because no battle is ever won. . . . They are not even fought. The field only reveals to man his own folly and despair, and victory is an illusion of philosophers and fools.”