2040

by Lela Oswald

  Magdalena planned to explore these questions in the children’s book and broadway musical she was writing which was a sequel to the Disney movie Wall-E. Magdalena loved Disney movies, especially the science fiction ones. Zenon, Girl of the 21st century, Treasure Planet. Atlantis, Lilo and Stitch, and especially Wall-E because she loved the idea of distant humans living in far away spaceships. She wanted to live in a spaceship one day. Her Wall-E sequel was the backstory of the robot Eve and Eve’s journeys around the galaxy discovering the laws of nature and the ways of the universe. Laney saw clearly her future. She would one day live on Mars with her family. Her future husband and her future kids, her siblings, and her parents. She saw it clearly in her future-memories. Future-memories were glimpses of the future that she saw in her mind as clear as seeing the present day world right in front of her. Many of her future memories were positive and happy future-memories about her life and the lives of her loved ones. But sometimes they were danger warnings.

  The problem was how to convince people of the truth and validity of her future-memories. By virtue of the way time works, she couldn’t “prove” yet that her future-memories were accurate. But by the same token, no one else could prove they were inaccurate. But Magdalena knew in her bones that these visions were true. The danger warnings would start out as just a single flash. Then over time the flashes would become stronger and stronger. They would appear in dreams and then appear more frequently in waking life too. It was a sort of intuitive power, a hyper-awareness of the brain to the shifting circumstances of world events and personal events. Maybe it was just “intuition” simple as that. Maybe it was some sort of special genetic quirk? A combination of an analytic mind meets an imaginative future-oriented mind? Whatever the cause or structure of the tool, Magdalena just knew that she needed to share her worries about her brother so that something dangerous didn’t happen to him.

  Chapter 3: Mommy Laney Orville

  Magdalena walked out of her bedroom in the hotel suite and walked a few hotel rooms down to where her mom and two youngest siblings were staying. She and Martin and her dad Rex shared a room, and then her two youngest siblings Melody and Milo shared a hotel room with her mom Laney. This way it wasn’t suspicious that they were all together in one room and it wouldn’t blow their cover with the hotel staff. They needed to maintain their fake identities so that no one reported them to the American CIA for the reward money.

  Magdalena knocked on the door and her mom answered.

  “Hi honey,” said Laney, “Are you all packed? We leave in two hours.”

  “Ya mom, I’m all packed,” said Laney. Her mom scurried around the room packing up Milo’s diapers and baby toys.

  “Mom, I had a really vivid dream last night. Something bad was happening to us. To Martin. I can’t remember the details but he was in danger. It was like a memory but in the future. It felt so real and familiar, but it took place in the future, like some sort of FUTURE memory or something,” said Magdalena.

  Laney gave Magdalena a hug, “I think it was just a scary dream, hunny. The CIA isn’t after you kids, they’re after your dad. But our fake identities are very secure, top of the line. We’re going to be okay if we stay together and remain cautious.”

  Magdalena nodded, “Okay, I guess. Can I go up to the pool on the roof? Not to go swimming, just to hang out and enjoy the view and real and journal. I’ll come back down when you ping. Dad said to come ask you.”

  “Yes, that’s fine, but don’t disturb the people swimming. Be quiet and be mindful of your surroundings, okay?”, warned Laney.

  “I know, mom. I’m always mindful and cautious.”

  “I know you are,” said Laney. I can always count on you,” said Laney as she gave Magdalena a kiss on the forehead. “See you in a bit.”

  Laney trusted Magdalena to stay safe. She knew to always stick to areas where there were lots of people around. There was safety in the anonymity of the crowds. Laney had taught the kids to blend in with the tourists. She had taught them that if anyone ever grabbed them then they should scream, but that the odds of kidnapping were very low.

  During the day while Rex was working, Laney would head downstairs to the hotel lobby with Melody and Milo, and then Magdalena and Martin would meet her down in the designated meet up spot in the hotel lobby. It was important that the family split into two parts for hotel check in, with Rex taking the older two kids and Laney taking the younger two kids, but that was mostly just in case the CIA was tracking hotel check ins as a way to track down the runaway refugee googlers. Once the family was all already checked in, they didn’t worry about being seen altogether. Even if the hotel staff happened to remember the two families checking in separately, and then saw them together, they wouldn’t think anything strange about Laney and all 4 kids being together since for all the hotel staff knew they were all on vacation together as part of an extended family of aunts and uncles and cousins, or just two families of friends on vacation together. But just to be on the safe side, Laney had implemented a rule. No talking in the hotel lobby or elevators. Only talk to one another in the hotel room or once they were out and about in the city, and even then it was important to keep a low profile. The rules didn’t really apply to Milo since he was too young to understand what was going on, but the older three made sure to only text via their tablet watches when they were in the lobby together with their mom rather than talk and draw attention to the family.

  The same rules applied at airports and train stations. All communicating was done via tablet. When one family member needed the attention of another family members, they would put their hand lightly on that family member and then point to the tablet to indicate that they were going to send a message on the tablet. The messages were all encrypted on the family’s private inter-device network, so people at the airport couldn’t hack into it and read their conversations.

  Sometimes Laney wondered if it would be easier to hide from detection by being in a cabin in the woods in Canada or something like that. But there was more anonymity in the city. They would stand out amongst foreign tourists. They wouldn’t be recognized by local townspeople like they would if they lived off the grid in a small town and someone happened to notice and report them to local authorities for the reward money. It would be too easy to find them if they stayed in one place like sitting ducks.

  Plus the kids enjoyed seeing new cities and traveling and getting to go to museums and historical sites and tourist attractions to learn about the world first hand. Laney would feel like they were deprived if she had them all cooped up in a cabin somewhere for years on end. By traveling the world the kids could still sort of play and socialize with other kids in parallel at the hotel pools or by jointly participating in children’s museum activities and zoo activities and playground activities.

  Laney looked at Magdalena and thought about how proud she was of her. “Hey Mags, before you go up make sure your brother is all packed. We’re leaving in a few hours. Sometimes he can get lost in his architectural designs and math equations, so make sure he fully understands that we’re leaving in two hours and doesn’t go venture off somewhere in the hotel and cause us to miss our flight.”

  “Ok, I’ll tell him,” said Magdalena as she left the hotel room. She waved bye to Melody and Milo who were watching the Disney movie Wall-E with headphones on while Laney packed up their things.

  Chapter 4: Time Jumping

  One day this would all be in the past, Laney thought. The political dictatorship would blow over. The CIA will stop hunting down her husband Rex and the Googlers abroad. Back in the US, the FBI would stop offering rewards for the whereabouts of domestic googlers. One day they would go back to San Francisco and live in their rightful city for the rest of their lives. Or they could live in London full time. Or maybe Berlin. Laney had loved living in Berlin. Or they could stay here in Hong Kong. Hong Kong was another one of Laney’s favorite cities. They could get an apartment right downtown. Go to Hong Kong Disneyland periodically. Fly bac
k to the US to go to Disney World in Florida. It had been years since they had all been to Disney World. Milo had never even been before. Laney and Rex had planned to take the kids to Hong Kong Disneyland next week but after Rex got a hit on suspicious activity looking up the family’s fake identities and excess search results for those identities, they couldn’t risk using their current identities any longer.

  It was a precautionary measure to leave the country when there was excess search activity on their identities. After all it could only be someone who knew the people who inhabited the identities before they were used as cover identities. But it was the safer option to not risk it and to just book a flight out of the country as soon as there was evidence that anyone was on to them.

  It was time to fly out tomorrow and get all new identities. They would have to come back to Hong Kong another time and go to HK Disneyland then once everything blew over. And the next time they would go with their real identities. Maybe even monogrammed shirts and all, thought Laney.

  Laney recalled the last time she had put off a Disney trip. It was during the Covid-19 virus outbreak of 2020. She and Rex were going to Disneyland in California for Rex’s 32nd birthday. They had planned to go to Star Wars land which had opened the prior year. They had also planned to attend Laney’s little brother Josh’s USC college graduation. But college graduations were cancelled, schools were moved online, and Disney World was closed for months on end.

  During that time, Laney and Rex stayed in their San Francisco apartment aside for brief walks outside keeping distance from other people. They wore masks, stockpiled food, and tried to stay healthy. Laney had always been big on safety, even prior to the Covod-19 outbreak. She always kept emergency supplies in the home like fire escape ropes, emergency flashlights, aluminum blankets, back-up storage of medications and first aid supplies, etc. She carried pepper spray everywhere she went even though she and Rex lived in a very nice part of the city. She generally saw herself as prepared.

  Laney thought about Magdalena’s dream that trouble was on the horizon and wondered if it was just the anxiety about the upcoming move to the new country or whether there was something her intuition knew. Laney was a logical thinker by nature, but she knew the human brain was a powerful source of unknown unknowns, and there was so much even the science of 2040 still did not understand. Laney would have semi-psychic dreams and also daydreams in her youth and even now that often came true. But other times the dreams were just silly expressions of inner worries. It was hard to say what to make of Magdalena’s dream.

  Sometimes Laney would time jump in her dreams and go to far away future times or far in the past times. She saw what it was like when humans lived in space colonies in the future. She saw what it was like to live in the Victorian Age. In Medieval times. In the Stone Age. Sometimes her time jumping would scare her and she wouldn’t know how to escape. This time jumping had started happening when she was young, but now that she was middle-aged and had the wisdom of experience, it was more like a super power than a frightening shock. Sometimes she would be in a complete other world in a serialized dream that had recurring episodes night after night where she was able to recognize the setting of the dream from one night to the next but had no waking memory of the dreams in the morning upon waking up. Other times she would lucid dream where she knew she was dreaming and would be an active participant in the dreams.

  BZZZZZZZ. Laney looked down at her tablet watch. Cousin Parker had sent her an encrypted ping. “Angela has been asking around about your location. She’s trying to get the FBI reward money on you. Be careful who you talk to, and don’t engage in any unnecessary communication with anyone back in the US.” The message disappeared after it tracked Laney’s eye movement to see that she had read the whole thing.

  The FBI was offering rewards to anyone who had information on the whereabouts of googlers. Angela was Laney’s mother who Laney hadn’t seen in over 30 years. Parker had heard from his dad Edward, who was Angela’s older brother, that Angela had been asking around if anyone knew the whereabouts of the Orville family. Angela had never met Rex or the Orville children but she was eager to cash in on the reward for turning them in.

  Parker ran a robot tracking business. He lived back in Indianapolis with his wife Hannah and his kids Theodore and Clementine. Parker had been like a brother to Laney over the years and she was thankful he was looking out for her. She knew it would be risky to respond to his message and thank him so she let the message go without a response. She knew Parker would get a read receipt, that the message was confirmed, and she knew he would understand that it was safer for her to not respond, lest the CIA be tracking her communication to try and get a location tag on her sent message.

  Angela had an insatiable need for power and control. Laney wasn’t sure if she was motivated by greed alone or by some other pathology. Angela had been divorced from her third husband for a few years now. She was now dating a Senator named Tim Hawthorne. Tim Hawthorne was part of the Traditionalist Party, made up of mainly elderly and hyper-religious people. He was formerly the Mayor of Indianapolis, followed by an Indiana Congressman, and he was currently running for Governor of Indiana. He was dating Angela for her trust fund which funded his campaign, but it was an arrangement of mutual benefit given Angela’s constant hunger for power and fame. Capturing a refugee googler would be a big political win for Tim Hawthorne and could win him the governorship in the next election, thus elevating Angela to the status of First Lady of Indiana which was her ideal position. Enough power that she was the envy of her country club friends but not enough national spotlights for national reporters to put effort into digging up the many skeletons in her closet.

  Angela and Tim were trying to pull all the strings they knew of to get a location fix on Laney and Rex and the children since Angela and Tim knew that Laney and Rex were a liability in the upcoming election. The fact Angela’s own daughter was married to someone directly opposing everything the Traditionalist Party stood for would be used by Tim’s opponent in the election. There was also a large bounty put on Rex and the Orville family for anyone who could discover their whereabouts. If Rex were captured he would not only be tried for treason, but Laney would get a lifelong prison sentence for aiding and abetting an enemy of the state.

  Laney had been having intuitive dreams that she was about to hear from Parker. She had an intuition in her dream that Parker knew something and was worried about her and the kids and Rex. Laney had these type of prescient dreams for many years after undergoing an experimental light and sound treatment as a young adult called EMDR, eye movement desensitization and reprocessing therapy, to help get rid of her child abuse memories and nightmares due to Angela’s violent manic depressive outbursts when Laney was a kid. Angela would frequently fly off the handle in rage and lock young Laney in the garage all night when Laney’s dad Marvin was away on business trips. Angela suffered from manic depression, which she refused to get treatment for or even admit to having. It was a miserable childhood for Laney but thankfully her adulthood was the exact opposite of the constant drama and misery of her childhood. Soon after Laney met Rex at age 25, he gave her a plaque that said “May the best of your past be the worst of your future.” It had proved prophetic in that she and Rex had built a beautiful life.

  Laney thought her family was safe and everything was calm after having not heard from Angela for decades. But now the Orville family was on the run and not only on the run from the government but worst of all from her own mother who was trying to track them down and turn them in for the reward money and the political gains for her new boyfriend. Images of snakes filled Laney’s mind as she thought of the evil and deception that existed a half a world away back in Indiana as her mother plotted to have Rex arrested for treason and Laney arrested for aiding and abetting a terrorist.

  Chapter 5: Martin Orville

  Martin was only 11 year old, but he had known his whole life that he would be an engineer like his dad. He loved playing LEGOs with his da
d and building robotics contraptions. His passion was robotics, just like his dad’s passion had been as a kid. Martin was tall and lanky, had curly blond hair, a sly dimple in one cheek, and a toothy smile.

  Martin packed up his emergency bag as he thought about his future. One day he would live on Mars. He would live there in a permanent colony in his Mars house. It would like the Ray Bradbury science fiction stories of Mars. One day he would be the creator of the first Disney theme park on Mars. A beautiful Disneyland of futurism and yesteryear combined in perfect balance.

  Martin packed away his sketchbook of blueprints for Mars Disneyland. He was going to be the one to create the first Disneyland park off planet, and he had been planning it in his head for years. He had even designed new rides that were not found in any of the earth Disney parks. One ride was based on the movie Emperor’s New Groove and involved the villain Yzma’s death trap roller coaster featured in the movie. Another ride he had in mind was based on the movie Atlantis The Lost Empire, and involved a mining adventure with the hero character Milo. He would call it Milo’s Mining Adventure and it would be a steampunk ride based on Milo’s journey to Atlantis through the underground mines. Martin regarded the movie Atlantis as the biggest underrated Disney movie. His little brother loved the movie too, but that was probably because his brother Milo shared the same name as the main character Milo in Atlantis. Martin was a bit jealous that his little brother got the name of such an epic Disney character. Technically Martin was a Disney name too, as in Martin from the movie My Favorite Martian. Sometimes his aunts and uncles called him Martin the Martian, not because of the movie but because Martin was so passionate about building a Mars Disneyland someday. Martin had inherited his mother’s love of Disney and his father’s love of engineering. One day his vision would all come together. Humanity would thrive on Mars and his family would all live there with him. Mars would be more than just the scientists conducting experiments there and the corporate interests and mining that were there now. It would be full of tourism and travel and hotels and theme parks and life and fun. He couldn’t wait for the future to unfold. The future was on his side. Time always went in the right direction for him. It went forward. Toward the future. Time was always on his side.