by Tom DeMarco
“That’s what I want,” Loren said.
“We all do.” Kelly’s cheeks were as pink from the champagne as they had been earlier from the cold. “My goodness, what is a New Year’s Day for but resolutions? Let’s make one together. Let’s dedicate ourselves to doing something with our lives that will be a credit to Homer. Let’s do it.” She reached out for Edward’s hand on one side and Loren’s on the other. Sonia, opposite her, reached for hands on both sides to complete the circle.
“What shall it be?” Edward asked. “Something big.”
“Something to change the world,” said Loren.
“Something to help people live better lives,” said Sonia.
“Something for us to do together,” said Kelly.
Edward intoned the words. “We so dedicate ourselves.”
“And when it’s done,” Kelly finished up, “we will look back on it and say, That was for Homer.”
An awkward moment as they let their hands drop. Embarrassingly much sentiment for modern young people. Maybe too much champagne.
A long pause. “Well, that’s all a bit abstract.” Loren stood up. “I am more of a specifics fellow, a mechanic, as Homer says. I am going to put Homer’s Nobel letter into the frame that Claymore found for it.
“An historic moment coming up,” Sonia said, reaching for her purse. “Time for a picture.” She took out her smart phone camera.
The glass front of the frame was on the rack by the sink where Claymore had set it to dry after washing. Loren snapped the glass into its frame and inserted the letter with its backing.
“I guess we could put it here,” Kelly said. She was taking down the old year’s calendar, leaving a hook free on the kitchen wall.
Loren held up the framed letter. “Stand back and tell me if it’s level.”
“Up on the right.”
“Look back, Loren.”
“Smile pretty.”
“Say cheese.”
“Hold it.”
He smiled back at Sonia, focusing through the camera, and at Kelly and Edward. These are my people he thought, my very own. The shutter snapped.
The End
A Message From the Author
Thank you for reading. I've been writing now for more than thirty years, and yes, I probably might have carried on wrting even if there were no readers. But honestly, what fun would that be? It's the role that you play that gives meaning to what I do. Thank you so much.
I invite you to share your thoughts and reactions about Airship Nation:
Packaged immediately behind this page is a brief tease about my new novel, The One-way Time Traveler. I hope you might like that one as well.
– Tom DeMarco
And Now for Something
Completely Different
Tom DeMarco’s 2018 novel: The One Way Time Traveler
American astronaut John Donegal has cheated death when his damaged re-entry vehicle veered away from the earth into deep space. He has flooded the cabin with liquid nitrogen from the reserve air supply to freeze himself in the hopes of eventual rescue when his orbit next brings him within reach, decades or even centuries in the future.
When he awakes, Donegal finds himself in what is surely a hospital, but seems more like a lavish manor house. He is in the care of two doctors and two nurses, all women. His first question — to learn how far into the future he has come — is What is the date? To his surprise, his kindly caretakers can come up with no very satisfying answer to this question. They tell him precisely what day in May it is, but as to the year number they profess to be perplexed. Why would anyone want to keep track that way? Well, to record history, Donegal says. They look disappointed and tell him gravely, “Those who remember history are doomed to repeat it.”
All knowledge of the past has been suppressed, along with such “dangerous” notions as nations, states, flags, and affiliations of all kinds. “Nobody today cares about such things.” It is clear that some catastrophic event in the past has caused massive societal change, but no one can tell him what it was. From what evidence he can piece together he realizes that he must have come at least several hundred years into the future. The patriarchal society he once knew has been replaced by one that is rigidly matriarchal.
After an initial exuberance at being alive at all, he is overcome with a mounting sense of loss. His childhood sweetheart, life partner and wife, Jill, has now been dead for centuries. Can he even grieve for someone who has been dead for so long? And yet, in his own frame of reference she was alive only weeks ago. They had known each other more than half their lives by the time the married, and now he believes he knows her well enough to be sure of one thing: She would not have let him go off into the unknown future without something from her. There must be a message somewhere waiting for him, a message from Jill. He sets out to find it.
As he goes about his quest he learns that the new world which so values peacefulness is full of bottled-up violence and a danger that comes at him from an unexpected quarter. He is warned of a kind of male humiliation ritual that is accepted by all and that he is expected to accept as well. What this society wants to suppress is not only ideas about the past but also an old-fashioned attitude that is so intrinsic to Donegal that he comes to be viewed as a “virus.” His very existence is a threat.
The traces of the past are so few and so diligently concealed that he begins to lose hope of finding anything about Jill and how the rest of her life played out. He has only a few dreams to sustain him, dreams in which she tries and fails to tell him something. On the brink of defeat, he hears a haunting melody in a fairground, a song one of the performers tells him is “as old as the hills.” The words make no sense to him at all, but as he encounters it again and again he comes to suspect that the song is the message, a cryptic love note that has reached out to him across the centuries.
About the Author
Tom DeMarco is the author of fourteen books, including novels, business books and a collection of short stories. He began his career as a software engineer at Bell Telephone Laboratories, working on what was then the world’s largest computer. His focus began early to turn toward writing, with stops along the way in organizational design, litigation consulting, foreign affairs, and even a stint teaching undergraduate Ethics at the University of Maine. He lives with his wife, Sally Smyth, in the coastal village of Camden, Maine.
