Tomorrow

by C. K. Kelly Martin

  These two are cold; they act like they haven’t heard me.

  “I’m serious,” I tell them. “I’m human. It’s a biological need.”

  Finally, the guy in plaid gets up. “If you think this is going to be your big getaway attempt, you can forget it. But if you’re serious, we can take you outside for a minute.” He glances at the thin man. “We’ll cuff him and gag him again.” He sweeps up his walkie-talkie and tells whoever is on the other end of it they’re preparing to take me outside for a bathroom break.

  It sounds harmless when he puts it that way. Kids at school have bathroom breaks. Office clerks. Everyone.

  But my brain’s rattling from the tension. This could be my only chance.

  “Take the piss first so he won’t toss it,” the guy in plaid directs.

  If they were two normal guys from 1986 the one in acid wash jeans might protest that he didn’t want to touch the cup of piss. Instead he strides over to the knapsack and retrieves a pair of plastic gloves. He slips them on and then approaches my cage, the other man handing him the key. I watch the thin man jab it into the lock and gingerly retrieve the cup, placing it on the floor directly to the left of my cage.

  A spider—free and independent from whatever’s about to unfold—scurries by the cup and under a small pile of hay. It reminds me of how Kinnari used to talk about reincarnation. You’d think coming back as an insect would be a punishment, but maybe it’s easier. Humans have more power than they know what to do with. They fuck even the simple things up.

  The guy in the plaid shirt and Kodiak boots was right. I was going to throw the cup. I could still try to reach for it, but now that they expect it, that doesn’t seem like the smartest move. I breathe slowly as the thin man reaches back into the cage for me, the other man standing with his weapon aimed our way. If they just wanted to kill me they wouldn’t be using a tranquilizer gun. That’s something on my side.

  I don’t know how I’ll be able to sense the right moment to break away. If Freya were here she might be able to tell me, but she didn’t always know either. Sometimes the future is like the toss of a coin. Things could go either way.

  I don’t fall down like Minnow did. I let the guy yank me to my feet while the other stands aside with his weapon pointed at me. The man holding me has to let go for a few seconds to pull the gag, cuffs, and a roll of toilet paper from the knapsack, but this isn’t the right time, either. I’d never make it out of the barn. Wait until we get clear of it, I tell myself. Wait until you’ve had a few more seconds to really get your balance.

  When he snaps the cuffs on and pushes the gag into my mouth I shoot the guy a dirty look that makes him say, “You might bite.”

  I might. I might do fucking anything to get to Freya.

  With the restraints in place, the guy marches me out of the barn, the other man overtaking us. If he wants to stand in front of me, it must mean they’re more afraid I’d run in that direction, and I can see why. This farmer’s field hasn’t grown anything edible in a long time. It’s all prickly weeds, wildflowers, and reeds, but there’s an old two-story farmhouse within walking distance up ahead. Too far for me to overhear any noises from it, but reachable. I can’t see a road from here but there has to be one closer to the house.

  I’m nearly as sure as Freya would be that the place must be manned by more security people. They wouldn’t keep me in the barn if there were civilians within sight. It would make things too messy. They depend on flying under the radar.

  In the darkness the moon seems gigantic. The way you imagine it would look if it broke free from its orbit and started hurtling towards earth. Low and off to my right, something glimmers in the night air. Fireflies. Hundreds of them. I’ve never seen one before, let alone so many. They flash like miniature fireworks.

  I wish Freya could see them.

  “Left,” the thin man commands, guiding me roughly towards the side of the barn. He has one hand around my arm and the other’s holding the toilet paper. It’s the cheap, scratchy kind they always put in public bathrooms. The main thing is that his hands are full and the minute he gives me the toilet paper he’ll have one hand free. I glance at the other man, who hasn’t lost an iota of his focus. When he sees me look at him, he says, “Hurry up.”

  And this is it. I try to speak. With the gag in my mouth, my words come out sounding like I’ve swallowed a blanket. The man nearest me hesitates. I’ve given him one of those old Churchill quotes that they used to play on the U.N.A. Dailies: “It is more agreeable to have the power to give than to receive.” I watch the man’s struggle to translate my grunts into meaning play out in his eyes.

  For me, it’s always a surprise to be reminded of the future by external things. It trips up my brain for a couple of seconds before I can get a handle on the present. Immersed in a society passionately in love with oil-fuelled cars, French fries, and suntans like leather, it’s as if the whole continent is throwing a party that will never end. The world of 2063 doesn’t seem possible and although I never forget, it’s as if that future only exists in my head—mine and Freya’s. I wasn’t sure if the shock would be the same for the director’s people, who were never wiped and covered like I was. But it seems that it is, because the man’s eyes glaze over for a moment.

  I’m lucky that he cuffed my hands in front of me this time. I spin as I pull away, my joined hands soaring up together as a single entity. I crash them down on the arm that was clutching me. The action brings the man’s head cascading down towards me, and I bend and hit his chin with the hardest part of my skull. It’s the part I banged on the top of the cage earlier and it probably hurts me as much as it hurts him. He groans but reaches for me, the toilet paper spilling from his hand and unrolling like a red carpet.

  The guy in the plaid shirt is already firing but can’t get a decent shot off. With me and the other man grappling, I make a lousy target. Plaid puts down his gun and races for us. I try to hurl the thin man at him—use him as cover—but it doesn’t work. The guy has an iron grip on me that sends us both stumbling into his partner. Feverishly, I swing my chained arms around, my legs kicking at air and flesh, and when the grip on me eases, I run. Away from them and towards the house, my feet trampling wild grass and tripping over nothing. I’ve run this way in dreams, cursed with slow motion and leaden legs. You know you’ll never escape what’s coming after you but you keep running because there’s no choice.

  I feel the men hot on my heels. Then the prick of something sharp in the back of my neck. They got me. It’s only a matter of time before I’ll fall. The house is still too far. I imagine I see the curtain in the back window flutter. Before I hit ground, a third man appears from out of nowhere. He must’ve been watching us the entire time, and because I’m unsteady on my feet, he doesn’t have to hurry. There’s no danger of me going anywhere except down.

  Thirteen: 1986

  It must be a different drug than the one they gave me on the Lower East Side. I don’t pass out this time; I just can’t move. Not even to blink. Two of the men heave me into the house, one of them holding me under my arms and the other lifting my feet. I can feel their hands on me, neither rough nor gentle. But I want to yelp with the pain screaming from my wrist. I tried to break my fall with it and that was a bad move.

  Inside the house an elderly couple sit on a tan leather couch in lamplight, the woman knitting a purple scarf and the man staring blandly at the TV. The two of them look so ordinary it feels as if this has to be some kind of mistake. Maybe I’m unconscious and dreaming after all. Or maybe they have no part in U.N.A. business and are just in the wrong place at the wrong time. If only I could move my lips and ask them for help, but my tongue and lips are as paralyzed as the rest of me. I have to wonder if I’m even breathing. This is no vision of heaven, though—the old woman’s forehead creases as she looks at us. “I thought they were finishing with the other one first,” she says.

  One of the men carrying me adjusts his grip as he replies, “He tried to run and fell h
ard on his hand. Someone should probably have a look at him.”

  The older man nods and reaches for his radio. I don’t know what he says into it; my attention’s focused behind his shoulder, at a lone door ajar in the hallway. A trio promptly emerges from the room, a heavy-lidded Minnow at its centre with each of his arms draped leadenly around his captors’ necks. The men flanking Isaac drag him down the corridor towards us.

  “They’re done with him for now,” the old man with the radio says. He scurries ahead of us, swerving into the room Minnow just exited from. The men carrying me follow, angling me into a strange, narrow staircase. We descend slowly, moving into a downstairs corridor of bare drywall. Between the angle my head’s slumped at and the position of the men on either side of me, I can only make out a fraction of the room ahead on my left. Through the open door, I spy the lower half of a wheeled bed with a drab blue blanket spread across it. A lump under the covers signals that the bed’s not empty but I can’t see the patient’s face.

  It’s Freya’s hands on top of the blanket that give her away. I watched her paint her nails purple while she was listening to one of her Spanish language tapes this afternoon. I’d recognize her hands without the purple nails anyway. Long, thin fingers that are stronger than they look.

  My brain fights the paralysis, wanting to jump out of the men’s arms and rush to Freya’s side. I think I feel my nostrils flutter. It could just be my imagination; it doesn’t make any difference because I can’t move anything that matters. The men shuffle past the room, moving ever farther from Freya. Inside a second room with a wheeled bed, they begin to set me down. The blanket looks identical to the one covering Freya, like one you’d find in a 1986 hospital or nursing home.

  My arm with the injured wrist flops as they lay me down. Funny how it hurts more than the gunshot I took in the Eaton Centre last winter and how the people who are ready to tear holes in my memory and fill them up with confetti are concerned about the way I fell.

  The trio of men recedes from view, several people in lab coats taking their place. One of them is holding an IV in his hand and another reminds me a little of Bening, not physically, but in her calm yet in-charge aura. Damn, here it comes. First the IV and then an FM helmet. A functional magnetic resonance imaging machine, technology that was in its infancy circa 2010 but that the government was using to read people’s minds only a decade later. I grew up hearing stories about antiquated technologies like this from Bening, and now the technicians are fitting one of the helmets snugly over my head. I feel my brain begin to bend to U.N.A. will as whatever’s in the IV flows into my bloodstream. A truth-teller probably. They started using the drug in conjunction with the FM machine when people started fighting the procedure.

  Initially I try to battle the truth-teller the way I fought the paralysis—with pure mental conviction. I draw a line in the sand I swear to not to cross. A line that begins to blur…and blink…and forget its own existence.

  “Let go,” the woman says softly, her brown eyes reaching into mine with a certainty that has no need to depend on brutality. “There’s no enemy here. We’re on the same side.”

  And then…then nothing seems wrong. Nothing’s worth fighting for. Those ideas are gone. In the spot where they used to exist there’s only a swirl of intoxicating emotions and flickering images. Things like…a shade of pink I never noticed before, the most beautifully delicate shade Monet or Renoir could ever hope to capture on canvas. Seawater splashes from a breaching whale out on the Pacific Ocean. Eternal love. Legions of dancing fireflies. Profound gratitude. Wrapping my arms around Freya and holding her close. Her hair. Her pale eyes. Her long fingers. Her voice singing in my ear. A sense of calm I never want to let go of. Better than the first cigarette of the day. Better than anything. Peace. Hope. Surrender. Winston Churchill standing at the end of my bed with his arms crossed over his belly as he lectures, “Attitude is a little thing that makes a big difference.”

  Winston means it as a joke, I think. And I would laugh in appreciation but the paralysis makes that impossible. Not that it matters. Not that anything does except the woman’s words. She says, “We’ve given you something for the pain and something else that will allow you to speak. You should begin to feel their effects any second now. Then I’m going to ask you a series of questions I want you to answer aloud as fully as you can.”

  The woman smiles at me with a kindness I’m helpless to resist. “We’re trying to help everyone in the best way we know how, and this is your chance to help us.”

  In my mind’s eye, I nod, the pain in my wrist fading. She’s already helped me. It’s going to be all right, no matter what happens. I don’t know why I was so worried before. It’s almost laughable how anxious I was, but now she’ll take care of everything. The world is in good hands.

  I try to smile back and I think it works because the woman’s grin deepens in response. I feel as if I’m smiling her smile and she’s smiling mine. There’s no separation between us. I want what she wants. I believe what she believes.

  Because of that I gladly answer every question she poses as soon as I regain control over my mouth, tongue, and lips. I tell her about my past with Minnow and about running into him on the Lower East Side by chance. Then I repeat what he told me. 2071. The Doomsday cultists. My mother helping families go through the chute. At times it doesn’t feel as if either of us is communicating out loud. Thoughts seem to flit effortlessly back and forth between me and the woman. It’s like a Vulcan mind meld out of Star Trek with added peace and love and I chuckle at the thought, or at least I think I do. It’s difficult to tell what’s real and what’s not. The fireflies flickering to the beat of Peter Gabriel’s “Sledgehammer”? Winston Churchill in a one-piece swimsuit standing directly behind the woman, twirling a hula hoop around his wide waist?

  One of the guys in lab coats frowns and mutters something about the addition of the pain killer on top of the truth-teller and paralyzing agent making me punch-drunk. “Drug interaction,” he grumbles.

  I laugh at that too. I’ve never in my life felt so right. The colours in my head are greens now. I taste lime on my lips as a particularly tasty tropical shade bobs behind my eyes.

  “We’ll have to work quickly, then,” the woman tells him, returning her attention to me. “Try to focus on what I’m saying, Garren. This is important.”

  “Your voice sounds like music,” I muse before eagerly confessing all the remaining things she wants to know—details about Freya and me. Our plans to see elephants, giraffes, and rhinos on safari in Africa. The Puente Nuevo. Our surprise at President Reagan’s second shooting and our hope that the U.N.A.’s plans will change history but that they’ll leave us alone. I feel almost ashamed remembering that. This woman and the people she works with are striving for the greater good. I should’ve understood that they couldn’t allow me or Freya to stand in their way. We don’t matter in the scheme of things. “We were never going to tell anyone about the U.N.A.,” I vow. “Never ever ever.” The words roll off my lips like honey. I can’t stop their sweetness; can’t stop myself from repeating them. “Ever ever ever ever ever.”

  The woman frowns, her disapproval echoing inside my heart.

  “I’m sorry,” I splutter automatically. The last thing I’d ever want to do is make her unhappy. She’s doing so much for the world and I only want to help her, like she deserves. Even so, the syllables bubble insistently up in my throat. “Ever ever ever ever ever,” I stammer.

  “Shhh,” she commands. “I understand. Let’s get back to Isaac Monroe. You said he told you the only reason he came back through the chute was to help evacuate people from 2065 in advance of this 2071 nuclear attack from the Doomsday cultists.”

  “Yeah,” I murmur. “To kill your people stationed in Australia before they could kill the evacuees.” Never ever ever ever ever ever. The singsong echoes in my head but I try to keep it there. It would only upset her to hear it again.

  “Monroe never mentioned another purpose?�
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  “Noooooooo.” The protest stretches out like an interstate highway on my tongue. “What…what do you mean, another purpose?” It’s getting hard to think. My mind feels crowded and sludge-like. Too many colours and sounds closing in on me. It’s overpowering. “Ever EVER!” I blurt out compulsively.

  Winston Churchill points at me and erupts into a belly laugh, the hula hoop whirling faster around his hips. “It’s not funny,” I counter, glaring at him.

  “Oh, but it is, my boy,” he says sagely. “Very much so.” The hula hoop comes to a sudden stop and crashes to the floor. “Everyone has his day and some days last longer than others. Yours, my boy, is coming to a close.”

  “It doesn’t matter if it is,” I tell him, my voice feverish like a true believer’s. “They’ll do what’s best.”

  “Will they indeed?” he asks, his face ponderous and long. “I’ve always believed if the human race wishes to have a prolonged and indefinite period of material prosperity, they have only got to behave in a peaceful and helpful way toward one another.”

  With so much pink in my head, there’s no room for anything else, like comprehension. I wish I could understand what he’s trying to tell me, but he might as well be speaking another language. “Make him stop,” I beg the woman. “It’s too much.” Freya spinning to the music, her red locks flying. Kinnari scratching the skin from her arms, her poor wingless pet bird with the smashed head lying on the floor next to her. Pink like a dusty sunset, the inside of a conch or a puppy’s tongue. Pink everywhere. The smell of it in my nostrils, like a field of wildflowers.

  “Who?” the woman in the lab coat says, her disappointment with me dulling her eyes.

  “Him. Him.” My pupils shift to indicate the portly man’s position behind her. He’s back in his dark three-piece suit, a handkerchief in his top left pocket and a bowtie around his collar. He eyes me wryly as he flashes the peace sign with his fingers.