New America

by Jeremy Bates

  “No, not yet,” I said simply.

  “How hard is it to get in touch with someone?” Steve said.

  “She doesn’t have a phone anymore.”

  “She knows you’re here though. She hasn’t tried calling you?”

  “No,” I admitted.

  “I don’t know about that, Bob. Sounds sketchy to me—”

  “Would you care for something to drink, Bob?” Carly asked me, shushing her husband with a look.

  “A beer would be great, thanks,” I said.

  “Back in a jiff.” She disappeared inside.

  The rest of us sat at the table. I took the seat next to Jane and across from Rachel and Steve.

  “So where are you from, Bob?” Jane asked.

  “Boston. Born and bred.”

  “Oh my. Old LA would be a big change for someone from Boston, so NLA must be something else for you?”

  “It’s blowing my mind a little.”

  “Oxymoron!” Carly said, returning from inside. “Everyone drink up!”

  “You don’t have to tell me twice,” Steve said, and guzzled half his beer. Rachel and Jane took small ladylike sips of their wine.

  “It’s a drinking game we play,” Carly told me as she passed me a glass of cold beer. “You hear someone use a figurative language device, you shout it out and everyone else has to drink.”

  “It’s a retarded game,” Steve said. “But it gets these girls drunker than…”

  “Ooh…close call, Steve,” Carly said.

  “See what I mean?” Steve said. “Retarded. You have to watch everything you say.”

  “Anyway, Bob,” Jane said, resting a hand on my forearm. “One thing you can be certain of here. The weather’s going to be an improvement for you.”

  “How long have you been here?” I asked her.

  “About a year now. No, maybe a year and a half.”

  “How do you like it?”

  “You get used to it.” She removed her hand. “It’s not…how should I put it? It’s not like they make it out to be.”

  “Look, Bob,” Carly said. “I know you’ve done your research before you came, just like all of us. You’ve heard all the good, and you’ve heard all the bad too. That’s life. You’re always going to have someone who loves something, and someone who hates the same thing. Personally, I think New America is great. Give it a few weeks and you’ll soon forget you’re in a New City, or that you’re yea big.” She pinched her thumb and index finger together so they were almost touching.

  “That’s not completely true,” Jane said. “I might go a few days without thinking about the old world. But you don’t ever forget it, not completely, and you don’t ever forget you’re ‘yea big,’ to use Carly’s phrasing.”

  “I never think about it,” Carly protested.

  “Well, that’s you, Carly. Me, I’ll be sitting down, having dinner, and it’ll just hit me that I’m half an inch tall, that if it weren’t for this dome, a hungry bird could swoop out of the sky and gobble me up before I had time to scream.”

  “Don’t be so melodramatic,” Carly told her.

  “It’s true.”

  “You’re talking hypotheticals,” Steve said. “It’s like saying—”

  “Simile!” Carly said. “Drink!”

  “That’s no fucking simile. What, I can’t say ‘like’?”

  “You were comparing.”

  “Hell I was. If you hear me out, all I was saying is…it’s like saying the earth didn’t have no atmosphere.”

  “That’s not a simile, Carly,” Jane said.

  “No, it ain’t,” Steve said. “And, if that were the case, if the earth didn’t have no atmosphere, then we’d all be dead. But I don’t hear you going off about the earth not having no atmosphere.”

  “Do you guys miss anything in particular?” I asked them.

  “Travel,” Jane said immediately.

  “Ever hear of virtual reality?” Steve said.

  “You know that’s not the same.”

  “Pretty darn close.”

  “You’ve tried it?” Jane asked me.

  “No,” I said. “The idea of having a computer intelligence inside my head creeps me out.”

  With full immersion virtual reality, you were injected with nanobots no larger than blood cells. The microscopic machines searched out the neurons in your brain responsible for your visual and auditory and other senses. They intercepted the neurochemical signals from your real senses and replaced them with signals corresponding to the simulated reality environment, so if you waved at somebody in whichever program you were running, you didn’t move your real arm but a virtual one.

  “The bots aren’t permanent, Bob,” Steve said. “They’re removed after your trip.”

  “They mess with your nervous system.”

  “They’re too small to do any damage. They’re as harmless as bacteria.”

  “I VRed to the Barbados maybe three months ago,” Jane told me. “And I gotta say, the island felt pretty empty, and the AI weren’t all too bright, and it was missing out on all the subtleties of the real thing. Not to mention you have to break the illusion every now and then to take care of your bodily functions.”

  Steve said, “You hear about that guy who died of a heart attack because he refused to leave wherever he was? Didn’t take a shit for ten days. Got so backed up his heart just gave up.”

  “Where do you get this stuff?” Carly said.

  “It’s true. I’ll look it up right now.”

  “Please don’t,” Jane said. Then to me: “Anyway, that’s your answer, that’s what I miss. Traveling. Full immersion VR is pretty good, but it’s…well, it’s sort of like New America, isn’t it? A little bit…off?”

  “Okay, okay, enough New America bashing,” Steve said. “You’re going to scare Bob back up the rabbit hole.”

  “You know that’s not possible,” Jane said.

  “Really, Einstein? It was a—” He clamped his mouth shut.

  “Metaphor!” Carly sang. “Drink, people!”

  ☼

  The dinner of burgers, sausages, and salads was quite good. I found myself to be ravenous, not only because I had not eaten since the day before, but because New People, given their small size, burned energy at a relatively high rate. We continued discussing New America. Steve and Carly were clearly proponents of life here, while Jane continued to butt heads with them, though I didn’t think she had any deep-seated malcontent toward New America; rather, it seemed she simply liked playing devil’s advocate. Rachel, intriguingly and a bit unnervingly, didn’t speak more than a dozen words all evening.

  At ten thirty my eyes grew heavy from the beer, and I decided to take my leave. I thanked Steve and Carly for their hospitality and said goodbye to the others. Rachel announced she was leaving too, so we left together.

  Standing out front the house, she said, “So how was your first day?”

  “It was…okay,” I said. “It was nice meeting all of you.”

  “Ignore Jane and most of what she says about New America. She just likes to stir the pot sometimes.”

  “You didn’t get much into the debate.”

  “Because everybody here has an opinion of New America, and everybody’s always telling you that opinion. I’m sick of it. We’re here. It is what it is. Let’s move on.”

  “Sound advice,” I said. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  Rachel brushed an errant lock of hair from her face. “I’m just down the street. 3710.” She pointed. “If you ever need anything, come by.”

  “That’s a kind offer. Thank you.”

  She tiptoed and kissed me on the cheek. Her lips lingered a beat longer than appropriate.

  “Goodnight, Bob,” she said, and started away

  I watched her for a long moment, then I crossed the lawn back to my house.

  ☼

  I was tempted to call Maureen, to let her know that New America wasn’t so bad, that I’d already met some nice people. But I
didn’t. I’d only had three beers, but that was three more than I usually had on any given night, and if the conversation with Maureen took a turn for the worse, I didn’t want to say something I might later regret. Better to go to sleep, wake up fresh, call her then.

  I went upstairs and urinated in the toilet, which informed me I was at risk of dehydration and should drink some water. Ignoring its advice, I cleaned my teeth, then dropped into bed.

  I was passed out before the lights dimmed all the way to dark.

  ☼

  A loud crash somewhere caused me to jerk upright in bed. I listened but didn’t hear anything more. For some reason the bedroom light didn’t turn on.

  “Lights,” I said.

  The room remained pitch black.

  What the hell?

  “Blinds,” I said.

  They didn’t open.

  “Shit,” I mumbled, slipping out of bed.

  What had I heard? A window breaking?

  Why wasn’t the house responding to me?

  I crept across the room. I’d left the door open. I stopped at the threshold and listened again.

  Still nothing.

  “Hello?” I called.

  No answer.

  Blind, I stepped into the hallway—and something slammed into my gut. My breath exploded from my mouth. I doubled over. Someone gripped my hair and shirt and launched me forward. I tripped over my own feet and landed on my chest. I flipped onto my back and was kicked in the shoulder. I cried out and tried to stand. Hands helped me, yanking me to my feet.

  “Stop!” I said, my confusion and fright giving way to rage. I kicked, striking my attacker’s shin. He grunted—it was a male voice—and I kicked a second time, missing.

  The man had backed up. I could no longer feel him in front of me. Then his shoulder or head drove into me with the force of a charging bull. The banister behind us splintered.

  We were falling.

  ☼

  The impact with the ground came quickly, though I didn’t feel any pain. I was wondering whether I’d broken my back when the man, who had landed on top of me, hissed in my ear, “You shouldn’t have come here.”

  His fist plowed into my jaw.

  ☼

  A musical ringtone summoned me from unconsciousness. I cracked open my eyes. I was on the floor of the living room. Spindles from the upstairs banister lay around me. The house had recovered from whatever had taken it offline, and the lights were on, the blinds open. It was morning outside, or afternoon.

  The ringing continued. I recognized it. I’d programmed it to play when—

  “Answer!” I barked, sitting upright. I cringed against the pain in my jaw.

  The holographic wall screen came to life. Maureen materialized a few feet away from me. Her eyes widened in surprise. “My God, Bob! What happened to you?” The communication link altered the audio frequency of her voice so she could speak with New People and not sound like thunder rumbling.

  I brought a hand to my jaw. It was sore to the touch. My lip was split and swollen. Dried blood crusted my chin. “Someone broke in last night,” I said.

  “Broke in?”

  “He attacked me.” I looked around the room. One window was broken. Shards of glass lay on the slate floor.

  “Why would someone attack you, Bob? What are you talking about?”

  “I don’t know!” I said. “I heard a noise. I came out of the bedroom. This guy jumped me…” I raised my eyes to the second floor. I was frowning at the spot where we’d broken through the banister when it came to me why I hadn’t been injured in the fifteen-foot fall. I had the mass of a pea. I could no longer be hurt by falling, just as an ant couldn’t.

  “Who jumped you, Bob? I don’t understand. Do you need to go to the hospital?”

  The hospital—right. “What happened, Maureen?” I said. “When I came around yesterday in the hospital here, the doctor said you’d decided not to come?”

  I wanted to say more. I wanted to curse at her, yell at her.

  I bit my tongue and hoped she had a legitimate excuse.

  “I feel awful, Bob,” she said. “Really awful. But after you sank down into that floor, and they told me I was next, I…I couldn’t…I just couldn’t do it, Bob.”

  “Couldn’t do it?” I shoved myself to my feet. “We weren’t getting on a goddamn airplane to Hawaii, Maureen. We were miniaturizing, okay? Miniaturizing. And now I’m here, and you’re there. We may as well be on different planets.”

  “Bob…I…I really don’t know what to say…”

  “You have to come, Maureen. I can’t go back, so you have to come here. Do you understand that?”

  “I just...I don’t know if I can—”

  “Dammit, Maureen!” I shouted. “I’m here by myself! I never would have come here by myself! Jesus fucking Christ! Go back to the New World Complex. Talk to that girl, Sara, get her to reschedule you—”

  “Bob…”

  “It’ll probably take a few weeks wait. Maybe longer. That will give you time to think this through, build up the nerve or whatever…”

  “Bob…”

  “Dammit, Maureen!”

  “Stop! Don’t yell at me!” She was rubbing her forehead. “I’ll—I’ll think about it.”

  Think about it? That didn’t sound very convincing at all.

  I was trembling, my entire body, trembling—anger, fear, incredulity.

  “I have to go,” I said.

  “Bob, wait! Who attacked you? You need to see a doctor. I’m worried—”

  I ended the call.

  ☼

  I paced back and forth, numb, furious. I couldn’t believe it. Maureen had abandoned me. She had really done it. I felt as though I’d just caught her cheating on me—times ten. Because this didn’t merely mean we were through, our marriage of fifteen years over. It meant I was here, on my own, forever.

  I ran my hands over my face, pressed my palms into my eyes, and told myself to calm down. I was overreacting. I might never have planned to miniaturize on my own, but that didn’t make the fact I had a disaster. There were millions of single people in New America. Why was it any worse to be single here than in the old world? It wasn’t. The perks were still the same. I had a house, food, water, security, whatever I wanted. None of that had changed.

  And she said she’d think about it, hadn’t she? Maureen might still come after all, when she started to miss me, when I told her how great it was here, she might change her mind…

  I went to the backyard to get some fresh air. It was overcast, the clouds low and heavy, and I suspected it would storm soon. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath.

  “Bob-o!”

  I opened my eyes. Steve was in his yard, cleaning his bar-b-que. He came to the fence. “Shit, buddy,” he said. “What the hell happening to you?”

  I explained.

  He whistled loud and long and rested his forearms on the headrail of the fence. “How did he get in?”

  “A window in the living room.”

  “I never heard of nobody taking a house off the grid like that. Any idea what he was after? After all, everything’s free in New America…”

  “He threatened me,” I said.

  “Say what?”

  “He told me I shouldn’t have come here.”

  “To NLA?”

  “NLA. New America. Whatever.”

  Steve scratched his chin. “Sheesh, Bob. You only been here all of one day, and you’re already the most exciting New Person I know.”

  “You were in the army, right?” I said.

  “Yeah…?” he said cautiously.

  “You think you can find me plans for a gun?”

  Steve immediately shook his head. “Even if I could, which I can’t, you don’t want to go down that route. You get busted with a firearm here, you get to spend the next little while finding out what the inside of a new prison looks like.”

  “Maybe you’re right. Maybe I’ll print a bat or something…”

&nb
sp; “A bat? You going to walk around town carrying a bat? Man—you really think this guy’s coming back for you?”

  “I have no idea. But I may as well be ready in case he does.”

  “Hold on there, buddy. I know something I can print you. Won’t be a sec.”

  Steve went inside and came out again carrying a red umbrella.

  “Much better than a bat,” I said sardonically.

  “I saw it in an old movie once. Watch this.” He gripped the umbrella how you might a rifle and aimed at the patio table. One of the glasses on the tablet exploded into countless pieces.

  “Fires rubber bullets—perfectly legal,” Steve said proudly. “There’re two buttons. Bottom one opens the canopy like a normal umbrella, top one fires the bullets.”

  He passed the umbrella-cum-gun to me. I studied it thoughtfully.

  “You know it doesn’t rain in New America, right?” I said.

  “Tell anyone who cares it’s a sunshade. You burn easy. Now—you know what you really have to do, don’t you?”

  “Go to the cops?”

  “Damn right.”

  “They’re androids.”

  “They’re still cops.”

  “Maybe…”

  “Maybe my ass. They got so many eyes in the sky they know when you fart, even if they won’t admit that. They could track your mystery man right back to his house.”

  He was right, I realized.

  I nodded.

  “So you want a ride to the nearest station or something?”

  “Thanks,” I said, “but I think I’ll walk. I have nothing better to do.”

  “Suit yourself, Bob-o. But keep that umbrella handy, and take care now, you hear?”

  Back inside my house, out of sight of Steve, I slumped against the kitchen wall and slid to the floor. I was an inch tall and carrying an umbrella for protection.

  What the hell had I gotten myself into?

  NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR

  Thank you for taking the time to read New America: Utopia Calling. Stay tuned for Episode Two, New America: A Giant Headache. Here’s the blurb:

  Bob Smith can’t catch a break as the police’s investigation into his mysterious attacker hits a dead end. Nevertheless, he’s got much bigger problems, literally, when someone from the old world disables the dome protecting New Los Angeles and storms the city in Godzilla-like fashion, taking him and a handful of other New People hostage.