The Tomorrow File

by Lawrence Sanders

  I awoke at 0900 to the roar of the copter ascending: Chester K. Flair commuting to his office and factory near Mt. Clemens. The copter thrummed away, the noise faded. Then I heard gasping caws of delight: water birds over Lake St. Clair. I went to the south window but could not see them in the fog. But I heard their cries.

  The break in my daily routine was welcome. I pulled on old slacks, a heavy turtleneck sweater, worn moccasins. In the kitchen, with Miss Catherine bustling about, trying to force a “good, hot, solid breakfast” on me, I had only a glass of orange concentrate in cold Smack and a cup of something called coftea. It tasted like neither. To please Miss Catherine, I ate one slice of toast. Most of it anyway. Every year our bread became fouler and more nutritious.

  Then I wandered out onto the grounds. The fog was lifting from the lake. I could still hear the birds. I went down to the shore. I found a flat stone and tried to skip it over the surface of the water, but it sank instantly. I picked up another stone, almost perfectly round. I bounced it on my palm. How could a stone seem so alive?

  I strolled about, no plan or destination in mind, just meandering. I passed the garage, the boathouse, the guesthouse, the empty stable. .Once we had a horse, a gentle mare named Eve, with a back as broad as a desk, so fat you couldn’t possibly fall off. Eve had died during the equine encephalitis epizootic in 1985. My mother had wept.

  I sat on the cold, wet grass under an oak tree. I rubbed my cheek against the rough bark. I chewed a blade of grass, bitter and pulpy, and spit it out. I poked a finger down into the moist soil.

  My mother came down for lunch, sweeping into the glass-inclosed terrace like an obso queen.

  “Good morning, chappie! It’s going to be a beautiful day. I just feel it!”

  She held up her face to be kissed, then insisted I sit next to her at the table. It was glass-topped, on an ornate wrought-iron base. It was set with linen placemats, Georgian silver, a crystal vase of mums. Everything had been leased. The mums were plastic.

  The lunch was delightful, except for the food. My mother was in a manic mood, laughing, shrieking, clutching my arm, telling me outrageous stories of the two young ems who had purchased the estate next to ours. Apparently, both wore false eyelashes, and one had a small gold ring suspended from his nasal septum. Mother was delighted with them; they had brought her natural crocuses they had found on their grounds, in early spring.

  “What are their names?” I asked.

  “Who, Nick?”

  We went on to something else. She was like that now, and deteriorating. Her attention span grew shorter and shorter each time I came home. She would not seek help, and my father would not force her. Nor would I.

  Later we strolled about the grounds, trailed by Mrs. McPherson.

  The afternoon passed. It was a glory, the air washed, earth scented. We went back to the terrace, and Charles threw open all the windows. Another glass and pitcher were put on a small table next to the soft chair where mother lolled. I lay on the couch. Once we sang a song together, a children’s song I hadn’t heard in years: “If you needed a man to encourage the van. ...”

  Then, the pitcher almost empty, she fell silent. Her eyes became dazed: that faraway look I had noticed on greeting her the previous day. I looked around for Mrs. McPherson. She came out of the house and led my mother away.

  I went upstairs to bathe, shave, clean my teeth with an old-fashioned brush, and apply makeup. I dressed in a manner I thought would please Millie: a collarless jacket of purple velvet with a lavender shirt and mauve jabot. My knickers were fastened below the knee with gold buckles. My hose were black lace. My shoes were shiny plastisat, with heels higher than I was accustomed to. But I wouldn’t be doing much walking.

  A few years previously my father had a brief enthusiasm for antique and classic cars. He had purchased twelve before his interest waned. He sold them all off (by then he was collecting Japanese-armor), and I bought one of them, a 1974 Ford Capri. I kept it in our Grosse Pointe garage. It would have been useless in GPA-1.

  I drove the Ford into Detroit, the gift I had brought for Millie on the seat beside me. It was a combination powder and music box, made of plastic, with a tiny ef and em on top who held each other and twirled in time to the music. It was dreadful. Millie would think it a profit.

  I had arranged to meet her at a restaurant-cabaret in a crumbling section of the city, down near the river. I had no fear of appearing there in the costume I was wearing. Most of the young factory ems who frequented the place would be dressed in similar fashion, many more elaborately. Last year it had been plastipat tights and Wellington boots.

  I had met Millie Jean Grunwald at a basement cockfight. We had both bet a winner, and stood next to each other in the collect line. I won much more than she, and invited her and her girlfriend to join me at the bar for a drink. They accepted happily. I ordered a magnum of “champagne.” They adored it, so I said nothing, but drank as little as I could. I thought it might contain methanol.

  They went off to the ef nest together. When they returned, the girlfriend departed suddenly, giggling. I suspected they had flipped a coin for me. Whether Millie had won or lost, I did not know.

  She had a large one-room apartment over a porn shop. It was almost a loft, reasonably clean, decently enough furnished with leased possessions that were obviously in their third or fourth setting. But there were a few personal touches: a calendar showing a young ef hugging a kitten, a plastic imitation of an old-fashioned round-faced clock, a crimson sofa pillow stamped “Use Me.”

  She answered all my questions readily and with great good humor. She was fourteen then, a CF-E, and she served as a packer at the Qik-Freez Hot-Qizine factory. She traveled to and from work in an electric bus. She was paid 125 new dollars for a four-day week (twenty-two were take-home pay), plus two two-week vacations every year, plus free lunches every working day of the factory’s products which, she assured me, were the best foods ever, sold in all the tootiest restaurants in the world.

  She was jolly, companionable, undemanding. I could relax with her. When she came in from the nest (it was outside in the hallway), I stood up as she entered. She blushed, smiled shyly, and murmured, “Thank you.” When she asked if I would like to use her, I said it would be a profit.

  Afterwards, I offered her ten new dollars “to buy a gift.” She would not take it. I urged her then to accept a plastigold brooch I had on, the kind of cheap trinket I wore on my excursions into the “lower depths.” She was delighted with it.

  That had been two years ago. I saw her every time I came to Detroit to visit my parents. I brought her presents and took her wherever she wanted to go. I think she liked me. But it was hard to tell; she liked everything.

  Apparently something had gone wrong in the chromosomal manipulation of the embryo from which her group had been cloned. She was not quite a variant, but her Grade E genetic rating was warranted. Once I saw her trying to shove a grossly oversized plastic stopper into the narrow neck of a bottle. Her brow was furrowed, her eyes puzzled. Her spatial cognizance was especially deficient, her vocabulary limited, her speech rapid to the point of spluttering. But she was a sweet ef, not incapable of treachery but unaware of it. I liked her. I may have felt a sense of responsibility.

  She was standing outside the restaurant-cabaret when I arrived, although I had told her many times to wait inside if I was delayed. Her face lighted up when she saw me. She came running to throw her arms about my neck, and smeared my lip rouge.

  The restaurant was crowded, noisy, and smelled of phenol. Too many small tables had been jammed in under a low ceiling; the atmosphere was milky with smoke. But Millie loved it, waving to acquaintances as we threaded our way to our table.

  We had an enjoyable dinner: wretched food, but served with great verve by a flatfooted obso waiter who obviously recognized a good thing when he saw one. He would get his pat.

  Millie chattered unceasingly, sometimes with a mouthful of food. She told me about her mean supervisor
at the factory, about her girlfriend Sarah who had consumed a liter of petrorye “straight off’ ’ on a dare, and had to be taken to a hospital to have her stomach vacuumed, about a kitten she had found abandoned, named Nick, for me, who had stayed two days and then departed for parts unknown.

  I listened to all this, smiling and nodding. DIVRAD was far away. I ate my prochick, drank my petrowine, and asked myself no questions.

  Millie was wearing a tooty transparent blouse. Her breasts had been painted in red circles, like archery targets. There was what appeared to be a wide aluminum “gut-clutcher” about her waist, fastened in front with a brass tongue, shackle, and iron padlock. The key hung from a wire loop about her neck. She wore a minikilt, her legs bare from calf to buttock. Her boots were synthetic fur. From the zipper tabs hung the “flying penis” ornament that was the current rage, advertised on TV with a remarkable animated film and the endlessly repeated demand: “How tooty can you get? How tooty can you get? How tooty can you get?”

  After dinner I asked our solicitous waiter if any natural brandy was available. Regrettably no. But he promised something just as good. It turned out to be a fruit liqueur. I think it was natural. Much too sweet for my taste, but Millie loved it.

  The lights dimmed, a siren sounded, the diners screeched in anticipation, and a Master of Ceremonies darted through the curtain onto the minuscule stage. He was wearing an enormous codpiece, the batting popping out through a rip. The audience roared with laughter. He told several jokes (“I’m in mourning tonight. I lost my wife. But she found her way back home”).

  Then the nude chorus line came kicking on. One had a scar from a recent Caesarian section clearly visible. Another one astounded me; I thought I might have discovered the first case of steatopygia in the Detroit area.

  After the dance routine, the next act was introduced by a professional type as being a “serious sex lecture.” It was two marionettes, nude ef and em, cleverly manipulated, demonstrating various copulative positions. Father would have loved it.

  This was followed by an em transvestite who sang a song about his continual “hard luck,” with the rhyming lines you might expect.

  Then came two nude ef acrobatic dancers who were quite good.

  The chorus line came on again for a tired number in which they wore animal masks. The ef with the gluteus that was the most maximus I had ever seen was the gorilla.

  The final act, the “star attraction,” lasted less than five seconds. The room was darkened completely. A single blue spotlight centered on the stage. The curtains parted briefly. There stood a naked em, obviously a genetic variant, with a circumcised membrum virilis at least 60 cm long. The audience gasped. The curtains closed. The house lights came on. There was a great snapping of fingers.

  “Shall we go?” I asked Millie.

  She profited from driving at high speed. I enjoyed it, too, though I rarely had the opportunity. We drove out to an automobile testing track we had discovered in the River Rouge area. For a ten new-dollar pat, the bearded obso night watchman would unlock the gate and allow us onto the track. It was oval-shaped, the end curves so steeply banked that it was impossible to climb them until I had the car up to top speed.

  Around and around we went, Millie screaming with delight as we moved higher and higher, lying on our side as we neared the tops of the almost vertical end curves. It was a cloudy, moonless night. Only the fan of white from the headlights, rushing ahead of us, showed me the edge I was shaving.

  On the final go-round, I switched off the lights. Then just the faint light from the sky provided dim illumination. Wind-howl, engine roar, and the pleased whimpering of Millie next to me. ... I plunged through the darkness.

  “Y’gonna stop yesself one of these nights,” the bearded watchman said when we left.

  “That’s right,” I said.

  He shook his head. “This world. ...”

  I remembered my mother had spoken the same words in the same tone. “This world. . .

  Back in Millie’s apartment, I handed over her gift. She tore off the wrappings as a child might, almost frantically, ripping. She was delighted with the musical powder box and set the miniature couple to dancing, around and around, watching them with a pleased smile, head cocked.

  Her body was' young, young, the skin nylon, the flesh natural rubber. There was a patch of golden lanugo over the lumbar vertebrae. Her painted breasts stared at me like shocked eyes. I rolled atop her and penetrated. Her lips drew back in a lupine grin.

  She had told me, “Ilike using the most,” and that was operative. But she had a habit that amused me at first, then distracted me, then angered me, but that I eventually conditioned myself to ignore. During using she would continue her conversation, telling me of a prank they had played at the factory (they had put the supervisor’s purse on the assembly line, and it had emerged at the other end wrapped tightly in plastic and frozen as hard as a plastibrick). Or of a tooty pair of black plastisilk panties she had seen, imprinted with crimson mouths. Or of her desire to learn to drive, to drive endlessly, at high speed, anywhere.

  While she recounted these things, during using, her cardiac rate increased, her breathing became shallow and rapid, her eyes glittered, a sweat covered her plump thighs. She continued chattering, linking her heels behind my knees, grasping my buttocks to pull me deeper, talking, talking, until she summited, interrupting her recital for a small shriek, then gabbling again while her body continued to pump in diminishing rhythm and her fingers probed gently into my rectum.

  I arrived back at my parents’ home in Grosse Pointe about 0400 the following morning. I went immediately to bed and slept until almost 1300. Without a Somnorific.

  X-6

  The return to GPA-1, thirty-six hours later, was a series of small accidents that almost added up to disaster.

  1. The Bullet Train left the Detroit terminal right on schedule. It moved about ten meters and ground to a halt. A small em had tumbled off the platform, onto the tracks, and broken his right tibia.

  It was almost an hour before he was attended to and taken away.

  2. East of Canton, Ohio, streaking for Pittsburgh, we hit the last section of a four-unit articulated truck-train, driverless, on the new AUS-1 automated highway. No one was injured or stopped, but it took almost three hours to clear away the wreckage and the hundreds of plastilap bags of probeans scattered all over the right-of-way.

  3. In New York, getting close to conference time, it took me twenty minutes to get an electric cab. At Fourteenth Street we ran into a traffic jam and sat without moving for another twenty minutes. I was beginning to sweat under my zipsuit.

  I signed in at the compound with ten minutes to spare. I swung aboard one of the open-sided, slow-moving cart trains that made continual circuits of the compound, driverless, following a wire laid under the pavement. I was in my office in five minutes. Paul Bumford was waiting with his big green accordion file.

  “You like to live dangerously, don’t you?” he said.

  “Thank God for accidents,” I said, “or we’d start thinking we can predict everything. What’s hot?”

  “Lewisohn’s condition has stabilized. Everything else can wait.”

  “Good. I have the Supersense file. Let’s go.”

  We waited for the executive elevator to take us up to the conference room.

  “Were you faithful?” he whispered.

  I looked about casually. No one in sight. I patted his cheek softly.

  “Not to worry,” I said.

  We were the last division heads to arrive, but it was another minute before Angela Teresa Berri made her entrance. We all stood up.

  The Satisfaction Section of the Department of Bliss was rigidly organized into four divisions:

  —Division of Research & Development (DIVRAD). I was Assistant Deputy Director in charge (AssDepDirRad).

  —Division of Security & Intelligence (DIVSEC). Burton P. Klein was AssDepDirSec.

  —Division of Data & Statistics (DIVDA
T). The AssDepDirDat was Phoebe Huntzinger.

  —Division of Law & Enforcement (DIVLAW). The two Assistant Deputy Directors were identical (and, according to rumor, incestuous) twins, Frank and Frances von Liszt. Both, naturally, were called “Franz,” to their delight.

  In addition, Angela Berri, Deputy Director of Satisfaction (DEPDIRSAT) had her own headquarters staff. She ran a tight ship, especially on matters that affected policy rather than mere planning and operations.

  “Nick, you lead off,” she commanded.

  “Project Supersense,” I said, glanced at the digiclock on the wall, and began. . . .

  Without consulting my notes, I delivered a concise recitation of the history and current status of the project, costs to date, estimated costs to completion, estimated potential income. I ended in a little more than five minutes by stating, “I recommend Project Supersense be stopped.”

  “Comments?” Angela asked, looking at the others.

  Burton Klein was the first to respond. He felt Project Supersense should be continued. I knew he would; he had plastitanium electrodes implanted in his brain. He was a Mind-Jerker. He said he did not feel a potential market of two million was negligible. It could be exploited for a lot of love.

  I replied with a condensed form of my father’s lecture on Convenience and Consumption, pointing out that if synchronized movie films were made available, nothing would be consumed; it would be a one-time sale.

  “Not necessarily,” he said. He claimed that Mind-Jerkers would purchase large libraries of the high-stimulant movie films. And, he pointed out, the same technique could also be used on film reels of books for reading machines. “Even on tapes of music,” he added.

  It was an idea that hadn’t occurred to me, and I was silent.

  “Anyone else?” Angela Berri inquired.