New Kings of Tomorrow

by J. M. Clark

  Jacob walked to the living area and sat on a bright white love seat to have breakfast. A meal that he did not prepare. No one here had cooked for themselves since they arrived all those years ago, but still, they ate heartily every day. Upon waking up, all Jacob needed to do was stumble over to the nutrition dispensary, lift the latch, and grab the silver tray, upon which his breakfast would be warm and ready. The breakfast that appeared would be based on the option inputs from the day before. This morning he had six strips of bacon, two sausage patties, and scrambled eggs. A favorite dish for him, but he had long grown tired of it, and most other things here.

  In the living area of his appointed pod, a forty-five-inch television screen was mounted in the western wall next to the door. The only thing ever televised was a live feed of Sirus during dinnertime. At any other time, the screen displayed the ever-present message: “Please Wait.” Everyone had to tune in to watch the daily word from Sirus; it was seemingly the only function of the televisions. To Jacob, it always felt like a waste, but the sleek, modern screen added a certain feng shui to the efficiency-style pod. Most everyone there thought it was a way for the Order to spy on them. Jacob didn’t care either way.

  He finished his glass of water and gently returned it to the silver tray with the remnants of breakfast scattered along the plate. He mostly picked over it all, a bite here, a bite there, moving the eggs around the plate until he was satisfied with the visual that made it appear like he had eaten enough. Jacob placed the tray of food back inside of the nutrition dispensary on the left wall of the pod. The dispensary would do the magic that it did while he was out of the pod. He didn’t know how food came to be there, or when or how it was taken. It just was.

  He stretched a bit as he made his way to the bathroom, taking long strides and winding his arms in wide circles as he moved. The creaking of his joints was audible in the quiet pod. With age brought the slowing of metabolism and aches from seemingly natural movements. He turned the water faucet from cold to warm.

  Feeling it heat up over his hands, he stared at himself in the mirror above the sink. Jacob grabbed a washcloth and dipped it beneath the warm running water before applying it to his face to wash away any fragments of sleep from the night before.

  Water went dripping from his forehead and past the age lines leading to his pale blue eyes, traveling along the curves of his nose until finally finding a home in his mustache and the forest that was his beard. Jacob rubbed the beard down into a point. Over the years, his beard had been slowly invaded by more and more gray strands. He liked the gray, it looked good on him. Reminded him of his father. The thought made him look away from the man in the mirror.

  He folded the washcloth neatly into a small square and placed it in the top right corner of the sink (as pod rules directed him to do). A cleaning crew would come to pick up the rag and any other dirty clothes lying around the pod.

  They came to clean the pods when Palace members were away at morning enrichment classes and other learning or stress relieving activities. That was life here: no working, no wars, no fighting, no killing…although Jacob was skeptical about some of those things. He’d heard stories about things happening.

  After drying his face with a towel, he stopped to look back at himself once more. Someone wise once told him to stop and be in the moment. He could barely remember that man now, but every day he made sure to do that. Or at least he tried too. The Palace sapped his energy. Made it hard to stay in the moment when every moment seemed identical to the one before.

  So much time had passed, yet nothing had changed outside of his appearance, and his blood pressure. His eyes had begun to form bags that did not go away once he had been awake for a few hours. Oh no, Jake, these bags are here to stay. His father always called him Jake. He could sometimes hear his dad speaking in his head.

  Jacob smiled and laughed to himself. He was still a good-looking man though, and he was aging well. At least, Mary thought so. Mary was special to him; they probably spent more time together than the teachers would prefer. He fancied himself a rebel of sorts in the Palace, and for that reason, she was drawn to him.

  He gave himself a sarcastic wink. “Today is going to be a wonderful day,” he said aloud. Being positive was the medicine for the illness of repetition, and the Palace provided this ailment in abundance. The subject for morning enrichment today was his favorite, entitled “The Mistakes We Allow.”

  His favorite teacher would be holding the lesson. Teacher Phillip always had a way of getting his point across that enabled everyone to understand, and he allowed them to share their thoughts equally. The central idea of this communicative exercise was that “the true gift of ignorance is actually not knowing how ignorant you are, because only in that state can you truly be the intellectual powerhouse you believe yourself to be.”

  Teacher Phillip was so good at making tough ideas come across easily. He reminded Jacob of a scientist from the Old World by the name of Neil deGrasse Tyson. Jacob’s mother and a girlfriend of hers went to see him speak in California one weekend during his freshman year of high school.

  Wonder if he is still among the living? Jacob thought while gathering dirty clothes and towels from the bathroom.

  He walked back into the bedroom with its white sheets, white comforter, white walls, and white furniture. If he never saw the color white again, he wouldn’t miss it at all. Everything inside of the Palace was white. Reminded him of a hospital, a very posh hospital, but still, a hospital. Jacob stopped in the middle of the immaculate room to reflect on the ignorance lesson of the day. He threw the clothes, towel, and washcloth in a soggy heap by the pod exit.

  It kind of makes sense when you think about, he told himself. Only a fool believed himself to be all knowing. An intelligent man would never believe himself to be the authority on any subject, because an intelligent man knew that he knew nothing. This idea came from a philosophy he learned a few years back called the Socratic Paradox, and Jacob had taken to it: “I know that I know nothing.” Really, in the end, that was the truth. Reality was what you made it, and this could be different for everyone. He learned to not feed into the bullshit that the teachers shoveled into their gobs twenty-four hours a day, but that particular lecture had been a good one. If he had to be here, he may as well learn a thing or two.

  Jacob sat on the edge of his bed and bent over to touch the tips of his toes, stretching his back in the process and grimacing the whole way while thinking over this idea. Over the years, Jacob had become much more of a cerebral person, at least more so than when he lived out in the world.

  Prior to the sickness, he would fit into the jock stereotype: big, strong, stupid jokes, quick to anger, and in Jacob’s case, being a dick to anyone who cared about him. A lot about who he was made him ashamed to think of it now.

  Today…well, he was still quick to anger, but he did a much better job of controlling it. One, it wasn’t allowed here, and two, he had learned better coping mechanisms, and he did thank some of the teachers for that. Things that had happened in the past fueled his thirst for knowledge. The whys, whos, and ifs were like ghosts of Christmas past for Jacob. Except they showed up in his dreams every night to torment him about the past that he couldn’t change. While he had learned so much about himself and the human condition, the answers that he desired still evaded him. And at this age, this point in his life, he was beginning to think that those questions mattered less and less.

  Jacob thought back to when everyone in the world thought they could go around polluting the oceans, pumping toxins into the sky, and doing things that only served themselves. They believed that they could do this until the end of time because the world belonged to them, a possession to do with as they pleased. He had felt the same way, and he was not proud of that, but he was not ashamed of it either: he was a product of what society came to deem as normal.

  He could only hope to get into the Greater Understanding Program one day and change things when he got back out there. This Palace Program
was only meant to be a one-year solution; it was past time for him, for everyone, to be on the outside, living beyond the eastern courtyard. Here he sat, twenty years later, still going through the motions. His confidence was beginning to waver.

  All of humanity had thought the planet to be a non-thinking, non-self-aware object, a plaything even, for the beings that inhabited it. This wasn’t the case though, and everyone found out that they were lacking the fundamental truth looming in the background of their faults. They did not own the planet, the planet owned them, and it would fight back against the cancer attempting to drain the life from its core. As it should have, Jacob thought. Sadly, this happened before enough people could wise up to the damage being done, and they had all paid the toll. Both the dead and the living.

  Jacob stood and removed his white pajama pants and underwear, throwing them both in the dirty clothes pile. He walked past his bed, returning to the bathroom to turn the shower on.

  The pods were all identical in layout. The bed was the centerpiece of the pod, and the bathroom was just to the right of the bed. A love seat sat a few feet away from the foot of the bed, just before a short white table and the TV in the wall. To the right of the love seat sat a smaller table and three chairs surrounding it, which could be used to host other members. The left of the bed held the closet. The doors were of the sliding variety. On that same wall, just further up, you would find the nutrition dispensary. The exit door stood on the right side of the dispensary.

  The pod belonged to him alone, so having a small space worked out fine. There were just a few couples in the Palace—those who had arrived with their significant others. Unfortunately, because of the sheer number of deceased, most of the world’s population didn’t make it. And if they did, their spouses didn’t.

  Standing outside of the now steaming shower with body wash and shampoo in hand, Jacob recalled one of his childhood vacations with his parents. It was funny, but he couldn’t remember where they’d gone exactly. He could, however, recall jumping into a steaming waterfall. They had fun, took all kinds of pictures, and once they got back to the hotel, they ordered room service and pigged out all night. Those small returning memories, jogged by things like smells, sensations, and voices, always made him feel like he wasn’t in this facility, hidden away. For a time at least.

  Some Palace members hated the memories that came charging out of nowhere from time to time. They preferred to just deal with the here and now, and Jacob understood that point of view too. It was heartbreaking to realize that the things from that forgotten world would never come back. That’s life though, he thought as he stepped into the shower.

  While allowing the hot water to beat down on his body, he thought of the outside—imagined how it must have changed these past twenty years. While he had been outside, they only got a hundred-yard radius in any direction outside of the Palace. The quarantine zone was marked by small red flags in the grass. Unless one wore a protective suit, anything outside of that would mean certain death. The sickness was still active, and until it could be fully contained, this Palace served as his home. Indefinitely.

  Jacob proceeded to wash and think about everyone he’d lost twenty years ago. Just like he had done every morning, every shower, on every day before this one.

  Chapter Eight

  Trevor

  “It’s been so long, kid. It’s really hard to recall, but I’ll try,” Trevor told Ethan.

  He crossed one leg over the other and tried to conjure memories from the time before. As the years went by, it got harder and harder for him to pull off that trick. The sun beamed down on him and the young man. It was indeed a beautiful day.

  “I’d be so thankful to you, sir,” Ethan gushed as he sat crisscross on the ground in the courtyard of the Palace. The teenager rested his weight on his hands behind him as he waited for story time with Trevor, a big goofy smile on his face.

  Trevor had become the resident storyteller in the Palace. He was among one of the older members at sixty-two years young. All the Palace-born folks come to him or other members who had once lived on the outside to get insight into what the world was like before the sickness. You could only get so much imagery from morning enrichment, lectures, and imagination.

  Trevor felt uncomfortable at this eager display from the young man. Ethan was maybe sixteen years old, but he still acted like a damn child. Stop smiling at me like that, he thought. All the new ones were weird, and it gave him the creeps.

  “Alright Ethan, before the sickness, people could go anywhere they pleased—”

  “We know that much, Mr. Cox.” Ethan gave Trevor a quizzical look. “What I’m asking is more about the types of places you would go and the things you would do. These things are never in the teachings,” Ethan whispered with a mischievous grin. He gave Trevor a look that said, Now start over, Grandpa, and give up the good stuff.

  Trevor smiled uneasily and readjusted his sitting position on the park bench. It was one of twelve park benches positioned in a big circle that surrounded a statue of the earth here in the courtyard. Water shot up around the statue on every side. Looked like something you would have seen in a nice outdoor restaurant or a park, even a shopping mall from back then. This was a location within the Palace grounds that the older members would come to walk, talk, and just get some fresh air. It was also the only place you could go to get some fresh air.

  The courtyard was located just outside the east exit of the Palace. There was no security at that door, like at the main exit. Anyone could see the red flags in the grass from the courtyard; they weren’t very far away at all. The surrounding areas were fields and dense forest—so the Palace members were in a big beautiful structure seemingly made just for them, hidden in the woods.

  “Well,” Trevor said, staring at Ethan and searching through his mental rolodex for memories that would please the young man’s curiosity. “We would go all kinds of places. There were these buildings called grocery stores. I owned a property that served the same purpose of a grocery store.”

  “That’s a place where you would buy food that wasn’t really good for you?” Ethan said with a big grin, cutting Trevor off again. “Like fake food, right?” he said.

  Trevor laughed and said “Yeah, I guess you could call it that. But back in those days, that’s just the way things were. You could go to these places, and they had all kinds of food. Some ‘fake,’ as you would say, but some of it came fresh from the earth. They had other things as well, like home products, medicine, and clothes. Some even had banks in them. There was a grocery store in my hometown that had a US Bank inside of it. On payday you could go get your money and shop for food at the same location.”

  “You mean US, like the old regime? United States?” Ethan lit up. The kid was enjoying this. His smile widened with self-satisfaction.

  Since arriving to the Palace, Trevor had problems trying to reconcile what had happened with what this New World meant. Humans were very adaptable creatures; he was not necessarily unhappy. He had accepted what was, and he counted himself lucky to be here today, and with his wife.

  On the other hand, he had also fought, watched friends die, and gave up years of his life that could have been spent with his family for the United States of America, which had become a thing of novelty, a relic, something suspended in history. It was not Ethan’s fault, or anyone’s for that matter, but that didn’t change the fact that it still felt like yesterday to him, and to the other people who had lived through it. Some things you couldn’t get out of your head no matter how much talking, probing, and good days you had.

  “Yeah, it stood for the United States,” Trevor said, giving a nod and spoon-feeding the young idiot a helping of “good boy.” These story time sessions always got Trevor eternally boiling. He tried not to show the irritation on his face. Sometimes he failed, but over the years, he had gotten the hang of putting on a good face.

  “Banks were places where you could get money? Or currency? To buy things at the grocery store and ot
her places, correct? So you could just go in there by yourself and pick up things to take home, as long as you gave them those little pieces of paper or the plastic card?” Ethan asked his questions with a hint of hubris in how things were today, and, adversely, how dumb things sounded before. Trevor wanted to kick the kid square in the chest, knock him into the flowerbed behind him.

  He knows what money and credit cards are. The little shit fancies himself better than me, better than us. Trevor thought it, but he wouldn’t say it. “I know it sounds crazy, but yes, you had to pay for things that you got back then. We didn’t have a fleet of cooks to bring us food, or cleaning crews to pick up after us, or anyone to hold our hands through life. We actually had to work and pay for all we received,” Trevor said with a prideful wink to Ethan. Throwing that short jab made him feel better, regardless of how immature it might have been. Trevor had never been above being petty to prove a point.

  “Hmmm I see, I see. But who would make children of the earth work to enjoy what the earth provides to all for free?” Ethan replied.

  This made Trevor pause. Nothing was free; it all came at a cost to both the planet and those that were in charge. But in charge of what?

  Trevor had sat through hundreds of morning enrichment classes, lectures, and general talks with Palace members and teachers, and he now understood that the ways of the world pre-sickness were wrong. But there was still that small part of him that also understood the premise of the free market, so he tried to explain in the most basic way to someone who hadn’t experienced the Old World and how things worked back then.

  It was frowned upon to talk about the rituals and ideals that destroyed the Old World. Trevor couldn’t lie or omit truths. He thought that lowering his voice to give the information served as a good enough compromise.

  “If we all could just take and take as we wanted with no rules or order, then the strong would lord over the weak. Currency or trade made it possible for a weaker man or woman to have the same things as those who were physically stronger. It helped to differentiate humans from animals,” he said to Ethan, hoping this would suffice to feed the young man’s curiosity.