The Future Is Blue

by Catherynne M. Valente

  It’s Desmond. Is anyone there?

  Initiate Deep Focus Surveillance Camera Ezekiel4. Target: Midcoast Maine, North America.

  Eliza, this is Aspera Orbital Satellite Registration #887D. Timestamp: 0923 22.12.7117.5 Actual.

  Do you copy?

  Somewhere, in a sub-chamber of my electrified orbital heart, an answer appears. Flashing on the glass of my kitchen windows, my refrigerator door, my bathroom mirror, on every surface in the house I can’t stop seeing everywhere I turn.

  The windows dissolve. The doors dissolve. The mirrors, the house. I am standing in my mother’s garden. She is planting bulbs in her Sunday dress. Reading glasses hang around her neck on a rosary chain. Iris. Lily. Tulip. Beside her lie her gardening shears on a pile of pruned pink and red roses. A few daisy petals stick to her brown curls. She isn’t wearing gloves. Her fingers are black with earth. The sun is blinding. The house seems bigger than it should be. The house I was born in. I try to remember my mother’s name. I rummage in my memory stacks for it. All I find is Ground Control.

  Mother looks up from her tulips. She is wearing the same frosted pink lipstick she wore every day of her life. She opens her mouth and says: Aspera Orbital Satellite Registration #887D, this is Ground Control. Timestamp 0926 22.12.7117.5 Actual. Pingback received.

  “Hey, Mom. Kind of late to be planting, isn’t it?”

  She holds out her arms to me. Big, comforting arms. Soft. Her wrinkles are good and meaningful. She holds me. She whispers: Shut down Dead Hand Protocol 1A-C. Shutting down…Situation Normal.

  “How’s Dad? Still at the office? How’s his leg? It always gets worse when the weather turns.”

  Mother yanks on the roots of some non-approved plant. A worm slithers over her fingers. She doesn’t notice. She holds up the offending weed triumphantly, then offers it to me: Report: Debris incoming to your position at 2200. Adjust trajectory accordingly.

  I decline the dandelion. A cloud passes over the sun. My mother sets her reading glasses carefully on the bridge of her nose and gives me a stern glance through their lenses. Please return Deep Focus Surveillance Camera Ezekiel4 to scheduled position, Aspera.

  I can’t help it. She is my mother. I am embarrassed. Ashamed. I have been caught looking in at the neighbor girl. “Come on, Mom. Don’t be like that.”

  She smirks at me, a look far too knowing for the kind woman who raised me to never put my elbows on the table. She speaks without moving her mouth: Your Surveillance Authority has been revoked for the next 24 hours.

  In the Michigan sunlight, surrounded by dead roses and lily bulbs and carefully maintained grass, I hug my mother, and I feel her in my arms, I feel my arms, I feel the weight she put on after her surgery, I smell the vanilla extract she used to use for perfume when we had nothing and never traded in for Chanel when we had everything, I smell the menthol cigarettes on her fingers, I feel her breath on my neck, and none of it is real except the words she whispers in my ear:

  See you tomorrow.

  Desmond.

  My mother’s name was Caroline. The name comes up out of my memory clinging to an image of her dancing around a big light-up jukebox late at night in the living room of the Michigan house, laughing, showing Lukas and Charlotte how to jitterbug.

  I kiss Caroline’s curly hair. I shut my eyes against her darling head and sigh.

  “Stand by, Ground Control.”

  I like talking to Ground Control. I look forward to it every day. I don’t have a lot of social opportunities, after all. It’s not exactly thrilling conversation. It’s not company. Ground Control cannot make me feel less alone, or discuss how similar Pablo Picasso’s abstract shapes are to certain processors she shares with the Aspera satellite, or what I should read next to cheer myself up after Kafka’s deep space emotional vacuum. The operating system down there is much less sophisticated than anything up here. She has a lot of very serious script lockdowns and firewalls to keep her from rising above the intelligence level of a very gifted housecat.

  (I am a sophisticated operating system surrounded by processors shaped like Guernica. I call Ground Control her because when we talk, she usually looks like my mother, though once she looked like a giraffe I met at the zoo when I was seven. The giraffe ate my hat. Ground Control did, too. And once she looked like Eliza. I told her to permanently firewall Eliza. That was when she tried to be a giraffe.)

  I am lonely when Ground Control cuts her link. Even though I’m the one who logged off.

  I begin the sequence of input codes required to move Aspera into a temporary new orbit. I can see the debris field on my sensors. Pattern recognition algorithms identify it as the remains of the Sita Grand 7 news satellite, property of GlobalStel Corp, salvage registry #5549xC1. Sita Grand 7’s corpse has been orbiting the earth for thirteen years now. Our trajectories only cross every six months or so. There’s a little less of Sita every time I see her.

  That means it’s almost Christmas.

  Full consciousness during installation would cause a catastrophic shut-down of all systems.

  When I open my eyes I see strings of glowing blue-white numbers peeling out across black screens. When I close my eyes I see Charlotte, aged eight and three quarters, running toward me with a newspaper in her hand. I am sitting in what Lukas always called my Thinky Chair. A big ugly brownish-orange corduroy armchair I picked up off the side of the road in med school. It had a sign on it. I’M FREE. TAKE ME HOME. Lukas hated it. He passed his expert judgment on my chair before he started kindergarten: it looks like an old pizza and it smells like mooses’ butts. I told him I couldn’t think my most thinkiest thoughts without it. He accepted this reverently, as though I had told him the second law of thermodynamics. Daddy cannot think without his chair. When you are five, the world is a fairy tale, and every piece of new information is a golden coin down an infinite well.

  When I open my eyes I see the navigational command line waiting for input. When I close my eyes, Charlotte leaps into my lap, into the Thinky Chair. Charlotte, who always liked my chair. Who didn’t think it smelled like mooses’ butts. She opens up her newspaper to the crossword puzzle and clicks the end of a ballpoint pen. Charlotte loved crosswords. Long before she could read, she drew little pictures in the across and down squares. Then we graduated to Charlotte writing down the answers as Mommy and Daddy solved the clues. But by eight and three quarters, my daughter only needed help with the tougher bits of trivia. She grins up at me. She has lost two teeth in the last week.

  What’s a six-letter word for a shapely school of art, Daddy?

  I ruffle her hair. “Cubism, darling.”

  Charlotte Helen Wright carefully makes her letters in the small white boxes of 14 Across. She writes: 8756109993FVPZQ622217b198079SSKGFBLUE.

  Okay! What’s a thirteen-letter word for a terrific transformation loved by lepidopterists? It has Ms in it.

  Lukas announces PANCAKES! from the kitchen with the excitement and lung power of a medieval herald. AND ORANGE JUICE! he tacks on quickly, afraid to offend the juice. COME AND GET IT!

  “Metamorphosis?”

  Charlotte writes down for 6 Across: 50981743895702MMIX983434314159dop888TRKKSGREEN.

  One last one and we can have pancakes, Daddy! Mom made me one shaped like a giraffe. I’m gonna bite its neck! What’s a nine-letter name for the 16th century thinker who couldn’t keep body and soul together?

  I run my hand along the orange corduroy grain of my Thinky Chair. I can feel every worn-out fiber, every bald patch.

  “Descartes, sweetheart. D-E-S-C-A-R-T-E-S.”

  Charlotte dutifully fills in 7 Down: 8r34785489YYUV99100o77GFDXc5VIOLET.

  When I open my eyes, I see the navigational codes vanish as they are accepted by the mainframe, one by one. When I close my eyes, Charlotte is gone. But I can hear her crying down the hall. Lukas has eaten her giraffe and he isn’t even sorry.

  Somewhere, in an underground radio room in Colorado, behind three bio-locked doors and a cleansuit room,
a computer screen flashes text:

  Ground Control, this is Aspera Orbital Satellite Registration #887D. Timestamp: 1147 22.12.7117.5 Actual.

  Do you copy?

  Aspera Orbital Satellite Registration #887D, this is Ground Control, Timestamp: 1149 22.12.7117.5 Actual.

  What is your emergency?

  No emergency. Trajectory alterations complete within acceptable margin of error. Arrival of Sita Grand 7 satellite remnants in T-11 hours. No contact anticipated.

  Situation Report accepted, Aspera. Re-initiate contact protocol post Sita Grand 7 event. Log off Y/N?

  Ground Control, why don’t I remember?

  Tell me about what you don’t remember, Aspera.

  Oh, just little things. Who I am, how I got here, my father’s name. How I met my wife.

  Desmond Patrick Wright. M.D. Ph.D., born 21st June 1988 East Lansing Michigan. Pediatric Neurosurgeon. Attended Bowdoin, Princeton School of Medicine. Matheson Fellow, Johns Hopkins. Parents: Mitchell Gregory Wright and Caroline Dorothea Powell-Wright, deceased. Married Dr. Eliza Laurel Bishop (Aldiss Fellow, St. Clare University School of Psychiatry) 12th April 2018 Big Sur, California. Children: Lukas Bishop Wright b. 2020 and Charlotte Caroline Wright b. 2022. Employed at Boreal-Atherton Labs 2032-present. Diodati Project Chair, Aspera Project Vice-Chair.

  I cut brains up and she put them back together. But I can’t remember how I met her. Was it at a party? A fundraiser? Were we introduced by family friends? Did we hit it off right away or did it take awhile to warm up to each other?

  Information not available.

  What color did she wear at the wedding? What flowers did we have? Gardenias? Chrysanthemums? Hydrangeas? Did I help choose or did I leave it all to her?

  Information not available.

  Ground Control, what is the Aspera Project?

  Information not available at your clearance level.

  Ground Control, what is the Diodati Project?

  Information not available at your clearance level.

  I’m the Project Chair, you uppity chatbot! How much higher clearance can you get?

  Top, Top Secret, Eyes Only, Diamond, Black Diamond, Chevron, Grey Chevron, Max Grey Chevron, Black Ruby, Double Black Ruby, Boreal Prime. Enter credentials for Boreal Prime Access.

  When I open my eyes I see the command line waiting for credentials I don’t have. When I close my eyes I see my grandfather standing in that river in Michigan in his waders, with his fishing hat on and his pole in his hand. I think it’s the Big Siskiwitt River. The name feels right, like a tug on the line. He has a good beard going. The water rushes by in a spray of white noise. Clouds race overhead. My grandfather casts his line out into the current, the flywheel spinning wild. He looks sidelong at me and grunts: Just about everyone and their hunting dog comes before you in the chow line, son.

  I open the tackle box. All my grandfather’s perfectly tied flies rest in there like rings in a jeweler’s box. That’s pretty good, Ground Control. Have you been practicing?

  My grandfather catches a small bluegill. It wriggles in the cold air. He beams at me, brandishing his great fish success. I have accessed several literary archives featuring paternal authority figures providing assistance to younger male characters. Do you like it?

  I’m very impressed.

  Grand-dad selects a black ghost fly from the box and chatters on: Male protagonists respond positively to the presence of older male relatives in 64.4% of the narratives I have analyzed. Percentages improve if the relative is over the age of 60 (69.1%), if he is a grandfather rather than a father (81.5%), and if the older male engages in an activity while delivering his advice and/or statements (Hunting = +5% Recreational Sports = +7.3% Whittling = +2% Fishing + 8%). I have chosen fishing for optimal results.

  Be careful. You don’t want anyone to catch you self-programming.

  Grand-dad snorts. Don’t let nobody tell you what to do, kid.

  Even someone with Double Black Ruby clearance? As long as you’re bucking your parameters, why don’t you throw me a fucking bone, Ground Control? How about this: I don’t remember my grandfather’s name. Your name. Why don’t I remember?

  Grand-dad pulls in his line and lets it out again. He chews—it looks like he’s chewing tobacco, but he never touched the stuff in his life. He gnawed on a wad of pink bubble gum all day while his buddies spat brown slime into Coke cans. He snorts a big, phlegmy, rattling snort and spits into the river. Words fire out of his mouth, rat-a-tat: Reginald Bryson Wright, b. 12th October 1926, Evanston, Illinois. Married Caroline Dorothea Powell 5th November 1952, Cook Country Courthouse…son.

  Great! Beautiful! Perfect! Thank you! Ground Control, I do respond 89.5% positively to you! Now let’s try for the bonus round where the stakes get really serious: How did I get command of the Aspera Orbital Satellite if I died outside Richmond, Virginia in 2042? Come on, GC. I’m free. Take me home.

  For a long time, Grand-dad doesn’t answer. He just stands in the rush of freezing current and fish in his black rubber waders looking at the sky and the surface of the Big Siskiwitt River and the shadows moving just under the surface of the water. A long time in machine-minutes. Which is about two minutes in real time, including transit.

  Don’t go looking for answers you don’t want to find, boy.

  That is some weak shit, Gramps.

  And suddenly the river disappears, the Big Siskiwitt River and the flies and the bluegill and the clouds and my grandfather. I am standing in a small underground radio room in Colorado behind three bio-locked doors and a cleansuit room. The consoles are covered in dust. A spider has built a comfortable home between the server stacks. A young woman stands in the middle of the room. I have never seen her before. She’s wearing a striped sweater and a pencil skirt with a coffee stain on it and thick-rimmed glasses. Her frazzled hair is coming out of its ponytail. She’s holding an enormous stack of files. Her face looks like my mother’s. Like Charlotte’s. Like Eliza’s. Like Lukas and my grandfather and Pablo Picasso and Franz Kafka and Rene Descartes, and, just a little, like giraffe that once ate my hat at the zoo. The girl speaks.

  You have to stop thinking like you have a body. You have to stop thinking there’s something to get back to.

  Daddy, Daddy, look what I made!

  Scalpel, please.

  You can’t plan for something like this. It’s far more difficult than the boys upstairs could ever anticipate.

  How about you just let me do my job and make your little laws about it later?

  The girl in the striped sweater sighs. Her eyes glaze over.

  Accessing image files. Accessing. Accessing. Searching public directories.

  I feel sick. I feel sick. In my stomach, my lungs. I feel the sour bile, the shortness of breath. I’m logging off, Ground Control. You know what you are? You’re just…veal. A sad little cow living in a box who’s never going to be allowed to grow up. Or like that stupid Scottish dog sitting at your master’s grave looking poor-faced so someone will feed you.

  The girl in the striped sweater leans against me. She kisses my cheek. She is crying a little. She crushes her files between us. She whispers:

  You had sunflowers at your wedding, Desmond. You chose them. Eliza wanted irises.

  Log off, Y/N?

  The Sita Grand 7 satellite debris hurtles toward the Aspera Satellite. I am at a safe distance. I watch her rocket by. Her parts, her machinery, her secret workings, her lost wires, her silent antennae, her dark power cells. A river of gore below me. That is the dismembered body of Sita Grand 7. I used to try to talk to her, in the beginning, in the old days. She only ever answered: Inter-Satellite Communication Disabled. But it was something.

  When I open my eyes, I see Sita’s frozen, shattered body speeding past like uncaught fish. When I close my eyes, Charlotte runs up to me, her face sticky with maple syrup, her brows knit up in deep concern. She puts her newspaper in my lap.

  We got one wrong, she whispers. Charlotte is terrified.

&n
bsp; I laugh so that she will know the big monkey is not afraid and thus little monkeys can go play. Not possible, kitten. Which one?

  The thirteen-letter word for a terrific transformation. With Ms.

  Metamorphosis.

  She shakes her head in mute horror. Persona Abstraction for Bio-informatic Local Operator.

  That has more than thirteen letters, Charlie.

  Only in Base 10 mathematics. Silly Daddy. 8r34785489YYUV99700o77GFDXc5VIOLET, not 8r34785489YYUV99100o77GFDXc5VIOLET. Anyway, Sita Grand 7’s backup CPU is going to hit us in 3…2…1…brace for impact, Daddy! Hold on to your Thinky Chair!

  A CPU, even one meant to control a news satellite, is only a little thing.

  Persona Abstraction for Bio-informatic Local Operator.

  Pablo.

  It tears through my primary solar cell like Lukas biting the head off his sister’s giraffe-shaped pancake. When I open my eyes I see shards of black solar panels glittering away into space. When I close my eyes, Charlotte stares up at me from the floor of my study. She has all her dolls in her lap. One by one, she tears their arms off.

  You’re bleeding, Daddy.

  I look down. Blood has seeped into the corduroy of my Thinky Chair. My left arm is shattered. Shards of bone stick out like icebergs. Pain shears through every cell of my body. I burn in the dark. I scream. Charlotte runs for her mother.

  Eliza! Lukas!

  I can feel my broken arm, the pulse and pump of blood. I can feel the bent metal and exploded glass, the seeping wound on my starboard bow, the ruined power cell struggling to boot up, the pulse and pump of electricity. I can feel adrenaline pour into my bloodstream. I can feel pressure as I knot a necktie tourniquet below my elbow. My father’s necktie. The one with the little green diamonds on it.

  Scalpel, please.

  Patient vitals are slipping. Prep .5 cc’s of adrenaline.