31My mom says that people used to be able to go to the library and ask for a book about Joseph Stalin and people would be able to find a few. Over the 16 years she'd been able to read, books about "offensive" history, like the Nazis (not the Holocaust, of course), had been dwindling, but if you asked at the right places, then you could get a good collection going. Now of course, we can't even learn about the Holocaust.
She and the old woman next door, Hattie Minx, have a huge collection of forbidden art, music, books, movies and advertisements. Hattie even sometimes patches through to a Christian radio station in secret operation somewhere, and we listen to it over tea, then read the Bible, which we usually only take out only on really special occasions. No one's allowed to believe in God anymore.
It started with the Jews trying to eliminate our religion with the Muslims, and it worked, but then their plan turned on them and all religion was wiped away like water on the windshield, little droplets clinging to the edges, trying to take a stand. No one tries anymore.
No one seems to do anything anymore. Nothing crazy anyway, that makes you smile on the street, like flagpole sitting in the 1920s.
I'm 22 and I wish I was 80, so that I could have seen the world. But times are different, and I have to live with my mom. She's strong and tenacious, don't get me wrong. Self-sufficient too, but when you're so absorbed in the old life, you sometimes forget how the new one works, so I'm here to remind her. I like it, anyway. I could never travel anywhere with my favourite books.
The morning of March the 22nd came with a strange proposal. My mom was out shopping, getting food, that is, and someone was knocking on the door ten minutes after she'd left. I panicked, as I did every time someone unexpected visited. What if they'd caught us with our forbidden collection? What if they'd caught on, finally, that we weren't communists? Had a neighbor heard the radio one time when Hattie cut in to the signal?
Looking through the curtains, I saw a man at the doorstep wearing a black trench coat and waiting, hands in his pockets. He didn't have the white coat of the Safety Force. The Safety Force was like the Nazi Shutz Staffel. Sure, their name said safety, but they terrorized people, save for those who hailed them. They nabbed the undesirable. He didn't even have the insignia on his left arm—the American flag: a joke.
Walking slowly to the door prompted him to knock again and I opened it seconds after. "Yes?" I asked. He had dust all over his boots and he took of the pinched bowler he had been wearing when he saw me. Dark, dark, dark brown hair contrasting sharply with, to use an old cliché, ice blue eyes. So different from my blond-ish hair and grey eyes. Clear skies as opposed to hurricanes. "Madison?"
"Which one?" I asked. "Mrs. Katrina Madison?" My mom. "No, but she'll be back soon, would you like to wait?"
"Yes, thank you," he replied, voice resonating with a faded German accent. I nearly died when he walked in, however, remembering that I had Angels and Airwaves playing in the kitchen on an old stereo.
I gestured to the living room, waiting for him to sit before I would run to the kitchen, but he could hear it, and when the music reached his ears, he smiled slightly. Who was he, then? "You know, before you let someone in, make sure you have the restricted music turned off."
"Yes, I know," I replied, looking down at my feet, embarrassed and relieved. "I forgot." When I looked up, he had a small smirk on, and I asked, "Can I get you anything?"
"No, thank you. Ah, who are you, miss?"
"Cat Madison, Molly's daughter."
"I see. And she lets you use her collection?"
"Yes." He eyed me warily. "Are you a communist?" he asked. "Atheist? Democrat?"
"No, none of those. Why?"
"You never know whom you can trust," he replied, scowling a little. I narrowed my eyes. "You can trust me."
"How do I know that?"
"You don't."
"Why should I believe you then?"
"Because I'm telling the truth," I snapped, pulling my lines from some western I saw. "James garner," he says."
"Yeah, one of those. See? You can trust me."
"A few lines mean little regarding your own life."
"Don't believe me, then, but know that I'm telling the truth." I shrugged and wandered to turn the music off.
"Cat? Who is that?" her mother asked from the back door. "I hear someone inside." I helped her with the groceries and said, "I don't know, but he's looking for you."
"All right." She quickly put them away and went to meet him.
"You're Jakob, yes?" she asked, sitting across from him on a footrest while he sat on the edge of the other chair. "Yes. We need your help, ma'am, to get to the point."
"With what?" she asked, arms resting on her knees. She looked him in the eye and he returned it, unmoving, and said, "Can your daughter be trusted, first of all." She sat up and narrowed her eyes warily at him. "Depends. Are you going to try to kill someone, because then, regarding you, no she can't be."
"You know what I mean," he said irritably. My mom nodded and said, "Yes, she can." He nodded as well, but still hesitated. "We need you to find people…like us, who don't agree with the world's powers, how life is, and bring them to Germany, where we will build an underground city, for people in the future to understand the past. A free city. We'll have teams of two, and I'll work with someone collecting restricted items to build the life of the city. All the music, books…all that."
"All right. Why Germany?" He opened his mouth to speak, but I beat him to it. "The Berlin Wall's escape tunnels, of course. That way, we won't have to build our own, just repair them, which will cost less money. Hey won't hear construction going on, that way, and they won't be able to find them, because history's been outlawed, so the locations have been lost to all except for us." And suddenly, the world became "us" and "them".
Jakob glared and said, "Precisely the reasons." I smirked at him and leaned on the doorway, arms crossed. "Do you have someone working with me?" my mom asked. "No, do you have someone in mind?'
"Yes, my neighbor. She has a collection like mine—bigger though—so you can start there and here. Do you have a partner?"
"No, not yet."
"Take my daughter," my mom said, with a strange gleam in her eye—definitely up to something—and I could've killed her. Why would I work with him? "No, I'll find someone."
"Take her with you, or you can't have scrap of either of our collections," she said nonchalantly. Good way to play it…but not with me! He narrowed his eyes…didn't we all today?...and said, "Why does it matter?"
"She needs to part of this, and going around with you is something she needs."
"I'm going around the world, can she handle it?"
"I'm still here," I said, "Don't talk like I'm not," but they ignored me. "She can handle anything." I sighed. He waited and let minutes go by, no doubt calculating in his annoying mind, and said, "She can come for a month, longer if there are no problems."
"All right. When do you leave?"
"When we get everything packed up. First of all, do you consent these items to be the property of everyone? The music videos, books, games, and select art? Everything of personal value is yours, all tools, family possessions, etc."
"Yes, I do, once looked over, of course."
"Of course," he replied, handing her…a contract, I suppose. Then he stood and looked at me. "The truck will be by directly, come help pack everything away. I presume it's all in boxes?"
"Yes," I said. "Why is the truck on its way already?"
"I knew Mrs. Madison would say yes." I scowled at him and went to put the loose items in boxes.
Dust was on some boxes that hadn't been touched in a while, cardboard creased and bulging from the strain of it's contents. Others were aged, but that was all, containing little things, like marbles, yoyos, cap guns, and the likes. Some toy jets from the 50s, and few toy boats. There was old clothes too, and I knew my mom would keep those at our new home. No way she could get rid of her mother's antique clothing, by now, 80-100 years old, and yet still wearable, some of it.
The ceiling of our boiler room was low and I had to duck, being 5'8" compared to its 5'3". We had no attic—those were outlawed, too—and the basement was too obvious, in case guests had to be entertained and decided to look around. So the boiler room it was, with its compact machines that really didn't need they're own room, that's how small they were. Big machines hadn't been used since 2017. The pipes ran in the ground—anything to save space these days, what with the population booming and house being built everywhere, divided even, sometimes. In fact, the only things that didn't get smaller and more compact were cars, getting bigger to fit more kids.
Jakob was behind me, crouched even further down. He looked about 6' and would have such a backache after this, I realized happily. The process was hand it to him, he would hand it to mom, and she would take it to the truck, which had gotten there a minute after he'd agreed to my being his partner. Damn. "Could you move any slower?' he asked sarcastically, and I almost threw a box at him, but settled for my shoe instead, grinning in the dim ochre light as I heard it collide with him.
We had finished Hattie's collection and ours by Friday—two days—and on Saturday we said good-bye and headed for the airport. We would start on the West coast and make our way back east, then onto Europe. Jakob and I were given a horizontal southern strip in the U.S., and we had a range of half a mile north to south. We could afford to cover that little area, that's how many people were on our side.
On the plane, I didn't get the window, because Jakob nabbed it, so I sat next to him in our row of three, the third seat being empty, way up in the air, in a n armor plated plane headed for Salinas I had nothing to do, and so I looked at the smog in the air—it had become a permanent fixture over the U.S. since 2011—but soon turned away from the depression it brought on. The electronic map on the screen in front of us showed our progress on a quarter green, nearly all the way brown figure of America. I remember being told that once, only a little corner in the Southwest had been brown. It was hard to believe that life had ever been any different. Hard to imagine something different, as Hitler had once said about National Socialism if it had survived for some more decades.
"How old are you?" Jakob asked. "15? 16? Maybe 14?"
"22," I replied, glaring at him. "You?"
"45." I meant to make some smart remark back, but couldn't think of anything. He looked more like 28. 30 at the most, and I suppose he'd picked up on what I was thinking somehow and smirked. Jakob looked out the window while I tried to imagine a primarily green picture of the country when, after a few moments, he said, "At least the air's unpopulated, for now."
"For now…" I repeated. "There's news of Japan and Russia working together to build cities up here. Not so improbable, considering there are already cities underwater and in space. It was only a matter of time before they took over the air, too."
"I know," I said softly, and then thought about how much I loved looking at pictures of big, white, fluffed up clouds that were so beautiful you could have sworn they were heaven, and then looking outside and seeing that layer of smog and nothing else. A few rain clods, every once in a while. I had never seen white clouds before and the pictures, I bet, hardly did them justice.
"No, they didn't," Jakob said, and I jumped. "What/? Didn't you realize you were talking out loud?" he asked, with a smirk. I scowled again and said, "You've seen clouds?"
"When I was little. In home-ec and art, everyday, I would stare at the clouds through the widow, and every day my teachers would yell at me and tell me to focus.' I nodded. "My teachers yelled at me for humming. They never knew the tune, figuring it was some popular song with kids, though one teacher knew once, and said to stop humming or I'd be in for it. I never did stop, and they never did anything, even when they caught on, because they thought my feelings would be hurt and I'd be mentally scarred or something."
Jakob gave a short laugh and closed his eyes, shaking his head. "I suppose there are some advantages to this world, then. Hardly any punishment."
"Every smog has a chrome lining," I said, and Jakob—amazingly—smiled. "Have you ever seen the Rockies?" he asked me, and I shook my head. "It's a group of four cities, though, and used to be a mountain range. Well, it still is, but it's considered only four cities combined into one Grand City called the Rockies," I said slowly. He nodded and pulled a picture out of his jacket. It was from a distance and was of a few mountains topped with white. He stuck it on the bottom of a little pile in his hands and anther one was before me—of a rocky mountain face filled with strange plants and flowers that I'd only seen in movies. "This is what it was like?" I asked. I had been to the Rockies—the city of course—and had seen nothing that resembled these pictures. Not a trace. It was all paved, except for the parks on the top and bottom, though the one's at the top were closed off. All the caves that Jakob was now showing me with more pictures had been filled in and built on. The mountains were terraced cities of asphalt and concrete, and as he pointed out the places, through the smog stood the Rockies—the first city—city Alabaster. They named it after the founder of that city. In Canada a nuclear bomb from Russia had leveled the Rockies during the Russian-Canadian-Greenland war.
"Do you know what Greenland looked like before?" I said no. He pulled out another picture of icy landscapes. "This was Greenland before it became a world power." I stared in shock. This was nothing like the Greenland we'd studied. Our Greenland really was green, a lot of parks, with huge cities clustered around. The north was all green save for little towns. In any case, it had a strong population and a lot of technology where there were huge cities. "That's Greenland?"
"Yes. And Iceland is here." He held up a picture of a green little place with some snowy mountains. "And now it's a desert," I muttered. I saw a picture of that in an old textbook. No desert then," I shook my head. "Damn century." He nodded and put the pictures away. "Odd how one so young misses the old world."
"Odd how one so old gets off one's ass and does something," I replied, tilting my head and raising my eyebrows at him. He shook his head and turned to the window again, but I swear I saw him smile…or at least smirk.
We landed and got a car from some accomplice of Jakob's after going through mildly insane security—not nearly as bad as the departing series though. No, that was ridiculous. You could bring nothing on with you except non-electronics, which, today, meant you could bring nothing on with you. You had to go through an X-ray machine, and then had to get your bags searched and X-rayed. If the alarm was set off—for whatever reason—when you walked through, you were just short of strip-searched. All jewelry was sent away to be inspected carefully and was given back on the plane, in case you could somehow add something in after security—something dangerous. It was generally needles precautions, save for the X-rays, and with technology these days, you'd think they could get one that works brilliantly.
"We're going to Moray, which is in Tennessee, but there are a few places in the Rockies—still in Alabaster—where some people have westerns—videos, mostly—and some DVD players for us. We'll get there by about 7:00 in the evening," he said. Right now it was 1:00 p.m. "The first town will be half way up, which should be another hour, and then farther on up. We'll mail everything straight to Germany once we get our hands on it, because we have to go through the top, which is off-limits." He kept his eyes on the road, both hands on the wheel, and it seemed more like he was talking to himself—going over it once more—rather than to me. Nonetheless, I listened. "Then we'll take the train down the side and to the bottom where we'll get another car, leave it in Moray..." He trailed off. "So how long will it take on the Rockies?" I asked. He seemed surprised I was there but then said, "Three days."
So many cities passed by, but none of them held anything remotely resembling hope or a decent future. I had a panicked though, then. If this was the present…then what would be in the future. It was dark and we were now at the bottom, stopping at a hotel. One room—all that was affordable—and thankfully two beds. We had packed nothing but a small amount of clothes. Laundry could be done at hotels while we collect, after all. This hotel was just a regular one—cable, huge bath, shower, big, fluffed beds, actual wallpaper, large windows—the usual. I thought about that question while I was staring out the window out at the city full of neon lights, cars, people, and big glass and concrete buildings. What was in the future? There was no freedom of speech as it was. If we thought that everyone should earn their own money and do their own work, we couldn't say it. If we thought the government was increasing taxes for its own benefit, we couldn't say it. If we thought there were too many people in America who couldn't speak English and were here illegally, we couldn't say it. To do might mean jail, or at least heavy fines—which went to the government officials.
I thought back to the old movies—the mafia, cattle drives, free enterprise, real patriotism, capitalism, and history. What had the world come to?
We went to sleep around eight, having nothing to keep us up except news, and even while I slept, Jakob played the news: Japan and Russia creating drawn models of cities in the sky, oil shortage: tune in later for ways to save it, water shortage: Mexico preparing for war on Brazil for water. People still feeling the effects of the nuclear attack in Canada that had occurred only two years ago. England facing off Spain in naval war for water, as well. The world was giving way to madness. The daily smog percentage, water percentage, gas prices, oil prices, and stock ticker came on, and I fell asleep with doomsday playing in my mind.
"Time to go, get up, move," Jakob said quickly, prodding me with the remote. I rolled over to face him and sat up. He turned away a little and went to pack. I stood up and realized the straps on my string-strap shirt had fallen to my arms and my shoulders and collar were bare. Pale, bare skin…looked like alabaster. Alabaster. We had something to do, something to accomplish, and I got dressed quickly—black pants, black tank top—and almost dragged Jakob to the car.
We drove down the main street and turned left off onto a small street with tall glass apartments lining it. At the very end was a small arts and crafts house painted red with an old woman sitting on the porch. Jakob and I got out of the Toyota and walked towards her. Jakob wore a short sleeve button down and faded jeans. Very different from yesterday's depressing look. "Ma'am, is Mr. Chipotle home?"
"Yes, yes, hold on," she said, shaking from old age. Standing up, the woman studied us for a second before turning and going inside, gesturing us to follow. Sitting in the living room with the paper was an old man—her husband—and he stood up when we walked in, dizzy and blind from the sudden change in light. "Mr. Hauser?"
"Yes. You have everything?"
"Yes. When will they come?"
"By Monday. Are you both packed?"
"Yes, thank you," the old woman said as Mr. Chipotle moved off to collect two boxes and microwave package. "The player is in here," he said, indicating to the microwave package. "And everything else is in those two." He pointed a shaking finger to the two boxes on the floor and coughed into his other hand.
"Thank you, sir," Jakob said, and I found myself smiling a little at his accent. "Let's go," he said to me. "I picked up one of the boxes and he got the DVD player and the other one, thanked them both again, and we left. As we stacked things in the trunk, I saw another box, twice the size of ours, sitting in back, which he shoved everything in and then closed tightly. It was already addressed to München, and I asked him about the X-ray machines at the post office. For all they know, they're just DVDs and a player, which we'll say are going to the destruction factory in München."
"Okay." Destruction factory, a place where they get rid of restricted items. "I have a license of a Safety Force officer, regular clothes, and that'll get them there safely, where someone else with a license will get them to Berlin. Everything is shipped to München because then, if anyone suspects something, they'll look there first, concentrate there, and we'll get away in Berlin. That's why every person is flying to either Hamburg or Stuttgart."
"Makes sense," I replied. Whoever was behind all this must be a paranoid, brilliant person.
"That's all for this town," Jakob said as we were driving. We'll reach the upper middle by tonight."
"Okay. How many people there?"
"Four. We'll spend the next day getting their things, and then drive the day after that as far as we can go. We'll sneak past in the middle of the night—no, more towards morning."
"Okay." I sat back and watched us climb through towns, but saw only silver and gold boom towns, railroad towns, and the railroads of back then. Once or twice I even saw a locomotive go by, carrying the past with it into the smog.
What did I know about Jakob? Hmm, very little, I realized, and was intent on finding out, seeing as how I'd be sleeping so close to him. Well, first: he wasn't as bad as I thought and had been cautious for a reason. Second: this world depressed him too. I saw that sad look in his eyes whenever I could see them. But what else? His name, his age, his general stance on the world today. "Where are you from?" I asked, still staring up at the smog. That mucousy film tamping down the world. "Berlin. Near the Tiergarten. When it was still the Tiergarten."
"Before it became a multimall, you mean?"
"Yes." Again that look, but what I said must really have hurt because his look then made me want to comfort him. A multimall was a huge combination of malls and was one of the scariest things I'd seen in my life.
"How did you learn about the old world?" I asked, changing the subject. His poker expression—got that phrase from a book—was back and didn't even flicker when I asked. "I was 25 when things changed, and since I was 14 and back, things had been so different. I'd been able to read so much history, and I did. When I was a kid, I read, I immersed myself in the past. My grandfather, who lived in Hamburg, was an ex-Nazi, and for a week or so at a time, I'd stay with him and he'd tell me stories about the war, and the Great War, the Roaring 20s in America, which he'd witnessed on a rare vacation. My dad loved history too and took me everywhere around the world to great places that we both knew wouldn't last every long. He took me to see Israel, and what a country. I miss it. I miss all those places."
"Israel…" I said. "That was on the Mediterranean, right? With Dead Sea?"
"Yes. Wiped out in 2014. How did you know?"
"The old woman next door—Hattie—and my mom taught me everything they knew about history, and combined, that was a lot. I read ever book we had, watched every movie, listened to every song. I was raised around it, in other words." Then another thought occurred to me. "Jakob, do you know why things are restricted? I know about the things that are, but I was never told why." He was silent for a while. Focused, disappeared in thought, and then he said,
"The powerful kinds—Communists, Atheists, Democrats, and the overly sensitive—decided that history, since it was said was doomed to repeat itself, was dangerous, and should be eliminated, for the good of the people. They decided that God and Jesus were offensive to those who didn't believe in either or one and not the other, and decided that, for the public interest, they would get rid of them too. That music, they decided, was talking about depressing things: ex-wives, for example, meaning divorce, which was bad for children psychologically, so that was decided to be rid of, too. That music talked about death, life, love, the truth, and no one wanted to hear the truth. People were offended by the truth, and that couldn't happen either. Those videos showed people the past, rebellions, like the revolutions, the civil wars, which they believed encouraged rebellion against the good government. Those and the other wars encouraged people to be violent, and no one could benefit from that. Teaching about the Armenian genocide, the holocaust, and other massacres would give people the idea to repeat them. History gave people ideas, and that wasn't what was best for the public, they decided. Creative people were dangerous, they hurt people's feelings." He spoke slowly and snapped the last bit at me. We continued in silence, and then I asked, "Why don't they regulate the news?"
"They're working on it," he muttered. "They're working on it."
We had stopped to eat only once, having now only eaten dinner in the past two days. It didn't matter. We weren't hungry anyway. Before we checked in, we mailed Mr. Chipotle's contribution, and then continued on to the hotel, getting to our room around 8:20. I stared out the window again, after showering, while Jakob used the bathroom, and though more about the future. The more I thought about, the stronger this ache in my chest grew. It suddenly reminded me of Gettysburg, and how that had been paved over and turned into something else—a stadium, I think, or a shopping centre. I took my towel off and got dressed, was about to pull my shirt on, and then the phone rang. What had happened to freedom? What had happened to capitalism and patriotism? Where had the world gone? Up in the smog? I picked it up and said, "Hello?"
"Cat?" It was my mom. "Yeah?"
"Oh Cat," she sobbed, and my heart skipped beats, my breath stopping. "What's wrong?"
"Hattie," she managed through tears, or what sounded like them. "What about Hattie, Mom? What about her?"
"The SF came in the middle of the night last night to her door and…I was watching through the window, could see their shadows. They talked, and one of them pulled out a gun after a five minutes. They-they killed her, Cat," she whispered, breaking off into sobs again. I nearly dropped the phone and said, "I'll call you later Mom. Love you, bye." The phone clattered back into the nailed in charger and was lost soon in my welling tears.
"Cat?" I turned around from my spot on the edge of the bed where I was sitting. "What are you doing?"
"Sitting," I said. "Just thinking." He nodded and sat down on his bed, the one away from the window, and stared at me for a few seconds before lying down. His hair hung in small clumps, still dripping, and strands dangled in his eyes, water dripping to land on his cheeks and running down like tears. He really didn't look 45. No wrinkles that I could see, a young light in his blue eyes. When wet, his hair looked black, and there wasn't a grey hair in sight. The usual age hair started graying was 36. Wrinkles usually appeared around 30. Maybe it came from having an old soul, because mom looked the same way: young, still full of rebellious spirit. I turned to face him, cross-legged, and asked, "