“Have you made a decision yet?” he asked.
“About what?”
“About the question I asked and you never answered.”
Sheila became very quiet, her body going still. She didn’t answer him.
“Well? What are you going to do, leave me hanging?”
“I need to think about it, Dodd.”
“What’s there to think about? Either you want to, or you don’t. If you want to, say you want to. If you don’t, say you don’t.”
“You’re not being fair.”
“Fair?”
“You shouldn’t ask this, I mean, like such an ultimatum. I have to think about it.”
“Sheila, I have to know.” I have to know if I’m wasting my time with you. Fortunately Dodd was able to shut his mouth before the whole statement came out.
“I can’t have time to think it over?”
“If you have to think it over, then it’s obvious you don’t want to.”
“Well I don’t, really.”
“Oh, well, there. What’s there to think about, you have the answer right on your tongue.”
“I don’t want to lose you.”
“I didn’t expect you to be an unwilling mother. That’s not what I want, either.”
“Well, Dodd, a baby is such a big responsibility, and it’ll take years and years to save the money–-”
“I have the money already. I’ve been saving since after the war.”
The idea of him having all that money seemed to shock her.
She looked upset, confused. They both stared off at the skyline in silence as the new skyscraper was slowly lowered among its neighbors. Spotlights lit glowing pointers of light that swung across the fading sunset, outlining the building. Dodd felt heartbroken, but at the same time he was a little relieved.
8. FAST FORWARD
Bob Recent did not watch JTV, nor did he watch the Politico Network. He didn’t watch any of the sickly, gasping, once-giant broadcast networks – they were all hanging onto life by a few bare threads, depending entirely upon pornography to keep themselves afloat. Neither Bob nor his wife Denise had any interest in the local music-television stations filling the obsolete broadcast frequencies known as VHF and UHF. They rarely if ever watched theatre disks even though their system was capable of playing them. Bob and Denise had only one real video interest, and that interest absorbed them. The JTV announcement didn’t have any effect on them at all. They were unaware of the news until the announcement was days old.
One of Denise’s old friends called to talk to her about the Second Coming, excited to the point of hysterics, asking Denise where she and her husband would be on that fantastic day. “I don’t know. Home probably,” Denise had told her. When she and her friend had hung up she wordlessly resumed her place beside her husband in front of the television, baffled by the whole conversation. It occurred to her that she hadn’t understood most of what her friend had said.
“What was all that about?” her husband asked, his voice a monotone.
“… I don’t know,” she replied, watching as the Travels sphere tumbled hectically down a grassy knoll, ricocheting between the trunks of large oak trees. “I’ve forgotten.”
“I overheard something about ‘the Savior.’”
“Mm-hmm. Something like that.” Denise let out a small sigh, trying to concentrate. What was it? Something about ‘the Savior’
coming back in two weeks. Something like that. She wondered vaguely if it was something that should be important to her. It was hard to think.
The sphere had gone down a mountainside and was now heading for a ravine. Denise sat forward stiffly, her pulse racing, as the sphere went right over the edge of the ravine with her following.
The angle of the view widened, trees rushing past in the background, and rocky cliff face, and swooping birds, and the ball was spinning and wavering from side to side as it fell. Dark and solid, rocks rushed up and the sphere hit, rebounding across a large waterfall, soaring through the mists, and was soon bouncing along beside a river as it raced the water downhill. Denise reached out and numbly picked up her drink from the coffee table.
It was warm, the ice long since melted, but it was still good.
Orange juice and Jacovik Premium Imported vodka, her favorite morning drink. It was called a, called a …
A what?
Denise couldn’t remember, though she knew it was named after some sort of tool. It wasn’t important. She sat the glass down, forgetting about it, watching as the sphere rolled down into the depths of a canyon littered with fallen logs; it bounced between them and over them, graceful, nimble, with endless momentum …
pine and sage rushed past, flat mossy boulders and deep pools of blue water, an occasional bird flying along for a moment or two then zipping off. Denise closed her eyes, feeling warm and cozy, but when she opened them again she found a sharp pain in her neck and her right arm was tingling. She’d been sleeping in an odd position, and she was surprised to find herself on the couch and not in bed. Where was her husband? At work? Denise had no idea, she didn’t know if this was one of his work days or not. She couldn’t remember what day of the week it was. It didn’t matter, though; all she knew or cared about at the moment was that she was very hungry. The Travels sphere was hurling down a narrow path through a yellow field of wheat, but Denise managed to tear herself away. She pulled her body upright and found her legs weak and her head spinning.
In the kitchen she keyed instructions into the Master Chef and stood wearily against a wall while the insectile chrome arm pulled bread and sandwich makings out of the refrigerator. With quick, deft movements it built a ham and cheese sandwich, then pulled a half-empty bottle of Jacovik vodka out of the liquor cabinet and fixed her another drink. Denise wolfed down the sandwich, followed by the vodka and orange juice, and while the robot arm mixed a refill she walked stiffly to the bathroom.
She peered at her reflection in the bathroom mirror with a dull sense of shock – how long had it been since she’d last showered? How long had she been wearing these clothes? Her hair hung in oily strings, and crusted food matter clung to the skin around her mouth. With numb fingers Denise undid her clothing, letting them fall to the floor, and punched in a temperature setting for the shower water.
After showering and changing, she picked up her fresh drink from the kitchen and sat down in front of the television, watching with excitement as the Travels sphere bounced off an old chunk of cement, rolled up a broken piece of wood, sailed through the air and ricocheted off the side of a colorful billboard.
Her husband, Bob, shook her. “Ready for some dinner, darling?”
Denise looked at him, wondering where he had been. “No, I just ate.”
“Are you sure you don’t want something? I’m getting a sandwich.”
“Well …” Come to think of it, she was hungry. “Alright.
Thank you, honey.”
Denise looked back at the television, watched the sphere roll across white sand with green, green trees in the background. She yawned and, looking down, was surprised to find a half-eaten sandwich in her limp hand. Bob was reclined beside her, head lolling, eyes closed. A raw rasping noise was coming from his throat. She shoved him, and his body jerked. “You’re snoring!” she snapped as he blinked and looked around in confusion.
“I’m sorry,” he said, his voice small and boyish.
Looking back at the screen, Denise bit down on the remainder of her sandwich and tasted nothing. Then a warm, strong hand had a hold on her shoulder, shaking her, and she opened her bleary eyes and looked up at her husband. “Baby, wake up,” he said.
“Hmmmm?”
“I think you wet yourself.”
“Hmmmm?” But then she noticed the wet stickiness between her legs, and she groaned. “Not again,” she muttered, getting stiffly to her feet. She realized she was starving.
“I’ll get the automaid up here, darling. You go change.”
“Thank you.” Denise waddled into the bathroom and stripped off her clothes. In the bathroom she wiped her legs and crotch with a warm, damp washcloth, then put on a clean pair of disposable panties. Over that she slipped on a silky black see-through robe. Why anything else? she thought. I’m not planning on going anywhere today.
Back in the living room there was a six-wheeled multi-limbed metal creature busily dry-cleaning the couch. Denise wandered past, making her way into the kitchen. Through the kitchen window shone morning sunlight. How long was the morning going to last?
she wondered. Meanwhile the kitchen arm swung back and forth with jerky motions, stopping suddenly here and there, fixing her another sandwich.
Three in one morning? Denise thought, munching it down. I’m going to get fat. But something about this struck Denise as wrong, and she realized this was a new morning, not an old one. Funny, she didn’t remember much of last night.