As a consequence of improved geriatrics and longevity techniques, in 2007, life expectancy of male infants at birth in the United States and Western Europe rose to ninety-one years, and of females, one hundred three.
Coded stimulation of visual centers in the brain, with input from holocameras, enabled the blind to see normally. A device to monitor consciousness was developed for medical use in 2010. By the use of special lenses, it enabled the operator to see a faint pinkish glow around the head of a conscious patient. Later it was discovered by curious researchers that consciousness was shared by mammals, birds, reptiles, insects, arachnids, plants, and some stones. A new game, Chessex, combining elements of chess and checkers, swept the world in 2017. Body dyes combined with new superlight fabrics were popular in the New Sunbelt and in domed cities.
A new class of antinarcotic neurotransmitters, introduced into food and water in the remaining large cities, effectively wiped out the drug traffic in 2008. A totally effective contraceptive method for both men and women was developed in 2009. By the following year, most epidemic diseases, including all venereal disease, had been wiped out except for laboratory specimens.
Sexual intercourse as a performance art form began to gain respectability in 2012. The grand prize in the first All-Europe Tournament was awarded to a married couple from Brussels, Robert-Luc and Jeanne Dufour.
In a related development, mind-to-mind communication was made possible by computer-controlled readouts of one brain and stimulation of another. Monitoring by this means enabled the judges to be sure the reactions of tournament contestants were genuine.
A new process made it possible to recover sound recordings from the past. Most of them were banal or incomprehensible; for instance, Napoleon was heard to say, “This is inferior shit.”
In 2013, a consistent theory of synchronicity was based on the laws of chaos.
“Free systems,” artificial intelligences not bound to any circuitry, were in use by 2019.
Tailored food plants requiring no care were introduced into wastelands and abandoned cities in 2020.
All this was taking place simultaneously with the social and economic changes brought about by the McNulty’s Symbiont, to which we must now return. ...
The Twenty-first Century,
by A. R. Howarth and Lynette Ford
A man walked into White Cloud Outfitters in Seattle and started looking over the racks of jeans at the front of the store. He was poorly dressed and wore a backpack. Grace Timmons, the manager, watched him go into the dressing room with three pairs of jeans and come out with two, which he brought to the counter.
Timmons took the card he handed her, put it into the scanner and looked at the readout. “It says here this card was canceled last June,” she said. “Denver Co-op? Did they kick you out?”
“Let’s say I left.”
“And you haven’t hooked up with anyone since?”
“No. I hurt my back.”
“I’m sorry to hear it. What kind of work did you do before?”
“Construction.”
“No office skills?”
“No.”
“I understand the toy factory down at the end of Western Avenue is hiring. Maybe you could get a job doing-light assembly.”
“Look, I don’t have to do anything.” He turned to leave.
“Just a moment. You know, of course, that your picture is in the computer.”
“So what? You can’t put me in jail.”
“No, but two or three sturdy young lads could throw you in the river. I’m not saying that would happen, but think about it. Good day.”
Bubbles of memory . . . This is Kim at fifteen, when she gained all that weight. This is her mother, that same year, with her hair dyed red. Isn’t that a funny hat? This is Cletus Robinson of Savannah at the age of seven. The squint was corrected by an operation the following year. This is President Otis before his heart attack. This is Emelia Switt writing the first sentence of her first novel. This is a rabbit named Bunny, the pet of Olivia Eveling of Okemos, Michigan. This is Dan Cowper out hunting with his dog. The dog’s name is Bruce. They didn’t catch anything that day, but the cold autumn air was great, and there was a fine sunset. This is Regina Dingwall on her eightieth birthday, surrounded by her five living children, seventeen grandchildren, and three great-grandchildren. Regina was part of the problem, but we forgive her. This is Norbert Spanbogen getting laid in New Orleans. He came down with the clap shortly afterward. This is Miss McDevitt finding something nasty in her weather shoes. This is Arpad Adjarian resigning his commission. Some of his relatives have emigrated to France, and he intends to join them. This is John Stevens working on his book of translations. His hair is white.
From the time Kim was nine or ten, Stevens had fallen into the habit of taking her with him on occasional business trips. He took her to museums and zoos, arboretums, amusement parks, restaurants; he liked to watch her when she saw new things. A complicity grew up between them. Once she asked, “Do you think people should tell the truth?”
“Always? No.”
“Why not?”
“Because sometimes the truth just makes people unhappy. I try to tell you the truth, though, because I want you to trust me.”
“Do you love Mama?”
“Yes, I love your mother.”
“Then why do you go away with Signorina Lamberti?” “I love your mother, but I like other women, including Signorina Lamberti. Teufelsdreck.”
“What does that mean?”
“Devil’s dirt. It means that l am annoyed.”
He knew she was unhappy at school. He had had many talks with teachers, and the trouble was not academic. “She just doesn’t seem to warm up to the other children,” the teachers said. Contrasting this with her evident pleasure in his own company, Stevens was secretly flattered. He thought of her as a companion, someone to whom he could be more and more open as she grew into maturity.
When she was fifteen, Kim started gaining weight. Her boyishness disappeared; she became oblong in silhouette. Julie took her frantically to one doctor after another; Kim resented the examinations and the diets which never did any good. She grew more withdrawn, even from Stevens. Her grades declined. When she was sixteen, after many conferences with Julie, Stevens took her out of school and let her study by holo. She spent most of her time in her room, or walking alone with her dog, a golden retriever who had never liked Stevens, in the woods behind their house in Ontario.
“What’s going to become of her?” Julie said. “In a year or two she ought to be going out with boys, dating.”
“That will come soon enough,” Stevens said. He could not hide his disappointment. His bright companion was gone; in her place there was a bloated, unattractive teenager. More and more often he remembered his own bitterly unhappy childhood. “She’ll grow out of it,” he said.
Every now and then he saw something about Palladino in the net. There was one incident that suggested that his former employers might have taken his advice: a waiter had spilled a plate of lasagna on Palladino’s head in a Berlin restaurant. Then nothing. In the holo, Palladino seemed to have put on some flesn. His skin was smooth, shining; he looked like a happy Buddha.
There had not been a reliable census anywhere in the world since the turn of the century, but some analysts, working from satellite data, had estimated that world population was down to 3.5 billion. Stress on the environment had abated somewhat during the last decade, and there were even signs that ocean biota were recovering. Atmospheric pollution was markedly better, but the damage to the ozone layer was apparently irreversible; climatic changes and flooding of coastal cities had caused much hardship.