“Really? Okay!”
The paneling vanished, as did the pipe organ and ceiling. In their place, Ellis stood amid a field of spring flowers in a valley surrounded by distant mountains and capped with a vast sky. Gorgeous thunderhead clouds billowed up in the distance as the sun drifted toward the horizon. The grand table was replaced with a rustic picnic bench covered by a traditional red-and-white-checkered cloth and set with ceramic cups and a wicker basket. Ellis held still, disoriented and uncertain what had just happened. Was he still in the dining room? He figured he was, imagined Pax had just adjusted the decorations like he might have dimmed the lights in his own house, but he wasn’t just seeing it. Ellis could feel the breeze, smell the sunbaked grass, and hear the distant drone of a cicada.
“Are we still in your house?”
Pax looked amused. “Yes. It’s just that Vin’s taste tends to run a bit more heavy—more serious—than I prefer.”
A shadow crossing the table startled Ellis, and he looked up to see a hawk. “Whoa. That’s really cool.”
Pax looked concerned. “Alva, turn down the breeze, please.”
Ellis laughed. “Oh—no. I didn’t mean…I meant it is very nice.”
“Twentieth-century slang, Pax,”Alva put in, and Ellis realized she sounded a lot like his aunt Virginia. “Cool is a respected aesthetic, what we might refer to asgrilling ormagnetic.”
“Really?” Pax said, looking dubious, then turned and began walking across the field. “Let me grab the meal and see where Vin got off to.”
Ellis took a seat at the picnic table. When he looked back, Pax was gone, leaving him alone in the landscape.
In all directions the flat land extended out to a distant horizon. He was in a John Ford movie or a Windows screen saver and couldn’t stop gawking. Ellis had spent the majority of his life in Michigan, mostly around Detroit, never able to get away from work. Aside from M.I.T., his one big trip was his honeymoon in Cancun. He’d always planned to go places, but never really had until he pressed the button on the time machine. Even then, he had remained in Detroit, but was now supposedly somewhere under Paris. None of that mattered. Perched on that picnic table, he knew he was a long way from home.
A blade of grass brushed Ellis’s leg. He snapped it off and rolled the plant between his fingers, feeling the moisture in it. He held it to his nose and smelled the scent of summer lawn cuttings. How is this possible?
“Vin’s not feeling well.” Pax appeared again, walking back through the tall grass and holding a tray of food, the frock coat whipping with the breeze.
I bet.Ellis tried not to jump to conclusions, but he didn’t like Vin. “Just us then?”
Pax nodded and set two steaming plates on the picnic table in front of them filled with pasta topped with a white sauce laden with minced vegetables. Ellis waited to see if Pax would be saying grace. Not everyone did, and it wasn’t as big a deal as it had once been.
Pax began eating without a pause.
Ellis looked down at his plate and whispered, “Thanks.” He wasn’t really thanking God for the meal or even the miracle of surviving the time travel. He just appreciated that God had been there to listen when he needed Him the most. Maybe that was God’s whole purpose—a hand to hold. Then again, just the day before he had expected to die of starvation, and if anything was likely to make him feel religious it was the miracles of the last two days. And there was something else—in this brave new world, God was the only one he knew.
“Whatever happened with the murder?” Ellis asked.
“Cha arranged for the disposal of the body,” Pax said. “I spent the rest of the day and most of the night with those students who witnessed the scene to make sure they would have no lingering trauma. They were upset, obviously, but they’ll be fine.”
“Wow. Are people that fragile nowadays?”
“Murders might have been commonplace in your time, Ellis Rogers, but we don’t have them. And with the various safety features, even accidents are extremely rare. Death is alien to us.”
“You mentioned that before. But how is that possible? What about old age and disease?”
Pax sucked in a noodle and reached for one of the red-checkered napkins. “The ISP eliminated diseases hundreds of years ago—aging took longer, of course. They only slowed it in the previous versions, but it was eradicated in this last pattern.”
“Pattern?”
“Ah…are you familiar with genetics? DNA?”
“I know ofthem. They completed work on the Human Genome Project—mapping genes—a few years back, but were just starting work interpreting the data when I left.”
“Right, okay. So, in a way the sequence of base pairs that make up DNA is like a recipe. Everyone—back in your day, I assume—was a little different, right?”
He nodded. “Like snowflakes.”
“Well, the ISP tinkered with the sequencing, adjusting it mostly because of the epidemics that occurred back in the 2150s. All the drugs they had used stopped working, I guess, or the diseases got stronger—I don’t know. Anyway, the ISP started altering DNA to make people more resistant to diseases, which caused all kinds of conflicts with people making drugs and other people who were against tinkering at all—well, it was a big deal. But anyway—after centuries of adjustments, the ISP unlocked the perfect pattern, which you see before you.” Pax smiled and made a little seated flourish and bow. “Disease is just a horror of the distant past, and so is aging.”
“You never get—how old are you?”
“Me? I’m only three hundred and sixty. I’m a baby. Part of the Accident Generation.” Pax took another swallow of food as Ellis tried to figure out what that meant.
Pax sighed and took a drink. “There’s so much you don’t know. I had hoped Alva would have taken some time to—”
A gust of wind blew Pax’s bowler hat off. “Real mature, Alva.”
Pax retrieved the hat and sat back down, keeping one hand on the brim.
“But if no one ever dies, isn’t that a problem? With overpopulation, I mean,” Ellis asked.
“There was a population crisis in the middle of the twenty-third century.”
Ellis nodded, remembering Charlton Heston in Soylent Green.
“But not overpopulation—it was because of a depleting population. This was before the ISP wiped out death and disease, you understand. People were still dying, but fewer and fewer children were being born each year—a real emergency. Everyone was content and fulfilled and didn’t feel the need. Most people had no children, and those who did had just one, which meant the world population was diminishing with each generation. So the ISP stepped in and filled the void.”
“Manufacturing people?”
Pax looked surprised at the comment. “Creatingnew people from DNA patterns.”
“And the religious community just let that happen?”
This appeared to catch Pax by surprise, resulting in an expression that was part confusion, part suspicion, as if Pax felt he was being intentionally obtuse. “There haven’t been any religions for hundreds of years. I think the last church was in Mexico somewhere, but that was a longtime ago.”
“So no one believes in God anymore?”
“Of course not.” The tone was flippant and condescending. Then Pax appeared mortified. “Oh—I’m sorry.” Setting down the fork, Pax reached out and touched his hand. “I didn’t mean to insult you like that. I didn’t realize. I should have, but…” Pax looked sick.
“It’s okay—really.”
“But I should never have—”
“It’s fine—trust me, you aren’t the first atheist I’ve talked to. What were you saying about the population problem?”
Pax resumed work on the minlatta. “Oh—well, since the new patterns never grow old, it wasn’t long before we reached the perfect population size. The only problem comes from accidents. People don’t die from disease, but accidents still happen and create openings for new births. I was one of those—hence the Accident Generation. I, and everyone sharing this pattern, should live forever, which is why these killings are so horrible. Death is an awful tragedy to us.”