Кори Доктороу - Make Shift - Dispatches from the Post-Pandemic Future

“Good.”

I slump back in the chair. The housebot starts scrubbing a white blot of pigeon shit off the edge of the balcony. Makes me feel guilty when it cleans in front of me—even though it’s a machine, I always feel I ought to be helping. To distract myself I look across the street again.

I don’t know how the scamps are planning to get away with it. Maybe they have a sound damper to hide their voices, or maybe they’re all going to be listening to the same music in their earpods. I picture them all sneaking in, two or three at a time, grinning smug little grins to each other.

I picture the party, picture all the aerosol saliva, all the droplet clouds misting through the air carrying virus, and it makes me furious all over again.

Then and there, I decide: there’s not going to be any koronapárty tonight. Not on my street. Yesterday I did the arthritic James Bond thing, with the tailing and the eavesdropping, and now I’m going to do a good old-fashioned private eye stakeout.

Right after I use the toilet again.

I SETTLE IN TO WATCH FROM THE BALCONY, ME AND MY COHORT OF PIGEONS. PRAGUEis quiet during lockdown. Hardly any traffic noises. A few delivery drones zip up and down Dělnická carrying take-out in insulated bags, and a few people hurry past in masks, keeping their one point five meters distance from each other.

The light fades, turning the sky a cold blue, and it gets cold enough that I pack in. The housebot badgers me, so I eat something, but I don’t really get hungry anymore. Food is mostly just something to take with medications. The housebot helps me drag an armchair right up to the window, so I can still watch the building.

I’ve got the book of poems in my lap but never manage to focus on it for more than a few stanzas. It’s fully possible the kids will never show up. Maybe they came to their senses, or maybe they picked somewhere better-concealed for their little party. It’s fully possible I’m doing this for nothing, but at least for once I’m doing something besides drinking cheap beer and trawling old message threads for new memories.

I drift off re-reading the poem where death is a hungry broom, and an admiral, and it gives me a weird little dream where Jan and I are chasing the pigeons off the balcony with brooms while a woman in a big admiral’s hat supervises. Fortunately, I instructed the housebot to wake me if it spotted any activity across the street.

“Sorry to disturb your nap, asshole!”

I blink my eyes open.

“I think the party you mentioned is starting,” the housebot says.

I sit up; my spine cracks and pops. The housebot’s right: across the way I can see lights, holoshow-type stuff flashing up into the sky over the block. They’re not even trying to be subtle about it. I send the alert to the lockdown-breach app, all righteous anger and savage triumph. I’m sure mine must be one of a dozen already.

“Idiot kids,” I say, leaning my elbows on the windowsill. “Hope they get a fine.”

I wasn’t expecting the housebot to do much more than blandly agree, but its emoji display turns into a thoughtful frowny face. “Why do idiot kids make you feel angry?” it asks.

My ears go hot. “Not angry,” I say. “Just looking out for the greater good. Even if this bug’s not as bad as the last few, we’re still in lockdown for a reason.”

“Some types of party are more risky than others,” the housebot says, then pops up a health display. “I am worried by your increased blood pressure, asshole.”

I grit my teeth. “I’ve got increased blood pressure because I don’t like watching people be selfish,” I say. “People not giving a shit about anybody but themselves. If they cared at all about the people around them, they’d be indoors.”

The housebot got me: I am angry. And now that I’m talking I can’t stop.

“They’d be doing what I do,” I say. “They’d be living in a little box all alone with a fucking housebot, where they can’t hurt anybody, where they can’t be vectors, and where they can’t get sick and turn into another burden on the healthcare system. That’s how people are meant to be living during lockdown.” I swallow. “I’m living this shitty-ass little life for the greater good, not because I like it. And I’m calling the police on those kids for the greater good, too.”

I can feel a whine in the back of my throat, which makes me feel even more pathetic. My pulse is squeezing fast, thudding in my wrists and neck. If my blood pressure wasn’t up before, it’s skyrocketing by now.

“I think most adolescents live with their families, Ivan,” the housebot says. “Not all alone.”

“Exactly my point,” I say, no longer sure what my point was. “They’re putting people at risk just so they can have a laugh. And they deserve to get in shit for it.”

“Maybe you should communicate your feelings to them directly,” the housebot says. “Have you considered attending their party?”

I’ve obviously taken the basic AI to its limit, so I fold my arms and stare across the street at the flickering lights. The minutes tick by. I wait for the police drone to come swooping in, loudspeakers on full, to scatter the little shits like how pigeons ought to scatter when confronted by the looped calls of predatory birds.

The minutes keep ticking by. I check my phone, and see that my alert has been processed and filed, whatever that means. But there’s no police drone, and nobody shouting off their balconies to tell the kids off. Everybody’s just looking the other way, how they look the other way in the street, too polite to start any sort of confrontation. Everybody’s minding their own business with no thought to the delayed consequences.

I rock once, twice, and heave myself out of the chair.

“Where are you going, Ivan?” the housebot asks. “Curfew begins in twenty-two minutes.”

“I’m going to a party,” I say. “Briefly.”

“I’m glad to hear that, asshole,” the housebot says. “Have fun!”

MY FINGER TREMBLES WHEN I JAB THE BUTTON FOR THE LIFT. I’M THAT WORKEDup—mostly anger, with a decent helping of anxiety over what I’m about to do, too. But it’s got to be done, and in a weird way it feels good to be worked up over something again. For so long I’ve just been monotone. Just drifting.

On the way to the ground floor, watching the little animation of the scrubbing hands, I rehearse what I’m going to say. I’ve got it all floating around in my head: how I’m risking my life to come over and tell them off, how utterly selfish they are, how ashamed their parents must be. My phone is along as a simultaneous interpreter; it can echo the whole thing in loud electronic Czech.

Night’s fully fallen when I hobble out of the apartment. For a moment the blurry orange of the streetlamps and the warm breeze on my face takes me back to when I loved this neighborhood. I used to be so fascinated by the Communist-era architecture and the little potraviny shops, used to adore Letna Park—limping up the hill was always worth it to look out over the city.

The neighborhood was bigger back then. Now it’s just my apartment and a grocery store every three days. Sometimes I feel like I barely live here at all.

But I do, and I’ve got the right to stay living here, which I can’t do with little idiots endangering my health and that of the public at large. I stump across the deserted street, checking the seals on my mask one last time. I brought the good one for this, full face coverage. No telling how many spit clouds I’ll have to walk through.

Like a moth to fluorescent, I follow the lights. There’s still no sounds of conversation or laughter, which boosts my theory about the sound damper. If the kids are really committed, they might be subvocalizing to each other and letting their fancy masks synthesize speech into text—read an article about that.