Сара Пинскер - A Song for a New Day

According to Aran, the 2020 held shows on Saturday and Wednesday nights. That gave Rosemary two days and two nights to figure out if there were any other less crowded places to hear live music and/or to come up with strategies for how to brave the crowds again. She tried not to be a total drain on company resources. Even walking the hotel’s neighborhood was an exercise in desensitization and discovery, worth her time and energy. There weren’t many people on the streets, but enough to unsettle her stomach.

Finding music proved impossible. She tried the hotel’s e-concierge, which reminded her gatherings larger than thirty people were illegal and unsanitary. The human concierge gave her the same line, but she thought his answer might change once she’d been there a little while. The 2020 couldn’t be the only place with live music. There had to be other places where jazz or classical music fans risked arrest to hear their favorites live, or underground dance or rap clubs like the ones Bailey had described.

Or maybe this was all that remained. Except there were still jazz musicians on StageHolo, which must mean people played jazz somewhere, or they wouldn’t be able to hone their craft. Unless they did it all online? But how could they do that and still be sure they weren’t broadcasting their existence to the very people who’d shut them down? She had these conversations with herself, alone in her room. As if it even mattered. She worked for the rock division, and she knew even less about jazz than rock.

She found a proper branded restaurant a few blocks from the hotel. She hadn’t realized how much she had missed the familiarity until she slid into a red vinyl Micky’s booth and shut the isolation door. In-booth ordering made so much more sense than sending an employee around like at the Heatwave. The server had said she’d have warned her if Rosemary had ordered the burn-your-face-off chili, but Micky’s could place a warning on a dish, too, not subject to the waitress’s whims or sense of humor. Not that she’d need warnings at Micky’s, where she knew every dish on this menu by heart. Comfort slathered with comfort, served in a bowl.

On the way back to her hotel, a man walking in the opposite direction sneezed as he passed her. She didn’t think his sneeze hit her, but her skin crawled for the duration of the walk, and she had to use her day’s water allotment to wash herself and her clothes.

Afterward, she called her mother. She had left her ancient school Hoodie at home for her mom to use, so they’d be able to sit together and chat even when she was far away. Her mother had held it like a dead thing—no, like less than a dead thing, their chickens were handled respectfully—but agreed to try it.

“How did you deal with it?” she asked, when they were both seated in the space they had agreed on before she left, a static kitchen with padded wooden chairs and a picture window facing out on a field of winter wheat. It was the closest hoodspace template they had found to their own comfortable kitchen. Maybe if she made enough money at her job she could get their home done up as a custom environment.

“Deal with what? What happened?” The old Hoodie couldn’t handle photo-realistic avatars, either, so the other av didn’t look much like her mother at all. Same hairstyle, but different body type, wrong height, wrong face. Two legs. Cheap and generic, with only her real voice to reassure Rosemary. Her worried voice. “Is everything okay?”

Rosemary held up placating hands. “Mom. If I needed help, I would have called you direct, not invited you for a sit-down. I promise. Somebody sneezed near me, and my brain went all flu and pox and disease vectors. How did you stand being so close to people all the time? They’re so… warm.”

Her mother shrugged a cartoon shrug. “We didn’t think about it. We went to movie theaters where hundreds of people sat in the same room and stadiums where thousands sat next to each other. We rode in airplanes and buses and trains, in open compartments, where strangers sat next to strangers.”

“The city buses are like that! People sitting and standing right next to each other.”

“I thought you were taking single-cells once you got there.”

“I was—I was going to—but there weren’t any around that night so I thought I’d try it.”

The avatar’s frown looked nothing like her mother’s. The mouth bent in a strange way. “What are you there for again? You didn’t say you’d be taking public buses.”

“Mom. We’ve gone over this. It’s a business trip. SHL sent me here to take some meetings.”

“I still don’t understand why they have to have meetings in person. Nobody else does.”

“It’s part of what makes them the best, Mom. The personal touch.” She had decided not to mention the club or the bands even before coming here. The part she most wanted to ask about, the crowds, she couldn’t except obliquely without heightening her mother’s concern. “How did you keep from panicking around so many people, though? On the bus, in the old days?”

“It’s so hard to explain. People were everywhere. Some were sick, sure. Maybe we washed our hands a lot, I don’t know. I had a friend who didn’t like touching people, even back then. She used to imagine a bubble surrounding her, a bubble that grew and shrank, but was always there. Even if somebody tried to hug her, or bumped into her on the street, a thin layer of the bubble was still there between them.”

“Huh. But there wasn’t one?”

“No, of course not. It was a psychological technique. It wouldn’t have protected her from anything, but it kept her functional.”

“Huh.” She filed that tip away.

“Rosemary?” her mother said after a minute. “I still don’t understand why we’re talking through cartoon characters instead of face-to-face by phone.”

“A phone can’t do this.” Rosemary switched to clearview and shared her feed from her own perspective for the grand tour: the gym in the corner, the fingerprint lock, the magnificent view out the window.

Her mother sighed. “I do miss it.”

“Miss what?”

“I don’t know. All of it. Everything.”

Saturday night loomed closer. It hung over Rosemary, exciting and terrifying in equal parts. She wanted to go back. She wanted to hear the music, but each time she thought about the people in the room, even sitting alone in her hotel, she had to fight panic. It didn’t seem possible that the two feelings existed so close to each other, the excitement and the fear.

Still, she had to go. If she framed it as a chore, an inevitability, it became a thing she’d have to cope with, rather than a thing to avoid. If she didn’t go, she didn’t talk to the bands. If she didn’t talk to the bands, she didn’t sign the bands. If she didn’t sign the bands, she didn’t have a job. The company would decide she’d taken the job fraudulently and bill her for her magnificent hotel room, and she didn’t have the money for that, so she had to go. No other option.

She didn’t go. Seven p.m. passed. She was a fraud. A cheater. A shirker. A chicken. A liar. A thief. Eight p.m. It was raining. She’d be forgiven for not wanting to go out in the rain. Wait until Wednesday, unless it rained Wednesday, too.

Her mother had told her to put herself in a mental bubble, though she’d be horrified to know her advice was being used to go to the 2020. Her father would tell her to go with her gut, stay safe in the hotel, come home. Nobody else in her life would bother to make the case. Aran, maybe, if he didn’t laugh, but she had asked him enough already. She had to be the one to convince herself.