Walter Mosley - Futureland - Nine Stories of an Imminent World

“I’m gonna miss you, Dad,” Harold remembered saying. Not I love you or Can’t you stay? Just acceptance. And even that weak farewell was a lie. He had never missed his parents.

It wasn’t until he experienced the sweet-faced, rough loving of Yasmine that he began to miss them. He wondered if they still spoke to each other. Everyone had a communication number. This code took the place of the Social Security number after that program went bust in 2012.

Jamey and Harold spent a lot of time together and at the Blanklands. Jamey’s wife had had their marriage license revoked for emotional and material incompatibility. She married the woman she worked for and moved to Seattle to join a state-run pottery studio.

The bachelors frequented the Blanklands, where Harold spent all of his extra money on Yasmine. Yasmine for her part was pleased by the young man’s interest and spent more time with him than he paid for. So it was no surprise that she called him when she found out that she was dying.

“It came on me on Sunday night.” She only transmitted her voice, and so Harold found himself looking upon a speeded-up rendition of the birthing of far-off galaxies in the void of space.

“But that was only three days ago.”

“Meds say it’s some kinda fast-working cancer.”

“But they cured cancer, Yas,” Harold said.

“Not this kind. They said that it works on a chromosomal level. Something like that. I had to quit the road show. Sexno-more.” She giggled to lighten the mood.

“Can I see you?”

“I’m not really pretty anymore,” the disembodied Yas whispered. “And I can’t do anything.”

“I don’t need you to do nuthin’.”

“You don’t?”

“No. Uh-uh. I don’t go there for you to do stuff. I go there to see you. Shit. I’d be happy payin’ for dinner or sumthin’ like that.”

For a long span Yasmine was silent in the depths of unfolding space. Harold forced himself to concentrate on two giant galaxies colliding in the far-off reaches.

“They’re gonna take me home. My parents are gonna come on Friday to take me back to Tehran. You could come tomorrow after work if you wanted.”

“All right. At six?”

“Okay.”

“Just one thing.”

“What?”

“Where do you live?”

”You wanna come wit’ me?” Harold asked Jamey at work the next morning.

“Naw, man. Hey, I don’t wanna remember Yas like that,” Jamey said.

“That’s cold, J.”

The sandy-headed cycler didn’t reply. He was studying ghostnet on his wall monitor, reading an article and looking over his shoulder now and then.

Periodically a member of the Shaker Party embedded a ghostnet chip in the L&L system. Before the chip was destroyed anybody could enter the word ghostnet and get the weekly download, which included a banned issue of the Daily Dump . This chip had been working for over four days.

“They said it’s five marks if they catch you ghostin’, J,” Harold said.

“Shit,” Jamey said, not to his friend.

“What?”

“Somethin’s happenin’ in MacroCode Russia, man.”

“I didn’t see anything on the mornin’ report.”

“Ghost says that they’re killin’ Techs. They destroyed five labs and killed all the scientists. A general has formed an army. Shit. An army. An’ they been killin’ big time.”

“How could that be?” Harold asked. “How could they raise an army and it’s not on the news?”

“They lie on the vid all the time, nig, you know that.”

“But not about somethin’ like that, man,” Harold said, ignoring the lack of respect. “They’re not gonna lie about an army and a revolt against the biggest company in the world.”

“They say at least four hundred and sixty-five thousand people killed. That they dropped clean nukes on Jesus City.”

“That’s crazy,” Harold said.

“Okay, then.” Jamey hit a button and the ghostnet blipped off. Then he said, “M-R-L–L-Tak,” and a blank green screen appeared.

“Moscow’s L&L branch is temporarily off-line,” a friendly voice said. This was Leda, the computer voice that Jamey preferred.

Jamey turned to look at Harold.

“Don’t mean a thing,” Harold protested. “Russia’s off-line more than half the time and you know it.”

“I don’t know a thing, man,” Jamey said flatly. “And neither do you.”

“Fuck you,” Harold said.

Even though Harold knew that Yasmine’s parents were wealthy, he didn’t expect a Park Avenue penthouse high above the streets of Upper Level Manhattan. The elevator opened up inside of her apartment.

“Go down the hall to your left and knock on the last door you get to,” said the black elevator operator in a red uniform.

Yasmine had lost most of her body fat in the four days that she’d been sick. She resembled a humanlike rubber toy that had been deflated.

“It hurts, Harry,” she said. “It hurts all the time. They gave me opium and nerve killers but it still hurts.”

The fading young woman had lesions down her face that looked like the clawing mark of some predatory beast. They were red, almost iridescent.

“It’s okay, honey,” Harold said as he cradled her in his arms.

“Hold me.”

Harold tried not to squeeze the New Age courtesan too hard, fearing that her bones might snap. She clung to him with greater strength than he would have imagined. She smiled.

“Somethin’ funny?” Harold asked.

“I feel safe with you, Harry. You make me feel better. That’s kinda funny, don’t you think?”

“How come funny?”

One of the lesions on Yasmine’s face pulled open and blood trickled down. Harold pressed closer to her so that the pillow covered the bleeding.

“How come funny?” he asked again.

“Because here I am all alone and dyin’ in this big place and my boyfriend is a john.” She stopped talking in order to swallow twice. “It’s really nice.”

Harold held her for a long time after she was dead. He wasn’t ready to go on for over an hour.

“How come they don’t send a nurse up to watch her?” Harold asked the same elevator operator going down.

“Nurses, firemen, security force, everybody in city service been called up.”

“Called up for what?”

“Some kinda big emergency in the outer fiefs where the white people live. Jersey and Long Island. You know white people throw a fit in a minute.”

“Wake up, Harold! Wake up!” It was either his brother or his father, but Harold kept his eyes shut because this was a Sunday or it was a summer day. All Harold knew was that it wasn’t time to sign on to school yet. And he was sure that it wasn’t one of the days he was supposed to go in for sports or socialization class.

“Get your ass up outta the bed, nig!”

Harold sat up and said, “I told you that I don’t want you calling me that. Now if you don’t mind, I was about to sign on to class.”

“You awake, Hair?” Jamey was standing in the IT curve’s interior. The plastic screen had unfurled automatically when the call came in.

“No,” Harold said. “But I’m waking up right now and I’ll be with you in a minute.”

“Hurry up, man,” Jamey said. “The world is almost over and we ain’t got time for you to sleep.”

“Huh?”

“That general has dissolved MacroCode Russia and they’re gonna drop on New York.”

The lower half of the screen became an image of carnage in St. Petersburg. Armed soldiers could be seen running down civilians and shooting them with rifles and ember guns.

“This came over the ghostnet. I got the cube from a gypsy hacker in Soho.” The panic in Jamey’s voice brought Harold to full awareness. “The feds gonna shut New York down at six A.M.”