Chris Adrian - The New World

“I suppose I am,” Jim said. “And let me be the first to wish you a happy birthday.”

“It kind of is my birthday, isn’t it? Something smells delicious. Is that dinner?”

“Inside,” Jim said. “I think the others are all waiting for you.”

“That’s awesome,” the girl said, still pumping Jim’s hand and looking all around at the house and the sky and the orchard and the dwindling fire. “This is awesome . Are you coming in too?”

“Not right now,” Jim said. “I have a lot of work to do.” When Alice called him to dinner a little later, he said he would come when the fire was out, but when the flames had died to nothing, he went inside through a door close to the stairs and went up to his room. There he began to write out all the memories of his wife he had been holding on to in the secret, stupid hope that he would be allowed to carry them along with him into the new world. He quietly and diligently inscribed his love upon the page, pressing firmly as if to pin the words and their feelings to the paper. But since he could still remember what it had been like to want something with his whole heart and know he couldn’t have it, he said to himself, Now it really does feel like being alive again .

Jane was afraid Brian would meet her at the airport. She didn’t feel ready to see him. But it was a fizzy young lady who met her, holding up a blue Polaris sign with Jane’s name on it. When Jane approached, the girl bowed to her with her fists pressed over her heart. Jane clasped her hands over her stomach and bowed back, not sure of what else to do. Oh, Jim , she thought to herself. How could you not tell me you were joining a cult? “Greetings and salutations!” the girl said. “I’m Poppy.”

“What a lovely name,” Jane said, pretending to be a nicer version of herself. “I knew a girl named Peony once in grade school. All the boys called her Pee-on-Me, but she didn’t care. I never knew how she could be so gracious and strong but very much later I started to think she was somehow protected by the beauty of her name.”

“I wasn’t born with it,” Poppy said, very brightly of course, as they waited for Jane’s bag to come out on the carousel. Jane hadn’t dared carry it on with the Kiss inside — Hecuba couldn’t guarantee it wouldn’t set off alarms at security — and now Jane was anxious that the bag was lost, or being tampered with. “It’s my Polaris name. It’s what I want them to call me in the future. What’s yours?”

“I haven’t selected it yet,” Jane said. “And anyway, that might be premature. I’ve got one more interview left.”

“Oh, the last one’s easy! Alice asks you everything that matters. This is just a formality, really.” She gave Jane a sly smile. “But it’s the most wonderful formality ever. Once I saw campus, I never wanted to leave again. I wanted to go right away, you know. But of course that was impossible.”

“Of course,” Jane said, trying to sound sad.

“So I did the next best thing,” Poppy said. “I moved in!”

“I’m really looking forward to seeing the campus,” Jane said, which was true in its way. She had felt a tremendous pressure of anxiety behind her, building since Alice had congratulated her on becoming a Polaris Novitiate and clearing the way for her to take her final interview and become a member. Within a few days Jane had booked her flight, and Hecuba had sent her to an address deep in Crown Heights. Jane rang the bell of an ordinary-looking brownstone and was handed the envelope through the mail slot by a well-manicured lady’s hand. She never saw a face.

By her last night at home, the pressure was nearly pushing her out of the house. She said good night to her mother and lay awake with a flavor of insomnia different from the one to which she had grown accustomed in the weeks since Jim had died. She rose every now and then to sniff at the envelope a few times — Hecuba said it was totally harmless to unfrozen, full-bodied human beings. It smelled very strongly of cinnamon and paprika. She spent most of the night quietly dressing in the dark, and gave herself a whole half hour just to sneak down the stairs and out the door. Still, Millicent came down before she’d shut the door, standing like a mad shadow in the dark. Jane put a finger to her lips. Millicent put a finger on the side of her nose. Jane met a cab around the corner with sunrise still two hours away.

“Oviedo is lovely,” Jane said in the car, which prompted a snort from Poppy.

“It’s a dump,” she said. “That’s what makes the campus so amazing — you’ll be able to see the pyramid in just a minute.” And soon enough, as they rose up a highway ramp, Jane saw it glinting above the strip malls. “ Look at it! We’re still three miles away!” Poppy shouted, rolling down the windows, as if to start savoring the air.

“It’s quite large!” Jane shouted above the wind.

“Exactly as big as Cheops!” Poppy said, something Jane knew already from the brochure, but it really was something to see it in person, glassy and enormous amid the Oviedo sprawl. After they parked, Poppy led her to a sunny terrace where two other applicants were waiting on a stainless-steel bench, a married couple named Sally and Bill. “Greeting and salutations!” Poppy said to the pair. Sally and Bill did the Polaris bow, but Jane could only wave feebly. Her other hand was in her pocket, to make sure of the envelope. She took her hand away only to dry it when she was worried her sweaty palms would compromise the fine particulate nature of the Kiss. “Are you ready to spend a few hours in the future?” Poppy asked them all when she’d brought them around to the main entrance. Bill said he was born ready. Sally said she was so excited she was going to explode . Jane said she might explode too. The giant glass doors slid open.

She supposed it was amazing in there. She still felt the pressure behind her, blowing her toward the dewars, which made it hard to consider very deeply anything that Poppy was saying. Poppy loaded them onto an electric cart and toured the interior of the daylit portion of the pyramid, which receded upward into balconies and catwalks. Poppy was talking about membership services and the R&D section and the Foundation initiatives. The upper pyramid was all about bringing the future into the present, she said, while the inverted lower pyramid (the whole building extended as far under the ground as it did up into the sky) was all about sending the present into the future.

“But when will we see the dewars?” Jane asked, when she couldn’t stand it anymore. “Those amazing dewars,” she added, when Poppy looked at her strangely and didn’t answer.

“I believe those are last on the tour,” Sally said, holding up the itinerary. Jane had wadded her copy in a sweaty fist.

“Don’t worry. They’re not going anywhere… except into the future!” Poppy said. “And I should tell you,” she said, lowering her voice, “that Brian likes to quiz folks a little on the Foundation activities. So pay attention to all the details!” Jane felt a little thrill of nausea at Brian’s name, and the thought of his actual presence in the building.

“Pay attention?” Bill said. “Poppy, my dear, I’ve been waiting all my life to hear about this!”

“Can you believe we’re going to meet Brian ?” Sally asked, squeezing Jane’s arm.

“It’s like a dream come true,” Jane replied.

They went toodling along the glass-and-steel runways and catwalks and balconies and causeways, Jane feeling more and more like she was on some combination of very slow roller coaster and living diorama of the future. Futuristically styled, artificial-looking people waved at them from their workstations or work-sponsored recreations, having indoor picnics or doing yoga or playing badminton without a net or racquets. In the future, Poppy told them, Polaris would make Florida the center of the world. Jane, wishing she could say it to Jim, thought very sadly that crazy, ridiculous Florida was already the center of the world.