Chris Adrian - The New World

“I promise you,” he said, even though he had told her five times already that he wasn’t going to make any promises, “we’ll get him back.”

There was Sondra from Menlo Park in 1985 and her social worker Alice, and Franklin from Albuquerque in 1992 and his social worker Alice, and Judy from Detroit in 2035 and she had an Alice too. Everyone had an Alice, who were all (Jim’s Alice told him) of the same presence but not the same substance ; they all acted and sounded like the same person, but no two looked the same. There was Brenda from Northampton in 2041 and her Alice, and Eagle from the Wisconsin Freestate Experiment in 2049 and her Alice, and Blanket from the United Islands of Atlantis in 2067 and her Alice. Folly, a tall black woman, came from an orbital ring habitat in the year 2085; her Alice was an albino. And then there was a thin person of indeterminate sex, who introduced itself to Jim as Ahh! from Lacus Oblivionis upon the moon, who had glowing multicolored hair and was translated in the year 2101. Ahh!’s Alice was as sexless as its client. In the evening of Jim’s first day, all his fellow residents in the halfway house celebrated his arrival with a feast.

“They think they’re special,” said Sondra, his leftward neighbor at the long farm table, “just because they’re from the future. Which could not be more relative. Right?”

“Exactly,” said Franklin, on Jim’s other side. “They may be from the future, but they’re not from the future . I bet you a hundred bucks we all get out of here before they do.”

“Is there still such a thing as money?” Jim asked.

“Who knows?” Sondra said, raising her glass as if to make a toast but only glaring at everyone. “We can’t know, can we, until we make our Debut. I like that. Debut .” She made jazz hands at them. “It sounds like the future is one big musical.”

Jim noticed his own Alice sitting in a little cluster of social workers, and waved. That morning, she had let him stare out the window until he cried himself out again, and then she said, “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” For a moment he thought she meant the pain in his heart, but of course she was talking about the view over the orchard and the creek to a series of rolling wooded hills. “Are we in California?” he asked her.

“No.”

“Italy? Tuscany?”

“No.”

“Where are we?”

“Let’s go for a walk,” she said. She drew him out of the bedroom, pointing out his bathroom as they passed it and telling him she’d teach him how to use the fixtures later. She walked him through the house, identifying all the rooms, which she called not by their function but in association with some person she said loved it best. “And this one is Judy’s favorite,” she said in a little solarium upstairs from his room.

“Who’s Judy?” he asked. “Who are these people you’re talking about?”

“Your crèchemates, of course,” she said. “Now there are nine of you. We learned that too, that loneliness delayed or diminished the Debut. So we bring you out in clusters, for fellowship and for love, until your time here in the house is over.”

“Oh, I see,” Jim said calmly, though the thought of other people in the house made him want to start crying again. It was a few more rooms before he could ask, without his voice breaking, where they all were.

“Camping!” Alice said. “But they’ll return soon.” They were in the kitchen, Sondra’s favorite room, which opened directly onto the terrace. As Alice took him into the open air, Jim wondered if he was dressed properly to go outside — loose white silk pants and a sleeveless shirt — or if this was just what men wore in the future, Don Johnson pajamas, while the women all dressed like sexy nurses. Alice was patient when he slowed down and stepped cautiously on the terra-cotta tiles of the terrace. They were warm underneath his feet.

“Can I ask you…” Jim started to say, but she shushed him. They were entering the orchard — it was apple or pear trees or both. He couldn’t tell because the fruit was all so small and young.

“No questions. Just walking and listening. With your ears and your skin. Listen with your toes .”

“But what if she’s here?” Jim asked. “It’s not too crazy, is it? To think she might have followed me?” When Alice tried to put a finger to his lips he grabbed it and held on tight. “I won’t let go of your finger until you answer me.” But his hands were sweaty and she popped her finger out easily.

She sighed, then frowned. “If your former wife were here,” she said, “you would never know it. Not on this side of your Debut. The challenge is the same for all of you, no matter when you lived your first life. The same for woman, man, or other. If she were here, the challenge would be the same for her.”

“She’d have to forget me?”

Alice made one slow, grave nod.

“But then we might be reunited again, eventually, after the Debut?”

“You are facing the wrong direction,” Alice said, grabbing him by his shoulders and turning him irresistibly. “If you are going to speak when you ought to be listening, then you should at least ask questions that can be answered.” She gave him a push. “Now listen . With your toes!”

“But a person can’t listen with their…” he began to say, but his toes convinced him otherwise before he could finish his sentence. “Oh!” he said. It wasn’t really listening, of course, but his toes were taking information out of the grass that seemed to be more than just tactile. “Oh, that’s nice!” he said, going step by step through the orchard. Alice followed. “You will be ready to make your Debut,” she murmured behind him, “when you have utterly Examined and emptied yourself of every memory of your past. That is your only job while you’re here in the house. But it’s easier to consider, isn’t it, when you are listening with your toes?” They passed through the orchard and over the creek, then went farther, past a barn and through a meadow, up and down a hill and along the edge of a wood, Alice all the while describing what Jim had to do to become not just a visitor in but a citizen of the new world. “Incarnation, Examination, Debut. Always in that order. You’ve got to be empty before you can be filled. And yes, there will be a test here and there, and daily exercises to help you on your way, but we can’t really test you on this any more than we could do it for you. We’ve learned better than to try to decide for you what part of who you are doesn’t depend on who you were or who you loved . Not even our best quantum mindsurgeons would dare ever try to wield such subtle knives. So you have to do it. You find the memories. You make the cuts with a knife that you make yourself .” She was quiet then, though Jim could hear her stepping behind him — he was distracted by his feet and toes, so sensitive now that he barely had room in his head to appreciate anything except how it felt to walk on the damp green moss that covered all the ground beneath the trees.

“Mind surgery?” he asked, turning around. But now he was alone in the woods. “Alice? Hello?” He thought he heard her sigh behind him, but when he turned it was nothing but trees. “Goddamn,” he said. They’d been walking only for an hour on the way out, but it took him almost five to get back, and he might never have found his way if he hadn’t crossed his own lost wandering path in the woods and been calm or exhausted enough to notice the tingle in his feet when he went where his marvelous new toes had already been. It ought to have been nicer to be alone then, once he knew it was just a matter of time and distance before he came back to the house. But loneliness made the wrong kind of room in his head, inviting anxiety instead of exultation, and nostalgia for all the things he was supposed to remember so he could forget them again. Might he be able to live without Jane, he asked himself, if he couldn’t think about her all the time? Wasn’t that just what happened, when you finally outlived your grief?