Snapshot of the Future 2047

Peter Smith climbed slowly out of the cab, his old joints protesting after the long ride. The Mexican cabby dropped his bag on the sidewalk and uttered a few words of Spanish as he climbed back in and ran the fare. Then he was off, the whir of the electric motor taking him to his next appointment. He stood there looking at the house, closing his coat against the biting wind. Once upon a time his grandparents had lived in this neighborhood. He remembered the neat lawns surrounding neat houses. He recalled stories of how his father had roamed the neighborhood on his bicycle without fear of violence or crime, the neighborhood bully excepted. Now all the homes had bars on the windows, sparse clumps of grass struggled to survive is the small spaces between the houses, paint was peeling on every exterior and there were few cars in the driveways. This neighborhood, and America itself, had changed much in the fifteen years since he had been here last. He had flown in from the Cayman Islands, his home for over thirty years, for his son’s funeral. He had died of colon cancer, unheard of in his country. While it had been detected early through the yearly screenings and exams mandated under the Universal Health Care System, the wait for the specialist was six months and treatment was delayed for a year and a half. By then it had spread and it was too late. Such foolishness, such a waste. He had wished he could have helped but his son had kept his condition secret until it was too late. Peter supposed that was his fault. He had left America as he saw it slipping more and more quickly into socialism, as he had seen liberty die, as he had seen the character of the American people themselves change for the worse. He tried to convince his son and his young wife to leave with him but they were too stubborn, to conditioned perhaps into accepting the new ways as normal. His son probably was too proud to admit he had been wrong, that the socialism Peter had railed against was not as good as he had been told. Now he was gone. Peter shook his head and picked up his bag, heading for the front door. “Grandpa!” called Darryl from the front doorway. Peter had to look twice to make sure he was at the right house. The man who stood before him was thin, very thin, with sunken eyes and protruding cheekbones. The wide smile revealed a missing tooth and his hair was greasy, as if he hadn’t washed it in a few days. The last time he had seen his grandson, the last time he had been to the States, was for Darryl’s High School graduation, fifteen years ago. He still had the picture of that athletic young man on his wall at home. “Darryl?” he asked tentatively. “Of course it’s me,” he said, grabbing Peter’s bag and shaking his hand. “Come inside, it’s freezing out here.” Peter stepped over the threshold and into the living room. There was a threadbare couch in the center and a few old kitchen chairs. The bare floor was scratched and dirty, the walls needed new paint. In the corner a viewing screen was projecting a comedy with canned laughter. He started to unbutton his coat but he thought better of it. It was still cold inside and his constitution, accustomed to the tropics, rebelled at the thought. “I guess the weather’s a bit different from the islands, eh Grandpa?” “So it is. Do you think you could turn up the heat a little while I’m here?” “No can do. Thermostat's controlled by HUD, ‘cooler in the winter saves us from global warming’,” he repeated mechanically as if he were a preschooler. “Don’t want the ocean to rise and cover your island,” he added, chuckling and flopping on the couch. “I see,” was all he could say. “Where’s Tammy, and little Mikey?” “Tammy’s got the evening shift at the moment, and Mikey’s at school.” Peter looked at his watch. “It’s almost seven o’clock!” “Yeah, isn’t it great. When Tammy and I are on the same schedule we get plenty of time together in front of the viewer without the little guy to bother us. He’s in school for twelve hours a day and we only have to work for six.” He leaned back and put his hands behind his head. “Si, life is good.” “Six hours, why don’t you get another job and move out of this....place,” he said, making a great effort to hid his disgust. “Not allowed, and why should I. I’ve got everything, a big house in the suburbs, a job, plenty of leisure time and my government allowance goes up every year.” “Why don’t you spend it fixing this place up?” “Ain’t my house.” “What do you mean, you rent this place?” “Rent,” he laughed. “No one rents any more. Government provides houses for everyone these days, sometimes I forget how long you’ve been gone. Government provides everything. Our house, our health care, our jobs, our food, speaking of which, this is our meat week for the month so you caught us at a good time. Tammy’s really good at making our ration stretch. ‘a little less for us, more for the world’.” The little slogans were really beginning to annoy Peter. “What is your job, by the way?” “I work with Tammy in housing distribution. You know, we determine when it is time to move people up or down in their residence based on size of family and stuff.” “Did you ever get to college? Didn’t you want to go into physics?” “That never worked out. College is all lottery now, put every high schooler’s name into a big pot and pull out those that get to go. Being white, my name only goes in once, other kids get two markers, go whether they want to or not. But I guess that’s fair. Everyone has the same chance.” “Fair?” Peter couldn’t believe what he was hearing, it was worse than he had imagined. “Don’t you see what you’ve become? You’re a damn serf, a slave to the government, they make all your choices for you, they’ve ruined your potential and brainwashed you into being happy about it!” “A slave?” laughed Darryl. “I’ve got lots of choices. I can choose what I watch on the viewer, over twelve hundred channels (all content approved by the government, Peter knew), I can choose what I have for dinner tonight (based on a nutritional allotment approved by the government), I chose my job (out of the current available government openings), we can spend our allowance on what we please instead of what we need, all that is provided.” “My God Darryl, you really don’t see. I wish I could take you back a hundred years, or even fifty. People worked hard at jobs they chose, or so they could choose in the future. And because they worked hard for the things they had, they appreciated them. We raised our own children in my day, we didn’t turn them over to the government. Darryl, it is risk, it is achievement that makes one feel alive and....” Peter stopped in mid sentence. Darryl was looking at him with a look of incomprehension mixed with horror. He had been shouting. “So what, all I have is nothing? That hurts Grandpa, Dad never talked like that.” With that he grabbed a bottle of pills by the table and swallowed a few. He turned his attention to the viewer in the corner. “My like is good. No worries.” Peter sat quietly as he watched Darryl’s eyes glaze over in his drug induced stupor. So this was America today. A land of lazy serfs for whom everything is provided and from whom little expected. A people happy with the illusion of freedom, a people whose deepest thought is a slogan they learned in a government school. A people devoid of passion or ambition. The end, thought Peter, is certainly in sight.

If you enjoyed this story..... You would also enjoy Memoirs of a Former American, a look at the next sixty years of American history.

Suburbs of Reading, Pennsylvania, February 23, 2047

Peter Smith climbed slowly out of the cab, his old joints protesting after the long ride. The Mexican cabbie dropped his bag on the sidewalk and uttered a few words of Spanish as he climbed back in and ran the fare. Then he was off, the whir of the electric motor taking him to his next appointment.

Peter stood there looking at the house, closing his coat against the biting wind. Once upon a time his grandparents had lived in this neighborhood. He remembered the neat lawns surrounding neat houses. He recalled stories of how his father had roamed the neighborhood on his bicycle without fear of violence or crime, the neighborhood bully excepted. Now all the homes had bars on the windows, sparse clumps of grass struggled to survive is the small spaces between the houses, paint was peeling on every exterior and there were few cars in the driveways.

This neighborhood, and America itself, had changed much in the fifteen years since he had been here last. He had flown in from the Cayman Islands, his home for over thirty years, for his son’s funeral. The son had died of colon cancer, unheard of in his country. While it had been detected early through the yearly screenings and exams mandated under the Universal Health Care System, the wait for the specialist was six months and treatment was delayed for a year and a half. By then it had spread and it was too late. Such foolishness, such a waste.

Peter had wished he could have helped but his son had kept his condition secret until it was too late. Peter supposed that was his fault. He had left America as he saw it slipping more and more quickly into socialism, as he had seen liberty die, as he had seen the character of the American people themselves change for the worse. He tried to convince his son and his young wife to leave with him but they were too stubborn, too conditioned perhaps into accepting the new ways as normal. His son probably was too proud to admit he had been wrong, that the socialism Peter had railed against was not as good as he had been told. Now he was gone.

Peter shook his head and picked up his bag, heading for the front door.

“Grandpa!” called Darryl from the front doorway.

Peter had to look twice to make sure he was at the right house. The man who stood before him was thin, very thin, with sunken eyes and protruding cheekbones. The wide smile revealed a missing tooth and his hair was greasy, as if he hadn’t washed it in a few days. The last time he had seen his grandson, the last time he had been to the States, was for Darryl’s high school graduation, fifteen years ago. He still had the picture of that athletic young man on his wall at home.

“Darryl?” he asked tentatively.

“Of course it’s me,” he said, grabbing Peter’s bag and shaking his hand. “Come inside, it’s freezing out here.”

Peter stepped over the threshold and into the living room. There was a threadbare couch in the center and a few old kitchen chairs. The bare floor was scratched and dirty, the walls needed new paint. In the corner a viewing screen was projecting a comedy with canned laughter. He started to unbutton his coat but he thought better of it. It was still cold inside and his constitution, accustomed to the tropics, rebelled at the thought.

“I guess the weather’s a bit different from the islands, eh Grandpa?”

“So it is. Do you think you could turn up the heat a little while I’m here?”

“No can do. Thermostat’s controlled by HUD, ‘Cooler in the winter saves us from global warming’,” he repeated mechanically as if he were a preschooler. “Don’t want the ocean to rise and cover your island,” he added, chuckling and flopping on the couch.

“I see,” was all Peter could say. “Where’s Tammy, and little Mikey?”

“Tammy’s got the evening shift at the moment, and Mikey’s at school.”

Peter looked at his watch. “It’s almost seven o’clock!”

“Yeah, isn’t it great? When Tammy and I are on the same schedule we get plenty of time together in front of the viewer without the little guy to bother us. He’s in school for twelve hours a day and we only have to work for six.” Darryl leaned back and put his hands behind his head. “Si, life is good.”

“Six hours, why don’t you get another job and move out of this....place,” Peter said, making a great effort to hide his disgust.

“Not allowed, and why should I? I’ve got everything, a big house in the suburbs, a job, plenty of leisure time and my government allowance goes up every year.”

“Why don’t you spend it fixing this place up?”

“Ain’t my house.”

“What do you mean, you rent this place?”

“Rent,” he laughed. “No one rents any more. Government provides houses for everyone these days; sometimes I forget how long you’ve been gone. Government provides everything. Our house, our health care, our jobs, our food. Speaking of which, this is our meat week for the month so you caught us at a good time. Tammy’s really good at making our ration stretch. ‘A little less for us, more for the world’.”

The little slogans were really beginning to annoy Peter. “What is your job, by the way?”

“I work with Tammy in housing distribution. You know, we determine when it is time to move people up or down in their residence based on size of family and stuff.”

“Did you ever get to college? Didn’t you want to go into physics?”

“That never worked out. College is all lottery now; put every high schooler’s name into a big pot and pull out those that get to go. Being white, my name only goes in once, other kids get two markers, go whether they want to or not. But I guess that’s fair. Everyone has the same chance.”

“Fair?” Peter couldn’t believe what he was hearing. It was worse than he had imagined. “Don’t you see what you’ve become? You’re a damned serf, a slave to the government, they make all your choices for you, they’ve ruined your potential and brainwashed you into being happy about it!”

“A slave?” laughed Darryl. “I’ve got lots of choices. I can choose what I watch on the viewer, over twelve hundred channels” (all content approved by the government, Peter knew), “I can choose what I have for dinner tonight” (based on a nutritional allotment approved by the government), “I chose my job” (out of the current available government openings), “we can spend our allowance on what we please instead of what we need, all that is provided.”

“My God, Darryl, you really don’t see. I wish I could take you back a hundred years, or even fifty. People worked hard at jobs they chose, or so they could choose in the future. And because they worked hard for the things they had, they appreciated them. We raised our own children in my day; we didn’t turn them over to the government. Darryl, it is risk, it is achievement that makes one feel alive and....” Peter stopped in mid-sentence. Darryl was looking at him with a look of incomprehension mixed with horror. He had been shouting.

“So what, all I have is nothing? That hurts, Grandpa. Dad never talked like that.” With that he grabbed a bottle of pills by the table and swallowed a few. He turned his attention to the viewer in the corner. “My life is good. No worries.”

Peter sat quietly as he watched Darryl’s eyes glaze over in his drug-induced stupor. So this was America today. A land of lazy serfs for whom everything is provided and from whom little is expected. A people happy with the illusion of freedom, a people whose deepest thought is a slogan they learned in a government school. A people devoid of passion or ambition. The end, thought Peter, is certainly in sight.

Patrick Samuels www.patricksamuels.com

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