If only we could learn from an imagined future...
~~~
Chelsea went to bed late the night the world ended, more than a little concerned about the state of global affairs. She'd spent hours riveted to the television set, watching the pundits relate the bitter news of the latest Gulf War's escalation, so she was exhausted by the time she finally snuggled into the hollow next to her husband's sleeping form. Before she fell asleep herself, she barely had time to wonder how long it would be before the bombs dropped.
When she awoke the next morning, everyone was gone and the world had changed.
❖
Awareness came hard, as always. She lay huddled in the warm cocoon of the comforter, fighting it. Tom was no longer beside her, she noticed; already up, then, planning to make the most of this bright Sunday morning. He was one of those annoying morning people, and she kinda hated him for that. She screwed her eyes shut against the light that pierced the blanket, trying to sink back into sleep, but sleep would have no more to do with her. Groaning, she threw the blanket aside, opened her eyes — and screamed.
She and her bed were sealed under a pristine transparent dome… but the rest of the bedroom lay in ruins. The furniture was gone, the plaster was cracked, pitted, and stained, and dust lay thick over everything — including the apex of the dome. There was no glass left in the two bay windows on the north side of the room; the sills were half-rotted away, and beneath them, a thick blanket of soggy leaves had accumulated. The carpet, what was left of it, was stained a filthy brown. Huge blooms of moss and mildew spread out from the windows, and scraggly weeds were growing in the leaf mat on the floor.
She shook her head forcefully. No. Those couldn't really be weeds. She might be willing to believe the rest of the mess was due to a natural disaster of some sort, like maybe a hurricane; this was Houston, after all. She might even be able to make herself believe that she'd slept through the entire catastrophe. But she didn't believe the weeds.
Still shaking her head, her mind numb from drowsiness and confusion, she got up, stepping gingerly over the floor toward the edge of the dome. She reached out and touched it; it felt like some kind of plastic, and she noticed that it was pierced by a row of small holes near the floor.
Air holes, she thought automatically. She examined the filthy piles of indeterminate debris on the floor outside the dome and looked toward the door, except the door was gone. In the empty frame stood something blocky, gray, metallic. "What the hell?"
At the sound of her voice, a bright yellow light began blinking high on the thing's chassis. She knocked on the plastic, and just as she did, the thing in the door addressed her in a soothing baritone: "Mrs. Bach?"
She stared at it, eyes wide, for a long time before she replied, in a tiny voice, "Yes?"
"Please stay where you are, and don't panic. There's been a national emergency. On the night of June 15, 2031, the United States was attacked by an unknown assailant. A Rescue Team has been notified and dispatched to your location. When they arrive, please accompany them to the nearest Relocation and Reunion Center."
"I — I don't understand. Why do I have to relocate? Why am I in this plastic bubble?"
"It's for your own protection, ma'am. You've probably noticed some indicators that quite some time has passed since the attack, Mrs. Bach, but please don't concern yourself with that at the moment," the voice said calmly. "We're here to help you. Don't worry. The Rescue Team will explain in more detail."
"Oh, really." She struck the plastic hard with the side of her fist. "What's this crap about a Relocation Center?"
"At the Relocation and Reunion Center, you'll be reunited as soon as possible with your surviving family. Do you have any questions? I'll be happy to talk with you until the Team arrives. My name is Michael Trent, and I —"
Her mind blanked for a moment, and then she understood, all too well.
The bombs had dropped last night, and she'd slept through it all. And then some.
❖
Chelsea Bach was standing quietly, facing the sentinel, when the Rescue Team arrived. The leader tapped his lapel and said, "We'll take it from here, Mike. I guess she stonered?"
"Looks like," the voice at the other end sighed. "I imagine the realization hit her pretty hard. I tried to be gentle..."
"Don't worry about it — happens all the time. You did what you could. Rivas out." He thumbed the heat-sensitive switch on the sentinel's flank that retracted the protection dome, then stepped forward and touched the woman lightly on the shoulder. "Miz Bach? I'm Lieutenant Craig Rivas. I'm in charge of this Rescue team. You all right?"
No answer. He tapped her lightly on the cheeks and shone a flashlight in her eyes; her pupils shrank, but he got no other response. Rivas sighed and touched his label. "Houston Central, this is Rescue Team Leader Halo Apache Three. Mrs. Bach does in fact appear to be suffering from a catatonic reaction. Thanks for trying, Mike."
"Copy, Halo Apache Three," Trent replied, discouragement in his voice. "I advise standard —"
"Hold it," Rivas barked. The woman's stance had changed; she stood hunched now, eyes clenched shut, a low moan escaping her lips. "We have a reaction, repeat, an emotional reaction. She —"
"Damn right we have an emotional reaction!" Chelsea shouted, punching him hard on the shoulder. "What the hell happened? Where are my kids? Where's my husband? Are they alive? Are they okay?"
Rivas glanced at his teammates, both of whom had moved into defensive stances the instant she struck him, and snapped, "Holster your batons. That's an order. She's just a little scared."
Frankowsky complied immediately, but Jackston refused to sheath her stun-baton. In her lilting Mersey accent she stated, "That Donaldson kid last month was 'just a little scared' too, Leftenant, and Johnny Ro's still in hospital 'cause of it."
"Private Rohlander will be fine, Corporal," Rivas said in a firm shut-the-hell-up voice. "Put it away. Miz Bach is just confused right now."
Eyes bright, Jackston holstered her baton, as the Bach woman yelled, "Damn straight I'm confused!" Then she made a visible effort to compose herself. "The Russians," she declared. "They did this. Or maybe the Canadians. They've been edgy ever since Trump imposed all those tariffs!"
Well, that was unexpected. It didn't connect until he remembered the second-to-last American president, who had once accused Canadians of walking across the border in stolen American shoes, and in his second term, had imposed crippling tariffs on Canadian goods. That former president was still sleeping at Mar-a-Lago. Taking a deep breath, Lieutenant Rivas said, "Actually, ma'am, we're not sure who did it. We think it might have been the Saudis, but there's, um, not much left in that part of the world. We still had a few ICBMs left, see, and well..."
She digested the information for a long moment, then asked, almost briskly, "Is my family dead, then?"
He knew the basic post-War history of the Bach family. All of them had survived the stasis bombs; the mother was just the last to awaken. He said quickly, "No, not at all. Everyone's healthy and safe."
"And me? What's happened to me?"
He looked at her, trying to determine if she'd stoner on him if he just flat-out told her. He hadn't, but he'd seen people who had. It wasn't easy to get them back once they'd fallen into themselves. Whether it was a side effect of the attack or just some self-coping mechanism, he didn't know, but it happened to roughly a third of the newly awakened. Somehow, he didn't expect she'd flee inward, so he told her the truth. "This'll sound strange, ma'am, but... well, you've been asleep for the past eight years."
He was proud of her. She didn't stoner; she just said, "Oh. No wonder I have to pee so bad," and then she fainted. So had he, and he'd only slept three years.
❖
They brought her up to date at the Relocation and Reunion Center, where they gave her full access to detailed histories of the past eight years, as well as her own file, a slim but detailed précis of her family's history since what the global news media called "Dreamtime" began. The date in question was June 15, 2039: precisely eight years after the night she'd fallen asleep. She'd missed the world's second nuclear war, which reduced much of the Middle East to a radioactive dead zone. She'd missed the birth of her first grandchild. And she'd missed the fall of the United States of America.
The Last Gulf War had been just one of series of firecracker wars the U.S. and its allies had fought in the Persian Gulf region since the 1990s — but this time, all the cards were in Middle Eastern hands. Decades of military budget cuts following the dissolution of the Soviet Union had left the U.S. military in hideous shape, but the country was determined to continue to fulfill its traditional role as the Policeman of the World and Watchdog of Democracy—which was ironic, since democracy had never really taken hold in the Middle East, and now never would. The end came when stasis bombs were airburst over two hundred North American cities. They caused minimal damage, except to biological organisms. Vertebrates exposed to the quick flash of exotic quanta were shunted into a state of suspended animation so total that it was almost indistinguishable from death.
Those who weren't asleep when the bombs hit were put to sleep instantly, causing close to a million deaths nationwide as automobiles crashed, airplanes fell out of the sky, and workers dropped in place, sometimes into deep fryers, cement mixers, and other dangerous machinery, some shattering skulls or bleeding out from accidental injuries as they hit the ground or floor. Others drowned in bathtubs or as they enjoyed midnight swims, and more than a few suffocated during sex as the full weight of their partners came down on them.
On June 15, 2031, almost six million people had lived within a seventy-kilometer radius of Houston. The next morning, fewer than two thousand woke up.
❖
Two days later, Chelsea had lunch with her Rescue Team Leader, whom she had discovered was a fully accredited psychological counselor — which was why he'd been in charge of her Rescue Team in the first place. In the past eight years, they'd learned that it was a good idea to have psych personnel on hand when a victim of the attack woke from stasis. As she spooned up a sip of a very good vichyssoise — the French were in charge of provisioning in this sector of the Former USA, or FUSA as some called it —she asked about something that had bothered her. "If we don't know who did it, then why did we nuke the Saudis and Iraqis?"
Rivas took a long drag on an e-cig and puffed out a plume of fragrant vapor. "Knee-jerk reaction. We retaliated automatically, taking out the greatest perceived threats — the Joint Chiefs thought the airbursts were conventional nukes, you see — and seventy-five minutes later there were no more Saudis or Iraqis. North Korea didn't fare much better. They're basically Stone Age now."
"Good! " she whispered forcefully.
He shook his head. "Bad. Radiation doesn't respect national boundaries, and we, uh, overdid it. Tens of millions of people were killed all over the Middle East. Even most of Israel's a wasteland now. We were just lucky the batch aimed at North Korea was mostly duds. And we still don't have any proof the Arabs were involved, just beliefs."
"Oh my God," Chelsea moaned. "I had family in Israel."
"Yes. I know." He put his hand on hers. "It was... pretty awful. It was still awful when I woke up, three years later." He looked away for a moment, his eyes distant. "We're lucky there's still an America at all, actually." He sighed, switched the e-cig off, and set it aside. "The rest of the world was horrified by our response... justifiably, I think. So they got together and dismantled what was left of the U.S. government. And we couldn't do a damned thing about it, because our effective population was a tiny fraction of what it had been."
He noticed that she was finished with her soup, and stood. "Ready for the rest of your orientation tour? We can check out the archives, find your new quarters, and get you issued your Universal Card so you can eat and get in contact with any friends who've awakened. Don't expect too many of them — they say it's early yet."
"Yeah, sure." She'd already found the archives and was sure she could find the rest on her own, but Rivas made her feel safe... and she knew that he couldn't help but keep talking about what had happened. It was a kind of self-therapy for him, with the added benefit of helping others who needed it as they re-entered the World That Was and tried to come to grips with the World That Died.
"Two million people," he told her later, when she asked how many Americans had woken up on June 16. "Out of 350 million. You can't keep a country this big operating with that few people. Canada and Mexico were going through the same thing, and so were the Caribbean nations, even Cuba. So after a while the UN dismantled their governments too and put us all back together as the North American Protectorate. With their help, we've managed to muddle through for the past eight years."
"North American Protectorate." She shook her head. "I always expected the US and Canada might unite someday, but I didn't think it would take something like this."
"Surprised us all."
Her laughter was brittle as spun sugar. "One thing I still don't completely understand. Why'd you just leave me there in my house all those years? That kind of thing doesn't do wonders for a girl's self-esteem, y'know."
He stopped mid-hall, and turned grave, dark eyes on her. "You would not believe how many people died when we disturbed them. Officially, it was about a hundred thousand, but I suspect it was closer to a million. Whole towns died. So now it's standard policy to erect a protective dome, station a sentinel, and leave the Sleepers right where they are."
"Oh. I get it." She looked at him uncertainly. "The Orientation Officer — he told my class that about 75 million people have awakened so far —"
He cut her off. "Our best guess is that we'll still be recovering people for another fifty years or so. Your family was lucky. Your house was a lot more solid than most, and you were in the radiation shadow of a hill."
Just then, Rivas' comtab buzzed. "Rivas," he said to the air, then listened for a moment, his expression thoughtful. "Sure. I'll tell her." He looked at Chelsea, his eyes a little haunted. "Your family's been assembled. They're here."
"I —" she caught her bottom lip between her teeth."Um, maybe I shouldn't see them yet." She clutched the case folder in her hands so tightly that her knuckles turned white. This was the folder that told the convoluted tale of what had become of her family while she was lost in time.
"Nonsense," Craig told her, reaching out to take her hand. "No matter how much they've changed, how much they've grown apart, they're still your family. They still love you."
"You really think so?" she asked, her voice almost a whisper.
"I know so." His hand tightened. "Voice of experience. Things have changed, but... well, things always change, no matter what."
She looked at him. For the past two days, as her family members had been traced to their new homes throughout the far-flung Protectorate, he'd been her constant companion, briefing her on this nightmarish situation she'd suddenly found herself in. He had been with her, had comforted her when she had cried over the time she'd lost, the time that had taken her husband and children and turned them into complete strangers. She knew she could trust him.
"I've been through it," he told her. "No matter what's changed, you're better off facing them and easing them back into your life, and you into theirs. Now: Are you ready to see them?"
"Yes, " she said, smiling through her tears. "I'm ready."
"I'm proud of you, Chelsea." Without another word, he walked her to a conference room, where he touched his comtab and said, as he slipped out the door, "You can send them in now."
❖
In the end, it was Craig Rivas who helped her survive the tentative, painful reunions and all that followed. What got to her most was not the fact that her husband had remarried after having her declared legally dead two years before; no, she'd expected something like that. It hurt, but she'd expected it. He'd been alone for four years before then, and it might have been decades before she woke. His new wife was pretty, and seemed very nice, not jealous at all as they spoke about their life together, and she even laughed a little.
Timothy, Cindy's toddler, was a surprise — but Chelsea felt that she could get used to that; she'd always loved little kids, and Cindy was so happy to see her again that they both cried over it. "I came to see you every year on your birthday, Mom," her suddenly grown-up daughter said. She'd slept a bit less than two years. "I knew you'd be back someday, and now here we all are, a family again."
Brent, though; he was the real shocker. When the bombs burst, he'd been burrowed under the covers in his dark, closed room in the back of the house, which faced toward the south. The entire house—brick and solid, as Craig had mentioned—had been between him and the stasis blast. He'd slept for less than a month, had been the first in the house to awaken, and had been fortunate to survive the chaotic aftermath of the war.
When she'd gone to bed a few nights before, he’d been a mischievous six-year-old. Now he was a gawky adolescent in love for the first time, about to start high school. He was a stranger, and she barely recognized him when he shuffled into the room. Worse, he hardly remembered her at all.
Their meeting was awkward, to say the least. They were separated by an insurmountable gap of eight long years, almost 3,000 days of independent experience on his part, as well as his subconscious but understandable belief that she had abandoned him. To him, the woman he saw was a revenant, risen from the dead, someone he knew only from photographs and yearly visits to the mausoleum where she slept. His real mother was a childless blind woman who had taken him in shortly after his awakening.
He was no closer to the rest of the family, who had all awakened years after he had.
They tried to talk, but nothing much came of it. They had nothing in common anymore except their genes. In his reality, his biological mother was dead, no matter what his eyes told him, and his real mother was still alive and waiting for him down the hall. In hers, Craig Rivas was closer to her, more real, than this pimply fraud who had replaced her son when her back was turned. In the end, he left long before his allotted time was up, fleeing back to the arms of his adopted mother and his new girlfriend.
Chelsea had no arms to flee to but those of Craig Rivas.
❖
The Rescue Team approached the house in silence. It was a ramshackle, tumbledown ruin now, but the atavistic garden that made up the front yard suggested it hadn't always been this way. In fact, a Rice University anthropology professor and his two sons slept on in the remnants of the River Oaks mansion. The prof’s wife and daughter had only just Awakened, coincidentally within an hour of one another, and were by now almost hysterical with fright and confusion.
Lieutenant Rivas went first, pushing aside a thick growth of wisteria that obscured the gaping front door. The sentinel stood a few yards away, in the middle of the living room, facing two figures in ragged nightgowns. It was too late for the mother; she was already standing still as a statue, staring at the sentinel, saliva drooling from one corner of her mouth. The daughter was screaming at her: "Mom, what's wrong? What's wrong with you?"
"Miss Kyle?"
The girl spun toward the team. "About goddamn time. Who are you?"
"I'm Lieutenant Rivas, the psych officer in charge of this Rescue Team. Don't worry about your mom — she'll be fine, given a little time and therapy. Are you all right?"
"Do I look all right?" Lila Kyle snapped. Her face was an intelligent one, shrewd; it was obvious she'd already figured out some of it. "It was the Saudis, wasn't it?"
"Probably. We're not entirely sure yet, though."
"Because we nuked 'em till they glowed and shot 'em in the dark, am I right? Okay. Okay." The girl took a deep breath. "So, how long have we been out?" Damn, this girl was sharp; just the fact that she'd been able to get herself and her mother out of the protective domes without any help had already proved that, and that she'd put it all together from minimal evidence spoke volumes.
Chelsea Rivas sighed. "I hate to tell you this, Miss Kyle, but you've been asleep for the past twelve years..."
[ Pikers love feedback! Comment on this article . ]