Future Tense Fiction Read online

  Jinky and me, we are really just normal people who work very hard. But Pandora is out of the box, you know? If you asked me when I was 10 years old, would I have my body changed to be an elite gymnast? I would say yes.

  LIAM

  What would you say now?

  SVETLANA

  I would say yes.

  “Yes,” Jinky whispered, watching. “Yes.”

  The Minnesota Diet

  Charlie Jane Anders

  North American Transit Route No. 7 carves a path between tree silhouettes like wraiths, through blanched fields that yawn with the furrows of long-ago crops. Weaving in and out of the ancient routes of Interstates 29 and 35, this new highway has no need for rest stops or attempts to beautify the roadside, because none of the vehicles have a driver or any passengers. The trucks race from north to south, at speeds that would cause any human driver to fly off the road at the first curve. The sun goes down and they keep racing, with only a few thin beams to watch for obstacles. They don’t need to see the road to stay on the road. The trucks seem to hum to one another, tiny variations in their engine sounds making a kind of atonal music. Seen from above, they might look like the herds of mustangs that used to run across this same land, long ago.

  The self-driving trucks seem to pick up pace as they approach the cluster of crystal towers that rise from the horizon: the cutting-edge “Smart City” of New Lincoln. And then just as they are cresting the last rise in the road, they change direction. They veer off along one of the other North American Transit Routes, leaving New Lincoln in their rearview.

  Mason is one of those people who turns every morsel into a story: about the Napa Valley soil that gave this grape its particular tartness, or the windy Vermont hillside where sheep gamboled and munched tall grass, producing milk that became a cheese with such a complicated bite. Listening to Mason talk about food is almost better than eating. But right now, Mason is sitting at his workstation screaming and hitting refresh on the holographic display, which keeps showing the trucks careening in the wrong direction. At last he howls, making his blue pompadour quiver and causing his co-workers to beg him to keep it down.

  Normally, Mason would be worrying about the latest boy who isn’t responding to his Flings—in this case, a lovely Australasian named Richard who seemed interested just a few days ago. By rights, Mason should be concentrating on work purely to distract himself from Fling drama. But now, the Very Prairie Food Co-op is down to just one kind of sheep’s-milk cheese, and it’s not even one of the creamy ones. The cold cuts are a disaster. He should be standing out front, telling customers about the romance and the drama behind a lovely spelt bread, but the Co-op is out of it. They’re out of everything, except for some locally sourced produce from the city’s 17 vertical farms.

  It’s classic variable reinforcement: Every third or fourth time Mason hits “refresh,” the screen shows a delivery truck en route, practically at its loading bay already. One self-driving truck did actually show up this morning: half-empty, with some pasta and oatmeal on board. But then the next few trucks got rerouted. Basically, the worst slot machine ever.

  Mason’s co-workers grow tired of hearing him berate dots on a hologram, until Percy tells him to get the hell outside for some fresh air. Mason keeps his head down as he walks through the front of the store toward the exit, because the exposed bioplastic of the empty shelves feels like a kick in the stomach, and he can’t look any of the customers in the eye.

  Mason storms out into the Greatest City in the World.

  Mason grew up thinking cities were supposed to be gray, shading toward ochre in the parts made of bronze, brass, brownstone, or rusted iron. Until he moved to New Lincoln five years ago—this city is like a forest canopy, or some kind of giant vegetable patch; trees stretch their branches out from all the rooftops, and bracken grows out of every wall sconce, while ivy and other vines wrap around all the surfaces. The walls themselves are made of some kind of dense bioplastic, colored bright purple or deep blue, that “breathes,” allowing for natural cooling and heating. Not only does the whole metropolis have no carbon footprint, but also the air smells like springtime whenever Mason ventures out. Every square of the walkway (there are no sidewalks, because there are no streets) tells Mason how many steps he’s walked today, and everything that’s going on with his friends, plus news about the ongoing legislative DeathGrip in Congress. (The news services cheerily natter about “DeathGrip Day 709,” along with interesting facts: Did you know the government hasn’t had a budget in two years? So fascinating!) The billboards in the CityPlex target Mason with messages designed just for him, thanks to next-level systems that aim photons directly at his retinas. If Mason put on his Blinkers, he’d see virtual structures and companions—part of a whole other city that could be almost endless.

  To walk through New Lincoln is to marvel at human potential at its mightiest. But today, Mason looks up at all this vibrant color and sees nothing but gray. He is ramping up for some really first-class brooding when his Savant kicks up a message from Sumana and Flood: “quit wandering in circles like a drunk goose and meet us at the Bruisory, son-son.” Mason sighs, then turns on his Blinkers and heads over.

  If Mason tried to go to the Bruisory without his Blinkers, he’d get as far as some stairs and a terrace. This mostly virtual bistro has sleek wooden surfaces and old-style squeaky roll-chairs and a shimmering menu of comfort food, fancy coffees, and high-end beers. The actual decor is one big tribute to Bruisor, the hottest social network from way back in the 2040s, right before the public internet went away. The menu is all Bruisor pastiche, with playful insults in between every menu item, plus Mason’s worst underwear picture, and his whiny drunken messages to that one boy who ditched him at the club two years ago—exactly the sort of stuff that would have been posted about Mason on Bruisor, back in the day. (Everyone sees their own embarrassing info.) And in true Bruisor style, Sumana greets Mason saying, “lick goat nose, son-son,” and Mason responds, “choke on a smeg pretzel, mana-mana.” Then they hug.

  Everyone asks Mason why he looks so gloomy, and he tries to explain that the Very Prairie Food Co-op’s distributor is trying to screw them, but just then, he finally gets a good look at the Bruisor’s menu.

  “What the fletch,” Mason says. “There’s only three menu items.”

  “Two if you don’t consider peanut soup real food,” says Flood, who as usual wears a hoodie with ever-changing sarcastic phrases about smashing the hypocracy on their skinny torso.

  “The deliveries,” Vera says from behind the counter, “they just haven’t been showing up.” Vera wears a floor-length skirt and complicated bustier-halter top combo as usual, and her locs spill over her shoulders.

  Mason is so startled, he flouts the Bruisory custom, and doesn’t even bother to insult Vera, or anyone else here. “What the fletch is going on? Where are all the deliveries?”

  Half the people in the Bruisory work in white-collar jobs, like Sumana (coding), Warren (design), Flood (strategy consulting), and Amanda (UX design), and those people can’t understand what Mason and Vera are worried about. It’s only the people who work in food service, or know something about food, who are losing their minds.

  “It’s kind of a cliché to say that most cities are only about nine meals away from total anarchy,” says Jolene, who’s an actual food scientist at New Lincoln University. “But New Lincoln is so efficient and streamlined, we may have succeeded in getting it down to just seven or eight meals.” Nobody laughs at this.

  “I still don’t get the problem if a few self-driving trucks took a wrong turn,” says Amanda. Vera’s longtime girlfriend is a curvy blonde who wears tons of jewelry with clock faces all over it.

  “Maybe it’s the robot uprising at last,” snorts Warren, who has a kind of retro “crusty punk” thing going on.

  “They probably just got rerouted because some algorithm decided they were needed elsewhere,” agrees Sumana.

  “I’m sure you’re right,” Mas
on says. “Meanwhile, I guess I’ll have a grilled cheese sandwich.”

  “Sorry,” Vera says. “We literally just ran out of cheese.”

  Mason sighs. “I guess peanut soup then?”

  Jolene takes the words food scientist off her Savant profile, because she’s sick of friends of friends and exes of exes pinging her nonstop, trying to get some kind of explanation. Whether they’ve gone to the big supermarket or one of the smaller ones like the Very Prairie Co-op, they’ve noticed the half-empty shelves, and the absence of the usual fluttering augmented reality displays that tell you all about the vegetable momos, the tsuivan, the kitfo, the string-hoppers, the black pudding, the five kinds of spiced lentils, the wild-caught salmon, and the house-marinated venison. Or else their favorite restaurant shut down temporarily. Or they know someone who works at a restaurant or grocery store, and that person is having a nervous breakdown. These people saw the reports about droughts, blights, monoculture crop collapse, soil exhaustion, and pesticide-resistant bugs, and always figured it was someone else’s problem.

  After all, they live in New Lincoln, the “smart city” where you could have urban density and a cutting-edge urban lifestyle, at a cheap enough price for all the white-collar workers whose labor had been devalued by the latest superadvanced software. A post-scarcity city.

  Jolene’s mother was an immigrant from the Dominican Republic who loved Dolly Parton with an unwavering fierceness, and she’d decided to name her firstborn daughter after the best thing about their new home. Growing up with an unusual first name helped make Jolene more of an introvert, and left her with less tolerance for a hundred people in a row asking her the exact same question.

  Mostly, Jolene hangs out with the same handful of people she’s known since she moved here a few years ago: Vera, Samanthor the Mighty, Mason, Sumana, Flood, Amanda, Warren, and a few others who rotate in and out. Most of the time, they sit around eating Vera’s famous stinky-bean-curd frittata and guzzling vodka, or they eat chips and dip at someone’s house, or they share lasagna at that place that puts truffles in everything. But today, they sit around a game-holo, playing some interactive strategy game, without even any snacks.

  “I never realized how much my social life revolved around food,” says Flood, more bemused than upset. They’ve shaved new streaks into their prematurely gray curly hair, and they’re wearing cargo pants so baggy they’re almost square. “Until there wasn’t any.”

  “Don’t be dramatic,” says Samanthor (who’s using “she/her” pronouns at the moment, according to her animated pirate shirt). “There’s plenty of food, it’s just not fancy.” She hefts a can of peas for emphasis. Everyone is hanging out in the loft apartment where Samanthor the Mighty, Mason, and Warren live, which has exposed bioplastic girders and a window that changes to reflect everyone’s mood.

  “Just saying, the lack of restaurants and snack options puts a dent in my social life,” Flood says.

  “Can’t go on much longer,” says Sumana, who has an unshakable faith in her fellow engineers. “It’s just a glitch in the system.”

  “It’s been over a week since anyone saw a delivery truck,” says Mason, whose interactive T-shirt has sported nothing but angry cartoons lately. “Nearly a week and a half.”

  “Soon the same algorithm that’s sending all the trucks somewhere else will realize that we’re in dire need, and everything will swing the other way,” says Sumana. “We’ll have more trucks than we know what to do with.”

  “Oh yes, the algorithm will save us.” Flood’s sarcasm is curiously relaxed, without much bitterness in their voice.

  At least with these seven friends, Jolene won’t have to hear the same terrible questions, over and over again.

  Here’s what nobody wants to hear from Jolene: Experts have warned for decades—since even before Superstorm Sandy hit New York and closed off the tunnels, and Manhattan suffered shortages almost instantaneously—that cities have fragile supply chains. City planners have learned to prepare for hurricanes and other natural disasters, but nobody predicted that a simple combination of logistical problems and crop failure could be worse than any storm. New Lincoln’s 17 indoor vertical farms and assorted rooftop gardens and orchards can’t save the city from depending on faraway warehouses and narrow delivery pipelines. Even if all 3 million residents wanted to eat nothing but lettuce, kale, and arugula, the vertical farms collectively produce only enough for half a million meals per day. They were designed to produce artisanal salads and to supplement the food brought in from elsewhere, not to sustain a population.

  “But I don’t mind eating canned food and frozen pizza for a while,” says Amanda in a breezy voice. Then, maybe worrying that this sounded too Pollyanna, she adds: “I mean, shit. We take our incredible standard of living for granted here. We were lucky to wind up in a city where our skills are actually valued. There’s nothing wrong with a reminder to be grateful.”

  “Why don’t you lay an egg and then suck on it?” says Flood, as if they’re back in the Bruisory and everybody’s supposed to lob silly fake insults. Amanda just rolls her eyes.

  Samanthor fasted in college to protest the government’s refugee policies, and she remembers how the hunger started gentle, like, oh, you just skipped a meal, and then with no warning there was a jagged chunk of rock, dredged from a silty riverbed, in your stomach. After even one day of fasting, everything hurt, and you had to exercise ridiculous caution when you started eating again, or you’d throw up everywhere. The hunger strike had probably made the tiniest scratch on the xenophobia-industrial complex, but afterward Samanthor felt like she had skin in the game, and she’d remembered that awful feeling every time she’d felt tempted to stay home from another protest or petition drive.

  But this time, there’s no sense of virtue in the dull pain that has settled in Samanthor’s chest, or the sick feeling in her arms and legs. She feels like she ran a marathon, even though she’s been sitting still for ages.

  Somehow, they went from having enough nonperishable and semi-perishable food to get by, if they didn’t binge, to not quite scraping by. The grocery stores have completely emptied out, even of the stuff that nobody really wanted, like the high-fiber cereal that looks like actual twigs, the sweaty root vegetables, and the organic caffeinated sour mints. People have been breaking into the rooftop gardens and even people’s window boxes, ripping out every tomato vine and celery stalk. All of the trees and parklets are studded with crude traps for squirrels and pigeons.

  Mason still keeps checking the holo-display with the dots moving around, but it’s mostly a running joke at this point. The Mayor’s Office and the City Council keep putting out messages urging people not to panic, because this is just a temporary glitch, and New Lincoln is still a brilliant shining metropolis. But some malign piece of code somewhere keeps deciding that New Lincoln, with its population of midlevel computer engineers, quality-control experts, content creators, architects, marketing experts, musical theater geeks, and service workers, isn’t a priority. It’s been 20 days since the last delivery.

  Samanthor has a constant headache, and she can’t stand bright lights or loud noises, and Mason’s squawking is driving her bonkers, and the automatically adjusting picture window is putting weird black shrouds on the yew trees and crystal towers outside in response to her foul mood. She’s not ready for how much this hunger isn’t just in her stomach. She keeps wishing she’d stayed in Denver, where the bright new smart buildings jostled next to ancient skyscrapers in an architectural mishmash, but at least there was plenty of good barbecue.

  “I feel gross,” growls Warren, who’s been raising his “crusty punk” act to a new level since he doesn’t have enough energy to shave or shower. “I gotta go to work tomorrow, and I can’t even think straight.”

  “I feel like barfing, even though there’s nothing to barf up,” responds Samanthor. “This feels like the flu, only flu-ier.”

  Mason yells something else, and both of his roommates glare at him.<
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  At last they go down to City Hall, where they spy Amanda, Vera, Flood, and Sumana among the people protesting the lack of official response to this disaster. Under the big CityPlex signs, a woman with a bullhorn demands that some kind of food distribution and rationing program be set up, and that the local government declare a state of emergency.

  Samanthor can’t deal with this crowd, the meaty bready wet-doggy smell of so many people all in one place. She feels like barfing or screaming or punching someone or keeling over.

  “We need to go where the food is,” Warren says as they walk away from the protest.

  “Where’s that?” Mason says.

  “You know where,” Warren says. “The place you’re always talking about. The sheep farm where they graze on a grassy hillside, near the orchard where the climate is just perfect, and the river where the salmon spawn and the trout do backflips.”

  “Um, those are all different places,” Mason says.

  “That’s where I want to go.” Warren seems not to have heard Mason. “The place where it all comes from. The food place.”

  “Let’s go,” Samanthor says.

  There’s supposed to be high-speed rail connecting New Lincoln to both Chicago and Kansas City, but it never got finished because of the DeathGrip. So they rent a self-driving car, a preloved Zaeo Superlux, and throw everything they can carry in the back. They get about a dozen kilometers outside New Lincoln, and then the car just stops. Plenty of charge left in the battery, and the engine seems fine, but the car’s software license won’t allow it to drive on the North American Transit Route. Even telling the Superlux to drive on back roads seems to trigger some terms-of-service issue that keeps them clicking through screen after screen.