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= ORWELL IN ORBIT 2084 =

Dystopia USA

by John Argo

Page 10.

Chapter 3: Time Town

When Mack awoke, he was comfortably strapped into a plush chair in a semi-dark room. His hands were loosely clasped in his lap, over a thin blanket covering his lower torso and upper legs. A seatbelt secured him to the high backed chair. He wore a brown jumpsuit and soft, comfortable black slippers. He was sitting a bit laid back, with his legs crossed at the ankles.

A gray cat with golden eyes purred and rubbed against his slippers. The cat looked at him questioningly.

"Cats are always about lunch," Mack said to the cat. Mack looked around at the richly carpeted floor, the books on the walls, a ladder to reach the high shelves, a small wooden coffee table whose top was finished with red Morocco leather. It reminded him of being on a train, in an odd way, because there was an empty seat beside him, and two empty seats faced him. He strained to look over his shoulder, and saw more facing arrangements fading into darkness behind him. On his right was a great big circle made of brass, like the rim of a clock, a shining band about six inches wide. Unlike a clock, there was nothing but blank wall on the surface inside the circle.

The cat squeezed its eyes shut and opened them, a gesture of greeting. It yawned, showing razor teeth and a pink tongue. It emitted a yowl of need.

"I wish I had something to give you. But I don't know where we are, or what's going on. I don't know why, and I hardly remember who I am."

The door opened, and several young men and women poured in. They wore dark blue smocks, dark trousers, and soft boots. They brought a tray of food, a tray of medicine, a data tablet, all sorts of other junk and equipment. With them were an older man and woman, both 60ish and dressed elegantly in black. Their clothing looked almost like normal 21st Century business attire. As two pretty young technicians swung open a shelf in the armrest, on which to put his breakfast, the older woman rubbed her hands together briskly and sat in the seat opposite Mack, next to the wall. "Well, well, Mr. Mackinson, it looks like we have you put to rights. Are you comfortable?"

The oldish man petted the cat and picked it up. "I see you have met Donald."

Mack shrugged. "I have no idea where I am or what's going on. I remember being in pain, but not any more. I can't remember…"

The older man let the cat go, which ran away. The man joined her in the other facing seat. "Of course, Mack. You don't remember much of anything, and you won't remember us when we're done. Go on, eat your breakfast. I hope it's to your liking."

As the technicians started to leave, Mack lifted a metal lid on his tray. He saw under it two eggs on a plate, sunny side up; several strips of bacon cooked just to the edge of crisp, the way he liked it, the way…[someone]…used to make it; an English muffin with butter melting in its just-browned peaks; and black coffee. "No orange juice?" A technician anxiously ran from the room. The older man said: "We're getting it for you as we speak." He handed Mack a card made of a white plastic-like material—a digital business card. Mack saw their images on it—and salad-mix alphabet writing. The calligraphy had a certain busy though orderly elegance—almost Chinese—but still reminded Mack of an explosion in a noodle factory. "You may call me Tenc, and this is The Honorable Lady Chivet Betize, Third Postal Lord. I am General Tenc Hoseth of the Postal Service." The way he said it, her last name sounded like 'beat haze.' The calligraphy floated, sort of turned in its watery digital grave, and sensible American English letters drifted up into view, so he knew how to spell these foreign names.

Mack chortled. He put the card aside. Postal Lord? "Let me taste this to see if it's real." He picked up a bacon slice and chewed on it. Made his mouth water. "It's good! I seem to remember being a policeman in the United States, but it's all very dim." He shifted positions, eager to stand, but didn't quite have the strength in his legs. He did manage to undo the seatbelt. Seatbelt? In a library?

"What's your last memory?" asked Lady Betize. She looked a healthy, tan sixty with smooth skin just beginning to wrinkle. Her hair was silvery and full, combed in a wave with a gold comb in it. General Hoseth looked like a puffy haw haw in those tea commercials, one eye slightly larger than the other. His wrinkles were more pronounced than hers. His hair was long and combed over one side, a bit mussy.

Mack thought hard as he stared at the two. A young blonde woman in a smock rushed to his side with a glass of chilled orange juice. "I see me standing at the edge of a river. It's foggy. There is a craft of some kind hovering there. A UFO. There's a dead body hanging out the door, and there are people fighting in the water."

"That's it?" asked Lady Betize. She looked at Hoseth, and they both nodded in satisfaction.

"There's more," Mack said, struggling to push further in time.

They instantly looked at him with worry.

"Something about a car…blowing up…fire from the sky…a huge UFO overhead…"

"Go on," Hoseth urged, as if offering poisoned meat to a strange dog. Mack got the reading: these people were not his friends. But were they his enemies? There was something warlike and ruthless about them.

Mack shook his head. A kitchen. Pain. He shook his head, trying to free the memory.

"Your orange juice," said LadyBetize. She and Haw Haw both eyeballed the glass the girl had just brought.

"Are you going to kill me?"

Her face widened in shock, and he guffawed. "Kill you! Haw haw! That's rich. We just saved your life." He laughed until he turned red, slapping his knees with his hands, until she jabbed him in the side with her elbow. She took over, saying: "Mr. Mackinson, we need your help. It's not a matter of choice for either you, or us."

He picked up the orange juice and sipped a little. It was just perfect—cool, tart, orangey. He drank it down thirstily, closing his eyes, and that vision of a kitchen morphed into someone else's house. The other people's kitchen table had a brass vase on it with red, white, and blue flowers, on a white crocheted doily. There were some letters and a small package on the corner of the table, waiting to be opened when the strangers who lived here came home from work. A strange dog barked at Mack—a little black and white Boston terrier. Mack apologized to the jumping, anxious dog. Mack let himself out, promising never to intrude again, and turned the lock so that, when he clicked the door shut, nobody including himself could enter without a key.

Lady Betize glowed. "That's more like it."

General Hoseth leaned forward. "Mr. Mackinson, you won't remember this meeting when you go into the field. We do have to explain a few things to you, so that certain instructions will remain in your deep memory where neither you, nor our enemies, nor our allies, nor the Long War government of your people will be able to read them. Your mission will be very important to our nation, and we thank you ahead of time for your commitment."

"Why should I do anything for you?"

"Bravo," Hoseth said, "now we're down to the nub of it."

"There's the key, isn't it?" said Lady Betize.

Mack got it. He didn't know what they were holding over him, but it was something so colossal and soul-smashing that he knew he had no choice but to comply with their wishes.

"Sadly, Mr. Mackinson, our government is forced to not always play gently. In a few moments you'll see why. We have our backs against the wall. We're fighting for our lives, and the little things that you people have done in the past grow and grow, the way a sound will go out, and sympathetic tuning forks pick up on it, and soon a whole world is humming with that sound. Waves of do and don't propagate like light, Mr. Mackinson."

"What on earth are you talking about?"

"On earth," Hoseth said with a nod.

"In the future," Lady Betize. "Look." She lifted a finger to the wall beside her. A button appeared out of nowhere, and she pressed it. Inside the great brass framing circle, the wall turned into a giant viewing screen. Mack jumped back. For an instant he felt a shock of vertigo as trillions of miles of outer space hung frozen on his right.

"Don't worry," she said. "It's a solid wall. What you are seeing is a tubed image captured on the outside and broadcast on this viewing screen. It's just like having a window, but without all the silly glass that would be so fragile."

"What is this?" Mack said.

"Eat your breakfast and you'll find out."

"Huh?" He stared at the two wiggly eggs with their happy yellow eyes, and the bacon which he'd been nibbling.

"Meme cocktails," said Haw Haw. "It would take us years to explain it all. Eat and you'll understand."

"Before it gets cold," she added in a motherly fashion.

Hoseth added: "We have to pour it all into you. Time is something we don't have enough of here, even though it's Time Town. You'll see why. We are literally running out of time."

Mack ate his breakfast. Servers brought him more coffee, and tea for his hosts. As he ate, he looked out and started to get it. The coffee particularly seemed to jolt those tiny memory clusters into his bloodstream, whence they rushed into his brain and joined their fellow bioelectrical constructs dancing around on the wetly glistening folds of the cortices. As he drank his coffee, it all became clear to Mack. His era was critical in the history of mankind, because (broadly) his contemporaries discovered the true cosmos beyond the Milky Way, and made the first fledgling steps in to space. The cosmos, the Temporale, and Time Town explained themselves to him, direct from his breakfast to the brain.

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