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= ORWELL IN ORBIT 2084 =

Dystopia USA

by John Argo

Page 20.

After work, Kenny walked the three miles from Barrio Logan to his third floor walk-up in an ancient brick building in Golden Hills.

As he walked, government holograms would speak to him in slogans. Some also had signs next to them, stenciled in black letters on plain white cardboard, for the few citizens who could still read.

The hologram speakers were always either a white-haired man in a business suit, who looked like a preacher, or an attractive middle-aged woman in demure clothing, who looked nice but not sexy.

Work Makes Us Free, said the hologram man.

Productivity Is Your Concern, said the hologram woman.

Got The Time? Donate An Hour, said the hologram man—that was the famous campaign when threat levels were red, and the Great Shepherd asked people everywhere to step up war production and donate extra time.

Smoking Helps The Economy, said the holograms.

And this one, on the public library wall outside: Say No To Big Government. Say Yes To Just Enough Government—Corporations Gladly Take Care of the Rest For You.

On the church across the street: Faith, Not Reason. Trust the Shepherd.

Down the street: Be Free—Buy Guns.

And: The Lord is My CEO—I Shall Not Want.

The money Kenny saved on bus fare amounted to an extra meal or two over a week's time. Besides, the walk did you good. It wasn't quite as hot in late mid-afternoon, though the sidewalks still shone as if the heat trapped in them was glowing, and the silica used to make them two centuries ago glittered with diamond intensity. The building had once been a wealthy doctor's mansion. It was now subdivided into a warren of efficiency studios for artists from the city and poor workers from the barrio. As he came into the heights, Kenny could see the city skyline to the north—a lovely dream in the late sunlight, the afterglow of the Good Old Days that lasted more than a century and collapsed in the early 21st Century. To imagine the old beauty, you could squint a little, ignoring ragged spots like the copper spire that hung a bit sideways, the hole were a clock had been on a tower, and the black dots of missing windows. Some of the skyscrapers were still functioning, up to the tenth floor or so; they now had crank-windows. The air conditioning no longer worked in those huge buildings, and nobody today knew why you didn't just let a fresh breeze in. The Old People had done things in such complicated ways.

To the west, you could see the ruin of the great bridge. The Coronado Bay Bridge had lost its high span a generation ago because nobody could afford to keep up the paint and maintenance, so the bolts were rusting through. The middle span dropped during an earthquake. The city department that saw to such things no longer even existed. All these high places—the bridge, the skyscrapers—were now just roosting places for birds. Occasionally, someone still walked a mile up the bridge to jump, as they had during the Good Old Days. Kids often went up there to launch model airplanes and watch them sail away into the ocean, into the city, down into the barrio. Children still had their innocence. They could go fishing off the piers, run wild in the canyons, wander down miles of beach. There were fewer people, too, which made for lots of empty houses and ruined buildings. In some of these lived crazy men, who grabbed kids and took them into the dark places and they never came out again. The radio and video never talked about things like that. Society focused on helping the Great Shepherd lead America through these frightening and dangerous times, back to prosperity. Like the skyline, prosperity was a hope that never stopped being beautiful.

Kenny stopped at the library. Ignoring the download and tablet rooms, he went to the old print books in back, where almost nobody went these days. He wandered around the shelves in a cool haze and silence that was one of his favorite things in the world. The book section was small. Most people didn't read. They had tablets of all sizes on which they watched video or downloaded games to play. Who needed reading when all public instructions (Stop, Yield, Caution, Stairs, etc.) were either voice or holograph, always nice to look at and sounding sensuous. Stop was a hand upheld, Walk was a little white man, Go was a green arrow, all very clever.

Half this book room consisted of religious volumes approved by the city, which paid for them, after all, with tax money—Bibles, Book of Mormon, tracts, sanctioned philosophers, and so on. He wasn't interested. He craved the escape of dreamy books, fictions, fantasies. They were books that the Church and the Government frowned on, but they reluctantly permitted some of them to circulate. After all, so few people read, and these were old classics, so what was the harm? He ran his fingers over the worn spines of books he'd already read—1984, Brave New World, The Iron Heel, It Can't Happen Here, The Man Who Was Thursday, Time Out Of Joint, The Crying of Lot 49, Fahrenheit 451… and more, and more… and when he found one he'd put off reading, he excitedly took it to the checkout desk. The title was Daybreak 2045. The librarian was a stern, white-haired man with a red face and a certain bleak kindness. "Got your permit?"

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