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TIME CAPSULE
FICTION BY JOE MC DONALD
INSTALLMENT THE FIRST
It was the greatest night of my life during the greatest summer of my life.
In all honesty, those are the best words I know to describe what went on that hot July 4th night so many years ago. And being that anyone as old as me with a memory is considered something of a paradigm which should be researched by science, I figure I know what I'm talking about. Since they once again became legal, I've found that taking a healthy dose of aluminum hydroxide pills each and every day has only helped me to remember as clear as day certain things which went on during the first seventy-five ye ars of my life. Some of you might find this hard to believe, but it is the gospel truth.
I was born in the dead of winter, on the coldest day of the year nineteen hundred and forty-nine. My mother used to tell me she was in labor for two whole days before I decided to make my initial appearance. Leave it to me to pick a day like the one I did to show up. But then again, I guess you could say that sort of set the tone for the life I would eventually lead.
So, being that I was born between two major wars...oh, by the way: let me tell you about wars. See, there was a time when people and nations and all would fight for territory. Sometimes it seemed like the whole darn world was fighting with each other. And people died because of stupidity. Innocent civilians were killed because of hunger.
Nowadays, we just sit and fight out our territorial battles on giant computer screens. But back then, people and countries were armed with projectile weapons which could kill and maim. One such weapon was called the nuclear bomb. Quite a marvelous thing, the nuclear device. It could kill large quantities of individuals in one fell swoop. No mess. no fuss. It just vaporized them before they knew what hit them. That's what happened in the Cataclysm of 01. And that's how we ended up where we are today.
Anyway, like I was saying, I was born between two wars and so were a lot of babies. We were ultimately one of the reasons the world went on the Z.P.G. program and eventually mandatory sterilization for those who violated the law. See, there used to be a time when the world was running dry and people had no open space any more. Open space is things like trees and stuff like that; stuff we only have in pictures since the Cataclysm of 01. But we didn't have nowhere left to go and it seemed we were going to pu sh each other off the planet.
So Z.P.G., long a proposed solution, became a reality.
I've seen it all. I guess you could call me a walking, talking, history of life in the last half of the Twentieth Century, which is the way we used to number before the Cataclysm of 01 caused us to start over again from Day One Year One. I saw the rise and fall of presidents and the murders of others. I've seen clothing styles change from long to short to the one piece grav. suits that keep us alive. I watched as two nations stood on the verge of blowing each other off the map, only to watch it happen some twenty years later. I remember how sweet the air used to smell before it became so toxic that we all had to retreat into glass bubbles which shielded us from the radiation.
I was there when something called Rock and Roll was born. Rock and Roll was a type of music that just made you get up and want to move your body around in time with it. It was fun to do and sometimes even gave you a chance to get real close to some real pretty women. Then there was a movement which said it was bad and we fought it. We fought it for almost a third of my life before it was finally outlawed because of the obscene behavior it caused. I'll never forget what Rock and Roll did to me. I was there at Monterey and Woodstock and Watkins Glen. There was Liv e Aid and other benefit concerts to make people aware of worldly plight.
Today we just send the military in to solve any kind of strife. Ain't that the American way?
Anyway, I guess you could say I've seen just about all a man could ever want to see. Peace, love, death, war-great triumph and tremendous disasters. I was around when man took his first steps into the great unknown called the solar system. I saw man set foot on the dead rock called the Moon. I was there when we established the first base on Pluto. I also remember the pain I saw when the stratosphere claimed its' casualties; some in plain view of those of us on Earth, others deep in space-where the picture of the tragedy is etched only in our imagination.
After the Cataclysm of 01, most folks went rushing off into space to get away from the killing radiation. Most of my friends headed for the bright red pastures of Mars. And co-workers arranged for transfers to our plan on Jupiter. Me, I elected to stay behind...you know, take care of things here. Now, that wasn't because I was afraid of dying here or that outer space would become as crowded as my mother planet once had.
It was because I wasn't about to let some fool's mistake scare me away without a damned decent fight.
As you know, the government developed the Plutonium Nitrate in 2009 and discovered that it DID cure radiation sickness. And cancer. And most of the other killer diseases which cut short our lives. And it also helped extend our lives to the point where they say many of us could live into the next century.
At least many of the young will live into the next century. When you get as old as me, you sometimes wonder if you will live forever. Or if the good Lord will still have a say when it's time to leave this world.
I'm sorry. I guess I've drifted away from the story at hand. I think my advanced age has something to do with that.
Oh well...the greatest night of my life.
It was Fourth of July, 1978. Or, since we are now in a new age and a new calendar system, that was 46 years ago. Seems like a lifetime away but it's still clear in my mind's eye as if it happened yesterday. I can see the tableau before me.
I betcha didn't think an old guy like me could come up with a big word like that one, didja?
Well, it was sure a hot one. The weatherman had said we would probably break a record which had stood since they started keeping records. Something tells me that it got well over 100 degrees...something like 120 or so. Of course, year by year, the summers got hotter and hotter because of the hole we had managed to punch into the ozone with all that crap we kept pushing into the air. By the time the Cataclysm of 01 came around, we were having July days as hot as 145 degrees.
It sure as hell made the air conditioner manufacturers really happy. It was no longer a luxury. It was now a necessity.
Like all Fourth of July celebrations, this one was filled with food and drink and plenty of fireworks. Being that this was a celebration of the birth of our great nation, fireworks were a must. Fireworks were these gunpowder doohickies which, when ignited, either exploded, flew off into the air, glimmered with bright colors or did all of the above. Nowadays, we have lasers and special effects that make these toys look primitive by comparison. but back then, fireworks, especially those which exploded into l oud crashes, were all the rage. And, in many sates, they were illegal for the civilian populace to possess-states like this one used to be before the merging and creation of Reafordville.
On this particular Fourth, I had planned on doing nothing but sitting back and watching television; what we now know as video-scanning. The Fourth of July was a national holiday: business shut down and people just relaxed. Or had visits from family members. Or threw large gatherings known as parties. These parties consisted of friends and friends of friends sitting around, eating food cooked over an open fire and drinking beverages known as beer. Beer was a fermented drink made from malt. When consumed in large quantities, it causes increased urination, slurring of speech, loosening of morals and gave one a feeling much akin to consuming a Silica tablet.
For those who didn't know when to stop their consumption of this beverage, vomiting could also result.
So here I was, with a cool drink in hand an a portable television in my lap, lying on a blanket in the bright sunshine, desperately trying to darken my skin tone. It was a ritual known as getting a tan. For reasons our best known scholars still cannot understand, the people of the Twentieth Century felt it was important to have skin which was golden brown in color. It became so important that businesses began which offered ways for the public to tan year-round. It was a blossoming business until government scientists proved inconclusively that changing the color of your skin adversely effected ones' sexual urges and also caused a deadly disease known as cancer, which was cured in 1994.
Even still, the fact that too much sun drastically reduced the "urge to merge" caused all of these businesses to go bankrupt shortly before the Cataclysm of 01. Today, we don't care about the color of ones' skin. It could be as pale as milk or it could be as black as the sky over Eroica VI. It doesn't matter anymore. Long ago, people with just the right "look" to them were considered "sex objects". There are no sex objects now. That was outlawed in Year 32.
Shortly after I had gotten comfortable and was ready to try to get tanned, my telephone rang. A telephone was the predecessor to the visi-screen comm-link we currently employ. In fact, it was extremely primitive by today's standards. Using a cable or wires, ones' voice was transmitted from place to place. As you know, today everything is beamed direct by sound and light waves, which can be received by anyone with a crystal pod(rather inexpensive as comm-links go).
Looking back, I wonder how we survived all these years listening to someone and not seeing them. I'll never forget my first experience with the visi-screen. I called a co-worker of mine, to tell her about this business proposal I was working on. She stepped in front of the screen and proceeded to tell me I had just gotten her out of the shower.
Point is, she didn't have to tell me that. It was as plain as the...oh, never mind.
Well, my phone rang and it was my friend Jeff. He was a great dude who, unfortunately, died during the Cataclysm of 01. Our scientists tried to bring him back, but he was too far gone. So they made use of experimental cryogranics techniques and put him on ice. Now I visit him once a week at the Carmenion Labs. It's really weird seeing someone you know just staring back at you like he's in a trance. Especially when you know he's as cold as a piece of haddock at O'Leary's Fish Market.
That was back before all our food was turned into intravenous fluids; back when eating was a real treat.
TO BE CONTINUED