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Pax America: Robert's Story
Room 227, American History 1
New Washington Junior High
New Washington, Brazil, United States of America
May 16, 2003
I heard Mr. Grant sigh deeply. "Good luck, kids. I just hope, for the world's sake, that your generation doesn't make the same mistakes as mine."
The bell rang, and we all headed out. Well, most of us at least.
I'd lost family members during 9-11, like a lot of kids. About half of the class of thirty stayed behind to talk with Mr. Grant.
I decided not to.
My name, by the way, is Robert Ulrich. My friends call me Robbie.
My dad was an officer in the Viking military, now an officer in the U.S. Army. Mom is from Ireland, which recently joined the Union as the seventy-fifth state.
I live in New Washington. Lincoln named it that after the Spaniards who originally built the settlement were wiped out with the death of Queen Isabella. I don't remember the Spanish name of the town - the name is actually from an old Spanish dialect called Portuguese - but I remember that the American translation is "River of January."
Whatever that means.
Next period was lunch, then Computer Sciences. After that was math and then school was over for the weekend. Next week was finals.
I probably wouldn't need to do much studying. CompSci wasn't a hard class, I knew all the formulas and such that I'd need for my Algebra final. English - a breeze. History - a real breeze. Chemistry - a little harder, but I knew the chemical formulas we'd covered that year. P.E. didn't have a final, so I had everything pretty much covered.
I read somewhere that the secret of getting ready for a big test is being relaxed and not thinking about it for a couple days. Well, the weekend was certainly good for that.
"Hey, Robbie, wait up!"
That would be Theodore "Tad" Wilson, my best friend. He isn't the best student in the world, so I'd have to help him out getting ready for finals. As usual.
"You have to stay after class again?"
"No. I notice you didn't."
"I went through the whole thing. I went to the funerals. Mom and Dad were a lot of help."
"Oh, yeah. I can just understand why the memory would be kinda fresh and all."
We reached the cafeteria. I palmed the panel by the door, and the door opened. Tad did the same and we both went in.
The pad recognized both of us and told the cafeteria chefs that we were there. Students are given lunches according to their individual dietary needs, which were updated from time to time by the school physician. That's the way it's done all over the country, but it started here in N.W.
Lunch that day was chicken, rice, and potatoes. Vitamins were deposited on the side of the tray, personalized for each student.
The American government takes care of the schools and health plans - among other things - which may be why Americans live longer than any other people in the world, even the Iroquois.
"So do we have band practice after school today?"
"Just drummers," I said. I grinned. "Like me."
"Sure. You get the cushiest job in the band. Hitting stuff."
"We're the most important people in the band. We keep time for everybody else."
Tad nodded. "Okay, okay."
"And it's just for an hour. Mr. Van Owen wants to make sure we've got it down before the parade next week."
"I know. 'We Love the President Day.' Geez, man, it gets old after the first ten thousand times."
"We haven't been alive that long. And it's only once a year besides."
"I know that, I'm exaggerating." We found a table and sat down. "But it feels like it. It gets old, that's all I'm saying."
"Even the fireworks?"
Tad paused. "Well, maybe not the fireworks. I still like those. And the bands playing in the town square, just outside the Second White House, are pretty cool. Who do you think they'll get this year?"
"Who knows? Probably a local band or something. Nothing wrong with that."
"Yeah. So have you got any plans for this weekend?"
"Nothing but the Festival, so far. And, of course, the dance."
"I finally talked to Spring River. Someone asked her to the last dance, but I'm gonna ask her to this one."
"Spring River... Oh, yeah, that Iroquois exchange student. You mentioned her in class once."
He laughed. "Are you that into school? Don't tell me it's your parents and their love of American education."
I shrugged. "I like learning stuff."
After we ate, we went our separate ways.
After lunch was Math, then P.E. And then drum practice.
And, finally, time to go home.
I got out of practice with the other drummers just in time to hear the PA shouting, "Last call for route 109. Repeat, last call for one-oh-nine. You have one minute."
CRAP!
I ran as fast as I could to catch up with the maglev bus.
Maglev isn't a new technology - it was first instituted as part of the scenery at the Atlanta Olympics in 1996, then at the most recent World's Fair in Lisbon, New Spain, and is now all over the country, thanks to hard work from the American Worker Corps. Maglev means "magnetic levitation," and is the most energy-efficient form of transportation in the world. It uses little energy, and is now completely computer-controlled.
But of course, the maglev buses still had the yellow-and-black patterns associated with American school buses, so other commuters remember that the bus has the right-of-way in most situations.
Computer control also meant that if necessary, the cops could take control of a car being used by an escaping criminal, and drive it straight to the nearest police station.
I palmed the pad by the door just as it began to close.
What would traditionally be the drivers' seat of the school bus was occupied by a computer. This one had a large red, electronic eye, and it swiveled on its universal joint to look straight at me. I felt a flash in my right eye as the computer scanned it to confirm my identity, then said, in a female voice, "You're late, Ulrich."
"Band practice," I explained. "You know how it is."
The computer obviously did not know how it was, but the eye nodded. The bus computer could access my daily schedule in a moment. You gotta love sentient A.I. "Get on. Your seat's still empty, so you'll be okay. Drop you off at home?"
"No. Just the nearest intersection to home," I said, getting into my seat, second on the right, near the window. No one ever took the seat next to me.
The computer didn't ask why - the videodisk for the first Lord of the Rings movie had just come out, and there was s tore near home that was selling them.
Besides, I'd be home before dinner either way.
The computer closed the bus doors and headed off for home.
N.W. is one of the great cultural centers of South America. The majority of obscure immigrants came here and the descendants of refugees lived there. The city was populated by former Zulus, Spaniards, Celts, even Koreans. As a result, it was a very eclectic culture.
There was a lot of great music as well. Right along with American rock-and-roll, pop and other stuff, Latin music was big. It was popularized by Spanish immigrants and descendants of the Mexica and the conquered Incas. It had a great rhythm to it, and the culture was everywhere.
To its very core it was an American city, partly because of that cultural richness. American culture was the envy of the world. Whatever fad came along in America was quickly being replicated worldwide. American movies were shown in nearly every theater on Earth, American books filled bookstores all over, and so on.
New Washington was also a center for trade. Even though sea trade was not as important in a world with jets transporting goods to every corner of the globe, it was popular. The airport received tourists from all over the planet. American communication satellites were often launched from the recently-built Space Center in N.W.
The architecture shows roots from all over, but at the heart of the city were the American signature - skyscrapers, towers of plastiglass and titanium alloys that seemed almost to touch the clouds - and actually did in some cases, so the uppermost parts of skyscrapers actually had to be pressurized.
The maglev system traveled between the large buildings in a lot of cases, but the school buses usually didn't go more than a hundred feet off the ground, even in the more condensed parts of the city.
It was usually commuters who ended up riding the sides of buildings, going up and down the maglevs on the sides of skyscrapers.
Skyscrapers weren't made out of steel and glass anymore, like they were in the old days, especially at the higher altitudes. It was mostly synthetic materials, sorts of plastics and alloys that high up.
I live in the suburbs. Suburbs are pretty common, since not everybody wants to live in apartments in the big city. The suburbs were where you raised families. Then the kids moved into the city, and eventually, more likely than not, they eventually ended up back in the suburbs to raise their kids. I'm surprised that no one just stays in the suburbs to save some time.
But anyway.
I picked up the disk and headed home.
I guess you could call me a 'latchkey kid' most of the time. But in my parents' day, the term actually made sense, because there were actual latches and actual keys involved.
These days, most doors are magnetically sealed, and I had to palm the pad by the door and let the Eye-Dentifier scan my iris to confirm that it was me. Palm prints were easy to fake, after all.
The door opened.
I walked inside, to find that the house was much cooler. I shivered a little, and smiled. Mom and Dad, as you may or may not remember, come from much colder climates. And even with the jungles around the city cleared, the area was pretty warm. It was the largest American city this close to the Equator. Scandinavia and Ireland pretty much never get this warm.
We could afford having the air conditioning going full-blast. Dad's status as a military advisor at the Second White House got us a lot of money. Mom was content to stay home, even though she was taking classes.
I called out to her - in American, of course, since Celtic was a dead language now, mostly. But even so, strangely enough, American sounds almost exactly like old English, just without the accent and with a lot of words the English never thought of. We Americans took a lot of words from other languages and made them our own.
Dad was different. When he was home, he spoke Scandinavian half the time, and so almost from infanthood I've been bilingual. Dad speaks American, but it's rudimentary at best, so I speak a fluent Scandinavian.
New Washington is a polyglot city, so no one really seems to mind.
But it was just Mom at home for now. She was in the TV room, with the TV off, listening to U2. She mostly likes them because they're from Ireland and actually released an album in Celtic recently.
I like their music, too, and I guess Mom got into them because of me.
Mom was a big believer in national pride. Every year on St. Patrick's Day, she goes out and hangs an old Celtic Irish flag next to the American one. The newer state flag is almost the same as the old Celtic version.
"Mom, I'm home," I said.
"I heard you come in," she said. "Where were you? The school bus came by twenty minutes ago."
"At the video store getting Lord of the Rings. The new expanded version. I know you and Dad like that movie."
Mom shrugged. "I liked the books. The movie was good, too. So how was school?"
"Same old, same old. We're pretty much done with American History for this year. And all the other stuff."
"About the conquests?" she said, sadly.
"Liberations, really. The Celtic administration of the time oppressed those that they had conquered, like the English and the Spaniards. Things were better in Ireland because the population was mostly Celtic."
She smiled sadly. "I suppose they were oppressive. Things are much better now."
"Yeah. But here people have the option of saying that they don't like the way things are without fear of reprisal. Freedom of speech. Same in the territories and Iroquois-England."
"I still can't believe that the Iroquois took over there."
"Hiawatha loves English culture, and particularly Shakespeare. And he and Elizabeth were good friends until the Celts killed her."
Mom sighed. "I know that my people were never perfect, but we did what we felt was best."
"I know, Mom."
Mom sighed. "It's almost time for the news." Then she turned to the TV. "TV: On: CNN."
The TV turned to CNN where the global news was playing.
There was a riot going on in London. A group calling itself the ERA (English Republican Army) was causing a large riot near Buckingham Palace, now home to the Iroquois-English Congress. The riot was led by Charles Windsor, supposedly a direct descendant of Elizabeth. But since she divorced her first husband, it was hard to figure it out. Recent genetic tests had proven his claims to be true.
The so-called ERA had a small band of followers, most of them people who had been brought up hating the Iroquois. It was interesting to see that European xenophobia was still alive and well in certain places.
The Iroquois police had dealt with the rioters. Windsor - affectionately called 'Prince Charles' by ERA supporters - would spend the night in jail.
The CNN anchor theorized that the ERA wanted a return to the old English monarchy because these royal descendants would, by right of bloodline, get the job immediately.
The only royal descendants, the anchor continued, who seem not to share the dissident opinions of their other family members, were Charles' estranged wife, Diana, and their two children.
Diana went on record as denouncing her ex-husband's efforts to rebuild the old English Empire, and went on record as being a proud citizen of Iroquois-England.
The next Olympic Games were taking place in Athens, Greece. The Winter Games after that were taking place in Italy, then the Summer Games in Beijing. That was possibly because Mao was working hard to rehabilitate himself.
America was sure to dominate again - but that was my opinion. The United States and Germany - and to a lesser extent Scandinavia - had been competing specifically against each other in those games for decades.
Festivities were being held to celebrate the hundredth anniversary of man walking on the moon. The descendants of Wilbur and Orville Wright were going to help with the celebration taking place at the NASA Space Center in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. I was hoping I could be there.
After the news they went back to covering the mediations between Lincoln and Cleopatra. They were meeting in Thebes, with the Great Pyramids in the background. She had really spared no expense for Lincoln's arrival - large red Egyptian flags were everywhere, and even the Pyramids were decorated with the hammer and sickle - in solid gold, which gleamed even more brightly in the sunlight than the ancient covering of white limestone covering the ancient structures. [OCC: True story. The Pyramids were originally covered with white limestone, but the covering was stolen by thieves. Don't ask me why.] She had even brought out the solid gold cap for the largest of the Pyramids. She had last used that gold cap for the Millennium celebrations back in '01. They had visited exhibits at the Egyptian museums, and the tombs of her greatest advisors from ages past. Lenin, who had been assassinated recently, was in a brand-new tomb in Hieraconpolis. (one of many Egyptian cities with a Greek name, this one meaning "city of the hawk" - in honor of its patron god, Horus) The city had been home to Egypt’s first king before Cleopatra came to power.
The Egyptian practice of mummification had gotten better with the passing of time. Lenin's sarcophagus was encrusted with solid gold – they showed it on TV, after Cleopatra allowed CNN cameras into the tomb for the first time in history – with a very lifelike death mask, traditional Egyptian headdress… but instead of the traditional mace and flail that most Egyptian mummies were depicted as wearing – traditional Egyptian symbols of authority – he wore a solid gold, life-size, hammer and sickle crossed on his chest, one tool in each hand so the two tools were crossed as on the Egyptian flag.
The Egyptian flag, by the way, depicted the three pyramids with the gold hammer and sickle crossing the image of the Great Pyramid.
Creepy.
The French in the Philippines... sorry, New France... were getting along okay. Joan of Arc ruled quietly from her palace in New Paris – formerly Manila – but still let her advisors do most of the work. She wasn’t the young immortal who’d taken control of ancient Paris six thousand years before. Her spirit was broken.
Sometimes people wondered if wiping her out wouldn’t be considered a mercy.
Not that anyone could have tried, since the island was guarded by battleships – old American battleships sold to the French.
The French barely had flight capabilities, so they were pretty much trapped, except for the number of French refugees who regularly headed for South America.
The news was okay, but it got kinda boring when they started looping it again and again. CNN had to show news twenty-four-seven, after all.
“TV: Off,” I said. “So, Mom, how was your day?”
“The usual,” she said. “I mostly just hung around. I’m glad we bought those little robots that vacuum and clean the windows and dust things. I hardly have to do any work anymore.”
I smiled. “They have the upgrades available for download on the ‘Net.”
“You do that,” she said, chuckling. “Computers are more your department anyway.”
“Oh, gee, thanks,” I said, smiling.
She shoved me a little bit and I got up. She got up to start on dinner. Dad would be home soon.
“So how was everything else in school?” Mom asked. “Other than history.”
“Like I said, same old, same old. Nothing really new, since it’s almost time for finals.”
She nodded. “Oh, okay.”
I sighed. I was tired, and there was no homework. I felt like maybe playing a computer game.
I headed for my room. It was dark.
“Lights: on. Level four. Computer: On: Check messages. TV: On: History Channel.”
The appliances did as instructed, and I sat down at my desk, the TV going quietly behind me.
The computer whirred a little, then the keyboard shimmered and appeared. The monitor turned on, and the computer itself went through daily diagnostics. It only took a few nanoseconds.
The computer was new: Pentium 18, 64 Gigs, holographic flat-screen, WEBcam, holographic keyboard, voice-activated. But then the voice-activation tech was nothing new. It had been around since the '90s.
I checked my messages. A couple from my friends asking about the dance, if I was going or not. I read them all, deleted them, and then signed off of the Internet.
I sighed. “Computer: Load: Civilization 3 - Play the World.”
To be continued...
New Washington Junior High
New Washington, Brazil, United States of America
May 16, 2003
I heard Mr. Grant sigh deeply. "Good luck, kids. I just hope, for the world's sake, that your generation doesn't make the same mistakes as mine."
The bell rang, and we all headed out. Well, most of us at least.
I'd lost family members during 9-11, like a lot of kids. About half of the class of thirty stayed behind to talk with Mr. Grant.
I decided not to.
My name, by the way, is Robert Ulrich. My friends call me Robbie.
My dad was an officer in the Viking military, now an officer in the U.S. Army. Mom is from Ireland, which recently joined the Union as the seventy-fifth state.
I live in New Washington. Lincoln named it that after the Spaniards who originally built the settlement were wiped out with the death of Queen Isabella. I don't remember the Spanish name of the town - the name is actually from an old Spanish dialect called Portuguese - but I remember that the American translation is "River of January."
Whatever that means.
Next period was lunch, then Computer Sciences. After that was math and then school was over for the weekend. Next week was finals.
I probably wouldn't need to do much studying. CompSci wasn't a hard class, I knew all the formulas and such that I'd need for my Algebra final. English - a breeze. History - a real breeze. Chemistry - a little harder, but I knew the chemical formulas we'd covered that year. P.E. didn't have a final, so I had everything pretty much covered.
I read somewhere that the secret of getting ready for a big test is being relaxed and not thinking about it for a couple days. Well, the weekend was certainly good for that.
"Hey, Robbie, wait up!"
That would be Theodore "Tad" Wilson, my best friend. He isn't the best student in the world, so I'd have to help him out getting ready for finals. As usual.
"You have to stay after class again?"
"No. I notice you didn't."
"I went through the whole thing. I went to the funerals. Mom and Dad were a lot of help."
"Oh, yeah. I can just understand why the memory would be kinda fresh and all."
We reached the cafeteria. I palmed the panel by the door, and the door opened. Tad did the same and we both went in.
The pad recognized both of us and told the cafeteria chefs that we were there. Students are given lunches according to their individual dietary needs, which were updated from time to time by the school physician. That's the way it's done all over the country, but it started here in N.W.
Lunch that day was chicken, rice, and potatoes. Vitamins were deposited on the side of the tray, personalized for each student.
The American government takes care of the schools and health plans - among other things - which may be why Americans live longer than any other people in the world, even the Iroquois.
"So do we have band practice after school today?"
"Just drummers," I said. I grinned. "Like me."
"Sure. You get the cushiest job in the band. Hitting stuff."
"We're the most important people in the band. We keep time for everybody else."
Tad nodded. "Okay, okay."
"And it's just for an hour. Mr. Van Owen wants to make sure we've got it down before the parade next week."
"I know. 'We Love the President Day.' Geez, man, it gets old after the first ten thousand times."
"We haven't been alive that long. And it's only once a year besides."
"I know that, I'm exaggerating." We found a table and sat down. "But it feels like it. It gets old, that's all I'm saying."
"Even the fireworks?"
Tad paused. "Well, maybe not the fireworks. I still like those. And the bands playing in the town square, just outside the Second White House, are pretty cool. Who do you think they'll get this year?"
"Who knows? Probably a local band or something. Nothing wrong with that."
"Yeah. So have you got any plans for this weekend?"
"Nothing but the Festival, so far. And, of course, the dance."
"I finally talked to Spring River. Someone asked her to the last dance, but I'm gonna ask her to this one."
"Spring River... Oh, yeah, that Iroquois exchange student. You mentioned her in class once."
He laughed. "Are you that into school? Don't tell me it's your parents and their love of American education."
I shrugged. "I like learning stuff."
After we ate, we went our separate ways.
After lunch was Math, then P.E. And then drum practice.
And, finally, time to go home.
I got out of practice with the other drummers just in time to hear the PA shouting, "Last call for route 109. Repeat, last call for one-oh-nine. You have one minute."
CRAP!
I ran as fast as I could to catch up with the maglev bus.
Maglev isn't a new technology - it was first instituted as part of the scenery at the Atlanta Olympics in 1996, then at the most recent World's Fair in Lisbon, New Spain, and is now all over the country, thanks to hard work from the American Worker Corps. Maglev means "magnetic levitation," and is the most energy-efficient form of transportation in the world. It uses little energy, and is now completely computer-controlled.
But of course, the maglev buses still had the yellow-and-black patterns associated with American school buses, so other commuters remember that the bus has the right-of-way in most situations.
Computer control also meant that if necessary, the cops could take control of a car being used by an escaping criminal, and drive it straight to the nearest police station.
I palmed the pad by the door just as it began to close.
What would traditionally be the drivers' seat of the school bus was occupied by a computer. This one had a large red, electronic eye, and it swiveled on its universal joint to look straight at me. I felt a flash in my right eye as the computer scanned it to confirm my identity, then said, in a female voice, "You're late, Ulrich."
"Band practice," I explained. "You know how it is."
The computer obviously did not know how it was, but the eye nodded. The bus computer could access my daily schedule in a moment. You gotta love sentient A.I. "Get on. Your seat's still empty, so you'll be okay. Drop you off at home?"
"No. Just the nearest intersection to home," I said, getting into my seat, second on the right, near the window. No one ever took the seat next to me.
The computer didn't ask why - the videodisk for the first Lord of the Rings movie had just come out, and there was s tore near home that was selling them.
Besides, I'd be home before dinner either way.
The computer closed the bus doors and headed off for home.
N.W. is one of the great cultural centers of South America. The majority of obscure immigrants came here and the descendants of refugees lived there. The city was populated by former Zulus, Spaniards, Celts, even Koreans. As a result, it was a very eclectic culture.
There was a lot of great music as well. Right along with American rock-and-roll, pop and other stuff, Latin music was big. It was popularized by Spanish immigrants and descendants of the Mexica and the conquered Incas. It had a great rhythm to it, and the culture was everywhere.
To its very core it was an American city, partly because of that cultural richness. American culture was the envy of the world. Whatever fad came along in America was quickly being replicated worldwide. American movies were shown in nearly every theater on Earth, American books filled bookstores all over, and so on.
New Washington was also a center for trade. Even though sea trade was not as important in a world with jets transporting goods to every corner of the globe, it was popular. The airport received tourists from all over the planet. American communication satellites were often launched from the recently-built Space Center in N.W.
The architecture shows roots from all over, but at the heart of the city were the American signature - skyscrapers, towers of plastiglass and titanium alloys that seemed almost to touch the clouds - and actually did in some cases, so the uppermost parts of skyscrapers actually had to be pressurized.
The maglev system traveled between the large buildings in a lot of cases, but the school buses usually didn't go more than a hundred feet off the ground, even in the more condensed parts of the city.
It was usually commuters who ended up riding the sides of buildings, going up and down the maglevs on the sides of skyscrapers.
Skyscrapers weren't made out of steel and glass anymore, like they were in the old days, especially at the higher altitudes. It was mostly synthetic materials, sorts of plastics and alloys that high up.
I live in the suburbs. Suburbs are pretty common, since not everybody wants to live in apartments in the big city. The suburbs were where you raised families. Then the kids moved into the city, and eventually, more likely than not, they eventually ended up back in the suburbs to raise their kids. I'm surprised that no one just stays in the suburbs to save some time.
But anyway.
I picked up the disk and headed home.
I guess you could call me a 'latchkey kid' most of the time. But in my parents' day, the term actually made sense, because there were actual latches and actual keys involved.
These days, most doors are magnetically sealed, and I had to palm the pad by the door and let the Eye-Dentifier scan my iris to confirm that it was me. Palm prints were easy to fake, after all.
The door opened.
I walked inside, to find that the house was much cooler. I shivered a little, and smiled. Mom and Dad, as you may or may not remember, come from much colder climates. And even with the jungles around the city cleared, the area was pretty warm. It was the largest American city this close to the Equator. Scandinavia and Ireland pretty much never get this warm.
We could afford having the air conditioning going full-blast. Dad's status as a military advisor at the Second White House got us a lot of money. Mom was content to stay home, even though she was taking classes.
I called out to her - in American, of course, since Celtic was a dead language now, mostly. But even so, strangely enough, American sounds almost exactly like old English, just without the accent and with a lot of words the English never thought of. We Americans took a lot of words from other languages and made them our own.
Dad was different. When he was home, he spoke Scandinavian half the time, and so almost from infanthood I've been bilingual. Dad speaks American, but it's rudimentary at best, so I speak a fluent Scandinavian.
New Washington is a polyglot city, so no one really seems to mind.
But it was just Mom at home for now. She was in the TV room, with the TV off, listening to U2. She mostly likes them because they're from Ireland and actually released an album in Celtic recently.
I like their music, too, and I guess Mom got into them because of me.
Mom was a big believer in national pride. Every year on St. Patrick's Day, she goes out and hangs an old Celtic Irish flag next to the American one. The newer state flag is almost the same as the old Celtic version.
"Mom, I'm home," I said.
"I heard you come in," she said. "Where were you? The school bus came by twenty minutes ago."
"At the video store getting Lord of the Rings. The new expanded version. I know you and Dad like that movie."
Mom shrugged. "I liked the books. The movie was good, too. So how was school?"
"Same old, same old. We're pretty much done with American History for this year. And all the other stuff."
"About the conquests?" she said, sadly.
"Liberations, really. The Celtic administration of the time oppressed those that they had conquered, like the English and the Spaniards. Things were better in Ireland because the population was mostly Celtic."
She smiled sadly. "I suppose they were oppressive. Things are much better now."
"Yeah. But here people have the option of saying that they don't like the way things are without fear of reprisal. Freedom of speech. Same in the territories and Iroquois-England."
"I still can't believe that the Iroquois took over there."
"Hiawatha loves English culture, and particularly Shakespeare. And he and Elizabeth were good friends until the Celts killed her."
Mom sighed. "I know that my people were never perfect, but we did what we felt was best."
"I know, Mom."
Mom sighed. "It's almost time for the news." Then she turned to the TV. "TV: On: CNN."
The TV turned to CNN where the global news was playing.
There was a riot going on in London. A group calling itself the ERA (English Republican Army) was causing a large riot near Buckingham Palace, now home to the Iroquois-English Congress. The riot was led by Charles Windsor, supposedly a direct descendant of Elizabeth. But since she divorced her first husband, it was hard to figure it out. Recent genetic tests had proven his claims to be true.
The so-called ERA had a small band of followers, most of them people who had been brought up hating the Iroquois. It was interesting to see that European xenophobia was still alive and well in certain places.
The Iroquois police had dealt with the rioters. Windsor - affectionately called 'Prince Charles' by ERA supporters - would spend the night in jail.
The CNN anchor theorized that the ERA wanted a return to the old English monarchy because these royal descendants would, by right of bloodline, get the job immediately.
The only royal descendants, the anchor continued, who seem not to share the dissident opinions of their other family members, were Charles' estranged wife, Diana, and their two children.
Diana went on record as denouncing her ex-husband's efforts to rebuild the old English Empire, and went on record as being a proud citizen of Iroquois-England.
The next Olympic Games were taking place in Athens, Greece. The Winter Games after that were taking place in Italy, then the Summer Games in Beijing. That was possibly because Mao was working hard to rehabilitate himself.
America was sure to dominate again - but that was my opinion. The United States and Germany - and to a lesser extent Scandinavia - had been competing specifically against each other in those games for decades.
Festivities were being held to celebrate the hundredth anniversary of man walking on the moon. The descendants of Wilbur and Orville Wright were going to help with the celebration taking place at the NASA Space Center in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. I was hoping I could be there.
After the news they went back to covering the mediations between Lincoln and Cleopatra. They were meeting in Thebes, with the Great Pyramids in the background. She had really spared no expense for Lincoln's arrival - large red Egyptian flags were everywhere, and even the Pyramids were decorated with the hammer and sickle - in solid gold, which gleamed even more brightly in the sunlight than the ancient covering of white limestone covering the ancient structures. [OCC: True story. The Pyramids were originally covered with white limestone, but the covering was stolen by thieves. Don't ask me why.] She had even brought out the solid gold cap for the largest of the Pyramids. She had last used that gold cap for the Millennium celebrations back in '01. They had visited exhibits at the Egyptian museums, and the tombs of her greatest advisors from ages past. Lenin, who had been assassinated recently, was in a brand-new tomb in Hieraconpolis. (one of many Egyptian cities with a Greek name, this one meaning "city of the hawk" - in honor of its patron god, Horus) The city had been home to Egypt’s first king before Cleopatra came to power.
The Egyptian practice of mummification had gotten better with the passing of time. Lenin's sarcophagus was encrusted with solid gold – they showed it on TV, after Cleopatra allowed CNN cameras into the tomb for the first time in history – with a very lifelike death mask, traditional Egyptian headdress… but instead of the traditional mace and flail that most Egyptian mummies were depicted as wearing – traditional Egyptian symbols of authority – he wore a solid gold, life-size, hammer and sickle crossed on his chest, one tool in each hand so the two tools were crossed as on the Egyptian flag.
The Egyptian flag, by the way, depicted the three pyramids with the gold hammer and sickle crossing the image of the Great Pyramid.
Creepy.
The French in the Philippines... sorry, New France... were getting along okay. Joan of Arc ruled quietly from her palace in New Paris – formerly Manila – but still let her advisors do most of the work. She wasn’t the young immortal who’d taken control of ancient Paris six thousand years before. Her spirit was broken.
Sometimes people wondered if wiping her out wouldn’t be considered a mercy.
Not that anyone could have tried, since the island was guarded by battleships – old American battleships sold to the French.
The French barely had flight capabilities, so they were pretty much trapped, except for the number of French refugees who regularly headed for South America.
The news was okay, but it got kinda boring when they started looping it again and again. CNN had to show news twenty-four-seven, after all.
“TV: Off,” I said. “So, Mom, how was your day?”
“The usual,” she said. “I mostly just hung around. I’m glad we bought those little robots that vacuum and clean the windows and dust things. I hardly have to do any work anymore.”
I smiled. “They have the upgrades available for download on the ‘Net.”
“You do that,” she said, chuckling. “Computers are more your department anyway.”
“Oh, gee, thanks,” I said, smiling.
She shoved me a little bit and I got up. She got up to start on dinner. Dad would be home soon.
“So how was everything else in school?” Mom asked. “Other than history.”
“Like I said, same old, same old. Nothing really new, since it’s almost time for finals.”
She nodded. “Oh, okay.”
I sighed. I was tired, and there was no homework. I felt like maybe playing a computer game.
I headed for my room. It was dark.
“Lights: on. Level four. Computer: On: Check messages. TV: On: History Channel.”
The appliances did as instructed, and I sat down at my desk, the TV going quietly behind me.
The computer whirred a little, then the keyboard shimmered and appeared. The monitor turned on, and the computer itself went through daily diagnostics. It only took a few nanoseconds.
The computer was new: Pentium 18, 64 Gigs, holographic flat-screen, WEBcam, holographic keyboard, voice-activated. But then the voice-activation tech was nothing new. It had been around since the '90s.
I checked my messages. A couple from my friends asking about the dance, if I was going or not. I read them all, deleted them, and then signed off of the Internet.
I sighed. “Computer: Load: Civilization 3 - Play the World.”
To be continued...
Interesting start.
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