A Place So Foreign (2 of 26)

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COPYRIGHT & LICENSE
A Place So Foreign by Cory Doctorow. Copyright 1998 by Cory Doctorow.
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A PLACE SO FOREIGN (CONT'D)

1975 was a queer sight. Our apartment was a lozenge of silver, spoked into the hub of a floating null-gee doughnut. Pa did something fancy with his hands and the walls went transparent, and I swear, I dropped to the floor and hugged the nubby rubber tiles for all I was worth. My eyes were telling me that we were hundreds of yards off the ground, and while I'd jumped from the rafters of the horsebarn into the hay countless times, I suddenly discovered that I was afraid of heights.

After that first dizzying glimpse of 1975, I kept my eyes squeezed shut and held on for all I was worth. After a minute or two of this, my stomach told me that I wasn't falling, and I couldn't hear any rushing wind, any birdcalls, anything except Mama and Pa laughing, fit to bust. I opened one eye and snuck a peek. My folks were laughing so hard they had to hold onto each other to stay up, and they were leaning against thin air, Pa's back pressed up against nothing at all.

Cautiously, I got to my feet and walked over to the edge. I extended one finger and it bumped up against an invisible wall, cool and smooth as glass in winter.

"James," said my Pa, smiling so wide that his thick moustache stretched all the way across his face, "welcome to 1975."

#Pa's ambassadorial mission meant that he often spent long weeks away from home, teleporting in only for Sunday dinner, the stink of aliens and distant worlds clinging to him even after he washed up. The last Sunday dinner I had with him, Mama had made mashed potatoes and corn bread and sausage gravy and turkey, spending the whole day with the wood-fired cooker back in 1898 (actually, it was 1901 by then, but I always thought of it as 1898). She'd moved the cooker into the horsebarn after a week of wrestling with the gadgets we had in our 1975 kitchen, and when Pa had warned her that the smoke was going to raise questions in New Jerusalem, she explained that she was going to run some flexible exhaust hose through the door into 75 and into our apt's air-scrubber. Pa had shook his head and smiled at her, and every Sunday, she dragged the exhaust pipe through the door.

That night, Pa sat down and said grace, and he was in his shirtsleeves with his suspenders down, and it almost felt like home -- almost felt like a million Sunday dinners eaten by gaslight, with a sweaty pitcher of lemonade in the middle of the table, and seasonal wildflowers, and a stinky cheroot for Pa afterwards as he tipped his chair back and rested one hand on his belly, as if he couldn't believe how much Mama had managed to stuff him this time.

"How are your studies coming, James?" he asked me, when the robutler had finished clearing the plates and clattered away into its nook.

"Very well, sir. We're starting calculus now." Truth be told, I hated calculus, hated Isaac Newton and asymptotes and the whole smelly business. Even with the viral learning shots, it was like swimming in molasses for me.

"Calculus! Well, well, well --" this was one of Pa's catch-all phrases, like "How about that?" or "What do you know?" "Well, well, well. I can't believe how much they stuff into kids' heads here."

"Yes, sir. There's an awful lot left to learn, yet." We did a subject every two weeks. So far, I'd done French, Molecular and Cellular Biology, Physics and Astrophysics, Esperanto, Cantonese and Mandarin, and an alien language whose name translated as "Standard." I'd been exempted from History, of course, along with the other kids there from the past -- the Chinese girl from the Ming Dynasty, the Roman boy, and the Injun kid from South America.

Pa laughed around his cigar and crossed his legs. His shoes were so big, they looked like canoes. "There surely is, son. There surely is. And how are you doing with your classmates? Any tussles your teacher will want to talk to me about?"

"No, sir! We're friendly as all get-out, even the girls." The kids in 75 didn't even notice what they were doing in school. They just sat down at their workstations and waited to have their brains filled with whatever was going on, and left at three, and never complained about something being too hard or too dull.

"That's good to hear, son. You've always been a good boy. Tell you what: you bring home a good report this Christmas, and I'll take you to see Saturn's rings on vacation."

Mama shot him a look then, but he pretended he didn't see it. He stubbed out his cigar, hitched up his suspenders, and put on his tailcoat and tophat and ambassadorial sash and picked up his leather case.

"Good night, son. Good night, Ulla. I'll see you on Wednesday," he said, and stepped into the teleporter.

That was the last time I ever saw him.

#

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