The plow was stuck. The horses dropped their dung and trampled the ground with their enormous hooves as the farmer knelt before the sharp point. Finding nothing, he followed the ingenious curved board, which turned the furrowed soil over upon itself – a marvel of technology! – until he discovered the obstacle. It looked like part of an old engine block. He moved it to lean against the stone wall. Anything could turn up in a field, but spring days weren’t long enough for wondering.
Beyond the wall, his neighbor passed on her way to the train station. She was shipping some of her fresh beeswax to a distant monastery where the faithful still lived in the Dark Ages, poor souls. A whistle warned her that the locomotive was approaching, though no smoke appeared above the treetops to mark its passage.
Later that day, the beeswax rode to the end of the line and was transferred to a barge. Within the next week, it was hauled by mule along the canal until, after the last lock, it was unloaded and tucked into an ox cart. Nearing the monastery, the carter heard the monks chanting Evensong in the chapel. He crossed himself. He had never been sick, never gone hungry, never even shivered in winter. He would take vows as a lay brother when he was old. Not this year; he was only 80. But someday.
Eventually, the cart was unloaded and refilled with the monastery’s raw wool. The wool travelled to the nearest market town, where it was traded for tanned hides. In another village, the leather was bartered for tin, obtained in exchange for ochre. Far away in the countryside, this rusty clay was powdered and mixed with animal fat. On the year’s longest day, it returned to the earth painted on the bones of the dead.
Deep inside the burial mound, the children witnessed the exhumation. You could die, they realized. You could fall off the cliff just like the aurochs do. The Wise Woman might fail to heal you. They recoiled, except for one.
Jani leaned forward to peer at the disjointed, ruddy bones. After the anointing and reburial, she followed her father through the narrow tunnel. Outside, she asked, “Why do we have to die?”
“All living things die,” her father replied.
“But animals only die because we kill them.” They joined the rest of the clan around the fire where meat was roasting.
“We kill some. But if we didn’t, there would be too many aurochs, and they would starve. They can’t go anywhere else.”
“Why not?”
“There are other people and animals all around us. The world is filled up.”
“Why?” Jani sat amidst all the individuals she could possibly know or care about. Beyond these hundred or so, “other people” were as abstract as the bones in the grave.
“Because life naturally expands as much as it can.”
Her mother brought over a platter of food. Jani asked, “Is there any place where people don’t die? Is there a future where people don’t die?”
“And hello to you, too.” Her mother knelt and one of the dogs subsided onto the ground beside her. “No, people don’t live longer than about 140 years.”
“Why not?”
“Go ahead and eat. I’m going to chew up some meat for Old Ma.” This required spitting each mouthful into a wooden bowl.
“I’ll take it to her.” Jani’s father stood. “Unless you want it, Jani?”
“Yuck.”
“I sense a teachable moment.” The man walked toward Old Ma’s hut.
“What does he mean?” Jani demanded.
“Well, Old Ma has to eat pre-chewed food. And she seems to be asleep even when she’s sitting up. She’s not in pain and she has no ailments, but she doesn’t want to do anything except stare into the fire.” Jani’s mother settled herself and stroked the dog’s grey head. “All creatures have a natural life span.” She pinched a blob of bone marrow and let the dog lick it from her fingers. “Every animal that lives long enough will someday just… let go. They lie down and don’t get up again.”
“But not us.” Jani scooped a bite for herself. “Humans don’t decide to die.”
“Oh, sweetheart,” her mother said gently. “You wouldn’t believe how many humans have taken their own lives throughout history.”
“In the past. When there was hunger and disease and warfare.”
“And even without those things. Back then, people sometimes just couldn’t find any joy or purpose in life.”
Jani glanced at the dog, head on its paws, and then at her mother. “Do you have joy and purpose?”
Her mother blinked. “Why, yes.” She gestured at the center of the circle. “I take joy in the smell of wood smoke. My purpose here is to find and make everything we need.”
“Are you serious?” Jani jumped to her feet. “That’s it? No wonder you think people would rather die.”
“I didn’t say that. Wait. I also have you. My very greatest joy and purpose.”
Jani’s response was a glare of mingled contempt and disbelief before she stomped off. She plopped down next to another family and sulked. Her mother gathered up the leftovers and joined her husband in Old Ma’s hut. “We have a problem.”
“Already?”
“We knew she’d want more than this someday. I’ll start packing.”
Old Ma said only, “There’s always one, isn’t there?”
It took a day to gather everything they could carry and to bid farewell to their clan. The youngsters couldn’t understand why Jani wanted to leave when she could see the whole world and all the future in the Wise Woman’s fire. But as soon as the village was out of sight, Jani bounded down the path. After three days of walking, they met a Centurion on patrol. He escorted them to the guard post, accepted their belongings in trade for Roman clothing and coins, and ushered them through the walls into the settlement.
There, to her amazement, Jani discovered her parents had skills. They could bake bread and plaster the walls of a house and build furniture from wood. “Is this more to your liking?” they asked. “Paved streets. Latrines with running water! Crowds of people living cheek by jowl.” Here they called her Julia.
She listened to lectures. She learned how to brew beer and weave cloth on a loom. She attended the Oracle and, after the ritual, looked into the pool herself. She had questions. Was her mother allowed to operate a market stall in the Agora? (Technically, no, but really, yes.) Were the slaves actually owned by their masters?
“No. They’re adults,” the Oracle told her. “They have freedom of person.”
“Do they know that?”
“Of course they do. They have freedom to access information. Don’t you have a tutor? Haven’t you learned the human rights and freedoms?”
“My tutor acted like he’d never heard of them.”
“As is his right,” the Oracle sighed, “since he has freedom of behavior as long as he doesn’t constrain anyone else’s freedoms.” She massaged her forehead. “Don’t mind me. I’m sure you have more questions.”
“What is your joy?” Julia asked. “What is your purpose?”
“I’m an information manager. My purpose is to direct queries so they are answerable.” The silence grew until the woman explained, “Information is as vast as the sea. Meaningful knowledge, the useful, comprehensible answer to a question, is hidden like a drop in a waterfall. My purpose is to reach into the torrent and collect that drop for you.”
“Oh.” Julia waited. “And…?”
The Oracle lowered her eyes. “My joy. My joy is horses.” She spoke rapidly. “I keep a stable. The foals grow up to carry riders and pull carriages. They live only where their cost to the environment is justified by the work they do.”
“Who decides that?”
“Enough. I need to brew some willow bark. You, you need to take your questions to Londinium.”
Julia told her parents. Yes, they had heard of Londinium. This time, the move took more effort. They converted their possessions into trade goods and swapped their clothes several times on the road. At last a closed carriage brought them to the White Hart Inn, on the south bank of the Thames. Here she was called Joan.
The next day, while her parents searched for jobs, Joan walked to the Globe. The man who collected her penny lamented that Good Queen Bess had taken ill. Inside, spectators milled around in front of the stage while the troupe set up the scenery and rehearsed their lines.
Joan accosted one of them. “So, you’re an actor playing an actor about to play a princess?” she asked. “This is an historical re-enactment of an Elizabethan drama?”
The actor bowed. “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.”
“Really? All the world?”
The man threw out one arm and declaimed, “This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England.”
Several other groundlings gathered to listen. “Well, are there any countries that live in the future instead of the past?”
“Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow…”
“No, I mean now. Today.”
“Though patience be a tired mare, yet she will plod.” The actor nodded slightly at a smattering of applause. Someone offered a kingdom for that horse. Apparently this was now a game. Joan frowned and backed out of the crowd.
In the empty tavern of the White Hart Inn, the landlady exclaimed, “Oh, dear. You’re missing the matinee. Here, sit down.” She insisted with a hand on Joan’s shoulder, then bustled off and returned with a laden tray. “I understand. You’re homesick. Drink this.” She filled two cups. “Tea won’t arrive in England for another fifty years, but I can’t wait that long.”
“You’re breaking character,” Joan said glumly.
“Oh, there’s no such thing. No one’s invented a time machine, you know. The past is just a story we agree on.” She nudged the tray. “Try the shortbread.”
Joan nibbled on the pastry and almost flinched, it was so sweet.
“Don’t worry, the sugar is sustainably and ethically sourced,” her host assured her. “Another historical inaccuracy.”
Joan gobbled the shortbread slice and started on another piece. “But why?” She licked crumbs from her fingers. “Why do people agree to live in some fake version of the past?”
“Real sugar. Real butter.” The landlady smiled. “And every context is real to the people who live in it. It’s just that now we can choose our contexts. Here you can sleep on a featherbed and eat mutton. Shakespeare’s theatre is on all the tourist lists.”
“It is? What else is on the list?”
“Oh, you know, feasting at King Arthur’s Round Table. Any Beatles concert. Wait a second.” She hurried away again and returned with a playbill. The printed side advertised the current production at the Globe. The woman spoke to it: “What are the most popular tourist destinations, cultural, secular, non-combat?” She turned the sheet over. On the back, new writing appeared. “Oh, these are all in Asia. Another region with a long history. You don’t want those.” She repeated her request, this time adding, “Western heritage”.
Joan leaned over and they read together. Renaissance Florence, Manhattan in the 1950’s, Fin de Siècle Paris. Athens when the Parthenon was new.
“Ah,” the landlady said dreamily. “Sometimes you find yourself somewhere and your heart takes wing. You feel like your soul is reverberating with that particular place and time. You never want to leave.” She added, “I think it’s reincarnation.”
“I think it’s—” Joan began, then reconsidered. “I never feel that way. And I’m not homesick. I always want to go forward, not back where I came from. I just want to get to the present.”
“You are in the present.” Her hostess waved the handbill. “But you’ve still got a lot to learn. What you need is a job. You could serve the visitors here.”
“I think I’ll have to go to school.”
“You can do both. School costs money, you know. As do tea and biscuits.” She laughed at Joan’s expression. “Well, this one time, I’ll make an exception. But, you know, everything has a cost. Going somewhere new has a cost. What you earn now is what gives you choices later.”
Joan stood. She placed the cups and teapot back on the tray. “Show me where to take this and what to do next,” she said.
Her parents also found work, one as an herbalist, the other as a schoolteacher. That night, Joan practiced waiting on them at supper. “And where are you from?” she asked, while refilling their tankards with ale.
“Thank you, wench,” said her father. “I was born in the American mid-west, with the Homegrown National Park in my backyard and the community kitchen garden in my front yard.”
“Your house had yards? Like where we tie up horses?”
“Oh, no. In American suburbs, every house was on its own plot of land, with patches of lawn in front and behind. At one time about 40 million acres were wasted this way in that one country.”
“Good sir. Methinks thou doth but jest.” She turned to her mother. “And you?”
“He’s not joking. But I grew up underwater, on Vanuatu, where our playgrounds were reefs full of fish. I could swim to school. Seaweed was our main crop and lots of my friends stayed there to work on those farms. Or cater to tourists. Here’s the secret: smile at everyone whether they deserve it or not.”
This was sound advice, and henceforth Joan smiled at all her customers, and if they smiled back, she inquired. What was their joy? What was their purpose?
“My joy and my purpose are the same. I’m a neurolinguistic ornithologist.”
“My purpose is microbiotic genetic engineering. You know, modifying human gut flora to digest more types of food. My joy is art history. Mannerist paintings? Sixteenth century? Well, anyway, those.”
“Wildlife safaris, especially in the open ocean. I build invisible ecological barriers. I design the transition zones, where one biome is kept separate from another, without either side noticing.”
“Oh, I don’t know. Walking in the woods. Toads. Little things. I’m a climatologist, and there’s still a lot to worry about. Sometimes my greatest joy is just the sound of a gentle rain.”
“Rumspringa. But I think part of the joy is knowing I’ll be going back to Bird-in-Hand and my purpose will be Amish.”
“Mind if I sit down?” Joan asked. After years of taking notes along with the drink orders, she had two columns. Joys arose from the senses, triggered by art or nature; purposes entailed changing things into other things. “And may I ask you to repeat everything you just said?” He was about her age and not bad-looking.
Jacob obliged. It was late that night when Joan thoughtfully crossed the old bridge into the City; her family had moved to a later century that welcomed teenaged girls in school. At home she announced, “There’s a community in America that has deliberately maintained a seventeenth-century way of life for almost five hundred years.” Her parents exchanged glances. “They let their kids go on a trip, a rumspringa, to experience more modern ways of life. Then the kids can decide to re-join the Amish community or not.”
“Your whole life has been a rumspringa,” her mother said.
“But I haven’t seen the modern world. Not really. Jacob is going to visit an arcology. I want to go, too.”
“We’ll go with you.”
“Mother!”
“Sweetheart. I waited so long to have a child. I’m not ready to let you go just yet.”
“Besides, you have to take your exams,” her father said. “And I have to meet this Jacob person.”
“Yes, I will, and no, you don’t.”
“How about this.” Her mother reached for her portable writing desk. “We have old friends in some of those cities. I’ll ask one of them to meet you. Then you can go ahead by dirigible and we’ll catch up with you.”
“Assuming you pass your exams!”
But Joan was already leaping up the stairs to her room. By the end of the week she had packed her carpetbag, excelled on every test, and rushed up the gangplank to the dirigible, where Jacob was waiting.
Aboard the airship, he called her Johanna. They spent whole days with the other passengers gazing at the landscapes that passed slowly below. At night faint yellow patterns, invisible to wildlife, marked the towns. Jacob pointed out the tree line along the Sahel, where desert was returning to woodland. Sometimes the angle of the sun lit up glittering necklaces around lakes and along rivers: energy collectors? Water purifiers? Look again, and they disappeared. Then one day the dirigible drifted over a densely forested valley and stopped on the next mountain peak. They had arrived.
Jacob and Johanna walked down the gangplank into a clearing in the trees and immediately were accosted by strangers. “Hey, looking for work?” Jacob politely declined. “Great pay!” someone shouted. “Management positions after six weeks.”
“Managing what?” Johanna shouted back.
“Join our team and find out! Retirement in only twenty years!”
The other passengers were scattering around them, but Jacob and Johanna were mobbed to a standstill. Then a deep voice called their names and urged everyone else to back off. “They’re with me!” he bellowed. “Better luck next time!” The man laughed hugely as he scattered the more persistent recruiters with exuberant sweeping gestures.
“Mother said to call you Uncle—” Johanna began, as their host engulfed her in a bear hug.
“Don’t worry, no one will hire you if you’re with me. Jacob!” He embraced the startled young man. “Too few workers,” he explained. “Too much to manage. Global grids and waste and demographics and calories and other managers. No joke! Are you two okay to walk into town?”
“Where is it?” asked Jacob.
“All around us.” He led them away from the docking station, toward what appeared to be impenetrable jungle. “These are living walls.” Sure enough, there were gaps they could walk through. The pavement gave way to matted surfaces that Uncle described as living floors. Their path forked a few times, and then the leafy walls separated into vine-covered trunks, and they could glimpse the valley in the distance. They descended a flight of stairs, the trees closed overhead again, and then they strode between silent walls of water. “Rain is directed along these capillary surfaces, so that it spreads to every organism. And is cleaned for drinking. Can you believe people used to wash with water?” He didn’t wait for an answer.
They emerged into an atrium filled with plants and lit by full-spectrum lights, now reddening into dusk. “Let’s eat.” Uncle broke a rimmed leaf from a water lily and examined the foliage around it. “Ah, fiddleheads,” he said. The kids stood frozen. “What’s wrong? What are you used to eating?”
“Brains. Trotters and tongues.”
Uncle paled.
“I grew up on winged insects and grubs.”
“Ah. Hm.” Uncle broke off two more plate-sized leaves. “These plants store proteins and fats in their leaves, not just their seeds, so we don’t have to eat… well, let’s go to the serving station and see what else they have.”
“You mean this is a farm?” Jacob scanned the greenery. “And everyone acts as harvesters?”
“This is a restaurant and we harvest for fun.” Uncle stopped at a table covered with closed dishes. “The real work is done automatically.”
“By machines?” Johanna followed Uncle around the serving table, filling her green plate with who-knows-what.
“Robots? Computers?” Jacob copied Johanna exactly.
“Nanobots connected by neural nets?” Johanna sat down on a pond’s retaining wall, and the men sat on either side of her.
“All of the above!” Uncle exclaimed. “Technology has advanced faster than we can even label it. People are lazy. Ever notice?” His listeners nodded solemnly. “We take shortcuts with our shortcuts! We call things what they do, not what they are. Lights make light. Heaters make heat. I’m sure a scientist could tell you how they do it.” Uncle set his plate on his knee. “Information. You press a button.” He touched one hand to the opposite arm. A translucent display appeared and hovered in mid-air before them. “Let’s get the weather report.” Images and text appeared. “And, let’s close this so people don’t have to walk around it.”
“It’s the Oracle,” Johanna realized. “And the Wise Woman’s fire. And my slate at school.”
“And the news kiosk in the town of Intercourse,” Jacob said. He explained, “Intercourse means fellowship. All communication is an exercise of faith.”
“Mm-hmm. It’s the one constant in the evolution of human society.” Uncle pushed back his sleeve and revealed three bands on his wrist. He removed the first one. Johanna promptly extended her arm. “It’s keyed to your biometrics. You have to deliberately touch it, like this, to activate it.”
“I’ll figure it out.”
Uncle removed the second band, but Jacob only thanked him and shook his head.
“Eat your plates and sporks and I’ll take you to your rooms,” Uncle said. They were scarcely out of the atrium before he had to warn Johanna not to open projected interfaces while moving. Then he urged her to watch her step while pressing her wristband to her ear. As he was explaining how to open their doors by voice, Johanna suddenly threw her arms around him.
“Thank you, thank you! I can’t wait to see everything here!” She bounced on her toes. “Open! Close!” She laughed at the obedient door sliding back and forth.
“Goodnight, sir,” said Jacob. When the door opened again and Johanna danced inside, he slipped in after her.
She threw herself onto the bed and began opening screens, one after another, and speaking to them. The bed appeared to be a single sheet, suspended by cords from the ceiling. When Jacob climbed in, the cords moved apart to double the size of the sheet. He crawled closer to Johanna. “This is it,” she murmured. “I’m standing under the waterfall.” She was gesturing like a mystic, expanding and shrinking the displays. “I finally feel like I’ve reached the present day.”
“It’s too much.” Jacob shivered, and reflexively reached for the edge of their level hammock. He was able to pull the sheet over himself while it remained exactly where it was. “How is this possible?” he moaned.
“Anything is possible,” Johanna breathed. “It’s magic. I’m sure we haven’t seen the half of it.” Movement filled the overlapping projections, animations competing with talking heads, amid live-cam streaming and instructional videos. “I bet they have telepathy and anti-gravity and immortality.”
“Why would anyone want all that?”
“To beat death, that’s why. People used to rush through their lives, rush to have children, fight over resources, all because they could die at any moment.” She turned to him, wide-eyed. “There were cars everywhere.”
“But that’s not true anymore. Isn’t that enough?” He touched her hair. “I like you the way you are. If you could fly and read minds and live forever, you wouldn’t be you. You wouldn’t even be human.” He lowered his voice as if confessing. “Farming is work. Necessary work. I love it, but I don’t do it for fun.”
“Oh, Jacob, I’m sorry.” She waved her arm. “Forget all this.” Her gesture, luckily, erased all the screens. “Please don’t take your own life.”
She was so sincere he had to smile. “I don’t want to die,” he assured her. “I still have my purpose and my joy. I just want to go home.”
“Home. So. Tell me more about fellowship.”
The next morning he was gone.
Uncle fetched her and, at her request, they went to meet the janitors. Johanna learned about the technology (managed by everyone else) underlying all the systems that maintained the arcology, and the rest of the world, too. She was a bit disappointed to find that gravity, time, and the speed of light remained non-negotiable. Most magic was just advanced materials science.
Late in the day, they wended their way back to the airship dock. The little plaza at the top of the city was again filled, though not with job recruiters. This time, people quietly watched the passengers disembark. Then, everyone clapped. A woman proceeded down the ramp, looking around. She waved.
“Ina!” Uncle bellowed, barrelling in for his usual bone-crushing hug.
“Mom,” Johanna gasped. Her father navigated off the ramp and through the crowd to her side. “What’s all this?”
“Your mother wrote a book. Way back before you were born.”
Released from Uncle’s grip, Ina called, “And hello to you too, dear.” The onlookers parted to allow the four of them to walk away from the airship together.
“What book did you write?” Johanna asked. “Why didn’t you ever tell me?”
“Oh, it was just some popular science that happened to come out at the right time.” Most of the throng seemed to be following them.
“Ha!” Uncle roared. “Billions of human beings live in harmony with the environment now. And you know what made it possible, Johanna? I’ll give you a hint. It was a scientific field that sprang up in the early 20th century.”
“And a book called Fission and Fusion that happened to come out in the 21st century.” Johanna’s father beamed at her mother.
“I know. I know all about quantum physics,” Johanna snapped.
“What?” Uncle led them through a leafy archway. Beyond was a large auditorium, empty seats arrayed in rows before a podium. To the sides, tables held cups and pitchers and vases of flowers. “I was talking about anthropology.”
“My book was about societies,” Ina explained. “Humans like to live in small groups. Then we fuse those groups into bigger groups, sharing a language, say, or a religion, or perhaps even a universal respect for the Earth and its ecology. Smaller groups continue to form inside the larger ones. Their stability ensures that each level supports the next.” Ina chose one of the tables. Uncle filled four cups. “All primates do this. We’re primates.”
“Let’s drink to that,” Uncle said.
“I don’t get it,” Johanna said. “And this is the worst beer I’ve ever had.”
“Because it’s champagne,” Ina said. “And you’re already accustomed to a global society that is simultaneously divided into millions of smaller groups. All I did was predict this would happen.”
“And perhaps guarantee it, once everyone was expecting it,” Uncle said. “Sometimes that’s the way progress occurs.”
At another table, someone raised a mug into the air and shouted, “To being human!” Ina graciously raised her glass in reply.
“That was the subtitle of the book,” her father told Johanna.
“But, but, we were already being human!”
“For tens of thousands of years,” Uncle agreed.
“And that’s what caused our problems in the first place.” Johanna slammed her cup down on the table. “It’s not what solved them.”
“Don’t forget, curiosity is also part of being human.” Ina refilled the empty cups. “So is invention. It’s just that culture governs those like it governs everything else.”
“Technology doesn’t drive progress. Culture does.” Uncle grinned. “Anthropology rules.” He turned to the crowd and repeated his remark in a voice like a bullhorn. While the others drank to that, Joan stepped away from the table and disappeared into the crowd.
Her father found her outside, in a grove that overlooked the valley, now a vast pool of darkness. She was staring at the horizon and the early stars. She didn’t move when he stopped beside her. “No,” she said. “No. I don’t want to be governed by some culture.” A tear ran down her cheek. “If that’s being human, I don’t want it.” She wiped her face with the back of her hand and crossed her arms over her chest.
“There’s always one.” Her father patted her gently on the back. “There’s always one who wants something more. Maybe just one in a million. But we’re lucky there are people like you.”
“Why?” She scowled into the darkness. “There’s nothing left for people like me. There isn’t anything more. The world is filled up, like you said.”
“Oh, sweetheart, there’s always more. It’s just that we’ve learned not to overload the boat we’re all in. Look. I have a present for you.” He stepped around to stand before her. “Here.” It was a leaf. “Read the back.”
He had scratched a message. Good for one college education at the Space Exploration Academy.
“You can apply to other colleges if you want. But I think I know what you’d like. After all, even one in a million adds up to thousands of malcontents just like you. Running physics experiments in outer space. Exploring the moons of Jupiter.”
“Really?” She held the leaf in both hands. “Are you serious? There’s an Academy for that? Where is it?”
“There’s one campus under the Arctic’s fake ice sheet. The other is on the Moon. Now, the Moon also has a colony where retired malcontents, authors and such, can go to live, and someday die. Not before you graduate, that is, but they always need more organic molecules, so, years from now—”
He never finished because his daughter was covering his face with kisses. And then she ran inside and treated her mother, and even Uncle, to more of the same.
A few months after that, she and her parents floated into the space station to await the lunar shuttle. Each claimed a window. Like children, they stared down at the variegated jewel that was the Earth spinning below, polished to a brilliant lustre. Her parents gazed, unblinking, but Johanna soon moved to a window that showed the stars in all their equally-dazzling brilliance. When it docked, she was the first to rush onto the shuttle that would carry her into the future.
After that, they called her Joy.
