Chapter 21
"Thomas? You awake?" Darin asked, knocking on the door. "We wanna leave soon!"
"Ugh, overslept, sorry!" Thomas yelled back. "I’ll be down in fifteen minutes." He stumbled to the bathroom, hopped in the shower, and hopped back out all within ten minutes. He threw on his clothes, dashed out into the hallway, and rushed down the stairs. "Ready!" he announced when he saw the gang standing in the landing waiting.
"Let’s tell him before he asks," Doug said, smiling.
"So basically, we’re going to the bank to add you guys to the account that Frank started when you were first frozen. That way you’ll have access to the money when we travel. The account has been transferred from person to person over the years here at the lab," Darin explained.
"It’s a miracle someone didn’t run off with the money…" Vera muttered.
"Well, Frank was extremely careful about who he hired to take the reins from him, and impressed upon that person the importance of doing the same," Lyla said. "We were lucky to get the job ourselves, but the lab manager seemed to think having two younger people would be the best guides for you three when you were revived."
"Lab manager? We have a lab manager?" Thomas asked.
"Not anymore, he died just over a year ago. He was so sad that he’d never get to meet you too…" Darin nodded in quiet agreement. "Anyhow, Darin and I have access to the account, we just need to go down to the bank, add you to the account, and we’re set."
"That sounds easy enough...it'll probably go horribly, horribly wrong," Thomas mumbled. The others looked at him. His seemingly prophetic utterances were growing quite annoying.
The group exited the POD station, made their way up the street, into the bank, and into yet another queuing line. Fortunately this one didn’t take nearly as long as the line at the ID Office, and they were comforted by the fact that the bank seemed to be devoid of strange old women with British accents.
"Next!" said the man behind the counter. The group approached. "Oh? And which person here is the account holder?" Darin and Lyla looked at each other, gestured with their eyes, and finally Lyla approached and stepped into a circular area on the floor marked off by a change of color in the carpet. A light flashed, and a scanner beeped. "OK, Lyla, you have two accounts with us today, which will we be managing?"
"Umm, we’ll be managing the account with more money in it," Lyla said sheepishly. The man behind the counter laughed as if it was the funniest thing he had heard all day, then abruptly stopped, put on his serious face, and continued.
"OK, and what do you want to do with the account?"
"I’d like to give access to additional people."
"Ah, and that explains your friends," He winked cryptically as if his statement was supposed to have some sort of additional meaning. "Alright, well, have each one who needs access step forward into the scanner ring and we’ll get them on!" Lyla stepped aside and motioned Vera into her spot. The implant scanner lit up and beeped again. "Good, good, do you wish to impose a withdraw limit onto Vera here?" The teller asked Lyla.
"Oh, no, no, don’t put a limit on any of them," Lyla responded. The teller nodded and pecked away at his keyboard, then motioned for the next person to step in. Moments later, Doug was added, then Thomas.
"OK Lyla, you’re all set! Anything else we can do for you today?"
"Oh wonderful, thanks, no I think that’s it."
"Wait, can we get some cash out?" Doug asked.
"Cash?" The teller asked with a confused look on his face.
"Oh don’t mind him," Lyla laughed and waved dismissively, "he’s been frozen for the past two-hundred years, and he just doesn’t know any better." The teller laughed uproariously and banged his fists on the counter.
"BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!! AAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!" he screamed, causing everyone to look over and wonder what on Earth could be so funny. Suddenly he stopped, put his serious face back on, and looked towards the queue line. "Next!" he said and waved goodbye to the group.
"Why wouldn’t you let me get any cash?" Doug asked. "You already have a nice wad handy or something?"
"No, physical currency hasn’t existed for decades," Lyla said. "An international debit system was created around the middle of the last century once the implants were required by law. Everything is handled by the implant now; you just confirm the transaction and the money is removed from your account. After a while, it became obvious that currency was no longer needed, so it was phased out."
"You don’t write checks anymore either," Darin chimed in. "Just use a voice command to transfer money and you’re set."
"What’s with all these voice commands anyhow?" Thomas asked. "How are we supposed to remember them?"
"Didn’t you read all of the brochures they gave you? They explained everything," Vera said.
"Well...no."
"Then don’t complain," Vera folded her arms to rest her case. Lyla, Darin, and Doug stood smiling and very amused. Thomas just stood quietly. "Let’s go," Vera said and walked out. The rest slowly followed with Thomas taking up the rear. Doug turned around and looked at Thomas occasionally, grinning like a maniac. They finally caught back up with Vera and paused to figure out what the next thing on the day’s agenda was.
"Well I don’t know, we’ve got the implants, you have access to the bank account, and we’ve basically done everything we needed to do for you to fit into society... What we do now is basically up to you guys," Darin smiled.
"Wow, I think that’s the first time you’ve actually smiled. It's very nice. You should do it more often," Vera said and patted his arm. Darin blushed, Thomas gaped, and Doug coughed.
"Actually," Doug said, "I’d like to spend some time researching travel destinations, you know?"
"I agree," said Thomas, "I want to find out where we could possibly go, given that most of the things from our time are probably gone by now anyhow."
"Well," Vera said, "I wouldn’t mind having some time to check out some of the local scenery..." She stared at Darin, who blushed even more than before.
"OK..." said Lyla who was annoyed at this display, "let’s just go then." They began on their journey back to the lab, a very uneventful trek that took them about fifteen minutes of walking and one POD trip. Finally they got back and separated to their rooms. Thomas looked around his room and realized how utterly boring it would be to just sit there. He wondered why they were back in their rooms again at mid-day, but then remembered that they were supposed to be investigating travel destinations. Thomas decided to make a list and looked around for a pen and paper, but didn’t see any.
"They give us a room with no TV, no windows, and no paper? Good grief," Thomas muttered. He decided to go down to the lab. Surely there would be some paper there. He slipped out into the hallway and walked towards the staircase. Just as he was about to descend he heard a door crack behind him. He turned around and saw Doug’s head dart out to the left in the direction of his room and then towards the stairs where he was standing. He caught sight of Thomas and started flailing his arms wildly, indicating he wanted him to come that way.
"What’s up?" Thomas shouted.
"SHHH!!" Doug hissed and put his finger to his lips to indicate the need to, quite bluntly, shut up. Thomas obeyed and walked briskly in that direction.
"What’s up?" he whispered when he was close.
"I wanted to talk to you about something but I don’t want Vera to know," Doug twisted his face in an unusual way. "She’s been annoying me lately, and I’m not sure what’s going with her and Darin, but it bugs me. Anyhow, come on," Thomas entered Doug’s room and abruptly stopped, staring at the large image on the wall across from Doug’s bed.
"How?" he asked, amazed.
"I know, right? I just figured it out myself a few hours ago. It’s another one of those voice commands you love so much. I guessed that there had to be some sort of TV somewhere, and figured that it might be on the implant, so I was guessing at commands when the wall there turned
on instead."
"Awesome!"
"Well, not really, no. TV hasn’t gotten any better since our day and since I’ve had it on, I’ve seen nothing good. But the local news starts in about twenty minutes so I figured I’d watch that."
"Oh. That’s not a big surprise though really, I didn’t expect the media to change all that much..."
"I was hoping it would, but...oh well. Anyhow, I wanted to see if we could try to get a list together of potential travel destinations so we could split the list, research it individually, and save some time."
"That's what all the flailing and secrecy was for?" Doug shrugged. "Yeah, OK, let’s do it."
"Good! I’ve got some paper right here," Doug reached down and produced a notebook from the backpack that had been stored in the closet all the years they were frozen. "I never go anywhere without a notebook on me, doodling is the perfect cure for boredom on any trip. Plus, if I’m suddenly hit with inspiration for some idea, I can write it down before I forget."
"Good thing, because I couldn’t find paper anywhere in my room, and I was on my way to see if there was some in the lab when you caught me."
"OK, so let’s try and figure this out," Doug sat on the bed and cracked the notebook, turning till he found a blank page. Thomas sat in the armchair across from the bed and pondered quietly about all the places he dreamed of going as a kid. The list was rather brief. Thomas never really cared for traveling and, until the few years before he met Frank’s team, he was content with where he lived.
"What about London?" Doug thought out loud. "I’ve always wanted to see England, and some parts of Europe for that matter."
"How about Paris?" Thomas added.
"Eh..." Doug twisted his face. "See, from everything I’ve heard about Paris, it's always struck me as a tourist trap. I mean, there’s France, and then there’s Paris. I wouldn't mind seeing France, but not Paris." Thomas shrugged.
"Might want to look into it anyhow, it could’ve changed a lot in two-hundred years," Doug considered this, and finally wrote it down below London. They both paused momentarily while a loud, flashy advertisement for something on TV distracted them.
"China?" Doug suggested when the ad was done.
"What city?"
"Beijing? Shanghai? Hong Kong? Anything really."
"We could go to more than one, couldn’t we?"
"Yeah, I guess, but we should at least pick one to really look into."
"Let’s just try Beijing, that is--or was I guess--the capital." Doug nodded in agreement and wrote it down on the list.
"WILL IT POO ON YOU?" The TV blared. Doug and Thomas stopped dead in their tracks, their jaws on the floor. Flashy three-dimensional word art accompanied the message. "The creators of ‘Survivor 1134, Enclosed Room Rapidly Filling With Water’, bring you their latest hit reality show, ‘Will It Poo On You?’" The advertisement cut to show a strange, bearded, malnourished looking man who was apparently the host. "Join us this week as we subject our contestants to the whims of a group of giraffes, all but one of which have been fed laxatives!" Another cut scene occurred, this time showing five people sitting behind five giraffes. "Join us for the fun Sunday at 9 PM!"
"You're right..." Thomas finally said once the shock had passed. "It hasn't changed a bit." Doug shook his head sadly.
"Hey! Speaking of giraffes," Doug perked up, "what if we go on an African safari?"
"Hey, yeah! I've always wanted to do that, but I knew there was no way I would've been able to afford it our time period, so I killed that dream early on." Doug wrote it on the list. They sat quietly for a bit more, deep in thought.
"I really don't know. I mean there are all the big cities of our day--provided they still exist anyhow--like Tokyo, Mexico City, Los Angeles, Delhi, Moscow, and so on... But none of them particularly appeal to me." Thomas said. "I always dreamed of seeing the more scenic things like mountains, lakes, waterfalls, you know? I still wouldn't mind doing that now but you're not going to learn much about the future by staring at a mountain, no matter how majestic it is." Doug smirked.
"This is true... I suspect that regardless of the 'main' destinations we choose, we'll likely end up stopping over in various places along the way and get to do at least a little bit of sightseeing. So how about we just research different large Chinese cities, London, Paris, the safari, and..." he hesitated, mentally flipping coins and eliminating options. "Los Angeles. At least we'll get an American city in there to see too."
"That sounds good," Thomas said.
"Cool. How about you take China and London, and I'll take L.A. and the safari?"
"Sure, I'll probably just go to my room and use the implant thing to look up stuff on the wiki." Just then the local evening news came on.
"This is the WBC5 evening news with anchors Stan Stanley and Rita Viona, Sports with Emma Carme, and Weather with Rex Irving!" The announcer blared as images of strange looking people flashed by. The screen faded to black and a darkened studio lit up to reveal Stan and Rita at the anchor desk.
"Nevermind, I want to watch this first..." Thomas said.
"SHHH!!" Doug hissed.
"Good evening and welcome!" Rita said in an excessively perky voice. "We've got a lot of ground to cover tonight so we're going to get started right away."
"That's right Rita," said Stan in a sickeningly happy voice. Looking at these two, Thomas initially began to feel overwhelmed about how different these people were compared to the TV personalities of his time. Stan, though sitting down, appeared to be fairly tall, and his hair looked to be an unnatural shade of jet black. Rita was a blonde woman who seemed to have an extremely high center of gravity that would make it difficult to walk, let alone sit up. Both of them looked to only be in their twenties.
Thomas reflected for an additional few minutes and realized that they weren't, in fact, all that different after all. These two were just much younger than the typical anchors of his day. Perhaps this was a good thing, though. After all, the old system was designed around the idea that people would only take those who had been in the journalism business for years seriously, and so the older, more experienced individuals usually became anchors. Maybe people were more open minded now than in times past, and didn't look down on age so much. That, or these two were just picked for their looks. Either scenario seemed equally likely. Thomas realized he had missed the large majority of what had been going on, so he decided to shut off his mind and went back to listening.
"And that's why the students at Bill Gates Junior High will be sure to look both ways before crossing the street," Stan finished.
"Hahaha, oh those children, learning things. In sadder news 15 homicides were committed today," Rita said. Suddenly a list appeared on the screen showing the name, ID number, and picture of the victims. The list quickly scrolled by and disappeared. "Only two of those homicides remain unsolved." The camera panned back over to Stan who was staring at Rita.
"Oh, yes, well it was certainly a ... hot ... one outside today, wasn't it Rex? Can you tell us what to expect over the next few days?" An enormous, rotund looking man stood in front of a weather map with a pointer.
"Well Stan, it was quite hot indeed, and we'll see that trend continue through about the middle of this week, but at that point it's going to take a dive towards temperatures that are more typical of this time of year. Morning lows will be in the lower teens, so you may need to start stockpiling up on hot chocolate now!" Rex paused and looked extremely pleased. "I do love the hot chocolate... Beyond that, however, we should see a chance for some showers later this week. We may be dealing with some fog tonight and into tomorrow morning that looks like it could be as thick as pea soup..." Saliva began to drip down Rex's chin, but he quickly wiped it away and carried on. "As for today, however, it did get very hot out, and there wasn't a cloud in the sky! Temperatures reached the lower thirties and boy, you could feel it, it was hot enough to cook an egg on a sidewalk!" Drool began pouring down now without restraint. "As we look at our current condit
ions, however, we're sitting comfortably at about twenty degrees with clear skies... I like donuts. Back to you Stan."
"OK, thanks very much Rex, we always look forward to hearing your delicious weather reports. Now we're going to go to Emma for sports."
"OH GOODY!" Rita suddenly exclaimed. She began clapping and bouncing in her chair, hitting Stan in the head. The screen cut to Emma who appeared to be in the middle of a stadium.
"Thanks Stan! Rita, I love your enthusiasm!" Emma flashed a wicked looking smile, obviously aware of what had happened. "I'm here in the Knick's stadium," she said, the camera pulling back from the close up to reveal her standing on a step ladder next to one of the team's players. "We're here with Marius Henning, the team's 8'6" center. Now Marius, you guys had a rough game tonight against the Wildcats, can you tell me what your toughest issue was?" Marius began muttering incoherently, but eventually real words started to come out.
"Well Emma, I dunno what to tell ya, I mean that there team is simply amazing, they got one a them new centers from the most recent change in the Minimum Requirements, and going against someone that tall is just crazy." Marius turned to talk directly to the camera now. "I mean I got mad respect for you Joey, but I gotta say that I don't know what kinda ball you were playin' out there!"
"Yes, that has to be tough for you since you've been playing for so long to see the latest generation of players start to enter the court, do you think that you will be forced to retire soon?" Marius looked away from the camera and began to tear up.
"Well Emma, I don't know what..." he paused to sniffle and wipe away some tears. "I mean, the game is my life, if they replace me I just don't know what I'm gonna do..." He walked off abruptly. Emma clearly wasn't prepared for this.
"Changing times here on the court, Stan and Rita, it's clearly difficult for some of the players, but I do want to relieve any fears Marius' fans may have, the team's manager indicated to me that they weren't planning on replacing him anytime soon. Live from Knick's stadium, I'm Emma Carme."
"Thanks Emma," Rita said. Stan was conspicuously absent. "Well that seems to be it for our broadcast this evening, we'll leave you now with some footage from the marathon that happened earlier today. Stay tuned for the regional news." Rita smiled and the studio faded out to show a mass of people running along the Queensboro Bridge. Doug turned towards Thomas, but said nothing. Thomas said nothing in return. Their silence said enough.
"This is the WBC regional news with Katie Couric's clone," the announcer said as dramatic music played in the background. Katie Couric--her clone that is--appeared on screen. Doug laughed in an amused tone that also seemed slightly nervous.
"Good evening, I'm Katie Couric's clone, and welcome to the WBC regional news. Recently our region has been all abuzz about the upcoming election for this region's members of the International House, and I had a chance to sit down today for an exclusive interview with Paula Antonie, one of the most controversial candidates in our region." The recording of the interview began to play.
"Good evening Katie, thanks for havin' me!" Paula said and shook hands with Katie.
"Well thank you for this interview, Paula, it's an honor. Now I'd like to just get started and address one of the main things your opponents are attacking you for: your lack of experience. You, however, say that you have been studying the methods of a few of our region's most distinguished members of the International House. Now I'm curious, which particular members of the International House from this region have you studied to understand how they get the job done?"
"I've really studied most of them, again, with great appreciation for them, for all that they do, they really are the ones that make our world great."
"But which ones specifically? I'm curious."
"Um, well, all of them, any of them that have really stood out to me over the years."
"Can you name any of them?"
"I have a vast variety of individuals that I have studied."
"Ugh!" Doug shouted in disgust. "Politicians are worse than they were in our day! Mute TV!" He barked and it was suddenly silent. "Hey, it worked! I was just guessing. Well anyhow, I'm going to start looking into things now. You can stay if you want, it's up to you."
"Nah," said Thomas, "though I will need some paper if I'm going to be able to write things down. Can I borrow some?"
"Sure," Doug said, reaching into his bag and producing a second notebook with a pen already stuck in the metallic spiral.
"Thanks!" Thomas said and hastily exited. He quietly made his way back down the hall to his room as if he were about to be eaten by a grue. Each step was strategically made and placed as if the next could be his last in a text-based adventure game that was seemingly impossible to beat. He cracked the door to his room, flipped the light switch and entered, swiftly closing the door behind him. He stood there and realized how silly he must've looked, had anyone seen him. "That was pointless," he said to no one in particular.