The sky is blue. It rains, but it is
hard to see the clouds anymore. The DynaCore satellites move through
the sky, translucent and beautiful as they are touched by the sun and
touch the world in turn. There was a slight misting of rain just
before dawn, and it will be warm the rest of the day. I don’t need
to look at any interface to know this – it has been that way longer
than our child has been alive.
“Is it going to snow for Christmas?”
That’s all our child asks behind me, soft and hard at once.
“I believe so. Your father always
liked snow at Christmas, and most of the neighbours would like it as
well.”
They pause. I have always been good
with weather; I find I am good with the moods of people, later than I
would have liked to learn this skill. The pause is sharp and hard, a
sudden updraft. “And that’s it, mom? A week of snow perhaps, and
then this –?” They wave a hand to compass the sky, the growing
fields, the sun.
I master anger. It gets harder with
every season, with every year. In the face of hatred I do not
understand. But I do it. “You have seen pictures of me and your
father. Why DynaCorp was built. You have not had to worry about acid
rains burning off your skin, weirding storms tearing apart homes and
lands, the resource wars that shattered nations and continents,” I
snap, louder than I intended to.
“I know that, mom,” they say, as if
they do. As if virtual games substitute for experience. “But the
weather is gone, and you don’t get that. You’ve never got that,
because you don’t talk about small things. Little things. All the
conversations that are simple common ground everyone can discuss to
fill holes in a conversation. And now the weather isn’t one of
those at all, and you don’t – none of you understand what you
took from us.”
“There are,” I say as patiently as
I can, “many topics of conversation, child.”
They bristle at the child; I don’t
think I would have, as a child, but the world has changed. “And
weather was one of the levellers, the ones everyone could talk about.
Weather was safe, and now you’ve made it bland, mom. You and this
company, and everything you’ve done!”
“We made the world safe; if that is
the price, it is one people should be glad to pay.”
“And if we’re not?”
I say nothing to that at all. There
have been attempts to take down the DynaCorp system, often fronted by
religionists, but this is something else altogether. Almost, almost I
am tempted to use override codes and let them know what the world was
truly like, let them see the truth they don’t understand.
But I master the anger and go back
inside.
Tomorrow will be another beautiful day.
