Court of the Grandchildren

2. David

2

David

My planned welcoming words and offer of refreshments evaporated the moment Lily walked through the door. I was surprised, unsettled. I hadn’t anticipated it; how could I? My whole plan was disrupted and, under pressure, I had defaulted to my old business mode.

“Why didn’t you tell me about her face?” I chided Sarah after Lily left.

“Here’s your Zepraxonyl.” She placed the tablet into my cupped palm. A white ellipse with an etched band.

I threw it into my mouth and washed it down.

“Why didn’t you?” I persisted.

“I didn’t think it was relevant.”

“But it is.”

“Why?”

I didn’t bother to answer. Sarah wouldn’t understand. How could she? She isn’t family.

“And those tattoos,” I scoffed.

“They’re ‘kumadori,’” Sarah said. “It’s the Japanese word for face painting.”

“Why would you change your face like that?”

“They’re not permanent,” she explained. “Some people change them every week. They’re very popular with the young.”

I shook my head at the folly of this latest fad. It won’t last.

Despite being flustered by her appearance, it was refreshing to meet someone who could see past the artificial intelligence hype and know the dangers to society at large. It gave me hope that this generation might avoid the disaster we’re heading into. I was surprised that young people had groups like hers who understood these dangers. All I ever heard about the younger generation was that they wanted nothing to do with us older people. And those bizarre face tattoos, those kumadori, won’t make them any more approachable for us.

Still, it wasn’t Lily I was mad at, it was Sarah. She had sabotaged my whole plan and confused the issue by bringing up the court.

She finished her cleaning chores and sat at the table with me. “Is everything all right, David?”

“Don’t ever contradict me again.”

“I didn’t contradict you,” she replied calmly.

“You brought up the Climate Court.”

“I was saying what was true.”

“You know I’m getting a waiver.”

“That’s not certain. And I didn’t say anything when you lied about a terminal illness.”

“For god’s sake, Sarah. Stop resisting for once.” I could tell she was trying to manipulate me, which of course would fail.

“How are we going to get her permission?” I asked, turning to the more important point.

“It might be best to avoid a face-to-face meeting next time,” she replied. “We should do a Holo call. There’ll be less emotion.”

I grunted in agreement. The kind of emotion that Lily brought was not a familiar event in my apartment. Usually I had nothing to be emotional about other than mundane annoyances from Sarah.

“Do you think she’ll give permission?” I asked.

Sarah paused. “She will. When the time’s right.”

Lily must have noticed that I was of sound mind and able to make my own decisions. So, Sarah was right, it was only a matter of time before Lily would approve my wish.

With that more positive outlook, I could enjoy beating the crap out of Fred. I called my joint pain Fred. It seemed childish to name the pain at first, and I ignored the suggestion to do so from the specialist when she first made it. But now I saw the merit in personalizing the pain. The Zepraxonyl pushed back against Fred and his army. It was my fleeting moment of winning and I cherished every second of it.

I visualized a battle, and I made up different scenarios. One of my favorites was imagining force fields around my knees being re-energized by the Zep. Fred’s henchmen were pushed off their footholds into the abyss below—to the bottom of my feet. And for the rest of the day, when I remembered, I paced around the apartment and felt tiny prickles all over the soles of my feet as their bodies exploded under my weight. I got a lot of satisfaction from these fantasies. I dared not tell Sarah about them, although she would notice me walking, almost dancing, and ask if everything was all right.

This time I imagined the gremlins being pushed off the tops of my shoulders and falling right down into my fingertips. I hung my arms straight down by my sides and shook them to make sure the gremlins didn’t get hung up along their fall.

During one of these pleasant winning moments, I came up with a theory that the name Zepraxonyl derived from its shape. The tablet looked like a miniature Zeppelin and it had a shiny surface, like the membrane on the airships themselves. I recounted this observation to Dr. Bartok. He didn’t know what a Zeppelin was. It startled me how quickly the past had faded and was lost to the present.

Alas, the pleasant moments didn’t last long. The pain receded as the Zep-powered force fields hit peak strength and then they started their slow decline … and Fred’s fog rolled in.