Mary squeezed his arm and said, “Food, no matter how cleverly assembled, Fred, is still just food.”
ROLFE’S WAS HOPPING, wall to wall, overbooked. Extra tables encroached on the dance floors and vidwalls. Revelers were pressed tight around the bars and out to the Stardeck beyond the pressure curtain. The noise was deafening. Mary swiped them in, and Fred broke trail for her to the Tin Room where their friends gathered each Wednesday. But their usual table was occupied by strangers.
Mary tuned to her FDO channel and said, Hey, guys, where are you?
Is that Mary? someone replied. We’re in the Zinc Room, on the bandstand.
Mary pointed to the Zinc Room, and Fred steered a course through the masses.
The Zinc Room bandstand had been dragooned into service for additional table space. Their friends had three small tables pushed together. Sofi waved at them. Yoo hoo. Over here.
The tables were laid with carafes of drink and plates of Aegean appetizers: feta and kasseri cubes, and grape leaves stuffed with spicy bits of meat and vegetables. There was a bowl of giant, glistening green and black olives.
“Isn’t this great?” Sofi shouted.
“What?” Mary shouted back, cupping her ear with her hand.
I said isn’t this great? Sofi was their helena, their Mediterranean doll woman, petite and dark, with wide hips and wide eyes and flashing teeth. She swayed in time to some music channel and opened her arms to take in the whole frenzied dining hall.
Oh, the crowd, Mary replied. Yes, it’s great. Just like the centennial.
Sofi’s brown eyes lit up. You’re right! Just like the centennial.
As Mary and Fred found their spot at the table, Mary looked around to see who all was there. Their jerrys—Wes, Bill, and Ross—were sitting at one end of the table, with their jenny wives—Liz, Gwyn, and Deb—sitting opposite them. Their sole jerome—Peter—and their sole joan—Alice—were present without dates, as well as their other helena—Sazza—and her frank husband Mickey. Their ruth, isabella, and jack, all present and accounted for.
Missing were their two lulus—Abbie and Mariola. Also missing was the other evangeline/russ couple—Shelley Oakland and Reilly Dell.
Shelley would be late. She had a long commute. She was the only envangeline Mary knew who had a real evangeline job and had had it for over five years. Other ’leens hated Shelley as much as they admired her, and Mary would have hated her too except that Shelley was her best friend. Also, Shelley’s client was a famous death artist, so Shelley’s working conditions weren’t ideal.
After settling in with small talk, Mary scanned the furious, engorged dining hall. People, tables, chairs—all were pressed together in a solid mass, forcing the arbeitor waiters to ride overhead, suspended on a network of cables. Most of the tables were mixed, like theirs, though there were the inevitable jane/john and juanita/juan tables.
The dance floor looked like a squirming, many-headed monster as everyone danced to their own music channel. Mary picked out Abbie and Mariola. At least they looked like Abbie and Mariola. Anyway, she picked out two lulus practicing dance steps who were possibly their lulus.
At the end of the table, jenny Gwyn said, Wes! Take off that visor. You promised.
Wes looked around, all innocence. What? What’d I do now?
Don’t give me that, said Gwyn. If that game means so much to you, why don’t you go back to the flat and watch it there?
And take Bill with you, added Liz.
Bill shot back, It’s a tournament, not a game. And I’m not watching it either.
The main topic of conversation around the table seemed to be the canopies: where each of them had been seventy years ago when the first city-wide canopies were erected. Mary, along with about half of their gang, hadn’t been decanted yet, but she found the topic fascinating nevertheless.
Alice, their joan, related her experience in New York City, when the Outrage first washed in from the Atlantic. She had been inside a pressurized office that day and so had survived the initial slaughter. She described the weeks and months of terror and strife, as the streets were filled with the dead, and food and water ran out. We endured; like we always do, she said, summarizing a year in hell with typically joan understatement. Seventy years ago, Gwyn the jenny had been taking an advanced nursing course in Sydney when one day she was the only student to show up for practicum. Meanwhile, Mickey the frank had been in Kyoto and lost everyone he knew up to that point in his life. Peter the jerome spent three whole days stuck in a Hong Kong noodle shop in which over a hundred people died. He’d had to fight (a jerome fighting!) a free-ranger who tried to steal the hazmat suit off his back and tore it in the attempt.
After a while, the stories took on a sameness. Seventy years ago they were living in this or that region, were employed at the same sort of work they were still employed at today, were enjoying or not enjoying their lives, when on that fateful May Day, the whole world changed.
Chicago was the first city to experiment with a semisolid atmospheric filter to protect its urban biosphere. The new technology quickly spread to all the cities of the United Democracies. Over the next few months, the canopies became larger, deeper, and more reliable until they were able to hold the Outrage at bay.
Mickey said, Compared to the ones we have today, the first ones were pretty porous, but you have no idea what a relief it was to be inside one of them.
Gwyn said, We called them our blessed shields of normalcy.
Peter said, I’ve lived under this same canopy for sixty-eight years, and I swear, I’m not ready to give it up.
Here, here! chorused the others. They raised their glasses in a toast to the Chicagoland canopy. Fred poured Mary white wine from one of the carafes and ginger ale for himself. To our blessed shield of normalcy, they cried. Fred didn’t know what the toast was to, but he raised his ginger ale anyway.
Mary gagged on her wine. It had a sharp, sour flavor and it reeked of turpentine. It’s retsina, Sofi told her. Do you like it?
Yes, Mary said. I just wasn’t expecting it.
It goes well with food. Try it with the octopus.
Forget that stuff, Wes said and poured her a glass of what he was drinking. This goes down better. He passed her a glass of an oily, colorless liquid that smelled like licorice. It was too strong for Mary’s taste, but she thanked him and took a few appreciative sips.
When the conversation came around to Fred, he seemed to know that something was expected of him, but he didn’t know what. He pointed to his ears and shook his head. Mary leaned over to him and shouted over the noise, “They’re reminiscing about when the canopies first went up!”
“Who’s missing?” he shouted back.
“No one’s missing — reminiscing! The Outrage! Where were you seventy years ago?”
Gwyn quipped, So what’s the score, Fred?
He’s not watching the game, Mary replied.
Sure he is, said Liz. Just look at him.
Wes banged an empty glass on the table to get everyone’s attention. Yo! Myren! Fred’s off-line. He was sheep-dipped today. Can’t you smell it? Everyone looked at Fred, and he flinched under the sudden scrutiny.