Back in the year 1990, the people of the United States of America paid three billion dollars for eighteen thousand million disposable diapers. Into these snug, absorbent, well-engineered products went one hundred million kilograms of plastic, eight hundred million kilograms of wood pulp, and approximately five million babies. The babies weren’t disposable, but all the rest went straight into the trash stream.
Early designs for “disposable” diapers had included degradable inner liners, meant to be flushed down the toilet while the outer portion was reused. But that method was soon abandoned as inconvenient and unpleasant. Modern parents preferred just balling up the whole offensive mess and tossing it into the garbage. Tons of feces and urine thus bypassed urban sewage systems and went instead by flyblown truck through city streets to landfills, incinerators, and the new, experimental recycling plants. Along with them went hepatitis A, the Norwalk and Rota viruses, and a hundred other air- and water- and insect-borne threats.
As the price of landfill dumping rose above $100 a ton, by 1990 it was costing Americans $350 million a year just to get rid of single-use diapers, so for every dollar spent by parents on disposables, other taxpayers contributed more than ten cents in hidden subsidy.
That didn’t include, of course, the untold cost of the 1996 New Jersey Rota epidemic. Or the nationwide hepatitis outbreaks of ’99.
But what could be done? To busy young families, needing two wage earners just to make ends meet, convenience was a treasure beyond almost any price. It could make the difference between choosing to have a child or giving up the idea altogether.
Packaging and disposal fees might have let old-fashioned diaper services compete on even terms. But that, and other bullet-biting measures, voters succeeded in putting off for another generation… for another, harder century.
These, after all, were the waning years of high-flying TwenCen. And nothing was too good for baby.
Anyway, if the bill wouldn’t come due for another twenty years or so, all the better. Baby would be a superkid, raised on tofu and computers and quality time. So baby could pay for it all.
• HOLOSPHERE
Jen Wolling missed her postman. Who would have imagined it, back when she was a blonde fireball tearing up turn-of-the-century biology? Even then she’d known the future would offer surprises, but the changes that amazed her most turned out not to be the grand ones — those milestones noted breathlessly by media pundits — but little things, the gradual shifts people overlooked simply because they crept up on you bit by bit, day by day.
Such as the steady disappearance of postmen. Amid the growing worldwide data culture few had foreseen that consequence — an end to those punctual footsteps on the walk, to the creak of the letter box, to the friendly “hello” rustle of paper envelopes…
Without fanfare, Britain’s twice-a-day deliveries went every other day, then once weekly. Letter carrying was “deregulated” — turned over to private services, which then charged by the minute and made a production number of signing over a single envelope.
What Jen missed most was the routine mundanity of mail time. It used to come as a welcome break, an excuse to tear herself away from the flat, cramped, eye-wearying computer screens of those days, stretching her crackling back as she hobbled over to pick up the daily offering of multicolored envelopes.
Most of it had been junk of course. What was Sturgeon’s first law? Ninety percent of anything is crap.
But ah, that remaining ten percent!
There were letters from dear friends (which, amidst a month-long wrestling bout of abstract theory, often served to remind her she had friends). And there were technical journals to leaf through, scribble on the margins, and leave in the corner to pile up like geologic sediments…
And beautiful, real-paper magazines — Natural History and .National Geographic and Country Life — their glossy pages conveying what modern hyper versions could not, despite high-fidelity sound and stereo projection.
Trees regularly died for human literacy in those days. But that was one sacrifice even Jen didn’t begrudge. Not then, nor even today as she opened the curtains to spill morning light onto library shelves stacked high with books printed on rag paper, some even bound in burnished leather that had once adorned the backs of proud animals.
This library could bring a small fortune from collectors… and the sharp opprobrium of vegetarians. But one of the advantages of the electronic age was that you could maintain a universe of contacts while keeping all prying eyes out of your own home, your castle.
It also has disadvantages, she thought as she scanned the list of bulletins awaiting her this morning. Her autosecretary displayed a column of daunting figures. Back when communication had still been a chore, half these correspondents would have been too lazy or thrifty to spend the time or a stamp. But now, message blips were as easy and cheap as talk itself. Easier, for copies could be made and transmitted ad infinitum.
Yes, indeed. Sometimes Jen longed for her postman.
You don’t miss water or air, either — not till the well runs dry, or the oxygen partial pressure drops to twenty percent.
She took a subvocal input device from its rack and placed the attached sensors on her throat, jaw, and temples. A faint glitter in the display screens meant the machine was already tracking her eyes, noting by curvature of lens and angle of pupil the exact spot on which she focused at any moment.
She didn’t have to speak aloud, only intend to. The subvocal read nerve signals, letting her enter words by just beginning to will them. It was much faster than any normal speech input device… and more cantankerous as well. Jen adjusted the sensitivity level so it wouldn’t pick up each tiny tremor — a growing problem as her once athletic body turned wiry and inexact with age. Still, she vowed to hold onto this rare skill as long as possible.
Tapping certain teeth made colors shift in the tanks and screens. A yawn sent cyclones spinning within a blue expanse. Sometimes, under a talented operator, a subvocal could seem almost magical, like those “direct” brain-to-computer links science fiction writers were always jabbering about, but which, for simple neurological reasons, had never become real. This was as close as anyone had come, and still ninety percent of existing subvocals were used at most to make pretty 3-D pictures.
How ironic then, that Jen had been taught to use hers at age sixty-two. So much for adages about old dogs and new tricks!
“Hypersecretary, Sri Ramanujan,” she said.
Mists cleared and a face formed, darkly handsome, with noble Hindu features. For her computer’s “shell” persona Jen could have chosen anything from cartoon alien to movie star. But she had picked this system’s unique designer as a model. In those eyes she recognized something of the young consultant from Nehruabad, his life-spark peering out from the cage of his useless body.
“Good morning, Professor Wolling. During the last twenty-four hours there have been three priority-nine world news items, two regional alerts for Britain, and four on general topics from Reuters, your chosen neutral-bias news agency. None of the alerts were in categories listed by you as critical.”
Citizens had to subscribe to a minimum news-input or lose the vote. Still, Jen was anything but a public events junky, so her nine-or-greater threshold was set as high as allowed. She’d scan the headlines later.
“You have received six letters and thirty five-message blips from individuals on your auto-accept list. Sixty-five more letters and one hundred and twelve blips entered your general delivery box on the Net.
“In addition, there were four hundred and thirteen references to you, in yesterday’s scientific journals. Finally, in popular media and open discussion boards, your name was brought up with level seven or greater relevance fourteen hundred and eleven times.”