Chapter 7

After climbing a junked fire escape, careful not to fall, Marco pulled me onto the roof of his parents’ building.  From there, the cluster of grandfathered brownstones looked like a simulated village against blocks of towers.  Somewhere past those towers, Marco promised he’d take me one day once travel restrictions were lifted.

On the far side of City’s metro, beyond the towers and water that circle City’s core, farms and factories grow food and assemble product made by machines at the direction of programmers living in City towers.  Marco longs to experience firsthand how things are made in their place of origin before being actuated.  Few in City share his curiosity.

Once the majority of City drifted into their trace-aided slumber, the lights of all but the nightshift brownstones went dim.  Marco shared his cynical take on why tinted windows were intended to keep lights out, shielding us from the truth of the streets and the lives of transits, rather than serving their promise of protecting our privacy.  Otherwise why would the windows need tint in both directions, and why had City failed to upgrade windows on the brownstones so that light would not escape from them, compromising the privacy of those grandfathered families living inside?  Only City’s arrogant disregard for the potential of individuals had shielded Marco from City’s gaze.

Those of us who never venture outside our towers miss the panoramic beauty that digital technology fails to capture: such as the firmament of stars no different in splendor than the fairy tale where the boy, guided only by constellations, carries a bouquet of roses across the cool desert night to bring to his true love flowers from a land where such things continue to grow.
Marco said the stars tell stories more ancient than the earliest forms of digital technology, that tech’s comparative lack of historical footing reminds us of the inquisitiveness and imagination inherent in our ancestors who studied the sky.  Marco pointed out a pattern of stars like the animal that produced milk prior to powder.  Another constellation cinched the sky like a girl’s belt. 

As Marco tilted me back for a brief kiss, the stars dipped in the sky.  Then Marco twirled me around and called me his compass before plugging in a long cord to display a set of handmade lights once used to celebrate a winter holiday, casting the space above us into a miniature version of the starry sky.

As if the holiday lights were not enough, Marco set a large black disc into an old-fashioned music device plugged into an outlet on the roof--old outlets Marco had modernized to receive energy from his parents’ elliptical machine--and we danced to music from a Prokofiev record while the lights swayed in the wind.  The dizziness brought on by so much motion and light sent me back into Marco’s arms from where he carried me to his roses, explaining how he collects rainwater in barrels on the rooftop to prepare for unexpected droughts and the limited supply of water allocated to citizens via pipes.  No longer guided solely by the logic and structure of the rationale, Marco allowed the roses to grow untamed over a trellis he’d reconstructed from bits of wood found in the collector’s flat. 

When I thought there’d be nothing left for Marco to show me on the rooftop, he pulled out a small music box meant to store jewelry from a time when women could expect more than one necklace for the senior dance and a ring for their wedding.  A song called “You Are My Sunshine” tinkled out of the music box while Marco, with the dexterity of a computer mouse, transferred a gold ring from the velvet of the box to my fourth finger.

“But we’re too young,” I said.  “I’m not even old enough to be courting.  We could be convicted for crimes against reason.”

“For courting, yes, but do you know what chance has provided?  Do you remember the coincidence of the annual dance, the event that brought you to my parents’ shop?”

“My eighteenth.”

“Yes, and people used to celebrate their birthdays with friends and family before digital socializing replaced real time, before video chat replaced the need to meet in person.”

“What does all that have to do with courting?”

“You are eighteen, and have been since our first meet in the tall grass after the dance.  Turning eighteen used to mean something, a cause for gathering and celebration, but also more.  I discovered the historical significance in a book from the collection, and my digital research proved some meanings held.”

“I thought you were offline?  I thought you’d sworn.”

“I did, but for you, for us, I had to make an exception.  I practically flipped my desk over in anger when I logged on, but how else could we confirm the loophole, that at eighteen you are free to marry?  Though forgotten in the wake of new customs, the right was never repealed.  Once we are married, the Mod must honor our union.”

“How will I work?  Where will we live?”

“If we’re already married, my parents will let us live on the third floor among the collector’s treasures.  I can continue to sew dresses, and you can make the jewelry you’ve been designing digitally, crafting new pieces out of old rings and necklaces the collector left behind.  My parents’ shop is grandfathered; they can sell anything related to annual dances or weddings as long as we have enough raw materials from the collection or from objects received in barter from those who visit the shop.  There are plenty of materials remaining in the collection.  How do you think my parents made all those dresses despite citizens being careful in bartering for handmade when they can opt for machine made clothing at a fraction of the price?  My parents cut old sheets of fabric from the collector’s items or unstitch old dresses.  The collector vacuum sealed all the fabric to preserve it.  There’s enough material left to last two lifetimes, so the practice is sanctioned as efficient and reasonable.  Your contribution will function the same.

"The collector saved chests filled with jewelry, tools for disassembling the stones and a contraption where the gold and silver can be melted down and reformed.  You can learn his craft from books in the collection, and we can continue to sell to those who visit the shop so long as some citizens are willing to trade portions of their allotment to commemorate annuals and weddings.  While we won’t be completely free of the actuator, we can reduce our reliance on it, using even less actuated product than my parents once we learn how to grow more than roses.”

“Then it all comports with the rationale?”

“Better than that.  Wait until you see the treasures we will live amongst: packages of rose and vegetable seeds, bits of wood, music boxes, record players and piles of records.  Ice cream makers are only the beginning.  There are popcorn machines, if we can find some kernels, and tape players and tapes with music recorded on miles of ribbon.  Kites for flying in the wind, sleds for riding over snow, if we can find a hill come winter, and a jar of pennies for your thoughts.”

“Pennies for my thoughts?”

“People’s thoughts, not just their logic and programming, used to be considered valuable.  Anyone who loved you would trade a penny, a fraction of allotment, for your thoughts.”

“They’d give up part of their allotment for that?”

“I would.”

“Put a penny on it,” I said, extending my palm as Marco guided me through a door in the roof and down a ladder that extended into the third floor of his parents’ brownstone.  After helping me down, gingerly in the dark, Marco lit a candle from the collection; and we found our way through gilded light reflected off mirrors and suits of armor and large picture frames and a chandelier and mirror ball for dancing and a bronze bicycle for riding through the streets and drums for making sound and a tall wooden device with white and black keys for striking music and wooden horses for children to rock on and miniatures of pre-digital homes for children to house their miniature dolls and other forgotten items too big for actuating, but not considered as essential to justify old-fashioned delivery as bed frames, mattresses, desks and the elliptical.

The collector’s flat extended deeper through the years than the building’s exterior suggested possible with paper books lining most walls: how-to books and poetry, historical novels and the plays of Shakespeare, treatises on mechanical engineering and jewelry design, biographical and culinary works, horticulture and cartography, maps and atlases and adventure tales from the pre-digital age, the works of Bengtsson and Melville, religious texts and two books written by the collector himself, and works with visions of the future (some that predicted it right, some that did not).  The collection went on, but we stopped beside a jar of coins where Marco produced a penny for my thoughts.

“And?” he asked.

“Yes!  Yes, yes and a thousand more yesses.  This is how I will live, and whatever the compatibility tests would have determined, you are the only with whom I will live.”

We kiss hurriedly so Marco could take me home.  So close to our union, we couldn’t take any chances with time; but before we left, he took a picture of himself from a pre-digital camera that produced a paper copy instantly so I could have him with me until the wedding.  He’d found a reliable justice who will marry us, and Marco agreed to use digital tech one more time so you can witness our wedding via video chat.

Oh, Vidalia, now it is your turn.  You must know we are being reasonable.  Emotion and physicality can exist along with efficiency and reason.  Please say yes.  Please be a part of our wedding.  If you can’t touch these treasures, then see with your own eyes our love and the world where it will grow.   You are the only one I trust.

The wedding will take place in the collector’s flat.  Marco found an old tuxedo in the collection that suits him, and he already made me my dress.
Please, Vidalia.  Please say yes.