Years later and years later after that

There now is something called “The Freedom Tower” where the huge negative space used to be. It was stuck in the hole in the sky where the Old World Trade Center was.

They had to put something there because they were afraid of the vacuum, afraid it would suck them into it, and they would be lost forever.

So, another expensive, worthless, phallic symbol was erected in Lower Manhattan. I can’t see it at this moment, but I know it’s there in the fog, and when the fog clears I will see it out my window.

In those days, I often walked downtown to look at the big hole where the Trade Center had been and the emptiness was overwhelming. I used to wonder if I would ever again be able to enjoy a perfect September day, or any perfect blue day. But that was back when the pile was still burning. It burned into December while volunteers worked, with no protective gear, no respirators, not even the kind of pathetic homemade masks we wear now when we go out to get groceries. The workers weren’t warned that they were in danger of getting cancer or fatal respiratory illness from their sad labor of searching for tiny pieces of human remains. “Recovery,” it was called, for a “decent burial” that honored the dead.

We never know where to put the dead, even when there is a burial plot already paid for, or a bag of ashes. That Fall we inhaled the dead, their smoky ghosts, but we could never understand what we thought they demanded of us. We are never ready to lose our people and we never know how to fill the vacuum that takes the place they occupied in our lives, the big hole in the sky.

People were born after the towers fell and they grew up and graduated from high school and started college or went to work or became parents. I used to wonder about those people of the future for whom the towers were not an everyday sight, something you looked for when you got off the subway and needed to orient yourself. The towers are over there, so uptown is over here, and the East Side is to the right, etc. When the towers were gone we were often disoriented and had to find other ways to know where we were.

America was lost in the world, picking fights, blustering, and deceiving itself. America wasn’t prepared for the new viruses, its social safety net was torn, its constitution had been sabotaged, and the empire never fully recovered.

Years Later, others were born who grew up not knowing some things that were commonplace in 2019. Why would anyone ever eat THAT? Were they TRYING to kill themselves? Why the addiction to fossil fuels? Were they CRAZY? And so on. 

The people of the future — I call them “People of the Future” — never shake hands. Handshakes are disgusting. Bare hands are disgusting. Seeing someone without gloves turn a doorknob is like seeing someone pick their nose. Young people roll their eyes when I make these observations, so I try to hold my tongue — excuse the vulgarity — but since you asked… 

What else? she asked. What else was normal twenty years ago that is not normal in 2040?

We were also addicted to money. Dirty, bacteria—ridden cash. We thought we couldn’t live without it. 

People back then were so nasty, my great great niece said to me. They displayed their naked faces in real life. It was gross.

I tried to explain that we weren’t used to masking our faces all the time, because the 21st century viruses were unknown, and we didn’t need to protect ourselves so much.

That’s not even true, she says. You had the flu, you had  the common cold, you had AIDS, SARS, Ebola, measles…

People died from that shit.

She’s writing her dissertation on the history of modern pandemics. She’s not stupid, but to her generation, an old man’s naked face is a very unpleasant sight, and a young person’s bare mouth is either erotic or ridiculous. Now everyone is veiled and everyone’s veil is a unique fashion statement that shows the world how one wants to be seen. It has only been this way for a couple of decades. Nose, mouth, eyes, need to be protected from invisible enemies, everyone is taught that, but it took years for my generation to learn it. We didn’t know.

2020 was the year the new viruses discovered the human world, my great great niece says, and by 2025 the new viruses had colonized Earth. They are cruel rulers, but they also give us some good things. They unified the human community and they put a stop to global warming. People adapted. 

Yeah, we adapted, but I’m 86 years old and I remember how things were and I’m still amazed at how things changed.

What do you think is the best thing we have now that we didn’t have BV?

BV?

Before Virus, she says. We are making a new calendar. We have to, because Time has changed so much since your time and we need new ways to measure it.

Yes, my time. Well, the biggest thing, I’m not sure if it’s good or bad, but it is very big, is we finally found a place to put the dead. I passed into the Noosphere five years ago. The technology of transmigration was, I won’t say unthinkable, there were what we called science fiction stories, and there were myths of resurrection, but the more or less permanent storage of one’s essential data was a fantastic idea that most scientists thought was impossible. The next leap was the discovery that our data could continue to live and grow and merge with the data of others in the information afterlife. It is nice to visit you on this device and to have these zoom meetings — I’m surprised it’s still called that — but to leave the meeting and not be attached to my image, and let the soul evaporate into the cloud of witnesses is a rapture you never dreamed of.