New America (4 page)

I went upstairs and urinated
in the toilet, which informed me I was at risk of dehydration and should drink
some water. Ignoring its advice, I cleaned my teeth, then dropped into bed.

I was passed out before the
lights dimmed all the way to dark.

☼

A
loud crash somewhere caused me to jerk upright in bed. I listened but didn’t
hear anything more. For some reason the bedroom light didn’t turn on.

“Lights,” I said.

The room remained pitch
black.

What the hell?

“Blinds,” I said.

They didn’t open.

“Shit,” I mumbled, slipping
out of bed.

What had I heard? A window
breaking?

Why wasn’t the house
responding to me?

I crept across the room. I’d
left the door open. I stopped at the threshold and listened again.

Still nothing.

“Hello?” I called.

No answer.

Blind, I stepped into the
hallway—and something slammed into my gut. My breath exploded from my mouth. I
doubled over. Someone gripped my hair and shirt and launched me forward. I tripped
over my own feet and landed on my chest. I flipped onto my back and was kicked
in the shoulder. I cried out and tried to stand. Hands helped me, yanking me to
my feet.

“Stop!” I said, my confusion
and fright giving way to rage. I kicked, striking my attacker’s shin. He
grunted—it was a male voice—and I kicked a second time, missing.

The man had backed up. I
could no longer feel him in front of me. Then his shoulder or head drove into
me with the force of a charging bull. The banister behind us splintered.

We were falling.

☼

The
impact with the ground came quickly, though I didn’t feel any pain. I was
wondering whether I’d broken my back when the man, who had landed on top of me,
hissed in my ear, “You shouldn’t have come here.”

His fist plowed into my jaw.

☼

A
musical ringtone summoned me from unconsciousness. I cracked open my eyes. I
was on the floor of the living room. Spindles from the upstairs banister lay
around me. The house had recovered from whatever had taken it offline, and the
lights were on, the blinds open. It was morning outside, or afternoon.

The ringing continued. I
recognized it. I’d programmed it to play when—

“Answer!” I barked, sitting
upright. I cringed against the pain in my jaw.

The holographic wall screen
came to life. Maureen materialized a few feet away from me. Her eyes widened in
surprise. “My God, Bob! What happened to you?” The communication link altered
the audio frequency of her voice so she could speak with New People and not
sound like thunder rumbling.

I brought a hand to my jaw.
It was sore to the touch. My lip was split and swollen. Dried blood crusted my
chin. “Someone broke in last night,” I said.

“Broke in?”

“He attacked me.” I looked
around the room. One window was broken. Shards of glass lay on the slate floor.

“Why would someone attack
you, Bob? What are you talking about?”

“I don’t know!” I said. “I
heard a noise. I came out of the bedroom. This guy jumped me…” I raised my eyes
to the second floor. I was frowning at the spot where we’d broken through the
banister when it came to me why I hadn’t been injured in the fifteen-foot fall.
I had the mass of a pea. I could no longer be hurt by falling, just as an ant
couldn’t.

“Who jumped you, Bob? I don’t
understand. Do you need to go to the hospital?”

The hospital—right. “What
happened, Maureen?” I said. “When I came around yesterday in the hospital here,
the doctor said you’d decided not to come?”

I wanted to say more. I
wanted to curse at her, yell at her.

I bit my tongue and hoped she
had a legitimate excuse.

“I feel awful, Bob,” she
said. “Really awful. But after you sank down into that floor, and they told me
I was next, I…I couldn’t…I just couldn’t do it, Bob.”

“Couldn’t do it?” I shoved
myself to my feet. “We weren’t getting on a goddamn airplane to Hawaii,
Maureen. We were miniaturizing, okay?
Miniaturizing
. And now I’m here,
and you’re there. We may as well be on different planets.”

“Bob…I…I really don’t know
what to say…”

“You have to come, Maureen. I
can’t go back, so you have to come here. Do you understand that?”

“I just...I don’t know if I
can—”

“Dammit, Maureen!” I shouted.
“I’m here by myself! I never would have come here by myself! Jesus fucking
Christ! Go back to the New World Complex. Talk to that girl, Sara, get her to
reschedule you—”

“Bob…”

“It’ll probably take a few
weeks wait. Maybe longer. That will give you time to think this through, build
up the nerve or whatever…”

“Bob…”

“Dammit, Maureen!”

“Stop! Don’t yell at me!” She
was rubbing her forehead. “I’ll—I’ll think about it.”

Think about it? That didn’t sound
very convincing at all.

I was trembling, my entire
body, trembling—anger, fear, incredulity.

“I have to go,” I said.

“Bob, wait! Who attacked you?
You need to see a doctor. I’m worried—”

I ended the call.

☼

I
paced back and forth, numb, furious. I couldn’t believe it. Maureen had
abandoned me. She had really done it. I felt as though I’d just caught her
cheating on me—times ten. Because this didn’t merely mean we were through, our
marriage of fifteen years over. It meant I was here, on my own,
forever
.

I ran my hands over my face,
pressed my palms into my eyes, and told myself to calm down. I was
overreacting. I might never have planned to miniaturize on my own, but that
didn’t make the fact I had a disaster. There were millions of single people in
New America. Why was it any worse to be single here than in the old world? It
wasn’t. The perks were still the same. I had a house, food, water, security,
whatever I wanted. None of that had changed.

And she said she’d think
about it, hadn’t she? Maureen might still come after all, when she started to
miss me, when I told her how great it was here, she might change her mind…

I went to the backyard to get
some fresh air. It was overcast, the clouds low and heavy, and I suspected it
would storm soon. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath.

“Bob-o!”

I opened my eyes. Steve was
in his yard, cleaning his bar-b-que. He came to the fence. “Shit, buddy,” he
said. “What the hell happening to you?”

I explained.

He whistled loud and long and
rested his forearms on the headrail of the fence. “How did he get in?”

“A window in the living
room.”

“I never heard of nobody
taking a house off the grid like that. Any idea what he was after? After all,
everything’s free in New America…”

“He threatened me,” I said.

“Say what?”

“He told me I shouldn’t have
come here.”

“To NLA?”

“NLA. New America. Whatever.”

Steve scratched his chin. “Sheesh,
Bob. You only been here all of one day, and you’re already the most exciting
New Person I know.”

“You were in the army,
right?” I said.

“Yeah…?” he said cautiously.

“You think you can find me
plans for a gun?”

Steve immediately shook his
head. “Even if I could, which I can’t, you don’t want to go down that route.
You get busted with a firearm here, you get to spend the next little while
finding out what the inside of a new prison looks like.”

“Maybe you’re right. Maybe
I’ll print a bat or something…”

“A bat? You going to walk
around town carrying a bat? Man—you really think this guy’s coming back for you?”

“I have no idea. But I may as
well be ready in case he does.”

“Hold on there, buddy. I know
something I
can
print you. Won’t be a sec.”

Steve went inside and came
out again carrying a red umbrella.

“Much better than a bat,” I
said sardonically.

“I saw it in an old movie
once. Watch this.” He gripped the umbrella how you might a rifle and aimed at
the patio table. One of the glasses on the tablet exploded into countless
pieces.

 “Fires rubber
bullets—perfectly legal,” Steve said proudly. “There’re two buttons. Bottom one
opens the canopy like a normal umbrella, top one fires the bullets.”

He passed the
umbrella-cum-gun to me. I studied it thoughtfully.

“You know it doesn’t rain in
New America, right?” I said.

“Tell anyone who cares it’s a
sunshade. You burn easy. Now—you know what you really have to do, don’t you?”

“Go to the cops?”

“Damn right.”

“They’re androids.”

“They’re still cops.”

“Maybe…”

“Maybe my ass. They got so
many eyes in the sky they know when you fart, even if they won’t admit that.
They could track your mystery man right back to his house.”

He was right, I realized.

I nodded.

“So you want a ride to the
nearest station or something?”

“Thanks,” I said, “but I
think I’ll walk. I have nothing better to do.”

“Suit yourself, Bob-o. But
keep that umbrella handy, and take care now, you hear?”

Back inside my house, out of
sight of Steve, I slumped against the kitchen wall and slid to the floor. I was
an inch tall and carrying an umbrella for protection.

What the hell had I gotten
myself into?
 

Thank you for taking the time to
read
New America: Utopia Calling.
Stay tuned for Episode Two,
New
America: A Giant Headache
. Here’s the blurb:

Bob Smith can’t catch a break as the
police’s investigation into his mysterious attacker hits a dead end.
Nevertheless, he’s got much bigger problems, literally, when someone from the
old world disables the dome protecting New Los Angeles and storms the city in
Godzilla-like fashion, taking him and a handful of other New People hostage.

Also, if you enjoyed the story, it
would be wonderful if you could leave a review on the
Amazon
product page
. Reviews might not matter much to the big-name authors, but
they can really help the small guys to grow their readership.

Also, you can check out
www.jeremybatesbooks.com
for info on
my other novels and novellas.