A HISTORY OF TOMORROW

They had decided, the insurance lady in her white uniform and the lizard, to meet at the Cyberspace Cafe.

LDY. You're sure we're off line?

LZD. Don't mind that guy at the other table. He's harmless. Scribblers are spellbound by people like us. He's using a ball point pen, can you believe it?

LDY. I can't believe that we were not paid. Blabbing for free on Facebook. Remember?

LZD. Relax. It's not going far. See any klieg lights?

LDY. Facebook was fun, wasn't it? But let's admit, so is making money. Pass the sugar, please . . .

LZD. The old days. Gone but not over. Now we can be ourselves again, in private.

LDY. Well I don't really know what's going on. It's not fiction, that's sure. No complaint about the facts, but you know what? I got this thought . . . like I've got the answer. Vote for me! And then it slipped away. Damn.

SCR. (at his table) Still here, folks? I wonder why. Well then, it shows the art of reading is not totally lost. That has to explain it. There's a kindred soul. He's up there on a hilltop, chinking away at solid stone. And no, he's definitely not Moses in a rerun.

LDY. I'll say! If this had come out of nowhere, like maybe in a dream. Or try a hypnogogic image. Even coagulated on paper. Then I agree. The very words are enough. Yeah, but you know me. A tendency to gush.

LZD. You'll say, I'll add, how else would nothing slip into the emperor's new clothes? Let's see --

SCR. OK, maybe it's like joining a commune, right? Without having to drink Kool Aid. Join me – One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest gets done up as Grand Opera, Charlie Mingus laying down the bass line. Nurse Ratched is banging under the sink pipe to keep time. Surely that perks your ears. And . . . you still here?

LZD. Still here. Yes, and to keep warm I've kept alive that glowing ember, rescued from fossilized centuries that brought energy for the bandwagon. Those glory days of the Ferris wheel, slumbering. Now waking, the new notion is an idea mightier . . .

SCR. . . . than the pen, so to speak. So obvious when said that way. Don't look to history for an echo of the present.

LDY. I can feel it! Torn right out of the nest, grappling, taking from our collective consciousness. Glory be! And all without a shot fired. Dictators topple. And all the more, as I've said, because I don't know what this is all about.

SCR. The earth was flat, several lives ago. Remember that? When no one could possibly imagine a Mars rover.

LZD. Let's check here. Where we were the product. Is it not so? We delivered ourselves gratis. Won't we hear the plunk of small meteorites falling like pennies into the Salvation Army kettle?

SCR. My line, gekko! You steal!

LZD. Is this going to get us to that exo-planet, so recently discovered? And when we get there, just a few light years away, what will we find? They're expecting us.

LDY. Our radio telescopes are pointing out there, it's like exo-everything. They've been listening to our FM radio stations playing Mingus among us, scratchy AM broadcasts of As The World Turns, ah, the irony. Going the right way is Bruebeck's Take Five.

SCR. Our non-circadian rhythms pervade. Or none at all, by my beans. I was launched in precognitive somewhat personal experience to leave behind time, daily order ticking as usual. The usual, usual, usual orbit round our sun. But I discovered it doesn't work that way at all.

LZD. One has to say, don't one, that Satchmo was onto something.

LDY. You're sure? Feels like someone staring at us. It's creepy. And probably more than one. But when I look over my shoulder no one's there.

LZD. Or that we could have been about a few other things here. We've got this climate disaster scotching delivery of COVID vaccines. Wart-like leaders rounding up cattle, slaves, protestors. Tick, tick, tick, the doomsday clock. The disaster in Texas even bigger than its history.

SCR. It's no hoax, folks. Climate complacency is over. The real question: Will enough hearts and minds get wise before time truly collapses?

LZD. Good to see you again at our Cyberspace Cafe, my dear.

LDY. Thank you. So where's that guy with the pen?

LZD. Gone. Said his order arrived from Amazon, almost before he'd ordered it. An invisibility cloak.