What Happened Tomorrow

Share the Sensation (don't)

Montreal. Danielle couldn't quite explain why she'd stayed. Her friends had roped her into a weekend trip back in '32, just for kicks. Two days later, they'd packed up and headed home — but she didn't. Something about the city just clicked, like it was where she was meant to be. That was reason enough.

Settling in took a while, especially dragging all her stuff over from Alberta, but in the end, it was worth it. Calgary had been so dull, but here? Here was different. Sin City, or the City of Sins, depending on who you asked, was alive in a way she hadn't expected.

Montreal hadn't always been this dazzling. Back in the day, it was just another cookie-cutter North American city, swallowed up by the grind of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. It nearly lost its soul twice: first to English, then to a frozen kind of stagnation that passed for "liberal views." Calmness, once a point of pride, morphed into blandness. But that was before it got its second wind.

Everything changed after the turn of the century. The unification of the U.S., Canada, and Mexico in 2093 turned Montreal into a magnet for adventurers. Thousands of migrants from the south flooded in, forcing the city to take another look at its language policies. Slowly but surely, French returned to the streets. Then came the corporate exodus during the Civil Wars in Europe and Russia. HQs relocated en masse to North America, dragging along their boldest, brightest, and wildest minds.

Montreal buzzed with a new kind of energy, like the city was reinventing itself every day. Nightclubs, bars, and the whole "anything goes" vibe came roaring back. Alcohol, drugs, casual sex — pick your poison — became the norm again. Sure, everything gets old eventually, but if things got stale, you could always "cleanse" your memories and start fresh. In the end, Montreal stayed what it had always been: a bastion of fun, a playground for the reckless, and a place where "social responsibility" was more of a suggestion than a rule.

The North American Union's laws? Pfft. Not here. Especially not on a Friday night. The Anti-Unionists had it right when they used to say, "No to NAU."

It was April now, and Quebec was finally starting to thaw. The first hints of spring warmth were creeping in, and as the locals would say, "Je m'en calisse!" Thank God Dannie barely spoke any French.

Danielle slipped on a light leather jacket and stepped out of her apartment. The street outside was calm, the kind of calm you'd expect in an upscale old neighbourhood. Rows of perfectly trimmed trees and bushes lined the sidewalks, flanked by elegant two- and three-story semi-detached houses with sleek black metal fences. The rain-darkened asphalt gleamed faintly under the soft glow of the streetlights, undisturbed except for the occasional car rolling by at a leisurely pace. The air carried that hypnotic scent of wet dust, earthy and clean, a reminder of the rain that had just passed.

This area had recently been declared a drone-free zone, sparing it from the incessant buzzing that filled most parts of the city. Instead, the only sound was the distant, muffled hum of downtown, a reminder that the chaos of Montreal wasn't far off. Danielle liked it here. A quick bike ride, and you were in the thick of it—not necessarily the centre of attention, but part of the flow, the energy of the city pulsing around you. But tonight, the serenity would have to wait.She sighed, descended the stairs, and smiled faintly as the sidewalk beneath her lit up with bright navigational arrows, responding to her mental command. The AR interface was on. She turned right and followed the glowing path. Two-fifty metres. One-eighty. One hundred.