Utopia

Chapter Thirty-Two - Need Me Again

She knew at once why the homework had been what it was. Words had become bills that had become legislation. What Kira had learned in her travels had found its first foothold.

In Northern Europe, one of the smaller nations already pre-disposed to helping each other, had taken on the new economic form as a test trial. They would ease into it: first implementing the organizational and inventorial systems, and when those were well-practiced, they would simply allow the currency to become obsolete. In the time to come, all physical tenure could be sustainably recycled. Banks would become managers of the system instead of keepers of the material.

Kira read ten different articles, most from reputable sources and some from lesser magazines. One took her over an hour to go through, and by the end of it, she could have quoted the Prime Minister's address in their native tongue.

All the articles linked the new system to a revisionist American. One glossed over his political career, going so far as to mention an embarrassing onscreen interview where one of his partners had been drunk.

Kira scoffed at the mention, but it was a short leap to searching for that interview. For watching online recordings and reading articles from columnists and bloggers. The comments were brutal.

And still, she read them with detached amusement. She cared as much for the public perception of her as she did for the direction of the rotation of the Earth. She just wanted to know.

It was another short leap to searching for the movies and books and songs she hadn't partaken in since she was eighteen. She hadn't looked since she had lost Lys the second time.

It meant more to her to find that her favorite author had published her second book. Her favorite band would be releasing their first album in June. Her favorite movie was still only a dream, but it almost didn't matter.

She had to tell herself to breathe. Her heart pounded so strongly in her chest that she could have kept time for a waltz. She wanted to run. Or yell. She wanted to call Susannah wherever she was and tell her everything even though she couldn't.

She had to breathe. She had to breathe because she didn't know how many years might still separate her from Lys. She might've been reading books and watching movies from a hundred years earlier. They still used the old economy, after all.

Never mind, also, the distance created by the time she was there.

It became just another thing she couldn't talk about. She didn't know how to talk about. She spun another tale for Dr. Nate: a tale of growth and development, that might have led to a cure to something that might take a girl's life. The kind of thing that let two women spend their life together.

He watched her while she spoke, and the absence of that usual sympathy told her he didn't quite believe her story. But there must have been enough truth in it, because he didn't press.

Dr. Nate only related the idea of two people who might change the world, each for a singular person. One for themself, one for another. Were their drives so different?

It turned into a conversation about how love could be so similar to obsession. How Kira might have replaced herself with love for Lys. It ended with her telling him about living after the best thing to ever happen in your life. In your life, there was always a best and a worst, and Kira had experienced both at eighteen. With both behind her, why did she persist?

Why did she turn around?

It was the kind of conversation that had Kira closing her eyes to dry them and subtly wiping her nose with her sleeve. When she departed, because their time ended and Dr. Nate had other obligations, she stopped in the lobby bathroom to clean herself up.