Famine

Chapter Four

Chapter Four

Hospital rules required that Nurse Luckett take Jonah to the entrance in a wheel chair facing Center Street.

   "You know, Nurse Luckett?" Jonah said to start up conversation with him because he had said nothing all day on his floor.  "The hospital has faced in every direction since it started in 1898 except north."

   Nurse Luckett adjusted his hospital smock, he then motioned in the direction of the far corner of the parking lot.  At last he began to speak, "It's been this way since I was a kid.  I still have some time before retiring.  Right now I play football for the Porter's Corner Football Club.  The built a field after returning the property to the way it looked in 1910.  They cleared a lot of housing that used to be on Ninth Street."

   Jonah remembered the frame houses, many of them Cape Cods that had surrounded the hospital when the city was small. Jonah realized the twentieth century growth had long halted and the population was so much smaller.  Perhaps the world had fewer people nowadays. The doctors' offices had replaced them but then had given way to something looking like Babylon's Hanging Gardens. For a century there had been a high riser with terraces and palm trees.  Palm trees were possible since the city's dome had been built.  Parking lots were smaller.

   Cars parked in the lots had changed little.  Perhaps one always needed wheels and tires.  Jonah concluded they ran on a variety of fuels: hydrogen, solar, petroleum.  One car that was praised during Jonah's boyhood were the turbine cars.  But they melted grills of tail-gating drivers and were slow to accelerate.  Safety improvements had to have kept up.  But there would always be fender benders as long as there were drivers.  So people would forever look for an honest mechanic.  He had not seen used car lots but believed there would always be Honest Johns around to sell them.

   Jonah's thoughts turned to his fortyish companion.  "Think you are up to coaching football?"

   Nurse Luckett gave him an incredulous look. "Coach?"  He paused.  "Boy, are you out of touch! I'm only eithgy-five now and will not coach until I reach a hundred."

   He raised his leg to reveal an artificial limb.  "This prosthesis kept me out of the pros. But I can still sprint a hundred yards in eleven seconds."

   Jonah thought to himself, 'Jack LaLane, eat your heart out.'  Nurse Luckett stepped through the auto doors.  Meanwhile Dr. Rene Estes drove up to the entrance in a 1957 Chevy convertible!

   "Wow!"  Jonah said, as he walked in awe around the car before throwing his bag in the backseat. He was stunned.  Rene did the car justice.  She wore a simple red dress that revealed her obsidian knees.  She looked fantastic to Jonah.  Her black eyes were accented with a suggestion of blue shadow.  With her long, straight hair and smooth skin, she needed no more makeup. If men of Jonah's own time didn't ask women's ages, Jonah determined that it was just as impolite to ask now.  Rene might be much older than the thirty years of age that she looked.

   Jonah was not going to risk another awkward moment like had had with Nurse Luckett.  Besides, she might tell him her age and spoil the illusion he nurtured about Rene.  He resolved to rethink what it was to grow old nowadays.

   "Where did you get this car?" Jonah asked in admiration.

   It took off without making noise.

   "Actually this is a replica built from a car kit on a 2098 Nader Chassis.  The real thing costs too much.  You barely hear its hydrogen, pollution-free engine."

   Rene was handling the steering wheel.  Cars for generations had built-in sensor to steer the car to avoid obstacles unless she turned off its automatic response system.  A global sensor kept track of its location.  If a road was notorious for accidents, the car's computer would advise or route around the danger area if allowed free rein.  Rene said the car did not yet have independent thought, but some cars came so close to it that it was hard to know if cars had developed self-awareness.