Negative Energy

Remembered Art

In a daze of confusion, Matt exited the fractal cone and climbed back into his pod. His mind grappled fruitlessly with the enigma of the bottomless shaft of lights. Was it some form of data center? If so, what was being stored or processed? The blue spheres certainly didn't resemble any kind of computing device from his time. But most of all, why had he been permitted to enter, only to be urgently ushered out?

Engrossed in thought, he barely registered the alien cityscape as the pod whisked him from the arcology center to one of its pinwheel wings. He traversed a tunnel of interlocking crescents to emerge into an open, sunlit space. He had arrived at the main concourse, his Nex informed him.

Matt did a double take. Puffy clouds roamed across a blue sky like errant sheep, casting shadows onto the rolling, green ridges below. In the foreground, a cobbled walk separated a row of rustic shops from a park of old-growth trees, with canvas stands pitched in their shade. An Appalachian arts and crafts festival?

He stepped out of the pod into a beautiful early-summer day. The air was rich with aromas: mulled cider, cornbread, maple, and the umami of meats cooking in their own grease. A breeze rustled through the trees, momentarily drowning out the thrum of insects. There was birdsong: the staccato chirps of a red-breasted nuthatch, the high trills of an alder flycatcher, and an ensemble of warblers. Small numbers of people strolled along the cobbled street and milled beneath the trees. This place couldn't possibly be authentic, he thought. After all, he was still within the confines of the arcology. He was tempted to peek behind the façade but didn't want to spoil the effect.

Matt figured he would first explore the park and retire to a sidewalk café later. Walking felt good. For all its personalized ambience, the apartment didn't have much room to move about. As he crossed the cobbled path, a figure several shops down caught his eye, eliciting a spike of wrongness. In stark contrast to the other denizens, all attractive and smart-looking in their leisure wear, this man wore a dingy, gray overcoat and moved with the jerky gait of a Parkinson's patient. Hadn't nerve conditions been eradicated by now? Before Matt could get a closer look at him, the man disappeared behind a shop.

The crowd in the park was diffuse, composed mostly of solitary individuals with only a few couples and hardly any clumps of three or more. The other park-goers kept a respectful distance and the vendors remained at their stands, making no attempt to hawk him anything. It reminded Matt of the farmer's market his dad used to take him to on Saturdays. Although many of the sellers had driven in long distances from the countryside, they were laid-back to the point of disinterest, reading newspapers, listening to baseball, or chatting with their neighbors; smartphones had just started to make an appearance back then. Prices were scribbled in Sharpie on cardboard, and the wares arranged on the fold-out tables needed no advertising: apples, broccoli heads, chickpeas, chiles, homemade salsa, and tamales. His father would buy them barbecue burnt ends sold from the back of a truck with some fresh-squeezed lemonade to wash them down. Then they would sit on the caboose outside the railroad museum, doing and saying nothing in particular. When his dad moved out, his mother replaced those Saturday outings with less frequent trips to fairs and theme parks. Matt hated all the noise and bustle but pretended to like them for her sake.

As Matt took in more of the art festival, he realized that it was not quite the throwback it had first seemed. Some of the park-goers had gold rings around their irises, a sign they were immersed in mental activity such as two-way pathing. Others had metallic, silver pupils that looked as if they had been soldered over. Some kind of visual augmentation? He found the effect unnerving. Even more unsettling was the peculiar absence of human-made sounds. Birdcall and insect noise were audible, and when an acorn fell on a canopy, it rolled off with a thrumming crescendo. But a man playing a violin produced no audible music. Stranger still, when Matt tried to peruse the vendors' goods, his vision went suddenly out of focus. The effect was oddly specific. He could clearly make out the vendors and the wooden tables beneath their forest-colored canopies. He could perceive that there were objects on the tables and discern their overall dimensions. But whenever he looked directly at one, it dissolved into an amorphous blob.