Message from the future- part 1.

Meade Fischer

I had another conversation with my friend from the future. He likes to swap news with me. Ok, he manages to contact me via my computer, and we have this kind of live chat, which he says he's able to accomplish using reverse amplitude temporal wormhole imaging. So, I don't understand all that, but the photos he sends of my neighborhood in 2055 are positively devastating: a twenty story apartment house at the corner park!

Anyway, Walmart likes to share the breaking news fifty years hence. About his name. Apparently, since they did away with all medical plans for workers, often the only way to pay for prenatal care and birthing costs is to get product sponsorship, so most kids are named for business or products.

Some interesting news clippings he forwarded to me include the closing of the last public school. All schools are now run by the Christian Fundamentalist Coalition. It seems they found a way around the constitutional stumbling blocks in the mid 40s. Needless to say, only a few radicals have even heard of Darwin.

Bush 7 hailed the event as a milestone in the campaign for the ultimate truth. Apparently, there has been only one non Bush president since George W., and the rules of succession have been amended to make sure there will never be another.

One headline he sent was about a woman in Denver being arrested for appearing in public without her burka. A sidebar detailed a rally by some fringe women's group to protest the fifth anniversary of the 44th amendment, which rescinded the one that gave the woman the vote.

Everyone still has the ultimate freedom to work, spend and consume, but there are strict limits on savings, dictated by the Federal Reserve, presided over by Alan Greenspan, who was recently awakened from cryogenic stasis.

Walmart is concerned that the history books might portray 2005 inaccurately. He wanted to know if we really ate our young when we ran out of food stamps.

Meade Fischer

I had another on line chat with my friend from 2055, using technology I don't understand. If you've been following these conversations, you'll recall that my friend's name is Walmart, which is not unusual considering that with no health insurance, product sponsorship pays the hospital bills.

I was curious how after all these years we could still have a Bush in the White House. I asked him who the Democrats were running, and he answered that the Democrats had self destructed in the late teens. Soon after that there was a fundamental split in the Republican Party. It broke into the Corporate Party and the Party of God. While they don't agree on much, they do both claim the Bush franchise as their own, so any Bush who decides to run gets nominated by both parties. That knee jerk reaction resulted in the debacle of Jenna becoming the first and only female President, a subject Walmart didn't want to talk about.

Having only a passing interest in politics, I moved on to a subject I really care about, surfing.

I wanted to know how the sport and its equipment had evolved. Surfing, according to Walmart, is dead. The ocean has become so polluted that only the suicidal would dare go in. The ocean is a dead zone to at least 300 miles from the coast. In fact, he checked my obituary and found that I was one of the last of the old coots who refused to give up surfing after the universal warnings. Between the bacteria and my advanced age, there was nothing they could do for me.

"Aren't the scientists doing something?" I demanded. Apparently "American science" has become an oxymoron in mid century. Any research that displeases either the corporate people or the religious folks get discredited, along with the scientists who produced it. The scientists usually end up out of work and moving to another country, such as enlightened Canada, which recently secured its borders to keep out the flow of American rif-raff.

That brought up Mexico. Knowing that we had a problem with too many coming in from the south, he explained that the opposite was happening. Mexico was desperate to stem the flow of Americans sneaking across the border.

Walmart had to sign off. He needed to run out for a quart of milk and a loaf of bread, which as he said, "Shoots the hell out of a hundred dollar bill.

Meade Fischer

My friend Walmart from 2055 came on line late last night. He wanted to introduce me to his brothers and sisters. He had them all in front of the camera. There was his little brother, Big Mac, and his sisters Verizon, Coorslite, and Quicklube. He was proud of the fact that their mother made a decent profit on naming them. They were nice looking young people, even though they dressed rather strangely.

I remarked that he had a large family, and he said it was actually quite small by current standards. Apparently, since the Party of God pushed through the anti birth control law, families have gotten quite large. That concerned me, particularly since overpopulation is an issue in 2005, so I asked him how many people live in the country. He said it was around a billion.

Where, I wondered, were they going to put all those people. He said there were plans for a lunar colony, using the technology developed to save Southern California. When the air became unbreathable, the government erected a series of interconnected Plexiglas domes with an intricate system of oxygen pumps. the 78 million people who live there need never go outside, not that they'd survive the experience.

Well, I mused, there is still the vast open space of Alaska. He corrected me. Since all the trees were cut down, Alaska has become a virtual wasteland. Even the Eskimos have moved out.

I was confused by the rather normal outfits worn by his sisters, in light of one of his earlier reports about a woman in Denver being arrested for being out without a burka. It seems that clothing restrictions are regional. The coasts, being more liberal, allow women to dress any way they wish, provided no skin shows between the neck and ankles. The south and midwest are far more conservative. People in Kansas have been flogged for missing church.

The notion of repressive societies reminded me of Iraq, so I asked him how that whole mess turned out. Violence and civil war raged for over twenty years, while the U.S. gradually pulled its troops out, finally leaving their government in total control. It wasn't long before a military coup threw out the elected officials and restored order via martial law. A young Sunni colonel had himself elected President and has remained in office since then, always getting 100 percent of the vote. He has suppressed opposition, and the country is stable. The U.S. government considers him a model of democratic leadership.

I had one more pressing question before Walmart signed off. What happened with all the global warming? As he put it, the weather got really weird. Lots of areas heated up, and in fact Canada's Northwest Territories became a major agricultural area, where many Americans settled until the borders closed. The American southwest became a land of swamps and biting bugs, while the west coast became subject to monsoons.

This is all changing, however. The thick blankets of smog covering the urban areas, which include both coasts and the former sunbelt have shut out much of the sun light, causing something similar to what we used to call a nuclear winter. Now all the warming and the cooling is starting to cause some pretty scary weather. The resorts on Greenland prosper while most of L.A., San Francisco, and the Monterey Bay are under water.

Then he signed off from South Lake Tahoe, population twelve million.

Meade Fischer

During my last conversation with my 2055 friend Walmart, I was so involved with meeting his brother BigMac and his sisters Verizon, Quicklube, and Coorslite that I forgot to ask him about the strange tattoos on their right jaws. When he came on line last night, that was my first question.

When I suggested that the tattoos looked like bar codes, Walmart said that was what they were. Cash is no longer used in 2055. Every time a person makes a transaction, he or she gets scanned, and the transaction is credited or debited to their account. That, I pointed out, would require everyone to have some kind of an account. And they do. It seems that each person gets a Visa account upon turning twelve. They also get the bar code tattoo. From then on everything gets recorded. Buy a stick of gum, mow the neighbor's lawn, purchase a car, spend a week at work, spend an afternoon in the mall; it all gets recorded, and there's never a question of whether one has the funds to pay or not. It gets paid automatically at the end of the month. Whatever isn't covered in one's bank account is charged to the credit card account.

What's to keep people from becoming hopelessly in debt, I wondered. Everyone, insisted Walmart, is indeed hopelessly in debt. No one except the very rich will ever get out of debt. One must work continually until the retirement age of 75 to pay what is owed. After that, there is limited debt relief where one pays only fifty percent of one's pension. Naturally, no one every inherits anything, as assets are sold off upon a person's death in order to pay down the debt. The up side is that everyone can indulge themselves and purchase every new gadget that comes out.

I mentioned that gasoline had finally started becoming a major expense in my time, and I wondered it that problem had gotten worse or had been solved by alternative fuels. He actually laughed at the thought of being concerned by $3 a gallon gas. People gradually became used to expensive gas and are now quite comfortable with paying over $19 a gallon. So, the hybrids and other economical cars must have taken over, I assumed.

Not at all, Walmart insisted. The average 2055 car is, in 2005 terms, a cross between a stretch Hummer and an RV. The logic behind huge vehicles is that people spend much of their lives in their autos. Housing prices have become so prohibitive that most people live in small apartments or modest flats. In contrast to housing, cars have become second homes. Commutes take up much of the day, and people have constantly updated on line reports on traffic. One doesn't just leave in the morning to get to work. The idea is to calculate the best time to travel to one's destination and to leave at that time, avoiding total gridlock. So, sometimes a person will start for work at 2 AM, 8 PM, or whatever. Good timing can reduce a commute to only 3 or 4 hours each way.

As a result, people spend as much time in their cars as they do at work or at home, sometime even more. Consequently, a car is a second home, complete with all the trappings. Most cars have a shower and toilet, a microwave and fridge, cots for napping, an office cubicle and a wet bar.

I stopped him on that one, noting that in my day drinking and driving was a serious offense.

Well, between the liquor lobby, the auto makers and the drivers who spend many hours commuting, the drinking and driving laws were changed. After all, it was argued, cars rarely moved fast enough to cause any injury, so impaired drivers were not a problem.

Carpooling with two or more had become the rule, allowing the non driver to check e-mail, generate reports, take a nap, shower, have breakfast and all the rest. This car culture gave rise to the supper mall, like the one straddling I-5 from the Grapevine to Stockton.

Meade Fischer

I could hardly wait for Walmart to contact me again from fifty years in the future. My 2005 mentality was locked into the scarcity of natural resources. Naturally, once he came on line, my first question was, "How can people drive such huge vehicles when in my time we are worried about running out of oil?"

Walmart's response was, "European scientists are saying we have no more than 20 years of fossil fuel left. Our wells will be dry. In fact, the diameter of the earth, due to all the pumping, has been reduced by 6.3 feet since we start drilling for oil."

Trying to reason with him, I asked how people can drive these monsters while knowing that there will soon be no gas for them. He actually laughed, adding that American scientists claim that we have abundant sources of petroleum, both producing and yet to be tapped.

We'd been corresponding long enough for me to realize that American science will be biased in 2055. "Are people going to believe scientist who work for oil companies?"

He flashed me a sarcastic look. "Duh, the American public? Will they believe?"

"Right," I ventured. "Are we still locked into TV and all the pap that generates?"

"3000 cable channels and growing. How about this program: Camera follows the President's kids around all day and evening. Really, spoiled, rich kids What do you think?"

In my opinion, a losing concept, Walmart said it was the third highest rated show on TV. If that's the third, I wondered what was first. He said it was something called "Still Friends," a remake of a comedy popular in my time.

They also have a channel for just about everything. There's the bird watcher's channel, the garlic cheese spread channel, and the glue channel.

The glue channel? What in the world would that be. Walmart explained that since there are about six hundred different adhesives on the market, this channel gives advice on what to use if, say you want to glue an aluminum pole to your asphalt driveway. There are also personal channels, like the one he had on the set, the "Sylvia Parkworth is Sooo Cool channel. " The programming sucks, but Sylvia is, according to Walmart, a total babe.

Since I hate cell phones, I was curious to see if they survived the coming fifty years. Apparently pretty much everyone has one and wears it all day. All the electronics are now contained in a little wire loop that goes around one ear. It's all voice activate, so you can just, "call Sylvia Parkworth," and you're connected. People usually talk non stop from the time they wake up to the time they go to bed.

In fact, everything is interconnected, internet, phone, TV, daily planners, elevators, wrist watches, everything, and, he insisted, they are ad driven. In fact, while your cell phone is ringing the number you are calling, you get a short ad.

I explained to Walmart that in 2005 there was major concern about obesity and diseases related to excess weight. Snack and fast foods were slowly killing us. I hoped they had at least solved that problem, and, he assured me, they had. The government had done further research and had established new standards for normal and healthy weights, as the old standards were clearly unrealistic. Now, the rule of thumb is 140 lbs. for someone 5 foot tall and 9 lbs. for every inch beyond that. Virtually everyone in 2055 is at or near a healthy weight.

Well, an improvement on paper is better than no improvement at all. I was starting to think like a man of the future, so I signed off.

Meade Fischer

When my friend Walmart came on line from 2055, I was full of questions as usual. He suggested we play the game "Where are they now?"

My first choice was "liberals." They'd been taking quite a trashing in my time, and the future seemed to be an unending line of Bushes, so I was naturally concerned about the future health of this group.

"Anachronisms," was his response. "They still exist, and will probably never disappear for good, but they aren't taken seriously any longer." They seem to have come together in communities, almost communes. There are two or three in Maine, one on Cape Cod, another in Vermont, a few more in the mountain towns on New Mexico and Arizona, and several in California.

Well, I live in California, so I wanted to know more, but I could have guessed. They were concentrated in Santa Cruz, Berkeley, San Francisco, and Arcata. He urged me to recall that, due to global warming, these towns were mostly inundated, so only small islands remain in the hilly portions of town. These liberals do really weird things, like have town hall meetings, grown organic food, shun corporate stores, and often ride bicycles around town. Most people consider them quaint and not at all dangerous.

As an owner of an Apple computer, I wondered whether the company had survived. Walmart assured me that, in spite of some diehard fans, the Apple computer was history. The final blow was the release of OS 10.24, nicknamed Saber-toothed Cat. It was so complex and powerful that it could do anything, except, unfortunately, run your software. Users would have had to pony up about 300 grand for upgrades, so everyone junked their Macs.

Then, I assumed, Microsoft owned the market. Well, they not only owned it, they were it. They'd bought up almost all computer manufacturers, competing software makers, and several governments.

I reminded him that the whole thing was started by a guy from my era, Bill Gates. Walmart knew who Gates is. Bucking the shorter life span trend, Gates was closing in on his 100th birthday, and was reported hale and hearty. Some years back he'd purchased Mt. Rainier from the U.S. Government for several trillion. He then converted in into a complex insulated from all the pollution, and from his offices deep within the mountain, he presides over a 579 trillion dollar per year company. When the U.S. went to war with Costa Rica, Gates' tax check covered the first year's operations.

Years ago, Gates opened a national network of schools. Anyone who could afford them would be guaranteed a first class technical education for their kids. That was back when we still had public schools, and most kids would graduate only if they could prove they could read a basic "Dick and Jane" text.

Desperately trying to stump Walmart, I asked what happened to Brittany Spears. "Still popular," was his reply. Through digital images based on human features and movement, a concept pioneered in a film from my time, "Polar Express," but greatly improved upon over the years, Brittany is still a hot teen entertainer, even though she's a grandmother.

I was about to ask him more questions when he told me he had to slip on his gas mask and go out to check the mail.

Almost from the moment Walmart severed the connection between my time and his, fifty years hence, I was troubled about what he said about the U.S. war with Costa Rica. Late the following night, that was the first thing I asked about when he made a connection.

"Why in hell would we go to war with Costa Rica," I demanded.

He got that pained look on his face, the look that says he's got to belabor the obvious. Then he slowly explained how we can't afford any big wars with countries that can actually defend themselves. Apparently, war in the future is just too costly, and future America won't be quite as well off as in our time. It took long enough, Walmart explained, but our leaders finally understood that we need a war about every seven to twelve years, just about the time when domestic problems create dissatisfaction and people complain about lack of jobs, health care, secure retirement and the like. A war gets everyone back on the band wagon, our country, right or wrong, and all that. By waging war against relatively defenseless countries, we spend less, have less causalities, and are able to reconstruct the conquered country in record time. Everyone wins, except for the few hundred soldiers on each side who unfortunately get killed.

"Everyone wins," I asked, "Including Costa Rica?"

"Oh, yeah. Their GNP has doubled in four years since the war. Our companies moved in and got the country on its feet, and now they are prosperous and part of the American Fan Club."

Wars where everyone wins, nice concept. Well, it looks like we might make a bit of progress in the future.

A female face appeared on my screen. Walmart introduced her as his girlfriend, Mary'sdiner. Unfortunately, her mother didn't really get the concept of corporate sponsorship, and the local restaurant was only able to contribute a small amount to Mary'sdiner's birth, leaving her mother deeply in debt.

"You mean, she's living in poverty?" I asked.

Walmart got a shocked look on his face. "Heavens no!" he exclaimed.

His response seemed odd, so I asked about poverty in 2055, hoping that something had been done about this problem.

Walmart assured me that there was no longer any poverty. Naturally skeptical, I wanted to know how they'd managed it.

"Poverty is illegal. Anyone found to be poor is taken to court and fined."

If a person's poor, I wondered, how in hell can you fine them?

He was obviously getting impatient. "There's no point in a law unless there's a penalty, a fine for breaking the law. The other choice is putting them in jail, but that's pointless, seeing that free room and board for the poor isn't exactly punishment."

I may be living in the past, but certain thing are obvious, such as not being able to get money out of people who don't have any. I insisted he explain what happens when the poor can't pay the fine.

He shrugged and said that if all else failed, they were deported, usually to Mexico, under the cover of night, since Mexico didn't appreciate us sending them our poor.

I was shocked. If these people were poor here, being citizens and speaking the language, how could they possibly survive in a foreign country, without connections or a knowledge of the language. He'd heard that many got migrant jobs in the fields, making enough to eat and pay for a small shack, but since they were no longer here, they were no longer tracked, so it was hard to tell what happened.

The upshot was that anyone who was poor didn't admit it and certainly didn't apply for any services. In the future it's apparently in everyone's interest to give the impression of being at least solvent.

I have to say I've become more sophisticated regarding the world of the future. No longer the innocent, I was ready for Walmart when he logged on Wednesday night.

I wanted to know about this business about the demise of public education. I mean, like it's in the state constitution.

"Sure," Walmart admitted, "It's there in the constitution, and one can insist on sending children to public school, but there really isn't any. I mean, they'd have a building with someone as teacher, and the kid could spend the day, but really."

It was there, I gathered, in name only. So, what was the reality of education in 2055?

Actually, some states did retain public education, notably Kentucky, which managed to maintain good public education. New England learned to rely on very local education, basically at the township level. The south and most of the midwest was dominated by religious schools, and the west coast had the Microsoft schools for those who could afford them. Many parents home schooled their kids, not trusting the government, the churches, or the corporations.

"Sounds like a seriously divided country," I observed.

The word, "divided" got a peel of laughter from Walmart, who reminded me that in his time Americans owned an average of 3.7 guns per capita. America was not only divided but ready to take that division to the streets.

People would move to India or Nigeria, where the jobs are, but they aren't taking any undereducated Americans. Even a visitor's passport can be a problem, as they suspect that once there, Americans would hide and avoid returning home.

India and Nigeria? "What about China, the rising star in my era?"

China is seriously polluted, more than America, more than Poland. A million chinese are born each week, and 900 thousand die of pollution or starvation each week, leaving a net gain of one hundred thousand. The numbers are almost the same in Africa and southeast Asia. South America stopped keeping track of population around 2038 when the population-counting computers overheated and crashed.

We'd gotten off track, so I brought the subject back to education and what caused its downfall. Walmart's take on this was that two factors destroyed public education. One was money. He noted that in my time the state kicked in around five grand per year per kid. Through a perennially divided legislature and a series of governors who beat on the issue of no taxes, the state's annual kick to education has only increased about a grand in fifty years. He reminded me that six thousand is basic weekly pay for entry level blue collar workers.

The other factor was testing. It got so that testing went on almost the entire school year, either the actual test or the practice tests to prepare students for the real one. As a result, nothing was learned except the hand full of facts necessary to pass the tests. Naturally everyone blamed everyone else, and the school slowly emptied out.

That sounded like bad news for the middle class, and when I made that observation, Walmart laughed for some minutes. "What middle class?"

The America of 2055 has basically two classes, the very rich who let their money work for them, and the struggling working class who work to make it from payday to payday. Maybe two or three percent of people fall in the middle. In fact, one of the government slogans is, "Only the very rich are true patriots." Another one is, "Avoid poverty; it's the law."

This was giving me a headache, so I signed off, took my life savings and bought three shares of GM stock.

Meade Fischer

I'd just returned from a long hike when Walmart came on line from the future. When I told him what I'd been doing, he thought it quaint. I asked if he was insinuating that people in 2055 didn't hike.

"Damn few," he replied. "Everything's pretty much virtual. It's quicker, more convenient, and easier to control. Real experiences are unpredictable." Naturally, a few odd balls still enjoy getting out in nature where they can get bitten by bugs or get sunburned.

I reminded him that virtual experiences originated in my time, and then I pressed him to elaborate on how outdoor adventure could be made virtual.

He explained that hikers would be on a treadmill that could be programed to change pitch and speed quickly. The hiker would then put on the helmet, and he'd be in the Alps, Sierra Nevada, or whatever. Kayaks float in pools where they are paddled against a controlled flow, combined with the helmet, you could be on the water anywhere. There was also virtual hunting and fishing, and naturally, virtual skiing.

"I guess even golfers have gone virtual," I remarked sarcastically. He nodded yes. Land was simply too expensive to set aside in acres of grass.

"What about professional sports?"

"There's still a small amount of playing, but when anyone get well known, he or she models all the moves for a video simulator and then becomes the star of a video game. Real sports are just the launching pad for the virtual, and profitable sports career."

"Then the only true athletics left is kids' sports?" As soon as I said it, I realized how stupid it sounded, even before Walmart's ear to ear grin.

"Could you, oh wise and ancient sage, briefly describe kids' sports circa 2005?"

He had me. I gave the dull account of how parents and coaches organize children's sports, buy the uniforms, set up the playing field, organize the leagues, coach the kids, schedule the games, and then allow the kids a few minutes of play, with an official ready to call the slightest irregularity. Then, defeated, I said that I imagined that it was much the same fifty years hence.

"Worse. Now it's one adult for every child, walking them through each step, stopping the game if the child tries anything unscripted."

"What the hell do kids learn in a setting like that?"

"They learn to be good cogs in a wheel, knowledge that will help them get and keep a job in the real world. it was the real world in your time too, but you guys had all those romantic notions and tended to sugar coat the truth."

I told him he made it seem like all the fun had been taken out of life, and he replied that fun was what one learned to think of as fun. The ads make virtual activity sound like the ultimate thrill. The people, young people in particular, are easily sucked in. As an example, he cited the video game obsession of so many young males of my time.

Seeing the depressed look on my face, Walmart added, "Remember, with the traffic we have, fun that requires driving is nothing short of masochism."

Meade Fischer

Always one to stand up for humanity, particularly the American brand of humanity, I confronted Walmart the next time he came on line.

"I know Americans are somewhat complacent, but I can't believe we've let our country get in such a sorry state. Ultimately, if things get too weird, we object with our vote."

He acknowledged that we still do that in 2055.

"The public still holds the power," I insisted, "After all, one person, one vote."

"Not since the last election," He corrected. "It's now one share, one vote."

That caught me off guard, and I demanded to know what the devil he was talking about.

He told me to calm down, saying he had the same reaction at first, but now he's beginning to understand the wisdom behind it. People who have a vested interest in public policy were once called stake holders, and now they're shareholders. It seemed logical that those who have the most to gain or lose should have the most power. People who didn't invest, didn't work, didn't pay bills and all that shouldn't have the same vote as the person who is involved in the economy. In a company, stockholders care about how the business performs, since they have an investment to protect. A temporary worker, say, would have little investment and wouldn't be interested in making decisions that were good for the company. The same idea, Walmart claimed, works for government.

He seemed to be making sense, and that was scaring me. I wanted to know just how it worked, and he explained that everyone automatically gets one share, unless they were a convicted felon or a known drug user. After that one share, which is the birthright of all Americans, you must purchase additional shares, just as you would for any company. You can buy them individually or as a group. Noting my environmental position, he mentioned that the Sierra Club purchases blocks of shares, but since membership has dwindled in recent years, the blocks are modest.

"So, any organization can buy stock in America, including corporations?" I was starting to feel righteous indignation.

"Sure, in fact one of the biggest buyers this year is CaChurCo."

I'd never heard of them. Walmart said it stands for Catholic Church Corporation. Like most churches, they incorporated in American to get the same advantages as other corporations.

SoBapCo and EpisCo were also large traders. Red Cross Inc. was becoming a player on the exchange lately, as was The American Medical Corporation.

"Doesn't that give corporations an unfair advantage in governmental decisions?"

"Look, you can get with any group, incorporate, buy stock in American and have a strong voice. Take Mothers Against Drunk Drivers. They invested over 27 million in American stock in 2049. Even NORML holds several thousand shares."

Walmart said he voted his 312 shares for his current congressman because the guy promised an 11 percent dividend each year. "Now, that's the American way."

"What about political morality?" I demanded weakly.

"Let's get real. At my current salary it'll take me nearly twenty years to pay off my college loans. What's more moral than trying to become financially solvent. After all, if you recall, poverty is illegal."