Life After the Before

Have you ever wondered that if you were told something enough times that you would not just start to believe it but to live it without even noticing?

The motto of our government is one that basically flips off the switch on our ideas. I had never given it much thought before today. That is, until I talked to my grandpa about it. He’s basically older than the frozen dirt.

To hear my him tell it, people used to be mega-obsessed with themselves and their place in the world. He says, they used to have places “online” where they hosted their own “channels.” But it wasn’t like the chips we have. You had to sit in front of a screen you held in your hand. On these channels, you could watch people do just about anything. Like cook? Or play “video games”?

But now, he says, it is as if people aren’t concerned about living at all, like they turn all their lights off in their heads and just sit in the dark. His words, not mine. It’s not like I ever asked him. He talks, like, all the time. He talks about his memories like there was time before the Aftermath.

“People complained a bit at first, sure,” he is saying. “They’d have these devices, called phones, that they always placed in their hands. Eyes glued there for hours. Like this,” and he stares into his palms, his eyes bugging out. “Before the implants, the kind of phone you had made you cool. You always knew what kind of life someone lived based on the type of phone they had and what carrier they had.”

Gramps only ever talks about Before. Hearing about it is always confusing, because he uses words that don’t make sense. For example, who was carrying these phones for everyone? And he talks about “phones” like they are the same as the Connectchips.

When I want to talk to someone, I just conjure my contacts in my mind, and the list of people I want to contact manifests itself in front of my face. I move my eyes around until I find who I want to talk to.

“It’s disorienting now, walking down the street, to get our rations, seeing people touch the air like they can catch it in a butterfly net…” He pauses.

I think, What’s a butterfly?

“… And then they talk to someone as if they are right there.”

Grandpa is just holding himself back. Because the people are right there. You can’t see them, but you can. Sort of. I hear my mom’s voice over a Mindcall and I can practically see her. But Gramps always goes on about how things used to be. Like, get over it.

I nod, because I’ve heard this story hundreds of times.

“Back then you never had to decide when you could cook food. You just cooked it. If you needed it, then you went to the store.”

“Just be happy you have rations, Gramps.” My eyes begin to twitch, restlessly. I’m scrolling through my contacts. But I’m not thinking of talking to anyone else. Mom is serious about this time I spend with Gramps. I’m just bored.

He looks at me like my eyes are dangling from my face. “You know, that’s the hard part about living this way. I’ve gotta eat these… what the hell are these things, anyway?” He looks closely at the package. “Pork and Beans?” Then he drops it on the table. Dust plumed into the air, a mushroom cloud of freeze dried and pureed food stuff.

He points his finger at me. “You go out into those cloudy skies and you read those billboards. After awhile, you don’t just believe it. You live it.”

“Whatever, Gramps.” I try to ignore him, but then the slogan pops in front of my twitching eyes again in as I scroll through my Connectlist.

He laughs, but it sounds sad. “People can’t even get a steak and potato dinner carved from a cow or grown from the dirt. And do you know why?”

“Because the ground is practically frozen, Gramps. Duh. You have rations. Be glad for that.”

“Go ahead and roll your eyes, boy. Here are the facts. Eventually, the world became too populated, so countries had to figure our how they were going to provide for their people. You know what happened? The wars started. For food. For water. For land. Any resource they could get their hands on. Then the bombs fell.”

I knew the bombs he was talking about because I’d seen one before. On the outside of town, there is one of those bombs that, to hear Gramps tell it, just happened not to explode. According to Gramps, our town was one place that wasn’t reduced to ashes once the bombs flew from the corners of the world.

He pauses for a second. This part was always hard for him to swim through, like the water was sullied and thick. “Eventually, well, the government just figured that we should be happy just to be alive. And that that should be good enough for us. So they built those billboards, and they made it mandatory, I guess, for all agencies and businesses to quote that one-liner. Life’s punchline. Then the implants, though I’m not sure who’s lives ended to take those resources.”

Despite what Gramps says, the chips are awesome. If I want something, I think about it, then I can see it in my mind. Who cares if the government can see what I see? I’m just happy I have one. “Do you have one, Gramps?”

I guess I should know this, but now that I think of it, I’ve never been contact by him through a Mindcall.

“No!” He slammed his palm on the table.

This was news to me. “What do you mean you don’t have one?”

He slapped me on the back of my head, “Shut up, boy. They’re mostly concerned with you and your generation. But if you and your friends don’t stop your yacking, then we’re all gonna be spitting their motto eventually. They’ve taken everything but my mind, son.”

I shrugged, “What are you on about, old timer? Get with the program. Your generation is dead. Get over it.”

He scoffs at me, a simple tch sound, but as he crosses his arms and turns away from me, then he says, “Boy, you have no idea. You’re just walking blind, listening to Oz behind the curtain.”

“Who’s Oz?”

“You read their billboards and you see the messages in front of your face in between your Mindcalls, or whatever you call them. And you know nothing different. Your generation is lost because you don’t know any other way. Only what they tell you. Did you ever hear about when your mom went to the hospital and had you?”

No. I did not. Mom never talked about personal stuff. No one really did, but I guess I was kind of curious. “No.”

“You were a twin, my boy.”

“A twin?”

“Yep. You were born first, and your sister was second. I guess in the womb you both had already learned that slogan. I heard the doctors telling all kinds of people that when they lost someone. So one of you gave up. So your sister didn’t make it.”

I had a feeling where he was going with this, but he was in the middle of something, so I figured that I’d let him finish.

“They told your momma, while she was grieving, the same thing those Mindcalls say to you. The same thing the billboards say. The same thing your government has been saying to you for as long as you’ve been alive and longer.”

The rest of my visit was silent.

As I left Gramps’s house, I look around at the landscape. The houses are falling apart. No one is outside. I look at Gramps’s house. The roof is practically caved in, and I guess I never thought about how he never takes off his heavy clothes and never leaves that one room that is still completely intact, roof and all.

Gray clouds mottle the sky, the sun hides behind a sheath that can never be removed. The air is cold, nearly freezing, so I tighten my parka closer around me and walked along what remains of the sidewalks and the near-frozen ground. And as I turned the corner to go home, I see a billboard.

Down the block, I see another.

I conjure up my Connectlist, so I can let mom know I am almost home and a box with the same message popped up in front of my face between contacts.

Once I disconnected the call, the same message box pops up again.

I never gave it much thought. I guess Gramps might be right. Maybe he wasn’t just a lost soul wandering through a forest without a compass. Maybe the compass was stripped from him? I wonder if the one who stole it said the same thing that I have seen painted all around the world all my life. I start to think that, maybe, Gramps isn’t as crazy as I thought he was. Maybe, there could be a way forward.

Though doubt warms my heavy parka as I find myself reading the billboard aloud, “…Maybe in another life.”