Post Rock Limestone Caryatids

By Rachel Creager Ireland

Like most people, Maeve Wolf lives in a cubicle. Who needs anything else when you can live your life through the screens that fill every wall? Yet she longs for more, and her drive for real connection to other people takes her out of the cubicle, onto the vast, abandoned, open prairie of Kansas. Along the way, she meets religious proselytizers, itinerant musicians, the Sisters of the Star (a ladies’ service club), and other misfits.

What really makes Creager Ireland’s first novel unusual is its injection of nature writing into a dystopian future, while exploring themes around community, birth politics, and the needs of children. It’s unconventional and off-trend, and she doesn’t care.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Dec 22, 2012
• ISBN: 9781624887550

Book preview

Ireland.

The Post Rock Limestone Caryatids

1.

Julio Jones sits, as always, in his recliner, sipping a carbonated, sugary drink from a cup the size of a fish bowl. When it is empty, he will set it in a window in the wall, within arm’s reach as is everything in the tiny room, and he will verbally order another drink from the foodservice system in his cube. This is highly convenient, as it allows him to consume his beverage without taking his eyes off the wallscreen that consumes his attention. Turning away from the rows of running numbers in front of him, as well as three news channels running simultaneously, and the clocks showing the time in eight different zones, could cost him a fortune. Many things could happen in the blink of an eye –a stevedore strike in San Francisco, another flood of the antiquated cellulosic ethanol plants in Old New Orleans, the announcement of a new process developed for excavating landfills --that might throw the price of garbage in China next winter way up, or way down, and to a trader in garbage futures, missing that could end his career.

He used to get caught regularly whenever he went to the tiny bathroom in his cube, so he finally had installed a Pot-O-Matic recliner. Now, he doesn’t even need to get out of the chair to sh**. In fact, he loves sh***ing while working, giggling gleefully and fantasizing about leaving a steaming pile atop every mountain of garbage shipped off to China, and loving the thought of making lots of money for himself and his clients while doing it. Ah, it’s a good life.

A disembodied voice (his cubeputer, naturally) announces, Insulin shot. Please extend arm to window. And he does. Then he orders a fresh drink.

Life is so much better than back in the day, when people had to haul their meaty asses everywhere they went, where they had to sit at a desk next to who knows what kind of co-worker, listening to piped-in pussy music and drowning in clouds of body odor and perfume all day. Julio does all his work from his own cube, free to listen to the latest tunes from Pimp Daddy Zep Tepi and the Shemsu Whore. Let others suck up that Hutchinson Family Revival crap if they want, Julio is about today, and tomorrow, not yesterday.

The GarbTrade social network is suddenly buzzing with activity. Whoo! Ya! The plastic ice cap is happenin’! whoops one of his 72,000 friends (though he doesn’t recognize the name).

Who’s funding?

Furs n Fights, god bless ‘em!

This is the best news Julio’s had all week. They’re going to need a LOT of garbage to build that plastic polar ice cap, and with the bonus he’ll get for having been in on this deal early, Julio will be able to afford a polar bear fur recliner cover. Plus who can resist a good polar bear fight, streamed live from the north pole? This might make a killer blog entry. It’s a fine example of a win-win situation, where everyone makes money.

Yesterday’s post:

Isn’t it amazing how great things are, today, in the twenty-first century? Our cubes may be small, but our world is larger than life. Remember the days when everyone had to go someplace to their job?

[He doesn’t, hardly anyone does, but who cares?]

Who wants to deal with live people? Face it, we’re not that great. The greatest triumph of the modern world is that it’s so truly global that I can choose my friends and associates from anywhere in the world, and never have to waste a minute listening to the time-sucking ramblings of paranoid conspiracy theorists, or addlepated religious fanatics, or politicos reliving the past, when that stuff mattered. No, I do it all from the comfort of my own cube. Kiss my ass, everyone! Kill Everyone! Zep Tepi forever!

(Kill Everyone is Julio’s favorite game.)

Your scheduled monkeypox vaccine has arrived.

He extends his arm to the window. (He doesn’t have a real window, one a person could look through. Why would someone want a window that doesn’t do anything?) There are so many weird deadly diseases going around these days that jabs are coming nearly monthly, and Julio always feels weak and asthmatic for days afterwards, but in this unpredictable world, it doesn’t pay to be stupid. Fortunately, Julio has a good sponsor, one of the best, so he knows his health is well taken care of, as long as he follows instructions. ConArcherMart dictates many of the choices Julio makes in a day, and in return for his cooperation, his willingness to allow himself to be exposed to a constant barrage of advertising, and a small monthly fee, Julio receives the most sophisticated level of medical attention humans have ever known, since the first hominid set foot upon the open savannah.

Somewhere a drone is going on its next errand, likely delivering more monkeypox vaccines via windows in other cubes throughout the building.

Julio has never seen the building that houses his cube, so he has only the vaguest notion of how the thousands of cubes are stacked in long, tall rows, suspended on the same tracks that allow them to be driven out of the building if, for some odd reason, someone should wish to go somewhere. Each cube has an automatic quick-release connection to the pipes that carry water and waste from its built-in bathroom and the delivery system, as well as a thick electrical cable, a garbage chute, and a ventilation duct. The interior of the building is more like a warehouse than an apartment building, with a concrete floor and bare steel beams overhead. At any given moment, one might see dozens of delivery drones entering through the roof or wall, flying the narrow rows between cubes, finding their target, and connecting with the appropriate window. Larger deliveries come by ground, through a big rolling door. This system allows for automated delivery of anything the building’s tenants might need or want, while providing the ultimate protection of their privacy. Julio has never met or even seen any of his neighbors, nor does he care to. He has plenty of friends. His smart cube takes care of him in every way.

Julio hasn’t left his cube in eight years. The last time he went out was to go to his mother’s funeral. He would have watched it via wallstream, but he was asked to be a pallbearer.

It wouldn’t interest him in the slightest to know that, in the next cube over, there lives a woman with a similar life, but who is not so clam-happy as he is. He would be astounded to know that she is totally unsponsored, has no genetic modifications, no health care security net, has never even had a vaccine in her life. Unlike every one of the other 180,000 people living in this battery-cage of a residence, she has richly red hair, the color of a roasted sweet potato. And, she is desperately, painfully, agonizingly lonely.

2.

Maeve woke, as usual, with tears on her face. She’d had another dream about her sister, Rose. They were strolling the virtual mall, as they’d often done, enjoying the spectacle of larger-than-life palm trees and philodendrons in shifting fluorescent colors that reflected off a ten-story waterfall. On a rock in the middle of the fountain, a chorus of mermaids sang, while fish in lurid colors that matched the trees danced in formation, splashing to the rhythm of the mermaid song. Every splash sent up a little spray of water that morphed into the shape of a logo or slogan of a store in the mall, then dissolved into droplets that rained back down into the pool. Weren’t mermaids supposed to warn of danger? Maeve thought, faintly. There was something about that that she couldn’t remember. It would be odd if, in such a commercial and intentionally created space, they would have any reminder of danger. Surely it didn’t matter, anyway. The sisters had come here for something.

Let’s go to the Baby Wing, said Rose, and then as if called into being by her words, there appeared an arch topped by a winged cherub whose genitals were loosely covered by a white linen cloth that rippled slightly as if in a gentle breeze, but never blew up or fell off. Light seemed to emanate from the baby’s alabaster-like skin. The sisters wafted through the arch, then on the other side, they were surrounded by pastel pink and blue, and the fragrance of lavender gently caressed their olfactory senses. Smaller cherubs flocked around Maeve and Rose, carrying pink and blue ribbons which streamed through the air around them. The ribbons carried ads, woven into the weave of the fabric, in such a way that they were only visible when looked at, and yet were irritatingly unavoidable. Babylife floated in front of Maeve’s face, then Mothers end. Must be at the end of the corridor, she thought.

I want to go on the carousel, said Maeve, but Rose only wanted to look at baby things. Already a parade of items was floating around the women, bouncing slightly in the air. There were sweet pink and blue baby clothes, which nobody needed, but everybody bought anyway, as soft as air and beribboned with little satin bows. There were virtual photo albums and log books for the nurses to record the baby’s daily milestones (if the sponsor allowed it), and baby-safe cameras that could be installed in their bassinets and set to take pictures at intervals, so no important moment would go unrecorded. There were gazillions of little rattley baby toys in every imaginable color, and a service that would keep the baby constantly entertained by playing a selection of developmentally appropriate educational video programs.

That was all usual; but then things began to get strange. Something alerted Maeve and she looked around. There was water on the floor, coming up to her ankles now. Trying to gauge how fast the flood was rising, she stared. The more she looked at it, the higher it was. Rose! she shouted, but she couldn’t see her sister among the cackling cherubs and ribbons. As the water came up to her waist, she was frantic. Rose! Rose! but the water was filling her mouth, choking her, threatening to drown her. Flailing, struggling, she went under, into darkness, and in the darkness she remembered that the baby was already born, she was beautiful and helpless and alone. Maeve panicked and woke.

Sometimes waking from such a dream is a mercy, but there are other times in life when being awake is no better than the most heart-rending nightmare, and this was one of those times. Maeve wouldn’t be allowed to see the baby, Lada – Maeve called her Ladybug -- for two more days. Show Ladybug, she commanded her wallscreen, and in front of her, black and white (she couldn’t afford color) and composed of jerkily shifting squares, but larger than life, she could see the image of a tiny (growing so fast!) little baby, just three months old, eyes open and looking around, kicking her feet gently. She must have just woken up, too. Such a sweet, sweet little… little … bug. Maeve longed to hold her, to feel the baby’s weight in her arms, to feel her squirm and her tiny heart beat. She wanted to squeeze the baby to her own heart, as if to fill the boundless void left there when Ladybug’s mother, Rose, had bled to death.

It had been so totally unexpected. Just three months ago, Rose had been perfectly healthy, a lovely young woman smiling and bursting with pregnant vitality. Rose was Maeve’s only friend in the world, and they talked, via wall, throughout the day. They had shopped together, from their respective cubes, taking virtual strolls through the mall, looking simultaneously at the endless array of baby products available to expectant mothers. Rose had downloaded a digital baby book that would help her record the baby’s early moments, and she had made all the arrangements to have a streaming video feed of the baby, so she could watch her any time she wanted to. Maeve had assumed that would be enough, like it was for everyone else, to watch the baby on the wall. So it was a complete surprise when, as soon as the robosurgeon lifted the tiny, wriggling, gooey baby from Rose’s open abdomen, Maeve felt an intense desire to be in constant contact with the little Ladybug.

Do you feel that too? she’d asked Rose later, in the recovery room. Rose was too drugged up to do much more than smile. Maeve lifted the sleeping, now clean and swaddled, baby from the gapingly huge, wheeled bassinet and placed her in the bed next to her mother, nestled into her arm, head resting on Rose’s shoulder. Watching them doze together, Rose’s black hair falling down around the pure white fuzz of the baby’s head, Maeve felt a depth of joy she had never known before. A few moments later the bassinet announced that it was time to take the baby away for shots, tests, and genetic treatments. After that, the baby would be transferred to the sponsor’s nursery, where she would be cared for with the best, most sophisticated methods available.

A few days later, Rose would be dead, bled beyond resuscitation from a post-surgery hemorrhage.

Now three months had passed, and Maeve could almost count on her hands the times she had actually touched Ladybug since then. And every time ripped the fresh scab off her wounded heart.

As Maeve gazed at the waking baby on her wall, Ladybug stretched, yawned, and made a little shake of her head. She looked around and began to kick more vigorously. Then she took in a deep, slow breath and let out a wail. Maeve felt herself reflexively reaching toward the baby. It felt so wrong to be separated from her, a little motherless child who, Maeve felt sure, needed more than anything to be held.

Nurse Nancy, she commanded the wall. In a moment the call was answered and the nurse’s avatar appeared in a smaller box to the side of the wall, while the image of the kicking Ladybug remained, filling most of the surface. The avatar showed a slightly plump woman of perhaps thirty, old enough to be experienced and trustworthy and young enough not to be a threat. Her hair was a salt-and-peppery mix of black and white, and a perpetual faint smile on her lips made her appear warm. Maeve knew the avatar bore little resemblance to the real person.

This is Nancy, how may I help you?

Hello, I’m Maeve Wolf, Lada’s aunt. She knew Nancy knew her, as she always spoke to the nurse when she visited Ladybug.

Yes, Maeve, what can I do for you?

Well, Lada’s crying right now. I just thought maybe you could go pick her up, maybe comfort her a bit.

Thank you Maeve, I can see all the babies on my screen, and Lada will get attention in her turn, which is scheduled to come around in about ten minutes.

Well, I mean, she’s crying now, and I just thought maybe it wouldn’t be too much trouble. I think she misses her mom.

It really is sad how she lost her mother, but I’m sure at this point she doesn’t even remember her anymore. She just wants attention.

Maeve hadn’t expected the lost mother card to hold value for very long with these people, but she had nothing else in her hand. Meanwhile, the baby had worked herself up to a frenzy. Wailing at top volume, she kicked and flailed with her whole body, her head shaking vigorously side to side.

It’s not such a bad thing, is it, wanting attention? You know, I’d be happy, more than happy, to pick her up and cuddle her, if I could come see her, I’d do it right now, I could be there in--

You know, Ms. Wolf, Nancy cut her off, it may seem hard to believe, but babies can learn to be manipulative at a very young age. If I pick her up now, it will teach her that whenever she wants attention, all she has to do is cry. That’s not a desirable behavior to reinforce. That’s why we schedule all the babies for appropriate attention on our schedule, not theirs. It really wouldn’t even be in her interest for you to come here today. We do this all the time, we do know a few things. The avatar made a polite smile, as if to communicate that the nurse it represented wasn’t being sarcastic.

I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be rude, it’s just hard for me to watch her suffering –

Thank you Ms. Wolf.

She cut off the connection.

Wait! Uuuhh! In anger, Maeve rose from her recliner so fast her head hit the ceiling, on her way to kicking the wall. Then she felt she had kicked the image of Ladybug, and felt intense remorse. I’m sorry! she called, hugging her arms to the wall. I’m so so sorry! Oh I’m sorry, and she collapsed to the floor in a wash of tears, arms still reaching up to the image of the screaming baby on the wall. She remained in that position, repeating I’m sorry, I’m sorry, until she had cried herself to sleep.

3.

When she awoke, Maeve rubbed her aching eyes as she stood up and moved back to her chair. The wallscreen had gone to a screen saver, showing color undulating on a black background. Water, she commanded the delivery system, and in two seconds the window opened to a disposable cup of water. She would have preferred to use reusable containers, but her cube couldn’t accommodate the washing up. It would be a custom job, a cube that would wash and store dishes, and Maeve didn’t make enough money as an insurance policy proofreader to upgrade her cube. Life was much more expensive for the unsponsored.

She gulped the water, pulled her hood down from the headrest of her chair, and slipped her hands into the gloves patched into the arms of the chair. Safetynet, she commanded, and found herself in the entrance to a social network for unsponsored people. Maeve rarely came here. She’d never liked social networks, wasn’t comfortable with people, other than Rose; she never trusted that they were really saying what they meant, that there wasn’t too much she was missing by not being able to see their faces. People who’d grown up in cubes didn’t have this problem, but Maeve was an oddball. She would never fit in with normal people. But now she was desperate for some kind of connection.

She was in a wide, open area, with dark space for a ceiling, a bright blue and green zigzag pattern on the floor, and endless rows of booths stretching out in every direction. At each booth stood a person or two, who smiled pleasantly and nodded as Maeve moved by. Most of the booths had short video feeds, signs, and music or a spoken soundtrack that faded in and out of prominence as Maeve’s virtual proximity shifted. Welcome to Romance, a handsome man in a toga said to Maeve, arms outstretched as if to embrace her. Behind him was an elaborate Greek-style archway through which Maeve could see vague movement. She’d have to move closer to see anything inside. Sponsored by Virchsuit.com, your supplier for every suit, choices in every price range. Maeve moved on.

The space was less densely populated than it had been in the past; now that being unsponsored was illegal, the numbers were falling. Still, there were people milling around, with all kinds of looks.