Yesterday Forever

By Robert Goodman

This story chronicles the journey of a man named Adam who is reliving his life. He recalls his childhood and meeting the woman who would later become his wife, only to lose her and their newborn child in a car accident. Angry over his devastating loss, Adam tries to punish God for taking his wife and child and, in turn, is destined to live forev

• Language: English
• Publisher: Palmetto Publishing
• Release date: Jan 10, 2023
• ISBN: 9798885908733

Robert Goodman

Robert Goodman is Lemelson Professor of Environment Design and Planning at Hampshire college and a former columnist for the Boston Globe. He is the author of After the Planners and The Last Entrepreneurs: America’s Regional Wars for Jobs and Dollars, as well as numerous articles on urban planning and economic policy. He lives in Northampton, Massachusetts.

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

LIVING 350 YEARS WITHOUT aging or getting sick and not being able to be killed may sound like a dream to most people, but for Adam Crawford it was the worst kind of hell you could imagine. He lost his wife and daughter in a car accident over 350 years ago and has had to live with their memory every day like it was yesterday. The world around him has changed in a huge way, but the love for them has burned inside of him like a red-hot branding iron to his soul. God cursed him to live forever with their memory for all that he had done after the accident. The anger he had for God had raged inside him since that fateful day.

Nothing had changed his rage in 350 years, and he didn’t see it changing in the next 350 years. Except for some scars and a tattoo on his back of a broken heart with Audrey’s name on it, Adam hadn’t changed in all the years since the accident. He had decided to make God pay for the loss of his family. He wanted to hurt God as much as he had been hurt. He decided to steal from the churches and give all that he stole to less-fortunate people who could use the help. It first started after the accident when all the preachers, bishops, and anyone who held a cross kept telling him that they were in a better place. None of them could tell him what was wrong with the place they were in. None of them could give him an answer that made any sense to him. Adam had no use for any of them; in fact, he had shut the entire world out. Except for taking from the churches and giving it to whoever needed it, he wanted no contact with anyone.

It was the year 2330 now, and people lived in buildings up high in the clouds. After the wars were over, everyone who was someone moved to the clouds. They left the ground and the people who were left to perish in the aftermath of their wars. None of the cloud dwellers would come to the ground anymore; their bodies had acclimated to their new environment, and they couldn’t live for long if they did come down. They lived like kings and queens up there, and what was beneath them was a wasteland they wanted no part of. They assumed everything and everyone had long been dead—and good riddance to them. The people who survived on the ground had colonized and started life on the ground over without the cloud people’s help. The few cars that were left and functional were used to transport goods from one colony to the next.

It was a hard existence, but it had been getting easier over the last hundred years. The cars that were on the ground flew like the ancient airplanes did in the days before the wars. Airplanes became useless when the cars no longer needed roads and could fly from one continent to another. Adam’s car was an even more ancient relic, but it had been rebuilt and revamped to fly and was undetectable by any radar that the cloud people had. This made it easier to fly up to the clouds and steal water and food for the ground people. The cloud people had banned any flying cars and would shoot them down if they came within their radar. Being shot down and killed was never a fear of Adam’s, since he couldn’t be killed. The thought of losing the only 1969 Chevrolet Camaro did make him worry.

On his latest trip to the clouds, he filled his car with water capsules and some food and clothes, then waited for it to get dark before heading to the ground. His car was black and easy to spot during daylight but impossible to see in the dark. When he woke the next morning, he started passing out water capsules to the ground people who had colonized in the old cities near Portland, Oregon.

It was getting to be around noon when a little girl who was walking toward him reached in and grabbed the heart he no longer thought was even there. The little green-eyed, blond-haired girl was smiling at him when she reached out her hand and shook Adam’s hand.

Hello. My name is Audrey Lot. What is your name, sir?

For the next few minutes, Adam was speechless. Then he whispered in a crackly voice, My name is Adam Crawford. Pleased to meet you.

He gave her a box of water capsules and ended up talking to her for an hour or so. All the ground people just stared at them as they talked. Adam had never talked to anyone as far back as he could remember. It had been over two hundred years since Adam had spoken a single word to anyone. They talked and laughed until her parents had finished gathering food and clothes and came to take her home.

Months went by, and Adam would talk to Audrey on every trip he made to the colony to replenish the grounds people’s water. On one trip to the clouds, Adam had stolen some vegetable seeds to give to Audrey just to see her face light up when he gave them to her. She planted them in the colony’s garden that hadn’t been planted in over a hundred years. Seeds were the most expensive item there was on the ground and in the clouds. Adam started bringing Audrey water every day for her garden, more for his benefit than the garden’s.

Years went by, and the garden continued to grow bigger—and so did Audrey. Many times she would ask him why everyone around grew older or died but he never changed. He told her he was just luckier than everyone else, then would change the subject as soon as he had the chance. That seemed to work until, on her twenty-second birthday, she would not accept his answer any longer. He told her that he had been cursed by God for being a bad person and doing some terrible things in his life. He said, after his wife and daughter were killed, he did some evil things, and God made him live forever with the memory of his family etched in his brain. She tried to tell him that if he apologized to God for what he had done, God would make things right. He told her he couldn’t say he was sorry, and even if he could say it, God wasn’t listening to him anymore. He changed the subject as fast as he could. He started talking to her about her grandparents and her great grandparents. He wanted to know as much as he could about them.

On his next visit to the clouds, he was quick to get what he wanted so he could get back to Audrey. He didn’t notice he was being followed by the Seekers. Seekers are like the police in the old days, only they are judge and jury also. They shoot first and sort out the details later. That is their new way of population control. They don’t have prisons or jails in the clouds. When Adam landed, he was happy to see that beautiful little face smiling at him as she walked over to meet him. When the Seekers started firing at the ground people, he realized he had screwed up big time. He had no time to think or grab any of his weapons other than his pistol he carried all the time. He ran for the nearest building he could and pushed some of the people standing around him toward it. They