Chapter 6: Visit
The hover bus skimmed the street, the air jets pushing it a few feet off the ground, never making contact with the street. I looked out the window past the old warehouses. This part of the city had fewer residents and was the most damaged since the great earthquake. Patches of weeds sprung around building corners, reaching towards the rooftops. Since my talk with Dad, I had sleepwalked through class the next day, my mind numb and overloaded with information. I asked Dad if I could visit Grandma on Saturday, and he was supportive of me getting out of the downtown core.
The bus had screens on the ceiling that shimmered with news, videos and advertisements. One screen showed the ribbon-cutting for a new park downtown. Another showed news of some football players crossing the end zone. Endless talking heads inhabited the other ones. I wished for a remote to shut them all off.
Then I caught the footage of young man who had just returned back from travels abroad. He had been the lucky visa traveler and had spent four months outside of the city. Four months! I wished I could have been him. He was doing an interview with a journalist and several images came up of his travels. I was so jealous, I couldn’t watch any longer. I twisted around, looked through the window and focused on the buildings as they passed by. It wasn’t far now.
Grandma was my father’s mother, my only living grandparent. Her home was old, on the outskirts of the city. Each lot had an acre of land, and with the trees between them you could almost believe that no one lived nearby. It was a one-level home with a sun porch where she spent a good part of her time reading and putting puzzles together. She loved her puzzles, and on any given visit she might have a dozen different ones in various stages of completion around her home. Some lay on tables, on wooden boards and even a few on the floor that made it difficult to walk around. As the hover bus skidded to a stop, I could make out the outline of her home in the distance.
I walked onto the street, the doors closing behind me, and the driverless vehicle circled around the street before heading back into the city. As I walked down a dirt path, I could hear a buzzing sound from a berry bush between two houses. I turned down a short driveway and instead of knocking on the front door continued on to the back of the house. As I swerved around some overgrown branches, my hands groped for the door of the sun porch. When I entered, I saw my grandma sitting on a flowery couch with a cup a tea on a table. She looked like she had just started a new puzzle.
“Pene!” she exclaimed, putting down her teacup, “come give your nana a hug.” Her smile was infectious and I gladly squeezed her. Her body felt thin and brittle, and I tried not to break any bones with my hug.
“Nana, have you lost weight?”
“I might have,” she said with a mischievous grin. “You never know when you might catch the eye of an eligible bachelor.”
“Nana,” I chastised, not knowing if she was telling the truth, “You feel too thin. Have you been taking your medication?”
On the coffee table in front of her, my eyes spied motion. A mechanical drone stomped towards her with a pill on his tray. It stopped before her as she plucked it from the tray and inserted it into her mouth.
“Pretty hard to miss my schedule with these things marching about.” Her fingers flicked the drone, which tipped over with its legs kicking. She seemed not to notice. “Sit down, honey, let me look at you. You look more like your mother every time I see you.” Her smile was creased with wrinkles framed by kindly eyes. A bee buzzed overhead and tried to land on her face. I instinctively tried to swat it away.
“Damn drones,” I exclaimed angrily, “can’t leave us alone for a second!” My grandma’s expression turned to bewilderment and then to realization.
“Oh dear, you misunderstand. Not every one of these mechanical wonders is watching you. Some are assigned very specific tasks. Take this little guy.” She plucked a flower from a vase and the bee flew around her hand before resting on her finger. Its little legs scurried as it dug into petals, its body shaking in the flower.
“When I was a child, I couldn’t do that with a real bee. I’d either be too scared or it would consider me a threat. These new mechanical bees are trained not to hurt, and without their help, half of our crops, from apples to blueberries, would never get pollinated.”
“I’ve never seen real bees. Where did they go?”
“They died,” she answered flatly, as if their extinction was quite normal. “No one knows for sure. It happened gradually. May have been pesticides or parasites; scientists never confirmed why. Man interfered with things and Mother Nature said we could no longer have bees. Good thing we showed Mother Nature a thing or two.” Nana sipped her tea as the bee flew out the window.
“Nana,” I reached and grabbed her hand, “Dad told me about Mom. About how she died.” Her face was first blank and then realization set in.
“Well, it’s about time. You’re not a child anymore.” She waggled her finger at me. “Your mother was an amazing woman. Smart as all get-out. I used to tease my son and ask him how he attracted such a brilliant woman. If she hadn’t died in the power plant blasts, she would have been one of our leading scientists.” She picked up a puzzle piece and put it to place. She was a multitasker, always doing more than one thing at a time. I was never offended; I knew she was still listening to me even as she did something else.
“Nana. Why didn’t you tell me?” I grabbed a flower piece and fit it into her puzzle. She smiled at my assistance.
“Not my place, dear. Your father changed after your mother’s death. He became more withdrawn, more focused on the law. He missed her spontaneity and creativity.” She looked closely into my eyes. “It was never my story to tell.” She was focused again on the puzzle. This topic had come to a close. I thought about something else.
“Grandma, how come you don’t live in the city? If you lived any further outside, you would be beyond the hover buses.” She focused on her puzzle, and for a moment I thought she hadn’t heard me. Then her hand cupped her ear.
“Dear Pene,” she didn’t raise her head, “what do you hear?” I was silent and confused.
“But Grandma?”
“What do you hear?” She looked up, expecting an answer. I was quiet and closed my eyes. I could hear a bird chirping in a nearby tree. I could hear the hum of the refrigerator. In the distance I thought I heard a mower cutting grass. But if I listened really carefully, I could hear…
“Nothing,” I said. “It’s so quiet, you can hear yourself think.”
She smiled. “Now you know. When your grandfather was alive, we hated the city. Too much noise, too many cameras, no privacy. We always felt like we were under a microscope. Some specimen meant to be examined. Here we felt less studied, freer.”
“Why didn’t you two move away? See the world?”
“Justin was always a homebody, never had the itch to see beyond the city. During university, I thought about taking the necessary courses to go overseas but....” She trailed off.
“What stopped you?”
“The red tape. There are so many tests and costs, it became so difficult that it made it not worth it to travel. Then your father was born and my priorities changed.” Grandma became quiet and I wondered if she ever regretted her choices. Maybe she would have made a different decision now, looking back.
I poured some tea from her flowery pot. It smelled sweet. I dropped a spoonful of synthetic honey into my glass. The drone bee banged on the window from the outside.
“Grandma — what was it like before the drones? Were they all created after the earthquake?” She looked thoughtful, as if imagining a world completely different to the one we lived in now. She put the puzzle piece into the corner.
“The earthquake certainly expedited the drone machines, but honestly, they have been around for as long as I can remember. We have been poisoning our earth for so long, we had been trying to recreate animals in some form or another. Clones were popular for a while but their ability to follow instruction was unpredictable. Drones were used about ten years before the earthquake, simple ones, like robot rats, to sniff for explosive devices. Drone planes eventually replaced fighter pilots when I was a teenager. It was all about dollars and trying to balance government budgets. Countries were so badly in debt. Drone planes were much cheaper to build and fly than human operators. Pilots fought the changes, but eventually defense budgets were trimmed and drones were the most cost-effective option.”
“You mean people used to fly in planes?” I asked.
“They used to drive cars and ships as well. But sweetheart, we make mistakes. Thousands of lives were lost each year, from car crashes to airline disasters. You might not like the drones but a lot of accidents are prevented because of their help.”
“But when did they start watching us? I can’t walk for two minutes without a drone following me.” I stood up and knocked over the cup of tea. It flowed towards the puzzle pieces like a liquid snake across the table. As it reached a corner piece, Grandma placed her napkin down, making a barrier and stopping the flow.
“What’s wrong with you, dear? I’ve not seen you this upset before.” I cautiously scanned the window to make sure a drone bee wasn’t watching me. I choose my words carefully.
“I think I got frustrated with my class project,” I lied. “You know how there are rarely any court trials. The sentence is usually automatic once footage of the crime is played.”
“Of course, you should have seen it in my day. Trials could go for years. The guilty would often go free on a technicality. The system is so efficient now, and our city is so much safer.”
“Yes, but are innocent people being punished? Are we seeing the truth?” I spoke louder than I wanted. And I realized then that I didn’t want to tell Grandma all of the details. It would be too much for her to believe. Or worse, she’d tell Dad.
“Truth?” Grandma seemed bewildered. “Of course it’s the truth. Just ask your father. Crimes are caught on camera. The guilty acts are captured, digitally recorded. Now people think twice before committing a crime. What seems to have you so worked up, dear? You can tell me.” She looked genuinely concerned and I wanted to tell her about Lou and the doctored footage. But it wasn’t fair to involve her. I was already in deep trouble if I told others; I wasn’t going to jeopardize her.
“No reason, Grandma, just curious, that’s all. I’m trying to finish my project in a very short time. Putting me under a bit of pressure.” I tried another approach. “Where do all of these drones come from? No one seems to know where they originate. They just seem to be everywhere.” Grandma looked thoughtful for a few seconds but then nodded.
“That’s an excellent question, dear, but I don’t know. I really don’t need to know. I don’t need to know where the local police station is to know that they are protecting me.”
“But—” I tried to coax out a location.
“If I did, I would go see your father. They record and send all footage to the courts. Your father reports to the High Courts — the judges probably know.
I thought of Lord Morall’s red eye and thought no one else would know better than he.
“That’s a good idea. Maybe it’s silly to want to know where they come from.” Grandma looked warily around the room and scanned the windows.
“Now, dear, if you ask me, drones aren’t the only way they watch us.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Drones, cameras, satellites, who knows what else they track us with. With today’s technology, no one can truly hide from the law.”