Children of the New World Read online

  “You know he’s probably some hairy guy in Kalamazoo, right?”

  “And Kira’s not?”

  “Kira’s definitely not,” I answer, though I have no clue. I picture a balding middle-aged man sitting in an apartment, his floor littered with chips and Coke bottles as he crafts Kira’s avatar. For all I know, my wife is right—the university no longer gives us gender, age, or birth names, just a class list based on my students’ chosen identities. “Are you really okay with this?” I ask.

  “Are you kidding? I’ve been okay from the start. You’re the one who calls it cheating.”

  It’s true. I’m from the generation who had hookups through Tinder and erased websites from browsers, a generation who, for a short while, still had time to be idealistic about what the future held. Ann’s eight years younger; her generation lost their online virginity in middle school.

  “Come on,” Ann says, “it’s going to be fun. We’ll be next to each other when we get off.”

  “Explain to me again how this isn’t cheating?”

  Ann takes off her headset and crosses the room to sit by me. “They’re just avatars,” she says and kisses me. It feels good. Even though real lips can’t bring you to orgasm, there’s something nice about them all the same. We kiss again, a short one this time; then Ann returns to her work, and I go back down the hallway—past Max’s music of groaning car engines and screeching violins—to my office. I put my bodysuit back on for a walk.

  Ann created Autumn for us when Max was five, a Father’s Day gift. As a little boy, Max and I would walk the landscape together, he in his bodysuit and I in mine, but nowadays I just bring up a saved avatar of Max and reach down to take his hand. The air is crisp and startling, a day that hints toward the coming winter. The leaves have begun turning, and they fall from large oaks, covering the ground in yellow and orange.

  “Hi, Daddy,” Max says. The simulator gives his child’s sweetness a disturbing digital timbre, but it’s close enough.

  “Hey,” I say and squeeze his hand. Above us, a couple planes cut white trails across the sky, and I hold my son’s hand as we step from the sidewalk into a sea of golden leaves.

  * * *

  MAX WEARS HIS hockey mask through dinner. He lifts it only to take bites of the lemongrass tilapia Ann has prepared. We’ve asked him to take the mask off when we eat. We’ve punished him, grounded him, taken away his video-game time, but there’s no victory in having a mask-less boy who hates us. So, Ann and I talk to each other while our son silently tends goal at the end of the table. The mask isn’t his invention. Some teenager somewhere found their grandparents’ B-grade horror films and decided the mask was the new vogue for angry anti-tech youth. Indeed, the mask is chilling. The hard, emotionless white fiberglass covers our son’s features, and the hollow, perpetually sunken eyes create a furious expression. The triangles of red above the cheeks resemble streaks of blood. When you add in his clothing—a costume based entirely on either hazmat suits or straitjackets—our son looks essentially like a mass murderer.

  It pains Ann and me to see Max like this, knowing that beneath the darkness of the mask his eyes are still spinning, his mind is high on cybernetics, and his heart is full of some pain neither of us understands. Max wasn’t always like this. Until he was eleven, he was a sweet child with a downy head of hair and cheeks that lifted in smiles. He played online games like Club Koala, where he clung to eucalyptus trees and traded in bamboo shoots for fur upgrades. Then he entered middle school. We’d bought his school avatar a Club Koala shirt. The other students made fun of him, and a group of tech-savvy assholes hacked into his Club Koala account and spray-painted his bear pink. They made his koala say obscene things to the other bears, which left Max permanently expelled from the site. That’s when he bought the hockey mask and straitjacket and teamed up with the slasher-punk kids at school, a group that refuses to streamline their avatars. They wear patches that read NO DIFFERENCE! and appear online in the same gruesome costumes they wear at home.

  “I’m done eating,” Max says. “Can I be excused?”

  We let him leave the table, even though Ann and I are only halfway through our fish, and Max disappears upstairs.

  “That was pleasant,” Ann says. Machine-gun noises cut her off, followed by the sound of jackhammers on a keyboard.

  “Max!” I yell. No answer. “Max!”

  “What?”

  “Turn it down. And it’s going off in half an hour.”

  His reply is to slam the door, but the music does lower.

  Ann washes the dishes and I order another shipment of groceries. Beets, milk, honey; Chesapeake mussels are on sale. I click them into my cart. I think of the people working out there, transporting seafood across the country, driving mile after mile of empty highways. There are weekly reports of truck attacks by refugees living outside. I click my cart and check out.

  By ten the slasher-punk is turned off, and by a quarter to eleven Max is asleep. The house is quiet again. I sit on our bed as Ann gets her equipment ready. She pulls off her sweater, then unhooks her bra. Her body looks good. It’s not as slim as her avatar. Around the hips she’s gained some weight but, then again, so have I. She’s at least better at going to online yoga.

  I try to mentally prepare myself for Kira, but all I can think about is how Ann and I have a good love life. After fifteen years of marriage we still manage to have sex with each other’s avatars two to three times a week. We’ve swapped genders, created a third programmed avatar to have three-ways with, placed genitalia on every inch of our bodies and had simultaneous multiple-appendage orgasms. It’s not for a lack of experimentation. If that were the case, Ann could design a version of herself that looks exactly like Kira. But somehow that’s not the same. Ann shifts her hips back and forth to slip out of her jeans, then pulls down her panties. I reach out and place my hand against her legs. Her skin feels soft.

  “Are you sure you want to do this?” I ask.

  “Yeah, baby.” She steps into her suit and pulls the zipper up past her navel.

  “You look hot,” I say.

  “You do, too,” she says, pointing at my boxers. “Aren’t you going to get dressed?” She pulls on her head mask and lowers her goggles.

  “I’ll be right there.” I remove my boxers, slip my bare legs into my suit, secure my penis in the catheter, then zip in. The clock by the bed reads 10:57. I put on my mask and goggles and lie down next to Ann.

  “I’m right here,” she says, taking my hand.

  Then we log on.

  * * *

  KIRA IS WAITING for me by the door of the classroom. Her hair is dark brown tonight, and it falls past her shoulders, loose and wild against her trench coat, in constant motion, as though blown by a breeze. She lifts a hand to her face and brushes the hair from her eyes.

  “Hey, there,” she says. She places her hand behind my neck and pulls me toward her, our tongues rubbing across each other’s lip receptors again and again. I unlock the door, and once inside, Kira pushes me against it, closing the door behind us. My shirt is already bulging and Kira rubs her hand along the buttons, then rips the collar around my shoulders, exposing the erection in the middle of my chest.

  “Get on the desk,” she says.

  She unties her own trench coat, and in the dim light of the room I see the vagina beneath her right breast. She places her rib cage against mine. “Oh, God,” I say as she pushes me inside and begins to rock. I take her hand, looking for the vagina on her palm.

  “Not there anymore,” she says, grinding back and forth.

  “What did you do with it?”

  “I’ve got something better for you.” She pulls her hair aside to reveal the puckered lips on the side of her throat.

  “You’re so beautiful,” I say, and push my fingers into her neck. Already I can feel the hum in her body. She grabs the back of my head and pulls me toward her. “You’ve got one, too, don’t you?”

  “Yes,” I say, moving my fingers in and out
of her neck.

  “I want it,” Kira says, her voice suddenly harsher. “Tell me where it is.”

  “My leg.”

  Kira unbuttons my pants and yanks them around my knees, fully exposing the vulva on my right thigh. She lifts her leg from the floor, her own erection protruding from her kneecap, and pushes into me. She grunts, lifts her leg into a horse kick, and drives her knee down again. I moan.

  “Don’t stop fucking me,” she says. I push my fingers deeper into her neck as she jackhammers her knee into me. She’s rocking up and down, her leg kicking back and forth, her neck nodding in unison as her rib cage begins shaking. “Keep going!” And I want to, but she has me pinned against the desk and I can barely lift my leg. “This is it!” she yells. Her neck clenches tightly around my fingers and her rib cage spasms as she collapses on top of me. Then her weight is gone, her avatar popping from above with the sound of a computer logging off. The room is quiet, the desks and chairs all lined up in perfect rows, and the moon outside casts a silver light across the floor. I’m alone on my desk, my shirt torn, the silk ruined, and my pants are around my ankles. I pull my trousers back on and try to button my ruined shirt—it’s no use—then I slide off the desk and shut down the classroom.

  My wife is still lying on the bed beside me. Her lips are parted and she’s letting out a slow moan. I take a couple breaths, staring at the lilacs stenciled around the ceiling. I count them: twenty-one … twenty-two … twenty-three … I tap my wife’s shoulder. “Hey?” I say. There’s no response, except her lips open slightly wider. “Hey,” I say again, but she’s too far gone.

  What I want to do is lie down with Ann, hold her, and go to sleep. But that’s not what’s happening. She’s kicking her foot up and down on the bed with no indication of stopping anytime soon. I think about logging back on and finishing myself off with a programmed avatar, but it feels too pathetic. So, I strip off my headgear and peel down the bodysuit, my leg hairs sticking to the rubber as I remove it. Then I go to the bathroom and turn on the water. In the mirror, my pupils are dilated as though in shock and my hands are shaking. I sit on the toilet and take a deep breath. The tiles are yellow beneath my bare feet, and my body smells sour from the suit. In the other room, I hear a drawn-out moan. There’s nothing to do except log on, watch something on Virtuview, check my email, or buy my avatar a new shirt—none of which sounds interesting. So, I take a shower. Then I put on my robe, close the bedroom door behind me, and head downstairs to find something to eat.

  Halfway down the stairs, I hear a thump. I freeze on the last carpeted step. There’s the strained silence of someone trying to be quiet, then a tentative squeak starts up, growing quicker. I’m thinking of instant messaging the police when I recognize the sound.

  Max is crouched by the bicycles in our garage. He’s still in his flannel pajamas, and his hockey mask is up over his head. Above him, the frosted bulb casts a bleak light onto our car, which is buried beneath boxes labeled CHRISTMAS ORNAMENTS and MAX’S BABY CLOTHES.

  “What are you doing?” I ask.

  There’s a clatter of handlebars as he gets to his feet, trying to hide the pump behind his back. “Nothing,” he says. He’s forgotten to pull his mask down, but now he remembers and lowers it.

  “Show me what’s behind your back.”

  Max brings out the pump. “I found it.”

  “You were going bicycling at this hour?”

  “No,” Max says. “Seriously, Dad, I wasn’t. I just wanted to get my bike ready. You know, like to go riding after school or something.”

  I don’t know what to say. Seeing him standing there in his flannel pajamas, it sure doesn’t look like he’s planning on going anywhere. Still, none of this makes any sense. “Max, tell me what’s going on.”

  “Nothing,” he says. “All I want to do is go biking.”

  “Don’t lie to me.”

  “I’m not lying.”

  “Where were you going?”

  “Nowhere!”

  “To get drugs?”

  “No!” he yells. “God, you never leave me alone!” He throws the aluminum pump to the ground, where it clatters hollowly.

  “Hey!” I grab his arm. It’s the first time I’ve touched my son in months, and the shock of his skin beneath mine suddenly reminds me of what it was like to hold him as a child. My voice catches. I release my grip and he’s out the door, his footfalls echoing through the kitchen and up the stairs. His bicycle sits, ready for escape, next to my own deflated bicycle. It’s only as I take the bike pump and begin to inflate my own tires that I think to exhale.

  * * *

  THE NEXT MORNING feels strange. We do our usual routine, get up, shower, eat cereal with Max, but I don’t feel connected to any of it. I stack the dishes in the dishwasher and think of Kira’s knee inside me. Max logs in to school and we close his door.

  “Can we talk?” Ann says.

  “Not now, I’ve got office hours.”

  “You promised we’d talk in the morning. Something’s wrong, I can tell.”

  “Nothing’s wrong.”

  Ann doesn’t say anything; she just stands there, an arm’s reach from me, looking like a stranger. “I promise we’ll talk later,” I say and turn, leaving her in the hallway as I escape to my office.

  The system logs me on without any Departmental Message pop-ups. My inbox is full of junk mail, a virtual greeting card from my mother, and a couple emails from students asking about the essay that’s due in two hours. I hang around my office, waiting for students to show up. I gaze out the window, flip through the Seven Wonders of the World, and think about Kira. There’s a reality wherein Kira and I are a couple, a world where I’m eternally thirty, without a wife who’s quickly aging or a son on drugs. I could move out, get my own apartment, live a new life, alone and happy with a thousand avatar lovers.

  When it’s time for class, the students arrive, but I’m waiting to see Kira. Her seat is empty when the bell rings, so I wait a couple minutes longer, and then, with a sigh, begin teaching. I’m halfway into my lecture on Joyce’s “The Dead” when Ann starts shaking my body. I excuse myself and raise my goggles.

  “I’m in the middle of class,” I say.

  “The garage door just opened.”

  “What?” I ask, pulling my goggles completely off.

  “Max is outside!”

  “Shit!” I dismiss class and log off to find my son.

  * * *

  MAX’S BIKE IS gone. The garage is open on its hinges, letting in the blinding glare of the world and a cold blast of wind that cuts through my shirt.

  “I’m going after him,” I say and cross the garage to my bicycle. I raise the kickstand and walk the bike to the edge of our garage.

  “You need a jacket; it’s freezing out there.” Ann pulls boxes off our car and onto the ground. I hear something shatter in our Christmas box. She opens a large box that says WINTER GIVE-AWAY and yanks the puffy sleeve of an old coat I haven’t seen in years.

  “Be careful,” Ann says, and then I’m off, pedaling away from our house, my tires crunching the salted road and echoing across the concrete of our subdivision. Out here all the houses look abandoned. The vinyl sides are yellowed and the blinds are drawn. Their front yards, like ours, are completely overgrown: high grasses, stalky and dry, rustle in the wind that blows down from the rooftops. The cold sucks the blue from the sky, deadens sound, and makes the streets desolate. I pedal wobbly along our road, turn down the first intersection, then the next, a right, followed by a left, surrounded by nothing but darkened windows and sidewalks. I push harder against the pedals, sweeping the empty streets for my son. My breathing becomes a labored rasp, my legs ache, and it’s only when I stop the bicycle to catch my breath that I hear the muted sound of tires between the houses. I follow the sound down the street, turning on another street, another, and then out past the houses, leaving our subdivision for the long flatlands between the suburbs and the abandoned shopping plaza on the horizon. Far ahea
d, I can see Max’s outline.

  Vacant car dealerships lie fallow by the long stretch of the four-lane road as I huff to keep up with him, my knuckles purple from the cold. A truck rumbles past, delivering groceries. Ten minutes, fifteen. I am far behind my son by the time he reaches the abandoned plaza. I pull off the road, behind an overgrown pine by the entrance, and scan the lot for Max’s drug dealer.

  Max slaloms between the metal lampposts, stopping by the tinted doors of the entrance to the mall. He cups his hands against the glass and looks inside. Then he gets back on his bike and swoops around the side of the building. By the jagged shards of a smashed Toys“R”Us window, Max dismounts and leans his bicycle against the brick wall. He removes his goalie mask and hangs it on the handlebars, then digs around in his coat pocket and pulls out a green orb. From this distance I can’t make out what the object is, consider that it may be some sort of new drug, until he throws it.

  The tennis ball rebounds on the concrete with a delayed echo. Max catches it, then throws it again. He doesn’t seem to be looking for anyone; he’s simply throwing the ball and catching it, throwing it and catching it. A couple of times the ball hits a cracked patch of concrete and rebounds crookedly, rolling across the blacktop, but otherwise it’s the same monotony for five minutes, ten minutes, a quarter of an hour.

  The day is dying around us. Soon the sun will be gone, the roads dark. I roll my bike from behind the pine and enter the open expanse of Parking Lot B, where Max is playing. He doesn’t see me until I’m halfway toward him, and when he does, he jumps.

  “Max,” I call. He stands frozen, holding the ball, and it’s only when I’m within three parking lot rows from him that he retreats to his bicycle to get his mask on.

  “What are you doing here?” I ask.

  “Nothing.”

  “I saw you throwing the ball. What was that for?”

  “Just for fun,” he says, stuffing the ball into his jacket pocket.

  “Take your mask off.”

  He lifts the mask up like a visor.