FutureBook

a short story

They dragged Tad out of class and brought him to The Consoling Room. Yes, Tad Bolton. The Varsity player. The guitar swinging senior. Who kissed Lindsay Ritten on the mouth. Right in front of Mr. Harold’s dumb face. While swinging a petition. With 5,000 signatures, to save the library. The greatest high schooler in history.

Yes, that very Tad was the weeping Tad they pulled from his desk during 5th period because he received no invitations to FutureBook, even after weeks of waiting.

“Which means Tad will be dead in fifteen years,” his mother said, “or at least that he’ll become a reclusive luddite failure, or a vegetable, or have no hands.”

Or whatever, but it’s just gonna be horrible for him because in the future, everyone is on FutureBook. So if you’re not on FutureBook, you’re not in the future. And you can only get on FutureBook via a personal invite code, from yourself, from the Future.

Which Tad didn’t get, so Tad is basically already dead, which is terrible, I think, even though I kind of hate the guy.

Unlike Tad and other soon-to-be-dead people (like the old and the sick and the just plain unlucky), the rest of us received email invitations. Initially, people brushed it off as a joke, like: “Look at this, ha!” SPAM maybe? A cute marketing trick? Digital performance art? Whatever, but definitely not an invitation from our future selves to join a new social network linking the present day to fifteen years in the future. That’s crazy.

But the onslaught was too persistent. Those who investigated it for fun, just for kicks, literally found themselves, but older and wiser. It was real.

The site proved beneficial for me, but I hesitated to engage at first. “Eric,” my future-me posted on our shared account wall, “you cannot go to the mall tonight. Do not go there. I went when I was you, and it was terrible.” Accompanying the post was a blurry image (the link between now and then is essentially dial-up) depicting a deep scar running the length of a thigh.

Well, shutup, FutureMe, I thought, you’re not the boss of me, that old calf of yours is even less the boss of me, and if I’m honest with myself, it’s pretty clear that Pototoxia, the best indie rock band in history, is the boss of me and happens to be playing at the Mall tonight.

So obviously I went, and let’s just say… it was terrible. I nearly died from bleeding, spent three days in the hospital. The whole time, FutureMe was posting, “Eric, are you at the mall?” and “Eric are you okay?” and “Oh my God Eric, I’m so sorry.”

So when FutureMe told me to not buy the blue sweater, that time I listened. When he told me to stand around for a few hours on Norman Street after school, I did it. When he told me to punch Harold Yancher in the face, I swung with all my might. When he told me to take up the campaign torch dropped by Tad Bolton, I became an unlikely champion of library expansion. When he told me to just go for it already and ask for her number, I fell in love with Lindsay Ritten.

And each time, FutureMe posted a little photo of how our life had changed, if it wasn’t already obvious. Money, great job, healthy body. Like, like, like. The future was bright and becoming brighter.

I had to keep all of this in mind as I reacted to the present.

For example:

Tad asking “why are you stealing my life?” Unsubscribe.

FutureMe painting the future mansion? Like!

Tad’s stupid sad face? No thanks.

FutureMe trimming the hedge around our future pool? Like!

Tad weeping in a field like an idiot? Boring.

FutureMe grilling inside of a sportscar? Like!

“This is us,” FutureMe posted, “our life is in your hands.” He was happy, and so was I. How could I not be?

The new social network wasn’t all gravy, though. When Esther Sowa got arrested for drunk driving on prom night, her FutureSelf linked to some terrible crafts she would eventually knit during three upcoming stints at rehab. Dan Krager switched to an Apple computer, then saw a post about a missing leg and years of unemployment. Every little thing mattered, and that was terrifying.

Sandra Willicks left for Paris, and her entire FutureBook account disappeared overnight. Wow. Shocked, her family held a funeral for their still-living daughter; Sandra delivered the eulogy, describing herself as a “good person with a big heart.”

And most peculiar of all, when Tad Bolton painted a portrait of the town lake (he’d taken up painting as a kind of solace amid his new life of quiet exile), his FutureBook account briefly popped into existence. He came back to life, in the future at least, but then died again. “He has the email to prove it,” his mom always recites, again and again, while she showers him with new painting supplies, waiting for it to return. Now he just paints and paints and paints like some idiot, waiting for things to change.

So, I took it seriously when FutureMe posted a picture of his burnt hands waving at the Real Estate sign outside our future mansion, now dilapidated and unkempt. The hedges looked forgotten, the sports car filled with garbage and old meat. I saw a pig loosed in the street.

“What’s happening,” I wrote. “Or, er, what will happen now? Or what’s happening in the future? Tell me what’s happening, why are we poor and alone.”

“I’m sick. We need money,” FutureMe told myself. “We need it bad.”

“What did you do with all the money we earned?”

“That’s not important. What’s important is it’s gone. And what’s important is, Tad Bolton can help us get it back.”

“Okay, how?”

“Well, you need to…hmm, uh, you need to destroy his paintings.”

“What?”

“Listen, the kid is gonna be dead in a few years, it doesn’t matter. You and I? We have a rich life ahead of us, or not! You see? He’s definitely screwed and we’re only maybe screwed, and that maybe depends on you. I need money for medicine to live bucko, so mess up those paintings”

I didn’t press the Like button on this comment.

“I can sense your hesitation,” FutureMe said, posting that same picture of our thigh scar. “Why not just trust me here, like you always should. Destroy one painting and see what it does. If I’m wrong, I’m wrong. If I’m right, we’re right together.” Then he posted the thigh picture again.

Sigh.

I marched over to Tad Bolton’s house, barged in, careened up the stairs to his room, grabbed a painting right out of his hands, and kind of reluctantly smashed it over my knee.

Ack, sorry, man, I said.

Tad, the huge hulking mass of a teenager, just looked at me and wept. He sat there like an old fruit left in a box and squeezed himself out. I couldn’t make eye contact.

I checked my phone and saw the FutureBook update: a pile of cash. Great. You have to believe in yourself.

I made my way through the room, snapping the portraits and tossing them across the floor, but that wasn’t enough, I knew.

I spilled his paints out the window, but that wasn’t enough. How could it be?

I threw Tad’s brushes against the wall and it wasn’t enough.

I kicked his desk into the door. It wasn’t enough.

I threw his stool into the air. I pulled all his clothes from the dresser. I ripped his posters from the wall. I flipped his bed, I smashed his lamps. I broke his clock. I flung his computer. I ripped up his papers. I picked up his phone and saw a blinking light, an update, an email, and I stood there in the middle of Tad Bolton’s room feeling exactly like myself.

I felt exactly like myself, and a piece of glass fell from the window frame to the floor. It takes a minute to know who you are, but I was becoming clearer to myself every second.

So even before Tad’s mother burst in with a huge smile on her face, screaming, ready to declare some joyous announcement, I knew the future was waiting for us.