HABITAT
Osgood's Dilemma
In honor of HABITAT's 30th Anniversary, we present a short story from journalist and humorist Frank Lovece, whose fiction has appeared in Marvel Comics and elsewhere.
Osgood Millimeter was fuming. The time was half-past 1982 and his Checker cab was stuck in traffic — he was going to be late for his co-op board meeting again. It was times like these he idly dreamed of having one of those two-way TV/radio wristwatches like in Dick Tracy. But he knew that would never happen during his lifetime, and he was only 40.
The radio was playing, its music pushing up against the wall of heat in the non-air-conditioned cab. Osgood thought if he had to listen to "Eye of the Tiger" from Rocky III one more time he'd scream. As if on cue, the song's headache-inducing guitar thumps stopped, and static filled the tinny radio speaker.
And then, suddenly, he was beside himself.
Literally.
There on the seat beside him was another Osgood Millimeter — an older one, maybe by 30 years. Osgood knew this immediately, as if he'd just remembered something he'd forgotten, and it seemed like the most natural thing in the world to meet your future self.
"Because now that we've met, I remember this, and I'm you, so you remember," Future Osgood said. "It's a conundrum. We don't actually have time travel in 2012, either, but there was this thing and yadda, yadda, and now I'm here. Sorry — I forgot no one was saying 'yadda, yadda' yet. Make that 'blah, blah, blah.' Also, only you can see me."
"That's fine," Osgood said, completely accepting it. Speaking quietly while the driver rapped the radio with his knuckles — Human League's "Don't You Want Me" now filled the air — he asked, "How come I don't remember why you're here?" The cab finally began to move.
"Because I haven't told you yet," Future Osgood replied. "Naturally."
"Naturally," Osgood replied. "How could I not have known that?" He was getting a little tired of himself already, and they'd only just met. "Are you here to tell me what stocks to invest in, so that we become rich?"
"No," Future Osgood said, "because things have worked out OK and I don't want to risk us getting killed in that Concorde accident or that Mount Everest expedition or whatever else it is rich people do."
"Well," Osgood considered, "that's some relief, at least." Now the cab was pulling up to his building. It was trash day, so the incinerator was puffing black smoke.
"Yeah, we don't do that anymore," he future self said, pointing at the smoke. "You've forgotten what day this is, haven't you?" he suddenly said, surprised. "Don't you remember? Today's your 40th birthday!"
"Yes, I remembered," Osgood said. "Don't remind me. I … oh, for — !" He had forgotten his keys. His building was too small to afford a doorman, so he hit all the intercom buttons until someone buzzed him in.
"You won't have to do that in the future," Future Osgood said, as the two of them entered the vestibule. "First, we'll have electronic keyless entry — like a garage-door opener for people! And second — wait'll you hear this! — small co-ops like yours will have a ‘virtual doorman.' That's a two-way video setup with a central monitoring center, where attendants let you in, screen visitors, and accept deliveries."
"Awwww, no robot doormen?" Osgood said. "Next you'll be telling me there are no flying cars, or videophones."
"Don't be snarky."
"Don't be what?"
"Oh, sorry. People don't say that yet. Don't be, uh, sarcastic with a patronizing tone. As it happens, we do have videophones. It's called Skype, and you use it with a webcam on your laptop."
"You realize that last sentence made no sense at all," Osgood said, pulling down a note taped to the vestibule wall, saying the boiler for their No. 6 oil had passed city inspection. "Laptop? What am I, Santa Claus?" Geez, is that how I'm going to be in the future, Osgood wondered. Suh-nuh-arkey?
Apparently so. "You know that ‘personal computer' IBM introduced last year, your time? Or the Apple II before that? Well, everybody has a computer in the future — only they're the size of notebooks and you can put 'em on your lap! And Sype is the software that lets you ‘phone up' other computers, and a webcam is the computer's built-in video camera. If you had that, you could have attended the board meeting remotely from work and not gotten stuck in a cab during rush hour like a…"
"Like a what?" Osgood snapped. "And this camera's called ‘web-something' why?" The two were ascending in the elevator, headed to the apartment where the board meeting was being held. Osgood wondered if they had super-duper aspirins in the future for the headache he was giving himself.
"‘Web' is short for ‘World Wide Web.' That's part of the Internet, which is the network that connects everybody's computer to everybody's else's. It's actually around right now, for universities and the Pentagon and things. It'll start going public in 1989." God, am I already this boring? Osgood thought. "Then instead of having to mail or messenger paper copies of co-op documents to the managing agent or prospective buyers, you can send electronic copies using 'electronic mail' — e-mail, we call it. You'll just read the stuff right there on your computer screen!
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