BACK FROM THE FUTURE: A 30TH-ANNIVERSARY SHORT STORY, "OSGOOD'S DILEMMA"

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"And," Future Osgood added, after Osgood had sat down with the other board members and taken out pen and notepad to record the minutes, "we'll have portable devices even smaller than laptops! They're called ‘tablets,' and ‘smartphones,' and they've got touchscreen keyboards so you can take notes and not have to retype stuff later! Smartphones, they're these handheld portable telephones, like the Dick Tracy thing, crossed with a computer! Isn't that amazing? Huh? Huh? Isn't it?"

Future Osgood was on a roll, now. It was all Osgood could do to take down minutes with his annoying older self jabbering in his ear. How was he going to get rid of him? Oh, God, he wasn't planning to retire here in this ‘simpler' era of 1982, was he? If I kill him, do I kill myself? No, no, it's the other way around…

"Forget paper newsletters!" Future Osgood carried on, excitedly. "With the World Wide Web, we all have ‘websites' for our co-ops, where people can get up-to-the-minute news on their computer screens – including their ‘tablets' and their ‘smartphones,'" he noted, stretching the words out as if he were talking to a child. Do they have ray guns in the future, Osgood wondered, and if so, do you need a license to carry one? Maybe he could get someone else's future self to do the deed. Not to hurt him, of course, just, you know, order him back to where he came from.

"Ohmigod, and solar panels!" he was saying. There was other stuff in between, but Osgood was tuning him out. "Buildings generate part of their own electricity and get credits for any excess they feed into the grid! And Con Ed stops being a monopoly in 1997! And we've started replacing incandescent light bulbs with energy-efficient light-emitting diodes!" What the hell's a diode and I DON'T CARE! Osgood was screaming to himself. "And we've got cleaner-burning heating oil that we get from plants, called 'biofuel,' and instead of thermostats we've got ‘building automation software' that uses wireless sensors to read inside temperatures and then signal the risers to increase or decrease heat in pinpointed spots and even turn off lights when nobody's in the room and…!

"STOP!!" Osgood yelled. Everybody in the room turned to look at him, and a red flush of embarrassment began itching. "I'm sorry. Not you. Me. I'm … not feeling well and I have to … to stop. Eleanor, here, take over. I'm sorry."

Osgood hurried out of the apartment, went quickly to his own, and splashed water on his face. When he looked up from the sink, future him was watching benignly in the mirror.

"This should have been the greatest moment of my life," Osgood turned and told him, fuming but too exhausted to have any passion in his pronouncement. "Who doesn't dream of this when he's a kid — being able to meet his future self and find out if he's going to make good decisions and get through adolescence and see how cool life's going to be in the future?"

"Did I mention we have flat-screen TVs?"

"Shut up. That 'Iinternet' thing, with the computers? That's, like, the most amazing thing ever. And you make it sound like, like … like normal, everyday life!"

"Well … gee, Ozzy." Future Osgood was crestfallen. Maybe he should have found a better time to do this. Maybe he should have brought back pictures, to really dazzle him. Hell, maybe he should have made stuff up about flying cars. And jet packs — everybody thought there'd be jet packs, way back when.

Future Osgood shifted his feet and looked at his watch, which looked exactly like watches in 1982. "You see … it's our birthday today. And I just thought this would be a really cool gift."

Now it was Osgood's turn to feel bad. Of course — this was what he had dreamed of all his life. I'm meeting my future self. Well, he thought ruefully, doesn't that just make this like any other holiday where family comes over? Expectations run so high and everybody knows each other so well — you're inevitably disappointed. Even with a miracle like this. Technology changes, but people…?

"Not so much," Future Osgood said. "That's another phrase we use. This is all coming back to me now," he said, mostly to himself. "Hey, when you're 70," he told Osgood, "you don't always remember so well."

"Wow," Osgood said quietly. "I'm sorry. This really is monumental. Can you stay a little longer? Tell me a little more?"

"Of course I can. But first promise me that all that other stuff, about buildings and things, that you'll remember them and be a good, forward-thinking co-op board member."

"What? Well, sure — I guess. But … why?"

"Because right here in New York, at this very moment, an enterprising woman is creating what will become this great and wonderful magazine for co-op and condo boards. She's going to call it Habitat, and it's going to help boards do a good job and keep their buildings solvent. And that's going to keep the middle class here and stabilize the city. Without co-ops, Ozzy, New York is doomed. So you're going to help her."

The two of them spoke about it long into the night before Future Osgood finally had to go. It was enlightening. Osgood now knew that he and other co-op directors were doing something important. But he was a little disappointed to find that he never did change his first name.

Illustration by Liza Donnelly

From Habitat May 2012. For more, join our Archive >>