Sun and Moon - The Presidential Election of 2040

[Unapologetic Chinaperson]

It's hard to express how good this TL is. It's unconventional in its focus (China), it's absurdly detailed, and you're very good at getting us to feel for the characters. Great job!

How some people in that town thought I should go back to China or how I belonged in an internment camp, just like the late President Trump in the infamous Nerdgate video.

EXPLAIN PLEASE

Explanation for the name of that video/scandal.

Also of note: that video nearly caused WWIII.

[Cold War Liberal]

It's hard to express how good this TL is. It's unconventional in its focus (China), it's absurdly detailed, and you're very good at getting us to feel for the characters. Great job!

How some people in that town thought I should go back to China or how I belonged in an internment camp, just like the late President Trump in the infamous Nerdgate video.

EXPLAIN PLEASE

Explanation for the name of that video/scandal.

Also of note: that video nearly caused WWIII.

Well yeah I'm aware of the stereotype, I assume the specific incident involving Trump speaking approvingly of internment camps will be forthcoming (maybe through an Amber and/or Crystal POV)?

[Unapologetic Chinaperson]

Just a quasi-update: School has started and has been a never-ending cycle of homework (particularly for Intro Statistics and Algorithms). So updates will be slow and unreliable. That said, I do wish every Atlasian a happy Year of the Dog!



Also a minor retcon: I'm changing President Macron's successor from Marine to Marion Le Pen. France is still getting a FN presidency ITTL, alas.

[Unapologetic Chinaperson]

February 14, 2040 - Beijing, China

She read the last line of the article again.

No matter where you are, who you became, or what you believe in, you will always be Chinese.

It was the first article she ever wrote at the New Yorker, back when she was new to the job. The magazine issue she held in her hand was crinkled from months of use, with some of its pages bearing the stains of long-forgotten coffee spills. She always carried it around, and every time she turned to that page that she wrote, she reflected on her own identity.

My name is Victoria Lee. I am a 23-year-old American, born in China, adopted by a white family from Eastern Tennessee. Since my adoption, I had never been back to my birth country. Until now.

She looked outside the plane window and peered below. Growing up in a small town near Knoxville, that American city formed her prototype of what a city was, and so she was amazed by the size of Baltimore when she went there for college. She could scarcely believe how nearly a million souls could form this giant city. Ten million souls was out of the question, yet she was confronted by that size when she moved to New York City after graduation. Surely nothing, she thought, could possibly be bigger than the Big Apple, the City That Never Sleeps.

But as Beijing came into view outside the airplane window, below the great blue sky, she saw a metropolis of a different scale. Below the shadows of the scattered clouds floating like wilted cotton balls, the capital city formed a quilt of gray and green, its highways and railroads weaving through a fabric of apartment complexes and vast parklands. In the distance, the hand of humanity had sculpted the surrounding plains into fields of glistening blue and black stretching to the horizon, forming solar farms that provided the vast amounts of energy needed to sustain Beijing. The mountains ranges beyond, which in a previous era may have awed the locals, seemed distant and miniscule in comparison to the man-made wonder that was the city.

As if the city itself beckoned the Airbus A500 towards its embrace, the plane descended. The highways grew from one dimensional lines to three dimensional arteries, as millions of mostly blue-white cars that plyed seas of concrete and asphalt and silicon came into focus. Buildings transformed from matchboxes and dollhouses to the monuments of engineering they were - glass and steel and concrete soaring into the air, their curves and lines reflecting the sun’s rays back into the sky. The people themselves, too, came into view, first as ants, then as flesh-and-blood humans living with their hopes, dreams, and aspirations. Their combined life energy was so strong, Victoria could feel it pulsating from thousands of feet in the air.

It wasn’t long before the plane reached the ground. On cue, the roof lit a bright pastel blue whose color filled the whole cabin, alerting the passengers that they had to get ready to depart. The speakers, too, had to signal the plane’s arrival. “欢印您到北京机场,” a gruff male voice said as if it came from a pilot, even though United Airlines had replaced them with artificial intelligence years ago.

Using her implant’s translation ability, Victoria heard “Welcome to Beijing Capital Airport” instead of the original Mandarin. But with a feeling of slight trepidation, she gave it a command. Turn off translation. On one hand, she wanted to hear the language of her heritage, but on the other hand, she didn’t know a single lick of it. She hoped that customs would be gentle to her, but she mentally prepared for the worst.

Her decision soon felt moot, though, as the artificial pilot repeated the sentence in English himself. She mentally shrugged and she stretched on her tippy-toes to get her luggage from the overhead bin. Slowly, she tried her way to the front exit, frustrated by the slow movement of the crowd of humans that stood around her blocking the aisle.

Waiting for even the tiniest bit of movement by the crowd, Victoria looked around and up. On the roof, curved green arrows glowed on top of the blue, pointing to the front as if the passengers were too stupid to know where the exit was. They did their job in vain as every other passenger hunched down to focus on their smartphones or dazed around as they connected their minds to the Internet. As Victoria’s eyes darted from one zombie to another, she realized that she had nothing better to do, and that this was perhaps the best time to plug herself into the Chinese internet.

“Welcome to China!” said a female persona in her head, thankfully in English. She had a tone that sounded like a cross between an NPR reporter and a biologics saleswoman. “You are now connected to China Unicom through the Beijing Capital Airport Wifi Network. China Unicom provides the fastest speeds with the most widespread coverage in all of China. Please enjoy the full extent of our services, from free public wifi to our special virtual-reality-only networks, and have an amazing stay.”

Funny how the network knew that I speak English, she thought. Even in this era of ubiquitous AI and daily data mining, she still managed to appreciate the small miracles that made her world function.

It wasn’t long before Victoria found herself at the front of the plane. There, a young female attendant stood in the front wearing uniform that, except for the blue and white United logo sown on her sleeves, was of pure red and gold, its silk fabric glowing under the yellow and blue lights of the plane. As she greeted passengers heading into the jetway, she found that most ignored her, though some passengers gave her a “Thank You” or ”谢谢” as they walked passed. Victoria looked at the attendant. She looked just like her - long black hair, mousey blue eyes, and skin as pale as the moon. Perhaps she would be this woman, she thought, had her life went slightly differently.

But Victoria noticed that the attendant had noticed her too. She was surprised; despite her upbringing, she had a Chinese face, just like most of the people on the plane. Yet the attendant gave her a look the she gave no one else. And as she was thinking, a female voice that belonged to the attendant played in her head. “欢迎你...Vic...Victoria.”

Instantly, Victoria turned her face to the attendant’s and made a confused look, realizing that it was her that gave that mind-to-mind message. The attendant gave a look of confusion in turn, followed by one of embarrassment as her cheeks glowed a bright tomato-red.

“Oh...ahm...you...ahre...sorry, my English not so good,” the attendant messaged, keeping her mouth in the form of an silent embarrassed grin. A bit of sweat dripped off her otherwise clean forehead.

As someone with poor foreign language skills herself, Victoria couldn’t help but sympathize with the flight attendant. She turned her audio implant’s translation functionality back on again and motioned the attendant to repeat herself in her native language.

“Are you Victoria Lee of the New Yorker?” she messaged again, the words now properly translated in real time.

Victoria, despite her poor Mandarin skills, decided to give the language a bit of a spin. “是的” she messaged. “Yes, I am.”

“Oh my goodness,” the attendant messaged, “I read the New Yorker every day, and your articles are my favorite!”

Now she felt flustered, realizing that she had a fanbase, albeit a small one. “谢谢” she said. “Thank you!”

“You’re welcome,” the attendant messaged, as Victoria made her way onto the jetway and into a new world.

[Unapologetic Chinaperson]

It is said that a country’s worth is measured by the qualities of its airports. An airport is, after all, the first building one encounters as one enters a country, and everybody knew that first impressions were everything. By that measure, China was no slouch. It was the most powerful nation in the world, so it built the best airports in the world. And it was only natural that Beijing Capital Airport was the best of the best.

Terminal 3 of Beijing Capital Airport was huge. Very huge. The roof formed a second sky that presided over the vast open space that encompassed a seeming infinity. Between pale white support beams that seemed to reach hundreds of meters into that second sky, thousands of tiny windows let in just enough light to choreograph a dance of time and space, blur the distinction of inside and outside, and create a harmony of yin and yang.

In stark contrast to the vast Norman Foster-esque roof above, the ground below was a sight of cacophony and chaos. It was the Lunar New Year, and right now billions of Chinese were criss-crossing the country to celebrate the holidays with their families. Every year, transportation hubs overflow with people squeezing into every nook and cranny to get from Point A to Point B, and Beijing Capital Airport was no exception. It was to her displeasure as she realized, while stumbling into the seas and mountains of the warm bodies shuffling through the terminal, that the next few hours were going to suck.

To Victoria’s slight relief, at least the lines were moving. Immigration was a breeze; her passport and visa stamps had RF technology embedded in them; that, combined with advanced facial recognition and X-ray technology, allowed people to walk through security checkpoints like nobody’s business. The trams were tougher. She boarded too late to get a seat, so she ended up standing in the exact middle of the aisle, surrounded by chatterboxes, crying babies, and men with halitosis.

Once she got off however, she was excited. After walking past some more security she found herself like a baby in a candy store. To her left and right were hundreds of duty-free stores selling everything from clothes to ice cream. There was an Apple Store, selling their latest iHolos for the low low price of one hundred thousand yuan. There was a Semir outlet displaying the latest in C-pop and K-pop fashion; this month it was BTS showing off the futuristic black neo-Punk outfits they plan on wearing for the Super Bowl. There was even an In-and-Out Burger, the second one she ever saw. The first one was in Las Vegas; after buying an Animal Style cheeseburger at that establishment, she realized that their food was overrated thanks to the loud mouths of jealous Californians.

But what interested Victoria the most was a Paris Baguette vending machine, tucked in an alcove between the In-and-Out and a KFC. The South Korean chain, despite filing for bankruptcy during the Crisis and being the butt of jokes from French people, has had a successful run over the past few decades, opening stores around the world from New Jersey to Nairobi. In line with the global automation revolution, they opened up thousands of vending machines like the one Victoria saw.

She hadn’t had anything to eat for over ten hours, so she squeezed through the crowd to get to that machine. Its many products were displayed in a window in a neat six-by-eight grid, the earthen textures of the pastries desaturated by the pale blue glow of the “Paris Baguette” sign above. Despite this, they still looked appetizing, especially to a hungry Victoria agonizing over the many choices the machine offered. Should she get the black banana bread? Or should she go with the Dutch Toast, with pre-applied nut spread covered with chocolate sprinkles?

“Hi Victoria,” a female voice said out of nowhere. She realized that it was the vending machine talking to her. “It looks like you’re choosing which of our pastries to buy. May I suggest a croissant?”

Ah, the humble croissant. There were croissants wrapped in plastic, fitting snugly in a nook located just under the “U” in “Baguette.” Victoria remembered ordering a croissant a year ago back in Paris, in Chloe Leung’s restaurant as she interviewed her about the Chinese Community. It looked just like the one on display now, and she remembered it vividly. The flakiness and freshness of the bread and the smells it conjured into the air. The final result of a family’s true love for baking, created over many generations from a mix of two cultures.

“Sure,” Victoria messaged the machine, mentally placing her order. It automatically deducted $8.24 from her account while the croissant slowly emerged from its pigeonhole, before it fell into a chamber at the bottom of the machine ready to be picked up.

Victoria snapped out of her contemplation, grabbed the croissant, unwrapped it and took a bite. The croissant was cheap and stale, she quickly realized, with just the slightest hint of plastic to enhance the flavor. She didn’t care, though; she was hungry and desperate. In five bites she ate it all before diving back and making her way towards the taxi terminal.

[WestVegeta]

This is obviously incredibly written, but I miss the near-future American politics.

[Unapologetic Chinaperson]

The walls of the taxi terminal were made of glass. The glass had a slight greenish tint, which gave the lobby a bit of an Emerald City vibe. And just like the metropolis from The Wizard of Oz, the airport was filled with people from different walks of life. Such people included overworked salarymen, husbands who had quit their jobs after getting tired of being overworked salarymen, girls with anime hair, confused Europeans, even more confused Africans, and of course hucksters offering “tours” to popular tourist traps in Beijing. Aside from those wannabe tour guides, all of them had one thing in common - they all needed to hail a taxi, and they were willing to wait three hours in a queue to get one.

Being stuck in that queue, Victoria went through her mental checklist of things she needed to do. She needed to get her taxi and program it to go to 200 Xi Jinping Road. Yes, she recalled, that was the right number, and this was the correct Xi Jinping Road. It was there at the hotel where she would meet Maya Kuo, her friend from college, who had arrived a day ago from her hometown of Singapore. It was some time since they had last reunited, three long months ago.

And from there, now what? Why was she even here? On a surface level, this was a vacation. She and Maya would stay in hotels all across China for two weeks before returning to the States, where she would write up a summary of all the interesting sights and sounds she encountered during her stay. Lots of readers loved her stories, and this story would be the most exciting yet. It would be the perfect adventure, a mission to lands far away.

But Victoria wanted a deeper purpose. Introspection, perhaps. She wanted to connect back to her heritage, after an entire lifetime of separation. And she also wanted to find her biological parents, even though she knew this was a futile task. She had no leads, nor a roadmap or really any idea how to begin. But if she found an opportunity to find her family, she thought, she would take it without hesitation.

One thought passed into another, just like the planes that landed and departed outside, carrying thousands of passengers to destinations unknown. With little else to do except for watching those metal birds soar outside, she closed her eyes and plugged herself back into the Internet, reading and listening to today’s news with her mind’s eye and ear.

“Presidents Sun and Xie discussing Africa, joint mission to Alpha Centauri”

“Four university students kidnapped in Changchun; Neo-Rationalist Buddhists suspected”

“Democrats start taking a look at first Super Tuesday”

“Galbraith, McKesson square off in Maryland’s special Senate election”

“U.S. Senator Lee Carter (D-VA) contemplating retirement this fall”

“Rep. Emma Gonzalez (D-FL) blasted NRA ad as ‘exploiting racial minorities’ fears’”

Boring, she thought, other than the kidnapping story. She opened her eyes and let them wander, drifting from looking at the planes outside to the people inside. She noticed the details of the men and women standing around her. In front was a Asian man, probably Chinese, in a suit and tie. He was turned sideways from the direction of the queue, and though he said nothing, his sweat-covered face contorted into different expressions one moment to the next. Clearly, Victoria realized, he was having an argument over the Internet. With whom, she could only guess. Maybe he was doing intense business negotiations? Maybe he was arguing with his wife on where to go for dinner.

She turned around her to face another man, this one a somewhat tall white guy with dirty blond hair and cool hazel eyes. He was clean shaven, with a mere hint of blond fuzz lining his jawline. Like the Asian man in front of Victoria, he wore a suit, with a tie that had colorful tropical fish printed on it. His hands, which glowed with a light shade of pink, rested on the queue dividers, his long fingers drumming as if the man was waiting for something. His eyes wandered, sometimes looking at the ceiling, sometimes at the planes outside, and never at her directly, but even so he caught her attention and she couldn’t look away. Like Victoria, he looked bored, yet unlike her, he looked like he came to China to do something great.

He looked like a fellow American, Victoria thought, though he could also be European - she didn’t want to assume. Maybe he was even one of those rich foreigners who immigrated to China thinking that they could start new lives. Was he an English teacher here? Was he a good person, or was he one of those amoral losers who goes to foreign countries to hook up with local girls. The possibilities were endless, something she knew from her experience as a journalist, and there was only one way to found out.

“Hey,” she said softly. In the din of the terminal, nobody could hear her, not even herself.

She tried messaging him instead, hoping that he would have an open implant. “Hey,” she said, even quieter this time as if the entire terminal could intercept her message. “How’s it going?”

This time, the man noticed her perked up. “Hi,” he said to a smiling Victoria with his real voice. It pierced through the loud din of the terminal and grabbed her focus, like the only sound in the world worth paying attention to. He probably had an implant too - not a brain implant like she had, but a voice box implant to adjust and enhance his real voice.

“I’m good,” he said. “How about you?”

“Good,” Victoria said in a slightly louder voice. She still couldn’t hear herself, but the man did. He must have astute hearing, she thought. She observed how he was not surprised that this strange girl was suddenly talking to them. At the same time, she struggled to come up with more to say. “So, what are you doing,” she said, “here in Beijing?”

“Who, me?” the man said. “I’m a teacher,” he said. “I used to teach for Los Angeles Public Schools, but recently I moved to Beijing to teach at university. I just came back from LA after spending winter break with family.”

So he is a Western immigrant! Victoria thought, proud that one of her predictions was correct. “Do you teach English?” she asked, wanting to prove or disprove more of her assumptions about this figure.

“No,” the man said, grinning as if he was about to laugh. “I mean I help students with their English sometimes, but I’m a lecturer for the university’s Spanish department.

“That’s cool,” Victoria said, realizing why the man might have a voice implant. “I’m assuming you also speak Chinese.”

“Yeah,” the man said, ruffling through his short blond hair, which rippled under the cool breeze of the air conditioning. “I don’t want to say that I’m the best, but my students say it’s pretty good. Good enough to teach other languages with.”

“That’s better than my Chinese,” she said. “Like I’m Chinese but I barely know any.”

“Oh, are you Chinese-American?” the man asked.

“I’m actually adopted,” she said. “I was born in China but I was raised by a white family in Eastern Tennessee.”

“Easter Tennessee? That’s nice,” the man said, his eyes rolling towards the ceiling as if he had a strange thought. And he did. “That’s Democratic, right? Appalachia, right? So it’s Dem.”

“What did you say?” Victoria said, confused. She tried to make sense of the bits and pieces of that thought she managed to hear. Appalachia. Democrat. She thought of herself as a semi-junkie when it came to politics, and she was used to people bringing up politics at the most random times, but this still surprised her. Especially considering that it was American politics in the middle of the capital of China.

“Oh, it’s nothing,” the man said. “I just have a tendency to think out loud. Yeah, it’s a nice place. I’ve been there once. Lots of mountains to hike in.”

“Yeah it’s super duper gorgeous,” Victoria said. “I actually grew up in a town right next to the Great Smoky Mountains. It’s Sevierville. It’s a very touristy town in Appalachia.”

Victoria looked at him with a quizzical expression as she took a step back, to fill in the space left by the moving queue. The man noticed and stepped in kind as she searched for questions to ask himself. “If I don’t ask me, what’s your name?” she asked.

The man ostensibly paused for a second before he said anything, but Victoria thought she heard him mumble something out of the corners of his mouth. “I’m Timmy, Technocratic Timmy,” he seemed to say, but she wasn’t sure.

“My name’s Timmy,” he said again, this time for real. “Timothy Miller to be precise.”

Timmy. She repeated the name in her head again, over and over.

It was something she did every time she hears that name. And every time she hears it, she thinks of that six-year-old boy she used to play with.

Timmy.

[Cold War Liberal]

An Allison Galbraith shout-out? Nice

LMAO @ Technocracy Timmy. I wonder what I'm up to in this timeline. I hope to be somewhere in MD politics by 2040 (hopefully much, much earlier)...

The writing here is just fantastic. I'm eager to read more from Amber and Crystal's time observing politics at Hopkins and beyond but also this is so good too.

[WestVegeta]

I'm also curious as to what I'm doing by this point ITTL, I'm probably a Republican again, but I wonder if I'm in office at all.

[Sestak]

Technocracy Timmy LMAO.

[_]

LOL at Timmy being in this.

I swear if I get a reference that'd be cool but I don't expect it.  Just have Madigan please be dead and universally remembered as a horrible human being.

[Unapologetic Chinaperson]

LOL at Timmy being in this.

I swear if I get a reference that'd be cool but I don't expect it.  Just have Madigan please be dead and universally remembered as a horrible human being.

Lisa Madigan?

[_]

LOL at Timmy being in this.

I swear if I get a reference that'd be cool but I don't expect it.  Just have Madigan please be dead and universally remembered as a horrible human being.

Lisa Madigan?

Michael.  Why?  Did Lisa beat Cheri Bustos in the 2020 Senate Race in this TL?

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Give me a chapter too! Please.

[Unapologetic Chinaperson]

LOL at Timmy being in this.

I swear if I get a reference that'd be cool but I don't expect it.  Just have Madigan please be dead and universally remembered as a horrible human being.

Lisa Madigan?

Michael.  Why?  Did Lisa beat Cheri Bustos in the 2020 Senate Race in this TL?

Oh. Michael Madigan is dead by 2040, but there are people way more hated than him. (Such as Trump, for example.) Lisa never becomes Senator, though.

[Unapologetic Chinaperson]

Even the best of Chinese efficiency could not resolve the mess that the Lunar New Year caused every year. Three hours was a long time waiting in line, and without anything better to do the two kept talking.

Victoria gave her name and her occupation after Timmy completed his own introduction. Timmy nodded along as he listened, painfully aware that it was years since he read any American magazine, let alone the New Yorker in particular.

They soon took turns diving into their own life stories. Victoria spoke of her experiences growing up Asian in Appalachia, of family and friends, buddies and bullies, God and monsters, racist rednecks and cunning scalawags. She described her adopted parents; her dad a park ranger and her mother was a high school biology teacher. As people who valued learning and education, they encouraged her to do well in school. She described the look on their faces when she told them she was accepted by Johns Hopkins University, validating their hard work of raising her, their treasure. She told him about the friends she made there and how they opened her mind up to the world. She even mentioned the celebrations the university had when one of their own - Crystal Sun, Class of 2017 - was elected President of the United States.

Their conversation became as winded as one of the many trails that weaved through the Appalachian mountains. As a little girl and the child of a ranger dad, she often hiked with him, taking note of the trees and ferns that grew alongside the trails and observing the little animals that scurried along. She grew up with the outdoors, but only a small part of it; her parents were frugal and didn’t travel at all. It frustrated Victoria, since all her life she wanted to see the world. That was a big reason why she became a journalist, she explained. Going to France, the first foreign country she visited as an adult, was an eye-opening experience, as she finally experienced what she previously saw only in books and on websites.

Knowing that Victoria was a trained writer who wrote for one of America’s most prestigious magazines, Timmy let her do most of the storytelling. He was perfectly content with letting his ears listen to Victoria’s life as his eyes observed the going-ons of the world outside, with its soaring planes and its scurrying people. He kept his own stories short. He described his experiences growing up as an average boy in sunny suburban Orange County. He described his interests, namely politics, telling about the fun he had as a young man exploring the nooks and crannies of American politics.

“It’s actually a Republican place,” Victoria corrected as they went back to discussing how Republican or Democratic different parts of America were. “Most people think Appalachia’s super-duper Democratic, but that’s Kentucky and West Virginia. Most of eastern Tennessee is pretty Republican. Sevier County’s actually an exception because of all the unionized park rangers and tourist workers who live there.”

“Yes,” Timmy said as he was being corrected. “I remember now. Appalachian Tennessee was always pretty Republican since the Civil War. They didn’t have a mining union tradition like the other places you mentioned.”

“Yeah,” Victoria said. “But unions are important here nowadays. Both of my parents were in unions. My mom’s part of the state teachers union and my dad is part of a park ranger union. Basically unions determine who you voted for. If you’re in a union you’re Democrat. Otherwise you’re Republican. Simple.”

“Cool,” Timmy said as the two shuffled with the moving line. “But I wouldn’t say simple. Back when I was your age all of Appalachia was so Republican like you wouldn’t believe it. If you went there you didn’t have to guess if they’re union or not or if they were Democrat or Republican. They were all Republican. You can’t get more simple than that.”

“That’s true,” Victoria said. “That was true when I was really little. But then the Realigner came and changed everything up.”

“He’s called the Realigner for a reason.”

“Duh,” Victoria said, blowing off a strand of hair that was hanging in front of her face and blocking her view of Timmy.

“I mean,” he said as he gazed at a Qantas plane that was about to land, “where I’m from, OC, we used to be super Republican before we became Democratic. But then the Realigner raised everyone’s taxes to pay for all of your stuff and everyone became super-pissed at him so they went back to being Republicans.”

“Hey hate the game not the player,” Victoria admonished as she struggled to keep that strand of hair away from her eyes.

From there they kept talking about politics, from the rise of China to President Castro’s hairstyles. Along the way, Timmy mentioned an obscure website called the Atlas Forums that he used to go on a lot as a college student.

“So you went by ‘Technocratic Timmy’ on that site,” Victoria said. “Oh okay now I get it.”

“Get what?” Timmy said, not remembering how Victoria picked up on his old screen name.

“Nothing,” she said. “You mentioned that you still remember a lot of people on that website.”

“Oh yeah I do remember quite a few old Atlasians,” he said. “Like the President. Crystal Sun used to be an active poster.”

“Wait...what the pineapple?!” Victoria said, borrowing a catchphrase from Amber Glass, one of Sun’s political opponents.

“Yeah she went on there as a poster,” Timmy said. “I think we even talked on Discord,” he added, mentioning the once-popular social media platform that was later be bought by VirtualEarth. “She wasn’t super-memorable back then. She was mostly your standard Democrat, pretty socially liberal, though even back then she had somewhat fiscally moderate tendencies. We left the forum at about the same time, though, so I was also all ‘WTF’ when I realized that she was the Atlas poster ‘NJ Dem’ all those years ago.”

“I wonder,” Victoria said, “do you two still talk now that she’s President?”

“Haha nope,” Timmy said, chuckling and tapping on the Plexiglass queue dividers.

“So the President used to go on Atlas. Who else?”

“One other guy I remember well was TD. ‘The Doctor’ was his full name.”

“Like ‘The Doctor’ from Doctor Who?” Victoria asked after trying to remember the name of that show.

“Yep exactly,” Timmy said. “It was a very popular show when I was a kid, more popular than...uh I don’t even know what’s the most popular show on TV right now!”

“The Spongebob anime?” Victoria suggested.

“Thank you!” Timmy said, looking relieved. “Yep. He wrote this huge future timeline called ‘Between Two Majorities’ that predicted everything.”

“What do you mean everything?”

“Everything,” Timmy said as he and Victoria shuffled forwards in line again. “He predicted the Crisis and he predicted that there would be a Realigner who would follow eight years of Republican domination.”

“He predicted the Realigner?” Victoria asked, looking confused.

“Oh you don’t understand how bold that kind of prediction was,” Timmy added. “Nobody would’ve thought that there would be a Realignment, not after Trump. This may sound ridiculous to you but everyone back then predicted he would turn America into a fascist dictatorship. Or that Republicans and Democrats would get so divided there would be a legit Civil War Two. Nobody thought that America would get so liberal or that it could even elect someone like the Realigner.”

“No I get it,” Victoria said, trying her best to show she wasn’t totally ignorant about pre-Realignment politics.

Timmy listened as he rolled his eyes again in contemplation. “Okay, now that I think about it, TD didn’t get everything right. He thought Trump would resign and that the Realigner was going to be the former Treasury Secretary Richard Cordray. He also thought China would collapse, but he admitted that he was totally guessing about that, so I'll excuse him for that. But for the most part he was mostly correct about everything. He was also brilliant in style as well as substance. Like you, he was an amazing storyteller, one of the best I've ever read.”

“Oh thank you!” Victoria said, instinctively going into full cutesy-pose mode after hearing the compliment.

“This is the third time I complimented your writing during this conversation,” Timmy said, smiling. “So who else was there on the Atlas who I could remember.” He paused, then had an insight. “Now that I think about there was someone who you remind me of in particular, in backstory and I guess in demeanor. I just remembered her name.”

“Who was it?” Victoria asked, bobbing with excitement.

“Her name was Kamala.”

[MAINEiac4434]

Okay, I want in before you're inundated with requests.

[P. Clodius Pulcher did nothing wrong]

Thankful that I got in the story way earlier than the rest of you posers  8]

[President of the great nation of 🏳️‍⚧️]

Thankful that I got in the story way earlier than the rest of you posers  8]

[Unapologetic Chinaperson]

“Kamala Harris?” Victoria said, mentioning the name of the FBI Director.

“No not Kamala Harris,” Timmy corrected. “If Crystal Sun and Kamala Harris were both on the forum the place would’ve exploded a long time ago. No this was a different Kamala. She was a girl from South Dakota who was on the forum for several months, maybe almost a year even. She was a good person, very independently minded, and she even had an amazing timeline everybody loved. But one day she said she had some real-life commitments to attend to, and so left the forum. A lot of people missed her and waited for the day she would come back. That day never came.”

“Wow, that’s sad,” Victoria said.

“To be fair I left a short while after,” he said. “Atlas was becoming a distraction from my own life, so I totally understand Kamala’s motivations.” He shuffled his feet and looked at his reflection on the polished tiled floor. “One day, a few years after I left the forum I was waiting in line at a Starbucks. It was a line like this one, except that it was way shorter.”

“How long do we have to wait?” Victoria mused, looking at the front of the line.

“Actually I think we’re almost done,” Timmy said, pleasantly surprised. “Probably not even fifteen minutes are left.”

“Oh thank goodness,” Victoria said with a sigh of relief.

“Anyways there was a girl in front of me, with brown skin and dark curly hair, who was on her phone with someone. I forgot what they were talking about, but I remember that she was pretty angry. When they finished talking I head the person on the other side saying ‘Bye Kamala’ before they hung up. I wondered if this was the Kamala I and so many other Atlasians got to know.”

“Did you ask her if she was Kamala?” Victoria asked as she watched a Ethiopian Airlines plane fly into the sky.

“Nah,” Timmy said, “I didn’t want to sound like a stalker. Instead I pretended that nothing weird was happening and I just ordered my drink. This was back in the dinosaur age when the barista called out your name when your drink arrived. So they called my name, I got my drink, and I sat down at a table close to the counter. Guess whose name they called out next.”

“Kamala,” Victoria said with a silent chuckle.

“Correct,” Timmy said, satisfied with the answer. “And actually, guess what happened next. She came up to me and asked if I was Timmy from Atlas.”

“Really?”

“Yep,” he said. “I think she recognized me from the pics I put on the Discord.”

“Oh wow,” Victoria said, nearly stumbling this time as the line moved again. “What happened after? Did you keep talking?”

“Yeah. We talked about a lot of stuff, like politics, but Kamala especially talked about what was going on in her life. Basically after leaving Atlas she had to get on with her actual life, but once she got that fixed she was doing pretty well. She started going to UT Austin but she wanted to change majors, so she decided to transfer to the University of Southern California. That was actually pretty lucky for her, since SoCal managed to get out of the Crisis pretty good. We didn’t get destroyed - at least not until the earthquake, but that was after the Crisis - and we had a relatively decent economy.”

“But back to Kamala,” Timmy continued, “she found a job here after she graduated. I forgot what it was, but I think it was at some news company like Vice or Buzzfeed. We kept in touch. I introduced her to my friend group, including my girlfriend. She was all-in-all good friend, just like on Atlas. But then, just like on Atlas, she left us.”

“Oh no what happened?” Victoria asked. “Did she die or anything?”

“Well,” Timmy replied with a look of nervousness crystallizing in his eyes. “She started leaving the country a lot, going to India and Madagascar where her family was from. Usually she would come back to LA and tell me and her other friends about all the cool stuff she did overseas, like helping out family and doing humanitarian work.”

Timmy put his hands in his pockets and looked down. “But then one day, she went on what we thought was another one of her trips, she just disappeared. She was just gone. A few days after she left the US, she stopped replying to text and Facebook messages. Her family in both the States and overseas also realized this and tried to contact her, but she didn’t reply to their messages either. We all got really worried. Days turned into weeks, weeks turned into months, and before we knew it it was a year since she last replied.”

“Oh my god I’m so sorry,” Victoria said, the first hints of tears appearing in her eyes.

“Since then her family has prayed that she would return, to no avail. Everybody I know assumes that she passed away when she was abroad, but nobody really knows what happened. The State Department doesn’t know either, her family contacted them and they couldn’t get a hold of her, and neither does the Indian or Malagasy governments. For all everybody knows she just vanished without a trace.”

Victoria sighed and sulked, looking at her own reflection on the floor below. “I’m sorry for your loss, Timmy,” she said.

“I actually think she’s still alive,” Timmy said. “Everybody else thinks she’s dead, but I think she’s out there, hiding somewhere. Don’t ask me why I think this. I just know.”

Victoria looked at Timmy’s wandering eyes again. “You know,” she said, “I also had someone in my life disappear, never to be seen again.”

“Who?” Timmy asked with a plain tone, his look of sad remembrance turning into one of curiosity.

“He had the same name as you,” Victoria said. “Timmy. Timmy Gonzales. I knew him growing up in Sevierville, when I was really really young. He was my best friend when he was six.”

“What happened when you were six?” Timmy asked. His voice was soft and quiet, but its gravity alone was able to cut through the noise of the airport.

That was when Victoria let the waterworks begin. “He...he...That was when his family was deported by ICE.”

“Wait, wait, what? Like deported deported?” Timmy said, his usual contemplative personal wiped out by a look of complete shock.

“Y-y-yeah,” Victoria said. “Immigrations and Customs Enforcement.”

“What.” Timmy said with a frozen face. “What. The. Pineapple.”

“Yes,” Victoria said. “I was going to ask my mom to drive me to Timmy’s place when she told me the news. Several ICE agents showed up at his house and took his parents and his brother to a detention facility. They didn’t know where Timmy himself went at the time.”

“Okay,” Timmy Miller said, “Let me get this straight. Timmy’s parents and brothers were detained and I’m assuming deported. They were illegal immigrants, right?”

“Yeah,” Victoria said. “Everyone except for Tim.”

Timmy’s face sunk further into resignation. “Oh my frickin’ god,” he said as he cursed the late President Trump’s name and looked around for something he could kick. Growing up in southern California, deportation stories were nothing new to him. But he never expected to meet someone who would just up and tell him about the time their childhood friend got deported.

“And then,” Victoria said, pausing with each sob, “they deported his family back to El Salvador. I heard that they were murdered by gang members as soon as they returned. Those gangs remembered that they escaped them, and those gangs wanted revenge, so they shot them. Just...shot them.”

“Jesus Christ,” Timmy said. “What happened to Timmy himself?”

“He was born in America so they didn’t deport him,” Victoria said. “He left Sevierville to live with his aunt and uncle and their five children. That’s what my parents said. Since then, I never heard about him ever again. But even so, sometimes, I hear his voice, his soft, 6-year-old voice, in dreams and in daydreams. It’s the only part of him I still vividly remember.”

“Jesus,” Timmy mused. Looking to break the somber tone of their recent conversation, he took off his backpack and rummaged through it, before stumbling across a soft mass covered in a thin sheath of paper and aluminum foil.

“In-and-Out Burger?” Timmy asked. “Best burgers ever. I’m so glad they now have stores here in China.”

Victoria, still wiping off dried tears off her cheeks, suddenly felt awkward. But she didn’t had to say anything, once Timmy noticed that they had finally reached the end of their three hour wait.

“I think I see daylight,” he said as he unwrapped the foil.

“Wait, what do you mean - oh,” Victoria said as she saw the Asian businessman in front of her step through a pair of automatic glass doors into the outside world. Several pod taxis were lined up in front of the terminal, their blue and silver paint making them look like iridescent pearls on a necklace. The man got into one and in five seconds pulled away from the curve, driving itself to somewhere far away. She knew that she was going to be next.

“Bye Victoria,” Timmy said, waving his hand. “I hope you have a nice vacation.”

“You too,” Victoria said. “It was a nice talk we had. I hope that we can see each other soon.”

“Ha, I hope so too,” Timmy said as he bit into his lukewarm burger, thinking about his plans to do great things.

[Unapologetic Chinaperson]

March 7, 2023 - Sevierville, Tennessee

The boy was six years old and already knew how to generate electricity. A plump yellow lemon sat on the carpet in front of him, with two pennies stuck into them like mini-Mickey Mouse ears. Calmly, the boy grabbed a pair of alligator clips and attached them to the pennies. A tiny red LED at the other end of the wires glowed. It was a dim glow, barely visible under the rays of the evening sun, yet it was there, pulsating like a beacon of hope.

But there would be no hope for little Timothy Gonzales today. As he admired the lemon battery he had created, he heard knocking downstairs, followed by heavy footsteps. Then screaming.

“They’ve come!” the boy heard his older brother say, the two words piercing the air like the shriek of a witch. Without hesitation, Tim dropped his circuit and ran to the kitchen, where he found four men clad in uniform surrounding his parents, who stood there helplessly as they awaited their fates. The uniforms they wore was nothing special - black vests worn over olive long-sleeve shirts, with black pants and baseball caps to complete the outfit. Three letters - I.C.E., Immigration and Customs Enforcement - were printed on their vests, the bone-white ink stained by years of accumulated dirt and grime.

Tim saw fear in his parents as he stood helplessly surrounded by the four men. he saw the almost-invisible sweat that beaded on their foreheads and observed their chests heaving up and down with each breath of air. He saw their eyes looking at him, their son, with a sense of pleading. This will be okay! they seemed to say.

In contrast, none of the four ICE men showed fear on their faces. They looked bored instead. While three of the four men patiently stood watch over the parents, their hands resting on their guns and handcuffs, the fourth was writing something on a pad of yellow lined paper. To those four men, this was simply another Tuesday, another day on their job.

“Mommy!” Tim said, jumping up and down to get their attention. “Mommy! Papi! What’s happening?”

“Mi hijo, don’t make too much noise,” the mother said, trying to calm her son down. “It’s going to be okay. It will be okay.”

“This isn’t okay!” Tim said, knowing that ‘okay’ did not mean seeing his parents in handcuffs. He realized that his parents would say anything to reassure him, even if the world around him was splitting apart into shards of despair and darkness. He asked the ICE men. “What are you doing with Mommy and Papi?”

The ICE man with the yellow notepad turned to face Tim. His face, one of around forty or fifty years, had a five o’clock shadow on it, with several stray hairs poking out of the sparse wrinkles that criss-crossed his face. Underneath the calloused skin, blood rushed to his cheeks, creating a pink hue that was accentuated by the orange of the sunset. Little Tim could tell that it was a face that had seen all sorts of things over the years.

“Young man,” the man said softly, “we’re here because we have an important job - to uphold the law. Laws are important, right?”

Tim nodded slowly.

“Without laws and rules, we wouldn’t be safe. Imagine if someone tried to rob a bank. That’s bad, right?”

Tim nodded again.

“Or if somebody tried to rob your house. That wouldn’t be nice, would it?”

He nodded yet again, but now he had a question. “If robbing houses is bad, why are you doing that right now?”

“Tim!” his dad said in panic. “Don’t question them! Don’t say anything that can get you in trouble!”

As soon as he said that, a door exploded. Two more ICE men stormed into the kitchen as they carried Tim’s 14-year old brother from the living rooms, their hands trapping the young man in their unshakable grip.

“You can’t deport me!” Tomas said as he resisted their grips, twisting his body as the two ICE men struggled to restrain him. “I’m more American than you redhats! F[in]k you guys! F[in]k Trump! F[in]k you deplorables! F[in]k all!”

“Tell that to the judge, boy!” one of his captors said, his face tomato-red with heat and anger and his armored vest drenched with sweat. “You ain’t going anywhere!”

The man with the notepad turned to look at the struggle scene before he turned back to face Tim. “Sorry young man, but we’re going to have to leave soon.”

“Are you taking my parents?”

“Yes, we have to. It’s our job.” He walked over to the rest of the men and motioned for them to leave the door, taking their three arrestees with them.

Panicking, Tim ran up to the notepad man with a plea. “Can I come with them?”

“Unfortunately no,” he said as the ICE men escorted his parents out of the house, making sure that they kept their heads down as they walked out of the door. “But you can’t be alone in your house, so you will have to come with me.”

“Really?” Tim said as the other ICE men finished handcuffing Tomas.

“Yes,” the notepad man said, “that’s how it works young man.”

Tim watched Tomas follow his parents outside, walking towards a black van parked at the curb right outside their home. No longer physically resisting but still muttering curses against everything under heaven, Tomas gave one final look at his brother. He said no words to Tim, but the message his eyes sent a message as clear as day: Get revenge.

Tim slowly closed his eyes, feeling the tears that had welled up, and opened them again. Nobody remained, with the exception of the notepad man who stood at his side. As Tim turned to see the aftermath - toys scattered on the ground, the broken kitchen door - he felt a thing of dirty plastic and fabric rest on his shoulder. It was the man’s glove.

Turning back around, Tim looked at the notepad man again, with his well-worn face and the resting countenance he had kept the whole time. Like Tomas, he too had a silent message. You, he repeated once more, are coming with me.

[Unapologetic Chinaperson]

February 14, 2040 - Beijing, China

Tim returned to being Victoria and the old Sevierville sunset gave way to the bright Beijing afternoon as she woke up from her mid-ride slumber. Nervously, she looked around, checking that she wasn’t still in a dream. No ICE men, she observed to her relief. In fact, there was nobody else in the pod at all, save for the pod taxi’s AI system, which didn’t count. It was, as far as she knew, just herself and her alone.

“Wakey wakey, rise and shine,” the AI said, speaking to Victoria in English with a light female voice, her accent containing a hint of stiff-upper-lip Britishness. “I hope you had a nice nap.”

“Yeah that was some nap,” Victoria mumbled, too quiet for any human to hear. She shifted her weight in her seat, which was a big semicircle covered with aquamarine fabric that was attached to the rear of the pod’s circular frame. In front was a ledge lined with stripes of blue LEDs. It was made for passengers to rest their elbows on, and that was what Victoria did, as she mused on what was going to happen next for her.

“Are we there yet?” she asked the AI, consciously repeating that cliche line.

“Ten minutes,” the taxi responded. “We’re almost there.”

“Great.” Victoria leaned against the curved window of the pod and observed the moving landscape around her. The organized complexity of the airport, with roads and terminals weaving whichever which way, had given way to vast spaces of green punctuated with apartment complexes. Vines and other greenery wrapped around the glass of those buildings, as those buildings were designed to be one with the nature around them, a nature that was sculpted by man yet no less real. Below the shadows of these buildings, which towered thirty, forty, or even fifty stories in the air, were malls, parks, and other buildings, covered by glass domes that undulated with the hills and valleys of outer Beijing.

Cutting between those buildings was the highway, one of the many members of the Beijing Ring Road system. On the autonomous-only road that Victoria’s taxi cruised on, the other autos looked less like vehicles and more like speeding bullets, or like falcons flying through their air chasing down their fearful prey.

But even as she looked at the scenery outside and the plush interior inside, she couldn’t help but think about the nightmare she just had. She thought about how she became, for that one fateful day, Tim Gonzales, and how vivid the experience was. This wasn’t a dream or a nightmare, she realized. This was a vision.

She had had thoughts about Tim before, how they played together before that moment came. She had thoughts about what could have been, how they might still be friends or even a couple today. Sometimes she thought about what his voice would sound like all grown up today, and sometimes that voice would play all day in her head. Sometimes it felt real, as if Tim was speaking to Victoria through her implants or her dreams or whatever.

It was a lot of think about, and under the warm Beijing sun she was about to fall asleep again. But then the pod slowed down, took an exit ramp and went through a boom gate before stopping in front of her destination.

“We have arrived,” the taxi said. “Have a nice day!”

[Unapologetic Chinaperson]

Victoria felt like a queen in the shadow of the Dong Feng Hotel. With every step she made, the sidewalk made a soft fuzzy green, leaving her footsteps and her suitcases’ track marks glowing against the chrome concrete. To her left and her right, vibrant beds of red roses and hot-yellow chrysanthemums blossomed in the 70 degree February weather, striking a contrast against dark green leaves. She could hear horticulturalist drones buzzing around as the dodged the rhythmic spurts of fountain jets.

The hotel itself was massive, stretching forty-so stories into the air. Flanking it were about ten apartment buildings that were equally as tall, gleaming under the sun as their leaves trembled in the cool northern wind. And to think this was a suburb, Victoria thought. To her American mind, a suburb was a sprawling monstrosity of detached homes, each with two autos and a dog. But in China, Manhattan would barely count as a suburb.

With a calm and cool stride, Victoria walked in the hotel lobby and felt a blast of air-conditioned air. It was a relief, she thought as she admired the room. It was built like a large half-circle, with its curved side made out of glass windows and its flat side being a faux-mahogany wall with fancy watercolors of Chinese landscapes. On either side of the lobby were several small wooden tables that had gold-trimmed cigarette holders and piles of magazines on them; they were surrounded by tan upholstered chairs that looked extraordinarily comfortable. To Victoria, used to her parents’ asture house, her tiny Baltimore dormitories and her even tinier New York apartment, this was an epitome of luxury.

But what struck her the most was the design or the check-in counter. It was not a counter at all. Instead it was a metal circle that looked like a teleporter pad from Star Trek. Two semicircular koi ponds partially surrounded it, glowing a sapphire blue; the partition between them formed the bridge to get on and off the pad. She knew what to do - there were signs around it - but she still stepped onto it with trepidation. She was very familiar with hotels; not only did she stay in lots of them when she reported in Europe, she also worked at the Sevierville Clarion as a teenager. All of those hotels had traditional check-in counters, even if some of them were self-service. But this? She may as well be in Wakanda.

As she stepped on the glowing circular pad, Victoria felt a strange relaxation as the system scanned her implant and the koi ponds cycled through the colors of the rainbow. This was much more convenient than the usual check-in counter system, where even one forgotten paper can screw everything up. Though in the back of her mind, Victoria wondered how this would work for people without implants or smartphones.

In practically no time, her check-in was complete and the mahogany walls parted to reveal a chrome elevator cab. Victoria stepped in carrying her suitcases and the doors calmy closed behind her, leaving her alone in the cab with the faint stench of cigarette smoke. “Lobby to Floor 23,” the cab said as it automatically sent her to her floor. As she turned around, she noticed there was also a manual button panel that, to her bemusement, had a ton of buttons that were missing. She was used to hotels leaving out the 13th floor, and she knew about the number 4 being bad luck in East Asia, but this hotel went the extra mile. Besides 4 and 13, the number 2 was missing, as were 12, 14, and so on, thus making the “52” floors more like 45.

Soon, she landed on her floor and she headed straight for her room, which conveniently was just two doors away from the elevators, on the left. She unlocked the door using her mind as the room key; at once the door greeted her with a digital “Welcome to Beijing!” message before opening up.

The room was as fancy as the lobby, with its faux-mahogany flooring, smooth quartz-looking ceiling and intelligent walls. Two fluffy beds formed the centerpiece of the main room, with a kitchenette snuggled into an alcove. Taking a look at the bathroom, Victoria found that the shower had gazillions of buttons to allow her the perfect shower experience and that the toilet was obviously imported from Japan.

Victoria noticed two opened suitcases half-filled with scattered clothes, lying in the corner of the room. Maya had arrived; she was not here at the moment, but Victoria should be prepared to meet her old college friend. In the meantime, she casted her suitcases aside and fell into the bed closer to the window. It was a long day, she was tired, and she didn’t care if she was going to be eaten by a mattress today.

Maybe some good old-fashioned television would be good, she thought. To her pleasant surprise, she found out she could turn on the hotel TV - or rather, the hotel’s smart walls - with her implant and even change the channel. In most American hotels, you still needed to fumble with whatever germy remote they gave you, though all the Las Vegas hotels upgraded to this sort of electronic compatibility to placate their Asian guests.

More important than knowing how to change the channel was knowing what channels to change to. Tired and unfamiliar was Chinese media, she aimlessly scrolled through state news reports on the Sino-American dialogue, WWII-era dramas, and documentary films about long-lost Chinese artifacts, in the vague hope that she would stumble on something exciting to watch.

Soon, after several minutes of channel surfing, she stumbled upon a familiar show: the Spongebob anime. This was a show she could watch, she figured. Hopefully her translation software knew how to handle Japanese-translated Chinese.

“Are you ready Patrick?” Spongebob said as the two lied in ambush in front of Plankton’s secret lair in Rock Bottom.

“Sure am,” Patrick said in agreement.

“Good,” Spongebob replied, nodding. “On the count of three, two-”

“One!” a girly voice screamed as the front door burst open. “Guess who’s here?”

Victoria immediately jumped out of bed and ran to hug Maya. “Ohmygodyou’rehere!”

“I can’t believe we’ve been apart so long Vicky!” Maya said as the two embraced each other in their bear hug.

“Do you have Singaporean candy?” Victoria asked. “Haw flakes? Wang Wang biscuits?”

“Even better,” Maya said as she let go of Victoria and opened her knapsack to grab a handful of cubes wrapped in silver. “Powdered Milo.”

“You mean the drink?”

“Yep. You just put it in water and you drink it. No shaking required!”

“Wow,” Victoria said as she sat back in her bed. “I’m so glad we’re together again. This vacation is going to be so awesome!”

“I know,” Maya said as she went into the bathroom to fix up her hair.

Victoria rolled on her bed and looked outside as the smart wall kept on playing Spongebob in the background. The sun was setting and the bright blue sky was turning into a purple and orange twilight. In the distance behind the lush green foreground of parkland and preserved forests, the skyline of Beijing began to light up, as befits a city that never sleeps.

“It’s getting late,” Victoria said. “Do you have any plans for what to do tonight? Dinner?”

“Even better,” Maya said as she got out of the bathroom. “I know this place in Sanlitun - that’s the main entertainment district - that’s really great. It’s very secret - you have to be in the know to get in. Like, really in the know.”

“Nice,” Victoria said. She was always the more cautious type in comparison to Maya, but this seemed exciting. Hopefully she had enough energy to go out tonight.

[Cynthia]

I wonder if the clubs that flourish today in Sanlitun are still around in 2040 or were they destroyed during the progress?

[Unapologetic Chinaperson]

February 14, 2040 - Sanlitun, Chaoyang District, Beijing, China

“Here we are!” Maya said to Victoria as the two climbed out of their pod taxi. Maya did so with great excitement as she looked forward to dancing the night away. But Victoria stumbled out like a zombie, fixed in awe at the city lights of downtown Beijing.

“So this is the place,” Victoria said, slackjawed as her words floated into the cool night air.

“It is indeed,” Maya said.

“Not even Times Square is like this,” Victoria mumbled as she scanned the sea of glass and concrete surrounding them. “I never saw so much light before.”

The two stood like ants on the mile-wide street flanked by postmodern Apple Stores, mile-high IKEAs, and other monoliths to capitalism. Strings of thousands of LEDs blinked on and off as they traced the edges and outlines of megamalls and IMAX theaters like lines of a Mondrian painting. Billboards advertised everything from Huawei implants to Tencent smart homes, Hyundai taxi rentals and Colgate toothpaste. Even the sky itself glowed, as blues, greens and oranges fought for themselves on the canvas of the heavens.

“Haha you mentioned all this light,” Maya said. “May I add a bit more?”

“What?” Victoria asked.

“Look at me.” Maya’s party dress was one of complete darkness, jet black from the carbon fibers that gave it strength with beauty. But in one go, Maya made a complete pirouette and let intricate flowers of light bloom on the fabric. Veins of fiber optic light lit up Maya's leaves and petals as her light coursed through them, the colors of rose pink and jade green ebbing and flowing like the artificial stars around them. Around her neck, her necklace glowed at the same time, its light emanating from inside the six translucent pearls that made up the centerpiece.

“Dang girl,” Victoria said as she looked between her own dress and Maya’s. Her dress, a white one with gold trimmings her parents picked out back in Sevierville, paled in comparison.

“Designer cheongsam,” Maya said, using the Chinese term for the type of one-piece dress she wore. “The future of fashion. Technologically advanced and extremely sexy. Made in Singapore.”

“Okay,” Victoria said. “Thanks for making me feel not sexy.”

“Oh come on, you’re plenty sexy,” Maya said. “I can get you your own cheongsam next time if you want. I’m sure there’s a fancy dress store around here.”

“Nah it’s okay.”

“You sure?”

“Let’s find the place okay? We can worry about this when we’re drunk and everything.”

Maya rolled her eyes, her advertising efforts having clearly failed. “Follow me,” she said, pointing to a nearby alley.

“It’s in there?” Victoria said?

“Yes?” Maya said. “You think a place as sketch as this would be on this main road?”

“No?”

“Good.” With Maya in the lead, the two walked into the alleyway.

In stark contrast to the infinite expanse of street they were dropped off on, the alleyway was barely wide enough to fit two people, let alone two thousand. Victoria struggled to even breathe as she struggled through the sea of people streaming in and out of the stores and bars around her. She was particularly hypersensitive to her dress snagging on something and ripping to shreds, a possibility Maya didn’t have to contemplate with her form-fitting carbon fiber cheongsam.

“Hey,” Maya said, barely audible above the din of the night time crowd. “How are you doing with that cheap dress and no makeup?”

“No makeup?” Victoria asked as she struggled through the crowd.  “I spent an hour putting on this dress and my natural makeup. Just ‘cause y’all are complaining that my face doesn’t look like plastic doesn’t mean that it doesn’t look good!”

“Haha sure,” Maya said as she made her way to the entrance of their establishment.

“So this is the place?” Victoria asked as they stopped under a ice-blue neon sign.

“Yep,” Maya said. “蓝月酒吧。 Blue Moon Bar.”

“You sure?”

“Yep.”

Victoria took Maya’s word for it; to her, the hanzi may as well be alien writing. Nervously, she looked around at the concert of neon surrounding her. Above, red lanterns hung from wires, swinging to and fro in the evening air. White raindrops drizzled from the trees above in the form of LEDs as they too swayed back and forth in the gentle Beijing breeze.

Right now, Victoria thought as she tried not to get a seizure from all these flashing lights, all she wanted was a drink, whether it be a bottle of pop or a can of Natty Boh. Nothing else mattered. Especially not getting an argument with your friend, especially not one who was also your tour guide. Victoria forgot how many times Maya went to Beijing, and she suspected that Maya lost count herself. Being part of a Chinese Community, she thought, has its perks.

“Vicky,” Maya said, interrupting Victoria’s train of thought, “we’re here. Just stay close to me. I’ll get us in.”

Victoria looked at Maya as she walked towards a woman guarding the entrance of the Blue Moon. The woman had snow-white skin, her hair as black as charcoal. Her lipstick was redder than blood and her eyeliner was thicker than it. Her fashion matched her vampire makeup. She wore a bold red miniskirt held in place by a black leather belt with a buckle that had “蓝月” printed on it in gleaming silver. And her white top was scandalously low-cut; between that and her wearing a push-up bra, the woman would not look out of place on VirtualEarth After Dark.

As soon as she saw Maya, her normal stoic appearance gave way to a gleaming smile. “Welcome back Maya!” she said as she turned towards her with childlike glee. “We missed you for so long!”

“You don’t worry,” Maya said, “I’m back to play.”

At once, Maya placed her right hand on the vampire woman’s outstretched palm. When they connected, they glowed a deep neon green, with streaks of milky white coursing along their veins as if their hands had become made of jade. “You have indeed returned home, Maya.”

“I sure did,” Maya said as she let go, the glow disappearing as soon as it appeared. The vampire let her pass as Maya gestured Victoria to follow her.

Victoria tried to follow Maya, but the vampire immediately stopped her. “This is a restricted establishment,” she said with her usual stoicness having returned to her face. “You cannot follow her unless you too are a Member.”

“Uh,” Victoria said. “Can I at least try the palm thing you just did with Maya?”

“Yidong,” Maya said, “she’s with me. She’s my best friend.” The two didn’t hear her, however, as Victoria for whatever reason tried to repeat the gesture. To Victoria’s dismay and non-surprise, nothing happened when she placed her own hand on Yidong’s palm. No green light, no nothing.

“I said,” Maya repeated, louder this time, “she’s with me. I’m letting her come with me.”

“You are?” Yidong asked as she turned to face Maya. She turned back to face Victoria, who was slapping Yidong’s palm repeatedly with no effect, with a look of uncertainty. “Are you her friend?”

“Uh, yeah I am,” Victoria said, keeping one eye on Yidong and the other on Maya.

“Oh okay,” Yidong said. “Maya is one of our most trustworthy Members. Her word is golden. You may enter the Blue Moon.”

“Thank you,” Victoria said as she walked into the Blue Moon. Grabbing Maya’s arm, she followed her into a pitch-black sanctum, which fell further into total darkness as soon as Yidong closed the doors on them.

“What’s happening?” Victoria asked as she tried to find her own face in the complete void of light and color.

“You’re in for a surprise,” Maya said. Though she couldn’t see her at all, Victoria knew that she had a huge smirk on her face.

They soon felt the ground below them being gently lowered as the whirls of elevator gears grounded above them. One second, then two seconds, then three. They landed, and behind them, the elevator doors opened to a world of psychedelic color that was the Blue Moon Bar.