The Wakeful Wanderer's Guide to New New England & Beyond

Spiral

The ceiling at Bar Zinc was composed of one hundred years of sun-bleached plastic bric-a-brac circling a drain. Epoxied above the gray metal bar were hundreds of Christmas ornaments, a few harlequin masks, several model trucks and cars, dozens of plastic dolls and doll parts, toy guns, a plastic tricycle, a plastic sled, several games and game pieces, mobile phone pieces, broken tablets, a plastic palm tree, several plastic flamingos, toy shovels and buckets, ragged inline skates, toy hammers, saws, wrenches, badges, helmets, model houses, plastic dogs, cats, cows, horses and birds, various shapes of dice, tops, fake coins, flat vinyl dresses, a couple of mini plastic records, and hundreds of rattles, pacifiers, and baby bottles. The artist had found all of these items on the shores of Acadie, and hauled them here via her work-trike to glue them to the ceiling. The entirety of her work was laid out in a great spiral, ending above a white spherical hanging lamp.

Matthew thought he could sense a pattern to the field of detritus. He felt certain that sections were organized by genre and age, and others by manufacturer. He spent his spare minutes, leaning on his broom, looking up at the washed-up trash, looking for patterns. He thought could spend years generating his own account of a lost culture from the swirling detritus hovering above the heads of the bar's graying patrons.

Zinc was on the Boulevard Saint Laurent, one floor above street level in the Free City of Montreal, capital of the Commune of Quebec. His uncle Charlie was the bartender most nights here. Charlie had convinced the owner, Jean-Philippe to give Matthew the position of busboy and dishwasher when the job opened up. Charlie had assumed the surname of Dent upon his arrival decades ago. He was well loved by all the clientele.

The patrons at Zinc were a mix of young and old, but mostly old. Matthew thought he had never before seen so many people over 40. It rarely occurred to him when he was among the Interconnected that everyone he knew was young. During one of his breaks, shortly after finding his uncle and gaining employment here, he asked him why the bar had so many older customers.

"That's the way it is here," Charlie responded, drying a glass, "people of a certain age are afraid of joining the augmenté, and have no particular love for les voyous or les royalistes. Quebec's a protected haven for les anachroniques. We have one of a few remaining governments. There's a working legal system and a volunteer army. It also helps that the weather here's cooler. Gets too damn hot down south for most of my customers."

"But how does the government survive in the absence of currency?" Matthew couldn't help but fall into his old inquisitive habits.

"It's based on the old Paris commune, not cold war communism, but an insular system of scrip. It's doled out to us for our basic needs. Frankly, I think it only works because the population is so old. Everyone here seems happy to live on a budget."

"But how does the farming get done? Transportation? Without young people, who does the manual labor?" Matthew was fascinated.

"The hard work's automated, but that usually happens out of sight. No one here likes to think about the robots. For example, there are a few restaurants where drinks and food are dispensed automatically, but thankfully, most people prefer a human being to serve them. Jean-Philippe makes sure most things are done by hand in his bar."

Jean-Philippe liked to cook, and when he was in the kitchen, the food was excellent. The rest of the time, it was pretty bland, delivered to be heated up by Charlie or Matthew or whoever was on staff. No doubt, it was prepared by bot somewhere out of sight.

Matthew arrived in Montreal at the onset of winter. Upon leaving his unicycle in Montpellier, he shut off his implants and tracked down a small busload of elderly people heading north. They let him aboard without any questions. The customs booth at the border to Quebec was all automated, the entry queries were trivial. Matthew used the name, Matthew LaCompte. The robot waived him through.