The Reveries of Orlie Greene

I

Orlie sat in her white oak bed bent over a plastic contraption and an old David Bowie record. Her room was illuminated by a string of coloured lights hooked up to a battered solar panel in the window.

'C'mon,' she whispered, fiddling with the flat, wand-like device.

She slipped the record into a slot going through its middle and it clicked into place. With the push of a button a needle flipped out, fitting perfectly into the outer edge of the record. As it began to spin an eerie glow shone from inside of the wand lighting the shiny vinyl up blue. Orlie carefully placed the player on her bedside table, hands shaking with excitement. Leaning back on the headboard she smiled, entertained by the small speaker coming to life. She relished the sound of the needle running over the initial, music-less groove. It took her weeks to figure out what the thing even did, let alone to find records it would still work with. Then the sound of guitar strings and drums started to pitter-patter, and a voice sung out.

Ground control to Major Tom.

She'd never heard a song like Space Oddity before. The only recorded music she'd ever been able to listen to were the same seven albums all her life, electronic dance from the 2060's. When she was sixteen, she'd found a miraculously working iPod, the battery had been hacked, made internally rechargeable. Unfortunately the only headphones she'd ever found were either dead or very scratchy. All she could make out was static heavy bass and odd, auto-tuned voices. Hearing music clearly for the first time was a tremendous gift for this particular occasion. Tomorrow would be her eighteenth birthday, August 21, 2089.

So she could hear better, she took up her thick, long dreads of white blonde and tied them in a bun on top of her head. She'd been dreading her hair since she was thirteen, it roughed her up a bit, but she still had a vulnerable kitten-like look to her face. She had light green eyes, a little button nose and full, pouty lips. Her nose was a constellation of brown freckles that stretched out to her cheeks. She was thin but muscular. Her arms were like tightly knotted bamboo beneath her turquoise tank top and denim overalls. Orlie grabbed a wooden box from beneath her bed and pulled up its floral etched lid. Then she untied a little pouch full of rolled cigarettes sitting on top. She lit one off a candle on her bedside table and a flowery, smoky haze filled the room. The music continued on beneath the sound of a thousand raindrops hitting the attic roof.

She'd spent her whole life just on the outskirts of Kansas City. Everyone told her it was unsafe to travel far alone. Nobody really knew what was out there anymore. Her family had been in hiding from the pandemics her entire life. Orlie's only friends, a few kids that lived in the surrounding area, never had the real desire to explore like she did. They were scared by stories of disease and suffering. She always dreamt of finding a way out.

She made a dozen tiny o's with the smoke and a calming sensation drifted like the feeling of someone's soft fingers tickling her skin. Her mind drifted with the music to outer space. She imagined looking down on earth and all the wonders it contained. She visualized waterfalls, rainforests, deserts and mountains, things she'd only seen in books and dreams. For a brief moment, she felt like she was flying.

There was a knock on the door. Orlie snapped out of her daze.

'Hey,' her dad Hubert, walked in, 'How are you making this fantastic racket?'

'Have you ever heard a vinyl record?' Orlie passed him the joint.

He took a big puff and exhaled, 'Not in a very long time kid.'

He took a seat on the edge of her bed and they both sat silently for a moment, enjoying the music.

Hubert always wore a pair of goofy, aviator-style glasses, the same pair he'd had since his teens. His hair was curly, light blonde like hers but with streaks of silver. After the song ended, he walked over to her window looking out to their backyard.

'Your blue lotus pond is doing so well, I'm impressed. Guess you get the green thumb from your mother,' he passed her back the smoke and Orlie took another drag.

'You think Nan knew she could get a buzz off these?' she wondered.

She'd found the seeds after cleaning out her grandmother's attic after she died a few years ago. Miraculously, they grew. Clarabella's house was filled with oddities ordered from around the world before the postal system collapsed. Their family had once owned a lucrative vegetable farm, they used to be quite wealthy before the pandemics, before money became a thing of the past.

The rain stopped abruptly and the clouds began to separate, revealing a round, full moon. Orlie joined her dad by the window. She'd come up with the idea to make a pond from scratch and set her mind to it. It took her and the boys weeks to dig it out, line it, and fill it bucket by bucket with water from the spring. The lotus buds floated silently along, their little mauve petals closed shut for the night. Beyond Orlie's pond, lines of vegetables streaked the land. Her and her parents, the lone survivors of the family, worked hard every spring to get food growing, saving and drying the precious seeds, which could no longer be ordered so easily in bulk.

As Orlie became older, she developed a special interest in cultivating medicinal and psychoactive plants. She had her own section of the garden dedicated specifically to healing herbs and flowers. She'd read any and every book or article she could get her hands on regarding the subject. She'd often go foraging for new species, hoping to find cuttings that would grow in her garden. Her eyes drifted up beyond the forest out back. Up towards the old highway, out in the fields, she thought she saw lights.

'Must be the lotus,' thought Orlie to herself.

Her father and her continued to listen to the album, exchanging few words. The first side of the record finished and all that remained was a repetitive static tap. She went over to the device, flipped the record and reinserted it.

'I think this is how you do it,' she muttered.

'So where'd you find that? I haven't seen a record player in years.'

'Yeah, it's solar powered. Somehow it still works. I left it in the sun for a few days by my windowsill and the buttons lit up.'

'Well I know you didn't find it in your Nan's house,' Hubert raised an eyebrow.

'I snatched it house digging with the boys a few weeks ago.'

'And what about the records?' he had his arms crossed now, paternal.

'Another house yesterday, I'm sorry dad, I needed to see if it worked!'

Her parents rarely approved of her stealing goods from abandoned houses, but Orlie couldn't help it. To her they were like pharaoh tombs, full of clues to what life was like when there was electricity, money and fuel. Back when there were billions of people.

'Greg and Thomas killed a chicken for my birthday dinner tomorrow,' Orlie struggled to change the subject.

'Yeah,' her dad sighed, 'I noticed the birds are pretty quiet tonight.'

He looked back out the window, thinking for a moment.

'When you were born Orlie, it was the scariest day of my life. All of our friends and family were either dead or hiding. It's a miracle that we survived. I'll never forget staying up all night, every night with the windows boarded up. Our only three bullets loaded in a shotgun and I would have used them all in a heartbeat if a stranger walked through the door. Back then, you couldn't even let someone breathe on you. Not if they were sick. I understand things are different now. That the damage is done, that you kids want to understand what it was like. But please Orlie, promise me you're being careful, you're wearing gloves and a mask when you go into these places, right? Be aware of who else might be there. Remember how lucky we are.'

'I know,' Orlie said, 'I'm always careful. I'm sorry I scare you and mom all the time.'

Her dad unfurrowed his eyebrows and let go a smile.

'Anyway kid, I'm off to bed. I'll see you in the morning.'

He headed towards the door and Orlie stopped him.

'If mom asks, can you tell her the record player was a gift from Thomas?'

'No problem.'

He kissed her on the forehead and quietly shut the door behind him. Her dad was always a little less harsh than the other parents about ransacking houses. She felt like deep down he was sorry for having a kid in the aftermath of multiple pandemics.