A Journey With Poppies

Tuesday, April 2, 2052
Walnut Creek, California

Poppies called me on my newly imbedded microcom at 7:00 a.m.  Poppies typically was up and out of the house he and I shared before I awoke, so it wasn’t unusual to get an early morning call from him.  He frequently called to make sure I was ready for school, but today he spoke hastily and I caught the urgency in his message.  “We’ve got to get across the border soon,” he said. 

I was already awake but I wasn’t ready for his microcom call and my tooth vibrated with the sensation created by the new device.  Microcoms had been around for over ten years, but this was my first really good one.  I could receive and send verbal messages just by activating the “tooth phone” that had been embedded in my large upper molar.  The voice activated transmitter responded to my verbal command in a code known only to me. 

By voice commands, I could initiate a call, answer a call, send a call to voice mail, etc.  Plus, it was a totally “hands free and instrument free” operation. 

As I learned to master the new device, I thought how much of a drag it must have been to carry around a verbal communication device such as a cellular phone back in the first decade.  Even the miniaturized wrist phones of the twenties had to be an inconvenience.  I read once that those had to be dialed and the transmission quality was sporadic.  With the current state of the art, I could send a verbal message by microcom anywhere in the world just as easily and clearly as I could by talking to someone face-to-face.  Further, since all transmissions were based on verbal commands, and number destinations were already programmed in Microcom Central, all I had to do was verbally activate the “tooth phone,” say the name of the person I wanted, and start talking.  Tiny speakers also were embedded in my Eustachian tubes so every message I received was crystal clear.

I wondered what the hurry was, but if Poppies was concerned, then I had better be too.  He told me what to pack and that he’d meet me at the old pax train station at 8:00 p.m. that evening. 

Back in the early twenties, Amtrak had taken over all the rail lines in America, including metro area transit lines.  Even that merger didn’t help.  The entire passenger rail network folded in the thirties.  Ever since passenger trains stopped running in America, Amtrak stations had become havens for derelicts but this one was in such bad shape, even the hobos and street gangs avoided it. As I went off to school, I wondered what Poppies was up to.  He had not been his former self ever since Grammy went away.

I was a little early for our rendezvous and, at age fourteen, I felt uneasy about going into the station after dark.  Nevertheless, there was a strange feeling of human presence in the station.  Perhaps it was the ghosts of all the riders who had passed through the station in years past.  I had read in my history books that Amtrack never really caught on and had to be subsidized by the government for many years.  Even in the years preceding the Petroleum Wars when fuel for other modes of transportation was scarce, travel by rail did not flourish. 

The station reeked with the smell of garbage and sewage.  There were still remnants of drugs, alcohol, and marihuana going back to the days before legalization.  This was the congregating place for the scum of society that had lost themselves in the mind-numbing world of narcotics when it was still illegal to use them.  How ironic, that once legalized, the crack houses disappeared and the sidewalk junkies did likewise, as the concept of removing a prohibition, once again, removed the lure. 

Drugs were not a problem in 2052.  However, crime and oppression were, so it was with considerable trepidation that I sat there in the dwindling twilight of the station lobby.  I was breathing quickly and sweating heavily as I brushed away the cobwebs and imaginary spiders I thought were crawling down my neck.

Poppies came up behind me and his “Pssst” about made me wet my pants.  He motioned for me to follow him and I stayed close as he took me down the frozen-in-time escalator to the track level.  We walked along the track bed for about two hundred meters until we came to a tunnel that had been sealed.  Poppies knew that some of the bricks had been knocked away, creating a small hole in the barricade.  I looked to my left and saw a dilapidated sign that read, “Walnut Creek Station.”  We slipped through the opening quickly and, without another word, we were on our way down the tunnel.

It was pitch dark but Poppies seemed to know where he was going so I reached out to touch his climate coat that was already warming him to counter the cold and damp of the tunnel.  As it was April and already quite warm, my climate clothing was packed in my bag, which w