Itsy Bitsy Spider

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When I found out that my father was still alive after all these years and living at Strawberry Fields, I thought he’d gotten just what he deserved. Retroburbs are where the old, scared people go to hide. I’d always pictured the people in them as deranged losers. Visiting some fantasy world like the disneys or Carlucci’s Carthage is one thing, moving to one is another. Sure, 2038 is messy, but it’s a hell of a lot better than nineteen-sixty-whatever.

Now that I’d arrived at 144 Bluejay Way, I realized that the place was worse than I had imagined. Strawberry Fields was pretending to be some long-lost suburb of the late twentieth century, except that it had the sterile monotony of cheap VR. It was clean, all right, and neat, but it was everywhere the same. And the scale was wrong. The lots were squeezed together and all the houses had shrunk—like the dreams of their owners. They were about the size of a one-car garage, modular units tarted up at the factory to look like ranches, with old double-hung storm windows and hardened siding of harvest gold, barn red, forest green. Of course, there were no real garages; faux Mustangs and VW buses cruised the quiet streets. Their carbrains were listening for a summons from Barbara Chesley next door at 142, or the Goltzes across the street, who might be headed to Penny Lanes to bowl a few frames, or the hospital to die.

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